indignantly replied, that he gloried in his fate, and only lamented that he
had not limbs sufficient to furnish every city in Christendom with proofs
of his loyalty. On the scaffold, he maintained the uprightness of his
conduct, praised the character of the present king, and appealed from the
censures of the kirk to the justice of Heaven. As a last disgrace, the
executioner hung round his neck his late declaration, with the history of
his former exploits. He smiled at the malice of his enemies, and said that
they had given. him a more brilliant decoration than the garter with which
he had been honoured by his sovereign. Montrose, by his death, won more
proselytes to the royal cause than he had ever made by his victories. He
was in his thirty-eighth year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 13, 15, 16, 19-22. Wishart, 389. Clar. iii.
353-356. Whitelock, 456. Colonel Hurry, whom the reader has seen
successively serving under the king and the parliament in the civil war;
Spotiswood, the grandson of the archbishop of that name; Sir W. Hay, who
had been forefaulted as a Catholic in 1647; Sibbald, the confidential envoy
of Montrose, and several others, were beheaded. Of the common soldiers,
some were given to different lords to be fishermen or miners, and the rest
enrolled in regiments in the French service.--Balfour, iv. 18, 27, 28, 32,
33, 44.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. May 21.]

Long before this the commissioners from both parties had met at Breda;
and, on the very day of the opening of the conferences, Charles
had despatched[a] an order to Montrose to proceed according to his
instructions, and to bear in mind that the success of the negotiation
at Breda depended on the success of his arms in Scotland. A month
afterwards[b] he commended in strong terms the loyalty of Lord Napier,