To prevent the Earl of Caithness from attempting any farther interference with the Privy Council, either in the way of intrigue or intimidation, Sir Robert Gordon obtained a remission and pardon from the king, in the month of December, 1613, to his nephew, Donald Mackay, John Gordon, younger of Embo, John Gordon in Broray, Adam Gordon Georgeson, and their accomplices, for the slaughter of John Sinclair of Stirkage at Thurso. However, Sir Gideon Murray, Deputy Treasurer for Scotland, contrived to prevent the pardon passing through the seals till the beginning of the year 1616. The Earl of Caithness, being thus baffled in his designs against the Earl of Sutherland and his friends, fell upon a device which never failed to succeed in times of religious intolerance and persecution. Unfortunately for mankind and for the interests of Christianity, the principles of religious toleration, involving the inalienable right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, have been till of late but little understood, and at the period in question, and for upwards of one hundred and sixty years thereafter, the statute book of Scotland was disgraced by penal enactments against the Catholics, almost unparalleled for their sanguinary atrocity. By an act of the first parliament of James VI., any Catholic who assisted at the offices of his religion was, “for the first fault,” that is, for following the dictates of his conscience, to suffer confiscation of all his goods, movable and immovable, personal and real; for the second, banishment; and death for the third fault! But the law was not confined to overt acts only--the mere suspicion of being a Catholic placed the suspected person out of the pale and protection of the law; for if, on being warned by the bishops and ministers, he did not recant and give confession of his faith according to the approved form, he was excommunicated, and declared infamous and incapable to sit or stand in judgment, pursue or bear office.[205]