Thus,
without regard to any of their unlawful forms of legal procedure, they
defiled and besmeared the high places of the field with innocent blood.
These unprecedented methods and measures obliged the sufferers, for
their own preservation, stopping the deluge of blood, and to deter the
insolence of intelligencers and informers, to publish the apologetic
declaration, which they affixed on several market crosses, and parish
church doors, upon the 28th of _October_, 1684; wherein they declare
their firm resolution of constant adherence to their covenanted
engagements; and to the declaration disowning the authority of _Charles
Stuart_, warning all bloody Doegs and flattering Ziphites, to expect to
be dealt with as they deal with them; to be regarded as enemies to GOD,
and the covenanted reformation, and according to their power, and the
degree of their offense, punished as such, &c. After this declaration,
these enemies were still more enraged, and their fury flamed more than
ever formerly. They framed an oath, commonly called the oath of
abjuration, renouncing and abjuring the same, and by a venomous bloody
proclamation, enjoined this oath to be taken by all universally, from
sixteen years and upward, women as well as men, under pain of death; and
many prisoners who having the oath tendered them, refused or declined
it, were sentenced, and executed all in one day, according to the tenor
of their proclamation.
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