Soon afterwards Strachan, with
sixty troopers, passed over to Lambert, and the associated counties, left
without defence, submitted to the enemy. Still the framers and advocates of
the remonstrance, though they knew that it had been condemned by the state
and the kirk, though they had no longer an army to draw the sword in
its support, adhered pertinaciously to its principles; the unity of the
Scottish church was rent in twain, and the separation was afterwards
widened by a resolution of the assembly,[a] that in such a crisis all
Scotsmen might be employed in the service of the country.[1] Even their
common misfortunes failed to reconcile these exasperated spirits; and after
the subjugation of their country, and under the yoke of civil servitude,
the two parties still continued to persecute each other with all the
obstinacy and bitterness of religious warfare. The royalists obtained
the name of public resolutioners; their opponents, of protestors or
remonstrants.[2]
Though it cost the young prince many an internal struggle, yet experience
had taught him that he must soothe the religious prejudices of the kirk, if
he hoped ever to acquire the preponderance in the state. On the first day
of the new year,[b] he rode in procession to the church of Scone, where his
ancestors had been accustomed to receive the Scottish crown: there on his
knees, with his arm upraised, he swore by the Eternal
[Footnote 1: With the exception of persons "excommunicated, notoriously
profane, or flagitious, and professed enemies and opposers of the covenant
and cause of God.
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