A few days later, Lord Ross, writing from Lanark, conveyed a similar warning. He could learn nothing, he said, but of an inclination to rise, although there were none yet actually in arms. This was on the 2nd of May. On the 5th he forwarded another despatch in which he had to report an encounter between a small party of troopers and some peasants of the district. The soldiers had been sent out to apprehend a man who was reported to have in his possession some of the ‘new-fashioned arms,’ that is, halberts which were provided with a cleek, or crooked knife, for the purpose of cutting the dragoons’ bridles, and of which the manufacture was in itself an indication of what was intended. After seizing the young fellow, who did not deny that he had been enlisted as one of those who were to defend the conventicles in arms, the troopers, instead of returning with their prisoner stabled their horses and fell a-drinking. Some of the neighbours, availing themselves of the opportunity, attacked them with forks, and the like, and wounded one of them ‘very desperately ill.’ The next day Claverhouse also forwarded his report from Dumfries. It contained, in addition to an account of his own movements, the following comment on orders which he had just received, and which indicated that the Earl of Linlithgow was also alive to the dangers of the situation:— ‘My Lord, I have received an order yesterday from your Lordship, which I do not know how to go about on a sudden, as your Lordship seems to expect. For I know not what hand to turn to, to find those parties that are in arms. I shall send out to all quarters, and establish spies; and shall endeavour to engage them Sunday next, if it be possible. And if I get them not here, I shall go and visit them in Teviotdale or Carrick; where they say, they dare look honest men in the face.’ On the 3rd of May, a few days before Lord Ross and Claverhouse drew up their respective reports, there had happened an event which was destined to bring matters to an immediate crisis, and which proved the signal for another, and a far more serious rising than that of 1666. James Sharp, Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of Scotland, was murdered on Magus Muir, by a party of Covenanters.