Crime & punishment > Times of Claverhouse, or, Sketches of the persecution

THE TIMES OF CLAVERHOUSE.
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These deeds of cruelty speak for themselves, and
plainly show the temper and the character of the
men to whom the affairs of the nation were mainly
intrusted.
The cruelties exhibited on the scaffold were
strictly akin to those already specified, and wrere
actually decreed by the same persons; for they were
not satisfied with simply inflicting torture in pri¬
vate, they were determined also that the most pain¬
ful spectacles of this kind should occasionally be
exhibited to the public. One of the most distress¬
ing of these exhibitions was witnessed in the case
of Hackston of Rathillet, who had been present at
the death of the archbishop, though he had no
hand in it, and was also at the skirmish at Airs-
moss. It was not to be expected, that to a man in
his situation any thing like clemency would be
shown, and therefore the council resolved that he
should be subjected to a very hideous and barbarous
treatment. He was condemned to die;—this was
nothing strange, it is the circumstances that at¬
tended his execution that strike us as being pecu¬
liarly revolting and inhuman. His sentence was
as follows:—“ That his body be drawn backward
on a hurdle to the cross of Edinburgh ; that there
I be an high scaffold erected a little above the cross,
where, in the first place, his right hand is to be
1 struck off, and after some time, his left hand; then
he is to be hung up and cut down alive, his bowels
to be taken out, and his heart shown to the people
by the hangman; then his heart and his bowels to
} be burned in a fire prepared for that purpose on the
scaffold; that afterwards his head be cut off, and
his body divided into four quarters ; his head to be