It is pleasant to find on record a friendly action of Grossett to a condemned prisoner. Patrick Murray, a goldsmith of Stirling, was taken prisoner at Airdrie in November 1745 by some country people. To Grossett, who was present, he declared that he surrendered in accordance with Marshal Wade’s proclamation of 30th October offering his Majesty’s clemency to all rebels who would surrender before 11th November.[98] Grossett had been summoned to Murray’s trial at Carlisle as a witness for the defence, but was prevented from being present owing to his secret services detaining him in London. Murray was tried on September 24th, 1746, found guilty, and condemned to death. The terms of his surrender were not pled at his trial, and Grossett sent in a memorial stating the facts of the arrestment:[99] it was of no avail, Murray was executed on November 15th. Grossett tells the story of his executive work and of the expenses he incurred in the pages printed in this volume. He mentions that he gave evidence in 1747 at the trial of Lord Provost Archibald Stewart for losing Edinburgh to Prince Charles, but he does not mention the lines in which he is held up to shame and ridicule, along with the magistrates and the clergy of Edinburgh, in a poem published after the trial, which was burned by the hangman, and which brought the printer to the pillory and to ruin: ‘And stupid Gr--t next must take the field, And He, (with fifty,) swore he would not yield, To those brave Hundreds (who deserv’d the rope,) That did beat Thousands under Sir J--n C--pe.’[100] Judging from the report of the Duke of Cumberland’s Secretary and the Solicitor to the Treasury (p. 400), Grossett’s claim for £3709 was justified. I have, however, failed to discover if the sum was actually paid, and family papers throw some doubt on this. In a memorandum by his eldest son it is stated that he was a sufferer for his services to Government by many thousand pounds. This may mean that his claim was never liquidated, though after the report of the official scrutineers that hardly seems probable. It is more likely that young Grossett refers to the legal expenses incurred by his father in defending himself against the ‘scandalous Libells and groundless and vexatious lawsuits,’ which he had to meet as the result of his anti-Jacobite and anti-smuggling zeal, together with the loss of professional perquisites referred to on pp. 336 and 337.[101]