On the 18th of August 1746, a formidable column of troops marched toward Tower Hill, charged with maintaining order about a scaffold. Camden Pelham’s account numbers a thousand foot soldiers, a troop of Horse Guards, and a detachment of grenadiers. Two prisoners from the Tower of London were appointed to die there: William Boyd, Earl of Kilmarnock, and Arthur Elphinstone, Lord Balmerino. A few weeks prior, their peers had tried them for their share in the Jacobite rebellion. On this day, the grim ritual of execution was to unfold before an immense concourse of people.
The 1887 edition consulted reproduces a retrospective chronicle, the preface of which, by Camden Pelham, bears the date of 1840. It opens upon the expedition of Charles Edward Stuart and the campaign of 1745, tracing the march of the armies down to the defeat at Culloden. This long retrospect illuminates the trial without obscuring it: in the summer of 1746, several rebel lords were brought from the Tower to Westminster Hall. The Earl of Kilmarnock and the Earl of Cromartie pleaded guilty. Balmerino, for his part, denied the charge; six witnesses were heard, and the peers pronounced him guilty. On the 1st of August, the Lord High Steward pronounced sentence of death upon the prisoners.
The sentence, however, had not determined the fate of all. Kin and allies sought to obtain the royal clemency for the condemned. When counselled to have his friends intercede on his behalf, Balmerino replied that he was indifferent to his own fate, adding that, had true friendship prevailed, the two earls ought to have “squeezed his name in among their own.” Pelham adduces this rejoinder as proof of magnanimity. Above all, it bears the mark of an asserted solidarity between men whom the law had nonetheless sundered by their pleas: Kilmarnock had confessed his guilt; Balmerino had denied the charge at his trial, before the peers found him guilty.
The Countess of Cromartie chose another course. The mother of several young children, she petitioned the Princess of Wales for her husband’s life, appearing before her accompanied by her infants, all clad in deep mourning. A pardon was granted upon the condition that Cromartie should never reside north of the River Trent. He lived in Soho Square until his death in 1766. His case remained an exception, and his absence was to haunt the remaining two noblemen all the way to the place of execution.
Shortly after six o’clock in the morning, the troops marched out of St. James’s Park. They traversed the City and took up their stations between the Tower, the scaffold, and the public avenues. The Sheriffs had assembled at a tavern in Fenchurch Street before proceeding to the former Transport Office near Tower Hill. The Guards were ordered to form lines between the fortress and the place of execution, and to secure the perimeter. At eleven o’clock, the Sheriffs formally demanded the bodies from the Constable of the Tower. The two lords came forth in procession, followed by mourning coaches and two hearses. The chronicle details this disposition with the selfsame gravity with which it later describes the gestures of the condemned: here, public punishment was also a pageant of State.
The prisoners were conducted into two separate apartments fronting the scaffold stairs, where their friends were permitted to attend them. Kilmarnock spent an hour in prayer with the Reverend Mr. Foster, a Dissenting divine. Balmerino was attended by the Chaplain of the Tower and another Anglican clergyman. Upon entering the house, Balmerino overheard the spectators inquiring which of the prisoners was Lord Balmerino. He replied with a smile: “It is I, gentlemen, at your service.” After conferring with Kilmarnock concerning certain intelligence regarding the Pretender’s orders at Culloden, he withdrew to his friends.
The Earl desired that Balmerino should suffer first. The warrant, it was explained, named Kilmarnock at its head; to this order he submitted. When he stepped forth before the multitude, the chronicle relates that the crowd gave tokens of compassion and pity. “It is terrible!” he exclaimed at the sight of the apparatus. He did not address the assembly to vindicate the rebellion. He prayed, mentioned King George and his family, and embraced his companions. The headsman, overcome with emotion, asked his forgiveness before commencing. Kilmarnock presented him with five guineas and spoke words of encouragement. He made ready for the block with the assistance of his gentlemen; his hands trembled as he adjusted his posture—a circumstance the chronicler does not banish behind the dignified veil of ceremony.
The concerted signal was the dropping of his handkerchief. The first stroke severed the head almost entirely; a second stroke completed the severance. The body was laid in a coffin, and the blood cleansed from the platform. The executioner’s garments, stained during the stroke, were shifted before Balmerino was brought forward. These particulars are distressing, yet they belong to the very order of things that Pelham describes: the scaffold was refurbished to receive the second victim, as though the spectacle were partitioned into two discrete acts.
Balmerino had given out that he would read a speech. In his room, he partook of bread and wine, jested with his companions, and inquired whether Kilmarnock’s execution was accomplished. Learning that it was done, he wished to know whether the headsman had performed his office well. He then mounted the steps to the scaffold with a tread that observers remarked as steady. His blue and red uniform was, according to Pelham, the very coat he had worn at Culloden. He walked about the platform, bowed to the crowd, examined his coffin, and read his declaration. It acknowledged King George’s personal magnanimity, whilst disputing that he held any right to the allegiance of his subjects. He delivered the paper to the Sheriff.
When the executioner would have asked his pardon, Balmerino stayed him: his office, he observed, was commendable. He handed him three guineas, regretting that he had no more to bestow upon him save his garments. He then stripped off his coat and placed a Scottish cap upon his head, declaring that he would die a Scotsman. He showed the headsman where to strike, indicating that the signal should be the dropping of his arms. “There,” records Pelham, “will be your kindness.” Even in the presence of the steel, Balmerino sought to dictate the other man’s movements and the meaning they should bear.
He bent forward a first time toward the block. The blow fell without sufficient force; two further strokes were dealt before life was extinguished. The chronicle relates plainly that the headsman was obliged to strike repeatedly. The two coffins were placed beside that of the Marquess of Tullibardine, who had expired in his captivity, and the three men were interred in the same vault of the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, within the Tower. The law had parted them by their pleas before their peers; their final journey united them in the dust.
Pelham casts into high relief the contrast between Kilmarnock, who confessed the indictment, and Balmerino, who denied it at the bar and preserved to the last a political defiance. The narrative does not pretend that the multitude caught every syllable. Rather, it delineates the apparatus enclosing the scene: the palisades, the soldiery, the chambers where friends were received, the raised stage where each stepped forward in his turn. Authority had sundered the condemned before reuniting them within a single tomb. The public ceremony exhibited both the majesty of the judgment and the boundaries of what it could wrest from men upon the threshold of death. The chronicle records their final hours, but it claims no access to their inner souls. It leaves us only with the words they uttered, the actions observed, and the choices recounted. Their end does not transmute their cause into an acquittal. It serves, however, to remind us that a common sentence may encompass two vastly divergent roads: one leading from confession to rejected mercy, the other from initial denial to a dying testament of Scottish fidelity.