to which they had been in common, and almost indiscriminately subjected, had reunited them.  According to a most expressive phrase of an eminent minister of their church, who sincerely lamented their disunion, the furnace had not yet healed the rents and breaches among them.  Some doubted whether, short of establishing all the doctrines preached by Cargill and Cameron, there was anything worth contending for; while others, still further gone in enthusiasm, set no value upon liberty, or even life itself, if they were to be preserved by the means of a nobleman who had, as well by his serviced to Charles the Second as by other instances, been guilty in the former parts of his conduct of what they termed unlawful compliances.

Perplexed, no doubt, but not dismayed, by these difficulties, the earl proceeded to Tarbet, which he had fixed as the place of rendezvous, and there issued a second declaration (that which has been mentioned as having been laid before the House of Commons), with as little effect as the first.  He was joined by Sir Duncan Campbell, who alone, of all his kinsmen, seems to have afforded him any material assistance, and who brought with him nearly a thousand men; but even with this important reinforcement, his whole army does not appear to have exceeded two thousand.  It was here that he was over-ruled by a council of war, when he proposed marching to Inverary; and after much debate, so far was he from being so self-willed as he is represented, that he consented to go over with his army to that part of Argyleshire called Cowal, and that Sir John Cochrane should make an attempt upon the Lowlands; and he sent with him Major Fullarton, one of the offices in whom he most trusted, and who appears to have best deserved his confidence.  This expedition could not land in Ayrshire, where it had at first been intended, owing to the appearance of two king’s frigates, which had been sent into those seas; and when it did land near Greenock, no other advantage was derived from it than the procuring from the town a very small supply of provisions.

When Cochrane, with his detachment, returned to Cowal, all hopes of success in the Lowlands seemed, for the present at least, to be at an end, and Argyle’s original plan was now necessarily adopted, though under circumstances greatly disadvantageous.  Among these, the most important was the approach of the frigates, which obliged the earl to place his ships under the protection of the castle of Ellengreg, which he fortified and garrisoned as well as his contracted means would permit.  Yet even in this situation, deprived of the co-operation of his little fleet, as well as of that part of his force which he left to defend it, being well seconded by the spirit and activity of Rumbold, who had seized the castle of Ardkinglass, near the head of Loch Fin, he was not without hopes of success in his main enterprise against Inverary, when he was called back to Ellengreg, by intelligence of fresh discontents having broken out