It is beyond the range of these introductory remarks, to enter on all the details of procedure which took place from the first outbreak of this opposition till the meeting of the General Assembly of Glasgow, in November 1838. Of these, all the particulars are fully detailed in Lord Rothes’ MS. Relation, in the Advocates’ Library, Baillie’s Letters, and other contemporary chronicles, and more recently in Mr Laing’s and Dr Cook’s Histories, and Dr Alton’s Life of Henderson—a man who, at that juncture, arose to great eminence, to guide his countrymen In their struggles, and to dignify their cause by the distinguished talents which in him were called forth and displayed on this occasion. It is sufficient for the present purpose to note a few of the more prominent facts and occurrences which hastened the movement and, ere long, prostrated the royal authority in Scotland. Henderson, then minister of Leuchars, in Fife, and three other clergymen from the Presbyteries of Irvine, Ayr, and Glasgow, having been pressed by the prelatical authorities on the score of the Liturgy presented, on the 20th of August, bills of suspension to the Privy Council, upon the grounds that the recent innovations were illegal, not being sanctioned by Parliament or the General Assembly, and as being in contravention to the Acts of Parliament and of the Church. The Council eluded these broad grounds, by finding that the edicts of which suspension was sought, did not require the _observance_, but only the _purchase_, of the new formalities; and the Council communicated with the King as to the dilemma in which both he and they were now placed. His Majesty, however, unmoved by these events, ordered the immediate observance of the ritual, (September 20,) and rebuked the tardiness of the Council. But whenever this untoward resolution of the King was known, the four ministers, who were thus the foremost men in the contest, were joined and supported by twenty-four peers, a great many of the gentry, sixty-six commissioners from towns and parishes, and nearly one hundred ministers, who immediately poured in numerous petitions, remonstrating against the imposition of the Liturgy and Canons.[15] These gave open demonstrations of their making common cause with Henderson and his associates, going in a body to the door of the Council House, in the High Street of the metropolis, with their remonstrances or petitions; and thus they sustained the four individuals who had been selected by the prelates for persecution. During the interval which elapsed before an answer was returned, the remonstrants busied themselves in agitating their grievances over the whole kingdom, and speedily organized one of the most formidable and best constructed oppositions to which any government ever was exposed.