The magistrates fled for shelter to a house in
the Grassmarket, and the mob carried all before
it. Captain Porteous, the commander of the Guard,
was an active officer, who had seen some service
with the Scots Brigade in Holland; but he was a
harsh, proud man, of profligate character, who, it
has been alleged, rendered himself odious to the
people by the seventy with which he punished the
excesses of the poor, compared with his leniency to
the wealthy. His fierce pride was roused to boiling
heat. He had resented the escape of Robertson
as an imputation upon the City Guard ; and also
resented, as an insult, the presence of the Welsh
Fusiliers in the city, where no drums were permitted
to be beaten save his own and those of
the 25th or Edinburgh Regiment, and he was
therefore well inclined tb vent his wrath on Wilson,
as the cause of all these affronts. It would seem that
on the morning of the execution, he appeared, by
those who saw him, to be possessed by an evil spirit.
It is alleged that he treated Wilson with brutal
severity before leaving the prison ; and when the
riot began, after the execution, and the City Guard
was slowly returning up the steep West Bow, anti
facing about from time to time under showers of
missiles, which broke some bones and dashed the
drums to pieces, it is said that he not only ordered
his soldiers to I? level their pieces and be d-d !?
but snatched a musket from one and shot a ringleader
dead (Charles Husband, the man who cut
down Wilson) ; then a ragged volley followed, and
six or seven more fell killed or wounded.
An Edinburgh crowd never has been easily intimidated
; the blood of the people was fairly up
now, and they closed in upon the soldiers with
louder imprecations and heavier volleys of stones.
A second time the Guard faced about and fired,
filling the steep narrow street with smoke, and
producing the most fatal results; and as all who
were killed or wounded belonged to the better
class of citizens-some of whom were viewing the
tumult from their own windows-public indignation
became irrepressible. Captain John Porteous
was therefore brought to trial for murder, and
sentenced to die in the usual manner on the 8th of
September, 1736. His defence was that his men
fired without orders; that his own fusil when shown
to the magistrates was clean ; and that the fact of
their issuing ball ammunition amounted ?? to no less
than an order to fire when it became necessary.?
GeorgeII. was then on the Continent, and Queen
Caroline, who acted as regent of a country of which
she knew not even the language, took a more favourable
view of the affair of Porteous than the Edinburgh
mob had done, and from the Home Office
a six weeks? reprieve, preparatory to granting a full
pardon, was sent down. ?The tidings that a reprieve
had been obtained by Porteous created
great indignation among the citizens of the capital ;
they regarded the royal intervention in his behalf
as a proof that the unjust English Government were
disposed to treat the slaughter of Scotsmen by a
military officer as a very venial offence, and a resolution
was formed that Porteous should not escape
the punishment which his crime deserved.?
On the night of the 7th September, according te
a carefully-arranged plan, a small party of citizens,
apparently of the lower class, preceded by a drum,
appeared in the suburb called Portsburgh. At the
sound of the drum the fast-swelling mob assembled
from all quarters ; the West Port was seized, nailed,
and bamczded. Marching rapidly along the Cowgate,
with numbers increasing at every step, and all
more or less well-armed, they poured into the
High Street, and seized the Nether Bow Port, to
cut off all communication with the Welsh Fusiliers,
then quartered in the Canongate. While a strong
band held this important post, the City Guardsmen
were seized and disarmed in detail ; their armoury
was captured, and all their muskets, bayonets, halberts,
and Lochaber axes, distributed to the crowd,
which with cheers of triumph now assailed the Tolbooth,
while strong bands held the street to the
eastward and westward, to frighten all who might
come either from the Castle or Canongate. Thus
no one would dare convey a written order to the
officers commanding in these quarters from the
magistrates, and Colonel Moyle, of the 23rd, very
properly declined to move upon the verbal message
of Mr. Lindsay, M.P. for the city.
Meanwhile the din of sledge-hammers, bars, and
axes, resounded on the ponderous outer gate of the
Tolbooth. Its vast strength defied al! efforts, till a
voice cried, IITry it with fire !? Tar-barrels and
other combustibles were brought ; the red flames
shot .upward, and the gate was gradually reduced to
cinders, and through these and smoke the mob
rushed in with shouts of triumph. The keys of the
cells were torn from the trembling warder. The
apartment in which Porteous was confined was
searched in vain, as it seemed at first, till the
unhappy creature was found? to have crept up the
chimney. This he had done at the risk of suffocation,
but his upward progress was stopped by an
iron grating, which is often placed across the vents
of such edifices for the sake of security, and tu
this he clung by his fingers, with a tenacity
bordering on despair, and the fear of a dreadful
death-a death in what form and at whose hands
he knew not. He was dragged down, and though
