From this day till the 22d March, ‘great frost, that nae plews gaed while aucht days; and men might pass and repass on the ice of Lyon the 3d day of March.’ February 22, after noon, ‘there came ane great storm, and snaw and hail and wind, that nae man nor beast might take up their heads, nor gang, nor ride, and mony beasts, and mony men and women, were perished in sundry parts, and all kind of victuals right dear, and that because nae mills might grind for the frost.’--_C. F._ * * * * * [Sidenote: 1571. MAR.] A General Assembly sitting in Edinburgh issued an order that adulterers, murderers, and others guilty of heinous offences, who might desire to be received back into Christian fellowship, should first appear penitently before their respective ministers, and then present themselves in linen clothes, bareheaded and barefooted, before the synod of their district. It was presently found, however, that divers of these penitents were too far distant from the meeting-places of the synods, and others were in such poverty, or _under such terror of enemies_, that they could not, or durst not travel through the country. This fact verifies to us a passage in a contemporary historian: ‘The haill realm of Scotland was sae divided in factions, that it was hard for any peaceable man as he rade out the hie way, to profess himself openly, either to be a favourer of the king or queen. All the people were casten sae lowss, and were become of sic dissolute minds and actions, that nane was in account but he that could either kill or rieve his neighbour.’--_H. K. J._ [Sidenote: 1571.] Incidents characteristic of such a time abound in the contemporary diarists. ‘March 27, David Lawtie, writer to the signet [in Edinburgh] was invaded by Thomas Douglas, and the maist part of his fore-finger strucken fra him.’--_D. O._ October 30, ‘There was ane combat betwixt Campbell on the king’s part, and ane Smith, a lieutenant or servant within Edinburgh. Campbell strack him twice through the body without blood drawn upon himself, except a scrape upon the thumb.’--_Ban._ * * * * * [Sidenote: APR. 7.]