The newspaper press neither reported the proceedings, nor made any comments on the judgment delivered. The simple facts that the Jacobite lords had pleaded _guilty_, that they had been sentenced, and that the Prince was present when the lords were condemned, were chronicled in few words. On February 21st the public were told that ‘the dead warrants had come,’ and that the master carpenter of the Tower had marked out the ground on ‘Great Tower Hill,’ for the scaffold. The ‘London Gazette’ despatched the lords in three lines. ‘Whitehall, Feb. 25th. Yesterday, James, late Earl of Derwentwater, and William, late Viscount Kenmure, condemned for High Treason, were beheaded on Tower Hill.’ The ‘Flying Post’ went into details, nine lines long, in which it was said that the lords, ‘being conveyed from the Tower to the Transport Office on Tower Hill, were beheaded in sight of many thousands of spectators, without the least disturbance or disorder; and we hear that the other four are reprieved till the 14th of March next. The Earl of Derwentwater’s corpse was taken down from the scaffold into a Hackney Coach, and that of Viscount Kenmure into a hearse.’ A paragraph, as brief as it is interesting, is appended to the above details. It runs thus: ‘P.S. We hear that the Earl of Nithsdale made his escape from the Tower, on Thursday night, at seven o’clock, in woman’s apparel.’ The ‘Daily Courant’ tells of the execution and the escape, in four lines. When the news of Lord Nithsdale’s escape reached Lady Cowper, at Court, she rejoiced at it, declaring that she was never better pleased with anything in her life, and that everybody else was as pleased as she was. ‘I hope he’ll get clear off!’ she exclaimed, when the report of the escape was confirmed. ◆[Sidenote: _THE KING, ON THE ESCAPE._]◆ King George himself good-naturedly remarked, on the same report being made to him,――‘It was the very best thing a man in Lord Nithsdale’s condition could have done!’――Lord Campbell calls this, ‘a quaint saying,’ and takes the trouble to tell posterity, ‘I have often been tickled by it!’――After all, there is some doubt as to the truth of this story. Lady Nithsdale says, in her letter to her sister, Lady Traquair: ‘Her Grace of Montrose said she would go to Court to see how the news of my Lord’s escape was received. When the news was brought to the King, he flew into an excess of passion, and said he was betrayed, for it could not have been done without some confederacy. He instantly despatched two persons to the Tower, to see that the other prisoners were well-secured.’ [Sidenote: _LORD DERWENTWATER._]