General Monk coming down to Edinburgh to take command of the forces against Glencairn and Kenmure, and to proclaim Oliver’s union of Scotland and England, had a most honourable reception. ‘The provost and bailies in their scarlet gowns met him at the Nether Bow Port, the haill council in order going before them.’ After the proclamation, they ‘did convoy him to a sumptuous dinner and feast, prepared by the town of Edinburgh for him and his special crowners [colonels]. This feast was six days in preparing, _whereat the bailies of Edinburgh did stand and serve the haill time of that dinner_.’ ‘There was great preparation for firewarks, whilk was actit at the Mercat Cross betwixt nine and twelve hours in the nicht, to the admiration of many people.’--_Nic._ Next day was proclaimed an act of _grace_, forfaulting the heirs of the Duke of Hamilton and some score of other nobles, and imposing huge fines upon sundry others; for example, £15,000 on the heirs of the Earl of Buccleuch, £10,000 on the Earl of Panmure, £6000 on the Earl of Roxburgh, £5000 on the Earl of Perth, and the latter sum and other sums down to £1000 on upwards of fifty others, noblemen and gentlemen [these sums being of sterling money]. If, as has been insinuated by cavalier writers, the Scotch nobles were prompted in their joining the religious movement of 1637 by a fear of the revocation of church-lands, they were now suffering a severe punishment for their hypocrisy. Under the late exhausting wars, in which they had incurred vast expenses, and the penal fines imposed on them by Cromwell, they might well be described by a contemporary writer as nearly all ‘wracked.’ Our authority sums them up in the following terms: [Sidenote: 1654.] ‘Dukes Hamilton, the one execute, the other slain; their [e]state forfault[ed]; one part gifted to English sogers; the rest will not pay the debt. Huntly execute; his sons all dead but the youngest; there is more debt on the house nor the land can pay. Lennox is living, as a man buried, in his house of Cobham. Douglas and his son Arran are quiet men of no respect. Argyle almost drowned in debt, in friendship with the English, but in hatred with the country. Chancellor Loudon lives like an outlaw about Athole, his lands comprised for debt, under a general very great disgrace. Marischal, Rothes, Eglintoun and his three sons, Crawford, Lauderdale, and others, prisoners in England, and their lands all either sequestrat or forfault[ed], and gifted to English sogers. Balmerino suddenly dead, and his son, for public debt, comprisings, and captions, keeps not the causey [that is, cannot appear in public].’