Why did the young Protestant monarch William of Orange fail to make his mark on Scotland? How did a particularly hard-line Protester branch of Presbyterianism (the last off-shoot of the Convenanting movement) become the established Church in Scotland? & how did it come about that Scotland suffered a kind of cultural revolution after the Williamite revolution nipping in the bud the proto-Enlightenment? This book reviews the political events that led to the abolition of episcopacy in 1689 & with it the concerted attack on the parish clergy. It explores for the first time the background & influences that led to the brutal rabbling of the curates in south-west Scotl&. It explores the mind-set of the notorious Covenanting tract Naphtali (1667) & of its author Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees who was the author of the Act establishing hard-line Presbyterianism in 1690 & became Lord Advocate of Scotland in 1692. The purges of the universities after the 1690 Act led to a hardening of attitudes & the on-going purging of the parishes led ultimately to the emptying of two-thirds of all the parishes of Scotl&. The book suggests how these events contributed to the notion of King Williams ill years.