John Gibson of Durie had a petition before the Privy Council regarding
his niece Anna Gibson, daughter of the deceased Sir Alexander Gibson
of Durie. His complaint was, that Anna had been unwarrantably carried
away into the Highlands by certain persons unknown, but for no other
imaginable purpose than to acquire an influence over her mind in the
choice of curators. We learn through other channels that the young
lady was an orphan, scarcely eleven years of age, and that she was
living at Perth at the time of her abduction. Her deceased mother was
Marjory Murray, a sister of the Viscount Stormont, and we are informed
by Lamont, as part of the gossip of the day, that it was by this
nobleman’s means that the young lady was carried off, his aim probably
being to prevent her paternal relatives from acquiring an exclusive
influence over her. The Council, on the supplication of John Gibson,
issued warrants for a search after Anna Gibson, and the taking of her
from the hands of any into whose power she had fallen; also threatening
punishment for her detention, and decreeing a fine of £20,000 Scots to
any man who should marry her.
[Sidenote: 1668.]
We hear nothing more of this case till the ensuing 11th of February,
when the Lord Chancellor acquainted the Council that Anna Gibson had
been brought to his lodging that forenoon. She was ordered to be
placed in the family of Mr Alexander Gibson, one of the clerks of the
Council, ‘ay and while she shall make choice of her curators after
her age of twelve years complete.’ Apparently, the relatives on both
sides had afterwards come to an agreement about this young heiress,
as Lamont tells us that, on the 28th of August 1669, ‘Mistris Anne
Gibson, Durie’s niece, remaining at Durie for the time, did choose her
curators; among whom were the Earl of Rothes the chancellor, Sir Andrew
Murray, and the Tutor of Stormont, her uncles on the mother’s side;
Durie and his brother George Gibson, her uncles on the father’s side,
&c. They dined that day at David Johnston, in Cupar, his house.’
Mrs Anna Gibson afterwards became the wife of John Murray of
Touchadam and Polmaise. It is worthy of observation that she was the
great-granddaughter of Lord Durie who was kidnapped by George Meldrum
of Dumbreck; see under September 1601.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAY 22.]
The town of Kilmarnock was wholly destroyed by an accidental fire,
‘wherethrough about sexscore families are set to the fields destitute
both of goods and houses’--indeed, ‘in a condition of starving.’
Matters were the worse for them, by reason that they, ‘being all poor
tradesmen, and having no other means of livelihood but their daily
employment,’ had some time before been reduced to ‘great misery and
affliction,’ in consequence of the quartering upon them of a great
party of the king’s forces, when these were sent to the west to prevent
a rebellion. Under the sanction of the Privy Council, a collection was
made at the parish churches for the succour of these poor people.
The event is chiefly worthy of notice as marking the smallness of
Kilmarnock in those days, when as yet there was no such thing as
manufacturing industry in the country. A hundred and twenty families
speaks to a population of between five and six hundred: in 1851, this
industrious town contained 21,443 inhabitants within the parliamentary
boundaries.
[Sidenote: 1668.]
In April 1669, a fire broke out at midnight in the town of Cupar
(Fife), and spread so fast and with such violence, that ‘above the
number of twenty considerable families being asleep in bed, did,
unclothed with their apparel, with great difficulty escape their
dwelling-houses,’ which were consumed with their entire contents. Thus,
not only were these people, with their many young children, ‘ruined and
reduced to begging,’ but ‘a great part of that ancient burgh, being the
head burgh of the shire, [was] annihilat and turned to desolation.’ On
a petition, the Privy Council ordered a charitable collection in Fife
and the adjacent counties ‘for the relief of the poor indigent families
of the said ancient burgh.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JULY 9.]
Cases of outrageous personal violence, so common in the reign of James
VI., and even in the ensuing reign, continued to be now and then heard
of. The Privy Council Record, under this date, adverts to one of a
typical character, referring to a remote province, where early forms
and fashions of society still obtained. It appears that Marion Peebles,
‘Lady Cardiness,’ widow of the late ---- Gordon of Cardiness, was an
aged and infirm lady living in the house of Bussabiel in the stewartry
of Kirkcudbright. She was liferented in her husband’s lands; and her
two sons, William and Alexander Gordon, resided with her; but the heir
of the property was a grandchild in infancy. The allegation of William
and Alexander Gordon was, that Sir Alexander M‘Culloch of Myreton had
formed a design to possess himself of Cardiness, for which purpose ‘he
did buy several pleas, debts, comprisings, and factories of the estate,
and used all means to get himself intruded thereinto.’ For a series
of years, he did his best to harass the Gordons and their tenantry
out of their rights and possessions; and at length, on the 19th of
August 1664, he came with a party, consisting of his sons Godfrey and
John; Harry M‘Culloch, younger of Barholm; William M‘Culloch, younger
of Locharduae; John M‘Culloch of Auchleoch; Alexander Fergusson of
Kilkerran; and sundry other persons, attended by their servants, all
armed with swords and pistols, to Bussabiel, where they broke up the
house, and attacked the lady in her bed. They beat her till she fell
in a swoon, then broke down the roof of the house upon her head; and
afterwards, finding her son William, they also ‘wounded him dangerously
in the arm and hand, to the hazard of his life, not permitting his
servants to give him drink or go for a chirurgeon to dress his wounds,
or administer any kind of help or comfort to him for a long time.’
Through their violent treatment, he was ‘forced to forsake the country,
his infirm mother, and business.’
[Sidenote: 1668.]
On a subsequent occasion (October 1665), the same persons came again to
Bussabiel, and committed a fresh assault on Lady Cardiness, ‘striking
her with her own stilt till she fell a-sound among their hands.’ Yet
a third time did they come in March 1666, and with still more fearful
violence. They ‘brake down the doors, and put forth all the servants,
and pulled down the bed about Marion her head, and in ane most inhuman
manner dragged her forth thereof. She not being able to go of herself
by reason of her weakness, they carried her forth of the yett to the
croft,’ letting her head fall against a stone by the way; then leaving
her insensible, they proceeded to demolish and destroy all that was
of any value in the house. The wretched lady was carried by some of
her tenants into a barn, where she remained for the night. Two months
afterwards, they beset her house with a guard, to prevent her from
receiving any succour from friends or servants; and a woman detected
taking in something to her mistress by a back-window, was beaten
cruelly. Then entering the house, ‘they did keep her from sleep as weel
as meat, and further did throw down water and other liquid matters upon
her, so that she was forced to retire and shelter herself within the
bounds of the kitchen chimney for her safety.’ In consequence of these
‘inhuman acts, and keeping of all her rents, corns, goods, and geir,
whereupon she should have lived, from her,’ she was reduced to such a
state of wretchedness, that ‘she within a short time thereafter did
burst forth her heart’s blood and died.’
There were sundry deadly assaults upon the two sons, and some attacks
of a destructive nature upon their house, all betokening a savage
violence on the part of M‘Culloch and his friends.
There is some difficulty as to the decision of the Council. They first
appear as condemning the accused parties to fine and imprisonment; then
next day give an opposite verdict; yet after all, in April next year,
we hear of Godfrey M‘Culloch and Fergusson of Kilkerran as still under
threat of punishment on account of their offence.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JULY 11.]
[Sidenote: 1668.]
‘Saturday, in the evening, as the Archbishop of St Andrews and Bishop
of Orkney were going abroad, the archbishop being in his coach, and the
other stepping in, a wicked fellow standing behind the coach did shoot
the Bishop of Orkney beneath his right hand; which broke his left arm a
little above the wrist with five balls.’ So wrote the Privy Council to
the king.--_P. C. R._ The assassin was a preacher named James Mitchell,
‘a weak scholar,’ according to Kirkton, but whom Wodrow describes as
‘a youth of much zeal and piety.’ We may charitably presume that he
was a weak man infuriated by the sufferings of his party. His design
was to slay the archbishop, who had become more and more odious
to the malcontent Presbyterians. ‘After the shot, he crosses the
street quietly, till he came near Niddry’s Wynd head, and there a man
offered to stop him, upon which he presents the other loaden pistol,
and so the pursuer leaves him. He stepped down the Wynd, and turning
up Steven Law’s Close, entered a house, and shifting his clothes,
passed confidently to the street. The cry arose, A man was killed. The
people’s answer was, It was but a bishop; and so there was no more
noise.’--_Kir._
The government made much noise about this attempt, but failed to
discover the murderer; nor was he discovered till six years after, when
Sharpe himself recognised and had him arrested. Gilbert Burnett says:
‘I lived then much out of the world; yet I thought it decent to go and
congratulate on this occasion. He [Sharpe] was much touched with it,
and put on a show of devotion. He said with a very serious look: “My
times are wholly in Thy hand, O thou God of my life!” This was the
single expression savouring of piety that ever fell from him in all the
conversation that passed between him and me.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1668.]
John Geddie, sheriff-clerk of Fife, residing at Falkland--a prosperous
sort of person, who had gathered some substance while acting as clerk
to the committee of war during the king’s residence in Scotland,
1650-1--attracted attention at this time by a novel plan for the
management of bees. He constructed a bee-house, of wainscot, with
eight sides, about sixteen inches in height, and twenty-three inches
in diameter; containing various divisions, designed to allow of
the swarming of the industrious insects, and save the necessity of
destroying any in order to obtain the result of their labours. In an
age when men seem to have had no extra occupation but that of wrangling
about abstract matters in which they could never hope to convince
each other, it is pleasant to light upon even so simple an exercise
of ingenuity and economic wisdom as the bee-house of John Geddie. The
inventor succeeded in obtaining for his plan the approving notice of
the Royal Society. The king, too, was induced to have a bee-house of
Geddie’s construction erected at Spring Gardens, near Whitehall, and
another at Windsor Castle, ‘where, for several years, his majesty did
come to the places himself, and with delight behold them, and saw
the honey in its season taken forth without troubling the bees, to
his great satisfaction.’ His majesty likewise ‘willed and commanded
another to be erected in his park of Falkland, in the ancient kingdom
of Scotland, for the good and benefit of his whole subjects, rich and
poor therein, in order to stir up noblemen and gentlemen to follow his
example.’ That this might be duly effected, the king granted to Geddie
twenty acres of marsh-land in the east end of the park of Falkland,
‘to be enclosed, trenched, and planted with such herbs, trees, &c.,
as is most suitable and convenient for the maintenance and food of an
apifacture; and ordered a convenient house to be built therein for that
purpose, and did ordain the treasurer and receivers of his majesty’s
revenues to pay John Geddie the sum of £200 sterling for building
and accomplishing the said apifacture.’ In April 1673, a patent was
conferred on Geddie for his invention, for fourteen years. In 1679, the
king further granted him power to buy the island of Inchkeith, probably
with a view to its being employed in apiculture. But owing to troubles
on account of oaths--John being a Presbyterian--it does not appear that
he greatly benefited by the royal favour. He published a small treatise
on the subject, of which a third edition appeared in 1697.--_Abbotsford
Misc._
* * * * *
A pleasant year as to weather, and a great crop--nothing better in
either respect these sixty years past.--_Lam._
In October occurred a violent storm, which produced great damage at
Dundee, both in the structure of the harbour and by loss of ships. An
act of parliament was passed to encourage a voluntary contribution to
repair these disasters.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1669.