Elders, however, were not appointed: but a noted hill preacher, Alexander Shields, was called to the office of chaplain.
It is not easy to conceive that fanaticism can be heated to a higher temperature than that which is indicated by the writings of Shields.
According to him, it should seem to be the first duty of a Christian ruler to persecute to the death every heterodox subject, and the first duty of every Christian subject to poniard a heterodox ruler.

Yet there was then in Scotland an enthusiasm compared with which the enthusiasm even of this man was lukewarm.

The extreme Covenanters protested against his defection as vehemently as he had protested against the Black Indulgence and the oath of supremacy, and pronounced every man who entered Angus's regiment guilty of a wicked confederacy with malignants, [348] Meanwhile Edinburgh Castle had fallen, after holding out more than two months.

Both the defence and the attack had been languidly conducted.
The Duke of Gordon, unwilling to incur the mortal hatred of those at whose mercy his lands and life might soon be, did not choose to batter the city.

The assailants, on the other hand, carried on their operations with so little energy and so little vigilance that a constant communication was kept up between the Jacobites within the citadel and the Jacobites without.