The conspiracy was, in fact, a very serious affair:  Carstares was confessedly aware of its criminal aspect, and was in the closest confidence of the ministers of William of Orange.  What his dealings were with them in later years he would never divulge.  But it is clear that if the plotters slew Charles and James, the hour had struck for the Dutch deliverer’s appearance.  If we describe the Rye House Plot as aiming merely at “the exclusion of the Duke of York from the throne,” we shut our eyes to evidence and make ourselves incapable of understanding the events.  There were plotters of every degree and rank, and they were intriguing with Argyll, and, through Carstares who knew, though he refused a part in the murder plot, were in touch at once with Argyll and the intimates of William of Orange.

Meanwhile “the hill men,” the adherents of Renwick, in October 1684, declared a war of assassination against their opponents, and announced that they would try malignants in courts of their own.  Their manifesto ("The Apologetical Declaration”) caused an extraordinary measure of repression.  A test—­the abjuration of the criminal parts of Renwick’s declaration—­was to be offered by military authority to all and sundry.  Refusal to abjure entailed military execution.  The test was only obnoxious to sincere fanatics; but among them must have been hundreds of persons who had no criminal designs, and merely deemed it a point of honour not to “homologate” any act of a Government which was corrupt, prelatic, and unholy.

Later victims of this view of duty were Margaret Lauchleson and Margaret Wilson—­an old woman and a young girl—­cruelly drowned by the local authorities at Wigtown (May 1685).  A myth represents Claverhouse as having been present.  The shooting of John Brown, “the Christian Carrier,” by Claverhouse in the previous week was an affair of another character.  Claverhouse did not exceed his orders, and ammunition and treasonable papers were in Brown’s possession; he was also sheltering a red-handed rebel.  Brown was not shot merely “because he was a Nonconformist,” nor was he shot by the hand of Claverhouse.

These incidents of “the killing time” were in the reign of James II.; Charles II. had died, to the sincere grief of most of his subjects, on February 2, 1685.  “Lecherous and treacherous” as he was, he was humorous and good-humoured.  The expected invasion of Scotland by Argyll, of England by Monmouth, did not encourage the Government to use respective lenity in the Covenanting region, from Lanarkshire to Galloway.

Argyll, who sailed from Holland on May 2, had a council of Lowlanders who thwarted him.  His interests were in his own principality, but he found it occupied by Atholl and his clansmen, and the cadets of his own House as a rule would not rally to him.  The Lowlanders with him, Sir Patrick Hume, Sir John Cochrane, and the rest, wished to move south and join hands with the Remnant in the west and in Galloway; but the