his expedition to the Holy Land with the heart of King
Robert Bruce. Douglas, impatient to get at the Saracens, entered into
war with those of Spain, and was killed there. Lockhart proceeded to the
Holy Land with such Scottish knights as had escaped the fate of their
leader and assisted for some time in the wars against the Saracens.

The following adventure is said by tradition to have befallen him:--

He made prisoner in battle an Emir of considerable wealth and
consequence. The aged mother of the captive came to the Christian camp,
to redeem her son from his state of captivity. Lockhart is said to have
fixed the price at which his prisoner should ransom himself; and the
lady, pulling out a large embroidered purse, proceeded to tell down the
ransom, like a mother who pays little respect to gold in comparison of
her son's liberty. In this operation, a pebble inserted in a coin, some
say of the Lower Empire, fell out of the purse, and the Saracen matron
testified so much haste to recover it as gave the Scottish knight a
high idea of its value, when compared with gold or silver. "I will not
consent," he said, "to grant your son's liberty, unless that amulet be
added to his ransom." The lady not only consented to this, but explained
to Sir Simon Lockhart the mode in which the talisman was to be used,
and the uses to which it might be put. The water in which it was dipped
operated as a styptic, as a febrifuge, and possessed other properties as
a medical talisman.

Sir Simon Lockhart, after much experience of the wonders which it
wrought, brought it to his own country, and left it to his heirs, by
whom, and by Clydesdale in general, it was, and is still, distinguished
by the name of the Lee-penny, from the name of his native seat of Lee.

The most remarkable part of its history, perhaps, was that it so
especially escaped condemnation when the Church of Scotland chose to
impeach many other cures which savoured of the miraculous, as occasioned
by sorcery, and censured the appeal to them, "excepting only that to
the amulet, called the Lee-penny, to which it had pleased God to annex
certain healing virtues which the Church did not presume to condemn." It
still, as has been said, exists, and its powers are sometimes resorted
to. Of late, they have been chiefly restricted to the cure of persons
bitten by mad dogs; and as the illness in such cases frequently arises
from imagination, there can be no reason for doubting that wate