During all the
dreadful times that had overpast, though the laird had been a
moderate man, he had still leaned to the side of kingly
prerogative, and had escaped confiscation and fines, without ever
taking any active hand in suppressing the Covenanters. But, after
experiencing a specimen of their tenets and manner in his wife,
from a secret favourer of them and their doctrines, he grew
alarmed at the prevalence of such stern and factious principles,
now that there was no check or restraint upon them; and from that
time he began to set himself against them, joining with the
Cavalier party of that day in all their proceedings.
It so happened that, under the influence of the Earls of Seafield
and Tullibardine, he was returned for a Member of Parliament in
the famous session that sat at Edinburgh when the Duke of
Queensberry was commissioner, and in which party spirit ran to
such an extremity. The young laird went with his father to the
court, and remained in town all the time that the session lasted;
and, as all interested people of both factions flocked to the town
at that period, so the important Mr. Wringhim was there among
the rest, during the greater part of the time, blowing the coal of
revolutionary principles with all his might, in every society to
which he could obtain admission.
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