capacity than as author of the book aptly entitled The Troubles, or,
more fully, "Memorials of the Troubles in Scotland and in England," from
1624 to 1645. Little, probably, did the Commissary-Clerk imagine, when
he entered on his snug quiet office, where he recorded probates of wills
and the proceedings in questions of marriage law, that he was to witness
and record one of the most momentous conflicts that the world ever
beheld--that contest which has been the prototype of all later European
convulsions. Less still could he have imagined that fame would arise for
him after two hundred years--that vehement though vain efforts should be
made to endow the simple name of John Spalding with the antecedents and
subsequents of a biographical existence, and that the far-off
descendants of many of those lairds and barons, whose warlike deeds he
noticed at humble distance, should raise a monument to his memory in an
institution called by his name. He was evidently a thoroughly retiring
man, for he has left no vestige whatever of his individuality. Some
specimens of his formal official work might have been found in the
archives of his office--these would have been especially valuable for
the identification of his handwriting and the settlement of disputed
questions about the originality of manuscripts; but these documents, as
it happens, were all burnt early in last century with the building
containing them. So ardent and hot has been the chase after vestiges of
this man, that the fact was once discovered that with his own hand he
had written a certain deed concerning a feu-duty or rent-charge of L25,
7s. 4d., bearing date 31st January 1663; but in spite of the most
resolute efforts, this interesting document has not been found.

It is probably to this same unobtrusive reserve, which has shrouded his
very identity, that we owe the valuable peculiarities of the
Commissary-Clerk's chronicle. He sought no public distinctions, took no
ostensible side, and must have kept his own thoughts to himself,
otherwise he would have had to bear record of his own share of troubles.
In this calm serenity--folding the arms of resignation on the bosom of
patience, as the Persians say--he took his notes of the wild contest
that raged around him, setting down each event, great or small, with
systematic deliberation, as if he were an experimental philosopher
watching the phenomena of an eclipse or an eruption. Hence nowhere,
perhaps, has it been perm