This day, Heriot’s Hospital, which had been founded in 1628, being
now complete, was solemnly dedicated by the ceremony of a preaching
in presence of the magistrates of Edinburgh, the preacher, Mr Robert
Douglas, receiving five double pieces for his pains. There were placed
in it ‘thirty-five boys, of honest parents, but decayit in means, all
of them weel arrayit in purpour clothes and cassocks.’ ‘This hospital,’
says Nicoll, ‘was not ane ordinary hospital, but a hospital very
famous, with halls, chalmers, kitchens, brew-houses, yards, orchards, a
chapel, and all other necessaries.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP. 1.]
The town of Edinburgh obtained an additional impost upon the ale sold
in its bounds; it was now a full penny sterling a pint, so that the
liquor rose to the unheard-of price of 32d. Scots for that quantity.
‘Yet this imposition,’ says Nicoll, ‘seemed not to thrive; for at
the same instant God frae the heavens declared his anger by sending
thunder, and unheard tempests, and storms, and inundations of water,
whilk destroyed their common mills, dams, and warks, to the town’s
great charges and expenses.’ Eleven mills belonging to Edinburgh, and
five belonging to Heriot’s Hospital, all upon the Water of Leith, were
destroyed on this occasion, ‘with their dams, water-gangs, timber and
stone-warks, the haill wheels of their mills, timber graith, and haill
other warks.’ The chronicler, somewhat awkwardly for his hypothesis,
admits that many neighbouring towns suffered by the like destruction of
their mills.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP. 21.]
Nicoll states himself to have seen this day, a youth of sixteen, a
native of Aberdeen, who, having been born without power in his arms,
either to eat or drink, or do any other thing for himself or others,
‘Almighty God, who is able to do all things, gave him power to supply
all these duties with the toes of his feet, and to write in singular
good legible and current write, and that with such haste as any
common notar is in use to do. Yea, further, with his toes he put on
his clothes, kamed his head, made his writing pens, [and] threaded a
needle, in such short time and space as any other person whatsomever
was able to do with his hands.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1659.]
In the Council Records of Inverness occurs, under this year, the
following petition: ‘To the Right Honourable the Magistrates and Town
Council of the burgh of Inverness, the supplication of Frederick
Fraser, tailor burgess of Inverness, and Alexander Duff, burgess there,
for ourselves and in behalf the remanent freemen of that trade, humbly
sheweth--That your supplicants are very much damnified and prejudged
in the enjoyment of their trade, the same being in-falled upon and
taken away by many outlandish men, who dwell round about the burgh for
eschewing of burden, and yet peeps in by night and by day and steals
away the trade of the place, and works the same in the landward, to
our great loss and apparent ruin, so that if speedy redress be not
found, and this evil to this poor trade be not stayed, your supplicants
and our poor families will undoubtedly perish. We are able to shew
your lordships, and to make it out, that in these times we gain not
by our trade for our own subsistence and the upholding of the burdens
of the place, that which our servants were wont to gain under us.
May it please your lordships, therefore, to take the premises into
consideration, and to allow us, your supplicants, or such others of the
trade as your lordships please to nominate, such power and freedom in
the exercise of that trade as formerly we had, and that for the better
restraining of all such as are neither profitable nor allowable to the
place, and for the further and better encouragement of us your poor
supplicants who has and are willing daily to contribute with the place
in weal and woe according to our poor power.’
A local journalist, after giving a transcript of this petition,
adds: ‘Provost Cuthbert and the council turned a friendly ear to the
supplication, and authorised the petitioners to “look and see to
restrain all outlandish tailors,” and empowering them to seize upon the
work of the transgressors, and bring the whole before a magistrate.
Two years afterwards, however, the same parties, with the addition
of John Cumming, tailor, again complain of the outlandish tailors.
They petition that all unfreemen in the town should be discharged
from usurping to themselves the benefits of freemen, and from keeping
apprentices and servants, and _made to live within the verge of their
own calling_. The provost and council granted the desire of the
petition, and authorised the supplicants, with the concurrence of the
burgh officers, to put the act in force. The principles of political
economy or free-trade were not then understood, but the inhabitants
seem to have been willing enough to avail themselves of the cheap
services of the outlandish tailors, else the freemen would not so
strongly have urged their claims upon the council.’[185]