So exasperated was the old man by the importunity of his creditors, that at last, we are told, the sound of one of their voices was in his ears as "the hissing of a basilisk." The great Civil war itself, which brought calamity and grief to so many homes, was almost welcomed by him for the relief it brought him from the "hornings" and "apprisings," and other legal processes, which threatened him in times of peace. "The disorderly troubles of the land," says his son of him, "being then far advanced, though otherways he disliked them, were a kind of refreshment to him, and intermitting relaxation from a more stinging disquietnesse. For that our intestin troubles and distempers, by silencing the laws for a while, gave some repose to those that longed for a breathing time, and by hudling up the terms of Whitsuntide and Martimass, which in Scotland are the destinated times for payment of debts, promiscuously with the other seasons of the year, were as an oxymel julip wherewith to indormiat them in a bitter sweet security."[61] The most importunate of all the creditors, or, as Urquhart describes them, "the usurious cormorants," who harassed the unhappy proprietor of Cromartie, was a certain Robert Lesley of Findrassie. He held a mortgage upon the estate, and though he was indebted to its owner for many acts of kindness, he had been the first to foreclose upon the property, and had persuaded other creditors to join with him in taking this step. The annoyance and mortification caused by these proceedings hastened Sir Thomas's death. Two days before that event, animated by regret for the wrong he had done his heir by the impoverishment of the family property, he assembled his younger children, and bound them, "under pain of his everlasting curse and execration," to do all in their power to help their elder brother. The terms of this extraordinary bond, his son tells us, were these: "to assist, concur with, follow, and serve me, to the utmost of their power, industry, and means, and to spare neither charge nor travel, though it should cost them all they had, to release me from the undeserved bondage of the domineering creditor, and extricate my lands from the impestrements wherein they were involved; yea, to bestow nothing of their owne upon no other use, till that should be done; and all this under their own handwriting, secured with the clause of registration to make the opprobrie the more notorious in case of failing, as the paper itself, which I have _in retentis_, together with another signed to the same sense, by my mother, and also my brothers and sisters, Dunbugur [Dunlugas][62] only excepted, will more evidently testifie."[63] Sir Thomas Urquhart, the elder, died in April [?], 1642, after a long and lingering illness.[64]