In the spring of 1736 two noted smugglers, Wilson and Robertson, were condemned to death.  They had, while in prison, managed to widen the space between the window-bars of their cell, and would have escaped; but Wilson, a very stoutly built man, went first and stuck in the aperture, so that Robertson had no chance.  The pair determined to attack their guards in church, where, as usual, they were to be paraded and preached at on the Sunday preceding their execution.  Robertson leaped up and fled, with the full sympathy of a large and interested congregation, while Wilson grasped a guard with each hand and a third with his teeth.  Thus Robertson got clean away—­to Holland, it was said,—­while Wilson was to be hanged on April 14.  The acting lieutenant of the Town Guard—­an unpopular body, mainly Highlanders—­was John Porteous, famous as a golfer, but, by the account of his enemies, notorious as a brutal and callous ruffian.  The crowd in the Grassmarket was great, but there was no attempt at a rescue.  The mob, however, threw large stones at the Guard, who fired, killing or wounding, as usual, harmless spectators.  The case for Porteous, as reported in ‘The State Trials,’ was that the attack was dangerous; that the plan was to cut down and resuscitate Wilson; that Porteous did not order, but tried to prevent, the firing; and that neither at first nor in a later skirmish at the West Bow did he fire himself.  There was much “cross swearing” at the trial of Porteous (July 20); the jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to be hanged on September 8.  A petition from him to Queen Caroline (George II. was abroad) drew attention to palpable discrepancies in the hostile evidence.  Both parties in Parliament backed his application, and on August 28 a delay of justice for six weeks was granted.

Indignation was intense.  An intended attack on the Tolbooth, where Porteous lay, had been matter of rumour three days earlier:  the prisoner should have been placed in the Castle.  At 10 P.M. on the night of September 7 the magistrates heard that boys were beating a drum, and ordered the Town Guard under arms; but the mob, who had 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.