their knives, nay, their modesty could not so far prevail against their zeal, as to spare his shirt and drawers, but all were cut in pieces and sacrificed to a broken Covenant. The forementioned Captain gave the finishing stroke himself with a great Reforming Club, the blow was designed for the minister’s head or breast, but he naturally throwing up his hands to save those vital parts, occasioned it to fall upon his shin-bones, which he had drawn up to cover his Nakedness; the blow was such as greatly bruised his legs, and made them swell extraordinarily after; however the Captain thinking they were broke, and finding it uneasie for himself and his companions to stand longer in a great storm of wind and snow which happened to fall out that morning, he drew off his company, and left the Semi-Martyr, who afterwards, by the assistance of his servants, crawled home to his bed, and but a little after, the whole herd of his persecutors broke in again upon him, and told him: they had treated him so because he prayed for the Tyrant York (so these people ordinarily called King _James_, tho’ he was too kind to them), and because he had presumed to preach and visit the parishioners as if he had been their minister, which they had formerly forbidden him to do; they required him also to be gone from their Covenanted Lands, under pain of death, before that day Sevennight, and never again to meddle with the ministry.”[115] Such stories--and this is only one of many which were printed and circulated--could not fail to produce anger and alarm in England; and the conduct of the Presbyterian ministers was, at the same time, represented in the most unfavourable light. Not one of them, it was said, had ever been heard to condemn these outrages from the pulpit. On the contrary, sermons had been preached in which the mob had been applauded for their zeal. In the cathedral church of Saint Giles at Edinburgh the congregation had been told that “such shakings as these were the shakings of God, and without such shakings his Church was not in use to be settled.”