"Did you excommunicate the King at the Torwood, or were you there at the time?" continued the Chancellor.
"I have not been at the Torwood for these four years."
"But what do you think of it (the excommunication)? Do you approve of it?"
He was asked the usual ensnaring questions (and, like other prisoners, had the instruments of torture on the table before him) as to whether he approved of the execution of Charles I.; if he had preached in the fields and on the hill-sides, and so forth; but his answers proved unsatisfactory, and, after a long examination, he was sent back to Philiphaugh's apartments at Holyrood.
On the morning of the next day he sent his son Thomas to a kinsman named Blackadder, who bore the rank of colonel, and had been Dalyell's comrade in the expedition at Skelko Castle in 1654, and who now exerted himself in his favour, and made such interest with the stern General, that he received the recusant divine with great politeness in the forenoon, when he was again brought before the Council.
"Mr. Blackadder," said he, "of what family are you—the House of Tulliallan?"
"Yes, General, I am the nearest alive now, to represent that family, although it is now ruined and brought so low."
Dalyell was also allied by blood to the family of Tulliallan.
"Are you the son of Sir John Blackadder?" asked Bishop Paterson; but the inflexible Covenanter declined his authority as a spiritual lord, and would not reply even to this trivial question.
In the sequel, he was sent prisoner to the Bass, escorted by three Life Guardsmen, and an officer named Rollock, who threatened to pistol him at Fisher-row, when the people gathered to see him pass. On that dreary rock, which was then the home of many a broken heart, the old man died in his seventieth year, and he now lies in the churchyard of North Berwick.[38]