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."

The Committee of Estates by which this paltry deed was done was that of
Middleton's parliament, frequently called the "drunken parliament," from
the excesses of its leading men, and which on the following year
signalised itself by the Glasgow act,--that act which emptied nearly four
hundred pulpits in one day. The inaccuracy of the statement made by the
prelatic newspaper, asserting that he had formerly been minister at
Kirkcaldy, will not surprise any person who is acquainted with the
writings of the Prelatists of that period, who seem not to have been able
to write the truth when relating the most common and well-known facts. But
one is somewhat surprised to find statements equally inaccurate made
respecting George Gillespie, by reverend and learned historians. In Dr
Cook'