While these operations were going on, the commissioners on the Forfeited Estates were coolly reckoning up the little patrimony |1716.| of Rob Roy as part of the public spoil of the late rebellion. It is felt as a strange and uncouth association that Steele, of Tatler and Spectator memory—kind-hearted, thoughtless Dicky Steele—should have been one of the persons who administered in the affairs of the cateran of Craigrostan. In the final report of the commissioners, we have the pitiful account of the public gains from the ruin of poor Rob, Inversnaid being described as of the yearly value of £53, 16s. 8½d., and the total realised from it of purchase-money and interest, £958, 10s. There is all possible reason to believe, that it would have been a much more advantageous as well as humane arrangement for the public, to allow these twelve miles of Highland mountains to remain in the hands of their former owner.
1717. Jan.
Wonder-seekers were at this time regaled with a brochure stating how Mr John Gardner, minister near Elgin, fell into a trance, and lay as dead for two days, in the sight of many; and how, being put into a coffin, and carried to his parish church in order to be buried, he was heard at the last moment to make a noise in the coffin; which being opened, he was found alive, ‘to the astonishment of all present.’ Being then carried home, and put into a warm bed, he in a little time coming to himself, ‘related many strange things which he had seen in the other world.’ In the same publication was a sermon which the worthy man had preached after his recovery.
Apr. 29.
Mr Gordon of Ellon, a rich merchant of Edinburgh, lived in a villa to the north of the city, with a family composed of a wife, two sons, and a daughter, the children being all of tender age.[[502]] He had for a tutor to his two boys a licentiate of the church, named Robert Irvine, who was considered of respectable attainments, but remarked for a somewhat melancholic disposition. A gloomy view of predestination, derived from a work by Flavel, had taken hold of Irvine’s mind, which, perhaps, had some native infirmity, ready to be acted upon by external circumstances to dismal results.
The tutor, having cast eyes of affection upon a servant-girl in his employer’s house, was tempted, one day, to take some liberties |1717.| with her, which were observed and reported by his two pupils. He was reprimanded by Mr Gordon for this breach of decorum, which, on an apology from him, was forgiven. The incident sunk into the man’s sensitive nature, and he brooded upon it till it assumed proportions beyond the reality, and raised in his heart an insane thirst for revenge. For three days did the wretch revolve the idea of cutting off Mr Gordon’s three children, and on the day here noted he found an opportunity of partially accomplishing his morbid desire. It was Sunday, and Mr and Mrs Gordon went to spend the latter part of the day with a friend in the city, taking their little daughter along with them. Irvine, left with the two boys, took them out for a walk along the then broomy slope where St Andrew Square and York Place are now situated. The children ran about gathering flowers and pursuing butterflies, while this fiend-transformed man sat whetting a knife wherewith to cut short their days. Calling the two boys to him, he upbraided them with their informing upon him, and told them that they must suffer for it. They ran off, but he easily overtook and seized them. Then keeping one down upon the grass with his knee, he cut the other’s throat; after which he despatched in like manner the remaining one.
The insane nature of the action was shewn by its being committed in daylight in an open place, exposed to the view of multitudes who might chance to look that way from the adjacent city. A gentleman, enjoying his evening walk upon the Castle Hill, did obtain a tolerably perfect view of the incident, and immediately gave an alarm. Irvine, who had already attempted to cut his own throat, but unsuccessfully, ran from his pursuers to the Water of Leith, thinking to drown himself there; but he was taken, and brought in a cart to prison, and there chained down to the floor, as if he had been a wild beast.
There was a summary process of law for murderers taken as he was with the red hand. It was only necessary to bring him next day before the judge of the district, and have sentence passed upon him. In this case, the judge was the Baron Bailie of Broughton, a hamlet now overwhelmed in the spreading streets of the New Town of Edinburgh, but whose court-house existed so lately as 1827.[[503]] Till the abolition of heritable jurisdictions in 1747, the bailie of the Baron of Broughton could arraign a |1717.| criminal before a jury of his own people, and do the highest judgment upon him. Irvine was tried by the bailie upon the 30th of April, and received sentence of death. During the brief interval before execution, which was but a day, the unhappy wretch was addressed by several clergymen on the heinousness of his crime, and the need of repentance, and, after a time, he began to exhibit signs of contrition. The bloody clothes of the poor children being then exhibited before him, he broke out in tears and groans, as if a new light was shed upon his mind, and he had been able to see his offence in its true character. He then sent a message to the bereaved parents, beseeching their Christian forgiveness to a dying man; and this they very kindly gave.
Irvine was next day hanged at Greenside, having first had his hands hacked off, and stuck upon the gibbet by the knife with which he had committed the murder. His body was thrown into a neighbouring quarry-hole.[[504]]
June 10.