Being, however, the most active and
trustworthy among the captains of the City Guard, he was the person to
whom the magistrates confided the command of the soldiers appointed to
keep the peace at the time of Wilson's execution. He was ordered to guard
the gallows and scaffold, with about eighty men, all the disposable force
that could be spared for that duty.
But the magistrates took farther precautions, which affected Porteous's
pride very deeply. They requested the assistance of part of a regular
infantry regiment, not to attend upon the execution, but to remain drawn
up on the principal street of the city, during the time that it went
forward, in order to intimidate the multitude, in case they should be
disposed to be unruly, with a display of force which could not be
resisted without desperation. It may sound ridiculous in our ears,
considering the fallen state of this ancient civic corps, that its
officer should have felt punctiliously jealous of its honour. Yet so it
was. Captain Porteous resented, as an indignity, the introducing the
Welsh Fusileers within the city, and drawing them up in the street where
no drums but his own were allowed to be sounded without the special
command or permission of the magistrates. As he could not show his
ill-humour to his patrons the magistrates, it increased his indignation
and his desire to be revenged on the unfortunate criminal Wilson, and all
who favoured him.
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