In George Borrow’s account, the excise officer Mungo Campbell had warned Lord Eglinton that he would surrender his gun to no man. Upon the coastal verge of the estate, his foot struck a stone. He fell upon his back but a few paces from the earl, who was advancing upon him. Campbell raised himself upon one elbow and fired. The charge struck the peer in his left side. A few moments later, his lordship pressed his hand to the wound and said, “I am an undone man.”
The scene did not arise from an isolated sporting quarrel. Campbell was an officer of the excise, charged notably with the pursuit of smugglers. Born in Ayr in 1721 into a prominent merchant family, he had received a liberal education and served as a cadet in the Scots Greys. He had fought at Dettingen and hoped to secure a quartermaster’s commission, provided he could raise one hundred pounds. Failing to gather the sum, the post was bestowed upon another. He quitted the army and returned to Scotland.
During the rebellion of 1745, Campbell fought on the government side under Lord Loudoun, who was of his kin. He had already known several forms of familial dependence. His father, once a prosperous merchant burdened with a family of twenty-four children, had suffered losses that prevented him from providing for their future. After his death, relatives took the children in. The uncle who had taken Mungo under his protection died in turn when the young man was about eighteen, leaving him sixty pounds. The hundred pounds requisite for his military advancement had subsequently eluded him.
After Culloden, his kinsman secured him a post in the Ayrshire excise, near his connections. Borrow depicts him as upright in his service and sufficiently civil to maintain good relations with the inhabitants. He took a wife after reaching mature years. Most of the great proprietors of the neighbourhood permitted him to shoot over their lands; the Earl of Eglinton proved the exception.
Campbell was above all fond of angling. A river upon the Eglinton estate was renowned for its fish, but the proprietor barred access to it just as he forbade the chase. One day, whilst searching for smugglers, Campbell was carrying his gun across the estate when a hare started before him. He fired. The earl, informed of the shot, summoned the officer to his house. He reproached him for trespassing upon his lands and treated him with contempt. Campbell offered his apologies, stating that the hare had started up suddenly and that he had intended no offence to the proprietor.
Another matter had aggravated their estrangement. Campbell had intercepted Bartleymore, a favourite servant of the earl, whilst he was conveying eighty gallons of contraband rum along the coast. The cargo was condemned; the cart was returned because it belonged to Eglinton. Bartleymore began to spread ill reports concerning the officer. Borrow’s narrative asserts that he thereby helped poison relations between the earl and Campbell. The latter, persuaded that he had merely performed his duty, paid little heed to these rumours.
On October 24, 1769, about ten o’clock in the morning, Campbell set out with another officer, Brown, to search for smugglers. He carried a shooting licence granted by Doctor Hunter, though neither man claimed their purpose was to kill game. They crossed a small parcel of Eglinton’s lands to reach the shore. They arrived there near noon. The earl appeared in his coach, accompanied by Wilson, a carpenter in his employ, and four mounted servants.
Bartleymore pointed out poachers in the distance to his master and singled out Campbell. Eglinton quitted his carriage, mounted a saddle horse, and rode toward the two officers. He reminded Campbell that he had promised never to trespass upon his grounds again after the incident of the hare. He then demanded his gun. Campbell refused. The earl drew near; Campbell stepped back, weapon presented, and bid him keep his distance.
Eglinton smiled and asked whether he meant to fire. Campbell replied that he would do so if his lordship did not cease his advance. The earl then called to his servants to bring him a weapon from the coach. Whilst one man drew it forth, another was to convey it to him. Eglinton left his horse and continued walking toward Campbell, who continued his retreat without parting with his piece. He repeated that he would surrender it to no man, not even to the earl, and begged him to stand off.
Campbell was stepping backwards obliquely. His heel caught against a stone and he fell heavily. The narrative then describes Eglinton taking a stride as if to pass before his feet. Campbell, resting upon his elbow, leveled the gun at him and fired. The servant bringing the firearm had not yet reached the earl. Bartleymore ran upon Campbell just as the latter attempted to seize the gun borne by the servant. Eglinton clapped his hand to his wound and cried out that he was killed.
Bartleymore struck the officer repeatedly. The earl called out to him not to ill-use the man. Campbell’s hands were tied behind his back, and he was brought before the wounded peer. Eglinton told him that he would not have shot him. Campbell made no answer. His servants placed the lord in his carriage to convey him back to the castle, some three miles distant. Campbell was conducted to Saltcoats, where he had formerly been stationed as an excise officer. Those escorting him questioned him along the way. He confessed that he would sooner die than surrender his gun, and that he would shoot any peer of the realm who sought to wrest it from him. These words were subsequently produced against him at his trial.
Eglinton lingered in agony for ten hours and expired. The following day, Campbell was committed to the tolbooth of Ayr, then removed to Edinburgh the following month. Counsel debated at great length the legal character of the act. In his defence, they maintained that the piece had discharged by accident; failing that, that Campbell had defended his life and property against an assault; and lastly, that so sudden an affray could not argue premeditated malice. The prosecution countered that the threat to fire revealed murderous intent, and that the earl possessed the lawful right to seize the gun upon his own domain. They argued further that the peer had provoked Campbell only with words, and that words did not constitute provocation recognized by law. The defence invoked the officer’s life and property; the prosecution asserted the territorial rights of the landed proprietor.
The trial opened before the High Court of Justiciary on February 27, 1770. The jury returned a verdict of guilty against Campbell. The judge informed him that the nature of his crime left no hope of royal clemency and exhorted him to prepare for death. Borrow relates that the prisoner remained composed throughout the proceedings; upon the verdict, he bowed to the bench without seeking to extenuate his deed.
Returned to the prison, Campbell received several friends. He appeared in tolerable spirits and bid them return on the morrow. After they had shared several bottles of wine, they left him alone. On the morning of February 28, 1770, he was found dead in his cell; he had hanged himself. He had cheated the public execution that his sentence had appointed.
The affair had begun with a shooting licence that Campbell claimed to hold, a piece that Eglinton was determined to wrest from him, and a man stepping backward until he fell. The verdict stamped this shot with the character of murder; by the following morning, the tolbooth held no condemned man to conduct to the gibbet. Borrow’s narrative preserves these two ends side by side: that of the earl, struck down upon the borders of his domain, and that of the officer who received his sentence with composure, then died before it could be carried into effect.