tches to the commander-in-chief at
Edinburgh as usual. It is clear that neither of them had at that time
heard any rumour of an event which had happened a few days previously at
no very great distance from their quarters. On May 2nd the Primate of
Scotland had been dragged from his carriage as he was driving across an
open heath three miles out of Saint Andrews, and murdered in open day
before the eyes of his daughter.

James Sharp, Archbishop of Saint Andrews, was at that time probably the
best-hated man in Scotland. Like all renegades he was in no favour even
with his own party, though Lauderdale found after trial that he could
not dispense with his support. Even the moderate Presbyterians, who
regarded the uncompromising Covenanters as the real cause of their
country's troubles, looked askance upon Sharp, as the man whom they had
chosen out of their number to save them and who had preferred to save
himself. By the Covenanters themselves he was assailed with every form
of obloquy as the Judas who had sold his God and his country for thirty
pieces of silver, and who had hounded on the servants of the King to
spill the blood of the saints. Yet his murder was but an accident.
Eleven years before an attempt had, indeed, been made upon his life by
one Mitchell, a fanatical and apparently half-witted preacher, who was
after a long delay put to the torture and finally executed on a
confession which he had been induced to make after a promise from the
Privy Council that his life should be spared. It is said that Lauderdale
would have spared him, but Sharp was so vehement for his death that the
Duke dared not refuse.

The chief promoters of the Archbishop's murder were Hackston of
Rathillet, Russell of Kettle, and John Balfour of Burley, or, more
correctly, of Kinloch. These three men were typical of the class who at
this time began to come to the front among the Covenanters, and by their
incapacity, folly, and brutality discredited and did their best to ruin
a cause whose original justice had been already too much obscured by
such parasites. It is impossible to believe that they, or such as they,
were inspired by any strong religious feelings. Hackston and Balfour
were men of some fortune, who had been free-livers in their youth, and
were now professing to expiate those errors by a gloomy and ferocious
asceticism. Both had a grudge against Sharp. Balfour had been accused of
malversation in the management of some property for