Confiscated goods were displayed at the Mercat Cross on the Royal Mile and sold to the highest bidder, to reimburse creditors who had obtained an order called a "decreet" from the baillies.
[3] On 15 April 1601 Archibald was displaying confiscated household goods including the portraits of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark at the cross and was seen to be standing on a table about to hang the pictures on two nails on the gallows or gibbet.
The English diplomat George Nicholson wrote that displaying the paintings there was accounted "an ill presage" and a "dishonour to the king".
Archibald was found guilty by an assize composed of Edinburgh tailors and condemned to be hung on Monday 27 April and remain on the same gibbet for 24 hours.
The Edinburgh diarist Robert Birrell recorded the execution, and also suggested that Cornwall was unpopular in Edinburgh, perhaps for auctioning townspeople's household goods;He being an unmerciful greiddie creatur, he poyndit ane hones manis hous, and, amongst the rest, he poyndit the King and Queinis picturis, and quhen he came to the crosse to compryse the same he hung thame up on two naillis on the same gallowisHe being an unmerciful greedy creature, he confiscated an honest man's house, and among the rest, he took the King and Queen's pictures, and when he came to the Cross to auction them, he hung them on two nails on the gallows.