Up to this time the ministry had kept in its midst, at the head of the affairs of Scotland, an abettor of tyranny who had already more than once caused grave embarrassment to the government of the king. Lord Lauderdale, supported in Scotland by Archbishop Sharp, had transgressed the limits of Presbyterian patience. In spite of his ordinances, and of the atrocious penalties by which he punished offences against them, conventicles multiplied on all hands. Once already the Archbishop had been threatened by assassins who failed in their purpose. He pursued them with pitiless vengeance, exacting from all the landed gentry of the west an engagement not to tolerate on their estates the forbidden religious assemblies, or to be present at them themselves. On the refusal of these gentlemen, they were required "to deliver up their arms and to keep no horse of greater value than £4 sterling." To this edict, as to the former one, they refused obedience; at the news of this step the Duke of Lauderdale fell into such a fit of rage that in full council he turned his sleeves up to his elbows and swore by Jehovah "that he would know how to put them in irons again." Halifax obtained the king's consent to examine for himself the complaints broached against his minister. "Kings," says Burnet, "naturally love to hear their prerogative magnified; yet on this occasion the king had nothing to say in defence of the administration. But when May, the Master of the Privy Purse, asked him, in his familiar way, what he thought now of his Lauderdale, he answered, as May himself told me, that he had objected to many things that he had done against them, but there was nothing objected that was against his service." Strange infatuation of a sovereign so long a prey to the vicissitudes of fortune, but who had not yet learnt that his interests were inseparable from those of his people. {378}