Scarcely was he seated in the Council when the edicts of oppression were renewed. The prelates became clamorous for his interference, and the penalties of the bonds of peace presented the means of supplying the inordinate wants of his rapacious wife. Steps were accordingly soon taken to appease and pleasure both. The court-contrived crime of hearing the Gospel preached in the fields, as it was by John in the Wilderness and Jesus on the Mount, was again prohibited with new rigour; and I for one soon felt that, in the renewed persecution of those who attended the conventicles, the King had again as much broken the conditions under which I gave the bond of peace as he had before broken the vows of the Solemn League and Covenant; so that when the guilty project was ripened in his bloody councils, that the West Country should be again exasperated into rebellion, that a reason might be procured for keeping up a standing army, in order that the three kingdoms might be ruled by prerogative instead of parliament, I freely confess that I was one of those who did refuse to sign the bonds that were devised to provoke the rebellion,--bonds, the terms whereof sufficiently manifested the purpose that governed the framers in the framing. We were required by them, under severe penalties, to undertake that neither our families, nor our servants, nor our tenants, nor the servants of our tenants, nor any others residing upon our lands, should withdraw from the churches or adhere to conventicles, or succour field preachers, or persons who had incurred the penalties attached to these prelate-devised offences. And because we refused to sign these bonds, and continued to worship God in the peacefulness of the Gospel, the whole country was treated by the Duke of Lauderdale as in a state of revolt. The English forces came mustering against us on the borders, the Irish garrisons were drawn to the coast to invade us, and the lawless Highlanders were tempted, by their need and greed, and a royal promise of indemnity for whatsoever outrages they might commit, to come down upon us in all their fury. By these means ten thousand ruthless soldiers and unreclaimed barbarians were let loose upon us, while we were sitting in the sun listening, I may say truly, to those gracious counsellings which breathe nothing but peace and good-will. When, since the burning days of Dioclesian, the Roman Emperor,--when, since the massacre of the protestants by orders of the French king on the eve of St Bartholomew, was so black a crime ever perpetrated by a guilty government on its own subjects? But I was myself among the greatest of the sufferers; and it is needful that I should now clothe my thoughts with sobriety, and restrain the ire of the pen of grief and revenge.--Not revenge! No; let the word be here--justice.