The parliament of Scotland was presided over by the Duke of Queensbury, a base time-server: it appeared devoted to the new sovereign, and declared him vested with solid and absolute authority, in which none could participate, and had promised him the whole array of the realm, between the ages of sixteen and sixty, whenever he should require their services. Notwithstanding these and similar loyal and liberal offers, there existed a strong faction intensely averse to the rule of a Catholic king; and though only three years before Archibald, Earl of Argyle, and the equally unfortunate Duke of Monmouth, had both perished in a futile attempt to preserve the civil and religious liberties of the land, the unsubdued Presbyterians were still intriguing with Holland, and concerting measures with William Prince of Orange, for a descent on the British shores, the expulsion of James by force of arms, and thus breaking the legitimate succession of the Crown. Suspicion of these plots, and the intended invasion, had called forth all the fury and tyranny of the Scottish ministry against those whom they supposed to be inimical to the then existing state of things. A certain covenanting preacher of some celebrity, the Reverend Mr. Ichabod Bummel, and a man of a very different stamp, Captain Quentin Napier, (an officer of the Scottish Brigade in the service of the States-General,) both supposed to be emissaries of the Prince of Orange, were known to be concealed in the house of Bruntisfield, the residence of Lady Grizel Napier, widow of Sir Archibald of the Wrytes, a brave commander of cavalier troops, who had fallen in the Battle of Inverkeithing. Unluckily for herself the old lady was a kinswoman of the intercommuned traitor, Patrick Hume, "umquhile designate of Polworth," to use the legal and malevolent phraseology of the day; and consequently, notwithstanding the loyalty of her husband, the eyes of that stern tribunal, which ruled the Scottish Lowlands with a rod of iron, had been long upon her. And now, attended by a macer of Council, bearing a warrant of search and arrest, a party of soldiers were approaching her mansion. An archway, the piers of which were surmounted by two great stone eagles in full flight, each bearing a lance aloft, gave admittance to the long avenue that curved round the eminence on which the mansion stood. As the soldiers entered, the measured tap of a distant drum was borne from the city on the passing night-wind, and announced the hour of ten. Thick dark beeches and darker oaks waved over them; the gigantic reliques of the great forest of Drumsheugh, beneath whose shade in the days of other years, the savage wolf, the stately elk, the bristly boar, and the magnificent white bull of ancient Caledonia, had roamed in all the glory of unbounded freedom, on the site now occupied by the Scottish capital.