John Murdoch and Janet Douglas, both of them married persons, inhabitants of Edinburgh, were tried capitally at the instance of His Majesty's Advocate, not for notour*, but for simple adultery, i.e., for one act of adultery.  Informations were lodged for the prosecutor and the prisoners.  The King's Advocate restricted the libel to an arbitrary punishment.  The prisoners threw themselves upon the King's will, and were banished for life, never to return under pain of death.

If the frequency, variety, and severity, of criminal prosecutions can establish the purity of statesmen and judges, this surely was an age in which persons in public office could boast of a very uncommon degree of purity and virtue.  In this case, such was the zealous detestation of vice, that persons were indicted capitally for simple adultery, although neither by the statutory law, nor the judgments of the criminal courts, was simple adultery ever deemed capital.  A few months preceding this trial, the Court of Judiciary entered in its journals ** a recommendation to the King's Advocate to prosecute witches.  About the close of that century too, a man was hanged for murder, although the jury found that the prisoner in defending himself had killed the deceased.  Another was hanged for expressing in conversation, opinions on religion and philosophy opposite to those of the times.  A third was tried for high treason, for engraving a political print, but aquitted by the jury.  Others suffered death also, when perhaps their trials had better been omitted.

**  Records of Judiciary, March 27, 1699;  November 21, 1695;  December 24, 1696;  July 10, 1699;  April 14 & 22,;  May 24, 1701;  July 10, 1699.