The gentry generally refused to enter into such bonds; and Lauderdale wrote to the King that the country was in a state of incipient rebellion, and required reduction by force of arms. He treated the whole of the west country as if in open revolt. Not only did he send ordinary troops with field artillery into the devoted districts, but he brought down from the hills a Highland host of 9000 men to live upon, and with every encouragement to plunder and oppress, the poor people. Speaking an unknown tongue, strange in manners and attire, they were to the lowlanders a veritable plague of human locusts. When, after a few months of free quarterage, they went back to their hills, themselves and a number of horses were loaded with booty, as if from the sack of a rich town. But so far as we can learn they were not guilty of personal violence upon those they were sent to despoil; perhaps in this respect hardly coming up to the wishes and expectations of their employers. In May, 1679, occurred a deed of blood which widened the gulf between the Covenanters and the government, and gave legal colouring to harshness and persecution. In Fifeshire, one Carmichael had become especially obnoxious as a cruel persecutor, and an active commissioner for receiving the fines laid upon the malcontents. On 3rd May, a party of twelve men, chiefly small farmers in the district, with David Hackston of Rathillet and John Balfour of Burley as the leaders, lay in wait for Carmichael, with full purpose to slay him. It appears he had received some warning, and kept out of the way. After waiting long, the band were, in sullen disappointment, preparing to separate, when the carriage of Sharpe, the Archbishop, appeared unexpectedly, conveying him and his daughter home to St. Andrews. To these superstitious men, nursed under persecution by old biblical texts into religious fanaticism, it appeared as if an act of necessary vengeance was here thrust upon them, that instead of an inferior agent, a foremost persecutor, who had hounded to the death many of their brethren, was now delivered into their hands. They took him from his carriage, and there on Magus Muir— suing upon his knees for mercy, his grey hairs, and his daughter’s anguished cries, also pleading for his life—they slew him with many sword thrusts.