Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/367

Rh Christmas, after the duke of York succeeded to the crown, and a year and a half after I was cured. Having drank hard one night, I dreamed that I had found captain David Steele, a notorious rebel, in one of the five farmers houses on a mountain in the shire of Clydesdale, and parish of Lismahego, within eight miles of Hamilton, a place that I was well acquainted with. This man was head of the rebels, since the affair of Airs-moss; having succeeded to Haxton, who had been there taken, and afterward hanged, as the reader has already heard: for, as to Robert Hamilton, who was their commander in chief at Bothwell bridge, he appeared no more among them, but fled, as it was believed, to Holland.

Steele, and his father before him, held a farm in the estate of Hamilton, within two or three miles of that town. When he betook himself to arms, the farm lay waste, and the duke could find no other person, who would venture to take it; whereupon his grace sent several messages to Steele, to know the reason why he kept the farm waste. The duke received no other answer, than that he would keep it waste, in spite of him and the king too: whereupon his grace, at whose table I had always the honour to be a welcome guest, desired I would use my endeavours to destroy that rogue, and I would oblige him for ever.

I must here take leave to inform the reader, that the duke of Hamilton's friendship for me was founded upon the many services he knew I had done the publick, as well as upon the relation I bore to sir Gerard Irvin; the person whom, of all the world, his grace most loved and esteemed, ever since the time they had served in arms together for the king, in the Rh