192 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
shot the Bishop of Orkney in 1668, at the head of Blackfriars Wynd, in an attempt to
assassinate Archbishop Sharpe, so strangely eluded the strict search made for him; he effected
his escape by taking refuge in the Tolbooth, to which ingress, in latter times at least, was
never very difficult. The city gates were shut at the time, and none allowed to go out
without a passport signed by one of the magistrates, but it will readily be believed that the
Tolbooth might be overlooked in the most vigilant pursuit after one who was to be consigned
to it the instant he was taken. It may be, however, that this interesting tradition
is only a confused version of a later occurrence in the same reign, when Robert Ferguson,
a notorious character, known by the name of ‘‘ the Plotter,” was searched for in Edinburgh
under somewhat similar circumstances, as one of the conspirators implicated in the
Rye-House Plot. It was almost certainly known that he was in the town, and the gates
were accordingly closed, but he also availed himself of the same ingenious hiding-place, and
quietly withdrew after the whole town had been searched for him in vain. Another similar
escape is mentioned in the Minor Antiquities,” where the Highlands were scoured by
the agents of government in search for a gentleman concerned in the rebellion of 1745,
while he was quietly taking his ease in (‘ the King’s Auld Tolbooth.”
Of the numerous female inmates of this “ house of care,” we shall only mention two,
who contrast with one another no less strikinglyin their crimes than in their fate. In the
year 1726 great interest was excited by a trial for forgery, in which Mr George Henderson,
a wealthy merchant in Edinburgh, was accused of forging a bill upon the Duchess
of Gordon for 258, which he had endorsed to Mrs Macleod, the wife of a wig-maker in
Leith. Respectable citizens declared on oath that they had been present when Henderson
signed the bill, and had a&ed their names to it in his presence as witnesses ; others
had seen him on the same evening, a little above the Canongate Cross, in company with
Mrs Macleod, and dressed in ‘( dark coloured clothes, and a black wig.” So conclusive
did the whole evidence appear, that the Lord Advocate, Duncan Forbes of Culloden, presented
himself before the Court on the last day of the summer Session, and demanded the
prisoner’s conviction by a decree of the Judges. By the most strenuous exertions of council
and friends, the cause was delayed till the winter Session, and meanwhile the Lord Advocate,
when going north to Culloden, stopped at Kihavoch to inspect a new house that a
friend was having built. One of the carpenters employed on the house, an intelligent and
exFert workman named David Household, could nowhere be found on the proprietor
inquiring for him to furnish some information ; this casual incident led to inquiries, and
at length to the discovery of a most ingenious and complicated system of fraud practised
by Mrs Macleod with the aid of Household, whom she had dressed up in her own husband’s
black coat and wig, and bribed to personate the merchant who so narrowly escaped conviction
and execution. So deeply was the Lord Advocate impressed with the striking
nature of the case, that he often afterwards declared, had Henderson been executed in
accordance with his official desire, he would have looked upon himself as guilty of
murder.”
On Household being shown to the witnesses, attired in his former disguise, they at once
detected the fraud. Henderson was released, and Mrs Macleod put on trial in his stead.
From the evidence produced, it appeared that this ingenious plot had been concocted for‘
the pious purpose of raising, on the credit of the bill, a small sum to release her husband
