In the Tower Dr. Cameron was allowed to rest some eight and forty hours, and then a multitude saw him carried from the fortress to where the Privy Council were sitting. The illustrious members of that body were in an angry mood. They were blustering in their manner, but they stooped to flattering promises if he would only make a revelation. When he declined to gratify them, they fell into loud tumultuous threatenings. They could neither frighten nor cajole him; and accordingly they flung him to the law, and to the expounders and the executants of it.
TRIAL OF CAMERON.
Very short work did the latter make with the poor gentleman. It is said that when he was first captured he denied being the man they took him for. Now, on the 17th of May, he made no such denial, nor did he deny having been in arms against the ‘present happy establishment.’ He declared that circumstances, over which he had no control, prevented him from clearing his attainder by a surrender on or before a stated day. But he neither concealed his principles nor asked for mercy. There was no intention of according him any. Sir William Lee and his brother judges, the identity of the prisoner being undisputed, agreed that he must be put to death under the old attainder, and Lee delivered the sentence with a sort of solemn alacrity. It was the old, horrible sentence of partial hanging, disembowelling, and so forth. When Lee had reached the declaration as to hanging, he looked the doctor steadily in the face, said with diabolical emphasis, ‘but NOT till you are dead;’ and added all the horrible indignities to which the poor body, externally and internally, was to be subjected. The judge was probably vexed at finding no symptom that he had scared the helpless victim, who was carried back to the Tower amid the sympathies of Jacobites and the decorous curiosity of ladies and gentlemen who gazed at him, and the gay dragoons escorting him, as they passed.
THE DOCTOR’S JACOBITISM.
Next day, and for several days, Jean Cameron, the doctor’s wife, was seen going to St. James’s Palace, to Leicester House, and to Kensington. She was admitted, by proper introduction to majesty, to the dowager Princess of Wales and to the Princess Amelia. The sunshine of such High Mightinesses should ever bear with it grace and mercy; but poor and pretty Jean Cameron found nothing but civility, and an expression of regret that the law must be left to take its course. She went back to cheer, if she could, her doomed, but not daunted, husband. He was not allowed pen and ink and paper, but under rigid restrictions. What he wrote was read. If it was not to the taste of the warders, they tore up the manuscript, and deprived the doctor of the means of writing. Nevertheless, he contrived to get slips of paper and a pencil, and therewith to record certain opinions, all of which he made over to his wife.
It cannot be said that the record showed any respect whatever for the king de facto, or for his family. These were referred to as ‘the Usurper and his Faction.’ The Duke of Cumberland was ‘the inhuman son of the Elector of Hanover.’ Not that Cameron wished any harm to them hereafter. He hoped God would forgive, as he put it, ‘all my enemies, murderers, and false accusers, from the Elector of Hanover (the present possessor of the throne of our injured sovereign) and his bloody son down to Sam Cameron, the basest of their spies, as I freely do!’ He himself, he said, had done many a good turn to English prisoners in Scotland, had also prevented the Highlanders from burning the houses and other property of Whigs, ‘for all which,’ he added, ‘I am like to meet with a Hanover reward.’
CHARLES EDWARD, A PROTESTANT.
On the other hand, the doomed man wrote in terms of the highest praise of the old and young Chevalier, or the King and Prince of Wales. There would be neither peace nor prosperity till the Stuarts were restored. The prince was as tenderly affectioned as he was brave, and Dr. Cameron knew of no order issued at Culloden to give no quarter to the Elector’s troops. As aide-de-camp to the prince, he must (he said) have known if such an order was issued. On another subject, the condemned Jacobite wrote: ‘On the word of a dying man, the last time I had the honour of seeing His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales, he told me from his own mouth, and bid me assure his friends from him, that he was a member of the Church of England.’ It is to be regretted that no date fixes ‘the last time.’ As to the assurance, it proves the folly of the speaker; also, that Cameron himself was not a Roman Catholic, as he was reported to be.
From Walpole’s Letters and the daily and weekly papers, ample details of the last moments of this unfortunate man may be collected. They were marked by a calm, unaffected heroism. ‘The parting with his wife (writes Walpole) the night before (his execution) was heroic and tender. He let her stay till the last moment, when being aware that the gates of the Tower would be locked, he told her so; she fell at his feet in agonies: he said, “Madam, this is not what you promised me,” and embracing her, forced her to retire; then, with the same coolness, looked at the window till her coach was out of sight, after which, he turned about and wept.’
CAMERON’S CREED.