YEAR 1781
IF the two last years passed o’er the heads of me and my people without
any manifest dolour, which is a great thing to say for so long a period
in this world, we had our own trials and tribulations in the one of which
I have now to make mention. Mungo Argyle, the exciseman, waxing rich,
grew proud and petulant, and would have ruled the country side with a rod
of iron. Nothing less would serve him than a fine horse to ride on, and
a world of other conveniences and luxuries, as if he had been on an
equality with gentlemen. And he bought a grand gun, which was called a
fowling-piece; and he had two pointer dogs, the like of which had not
been seen in the parish since the planting of the Eaglesham-wood on the
moorland, which was four years before I got the call. Every body said
the man was fey; and truly, when I remarked him so gallant and gay on the
Sabbath at the kirk, and noted his glowing face and gleg een, I thought
at times there was something no canny about him. It was indeed clear to
be seen, that the man was hurried out of himself; but nobody could have
thought that the death he was to dree would have been what it was.
About the end of summer my Lord Eaglesham came to the castle, bringing
with him an English madam, that was his Miss. Some days after he came
down from London, as he was riding past the manse, his lordship stopped
to enquire for my health, and I went to the door to speak to him. I
thought that he did not meet me with that blithe countenance he was wont,
and in going away, he said with a blush, “I fear I dare not ask you to
come to the castle.” I had heard of his concubine, and I said, “In
saying so, my lord, you show a spark of grace; for it would not become me
to see what I have heard; and I am surprised, my lord, you will not
rather take a lady of your own.” He looked kindly, but confused, saying,
he did not know where to get one; so seeing his shame, and not wishing to
put him out of conceit entirely with himself, I replied, “Na, na, my
lord, there’s nobody will believe that, for there never was a silly Jock,
but there was as silly a Jenny,” at which he laughed heartily, and rode
away. But I know not what was in’t; I was troubled in mind about him,
and thought, as he was riding away, that I would never see him again; and
sure enough it so happened; for the next day, being airing in his coach
with Miss Spangle, the lady he had brought, he happened to see Mungo
Argyle with his dogs and his gun, and my lord being as particular about
his game as the other was about boxes of tea and kegs of brandy, he
jumped out of the carriage, and ran to take the gun. Words passed, and
the exciseman shot my lord. Never shall I forget that day; such riding,
such running, the whole country side afoot; but the same night my lord
breathed his last; and the mad and wild reprobate that did the deed was
taken up and sent off to Edinburgh. This was a woeful riddance of that
oppressor, for my lord was a good landlord and a kind-hearted man; and
albeit, though a little thoughtless, was aye ready to make his power,
when the way was pointed out, minister to good works. The whole parish
mourned for him, and there was not a sorer heart in all its bounds than
my own. Never was such a sight seen as his burial: the whole country
side was there, and all as solemn as if they had been assembled in the
valley of Jehoshaphat in the latter day. The hedges where the funeral
was to pass were clad with weans, like bunches of hips and haws, and the
kirkyard was as if all its own dead were risen. Never, do I think, was
such a multitude gathered together. Some thought there could not be less
than three thousand grown men, besides women and children.
Scarcely was this great public calamity past, for it could be reckoned no
less, when one Saturday afternoon, as Miss Sabrina, the schoolmistress,
was dining with Lady Macadam, her ladyship was stricken with the
paralytics, and her face so thrown in the course of a few minutes, that
Miss Sabrina came flying to the manse for the help and advice of Mrs.
Balwhidder. A doctor was gotten with all speed by express; but her
ladyship was smitten beyond the reach of medicine. She lived, however,
some time after; but oh! she was such an object, that it was a grief to
see her. She could only mutter when she tried to speak, and was as
helpless as a baby. Though she never liked me, nor could I say there was
many things in her demeanour that pleased me; yet she was a free-handed
woman to the needful, and when she died she was more missed than it was
thought she could have been.
Shortly after her funeral, which was managed by a gentleman sent from her
friends in Edinburgh, that I wrote to about her condition, the Major, her
son, with his lady, Kate Malcolm, and two pretty bairns, came and stayed
in her house for a time, and they were a great happiness to us all, both
in the way of drinking tea, and sometimes taking a bit of dinner, their
only mother now, the worthy and pious Mrs. Malcolm, being regularly of
the company.
Before the end of the year, I should mention, that the fortune of Mrs.
Malcolm’s family got another shove upwards, by the promotion of her
second son, Robert Malcolm, who, being grown an expert and careful
mariner, was made captain of a grand ship, whereof Provost Maitland of
Glasgow, that was kind to his mother in her distresses, was the owner.
But that douce lad Willie, her youngest son, who was at the university of
Glasgow under the Lord Eaglesham’s patronage, was like to have suffered a
blight. However, Major Macadam, when I spoke to him anent the young
man’s loss of his patron, said, with a pleasant generosity, he should not
be stickit; and, accordingly, he made up, as far as money could, for the
loss of his lordship; but there was none that made up for the great power
and influence, which, I have no doubt, the Earl would have exerted in his
behalf, when he was ripened for the church. So that, although in time
William came out a sound and heart-searching preacher, he was long
obliged, like many another unfriended saint, to cultivate sand, and wash
Ethiopians in the shape of an east country gentleman’s camstrairy weans;
than which, as he wrote me himself, there cannot be on earth a greater
trial of temper. However, in the end he was rewarded, and is not only
now a placed minister, but a doctor of divinity.
The death of Lady Macadam was followed by another parochial misfortune;
for, considering the time when it happened, we could count it as nothing
less. Auld Thomas Howkings, the betheral, fell sick, and died in the
course of a week’s illness, about the end of November; and the measles
coming at that time upon the parish, there was such a smashery of the
poor weans as had not been known for an age; insomuch that James Banes,
the lad who was Thomas Howkings’ helper, rose in open rebellion against
the session during his superior’s illness; and we were constrained to
augment his pay, and to promise him the place if Thomas did not recover,
which it was then thought he could not do. On the day this happened,
there were three dead children in the clachan, and a panic and
consternation spread about the burial of them when James Bane’s
insurrection was known, which made both me and the session glad to hush
up the affair, that the heart of the public might have no more than the
sufferings of individuals to hurt it.—Thus ended a year, on many
accounts, heavy to be remembered.