If they spoke truth, Captain Green certainly did not
seize the 'Speedy Return,' whatever dark and bloody deeds he may have
done off the coast of Malabar.
In England, as Secretary Johnstone, son of the caitiff Covenanter,
Waristoun, wrote to Baillie of Jerviswoode, the Whigs made party
capital out of the proceedings against Green: they said it was a
Jacobite plot. I conceive that few Scottish Whigs, to be sure, marched
under Roderick Mackenzie.
In Scotland the Privy Council refused Queen Anne's demand that the
execution of Green should be suspended till her pleasure was known,
but they did grant a week's respite. On April 10 a mob, partly from
the country, gathered in Edinburgh; the Privy Council, between the mob
and the Queen, let matters take their course. On April 11 the mob
raged round the meeting-place of the Privy Council, rooms under the
Parliament House, and chevied the Chancellor into a narrow close,
whence he was hardly rescued. However, learning that Green was to
swing after all, the mob withdrew to Leith sands, where they enjoyed
the execution of an Englishman. The whole affair hastened the Union of
1707, for it was a clear case of Union or war between the two nations.
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