The first Indulgence was passed in 1669, in favour of the ministers whom the Act of 1662 had driven from their parishes.  Such as had since that time kept from open violation of the law were now to be reinstated in their livings where vacant.  The manse and the glebe were to be theirs as formerly, but the stipend was not to be renewed.  These terms were accepted by some forty or fifty clergymen.  By the advice of the gentle Leighton, who almost alone among his brethren seems at this time to have dared, or to have been even willing, to counsel tolerance, a deputation, nicknamed “the Bishop’s Evangelists,” was sent into the West to preach the doctrine of this Indulgence.  The pious crusade was in vain.  The failure of the Pentland rising and its terrible sequel had turned those stubborn hearts to madness.  Their weaker brethren were now classed with the apostate Sharp and the butcher Dalziel; and the Indulgence was declared a snare for the soul far more deadly than any torture the Government could devise for the body.  Nor, if time could have strengthened Leighton’s hands, was time allowed him.  Following close upon the Indulgence came a fresh Act, now making not only all field-preaching a capital offence, but even laying heavy penalties on any exercise of the Presbyterian worship except under an Indulged minister.  This again was soon followed by a fresh law against Intercommuning—­that is to say, against all who should offer even the simplest act of common charity to a Covenanter—­and promising large rewards to all who should give information against them or their protectors.  By this law it is said that thousands of both sexes, including many persons of rank, suffered severely; and from it sprang a curious incident in the miserable history of this time.

An order was issued to the landed gentry of Renfrew and Ayr, the shires where the disaffection was strongest, requiring them to give bail that their servants and tenants should not only abstain from personal attendance at conventicles, but also from all intercourse with intercommuned persons.  The gentry answered that such assurance was impossible.  It was not, they said, within the compass of their power to do this thing.  The reply from Edinburgh was short and conclusive:  if the landlords could not keep order in their districts, order must be kept for them.  A body of English troops had already been moved up to the border and an Irish force collected at Belfast; but a more ingenious mode of punishment was now devised.  Since the barbarous excesses of the Highland clans under Montrose, it had become an acknowledged breach of the rules of civilised warfare to employ men who, like the Red Indians used in our own American wars, were amenable to no discipline and recognised no principles of humanity.  Eight thousand of these savages were now let loose on the disobedient Lowlanders.  The result was, indeed, not all that had been anticipated at Edinburgh.  The Council had naturally enough