Sir Walter Scott has gravely published, in the _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, a strange story about Sir Godfrey M‘Culloch, to the effect that he had made friendship in early life with an old man of fairyland, by diverting a drain which emptied itself into the fairies’ chamber of dais; and when he came to the scaffold on the Castle Hill, this mysterious personage suddenly came up on a white palfrey, and bore off the condemned man to a place of safety. There is, however, too much reason to believe that Sir Godfrey really expiated the murder of William Gordon at the market-cross of Edinburgh. The fact is recorded in a broadside containing the unhappy man’s last speech, which has been reprinted in the _New Statistical Account of Scotland_. In this paper, he alleged that the murder was unpremeditated, and that he came to the place where it happened contrary to his own inclination. He denied a rumour which had gone abroad that he was a Roman Catholic, and recommended his wife and children to God, with a hope that friends might be stirred up to give them some protection. It has been stated, however, that he was never married. He left behind him several illegitimate children, who, with their mother, removed to Ireland on the death of their father; and there a grandson suffered capital punishment for robbery about the year 1760.[205] [Sidenote: MAR.] The Privy Council had an unpleasant affair upon its hands. Alexander Brand, late bailie of Edinburgh—a man of enterprise, noted for having introduced a manufacture of gilt leather hangings—had vented a libel under the title of ‘Charges and Gratuities for procuring the additional fifteen hundred pounds of my Tack-duty of Orkney and Zetland, which was the surplus of the price agreed by the Lords,’ specifying ‘sums of money, hangings, or other donatives given to the late Secretary Johnston; the Marquis of Tweeddale, late Lord High Chancellor; the Duke of Queensberry, then Lord Drumlanrig; the Earl of Cassillis; the Viscount of Teviot, then Sir Thomas Livingstone; the Lord Basil Hamilton; the Lord Raith, and others.’ He had, in 1693, along with Sir Thomas Kennedy of Kirkhill and Sir William Binning, late provosts of Edinburgh, entered into a contract with the government for five thousand stands of arms, at a pound sterling each, which, it was alleged, would have allowed them a good profit; yet, when abroad for the purchase of the arms, he wrote to his partners in the transaction, that they could not be purchased under twenty-six shillings the piece; and his associates had induced the Council to agree to this increased price, the whole affair being, as was alleged, a contrivance for cheating the government. To obtain payment of the extra sum (£1500), the two knights had entered into a contract for giving a bribe of two hundred and fifty guineas to the Earls of Linlithgow and Breadalbane, ‘besides a gratuity to James Row, who was to receive the arms.’ But no such sum had ever