For some time after the Scottish Convention had commenced its sittings, the Scottish prelates retained their seats, and said prayers by rotation to the meeting, until the character of the Convention became, through the secession of Dundee, decidedly Presbyterian. Occasion was then taken on the Bishop of Ross mentioning King James in his prayer, as him for whom they watered their couch with tears. On this the Convention exclaimed, they had no occasion for spiritual Lords, and commanded the Bishops to depart and return no more, Montgomery of Skelmorley breaking at the same time a coarse jest upon the scriptural expression used by the prelate. Davie Deans’s oracle, Patrick Walker, gives this account of their dismission.
“When they came out, some of the Convention said they wished the honest lads knew they were put out, for then they would not get away with haill (whole) gowns. All the fourteen gathered together with pale faces, and stood in a cloud in the Parliament Close; James Wilson, Robert Neilson, Francis Hislop, and myself, were standing close by them; Francis Hislop with force thrust Robert Neilson upon them, their heads went hard on one another. But there being so many enemies in the city fretting and gnashing the teeth, waiting for an occasion to raise a mob, when undoubtedly blood would have been shed, and having laid down conclusions amongst ourselves to avoid giving the least occasion to all mobs, kept us from tearing off their gowns.
“Their graceless Graces went quickly off, and there was neither bishop nor curate seen in the street—this was a surprising sudden change not to be forgotten. Some of us would have rejoiced near them in large sums to have seen these Bishops sent legally down the Bow that they might have found the weight of their tails in a tow to dry their tow-soles; that they might know what hanging was, they having been active for themselves and the main instigators to all the mischiefs, cruelties, and bloodshed of that time, wherein the streets of Edinburgh and other places of the land did run with the innocent precious dear blood of the Lord’s people.”—Life and Death of three famous Worthies (Semple, etc.), by Patrick Walker. Edin. 1727, pp. 72, 73.
NOTE Q.—Half-hanged Maggie Dickson.
[In the Statistical Account of the Parish of Inveresk (vol. xvi. p. 34), Dr. Carlyle says, “No person has been convicted of a capital felony since the year 1728, when the famous Maggy Dickson was condemned and executed for child-murder in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, and was restored to life in a cart on her way to Musselburgh to be buried . . . . . She kept an ale-house in a neighbouring parish for many years after she came to life again, which was much resorted to from curiosity.” After the body was cut down and handed over to her relatives, her revival is attributed to the jolting of the cart, and according to Robert Chambers,—taking a retired road to Musselburgh, “they stopped near Peffer-mill to get a dram; and when they came out from the house to resume their journey, Maggie was sitting up in the cart.” Among the poems of Alexander Pennecuick (who died in 1730), is one entitled “The Merry Wives of Musselburgh’s Welcome to Meg Dickson;” while another broadside, without any date or author’s name, is called “Margaret Dickson’s Penitential Confession,” containing these lines referring to her conviction:—
“Who found me guilty of that barbarous crime,
And did, by law, end this wretched life of mine;
But God . . . . did me preserve,” etc.
In another of these ephemeral productions hawked about the streets, called, “A Ballad by J—n B—s,” are the following lines:—
“Please peruse the speech
Of ill-hanged Maggy Dickson.
Ere she was strung, the wicked wife
Was sainted by the Flamen (priest),
But now, since she’s retum’d to life,
Some say she’s the old samen.”
In his reference to Maggie’s calling salt after her recovery, the Author would appear to be alluding to another character who went by the name of “saut Maggie,” and is represented in one or more old etchings about 1790.]