When he had delivered this his seasonable and pathetic speech, which with his last words is recorded at length in Naphtali[101]. Mr. Hamilton prayed, after which he prayed most sweetly himself, then he took his leave of all his friends on the scaffold. He first gave to the executioner a napkin with some money in it; to his sons in law Caithness and Ker his watch and some other things out of his pocket, he gave to Loudon his silver penner, to Lothian a double ducat, and then threw off his coat. When going to the maiden, Mr. Hutcheson said, My lord, now hold your grip sickker.----He answered, "You know Mr. Hutcheson, what I said to you in the chamber. I am not afraid to be surprised with fear." The laird of Shelmerlie took him by the hand, when near the maiden, and found him most composed. He kneeled down most cheerfully, and after he had prayed a little, he gave the signal (which was by lifting up his hand), and the instrument called the maiden struck off his head from his body, which was fixed on the west end of the tolbooth, as a monument of the parliaments injustice and the land's misery. His body was by his friends put in a coffin and conveyed with a good many attendants through Linlithgow and Falkirk to Glasgow, and from thence to Kilpatrick, where it was put in a boat, carried to Denune, and buried in Kilmunn church. Thus died the noble marquis of Argyle, the proto-martyr to religion since the reformation from popery, the true portrait of whose character cannot be (a historian[102] says I dare not) drawn. His enemies themselves will allow him to have been a person of extraordinary piety, remarkable wisdom and prudence, great gravity and authority, and singular usefulness. He was the head of the covenanters in Scotland, and had been singularly active in the work of reformation there, and of any almost that had engaged in that work he stuck closest by it, when most of the nation quitted it very much, so that this attack upon him was a stroke at the root of all that had been done in Scotland from 1638, to the usurpation. But the tree of prelacy and arbitrary measures behoved to be soaked when planting, with the blood of this excellent patriot, staunch presbyterian, and vigorous assertor of Scotland's liberty, and as he was the great promoter thereof during his life, and stedfast in witnessing to it at his death, so it was to a great degree buried with him in Scotland, for many years. In a word, he had piety for a christian, sense for a counsellor, carriage for a martyr, and soul for a king. If ever any was, he might be said to be a born Scotsman. _The Life of Mr. JAMES GUTHRIE._