SIR JOHN SWINTON TO MRS KENDALL.

For broth, £00 : 03 : 00

For rost mutton and cutlets, 01 : 16 : 00

For on dish of hens, 03 : 00 : 00

For harenes, 00 : 05 : 00

For allmonds and rasens, 01 : 06 : 00

For 3 lb. of confectiones, 07 : 16 : 00

For bread and ale, 01 : 00 : 00

For 3 pynts of clarite, 06 : 00 : 00

For sack, 02 : 16 : 00

For oysters fryed and raw, 03 : 16 : 00

For brandie and sugare, 00 : 06 : 00

For servants, 02 : 02 : 00

—————————————

£30 : 06 : 00

The sum in English money is equal to £2, 10_s._ 6½_d._ One remarkable

fact is brought out by the document—namely, that claret was then charged

at twenty pence sterling per quart in a public-house. This answers to a

statement of Morer, in his _Short Account of Scotland_, 1702, that the

Scots have ‘a thin-bodied claret at 10_d._ the mutchkin.’ Burt tells us

that when he came to Scotland in 1725, this wine was to be had at

one-and-fourpence a bottle, but it was soon after raised to two

shillings, although no change had been made upon the duty.[214] It seems

to have continued for some time at this latter price, as in an account

of Mr James Hume to John Hoass, dated at Edinburgh in 1737 and 1739,

there are several entries of claret at 2_s._ per bottle, while white

wine is charged at one shilling per mutchkin (an English pint).

An Edinburgh dealer advertises liquors in 1720 at the following prices:

‘Neat claret wine at 11_d._, strong at 15_d._; white wine at 12_d._;

Rhenish at 16_d._; old Hock at 20_d._—all per bottle.’ Cherry [Sidenote:

1697.] sack was 28_d._ per pint. The same dealer had English ale at

4_d._ per bottle.[215]

Burt, who, as an Englishman, could not have any general relish for a

residence in the Scotland of that day, owns it to be one of the

redeeming circumstances attending life in our northern region, that

there was an abundance of ‘wholesome and agreeable drink’ in the form of

French claret, which he found in every public-house of any note, ‘except

in the heart of the Highlands, and sometimes even there.’ For what he

here tells us, there is certainly abundance of support in the traditions

of the country. The light wines of France for the gentlefolk, and

twopenny ale for the commonalty, were the prevalent drinks of Scotland

in the period we are now surveying, while sack, brandy, and punch for

the one class, and usquebaugh for the other, were but little in use.

Comparatively cheap as claret was, it is surprising, considering the

general narrowness of means, how much of it was drunk. In public-houses

and in considerable mansions, it was very common to find it kept on the

tap. A rustic hostel-wife, on getting a hogshead to her house, would let

the gentlemen of her neighbourhood know of the event, and they would

come to taste, remain to enjoy, and sometimes not disperse till the

barrel was exhausted. The Laird of Culloden, as we learn from Burt, kept

a hogshead on tap in his hall, ready for the service of all comers; and

his accounts are alleged to shew that his annual consumpt of the article

would now cost upwards of two thousand pounds. A precise statement as to

quantity, even in a single instance, would here obviously be of

importance, and fortunately it can be given. In Arniston House, the

country residence of President Dundas, when Sheriff Cockburn was living

there as a boy about 1750, there were sixteen hogsheads of claret used

per annum.

Burt enables us to see how so much of the generous fluid could be

disposed of in one house. He speaks of the hospitality of the Laird of

Culloden as ‘almost without bounds. It is the custom of that house,’

says he, ‘at the first visit or introduction, to take up your freedom by

_cracking his nut_ (as he terms it), that is, a cocoa-shell, which holds

a pint filled with champagne, or such other wine as you shall choose.

You may guess, by the introduction, at the conclusion of the volume. Few

go away sober at any time; and for the greatest part of his guests, in

the conclusion, they cannot go at all.

[Sidenote: 1697.]

‘This,’ it is added, ‘he partly brings about by artfully proposing after

the public healths (which always imply bumpers) such private ones as he

knows will pique the interest or inclinations of each particular person

of the company, whose turn it is to take the lead to begin it in a

brimmer; and he himself being always cheerful, and sometimes saying good

things, his guests soon lose their guard, and then—I need say no more.

‘As the company are one after another disabled, two servants, who are

all the while in waiting, take up the invalids with short poles in their

chairs, as they sit (if not fallen down), and carry them to their beds;

and still the hero holds out.’[216]

Mr Burton, in his Life of President Forbes, states that it was the

custom at Culloden House in the days of John Forbes—_Bumper John_, he

was called—to prize off the top of each successive cask of claret, and

place it in the corner of the hall, to be emptied in pailfuls. The

massive hall-table, which bore so many carouses, is still preserved as a

venerable relic; and the deep saturation it has received from old

libations of claret, prevents one from distinguishing the description of

wood of which it was constructed. Mr Burton found an expenditure of £40

sterling a month for claret in the accounts of the President.

[Sidenote: OCT. 6.]

At an early hour in the morning, seven gentlemen and two servants, all

well armed, might have been seen leaving Inverness by the bridge over

the Ness, and proceeding along the shore of the Moray Firth. Taking post

in the wood of Bunchrew, they waited till they saw two gentlemen with

servants coming in the opposite direction, when they rushed out into the

road with an evidently hostile intent. The leader, seizing one of the

gentlemen with his own hand, called out to his followers to take the

other dead or alive, and immediately, by levelling their pistols at him,

they induced him to give himself up to their mercy. The victorious party

then caused the two gentlemen to dismount and give up their arms,

mounted them on a couple of rough ponies, and rode off with them into

the wild country.

This was entirely a piece of private war, in the style so much in vogue

in the reign of the sixth James, but which had since declined, and was

now approaching its final extinction. The leader of the assailants was

Captain Simon Fraser, otherwise called the Master of Lovat, the same

personage who, as Lord Lovat, fifty years after, came to a public death

on Tower-hill.

[Sidenote: 1697.]

The father of this gentleman had recently succeeded a grandnephew as

Lord Lovat; but his title to the peerage and estates, although really

good, had been opposed under selfish and reckless views by the Earl of

Tullibardine, son of the Marquis of Athole, and brother of the widow of

the late Lovat; and as this earl chanced to be a secretary of state and

the king’s commissioner to parliament, his opposition was formidable.

Tullibardine’s wish was to establish a daughter of the late lord, a

child of eleven years old, as the heiress, and marry her to one of his

own sons. His sons, however, were boys; so he had to bethink him of a

more suitable bridegroom in the person of Lord Salton, another branch of

the house of Fraser. Meanwhile, Captain Simon, wily as a cat, and as

relentless, sought to keep up his juster interest by similar means. He

first tried to get the young lady into his power by help of a follower

named Fraser of Tenechiel; but Tenechiel took a fit of repentance or

terror in the midst of his enterprise, and replaced the child in her

mother’s keeping. Lord Salton was then hurried northward to the Dowager

Lady Lovat’s house of Castle Downie, to woo his child-bride, and arrange

for her being brought to safer lodgings in Athole. He went attended by

Lord Mungo Murray, brother at once to the Earl of Tullibardine and the

Dowager Lady Lovat. The Master, seeing no time was to be lost, brought a

number of the chief gentlemen of his clan together at a house belonging

to Fraser of Strichen, and had no difficulty in taking them bound under

oaths to raise their followers for the advancement of his cause. It was

by their aid that he had seized on Lord Salton and Lord Mungo Murray at

the wood of Bunchrew.

Lord Salton and his friend were conducted amidst savage shouts and drawn

dirks to the house of Fanellan, and there confined in separate

apartments. The fiery cross was sent off, and the coronach cried round

the country, to bring the faithful Frasers to the help of their young

chief. A gallows was raised before the windows of the imprisoned

gentlemen, as a hint of the decisive measures that might be taken with

them. They saw hundreds of the clansmen arrive at muster on the green,

with flags flying and bagpipes screaming, and heard their chief taking

from them oaths of fidelity on their bare daggers. When five hundred

were assembled—a week having now elapsed since the first assault—the

Master put himself at their head, and went with his prisoners to Castle

Downie, which he took into his care along with its mistress. The child,

however, was safe from him, for [Sidenote: 1697.] she had been already

transferred to a refuge in her uncle’s country of Athole. Fraser was, of

course, mortified by her escape; but he was a man fertile in expedients.

He first dismissed his two prisoners, though not till Salton had bound

himself under a forfeiture of eight thousand pounds to ‘interfere’ no

more in his affairs. His plan was now to secure, at least, the dowager’s

portion of the late lord’s means by marrying her. So, too, he

calculated, would he embarrass the powerful Tullibardine in any further

proceedings against himself.

That night, the lady’s three female attendants were removed from her by

armed men; and one of them, on being brought back afterwards to take off

her ladyship’s clothes, found her sitting in the utmost disorder and

distress on the floor, surrounded by Fraser and his friends, himself

trying by burned feathers to prevent her senses from leaving her, and

the others endeavouring to divest her of her stays. Robert Monro,

minister of Abertarf, then pronounced the words of the marriage-ceremony

over her and the Master of Lovat. As the woman hurried out, she heard

the screams of her mistress above the noise of the bagpipes played in

the apartment adjacent to her bedroom; and when she came back next

morning, she found the lady to appearance out of her judgment, and

deprived of the power of speech. Lady Lovat was at this time a woman of

about thirty-five years of age.

Such accounts of this outrage as reached the low country excited general

horror, and Tullibardine easily obtained military assistance and letters

of fire and sword against the Master of Lovat and his accomplices. The

Master was not only supported by his father and other clansmen in what

he had done, but even by the Earl of Argyle, who felt as a relative and

old friend of the house, as well as an opponent of Tullibardine. On the

approach of troops, he retired with his reluctant bride to the isle of

Agais, a rough hill surrounded by the waters of the Beauly, where Sir

Robert Peel spent the last summer of his life in an elegant modern

villa, but which was then regarded as a Highland fastness. A herald, who

ventured so far into the Fraser territory to deliver a citation, left

the paper on a cleft stick opposite to the island. Fraser had several

skirmishes with the government troops; took prisoners, and dismissed

them, after exacting their oaths to harass him no more; and, in short,

for a year carried on a very pretty guerrilla war, everywhere dragging

about with him his wretched wife, whose health completely gave way

through exposure, fatigue, [Sidenote: 1697.] and mental distress. In

September 1698, he and nineteen other gentlemen were tried in absence,

and forfaulted for their crimes, which were held as treasonable—a

stretch of authority which has since been severely commented on. At

length, the Master—become, by the death of his father, Lord Lovat—tired

of the troublous life he was leading, and by the advice of Argyle, went

to London to solicit a pardon from the king. Strong influence being

used, the king did remit all charges against him for raising war, but

declined to pardon him for his violence to the Lady Lovat, from fear of

offending Tullibardine. He was so emboldened as to resolve to stand

trial for the alleged forced marriage; but it was to be in the style of

an Earl of Bothwell or an Earl of Caithness in a former age. With a

hundred Frasers at his back, did this singular man make his appearance

in Edinburgh, in the second year before the beginning of the eighteenth

century, to prefer a charge against the Earl of Tullibardine—perhaps the

very last attempt that was made in Scotland to overbear justice. On the

morning, however, of the day when the charge was to be made, his patron,

Argyle, was informed by Lord Aberuchil, one of the judges (a Campbell),

that if Fraser appeared he would find the judges had been _corrupted_,

and his own destruction would certainly follow. He lost heart, and fled

to England.[217]

[Sidenote: NOV. 9.]

Sir Robert Dickson of Sorn-beg was one of a group of Edinburgh merchants

of this age, who carried on business on a scale much beyond what the

general circumstances of the country would lead us to expect. He at this

time gave in a memorial to the king in London, bearing—‘In the year

1691, I with some others who did join with me, did engage ourselves to

the Lords of your majesty’s Treasury in Scotland, by a tack [lease] of

your customs and foreign excise, by which we did oblige ourselves to pay

yearly, for the space of five years, the sum of twenty thousand three

hundred pounds sterling. Conform to which tack, we continued as tacksmen

during all the years thereof, and did punctually, without demanding the

least abatement or defalcation, make payment of our whole tack-duty,

save only the sum of six hundred pounds, which still remains in my hand

unpaid, and which I am most willing to pay, upon the Lords of the

Treasury granting me and my partners ane general discharge.’

Nevertheless, ‘the Lords of the Treasury have granted a warrant for

seizing of my [Sidenote: 1697.] person, and committing me prisoner until

I make payment of the sum of two thousand and three hundred pounds

sterling more, which they allege to be _due to the officers of state for

wines_, and which I humbly conceive I and my partners can never be

obliged to pay, it being no part of my contract. And I humbly beg leave

to inform your majesty that, if such a custom be introduced, it will

very much diminish your majesty’s revenue; for it is not to be thought

that we nor any other succeeding tacksmen can give such gratification

over and above our tack-duty without a considerable allowance, and this

still prejudges your majesty’s interest. [Sir Robert seems to mean that,

if farmers of revenue have to give gratuities to officers of state,

these must be deducted from the sum agreed to be paid to his majesty.]

They were so forward in the prosecution of the said warrant, that I was

necessitat to leave the kingdom, and come here and make my application

to your majesty.’ The memorial finally craved of the king that he would

remit ‘the determination of the said wines’ to the Lords of Session.

The Lords of the Privy Council had, of course, the usual dislike of

deputies and commissions for seeing appeals taken against their

decisions to the principal authority, and they embraced the first

opportunity of laying hold of the customs tacksman and putting him up in

the Tolbooth. There he did not perhaps change his mind as to his

non-liability in justice for two thousand three hundred pounds for

presents of wine to the officers of state in connection with the farming

or tack of the customs, being a good ten per cent. upon the whole

transaction; but he probably soon became sensible that the Privy Council

of Scotland was not a body he could safely contend with. The Lord

Advocate speedily commenced a process against him, on the ground of his

memorial to the king falling under the statute of King James V. for

severe punishment to those who _murmur_ any judge spiritual or temporal,

and prove not the same; and on this charge he was brought before the

Council (1st of February 1698). It was shewn that the charge for

gratuities was ‘according to use and wont,’ and that the memorial was a

high misdemeanour against their lordships; therefore inferring a severe

punishment. As might have been expected, Sir Robert was glad to submit,

and on his knee to crave pardon of their lordships, who thereupon

discharged him.[218]

[Sidenote: 1697.]

The reader, who has just seen some other Edinburgh merchants punished

for imputing to state-officers the possibility of their being bribed

with money, will probably smile when he sees another in trouble so soon

after, for remonstrating against the necessity he had been under of

actually giving them bribes.

[Sidenote: DEC. 28.]

It had occurred to Mr Charles Ritchie, minister of the gospel, to be

asked by Lieutenant Whitehead, of Colonel Sir John Hill’s regiment at

Fort-William, to join him in marriage with the colonel’s daughter, and

the ceremony was performed in the presence of several of the officers of

the regiment, the minister professing to know of no impediment to the

union of the young couple. For this fact, Mr Charles had been carried to

Edinburgh, and put up in the Tolbooth, where he languished without trial

for several months. He now petitioned for release or banishment, stating

that he had been kept in jail all this time ‘without any subsistence,’

and ‘is reduced to the greatest extremity, not only for want of any mean

of subsistence, but also by want of any measure of health.’

The Council, viewing his consent to banishment, granted him that boon,

he enacting himself bound to depart ‘furth of the kingdom’ before the

1st of February, and never to return without his majesty’s or the

Council’s warrant to that effect.[219]

Throughout this year, there were protracted legal proceedings before the

Privy Council, between Blair of Balthayock, in Perthshire, and Carnegie

of Finhaven, in Forfarshire, in consequence of the latter having brought

on a marriage between his daughter and a young minor, his pupil, Blair

of Kinfauns, the relative of Balthayock. The affair ended in a

condemnation of Finhaven and a fine of one hundred and fifty pounds, to

be paid to Balthayock for his expenses in the action.

On the 20th September 1703, by which time Balthayock was dead, Finhaven

presented a petition to the Privy Council, setting forth that he had not

submitted to the sentence, but placed the sum of the fine in

consignment, and thereupon was liberated. Balthayock had never called

for the suspension; her majesty’s late gracious indemnity had discharged

the fine, ‘the cause of which,’ he alleged, ‘was natural and ordinary,

and the marriage every way suitable.’ There might be demur to the last

[Sidenote: 1697.] particular, as young Kinfauns, when led into the

marriage with Carnegie’s daughter, was only a boy. Nevertheless, the

Council now ordained the money to be rendered back to the

petitioner.[220]

[Sidenote: 1698. JAN. 27.]

The Court of Session had before it a remarkable case, involving matters

of the highest delicacy, regarding two prominent members of society.

David Lord Cardross—son of the Lord Cardross whose piety had exposed him

to sufferings all but the highest in the late reigns—was married in

February 1697 to the daughter of Henry Fairfax of Hurst, in Berkshire,

an heiress of ten thousand pounds. They were the grand-parents of the

Chancellor Lord Erskine. He had been helped in the obtaining of this

match by Sir John Cochrane, another eminent sufferer in the late times

of trial. To secure his best services as _proxenata_, or, as it is

called in Scotland, _black-foot_, Lord Cardross had given Sir John a

bond, securing him a thousand pounds, if he should be able to effect the

marriage. When the marriage was completed, Cochrane applied for the

promised sum, but was met with the assertion that no money was fairly

due, as the lady’s hand had been obtained without his assistance. He

sued Lord Cardross first in Westminster Hall, where the bond was

declared void by the Lord Chancellor, as granted _ob turpem causam_, and

now in the Court of Session for similar reasons, much to the enjoyment

of all the lovers of gossip. Sir John, probably seeing public sentiment

to be against him, gave up his claim to the whole £1000 as a reward for

his services, and restricted it to £600, as required to repay him for

expenses he had incurred in Lord Cardross’s lovesuit. Even this was

denied to him, unless he could ‘condescend’ upon an account of special

outlays in Lord Cardross’s behalf. We do not hear of his doing anything

in consequence of this award, and it is to be suspected that he lost

some character by the transaction, as well as legal expenses, and got

nothing in return.[221]

Those who looked back with feelings of sympathy and pride to the

sufferings of the patriots under the late reigns, must have had some

painful feelings when they reflected on the present doings of some of

them and their descendants. The Argyle of this day, though a man of both

ability and spirit, highly qualified to serve his country, was now

living in circumstances which certainly formed a marked contrast with

the history of his grandfather and [Sidenote: 1698.] father. Being

married unhappily—his wife was a daughter of the Duchess of

Lauderdale—he was induced to associate himself with another lady, for

whose sake he seems to have in a great measure abandoned public life.

Purchasing a house called Chirton, near Newcastle (which he bequeathed

to his mistress), he was content to spend there in inglorious

self-indulgence the days which ought to have been consecrated to the

service of his country. Sad to say, this representative of pious martyrs

died of bruises received in a house of evil fame at North Shields

(September 1703). Even worse was the story of his Grace’s brother,

James, who carried off Miss Wharton, an heiress of thirteen, and

forcibly married her (November 1690)—a crime, the proper consequences of

which he escaped, while his instrument and assistant, Sir John Johnston

of Caskieben, paid the penalty of an ignominious death at Tyburn. Worse

still, the actual Gordon of Earlstoun, so renowned for his resolute

conduct in the evil days, fell, more than twenty years after, under

censure for a lapse in virtue of the highest class, and underwent the

higher excommunication; ‘but,’ says Wodrow, ‘they find the intimation of

it will not be for edification, and people will still converse with him,

do as they will; so the sentence is not pronounced.’

[Sidenote: FEB. 22.]

We have seen something of an old clan-feud between the Laird of

Mackintosh and his vassal, Macdonald of Keppoch. The Keppoch who had

overthrown the chief at Inverroy in 1688, and afterwards burned down his

house of Dunachtan, was now dead; but in his son, Coll Macdonald, he had

left a worthy successor. Coll was as defiant of the Mackintosh claims as

his father had been, and, though he lived within ten miles of the

well-established garrison of Fort-William, he seemed as utterly beyond

the reach of the law as if he had haunted the wilds of Canada. It now

became necessary to take sharp measures with him, in order to make good

the rights of his superior.

The king, seeing ‘it is below the justice of our government that any of

our loyal subjects should be disappointed of the benefit of our laws,’

was pleased to resort once more to that desperate remedy of letters of

fire and sword which he had, to all subsequent appearance, employed once

too often six years before in the case of the Glencoe Macdonalds. A

commission was accordingly granted to Lachlan Mackintosh of that Ilk, to

the governor for the time of Fort-William, Farquharson of Monaltrie,

Farquharson of Invercauld, and a number of other gentlemen, ‘to

convocate [Sidenote: 1698.] our lieges in arms, and pass and search,

seek, hunt, follow and take, and in case of resistance, pursue to the

death Coll Macdonald [and a multitude of other persons specified,

outlaws and fugitives from justice], and if any of them shall happen to

flee to houses or strengths [then grants full power] to asseige the said

houses or strengths, raise fire, and use all force and warlike engines

that can be had for winning thereof,’ slaughter of the persons pursued

not to be imputed as a crime.[222]

There was, in reality, nothing to prevent the same class of inhumanities

flowing from this order as had followed on the Glencoe commission, if

the officers intrusted with it had been disposed, as in the other case,

to carry it out to the letter. It was effectual for its purpose without

any extreme atrocities, and, three months after, we hear of a detachment

from Fort-William to assist Mackintosh ‘in maintaining his own lands

against Keppoch and others, who may disturb him in the peaceable

possession thereof.’

In a poem written in 1737, Coll Macdonald of Keppoch is spoken of as a

kind of Rob Roy, who had fought against the government at Killiecrankie,

Cromdale, and Dunblane; who had resisted the law regarding lands which

he occupied, and been denounced rebel on that account; who ‘from thefts

and robberies scarce did ever cease;’ but who had, nevertheless, not

merely kept possession of his territory, but rather improved his

circumstances; and finally, four years ago, had died at home in peace.

He was, says the poet in a note, ‘a man of low stature, but full of

craft and enterprise: his life, if printed, would make an entertaining

piece, whether one considers the depth of his genius, the boldness of

his adventures, or the various turns of adverse fortune which he bore

with uncommon steadiness, and had the art to surmount.’

[Sidenote: MAR. 1.]

A commission was granted by the Privy Council to Sir John Maxwell of

Pollock, —— Maxwell of Dalswinton, Hugh M‘Guffock of Rusco, Adam Newall

of Barskeroch, and four other gentlemen, to try, and, if guilty, adjudge

to death, Elspeth M‘Ewen and Mary Millar, now prisoners in the tolbooth

of Kirkcudbright, ‘alleged guilty of the horrid crime of witchcraft, and

[who] has committed several malefices.’

On the 26th of July, a committee of Privy Council reported that they had

examined the proceedings of the commissioners in [Sidenote: 1698.] the

case of Elspeth M‘Ewen (the report signed by the _Lord Advocate_), who

had been pronounced guilty upon her own confession and the evidence of

witnesses, ‘of a compact and correspondence with the devil, and of

charms and of accession to malefices.’ It was ordered that the sentence

of death against Elspeth should be executed, under care of the steward

of Kirkcudbright and his deputies, on the 24th of August.

In July, a number of noblemen and gentlemen of Renfrewshire sent a

letter to the Privy Council, setting forth the case of a young woman

named Margaret Laird, of the Earl of Glencairn’s land in the parish of

Kilmacolm. Since the 15th of May, ‘she hath been under ane extraordinary

and most lamentable trouble, falling into strange and horrible fits,

judged by all who have seen her to be preternatural, arising from the

devil and his instruments.’ In these fits, ‘she sees and distinctly

converses with divers persons whom she constantly affirms to be her

tormentors, and that both while the fits continue, and in the intervals

wherein she is perfectly free of all trouble and composed.’ The persons

named were of those formerly accused by ‘confessing witches.’ ‘In some

of these fits there is such obstruction upon her external senses, that

she neither sees nor feels bystanders, though in the meantime she sees

and converses with any of her alleged tormentors when we cause any of

them come before her; and at the sight or touch of any of them, yea,

even upon her essaying to name them when not present, she’s thrown into

the fits, and therein gives such an account of their circumstances

(though otherwise unknown to her) as is very convincing.’ The writers

had been so impressed by the various facts brought under their notice,

as proving fascination or witchcraft, that they found themselves obliged

to make a representation of the case ‘out of pity to the poor distressed

damsel;’ and they were the more solicitous about the affair, that the

country people were in a state of such excitement, and so incensed

against the alleged witches, that ‘we fear something may fall out in

their hands that the government would willingly prevent.’

The Council appointed a committee of inquiry, and ordered the sheriff of

the county—the Earl of Eglintoun—to apprehend the suspected witches,

‘that it may appear whether, after their being seized and committed, the

said Margaret shall complain of their tormenting her or not.’

In September, Mary Morison, spouse of Francis Duncan, skipper, Greenock,

was under accusation of witchcraft, but allowed to be at liberty within

the city of Edinburgh, ‘the said [Sidenote: 1698.] Francis her husband

first giving bond that the said Mary shall keep the said confinement,

and that he shall produce her before the Lords of Justiciary at any time

to which she shall be cited before the 15th of November next, under a

penalty of ten thousand pounds Scots.’

Mrs Duncan was detained as a prisoner in Edinburgh till the 15th

November, although no such proof could be found against her as the

Advocate could raise an action upon, her husband kept all the time away

from his employment, and her ‘numerous poor family’ starving in neglect

at home. On a petition setting forth these circumstances, and

re-asserting her entire innocence, she was set at liberty.

The Lord Advocate soon after reported to the Privy Council a letter he

had received from the sheriff of Renfrewshire, stating that ‘the persons

imprisoned in that country as witches are in a starving condition, and

that those who informed against them are passing from them, and the

sheriff says he will send them in prisoners to Edinburgh Tolbooth,

unless they be quickly tried.’ His lordship was recommended to ask the

sheriff to support the witches till November next, when they would

probably be tried, and the charges would be disbursed by the treasury. A

distinct allowance of a groat a day was ordered on the 12th of January

1699 for each of the Renfrewshire witches.[223]

While the works of Satan were thus coming into new prominence, the

clergy were determined not to prove remiss in their duty. We find the

General Assembly of this year remitting to their ‘commission,’ ‘to give

advice to presbyteries and ministers, upon application, against

witchcraft, sorcery, and charming.’ In the ensuing year, they

deliberated on an address to the Privy Council, for punishing witches

and charmers; and the same subject comes up in the two subsequent years,

in one instance in connection with ‘masquerades, balls, and

stage-plays.’[224]

[Sidenote: MAY 10.]

An ‘unkindly cold and winter-like spring’ was threatening again to

frustrate the hopes of the husbandman, ‘and cut off man and beast by

famine.’ Already the dearth was greatly increased, and in many places

‘great want both of food and seed’ was experienced, while the sheep and

cattle were dying in great numbers. In consideration of these facts, and

of the abounding [Sidenote: 1698.] sins of profaneness,

Sabbath-breaking, drunkenness, &c., ‘whereby the displeasure of God was

manifestly provoked,’ a solemn humiliation and fast was ordered for the

17th of May within the synod of Lothian and Tweeddale, and the 25th day

of the month for the rest of the kingdom.

An edict of the same date strictly forbade the exportation of victual.

One, dated the 7th July, orders that the girnels at Leith, which had

been closed in hopes of higher prices, be opened, and the victual sold

‘as the price goes in the country, not below the last Candlemas fairs.’

On the 13th, there was an edict against regrating or keeping up of

victual generally, threatening the offenders with forfeiture of their

stocks. In September, the tolerance for importing of foreign grain was

extended to the second Tuesday of November ensuing. On the 9th November,

a proclamation stated that ‘through the extraordinary unseasonableness

of the weather for some months past, and the misgiving of this year’s

crop and harvest, the scarcity of victual is increased to that height,

as threatens a general distress and calamity.’ Wherefore the exportation

of grain was again strictly prohibited. A strong proclamation against

forestalling and regrating appeared on the 15th of the same month.

A solemn fast was kept on the 9th of March 1699, on account of ‘the

lamentable stroke of dearth and scarcity.’ During this spring there were

officers appointed to search out reserved victual, and expose it at

current prices; also commissioners to appoint prices in the several

counties. We find the commissioners of supply for the county of

Edinburgh, by virtue of powers intrusted to them by the Privy Council,

ordaining in April maximum prices for all kinds of grain—an interference

with the rights of property at which our forefathers never scrupled,

notwithstanding the constant experience of its uselessness for the

object in view. They fixed that, till September next, the highest price

for the best wheat should be seventeen pounds Scots per boll, the best

oats twelve pounds, and the best oatmeal sixteen shillings and sixpence

per peck (half a stone).[225]

‘These unheard-of manifold judgments continued seven years [?], not

always alike, but the seasons, summer and winter, so cold and barren,

and the wonted heat of the sun so much withholden, that it was

discernible upon the cattle, flying fowls, and insects decaying, that

seldom a fly or cleg was to be seen: our harvests not in [Sidenote:

1698.] the ordinary months; many shearing in November and December; yea,

some in January and February; many contracting their deaths, and losing

the use of their feet and hands, shearing and working in frost and snow;

and, after all, some of it standing still, and rotting upon the ground,

and much of it for little use either to man or beast, and which had no

taste or colour of meal.

‘Meal became so scarce, that it was at two shillings a peck, and many

could not get it. It was not then with many, “Where will we get siller?”

but, “Where shall we get meal for siller?” I have seen, when meal was

sold in markets, women clapping their hands and tearing the clothes off

their heads, crying: “How shall we go home and see our children die of

hunger? They have got no meat these two days, and we have nothing to

give them!” Through the long continuance of these manifold judgments,

deaths and burials were so many and common, that the living were wearied

with the burying of the dead. I have seen corpses drawn in sleds. Many

got neither coffin nor winding-sheet. I was one of four who carried the

corpse of a young woman a mile of way, and when we came to the grave, an

honest poor man came and said: “You must go and help to bury my son; he

has lain dead these two days; otherwise, I shall be obliged to bury him

in my own yard.” We went, and there were eight of us had to carry the

corpse of that young man two miles, many neighbours looking on us, but

none to help us. I was credibly informed that in the north, two sisters

on a Monday morning were found carrying the corpse of their brother on a

barrow with bearing ropes, resting themselves many times, and none

offering to help them. I have seen some walking about at sunsetting, and

next day, at six o’clock in the summer morning, found dead in their

houses, without making any stir at their death, their head lying upon

their hand, with as great a smell as if they had been four days dead;

the mice or rats having eaten a great part of their hands and arms.

‘Many had cleanness of teeth in our cities, and want of bread in our

borders; and to some the staff of bread was so utterly broken (which

makes complete famine), that they did eat, but were neither satisfied

nor nourished; and some of them said to me, that they could mind nothing

but meat, and were nothing bettered by it; and that they were utterly

unconcerned about their souls, whether they went to heaven or hell.

‘The nearer and sorer these plagues seized, the sadder were their

effects, that took away all natural and relative affections, so that

husbands had no sympathy for their wives, nor wives for their [Sidenote:

1698.] husbands, parents for their children, nor children for their

parents. These and other things have made me to doubt if ever any of

Adam’s race were in a more deplorable condition, their bodies and

spirits more low, than many were in these years.

‘The crowning plague of all these great and manifold plagues was, many

were cast down, but few humbled; great murmuring, but little mourning;

many groaning under the effects of wrath, but few had sight or sense of

the causes of wrath in turning to the Lord: and as soon as these

judgments were removed, many were lift up, but few thankful; even these

who were as low as any, that outlived these scarce times, did as lightly

esteem bread as if they had never known the worth of it by the want of

it. The great part turned more and more gospel-proof and judgment-proof;

and the success of the gospel took a stand at that time in many places

of the land, but more especially since the Rebellion, 1715.

‘King William his kindness is not to be forgotten, who not only relieved

us from tyranny, but had such a sympathy with Scotland, when in distress

of famine, that he offered all who would transport victual to Scotland,

that they might do it custom-free, and have twenty pence of each boll.

‘I cannot pass this occasion without giving remarks upon some observable

providences that followed these strange judgments upon persons who dwelt

in low-lying fertile places, who laid themselves out to raise markets

when at such a height, and had little sympathy with the poor, or those

who lived in cold muirish places, who thought those who lived in these

fertile places had a little heaven; but soon thereafter their little

heavens were turned into little hells by unexpected providences....

There was a farmer in the parish of West Calder (in which parish 300 of

900 examinable persons wasted away, who at that time was reckoned worth

6000 merks of money and goods) that had very little to spare to the

poor; the victual lay spoiling in his house and yard, waiting for a

greater price. Two honest servant-lasses, whose names were Nisbet, being

cast out of service (for every one could not have it; many said, they

got too much wages that got meat for their work), these two lasses would

not steal, and they were ashamed to beg; they crept into a house, and

sat there wanting meat until their sight was almost gone, and then they

went about a mile of way to that farmer’s yard, and ate four stocks of

kail to save their lives. He found them, and drove them before him to

the Laird of Baad’s, who was a justice-of-peace, that he might get them

punished. The laird inquired what moved them to go by so many yards, and

go to his. They said: “These in their way were in straits themselves,

and he might best spare them.” The laird said: “Poor conscionable

things, go your way—I have nothing to say to you.” One of them got

service, but the other died in want; it was her burial I mentioned

before, who was carried by us four. But so in a very few years he was

begging from door to door, whom I have served at my door, and to whom I

said: “Who should have pity and sympathy with you, who kept your

victuals spoiling, waiting for a greater price, and would spare nothing

of your fulness to the poor; and was so cruel to the two starving

lasses, that you took them prisoners for four stocks of kail to save

their lives? Ye may read your sin upon your judgment, if ye be not blind

in the eyes of your soul, as ye are of one in your body, and may be a

warning to all that come after you.”’[226]

These striking and well-told anecdotes of the dearth are from the simple

pages of Patrick Walker. The account he gives of the religious apathy

manifested under the calamity is corroborated by a rhymster named James

Porterfield, who was pleased to write a series of poems on three

remarkable fires in Edinburgh, which he viewed entirely in the light of

‘God’s Judgments against Sin’—such being indeed the title of his

book,[227] which he dedicated to the magistrates of the city. He says:

To awake us from our sin,

Horses and cattle have consumed been;

And straits and dearth our land have overswayed,

And thousand lives therewith have been dismayed;

Many through want of bread dropped at our feet,

And lifeless lay upon the common street:

_These plagues made no impression on the flock,

And ministers seemed ploughing on a rock._

In the five or six years of this dearth, ‘the farmer was ruined, and

troops of poor perished for want of bread. Multitudes [Sidenote: 1698.]

deserted their native country, and thousands and tens of thousands went

to Ireland, &c. During the calamity, Sir Thomas Stewart laid out

himself, almost beyond his ability, in distributing to the poor. He

procured sums from his brother, the Lord Advocate, and other worthy

friends, to distribute, and he added of his own abundantly. His house

and outer courts were the common resort of the poor, and the blessing of

many ready to perish came upon him; and a blessing seemed diffused on

his little farm that was managed for family use, for, when all around

was almost blasted by inclement seasons and frosts in the years

1695–6–7, it was remarked here were full and ripened crops. The good man

said the prayers of the poor were in it, and it went far.’[229]

When the calamity was at its height in 1698, the sincere but over-ardent

patriot, Fletcher of Salton, published a discourse on public affairs, in

which he drew a lamentable picture of the condition of the great bulk of

the people. He spoke of many thousands as dying for want of bread,

whilst, ‘from unwholesome food, diseases are so multiplied among the

poor people, that, if some course be not taken, this famine may very

probably be followed by a plague.’ ‘What man,’ he adds, with a just

humanity, ‘is there in this nation, if he have any compassion, who must

not grudge every nice bit, and every delicate morsel he puts in his

mouth, when he considers that so many are dead already, and so many at

this minute struggling with death, not for want of bread, but of grains,

which, I am credibly informed, have been eaten by some families, even

during the preceding years of scarcity. And must not every unnecessary

branch of our expense, or the least finery in our houses, clothes, or

equipage, reproach us with our barbarity, so long as people born with

natural endowments, perhaps not inferior to our own, and

fellow-citizens, perish for want of things absolutely necessary to

life?’[230] This generous outburst, at once accordant with the highest

moral duty and the principles of political economy, stands somewhat in

contrast with a sentiment often heard of among the rich in Ireland

during the famine of 1847, to the effect, that keeping up their system

of luxurious living was favourable to the poor, because giving

employment for labour.

[Sidenote: MAY 31.]

Sir Alexander Home of Renton, in Berwickshire, appears to [Sidenote:

1698.] have been of weak mind, and unhappy in his married life, his

wife, Dame Margaret Scott, having for some years lived apart from him.

He had so arranged his affairs, that his brother, Sir Patrick Home of

Lumsden, advocate, was his heir, he retaining only a liferent,

notwithstanding that he had a son, a boy, in life. The unfortunate

gentleman being on his death-bed, Sir Patrick’s wife, Dame Margaret

Baird, came to attend him (her husband being in England), and took up

her residence in the principal room of the house, called the Chamber of

Dais. At the same time came the alienated wife and her son, Robert Home,

professing to understand that Sir Patrick had only accepted a factory

for the payment of Sir Alexander’s debts, and for the behoof of his

children. The dying man, hearing of his wife’s arrival, admitted her to

an interview, at which he forgave her ‘the injuries and provocations he

had received from her,’ but, at the same time, ordered her to depart,

‘telling those that interceded for her, that her behaviour was such that

he could not keep her in his house, she being capable by her nature to

provoke him either to do violence to her or himself.’ She contrived,

however, to lurk in or about the house for a few days, till her poor

husband was no more.

There is then the usual ostentatious funeral—a large company assembled—a

table of deals erected in the hall for their entertainment at dinner

_before_ the obsequies—the surviving brother, Sir Patrick, ostensibly

master of the house, and his wife keeping state in it, but the widow and

her boy cherishing their own purpose in some bye-place. When the

company, duly refreshed, had departed with the corpse to Coldingham

kirkyard, excepting a small armed guard left in the dining-room, Lady

Renton, as she chose to call herself, came forth from her concealment,

with sundry supporters, and desired her sister-in-law, Lady Patrick

Home, to quit the chamber of dais, and give place to her. Lady Patrick

refusing to go, the other lady threatened, with most opprobrious

language, to turn her out by violence; and for this purpose caused Mr

John Frank, advocate, and a few other friends, to be called back from

the funeral. Lady Patrick was, however, a full match for the widow. She

reviled her and her friends, ‘calling them villains, rascals, footmen,

and vowing she would let them know [that] nobody had a right to the

house but her Pate; and [if we are to believe the opposite party] she

dreadfully over and over again cursed and swore with clapping of hands,

that she would not stir off her bottom (having settled herself upon the

resting-chyre) [Sidenote: 1698.] until the pretended lady and her brats

were turned out of doors; railing and reproaching the [Lady Renton],

calling her a disgrace to the family, and otherwise abusing her by most

injurious and opprobrious language, and vowed and swore, if once her

Pate were come from the burial, she would sit and see the [pretended

lady] and her children, and all that belonged to her, turned down

stairs, and packed to the yetts.’ She then called in the guard from the

dining-room, and incited them to turn her sister-in-law out of the

house; which they declining to do, she broke out upon them as cowardly

rascals that did not know their duty. She and her women, she said, had

more courage than they. They at least protected her, however, from being

turned out of the house by Lady Renton, which otherwise might have been

her fate.

When Sir Patrick returned in the evening from the funeral, he approved

of his lady’s firmness, and intimated to Lady Renton his determination

to keep possession of the house in terms of law, asserting that she had

no title to any refuge there. Finding all other means vain, she

contrived, while the chamber of dais was getting cleared of the

temporary table, to possess herself of the key, and lock the door. A

violent scene took place between her and Sir Patrick; but she could not

be induced to give up the key of the chamber, and he finally found it

necessary to get the door broken up. Then he learned that she had caused

his bed to be carried away and locked up; and when all remonstrances on

this point proved vain, he had to send, at a late hour, for the loan of

a bed from a neighbour. Meanwhile, the widow herself was reduced to the

necessity of keeping herself and her children immured in the footman’s

room, there being no other part of the house patent to her. Such was the

posture of the relatives of the deceased gentleman on the night of his

funeral.

The parties came with their respective complaints before the Privy

Council, by whom the case was remitted to the decision of the Court of

Session. We learn from Fountainhall, that the Lords decided (June 24)

against the widow as not being ‘infeft’ (which Sir Patrick was); but the

young Sir Robert carried on a litigation against his uncle for several

years—first, for the reduction of his father’s disposition of the

estate; and, secondly, when this was decided in his favour, in defence

against Sir Patrick’s plea, that he, as heir-male and of provision to

his father, was bound to warrant his father’s deed. On a decision being

given in Sir Robert’s favour on this point also, the uncle appealed the

case to the House of Peers; and ‘both of them did take their journey to

[Sidenote: 1698.] London (though in the midst of winter) to see it

prosecute.’ Here, in 1712, the interlocutors of the Court of Session

were affirmed.[231]

[Sidenote: JUNE 26.]

This day, being Sunday, the magistrates of Aberdeen ‘seized a popish

meeting at the house of one Alexander Gibb, merchant in their town.’

They ‘found the altar, mass-book, bell, cross, images, candles, and

incense, the priests’ vestments, and a great many popish books, the

value of ane hundred pounds sterling, and imprisoned Alexander Gibb and

one John Cowie, a trafficking papist, who calls himself a Quaker;’ but

by a secret communication with the house of George Gray, merchant, ‘the

priests who were at the meeting did escape.’

The Privy Council thanked the magistrates ‘for their good service in

this affair,’ and ordered them to send Gibb, Cowie, and Gray to

Edinburgh, under a guard, with ‘all the popish books, vestments, and

other popish trinkets, and particularly the book of their popish

baptisms, confirmations, or marriages.’ The magistrates were also

enjoined to send ‘a list of the names and designations of all the

persons which they can learn were at the said popish meeting’ to the

Lord Advocate; and to secure ‘all popish schoolmasters or

schoolmistresses, or breeders of youth in the popish religion, and all

priests and trafficking papists found in their bounds.’

Lieutenant Vandraught was ordered (July 28) eight pounds, to requite his

expenses in bringing Alexander Gibb, John Cowie, and George Gray as

prisoners from Aberdeen, along with the vestments, images, trinkets, and

popish books which had been taken on the above occasion. A few days

after, George Gray convinced the Lords that he was a sound Protestant,

and that, having only possessed his house since June last, he was

unaware of the communication with the adjacent one through which the

priests were supposed to have escaped; indeed, was innocent of the whole

matter; wherefore they immediately ordered him to be set at liberty.

The Council ordered the articles taken to be carried back to Aberdeen,

the silver chalice, crucifix, and all other silver-work to be melted

down, and the proceeds given to the poor of the burgh, and all the other

articles ‘to be carried to the mercat-cross, and the magistrates to see

them burnt thereat by the hands of the common executioner.’

[Sidenote: 1698.]

John Cowie remained in the Edinburgh Tolbooth till the 24th of November,

notwithstanding an extremely low state of health, and stout

protestations against his being a ‘trafficking papist’—that is, ‘one who

endeavours to proselytise others to the Catholic faith.’ On a petition

setting forth his unmerited sufferings, the Lords ordered him to be set

free, but not without giving caution that he would henceforth live on

the south side of the Tay.

Alexander Gibb (December 15) represented himself as having now suffered

five months of wretched imprisonment, oppressed with sickness, poverty,

and old age, being seventy-three years old. He was content to take

freedom, on the condition of never returning to Aberdeen, ‘though he can

hardly live elsewhere.’ The Lords liberated him on that condition, for

the observance of which he had to give bond to the extent of five

hundred merks.

In April 1699, notwithstanding the severe procedure in the recent case

of the Catholics who met for worship at Aberdeen, it was found that the

Duke of Gordon made bold to have such meetings in his ‘lodging’ in

Edinburgh. If Macky is right in saying of him that ‘he is a Catholic

because he was bred so, but otherwise thinks very little of revealed

religion,’ we may suppose that his Grace was mainly induced by

good-nature to allow of these dangerous assemblages. However this might

be, the authorities made seizure of the Duke and a considerable number

of people of all ranks, as they were met together in his house for mass.

The whole party was soon after cited before the Privy Council, when his

Grace and seven of the other offenders appeared. The Duke spoke so

boldly of the laws against his faith and worship, that he was

immediately sent prisoner to the Castle; three others were put in the

Tolbooth. What was done with the rest, does not appear. After a

fortnight’s imprisonment, the Duke made a humble apology, and was

liberated.

In a letter from the king, dated at Loo, July 14th, the procedure of the

Council in the case of the Duke’s disrespectful expressions was approved

of, the more so ‘since those of that persuasion must be convinced they

have met with nothing from us but the utmost lenity.’ ‘We have ever,’

says William, ‘been adverse from prosecuting any on account of their

religion, so long as, in the exercise thereof, they have kept within the

bounds of moderation; but when, in contempt of our lenity, they proceed

to such ane open and barefaced violation of the laws as tends evidently

to the disturbance of the public peace, you may be assured we will never

countenance nor protect them, but suffer the law and justice to

[Sidenote: 1698.] have its due course.’ It is difficult to see how the

few Catholics of Edinburgh, if they were to be allowed their worship at

all, could have conducted it more inoffensively than by meeting in a

private house, or how it could be an offence on their part that the

vulgar were liable to be provoked to outrage by the fact of their

worshipping.

It was thought at this time, however, that ‘popery’ was becoming

impudent, and an unusual number of priests was supposed to be going

about the country. Considering the hazard with which ‘the true

Protestant religion’ was threatened, the parliament, in May 1700,

enacted a severe statute, which continued to be acted upon for many

years afterwards, assigning a reward of five hundred merks for the

detection of each priest and Jesuit, and ordaining that any one who was

so by habit and repute, and refused to disclaim the character on oath,

should be liable to banishment without further ceremony, under

certification that, on returning, still a papist, he should be liable to

death. Lay Catholics were in the same act declared incapable of

succeeding to heritable property; and their incompetency to educate

their children, formerly established, was confirmed.[232] The identity

of this act _in principle_ with the dragooning system practised against

the western hill-folk in 1685, is obvious.

Notwithstanding the crushing severity of this treatment, the professors

of the Catholic religion in Scotland contrived to establish about this

time, and to maintain, one seminary for at least the preparation of its

priesthood; but it was of a character to impress more forcibly the

sternness of Protestant prohibition than had there been none. It was

literally a little cottage, situated on the bank of the Crombie Water,

in a very sequestered situation among the mountains dividing Inveravon

parish, in Banffshire, from the Cabrach, Glenbucket, and Strathdon, in

Aberdeenshire. It was named _Scalan_, which means an obscure or shadowy

place, and the name was most appropriate. Here, far from the haunts of

civilised man, hardly known but to a few shepherds, or the wandering

sportsman, living on the proceeds of a small tract of mountain-ground, a

priest superintended the education of eight or ten youths, designed for

the most part to complete their course and take ordination on the

continent; though, occasionally, the rite of ordination was performed at

Scalan. This truly humble seminary, as singular a memorial of the

tenacity of the human [Sidenote: 1698.] heart towards the religious

tenets impressed on it as the Covenanters’ moorland communion-tables or

their mossy graves in the west, continued in existence at the close of

the eighteenth century.[233]

[Sidenote: JULY 26.]

The African Company, undeterred by the opposition of the English

mercantile class, had never for a moment, since the subscription of

their stock in spring 1696, paused in their design. They caused six

ships of good size to be built in Holland, and these they partially

mounted with guns, with a view to defence in case of need, at the same

time taking care to furnish them with an ample store of provisions, and

of every conceivable article likely to be required in a new colony.

Twelve hundred select men, many of them Highlanders, and not a few

soldiers who had been discharged at the peace of Ryswick, mustered under

a suitable number of officers, who were generally men of good birth, on

board this little fleet. ‘Neighbouring nations,’ says Dalrymple, ‘with a

mixture of surprise and respect, saw the poorest kingdom of Europe

sending forth the most gallant and the most numerous colony that had

ever gone from the old to the new world.’

On the summer day noted, the colony left Leith, in five ships, amidst

‘the tears, and prayers, and praises’ of a vast multitude of people, all

interested in the enterprise either by a mercantile concern in it, or as

viewing it in the light of an effort to elevate the condition and

character of their country. We are told by one who might have heard

eye-witnesses describe the scene, and probably did so,[234] that ‘many

seamen and soldiers whose services had been refused, because more had

offered themselves than were needed, were found hid in the ships, and,

when ordered ashore, clung to the ropes and timbers, imploring to go,

without reward, with their companions.’ The ships had a prosperous

voyage to a point on the Gulf of Darien, which had been previously

contemplated as suitable for their settlement, though the order for the

purpose was kept sealed till the expedition touched at Madeira. Landing

here on the 4th of November, they proceeded to fortify the peninsula on

one side of the bay, cutting a channel through the connecting isthmus,

and erecting what they called Fort St [Sidenote: 1698.] Andrew, with

fifty cannon. ‘On the other side of the harbour [bay] there was a

mountain a mile high, on which they placed a watch-house, which, in the

rarefied air within the tropics, gave them an immense range of prospect,

to prevent all surprise. To this place it was observed that the

Highlanders often repaired to enjoy a cool air, and to talk of their

friends whom they had left behind.’ They purchased the land they

occupied from the natives, and sent out friendly messages to all Spanish

governors within their reach. The first public act of the colony was to

publish a declaration of freedom of trade and religion to all

nations.’[235]

It does not belong to the plan of the present work to detail the history

of the Darien adventure. Enough to say that a second expedition of six

ships sailed in May and August 1699, and that this was soon followed by

a third, comprising thirteen hundred men. Before the first of these

dates, the first colony had fully experienced the difficulties of their

position. One of their vessels happening to fall ashore near Carthagena,

the crew and its master, Captain Pinkerton, were seized as pirates, and

with difficulty spared from hanging. Hunger, dissension, and disease

took possession of the settlement, and in June the survivors had to

leave it, and sail for New York. When the second set of ships arrived,

they found the place a desert, marked only by the numerous graves of the

first settlers. The men of the second and third expeditions, brought

together on that desolate spot, felt paralysed. Discontent and mutiny

broke out amongst them. After one brilliant little effort against the

Spaniards, the remainder of these unfortunate colonists had to

capitulate to their enemies, and abandon their settlement (March 1700).

It has been stated that not above thirty of them ever returned to their

native country.

The failure of the Darien settlement was a death-blow to the African

Company, the whole capital being absorbed and lost. So large a loss of

means to so poor a country, amidst the home-troubles of famine and

disease, was felt severely. It seemed to the people of Scotland that the

hostility of the king’s government, rather than that of the Spaniards,

had been chiefly to blame for their misfortunes; and certainly there is

some truth in the allegation. Nevertheless, when the whole matter is

viewed without national prejudice, it must be admitted that there was a

radical want of prudential management and direction in the expedition to

[Sidenote: 1698.] Darien, and that thus chiefly did Scotland lose the

opportunity of possessing herself of the most important station for

commerce in the world.

It is stated by Macky, in his _Characters_, that Mr Johnston, Secretary

of State for Scotland (son of the celebrated Archibald Johnston of

Warriston), was the person who carried the bill for the African Company

through the Scottish parliament, and that it proved for a time his ruin

as a statesman. ‘What was very strange, the Whigs, whose interest it was

to support him, joined in the blow. This soured him so, as never to be

reconciled all the king’s reign, though much esteemed.’[236]

[Sidenote: AUG. 8.]

The records of parliament at this date present a remarkable example of

the mutability of fortune. Robert Miln had risen by trade to

considerable distinction, and, in the latter years of Charles II., was

one of two persons who farmed the entire customs and excise revenue of

Scotland. He acquired lands—Binny and Barnton, in Lothian—and in 1686

was raised to a baronetage. He had, however, been unfortunate in some of

his latter transactions, and become involved in large responsibilities

for others; so that now he was in danger of having his person laid hold

of by his creditors. On his petition, the parliament gave him a personal

protection. Serious people, who remembered that Sir Robert, as bailie of

Linlithgow, had conducted the burning of the Covenant there in 1662,

would smile grimly, and draw inferences, when they heard of him as a

supplicant in fear of a jail. Wodrow tells us that he subsequently died

in bankrupt circumstances in ‘the Abbey;’[237] that is, the sanctuary of

Holyrood.

[Sidenote: SEP. 20.]

Warrant was given by the Privy Council to the keeper of the Tolbooth, to

provide meat and drink to the prisoners under his care, as per a list

furnished by the Lord Advocate, at the rate of four shillings Scots _per

diem_, to be paid by the Treasury.

From various orders by the Privy Council, it appears that a groat a day

was at this time deemed a proper allowance for the subsistence of an

imprisoned witch, recruit, or any other person in humble life dependent

for aliment on the public.

[Sidenote: OCT.]

Jean Gordon, widow of Mr William Fraser, minister of Slaines, [Sidenote:

1698.] Aberdeenshire, had been for some years decayed in body and mind,

so as probably to be a considerable burden to her surviving relatives.

One morning in this month, she was found dead in her bed, and after the

usual interval, she was duly interred. Soon after, some suspicions arose

against Mr William Fraser, minister of the gospel, stepson of the

deceased, to the effect that he had poisoned and bled her to death,

although, as he alleged, he had been absent at Aberdeen at the time of

her death. A warrant being obtained, the body was raised from the grave,

and examined. No external mark of violence was discovered, and science

did not then give the means of detecting the internal consequences of

poison. It was resolved, however, to revive, in this instance, a mode of

discovering murder, which has long been ranked with vulgar

superstitions. The body being laid out in open view, Mr William Dunbar,

minister of Cruden, prayed to God that he would discover the authors of

any violence done to the deceased lady, if any there were; and then the

persons present, one by one, including the suspected stepson, touched

the body; ‘notwithstanding whereof there appeared nothing upon the body

to make the least indication of her having been murdered.’ A

precognition reporting all these circumstances, and making no charge

against any one, was sent to the Lord Advocate.

The friends of the deceased nevertheless continued to suspect the

stepson, and caused him to be apprehended and thrown into Aberdeen jail.

He lay there unaccused for three months, ‘to the ruin of himself and his

small family,’ till at length they agreed to have him charged before the

Commissioners of Justiciary for the Highlands. Hereupon (March 6, 1699)

he petitioned the Privy Council for trial before the High Court of

Justiciary; which was granted.[238] What was the upshot of the affair

does not appear.

[Sidenote: NOV. 29.]

It was reported by the Lord Advocate to the Privy Council that there had

just been put into his hand _a challenge at sharps_, which had been sent

by one fencing-master to another, ‘to be performed in the face of the

school.’ He was told ‘it was but a business of sport, and that there was

no hazard in it.’ Nevertheless, the Council recommended his lordship to

inquire further into the matter, and report, or act as he might think of

it.[239]

[Sidenote: DEC. 1.]

Mr George Brown, a minister under banishment from Edinburgh [Sidenote:

1698.] on account of the performance of irregular marriages, came before

the Privy Council for their favour in behalf of an instrument he had

invented—called _Rotula Arithmetica_—‘whereby he is able to teach those

of a very ordinary capacity who can but read the figures, to add,

subtract, multiply, and divide, though they are not able otherwise

readily to condescend [specify] whether seven and four be eleven or

twelve.’ This instrument he set forth as calculated ‘for freeing the

mind from that _rack of intortion_ to which it is obliged in long

additions, as some honourable persons of their Lordships’ number (with

whom he had the honour to converse on that head) are able to instruct.’

The Lords treated this arithmetical nonjurant relentingly, and both gave

him a copyright in the _Rotula_ for fourteen years, and allowed him to

return to Edinburgh.

On the 13th December 1698, the Lords of the Council recommended the

Lords of the Treasury to give ‘a reasonable allowance to Mr George

Brown, minister, to be ane encouragement to him for his inventing and

making of his _Rotula Arithmetica_.’

His arithmetical machine comes up again three or four times in the Privy

Council books during the next few years.

[Sidenote: DEC. 22.]

Charles Hope of Hopetoun had a band of workmen constantly engaged at his

mines in the Leadhills, far up one of the higher vales of Lanarkshire.

It not being worth while for each man to go singly some miles for his

victuals, the proprietor was desirous of arranging that one should go

and make marketing for himself and all the rest; but there was an

obstacle—under terror of a late act against forestalling, no one could

venture to sell so much grain to any single person as was required for

this body of miners. Hopetoun[240] was therefore obliged to address the

Privy Council, setting forth the case, and craving a permission for his

bailie to make purchases to the required amount, on full security that

the victual so bought should not be ‘laid up or girnelled, or sold out

to any other persons except the said workmen,’ and that it should

[Sidenote: 1698.] be ‘given out and sold to the workmen at the price it

was bought for in the market, and no higher.’ A dispensation from the

act was granted to Hopetoun accordingly.

At the same time, a like concession was made in favour of ‘Robert Allan,

chamberlain to the Earl of Marr,’ for the benefit of the men working in

his lordship’s coal-mines; the same privilege was conferred on the Duke

of Queensberry, for the workmen at his lead-mines, and ‘workmen builders

at his Grace’s house [Drumlanrig];’ on the Earl of Annandale, for his

servants and workmen; and on Alexander Inglis, factor for the colliers

on the estate of Clackmannan. All these noblemen were members of the

Privy Council.

Not long after (May 4, 1699), Roderick Mackenzie of Prestonhall was

desirous of bringing a quantity of victual from his lands in

Forfarshire, to be used at his residence in Mid-Lothian; but it was

prevented by the magistrates of Dundee from being shipped there, upon

pretence of a late act of Privy Council, allowing certain persons to

prohibit the transporting of victual from the northern to the southern

districts, if they should see fit. It was evident, argued Mackenzie,

that this act was only designed to prevent a traffic in corn for profit

at the expense of the lieges: his case was wholly different, as clearly

appeared from the smallness of the quantity in question—namely, forty

bolls of meal, twenty of malt, and thirty of oats.

On his petition, the Council allowed him to transport the victual, and

enjoined that in doing so ‘he should not be troubled or robbed within

the said town of Dundee, or liberties thereof, as they will be

answerable.’[243]

[Sidenote: DEC. 27.]

Foreigners were accustomed to come to Scotland with ships, and carry

away multitudes of people to their own plantations, there to serve as

labourers. There was now issued a strict proclamation against this

practice, offenders to be held and treated as man-stealers.[244]

Nevertheless, in November 1704, Captain William Hutcheson, of the

province of Maryland, petitioned the Privy Council for liberty to

transport to his country six young pickpockets and twenty-two degraded

women, then in the correction-house of Edinburgh, who had all ‘of their

own choice and consent’ agreed to go along with him; and the request was

agreed to, under no [Sidenote: 1698.] other restriction than that he was

not to carry away any other persons, and should ‘aliment’ those whom he

was to take away until they should leave the country.

Nearly about the same time, John Russell, merchant in Edinburgh, was

allowed to carry off twenty persons, chiefly women, from the jails of

the city, to the plantations.

Such were the facts in view when pamphleteers afterwards twitted the

rebellious colonists with the taunt that the Adam and Eve of Maryland

and Virginia came out of Newgate.

[Sidenote: 1699. JAN.]

When the Bank of Scotland was started in 1695, there were no notes for

sums below five pounds. For the extension of the bank’s paper, there

were now issued notes for twenty shillings—ever since a most notable

part of the circulating medium in Scotland. These small notes readily

got into use in Edinburgh and some parts of the provinces; yet the hopes

which some entertained of their obtaining a currency in public markets

and fairs were not at first realised—for, as one remarks thirty years

later, ‘nothing answers there among the common people but silver

money,[245] even gold being little known amongst them.’[246]

[Sidenote: JAN. 30.]

The funeral of Lady Anne Hall, wife of Sir James Hall of Dunglass, took

place at the old church near her husband’s seat, and was attended by a

multitude of the nobility and other distinguished persons. A quarrel

happened between the respective coachmen of the Earls of Lothian and

Roxburgh, for precedence, ‘which was very near engaging the masters, but

was prevented.’ It appears that the two noble earls were aspirants for

promotion in the peerage, and thus were rendered more irritable.[247]

[Sidenote: MAR. 2.]

After the _Mercurius Caledonius_ had come to the end of its short and

inglorious career in 1661, there was no other attempt at a newspaper in

Scotland till 1680, when one was tried under the name of the _Edinburgh

Gazette_. This having likewise had a short life, nineteen years more

were allowed to elapse before the craving of the public mind for

intelligence of contemporary events called for another effort in the

same direction.

There was a gentleman hanging about Edinburgh, under the [Sidenote:

1699.] name of Captain Donaldson; originally in trade there; afterwards

an officer in the Earl of Angus’s regiment, for which he had levied a

company at his own charge. He had been wounded in seven places at the

battle of Killiecrankie, and was confined for several weeks by the

Highlanders in Blair Castle. Finally turned adrift at the peace of

Ryswick, with no half-pay, he found himself in want of both subsistence

and occupation, when he bethought him of favouring his fellow-citizens

with periodical news.[248] Having issued two or three trial-sheets,

which were ‘approven of by very many,’ he now obtained from the Privy

Council an exclusive right to publish ‘ane gazett of this place,

containing ane abridgment of foraine newes, together with the

occurrences at home;’ and the _Edinburgh Gazette_ (the second of the

name) accordingly began to make its appearance at the date marginally

noted.

Wisely calculating that news were as yet but a poor field in our

northern region, Donaldson supplemented the business of his office with

a typographical device on which more certain dependence could be placed.

He informed the Privy Council that he had fallen upon a wholly new plan

for producing funeral-letters—namely, to have the principal and

necessary parts done by characters ‘in fine writ,’ raised on ingots of

brass, leaving blanks for names, dates, and places of interment.

Stationery in this form would be convenient to the public, especially in

cases of haste, ‘besides the decencie and ornament of a border of

skeletons, mortheads, and other emblems of mortality,’ which he had ‘so

contrived that it may be added or subtracted at pleasure.’ The Lords,

entering into Donaldson’s views on this subject, granted him a monopoly

of his invention for nineteen years.

Very few months had the _Gazette_ lived when it brought its author into

trouble. On the 8th of June he was suddenly clapped in prison by the

Privy Council, ‘for printing several things in his _Gazette_ which are

not truths, and for which he has no warrant.’ Five days after, he came

before them with a humble petition, in which he set forth, that he had

begun the _Gazette_ under a sense of its probable usefulness,

‘notwithstanding he was dissuaded by [Sidenote: 1699.] most of his

friends from attempting to undertake it, as a thing that could not

defray the charges of printing, intelligence, &c.’ Trusting that their

Lordships must now ‘see how useful it is,’ he begged them to overlook

what was amiss in a late number, and ‘give him instructions how to act

for the future.’ They liberated him, and at the same time made

arrangements for having the _Gazette_ duly revised by a committee of

their own body before printing.[249]

Donaldson will reappear before us under date February 19, 1705.

[Sidenote: MAR. 16.]

Robert Logan, cabinet-maker, professed to have made an invention which

even the present inventive age has not seen repeated. He averred that he

could make kettles and caldrons of wood, which could ‘abide the

strongest fire,’ while boiling any liquor put into them, ‘as weel as any

vessels made of brass, copper, or any other metal,’ with the double

advantage of their being more durable and only a third of the expense.

The Earl of Leven having made a verbal report in favour of the

invention, Robert obtained a monopoly of it for ‘two nineteen

years.’[250]

[Sidenote: JUNE.]

Apostacy from the Protestant religion was held as a heinous crime in

Scotland. By an act of James VI., all persons who had been abroad were

enjoined, within twenty days after their return, to make public

profession of their adherence to ‘the true faith;’ otherwise to ‘devoid

the kingdom’ within forty days. By another statute of the same monarch,

an apostate to popery was obliged to leave the country within forty

days, ‘under highest pains.’

The faithfully Presbyterian Lord Advocate had now heard of a dreadful

case in point. David Edie, formerly a bailie of Aberdeen, having been

some years abroad, was come home a papist, everywhere boldly avowing his

apostacy; nay, he might be considered as a trafficking papist, for he

had written a letter to Skene of Fintry, containing the reasons which

had induced him to make this disastrous change. Already, the magistrates

of his native city had had him up before them on the double charge of

apostacy and trafficking; but ‘he behaved most contemptuously and

insolently towards them, saying: “They acted Hogan-Mogan-like; but he

expected better times.”’ It was therefore become [Sidenote: 1699.]

necessary to take the severest measures with him, ‘to the terror of

others to commit the like in time coming.’

On the 9th of November, David Edie was brought before the Privy Council,

and charged by the Lord Advocate and Solicitor-general with the crime of

apostacy, when he fully avowed his change of opinion, and likewise his

having written on the subject to Skene of Fintry. He was consequently

remitted to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, to remain there a prisoner during

the pleasure of the Council. They were, however, comparatively merciful

with the ex-bailie, for, five days later, they called him again before

them, and passed upon him a final sentence of banishment from the

kingdom, he to be liberated in the meantime, in order to make his

preparations, on his granting due caution for his departure within forty

days.

[Sidenote: JULY 17.]

The tacksmen of the customs and their officers were of course far from

being popular characters. The instinct for undutied liquors was strong

in the Scotch nature, and would occasionally work to unpleasant results.

Two waiters, named Forrest and Hunter, went at the request of the

tacksmen to Prestonpans, to try to verify some suspicions which were

entertained regarding certain practices in that black and venerable

village. Finding several ankers of sack and brandy hid in the house of

Robert Mitchell, skipper, they carried them to the Custom-house, and as

they were returning, they were assailed by a multitude of men and women,

who ‘fell desperately upon them, and did bruise and bleed them to ane

admirable height,’ robbing them, moreover, of their papers and fourteen

pounds of Scots money. Things might have been carried to a worse

extremity, had not the collector and others come up and diverted the

rabble. As it was, one of the men was so severely wounded, as to lie for

some time after in the chirurgeon’s hands.

A few days after, information being given of an embezzlement at Leith, a

few waiters were sent on the search, and finding a number of half-ankers

of brandy in a chest in a house in the Coalhill, carried them off to the

Custom-house, but were assailed on the way by a great rabble, chiefly

composed of women, who beat them severely, and rescued the goods.

The Lord Advocate was ordered by the Privy Council to inquire into these

doings, and take what steps might seem necessary.[251]

[Sidenote: 1699. JULY.]

Whenever a gentleman at this time returned from France, he became an

object of suspicion to the government, on account of his having possibly

had some traffickings with the exiled royal family, with views to the

raising of disturbances at home. The Earl of Nithsdale having come from

that country in July, a committee of the Privy Council was sent to speak

with him, and ‘report what they find in the said earl’s deportment in

France or since he came therefrom.’ A few days afterwards, he was

formally permitted ‘to go home and attend to his own affairs.’ In

November, Graham of Boquhapple, having returned from France ‘without

warrant from his majesty,’ was put up in the old Tolbooth, there to

remain _a close prisoner_ till further order, but with permission for

his family and a physician to visit him. At the end of February, Graham,

having given an ingenuous account of himself as a worn-out old soldier

of the Revolution, was liberated.[252]

[Sidenote: JULY 18.]

From Ross-shire, a new batch of witches was reported, in the persons of

‘John Glass in Spittal; Donald M‘Kulkie in Drumnamerk; Agnes Desk in

Kilraine; Agnes Wrath there; Margaret Monro in Milntown; Barbara Monro,

spouse to John Glass aforesaid; Margaret Monro, his mother; Christian

Gilash in Gilkovie; Barbara Rassa in Milntown; Mary Keill in Ferintosh;

Mary Glass in Newton; and Erick Shayme.’ All being ‘alleged guilty of

the diabolical crimes and charms of witchcraft,’ it was most desirable

that they should be brought to a trial, ‘that the persons guilty may

receive condign punishment, and others may be deterred from committing

such crimes and malefices in time coming;’ but the distance was great,

and travelling expensive; so it was determined to issue a commission to

Robertson of Inshes and several other gentlemen of the district, for

doing justice on the offenders.

The proceedings of Mr Robertson and his associates were duly reported in

November, and a committee was appointed by the Privy Council to consider

it, that they might afterwards give their opinion, ‘whether the sentence

mentioned in the said report should be put in execution as pronounced or

not.’ On the 2d of January 1700, the committee, composed of the judges

Rankeillor and Halcraig, reported that Margaret Monro and Agnes Wrath

had made confession—for them they recommended some [Sidenote: 1699.]

arbitrary punishment. Against John Glass in Spittal, and Mary Keill in

Ferintosh, it was their opinion that nothing had been proved. The

Council consequently assoilzied these persons from the sentence which

had been passed upon them by the local commissioners, and ordered their

liberation from the jail of Fortrose. As to the other persons, they

adopted the proposal of an arbitrary punishment, remitting to the

committee to appoint what they thought proper.[253] This is the first

appearance of an inclination in the central authorities to take mild

views of witchcraft.[254] We are not yet, however, come to the last

instance of its capital punishment.

On the 20th of November 1702, Margaret Myles was hanged at Edinburgh for

witchcraft. According to a contemporary account: ‘The day being come,

she was taken from the prison to the place of execution. Mr George

Andrew, one of the preachers of this city, earnestly exhorted her, and

desired her to pray; but her heart was so obdured, that she answered she

could not; for, as she confessed, she was in covenant with the devil,

who had made her renounce her baptism. After which, Mr Andrew said:

“Since your heart is so hardened that you cannot pray, will you say the

Lord’s Prayer after me?” He began it, saying: “Our Father which art in

heaven;” but she answered: “Our Father which wart in heaven;” and by no

means would she say otherways, only she desired he might pray for her.

He told her: “How could she bid him pray for her, since she would not

pray for herself.” Then he sung two verses of the 51st Psalm, during

which time she seemed penitent; but when he desired her to say: “I

renounce the devil,” she said: “I unce the devil;” for by no means would

she say distinctly that she renounced the devil, and adhered unto her

baptism, but that she unced the devil, and hered unto her baptism. The

only sign of repentance she gave was after the napkin had covered her

face, for then she said: “Lord, take me out of the devil’s hands, and

put me in God’s.”’[255]

[Sidenote: JULY 25.]

The inventive spirit, of which we have seen so many traits within the

last few years, had entered the mind of the poor [Sidenote: 1699.]

Englishman, Henry Neville Payne, so long confined, without trial, under

the care of the Scottish government, on account of his alleged concern

in a Jacobite conspiracy. In a petition dated at Stirling Castle, he

stated to the Privy Council, that ‘though borne down with age, poverty,

and a nine years’ imprisonment, he is preparing ane experiment for river

navigation, whereby safer, larger, and swifter vessels may be made with

far less charge than any now in use.’ As this experiment, however, owing

to the straitened circumstances and personal confinement of the

inventor, had cost ten times more than it otherwise would have done, so

did he find it could not be perfected unless he were allowed personally

to attend to it. He entreated that, however they might be determined to

detain him in Scotland, they would, ‘in Christian compassion to his hard

circumstances, permit him on his parole, or moderate bail, to have

freedom within some limited confinement near this place, to go forth of

the Castle, that he may duly attend his business, as the necessity of it

requires.’

The Council granted him liberty of half a mile’s range from the Castle,

during a limited portion of the day, under a guard.[256]

[Sidenote: SEP. 15.]