r
and other necessaries for maintaining his crazy body, he is in hazard to
lose his life, therefore, humbly desiring warrant to be put at liberty,
upon caution to enter his person when he should be commanded, as the
petition bears; which being at length he heard and considered, the lords
of council ordain the king's supplicant to be put at liberty, forth of
the tolbooth, his first obliging himself to remove and depart off the
king's dominions, and not to return, without licence from his majesty
and council, under pain of death."

Great were the hardships he underwent in prison, for (says a historian)
he was denied even the necessaries of life; and though, because of the
ill treatment he met with, he was brought almost to the gates of death,
yet he could not have the benefit of the free air until he signed a bond
obliging himself to a voluntary banishment, and that without any just
cause.[168]

But, upon the 23d of the same month, on presenting a petition to the
council to prorogue the time of his removal from the kingdom, in regard
he was not able to provide himself with necessaries, and the weather so
unseasonable that he could not have the opportunity of a ship, &c. as
the petition bears; which being read and considered, "They grant him two
months longer after the 11th of Dec. by-past; in the mean time he being
peaceable, acting nothing in prejudice of the present government,
&c."--And next year he went over to Holland (then the asylum of the
banished) where he lived many years, but never, that we heard of, saw
his own native country any more.

How he employed himself mostly in Holland we are at a loss to say; his
many elaborate pieces, both practical, argumentative and historical,
witness that he was not idle; which were either mostly wrote there, or
published from thence; and particularly those concerning the
indulgences-paying, &c. sent for the support and strengthening of his
persecuted brethren in the church of Scotland, unto whom he and Mr.
M'Ward contributed all in their power, that they might be kept straight
(while labouring in the furnace of affliction) under a scene of sore
oppression and bloody tyranny. But hither did the malice of their
enemies yet pursue them. For the king, by the infliction of prelate
Sharp, _anno_ 1676, wrote to the states-general to remove them from
their province. And although the states neither did nor could reasonably
grant this demand, seeing they had got the full stress of law