Mr James Mitchell, who made an attempt on Archbishop Sharpe’s life in 1668, and wounded the Bishop of Orkney, was taken prisoner in February 1674, and being subjected to examination, and promised his life if he would confess, did make a confession—which, however, he afterwards retracted before the Court of Justiciary, having in the interval been told that nothing could be proved against him, and warned that perhaps the promise made to him might not be respected. This conduct put the government to a difficulty, and irritated them the more against him. At length, after keeping him in a very hard confinement for two years, they resolved to subject him to the torture, as the only means left to bring him back to his confession.
It is not proposed here to detail the sufferings of the wretched Mitchell; but those who know the courts of law, as they now exist, will probably view with some interest the arrangements that were made beforehand for that kind of procedure.
Jan. 6.
The resolution having been formed to put Mitchell to the torture of the boot, the Council ‘do hereby nominate the Earls of Linlithgow, Wigton, Seaforth, the Lords Ross and Treasurer Depute as a committee of Council to meet on the 24th day of January next, at nine o’clock in the forenoon in the Parliament House, where the justices do ordinarily hold their courts, and to cause put the said Mr James Mitchell to the question and torture concerning his being in the rebellion in the year 1666, and appoints the commissioners of justiciary in a fenced court to be present then and assistant, in their robes, with their clerks and other officers of court; and recommends to the said committee, or any three of them with the commissioners of justiciary, to meet before that time and consider of the way and manner of the said torture,’ &c.
The Council afterwards ordered that a bailie of Edinburgh should be present, ‘to receive and put in execution such orders as the lords shall think fit to give.’—P. C. R.
The unfortunate Mitchell sustained the torture with surprising firmness, and without making any admission criminative of himself. A proposal being afterwards made to torture him in the other leg, one of his friends (so the report went) dropped an anonymous hint to Archbishop Sharpe, that if he persisted in the resolution, he should have a shot from a steadier hand; ‘whereupon he was let alone, but still kept in prison.’—Law. At length the unhappy man was brought to a regular trial, when the state-officers all denied in the witness-box that fact of the promise of life upon confession, which their own record bore, and which Mitchell alleged had taken place. It is just possible that the record misrepresented what took place; but it is very difficult to make so largely charitable an allowance. Mitchell suffered in the Grassmarket (January 1678).
1676. July 9.
‘A star was seen at twelve hours of the day by a great company of people met for sermon on Gargunnock Hills, and that when the sun was shining.’—Law.
Sep.