derness in which she had long wandered, she would be made to take her harp from the willows, and to sing, as in the days of her youth-the days of her first and second Reformations, when, under Knox and Melville, Henderson and Dickson, Argyle and Warriston, she had come up out of the land of Egypt. How her efforts were defeatedhow her expectations were blasted-how Sharpe betrayed the cause he was commissioned and committed to plead-how Charles, within a short time of his restoration, overturned and destroyed what he had formerly covenanted, and what he now promised, on the faith of a king, to protect and preserve-how the day of his return, hailed with such universal joy, turned out to be the darkest day in the history of this broken and bleeding Kirk and Kingdom, are things on which I need not dilate; they have been written in blood.

After that dark and dismal day on which the Act Recissory was passed by the Scottish Parliament, rescinding every statute and ordinance which had been made in favour of the Presbyterian Kirk during the twelve reforming years, -and when, by a subsequent Act, Prelacy, so fervently disliked, and so frequently abjured, was thrust upon a reclaiming nation, and when, in consequence of conscientiously refusing to conform, nearly four hundred parish ministers were in one day ejected from their homes, and, amid the tears and lamentations of their people, were driven forth with their families, like Hagar of old, to wander, and famish, and faint in the wilderness,-Knockdailie became a place of general resort to the persecuted wanderers, and I may say a house of refuge, a lodge in the wilderness of wayfaring men. Little did I, who was

then but a child, jalouse, as I gazed on the pale faces, and listened to the privations and perils of the persecuted wanderers, what was one day to befall myself, that the scenes and the sufferings which I heard described by Semple and Welsh, Cargill and Peden, were but the foreshadowings of scenes in which I was myself doomed, and at no distant day, to mingle, and of sufferings which I was myself doomed to dree. It did not, it could not, occur to me then, that like them I was to wander in deserts and on mountains, to have a price set upon my blood, to be driven from the dwellings of men, and to find no refuge on the earth but in its dens and in its caves, to witness those dearer to me than the light and the air of heaven put to violent and untimely deaths,-to flee from one hiding place to another, till, having become familiar with every form of evil, I was to pine for years in a prison, and perhaps to perish at last upon a scaffold. No; what man has the heart to inflict, God has the mercy to conceal. What I was destined to become,-the scenes I was destined to witness, and the sufferings I was destined to endure, the frail memorial I am now, by the dim and dying lamp of my dungeon, inscribing, will show, should it ever reach the light of day, and should it ever arrest the eye of man.

5

CHAPTER I.

MY PARENTAGE.

My father, Josiah Welwood, was Laird of Knockdailie, a small estate near the water of Dee, in Galloway. He was a good man, and one who feared God above many. During a long lifetime, he had seen many strange and sad vicissitudes both in Kirk and State. He had lived under both Reformations; he was one of the "ancient men" who had seen the first house, the foundations of which were laid by that great master-builder, Knox, and the top-stone of which was brought forth by one not unworthy to be his successor, Andrew Melville. While the first house he had merely seen, and that in its decay, -the second house he contributed to build.

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'Mr. Welwood," said Mr. Gilbert Traill, addressing my father, one evening in the December of 1665, as we were seated around the family hearth, "I have this morning given the children an outline of the history of the first Reformation, may I ask you to give us the history of the second, and of the part which you were honoured to take in promoting it."

This, at the request of Mr. Traill, who at that early period of the persecution was a wanderer and a sufferer, and who, at the moment I am now writing, is a brother and companion in tribulation, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ, my father gave us in

these words:" In the earlier part of his reign," said he, "James VI. was a Presbyterian. In the presence of the General Assembly, as I was told by Mr. David Calderwood, who was present on the occasion,-'he praised God that he was born at such a time, in the clearest light of the Gospel, and that he was a member of such a kirk, the sincerest kirk of the world. The Kirk of Geneva,' said he, 'keeped Pasch and Yule; what have they for them? They have no institution. As for our neighbour Kirk in England, their service is an ill said mass in English. They want nothing of the mass but the liftings. I charge you, my good people, ministers, doctors, elders, nobles, gentlemen, and barons, to stand to your puritie, and to exhort the people to do the same, and I, forsooth, so long as I brook my life and crown, shall maintain the same against all deadly, &c.' Whereupon there was nothing heard in the Assembly, for a quarter of an hour, but praising God, and praying for the king. How truly the king kept his word, his attempts to introduce prelacy, and his actually introducing the Five Articles of Perth,-viz. "kneeling at the sacrament," "private communion," "private baptism," "confirmation of children," and the "keeping of holy days," declare. The day on which the Five Articles of Perth,' so called from having been enacted by an Assembly held there, were ratified in the Scottish Parliament, was long remembered in Scotland. On the Grand Commissioner's rising from the throne to ratify the Act, an immense thunder-cloud, which had for some minutes been gathering over the city, burst. For a moment the House was illuminated by three fearful flaughts of fire, and then enveloped in darkness. The beacon at the haven of

Leith was extinguished, and the tower on which it stood shattered to pieces. The thunder was succeeded by a tempest of wind, and hail, and rain, such as had not been experienced in the memory of the oldest men alive. This took place on the 4th of August, 1621, and was long remembered, and is spoken of as the black Saturday until this day. On Monday, when the Act was proclaimed at the cross, the thunder and tempest were renewed and raged with almost equal fury as on Saturday, so that they were interpreted, whether truly or not I do not take upon me to determine, as tokens of the Divine displeasure; certain it is that such signs were that day seen, which made the profane wits of the time say, that the laws of the Parliament, like those of Moses, were given in fire. This was, however, when both the fire and their own fears were over.

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What James thus commenced, his son and successor, the First Charles, with equal bigotry, and with greater blindness and boldness, attempted to complete. Having, with the assistance of Archbishop Laud, who is said not only to have been at heart a Papist, but to have entertained the idea of restoring Popery, framed a liturgy with a book of canons for the bishops and clergy, enjoining and regulating the new mode of worship, it was confirmed under the great seal, and transmitted to Scotland for the use, in all time coming, of the Kirk, which was thus to be brought not only into a complete conformity with the Church of England, but in many respects with the Church of Rome itself. In addition, for example, to the five articles and the use of the liturgy, the book of canons enjoined fonts for baptism to be erected near the doors; the altar