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Jael and Phinehas. These were the most material points on which he was examined.
While he was in prison, a gentlewoman who came to visit him, told him weeping, 'That those heaven daring enemies were contriving a most violent death for him; some, a barrel with pikes to roll him in; others an iron chair, red hot, to roll him in,' &c. But he said, 'Let you nor none of the Lord's people be troubled for these things, for all that they will get liberty to do to me, will be to knit me up, cut me down, and chop off my old head, and then fare them well; they have done with me and with them for ever.'
He was again before the Council on the 19th, but refusing to answer their questions, except anent the excommunication. There was some motion made to spare him as he was an old man. and send him prisoner to the Bass during life, which motion being put to the vote, was, by the casting vote of the Earl of Rothes, rejected; who doomed him to the gallows, there to die like a traitor.
Upon the 26th he was brought before the justiciary, and indicted in common form. His confession being produced in evidence against him, he was brought in guilty of high treason, and condemned with the rest, to be hanged at the cross of Edinburgh, and his head placed on the Nether Bow. When they came to these words in his indictment, viz., having cast off all fear of God, &c., he caused the clerk to stop, and, pointing to the Advocate, Sir George M'Kenzie, said, 'The man that hath caused that paper to be drawn up hath done it contrary to the
