July 14.
Lord Torthorald was walking one morning, between six and seven o’clock, in the High Street, below the Cross, unaccompanied by any friend or servant, dreading no harm, when William Stewart, nephew of the man he had slain twelve years before, observing him, was unable to restrain the rancorous feeling of the moment, and pulling out a short sword he carried, stabbed him in the back, so that he fell to the ground and instantly died.
William Stewart escaped, and we hear no more of him. The Privy Council, horror-struck at the outrage, had two meetings on the same day to consider what should be done. At the first, before noon, they ordered that the Earl of Morton, James commendator of Melrose, Sir George and Sir Archibald Douglas, his uncles, —— Douglas now of Torthorald, William Douglas, apparent of Drumlanrig, Archibald Douglas of Tofts, and Sir James Dundas of Arniston—all friends of the deceased, and presumably eager to revenge his slaughter—should be confined to their lodgings. Lord Ochiltree, on whom the Douglases might be apt to vent their fury, was likewise commanded to keep within doors. At the second meeting, after noon, they gave an order for the apprehension of the culprit.
There is a remarkable connection of murders recalled by this shocking transaction. Not only do we ascend to Torthorald’s slaughter of Stewart in 1596, and Stewart’s deadly prosecution of Morton to the scaffold in 1581; but William Stewart was the son of the Sir William Stewart who was slain by the Earl of Bothwell in Blackfriars’ Wynd in 1588. This, however, is the last open murder of one gentleman by another which we have to record as taking place on a street in Edinburgh.
Lord Torthorald lies buried under a carved slab in Holyrood Chapel, where the guide reads his name daily to hundreds of visitors, few of whom know what a series of tragic circumstances in old Scottish history lies concentered in the body of him who sleeps below.
1608.
The progress of persecution against the Catholics may be traced all through this period by the equal progress of the king’s measures for introducing the episcopal system into the church. A General Assembly, which met at Linlithgow in December 1606, was brought by court influence to give a consent to the principle of permanent moderators for presbyteries—a necessary step to the assumption of entire power over dioceses by the bishops. They sent the act to court, with a petition for fresh securities against the Catholic nobles of the north, and their ladies. James affected to listen to their desires, and promised well, but does not seem to have taken any decisive steps till he found that the act for constant moderators, as interpreted by him, met considerable resistance. He then called another General Assembly, mainly for the purpose of taking ‘strait order’ with the adherents of the proscribed faith.
This reverend body professed to consider the country as in unexampled danger from popery. It is found complaining that Jesuit and seminary priests were allowed to traffic within the land, that papistical books were brought from abroad, and that persons in authority often shewed favour to traffickers and excommunicated papists, ‘such as the abbot of New Abbey and other mass priests, demitted, as is thought, out of ward, not without reward [bribery], and without all warrant of his majesty, and presently tolerated in this country without pursuit.’ Amongst some objects petitioned for from the king, were—that papists of rank be imprisoned, and only Protestants have access to them; that orders be given for down-casting of the Laird of Gight’s chapel, and the house of John Cheyne in Kissilmonth, who receipted all Jesuits and seminary priests; and that order be taken with the pilgrimages—namely, to the Chapel called Ordiquhill, and the Chapel of Grace, and to a well in the bounds of Enzie upon the south side of Spey.