With the solitary exception mentioned in the previous chapter, the whole people of Cromarty were loyal to the house of Hanover. They were all sound Protestants to the utmost of their ability, and never failed doing justice in a bumper to the “best in Christendom” but when the liquor was bad. It was therefore with no feelings of complacency, that, in the autumn of 1745, they learned that the Pretender, after landing in the western Highlands, had set off with a gathering of Gaelic Roman Catholics to take London from the King. They affirmed, however, that the redcoats were too numerous, and London too strong, to leave the enterprise a chance of success; and it was not until Cope had been set a-scampering, and the bayonets of England proved insufficient to defend it on the Scottish side, that they began to pity George Rex (poor man), and to talk about the downfall of the Kirk. Their attention, however, was called off from all such minor matters to a circumstance connected with the outbreaking which directly affected themselves. Parties of wild Highlanders, taking advantage of the defenceless state of the Lowlands, and the cause of the Pretender, went prowling about the country, robbing as the smith fought, “every man to his own hand;” and stories of their depredations began to pour into the town. They were doing great skaith, it was said, to victual and drink, spulzieing women of their yarn, and men of their shoes and bonnets; as for money, there was luckily very little in the country. Nor was it possible to conciliate them by any adaptation whatever of one’s politics to the Jacobite code. A man of Ferindonald, a genuine friend to the Stuart, had gone out to meet with them, and in the fulness of his heart, after perching himself on a hillock by the wayside, he continued to cry out, “You’re welcome! you’re welcome!” from their first appearance until they had come up to him. “Welcomes or na welcomes,” said a bareheaded, barefooted Highlander, as stooping down he seized him by the ankles; “welcomes or na welcomes, _thoir dho do brougan_.” (Give me your shoes.)