acquiesced in their prayer and godly
exhortation, and uttered these words:--"I am so straitly guarded that it
lies not in my power to get my hand to take off my bonnet, nor to get
bread to my mouth." And immediately after the departing of the two
ministers from him, the juggler being sent for at the desire of my Lord
of Eglintoune, to be confronted with a woman of the burgh of Air, called
Janet Bous, who was apprehended by the magistrates of the burgh of Air
for witchcraft, and sent to the burgh of Irvine purposely for that
affair, he was found by the burgh officers who went about him, strangled
and hanged by the cruik of the door, with a _tait_ of hemp, or a string
made of hemp, supposed to have been his garter, or string of his bonnet,
not above the length of two span long, his knees not being from the
ground half a span, and was brought out of the house, his life not being
totally expelled. But notwithstanding of whatsoever means used in the
contrary for remeid of his life, he revived not, but so ended his life
miserably, by the help of the devil his master.

"And because there was then only in life the said Margaret Barclay, and
that the persons summoned to pass upon her assize and upon the assize of
the juggler who, by the help of the devil his master, had put violent
hands on himself, were all present within the said burgh; therefore, and
for eschewing of the like in the person of the said Margaret, our
sovereign lord's justices in that part particularly above-named,
constituted by commission after solemn deliberation and advice of the
said noble lord, whose concurrence and advice was chiefly required and
taken in this matter, concluded with all possible diligence before the
downsitting of the Justice Court to put the said Margaret in torture; in
respect the devil, by God's permission, had made her associates who were
the lights of the cause, to be their own _burrioes_ (slayers). They used
the torture underwritten as being most safe and gentle (as the said
noble lord assured the said justices), by putting of her two bare legs
in a pair of stocks, and thereafter by onlaying of certain iron gauds
(bars) severally one by one, and then eiking and augmenting the weight
by laying on more gauds, and in easing of her by offtaking of the iron
gauds one or more as occasion offered, which iron gauds were but little
short gauds, and broke not the skin of her legs, &c.

"After using of the which kind of _gentle torture_, the