A week later, Malcolm Laing and Henry Gibson, servants of the Marquis of Huntly, confessing their having been present ‘at the late mass within the burgh of Edinburgh,’ were adjudged by the Council to banishment for life. At the same time, two female servants of the marchioness having made similar confession, the Council, ‘seeing their remaining with the said marquesse may procure a forder sclander to the kirk,’ ordained that her ladyship should remove them from her company, and no more receive them, under pain of rebellion.
Apr. 27.
1601.
‘... Archibald Cornwall, town-officer, hangit at the Cross, and hung on the gibbet twenty-four hours; and the cause wherefore he was hangit—He being an unmerciful greedy creature, he poindit ane honest man’s house, and among the rest, he poindit the king and queen’s pictures; and when he came to the Cross to comprise the same, he hung them up upon twa nails on the same gallows to be comprisit; and they being seen, word gaed to the king and queen, whereupon he was apprehendit and hangit.’—Bir.
Cornwall sustained a regular trial before a jury, eight of whom were tailors. The dittay bears that ‘in treasonable contempt and disdain of his majesty, he stood up upon ane furm or buird, beside the gibbet, and called [drove] ane nail therein, as heich as he could reach it, and lifted up his hieness’ portraitor foresaid, and held the same upon the gibbet, pressing to have hung the same thereon, and to have left it there, as an ignominious spectacle to the haill world, gif he had not been stayed by the just indignation of the haill people, menacing to stane him dead, and pulling him perforce frae the gibbet.’
The punishment goes so monstrously beyond the apparent offence, that one is led to suspect something which does not appear. The ‘honest man’ whose goods were taken might be a known friend of the king, while Cornwall was known to be the reverse. It was perhaps inferred that the ‘unmerciful greedy creature’ was only too ready to embrace the opportunity of holding up the king to contempt. These remarks are only meant to suggest motives, not to justify the severity of the punishment.
The gibbet on which the portrait had been hung—as something rendered horrible by that profanity—was ‘taken down and burnt with fire.’
1601.