Note 156 — BOOK XX.
Reading edition
On this most infamous judicial assassination, Sir Walter Scott remarks—“It is strange how the ferocity of persecution begets in those who are exposed to it a corresponding obstinacy and pertinacity. In the present case, one may say with the jailer in Cymbeline, that ‘unless a man would marry a gallows and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone.’” The fact was, he was on horseback riding home, when he was stopped by the crowd in the Grassmarket, and remained till the three were turned over, when, unable to repress his honest indignation, he expressed himself in the words for which he suffered.