owed, and their
persecutors at last fell on the method of calling a roll of the
parishioners' names every Sabbath, and marking a fine of twenty
shillings Scots to the name of each absenter. In this way very large
debts were incurred by persons altogether unable to pay. Besides this,
landlords were fined for their tenants' absences, tenants for their
landlords', masters for their servants', servants for their masters',
even though they themselves were perfectly regular in their attendance.
And as the curates were allowed to fine with the sanction of any common
soldier, it may be imagined that often the pretexts were neither very
sufficient nor well proven.

When the fines could not be paid at once, Bibles, clothes, and household
utensils were seized upon, or a number of soldiers, proportionate to his
wealth, were quartered on the offender. The coarse and drunken privates
filled the houses with woe; snatched the bread from the children to feed
their dogs; shocked the principles, scorned the scruples, and blasphemed
the religion of their humble hosts; and when they had reduced them to
destitution, sold the furniture, and burned down the roof-tree which was
consecrated to the peasants by the name of Home. For all this attention
each of these soldiers received from his unwilling landlord a certain
sum of money per day--three shillings sterling, according to _Naphtali._
And frequently they were forced to pay quartering money for more men
than were in reality "cessed on them." At that time it was no strange
thing to behold a strong man begging for money to pay his fines, and
many others who were deep in arrears, or who had attracted attention in
some other way, were forced to flee from their homes, and take refuge
from arrest and imprisonment among the wild mosses of the uplands.[3]

One example in particular we may cite:

John Neilson, the Laird of Corsack, a worthy man, was, unfortunately for
himself, a Nonconformist. First he was fined in four hundred pounds
Scots, and then through cessing he lost nineteen hundred and
ninety-three pounds Scots. He was next obliged to leave his house and
flee from place to place, during which wanderings he lost his horse. His
wife and children were turned out of doors, and then his tenants were
fined till they too were almost ruined. As a final stroke, they drove
away all his cattle to Glasgow and sold them.[4] Surely it was time that
something were done to alleviate so much sorrow, to ove