the provocations of a prerogative
that has so little regard for the people. In the name and strength of
God, let us march."

With six-and-twenty thousand horse and foot Lesley crossed the Tweed,
and in the first onset the King's army was scattered like chaff before
the wind. When the news of the victory arrived among us, every one was
filled with awe and holy wonder; for it happened on the very day which
was held as a universal fast throughout the land; on that day, likewise,
even in the time of worship, the castle of Dumbarton was won, and the
covenanted Earl of Haddington repelled a wasteful irruption from the
garrison of Berwick.

Such disasters smote the King with consternation; for the immediate
fruit of the victory was the conquest of Newcastle, Tynemouth, Shields
and Durham.

Baffled and mortified, humbled but not penitent, the rash and vindictive
monarch, in a whirlwind of mutiny and desertion, was obligated to
retreat to York, where he was constrained, by the few sound and
sober-minded that yet hovered around him, to try the effect of another
negotiation with his insulted and indignant subjects. But as all the
things which thence ensued are mingled with the acts of perfidy and
aggression by which, under the disastrous influence of the fortunes of
his doomed and guilty race, he drew down the vengeance of his English
subjects, it would lead me far from this household memorial to enter
more at large on circumstances so notour, though they have been
strangely palliated by the supple spirit of latter times, especially by
the sordid courtliness of the crafty Clarendon. I shall therefore skip
the main passages of public affairs, and hasten forward to the time when
I became myself enlisted on the side of our national liberties, briefly,
however, noticing, as I proceed, that after the peace which was
concluded at Ripon my father and my five brothers came home. None of
them received any hurt in battle; but in the course of the winter the
old man was visited with a great income of pains and aches, in so much
that, for the remainder of his days, he was little able to endure
fatigue or hardship of any kind; my second brother, Robin, was therefore
called from his trade in Glasgow to look after the mailing, for I was
still owre young to be of any effectual service; Alexander continued a
bonnet-maker at Kilmarnock; but Michael, William and Jacob, joined and
fought with the forces that won the mournful triumph of Marston Moo