By this law it is said that thousands of both sexes,
including many persons of rank, suffered severely; and from it sprang a
curious incident in the miserable history of this time.
An order was issued to the landed gentry of Renfrew and Ayr, the shires
where the disaffection was strongest, requiring them to give bail that
their servants and tenants should not only abstain from personal
attendance at conventicles, but also from all intercourse with
intercommuned persons. The gentry answered that such assurance was
impossible. It was not, they said, within the compass of their power to
do this thing. The reply from Edinburgh was short and conclusive: if the
landlords could not keep order in their districts, order must be kept
for them. A body of English troops had already been moved up to the
border and an Irish force collected at Belfast; but a more ingenious
mode of punishment was now devised. Since the barbarous excesses of the
Highland clans under Montrose, it had become an acknowledged breach of
the rules of civilised warfare to employ men who, like the Red Indians
used in our own American wars, were amenable to no discipline and
recognised no principles of humanity. Eight thousand of these savages
were now let loose on the disobedient Lowlanders. The result was,
indeed, not all that had been anticipated at Edinburgh.
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