It having been intimated that answers from Court to their remonstrances and petitions would reach Edinburgh on the 18th of October, great multitudes, from all parts of the country, flocked to the capital. The Privy Council were panic-struck, and issued proclamations, intimating that, at the first Council-day, nothing should be done relating to the Church; ordering all strangers to leave Edinburgh within twenty-four hours; removing the Council and Session from Edinburgh to Linlithgow, and afterwards to Dundee; and denouncing a book which had been published against the measures of the Court and Prelates. This brought matters to a crisis. Having delivered the several applications with which they had been intrusted from the provinces to the Clerk of the Council, the noblemen, gentlemen, and clergy met in three different bodies; but they concurred in a general declaration against the obnoxious books, and ordered it to be presented to the Council. It were tedious enumerating all the proclamations by the King and Council, and the protestations against these by the nobles and clergy, and all the negotiations and intrigues which supervened—of these original documents, however, copies will be given in the notes subjoined to the Acts of Assembly in 1638; but it would savour of undue partiality to the proceedings of the malcontents, if we omitted to state that, during the whole of the period alluded to, many disgraceful outrages were perpetrated by the rabble, who, in the language of Baillie, seemed to be “possessed with a bloody devil,” the authorities being utterly unprepared and unable to repress these disorders, at the very time that they were exciting the people of all classes by their lawless and inconsiderate edicts and tyrannical acts.