from which he had been expelled under very flimsy pretences, inferred
a severe blow to the Presbyterian divine, who could not be considered
otherwise than as an intruder. The interest of the two preachers,
therefore, as well as the sentiments of their flocks, were at direct
variance; and here was another fatal objection in the way of Lady
Peveril's scheme of a general and comprehensive healing ordinance.

Nevertheless, as we have already hinted, Doctor Dummerar behaved as
handsomely upon the occasion as the Presbyterian incumbent had done.
It is true, that in a sermon which he preached in the Castle hall to
several of the most distinguished Cavalier families, besides a world
of boys from the village, who went to see the novel circumstance of
a parson in a cassock and surplice, he went at great length into the
foulness of the various crimes committed by the rebellious party during
the late evil times, and greatly magnified the merciful and peaceful
nature of the honourable Lady of the Manor, who condescended to
look upon, or receive into her house in the way of friendship and
hospitality, men holding the principles which had led to the murder
of the King--the slaying and despoiling his loyal subjects--and the
plundering and breaking down of the Church of God. But then he wiped all
this handsomely up again, with the observation, that since it was the
will of their gracious and newly-restored Sovereign, and the pleasure of
the worshipful Lady Peveril, that this contumacious and rebellious race
should be, for a time, forborne by their faithful subjects, it would
be highly proper that all the loyal liegemen should, for the present,
eschew subjects of dissension or quarrel with these sons of Shimei;
which lesson of patience he enforced by the comfortable assurance, that
they could not long abstain from their old rebellious practices; in
which case, the Royalists would stand exculpated before God and man, in
extirpating them from the face of the earth.

The close observers of the remarkable passages of the times from which
we draw the events of our history, have left it upon record, that these
two several sermons, much contrary, doubtless, to the intention of the
worthy divines by whom they were delivered, had a greater effect in
exasperating, than in composing, the disputes betwixt the two factions.
Under such evil auspices, and with corresponding forebodings on the mind
of Lady Peveril, the day of festivity at length arriv