- - -
who had come to pity, there were more than a
hundred whose hearts were filled with a tiger-like
ferocity, which the clergy had inspired to a dangerous
degree, and for the most ungenerous purpose.?
The women of the kail-market and the ?? saints
of the Bowhead? were all there, their tongues
trembling with abuse, and their hands full of stones
or mud to launch at the head of the fallen Cavalier,
who passed through the Water Gate at four in
the afternoon, greeted by a storm of yells. Seated
on a lofty hurdle, he was bound with cords so
tightly that he was unable to raise his hands to
save his face; preceded by the magistrates in
their robes, he was bareheaded, his hat having
been tom from him. Though in the prime of manhood
and perfection of manly beauty, we are told
that he ? looked pale, worn, and hollow-eyed, for
many of the wounds he had received at Invercarron
were yet green and smarting. A single
horse drew the hurdle, and thereon sat the executioner
of the city, clad in his ghastly and sable
livery, and wearing his bonnet as a mark of disrespect.??
He was escorted by the city guard, under
the notorious Major Weir-Weir the wizard, whose
terrible fate has been recorded elsewhere.
In front marched a number of Cavalier prisoners,
bareheaded and bound with cords. Many
of the people now shed tears on witnessing this
spectacle ; but, says Khcaid, they were publicly
rebuked by the clergy, ? who declaimed against
this movement of rebel nature, and reproached
them with their profane tenderness ; ? while the
?Wigton Papers ? state that how even the widows
and the mothers of those who had fallen in his
wars wept for Montrose, who looked around him
With the profoundest serenity as he proceeded
up the Canongate, even when he came to Moray
House-
?Then, as the Graham looked upward, he met the ugly
was one living mass of human beings ; but for one I where, by an unparalleled baseness, Argyle, with
the chief men of his cabal, who never durst look
Montrose in the face while he had his sword in
his hand, appeared in the balcony in order to feed
merrily their sight with a spectacle which struck
horror into all good men. But Montrose astonished
them with his looks, and his resolution confounded
them.?
Then with broad vulgarity the marchioness spat
full in his face ! Argyle shrank back at this, and
an English Cavalier who stood among the crowd
below reviled him sharply, while Lorne and his
bride continued to toy and smile in the face of
the people. (? Wigton Papers.?)
So protracted was this melancholy spectacle that
seven o?clock had struck before the hurdle reached
the gate of the Tolbooth, where Montrose, when
unbound, gave the executioner a gold coin, saying
-?? This-is your reward, my man, for driving the
cart.?
On the following day, Sunday, the ministers in
their pulpits, according to Wishart, rebuked the
people for not having stoned him. One declared
that ?he was a faggot of hell, and that he already
saw him burning,? while he was constantly
taunted by Major Weir as ?a dog, .atheist, and
murderer.?
The story of Montrose?s execution on the z1st
of May, when he was hanged at the Cross on a
gibbet thirty feet high, with the record of his
battles suspended from his neck, how he died
with glorious magnanimity and was barbarously
quartered, belongs to the general annals of the
nation ; but the City Treasurer?s account contains
some curious items connected with that great legal
tragedy :-
1650. Ffebruar. To making a scaffold at ye Cross
for burning ye Earl of Montrose?s papers . 2 8 0
May 13. For making a seat on a cart to carry him
from ve Water Gate to ve Tolbooth . IZ 16 o
?
into the street was Argyle, with a gay bridal party
in their brave dresses. His son, Lord Lorne, had
just been wedded to the Earl of Moray?s daughter,
deeperand covering it again . . I 16 0
Pd. for sharping the axe for striking
away the head, legs, and arms from
the body. . . . . . o 12 0
,,
