lly lairds,
who were accused of helping or harbouring rebels. The officials were
rapacious for their own profit. The records of scores of trials
prosecuted for the sake of spoil, and disgraced by torture and injustice,
make miserable reading. Between the trials of the accused and the
struggle with the small minority of extremists led by Richard Cameron and
the aged Mr Cargill, the history of the country is monotonously wretched.
It was in prosecuting lairds and peasants and preachers that Sir George
Mackenzie, by nature a lenient man and a lover of literature, gained the
name of "the bluidy advocate."

Cameron and his followers rode about after issuing the wildest
manifestoes, as at Sanquhar in the shire of Dumfries (June 22, 1680).
Bruce of Earlshall was sent with a party of horse to pursue, and, in the
wild marshes of Airs Moss, in Ayrshire, Cameron "fell praying and
fighting"; while Hackstoun of Rathillet, less fortunate, was taken, and
the murder of Sharp was avenged on him with unspeakable cruelties. The
Remnant now formed itself into organised and armed societies; their
conduct made them feared and detested by the majority of the preachers,
who longed for a quiet life, not for the establishment of a Mosaic
commonwealth, and "the execution of righteous judgments" on "malignants."
Cargill was now the leader of the Remnant, and Cargill, in a conventicle
at Torwood, of his own authority excommunicated the king, the Duke of
York, Lauderdale, Rothes, Dalziel, and Mackenzie, whom he accused of
leniency to witches, among other sins. The Government apparently thought
that excommunication, to the mind of Cargill and his adherents, meant
outlawry, and that outlawry might mean the assassination of the
excommunicated. Cargill was hunted, and (July 12, 1681) was captured by
"wild Bonshaw." It was believed by his party that the decision to
execute Cargill was carried by the vote of Argyll, in the Privy Council,
and that Cargill told Rothes (who had signed the Covenant with him in
their youth) that Rothes would be the first to die. Rothes died on July
26, Cargill was hanged on July 27.

On the following day James, Duke of York, as Royal Commissioner, opened
the first Parliament since 1673-74. James secured an Act making the
right of succession to the Crown independent of differences of religion;
he, of course, was a Catholic. The Test Act was also passed, a thing so
self-contradictory in its terms that any man might ta