It struck some men in the Privy Council that it was hard to take the life of a lad of eighteen, otherwise irreproachable, for a purely metaphysical offence, regarding which he had already expressed an apparently sincere penitence; and this feeling was probably increased when a petition was received from Aikenhead, not asking for life, which he had ceased to hope for, but simply entreating for delay of a sentence which he acknowledged to be just, on the ground that it had ‘pleased Almighty God to begin so far in His mercy to work upon your petitioner’s obdured heart, as to give him some sense and conviction of his former wicked errors ... and he doth expect ... if time were allowed ... through the merits of Jesus, by a true remorse and repentance, to be yet reconciled to his offended God and Saviour.’ I desire, he said, this delay, that ‘I may have the opportunity of conversing with godly ministers in the place, and by their assistance be more prepared for an eternal rest.’
Lord Anstruther and Lord Fountainhall, two members of the Council, were led by humane feeling to visit the culprit in prison. ‘I found a work on his spirit,’ says the former gentleman, ‘and wept that ever he should have maintained such tenets.’ He adds that he desired for Aikenhead a short reprieve, as his eternal state depended on it. ‘I plead [pleaded] for him in Council, and brought it to the Chan[cellor’s] vote. It was told it could not be granted unless the ministers would intercede.... The ministers, out of a pious, though I think ignorant zeal, spoke and preached |1696.| for cutting him off ... our ministers being,’ he adds, ‘generally of a narrow set of thoughts and confined principles, and not able to bear things of this nature.’ It thus appears that the clergy were eager for the young man’s blood, and the secular powers so far under awe towards that body, that they could not grant mercy. The Council appears in numberless instances as receiving applications for delay and pardon from criminals under sentence, and so invariably assents to the petition, that we may infer there having been a routine practice in the case, by which petitions were only sent after it was ascertained that they would probably be complied with. There being no petition for pardon from Aikenhead to the Council after his trial, we may fairly presume that he had learned there was no relaxation of the sentence to be expected.
As the time designed for his execution drew nigh, Aikenhead wrote a paper of the character of a ‘last speech’ for the scaffold, in which he described the progress of his mind throughout the years of his education. From the age of ten, he had sought for grounds on which to build his faith, having all the time an insatiable desire of attaining the truth. He had bewildered himself amongst the questions on morals and religion which have bewildered so many others, and only found that the more he thought on these things the further he was from certainty. He now felt the deepest contrition for the ‘base, wicked, and irreligious expressions’ he had uttered—‘although I did the same out of a blind zeal for what I thought the truth.’ ‘Withal, I acknowledge and confess to the glory of God, that in all he hath brought upon me, either one way or other, he hath done it most wisely and justly.... Likeas I bless God I die in the true Christian Protestant apostolic faith.’ He then alluded in terms of self-vindication to aspersions regarding him which had been circulated in a satire by Mr Mungo Craig, ‘whom I leave,’ said he, ‘to reckon with God and his own conscience, if he was not as deeply concerned in those hellish notions for which I am sentenced, as ever I was: however, I bless the Lord, I forgive him and all men, and wishes the Lord may forgive him likewise.’ Finally, he prayed that his blood might ‘give a stop to that raging spirit of atheism which hath taken such a footing in Britain both in practice and profession.’ Along with this paper, he left a letter to his friends, dated the day of his execution, expressing a hope that what he had written would give them and the world satisfaction, ‘and after I am gone produce more charity than [it] hath been my fortune to be trysted hitherto with, and remove |1696.| the apprehensions which I hear are various with many about my case.’[[195]]
There was at that time in Edinburgh an English Nonconformist clergyman, of Scottish birth, named William Lorimer, who had come to fill the chair of divinity at St Andrews. While Aikenhead was under sentence, Mr Lorimer preached before the Lord Chancellor and other judges and chief magistrates, On the Reverence due to Jesus Christ, being a sermon apropos to the occasion; and we find in this discourse not one word hinting at charity or mercy for Aikenhead, but much to encourage the audience in an opposite temper. It would appear, however, that the preacher afterwards found some cause for vindicating himself from a concern in bringing about the death of Aikenhead, and therefore, when he published his sermon, he gave a preface, in which he at once justified the course which had been taken with the youth, and tried to shew that he, and at least one other clergyman, had tried to get the punishment commuted. The prosecution, he tells us, was undertaken entirely on public grounds, in order to put down a ‘plague of blasphemous deism’ which had come to Edinburgh. The magistrates, being informed of the progress of this pestilence among the young men, had two of them apprehended. ‘One [John Fraser] made an excuse ... humbly confessed that it was a great sin for him to have uttered with his mouth such words of blasphemy against the Lord; professed his hearty repentance ... and so the government pardoned him, but withal ordered that he should confess his sin, and do public penance in all the churches in Edinburgh. And I believe the other might have been pardoned also, if he had followed the example of his companion; but he continued sullen and obstinate, I think for some months; and the party were said to be so very bold and insolent, as to come in the night and call to him by name at his chamber-window in the prison, and to tell him that he had a good cause, and to exhort him to stand to it, and suffer for it bravely. This influenced the government to execute the law.’
With regard to efforts in favour of Aikenhead, Mr Lorimer’s statement is as follows: ‘I am sure the ministers of the Established Church used him with an affectionate tenderness, and took much pains with him to bring him to faith and repentance, and to save his soul; yea, and some of the ministers, to my certain knowledge, and particularly the late reverend, learned, prudent, peaceable, and pious Mr George Meldrum, then minister of the Tron Church, interceded for him with the government, and solicited for his pardon; and when that could not be obtained, he desired a reprieve for him, and I joined with him in it. This was the day before his execution. The chancellor was willing to have granted him a reprieve, but could not do it without the advice of the Privy Council and judges; and, to shew his willingness, he called the Council and judges, who debated the matter, and then carried it by a plurality of votes for his execution, according to the sentence of the judges, that there might be a stop put to the spreading of that contagion of blasphemy.’[[196]]
Mr Lorimer’s and Lord Anstruther’s statements are somewhat discrepant, and yet not perhaps irreconcilable. It may be true that, at the last moment, one of the city clergy, accompanied by an English stranger, tried to raise his voice for mercy. It is evident, however, that no very decided effort of the kind was made, for the records of the Privy Council contain no entry on the subject, although, only three days before Aikenhead’s execution, we find in them a reprieve formally granted to one Thomas Weir, sentenced for housebreaking. The statement itself, implying a movement entirely exceptive, only makes the more certain the remarkable fact, derived from Lord Anstruther’s statement, that the clergy, as a body, did not intercede, but ‘spoke and preached for cutting him off,’ for which reason the civil authorities were unable to save him. The clergy thus appear unmistakably in the character of the persecutors of Aikenhead, and as those on whom, next to Sir James Steuart, rests the guilt of his blood.
The Postman, a journal of the day, relates the last moments of the unhappy young man. ‘He walked thither [to the place of execution—a mile from the prison] on foot, between a strong guard of fusiliers drawn up in two lines. Several ministers assisted him in his last moments; and, according to all human appearance, he died with all the marks of a true penitent. When he was called out of the prison to the City Council-house, before his going to the place of execution, as is usual on such occasions, he delivered his thoughts at large in a paper written by him, and signed with his own hand, and then requested the ministers that were present |1696.| to pray for him, which they did; and afterwards he himself prayed, and several times invocated the blessed Trinity, as he did likewise at the place of execution, holding all the time the Holy Bible in his hand; and, being executed, he was buried at the foot of the gallows.’
1697. Jan. 16.
There had been for two years under process in the Court of Session a case in which a husband was sued for return of a deceased wife’s tocher of eight thousand merks (£444, 8s. 10d.⅔), and her paraphernalia or things pertaining to her person. It came, on this occasion, to be debated what articles belonging to a married woman were to be considered as paraphernalia, or jocalia, and so destined in a particular way in case of her decease. The Lords, after long deliberation, fixed on a rule to be observed in future cases, having a regard, on the one hand, to ‘the dignity of wives,’ and, on the other, to the restraining of extravagances. First was ‘the mundus or vestitus muliebris—namely, all the body-clothes belonging to the wife, acquired by her at any time, whether in this or any prior marriage, or in virginity or viduity; and whatever other ornaments or other things were peculiar or proper to her person, and not proper to men’s use or wearing, as necklaces, earrings, breast-jewels, gold chains, bracelets, &c. Under childbed linens, as paraphernal and proper to the wife, are to be understood only the linen on the wife’s person in childbed, but not the linens on the child itself, nor on the bed or room, which are to be reckoned as common movables; therefore found the child’s spoon, porringer, and whistle contained in the condescendence [in this special case] are not paraphernal, but fall under the communion of goods; but that ribbons, cut or uncut, are paraphernal, and belong to the wife, unless the husband were a merchant. All the other articles that are of their own nature of promiscuous and common use, either to men or women, are not paraphernal, but fall under the communion of goods, unless they become peculiar and paraphernal by the gift and appropriation of the husband to her, such as a marriage-watch, rings, jewels, and medals. A purse of gold or other movables that, by the gift of a former husband, became properly the wife’s goods and paraphernal, exclusive of the husband, are only to be reckoned as common movables quoad a second husband, unless they be of new gifted and appropriated by him to the wife again. Such gifts and presents as one gives to his bride before or on the day of the marriage, are paraphernal and irrevokable by the husband |1697.| during that marriage, and belong only to the wife and her executors; but any gifts by the husband to the wife after the marriage-day are revokable, either by the husband making use of them himself, or taking them back during the marriage; but if the wife be in possession of them during the marriage or at her death, the same are not revokable by the husband thereafter. Cabinets, coffers, &c., for holding the paraphernalia, are not paraphernalia, but fall under the communion of goods. Some of the Lords were for making anything given the next morning after the marriage, paraphernalia, called the morning gift in our law; but the Lords esteemed them man and wife then, and [the gift] so irrevokable.’[[197]]
Jan. 30.