Cromwell having been formally installed as Protector, Mr Robert Baillie
notes a popular expectation in Scotland that a storm--that is, a storm
of political trouble--would follow; and some things seemed to foretell
it: for example, the blowing up of a powder-magazine, destroying many
houses and persons; an army of pikemen appearing about the house of
Foggo Muir, near Dunse Law; and the discovery of some thousands of
objects in the form of cannon, shaped from snow without the hand of
man. Yet, to the surprise of the reverend gentleman, months passed on
without any interruption of peace.
[Sidenote: 1657.]
The same writer, addressing a friend abroad, tells of many painful
occurrences which broke the calm tenor of life in Scotland in this and
the next preceding and following years. Several young noblemen were
carried off by acute diseases. Lord Lorn, son of the Marquis of Argyle,
playing at a game in Edinburgh Castle, where stone-bullets were used,
one of them striking him on the head, he fell down as one dead, and
continued so for some time. Three judges died suddenly, one of them in
the court, as he was about to seat himself on the bench. Imprudence
and vice also attracted attention. ‘The Earl of Eglintoun’s heir, the
Lord Montgomery, convoying his father to London, runs away without any
advice, and marries a daughter of my Lord Dumfries, who is a broken
man, when he was sure of my Lady Buccleuch’s marriage, the greatest
match in Britain; _this unexpected prank is worse to all his kin than
his death would have been_. The Earl of Moray did little better, for at
London, without any advice, he ran and married Sir William Balfour’s
second daughter.’ The Earl of Rothes was clapped up in Edinburgh
Castle, by the Protector’s orders, in great infamy on account of a
certain light-mannered Lady Howard, who had come to his lordship’s
house on a visit, and whose husband was now in Scotland, bent on
obtaining a bloody satisfaction for his dishonour. At the same time,
the wife of Lord Forrester sunk into the grave, through grief excited
by the misconduct of her husband and her sister.
The number of cases of uncommon turpitude in a time of extraordinary
religious purism forces itself upon attention. One Foyer, who was under
the notice of the English judges at Glasgow in the spring of 1659, is
described by Robert Baillie as ‘a most wicked hypocrite, who, under
the colour of piety and prayer, has acted sundry adulteries.’ Being
libelled for one only, ‘he was but scourged: many were grieved that he
was not hanged.’ The reverend writer adds: ‘_Great appearance of his
witchery also_, if he had been put to a real trial.’
Offences of a horrible and unnatural kind continued to abound to a
degree which makes the daylight profligacy of the subsequent reign
shine white in comparison. ‘More,’ says Nicoll, ‘within these six or
seven years nor within these fifty years preceding and more.’ Culprits
of all ages, from boys to old men, are heard of every few months as
burnt on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh; sometimes two together. Young
women, who had murdered their own infants--on one occasion it was ‘ane
pretty young gentill woman’--were frequently brought to the same scene
of punishment. John Nicoll states that on one day, the 15th October
1656, five persons, two men and three women, were burnt on the Castle
Hill for offences of the several kinds here glanced at; while two
others were scourged through the city for minor degrees of the same
offences.
[Sidenote: 1657.]
Burnings of warlocks and witches were of not less appalling frequency.
In February 1658, two women and a man were prisoners for this crime
in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. One of the women died in prison; the
warlock was executed. The other woman, named Jonet Anderson, who had
been married three months before, confessed that she had previously
given herself up, body and soul, to the devil, and that at her nuptials
she saw her spiritual lover standing in the church behind the pulpit.
Though this must have been merely such a case of hallucination as would
now require simply medical treatment, Jonet was only spared till it
was ascertained that she was not pregnant. ‘She made ane happy end,
and gave singular testimonies of her repentance by frequent prayers,
and singing of psalms, before her execution.’ In the ensuing August,
four women, ‘ane of them a maiden,’ were burnt on the Castle Hill, ‘all
confessing the sin of witchcraft.’ Not long after, we hear of _five
women_ belonging to Dunbar, burnt on the Castle Hill together, all
confessing that they had covenanted with Satan, renounced to him their
baptism, and taken from him new names, with suitable marks impressed
on their flesh. And presently follows again the case of _nine_ from
the parish of Tranent, all dying with similar confessions on their
lips.--_Nic._
Although these executions appear to us as tolerably numerous, they were
not enough to satisfy the zealous people of that day. ‘There is much
witchery up and down our land,’ says Robert Baillie; ‘_the English be
but too sparing to try it, but some they execute_.’
It is to be feared that, so long as reputation is to be gained by mere
religious professions, or the adherence to certain systems of doctrine,
cases of hypocrisy like that of Foyer will be occasionally heard of.
Nor will it be doubted that a moral code which presses too severely
upon the natural affections is calculated in all circumstances to have
the consequences here adverted to. Of the cases of witchcraft, we can
only deplore, with humiliation, that such delusions should have formed
a part of the religious convictions of the age. In the seventeenth
century, the ruling minds had a clear apprehension of what they
thought the truth, and went right to their point in seeking to work
it out. Distinctions, refinements, explained-away texts, moderating
reflections, fears of reaction, were reserved for a later day.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE.]
[Sidenote: 1657.]
The magistrates of Glasgow at this time provided themselves with an
engine ‘for the occasion of sudden fire, in spouting out of water
thereon,’ after the form of one recently established in Edinburgh.--_M.
of G._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP.]
The magistrates of Glasgow, feeling the need for ‘ane diurnal’--that
is, newspaper, a luxury hitherto little known in Scotland--‘appoint
John Fleming to write to his man wha lies at London,’ to cause one be
sent for the town’s use. Whether John Fleming’s man, from the fact of
his _lying_ at London, is to be presumed as himself connected with the
public press, may be left to the consideration of the reader.
Before this time, it appears that John Nicoll, a legal agent in
Edinburgh, often quoted here on account of his _Diary_, had supplied
the magistrates of Glasgow with weekly intelligence.
* * * * *
Mr Thomas Stewart, the hero of the plague anecdote of 1645, married in
1654, and retired to enjoy a quiet country life on his father’s estate
of Coltness, in Lanarkshire. His relative, Sir Archibald, gives us a
minute recital of what he did with the old place, in extending its
accommodations and ornamenting its environs, and the result is that
we get a tolerably clear idea of a Scotch gentleman’s country-house,
according to the views and tastes which prevailed in the time of the
Commonwealth.
[Sidenote: 1657.]
‘He set himself to planting and enclosing, and so to embellish the
place. But [as] the old mansion was straitening, and their family
likely to increase, he thought of adding to the old tower (which
consisted only of a vault and two rooms, one above the other, with a
small room on the top of the turnpike stair, and a garret) a large
addition on the south side of the staircase, of a good kitchen, cellar,
meat-room or low parlour; a large hall or dining-room, with a small
bedchamber and closet; over these, and above that, two bedchambers with
closets; and yet higher, in a fourth story, two finished roof-rooms.
And thus he made an addition of a kitchen, six fire-rooms with closets;
and the vault in the old tower, built by Hamilton of Uddeston, was
turned to a convenient useful cellar, with a partition for outer and
inner repositories. The office-houses of bake-house, brew-house,
garner-room, and men-servants’ bedchamber, were on the north of a paved
court; and a high front wall towards the east, with an arched entry
or porch, enclosed all. Without this arched gate was another larger
court, with stables on the south side for the family and strangers’
horses, and a trained up thorn with a bower in it. Opposite to the
stables, north from the mansion-house, with an entry to a good
spring draw-well, as also leading to the byre, sheep-house, barn, and
hen-house, all which made a court, to the north of the other court,
and separate from it with a stone-wall; and on the east part of the
court was a large space for a dunghill. The gardens were to the south
of the house, much improved and enlarged; and the nursery-garden was
a small square enclosure to the west of the house. The slope of the
grounds to the west made the south garden, next the house, fall into
three cross terraces. The terrace fronting the south of the house was
a square parterre, or flower-garden, and the easter and wester, or the
higher and lower plots of ground, were for cherry and nut gardens, and
walnut and chestnut trees were planted upon the head of the upper bank,
towards the parterre; and the slope bank on the east side the parterre
was a strawberry border.
‘These three terraces had a high stone-wall on the south, for ripening
and improving finer fruits; and to the south of this wall, was a good
orchard and kitchen-garden, with broad grass-walks, all enclosed with
a good thorn-hedge; and without this, a ditch and dry fence, enclosing
several rows of timber-trees for shelter; to the west of the house, and
beyond the square nursery-garden, was a large timber tree park, with
birches towards the house, and on the other three sides rows of ash
and plane, and in the middle a goodly thicket of firs. To the north,
the barn court; and north from the house was a grass enclosure of four
acres, with a fishpond in the corner for pikes and perches. All was
enclosed with a strong wall and hedgerows of trees: so the whole of
this policy might consist of an oblong square, and the longer side of
the square fronted to the south; the ordinary entries to the house were
from east to west, but the main access from the east.
[Sidenote: 1657.]
‘It was found still a convenient nursery was wanted for an interesting
young family, and a lower addition was made to the east end of the
new buildings, and to run parallel with the south side of the high
house, towards the gardens. The low room was for a woman-house, and
the upper room was the nursery; and both nursery and woman-house had
passage to the great house, by proper doors, and a timber trap-stair
made a communication betwixt the nursery and the woman-house. In short,
after all was finished, the fabric was wholly irregular as to the
outside appearance, and both house and policy were more contrived for
conveniency and hospitality, than for beauty or regular proportion;
and so was the humour of these times, that, if there was lodging,
warmness, and plenty within doors, a regular front or uniform roof were
little thought of. All above was executed the three years 1657, 1658,
as appears from the dates on the upper lintel ornaments of the window.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC.]
Notwithstanding a good harvest, ‘poverty and scarcity of money daily
increased, by reason of the great burdens and charges imposed upon
the people, which constrained them to sell not only their lands and
estates, but even their household geir, insight, and plenishing, and
some their claiths and habulyiements. Witness the bell, which did
daily ring in Edinburgh, making intimation to the inhabitants of such
frequent rouping as was in use.’--_Nic._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1658.