shrank from the great wickedness of butchering her husband before her
face. The prisoner, meanwhile, raised above himself by the near
prospect of eternity, prayed loud and fervently as one inspired, till
Claverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It was reported by credible
witnesses that the widow cried out in her agony, "Well, sir, well; the
day of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer replied, "To man I
can answer for what I have done; and as for God, I will take him into
mine own hand." Yet it was rumoured that even on his seared conscience
and adamantine heart the dying ejaculations of his victim made an
impression which was never effaced. [288]

On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce, were
tried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal consisting of fifteen soldiers.
The indictment is still extant. The prisoners were charged, not with any
act of rebellion, but with holding the same pernicious doctrines which
had impelled others to rebel, and with wanting only opportunity to act
upon those doctrines. The proceeding was summary. In a few hours the two
culprits were convicted, hanged, and flung together into a hole under
the gallows. [289]

The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than one great crime.
Some rigid Calvinists had from the doctrine of reprobation drawn the
consequence that to pray for any person who had been predestined to
perdition was an act of mutiny against the eternal decrees of the
Supreme Being. Three poor labouring men, deeply imbued with this
unamiable divinity, were stopped by an officer in the neighbourhood
of Glasgow. They were asked whether they would pray for King James the
Seventh. They refused to do so except under the condition that he was
one of the elect. A file of musketeers was drawn out. The prisoners
knelt down; they were blindfolded; and within an hour after they had
been arrested, their blood was lapped up by the dogs. [290]

While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible was
perpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed Covenanters, overcome by
sickness, had found shelter in the house of a respectable widow, and
had died there. The corpse was discovered by the Laird of Westerhall, a
petty tyrant who had, in the days of the Covenant, professed inordinate
zeal for the Presbyterian Church, who had, since the Restoration,
purchased the favour of the government by apostasy, and who felt towards
the party which he had deserted the implacabl