page_title: Archibald Johnston
section_title: The Restoration
hierarchical_section_title: Archibald Johnston / The Restoration
caption_attribution_description: English: Archibald Johnston, Lord Wariston, captured from Aikman vol 1
context_page_description: Archibald Johnston, Lord Wariston was a Scottish judge and statesman.
  He assisted Alexander Henderson in writing the Scottish National Covenant in 1638, and was appointed Procurator of the Kirk in the same year. He helped negotiate the pacification of Berwick in 1639 and the treaty of Ripon in 1640. He was Lord of Session as Lord Warriston in 1641. In 1643 as commissioner for Midlothian he opposed neutrality in English affairs.
  He played a prominent part in the Westminster Assembly, and in 1644 became a member of the Committee of Both Kingdoms representing Scotland in London. Named King's Advocate by Charles I in 1646, he resisted the Engagement of 1648, and may have drawn up the Act of Classes in 1649. He was appointed Lord Clerk Register in 1649 and is said to have given Leslie fatal advice at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, after which he lost his offices.
  In 1657, as a leading Remonstrant, he was renamed by the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell as Lord Clerk Register. He was a member of Oliver and Richard Cromwell's House of Lords and a member of the Council of State.
context_section_description: At the Restoration Warriston was excluded from the general pardon. On 1 February 1661 he was summoned along with John Home of Kello, William Dundas of Magdalens and others to appear before Parliament on a charge of high treason. He had already fled to Holland and thence to Hamburg in Germany, so he was condemned to death (and stripped of his properties and title) in absentia on 15 May 1661. In 1663, having ventured into France, he was discovered at Rouen, and with the consent of Louis XIV was brought to England and imprisoned in the Tower of London. In June he was taken to Edinburgh and confined in the Tolbooth. He was hanged on 22 July at the Mercat Cross, Edinburgh, the scene of many of his triumphs, and a few yards from his own house in the High Street. This stood on the east side of what is now known as Warristons Close. His head was exposed on the Netherbow (town gate) and afterwards buried with his body in Greyfriars churchyard.
caption: Archibald Johnston captured[7]
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