ad any personal
prejudice against his Majesty, nor was I ever accessory to any previous
design against him. I humbly beg my noble Peers and the honourable House
of Commons to intercede with the King for mercy to me, that I may live
to show myself the dutifullest of his subjects, and to be the means to
keep my wife and four small children from starving; the thoughts of
which, with my crime, makes me the most unfortunate of all gentlemen."

After the trial, great intercessions were made for mercy, but without
any avail, as far as Lord Derwentwater and Lord Kenmure were concerned.
They were ordered for execution on the 24th of February, 1716.

The intelligence of the condemnation of these two lords, produced the
greatest dismay among their fellow sufferers in the Tower; and the
notion of escape, a project which was singularly successful in some
instances, was resorted to, in the despair and anguish of the moment, by
those who dreaded a cruel and ignominious death.

Lord Kenmure, meantime, prepared for death. A very short interval was,
indeed, allowed for those momentous considerations which his situation
induced. He was sentenced on the ninth of February, and in a fortnight
afterwards was to suffer. Yet the execution of that sentence was, it
seems, scarcely expected by the sufferer, even when the fatal day
arrived.

The night before his execution, Lord Kenmure wrote a long and affecting
letter to a nobleman who had visited him in prison a few days
previously. There is something deeply mournful in the fate of one who
had slowly and unwillingly taken up the command which had ensured to him
the severest penalties of the law. There is an inexpressibly painful
sentiment of compassion and regret, excited by the yearning to live--the
allusion to a reprieve--the allusion to the case of Lord Carnwath as
affording more of hope than his own--lastly, to what he cautiously calls
"an act of indiscretion," the plea of guilty, which was wrung from this
conscientious, but sorrowing man, by a fond value for life and for the
living. So little did Lord Kenmure anticipate his doom, that, when he
was summoned to the scaffold the following day, he had not even prepared
a black suit,--a circumstance which he much regretted, since he "might
be said to have died with more decency."

The following is the letter which he wrote, and which he addressed to a
certain nobleman.

"My very good Lord,

"Your Lordship has interested yourself s