livings where vacant. The manse and the glebe were to be theirs as
formerly, but the stipend was not to be renewed. These terms were
accepted by some forty or fifty clergymen. By the advice of the gentle
Leighton, who almost alone among his brethren seems at this time to have
dared, or to have been even willing, to counsel tolerance, a deputation,
nicknamed "the Bishop's Evangelists," was sent into the West to preach
the doctrine of this Indulgence. The pious crusade was in vain. The
failure of the Pentland rising and its terrible sequel had turned those
stubborn hearts to madness. Their weaker brethren were now classed with
the apostate Sharp and the butcher Dalziel; and the Indulgence was
declared a snare for the soul far more deadly than any torture the
Government could devise for the body. Nor, if time could have
strengthened Leighton's hands, was time allowed him. Following close
upon the Indulgence came a fresh Act, now making not only all
field-preaching a capital offence, but even laying heavy penalties on
any exercise of the Presbyterian worship except under an Indulged
minister. This again was soon followed by a fresh law against
Intercommuning--that is to say, against all who should offer even the
simplest act of common charity to a Covenanter--and promising large
rewards to all who should give information against them or their
protectors. By this law it is said that thousands of both sexes,
including many persons of rank, suffered severely; and from it sprang a
curious incident in the miserable history of this time.

An order was issued to the landed gentry of Renfrew and Ayr, the shires
where the disaffection was strongest, requiring them to give bail that
their servants and tenants should not only abstain from personal
attendance at conventicles, but also from all intercourse with
intercommuned persons. The gentry answered that such assurance was
impossible. It was not, they said, within the compass of their power to
do this thing. The reply from Edinburgh was short and conclusive: if the
landlords could not keep order in their districts, order must be kept
for them. A body of English troops had already been moved up to the
border and an Irish force collected at Belfast; but a more ingenious
mode of punishment was now devised. Since the barbarous excesses of the
Highland clans under Montrose, it had become an acknowledged breach of
the rules of civilised warfare to employ men who, like the Red Indians
used