268 



transmitted to the gate-house at Westminster. But before the sen- 

 tence was executed, he had a petition presented to the king by his 

 wife ; and at the intercession of one of Charles's mistresses, who was 

 attracted to the prison by the fame of his preaching, he was allowed 

 to choose the place of his exile, when he named the " Wild woods 

 of Killinchy," his former parish, part of which still bears the name 

 of Killinchy in the Woods. His petition is among the annexed 

 papers (No. IX.), with his signature, as if intended for presentation. 

 His grandson, also Michael, was my grandfather, whose younger 

 brother was grandfather to the two baronets. Sir Hervey and Sir 

 Stewart Bruce. My son is in the seventh generation] of Presbyte- 

 rian ministers, in lineal succession from the reformation in Scotland, 

 a circumstance so uncommon, that I have thought it worth stat- 

 ing. 



Robert Bruce was born in 1554, and sent to Paris to study the 

 Civil Law. On his return, he joined the Scotch bar ; and his father 

 had obtained a patent appointing him a Lord of Session, when he 

 attached himself to the Reformers. Sir Alexander, who was of that 

 persuasion, seems to have acquiesced ; but his mother would give her 

 consent only on condition of his denuding or divesting himself of the 

 lands of Kinnaird, the appanage designed for him out of the estate 

 in which he had been enfeoffed. He accordingly " threw off the em- 

 broidered scarlet dress, worn at court," and repaired to St. An- 

 drews' to study theology, under Andrew Melvill, who afterwards 

 introduced him to the General Assembly. The transactions of his 

 professional and political life are amply detailed in Calderwood, 

 Spotswood, M'Kenzie, Wodrow, and other historians ; but I shall 

 confine myself chiefly to such particulars as are connected with the 

 papers before us. 



The situation of James, as the last of his race, the disturbed con- 



