Page:Some remarkable passages of the life and death of Master Alexander Peden.pdf/27

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preach: He turned about upon his knees, and said, Sir, you know neither the nature of preaching nor praying, that calls this preaching; then continued without confusion. When ended, Claverhouse said, take goodnight of your wife and children r His wife standing by with her child in her arms that she had brought forth to him, and another child of his first wife's, he came to her, and said, Now, Marion, the day is come, that I told you would come, when I spake first to you of marrying me. She said, Indeed, John, I can willingly part with you. Then he said that's all I desire, I have no more to do but die. He kissed his wife and bairns, and wished purchased and promised blessings to be multiplied upon them, and his blessing. Clavers ordered 6 soldiers to shoot him; the most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains upon the ground. Claverhouse said to his wife, What thinkst thou of thy husband now, woman? She said, I thought ever much of him, and now as much as ever. He said, It were but justice to lay thee beside him. She said, If ye were permitted I doubt not but your cruelty would go that length, but how will ye make answer for this morning's work? He said, to man I can be answerable; and for God, I will take him in my own hand. Claverhouse mounted his horse, and marched, and left her with the corps of her dead husband lying there; she set the bairn upon the ground, and gathered his brains, and tied up his head, and straighted his body, and covered him in her plaid, and sat down and wept over him. It being a very desart place, where never victual grew, and far from neighbours, it was sometime before any friends came to her; the first that came was a very fit hand, that old singular Christian woman, in the Cummerhead, named Elizabeth Menzies, three miles distant, who had been tried with the violent death of her husband at Pentland, afterwards of two worthy sons, Thomas Weir who was killed at Drumclog, and David Steel, who was suddenly shot afterwards, when taken. The said Marion Weir, sitting upon her husbands gravestone, told me, That before that, she could see no blood but she was in danger to faint, and yet was helped to be a witness to all this, without either fainting or confusion, except when the shots were let off, her eyes dazzled. His corps were buried at the end of his house, where he was slain, with this inscription on his gravestone.

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