In the silence and solitude of his prison, Lord Kilmarnock's recollection reverted to those whom human nature were shortly to be left to buffet with the storms of their hard fate. It reverted also to those who might, in any way, have suffered at his hands. The following touching epistle, addressed to his factor, Mr. Robert Paterson, written two days only before his execution, shows how tender was his affection for his unhappy wife: in how Christian a spirit towards others he died. His consideration for the poor shoemakers of Elgin is one of those beautiful traits of character which mark a conscientious mind. The original of this letter is still in existence, and is in the possession of the great-grandson of him to whom it was addressed.[383]
"Sir,
"I have commended to your care the inclosed packet, to be delivered to my wife in the manner your good sense shall dictate to you, will be least shocking to her. Let her be prepared for it as much by degrees, and with great tenderness, as the nature of the thing will admit of. The entire dependance I have all my life had the most just reason to have on your integrity and friendship to my wife and family, as well as to myself, make me desire that the inclosed papers may come to my wife through your hands, in confidence; but you will take all the pains to comfort her, and relieve the grief I know she will be in, that you and her friends can. She is what I leave dearest behind me in the world; and the greatest service you can do to your dead friend, is to contribute as much as possible to her happiness in mind, and in her affairs.
"You will peruse the State[384] before you deliver it to her, and you will observe that there is a fund of hers (I don't mention that of five hundred Scots a-year); as the interest of my mother-in-law's portion in the Countess of Errol's hands, with, I believe, a considerable arrear upon it; which, as I have ordered a copy of all these papers to that Countess, I did not care to put in. There is another thing of a good deal of moment, which I mention only to you, because if it could be taken away without noise it would be better; but if it is pushed it will be necessary to defend it. That is, a bond which you know Mr. Kerr, Director to the Chancery, has of me for a considerable sum of money, with many years interest on it, which was almost all play debt. I don't think I ever had fifty pounds, or the half of it, of Mr. Kerr's money, and I am sure I never had a hundred; which however I have put it to, in the inclosed declaration, that my mind may be entirely at ease. My intention with respect to that sum was to wait till I had some money, and then buy it off, by a composition of three hundred pounds, and if that was not accepted of, to defend it; in which I neither saw, nor now see anything unjust; and now I leave it on my successors to do what they find most prudent in it. Beside my personal debt mentioned in general and particular in the State,[385] there is one for which I am liable in justice, if it is not paid, owing to poor people, who gave their work for it by my orders; it was at Elgin in Murray; the regiment I commanded wanted shoes. I commissioned something about seventy pair of shoes and brogues, which might come to about three shillings, or three and sixpence each, one with another. The magistrates divided them among the shoemakers of the town and country, and each shoemaker furnished his proportion. I drew on the town for the price out of the composition laid on them, but I was told afterwards at Inverness, that it was believed the composition was otherwise applied, and the poor shoemakers not paid. As these poor people wrought by my orders, it will be a great ease to my heart to think they are not to lose by me, as too many have done in the course of that year; but had I lived, I might have made some enquiry after it; but now it is impossible, as their hardships in loss of horses, and such things which happened through my soldiers, are so interwoven with what was done by other people, that it would be very hard, if not impossible, to separate them. If you will write to Mr. Jones of Dalkinty, at Elgin, (with whom I was quartered when I lay there,) he will send you an account of the shoes, and if they were paid to the shoemakers or no; and if they are not, I beg you'll get my wife, or my successors, to pay them when they can.
"Receive a letter to me from Mrs. Boyd, my cousin Malcomb's widow; I shall desire her to write to you for an answer.
"Accept of my sincere thanks for your friendship and good services to me. Continue them to my wife and children.
"My best wishes are to you and yours, and for the happiness and prosperity of the good town of Kilmarnock, and I am, sir, your humble servant,
"Kilmarnock."
Tower of London, August 16th, 1746.
On the Saturday previous to the execution of Lord Kilmarnock, General Williamson gave his prisoners a minute account of all the circumstances of solemnity, and outward terror, which would accompany it. Lord Kilmarnock heard it much with the same expression of concern as a man of a compassionate disposition would read it, in relation to others. After suggesting a trifling alteration in the arrangements after the execution, he expressed his regret that the headsman should be, as General Williamson informed him, a "good sort of man;" remarking, that one of a rougher nature and harder heart, would be more likely to do his work quickly. He then requested that four persons might be appointed to receive the head when it was severed from the body, in a red cloth; that it might not, as he had heard was the case at other executions, "roll about the scaffold and be mangled and disfigured." "For I would not," he added, "though it may be but a trifling matter, that my remains should appear with any needless indecency after the just sentence of the law is satisfied." He spoke calmly and easily on all these particulars, nor did he even shrink when told that his head would be held up and exhibited to the multitude as that of a traitor. "He knew," he said, "that it was usual, and it did not affect him." During these singular conversations, his spiritual attendant and the General, could hardly have been more precise in their descriptions had they been portraying the festive ceremonials of a coming bridal, than they were in the fearful minutiæ of the approaching execution. It was thought by them that such recitals would accustom the mind of the prisoner to the apparatus and formalities that would attend his death, and that these would lose their influence over his mind. "He allowed with me," observes Mr. Foster, "that such circumstances were not so melancholy as dying after a lingering disorder, in a darkened room, with weeping friends around one, and whilst the shattered frame sank under slow exhaustion." But experience and human feelings contradict this observation of the resigned and unhappy sufferer; we look to death, under such an aspect, as the approach of rest; but human nature shrinks from the violent struggle, the momentary but fierce convulsion, plunging us, as it were, into the abyss of the grave.