Mr. Forbes of Culloden,
later President of the Court of Session, and, far more than the
butcher Cumberland, the victor over the rising of 1745, believed in
the innocence of Captain Green, wore mourning for him, attended the
funeral at the risk of his own life, and, when the Porteous Riot was
discussed in Parliament, rose in his place and attested his conviction
that the captain was wrongfully done to death.
[Footnote 29: Gibbet.]
Green, like his namesake in the Popish Plot, was condemned for a crime
of which he was probably innocent. Nay more, he died for a crime which
was not proved to have been committed, though it really may have been
committed by persons with whom Green had no connection, while Green
may have been guilty of other misdeeds as bad as that for which he was
hanged. Like the other Green, executed for the murder of Sir Edmund
Berry Godfrey during the Popish Plot, the captain was the victim of a
fit of madness in a nation, that nation being the Scottish. The cause
of their fury was not religion--the fever of the Covenant had passed
away--but commerce.
'Twere long to tell and sad to trace the origin of the Caledonian
frenzy.
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