Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
FLORIDA. George Johnstone, a member of the family of Johnstone of Westerhall, was nominal Governor of Florida when that colony was ceded by Spain to Great Britain in 1763. He was one of the Commissioners appointed by the British government to try and restore peace in America in 1778.
This was discovered by one Johnstone of Westerhall, an apostate Presbyterian, and, like most of his class, particularly bitter against his former associates. He turned the woman with her younger children into the fields, pulled down her house, and dragged the eldest son before Claverhouse, then marching through that part of the country.
Westerhall was one of those who had in the previous year been empowered by royal commission to try prisoners, and his commission was still running when Claverhouse was disgraced. But on April 20th General Drummond was appointed to the supreme authority in all the southern and western shires, and his appointment was expressly declared to cancel all other civil commissions previously granted.
Both versions, it will be seen, agree in representing Claverhouse as inclined to mercy but overborne by Westerhall. The question remains, how was it that the former, a masterful man and not easy to be silenced when he was in the right, could not save this poor lad if he had a mind to do so? The answer is in truth not easy to find.
The corpse was discovered by the Laird of Westerhall, a petty tyrant who had, in the days of the Covenant, professed inordinate zeal for the Presbyterian Church, who had, since the Restoration, purchased the favour of the government by apostasy, and who felt towards the party which he had deserted the implacable hatred of an apostate.
Westerhall voted for instant death, while Claverhouse pleaded for the lad, and only yielded at last on the other's insistence, saying: "The blood of this poor man be upon you, Westerhall. I am free of it." He thereupon ordered the captain of a Highland company, then brigaded with his own men, to provide a firing-party; but the Highlanders angrily refused, and the troopers had to do the work.
Some thought that he had not been quite himself since the death of the Christian carrier, ten days before. But Westerhall was eager to signalise his loyalty, and extorted a sullen consent. The guns were loaded, and the youth was told to pull his bonnet over his face. He refused, and stood confronting his murderers with the Bible in his hand.
So Macaulay tells the story, following for once the "Cloud of Witnesses" rather than Wodrow. According to the latter, Claverhouse found Hislop wandering about the fields, and carried him before Westerhall, "without any design, as appeared, to murder him."
Goldsmith in 1755 met Irish medical students there, and some twenty years before the time we have reached Carlyle of Inveresk had found in Leyden 'an established lodging-house' where his countrymen, Gregory and Dickson, were domiciled, and numerous others, among whom he expressly mentions Charles Townshend, Askew the Greek scholar, Johnston of Westerhall, Doddeswell, afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer, and John Wilkes then entering, at eighteen, on the career of profligacy that was to render him notorious.
The explanation that Westerhall was at that particular time superior in authority to Claverhouse will hardly serve. It is true that the latter had just then no civil jurisdiction at all, either to condemn or pardon no commission of justiciary, as he wrote to Queensberry.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking