o far in mine, and the
lords, my fellow prisoners' behalf, that I should be the greatest
criminal now breathing, should I, whether the result of your
generous intercession be life or death, be neglectful of paying my
acknowledgments for that act of compassion.

"We have already discoursed of the motives that induced me to take
arms against the Prince now in possession of the throne, when you
did me the honour of a visit three days since in my prison here; I
shall therefore wave that point, and lament my unhappiness for
joining in the rest of the lords in pleading guilty, in the hopes of
that mercy, which the Generals Wills and Carpenter will do us the
justice to say was promised us by both of them. Mr. Piggot and Mr.
Eyres, the two lawyers employed by us, advised us to this plea, the
avoiding of which might have given us further time for looking after
the concerns of another life, though it had ended in the same
sentence of losing this which we now lie under. Thanks be to the
Divine Majesty, to whose infinite mercy as King of Kings, I
recommend myself in hopes of forgiveness, tho' it shall be my fate
to fail of it here on earth. Had the House of Commons thought fit to
have received our petition with the same candour as yours has done,
and recommended us to the Prince, we might have entertained some
hopes of life; but the answer from St. James's is such as to make us
have little or no thoughts of it.

"Under these dismal apprehensions, then, of approaching dissolution,
which, I thank my God for his holy guidance, I have made due
preparation for, give me leave to tell you, that howsoever I have
been censured on account of the family of the Gordons, which I am an
unhappy branch of, that I have ever lived and will die in the
profession of the Protestant religion, and that I abhor all
king-killing doctrines that are taught by the church of Rome as
dangerous and absurd. And though I have joined with some that have
taken arms, of that persuasion, no other motive but that of
exercising to the person called the Pretender, whom I firmly believe
to be the son of the late King James the Second, and in defence of
whose title I am now going to be a sacrifice, has induced me to it.
Your Lordship will remember the papers I have left with you, and
deliver them to my son. They may be of use to h