Lockhart used to be spoken of by all old men about the Court of Session
as a paragon. He had been at the bar from 1722, and had attained the
highest eminence long before going upon the bench, which he did at
an unusually late period of life; yet so different were those times
from the present that, according to the report of Sir William Macleod
Bannatyne to myself in 1833, Lockhart realised only about a thousand a
year by his exertions, then thought a magnificent income. The first man
at the Scottish bar in our day is believed to gain at least six times
this sum annually. Lockhart had an isolated house behind the Parliament
Close, which was afterwards used as the Post-office.[127] It was
removed some years ago to make way for the extension of the buildings
connected with the court; leaving only its coach-house surviving, now
occupied as a broker’s shop in the Cowgate.
Mr Lockhart and Mr Fergusson (afterwards Lord Pitfour) were rival
barristers—agreeing, however, in their politics, which were of a
Jacobite complexion. While the trials of the poor _forty-five_ men were
going on at Carlisle, these Scottish lawyers heard with indignation
of the unscrupulous measures adopted to procure convictions. They
immediately set off for Carlisle, arranging with each other that
Lockhart should examine evidence, while Fergusson pleaded and addressed
the jury; and offering their services, they were gladly accepted as
counsel by the unfortunates whose trials were yet to take place. Each
exerted his abilities, in his respective duties, with the greatest
solicitude, but with very little effect. The jurors of Carlisle had
been so frightened by the Highland army that they thought everything
in the shape or hue of tartan a damning proof of guilt; and, in truth,
there seemed to be no discrimination whatever exerted in inquiring
into the merits of any particular criminal; and it might have been
just as fair, and much more convenient, to try them by wholesale or
in companies. At length one of our barristers fell upon an ingenious
expedient, which had a better effect than all the eloquence he had
expended. He directed his man-servant to dress himself in some tartan
habiliments, to skulk about for a short time in the neighbourhood of
the town, and then permit himself to be taken. The man did so, and was
soon brought into court, and accused of the crime of high treason,
and would have been condemned to death had not his master stood up,
claimed him as his servant, and proved beyond dispute that the supposed
criminal had been in immediate attendance upon his person during the
whole time of the Rebellion. This staggered the jury, and, with the
aid of a little amplification from the mouth of the young advocate,
served to make them more cautious afterwards in the delivery of their
important fiat.
To show the estimation in which Lockhart of Covington was held as an
advocate, the late Lord Newton, when at the bar, wore his gown till it
was in tatters, and at last had a new one made, with a fragment of the
neck of the original sewed into it, whereby he could still make it his
boast that he wore ‘Covington’s gown.’