the top of the ladder,
cutting Wilson down, when a few idle men and boys began to throw pebbles,
stones, or garbage at him (a common practice at that time,) thinking he was
treating the affair rather ludicrously; whereupon Captain Porteous, who was
in very bad humour, became highly incensed, and instantly resented, by
commanding the city-guard, without the slightest authority from the
magistrates, and without reading the riot act or proclamation according to
law, to fire their muskets, loaded with ball, and by firing his own fuzee
among the crowd, by which four persons were killed on the spot, and eleven
wounded, many of them dangerously, who afterwards died. The magistrates,
ministers, and constables, who had retired to the first storey of a house
fronting the street, were themselves in danger of being killed, a ball, as
was discovered afterwards, having grazed the side of the window where they
stood. The lord provost and magistrates immediately convened, and ordered
Captain Porteous to be apprehended and brought before them for examination;
after taking a precognition, his lordship committed Porteous to close
imprisonment for trial for the crime of murder; and, next day, fifteen
sentinels of the guard were also committed to prison, it clearly appearing,
after a careful examination of the firelocks of the party, that they were
the persons who had discharged their pieces among the crowd.

On the 25th of March 1736, Captain Porteous was put on trial, at the
instance of the lord-advocate of Scotland, before the High Court of
Justiciary, for the murder of Charles Husband, and twelve other persons, on
the 14th of April preceding, being the day of the execution of Andrew
Wilson; and after sundry steps of procedure, having been found, by the
unanimous voice of the jury, guilty, he was, on the 20th of July following,
sentenced to suffer death in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, on Wednesday the
8th of September in the same year--that was, about five months after
Wilson's execution.

On the 26th of August, the Duke of Newcastle, one of the secretaries of
state, wrote a letter to the right honourable the lord justice-general,
justice-clerk, and other lords of justiciary, of which the following is a
copy:--"My lords, application having been made to her Majesty[G] in the
behalf of John Porteous, late captain-lieutenant of the city-guard of
Edinburgh, a prisoner under sentence of death in the gaol of that city, I
am commanded to sign