It was the custom in those days for condemned prisoners to be taken to the Tolbooth church the Sunday before their execution, and be preached at. Robertson and Wilson went as was customary, escorted by guards, but as they were coming out Wilson attacked the guards unexpectedly, and cried to Robertson to escape. In the confusion the latter managed to do so; he jumped over the pews, and was aided by the sympathetic congregation. The generous conduct of Wilson excited great popular sympathy, but Captain John Porteous, who was in command of the city guard, a rough and brutal man, especially resented the saving of one prisoner by the other, and determined that Wilson’s execution should take place the next day. In this decision he was hastened by a rumour that Wilson would be rescued from the gallows by the mob. He ordered a double guard around the scaffold, and was said to have forced the unfortunate victim to wear handcuffs much too small for him as he went to the place of execution, though the latter showed him his bruised and bleeding wrists, and protested against this barbarity. “It signifies little,” said Porteous brutally, “your pain will soon be at an end.” Wilson answered him in words that were afterwards remembered: “You know not how soon you yourself may have occasion to ask the mercy which you are now refusing to a fellow-creature. May God forgive you!” [Illustration: THE OLD TOLBOOTH, EDINBURGH, TEMP. 1736. _From an old Print_] Wilson was hanged by the neck on the gibbet erected in the Grassmarket, and the execution passed off quietly enough, though an enormous and threatening crowd had assembled. But when the body had hung on the gibbet for some time, some of the mob began to throw stones at the guards and a rush was made for the scaffold to cut down the body, either to give it decent burial or to see if it could be resuscitated. Porteous, who was a violent-tempered man and was said to be half-drunk, ordered the soldiers to fire upon the crowd and even stimulated them by snatching a musket from a soldier and firing it himself. Several persons were wounded, and six or seven killed on the spot. The firing was the signal for a general tumult; Porteous and his soldiers withdrew with difficulty to the guard-house, pursued by execrations and volleys of stones. Local feeling was wholly against Porteous; he was arrested for ordering the soldiers to fire upon the citizens, several of whom had taken no part in the tumult. His trial took place before the High Court of Justice in Edinburgh, and he was found guilty and condemned to death. He was to be hanged on September 8th, 1736, and meanwhile lay in the Tolbooth. He appealed to London, and the Queen-Regent in Council, taking into consideration the provocation which Porteous had received, ordered his reprieve.