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IN Scottish history -
ecclesiastical or political--execution is a less distinctive feature
than assassination. The roll of the assassinated is probably a more
distinguished one than that of the legally executed, for it embraces
several kings and regents, two Church dignitaries of the highest rank,
and nobles too numerous to mention. Moreover, assassination acquired in
Scotland a certain lustre from the rank of those who deigned to use it
as a weapon of revenge; and as practised under these conditions it far
transcends the rival method in pungency of interest. Other things being
equal, the tragic doment in assassination greatly exceeds that
associated with the stereotyped legal methods of terminating life. A
peculiar fascination always attaches to the exhibition of the emotional
side of human nature; and conventionalities being, in the case of
assassination, cast aside, we have glimpses of character and personality
which could not be otherwise obtained. Thus Scottish history is
necessarily more edifying to the student of human life than to the
pedantic constitutionalist. In English history—excepting as regards the
earlier centuries—the position is reversed. We have the minute details
and circumstances of several extraordinary plots, but the catastrophes
are, on the whole, sadly disappointing. True, it will be difficult to
find in Scottish annals any piece of political villainy so pitiful and
so base as the murder of the princes in the Tower; but this is an
exception—literally—that proves the rule. The very obscurity in which
the crime is shrouded may in itself be taken to indicate how alien was
political murder to the English habit.
In Scotland assassination
was practised for the most part brazenly and openly; no special odium
appears to have attached to it; it was a matter rather for boasting than
for shame. But even in the throes of revolution the English nation never
lost her instinctive respect for law and order; and in the perpetration
of her most notorious political murders she strove at least to travesty
the traditional legal forms. it follows that for religious or political
executions Scotland cannot compare for a moment to the Southern kingdom.
The martyr-pyres on the Scores at St. Andrew's, or on the Edinburgh
Calton Hill, do pale their ineffectual fires in the great blaze of
Smithfield; and no spot on Scottish soil can boast of such a notable
assemblage of the doomed as that which crowds on the memory at the
mention of Tower Hill. For centuries in Scotland a certain number of
nobles were nearly always at feud with their sovereign; but they were
treated rather as belligerents than as rebels, and it was rarely indeed
that the extreme penalty of the law was exercised against them. Until
the Reformation there are comparatively few deaths of notables at the
instance of government or king; and some of them—as those of the sixth
and eighth Earls of Douglas—may more fairly be placed in the category of
assassinations. The case of Sir Robert Graham, however —the murderer of
James I.—stands out conspicuous for all time by reason of the almost
incredible cruelty of the tortures (by "hooked instruments of iron all
glowing hot") with which he was done to death. It is a remarkable fact
that the majority of political executions in Scotland, even after the
Reformation, were traceable directly or indirectly to religious
controversy. They date properly from the construction of the maiden by
the Edinburgh magistrates in 1565. It may be that the need of the maiden
was brought home by the fact that the "auld heiding sword had failyet,"
and that the two- handed sword then bought of William Macartney was
discovered to be inconvenient and unserviceable. Perhaps, too, so
ingenious and consummate an instrument of death was deemed a fitting
complement to the more complete judicial arrangements consequent on the
erection of the Tolbooth a few years before. Anyhow, this same
Maiden-with the occasional substitution of a new blade— continued to
figure as the presiding genius or familiar spirit of the High Street and
the Tolbooth for the next hundred and fifty years, the scene of her
operations being generally the Cross, but occasionally the Castle Hill
(she appeared in the Grass- market only once or twice), while the west
gable of the Tolbooth became more and more hideous with the grisly
trophies of her prowess. Those she caressed were not necessarily
criminals of rank, nor even political criminals. In Scotland the ancient
custom of reserving the honour of death by decapitation for persons of
birth and station had fallen somewhat into desuetude, though
strangulation was still regarded as especially opprobrious. Decapitation
by the maiden seems, however, to have been chiefly confined to criminals
under sentence from the judges of the supreme courts, and for offences
of peculiar heinousness—as murder, rape, and treason. None to whom this
method of execution was deemed appropriate had been guilty of mere
theft; and it must be remembered that while the maiden went on plying at
the Cross, the hangman was also at work on the Borough Muir, and
afterwards in the Grassmarket. Among the more distinguished of the
maiden's victims were the Regent Morton, the Marquis of Argyll, the Earl
of Argyll, the Marquis of Huntly and the Earl of Gowrie - all executed
at the Cross. Morton had been sentenced to the more shameful death of
strangulation, but the sentence was modified by the king. In two other
conspicuous eases—those of the Great Marquis and Kirkcaldy of
Grange—religious bigotry insured the substitution of strangulation for
decapitation. Both were executed at the Cross; but the method practised
on the criminals at the Borough Muir was deemed the more fitting reward
of persons excommunicated by the Kirk. In Montrose's sentence it was
specially mentioned that if at his death he was penitent and relaxed
from excommunication," the "trunk of his body" (his limbs were assigned
conspicuous positions in the chief towns) was "to be interred by
pioneers in the Greyfriars, otherwise to be interred in the Burrow Muir
by the hangman's men under the gallows." The fashion of Kirkcaldy's
death was no doubt determined by what was held the necessity of
fulfilling It prophecy of good John Knox—that he should "be brought down
over the walls of it" (the Castle) "with shame, and hung against the
sun"; and, as a fact, he was ''put off the ladder" just after the sun,
having passed the northwest corner of the steeple of St. Giles, began to
gleam down upon the pitiable scene. "As he was hanging,'' records the
devout Calderwood, "his face was sett towards the east ; but within a
prettie space, turned about to the west, against the sunne, and so
remained ; at which time Mr. David" [Lindsay] "marked him, when all
supposed he was dead, to lift up his hands, which were bound before Min)
and to lay them down again softlie which moved him with exclamation to
glorify God."
It is a common error to
suppose that Edinburgh has had but two chief places of execution, the
Borough Muir and (later) the Grassmarket. Even the latest edition of
Chambers's Encyclopced'ia compiled in this very High Street, within a
stone's- throw of these centres of history, will have it that " at
Edinburgh the place of execution was chiefly in the Grassmarket till
1784, when it was transferred to a platform at the west end of the
1othoo', This general forgetfulness of the original scene of the
principal Political executions is a doleful comment on the transiency of
fame. The only political executions of importance associated with the
Grass- market are those of certain leaders of the Covenanters—as
Johnston of Warriston, Renwick, and others—all deemed only worthy of
death by strangulation; but in the case of the Covenanters the extreme
sentence was generally carried into execution immediately after capture,
and in accordance with the regulations of martial law. The Jacobite
risings swelled in no inconsiderable degree the roll of Scots political
victims; but the trials of the rebels-in-chief were held in London, and
the Scotsmen who fell under the axe were made to follow in the footsteps
of More and Cromwell and Strafford and Laud and— like the Greys, the
Dudleys, and the Howards—they looked their last upon the world from
Tower Hill. |
