214 Two Irongray Traditions. 



the Covenant was James Guthrie, the author of The Causes 

 of God's Wrath. He was hanged at the Cross, his head 

 severed from his body and fixed on a pole above the West 

 Port* of Edinburgh. Guthrie's body was given to his rela- 

 tives for burial. Now, among them there was a nephew 

 who had been brought up in Guthrie's house, and whom he 

 had educated till he was ripe to become a minister of the 

 Gospel. This youth vowed that he would remove his uncle's 

 head from the ignominous position, in spite of all the terrors 

 of the law. He boldly climbed the gate at high noon, 

 wrapped the head reverently in a linen napkin and carried it 

 away for burial, under the guns of the soldiers in the Castle. 

 Such a piece of daring could not pass unnoticed, so a hue- 

 and-cry was raised to apprehend the culprit. None was 

 more eager in the search than the Lord Provost of Edin- 

 burgh (the Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1661 was Sir Robert 

 Murray), who, in addition to his zeal for prelacy, felt his 

 position as chief magistrate of the city insulted by such an 

 outrage. 



Young Guthrie, like Romeo, had already fallen in love 

 with his enemy's daughter. In fact, they had met at some 

 secret conventicle, for the Lord Provost's daughter did not 

 share her father's religious views. As Irving puts it : — " To 

 this true love, religion had been the guide and the minister, 

 as she was destined to prove the comforter ; for the soul of 

 this young maiden had been touched with the grace of God, 

 and, abhorring of the legal doctrines of the curates, she cast 

 in her lot with the persecuted saints ; and in hiding places 

 from the wrath of man, where they worshipped God with 

 their lives in their hands, these two hearts grew together 

 in the bonds of faithful love." 



Guthrie's friends urged him to flee to the continent, and 

 the lady, knowing her father's anger and determination to 

 bring the offender to justice, joined in their entreaties. And 

 so Guthrie reluctantly consented to leave his native land ; 

 but before doing so, he and his lady plighted their faith to 

 be true to one another while spared to each other on earth, 



* Nether Bow; Wodrow, I., 191 note. 



