The following account of the sufferings of the people in the parish of Glassford for religion and non-conformity to Prelacy, about the year 1660, appears to have been appointed by the kirk-session of 1694, to be inserted in their records. As exemplifying the persecutions of the time, it is thought not unworthy of being presented here in length . . .
“Item, John Semple in Craigthorn, sometime after Bothwell Bridge, in the year 1684, was apprehended and cruelly used by soldiers, then laid up in Hamilton Tolbooth; afterwards carried to foresaid tollbooth, where he was barbarously handled, his fingers driven into the thummeking, and his legs driven into the bolts, and that both at one and the same time, for the space of five hours together, to increase his torments, - afterwards they condemned him to die, passing sentence of death upon him in the forenoon, and executing him in the afternoon of the same. The same John Semple of good report, well versed in the Holy Scriptures, by the very quoting of which he even dashed his persecutors. He bore sufferings with much patience.
“Item, A sister of the foresaid John Semple, coming to see him while he was a prisoner in Edinburgh, and to put on his dead clothes, the persecutors made her a prisoner, also first in Edinburgh, then in Donnoter Castle. Likewise the mother of the said young woman named Janet Scott, going to see her daughter at Donnoter, she was also made a prisoner there; afterwards they were brought to Leith to be sent over sea to America, but it was so ordered that both were reserved, and sent to Edinburgh Tolbooth, where they lay in prison a long time. The whole time of the daughter’s imprisonment was about two years and three quarters of a year, and the mother’s imprisonment was near two years.
“Item, Janet Scott suffered much by the troopers coming at several times upon her, free quartering, and destroying her corn, grass, and meal, and driving away her horses and cattle, which she never after received, the said troopers carrying themselves rudely and barbarously to them in the house.
