A set of ‘malignants’ intruded themselves into the magistracy of
Glasgow, ‘and at the very same time did the pestilence arrive in the
town.’ Spreull, the town-clerk, with Mr George Porterfield and Mr John
Graham, had to go to Edinburgh to complain of this intrusion before
the Estates. During the winter, while they were absent, the plague
was so severe, that the malignants would fain have been quit of the
magistracy. ‘In February 1648,’ says Spreull, ‘having carried the point
at the parliament, we came home and were reponed; whereupon, though
there were several hundreds of families shut up for the sickness, yet
for twenty days after, there died not so much as one person thereof,
and frae thenceforth it did abate till it evanished.’[118]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1647.