regation in their many arduous labours and perilous
correspondencies, till the Earl of Glencairn was appointed to see
idolatry banished and extirpated from the West Country; in which
expedition his Lordship, being minded to reward my grandfather's
services in the cause of the Reformation, invited him to be of his
force; to which my grandfather, not jealousing the secularities of his
patron's intents, joyfully agreed, hoping to see the corner-stone placed
on the great edifice of the Reformation, which all good and pious men
began then to think near completion.

Having joined the Earl's force at Glasgow, my grandfather went forward
with it to Paisley. Before reaching that town, however, they were met by
a numerous multitude of the people, half way between it and the castle
of Cruikstone, and at their head my grandfather was blithened to see his
old friend, the gentle monk Dominick Callender, in a soldier's garb, and
with a ruddy and emboldened countenance, and by his side, with a sword
manfully girded on his thigh, the worthy Bailie Pollock, whose nocturnal
revels at the abbey had brought such dule to the winsome Maggy Napier.

For some reason, which my grandfather never well understood, there was
more lenity shown to the abbey here than usual; but the monks were
rooted out, the images given over to destruction, and the old bones and
miraculous crucifixes were either burnt or interred. Less damage,
however, was done to the buildings than many expected, partly through
the exhortations of the magistrates, who were desirous to preserve so
noble a building for a protestant church, but chiefly out of some
paction or covenant secretly entered into anent the distribution of the
domains and property, wherein the house of Hamilton was concerned, the
Duke of Chatelherault, the head thereof, notwithstanding the papistical
nature of his blood and kin, having some time before gone over to the
cause of the Congregation.

The work of the Reformation being thus abridged at Paisley, the Earl of
Glencairn went forward to Kilwinning, where he was less scrupulous; for
having himself obtained a grant of the lands of the abbacy, he was fain
to make a clean hand o't, though at the time my grandfather knew not of
this.

As soon as the army reached the town, the soldiers went straight on to
the abbey, and entering the great church, even while the monks were
chanting their paternosters, they began to show the errand they had come
on. Dreadful