was guilty!  All said, “guilty upon honour,” and then adjourned, the prisoner having begged pardon for giving them so much trouble.  While the Lords were withdrawn, the Solicitor-General Murray (brother of the Pretender’s minister) officiously and insolently went up to Lord Balmerino, and asked him, how he could give the Lords so much trouble, when his solicitor had informed him that his plea could be of no use to him?  Balmerino asked the bystanders who this person was? and being told he said, “Oh, Mr. Murray!  I am extremely glad to see you; I have been with several of your relations; the good lady, your mother, was of great use to us at Perth.”  Are not you charmed with this speech? how just it was!  As he went away, he said, “They call me Jacobite; I am no more a Jacobite than any that tried me:  but if the Great Mogul had set up his standard, I should have followed it, for I could not starve.”  The worst of his case is, that after the battle of Dumblain, having a company in the Duke of Argyll’s regiment, he deserted with it to the rebels, and has since been pardoned.  Lord Kilmarnock is a Presbyterian, with four earldoms in him, but so poor since Lord Wilmington’s stopping a pension that my father had given him, that he often wanted a dinner.  Lord Cromartie was receiver of the rents of the King’s second son in Scotland, which, it was understood, he should not account for; and by that means had six-hundred a-year from the Government:  Lord Elibank, a very prating, impertinent Jacobite, was bound for him in nine thousand pounds, for which the Duke is determined to sue him.

When the Peers were going to vote, Lord Foley withdrew, as too well a wisher; Lord Moray, as nephew of Lord Balmerino—­and Lord Stair,—­as, I believe, uncle to his great-grandfather.  Lord Windsor, very affectedly, said, “I am sorry I must say, guilty upon my honour.”  Lord Stamford would not answer to the name of Henry, having been christened Harry—­what a great way of thinking on such an occasion!  I was diverted too with old Norsa, the father of my brother’s concubine, an old Jew that kept a tavern; my brother [Orford], as Auditor of the Exchequer, has a gallery along one whole side of the court; I said, “I really feel for the prisoners!” old Issachar replied, “Feel for them! pray, if they had succeeded, what would have become of all us?” When my Lady Townsend heard her husband vote, she said, “I always knew my Lord was guilty, but I never thought he would own it upon his honour.”  Lord Balmerino said, that one of his reasons for pleading not guilty, was that so many ladies might not be disappointed of their show.