Etching advertising the execution of the Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino

Kilmarnock and Balmerino were executed in 1746 for their part in the 1745 Jacobite uprising.  They had been allowed to meet in Balmerino's cell the night before and had devised such powerful speeches which they made from the scaffold that at a stroke they were able to debunk much of the anti-Jacobite and indeed anti-Scottish propoganda which had been circulated throughout the city by the penny dreadfuls.  As a result of this their executions were to be the very last ones ever to be held in public, all executions which followed had only a military presence as witness.