[Sidenote: 1674.]
At this time commenced a stormy period which was long memorable in
Scotland. It opened with a tempest of east wind, which strewed the
coasts of Northumberland and Berwickshire with wrecks. During February,
the rough weather continued; and at length, on the 20th of the month,
a heavy fall of snow, accompanied by vehement frost, set in, which
lasted for thirteen days. This was afterwards remembered by the name
of the _Thirteen Drifty Days_. There was no decided improvement of
the weather till the 29th of March. ‘All fresh waters was frozen as
if in the midst of winter; all ploughing and delving of the ground
was marred till the aforesaid day; much loss of sheep by the snow,
and of whole families in the moor country and highlands; much loss of
cows everywhere, also of wild beasts, as doe and roe.’--_Law._ This
storm seems to have fallen with greatest severity upon the Southern
Highlands. It is stated in the council books of Peebles, that ‘the most
part of the country lost the most part of their sheep and many of their
nolt, and many all their sheep. It was universal, and many people were
almost starved for want of fuel for fire.’
James Hogg has given a traditionary account of the calamity.[246] ‘It
is said that for thirteen days and nights, the snow-drift never once
abated: the ground was covered with frozen snow when it commenced, and
during all that time the sheep never broke their fast. The cold was
intense to a degree never before remembered; and about the fifth and
sixth days of the storm, the young sheep began to fall into a sleepy
and torpid state, and all that were affected in the evening died
over-night. The intensity of the frost wind often cut them off when
in that state quite instantaneously. About the ninth and tenth days,
the shepherds began to build up huge semicircular walls of their dead,
in order to afford some shelter for the remainder of the living; but
they availed but little, for about the same time they were frequently
seen tearing at one another’s wool with their teeth. When the storm
abated on the fourteenth day from its commencement, there was, on many
a high-lying farm, not a living sheep to be seen. Large mis-shapen
walls of dead, surrounding a small prostrate flock, likewise all dead,
and frozen stiff in their lairs, was all that remained to cheer the
forlorn shepherd and his master; and though on low-lying farms, where
the snow was not so hard before, numbers of sheep weathered the storm,
yet their constitutions received such a shock that the greater part of
them perished afterwards, and the final consequence was, that about
nine-tenths of all the sheep in the south of Scotland were destroyed.
[Sidenote: 1674.]
‘In the extensive pastoral district of Eskdale Moor, which maintains
upwards of 20,000 sheep, it is said none were left alive but forty
young wedders on one farm, and five old ewes on another. The farm of
Phaup remained without a stock and without a tenant for twenty years
subsequent to the storm. At length, one very honest and liberal-minded
man ventured to take a lease of it, at the annual rent of a _gray coat
and a pair of hose_. It is now rented at £500. An extensive glen in
Tweedsmuir, belonging to Sir James Montgomery, became a common at that
time to which any man drove his flocks that pleased, and it continued
so for nearly a century. On one of Sir Patrick Scott of Thirlestane’s
farms, that keeps upwards of 900 sheep, they all died save one black
ewe, from which the farmer had high hopes of preserving a breed; but
some unlucky dogs, that were all laid idle for want of sheep to run at,
fell upon this poor solitary remnant of a good stock, and chased her
into the lake, where she was drowned.’
The _Thirteen Drifty Days_ are the means of bringing the ill-fated Duke
of Monmouth before us in an extraordinary relation of circumstances.
He and his duchess, in December 1675, obtained a licence to import
4800 nolt of a year old, and 200 horses, ‘to be employed in stocking
their waste lands in the south part of this kingdom,’ the bringing in
of live-stock from Ireland being then forbidden by act of parliament.
Walter Scott of Minto, sheriff-depute of Roxburghshire, became caution
that the licence should not be exceeded. But 120 of the oxen were
proved to have been above a year old; and the Council, accordingly
(August 3, 1676), fined Scott in £200 sterling.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: FEB. 19.]
[Sidenote: 1674.]
Agnes Johnston, of Airth in Stirlingshire, an unmarried woman about
fifty years of age, was tried in Edinburgh for the murder of an infant
named Lamb, her own grand-niece. Living with the parents of the
deceased, she took an opportunity, when there was nobody in the house
but herself and the child, to take the infant out of its cradle, lay it
in a bed, and cut its throat. The confession of the wretched woman bore
that, for some time before she committed the deed, she felt a spirit
within her _that did draw her neck together_, and which frequently
tempted her to make away with herself. Once she actually did attempt to
drown herself in a well at Clackmannan; but she cried to a woman near
by, who helped her out. She had never told any one of her temptations,
_nor had she power to tell_; but, her fits being thought fictitious by
her relatives, and they having consequently threatened to turn her out
of their house, she had in revenge resolved to destroy their child.
Agnes, who would now be regarded as a person under hallucinations,
expiated her sad act two days after in the Grassmarket.[247]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: FEB.]
Law, in noting the death of an eminent physician at this time, mentions
the death, some time before, of another, Dr Purves, from _an extreme
cold_, and because he ‘could not be kept in heat,’ ‘God letting us see
that all means applied for our health without his blessing them, are
ineffectual.’ Another writer of this age adverts to a Mr Dalgliesh,
‘curate’ of Parton, who ‘was so chilly, that he wore twenty fold of
cloth on him all the year, and furs on his head day and night.’[248]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAR. 4.]
An act of grace towards the Presbyterians, passed at this time with
the hope of conciliating them, had the effect of encouraging that
disposition to private religious meetings, or conventicles, which for
some years had given the government so much trouble. ‘From that day
Scotland broke loose with conventicles of all sorts, in houses, fields,
and vacant churches.... In Merse, Teviotdale, the Borders, Annandale,
Nithsdale, Clydesdale, Lothian, Stirlingshire, Perthshire, Lennox,
Fife, they fixed so many posts in the fields, mosses, muirs, and
mountains, where multitudes gathered almost every Sabbath,’ until the
time of Bothwell Bridge. ‘At these meetings, many a soul was converted
to Christ, but far more turned from the bishops to profess themselves
Presbyterians. The parish churches of the curates [that is, the regular
parish clergy] came to be like pest-houses; few went to any of them,
none to some, so the doors were kept locked. The discourse up and down
Scotland was the quality and success of last Sabbath’s conventicle,
who the preachers were, what the number of the people was, what the
affections of the people; how sometimes the soldiers assaulted them,
and sometimes killed some of them; sometimes the soldiers were beaten,
and some of them killed.’
[Sidenote: 1674.]
There appears to have been a band of about forty ministers who set
the government at defiance in this manner, most of them young and
active men. In the large towns, house conventicles prevailed; but
in the country, ‘the people had a sort of affectation to the fields
above houses.’ There came to be a regularity in these affairs; when
the people in a rural district wished to have a conventicle minister,
they sent to town to engage one. Danger made the congregations come
armed. ‘Not many gentlemen of estates durst come, but many ladies,
gentlewomen and commons, came in good multitudes. Wonderful conversions
followed upon the sermons. People discovered their own secret scandals.
Sometimes people of age bemoaned their want of baptism, and received
it at these occasions. Sometimes a curate would come, and after the
first sermon, stand up and profess his repentance, and afterwards would
consecrate himself to that work by a solemn field-preaching. So the
work of the gospel advanced in Scotland for several years.’--_Kir._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE 4.]
[Sidenote: 1674.]
A strange scene was presented in the Parliament Close in Edinburgh.
As the members of the Council approached their house of meeting, they
found fifteen ladies prepared to present a petition, ‘desiring that
a gospel ministry might be presented for the starving congregations
of Scotland.’ There were present amongst them the widows of Mr Robert
Blair and Mr John Neave, noted as entirely ‘faithful’ clergymen during
the troubles; Lady Crimond, a daughter of Johnston of Warriston; a
sister-in-law of the Laird of Dundas and a sister of the Earl of
Melville; the rest being generally the wives of Edinburgh citizens.
Seeing it was dangerous for men to appear in the form of remonstrants,
these ladies had volunteered to undertake the duty. The singularity
of the occasion had brought together a crowd, which filled the close,
and which is said to have comprised a large proportion of the fair
sex. The press was so great and so tumultuous around the councillors,
that they could scarcely make their way to the council-house. As the
chancellor descended from his coach, Archbishop Sharpe went close
behind him, fearing bodily harm. It is alleged by Sir George Mackenzie
that a design for doing some serious injury to the primate was entered
into on this occasion, and that the ladies were to ‘set upon him’ when
a certain member of the corps should raise her hand as a signal; but
this would need confirmation. He was saluted with reproaches and cries
of Judas! and Traitor! but the only approach to personal violence
was a slap on the neck from one of the sisterhood, who at the same
time took leave to tell him that _that_ (meaning the neck) should
yet pay for it ere all was done! One of the ladies, presenting her
petition to the chancellor, he received it with a courteous salute, and
listened to her with an inclined head till he got to the door of the
council-chamber. Lord Stair tossed his copy to the ground, whereupon
the fair petitioner reminded him he had not acted in that manner with
the famous Remonstrance of 1651, which he helped to pen.
The Council took this matter in high dudgeon. They resented the
personal disrespect of the scene in the Parliament Close, and they
denounced the matter of the petition as tending to stir up hatred
against his majesty’s government. For one thing, it ‘most falsely and
scandalously bears that they [the supplicants] had long been deprived
of the inestimable blessing of the public worship and ordinances of
God, whereas it is notour that his majesty’s subjects do enjoy [those
blessings] in great purity and peace, [there being] ane orderly
ministry authorised and countenanced and established by law.’ In
short, it was a seditious libel, calling for sharp punishment. Two
of the ladies being brought before the Council, refused to take an
oath or give evidence; the rest failed to appear on citation. The
whole were put to the horn as rebels, and three suffered a short
confinement.--_Kir._ _P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1674.]
The Macleans had been a loyal clan, fighting with Montrose for the
king, and suffering not a little in the royal cause. What the Campbells
had been during the same period need not be particularised. Yet, when
the clemency of the government had restored the Argyle estates to the
earl, he was not the less disposed on that account to urge certain
claims of his family upon its more loyal neighbours. Fountainhall
speaks of them as ‘patched-up claims and decreets of his own courts
for contumacy;’ while the fact was that the Macleans durst not make
appearance in the grounds of their enemy, ‘and pretended casualties
of superiority, as escheats, wards, non-entries, reliefs, &c.,’ a
particularly hard case, as these arose in many instances from the
deaths of Macleans in the king’s service, while their superior, the
late Marquis of Argyle, had been ‘the great transgressor.’ Argyle,
however, according to the alleged genius of his family in that age,
‘walked warily in all he did,’ and, the Macleans imprudently despising
his efforts, and neglecting legal measures of resistance, he succeeded
ultimately in obtaining a letter of fire and sword against them.[249]
Behold, then, in the summer of this year, a clan muster of the
Campbells and their connections, to the amount of 2000 men, designed
to enforce certain payments from the Tutor of Maclean in Mull--the
Maclean of the day being a minor under the care of an uncle so called.
The Tutor, on his part, has seven or eight hundred kilted followers to
make resistance; but either his means were inadequate, or his measures
had been ill concerted. The earl ‘besetting the isle with ships and
boats, enters at three several places; at one place, Lord Niel, the
earl’s brother, lights upon the cows which the Highlanders had driven
to that place for safety, and caused cut down and hough [hamstring]
a considerable number of them; which occasioned a great cry by the
women and children keeping them, and running to their husbands and
friends to acquaint them how it stood; whereupon the islanders, being
amazed, fainted and came to a composition of the matter. The earl gets
the castle of Duart into his own hand, and mans it for himself. They
all yield and submit, and promise payment and subjection to the said
earl.’--_Law._ See further transactions next year.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: OCT.]
There was no shearing this year till October, and much of the corn
green when cut even then. Consequently, meal, though of bad quality,
went to a pound sterling the boll. ‘Yet there was not any time cows
found fatter than in this harvest, and no scarcity either of cows or
sheep for slaughter. Thus the Lord, who casts down with one hand, lifts
up with the other.’--_Law._
[Sidenote: 1674.]
It is rather surprising that sheep and cattle should so quickly have
become plentiful after the great destruction of such stock from the
storms of the preceding January. But in as far as the fact was true,
the good condition of the animals might be readily accounted for by
the very humidity of the summer and autumn, producing an abundance of
herbage, while destructive to cereal crops.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1675.]
The winter of 1674-5 is stated to have been singularly mild and free of
rain in Ireland, and probably it was of the same character in Scotland.
In our country, as in Ireland, there was a good harvest; yet victual
continued to be dear by reason of the stock of the preceding scanty
season being so thoroughly exhausted. Another winter of extraordinary
mildness followed. The weather, at the end of November and beginning of
December, is described as very warm. Many people fell sick, and died.
A feverish cold--what might now be called influenza--was epidemic in
town and country, ‘whereof moe die than was observed in other years
before.’--_Law._
Patrick Walker tells us that one night in August of this year, but
more probably the fact occurred in 1674, Mr Donald Cargill, being at
Cowhill in Livingstone parish, saw a great mist come on, and told the
family to be careful of it, keeping close within their houses. He also
desired them to mark where it stood thickest, ‘for there they would
see the effects saddest.’ There was a small place called Craigs, where
they observed the mist unusually thick, and, within four months after,
thirty persons died there. It is probable that Mr Donald’s predictions
in this case were founded upon simple observation of natural facts.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP.]
The Macleans having failed in their agreement with the Earl of Argyle,
and set his claims at nought, his lordship now prepared a second
expedition against Mull, and this time he added to his own forces
some regular soldiers and militia. The Macleans, on the other hand,
had obtained assistance to a considerable amount from Macdonnell of
Glengarry, Cameron of Locheil, and Maclean of Lochbuy. There were
probably not less than fifteen hundred armed Highlanders on each side.
[Sidenote: 1675.]
The Campbells, proceeding in a great fleet of ships and _birlins_,
under the command of the earl’s brother, Lord Niel, encountered a
severe storm on the 21st and 22d of September, by which they were
damaged and driven back, though fortunately no lives were lost. ‘This
storm was so great, that ... great oaks were blown up by the roots ...
old trees of two hundred years standing broken in the midst ... and
the corns so shaken, that the people got little more than straw to
cut down. A rumour went that there was a witch-wife, named Muddock,
had promised to the Macleans that, so long as she lived, the Earl of
Argyle should not enter Mull; and indeed many of the people imputed the
rise of that great storm unto her paction with the devil, how true I
cannot assert.’--_Law._ Might not the autumnal equinox somewhat better
account for the fact?
The Earl of Argyle was so far baffled by this storm, that he had to
give up for the meantime the design of vindicating his rights by force.
We find next year the cause of the Macleans taken up by the Earl of
Seaforth, the Marquis of Athole, and some other chiefs, by whose
means a suspension of Argyle’s powers was obtained, and his account
subjected to a severe reckoning, ‘which he was most averse to.’ They
also hounded out a creditor of his own upon him, and he was obliged to
make a precipitate retreat from Edinburgh to escape caption, and to
carry off the furniture of his Stirling mansion to a secure place in
the Highlands, lest it should be seized for the debt.
The earl and the Macleans are found next year again at legal tilt, but
with no particular result that appears. His own forfeiture for treason,
which soon after occurred, probably saved them from further annoyance.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1676.]
The winter of 1675-6 being singularly mild, was followed by a
favourable spring, and there consequently was an abundant harvest.
The characteristic mutability of our climate was, however, shewn
immediately after. There was a drought in latter autumn, and about
the 18th of December the temperature fell to an extraordinary degree,
‘the most aged never remembered the like. The birds fell down frae the
air dead; the rats in numbers found dead; all liquors froze, even the
strongest ale; and the distilled waters of apothecaries in warm rooms
froze in whole, and the glasses broke.’--_Law._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JAN.]
[Sidenote: 1676.]
Two boys, named Clark and Ramsay, the one seventeen, and the other
fifteen years of age, suffered in Edinburgh for an offence which had
perhaps been suggested by the rumours attending the celebrated case of
the Marchioness de Brinvilliers. John Anderson, a merchant, the master
of Ramsay, had long been pining under an enfeebling malady, which was
likely to have in time brought him to the grave. During his sickness,
Ramsay, in conjunction with his companion Clark, purloined several
articles of value belonging to his master, trusting that he would die,
and that consequently no discovery would take place. Finding Anderson’s
disease taking a turn, the young thieves became alarmed; and took into
counsel another boy named Kennedy, an apothecary’s apprentice, who
supplied them with a drug calculated to keep up the malady under which
Anderson had suffered. The man receiving this in small doses, grew ill
again, and in time died. No suspicion of foul play was entertained, and
apparently the two lads would have been allowed to remain unnoticed, if
they had not offered for sale a gold chain which formed part of their
plunder. Being detained and questioned, they fell into such terror,
that an ingenuous confession of their guilt was easily obtained from
them, accompanied with many expressions of sorrow. They were hanged,
‘both in regard to the theft clearly proven, and for terror that the
Italian trick of sending men to the other world in figs and possets
might not come over seas to our island.’ Kennedy, ‘an outed minister’s
son,’ was detained for want of proof, and ultimately banished.--_Foun._
Wodrow adds a tale of wonder, as told him by his mother-in-law, Mrs
Warner, who had visited the two boys in prison. After the burial of
Anderson, his nephew, Sir John Clerk of Pennycuick, ‘was one night
lying in his own house, in a room with some others, sleeping. In his
sleep he imagined he heard a voice calling to him: “Avenge the blood of
your uncle!” and wakened, and asked if any of them had been speaking
to him. They declared not. He composed himself to sleep, and had it
repeated; and he asked the former question the second time, and those
in the room denied, as above. He slept again, and had the same repeated
the third time; on which he got up, and went immediately to Edinburgh
and made a particular inquiry into the circumstances of his uncle’s
death, at the two apprentices, but found nothing to fix on at this
time. In a little, Sir John met with a medal in a goldsmith’s shop
which he knew to belong to his uncle. This he traced up till he landed
it on the apprentices, who, upon this, confessed they had opened their
master’s cabinet and taken out money, &c.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1676.]
Mr James Mitchell, who made an attempt on Archbishop Sharpe’s life in
1668, and wounded the Bishop of Orkney, was taken prisoner in February
1674, and being subjected to examination, and promised his life if he
would confess, did make a confession--which, however, he afterwards
retracted before the Court of Justiciary, having in the interval been
told that nothing could be proved against him, and warned that perhaps
the promise made to him might not be respected. This conduct put the
government to a difficulty, and irritated them the more against him.
At length, after keeping him in a very hard confinement for two years,
they resolved to subject him to the torture, as the only means left to
bring him back to his confession.
It is not proposed here to detail the sufferings of the wretched
Mitchell; but those who know the courts of law, as they now exist,
will probably view with some interest the arrangements that were made
beforehand for that kind of procedure.
[Sidenote: JAN. 6.]
The resolution having been formed to put Mitchell to the torture of
the _boot_, the Council ‘do hereby nominate the Earls of Linlithgow,
Wigton, Seaforth, the Lords Ross and Treasurer Depute as a committee
of Council to meet on the 24th day of January next, at nine o’clock in
the forenoon in the Parliament House, where the justices do ordinarily
hold their courts, and to cause put the said Mr James Mitchell to the
question and torture concerning his being in the rebellion in the year
1666, and appoints the commissioners of justiciary in a fenced court to
be present then and assistant, in their robes, with their clerks and
other officers of court; and recommends to the said committee, or any
three of them with the commissioners of justiciary, to meet before that
time and consider of the way and manner of the said torture,’ &c.
The Council afterwards ordered that a bailie of Edinburgh should be
present, ‘to receive and put in execution such orders as the lords
shall think fit to give.’--_P. C. R._
The unfortunate Mitchell sustained the torture with surprising
firmness, and without making any admission criminative of himself.
A proposal being afterwards made to torture him in the other leg,
one of his friends (so the report went) dropped an anonymous hint to
Archbishop Sharpe, that if he persisted in the resolution, _he should
have a shot from a steadier hand_; ‘whereupon he was let alone, but
still kept in prison.’--_Law._ At length the unhappy man was brought to
a regular trial, when the state-officers all denied in the witness-box
that fact of the promise of life upon confession, which their own
record bore, and which Mitchell alleged had taken place. It is just
possible that the record misrepresented what took place; but it is very
difficult to make so largely charitable an allowance. Mitchell suffered
in the Grassmarket (January 1678).
[Sidenote: 1676.