Whatever he had
done, either in the last or present reign, had been done with the sanction
of the sovereign. If he had formerly taken up arms, it had been to divert
his countrymen from the impious war which they waged against the royal
authority in England; if now, his object was to accelerate the existing
negotiation between them and their new king. As a Christian, he had always
supported that cause which his conscience approved; as a subject, he always
fought in support of his prince; and as a neighbour, he had frequently
preserved the lives of those who had forfeited them against him in battle.
The chancellor, in return, declared him a murderer of his fellow-subjects,
an enemy to the covenant and the peace of the kingdom, and an agitator,
whose ambition had helped to destroy the father, and was now employed for
the destruction of the son. Judgment, which had been passed in parliament
some days before, was then pronounced, by the dempster, that James Graham
should be hanged for the space of three hours on a gibbet thirty feet high,
that his head should be fixed on a spike in Edinburgh, his arms on the
gates of Perth or Stirling, his legs on those of Glasgow and Aberdeen,
and his body be interred by the hangman on the burrowmuir, unless he were
previously released from excommunication by the kirk.
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