A Scots judge in those times had not seldom a plurality of offices: thus the first Earl of Haddington was both President of the Court of Session and Secretary of State. He played many parts in his time, and he played them all well, for Tam o’ the Coogate was nothing if not acute. There are various stories of this old-time statesman. This shows forth the man and the age. A highland chief was at law, and had led his men into the witness-box just as he would have led them to the tented field. The Lord President had taken one of them in hand, and sternly kept him to the point, and so wrung the facts out of him. When Donald escaped he was asked by his fellow-clansman whose turn was to follow, how he had done? With every mark of sincere contrition and remorse, Donald groaned out, that he was afraid he had spoken the truth, and “Oh,” he said, “beware of the man with the partridge eye!” How the phrase brings the old judge, alert, keen, searching, before us! By the time of the Restoration things were more specialised, and the lawyers of the day could give more attention to their own subject. They were very talented, quite unscrupulous, terribly cruel; Court of Justice and Privy Council alike are as the house of death. We shudder rather than laugh at the anecdotes. Warriston, Dirleton, Mackenzie, Lockhart, the great Stair himself, were remarkable men who at once attract and repel. Nisbet of Dirleton, like Lauder of Fountainhall, took his title from East Lothian—in both cases so tenacious is the legal grip, the properties are still in their families—and Dirleton’s _Doubts_ are still better known, and are less read, if that be possible, than Fountainhall’s _Decisions_. You can even to-day look on Dirleton’s big house on the south side of the Canongate, and Dirleton, if not “the pleasantest dwelling in Scotland,” is a very delightful place, and within easy reach of the capital. But the original Nisbet was, I fear, a worse rascal than any of his fellows, a treacherous, greedy knave. You might bribe his predecessor to spare blood, it was said, “but Nisbet was always so sore afraid of losing his own great estate, he could never in his own opinion be officious enough to serve his cruel masters.” Here is _the_ Nisbet story. In July 1668, Mitchell shot at Archbishop Sharp in the High Street, but, missing him, wounded Honeyman, Bishop of Orkney, who sat in the coach beside him. With an almost humorous cynicism some one remarked, it is only a bishop, and the crowd immediately discovered a complete lack of interest in the matter and in the track of the would-be assassin. Not so the Privy Council, which proceeded to a searching inquiry in the course whereof one Gray was examined, but for some time to little purpose. Nisbet as Lord Advocate took an active part, and bethought him of a trick worthy of a private inquiry agent. He pretended to admire a ring on the man’s finger, and asked to look at it; the prisoner was only too pleased.