[Sidenote: 1670.]
Major Weir was strangled at a stake and burnt in Edinburgh, for a
series of sexual offences of the most abominable kinds. His sister,
Jean Weir, who was involved in her brother’s guilt, suffered next
day the less severe penalty of hanging. These were old people, and
hitherto of good character.[224] The major, indeed, was a religious
professor of the highest style of sanctity, making unusual pretensions
to strictness in piety, and noted for his power in prayer. He seems
to have been a singular example of a paradox in human nature far from
uncommon, and which may well make us all humble--an exalted strain of
moral sentiment, refining overmuch, in coexistence with secret and
inexpressibly degrading propensities. The poor man seems to have been
at length unable any longer to endure the sense of secret guilt and
hypocrisy; he sent to the public authorities to come and take him up.
Unable to believe in the turpitude of one externally so well reputed,
they sent physicians of his own religious party to see if he were not
speaking from a disordered mind; and it was only when these reported
him perfectly sane and collected, that he was taken into custody. It
appeared that he had been addicted to his loathsome offences for a
long course of years. The major was condemned upon his own confession,
and thenceforth remained stupid and inaccessible to all that was said
to him. He would not hear any minister pray to or for him, telling
them, when they offered, that it was in vain--‘his condemnation was
sealed; and since he was to go to the devil, he did not wish to anger
him!‘--_Law._
Jean Weir confessed, besides, to intercourse with evil spirits. The
devil had supplied her with lint to her wheel, and when she lived at
Dalkeith, she had had a _familiar_, ‘who used to spin extraordinary
quantities of yarn for her in a shorter time than three or four women
could have done the same.’ That this wretched old woman was under
the influence of hallucinations, there can be no doubt. When she and
her brother were apprehended, ‘she desired the guards to keep him
from laying hold of a certain staff, which, she said, if he chanced
to get into his hands, he would certainly drive them out of doors,
notwithstanding all the resistance they could make. This magical staff
was all of one piece of thornwood, with a crooked head; she said he
received it of the devil, and did many wonderful things with it.... It
was ordered by the judges to be burnt with his body.’[225]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JULY 29.]
[Sidenote: 1670.]
Lord Rutherford, whom we have seen so recently figuring in the romantic
affair of the _Bride of Baldoon_, was now engaged in one of a very
different kind--prosecuting a Captain Rutherford for the improbation
of certain documents believed to have been forged by him, in order to
establish claims on the estate of his lordship’s late brother, the
second lord. The captain, after lying a long time in the Tolbooth of
Edinburgh, was sent for by the Lords of Session (July 27, 1671) to be
interrogated about the case. As he was coming along under the care
of Robert Hamilton, macer of the court, ‘he pretends there were some
papers in Colliston’s chamber in Bess Wynd, which would be of great use
to him if he took them with him; and therefore begged leave to fetch
them, and paroled he should presently return. The macer trusting him
simply, Rutherford makes his escape; the rumour whereof running up and
down the town, Towie Barclay, who was but lately released from his
confinement in Glasgow, comes in to the Lords in the Inner House, and
proffered to find him out and fetch him again within an hour; which
accordingly he did with a great deal of zeal, expressing that he could
not abide cheatry by anything in the world; such persons know one
another’s lurking-places so weel.’--_Foun._
Captain Rutherford was kept in prison seven years, while justice
hesitated about his deservings; but at length, on Sir George Mackenzie
coming in as king’s advocate, with resolutions to be more vigorous, the
culprit was tried along with William Rutherford, messenger, for the
crime of forging writs, and both were soon after (November 28, 1678)
executed in the Grassmarket.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: AUG.]
[Sidenote: 1670.]
The Privy Council was pretty fully occupied at this time in summoning
and fining individuals who had been present at unauthorised religious
meetings. For example, ‘Robert Burnes, merchant in Glasgow,’ expiated
by a fine of 300 merks his having been at a conventicle lately held
at Kirkintilloch. Four persons, described as merchants, were fined
each in £100 Scots for being at such a meeting in Hilderston House,
Linlithgowshire. A fifth, who had not only been there, but had a
child baptised on the occasion, suffered to double the amount. A
great number were brought into trouble by having been present at a
famous conventicle held a short time before at the Hill of Beith, near
Dunfermline. Adam Stobie and eight other men, who had been at both
that conventicle and another at Livingseat, and who refused to take an
oath regarding them, were ‘ordained to be carried to the plantations
in America, and discharged to return under pain of death.’ In thus so
harshly thwarting the extreme Presbyterians in their predilections
as to clergymen and meetings for worship, the government must have
calculated on a certain support from the reactionary feeling engendered
by the recent twenty-two years of troubles--that feeling under which we
may presume they themselves acted. But a constant repetition of such
proceedings against members of the community who were only exercising a
natural privilege, and meaning no harm to their fellow-creatures, could
not fail to create very bitter feelings, and gradually muster elements
for the destruction of the existing _régime_. There was at the same
time an effort to deal what was doubtless intended to be equal justice
towards the various dissenters whom the Presbyterians themselves were
accustomed to persecute when in the possession of power. There were
even now Quakers in the tolbooths of Aberdeen, Inverury, Montrose,
Edinburgh, and other towns, charged with no other offence than that
of holding meetings for their own kind of devotion. Professors of the
Catholic faith were also from time to time assailed in ways which, one
would think, must have been sufficiently annoying to them, although,
there is reason to believe, not quite up to that point of severity
which would have been satisfactory to the people on the opposite
extreme.
On a slight eminence beside the pastoral Doveran in Banffshire, is
a little old-fashioned manor-house, surrounded as usual by a few
trees, and bearing the descriptive name of Kinnairdie. Rothiemay
and Frendraught--names of painful memory--are in the neighbourhood.
Kinnairdie was occupied by the Crichtons of Frendraught, zealous,
though unobtrusive Catholics. Word came to the Council as it sat in
Edinburgh (August 1670), that in this retired villa ‘there is usual
resort publicly to mass every Lord’s day, and four families of the
heritors in the parish do, upon the ringing of a bell, go to a room
in the said house where there is ane altar erected, and priests do
officiate.’ The sheriff of the county was immediately ordered to go
and inquire into the matter, to apprehend the priest if he could, and
also ‘seize upon any vestments or other popish ornaments made use of in
their superstitious worship.’
[Sidenote: 1670.]
The sheriff soon after reported that he had seized a Mr Patrick
Primrose, who was believed to have officiated as priest at Kinnairdie.
He was ordered by the Council to keep this person strictly secured till
he should be subjected to trial. By and by, however, ‘being informed
that Mr Patrick Primrose, prisoner in the Tolbooth of Banff, doeth
belong to the queen’s majesty as one of her servants,’ the Council
ordered his liberation, ‘he always obliging himself to depart furth of
the kingdom, and shall never return thereto under the pain of death.’
This was a comparatively merciful dealing; but poor Primrose was not
destined to be benefited by it. Whether the Tolbooth of Banff had not
agreed with his health, or some natural disease fell upon him, so it
was that he soon after died.
On the 3d of August 1671, severe proceedings were taken with several
north-country Catholic families, Gordon of Carmellie, Gordon of
Littlemill, and Grant of Ballindalloch, for harbouring papist priests,
and being present at mass; also against four priests named Leith,
Ross, Forsyth, and Burnet, for saying mass, baptising children, and
performing the ceremony of marriage, contrary to divers acts of
parliament. On the 1st of February 1672, the Council, understanding
that the Countess of Traquair, ‘being popishly affected, doth keep
in family with her her son, the Earl of Traquair, and endeavours to
educate him in the popish profession, and for that effect doth keep ...
Irving, a priest, to instruct him therein,’ ordered messengers-at-arms
to apprehend her ladyship, or if she could not be laid hold of, to
summon her at the Cross of Edinburgh, that she and her son might come
before them, in order that they might arrange for his ‘education and
breeding conform to act of parliament.’
Accordingly, eight days after, the countess having obeyed the citation,
the Council ordained that before the 22d instant she should ‘send her
son to Glasgow, and cause deliver him to Mr Gilbert Burnet, Professor
of Divinity, to be educat and bred at the College of Glasgow, in the
company of the said Mr Gilbert, at the sight, and by the advice, of
the Archbishop of Glasgow,’ no servants to be allowed to attend the
young earl ‘bot such as are of the reformed religion.’ On the same
day, Wauchope, younger of Niddry, and the Lord Semple, were ordered to
bring and deliver up their children, ‘in order to their education with
some Protestant friend,’ Lord Semple being at the same time called to
account ‘for sending his eldest son abroad contrair to the Council’s
order.’ Wauchope was on this occasion ordered to give up his eldest son
into the charge of his own father, the elder laird, and the parents
were forbidden to have for the future any intercourse with their child,
except in presence of the Protestant preceptor, into whose charge he
was to be put.
[Sidenote: 1670.]
We soon after hear of the Countess of Traquair being subjected to a
horning for disobeying the Council’s order, while Lord Semple was put
into ward in Edinburgh Castle for sending his son to Doway, and only
liberated on a petition craving pardon for his offence, and giving
caution to the extent of ten thousand merks for ‘sending his third son
to be educat in schools in Glasgow.’
Lord and Lady Semple yielded to the order of the Council regarding
their third son; but the result appears to have been of a kind
satisfactory to neither party. In April 1678, Lady Semple (her
husband being then dead) complained to the Council regarding her son,
that, ‘either through the neglect of those he was recommended to,
or through _the general humour and corruption of the place_, he has
been frequently withdrawn from the public ordinances, and so seduced
and poisoned with bad principles anent his majesty’s government and
laws, as may not only hazard his small fortune, but render his loyalty
altogether suspect.’ At her ladyship’s request, the Council gave
commission to the Bishop of Argyle and Lord Ross to appoint ‘a person
of sound principles’ to attend the boy as his pedagogue.
In March 1672, the Council sent orders to the sheriffs of Aberdeen
and Banff for taking stern measures with the papists of their bounds.
Sayers and hearers of mass were to be summoned to answer for their
‘crimes,’ to be excommunicated and escheat, and their estates given to
the universities. The sheriffs were enjoined to give their support to
the bishop and clergy of the diocese in ‘suppressing and rooting out
of Popery and Quakerism.’ And ‘whereas we are informed that there is a
superstitious monument erected upon the grave of the late Mr Patrick
Primrose, priest, in St Peter’s Chapel in the parish of Botarie, we
authorise and require you to cause demolish the same.’ Very likely,
some of Patrick’s skulking flock had ventured to put upon his tomb that
emblem which most expressively recalls what the Saviour suffered for
all sects alike. No such thing could be for a moment endured.
[Sidenote: 1670.]
The Presbyterian historians of the age speak of these papist
persecutions as not springing from a right zeal. Wodrow says the
rulers could not ‘for shame’ but do something of that sort, while at
the same time doing so much against the Whigs. Indeed, Sir George
Mackenzie plainly confesses, it was for ‘allaying the humour of the
people,’ to convince them that the rulers were themselves disinclined
to popery, the people being ‘bred to believe that episcopacy was a
limb of antichrist.’[226] A most deplorable exhibition of Christian
feeling on all hands truly. As regards the persecution of the extreme
Presbyterians, which was beyond all comparison the deadliest then
going on, it takes one of its most curious aspects when, as sometimes
happened, an element of benevolence towards some other kind of person
intruded. For example, Mr Walter Birnie, preacher, having shewn that
he was thrown out of bread in his own profession, and, being blind,
could go about no other employment, the Council ordered him two hundred
merks to be taken in equal parts out of fines lately imposed on John
Tennant in Moss-side and the Lady Glanderston. The pages of Wodrow
have familiarised us so much with the idea of the Privy Council as a
kind of inquisition for the suppression of a respectable dissent, that
we can scarcely think of it in any other character. Yet a survey of
its records would shew many beneficent and merciful edicts mingling
with the severe orders against conventiclers. Petitions for freedom
from sickly prisoners or for an abatement of fines, are yielded to in
numberless instances--indeed, they appear to have never been refused.
In all matters apart from the unhappy religious disputes, there is
no lack of humane feeling or of a desire to promote the good of the
community.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: AUG. 16.]
[Sidenote: 1670.]
Francis Irving, brother of the Laird of Drum, was before the Privy
Council, on account of some very offensive demonstrations which he
had lately made. Being a convert from the Protestant faith, he was
unusually given to the entertaining of Jesuit priests and the getting
up of masses. Under his favour and that of a few similar zealots, a
priest had been emboldened to hold a public disputation in favour of
his religion, an ‘insolency’ of which there had not been an example in
Scotland since Quentin Kennedy argued with John Knox at Maybole. On a
recent occasion, at Aberdeen, when certain persons were to be burned
for sorcery and witchcraft, and a great crowd was assembled, ‘though
he knew that it is a Christian and usual custom that the ministers and
people do join in prayers to God for the persons who are to suffer, yet
he ... when the minister and people went to prayer, stood covered to
the great offence of the people, who knew him,’ and when some reminded
him of his duty, ‘he quarrelled, at least caused his servant quarrel
them.’ His sister Elizabeth, also a papist, being deceased, he resolved
to have her buried in a public way in St Nicolas’ Church in Aberdeen,
being the principal church there, and for this purpose he collected a
great company of his own persuasion, and ‘that the strength, interest,
and boldness of the papists there might the more appear,’ he ‘in a
most insolent and treasonable way, did raise in arms and bring to the
town, from Comar, a band of Highlandmen, armed with guns, hagbuts,
pistols, bows and arrows, and other weapons.’ These, ‘after they had
entered at the ---- Port, albeit they might have taken a nearer and
more private way to the Lady Drum her lodging, where the corpse lay, in
the Guestraw,’ being resolved to affront and provoke the magistrates
and people, ‘had the confidence to march to the said house alongst
----, being the most populous and public street in the said town, in
rank and order and in warlike posture, a commander marching before and
another behind, to the great astonishment and grief of his majesty’s
good subjects, affected to the purity of religion.’ On the morning of
the day of the funeral, a gentleman went at the order of Francis to
the provost of the burgh, told him what was to be done that night, and
warned him that, if the people thronged about the funeral company,
and any ‘inconvenience ensue therethrough,’ it should be at the peril
of the magistracy, who ought to restrain their people--‘which was a
practice without parallel for insolency and boldness.’ ‘About eleven
o’clock that night, the corpse being lifted was carried to the church
of Aberdeen, with great show and in a public way, with many torches, a
great multitude of persons accompanying, the coffin being covered with
velvet or cloth, with a cross upon the same, and a priest or some other
person going before the corpse, holding out his arms before him, and
carrying a crucifix under his cloak or using some other superstitious
ceremony.’ The Highlandmen, having their swords drawn, guarded the
corpse and torches, ‘and when they came to the church-door, divers
others of the company drew their swords and did hold them drawn in the
church all the time the corpse was [being] buried.’ ‘In the throng,
two of the inhabitants of the town was wounded.’ ‘Next morning, the
Highlandmen having marched out of the town, many of them in a braving
and insulting manner did shoot and discharge their guns as they went by
the provost’s lodging.’
[Sidenote: 1670.]
Francis was found guilty of ‘a high and insolent riot,’ and condemned
to be imprisoned in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh during pleasure, besides
paying the expenses incurred in his prosecution. It does not appear
that he suffered much confinement in jail; but he was forbidden to
approach within a mile of Aberdeen. It was only on petition that he
obtained so far a relaxation from this sentence as to be permitted to
visit his mother there, in order to settle some weighty affairs of
hers, on which he acted as trustee. On a subsequent petition in July
1671, he was freed from this restraint.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP. 12.]
One Campbell, a writer in Edinburgh, having obtained decreet for a
debt against Sir Alexander Cunningham of Robertland, sent a messenger
to the baronet’s house with a band of armed Highlanders to poind goods
for the amount. Sir Alexander being from home, the party found no
difficulty in taking some horses from his grounds, and bringing them
to the cross of Irvine to be sold. ‘Sir Alexander gets notice of it;
he runs to the Earl of Eglintoun, as bailie of the district; complains
how he was affronted, that some had come and plundered his horse under
pretence of poinding; [and] procures from him some twenty men to go and
recover them. With thir men he enters Irvine, and with violence offers
to hinder their poinding. The provost being present, entreated them to
behave civilly, and remember they were in a burgh-royal. Robertland’s
man [Alexander Kennedy], after much insolent boasting, drew his sword
and ran at the provost, and would undoubtedly have slain him, had he
not been immediately knocked down by some of the town-officers, and
killed.’
The baronet prosecuted the burgh for this slaughter, before the
Privy Council, but without success. How the burgh sped, in a
counter-prosecution for riot in their bounds, does not appear.--_Foun._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP.]
The Marquis of Douglas, a young man, after being engaged for marriage
with the daughter of one Widow Jack, a taverner at Perth, was wedded
at Alloa House to Lady Barbara Erskine, daughter of the Earl of
Mar.--_Lam._
This was an unfortunate marriage for the lady. The marquis, a man of
profligate conduct, was subsequently led by his factor, Lowrie of
Blackwood (said to have been a rejected suitor of the lady), to suspect
his marchioness of infidelity, and they were consequently separated,
after she had born him one child. The sorrows of the Marchioness of
Douglas were described in a popular ballad of the day, some verses of
which constitute the favourite song of _Waly, waly!_
‘O wherefore should I busk my head,
Or wherefore should I kaim my hair,
Since my true love has me forsook,
And says he’ll never love me mair.
[Sidenote: 1670.]
Now Arthur’s Seat shall be my bed,
The sheets shall ne’er be pressed by me,
St Anton’s Well shall be my drink,
Since my true love’s forsaken me.
O Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw,
And shake the green leaf aff the tree?
O gentle death, when wilt thou come,
And take a life that wearies me?’
The prose reality of all this was, that the marchioness by and by
obtained a decree of the Privy Council, allowing her a provision out of
her husband’s estate.
The marquis, by a subsequent marriage, was the father of the semi-mad
Duke of Douglas and of the celebrated Lady Jane Douglas.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1671.