| The prisoner, who was son
and heir to John Dickson of Bellchester, on the 30th of April 1591, was tried for the
murder of his father, committed in the month of July 1588.
The Criminal Record
*
contains neither the particulars of the murder, nor the
evidence against the prisoner, but only that he was convicted by a jury, and sentenced to
be broke upon the wheel at the cross of Edinburgh.
At this period, and long after, the
sentences of the Court of Justiciary frequently express no time for their being carried
into execution; it being customary to take the convict directly from the Court to the
scaffold. |
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