one particular spot, to which we were consequently attracted. Here we found a most interesting record, a lately-erected monument of some importance enclosed by an iron railing, within which also lies a square stone rudely inscribed, there is reason to believe, by the hand of the itinerant enthusiast called by Sir Walter Scott Old Mortality. This inscription, which is reproduced on the lately erected obelisk, runs as follows:

Here lies

The corpse of John Semple, who was shot by Kilkerran, at command of Cornet James Douglas. Also, here lies Thomas M'Clorgan, who was shot uncertain by whom; For their adherence to the Word And the covenanted work of Reformation, 1685.

Deeply interested by thus coming so characteristically on this memorial of the struggle for religious freedom, most prolonged and most cruel perhaps in modern European history, carefully re-edified in its native place under the great old ash trees and beside the deserted church, I enquired for other remains of the period, and was directed to various similar though less interesting or less authentic monuments. One was the gravestone of a farmer who had fought at the disastrous struggle at Bothwell Bridge, but who had escaped when nearly the whole of the insurgents there taken prisoners were driven like an immense flock of sheep into Edinburgh and confined for months without shelter and without sufficient food in the Greyfriars graveyard, a place which is now, with all its monuments of the rich citizens of old Edinburgh, one of the most interesting historic spots in Scotland. This Dailly soldier for the faith had outlived the Stuarts in authority, and had died in his bed. There was also a large flattish square-shaped stone, said to have been the hearthstone

of a martyr who had been sabred by the dragoons as he stood by his own fireside; the bloody hearthstone on which he died, as the tradition says, having been brought out with the body and laid upon his grave. This story, although unsupported by any evidence, except that the stone itself has no resemblance to any ordinary kind of gravestone, is not so unlikely as it may at first appear, as the cottage fire in these times was, like the ancient focus, simply lighted on the hearth, which was a stone not sunk into the floor, but rising a few inches over it.

By

The parish clergy of Scotland have this invaluable quality above those of the Southern Church-they feel an antiquarian and patriotic interest in their localities. This interest they share with the heritors or landed proprietors ; and the reason for it is not far to seek-some parts of Scotland, as Ayrshire and Stirlingshire, where the struggles for independent national life were most persistently fought out, teeming with historical associations. the friendly help of one of these gentlemen I was soon enabled to realise very vividly the time mentioned on Semple's monument in connection with the locality. In the first place, was there anything further known with certainty regarding the three men recorded by the chisel of Old Mortality-of John Semple himself, of the Laird of Kilkerran of that generation, and of the Cornet who bore the good name of Douglas? Of the first two I soon found there was; but nothing of the third, who may be dismissed with the hope he persevered in his noble course till the end, and that he was the Lieutenant Douglas who died at Killiecrankie, affording a day or two's feast to the corbies of that half-starved district.

In Wodrow's History of the Kirk the narrative of the murder of Semple is very complete. Although

his

graphic enough, however, signed and attested' account is rather too long to quote. It acquits the Laird of Kilkerran from the degradation of killing with his own hand an innocent man at the order of a Cornet; but it relates that he was at the time living not at Kilkerran, but at his house of Eldington, close to the farm of Semple, a harmless but intelligent man, who had never borne arms against the Government, and who was only accused of avoiding the episcopal service, and harbonring Covenanting ministers in defiance of the prohibition. Possibly out of fear of the military, a brigade of Highland savages brought from the far North, because the Gael had no sympathy with the Lowlander, or the collected offscourings of creation called dragoons, who had established themselves in some force in the neighbourhood, and supplied their commissariat by pillage of the disaffected, the laird offered to conduct a party to Semple's homestead. The offer being accepted, he actually did so, having first regaled the soldiers at his own house. It was in April and at midnight: John, hearing the sound of their feet about the steading, and a confused noise of whispering, dreaded what was the matter, and at length concluded to venture his escape out at a narrow window;' but just as he was 'half. out and half in,' five or six shots discharged at once brought him. down. This feat accomplished, 'they and the said laird went to the barns of Bargany, and drank and caroused till next night.'

Both the places mentioned, Bargany and Kilkerran, which are a few miles away, still exist in possession of the same families. The great houses nearest the ruined church, with its monuments, stood then exactly the same as now-large peel towers with circular staircases and coign turrets, like French

houses of the same date, and large additions built on, with walls rough-cast and dormer windows. These are Killochan, the place of the Cathcarts, one of the early Scottish boronetcies; and Penkill, the seat of a still older family, the Boyds, whose history dates in the Kilmarnock line from the days of King Robert the Bruce. Penkill Castle is one of the most interesting of the sixteenth and seventeenth century houses in Ayrshire, and has been celebrated by the present writer in a series of sonnets and pictures lately published. The earliest part of the house was built about 1500, a thick-walled high tower; the corner turrets in the top room of which, with their three loopholes for arrows or musketry, have been turned into dressing closets, the room itself having been decorated in a fantastic manner. Perhaps the writer may be allowed to quote the sonnet he wrote about this chamber, which was originally in the language of the ballads :

THE BOWER.

In the old house there is a chamber high, Diapered with wind-scattered plane-tree leaves;

And o'er one corbelled window that receives

The sunrise, we've inscribed right daintily,
Come, O fair Morn, fulfilling prophecy!'
Over another, western watch doth keep,
Is writ, 'O Eve, bring thou the nurseling
Sleep!'

Adorning the old walls as best we may.
For up this bower-stair in long-vanished
years,

The bridegroom brought his bride and shut the door;

Here too closed weary eyes with kindred's tears,

While mourners' feet were hushed upon the floor:

And still it seems these old trees and brown hills

Remember also our past joys and ills. Shortly after the Reformation, before the Church government or forms of worship were fixed, one of the Boyds of Penkill was Archbishop of Glasgow; but after that they adhered steadily to Presby

terianism, and several great lights in the Kirk belonged to the family. One of these, who was also a poet, Zacherie, preached before Cromwell. and called him very hard names to his face the 'eccentric old gentleman!' as Carlyle styles him. The tradition is that Thurloe wished the Protector to give him a warrant for the arrest of the fearless preacher; but that Cromwell answered him that he would deal with him in a different fashion, and sent for him to eat and drink with him in his lodgings; with which invitation the minister complied, when they settled into prayer, and the Protector continued his supplication for three hours, to the astonishment and delight of the Rev. Zacherie.

Some extracts from the poetry of this remarkable man were published by Pennant, and have been often quoted as the most absurd on record; and some verses there are in his 'Flowers of Zion' that no doubt bear out this character, as the soliloquy of Jonah after the whale had swallowed him, and he cries,

What house is this? Here's neither fire nor candle,

Where I no thing but guts of fishes handle? Or where the sailors find him in the bottom of the ship in the storm, and question him as to his business there, when he replies,

I am a man come of the Hebrew nation;
I am a prophet, that's my occupation!

But it is very doubtful whether these simplicities, absurdities if you will, do not enhance the interest of the poems, which are full of curious matter and novel points of view, mixed with passages of considerable power. This Historie of Jonah,' for example, is a dialogue between the Shipmaster of Tarsus, the Sailors, Jonah, the men of Niniveh, and the King thereof, 'The Lord' being an interlocutor, who acts a part somewhat like the chorus in

So suddenly, the sailors then may know That Heaven's in wrath against some wicked sinner

That is aboord the ship and lurketh in her. O ye, my winds, that hitherto your course Have barred in, break out with all your force!

Let them to know my wrath is kindled hot, Make seas to swell e'en like a seething pot, Blow hard until to hells they down be driv'n, And mount again up to the very Heav'n.

There were other poets besides this clergyman in the family. Robert, who was Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and wrote in Latin, his longest poem being entitled Ad Christum servatorem Hecatombe;' and Mark Alexander, one of the 'Scotchmen Abroad,' who fought in the French service, and studied law at Toulouse. Born in 1562 at Penkill, he returned there to die; and his poems, also in Latin, twelve in number, with the names of flowers, Rosa, Lilium, Nardus, &c., are preserved, but still in manuscript as far as I know.

One of the most inexplicable facts in Scottish history is the enthusiasm for the Stuarts after three quarters of a century of the most tyrannical and useless persecution-an enthusiasm existing even in parts of the country that had suffered severely. The Duke of York, afterwards James II. of England, while in Edinburgh in the worst time of the persecution, attended the meetings of the Council at the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and enjoyed looking on when the torture of the boot was inflicted, as if it were an interesting experiment. On one occasion, re

lated by Wodrow, one of the lords, perhaps to please the Duke, accused the gaoler of not striking with all his might; on which the man offered his accuser the mallet and bade him do it himself! Buckle mentions this habit of the Duke, and expresses his astonishment that for such a wretch, a disgrace to human nature, so many should have risked their fortunes and their lives. While the Boyds of Penkill and Trochrague were steady patriots and Presbyterians, the head of the elder branch of the family, the Earl of Kilmarnock, lost his head for the Pretender.

To return from this long digression, a few days after our first conversation my intelligent friend procured me a sight of the earliest record-book of the Kirk Sessions of the parish, telling me that I would there find something more about Kilkerran. This curious fragmentary note-book had been lined with transparent paper and carefully bound. The writing of the earliest portion was more like that of 1550 than of the end of the seventeenth century, and required some care at first to decipher; but the trouble was fully rewarded, for I found to my great amusement the tables turned on the cowardly creature, the laird, the Kirk Session having made him stand in sackcloth in the church every Sunday for nearly half a year, not indeed for the murder of Semple, but for the 'deadly sin' of a breach of the seventh commandment!

But the more I read in this Sessions-book, which began shortly after the expulsion of the Stuarts, when the Kirk of Scotland attained to its highest power, the more interesting it became. Here was an unquestionable record, hitherto unedited, of the 'tyranny' of Presbyterianism so startlingly described by Buckle in the third volume of

When

his History of Civilisation. the Scotch Kirk was at the height of its power, we may search history in vain for any institution which can compare with it, except the Spanish Inquisition. Between these two there is a close and intimate analogy,' are the words with which he concludes his absurdly sensational invective against a Church which was always much more the servant than the master of the people, and which in no instance whatever administered punishment to its dissenters or enemies. The identity of the people and the clergy he owns more than once; but he never notices the fact that the Church never had the power to punish heresy, and never tried to do so, while its own members could disobey it, and did in effect constantly disobey it, the only authority the Kirk ever had being popular approbation! In 1603,' he says, 'James ascended the throne of England, and the struggle began in earnest. It lasted, with few interruptions, eighty-five years, and during its continuance the Presbyterian clergy never wavered; they were always on the side of the people, steady to the good cause. Besides being the champions of popular liberty, they were the champions of popular independence.' Yet he constantly recurs to the monstrous exaggeration that they abused their power, and ruled with a rod of iron, whereas the lay elements in the Sessions and Presbyteries were more powerful than the clerical, because more numerous. In the Kirk Sessions-book of the Parish of Dailly, the minister's name never occurs except at his ordination in 1691, with which event the record begins; and the only mention of him afterwards is his presence at the meetings. The adherents of the national form of faith died for it by hundreds on the scaffold; but from the