170 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Parliament House.
the old High School in 1659, and studying law
at Leyden, became a member of the Faculty of
Advocates on the 5th June, 1668, from which
period he began industriously to record the decisions
of the Court of Session. He was one of the
counsel for the Earl of Argyll in 1681, and four
years after was M.P. for West Lothian. To the
arbitrary measures of the Scottish Government he
offered all constitutional resistance, and for his
zeal in support of the Protestant religion was exposed
to some trouble and peril in 1686. He
firmly opposed the attempt of James VII. to
abolish the penal laws against Roman Catholics in
Scotland; and in 1692 was offered the post of
Lord Advocate, which he bluntly declined, not
being allowed to prosecute the perpetrators of the
massacre of Glencoe, which has left an indelible
stain on the memory of William of Orange. He
was regular in his attendance during the debates
on the Union, against which he voted and protested;
but soon after age and infirmity compelled
him to resign his place in the Justiciary
Court, and afterwards that on the Bench. He
died in 1722, leaving behind him MSS., which are
preserved in ten folio and three quarto volumes,
many of which have been published more than
once.
Few senators have left behind them so kindly
a memory as Alexander Lockhart, Lord Covington,
so called from his estate in Lanarkshire. His
paternal grandfather was the celebrated Sir GCorge
Lockhart, President of the Court of Session ; his
maternal grandfather was the Earl of Eglinton ;
and his father was Lockhart of Camwath, author
of the Memoirs of Scotland.?
He had been at the Bar from 1722, and, when
appointed to the Bench, in 1774, had long borne
the reputation of being one of the most able
lawyers of the age, yet he never realised more
than a thousand a-year by his practice. He lived
in a somewhat isolated nlansion, near the Parliament
Close, which -eventually was used as the
Post Office. Lockhart and Fergusson (afterwards
Lord Pitfour, in 1764, being rival advocates, were
usually pitted against each other in cases of
importance. After the battle of Culloden, says
Robert Chambers, ? many violently unjust, as well
as bloody measures, were resorted to at Carlisle in
the disposal of the prisoners, about seventy of
whom came to a barbarous death.? Messrs. Lockhart
and Fergusson, indignant at the treatment
of the poor Highlanders, and the unscrupulous
measures of the English authorities to procure convictions,
set off for Carlisle, arranging with each
other that Lockhart should examine the evidence,
while Fergusson pleaded, and addressed the jury-
Offering their services, these were gladly accepted
by the unfortunates whom defeat had thrown at
the mercy of the Government. Each lawyer
exerted his abilities with the greatest solicitude,
but with little or no effect; national and political
rancour inflamed all against the prisoners. The
jurors of Carlisle had been so temfied by the
passage of the Highland army-orderly and peaceful
though it was-that they deemed everything
like tartan a perfect proof of guilt ; and they were
utterly incapable of discriminating the amount of
complicity in any particular prisoner, but sent all
who came before them to the human shamblesfor
such the place of execution was then namedbefore
the Castle-gate. At length one of the tww
Scottish advocates fell upon an expedient, which?
he deemed might prove effectual, as eloquence had
failed. He desired his servant to dress himself in
a suit of tartan, and skulk about in the neighbourhood
of Carlisle, till he was arrested, and, in the
usual fashion, accused of being ?a rebel.? As
such the man was found guilty by the English
jury, andwould have been condemned had not
his master stood forth, and claimed him as his
servant, proving beyond all dispute that he had
been in immediate attendance on himself during
the whole time the Highland army had been in
the field.
This staggered even the Carlisle jury, and, when
aided by a few caustic remarks from the young and
indignant advocate, made them a little more cautious
in their future proceedings. So high was the
estimation in which Lockhart of Covington (who
died in 1782) was held as an advocate, that Lord
Newton-a senator famous for his extraordinary
judicial talents and social eccentricities-when at
the Bar wore his gown till it was in tatters; and
when, at last, he was compelled to have a new
one made, he had a fragment of the neck of the
original sewed into it, that he might still boast he
wore ?? Covington?s gown.? Lord Newton, famous
in the annals of old legal convivialia, died so late
as October, 18-11.
Covington, coadjutor to Lord Pitfour, always
wore his hat when on the Bench, being afflicted
with weak eyes.
Lords Monboddo and Kames, though both
learned senators, are chiefly remembered for
their eccentricities, some of which would now
be deemed vulgarities.
The former, James Burnet, who was raised to
the Bench in 1767, once embroiled himself in a
law-plea respecting a horse, which belonged to
himself. He had committed the animal, when ill,
