less scholar was haled off to Edinburgh, tried, convicted — and what was the decree pro nounced by " his schyning and royall Maiestie "? Why, that he should be taken to the market cross, "and thair vpone ane scaffold, first has rycht hand to be strukin aff, and thaireftir his heid to be strukin frome his bodie : And his heid to be thaireftir affixt and set vpone ane irne prik [iron spike] vpone the Nether Boll Poirt; and his said rycht hand to be also affixt vpone the Wast Poirt of the said burgh of Edinburgh : And his haul moveable guidis and geir (gif he ony hes) to be escheit to his Maiesteis vse."
How frightfully disproportionate to the offense was the punishment inflicted upon offenders against the king's dignity, may be seen in many instances during this reign. In 1615, John Fleming, in Cockburnspath, for not coming to communion, was pulled up by his minister, who reminder him that even if he disregarded the discipline of the kirk, the king would punish any one guilty of con tempt of ordinances. On which John ob served very improperly that the king might be shot, or die of the falling sickness, for all he cared; "be the vttering of quhilkis dammable and blas phemous speiches aganis his Maiestie, he had committit most harynous and vnpardoneable tressone." Will it be believed that for his hasty words this unfortunate man was hanged? Almost as monstrous was the sentence on William Tweedie, who was charged, first with theft and slaughter, and next with irreverent speech about the king and justices of the "Peax " when the constables came to arrest him. He had declared, it seems, that " he wald nocht give ane of his for the justices of the Peax," nor yet for the king. Well, the jury unanimously acquitted Tweedie on the charges of theft and slaughter, alleged to have been committed at various periods from eleven to twenty-nine years previously,
but convicted him of the " vnreverent and disdanefull speiches; " whereupon he was sen tenced to be scourged through the streets of Edinburgh, and then to be banished for life, on pain of hanging if he returned. James VI, had been nearly forty years on the throne before much had been effected towards reducing the Highlands to order. It is true that, as long before as 1563, the legislature had formally adopted the san guinary expedient of setting the clans to hunt each other down. In that year the atrocities of the Clan Gregor had become so frequent and outrageous that rt was proscribed and commissions were issued to chiefs of other clans to extirpate them with fire and sword. Every one who has read the introduction to "Rob Roy " must be familiar with what fol lowed, how bloodshed and burning went on worse than before; the offenders, failing to appear when summoned for prosecution, were sentenced to outlawry, but, being beyond reach of apprehension, snapped their fingers at the terrors of the justice. With the seven teenth century began a new era in the ad ministration of the Highlands, and the meas ures of repression became hardly less horrible than the state of affairs they were framed to bring to an end. The Macgregor's cup of of iniquity was filled in 1603, by their slaugh ter of the Colquhouns in Glenfruin. The Chief of Macgregor had the authority of the king's lieutenant, the Earl of Argyle, for invading the Lennox, while Colquhoun had mustered his forces to resist the Macgregors under direct commission from the king. Sir Alexander Colquhoun ' fled from the field at the first onset, leaving his men to be cut to pieces, of whom one hundred and forty are known to have been slain. All the blame for1 Sir this Walter beingScott laidsays to that theSir account Humphrey of the Colquhoun Maccommanded the clan on this occasion and was chased to Bannachra Castle, where the Macgregors slew him. But Sir Humphrey had been murdered in that castle by the Macfarlanes eleven years previously, in 1592, and his brother Alexander, who succeeded him, was still alive seven years after the battle, in 1610.
