trained to war, had more or less of a tendency to fling off every
corrective band. Both Rev. John Borland and Rev. Alexander Shiels,
author of the "Hynd let Loose," were stern fanatics who would tolerate
nothing diverging a shade from their own code of principles. They
treated the people as persons under their spiritual authority, and
required of them fastings, humiliations, and long attendance on sermons
and exhortations. Such pastors were treated with contempt and ignominy
by men scarcely inclined to bear ecclesiastical authority, even in its
lightest form. They mistook their mission, which was to give Christian
counsel, and to lead gently and with dignity from error into rectitude.
Instead of this they fell upon the flock like irritated schoolmasters
who find their pupils in mutiny. They became angry and dominative; and
the more they thus exhibited themselves, the more scorn and contumely
they encountered. Meanwhile two trading sloops arrived in the harbor
with a small stock of provisions; but the supply was inadequate; so five
hundred of the party were ordered to embark for Scotland.

The news of the abandonment of the settlement by the first expedition
was first rumored in London during the middle of September, 1699.
Letters giving such accounts had been received from Jamaica. The report
reached Edinburgh on the 19th, but was received with scornful
incredulity. It was declared to be an impudent lie devised by some
Englishmen who could not endure the sight of Scotland waxing great and
opulent. On October 4th the whole truth was known, for letters had been
received from New York announcing that a few miserable men, the remains
of the colony, had arrived in the Hudson. Grief, dismay, and rage seized
the nation. The directors in their rage called the colonists
white-livered deserters. Accurate accounts brought the realization of
the truth that hundreds of families, once in comparative opulence, were
now reduced almost to beggary, and the flower of the nation had either
succumbed to hardships, or else were languishing in prisons in the
Spanish settlements, or else starving in English colonies. The
bitterness of disappointment was succeeded by an implacable hostility to
the king, who was denounced in pamphlets of the most violent and
inflammatory character, calling him a hypocrite, and a deceiver of those
who had shed their best blood in his cause, and the author of the
misfortunes of Scotland. Indemnification, redress,