EXTRACT FROM PERSONAL DIARY
1631
Printed more or less as he wrote it in long-hand, from the
copy in the museum at Wigtown
In those daies it was no great difficulty for a minister to
preach or pray in publick or private, such was the hunger of the hearers, &
it was hard to judge whether there was more of the lords presence in the
publick or in the privat meetings.
In August 24 1631 the lord was
pleased to deliver me from a great danger of fire, I lay in a high chamber of
John Stewarts house in Balemarran the room was strawed with a great deall of
dry seabent I used never after I was asleep to awaken till the morning, yet
that night about one a clock all the house being fast asleep I wakened
peaceably & thought it had been day & for a little space keeped mine
eyes shutt, & neither heard any noise nor felt any smell, within a little I
opened my eyes & saw the bent burning within two ells of the bed where I
lay, for a great fire in the room below the night before making ready the meat
of the reapers, had fired the mantle tree of the chimney the end where of came
into the room where I lay, the fire was between me & the door of the
chamber, I rose & took wth me my breeches, my bible and my watch, giving my
books & anything else I had for gone, & got out of the door and called
up those of the house, it pleased the lord in a short space they gat the fire
quenched, whereas in all appearance had I sleeped a quarter of an hour longer,
the fire had seized on the roof of the house covered only wtn straw, & so
not only house and goods but our bodies had been consumed.
From the
typed copy in the possession of the Stranraer Library.