them. The only excuse that was ever pretended for this infamous persecution was, that they were sure he was guilty; and that the whole secret of the negociation between the two kingdoms was trusted to him; and that, since he would not discover it, all methods might be taken to destroy him: not considering what a precedent they made on this occasion, by which, if men were once possessed of an ill opinion of a man, they were to spare neither artifice nor violence, but to hurt him down by any means.”—It will surely be admitted, that the practice of torture, as a mode either of detection or conviction, is the consummation of injustice and tyranny.

July 22. 1668. Anna Ker, relict of Mr James Duncan, was brought before the council. "The lords caused bring in the boots before her, and gave her to five of the clock to think upon it, apprizing her, if she would not give her oath in the premises, she was to be tortured. In the afternoon Mrs Duncan continued firm to her purpose, and had certainly been put to torture, had not Rothes interposed, and told the council, It was not proper for gentlewomen to wear boots."—WODROw, Vol. I. p. 994.

"Some time after Bothwell, George Forbes, a trooper in Captain Stewart's troop, then lying in Glasgow, came out one morning with a party of soldiers to the village of Langside, in the parish of Cathcart, not two miles from that city, and by force broke open the doors of John Mitchell, tenant there, his house, who, they alleged, had been at Bothwell. John was, that morning, happily out of the way, whereupon they seized Anna

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Park, his wife, a singularly religious and sensible country woman, whose memory is yet savoury in that place, and pressed her to tell where her husband was. The good woman peremptorily refusing, they bound her, and put kindled matches between her fingers, to extort a discovery from her. Her torment was great; but her God strengthened her, and she endured, for some few hours, all they could do, with admirable patience, and both her hands were disabled for some time."-WODROW, Vol. II. p. 77.

A people doomed, &c.-P. 10. 1.23.

By the tyrannous and sanguinary laws that were passed between the year 1661, and the ever-memorable year of the Revolution, the whole inhabitants of extensive districts in the Lowlands of Scotland might be said to have lived under sentence of death.

Old men, and youths, and simple maids.

P. 10. 1. 24.

"One morning, between five and six hours, John Brown, having performed the worship of God in his family, was going, with a spade in his hand, to make ready some peat-ground. The mist being very dark, he knew not until cruel and bloody Claverhouse compassed him with three troops of horse, brought him to his house, and there examined him; who, though he was a man of stammering speech, yet answered him distinctly and solidly; which made Claverhouse to examine those whom he had taken to be his guide through the muirs, if they

had heard him preach? They answered, 'No, no, he was never a preacher.' He said, 'If he has never preached, meikle he has prayed in his time.' He said to John, Go to your prayers, for you shall immediately die.' When he was praying, Claverhouse interrupted him three times: one time that he stopped him, he was pleading that the Lord would spare a remnant, and not make a full end in the day of his anger. Claverhouse said, ‘I gave you time to pray, and you are begun to preach ;' he turned about upon his knees, and said, 'Sir, you know neither the nature of praying nor preaching, that calls this preaching;' then continued, without confusion. When ended, Claverhouse said, 'Take goodnight of your wife and children.' His wife standing by with her child in her arms that she had brought forth to him, and another child of his first wife's, he came to her, and said, 'Now, Marion, the day is come that I told you would come, when I spake first to you of marrying me.' She said,Indeed, John, I can willingly part with you.' Then he said, 'This is all I desire, I have no more to do but die." He kissed his wife and bairns, and wished purchased and promised blessings to be multiplied upon them, and his blessing. Claverhouse ordered six men to shoot him the most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains upon the ground. Claverhouse said to his wife, What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman? She said, 'I thought ever much of him, and now as much as ever.' He said, 'It were justice to lay thee beside him.' She said, 'If ye were permitted, I doubt not but your cruelty would go that

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length; but how will you make answer for this morning's work?' He said, ' To man I can be answerable; and for God, I will take him in mine own hand. Claverhouse mounted his horse, and marched, and left her, with the corpse of her dead husband lying there. She set the bairn on the ground, and tied up his head, and straighted his body, and covered him in her plaid, and sat down, and wept over him. It being a very desart place, where never victual grew, and far from neighbours, it was some time before any friends came to her: the first that came was a very fit hand, that old singular Christian woman in the Cummerhead, named Elizabeth Menzies, three miles distant, who had been tried with the violent death of her husband at Pentland, afterwards of two worthy sons, Thomas Weir, who was killed at Drumclog, and David Steel, who was suddenly shot afterwards when taken. The said Marion Weir, sitting upon her husband's grave, told me, that, before that, she could see no blood but she was in danger to faint, and yet she was helped to be a witness to all this, without either fainting or confusion; except when the shots were let off, her eyes dazzled. His corpse was buried at the end of his house, where he was slain."-PEDEN'S Life.

Claverhouse was rewarded by his master, James, with the title of Viscount Dundee, and with the confiscated lands and goods of the sufferers. A late memoir-writer, the slanderer of Sydney and Russel, apostrophises this dastardly murderer of the unarmed peasantry, as a generous and heroic character.

James Stewart, a boy, " came in from the west coun

try to see a relation of his in prison at Edinburgh. By what means I know not, the other got out, and he was found in the room whence the other escaped; whereupon he was brought before a committee of the council, and soon ensnared by their questions. When he was silent on some heads, and would not answer, some papers before me bear, that Sir George M'Kenzie threatened to take out his tongue with a pair of pincers. Precisely on his answers, he was condemned, and in a few days after he was taken with the rest, (six others,) and executed at the Gallow-lee."-WODROW, B. III. c. 5. § 4. year 1681.

"Marion Harvie, a young woman, not twenty years of age, on her way to the place of execution, was interrupted in her devotions; on which she turned to her fellow-prisoner, Isabel Alison, and said, ' Come, Isabel, let us sing the 23d psalm;' which accordingly they did, Marion repeating the psalm, line by line, without book. Being come to the scaffold, after singing the 84th psalm, and reading the 3d of Malachi, she said, 'I am come here to-day for avowing Christ to be the Head of his church, and King in Zion. They say, I would murder; but I declare, I am free of all matters of fact: I could never take the life of a chicken but my heart shrinked. But it is only for my judgment of things that I am brought here. I leave my blood on the council and the Duke of York. At this, the soldiers interrupted her, and would not allow her to speak any."-Cloud of Wit

nesses.