REIGN OF WILLIAM AND MARY: 1689–1694.

Our narrative takes up the political story of Scotland at the crisis of

the Revolution, when, King James having fled in terror to France, his

nephew and daughter, the Prince and Princess of Orange, were proclaimed

king and queen as William and Mary, and when the Episcopacy established

at the Restoration, after a struggling and unhonoured existence of

twenty-eight years, gave way to the present more popular Presbyterian

Church. It has been seen how the populace of the west rabbled out the

alien clergy established among them; how, notwithstanding the gallant

insurrection of my Lord Dundee in the Highlands, and the holding out of

Edinburgh Castle by the Duke of Gordon, the new government quickly

gained an ascendency. It was a great change for Scotland. Men who had

lately been in danger of their lives for conscience’ sake, or starving

in foreign lands, were now at the head of affairs—the Earl of Melville,

Secretary of State; Crawford, President of Parliament; Argyle restored

to title and lands, and a privy-councillor; Dalrymple of Stair, Hume of

Marchmont, Steuart of Goodtrees, and many other exiles, come back from

Holland to resume prominent positions in the public service at

home—while the instruments of the late unhappy government were either

captives under suspicion, or living terror-struck at their

country-houses. Common sort of people, who had last year been skulking

in mosses from Claverhouse’s dragoons, were now marshalled in a

regiment, and planted as a watch on the Perth and Forfar gentry. There

were new figures in the Privy Council, and none of them ecclesiastical.

There was a wholly new set of senators on the bench of the Court of

Session. It looked like the sudden shift of scenes in a pantomime,

rather than a series of ordinary occurrences.

Almost as a necessary consequence of the Revolution, a war with France

commenced in May 1689. Part of the operations took place in Ireland,

where James II., assisted with troops by King Louis, and supported by

the Catholic population, continued to exercise sovereignty till his

defeat at the Boyne (July 1, 1690). The subjugation of Ireland to the

new government was not completed till the surrender of Limerick and

other fortified places by treaty (October 3, 1691). Long before this

time, the Jacobite movement in Scotland had come to a close by the

dispersion of the Highlanders at Cromdale (April 1690). A fortress and

garrison were then planted at Inverlochy (Fort William), in order to

keep the ill-affected clans Cameron, Macdonald, and others, in check. At

the same time, the Earl of Breadalbane was intrusted with the sum of

twelve thousand pounds, with which he undertook to purchase the

pacification of the Highlands. In 1691, there were still some chiefs in

rebellion, and a threat was held out that they would be visited with the

utmost severities if they did not take the oaths to the government

before the 1st of January next. This led to the massacre of the

Macdonalds of Glencoe (February 13, 1692), an affair which has left a

sad shade upon the memory of King William.

In Scotland, it gradually became apparent that, though the late changes

had diffused a general sense of relief, and put state control more in

accordance with the feelings of the bulk of the people, there was a

large enough exception to embarrass and endanger the new order of

things. There certainly was a much larger minority favourable to

Episcopacy than was at first supposed; whole provinces in the north, and

a majority of the upper classes everywhere, continued to adhere to it. A

very large portion of the nobility and gentry maintained an attachment

to the ex-king, or, like the bishops, scrupled to break old oaths in

order to take new. Even amongst those who had assisted in the

Revolution, there were some who, either from disappointment of personal

ambition, or a recovery from temporary fears, soon became its enemies.

Feelings of a very natural kind assisted in keeping alive the interest

of King James. It was by a nephew (and son-in-law) and a daughter that

he had been displaced. A frightful calumny had assisted in his downfall.

According to the ideas of that age, in losing a crown he had been

deprived of a birthright. If he had been guilty of some illegal doings,

there might be some consideration for his age. Anyhow, his infant son

was innocent; why punish him for the acts of his father? These

considerations fully appear as giving point and strength to the Jacobite

feeling which soon began to take a definite form in the country. The

government was thus forced into severities, which again acted to its

disadvantage; and thus it happened that, for some years after the

deliverance of Scotland from arbitrary power, we have to contemplate a

style of administration in which arbitrary power and all its abuses were

not a little conspicuous.

In the very first session of the parliament (summer of 1689), there was

a formidable opposition to the government, headed chiefly by politicians

who had been disappointed of places. The discontents of these persons

ripened early next year into a plot for the restoration of the ex-king.

It gives a sad view of human consistency, that a leading conspirator was

Sir James Montgomery of Skelmorley, who was one of the three

commissioners sent by the Convention in spring to offer the crown to

William and Mary. The affair ended in Montgomery, the Earl of Annandale,

and Lord Ross, informing against each other, in order to escape

punishment. Montgomery had to flee to the continent, where he soon after

died in poverty. The offences of the rest were overlooked.

Amongst the events of this period, the ecclesiastical proceedings bear a

prominent place—efforts of statesmen for moderate measures in the

General Assembly—debates on church-patronage and oaths of

allegiance—tramplings out of old and rebellious Episcopacy; but the

details must be sought for elsewhere.[1] During 1693, there were great

alarms about invasion from France, and the forcible restoration of the

deposed king; and some considerable severities were consequently

practised on disaffected persons. By the death of the queen (December

28, 1694), William was left in the position of sole monarch of these

realms.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: 1688. Nov.]

The first emotions of the multitude on attaining confidence that the

Prince of Orange would be able to maintain his ground, and that the

reigning monarch would be brought low, that the Protestant religion

would be safe, and that perhaps there would be good times again for

those who loved the Presbyterian cause, were, of course, very

enthusiastic. So early as the close of November, the populace of

Edinburgh began to call out ‘No pope, No papist,’ as they walked the

streets, even when passing places where guards were stationed. The

students, too, whose pope-burning enthusiasm had been sternly dealt with

eight years back, now broke out of all bounds, and had a merry cremation

of the pontiff’s effigy at the cross, ending with its being ‘blown up

with art four stories high.’ This, however, was looked upon as a hasty

[Sidenote: 1688.]business, wanting in the proper solemnity; so, two days

after, they went to the law-court in the Parliament Close, and there

subjected his Holiness to a mock-trial, and condemned him to be burned

ceremoniously on Christmas Day, doubtless meaning by the selection of

the time to pass an additional slight upon the religion over which they

were now triumphing.

On the appointed day, the students had a solemn muster to execute the

sentence. Arranged in bands according to their standing, each band with

a captain, they marched, sword in hand, to the cross, preceded by the

janitor of the college, carrying the mace, and having a band of hautbois

also before them. There, in presence of the magistrates and some of the

Privy Council, they solemnly burned the effigy, while a huge multitude

looked on delighted.[2]

There were similar doings in other parts of the country; but I select

only those of one place, as a specimen of the whole, and sufficient to

shew the feeling of the time.

[Sidenote: 1689. JAN. 11.]

A Protestant town-council being elected at Aberdeen, the boys of the

Marischal College resolved to celebrate the occasion with a burlesque

_Pope’s Procession_. They first thought proper to write to the new

magistrates, protesting that their design was not ‘tumultuary,’ neither

did they intend to ‘injure the persons or goods of any.’ The ceremonial

reminds us slightly of some of the scenes in Lyndsay’s _Satire of the

Three Estates_. Starting from the college-gate at four in the afternoon,

there first went a company of men carrying links, six abreast; next, the

janitor of the college, with the college-mace, preceding six judges in

scarlet robes. Next marched four fifers playing; then, in succession,

four priests, four Jesuits, four popish bishops, and four cardinals, all

in their robes; then a Jesuit in embroidered robes, carrying a great

cross. Last came the pope, carried in his state-chair, in scarlet robes

lined with ermine, his triple crown on his head, and his keys on his

arm; distributing pardons and indulgences as he moved along.

Being arrived at the market-cross, the pope placed himself on a theatre,

where a dialogue took place between him and a cardinal, expressing the

pretensions commonly attributed to the head of the Catholic Church, and

announcing a doom to all heretics. In the midst of the conference,

Father Peter, the ex-king’s confessor, entered with a letter understood

to convey intelligence of the late [Sidenote: 1689.] disastrous changes

in London; whereupon his holiness fell into a swoon, and the devil came

forward, as to help him. The programme anticipates that this would be

hailed as a merry sight by the people. But better remained. The pope, on

recovering, began to vomit ‘plots, daggers, indulgences, and the blood

of martyrs,’ the devil holding his head all the time. The devil then

tried in rhyme to comfort him, proposing that he should take refuge with

the king of France; to which, however, he professed great aversion, as

derogatory to his dignity; whereupon the devil appeared to lose

patience, and attempted to throw his friend into the fire. But this he

was prevented from doing by the entry of one ordering that the pope

should be subjected to a regular trial.

The pontiff was then arraigned before the judges as guilty of high

treason against Omnipotence, in as far as he had usurped many of its

privileges, besides advancing many blasphemous doctrines. ‘The court

adduced sufficient proofs by the canons of the church, bulls, pardons,

and indulgences, lying in process;’ and he was therefore pronounced

guilty, and ordered to be immediately taken to the public place of

execution, and burned to ashes, his blood to be attainted, and his

honours to be blotted out of all records. The procession was then formed

once more, and the sentence was read from the cross; after which ‘his

holiness was taken away from the theatre, and the sentence put in

execution against him. During the time of his burning, the spectators

were entertained with fireworks and some other divertisements.

‘After all was ended, the Trinity Church bell—which was the only church

in Scotland taken from the Protestants and given to the papists, wherein

they actually had their service—was rung all the night.’[3]

[Sidenote: MAR. 14.]

Patrick Walker relates,[4] with great relish, the close of the political

existence of the unhappy episcopate of Scotland, amidst the tumults

attending the sitting of the Convention at Edinburgh, during the process

of settling the crown on William and Mary. For a day or two after this

representative body sat down, several bishops attended, as a part of the

parliamentary constitution of the country, and by turns took the duty of

saying prayers. The last who did so, the Bishop of Dunkeld, spoke

pathetically of the [Sidenote: 1689.] exiled king as the man for whom

they had often watered their couches, and thus provoked from the

impetuous Montgomery of Skelmorley a jest at their expense which will

not bear repetition. They were ‘put out with disdain and contempt,’

while some of the members expressed a wish that the ‘honest lads’ knew

of it, ‘for then they would not win away with hale gowns.’ And so

Patrick goes on with the triumph of a vulgar mind, describing how they

‘gathered together with pale faces, and stood in a cloud in the

Parliament Close. James Wilson, Robert Neilson, Francis Hislop, and

myself were standing close by them. Francis Hislop with force thrust

Robert Neilson upon them; their heads went hard upon one another. But

there being so many enemies in the city, fretting and gnashing their

teeth, waiting for an occasion to raise a mob, where undoubtedly blood

would have been shed; and we having laid down conclusions among

ourselves to guard against giving the least occasion to all mobs; kept

us from tearing off their gowns.

‘Their graceless graces went quickly off; and neither bishop nor curate

was seen in the streets; this was a surprising change not to be

forgotten. Some of us would have been rejoiced more than in great sums,

to see these bishops sent legally down the Bow, that they might have

found the weight of their tails in a tow, to dry their hose-soles, that

they might know what hanging was; they having been active for

themselves, and the main instigators to all the mischiefs, cruelties,

and bloodshed of that time, wherein the streets of Edinburgh, and other

places of the land, did run with the innocent, precious, dear blood of

the Lord’s people.’

A more chivalric adversary might have, after all, found something to

admire in these poor prelates, who permitted themselves to be so

degraded, purely in consequence of their reverence for an oath, while

many good Presbyterians were making little of such scruples. On the

other hand, a more enlightened bench of bishops might have seen that the

political status which they now forfeited had all along been a worldly

distinction working against the success of spiritual objects, and might

thus have had some comfortable re-assurances for the future, as they

‘stood in a cloud in the Parliament Close,’ to receive the concussion of

Robert Neilson pushed on by Francis Hislop.

Since Christmas of the past year, there had been constant mob-action

against the Episcopal clergy, especially in the western shires, about

three hundred having been rudely expelled or forced to [Sidenote: 1689.]

flee for safety of their lives. On the rebound of such a spring, nothing

else was to be expected; perhaps there is even some force in the defence

usually put forward for the zealous Presbyterians on this occasion, that

their violences towards those obnoxious functionaries were _less_ than

might have been expected. I do not therefore deem it necessary to go

into ‘the Case of the present Afflicted Clergy,’[5] or to call attention

to the similar case of the faithful professors of the Edinburgh

University, expelled by a commission in the autumn of 1690. There is,

however, one anecdote exemplifying Christian feeling on this occasion,

which it must be pleasant to all to keep in green remembrance. ‘The last

Episcopal clergyman of the parish of Glenorchy, Mr David Lindsay, was

ordered to surrender his charge to a Presbyterian minister then

appointed by the Duke [Earl] of Argyle. When the new clergyman reached

the parish to take possession of his living, not an individual would

speak to him [public feeling on the change of church being here

different] except Mr Lindsay, who received him kindly. On Sunday, the

new clergyman went to church, accompanied by his predecessor. The whole

population of the district were assembled, but they would not enter the

church. No person spoke to the new minister, nor was there the least

noise or violence till he attempted to enter the church, when he was

surrounded by twelve men fully armed, who told him he must accompany

them; and, disregarding all Mr Lindsay’s prayers and entreaties, they

ordered the piper to play the march of death, and marched away the

minister to the confines of the parish. Here they made him swear on the

Bible that he would never return, or attempt to disturb Mr Lindsay. He

kept his oath. The synod of Argyle were highly incensed at this

violation of their authority; but seeing that the people were fully

determined to resist, no further attempt was made, and Mr Lindsay lived

thirty years afterwards, and died Episcopal minister of Glenorchy, loved

and revered by his flock.’[6]

[Sidenote: APR.]

A little incident connected with the accession of King William and Queen

Mary was reported to Wodrow as ‘beyond all question.’ When the

magistrates of Jedburgh were met at their market-cross to proclaim the

new sovereigns, and drink their healths, a Jacobite chanced to pass by.

A bailie asked him if he [Sidenote: 1689.] would drink the king’s

health; to which he answered no, but he was willing to take a glass of

the wine. They handed him a little round glass full of wine; and he

said: ‘As surely as this glass will break, I drink confusion to him, and

the restoration of our sovereign and his heir;’ then threw away the

glass, which alighted on the tolbooth stair, and rolled down unbroken.

The bailie ran and picked up the glass, took them all to witness how it

was quite whole, and then dropping some wax into the bottom, impressed

his seal upon it, as an authentication of what he deemed little less

than a miracle.

Mr William Veitch happening to relate this incident in Edinburgh, it

came to the ears of the king and queen’s commissioner, the Earl of

Crawford, who immediately took measures for obtaining the glass from

Jedburgh, and ‘sent it up with ane attested account to King William.’[7]

[Sidenote: APR. 28.]

The sitting of the Convention brought out a great amount of volunteer

zeal, in behalf of the Revolution, amongst those extreme Presbyterians

of the west who had been the greatest sufferers under the old

government. They thought it but right—while the Highlanders were rising

for James in the north—that they should take up arms for William in the

south. The movement centered at the village of Douglas in Lanarkshire,

where the representative of the great House of that name was now devoted

to the Protestant interest. On the day noted, a vast crowd of people

assembled on a holm or meadow near the village, where a number of their

favourite preachers addressed them in succession with suitable

exhortations, and for the purpose of clearing away certain scruples

which were felt regarding the lawfulness of their appearing otherwise

than under an avowed prosecution of the great objects of the Solemn

League and Covenant.

After some difficulties on these and similar points, a regiment was

actually constituted on the 14th of May, and nowhere out of Scotland

perhaps could a corps have been formed under such unique regulations.

They declared that they appeared for the preservation of the Protestant

religion, and for ‘the work of reformation in Scotland, in opposition to

popery, prelacy, and arbitrary power.’ They stipulated that their

officers should exclusively be men such as ‘in conscience’ they could

submit to. A minister was appointed for the regiment, and an elder

nominated [Sidenote: 1689.] for each company, so that the whole should

be under precisely the same religious and moral discipline as a parish,

according to the standards of the church. A close and constant

correspondence with the ‘United Societies’—the _Carbonari_ of the late

evil times—was settled upon. A Bible was a part of the furniture of

every private’s knapsack—a regulation then quite singular. Great care

was taken in the selection of officers, the young Earl of Angus, son of

the Marquis of Douglas, being appointed colonel; while the second

command was given to William Cleland, a man of poetical genius and

ardent soldierly character, who had appeared for God’s cause at

Bothwell-brig. It is impossible to read the accounts that are given of

this Cameronian Regiment, as it was called, without sympathising with

the earnestness of purpose, the conscientious scrupulosity, and the

heroic feelings of self-devotion, under which it was established, and

seeing in these demonstrations something of what is highest and best in

the Scottish character.

It is not therefore surprising to learn that in August, when posted at

Dunkeld, it made a most gallant and successful resistance to three or

four times the number of Highlanders, then fresh from their victory at

Killiecrankie; though, on this occasion, it lost its heroic

lieutenant-colonel. Afterwards being called to serve abroad, it

distinguished itself on many occasions; but, unluckily, the pope being

concerned in the league for which King William had taken up arms, the

United Societies from that time withdrew their countenance from the

regiment. The Cameronians became the 26th Foot in the British army, and,

long after they had ceased to be recruited among the zealous in

Scotland, and ceased to exemplify Presbyterian in addition to military

discipline, they continued to be singular in the matter of the Bible in

the knapsack.[8]

[Sidenote: JUNE 7.]

There had been for some time in Scotland a considerable number of French

Protestants, for whom the charity of the nation had been called forth.

To these was now added a multitude of poor Irish of the same faith,

refugees from the cruel wars going on in their own country, and many of

whom were women, children, and infirm persons. Slender as the resources

of Scotland usually were, and sore pressed upon at present by the

exactions necessary for supporting the new government, a collection was

going on in behalf of the refugee Irish. It was [Sidenote: 1689.] now,

however, represented, that many in the western counties were in such

want, that they could not wait till the collection was finished; and so

the Lords of the Privy Council ordered that the sums gathered in those

counties be immediately distributed in fair proportions between the

French and Irish, and enjoining the distributors ‘to take special care

that such of those poor Protestants as stays in the remote places of

those taxable bounds and districts be duly and timeously supplied.’

Seventy pounds in all was distributed.

Five days before this, we hear of John Adamson confined in Burntisland

tolbooth as a papist, and humanely liberated, that he might be enabled

to depart from the kingdom.[9]

[Sidenote: JUNE 23.]

This morning, being Sunday, the royal orders for the appointment of

fifteen new men to be Lords of Session reached Edinburgh, all of them

being, of course, persons notedly well affected to the new order of

things. Considering the veneration professed for the day by zealous

Presbyterians in Scotland, and how high stood the character of the Earl

of Crawford for a religious life, one is rather surprised to find one of

the new judges (Crossrig) bluntly telling that that earl ‘sent for me in

the morning, and intimated to me that I was named for one of them.’ He

adds a curious fact. ‘It seems the business had got wind, and was talked

some days before, for Mr James Nasmyth, advocate, who was then concerned

for the Faculty’s Library, spoke to me to pay the five hundred merks I

had given bond for when I entered advocate; which I paid. It may be he

thought it would not be so decent to crave me after I was preferred to

the bench.’[10]

It is incidental to liberating and reforming parties that they seldom

escape having somewhat to falsify their own professions. The Declaration

of the Estates containing the celebrated Claim of Right (April 1689)

asserted that ‘the imprisoning of persons, without expressing the

reasons thereof, and delaying to put them to trial, is contrary to law.’

It also pronounced as equally illegal ‘the using of torture without

evidence in ordinary crimes.’ Very good as a party condemnation of the

late government, or as a declaration of general principles; but, for a

time, nothing more.

One of the first acts of the new government was for the ‘securing of

suspect persons.’ It could not but be vexing to [Sidenote: 1689.] the

men who had delivered their country ‘from thraldom and poperie, and the

pernicious inconveniences of ane absolute power,’ when they found

themselves—doubtless under a full sense of the necessity of the

case—probably as much so as their predecessors had ever felt—ordering

something like half the nobility and gentry of the country, and many

people of inferior rank, into ward, there to lie without trial—and in at

least one notorious case, had to resort to torture to extort confession;

thus imitating those very proceedings of the late government which they

themselves had condemned.

All through the summer of 1689, the register of the Privy Council is

crammed with petitions from the imprisoned, calling for some degree of

relief from the miseries they were subjected to in the Edinburgh

Tolbooth, Stirling Castle, Blackness Castle, and other places of

confinement, to which they had been consigned, generally without

intimation of a cause. The numbers in the Edinburgh Tolbooth were

particularly great, insomuch that one who remembers, as the author does,

its narrow gloomy interior, gets the idea of their being packed in it

much like the inmates of an emigrant ship.

Men of the highest rank were consigned to this frightful place. We find

the Earl of Balcarres petitioning (May 30) for release from it on the

plea that his health was suffering, ‘being always, when at liberty,

accustomed to exercise [his lordship was a great walker];’ and,

moreover, he had given security ‘not to escape or do anything in

prejudice of the government.’ The Council ordained that he should be

‘brought from the Tolbooth to his own lodging in James Hamilton’s house

over forgainst the Cross of Edinburgh,’ he giving his parole of honour

‘not to go out of his lodgings, nor keep correspondence with any persons

in prejudice or disturbance of the present government.’ With the like

humanity, Lord Lovat was allowed to live with his relative the Marquis

of Athole in Holyroodhouse, but under surveillance of a sentinel.

Sir Robert Grierson of Lagg—who, having been an active servant of the

late government in some of its worst work, is the subject of high

popular disrepute as a _persecutor_—was seized in his own house by Lord

Kenmure, and taken to the jail of Kirkcudbright—thence afterwards to the

Edinburgh Tolbooth. He seems to have been liberated about the end of

August, on giving security for peaceable behaviour.

The most marked and hated instrument of King James was [Sidenote: 1689.]

certainly the Chancellor Earl of Perth. He had taken an early

opportunity of trying to escape from the country, so soon as he learned

that the king himself had fled. It would have been better for all

parties if his lordship had succeeded in getting away; but some

officious Kirkcaldy boatmen had pursued his vessel, and brought him

back; and after he had undergone many contumelies, the government

consigned him to close imprisonment in Stirling Castle, ‘without the use

of pen, ink, or paper,’ and with only one servant, who was to remain

close prisoner with him. Another high officer of the late government,

John Paterson, Archbishop of Glasgow, was placed in close prison in

Edinburgh Castle, and not till after many months, allowed even to

converse with his friends: nor does he appear to have been released till

January 1693.

Among the multitude of the incarcerated was an ingenious foreigner, who

for some years had been endeavouring to carve a subsistence out of

Scotland, with more or less success. We have heard of Peter Bruce

before[11] as constructing a harbour, as patentee for a home-manufacture

of playing-cards, and as the conductor of the king’s Catholic

printing-house at Holyrood. It ought likewise to have been noted as a

favourable fact in his history, that the first system of water-supply

for Edinburgh—by a three-inch pipe from the lands of Comiston—was

effected by this clever Flandrian. At the upbreak of the old government

in December, Bruce’s printing-office was destroyed by the mob, and his

person laid hold of. We now (June 1689) learn, by a petition from him to

the Privy Council, that he had been enduring ‘with great patience and

silence seven months’ imprisonment, for no other cause or crime but the

coming of one Nicolas Droomer, skipper at Newport, to the petitioner’s

house, which Droomer was likewise on misinformation imprisoned in this

place, but is released therefra four weeks ago,’ He adds that he looks

on his imprisonment to be ‘but ane evil recompense for all the good

offices of his art, has been performed by him not only within the town

of Edinburgh, but in several places of the kingdom, to which he was

invited from Flanders. He, being a stranger, yet can make it appear [he]

has lost by the rabble upwards of twenty thousand merks of writs and

papers, besides the destruction done to his house and family, all being

robbed, pillaged, and plundered from him, and not so much as a shirt

left him or his wife.’ He [Sidenote: 1689.] thinks ‘such barbarous usage

has scarce been heard [of]; whereby, and through his imprisonment, he is

so out of credit, that himself was like to starve in prison, [and] his

family at home in the same condition.’ Peter’s petition for his freedom

was acceded to, on his granting security to the extent of fifty pounds

for peaceable behaviour under the present government.

Another sufferer was a man of the like desert—namely, John Slezer, the

military engineer, to whom we owe that curious work the _Theatrum

Scotiæ_. The Convention was at first disposed to put him into his former

employment as a commander of the artillery; but he hesitated about

taking the proper oath, and in March a warrant was issued for securing

him ‘untill he find caution not to return to the Castle [then held out

for King James].’[12] He informed the Council (June 3) that for some

weeks he had been a close prisoner in the Canongate Tolbooth by their

order, till now, his private affairs urgently requiring his presence in

England, he was obliged to crave his liberation, which, ‘conceiving that

he knew himself to be of a disposition peaceable and regular,’ he

thought they well might grant. They did liberate him, and at the same

time furnished him with a pass to go southward.

One of the petitioning prisoners, Captain Henry Bruce, states that he

had been in durance for nine months, merely because, when the rabble

attacked Holyroodhouse, he obeyed the orders of his superior officer for

defending it. That superior officer himself, Captain John Wallace, was

in prison on the same account. He presented a petition to the

Council—February 5, 1691—setting forth how he had been a captive for

upwards of a year, though, in defending Holyrood from the rabble, he had

acted in obedience to express orders from the Privy Council of the day,

and might have been tried by court-martial and shot if he had not done

as he did. He craved liberation on condition of self-banishment. The

Council ordered their solicitor to prosecute him; and on a reclamation

from him, this order was repeated. In the ensuing November, however, we

find Wallace still languishing in prison, and his health

decaying—although, as he sets forth in a petition, ‘by the 13th act of

the Estates of this kingdom, the imprisoning persons without expressing

the reasons, and delaying to put them to a trial, is utterly and

directly contrary to the known statutes, laws, and freedoms of this

kingdom.’ He was not [Sidenote: 1689.] subjected to trial till August 6,

1692, when he had been nearly four years a prisoner. The laborious

proceedings, extending over several days, and occupying many wearisome

pages of the Justiciary Record, shew the anxiety of the Revolution

government to be revenged on this gallant adversary; but the trial ended

in a triumphant acquittal.

Several men and women were imprisoned in the Tolbooth for giving signals

to the garrison holding out the Castle. One Alexander Ormiston

petitioned for his liberation as innocent of the charge. He had merely

wiped his eyes, which were sore from infancy, with his napkin, as he

passed along the Grassmarket; and this had been interpreted into his

giving a signal. After a confinement of twelve days, Alexander obtained

his liberation, ‘free of house-dues.’

John Lothian petitioned, August 19, for liberation, having been

incarcerated on the 8th of July. He declared himself unconscious of

anything that ‘could have deserved his being denied the common liberty

of a subject,’ A most malignant fever had now broken out in the

Tolbooth, whereof one prisoner died last night, and on all hands there

were others infected beyond hope of recovery. He, being reduced to great

weakness by his long confinement, was apprehensive of falling a victim.

John Rattray, on the ensuing day, sent a like petition, stating that he

had lain six weeks ‘in close prison, in a most horrible and starving

condition, for want of meat, drink, air, and bedding,’ A wife and large

family of small children were equally destitute at home, and likely to

starve, ‘he not having ane groat to maintain either himself or them.’

Lothian was liberated, but the wretched Rattray was only transferred to

‘open prison’—that is, a part of the jail where he was accessible to his

family and to visitors.

Amongst the multitude of political prisoners was one James Johnstone,

who had been put there two years before, without anything being laid to

his charge. The new government had ordered his liberation in June, but

without paying up the aliment due to him; consequently, he could not

discharge his prison-dues; and for this the Goodman—so the head-officer

of the jail was styled—had detained him. He was reduced to the most

miserable condition, often did not break bread for four or five days,

and really had no dependence but on the charity of the other scarcely

less miserable people around him. The Council seem to have felt ashamed

that a friend of their own should have been allowed to lie nine months

in jail after the Revolution; so they ordered [Sidenote: 1689.] his

immediate dismissal, with payment of aliment for four hundred and two

days in arrear.[13]

Christopher Cornwell, servitor to Thomas Dunbar, stated to the Privy

Council, March 19, 1690, that he had been in the Edinburgh Tolbooth

since June last with his master, ‘where he has lived upon credit given

him by the maid who had the charge of the provisions within the prison,

and she being unable as well as unwilling to furnish him any more that

entertainment, mean as it was, his condition hardly can be expressed,

nor could he avoid starving.’ He was liberated upon his parole.

David Buchanan, who had been clerk to Lord Dundee’s regiment, was seized

in coming northward, with some meal believed to be the property of his

master, and he was thrown in among the crowd of the Tolbooth. For weeks

he petitioned in vain for release.

The Privy Council, on the 13th May 1690, expressed anxiety about the

prisoners; but it was not regarding their health or comfort. They sent a

committee to consider how best the Tolbooth might be made secure—for

there had been an escape from the Canongate jail—and for this purpose it

was decreed that close prisoners should be confined within the inner

rooms; that the shutters towards the north should be nightly locked, to

prevent communications with the houses in that direction; and that

‘there should be a centinel all the daytime at the head of the iron

ravell stair at the Chancellary Chamber, lest letters and other things

may be tolled up.’[14]

[Sidenote: JUNE.]

The chief of the clan Mackintosh, usually called the Laird of

Mackintosh, claimed rights of property over the lands of Keppoch,

Glenroy, and Glenspean, in Inverness-shire, ‘worth five thousand merks

of yearly rent’—a district interesting to modern men of science, on

account of the singular impress left upon it by the hand of nature in

the form of water-laid terraces, commonly called the Parallel Roads of

Glenroy, but then known only as the haunt of a wild race of Macdonalds,

against whom common processes of law were of no avail. Mackintosh—whose

descendant is now the peaceable landlord of a peaceable tenantry in this

[Sidenote: 1689.] country—had in 1681 obtained letters of fire and sword

as a last desperate remedy against Macdonald of Keppoch and others; but

no good had come of it.

In the year of the Revolution, these letters had been renewed, and about

the time when Seymour and Russell were inviting over the Prince of

Orange for the rescue of Protestantism and liberty, Mackintosh was

leading a thousand of his people from Badenoch into Glenspean, in order

to wreak the vengeance of the law upon his refractory tenants. He was

joined by a detachment of government troops under Captain Mackenzie of

Suddy; but Keppoch, who is described by a contemporary as ‘a gentleman

of good understanding, and of great cunning,’ was not dismayed. With

five hundred men, he attacked the Mackintosh on the brae above Inverroy,

less than half a mile from his own house, and gained a sanguinary

victory. The captain of the regular troops and some other persons were

killed; the Laird of Mackintosh was taken prisoner, and not liberated

till he had made a formal renunciation of his claims; two hundred horses

and a great quantity of other spoil fell into the hands of the

victors.[15] The Revolution, happening soon after, caused little notice

to be taken of this affair, which is spoken of as the last clan-battle

in the Highlands.

Now that Whiggery was triumphing in Edinburgh, it pleased Keppoch to

rank himself among those chiefs of clans who were resolved to stand out

for King James. Dundee reckoned upon his assistance; but when he went

north in spring, he found this ‘gentleman of good understanding’ laying

siege to Inverness with nine hundred men, in order to extort from its

burghers at the point of the sword some moneys he thought they owed him.

The northern capital—a little oasis of civilisation and hearty

Protestantism in the midst of, or at least close juxtaposition to, the

Highlands—was in the greatest excitement and terror lest Keppoch should

rush in and plunder it. There were preachings at the cross to animate

the inhabitants in their resolutions of defence; and a collision seemed

imminent. At length the chieftain consented, for two thousand dollars,

to retire. It is alleged that Dundee was shocked and angry at the

proceedings of this important partisan, but unable or unwilling to do

more than expostulate with him. Keppoch by and by joined him in earnest

with his following, while Mackintosh held off in a state of indecision.

[Sidenote: 1689.]

This gave occasion for a transaction of private war, forming really a

notable part of the Scottish insurrection for King James, though it has

been scarcely noticed in history. It was when Dundee, in the course of

his marching and countermarching that summer, chanced to come within a

few miles of Mackintosh’s house of Dunachtan, on Speyside, that Keppoch

bethought him of the opportunity it afforded for the gratification of

his vengeful feelings. He communicated not with his commander. He took

no counsel of any one; he slipped away with his followers unobserved,

and, stooping like an eagle on the unfortunate Mackintosh, burned his

mansion, and ravaged his lands, destroying and carrying away property

afterwards set forth as of the value of two thousand four hundred and

sixty-six pounds sterling.

This independent way of acting was highly characteristic of Dundee’s

followers; but he found it exceedingly inconvenient. Being informed of

the facts, he told Keppoch, in presence of his other officers, that ‘he

would much rather choose to serve as a common soldier among disciplined

troops, than command such men as he; that though he had committed these

outrages in revenge of his own private quarrel, it would be generally

believed he had acted by authority; that since he was resolved to do

what he pleased, without any regard to command and the public good, he

begged that he would immediately be gone with his men, that he might not

hereafter have an opportunity of affronting the general at his pleasure,

or of making him and the better-disposed troops a cover to his

robberies. Keppoch, who did not expect so severe a rebuke, humbly begged

his lordship’s pardon, and told him that he would not have abused

Mackintosh so, if he had not thought him an enemy to the king as well as

to himself; that he was heartily sorry for what was past; but since that

could not be amended, he solemnly promised a submissive obedience for

the future.’[16]

The preceding was not a solitary instance of private clan-warfare,

carried on under cover of Dundee’s insurrection. Amongst his notable

followers were the Camerons, headed by their sagacious chief, Sir Ewen

of Locheil, who was now well advanced in years, though he lived for

thirty more. A few of this clan having been hanged by the followers of

the Laird of Grant—a chief strong in the Whig cause—it was deemed right

[Sidenote: 1689.] that a revenge should be taken in Glen Urquhart. ‘They

presumed that their general would not be displeased, in the

circumstances he was then in, if they could supply him with a drove of

cattle from the enemy’s country.’ Marching off without leave, they found

the Grants in Glen Urquhart prepared to receive them; but before the

attack, a Macdonald came forward, telling that he was settled amongst

the Grants, and claiming, on that account, that none of the people

should be injured. They told him that, if he was a true Macdonald, he

ought to be with his chief, serving his king and country in Dundee’s

army; they could not, on his account, consent to allow the death of

their clansmen to remain unavenged. The man returned dejected to his

friends, the Grants, and the Camerons made the attack, gaining an easy

victory, and bearing off a large spoil to the army in Lochaber.

Dundee consented to overlook this wild episode, on account of the

supplies it brought him; but there was another person grievously

offended. The Macdonald who lived among the Grants was one of those who

fell in the late skirmish. By all the customs of Highland feeling, this

was an event for the notice of his chief Glengarry, who was one of the

magnates in Dundee’s army. Glengarry appeared to resent the man’s death

highly, and soon presented himself before the general, with a demand for

satisfaction on Locheil and the Camerons. ‘Surprised at the oddness of

the thing, his lordship asked what manner of satisfaction he wanted;

“for,” said he, “I believe it would puzzle the ablest judges to fix upon

it, even upon the supposition that they were in the wrong;” and added,

that “if there was any injury done, it was to him, as general of the

king’s troops, in so far as they had acted without commission.”

Glengarry answered that they had equally injured and affronted both, and

that therefore they ought to be punished, in order to deter others from

following their example.’ To this Dundee replied with further excuses,

still expressing his inability to see what offence had been done to

Glengarry, and remarking, that ‘if such an accident is a just ground for

raising a disturbance in our small army, we shall not dare to engage the

king’s enemies, lest there may chance to be some of your name and

following among them who may happen to be killed.’ Glengarry continued

to bluster, threatening to take vengeance with his own hand; but in

reality he was too much a man of the general world to be himself under

the influence of these Highland feelings—he only wished to appear before

his people as eager to avenge [Sidenote: 1689.] what they felt to be a

just offence. The affair, therefore, fell asleep.[17]

[Sidenote: JULY 4.]

The Earl of Balcarres, having failed to satisfy the government about his

peaceable intentions, was put under restraint in Edinburgh Castle, which

was now in the hands of the government. There, he must have waited with

great anxiety for news of his friend Lord Dundee.

‘After the battle of Killiecrankie, where fell the last hope of James in

the Viscount of Dundee, the ghost of that hero is said to have appeared

about daybreak to his confidential friend, Lord Balcarres, then confined

to Edinburgh Castle. The spectre, drawing aside the curtain of the bed,

looked very steadfastly upon the earl, after which it moved towards the

mantel-piece, remained there for some time in a leaning posture, and

then walked out of the chamber without uttering one word. Lord

Balcarres, in great surprise, though not suspecting that which he saw to

be an apparition, called out repeatedly to his friend to stop, but

received no answer, and subsequently learned that at the very moment

this shadow stood before him, Dundee had breathed his last near the

field of Killiecrankie.’[18]

On the news of the defeat of the government troops, his lordship had

some visits from beings more substantial, but perhaps equally pale of

countenance. In his Memoirs, he tells us of the consternation of the new

councillors. ‘Some were for retiring to England, others to the western

shires of Scotland ... they considered whether to set at liberty all the

prisoners, or make them more close; the last was resolved, and we were

all locked up and debarred from seeing our friends, but _never had so

many visits from our enemies_, all making apologies for what was past,

protesting they always wished us well, as we should see whenever they

had an opportunity.’

Lord Balcarres was liberated on the 4th of March 1690, on giving caution

for peaceable behaviour, the danger of Jacobite reaction being by that

time abated.

[Sidenote: JULY 10.]

A poor young woman belonging to a northern county, wandering southwards

in search of a truant lover, like a heroine of one of the old ballads,

found herself reduced to the last extremity of distress [Sidenote:

1689.] when a few miles south of Peebles. Bewildered and desperate, she

threw her babe into the Haystown Burn, and began to wander back towards

her own country. A couple of the inhabitants of Peebles, fishing in the

burn, soon found the body of the infant, and, a search being made, the

wretched mother was discovered at a place called Jedderfield, brought

into town, and put in confinement, as a suspected murderess. The

magistrates of the burgh applied to the sheriff, John Balfour of

Kailzie, to have the supposed culprit taken off their hands, and tried;

but he refused to interfere, owing to ‘the present surcease of justice’

in the country. Consequently, the magistrates were ‘necessitate to cause

persons constantly guard the murderer, the prison not being strong

enough to secure her.’ On their petition, the Privy Council allowed the

Peebles authorities to send Margaret Craig, with a guard, to Edinburgh,

and ordained her to be received into the Tolbooth of Leith, till she be

processed for the murder.[19]

This miserable young woman must have lain in prison three years, for she

was tried by the Court of Justiciary in June 1692, and condemned to be

hanged.[20]

[Sidenote: JULY 26.]

There is something interesting in the early difficulties of so valuable

an institution as the Post-office. John Graham had been appointed

postmaster-general for Scotland in 1674, with a salary of a thousand

pounds Scots (£83, 6_s._ 8_d._ sterling), and had set about his duty

with great spirit. He had travelled to many towns for the purpose of

establishing local offices, thus incurring expenses far beyond what his

salary could repay. He had been obliged on this account to encroach on

money belonging to his wife; also to incur some considerable debts; nor

had he ever been able to obtain any relief, or even the full payment of

his salary from the late state-officers. He was now dead, and his widow

came before the Privy Council with a petition setting forth how she had

been left penniless by her husband through his liberality towards a

public object. It was ordained that Mrs Graham should get payment of all

debts due by provincial offices to her husband, and have the income of

the general office till Martinmas next.

It is to be feared that Mrs Graham did not profit much by this order, as

on the subsequent 19th of October we find her complaining that William

Mean of the Edinburgh letter-office, and others, [Sidenote: 1689.] had

refused to pay her the arrears declared to be due to her; wherefore the

order was renewed.

The general post-mastership was at this time put upon a different

footing, being sold by roup, July 24, 1689, to John Blair, apothecary in

Edinburgh, he undertaking to carry on the entire business on various

rates of charge for letters, and to pay the government five thousand one

hundred merks (about £255 sterling) yearly, for seven years. The rates

were, for single letters to Dumfries, Glasgow, and Ayr, Dundee, Perth,

Kelso, and Jedburgh, two shillings; to Carlisle, Portpatrick, Aberdeen,

and Dunkeld, three shillings; to Kirkcudbright and Inverness, four

shillings, all Scots money.

[Sidenote: OCT. 8.]

In October of this year, the above-mentioned William Mean was sent with

a macer to the Tolbooth for keeping up letters sent from Ireland ‘untill

payment of the letters were paid to him, albeit the postage were

satisfied in England, and that he had sent back packets to London which

were directed for Ireland.’ Also, ‘notwithstanding the former order of

Council appointing him to deliver in to them any letters directed for

James Graham, vintner, he had kept up the same these eight or ten days,

and had never acquainted any member of Council therewith.’ He was

liberated two days after, on caution for reappearance under 500 merks.

It may be surmised that William Mean was disposed to take advantage of

some regulations of his office in order to give trouble to the existing

government.

In the course of 1690, besides a deliberate robbery of the post-boy on

the road between Cockburnspath and Haddington (see under August 16th of

that year), the fact of the bag frequently coming with the seals broken,

is adverted to in angry terms by the Privy Council. An edict for the use

of official seals and the careful preservation of these was passed;

nevertheless, we soon after hear of the bag or box coming once more into

Edinburgh with the seals broken, Mrs Gibb, the post-mistress at the

Canongate post,[21] sent for, Mrs Mean of the letter-office also called

up, and much turmoil and fume for a while, but no sort of decisive step

taken in consequence. It is to be observed that the post from the

English to the Scottish capital was at this time carried on horseback

with a fair degree of speed. English parliamentary proceedings of

Saturday are noted to be in the hands of the Edinburgh public on the

ensuing Thursday.[22]

[Sidenote: 1689. SEP.]

Alexander Irvine of Drum, the representative of a distinguished

historical family in Aberdeenshire, was unfortunately weak both in mind

and body, although it is related that he could play well on the viol,

and had picked up the then popular political tune of _Lullibullero_ in

the course of a few days. Under sanction of the Privy Council, Dr David

Mitchell of Edinburgh undertook to keep him in his house in a style

befitting his quality, and with the care required by his weakly

condition, and for this purpose hired some additional rooms, and made

other necessary furnishings and preparations. The laird came to him at

the close of July, but before the end of August, Marjory Forbes had

induced the laird to own her as his wife, and it became necessary that

Drum should leave his medical protector. A petition being presented by

Dr Mitchell for payment of board and recompense for charges thus

needlessly incurred, he was allowed by the Lords £500 Scots, or £41,

13_s._ 4_d._ sterling, over and above twenty pieces he had received for

a professional visit paid to the laird’s Aberdeenshire castle, to

arrange for his migration to Edinburgh.[23]

James Broich, skipper of Dundee, was proceeding in his scout to Norway

with a small parcel of goods, and a thousand pounds Scots wherewith to

buy a larger vessel. In mid-sea he fell in with a French privateer, who,

after seizing cargo and money, having no spare hands to leave on board,

proceeded to cut holes in the vessel, in order to sink her, proposing to

put the unfortunate crew to their boat, in which case they must have

perished, ‘there being then a great stress.’ By the prayers and tears of

the skipper and his people, the privateer was at length induced to let

them go in their vessel, but not without first obtaining a bond from

Broich, undertaking to remit six hundred guelders to Dunkirk by a

particular day. As a guarantee for this payment, the rover detained and

carried off the skipper’s son, telling him he would hear no good of him

if the money should fail to be forthcoming.

Poor Broich got safe home, where his case excited much commiseration,

more particularly as he had suffered from shipwreck and capture four

times before in the course of his professional life. He was penniless,

and unable to support his family; his son, also—‘the stay and staff of

his old age’—had a wife and small children of his own left desolate.

Here was a little [Sidenote: 1689.] domestic tragedy very naturally

arising out of the wars of the _Grand Monarque_! Beginning in the

council-room of Versailles, such was the way they told upon humble

industrial life in the port of Dundee in Scotland. It was considered,

too, that the son was in ‘as bad circumstances, in being a prisoner to

the French king, as if he were a slave to the Turks.’

[Sidenote: SEP. 2.]

On the petition of Broich, the Privy Council ordained a voluntary

contribution to be made for his relief in Edinburgh, Leith,

Borrowstounness, and Queensferry, and in the counties of Fife and

Forfar.

In a contemporary case, that of a crew of Grangepans, carried by a

privateer to Dunkirk, and confined in Rochefort, it is stated that they

were each allowed half a sous _per diem_ for subsistence, and were daily

expecting to be sent to the galleys.[24]

[Sidenote: OCT. 10.]

It was now acknowledged of the glass-work at Leith, that it was carried

on successfully in making green bottles and ‘chemistry and apothecary

glasses.’ It produced its wares ‘in greater quantity in four months than

was ever vended in the kingdom in a year, and at as low rates as any

corresponding articles from London or Newcastle.’ The Privy Council

therefore gave it the privileges of a manufactory, and forbade

introduction of foreign bottles, only providing that the Leith work

should not charge more than half-a-crown a dozen.

[Sidenote: DEC. 2.]

The magistrates of Edinburgh were ordered to put William Mitchell upon

the Tron, ‘and cause the hangman nail his lug [ear] thereto,’ on

Wednesday the 4th instant, between eleven and twelve in the forenoon,

with a paper on his breast, bearing ‘that he stands there for the

insolencies committed by him on the Guards, and for words of reflection

uttered by him against the present government.’[25]

[Sidenote: 1690. FEB. 2.]

A large flock of _mere-swine_ (porpoises?) having entered the Firth of

Forth, as often happens, and a considerable number having come ashore,

as seldom happens, at Cramond, the tenants of Sir John Inglis,

proprietor of the lands there, fell upon them with all possible

activity, and slew twenty-three, constituting a prize of no

inconsiderable value. After fastening the animals with ropes, so as to

prevent their being carried out to sea—for the [Sidenote: 1690.] scene

of slaughter was half a mile in upon a flat sandy beach—the captors sold

them for their own behoof to Robert Douglas, soapboiler in Leith, fully

concluding that they had a perfect right to do so, seeing that

mere-swine are not royal fish, and neither had they been cast in dead,

in which case, as wrack, I presume, they would have belonged to the

landlord.

The greater part of the spoil had been barrelled and transported to

Leith—part of the price paid, too, to the captors—when John Wilkie,

surveyor there, applied to the Privy Council for a warrant to take the

mere-swine into his possession and dispose of them for the benefit of

such persons as they should be found to belong to. He accordingly seized

upon the barrels, and disposed of several of them at eleven pounds four

shillings per barrel, Douglas protesting loudly against his procedure.

On a petition, representing how the animals had been killed and secured,

Wilkie was ordained to pay over the money to Douglas, deducting only his

reasonable charges.

[Sidenote: FEB. 28.]

A few hot-headed Perthshire Jacobites, including [George] Graham of

Inchbrakie, David Oliphant of Culteuchar, and George Graham of

Pitcairns, with two others designed as ensigns, met to-day at the

village of Dunning, with some other officers of the government troops,

and, getting drink, began to utter various insolencies. They drank the

health of King James, ‘without calling him the late king,’ and further

proceeded to press the same toast upon the government officers. One of

these, Ludovick Grant, quarter-master of Lord Rollo’s troop, was

prudentially retiring from this dangerous society, when Ensign Mowat

cocked a pistol at him, saying: ‘Do you not see that some of us are King

William’s officers as well as you, and why will ye not drink the health

as well as we?’ Grant having asked him what he meant by that, Inchbrakie

took the pistol, and fired it up the chimney—which seems to have been

the only prudential proceeding of the day. The party continued drinking

and brawling at the place, till James Hamilton, cornet of Rollo’s troop,

came with a party to seize them, when, drawing their swords, they beat

back the king’s officer, and were not without great difficulty taken

into custody. Even now, so far from being repentant, Inchbrakie ‘called

for a dishful of aqua vitæ or brandy, and drank King James’s health,’

saying ‘they were all knaves and rascals that would refuse it.’ He said

‘he hoped the guise would turn,’ when Lord Rollo would not be able to

keep Scotland, and he would get [Sidenote: 1690.] Duncrub [Lord Rollo’s

house and estate] to himself. His fury against the soldiers extended so

far, that he called for powder and ball to shoot the sentinels placed

over him, and ‘broke Alexander Ross’s face with ane pint-stoup.’ Even

when borne along as prisoners to Perth, and imprisoned there, these

furious gentlemen continued railing at Lord Rollo and his troop, avowing

and justifying all they had done at Dunning.

The offenders, being brought before the Privy Council, gave in defences,

which their counsel, Sir David Thores, advocated with such rash

insolency that he was sent away to prison. The culprits were punished by

fines and imprisonment. We find them with great difficulty clearing

themselves out of jail six months after.[26]

In religious contentions, there is a cowardice in the strongest

ascendency parties which makes them restlessly cruel towards

insignificant minorities. The Roman Catholics in Scotland had never

since the Reformation been more than a handful of people; but they had

constantly been treated with all the jealous severity due to a great and

threatening sect. Even now, when they were cast lower than at any former

time, through the dismal failure of King James to raise them, there was

no abatement of their troubles.

It was at this time a great inconveniency to any one to be a Catholic.

As a specimen—Alexander Fraser of Kinnaries, on the outbreak of the

Revolution, to obviate any suspicion that might arise about his

affection to the new government, came to Inverness, and put himself

under the view of the garrison there. Fears being nevertheless

entertained regarding him, he was sent to prison. Liberated by General

Mackay upon bail, he remained peaceably in Inverness till December last,

when he was sent to Edinburgh, and there placed under restraint, not to

move above a mile from town. [Sidenote: MAR. 2.] He now represented the

hardship he thus suffered, ‘his fortune being very small, and the most

of his living being only by his own labouring and industry.’ ‘His

staying here,’ he added, ‘any space longer must of necessity tend to his

own and his family’s utter ruin.’ With difficulty, the Lords were

induced to liberate him under caution.

Mr David Fairfoul, a priest confined in prison at Inverness, only

regained his liberty by an extraordinary accident. James Sinclair of

Freswick, a Caithness gentleman, had chanced a [Sidenote: 1690.]

twelvemonth before to be taken prisoner by a French privateer, as he was

voyaging from his northern home to Edinburgh. Having made his case known

to the Scottish Privy Council, he was relieved in exchange for Mr

Fairfoul (June 5, 1690).

About the end of the year, we find a considerable number of Catholics

under government handling. Steven Maxwell, who had been one of the two

masters in the Catholic college at Holyroodhouse, lay in durance at

Blackness. John Abercrombie, ‘a trafficker,’ and a number of other

priests recently collected out of the Highlands, were immured in the

Tolbooth of Edinburgh. Another, named Mr Robert Davidson, of whom it was

admitted that ‘his opinion and deportment always inclined to sobriety

and moderation, shewing kindness and charity to all in distress, even of

different persuasions, and that he made it no part of his business to

meddle in any affairs, but to live peaceably in his native country for

his health’s sake,’ had been put into Leith jail, with permission to go

forth for two hours a day, under caution to the amount of fifty pounds,

lest his health should suffer.

At this very time, a fast was under order of the General Assembly, with

sanction of the government, with a reference to the consequences of the

late oppressive government, citing, among other things, ‘the sad

persecutions of many for their conscience towards God.’[27]

[Sidenote: APR. 25.]

It was declared in the legislature that there were ‘frequent murders of

innocent infants, whose mothers do conceal their pregnancy, and do not

call for necessary assistance in the birth.’ It was therefore statute,

that women acting in this secretive manner, and whose babes were dead or

missing, should be held as guilty of murder, and punished

accordingly.[28] That is to say, society, by treating indiscretions with

a puritanic severity, tempted women into concealments of a dangerous

kind, and then punished the crimes which itself had produced, and this

upon merely negative evidence.

Terrible as this act was, it did not wholly avail to make women brave

the severity of that social punishment which stood on the other side. It

is understood to have had many victims. In January 1705, no fewer than

four young women were in the Tolbooth of Aberdeen at once for concealing

pregnancy and [Sidenote: 1690.] parturition, and all in a state of such

poverty that the authorities had to maintain them. On the 23d July 1706,

the Privy Council dealt with a petition from Bessie Muckieson, who had

been two years ‘incarcerat’ in the Edinburgh Tolbooth on account of the

death of a child born by her, of which Robert Bogie in Kennieston, in

Fife, was the father. She had not concealed her pregnancy, but the

infant being born in secret, and found dead, she was tried under the

act.

At her trial she had made ingenuous confession of her offence, while

affirming that the child had not been ‘wronged,’ and she protested that

even the concealment of the birth was ‘through the treacherous dealing

and abominable counsel of the said Robert Bogie.’ ‘Seeing she was a poor

miserable object, and ane ignorant wretch destitute of friends, throwing

herself at their Lordships’ footstool for pity and accustomed

clemency’—petitioning that her just sentence might be changed into

banishment, ‘that she might be a living monument of a true penitent for

her abominable guilt’—the Lords looked relentingly on the case, and

adjudged Bessie to pass forth of the kingdom for the remainder of her

life.[29]

It was seldom that such leniency was shewn. In March 1709, a woman named

Christian Adam was executed at Edinburgh for the imputed crime of

child-murder, and on the ensuing 6th of April, two others suffered at

the same place on the same account. In all these three cases, occurring

within four weeks of each other, the women had allowed their pregnancy

and labour to pass without letting their condition be known, or calling

for the needful assistance, Adam acting thus at the entreaty of her

lover, ‘a gentleman,’ who said it would ruin him if she should declare

her state. Another, named Bessie Turnbull, had been entirely successful

in concealing all that happened; but the consciousness of having killed

her infant haunted her, till she came voluntarily forward, and gave

herself up. At the scaffold, Adam ‘gave the ministers much

satisfaction;’ Margaret Inglis ‘did not give full satisfaction to the

ministers;’ Turnbull ‘seemed more affected than her comrade, but not so

much as could be wished.’[30]

[Sidenote: JULY 5.]

Our old acquaintance, Captain John Slezer, turns up at this time in an

unexpected way. Three or four months before, he [Sidenote: 1690.] had

obtained a commission as captain of artillery from their majesties, and

now he was about to leave Edinburgh on duty; but, lo, John Hamilton,

wright, burgess of Edinburgh, ‘out of a disaffection to their majesties

and the present government,’ gave orders to George Gilchrist, messenger,

to put in execution letters of caption against the captain, for a debt

due by him, ‘albeit he [Slezer] the night before offered him

satisfaction of the first end of the money.’ The Council, ‘understanding

that the same has been done out of a design to retard their majesties’

service, called for Hamilton, and, in terms of the late act of

parliament, desired him to take the oath of allegiance and assurance,

which he refused to do.’ They therefore ordained him to be committed

prisoner to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and ‘declares Captain Slezer to

be at liberty to prosecute his majesty’s service.’ The debtor and

creditor might thus be said to have changed places: one can imagine what

jests there would be about the case among the Cavalier wits in the Laigh

Coffee-house—how it would be adduced as an example of that vindication

of the laws which the Revolution professed to have in view—how it would

be thought in itself a very good little Revolution, and well worthy of a

place in the child’s toy picture of The World Turned Upside Down.

After a six weeks’ imprisonment, Hamilton came before the Council with

professions of peaceable inclination to the present government, and

pleaded that he was valetudinary with gravel, much increased by reason

of his confinement, ‘and, being a tradesman, his employment, which is

the mean of his subsistence, is altogether neglected by his continuing a

prisoner,’ and he might be utterly ruined in body, family, and estate,

if not relieved. Therefore the Lords very kindly liberated this

delinquent creditor, he giving caution to live inoffensively in future,

and reappear if called upon.

We find a similar case a few years onward. Captain William Baillie of

Colonel Buchan’s regiment was debtor to Walter Chiesley, merchant in

Edinburgh, to the extent of three thousand merks, for satisfaction of

which he had assigned his estate, with power to uplift the rents. He was

engaged in Edinburgh on the recruiting service, when Chiesley, out of

malice, as was insinuated, towards the government of which Baillie was

the commissioned servant, had him apprehended on caption for the debt,

and put into the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. Thus, as his petition to the

Privy Council runs (February 7, 1693), ‘he is rendered incapable of

executing that important duty he is upon, which will many [Sidenote:

1690.] ways prejudice their majesties’ service;’ for, ‘if such practices

be allowed, and are unpunished, there should not ane officer in their

majesties’ forces that owes a sixpence dare adventure to come to any

mercat-town, either to make their recruits or perform other duty.’ For

these good reasons, Baillie craved that not only he be immediately

liberated, but Walter Chiesley be censured ‘for so unwarrantable ane

act, to the terror of others to do the like.’

The Council recommended the Court of Session to expede a suspension, and

put at liberty the debtor; but they seem to have felt that it would be

too much to pass a censure on the merchant for trying to recover what

was justly owing to him.

But for our seeing creditors treated in this manner for the conveniency

of the government, it would be startling to find that the old plan of

the _supersedere_, of which we have seen some examples in the time of

James VI., was still thought not unfit to be resorted to by that

_régime_ which had lately redeemed the national liberties.

James Bayne, wright in Edinburgh—the same rich citizen whose daughter’s

clandestine nuptials with Andrew Devoe, the posture-master, made some

noise a few years back[31]—had executed the carpentry-work of

Holyroodhouse; but, like Balunkin in the ballad, ‘payment gat he nane.’

To pay for timber and workmen’s wages, he incurred debts to the amount

of thirty-five thousand merks (about £1944 sterling), which soon

increased as arrears of interest went on, till now, after an interval of

several years, he was in such a position, that, supposing he were paid

his just dues, and discharged his debts, there would not remain to him

‘one sixpence’ of that good stock with which he commenced the

undertaking.

At the recommendation of ‘his late majesty [Charles II.?],’ the Lords of

the Treasury had considered the case, and found upwards of £2000

sterling to be due to James Bayne, ‘besides the two thousand pounds

sterling for defalcations and losses, which they did not fully

consider,’ and they consequently ‘recommended him to the Lords of

Session for a suspension against his creditors, ay, and while the money

due to him by the king were paid.’ This he obtained; ‘but at present no

regard is had to it.’ Recently, to satisfy some of his most urgent

creditors, the Lords of the Treasury gave him an order [Sidenote: 1690.]

for £500 upon their receiver, Maxwell of Kirkconnel; but no funds were

forthcoming. His creditors then fell upon him with great rigour, and

Thomas Burnet, merchant in Edinburgh, from whom he had been a borrower

for the works at the palace, had now put him in jail, where he lay

without means to support himself and his family.

Bayne craved from the Privy Council that the two thousand pounds already

admitted might as soon as possible be paid to him, and that, meanwhile,

he should be liberated, and receive a protection from his creditors,

‘whereby authority will appear in its justice, the petitioner’s

creditors be paid, and no tradesman discouraged to meddle in public

works for the advancement of what is proper for the government to have

done.’ The Privy Council considered the petition, and recommended the

Lords of Session ‘to expede ane suspension and charge to put to liberty’

in favour of James Bayne, on his granting a disposition of his effects

in favour of his creditors.[32]

It was, after all, fitting that the government which interfered, for its

own conveniency, to save its servants from the payment of their just

debts, should stave off the payment of their own, by similar

interpositions of arbitrary power.

[Sidenote: AUG.]

The ‘happie revolution’ had not made any essential change in the habits

of those Highlanders who lived on the border of the low countries. It

was still customary for them to make periodical descents upon Morayland,

Angus, the Stormont, Strathearn, and the Lennox, for ‘spreaths’ of

cattle and other goods.

Sir Robert Murray of Abercairney, having lands in Glenalmond and

thereabouts, employed six men, half of whom were Macgregors, as a watch

or guard for the property of his tenants. These men, coming one day to

the market of Monzie, were informed that a predatory party had gone down

into the low country, and ‘fearing that they might, in their return,

come through Sir Robert’s lands, and take away ane hership from his

tenants,’ they lost no time in getting the land, over which they were

likely to pass, cleared of bestial. They were refreshing themselves

after their toil at the kirk-town of Monzie, when the caterans came past

with their booty. Enraged at finding the ground cleared, the robbers

seized the six men, and carried them away as prisoners.

A few days after, having regained their liberty, they were [Sidenote:

1690.] apprehended by Lord Rollo, on a suspicion of having been

accomplices of the robbers, by whom it appeared his lordship’s tenants

had suffered considerably; and they were immediately dragged off to

Edinburgh, and put into the Canongate jail. There they lay for two

months, ‘in a very starving condition, and to the ruin of their poor

families at home;’ when at length, Lord Rollo having failed to make good

anything against them, and Sir Robert Murray having undertaken for their

appearance if called upon, they were allowed to go home, with an order

to the governor of Drummond Castle for the restoration of their arms.

On the 22d January 1691, Lord Rollo represented to the Privy Council

that ‘in the harvest last, the Highland robbers came down and plundered

his ground, and because of his seeking redress according to law, they

threaten his tenants with ane other depredation, and affrights them so

as they are like to leave the petitioner’s lands, and cast them

waste.’[33] The matter was remitted to the Commander of the Forces.[34]

[Sidenote: 1690. AUG. 16.]

Andrew Cockburn, the post-boy[35] who carried the packet or letter-bag

on that part of the great line of communication which lies between

Cockburnspath and Haddington, had this day reached a point in his

journey between the Alms-house and Hedderwick Muir, when he was assailed

by two gentlemen in masks; one of them ‘mounted on a blue-gray horse,

wearing a stone-gray coat with brown silk buttons;’ the other ‘riding on

a white horse, having a white English gray cloak coat with wrought

silver thread buttons.’ Holding pistols to his breast, they threatened

to kill him if he did not instantly deliver up ‘the packet, black box,

and by-bag’ which he carried; and he had no choice but to yield. They

then bound him, and, leaving him tied by the foot to his horse, rode off

with their spoil to Garlton House near Haddington.

As the packet contained government communications besides the

correspondence of private individuals, this was a crime of a very high

nature, albeit we may well believe it was committed on political impulse

only. Suspicion seems immediately to have alighted on James Seton,

youngest son of the Viscount Kingston, and John Seton, brother of Sir

George Seton of Garlton; and Sir Robert Sinclair, the sheriff of the

county, immediately sought for these young gentlemen at their father’s

and brother’s houses, but found them not. With great hardihood, they

came to Sir Robert’s house next morning, to inquire as innocent men why

they were searched for; when Sir Robert, after a short examination in

presence of the post-boy, saw fit to have them disarmed and sent off to

Haddington. It was Sunday, and Bailie Lauder, to whose house they came

with their escort, was about to go to church. If the worthy bailie is to

be believed, he thought their going to the sheriff’s a great presumption

of their innocence. He admitted, too, that Lord Kingston had come and

spoken to him that morning.[36] Anyhow, he concluded that it might be

enough in the meantime if he afforded them a room in his house, secured

[Sidenote: 1690.] their horses in his stable, and left them under charge

of two of the town-officers. Unluckily, however, he required the

town-officers, as usual, to walk before him and his brother-magistrates

to church; which, it is obvious, interfered very considerably with their

efficiency as a guard over the two gentlemen. While things were in this

posture, Messrs Seton took the prudent course of making their escape. As

soon as the bailie heard of it, he left church, and took horse after

them with some neighbours, but he did not succeed in overtaking them.

The Privy Council had an extraordinary meeting, to take measures

regarding this affair, and their first step was to order Bailie Lauder

and the two town-officers into the Tolbooth of Edinburgh as close

prisoners. A few days afterwards, the magistrate was condemned by the

Council as guilty of plain fraud and connivance, and declared incapable

of any public employment. William Kaim, the smith at Lord Kingston’s

house of Whittingham, was also in custody on some suspicion of a concern

in this business; but he and the town-officers were quickly

liberated.[37]

John Seton was soon after seized by Captain James Denholm on board a

merchant-vessel bound for Holland, and imprisoned in the Castle of

Edinburgh. He underwent trial in July 1691, and by some means escaped

condemnation. A favourable verdict did not procure his immediate

liberation; but, after three days, he was dismissed on caution to return

into custody if called upon. This final result was the more remarkable,

as his father was by that time under charge of having aided in the

betrayal of the Bass.[38]

[Sidenote: AUG. 16.]

William Bridge, an Englishman, had come to Scotland about ten years ago,

at the invitation of a coppersmith and a founder in Edinburgh, to ‘give

them his insight in the airt of casting in brass;’ and now they had

imparted their knowledge to James Miller, brasier in the Canongate.

Bridge petitioned the Privy Council for some charity, ‘seeing he left

his own kingdom for doing good to this kingdom and the good town of

Edinburgh.’ The Council took that way of proving their benevolence on

which Mr Sidney Smith once laid so much stress—‘they recommend to

[Sidenote: 1690.] the magistrates of Edinburgh to give the petitioner

such charity as he deserves.’[39]

[Sidenote: AUG. 26.]

The monopoly of the manufacture and sale of playing-cards, which was

conferred some years back on Peter Bruce, engineer, had been transferred

by him to James Hamilton of Little Earnock, together with a paper-mill

which he had built at Restalrig, and two machines for friezing cloth.

Hamilton now petitioned for, and obtained the Privy Council’s

confirmation of this exclusive right, in consideration of his great

expenses in bringing home foreign workmen, and putting his little

manufactory in order.[40]

[Sidenote: AUG.]

Many gentlemen and others, who for several months had been prisoners in

the Edinburgh Tolbooth, were transported to Blackness, Leith, and Bass,

leaving George Drummond, the ‘Goodman’ of the prison, unpaid for their

aliment and house-dues. The Council ordained the keepers of the prisons

of Blackness and Bass to detain these gentlemen till they had satisfied

Drummond, whatever orders might come for their enlargement.

In another case, which came before them in the ensuing January, the

Council acted much in the spirit of their late ordinance in favour of

William Bridge the brass-founder. Gavin Littlejohn, a prisoner in the

Edinburgh Tolbooth, had been ordered by them to be set at liberty, but

he was detained by his jailer for fourscore pounds Scots of house-dues.

Being poor, ‘he was no ways able to make payment, albeit he should die

in prison,’ and he therefore craved the Lords that they would, as usual

in such cases, recommend the discharge of his debt by the treasury. The

Lords, having considered this petition, ‘recommend to George Drummond,

master of the Tolbooth, _to settle with the petitioner_, that he may be

set at liberty.’[41]

[Sidenote: SEP.]

Law had not yet so well asserted her supremacy in Scotland as to

entirely banish the old inclination to enforce an assumed right by the

strong hand. Of the occasional violences still used in debatable matters

of property, a fair specimen is presented by a case which occurred at

this time between Andrew Johnstone of Lockerby and Mrs Margaret

Johnstone, the widow of his eldest [Sidenote: 1690.] son. For a year or

two past, Mrs Margaret, supported by her father, Sir James Johnstone of

Westerhall, and with the aid of sundry servants of her own and her

father, had been accustomed to molest Andrew Johnstone, his friends and

tenants, in the possession of their lands, and to threaten them with

acts of violence. They had been obliged to take out a writ of lawborrows

against the wrathful lady and her ‘accomplices;’ but it had proved of no

avail in inducing peaceful measures.

One day in the last spring, as Johnstone’s tenants were labouring their

lands at Turrie-muir, his furious daughter-in-law and her ‘accomplices’

came upon them, loosed the horses from their ploughs and harrows, cut

the harness, and beat the workmen. James Johnstone, a younger son of

Lockerby, was present, and on his trying to prevent these outrages, they

fell upon him violently, and wounded him under the eye with a penknife,

‘to the great hazard of the loss of his eye.’

In June, a set of Mrs Margaret’s friends, headed by David Carlyle, and

his sons William and Robert, took an opportunity of making a deadly

personal assault upon Mrs Mary Johnstone, wife of the Laird of Lockerby.

The poor lady was cut down, and left as dead, while her friend, Mrs

Barbara Hill, was run through the thigh with a sword. These ladies had

since lain under the care of surgeons, and it was uncertain whether they

would live or die. Janet Geddes, servant of Mungo Johnstone of

Netherplace, a friend of Lockerby, had also been assailed by the

Carlyles, pulled to the ground by the hair of her head, cruelly beaten

and wounded, and nearly choked with a horn snuff-box which they

endeavoured to force down her throat.

In May, a group of Mrs Margaret’s friends came armed to the lands of

Hass and Whitwyndhill, with ‘horrid and execrable oaths,’ and

‘masterfully drove away the sheep and bestial.’ The poor tenants and

their wives came to rescue their property, when the assailing party rode

them down, and beat them so sore, that several had to be taken home in

blankets. Not long after, Westerhall’s servants came to the same lands,

and took by violence from Robert Johnstone of Roberthill fourteen kine

and oxen, ‘which were reset by Sir James, being carried home to his

house and put in his byres, and set his mark upon them, and thereafter

sold ten of the said beasts, ilk ane being worth forty pounds.’

Last, and worst of all, Walter Johnstone, brother of Mrs Margaret, had

come with attendants to the house of Netherplace by night, broke in, and

beat the owner, Mungo Johnstone, in a [Sidenote: 1690.] most outrageous

manner, besides squeezing the hands of his son, a boy, that the blood

sprung below his nails.

The matter was brought before the Privy Council by complaints from both

parties, and as the awards went rather against Lockerby and his son for

keeping his daughter-in-law out of her rights, than against her and her

friends for their violent procedure on the other side, we may reasonably

infer that the James VI. style of justice was far from extinct in the

land.

A case of violent procedure on the part of a landlord towards a tenant

occurred about the same time. Catherine Herries possessed the lands of

Mabie, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, in liferent. In the early part

of 1689, she entered into a communing with one Robert Sturgeon, to set

to him the small farm of Crooks, promising him a nine years’ lease; and

he was admitted to possession, though upon a verbal agreement only. He

immediately addressed himself to the improvement of the ground by

ditching and draining, and in a year laid out upon it two hundred merks,

or something more than eleven pounds sterling. Meanwhile, the lady

united herself to John Maxwell of Carse, ‘a notorious papist,’ who had

not long before been searched for as a person dangerous to the new

government. When the lady learned that Sturgeon had been active among

the searchers, she seems to have resolved to discontinue his connection

with her estate. At Lammas 1690, alleging that he had been warned away

at the preceding Pasch, she caused him to be summoned before the

steward-depute of Kirkcudbright, who decreed him to remove within an

irregularly brief period. He had no resource but to go to Edinburgh, and

sue for a suspension of the decree; but when he returned with this

document, he found that the lady, the day before, had violently ejected

his wife, bairns, and bestial, ‘whereof many were lost.’ He intimated

the suspension; but Lady Mabie, disregarding it, obtained a precept from

the steward-depute, ordering him to answer for a thousand merks on

account of his unlawful intrusion upon her estate, and authorising his

imprisonment till this was paid. Without any other warrant, as Sturgeon

complains to the Council, the lady, under cloud of night, sends fifteen

or sixteen persons, whereof John Lanerick, writer in Dumfries, was

ringleader, with swords and staves, and takes the complainer out of his

bed, as if he had been a notorious malefactor, and carries him bound

prisoner to the Tolbooth of Kirkcudbright, where he lay six weeks, his

wife, bairns, and goods being again ejected, and his house shut up.

[Sidenote: 1690.]

In such a relation of parties, even had the proceedings of Lady Mabie

and her husband been more regular, the Lords of the Privy Council could

have no difficulty in deciding. They fined the lady and her husband in

two hundred merks, one half to go as compensation to the ejected

tenant.[42]

[Sidenote: SEP.]

If the author could be allowed to indulge in a little personality, he

would recall a walk through the streets of Edinburgh with Sir Walter

Scott in the year 1824—one of many which he was privileged to enjoy, and

during which many old Scottish matters, such as fill this work, were

discussed. Sir Walter, having stopped for a moment in the crowd to

exchange greetings with a portly middle-aged man, said, on coming up to

continue his walk: ‘That was Campbell of Blythswood—we always shake

hands when we meet, for there is some old _cousinred_ between us.’ Let

this occurrence, only redeemed from triviality by its bringing up a

peculiar Scotch phrase unknown to Jamieson, be introduction to a

characteristic letter of the year 1690, which seems worthy of a place

here. First be it noted, the ‘cousinred’ between the illustrious

fictionist of our century and the great laird of the west, took its

origin two centuries earlier, thus forming a curious example of the

tenacity of the Scottish people regarding relationships. The paternal

great-grandfather of Sir Walter Scott was a person of his own name, the

younger of the two sons of that Scott of Raeburn whom we have seen in

1665 set aside from the use of his property, the education of his

family, and the enjoyment of his liberty, in consequence of his becoming

a Quaker. The young Walter Scott spent his mature life in Kelso; we find

him spoken of in a case under the attention of the Privy Council as a

‘merchant’ there: from devotion to the House of Stuart, he never shaved

after the Revolution, and consequently acquired the nickname of

_Beardie_. It was his fortune, in the month of September 1690, to ride

to Glasgow, and there wed a lady of a noted mercantile family, being

daughter to Campbell of Silvercraigs, whose uncle was the first Campbell

of Blythswood, provost of Glasgow in 1660. The house of the Campbells of

Silvercraigs in the Saltmarket was a handsome and spacious one, which

Cromwell had selected for his residence when he visited Glasgow.[43]

Here, of course, took place the wedding of this young offshoot of

Roxburghshire gentility [Sidenote: 1690.] with Mary Campbell, the niece

of Blythswood, the result, most probably, of a line of circumstances

originating in that tyrannical decreet of the Privy Council which

ordained the Quaker Raeburn’s bairns to be taken from him, and educated

in a sound faith at the schools of Glasgow (see under July 5, 1666).

The letter in question is one which Walter Scott wrote to his mother

immediately after his marriage, stating the fact, and giving her

directions about horses and certain articles to be sent to him against

his intended return home with his bride. It is merely curious as

illustrating the personal furnishings of a gentleman in that age, and

the manner in which he travelled.

‘DEAR MOTHER—The long designed marriadge betwixt Mary Campbell and mee

was accomplished upon the 18th of this instant, and I having stayed here

longer than I thought to doe, thought fitt to lett you know soe much by

this. I have sent home Mr Robert Ellott his mare with many thanks, and

tell him she has been fed since I came from home with good hay and

corne, and been more idle as rideing. I have sent you the key of the

studdy, that you may send mee with Rob^t Paterson and my horses my two

cravatts that are within, and one pare I suppose within my desk the

key and keep till I come home. As also send mee ane clene shirt, my

hatt that is within my trunk send hither, and give to Robert Paterson,

to putt one, another hat that is in itt—the trunk is open already. Send

me out of ane bagge of rix dollars that you shall find in my desk, 30

rix dollars, and my little purse with the few pieces of gold. You will

find there also two pairs of sleives and a plain cravatt: give with my

hatts to Rot. my coat and old , to putt one, if they bee meet for

him. Let Rot. come in by Ed^r and call at Dykes the shoe maker for my

boots and one of the pairs of the shoes he has making for me, if they be

ready, and bring them with him hither. Let him bring my own sadle and

pistolls upon the one horse, and borrow my good sisters[44] syde sadle

and bring upon the other. Lett him be sure to bee here upon Tuesday the

thirteenth [thirtieth?] instant and desire him to be careful of all thir

things. William Anderson[45] says he will come home with us. We are all

in good health here. My wife with all the rest of us gives our service

to you. Wee hope to see you upon the Saturday night after Rot. Paterson

comes hither. We pray for God’s blessing [Sidenote: 1690.] and yours. I

have writt to desire my brother to come again thatt time hither and come

home with us. God be with you, dear mother. I am your loving sonne,

‘W. SCOTT.

‘GLASGOW, _Sept. 22^o, 1690_.

‘Iff my brother could bee here sooner, I wish he would come, and Robt.

also, for I mean to stay from home, and our time will much depend on

their coming.’

For a notice of a visit paid by Beardie to Glasgow in February 1714, on

the occasion of the death of his father-in-law, see under that date.

[Sidenote: NOV. 11.]

The Bible, New Testament, and a catechism, having recently been prepared

in the Irish language, mainly for the use of the Irish population, it

was thought by some religiously disposed persons in England, including

some of Scottish extraction, that the same might serve for the people of

the Highlands of Scotland, whose language was very nearly identical. It

was accordingly part of the duty of the General Assembly to-day to make

arrangements for receiving and distributing throughout the Highlands a

gift of three thousand Bibles, one thousand New Testaments, and three

thousand catechisms, which was announced to be at their disposal in

London. A thousand pounds Scots was petitioned for from the Privy

Council, to pay the expense of transporting the books from London and

sending them to the various northern parishes.[46] It is to be regretted

that so important an event as the first introduction of an intelligible

version of the Scriptures to a large section of our population should be

so meagrely chronicled. We shall hereafter have much to tell regarding

further operations of the same kind in the northern portion of Scotland.

[Sidenote: DEC.]

The domestic condition of the people is so much affected by certain

sacred principles of law, that the history and progress of these becomes

a matter of the first consequence. We have seen how the new rulers acted

in regard to the sacredness of the subject from imprisonment not meant

to issue in trial; we shall now see how they comported themselves

respecting the unlawfulness of torture, which they had proclaimed as

loudly in their Declaration or Claim of Rights.[47] We find the Duke of

Hamilton, within three months of his presiding at the passing of this

‘Declaration,’ [Sidenote: 1690.] writing to Lord Melville about a little

Jacobite conspiracy—‘Wilson can discover all: if he does not confess

freely, it’s like he may get either the boots or the thumbikens.’[48]

When, at the crisis of the battle of the Boyne, the plot of Sir James

Montgomery of Skelmorley, the Earl of Annandale, Lord Ross, and Robert

Fergusson, for the restoration of King James, broke upon the notice of

the new government, a Catholic English gentleman named Henry Neville

Payne, who had been sent down to Scotland on a mission in connection

with it, was seized by the common people in Dumfriesshire, and brought

to Edinburgh. Sir William Lockhart, the solicitor-general for Scotland,

residing in London, then coolly wrote to the Earl of Melville, secretary

of state at Edinburgh, regarding Payne, that there was no doubt he knew

as much as would hang a thousand; ‘but,’ says he, ‘except you put him to

the torture, he will shame you all. Pray you _put him in such hands as

will have no pity on him_; for, in the opinion of all, he is a desperate

cowardly fellow.’

The Privy Council had in reality by this time put Payne to the torture;

but the ‘cowardly fellow’ proved able to bear it without confession. On

the 10th of December, under instructions signed by the king, and

countersigned by the Earl of Melville, the process was repeated

‘gently,’ and again next day after the manner thus described by the Earl

of Crawford, who presided on the occasion: ‘About six this evening, we

inflicted [the torture] on both thumbs and one of his legs, with _all

the severity that was consistent with humanity_, even unto that pitch

that _we could not preserve life and have gone further_, but without the

least success.... He was so manly and resolute under his suffering, that

such of the Council as were not acquainted with all the evidences, were

brangled and began to give him charity, that he might be innocent. It

was surprising to me and others, that flesh and blood could, without

fainting, and in contradiction to the grounds we had insinuat of our

knowledge of his accession in matters, _endure the heavy penance he was

in for two hours_.... My stomach is truly so far out of tune, by being a

witness to an act so far cross to my natural temper, that I am fitter

for rest than anything else.’

The earl states, that he regarded Payne’s constancy under the torture as

solely owing to his being assured by his religion that it would save his

soul and place him among the saints. His [Sidenote: 1690.] lordship

would never have imagined such self-consideration as supporting a

westland Whig on the ladder in the Grassmarket.[49] The conviction

doubtless made him the more resolute in acting as ‘the prompter of the

executioner to increase the torture to so high a pitch’—his own

expression regarding his official connection with the affair. It is

curious that none ever justly apprehend, or will admit, the martyrdoms

of an opposite religious party. Always it is obstinacy, vanity,

selfishness, or because they have no choice. Sufferings for conscience’

sake are only acknowledged where one’s own views are concerned. It must

be admitted as something of a deduction from the value of martyrdom in

general.

We after this hear of Payne being in a pitiable frame of body under

close confinement in Edinburgh Castle, no one being allowed to have

access to him but his medical attendants. For a little time there was a

disposition to give him the benefit of the rule of the Claim of Rights

regarding imprisonment, and on the 6th January 1691, it was represented

to King William that to keep Payne in prison without trial was ‘contrare

to law.’ Nevertheless, and notwithstanding repeated demands for trial

and petitions for mercy on his part, Neville Payne was kept in durance

more or less severe for year after year, until _ten_ had elapsed! During

this time, he became acquainted with the principal state-prisons of

Scotland, including the Edinburgh Tolbooth.

At length, on the 4th of February 1701, the wretched man sent a petition

to the Privy Council, shewing ‘that more than ten years’ miserable

imprisonment had brought [him] to old age and extreme poverty,

accompanied with frequent sickness and many other afflictions that are

the constant attendants of both.’ He protested his being all along

wholly unconscious of any guilt. He was then ordered to be liberated,

without the security for reappearance which was customary in such

cases.[50]

[Sidenote: 1691. JAN.]