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for sermon; he said. Let the people go to their prayers, for me I neither can nor will preach any this day; for our friends are fallen and fled before the enemy at Hamilton, and they are hagging and hashing them down, and their blood is running like water.
11. After this, he was preaching in Galloway, in the forenoon he prayed earnestly for the prisoners taken at & about Bothwel; but in the afternoon when he began to pray for them he halted & said, Our friends at Edinburgh, the prisoners, have done somewhat to save their lives that shall not do with them, but the sea billows shall be many of their winding-sheets, & the few of them that escape shall not be useful to God in their generation. Which was sadly verified thereafter. That which the greatest part of these prisoners did, was the taking of that bond, commonly called the black bond after Bothwel, wherein they acknowledged their appearance in arms for the defence of the gospel and their own lives to be rebellion, and engaged themselves never to make any more opposition; upon the doing of which these Perfidious enemies promis d them life and liberty; this with the cursed and subtile arguments & advices of ministers, who went into the new yard, where they were prisoners, particularly Mr. Hugh Kennedy, Mr. William Ceighton, Mr. Edward Jamieson, and Mr. George Johnston: these took their turn in the yard, where the prisoners were, together with a letter that was sent from that Erastian meeting of ministers, met at Edinburgh in August 1679, for the accepting of a third indulgence with a cautionary bond. Notwithstanding of the enemies promise, and the unhappy advices of these ministers not indulged, after they were ensnared in this foul compliance, banished 255, whereof 203 perished in the Orkney sea. This foul step, as some of them told me, both in their life, and when dying, lay heavy upon them all their days; and that these unhappy arguments and advices of ministers prevailed more with them, than the enemies promise of life and liberty.
In August, 1679, fifteen of Bothwel prisoners got indictments of death. Mr. Edward Jamieson, a worthy presbyterian minister, as Mr. Woodrow calls him, was sent from that Erastian meeting of ministers into the tolbooth to these fifteen, who urged the lawfulness of taking the bond to save their lives; and the refusal of it would be a reflection to religion and the cause they had appeared for, and a throwing away their lives, for which their friends would not be able to vindicate them.He.
