What was ultimately done with the four Stirling prisoners, we do not learn. As to Janet Douglas, the Council began to feel that she was something of an inconvenience in the country; so they determined to banish her beyond seas. At first, no skipper could be found who was willing to take her in his vessel; some were disposed to set sail without a pass, to avoid being compelled to take such a dangerous commodity on board. But Janet was ultimately banished and heard of no more.
1676-7.
Lord Fountainhall notes a remarkable homicide as taking place this winter, at the village of Abernethy in Fife. A butcher and another man, sitting in an ale-house together, quarrelled, and in a sudden fit of passion, the butcher inflicted a mortal stab upon his companion. Some gentlemen sitting in a neighbouring room heard the fray, and, rushing in, found the butcher with the bloody knife in his hand. Excited by the atrocity of the deed, they hurried off the murderer to the regality gallows, and instantly hanged him, though they had no sort of authority to act in that manner. They probably acted upon a popular notion, that a murderer taken red-hand, or fresh from the act, may be instantly done to death by the bystanders; which appears, however, to be a mistake.
1677. Jan.
The celebrated Beau Fielding is supposed to have at this time paid a visit to Edinburgh, while in difficulties on account of his suspected share in the murder of Robert Perceval—a young libertine found dead one morning near the Maypole in the Strand. He and two Scotch gentlemen of his own sort, being met one evening at their cups in a house in Edinburgh, were reputed to have drunk three toasts, ‘horrid to think on’—namely, the Trinity, their own confusion, and the devil.—Law. The allegation is but too credible, for about this time there begins to appear an extreme form of profligacy and impiety—confined, indeed, to a few of the upper classes—such as had never before been known in Scotland.
Jan. 18.
1677.