After the trial, great intercessions were made for mercy, but without any avail, as far as Lord Derwentwater and Lord Kenmure were concerned. They were ordered for execution on the 24th of February, 1716. The intelligence of the condemnation of these two lords, produced the greatest dismay among their fellow sufferers in the Tower; and the notion of escape, a project which was singularly successful in some instances, was resorted to, in the despair and anguish of the moment, by those who dreaded a cruel and ignominious death. Lord Kenmure, meantime, prepared for death. A very short interval was, indeed, allowed for those momentous considerations which his situation induced. He was sentenced on the ninth of February, and in a fortnight afterwards was to suffer. Yet the execution of that sentence was, it seems, scarcely expected by the sufferer, even when the fatal day arrived. The night before his execution, Lord Kenmure wrote a long and affecting letter to a nobleman who had visited him in prison a few days previously. There is something deeply mournful in the fate of one who had slowly and unwillingly taken up the command which had ensured to him the severest penalties of the law. There is an inexpressibly painful sentiment of compassion and regret, excited by the yearning to live--the allusion to a reprieve--the allusion to the case of Lord Carnwath as affording more of hope than his own--lastly, to what he cautiously calls "an act of indiscretion," the plea of guilty, which was wrung from this conscientious, but sorrowing man, by a fond value for life and for the living. So little did Lord Kenmure anticipate his doom, that, when he was summoned to the scaffold the following day, he had not even prepared a black suit,--a circumstance which he much regretted, since he "might be said to have died with more decency." The following is the letter which he wrote, and which he addressed to a certain nobleman. "My very good Lord, "Your Lordship has interested yourself so far in mine, and the lords, my fellow prisoners' behalf, that I should be the greatest criminal now breathing, should I, whether the result of your generous intercession be life or death, be neglectful of paying my acknowledgments for that act of compassion.