angry Edinburgh mob, and did not postpone the execution date further. Green and two of his crew members, an Englishman, Simpson, and John Madder, a Scot, were found guilty and hanged on Leith Sands on 11 April. The men met their deaths, amongst the baying mob, with calm and resolve. It is probable that the Worcester was seized in an act of revenge against the East India Company (for whom Green had earlier worked) that had seized one of the last ships of the Company of Scotland, the Annandale, the previous year. After the executions of the three, the remaining crewmen were quietly released with no further charge. The incident caused great consternation and anger throughout much of England and provided fodder for the vitriolic patriots on both sides of the border. Trevelyan concluded that the deaths of the three men served as an outlet for a widely held Scottish resentment of their Anglo-centric government's mismanagement. Examples of the problems partially caused by this mis-governance included the Glencoe Massacre, the ill-fated Darien Scheme (the failure of which was partially attributable to King William's concession to English mercantile interest) and the "seven ill years" (seven bad harvests experienced by Scottish farmers between 1692 and 1698, blame for which must also lie partially with archaic tools, expertise and practices in use at that time). Scottish historians such as Andrew Lang instead contend that while Green and crew may not have taken Drummond's ship, they had engaged in some piracy after all, and so the trial was not unjust: "Hence I conclude that the 'Worcester' really had been pirating off the coast of Malabar, but that the ship taken by Captain Green in these waters was not the 'Speedy Return,' but another, unknown. If so, there was no great miscarriage of justice, for the indictment against Captain Green did not accuse him of seizing the 'Speedy Return,' but of piracy, robbery, and murder, though the affair of the 'Speedy Return' was brought in to give local colour. This fact and the national excitement in Scotland probably turned the scale with the jury, who otherwise would have returned a verdict of 'Not Proven.'" References Further reading "Historical Mysteries" by Andrew Lang (page 193–213) - contains an analysis of the Green case with footnotes and some additional correspondence. 1705 deaths English pirates Executed English people People executed by Stuart Scotland People executed for piracy Year