The head was not held up nor its late owner denounced as a traitor. The Duke of Newcastle was displeased at the omission, but the Sheriffs justified themselves on the ground that the custom had not been observed at the execution of Lord Balmerino, and that the duke had not authorised them to act, in writing. A sample of the levity of the time is furnished in the accounts of the crowds that flocked to the trial as they might have done to some gay spectacle; and an example of its callousness may be found in what Walpole calls, ‘an excessive good story of George Selwyn.’ ‘Some women were scolding him for going to see the execution, and asked him how he could be such a barbarian to see the head cut off?’ “Nay,” says he, “if that be such a crime, I am sure I have made amends, for I went to see it sewed on again!” When he was at the undertaker’s, Stephenson’s in the Strand, as soon as they had stitched him together, and were going to put the body into the coffin, George, in my Lord Chancellor’s voice, said, “My Lord Lovat, your Lordship may rise.”’ [Sidenote: _LOVAT’S BODY._] Lovat had expressed a passionate desire to be buried in his native country, under the shadow of its hills, his clansmen paying the last duty to their chief, and the women of the tribe keening their death-song on the way to the grave. The Duke of Newcastle consented. The evening before the day appointed for leaving the Tower, a coachman drove a hearse about the court of the prison, ‘before my Lord Traquair’s dungeon,’ says Walpole, ‘which could be no agreeable sight, it might to Lord Cromartie, who is _above the chair_.’ Walpole treats Lord Traquair with the most scathing contempt, as if he were both coward and traitor, ready to purchase life at any cost. After all, Lovat’s body never left the Tower. ‘The Duke of Newcastle,’ writes Walpole to Conway, 16th April, on which night London was all sky-rockets and bonfires for last year’s victory, ‘has burst ten yards of breeches-strings, about the body, which was to be sent into Scotland; but it seems it is customary for vast numbers to rise, to attend the most trivial burial. The Duke, who is always at least as much frightened at doing right as at doing wrong, was three days before he got courage enough to order the burying in the Tower.’