Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald: for the Murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's; Regiment of FootScott, Walter
History
Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald: for the Murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's; Regiment of Foot
which wounds he died on the said hill, immediately or soon thereafter,
where his dead body remained concealed for sometime, and was afterwards
found, together with a hat, having a silver button on it, with the
letters A. R. D. marked on it. LIKEAS, soon after the said Arthur
Davies was murdered, each of the said two panels, being persons of bad
fame and character, and who were habite and repute thieves, were, by
the general voice of the country, reputed to have perpetrated the said
murder, and to have robbed and taken from him a silver watch, two gold
rings and a purse of gold, which it was known or believed in the
country he generally wore or carried about him, which said opinion or
belief of the neighbourhood, that both of them had been guilty of the
said murder and robbery, has been since that time rendered the more
credible, particularly with respect to him, the said Duncan Clerk, in
so far as, although he was not possesst of any visible funds or effects
which could enable him to stock a farm before the period of the said
murder, yet soon thereafter he took and obtained a lease from Lord
Bracco, of a farm called the Craggan, for which he was bound to pay
thirty pounds Scots of yearly rent; as also thereafter he obtained a
lease of the farm of Gleney, from ---- Farquharson of Inverey, for
which at present he was bound to pay a yearly rent, or tack duty, of
one hundred and five merks Scots, as appears from the judicial
declaration of him, the said Duncan Clerk, to be hereafter more
particularly taken notice of; and both of the said panels having been
apprehended in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty-three, for
being guilty of the foresaid murder, and upon the twenty-third day of
January last, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-four years, brought
into the presence of the Right Honourable Alexander Fraser of Strichen
and Hugh Dalrymple of Drummore, two of the Lords Commissioners of
Justiciary each of them gave different and contradictory accounts of
themselves, in so far as the said Duncan Clerk did then acknowledge, in
presence of the said Judges, that he was on the hill of Gleneye,
alongst with the said Alexander Bain Macdonald, both armed as above set
forth, on the day the said Arthur Davies was amissing; that the said
Alexander Macdonald fired a shot at some deer, but that about ten
o'clock the said Duncan Clerk parted with him on the hill, and came
back to his father's house, to which likewise the said Alexander
Macdonald came the same evening, where he lodged or stayed all night;
as also a paper containing a list of debts, beginning with the words,
"I, Duncan Clerk, in Gleneye, was put in Perth Jail," and ending,
"Angus Macdonald, 12 sh.," now marked on the back with the name and
sirname of the said Lord Drummore, being exhibited to him the said
Duncan Clerk, he acknowledged the same to be his handwriting, and that
it contains a list of debts due to him when he was imprisoned, as is at
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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