Religion & morality > Cloud of witnesses, for the royal prerogatives of Jesus Christ, or, The last speeches and testimonies of those who suffered for the truth in Scotland, in the years 1681-1688, with an appendix, containing the Queensferry paper, Torwood excommunications, &c

PREFACE,
xix
tracting itself, when it was pulled out, and by the violent
motion of the heart when it dropped upon the scaffold, which
the executioner taking up upon the knife, showed to the
people upon the severalcorners of the stage, crying, ‘Here is
the heart of a traitor,’ and then threw it into a fire prepared
for the purpose, upon the stage, together also with his other
inwards and noble parts ; and having quartered his body,
fixed his head and hands on a port at Edinburgh, and the
other quarters at Leith, Cupar of Fife, and other places.—
Such was the size and proportion of their persecutions, while
yet they pretended to bring them to the knowledge of assizes
and colour of law.
But being now weary with these persecutions, according
to the tenor of their own laws ; the counsellors, to rid them¬
selves of this trouble, gave out an edict for killing them,
wherever they might be found, immediately upon the spot,
unless they would take the oaths, and show their pass,
which they behoved to swear was not forged ; or if they
found any arms or ammunition upon them of any sort: by
means of which edict, many were suddenly surprised and
shot dead, by the brutish and merciless soldiers, who were
either peaceably living at home, following their lawful em¬
ployments, or wandering in mountains, to hide themselves
from their bloody enemies, not being allowed time to recom¬
mend their souls to God ; and the country was engaged by
oath to raise the hue and cry against them, in order to deliver
them up to the hands of these burriors. The chief contrivers
and framers of this horrid murdering edict, were the Earl of
Perth, chancellor, Duke of Queensberry, Marquis of Athol,
and particularly the Viscount of Tarbet, now Earl of Crom¬
arty, who invented this murdering device, wherein yet he
carried so cunningly, that he procured the act of the dis¬
patch to the king with such suddenness, that he found a
way to shift his own subscribing it; and though he wants
power now to practise such bloody mischief, yet it is evi¬
dent, he has not repented thereof, but is, as yet, a contriver
of the present encroachments made upon the established
church, by the late mischievous acts of parliament.
But I must not enter any further into the relation of
these cruelties, the true history of which would expand
into a volume. I own, indeed, that a fuller narration of these