It can be easily asked, why did this Scottish people, with the memory of their past, submit to these things? There was, as in England, a reaction to an extreme of loyalty; there was the satisfaction of finding themselves freed from English domination in its tangible form of Cromwell’s troops and garrisons; there was the pleasure of once more seeing a Parliament in Edinburgh, even though it merely registered and gave legal form to the king’s decrees. They were told that the advantage of being governed by their own native prince implied as its price the establishment of that prince’s form of religious faith. Their own nobles and many of their ministers had conformed; and thus bereft of their natural leaders, there was weakness and division. Despite of all these discouragements, they were often goaded into insurrections; which were cruelly suppressed, and made the excuses for further intolerance, and still harsher persecutions. The field conventicles continued. In the solitudes of nature, in lonely glens, or on pine-shaded hillsides, with sentinels posted on the heights, arose the solemn psalm, and the preachers prayer and exhortation. And men now came armed to these gatherings, the women had to be defended, force was to be met by force. To suppress such meetings, troops were sent into the insubordinate districts, under a wild fanatical Royalist, General Dalziel, and had free quarters on the inhabitants. By 1666, a reign of terror was fully inaugurated; Dalziel flared like a baleful meteor over the West of Scotland. In November of this year, without concert or premeditation, an open insurrection broke out. At Dalry, in Ayrshire, four soldiers were grossly maltreating an aged man, and common humanity could not stand by and look on with indifference or mere sympathy. The people rescued the old man, disarmed the soldiers, and took their officer prisoner to Dumfries. A resolution was suddenly taken to march on Edinburgh. They gathered in a fortnight’s march to barely 2000 men, and wearied and worn out, encamped on a plateau, called Rullion Green, on the Pentland hills, a few miles south of Edinburgh. Here they were attacked by double their numbers under Dalziel, and, after a gallant resistance, considering their inferior arms and discipline, were put to flight. Some fifty were killed on the field, one hundred and thirty were taken prisoners, thirty-four of whom were, chiefly at the instigation of Archbishop Sharpe, hanged as rebels, and the rest banished. [Illustration: THUMBIKINS. (_From the Scottish Antiquarian Museum._) ]