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covered, informed the lords that all the business was completed, which, by his commission, he was required to execute, and then taking the white rod in both his hands, broke it in two pieces, and declared the commission at an end. The peers then adjourned to their chamber; and the three prisoners, after taking a cold collation which had been prepared for them, were carried back to the Tower in the same order and form as before.

The earl of Kilmarnock immediately presented a petition to the king for mercy, couched in the same servile strain as his speech, and almost in similar language. He also presented another, which was a copy of the first, to the prince of Wales, praying his royal highness's intercession with his majesty in his behalf; and a third to the duke of Cumberland for a similar purpose. In this last mentioned petition he asserted his innocence of charges which had been made against him, of having advised the putting to death of the prisoners taken by the Highland army before the battle of Culloden, and of advising or approving of an alleged order for giving no quarter to his majesty's troops in that battle. In the petitions to the king and the prince of Wales, the earl repeated the statement he had made in his speech after his condemnation, that he had surrendered himself at the battle of Culloden, at a time when he could have easily escaped; but he afterwards declared that the statement was untrue, and that he was induced to make it from a strong desire for life;—that he had no intention of surrendering ;—and that, with the view of facilitating his escape, he had gone towards the body of horse which made him prisoner, thinking that it was Fitz-James's horse, with the design of mounting behind a dragoon. These petitions were entirely disregarded.

The earl of Cromarty, with better claims to mercy, also petitioned the king. In support of this application the countess waited upon the lords of the cabinet-council, and presented a petition to each of them; and, on the Sunday following the sentence, she went to Kensingtonpalace in deep mourning, accompanied by Lady Stair, to intercede with his majesty in behalf of her husband. She was a woman of great strength of mind, and though far advanced in pregnancy, had hitherto displayed surprising fortitude; but on the present trying occasion she gave way to grief. She took her station in the entrance through which the king was to pass to chapel, and when he approached she fell upon her knees, seized him by the coat, and presenting her supplication, fainted away at his feet. The king immediately raised her up, and taking the petition, gave it in charge of the duke of Grafton, one of his attendants. He then desired Lady Stair to conduct her to one of the apartments. The dukes of Hamilton and Montrose, the earl of Stair and other courtiers, backed these petitions for the royal mercy by a personal application to the king, who granted a pardon to the earl on the ninth of August.

The high-minded Balmerino disdained to compromise his principles

own.

by suing for pardon, and when he heard that his fellow-prisoners had applied for mercy, he sarcastically remarked, that as they must have great interest at court, they might have squeezed his name in with their From the time of his sentence down to his execution, he showed no symptoms of fear. He never entertained any hopes of pardon, for he said he considered his case desperate, as he had been once pardoned before. When Lady Balmerino expressed her great concern for the approaching fate of her lord, he said, "Grieve not, my dear Peggy, we must all die once, and this is but a few years very likely before my death must have happened some other way: therefore, wipe away your tears; you may marry again, and get a better husband." About a week after his sentence a gentleman went to see him, and apologizing for intruding upon him when he had such a short time to live, his lordship replied, "Oh! Sir, no intrusion at all: I have done nothing to make my conscience uneasy. I shall die with a true heart, and undaunted; for I think no man fit to live who is not fit to die; nor am I any ways concerned at what I have done." Being asked a few days before his execution in what manner he would go to the scaffold, he answered, "I will go in the regimentals which I wore when I was first taken, with a woollen shirt next my skin, which will serve me instead of a shroud to be buried in." Being again asked why he would not have a new suit of black, he replied, "It would be thought very imprudent in a man to repair an old house when the lease of it was near expiring; and the lease of my life expires next Monday." The king could not but admire the high bearing and manly demeanour of this unfortunate nobleman; and when the friends of the other prisoners were making unceasing applications to him for mercy, he said, "Does nobody intercede for poor Balmerino? He, though a rebel, is at least an honest man."

On the eleventh of August an order was signed in council for the execution of the earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino, and on the twelfth two writs passed the great seal, empowering the constable of the Tower to deliver their bodies to the sheriffs of London, for execution on Monday the eighteenth. The order for their execution was announced to the unfortunate noblemen by Mr Foster, a dissenting clergyman. Lord Kilmarnock received the intelligence with all the composure of a man resigned to his fate, but at the same time with a deep feeling of concern for his future state. Balmerino, who perhaps had as strong a sense of religion as Kilmarnock, received the news with the utmost unconcern. He and his lady were sitting at dinner when the warrant arrived, and, being informed of it, her ladyship started up from the table and fainted away. His lordship raised her up, and after she had recovered, he requested her to resume her seat at table and finish her dinner.

On the Saturday preceding the execution, General Williamson, at Kilmarnock's desire, as is supposed, gave him a minute detail of all the

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circumstances of solemnity and outward terror which would accompany it. He told the earl, that, on Monday, about ten o'clock in the morning, the sheriffs would come to demand the prisoners, who would be delivered to them at the gate of the Tower; that thence, if their lordships thought proper, they should walk on foot to the house appointed on Tower-hill for their reception, where the rooms would be hung with black to make the more decent and solemn appearance, and that the scaffold also would be covered with black cloth; that his lordship might repose and prepare himself in the room fitted up for him as long as he thought it convenient, remembering only that the warrant for the execution was limited to, and consequently expired at, one o'clock; that, because of a complaint made by Lord Kenmure, that the block was too low, it was ordered to be raised to the height of two feet; that, in order to fix it the more firmly, props would be placed directly under it, that the certainty or decency of the execution might not be obstructed by any concussion or sudden jerk of the body. All this Lord Kilmarnock heard without the least emotion, and expressed his satisfaction with the arrangements. But when the general told him that two mourning hearses would be provided, and placed close by the scaffold, in order that, when their heads were struck off, the coffins might be soon taken out to receive the bodies, he said he thought it would be better for the coffins to be upon the scaffold, that the bodies might be sooner removed out of sight. And being further informed, that an executioner had been provided who would perform his duty dexterously, and that, moreover, he was "a very good sort of man," Kilmarnock said, "General, this is one of the worst circumstances you have mentioned. I cannot thoroughly like for such business your good sort of men; for one of that character, I apprehend, must be a tender-hearted and compassionate man, and a rougher and a less sensible temper might be fitter to be employed." The earl then desired that four persons might be appointed to receive the head when it was severed from the body, in a red cloth, that it might not, as he had been informed was the case on some former executions, roll about the scaffold, and be thereby mangled and disfigured; for that, though this was, in comparison, but a trifling circumstance, he was unwilling that his body should appear with any unnecessary indecency after the law had been satisfied. Being told that his head would be held up to the multitude, and public proclamation made that it was the head of a traitor, his lordship observed, that he knew that such a practice was followed on all such occasions, and spoke of it as a thing which did not in the least affect him. After this conversation, Mr Foster advised the earl to think frequently on the circumstances which would attend his death, in order to blunt their impression when they occurred.

Balmerino was not actuated with the same feeling of curiosity as Kilmarnock was, to know the circumstances which would attend his execu tion; but awaited his fate with the indifference of a martyr desirous of sealing his faith with his blood. The following letter, written by

on the eve of his execution, to the Chevalier de St George, strikingly exemplifies the cool intrepidity of the man, and the sterling honesty with which he adhered to his principles :

"SIR,-You may remember, that, in the year 1716, when your Majesty was in Scotland, I left a company of foot purely with a design to serve your Majesty, and, had I not made my escape then, I should certainly have been shot for a deserter.

"When I was abroad I lived many years at my own charges before I ask'd any thing from you, being unwilling to trouble your Majesty while I had any thing of my own to live upon, and when my father wrote me that he had a remission for me, which was got without my asking or knowledge, I did not accept of it till I first had your Majesty's permission. Sir, when his Royal Highness the Prince, your son, came to Edinburgh, as it was my bounden and indispensable duty, I joyn'd him, for which I am to-morrow to lose my head on a scaffold, whereat I am so far from being dismayed, that it gives me great satisfaction and peace of mind that I die in so righteous a cause. I hope, Sir, on these considerations, your Majesty will provide for my wife so as she may not want bread, which otherwise she must do, my brother having left more debt on the estate than it was worth, and having nothing in the world to give her. I am, with the most profound respect, Sir, your Majesty's most faithful and devoted subject and servant,

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"BALMERINO."*

On Monday, the eighteenth of August, about six o'clock in the morning, a thousand foot-guards, a troop of life-guards, and one of horseguards, marched through the city, and drew up on Tower-hill. They

*The original of the above letter, from which this copy was taken, is in the possession of his Majesty, and is written in a remarkably bold and steady hand. The Chevalier sent a copy of this letter to Charles on 20th January, 1747. "I send you," says he, "n copy of poor Lord Balmerino's letter. I shall inquire about his widow, and send her some relief if she stands in need of it."-Stuart Papers. James was as good as his word. See Mr Theodore Hay's letter to Secretary Edgar, of 10th June, 1747, and Lady Balmerino's receipt, 18th May following, for £60, in the Appendix. The originals are ir the possession of his Majesty. The letter of Lord Balmerino, and the circumstances of his death, are feelingly alluded to in a letter written by Lady Balmerino to the Chevalier from Edinburgh, on 15th June, 1751:-" Before my dear lord's execution, he leaving this world, and having no other concern in time but me, wrote a letter to your Ma jesty, dated 17th August, 1746, recommending me and my destitute condition to your Majesty's commiseration and bounty. You are well informed of his undaunted courage and behaviour at his death, so that even your Majesty's enemies and his do unanimously confess that he died like a hero, and asserted and added a lustre which never will be forgot to the undoubted right your Majesty has to your three realms. He had the honour to have been in your Majesty's domestick service in Italy, and ever preserved, before his last appearance, an inviolable, constant attachment to your royal house and interest, which at last he not only confirmed by his dying words, but sealed it with his blood, than which a greater token and proof it is not of a subject to give of his love and fidelity to his sovereign."-See this and another letter of Lady Balmerino to the Chevalier de St. George, 5th February, 1752, in the Appendix, tuken from the originals, in the possession of his Majesty.

formed round the scaffold, and extended themselves to the lower gate of the Tower, in two lines, with a sufficient interval between to allow the procession to pass. About eight o'clock the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, the under-sheriffs, six sergeants-at-mace, six yeomen, and the executioner, met at the Mitre Tavern, in Fenchurch-street, where they breakfasted. After breakfast they proceeded to the house on Tower-hill, hired by them for the reception of the prisoners, in front of which the scaffold had been erected. At ten o'clock the block was fixed on the stage, covered with black cloth, and several sacks of sawdust were provided to be strewed upon the scaffold. Soon after, the two coffins were brought and placed upon the scaffold. Upon Kilmarnock's coffin was a plate with this inscription, "Gulielmus Comes de Kilmarnock, decollatus 18o Augusti, 1746, ætat. suæ 42," with an earl's coronet over it, and six coronets over the six handles. The plate on Balmerino's coffin bore this inscription, "Arthurus Dominus de Balmerino, decollatus 18° Augusti, 1746, ætat. suæ 58," surmounted by a baron's coronet, and with six others over the handles.

These preparations were completed about half-past ten, when the sheriffs, accompanied by their officers, went to the Tower, and, knocking at the door, were interrogated by the warder from within, "Who's there?" "The sheriffs of London and Middlesex," was the answer made by one of the officers. The warder then, agreeably to an ancient practice, asked, "What do they want?" when the same officer answered, "The bodies of William, earl of Kilmarnock, and Arthur, Lord Balmerino." The warder then said, "I will go and inform the lieutenant of the Tower." General Williamson thereupon went to inform the prisoners that the sheriffs were in attendance. When told that he was wanted, Lord Kilmarnock, who had just been engaged in prayer with Mr. Foster, betrayed no fear, but said, with great composure, "General, I am ready; I'll follow you." At the foot of the stair he met Lord Balmerino. They embraced each other, and Balmerino said, "I am heartily sorry to have your company in this expedition." The ill-fated noblemen were then brought to the Tower-gate, and delivered over to the sheriffs, who granted receipts for their persons to the deputy-lieutenant of the Tower. When the prisoners were leaving the Tower, the deputy-lieutenant, according to an ancient usage, cried, "God bless King George!" to which Kilmarnock assented by a bow, but Balmerino emphatically exclaimed, "God bless King James." The procession then moved slowly forward in the following order :-First, the constables of the Tower Hamlets, followed by the knights' marshal's men and tipstaves, and the sheriffs' officers. Then the prisoners, attended by their chaplains, and the two sheriffs, followed by the warders of the Tower, next a guard of musketeers. Two hearses and a mourning coach closed the procession. When it had passed through the lines into the area of the circle, the passage was closed, and the

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