and my son were both there,
and there my gallant Michael lies. My brother, then verging on
threescore, being among the prisoners, was, after sore sufferings in the
Greyfriars church-yard of Edinburgh, sent on board a vessel as a
bondsman to the plantations in America. His wrongs, however, were
happily soon over; for the ship in which he was embarked perished among
the Orkney islands, and he, with two hundred other sufferers, received
the crown of martyrdom from the waves.

O Charles Stuart, king of Scotland! and thou, James Sharp!--false and
cruel men--But ye are called to your account; and what avails it now to
the childless father to rail upon your memory?

CHAPTER LXXII

Before proceeding farther at this present time with the doleful tale of
my own sufferings, it is required of me, as an impartial historian, to
note here a very singular example of the spirit of piety which reigned
in the hearts of the Covenanters, especially as I shall have to show
that such was the cruel and implacable nature of the Persecution, that
time had not its wonted influence to soften in any degree its rigour.
Thirteen years had passed from the time of the Pentland raid; and surely
the manner in which the country had suffered for that rising might, in
so long a course of years, have subdued the animosity with which we were
pursued; especially, as during the Earl of Tweeddale's administration
the bonds of peace had been accepted. But Lauderdale, now at the head of
the councils, was rapacious for money; and therefore all offences, if I
may employ that courtly term, by which our endeavours to taste of the
truth were designated,--all old offences, as I was saying, were renewed
against us as recent crimes, and an innocent charity to the remains of
those who had suffered for the Pentland raid was made a reason, after
the battle of Bothwell-brigg, to revive the persecution of those who had
been out in that affair.

The matter particularly referred to arose out of the following
circumstances:

The number of honest and pious men who were executed in different
places, and who had their heads and their right hands with which they
signed the Covenant at Lanerk cut off, and placed on the gates of towns
and over the doors of tolbooths, had been very great. And it was very
grievous, and a sore thing to the friends and acquaintances of those
martyrs, when they went to Glasgow, or Kilmarnock, or Irvine, or Ayr, on
their farm business, to trys