Amongst those who looked ill upon the expedition which the Duke of Hamilton was preparing for the relief of the king in England, was his Grace’s own parish minister at Hamilton, Mr James Naismith. Wodrow records, as a traditionary story, that, on the Sunday before the Duke went to England, Mr Naismith preached before his Grace on the text: ‘Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country,’ _Jer._ xxii. 10. The preacher said that God would regard neither dukes nor generals, and as sure as the Bible was the word of God, any who went on in a course of opposition to him, should not return in peace. ‘On the Monday after, when the duke was leaving Hamilton, there was a crowd of women looking on. Mr Naismith said: “Hold him! hold him! for you will never see his face any more.” The Duke at his death in England,[120] said he would give never so much to see his own faithful minister, Mr Naismith.’--_Wod. An._ * * * * * [Sidenote: JULY 28.] The Shorter Catechism recently framed by the Westminster Assembly of Divines, for the instruction ‘of such as are of weaker capacity,’ and which has since been in constant and universal use in Scotland, was this day sanctioned by the General Assembly, sitting in Edinburgh. * * * * * [Sidenote: OCT. 4.] [Sidenote: 1648.] Oliver Cromwell paid his first visit to Edinburgh. He came hot from the destruction of the Duke of Hamilton’s semi-royalist Scotch army at Preston, designing to confer with the heads of the ultra-presbyterian party for the extinction of that kind of opposition in the northern part of the island. The Earl of Kirkcudbright and Major-general Holburn conducted him into the city, where he was lodged very handsomely in the Earl of Moray’s house in the Canongate; a strong guard _of his own troops_ was mounted at the gate. ‘The Earl of Moray’s house,’ says Thomas Carlyle, ‘still stands in the Canongate, well known to the inhabitants there--a solid spacious mansion, which, when all bright and new two hundred years ago, must have been a very adequate lodging.’ ‘As soon as he came there, the Chancellor [Loudon], the Marquis of Argyle, the Earl of Cassillis, the Lord Burleigh, the Provost of Edinburgh,[121] with many other lords and gentlemen, went to pay their respects to him; and the next day, the Earl of Cassillis and Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston went to visit him on the part of the Committee of Estates, to know what he had to communicate to them. Cromwell presented them a writing, whereby he demanded that, in order to keep Hamilton’s party from being able to rise up again in Scotland, where they might embroil the two kingdoms, they would be pleased to order that none of those who had carried arms under his command, or who had consented to the invasion of England, should have any public employment in Scotland. The committee granted him that