UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND.

83

opinion. The bulk of the Scottish nation, therefore, sullenly chap.submitted, and, with many misgivings of conscience, attendedthe ministrations of the Episcopal clergy, or of Presbyteriandivines who had consented to accept from the government ahalf toleration, known by the name of the Indulgence. Butthere were, particularly in the western lowlands, many fierceand resolute men, who held that the obligation to observe theCovenant was paramount to the obligation to obey the ma-gistrate. These people, in defiance of the law, persisted inmeeting to worship God after their own fashion. The Indul-gence they regarded, not as a partial reparation of the wrongsinflicted by the magistrate on the Church, but as a new wrong,the more odious because it was disguised under the appearanceof a benefit. Persecution, they said, could only kill the body;but the black Indulgence was deadly to the soul. Driven fromthe towns, they assembled on heaths and mountains. Attackedby the civil power, they without scruple repelled force byforce. At every conventicle they mustered in arms. Theyrepeatedly broke out into open rebellion. They were easilydefeated, and mercilessly punished: but neither defeat norpunishment could subdue their spirit. Hunted down like wildbeasts, tortured till their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned byhundreds, hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the licenseof soldiers from England, abandoned at another time to themercy of bands of marauders from the Highlands, they stillstood at bay in a mood so savage that the boldest andmightiest oppressor could not but dread the audacity of theirdespair.

Such was, during the reign of Charles the Second, the state s'* 1 ”*of Scotland. Ireland was not less distracted. In that islandexisted feuds, compared with which the hottest animosities ofEnglish politicians were lukewarm. The enmity between theIrish Cavaliers and the Irish Roundheads was almost forgottenin the fiercer enmity which raged between the English and the