nd
carried him with them as they "went conventicling about," as Mackenzie
writes, holding prayer-meetings, led by Wallace, an old soldier of the
Covenant. At Lanark they renewed the Covenant. Dalziel of Binns, who
had learned war in Russia, led a pursuing force. The rebels were
disappointed in hopes of Dutch or native help at Edinburgh; they turned,
when within three miles of the town, into the passes of the Pentland
Hills, and at Bullion Green, on November 28, displayed fine soldierly
qualities and courage, but fled, broken, at nightfall. The soldiers and
countryfolk, who were unsympathetic, took a number of prisoners,
preachers and laymen, on whom the Council, under the presidency of Sharp,
exercised a cruelty bred of terror. The prisoners were defended by
George Mackenzie: it has been strangely stated that he was Lord Advocate,
and persecuted them! Fifteen rebels were hanged: the use of torture to
extract information was a return, under Fletcher, the King's Advocate, to
a practice of Scottish law which had been almost in abeyance since
1638--except, of course, in the case of witches. Turner vainly tried to
save from the Boot {208} the Laird of Corsack, who had protected his life
from the fanatics. "The executioner favoured Mr Mackail," says the Rev.
Mr Kirkton, himself a sufferer later. This Mr Mackail, when a lad of
twenty-one (1662), had already denounced the rulers, in a sermon, as on
the moral level of Haman and Judas.

It is entirely untrue that Sharp concealed a letter from the king
commanding that no blood should be shed (Charles detested hanging
people). If any one concealed his letter, it was Burnet, Archbishop of
Glasgow. Dalziel now sent Ballantyne to supersede Turner and to exceed
him in ferocity; and Bellenden and Tweeddale wrote to Lauderdale
deprecating the cruelties and rapacity of the reaction, and avowing
contempt of Sharp. He was "snibbed," confined to his diocese, and "cast
down, yea, lower than the dust," wrote Rothes to Lauderdale. He was held
to have exaggerated in his reports the forces of the spirit of revolt;
but Tweeddale, Sir Robert Murray, and Kincardine found when in power that
matters were really much more serious than they had supposed. In the
disturbed districts--mainly the old Strathclyde and Pictish Galloway--the
conformist ministers were perpetually threatened, insulted, and robbed.

According to a sympathetic historian, "on the day when Charles should
abolish bishop