chapter 5 (volume 2).

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EDINBURGH: A. D. 1736. The Porteous Riot.

"The circumstances of the Porteous Riot are familiar wherever the English tongue is spoken, because they were made the dramatic opening of one of his finest stories by that admirable genius who, like Shakespeare in his plays, has conveyed to plain men more of the spirit and action of the past in noble fiction, than they would find in most professed chronicles of fact. The early scenes of the 'Heart of Midlothian' are an accurate account of the transaction which gave so much trouble to Queen Caroline and the minister [Walpole]. A smuggler who had excited the popular imagination by his daring and his chivalry was sentenced to be hanged; after his execution the mob pressed forward to cut down his body: Porteous, the captain of the City Guard, ordered his men to fire, and several persons were shot dead: he was tried for murder, convicted, and sentenced, but at the last moment a reprieve arrived from London, to the intense indignation of a crowd athirst for vengeance: four days later, under mysterious ringleaders who could never afterwards be discovered, fierce throngs suddenly gathered together at nightfall to the beat of drum, broke into the prison, dragged out the unhappy Porteous, and sternly hanged him on a dyer's pole close by the common place of public execution."

_J. Morley, Walpole, chapter 9._

ALSO IN: _J. McCarthy, History of the Four Georges,