to you.'
To others, when bread and cheese was given him, and was laid on the
ground by him, he said, 'If I leave this, I will [shall] long cry
to God before he give it me again.' To others he said, 'Take a
bannock, and break it in two, and lay down one half thereof, and ye
will long-pray to God before he put the other half to it again.'
_Tenthly_, Being posed whether or not he knew God or Christ, he
answered he had never had any profession, nor never would--he had
never had any religion, nor never would: also that there was no God
nor Christ, and that he never received anything from God, but from
Nature, which he said ever reigned and ever would, and that to
speak of Gods and their persons was an idle thing, and that he
would never name such names, for he had shaken his cap of such
things long since. And he denied that a man has a soul, or that
there is a Heaven or a Hell, or that the Scriptures are the Word of
God. Concerning Christ, he said that he heard of such, a man; but,
for the second person of the Trinity, he had been the second person
of the Trinity if the ministers had not put him in prison, and that
he was no more obliged to God nor the Devil.--And these aforesaid
blasphemies are not rarely or seldom uttered by him, but frequently
and ordinarily in several places where he resorted, to the
entangling, deluding, and seducing of the common people. Through
the committing of which blasphemies, he hath contravened the tenor
of the laws and acts of Parliament, and incurred the pain of death
mentioned therein; which ought to be inflicted upon him with all
rigour, in manner specified in the indictment.--Which indictment
being put to the knowledge of an assize, the said Alexander Agnew,
called Jock of Broad Scotland, was by the said assize, all in one
voice, by the mouth of William Carlyle, late bailie of Dumfries,
their chancellor, found guilty of the said crimes of blasphemy
mentioned in his indictment; for which the commissioners ordained
him, upon Wednesday, 21 May, 1656, betwixt two and four hours in
the afternoon, to be taken to the ordinary place of execution for
the Burgh of Dumfries, and there to be hanged on a gibbet while
[till] he be dead, and all his moveable goods to be escheat."

The intercourse between Scotland and London, both by letters and by
journeys to and fro, was now very brisk.[1] Not only were Lauderdale,
Eglinton, Marischal,