The Solicitor-General (Bacon), in his speech, took the opportunity of fulsomely bepraising the king after his manner. He represented the sputtering, drunken, corrupt James as almost divine, in his energy and sagacity. He had stretched forth his long arms (for kings, he said, had long arms), and taken Gray as he shipped for Sweden, Carlisle ere he was yet warm in his house in Scotland. He had prosecuted the offenders "with the breath and blasts of his mouth;" "so that," said this gross time-server, "I may conclude that his majesty hath showed himself God's true lieutenant, and that he is no respecter of persons, but English, Scots, noblemen, fencers (which is but an ignoble trade), are all to him alike in respect of justice. Nay, I may say further, that his majesty hath had in this matter a kind of prophetical spirit, for at what time Carlisle and Gray, and you, my lord, yourself, were fled no man knew whither, to the four winds, the king ever spoke in confident and undertaking manner, that wheresoever the offenders were in Europe, he would produce them to justice."
Mr. Justice Yelverton, though Bacon had altogether taken the wind out of his sails, summed up in the same vein, to prove that James was a Solomon and a prophet, and would show no favouritism to Scotchmen. He held out no hope of a reprieve. "The base and barbarous murder," he said, with ample legal verbiage, "was exceeding strange;—done upon the sudden! done in an instant! done with a pistol! done with your own pistol! under the colour of kindness. As Cain talked with his brother Abel, he rose up and slew him. Your executioners of the murder left the poor miserable man no time to defend himself, scarce any time to breathe out those last words, 'Lord, have mercy upon me!' The ground of the malice that you bore him grew not out of any offence that he ever willingly gave you, but out of the pride and haughtiness of your own self; for that in the false conceit of your own skill you would needs importune him to that action, the sequel whereof did most unhappily breed your blemish—the loss of your eye." The manner of his death would be, no doubt, as he (the prisoner) would think, unbefitting to a man of his honour and blood (a baron of 300 years' antiquity), but was fit enough for such an offender. Lord Sanquhar was then sentenced to be hung till he was dead. The populace, from whom he expected "scorn and disgrace," were full of pity for a man to be cut off, like Shakespeare's Claudio, in his prime, and showed great compassion.
On the 29th of June (St. Peter's Day) Lord Sanquhar was hung before Westminster Hall. On the ladder he confessed the enormity of his sins, but said that till his trial, blinded by the devil, he could not see he had done anything unfitting a man of his rank and quality, who had been trained up in the wars, and had lived the life of a soldier, standing more on points of honour than religion. He then professed that he died a Roman Catholic, and begged all Roman Catholics present to pray for him. He had long, he said, for worldly reasons, neglected the public profession of his faith, and he thought God was angry with him. His religion was a good religion—a saving religion—and if he had been constant to it he was verily persuaded he should never have fallen into that misery. He then prayed for the king, queen, their issue, the State of England and Scotland, and the lords of the Council and Church, after which the wearied executioner threw him from the ladder, suffering him to hang a long time to display the king's justice. The compassion and sympathy of the people present had abated directly they found he was a Roman Catholic. The same morning, very early, Carlisle and Irving were hung on two gibbets in Fleet Street, over against the great gate of the Whitefriars. The page's gibbet was six feet higher than the serving-man's, it being the custom at that time in Scotland that, when a gentleman was hung at the same time with one of meaner quality, the gentleman had the honour of the higher gibbet, feeling much aggrieved if he had not.
THE MURDER OF TURNER
The riotous little kingdom of Whitefriars, with all its frowzy and questionable population, has been admirably drawn by Scott in his fine novel of "The Fortunes of Nigel," recently so pleasantly recalled to our remembrance by Mr. Andrew Halliday's dexterous dramatic adaptation. Sir Walter chooses a den of Alsatia as a sanctuary for young Nigel, after his duel with Dalgarno. At one stroke of Scott's pen, the foggy, crowded streets eastward of the Temple rise before us, and are thronged with shaggy, uncombed ruffians, with greasy shoulder-belts, discoloured scarves, enormous moustaches, and torn hats. With what a Teniers' pencil the great novelist sketches the dingy precincts, with its blackguardly population:—"The wailing of children," says the author of "Nigel," "the scolding of their mothers, the miserable exhibition of ragged linen hung from the windows to dry, spoke the wants and distresses of the wretched inhabitants; while the sounds of complaint were mocked and overwhelmed by the riotous shouts, oaths, profane songs, and boisterous laughter that issued from the ale-houses and taverns, which, as the signs indicated, were equal in number to all the other houses; and that the full character of the place might be evident, several faded, tinselled, and painted females looked boldly at the strangers from their open lattices, or more modestly seemed busied with the cracked flower-pots, filled with mignonette and rosemary, which were disposed in front of the windows, to the great risk of the passengers." It is to a dilapidated tavern in the same foul neighbourhood that the gay Templar, it will be remembered, takes Nigel to be sworn in a brother of Whitefriars by drunken and knavish Duke Hildebrod, whom he finds surrounded by his councillors—a bullying Low Country soldier, a broken attorney, and a hedge parson; and it is here also, at the house of old Miser Trapbois, the young Scot so narrowly escapes death at the hands of the poor old wretch's cowardly assassins.
BRIDEWELL, AS REBUILT AFTER THE FIRE, FROM AN OLD PRINT