Though the prisoner was condemned, Lauderdale was
still inclined to pardon him; but the unrelenting primate rigorously
insisted upon his execution, and said, that if assassins remained
unpunished, his life must be exposed to perpetual danger. Mitchel was
accordingly executed at Edinburgh, in January, 1678. Such a complication
of cruelty and treachery shows the character of those ministers to whom
the king at this time intrusted the government of Scotland.

Lauderdale's administration, besides the iniquities arising from the
violence of his temper, and the still greater iniquities inseparable
from all projects of persecution, was attended with other circumstances
which engaged him in severe and arbitrary measures. An absolute
government was to be introduced, which on its commencement is often most
rigorous; and tyranny was still obliged, for want of military power, to
cover itself under an appearance of law; a situation which rendered it
extremely awkward in its motions, and, by provoking opposition, extended
the violence of its oppressions.

The rigors exercised against conventicles, instead of breaking the
spirit of the fanatics, had tended only, as is usual, to render them
more obstinate, to increase the fervor of then zeal, to link them more
closely together, and to inflame them against the established hierarchy.
The commonalty, almost every where in the south, particularly in the
western counties frequented conventicles without reserve; and the gentry
though they themselves commonly abstained from these illegal places of
worship, connived at this irregularity in their inferiors. In order to
interest the former on the side of the persecutors, a bond or contract
was, by order of the privy council, tendered to the landlords in the
west, by which they were to engage for the good behavior of their
tenants; and in case any tenant frequented a conventicle, the landlord
was to subject himself to the same fine as could by law be exacted from
the delinquent. It was ridiculous to give sanction to laws by voluntary
contracts: it was iniquitous to make one man answerable for the conduct
of another: it was illegal to impose such hard conditions upon men who
had nowise offended. For these reasons, the greater part of the gentry
refused to sign these bonds; and Lauderdale, enraged at this opposition,
endeavored to break their spirit by expedients which were still more
unusual and more arbitrary.

The law enacted against conventic