IX. Then the country behoved to pay the soldiers for all this service, and hire them to do more, by paying the imposed cess; whereby they were sharpened into a greater keenness in cruel executions of their orders, returning to those places of the country whither they had chased the persecuted people, who still kept their meetings wherever they were, though they could not attend them, but upon the hazard of being killed, either in the place (where some had their blood mingled with their sacrifice) or fleeing, or be exposed to their dreadful cruelties, more bitter than death. For then it was counted a greater crime, and punished with greater severity, for persons to hear a faithful minister preach, than to commit murder, incest, adultery, or to be guilty of witchcraft, or idolatry, or the grossest abominations: for these have passed unpunished, when some, for their simple presence at a meeting, have been executed unto the death. Then also, when some were forced to flee into the English border for shelter, there also were parties ordered to pursue these poor hunted partridges, who could not find a hole to hide their head in. There we lost a valiant champion for truth, and truly zealous contender for the interest of Christ, that universally accomplished gentleman and Christian, Thomas Ker of Heyhope, who was cruelly murdered in a rencounter with a party of the English side. Thereafter followed that lamentable stroke at Bothwel, where about 300 were killed on the field, and about 10 or 1100 taken prisoners, and stript, and brought into Edinburgh in a merciless manner. After which, first two faithful and painful ministers and witnesses of Christ, Mr. John Kid and Mr. John King, received the crown of martyrdom, sealing that testimony with their blood, and many others after them for the same cause. Then the enemy, after the manner used before, first to wound our head, and then put on a hood upon it, (as they have done always after a mischief, and intending a greater), offered their bond of peace, on terms that clearly condemned the cause, never to rise in arms against the king, &c. by which bond, many of the prisoners, after they had lien several weeks in a church-yard, without the shadow of a house to cover them night and day, were liberate: and many of the rest, by the persuasion of some ministers, at whose door their blood lies as well as at the enemy's, took that bond; and yet were sent away with others that did not take it, in a ship bound for America between 2 and 300 in all, who were all murdered in the ship, being shut up under the hatches, when it split upon a rock in the north of Scotland, except about 50 persons; whereof many to this are living witnesses of such a cruelty.