Gusts of rain were splashed by the spring winds round and about the
hilly streets of Edinburgh; the defeated sun lay like a large pale
yellow blot against the moist clouds. Yet very early in that morning
of April 4 throngs of folk were crowding to the prison gates and
scattering about the sands of Leith. For to-day Darien was to be
avenged.
In the chambers of the Scottish Estates, in Parliament Square, the
privy council assembled, attended by the city magistrates, for a tumult
was clearly prophesied.
“The idea!” puffed my lord chancellor, getting into his gown. “Such a
clamor about the prison! Would they intimidate us with their uproar.
Mr. Magistrate, go sweep them through the gutters to their kennels!”
“My lord, I hae no broom big enow.”
The clerk presented a petition, signed by many of the better
consciences of the town, praying a reprieve for the condemned pirates.
The council turned the matter about with grave, genteel speech.
“What a file of names! They seem to urge that Reynolds should have had
opportunity of exculpation. Well, we discharged Reynolds, did we not?”
“In view of the verdict, my lords, I am inclined to think--well, that
he might have been exculpated.”
“And I.”
“And I.”
“The indictment was good, my Lord Chancellor, of course--did we not so
hold. But the fact of death--ordinarily, of course, it should be shown.
Ordinarily, I say. The other rule is a little dangerous, is it not? The
_corpus delicti_--it is a sound doctrine--usually.”
“Oh, ordinarily--certainly. Macer, close the window--the noise from the
prison yard is getting intolerable.”
“My lords, my lords, they’re under our windows! Oh, my lords, such a
press, and ilk has a stick or a stane ’n’s fist.
“Mr. Magistrate, you will see to the protection of her majesty’s
council.”
“Aye, my Lord Chancellor--or die wi’ ye.”
“Tush! tush! Such blathering! Die? Who said die?”
“Heavens! Who’s thumping on that door?”
“My lords, the people cry that you are reprieving the pirates!”
“I pray that no torch be set to the town. Shall I step forth and
promise the people, on the honor of a magistrate, there shall be no
reprieve?”
“Reprieve, Mr. Magistrate! Who spoke of reprieve?”
A gust of wind from the open door blew the petition fluttering to the
floor. None stooped to pick it up.
The council adjourned. The chancellor got as far as the old Tron church
when some pudding-face in the crowd shouted the pirates were reprieved.
A wave of people beat against the chancellor’s coach, they smashed the
glass, crashed in the panels, and might have licked up the blood of
the worthy nobleman himself but for the onrushing bayonets of the city
guard, and, what was more effective,--a sudden, cyclonic roar from the
throng at the prison gate, announcing that Green, Madder and Simpson
were departing in the death wagon for the doomful sands of Leith.
Dimmed, indeed, was the honor of Scottish lawyers when bench and bar
could thus go hand in hand to cast to the wild beast of public passion
the unprotected and the innocent. Even the defense--able, adroit,
complete--was not purely disinterested, yet amid all those mad scenes
one soul, at least, kept the noblest traditions of the law alive
within him and splendidly redeems his profession. For a young, obscure
lawyer sat attentively in court during the whole trial, and, on the
day of doom, clad himself in a suit of complete mourning and attended
at the sands of Leith, and, when Justice had completed its terrific
miscarriage, he, at the risk of his life, saw to the decent interment
of the poor victims. That young man was to be the future illustrious
Duncan Forbes!
None of the other _Worcester_ men were executed. Between March 16 and
April 3, Thomas Linsteed, John Bruckley and George Haines made solemn
confession of their fictitious crimes before James Graham, the judge
admiral. But these confessions are dismissed by a contemporary writer
as worthless and purely self-serving; they merely elaborated the tale
already told and were obviously made to repair the weakness of the
State’s case, and as the prosecution’s apology for an act already
beginning to disturb many consciences.
The public blood thirst was slaked. One reprieve followed another, and
eventually the whole crew drifted out of prison, out of the country and
out of the view of history.
And a few days before the execution of the three ill-fated men, our old
friends Israel Phippany and Peter Freeland landed in England, but too
late to prevent the tragedy of Leith sands, and revealed the true fate
of the good ships _Content_ and _Speedy Return_!
A moralist must find this tale provocative. Mark the factors of evil
in the case; the commercial greed which seized the _Annandale_, the
violent crime of Bowen in pirating the _Speedy Return_, the blind
national anger which perverted public opinion, and which in its
turn warped a timid and compliant court and council to its will, the
individual habits of a ship’s steward, and the fear for their personal
safety which made perjurers of the State’s witnesses. One’s speculation
is challenged.
These tragic deaths were not entirely fruitless. Although not the
foundation of the principle, nevertheless this celebrated cause went
far to rivet unshakably into the foundations of English jurisprudence
the vital doctrine of the _corpus delicti_,--proof of the actual fact
of death before a charge of homicide will lie.