He mounted the steps and stood upon the scaffold. The grace granted to even the meanest criminals was denied to him; he was not allowed to address the people. But to the magistrates and others round him he thus for the last time justified himself.
"I am sorry if this manner of my end be scandalous to any good Christian here. Doth it not often happen to the righteous according to the way of the unrighteous? Doth not sometimes a just man perish in his righteousness, and a wicked man prosper in his wickedness and malice? They who know me should not disesteem me for this. Many greater than I have been dealt with in this kind. But I must not say but that all God's judgments are just. And this measure, for my private sins, I acknowledge to be just with God. I wholly submit myself to Him. But, in regard of man, I may say they are but instruments. God forgive them; and I forgive them. They have oppressed the poor, and violently perverted judgment and justice. But He that is higher than they will reward them. What I did in this kingdom was in obedience to the most just commands of my sovereign: and in his defence, in the day of his distress, against those who rose up against him. I acknowledge nothing; but fear God and honour the King, according to the commandments of God, and the just laws of nature and nations. And I have not sinned against man, but against God; and with Him there is mercy, which is the ground of my drawing near unto Him. It is objected against me by many, even good people, that I am under the censure of the Church. This is not my fault, seeing it is only for doing my duty, by obeying my Prince's most just commands, for religion, his sacred person, and authority. Yet I am sorry they did excommunicate me; and, in that which is according to God's laws, without wronging my conscience or allegiance, I desire to be relaxed. If they will not do it, I appeal to God, who is the righteous Judge of the world, and who must, and will, I hope, be my Judge and Saviour. It is spoken of me, that I would blame the King. God forbid! For the late King, he lived a saint, and died a martyr. I pray God I may end as he did. If ever I would wish my soul in another man's stead, it should be in his. For his Majesty now living, never any people, I believe, might be more happy in a king. His commands to me were most just; and I obeyed them. He deals justly with all men. I pray God he be so dealt withal; that he be not betrayed under trust as his father was. I desire not to be mistaken; as if my carriage at this time, in relation to your ways, were stubborn. I do but follow the light of my conscience; my rule, which is seconded by the working of the Spirit of God that is within me. I thank Him I go to heaven with joy the way He paved for me. If he enable me against the fear of death, and furnish me with courage and confidence to embrace it, even in its most ugly shape, let God be glorified in my end, though it were in my damnation. Yet I say not this out of any fear or mistrust, but out of my duty to God and love to His people. I have no more to say, but that I desire your charity and prayers. And I shall pray for you all. I leave my soul to God, my service to my Prince, my good-will to my friends, my love and charity to you all. And thus briefly I have exonerated my conscience."
Once more the ministers pressed round him, proffering the remission of his spiritual sentence if he would confess his sins against the Church and the Covenant. Once more he answered that he could not accept it on those terms, but desired their prayers. They bid him pray for himself if he would; they would make no intercession for a man who died under the ban of the Church. One of these misguided creatures did not scruple to call him a faggot of hell, which his prophetic eye could already see in flames. Montrose made no reply, but bent his head in silent prayer, covering his face with his hat and raising one hand to heaven. As the executioner then approached to tie round his neck the copies of his declaration and the memoirs of his campaigns, Montrose gave the man a few pieces of gold, saying that he was even more proud of such a collar of merit than when the King had sent him the Garter. Only when his arms were pinioned did he show any signs of displeasure; but he contented himself with asking if they had any more compliments to bestow on him, as he was anxious to lose no honour during the short time left to him on earth. He then climbed the huge ladder with a steady foot and a countenance that had assumed its wonted serenity. "May God have mercy on this afflicted kingdom," he cried with a loud voice, and then moved his arms for the signal. The hangman burst into tears as he thrust him off the step, and as the body swung slowly out into the air, a universal sob of pity broke from all that vast crowd.
The inhuman sentence was carried through in all its details, and the dismembered trunk was placed in a rude shell and thrust into the common earth below the gallows on the Borough Moor. A pretty story, which there is no reason to discredit, tells how a few nights later the grave was secretly opened, and that heroic heart removed, embalmed, and carried to Lady Napier. For the strange adventures of this precious relic, how it was lost to the family, found, and lost again, there is no room here; the curious will find them fully described in the elaborate and interesting work to which these pages already owe so much.[27]
Eleven years passed, and again a vast crowd thronged the High Street of Edinburgh to witness a different scene. The King, for whom Montrose had died, was now restored to the throne of his fathers, and had decreed the empty tribute of a public funeral for the man whom he had not dared to lift a finger or speak a word to save. The scattered remains had been previously collected, and carried amid great pomp to Holyrood. There they lay in state from January 7th, 1661, to May 11th, on which day they were placed beside the bones of his grandfather in the old cathedral church of St. Giles. No more imposing ceremony, it is said, was ever seen in Edinburgh. The streets were lined by the Train-bands; the Royal Life-Guards formed the escort. Marshalled by the heralds in their robes of office, the provost and magistrates of the City with the barons and burgesses of Parliament walked two abreast all clad in deep mourning. The coffin was carried by fourteen earls, while twelve noblemen of lesser rank held the pall. The armour worn by the dead man in battle, his field-marshal's baton, his Garter, and the other insignia of his state were borne before it by various members of his House. Behind walked the young Marquis and his brother Lord Robert, followed by the nearest relatives of the family. The long procession was closed by Middleton, now Lord High Commissioner of Scotland, representing the King, in an open mourning-coach drawn by six horses and attended by six gentlemen of quality on either side, bareheaded and also in deep mourning. Though the day broke dark and rainy, the sky cleared and the sun shone as the solemn pageant passed on its way from the palace to the cathedral, while the bells pealed from every steeple in the city. Nothing was wanting to enhance the splendour of the scene; to those who allowed themselves to reflect, nothing could have been wanting to add to its irony. The route was the same as that by which the living man had been dragged before the eyes of many now present amid brutal insults to an ignominious doom. As the coffin was lowered into the vault the Train-bands fired a volley, and the cannon thundered in answer from the Castle. In that Castle, a prisoner under sentence of death, execrated by all Scotland, lay Archibald, Marquis of Argyll.
It was left for our own generation to pay the last honours due to the memory of the illustrious dead. In the little aisle that now bears his name a lofty window, blazoned with the royal arms of Scotland and the shields of the families and clans that shared his triumphs and his fall, looks down upon the plain stone slab that for more than two hundred years alone marked the grave of Montrose. Over against the grave rises a stately shrine. Beneath an arched and fretted roof, supported on gilded pillars, lies carved in white marble the figure of the Great Marquis, bareheaded, in full armour, with his sword upon his breast. Above the figure a Latin inscription records that this monument has been raised to the memory of James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, by his descendants and kinsmen, by the bearers of his name, and by the admirers of his lofty genius. On a tablet below are engraved the lines with which he solaced the long hours of his last night on earth:
Scatter my ashes, strew them in the air—
Lord, since Thou knowest where all these atoms are,
I'm hopeful Thou'lt recover once my dust,
And confident Thou'lt raise me with the just.[28]
THE END
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