ing, or in virtue of baronies and feudalities.

In this there was great wisdom; for it left the sin of the provocation
still on the heads of the King and his evil counsellors, in so much that
even, when the General Assembly, holden at Glasgow, vindicated the
independence and freedom of Christ's kingdom, by continuing to sit in
despite of the dissolution pronounced by King Charles' commissioner, the
Marquis Hamilton, and likewise by decreeing the abolition of prelacy as
an abomination, there was no political blame wherewith the people, in
their capacity of subjects to their earthly prince, could be wyted or
brought by law to punishment.

In the meantime, the King, who was as fey as he was false, mustered his
forces, and his rampant high-priest, Laud, was, with all the voices of
his prelatic emissaries, inflaming the honest people of England to wage
war against our religious freedom. The papistical Queen of Charles was
no less busy with the priesthood of her crafty sect, and aids and
powers, both of men and money, were raised wherever they could be had,
in order to reinstall the discarded episcopacy of Scotland.

The Covenanters, however, were none daunted, for they had a great ally
in the Lord of Hosts; and, with Him for their captain, they neither
sought nor wished for any alien assistance, though they sent letters to
their brethren in foreign parts, exhorting them to unite in the
Covenant, and to join them for the battle. General Lesley, in Gustavus
Adolphus' army, was invited by his kinsman, the Lord Rothes, to come
home, that, if need arose, he might take the temporal command of the
Covenanters.

The King having at last, according to an ancient practice of the English
monarchs, when war in old times was proclaimed against the Scots,
summoned his nobles to attend him with their powers at York, the
Covenanters girded their loins, and the whole country rung with the din
of the gathering of an host for the field.

One Captain Bannerman, who had been with Lesley in the armies of
Gustavus, was sent from Edinburgh to train the men in our part; and our
house being central for the musters of the three adjacent parishes, he
staid a night in the week with us at Quharist for the space of better
than two months, and his military discourse greatly instructed our
neighbours in the arts and stratagems of war.

He was an elderly man, of a sedate character, and had gone abroad with
an uncle from Montrose when he was quite a yout