of his days.

Soon after the death of my grandfather, he had occasion to go into
Edinburgh anent some matter of legacy that had fallen to us through the
decease of an uncle of my mother, a bonnet-maker in the Canongate; and,
on his arrival there, he found men's minds in a sore fever concerning
the rash councils wherewith King Charles the First, then reigning, was
mindit to interfere with the pure worship of God, and to enact a part in
the kirk of Scotland little short of the papistical domination of the
Roman Antichrist. To all men this was startling tidings; but to my
father it was an enormity that fired his blood and spirit with the
fierceness of a furnace. And it happened that he lodged with a friend of
ours, one Janet Geddes, a most pious woman, who had suffered great
molestation in her worldly substance, from certain endeavours for the
restorations of the horns of the mitre, and the prelatic buskings with
which that meddling and fantastical bodie, King James the Sixth, would
fain have buskit and disguised the sober simplicity of gospel
ordinances.

No two persons could be more heartily in unison upon any point of
controversy than was my worthy father and Janet Geddes, concerning the
enormities that would of a necessity ensue from the papistical
pretensions and unrighteous usurpation of King Charles; and they sat
crooning and lamenting together all the Saturday afternoon and night
about the woes of idolatry that were darkening again over Scotland.

No doubt there was both reason and piety in their fears; but in the
method of their sorrow, from what I have known of my father's earnest
and simple character, I redde there might be some lack of the decorum of
wisdom. But be this as it may, they heated the zeal of one another to a
pitch of great fervour, and next morning, the Sabbath, they went
together to the high Kirk of St Giles to see what the power of an
infatuated government would dare to do.

The kirk was filled to its uttermost bunkers; my father, however, got
for Janet Geddes, she being an aged woman, a stool near the skirts of
the pulpit; but nothing happened to cause any disturbance till the godly
Mr Patrick Henderson had made an end of the morning prayer, when he
said, with tears in his eyes, with reference to the liturgy, which was
then to be promulgated, "Adieu, good people, for I think this is the
last time of my saying prayers in this kirk;" and the congregation being
much moved thereat, many wept.