TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE REBELS.
The rebellion being quelled, the legislature resolved to make examples of those who had been concerned in disturbing the peace of their country. In June, an act of attainder was passed against the principal persons who had embarked in that desperate undertaking; and courts were opened in different parts of England for the trial of the prisoners. Seventeen persons who had borne arms in the rebel army were executed at Kennington Common, in the neighbourhood of London, and suffered with great constancy under the dreadful tortures which their sentence prescribed; nine were put to death in the same manner at Carlisle; six at Brampton, seven at Penrith, eleven at York: of these a considerable number were gentlemen, and had acted as officers; about fifty had been executed as deserters in different parts of Scotland; eighty-one suffered the pains of the law as traitors. A few obtained pardons, and a considerable number were transported to the plantations. Bills of indictment for high treason were found by the county of Surrey against the earls of Kilmarnock and Cromartie, and lord Balmerino. These noblemen were tried by their peers in Westminster-hall, the lord chancellor presiding as lord high-steward for the occasion. The two earls confessed their crimes, and in pathetic speeches recommended themselves to his majesty’s mercy. Lord Balmerino pleaded not guilty; he denied his having been at Carlisle at the time specified in the indictment, but this exception was over-ruled; then he moved a point of law in arrest of judgment, and was allowed to be heard by his counsel. They might have expatiated on the hardship of being tried by an ex post facto law; and claimed the privilege of trial in the county where the act of treason was said to have been committed. The same hardship was imposed upon all the imprisoned rebels: they were dragged in captivity to a strange country, far from their friends and connexions, destitute of means to produce evidence in their favour, even if they had been innocent of the charge. Balmerino waived this plea, and submitted to the court, which pronounced sentence of death upon him and his two associates. Cromartie’s life was spared; but the other two were beheaded, in the month of August, on Tower-hill. Kilmarnock was a nobleman of fine personal accomplishments; he had been educated in revolution principles, and engaged in the rebellion partly from the desperate situation of his fortune, and partly from resentment to the government, on his being deprived of a pension which he had for some time enjoyed. He was convinced of his having acted criminally, and died with marks of penitence and contrition. Balmerino had been bred up to arms, and acted upon principle: he was gallant, brave, rough, and resolute; he eyed the implements of death with the most careless familiarity, and seemed to triumph in his sufferings. In November, Mr. Ratcliffe, the titular earl of Derwentwater, who had been taken in a ship bound for Scotland, was arraigned on a former sentence passed against him in the year one thousand seven hundred and sixteen: he refused to acknowledge the authority of the court, and pleaded that he was a subject of France, honoured with a commission in the service of his most christian majesty. The identity of his person being proved, a rule was made for his execution; and on the eighth day of December he suffered decapitation, with the most perfect composure and serenity. Lord Lovat, now turned of four-score, was impeached by the commons, and tried in Westminster-hall before the lord high-steward. John Murray, secretary to the prince-pretender, and some of his own domestics, appearing against him, he was convicted of high treason, and condemned. Notwithstanding his age, infirmities, and the recollection of his conscience, which was supposed to be not altogether void of offence, he died like an old Roman, exclaiming, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” He surveyed the crowd with attention, examined the axe, jested with the executioner, and laid his head upon the block with the utmost indifference. From this last scene of his life, one would have concluded that he had approved himself a patriot from his youth, and never deviated from the paths of virtue.
GEORGE II. 1727-1760