ABERDEEN, _March 14, 1637_.
CLI.--_To JOHN MEINE, Senior._
[JOHN MEINE, merchant in Edinburgh, was a man of enlightened piety, and a decided Presbyterian. His zeal and stedfastness in maintaining Presbyterian principles exposed him to the resentment of the court and prelates. Having, with other citizens of Edinburgh, encouraged Nonconforming ministers, by accompanying them to the court when they were dragged before the High Commission, he was, without citation or trial, banished to Wigtown by the Privy Council, according to the orders of the king. But the execution of the sentence was suspended. In regard to the Perth Articles, he would make no compromise. In 1624, when the Town Council, Session, and citizens of Edinburgh, convened, according to an ancient custom observed among them from the time of the Reformation, to remove such grounds of difference as might have arisen, before uniting in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, Meine strongly pleaded that the ordinance should be solemnised without kneeling, a ceremony with which (he said) he could not comply. On account of his zeal in this matter, he was summoned before the Privy Council. The result was, that in June that year, he was sentenced to be banished to the north and confined within the town of Elgin. About the beginning of January next year, he obtained liberty for a few days to visit his family, but on the understanding that he should afterwards return to his place of confinement. However, the death of James VI. on the 27th of March that year, put an end to his trouble for a time. Livingstone, describing him in his Memorable Characteristics, says, "He used, summer and winter, to rise about three in the morning, and always sing some psalm as he put on his clothes. He spent till six o'clock alone in religious exercises, and at six worshipped God with his family, and then went to his shop." Meine was married to Barbara Hamilton, sister to the first wife of the famous Robert Blair.]