The Protestantism of the nation was soon alarmed. The king openly heard mass, and a week or two later the rites of the Church of Rome, after an interval of a hundred and twenty-seven years, were once more performed at Westminster. Then came a proclamation suspending the penal laws against Nonconformists, and thousands of prisoners, including the author of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” were released. Parliament showed no anger; it was packed with the king’s friends. They granted James a most liberal income, which almost made him independent of further Parliamentary grants. Meanwhile, Monmouth in Holland was busy hatching a plot to oust James and secure the throne for himself. His fellow-conspirator was Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll, the leader of the Covenanters who had suffered persecutions many and sore during the last reign. Two years after the Restoration Episcopacy had been re-established in Scotland, and more than three hundred ministers had given up their livings rather than conform. Severe fines were inflicted on all who dared to abstain from public worship in the parish churches, and troopers rode about the country cursing and swearing, harrying and plundering, wounding and killing to their hearts’ content. Many of the ejected ministers continued to preach in the open air, and their flocks, greatly daring, attended their secret ministrations. “Conventicles” increased daily in number. With a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, the blue-bonneted Covenanters gathered on lonely hillsides for worship, while scouts kept watch for the coming of the dreaded troopers. Persecution at last drove them to arms. After a victory at Drumclog, they were utterly defeated at Bothwell Bridge, and a terribly cruel time of shooting and hanging, torture and transportation set in. Argyll’s father had been leader of the Covenanters in the days of Charles the First, and after the Restoration he lost his head. The son, Monmouth’s fellow-conspirator, refused to take the oath of the Scottish Test Act without adding a statement that thereby he was not precluded from trying to amend both Church and State. For this he was brought to trial, and on evidence that would not hang a dog condemned to death. Fortunately, however, he escaped in disguise, and found a refuge in Amsterdam, where the leading English and Scottish exiles were assembled. Though there was not much sympathy between Monmouth and Argyll, they joined hands, and arranged that the great MacCallum More should rouse his clansmen and head a rising in Scotland. This was to be promptly followed by Monmouth’s descent on England.