e hesitate to believe the
story, so great is our admiration of that wonderful man. After the
Restoration, (1660,) the ultra Protestants, perverting various passages
of Scripture, assumed to execute judgment on those whom they held to be
enemies of God and the true Kirk. The man for whom they felt most hatred
was James Sharpe, Archbishop of St. Andrews,--a title that seems to have
had peculiar attractions for assassins. Sharpe was accused, not
untruthfully, of having sold his cause to Government; and he became a
marked man with those whom he had betrayed. A preacher named Mitchell
fired a pistol into Sharpe's carriage, and wounded the Bishop of the
Orkneys so severely that that prelate ultimately died of the injury.
Years later Mitchell was about to make a second attempt on the
Archbishop, when he was arrested, tried, imprisoned for some time,
condemned, and executed, at the Archbishop's earnest request. The next
year Sharpe was slain by a number of Protestants, who were looking for a
minor persecutor, and who thought that Heaven had specially delivered
the Archbishop into their hands when they encountered his carriage, from
which they made him descend, and murdered him in presence of his
daughter, using swords and pistols. Among the many stories told of
Claverhouse (then Viscount of Dundee) is one to the effect that he was
shot on the battlefield of Killiecrankie by one of his servants, who
used a silver button from his livery-coat, the great Grahame being
impervious to lead.[C] About the same time, Sir George Lockhart,
President of the Court of Session, and head of the Scotch tribunals, was
assassinated by Chiesly of Dalry, who was angry because the President
had assigned to Mrs. Chiesly, with whom her husband had quarrelled, a
larger alimony than that husband thought she should have. The business
of divorcing, and discriminating as to the amount of ladies' allowances,
is a safer one in these times, and fortunate for the judges that it is,
considering how much of such business they have to perform. If every
hundred divorce cases produced one assassination, lawyers would be
rapidly promoted--and shot.

England has contributed a large number of assassinations to the pages of
that Newgate serial which is known by the grave name of history. One of
her kings, Edward II., is known to have been murdered after his
deposition; and it is supposed that he perished by a peculiarly horrible
form of death. William Rufus is believed