If, in 1670, an Union had been accomplished by the terms of which the people of Scotland had obtained everything which they desired with regard to trade, it would have been an immense blessing to the country. But knowing what we know of the councillors who surrounded the throne, and of the character of the last two princes of the house of Stuart, we may be perfectly certain that an attempt would have been made to unite the Churches. In England, the Scottish Church question was completely misunderstood; nay more, to most Englishmen it was unintelligible. It was known that there were troubles in the North; and it was vaguely supposed that the Government had to cope with false doctrine, heresy, and schism, evils for delivery from which every good Anglican was accustomed to pray. But few imagined that month after month, and year after year, the majority of the Scottish nation was being treated in a manner which the majority of the English nation would not have tolerated for a single week. Even those Englishmen who had the best means of knowing the truth had been totally deceived as to the number and determination of the Presbyterians. At the Restoration, Sharp had told the Government that if Episcopacy was established not more than twenty ministers would refuse to conform. As a matter of fact, more than three hundred gave up their livings. The parish churches were deserted in many places by the people, and meetings were held in private houses. Not only was this declared to be illegal, but mere nonconformity was made a crime; and the madness of the Scottish Privy Council may be seen from the fact that any landowner who failed to attend his parish church was fined a fourth of his rents for the year in which he was convicted; while for the same offence tenants and burgesses were fined a fourth of their personal estates. Forbidden by a law resembling the English Five Mile Act to live within twenty miles of their parishes, within six miles of a cathedral town, or within three miles of a burgh, the ejected ministers took to preaching in the fields. This was punished as sedition; and the law was administered in so cruel and relentless a fashion that, if the whole truth had been known in England, there can be little doubt that indignant remonstrances would have been addressed to the Government; especially when, in 1670, the Scottish Parliament passed an Act by which any person who, without a licence from a bishop or the Privy Council, preached or prayed at a field meeting, was to be put to death,--a savage law which was savagely executed. To the people of England, however, very little of all this was known.