第11章 A FAIR NECK FOR THE MAIDEN(3)

Lady Warriston was found guilty, and four days after the murder, on the 5th of July, was taken to the Girth Cross of Holyrood, at the foot of the Canongate, and there decapitated by that machine which rather anticipated the inventiveness of Dr Guillotin--the Maiden.'' At the same time, four o'clock in the morning, Janet Murdo, the nurse, and one of the serving- women accused with her as accomplices were burned on the Castle Hill of the city.

There is something odd about the early hour at which the executions took place.The usual time for these affairs was much later in the day, and it is probable that the sentence against Jean ran that she should be executed towards dusk on the 4th of the month.The family of Dunipace, however, having exerted no influence towards saving the daughter of the house from her fate, did everything they could to have her disposed of as secretly and as expeditiously as possible.In their zeal to have done with the hapless girl who, they conceived, had blotted the family honour indelibly they were in the prison with the magistrates soon after three o'clock, quite indecent in their haste to see her on her way to the scaffold.In the first place they had applied to have her executed at nine o'clock on the evening of the 3rd, another unusual hour, but the application was turned down.The main idea with them was to have Jean done away with at some hour when the populace would not be expecting the execution.Part of the plan for privacy is revealed in the fact of the burning of thenurse and the hyred woman'' at four o'clock at the Castle Hill, nearly a mile away from the Girth Cross, so--as the Pitcairn Trials footnote says-that the populace, who might be so early astir, should have their attentions distracted at two opposite stations...and thus, in some measure, lessen the disgrace of the public execution.''

If Jean had any reason to thank her family it was for securing, probably as much on their own behalf as hers, that the usual way of execution for women murderers should be altered in her case to beheading by the Maiden.'' Had she been of lesser rank she would certainly have been burned, after being strangled at a stake, as were her nurse and the serving-woman.This was the appalling fate reserved for convicted women in such cases, and on conviction even of smaller crimes.The process was even crueller in instances where the crime had been particularly atrocious.The criminal,'' says the Pitcairn account of such punishment, was `brunt quick'!''

Men convicted of certain crimes were also subject to the same form of execution adulterating and uttering base coins (Alan Napier, cutler in Glasgow, was strangled and burned at the stake in December 1602) sorcery, witchcraft, incantation, poisoning (Bailie Paterson suffered a like fate in December 1607).For bestiality John Jack was strangled on the Castle Hill (September 1605), and the innocent animal participator in his crime burned with him.

Altogether, the Dunipace family do not exactly shine with a good light as concerns their treatment of the condemned girl.Her father stood coldly aside.The quoted footnote remarks:

It is recorded that the Laird of Dunipace behaved with much apathy towards his daughter, whom he would not so much as see previous to her execution; nor yet would he intercede for her, through whose delinquency he reckoned his blood to be for ever dishonoured.

Jean herself was in no mind to be hurried to the scaffold as early as her relatives would have had her conveyed.She wanted (poor girl!) to see the sunrise, and to begin with the magistrates granted her request.It would appear, however, that Jean's blood-relations opposed the concessionso strongly that it was almost immediately rescinded.The culprit had to die in the grey dark of the morning, before anyone was likely to be astir.

In certain directions there was not a little heart-burning about the untimely hour at which it was manoeuvred the execution should be carried out.The writer of a Memorial, from which this piece of information is drawn, refrains very cautiously from mentioning the objectors by name.But it is not difficult, from the colour of their objections, to decide that these people belonged to the type still known in Scotland as the `unco guid.' They saw in the execution of this fair malefactor a moral lesson and a solemn warning which would have a salutary and uplifting effect upon the spectators.

Will you,'' they asked the presiding dignitaries, and the blood- relations of the hapless Jean, deprive God's people of that comfort which they might have in that poor woman's death? And will you obstruct the honour of it by putting her away before the people rise out of their beds? You do wrong in so doing; for the more public the death be, the more profitable it shall be to many; and the more glorious, in the sight of all who shall see it.''

But perhaps one does those worthies an injustice in attributing cant motives to their desire that as many people as possible should see Jean die.It had probably reached them that the Lady Warriston's repentance had been complete, and that after conviction of her sin had come to her her conduct had been sweet and seemly.They were of their day and age, those people, accustomed almost daily to beheadings, stranglings, burnings, hangings, and dismemberings.With that dour, bitter, fire-and- brimstone religious conception which they had through Knox from Calvin, they were probably quite sincere in their belief that the public repentance Jean Livingstone was due to make from the scaffold would be for thecomfort of God's people.'' It was not so often that justice exacted the extreme penalty from a young woman of rank and beauty.Withdreadful objects so familiar'' in the way of public executions, it was likely enough that pity in the commonalty was choked with custom of fell deeds.'' Something out of the way in the nature of a dreadful object- lesson might stir the hearts of the populace and make them conscious ofthe Wrath to Come.