[419] Hurry was at first condemned by the parliament to perpetual banishment, “but the commission of the kirk voted he should die, and thereupon sent ther moderator, with other two of their number, to the parliament house, who very saucilly, in face of that great and honourable court, (if it had not been then a body without a head) told the president and chancellor that the parliament had granted life to a man whom the law had appointed for death, being a man of blood, (citing these words of our blessed Saviour to Peter,—‘All they that take the sword shall perish by the sword;’) whereas, it was very weill knoune, all the blood that that unfortunate gentleman had shed in Scotland was in ther quarrell and defence, being but then engaged in his master’s service, when he was taken prisoner, and executed at the kirk’s instigatione.
“The parliament was sae farre from rebuking ther bold intruders, or resenting those acts of the commission of the kirk, now quyte besyde ther master’s commissione, as they will have it understood, and ther owne solemne professione not to meddle in secular affairs, that they rescinded their former act, and passed a sentence of death upon him, hereby imitating ther dear brethren, the parliament of England, in the caice of the Hothams.”—Memoirs of the Somerville Family.
[420] Wishart, p. 412.
[421] “His constancy at death show well he repented nothing he did, in order to his allegiance and Majesty’s service, to the great shame of those who threatened him with their apocryphal excommunications, to which he gave no more place than our Saviour to the devil’s temptations.”—Relation of the True Funerals of the Great Lord Marquesse of Montrose.
[422] Wishart.
[423] Wishart, p. 413.—The practice of auricular confession seems to have existed to a considerable extent among the Covenanters. It is singular that had it not been for the evidence of the minister of Ormiston, to whom the noted Major Weir had communicated his secrets in auricular confession, he would not have been convicted.—See Arnot’s Criminal Trials.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
A.D. 1650–1660.
Commonwealth, 1649–1660.