This was a sore time for the southern counties of Scotland. Owing to the futile opposition presented to Cromwell by the ultra-Presbyterians in the west, a large detachment of the English army had to parade through the country. ‘Much corns destroyed by them and their horses ... the kirks and kirk-yards made stables and sentries for their guards and horses.... The corns of the field were not only destroyed by this foreign enemy, and by the Scots armies at home, wha rampit and raged through the land, eating and destroying wherever they went, but also the Lord from the heavens destroyed much of the rest by storms and tempests of weet and wind. The seas also were closed up by the enemy, whase ships enclosed us on every side, so that no man was able to travel by sea, neither yet by land without a pass.’--_Nic._ ‘Cromwell and his army of cavalry domineered in all parts where they came,’ and in especial about Edinburgh, and in East Lothian. The good Earl of Winton, to whose well-furnished table all the noblemen and gentlemen had ever been welcome, was pitifully abused by them; his fair house of Seaton made a common inn; himself threatened to be killed, if they had not whatsoever they called for; his rich furniture and stuff plundered, and all the enormities that could be offered by Jews or Turks to Christians, he suffered daily; and when he complained to those of our nobility who now rule all, he got no redress, but [was] ordered with patience to give them whatsoever they called for. Their general, Cromwell, stayed in Edinburgh, a stately lodging being appointed for him.[143] He went not to their churches, but it is constantly reported that every day he had sermons in his own lodgings, himself being the preacher, whensoever the spirit came upon him; which took him like the fits of an ague, sometimes twice, sometimes thrice in a day. [Sidenote: 1650.] ‘One of his commanders being quartered with one of the magistrates of the city, that he might be used with the more reverence, and entertained with the more graceful respect, the master of the house brought the preacher of the parish, a discreet and modest man, to accompany him, whose conversation, he hoped, would be pleasing to him. The preacher, after he had blessed the table, according to our Scottish custom, prayed for the continuance and prosperous success of the Covenant, which did so offend the English captain and those gentlemen who attended upon him, as the preacher was threatened and abused most beastly, for presuming in their presence to extol their rotten Covenant (as he termed it); and with many reproachful terms told the preacher, that they had in England trodden his Covenant under their feet, and they hoped, before it was long, to consume it in Scotland with fire, and with disgrace to extinguish the memory thereof. The preacher would have answered, but he durst not....