manner. thus making this respectable outward show, he was carrying on his shameful intrigue with the unhappy young woman whom he had seduced. It was not long, however, before the common result of such criminal connections took place in the intercourse of Lord Forrester and Mrs. Nimmo-satiety on his side, and wounded pride, jealousy, and despair on hers! She was a woman of violent character, accustomed, as it was said, to carry a dagger under her clothes. It was obvious that such a high-spirited and vindictive woman was not to be offended with impunity. Lord Forrester, however, having got tired of her, wished to break off his connection with her, and was so cruel and base as to speak of her openly in the most opprobrious He publicly alluded to her criminal connection with him, using the most reproachful language concerning her; and he even spoke of her personal attractions in contemptuous and disparaging terms. As he was much given to conviviality, Mrs. Nimmo was the frequent theme of discourse in his orgies with his boon companions, and he neither spared her reputation nor her person. This fact soon came to her knowledge, and inflamed her passion to the uttermost. All her love was turned into hate. She proceeded one afternoon to Corstorphine Castle, for the purpose of reproaching him; whether she had any bloody intention, it is impossible to say. It is more probable that she had no distinct plan, but wished to have a violent scene with her inconstant seducer. Lord Forrester was at the time drinking with a convivial party at the village tavern. This was a common practice with men of the first quality in Scotland at that time, and for a century P after, as we learn from the very interesting autobiography of the late Lord Cockburn. Mrs. Nimmo requested that his lordship should be summoned from the tavern, in order to speak to one who had particular business with him. Lord Forrester left the tavern flushed with claret, and met the infuriated woman in the garden of the castle. The altercation between them soon became violent; loud and bitter reproaches were uttered on the one side, and contemptuous sneers on the other. At length the unhappy woman was provoked to frenzy, and stabbed her paramour to the heart with his own sword. He fell under a tree near the pigeon-house, and died immediately. There was no actual witness to the deed, and the murderess immediately hurried from the garden, entered the castle, and took refuge in a distant turret, where she attempted to hide herself. She was, however, speedily discovered-it is said in consequence of one of her slippers falling through a crevice of the floor of the old room in which she was secreting herself. She was seized and taken before the sheriff of Edinburgh, where she made a full confession of her crime, although she urged every possible argument in extenuation of it. These, however, were necessarily unavailing in so clear a case of guilt, and in the course of two days, she was tried, and sentence of death was passed upon her. She, however, took advantage of the humanity of the law, declaring that she was with child by her seducer; and by means of this deception she succeeded in postponing the execution of her sentence for between two and three months. During this interval she contrived to clude the vigilance of the keepers of the Edinburgh tol booth, where she was confined, and she succeeded in making her escape in the disguise of a young man. However, she was pursued and captured at the mill of Fala on the day succeeding her flight, when she was brought back to prison, and kept with more vigilant care until her day of doom. The 12th of November, 1679, was fixed for her execution, and on that day she was brought out to the Cross of Edinburgh, where a scaffold was erected, the mode of death to which she was sentenced being decapitation. Mrs. Nimmo appeared in deep mourning, covered with a large veil. She mounted the scaffold with a firm step, and putting aside her veil, she showed an undaunted face to the assembled crowd. With her own hands she bared her neck and shoulders, and laid her head down upon the block with unflinching courage. Thus ended the Corstorphine tragedy. A curious circumstance is recorded to have taken place concerning the succession to Lord Forrester's property. His children had no just claim to the Corstorphine estates, which were destined to devolve, along with the peerage, on his brother, William Baillie, husband of the youngest daughter of the first lord, and on his heirs. Corstorphine Castle, however, was in possession of the Ruthvens, the family of the murdered lord. In that day, nothing was more common than the crime of violently seizing and secreting or altering legal deeds connected with territorial inheritance. Being well aware of this, William Baillie dreaded lest the young Ruthvens might use foul play with their father's charter chest, so as to favour their succession to the prejudice of himself and his family. He therefore went with a band of friends to the castle, of which he took forcible possession while the body of the murdered lord still lay there before his burial. The object of their violent intrusion was to take care that no documents or charters should be made away with or stolen. This conduct was afterwards the subject of a legal trial, when the lords condemned the wife and son of William Baillie to be put in prison during their pleasure; but, at the same time, they took measures to secure the charter chest. William Baillie was de jure third Lord Forrester; but during the two years which intervened between his brother's murder and his own death, he never assumed the title. It was, however, taken up by his son William, fourth Lord, in 1698, by whose descendants it has ever since continued to be held. It now forms one of the titles of the Earl of Verulam, whose grandfather, James, third Viscount Grimstone, married Harriet, daughter of Edward Walter of Stalbridge, by the Hon. Harriet Forrester, daughter of George, fifth Lord Forrester. Rise of the Strutts of Belper. "Hic patet ingeniis campus: certusque merenti It has long been the just boast of our country, that the highest honours are open to the humblest of her sons. In the roll of the British Peerage will be found seventy names ennobled by the successful practice of the law. Trade and commerce have been prolific sources of nobility. The Dukes of Leeds trace back to a clothworker, the Earls of Radnor to a Turkey merchant, the Earls of Craven to a Merchant taylor, and the Earls of Coventry to a London mercer. The families of Dartmouth, Ducie, Pomfret, Tankerville, Dormer, Romney, Dudley, Fitzwilliam, Cowper, Leigh, Darnley, Hill, and Normanby were all founded by merchants or citizens of London. In our own times commerce has added Lords Ashburton, Carrington, and Overstone to the Upper House, and the Peerage is not less noble, but more honoured and more useful, because it is occasionally recruited from the ranks of honourable industry. Mechanical invention, which is, perhaps, the basis of our pre-eminence as a commercial nation, has less frequently led to wealth and honours, either to inventors themselves or to their descendants, than the successful |