Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/245

Rh Covenanting legend and tradition, one of the figures in Wandering Willie's tale in Red Gauntlet ("who for his worldly wit and wisdom had been to the rest as a god"). He had been Lord Advocate already, and was presently to be Lord Advocate again. Nominally but second counsel he seems to have conducted the whole prosecution. He had a strong case, and he made the most of it. Passionate invective and prejudicial matter were mixed with legal argument. Cultured politician and jurist as he was, he dwelt with terrible emphasis on the scene in Morham Church. "God Almighty himself was pleased to bear a share in the testimonies which we produce," nor was the children's testimony forgotten. "I need not fortifie so pregnant a probation." No! yet he omitted not to protest for "an Assize of Error against the inquest in the case they should assoilzie the pannal"—a plain intimation to the jury that if they found Philip Standsfield "not guilty" they were liable to be prosecuted for an unjust verdict. But how to doubt after such evidence? The jury found the panel guilty, and my lords pronounced a sentence of picturesque barbarity. Standsfield was to be hanged at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh, his tongue cut out and burned upon the scaffold, his right hand fixed above the east port of Haddington, and his dead body hung in chains upon the Gallow Lee betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, his name disgraced for ever, and all his property forfeited to the Crown. According to the old Scots custom the sentence was given "by the mouth of John Leslie, dempster of court"—an office held along with that of hangman. "Which is pronounced for doom" was the formula wherewith he concluded. On February 15 Standsfield went to his death "in manner alone prescribed."

The second case, not so romantic albeit a love-story is woven through its tangled threads, is that of Mary Blandy, spinster,

Rh