collected ; the City Guard came promptiy on the
spot, and when the prisoner recovered from his
swoon he was safe in his old quarters, which did
not hold him long, however, as it would appear
from the old folio of Douglas. Peerage that he
escaped in his sister?s clothes. Yet as Lord Burleigh
died in 1713, Douglas in this matter seems
to confound him with his son, the Master.
Of all the thousands who must have been prisoners
there, recorded and unrecorded, on every conceiv-
The malt-tax, the dismissal of the Duke of Roxburgh
from his ofice as Scottish Secretary of State,
and the imposition of an intolerable taxation, the first
result of the Union, and the endeavours of the revenue
officers to repress smuggling, all embittered
the blood of the people. The latter officials were
either all Englishmen, ?? or Scotsmen, chosen, as
was alleged, on account of their treachery to Scottish
interests, and received but little support even
from local authorities. If in their occasional
INTERIOR OF THE SIGNET LIBRARY. (FWUI a Vinujublidud in 1829)
able charge, the stories of none have created more
excitement than those of Captain Porteom, of
Ratharine Nairne, and another prisoner named
Hay; and singular to say, the names of none of
them appear in the mutilated record just quoted.
Porteous has been called the real hero of the
Tolbooth. ?The mob that thundered at its
ancient portals on the eventfd night of the 7th of
September, 1736, and dashed through its blazing
embers to drag forth the victim of their indignant
revenge, has cast into shade all former acts of
Lynch h w , for which the Edinburgh populace
were once so notorious.? But the real secret and
mainspring of the whole kagedy was jealousy of
the treatment of Scotland by the ministry in
Lcndon
collisions with smugglers they shed blood, hey
were at once prosecuted, and an outcry was raised
that Englishmen should not be allowed to slaughter
Scotsmen with impunity.? At length these quarrels
led to and culminated in the Porteous mob.
The seaport towns with which the coast of Fife
is so thickly studded were at this time much
infested by Scottish bands of daring smuggiers,
many of whom had been buccaneers in the Antilles
and Gulf of Florida, and thus were constantly at
war with the revenue officials. One of these contrabandistas,
named Wilson, in revenge for various
seizures and fines, determined to rob the collector
of Customs at Pittenweem, and in this, with the aid
of a lad named Robertson and two others, he fully
succeeded They were all apprehended, and tried ;
