We have but little more to relate respecting George Gillespie. His death was deeply lamented by all who loved their church and country at the time; and such was the feeling generally entertained of his great merit, that the Committee of Estates, or government of the kingdom, by an Act dated 20th December, 1648, did, “as an acknowledgment for his faithfulness in all the public employments entrusted to him by this Church, both at home and abroad, his faithful labours, and indefatigable diligence in all the exercises of his ministerial calling, for his Master’s service, and his learned writings, published to the world, in which rare and profitable employments, both for Church and State, he truly spent himself and closed his days, ordain, That the sum of one thousand pounds sterling be given to his widow and children.” And though the Parliament did, by their Act, dated June 8th, 1650, unanimously ratify the preceding Act, and recommended to their Committee to make the same effectual, yet in consequence of Cromwell’s invasion, and the confusion into which the whole kingdom was thereby thrown, this benevolent design was frustrated, as his grandson, the Rev. George Gillespie, minister at Strathmiglo, afterwards declared.(6) So much for the trust to be placed in national gratitude and the promises of statesmen. George Gillespie was buried at Kirkcaldy, his birth-place, and the place also where he died. A tomb-stone, erected to his memory by his relatives and friends, bore an inscription in Latin, recording the chief actions of his life, and stating the leading elements of his character. But when Prelacy was re-imposed on Scotland, after the restoration of Charles II., the mean malice of the Prelatists gratified itself by breaking the tomb-stone. This petty and spiteful act is thus recorded in the “Mercurius Caledonius,” one of the small quarto newspapers or periodicals of the time, of date January 16th to 25th, 1661. “The late Committee of Estates ordered the tomb-stone of Mr George Gillespie, whereon was engraven a scandalous inscription, should be fetched from the burial place, and upon a market-day, at the cross of Kirkcaldy, where he had formerly been minister, and there solemnly broken by the hands of the hangman; which was accordingly done,—a just indignity upon the memory of so dangerous a person.”