The impunity of numberless murders and other atrocious crimes in this reign is not more remarkable than the severity occasionally exhibited in comparatively trifling cases. For making a false writ in a matter of three hundred merks, five citizens of Edinburgh were condemned to death. Such, likewise, was the issue of the trial of John Moscrop, writer in Edinburgh, for giving himself out as a notary, and subscribing divers papers as such, he not being one. The six men appear to have all been tried on one day, and the end of the affair is chronicled by Birrel: ‘John Windieyetts, John Moscrop, Alexander Lowrie, John Halliday, and Captain James Lowrie [were] all hangit at the Cross of Edinburgh for counterfeiting false writs; whilk was great pity to see.’--_Bir._ * * * * * [Sidenote: FEB. 16.] It was now five years since the tragic death of the Earl of Moray, and yet his corpse lay unburied. So also did that of the late Lord Maxwell, killed in a conflict with the Johnstons, in December 1593. Stigmatising this as an abuse that ‘of late has croppin in,’ and in order to prevent the example from being followed, the king and Council issued an order to the respective relatives of the two noblemen, that they have the bodies buried in their ordinary places of sepulture within twenty days, under pain of rebellion.--_P. C. R._ * * * * * [Sidenote: FEB. 25. 1597-8.] On this day, being Saturday, occurred an eclipse of the sun, total at Edinburgh, and probably so throughout the country generally. No event entirely similar had occurred within the memory of living people in Scotland, and the impression which it was naturally calculated to produce in an age when such things were regarded as prodigies, was aggravated by the critical state in which the favourite Presbyterian institutions were then believed to be placed. Men regarded it as the omen of a dark period for the Kirk of Scotland.[232] ‘Betwixt nine and ten forenoon,’ says Calderwood, ‘began a fearful eclipse, which continued about two hours. The whole face of the sun seemed to be covered and darkened about half a quarter of an hour, in such measure that none could see to read a book. The stars appeared in the firmament. Sea, land, and air was still, and stricken dead as it were. The ravens and fowls flocking together mourned exceedingly in their kind. Great multitudes of paddocks [frogs] ran together, making an uncouth and hideous noise; men and women were astonished, as if the day of judgment had been coming. Some women swooned. The streets of Edinburgh were full of cries. Some men ran off the streets to the kirk to pray.’