"On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, And frequent hearses shall besiege their gates."
And they were literally considered by all the neighbourhood as caitiffs,
"Whose breasts the furies steel'd And curst with hearts unknowing how to yield."--POPE.
The blasting influence of more than dramatic justice, or of corroding infamy, seemed to reach every branch of this devoted family. After the extinction of the direct male heirs, a brother, who was a captain in the army, came home to take possession of the property. He was a person well-respected in life, and possessed some talent, and much amenity of manners. The country gentlemen, however, shunned and disliked him, on account of the existing prejudice. This person, thus shunned and slighted, seemed to grow desperate, and plunged into the lowest and most abandoned profligacy. It is needless to enter into a detail of crimes which are hastening to desired oblivion. It is enough to observe that the signal miseries of this family have done more to impress the people of that district with a horror of treachery, and a sense of retributive justice, than volumes of the most eloquent instruction could effect. On the dark question relative to temporal judgments it becomes us not to decide. Yet it is of some consequence, in a moral view, to remark how much all generous emulation, all hope of future excellence, is quenched in the human mind by the dreadful blot of imputed infamy."[65]
This account of the retributive justice of public opinion which was visited upon Drumakiln, is confirmed by other authority.[66] It is consolatory to reflect that the Marquis of Tullibardine, after a life spent in an honest devotion to the cause which he believed to be just, was spared, by a merciful release, from the horrors of a public trial, and of a condemnation to the scaffold, which age and ill-health were not sufficient pleas to avert. After remaining some weeks in confinement at Dumbarton, he was carried to Edinburgh, where he remained until the thirteenth of May, 1746. He was then put on board the Eltham man-of-war, lying in the Leith Roads, bound for London. His health all this time was declining, yet he had the inconvenience of a long sea voyage to sustain, for the Eltham went north for other prisoners before it sailed for London. But at length the Marquis reached his last home, the Tower, where he arrived on the twenty-first of June. He survived only until the ninth of July.