Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

402 LOGOPANDECTEISION.
in I had ranked them, compiled like to a compleat nosegay of flowers, which in my
travels I had gathered out of the gardens of above sixteen several kingdoms, by hav-
ing their thoughts plunged and totally immersed in an extraordinary care for these
things, which with little expence and less labour, were obtainable about our owne
doors ; all which books, had not that worthy and most consciencious gentleman Col.
Tho. Fitch, to whom I was then unknown, contremanded the sequestrator's purpose
of sending them to Leith in a ship, then ready to launch forth from Cromarty, had
assuredly been thrown into the bottom of the sea, for the vessel within two days there-
after was taken by the Hollander, or tossed amongst the Flemish stationers in their
shops at Amsterdam, never any more to be thumb'd in this Isle.
50. But Providence, which doth not always go along in its dispensation of events
according to the expectation of the forecasters, permitted not what they would have
most concealed to slip out of the reach of Dundasse's hands ; unwilling, as it were for
their preposterous election, that any thing should be saved, though the loss of both
was mine ; with this difference, nevertheless, that upon giving of bonds and good se-
curity, they were repossessed with the other moveables; but as for my books, although
I obtained an order from the Commissioners for the sequestration at Leith to Captain
Dundass, requiring him to let me have the refusal of them ; yet he not pleasing to
come to Cromartie, where they were fast locked into trunks, whereof himself had the
keys, I was not able, for all the favour I could make till this hour, to obtain either the
getting or buying of any of them, save a few of those which under pretext of the se-
questrator's having medled with them, being stollen, and afterwards dispersed thorow
the country, were through good intelligence by me happily recovered.
51. The little care had of my papers and books by those to whom they were in-
trusted, being a branch springing from the epidemical tree of ignorance, which, to-
gether with hypocrisie, usury, oppression, and iniquity, took root in these parts, when
uprightness, plain-dealing, and charity, with Astraea, took their flight with Queen
Mary of Scotland into England, where, not without the incitement of those her sub-
jects, who from her own dominions had expelled her, she lost her life ; since which
Avari om- time, what devastation hath by usury been made amongst the most ancient families of
nem tur." tnat country, he that runs may read it upon all the prime castles of the land,
bant, estque 52. The usurer thus, as is obvious to the eyes of any, being the chiefest occasion of
omnium the ignorance of Scotland, and of a huge deal of wickedness besides, as in my own
malorum. particular may be instanced ; for as of any knowledge that, by the favour of God, is
in me, he would rob the whole world ; so goeth he about to despoil me of all my
means and inheritance against all reason, therefore could I say no less ; but who would
have more, I remit him to my aporrectical intervals in the Mennippaean satyrs, where-
of he may see five hundred times as much, when the order obtained for recovering
those my manuscripts, which Dundass the sequestrator medled with at Cromartie,
shall prove more effectual.