Bible in his hand
and wickedly said, it would never be well with the land till that book
was destroyed. These and the like procured him a place in that black
list excommunicated at Torwood. After the persecuting work was over, he
went up to London, where he died with all the passages of his body
running blood (like Charles IX. of France author of the Paris massacre.)
Physicians being brought could give no natural cause for it, but that it
was the hand of God on him for the blood he had shed in his own
land.--_Vid._ _West's memoirs, and History of the sufferings of the
church of Scotland_.

SIR JAMES JOHNSTON of Westerraw (alias Westerhall) another of the same
kidney was an egregious apostate. He was such a zealous professor, that
when the test was first framed, he could boast that he was an actual
covenanter, and so scorned it. But, on the first trial, he not only took
it, but furiously pressed it on others; and, having gathered the parish
for that purpose, 1683, he in one of his rages said, "The devil damn his
soul; but before to-morrow's night they should all be damned by taking
it as well as he." And for persecuting work, he exacted 11,000l. in
Galloway by oppression, digged a man's body out of the grave, plundered
the poor widow woman's house where he died, because he was one of the
sufferers, and caused Claverhouse, somewhat contrary to his mind to
shoot An. Hyslop because taken on his ground. He lived till or after the
revolution, that he died in great torture of body and grievous torment
and horror of conscience, insomuch that his cries were heard at a great
distance from the house, as a warning to all apostates.--_Wodrow,
Appendix to the Cloud_ &c.

SIR JOHN WHITEFORD of Milton (Carluke parish) was a wicked man, and such
a persecutor, that he was said with his servants to have murdered
severals when flying from Pentland, and had a principal hand in
informing against Gavin Hamilton in Mauldslie, who was taken and
executed with others at Edinburgh Dec. 7, 1666, and was one of the test
circuits 1683. This and other pieces of the like employment made James
Nicol a martyr say, That the world would see that house a desolation,
and nettles growing in its closs:--which came to pass soon after the
Revolution, when he became insolvent, his estate sequestrated, and
orders obtained to apprehend him: which at last was effected although he
defended himself some time with stones from the battlement. The lands
changed many m