The same high tone of feeling supported the unfortunate victim to the last gasp.  When the ministers admonished[a] him that his punishment in this world was but a shadow of that which awaited him in the next, he indignantly replied, that he gloried in his fate, and only lamented that he had not limbs sufficient to furnish every city in Christendom with proofs of his loyalty.  On the scaffold, he maintained the uprightness of his conduct, praised the character of the present king, and appealed from the censures of the kirk to the justice of Heaven.  As a last disgrace, the executioner hung round his neck his late declaration, with the history of his former exploits.  He smiled at the malice of his enemies, and said that they had given. him a more brilliant decoration than the garter with which he had been honoured by his sovereign.  Montrose, by his death, won more proselytes to the royal cause than he had ever made by his victories.  He was in his thirty-eighth year.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Balfour, iv. 13, 15, 16, 19-22.  Wishart, 389.  Clar. iii. 353-356.  Whitelock, 456.  Colonel Hurry, whom the reader has seen successively serving under the king and the parliament in the civil war; Spotiswood, the grandson of the archbishop of that name; Sir W. Hay, who had been forefaulted as a Catholic in 1647; Sibbald, the confidential envoy of Montrose, and several others, were beheaded.  Of the common soldiers, some were given to different lords to be fishermen or miners, and the rest enrolled in regiments in the French service.—­Balfour, iv. 18, 27, 28, 32, 33, 44.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1650.  May 21.]

Long before this the commissioners from both parties had met at Breda; and, on the very day of the opening of the conferences, Charles had despatched[a] an order to Montrose to proceed according to his instructions, and to bear in mind that the success of the negotiation at Breda depended on the success of his arms in Scotland.  A month afterwards[b] he commended in strong terms the loyalty of Lord Napier, and urged him to repair without delay to the aid of his lieutenant.  It is impossible after this to doubt of his approbation of the attempt; but, when the news arrived of the action at Corbiesdale, his eyes were opened to the danger which threatened him; the estates, in the insolence of victory, might pass an act to exclude him at once from the succession to the Scottish throne.  Acting, therefore, after the unworthy precedent set by his father respecting the powers given to Glamorgan, he wrote[c] to the parliament, protesting that the invasion made by Montrose had been expressly forbidden by him, and begging that they “would do him the justice to believe that he had not been accessory to it in the least degree;” in confirmation of which the secretary at the same time assured Argyle that the king felt no regret for the defeat of a man who had presumed to draw the sword “without and contrary to the royal command.”  These letters arrived[d] too late