The Lord Lieutenant began with his recruiting about Strathboggy, but as the waifest kind of people had mostly gone off in the first Levys, this was not so successful as he expected. Nay, on his first coming there, his summonses to his brother’s tenants to rise were so slighted, and volunteers so backward, that he was obliged to write to Blelack[351] and some of the gentlemen of Deeside who had a number of men with them, begging of them for God’s sake to send him a command of their men that he might not be affronted. How soon he got these, then he went to work quartering on the tenants about Strathboggy till they either rose or furnished men according to the proportions he had settled. But this was tedious, as he had but a small party to quarter with, and therefore he soon took a more expeditious way, threatening to burn the houses and farmyards of such as stood out. This soon had the desired effect, for the burning a single house or farm stack in a Parish terrified the whole, so that they would quickly send in their proportion, and by this means, with the few that joined as volunteers, he raised near 300 men called the Strathboggy Battalion in the country thereabouts. The same method of military execution (a discipline till then unknown in these counties) was used in most of the high parts of the shire for forcing out men, especially on Deeside, where a great many were raised in this manner. Stonnywood however found people enough about the town of Aberdeen and places adjacent without force, to form another corps for Lord Lewis called the Aberdeen Battallion consisting of about 200 men, which with the Strathboggy Batallion formed what was properly Lord Lewis’ own Regiment; Avachy being Lieutenant of the latter; Stonnywood of the former. _Auchengaul raises a Company_ About the same time Crichton of Auchengaul, a Popish gentleman of a very small estate, but representative of the Viscount Frendraught, raised a company and joined Lord Lewis. There were also several little people in Banffshire and Buchan, etc., who raised a few men each, and joined the Lord Lieutenant and all got commissions of one kind or other, which was by no means hard to be obtained. And thus the whole of this second Levy in the Counties of Aberdeen and Banff, under Lord Lewis would have amounted to near 800 men. _Comparison with 1715_ As the above is a view of the whole course of the Rebels from these Counties, it may not be amiss to compare it with what it was in the 1715, from which it will be evident that for all the noise they made about their strength in these parts it was nothing now in comparison with what it was then.