PREFACE. IN collecting materials for "The Martyrs of the Bass," published some time ago, in a volume entitled "The Bass Rock," it occurred to the author, from the various notices he met with of ladies who were distinguished for their patriotic interest or sufferings in the cause of nonconformity, during the period of the Covenant, and particularly, during the period of the persecution, that sketches of the most eminent or best known of these ladies would be neither uninteresting nor unedifying. In undertaking such a work at this distance of time, he is aware of the disadvantage under which he labors, from the poverty of the materials at his disposal, compared with the more abundant store from which a contemporary writer might have executed the same task. He, however, flatters himself that the materials which, with some industry, he has collected, are not unworthy of being brought to light; the more especially as the female biography of the days. of the Covenant, and of the persecution, is a field which has been trodden by no preceding writer, and which may, therefore, be presumed to have something of the freshness of novelty. The facts in these lives have been gathered from a widelyscattered variety of authorities, both manuscript and printed. From the voluminous manuscript records of the privy council, |