Colonel Gage, commander of a regiment in the service of the King of
Spain, proposed to the Duke of York to take a few of the _phanatiques_
now in custody into his regiment, and so relieve the authorities of all
further charge of them. The duke caused six, named Forman, Garnock,
Lapsley, Stewart, Fairie, and Russell, ‘most of them young fellows,’
to be brought before the Council, with the design of sentencing them
to be delivered to Colonel Gage. The men, however, ‘did so misbehave,
in declining the king, duke, and Council, and speaking such notorious
treason,’ that it was thought necessary to send them instead to the
criminal court. There it was only too easy to prove the treasonable
nature of their language. Forman had a knife, with a posy, ‘This is to
cut the throat of tyrants.’ It appeared that Garnock had at the Council
so railed at General Dalyell, calling him ‘a Muscovy beast who used
to roast men,’ that the old soldier struck him with the pommel of his
sword on the face till the blood sprung. One alone obtained mercy; the
other five were doomed to death, Forman having the special sentence
to lose his hand before hanging, on account of his knife. These men
all died ‘obdurately,’ as their enemies called it, ‘heroically,’
according to their friends, ‘reviling and condemning their judges and
all who differed from them,’ says Fountainhall. Patrick Walker adds
some curious particulars. ‘The never-to-be forgotten Mr James Renwick
told me that he was witness to this public murder at the Gallow-lee,
betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, where he saw the hangman hash and hag off
their five heads, with Patrick Forman’s right hand. Their bodies were
all buried at the gallow’s foot; their heads, with Patrick’s hand, were
brought and put on five pikes on the Pleasance Port.... Mr Renwick told
me also, that it was the first public action that his hand was at, to
convene friends and lift their murdered bodies, and carry them to the
West Churchyard, and bury them there. Then they came about the city
to the Nether-Bow Port, with a design to retake the heads, hands, and
other parts of our martyrs down; but a woman, holding over a candle
to let some people see the street, marred them. Then they took down
these five heads and that hand, and the day being come, they went
quickly up the Pleasance, and when they came to Lauriston yards, upon
the south side of the city, they durst not venture, being so light,
to go and bury their heads with their bodies, which they designed, it
being present death if any of them had been found. Alexander Tweedie, a
friend, being with them, who at that time was gardener in these yards,
concluded to bury them in his yard, being in a box (wrapped in linen),
where they lay forty-five years....’ These relics were exhumed in 1726,
with all manifestations of rejoicing.
[Sidenote: 1681.]
The day after the five men had suffered at the Gallow-lee, the duke had
other four called before the Council, with a view to their being sent
away with Colonel Gage. ‘When they were brought in, they began in the
very same strain with their neighbours who were hanged the day before;
but the duke caused hastily remove them, that they might not also hang
themselves with their own tongue.’--_Foun._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: NOV. 15.]
Amongst the gaieties of this day at Holyroodhouse, in celebration of
the queen’s birthday, was ‘the acting a comedy called _Mithridates,
King of Pontus_, wherein Lady Anne, the duke’s daughter, and the
ladies of honour, were the only actors.’ Fountainhall, who states
this occurrence, only adds the remark: ‘Not only the canonists, both
Protestant and Popish, but the very heathen Roman lawyers, declared
all scenic and stage players infamous, and will scarce admit them to
the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.’ On this occasion, there was a
prologue by the Earl of Roscommon, addressed specially to the duke, and
conceived in a strain of extravagant flattery ludicrously in contrast
with the feelings of a large body of the people:
‘When wealthy neighbours strove with us for power,
Let the sea tell how, in their fatal hour,
Swift as an eagle our victorious prince,
Great Britain’s genius, flew to her defence.
His name struck fear, his conduct won the day....
O happy islands, if you knew your bliss!
Strong by the sea’s protection, safe by his!
Express your gratitude the only way,
And humbly own a debt too vast to pay,’ &c.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: NOV. 24.]
[Sidenote: 1681.]
The test being a puzzle and a bewilderment to some of the sagest
statesmen of the day, it is not surprising that it should have somewhat
confounded the magistrates of a simple Scotch burgh. At this date,
there was a petition to the Privy Council from William Plenderleith,
provost; John Hope, bailie; and John Givan, treasurer of Peebles, in
name of the council of that burgh, setting forth that, ‘being desired
to take the test, they were always willing;’ yet, ‘the town being very
inconsiderable, and _the petitioners very illiterate and ignorant_,
and living in a remote place where they could get no person to inform
them of the difference betwixt the act of parliament and the act of
Council, and not having the act of parliament in all the country, _nor
yet the confession of faith_, to which it related, the petitioners
humbly desired a time to advise as concerning the test.’ At their late
election, they had contented themselves with taking the Declaration,
‘thinking that the first of January was sufficient to take the test.’
But now, understanding what was required of them, they protested their
eager willingness to take the test, ‘having always been very loyal,’ as
they had shewn by their conduct on the occasion of the Bothwell Bridge
rebellion, for which they had received the thanks of the Council. The
Lords seem to have looked leniently on the omission of this innocent
little municipality, and now accepted their signatures in good part.
The magistrates of Peebles were, not long after, involved in a trouble
of a different complexion, in consequence of an unpopular movement
for the letting of a piece of commonty near the walls of the town,
which they had found to be ‘a pretext for incomers to the said burgh,
and the poor people, to eat up their neighbours’ corns.’ While they
were engaged in their Tolbooth or court-house (March 1, 1682) in
the administration of justice, a mob of irate burgesses, of whom
thirty-seven are named, came to express their disapprobation of a late
act of Council on that subject, and, if possible, frighten them from
proceeding with it; ‘menacing the provost that if he did so, he should
be sticked as Provost Dickison was.’[285] The magistrates put two of
their assailants in jail; but these were soon liberated by force. Then
the magistrates got the two burgesses and five of their liberators
clapped up in prison; but, behold, next day, taking a leaf out of the
history of the troubles of 1637, a mob of women assembled--namely,
Marion Bennett, Marion Grieve, Margaret Wilson, Isobel Wilson, Isobel
Robertson, Janet Ewmond, Isobel Ewmond, and Helen Steel--the names
of such heroines are worth preserving--and ‘did in a tumultuous and
irregular way take out of prison the persons of William Porteous,
Andrew Halden [the original prisoners], Thomas Stoddart, Alexander
Jonkieson, John Tweedie, Thomas King, James Waldie, and William
Leggat, and went to the Cross of Peebles with them, and there drank
their good healths as protectors of the liberties of the poor, and the
confusion of the said magistrates and council, and took up with them
stones to stone to death such as should oppose them; and thereafter,
they being about three hundred persons, divided themselves in several
companies, and every company convoyed home a prisoner, and drank their
good health, to the great astonishment of all honest and well-meaning
people.’
[Sidenote: 1681.]
This affair being brought as a gross riot before the Privy Council,
five of the men liberated, including the two who had first been in
prison, were deprived of their burgess privileges, and committed to
the Tolbooth of Edinburgh during pleasure, while the magistrates were
enjoined to ‘convene before them the haill rest of the inhabitants
that were accessory to the tumult and riot libelled, and to proceed
against them therefor, in fining, imprisonment, or ryving their
burgess-tickets, as they shall find cause.’
On the same day in which this case was judged, a petition was
presented from the five ex-burgesses, representing themselves as ‘poor
and ignorant persons,’ who had not meant any harm--as most of them
valetudinary and unable to bear confinement in jail--and, moreover,
as required to be now engaged in the labours of the season; wherefore
their liberation was craved. This was soon after acceded to, on their
giving security to reappear if called upon, and that they would go and
confess their fault, and crave pardon of the Peebles magistrates.--_P.
C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC. 22.]
As an example of the benevolence of the Privy Council of this time,
in cases where the reigning political prepossessions were not
offended--we find, on the very same day with some strong proceedings
against Presbyterian recusants, a representation from John Riddell,
merchant in Edinburgh, setting forth some recent heavy losses of
merchandise at sea, and certain obligations he was under in the way of
cautionry, whereby he had been reduced for eleven months past to the
sad condition of a prisoner in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, with ‘nothing
left to maintain himself and three motherless children, unless that
that the charitable supply of tender-hearted Christians doth support
and help him.’ Though he had no claim on public benevolence beyond
some sufferings long ago for the king at and before Worcester, the
Council gave warrant to the Archbishop of St Andrews and the Bishop of
Edinburgh for a voluntary contribution on Riddell’s behalf throughout
these two dioceses, enjoining them to cause the ministers to ‘make due
and lawful intimation thereof.’--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC.]
[Sidenote: 1681.]
Poor as Scotland was universally reputed to be, foreign adventurers
in search of fortune would occasionally resort to it. Peter Bruce
or de Bruis was one of these--a native of Flanders, and a Catholic.
We have already (February 1680) seen him asking public favour for a
water-pumping engine and an iron-cutting mill which he had invented. We
hear of him in Fountainhall, about that time, as building a harbour
at Cockenzie for the Earl of Winton, and having a long litigation
about the payment. He seems to have been an active spirit. In December
1681, he succeeded in obtaining from the Privy Council a patent for
the exclusive manufacture and sale of playing-cards, under the usual
pretence that money would thus be retained within the country. Within a
very few months, he had erected a work near Leith for this manufacture,
and brought home from Holland and Flanders ‘expert masters’ for making
the cards, and ‘carvers for making the patterns,’ all of whom he took
bound to instruct native workmen. In a very short time, we find him at
war with two merchants who were accustomed to import playing-cards,
and not disposed to brook his monopoly. Perhaps Peter was too vehement
in his proceedings for the Scotch people among whom he cast his lot;
perhaps they were unduly jealous of this keen-witted stranger. How it
came we cannot tell; but before the work had been long erected, the
tacksman of Canonmills set upon it and did somewhat to demolish it,
and, horrid to relate, threw Madame de Bruis into the dam, besides
using opprobrious words; for which he was fined in £50, and imprisoned.
Not long after, Peter gained a triumph over the two importers of cards,
for they were ordered by the Council to compound with him at so much a
pack before they could be allowed to sell them.[286]
[Sidenote: 1682.