■WILLIAM AUD MARY.

249

On Christmas day, therefore, the Covenanters held armedmusters by concert in many parts of the western shires. Eachband marched to the nearest manse, and sacked the cellar andlarder of the minister, which at that season were probablybetter stocked than usual. The priest of Baal was reviled andinsulted, sometimes beaten, sometimes ducked. His furniturewas thrown out of the windows; his wife and children turnedout of doors in the snow. He was then carried to the marketplace, and exposed during some time as a malefactor. Hisgown was torn to shreds over his head: if he had a prayer bookin his pocket it was burned; and he was dismissed with a charge,never, as he valued his life, to officiate in the parish again.The work of reformation having been thus completed, thereformers locked up the church and departed with the keys. Injustice to these men it must be owned that they had sufferedsuch oppression as may excuse, though it cannot justify, theirviolence; and that, though they were rude even to brutality,they do not appear to have been guilty of any intentional injuryto life or limb. *

The disorder spread fast. In Ayrshire, Clydesdale, Nithis-dale, Annandale, every parish was visited by these turbulentzealots. About two hundred curates — so the episcopal parish

December, 1736, it is said that “countenance is given by authority of Par-liament to the observation of holidays in Scotland, by the vacation of ourmost considerable Courts of Justice in the latter end of December.” Thisis declared to be a national sin, and a ground of the Lord's indignation. InMarch 1758, the Associate Synod addressed a Solemn Warning to the Na-tion, in which the same complaint was repeated. A poor crazy creature,whose nonsense has been thought worthy of being reprinted even in ourown time, says: “I leave my testimony against the abominable Act of thepretended Queen Anne and her pretended British, really Brutish Parlia-ment, for enacting the observance of that which is called the Yule Va-cancy.”— The Dying Testimony of William Wilson, sometime Schoolmasterin Park, in the Parish of Douglas, aged 68, who died in 1757.

* An Account of the Present Persecution of the Church in Scotland, inseveral Letters, 1690; The Case of the afilicted Clergy in Scotland trulyrepresented, 1690; Faithful Contendings Displayed; Burnet, i. 805.

CHAP.

XIII.

Ili89,