authority; but that the apostasy and rebellion with which
they reproached him were, in his estimation, acts of duty. Whatever he had
done, either in the last or present reign, had been done with the sanction
of the sovereign. If he had formerly taken up arms, it had been to divert
his countrymen from the impious war which they waged against the royal
authority in England; if now, his object was to accelerate the existing
negotiation between them and their new king. As a Christian, he had always
supported that cause which his conscience approved; as a subject, he always
fought in support of his prince; and as a neighbour, he had frequently
preserved the lives of those who had forfeited them against him in battle.
The chancellor, in return, declared him a murderer of his fellow-subjects,
an enemy to the covenant and the peace of the kingdom, and an agitator,
whose ambition had helped to destroy the father, and was now employed for
the destruction of the son. Judgment, which had been passed in parliament
some days before, was then pronounced, by the dempster, that James Graham
should be hanged for the space of three hours on a gibbet thirty feet high,
that his head should be fixed on a spike in Edinburgh, his arms on the
gates of Perth or Stirling, his legs on those of Glasgow and Aberdeen,
and his body be interred by the hangman on the burrowmuir, unless he were
previously released from excommunication by the kirk. During this trying
scene, his enemies eagerly watched his demeanour. Twice, if we may believe
report, he was heard to sigh, and his eyes occasionally wandered along
the cornice of the hall. But he stood before them cool and collected; no
symptom of perturbation marked his countenance, no expression of complaint
or impatience escaped his lips; he showed himself superior to insult, and
unscarred at the menaces of death.

The same high tone of feeling supported the unfortunate victim to the last
gasp. When the ministers admonished[a] him that his punishment in
this world was but a shadow of that which awaited him in the next, he
indignantly replied, that he gloried in his fate, and only lamented that he
had not limbs sufficient to furnish every city in Christendom with proofs
of his loyalty. On the scaffold, he maintained the uprightness of his
conduct, praised the character of the present king, and appealed from the
censures of the kirk to the justice of Heaven. As a last disgrace, the
executioner hung round his n