[138] Nicoll’s Diary, p. 8.
[139] Dr Wilde, in Census of Ireland for 1851; part V., vol. i., p. 110.
[140] Baillie’s Letters, iii. pp. 97, 550.
[141] See an interesting narration on this subject in Mr Mark Napier’s Montrose and the Covenanters, 1838.
[142] The formula used on the occasion is given in the following terms by a writer of the seventeenth century: ‘When any one dies, the bellman goes about ringing the passing bell, and acquaints the people therewith in the following form: “Beloved brethren and sisters, I let you to wit, that there is ane faithful brother lately departed out of this present warld, at the pleasure of Almichty God (and then he veils his bonnet); his name is Wully Woodcock, third son to Jemmy Woodcock, a cordinger; he ligs at the sixt door within the Norgate, close on the Nether Wynd, and I would you gang to his burying on Thursday before twa o’clock, &c.” The time appointed for his burying being come, the bellman calls the company together, and he is carried to the burying-place, and thrown into the grave as dog Lion was, and there is an end of Wully.’—A Modern Account of Scotland, 1670. Harleian Miscellany, vi. 121.
[143] The mansion of the Earl of Moray in the Canongate, the same house that Cromwell occupied on his brief visit in 1648. It is now the Normal School of the Education Committee of the Free Church of Scotland.
[144] These anecdotes appear in A Short Abridgment of Britain’s Distemper from 1639 to 1649. By Patrick Gordon of Ruthven. Spalding Club. 1844. They are placed by the author in connection with Cromwell’s comparatively peaceful visit to Edinburgh in 1648, but must, beyond a doubt, refer to the crisis of 1650.
[145] See under date December 18, 1649.
[146] The small county of Kinross was included.
[147] The annual valued rent of Fife and Kinross in 1674 amounted to £383,379 Scots.