Series 1 > Loyall dissuasive

190
THE LOYALL DISSUASIVE
promise, in the third place, mention some few for myself, and
leave you to j udge which of the two (theirs or mine) are most
concluding.
First, is it reasonable to believe, if I hade obliet1 the
Government, by Mr. Paine’s torture, that they would have
made me prisoner and cag’d me up ever after the torture for
15 weeks,2 without intermission, and at a time too, when I was
scarce recovered of a tedious and dangerous disease qrof my
physicians and the churchmen who attended me concluded I
should have dyed, notwithstanding yrof, and that my physicians
declared by yr certificate, on soul and conscience that it was
their opinion, if I was kept a prisoner and not allowed to go
to my own Country in the Highlands for my health, it might
endanger my life; yet such was yr governments favour towards
me that neither that, nor the repeated endeavours of my friends,
could procure me my enlargement, till the starving condition
I was in for so long a time, and the apparent danger of a relaps,
forced me to petition the Councill for aliment, or to be set at
liberty on my finding sufficient baill, and rather then give the
first, they consented to the last.
If I had been in the interest of the Government, it is plain
yr had been no occasion for Mr. Paine’s torture, for being then
in the inside of affairs, it was in my power to have made my
court (as others did) by a full and totall discovery, in which
case, his life and not his limbs were likeliest to be in hazard.
But, is it not next to frenzie to imagine that any man having
a grain weight of sense would refuse a Collonel’s Comission,
and take up a trade scarce becoming a footman or a porter,
and that such a Comission was not onlie offered but pressed on
me by Melvill and Mackay some 3 years ago, is known to
severalls of the best rank and quality of both nations. I was
indeed advised by some of our own party to accept of that
Commission, adding that they were sure considering my
sufferings and circumstances, my master would excuse it. To
which I answered that I was not at my own disposall, and if I
committed such a villany without my master’s knowledge, one
1 Obliet=obliged.
2 Fifteen weeks after nth December 1690. But not immediately after. See
Prefatory Note, p. 200.