“On Saturday most of our eastland noblemen, barons, and ministers, came in. In the afternoon, the Lord Commissioner with most of the council came. The Earls of Rothes, Montrose, and many of our folks, went out to meet his Grace. Much good speech was among them; we protesting, that we would crave nothing but what clear scripture, reason, and law, would evince. His Grace assured nothing reasonable should be denied. On Sunday afternoon, some of the wisest of the ministry consulted upon the ordering of affairs. For myself, I resolved not to be a meddler in anything. I was well lodged. I had brought in a trunk full of my best books and papers. I resolved to read and write, and study as hard as I could all incident questions. On Monday the ministry met in three divers places; for no one private place could contain us. Out of every meeting three were chosen, nine in all, to be privy to hear references from the nobility, barons, burrows, to ripen and prepare what was to be proponed in public. We laid it on Mr Alexander Somervail, an old half-blind man, sore against his heart, to preach on Tuesday. He did pretty well. He insisted at length on the extirpation of all bishops, little to the contentment of some, but greatly to the mind of the most. Our privy consultation was about the clerk and the moderator. We were somewhat in suspense about Mr Alexander Henderson. He was incomparably the ablest man of us all for all things. We doubted if the moderator might be a disputer; we expected then much dispute with the bishops and Aberdeen doctors. We thought our loss great, and hazardous to lose our chief champion, by making him to be a judge of the party; yet at last, finding no other man who had parts requisite to the present moderation, (for in Messrs Ramsay, Dick, Adamson, Pollock, Cant, Livingston, Bonner, Cunningham, there were some things evidently wanting,) we resolved that Mr Henderson of necessity behoved to be the man. Mr Johnston to us all was a nonsuch for a clerk.