Cameron and his followers rode about after issuing the wildest manifestoes, as at Sanquhar in the shire of Dumfries (June 22, 1680).  Bruce of Earlshall was sent with a party of horse to pursue, and, in the wild marshes of Airs Moss, in Ayrshire, Cameron “fell praying and fighting”; while Hackstoun of Rathillet, less fortunate, was taken, and the murder of Sharp was avenged on him with unspeakable cruelties.  The Remnant now formed itself into organised and armed societies; their conduct made them feared and detested by the majority of the preachers, who longed for a quiet life, not for the establishment of a Mosaic commonwealth, and “the execution of righteous judgments” on “malignants.”  Cargill was now the leader of the Remnant, and Cargill, in a conventicle at Torwood, of his own authority excommunicated the king, the Duke of York, Lauderdale, Rothes, Dalziel, and Mackenzie, whom he accused of leniency to witches, among other sins.  The Government apparently thought that excommunication, to the mind of Cargill and his adherents, meant outlawry, and that outlawry might mean the assassination of the excommunicated.  Cargill was hunted, and (July 12, 1681) was captured by “wild Bonshaw.”  It was believed by his party that the decision to execute Cargill was carried by the vote of Argyll, in the Privy Council, and that Cargill told Rothes (who had signed the Covenant with him in their youth) that Rothes would be the first to die.  Rothes died on July 26, Cargill was hanged on July 27.

On the following day James, Duke of York, as Royal Commissioner, opened the first Parliament since 1673-74.  James secured an Act making the right of succession to the Crown independent of differences of religion; he, of course, was a Catholic.  The Test Act was also passed, a thing so self-contradictory in its terms that any man might take it whose sense of humour overcame his sense of honour.  Many refused, including a number of the conformist ministers.  Argyll took the Test “as far as it is consistent with itself and with the Protestant religion.”

Argyll, the son of the executed Marquis, had recovered his lands, and acquired the title of Earl mainly through the help of Lauderdale.  During the religious troubles from 1660 onwards he had taken no great part, but had sided with the Government, and approved of the torture of preachers.  But what ruined him now (though the facts have been little noticed) was his disregard of the claims of his creditors, and his obtaining the lands of the Macleans in Mull and Morven, in discharge of an enormous debt of the Maclean chief to the Marquis, executed in 1661.  The Macleans had vainly attempted to prove that the debt was vastly inflated by familiar processes, and had resisted in arms the invasion of the Campbells.  They had friends in Seaforth, the Mackenzies, and in the Earl of Errol and other nobles.