He was so open and candid hi his answers that the members of the Justiciary were to some extent favourably impressed, and this had doubtless some influence in preventing him from being tortured.  He enjoyed so much of Divine presence from his entrance into prison, till his execution, that to his mother he said, “he could hardly pray, being so much taken up with praise, and ravished with the joy of the Lord.”  When before the Justiciary, on the 14th February, he confessed to all in the indictment, save the first article, charging him with having “cast off all fear of God.”  He said, “It is because I feared to offend God, and to violate His law, that I am here to-day, standing to be condemned.”  When asked about disowning the king’s authority, he answered like a true Protestant and a heroic patriot—­“I own all authority that hath its prescriptives and limitations from the word of God; but I cannot own this usurper as lawful king—­seeing both by the word of God, such a one is incapable to bear rule, and likewise by the ancient laws of the kingdom, which admit none to the crown of Scotland until he swear to defend the Protestant religion, which a man of his profession cannot do.”

At the close of his examination, when asked if he would subscribe his Testimony, he did so, with protestation that he subscribed it as his testimony, but not as recognizing the authority of his judges.  When condemned to be executed in the Grassmarket, on the Friday following, he was asked by the Justice General if he desired a longer time, he declared, “It was all one to him; if the time was protracted, it was welcome; if it was shortened, it was welcome too;—­his Master’s time was the best.”  Without his knowledge he was reprieved for ten days, till the 17th of February, as the persecutors were to some degree sated with blood, and perhaps somewhat troubled in conscience by the demeanor of the youthful confessor.  After his condemnation was pronounced, many attempts were made to shake his constancy.  Several petitions were written for him, but he refused resolutely to sign any of them.  It was at one time proposed to him, that his dropping a few drops of ink on paper would be sufficient:  this however, he promptly refused, alleging that it would be so far an owning of wicked authority, and a renunciation of his whole testimony.

His friends were denied access to him in prison; paper and ink were removed from him, and also part of his dying testimony which he had written.  Others—­persons in authority—­prelates, curates, and popish priests visited him.  His Christian firmness resisted all their attempts to make him swerve from his principles; while several of them were struck and overawed by the power of his singular wisdom, gentleness, and unaffected goodness.  Viscount Tarbet, a man of intellect, but noted for his lax accommodating principles, said of Renwick, after several times visiting him, “He was the stiffest maintainer of his principles that ever came before us.  Others we used always to cause at one time or other to waver; but him we could never move.  We could never make him yield nor vary in the least.  He was of old Knox’s principles.”