On this day--an unusual season for thunder in our climate--a
thunder-clap fell upon Castle-Kennedy, the seat of the Earl of
Cassillis in Ayrshire--‘which, falling into a room where there were
several children, crushed some dogs and furniture; but happily the
children escaped. From thence descending to a low apartment, it
destroyed a granary of meal. At the same time, a gentleman in the
neighbourhood had about thirty cows, that were feeding in the fields,
struck dead by the thunder.’[15]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: APR. 15.]
[Sidenote: 1629.]
The case of John Weir ‘in Clenochdyke,’ who had married Isobel Weddell,
the relict of his grand-uncle, and thus been guilty of ‘incest,’ was
under the consideration of the Privy Council. Weir had been three years
under excommunication for this crime, which the Council deemed ‘fit
to procure the wrath and displeasure of God to the whole nation.’ The
king’s advocate was now ordered to proceed with his trial, and, in
the event of his conviction, to cause sentence to be passed; but they
superseded execution till July. Weir was actually tried on the 25th
of April, found guilty, and sentenced to be beheaded at the Cross of
Edinburgh.[16] After suffering a twelvemonth’s imprisonment under this
sentence, he became a subject for the special mercy of the king, and
was only banished the island for life.
Weir’s is not a solitary case. On the 19th of August in the same
year, Henry Dick, ‘in Bandrum,’ was adjudged to lose his head for
a transgression in connection with the sister of his wife, this
offence being regarded as incest, and misinterpreted as a breach of a
well-known text which is still the basis of an English law. In July
1649, Donald Brymer for the same offence was sentenced to the same
punishment. It is worthy of notice that, in June 1643, Janet Imrie, who
had been the paramour of two brothers, was for that reason condemned to
be beheaded.
One of the most remarkable of a large class of cases of this kind was
that of Alexander Blair, a tailor in Currie, who had married his _first
wife’s half-brother’s daughter_.[17] For this offence, under reverence
for the same misinterpreted text, he was condemned to lose his head!
(September 9, 1630.)
It is deplorable to see these severe punishments inflicted for acts
which neither interfere with any principle of nature, nor tend in
any way to injure the rights of individuals or to trouble society.
At the same time, the marriage of first-cousins, which tends to the
deterioration of the race, was not forbidden.[18] And offences of
real consequence, as affecting the condition of individuals, were
visited with comparatively light penalties. Thus, on the same day when
Alexander Blair, tailor in Currie, was sentenced to lose his head for
marrying his first wife’s half-brother’s daughter, William Lachlane was
adjudged to banishment for life for bigamy. The jurisprudence of the
country on these points was mainly guided by a few semi-religious or
rather superstitious views, while the voice of God through nature no
one thought of listening to or applying.
[Sidenote: 1629.