_Requiescant in pace!_
NOTE TO CHAPTER III.
Note, B.---Steele, a covenanter, shot by Captain
Creichton.
The following extract from Swift's Life of Creichton gives
the particulars of the bloody scene alluded to in the text:---
``Having drank hard one night, I (Creichton) 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 Lismahago, 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 Hackston, who had been there taken, and
afterward hanged, as the reader has already heard; for, as to
Robert Hamilton, who was then 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.
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