accused on his own knowledge was
Neville Payne, who had not, it should seem, been mentioned either by
Ross or by Montgomery, [780]

Payne, pursued by messengers and warrants, was so ill advised as to take
refuge in Scotland. Had he remained in England he would have been safe;
for, though the moral proofs of his guilt were complete, there was not
such legal evidence as would have satisfied a jury that he had committed
high treason; he could not be subjected to torture in order to force
him to furnish evidence against himself; nor could he be long confined
without being brought to trial. But the moment that he passed the border
he was at the mercy of the government of which he was the deadly foe.
The Claim of Right had recognised torture as, in cases like his, a
legitimate mode of obtaining information; and no Habeas Corpus Act
secured him against a long detention. The unhappy man was arrested,
carried to Edinburgh, and brought before the Privy Council. The general
notion was that he was a knave and a coward, and that the first sight
of the boots and thumbscrews would bring out all the guilty secrets
with which he had been entrusted. But Payne had a far braver spirit than
those highborn plotters with whom it was his misfortune to have been
connected. Twice he was subjected to frightful torments; but not a word
inculpating himself or any other person could be wrung out of him. Some
councillors left the board in horror. But the pious Crawford presided.
He was not much troubled with the weakness of compassion where an
Amalekite was concerned, and forced the executioner to hammer in wedge
after wedge between the knees of the prisoner till the pain was as
great as the human frame can sustain without dissolution. Payne was
then carried to the Castle of Edinburgh, where he long remained, utterly
forgotten, as he touchingly complained, by those for whose sake he had
endured more than the bitterness of death. Yet no ingratitude could damp
the ardour of his fanatical loyalty; and he continued, year after year,
in his cell, to plan insurrections and invasions, [781]

Before Payne's arrest the Estates had been adjourned after a Session
as important as any that had ever been held in Scotland. The nation
generally acquiesced in the new ecclesiastical constitution. The
indifferent, a large portion of every society, were glad that the
anarchy was over, and conformed to the Presbyterian Church as they had
conformed to the Episcopal Churc