“With regard to his late invasion, he said, he had undertaken it at the command and by the express orders of the present king, (to whom they all owed duty and allegiance, and for whose long and happy reign he offered his sincere and earnest prayers,) in order to accelerate the treaty which was then begun betwixt him and them—that it was his intention, as soon as the treaty had been concluded, to lay down arms and retire at the call of his majesty; and such being his authority and determination, he might justly affirm, that no subject ever acted upon more honourable grounds, nor by a more lawful power and authority than he had done in the late expedition.
“In conclusion, he called upon the assemblage to lay aside all prejudice, private animosity, and desire of revenge, and to consider him, in relation to the justice of his cause, as a man and a Christian, and an obedient subject, in relation to the commands of his sovereign, which he had faithfully executed. He then put them in mind of the great obligations which many of them were under to him, for having preserved their lives and fortunes at a time when he had the power and authority, had he inclined, of destroying both, and entreated them not to judge him rashly, but according to the laws of God, the laws of nature and nations, and particularly by the laws of the land—that if they should refuse to do so, he would appeal to the just Judge of the world, who would at last judge them all, and pronounce a righteous sentence.”[410]
This speech was delivered without affectation or embarrassment, and with such firmness and clearness of intonation, that, according to a cavalier historian, many persons present were afterwards heard to declare, that he looked and spoke as he had been accustomed when at the head of his army.[411] The chancellor replied to Montrose, in a strain of the most furious invective, “punctually proving him,” says Balfour, “by his acts of hostility, to be a person most infamous, perjured, treacherous, and of all that this land ever brought forth, the most creuell and inhumane butcher and murtherer of his natione, a sworne enimy to the Covenant and peace of his countrey, and one quhosse boundlesse pryde and ambition had lost the father, and by his wicked counsells done quhat in him lay to distroy the sone lykwayes.”[412]
Montrose attempted to address the court a second time, but was rudely interrupted by the chancellor, who ordered him to keep silence, and to kneel down and receive his sentence. The prisoner at once obeyed, but remarked, that on falling on his knees, he meant only to honour the king his master, and not the parliament. While Sir Archibald Johnston, the clerk-register, was reading the sentence, Montrose kept his countenance erect and displayed his usual firmness. “He behaved all this time in the house with a great deal of courage and modesty, unmoved and undaunted.”[413] The execution was fixed for three o’clock the following day.
The feelings of humanity and the voice of religion, now demanded that the unfortunate prisoner should be allowed to spend the short time he had to live, in those solemn preparations for death, enjoined by religion, in privacy and without molestation; but it was his fate to be in the hands of men in whose breasts such feelings were stifled, and whose religion was deeply imbued with a stern and gloomy fanaticism, to which charity was an entire stranger. However, it would be unfair and uncharitable to look upon the conduct of these men as if they had been surrounded with all the advantages of the present enlightened age. We ought to bear in mind their recent escape from the most intolerant of all religions, of whose persecuting principles they had not yet got rid; the hard treatment to which they had been subjected by the late king and his father; and the fact that they really believed they were doing their duty to God and serving the best interests of true religion. It is indeed difficult to be charitable to the uncharitable, tolerant to persecutors.
No sooner had Montrose returned to prison, than he was again assailed by the ministers, who endeavoured to induce him to submit to the kirk, no doubt considering the conversion of such an extraordinary malignant as Montrose, as a theological achievement of the first importance. To subdue his obstinacy, they magnified the power of the keys, which they said had been committed to them, and informed him that unless he reconciled himself to the kirk and obtained a release from the sentence of excommunication which had been pronounced against him, he would be eternally damned. But Montrose, regardless of their threats and denunciations, remained inflexible. Besides the ministers, he was frequently waited upon by the magistrates of the city, with whom he entered into conversation. He told them that he was much indebted to the parliament for the great honour they had decreed him,—that he was prouder to have his head fixed upon the top of the prison, than if they had decreed a golden statue to be erected to him in the market-place, or ordered his portrait to be placed in the king’s bed-chamber,—that so far from grieving for the mutilation which his body was about to undergo, he was happy that the parliament had taken such an effectual method of preserving the memory of his loyalty, by transmitting such proofs of them to the four principal cities of the kingdom, and he only wished that he had flesh enough to have sent a piece to every city in Christendom, as a testimony of his unshaken love and fidelity to his king and country.[414] But annoying as the visits of the ministers and magistrates undoubtedly were, Montrose was still farther doomed to undergo the humiliation of being placed under the more immediate charge of Major Weir, who afterwards obtained an infamous notoriety in the annals of criminal jurisprudence. This incestuous wretch, who laid claim to superior godliness, and who pretended to be gifted with the spirit of prayer, of which he gave proofs by many extemporary effusions, gave Montrose great uneasiness by smoking tobacco, to the smell of which he had, like Charles I., a particular aversion.
During the night, when free from the intrusion of the ministers, Montrose occupied himself in devotional exercises, and even found leisure to gratify his poetic taste, by composing the following lines which he wrote upon the window of the chamber in which he was confined.
“Let them bestow on every airth a limb,
Then open all my veins, that I may swim
To thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake,