Philip had a short and ignominious military career on the Continent, and returned home to prey upon his father; who, for sufficient reasons, disinherited him in favour of his younger brother. In the end, aided by some servants, he strangled the old man and threw the body in the river. For this he was hanged at Edinburgh, and as the hanging was not effectual, the executioner had to finish by strangling him, in which public opinion of that time saw the neat handiwork of Providence. XXXII HERE begins Haddington, and here end good roads for the space of a mile; and not until the burgh is left behind do they recommence. The traveller who might set out in quest of bad roads and vile paving would without difficulty discover the objects of his search at Haddington. He might conceivably find as bad elsewhere, but worse examples would be miraculous indeed. We have encountered many stretches of road, thus far, of a mediæval quality, but the long road to the North boasts, or blushes for, nothing nearly so craggy as are the cobble-stoned thoroughfares of this “royal burgh.” The entrance to the town from the south resembles, in its picturesque squalor, that to one of the decayed towns of Brittany. Unswept, tatterdemalion as it is, it still remains a fitting subject for the artist’s pencil, for here beside the narrow street stands the rugged mass of Bothwell Castle, patched and clouted from time to time, but happily as yet unrestored. Over the lintels of old houses adjoining, still remain the pious invocations and quaint devices originally sculptured there for the purpose of averting the baleful glance of the Evil Eye. The initial letter in the name of Haddington is a superfluity and a misuse of the letter H, the name deriving from that of Ada, Countess of Northumberland and ancestress of Scottish monarchs; foundress also of a nunnery here which has long gone the way of such mediæval things. The Tyne borders this town, and sometimes floods it, as may be readily seen by an inscription on the wall of a house in High Street, which tells how the water on October 4, 1775, suddenly rose eight feet and three quarters. A curious legend, too, still survives, recording a flood in 1358, when a nun of the pious Ada’s old foundation, seizing a statue of the Virgin out of its niche, waded into the torrent and threatened to throw it in unless the Blessed Mary instantly caused the waters to subside. That they immediately did so appears to have been taken as evidence of the effective moral suasion thus applied. [Picture: Bothwell Castle]