HMMIMMMMMMIIIIMIII ^'NIVERSITY OF I SAN DIEGO / TWELVE SCOTS TRIALS By the same Author. DR. PRITCHARD. DEACON BRODIB. CAPTAIN PORTEOUS. OSCAR SLATER. MRS. M'LACHLAN. In preparation. MARY BLANDY. The House of Major "Weir. From an unpublished water-colour sl-cteh by Mrs. J. Steicart Smith. TWELVE SCOTS TRIALS BY WILLIAM ROUGHEAD WRITER TO THE SIGNET EDINBURGH AND LONDON WILLIAM GREEN & SONS 1913 TO H. B. lEVING IX APPRECIATION IN FRIENDSHIP PEEFACE These adventures in criminal biography, begun at the suggestion of the late Mr. Andrew Lang, with his kind encouragement w^ere completed shortly before his death. Mr. Lang read them in manuscript. He was good enough to approve them, and had promised to write an Introduction when they came to be published. Thus, by his sudden passing, which has left literature so much the poorer, the • reader is deprived of what would have been the most attractive feature of the book. Dickens has noted the exclusive nature of a true professional relish, as shown in the enthusiasm of Mr. Dennis ; and while, personally, I find the people of our causes celebres more "con- vincing " than those of many popular and prolific writers, it is quite possible that the reader may not share my taste. I know the disadvantages under which the subjects of these studies labour in competition with their rivals of the circulating library. The fact that they were real men and women, who sinned and suffered in their day, and whose stories are unfor- tunately true, is alone enough to alienate the sympathy of a fiction-loving public. Yet here we have characters and incidents as curious, and problems in psychology as perplexing, as any wherewith the modern novelist delights his votaries ; and although the fitness of my rascals to adorn a tale may be questioned, their ability to point a moral is beyond dispute. So I venture to hope that, if their regrettable actuality be overlooked, they may even afford some measure of enter- tainment. The selection of the cases dealt with is purely arbitrary. They were chosen as being unfamiliar, and, in my view, worthy of rescue from orthodox interment in the official records and the pages of old lii.storians, or less IuiHowimI luiii.il in tlio flics of liygono ncwKpapcrs. Wlietiier or not the nsHult will Hu.stain my judgment is for the reader to say ; it may at least be claimed that in each instance the best available sources of information have been coiisidted, and no pains spared to make the several narratives faithful and complete. So far as my subject permitted I have sought to lighten its technical obscurities and to garnish the unpalatable fruits of research, but, as Sir Thomas Ih-owiie has observed, with greater occasion, "A work of this nature is not to be performed upon one legg; and should smel of oyl, if duly and deservedly handled." A certain historical, even romantic, interest attaches to the earlier trials ; and if, in the course of time, the original colours have somewhat faded, the figures are still sufficiently distinct. The lleverend John Kello and Lady Warriston, who flourished in the reign of our sixth James, were justified (as the phrase went) for solving their marital difficulties in similar savage fashion, and enjoyed an equal notoriety by reason of their edifying confessions and godly ends. Major Weir, the covenanting wizard, needs no introduction; his presence confers distinction upon any company, however evil. Philip Stanfield (who aggravated his other crimes by boring Mr. Lang) played with much success the part of the Prodigal Son, but overacted it at last by slaying, in the year of the Eevolution, "his natural and kindly parent," his guilt being established by supranormal means. The Sergeant's ghost, that temerarious spirit, vainly seeking to convince a jury of David Hume's fellow-citizens, succumbed to scepticism, and so was laid for ever. For the rest, the cases of Katharine Nairn and Keith of Northfield are in themselves remarkable, and throw a strange light upon the domestic manners of Scottish society towards the close of the eighteenth century. The next three exemplify the use of the verdict Xot Proven, "that Caledonian medium quid" hated by Sir "Walter Scott. No account of the Dunecht mystery or of the Ai-ran murder PEEFACE xi has hitherto been published, and, as cases of such importance should not remain unchronicled, an attempt is here made to supply the want. I wish to thank those friends to whose kindness I am indebted for some of the accompanying illustrations, especially Mrs. Stewart Smith, who has allowed me to reproduce her unpublished sketch of Major Weir's house, which forms the frontispiece to the present volume. The views of Dunecht House and the Clachan of Inverey are from photographs by Messrs. Valentine & Sons, Dundee. W. E. 8 Oxford Terrace, Edinburgh, April, 1913. CONTENTS The Parson of Spott, 1570 . The Doom of Lady Warriston, 1600 Touching One Major Weir, a Warlock, 1670 The Ordeal of Philip Stanfield, 1688 The Ghost of Sergeant Davies, 1754 Katharine Nairn, 1765 Keith of Northfield, 1766 . "The Wife o' Denside," 1827 Concerning Christina Gilmour, 1844 The St. Fergus Affair, 1854 The Dunecht Mystery, 1882 The Arran Murder, 1889 . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The House of Major Weir . Frontispiece Spott Kirk .... The Tolbooth of Edinburgh The Devil's Coach in the West Bow • The Pool in the Tyne near New Mills The Clachan of Inverey Katharine Nairn Lord Kames Francis Jeffrey Town op Inchinnan Plan op Kirktown op St. Fergus DuNECHT House The Boulder at Corrie-na-Fuhren . THE PAESON OF SPOTT N.B.—No mischief but a woman or a priest iu it, —here both. —The Journal of Mr. Groves, 1788. The criminous clerk is a character but seldom impersonated by what may be called the stock company of the Justiciary Opera. The part has been long a popular one on the Continent, and France especially has produced many eminent players. " From the consummate Eiembauer, so graphically described by Feuerbach, through Mingrat and Contrafatto, down to the Abbes Boudes and Bruneau of our own day, the crimes of priests have possessed an atrocity all their own." Thus Mr. H. B. Irving, in his admirable Studies of French Criminals of the Nineteenth Century. But the Eoman Catholic clergy do not possess the exclusive right of representation ; Protestant Eng- land, for instance, is secure in the supremacy of Dr. Titus Gates in the role, and very capable performers have been furnished from time to time by a variety of sects. In Scotland, however, we must go back more than three centuries to find an actor of outstanding merit. So remote is the period that only a glimpse of this old-time tragedy is now obtainable from a brief entry in the official record, and from certain scanty notices by contemporary historians of the Kirk, who, as is their wont in dealing with such scandals, devote more space to the culprit's contrition than to the particulars of his crime. The murderer's own con- fession, fortunately, has been preserved. " The Confessione of Mr. Johnne Kello, minister of Spott ; together with his earnest repentance maid upon the scaffald befoir his suffering, the fourt day of October 1570," was "imprinted at Edinburgh be Eobert Leckprivicke " in that year. It is reprinted with some variations both in the Journal and Memorials of Eichard 1 2 THE PAESON OF SPOTT Banuatyne, secretary to John Knox, and also in Calderwood's History of the Kirk of Scotland. Though doubtless edited for behoof of the godly, it remains a human document of rare interest, and such facts of the case as have survived sufficiently prove that the Keverend John Kello was no whit inferior to his clerical rivals of other days and climes. The time was the year of grace 1570. Calvinism had triumphed, and the cause of Queen Mary and the "Auld Faith " was lost. That unhappy lady was safely in Eliza- beth's parlour, the gallant Kirkcaldy still kept the flag of his Eoyal mistress flying on the castle of Edinburgh, and the ambition of her ambiguous brother, the " Good Eegent," had lately been abridged by the bullet of Bothwellhaugh at Linlithgow. The scene was the hill parish of Spott, on the eastern slope of the Lammermuirs, near the coast town of Dunbar. The little East Lothian village, with its ancient church and manse, lies remote from the highroad of history, but echoes of its name are sometimes heard among the crash of great events. A son of Home of Cowdenknowes was rector at the Eeformation. George Home of Spott, tried for the murder of Darnley, was himself one of the assize on the trial of Archibald Douglas for the same crime. He was murdered by his son-in-law, James Douglas of Spott, who in 1591 helped Francis, Earl of Bothwell, to beset " Chancellor Maitland at Holyrood, when they " made a stour that nearly frightened King James out of his princely wits. In 1650 General Leslie pitched his camp upon the summit of Doon Hill before the battle of Dunbar, which he lost by abandoning that strong position at the command of the prophets who accompanied his army ; and Cromwell himself is said to have spent the night after his victory at the house of Spott. The parish is celebrated, too, as being the scene of the last witch-burnings in Scotland, for so late as October 1705, only two years before the Union, the minutes of the Kirk Session signifi- " cantly record : Many witches burnt on the top of Spott Loan." THE PAESON OF SPOTT 3 In the sixteenth century a strange fatality attached to the incumbency of this quiet rural parish, the church of which, previous to the Pteformation, was a Prebend of the Collegiate Church of Dunbar.