This atrocious action served the ministry as a pretence for a more violent persecution against the fanatics, on whom, without distinction, they threw the guilt of those furious assassins. It is indeed certain, that the murder of Sharpe had excited a universal joy among the Covenanters; and that their blind zeal had often led them, in their books and sermons, to praise and recommend the assassination of their enemies, whom they considered as the enemies of all true piety and godliness. The stories of Jael and Sisera, of Ehud and Eglon, resounded from every pulpit. The officers quartered in the west received more strict orders to find out and disperse all conventicles; and for that reason the Covenanters, instead of meeting in small bodies, were obliged to celebrate their worship in numerous assemblies, and to bring arms for their security. At Rutherglen, a small borough near Glasgow, they openly set forth a declaration against prelacy; and in the market place burned several acts of parliament and acts of council, which had established that mode of ecclesiastical government, and had prohibited conventicles. For this insult on the supreme authority, they purposely chose the twenty-ninth of May, the anniversary of the restoration; and previously extinguished the bonfires which had been kindled for that solemnity. Captain Graham, afterwards Viscount Dundee, an active and enterprising officer, attacked a great conventicle upon Loudon Hill, and was repulsed with the loss of thirty men. The Covenanters, finding that they were unwarily involved in such deep guilt, were engaged to persevere, and to seek, from their valor and fortune alone, for that indemnity which the severity of the government left them no hopes of ever being able otherwise to obtain. They pushed on to Glasgow; and though at first repulsed, they afterwards made themselves masters of that city; dispossessed the established clergy; and issued proclamations, in which they declared, that they fought against the king’s supremacy, against Popery and prelacy and against a Popish successor. How accidental soever this insurrection might appear, there is reason to suspect that some great men, in combination with the popular leaders in England, had secretly instigated the Covenanters to proceed to such extremities,[*] and hoped for the same effects that had forty years before ensued from the disorders in Scotland. * Algernon Sidney’s Letters, p. 90.