This being the Rood Fair-day in Jedburgh, a party of rough borderers, Turnbulls, Davidsons, and others, to the number of twenty, came to the town, armed with hagbuts and pistols, and there presented themselves before the lodging of Sir Andrew Kerr of Ferniehirst, ‘fornent the market-cross, and after divers brags, insolent behaviour, and menacings, in contempt of him and his servants,’ slew his brother, Thomas Kerr, and one of his servants. Eleven persons stood a trial for this act, when it appeared that they were only, _more suo_, executing a horning of the sheriff of Roxburgh against Thomas Kerr. Sir Andrew Kerr and others stood a counter-trial for resisting the execution of the horning. But the only practical result was, that one Andrew Turnbull, brother of Turnbull of Bewly, was beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh (Dec. 16) for the slaughter of Thomas Kerr.--_Pit._ * * * * * [Sidenote: OCT. 8.] [Sidenote: 1600.] Francis Tennant, a wealthy merchant of Edinburgh, was hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh for uttering pasquils against the king and ‘his maist noble progenitors.’ Tennant had been an active friend of the Earl of Bothwell, and when that nobleman was at his last extremity, towards the end of 1594, this merchant-burgess had undertaken to get him delivered up to the king. ‘But by the contrair, howsoon he came to Bothwell, he revealit the cause of his coming to him, and shew[ed] what reward he had gotten, and offerit himself with all his guids in Bothwell’s will, affirming that he would not betray him for all the gold in the warld.’ It was in a ship furnished by Francis Tennant that the forlorn Bothwell escaped to France. Francis appears to have consequently forfeited his position in his native country. Having now fallen into the king’s hands, he was arraigned for writing a calumnious letter against the king, dated at Newcastle, January 17, 1597, addressed to Mr Robert Bruce, the minister, and another to Mr John Davidson, both being under fictitious signatures; and which letters ‘he had laid down in the kirk of Edinburgh, to the effect the same might have fallen in the hands of the people, thereby to bring his majesty in contempt, and steir up his people to sedition and disobedience.’ King James must have been stung to an unusual degree of wrath by these pasquils, for, after the trial, he sent a warrant to the justice-clerk, ordering for sentence, that Francis Tennant should ‘have his tongue cuttit out at the rute,’ and then be ‘hangit.’ Four days later, indeed, he departed from this cruel order, and sent a second warrant, stating that, ‘for certain causes moving us, we have thought good to mitigate that sentence, by dispensing with the torturing of the said Francis, other [either] in the boots, or by cutting out of his tongue, and _are content_ that ye only pronounce doom agains him to be hangit.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: DEC. 23.]