(1746.)
[Illustration: Drop-D]uring the summer, the parks had special
attractions for the public. The tactics which were supposed to have
won Culloden were ordered to be followed in the army. Consequently,
the twenty-eight companies forming the First Regiment of Foot Guards
were exercised in Hyde Park, by General Folliot, half of idle London
looking on. ‘They went through their firing,’ as the papers reported,
‘four deep, with their bayonets fixed, as at the late battle near
Culloden House, and performed the exercise, though quite new to them,
exceeding well.’ Then, there was a little spectacle in the presentation
to General St. Clair of a sword which had been taken from the Earl
of Cromartie. When the earl possessed this weapon, the blade bore
two inscriptions: ‘God preserve King James VIII. of Scotland!’ and
‘Prosperity to Scotland, and No Union!’ For these were substituted ‘God
preserve King George II., King of Great Britain, France and Ireland!’
and ‘Prosperity to England and Scotland!’
[Sidenote: _AT THE WHIPPING POSTS._]
All military sights did not go off so pleasantly as the above. There
is record of a soldier being shot by an undiscovered comrade in the
new Culloden exercise. There is also the chronicling of the sentence of
death having been passed on fifty-six deserters, who declined further
service under King George. On being reprieved, they were paraded in St.
James’s Park, for the public scorn, perhaps for the public sympathy.
Thence, the Londoners saw them marched, under a strong guard, on their
way to Portsmouth. They arrived there footsore, but the loyal folk
refused to give them the refreshment which was generally offered to
troops on the march and about to embark for war service abroad. These
deserters were destined for Cape Breton, for ‘General Frampton’s
regiment,’ a position celebrated for its power of using up all
consigned to it. There were worse characters left behind. So disloyal
and riotous were parts of the Westminster populace that the magistrates
adorned several of the streets with new Whipping Posts. When constables
heard a disloyal cry, or fancied they did, or had a loyal spite against
a poor devil, they had him up to a Whipping Post, in a trice, dealt
with him there in ruffianly fashion, and then took the patient before
a magistrate to see if he deserved it. While too outspoken Jacobites
and the ruffians of no particular politics were exhibited as patients
at the Whipping Posts, the Pugilists took Whiggery by the arm and
taught it the noble art of self-defence. Mr. Hodgkins, a great bruiser,
fencer, and single-stick player of that day, loyally advertised that he
was ‘fully resolved to maintain his school gratis to all well-wishers
of King George and Duke William, that they may know how to maintain
their cutlass against their enemies.’
All this while, arraigners and hangmen were kept in great professional
activity. While rebel officers and men were being tried at Southwark
and hanged at Kennington,――a process which went on to the end of the
year,――so grand an episode was offered to the public in the trial of
the rebel peers, that it took, in the public eye, the form of the chief
spectacle, to which the Southwark butcheries were only accessories.
[Sidenote: _IN WESTMINSTER HALL._]
When the day for the arraignment of the ‘rebel lords’ was fixed for
July 28th, there was a general movement of ‘the Quality.’ All who
belonged to it rushed to the country to get a preparatory breath of
fresh air. Nobody, who was at all Somebody, or related thereto, was
expected to remain there for the season. ‘You will be in town to be
sure, for the eight and twentieth,’ wrote Walpole to George Montague
(July 3rd). ‘London will be as full as at a Coronation. The whole form
is settled for the trials, and they are actually building scaffolds
(for spectators) in Westminster Hall.’
[Sidenote: _PREPARATIONS FOR THE NEW TRIALS._]
The general public watched all the preliminaries of the trials of the
lords with much interest. On the first Tuesday in July, late at night,
the workmen began to enclose nearly two-thirds of Westminster Hall,
‘to build a scaffold for the trial of the lords now in the Tower.’ The
mob watched its progress eagerly. By the next day, as we read in the
papers, ‘the platform of the same scaffolding was laid, being even
with the uppermost step of that leading to the Courts of Chancery and
King’s Bench.’ All the colours that hung there since 1704, the trophies
of Marlborough’s victories, were taken down, and all the canopies were
removed from the shops or stations, in the hall, in order to make way
for the galleries and scaffolding, which, it was said, would be kept
up for some years, in case of future trials of Jacobites of lordly
degree! All the following Sunday night, fifty workmen were plying saw,
nail, and hammer; but the gates were shut to keep out a mob which, by
pressure, noise, and drinking, impeded the work in hand. A favoured
many, however, gazed at the royal box, for the Prince and Princess of
Wales, on the right of the throne, and one on the left, for the Duke
of Cumberland and his friends. Boxes were also erected for the foreign
ministers next to the duke’s. No member of the royal family had the
bad taste to be present, but the Duke of Cumberland took the oaths
which would enable him to sit, as a peer, in Judgment on the lords whom
he had captured. Happily, he thought better of it, or he was better
advised, and he was becomingly absent from Westminster Hall, both as
judge and as spectator.
At this juncture, when the feeling in London against the late Jacobite
army was intensified by the accounts of the reckless and cruel
acts which marked both the advance to Derby and the retreat, every
Scotchman, and especially every Highlander, was looked upon as a
horrible savage; but the Londoners got good counsel from the old seat
of war itself. A letter from Fort Augustus, dated July 8th, appeared
in most of the London papers, and it was well calculated to moderate
the superabundant wrath of the metropolis. ‘We see,’ says the writer,
‘a good many letters here from London, that treat these people with
the opprobrious name of savages, which is a term which I think they
don’t deserve, for, excepting what relates to the rebellion, I can see
nothing in their behaviour worse than other people, and, I am sorry to
say, in many respects better, bringing rank to rank, and I only wish
some fair measure was pursued, the better to understand their morals
and dispositions by a friendly intercourse, which, I hope, when the
rebellion is over, will be worth thinking on.’
[Sidenote: _THE LORD HIGH STEWARD._]
On Monday, July 28th, the Lord High Steward set out in great pomp from
his house in Great Ormond Street to open the proceedings in Westminster
Hall. There were in the procession ’6 led coaches and six,’ and a
stupendous state carriage, of which much had been previously said in
the papers. The carriage was not so remarkable as the attendants upon
it. Ten footmen, bareheaded, were clustered upon the platform which
served for footboard in the rear. When the spectators had done admiring
them, they turned to the vehicle itself, and rather contemptuously
remarked that it was nothing more than the old faded state carriage
of the mad Duchess of Buckingham, who used to go to Court in it,
as a sprig of royalty, she being an illegitimate daughter of James
II. However, there was mock splendour enough to satisfy reasonable
spectators. The great Earl of Hardwicke, Lord High Steward, moved,
according to the arrangements of the Master of the Ceremonies, with six
maces before him as well as ten bareheaded footmen behind him; and less
ceremony would not have suited the circumstance that was to begin at
the bar, in the House of Lords, and end at the block, on Tower Hill.
[Sidenote: _THE SPECTATORS’ GALLERY._]
Lord Orford’s gallery, on the south side of the hall, was filled by
his friends. While it was building, a marriage took place which was
thus announced in the papers. ‘On Wednesday, July the 23rd, Walford,
Esq., clerk of certificates at the custom house, was married to Miss
Rachel Norsa, daughter of Mr. Norsa, steward to the Earl of Orford,
a beautiful young lady with a very considerable fortune’.... We
learn from Horace Walpole that among the spectators was ‘the Old Jew
tavern-keeper, Norsa, now retired from business.’ He had sanctioned
(for money) an arrangement whereby his daughter, a singer of some
eminence, was to live with Lord Walpole, my lord signing a contract to
marry Miss Norsa when his wife happened to die――but she happened to
survive him. The Jew and Horace Walpole were in the extensive gallery,
which the latter’s brother, Lord Orford, had at his disposal as auditor
of the exchequer. Horace, not disdaining to speak to this rascal,
Norsa, remarked: ‘I really feel for the prisoners!’ Old Sparker,
as Walpole calls him, replied, ‘Feel for them! Pray, if they had
succeeded, what would have become of all us?’
They who could not get tickets for the official galleries thought
that there might as well have been no rebellion! The grand jury of
Surrey having found true bills, the curious order was issued that,
on the above Monday, July 28th, Lord Kilmarnock should be tried in
Westminster Hall at 9 o’clock, Lord Cromartie at 10, and Lord Balmerino
at 11. The three lords were brought to the hall in three separate
carriages, heavily escorted. It was at starting that the little
difficulty occurred as to which carriage should convey the official and
significant axe; difficulty which Balmerino terminated by exclaiming,
‘Come, come! put it in here with me.’ He needed not to have been in a
hurry, for the Lord High Steward kept everybody waiting, and eleven
had struck when the three lords were brought into the hall together,
and then Lord Hardwick addressed them prosily, yet sharply, on their
alleged wickedness, and he did not particularly interest them by
remarking that their lordships were the first of their rank who had
been brought to trial upon _indictments_ for high treason, since the
passing of the Act of William III.
[Sidenote: _KILMARNOCK AND CROMARTIE._]
On being arraigned, the tall, slender, and dignified Kilmarnock, and
Cromartie, without dignity, or self-possession, disappointed half the
audience by pleading ‘Guilty.’ They were at once removed, Cromartie
almost swooning. Balmerino was left standing, with the gentleman-gaoler
at his side, holding the ominous axe, with its edge turned away from
the prisoner. The latter conversed with the axe-bearer as unconcernedly
as if both were mere spectators; while talking, he played with his
fingers on the axe, and when a bystander listened to what Balmerino
was saying, the stout old lord himself turned the blade of the axe in
such a way as to partly hide his face, and to enable him the better
to speak with the gentleman-gaoler without being heard. ◆[Sidenote:
_BALMERINO._]◆ Balmerino, on being asked to plead, fenced rather than
fought for his life. He was not, he said, what the indictment styled
him, ‘Arthur, Lord Balmerino, of the city of Carlisle.’ He could prove,
he said, that he was never within twelve miles of it. On this and
other trifling objections being over-ruled, he bluntly pleaded, _Not
Guilty_, and the clerk of arraigns as bluntly called out, ‘Culprit,
how will you be tried?’ and Balmerino, looking at the clerk with some
disgust for assuming his guilt, muttered the formula, ‘by God and my
peers’; whereupon Sir Richard Lloyd opened the case against him. In a
few words to the purpose he accused Balmerino with waging war against
the king, and with slaughtering the king’s subjects. Sir Richard was
followed by careful Serjeant Skinner, who spoke of Balmerino as ‘this
unfortunate peer,’ adding: ‘I will not bring a railing accusation
against this unhappy lord,’ but he marred this fair precedent by a
fierce denunciation of the traitor whose treason merited death, and
whose condemnation would cover his posterity with infamy.
[Sidenote: _THE PROSECUTION._]
The serjeant committed a few plagiarisms from various loyal sermons,
such as,――that rebellion was as wicked as witchcraft, and as absurd
as transubstantiation; and that, had it succeeded, it would have
reduced England to the degraded position of being a mere province of
France. Then, having traced the progress of the ‘rebels’ from the
landing of the Pretender, in June 1745, to the battle of Preston Pans,
the serjeant heaved a sigh, and added: ‘I wish we could forget the
miscarriages of that day!’ Having noted at what period Kilmarnock and
Cromartie had joined the Pretender’s army, and added some forcible
comments on the alleged murdering of the king’s wounded soldiers on
the field at Clifton, the serjeant alluded to Balmerino having held a
commission in the king’s service, and deserting that service to side
with traitors, whereby ‘he heightened every feature of the deformity of
treason.’ Having sketched the career of Balmerino from his first entry
into Carlisle till his capture near Culloden, the serjeant gave place
to the Attorney-General, who began by sympathetically remarking that
it was ‘disagreeable to try a noble person, one of their lordships’
high order,’ and then Mr. Attorney did what he could to condemn him by
insisting that failing to prove a single event in the indictment could
not invalidate it. On the contrary, if but one alleged criminal act was
proved, a verdict of _Guilty_ must follow.
[Sidenote: _BALMERINO AND MURRAY._]
Balmerino protested against such interpretation of the law. But, being
asked if he would have counsel assigned to him to argue the question,
he curtly replied: ‘I don’t want any.’ Only four witnesses were called.
They made brief and simple statements, and not a question was put to
them by way of cross-examination. William M‘Ghee swore to Balmerino’s
active offices in the rebel army. The accused peer only remarked
that M‘Ghee confused his dates. ‘I can’t tell the time myself,’ said
Balmerino, ‘unless I was at home to look at my notes.’ He declined,
however, to ask M‘Ghee any questions. Next, Hugh Douglas gave similar
evidence, with the additional circumstance that, at Falkirk, where
the cavalry were not engaged, he was with them, and saw Balmerino,
Kilmarnock, and Lord Pitsligo, with the reserve of horse. One James
Patterson corroborated this testimony, and Balmerino asked him what
he was. ‘I am a gentleman’s servant,’ was the reply. ‘What regiment?’
rejoined Balmerino. Patterson intimated that he was a soldier, servant
to a gentleman in the first troop of Horse Guards. ‘Horse Guards!’
cried the Lord High Steward, ‘whose Horse Guards?’ ‘The Pretender’s,’
answered the ‘approver.’ One Roger Macdonald deposed to similar
purpose, and closed the case for the Crown. Balmerino had ‘nothing to
say,’ except that all the acts laid in the indictment had not been made
out. Long pleadings ensued, the end of which was unfavourable to the
prisoner. ‘My solicitor, Mr. Ross,’ he said, ‘thought as the king’s
counsel thinks, but I thought Mr. Ross was wrong. I was mistaken. I
heartily beg your lordships’ pardon for taking up so much of your
present time.’ It was at this juncture that the Solicitor-General
(brother of the Pretender’s secretary) officiously and insolently
went up to Balmerino and asked how he dared to give the lords so much
trouble, when his solicitor had told him his plea could be of no use
to him. ‘Who is this person?’ asked Balmerino, and being told it was
Mr. Murray, ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Balmerino, ‘Mr. Murray! I am glad to see
you. I have been with several of your relations: the good lady, your
mother, was of great use to us at Perth!’ When the votes were about to
be taken, Lord Foley withdrew, ‘as too well a wisher,’ says Walpole.
Lord Moray and Lord Stair also withdrew, being kinsmen of Balmerino;
and Lord Stamford ‘would not answer to the name of _Henry_, having been
christened Harry. ◆[Sidenote: ‘_GUILTY, UPON MY HONOUR!_’]◆ All the
remaining peers put their hands to their breasts and said, ‘Guilty,
upon my honour,’ except Lord Windus, who remarked, ‘I am sorry I must
say, “Guilty, upon my honour.”’ When Lord Townshend uttered the usual
formula, his wife, with her well-known audacity, applied it to himself,
and said, ‘Yes, I knew he was guilty, but I never thought he would
own it upon his honour!’ The joking and the solemnity being over, the
gentleman-gaoler turned the edge of his axe towards the traitor, and
Balmerino bowed to his judges and was ushered out of the hall. On going
out he remarked: ‘They call me a Jacobite. I am no more a Jacobite than
any that tried me; but if the Great Mogul had set up his standard, I
should have followed it, for I could not starve!’ and he good-naturedly
remarked, that if he had pleaded _Not Guilty_, it was chiefly that the
ladies might not be disappointed of their show.
Walpole spoke of Balmerino as the most natural, brave old fellow he
had ever seen, his intrepidity amounting to indifference. While the
lords were in consultation in their own house, Balmerino shook hands
and talked with the witnesses who had sworn against him. Among the
spectators was a little boy who could see nothing. Balmerino alone was
unselfish enough to think of him. ‘He made room for the child,’ says
Walpole, ‘and placed him near himself.’
[Sidenote: _KILMARNOCK’S APOLOGY._]
On Wednesday, July 30th, the three Jacobite lords, Kilmarnock,
Cromartie, and Balmerino, were brought from the Tower to Westminster
Hall, to receive judgment. On being asked what they had to say why
sentence should not be passed upon them, Kilmarnock was the first to
speak. Walpole says that, ‘with a very fine voice he read a very fine
speech.’ It was a very curious speech. Lord Kilmarnock stated that
his father had been a loyal officer of the late King George in 1715,
and that he had since followed his father’s example, practising and
inculcating loyalty on his estate, till he was unhappily led away.
(It was said that his wife’s rich aunt, the old Countess of Errol,
had forced him into joining Charles Edward, under the threat that
she would leave all her money elsewhere if he refused. The old lady
did, ultimately, leave her property to Kilmarnock’s widow.) Lord
Kilmarnock passed over the fact that he had led away his second son
into rebellion; but he made a merit of another fact, that his eldest
son, Lord Boyd, was in the Duke of Cumberland’s army at Culloden,
fighting there, as Walpole remarks, for the liberties of his country,
‘where his unhappy father was in arms to destroy them!’ He could have
escaped, Lord Kilmarnock said, when he resolved to surrender. He
trusted to King George’s mercy, and he expressed great indignation that
the King of France (through his ambassador) had been impudent enough
to interfere in the affairs of this kingdom, by interceding in his
behalf. On this point, Walpole remarks, ‘he very artfully mentioned
Von Hoey’s letter, and said how much he should scorn to owe his life
to such intercession!’ Lord Kilmarnock also referred to his tenderness
towards the English prisoners, but, according to Walpole, it was
stated,――that the Duke of Cumberland had spoken aloud, at a levee,
to the effect that Kilmarnock was guilty of an atrocious proposal to
murder his English prisoners, and that the statement hardened the
king’s heart, who was otherwise disposed to be merciful. If it had been
true, Kilmarnock could hardly have had the audacity to insist on his
kindness towards the English prisoners, as one ground for mercy being
extended towards him. When Lord Kilmarnock had read, with dignity and
effect, his apology for his rebellion, Lord Leicester, remembering that
the Ministry had lately given the paymastership of the army to Pitt,
out of fear of his abusive eloquence, went up to the Duke of Newcastle,
and said, ‘I never heard so great an orator as Lord Kilmarnock. If I
was your grace, I would pardon him and make him paymaster!’
[Sidenote: _CROMARTIE’S PLEA._]
Lord Cromartie’s reply could only be heard by those who sat near him,
as he read it with a low and tremulous voice. They who heard it are
said to have preferred it to Kilmarnock’s address――an opinion in which
they who now read both will not concur. Cromartie expressed sorrow
at having drawn his eldest son (who was captured with him) into the
rebellion, and while he hoped for mercy, professed to be resigned to
God’s will, if mercy were denied him; but the substance of his reply
was that he had never thought of rebelling till there was a rebellion!
Walpole has put on record that if Lord Cromartie had pleaded ‘_Not
Guilty_,’ there was ready to be produced against him a paper, signed
with his own hand, for putting the English prisoners to death. The best
proof that the statement is unfounded is the fact that Cromartie was
ultimately pardoned.
[Sidenote: _BALMERINO’S DEFENCE._]
Last came bold Balmerino. He had little to say, but it was to the
purpose. Before the three lords left the Tower, that morning, a good
friend had sent them a suggestion, in the form of a plea which, if
successfully made, would not only save the lives of the lords, but
stop the further execution of the Jacobites at Kennington. The plea
was,――that as the Act for regulating the trials of these lords did not
take place till after their crime was committed, judgment ought not
to be pronounced. The plea had been handed to the Lieutenant of the
Tower, who had made it over to the Governor, the Earl of Cornwallis,
by whom it was laid before the Lords sitting in Westminster Hall, who
‘tenderly and rightly,’ says Walpole, sent it to the Jacobite peers
awaiting judgment. Balmerino alone made use of it, and he demanded
counsel to assist him in establishing it. ‘The High Steward,’ almost in
a passion, told him that when he had been offered counsel he did not
accept it! After some discussion, Messrs. Forester and Wilbraham were
named as counsel, and as they needed time to consider the question, the
Court adjourned to Friday, August 1st, on which day Balmerino’s counsel
confessed that the plea was invalid, and simply apologised for having
wasted their lordships’ time, and Lord Hardwicke, after a tedious
speech, pronounced sentence. The worst point in the Lord High Steward’s
speech was in a taunting expression of surprise at the two earls, who,
with so much loyal feeling as they pretended to possess, had gone into
rebellion. ‘Your lordships,’ he remarked, ‘have left that a blank in
your apologies,’ a course, he added, which might be safely left to the
construction of others.
[Sidenote: _BALMERINO’S CONDUCT._]
In the room to which the condemned lords were conducted after sentence,
refreshment was served to them, previous to their removal to the Tower.
When this had nearly come to an end, Balmerino, ever self-possessed,
proposed that they ‘might have t’other bottle,’ for, said he, alluding
to their being now condemned to separate cells: ‘We shall never meet
again till――’ and here he pointed to his neck. Kilmarnock was more
depressed than Cromartie. Balmerino did not greatly encourage him
by showing how he should lay his head. He bade him ‘not wince, lest
the stroke should cut his skull or his shoulders, and advised him
to bite his lips.’ In some of the idle half-hours in Court, during
adjournments, Balmerino had played with the tassels of the axe, and
affected to try its edge with his finger. His good humour towards
it did not last. On this eventful day, after he had gone into his
coach, the symbolic weapon was rather carelessly flung in, before the
gentleman-gaoler himself took his seat. ‘Take care!’ cried Balmerino
to that official, ‘or you will break my shins with that damned axe!’
However, he recovered his good humour by the time he arrived at Charing
Cross, where he stopped the coach at a fruit stall, that he might buy
‘honeyblobs,’ as the Scotch call gooseberries. Balmerino had lost his
playful indifference for the gaoler’s weapon. He observed, with a grim
expression, that, as the Lord High Steward proceeded with his address,
the gentleman-gaoler gradually turned the edge of the axe towards the
condemned peers. On entering the Tower, he thought no more of himself.
‘I am extremely afraid,’ he said, ‘that Lord Kilmarnock will not behave
well!’
[Sidenote: _GEORGE SELWYN._]
George Selwyn, of course, contrived to get a dreary joke out of the
solemnity. He saw plain and meagre Mrs. Christopher Bethel, her sharp
hatchet visage looking wistfully towards the rebel lords. ‘What a shame
it is,’ said Selwyn, ‘to turn her face to the prisoners till they are
condemned!’ Selwyn, who was fond of keeping memorials of capital trials
and executions at which he was present, begged Sir William Saunderson
to get him the High Steward’s wand, after it was broken, when the
trials were over. When that time came, Selwyn had no longer a fancy for
the fragments. Lord Hardwicke, he said, behaved so like an attorney
the first day, and so like a pettifogger the second, that he wouldn’t
take it to light his fire with. Walpole gives an illustration of the
foreign idea which found expression in the hall, in which he seems
to have discerned some wit, which might escape the detection of less
acute personages. One foreign ambassador, addressing another, said,
‘Vraiment, cela est auguste.’ ‘Oui,’ replied the other, ‘mais cela
n’est pas royal!’
[Sidenote: _KILMARNOCK’S PRINCIPLES._]
There was something about both lords which diminishes in a certain
degree our pity for them. Kilmarnock and Balmerino were both brave
men, each in his way. The first had a terror of death, but heroically
concealed it. The latter had nothing to conceal, for he was insensible
to fear. But both were void of lofty principles. Kilmarnock childishly
pleaded that his poverty and not his will drove him to join the young
Prince Charles Edward. This plea was put forth in his apologetic
speech, as well as in private. ‘My lord,’ he said to the Duke of
Argyle, who had expressed his sorrow at seeing Lord Kilmarnock in such
an unhappy condition, ‘for the two kings and their rights, I cared
not a farthing which prevailed; but I was starving; and by God, if
Mahomet had set up his standard in the Highlands, I had been a good
Mussulman for bread, and stuck close to the party, for I must eat!’
This poor hungry and noble Scot was not nice as to the company with
whom he dined. So miserable had been his condition in London that he
was not above taking his dinner with a dealer in pamphlets sold in the
street. This circumstance was told to Horace Walpole by an attendant
at the Tennis Court in the Haymarket, where Kilmarnock occasionally
showed himself. ‘He would often have been glad,’ said the professional
tennis-player, ‘if _I_ would have taken him home to dinner!’ The
tennis-player was above stooping to take up with a Scotch lord who
could condescend to dine with a dealer in ballads, broadsides, and
pamphlets. And yet this Scottish peer had an estate, and a steward upon
it, in Scotland. In neither was there much profit. Lady Kilmarnock
once importuned the steward, for a whole fortnight, for money. All
that she could obtain from him at last, to send to her lord in London,
was three shillings! The steward seems an unnecessary luxury, and his
place a sinecure. Horace Walpole’s father had settled a pension on
Kilmarnock, which Lord Wilmington, on coming into power, had taken
away. Thenceforth, in London, at least, he often wanted a dinner.
[Sidenote: _THE PRINCIPLES OF BALMERINO._]
Balmerino had even less of noble principle than Kilmarnock. In
the Rebellion year of 1715, he was on the Hanoverian side. The
Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Argyle, was warned not to trust him;
but the duke relied on him, and Balmerino did his duty under the
duke at Sheriff-Muir. When that rather indecisive victory had been
‘snatched’ on the Whig side, Balmerino went off with his troops to the
Pretender, ‘protesting,’ as Walpole says, ‘that he had never feared
death but that day, as he had been fighting against his conscience.’ He
was treated very leniently by the Government in London. They pardoned
[Sidenote: _LENIENCY OF THE GOVERNMENT._]
a crime which, according to military men, made him infamous for ever.
The pardon lost some of its grace from the fact that it was granted
simply to engage the vote of Balmerino’s brother at the election of
Scotch Peers! The deserter at Sheriff-Muir took up arms against the
side that had pardoned his desertion. Like Lord Kilmarnock, he pleaded
the pressure of poverty.
[Illustration; Decorative Banner]