The same writer, addressing a friend abroad, tells of many painful occurrences which broke the calm tenor of life in Scotland in this and the next preceding and following years. Several young noblemen were carried off by acute diseases. Lord Lorn, son of the Marquis of Argyle, playing at a game in Edinburgh Castle, where stone-bullets were used, one of them striking him on the head, he fell down as one dead, and continued so for some time. Three judges died suddenly, one of them in the court, as he was about to seat himself on the bench. Imprudence and vice also attracted attention. ‘The Earl of Eglintoun’s heir, the Lord Montgomery, convoying his father to London, runs away without any advice, and marries a daughter of my Lord Dumfries, who is a broken man, when he was sure of my Lady Buccleuch’s marriage, the greatest match in Britain; _this unexpected prank is worse to all his kin than his death would have been_. The Earl of Moray did little better, for at London, without any advice, he ran and married Sir William Balfour’s second daughter.’ The Earl of Rothes was clapped up in Edinburgh Castle, by the Protector’s orders, in great infamy on account of a certain light-mannered Lady Howard, who had come to his lordship’s house on a visit, and whose husband was now in Scotland, bent on obtaining a bloody satisfaction for his dishonour. At the same time, the wife of Lord Forrester sunk into the grave, through grief excited by the misconduct of her husband and her sister. The number of cases of uncommon turpitude in a time of extraordinary religious purism forces itself upon attention. One Foyer, who was under the notice of the English judges at Glasgow in the spring of 1659, is described by Robert Baillie as ‘a most wicked hypocrite, who, under the colour of piety and prayer, has acted sundry adulteries.’ Being libelled for one only, ‘he was but scourged: many were grieved that he was not hanged.’ The reverend writer adds: ‘_Great appearance of his witchery also_, if he had been put to a real trial.’ Offences of a horrible and unnatural kind continued to abound to a degree which makes the daylight profligacy of the subsequent reign shine white in comparison. ‘More,’ says Nicoll, ‘within these six or seven years nor within these fifty years preceding and more.’ Culprits of all ages, from boys to old men, are heard of every few months as burnt on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh; sometimes two together. Young women, who had murdered their own infants--on one occasion it was ‘ane pretty young gentill woman’--were frequently brought to the same scene of punishment. John Nicoll states that on one day, the 15th October 1656, five persons, two men and three women, were burnt on the Castle Hill for offences of the several kinds here glanced at; while two others were scourged through the city for minor degrees of the same offences. [Sidenote: 1657.]