to “preach, expound scripture, or pray”, at any unlicensed meeting.  On May 5th, 1679, Sharpe was assassinated near St. Andrews.  The murderers escaped, and some of them joined the Covenanters of the west.  The Government had determined to put a stop to the meetings of conventicles, and had chosen for this purpose John Graham of Claverhouse.  On the 11th June, Claverhouse was defeated at Drumclog, but eleven days later he routed the Covenanting army at Bothwell Bridge, and took over a thousand prisoners.  Only seven were executed, but the others were imprisoned in Greyfriars’ churchyard, and a large number of them were sold as plantation slaves.  A small rising at Aird’s Moss in Ayrshire, in 1680, was easily suppressed.  In 1681 the Scottish Parliament prescribed as a test the disavowal of the National Covenant of 1638 and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1644, and it declared that any attempt to alter the succession involved the subjects “in perjury and rebellion”.  In connection with the Test Act, an opportunity was found for convicting the Earl of Argyll[91] of treason.  His property was confiscated, but he himself was allowed to escape.  The last years of the reign, under the administration of the Duke of York, were marked by exceptional cruelty in connection with the religious persecutions.  The expeditions of Claverhouse, the case of the Wigtown martyrs, and the horrible cruelties of the torture-room have given to these years the title of “the Killing time”.

The Scottish Parliament welcomed King James VII with fulsome adulation.  But the new king was scarcely seated on the throne before a rebellion broke out.  The Earl of Argyll adopted the cause of Monmouth, landed in his own country, and marched into Lanarkshire.  His attempt was an entire failure:  nobody joined his standard, and he himself, failing to make good his retreat, was captured and executed without a new trial.  The Parliament again enforced the Test Act, and renewed the Conventicle Act, making it a capital offence even to be present at a conventicle.  The persecutions continued with renewed vigour.  James failed in persuading even the obsequious Parliament to give protection to the Roman Catholics.  He attempted to obtain the same end by a Declaration of Indulgence, of which the Covenanters might be unable to avail themselves, but in its final form, issued in May, 1688, it included them.  The conjunction of popery and absolute prerogative thoroughly alarmed the Scots, and the news of the English Revolution was received with general satisfaction.  The effect of the long struggle had been to weaken the country in many ways.  Thousands of her bravest sons had died on the scaffold or on the battle-field or in the dungeons of Dunnottar, or had been exiled to the plantations.  Trade and commerce had declined.  The records of the burghs show us how harbours were empty and houses ruinous, where, a century earlier, there had been a thriving trade.  Scotland in 1688 was in every way, unless in moral discipline, poorer than she had been while England was still the “auld enemy”.