ate as said is, shall
preach, expound scripture, or pray: declaring hereby, all such who shall
do in the contrary, to be guilty of keeping of conventicles; and that
he, or they, who shall so preach, expound, or pray, within any house,
shall be seized upon and imprisoned, till they find caution, under the
pain of five thousand merks, not to do the like thereafter, or else
enact themselves to remove out of the kingdom, and never return without
his majesty's license; and that every person who shall be found to have
been present at any such meetings, shall be _toties quoties_, fined
according to their qualities, in the respective sums following, and
imprisoned until they pay their fines, and further, during the council's
pleasure, viz., each man or woman, having land in heritage, life-rent,
or proper wadset, to be lined in a fourth part of his or her valued
yearly rent; each tenant labouring land, in twenty-five pounds Scots;
each cottar, in twelve pounds Scots, and each serving man, in a fourth
part of his yearly fee: and where merchants or tradesmen do not belong
to, or reside within burghs royal, that each merchant or chief tradesman
be fined as a tenant, and each inferior tradesman as a cottar: and if
any of the persons above-mentioned shall have their wives, or any of
their children living in family with them, present at any such meeting,
they are therefore to be fined in the half of the respective fines
aforesaid, consideration being had to their several qualities and
conditions. And if the master or mistress of any family, where any such
meetings shall be kept, be present within the house for the time, they
are to be fined in the double of what is to be paid by them, for being
present at a house conventicle. And it is hereby declared, that
magistrates of burghs royal are liable, for every conventicle to be kept
within their burghs, to such fines as his majesty's council shall think
fit to impose; and that the master or mistress of the house where the
conventicle shall happen to be kept, and the persons present thereat,
are to relieve the magistrates, as the council shall think fit to order
the same; it being notwithstanding free to the council to fine the
inhabitants of burghs for being present at conventicles within or
without burghs, or where their wives or children shall be present at the
same.

And further, his majesty understanding that divers disaffected persons
have been so maliciously wicked and disloyal, as