HISTORICAL INCIDENTS AFTER THE RESTORA TION. rog
the presence of a host of English tax-gatherers who speedily thereafter overran the whole
of Scotland, were mainly influential in directing anew the thoughts of the people to the
exiled family of the Stuarts. Edinburgh, however, took no share in the rising of 1715.
The magistrates exerted themselves to p t the city in an effective state of defence. The
walls and gates were immediately repaired and fortified. The sluice at the east end of the
North Loch was dammed up, and trenches made at various accessible points, The cityguard
was augmented, the trained bands armed, and four hundred men ordered to be raised
and maintained at the city’s expense.
These measures saved the capital from any concern in this rash enterprise, beyond an
ineffectual attempt upon the Castle. A party of the insurgents marched towards Edinburgh,
but finding it in vain to attempt an assault, they repaired to Leith, and fortified the
citadel. This they were speedily compelled to evacuate, on the approach of the Duke of
Argyle’s forces ; and after a feeble struggle, this ill-concerted rising was suppressed, and
tranquillity restored to the country.
The year 1736 is rendered memorable in the annals of the city by the famous Porteous
mob. The accounts already furnished of some of the more serious tumults that have
from time to time occurred in the Scottish capital, must have sufKced to show the daring
character of the populace, and their hearty co-operation in any such deed of violence. Yet
the cool and determined manner in which this act of popular vengeance was effected has
probably never been equalled.
The incidents of this remarkable transaction have been rendered so familiar by the
striking narrative of Scott (in all its most important features strictly true), that a very
hasty sketch will suffice. Captain John Porteous, the commander ‘of the city-guard, having
occasion to quell some disturbances at the execution of one Wilsdn, a smuggler, rashly
ordered his soldiers to fire among the crowd, by which six were killed, and eleven wounded,
including females, and some of the spectators from the neighbouring windows. Porteous
was tried and condemned for murder, but reprieved by Queen Caroline, who was then acting
as Regent, in the absence of her husband, George II., at Hanover.
The people, who had regarded Wilson in the light of a victim to the oppressive excise
laws and other fruits of the hated Union, were exasperated at the pardon of one who had
murdered so many of their fellow-citizens, and determined that he should not escape. Many
people, it is said, assembled from the country to join in the enterprise. The leaders of the
mob were disguised in various ways, some of them in female attire. They surprised the
town-guard, armed themselves with their weapons, and then forcing the door of the Tolbooth,
by setting it on fire, they dragged from thence the unhappy object of their vengeance,
and led him to the scene of his crime, the ordinary place of execution, in the Grassmarket.
It was intended at first to have erected the gallows and executed him there with greater
formality, but the ringleaders found th!s project attended with too serious a loss of time,
and he was hastily suspended from a dyer’s pole, over the entrance to Hunter’s Close, in
the south-east corner of the Grassmarket. As soon as their purpose was effected, the
rioters threw away their weapons and quietly dispersed.
Notwithstanding the most searching investigations instituted, and the imprisonment
of various parties on suspicion of being concerned in this violent deed, no person was convicted
for i’t, and no discovery ever made concerning any of its perpetrators. The order,
