As soon as it was known abroad that Charles the Second was dead, the
Covenanters who had taken refuge in Holland from the Persecution
assembled to consult what ought then to be done; for the papist James
Stuart, on the death of his brother, had caused himself to be proclaimed
King of Scotland, without taking those oaths by which alone he could be
entitled to assume the Scottish crown.

At the head of this congregation was the Earl of Argyle, who, some years
before, had incurred the aversion of the tyrant to such a degree that,
by certain of those fit tools for any crime, then in dismal abundance
about the court of Holyrood, he had procured his condemnation as a
traitor, and would have brought him to the scaffold, had the Earl not
fortunately effected his escape. And it was resolved by that
congregation that the principal personages then present should form
themselves into a Council, to concert the requisite measures for the
deliverance of their native land; the immediate issue of which was,
that a descent should be made by Argyle among his vassals, in order to
draw together a sufficient host to enable them to wage war against the
Usurper, for so they lawfully and rightly denominated James Stuart.

The first hint that I gleaned of this design was through the means of
Mrs Brownlee. She was invited one afternoon by the gentlewoman of the
Lady Sophia Lindsay, the Earl's daughter-in-law, to view certain
articles of female bravery which had been sent from Holland by his
Lordship to her mistress; and, as her custom was, she, on her return
home, descanted at large of all that she had seen and heard.

The receipt, at that juncture, of such gear from the Earl of Argyle, by
such a Judith of courage and wisdom as the Lady Sophia Lindsay, seemed
to me very remarkable, and I could not but jealouse that there was some
thing about it like the occultation of a graver correspondence. I
therefore began to question Mrs Brownlee how the paraphernalia had come,
and what the Earl, according to the last accounts, was doing; which led
her to expatiate on many things, though vague and desultory, that were
yet in concordance with what I had overheard the Lord Perth say to the
Earl of Aberdeen in the Bishop's house. In the end, I gathered that the
presents were brought over by the skipper of a sloop, one Roderick
Macfarlane, whom I forthwith determined to see, in order to pick from
him what intelligence I could, without being at the time well aw