[136] A great many of the Scottish Gipsies, in former times, carried arms. One of the Baillies once left his budget in a house, by mistake. A person, whom I knew, had the curiosity to examine it; and he found it to contain a pair of excellent pistols, loaded and ready for action. "As early as the month of August, 1715, the same man, as I understand it," says Baron Hume, "was again indicted, not only for being found in Britain, but for continuing his former practices and course of life. Notwithstanding this aggravation, the interlocutor is again framed on the indulgent plan; and only infers the pain of death from the fame and character of being an Egyptian, joined with various acts of violence and sorning, to the number of three that are stated in the libel. Though convicted nearly to the extent of the interlocutor, he again escaped with transportation." Baillie's policy in representing himself as a bastard son of an ancient and honourable family had, as I have already observed, been of great service to him; and in no way would it be more so than in his various trials. It is almost certain, as in cases of more recent times, that great interest would be used to save a bastard branch of an honourable house from an ignominious death upon the scaffold, when his crimes amounted only to "sorning, pickery, and little thieving, and habit and repute an Egyptian."[137] [137] What our author says of "the usual Gipsy policy of making the people believe that they are descended from families of rank and influence in the country," (page 154,) and that "the greater part of them will tell you that they are sprung from a bastard son of this or that noble family, or other person of rank and influence, of their own surname," (117,) is doubtless true as a rule; but there were as likely cases of what the Gipsies assert, and that Gipsy women, "in some instances, bore children to some of the 'unspotted gentlemen' mentioned by act of parliament as having so greatly protected and entertained the tribe," (114,) and that Baillie was one of them, (121 and 185.) If Baillie had been following the occupation, and bearing the reputation, of an ordinary native of Scotland, there would have been some chance "that great interest would be used to save a bastard branch of an honourable house from an ignominious death upon the scaffold," for almost any offence he had committed, but not for one who was guilty of "sorning, pickery, and little thieving, and habit and repute an Egyptian." There was doubtless a connexion, in _Gipsy_ blood, between Baillie and his influential friends who saved him and his relatives so often from the gallows.--_See Baillies of Lamington and McLaurin's Criminal Trials, in the Index._--ED.