CHAPTER I--THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLT.
'Halt, passenger; take heed what thou dost see, This tomb doth show for what some men did die.' _Monument_, _Greyfriars' Churchyard_,_ Edinburgh_, 1661-1668.

{85} Two hundred years ago a tragedy was enacted in Scotland, the memory whereof has been in great measure lost or obscured by the deep tragedies which followed it.

It is, as it were, the evening of the night of persecution--a sort of twilight, dark indeed to us, but light as the noonday when compared with the midnight gloom which followed.

This fact, of its being the very threshold of persecution, lends it, however, an additional interest.
The prejudices of the people against Episcopacy were 'out of measure increased,' says Bishop Burnet, 'by the new incumbents who were put in the places of the ejected preachers, and were generally very mean and despicable in all respects.

They were the worst preachers I ever heard; they were ignorant to a reproach; and many of them were openly vicious.
They.