[Sidenote: 1696. JAN. 14.]
Margaret Balfour, Lady Rollo, had brought her husband relief from a
burden of forty thousand merks resting on his estate, being a debt owing
to her father; and without this relief he could not have enjoyed the
family property. She had, according to her own account, endeavoured to
live with him as a dutiful and loving wife, and they had children grown
up; yet he had been led into a base course of life with a female named
Isobel Kininmont, and in October last he had deserted his family, and
gone abroad. The lady now petitioned the Privy Council for aliment to
herself and her six children. The estate, she said, being eight thousand
merks per annum (£444, 8_s._ 10_d._⅔), she conceived that four thousand
was the least that could be modified for her behalf, along with the
mansion of Duncrub, which had been assigned to her as her
jointure-house.
The Lords of the Council ordained that Lord Rollo should be cited for a
particular day, and that for the time past, and till that day, the
tenants should pay her ladyship a thousand pounds Scots, she meanwhile
enjoying the use of Duncrub House. Lord Rollo, failing to appear on the
day cited, was declared rebel, and the lady’s petition was at the same
time complied with in its whole extent.[173]
[Sidenote: 1696. JAN.]
William Murray, tavern-keeper in the Canongate, was again a prisoner on
account of an offensive news-letter. He had suffered close imprisonment
for twenty-one weeks, till ‘his health is so far decayed, that, if he
were any longer where he is, the recovery thereof will be absolutely
desperate.’ His house having been shut up by the magistrates, his
liquors and furniture were spoiled, and ‘his poor wife and family
exposed to the greatest extremity and hazard of being starved for cold
and hunger in this season of the year.’ He represented to the Privy
Council that he was willing to be tried for any crime that could be laid
to his charge. ‘Ane Englishman’s directing,’ however, ‘of ane
news-letter to him was neither a crime nor any fault of his.... In case
there was anything unwarrantable in the letter, the postmaster was
obliged in duty to have suppressed the same, after he had read and
perused it.’ His having, on the contrary, delivered it, ‘after he had
read and perused it,’ was ‘sufficient to put him _in bonâ fide_ to
believe that the letter might thereafter be made patent.’
Murray went on to say that ‘this summar usage of himself and his poor
family, being far above the greatest severity that ever was inflicted by
their Lordships or any sovereign court of the nation, must be conceived
to be illegal, arbitrary, and unwarrantable, and contrair both to the
claim of right and established laws and inviolable practice of the
nation.’
The Council did so far grant grace to Murray as to order him out of
jail, but to be banished from Lothian, with certification that, if found
in those bounds after ten days, he should be taken off to the
plantations.[174]
[Sidenote: JAN. 16.]
The imbecile Laird of Drum was recently dead, and the lady who had
intruded herself into the position of his wife—Marjory Forbes by
name—professed a strong conviction that she would ere long become the
mother of an heir to the estate. For this consummation, however, it was
necessary that she should have fair-play, and this she was not likely to
get. Alexander Irvine of Murtle, heir of tailzie to the estate in
default of issue of the late laird, had equally strong convictions
regarding the hopes which Lady Drum asserted herself to entertain. He
deemed himself entitled to take immediate possession of the castle,
while Marjory, on her part, was resolved to remain there till her
[Sidenote: 1696.] expected accouchement. Here arose a fine case of
contending views regarding a goodly succession, worthy to be worked out
in the best style of the country and the time.
Marjory duly applied to the Privy Council with a representation of her
circumstances, and of the savage dealings of Murtle. When her condition
and hopes were first spoken of some months ago, ‘Alexander Irvine,
pretended heir of tailzie to the estate of Drum’—so she designated
him—‘used all methods in his power to occasion her abortion,
particularly by such representations to the Privy Council as no woman of
spirit, in her condition, could safely bear.’ When her husband died, and
while his corpse lay in the house, Murtle ‘convocat a band of armed men
to the number of twenty or thirty, with swords, guns, spears,
fore-hammers, axes, and others, and under silence of night did
barbarously assault the house of Drum, scaled the walls, broke up the
gates and doors, teared off the locks, and so far possessed themselves
of all the rooms, that the lady is confined in a most miserable
condition in a remote, obscure, narrow corner, and no access allowed to
her but at ane indecent and most inconvenient back-entry, not only in
hazard of abortion, but under fear of being murdered by the said
outrageous band of men, who carouse and roar night and day to her great
disturbance.’
The lady petitioned that she should be left unmolested till it should
appear in March next whether she was to bring forth an heir; and the
Lords gave orders to that effect. Soon after, on hearing representations
from both parties, four ladies—namely, the spouses of Alexander Walker
and John Watson of Aberdeen, on Murtle’s part, and the wife of Count
Leslie of Balquhain and the Lady Pitfoddels, on Lady Drum’s part—were
appointed to reside with her ladyship till her delivery, Murtle
meanwhile keeping away from the house.[175]
If I am to believe Mr Burke, Marjory proved to have been under a fond
illusion, and as even a woman’s tenacity must sometimes give way,
especially before decrees of law, I fear that Murtle would have her
drummed out of that fine old Aberdeenshire château on the ensuing 1st of
April.
Sir Robert Grierson of Lagg, the notable ‘persecutor,’ who had been not
a little persecuted himself after the Revolution as a person dangerous
to the new government, was now in trouble on [Sidenote: 1696.] a
different score. He was accused of the crimes of ‘clipping of good money
and coining of false money, and vending the samen when clipped and
coined,’ inferring the forfeiture of life, land, and goods.
It appears that Sir Robert had let his house of Rockhill to a person
named John Shochon, who represented himself as a gunsmith speculating in
new modes of casting lead shot and stamping of cloth. A cloth-stamping
work he had actually established at Rockhill, and he kept there also
many engraving tools which he had occasion to use in the course of his
business. But a suspicion of clipping and coining having arisen, a
search was made in the house, and though no false or clipped coin was
found, the king’s advocate deemed it proper to prosecute both Shochon
and his landlord on the above charge.
[Sidenote: JUNE 22.]
The two cases were brought forward separately at the Court of
Justiciary, and gave rise to protracted proceedings; but the result was,
that Sir Robert and Shochon appeared to have been denounced by enemies
who, from ignorance, were unable to understand the real character of
their operations, and the prosecution broke down before any assize had
been called.[176]
Shochon was residing in Edinburgh in 1700, and then petitioned
parliament for encouragement to a manufactory of arras, according to a
new method invented by him, ‘the ground whereof is linen, and the
pictures thereof woollen, of all sorts of curious colours, figures, and
pictures.’[177]
‘Lagg’—who had drowned religious women at stakes on the sands of
Wigton—had the fortune to survive to a comparatively civilised age. He
died in very advanced life, at Dumfries, about the close of 1733.
[Sidenote: APR. 10.]
Some printed copies of certain ‘popish books’—namely, _The Exposition of
the True Doctrine of the Catholic Church in Matters of Controversy_, _An
Answer to M. Dereden’s Funeral of the Mass_, and _The Question of
Questions, which is, Who ought to be our Judges in all Differences in
Religion?_—having been seized upon in a private house in Edinburgh, and
carried to the lodging of Sir Robert Chiesley, lord provost of the city,
the Privy Council authorised Sir Robert ‘to cause burn the said books in
the back-close of the town council by the hand of the common
executioner, until they be consumed to ashes.’
[Sidenote: 1696.]
Six months later, the Privy Council ordered a search of the booksellers’
shops in Edinburgh for books ‘atheistical, erroneous, profane, or
vicious.’
We find the cause of this order in the fact, that John Fraser,
book-keeper to Alexander Innes, factor, was before the Council on a
charge from the Lord Advocate of having had the boldness, some day in
the three preceding months, ‘to deny, impugn, argue, or reason against
the being of a God;’ also he had denied the immortality of the soul, and
the existence of a devil, and ridiculed the divine authority of the
Scriptures, ‘affirming they were only made to frighten folks and keep
them in order.’
Fraser appeared to answer this charge, which he did by declaring himself
of quite a contrary strain of opinions, as became the son of one who had
suffered much for religion’s sake in the late reigns. He had only, on
one particular evening, when in company with the simple couple with whom
he lived, recounted the opinions he had seen stated in a book entitled
_Oracles of Reason_, by Charles Blunt; not adverting to the likelihood
of these persons misunderstanding the opinions as his own. He professed
the greatest regret for what he had done, and for the scandal he had
given to holy men, and threw himself upon their Lordships’ clemency,
calling them to observe that, by the late act of parliament, the first
such offence may be expiated by giving public satisfaction for removing
the scandal.
The Lords found it sufficiently proven, that Fraser had argued against
the being of a God, the persons of the Trinity, the immortality of the
soul, and the authority of the Scriptures, and ordained him to remain a
prisoner ‘until he make his application to the presbytery of Edinburgh,
and give public satisfaction in sackcloth at the parish kirk where the
said crime was committed.’ Having done his penance to the satisfaction
of the presbytery, he was liberated on the 25th of February.
The Council at the same time ordered the booksellers of Edinburgh to
give in exact catalogues of the books they had for sale in their shops,
under certification that all they did not include should be confiscated
for the public use.[178]
[Sidenote: APR. 15.]
In the austerity of feeling which reigned through the Presbyterian
Church on its re-establishment, there had been but little [Sidenote:
1696.] disposition to assume a clerical uniform, or any peculiar pulpit
vestments. It is reported, that when the noble commissioner of one of
the first General Assemblies was found fault with by the brethren for
wearing a scarlet cloak, he told them he thought it as indecent for them
to appear in gray cloaks and cravats.[179] When Mr Calamy visited
Scotland in 1709, he was surprised to find the clergy generally
preaching in ‘neckcloths and coloured cloaks.’[180] We find at the date
here marginally noted, that the synod of Dumfries was anxious to see a
reform in these respects. ‘The synod’—so runs their record—‘considering
that it’s a thing very decent and suitable, so it hath been the practice
of ministers in this kirk formerly, to wear black gowns in the pulpit,
and for ordinary to make use of bands, do therefore, by their act,
recommend it to all their brethren within their bounds to keep up that
laudable custome, and to study gravitie in their apparel and deportment
every manner of way.’
From a poem of this time, in which a Fife laird, returned from the
grave, gives his sentiments on old and new manners, we learn that
formerly
We had no garments in our land,
But what were spun by th’ goodwife’s hand,
No drap-de-berry, cloths of seal,
No stuffs ingrained in cochineal;
No plush, no tissue, cramosie,
No China, Turkey, taffety;
No proud Pyropus, paragon,
Or Chackarally there was none;
No figurata, water shamlet,
No Bishop sattin, or silk camblet;
No cloth of gold or beaver hats,
· · · · ·
No windy-flourished flying feathers,
No sweet, permusted shambo leathers, &c.
And things were on an equally plain and simple footing with the ladies;
whereas now they invent a thousand toys and vanities—
As scarfs, shefroas, tuffs, and rings,
Fairdings, facings, and powderings,
Rebats, ribands, bands, and ruffs,
Lapbends, shagbands, cuffs, and muffs;
Folding o’erlays, pearling sprigs,
Atries, fardingales, periwigs;
Hats, hoods, wires, and also kells,
Washing balls and perfuming smells;
French gowns cut and double-banded,
Jet rings to make her pleasant-handed;
A fan, a feather, bracelets, gloves—
All new-come busks she dearly loves.[181]
[Sidenote: 1696.]
The spirit which dictated these lines was one which in those days forced
its way into the legislation of the country. In September 1696, an
overture was read before parliament ‘for ane constant fashion of clothes
for men, and another for ane constant fashion of clothes for women.’
What came of this does not appear; but two years later, the parliament
took under consideration an act for restraining expenses of apparel.
There was a debate as to whether the prohibition of gold and silver on
clothes should be extended to horse-furniture, and carried that it
should. Some one put to the vote whether gold and silver lace
manufactured within the kingdom might not be allowed, and the result was
for the negative. It was a painful starving-time, and men seem to have
felt that, while so many were wretched, it was impious for others to
indulge in expensive vanities of attire. The act, passed on the 30th
August 1698, discharged the wearing of ‘any clothes, stuffs, ribbons,
fringes, tracing, loops, _agreements_, buttons, made of silver or gold
thread, wire, or philagram.’
[Sidenote: APR.]
Two young men, Matthew M‘Kail, son of an advocate of the same name, and
Mr William Trent, writer, hitherto intimate friends, quarrelled about a
trifling matter, and resolved to fight a duel. Accompanied by John
Veitch, son of John Veitch, ‘presentee of the signator,’ and William
Drummond, son of Logie Drummond, youths scarcely out of their minority,
they went two days after—a Sunday having intervened—to the park of
Holyrood Palace, and there fought—it does not appear with what
weapons—but both were slain on the spot; after which the seconds
absconded.[182]
[Sidenote: JULY.]
A preacher named John Hepburn, who had been called to the parish of Urr
in Galloway, before the regular establishment of the church in 1690,
continued ever since to minister there and in the neighbouring parish of
Kirkgunzeon, without any proper authority. Enjoying the favour of an
earnest, simple people, and cherishing [Sidenote: 1696.] scruples about
the established church, he maintained his ground for several years, in
defiance of all that presbyteries, synods, and general assemblies could
do for his suppression. Holding a fast amongst his own people (June 25,
1696), he was interrupted by a deputation from the presbytery of
Dumfries, but nevertheless persisted in preaching to his people in the
open air, though, as far as appears, without any outward disorderliness.
It affords a curious idea of the new posture of Presbyterianism in
Scotland, that one of the deputation was Mr William Veitch, a noted
sufferer for opinion in the late reign.
The Privy Council took up this affair as a scandalous tumult and riot,
and had Mr Hepburn brought before them, and condemned to give bond under
a large forfeiture that he would henceforth live in the town of Brechin
and within two miles of the same—a place where they of course calculated
that he could do no harm, the inhabitants being so generally
Episcopalian. Meanwhile, he was laid up in the Old Tolbooth, and kept
there for nearly a month. There were people who wished to get in to hear
him. There were individuals amongst his fellow-prisoners also anxious to
listen to his ministrations. The Council denied the necessary
permission. We hear, however, of Mr Hepburn preaching every Sunday from
a window of his prison to the people in the street. He was then
conducted to Stirling Castle, and kept in durance there for several
months. It was three years before he was enabled to return to his
Galloway flock.[183] The whole story reads like a bit of the history of
the reign of Charles II. misplaced, with presbyteries for actors instead
of prelates.
[Sidenote: SEP.]
A crew of English, Scots, and foreigners, under an Englishman named
Henry Evory or Bridgman, had seized a ship of forty-six guns at Corunna,
and had commenced in her a piratical career throughout the seas of India
and Persia. Having finally left their ship in the isle of Providence,
these pirates had made their way to Scotland, and there dispersed,
hoping thus to escape the vengeance of the laws which they had outraged.
The Privy Council issued a proclamation, commanding all officers
whatsoever in the kingdom to be diligent in trying to catch the pirates,
‘who may probably be known and discovered by the great quantities of
Persian and Indian gold and silver which they have with them,’
[Sidenote: 1696.] a hundred pounds of reward being offered for
apprehending Bridgman, and fifty for each of the others.[184]
[Sidenote: SEP.]
Since the Reformation, there had been various public decrees for the
establishment of schools throughout Scotland; but they had been very
partially successful in their object, and many parishes continued to be
without any stated means of instruction for the young. The Presbyterian
or ultra-Protestant party, sensible how important an ability to read the
Scriptures was for keeping up a power in the people to resist the
pretensions of the Romish Church, had always, on this account, been
favourable to the maintenance of schools whereby the entire people might
be instructed. Now, that they were placed securely in ascendency, they
took the opportunity to obtain a parliamentary enactment ‘for settling
of schools,’ by virtue of which it was ordered that the heritors
(landowners) of each parish in the realm should ‘meet and provide a
commodious house for a school, and settle and modify a salary to a
schoolmaster, which shall not be under one hundred nor above two hundred
merks [£5, 11_s._ 1_d._⅓ and £11, 2_s._ 2_d._⅔].’[185] It was thus made
a duty incidental to the possession of land in each parish, that a
school and schoolmaster should be maintained, and that the poorest poor
should be taught; and, in point of fact, the community of Scotland
became thus assured of access to education, excepting in the Highlands,
where the vast extent of the parishes and other circumstances interfered
to make the act inoperative. The history of the commencement of our
parochial school establishment occupies but a page in this record; but
the effects of the measure in promoting the economic and moral interests
of the Scottish people are indefinite. It would be wrong to attribute to
that act solely, as has sometimes been done, all the credit which the
nation has attained in arts, in commerce, in moral elevation, and in
general culture. But certainly the native energies have been developed,
and the national moral character dignified, to a marked extent, through
the means of these parish schools—an effect the more conspicuous and
unmistakable from the fact of there having been no similar institution
to improve the mass of society in the sister-kingdom.
[Sidenote: OCT. 15.]
It is a rather whimsical association of ideas, that Sir David [Sidenote:
1696.] Dunbar, the hero of the sad story of the _Bride of
Baldoon_[186]—the bridegroom in the case—was an active improver of the
wretched rural economy of his day. Some years before his unfortunate
death in 1682, he had formed the noted _park_ of Baldoon, for the
rearing of a superior breed of cattle, with a view to the demands of the
market in England. It was, as far as I can learn, the first effort of
the kind made in Scotland, and the example was not without imitation in
various parts of the southwestern province of Scotland.
Andro Sympson, in his gossiping _Description of Galloway_, written
before the Revolution, speaks of the park of Baldoon as a rich pastoral
domain, of two and a half miles in length and one and a half in breadth,
to the south of the river Blednoch. It ‘can,’ he says, ‘keep in it,
winter and summer, about a thousand bestial, part whereof he [Sir David
Dunbar] buys from the country, and grazeth there all winter, other part
whereof is his own breed; for he hath nearly two hundred milch kine,
which for the most part have calves yearly. He buys also in the
summer-time from the country many bestial, oxen for the most part, which
he keeps till August or September; so that yearly he either sells at
home to drovers, or sends to St Faith’s, and other fairs in England,
about eighteen or twenty score of bestial. Those of his own breed at
four year old are very large; yea, so large, that, in August or
September 1682, nine-and-fifty of that sort, which would have yielded
betwixt five and six pound sterling the piece, were seized upon in
England for Irish cattle; and because the person to whom they were
intrusted had not witnesses there ready at the precise hour to swear
that they were seen calved in Scotland, they were, by sentence of Sir J.
L. and some others, who knew well enough that they were bred in
Scotland, knocked on the head and killed.’
The estate of Baldoon having, by the marriage of the heiress, Mary
Dunbar, come into the possession of Lord Basil Hamilton, a younger son
of the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton, we now find that young nobleman
petitioning the Privy Council for permission to import from Ireland ‘six
score young cows of the largest breed for making up his lordship’s stock
in the park of Baldoon,’ he giving security that he would import no
more, and employ these for no other end.[187]
[Sidenote: 1696.]
The example of the Baldoon park was followed by the Laird of Lochnaw and
other great proprietors, and the growing importance of the
cattle-rearing trade of Galloway is soon after marked by a demand for a
road whereby the stock might be driven to the English market. In June
1697, the matter came before the Privy Council. It was represented that,
while there was a customary way between the burgh of New Galloway and
Dumfries, there was no defined or made road. It was the line of passage
taken by immense herds of cattle which were continually passing from the
green pastures of the Galloway hills into England—a branch of economy
held to be the main support of the inhabitants of the district, and the
grand source of its rents. Droves of cattle are, however, apt to be
troublesome to the owners and tenants of the grounds through or near
which they pass; and such was the case here. ‘Several debates have
happened of late in the passage of droves from New Galloway to Dumfries,
the country people endeavouring by violence to stop the droves, and
impose illegal exactions of money upon the cattle, to the great damage
of the trade; whereby also riots and bloodsheds have been occasioned,
which had gone greater length, if those who were employed to carry up
the cattle had not managed with great moderation and prudence.’
On a petition from the great landlords of the district, James Earl of
Galloway, Lord Basil Hamilton, Alexander Viscount of Kenmure, John
Viscount of Stair, Sir Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw, Sir Charles Hay of Park,
&c., a commission was appointed by the Privy Council ‘to make and mark a
highway for droves frae New Galloway to Dumfries,’ holding ‘the high and
accustomed travelling way betwixt the said two burghs.’[188]
Amongst Sir David Dunbar’s imitators, it appears that we have to class
Sir George Campbell of Cessnock, in Ayrshire, so noted for his
sufferings under the late reign. The parks of Cessnock had formerly been
furnished with ‘ane brood of great cattle’ and a superior breed of
horses, both from Ireland; but, on the unjust forfeiture of the estate,
the stock had been taken away and destroyed, so that it was ‘entirely
decayed out of that country.’ Sir George, to whom the estate had been
restored at the Revolution, obtained, in March 1697, permission from the
Privy Council ‘to import from Ireland sixty cows and bulls, thretty-six
horses and mares, and six score of sheep, for plenishing of his
[Sidenote: 1696.] park.’ Soon after, the Council recalled the permission
for the sheep.
[Sidenote: OCT.]
The rolls of parliament and the books of the Privy Council contain about
this time abundant proofs of the tendency to manufacturing enterprise.
Sir John Shaw of Greenock and others were encouraged in a proposed
making of salt ‘after a new manner.’ There was a distinct act in favour
of certain other enterprising persons who designed to make ‘salt upon
salt.’ John Hamilton, merchant-burgess of Edinburgh, was endowed with
privileges for an invention of his, for mills and engines to sheel and
prepare barley. James Melville of Halhill got a letter of gift to
encourage him in a manufacture of sail-cloth. Inventions for draining of
mines are frequently spoken of.
William Morison of Prestongrange was desirous of setting up a glass-work
at a place within the bounds of his estate, called Aitchison’s Haven or
New Haven, ‘for making of all sorts of glass, as bottles, vials,
drinking, window, mirror, and warck [?] glasses.’ ‘In order thereto, he
conduced with strangers for carrying on the said work, who find great
encouragement for the same, within the said bounds.’ On his petition,
this proposed work, with the workmen and stock employed, was endowed by
the Privy Council (April 27, 1697) with the privileges accorded to
manufactories by acts of parliament.
Connected with Prestongrange in this business was a French refugee named
Leblanc, who had married a Scotchwoman, and got himself entered as a
burgess and guild-brother of Edinburgh, designing to spend the remainder
of his life in the country of his adoption. It was his part to polish
the glass for the making of mirrors, an art never before practised in
Scotland; and this business he carried on in a workshop in the
Canongate. It was found, however, that ‘the glasses must have mullers
and head-pieces of timber, and sometimes persons of honour and quality
desired also tables, drawers, and stands agreeable to the glass for
making up a suit.’ Leblanc offered to employ for this work the wrights
of the corporation of the Canongate; but they plainly acknowledged that
they could not execute it. He was obliged to employ wrights of
Edinburgh. Then came forth the same Canongate wrights, with complaints
of this infraction of their rights. It was a plain case of the dog in
the manger—and the consequence was the stoppage of a branch of industry
of some importance to the community. On Leblanc’s petition, the Privy
[Sidenote: 1696.] Council gave him permission to make up the upholstery
work connected with his mirrors, on the simple condition of his making a
first offer of it to the wrights of the Canongate.
One George Sanders had obtained, in 1681, an exclusive privilege, for
seventeen years, for a work for the twisting and throwing all sorts of
raw silk; but he never proceeded with the undertaking. ‘Joseph Ormiston
and William Elliot, merchants,’ proposed (June 1697) to set up such a
work, which they conceived would be useful in giving employment to the
poor, and in opening a profitable trade between Scotland and Turkey;
also in ‘advancing the manufactories of buttons, galloons, silk
stockings, and the like.’ They designed ‘to bring down several families
who make broad silks, gold and silver thread, &c.,’ and entertained ‘no
doubt that many of the Norwich weavers may be encouraged to come and
establish in this country, where they may live and work, at easy rates.’
On their petition, the adventurers had their proposed work invested by
the Privy Council with the privileges and immunities of a manufactory.
On the 22d February 1698, David Lord Elcho, for himself and copartners,
besought the favour of the Council for a glass-work which they proposed
to erect at Wemyss. They were to bring in strangers expert in the art,
and did not doubt that they would also afford considerable employment to
natives and to shipping; besides which, they would cause money to be
kept at home, and some to come in from abroad. They asked no monopoly or
‘the exclusion of any others from doing their best, and setting up in
any other part of the kingdom they please;’ all they craved was a
participation in the privileges held out by the acts of parliament.
Their petition was cordially granted.
Viscount Tarbat and Sir George Campbell of Cessnock, ‘being resolved to
enter into a society for shot-casting, whereby not only the exportation
of money for foreign shot will be restrained, but also the product of
our own kingdom considerably improved,’ petitioned (February 1698) for
and obtained for the said society all the privileges accorded by statute
to a manufactory for nineteen years.
It was well known, said a petition in September 1698, ‘how much the
burgh of Aberdeen and inhabitants thereof had in all times been disposed
to the making of cloth and stuffs, stockings, plaids, and all other
profitable work in wool.’ It therefore appeared reasonable to certain
persons of that burgh—Thomas Mitchell, John Allardyce, Alexander Forbes,
John Johnstone, [Sidenote: 1696.] and others—that a woollen manufactory
should be set up there, and they petitioned the Privy Council for
permission to do so, and to have the usual privileges offered by the
statute; which were granted.[189]
In 1703, a cloth manufactory was in full operation at Gordon’s Mills,
near Aberdeen, under the care of Mr William Black, advocate. Though
established but a year ago, it already produced broad cloths, druggets,
and stuffs of all sorts, ‘perhaps as good in their kind as any that have
been wrought in this kingdom.’ Mr Black had French workmen for the
whitening and scouring of his cloths, and boasted that he had created a
new trade in supplying the country people with sorted fleece-wool,
‘which is a great improvement in itself.’ Amongst his products were
‘half-silk serges, damasks, and plush made of wool, which looks near as
fine as that made of hair.’ Unlike most enterprisers in that age, he
desired to breed up young people who might afterwards set up factories
of the same kind, ‘which,’ he said, ‘will be the only way to bring our
Scots manufactories to reasonable prices.’ But he did not propose to do
this upon wholly disinterested principles. He petitioned parliament to
make a charge upon the county of Aberdeen, for the support of boys
working at his manufactory, during the first five years of their
apprenticeships;[190] and his desire was in a modified manner complied
with.
About the same time, William Hog of Harcarse had a cloth manufactory at
his place in Berwickshire, where he ‘did make, dress, and lit as much
red cloth as did furnish all the Earl of Hyndford’s regiment of dragoons
with red cloaths this last year, and that in a very short space.’[191]
It would appear that up to 1703 there was no such thing in Scotland as a
work for making earthenware; a want which, of course, occasioned ‘the
yearly export of large sums of money out of the kingdom,’ besides
causing all articles of that kind to be sold at ‘double charges of what
they cost abroad.’ William Montgomery of Macbie-hill, and George Linn,
merchant in Edinburgh, now made arrangements for setting up ‘a Pot-house
and all conveniences for making of laim, purslane, and earthenware,’ and
for bringing home from foreign countries the men required for such a
work. As necessary for their encouragement in this undertaking, the
parliament gave them an exclusive [Sidenote: 1696.] right of making
laim, purslane, and earthenware for fifteen years.[192]
[Sidenote: DEC 1.]
On a low sandy plain near the mouth of the Eden, in Fife, in sight of
the antique towers of St Andrews, stands the house of Earlshall, now
falling into decay, but in the seventeenth century the seat of a
knightly family of Bruces, one of whom has a black reputation as a
persecutor, having been captain of one of Claverhouse’s companies. The
hall in the upper part of the mansion—a fine room with a curved ceiling,
bearing pictures of the virtues and other abstractions, with scores of
heraldic shields—testifies to the dignity of this family, as well as
their taste. Some months before this date, Andrew Bruce of Earlshall had
granted to his son Alexander a disposition to the corns and fodder of
the estate, as also to those of the ‘broad lands of Leuchars;’ and
Alexander had entered into a bargain for the sale of the produce to John
Lundin, younger of Baldastard, for the use of the army. Against this
arrangement there was a resisting party in the person of Sir David Arnot
of that Ilk.
Sir David, on the day noted, came with a suitable train to Earlshall,
and there, with many violent speeches, proceeded to possess himself of
the keys of the barns and stables; caused the corns to be thrashed;
brought his own oxen to eat part of the straw; and finally forced
Earlshall’s tenants to carry off the whole grain to Pitlethie. The
produce thus disposed of is described as follows: ‘The Mains [home-farm]
of Earlshall paid, and which was in the corn-yard at the time, six
chalders victual, corn, and fodder, estimat this year [1697] at fourteen
pounds the boll, is ane thousand three hundred and forty-four pounds
Scots; and nine chalders of teind out of the lands of Leuchars-Bruce,
corn and fodder, estimat at the foresaid price to two thousand and
sixteen pounds.’
The Privy Council took up this case of ‘high and manifest oppression and
bangstrie,’ examined witnesses on both sides, and then remitted the
matter to the Court of Session.
A similar case of violently disputed rights occurred about the same
time. John Leas had a tack from the Laird of Brux in Aberdeenshire, for
a piece of land called Croshlachie, and finding it a prosperous
undertaking, he was ‘invyed’ in it by Mr Robert Irving, minister of
Towie. The minister frequently [Sidenote: 1696.] threatened Leas to
cause the laird dispossess him of his holding, possibly expecting to
harass him out of it. Leas stood his ground against such threats; but,
being simple, he was induced to let Mr Irving have a sight of his
‘assedation,’ which the minister no sooner got into his hands, than he
tore it in pieces. A few weeks after, May 8, 1693, Irving came to
Croshlachie, and causing men to divide the farm, took possession of one
part, put his cattle upon it, and pulled down two houses belonging to
Leas, who was thus well-nigh ruined.
Still unsatisfied with what he had gained, Irving came, in March 1694,
with Roderick Forbes, younger of Brux, whom he had brought over to his
views, and made a personal attack upon Leas, as he was innocently sowing
his diminished acres. ‘Tying his hands behind his back, [Irving] brought
him off the ground, and carried him prisoner like a malefactor to his
house.’ While they were there preparing papers which they were to force
him to subscribe, Leas ‘did endeavour to shake his hands lowse of their
bonds; but Mr Robert Irving came and ordered the cords to be more
severely drawn, which accordingly was done.’ He was detained in that
condition ‘till he was almost dead,’ and so was compelled to sign a
renunciation of his tack, and also a disposition of the seed he had
sown.
On a complaint from Leas coming before the Privy Council, Irving and
young Brux did not appear; for which reason they were denounced rebels.
Afterwards (June 16, 1698), they came forward with a petition for a
suspension of the decreet, alleging that they had come to the court, but
were prevented from appearing by accident. ‘It was the petitioners’
misfortune,’ they said, ‘that the time of the said calling they were
gone down to the close, and the macers not having called over the
window, or they not having heard, Maister Leas himself craved [that] the
letters might be found orderly proceeded.’ On this petition, the decreet
was suspended.
In August 1697, we are regaled with an example of female ‘bangstrie’ in
an elevated grade of society. It was represented to the Privy Council
that the wife of Lumsden of Innergellie, in Fife—we may presume, under
some supposed legal claim—came at midnight of the 22d July, with John
and Agnes Harper, and a few other persons, to the house of Ellieston, in
Linlithgowshire—ostensibly the property of the Earl of Rutherglen—which
was fast locked; and there, having brought ladders with them, they
scaled the house, and violently broke open the windows, at which they
[Sidenote: 1696.] entered; after which they broke open the doors. Having
thus taken forcible possession of the mansion, they brought cattle,
which they turned loose, to eat whatever fodder the place afforded.
On the petition of the Earl of Rutherglen, this affair came before the
Council, when, the accused lady not appearing, the Lords gave orders
that she and her servants should be cast out of the house of Ellieston,
and that John and Agnes Harper should pay a hundred pounds Scots as
damages, and to be confined (if caught) until that sum was paid.[193]
[Sidenote: 1697.]
Jean Douglas, styled Lady Glenbucket, as being the widow of the late
Gordon of Glenbucket, had been endowed by her husband, in terms of her
marriage-contract, with a thousand pounds Scots of free rent out of the
best of his lands ‘nearest adjacent to the house.’ At his death in 1693,
she ‘entered on the possession of the mains and house of Glenbucket, and
uplifted some of the rents, out of which she did aliment her eight
children till May [1696],’ when an unhappy interruption took place in
consequence of a dispute with her eldest son about their respective
rights.
According to the complaint afterwards presented by the lady—though it
seems scarce credible—‘she was coming south to take advice regarding her
affairs, when her son, Adam Gordon, followed her with an armed force,
and, on her refusal to comply with his request that she would return,
avowed his determination to have her back, though he should drag her at
a horse’s tail. Then seizing her with violence, he forced her to return
to Glenbucket, three miles, and immured her there as a prisoner for
thirty days, without attendance or proper aliment; indeed, she could
have hardly eaten anything that was offered for fear of poison; and ‘if
it had not been for the charity of neighbours, who in some part supplied
her necessity, she must undoubtedly have starved.’ The young man
meanwhile possessed himself of everything in the house, including the
legal writings of her property; he left her and her children no means of
subsistence, ‘yea, not so much as her wearing clothes,’ and she ‘was
glad to escape with her life.’ He also proceeded to uplift her rents.
The lady craved redress from the Privy Council, which seems [Sidenote:
1697.] to have become satisfied of the truth of her complaint; but what
steps they took in the case does not appear.[194]
[Sidenote: 1696. DEC. 12.]
Every now and then, amidst the mingled harmonies and discords proceeding
from the orchestra of the national life, we hear the deep diapason of
the voice of the church, proclaiming universal hopeless wickedness, and
threatening divine judgments. At this time, a solemn fast was appointed
to be held on the 21st of January next, to deprecate ‘the wrath of God,’
which is ‘very visible against the land, in the judgments of great
sickness and mortality in most parts of the kingdom, as also of growing
dearth and famine threatened, with the imminent hazard of ane invasion
from our cruel and bloody enemies abroad; all the just deservings and
effects of our continuing and abounding sins, and of our great security
and impenitency under them.’
[Sidenote: DEC. 23.]
It was while the public mind was excited by the complicated evils of
famine and threatened invasion, that an importation of atheistical books
was found to have been made into Edinburgh, and several young men were
denounced to the authorities as having become infected with heterodox
opinions. At a time when every public evil was attributed to direct
judgment for sins, we may in some faint degree imagine how even an
incipient tendency to irreligion would be looked upon by the more
serious-minded people, including the clergy, and how just and laudable
it would appear to take strong measures for the repression of such
wickedness. We have to remember, too, the temper of Sir James Steuart,
the present public prosecutor. One delinquent—John Fraser—had, upon
timely confession and penitence, been lightly dealt with; but there was
another youthful offender, who, meeting accusation in a different frame
of mind, at least at first, was to have a different fate.
Thomas Aikenhead, a youth of eighteen, ‘son to the deceest James
Aikenhead, chirurgeon in Edinburgh,’ was now tried by the High Court of
Justiciary for breach of the 21st act of the first parliament of Charles
II., ‘against the crime of blasphemy,’ which act had been ratified by
the 11th act of the fifth session of the parliament of the present
reign. It was alleged in the indictment that the young man had, for a
twelvemonth past, been accustomed to speak of theology as ‘a rhapsody of
feigned and ill-invented nonsense,’ calling the Old Testament _Ezra’s
fables_, [Sidenote: 1696.] and the New _the history of the Impostor
Christ_, further ‘cursing Moses, Ezra, and Jesus, and all men of that
sort.’ ‘Likeas,’ pursued this document, ‘you reject the mystery of the
blessed Trinity, and say it is not worth any man’s refutation, and you
also scoff at the mystery of the incarnation of Jesus Christ ... as to
the doctrine of redemption by Jesus, you say it is a proud and
presumptuous device ... you also deny spirits ... and you have
maintained that God, the world, and nature, are but one thing, and that
the world was from eternity.... You have said that you hoped to see
Christianity greatly weakened, and that you are confident it will in a
short time be utterly extirpat.’
Aikenhead, though impenitent at first, no sooner received this
indictment in prison, than he endeavoured to stop proceedings by
addressing to the Lords of Justiciary a ‘petition and retraction,’ in
which he professed the utmost abhorrence of the expressions attributed
to him, saying he trembled even to repeat them to himself, and further
avowing his firm faith in the gospel, in the immortality of the soul, in
the doctrine of the Trinity, and in the divine authority of Scripture.
He alleged, like Fraser, that the objectionable expressions had only
been repeated by him, as sentiments of certain atheistical writers whose
works had been put into his hands by a person now cited as a witness
against him, and ‘who constantly made it his work to interrogate me
anent my reading of the said atheistical principles and arguments.’ ‘May
it therefore please your Lordships,’ said the petitioner in conclusion,
‘to have compassion on my young and tender years (not being yet major),
and that I have been so innocently betrayed and induced to the reading
of such atheistical books ... that I do truly own the Protestant
religion ... and am resolved, by the assistance of Almighty God, to make
my abhorrence of what is contained in the libel appear to the world in
my subsequent life and conversation ... to desert the diet against me.’
This appeal, however, was in vain.
The case was conducted by Sir James Steuart, the king’s advocate, and
Sir Patrick Hume, the king’s solicitor.
The witnesses were three students, and a ‘writer,’ all of them about
twenty years of age, being the companions of the culprit, and one of
them (named Mungo Craig) known to be the person who had lent Aikenhead
the books from which he derived the expressions charged in the
indictment. It was proved by the ample depositions of these young men,
that Aikenhead had been accustomed [Sidenote: 1696.] to speak
opprobriously of the Scriptures and their authors, as well as of the
doctrines of Christianity; by Mungo Craig alone it was averred that he
had cursed Jesus Christ, along with Moses and Ezra. Thus there was not
_full_ proof against the accused on the principal point of the statute
charged upon—namely, the cursing of God or any other person of the
blessed Trinity. The jury nevertheless unanimously found it proven ‘that
the panel, Thomas Aikenhead, has railed against the first person, and
also cursed and railed our blessed Lord, the second person, of the holy
Trinity.’ They further found ‘the other crimes libelled proven—namely,
the denying the incarnation of our Saviour, the holy Trinity, and
scoffing at the Holy Scriptures.’ Wherefore the judges ‘decern and
adjudge the said Thomas Aikenhead to be taken to the Gallowlee, betwixt
Leith and Edinburgh, upon Friday the eighth day of January next to come,
and there to be hanged on a gibbet till he be dead, and his body to be
interred at the foot of the gallows.’
It struck some men in the Privy Council that it was hard to take the
life of a lad of eighteen, otherwise irreproachable, for a purely
metaphysical offence, regarding which he had already expressed an
apparently sincere penitence; and this feeling was probably increased
when a petition was received from Aikenhead, not asking for life, which
he had ceased to hope for, but simply entreating for delay of a sentence
which he acknowledged to be just, on the ground that it had ‘pleased
Almighty God to begin so far in His mercy to work upon your petitioner’s
obdured heart, as to give him some sense and conviction of his former
wicked errors ... and he doth expect ... if time were allowed ...
through the merits of Jesus, by a true remorse and repentance, to be yet
reconciled to his offended God and Saviour.’ I desire, he said, this
delay, that ‘I may have the opportunity of conversing with godly
ministers in the place, and by their assistance be more prepared for an
eternal rest.’
Lord Anstruther and Lord Fountainhall, two members of the Council, were
led by humane feeling to visit the culprit in prison. ‘I found a work on
his spirit,’ says the former gentleman, ‘and wept that ever he should
have maintained such tenets.’ He adds that he desired for Aikenhead a
short reprieve, as his eternal state depended on it. ‘I plead [pleaded]
for him in Council, and brought it to the Chan[cellor’s] vote. It was
told it could not be granted _unless the ministers would intercede_....
The ministers, out of a pious, though I think ignorant zeal, spoke and
preached [Sidenote: 1696.] for cutting him off ... our ministers being,’
he adds, ‘generally of a narrow set of thoughts and confined principles,
and not able to bear things of this nature.’ It thus appears that the
clergy were eager for the young man’s blood, and the secular powers so
far under awe towards that body, that they could not grant mercy. The
Council appears in numberless instances as receiving applications for
delay and pardon from criminals under sentence, and so invariably
assents to the petition, that we may infer there having been a routine
practice in the case, by which petitions were only sent after it was
ascertained that they would probably be complied with. There being no
petition for pardon from Aikenhead to the Council after his trial, we
may fairly presume that he had learned there was no relaxation of the
sentence to be expected.
As the time designed for his execution drew nigh, Aikenhead wrote a
paper of the character of a ‘last speech’ for the scaffold, in which he
described the progress of his mind throughout the years of his
education. From the age of ten, he had sought for grounds on which to
build his faith, having all the time an insatiable desire of attaining
the truth. He had bewildered himself amongst the questions on morals and
religion which have bewildered so many others, and only found that the
more he thought on these things the further he was from certainty. He
now felt the deepest contrition for the ‘base, wicked, and irreligious
expressions’ he had uttered—‘although I did the same out of a blind zeal
for what I thought the truth.’ ‘Withal, I acknowledge and confess to the
glory of God, that in all he hath brought upon me, either one way or
other, he hath done it most wisely and justly.... Likeas I bless God I
die in the true Christian Protestant apostolic faith.’ He then alluded
in terms of self-vindication to aspersions regarding him which had been
circulated in a satire by Mr Mungo Craig, ‘whom I leave,’ said he, ‘to
reckon with God and his own conscience, if he was not as deeply
concerned in those hellish notions for which I am sentenced, as ever I
was: however, I bless the Lord, I forgive him and all men, and wishes
the Lord may forgive him likewise.’ Finally, he prayed that his blood
might ‘give a stop to that raging spirit of atheism which hath taken
such a footing in Britain both in practice and profession.’ Along with
this paper, he left a letter to his friends, dated the day of his
execution, expressing a hope that what he had written would give them
and the world satisfaction, ‘and after I am gone produce more charity
than [it] hath been my fortune to be trysted hitherto with, and remove
[Sidenote: 1696.] the apprehensions which I hear are various with many
about my case.’[195]
There was at that time in Edinburgh an English Nonconformist clergyman,
of Scottish birth, named William Lorimer, who had come to fill the chair
of divinity at St Andrews. While Aikenhead was under sentence, Mr
Lorimer preached before the Lord Chancellor and other judges and chief
magistrates, _On the Reverence due to Jesus Christ_, being a sermon
apropos to the occasion; and we find in this discourse not one word
hinting at charity or mercy for Aikenhead, but much to encourage the
audience in an opposite temper. It would appear, however, that the
preacher afterwards found some cause for vindicating himself from a
concern in bringing about the death of Aikenhead, and therefore, when he
published his sermon, he gave a preface, in which he at once justified
the course which had been taken with the youth, and tried to shew that
he, and at least one other clergyman, had tried to get the punishment
commuted. The prosecution, he tells us, was undertaken entirely on
public grounds, in order to put down a ‘plague of blasphemous deism’
which had come to Edinburgh. The magistrates, being informed of the
progress of this pestilence among the young men, had two of them
apprehended. ‘One [John Fraser] made an excuse ... humbly confessed that
it was a great sin for him to have uttered with his mouth such words of
blasphemy against the Lord; professed his hearty repentance ... and so
the government pardoned him, but withal ordered that he should confess
his sin, and do public penance in all the churches in Edinburgh. And I
believe the other might have been pardoned also, if he had followed the
example of his companion; but he continued sullen and obstinate, I think
for some months; and the party were said to be so very bold and
insolent, as to come in the night and call to him by name at his
chamber-window in the prison, and to tell him that he had a good cause,
and to exhort him to stand to it, and suffer for it bravely. This
influenced the government to execute the law.’
With regard to efforts in favour of Aikenhead, Mr Lorimer’s statement is
as follows: ‘I am sure the ministers of the Established Church used him
with an affectionate tenderness, and took much pains with him to bring
him to faith and repentance, and to save his soul; yea, and some of the
ministers, to my certain knowledge, and particularly the late reverend,
learned, prudent, peaceable, and pious Mr George Meldrum, then minister
of the Tron Church, interceded for him with the government, and
solicited for his pardon; and when that could not be obtained, he
desired a reprieve for him, and I joined with him in it. This was the
day before his execution. The chancellor was willing to have granted him
a reprieve, but could not do it without the advice of the Privy Council
and judges; and, to shew his willingness, he called the Council and
judges, who debated the matter, and then carried it by a plurality of
votes for his execution, according to the sentence of the judges, that
there might be a stop put to the spreading of that contagion of
blasphemy.’[196]
Mr Lorimer’s and Lord Anstruther’s statements are somewhat discrepant,
and yet not perhaps irreconcilable. It may be true that, at the last
moment, _one_ of the city clergy, accompanied by an English stranger,
tried to raise his voice for mercy. It is evident, however, that no very
decided effort of the kind was made, for the records of the Privy
Council contain no entry on the subject, although, only three days
before Aikenhead’s execution, we find in them a reprieve formally
granted to one Thomas Weir, sentenced for housebreaking. The statement
itself, implying a movement entirely exceptive, only makes the more
certain the remarkable fact, derived from Lord Anstruther’s statement,
that the clergy, _as a body_, did not intercede, but ‘spoke and preached
for cutting him off,’ for which reason the civil authorities were unable
to save him. The clergy thus appear unmistakably in the character of the
persecutors of Aikenhead, and as those on whom, next to Sir James
Steuart, rests the guilt of his blood.
The _Postman_, a journal of the day, relates the last moments of the
unhappy young man. ‘He walked thither [to the place of execution—a mile
from the prison] on foot, between a strong guard of fusiliers drawn up
in two lines. Several ministers assisted him in his last moments; and,
according to all human appearance, he died with all the marks of a true
penitent. When he was called out of the prison to the City
Council-house, before his going to the place of execution, as is usual
on such occasions, he delivered his thoughts at large in a paper written
by him, and signed with his own hand, and then requested the ministers
that were present [Sidenote: 1696.] to pray for him, which they did; and
afterwards he himself prayed, and several times invocated the blessed
Trinity, as he did likewise at the place of execution, holding all the
time the Holy Bible in his hand; and, being executed, he was buried at
the foot of the gallows.’
[Sidenote: 1697. JAN. 16.]
There had been for two years under process in the Court of Session a
case in which a husband was sued for return of a deceased wife’s
_tocher_ of eight thousand merks (£444, 8_s._ 10_d._⅔), and her
_paraphernalia_ or things pertaining to her person. It came, on this
occasion, to be debated what articles belonging to a married woman were
to be considered as _paraphernalia_, or _jocalia_, and so destined in a
particular way in case of her decease. The Lords, after long
deliberation, fixed on a rule to be observed in future cases, having a
regard, on the one hand, to ‘the dignity of wives,’ and, on the other,
to the restraining of extravagances. First was ‘the _mundus_ or
_vestitus muliebris_—namely, all the body-clothes belonging to the wife,
acquired by her at any time, whether in this or any prior marriage, or
in virginity or viduity; and whatever other ornaments or other things
were peculiar or proper to her person, and not proper to men’s use or
wearing, as necklaces, earrings, breast-jewels, gold chains, bracelets,
&c. Under childbed linens, as _paraphernal_ and proper to the wife, are
to be understood only the linen on the wife’s person in childbed, but
not the linens on the child itself, nor on the bed or room, which are to
be reckoned as common movables; therefore found the child’s spoon,
porringer, and whistle contained in the condescendence [in this special
case] are not paraphernal, but fall under the communion of goods; but
that ribbons, cut or uncut, are paraphernal, and belong to the wife,
unless the husband were a merchant. All the other articles that are of
their own nature of promiscuous and common use, either to men or women,
are not paraphernal, but fall under the communion of goods, unless they
become peculiar and paraphernal by the gift and appropriation of the
husband to her, such as a marriage-watch, rings, jewels, and medals. A
purse of gold or other movables that, by the gift of a former husband,
became properly the wife’s goods and paraphernal, exclusive of the
husband, are only to be reckoned as common movables _quoad_ a second
husband, unless they be of new gifted and appropriated by him to the
wife again. Such gifts and presents as one gives to his bride before or
on the day of the marriage, are paraphernal and irrevokable by the
husband [Sidenote: 1697.] during that marriage, and belong only to the
wife and her executors; but any gifts by the husband to the wife after
the marriage-day are revokable, either by the husband making use of them
himself, or taking them back during the marriage; but if the wife be in
possession of them during the marriage or at her death, the same are not
revokable by the husband thereafter. Cabinets, coffers, &c., for holding
the paraphernalia, are not paraphernalia, but fall under the communion
of goods. Some of the Lords were for making anything given the next
morning after the marriage, paraphernalia, called the _morning gift_ in
our law; but the Lords esteemed them man and wife then, and [the gift]
so irrevokable.’[197]
[Sidenote: JAN. 30.]
John, late Archbishop of Glasgow, having applied to the king for
permission to go to Scotland ‘for recovery of his health,’ obtained a
letter granting him the desired liberty under certain restrictions. On
the ensuing 16th of March, there is an ordinance of the Privy Council,
appointing the town of Cupar, in Fife, and four miles about the same, as
the future residence of the ex-prelate, provided he give sufficient
caution for keeping within these bounds, and entering into no
contrivance or correspondence against the government.
On the 15th of April, the archbishop, having found no ‘convenient
lodging for his numerous family in Cupar,’ was permitted, on his
petition, to reside in the mansion of Airth, under the same conditions.
Two months later, this was changed to ‘the mansion-house of Gogar, near
to Airth, within the shire of Clackmannan.’ The archbishop does not
appear to have been released from his partial restraint till February
1701.[198]
[Sidenote: FEB.]
Commenced an inquiry by a commission from the Privy Council into the
celebrated case of _Bargarran’s Daughter_—namely, Christian Shaw, a girl
of eleven years old, the daughter of John Shaw of Bargarran, in
Renfrewshire. A solemn importance was thus given to circumstances which,
if they took place now, would be slighted by persons in authority, and
scarcely heard of beyond the parish, or at most the county. It was,
however, a case highly characteristic of the age and country in which it
happened.
In the parish of Erskine, on the south bank of the Clyde, stands
Bargarran House, a small old-fashioned mansion, with some [Sidenote:
1697.] inferior buildings attached, the whole being enclosed, after the
fashion of a time not long gone by, in a wall capable of some defence.
Here dwelt John Shaw, a man of moderate landed estate, with his wife and
a few young children. His daughter Christian had as yet attracted no
particular attention from her parents or neighbours, though observed to
be a child of lively character and ‘well-inclined.’
One day (August 17, 1696), little Christian having informed her mother
of a petty theft committed by a servant, the woman broke out upon her
with frightful violence, wishing her soul might be harled [dragged]
through hell, and thrice imprecating the curse of God upon her.
Considering the pious feelings of old and young in that age, we shall
see how such an assault of terrible words might well impress the mind of
a child, to whom all such violences must have been a novelty. The
results, however, were of a kind which could scarcely have been
anticipated. Five days afterwards, when Christian had been a short while
in bed, and asleep, she suddenly started up with a great cry, calling,
‘Help! help!’ and immediately sprung into the air, in a manner
astonishing to her parents and others who were in the room. Then being
put into another bed, she remained stiff and to appearance insensible
for half an hour; after which, for forty-eight hours, she continued
restless, complaining of violent pains through her whole body, or, if
she dozed for a moment, immediately starting up with the same cry of
irrepressible terror, ‘Help! help!’
For eight days the child had fits of extreme violence, under which she
was ‘often so bent and rigid that she stood like a bow on her feet and
neck at once,’ and continued without the power of speech, except at
short intervals, during which she seemed perfectly well. A doctor and
apothecary were brought to her from Paisley; but their bleedings and
other applications had no perceptible effect. By and by, her troubles
assumed a different aspect. She seemed to be wrestling and fighting with
an unseen enemy, and there were risings and fallings of her belly, and
strange shakings of her whole body, that struck the beholders with
consternation. She now began, in her fits, to denounce Catherine
Campbell, the woman-servant, and an old woman of evil fame, named Agnes
Naismith, as the cause of her torments, alleging that they were present
in person cutting her side, when in reality they were at a distance. At
this crisis, fully two months after the beginning of her ailments, her
parents took her to Glasgow, to consult an eminent physician, named
Brisbane, [Sidenote: 1697.] regarding her case. He states in his
deposition,[199] that at first he thought the child quite well; but
after a few minutes, she announced a coming fit, and did soon after fall
into convulsions, accompanied by heavy groanings and murmurings against
two women named Campbell and Naismith; all of which he thought
‘reducible to the effect of a hypochondriac melancholy.’ He gave some
medicines suitable to his conception of the case, and for eight days,
during which the girl remained in Glasgow, she was comparatively well,
as well as for eight days after her return home. Then the fits returned
with even increased violence; she became as stiff as a corpse, without
sense or motion; her tongue would be drawn out of her mouth to a
prodigious length, while her teeth set firmly upon it; at other times it
was drawn far back into her mouth. Her parents set out with her again to
Glasgow, that she might be under the doctor’s care; but as they were
going, a new fact presented itself. She spat or took from her mouth,
every now and then, parcels of hair of different colours, which she
declared her two tormentors were trying to force down her throat. She
had also fainting-fits every quarter of an hour. Dr Brisbane saw her
again (November 12), and from that time for some weeks was frequently
with her. He says: ‘I observed her narrowly, and was confident she had
no human correspondent to subminister the straw, wool, cinders, hay,
feathers, and such like trash to her; all which, upon several occasions,
I have seen her pull out of her mouth in considerable quantities,
sometimes after several fits, and sometimes after no fit at all, whilst
she was discoursing with us; and for the most part she pulled out those
things without being wet in the least; nay, rather as if they had been
dried with care and art; for one time, as I remember, when I was
discoursing with her, she gave me a cinder out of her mouth, not only
dry, but hot, much above the degree of the natural warmth of a human
body.’ ‘Were it not,’ he adds, ‘for the hairs, hay, straw, and other
things wholly contrary to human nature, I should not despair to reduce
all the other symptoms to their proper classes in the catalogue of human
diseases.’ Thereafter, as we are further informed, there were put out of
her mouth bones of various sorts and sizes, small sticks of candle-fir,
some stable-dung mingled with hay, a quantity of fowl’s feathers, a
gravel-stone, a whole gall-nut, and some egg-shells.
[Sidenote: 1697.]
Sometimes, during her fits, she would fall a-reasoning, as it were, with
Catherine Campbell about the course she was pursuing, reading and
quoting Scripture to her with much pertinence, and entreating a return
of their old friendship. The command which she shewed of the language of
the Bible struck the bystanders as wonderful for such a child; but they
easily accounted for it. ‘We doubt not,’ says the narrator of the case,
‘that the Lord did, by his good spirit, graciously afford her a more
than ordinary measure of assistance.’
Before leaving Glasgow for the second time, she had begun to speak of
other persons as among her tormentors, naming two, Alexander and James
Anderson, and describing other two whose names she did not know.
Returned to Bargarran about the 12th of December, she was at ease for
about a week, and then fell into worse fits than ever. She now saw the
devil in various shapes threatening to devour her. Her face and body
underwent frightful contortions. She would point to places where her
tormentors were standing, wondering why others did not see them as well
as she. One of these ideal tormentors, Agnes Naismith, came in the body
to see the child, spoke kindly, and prayed God to restore her health;
after which Christian always spoke of her as her defender from the rest.
Catherine Campbell was of a different spirit. She could by no means be
prevailed on to pray for the child, but cursed her and all her family,
imprecating the devil to let her never grow better, for all the trouble
she had brought upon herself. This woman being soon after imprisoned, it
seemed as if from that time she also disappeared from among the child’s
tormentors. We are carefully informed that in her pocket was found a
ball of hair, which was thrown into the fire, and after that time the
child vomited no more hair.
The devil’s doings at Bargarran having now effectually roused public
attention, the presbytery sent relays of their members to be present in
the house, and lend all possible spiritual help. One evening, Christian
was suddenly carried off with an unaccountable motion through the
chamber and hall, down the long winding stair, to the outer gate,
laughing wildly, while ‘her feet did not touch the ground, so far as
anybody was able to discern.’ She was brought back in a state of
rigidity, and declared when she recovered that she had felt as one
carried in a swing. On the ensuing evening, she was carried off in the
same manner, and borne to the top of the house; thence, as she stated,
by some men [Sidenote: 1697.] and women, down to the outer gate, where,
as formerly, she was found lying like one dead. The design of her
bearers, she said, was to throw her into the well, when the world would
believe she had drowned herself. On a third occasion, she moved in the
same unaccountable manner down to the cellar, when the minister, trying
to bring her up again, felt as if some one were pulling her back out of
his arms. On several occasions, she spoke of things which she had no
visible means of knowing, but which were found to be true, thus
manifesting one of the assigned proofs of possession, and of course
further confirming the general belief regarding her ailments and their
cause. She said that some one spoke over her head, and distinctly told
her those things.
The matter having been reported with full particulars to the Privy
Council, the commission before spoken of was issued, and on the 5th
February it came to Bargarran, under the presidency of Lord Blantyre,
who was the principal man in the parish. Catherine Campbell, Agnes
Naismith, a low man called Anderson, and his daughter Elizabeth,
Margaret Fulton, James Lindsay, and a Highland beggar-man, all of whom
had been described as among Christian’s tormentors, were brought forward
and confronted with her; when it was fully seen that, on any of these
persons touching her, she fell into fits, but not when she was touched
by any other person. It is stated that, even when she was muffled up,
she distinguished that it was the Highland beggar who touched her. The
list of the culprits, however, was not yet complete. There was a boy
called Thomas Lindsay, who for a half-penny would pronounce a charm, and
turn himself about _withershins_, or contrary to the direction of the
sun, and so stop a plough, and cause the horse to break the yoke. He was
taken up, and speedily confessed being in paction with the devil, and
bearing his marks. At the same time, Elizabeth Anderson confessed that
she had been at several meetings with the devil, and declared her father
and the Highland beggar to have been active instruments for tormenting
Christian Shaw. There had been one particular meeting of witches with
the devil in the orchard of Bargarran, where the plan for the affliction
of the child had been made up. Amongst the delinquents was a woman of
rather superior character, a midwife, commonly called Maggie Lang,
together with her daughter, named Martha Semple. These two women,
hearing they were accused, came to Bargarran, to demonstrate their
innocence; nor could Christian at first accuse Maggie; but after a
while, a ball of hair was found where she had sat, and the [Sidenote:
1697.] afflicted girl declared this to be a charm which had hitherto
imposed silence upon her. Now that the charm was broken, she readily
pronounced that Mrs Lang had been amongst her tormentors.
In the midst of these proceedings, by order of the presbytery, a solemn
fast was kept in Erskine parish, with a series of religious services in
the church. Christian was present all day, without making any particular
demonstrations.
On the 18th of February—to pursue the contemporary narration—‘she being
in a light-headed fit, said the devil now appeared to her in the shape
of a man; whereupon being struck in great fear and consternation, she
was desired to pray with an audible voice: “The Lord rebuke thee,
Satan!” which trying to do, she presently lost the power of her speech,
her teeth being set, and her tongue drawn back into her throat; and
attempting it again, she was immediately seized with another severe fit,
in which, her eyes being twisted almost round, she fell down as one
dead, struggling with her feet and hands, and, getting up again
suddenly, was hurried violently to and fro through the room, deaf and
blind, yet was speaking to some invisible creature about her, saying:
“With the Lord’s strength, thou shalt neither put straw nor sticks into
my mouth.” After this she cried in a pitiful manner: “The bee hath stung
me.” Then, presently sitting down, and untying her stockings, she put
her hand to that part which had been nipped or pinched; upon which the
spectators discerned the lively marks of nails, deeply imprinted on that
same part of her leg. When she came to herself, she declared that
something spoke to her as it were over her head, and told her it was Mr
M. in a neighbouring parish (naming the place) that had appeared to her,
and pinched her leg in the likeness of a bee.’
At another time, while speaking with an unseen tormentor, she asked how
she had got those red sleeves; then, making a plunge along the bed at
the supposed witch, she was heard as it were tearing off a piece of
cloth, when presently a piece of red cloth rent in two was seen in her
hands, to the amazement of the bystanders, who were certain there had
been no such cloth in the room before.
On the 28th of March, while the inquiries of the commission were still
going on, Christian Shaw all at once recovered her usual health; nor did
she ever again complain of being afflicted in this manner.
The case was in due time formally prepared for trial; and seven persons
were brought before an assize at Paisley, with the Lord Advocate as
prosecutor, and an advocate assigned, according to the custom of
Scotland, for the defence of the accused. It was a new commission which
sat in judgment, comprehending, we are told, several persons not only
‘of honour,’ but ‘of singular knowledge and experience.’ The witnesses
were carefully examined; full time was allowed to every part of the
process, which lasted twenty hours; and six hours more were spent by the
jury in deliberating on their verdict. The crimes charged were the
murders of several children and persons of mature age, including a
minister, and the tormenting of several persons, and particularly of
Bargarran’s daughter. It is alleged by the contemporary narrator,
Francis Cullen, advocate, that all things were carried on ‘with
tenderness and moderation;’ yet the result was that the alleged facts
were found to be fully proved, and a judgment of guilty was given.
It is fitting to remember here, that the Lord Advocate, Sir James
Steuart, in his address to the jury, holds all those instances of
clairvoyance and of flying locomotion which have been mentioned, as
completely proved, and speaks as having no doubt of the murders and
torments effected by the accused. He insisted strongly on the devil’s
marks which had been found upon their persons; also on the coincidence
between many things alleged by Christian Shaw and what the witches had
confessed. From such records of the trial as we have, it fully appears
that the whole affair was gone about in a reasoning way: the premises
granted, everything done and said was right, as far as correct logic
could make it so.
On the 10th of June, on the Gallow Green of Paisley, a gibbet and a fire
were prepared together. Five persons, including Maggie Lang, were
brought out and hung for a few minutes on the one, then cut down and
burned in the other. A man called John Reid would have made a sixth
victim, if he had not been found that morning dead in his cell, hanging
to a pin in the wall by his handkerchief, and believed to have been
strangled by the devil. And so ended the tragedy of _Bargarran’s
Daughter_.
The case has usually, in recent times, been treated as one in which
there were no other elements than a wicked imposture on her part, and
some insane delusions on that of the confessing victims; but probably in
these times, when the phenomena of mesmerism have forced themselves upon
the belief of a large and respectable portion of society, it will be
admitted as more likely [Sidenote: 1697.] that the maledictions of
Campbell threw the child into an abnormal condition, in which the
ordinary beliefs of her age made her sincerely consider herself as a
victim of diabolic malice. How far she might be tempted to put on
appearances and make allegations, in order to convince others of what
she felt and believed, it would be difficult to say. To those who regard
the whole affair as imposture, an extremely interesting problem is
presented for solution by the original documents, in which the
depositions of witnesses are given—namely, how the fallaciousness of so
much, and, to appearance, so good testimony on pure points of fact, is
to be reconciled with any remaining value in testimony as the verifier
of the great bulk of what we think we know.
[Sidenote: MAR.]
About thirty years before this date, a certain Sir Alexander M‘Culloch
of Myreton, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, with two sons, named
Godfrey and John, attracted the attention of the authorities by some
frightfully violent proceedings against a Lady Cardiness and her two
sons, William and Alexander Gordon, for the purpose of getting them
extruded from their lands.[200] Godfrey in time succeeded to the title,
and to all the violent passions of his father; but his property was
wholly compromised for the benefit of his creditors, who declared it to
be scarcely sufficient to pay his debts. Desperate for a subsistence, he
attempted, in the late reign, by ‘insinuations with the Chancellor
Perth,’ and putting his son to the Catholic school in Holyrood Palace,
to obtain some favour from the law, and succeeded so far as to get
assigned to him a yearly aliment of five hundred merks (about £28) out
of his lands, being allowed at the same time to take possession of the
family mansion of Bardarroch. From a complaint brought against him in
July 1689 before the Privy Council, it would appear that he intromitted
with the rents of the estate, and did no small amount of damage to the
growing timber; moreover, he attempted to embezzle the writs of the
property, with the design of annihilating the claims of his creditors.
Insufferable as his conduct was, the Council assigned him six hundred
merks of aliment, but only on condition of his immediately leaving
Bardarroch, and giving up the writs of the estate. Yielding in no point
to their decree, he was soon after ordered to be summarily ejected by
the sheriff.[201]
There was a strong, unsubdued Celtic element in the [Sidenote: 1697.]
Kirkcudbright population, and Sir Godfrey M‘Culloch reminds us entirely
of a West Highland Cameron or Macdonald of the reign of James VI. What
further embroilments took place between him and his old family enemies,
the Gordons of Cardiness, we do not learn; but certain it is, that on
the 2d of October 1690, he came to Bush o’ Bield, the house of William
Gordon, whom twenty years before he had treated so barbarously, with the
intent of murdering him. Sending a servant in to ask Gordon out to speak
with some one, he no sooner saw the unfortunate man upon his threshold,
than ‘with a bended gun he did shoot him through the thigh, and brak the
bane thereof to pieces; of which wound William Gordon died within five
or six hours thereafter.’[202]
The homicide made his way to a foreign country, and thus for some years
escaped justice. He afterwards returned to England, and was little taken
notice of. William Stewart of Castle-Stewart, husband of the murdered
Gordon’s daughter, offered to intercede for a remission in his behalf,
if he would give up the papers of the Cardiness estate; but he did not
accept of this offer. Perhaps he became at length rather too heedless of
the vengeance that might be in store for him. It is stated that, being
in Edinburgh, he was so hardy as to go to church, when a gentleman of
Galloway, who had some pecuniary interest against him, rose, and called
out with an air of authority: ‘Shut the doors—there’s a murderer in the
house!’[203] He was apprehended, and immediately after subjected to a
trial before the High Court of Justiciary, and condemned to be beheaded
at the Cross of Edinburgh. The execution was appointed to take place on
the 5th of March 1697;[204] but on the 4th he presented a petition to
the Privy Council, in which, while expressing submission to his
sentence, he begged liberty to represent to their Lordships, ‘that as
the petitioner hath been among the most unhappy of mankind in the whole
course of his life, so he hath been singularly unfortunate in what hath
happened to him near the period of it.’ He thought that ‘nobody had any
design upon him after the course of so many years, and he flattered
himself with hopes of life on many considerations, and specially
believing that the only two proving witnesses would not have been
admitted. Being now found guilty, he is exceedingly surprised and
unprepared to die.’ On his [Sidenote: 1697.] petition for delay, the
execution was put forward to the 25th March.
Sir Walter Scott has gravely published, in the _Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border_, a strange story about Sir Godfrey M‘Culloch, to the
effect that he had made friendship in early life with an old man of
fairyland, by diverting a drain which emptied itself into the fairies’
chamber of dais; and when he came to the scaffold on the Castle Hill,
this mysterious personage suddenly came up on a white palfrey, and bore
off the condemned man to a place of safety. There is, however, too much
reason to believe that Sir Godfrey really expiated the murder of William
Gordon at the market-cross of Edinburgh. The fact is recorded in a
broadside containing the unhappy man’s last speech, which has been
reprinted in the _New Statistical Account of Scotland_. In this paper,
he alleged that the murder was unpremeditated, and that he came to the
place where it happened contrary to his own inclination. He denied a
rumour which had gone abroad that he was a Roman Catholic, and
recommended his wife and children to God, with a hope that friends might
be stirred up to give them some protection. It has been stated, however,
that he was never married. He left behind him several illegitimate
children, who, with their mother, removed to Ireland on the death of
their father; and there a grandson suffered capital punishment for
robbery about the year 1760.[205]
[Sidenote: MAR.]
The Privy Council had an unpleasant affair upon its hands. Alexander
Brand, late bailie of Edinburgh—a man of enterprise, noted for having
introduced a manufacture of gilt leather hangings—had vented a libel
under the title of ‘Charges and Gratuities for procuring the additional
fifteen hundred pounds of my Tack-duty of Orkney and Zetland, which was
the surplus of the price agreed by the Lords,’ specifying ‘sums of
money, hangings, or other donatives given to the late Secretary
Johnston; the Marquis of Tweeddale, late Lord High Chancellor; the Duke
of Queensberry, then Lord Drumlanrig; the Earl of Cassillis; the
Viscount of Teviot, then Sir Thomas Livingstone; the Lord Basil
Hamilton; the Lord Raith, and others.’ He had, in 1693, along with Sir
Thomas Kennedy of Kirkhill and Sir William Binning, late provosts of
Edinburgh, entered into a contract with the government for five thousand
stands of arms, at a pound sterling each, which, it was alleged, would
have allowed them a good profit; yet, when abroad for the purchase of
the arms, he wrote to his partners in the transaction, that they could
not be purchased under twenty-six shillings the piece; and his
associates had induced the Council to agree to this increased price, the
whole affair being, as was alleged, a contrivance for cheating the
government. To obtain payment of the extra sum (£1500), the two knights
had entered into a contract for giving a bribe of two hundred and fifty
guineas to the Earls of Linlithgow and Breadalbane, ‘besides a gratuity
to James Row, who was to receive the arms.’ But no such sum had ever
been paid to these two nobles, ‘they being persons of that honour and
integrity that they were not capable to be imposed upon that way.’ Yet
Kennedy and Binning had allowed the contract to appear in a legal
process before the Admiralty Court, ‘to the great slander and reproach
of the said two noble persons.’ In short, it appeared that the three
contractors had proceeded upon a supposition of what was necessary for
the effecting of their business with the Privy Council, and while not
actually giving any bribes—at least, so they now acknowledged—had been
incautious enough to let it appear as if they had. For the compound
fault of contriving bribery and defaming the nobles in question, they
were cast in heavy fines—Kennedy in £800, Binning in £300, and Brand in
£500, to be imprisoned till payment was made.
Notwithstanding this result, there is no room to doubt that it had
become a custom for persons doing business for the government to make
‘donatives’ to the Lords of the Privy Council. Fountainhall reports a
case (November 23, 1693) wherein Lord George Murray, who had been a
partner with Sir Robert Miln of Barnton in a tack of the customs in
1681, demurred, amongst other things in their accounts, to 10,000 merks
given yearly to the then officers of state. ‘As to the donatives, the
Lords [of Session] found they had grown considerably from what was the
custom in former years, and that it looked like corruption and bribery:
[they] thought it shameful that the Lords, by their decreet, should own
any such practice; therefore they recommended to the president to try
what was the perquisite payment in wine by the tacksmen to every officer
of state, and to study to settle [the parties].’[206]
From the annual accounts of the Convention of Royal Burghs, [Sidenote:
1697.] it appears that fees or gratuities to public officers with whom
they had any dealing were customary. For example, in 1696, there is
entered for consulting with the king’s advocate anent prisoners, &c.,
£84, 16_s._ (Scots); to his men, £8, 14_s._; to his boy, £1, 8_s._
Again, to the king’s advocate, for consulting anent the fishery,
bullion, &c., £58; and to his men, £11, 12_s._ Besides these sums, £333,
6_s._ 8_d._ were paid to the same officer as pension, and to his men,
£60. There were paid in the same year, £11, 12_s._ to the chancellor’s
servants; £26, 13_s._ 4_d._ to the macers of the Council; and an equal
sum to the macers of the Court of Session.
[Sidenote: APR. 20.]
The Quakers of Edinburgh were no better used by the rest of the public
than those of Glasgow. Although notedly, as they alleged, ‘an innocent
and peaceable people,’ yet they could not meet in their own hired house
for worship without being disturbed by riotous men and boys; and these,
instead of being put down, were rather encouraged by the local
authorities. On their complaining to the magistrates of one outrageous
riot, Bailie Halyburton did what in him lay to add to their burden by
taking away the key of their meeting-house, thus compelling them to meet
in the street in front, where ‘they were further exposed to the fury of
ane encouraged rabble.’ They now entreated the Privy Council to ‘find
out some method whereby the petitioners (who live as quiet and peaceable
subjects under a king who loves not that any should be oppressed for
conscience’ sake) may enjoy a free exercise of their consciences, and
that those who disturb them may be discountenanced, reproved, and
punished.’ This they implore may be speedily done, ‘lest necessity force
them to apply to the king for protection.’
The Council remitted to the magistrates ‘to consider the said
representation, and to do therein as they shall find just and
right.’[207]
[Sidenote: JUNE 1.]
St Kilda, a fertile island of five miles’ circumference, placed fifty
miles out from the Hebrides, was occupied by a simple community of about
forty families, who lived upon barley-bread and sea-fowl, with their
eggs, undreaming of a world which they had only heard of by faint
reports from a factor of their landlord ‘Macleod,’ who annually visited
them. Of religion they had only [Sidenote: 1697.] caught a confused
notion from a Romish priest who stayed with them a short time about
fifty years ago. It was at length thought proper that an orthodox
minister should go among these simple people, and the above is the date
of his visit.
‘M. Martin, gentleman,’ who accompanied the minister, and afterwards
published an account of the island, gives us in his book[208] a number
of curious particulars about a personage whom he calls Roderick the
Impostor, who, for some years bypast, had exercised a religious control
over the islanders. He seems to have been, in reality, one of those
persons, such as Mohammed, once classed as mere deceivers of their
fellow-creatures for selfish purposes, but in whom a more liberal
philosophy has come to see a basis of what, for want of a better term,
may in the meantime be called ecstaticism or hallucination.
Roderick was a handsome, fair-complexioned man, noted in his early years
for feats of strength and dexterity in climbing, but as ignorant of
letters and of the outer world as any of his companions, having indeed
had no opportunities of acquiring any information which they did not
possess. Having, in his eighteenth year, gone out to fish on a Sunday—an
unusual practice—he, on his return homeward, according to his own
account, met a man upon the road, dressed in a Lowland dress—that is, a
cloak and hat; whereupon he fell flat upon the ground in great disorder.
The stranger announced himself as John the Baptist, come direct from
heaven, to communicate through Roderick divine instructions for the
benefit of the people, hitherto lost in ignorance and error. Roderick
pleaded unfitness for the commission imposed upon him; but the Baptist
desired him to be of good cheer, for he would instantly give him all the
necessary powers and qualifications. Returning home, he lost no time in
setting about his mission. He imposed some severe penances upon the
people, particularly a Friday’s fast. ‘He forbade the use of the Lord’s
Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments, and instead of them, prescribed
diabolical forms of his own. His prayers and rhapsodical forms were
often blended with the name of God, our blessed Saviour, and the
immaculate Virgin. He used the Irish word _Phersichin_—that is, verses,
which is not known in St Kilda, nor in the Northwest Isles, except to
such as can read the Irish tongue. But what seemed most remarkable in
his obscure prayers was his mentioning ELI, with the character of our
preserver. He used [Sidenote: 1697.] several unintelligible words in his
devotions, of which he could not tell the meaning himself; saying only
that he had received them implicitly from St John the Baptist, and
delivered them before his hearers without any explication.’ ‘This
impostor,’ says Martin, ‘is a poet, and also endowed with that rare
faculty, the second-sight, which makes it the more probable that he was
haunted by a familiar spirit.’
He stated that the Baptist communicated with him on a small mount, which
he called _John the Baptist’s Bush_, and which he forthwith fenced off
as holy ground, forbidding all cattle to be pastured on it, under pain
of their being immediately killed. According to his account, every night
after he had assembled the people, he heard a voice without, saying:
‘Come you out,’ whereupon he felt compelled to go forth. Then the
Baptist, appearing to him, told him what he should say to the people at
that particular meeting. He used to express his fear that he could not
remember his lesson; but the saint always said: ‘Go, you have it;’ and
so it proved when he came in among the people, for then he would speak
fluently for hours. The people, awed by his enthusiasm, very generally
became obedient to him in most things, and apparently his influence
would have known no restriction, if he had not taken base advantage of
it over the female part of the community. Here his quasi-sacred
character broke down dismally. The three lambs from one ewe belonging to
a person who was his cousin-german, happened to stray upon the holy
mount, and when he refused to sacrifice them, Roderick denounced upon
him the most frightful calamities. When the people saw nothing
particular happen in consequence, their veneration for him experienced a
further abatement. Finally, when the minister arrived, and denounced the
whole of his proceedings as imposture, he yielded to the clamour raised
against him, consented to break down the wall round the Baptist’s Bush,
and peaceably submitted to banishment from the island. Mr Martin brought
him to Pabbay island in the Harris group, whence he was afterwards
transferred to the laird’s house of Dunvegan in Skye. He is said to have
there confessed his iniquities, and to have subsequently made a public
recantation of his quasi-divine pretensions before the presbytery of
Skye.[209]
Mr Martin, in his book, stated a fact which has since been the subject
of much discussion—namely, that whenever the steward [Sidenote: 1697.]
and his party, or any other strangers, came to St Kilda, the whole of
the inhabitants were, in a few days, seized with a severe catarrh. The
fact has been doubted; it has been explained on various hypotheses which
were found baseless: visitors have arrived full of incredulity, and
always come away convinced. Such was the case with Mr Kenneth Macaulay,
the author of the amplest and most rational account of this singular
island. He had heard that the steward usually went in summer, and he
thought that the catarrh might be simply an annual epidemic; but he
learned that the steward sometimes came in May, and sometimes in August,
and the disorder never failed to take place a few days after his
arrival, at whatever time he might come, or how often so ever in a
season. A minister’s wife lived three years on the island free of the
susceptibility, but at last became liable to it. Mr Macaulay did not
profess to account for the phenomenon; but he mentions a circumstance in
which it may be possible ultimately to find an explanation. It is, that
not only is a St Kildian’s person disagreeably odoriferous to a
stranger, but ‘a stranger’s company is, for some time, as offensive to
them,’ who complain that ‘they find a _difficulty in breathing a light
sharp air_ when they are near you.’
[Sidenote: APR. 20.]
The Privy Council, in terms of the 27th act of Queen Mary—rather a far
way to go back for authority in such a matter—discharged all printers
‘to print or reprint any pamphlets, books, or others, relating to the
government, or of immediate public concern, until the same be seen,
revised, and examined by the Earls of Lauderdale and Annandale, the Lord
Advocate, Lord Anstruther, and Sir John Maxwell of Pollock,’ under heavy
penalties.[210]
[Sidenote: JUNE 17.]
Margaret Halket, relict of the deceased Mr Henry Erskine, late minister
of Chirnside, petitioned the Privy Council for the stipend of the bypast
half year during which the parish had been vacant, she being ‘left in a
verie low and mean condition, with four fatherless children no way
provided for, and other burdensome circumstances under which the
petitioner is heavily pressed.’ The petition was complied with.[211]
This was the mother of the two afterwards famous preachers, Ebenezer and
Ralph Erskine. The application of Mrs Erskine is given here as the type
of many such, rendered unavoidable before [Sidenote: 1697.] the present
humane arrangements in behalf of the surviving relatives of the
established clergy.
[Sidenote: JULY 18.]
James Hamilton, keeper of the Canongate Tolbooth, gave in a humble
petition to the Privy Council, setting forth that ‘for a long while
bygone’ he has ‘kept and maintained a great many persons provided for
recruiting the army in Flanders.’ In this last spring, ‘the prisoners
became so tumultuous and rebellious, that they combined together and
assassinat the petitioner’s servants, and wounded them, and took the
keys from them, and destroyed the bread, ale, and brandy that was in the
cellar, to the value of eight pounds sterling.’ ‘Seeing the petitioner’s
due as formerly is two shillings Scots per night for himself, and twelve
pennies Scots for the servants for each person,’ in respect whereof he
was ‘liable for ane aliment of twenty merks monthly to the poor, besides
the expense of a great many servants,’ payment was ordered to him of
£837, 17_s._ for house-dues for the recruits, during a certain term, and
£107, 8_s._ for damages done by the mutiny.[212]
[Sidenote: JULY.]
In July 1697, in the prospect of a good harvest, the permission to
import grain free of duty was withdrawn. About the same time, a great
quantity of victual which had been imported into Leith, was, on
inspection, found to be unfit to be eaten, and was therefore ordered to
be destroyed.
On the 28th of December, the Privy Council was informed of a cargo of
two hundred bolls of wheat shipped in order to be transported to France,
and, considering that ‘wheat is not yet so low as twelve pounds Scots
per boll,’ it was proposed by the Lord Chancellor that it should be
stopped; but this the Council thought ‘not convenient.’
[Sidenote: AUG. 3.]
The Master of Kenmure, Craik of Stewarton, and Captain Dalziel, son to
the late Sir Robert Dalziel of Glenae, were accused before the Privy
Council of having met in April last at a place called _Stay-the-Voyage_,
near Dumfries, and there drunk the health of the late King James under
the circumlocution of _The Old Man on the other Side of the Water_, as
also of drinking confusion to his majesty King William, these being acts
condemned by the late Convention as treasonable. The Master was absent,
but the [Sidenote: 1697.] two other gentlemen were present as prisoners.
The Lords, after hearing evidence, declared the charge not proven, and
caused Craik and Dalziel to be discharged.[213]
[Sidenote: SEP.]
An Edinburgh tavern-bill of this date—apparently one for supper to a
small party—makes us acquainted with some of the habits of the age. It
is as follows, the sums being expressed in Scottish money: