John, I can willingly part with you."--"Then," he said, "this is all I
desire, I have no more to do but die." He kissed his wife and bairns,
and wished purchased and promised blessings to be multiplied upon them,
and his blessing. Clavers ordered six soldiers to shoot him; the most
part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains upon
the ground. Claverhouse said to his wife, "What thinkest thou of thy
husband now, woman?" She said, "I thought ever much of him, and now as
much as ever." He said, "It were justice to lay thee beside him." She
said, "If ye were permitted, I doubt not but your cruelty would go that
length; but how will ye make answer for this morning's work?" He said,
"To man I can be answerable; and for God, I will take him in my own
hand." Claverhouse mounted his horse, and marched, and left her with the
corpse of her dead husband lying there; she set the bairn on the ground,
and gathered his brains, and tied up his head, and straighted his body,
and covered him in her plaid, and sat down, and wept over him. It being
a very desart place, where never victual grew, and far from neighbours,
it was some time before any friends came to her; the first that came was
a very fit hand, that old singular Christian woman, in the Cummerhead,
named Elizabeth Menzies, three miles distant, who had been tried with
the violent death of her husband at Pentland, afterwards of two worthy
sons, Thomas Weir, who was killed at Drumclog, and David Steel, who was
suddenly shot afterwards when taken. The said Marion Weir, sitting upon
her husband's grave, told me, that before that, she could see no blood
but she was in danger to faint; and yet she was helped to be a witness
to all this, without either fainting or confusion, except when the shots
were let off her eyes dazzled. His corpse were buried at the end of his
house, where he was slain, with this inscription on his grave-stone:--

In earth's cold bed, the dusty part here lies,
Of one who did the earth as dust despise!