Thomas Aikenhead

Thomas Aikenhead (c. March 1676 – 8 January 1697) was a Scottish student from Edinburgh, who was prosecuted and executed at the age of 20 on a charge of blasphemy. He was the last person in Britain to be executed for blasphemy. This was 85 years after the death of Edward Wightman (1612), the last person to be burned at the stake for heresy in England.

Indictment

Aikenhead was indicted in December 1696. The indictment read:

Trial and sentence

The case was prosecuted by the Lord Advocate, Sir James Stewart (grandfather of the future Jacobite economist Steuart), who demanded the death penalty to set an example to others who might otherwise express such opinions in the future. On 24 December 1696 the jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to be hanged.

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".