strongly tinctured
by the adulatory spirit of the day, and was calculated to wound and to
harden the offending prisoners, rather than to unfold with dignity the
reasons for condemnation. In conclusion, since nothing could, in the
narrowing view of party, be too dictatorial for the unfortunate
Jacobites, they were exhorted not to rely any longer on the usual
directors of their consciences, but to be assisted by some of the pious
and learned divines of the Church of England. This was addressed to men
who were, with two exceptions, of the Church of Rome, and whose chief
reliance must naturally be upon those of their own persuasion.

The terrible sentence of the law was then recorded. It was that usually
given against the meanest offenders in like kind, the most ignominious
and painful parts being remitted by the grace of the Crown to persons of
quality. Judgment was, however, pronounced, according to the usual form
for high treason.[214]

The prisoners were then reconducted to the Tower; the Lord High Steward,
standing up uncovered, broke the staff of office, and declared the
present commission to be ended. The Peers returned to the House of
Lords.

Little is known of the dreary and solemn hours which intervened between
the judgment and the execution of the sentence. But one brief
expression, in an old newspaper, relative to the young and unhappy Earl
of Derwentwater, speaks volumes: "The Earl of Derwentwater is so
desponding, that two warders are obliged to sit up with him during the
night."[215] He was visited in his prison by Thomas Townshend, Viscount
Sydney, then Under Secretary of State for George the First;[216] one of
the most amiable men, as well as refined and elegant scholars of the
day, and a nobleman whose sensibility and delicacy of feeling, which
prevented his taking a share in the more active parts of public
business, must have caused an interview with the Earl of Derwentwater to
have been deeply touching. The Duke of Roxburgh also visited the
condemned nobleman; but no record is left of these communications. The
Duke was at that time Keeper of the Privy Seal for Scotland, and
Lord-Lieutenant of the counties of Roxburgh and Selkirk. He had recently
distinguished himself at Sherriff Muir: he was at this time a young man
of twenty-five years of age, and one whom all parties have commended.
"Learned, without pedantry, he was, perhaps," says Lockhart of Carnwath,
"the best accomplished young man of Europe."