Aprit 1907.] PATRICK BLAIR, SURGEON APOTHECARY. 271 
1716. He pled “guilty,” and, like his companions, was 
sentenced to death, Many of his fellow-prisoners emitted 
the same plea. It was their best hope. By pleading guilty 
there was a chance of pardon; whereas in the case of a 
conviction on evidence, clemency was less likely to be had. 
In Newgate, Blair was visited by his friends Sloane and 
Petiver. Sloane was a person in favour at Court, and his 
services were in request to secure Blair’s pardon. 
In a statement prepared for Sloane’s use, Dr. Blair says 
that “he was in no respect accessory to the late troubles, 
but happening to reside near the parts in which the rebellion 
broke out, the gentry forced him to accompany the army 
as a medical attendant” (Sloane MSS. 4038). There seems to 
have been considerable delay in securing the pardon. Letters 
passed between Blair and Petiver, in which the Doctor inclines 
to think Sloane was indifferent to his fate, and somewhat 
tardy in his actions, and certainly the official imtimation 
came under rather dramatic circumstances. On the evening 
of the day preceding the date fixed for his execution, some 
friends, at his request, came to see and spend the evening 
with him. Still no word of the pardon was forthcoming. 
Petiver, in a letter to Sloane, tells the story. “ The Doctor,” 
he said, “ sat pretty quietly till the clock struck nine, and then 
he got up and walked about the room; at ¢en he quickened his 
pace; and at twelve, no reprieve coming, he cried out, ‘ By 
my troth, this is carrying the jest too far.’” The reprieve, 
however, came soon after, and in due time the official pardon. 
Dr. Blair, as may well be supposed, found himself stranded 
in London when set at liberty. He need not return to 
Dundee; his business there would be quite gone. Pre- 
sumably his friends there, whose support was the chief 
reason of his joining the division led by Brigadier Mackintosh 
into England, were all scattered. Dundee was strongly 
Jacobite; so much so that when Argyll reached the town 
after Sheriffmuir, he found it necessary to appoint new 
magistrates and town-clerk, all the town’s officials having 
thought it their safest plan to leave the neighbourhood. 
Blair’s friends and admirers in the Royal Society, no doubt, 
did what they could, and his Scots fellow-countrymen 
encouraged him to start practice in London. He resumed 
his acquaintance, among others, with Alex. Geekie, “surgeon 
