 be transported from the tolbooth of Edinburgh to the
prison of Jedburgh, where his friends and others may have occasion to convert
him. And to the effect he may be secured from the practice of other Quakers, the
said Lords doe hereby discharge the magistrates of Jedburgh to suffer any
persons suspect of these principles to have access to him; and in case any
contraveen, that they secure ther persons till they be therfore puneist; and
ordaines letters to be direct heirupon in form, as effeirs.«
 
Both the sons, thus harshly separated from their father, proved good scholars.
The eldest, William, who carried on the line of Raeburn, was, like his father, a
deep Orientalist; the younger, Walter, became a good classical scholar, a great
friend and correspondent of the celebrated Dr. Pitcairn, and a Jacobite so
distinguished for zeal, that he made a vow never to shave his beard till the
restoration of the exiled family. This last Walter Scott was the author's
great-grandfather.
There is yet another link betwixt the author and the simple-minded and excellent
Society of Friends, through a proselyte of much more importance than Walter
Scott of Raeburn. The celebrated John Swinton, of Swinton, nineteenth baron in
descent of that ancient and once powerful family, was, with Sir William Lockhart
of Lee, the person whom Cromwell chiefly trusted in the management of the
Scottish affairs during his usurpation. After the Restoration, Swinton was
devoted as a victim to the new order of things, and was brought down in the same
vessel which conveyed the Marquis of Argyle to Edinburgh, where that nobleman
was tried and executed. Swinton was destined to the same fate. He had assumed
the habit, and entered into the Society of the Quakers, and appeared as one of
their number before the Parliament of Scotland. He renounced all legal defence,
though several pleas were open to him, and answered, in conformity to the
principles of his sect, that at the time these crimes were imputed to him, he
was in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity; but that God Almighty having
since called him to the light, he saw and acknowledged these errors, and did not
refuse to pay the forfeit of them, even though, in the judgment of the
Parliament, it should extend to life itself.
Respect to fallen greatness, and to the patience and calm resignation with which
a man once in high power expressed himself under such a change of fortune, found
Swinton friends; family connections, and some interested considerations of
Middleton the Commissioner, joined to procure his safety, and he
