Amongst many murders perpetrated at this time, that of John Brown, the Ayrshire carrier, stands out conspicuous in horror. He was a quiet, sedate man, leading a blameless life; his only offence was that he did not on Sundays attend the parish church, but either read his bible at home, or, with a few like-minded, met in a quiet place for a little service of praise and prayer. One morning, whilst digging peats for the house fire, he was surrounded by Claverhouse’s dragoons, and brought to his own door. Here, his wife and children being by—a baby in its mother’s arms—Claverhouse asked him why he did not attend on the King’s curate; and John, answering that he had to obey his conscience rather than the King, Claverhouse told him to prepare for death. He said he had long been so prepared. He prayed with fervour, until interrupted by Claverhouse, who saw his wild dragoons beginning to shew tokens of sympathy; Brown kissed his wife and little ones, and he was then shot dead. “What do you think of your bonnie man now?” the devil-hearted slayer asked of the newly-made widow. “I aye thocht muckle o’ him, but never sae muckle as I do this day.” She laid her infant on the ground, tied up the poor shattered head in her kerchief, composed the limbs, covered the body with a plaid, and then she sat down beside it, and, in heart-rending sobs and tears, gave full course to natural sorrow. The tragedy enacted on Magus Moor was a cruel murder, but if there are degrees of guilt in such an awful crime, that committed at the cottage door in Ayrshire was surely the more heinous and atrocious of the two. Monmouth remained only a short time in Scotland; Lauderdale was still nominally at the head of affairs. But in November, 1679, the King sent his brother James to Edinburgh, partly to keep him out of sight from the people of England. As a rigid Roman Catholic, standing next in succession to the throne, he was very unpopular. A cry of popish plots had been got up, and an Exclusion Bill would have been carried in Parliament,[4] but Charles dissolved it, and he never called another; for the last four years of his life he reigned as an absolute monarch. Footnote 4: A concession which was proposed on the King’s authority now sounds very strange. It was that at his death James should be King, but for ever banished five hundred miles from his dominions; his daughter, Princess of Orange, to reign as Regent. Parliament would not listen to this rather impracticable project.