The preservation of the strict rule of the church was at this time sought in the most earnest manner, no one dreaming of any such thing on the other side as the rights of conscience, or the danger of creating a reaction to contrary purposes. At a provincial assembly held in Aberdeen, there was much business regarding the few symptoms of _Brownism_ or independency lately presented throughout the country. Gilbert Garden, younger of Tillifroskie, in the parish of Birse, was denounced by his parish minister for forsaking the kirk, and affecting to regard his private family devotions as sufficient. Being brought before the court, he confessed that such was his case, but defended himself; whereupon the minister was enjoined to excommunicate him if he proved obdurate. (About a twelvemonth after, young Tillifroskie was seized ‘upon the causey of Edinburgh,’ and put in the Tolbooth there, on account of his Brownism.) One Ferendale was afterwards proceeded with in the same sharp way, but was induced to deny the Brownist tenets in time to save himself. Another man, named Maxwell, ‘a silly wheel-wright of his calling,’ who had also been summoned for Brownism, deemed it most prudent to vanish from the town. After an ineffectual search for this important recusant, the ministers out of their pulpits forbade all men to ‘reset’ him.--_Spal._ [Sidenote: 1642.] One of the means of keeping up the excitement necessary for sustaining the war against the king was to thunder constantly in the pulpits about the papists. The difficulty seems to have been to find a real live papist, to give some sort of countenance to these fulminations, for at this time, in the simple but expressive words of Spalding, ‘none durst be seen.’ Now and then, a smart _razzia_ brought out one or two cowed professors of the abhorred faith. A small clerical party, supported by a couple of bailies, went out of Aberdeen on the evening of Sunday the 16th of April (1643), ‘with caption to tak Alexander Hervie in Grandhame for popery, who was lying bedfast in the gut [gout], to have taken him as ane excommunicat papist; but they could not find him. His son they saw upon horseback, excommunicat likewise; but they had no commission against him.’ Two days later, the young Laird of Birkenbog seized a priest named Robertson in the house of Forbes of Blackton, and brought him to Aberdeen. Being soon after transported to Edinburgh, this priest was sent to West Flanders, with a hint that, if he reappeared in Scotland, he should be hanged. On the 8th of October 1643, Thomas Blackhall and his wife, and the wife of one Collieson, were excommunicated as papists by Andrew Cant, minister of Aberdeen. ‘Strange to see,’ says Spalding, ‘the wife to be excommunicat, and the husband not to keep company with her!’