Whatsoever indignities the bitterness of party rage or religious hatred could suggest, were accumulated on a fallen, illustrious enemy, formerly terrible, and still detested. He was slowly and ostentatiously conducted through the north by the ungenerous Lesly, in the same mean habit in which he was taken. His devastations were not forgotten,—his splendid victories never forgiven,—and he was exposed, by excommunication, to the abhorrence and insults of a fanatical people. His sentence was already pronounced in Parliament, on his former attainder, under every aggravation which brutal minds can delight to inflict. He was received by the magistrates of Edinburgh at the Watergate, 18th May, 1650, placed on an elevated seat in a cart, to which he was pinioned with cords, and, preceded by his officers, coupled together, was conducted, bareheaded, by the public executioner, to the common jail. But his magnanimity was superior to every insult. When produced to receive his sentence in Parliament, he was upbraided by the Chancellor with his violation of the Covenant, the introduction of Irish insurgents, his invasion of Scotland during a treaty with the King; and the temperate dignity which he had hitherto sustained, seemed, at first, to yield to indignant contempt. He vindicated his dereliction of the Covenant, by their rebellion,—his appearance in arms, by the commission of his Sovereign,—and declared, that as he had formerly deposited, so he again resumed his arms, by his Majesty’s command, to accelerate the treaty commenced with the States. A barbarous sentence, which he received with an undaunted countenance, was then pronounced by a Parliament who acknowledged Charles to be their King, and whom, on that account only, Montrose acknowledged to be a Parliament,—that he should be hanged for three hours, on a gibbet 30 feet high; that his head should be affixed to the common jail, his limbs to the gates of the principal towns, and his body interred at the place of execution, unless his excommunication were taken off, and then it might be buried in consecrated ground. With dignified magnanimity, he replied, that he was prouder to have his head affixed to the prison walls than his picture placed in the King’s bedchamber; “and, far from being troubled that my limbs are to be sent to your principal towns, I wish I had flesh enough to be dispersed through Christendom, to attest my dying attachment to my King.” It was the calm employment of his mind that night to reduce this extravagant sentiment to verse. He appeared next day on the scaffold, in a rich habit, with the same serene and undaunted countenance, and addressed the people, to vindicate his dying unabsolved by the Church, rather than to justify an invasion of the kingdom during a treaty with the Estates. The insults of his enemies were not yet exhausted. The history of his exploits, which had been written in Latin by Bishop Wishart, and published all over Europe,