Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > New Testament in Scots > Volume 1, 1901

Xll
INTRODUCTION.
of the after-persecution. Having spent some years thus
in foreign countries, he returned to Scotland and swore
the covenants when King Charles at his coronation
swore them in Scoon, 1650.’
John married Margaret Law and had four children.
He took up arms for the covenant, was severely wounded
at Pentland, ‘ did good service ’ at Drumclog and Bothwell,
and was finally captured and executed at Edinburgh. The
treasured New Testament descended to his son and
biographer, Sergeant James Nisbet, who died in 1728.
Wodrow in his ‘Analecta,’ under the year 1728
(vol. iii. p. 518), continues the history of the family and
the book:—
‘James Nisbit, son to John Nisbit of Hardhill, Ensing
or Lieutennant in the Castle of Edinburgh, dyed some
moneths ago. He was a very eminent and singular
Christian. ... A litle before his death, he gote my
Lord Grange’s acquaintance, and he somtimes visited
him in the Castle. He said to my Lord, he was the
last of his old family, (and had no children), and had
a nepheu bound to be a barber, to whom he was to
leave his papers, and an old Wickliffe’s Neu Testament,
which had been in the family of Hardhill since the
Reformation, and his Diary.1 That his papers about
civil affairs wer in some disorder, and he had nobody
he could trust those to till his nepheu greu up but his
Lordship, and begged he would take the trouble of
them.’
Lord Grange made some difficulty about undertaking
1 This Diary, 1667-1688, of which a manuscript copy is preserved in the
Signet Library, was printed in 1827 under the title ‘Private Life of the
Persecuted: or Memoirs of the first years of James Nisbet, one of the
Scottish Covenanters.’ Edinb., i2mo.