Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/435

Baillie primitive christians and first martyrs in those best days of the church.' On 23 Dec. 1684 the dying prisoner was (afresh) arraigned before the High Court of Justiciary on the capital charge of treason. He was carried to the bar in his night-dress, attended by his sister (Mrs. Ker of Graden). He solemnly denied having been accessory to any conspiracy against the king's or his brother's life, or of being an enemy to monarchy. He was 'brought in' guilty on 24 Dec, early in the morning, and sentenced to be hanged the same afternoon at the market cross of Edinburgh, with all the usual barbarities of beheading and quartering. Upon hearing his sentence he said simply: 'My lords, the time is short, the sentence is sharp, but I thank my God, who hath made me as fit to die as you are to live.' He was attended to the scaffold by his devoted sister. He was so feeble that he required assistance to mount the ladder. When he was up he said: 'My faint zeal for the protestant religion has brought me to this; 'but the beating of the drums interrupted him. An intended speech had to go undelivered, Thus, says Bishop Burnet, 'A learned and worthy gentleman, after twenty months' hard usage, was brought to such a death, in a way so foul, in all the steps of it of the spirit and practice of the courts of the Inquisition, that one is tempted to think that the methods taken in it were suggested by one well studied if not fostered in them.' The illustrious nonconformist divine Dr. John Owen, writing to a friend in Scotland before his death, said of him : 'You have truly men of great spirit among you; there is, for a gentleman, Mr. Baillie of Jerviswood, a person of the greatest abilities I ever almost met with.' '

The Jerviswood family was ruined by the execution and consequent forfeiture of their head. His son George fled to Holland. He returned in 1688 with William of Orange, when he was restored to his estates. The Baillies of Jerviswood have prospered since. An exquisite miniature of our patriot, painted in 1660, is at Jerviswood. It shows a firm yet naturally gentle face, with touches of Cromwell in it.

[Contemporary broad-sheet of Trial; Anderson's Scottish Nation, i. 177-9; Burnet's Own Time; Russell's Life of Lord William Russell; Wodrow's Analecta; Chambers's Scotsmen.]  BAILLIE, THOMAS (d. 1802), captain in the royal navy, entered the navy about 1740, and was made lieutenant on 29 March 1745. In 1756 he was serving on board the Deptford, and was present at the action near Minorca on 20 May. He was shortly afterwards promoted to the command of the Alderney sloop, and early in the following year, whilst acting captain of the Tartar frigate, captured a French privateer of 24 guns and 240 men, which was purchased into the service as the Tartar's prize, and the command of her, with post-rank, given to Captain Baillie, 30 March 1757. In this ship he continued, engaged for the most part in convoy service, till she was lost in 1760; and in the following year, 1761, he was appointed to Greenwich Hospital, through the interest, it is said, of the Earl of Bute; he certainly had no claim to the benefits of the hospital by either age, or service, or wounds. In 1774 he was advanced to be lieutenant-governor of the hospital, and in March 1778 published a work of 116 pages in quarto, the best account of which is its title. It runs; 'The Case of the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, containing a comprehensive view of the internal government, in which are stated the several abuses that have been introduced into that great national establishment, wherein landsmen have been appointed to offices contrary to charter; the ample revenues wasted in useless works, and money obtained by petition to parliament to make good deficiencies; the wards torn down and converted into elegant apartments for clerks and their deputies; the pensioners fed with bull-beef and sour small-beer mixed with water, and the contractors, after having been convicted of the most enormous frauds, suffered to compound their penalties and renew their contract.' The sin of making charges such as these was aggravated by the evidence, amounting to absolute proof, which accompanied them. Baillie had not put his name on the title-page, but he made no attempt to conceal it; and Lord Sandwich, whose conduct was both directly and indirectly called in question, at once deprived him of his office, and prompted the inferior officials of the hospital to bring an action for libel against him. The trial which followed, in November 1778, is principally noticeable for the magnificent speech with which Mr. Erskine, afterwards lord chancellor, but then just called to the bar, wound up the defence, and cleared Baillie of the charge (, Lives of the Chancellors, vi. 391-8). From the purely naval point of view, however, Baillie was ruined; he was acquitted of all legal blame; but Lord Sandwich had deprived him of his post, and refused to reinstate him, or to appoint him to a ship for active service. The question was raised in the House of Lords (Parl. Hist. xx. 475); but the interest of the ministry was sufficient to