night in confusion. The students of the University mingled with the
crowd and animated the tumult. Zealous burghers drank the health of the
college lads and confusion to Papists, and encouraged each other to face
the troops. The troops were already under arms. They were received with
a shower of stones, which wounded an officer. Orders were given to fire;
and several citizens were killed. The disturbance was serious; but
the Drummonds, inflamed by resentment and ambition, exaggerated it
strangely. Queensberry observed that their reports would lead any
person, who had not been a witness of the tumult, to believe that
a sedition as formidable as that of Masaniello had been raging at
Edinburgh. They in return accused the Treasurer, not only of extenuating
the crime of the insurgents, but of having himself prompted it, and
did all in their power to obtain evidence of his guilt. One of the
ringleaders, who had been taken, was offered a pardon if he would own
that Queensberry had set him on; but the same religious enthusiasm,
which had impelled the unhappy prisoner to criminal violence, prevented
him from purchasing his life by a calumny. He and several of his
accomplices were hanged. A soldier, who was accused of exclaiming,
during the affray, that he should like to run his sword through a
Papist, was shot; and Edinburgh was again quiet: but the sufferers
were regarded as martyrs; and the Popish Chancellor became an object of
mortal hatred, which in no long time was largely gratified. [130]

The King was much incensed. The news of the tumult reached him when the
Queen, assisted by the Jesuits, had just triumphed over Lady Dorchester
and her Protestant allies. The malecontents should find, he declared,
that the only effect of the resistance offered to his will was to make
him more and more resolute. [131] He sent orders to the Scottish Council
to punish the guilty with the utmost severity, and to make unsparing use
of the boot. [132] He pretended to be fully convinced of the Treasurer's
innocence, and wrote to that minister in gracious words; but the
gracious words were accompanied by ungracious acts. The Scottish
Treasury was put into commission in spite of the earnest remonstrances
of Rochester, who probably saw his own fate prefigured in that of his
kinsman. [133] Queensberry was, indeed, named First Commissioner, and
was made President of the Privy Council: but his fall, though thus
broken, was still a fall. He was also r