There is something at once ludicrous and revolting in the following complaint, and the remedy applied to the grievance. It is a good specimen of the way in which the Council exercised their inquisitorial functions:— “July 14. The magistrates of Glasgow present a petition to the council, showing that their tolbooth is pestered with many silly old women, who are a great charge to the town. The council order them to be whipped and burnt on the cheek severely, who are guilty of reset and converse; and such as are guilty of ill principles, that they be whipped and all dismissed.” Wodrow, Hist. of Sufferings of Church of Scotland, vol. iii. chap. ix. § 3. Reset and converse are the harbouring and intercourse with proscribed persons: _guilty of ill principles_ is a phrase of convenient latitude; but must be understood to signify affection to the kirk and covenant. [225] Wodrow, book i., chap. 2, § 4. [226] Burnet says, “he gave no advantage to those that wished to have saved him, by the least step towards any submission, but much to the contrary. I saw him suffer. He was so far from showing any fear, that he rather expressed a contempt of death. He spoke an hour on the ladder with the composedness of one that was delivering a sermon, rather than his last words. He justified all that had been done, and exhorted all people to adhere to the Covenant, which he magnified highly.” Burnet, Hist. of his own Times. [227] Wodrow, book i. chap. 2. [228] Wodrow, book i. chap. 2. [229] Last Days of Pompeii. [230] Heber’s ‘Life of Bishop Taylor,’ the worthy descendant of this excellent man. [231] By a singular specimen of ignorance, our ancestors, who held the Mahometans in pious abomination, chose to consider that sect, which holds images in abomination, as idolaters. Hence the word mawmet, or maumet, and maumetry, are continually used in our early writers for idol, and idolatry. “Unleful worschipping of mawmetis.”—Wiclif, 1 Pet. iv. 3. “When the Byshop Amphiarax sodeynly fell down into hell,” according to Lydgate, Story of Thebes, it was the “Mede of ydolatrie, Of rightes olde, and false mammentrye.”—_Caxton’s edition._ [232] The principal question argued in this letter is the marriage of priests. The following extract, which is of Taylor’s own writing, gives a good notion of the way in which such examinations might be carried on:— “Then my Lord Chancellor said, ‘Diddest thou never read the book that I set forth of the sacrament?’ I answered, ‘That I had read it.’ Then hee said, ‘How likest thou that book?’ With that one of the Councell (whose name I know not),(a) said, ‘My Lord, that is a good question, for I am sure that book stoppeth all their mouths.’ Then said I, ‘My Lord, I think many things be farre wide of the truth of God’s word in that book.’ “Then my Lord said, ‘Thou art a very varlet.’ To that I answered, ‘That is as bad as Racha, or Fatue.’(b) Then my Lord said, ‘thou art an ignorant beetlebrow.’