“Upon these bigoted and persecuted fanatics, and by no means upon the Presbyterians at large, are to be charged the wild anarchical principles of anti-monarchy and assassination which polluted the period when they flourished. “The Conventicles were now attended by armed crowds; and a formidable insurrection took place in the west, and rolled on towards the capital. It was terminated by a defeat at the Pentland Hills, where General Dalziel routed the insurgents with great loss, 28th November, 1666. “The Whigs, now become desperate, adopted the most desperate principles; and retaliating, as far as they could, the intolerating persecution which they endured, they openly disclaimed allegiance to any monarch who should not profess presbytery and subscribe the covenant. These principles were not likely to conciliate the favour of government, and, as we wade onward in the history of the times, the scenes become yet darker. At length, one would imagine the parties had agreed to divide the kingdom of vice between them,—the hunters assuming to themselves open profligacy and legalized oppression, and the hunted the opposite attributes of hypocrisy, fanaticism, disloyalty, and midnight assassination. The troopers and cavaliers became enthusiasts in the pursuit of the Covenanters. If Messrs. Kid, King, Cameron, Peden, etc., boasted of prophetic powers, and were often warned of the approach of the soldiers by supernatural impulse, Captain John Crichton, on the other side, dreamed dreams and saw visions, (chiefly, indeed, after having drunk hard,) in which the lurking-holes of the rebels were discovered to his imagination.[24] “Our ears are scarcely more shocked with the profane execration of the persecutors[25] than with the strange and insolent familiarity used towards the Deity by the persecuted fanatics. Their indecent modes of prayer, their extravagant expectations of miraculous assistance, and their supposed inspirations, might easily furnish out a tale, at which the good would sigh and the gay would laugh.[26] “The militia and standing army soon became unequal to the task of enforcing conformity and suppressing Conventicles. In their aid, and to force compliance with a test proposed by government, the Highland clans were raised, and poured down into Ayrshire; and armed hosts of undisciplined mountaineers, speaking a different language, and professing, many of them, another religion, were let loose to ravage and plunder this unfortunate country; and it is truly astonishing to find how few acts of cruelty they perpetrated, and how seldom they added murder to pillage. Additional levies of horse were also raised, under the name of independent troops, and great part of them placed under the command of James Grahame of Claverhouse, a man well known to fame by his subsequent title of Viscount of Dundee, but better remembered in the western shires under the designation of the bloody Clavers.