Feb. 6.
This day saw the extraordinary sight of a Scottish earl, cousin-german to the king, led out to a scaffold in the High Street of Edinburgh, and there beheaded. The sufferer was Patrick Earl of Orkney, whose father was a natural son of King James V. Forty years earlier, this man would have stood his ground against the law: now, it was too strong for him, and he fell before it.
Earl Patrick appears to have been a man of grand and ambitious views, and his dream of life was to make himself a sort of independent prince in the remote group of islands where lay his estate. The sketch given of his style of living there by a contemporary writer is striking: ‘He had a princely and royal revenue; and indeed behavit himself with sic sovereignty, and, gif I durst say the plain verity, rather tyrannically, by the shadow of Danish laws, different and more rigorous nor [than] the municipal or criminal laws of the rest of Scotland; whereby no man of rent or purse might enjoy his property in Orkney, without his special favour, and the same dear bought.... Fitchit and forgit faults was so devisit against many of them, that they were compellit by imprisonment and small rewaird to resign their heritable titles to him; and gif he had a stieve purse and no rent, then was some crime devisit against him, whereby he was compellit [to give up] either half or haill thereof, gif not life and all beside. And his pomp was so great there [in Kirkwall], as he never went from his castle to the kirk, nor abroad otherwise, without the convoy of fifty musketeers and other gentlemen of convoy and guard. And siclike, before dinner and supper, there were three trumpeters that soundit still till the meat of the first service was set at table, and siclike at the second service; and consequently, after the grace. He had also his ships directit to the sea, to intercept pirates, and collect tribute of uncouth [foreign] fishers, that came yearly to these seas. Whereby he made sic collection of great guns and other weapons for weir [war] as no house, palace, nor castle, yea all in Scotland were not furnished with the like.’
1615.
The doings of this insular potentate at length attracted the attention of the law, and he was summoned in 1610 to answer for various acts of the nature of a usurpation of the royal authority during the preceding twenty years. It appears from this summons, that he made laws of his own, and prosecuted divers gentlemen for disobeying them. He had forced some of these persons into a Bond of Manrent, obliging themselves to maintain his cause against whatsoever persons, and that they should never know of any ‘skaith’ threatening him but they would reveal it within twenty-four hours. He had imprisoned sundry persons in irons and stocks sundry days and weeks, and compelled many of the poorer class ‘to work for him all manner of work and labour by sea and land, in rowing and sailing his ships and boats, working in the stane quarry ... loading his boats with stane and lime ... bigging his park dykes, and all other sorts of servile and painful labour, without either meat, drink, or hire.’ While forbidding the people generally to sell any of the produce of their lands without his licence, he imposed on them grievous taxations. In short, he had acted the baronial tyrant in the extremest form of the character.
The earl was now a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle, and there could have been no difficulty in convicting and punishing him. The king, however, felt mercifully towards his cousin; and after several briefer postponements, the case was hung up, and the earl conveyed, for the safer custody of his person, to Dumbarton Castle. It is believed that King James was even willing to have come to a compromise with the culprit, granting him the lucrative keepership of some one of the royal palaces, on condition of his renouncing all claim to Orkney. The earl refused to temporise, and continued to entertain the secret resolution to regain, if possible, his island sovereignty, and there set all law at defiance.
He had a natural son, Robert, a fitting instrument for his designs. Under his instructions, this youth proceeded to Orkney in 1614, and there assembling a company, took possession of the castle of Kirkwall, at the same time fortifying the church and steeple. Voluntarily or by compulsion, a great number of the islanders signed a bond, engaging to support him; and it was soon understood that Orkney was in rebellion against the crown. The Privy Council met to consider what should be done. The Earl of Caithness was now in Edinburgh, attempting to obtain remission for offences of his own, one of which consisted in his waging war in the preceding year against the Earl of Sutherland. It readily occurred to his wily mind, that, for a culprit like himself, nothing could be so good as to offer to help the government to punish the crimes of others. It was, moreover, rather a pleasure than a duty to carry war into Orkney. His offered services were accepted, and he quickly sailed with a strong military party for Kirkwall. He found the fortress strong, the country people generally in favour of the rebels, and great deficiency of provision for his troops. He nevertheless beleaguered the castle for about a month, during which time some damage was done by ordnance on both sides. At length, by adroit dealing with one Patrick Halcro, the chief associate of Robert Stuart, he brought about a surrender of the house and all it contained (September 29, 1614), with a condition for the saving of Halcro’s life, but for no favour to any other.
1615. Jan. 6.
Robert Stuart was brought to trial in Edinburgh, and condemned to death. He was a youth of only twenty-two, ‘of a tall stature and comely countenance;’ and it is to be remembered in his favour, that he withstood all the persuasions of the Earl of Caithness to give up Kirkwall Castle, foreseeing that he should be tortured into revealing his father’s guilt; he only surrendered on finding that Halcro was going to betray him. He died penitent, with five of his company.