Notwithstanding the ill success that had attended his enterprise, he never expresses, or even hints, the smallest degree of contrition for having undertaken it:  on the contrary, when Mr. Charteris, an eminent divine, is permitted to wait on him, his first caution to that minister is, not to try to convince him of the unlawfulness of his attempt, concerning which his opinion was settled, and his mind made up.  Of some parts of his past conduct he does indeed confess that he repents, but these are the compliances of which he had been guilty in support of the king, or his predecessors.  Possibly in this he may allude to his having in his youth borne arms against the covenant, but with more likelihood to his concurrence, in the late reign, with some of the measures of Lauderdale’s administration, for whom it is certain that he entertained a great regard, and to whom he conceived himself to be principally indebted for his escape from his first sentence.  Friendship and gratitude might have carried him to lengths which patriotism and justice must condemn.

Religious concerns, in which he seems to have been very serious and sincere, engaged much of his thoughts; but his religion was of that genuine kind which, by representing the performance of our duties to our neighbour as the most acceptable service to God, strengthens all the charities of social life.  While he anticipates, with a hope approaching to certainty, a happy futurity, he does not forget those who have been justly dear to him in this world.  He writes, on the day of his execution, to his wife, and to some other relations, for whom he seems to have entertained a sort of parental tenderness, short, but the most affectionate letters, wherein he gives them the greatest satisfaction then in his power, by assuring them of his composure and tranquillity of mind, and refers them for further consolation to those sources from which he derived his own.  In his letter to Mrs. Smith, written on the same day, he says, “While anything was a burden to me, your concern was; which is a cross greater than I can express” (alluding probably to the pecuniary loss she had incurred); “but I have, I thank God, overcome all.”  Her name, he adds, could not be concealed, and that he knows not what may have been discovered from any paper which may have been taken; otherwise he has named none to their disadvantage.  He states that those in whose hands he is, had at first used him hardly, but that God had melted their hearts, and that he was now treated with civility.  As an instance of this, he mentions the liberty he had obtained of sending this letter to her; a liberty which he takes as a kindness on their part, and which he had sought that she might not think he had forgotten her.