SEPTEMBER 223 



would be as effective to send the youth to safe keeping 

 in Ireland. Auchendrayne seemed to incline to this 

 proposal also, but his son settled the question by rushing 

 suddenly upon Dalrymple, throwing him down, and, 

 assisted by his father, strangling him. Thereafter they 

 waded out to sea with the corpse and committed it to 

 the waves, which washed it up on the same spot seven 

 days later. 



Bannatyne was straightway sent to that convenient 

 receptacle for inconvenient individuals, Ireland, and it 

 was sworn by witnesses at the trial that Auchendrayne 

 had afterwards hired one James Pennicuik to go to 

 Ireland to murder Bannatyne. It is difficult to see where 

 this chain of crime would have finished had it not come 

 to a fitting conclusion in the trial and execution of both 

 the Mures and James Bannatyne. 



The trial has become celebrated, not because of the 

 atrocity of the crimes committed, nor because one of 

 the accused, the younger Mure, was put to the torture 

 of the boots to extract evidence against himself — there 

 was nothing unusual in either of these circumstances — 

 but because the ordeal of touch was employed to find 

 the murderer. The Earl of Cassilis caused Dalrymple's 

 corpse to be exhumed, and, finding that he had died by 

 violence, ordered all the people of the neighbourhood to 

 attend and touch the corpse. The order was obeyed by 

 all except the elder and younger Mure, who were not so 

 simple as to trust themselves in the clutches of Cassilis. 

 But Mure's daughter was one of the throng, and it was 

 alleged that so soon as she drew near the body blood 

 spouted upon her therefrom, in consequence of which 

 the Mures were apprehended and put upon trial, 



