Scotland is sometimes alluded to in the south, with an imperfect kind of

approbation, as an excessively strait-laced country; but if our

neighbours were to consult the records of the General Assembly

[Sidenote: 1691.] on the subject, they would find it powerfully defended

from all such charges. An act was passed by that venerable body for a

national fast to be held on the second Thursday of this month, and the

reasons stated for the pious observance are certainly of a kind to leave

the most free-living Englishman but little room for reproach. It is

said: ‘There hath been a great neglect of the worship of God in public,

but especially in families and in secret. The wonted care of sanctifying

the Lord’s day is gone ... cities full of violence ... so that blood

touched blood. Yea, Sodom’s sins have abounded amongst us, pride,

fulness of blood, idleness, vanities of apparel, and shameful

sensuality.’ Even now, it is said, ‘few are turned to the Lord; the

wicked go on doing wickedly, and there is found among us to this day

shameful ingratitude for our mercies [and] horrid impenitency under our

sins.... There is a great contempt of the gospel, and great barrenness

under it ... great want of piety towards God and love towards man, with

a woful selfishness, every one seeking their own things, few the public

good or ane other’s welfare.’

The document concludes with one noble stroke of, shall we say,

self-portraiture?—‘the most part more ready to censure the sins of

others, than to repent of their own.’[51]

[Sidenote: JAN. 20.]

John Adair, mathematician, had been proceeding for some years, under

government patronage and pay, in his task of constructing maps of the

counties of Scotland, ‘expressing therein the seats or houses of the

nobility and gentry, the most considerable rivers, waters, lochs, bays,

firths, roads, woods, mountains, royal burghs, and other considerable

towns of each shire’—a work ‘honourable, useful, and necessary for

navigation.’ He was now hindered in his task, as he himself expressed

the matter, ‘by the envy, malice, and oppression of Sir Robert Sibbald,

Doctor of Medicine, who, upon pretence of a private paction and

contract, extorted through the power he pretended, took the petitioner

[Adair] bound not to survey any shire or pairt thereof without Sir

Robert his special advice and consent, and that he should not give

copies of these maps to any other person without Sir Robert his special

permission, under a severe penalty.’

The Lords of the Privy Council, on Adair’s petition, were at no loss to

see how unjust the Jacobite Sir Robert’s proceedings [Sidenote: 1691.]

were towards the nation, which, by parliamentary grant, was paying Adair

for his work. They therefore ordered the hydrographer to go on with his

work, notwithstanding Sibbald’s opposition, ordering the latter to

deliver up the contract on which it rested.

Sir Robert Sibbald afterwards reclaimed against the award of the Privy

Council, setting forth a great array of rights connected with the case;

but he spoke from the wrong side of the hedge, and his claim was

refused.[52]

[Sidenote: JAN. 21.]

Captain Burnet of Barns was now recruiting in Edinburgh for a regiment

in Holland. As the service was so much to be approved of, it was the

less important to be scrupulous about the means of promoting it. A

fatherless boy of fourteen, named George Miller, was taken up to

Burnet’s chamber, and there induced to accept a piece of money of the

value of fourteen shillings Scots, which made him a soldier in the

captain’s regiment. He seems to have immediately expressed unwillingness

to be a soldier; but the captain caused him instantly to be dragged to

the Canongate Tolbooth, and there kept in confinement. Some friend put

in a petition for him to the Privy Council, setting forth that he had

been trepanned, and ‘had no inclination to be a soldier, but to follow

his learning, and thereafter other virtuous employments for his

subsistence.’ It was even hinted that the boy’s father, Robert Miller,

apothecary in Edinburgh, had been ‘a great sufferer in the late times.’

All was in vain; two persons having given evidence that the boy had

‘taken on willingly’ with Captain Burnet, the Council ordained him to be

delivered to that gentleman, ‘that he may go alongst with him to Holland

in the said service.’

Burnet’s style of recruiting was by no means a singularity. A few days

after the above date, as John Brangen, servant to Mr John Sleigh,

merchant in Haddington, was going on a message to a writer’s chamber in

Edinburgh with his master’s cloak over his arm, he was seized by

Sergeant Douglas, of Douglas of Kelhead’s company, carried to the

Canongate Tolbooth, and thence hurried like a malefactor on board a ship

in the road of Leith bound for Flanders. This man, though called

servant, was properly clerk and shopman to his master, who accordingly

felt deeply aggrieved by his abduction. At the same time, Christian

Wauchope [Sidenote: 1691.] petitioned for the release of her husband,

William Murdoch, who had been ‘innocently seized’ and carried off eight

days ago by Captain Douglas’s men, ‘albeit he had never made any paction

with them;’ ‘whereby the petitioner and her poor children will be

utterly starved.’ Even the town-piper of Musselburgh, James Waugh by

name, while playing at the head of the troop, and thinking of no harm,

had been carried off for a soldier. ‘If it was true,’ said his masters

the magistrates, ‘that he had taken money from the officers, it must

have been through the ignorance and inadvertency of the poor man,

thinking it was given him for his playing as a piper.’ He had, they

continued, been ‘injuriously used in the affair by sinistrous designs

and contrair to that liberty and freedom which all peaceable subjects

ought to enjoy under the protection of authority.’

The government seems to have felt so far the necessity of acting up to

their professions as the destroyers of tyranny that, in these and a few

other cases, they ordered the liberation of the prisoners.

A few months later, occurred a private case in which something very like

manstealing was committed by one of the parties in connection with this

unscrupulous recruiting system.

[Sidenote: AUG.]

Robert Wilson, son of Andrew Wilson in Kelso, was servant to Mrs

Clerkson, a widow, at Damhead (near Edinburgh?). On finding that his

mistress was about to take a second husband, he raised a scandal against

her, in which his own moral character was concerned, and she immediately

appealed for redress to Master David Williamson, minister of St

Cuthbert’s parish. Two elders came to inquire into the matter—Wilson

evaded them, and could not be found. Then she applied for, and obtained

a warrant from a justice of peace to apprehend Wilson, who now took to

hiding. Four friends of hers, James Bruntain, farmer at Craig Lockhart;

David Rainie, brewer in Portsburgh; James Porteous, gardener at

Saughton; and James Borthwick, weaver at Burrowmuirhead, accompanied by

George Macfarlane, one of the town-officers of Edinburgh, came in search

of Wilson, and finding him sleeping in the house of William Bell, smith

in Merchiston, dragged him from bed, and in no gentle manner hurried him

off to Macfarlane’s house, where they kept him _tanquam in privato

carcere_ for twenty-four hours. On his pleading for permission to go to

the door for but a minute, swords were drawn, and he was threatened with

instant death, if he offered to stir. Professedly, they were to take him

before the justices; but a better conclusion to the adventure occurred

to them. Captain Hepburn, an officer [Sidenote: 1691.] about to sail

with his corps to Holland, was introduced to the terror-stricken lad,

who readily agreed to enlist with him, and accepted a dollar as earnest.

Before he quitted the care of his captors, he signed a paper owning the

guilt of raising scandal against his late mistress.

The father of the young man complained before the Privy Council of the

outrage committed on his son, as an open and manifest riot and

oppression, for which a severe punishment ought to be inflicted. He

himself had been ‘bereaved of a son whom he looked upon to be a comfort,

support, and relief to him in his old age.’ On the other hand, the

persons complained of justified their acts as legal and warrantable. The

Lords decided that Robert Wilson had ‘unjustly been kept under

restraint, and violence done to him;’ but the reparation they allowed

was very miserable—a hundred merks to the aggrieved father.[53]

[Sidenote: JAN. 29.]

Nothing, in the former state of the country, is more remarkable in

contrast with the present, than the miserable poverty of the national

exchequer. The meagreness and uncertainty of the finances required for

any public purpose prior to those happy times when a corrupt House of

Commons was ready to vote whatever the minister wanted—the difficulties

consequently attendant upon all administrative movements—it is

impossible for the reader to imagine without going into an infinity of

details. At a time, of course, when Scotland had a revenue of only a

hundred thousand pounds a year, and yet a considerable body of troops to

keep up for the suppression of a discontented portion of the people, the

troubles arising from the lack of money were beyond description. The

most trivial furnishings for the troops and garrisons remained long

unpaid, and became matter of consideration for the Lords of the Privy

Council. A town where a regiment had lain, was usually left in a state

of desolation from unpaid debt, and had to make known its misery in the

same quarter with but small chance of redress; and scores of

state-prisoners in Edinburgh, Blackness, Stirling, and the Bass, were

starving for want of the common necessaries of life.

[Sidenote: 1690.]

On the 18th of April 1690, the inhabitants of Kirkcaldy, Dysart, and

Pathhead complained to the Privy Council, that for ten weeks of this

year they had had Colonel Cunningham’s regiment quartered amongst them.

The soldiers, ‘having nothing [Sidenote: 1690.] to maintain themselves,

were maintained and furnished in meat and drink, besides all other

necessars, by the petitioners,’ who, ‘being for the most part poor and

mean tradesmen, seamen, and workmen, besides many indigent widows and

orphans,’ were thus ‘reduced to that extreme necessity as to sell and

dispose of their household plenishing, after their own bread and

anything else they had was consumed for maintenance of the soldiers.’

They regarded the regiment as in their debt to the extent of £336, 6_s._

sterling, of which sum they craved payment, ‘that they might not be

utterly ruined, and they and their families perish for want of bread.’

Payment was ordered, but when, or whether at all, it was paid, we cannot

tell.

Another case of this nature, going far to justify the jokes indulged in

by the English regarding the contemporary poverty of Scotland, occurs in

the ensuing August, when the Council took up the case of James Wilkie of

Portsburgh (a suburb of Edinburgh), complaining that the soldiers of

three regiments lately quartered there, had gone away indebted to him

for meat and drink to the extent of seventeen pounds Scots (£1, 8_s._

4_d._). ‘Seeing the petitioner is very mean and poor, and not in a

capacity to want that small sum, having nothing to live by but the trust

of selling a tree of ale, his credit would be utterly broke for want

thereof, unless the Council provide a remeed.’ The Council ordained that

the commanders of the regiments should see the petitioner satisfied by

their soldiers.

In January 1691, the Council is found meditating on means for the

satisfaction of James Hamilton, innkeeper, Leith, who had sent in

accounts against officers of Colonel Cunningham’s regiment for board and

lodging, amounting to such sums as eight pounds each. At the same time,

it had to treat regarding shoemakers’ accounts owing by the same

officers, to the amount of two and three pounds each. Even Ensign

Houston’s hotel-bill for ‘thretteen shillings’ is gravely deliberated

on. And all these little bills were duly recommended to the lords of

their majesties’ treasury, in hopes they might be paid out of ‘the three

months’ cess and hearth money.’[54]

That such small bills, however, might infer a considerable amount of

entertainment, would appear by no means unlikely, if we could believe a

statement of Mr Burt, that General Mackay himself was accustomed, during

his commandership in Scotland, [Sidenote: 1690.] to dine at

public-houses, ‘where he was served with great variety, and paid only

two shillings and sixpence Scots—that is, twopence half-penny—for his

ordinary.’[55] The fact has been doubted; but I can state as certain,

that George Watson, the founder of the hospital in Edinburgh, when a

young man residing in Leith, about 1680, used to dine at a tavern for

fourpence. Even in the middle of the eighteenth century, Mr Colquhoun

Grant, writer to the Signet, and a friend who associated with him, dined

every day in a tavern in the Lawnmarket, for ‘twa groats the piece,’ as

they used to express it.

Amongst other claims on which the Council had to deliberate, was a very

pitiable one from Mr David Muir, surgeon at Stirling. When General

Mackay retreated to that town from ‘the ruffle at Killiecrankie,’[56]

Muir had taken charge of the sick and wounded of the government troops,

‘there being none of their own chirurgeons present,’ He ‘did several

times send to Edinburgh for droggs and other necessaries,’ and was

‘necessitat to buy a considerable quantity of claret wine for bathing

and fomenting of their wounds.’ His professional efforts had been

successful; but as yet—after the lapse of eighteen months—he had

received no remuneration; neither had he been paid for the articles he

had purchased for the men; at the same time, the salary due to him, of

ten pounds a year as chirurgeon of the castle, was now more than two

years in arrear. It was the greater hardship, as those who had furnished

the drugs and other articles were pressing him for the debt, ‘for which

he is like to be pursued.’ Moreover, he protested, as something

necessary to support a claim of debt against the state, that ‘he has

been always for advancing of his majesty’s interest, and well affected

to their majesties’ government.’

The Council, in this case too, could only recommend the accounts to the

lords of the treasury.[57]

[Sidenote: 1691. MAR. 8.]

Sinclair of Mey, and a friend of his named James Sinclair, writer in

Edinburgh, were lodging in the house of John Brown, vintner, in the

Kirkgate of Leith, when, at a late hour, the Master of Tarbat and Ensign

Andrew Mowat came to join the party. The Master, who was eldest son of

the Viscount Tarbat, a statesman of no mean note, was nearly related to

Sinclair of Mey. There was no harm meant by any one that night in the

hostelry of John Brown; but before midnight, the floor was reddened with

slaughter.

The Master and his friend Mowat, who are described on the occasion as

excited by liquor, but not beyond self-control, were sitting in the hall

drinking a little ale, while beds were getting ready for them. A girl

named Jean Thomson, who had brought the ale, was asked by the Master to

sit down beside him, but escaped to her own room, and bolted herself in.

He, running in pursuit of her, blunderingly went into a room occupied by

a Frenchman named George Poiret, who was quietly sleeping there. An

altercation took place between Poiret and the Master, and Mowat, hearing

the noise, came to see what was the matter. The Frenchman had drawn his

sword, which the two gentlemen wrenched out of his hand. A servant of

the house, named Christian Erskine, had now also arrived at the scene of

strife, besides a gentleman who was not afterwards identified. At the

woman’s urgent request, Mowat took away the Master and the other

gentleman, the latter carrying the Frenchman’s sword. There might have

now been an end to this little brawl, if the Master had not deemed it

his duty to go back to the Frenchman’s room to beg his pardon. The

Frenchman, finding a new disturbance at his door, which he had bolted,

seems to have lost patience. He knocked on the ceiling of his room with

the fire-tongs, to awaken two brothers, Elias Poiret, styled Le Sieur de

la Roche, and Isaac Poiret, who were sleeping there, and to bring them

to his assistance.

These two gentlemen presently came down armed with swords and pistols,

and spoke to their defenceless and excited brother at [Sidenote: 1691.]

his door. Presently there was a hostile collision between them and the

Master and Mowat in the hall. Jean Thomson roused her master to come and

interfere for the preservation of the peace; but he came too late. The

Master and Mowat were not seen making any assault; but a shot was heard,

and, in a few minutes, it was found that the Sieur de la Roche lay dead

with a swordwound through his body, while Isaac had one of his fingers

nearly cut off. A servant now brought the guard, by whom Mowat was soon

after discovered hiding under an outer stair, with a bent sword in his

hand, bloody from point to hilt, his hand wounded, and the sleeves of

his coat also stained with blood. On being brought where the dead man

lay, he viewed the body without apparent emotion, merely remarking he

wondered who had done it.

The Master, Mowat, and James Sinclair, writer, were tried for the murder

of Elias Poiret; but the jury found none of the imputed crimes proven.

The whole affair can, indeed, only be regarded as an unfortunate scuffle

arising from intemperance, and in which sudden anger caused weapons to

be used where a few gentle and reasonable words might have quickly

re-established peace and good-fellowship.[59]

The three Frenchmen concerned in this affair were Protestant refugees,

serving in the king’s Scottish guards. The Master of Tarbat in due time

succeeded his father as Earl of Cromarty, and survived the slaughter of

Poiret forty years. He was the father of the third and last Earl of

Cromarty, so nearly brought to Tower-hill in 1746, for his concern in

the rebellion of the preceding year, and who on that account lost the

family titles and estates.

[Sidenote: APR.]

Down to this time, it was still customary for gentlemen to go armed with

walking-swords. On the borders of the Highlands, dirks and pistols seem

to have not unfrequently been added. Accordingly, when a quarrel

happened, bloodshed was very likely to take place. At this time we have

the particulars of such a quarrel, serving to mark strongly the

improvements effected by modern civilisation.

Some time in August 1690, a young man named William Edmondstone,

described as apprentice to Charles Row, writer to the Signet, having

occasion to travel to Alloa, called on his master’s brother, William Row

of Inverallan in passing, and had an interview [Sidenote: 1691.] with

him at a public-house in the hamlet of Bridge of Allan. According to a

statement from him, not proved, but which it is almost necessary to

believe in order to account for subsequent events, Inverallan treated

him kindly to his face, but broke out upon him afterwards to a friend,

using the words rascal and knave, and other offensive expressions. The

same unproved statement goes on to relate how Edmondstone and two

friends of his, named Stewart and Mitchell, went afterwards to inquire

into Inverallan’s reasons for such conduct, and were violently attacked

by him with a sword, and two of them wounded.

The proved counter-statement of Inverallan is to the effect that

Edmondstone, Stewart, and Mitchell tried, on the 21st of April 1691, to

waylay him, with murderous intent, as he was passing between Dumblane

and his lands near Stirling. Having by chance evaded them, he was in a

public-house at the Bridge of Allan, when his three enemies unexpectedly

came in, armed as they were with swords, dirks, and pistols, and began

to use despiteful expressions towards him. ‘He being all alone, and

having no arms but his ordinary walking-sword, did rise up in a

peaceable manner, of design to have retired and gone home to his own

house.’ As he was going out at the door, William Edmondstone insolently

called to him to come and fight him, a challenge which he disregarded.

They then followed him out, and commenced an assault upon him with their

swords, Mitchell, moreover, snapping a pistol at him, and afterwards

beating him over the head with the but-end. He was barely able to

protect his life with his sword, till some women came, and drew away the

assailants.

A few days after, the same persons came with seven or eight other

‘godless and graceless persons’ to the lands of Inverallan, proclaiming

their design to burn and destroy the tenants’ houses and take the

laird’s life, and to all appearance would have effected their purpose,

but for the protection of a military party from Stirling.

For these violences, Edmondstone and Mitchell were fined in five hundred

merks, and obliged to give large caution for their keeping the

peace.[60]

[Sidenote: JUNE 25.]

Upon petition, Sir James Don of Newton, knight-baronet, with his lady

and her niece, and a groom and footman, were permitted [Sidenote: 1691.]

‘to travel with their horses and arms from Scotland to Scairsburgh Wells

in England, and to return again, without trouble or molestation, they

always behaving themselves as becometh.’[61]

This is but a single example of the difficulties attending personal

movements in Scotland for some time after the Revolution. Owing to the

fears for conspiracy, the government allowed no persons of eminence to

travel to any considerable distance without formal permission.

[Sidenote: JULY 8.]

An act, passed this day in the Convention of Royal Burghs for a

commission to visit the burghs as to their trade, exempted Kirkwall,

Wick, Inverary, and Rothesay, _on account of the difficulty of access to

these places_!

The records of this ancient court present many curious details. A

tax-roll of July 1692, adjusting the proportions of the burghs in making

up each £100 Scots of their annual expenditure on public objects,

reveals to us the comparative populousness and wealth of the principal

Scottish towns at that time. For Edinburgh, it is nearly a third of the

whole, £32, 6_s._ 8_d._; for Glasgow, less than a half of Edinburgh,

£15; Perth, £3; Dundee, £4, 13_s._ 4_d._; Aberdeen, £6; Stirling, £1,

8_s._; Linlithgow, £1, 6_s._; Kirkcaldy, £2, 8_s._; Montrose, £2;

Dumfries, £1, 18_s._ 4_d._; Inverness, £1, 10_s._; Ayr, £1, 1_s._ 4_d._;

Haddington, £1, 12_s._

All the rest pay something less than one pound. In 1694, Inverary is

found petitioning for ‘ease’ from the four shillings Scots imposed upon

them in the tax-roll, as ‘they are not in a condition by their poverty

and want of trade to pay any pairt thereof.’ The annual outlay of the

Convention was at this time about £6000 Scots. Hence the total impost on

Inverary would be £240, or twenty pounds sterling. For the ‘ease’ of

this primitive little Highland burgh, its proportion was reduced to a

fourth.

The burghs used to have very curious arrangements amongst themselves:

thus, the statute Ell was kept in Edinburgh; Linlithgow had charge of

the standard Firlot; Lanark of the Stoneweight; while the regulation

_Pint-stoup_ was confided to Stirling. A special measure for coal, for

service in the customs, was the _Chalder of Culross_. The burgh of

Peebles had, from old time, the privilege of seizing ‘all light weights,

short ellwands, and [Sidenote: 1691.] other insufficient goods, in all

the fairs and mercats within the shire of Teviotdale.’ They complained,

in 1696, of the Earl of Traquair having interfered with their rights,

and a committee was appointed to deal with his lordship on the

subject.[62]

To these notices it may be added that the northern burgh of Dingwall,

which is now a handsome thriving town, was reduced to so great poverty

in 1704 as not to be able to send a commissioner to the Convention.

‘There was two shillings Scots of the ten pounds then divided amongst

the burghs, added to the shilling we used formerly to be in the taxt

roll [that is, in addition to the one shilling Scots we formerly used to

pay on every hundred pounds Scots raised for general purposes, we had to

pay two shillings Scots of the new taxation of ten pounds then assessed

upon the burghs], the stenting whereof was so heavy upon the

inhabitants, that a great many of them have deserted the town, which is

almost turned desolate, as is weel known to all our neighbours; and

there is hardly anything to be seen but the ruins of old houses, and the

few inhabitants that are left, having now no manner of trade, live only

by labouring the neighbouring lands, and our inhabitants are still daily

deserting us.’ Such was the account the town gave of itself in a

petition to the Convention of Burghs in 1724.[63]

Though Dingwall is only twenty-one and a half miles to the northward of

Inverness, so little travelling was there in those days, that scarcely

anything was known by the one place regarding the other. It is at this

day a subject of jocose allusion at Inverness, that they at one time

sent a deputation to _see_ Dingwall, and inquire about it, as a person

in comfortable circumstances might send to ask after a poor person in a

neighbouring alley. Such a proceeding actually took place in 1733, and

the report brought back was to the effect, that Dingwall had no trade,

though ‘there were one or two inclined to carry on trade if they had a

harbour;’ that the place had _no prison_; and for want of a bridge

across an adjacent lake, the people were kept from both kirk and

market.[64]

[Sidenote: JULY 23.]

Licence was granted by the Privy Council to Dr Andrew Brown to print,

and have sole right of printing, a treatise he had written, entitled _A

Vindicatorie Schedule about the New Cure of Fevers_.[65]

[Sidenote: 1691.]

This Dr Andrew Brown, commonly called _Dolphington_, from his estate in

Lanarkshire, was an Edinburgh physician, eminent in practice, and

additionally notable for the effort he made in the above-mentioned work

to introduce Sydenham’s treatment of fevers—that is, to use antimonial

emetics in the first stage of the disorder. ‘This book and its author’s

energetic advocacy of its principles by his other writings and by his

practice, gave rise to a fierce controversy, and in the library of the

Edinburgh College of Physicians there is a stout shabby little volume of

pamphlets on both sides—“Replies” and “Short Answers,” and

“Refutations,” and “Surveys,” and “Looking-glasses,” “Defences,”

“Letters,” “Epilogues,” &c., lively and furious once, but now resting as

quietly together as their authors are in the Old Greyfriars’ Churchyard,

having long ceased from troubling. There is much curious, rude,

hard-headed, bad-Englished stuff in them, with their wretched paper and

print, and general ugliness; much also to make us thankful that we are

in our own _now_, not their _then_. Such tearing away, with strenuous

logic and good learning, at mere clouds and shadows, with occasional

lucid intervals of sense, observation, and wit!’[66]

Dolphington states in his book that he visited Dr Sydenham in London, to

study his system under him, in 1687, and presently after returning to

Edinburgh, introduced the practice concerning fevers, with such success,

that of many cases none but one had remained uncured.

Some idea of an amateur unlicensed medical practice at this time may be

obtained from a small book which had a great circulation in Scotland in

the early part of the eighteenth century. It used to be commonly called

_Tippermallochs Receipts_, being the production of ‘the Famous John

Moncrieff of Tippermalloch’ in Strathearn, ‘a worthy and ingenious

gentleman,’ as the preface describes him, whose ‘extraordinary skill in

physic and successful and beneficial practice therein’ were so well

known, ‘that few readers, in this country at least, can be supposed

ignorant thereof.’[67]

When a modern man glances over the pages of this dusky [Sidenote: 1691.]

ill-printed little volume, he is at a loss to believe that it ever could

have been the medical _vade-mecum_ of respectable families, as we are

assured it was. It has a classification of diseases under the parts of

the human system, the head, the breast, the stomach, &c., presenting

under each a mere list of cures, with scarcely ever a remark on special

conditions, or even a tolerable indication of the quantity of any

medicine to be used. The therapeutics of Tippermalloch include simples

which are now never heard of in medicine, and may be divided into things

capable of affecting the human system, and things of purely imaginary

efficacy, a large portion of both kinds being articles of such a

disgusting character as could not but have doubled the pain and hardship

of all ailments in which they were exhibited. For cold distemper of the

brain, for instance, we have snails, bruised in their shells, to be

applied to the forehead; and for pestilential fever, a cataplasm of the

same stuff to be laid on the soles of the feet. Paralysis calls for the

parts being anointed with ‘convenient ointments’ of (among other things)

earthworms. For decay of the hair, mortals are enjoined to ‘make a lee

of the burnt ashes of dove’s dung, and wash the head;’ but ‘ashes of

little frogs’ will do as well. Yellow hair, formerly a desired

peculiarity, was to be secured by a wash composed of the ashes of the

ivy-tree, and a fair complexion by ‘the distilled water of snails.’ To

make the whole face well coloured, you are coolly recommended to apply

to it ‘the liver of a sheep fresh and hot.’ ‘Burn the whole skin of a

hare with the ears and nails: the powder thereof, being given hot,

cureth the lethargy perfectly.’ ‘Powder of a man’s bones burnt, chiefly

of the skull that is found in the earth, cureth the epilepsy: the bones

of a man cure a man; the bones of a woman cure a woman.’ The excreta of

various animals figure largely in Tippermalloch’s pharmacopœia, even to

a bath of a certain kind for iliac passion: ‘this,’ says he,

‘marvellously expelleth wind.’ It is impossible, however, to give any

adequate idea of the horrible things adverted to by the sage Moncrieff,

either in respect of diseases or their cures. All I will say further on

this matter is, that if there be any one who thinks modern delicacy a

bad exchange for the plain-spokenness of our forefathers, let him glance

at the pages of John Moncrieff of Tippermalloch, and a change of opinion

is certain.

In the department of purely illusive recipes, we have for wakefulness or

_coma_, ‘living creatures applied to the head to dissolve the humour;’

for mania, amulets to be worn about the neck; and a girdle of wolf’s

skin certified as a complete preventive of [Sidenote: 1691.] epilepsy.

We are told that ‘ants’ eggs mixed with the juice of an onion, dropped

into the ear, do cure the oldest deafness,’ and that ‘the blood of a

wild goat given to ten drops of carduus-water doth powerfully discuss

the pleurisy.’ It is indicated under measles, that ‘many keep an ewe or

wedder in their chamber or on the bed, because these creatures are

easily infected, and draw the venom to themselves, by which means some

ease may happen to the sick person.’ In like manner, for colic a live

duck, frog, or sucking-dog applied to the part, ‘draweth all the evil to

itself, and dieth.’ The twenty-first article recommended for bleeding at

the nose is hare’s hair and vinegar stuffed in; ‘I myself know this to

be the best of anything known.’ He is equally sure that the flowing

blood of a wound may be repelled by the blood of a cow put into the

wound, or by carrying a jasper in the hand; while for a depraved

appetite nothing is required but the stone _ætites_ bound to the arm.

_Sed jam satis._

In _Analecta Scotica_ is to be found a dream about battles and

ambassadors by Sir J. Moncrieff of Tippermalloch, who at his death in

1714, when eighty-six years of age, believed it was just about to be

fulfilled. The writer, who signs himself William Moncrieff, and dates

from Perth, says of Tippermalloch: ‘The gentleman was, by all who knew

him, esteemed to be eminently pious. He spent much of his time in

reading the Scripture—his delight was in the law of the Lord. The

character of the blessed man did belong to him, for in that he did

meditate day and night, and his conversation was suitable thereto—his

leaf did not wither—he was fat and flourishing in his old age.’[68]

[Sidenote: AUG. 11.]

Dame Mary Norvill, widow of Sir David Falconer, president of the Court

of Session, and now wife of John Home of Ninewells, was obliged to

petition the Privy Council for maintenance to her children by her first

husband, their uncle, the Laird of Glenfarquhar, having failed to make

any right arrangement in their behalf. From what the lords ordained, we

get an idea of the sums then considered as proper allowances for the

support and education of a set of children of good fortune. David, the

eldest son, ten years of age, heir to his father’s estate of 12,565

merks (about £698 sterling) per annum, over and above the widow’s

jointure, was to be allowed ‘for bed and board, clothing, and other

necessaries, and for educating him at schools and colleges as becomes

[Sidenote: 1691.] his quality, with a pedagogue and a boy to attend him,

the sum of a thousand merks yearly (£55, 11_s._ 1⅓_d._ sterling).’ To

Mistress Margaret, twelve and a half years old, whose portion is twelve

thousand merks, they assigned an aliment for ‘bed and board, clothing,

and other necessaries, and for her education at schools and otherwise as

becomes her quality,’ five hundred merks per annum (£27, 15_s._ 6½_d._

sterling). Mistress Mary, the second daughter, eleven years of age, with

a portion of ten thousand merks, was allowed for ‘aliment and education’

four hundred and fifty merks. For Alexander, the second son, nine years

of age, with a provision of fifteen thousand merks, there was allowed,

annually, six hundred merks. Mistress Katherine, the third daughter,

eight years of age, and Mistress Elizabeth, seven years of age, with

portions of eight thousand merks each, were ordained each an annual

allowance of three hundred and sixty merks. George, the third son, six

years old, with a provision of ten thousand merks, was to have four

hundred merks per annum. These payments to be made to John Home and his

lady, while the children should dwell with them.[69]

‘Mistress Katherine’ became the wife of Mr Home’s son Joseph, and in

1711 gave birth to the celebrated philosopher, David Hume. Her brother

succeeded a collateral relative as Lord Falconer of Halkerton, and was

the lineal ancestor of the present Earl of Kintore. It is rather

remarkable that the great philosopher’s connection with nobility has

been in a manner overlooked by his biographers.

That the sums paid for the young Falconers, mean as they now appear,

were in accordance with the ideas of the age, appears from other

examples. Of these, two may be adduced:

The Laird of Langton, ‘who had gotten himself served tutor-of-law’ to

two young persons named Cockburn, fell about this time into ‘ill

circumstances.’ There then survived but one of his wards—a girl named

Ann Cockburn—and it appeared proper to her uncle, Lord Crossrig, that

she should not be allowed to stay with a broken man. He accordingly,

though with some difficulty, and at some expense, got the tutory

transferred to himself. ‘When Ann Cockburn,’ he says, ‘came to my house,

I did within a short time put her to Mrs Shiens, mistress of manners,

where she was, as I remember, about two years, at £5 sterling in the

quarter, besides presents. Thereafter she [Sidenote: 1691.] stayed with

me some years, and then she was boarded with the Lady Harvieston, then

after with Wallyford, where she still is, at £3 sterling per

quarter.’[70]

In 1700, the Laird of Kilravock, in Nairnshire, paid an account to

Elizabeth Straiton, Edinburgh, for a quarter’s education to his daughter

Margaret Rose; including, for board, £60; dancing, £14, 10_s._; ‘singing

and playing and virginalls,’ £11, 12_s._; writing, £6; ‘satin seame,’

£6; a set of wax-fruits, £6; and a ‘looking-glass that she broke,’ £4,

16_s._; all Scots money.[71]

It thus appears that both Mrs Shiens and Mrs Straiton charged only £5

sterling per quarter for a young lady’s board.

The subject is further illustrated by the provision made by the Privy

Council, in March 1695, for the widowed Viscountess of Arbuthnot (Anne,

daughter of the Earl of Sutherland), who had been left with seven

children all under age, and whose husband’s testament had been

‘reduced.’ In her petition, the viscountess represented that the estate

was twenty-four thousand merks per annum (£1333 sterling). ‘My lord,

being now eight years of age, has a governor and a servant; her two

eldest daughters, the one being eleven, and the other ten years of age,

and capable of all manner of schooling, they must have at least one

servant; as for the youngest son and three youngest daughters, they are

yet within the years of seven, so each of them must have a woman to wait

upon them.’ Lady Arbuthnot was provided with a jointure of twenty-five

chalders of victual; and as her jointure-house was ruinous, she desired

leave to occupy the family mansion of Arbuthnot House, which her son was

not himself of an age to possess.

The Lords, having inquired into and considered the relative

circumstances, ordained that two thousand pounds Scots (£166, 13_s._

4_d._ sterling) should be paid to Lady Arbuthnot out of the estate for

the maintenance of her children, including the young lord.

The lady soon after dying, the earl her father came in her place as

keeper of the children at the same allowance.[72]

[Sidenote: DEC.]

The Quakers residing at Glasgow gave in to the Privy Council a

representation of the treatment they received at the hands of their

neighbours. It was set forth, that the severe dealings with [Sidenote:

1691.] the consciences of men under the late government had brought

about a revolution, and some very tragical doings. Now, when at last the

people had wrestled out from beneath their grievances, ‘it was matter of

surprise that those who had complained most thereupon should now be

found acting the parts of their own persecutors against the petitioners

[the Quakers].’ It were too tedious to detail ‘what they have suffered

since the change of the government, through all parts of the nation, by

beating, stoning, and other abuses,’ In Glasgow, however, ‘their usage

had been liker French dragoons’ usage, and furious rabbling, than

anything that dare own the title of Christianity.’ Even there they would

have endured in silence ‘the beating, stoning, dragging, and the like

which they received from the rabble,’ were it not that magistrates

connived at and homologated these persecutions, and their continued

silence might seem to justify such doings. They then proceeded to

narrate that, on the 12th of November, ‘being met together in their

hired house for no other end under heaven than to wait upon and worship

their God,’ a company of Presbyterian church elders, ‘attended with the

rude rabble of the town, haled them to James Sloss, bailie, who, for no

other cause than their said meeting, dragged them to prison, where some

of them were kept the space of eight days.’ During that time, undoubted

bail was offered for them, but refused, ‘unless they should give it

under their hand [that] they should never meet again there.’ At the same

time, their meeting-house had been plundered, and even yet the

restoration of their seats was refused. ‘This using of men that are free

lieges would, in the case of others, be thought a very great riot,’ &c.

The feeling of the supreme administrative body in Scotland on this set

of occurrences, is chiefly marked by what they did not do. They

recommended to the Glasgow magistrates that, if any forms had been taken

away from the Quakers, they should be given back![73]

There were no bounds to the horror with which sincere Presbyterians

regarded Quakerism in those days. Even in their limited capacity as

disowners of all church-politics, they were thought to be most

unchristian. Patrick Walker gravely relates an anecdote of the

seer-preacher, Peden, which powerfully proves this feeling. This person,

being in Ireland, was indebted one night to a Quaker for lodging.

Accompanying his host to the meeting, Peden [Sidenote: 1691.] observed a

raven come down from the ceiling, and perch itself, to appearance, on a

particular person’s head, who presently began to speak with great

vehemence. From one man’s head, the appearance passed to another’s, and

thence to a third. Peden told the man: ‘I always thought there was

devilry amongst you, but I never thought he appeared visibly to you; but

now I see it.’ The incident led to the conversion of the Quaker unto

orthodox Christianity.[74]

On the 5th of April 1694, there was a petition to the Privy Council from

a man named James Macrae, professing to be a Quaker, setting forth that

he had been pressed as a soldier, but could not fight, as it was

contrary to his principles and conscience; wherefore, if carried to the

wars, he could only be miserable in himself, while useless to others. He

was ordered to be liberated, provided he should leave a substitute in

his place.[75]

It would have been interesting to see a contemporary Glasgow opinion on

this case.

[Sidenote: 1692.]

Irregularities of the affections were not now punished with the furious

severity which, in the reign of Charles I., ordained beheading to a

tailor in Currie for wedding his _first wife’s half-brother’s

daughter_.[76] But they were still visited with penalties much beyond

what would now be thought fitting. For example, a woman of evil repute,

named Margaret Paterson, having drawn aside from virtue two very young

men, James and David Kennedy, sons of a late minister of the Trinity

College Church, was adjudged to stand an hour in the jougs at the Tron,

and then to be scourged from the Castle Hill to the Netherbow, after

which a life of exile in the plantations was her portion. The two young

men, having been bailed by their uncle, under assurance for five

thousand merks, the entire amount of their patrimony, broke their bail

rather than stand trial with their associate in guilt. There was

afterwards a petition from the uncle setting forth the hardship of the

case, and this was replied to with a recommendation from the lords of

Justiciary to the lords of the treasury for a modification of the

penalty, ‘if their lordships shall think fit.’ In the case of Alison

Beaton, where the co-relative offender was a man who had married her

mother’s sister, the poor woman was condemned to be scourged in like

manner with [Sidenote: 1692.] Paterson, and then transported to the

plantations. It was a superstitious feeling which dictated such

penalties for this class of offences. The true aim of jurisprudence, to

repress disorders which directly affect the interests of others, and

these alone, was yet far from being understood.

In January 1694, there came before the notice of the Court of Justiciary

in Edinburgh, a case of curiously complicated wickedness. Daniel

Nicolson, writer, and a widow named Mrs Pringle, had long carried on an

infamous connection, with little effort at concealment. Out of a bad

spirit towards the unoffending Jean Lands, his wife, Nicolson and

Pringle, or one or other of them, caused to be forged a receipt as from

her to Mr John Elliot, doctor of medicine, for some poison, designing to

raise a charge against her and a sister of hers, of an attempt upon her

husband’s life. The alleged facts were proved to the satisfaction of a

jury, and the court, deeming the adultery aggravated by the forgery,

adjudged the guilty pair to suffer in the Grassmarket—Nicolson by

hanging, and Pringle by ‘having her head severed from her body.’

There were, however, curious discriminations in the judgments of the

Justiciary Court. A Captain Douglas, of Sir William Douglas’s regiment,

assisted by another officer and a corporal of the corps, was found

guilty of a shocking assault upon a serving-maid in Glasgow, in 1697. A

meaner man, or an equally important man opposed to the new government,

would have, beyond a doubt, suffered the last penalty for this offence;

Captain Douglas, being a gentleman, and one engaged in the king’s

service, escaped with a fine of three hundred merks.[77]

[Sidenote: FEB. 13.]

King William felt impatient at the unsubmissiveness of the Jacobite

clans, chiefly Macdonalds of Glengarry, Keppoch, and Glencoe, the Grants

of Glenmoriston, and the Camerons of Locheil, because it caused troops

to be kept in Scotland, which he much wanted for his army in Flanders.

His Scottish ministers, and particularly Sir John Dalrymple, Master of

Stair, the Secretary of State, carried towards those clans feelings of

constantly growing irritation, as latterly the principal obstacle to a

settlement of the country under the new system of things. At length, in

August 1691, the king issued an indemnity, promising pardon to all that

had been in arms against him [Sidenote: 1692.] before the 1st of June

last, provided they should come in any time before the 1st of January

next year, and swear and sign the oath of allegiance.

The letters of Sir John Dalrymple from the court at London during the

remainder of the year, shew that he grudged these terms to the Highland

Jacobites, and would have been happy to find that a refusal of them

justified harsher measures. It never occurred to him that there was

anything but obstinacy, or a hope of immediate assistance from France to

enable them to set up King James again, in their hesitation to swear

that they sincerely in their hearts accepted King William and Queen Mary

as the sovereigns of the land equally by right and in fact. He really

_hoped_ that at least the popish clan of the Macdonalds of Glencoe would

hold out beyond the proper day, so as to enable the government to make

an example of them. It was all the better that the time of grace expired

in the depth of winter, for ‘that,’ said he (letter to Colonel Hamilton,

December 3, 1691), ‘is the proper season to maul them, in the cold long

nights.’ On the 9th of January, under misinformation about their having

submitted, he says: ‘I am sorry that Keppoch and M‘Ian of Glencoe[78]

are safe.’ It was the sigh of a savage at the escape of a long-watched

foe. Still he understood Glengarry, Clanranald, and Glenmoriston to be

holding out, and he gave orders for the troops proceeding against them,

granting them at the utmost the terms of prisoners of war. In the midst

of a letter on the subject, dated the 11th January,[79] he says: ‘Just

now my Lord Argyle tells me that Glencoe hath not taken the oaths; at

which _I rejoice_—it’s a great work of charity to be exact in _rooting

out that damnable sect_, the worst in all the Highlands.’ Delighted with

the intelligence—‘it is very good news here,’ he elsewhere says—he

obtained that very day a letter from the king anent the Highland rebels,

commanding the troops to cut them off ‘_by all manner of hostility_,’

and for this end to proclaim high penalties to all who should give them

assistance or protection. Particular instructions subscribed by the king

followed on the 16th, permitting terms to be offered to Glengarry, whose

house was strong enough to give trouble, but adding: ‘_If M‘Ian of

Glencoe and that tribe can be well separated from the rest, it will be a

proper vindication of the public justice to extirpate that sect of

thieves._’ On the same day, Dalrymple himself wrote to Colonel

[Sidenote: 1692.] Hill, governor of Inverlochy, ‘I shall entreat you

that, for a just vengeance and public example, the thieving tribe of

Glencoe be _rooted out to purpose_. The Earls of Argyle and Breadalbane

have promised they shall have no retreat in their bounds.’ He felt,

however, that it must be ‘quietly done;’ otherwise they would make shift

both for their cattle and themselves. There can be no doubt what he

meant; merely to _harry_ the people, would make them worse thieves than

before—they must be, he elsewhere says, ‘_rooted out and cut off_.’

In reality, the old chief of the Glencoe Macdonalds had sped to

Inverlochy or Fort William before the end of the year, and offered his

oath to the governor there, but, to his dismay, found he had come to the

wrong officer. It was necessary he should go to Inverary, many miles

distant, and there give in his submission to the sheriff. In great

anxiety, the old man toiled his way through the wintry wild to Inverary.

He had to pass within a mile of his own house, yet stopped not to enter

it. After all his exertions, the sheriff being absent for two days after

his arrival, it was not till the 6th of January that his oath was taken

and registered. The register duly went thereafter to the Privy Council

at Edinburgh; but the name of Macdonald of Glencoe was not found in it:

it was afterwards discovered to have been by special pains obliterated,

though still traceable.

Here, then, was that ‘sect of thieves’ _formally_ liable to the

vengeance which the secretary of state meditated against them. The

commander, Livingstone, on the 23d January, wrote to Colonel Hamilton of

Inverlochy garrison to proceed with his work against the Glencoe men. A

detachment of the Earl of Argyle’s regiment—Campbells, hereditary

enemies of the Macdonalds of Glencoe—under the command of Campbell of

Glenlyon, proceeded to the valley, affecting nothing but friendly

intentions, and were hospitably received. Glenlyon himself, as uncle to

the wife of one of the chief’s sons, was hailed as a friend. Each

morning, he called at the humble dwelling of the chief, and took his

morning-draught of usquebaugh. On the evening of the 12th of February,

he played at cards with the chief’s family. The final orders for the

onslaught, written on the 12th at Ballachulish by Major Robert Duncanson

(a Campbell also), were now in Glenlyon’s hands. They bore—‘You are to

put all to the sword under seventy. You are to have a special care that

the old fox and his son do on no account escape your hands. You’re to

secure all avenues, that none escape; this you are to put in execution

at five o’clock [Sidenote: 1692.] precisely, and by that time, or very

shortly after it, I’ll strive to be at you with a stronger party. If I

do not come to you at five, you are not to tarry for me, but to fall

on.’

Glenlyon was but too faithful to his instructions. His soldiers had

their orders the night before. John Macdonald, the chief’s eldest son,

observing an unusual bustle among the soldiers, took an alarm, and

inquired what was meant. Glenlyon soothed his fears with a story about a

movement against Glengarry, and the lad went to bed. Meanwhile, efforts

were making to plant guards at all the outlets of that alpine glen; but

the deep snow on the ground prevented the duty from being fully

accomplished. At five, Lieutenant Lindsay came with his men to the house

of the chief, who, hearing of his arrival, got out of bed to receive

him. He was shot dead as he was dressing himself. Two of his people in

the house shared his fate, and his wife, shamefully treated by the

soldiers, died next day. At another hamlet called Auchnaion, the

tacksman and his family received a volley of shot as they were sitting

by their fireside, and all but one were laid dead or dying on the floor.

The survivor entreated to be killed in the open air, and there succeeded

in making his escape. There were similar scenes at all the other

inhabited places in the glen, and before daylight, thirty-eight persons

had been murdered. The rest of the people, including the chief’s eldest

son, fled to the mountains, where many of them are believed to have

perished. When Colonel Hamilton came at breakfast-time, he found one old

man alive mourning over the bodies of the dead; and this person, though

he might have been even formally exempted as above seventy, was slain on

the spot. The only remaining duty of the soldiers was to burn the houses

and harry the country. This was relentlessly done, two hundred horses,

nine hundred cattle, and many sheep and goats being driven away.

A letter of Dalrymple, dated from London the 5th March, makes us aware

that the Massacre of Glencoe was already making a sensation there. It

was said that the people had been murdered in their beds, after the

chief had made the required submission. The secretary professed to have

known nothing of the last fact, but he was far from regretting the

bloodshed. ‘All I regret is that any of the sect got away.’ When the

particulars became fully known—when it was ascertained that the

Campbells had gone into the glen as friends, and fallen upon the people

when they were in a defenceless state and when all suspicion was lulled

asleep—the transaction assumed the character which it has ever

[Sidenote: 1692.] since borne in the public estimation, as one of the

foulest in modern history.

The Jacobites trumpeted it as an offset against the imputed severities

of the late reigns. Its whole details were given in the French gazettes,

as an example of the paternal government now planted in Britain. The

government was compelled, in self-defence, to order an inquiry into the

affair, and the report presented in 1695 fully brought out the facts as

here detailed, leaving the principal odium to rest with Dalrymple. The

king himself, whose signature follows close below the savage sentence,

‘If M‘Ian of Glencoe,’ &c., did not escape reproach. True it is, that so

far from punishing his secretary, he soon after this report gave him a

full remission, and conferred on him the teinds of the parish in which

lay his principal estates.[80]

[Sidenote: FEB. 16.]

The Privy Council had before them a petition from Lieutenant Brisbane of

Sir Robert Douglas’s regiment, regarding one Archibald Baird, an Irish

refugee, imprisoned at Paisley for housebreaking. The sheriff thought

the probation ‘scrimp’ (scanty), and besides, was convinced that

‘extreme poverty had been a great temptation to him to commit the said

crime.’ Seeing he was, moreover, ‘a proper young man fit for service,’

and ‘willing and forward to go over to Flanders to fight against the

French,’ the sheriff had hitherto delayed to pronounce sentence upon

him. Without any ceremony, the Council ordered that Baird be delivered

to Brisbane, that he might be transported to Flanders as a soldier.

The reader will probably be amused by the sheriff’s process of

ideas—first, that the crime was not proved; and, second, that it had

been committed under extenuating circumstances. The leniency of the

Privy Council towards such a culprit, in ordering him out of the country

as a soldier, is scarcely less characteristic. The truth is, the

exigencies of the government for additional military force were now

greater than ever, so that scruples about methods of recruiting had come

to be scarcely recognisable. Poor people confined in jail on suspicion

of disaffection, were in many instances brought to a purchase of liberty

by taking on as soldiers; criminals, who had pined there for months or

years, half-starved, were glad to take soldiering as their punishment.

Sturdy vagrants [Sidenote: 1692.] were first gathered into the jails for

the offence of begging, and then made to know that, only by taking their

majesties’ pay, could they regain their freedom. But freedom was not to

be instantly gained even in this way. The recruits were kept in jail, as

well as the criminals and the disaffected—little distinction, we may

well believe, observed between them. Not till ready to go on board for

Flanders, were these gallant Britons permitted to breathe the fresh air.

An appearance of regard for the liberty of the subject was indeed kept

up, and on the 23d February 1692, a committee of the Privy Council was

appointed to go to the prisons of Edinburgh and Canongate, and inspect

the recruits kept there, so as to ascertain if there were any who were

unjustly detained against their will. But this was really little more

than an appearance for decency’s sake, the instances of disregard for

individual rights being too numerous even in their own proceedings to

allow any different conclusion being arrived at.[81]

[Sidenote: FEB.]

Two ministers at Dumfries, who had been ‘preachers before prelacy was

abolished,’ gave displeasure to the populace by using the Book of Common

Prayer. On a Sunday, early in this month, a party of about sixteen ‘mean

country persons living about four or five miles from Dumfries, who

disowned both Presbyterian and Episcopal ministers, and acknowledged

none but Mr Houston,’ came and dragged these two clergymen out of the

town, took from each his prayer-book, and gave them a good beating,

after which they were liberated, and allowed to return home. At an early

hour next morning, the same party came into the town and burned one of

the books at the Cross, on which they affixed a placard, containing, we

may presume, a declaration of their sentiments. The Privy Council

indignantly called the provost of Dumfries before them, and while

censuring him for allowing such a riot to take place, enjoined him to

take care ‘that there be no occasions given for the like disorders in

time coming.’ That is to say, the Privy Council did not desire the

Dumfries magistrates to take any measures for preventing the attacks of

‘mean country persons’ upon unoffending clergymen using the forms of

prayer sanctioned in another and connected kingdom not thirty miles

distant, but to see that such clergymen were not allowed to give

provocations of that kind to ‘mean country persons.’

[Sidenote: 1699. MAR.]

Dumfries had at this time another trouble on its hands. Marion Dickson

in Blackshaw, Isobel Dickson in Locherwood, Agnes Dickson (daughter of

Isobel), and Marion Herbertson in Mousewaldbank, had for a long time

been ‘suspected of the abominable and horrid crime of witchcraft,’ and

were believed to have ‘committed many grievous malefices upon several

persons their neighbours and others.’ It was declared to be damnifying

‘to all good men and women living in the country thereabouts, who cannot

assure themselves of safety of their lives by such frequent malefices as

they commit.’

Under these circumstances, James Fraid, John Martin, William Nicolson,

and Thomas Jaffrey in Blackshaw, John Dickson in Slop of Locherwoods,

John Dickson in Locherwoods, and John Dickson in Overton of Locherwoods,

took it upon them to apprehend the women, and carried them to be

imprisoned at Dumfries by the sheriff, which, however, the sheriff did

not consent to till after the six men had granted a bond engaging to

prosecute. Fortified with a certificate from the presbytery of Dumfries,

who were ‘fully convinced of the guilt [of the women] and of the many

malefices committed by them,’ the men applied to the Privy Council for a

commission to try the delinquents.

The Lords ordered the women to be transported to Edinburgh for

trial.[82]

[Sidenote: MAR. 29.]

The government beginning to relax a little the severity it had hitherto

exercised towards captive Jacobites, the Earl of Perth, on a showing of

the injury his health was suffering from long imprisonment in Stirling

Castle, was liberated on a caution for five thousand pounds sterling,

being a sum equal to the annual income of the highest nobles of the

land.

William Livingstone, brother to the Viscount Kilsyth, and husband of

Dundee’s widow, had been a prisoner in the Edinburgh Tolbooth from June

1689 till November 1690—seventeen months—thereafter, had lived in a

chamber in Edinburgh under a sentry for a year—afterwards was allowed to

live in a better lodging, and to go forth for a walk each day, but still

under a guard. In this condition he now continued. The consequence of

his being thus treated, and of his rents being all the time

sequestrated, was a great confusion of his affairs, threatening the

entire ruin of his [Sidenote: 1692.] fortune. On his petition, the

Council now allowed him ‘to go abroad under a sentinel each day from

morning to evening furth of the house of Andrew Smith, periwig-maker, at

the head of Niddry’s Wynd, in Edinburgh, to which he is confined,’ he

finding caution under fifteen hundred pounds sterling to continue a true

prisoner as heretofore; at the same time, the sequestration of his rents

was departed from.

On the 19th April, Mr Livingstone was allowed to visit Kilsyth under a

guard of dragoons, in order to arrange some affairs. But this leniency

was of short duration. We soon after find him again in strict

confinement in Edinburgh Castle; nor was it till September 1693, that,

on an earnest petition setting forth his declining health, he was

allowed to be confined to ‘a chamber in the house of Mistress Lyell, in

the Parliament Close,’ he giving large bail for his peaceable behaviour.

This, again, came to a speedy end, for, being soon after ordered to

re-enter his strait confinement in the Castle, he petitioned to be

allowed the Canongate Jail instead, and was permitted, as something a

shade less wretched than the Castle, to become a prisoner in the

Edinburgh Tolbooth. On the 4th of January 1693, he was again allowed the

room in the Parliament Close, but on the 8th of February this was

exchanged for Stirling Castle. In the course of the first five years of

British liberty, Mr Livingstone must have acquired a tolerably extensive

acquaintance with the various forms and modes of imprisonment, so far as

these existed in the northern section of the island.

Captain John Crighton, once a dragoon in the service of King James, and

whose memoirs were afterwards written from his own information by Swift,

was kept in jail for twenty-one months after June 1689; then for ten

months in a house under a sentinel; since that time in a house, with

permission to get a daily walk; ‘which long imprisonment and restraint

has been very grievous and expensive to the petitioner (Crighton),’ and

‘has redacted him and his small family to a great deal of misery and

want, being a stranger in this kingdom.’ His restraint was likewise

relaxed on his giving caution to the extent of a hundred pounds to

remain a true prisoner.

Soon after arose the alarm of invasion from France, and all the

severities against the suspected Jacobites were renewed. William

Livingstone was, in June, confined once more to his chamber at the

periwig-maker’s, and Captain John Crighton had to return to a similar

restraint. The Earl of Perth, so recently liberated from [Sidenote:

1691.] Stirling Castle, was again placed there. At that time, there were

confined in Edinburgh Castle the Earls of Seaforth and Home, the Lord

Bellenden, and Paterson, Ex-archbishop of Glasgow. In Stirling Castle,

besides Lord Perth, lay his relation, Sir John Drummond of Machany,[83]

and the Viscount Frendraught, the latter having only six hundred merks

per annum (about £34), so that it became of importance that his wife

should be allowed to come in and live with him, instead of requiring a

separate maintenance; to so low a point had civil broils and private

animosities brought this once flourishing family. Neville Payne lay a

wretched prisoner in Edinburgh Castle. Sir Robert Grierson of Lagg was

contracting sore ailments under protracted confinement in the Canongate

Jail. A great number of other men were undergoing their second, and even

their third year of confinement, in mean and filthy tolbooths, where

their health was unavoidably impaired.

On the 2d of June, Crighton gave in a petition reciting that he had been

again put under restraint, and for no just cause, as he had always since

the Revolution been favourable to the new government, and on the

proclamation of the Convention, had deserted his old service in the

Castle, bringing with him thirty-nine soldiers. He was relieved from

close confinement, and ordered to be subjected to trial. On the 10th of

June, he was ordered to be set at liberty, on caution. Less than two

months after, failing to appear on summons, his bond for £100 was

forfeited, and the money, when obtained from his security, to be given

to Adair the geographer.

On the 14th of June 1692, Captain Wallace represented that he had now

been three years a captive, ‘whereby his health is impaired, his body

weakened, and his small fortune entirely ruined.’ ‘Yet hitherto, there

has been no process against him.’ He entreated that he might be

liberated on signing ‘a volunteer banishment,’ and he would ‘never cease

to pray that God may bless the nation with ane lasting peace, of [which]

he would never be a disturber.’ An order for a process against him was

issued.

It was difficult, however, even for the Scottish Privy Council to make a

charge of treason against an officer whose only fault was that, being

appointed by a lawful authority to defend a post, he had performed the

duty assigned to him, albeit at the expense [Sidenote: 1692.] of a few

lives to the rabble which he was commanded to resist. Still, when the

solicitor-general, Lockhart, told them he could not process Captain

Wallace for treason ‘without a special warrant to that effect,’ they

divided on the subject, and the negative was only carried by a

majority.[84]

[Sidenote: APR. 25.]

Happened an affair of private war and violence, supposed to be the last

that took place in the county of Renfrew. John Maxwell of Dargavel had

ever since the Reformation possessed a seat and desk in the kirk of

Erskine, along with a right to bury in the subjacent ground. William

Hamilton of Orbieston, proprietor of the estate of Erskine, disputed the

title of Dargavel to these properties or privileges, and it came to a

high quarrel between the two gentlemen. Finding at length that Dargavel

would not peaceably give up what he and his ancestors had so long

possessed, Orbieston—who, by the way, was a partisan of the old dynasty,

and perhaps generally old-fashioned in his ideas—resolved to drive his

neighbour out of it by force. A complaint, afterwards drawn up by

Dargavel for the Privy Council, states that William Hamilton of

Orbieston, George Maxwell, bailie of Kilpatrick, Robert Laing, miller in

Duntocher, John Shaw of Bargarran, Gavin Walkingshaw, sometime of that

ilk, came, with about a hundred other persons, ‘all armed with guns,

pistols, swords, bayonets, and other weapons invasive,’ and, having

appointed George Maxwell, ‘Orbieston’s own bailie-depute,’ to march at

their head, they advanced in military order, and with drums beating and

trumpets sounding, to the parish kirk of Erskine, where, ‘in a most

insolent and violent manner, they did, at their own hand, and without

any order of law, remove and take away the complainer’s seat and dask,

and sacrilegiously bring away the stones that were lying upon the graves

of the complainer’s predecessors, and beat and strike several of the

complainer’s tenants and others, who came in peaceable manner to

persuade them to desist from such unwarrantable violence.’

Dargavel instantly proceeded with measures for obtaining redress from

the Privy Council, when his chief, Sir John Maxwell of Pollock, a member

of that all-powerful body, interfered to bring about an agreement

between the disputants. With the consent of the Earl of Glencairn,

principal heritor of the parish, Dargavel ‘yielded for peace-sake to

remove his seat from that [Sidenote: 1692.] place of the kirk, where it

had stood for many generations;’ while Orbieston on his part agreed that

Dargavel ‘should retain his room of burial-place in the east end of the

kirk, with allowance to rail it in, and strike out a door upon the gable

of it, as he should see convenient.’ This did not, however, end the

controversy.

The first glimpse of further procedure which we obtain is from a letter

of John Shaw of Bargarran, professing to be a friend of both parties,

though he had appeared amongst the armed party led by Orbieston’s

bailie-depute. He writes, 23d August, as follows to William Cunningham

of Craigends, a decided friend of Dargavel: ‘SIR—The Laird of Orbieston

heard when he was last here that Dargavel was intendit to put through a

door to his burial-place, which will be (as he says) very inconvenient

for Orbieston’s laft [gallery]; so he desired me to acquaint you

therewith, that ye wold deall with Dargavel to forbear; otherways he

wold take it very ill, and has given orders to some people here to stop

his design, if he do it not willingly; wherefor, to prevent further

trouble and emulation betwixt the two gentlemen, ye wold do well to

advyse him to the contrair either by a lyn or advyse, as ye think most

proper. I desyre not to be seen in this, because they are both my

friends, and I a weel-wisher to them both. I thought to have waited on

you myself; bot, being uncertain of your being at home, gives you the

trouble of this lyne, which is all from, sir, your most humble servant,

J. SHAW. Ye wold do this so soon as possible.’

There are letters from Craigends to Dargavel, strongly indicating the

likelihood that violent measures would again be resorted to by

Orbieston, and advising how these might best be met and resisted. But

the remainder of the affair seems to have been peaceable. Orbieston

applied to the Privy Council for an order to stop Dargavel, apparently

proceeding upon the rule long established, but little obeyed, against

burying in churches; and the Council did send an order, dated the 29th

August, ‘requiring you to desist from striking any door or breaking any

part of the church-wall of Erskine, until your right and Orbieston’s

right be discusst by the judges competent for preventing further abuse.’

Dargavel immediately sent a petition, shewing how he was only acting

upon an agreement with Orbieston, and hereupon the former order was

recalled, and Dargavel permitted to have the access he required, however

incommodious it might be to Orbieston’s ‘laft.’[85]

[Sidenote: 1692. MAY 10.]

The prisoners in the Canongate Tolbooth forced the key from the jailer,

and took possession of their prison, which they held out against the

magistrates for a brief space. A committee of Privy Council was ordered

to go and inquire who had been guilty of this act of rebellion.[86]

Viewing the manner in which jails were provided, there can be no doubt

that it was a rebellion of the stomach.

[Sidenote: MAY 17.]

Under our present multiplication of newspapers, a piece of false

intelligence is so quickly detected, that there is no temptation for the

most perverse politician to put such a thing in circulation. In King

William’s days, when the printed newspaper barely existed, and the few

who were curious about state-affairs had to content themselves with what

was called a _news-letter_—a written circular emanating from a centre in

London—a falsehood would now and then prove serviceable to a party,

particularly a depressed one.

We get an idea of a piece of the social economy of the time under

notice, from a small matter which came under the attention of the Privy

Council. William Murray kept a tavern in the Canongate. Each post

brought him a news-letter for the gratification of his customers, and

which doubtless served to maintain their allegiance to his butt of

claret. Just at this time, when there were alarms of an invasion from

France, a lie about preparations on the French shore was worth its ink.

The lord high chancellor now informed the Council that Murray’s letter

was generally full of false news; that he caused destroy the one brought

by last post, merely to keep Murray out of trouble; and he had kept up

the one just come, ‘in respect there is a paper therein full of cyphers

which cannot be read.’ Matters having now become so serious, he had

caused Murray to be brought before the Council.

Murray declared before a committee ‘he knows not what person writes the

news-letter to him ... he never writes any news from this to London ...

he knows not what the cyphers in the paper sent in his letter with this

post does signify.’ They sent him under care of a macer to the Tolbooth,

to be kept there in close prison, and his papers at home to be searched

for matter against their majesties or the government.

On the 2d of June, William Murray represented that he had [Sidenote:

1692.] now been a fortnight in jail, and his poor family would be ruined

if he did not immediately regain his liberty. The Council caused him to

be examined about the cypher-letter, and asked who was his

correspondent. We do not learn what satisfaction he gave on these

points; but a week later, he was liberated.

On the 15th November, the Privy Council ordered the magistrates of

Edinburgh to shut up the Exchange Coffee-house, and bring the keys to

them, ‘in respect of the seditious news vented in and dispersed from the

said coffee-house.’ A month after, the owners, Gilbert Fyfe and James

Marjoribanks, merchants, shewed that, some of their news-letters having

once before been kept up from them on account of the offensive contents,

they had changed their correspondent, in order that the government might

have no such fault to find with them. Moved, however, by malice against

them, their old correspondent had addressed to them a letter sure by its

contents to bring them into trouble with the officers of state, and it

had been the cause of their house being shut up accordingly. Seeing how

innocently on their part this had come about, and how prejudicial it was

to their interest, the men petitioned for re-possession of their house,

which was granted, under caution that they were to vent no news until it

was approved of by their majesties’ solicitor, or whoever the Privy

Council might appoint, ‘the reviser always setting his name thereto, or

at least ane other mark, as having revised the same.’

Not long after, we find the Council in such trouble on account of false

news as to be under the necessity of considering some general measure on

the subject.

In December, one William Davidson, described as a ‘writer,’ was taken up

and put into the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, ‘for writing and spreading of

lies and false news;’ and the Privy Council issued an order ‘for

delivering of the said William to ane of the officers come from

Flanders, to have been carried there as a soldier.’ On its appearing,

however, that William ‘is but a silly cripple boy, having had his leg

and thigh-bones broke,’ they ordered the magistrates of Edinburgh to

banish him from their city, ‘in case they shall find him guilty of the

said crime.’

On the 12th of July 1694, we hear something more of this William

Davidson. For inadvertently adding to a news-letter a postscript

‘bearing some foolish thing offensive to the government, without

affirming whether it was true or false, but only that it was reported,’

he had been condemned to banishment from the city, and also disinherited

by a Whiggish father, now [Sidenote: 1692.] deceased. He had since lived

upon the charity of his relations and acquaintances; but these were now

weary of maintaining him, and he was consequently ‘redacted to extream

misery.’ Having broken his thigh-bone six several times, he was

incapable of any employment but that of writing in a chamber, from

which, however, he was debarred by his banishment from Edinburgh. He

therefore craved a relaxation of his sentence, offering ‘to take the

oath of allegiance and subscribe the assurance, to evidence his

sincerity towards the government.’ The poor lad’s petition was complied

with.[87]

[Sidenote: JULY.]

Sir James Carmichael of Bonnyton, a minor, was proprietor of the lands

of Thankerton, lying on the north side of the river Clyde, in the upper

ward of Lanarkshire. The Clyde had been the march between his estate and

those of the adjacent proprietors—Chancellor of Shieldhill, and George

Kellie in Quothquan; but ‘rivers are bad neighbours and unfaithful

boundaries, as Lucan says of the Po,’[88] and there had happened a

_mutatio alvei_ about fifty years before, in consequence of a violent

flood, and now a part of Bonnyton lands was thrown on the opposite side.

Under the name of the Park-holm, it had lain neglected for many years;

but at length, in 1688, the present laird’s father sowed and reaped it;

whereupon the opposite neighbours, considering it as theirs, resolved to

assert their right to it. At the date noted, they came eighty strong,

‘resolved to take advantage of Sir James his infancy, and by open

bangstry and violence to turn him and his tenants out of his

possession.’ Their arms were ‘pitchforks, great staves, scythes,

pistols, swords, and mastive dogs.’ In a rude and violent manner, they

cut down ‘the whole growth of fourteen bolls sowing of corn or thereby,’

drove it home to their own houses, and there made use of it in bedding

their cattle, or threw it upon the dunghills. Thus, ‘corns which would

have yielded at least nine hundred bolls oats at eight pounds Scots the

boll, were rendered altogether useless for man or beast.’ During the

progress of this plunder, the tenants were confined to their houses

under a guard. So it was altogether a riot and oppression, inferring

severe punishment, which was accordingly called for by the curators of

the young landlord.

The Council, having heard both parties, found the riot proven, and

ordained Chancellor of Shieldhill to pay three hundred merks [Sidenote:

1692.] to the pursuer.[89] Afterwards (December 26, 1695), the Lords of

Session confirmed the claim of Bonnyton to the Park-holm.[90]

In this year died the Viscountess Stair—born Margaret Ross of Balniel,

in Wigtonshire—the wife of the ablest man of his age and country, and

mother of a race which has included an extraordinary number of men of

talent and official distinction. The pair had been married very nearly

fifty years, and they were tenderly attached to the last. The glories of

the family history had not been quite free of shade; witness the

tragical death of the eldest daughter Janet, the original of Lucy Ashton

in _The Bride of Lammermoor_.[91] Lady Stair is admitted to have been a

woman of a soaring mind, of great shrewdness and energy of character,

and skilled in the ways of the world; and to these qualities on her part

it was perhaps, in part, owing that her family, on the whole, prospered

so remarkably. The public, however, had such a sense of her singular

power over fortune, as to believe that she possessed necromantic gifts,

and trafficked with the Evil One. An order which she left at her death

regarding the disposal of her body, helped to confirm this popular

notion. ‘She desired that she might not be put under ground, but that

her coffin should stand upright on one end of it, promising that, while

she remained in that situation, the Dalrymples should continue to

flourish. What was the old lady’s motive for the request, or whether she

really made such a promise, I shall not take upon me to determine; but

it’s certain her coffin stands upright in the aile of the church of

Kirkliston, the burial-place of the family.’[92]

A local historian attributes to her ladyship ‘one of the best puns

extant. Graham of Claverhouse (commonly pronounced Clavers) was

appointed sheriff of Wigtonshire in 1682. On one occasion, when this

violent persecutor had been inveighing, in her presence, against our

illustrious reformer, she said: “Why are you so severe on the character

of John Knox? You are both reformers: he gained his point by clavers

[talk]; you attempt to gain yours by knocks.”’[93]

[Sidenote: AUG. 13.]

The boy carrying the post-bag on its last stage from England [Sidenote:

1692.] was robbed by ‘a person mounted on horseback with a sword about

him, and another person on foot with a pistol in his hand, upon the

highway from Haddington to Edinburgh, near that place thereof called

Jock’s Lodge [a mile from town], about ten hours of the night.’ The

robbers took ‘the packet or common mail with the horse whereon the boy

rode.’ The Privy Council issued a proclamation, offering a reward of a

hundred pounds for the apprehension of the offenders, with a free pardon

to any one of them who should inform upon the rest.

[Sidenote: OCT. 1.]

The troubles arising from corporation privileges were in these old times

incessant. Any attempt by an unfreeman to execute work within the

charmed circle was met with the sternest measures of repression and

punishment, often involving great suffering to poor industrious men.

Indeed, there is perhaps no class of facts more calculated than this to

disenchant modern people out of the idea that the days of old were days

of mutual kindliness and brothership.

At the date noted, one William Somerville, a wright-burgess of

Edinburgh, was engaged in some repairs upon the mansion of the Earl of

Roxburgh, in the Canongate, when Thomas Kinloch, deacon of the wrights

of that jurisdiction, came with assistants, and in a violent manner took

away the whole of the tools which the workmen were using. This was done

as a check to Edinburgh wrights coming and doing work in a district of

which they were not free. Somerville, two days after, made a formal

demand for the restoration of his ‘looms;’ but they were positively

refused. The Earl of Roxburgh was a minor; but his curators felt

aggrieved by Kinloch’s procedure, and accordingly concurred with

Somerville in charging the Canongate deacon, before the Privy Council,

with the commission of riot and oppression in the earl’s house.

Apparently, if the Roxburgh mansion had been subject to the jurisdiction

of the Canongate, the Council could not have given any redress; but it

so happened, that when the earl’s ancestor, in 1636, gave up the

superiority of the Canongate, he reserved his house as to be holden of

the crown; therefore, the Canongate corporations had no title to

interfere with the good pleasure of his lordship in the selection of

workmen to do work in his house. The Council remitted this point of law

to the Court of Session; but meanwhile ordered the restoration of

Somerville’s tools.[94]

[Sidenote: 1692.]

As an example of the troubles connected with mercantile privilege, it

may be well to introduce one simple case of the treatment of an

interloper by the Merchant Company of Edinburgh, the members of which

were the sole legalised dealers in cloth of all kinds in the city. In

June 1699, it was reported to the Company that one Mary Flaikfield, who

had formerly been found selling goods ‘off the mercat-day,’ and enacted

herself to desist from the practice, had been found sinning again in the

same manner. She was detected in selling some plaids and eight pieces of

muslin to a stranger, and the goods were seized and deposited in the

Merchants’ Hall.

The poor woman at first alleged that she had only been conversing with

this stranger, while the goods chanced to be lying beside her, and the

Company was wrought upon to give back her goods, all except two pieces

of the muslin, which they said they would detain till Mary could prove

what she alleged.

Presently, however, there was a change in their mood, for John Corsbie

came forward with information that Mary Flaikfield was really a notable

interloper. The very person she was lately detected in dealing with, she

had wiled away from Corsbie’s own shop, where he was about to buy the

same goods. She was accustomed to sell a good deal to the family of Lord

Halcraig. Then she had not appeared to prove her innocence. ‘The vote

was put: “Roup the two pieces of muslin or not?” and it carried “Roup.”

Accordingly, the muslin being measured, and found to be twenty-two ells,

and ane hour-glass being set up, several persons bid for the same. The

greatest offer made was fourteen shillings per ell, which offer was made

by Francis Brodie, treasurer—the time being run—the said offer was three

several times cried out, and the said two pieces of muslin were declared

to belong to him for £15, 8_s._ [Scots]; but if she compear and relieve

the same before the next meeting, allows her to have her goods in

payment of the above sum.’

At the meeting of the ensuing week, Mary Flaikfield not having come

forward to redeem her muslin, the treasurer was instructed to dispose of

it as he should think fit, and be comptable to the Company for £15,

8_s._ Two days later, however, there was another meeting solely on

account of Mary, when the Master, Bailie Warrender, and his assistants,

felt that Christian charity would not allow them to proceed further.

‘Considering that Mary Flaikfield is a poor woman, big with child, and

has been detained here about a fortnight, they, in point of pity and

[Sidenote: 1692.] compassion for her, order that her two pieces of

muslin be given her back upon payment of fourteen shillings to the

officer.’ She was not dismissed without a caution as to her future

behaviour.[95]

[Sidenote: NOV.]

The stranding of whales in the Firth of Forth was of such natural and

frequent occurrence in early times, that a tithe of all cast ashore

between Cockburnspath and the mouth of the Avon, was one of the gifts

conferred by the pious David upon the Canons Augustine of Holyrood. In

modern times, it may be considered as an uncommon event. At this time,

however, one had embayed itself in the harbour of Limekilns, a little

port near Queensferry. A litigation took place regarding the property of

it, between the chancellor, the Earl of Tweeddale, as lord of the

regality of Dunfermline, and Mr William Erskine, depute to the admiral,

and the Lords finally adjudged it to the chancellor, with seven hundred

merks as the price at which it had been sold.[96]

[Sidenote: DEC. 1.]

The Earl of Moray, being pursued at law for a tradesman’s account, which

was referred to his oath, craved the Court of Session to appoint a

commission to take his oath at Dunnibrissle, on the ground that, if he

were obliged to come to Edinburgh for the purpose, he should incur as

much expense as the whole amount of the alleged debt. As Dunnibrissle is

visible from Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth, this must be looked

upon as an eccentrically economical movement on his lordship’s part. The

court granted the commission, but ordained his lordship to pay any

expense which might be incurred by the debtor, or his representative, in

travelling to Dunnibrissle to be present at the oath-taking.[97]

The court had occasionally not less whimsical cases before it. In

February 1698, there was one regarding a copper caldron, which had been

poinded, but not first taken to the Cross to be ‘appreciate.’ The

defenders represented that they had done something equivalent in

carrying thither a part of it—the ledges—as a symbol; following here a

rule applicable with heavy movables, as where a salt-pan was represented

by two nails; nay, a symbol not homogeneous, as a wisp of straw for a

flock of sheep, fulfilled the law. The defence was sustained, and the

poinding affirmed.[98]

[Sidenote: 1692. DEC.]

The Privy Council had under its hands three Protestant clergymen—namely,

Mr John Hay, late minister at Falkland; Mr Alexander Leslie, late

minister at Crail; and Mr Patrick Middleton, late minister at Leslie—in

short, three of the ‘outed’ Episcopal clergy—for not praying for William

and Mary. They acknowledged that they prayed ‘only in general terms’ for

the king and queen, and were therefore discharged from thereafter

exercising any clerical functions, under severe penalties. Soon after,

the Council judged, in the case of Mr Alexander Lundie, late minister of

Cupar, who stated that, ‘having a mixed auditory, he prayed so as might

please both parties.’ This style of praying, or else the manner of

alluding to it, did not please the Privy Council, and Mr Lundie was

ordered ‘to be carried from the bar, by the macers, to the Tolbooth,

there to remain during the Council’s pleasure.’ Having lain there four

days, far from all means of subsistence, while his wife was ill of a

dangerous disease at home, and his family of small children required his

care, Mr Lundie was fain to beg the Council’s pardon for what he had

said, and so obtained his liberation also, but only with a discharge

from all clerical functions till he should properly qualify himself

according to act of parliament.

On the 22d of May 1693, Mr David Angus, minister of Fortrose, was before

the Council on a charge that, although deprived for not praying for

their majesties in terms of the act of parliament, ‘he has publicly

preached and exercised the ministerial function within his own house,

and parish where the same lies, and elsewhere, without qualifying

himself by signing the oath of allegiance.’ So far from evidencing the

sense he ought to have had of the grievous circumstances from which the

nation had been relieved, by reading the proclamation of estates, he had

neglected it, and prayed for King James, thus stirring up the

disaffected in opposition to their majesties’ government, and

discouraging their loyal subjects. These were ‘crimes which ought to be

severely punished for the terror of others.’ The Lords, therefore,

finding him unable to deny the alleged facts, and indisposed to engage

for a different behaviour in future, confirmed his deprivation, and

discharged him from preaching or exercising any ministerial function

within the kingdom.

As a specimen of the equivocating prayers—Mr Charles Key, one of the

ministers of South Leith, was charged, in September 1694, with using

these expressions, ‘“That God would bless our king and queen, and

William and Mary,” or [Sidenote: 1692.] “our king and queen, William and

Mary, and the rest of the royal family.”’[99]

[Sidenote: DEC. 31.]

A great number of recruits were now drawn together to be sent to

Flanders, but the vessels for their transportation were not ready. The

Privy Council therefore ordered their distribution throughout the jails

of Lothian and Fife, sixty, eighty, a hundred, and even more, to each

tolbooth, according to its capacity—for example, two hundred and

forty-four to the jails of Musselburgh, Haddington, and Leith—there to

be furnished with blankets to lie on by the various magistrates. When it

is known that two Jacobite gentlemen had lately petitioned for

liberation from Musselburgh jail, on the ground that it did not contain

a fireroom, and their health was consequently becoming ruined, it will

not seem surprising that a competent troop of horse and foot had to be

ordered ‘to keep guard upon the said recruits, and take care that none

of them escape.’

That a good many, induced either by the hardships of their situation, or

the enticements of disaffected persons, did desert the service, is

certain: a strict proclamation on this subject came out in April 1694.

At the same time, John M‘Lachlan, schoolmaster in Glasgow, was before

the Privy Council on a charge of having induced a number of soldiers in

the regiments lying at that city to desert. ‘Being disaffected,’ it was

said, ‘to their majesties’ government, he has, so far as possible for

thir three or four years past, made it his business to weaken the

government, and to instigate and persuade several soldiers to run away.’

He did ‘forge passes for them.’ In particular, in January last, he did

‘persuade John Fergusson and John M‘Leod, soldiers in Captain Anderson’s

company in Lord Strathnaver’s regiment, then lying at Glasgow, to run

away and desert ... telling them that they were but beasts and fools for

serving King William, for that he was sure that the late King James

would be soon here again.... He had given passes to several of the

regiment formerly in garrison at Glasgow, and offered to go with them to

a gentlewoman’s house without the Steeple-green port, who was a cousin

of his, who would secure them and receive their clothes, and furnish

them with others to make their escape; and told them they were going to

Flanders, and would be felled there, and so it was best for them to

desert, and that he would hide their firelocks [Sidenote: 1692.]

underground, and give them other coats and money, and a pass to carry

them safe away.’

The Council, having called evidence, and found the charge proven,

sentenced M‘Lachlan to be whipped through the city of Edinburgh, and

banished to the American plantations. They afterwards altered the

sentence, and adjudged the Jacobite schoolmaster, instead of being

whipped, to stand an hour on the pillory at Edinburgh, and an hour on

the pillory at Glasgow, under the care of the hangman, with a paper on

his brow, with these words written or printed thereon—‘John M‘Lachlan,

schoolmaster at Glasgow, appointed to be set on the pillory at Edinburgh

and Glasgow, and sent to the plantations, for seducing and debauching

soldiers to run away from their colours, and desert their majesties’

service.’

Two days later, the Privy Council recommended their majesties’ advocate

to prosecute M‘Lachlan before the committee anent pressed men, ‘for the

disloyal and impertinent speeches uttered by him yesterday while he

stood upon the pillory of Edinburgh.’ What came of this, we do not

learn; but on the 3d of July there is a petition from M‘Lachlan, setting

forth that, after a nineteen weeks’ imprisonment, he is sinking under

sickness and infirmity, while his family are starving at home, and

craving his liberty, on giving assurance that he shall not offend again

against the government. His liberation was ordered.

James Hamilton, keeper of the Canongate Tolbooth (July 16, 1696),

represented to the Privy Council that it had been customary for him and

his predecessors to receive two shillings Scots per night for each

recruit kept in the house, with a penny sterling to the servants (being

3_d._ sterling in all), and their lordships, in consideration of his

‘great trouble in keeping such unruly prisoners in order’—he ‘being

liable to the payment of ten dollars for every man that shall make his

escape’—had authorised him to take ‘obleisements’ from the officers for

the payment of these dues, till lately when the authority was withdrawn.

This had led to loss on the part of the petitioner, who had now spent

all his own means, and further run into debt, so that, ‘through

continual hazard of captions,’ he was threatened with becoming a

prisoner in his own jail. He entreated payment of some arrears for

General Mackay’s recruits, as well as these recent arrears, and likewise

for the proper allowance for ‘the coiners and clippers,’ latterly an

abundant class of prisoners, on account of the tempting condition of the

coin of the realm for simulation. The Lords [Sidenote: 1693.]

recommended Hamilton to the treasury for payment of the monies due to

him.[100]

[Sidenote: FEB. 2.]

Though Scotland had long enjoyed the services of four universities, the

teaching of any of the natural sciences was not merely unknown in the

country, but probably undreamed of, till the reign of Charles II. The

first faint gleam of scientific teaching presents itself about 1676,

when, under the fostering care of Dr (afterwards Sir) Robert Sibbald, a

botanic garden was established near the Trinity College Church, as a

means of helping the medical men of Edinburgh to a better knowledge of

the pharmacopœia. It was put under the care of James Sutherland, who had

been a common gardener, but whose natural talents had raised him to a

fitness for this remarkable position. In his little garden in the valley

on the north side of the city, he taught the science of herbs to

students of medicine for small fees, receiving no other encouragement

besides a salary from the city of twenty pounds, which did not suffice

to pay rent and servants’ wages, not to speak of the cost of new plants.

At the time of the siege of Edinburgh Castle in the spring of 1689, it

had been thought necessary, for strategic reasons, to drain the North

Loch, and, as the water ran through the Botanic Garden, it came to pass

that the place was for some days under an inundation, and when left dry,

proved to be covered with mud and rubbish, so that the delicate and

costly plants which Sutherland had collected were nearly all destroyed.

It had cost him and his assistants the work of a whole season to get the

ground cleared, and he had incurred large charges in replacing the

plants.

At this date, the Privy Council, on Sutherland’s petition, took into

consideration his losses, his inadequate salary, and the good service he

was rendering, ‘whereby not only the young physicians, apothecaries, and

chirurgeons, but also the nobility and gentry, are taught the knowledge

of the herbs, and also a multitude of plants, shrubs, and trees are

cultivated which were never known in this nation before, and more

numerous than in any other garden in Britain, as weel for the honour of

the place as for the advantage of the people.’ They therefore declared

that they will in future allow Mr Sutherland fifty pounds a year out of

fines falling to them, one half for expenses of the garden, and the

other half by way of addition to his salary.[101]

[Sidenote: 1693. APR. 13.]

Mr Stephen Maxwell, ‘alleged to be a Romish priest,’ prisoner in

Blackness Castle, Mr George Gordon, Mr Robert Davidson, and Mr Alexander

Crichton, ‘also alleged to be popish priests,’ and prisoners in the

Edinburgh Tolbooth, were ordered to be set at liberty, provided they

would agree to deport themselves from the kingdom ‘in the fleet now

lying under convoy of the man-of-war lying in the Road of Leith,’ and

give caution to the extent of a hundred pounds that they would never

return. On the 17th, Mr James Hepburn, ‘alleged to be a popish priest,’

was ordered to be liberated from the Canongate Tolbooth on the same

terms. All of these gentlemen had been for many months deprived of their

liberty.

There still lay in Blackness Castle one John Seaton, who had been

apprehended in December 1688, on suspicion of being a priest, and

confined ever since, being four and a half years. He had been offered

the same grace with the rest; but he was prevented by his personal

condition from accepting it. According to his own account, he was

seventy years of age. He ‘has not only spent any little thing he had,

but his health is likewise entirely ruined, beyond any probability of

recovery.’ He was most willing to have gone abroad, ‘where he might have

expected better usage for ane in his condition than he can reasonably

propose to himself anywhere in this kingdom;’ but ‘when the rest went

away above a month ago, finding his health so totally broken by

sickness, old age, and imprisonment, and his infirmity still growing

worse,’ he was ‘necessitat to continue prisoner, rather than hazard a

long sea-voyage, whereby he could expect no less than an unavoidable

painful death, the petitioner, when formerly in health and strength at

sea, being still in hazard of his life.’ John Seaton further represented

that he had never, during his long imprisonment, received any support

from the government, but been maintained by the charity of his friends.

He now prayed the Council that they would take pity on him, and ‘not

permit him, ane old sickly dying man, to languish in prison for the few

days he can, by the course of nature and his disease, continue in this

life,’ but let him retire to ‘some friend’s house, where he may have the

use of some help for his distressed condition, and may in some measure

mitigate the affliction he at present lies under by old age, sickness,

poverty, and imprisonment.’