Scotch burghs for the repayment of the
coin expended in vindicating the Scottish
honour. We looked carefully for the result
of this application, and we turned over the
page with some misgivings. We read, and
rejoiced greatly that the applicant was foiled.
The burghs declared it a national question
beyond their jurisdiction, and Stercovius's
ghost may perhaps have been soothed by the
agonies of grief with which the murderer
parted with the "siller." But what? If
foreigners are thus punished for aspersing the
countrymen of the king, shall one of the Scots
themselves turn traitor to the cause of
Scottish honour, and revile his auld respected
mother, and live? No, no. Call Thomas
Ross into court.

Mr. Thomas Ross has been a minister in
the Scotch kirk, but has gone to study at
Oxford preparatory to being episcopally
ordained: a flighty, light-headed man, who
has been sometimes in custody of his friends
as not quite in his right mind. They should
have kept him from pen ink and paper; for
one day— in his new-found zeal for the
English form of Church government, and
persuaded, with the absurd vanity common
to the half-witted, that his talents would
amply redeem any little wrong his enmity
might do to his countrymen, and that even
the king would be pleased with so witty, so
deep, so learned an adversary— he affixed on
the great door of Saint Mary's, in the High
Street, a thesis, as was the custom in those
days, containing most dreadful propositions,
as we shall afterwards see. The Vice-
Chancellor, if he had been a sensible man,
would have laughed at them and said no
more. But he was probably in hopes of a
bishopric, being a toady of the largest size.
He accordingly sent up the awful paper to
Whitehall. The king rubbed his hands;
there was another unhappy man to be
punished. He sent down to Oxford; he
hired a vessel at London Bridge; he sent the
much-bewildered author of the thesis down
to Edinburgh, with a letter to the judges to
condemn him as soon as they could, and keep
him in the iron cage in the meantime. He
was too valuable a bird to be allowed to
escape. Poor, silly, vain, ridiculous Mr.
Thomas! Why didn't you stay quietly in
your small manse at Cargill, and not mix
yourself up in the great questions of
Church and State ? For this is your indictment:—

"Ye are dilated of the devilish and detestable
forging, feigning, and blasphemous uttering,
and by writ publicly exposing of a
villanous, infamous, and devilish writ, all
written with your own hand, concerning a
pasquil, or thesis; together with ten several
abominable articles, or appendices, confirming
the same; that all Scotsmen ought to be
thrust forth of the court of England (excepting
his gracious Majesty and his son, and a very
few others); and that the Englishmen are
mightily blinded and deceived (although
quick-sighted otherwise), that they should
suffer such an unprofitable and pernicious
multitude, and filthy offscourings of people,
to rage and domineer within their entrails
and bowels, &c. &c."

What could Thomas say? He grinned a
foolish grin or two, we may suppose, and
confessed his crime: said he was in one of his fits of
insanity at the time — inops mentis, the Oxford
scholar called it—and that he was very sorry
for what he had done. Most people would
have been satisfied with this excuse. But
the king— let us see what conduct he pur-
sued. The half " daft" prisoner is, of course,
found guilty in terms of his own confession;
under what threats or promises obtained, the
record sayeth not; and sent back to his
miserable prison till his Majesty's pleasure
could be known. His Majesty's pleasure was
soon too widely known by means of the
following sentence:

"September 10, 1618. The Justice,
conform to a warrant and direction of his
Majesty, by the mouth of the dempster of
court, ordained the said Maister Thomas to
be taken to the market-cross of Edinburgh,
and there upon a scaffold, first his right hand
to be struck off, and thereafter his head to be
struck from his body; and his head to be
thereafter affixed on an iron spike upon the
Nether-Bow Port; and his said right hand
to be also affixed on the West Port of the
said burgh of Edinburgh; and his whole
moveable goods and gear (if any he has)
to be escheat to his Majesty's use, as
convict and culpable of the said heinous
crime."

The letter of the king is still extant, though
the lord advocate of the time, willing
enough to be the instrument of the cruelty,
made great efforts to have the record of the
whole transaction expunged from the Books
Of Session. But a careful picker-up of
remarkable incidents at the time took duplicates
of all the proceedings, and in an obscure
corner of the library of the Faculty was
discovered a manuscript containing everything;
the blood-thirsty instructions of the king,
the words of the accusation, and, most curious
of all, the very Thesis, with all its ten
propositions which the insane Scotchman fixed
up upon St. Mary's door. That noble church
in the noblest of streets, with thousands of
the youth of England pouring into it when
the bell rings on Sunday morning, are there
any who look upon the solemn gateway and
remember that an awful tragedy took its
beginning on that spot? A single student
saw the paper, and tore it down; he carried
it to the vice-chancellor before another eye
than his own had time to rest on the madly
scribbled document; and Thomas Ross died a
death of great suffering. His family were
disgraced and ruined; the king's frown was
upon the house of Craigy of which, he was a
son; and brothers, sisters, all, went into