Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/388

 The Calendar of Scottish Crime. riding days, and Kincaid was charged with having carried off a " wedo " from Bailie Johnstoun's house in Water of Leith, in broad daylight, and taken her to his castle of Craighouse. By the strangest coincidence, King James, "the sapient and the sext," happened to be taking the air on horseback near Craighouse at the very moment when the eloping couple (for there is no evidence of reluctance on the lady's part) arrived at the front door. With the unerring discern ment of a Solomon, the king instantly per ceived that this was a "rapt;" with the noble impulse of a true knight he sent his suite to the rescue; the lady was set free and the gallant lodged in prison that night. There he lay, from 18th December to i /th February, till, induced by squalor carceris to accept any terms, he " cam in the kingis will." The said "will" was that he should be set free on payment of 2,500 marks (an immense sum for a private gentleman of those days); as also, that he " sail delyner to ws his broune horse." In considering the almost incredible sever ity with which the king permitted disrespect to his name or person to be punished, it is nec essary to remember not only the prevalent doc trine of divine right, but James's exaggerated estimate of the kingly office. Still, it is dis gusting to reflect that the king, who was so ready to remit punishment when something could be got for it, withheld the royal mercy in the case of John Dickson, an English mari ner, who, in 1596, having been required by one of the king's cannoneers to veer his boat out of the line of a gun, declared that he would veer his boat for neither king nor kaiser, and that the Scots king was "ane bastard, and nocht worthie to be obeyit." For these uncomplimentary expressions to a foreign sovereign Dickson was tried and hanged. Imagine one of Scotland's greater monarchs — Alexander III. or Robert the the Bruce — permitting such disgraceful cruelty! A still worse case occurred in 1600.

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Frances Tennent being convicted of having, three years before, written "certane vyild and seditious Pascallis [pasquils], detracting ws and our maist nobill progenitouris," the king issued his warrant ordering the offender, first to be .tortured in the boots, then to be taken to the market cross of Edinburgh and his tongue cut out, and lastly to be hanged. A second warrant followed, however, in which the king says that, "for certane causses moving ws, We haif thocht gude to mitigat that sentence, be dispensing with y« torturing of yl said ffrances, other [either] in the buittis, or be cutting out of his toung; aud ar content that ye onlie pronunce dome aganis him to be hangit."

The victim was a well to do merchant bur gess of Edinburgh, and of course part of the sentence directed that all his goods should be forfeited, "and inbrocht to our souerane lordis vse." Let the saddle be put on the right horse. In ordinary cases, the judge passed sentence, subject to révisai by the king; but in offenses against the king's person or dignity, the pris oner was remitted to ward till the king had decided on the manner of punishment. This was the procedure even in the case of Thomas Ross (1618), a poor crazed student of Oxford, who, distracted with poverty, and having appealed for help in vain to several Scottish gentlemen in London, penned a thesis, calling on the English people to ex pel the Scottish courtiers who swarmed round the king. He compared them, perhaps not inaptly, to the "seaven leane ky of Pharo that conswmet and distroyit the sevin fatt and weill fed ky, and yit war nocht satisfeit. . . . Vnto his schyning and royall Maiestie be vntrublet health and increse of glory! Bot God frome the heavnes, persew these Courtioures with blak fyre and brimstone I"

This precious document he affixed to the door of St. Mary's Church in Oxford. It was brought before the Vice Chancellor; the luck