[Sidenote: 1652.]
The Castle of Dunnottar was now almost the only place of strength in
the kingdom which resisted the English arms. It held out with a small
garrison under the command of George Ogilvie of Barras, whose anxiety
to maintain his post was increased by the consideration that within
these sea-girt walls rested the regalia of the kingdom--the crown,
sceptre, and sword of state--which had been consigned by the Committee
of Estates to this fort, under the care of the Earl Marischal, as
being the strongest place in the kingdom that remained untaken after
the reduction of Edinburgh Castle. For many months, Ogilvie and his
little garrison had defied the English forces; but now it was likely
that he could not hold out much longer--in which case, of course, the
regalia must fall into the hands of the enemy. The Earl Marischal had
been taken with the Committee of Estates at Alyth, and shipped off to
London as a prisoner. He contrived, however, to send by a private hand
the key of the closet in which the regalia lay, to his mother, the
Dowager-countess, who by the advice of her son, opened a communication
with Mr James Grainger, minister of Kineff, a person in whom the family
reposed great faith, with a view to his assisting in the conveying
away of the precious ‘honours.’ The minister and his wife, Christian
Fletcher [posterity will desire the preservation of her whole name],
entered heartily into the wishes of the countess.[157] Mrs Grainger, by
permission of the English commander, visiting the wife of the governor
of the castle, received from that lady, but without the knowledge of
her husband, the crown into her lap. The sceptre and sword, wrapped
up in a bundle of _hards_ or lint, were placed on the back of a
female attendant. When Mrs Grainger and her maid returned through the
beleaguering camp, it appeared as if she were taking away some lint to
be spun for Mrs Ogilvie. So far from suspecting any trick, the English
officer on duty is said to have helped Mrs Grainger upon her horse. The
castle was rendered three months afterwards, when great was the rage
of the English on finding that the regalia were gone. It was adroitly
given out that they had been carried beyond sea by Sir John Keith, a
younger brother of the earl, and handed to King Charles at Paris.
[Sidenote: 1652.]
In reality, on reaching the manse of Kineff, Mrs Grainger had delivered
the crown, sceptre, and sword to her husband, who took the earliest
opportunity of burying them under the floor of his church, imparting
the secret of their concealment to no one but the Countess Marischal.
To the credit of the worthy minister and his wife, they preserved
their secret inviolate till the Restoration, eight years afterwards,
when ‘the honours’ were exhumed, and replaced under proper custody.
An order of the Scottish parliament, dated January 11, 1661, rewarded
Mrs Grainger with two thousand merks; Ogilvie was created a baronet;
while Sir John Keith, whose immediate concern in the affair does not
appear to have been great, was made Knight Marischal of Scotland, with
a salary of £400 yearly; to which rewards was added in 1677 a peerage
under the title of Earl of Kintore.[158]
* * * * *
‘In these times, the English commanders had great respect to justice,
and in doing execution upon malefactors, such as thieves, harlots, and
others of that kind, by scourging, hanging, kicking, cutting off their
ears, and stigmating of them with het irons.’--_Nic._
The diarist acknowledges that the English judicature established at
Leith _condemned_ the native one by its impartiality, suitors returning
from it ‘with great contentment.’ He adds: ‘To speak the truth, the
English were more indulgent and merciful to the Scots nor the Scots
were their awn countrymen and neighbours. They filled up the rooms of
justice-courts with very honest clerks,’ &c.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAR. 29.]
Being Monday, a celebrated eclipse of the sun took place between eight
and eleven in the morning, with a perfectly clear sky. ‘The whole
body of the sun did appear to us as if it had been covered with the
moon; only there was a circle about the sun that appeared somewhat
clear without any light [the corona?]. At that time there did a star
appear in the firmament, near to the place of the eclipse.’ ‘There
was ane manifest darkness for the space of some moments.’--_Lam._
‘The time of the eclipse it was exceedingly fearful and dark, to the
terror of many.’--Nic. Another account says, the darkness continued
about eight minutes, and the people began to pray to God.[159] ‘The
like, as thought by astrologers, was not since the darkness at our
Lord’s passion. The country people, tilling, loosed their ploughs,
and thought it had been the latter day.... The birds clapped to the
ground.’--_Law._ The day of this eclipse was long remembered, under the
name of MIRK MONONDAY.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: APR. 20.]
[Sidenote: 1652.]
Died at the Wemyss in Fife, Eleanour Fleming, Countess of Wemyss,
without children. She had been married to her husband only two years,
but in that time had made him, if report spoke true, ‘a hundred
thousand merk worse’ than before. ‘She caused her husband give a free
discharge to her brother, the Lord Fleming, of her whole tocher, being
about twenty thousand merks Scots, before any of it was paid to him.
She caused her husband and her brother to give Mr Patrick Gillespie a
bond of four thousand merks.... She caused also a door to be strucken
through the wall of her chamber, for to go to the wine-cellar; for she
had, as is said by many, a great desire after strong drink.’--_Lam._
Verily, a trying sort of lady for a quiet nobleman like Lord Wemyss,
who nevertheless ventured on a third wife before the year was out--the
mother of Anne Duchess of Monmouth.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE 17.]
‘It pleased God to lay the town of Glasgow desolate by a violent
and sudden fire.... The far best part of the fore streets and most
considerable buildings were burnt, together with above fourscore lanes
and closes, which were the dwellings of above a thousand families, and
almost all the shops and warehouses of the merchants, many whereof are
near by ruined. Besides, a great many more of widows, orphans, and
distressed honest families, having lost what they had, are now put to
starving and begging. The like of this fire has not been formerly heard
of in this nation.’--_Nic._ ‘It was said 1060 houses burnt.’--_C. P. H._
Five days after this fire, the Town Council appointed ‘the provost,
with John Bell, to ride to Ayr, to the English officers there, wha has
been here and seen the town’s lamentable condition--such as Colonel
Overton and others--and to obtein from them letters of recommendation
to such officers or judges who sits in Edinburgh, to the effect that
the same may be recommendit by them to the parliament of England, that
all help and supply may be gotten thereby that may be, for the supply
of such as has their lands and guids burnt.’[160]
It must have been with a sore heart that the newly subjugated city of
the west condescended to beg from the parliament of the sectaries.
The case, however, was one of extreme misery, for the resources of
Scotland, and of the west as much as anywhere, had been exhausted by
the war, so that without foreign help it must have been impossible to
repair the calamity.
Little more than four years after this period, Robert Baillie speaks of
Glasgow as much revived. ‘Our people,’ he says, ‘has much more trade in
comparison than any other: their buildings increase strangely both for
number and fairness.’ He adds, that in his time the city had been more
than doubled.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JULY.]
[Sidenote: 1652.]
In a General Assembly which sat at Edinburgh, sixty-five of the clergy
protested against the lawfulness of the last General Assemblies, in
which resolutions in favour of the king had been sanctioned. Andrew
Cant, Samuel Rutherford, and Robert Traill were the leaders of this
zealous faction--the _Protesters_ or _Remonstrators_--against whom the
censures of the kirk were threatened by the majority in vain. By this
schism, the hitherto admired unity of the Scottish kirk was broken up,
and henceforth, for several years, there scarcely ever was a meeting of
any of its courts unmarked by scenes of indecent violence. At a synod
held at Glasgow in October, two days being spent in contentions about
the choice of a moderator, the meeting dissolved without attempting
any other business.--_Nic._ Not long after, when the General Assembly
ordered a fast for the sins of the nation, and because ‘few were
seeking the things of Jesus Christ,’ the Remonstrators disallowed
it, and appointed among themselves ‘a day of humiliation for that
humiliation.’ In all matters regarding the settlement of ministers in
parishes, there was furious and uncompromising war for a series of
years between the two parties.
* * * * *
This summer was remarkable for clear, dry, warm weather, parching up
the herbage, and producing exceedingly light crops on the best lands.
The harvest commenced in June, and in a field near Dundee there were
_stooks_ on the 7th of July. At the end of July and beginning of
August, the harvest was general; and before the end of the latter
month, all was ‘in’--circumstances unexampled, and which have perhaps
never again occurred. ‘The pease wallowed [that is, faded in the bloom]
a fortnight before Lammas, whereas some years they continue till
Michaelmas.’--_Lam._ ‘All the corn was got in without rain, and long
before the usual time. The like harvest was in England.’ ‘It is truly
reported that in England there was such abundance of white butterflies
as was never heard of before. They destroyed all cabbage; and divers
cobles coming from sea, hardly could see the land for them.’--_Nic._
The summer ‘produced ripe wine-berries and grapes, and abundance of
Scotch chestanes openly sauld at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh, and
baken in pasties at banquets.’--_Nic._
[Sidenote: 1652.]
The weather, strange to say, remained of the same character all the
latter part of the year, so that fruit-trees had a second blossoming
in November, and some of them brought forth fruit, ‘albeit not in
perfection.’ The furze and broom bloomed again; the violet, not due
till March, presented its modest head in November. Birds began to
build their nests, and lay eggs, at or near Martinmas, and salads and
sybows were cried and sold in Edinburgh on the 27th of November.--_Nic._
* * * * *
The letters sent home by the English soldiery now marching through the
Highlands, describe the country as mountainous, yet the valleys rich;
the houses of earth and turf so low that the horsemen sometimes rode
over them; the people generally going with plaids about their middles,
both men and women; ‘simple and ignorant in the things of God, and
some of them as brutish as heathens;’ nevertheless, ‘some did hear the
English preachers with great attention and groaning.’[161]
* * * * *
In some churches in Fife, as Kirkcaldy and Kennoway, the English
soldiers ‘did pull down the stool of repentance; they did sit in
them also, in contempt, in some places where they came, in time of
sermon.’ Several ministers were openly challenged for their expressions
in prayers and sermons, by these soldiers. Mr George Hamilton at
Pittenweem was so troubled by some of Fairfax’s regiment, that he had
to break off; ‘at which time there was great uproar in the church
there.’--_Lam._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: AUG.]
The Earl of Crawford, having been taken by the English at Alyth a
twelvemonth before, now lay a prisoner in the Tower. The countess--a
sister of the late Duke of Hamilton--desiring to visit her husband in
his affliction, left Scotland for the purpose in a stage-coach which
had recently been established for the keeping up of communication
between the two countries--‘the journey coach,’ says Lamont, ‘that
comes ordinarily between England and Scotland.’ We do not learn the
periods of departure, or any other detail regarding this vehicle; but
from a paragraph which occurs under May 1658, we may presume that it
did not go oftener than once in three weeks, and charged for a seat
fully as much as a first-class railway ticket of the present day.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP. 30.]
‘There came into the very brig of Leith ane little whale, which
rendered much profit to the English.’--_Nic._
[Sidenote: 1652.]
This ‘little whale’ would probably be a stray member of a flock of the
_Delphinus globioceps_, which so frequently are embayed and slaughtered
in Zetland and the Faröe Islands. The appearance of such an animal in
Leith harbour is an event of a very rare character.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: OCT.]
Four English gentlemen, Messrs George Smith, John Martin, Andrew Owen,
and Edward Mosley, the commissioners appointed by Cromwell for the
administration of justice in Scotland in place of the Court of Session,
commenced their labours in the criminal department at Edinburgh. Three
days were spent in the trial and fining of persons of impure life, of
whom there were above sixty brought before the judges in a day. ‘It
is observable,’ says an English newspaper of the time, ‘that such is
the malice of these people, that most of them were accused for facts
done divers years since, and the chief proof against them was their
own confession before the kirk, who are in this worse than the Roman
religion, who do not make so ill a use of their auricular confession.
Some of the facts were committed five, ten, nay, twenty years. There
was one Ephraim Bennet, a gunner in Leith, indicted, convicted, and
condemned for coining sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns. Also two
Englishmen, Wilkinson and Newcome, condemned for robbing three men, and
for killing a Scottishman near Haddington in March last. But that which
is most observable is, that some were brought before them for witches,
two whereof had been brought before the kirk about the time of the
armies coming into Scotland, and having confessed, were turned over to
the civil magistrate. The court demanding how they came to be proved
witches, they declared they were forced to it by the exceeding torture
they were put to, which was by tying their thumbs behind them, and then
hanging them up by them: two Highlanders whipped them, after which
they set lighted candles to the soles of their feet, and between their
toes, then burned them by putting lighted candles in their mouths, and
then burning them in the head: there were six of them accused in all,
four whereof died of the torture.... Another woman that was suspected,
according to their thoughts, to be a witch, was twenty-eight days and
nights with bread and water, being stripped stark naked, and laid upon
a cold stone, with only a haircloth over her. Others had hair-shirts
dipped in vinegar put on them, to fetch off the skin.’--_Mercurius
Politicus_.[162] The resolution of the judges to inquire into these
cruelties is intimated.
[Sidenote: 1652.]
Regarding a man accused of witchcraft, it is mentioned a few days later
by the same newspaper, that he first confessed a number of ridiculous
things, including frequent converse with the devil, but before the
judges he denied all, and said that he _had only been in a dream_. ‘The
truth is, he lived in so poor a condition, that _he confessed or rather
said anything that was put into his head_.... By this you may guess
upon what grounds many hundreds have heretofore been burnt in this
country for witches.’ A most pregnant remark, truly.
Whitelocke intimates letters from Scotland at this time, stating that
sixty persons, men and women, had been accused of witchcraft before the
commissioners for the administration of justice in Scotland at the last
circuit; but ‘they found so much malice and so little proof against
them, that none were condemned.’[163]
The Scottish civil bench having not long been free from an evil
reputation for _budds_ or bribes, and to the last liable to the charge
of partiality, it is alleged that the English judges rather surprised
the public by their equitable decisions. It is added that some one,
in a subsequent age, was lauding to the Lord-president Gilmour, the
remarkable impartiality of these judges and the general equity of their
proceedings, when the Scottish judge answered in his rough way: ‘Deil
thank them, they had neither kith nor kin!‘[164]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1653.