In most cases interest proved more powerful than principle; and it was
observed that out of the numbers, who at first crowded to the Anabaptist
conventicle at Dublin as a profession of their political creed, almost all
who had any thing to lose, gradually abandoned it for the more courtly
places of worship. Even the Anabaptists themselves learned to believe that
the ambition of a private individual could not defeat the designs of the
Lord, and that it was better for men to retain their situations under the
protector, than, by abandoning them, to deprive themselves of the means of
promoting the service of God, and of hastening the reign of Christ upon
earth.[1]
In Scotland the spirit of disaffection equally prevailed among the superior
officers; but their attention was averted from political feuds by military
operations. In the preceding years, under the appearance of general
tranquillity, the embers of war had continued to smoulder in the Highlands:
they burst into a flame on the departure of Monk to take the command of the
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, ii. 149, 150, 162, 214.]
English fleet. To Charles in France, and his partisans in Scotland, it
seemed a favourable moment; the earls of Glencairn and Balcarras, were
successively joined by Angus, Montrose, Athol, Seaforth, Kenmure, and
Lorne, the son of Argyle; and Wogan, an enterprising officer, landing at
Dover,[a] raised a troop of royalists in London, and traversing England
under the colours of the commonwealth, reached in safety the quarters
of his Scottish friends.
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