court of justiciary, which was necessary to his punishment, the prosecutors pleaded that they were exempt from their promise. He was sentenced, therefore, to be examined by torture. The horrible instrument called the "boots" was brought forward. This consisted of several pieces of wood firmly fixed together, leaving an aperture for the reception of the leg of the accused. When it was thus fitted on, wedges were violently driven with a mallet between the boot and the leg, which, compressing the shin-bone, caused the most exquisite suffering. He was bound in an armchair, and asked which leg should be taken. The executioner was commanded to take either, and the left leg was inserted. But Mitchell lifted it out, and said, "Since the judges have not determined it, take the best of the two, for I freely bestow it in the cause," and he put in the other leg. As stroke after stroke descended, questions were put to the prisoner, and the answers written down. But nothing satisfactory was elicited. At last, the prisoner fainted, and was borne off. It was proposed to proceed with the other leg, but the intention was abandoned, through the fears of Sharp that he should have a shot from a steadier hand. At length, after much imprisonment-partly on the Bass rock-he was tried for the attempted assassination. The principal evidence was derived from his own confession, made four years previously. In vain did Mitchell plead the promise under which that confession had been made. It was solemnly denied, even by Lord Lauderdale and Sharp. When, on his trial, Mitchell's counsel asked for the production of the minutes which contained the promise under which the confession had been made, the request was denied, upon the plea, which Lauderdale was not ashamed to urge, that the books of the council were the king's secret! Mitchell was sentenced to be hanged at the Grass-market. When the court broke up, the lords of the privy-council referred to the records, and there found the promise made to Mitchell

which they had just denied. For a moment Lauderdale wavered, and seemed inclined to grant a reprieve. But Sharp was resolute. “Then," said Lauderdale, "let Mitchell glorify God in the Grass-market!" Bishop Burnet gives the unexceptionable authority of Primrose, the clerkregister, for this statement. It was this conduct of Sharp which, probably, led to his death two years after, as we have related. Mitchell was executed, and died with the

heroism of a martyr. This attempted assassination exhibits the stern ferocity engendered by the Scottish covenant, and the inflexible firmness of some who were bound by its provisions! We honour conscience; but conscience and law are not identical. The men acted as they believed; but their belief was not founded upon what was written. Mitchell originally deserved to die; but no words can express the sentiments due to the treachery, barbarity, and infamy of those who condemned him.*

The close of Blackader's labours bore a singular relation to the scene of his imprisonment. Ten days before his apprehension he had preached on a hill opposite to the Bass rock, and had prayed with special energy for those who were imprisoned in that desolate fortress. Soon after he was seized in Edinburgh, and himself received a similar sentence. Here he died, aged seventy. His prison is still to be seen, and a tombstone in the churchyard of North Berwick marks the spot of his interment.†

* Yet on Sharp's monument is this inscription:-" Pietatis exemplum; pacis angelum; sapientiæ oraculum; gravitatis imaginem; boni et fidelis subditi, impietatis, perduellonis, et schismaticis hostem acerrimum," &c. It is well that marble cannot blush. The latter clause is all of the inscription which is true. When this monument was opened, a few years since, it was found empty. It is conjectured that it was opened in search of treasure.

+ The Bass rock is now abandoned to Solan geese, which it harbours in great abundance, and to a few sheep, the flesh of which is in great request; some butchers have been known to boast of selling five times as much Bass wether mutton as the rock can by possibility sustain. Of the former, Defoe says, "Their laying but one egg, which sticks to

The account given in this chapter of the martyrs of the covenant has been brief and imperfect. The reader may find the whole series of transactions in Burnet's History of his Own Time, the volume entitled "The Bass Rock," &c.

None can fail to regard the league and covenant with solemnity, when he recals the events of its dismal history. But as a matter of legislation it was "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare." If it were lawful for presbyterians to sharpen swords against prelacy, it was by the same rule lawful for the adherents of prelacy to turn the sword, so sharpened, against those who had prepared it. The principle announced by Castalio, whom Calvin bitterly opposed, is clear and intelligible :-"Let us obey the righteous Judge, and leave the tares till the harvest, lest, perchance, (whilst we seek to be wiser than the Master,) we root up the wheat. For neither is it yet the end of the world, nor are we angels to whom this office has been intrusted."* Good men as they were, Gillespie, Henderson, Baillie, and the numerous ministers of London, Lancashire, and Chester, who swore by the directory, were scarcely angels; nor were they prone to think that name deserved by Cromwell, Milton, Goodwin, Owen, and the host of sectaries. And deeply did they feel, under the terrible retribution which followed, that Charles II., Monk, Sharp, Lauderdale, Middleton, were no angels!

the rock, and will not fall off unless pulled off by force, and then not to be stuck on again, though we thought them fictions, yet, being there at the season, we found true, as also their hatching upholding the egg fast by the foot." Whatever the means Defoe might have taken to verify the reports, they are only fictions.

*Bib. Sac. pp. xi., xii.

THUMBSCREWS.

CHAPTER X.

APPEARING IN TRUE COLOURS.

"Were I now to preach before a great magistrate that had the power in his hands, I would say,-My lord, you bear not the sword in vain. Let them be fined and imprisoned, nay, hanged, my lord. Now if my lord should say,-Do you endeavour to refute and convince them of their errors by sound doctrine and good example of life; then would I say,-No, my lord, they will never be convinced by us; for we have not wit or learning enough to do it; neither can we take so much pains. It is easier to talk an hour about state affairs than to preach convincing and sound doctrine. The fanatics, therefore, must be confuted by bolts and shackles; by fines and imprisonments; by excommunications and exterminations; and, therefore, my lord, let them be scourged out of the temple: let them be whipped out of the nation."-Speculum Crapegounorum,* by D. Defoe.

ELSTOW CHURCH.

HERE are few more interesting chapters in the miscellaneous volume of human life than those which describe the manner in which some men have "achieved greatness." The case of a single individual whom we desire to recal to the mind of the reader, may stand as an illustration of some of these phenomena. Let us imagine, in a secluded village, in a flat midland county, a cottage -none of the best-built in the

* Crape gowns were at this time the clerical fashion-a fashion, however, which this pamphlet of Defoe's rendered obsolete.

antique style of wood and plaster-with a steep roof and narrow windows, some of them very parsimonious of light and air-a poor but honest family, deriving their daily sustenance from the mean occupation of mending pans and kettles, mainly desirous that their son, destined, perhaps, to pursue the same occupation as themselves, should possess the rudiments of a decent education, and be taught, what few of their class then possessed, the art of reading, and even of writing. Let it be supposed that this boy, chubby, red-haired, and burly in person, gives, as he advances in years, no little trouble to his ignorant, but wellmeaning, parents. Strong, masculine, self-willed, mischief delights him; his passions, even in early life, are strong -often ungovernable; he is riotous and unruly; a very roysterer among his young acquaintance, who are, nevertheless, attracted to him by some indefinable charm, and delight in his humour, and in those massive or barbed phrases which distinguished his very vulgarity. Yet there are times in which this prevalent course of his life becomes interrupted; when he breaks away from his companions and plunges into solitude; when some unexplained sadness seems to bow down his mind; when his sleep is often broken, and those who watch his couch can observe writhings and shudderings, as if he were possessed by some infernal spirit. He grows up a tall and powerful lad; and, as he grows, he becomes less sad and more jovial; a despiser of all which calls itself religion; a captain among the gay and careless; daring beyond all ordinary precedent; remarkable for the breadth of his vulgarity and the emphasis of his oaths.

Such a disposition naturally impels him into all kinds of dangers, yet his preservations are all but miraculous. His companions tell of his hair-breadth escapes from drowning in the sea and in the river; how with his naked hand he once plucked out the forked tongue of an adder and escaped unhurt; how he afterwards enlisted in the civil