JOHN GOUGH NICHOLS.
There appears to have occurred in Scotland one instance at least of this barbarous mode of executing justice. In his Notes to Leyden's Ballad of Lord Soulis (in the Minstrelsy of the Border), Sir Walter Scott says:—
"The tradition regarding the death of Lord Soulis, however singular, is not without a parallel in the real history of Scotland. The same extraordinary mode of cookery was actually practised (horresco referens) upon the body of a Sheriff of the Mearns. This person, whose name was Melville of Glenbervie, bore his faculties so harshly, that he became detested by the Barons of the country. Reiterated complaints of his conduct having been made to James I. (or, as others say, to the Duke of Albany), the monarch answered, in a moment of unguarded impatience, 'Sorrow gin the Sheriff were sodden, and supped in broo!' The complainers retired, perfectly satisfied. Shortly after, the Lairds of Arbuthnot, Mather, Laureston, and Pattaraw, decoyed Melville to the top of the hill of Garvock, above Lawrencekirk, under pretence of a grand hunting party. Upon this place (still called the Sheriff's Pot), the Barons had prepared a fire and a boiling cauldron, into which they plunged the unlucky Sheriff. After he was sodden (as the king termed it) for a sufficient time, the savages, that they might literally observe the royal mandate, concluded the scene of abomination by actually partaking of the hell-broth.
"The three Lairds were outlawed for this offence; and Barclay, one of their number, to screen himself from justice, erected the kaim (i.e. the camp, or fortress) of Mathers, which stands upon a rocky and almost inaccessible peninsula, overhanging the German Ocean. The Laird of Arbuthnot is said to have eluded the royal vengeance, by claiming the benefit of the law of clan Macduff. A pardon, or perhaps a deed of replegiation, founded upon that law, is said to be still extant upon the records of the Viscount of Arbuthnot.
"The punishment of boiling," adds Sir Walter, "seems to have been in use among the English at a very late period, as appears from the following passage in Stowe's Chronicle:—'The 17th March (1524) Margaret Davy, a maid, was boiled at Smithfield for poisoning of three households that she had dwelled in.'"
According to tradition, however, the boiling, or broiling rather, of the Wizard-Earl Soulis, was still more frightful:—
"On a circle of stones they placed the pot,
On a circle of stones but barely nine;
They heated it red and fiery hot,
Till the burnished brass did glimmer and shine.