The Restoration was hailed with joy by the nobles, who hoped that they would again have their Parliament and their Privy Council, by means of which their families were aggrandised, and their hereditary jurisdictions and feudal rights, which gave them so much authority over their tenants and retainers. The clergy, smarting under the indignities to which they had lately been subjected, and believing that Charles would keep faith with them and establish Presbytery, welcomed the change, and at once began to pray again for the king. Clarendon, however, was of opinion that the majority of Scotsmen were in favour of the continuance of the Union. He himself was in favour of leaving things as they were. “But the king,” he says, “would not build according to Cromwell’s models, and had many reasons to continue Scotland within its own limits and bounds, and sole dependence upon himself, rather than unite it to England with so many hazards and dangers as would inevitably have accompanied it, under any government less tyrannical than that of Cromwell.”[92] Lauderdale, whose influence in Scottish affairs was now well-nigh supreme, was strongly in favour of removing all traces of the Commonwealth government. To begin with, he insisted that the fortresses which Cromwell had built should be demolished and their garrisons withdrawn. The time might come, he told the king, when he would be in need of Scottish garrisons in England, and to maintain an English army in Scotland would alienate the affections of the Scottish people. The fortresses were, accordingly, dismantled, and the army of occupation was disbanded. Every trace of the Union soon disappeared. The Estates met in the Parliament House once more; and the judges took their places on the bench of the Court of Session. On the question of the Church, Lauderdale’s advice was not followed. His view was that, instead of aiming at an Union, either civil or religious, between the two countries, the object of the Government should be to disunite them by all possible means, and, at the same time, to keep the people of Scotland in good humour by giving them whatever form of Church government they wanted, in order that they might be willing to serve the king, if necessary, against the Parliament of England. Such was the advice of Lauderdale. Charles himself, though he detested Presbytery, was at first inclined to take it. But, in the end, the intrigues of the Episcopal faction prevailed; and it was resolved to establish an Episcopal Church in Scotland. The Chancellor explained to Lauderdale that it was intended to set up only a modified form of prelacy. “My Lord,” he sternly answered, “since you are for bishops and must have them, bishops you shall have, and higher than ever they were in Scotland.”