An Edinburgh crowd drags John Porteous out…
September 1736 CE
An Edinburgh crowd drags John Porteous out of his cell in Tolbooth Prison on September 7 and lynches him.
The events in Edinburgh heighten the sense of alarm in London, where the government is concerned about the threat to its management of Scotland.
It is thought by Walpole, Queen Caroline and the Duke of Newcastle that Porteous had been unnecessarily sacrificed and there are even rumors that the conspiracy had involved the local city magistrates.
Various Opposition proposals to disband the city guard and debar the Lord Provost are put forward, and these are the subject of much debate—the Scottish MPs and the government strongly oppose these proposals for constitutional reasons and nothing is ever done.
It is variously thought that Porteous' murder had been carried out by friends of those who had been shot and killed, revenge by the smugglers, a Jacobite plot, or even a conspiracy by Presbyterian extremists.
However, the organization of events seems to imply a degree of planning, thought to be the work of James Maxwell, an Edinburgh journeyman carpenter, together with a small group of city tradesmen and journeymen.
Despite a reward of two hundred pounds being made available by the government for information, those responsible for the murder of Porteous are never found.
The events surrounding the Porteous Riots form part of the early chapters of the novel The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott (1818), where they are recorded in graphic detail.