ABSTRACT
THE DUTCH WAR OF 1665-7 brought the first serious strain on the new system, a war purely in the English interest: no Scot would have recommended fighting Scotland’s best customer. War dried up the Scottish customs just when the demand for money was at its greatest. The government decided to use the ‘fines’ to help pay for its share of troops, which annoyed those who had to pay. The disaffected in the south-west took to holding large prayer meetings, ‘conventicles’, out of doors, with the ‘outed’ ministers in charge. Most of the landowners dissociated themselves from these meetings, but the Privy Council had spasms of nervousness that, even without leadership from the upper classes, a rising might link up with a Dutch invasion. It forbade the conventicles and demanded that landowners repress non-conformity on their estates. Still, nobody can have been very apprehensive, for when the rising did occur in November 1666, too late in the year for Dutch help, the government forces in the area consisted of Sir James Turner (in Dumfries collecting fines and probably embezzling them) and only seventy soldiers, mostly quartered on the disaffected in the countryside. Taking the easy-going Turner along with them, the rebels marched east along the muddy tracks of Lanarkshire, expecting support. But none came and, in bad weather and despair, men seeped away. Perhaps at their strongest they had numbered 1,100 ill-armed peasants, with no one much above the status of farmer to lead them. Finding Edinburgh ready and defended, they turned back, hoping to break up and disperse in safety; but they were caught in the short mid-winter afternoon at Rullion Green in the Pentland Hills by General Dalyell, and totally defeated. The dominant party in the Privy Council, Rothes and Sharp, had been unreasonably frightened and now, nervous that any leniency would be taken as a sign of disloyalty, hanged more captured rebels than the danger had warranted; over thirty suffered. The ‘Pentland rising’ achieved a real benefit for Scotland,
for it, together with the impeachment of Clarendon in England, made a change of power necessary. Royalism was no longer the only recommendation for office. Rothes was pushed upstairs into the Chancellorship, an amnesty was granted, and Lauderdale began his period of real control.
