" Yet every attempt of his
enemies to convict him of extortion or malversation broke signally down.
The decorum of his life and conversation was allowed even by the
Covenanters; and it is recorded as a notable thing that, however
disturbed or thwarted, he was never known to use profane language. The
imperturbable calm of his temper is said by one of their own party to
have at once exasperated and terrified those who were brought before
him far more than the brutal fury of men like Dalziel and Lag.[67] His
heart was indeed hard to those whom he regarded as plotters and
murderers, traitors to their King and enemies of the true religion. He
was indeed in his own way as much a fanatic as the men whom he was
empowered to crush. His devotion to the Crown and to the Protestant
faith was a passion as deep and sincere as that which moved the simple
peasants of the West to find the gospel of Christ in the horrible
compound of blasphemy and treason which too often made up the eloquence
of the Conventicles. But his hardness, if not tempered with mercy, was
at least guided by more justice than was common among his colleagues. He
both advocated and practised the policy of distinguishing between the
multitude and their ringleaders. The just punishment of one of the
latter might save, he said, many of the former;[68] and his entreaty for
the prisoners whom he found under sentence of death at Dundee proves
that his actions were dictated by no vulgar thirst for blood.
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