Dunnottar, though lying in the anti-covenanting district of the Mearns,
was, with the parish churchyard, celebrated for the oppressions sustained
there by the Cameronians in the time of James II.

It was in 1685, when Argyle was threatening a descent upon Scotland, and
Monmouth was preparing to invade the west of England, that the Privy
Council of Scotland, with cruel precaution, made a general arrest of more
than a hundred persons in the southern and western provinces, supposed,
from their religious principles, to be inimical to Government, together
with many women and children. These captives were driven northward like a
flock of bullocks, but with less precaution to provide for their wants,
and finally penned up in a subterranean dungeon in the Castle of
Dunnottar, having a window opening to the front of a precipice which
overhangs the German Ocean. They had suffered not a little on the
journey, and were much hurt both at the scoffs of the northern
prelatists, and the mocks, gibes, and contemptuous tunes played by the
fiddlers and pipers who had come from every quarter as they passed, to
triumph over the revilers of their calling. The repose which the
melancholy dungeon afforded them, was anything but undisturbed. The
guards made them pay for every indulgence, even that of water; and when
some of the prisoners resisted a demand so unreasonable, and insisted on
their right to have this necessary of life untaxed, their keepers emptied
the water on the prison floor, saying, "If they were obliged to bring
water for the canting whigs, they were not bound to afford them the use
of bowls or pitchers gratis."

In this prison, which is still termed the Whig's Vault, several died of
the diseases incidental to such a situation; and others broke their
limbs, and incurred fatal injury, in desperate attempts to escape from
their stern prison-house. Over the graves of these unhappy persons, their