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BAI found taking part in a scheme which some noblemen and gentlemen had set on foot for the establishment of a Scotch colony in Carolina. "Any condition," as Hume remarks, "seemed preferable to their living in their native country, which, by the prevalence of persecution and violence, was become as insecure to them as a den of robbers." At this juncture, however, they were induced to enter into communications with the leaders of the Whig party in England, who were revolving a plan for a rising against the government, while unknown to them, certain fierce republicans formed a separate plot, commonly called the Rye-house Plot, for the assassination of the king and his brother. This conspiracy was betrayed to the government, who resolved to avail themselves of the opportunity to crush their political opponents. Lord William Russell, Algernon Sydney, and other leaders of the popular party, in defiance of law and justice, were executed for a crime of which they were entirely innocent; and Mr. Baillie and a number of other Scottish gentlemen were apprehended in London, and sent down to Scotland for trial, on the charge of complicity in the plot. No evidence, however, could be obtained of their connection with the alleged conspiracy. The government, therefore, resolved to adopt the illegal expedient of putting to Baillie an oath of purgation. He was accused, not by indictment, but on a royal letter, of a conspiracy to raise rebellion, and of a share in the Rye-house Plot, and was informed that if he would not clear himself of these charges by oath, and answer all the questions that should be propounded to him, he should be held as guilty. As he refused to comply with this demand, he was fined in £6000 sterling, a sum equal to the value of his whole estate. He was then remanded to prison, and confined for several months in a loathsome dungeon, which ruined his health, and reduced him to the last extremity. His behaviour under these trials, according to Bishop Burnet, "looked like a reviving of the spirit of the noblest of the old Greeks or Romans, or rather of the primitive Christians and first martyrs in these last days of the church."

Meanwhile the government were taking measures to supply the lack of evidence against him, by trying to wring confessions from his friends by the administration of torture; and at length he was dragged from his sick-bed, and on the 23rd of December, 1684, though so weak that he was unable to stand, he was placed at the bar of the justiciary court on a charge of high treason, and had to be supported by cordials to prevent him from sinking. He solemnly denied that he had ever been accessory to any conspiracy against the king's life, and the evidence against him was so defective, that in violation of the solemn promise of the council, the confession extorted from Principal Carstairs was produced in court by the Lord Advocate, "the bloody Mackenzie," as "an adminicle of proof," and the unprincipled lawyer, in a virulent harangue, denounced Baillie as an accessory to the "horrible plot," for assassinating the king and his brother. The venerable prisoner, looking fixedly on Mackenzie, said, "My lord, I think it strange that you charge me with such abominable things. Did you not own to me privately in prison, that you were satisfied of my innocence? And are you now convinced in your conscience that I am more guilty than before?" The whole court turned their eyes upon Mackenzie, who was overwhelmed with confusion, and muttered out, "Jerviswood, I own what you say, but my thoughts there were as a private man; what I say here is by special direction of the privy council," and pointing to the clerk, he added, "he knows my orders." "Well," replied Baillie, "if your lordship have one conscience for yourself and another for the council, I pray God forgive you—I do." At nine o'clock in the morning, a verdict of guilty was brought in by the jury, who had been impannelled at midnight. The council, apprehensive that the prisoner might anticipate the sentence by a natural death, ordered him to be executed on that afternoon. When this doom was pronounced, he said calmly, "My lord, the time is short, the sentence is sharp, but I thank my God, who has made me as fit to die as you are to live." His sister-in-law, Mrs. Ker of Graden, who had attended him in prison, and stood beside him during his trial, supported him also in his last moments. He was so weak, that he required to be assisted in mounting the ladder, and seating himself on one of the steps, he began to say, "My faint zeal for the protestant religion has brought me to this end;" when the drums were ordered to beat and silence his voice. He then submitted to his sentence, which was executed to the letter, with all its revolting barbarities. The address which he was prevented from delivering on the scaffold, was afterwards printed and circulated, greatly to the annoyance of the government, who attempted in vain to procure its suppression.

This unfortunate gentleman was as distinguished for his amiable disposition, and his abilities and learning, as for his patriotism and his fidelity to his religious principles. Burnet terms him "a worthy and learned gentleman;" and the celebrated Dr. Owen said to a friend, "You have truly men of great spirits in Scotland; there is Mr. Baillie of Jerviswood, a person of the greatest abilities I ever almost met with." His iniquitous attainder was reversed at the Revolution, and his estate restored to his family.—(Wodrow; Burnet; Fountainhall's Decisions; Pict. Hist. of Scotland.)—J. T.  BAILLIE,, an eminent Scotchman, and principal of the university of Glasgow, was the son of Thomas Baillie of that city, a cadet of the family of Jerviston and Lamington. He was born on 30th April, 1602, or, according to others, in 1599. He received his education first in the grammar school, and afterwards in the college of Glasgow under Principal Sharp. He matriculated in March, 1617; graduated in 1620; received episcopal ordination from Archbishop Law in 1623; was a regent of the college in August, 1625, in which capacity he was intrusted with the education of Lord Montgomery, by whom he was presented, in 1631, to the church of Kilwinning in Ayrshire. Though by education an Episcopalian, Baillie stood aloof from the high-church party, and when Laud attempted to force the new canons and service-book on the Scottish church, Baillie joined himself to the Presbyterians. In 1633 he was offered a charge in Edinburgh, but declined it. At the famous assembly of Glasgow which preceded the civil war in 1638, Baillie was present as a member of the Irvine Presbytery. In 1640 he published his "Laudensium," and was deputed to London in order to accuse Laud and negotiate with the king. Next year, on his return, he was made joint professor of divinity with David Dickson, in the university of Glasgow—an office he retained till the Restoration. He was one of the five clerical commissioners sent to the Westminster Assembly of Divines in 1643, and in March, 1649, he went with the commissioners of estates to the Hague to invite Charles II. to assume the government of Scotland. During Cromwell's advance on Glasgow, Baillie fled to the Cumbray isles, where he enjoyed the protection of Lady Montgomery. After the Restoration, Baillie was appointed principal of the university of Glasgow in January, 1661, vice Patrick Gillespie, who was a favourer of Cromwell. Wodrow says that Baillie was offered a bishopric by Charles, but declined the favour. In the spring of 1662 he was seized with a serious illness, which terminated his life in July following, in the sixty-third year of his age. Baillie's scholarship was most extensive and varied. He understood thirteen different languages, and wrote Latin with elegance and ease. Though he seldom took part in discussion, his learning and sagacity rendered him of great value to public movements. His ready memory and large acquaintance with history were of signal service to him. His principal works are controversial pamphlets: "Defence of Scottish Reformation," "Parallel betwixt the Service-Book and the Missal," "Canterburian Self-Conviction Queries anent the Service-Book," "Laudensium," "Opus Historicum et Chronologicum," &c. His "Letters and Journals" were first issued in Edinburgh, in 2 vols., 1775, and have been recently edited by David Laing, Esq., in 3 vols.—W. B., D.  BAILLIE,, a native of Ireland, born in 1736. He entered the British service, in which he rose to the rank of captain. Retiring from the army, he gave himself up entirely to the cultivation of the art of engraving, which he pursued diligently and with much success, not as a profession, but solely for the love of the art. The works of Rembrandt were his favourite studies, and he has left many fine engravings after the best etchings of that master.—J. F. W.  BAILLON,, a French naturalist, died at Abbeville in 1802. He devoted his attention in a special manner to ornithology, and collected important information regarding the sea-birds of the coasts of Picardy. The subject of vegetable physiology also engaged his attention. He published a memoir on the causes which lead to the destruction of woods, and the means of counteracting them; also on the mode of preventing the inroads of moving sands by means of plants with creeping stems, such as Arundo arenaria.  BAILLOT,, a violinist 