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Within forty-eight hours he died, January 28th, 1686, being past sixty years and was buried in the Laird of Afflect's Isle. The enemies got notice of his death and burial, and sent a troop of dragoons, who lifted his corpse and carried him to Cumnock gallows-foot, and buried him there (after being forty days in the grave) beside others. His friends thereafter laid a grave-stone above him, with this inscription;
After this that troop of dragoons came to quarter in the parish of Cambusnethen: Two of them were quartered in the house of James Gray, my acquaintance; they being frighted in their sleep, started up, and clapped their hands, crying, "Peden, Peden!" These two dragoons affirmed, that out of their curiosity they opened his coffin, to see his corpse, and yet he had no smell, though he had been forty days dead.
FINIS.