[Sidenote: 1680.]
In 1647, while the thoughts of men were engrossed by frightful civil
broils, one quiet country gentleman, Sir Robert Bruce of Clackmannan,
occupied himself in some measure with things of a practically useful
nature. It was a most uncommon way of bestowing spare mental energy
in those days, and perhaps was owing in a great degree to Sir
Robert’s situation in the midst of the fine coal-field still worked
so industriously under the skirts of the Ochils. He was then found
beseeching the attention of the Committee of Estates--amidst military
arrangements, payments of public creditors, punishments of malignants,
sharpening of the weapons of persecution against dissidents of all
kinds--to a mechanical invention of his own--‘ane water-work, never
invented, heard, nor seen heretofore, for drying of all water-heuchs
[coal-mines] within the kingdom, how deep soever the sumptis and growth
of the water-springs be within the samen, by the supplie of two men
allenarly, going by _pace_,[276] _peise_, or _swey_.’[277] The laird,
as usual, sought for his reward in an exclusive right to the use of
this engine for nineteen years, which was granted.
What, if anything, came of this contrivance we do not learn. Most
likely, it was never effectually tried, but fell asleep amongst the
troubles of the time. Yet it would appear that the idea was somehow
kept alive, for at the date noted in the margin, Peter Bruce[278] made
application to the Privy Council for their favour towards an engine
for drawing water out of coal-pits and quarries, which promised to do
more work with a couple of men than six horses could effect by any
other machine now in use; also towards a cutting-mill ‘for ane easy
way of cutting all sorts of great goads and bars of iron in small
lengths, stanchells, or strings, whereby smiths and other artificers
in iron will be able to make nails and other iron works at least £2
Scots cheaper of every hundredweight of iron.’ He had spent much on
these projects, and more was yet required, wherefore he thought himself
entitled to some public encouragement. The Privy Council granted him
an exclusive privilege of making the proposed machines for thirteen
years.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1680.]
A curious trait of the simplicity of Scotland in regard to some of
the mechanical arts occurs in Fountainhall’s _Decisions_ under 1679,
where he tells of plumbers that ‘they cannot subsist in Scotland as
a distinct trade, _there being so little to do; only our curiosity is
daily increasing_.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE 15.]
Great efforts were made during this reign for the building of bridges
and repairing of roads, but generally with little good effect. As
an example of the actual condition of a road near the capital of
the country at this time, we find the first four miles of that from
Edinburgh to London--namely, from the Clockmill Bridge to Magdalen
Bridge--are described as being in so ruinous a state, that passengers
were in danger of their lives, ‘either by their coaches overturning,
their horse falling, their carts breaking, their loads casting, and
horse stumbling, the poor people with the burdens on their backs
sorely grieved and discouraged:’ moreover, ‘strangers do often exclaim
thereat.’ A toll of a halfpenny for a laden cart, and a sixth of a
penny for a laden horse, was authorised in order to get this piece of
road kept in repair.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: OCT.]
In one week died Lady Kilbirnie and her husband of a pestilential
fever. ‘The death of thir spouses was much lamented by all sorts of
people.... In the day of the sickening of the laird and lady, his dogs
went into the close, and an unco dog coming amongst them, they all set
up a barking, with their faces up to heaven, howling, yelling, and
youphing; and when the laird called to them, they would not come to him
as in former times.’--_Law._
The same author relates that, before the death of Colquhoun of Luss,
‘the dogs went up to a chamber in the night-time, and made a hideous
lamentable-like noise, and tore down the curtains of the bed, there
being none in it.’ At the sickening of Lord Ross, who died in May 1682,
‘his dogs came up the stair towards his chamber, howling lamentably; he
caused shoot them all one after another.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: [NOV. ?]]
The Duke of York paying a visit to the Castle of Edinburgh, the huge
cannon called MONS MEG was fired in his honour. The charge, which was
done by an English cannoneer, had probably been too large, for it
caused the piece to burst. This ‘some foolishly called a bad omen. The
Scots resented it extremely, thinking the Englishman might of malice
have done it purposely, they having no cannon in all England so big as
she.’--_Foun._
[Sidenote: 1680.]
Mons Meg, with a breach in her side, still adorns the ancient
battlements of Edinburgh Castle, ‘to the great admiration of people,’
being upwards of thirteen feet long, and of twenty inches bore; formed
of longitudinal bars of iron, hooped with rings fused into one mass.
It is an example of a colossal kind of artillery which the sovereigns
of Europe had a craze for making in the middle and latter half of the
fifteenth century--this specimen being probably prepared at the command
of James II. of Scotland.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: NOV.]
An elephant which had been bought for £2000 sterling, and brought to
England for exhibition, was shewn in Scotland, being the first of the
species ever seen in the country. It was a male, eleven years old, ‘a
great beast, with a great body and a great head, small eyes and dull,
lugs like two skats (?) lying close to its head; having a large trunk
coming down from the nether end of the forehead, of length a yard and
a half, in the undermost part small, with a nostril; by which trunk it
breathed and drank, casting up its meat and drink in its mouth below
it; having two large and long bones or teeth, of a yard length, coming
from the upper jaw of it, and at the far end of it inclining one to
another, by which it digs the earth for roots ... it was backed like a
sow, the tail of it like a cow’s: the legs were big, like pillars or
great posts, and broad feet with toes like round lumps of flesh. When
it drinks it sucks up the water with its trunk, which holds a great
deal of water, and then putting the low end in its mouth, by winding
it in, it jaws in the water in its mouth, as from a great spout. It
was taught to flourish the colours with the trunk of it, and to shoot
a gun, and to bow the knees of it, and to make reverence with its big
head. They also rode upon it.... Let this great creature on earth and
the whale at sea be compared with a midge or minnow, and behold what
great wisdom and power is with the great God, the creator and preserver
of both!‘--_Law._
It appears that Alexander Deas and others farmed this elephant from
its owners for several months at £400, in order to shew it through
the country. They refused to pay in full, on the ground of several
failures as to the terms of the contract, alleging, for instance, that
the owners had not shewn all it might do--namely, its drinking, &c.
It was replied, ‘it could not drink every time it was shewn.’ How the
litigation ended does not appear.--_Foun._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC. 10.]
[Sidenote: 1680.]
A great comet, which had been observed in Germany a month earlier,
was first seen in Scotland this evening, ‘the night being clear and
frosty; between five and seven at night, it set in the west, and was
seen in the south-east in the morning of the following days.[279] [It]
had a great [tail] blazing frae the root of it, was pointed as it came
from the star, and then spread itself; was of a broad and large ascent
up to the heavens ... the stream of it all the night over is seen....
[It] had its recess from the west every night by degrees, as the moon
has from the sun after her change, and being every night more elevate
by degrees in its first after daylight was gone, then the stream of it
mounted to our zenith, and beyond it, very wonderfully. No history ever
made mention of the like comet ... and [it] is certainly prodigious of
great alterations and of great judgments on these lands and nations for
our sins; for never was the Lord more provoked by a people.... [It]
continued till the 16th or 17th day of January, growing smaller and
smaller to its end.’--_Law._
‘When Mr M‘Ward, who was then a-dying, heard of it, he desired Mr
Shields and other friends to carry him out, that he might see it. When
he saw it, he blest the Lord that was now about to close his eyes,
and was not to see the woful days that were coming upon Britain and
Ireland, especially upon sinful Scotland.’--_P. Walker._
[Sidenote: 1680.]
Lord Fountainhall, in noting the appearance of a smaller comet for two
weeks in August 1682, being the time when ‘semblances of joy’ were
presented in Edinburgh for the accouchement of the Duchess of York of
a daughter, adds: ‘I have seen a late French book, proving that comets
prognosticate nothing that’s fatal or dangerous, but rather prosperous
things; yet, at the time it shone, the Duke of Lauderdale, that great
minister of state, died.’--_Hist. Ob._ This ‘yet’ is exceedingly
amusing. He elsewhere states the opinions of those who believe in the
ominousness of comets. According to them, ‘the effects’ do not always
follow immediately: some indeed think a comet ‘takes as many years to
_operate_, as it appears nights.’ He estimates the tail of the comet of
1680 at near [upwards of] 3000 miles in length, because it extends over
60 degrees, ‘and each degree is 60 miles!’ This learned judge, however,
was himself of opinion that comets do not hold forth any prognostics
of blood and desolation, further than by their natural effects in
infecting the air, so as to occasion sterility, pestilential diseases,
and famine.
Lord Fountainhall probably deemed 3000 miles a considerable length for
a comet’s tail. How must he have been surprised to learn that it was in
reality nearly as long as the distance of the earth from the sun, or
not much short of a hundred millions of miles. Equally great must have
been his wonder to learn (as appears from Enke’s recent calculations)
that this illustrious stranger only comes to our part of space once in
8814 years!
[Sidenote: DEC.]
During this month, the public mind was in a highly excited state, owing
to the terrific appearance of the comet overhead, in connection with
the presence of the Duke of York in Edinburgh, and the news of the
struggles in parliament for his exclusion from the throne. One Gray,
a merchant in Edinburgh, gave out that, as he and a country friend
called Yule were looking at the comet, ‘he saw a fire descend from the
Castle down the city of Edinburgh to the Abbey’ [the duke’s residence],
while Yule heard a voice saying: ‘This is the sword of the Lord!’ A man
in a soldier’s apparel came up to Sir George Monro at mid-day in the
street, and bade him go down and tell the Duke of York, if he did not
counsel his brother the king to extirpate the Papists, both he and the
king were dead men. Sir George turned about to call witnesses to what
the man had said, and when he looked again, the man had mysteriously
vanished. To crown all, ‘a hypochondriac fellow’ came out to the
street, and proclaimed openly that the Day of Judgment would take place
next day, offering himself to be hanged if it should prove otherwise.
He was clapped up in the Canongate Tolbooth; rather a prosaic fate for
a prophet. The two first circumstances are clearly to be referred to
the hallucination which is apt to be engendered on occasions of great
public excitement.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC. 25.]
[Sidenote: 1680.]
The boys at the college in Edinburgh resolved to follow the example
of the London apprentices in getting up a demonstration against the
pope. What gave piquancy to the design was, that the Duke of York was
now living in Edinburgh, under exile from London on account of his
adherence to the Romish faith. They were very cunning and dexterous in
making their arrangements, having first prepared their effigy of the
pope, and then sent a small party with a portrait to the Castle Hill,
in order to make the authorities think that they designed to have a
procession from that place down the High Street to Holyrood Palace,
where the duke lived. While this feint drew off the attention of the
military, the youths brought out the true effigy to the High School
Yard, and then marched with it up Blackfriars’ Wynd to the High Street.
It was a rude statue of timber, with a painted face; on the head, a
gray periwig and triple crown; and in the hands a cross, a candle, and
a piece of money. The figure was clothed in a calico gown, and sat in a
chair. Having set it down on the street, they set fire to it, causing
a quantity of powder within the body to explode and burst it all in
pieces. Notwithstanding their expedition, they were attacked, while
performing the ceremony, by the swords of the Earl of Linlithgow and
a few other friends of the Duke of York; but they stood their ground,
warning the assailants that they might hurt some they would not like
to hurt. When all was over, they dispersed. Many regretted the act,
as inhospitable towards the duke, and we may well believe, if General
Dalyell had not been led with his troops on a false scent, he would
have made the lads repent of their frolic. ‘For a further testimony and
bravado, the school-boys, apprentices, and many other people, mounted
blue ribbons, inscribed with, “No Pope--no Priest--no Bishop--no
Atheist;” which, again, caused the loyal to hoist the rival legend, “I
am no fanatic.”’
One George Redpath, tutor to a gentleman’s two sons, was brought
before the Privy Council, and examined on the accusation of having
drawn up a bond for the execution of this project. But after a few
days’ detention, he was set at liberty ‘by the goodness of his royal
highness, who was always too compassionate to that generation of
vipers,’ says Sir William Paterson.[280] This same Redpath lived to be
an active Whig pamphleteer in London after the Revolution, and was the
author of the _Answer to the Scots Presbyterian Eloquence._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1681.