Note 457 — Chapter IV

See Fraser's Life of Himself, in vol. ii. of Select Biographies, edited by the Rev. W. K. Tweedie. ‘Nothing now remained of all my father's great fortune but a small wadset of sixteen chalders, liferented likewise by my mother. And about the same time a new (though an unjust) adversary charges both her and me for 36,000 merks, and a reduction of our rights; so that our whole livelihood was either gone or at the stake. For four years did this adversary vex us, and was like to have undone us as to our temporal condition, had not the Lord prevented.’ p. 196. ‘I, ignorant what defences to make, had in my company a registrate horning, which I accidentally and without premeditation (God putting it in my mind at the same time) did cast in, by which he, being the king's rebel, was incapacitate from pursuing me. And the Lord so ordered it that he never after compeared to trouble me, by which means I was delivered from a loss and a fashery, and had but one court to wait upon.’ p. 202. ‘My condition during this time was a wrestling condition with the sons of Zeruiah that were too strong for me; little or no overcoming, yet violent wrestling.’ … ‘For I humbled myself under the sense of the calamities of our family, and my own particular wants; I besought him to keep us from utter destruction. And the Lord was pleased to hear; he destroyed by death my chief adversaries, I found shifts to pay my many petty debts, gained our law-action, and was restored to some of my ancient possessions again.’ pp. 227, 228.