[58] Wodrow, iv. 148-9.  He prints the declaration in full from a copy in Renwick’s own handwriting.  The following extracts will give some idea of it:  “We have disowned the authority of Charles Stuart (not authority as God’s institution, either among Christians or heathens) and all authority depending upon him, for reasons given elsewhere (disclaiming all such things as infer a magistratical relation betwixt him and us); and also we have declared war against him, and his accomplices such as lay out themselves to promote his wicked and hellish designs....  We do hereby declare unto all that whosoever stretcheth forth their hands against us ... by shedding our blood actually, either by authoritative commanding, such as bloody counsellors ... especially that so-called justiciary, generals of forces, adjutants, captains, lieutenants, and all in civil and military power, who make it their work to embrue their hands in our blood, or by obeying such commands, such as bloody militia men, malicious troopers, soldiers, and dragoons; likewise such gentlemen and commons who, through wickedness and ill-will, ride and run with the foresaid persons ... we say all and every one of such shall be reputed by us enemies to God and the covenanted work of reformation, and punished as such, according to our power and the degree of their offence....  Let not any think that (our God assisting us) we will be so slack-handed in time coming to put matters in execution as heretofore we have been, seeing we are bound faithfully and valiantly to maintain our covenants and the cause of Christ.”

[59] For example, in the earliest edition of the pamphlet containing his version of this affair ("The Life of Peden”) an “old singular Christian woman named Elizabeth Menzies” is mentioned as the first neighbour who came to condole with Mrs. Brown.  In later editions Elizabeth Menzies becomes Jean Brown.  The wife also is sometimes Isabel and sometimes Marion.  Walker’s “Biographia Presbyteriana” is a collection of tracts published by him at different times, of which this “Life of Peden” is the earliest and the best.

[60] “A Short Memorial of the Sufferings of the Presbyterians.”

[61] This Buiening is called Bruning in “The Cloud of Witnesses,” and may be the Brownen of Claverhouse’s letter, that is to say, the nephew of John Brown.

[62] “It seems somebody had maliciously told this Graham they were of the Whigs who used the field meetings, upon which, without any trial or other sentence than his own command, his soldiers fetched them all to Mauchline, a village where his headquarters were, and hanged them immediately, not suffering them to enter into any house at their coming, nor at the entreaty of the poor men would suffer one to lend them a Bible, who it seems offered it, nor allow them a moment to pray to God.”  Defoe’s “Memoirs of the Church of Scotland” were first published in 1717, a few years before Wodrow’s History.  Elsewhere in the same work he states that Claverhouse