From the commencement of the religious troubles in 1638, the Privy
Council Record gives comparatively few of those notices of new
manufactures attempted in Scotland, or proposed to be introduced
by strangers, for which the previous thirty years of peace were so
remarkable. Amidst endless notices of religious persecution, it gives
an agreeable surprise, at the date noted, to light upon an application
from Philip Vander Straten, a native of Bruges, for the benefit of
naturalisation and freedom of working and trafficking, while embarking
a considerable sum of money in a work at Kelso ‘_for dressing and
refining of wool_.’ The petition was at once complied with.--_P. C. R._
[Sidenote: 1672.]
Two years later (March 19, 1674), the commencement of a humbler and
less useful branch of industry is noted. At that date, Andrew M‘Kairter
represented to the Privy Council that, being a young boy at the schools
of Dalmellington at the time of the Pentland insurrection in 1666, he
had joined in that affair, and after its conclusion, ‘out of a childish
fear did run away to Newcastle, and having there, and in London, and
Holland, served ane long apprenticeship? in spinning of tobacco,’ he
was now returned to his native country, and ‘hath set up the said
trade at Leith.’ His desire was to make his peace with the government
by signing the bond for the public peace. The Council entertained
the petition graciously, and Andrew became, we may suppose, the first
practitioner of tobacco-spinning in Leith.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: APR.]
At this time, and for six months previously, the small-pox raged in
Glasgow. Hardly a family escaped the infection, and eight hundred
deaths and upwards occurred.--_Law._
* * * * *
Some sensation was excited by the rumour that in a ship lying at
Newcastle, called the _Cape of Good Hope_ of London, the devil had
appeared in bodily shape, in the habit of a seaman, with a blue cravat
about his neck, and desired the master of the ship to remove out of
her; which he did not obey till sic time as she began to sink in the
ocean. Then he, with his company, took his cock-boat, who were saved by
another ship coming by. This was testified by the oaths of them that
were in her.--_Law._ It is seldom that the devil is found so obliging
as he seems to have been in this case.
It may serve to verify the possibility of such a rumour in the reign of
Charles II., that, in March 1682, the Privy Council was informed that
‘one Margaret Dougall is imprisoned in the Tolbooth of Ayr, as alleged
guilty of raising and consulting the devil;’ and an order was given
that she be transported from sheriff to sheriff until brought to and
placed in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, that she might be brought to a
legal trial.--_P. C. R._
[Sidenote: MAY 27.]
[Sidenote: AUG. 22.]
Joannes Michael Philo, physician, and ‘sworn operator to his majesty,’
was, on petition, allowed to erect a public stage in Edinburgh
for the practice of his profession, but ‘discharged to have any
rope-dancing.’--_P. C. R._ It was some time after stated regarding this
personage, that he did erect a stage in Edinburgh, and ‘thereon has
cured thretteen blind persons, several lame, and cut several cancers,
and done many other notable cures, as is notourly known, and that
out of mere charity.’ He was therefore invested by the Council, on
petition, with a warrant to go and do likewise in all the other burghs
of the kingdom, up till February next; the Council further recommending
him to the magistrates of these burghs, that they may give him due help
and countenance.
[Sidenote: 1672.]
His stage was then taken down by the magistrates of Edinburgh, ‘before
he could have time to complete many considerable cures,’ which he had
had on hand. There also came to him from remote parts of the country
‘five or six poor blind people, and as many with cancers, whose
poverty will not admit the same to be done otherwise than upon the
public stage, where they have their cure gratis and their entertainment
in the meantime upon [the operator’s] charges.’ He therefore petitioned
to have his stage re-erected in Edinburgh for a time; which was
complied with.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE 12.]
On the parliament sitting down to-day, under the Duke of Lauderdale
as commissioner, his ‘lady, with the number of thirty or forty moe
ladies, accompanies the duke to the parliament in coaches, and are set
down in the Parliament House, and sat there to hear the commissioner’s
speech.’--_Law._ ‘A practice so new and extraordinary, that it raised
the indignation of the people very much against her; they hating
to find that aspired to by her, which none of our queens had ever
attempted.’ It ‘set them to inquire into her origin and faults, and
to rail against the lowness of the one, and the suspicions of the
other.... This malice grew daily against her.’
The duke, at fifty-seven, and, it is said, only six weeks a widower,
had married the duchess in the preceding February in London, all their
friends in Edinburgh making feasts on their marriage-day, while ‘the
Castle shot as many guns as on his majesty’s birthday.’ Her grace, now
forty-five years of age, was in her personal qualities and history a
most remarkable woman. Her wit and cleverness were something singular;
‘nor had the extraordinary beauty she possessed while she was young,
ceded at the age at which she was then arrived.’ The daughter of one
who had been minister of Dysart, she was Countess of Dysart in her
own right, and by Sir Lionel Tollemache had had a large family, which
is still represented in the peerage. There was something romantic in
her union with the now all-powerful Lauderdale. He had owed to her
his life, through her influence with Cromwell, and in his marriage,
which was discommended by all his friends, ‘he really yielded to
his gratitude.’[230] For the next ten years, it might be said that
Lauderdale and his clever duchess were all but nominally king and queen
of Scotland.