Inn, to furnish me with information corrective of the facts which I
learned from others. There are also here and there a laird or two, who, though
they shrug their shoulders, profess no great shame in their fathers having
served in the persecuting squadrons of Earlshall and Claverhouse. From the
gamekeepers of these gentlemen, an office the most apt of any other to become
hereditary in such families, I have also contrived to collect much valuable
information.
    Upon the whole, I can hardly fear, that at this time, in describing the
operation which their opposite principles produced upon the good and bad men of
both parties, I can be suspected of meaning insult or injustice to either. If
recollection of former injuries, extra-loyalty, and contempt and hatred of their
adversaries, produced rigour and tyranny in the one party, it will hardly be
denied, on the other hand, that if the zeal for God's house did not eat up the
conventiclers, it devoured at least, to imitate the phrase of Dryden, no small
portion of their loyalty, sober sense, and good breeding. We may safely hope,
that the souls of the brave and sincere on either side have long looked down
with surprise and pity upon the ill-appreciated motives which caused their
mutual hatred and hostility while in this valley of darkness, blood, and tears.
Peace to their memory! Let us think of them as the heroine of our only Scottish
tragedy entreats her lord to think of her departed sire -
 
O rake not up the ashes of our fathers!
Implacable resentment was their crime,
And grievous has the expiation been.«
 

                                 Chapter First

 Summon an hundred horse by break of day,
 To wait our pleasure at the castle gates.
                                                                        Douglas.
 
Under the reign of the last Stuarts, there was an anxious wish on the part of
Government to counteract, by every means in their power, the strict or
puritanical spirit which had been the chief characteristic of the republican
government, and to revive those feudal institutions which united the vassal to
the liege lord, and both to the crown. Frequent musters and assemblies of the
people, both for military exercise and for sports and pastimes, were appointed
by authority. The interference, in the latter case, was impolitic, to say the
least; for, as usual on such occasions, the consciences which were at first only
scrupulous, became confirmed in their opinions, instead of giving way to the
terrors of authority; and the youth of both sexes, to whom the pipe and tabor in
England, or the bagpipe in Scotland, would have been in themselves an
irresistible