It was ridiculous to give sanction to laws by voluntary contracts: it was iniquitous to make one man answerable for the conduct of another: it was illegal to impose such hard conditions upon men who had nowise offended.

For these reasons, the greater part of the gentry refused to sign these bonds; and Lauderdale, enraged at this opposition, endeavored to break their spirit by expedients which were still more unusual and more arbitrary.
The law enacted against conventicles had called them seminaries of rebellion.

This expression, which was nothing but a flourish of rhetoric, Lauderdale and the privy council were willing to understand in a literal sense; and because the western counties abounded in conventicles, though otherwise in profound peace, they pretended that these counties were in a state of actual war and rebellion.

They made therefore an agreement with some highland chieftains to call out their clans, to the number of eight thousand men: to these they joined the guards, and the militia of Angus; and they sent the whole to live at free quarters upon the lands of such as had refused the bonds illegally required of them.

The obnoxious counties were the most populous and most industrious in Scotland.