Parliament House.
days again awaited the latter, when the insane
Cavalier persecution began in a cruel and retributive
spirit. For in the same place where he had been
so nobly feasted the royal duke was compelled to
preside to try by torture, with the iron boot and
thumb-screws, the passively heroic and high-spirited
adherents of that Covenant which the king had
broken, while one of Scotland?s most able lawyers,
Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh. acted his
enemies without form of trial, and hundreds of
less note courageously endured the fury of their
persecutors.?
Lord Fountainhall gives us one scene acted in
this chamber, which will suffice as an illustration,
and so powerfully shows the spirit of the time
that we are tempted to quote it at length. It
refers to the trial or examination of a man named
Garnock and five other Covenanters on the 7th of
part of -King?s Advocate with such unpitying 1 October, 1681 :-
THE OLD PARLlAMENT HOUSE. (Fuc-rimiL of Gmdon of Rothiemny?s Vim.)
zeal as to gain him the abhorrence of the people,
among whom he is still remembered as the ?Bluidy
Mackenzie.?
The rooms below the Parliament Hall, which
are still dark-one being always lighted with gas,
the other dimly and surrounded by a gallery-were
the places where the Privy Council met, and torture
went on, too often, almost daily at one time.
Though long dedicated now ? to the calm seclusion
of literary study, they are the same that witnessed
the noble, the enthusiastic, and despairing, alike
prostrate at the feet of tyrants, or subjected to
their merciless sword. There Guthrie and Argyle
received the barbarous sentence of their personal
?The King?s Advocate being in Angus, sent
over a deputation to me to pursue; but God so
ordered it that I was freed, and Sir William Purves
eased me of the office. In fortification of what
they said before the Duke and Council, they led
the clerks and macers as witnesses, who deponed
that they uttered those or the like words : ?They
declined the king, denied him to be their lawful
sovereign, and called him a tyrant and covenantbreaker.?
And Forman had a knife with this
posie graven on it-This is to cut the throafs of
4zants; and said ?if the king be a tyrant, why
not also cut his throat, and if they were righteous
judges, they would have the same on their swords,
