the Scriptures. He was sentenced to death by hanging. This was an extraordinary penalty, as the statute called for execution only upon the third conviction for this offence; first-time offenders were to be sack-clothed and imprisoned. According to Aikenhead's entry in the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (written by Andrew Hill): Aikenhead petitioned the Privy Council to consider his "deplorable circumstances and tender years". Also, he had forgotten to mention that he was also a first time offender. Two ministers and two Privy Councillors pleaded on his behalf, but to no avail. On 7 January, after another petition, the Privy Council ruled that they would not grant a reprieve unless the church interceded for him. The Church of Scotland’s General Assembly, sitting in Edinburgh at the time, urged "vigorous execution" to curb "the abounding of impiety and profanity in this land". Thus Aikenhead's sentence was confirmed. Execution On the morning of 8 January 1697, Aikenhead wrote to his friends that "it is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hid treasure. . . So I proceeded until the more I thought thereon, the further I was from finding the verity I desired. . ." Aikenhead may have read this letter outside the Tolbooth, before making the long walk, under guard, to the gallows on the road between Edinburgh and Leith. He was said to have died Bible in hand, "with all the Marks of a true Penitent". Thomas Babington Macaulay said of Aikenhead's death that "the preachers who were the poor boy's murderers crowded round him at the gallows, and... insulted heaven with prayers more blasphemous than anything he had uttered." Professor David S. Nash said that Aikenhead's execution was "a Calvinist providential moment". Aikenhead was the last person hanged for blasphemy in Great Britain, although it remained a capital offence in Scotland until 1825. In fiction The case of Thomas Aikenhead provides the inspiration for Dilys Rose's novel Unspeakable (2017). Aikenhead features as a central character in Heather Richardson's novel Doubting Thomas (2017). See also I Am Thomas, a 2016 play based on Aikenhead John William Gott, prosecuted for blasphemy and jailed in 1922 George Holyoake, convicted for blasphemy in a public lecture in 1842 Scottish Secular Society#Aikenhead Award Notes References Further reading (Originated at a conference in 2004) External links Broadside