In her long history there can have been few mornings upon which
Edinburgh had more to offer her burghers in the way of gossip and rumour
than on that of the 1st of July, 1600. In this 'gate' and that 'gate,'
as one may imagine, the douce citizens must have clustered and broke
and clustered, like eddied foam on a spated burn. By conjecture, as they
have always been a people apt to take to the streets upon small occasion
as on large, it is not unlikely that the news which was to drift into
the city some thirty-five days later--namely, that an attempt on the
life of his Sacred Majesty, the High and Mighty (and Rachitic) Prince,
James the Sixth of Scotland, had been made by the brothers Ruthven in
their castle of Gowrie--it is not unlikely that the first buzz of the
Gowrie affair caused no more stir, for the time being at any rate, than
the word which had come to those Edinburgh folk that fine morning of
the first day in July. The busier of the bodies would trot from knot
to knot, anxious to learn and retail the latest item of fact and fancy
regarding the tidings which had set tongues going since the early hours.
Murder, no less.
If the contemporary juridical records, even what is left of them, be
a criterion, homicide in all its oddly named forms must have been a
commonplace to those couthie lieges of his Slobberiness, King Jamie. It
is hard to believe that murder, qua murder, could have been of much more
interest to them than the fineness of the weather. We have it, however,
on reasonable authority, that the murder of the Laird of Warriston did
set the people of "Auld Reekie" finely agog.
John Kincaid, of Warriston, was by way of being one of Edinburgh's
notables. Even at that time his family was considered to be old. He
derived from the Kincaids of Kincaid, in Stirlingshire, a family then
in possession of large estates in that county and here and there about
Lothian. His own property of Warriston lay on the outskirts of Edinburgh
itself, just above a mile from Holyroodhouse. Notable among his
possessions was one which he should, from all accounts, dearly have
prized, but which there are indications he treated with some contumely.
This was his wife, Jean Livingstone, a singularly beautiful girl, no
more than twenty-one years of age at the time when this story opens.
Jean, like her husband, was a person of good station indeed. She was a
daughter of the Laird of Dunipace, John Livingstone, and related through
him and her mother to people of high consideration in the kingdom.
News of the violent death of John Kincaid, which had taken place soon
after midnight, came quickly to the capital. Officers were at once
dispatched. Small wonder that the burghers found exercise for their
clacking tongues from the dawning, for the lovely Jean was taken by the
officers 'red-hand,' as the phrase was, for the murder of her husband.
With her to Edinburgh, under arrest, were brought her nurse and two
other serving-women.
To Pitcairn, compiler of Criminal Trials in Scotland, from indications
in whose account of the murder I have been set on the hunt for material
concerning it, I am indebted for the information that Jean and her women
were taken red-hand. But I confess being at a loss to understand it.
Warriston, as indicated, stood a good mile from Edinburgh. The informant
bringing word of the deed to town, even if he or she covered the
distance on horseback, must have taken some time in getting the proper
authorities to move. Then time would elapse in quantity before the
officers dispatched could be at the house. They themselves could hardly
have taken the Lady Warriston red-hand, because in the meantime the
actual perpetrator of the murder, a horse-boy named Robert Weir, in the
employ of Jean's father, had made good his escape. As a fact, he was
not apprehended until some time afterwards, and it would seem, from the
records given in the Pitcairn Trials, that it was not until four years
later that he was brought to trial.
A person taken red-hand, it would be imagined, would be one found in
such circumstances relating to a murder as would leave no doubt as to
his or her having "airt and pairt" in the crime. Since it must have
taken the officers some time to reach the house, one of two things must
have happened. Either some officious person or persons, roused by the
killing, which, as we shall see, was done with no little noise, must
have come upon Jean and her women immediately upon the escape of Weir,
and have detained all four until the arrival of the officers, or else
Jean and her women must have remained by the dead man in terror,
and have blurted out the truth of their complicity when the officers
appeared.
Available records are irritatingly uninformative upon the arrest of the
Lady Warriston. Pitcairn himself, in 1830, talks of his many "fruitless
searches" through the Criminal Records of the city of Edinburgh, the
greater part of which are lost, and confesses his failure to come on any
trace of the actual proceedings in this case, or in the case of Robert
Weir. For this reason the same authority is at a loss to know whether
the prisoners were immediately put to the knowledge of an assize, being
taken "red-hand," without the formality of being served a "dittay"
(as who should say an indictment), as in ordinary cases, before the
magistrates of Edinburgh, or else sent for trial before the baron
bailie of the regality of Broughton, in whose jurisdiction Warriston was
situated.
It would perhaps heighten the drama of the story if it could be learned
what Jean and her women did between the time of the murder and the
arrest. It would seem, however, that the Lady Warriston had some
intention of taking flight with Weir. One is divided between an idea
that the horse-boy did not want to be hampered and that he was ready for
self-sacrifice. "You shall tarry still," we read that he said; "and if
this matter come not to light you shall say, 'He died in the gallery,'
and I shall return to my master's service. But if it be known I shall
fly, and take the crime on me, and none dare pursue you!"
It was distinctly a determined affair of murder. The loveliness of Jean
Livingstone has been so insisted upon in many Scottish ballads,[2] and
her conduct before her execution was so saintly, that one cannot help
wishing, even now, that she could have escaped the scaffold. But there
is no doubt that, incited by the nurse, Janet Murdo, she set about
having her husband killed with a rancour which was very grim indeed.
"She has twa weel-made feet;
Far better is her hand;
She's jimp about the middle
As ony willy wand."
The reason for Jean's hatred of her husband appears in the dittay
against Robert Weir. "Forasmuch," it runs, translated to modern terms,
as whilom Jean Livingstone, Goodwife of Warriston, having conceived
a deadly rancour, hatred, and malice against whilom John Kincaid, of
Warriston, for the alleged biting of her in the arm, and striking her
divers times, the said Jean, in the month of June, One Thousand Six
Hundred Years, directed Janet Murdo, her nurse, to the said Robert
[Weir], to the abbey of Holyroodhouse, where he was for the time,
desiring him to come down to Warriston, and speak with her, anent the
cruel and unnatural taking away of her said husband's life.
And there you have it. If the allegation against John Kincaid was true
it does not seem that he valued his lovely wife as he ought to have
done. The striking her "divers times" may have been an exaggeration.
It probably was. Jean and her women would want to show there had been
provocation. (In a ballad he is accused of having thrown a plate at
dinner in her face.) But there is a naivete, a circumstantial air, about
the "biting of her in the arm" which gives it a sort of genuine ring.
How one would like to come upon a contemporary writing which would throw
light on the character of John Kincaid! Growing sympathy for Jean makes
one wish it could be found that Kincaid deserved all he got.
Here and there in the material at hand indications are to be found that
the Lady of Warriston had an idea she might not come so badly off on
trial. But even if the King's Majesty had been of clement disposition,
which he never was, or if her judges had been likely to be moved by her
youth and beauty, there was evidence of such premeditation, such fixity
of purpose, as would no doubt harden the assize against her.
Robert Weir was in service, as I have said, with Jean Livingstone's
father, the Laird of Dunipace. It may have been that he knew Jean before
her marriage. He seems, at any rate, to have been extremely willing to
stand by her. He was fetched by the nurse several times from Holyrood to
Warriston, but failed to have speech with the lady. On the 30th of June,
however, the Lady Warriston having sent the nurse for him once again, he
did contrive to see Jean in the afternoon, and, according to the dittay,
"conferred with her, concerning the cruel, unnatural, and abominable
murdering of the said whilom John Kincaid."
The upshot of the conference was that Weir was secretly led to a "laigh"
cellar in the house of Warriston, to await the appointed time for the
execution of the murder.
Weir remained in the cellar until midnight. Jean came for him at that
hour and led him up into the hall. Thence the pair proceeded to the room
in which John Kincaid was lying asleep. It would appear that they took
no great pains to be quiet in their progress, for on entering the room
they found Kincaid awakened "be thair dyn."
I cannot do better at this point than leave description of the murder as
it is given in the dittay against Weir. The editor of Pitcairn's Trials
remarks in a footnote to the dittay that "the quaintness of the ancient
style even aggravates the horror of the scene." As, however, the ancient
style may aggravate the reader unacquainted with Scots, I shall English
it, and give the original rendering in a footnote:
And having entered within the said chamber, perceiving the said whilom
John to be wakened out of his sleep by their din, and to pry over his
bed-stock, the said Robert came then running to him, and most cruelly,
with clenched fists, gave him a deadly and cruel stroke on the jugular
vein, wherewith he cast the said whilom John to the ground, from out his
bed; and thereafter struck him on his belly with his feet; whereupon he
gave a great cry. And the said Robert, fearing the cry should have been
heard, he thereafter, most tyrannously and barbarously, with his hand,
gripped him by the throat, or weasand, which he held fast a long time,
while [or until] he strangled him; during the which time the said John
Kincaid lay struggling and fighting in the pains of death under him.
And so the said whilom John was cruelly murdered and slain by the said
Robert.[3]
It will be seen that Robert Weir evolved a murder technique which,
as Pitcairn points out, was to be adopted over two centuries later in
Edinburgh at the Westport by Messrs Burke and Hare.