The few particulars of those unfortunate gentlemen that appeared in the _Scots_ and in the _Gentleman’s Magazines_, for the year 1746, were unquestionably derived in a great measure from a pamphlet that was published, shortly after their execution, entitled, “A Genuine Acct. of the behaviour, &c., of Francis Towneley,” &c. This pamphlet was characterised by considerable political virulence; and, like all the publications of that turbulent period, sought to defame the unfortunate Jacobites, and to cover their memories with odium. To defend them from such attacks and unjust aspersions would, at that period, have been highly dangerous, and justice could not possibly have been done to their memories; but now when more than a century has elapsed since their deaths, and the asperities of party feeling which then prevailed have wholly disappeared, and, by the majority of our countrymen, are scarcely known to have ever existed, their reputations should be relieved from the unjust calumnies that have so long been suffered to attach to them; and the chivalric bravery with which these, and scores of other unhappy Jacobites, laid down their lives on the scaffold, cannot fail to awaken the sympathy and admiration of every Englishman. These brave but ill-fated men, without one exception, faced death with such undaunted firmness as to excite the wonder, sympathy, and respect of the multitudes who attended their executions. Though differing in age, social position, education, and habits, in their demeanour and proceedings on the scaffold, the most perfect similarity was exhibited; for, as Sir Walter Scott says, {32} “They prayed for the exiled family, expressed their devotion to the cause in which they died, and particularly their admiration of the princely leader whom they had followed till their attachment conducted them to this dreadful fate. It may be justly questioned whether the lives of these men, supposing everyone of them to have been an apostle of Jacobitism, could have done so much to prolong their doctrines as the horror and loathing inspired by so many bloody punishments.” In the pamphlet {33} to which I have referred, the character of David Morgan is described to have been singularly unamiable and arbitrary. That such was the _worst_ that could be said of him by one who wrote as the advocate and apologist of the dominant party, and the partisan of the ruthless government that doomed him and his ill-fated friends to death, and with whom it was regarded as a political necessity to traduce their characters, and hold them up to public odium, seems to me to afford very conclusive evidence that no discreditable stain rested on his name that even a hireling scribe could distort into a calumny. The account given of him in the “Genuine Account” is here subjoined in its entirety:—