At daybreak, Sir James Stansfield was discovered in the water near New Milns. His eldest son, Philip, sought to have the body interred without delay, before either friends or physicians could view it. The burial proceeded with haste, according to the indictment; yet the kin soon demanded that the remains be disinterred. The surgeons concluded that Sir James had been strangled, not drowned. The water had thus returned no answer to the question pressing upon the household: who had brought the old man to its edge?
The trial of Philip Stansfield opened at Edinburgh in February 1688. The indictment did not confine itself to his father’s death. It conjoined words declared treasonable against the King, execrations uttered against Sir James, antecedent threats, and finally the murder perpetrated under the domestic roof. The 1825 account preserves the counts of the indictment and the debates of counsel; it depicts an inquiry wherein the nocturnal movements of the house were mingled with ancient quarrels over succession and an ordeal upon which jurists could by no means agree.
Sir James had served as a colonel in the Parliamentary army, subsequently settling in Scotland, where he established a woollen manufactory at New Milns. Following the Restoration, he obtained pensions and privileges; Charles II conferred knighthood upon him. His eldest son, Philip, had received a liberal education, yet his father accused him of leading a dissolute life. The indictment set forth that Sir James intended to disinherit Philip and settle his estate upon his second son, John. Philip was said to have threatened to cut his father’s throat.
The domestic servants recounted several altercations that lent weight and history to this threat. John Robertson and Agnes Bruce testified that Philip had compelled members of the household to drink to the King’s confusion, exacting an oath of secrecy. Robertson affirmed he had heard him curse his father. Bruce maintained that Philip had voiced his hatred of Sir James for years past. These depositions likewise bore upon rebellious utterances: the court treated the treasonous toast as a crime of high treason, distinct from the accusation of parricide.
Threats were not the sole vestiges of this rupture. Archibald Dunbar related that Sir James had spoken to him of a prior assault upon the road near Lothian Burn: Philip, he said, had fired twice at him with a pistol. A lawyer summoned to prepare a new testament heard Sir James refer to another alleged attempt upon the Lead Hills road. The defence did not deny that such tales had been rehearsed; it contended that they were of old date, that Philip and his father had since been reconciled, and that the Act of Indemnity ought to bar them from being forged into proof of the present murder.
On the night of his death, Sir James had returned from Edinburgh to his house. The minister John Bell had travelled in his company and dined at New Milns. He spent part of the evening conversing in the minister’s chamber; Bell recorded that Sir James appeared rational and composed. Awakened later by a confused murmur of voices and footfalls, Bell bolted his door. He heard the sound move towards the garden and the water, though he could discern none of the persons there present. In the morning, Philip came to enquire whether his father had entered his room, adding that he had sought him along the water’s edge. Shortly thereafter, word came that Sir James had been found in the pool.
The events of that morning divided the house. Agnes Bruce swore that Philip refused to allow the body into the bedchamber, ordering it carried into a dimly lit cellar. She deposed further that she had seen him take gold and silver from his father’s pockets, rifle his cabinet, and appropriate his shoe buckles. The indictment alleged that Philip sought to hasten the interment and had prevented friends and physicians from inspecting the deceased. The defence maintained that he had remained abed throughout the night and that his conduct following the death constituted no proof of murder.
During the second inspection, a particular incident became the focus of another dispute. The surgeon James Murehead attested that as Philip assisted in lifting the corpse, blood seeped through the linen near the left side of the neck, precisely where his hands had rested. Murehead added that neither he nor his colleague had observed any blood when they previously manipulated the head and neck. The prosecution invoked this renewed bleeding as a supernatural sign of guilt. Counsel for Philip retorted that the body had been moved, that the surgeons had made incisions in the flesh, and that others had likewise touched the corpse. Medicine, as documented in the trial record, offered no simple demonstration; the same body served at once as physical evidence and alleged prodigy.
The Edinburgh physicians, consulted upon the surgeons’ report, concluded there was sufficient ground to hold that Sir James had been strangled rather than drowned. The prosecution drew further strength from the state of the chamber, the haste of the burial, and the anterior threats. It argued that the death could not be deemed a suicide by drowning preceded by strangulation. Philip, according to the defence, had lain asleep in his chamber and had not left it until awakened by a servant.
Two youthful witnesses brought to court the utterances of a night spent at George Thomson’s cottage. Philip’s counsel objected to their examination: James Thomson was about thirteen years of age and Anna Mark about ten. The court at first refused to hear them. The jurors subsequently requested that they be permitted to state what they knew. James deposed that he had heard Philip complain of his father withholding money and threaten to slay him to obtain his inheritance; he added that his mother and George Thomson had spoken of the murder after the night in question. Anna placed her mother in Philip’s company that evening and recounted the words exchanged upon their return. These witnesses had not seen the murder with their own eyes; they linked words, encounters, and absences to the hour of Sir James’s disappearance.
The defence likewise contested the allegation that the accused was an enemy to the Crown. Sir Patrick Plume recalled that Philip had served as a volunteer for the King during Monmouth’s rebellion. The King’s Advocate replied that subsequent acts of loyalty could not erase a repeated toast against the monarchy, particularly when Philip had demanded secrecy. The judges and the assize were thus called upon to weigh political speech, domestic relations, household testimony, noises heard in the dead of night, and the physical examination of the dead.
The jury found Philip guilty upon all counts: high treason, cursing his father, and art and part in the murder. He was condemned to be hanged at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh on 15 February; his tongue was to be cut out for his filial execrations, his right hand severed for the parricide, and his head affixed at Haddington, near New Milns. His estate was forfeited to the Crown. The chronicle records that the sentence was duly executed. It notes, moreover, that a bystander saw in an incident upon the gallows an eerie echo of Sir James’s death, the body slipping before being suspended anew. The law thus had its vengeance upon the son, while the servants’ tales and the ordeal of the bleeding corpse continued to bear the burden of proof.