Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/317

 288

Now it must not be supposed that, how ever frequent and flagrant may have been the failure or corruption of justice in these days, there were not plenty of good and earnest men in the land, jealous for the dig nity and purity of the courts, and for the maintenance of equity and order. Their task was a hard — it must have seemed at times a hopeless — one, but we enjoy the fruits of their labors at this day. The office of juryman was coveted as little in the sixteenth century as in the nineteenth, and for weightier reasons. If the assize ac quitted the prisoner on the evidence, they were liable to severe punishment in the event of the King or his advisers taking a different view. Thus, in 1537 Thomas Lawristoune of that Ilk and six other gentlemen were tried for perjury because they had acquitted the laird of Penicuik of mutilating Roger Tuedy of the " tholme " of his right hand, notwithstanding that " the said Rogeris tholme was schewin [shown] before thame . . . cutit away and mutilât." They were all sen tenced to forfeiture of their movable goods, to be denounced infamous, and to be im prisoned for a year and a day; "and farther, induring the Kingis will." There was made a pathetic appeal by cer tain "puir craftismene of ye burcht of Abirdene " to Queen Mary. They had been summoned to sit as jurors on a trial arising out of the blood feud between the Inneses and the Dunbars : never were men so awk wardly fixed between the devil and the deep sea. So they wrote to her Majesty, setting forth that — "Like as we haue bene diuerse tymes this yeire summond of befoir be youre gracis Pursevewantis and Messengerris to pas vpoun Assise in actionis distant fra ws fourty, fifty and Ix of mylis, that we knaw nathing thairof mair nor thai that cluellis in Jherusalem : And swa [so]. Ma dame, we ar hevely trublit and herreit [wor ried] heirthrow, be faill by [failure], abvse and misorclour of the said Pursewantis and Messingeris, that will nocht summond Lords, Lairdis

and Barronis, as wes wount to be done in all tymes bigane, past memour of man, quhill [until] this instant yeir bigane;"

they craved and obtained excuse from serv ing except in actions arising in the burgh or three miles round. Talking of juries, we may anticipate fifty years in order to note the remarkable change which had come over the social status of the Armstrongs, once the most irreclaimable rievers and cattle-lifters on the Border. "Jok Scott, alias callit Jok the Sukler," was tried on a capital charge and condemned to death for sheep-stealing. This was a craft in which the Armstrongs had been experts not very long before, yet no fewer than nine out of the fifteen jurymen bore that redoubt able name, at the head of the list being "Frances Airmcstrang, callit of Kynmonthe," one of the " seven stark sons " of Kinmount Willie. This was in 1 6 1 6 : two years later there is further proof, not only of the com fortable circumstances to which the Arm strongs had attained, but how completely they had severed their ancient partnership in lawlessness with the Elliots. Gilbert Elliot, better known as Gib the Galliard, was sentenced to be scourged through the streets of Edinburgh and then banished for life, for having taken a purse, " ffourtie pundis being thairin, furth of Johnne Airmestrangis breikis." Before taking final leave of Queen Mary's reign, it may be noted that in 1563 occurs the first entry of judicial proceedings against a witch. Perhaps no text of Scripture has ever been made the direct authority for so much inhuman iniquity as " Thou shall not suffer a witch to live; " and the most cur sory survey of the criminal records of the following reign cannot fail to show the prominence given to witchcraft in the chron icle of guilt. But in this solitary instance of a prosecution under Queen Mary, the death sentence was not pronounced, and Agnes Milligan of Dunfermline was only condemned to banishment.