ensbury, who examined him in private, little is
known, except that he denied his design having been concerted with any
persons in Scotland; that he gave no information with respect to his
associates in England; and that he boldly and frankly averred his hopes
to have been founded on the cruelty of the administration, and such a
disposition in the people to revolt as he conceived to be the natural
consequence of oppression. He owned, at the same time, that he had
trusted too much to this principle. The precise date of this
conversation, whether it took place before the threat of the torture,
whilst that threat was impending, or when there was no longer any
intention of putting it into execution, I have not been able to
ascertain; but the probability seems to be that it was during the first
or second of these periods.

Notwithstanding the ill success that had attended his enterprise, he
never expresses, or even hints, the smallest degree of contrition for
having undertaken it: on the contrary, when Mr. Charteris, an eminent
divine, is permitted to wait on him, his first caution to that minister
is, not to try to convince him of the unlawfulness of his attempt,
concerning which his opinion was settled, and his mind made up. Of some
parts of his past conduct he does indeed confess that he repents, but
these are the compliances of which he had been guilty in support of the
king, or his predecessors. Possibly in this he may allude to his having
in his youth borne arms against the covenant, but with more likelihood to
his concurrence, in the late reign, with some of the measures of
Lauderdale's administration, for whom it is certain that he entertained a
great regard, and to whom he conceived himself to be principally indebted
for his escape from his first sentence. Friendship and gratitude might
have carried him to lengths which patriotism and justice must condemn.

Religious concerns, in which he seems to have been very serious and
sincere, engaged much of his thoughts; but his religion was of that
genuine kind which, by representing the performance of our duties to our
neighbour as the most acceptable service to God, strengthens all the
charities of social life. While he anticipates, with a hope approaching
to certainty, a happy futurity, he does not forget those who have been
justly dear to him in this world. He writes, on the day of his
execution, to his wife, and to some other relations, for whom he seems to
have