Argyle, with his wonted generosity of spirit, was at first determined to lay siege to Kirkwall, in order to recover his friends; but, partly by the dissuasions of his followers, and still more by the objections made by the masters of the ships to a delay which might make them lose the favourable winds for their intended voyage, he was induced to prosecute his course.  In the meantime the government made the use that it was obvious they would make of the information they had obtained, and when the earl arrived at his destination, he learned that considerable forces were got together to repel any attack that he might meditate.  Being prevented by contrary winds from reaching the Isle of Islay, where he had purposed to make his first landing, he sailed back to Dunstafnage in Lorn, and there sent ashore his son, Mr. Charles Campbell, to engage his tenants and other friends and dependants of his family to rise in his behalf; but even there he found less encouragement and assistance than he had expected, and the laird of Lochniel, who gave him the best assurances, treacherously betrayed him, sent his letter to the government, and joined the royal forces under the Marquis of Athol.  He then proceeded southwards, and landed at Campbelltown in Kintyre, where his first step was to publish his declaration, which appears to have produced little or no effect.

This bad beginning served, as is usual in such adventures, rather to widen than to reconcile the differences which had early begun to manifest themselves between the leader and his followers.  Hume and Cochrane, partly construing, perhaps too sanguinely, the intelligence which was received from Ayrshire, Galloway, and the other Lowland districts in that quarter, partly from an expectation that where the oppression had been most grievous, the revolt would be proportionably the more general, were against any stay, or, as they termed it, loss of time in the Highlands, but were for proceeding at once, weak as they were in point of numbers, to a country where every man endowed with the common feelings of human nature must be their well-wisher, every man of spirit their coadjutor.  Argyle, on the contrary, who probably considered the discouraging accounts from the Lowlands as positive and distinct, while those which were deemed more favourable appeared to him to be at least uncertain and provisional, thought the most prudent plan was to strengthen himself in his own country before he attempted the invasion of provinces where the enemy was so well prepared to receive him.  He had hopes of gaining time, not only to increase his own army, but to avail himself of the Duke of Monmouth’s intended invasion of England, an event which must obviously have great influence upon his affairs, and which, if he could but maintain himself in a situation to profit by it, might be productive of advantages of an importance and extent of which no man could presume to calculate the limits.  Of these two contrary opinions it