Note 112 — BOOK XIII.

Mr Laing (Hist. vol. iii. p. 97,) considers this as an act of retaliation on the part of the covenanters. Of this I cannot see any credible evidence. The language used by the assassins was not such as the covenanters would have employed, nor were the persons attacked of that station the persecuted would have deliberately formed any design of destroying. It is not unlikely that the soldiers were the objects of private revenge, and were wounded by some rough companions of their own, whom their insults had irritated.