| Final Days For some time his health had begun to give cause for concern. ".......whether constant sitting at my studies, or ane time upon bussiness walking long too and again through the town, without rendering urine, so at last my urine was bloody, or any other former infirmity, or age creeping on, may have been the occasion, I cannot determine: but since the year 1667, and therafter, I have such ane constant pain in my bladder, especially when I walk, that I have been forced to take ane house nearer the church. "Yet neither I, nor such doctors as I consult with, can be certain whether it be ane stone, or only ane carnosity in my bladder. Also my hand shakes, so that sometimes I can hardly write with it, it shakes so. Otherwise I bless the Lord, I find hitherto no other great defect of body or minde". On 7th October he wrote his last letter to Ancrum. The final words to them were, "I fear ye shall hardly read my hand, and yet it hath taken near by as many days to write as there are pages; but it was not fitting to make use of any other`s hand", He signed it, `Your loving and lawful Pastor, John Livingston , Rotterdam, 7th December 1671.` He continued to read and study right up to the end. As he lay near death, he exclaimed, "If my heart was lifted up, it was in the preaching of Jesus Christ. I die in the faith that the truth of God, which he hath helped the Church of Scotland to own, shall be owned by him as truths so long as sun and moon endure". Just before his expiry, his wife beseeched him to take leave of his friends. "I dare not," said he, with an affectionate tenderness: "but it is likely our parting will be but for a short time". The Reverend John Livingston of Ancrum died in Rotterdam, the place of his exile, on the 9th August 1672. `Where`er he met a stranger, there he left a friend` Agassiz A sentiment that well have been coined for John Livingston. |
| Footnote On her husband`s death, Janet returned to Scotland accompanied by her youngest son, Robert. Now in his late teens, Robert was soon to take himself to America where he prospered and was to found the dynasty of the Livingstons of Livingston Manor in New York State. This family were to play a great part in the American fight for independance a century later. During her husband`s enforced absence from Scotland, the Church came under increasing pressure from the State with worship being held clandestinely. These conventicles, as they were called, were forever being hounded and those responsible for them, if caught, were severely dealt with. Imprisonment, banishment, and occasionally death were dealt out to them. Janet Livingston would carry on her husband`s fight. A meeting of the Privy Council was to be held in Edinburgh on 4th June, 1674 at which a letter from the King was to be read out. This letter was instructing the councillors to increase their effort in apprehending the field preachers and the ring leaders of the conventicles. Alongwith fourteen likeminded ladies, she drew up a petition asking for the granting of liberty to the threatened ministers throughout the land. This was to be presented to the Lord Chancellor, Lord Rothes. On the day in question, the ladies gathered in Parliament Close and awaited the arrival of Rothes. Soon the coach pulled up and alighted from it came The Lord Chancellor closely followed by Archbishop Sharp. The latter was described `as flyed as a fox........clave close to the Chancellor`s back`. As the ladies approached led by Janet, the Chancellor doffed his hat and listened as the petition was read out by her. At its completion, he dismiised the appeal by jest and insiinuations.then made his entrance. Mrs Livingston suffered six months of chastisement and was in fact banished for a period. It was claimed that `her husband`s heart could trust in her`, and to quote Robert mcWard, "..a mother indeed in Israel". John Livingston was at rest in Holland, but his wife continued his struggle. |