d themselves bravely. The
royal troops were twice driven back before they could carry the ridge,
and night had fallen before the insurgents were fairly broken. The
slaughter was not great; and it is significant of the unpopularity of
their cause that the fugitives suffered more from the Lothian peasantry
than from the victorious soldiers.

The Government could now assume the virtue of those who are summoned to
quell an open rebellion. Dalziel was put in command of the insurgent
districts, and his little finger was indeed found thicker than Turner's
loins. Twenty men were hanged on one gibbet in Edinburgh and many others
in various parts of the country: crowds were shipped off to the
plantations: torture was freely applied, and the ingenious devices of
the boot and the thumbkin were in daily requisition.[12] Dalziel was in
his element. A prisoner reviled him at the council board for "a Muscovy
beast who roasted men." The old savage struck the man with the hilt of
his sword so fiercely in the mouth that the blood gushed out.

At length there came a lull. Weary of the useless butchery, which,
hitherto, they had not perhaps fully realised, the English Government
determined to see if indulgence could persuade where persecution was
powerless to force. Orders to that effect were sent up to Edinburgh. The
soldiers were withdrawn from the western shires. Sharp was bidden to
retire to his see. Lauderdale took the place of Rothes as commissioner.

The character of Lauderdale is one of the most curious problems of the
time. In his youth he had been as zealous for the Covenant as he now
appeared to be zealous for Episcopacy. Hence some have supposed that his
real design was by favouring the intolerance of the bishops to bring
them to discomfiture, and to re-establish on their ruin the old
Presbyterian Church, for which, despite the profligacy of his life and
conversation, he was still believed to entertain as much veneration as
he was capable of feeling for any form of religion. But whatever may
have been his regard for the old Covenant of his youth, he was set as a
rock against the men who were now as much opposed to any moderate
observance of Presbyterian worship as the most inveterate Malignant at
Whitehall.

The first Indulgence was passed in 1669, in favour of the ministers whom
the Act of 1662 had driven from their parishes. Such as had since that
time kept from open violation of the law were now to be reinstated in
their