When tears and entreaties could
not prevail, and Claverhouse had shot him dead, I am
credibly informed the widow said to him, 'Well, sir, you
must give an account of what you have done.' Claverhouse
answered, 'To men I can be answerable, and as for God, I'll
take him into my own hand.' I am well informed that
Claverhouse himself frequently acknowledged afterwards that
John Brown's prayer left such impressions upon his spirit
that he could never get altogether worn off, when he gave
himself liberty to think of it."[54]
Patrick Walker, the pedlar, writing a very few years after Wodrow (whom
he notices only to abuse for his inaccuracy and backsliding), and
professing to have got his version from the wife, tells a different
tale. "Claverhouse," he says, "ordered six soldiers to shoot him. The
most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains
upon the ground." Of any refusal, or even disinclination, on the part of
the soldiers to obey their orders there is not a word. Then we have
Claverhouse's own report to Queensberry, written two days later from
Galston, a village between Kilmarnock and Ayr.
"On Friday last, amongst the hills betwixt Douglas and the
Ploughlands, we pursued two fellows a great way through the
mosses, and in end seized them.
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