already secured
the town's gates, disarmed the veterans. Mr Lindsay, lately Provost,
escaped by the Potter Row gate (near the old fatal Kirk-o'-Field), and
warned General Moyle in the Castle. But Moyle could not introduce
soldiers without a warrant. Before a warrant could arrive the mob had
burned down the door of the Tolbooth, captured Porteous--who was hiding
up the chimney,--carried him to the Grassmarket, and hanged him to a
dyer's pole. The only apparent sign that persons of rank above that of
the mob were concerned, was the leaving of a guinea in a shop whence they
took the necessary rope. The magistrates had been guilty of gross
negligence. The mob was merely a resolute mob; but Islay, in London,
suspected that the political foes of the Government were engaged, or that
the Cameronians, who had been renewing the Covenants, were concerned.

Islay hurried to Edinburgh, where no evidence could be extracted. "The
High Flyers of our Scottish Church," he wrote, "have made this infamous
murder a point of conscience. . . . All the lower rank of the people who
have distinguished themselves by the pretensions of superior sanctity
speak of this murder as the hand of God doing justice." They went by the
precedent of the murder of Archbishop Sharp, it appears. In the Lords
(February 1737) a Bill was passed for disabling the Provost--one
Wilson--for public employment, destroying the Town Charter, abolishing
the Town Guard, and throwing down the gate of the Nether Bow. Argyll
opposed the Bill; in the Commons all Scottish members were against it;
Walpole gave way. Wilson was dismissed, and a fine of 2000 pounds was
levied and presented to the widow of Porteous. An Act commanding
preachers to read monthly for a year, in church, a proclamation bidding
their hearers aid the cause of justice against the murderers, was an
insult to the Kirk, from an Assembly containing bishops. It is said that
at least half of the ministers disobeyed with impunity. It was
impossible, of course, to evict half of the preachers in the country.

Argyll now went into opposition against Walpole, and, at least, listened
to Keith--later the great Field-Marshal of Frederick the Great, and
brother of the exiled Earl Marischal.

In 1737 the Jacobites began to stir again: a committee of five Chiefs and
Lords was formed to manage their affairs. John Murray of Broughton went
to Rome, and lost his heart to Prince Charles--now a tall handsome lad of