One Mungo Murray was tried before the Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh,
on a charge of having, on the 8th day of May preceding, committed an
assault on Thomas Sydserf. The affair is only worthy of noting because
it brings out the fact that there was at this time a theatre in the
Canongate. Thomas Sydserf is the same person whom we have seen engaged
in editing the _Mercurius Caledonius_. He had since turned his mind to
dramatic literature, and written a play called _Tarugo’s Wiles_, which
was acted with applause at the Duke of York’s Theatre in 1668, and on
which the Earl of Dorset had written complimentary verses--representing
Phœbus as saying to Scotland, with reference to such Scotsmen as
Sydserf:
[Sidenote: 1669.]
‘On thee I will bestow my longest days,
And crown thy sons with everlasting bays.
My beams that reach thee shall employ their powers
To ripen souls of men, not fruits and flowers,
Let warmer climes my fading favours boast,
Poets and stars shine brightest in the frost.’
Sydserf was now conducting a theatre in the Canongate, depending in
all probability upon the yet unfaded spirit of cavalierism evoked at
the Restoration, for a slender support which it was not in the nature
of Scotland to give at ordinary times to such an establishment. It
appeared that Mungo Murray broke into Sydserf’s theatre in time of
rehearsal, and attacked him with his drawn sword, but was overpowered
before he could inflict any hurt. He was found guilty, and sentenced to
ask Sydserf’s pardon, and abstain from molesting him in future under
pain of banishment from the city.[218]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE 16.]
For several years after the Restoration, a very frequent entry in
the record of the Privy Council is an application from a Scotsman of
good family, resident abroad for a _borbrieff_ [birth-letter], or
certificate of his lineage and family connections, to be drawn up and
transmitted to him, that he might be enabled to appear in a proper
light before the strangers amongst whom he lived. At the date noted,
there is an application of this kind from a lady! ‘Maria Margaret
Urrie, eldest lawful daughter of the deceased Sir John Urrie of that
Ilk, being abroad in a strange country, where her birth and pedigree
is not known, to the prejudice of her fortune in those parts,’ had
‘purchased a certificate of her pedigree under the hands of the Earl
of Panmure and several other noblemen and gentlemen of quality;’ and
she now petitioned for ‘a _borbrieff_ in her favours, conform to the
said certificate.’--_P. C. R._ The requisite warrant for the Chancery
was at once granted. We soon after (29th September 1670) hear of an
application of the same nature from a lady of greater note, Elizabeth,
Countess of Grammont, who states that she had obtained the needful
‘certificate of her descent and pedigree under the hand of the Earl of
Lauderdale, his majesty’s High Commissioner; the Lord Duke of Hamilton,
the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls Marischal, Argyle, and divers other
noblemen.’ She was a descendant of the Abercorn family. Her brother’s
Memoirs of her husband, have made the world generally acquainted with
this elegant woman.
[Sidenote: 1669.]
Among applications for _borbrieffs_ was one in June 1670, from ‘Thomas
Kirkpatrick, secretary to the king of France and Councillor Lord
Duplosse in Dunua, in France, son lawful of Thomas Kirkpatrick, a
Scotsman and sometime one of the twenty-five Scots gentlemen soldiers
of the life-guard of the king of France.’ Another, in 1686, was from
the celebrated Colbert, minister of Louis XIV. of France, in whose
behalf an act of parliament was passed, authorising the required
document. It stated the descent of the Sieur Colbert, Marquis of
Seignelay, at seven removes from Edward Culbert, a son of Culbert or
Cuthbert of Castlehill, near Inverness, a family of king’s barons who
often represented their county in parliament, and whose connections
spread through the best branches of the peerage.--_S. Acts._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: AUG. 24.]
The marriage-day of the unfortunate _Bride of Baldoon_. The story
of this lady has been related with all the graces of fiction in the
tale of the _Bride of Lammermuir_; but in its actual circumstances it
is sufficiently impressive. She was the Honourable Janet Dalrymple,
daughter of the first Lord Stair, so distinguished as a lawyer and by
the part he took in the politics of his day. While still in girlish
years, the young lady contracted a passionate attachment to Lord
Rutherford, the distant relative and heir of that noble champion,
Andrew Rutherford, Earl of Teviot, who is alluded to so respectfully in
this chronicle under 1663. The young nobleman returned this affection,
and the pair plighted their troth in the usual manner, by parting a
coin between them, and imprecating dismal evils upon whoever should
withdraw from or violate the compact. But this alliance did not suit
the views of the parents, whether from deficient fortune in the young
lord, or from contrarious politics, does not appear. They favoured
a new suitor who appeared in the person of David Dunbar, younger of
Baldoon in Wigtonshire.
[Sidenote: 1669.]
On learning that Dunbar was advancing in his suit, Lord Rutherford
wrote to his mistress to remind her of her engagement, but received an
answer from her mother, to the effect that she was now sensible of the
error she had committed in entering into an engagement unsanctioned by
the parental authority; and this engagement it was not her intention to
fulfil. The lover refused to take an answer which did not come directly
from his mistress, and insisted on an interview. It took place, but
in presence of the mother, a woman whom public report represented as
master of her husband and whole family, and indebted for this influence
to witchcraft, though for no reason that can be discerned beyond her
uncommon talents and force of character. It may readily be supposed
that even the resources of love would be of poor avail against the
skill and resolution of such a person. When Rutherford was introduced,
he found her ready to meet his arguments with what was then an
unanswerable defence, a text of Scripture (_Numbers_ xxx., 2, 3, 4, 5),
clearly absolving a woman from a bond entered into in her youth, if her
father shall disallow her fulfilment of it, and promising that, in that
case, ‘the Lord shall forgive her.’ The poor girl herself sat mute and
overwhelmed, while the lover vainly pleaded against the application of
this text; and the scene ended with her surrender of her portion of the
broken coin, and his flying distracted from the house, after telling
her that she would be a world’s wonder from what she had done and was
yet to do.
The union with young Baldoon went on, but entirely under the management
of the mother, for it is inconceivable that the young man could have
pressed his suit, if he had known the extent to which the bride was
under constraint. The wedding was celebrated, as was customary in those
days, in the presence of the relatives of both parties, and with great
festivity; but the bride remained like one lost in a reverie, and who
only moves and acts mechanically. A younger brother lived long enough
to state to a lady who communicated the fact to Sir Walter Scott, that
he had the duty of carrying her on horseback behind him to church, and
he remembered that the hand with which she clasped his waist was ‘cold
and damp as marble.’ ‘Full of his new dress, and the part he acted in
the procession, the circumstance, which he long afterwards remembered
with bitter sorrow and compunction, made no impression on him at the
time.’
[Sidenote: 1669.]
In the evening, the newly wedded pair retired to their chamber, while
the merry-making still proceeded in the hall. The room had been locked,
and the key taken possession of by the brideman, to prevent any of
the unseemly frolics which, it would seem, were sometimes played off
on such occasions. But, suddenly there was heard to proceed from the
bridal-chamber a loud and piercing outcry, followed by dismal groans.
On its being opened, the alarmed company found the bridegroom weltering
in his blood on the threshold, and the bride cowering in a corner of
the chimney, with no covering but her shift, and that dabbled in gore.
She told them ‘to take up their bonny bridegroom.’ It was evident
she was insane, and the general belief was that she had franticly
stabbed her husband. From that moment, she made no other rational
communications, but pined away and died in less than three weeks. Young
Baldoon recovered, but would never enter into explanations regarding
the tragic occurrence. Perhaps it is this mystery alone which has
given rise to the favourite belief of the many descendants of Lord
Stair,[219] that the wound was not inflicted by their unhappy relative,
but by Lord Rutherford, who, they say, secreted himself in the chamber
beforehand, and escaped afterwards by a window. This notion seems to us
contrary to all probability, not merely because the conception of such
an act was too gross for a man of rank even in that day, but because,
had it been acted on, something must have come of it, either in the
way of private revenge or of procedure before a criminal court. The
idea was prevalent at the time; but it may be classed, we think, with
another recorded by the credulous Law, that the poor bride was taken
from her bed and _harled_ through the house by spirits.
David Dunbar is described in an elegy by Mr Andro Simpson, as a most
respectable country gentleman, an agricultural improver,[220] and yet
of studious habits. He died by a fall from his horse while riding
between Leith and Edinburgh in 1682, and was interred in Holyrood
Chapel. Andrew Lord Rutherford is stated in the Peerage to have died
childless in 1685.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: AUG. 24.]
An old man named George Wood, who died this day at the Grange above
Elie in Fife, was interred at Kilconquhar in the evening of the next
day, ‘his funerals being hastened for fear of arresting his corpse by
his creditors.’--_Lam._
[Sidenote: 1669.]
This sufficiently shews that creditors were supposed in Scotland to
have such a power by the law. In June 1677, it became a debate among
the advocates in the Court of Session, whether a dead body could be
arrested and stopped from interment on account of debt. What raised the
question was the death of the Countess of Wemyss, and the clamour made
by her numerous creditors among the merchants of Edinburgh, who feared
that her husband, from whom she had been separated, would not own her
obligations beyond her annuity of 6000 merks, all of which was already
‘fornailed.’ They talked seriously of arresting her ladyship’s body.
Lord Fountainhall says that, though it is a custom in Holland and some
other places, it is reprobated amongst us as a barbarity, and could
in no way be done, except on an express supplication to the Lords of
Session, or the Privy Council, ‘which would never be granted.’[221]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: NOV.]
Robert Donaldson, of Birdstown in Campsie, being in Edinburgh on
business, fell into the company of one Thomas Scott, an English
borderer, who travelled in the equipage of a gentleman. Scott, learning
that Donaldson possessed money, pretended an errand to Glasgow, and so
accompanied him on his way home. The two dined at Falkirk together,
and then set forward, Donaldson inviting Scott to spend the night with
him at his house. Just as they were turned off the main road into that
leading to Donaldson’s house, Scott gave his travelling companion
a stab in the neck with his rapier, and thrust him to the ground,
where he cut his throat. Donaldson was, it seems, a strong man, and
might have defended himself, if he had not been taken by surprise and
encumbered with his cloak, which was buttoned down and heavy with rain.
Scott carried off the horse and money of his victim.
Donaldson’s servants went in search of the murderer, and had gone
many miles in his track when they came up to a carrier wearing their
master’s hood. Immediately the man was interrogated, and told that
he had got the hood from a person now riding on in advance, near
Haddington. They soon came up with the said rider, and laid hands on
him. He being struck with a panic fear, confessed his guilt, for which
he was soon after hanged in Edinburgh.--_Law._
[Sidenote: 1669.