[Sidenote: 1681.]
The house of Priestfield, under the south front of Arthur’s Seat,
was burnt this evening between seven and eight o’clock. Political
circumstances gave importance to what would otherwise have been
a trivial occurrence. Sir James Dick, the owner, was provost of
Edinburgh, and a friend of the Duke of York. His having adopted
energetic measures with some college youths concerned in the Christmas
anti-papal demonstration, was supposed to have excited a spirit of
retaliation in their companions; and hence a suspicion arose that the
fire was designed and executed by them. The Privy Council were so
far convinced of this being the case, that they shut up the college,
and banished the pupils fifteen miles, unless they could give caution
for their good-behaviour. Sir James’s house was rebuilt at the public
expense, as it now exists in the possession of his descendant, Sir
William Cunningham Keith Dick, Bart.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JAN. 20.]
Six women were hanged in Edinburgh. Two of them, Janet Alison from
Perth, and Marion Harvey from Borrowstounness, ‘were of Cameron’s
faction, bigot and sworn enemies to the king and bishops,’ and, ‘for
all the pains taken, would not once acknowledge the king to be their
lawful prince, but called him a perjured bloody man.’ ‘Some thought the
threatening to drown them privately in the North Loch, without giving
them the credit of a public suffering, would have more effectually
reclaimed them nor any arguments which were used; and the bringing them
to a scaffold but disseminates the infection.’--_Foun._
The other four women were hanged for murdering their own children, born
out of wedlock. It would be hard to say which of the two cases reflects
the most discredit upon the wisdom and humanity of the age.
On the ensuing 13th of April, another woman was hanged in the
Grassmarket for murdering her child, declaring that she had committed
the deed in order ‘to shun the ignominy of the church pillory.’ The
frequency of such cases, and the declaration of this poor woman,
attracted the attention of the Duke of York. He was surprised to hear
of a custom used in no other Christian country, which ‘rather made
scandals than buried them.’ The duke, we are told, ‘was displeased,
and thought it would be a more efficacious restraint, if the civil
magistrate should punish them, either by a pecuniary mulct, or a
corporal punishment.’ Fountainhall, however, thought the practice
justifiable, on the text, ‘They who sin openly should be rebuked
openly,’ and from the penances imposed in the primitive church.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: FEB. 21.]
[Sidenote: 1681.]
A company of distracted people was this day brought into Edinburgh,
under the guardianship of a troop of dragoons. They were commonly known
as the _Sweet Singers of Borrowstounness_, from their noted habit of
frequent chanting of psalms. The religious exasperations of the times,
the execution of a Bo’ness man named Stewart, with two others, on the
preceding 1st of December, and perhaps in addition to these causes,
the terrors diffused by the comet, had now produced in that little
town an epidemic mania of a type only too well known. These people
felt as if all was wrong in church and state, and professed to deny
all kinds of institutions, even the names of the days of the week;
nay, the commonest social obligations, as that of working for one’s
own bread. They protested against taxes, confessions, and covenants;
disowned the king and his government; and called for vengeance on the
murderers of the two late martyrs, Stewart and Potter, whose blood
they carried on a handkerchief. They ran up and down the town in a
furious manner, sometimes uttering prayers which consisted chiefly of
curses invoked against individuals, more frequently singing psalms of
lamentation (74th, 79th, 80th, 83d, and 137th) for the sins of the
land. Such of the females as were married deserted their homes and
husbands, and if the husband, in his endeavours to win his wife back to
rationality, took hold of any part of her dress, she indignantly washed
the place, as to remove an impurity. They followed a gigantic fellow,
commonly called Muckle John Gibb, but who passed among them under the
name of King Solomon, and at length, ‘leaving their homes and soft
warm beds and covered tables,’ six-and-twenty of them went forth from
their native town, notwithstanding the entreaties of weeping husbands,
fathers, and children, calling on them to stay; ‘some women taking the
sucking children in their arms to desert places, to be free of all
snares and sins, and communion with all others, and mourn for their
own sins, the land’s tyranny and defections, and there to be safe from
the land’s utter ruin and desolation by judgments; some of them going
to the Pentland Hills, with a resolution to sit there to see the smoke
and utter ruin of the sinful, bloody city of Edinburgh.... Immediately
after they came to these desert places, they kept a day of fasting and
confessing of their sins one to another; yea, some of them confessed
sins which the world had not heard of, and so not called to confess
them to men.’--_Pat. Walker._
[Sidenote: 1681.]
Even the Whig clergymen who had gone to the wilderness rather than own
an uncovenanted king, were surprised at the more extreme feelings of
the Sweet Singers. Walker tells how he was with the Rev. Mr Cargill at
Darmead Muirs, when the Gibbites were ‘lying in the Deer Slunk, in the
midst of a great flow-moss betwixt Clydesdale and Lothian about a mile
distant.’ Gibb and another man came armed, and held a conference with
Mr Cargill in a barn, but it led to no good. After resting a while,
the chief of the Sweet Singers rose in haste and went to the muir all
night. ‘I well remember,’ says Walker, ‘it was a cold easterly wet
fog.’ Cargill was shocked by the state of mind he had found them in.
They were afterwards all taken by a troop of dragoons at the Woolhill
Craigs, betwixt Lothian and Tweeddale, a very desert place, and carried
to Edinburgh, where the men were put into the Canongate Tolbooth,
and the women into the Correction-house, where they were soundly
scourged. After a little time, these poor people cooled down somewhat,
and were one by one set at liberty. Walker says the most of them
ultimately returned to their right mind, and he had had some edifying
conversations with them since.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAR. 1.]
[Sidenote: 1681.]
Articles used in clothing in Scotland had hitherto been almost wholly
of home manufacture. As in Sweden to this day, the great bulk of the
people spun their own wool and flax, each family for itself, and had
the yarn woven into cloth by the village webster. There were as yet but
the merest attempts at a manufacture of cloths or hosen for general
sale and use. We have seen a modest attempt made by certain foreigners
in Edinburgh so early as 1609.[281] It is stated that in the reign
of Charles I., there were cloth-works on a small scale at Newmills
in Haddingtonshire, at Bonnington near Edinburgh, and at Ayr. That
at Newmills was in a thriving condition till Dundee was stormed and
sacked by Monk in 1651, when a store of its cloth was taken, and the
troubles soon after closed the work.[282] Latterly, it could scarcely
be said there was any general manufacture of articles of attire except
at Aberdeen. There one George Pyper had a number of country-people
engaged in working stockings with the needles, paying them at the rate
of five groats (equal to 1-2/3d. sterling) a pair for the making; and
he raised the working to such a fineness in some instances, ‘that he
hath given twenty shillings sterling and upward for the pair.’[283]
In this province there was also a manufacture of _plaiden_ stuffs and
_fingrams_, which was the more meritorious as the wool was mostly
brought by sea-carriage from the southern parts of the kingdom. It
is related that a Mr Barnes, ‘a substantious merchant in Edinburgh,’
thought he might make a saving by getting the same stuffs made in his
own neighbourhood, and have an advantage over the Aberdeen merchants in
sending out his cloth to the Dutch market. But, on trying an experiment
with ‘ten sea-packs of plaiden, which might be worth £20,000,’ he found
that he had scarcely produced his cloth at as low a rate as that at
which the Aberdeen merchants sold theirs. The explanation, which he
obtained from Mr Alexander Farquhar, a merchant in Aberdeen, might be
worthy of Mr Babbage’s attention for a new edition of his _Economy
of Manufactures_. It was, that the people who worked these cloths in
the north ‘had not by far such entertainment as his [Mr Barnes’s]
servants had--they oftener drank clear spring-water than ale.’ When
Mr Barnes heard this, he gave up his manufacture. Of late years, even
this frugally conducted manufacture, which had in some years brought a
hundred thousand rix-dollars into the country, and greatly facilitated
the payment of rents, was much decayed--the goods reduced to half their
wonted prices, and yet not the half exported that was--and all from a
cause also of much significance in the philosophy of business--namely,
‘deceitful mismanagement,’ leading of course to loss of confidence, and
a consequent checking of orders.
The faculties for business which the Duke of York possessed in so
respectable a degree, seem to have now begun to tell upon the country
in which he found a refuge. While joining in the unhappy severities
dictated by the Privy Council against the poor Whigs, he gave attention
to the solid interests of the nation at large, and had consultations
with such men of mercantile spirit as the country then possessed, with
a view to the planting of cloth-factories similar to those which had
long been realising good results in England. It was pointed out that
the making of the better kinds of cloth within the country was becoming
a matter of most serious concernment, because, owing to the great
drain of money which was occasioned by the importation of such cloths
from the south, ‘English money was not to be had under 6 or 7 per
cent., scarce at any rate,’ and exchange between Edinburgh and London
had risen against the former place as high as 12 or 15 per cent. ‘Our
four-merk pieces,’ it was added, ‘the best coin of our kingdom, were
almost wholly exported, and above £20,000 sterling in dollars left the
country in the year 1680.’
[Sidenote: 1681.]
The result of the duke’s patriotic deliberations was the passing of
acts of Council in March and April, and the passing of an act of
parliament in September 1681, for the encouragement of trade and
manufactories. Through his personal exertions, a body of men, including
Mr Robert Blackwood and several other merchants in Edinburgh, was
induced to associate for the setting up of a new work at Newmills,
the produce of which was to be disposed of by them under peculiar
regulations. It was to be under the care of an enterprising Englishman
named Sir James Stanfield, who for some time had been settled there.
In August, six _sheermen_ and a foreman having been brought down
from England, this work commenced with two looms--soon increased to
eight--soon after to twenty-five; and in 1683 it was still extending.
‘We began,’ says the pamphleteer formerly quoted, ‘to make the coarsest
of white cloths first, wherein we continued till October 1682; then we
turned part of our people to coarse mixed cloth, and so on gradually
to finer, and _now we are upon superfine cloths_, and have brought
the spinners and rest of the work-people that length, that we hope
against May next to have superfine cloths as good as generally are
made in England.’ There was also a manufacture of silk-stockings going
on at Newmills. The whole work seems to have then been in a hopeful
condition, albeit on the unsound footing of a monopoly, all English
goods of the same kinds being prohibited under severe penalties.
The act was, indeed, too sweeping in its tendency, for it forbade the
importing of a great number of stuffs--as silks, embroideries, gold
lace, ribbons, silk fringes, cambrics, and damasks, which it was not
in the power of any native manufacturer to supply, and which certain
classes of the people were little inclined to dispense with. It was
thought necessary by these means to save the money of the country. It
led to a strange scene one day on the High Street of Edinburgh. George
Fullerton, a merchant of that city, had committed a gross violation
of the law, first in smuggling in some packs of English cloth, and
afterwards, when they were seized by the authorities, repossessing
himself of them by violence. The Privy Council ordered him to be
declared fugitive, had the two ‘waiters’ of the West Port scourged for
allowing the goods to be introduced, and ordained the cloth itself to
be burnt at the Cross by the hand of the hangman. The common people
beheld this last spectacle with feelings of their own, for they thought
it might have been better to distribute the cloth among the poor:
however, says Fountainhall in a whisper, it was only the worst bales
that were burned: the best were ‘privily preserved.’
[Sidenote: 1681.]
Absurd as all this procedure may appear, it precisely represents the
existing policy of Sweden and some other continental countries in
respect of British manufactures.
One natural result of the act very soon appears, in the magistrates of
Edinburgh being called before the Privy Council at the suggestion of
the Duke of York, and recommended to call up the merchants, in order
to discharge them from ‘extortioning the lieges, by taking exorbitant
prices for the merchandises now prohibited ... on the pretence that
there no more of that kind to be imported within the kingdom.’
In February 1683, General Dalyell, finding ‘that he cannot be provided
in this kingdom with as much cloth of one colour as will be clothes to
the regiment of dragoons,’ obtained a licence from the Privy Council
permitting the cloth-manufacturing company at Newmills ‘to import 2536
ells of stone-gray cloth from England, for clothing the said regiment
of dragoons,’ they finding caution under £500 sterling to limit the
importation strictly to that quantity. About a month later, the Council
made a change in this order, to the effect that the general might
appoint a person to import the cloth--not exceeding five shillings
sterling the ell--instead of the Newmills company.
In May 1683, Captain John Graham of Claverhouse was permitted by the
Privy Council, on petition, to import from England, for the use of his
troops, 150 ells of red cloth, 40 ells of white cloth, and 550 dozen
of buttons; giving security that no advantage should be taken of this
licence to bring in any other cloth.
Of a small cloth-work in Leith it was declared (December 1683) that the
partners engaged ‘are excellently skilled in their trade, and can dye
and mix wool and cloth, and takes in wool from the merchant or other
person, and does dye and mix it; and when they get in yarn, does weave
and dress it, and deliver it in broadcloth; and has already made good
broadcloth to many of the merchants of Edinburgh.’ ‘Seeing that this
is so good a work,’ the Privy Council, on petition, extended to it the
privileges proposed in the act for encouraging manufactures.--_P. C. R._
[Sidenote: 1681.]
Still the Council itself does not seem to have been a consistent patron
of such native works. The dress of the infantry of the royal army
having hitherto been of a plain kind, it was reported as necessary
to have coats for them ‘of such a dye as shall be thought fit to
distinguish sojors from other skulking and vagrant persons, who have
hitherto imitated the livery of the king’s sojors.’ The Newmills Cloth
Manufacturing Company offered (August 28, 1684) from their own work,
to furnish a suitable cloth ‘of what dye should be desired,’ and as
cheaply and expeditiously as it could be had from England. They would
shew ‘swatches’ [samples] within a fortnight, and give security for the
fulfilment of their undertaking. But the lords decided to use English
cloth.
Patrick Graham, ‘captain of his majesty’s company of foot within the
town of Edinburgh’ (the Town Guard), was empowered (January 8, 1685)
to import ‘three hundred ells of English cloth of a scarlet colour,
with wrappings and other necessars’ for the clothing of his corps,
this being ‘in regard the manufactories are not able to furnish his
majesty’s forces with cloth and other necessars.’ Several other
commanders of troops got similar licences. The Newmills Company
looked on with outraged feelings, and presented a petition desiring
that a stop might be put to the importation of English cloth for the
soldiery, as the needful article could be furnished as cheaply and of
as good quality from the native factory. In order that they might not
be ‘utterly ruined and broke,’ they begged that a committee might be
appointed to ascertain that such was the case; and a committee was
accordingly appointed, but with no result that appears. Meanwhile, we
find the Newmills copartnery trying to protect their monopoly against
infractions by private parties.
[Sidenote: 1681.]
It made an attack in April 1684 upon five merchants of Edinburgh who
continued, in defiance of the law, to deal in English cloth. It was
complained of against Robert Cunningham that ‘he sold a suit of clothes
of English cloth to Daniel Lockhart; item, a suit to Boghall; item, a
suit to Lord Forfar; item, a suit to William Lockhart; which clothes
was made by William Cowan, tailor.’ He had likewise ‘sold ane coat of
... ells to the Laird of Blackadder, made by Hugh Galloway, tailor;
to the Marquis of Athole, a suit, made by Lachlan M‘Pherson, tailor;
item to Mr Thomas Chalmers, two ells and a half English cloth; item to
the Bishop of the Isles, two ells and a half English cloth ... item, a
suit to the Marquis of Montrose.’ It was alleged that he had imported
and sold in all ‘five hundred ells of prohibite cloth, ane thousand
ells of prohibite stuffs and serges, and two hundred pair of English
worsted and silk stockings less or more.’ James Weir, Andrew Irving,
William Fullerton, and Thomas Smith had all committed delinquencies of
the same kind, the enumeration of which would only tire the reader;
and all this notwithstanding they had been kindly invited by the
Newmills Company to join their concern. What made the matter the more
insufferable, a complaint made against them in August last had been
graciously superseded in their behalf by royal proclamation; and they,
as if to shew ‘their incorrigibleness and obstinacy,’ ‘slighting that
so great mark of clemency,’ imported more during the few months since
elapsed than they did for two whole years before, ‘in open contempt of
his majesty’s laws, _to the destruction of trade and commerce within
the kingdom_, to the cheating, abusing, and oppressing of his majesty’s
lieges, and manifest endangering of the said manufactory and ruining of
the persons therein concerned.’
The offenders, having been oft called before the Privy Council, and
having failed to appear, were held as confessing their guilt, and
accordingly decerned to deliver up the prohibited cloths and stockings
to be burned, and at the same time to recompense his majesty’s
cashkeeper for them ‘at twelve shillings sterling for the ell of cloth,
two shillings sterling for the ell of stuff, and five pound sterling
for ilk dozen of prohibite stockings.’--_P. C. R._
While these strenuous measures were taken for preventing the free
importation of English woollen cloth into Scotland, a petition came
(December 2, 1684) from persons interested in the linen manufacture of
Scotland, complaining of the usage which had lately been experienced
by Scotsmen selling their linens in England. Hitherto there had been
a free trade for Scotch linen-weavers in the south; and, as ten or
twelve thousand persons were employed in such weaving, the results
were important not merely to the workers, but to landlords, for the
payment of their rents, and to the government, as each of a thousand or
twelve hundred packs exported to England paid a custom of three pounds
sterling. Latterly, however, the men selling Scotch linen in England
had been taken up and whipped as malefactors, and many obliged to give
bonds that they would discontinue their traffic.
The Council recommended the secretary of state to interpose with his
majesty, that merchants and others might have liberty to sell linen in
England as formerly; never once adverting to the fact that they had
an act of parliament conceived in the same illiberal spirit towards
English woollen manufactures.
[Sidenote: 1681.]
Such were the early struggles of an important branch of industry in
Scotland. It was not, after all, to be in this age that good woollen
cloth was to be produced in our northern clime. A writer in 1697
says: ‘We have tried to make several things, and particularly hats and
broadcloth, and yet _we cannot make our ware so good as what we can
have from abroad_.’ He adds, however, as a ground of hope: ‘Those who
would propagate any new manufacture must lay their account to labour
under several disadvantages at first. When soap-manufactures were first
set up in this kingdom, the soap was not so good as what we had from
abroad by far. These at Glasgow gave it over, as a thing they could
not accomplish; these at Leith continued to work, and now they have
acquired so much knowledge in that art, that their soap is better than
that we have brought from abroad.’[284]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAR. 2.]
Three men, named Gogar, Miller, and Sangster, were hanged in the
Grassmarket ‘for disowning the king’s authority, and adhering to
Cargill’s covenant, declaration, and excommunication, and thinking
it lawful to kill the king and his judges.’--_Foun._ It is to make
the rulers of that day somewhat worse than they were, to suppose
that they ordered these horrible executions in a purely unfeeling
manner, and without any hesitation. It is stated by Fountainhall, a
Whig, that the Duke of York sent the Earl of Roscommon to see these
men on the scaffold, and try to bring them to such a point as would
have allowed of their lives being spared. Had they but pronounced the
words, ‘God save the king,’ they would not have been executed. But
they refused life on such terms--the more surprising, as there was no
want of Scripture texts to warrant them in praying for the reigning
sovereign, even supposing him a monster of wickedness. ‘Daniel,’
remarks Fountainhall, ‘wishes Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, heathen kings,
to live for ever.’ It would be curious to know what the accomplished
Roscommon felt regarding these singular examples of Scottish religious
pertinacity.
[Sidenote: 1681.]
On the other hand, it is surprising that when the Duke of York went
so far as to offer the poor men their lives on what appear such
easy terms, he did not go a little further and see the absurdity of
treating such tempers as treasonable. ‘It would have been better,’
says Fountainhall, ‘to have kept them in bonds as madmen, or to have
employed physicians to use their skill upon them as on hypochondriac
persons.’ One would have thought that the manifest and acknowledged
maniacal condition of the Borrowstounness saints might have suggested
the true theory as to the obduracy of such men as Gogar, Miller, and
Sangster.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAR. 11.]
A process stood at law between Alexander Robertson, laird of Struan,
and the Marquis of Athole, arising from a service of Struan as heir to
an ancestor who lived two hundred and fifty years before; and amongst
the points debated was an alleged superiority of the marquis over
some lands held by Struan. These were both Highland chiefs of some
importance, but, dwelling near the Lowland Border, might be considered
as of those who were most likely to exhibit a tinge of Lowland habits.
The marquis was indeed a political character of some figure, holding
the office of Lord Privy Seal and a place in the Council.
The Highland laird of those days was acquainted with law, and had often
enough occasion to resort to it; but there was an element in his nature
which placed him more or less above law. Law-giver and law-executor in
his own territory and over his own people, almost without control, it
was difficult for him to accommodate himself to the idea of submitting
to the formal, pedantic rules and awards of the Session or the Council.
So much being premised, we must figure to ourselves the doughty Struan
walking about in the Council-chamber on the day noted in the margin,
not bearing his ordinary arms, pistol and durk, externally--for that
was forbidden--but carrying them in his bosom under his clothes, and
no doubt very wrathful at the arrogance of his proud neighbour, the
marquis, in claiming any superiority over him.
His business being under consideration, he told the clerk that he was
no vassal of the Marquis of Athole. One John Fleming, ‘servitor’ to
the marquis--a kind of gentleman dependant--quietly contradicted him,
saying that not only did his sasine of the lands of Tulloch clearly
shew him as a vassal of the marquis, but there was a mutual contract
between him and the marquis, obliging him to hold these lands in that
manner, and on this a decreet had been obtained from the Court of
Session. The blood of the chief of the Clan Donochy could not brook
such an opposition. He broke out upon Fleming with passionate violence,
calling him rascal, knave, and villain. He would see the Marquis of
Athole hanged before he would be his vassal. And as for the Court of
Session, he cared not a snuff for its decreet. Then thrusting his hand
under the breast of his upper coat, ‘where his durk and pistol are
secretly keeped,’ he said he knew not what held his hand from writing
his case on Fleming’s skin.
[Sidenote: 1681.]
This conduct was of course sure to turn to the injury of Struan
himself. In a very few days, Fleming had him up by petition before the
Privy Council, who, finding the charge proved, sentenced Struan to
imprisonment during pleasure in the Tolbooth, to crave pardon first
of the Council, and then of the Marquis of Athole, ‘on his knees,’
and to give Fleming security for the expenses (limited to £100 Scots)
incurred by the action and by the interruption it had given him in his
business.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: APR. 8.]
A case before the Privy Council reveals the treatment of the insane
in this age. It was a complaint from Mr Alexander Burton against his
brother John for putting him into Hopkirk the surgeon’s hands as a
madman. It was alleged, on John Burton’s part, that Alexander was
really melancholic and furious; so required restraint: also that he was
misusing and dilapidating his fortune; hence a bill had been applied
for to put his affairs under curators. Alexander answered that ‘he had
only craved his annual rents, and to refuse him his own, and treat him
as a fool, would raise pepper and passion in any man’s nose, and then
they termed the acts fury.’ To settle the matter, the Duke of York, who
was present, desired that the alleged fool might be permitted to speak;
whereupon he delivered himself so extravagantly, that the Council found
it only right that he should be put under restraint, and his affairs
placed in charge of his brother. Fountainhall adds: ‘In Scotland, we,
having no Bedlam, commit the better sort of mad people to the care and
taming of chirurgeons, and the inferior to the scourge [or] the poor.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAY 5.]
[Sidenote: 1681.]
M‘Gill of Rankeillour gave in a petition to the Privy Council, craving
permission for his son, Sir James M‘Gill, to come to see him, as he was
about to depart from this life. The son had about eight years before
been so unfortunate as to kill Sir Robert Balfour of Denmill, and the
king had granted him a remission, on the condition that, in order to
prevent further bloodshed, _he should never again be seen in Fife_. The
father, being eighty years of age, anxious to take farewell of his son,
begged the Council to relax this condition for a few days. The Council
doubted if they had power to grant the petition; but the Duke of York
‘affirming that he believed the king would not refuse this desire of
an old dying gentleman, they granted it in thir terms, that he should
go with a guard like a prisoner, and stay but twenty-four hours, and
then depart out of Fife, where the friends of him that was killed
live.’--_Foun._
Sir Robert Balfour was the only surviving son and successor of Sir
James Balfour of Denmill, the well-known antiquary. He fell in a
duel with Sir James M‘Gill, at a spot closely adjacent to the M‘Duff
Cross in the parish of Newburgh in Fife. A cairn of stones raised in
commemoration of the sad event, and called _Sir Robert’s Prap_, was in
existence a few years ago. This unfortunate gentleman must have fallen
in the very morning of life, as he was born in 1652.
[Sidenote: DEC. 8.]
[Sidenote: 1681.]
Encouraged by the liberality of the Council, Sir James M‘Gill
petitioned them anew in December for a removal of all restriction
upon his remission, alleging that it was required on account of the
decayed and infirm condition of his parents (he being their only
son), and the ruin into which his affairs had fallen in consequence
of his long exile. Against this petition, however, the friends of Sir
Robert Balfour gave in answers, shewing how green such a family wound
could then be kept for eight years. They urged that the slaughter
of their kinsman, so far from being done as alleged by Sir James in
self-defence, was in forethought felony, and it was only owing to
an undeserved clemency on his majesty’s part that he had not been
brought to condign punishment. The pretexts regarding his parents and
estate were frivolous, when the nature of his offence was considered.
‘Though it is insinuate that the said Sir James desires only to live
in the parish of Monimail, and not in the parish of Ebdie, where Sir
Robert’s nearest relations are, this is a very silly pretence, for
this is the very next parish, and Sir Robert’s nearest relations have
their interests in this parish itself, and it may be easily considered
that, if this be allowed, Sir Robert’s friends will be punished for
Sir James’s crime, since they must, to shun his company, neither go to
meetings of the shire, baptisms, nor marriages, burials or churches,
nay, nor to see their friends nor neighbours, lest they should _fall
in inconveniences with him_, which was the ground upon which the
restriction was granted at first.’ To prove how unworthy Sir James
was even of the favour extended to him in May last, it was set forth
that on that occasion ‘he must ride insolently by the very gate of the
gentleman whom he had murdered, with a great train of his friends, and
in passing the road they did also very insolently boast and upbraid
the poor people with whom they met.’ If this, it was added, ‘was done
in the very first time, what may be expected when his confidence is
increased by renewed favours, and when Denmill’s friends see that the
only satisfaction they got (which was not to see him at all) is taken
from them.’
The pleading of Denmill’s friends was too reasonable to be resisted,
and M‘Gill’s petition was refused.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE 2.]
On a complaint from the master of the High School of Edinburgh to the
Privy Council, two or three private teachers were imprisoned till they
should give caution, not to teach Latin without a licence from the
bishop, and even then to carry the boys no further than ‘the rudiments
and vocables;’ after which it was thought they might be of sufficient
strength to go to the High School. What disposed the Council to support
the complaint was that there were several private teachers now in
Edinburgh, who were ‘outed ministers,’ and accordingly were suspected
of poisoning their pupils with disloyal principles.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE 24.]
From March up to this date, there was a cold drought, which at length
inspired so much dread of famine and consequent pestilence, that a fast
was proclaimed throughout the kingdom ‘for deprecating God’s wrath and
obtaining rain.’ The evil was generally regarded as an effect of the
great comet of the past winter; ‘and certainly,’ says Fountainhall, ‘it
may drain the moisture from the earth, and influence the weather; but
there is a higher hand of Providence above all these signs, pointing
out to us our luxury, abuse of plenty, and other crying sins.’ He adds:
‘God thought fit to prevent our applications and addresses, and on the
24th of June and following days, sent plentiful showers.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JULY 20.]
[Sidenote: 1681.]
Died this evening in his lodgings in Holyrood Palace, the Duke of
Rothes, Chancellor of the kingdom, an able and magnificent man, who,
by his licentious life, was believed to have set a bad example to the
Scottish nobility of his day. The cumbrous grandeur of his funeral
excited much attention. The body was carried from St Giles’s Church
to Holyrood Chapel, amidst a procession of soldiery, state officials,
personal retinue, noblemen and gentlemen mourners, and heraldic
personages, which fills six quarto pages in Arnot’s _History of
Edininburgh_. It was next day conducted in a hearse to Leith, thence
conveyed across the Forth to Burntisland, and ‘the next day after, it
was met by the gentlemen of Fife, of which his grace was high-sheriff,
and by them accompanied to the family burying-place at Leslie, being
laid in the grave with sound of trumpets, and the honours placed above
the grave.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP. 1.]
Leather stamped and gilded--believed to be originally a Spanish
fashion--was a favourite cover for the walls of rooms in the better
class of houses in Scotland as well as in England. Some examples of the
style still survive, and speak so strongly in its favour, that we might
justly wonder at its going out of fashion. Hitherto such ornamental
leather was introduced from abroad; but now Alexander Brand, merchant
in Edinburgh, by a considerable outlay, had brought workmen and
materials into the kingdom, and for the first time was about to set up
a work, in which he expected to produce the article ‘at as easy rates
as it could be imported.’ On a favourable report from ‘the Committee
of Trade,’ the Privy Council gave Brand a privilege of exclusive
manufacture for nineteen years.--_P. C. R._
Thomas Kennedy and John Trotter, merchants, were at the same time
proposing to set up a manufacture of linen and woollen cloth stuffs
and stockings in the place called Paul’s Work in Edinburgh, where, so
long ago as 1609, there had been an attempt at a woollen work. And as
an encouragement, the Council ordained them to have all the privileges
offered to manufactories in Scotland by the twelfth act of the present
parliament regarding manufactures.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: OCT. 1.]
The ‘whole settled revenue’ of the king in Scotland was this day leased
to Bailie Baird, Charles Murray, and Robert Milne, for seven years, at
£90,000 per annum, they advancing £16,000 to pay the army. It appears
that the pensions then paid out of the Scottish exchequer amounted
to £25,000 a year. It is a curious consideration that at present
the _Times_ newspaper pays considerably more revenue than the whole
taxation of Scotland in the latter part of the seventeenth century.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: OCT. 1.]
[Sidenote: 1681.