The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all evermore, is the prayer and blessing of, my dear mother, your obedient and affectionate son, and my loving sisters, your affectionate and loving brother, while ROBERT LYON. _Carlisle Castle, October 23d, 1746. To my mother and sisters._ THE LAST AND DYING SPEECH OF ROBERT LYON, A. M. PRESBYTER AT PERTH.[19] [19] This speech was printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for May 1819 (No. 26, vol. v. p. 164), and in _Stephen's Episcopal Magazine_ for 1836, pp. 10, 111. [Sidenote: 28 Oct.] [Sidenote: _fol._ 15.] The death I am now to suffer by the hands of violence the partial and unthinking world will doubtless be ready to imagine a sign of guilt and a stain upon the character with which I am invested. But would the hardships of a close confinement and the time permit me to explain and vindicate my principles, I am persuaded I could prove them just and my conduct guiltless in the things for which I am to die. That I may not, however, leave a natural curiosity on such occasions quite ungratified I shall briefly run over the principal passages of my past life, and represent my genuine sentiments in some material points. Which I hope will have the greater weight and efficacy upon you, my dear fellow-subjects and beloved countrymen, as I am just about to step into eternity where, at the greatest tribunal, on the last day I know I must be judged according to the works I have already done. And [Sidenote: _fol._ 16.] First. It will be very proper to inform you that I have the honour to be more immediately descended from one of those Scottish clergymen,[20] who unhappily surviv'd our flourishing Church and prosperous nation at the late Revolution; by which means it was my lot, by the wise providence of God to be early train'd up in the school of adversity, inasmuch as he underwent the common fate of our other spiritual pastors and dear fathers in Christ who were by merely secular, and what is worse, unlawful force thrust away from their charges and depriv'd of that maintenance to which they had a general and divine right as well as a legal title by our Constitution. And this in many instances was executed with the utmost rigour and severity, attended with every wicked and aggravating circumstance. For how could it be otherwise when allowed to be done by an ungovern'd mob, distracted with enthusiasm and misguided zeal, but whose deed received its sanction by some subsequent pretended laws. [20] Thought to be the Rev. James Lyon, a native of Forfarshire, who was ordained under the patronage of the Earl of Strathmore, and became incumbent at Kirkwall, whence he was ejected after the Revolution (_Episcopal History of Perth_, p. 135).