The question of Church government in Scotland was left to Charles and his advisers. The problem presented to the Government of the Restoration by the Kirk was much more difficult and complicated than historians usually suppose. The pretensions which the preachers had inherited from Knox and Andrew Melville were practically incompatible, as had been proved, with the existence of the State. In the southern and western shires,--such as those of Dumfries, Galloway, Ayr, Renfrew, and Lanark,--the forces which attacked the Engagers had been mustered; these shires had backed Strachan and Ker and Guthrie in the agitation against the king, the Estates, and the less violent clergy, after Dunbar. But without Argyll, and with no probable noble leaders, they could do little harm; they had done none under the English occupation, which abolished the General Assembly. To have restored the Assembly, or rather two Assemblies--that of the Protesters and that of the Resolutionists,--would certainly have been perilous. Probably the wisest plan would have been to grant a General Assembly, to meet _after_ the session of Parliament; not, as had been the custom, to meet before it and influence or coerce the Estates. Had that measure proved perilous to peace it need not have been repeated,--the Kirk might have been left in the state to which the English had reduced it. This measure would not have so much infuriated the devout as did the introduction of "black prelacy," and the ejection of some 300 adored ministers, chiefly in the south-west, and "the making of a desert first, and then peopling it with owls and satyrs" (the curates), as Archbishop Leighton described the action of 1663. There ensued the finings of all who would not attend the ministrations of "owls and satyrs,"--a grievance which produced two rebellions (1666 and 1679) and a doctrine of anarchism, and was only worn down by eternal and cruel persecutions. By violence the Restoration achieved its aim: the Revolution of 1688 entered into the results; it was a bitter moment in the evolution of Scotland--a moment that need never have existed. Episcopacy was restored, four bishops were consecrated, and Sharp accepted (as might have long been foreseen) the See of St Andrews. He was henceforth reckoned a Judas, and assuredly he had ruined his character for honour: he became a puppet of Government, despised by his masters, loathed by the rest of Scotland.