Rabbling

Rabbling a term employed to denote the summary ejectment, on Christmas-day, 1688, of Episcopal clergymen and their families by the Scottish populace, after the Revolution. The incumbents were turned out of their houses, and often into the snow; the church doors were locked, and the key was taken awav. These measures were certainly harsh and uncalled for; but the people had been exasperated, especially in the west country, by twenty-five years of bloodshed and persecution. Though they were "rude, even to brutality," yet, as lord Macaulay says, "they do not appear to have been guilty of any intentional injury to life or limb." The better part of the people put a stop to the riotous proceedings on the part principally of the Cameronians; but a form of notice, or a threatening letter, was sent to every curate in the Western Lowlands.

⇒See also the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.