their brother and parent a public and cruel death; but even this boon could not be obtained. On the 22d of March, the marquis is brought down from his airy prison, along the High Street of Edinburgh, clad in the deepest mourning, very weak in body, we are told, but cheerful in spirit, as not wishing to live after his master was gone, and placed on a scaffold at the Cross, where the Maiden stands prepared to receive him in her dismal embraces. He writes a few lines to his children, and speaks a few sentences to the multitude. The gleaming axe descends, and the noble of a score of illustrious titles is no more.[124] After all, the Highlanders were not disposed to be at peace. One Sunday in May, about fifteen hundred Mackenzies and Mackays came over the Kessock Ferry to Inverness, while the people were at church, and proceeded to great insolencies. ‘Instead of bells to ring in to service,’ says a clergyman who was present, ‘I saw and heard no other than the noise of pipes, drums, pots, pans, kettles, and spits in the streets, to provide them with victuals in every house. In their quarters the rude rascality would eat no meat at their tables, until the landlord laid down a shilling Scots upon each trencher, terming this _argiod cagainn_, or chewing money, which every soldier got, so insolent were they.’ This doughty band was in a few days half cut to pieces by two troops of horse under Colonels Strachan and Kerr, and about a thousand of them came back as prisoners to Inverness, where, ‘those men who, in their former march, would hardly eat their meat without money, are now begging food, and, like dogs, lap the water which was brought them in tubs and other vessels in the open streets.’[125] Such are amongst the scenes proper to a time of civil broil. The clergy were sensible of the benighted state of the Highlands, and longed to see the Gael brought to a sense of the beauty of a pure faith. As one small effort towards the object, the General Assembly ordained a collection to be made for the purpose of keeping forty Highland boys at school. It appears, however, that very little was efficiently done for the education of youth in the Highlands, till fully a century later. Dr Shaw, in his _History of the Province of Moray_, published in 1775, makes the remarkable declaration: ‘I well remember when from Speymouth (through Strathspey, Badenoch, and Lochaber) to Lorn _there was but one school_--viz., at Ruthven in Badenoch; and it was much to find, in a parish, three persons that could read and write.’ [Sidenote: 1649.]