The death of King William without children (March 8, 1702), opened the
succession to the Princess Anne, second daughter of the late King James.
Following up the policy of her predecessor, she had not been more than
two months upon the throne, when, in conjunction with Germany and
Holland, she proclaimed war against the king of France, whose usurpation
of the succession to Spain for a member of his family, had renewed a
general feeling of hostility against him. This war, distinguished by the
victories of the Duke of Marlborough, lasted till the peace of Utrecht
in 1713. The queen had been many years married to Prince George of
Denmark, and had had several children; but all were now dead.
King William left the people of Scotland in a state of violent
discontent, on account chiefly of the usage they had received in the
affair of Darien. Ever since the Revolution, there had been a large
party, mainly composed of the upper classes, in favour of the exiled
dynasty. It was largely reinforced, and its views were generally much
promoted, by the odium into which the government of William III. had
fallen, and by the feelings of jealousy and wrath which had been kindled
against the whole English nation. This was not a natural state of things
for Scotland, for the bulk of the people, Presbyterian at heart, could
have no confidence in a restored sovereign of the House of Stuart; but
anger had temporarily overcome many of the more permanent feelings of
the people, and it was hard to say what course they might take in the
dynastic difficulties which were impending.
In 1700, the English parliament, viewing the want of children to both
William and the Princess Anne, had settled the crown of England upon the
Electress Sophia of Hanover, daughter of the Princess Elizabeth,
daughter of King James I., she being the nearest Protestant heir; thus
excluding not only the progeny of James II., but that of several elder
children of the Princess Elizabeth, all of whom were of the Roman
Catholic religion. It was highly desirable that the Scottish Estates
should be induced to settle the crown of Scotland on the same person, in
order that peace might be preserved between the two kingdoms; but the
discontents of the Scotch stood in the way. Not that there existed in
Scotland any insuperable desire for another person, or any special
objection to Sophia; the great majority would probably have voted, in
ordinary circumstances, for this very course. But Scotland had been
wronged and insulted; it was necessary to shew the English that this
could not be done with safety to themselves. She had a claim to equality
of trading privileges: it was right that she should use all fair means
to get this established. Accordingly, in 1703, the Scottish parliament
passed two acts calculated to excite no small alarm in the south: one of
them, styled the Act of Security, ordaining that the successor of Queen
Anne should not be the same person with the individual adopted by the
English parliament, unless there should be a free communication of trade
between the two countries, and the affairs of Scotland thoroughly
secured from English influence; the other, providing that, as a means of
enforcing the first, the nation should be put under arms. The queen,
after some hesitation, was obliged to ratify the Act of Security. In the
debates on these measures, the Scottish parliament exhibited a degree of
eloquence which was wholly a novelty, and the memory of which long
survived. It was a remarkable crisis, in which a little nation, merely
by the moral power which animated it, contrived to inspire fear and
respect in one much its superior in numbers and every other material
element of strength.
The general sense of danger thus created in England proved sufficient to
overcome that mercantile selfishness which had inflicted so much
injustice upon Scotland. It came to be seen, that the only way to secure
a harmony with the northern kingdom in some matters essential to peace,
was to admit it to an incorporating union, in which there should be a
provision for an equality of mercantile privileges. To effect this
arrangement, accordingly, became the policy of the English Whig ministry
of Queen Anne. On the other hand, the proposition did not meet a
favourable reception in Scotland, where the ancient national
independence was a matter of national pride; nevertheless, there also a
parliamentary sanction was obtained for the preliminary steps.
In May 1706, the Commissioners, thirty from each nation, met at
Westminster, to deliberate on the terms of the proposed treaty. It was
soon agreed upon that the leading features of the act should be—a union
of the two countries under one sovereign, who, failing heirs of the
queen, should be the Electress of Hanover or her heir; but each country
to retain her own church establishment and her own laws—Scotland to send
sixteen representative peers and forty-five commoners to the British
parliament—Scottish merchants to trade freely with England and her
colonies—the taxes to be equalised, except that from land, which was to
be arranged in such a way that when England contributed two millions,
Scotland should give only a fortieth part of the sum, or forty-eight
thousand pounds; and as the English taxes were rendered burdensome by a
debt of sixteen millions, Scotland was to be compensated for its share
of that burden by receiving, as ‘an Equivalent,’ about four hundred
thousand pounds of ready money from England, which was to be applied to
the renovation of the coin, the discharge of the public debts, and a
restitution of the money lost by the African Company.
When these articles were laid before the Scottish Estates in October,
they produced a burst of indignant feeling that seemed to overspread the
whole country. The Jacobite party, who saw in the union only the
establishment of an alien dynasty, were furious. The clergy felt some
alarm at the prelatic element in the British parliament. The mass of the
people grieved over the prospect of a termination to the native
parliament, and other tokens of an ancient independence. Nevertheless,
partly that there were many men in the Estates who had juster views of
the true interests of their country, and partly that others were open to
various influences brought to bear upon their votes, the act of union
was passed in February 1707, as to take effect from the ensuing 1st of
May. The opposition was conducted principally by the Duke of Hamilton, a
Jacobite, and, but for his infirmity of purpose, it might have been more
formidable. The Duke of Queensberry, who acted on this occasion as the
queen’s commissioner to parliament, was rewarded for his services with
an English dukedom. The Privy Council, the record of whose proceedings
has been of so much importance to this work, now came to an end; but a
Secretary of State for Scotland continued for the next two reigns to be
part of the apparatus of the central government in the English
metropolis.
Of the discontent engendered on this occasion, the friends of the exiled
Stuarts endeavoured to take advantage in the spring of 1708, by bringing
a French expedition to the Scottish coasts, having on board five
thousand men, and the son of James II., now a youth of twenty years of
age. It reached the mouth of the Firth of Forth, and many of the
Jacobite gentry were prepared to join the young prince on landing. But
the Chevalier de St George, as he was called, took ill of small-pox; the
British fleet under Admiral Byng came in sight; and it was deemed best
to return to France, and wait for another opportunity.
The Tory ministry of the last four years of Queen Anne affected Scotland
by the passing of an act of Toleration for the relief of the persecuted
remnant of Episcopalians, and another act by which the rights of patrons
in the nomination of clergy to charges in the Established Church were
revived. The Whigs of the Revolution felt both of these measures to be
discouraging. During this period, in Scotland, as in England, the
Cavalier spirit was in the ascendency, and the earnest Whigs trembled
lest, by complicity of the queen or her ministers, the Pretender should
be introduced, to the exclusion of the Protestant heir. But the sudden
death of Anne on the 1st of August 1714, neutralised all such schemes,
and the son of the then deceased Electress Sophia succeeded to the
British throne, under the name of George I., with as much apparent
quietness as if he had been a resident Prince of Wales.
[Sidenote: 1702. JULY.]
On the principle that minute matters, which denote a progress in
improvement, or even a tendency to it, are worthy of notice, it may be
allowable to remark at this time an advertisement of Mr George
Robertson, apothecary at Perth, that he had lately set up there ‘a
double Hummum, or Bath Stove, the one for men, and the other for women,
approven of by physicians to be of great use for the cure of several
diseases.’ A hummum is in reality a Turkish or hot-air bath. We find
that, within twenty years after this time, the chirurgeons in Edinburgh
had a _bagnio_, or hot bath, and the physicians a cold bath, for medical
purposes.
The _Edinburgh Gazette_ which advertises the Perth hummum, also
announces the presence, in a lodging at the foot of the West Bow of
Edinburgh, of Duncan Campbell of Ashfield, chirurgeon to the city of
Glasgow, who had ‘cutted nine score persons [for stone] without the
death of any except five.’[313] There was also a mysterious person,
styled ‘a gentleman in town,’ and ‘to be got notice of at the Caledonian
Coffee-house,’ who had ‘had a secret imparted to him by his father, an
eminent physician in this kingdom, which, by the blessing of God,
certainly and safely cures the phrenzie’—also ‘convulsion-fits, vapours,
and megrims—in a few weeks, at reasonable rates, and takes no reward
till the cure is perfected.’
In the same sheet, ‘G. Young, against the Court of Guard, Edinburgh,’
bespoke favour for ‘a most precious eye-water, which infallibly cures
all distempers in the eyes, whether pearl, web, catracht, blood-shot
dimness, &c., and in less than six times dressing has cured some who
have been blind seven years.’
The custom of vending quack medicines from a public stage on the
street—of which we have seen several notable examples in the [Sidenote:
1702.] course of the seventeenth century—continued at this time, and for
many years after, to be kept up. Edinburgh was occasionally favoured
with a visit from a famous practitioner of this kind, named Anthony
Parsons, who, in announcing his arrival in 1710, stated the quality of
his medicines, and that he had been in the habit of vending them on
stages for thirty years. In October 1711, he advertised in the _Scots
Postman_—‘It being reported that Anthony Parsons is gone from Edinburgh
to mount public stages in the country, this is to give notice that he
hath left off keeping stages, and still lives in the Hammermen’s Land,
at the Magdalen Chapel, near the head of the Cowgate, where may be had
the ORVIETAN, a famous antidote against infectious distempers, and helps
barrenness, &c.’ Four years later, Parsons announced his design of
bidding adieu to Edinburgh, and, in that prospect, offered his medicines
at reduced rates; likewise, by auction, ‘a fine cabinet organ.’[314]
In April 1724, one Campbell, commonly called (probably from his ragged
appearance) _Doctor Duds_, was in great notoriety in Edinburgh as a
quack mediciner. He does not seem to have been in great favour with the
populace, for, being seen by them on the street, he was so vexatiously
assaulted, as to be obliged to make his escape in a coach. At this time,
a mountebank doctor erected a stage at the foot of the Canongate, in
order to compete with Doctor Duds for a share of business; but a boy
being killed by a fall from the fabric the day of its erection, threw a
damp on his efforts at wit, and the affair appears to have proved a
failure.[315]
The author just quoted had a recollection of one of the last of this
fraternity—an Englishman, named Green—who boasted he was the third
generation of a family which had been devoted to the profession. ‘A
stage was erected in the most public part of a town, and occupied by the
master, with one or two tumblers or rope-dancers, who attracted the
multitude. Valuable medicines were promised and distributed by a kind of
lottery. Each spectator, willing to obtain a prize, threw a
handkerchief, enclosing one or two shillings, on the stage. The
handkerchief was returned with a certain quantity of medicines. But
along with them, a silver cup was put into one to gratify some
successful adventurer.’
‘Doctor Green, younger of Doncaster’—probably the second of the three
generations—had occasion, in December 1725, to advertise [Sidenote:
1702.] the Scottish community regarding his ‘menial servant and
tumbler,’ Henry Lewis, who, he said, had deserted his service with a
week’s prepaid wages in his pocket, and, as the doctor understood, ‘has
resorted to Fife, or some of the north-country burghs, with design to
get himself furnished with a play-fool, and to set himself up for a
doctor experienced in the practice of physic and chirurgery.’ Doctor
Green deemed himself obliged to warn Fife and the said burghs, whither
he himself designed to resort in spring, against ‘the said impostor, and
to dismiss him as such.’[316]
We have this personage brought before us in an amusing light, in May
1731, in connection with the King’s College, Aberdeen. He had applied to
this learned sodality for a diploma as doctor of medicine, ‘upon
assurances given under his hand, that he would practise medicine in a
regular way, and give over his stage.’ They had granted him the diploma
accordingly. Finding, afterwards, that he still continued to use his
stage, ‘the college, to vindicate their conduct in the affair, and at
the same time, in justice to the public, to expose Mr Green his
disingenuity, recorded in the Register of Probative Writs his letter
containing these assurances.’ They also certified ‘that, if Mr Green
give not over his stage, they will proceed to further resentment against
him.’[317]
Down to this time there was still an entire faith among the common sort
of people in the medical properties of natural crystals, perforated
stones, ancient jet ornaments, flint arrow-heads, glass beads, and other
articles. The custom was to dip the article into water, and administer
the water to the patient. The Stewarts of Ardvorlich still possess a
crystal which was once in great esteem throughout Lower Perthshire for
the virtues which it could impart to simple water. A flat piece of ivory
in the possession of Campbell of Barbreck—commonly called _Barbreck’s
Bone_—was sovereign for the cure of madness. This article is now
deposited in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries in Edinburgh. The
_Lee Penny_—a small precious stone, set in an old English coin, still
possessed by the Lockharts of Lee—is another and highly noted example of
such charms for healing.
It was also still customary to resort to certain wells and other waters,
on account of their supposed healing virtues, as we have seen to be the
case a century earlier. Either the patient was brought to the water, and
dipped into it, or a fragment of his [Sidenote: 1702.] clothing was
brought and cast into, or left on the side of it, a shackle or tether of
a cow serving equally when such an animal was concerned. If such virtues
had continued to be attributed only to wells formerly dedicated to
saints, it would not have been surprising; but the idea of medicinal
virtue was sometimes connected with a lake or other piece of water,
which had no such history. There was, for example, on the high ground to
the west of Drumlanrig Castle, in Nithsdale, a small tarn called the Dow
[_i. e._ black] Loch, which enjoyed the highest medical repute all over
the south of Scotland. People came from immense distances to throw a rag
from a sick friend, or a tether from an afflicted cow, into the Dow
Loch, when, ‘these being cast in, if they did float, it was taken for a
good omen of recovery, and a part of the water carried to the patient,
though to remote places, without saluting or speaking to any one they
met by the way; but, if they did sink, the recovery of the party was
hopeless.’[318] The clergy exerted themselves strenuously to put down
the superstition. The trouble which the presbytery of Penpont had, first
and last, with this same Dow Loch, was past expression. But their
efforts were wholly in vain.[319]
[Sidenote: 1702. JULY 3.]
‘It pleased the great and holy God to visit this town [Leith], for their
heinous sins against him, with a very terrible and sudden stroke, which
was occasioned by the firing of thirty-three barrels of powder; which
dreadful blast, as it was heard even at many miles distance with great
terror and amazement, so it hath caused great ruin and desolation in
this place. It smote seven or eight persons at least with sudden death,
and turned the houses next adjacent to ruinous heaps, tirred off the
roof, beat out the windows, and broke out the timber partitions of a
great many houses and biggings even to a great distance. Few houses in
the town did escape some damage, and all this in a moment of time; so
that the merciful conduct of Divine Providence hath been very admirable
in the preservation of hundreds of people, whose lives were exposed to
manifold sudden dangers, seeing they had not so much previous warning as
to shift a foot for their own preservation, much less to remove their
plenishing.’ So proceeded a petition from ‘the distressed inhabitants of
Leith’ to the Privy Council, on the occasion of this sore calamity.
‘Seeing,’ they went on to say, ‘that part of the town is destroyed and
damnified to the value of thirty-six thousand nine hundred and
thirty-six pounds, Scots money, by and attour several other damages done
in several back-closes, and by and attour the household plenishing and
merchant goods destroyed in the said houses, and victual destroyed and
damnified in lofts, and the losses occasioned by the houses lying waste;
and seeing the owners of the said houses are for the most part unable to
repair them, so that a great part of the principal seaport of the nation
will be desolate and ruinous, if considerable relief be not provided,’
they implored permission to make a charitable collection throughout the
kingdom at kirk-doors, and by going from house to house; which prayer
was readily granted.[320]
[Sidenote: JULY 8.]
The Earl of Kintore, who had been made Knight Marischal of Scotland at
the Restoration, and afterwards raised to the peerage for his service in
saving the regalia from the English in 1651, was still living.[321] He
petitioned the Privy Council at this date on account of a pamphlet
published by Sir William Ogilvie of Barras, in which his concern in the
preservation of the regalia was unduly depreciated. His lordship gives a
long recital on the subject, from which it after all appears that his
share of the business was confined to his discommending obedience to
[Sidenote: 1702.] be paid to a state order for sending out the regalia
from Dunnottar Castle—in which case it was likely they might have been
taken—and afterwards doing what he could to put the English on a false
scent, by representing the regalia as carried to the king at Paris. He
denounces the pamphlet as an endeavour ‘to rob him of his just merit and
honour, and likewise to belie his majesty’s patents in his favour,’ and
he craved due punishment. Sir William, being laid up with sickness at
Montrose, was unable to appear in his own defence, and the Council,
accordingly, without hesitation, ordered the offensive brochure to be
publicly burnt at the Cross of Edinburgh by the common hangman.
David Ogilvie, younger of Barras, was soon after fined in a hundred
pounds for his concern in this so-called libel.[322]
There is something unaccountable in the determination evinced at various
periods to assign the glory of the preservation of the regalia to the
Earl of Kintore, the grand fact of the case being that these sacred
relics were saved by the dexterity and courage of the unpretending
woman—Mrs Grainger—the minister’s wife of Kineff, who, by means of her
servant, got them carried out of Dunnottar Castle through the
beleaguering lines of the English, and kept them in secrecy under ground
for eight years. See under March 1652.
[Sidenote: AUG.]
The arrangements of the Post-office, as established by the act of 1695,
were found to be not duly observed, in as far as common carriers
presumed to carry letters in tracts where post-offices were erected,
‘besides such as relate to goods sent or to be returned to them.’ A very
strict proclamation was now issued against this practice, and forbidding
all who were not noblemen or gentlemen’s servants to ‘carry, receive, or
deliver any letters where post-offices are erected.’
Inviolability of letters at the Post-office was not yet held in respect
as a principle. In July 1701, two letters from Brussels, ‘having the
cross upon the back of them,’ had come with proper addresses under cover
to the Edinburgh postmaster. He ‘was surprised with them,’ and brought
them to the Lord Advocate, who, however, on opening them, found they
were ‘of no value, being only on private business;’ wherefore he ordered
them to be delivered by the postmaster to the persons to whom they were
directed.
[Sidenote: 1702.]
Long after this period—in 1738—the Earl of Ilay, writing to Sir Robert
Walpole from Edinburgh, said: ‘I am forced to send this letter by a
servant twenty miles out of town, _where the Duke of Argyle’s attorney
cannot handle it_.’ It sounds strangely that Lord Hay should thus have
had to complain of his own brother; that one who was supreme in
Scotland, should have been under such a difficulty from an opposition
noble; and that there should have been, at so recent a period, a
disregard to so needful a principle. But this is not all. Lord Ilay, in
time succeeding his brother as Duke of Argyle, appears to have also
taken up his part at the Edinburgh Post-office. In March 1748, General
Bland, commander of the forces in Scotland, wrote to the Secretary of
State, ‘that his letters were opened at the Edinburgh Post-office; and I
think this is done _by order of a noble duke_, in order to know my
secret sentiments of the people and of his Grace. If this practice is
not stopped, the ministers cannot hope for any real information.’
Considering the present sound administration of the entire national
institution by the now living inheritor of that peerage, one cannot
without a smile hear George Chalmers telling[323] how the Edinburgh
Post-office, in the reign of the second George, was ‘infested by two
Dukes of Argyle!’
It will be heard, however, with some surprise, that the Lord Advocate
may still be considered as having the power, in cases where the public
interests are concerned, to order the examination of letters in the
Post-office. So lately as 1789, when the unhappy duellist, Captain
Macrae, fled from justice, his letters were seized at the Post-office by
order of the Justice-clerk Braxfield.
The sport of cock-fighting had lately been introduced into Scotland, and
a cock-pit was now in operation in Leith Links, where the charges for
admission were 10_d._ for the front row, 7_d._ for the second, and 4_d._
for the third. Soon after, ‘the passion for cock-fighting was so general
among all ranks of the people, that the magistrates [of Edinburgh]
discharged its being practised on the streets, on account of the
disturbances it occasioned.’[324]
[Sidenote: 1702.]
William Machrie, who taught in Edinburgh what he called ‘the severe and
serious, but necessary exercise of the sword,’ had also given a share of
his attention to cock-fighting—a sport which he deemed ‘as much an art,
as the managing of horses for races or for the field of battle.’ It was
an art in vogue over all Europe—though ‘kept up only by people of rank,
and never sunk down to the hands of the commonalty’—and he, for his
part, had studied it carefully: he had read everything on the subject,
conversed and corresponded on it with ‘the best cockers in Britain,’
carefully observing their practice, and passing through a long
experience of his own.
Thus prepared, Mr Machrie published in Edinburgh, in 1705, a brochure,
styled _An Essay on the Innocent and Royal Recreation and Art of
Cocking_, consisting of sixty-three small pages; from which we learn
that he had been the means of introducing the sport into Edinburgh. The
writer of a prefixed set of verses evidently considered him as one of
the great reformers of the age:
‘Long have you taught the art of self-defence,
Improved our safety then, but now our sense,
Teaching us pleasure with a small expense.’
For his own part, considering the hazard and expense which attended
horse-racing and hawking, he was eager to proclaim the superior
attractions of cocking, as being a sport from which no such
inconveniences arose. The very qualities of the bird recommended
it—namely, ‘his Spanish gait, his Florentine policy, and his Scottish
valour in overcoming and generosity in using his vanquished adversary.’
The ancients called him an astronomer, and he had been ‘an early
preacher of repentance, even convincing Peter, the first pope, of his
holiness’s fallibility.’ ‘Further,’ says he, ‘if variety and change of
fortune be any way prevalent to engage the minds of men, as commonly it
is, to prefer one recreation to another, it will beyond all controversy
be found in cocking more than any other. Nay, the eloquence of Tully or
art of Apelles could never with that life and exactness represent
fortune metamorphosed in a battle, as doth cocking; for here you’ll see
brave attacks and as brave defiances, bloody strugglings, and cunning
and handsome retreats; here you’ll see generous fortitude ignorant of
interest,’ &c.
Mr Machrie, therefore, goes _con amore_ into his subject, fully trusting
that his treatise on ‘this little but bold animal could not [Sidenote:
1702.] be unacceptable to a nation whose martial temper and glorious
actions in the field have rendered them famed beyond the limits of the
Christian world;’ a sentence from which we should have argued that our
author was a native of a sister-island, even if the fact had not been
indicated by his name.
Mr Machrie gives many important remarks on the natural history of the
animal—tells us many secrets about its breeding; instructs us in the
points which imply strength and valour; gives advices about feeding and
training; and exhibits the whole policy of the pit. Finally, he says, ‘I
am not ashamed to declare to the world that I have a special veneration
and esteem for those gentlemen, within and about this city, who have
entered in society for propagating and establishing the royal recreation
of cocking (in order to which they have already erected a cock-pit in
the Links of Leith); and I earnestly wish that their generous and
laudable example may be imitated in that degree that, in cock-war,
village may be engaged against village, city against city, kingdom
against kingdom, nay, the father against the son, until all the wars in
Europe, wherein so much Christian blood is spilt, be turned into the
innocent pastime of cocking.’
Machrie advertised, in July 1711, that he was not the author of a little
pamphlet on Duelling, which had been lately published with his name and
style on the title-page—‘William Machrie, Professor of both Swords.’ He
denounced this publication as containing ridiculous impossibilities in
his art, such as ‘pretending to parry a pistol-ball with his sword.’
Moreover, it contained ‘indiscreet reflections on the learned Mr
Bickerstaff [of the _Tatler_],’ ‘contrary to his [Machrie’s] natural
temper and inclination, as well as that civility and good manners which
his years, experience, and conversation in the world have taught
him.’[325]
The amusement of cock-fighting long kept a hold of the Scottish people.
It will now be scarcely believed that, through the greater part of the
eighteenth century, and till within the recollection of persons still
living, the boys attending the parish and burghal schools were
encouraged to bring cocks to school at Fasten’s E’en (Shrove-tide), and
devote an entire day to this barbarising sport. The slain birds and
_fugies_ (so the craven birds were called) became the property of the
schoolmaster. The minister of Applecross, in Ross-shire, in his account
of the parish, written about 1790, [Sidenote: 1702.] coolly tells us
that the schoolmaster’s income is composed of two hundred merks, with
payments from the scholars of 1_s._ 6_d._ for English, and 2_s._ 6_d._
for Latin, and ‘the cock-fight dues, which are equal to one quarter’s
payment for each scholar.’[326]
_A Short Account of Scotland_, written, it is understood, by an English
gentleman named Morer, and published this year, presents a picture of
our country as it appeared to an educated stranger before the union. The
surface was generally unenclosed; oats and barley the chief grain
products; wheat little cultivated; little hay made for winter, the
horses then feeding chiefly on straw and oats. The houses of the gentry,
heretofore built for strength, were now beginning to be ‘modish, both in
fabric and furniture.’ But ‘still their avenues are very indifferent,
and they want their gardens, which are the beauty and pride of our
English seats.’ Orchards were rare, and ‘their apples, pears, and plums
not of the best kind;’ their cherries tolerably good; ‘for gooseberries,
currants, strawberries, and the like, they have of each, but growing in
gentlemen’s gardens; and yet from thence we sometimes meet them in the
markets of their boroughs.’ The people of the Lowlands partly depended
on the Highlands for cattle to eat; and the Highlanders, in turn,
carried back corn, of which their own country did not grow a
sufficiency.
Mr Morer found that the Lowlanders were dressed much like his own
countrymen, excepting that the men generally wore bonnets instead of
hats, and plaids instead of cloaks; the women, too, wearing plaids when
abroad or at church. Women of the humbler class generally went barefoot,
‘especially in summer.’ The children of people of the better sort, ‘lay
and clergy,’ were likewise generally without shoes and stockings.
Oaten-cakes, baked on a plate of iron over the fire, were the principal
bread used. Their flesh he admits to have been ‘good enough,’ but he
could not say the same for their cheese or butter. They are ‘fond of
tobacco, but more from the snish-box than the pipe.’ Snuff, indeed, had
become so necessary to them, that ‘I have heard some of them say, should
their bread come in competition with it, they would rather fast than
their snish should be taken away. Yet mostly it consists of the coarsest
tobacco, dried by the fire, and powdered in a little engine after the
form of a _tap_, which they [Sidenote: 1702.] carry in their pockets,
and is both a _mill_ to grind and a _box_ to keep it in.’
[Illustration: Dresses of the People of Scotland.—From Speed’s _Atlas_,
1676.]
Stage-coaches did not as yet exist, but there were a few hackneys at
Edinburgh, which might be hired into the country upon urgent occasions.
‘The truth is, the roads will hardly allow them those conveniences,
which is the reason that the gentry, men and women, choose rather to use
their horses. However, their great men often travel with coach-and-six,
but with so little caution, that, besides their other attendance, they
have a lusty running-footman on each side of the coach, to manage and
keep it up in rough places.’
Another Englishman, who made an excursion into Scotland in 1704, gives
additional particulars, but to the same general purport. At Edinburgh,
he got good French wine at 20_d._, and Burgundy at 10_d._ a quart. The
town appeared to him scarcely so large as York or Newcastle, but
extremely populous, and containing abundance of beggars. ‘The people
here,’ he says, ‘are very proud, and call the ordinary tradesmen
merchants.’ ‘At the best houses they dress their victuals after the
French method, though perhaps not so cleanly, and a soup is commonly the
first dish; and their reckonings are dear enough. The servant-maids
attended without shoes or stockings.’
At Lesmahago, a village in Lanarkshire, he found the people living on
cakes made of pease and barley mixed. ‘They ate no meat, nor drank
anything but water, all the year round; and the common people go without
shoes or stockings all the year round. I pitied their poverty, but
observed the people were fresh and [Sidenote: 1702.] lusty, and did not
seem to be under any uneasiness with their way of living.’
In the village inn, ‘I had,’ says he, ‘an enclosed room to myself, with
a chimney in it, and dined on a leg of veal, which is not to be had at
every place in this country.’ At another village—Crawford-John—‘the
houses are either of earth or loose stones, or are _raddled_, and the
roofs are of turf, and the floors the bare ground. They are but one
story high, and the chimney is a hole in the roof, and the fireplace is
in the middle of the floor. Their seats and beds are of turf earthed
over, and raddled up near the fireplace, and serve for both uses. Their
ale is pale, small, and thick, but at the most common minsh-houses
[taverns], they commonly have good French brandy, and often French wine,
so common are these French liquors in this country.’
Our traveller, being at Crawford-John on a Sunday, went to the parish
church, which he likens to a barn. He found it ‘mightily crowded, and
two gentlemen’s seats in it with deal-tops over them. They begin service
here about nine in the morning, and continue it till about noon, and
then rise, and the minister goes to the minsh-house, and so many of them
as think fit, and refresh themselves. The rest stay in the churchyard
for about half an hour, and then service begins again, and continues
till about four or five. I suppose the reason of this is, that most of
the congregations live too far from the church to go home and return to
church in time.’[327]
The general conditions described by both of these travellers exhibit
little, if any advance upon those presented in the journey of the
Yorkshire squire in 1688,[328] or even that of Ray the naturalist in
1661.[329]
[Sidenote: 1703. JAN. 24.]
George Young, a shopkeeper in the High Street of Edinburgh, was
appointed by the magistrates as a constable, along with several other
citizens in the like capacity, ‘to oversee the manners and order of the
burgh and inhabitants thereof.’ On the evening of the day noted, being
Sunday, he went ‘through some parts of the town, to see that the Lord’s
Day and laws made for the observance thereof were not violat.’ ‘Coming
to the house of Marjory Thom, relict of James Allan, vintner, a little
before ten o’clock, and [Sidenote: 1703.] finding in the house several
companies in different rooms, [he] did soberly and Christianly
expostulate with the mistress of the house for keeping persons in her
house at such unseasonable hours, and did very justly threaten to delate
her to the magistrates, to be rebuked for the same. [He] did not in the
least offer to disturb any of her guests, but went away, and as [he was]
going up the close to the streets, he and the rest was followed by Mr
Archibald Campbell, eldest son to Lord Niel Campbell, who quarrelled him
for offering to delate the house to the magistrates, [telling him] he
would make him repent it.’ So runs George Young’s own account of the
matter. It was rather unlucky for him, in his turn at this duty, to have
come into collision with Mr Campbell, for the latter was first-cousin to
the Duke of Argyle, and a person of too much consequence to be involved
in a law which only works sweetly against the humbler classes, being,
indeed, mainly designed for their benefit.
To pursue Young’s narrative. ‘Mr Archibald came next day with some
others towards the said George his shop, opposite to the Guard [house],
and called at his shop, which was shut by the hatch or half-door:
“Sirrah, sirrah!” which George not observing, nor apprehending his
discourse was directed to him, Mr Archibald called again to this
purpose: “I spoke to you, Young the constable.” Whereupon, George
civilly desiring to know his pleasure, he expressed himself thus:
“Spark, are you in any better humour to-day than you was last night?”
George answered, he was the same to-day he was last night. “I was about
my duty last night, and am so to-day. I hope I have not offended you;
and pray, sir, do not disturb me.” Mr Archibald, appearing angry, and
challenging George for his taking notice of Mrs Allan’s house, again
asked him if he was in any better temper, or words to that purpose; [to
which] George again replied, He was the same he was, and prayed him to
be gone, because he seemed displeased. Whereupon Mr Archibald taking
hold of his sword, as [if] he would have drawn it, George, being within
the half-door, fearing harm, threw open the door, and came out to Mr
Archibald, and endeavoured to catch hold of his sword. Mr Archibald did
beat him upon the eye twice or thrice, and again took hold of his sword
to draw and run at him; which he certainly had done, if not interrupted
by the bystanders, who took hold of his sword and held him, till that
the Town-guard seized Mr Archibald, and made him prisoner.’
Mr Campbell, being speedily released upon bail, did not wait to
[Sidenote: 1702.] be brought before the magistrates, but raised a
process against Young before the Privy Council, ‘intending thereby to
discourage all laudable endeavours to get extravagancy and disorder
[repressed].’ In the charge which he brought forward, Mr Campbell
depicts himself as walking peaceably on the High Street, when Young
attacked him, seized his sword, and declared him prisoner, without any
previous offence on his part. The Guard thereafter dragged him to their
house, maltreating him by the way, and kept him a prisoner till his
friends assembled and obtained his liberation. The process went through
various stages during the next few weeks, and at length, on the 9th of
March, the Council found Young guilty of a riot, and fined him in four
hundred merks (upwards of £22 sterling), to be paid to Mr Campbell for
his expenses; further ordaining the offender to be imprisoned till the
money was forthcoming.
To do the Duke of Argyle justice, his name does not appear in the list
of the councillors who sat that day.
[Sidenote: MAR. 6.]
Sir John Bell, a former magistrate of Glasgow, kept up a modest frame of
Episcopal worship in that Presbyterian city, having occasionally
preachers, who were not always qualified by law, to officiate in his
house. On the 30th of January, a boy-mob assailed the house while
worship was going on, and some windows were broken. However, the
magistrates were quickly on the spot, and the tumult was suppressed.
A letter from the queen to the Privy Council, dated the 4th February,
glanced favourably at the Episcopalian dissenters of Scotland, enjoining
that the clergy of that persuasion should live peaceably in relation to
the Established Church, and that they should, while doing so, be
protected in the exercise of their religion. It was a sour morsel to the
more zealous Presbyterians, clergy and laity, who, not from any spirit
of revenge, but merely from bigoted religious feelings, would willingly
have seen all Episcopalians banished at the least. At Glasgow, where a
rumour got up that some Episcopalian places of worship would be
immediately opened under sanction of her majesty’s letter, much
excitement prevailed. Warned by a letter from the Lord Chancellor, the
magistrates of the city took measures for preserving the peace, and they
went to church on the 7th of March, under a full belief that there was
no immediate likelihood of its being broken. The Episcopalians, however,
were in some alarm about the symptoms of popular feeling, and it was
deemed [Sidenote: 1703.] necessary to plant a guard of gentlemen, armed
with swords, in front of the door of Sir John Bell’s house, where they
were to enjoy the ministrations of a clergyman named Burgess. Some rude
boys gathered about, and soon came to rough words with this volunteer
guard, who, chasing them with their swords, and, it is said, violent
oaths, along the Saltmarket, roused a general tumult amongst all who
were not at church. The alarm soon passed into the churches. The people
poured out, and flocked to the house where they knew that the
Episcopalians were gathered. The windows were quickly smashed. The
worshippers barricaded and defended themselves; but the crowd broke in
with fore-hammers, though apparently hardly knowing for what purpose.
The magistrates came with some soldiers; reasoned, entreated,
threatened; apprehended a few rioters, who were quickly rescued; and
finally thought it best to limit themselves to conducting the scared
congregation to their respective homes—a task they successfully
accomplished. ‘Afterwards,’ say the magistrates, ‘we went and did see
Sir John Bell in his house, where Mr Burgess, the minister, was; and, in
the meantime, when we were regretting the misfortune that had happened
to Sir John and his family, who had merited much from his civil carriage
when a magistrate in this place, it was answered to us by one of his
sons present, that they had got what they were seeking, and would rather
that that had fallen out than if it had been otherways.’
The Privy Council, well aware how distasteful any outrages against the
Episcopalians would be at court, took pains to represent this affair in
duly severe terms in their letters to the secretaries of state in
London. They also took strong measures to prevent any similar tumult in
future, and to obtain reparation of damages for Sir John Bell.
Generally, the condition of Episcopal ministers continued to be
uncomfortable. In February 1705, Dr Richard Waddell, who had been
Archdean of St Andrews before the Revolution, and was banished from that
place in 1691, but had lately returned under protection of her majesty’s
general indemnity, became the subject of repressive measures on the part
of the Established Church. Letters of horning were raised against him by
‘John Blair, agent for the kirk,’ and, notwithstanding strong
protestations of loyalty to the queen, he was ordained by the Privy
Council once more ‘to remove furth of the town and parochine of St
Andrews, and not return thereto.’[330]
[Sidenote: 1703. APR.]
An elderly woman named Marion Lillie, residing at Spott, in East
Lothian, was in the hands of the kirk-session, on account of the general
repute she lay under as a witch. Amidst the tedious investigations of
her case in the parish register, it is impossible to see more than that
she occasionally spoke ungently to and of her neighbours, and had
frightened a pregnant woman to a rather unpleasant extremity by handling
her rudely. The _Rigwoodie Witch_,[331] as a neighbour called her, was
now turned over to a magistrate, to be dealt with according to law; but
of her final fate we have no account.
Spott is a place of sad fame, its minister having basely murdered his
wife in 1570,[332] and the estate having belonged to a gentleman named
Douglas, whom we have seen concerned in the slaughter of Sir James Home
of Eccles, and who on that account became a forfeited outlaw.[333] The
wife of a subsequent proprietor, a gambler named Murray, was daughter to
the Lord Forrester, who was stabbed with his own sword by his mistress
at Corstorphine in 1679.[334] There is extant a characteristic letter of
this lady to Lord Alexander Hay, son of the Earl of Tweeddale, on his
bargaining, soon after this time, for the estate, with her husband,
without her consent—in which she makes allusion to the witches of Spott:
‘THES TO LORD ALEXANDER HAY.
‘SPOTT, _19 May_.
‘This way of proceeding, my lord, will seem verey abrupte and
inconsiderat to you; but I laye my count with the severest censer you
or may malicious enemies can or will saye of me. So, not to be
tedious, all I have to speak is this: I think you most absurd to
[have] bought the lands of Spott from Mr Murray without my consent,
which you shall never have now; and I hope to be poseser of Spott hous
when you are att the divel; and believe me, my childrin’s curse and
mine will be a greater moth in your estate than all your ladey and
your misirable wretchedness can make up and pray [pay].
‘This is no letter of my lord Bell Heavins, and tho you saye, in spite
of the divell, you’le buy it befor this time twell month, you may come
to repent it; but thats non of my bisnes. I shall only saye this, you
are basely impertinent to thrust me away in a hurrey from my houss at
Whitsunday, when I designed not [Sidenote: 1703.] to go till
Martinmis: and I wish the ghosts of all the witches that ever was
about Spott may haunt you, and make you the unfortountest man that
ever lived, that you may see you was in the wrong in makeing aney such
bargain without the consent of your mortal enemy,