On the Sunday before the appointed day, the High Church clergy took care to manifest their opinions, perhaps to exhibit their charitable feelings, by asking their congregations to join with them in prayers for the condemned lords. The scene that ensued was solemn and impressive, scarcely marred by the angry flinging-out of church of some exasperated Whig hastening home to write to the papers. Pray for lords like these, was the cry. ‘Are their souls dearer to God than the souls of thieves and murderers who die monthly at the common place of execution?’ On the other hand, there were Tory partizans among the lower classes who thought practice might as well follow praying. They made a feeble attempt on the Sunday night to pull down the scaffold which was erected in readiness for the tragedy on Tower Hill. The sight of a solitary soldier made them desist. As anyone caught would certainly have been hanged, and as anyone who tarried might have been shot, the Jacobite sympathisers cleared away from the hill with remarkable alacrity.
LADY NITHSDALE.
On the evening before the execution a little drama was being performed, the success of which is altogether inexplicable. Lady Nithsdale, accompanied by Mrs. Mills, in whose house she lodged, and by a Mrs. Morgan, alias Hilton, went in a hackney-coach to the Tower. The last two went in the character of friends of Lord Nithsdale, introduced by the wife to take their last farewell. They were really two confederates suddenly secured to further the plan for my lord’s escape. To keep them from reflection, Lady Nithsdale talked incessantly as they proceeded on their way. CHANGES OF DRESS. Mrs. Mills, who was ‘in the family way,’ and of the figure as well as height of Lord Nithsdale, wore clothes which she was to give up to the prisoner, dressed in which he was to attempt to make his escape! The tall and slender Morgan wore, under her riding hood, a second hood and other clothes in which Mrs. Mills was to be attired, after giving up her own dress to my lord. ‘The poor guard were not so strictly on the watch as they had been,’ wrote the countess, in after years, to her sister. They seem really to have been rather confederates than guards. The only restraint was that the supposed lady-friends should be introduced one at a time. Mrs. Morgan was the first to be taken in. During the brief time she was in Lord Nithsdale’s room, she divested herself of the garments in which Mrs. Mills (after the latter lady should have given up her own for Lord Nithsdale’s use) was to leave the Tower. Mrs. Morgan was then conducted to the gate by the countess who, feigning to be anxious for the arrival of her maid, Evans, implored Mrs. Morgan to send her forthwith. Mrs. Morgan having been thus got rid of, Lady Nithsdale took Mrs. Mills by the hand and led her, with her face buried in her handkerchief, as it had been all the time she had been waiting, to the chamber in which the earl stood, the passive, yet hopeful object of the countess’s devotion. Mrs. Mills stripped to the extent that was necessary, and my lord put on the cast-off garments, his wife having pinned her own petticoats about him. She also painted his eyebrows to match those of Mrs. Mills, and distributed white and rouge over his face and chin, the better to give him the appearance of a woman and to conceal that of an unshaven man. Mrs. Mills then put on the dress which Mrs. Morgan had brought in for her under her clothes, and Lady Nithsdale led her out, as she had done the other lady, but with no feigned weeping in her handkerchief, as when she passed in—imploring her to hasten, for her life, the coming of the tardy Evans. Guards, their wives and daughters, looked sympathisingly as they passed, and the sentinel officiously opened the door; but for whom he and the rest took this second departing lady, in a new costume, is beyond all conjecture.
ESCAPE OF LORD NITHSDALE.
The countess having now passed out the two ladies whom she had brought in with her, returned to the earl’s cell, to further prepare for his escape in the guise of the weeping woman, Mrs. Mills. When all was ready, save the half-ashamed, but not too reluctant earl himself, and the time was ‘’twixt the gloaming an’ the murk,’ the dusk before the lamps were lit, Lady Nithsdale led her lord over the threshhold. He buried his face in his handkerchief as Mrs. Mills had done. His lady kept him close before her, that the guard might not observe his gait, and went on imploring him as my dear Mrs. Betty, ‘for the love of God, to go and hasten the company of her maid, Mrs. Evans.’ At the foot of the stairs appeared the faithful Evans herself. She took the supposed woman by the arm and went away with him out of the Tower.
Thus, the countess had brought in two ladies and had passed out three; and no guard or gatekeeper seems to have been at all awake to a fact so suspicious.
LADY NITHSDALE.
Lady Nithsdale returned to her lord’s empty room in the same feigned fear of being too late to go to Court with a petition for the earl’s life, in consequence of the dilatoriness of her maid who had come and had just gone away with the supposed Mrs. Betty, who was despatched on a mission to find the provoking Abigail, and send her to dress her mistress, at once. The rest of the scene in Lord Nithsdale’s apartment may be best told in Lady Nithsdale’s own words:—‘When I was in the room, I talked to him as if he had been really present, and answered my own questions in my lord’s voice, as nearly as I could imitate it. I walked up and down, as if we were conversing together, till I thought they had enough time to clear themselves of the guards. I then thought proper to make off also. I opened the door and stood half in it, that those in the outward chamber might hear what I said; but held it so close that they could not look in. I bid my lord a formal farewell for that night, and added that something more than usual must have happened to make Evans negligent on this important occasion, who had always been so punctual in the smallest trifles, that I saw no other remedy than to go in person; that if the Tower were still open when I finished my business, I would return that night; but that he might be assured that I would be with him as early in the morning as I could gain admittance into the Tower; and I flattered myself that I should bring favourable news. Then, before I shut the door I pulled through the string of the latch, so that it could only be opened on the inside. I then shut it with some degree of force, that I might be sure of its being well shut. I said to the servant, as I passed by, who was ignorant of the whole transaction, that he need not carry in candles to his master, till my lord sent for him, as he desired to finish some prayers first. I then went down-stairs and called a coach, as there were several on the stand. I drove home to my lodgings, where poor Mrs. Mackenzie had been waiting to carry the petition, in case my attempt had failed.’ Her first words were: ‘There is no need of a petition! My Lord is safe and out of the Tower, though I know not where he is.’ The countess, restless in her joy, went in a chair to her friend, the Duchess of Buccleuch, who, friend as she was to the sentenced earl and to his countess, was ‘seeing company’ on the eve of the execution. Lady Nithsdale did not enter the mansion. She went, in a second chair, to another friend and confidant, the Duchess of Montrose. The countess was so excited by the strange success of the night, that the duchess was frightened, and scarcely crediting the extraordinary story, thought that the poor lady’s troubles had driven her out of herself. Her Grace, however, cautioned her to secrecy, and even to flight.
VISITING FRIENDS.
But the countess was bent upon joining, that very night, the husband whom she had restored to liberty and life. The faithful Evans, who had both courage and discretion (qualities which were utterly wanting in the husband of Mrs. Mills, whose timidity and confusion made him a burthen instead of a help), had safely led her master to a friend’s house, whence she had as discreetly and secretly removed him to another. This fact accomplished, she met her mistress at a trysting place, and conducted her to the earl. The temporary asylum was ‘opposite to the guard-house.’ The poor and honest woman who owned it, knew nothing and asked nothing about what must have seemed not above suspicion. When the gentleman’s wife arrived, she was shown up to a very small room with a very small bed in it. To be heard walking up and down was, the fugitives thought, a thing to be avoided. They threw themselves on the bed, and there consumed the wine and bread which had been brought up by the mistress of the house.