Note 328 — Chapter III

Wodrow, who had before him the records of the Privy Council, besides other evidence now lost, says, that the period from 1660 to 1688 was ‘a very horrid scene of oppression, hardships, and cruelty, which, were it not incontestably true, and well vouched and supported, could not be credited in after ages.’ Wodrow's History of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution, vol. i. p. 57. And the Reverend Alexander Shields, quaintly, but truly, observes, ‘that the said Government was the most untender, unpeaceable, tyrannical, arbitrary and wicked, that ever was in Scotland in any age or period.’ Shields' Scots Inquisition, Edinburgh, 1745, p. 24.