Clan Graham · 1650
Montrose at the Mercat Cross
On the twenty-first of May 1650, James Graham, fifth Earl and first Marquess of Montrose, by general assent the most brilliant Royalist commander of the Scottish civil wars and the architect of the *annus mirabilis* of 1644–45, was hanged at the Mercat Cross at the head of the High Street in Edinburgh on a thirty-foot gibbet. He had been captured at Ardvreck Castle in Sutherland three weeks earlier, after the failure of his Royalist landing in support of Charles II at the head of Loch Eriboll. He was thirty-seven years old. The Earl of Argyll, his old enemy, watched from a window of the Marquess's lodging on the Royal Mile as the cart went up. The crowd that had been ordered to spit on him as he passed was, by every contemporary report, silent and weeping. He went to the gallows in a black suit Argyll had refused to let him replace with the scarlet of his Order of the Garter. He carried his copy of George Wishart's biography of him around his neck on a string, in a parchment volume bound in calf, and the gibbet rope was placed over the volume. After the execution his body was quartered, the head spiked at the Tolbooth where it remained for eleven years, the limbs sent to Glasgow, Stirling, Perth and Aberdeen. In May 1661, after the Restoration, the body parts were collected and reassembled and the funeral he had not had was held at St Giles. He is buried in the abbey of the Knights of St John, by the south transept of St Giles, ten yards from where his head had stood.
It is a quarter past two on the afternoon of the twenty-first of May 1650, in the lower room of a tall lodging on the south side of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, three doors up from the Mercat Cross, with the noise of the crowd in the street muffled by the closed shutters. He is thirty-seven years old. He is James Graham, fifth Earl and first Marquess of Montrose, Lord-Lieutenant of Scotland by Charles II's commission of February 1650, condemned this morning by the Estates of the Parliament of Scotland for treason against the kingdom and ordered to be hanged at three o'clock at the Mercat Cross at the head of the same street.
He has, on the table in front of him, three things. A small calf-bound copy of George Wishart's De Rebus Auspiciis (the Latin biography of his own campaigns of 1644–45 that Wishart wrote in exile in Holland), a black coat with no other ornament, and a piece of paper from his confessor John Cant of the Tolbooth Kirk on which is written the order of service. He has refused breakfast. He has, with the help of his servant Hay, dressed in the black coat. The household of the Marquess of Argyll across the street, three windows up, is open and the candles are lit; he has been told the Marquess is at the window with his counsellors and will watch the procession.
The crowd in the street outside has been ordered, by Council proclamation read at six o'clock this morning, to spit upon the prisoner as the cart goes up to the cross. The proclamation has, by Cant's report, not been received well in the wynds. He has been told by one of his guards that the women of the Cowgate have been forbidden by the Town Watch to come to the Lawnmarket today.
He thinks, picking up the Wishart: the rope will not, by the form of the Edinburgh hangman, take a book under it. The book will be on the rope.
He thinks: the rope will be over the book and over my throat. The book will be at my throat under the rope.
He thinks: Charles in Breda has not, since February, sent any reply to me. Charles in Breda has signed the Solemn League and Covenant on the first of this month and has, by signing it, signed off on this afternoon.
He thinks: I will not blame Charles. Charles is twenty years old and has the hand of Argyll on his throat, the same hand I have had on my throat for ten years. I will not blame Charles in front of the crowd today.
He thinks: Argyll is at the window. Argyll has not seen me face to face since 1641. Argyll is going to want to see me at the cart. The cart will pass under his window in fifteen minutes.
He thinks: I will look up at his window once. I will not say anything. The crowd will see me look up.
He puts the book on a length of black ribbon Hay has cut for the purpose. He hangs the book around his neck. He puts on the black coat over the linen. He goes down the stair to the door. The drum of the Town Guard is at the door at five minutes to three. The cart is in the street. He gets up onto the cart by his own foot. The Provost of Edinburgh reads the warrant at five past three. The cart begins to roll up the Royal Mile.
The crowd is, by every contemporary report, silent. There is no spitting. There is, by the diary of John Lamont of Newton in Fife, written within the week, a great weeping, both of women and men. He passes under Argyll's window at twenty past three. He looks up. The window is open. Argyll is, by Lamont, partly behind a curtain; he can be seen but not entirely. Montrose looks at him for two seconds and looks back at the cart. He says nothing.
The cart reaches the Mercat Cross at half past three. The gibbet has been set up in the morning, thirty feet high, the highest gibbet ever raised in Edinburgh, by order of the Estates that no man should look down on the Marquess at the moment of his death. He goes up the wooden ladder by his own steps. The hangman places the rope over the parchment volume of Wishart at his throat. He says, by John Cant's deposition (Cant being on the platform with him): I leave my soul to God, my service to my Prince, my goodwill to my friends, my love and charity to all. The hangman ties the rope. The cart moves out from under him at twenty to four.
The body was let down at six. The head was struck off and spiked on the Tolbooth opposite St Giles, where it stood for eleven years. The four limbs were sent in salt to Glasgow, Stirling, Perth and Aberdeen and were displayed at the burgh tolbooths there for several years before quietly disappearing. The trunk was buried in unconsecrated ground at the Burghmuir, the gallows-ground south of Edinburgh.
On the eleventh of January 1661, eight months after the Restoration, the Estates of the new Parliament reversed the attainder. The head was taken down from the Tolbooth on the eleventh of May. The four limbs and the trunk were collected from the four burghs and the Burghmuir. The reassembled body was given a state funeral at St Giles on the seventh of May 1661, sixteen years after the annus mirabilis and eleven after the gallows. He is buried in the south transept of St Giles in a marble tomb with a recumbent effigy. The tomb was put up by his great-great-grandson the third Duke of Montrose in 1888 and bears the inscription, in Latin, of his own poem written in his cell at the Tolbooth on the morning of his execution: Let them bestow on every airth a limb / open all my veins, that every one may see / the sad effects of crossing kings; and yet / not for the world's reward I die. / Lord, since thou know'st whence all these crosses come, / set my dead corpse in some place all alone. The Wishart biography that hung at his throat on the rope was retrieved by his servant Hay after the body was cut down and is in the National Library of Scotland.