for our cattle and our servants, as well as for ourselves."BISHOP PORTEOUS.

Their constancy in torture and in death.-P. 52. 1. 31.

The following passage from Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Time, will give some notion of the kind, though not of the extent, of that hideous persecution, from which the people of Scotland were delivered by the Revolution. "When any are to be struck in the boots, it is done in the presence of the council; and upon that occasion almost all offer to run away. The sight is so dreadful, that, without an order restraining such a number to stay, the board would be forsaken. But the Duke, while he had been in Scotland, was so far from withdrawing, that he looked on all the while with an unmoved indifference, and with an attention, as if he had been to look on some curious experiment. This gave a terrible idea of him to all that observed it, as of a man that had no bowels nor humanity in him. Lord Perth observing this, resolved to let him see how well qualified he was to be an inquisitor-general. The rule about the boots in Scotland was, that upon one witness and presumptions, both together, the question might be given: but it was never known to be twice given, or that any other species of torture, besides the boots, might be used at pleasure. In the courts of Inquisition, they do, upon suspicion, or if a man refuses to answer upon oath as he is required, give him the torture; and repeat it, or vary it, as often as they think fit; and do not give over till they have got out of their mangled prisoners all that they have a mind to know from them.

"This Lord Perth resolved now to make his pattern; and was a little too early in letting the world see what a government we were to expect under the influence of a prince of that religion. So, upon his going to Scotland, one Spence, who was a servant of Lord Argyle's, and was taken

up at London, only upon suspicion, and sent down to Scotland, was required to take an oath to answer all the questions which should be put to him. This was done in a direct contradiction to an express law against obliging men to swear, that they will answer super inquirendis. Spence likewise said, that he himself might be concerned in what he might know; and it was against a very universal law, that excused all men from swearing against themselves, to force him to take such an oath. So he was struck in the boots, and continued firm in his refusal. Then a new species of torture was invented: he was kept from sleep eight or nine nights. They grew weary of managing this; so a third species was invented: little screws of steel were made use of, that screwed the thumbs with so exquisite a torment, that he sunk under this; for Lord Perth told him, they would screw every joint of his whole body, one after another, till he took the oath. Yet such was the firmness and fidelity of this poor man, that even in that extremity he capitulated, that no new questions should be put to him, but those already agreed on; and that he should not be a witness against any person, and that he himself should be pardoned so all he could tell them was, who were Lord Argyle's correspondents. The chief of them was Holmes, at London, to whom Lord Argyle writ in a cipher, that had a particular curiosity in it. A double key was necessary: the one was, to show the way of placing the words or cipher in an order very different from that in which they lay on the paper; the other was the key of the ciphers themselves, which was found among Holmes' papers when he absconded. Spence knew only the first of these; but he putting all in its true order, then by the other key they were deciphered. In these it appeared what Argyle had demanded, and what he undertook to do upon the granting his demands: but none of his letters spoke any thing of any agreement then made.

"When the torture had this effect on Spence, they offer

ed the same oath to Carstairs; and, upon his refusing to take it, they put his thumbs in the screws, and drew them so hard, that as they put him to extreme torture, so they could not unscrew them, till the smith that made them wasbrought with his tools to take them off."-BURNET.

July 22, 1668. Anna Kerr, 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, apprising 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 the 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 Park, his wife, a singularly religious and sensible countrywoman, 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 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. 53. 1. 4.

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. 53. 1. 5.

"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 peatground. 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 never was a preacher." He said, If he has never preached, meikle has he 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 have begun to preach;' he turned 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 or

'If ye were per

dered 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, mitted, I doubt not but your cruelty would go that 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 desert 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 Russell, apostrophizes this dastardly murderer of the unarmed peasantry as a generous and heroic character.

James Stewart, a boy, "came in from the west country to