A few days after, the same persons came with seven or eight other ‘godless and graceless persons’ to the lands of Inverallan, proclaiming their design to burn and destroy the tenants’ houses and take the laird’s life, and to all appearance would have effected their purpose, but for the protection of a military party from Stirling. For these violences, Edmondstone and Mitchell were fined in five hundred merks, and obliged to give large caution for their keeping the peace.[60] [Sidenote: JUNE 25.] Upon petition, Sir James Don of Newton, knight-baronet, with his lady and her niece, and a groom and footman, were permitted [Sidenote: 1691.] ‘to travel with their horses and arms from Scotland to Scairsburgh Wells in England, and to return again, without trouble or molestation, they always behaving themselves as becometh.’[61] This is but a single example of the difficulties attending personal movements in Scotland for some time after the Revolution. Owing to the fears for conspiracy, the government allowed no persons of eminence to travel to any considerable distance without formal permission. [Sidenote: JULY 8.] An act, passed this day in the Convention of Royal Burghs for a commission to visit the burghs as to their trade, exempted Kirkwall, Wick, Inverary, and Rothesay, _on account of the difficulty of access to these places_! The records of this ancient court present many curious details. A tax-roll of July 1692, adjusting the proportions of the burghs in making up each £100 Scots of their annual expenditure on public objects, reveals to us the comparative populousness and wealth of the principal Scottish towns at that time. For Edinburgh, it is nearly a third of the whole, £32, 6_s._ 8_d._; for Glasgow, less than a half of Edinburgh, £15; Perth, £3; Dundee, £4, 13_s._ 4_d._; Aberdeen, £6; Stirling, £1, 8_s._; Linlithgow, £1, 6_s._; Kirkcaldy, £2, 8_s._; Montrose, £2; Dumfries, £1, 18_s._ 4_d._; Inverness, £1, 10_s._; Ayr, £1, 1_s._ 4_d._; Haddington, £1, 12_s._ All the rest pay something less than one pound. In 1694, Inverary is found petitioning for ‘ease’ from the four shillings Scots imposed upon them in the tax-roll, as ‘they are not in a condition by their poverty and want of trade to pay any pairt thereof.’ The annual outlay of the Convention was at this time about £6000 Scots. Hence the total impost on Inverary would be £240, or twenty pounds sterling. For the ‘ease’ of this primitive little Highland burgh, its proportion was reduced to a fourth.