Scots' fury at their country's impotence leads…

December 1704 CE

Scots' fury at their country's impotence leads to what follows: the scapegoating and hanging of three innocent English sailors.

Thomas Green is the twenty-five year old master of an English merchant ship, the Worcester, which he had brought into Leith in July 1704; he had been given the command at the age of twenty-one.

A liking for strong drink is to be Green's downfall.

Mackenzie, who convinces himself that Worcester is an East India Company ship and should be seized in reprisal for the Annandale, succeeds in obtaining legal authority to do so and Green watches over the next three months as the cargo is impounded and the sails, guns and rudder were stripped.

The crew is in December arrested for piracy.

Although many in Scotland are delighted, it soon becomes clear to the directors of the Darien company that Mackenzie's charges are unsupported by any kind of valid proof and it seems that the men will be released.

However, Mackenzie suddenly claims to have ascertained from the crew of the Worcester that Green had drunkenly boasted of taking the Speedy Return, killing the Drummonds, and burning the ship.

Despite a total lack of real evidence Green and two of his crew, John Madden and James Simpson, are sent for trial.

The prosecution case, which is made in medieval Latin and legal Doric (the popular name for the Mid Northern Scots or Northeast Scots dialect) is unintelligible to jury and accused alike.

The advocates for the defense seem to have presented no evidence and flee after the trial.

There is almost no one in Scotland who is disinterested, but some jurors resist bringing in a verdict of guilty.

The men are convicted nonetheless and sentenced to death by hanging.

The Queen advises her thirty Privy Councillors in Edinburgh that the three men should be pardoned, but the common people demand that the sentence be executed.

Nineteen of the Councillors make excuses to stay away from the deliberations on a reprieve, fearing the wrath of the huge mob that has arrived in Edinburgh to demand that the sailors be put to death.

Although they have affidavits from London by the crew of the Speedy Return, which prove Green and his crew had no knowledge or involvement in the fate of the ship, the Councillors decline to pardon the men.

Green, Madden and Simpson are subjected to derision and insults by the mob before they are hanged, being mockingly huzza'd by the huge crowd on the way to the gallows on Leith sands.

Green has complete faith that, as an innocent man, he will be reprieved; he is still looking to the Edinburgh road for a messenger as the hangman places the hood over his head.