From this time until a few years before the insurrection of 1745, Lord Lovat may be regarded as a jealous partisan of the house of Hanover. No doubt, a general survey of the state of society in Scotland would, independent of his own personal views, have satisfied him that in such a course was the only chance of permanent safety. The wretchedness of the state of things at that period, can scarcely be adequately comprehended by those who live in times when liberty of opinion is universally an understood condition of civilized intercourse. It is difficult for any person who lives now to carry himself back, by reading or conversation, into the prospects or feelings of the people of Scotland about a hundred years ago. The religious persecutions of the Stuarts had given a darker hue to the old austerity of their Calvinism. The expectation of change constantly held out by that family divided the nation into two parties, differing on a point which necessarily made each of them rebels in the eyes of the other; and thus the whole kingdom was racked by jealousies, heart-burnings, and suspicions. The removal, by the Union, of all the patronage and show of royalty, spread a gloom and discontent, not only over the lower, but over the higher ranks. The commencement of a strict system of general taxation was new, while the miserable poverty of the country rendered it unproductive and unpopular. The great families still lorded it over their dependants, and exercised legal jurisdiction within their own domains; by which the general police of the kingdom was crippled, and the grossest legal oppression practised. The remedy adopted for all these evils, which was to abate nothing and to enforce everything under the direction of English counsels or of English men, completed the national wretchedness, and infused its bitterest ingredient into the brim full cup. The events of the year 1715 present but a feeble exemplification of the truth of this description compared with the annals of 1745, for the first Rebellion was, happily, soon closed. Lord Lovat did not hesitate long on which side he should enlist himself; and the intelligence that his rival, Mackenzie of Fraserdale, had taken up arms in favour of the Chevalier, decided his course.[202] On the fifth of November he assembled all those of his clan who were still faithful to him, and who had been warned of his approach by his friends. He was received among them with exclamations of joy; and, hearing that a body of Mackintoshes, a Jacobite clan, were marching to reinforce Sir John Mackenzie, who commanded the castle at Inverness, he marched forward with his adherents to intercept them, and to prevent their joining what he then called "the rebel garrison."