Note 1296 — Chapter XXXVIII

He made several appeals calculated to move commiseration for his grey hairs. “My lords,” he said, at the commencement, “I have not had the use of my limbs these three years; I cannot see, I cannot hear; and I beg, if your lordships have a mind I should have any chance of my life, that you will allow either my counsel or solicitors to examine my witnesses, and to cross-examine those produced on behalf of the crown, and to take notes.” If he had been tried, on the charges brought against him, in Scotland forty-six years earlier, he would have been allowed this privilege; but the rules of English law confined the assistance of counsel, in cases of treason, to purely legal questions. At the conclusion of the second day he complained of the hardships of the early daily attendance to one of his infirm constitution, and said, “I must therefore beg that your lordships will indulge me with a later hour and some respite; otherwise I shall die at your bar,” but the request seems to have been unheeded. Another appeal of the same description, in which he said, “I fainted away thrice this morning before I came up to your lordships’ bar; but yet was determined to show my respect to your lordships, or die upon the spot,” produced a respite of a day.—Burton’s Life of Lovat, p. 257.