23. Things that are found may not be concealed, but shall be restored to the owner, if known, with all convenient speed; and where the owner is not known, publick intimation thereof shall be given, otherwise the finder shall become lyable to suffer as a thiefe. 24. Benefits received, and good services done, shall always be generously and thankfuly compensated, whether a prior agreement or bargain hath been made or not; and if it shall hapen to be otherwise, and the benefactor be obliged justly to complain of the ingratitude, the ungrateful shall, in such case, be obliged to give threefold satisfaction at least. 25. Whosoever shall absent himselfe, go away from, or desert the service of this Colony, or that of any particular person to whom they are bound, besides due chastisement of whiping, shall be obliged to serve a week for every day of such their absence or deser tion. 26. No man shall be confined or detained prisoner for above the space of three moneths, without being brought to a lawful trial. 27. All lands, goods, debts, and other effects whatsoever and wheresoever, (except the needful and proper working tools of a mechanick, the proper books of a student or man of reading, and the proper and absolutely necessar wearing cloaths of any person,) shall in the most ready, easy, and absolute manner, be subject to the just and equal satisfaction of debts; but the person of a free man shall not in any sort be lyable to arreasts, imprisonment, or other restraints whatsoever, for or by reason of debt, unless there shall be fraud, or the design thereof, or willful or aparent breach of trust, missapplication or concealment first proved upon him. 28. In all cases, Criminal and Capital, no judgement or determi❤ nation shall pass against any man in the Justiciary Court, without the consent and concurrence of a Jury, consisting of fifteen fit persons, to be nominat and chosen by the said Court, in the ordinary and usual manner, out of such a number as they shall think fit. 29. Upon trials of persons or causes, the Justiciary Court shall proceed to examine the witnesses upon oath, and after having heard the prisoner, the party accused or the party concerned, whether for or against the witnesses. The Judges shall afterwards give their opinions one by one, beginning at the youngest in years, and proceeding to the eldest, and shall conclude by majority of votes; but if the votes be equal, the Fresident shall have a casting voice; and when judgement or sentence is to be given, the President shall pronunce it. 30. No man shall presume to sit in court, much less to act as a Judge, or be of the Jury in the case, and during the time that any cause wherein he is party, or any way interested or concerned, shall be under examination or trial. 31. The Justiciary Court shall keep a clerk or clerks, who shall be sworn to make true and faithful records of all the proceedings of that court. 32. No man shall presume to use any braving words, signs, or gesturs, in any place of Council or Judicatur, whilst the Council or Court is sitting, upon pain of such punishment as shall be inflicted by the Court. 33. All things relating to trade and navigation, and not compre◄ hended in or understood by these ordinances, shall be determined by the most known and practised lawes and customs of merchants, and of the sea. 34. And lastly, Evry Judge or Member of the Justiciary Court, and evry one of the Jury shall take a solemn oath, duly to administer justice according to these rules, ordinances, and probation taken, to the best of their understanding. Fort St Andrew, Aprill 24, 1699. All the saids Rules and Ordinances were read and aproven of, Article by Article, and afterwards past altogether. COLLIN CAMPBELL, J. P. P. No. XI. [MS. in Bibl. Jurid. Edin. No. LVIII. Jac. V. I. 11. art. 95.] Extract of a Letter from Mr MACWARD to Mr BLEKETER, ON Colonel Wallace's Death. -I DOUBT not but you have heard of the removeall of worthy and great Wallace, of whom I have no doubt it may be said, he hath left no man behind him in that church, minister, nor professor, quho hath gone thorow such a varietie of tentations, without turning aside to the right hand or to the left. He died in great serenitie of soul. He had lived abroad such an ornament to his profession, as he was not more lamented by us than by all the serious English and Dutch of his acquaintance (who were many) as haveing lost the man, who as a mean was mad use of by the Lord to keep life amongst them; yea, the poor ignorant people of the congregation of Rotterdam (besids the more serious and knowing amongst them) bemoan his death, and their lose as of father. And they have good reason; for I must say, he was the most faithfull, feckfull, compassionat, diligent, and indefatigable elder in the work of the Lord, that ever I knew at home or abroad; and as for his care, solicitude, and concernednesse, in the work and people of God, I may say, the care of all the churches lay more upon him than upon hundreds of us, so that the Church of God hath lost more in the removeall of that man than most will suffer themselves to believe. Onely we who know it, have this to comfort ourselves, that the residue of the spirit is with him quho made him such, and that the Great Intercessour lives to plead his own cause, and the causes of his peopls soul. I forgot to tell you, that when the cause for which he had suffered was mentioned, when it was scarce believed he understood or could speake, there was a sunshine of serene joy looked out of his countenance, and a lifting up of hands on high, as to receive the confessor's crown, togither with a lifting up of the the voice with an aha, as to sing the conquerour's song of victorie. And to close, I must tell you also, he lived and died in a deep detestation of that wretched indulgence, and of all the wayes of supporting it; and this abrupt account of his death you may give to our friends. In a word, as a compound of all, he fell asleep in the furnace, walking with the Son of God, and now his bones will rise up with the bones of the other great witnesses burried in a strange land, as a testimony against the wrong done to Christ, and the violence used against his followers by this wicked generation, whom the righteous Lord in his time, from him who sitteth upon the throne to the meanest instrument that hath put the mischeifs he framed into a law in execution, will make a generation of his wrath, of speciall wrath, which must answer and keep proportion unto the wrongs done to the Mediator. MACWARD to Mr CARGILL, (Ibid. art. 94.) [No date.] -GREAT Wallace is gone to glory. I shut his eyes while he went out of my sight, and was carried to see God, enjoy him, and be made perfectly like him in order to both. Forget not to give me a particular account whether there be any such agreement amongst these young men lately licensed with you.* No. XII. [MS. in possession of the Reverend JOHN WILLISON, Extracts from the Diary of Sergeant JAMES NISBET.† I was born in the month of Feberuary, 1667, of parents both of them realy and eminently religious; but the times were extreamly * It appears from the following extract, that Wallace escaped from confinement after the battle of Dunbar. "Leiutenant Collonell Wallace is escaped, and come to us this daye." (Letter from W. Rowallane, younger, to the Laird of Rowallane,-Dumfreis, Octob. 13, 1650.) Robert Riddell, Esq. has just favoured me with the following notice, which brings the line of the family of Achanes nearer the Colonel than anything I have yet met with. 66 I, Matthew Wallace of Auchands, grant me to be justlie adebted to Mr John Anderson of Stobcors, the sum of 55 pounds, Scots money," &c. Dated 21st June, 1634, and registered 5th Dec. 1637. (Volume of Bonds, &c. from October 1636, to December 1639: Records of the Commissariot of Glasgow.) +He was son to John Nisbet of Hardhill, who, after escaping for many years the pursuit of the government, was taken and executed at Edinburgh in 1685. (Scots Worthies.) The sergeant died, about the year 1726, in Edinburgh Castle. (Walker's Life of Peden, 73.) His Diary is chiefly religious, and contains a collection of letters written by him to his Christian acquaintances. unhappy, because of ane ilegal, tyrannical, prelatical persecution, begun and carried on by Charles the Second, Middleton and Lauderdale, in the state, and treacherous, perfiduous Sharp, and some others, in the church. Because of which, though my parents were persons of considerable worldly substance, yet they could not get the benefit of school education for their children, and so I got little or none but what I acquired at mine own hand when under my hideing. For before I was born, my father, with others, being set on by the enemy at Pentland-hills, 1666, when they were standing up in defence of the gospel, and was by the enemy routed, and many of them slain, and my father received wounds, but, lying close among the dead till night, got of with life. The enemy came to his house in quest of him, but missing him, they held a drawn sword to my mother's breast, who had me in her belly, threatening to run her through unless she would discover her husband. She, weeping, told them, that for any thing she knew, he was killed, (for she had heard that it was so,) and that she had not seen him; so they took what made for them in the house, and went off. But some days after, getting notice that he was still alive, they returned with greater fury then before, and threatened her with present death, first with a drawn sword at her breast, and also with a bended pistol; and, contrair to all law divine and humane, they dragged her alongst with them with a burning candle in her hand, through all the rooms of the maine house, and then through all the office-houses, they still rageing with their drawn swords and bended pistols; but, after all their search, they missing my father, beat the servants, to strike the greater terrour on my mother to tell where her husband was ; but she could not. Then they took a young man, called David Finlay, alongst with them to where their chief commander lay, called General Dalziel. He caused the said David Finlay to be shot to death in less then half ane hour's warning, and carried away all my father's stock of moveable effects, which was considerably great; and for half a year there was hardly a day ever passed bot they were at the house, either in the night or day, in search of my father. -In the year 1678, there was a great host of Highlanders came down in the middle of the winter to the westren shires. The shire of Air was the centre of their encampment or cantooning, where they pillaged, plundered, theeved, and robbed night and day ; even |