IV. After Pentland defeat, they ruled by rage more than either law or reason. There 40 prisoners, who were taken upon quarter, and solemn parole to have their life spared, yet treacherously and bloodily were all hanged (except five that were reprieved) who had much of the Lord's presence at their deaths, and assurance of his love, strengthening them to seal a noble testimony. One of them, a much honoured young minister, only for having a sword about him, though not present at the fight, did first most patiently endure the cruel torture of the boots (a cruel engine of iron, whereby with wedges the leg is tortured, until the marrow come out of the bone) and afterwards death, with great courage and constancy. Upon the scaffold, at their execution, they then began that barbarity never practised in Scotland before, but frequently, and almost always at all the executions since, to beat drums, that they might not be heard. After this conflict, many were forefaulted of their estates, and intercommuned, with inhibition to all to reset, conceal, or correspond with any that had escaped, under the pain of being accounted guilty of the same rebellion, as they called it. Soldiers are permitted to take free quarter in the country, and licensed to all the abuses, that either rapine or cruelty may suggest; to examine men by tortures, threatning to kill or roast alive, all that would not delate all they knew were accessory to that rising; to strip them who did so much as reset the fugitives, and thrust them into prisons, in cold, hunger and nakedness, and crowd them so with numbers, that they could scarce stand together, having the miseries of their own excrements superadded; yea, to murder without process, such as would not, nay could not, discover those persecuted people. But not only time, but heart and tongue would fail, to relate all the violences and insolencies, the stobbings, woundings, stripping and imprisonings of mens persons, violent breaking of their houses both by day and night, beating of wives and children, ravishing of women, forcing of them by fire-matches and other tortures, to discover their husbands and nearest relations, although not within the compass of their knowledge, and driving away all their goods that could be carried away without respect to guilt or innocency, and all the cruelties that were exercised without a check by these ruffians at that time.