Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Johnston, John (d.1690)
JOHNSTON, Sir JOHN (d. 1690), criminal, was son of Sir George Johnston of Caskieben, a Nova Scotian baronet; his mother was a daughter of Sir William Leslie of Wardes. He early took service under William of Orange, and served, according to the partial but vague accounts of his life issued after his execution, with distinction in Flanders. He was asserted to have committed a rape in Holland, but he indignantly denied the charge on the scaffold. At the revolution he came to England, and was the victim of a false accusation of the same kind made by a woman at Chester. He passed into Ireland, served with William III's troops at the battle of the Boyne, and returned to England. On 10 Nov. 1690 he was privy to the abduction of Mary Wharton, an heiress, by Captain the Hon. James Campbell; Johnston's share in the outrage was small. But he was the only offender who was arrested, and as the girl's family was related to Lord Wharton, the friend of William III, Johnston was promptly tried and convicted at the Old Bailey. He was hanged at Tyburn on 23 Dec. 1690, a victim, according to some, to the prevailing anti-Scottish sentiment. He was unmarried, and the title reverted to his uncle, John Johnston of Newplace. A cut of Johnston was prefixed to the ‘Brief History’ of his life and death, published in 1690.
[A Brief History of the Memorable Passages and Transactions that have attended … the unfortunate Sir John Johnston, 1690; An Account of the Behaviour, Confession, and last Dying Speech of Sir John Johnston, 1690; Irving's Book of Scotsmen; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Noble's Granger, i. 221; Luttrell's Brief Hist. Relat. ii. 148.]