The oppressions which these people had suffered, the delusions under which they labored, and their inoffensive behavior during the insurrection, made them the objects of compassion: yet were the king’s ministers, particularly Sharpe, resolved to take severe vengeance. Ten were hanged on one gibbet at Edinburgh; thirty-five before their own doors in different places. These criminals might all have saved their lives, if they would have renounced the covenant. The executions were going on, when the king put a stop to them. He said, that blood enough had already been shed; and he wrote a letter to the privy council, in which he ordered, that such of the prisoners as should simply promise to obey the laws for the future, should be set at liberty, and that the incorrigible should be sent to the plantations.[*] This letter was brought by Burnet, archbishop of Glasgow; but not being immediately delivered to the council by Sharpe, the president,[**] one Maccail had in the interval been put to the torture, under which he expired. He seemed to die in an ecstasy of joy. “Farewell, sun, moon, and stars; farewell, world and time; farewell, weak and frail body: welcome, eternity; welcome, angels and saints; welcome, Savior of the world; and welcome, God, the Judge of all!” Such were his last words: and these animated speeches he uttered with an accent and manner which struck all the bystanders with astonishment. * Burnet, p 237. * Wodrow’s History, vol. i. p. 255. The settlement of Ireland, after the restoration, was a work of greater difficulty than that of England, or even of Scotland. Not only the power, during the former usurpations, had there been vested in the king’s enemies; the whole property, in a manner, of the kingdom had also been changed: and it became necessary to redress, but with as little violence as possible, many grievous hardships and iniquities which were there complained of.