Page:Life and prophecies of that faithful minister of God's word, Mr. Donald Cargill.pdf/34

34 very dear billies, whoſe converſe and prayer together have been very edifying to me, and the remembrance of it this day is favoury, who lived in the Starry-ſhaw, was very near that Bentyrig where he was, Thomas and John Marſhal, to whom he ſaid at that ſame time, Lads, ye had meikle need to pray in earneſt, you have a ſharp ſtorm to meet with, and many ſtrange faces to ſee, and your bones ſhall lie in a ſtrange land: This came to paſs three years thereafter in December 1684, about the ſame time that I fell into the enemies hands, Meldrum, that wicked perſecutor, whom the world had heard of, apprehended them and carried them to Glaſgow. Walter Gibſon, merchant there, got a gift of them and other twenty-eight, who ſtarved and poiſoned them with little and bad victuals, above all that ever I heard of that carried our baniſhed to foreign lands; few of them in that ſhip lived any time in Carolina; Thomas died in a little time after their landing there, John lived for ſometime and died there alſo. That which was the occaſion of our baniſhed being carried to ſo many different places in the world, was, in theſe days, there were Scots regiments in France, Flanders, and Holland; and, when their men decayed, officers came home ſeeking recruits; hearing of priſoners that were under baniſhment, got giſts of them from the wicked bloody counſellors, and carried them to theſe places. Then merchants, ſuch as Gibſon in Glaſgow, and Malloch in Edinburgh, Pitlochie, a laird in Fife, and many others got gifts of them, (and, as the old ſaying is, cocks are free of other folks corn,) who tranſported them to Carolina, New Jerſey, Jamaica, and Barbadoes, to be their ſlaves; but none of them made their plack a bawbee with trading in ſuch wares, which confirms what that ſingular Chriſtian James Clarkſon, merchant in Linlithgow, whom the foreſaid Malloch got a gift of, with other thirteen, ſaid, when baniſhed on flip-board in the roads at Leith, to which I was a witneſs, We are the baddeſt wares that ever