Whether Porteous gave the order or not, it is certain that the attack upon the gibbet was followed by a loose fire from the guard which killed some six or seven persons and wounded many others. Then Porteous made an attempt to withdraw his men, and as they were moving up the High Street the now infuriated mob again attacked, and again the guards fired upon the people, and again men were killed and wounded. Thus, as it were, fighting his way, Porteous got his men to their guard-house.
The popular indignation was so great that the Edinburgh authorities put Porteous upon his trial. Porteous defended himself vigorously, denied that he had ever given an order to fire, denied that he had ever fired his piece, proved that he had exhibited his piece to the magistrates immediately after the occurrence unused and still loaded. This defence was met by the counter-assertion {62} that the weapon Porteous had used was not his own, but one seized from the hands of a soldier. A large number of persons gave evidence that they heard Porteous give the order to fire, that they saw him level and discharge the piece he had seized, and that they had seen his victim fall. After a lengthy trial Porteous was found guilty and sentenced to death.
[Sidenote: 1736—Attacking the Tolbooth]
The sentence was received with practically general approval in Edinburgh, but with very different feelings in London. The Queen, who was acting as regent in the absence of George II., felt especially strongly upon the subject. Lamentable as the violence of Captain Porteous had been, it was still urged that he had acted in obedience to a sense of duty. It was feared, too, that the sufficiently lawless attitude of the lower population of Edinburgh towards authority would be gravely and dangerously intensified if so signal an example were to be made of an officer whose offence was only committed under conditions of grave provocation and in the face of an outbreak which might well appear to resemble riot. The Government in London came to the conclusion that it would not do to hang John Porteous, and a message was sent by the Duke of Newcastle notifying her Majesty's pleasure that Porteous should have a reprieve for a period of six weeks—a preliminary step to the consequent commutation of the death sentence.
But, if the Government in London proposed to reprieve Porteous, the wild democracy of Edinburgh were not willing to lose their vengeance so lightly. The deaths caused by the discharge of the pieces of Porteous's men had aroused the most passionate resentment in Edinburgh. Men of all classes, those directly affected by the deaths of friends and relatives, and those who looked upon the quarrel from an attitude of unconcerned justice, alike agreed in regarding Porteous's sentence as righteous and deserved; now, alike, they agreed in resenting the interference of the Queen, and the apparently inevitable escape of Porteous from the consequences of his crime.
{63}
What followed fills one of the most dramatic of all the many dramatic pages in the history of Edinburgh town. John Porteous was imprisoned in the Tolbooth, in the very thick of the city. Some of his friends, stirred by fears which if vague were not imaginary, urged him to petition to the authorities to be removed to the Castle, perched safe aloft upon its rock. But Porteous, filled with a false security, and rejoicing in the reprieve that had arrived from London, took no heed of the warnings. Perhaps, like the Duke of Guise on something of a like occasion, he would, if warned that there was any thought of taking his life, have answered, secure in the sanctity of the old Tolbooth, in the historic words, "They would not dare." Porteous remained in the old Tolbooth; he gave an entertainment in honor of his reprieve to certain privileged friends; he was actually at supper, with the wine going round and round, and his apartment noisy with talk and laughter, when the jailer entered the room with a pale face and a terrible tale. Half Edinburgh was outside the Tolbooth, armed and furious, their one demand for the person of Porteous, their one cry for his life.
The tale was strange enough to seem incredible even to minds more sober than those of Porteous and his companions, but it was perfectly true. Edinburgh had risen in the most mysterious way. From all parts of the town bands of men had come together; the guard-house of the city guard had been seized upon, the guards disarmed, and their weapons distributed among the conspirators. In a very short space of time Edinburgh was in the hands of an armed and determined mob; the magistrates, who attempted to enforce their authority, were powerless, and the crowd, with a unanimity which showed how well their plans had been preconcerted, directed all their energies to effecting an entrance into the Tolbooth. This proved at first exceedingly difficult. The great gate seemed to defy the force of all the sledge-hammer strokes that could be rained against it, and its warders were obstinate alike to the demands and the threats of the besiegers. But some {64} one in the ranks of the besiegers suggested fire, and through fire the Tolbooth fell. Fagots were piled outside the great gate and lighted, and the bonfire was assiduously fed until at last the great gate was consumed and the rioters rushed to their purpose over the glowing embers and through the flying sparks.
[Sidenote: 1736—A "respectable" mob]
They found Porteous in his apartment, deserted by his companions, dizzy with the fumes of wines, and helpless with the horror of the doom that menaced him. He might perhaps have escaped when the first alarm was sounded, but, as he lost his head before through passion, so he seems to have lost it again now through dismay. The poor wretch had indeed at the last moment, when it was too late, sought refuge in the chimney of his room; his flight was stopped by a grating a little way up; to this grating he clung, and from this grating he was plucked away by his assailants. In a few moments he was carried into the open air, was borne, the bewildered, despairing, struggling centre of all that armed and merciless mass, swiftly towards the Netherbow. In the midst of the blazing torches, the Lochaber axes, the guns and naked swords, that hemmed him in, the helpless, hopeless victim was swept along. A rope was readily found, but a gibbet was not forthcoming; a byer's pole served at the need. Within a little while after the forcing of the Tolbooth gate, Porteous was hanged and dead, and his wild judges were striking at his lifeless body with their weapons. It is said, and we may well believe it, that Porteous died, when he found that he had to die, bravely enough, as became a soldier. In that wild, mad life of his he had faced many perils, and if he pleaded for his life with his self-ordained executioners while there was any chance that pleading might prevail, it is likely enough that he accepted the inevitable with composure. Wilson was avenged; the victims of the fusillade of the city guard had been atoned for by blood, and Edinburgh had asserted with a ferocity all her own that England's will was not her will, and England's law not her law.