The record of the trial of Robert Watt opens with a definition of treason. In Edinburgh, in 1794, the Lord Advocate reminded the jurors of the statute of Edward III: Watt was accused of compassing and imagining the death of the King, not of having assailed him directly. It was necessary, he explained, to prove intention by some overt act. The documents and witnesses that followed did not, therefore, describe any attempt upon the person of the sovereign, but rather an intricate web of committees, correspondence, weapons, and designs ascribed to Watt.
The prosecution represented the reform societies as the cradle of a revolutionary enterprise. Their petitions having failed, the prosecutor contended, the reformers sought to convene a convention capable of superseding Parliament itself. A Committee of Correspondence was tasked with preparing this rival assembly. Watt was a member of it, as well as of bodies styled the Committees of Union and of Ways and Means. The latter, the Crown asserted, kept no minutes and was charged with raising funds for the “great cause.” Downie was alleged to have served as its treasurer.
The charge rested upon more than mere assemblies. Letters from Thomas Hardy, secretary of the London Corresponding Society, to William Skirving, secretary to the Friends of the People in Scotland, were produced in court. In them the prosecutor discerned the renunciation of constitutional petitioning and the herald of more efficacious measures. He maintained that the design of a convention, modeled after that of France, was intended to subvert the established institutions of the realm. Yet epistolary exchanges and watchwords could not suffice to establish what Watt himself had contemplated; the prosecution thus undertook to bind him to the concrete plots debated in Edinburgh.
Arthur M’Ewan, a member of the Committee of Ways and Means, testified that Watt read aloud a plan to them: to set fire to an establishment near the Excise Office so as to draw out the garrison from the Castle, hem the soldiers between two detachments, seize the Castle itself, apprehend the judges and secure the banks, and thereafter issue proclamations to the tenantry and gentry. M’Ewan professed not to know what fate was reserved for those placed under arrest, nor whether the stroke was to be delivered by day or by night. He stated that he had opposed the design because he feared it would lead to bloodshed. The defense could not overturn his testimony, though the record confines it strictly within the bounds of his personal knowledge.
To this political architecture, the prosecution annexed the reality of arms. It maintained that Watt had commissioned four thousand pikes and organized their distribution through “Collectors of Sense and Money.” The material evidence included seized weapons and a font of types taken from his dwelling, together with an address directed to the soldiers of a fencible regiment quartered at Dalkeith. A printer affirmed that he had pulled an impression from these very types. Yet the witness who claimed to have sought out the printed broadside could find none at Watt’s lodging; he procured copies only later, and from the hands of another man.
The depositions of the blacksmiths introduced further doubt regarding the figure of four thousand. Robert Orrock explained that Watt had instructed him to forge a single pike as a pattern, and subsequently other models. The order he received directly from Watt’s mouth amounted to five dozen; Downie discharged the bill. William Brown admitted to having fashioned fourteen spearheads for Watt, but denied having ever told Orrock that a thousand were wanted. A committee member recounted that Watt had shown him a weapon, declaring it was intended solely for self-defense, that none would receive one save those who demanded and paid for it, and that he hoped to avert all effusion of blood. The quantities and the political intent did not speak with a single voice.
The narrative of the traveler John Fairley was no less divided. He was alleged to have distributed papers across several burghs at Watt’s behest and to have reported on the temper of the local societies. Yet Fairley recalled as well that Watt had assured him the pikes were intended merely for defense, and that the military might be solicited to make common cause with the reformers. Recalled to the stand at his own request during the proceedings, Fairley remembered more explicit designs: the seizure of the banks, public offices, and magistrates, followed by the dispatch of couriers. These declarations were not necessarily irreconcilable, but they compelled the court to distinguish between what Fairley had carried, what he had understood at the time, and what he subsequently recollected.
Walter Miller, of Perth, testified that he had remitted money to Downie to succor reformist patriots. He had never possessed any reason to believe that the projected convention pursued any object other than reform through lawful channels. This distinction was material in determining what the treasurer might truly have known. The prosecutor, for his part, brought together the remittances, the pikes, and the secret cabals to demonstrate that Watt was preparing a violent usurpation of authority.
When the Crown closed its case, Watt offered an entirely different account of these selfsame dealings. His counsel laid before the court his correspondence with Henry Dundas. Watt had written that he abhorred the pernicious principles gaining ground in Scotland and wished to furnish the government with intelligence regarding the Friends of the People. Dundas had answered, enjoining him to persevere and pledging secrecy. The letters received by Dundas had been placed in the hands of the Lord Advocate, who was now called as a witness for the defense.
Watt’s advocate maintained that his client had acted as an informer embedded within the movement. Such an office, he argued, made it an absolute necessity to attend meetings and feign zeal in order to win the trust of conspirators. He taxed the prosecution with having failed to prove that the most treasonable elements of the scheme were the work of his client. In this construction of the case, the same committees might well have been preparing a petition for parliamentary reform; Watt’s presence among them did not prove that he harbored any design to compass the King’s death or overthrow his government by force of arms.
The Lord Advocate acknowledged having met Watt upon several occasions. Intelligence previously supplied regarding disaffection among the dragoons at Perth had proved utterly unfounded. Watt had subsequently offered to deliver up further secrets for the sum of one thousand pounds—a proposal that was rejected. The witness conceded, however, that he had authorized the payment of thirty pounds to honor a bill of exchange for him. These communications had preceded the convention; the Lord Advocate could not recall having seen Watt since October 1793. The defense thus relied upon past communications with the Ministry, while the Crown produced weapons and machinations of a far more recent date.
The Lord President summed up the evidence and committed the verdict to the jurors. They retired at about half past five in the morning; five minutes later, they returned with a verdict of guilty. Watt and Downie were sentenced to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, there hanged, and then quartered. The text notes that royal clemency intervened on Downie’s behalf, his sentence being commuted to transportation for life. Watt, however, was led out to die on the 15th of October.
On the morning of his execution, the condemned man was conducted in procession to the Tolbooth. He spent some time in prayer before mounting the scaffold, accompanied by the magistrates, the sheriffs, and the Reverend Mr. Baird. He prayed once more and joined in the singing of psalms. After the hanging, the executioner severed his head with two strokes of an axe, holding it aloft to the multitude and proclaiming it the head of a traitor. Borrow adds that, in his final confession, Watt acknowledged having been a spy, and pronounced severe judgment upon any man who could debase himself to such an office. The defense had pleaded that role as an exculpation; the jury had seen in it only high treason.