Some humane impression or soldierly emotion stirred the heart of Dalyell at these words.
"Yes, John, you are right—that is true," said he: and striking the soldier with his cane, added, "I will teach you, sirrah, other manners, than to abuse a prisoner such as this." He then expressed sorrow for Paton's situation, and said he would have set him at liberty had his actions not been subject to the control of others; "but," he added, "I will yet write to the King, and crave at least your life."
"I thank you," replied the unmoved Covenanter; "but you will not be heard."
It is said that he obtained a reprieve for Paton, but was unable to save his life; for though willing to take the test, the Captain was hanged, by sentence of a quorum of the Council, in the Grassmarket, on the 9th May. In August, 1853, a monument to his memory was erected in the churchyard of Ayr.
Undaunted by all that had passed and was still passing around him, in the September of that year, Donald Cargill, one of the most determined preachers of the Covenant, and one who had long escaped the fangs of the Council, held a conventicle in the Torwood, near Stirling, and with all solemnity and bitterness excommunicated the King, the Dukes of York, Monmouth, and Lauderdale, General Dalyell and others, an act of daring which, at such a time, made a deep impression on the Government; but in the following year he paid for his enthusiasm by the forfeit of his life, being captured by General Dalyell, and executed by the authorities.
Tyranny and local misgovernment had now rendered the condition of poor Scotland sad beyond description.
Through the lonely mosses, the pathless moors, and pastoral mountain districts of their native land, the unhappy Covenanters were hunted like beasts of prey, without a refuge or a resting place but such as Heaven accords to wild animals; and wherever found, captivity or death was the penalty. During twenty-eight years of this military persecution, it has been calculated that eighteen thousand persons suffered death in the field, or by the utmost extremities of torture that the Council could inflict; seventeen hundred were banished to the plantations, and two hundred perished on the scaffold alone; seven thousand are said to have fled to foreign countries, and four hundred and ninety-eight were slain in cold blood, or in casual encounters; and all this was done in the name of God, of Religion, and Law!
In September, 1679, there was a stormy debate in the Scottish Privy Council. By an act of indemnity, his Majesty pardoned all who had been at Bothwell Bridge, ministers and lesser barons excepted, provided they appeared before such persons as the Council should appoint, and signed a bond that never again would they rise in arms against the government. It may readily be believed that very few gave this promise; and from the minutes it would appear that Dalyell and Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, urged that all who had not done so should be proceeded against as rebels. The President and others pled that to proceed to further extremities would be cruel, as more than four thousand persons, many of whom might be sick or ignorant of the King's letter, were involved in the measure proposed, and ultimately Dalyell, and those who adhered to him, agreed that the King should once more be addressed on the subject.
The next entry connected with the General runs thus:—
November 6, 1679. "At Privy Council there is a letter read from his Majesty, nominating Lieutenant-General Dalziel commander-in-chief of all the forces of Scotland, with power to him to act as he shall think fit, and only be liable and accountable and judgeable by his Majesty himself; for Dalziel would not accept of it otherways; only he promised and declared, that in difficult exigents he should take the advice of his Majesty's Privy Council." (Fountainhall, vol. i.) On the 3rd June, 1680, the Council received a letter from Charles on this subject. It declared that when he gifted forfeitures, he always reserved for his own use the houses standing on the forfeited lands. He also gave Dalyell a Commission of Justiciary, with the advice of nine others, to execute justice on all who were in arms at Bothwell, or failed to take the bond within the period stated, since the 1st of January.