Mackay now brought to Edinburgh regiments from Holland, which overawed the Jacobites, and he secured for William the key of the north, the castle of Stirling. With Hamilton as President, the Convention, with only four adverse votes, declared against James and his son; and Hamilton (April 3) proclaimed at the cross the reign of William and Mary. The claim of rights was passed and declared Episcopacy intolerable. Balcarres was thrown into prison: on May 11 William took the Coronation oath for Scotland, merely protesting that he would not "root out heretics," as the oath enjoined. This was "the end o' an auld sang," the end of the Stuart dynasty, and of the equally "divine rights" of kings and of preachers. In a sketch it is impossible to convey any idea of the sufferings of Scotland, at least of Covenanting Scotland, under the Restoration. There was contest, unrest, and dragoonings, and the quartering of a brutal and licentious soldiery on suspected persons. Law, especially since 1679, had been twisted for the conviction of persons whom the administration desired to rob. The greed and corruption of the rulers, from Lauderdale, his wife, and his brother Haltoun, to Perth and his brother, the Earl of Melfort, whose very title was the name of an unjustly confiscated estate, is almost inconceivable. {225} Few of the foremost men in power, except Sir George Mackenzie and Claverhouse, were free from personal profligacy of every sort. Claverhouse has left on record his aversion to severities against the peasantry; he was for prosecuting such gentry as the Dalrymples. As constable of Dundee he refused to inflict capital punishment on petty offenders, and Mackenzie went as far as he dared in opposing the ferocities of the inquisition of witches. But in cases of alleged treason Mackenzie knew no mercy. Torture, legal in Scotland, was used with barbarism unprecedented there after each plot or rising, to extract secrets which, save in one or two cases like that of Carstares, the victims did not possess. They were peasants, preachers, and a few country gentlemen: the nobles had no inclination to suffer for the cause of the Covenants. The Covenants continued to be the idols of the societies of Cameronians, and of many preachers who were no longer inclined to die for these documents,--the expression of such strange doctrines, the causes of so many sorrows and of so many martyrdoms. However little we may sympathise with the doctrines, none the less the sufferers were idealists, and, no less than Montrose, preferred honour to life. With all its sins, the Restoration so far pulverised the pretensions which, since 1560, the preachers had made, that William of Orange was not obliged to renew the conflict with the spiritual sons of Knox and Andrew Melville.