he had accepted the Covenant on ignominious terms.

At the restoration Charles II. was able to renew the oppressive policy
of his father and grandfather. The restored bishops supported the crown;
the people and the popular clergy were mercilessly persecuted. Matters
became even worse under James II., but the revolution of 1688 ended the
oppression. The exiled house found support in the Highlands not out of
loyalty, but from the Highland preference for anarchy; and after 1745
the Highlanders themselves were powerless. The trading spirit rose and
flourished, and the barbaric hereditary jurisdictions were abolished.
This last measure marked but did not cause the decadence of the power of
the nobility. This had been brought about primarily by the union with
England in 1707. In the legislature of Great Britain the Scotch peers
were a negligible and despised factor. The _coup de grace_ was given by
the rebellion of 1745. The law referred to expressed an already
accomplished fact.

The union also encouraged the development of the mercantile and
manufacturing classes, which, in turn, strengthened the democratic
movement. Meanwhile, a great literature was also arising, bold and
inquiring. Nevertheless, it failed to diminish the national
superstition.

This illiberality in religion was caused in the first place by the power
of the clergy. Religion was the essential feature of the Scotch war
against Charles I. Theological interests dominated the secular because
the clergy were the champions of the political movement. Hence, in the
seventeenth century, the clergy were enabled to extend and consolidate
their own authority, partly by means of that great engine of tyranny,
the kirk sessions, partly through the credulity which accepted their