From a petition presented to the king after the Restoration by his son, the bitterness of Sir Alexander’s experiences throughout the troubles appears to have been much the same in character as that of which an example has been given in the case of Farquharson of Inverey. ‘His lands were the first of Scotland that were spoiled.’ He was ‘twice fined in £4000 sterling, his house of Drum four times garrisoned and at length totally plundered, and his wife and children turned out of doors.’[152] For five years his revenues were detained from him by ‘one Forbes’--doubtless the same minion to whom the government had committed the fining of old Inverey.[153] Another Aberdeenshire laird, Sir Gilbert Menzies of Pitfoddels, being really a Catholic, had come even worse off. Throughout the whole period of the troubles, not only were his lands taxed like those of his neighbours for the support of the Covenanting armies, but he suffered endless finings, quarterings, and repeated banishments, on account of his inability in personal sentiment to go along with the popular movement. It appears from a petition he presented after the Restoration, that fully £12,000 sterling had been extorted from his estate, leaving it greatly reduced in extent and ‘like to ruin;’ as a matter of course, he and his family had undergone the greatest poverty abroad, and in one of the flights made by his family from Scotland, his wife and one of his sons had perished in a storm at sea.[154] We obtain from these historiettes, which are but examples of a large class, some notion of the grounds of the charges brought by cavalier writers against the men who, in all sincerity, believed they were establishing the reign of Christ upon the earth. Trusting to force for the attainment of the ideal which they had placed before them, they stirred up a spirit which made their object only the more unattainable. * * * * * [Sidenote: DEC.] One good consequence of the English military rule now established in Scotland was the introduction of some improved police regulations into Edinburgh. Householders were compelled to hang out lanterns, from six to nine at night, at their doors and windows; by which arrangement, ‘the winter night was almost as light as the day.’ The expense was reckoned to be about forty-five pounds a night. Rigorous measures were also taken for the cleaning of the streets and lanes, and for preventing foul water being thrown forth from windows. It would appear that these regulations were steadily kept up during the English occupation. In April 1657, there was a petition from the magistrates of Edinburgh to the commissioners of justiciary craving remission of certain fines, amounting in all to £50 sterling, which had been imposed on the magistrates ‘for not cleansing the streets.’ They alleged that they had ‘employed scavengers’ with a view to giving the commissioners satisfaction.--_B. A._ * * * * *