The ale and wine found in the cellars of the cavaliers, inflamed the inborn savagism of the multitude, who were urged by their ministers to commit a thousand nameless atrocities. For three days they continued in a state of perfect intoxication (says Lord Balcarris in his Memoirs), and in open daylight, in the crowded streets of the city, committed upon the persons of many Catholic ladies such outrages as cannot be written, and "without any attempt being made by the authorities to restrain such brutality." (pp. 22, 27.)
Of all the members of the old government none was more obnoxious to the people than Sir George Mackenzie, of Rosehaugh, the celebrated lawyer and essayist, who had rendered himself an object of intense hatred, by the severity with which he had stretched the criminal laws to answer the views of the Government; and who, in his office of Public Prosecutor, had obtained the unenviable soubriquet of "the persecutor of God's saints," "the blood-thirsty advocate," "bluidy Mackenzie;" and to this hour his vaulted mausoleum at Edinburgh is regarded with hatred and loathing by the old Cameronians and "true blue" Presbyterians.
His mansion in Rosehaugh Close was soon made the object of attack. The night of the third day had closed over the city, and still the scene of tumult and frenzy, the din and the flames of destruction, loaded the air with sounds of horror and outrage.
In great anxiety for his personal safety, the unhappy statesman heard with no ordinary perturbation the increasing roar of sounds, like the chafing of a distant sea; the mingling of a myriad human voices, and the rush of feet, which betokened the approach of a vast mob.
With drums beating before them, and armed with various weapons, the thousand bright points of which gleamed in the lurid blaze of the uplifted torches, a dense mass of ragged, squalid, and insane-looking men, poured like a human flood into the deep and narrow alley at the foot of which still stands the house of Rosehaugh. Begrimed with smoke and filth, maddened by intoxication and excess, their yells as they resounded between the solid walls of the narrow street, rang like those of fiends from some deep abyss, and the heart of Mackenzie died away within him. To appeal to their pity would be like craving mercy from the waves of an angry ocean? there was no escape, no remedy, no bribe, no hope; for among that terrible mob were the fathers, the sons, the brothers—yea, and the mothers of those who at his instance had perished in thousands, by the sword, by the torture, and the gibbet, or were lingering out a miserable existence as slaves and bondsmen in the distant Indies.
"My God! my God! for what am I reserved?" he exclaimed, as from a lofty upper window he surveyed the dense mass of madmen, who, wedged in the alley below, impeded each other's motions. Conspicuous above all, raised on the shoulders of two strong men, whose arms and faces were smeared with blood and blackness, there was upborne a man, whose sad-coloured garments and white bands announced him a preacher; his gaunt visage and long hair of raven hue waving around a face ghastly, though flashed with passion, his large hazel eyes glowing like those of a tiger, his upraised hands clenching one a bible, and the other a broadsword, declared him a wild enthusiast (another "Habakuk Mucklewrath").
It was Ichabod Bummel, who had escaped from the damp vaults of the wave-beaten Bass, and had now come to take vengeance on Mackenzie for his exile, his captivity, his crushed bones, and long persecution.
"Come forth, Achan, thou troubler of Israel!" he shrieked; "come forth, thou destroyer of the good and just, thou persecutor of the saints of God! come forth, thou thing that art accursed, or we will burn thee in the ruins of thy dwelling, and salt them with salt. Courage, my brethren! Oh, is not this a brave hour and a glorious one? For lo, the time is come when the host of Pharaoh shall be discomfited and stricken as of old. Achan, thou persecutor of the covenanted kirk, behold me towering amid Baal's prophets, four hundred and fifty men, as the book saith!"
This rhapsody was responded to with yells of ardour, and the din of hammers rang like thunder against the strong oaken door of the mansion, while many bullets were discharged at the windows, which were securely grated. A door of massive oak closed the entrance of the turnpike stair, and though the whole house resounded under the energy of the blows, the barrier refused to yield, though gradually it was falling in splinters, a process too slow to suit the fierce impatience of the increasing mob.
"Let fire be brought," cried Ichabod, "let the mansion be consumed, that its flames may be as a light to the house of Judah. Know, O thou persecutor of God's covenanted saints, that a sword is this night upon the inhabitants of Babylon, and upon her princes, and her mighty men; for it is the load of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols."