Series 1 > Loyall dissuasive

VINDICATION OF SIR J5NEAS MACPHERSON 185
nixt Tuesday by three of the clock in the afternoon, and Mr.
Paine upon that short advertizement did prepare himself to
undergoe the tryall. The Councill at that time seem’d so
forward and fix’t to yr resolution, that they sent a party to
bring the oyr gentlemen from Blackness prison, who were
appointed to be tortured with him.1 To all this I was ane
absolute stranger till Mr. Paine’s maid servant by his own
order made it known to me after ten of the clock that night,
and with all hid her tell me I was the only friend he hade in
that place; and if I made no interest to divert that misfortune,
he must reckon himself undone. I was at the time in the
company of two or three men of quality of our own party,
who seeing me return in such disorder (for the maid had called
me out) were impatient to know the occasion on’t; and when
I told them the hard circumstances Mr. Paine was in, one of
them said he knew a week agoe it must come to that at last,
for said he, Sir John Dalrymple,2 who hes a great ascendent
over the rest, caries that matter on with all imaginable
violence, much against the inclination of those of any temper
or quality in the Councill. Wherupon (the night being far
spent) we parted, and the nixt morning, the day appointed for
the torture, I went to Sir John Dalrymple’s lodgings very
humbly and left a note in the lock-hole 3 of his door, the coppie
whereof I have thought fitt to insert in this place, and is as
follows, Directed on the back, for Sir John Dalrymple. ‘ Sir,
It’s generally believed there are a set of men make it yr
1 See their names in previous note.
2 Sir John Dalrymple, afterwards second Viscount and first Earl of Stair. He
was King’s Advocate in 1690. There is evidence under his own hand of his
urging torture in another case, and he expresses contempt for Parliament as
being squeamish on the subject—Napier’s Viscount Dundee, vol. iii. p. 612.
His letters ordering the Massacre of Glencoe gave him an ill name in Scotland
and lost him his office for a time. He died suddenly 8th January 1707.
3 I do not know whether there be other evidence of this transaction. True
it is that Payne was not tortured till 10th December 1690, and only then after
an order from William signed by Melville, dated 18th November. The order
was entered in the Council register 10th December, and on that very day the
torture was applied and repeated, to the extremity possible without destroying
life, on the nth. Three of those present on the first day of torture Vere absent
on the second, viz. the Earls of Sutherland and Cassillis and Sir Colin Campbell
of Aberuchil. —Napier’s Viscount Dundee, vol. ii. p. 119.