that he commanded his men to fire over their
heads, to intimidate them; and then, as their opposition became
violent, he directed the guard to fire among them; whereby six persons
were killed, and eleven severely wounded. For this he was prosecuted
at the expense of the city, and condemned to die. But, a short
reprieve having been obtained, the mob, determined to defeat it,
assembled in the night preceding the seventh day of September, whereon
he was to have been executed pursuant to the sentence, and, in a very
riotous manner, seized and disarmed the city-guard, and possessed
themselves of the town-gates, to prevent the admission of troops
quartered in the suburbs. They then rushed to the Tolbooth prison;
the doors of which not yielding to the force of their hammers, they
consumed by fire, and then brought forth Porteous by violence, and
hung him on a dyer's post, or frame, in the Grass-market, nigh the
spot where the unfortunate people were killed.

The magistrates, attended with several of the burgesses, attempted to
quell the riot and disperse the mob, but were pelted with stones, and
threatened to be fired upon if they did not retire.

This insult of the sovereign authority was too flagrant to be
overlooked. Proclamations, with rewards of two hundred pounds
sterling, were issued for apprehending the rioters, and, when the
Parliament met, vigorous measures were taken in the affair. The Lord
Provost was ordered up to London in custody; the magistrates summoned
to answer the indictment, and a bill was introduced into the House of
Commons "to disable Alexander Wilson, Esq., the principal magistrate
during the riots, from ever after holding any office of magistracy in
Edinburgh or Great Britain; to subject him to imprisonment for a year;
to abolish the town guard, and to take away the gates of the nether
Bowport of the city." Oglethorpe objected to the first reading of the
bill, and it encountered his vigorous opposition. He engaged in a warm
defence of the magistrates, and of the guard, declaring that there
was no dereliction of duty on the part of the magistrates and of the
guard, but they were overpowered by numbers, and thrown into actual
jeopardy by the desperation of the mob. Hence the penalties of the
bill would be the punishment of misfortune, not of crime.

In consequence of the stand which he thus took, and the interest made
by others in the House of Commons, the bill was altered in its most
essential circu