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522 fix them on. After repeated attempts, he was obliged to give it up, and the council adjourned.

Torture having thus proved vain, the council once more assailed him in the way of flattery, promising him an ample pardon for himself, and that he should never be called in any court as a witness on any trial, and they further stipulated, that none of his answers to the interrogatories to be put to him, should ever be produced in evidence, either directly or indirectly, in any court, or against any person whatsoever. On these conditions, as they had already extracted from Mr Spence and Major Holmes, nearly all that he could inform them of upon the stipulated questions, he consented to answer them, provided the promise made him was ratified by a deed of court, and recorded in their books. He had, however, scarcely given his answers, when they were printed and hawked through the streets, under the name of Carstairs' Confession. Had they been printed correctly, less might have been said; but they were garbled to suit the purpose of the ruling party, which was to criminate Jerviswood, on whose trial Mackenzie the advocate read them to the jury as an adminicle of proof, without taking any notice of the qualifications with which they were clothed, the alleviating circumstances with which the facts to which they related were accompanied, or the conditions upon which he delivered then. They were so far true to their agreement, however, as to relieve him from his confinement in a dungeon of the castle, where he had remained for some months cut off from all communication with his friends, and struggling under the infirmities of a shattered constitution. He was also permitted to leave Scotland, on condition that he should wait on the secretaries at London, on his way to Holland. Milport being then at court, he went to him and demanded a pass, which he found no difficulty in obtaining; but the king was desirous to see him, and the secretary ought he ought in duty to wait upon him, and receive his commands. On stating, however, that, in such a conversation with the king, he might be led to say what might not be so honourable to some of his majesty's servants in Scotland, the secretary made out his pass, and he departed for Holland, where he arrived in the end of the year 1684, or the beginning of 1685, only a few months before the death of Charles II., and the accession of James VII. This was by far the most important event in the life of Carstairs, and it is impossible to say how much the human race may be indebted to his firmness and his address on this occasion. He had, at this very time, secrets of the greatest consequence from Holland, trusted to him by the pensionary Fogel, of which his persecutors had no suspicion. The discovering of these secrets would not only have saved him from torture, but would undoubtedly have brought him a high reward, and, had they been at that time discovered, the glorious revolution might have been prevented, and these kingdoms, instead of being the first and most exalted, as they are at this day, been among the lowest and most debased of nations. The great anxiety the Scottish managers were under to take the life of Baillie, by implicating him in the Rye House plot, seems so totally to have blinded them, that they had no suspicion of the Dutch connection, which Carstairs was so apprehensive about, and which he was so successful in concealing. On his return to Holland, William, fully appreciating his merits, received him into his family, appointed him one of his own chaplains, and at the same time procured him to be elected minister of the English protestant congregation at Leyden. To the day of his death William reposed upon the advice of Carstairs with the most perfect confidence. He was now, indeed, much better qualified than ever for being serviceable to his illustrious patron. During his stay in Britain he had had a fair opportunity of judging of public men and public measures. He had not only witnessed in others, but he had felt himself, the