Next, the Justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances--
And so he plays his part
--As You Like It
When Mrs. Bertram of Ellangowan was able to hear the news of what had
passed during her confinement, her apartment rung with all manner of
gossiping respecting the handsome young student from Oxford who had
told such a fortune by the stars to the young Laird, 'blessings on his
dainty face.' The form, accent, and manners of the stranger were
expatiated upon. His horse, bridle, saddle, and stirrups did not remain
unnoticed. All this made a great impression upon the mind of Mrs.
Bertram, for the good lady had no small store of superstition.
Her first employment, when she became capable of a little work, was to
make a small velvet bag for the scheme of nativity which she had
obtained from her husband. Her fingers itched to break the seal, but
credulity proved stronger than curiosity; and she had the firmness to
inclose it, in all its integrity, within two slips of parchment, which
she sewed round it to prevent its being chafed. The whole was then put
into the velvet bag aforesaid, and hung as a charm round the neck of
the infant, where his mother resolved it should remain until the period
for the legitimate satisfaction of her curiosity should arrive.
The father also resolved to do his part by the child in securing him a
good education; and, with the view that it should commence with the
first dawnings of reason, Dominie Sampson was easily induced to
renounce his public profession of parish schoolmaster, make his
constant residence at the Place, and, in consideration of a sum not
quite equal to the wages of a footman even at that time, to undertake
to communicate to the future Laird of Ellangowan all the erudition
which he had, and all the graces and accomplishments which--he had not
indeed, but which he had never discovered that he wanted. In this
arrangement the Laird found also his private advantage, securing the
constant benefit of a patient auditor, to whom he told his stories when
they were alone, and at whose expense he could break a sly jest when he
had company.
About four years after this time a great commotion took place in the
county where Ellangowan is situated.
Those who watched the signs of the times had long been of opinion that
a change of ministry was about to take place; and at length, after a
due proportion of hopes, fears, and delays, rumours from good authority
and bad authority, and no authority at all; after some clubs had drank
Up with this statesman and others Down with him; after riding, and
running, and posting, and addressing, and counter-addressing, and
proffers of lives and fortunes, the blow was at length struck, the
administration of the day was dissolved, and parliament, as a natural
consequence, was dissolved also.
Sir Thomas Kittlecourt, like other members in the same situation,
posted down to his county, and met but an indifferent reception. He was
a partizan of the old administration; and the friends of the new had
already set about an active canvass in behalf of John Featherhead,
Esq., who kept the best hounds and hunters in the shire. Among others
who joined the standard of revolt was Gilbert Glossin, writer in--,
agent for the Laird of Ellangowan. This honest gentleman had either
been refused some favour by the old member, or, what is as probable, he
had got all that he had the most distant pretension to ask, and could
only look to the other side for fresh advancement. Mr. Glossin had a
vote upon Ellangowan's property; and he was now determined that his
patron should have one also, there being no doubt which side Mr.
Bertram would embrace in the contest. He easily persuaded Ellangowan
that it would be creditable to him to take the field at the head of as
strong a party as possible; and immediately went to work, making votes,
as every Scotch lawyer knows how, by splitting and subdividing the
superiorities upon this ancient and once powerful barony. These were so
extensive that, by dint of clipping and paring here, adding and eking
there, and creating over-lords upon all the estate which Bertram held
of the crown, they advanced at the day of contest at the head of ten as
good men of parchment as ever took the oath of trust and possession.
This strong reinforcement turned the dubious day of battle. The
principal and his agent divided the honour; the reward fell to the
latter exclusively. Mr. Gilbert Glossin was made clerk of the peace,
and Godfrey Bertram had his name inserted in a new commission of
justices, issued immediately upon the sitting of the parliament.
This had been the summit of Mr. Bertram's ambition; not that he liked
either the trouble or the responsibility of the office, but he thought
it was a dignity to which he was well entitled, and that it had been
withheld from him by malice prepense. But there is an old and true
Scotch proverb, 'Fools should not have chapping sticks'; that is,
weapons of offence. Mr. Bertram was no sooner possessed of the judicial
authority which he had so much longed for than he began to exercise it
with more severity than mercy, and totally belied all the opinions
which had hitherto been formed of his inert good-nature. We have read
somewhere of a justice of peace who, on being nominated in the
commission, wrote a letter to a bookseller for the statutes respecting
his official duty in the following orthography--'Please send the ax
relating to a gustus pease.' No doubt, when this learned gentleman had
possessed himself of the axe, he hewed the laws with it to some
purpose. Mr. Bertram was not quite so ignorant of English grammar as
his worshipful predecessor; but Augustus Pease himself could not have
used more indiscriminately the weapon unwarily put into his hand.
In good earnest, he considered the commission with which he had been
entrusted as a personal mark of favour from his sovereign; forgetting
that he had formerly thought his being deprived of a privilege, or
honour, common to those of his rank was the result of mere party cabal.
He commanded his trusty aid-de-camp, Dominie Sampson, to read aloud the
commission; and at the first words, 'The King has been pleased to
appoint'--'Pleased!' he exclaimed in a transport of gratitude; 'honest
gentleman! I'm sure he cannot be better pleased than I am.'
Accordingly, unwilling to confine his gratitude to mere feelings or
verbal expressions, he gave full current to the new-born zeal of
office, and endeavoured to express his sense of the honour conferred
upon him by an unmitigated activity in the discharge of his duty. New
brooms, it is said, sweep clean; and I myself can bear witness that, on
the arrival of a new housemaid, the ancient, hereditary, and domestic
spiders who have spun their webs over the lower division of my
bookshelves (consisting chiefly of law and divinity) during the
peaceful reign of her predecessor, fly at full speed before the
probationary inroads of the new mercenary. Even so the Laird of
Ellangowan ruthlessly commenced his magisterial reform, at the expense
of various established and superannuated pickers and stealers who had
been his neighbours for half a century. He wrought his miracles like a
second Duke Humphrey; and by the influence of the beadle's rod caused
the lame to walk, the blind to see, and the palsied to labour. He
detected poachers, black-fishers, orchard-breakers, and
pigeon-shooters; had the applause of the bench for his reward, and the
public credit of an active magistrate.
All this good had its rateable proportion of evil. Even an admitted
nuisance of ancient standing should not be abated without some caution.
The zeal of our worthy friend now involved in great distress sundry
personages whose idle and mendicant habits his own lachesse had
contributed to foster, until these habits had become irreclaimable, or
whose real incapacity for exertion rendered them fit objects, in their
own phrase, for the charity of all well-disposed Christians. The
'long-remembered beggar,' who for twenty years had made his regular
rounds within the neighbourhood, received rather as an humble friend
than as an object of charity, was sent to the neighbouring workhouse.
The decrepit dame, who travelled round the parish upon a hand-barrow,
circulating from house to house like a bad shilling, which every one is
in haste to pass to his neighbour,--she, who used to call for her
bearers as loud, or louder, than a traveller demands post-horses,--even
she shared the same disastrous fate. The 'daft Jock,' who, half knave,
half idiot, had been the sport of each succeeding race of village
children for a good part of a century, was remitted to the county
bridewell, where, secluded from free air and sunshine, the only
advantages he was capable of enjoying, he pined and died in the course
of six months. The old sailor, who had so long rejoiced the smoky
rafters of every kitchen in the country by singing 'Captain Ward' and
'Bold Admiral Benbow,' was banished from the county for no better
reason than that he was supposed to speak with a strong Irish accent.
Even the annual rounds of the pedlar were abolished by the Justice, in
his hasty zeal for the administration of rural police.
These things did not pass without notice and censure. We are not made
of wood or stone, and the things which connect themselves with our
hearts and habits cannot, like bark or lichen, be rent away without our
missing them. The farmer's dame lacked her usual share of intelligence,
perhaps also the self-applause which she had felt while distributing
the awmous (alms), in shape of a gowpen (handful) of oatmeal, to the
mendicant who brought the news. The cottage felt inconvenience from
interruption of the petty trade carried on by the itinerant dealers.
The children lacked their supply of sugarplums and toys; the young
women wanted pins, ribbons, combs, and ballads; and the old could no
longer barter their eggs for salt, snuff, and tobacco. All these
circumstances brought the busy Laird of Ellangowan into discredit,
which was the more general on account of his former popularity. Even
his lineage was brought up in judgment against him. They thought
'naething of what the like of Greenside, or Burnville, or Viewforth
might do, that were strangers in the country; but Ellangowan! that had
been a name amang them since the Mirk Monanday, and lang before--HIM to
be grinding the puir at that rate! They ca'd his grandfather the Wicked
Laird; but, though he was whiles fractious aneuch, when he got into
roving company and had ta'en the drap drink, he would have scorned to
gang on at this gate. Na, na, the muckle chumlay in the Auld Place
reeked like a killogie in his time, and there were as mony puir folk
riving at the banes in the court, and about the door, as there were
gentles in the ha'. And the leddy, on ilka Christmas night as it came
round, gae twelve siller pennies to ilka puir body about, in honour of
the twelve apostles like. They were fond to ca' it papistrie; but I
think our great folk might take a lesson frae the papists whiles. They
gie another sort o' help to puir folk than just dinging down a saxpence
in the brod on the Sabbath, and kilting, and scourging, and drumming
them a' the sax days o' the week besides.'
Such was the gossip over the good twopenny in every ale-house within
three or four miles of Ellangowan, that being about the diameter of the
orbit in which our friend Godfrey Bertram, Esq., J. P., must be
considered as the principal luminary. Still greater scope was given to
evil tongues by the removal of a colony of gipsies, with one of whom
our reader is somewhat acquainted, and who had for a great many years
enjoyed their chief settlement upon the estate of Ellangowan.