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Thomson and Anna Mark might be examined anent their knowledge of the pannel's accession to the foresaid murder, they allowed the forenamed persons their declarations to be taken for clearing of the assize," -in other words, for the more complete satisfaction of the jury. Few more striking passages are to be found in the records of proceedings in courts of justice than the evidence which the boy, Thomson's son, accordingly now gave. He declared that "Janet Johnston came to George Thomson's house between nine and ten at night, and Philip Stansfield, the pannel, came there shortly thereafter: and, the house being dark, the said Philip gave the declarant a turnor [a small copper coin] to buy a candle, which he did in the neighbouring house; and, after the declarant returned with the candle, his mother ordered him to go to his bed, which was in the same room, and beat him because he did not presently obey. Declares he heard one come to the door and inquire for Janet Johnston, and desired her to come home and give her child suck. Declares, he knew by the voice that the person who came was Agnes Mark, the said Janet's daughter, and that Janet ordered her to go away, and that she should follow her. Declares, she stayed a considerable time thereafter, and the said Thomson's wife was desired to go for a pint of ale, and Philip took out a handful of money to see if he had any small money, and, finding he had none, the ale was taken on upon trust. Further declares, that the said George Thomson and his wife, and Janet Johnston, did stay together and whisper softly a considerable time. Declares, he heard Philip Stansfield complain that his father would not give him money, and pray the devil to take his father, and he should make an end of his father, and then all would be his, and then he would be kind to them. Declares, Philip Stansfield and Janet Johnston went away about eleven, and shortly after his father and mother came to the bed where the declarant was lying across the bed-foot; and the de larant in the nighttime perceiving his father and mother rising out of the bed, and going out of the house, and that they staid a considerable time away, about an hour and a half or two hours, and that the declarant was perfectly awake when they went and were away, and he wondered what they were going about. Declares, his mother came in first, and came softly to bed, and within some time after his father came in, and put a stool to the back of the door, without locking it, for the lock made always a great noise when they locked the door; and the declarant's father called to him whenever he came in, but the declarant made no answer, that it might be thought he was sleeping; and his mother asked what had staid his father; and thereupon his father and mother did fall discoursing of several things, and particularly his father said that the deed was done, and that Philip Stansfield guarded the chamber door, with a drawn sword and a bended pistol, and that he never thought a man would have died so soon, and that they carried him out towards the water-side, and they tied a stone about his neck, and, leaving him there, came back to the Little Kiln, and reckoned whether they should cast him in the water with the stone about his neck or not, and whether they should cast him in far in, or near the side, and at length they returned, and took away the stone from about his neck, and threw him in the water. Declares, his father said that yet he was afraid, for all that, that the murder would come out, and his mother answered Hoot, fool, there is no fear of that; it will be thought he has drowned himself, because he will be found in

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the water.' Declares, when Sir James was missing in the morning, the declarant's mother said to his father, Rise quickly, for if ye be found in your bed they will say that ye have a hand in the murder.' Declares, the coat and waistcoat which were upon Sir James when he was found in the water were sent to Thomson's house, and Thomson's wife said to her husband and Janet Johnston, in presence of the declarant, that she was affrighted to see the same coat and waistcoat, for she thought that some evil spirit was in it, and desired her husband to send it away, which he would not: and further, that his mother said to her husband, in the declarant's hearing, that she was affrighted to be in the house alone after night fell; and, accordingly, whenever her husband went out, she went out with him, which was not her ordinary. Declares, the said George Thomson did go into Edinburgh several days before the declarant's mother was brought in, and she did immediately after he came into Edinburgh send away Sir James's coat and waistcoat, and that she was never in her own house after night since her husband came in, but did lie in Janet Johnston's house."

The declaration of the little girl, Anna Mark, Janet Johnston's daughter, was to the following purport:-"That on the said Saturday night Philip came up to her mother's house, and sent for George Thomson and his wife, and thereafter he sent her to see if Sir James was come home declares, that she saw Philip with his hat off give a low salutation to George Thomson when he came up to him; and when she returned and told that Sir James was come, Philip did take a drink, and runs down to New Milns; that about eleven o'clock that night her goodfather [step-father] sent her to seek her mother, and that she found her mother with Philip, in George Thomson's house, and that her mother bade her go home, and she would come after her; and that her goodfather thereafter, finding her mother did not come, sent her for Margaret Isles to give suck to the child, and went home again; but that her mother did not come long after that, as she thinks about two in the morning, and that she heard her good-father say, Wretch, where have you been so long? and she answered, Wherever I have been, the deed is done; and then went to bed: and that after that she heard them speak together, but could not know what they said. She declares, also, that her mother said she was still feared, and would not abide alone, nor lie alone in the bed, but said she was afraid."

These remarkable declarations wound up the evidence for the prosecution, and indeed all the evidence that was produced in the case; for the prisoner's counsel called no witnesses.

The counsel for the prisoner being, moreover, silent, the jury was now addressed by the Crown counsel, Sir George Mackenzie. Mackenzie, whose name deserves an honourable place in the literary history of his country, both for various professional and other literary works, and more especially for the lasting debt the bar-and it may be said the public-of Scotland owe to him as the founder of the Advocates' Library, had himself held the office of Lord Advocate from 1674 till the accession of King James II., and was re-appointed to it very soon after the present trial, on the elevation of Sir John Dalrymple to a seat on the bench as Lord Justice Clerk. But the Revolution, which made Dalrymple Secretary of State, or Prime Minister for Scotland, drove Mackenzie from public life. He retired to Oxford, and entered himself

a student there at the age of fifty-four, but died within a year after. In politics, Sir George Mackenzie, as his writings as well as his life attest, was a devoted worshipper of the prerogative and the divine right; and in the arbitrary times in which he served, he has the credit of having gone as far as any one in carrying his doctrines into practice. The thoroughgoing style in which he exercised the powers of his high office made him be long popularly remembered as "The blood-thirsty Advocate."

He began his speech as follows:-" Gentlemen of the inquest, I am glad to see so strong and universal a propensity for justice in my native country, that every man, upon first hearing this death, concluded it a murder, and trembled lest it should not have been discovered. Every man became solicitor in it-wished to be of the inquest; and ardent prayers were generally put up to Almighty God for this end, with as much earnestness as uses to be for removing general plagues. And the Almighty, in return of those, did first make so clear impressions on all men's spirits of Philip's being the murderer, that he had fallen by these; but his Divine Majesty, who loves to see just things done in a legal way, furnished thereafter a full probation in an extraordinary manner, whereby we might not only convince ourselves, but all such as are not wicked enough to have been the authors. You will discern the finger of God in all the steps of this probation as evidently as Philip's guilt; and this extraordinary discovery has been made, as well to convince this wicked age that the world is governed by Divine Providence as that he is guilty of this murder."

The learned counsel then proceeded to observe on the evidence.

Upon the miracle of the bleeding of the corpse, Sir George was very great. Therein, he said,-" God Almighty himself was pleased to bear a share in the testimonies which we produce; that Divine power which makes the blood circulate during life, has oft-times, in all nations, opened a passage to it after death upon such occasions, but most in this case; for after all the wounds had been sewed up, and the body designedly shaken up and down, and, which is most wonderful, after the body had been buried for several days, which naturally occasions the blood to congeal, upon Philip's touching it the blood darted and sprung out, to the great astonishment of the chirurgeons themselves, who were desired to watch this event; whereupon Philip, astonished more than they, threw down the body, crying, O God! O God! and, cleansing his hand, grew so faint that they were forced to give him a cordial." He next adverted to the evidence of the two children, sent, as he observed, by Divine Providence, which oft-times reveals itself by the mouths of babes and sucklings, in order that no shadow of difficulty might remain on the case. "How then," he proceeded, in peroration, from which we gather several interesting circumstances of the case, and incidents that marked the progress of the trial of which there is no other notice in the report, should the least scruple remain with you, before whom so full, so clear, and so legal a probation has been led, that, like a bend, every part of it supports another; and, like a chain, every link draws on another ? I need not fortify so pregnant a probation by laying out before you how often he and his complices have contradicted one another, and even how often he has contradicted himself in the most obvious and material points, and how he denies everything with oaths and with equal confidence, though never so clearly proved; albeit such as these are the chief things that

make up the probation in other cases: nor how he suffered the greatest indignities imaginable from his complices in presence of the Privy Council, though this convinced many of their lordships that he was at the mercy of those complices, who were too far upon his secrets not to be slavishly submitted to. But I cannot omit how, that since he came into prison, he has lived so impiously and atheistically, as shews that he had no awe upon his spirit to restrain him from committing any crime from a love to God or a fear to hell; and that he constantly filled and kept himself drunk from morning till night, thereby to drown the voice of his conscience, and to make himself insensible of the terrors of the Almighty.

"The judges have declared what was necessary to be proved, and you are only to judge if we have proved what they have thought necessary; and therefore there is no place to doubt if a man's life may be taken upon mere presumptions, for the judges have eased you of that scruple by finding the grounds in this qualified libel relevant; and his own advocates have acknowledged this probation to be so strong and unanswerable, that before the half of it was led they went away and deserted a client whom they found they could not defend; nor should any man doubt of a probation which one's own advocates think invincible. If then such amongst you as are fathers would not wish to be murdered by your own children, or such of you as are sons would not wish the world to believe that you are weary of your fathers, you will all concur to find this miscreant guilty of a crime that God has taken so much pains” [an odd expression]" to detect, and all mankind had such reason to wish to be punished, May then the Almighty God, who formed your hearts, convince them; and may this poor nation cite you as the remarkable curbers of vice to all succeeding ages!"

When Sir George Mackenzie had concluded his address, His Majesty's Advocate protested for an assize of error against the inquest, in case they should assoilzie [acquit] the pannel. That is to say, he protested that, in case the jury should pronounce the prisoner not guilty, he might be entitled to have them brought up to be tried themselves for giving a wrong verdict.

But the jury unanimously found the prisoner Guilty of all the facts laid in the indictment; viz. of treason, cursing his father, and being accessory to his murder.

The assize finding him guilty, the lords of justiciary ordered him to be hanged on the 15th of February, at the cross of Edinburgh, and his tongue to be cut out for cursing his father, and his right hand to be cut off for the parricide, and his head to be put upon the East Port of Haddington, as nearest to the place of murder, and his body to be hung up in chains betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, and his lands and goods to be confiscated for the treason.

All this was rigorously put into execution. "Some thought,' says Lord Fontainhall, a contemporary judge, "if not a miraculous, yet an extraordinary return of the imprecations was the accident of the slipping of the knots on the crosse, whereby his feet and knees were on the scaffold, which necessitated them to strangle him, bearing therein a nearer resemblance to his father's death; and a new application having been made that they might be allowed to bury him, Duke Hamilton was for it, ut the Chancellor would not consent, because he had mocked his religion so his body was hung up, and some days after being stolen down,

it was found lying in a ditch among some water, as his father's was; and by order was hung up again, and then a second time was taken down.”

The haze of popular superstition with which this horrible case is surrounded is no unfit atmosphere for one of the darkest and saddest of domestic tragedies to be found in judicial records; a tragedy, as we may gather from many glimpses we have, through the scene chiefly presented to us by the trial, into the back-ground of the past, of long years of sin and sorrow before the horrors of that last midnight in which the old man's breath was crushed out of him by the son who had already broken his heart. Philip Stansfield is said to have been a reprobate from his youth upwards; and a story is told by the Scottish church historian, Wodrow, which makes his doom to have been pronounced by the voice of prophetic sagacity, not uninspired, long before he heard the fatal words from the lips of the Dempster of the High Court of Justiciary. "This profligate youth," Wodrow writes, "being at the University of St. Andrew's a good many years before he committed this barbarous murder, came to a sermon in Kinkell Close, about a mile from St. Andrew's, where Mr. John Welch was preaching, and, in his spite and mocking, in time of sermon, threw somewhat or other at the minister, which hit him. The minister stopped, and said he did not know who had put that public affront on a servant of Christ; but, be he who he would, he was persuaded there would be more present at his death than were hearing him preach that day, and the multitude was not small. This was accomplished, and Mr. Stansfield acknowledged this in prison after he was condemned, and that God was about to accomplish what he had been warned of." Wodrow says that he had the circumstance" from several hands, and one of them present when this passage fell out." The clergyman who made this severe repartee was a great grandson of John Knox, and one of a family eminent in the Scottish church for eloquence and courage during nearly the whole of the stormy period from the Reformation to the Revolution. The time of Mr. John Welch's preaching in Fife was from about 1670 to 1674.

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