The TolbOoth.1 PORTEOUS EXECUTED. 131
some proposed to slay hini on the spot, was told
by others to prepare for that death .elsewhere
which justice had awarded him ; but amid all their
fury, the rioters conducted themselves generally with
grim and mature deliberation. Porteous was allowed
to entrust his money and papers with a person who
was in prison for debt, and one of the rioters kindly
and humanely offered him the last consolation religion
can afford. The dreadful procession, seen
by thousands of eyes fiom the crowded windows,
was then begun, and amid the gleam of links and
;torches, that tipped with fire the blades of hundreds
of weapons, the crowd poured down the
West Bow to the Grassmarket. So coolly and
deliberately did they proceed, that when one 01
Porteous? slippers dropped from his foot, as he was
borne sobbing and praying along, they halted, and
replaced it In the Bow the shop of a dealer in
cordage (over whose door there hung a grotesque
figure, still preserved) was broken open, a rope
taken therefrom, and a guinea left in its stead.
On reaching the place of execution, still marked
byan arrangement of the stones, they were at a loss
for a gibbet, till they discovered a dyer?s pole in it:
immediate vicinity. They tied tbe rope round the
neck of their victim, and slinging it over the cross
beam, swung him up, and speedily put an end tc
his sufferings and his life ; then the roar of voicez
that swept over the vast place and re-echoed up the
Castle rocks, announced that all was over ! BUI
ere this was achieved Porteous had been twice le1
down and strung up again, while many struck him
with their Lochaber axes, and tried to cut off hi:
ears.
Among those who witnessed this scene, and nevei
forgot it, was the learned Lord Monboddo, who had
that morning come for the first time to Edinburgh.
When about retiring to rest (according to ? Kafi
Portraits ?) his curiosity was excited by the noise and
tumult in the streets, and in place of going to bed:
he slipped to the door, half-dressed, with a nightcap
on his head. He speedily got entangled in
the crowd of passers-by, and was hurried along with
them to the Grassmarket, where he became an
involuntary witness of the last act of the tragedy.
This scene made so deep an impression on his
lordship, that it not only deprived him of sleep foi
the remainder of the night, but induced him to
think of leaving the city altogether, as a place unfit
for a civilised being to live in. His lordship
frequently related fhis incident in after life, and
on these occasions described with much force the
effect it had upon him.? Lord Monboddo died
in 1799.
As soon as the rioters had satiated their venzeance,
they tossed away their weapons, and quietly
dispersed; and when the morning of the 8th September
stole in nothing remained of the event but
the fire-blackened cinders of the Tolbooth door, the
muskets and Lochaber axes scattered in the streets,
and the dead body of Porteous swinging in the
breeze from the dyer?s pole. According to the
Caledonian Mercury of 9th September, 1736, the
body of Porteous was interred on the second day
in the Greyfriars. The Government was exasperated,
and resolved to inflict summary vengeance
on the city. Alexander Wilson, the Lord Provost,
was arrested, but admitted to bail after three weeks?
incarceration. A Bill was introduced into Parliament
materially affecting the city, but the clauses for
the further imprisonment of the innocent Provost,
abolishing the City Guard, and dismantling the
gates, were left out when amended by the Commons,
and in place of these a small fine of Az,ooo
in favour of Captain Porteous? widow was imposed
upon Edinburgh. Thus terminated this extraordinary
conspiracy, which to this day remains a
mystery. Large rewards were offered in vain for
the ringleaders, many of whom had been disguised
as females. One of them is said to have been
the Earl of Haddington, clad in his cook-maid?s
dress. The Act of Parliament enjoined the proclamation
for the discovery of the rioters should be
read from the parish pulpits on Sunday, but many
clergymen refused to do so, and there was no power
to compel them ; and the people remembered with
much bitterness that a certain Captain Lind, of the
Town Guard, who had given evidence in Edinburgh
tending to incriminate the magistrates, was rewarded
by a commission in Lord Tyrawley?s South British
Fusiliers, now 7th Foot.
The next prisoner in the Tolbooth who created
an intensity of interest in the minds of contemporaries
was Katharine Nairn, the young and
beautiful daughter of Sir Robert Nairn, Bart, a
lady allied by blood and marriage to many families
of the best position. Her crime was a double
one-that of poisoning her husband, Ogilvie of
Eastmilne, and of having an intrigue with his
youngest brother Patrick, a lieutenant of the Old
Gordon Highlanders, disbanded, as we elsewhere
stated, in 1765. The victim, to whom she had
been mamed in her nineteenth year, was a man
of property, but far advanced in life, and her
marriage appears to have been one of those unequal
matches by which the happiness of a girl is sacnficed
to worldly policy. On her arrival at? Leith in
an open boat in 1766, her whole bearing betrayed
so much levity, and was so different from what
was expected by a somewhat pitying crowd, that a
