[Footnote 1: History and Proceedings of the House of Commons, Vol.
VII. p. 154.]

Another subject in the parliamentary discussions of Oglethorpe which I
shall mention, is his defence of the magistracy and town-guard of the
city of Edinburgh against an arraignment in the House of Lords, for
what was deemed the neglect of prompt and energetic measures for
suppressing the riotous seizure and murder of Captain Porteous by an
exasperated mob. The circumstances were these.

After the execution in the Grass-market, on the 14th of April, 1736,
of one Andrew Wilson, a robber, the town-guard, which had been ordered
out on the occasion, was insulted by rude and threatening speeches,
and pelted with stones, by the mob. John Porteous, the captain, so
resented the annoyance, that he commanded his men to fire over their
heads, to intimidate them; and then, as their opposition became
violent, he directed the guard to fire among them; whereby six persons
were killed, and eleven severely wounded. For this he was prosecuted
at the expense of the city, and condemned to die. But, a short
reprieve having been obtained, the mob, determined to defeat it,
assembled in the night preceding the seventh day of September, whereon
he was to have been executed pursuant to the sentence, and, in a very
riotous manner, seized and disarmed the city-guard, and possessed
themselves of the town-gates, to prevent the admission of troops
quartered in the suburbs. They then rushed to the Tolbooth prison;
the doors of which not yielding to the force of their hammers, they
consumed by fire, and then brought forth Porteous by violence, and
hung him on a dyer's post, or frame, in the Grass-market, nigh the
spot where the unfortunate people were killed.