Robert Auchmutie – A surgeon beheaded for duelling

On 10 June 1600, Robert Auchmutie, a freeman of the Incorporation of Surgeons and Barbers of Edinburgh since 1591, was beheaded by the 'Maiden' on Edinburgh's Royal Mile; convicted of the slaughter of James Wauchope in a duel fought on 20th April. His very definitive end, the only known execution of a member of what is now the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, was itself the result of a much broader evolution of societal and legal factors. The changing attitudes towards 'trial by combat' in Scottish law and society across centuries, and the attitude of King James VI, directly combined to condemn him when he attempted to take a modern approach to an ancient judicial privilege afforded to the nobility. His case forms both a legal and social microcosm of the collision between old and new, and his execution was intended to serve as a cautionary act, undertaken as much to deter others from attempting the same as to minister justice. The lengths gone to by both Robert Auchmutie and the judiciary of his time, to evade and minister justice, respectively, had a major impact on Scottish law and society for centuries thereafter.