Sir Walter Scott The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border The
Battle of Pentland Hills |We have observed the early antipathy
mutually entertained by the Scottish Presbyterians and the house
of Stuart. It seems to have glowed in the breast even of the
good-natured Charles II. He might have remembered, that, in
1651, the Presbyterians had fought, bled, and ruined themselves
in his cause. But he rather recollected their earlier faults
than their late repentance; and even their services were
combined with the recollection of the absurd and humiliating
circumstances of personal degradation, * to which their pride
and folly had subjected him, while they professed to espouse his
cause. As a man of pleasure, he hated their stern and inflexible
rigour, which stigmatized follies even more deeply than crimes;
and he whispered to his confidante that "Presbytery was no
religion for a gentleman." It is not, therefore, wonderful,
that, in the first year of his restoration, he formally re-
established Prelacy in Scotland; but it