The marquis of Montrose was sentenced to be hanged on a gibbet thirty feet high, to be afterward quartered, and his members fixed upon the gates of the four principal towns in Scotland, for having offended against the New Law or Covenant, as it was called. This brave nobleman, on hearing his sentence pronounced by the judge, made answer that he was sorry he had not quarters enough to be sent to the gates of every town in Europe, as monuments of his fidelity to his prince. He even put this sentiment into tolerable verse as he was going to the place of execution. He was a person of the most agreeable wit, and the most learning, as well as the bravest man of any in the three kingdoms. The Presbyterian clergy accompanied him to his execution, reviling and insulting him and pronouncing his damnation.
Oliver Cromwell placed confidence only in the independents, who could not exist except through him, and he would laugh at them sometimes with the deists, though he did not look on deism with a favorable eye, as being a religion void of enthusiasm, and consequently fit only for philosophers, and never of service to conquerors.
There were but a few of this philosophic sect in the kingdom, and with these he would sometimes divert himself at the expense of the holy madmen, who had cleared the way for him to the throne with the Bible in their hands. By this conduct he preserved, to his last hour, an authority which had been cemented with blood, and supported by force and artifice.