s own hands he placed on Charles the Second's head the ancient
diadem of Scotland. Surely it might therefore have been then supposed
that all previous offence against the royal family was forgotten and
forgiven; yea, when it is considered that General Monk himself, the
boldest in the cause of Cromwell's usurpation, was rewarded with a
dukedom in England for doing no more for the King there than Argyle had
done for him before in greater peril here, it could not have entered
into the imagination of Christian men, that Argyle, for only submitting
like a private subject to the same usurped authority when it had become
supreme, would, after the Restoration, be brought to the block. But it
was so; and though the machinations of political enemies converted that
submission into treasons to excuse their own crime, yet there was not an
honest man in all the realm that did not see in the doom of Argyle a
dismal omen of the cloud and storm which so soon after burst upon our
religious liberties.

Passing, however, by all those afflictions which took the colour of
political animosities, I hasten to speak of the proceedings which, from
the hour of the Restoration, were hatched for the revival of the
prelatic oppression. The tyranny of the Stuarts is indeed of so fell a
nature that, having once tasted of blood in any cause, it will return
again and again, however so often baffled, till it has either devoured
its prey, or been itself mastered; and so it showed in this instance.
For, regardless of those troubles which the attempt of the first Charles
to exercise an authority in spiritual things beyond the rights of all
earthly sovereignty caused to the realm and to himself, the second no
sooner felt the sceptre in his grip than he returned to the same
enormities; and he found a fit instrument in James Sharp, who, in
contempt of the wrath of God, sold himself to Antichrist for the prelacy
of St Andrews.

But it was not among the ambitious and mercenary members of the clergy
that the evidences of a backsliding generation were alone to be seen;
many of the people, nobles and magistrates were infected with the sin of
the same reprobation; and in verity, it might have been said of the
realm that the restoration of King Charles the Second was hailed as an
advent ordained to make men forget all vows, sobriety and solemnities.
It is, however, something to be said in commendation of the constancy of
mind and principle of our West Country folk th