on the anniversary of the Restoration he had declared from his pulpit
that the King's name should "stink while the world stands for treachery,
tyranny, and lechery."[30] In this party all was confused, extravagant,
fierce, unreasoning. What they wanted, what they were fighting to get,
from whom they expected to get it, even their own historians are unable
to explain, and probably they themselves had no very clear notions. They
talked of liberty, by which they seem to have meant no more than liberty
to kill all who on any point thought otherwise than they did: of
freedom, which meant freedom from all laws save their own passions: of
the God of their fathers, and every day they violated alike His precepts
and their practice. To slay and spare not was their watchword; but whom
they were to slay, or what was to be gained or done when the slaying was
accomplished, no two men among them were agreed. For the moment the
current of their fury seems to have set most strongly against the
Indulgence and those who had accepted its terms. A single instance will
show pretty clearly the state of insubordination into which those
unhappy men had fallen. It was announced that one Rae, a favourite
expounder on the moderate side, was about to preach on a certain day in
camp. Hamilton, who still retained the nominal command, sent him a
letter bidding him not spare the Indulgence. To this Rae, who does not
seem himself to have been in any position of authority, made answer that
Hamilton had better mind what belonged to him, and not go beyond his
sphere and station.[31] It would not be difficult to draw a parallel
between the condition of the Covenanting camp at that time and the
so-called Irish Party of our own time. Indeed, if any body will be at
the trouble to examine the contemporary accounts of Hamilton and his
followers, and particularly their language, much of which has been
faithfully chronicled by their admirers, they will be surprised to find
how closely the parallel may be pushed.