216 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
Lord Kinnoull and several other prisoners were equally successful in getting out of the
castle, by letting themselves down over the rock with their sheets and blankets cut into
strips ; and others confined in the Canongate Tolbooth effected, by like means, a similar
jail delivery for themselves.’ When a better understanding had been established between
the Protector and hia Scottish subjects, the old hall was restored to more legitimate uses.
There, in the following year, General Monck and the leaders of the Commonwealth were
feasted with lavish hospitality, and the courts of law resumed their sittings, with an
honest regard for justice scarcely known in Scotland before.
glorious Restoration,” under the auspices of the once republican
general ; and the vice-regent and royal commissioner, the Duke of York, was feasted
with his fair princess and daughter, attended by the beauty and chivalry of Scotland,
anxious to efface all memory of former doing in the same place. But sad as was the
scene of Scotland‘s children held captive in her own capital by English jailers, darker
times were heralded by this vice-regal banquet, when the Duke presided, along with
Dalaiell and Claverhouse, in the same place, to try by torture the passive heroism of the
confessors of the Covenant, and the astute lawyer, Sir George Mackenzie, played the part
of king’s advocate with such zeal, as has won him the popular title which still survives
all others, of “ Bluidy Mackenzie.” The lower rooms, that have so long been dedicated
to the calm seclusion of literary study, are the same that witnessed €he noble, the
enthusiastic, and despairing, alike prostrate at the feet of tyrants, or subjected to
cruel tortures by their merciless award. There Guthrie and Argyll received the barbarous
sentence of their personal enemies without. form of trial, and hundreds of less note
courageously endured the fury of their persecutors, while Mercy and Justice tarried at the
door.
A glimpse at the procedure of this Scottish Star Chamber,-furnished by Fountainhall,
in his account of the trial of six men in October 1681, on account of their religion and
fanaticism,”-may suffice for a key to the justice administered there. Garnock,. one of
the prisoners, having railed at Dalziell in violent terms, “the General in a passion
struck him with the pomel of his shable on the face, till the blood sprung.”a With
such men for judges, and thumbekins, boots, and other instruments of torture as the means
of eliciting the evidence they desired, imagination will find it hard to exceed the horrors
of this infamous tribunal.
Aninteresting trial is mentioned by Fountainhall as having occurred in 1685.8 Richard
Rumbold, one of Cromwell’s old hopsides, was brought up, accused of being implicated in
the Rye House Plot. He had defended himself so stoutly against great odds that he was
Then came the
1 The Scottish prisoners would seem to have been better acquainted with the secrete of their own strongholds than
their English jailem. Nicoll remarks, “ It waa a thing admirable to considder how that the Scottia prissoneris being so
cloalie keepit heir within the Castle of Edinburgh, and in the laich Parliament Hous, and within the Tolbuith of the
Cannogait, and daylie and nychtlie attendit with a gaird of sodgeris, sould Ea oft escaip imprisaonment. And now laitlie,
npone the 27 day of Maij 1654, being Settirday at midnicht, the Lord Kynnoull, the Laird of Lugtoun, ane callit Marechell,
and another callit Hay, by the nioyen of one of the Inglische centrie escapit forth of the Castell of Edinburgh,
being lat doun be thairawin bedscheittis and blankettis, hardlie knut. AlI these four, with ane of the Inglische centrie,
escapit. Thair waa ane uther prettie gentill man, and a brave sodger, eavaping to do the lyke, he, in his doungoing, fell
and brak his neck, the knotia of the scheittia being maid waik by the former persoues wecht that past doun before him.”
-Nicoll‘s Diary, p. 128. ’ Fountainhall’s Decisions, voL i. p. 159. Ibid, vol. i p. 365.
