learned, who all seeing me and my party advancing, hid themselves in a little island on the river among the broom that grew upon it. Wilson had not the good fortune to escape.... I seized and brought him to my quarters, and from thence immediately conveyed him to Edenborough, where he was hanged; but might have preserved his life if he would have condescended only to say, God save the King. This he utterly refused to do, and thereby lost not only his life, but likewise an estate worth twenty-nine thousand marks Scots. For this service, the Duke of Queensberry, then High Commissioner of Scotland, recommended me to the King, who rewarded me with the gift of Wilson's estate; but although the grant passed the Seals, and the Sheriff put me in possession, yet I could neither sell it nor let it, nobody daring, for fear of the Rebels who had escaped at Bothwell Bridge, either to purchase or farm it, by which means I never got a penny by the grant; and at the Revolution the land was taken from me, and restored to Wilson's heirs.... "The winter following, General Dalziel, with a battalion of the Earl of Linlithgow's Guards, the Earl of Airly's troop of Horse, and Captain Stuart's troop of Dragoons, quartered at Kilmarnock in the west, 50 miles from Edenborough. Here the general one day, happening to look on while I was exercising the troop of Dragoons, asked me, when I had done, whether I knew any of my men who was skilful in praying well in the style and tone of the Covenanters; I immediately thought upon one James Gibb, who had been born in Ireland, and whom I made a Dragoon. This man I brought to the General, assuring his Excellency that if I had raked Hell, I could not find his match for his skill in mimicking the Covenanters. Whereupon the General gave him £5 to buy him a gray coat and a bonnet, and commanded him to find out the Rebels, but to be sure to take care of himself among them. The Dragoon went 8 miles off that very night, and got admittance into the house of a notorious Rebel, pretending he came from Ireland out of zeal for the cause, to assist at the fight of Bothwell Bridge, and could not find an opportunity since of returning to Ireland with safety, he said he durst not be seen in the day-time, and therefore after bewitching the family with his gifts of praying, he was conveyed in the dusk of the next evening, with a guide, to the house of the next adjoining Rebel; and thus in the same manner, from one to another, till in a month's time he got through the principal of them in the west, telling the General at his return, that wherever he came he made the old wives in their devout fits tear off their biggonets and mutches; he likewise gave the General a list of their names and places of their abodes; and into the bargain, brought back a good purse of money in his pocket. The General desired to know how he had prayed amongst them; he answered that it was his custom in his prayers to send the King, the Ministers of State,