would have attested with me. The witness, observing some admiration in the auditors, spake further: My lord, I am minister of the parish, and have long known all the parties, but never had any occasion of displeasure against any of them, nor had to do with them, or they with me, but as I was minister. The thing was wonderful to me; but I have no interest in the matter, but as called upon to testify the truth, that I have done." Whereupon, applying himself to the chief-justice, he said: "My lord, my brother here present is minister of the next parish adjoining, and, I am assured, saw all done that I have affirmed."boolea

The clergyman so appealed to confirmed the statement, and the accused were convicted, and hanged. In justification of the clergymen, it can only be supposed that strong excitement had deceived their senses. It is an effect which has often been produced on nervous people contemplating a body under peculiar and exciting circumstances, that they have thought it moved an eye or a finger. Sir John Maynard, a very sagacious lawyer, who preserved the report of the case, seems to have been among the doubters, and to have thought the very repeating of such testimony would throw doubts on the authenticity of his report, for he says apologetically: I compared [my notes] afterwards with Sir Edward Powell, barrister-at-law, and others, who all concurred in the observation; and for myself, though I were upon oath, can depose that these depositions are truly reported in substance."' The affair occurred early in the reign of Charles I., when the belief in the ordeal was so prevalent, that one is more surprised by the scepticism of the lawyers than the credulity of the other parties. It has often, however, been noticed, that practical lawyers, however readily they may adopt any prevailing general belief, are slow to acknowledge anything supernatural mor out of the common course of events, in practice. They get accustomed, from their long habit of observation, to know the usual routine in which the natural events of human life occur, and anything out of that common-course is likely - to excite surprise and disbelief.condo fot tuo de surgɔ 7ods Tha maby

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While, however, we find these English lawyers of the early part of the seventeenth century thus sceptical, it must be admitted, that in Scotland we meet with sufficient credulity, both on the bench and at the bar, in a case which occurred fifty years later the trial of Philip Stanfield for treason and parricide, in the remarkable year 1688.ue en zod tab ban : larwad of

Sir John Stanfield was an officer of rank and trust in Cromwell's army. After the battle of Dunbar, he settled at Amisfield, in Haddingtonshire, subsequently the residence of the notorious Colonel Charteris, where he established a woollen manufactory. He was knighted by Charles II., and lived apparently a prosperous gentleman; but he had in his home that which wounds more sharply than a serpent's tooth-an undutiful son. Philip Stanfield appears to have been an accomplished profligate. The

long period of religious persecution in Scotland, and the consequent derangement in the operation of the laws, the general controlling influences of society, and the domestic relations, tended to make many bad men, at the time when there was the greatest amount of religious enthusiasm in the country. It was stated that young Stanfield had been repeatedly imprisoned in the Marshalsea, at Antwerp, Orleans, and other places, giving his father great expense and endless anxiety by his wild career. At length the old gentleman proposed to disinherit him, and employed a man of business to draw up a settlement accordingly. This has always in Scotland been deemed a strong step. The people whom he consulted on the occasion said, that perhaps Philip might yet reform; but the father said no, it was hopeless that, in fact, his son had attempted his life, and pursued him on more than one occasion with a pistol.

The person he spoke to made the suggestion, that it certainly could not have been loaded; and, in reality, young Stanfield's conduct repeatedly threatening to murder his father, if he were passed over-shewed far more of tipsy recklessness than of deep settled design. It was mentioned by some of the witnesses, that just before the tragedy, he sat in the kitchen of his father's house, requiring the servants to join him in drinking confusion to the pope, the chancellor, antichrist, and the king; and it was for this ebullition that he was charged with treason as well as murder w„Jzorac Phi mrgot

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Sir John Stanfield had returned one night from Edinburgh to his house at Amisfield, and was missed in the morning, his bed and chamber remaining in good order, as if no one had slept there or otherwise disturbed them. Mr John Bell, a clergyman, had accompanied him, and slept all night in the house. The account he gave of his experiences of the night was, that he awoke, and heard a great din and confused noise of several voices, and sometimes of persons walking, which affrighted him, and put him upon bolting his chamber-door faster; that he still heard the voices, but Lot so plain, till they came about to the chamber-window, and then he heard the voices as high as before; whereupon he rose again, and would have looked out of the window, but could not open it. That he looked into the garden and the water, whither the voices went, but heard no more. That he told the woman who came to light his fire in the morning, that he had rested little through the noise he heard; and that he was sure there were evil spirits about the house that night. That about an hour after day, the prisoner came to the witness's chamber-door, and asked if Sir John had been there that morning, and said he had been seeking him on the bank of the water; and immediately went down stairs again.' Presently, the body of Sir John was found in the water. Those who bore it, proposed to lay it down in the son's room, but he swore it should not enter there: he had died like a dog, and should so be treated. The clergyman and others recommended

that the body should be preserved and inspected; but the son resisted the proposal, and buried his father ere the evening.

The unpleasant rumours which consequently arose, acquired strength from the tattlings of the children in a neighbouring peasant's family of bad repute, whose house young Stanfield used to frequent. These children were afterwards produced in court. It was not in accordance with strict law that their evidence should be taken, but the jury desired to hear it; and as the case seems to have been looked upon as out of the pale of strict judicial regulation, they were gratified. The children stated, that on the night of the death, young Stanfield came to the house, and vented many fearful imprecations against himself, if he permitted his father longer to exist; that there was much whispering; that Stanfield and their grandmother went out together; that then their father and mother went out. The statement of one of them then was, 'that his mother came in first; that the declarant (the child) pretended to be asleep when they returned, and that he heard his father say the deed was done; and that the prisoner guarded the door with a drawn sword and a bended (or cocked) pistol; and that he never thought a man would have died so soon; and that they carried him out to the water-side, and put a stone about his neck, and leaving him there, they came back to the little kiln, and considered if they should cast him in the water with the stone about his neck or not, and whether they should cast him in far or near the side; and at length they returned, and took away the stone from about his neck, and threw him in the water; and his father said, he was afraid from all that, that the murder would come out. And his mother said: "Hoot, fool! there is no fears of that it will be thought he has drowned himself."'

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A warrant was now obtained for disinterring the body. The marks of strangulation were distinct, and the newly-formed faculty of surgeons being desired to give their opinion on a report of these appearances, did so to the effect, that death had been caused by violence. After the inspection, the body was carefully cleaned and wrapped in linen; and it was proposed, whether from a view to what was to follow or not, that the relations should lift it into the coffin. This lifting is an ancient funeral custom în Scotland, still to a certain extent followed in the practice of the nearest relations or dearest friends of the deceased holding the cords which are supposed to let the coffin down into the tomb. In that earlier time, however, it was not a mere pretence, as it is now; the weight of the body was actually borne in the process of committing it to the coffin. On this occasion, Philip Stanfield lifted the body by the right side, while a more distant relation took the left. What then occurred must be told in the strange language of the formal indictment on which Stanfield was brought to trial:

'His father's body, though carefully cleaned as said is, so as the least blood was not on it, did, according to God's usual method of discovering murders, bleed afresh upon him, and defiled all his

hands; which struck him with such a terror, that he immediately let his father's head and body fall with violence, and fled from the body, and in consternation and confusion said: "Lord have mercy upon me!" and bowed himself down over a seat of the church where the corpse was inspected, wiping his father's innocent blood off his own murdering hands upon his cloaths.'

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This was certainly a strange enough statement to be made in an indictment, which ought to be the perfection of calm logic, and should merely state, in the plainest terms, the crime charged, without any attempt to excite feelings of horror and resentment. The prosecutors in this trial were remarkable men, whose history was so much associated with blood, that one would suppose nothing connected with such matters would excite them from their propriety. The one was Sir George Mackenzie, traditionally called Bloody Mackenzie, from his having conducted the prosecutions of the Covenanters. The other was Sir John Dalrymple, equally notorious as the instigator of the massacre of Glencoe. The matter was very gravely argued. Sir Patrick Hume, the counsel for Stanfield, quoted largely from Carpzovius and Mathaeus, and maintained, the truth is, that the occasion of the dead body's bleeding was, the chirurgeon that came out to visit the body did make an incision in the neck, which might be the occasion of the bleeding; and also the very moving of the dead body, when it was taken out of the grave, and out of the coffin, might occasion the bleeding, especially seeing the body did not bleed for some time after, which certainly was made by the motion and by the incision.' Sir George Mackenzie, who was called by Dryden 'that noble wit of Scotland,' and who had the reputation of being one of the most enlightened men of his day, adopted the ordeal belief in its very strongest form, and said to the jury: God Almighty himself was pleased to bear a share in the testimonies which are produced that divine power which made the blood circulate during life, has ofttimes, in all nations, opened a passage to it after death on such occasions, but most in this case.'

As Sir

George was not in other respects a credulous man, and threw doubts on the belief in witchcraft in his treatise on criminal law, it would almost seem as if he here stretched a point to secure a conviction.

Stanfield suffered the extreme penalty of the law, his body being afterwards hung in chains.

There have been many instances of the ordeal of touch in Scotland, where an imaginative people, partial to gloomy and tragic associations, seem to have gloated on it. It was known to all the northern nations; and Dr Hibbert Ware, in his history of sorcery, gives some instances, which, from their northern origin, are of a peculiar character. Thus, in the year 1644, Marion Peebles, spouse to Swene, in Hildiswich, in Zetland, was sentenced to be strangled and burnt for the murder of Edward Halcro, in Over Ure, by witchcraft. It appears that she converted herself into a whale,

and upset Halcro's boat !a gigantic operation, which none but northern imaginations would be capable of realising The bodies of those who were in the boat, appear to have been thrown ashore almost in a skeleton condition, for the ordeal of touch is said to have been applied to the collar-bone and craig or neck-bone, which gushed forth blood, to the admiration of the beholders.'-es

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It was sometimes a belief, that the power of drawing blood from the murdered body descended to the murderer's offspring. There is an instance of this hereditary transmission in the trial of the Muirs of Auchindrane, whose complex web of crimes excited so much interest in Sir Walter Scott, and suggested to him the drama of the Ayrshire Tragedy. After a series of other iniquities, Auchindrane had waylaid and slain his venerable connection, Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culzean. It happened that a youth named Dalrymple, was so unfortunate as to have carried some messages on the night of the murder, an acquaintance with which would lead at once to a knowledge of the perpetrator. Whether the youth knew the portentous influence attached to the knowledge he possessed, is not clear. It is difficult to suppose that he should not; and yet if he did, his rashness and folly were extreme, in placing himself in the power of a feudal Scottish baron of the seventeenth century, having so strong a temptation, to cut him off. For some time, he was provided for in the Isle of Arran, but he became restive, and escaped to Ayrshire, the country of his enemy. Subsequently, he was drafted into a regiment serving abroad; various means were adopted for keeping him out of the way, but somehow he always returned, and this fatality was deemed part of the tissue of incidents which were to develop the primary iniquity. so dendu ditu 19797od mersurrogerky al Auchindrane at last determined to slay the youth. He was strangled at a spot near the sandy part of the Ayrshire coast. The next point was to conceal the body, and here again it was deemed that the finger of Providence was visible. Ever as the murderers dug holes in the sand, water and liquid sand filled them up. Their next plan was to carry it as far as possible into the sea; and having waded to the extent permitted by safety, they set the body afloat, hoping that it would be drifted away. In a few days, however, it was tossed on the shore, where it was found, and afterwards buried in Girvan church-yard. It had not been recognised; and it would appear, from a contemporary account of the matter, adduced in the proceedings against Mitchell for firing at Archbishop Sharpe, that its subsequent exhumation and recog nition as the body of Dalrymple, had in it something preternatural. The Laird of Culzean, the representative of old Sir Thomas who had been murdered, had a dream about the body discovered on the shore, in which it appeared to him to have a mouse-mark or mole on the left breast, which pointed it out to be the missing servant of the family, Dalrymple. He was so excited by this dream, that he resolved to test it by exhuming the body. It was then found

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