But the milder spirit of Monmouth found no place in the treatment of the prisoners taken at Bothwell. They were marched to Edinburgh, suffering much on the way; there, 1200 men were huddled together without shelter in the Greyfriars churchyard—sleeping amongst the tombs upon the bare ground. Several supposed leaders were executed, some escaped further misery by death from exposure, others were set free on signing a declaration never to take arms against the King, and 257 were sent as slaves to Barbadoes. And meantime Claverhouse was passing as a destroying angel through the western shires. Making little distinction between those who had, and those who had not, taken part in the late insurrection—he seized the property, and imprisoned or put to death, all against whom any charge of contumacy could be laid. The hunted Covenanters were driven into wilder seclusions, and their barbarous treatment naturally made them more aggressive and extravagant in their language. Useless to talk to men frenzied to despair of loyalty to a King, who, in his life of unhallowed pleasure in distant London, heard not, or cared not, for the bitter cry of the people whose rights he had sworn to protect. When they met at midnight in lonely glen or trackless moor, the leaders, Cameron, Cargill, Renwick, and others, would, like the Hebrew Prophets of old, mingle prophecy with denunciation; their high-strung enthusiasm bordered on insanity. Cameron and Cargill published a declaration denouncing Charles, calling on all true sons of the Covenant to throw off their allegiance, and take up arms against him. And government had now a pretext for putting Scotland under what was really martial law. The common soldiers were authorised to put to death, without any pretence of trial, all who refused to take the prescribed oath, or to answer all interrogations. It was a capital crime to have any intercourse with prescribed persons; and torture was inflicted, even on women, to extort the whereabouts of these persons. At Wigtown, Margaret McLauchlan, a widow of sixty-three years, and Margaret Wilson, a girl of eighteen, were drowned by being bound to stakes within flood-mark.