During Ivan's minority the country was governed, or rather misgoverned, first by his mother, and then by rival factions led by great nobles such as the princes Shuiski and Belski.
This period of murmuring and misery culminated in the Great Revolt of 1381, a phenomenon whose origins must be sought in the most complicated causes, but whose outbreak was due in the main to a general feeling that the realm was being misgoverned, and that some one must be 1381.
Without any Re-estab- efficient means of self-protection and coercion at its lishment disposal, it had to interfere with the power, privileges and perquisites of a class which had long misgoverned the country.
Middleton, with Archbishop Sharp, misgoverned the country, established a high court of commission, exiled the fiercest preachers to Holland, whence they worked endless mischief by agitation and a war of pamphlets; irritated the Covenanting shires, Fife and the south-west, by quartering troops on them to exact fines for Nonconformity, and so caused, during a war with Holland, the Pentland Rising (November 1666).
Yet it was certainly a cause of bitter disappointment to him that he had to stand by while the country was in his opinion not only misgoverned, but led to ruin.