THE EVE OF EXECUTION.

While these incidents were making the night memorable in one part of London, a circumstance of another character, yet not altogether unconnected with the adventures of the Nithsdales, was taking place at Court.

The Princess of Wales had a curiosity to see one of ‘the Pretender’s Cross-Bows.’ This was the name given to the gags which had been discovered among the spoils of the war. These iron instruments were a devilish invention, and it is said that they were made by the hundred weight. The sharp, straight part of the gag passed over the tongue into the throat, the semi-circular portion pressed against the cheeks. Any attempt to speak would cause both tongue and cheeks to be cut. The instrument of torture was shown to the Princess and her ladies, by Countess Cowper, giving rise to great unanimity of comment. When this grim pastime was over, other occupation was taken up, not by, but in presence of, the noble and illustrious ladies. ‘We sat up till past two,’ says the countess, ‘to do a pleasing office, which was to reprieve four of the Lords in the Tower.’ It was resolved that only Lords Derwentwater and Kenmure should die. Lords Widdrington, Nairn, Carnwath, and Nithsdale were reprieved. When this resolution was being made, the last-named lord and his lady were lying on the little bed in the little room near the guard-house, unconscious that a reprieve deferred the execution of himself and three other lords to the 14th of March.

THE PRESS, ON THE TRIALS.

How did, what is now called the Fourth Estate, deal with the trial, the criminals, and the penalty?

The newspaper press neither reported the proceedings, nor made any comments on the judgment delivered. The simple facts that the Jacobite lords had pleaded guilty, that they had been sentenced, and that the Prince was present when the lords were condemned, were chronicled in few words. On February 21st the public were told that ‘the dead warrants had come,’ and that the master carpenter of the Tower had marked out the ground on ‘Great Tower Hill,’ for the scaffold. The ‘London Gazette’ despatched the lords in three lines. ‘Whitehall, Feb. 25th. Yesterday, James, late Earl of Derwentwater, and William, late Viscount Kenmure, condemned for High Treason, were beheaded on Tower Hill.’ The ‘Flying Post’ went into details, nine lines long, in which it was said that the lords, ‘being conveyed from the Tower to the Transport Office on Tower Hill, were beheaded in sight of many thousands of spectators, without the least disturbance or disorder; and we hear that the other four are reprieved till the 14th of March next. The Earl of Derwentwater’s corpse was taken down from the scaffold into a Hackney Coach, and that of Viscount Kenmure into a hearse.’ A paragraph, as brief as it is interesting, is appended to the above details. It runs thus: ‘P.S. We hear that the Earl of Nithsdale made his escape from the Tower, on Thursday night, at seven o’clock, in woman’s apparel.’ The ‘Daily Courant’ tells of the execution and the escape, in four lines. When the news of Lord Nithsdale’s escape reached Lady Cowper, at Court, she rejoiced at it, declaring that she was never better pleased with anything in her life, and that everybody else was as pleased as she was. ‘I hope he’ll get clear off!’ she exclaimed, when the report of the escape was confirmed. THE KING, ON THE ESCAPE. King George himself good-naturedly remarked, on the same report being made to him,—‘It was the very best thing a man in Lord Nithsdale’s condition could have done!’—Lord Campbell calls this, ‘a quaint saying,’ and takes the trouble to tell posterity, ‘I have often been tickled by it!’—After all, there is some doubt as to the truth of this story. Lady Nithsdale says, in her letter to her sister, Lady Traquair: ‘Her Grace of Montrose said she would go to Court to see how the news of my Lord’s escape was received. When the news was brought to the King, he flew into an excess of passion, and said he was betrayed, for it could not have been done without some confederacy. He instantly despatched two persons to the Tower, to see that the other prisoners were well-secured.’

LORD DERWENTWATER.

The Earl of Derwentwater, after all hope of mercy had left him, repudiated the principles he had affected while he was seeking for mercy. He had called the judgment of the Lords a ‘just judgment,’ and he acknowledged a difficulty in advancing anything that could extenuate his guilt. When the hour of execution was approaching, he expressed a desire that the inscription on his coffin-plate should intimate that he had died in the cause of his lawful and legitimate sovereign. With this desire the prudent undertaker declined to comply. On the scaffold, where the earl did not allow his sensible terror of death to mar his manly dignity, he read a paper, in which he denied the guilt he had formerly admitted, and also the authority of the peers who had pronounced a judgment which he had acknowledged to be just! He protested that the only lawful king was King James; and he asserted that the country would not be free from disturbances and distractions till that most praiseworthy king should be restored. Yet, he remarked that he himself would have lived in peace, if King George had only granted him his life! That Lord Derwentwater should have been allowed to read such a paper to a multitude witnessing his execution, is a proof of the indifference of the Government to the consequences of such an appeal. As far as the author of it was concerned, it was in bad taste. In every other respect, the unfortunate earl met his fate with becomingness. At a single stroke of the axe, he passed from life unto death; but the plaintive spirit of his last words lives in that stanza of ‘Lord Derwentwater’s Last Good Night,’ in which, referring to his countess, he says,—

Farewell, farewell, my lady dear,

Ill, Ill, thou counseled’st me,