Scotland, telling them ‘not to be offended, although I be set over you
by providence,’ nor ‘think that I shall be like the bishops that were
before me—necessity gives me a right to be your overseer—necessity that
hath neither law nor manners.’ ‘I know you will not hear of a bishop
over you, and therefore I shall be over you, as a coachman to drive you
to your duty.’ He saw their deficiencies in what had happened in his own
case. In his evil days, they never told him sufficiently of his sins. He
might almost have supposed he was on the way to heaven for anything they
said to him. It was affliction, not their ministrations, which had
loosed him from the bonds of sin. Their own preachings were cold and
worthless, and so were those of the young licentiates whom they so often
engaged to hold forth in their stead. Here he applied another
professional parable. ‘You employ me to make a tobacco-box. I spoil it
in the making. Whether is you [Sidenote: 1711.] or I obliged to pay the
loss? I think ye are not obliged to pay it. Neither am I obliged to take
these sermons off your hand.’ ‘Perhaps,’ he adds, ‘you trust in your
elders.’ But ‘I may keep strange women in my house for them; I may stay
out till twelve o’clock at night and be drunk for them: a cart-horse,
when he comes up the Bow, may teach them their duty, for it will do its
duty to the outmost of its power; and before it will disobey, it will
fall to the ground.’ In short, the Tinkler had been used by these clergy
with a lenity which he felt to be utterly inexcusable.
It is to be feared that the Tinkler was one of those censors whom no
kind of conduct in persons of authority will please, for we find him in
this brochure equally furious at the ministers for not preaching
evangelical discourses, and for being so slack in telling their flocks
of the weighty matters of the law. He threatens to tell very sad things
of them at the great day, and yet he protests that it is not from hatred
to them. If such were his feelings, he would not be at the pains to
reprove them; still less would he have ever given Dean of Guild Neilson
a speaking-trumpet for a seat in the kirk, not worth twenty shillings
sterling, seeing it is but a back-seat, where he may fall asleep, and
the minister never once call on him to sit up. ‘This,’ however, ‘is only
a word by the by.’
One great charge which the Tinkler has to make against the clergy is,
that they are afraid to preach freely to the consciences of men, for
fear of angering the great. ‘If ye be feared to anger them, God will not
be feared to anger you. “Cry aloud and spare not; tell the poor their
transgressions, and the great folk their sins.”’ Then he proposes to
relate something of the justice he had himself experienced. ‘The Laird
of Cramond hath laid down a great cairn of stones before my shop-door,
which takes away my light. They have lain near these two years (because
he is rich). If I lay down but two carts-full, I believe they would not
lie twenty-four hours. I pursued a man at court; I could both have sworn
and proved that he was owing me; yet, because he had a blue cloak and a
campaign wig, the judge would not take his oath, and would not take my
word. I had a mind to buy a blue cloak, that I might get justice; but I
was disappointed by the dreadful fire. I bought some wool from a man. He
would not give it out of his house till I gave my bill. The goods was
not weighed, and I feared they came not to so much money; yet the man
persuaded me if it was not so, he would [Sidenote: 1711.] restore me the
money back. I believed his word, because I am a simple man. So I pursued
the man, thinking to get my money. The judge told me I would get no
money, although there were a hundred pounds of it; so I went home with
less money than I came out.... Ye will say, what is the reason there is
so little justice; I shall tell you my opinion of it. I have a vote for
choosing our deacon. A man comes to me and offers me a pint to vote for
such a man. I take it because he never did me no ill, and because I am a
fool-body. I vote for the man. So fool-tradesmen make fool-deacons, and
fool-deacons make fool-magistrates, and fool-magistrates make
fool-ministers. That is the reason there is so little justice in the
city.’ The crazy whitesmith has here touched a point of failure in
democratic institutions which wiser men have overlooked.
This singular genius afterwards published a brochure, entitled _The
Great Tinklarian Doctor Mitchell his Fearful Book, to the Condemnation
of all Swearers_, at the end of which he announced another ‘concerning
convictions;’ ‘the like of it ye have not heard since Cromwell’s days.’
But probably the reader has now heard enough of the effusions of the
white-ironsmith of the Bow-head.[434]
[Sidenote: 1711. NOV. 6.]
Notwithstanding the severity of the laws against Catholic priests, and
particularly that of 1701, which a proclamation two years back put into
fresh vigour, there was at least one minister of the hated faith of Rome
sheltered in Edinburgh. It would be curious to learn under what disguise
he contrived to live in a city where all, except a handful of people,
were disposed to tear him in pieces. From its being mentioned that his
paraphernalia for worship belonged to Lady Seaforth, it may be surmised
that he lived under her protection. Thomas Mackie, being now at last
apprehended by the magistrates, and ordained to remove immediately out
of Britain, was so bold as to call for a suspension of their act in the
Court of Session, setting forth that he had lived for many years
inoffensively in Edinburgh—the vestments, altar, crucifixes, &c., found
in his house belonged to the Countess of Seaforth—he had not been taken
in the act of saying mass, and it had not been proved that he was a
priest—finally, and above all, the magistrates of Edinburgh were going
beyond their powers in banishing any one forth of the island. The
magistrates having answered these objections, the Lords ‘ordained him to
enact himself to remove betwixt and a day out of the kingdom; and in
case of refusal, to be imprisoned till a ship was ready to transport
him.’[435]
[Sidenote: 1712. JAN. 14.]
Immemorial custom gave a right to the steward-depute of the stewartry of
Kirkcudbright to get a mart cow out of every parish in his jurisdiction,
being twenty-nine in number. He was not required to observe any
particular form or ceremony in raising this mail, beyond sending an
officer to the parish to pitch upon and seize the cow, and offer the
owner five shillings Scots, called the Queen’s Money, which entitled him
to relief from his fellow-parishioners, according to the value of their
respective estates. In October 1711, William Lindsay of Mains,
steward-depute under the Marquis of Annandale, principal steward, sent
his officer, William Hislop, to take a cow from the parish of Southwick,
and the man pitched upon a beast belonging to John Costein of Glensoane.
John, however, ‘did violently oppose the officer in the execution of his
office to uplift the cow; and making a convocation of his tenants and
others, his complices, by force of arms resisted the officer, whom he
beat and bruised with many strokes, and rescued his cow.’
[Sidenote: 1712.]
For this offence, Costein and his associates were now brought before the
Court of Justiciary. They pleaded several objections to the custom, as a
defence of their conduct; but all these were overruled by the Lords, and
their offence was declared to be liable to an arbitrary punishment.[436]
[Sidenote: FEB.]
‘About the beginning of this month, Whiston’s _Primitive Christianity_
came down to Edinburgh, and was seized in the booksellers’ shops by the
magistrates.’[437]
[Sidenote: MAR.]
‘The end of this last and the beginning of this month, we have some
accounts of a sickness in Fife, from some of the crew of a ship that
came out before their quarantine was performed; but it seems the Lord
hath hitherto prevented it. It’s, indeed, a wonder we are not visited
with some heavy rod.’[438]
The art of printing had fallen sadly off in Scotland during the latter
half of the seventeenth century. James Watson[439] points out truly that
Bassandyne’s folio Bible of 1576, Arbuthnot’s first edition of
Buchanan’s _History_ in 1582, Andro Hart’s Bible of 1610, and the
_Muses’ Welcome to King James_ in 1618, were well printed books; the
last of these Bibles so much so, that ‘many after-impressions of the
Bible in folio, had, as the greatest commendation that could be made of
them, at the foot of their title-pages, that they were “conform to the
edition printed by Andro Hart.”’ Watson adds: ‘The folio Common
Prayer-book, printed before the Troubles by Robert Young, then printer
for this kingdom to the Royal Martyr, is a pregnant instance of this. I
have with great pleasure viewed and compared that book with the English
one in the same volume, printed about the same time by the king’s
printer in England; and Mr Young’s book so far exceeded the other, that
there could be no comparison made between them. You’ll see by that
printed here, the master furnished with a very large fount, four sheets
being inset together; a vast variety of curiously cut head-pieces,
finis’s, blooming letters, fac-totums, flowers, &c. You’ll see the
compositor’s part done with the greatest regularity and niceness in the
Kalendar, and throughout the rest of the book; the pressman’s part done
to a wonder in the red and black, and the whole printed in so [Sidenote:
1712.] beautiful and equal a colour, that there is not any appearance of
variation. But this good and great master was ruined by the Covenanters
for doing this piece of work, and forced to fly the kingdom.’
After the Restoration, one Archibald Hislop, a bookseller, with William
Carron as his workman, produced a neat edition of Thomas à Kempis and
some other small books. Some Dutchmen, who had been brought over to
assist Hislop’s successor, John Cairns, also printed a few respectable
volumes, including the acts of parliament, and Sir Robert Sibbald’s
_Prodromus_; but all tendency to attain or maintain the level formerly
attained, was checked by a monopoly which was granted to one Andrew
Anderson in 1671. This Anderson, who seems to have come from Glasgow,
was early in that year condemned by the Privy Council for a very faulty
edition of the New Testament; yet, for ‘payment of a composition in
exchequer and other weighty reasons,’ they immediately after granted
him, as king’s printer, an exclusive right to print all kinds of lawful
books in Edinburgh, with a right of supervision over all other
typographers within the kingdom. He died in 1679; but his widow
succeeded to the monopoly, and exercised it for some years with the
greatest rigour, persecuting all who attempted to interfere with the
business of printing. As might be expected, the productions of her own
press were miserable beyond all example; she both produced bad and
erroneous editions of the Bible, and much fewer of them than were
required to satisfy the demands of the public. A restriction was at
length put upon her privilege, so as to allow general printing to be
executed by others; but she continued through the whole term of her
patent to be the sole printer of the Scriptures in Scotland. Fac-similes
of a few pages from her Bibles—in poor blurred type, almost
unintelligible with errors, with italic letters employed wherever the
Roman fount fell short, and some lines wholly without spaces between the
words—would appal the reader. It plainly appears that no such
functionary as a corrector was at any time kept by Mrs Anderson; nor was
she herself able to supply the deficiency. The Bible being then almost
the only school-book in use, we may imagine what unrequired difficulties
were added to the task of gaining a knowledge of the elements of the
English language. What, for example, was a poor child to make of the
following passage in her duodecimo Bible of 1705: ‘Whyshoulditbethoug
tathingincredi ble w^tyou, y^t God should raise the dead?’ Mrs
Anderson’s Bibles being of such [Sidenote: 1712.] a character, there was
a great importation of English and foreign copies, but only in despite
of strenuous efforts on her part to keep them out. Strange to say, when
now her government patent expired, she contrived to obtain the
appointment of printer to the Church of Scotland. Her ability to buy up
a heavy stock of acts of the General Assembly was what secured her this
piece of otherwise most unmerited patronage.
Had the government patent expired a few years earlier, she might, for
anything that appears, have obtained a renewal of it also. But, now that
a Tory ministry was in power, this lucrative privilege was conferred on
two zealous Jacobites—Mr Robert Freebairn, publisher, and Mr James
Watson, printer. These gentlemen were better typographers than Mrs
Anderson; and the Bibles they issued were much superior. But their Tory
principles prevented them from long enjoying the privilege. Probably
acting in the spirit of their patrons, they ‘seem to have exercised a
discretionary power of declining to publish royal proclamations when
they were not consonant with their own views; otherwise it is difficult
to discover why the queen’s proclamation against unlawful intruders into
churches and manses was printed, not by either of her majesty’s
printers, but by John Reid in Bell’s Wynd.’[440] This zeal led
Freebairn, on the breaking out of the rebellion in 1715, to go to Perth
with printing apparatus and materials, to act as printer for the person
whom he called James the Eighth; and he consequently forfeited his
patent.[441] Politics now favoured Mrs Anderson. In partnership with an
Englishman named Baskett, the king’s printer for England, she once more
became the exclusive printer of the Scriptures in Scotland, and for
forty-one years more! The Bibles produced during the greater part of
that time were indeed a little better than those under the former
patent—the general progress of the country necessitated some little
improvement—but they were still far inferior to the unprivileged
productions of the Scottish press during the same epoch.
There is a reflection which must, or ought somewhat to modify [Sidenote:
1712.] our feeling regarding this monstrous absurdity; namely, that the
printing of the Scriptures was kept upon the footing of a monopoly, with
the effect of poor work and high prices, till our own age, and that so
lately as 1823 the patentees, in a legal document, set forth their
expenses in erecting a printing-office and ‘other charges of various
descriptions,’ as entitling them ‘to enjoy the relative profits and
emoluments without interference from any quarter.’
[Sidenote: MAR.]
Encouraged by the triumph of Mr Greenshields, and the popularity of the
Tory administration, the Scottish Episcopalians began in many places to
introduce the liturgy of the Church of England. The old Scottish horror
for that form of devotion was excited in a high degree; church-courts
were full of terror and grief; in some parts, the mob was ready to make
a new reformation. In the course of 1711, a good deal of pretty
effectual work was done for the appeasing of the popular anxiety.
According to a contemporary narration—‘Mr Honeyman, for using the Church
of England liturgy at Crail, was prosecuted and deposed by the
presbytery, and if the magistrates and people were not Episcopal, he had
fallen under very severe punishments. It is but few months since Mr
Dunbreck was libelled by the presbytery, prosecuted by the magistrates,
and threatened by the Lord Advocate, for using the English liturgy in
the Earl Marischal’s own house at Aberdeen, to whom he was chaplain. The
Earl of Carnwath this summer was threatened to have his house burned
over his head, if he continued the English service in it, and his
chaplain thereafter forced to leave his family.’ In November 1711, the
presbytery of Perth deposed Henry Murray, a pre-Revolution incumbent of
Perth hitherto undisturbed, because he used the English service at
baptisms and burials, and the liturgy in worship.[442]
At the date of the present article, the two parties had what Wodrow
calls ‘a little ruffle’ at Auchterarder—a bleak parish in Strathearn,
which has at various times contrived to make a prominent appearance in
ecclesiastical politics. The trouble arose in consequence of an attempt
to use the funeral-service of the English Church at a funeral. ‘The
common people,’ says Wodrow, ‘though not very Presbyterian in their
principles, yet they reckoned the service popery, and could not away
with it. When the corpse came to [Sidenote: 1712.] the churchyard, the
women and country-people began and made a great mutiny. The Lord Rollo,
a justice of the peace, interposed, but to no purpose. The Duke of
Montrose’s bailie, Graham of Orchil, was there; and writes it was not
Presbyterians, but the whole of the common people there; and they chased
off the liturgy-man, and they behoved to bury in their wonted manner.’
Just at this crisis, the Tory administration of the
Church-of-England-loving Anne interposed with an act of toleration for
the distressed Episcopalians of Scotland, enabling clergymen, who had
orders from Protestant bishops, and took the oaths of allegiance,
assurance, and abjuration, to celebrate divine service—using, if they
chose, the English liturgy—and to perform baptisms and marriages,
without molestation; only further enjoining such clergymen to pray for
the queen, the Princess Sophia, and the rest of the royal family, under
a penalty of twenty pounds. The church commission had fasts, and
prayers, and addresses against the measure—even spoke of reviving the
Solemn League and Covenant—but their resistance was in vain.
Hitherto, the western section of the country had been clear of this
abomination; but, in November, to the great distress of the serious
people of Glasgow, an attempt was made there to set up the Episcopal
form of worship. The minister officiating was one Cockburn, ‘an immoral
profane wretch, and very silly,’ according to Mr Wodrow, ‘a tool fit
enough for beginning such a work;’ who, however, had prepared well his
ground by qualifying to the government. A number of persons of social
importance joined the congregation. ‘The Earl of Marr, and [the Laird
of] Bannockburn were there lately with two coaches, and many go out of
curiosity to see it.’[443] The boys took the matter up in their usual
decisive manner; but the Toleration Act compelled protection from the
magistrates, and three town-officers stood guard at the chapel door. On
the 27th of December, an English soldier having died, his officers
wished to have him buried according to the solemn ritual of his church,
and Mr Cockburn performed the ceremony in canonicals in the cathedral
cemetery, the company all uncovered, and a rabble looking on with
suppressed rage. The clergy took a look into the statute-book, to see if
they should be obliged to endure this kind of insolence as well as the
liturgy. Wodrow had hopes that Cockburn’s congregation would tire of
[Sidenote: 1712.] supporting him, though his ‘encouragement’ did not
exceed twenty-two pounds a year, or that his free conversation and
minced oaths would make them put him away. A foolish shoemaker who
attended his chapel having lost his wife, Cockburn wished to have a
second exhibition of the funeral-service; but the magistrates would not
allow it. One day, he was baptising a soldier’s child at a house in the
Gorbals, and great was the commotion which it occasioned among the
multitude. On coming out, he was beset by a host of boys calling to him
‘Amen, Amen!’ the use of this word in the service being so odious to the
public, that it had stuck to Cockburn as a nickname. For nearly two
years were the religious feelings of the people outraged by the open and
avowed practice of the ‘modified idolatry’ in the midst of them, when at
length a relief came with the Hanover succession. As soon as it was
known that Queen Anne was no more, occidental human nature could no
longer be restrained. On the evening of the 6th of August 1714, the
little chapel was fairly pulled down, and the minister and his wife were
glad to flee for their lives. So ended Episcopalian worship in Glasgow
for a time.[444] A few verses from a popular ballad will assist in
giving us some idea of the local feelings of the hour:
‘We have not yet forgot, sir,
How Cockburn’s kirk was broke, sir,
The pulpit-gown was pulled down,
And turned into nought, sir.
· · · · ·
Long-neckèd Peggie H[ome], sir,
Did weep and stay at home, sir,
Because poor Cockburn and his wife
Were forced to flee the town, sir.
· · · · ·
The chess-window did reel, sir,
Like to a spinning-wheel, sir,
For Dagon he is fallen now;
I hope he’ll never rise, sir.’[445]
[Sidenote: MAR.]
A Dumfriesshire minister communicated to Wodrow an account he had got
from the Laird of Waterside, a factor of the Duke of Queensberry, of a
spectacle which the laird and many others had [Sidenote: 1712.] seen
about sunset one evening in this month, about a mile from Penpont.
‘There appeared to them, towards the sea, two large fleets of ships,
near a hundred upon every side, and they met together and fairly
engaged. They very clearly saw their masts, tackling, guns, and their
firing one at another. They saw several of them sunk; and after a
considerable time’s engagement they sundered, and one part of them went
to the west and another to the south.’
Wodrow goes on to relate what Mr James Boyes told him of shootings heard
one morning about the same time in Kintyre. ‘The people thought it had
been thunder, and went out to see what sort of day it was like to be.
All appears clear, and nothing like thunder. There were several
judicious people that saw, at some distance from them, several very
great companies of soldiers marching with their colours flying and their
drums beating, which they heard distinctly, and saw the men walking on
the ground in good order; and yet there were no soldiers at all in that
country, nor has been a long time. They heard likewise a very great
shooting of cannon: ... so distinct and terrible, that many of the
beasts broke the harrow and came running home.’
[Sidenote: MAY.]
Wodrow notes, at this time, a piece of bad taste on the part of Sir
James Hall of Dunglass, whose family had in recent times acquired by
purchase that ancient possession of the Home family. The old
burial-place of the Earls of Home had been turned by Sir James into a
stable, and he resisted both the clamour of the public and the private
remonstrance of the aggrieved family on the subject. ‘Because the
minister shewed some dislike at this unnatural thing, he is very uneasy
to him.’
This act of Sir James Hall necessarily shocked Episcopalians; and to
such an extent was the feeling carried, that a distinct pamphlet on the
subject was published in London. The writer of this tells us, that,
having made an excursion into Scotland in the summer of 1711, he tarried
for a while at the post-house of Cockburnspath, and thus had an
opportunity of seeing the ‘pretty little church’ near Dunglass House. He
found that Sir James had gathered off all the grave-stones from the
churchyard, to give scope for the growing of grass. He had ‘made the
nave of the church a stable for his coach-mares, and dug up the graves
of the dead, throwing away their bones, to make way for a pavement for
his horses.... He has made the choir a coach-house, and [Sidenote:
1712.] broken down the great east end wall, to make a great gate to let
his coaches in, that they may stand where the altar of God did stand.
The turret is a pigeon-house, and over this new stable he has made a
granary. There is also a building called an aile, adjoining the north
side of the church, which is still a burying-place (still belonging to
the Earl of Home), in which Sir James keeps hay for his horses, though
his own first lady, who was daughter to Sir Patrick Home of Polwarth
(now Earl of Marchmont), and his own only son, lie buried there.’
The writer states that Sir James’s father, though ‘of no family,’ but
only a lord mayor of Edinburgh, had kept this church in good repair all
his lifetime, and bestowed upon it a new pulpit. The neighbouring
gentlemen had remonstrated against the desecration, and one had offered
to build for him separate conveniences such as he wanted, provided he
would spare the church; but all in vain. He adds: ‘Sir James is still as
well esteemed by the whole party as ever he was, and in full communion
with their kirk; nor could I learn of any reproof he ever had from his
spiritual guides, the Mass Johns, upon this account; though ’tis most
apparent that, had his Presbyterian holders-forth interposed, as they
might and ought to have done, and as in other cases they are very apt to
do when religion or even morality are not near so much concerned as
here, Sir James durst not have attempted the doing this wicked thing.’
The writer goes on to remark what he calls the inconsistency of the
Presbyterians in insisting that baptism shall always be performed in a
church. ‘There are instances to be given, if need were, of their letting
infants die without their baptism, rather than sprinkle them out of a
church.’ ‘I shall mention but one other of their inconsistencies; ’tis
that of their Judaical, if not Pharisaical observation of the Lord’s
Day, which they call the Sabbath. This they set up most rigidly as their
characteristic, though they pretend to admit of nothing as a principle,
nor allow of any stated practice ecclesiastic, for which they have not a
positive command in the Holy Scriptures. They despise the decrees and
canons of the church, even in the early ages of it; nor does the
unanimous consent of the primitive fathers of the first three centuries
weigh with them; and yet I humbly think they must either take the
observation of the first day of the week as the Lord’s Day or weekly
Easter from the authority of the church; else it would puzzle them to
get clear of the observation of the seventh day or [Sidenote: 1712.]
Jewish Sabbath from the morality of the fourth commandment by any
positive gospel precept.’[446]
[Sidenote: MAY 29.]
An ingenious piece of masked Jacobitism is described in a newspaper as
taking place in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. ‘Thursday last’—so runs
the paragraph—‘being the anniversary of the birth and happy restoration
of King Charles II., of ever-blessed memory, was solemnly observed by
Charles Jackson, merchant in Edinburgh, who had the honour to have his
majesty stand godfather to him in the church of Keith at his baptism;
and his majesty, by assuming the name of Jackson, was happily preserved
from his enemies’ hands, after his escape out of the Royal Oak. In
consideration of these honours conferred upon him by his sacred majesty,
and being lineally descended from a stock of the loyalists, he invited
all such, by public advertisement, to solemnise that memorable day, at
an enclosure called Charles’s Field, lying a mile south from this city
(where he hath erected a very useful bleaching-field), and there
entertained them with diversity of liquors, fine music, &c. He had
likewise a splendid bonfire, and a spacious standard erected, with a
banner displayed upon it, whereon was very artfully drawn his sacred
majesty in the Royal Oak, the bark wherein he made his escape, and the
colonel who conducted him on board, taking leave of his majesty. The
company round the bonfire drank her majesty, Queen Anne’s [health], and
the memory of the happy Restoration, with great joy and demonstrations
of loyalty. The night concluded with mirth; and the standard being
brought back to Mr Jackson’s lodgings, carried by a loyal gentleman
bareheaded, and followed by several others with trumpets, hautboys, and
bagpipes playing before them, where they were kindly entertained.’[447]
[Sidenote: JUNE 10.]
Whatever might be the personal delinquencies and shortcomings of the
judges, they never could be charged with a disposition to let other
people off too easily. On the contrary, one is always struck by the
appearances of severity in their treatment of those who fell into their
hands. Two men of a humble order, named Rutherford and Gray, had been
induced by a low agent, [Sidenote: 1712.] named Alexander Pitblado, to
adhibit their names as witnesses to a paper bearing to be a guarantee by
Dean of Guild Warrender for the rent of a house occupied by one Isabel
Guild, being the insignificant sum of £25 Scots. It became Pitblado’s
fortune—doubtless, not undeservedly—to be carried away as a recruit to
Flanders. The guarantee was detected to be a forgery. Rutherford and
Gray were taken into custody, and carried before the magistrates, where
they readily admitted that Pitblado had induced them to give their
signatures, on the assurance that Warrender had signed the paper.
The Lord Advocate thought the case worthy of the notice of the judges;
so the two men were brought up to the court, with a statement of their
offence against the 5th act 1681. It was determined that the matter was
proper to be decided summarily, and the culprits made no objection to
this course, for, as they said, they had not means of living in jail to
wait for a more deliberate trial. It was also determined that the Lords
could decide in the case with shut doors. Rutherford, now fearing that
his fault inferred death, withdrew his former confession, but was at
length prevailed on to confess once more, telling, what we can well
believe to have been the truth, that he had been ensnared by Gray to do
what he did in pure simplicity. ‘The Lords considered that, though it
was a very small sum, yet it was a dangerous case to let witnesses
escape on pretence of simplicity, where they neither see the party sign
nor own the subscription; therefore resolved to impose some stigma and
censure to terrify others; and so ordained them to be brought on
Wednesday, being the market-day, to the great door of the Parliament
House, by the hand of the hangman, with a paper on their breasts bearing
their crime, and there to stand betwixt ten and eleven in the forenoon,
and from that to be conducted to the pillory at the Tron, and there to
stand the other hour between eleven and twelve, with papers on their
breast: and in regard Gray had seduced Rutherford to sign, they ordained
his lug to be nailed to the Tron; and being informed that Rutherford was
a notar, they deprived him, and declared them both infamous.’
Four days later, having in the interval undergone their sentence, they
petitioned for liberation from jail, which was granted. Then, however,
came in George Drummond, the Goodman of the Tolbooth, with a claim for
his dues, which they were totally unable to pay. Before the Union, the
Lords in such a case could throw the expense upon the Treasury; but now
they were [Sidenote: 1712.] without any such resource, and neither could
they force the jailer to pass from his demand. In this dilemma, they
after all acted a humane part, and made up the necessary sum out of
their own pockets.[448]
[Sidenote: JUNE 21.]
The _Edinburgh Courant_ intimated, in an advertisement, that ‘Robert
Campbell, commonly known by the name of Rob Roy Macgregor, being lately
intrusted by several noblemen and gentlemen with considerable sums for
buying cows for them in the Highlands, has treacherously gone off with
the money, to the value of £1000 sterling, which he carries along with
him.’ This is the first public reference to a person who has become the
theme of popular legend in Scotland to an extent little short of Robin
Hood in England, and finally has had the fortune to be embalmed in a
prose fiction by one of the greatest masters in modern literature.
It is generally admitted that Rob Roy was a man of good birth and
connections, though belonging to a family or clan which for upwards of a
century had been under proscription, and obliged to live a rather
skulking kind of life. He had become possessed in an honourable manner
of certain lands on the skirts of Ben Lomond, in the county of Stirling,
composed wholly of mountain-ground, and of little annual value, yet
sufficient to maintain him, the principal place being Inversnaid, on the
isthmus between the Lochs Lomond and Katrine, where hundreds of tourists
now pass every summer-day, but which was considered a very outlandish
situation in the time of Queen Anne. His family name being illegal by
act of parliament, he had adopted that of Campbell, in compliment to the
Argyle family, which patronised him. The business of purchasing Highland
cattle at the Crieff and other markets, and getting them transferred to
England, where they were to be fattened and consumed, was for some years
after the Union a favourite one amongst gentlemen of good rank, and it
attracted the sagacious and active mind of Robert Macgregor Campbell.
With some funds supplied by his neighbours, and part of which, at least,
is said to have come primarily from the Duke of Montrose, on an
understanding that the lenders were to share in the profits, he entered
on the traffic with spirit, and conducted it for a time with success;
but the defalcations of a subordinate agent or partner, named Macdonald,
cut short his [Sidenote: 1712.] career in trade, and left him in serious
pecuniary difficulties. The aspect which the affair took at the Court of
Session in Edinburgh was, that Robert Macgregor Campbell drew bills on
Graham of Gorthie and other gentlemen for cattle he was to buy for them,
realised the money, and then ‘did most fraudulently withdraw, and fled,
without performing anything on his part, and thereby became
unquestionably a notour and fraudulent bankrupt;’[449] while in reality
he was probably only the victim of a fraud, and obliged to keep out of
the way in consequence of the unreasonable severities of the law towards
men in his situation. It was a sufficiently barbarous measure to
advertise an unfortunate man as a fraudulent bankrupt seeking to screen
himself from justice; but the Duke of Montrose—in some other respects
but a poor representative of his illustrious great-grandfather—went
further: he caused his factor, Mr Graham of Killearn, to fall upon
Macgregor’s poor little holding of Craigrostan and Inversnaid, and
thrust out from it the wife and family of the late owner.
This treatment turned the milk of Macgregor’s nature to bitterness, and
it is not surprising, when the general condition of the country, and the
ordinary strain of men’s ideas in that age are considered, that he
sought in a wild and lawless way to right himself with his
oppressors—above all with the Duke of Montrose. From the rough country
round Ben Lomond, he could any night stoop upon his Grace’s Lowland
farms, and make booty of meal and cattle. Strange to say, while thus
setting the law at defiance, he obtained a certain steady amount of
countenance and protection from both of the great Campbell chiefs,
Argyle and Breadalbane. The government made an effort to impose a check
upon his career by planting a little fort at Inversnaid;[450] but Rob
Roy, nevertheless, continued in his lawless course of [Sidenote: 1712.]
life. On the side of Loch Lomond, near Inversnaid, there is a cave
formed by a flexure in the stratification of the mountain: here Rob
occasionally took refuge when hard pressed. It is curious to reflect
that this strange exemplification of predatory life was realised in a
not very remote part of our island, in the days when Addison and Pope
were regaling the refined people of London with the productions of their
genius. Rob is described as a short, robust man, with bushy hair and
beard, and legs covered so thickly with red hair as to resemble those of
a Highland bull. His cognomen ‘Roy’ expresses his ruddy complexion. It
is admitted that, amidst his wild life, he was not without humanity or
feeling for the unfortunate, and, what is perhaps more strange, that he
was a sagacious and politic sort of person, who never would go into any
quarrel or contention which was not likely to result in some practical
benefit or advantage. It was probably owing to this cool temperament,
that, though he mustered a body of clansmen for the Stuart cause in
1715, he yet stood neutral at the battle of Sheriffmuir, alike afraid to
offend King James, on the one hand, and his patron, the Duke of Argyle,
on the other.
[Sidenote: JUNE.]
A singular and not very decent lawsuit took place at this time between
the Earl of Bute and his stepmother, the Dowager Countess, widow of the
first earl, by whom this family was first raised to any considerable
distinction. When the deceased peer went to Bath in the spring of 1710,
a few months before his death, he granted a liferent of 3300 merks
(£183, 6_s._ 8_d._ sterling) to his lady. The present peer—father, by
the way, of George III.’s celebrated minister—refused to pay this
annuity, and the countess raised an action against him for it, and also
for the annual rents of her own son’s patrimony. The only objection
presented by the earl in his defence was, that the lady had profited
unduly already out of her husband’s property, having at his death
appropriated large sums of ‘lying money.’ The matter being referred to
her oath, she acknowledged having had in hand at her lord’s death forty
pounds, with a purse containing ‘sundry medals and purse-pennies given
by the earl and others to her and her son, in which number there were
some guineas; and the whole might be about £60 sterling.’ She averred
that ‘she had nothing as the product of any trade she drove, except two
or three ells of _alamode_;’[451] [Sidenote: 1712.] she had made nothing
in her husband’s lifetime by lending money; there had been presents from
the tenants in kind and in money, and her husband had given them to her.
The peer seems to have gained nothing by challenging the claims of his
stepmother beyond the forty pounds of ‘lying money.’[452]
[Sidenote: JULY 23.]
The stricter Presbyterians, commonly called Cameronians—the people
chiefly involved in the persecutions of the Stuart reigns—had been left
unsatisfied by the Revolution, and were now as antagonistic to the
presbyterian church as they had ever been to the late episcopacy. For
years they held together, without ministers, or the means of getting any
trained in their peculiar walk of doctrine; but at length one or two
schismatics cast off by the church put themselves at their head, the
chief being Mr John Macmillan, formerly minister of Balmaghie in
Galloway. Oaths to the state, neglect of the Covenant, and general
compliances with the spirit of the times, were the stumbling-blocks
which these people regarded as disqualifying the national establishment
for their allegiance.
The Cameronians chiefly abounded in the counties of Lanark, Dumfries,
and Kirkcudbright, and their Canterbury was the small burgh of Sanquhar
in Nithsdale. Whenever any remarkable political movement was going on in
the country, these peculiar people were pretty sure to come to the cross
of Sanquhar and utter a testimony on the subject. The last occasion when
this was done was at the Union, a measure which it pleased ‘the
Antipopish, Antiprelatic, Antierastian, Antisectarian, _True_
Presbyterian Church of Scotland’ (for so they styled themselves), to
regard as ‘sinful,’ because it involved a sanction to that English
prelatic system which the Solemn League and Covenant had bound the
Scottish nation to extirpate.
While still brooding over the ‘land-ruining, God-provoking,
soul-destroying, and posterity-ensnaring-and-enslaving Union,’ the act
of toleration, so manifestly designed for a relief to the prelatists,
came like a bellows to blow up the fire. Sundry meetings were held, and
at length a general one at the upland village of Crawford-John (26th of
May 1712), where it was finally decided on that the faithful and true
church should renew the Solemn League and Covenant.
It was at a place called Auchensaugh, on the top of a broad [Sidenote:
1712.] mountain behind the village of Douglas, that the meeting was held
for this purpose. The transaction occupied several days. On the first,
there was a prayer for a proper frame of spirit, followed by a sermon,
as this was again by an engagement to duties, amongst which the
uprooting of all opinions different from their own was the most
conspicuous. The people were dismissed with an exhortation from Mr
Macmillan upon their ‘unconcerned carriage and behaviour.’ On the second
day, it was reckoned that about seventeen hundred were present,
including, however, many onlookers brought by curiosity. There was now
read an acknowledgment of sins, and the people were invited to clear
their consciences by declaring any of which they had been guilty. One
confessed having made a rash oath; another that he had attended the
Established Church; several that they had been married by the Erastian
clergy. One, hearing of the sinfulness of tests and oaths, rather
unluckily confessed his having sworn the Covenant at Lesmahago. A number
had to deplore their having owned William and Mary as their lawful
sovereigns. Mr Macmillan seems to have been a little perplexed by the
innocent nature of their sins. After all this was at an end, the Solemn
League was read and sworn to, article by article, with uplifted hands. A
day of interval being allowed, there was a third of devotion. On the
fourth, a Sunday, there was an administration of the communion, which
must have been a striking sight, as eight tables were set out upon the
moor, each capable of accommodating sixty persons. ‘It was a very
extraordinary rain the whole time of the action.’
Even Wodrow, who has taken such pains to commemorate the sufferings of
these people under prelacy, seems to have been unable to look with
patience on their making such demonstrations against the church now
established.[453] Such earnestness in intolerance, such self-confidence
in opinion, cannot be read of in our age without strange feelings. After
all, the Covenanters of Auchensaugh were good enough to invite the rest
of the community to join them, ‘being anxious to get the divisions which
have long wrecked this church removed and remedied;’ nay, they were
‘willing, for peace and unity, to acknowledge and forsake whatever we
can rationally be convinced to be bad in our conduct and
management,’[454] though it would have probably been a serious
[Sidenote: 1712.] task for a General Assembly of angels to produce such
a conviction.
About this time, and for long after, there flourished an enthusiast
named John Halden, who considered himself, and a friend of his named
James Leslie, as above all and peculiarly the proper representatives of
the martyrs Cameron, Cargill, Hackston, Hall, Skeen, Balfour, &c.,
according to the tenor of the Rutherglen, Sanquhar, and Lanark
Declarations. John, like his predecessors, declared not merely spiritual
but temporal war against all the existing powers, seeing they had
declined from the Covenant, exercised an Erastian power in the church,
and were tyrants over the state. Nay, he declared war against ‘the
enemies of Christ’ all over the world, denouncing the curse of Meroz
against all who would not join him. Halden and Leslie, since there was
no government they could submit to, professed their desire and endeavour
to ‘set up a godly magistracy, and form a civil state’ themselves; and
it is to be feared that the community remained grievously insensible to
the offered blessing. The Lord Advocate did not even do them the honour
to consider them dangerous. The only active step we hear of John Halden
taking was to burn the Abjuration Oath at the Cross of Edinburgh, on the
point of a dagger (October 28, 1712), proclaiming with a loud voice, as
he went off up the High Street: ‘Let King Jesus reign, and let his
enemies be scattered!’
[Sidenote: JULY.]
Dr Pitcairn, the prince of wits and physicians in his day, being an
Episcopalian and a Jacobite, moreover a man of gay and convivial habits,
did not stand in good repute among the severer of the Presbyterian
clergy. Regarding many things connected with religion from a peculiar
point of view, which was not theirs, he sometimes appeared to them, by
the freedom of speech he assumed on such points, and by the cast of
comicality which he gave them, to be little better than an unbeliever.
Wodrow in his Renfrewshire parish heard of him and his associates with
serious concern. It was reported, he tells us, that ‘Dr Pitcairn and
others do meet very regularly every Lord’s Day, and read the Scriptures,
in order to lampoon and ridicule it. It’s such wickedness that, though
we had no outward evidences, might make us apprehensive of some heavy
rod.’[455]
The Rev. James Webster, one of the Edinburgh clergy of that [Sidenote:
1712.] day, was distinguished by the highest graces as an evangelical
preacher. He had been a sufferer under the ante-Revolution government,
and hated a Jacobite with a perfect hatred. To the Jacobites, on the
other hand, his high Calvinism and general severity of style were a
subject of continual sarcasm and epigram; and it is not unlikely that
Pitcairn had launched at him a few jokes which he did not feel over
meekly. In a poem of Pitcairn’s, _Ad Adenas_, there is, indeed, a
passage in which Mr Webster, as minister of the Tolbooth kirk, a part of
St Giles’s, is certainly glanced at:
‘Protinus Ægidii triplicem te confer in ædem,
_Tres ubi Cyclopes fanda nefanda boant_.’
Perhaps this very remark gave rise to all that followed.
One day, in a company where the magistrates of Edinburgh were present,
Mr Webster fell into conversation with Mr Robert Freebairn, the
bookseller. The minister complained that, in his auctions, Freebairn
sold wicked and prohibited books; in particular, he had lately sold a
copy of Philostratus’s _Life of Apollonius Tyanæus_, which deists and
atheists were eager to purchase, because it set forth the doings of that
impostor as on a level with the miracles of Jesus. It being insinuated
that these auctions ministered to an infamous taste, Mr Freebairn asked
Mr Webster to ‘condescend upon persons;’ whereupon the latter
unguardedly said: ‘Such persons, for example, as Dr Pitcairn, who is
known to be a professed deist. As a proof of what I say, at that very
sale where you found so many eager to purchase the _Life of Apollonius_,
when some one remarked that a copy of the Bible hung heavy in comparison
on your hands, Pitcairn remarked: “No wonder, for, you know, _Verbum Dei
manet in æternum_,” which was a direct scoffing at the sacred volume.’
Pitcairn, having this conversation reported to him by Freebairn, took it
with lamentable thin-skinnedness, and immediately raised an action
against Webster before the sheriffs for defamation. Webster advocated
the case to the Lords, on the ground that the sheriffs were not the
proper judges in such a matter; and, after a good deal of debating, the
Lords, considering that the pursuer shewed too much keenness, while the
defender appeared willing to give reasonable satisfaction, recommended
the Lord-justice Clerk ‘to endeavour to settle the parties amicably;’
and so the affair seems to have ended.[456]
[Sidenote: 1712. SEP.]
In the early part of this month, the Rev. Mr Wodrow made an excursion
into Galloway, and noted on the way several characteristic
circumstances. ‘I find,’ he says, ‘they have no great quantity of straw,
and necessity has learned them to make thrift of fern or breckans, which
grow there very throng [close]. They thatch their houses with them ...
stript of the leaves ... and say it lasts six or eight years in their
great storms.’ He adverts to the moat-hills near some of the parish
churches, and great cairns of stones scattered over the moors. Of a loch
near Partan, he says: ‘There seem to be tracks of roads into it upon all
hands;’ a description reminding us of the glacial grooves and scratches
seen on rocks dipping into several of the Scottish lakes. ‘I notice,’ he
says, ‘all through the stewartry [of Kirkcudbright] the houses very
little and low, and but a foot or two of them of stone, and the rest
earth and thatch. I observe all the country moorish. I noticed the
stones through many places of far more regular shapes than in this
country [Renfrewshire]. On the water of Ken they are generally spherical
[boulders]. Through much of the moorish road to Crogo, they are square
and long. The strata that with us lie generally horizontally, there in
many places lie vertical.’
The worthy martyrologist received from a Galloway minister, on this
tour, an account of the witches who were rife in the parish of
Balmaclellan immediately after the Revolution. ‘One of them he got
discovered and very clear probation of persons that saw her in the shape
of a hare; and when taken she started up in her own shape. When before
the judge, he observed her inclinable to confess, when of a sudden, her
eyes being fixed upon a particular part of the room, she sank down in
the place. He lifted her up and challenged her, whether her master had
not appeared in that place. She owned it was so, confessed, and was
execute. All this process is in the records of the presbytery, of which
I am promised ane abstract.’[457]
Wodrow seems to have had a taste for geology, though the word did not
then exist. He thus wrote to Edward Lluyd, August 26, 1709: ‘My house
[is] within a quarter of a mile of the Aldhouse Burn, where you and I
were _lithoscoping_. My pastoral charge does not allow me that time I
once had, to follow out these subterranean studies, but my inclination
is just the same as when I saw you, or rather greater, and I take it to
be one of [Sidenote: 1712.] the best diversions from more serious work,
and in itself a great duty, to view and admire my Maker in his works, as
well as his word. I have got together some stone of our fossils
hereabout, from our marl, our limestone, &c.’[458]
[Sidenote: SEP. 24.]
The _Edinburgh Courant_ newspaper contains several notices of a flood
which happened this day in the west of Scotland, generally admitted to
be the greatest in memory. Wodrow, who calls it ‘the greatest for ane
age,’ says it prevented all travelling for the time between Glasgow and
Edinburgh. The lower parts of the western city were, as usual on such
occasions, deep in water, to the ruin of much merchandise, and the
imprisonment of (it is said) twelve hundred families in the upper parts
of the houses. A boat sailed about in the Briggate. The house of Sir
Donald Macdonald—a gentleman regarded with great jealousy in Glasgow on
account of his unpopular religion—is described in one account as
immersed to the depth of three fathoms; which is probably an
exaggeration. But we may believe Wodrow when he tells us that ‘the water
came up to the well in the Saltmarket.’
Great anxiety was felt at Glasgow for the safety of the fine old bridge,
which had its arches ‘filled to the bree.’ Vast quantities of country
produce and of domestic articles of all descriptions were brought down
on the surface of the Clyde and other rivers of the province involved by
the flood. Several lives were lost. At Irvine and other parts of
Ayrshire, as well as in Renfrewshire, bridges were carried away, and
great general damage inflicted. ‘A man and a woman were lost upon the
water of Kelvin, and if the Laird of Bardowie had not sent his boat from
his loch, to the said water of Kelvin, there had been a great many more
people lost therein.’
If we are to believe the observant minister of Eastwood, the whole air
at this season seemed ‘infected.’ He notes the frequency of madness in
dogs, and that, owing to various epidemics, as ‘the galloping fever,’
sore throat, and measles, scarce a third of the people of Glasgow were
able to appear in church.
‘I am told,’ he adds, ‘the Blantyre Doctor did presage this evil harvest
and the floods; and they talk, but whether true or false I know not,
that there is to be another and greater flood, wherein the Clyde shall
be three steps up the Tolbooth stair in Glasgow.’
[Sidenote: 1712. DEC.]
Mr Robert Monteath was at this time preparing his celebrated _Theater of
Mortality_, a collection of the sepulchral inscriptions existing
throughout Scotland. It had already cost him ‘eight years sore travel,
and vast charges and expenses.’ He now advertised for assistance in his
task, ‘desiring all persons who have any valuable epitaphs, Latin, prose
or verse, English verse only, or any historical, chronological, or moral
inscriptions,’ to send just and authentic copies of them to him ‘at his
house in the College Wynd, Edinburgh.’ He took that opportunity of
stating his hope that ‘all generous persons will cheerfully subscribe
his proposals in a matter so pious, _pleasant_, profitable, and
national.’[459]
[Sidenote: 1713. MAY 1.]
Died, Sir James Steuart, Lord Advocate for Scotland, aged about
seventy-eight, greatly lamented by the Presbyterians, to whom he had
ever been a steadfast friend. The General Assembly, in session at the
time, came in a body to his funeral, which was the most numerously
attended ever known in Edinburgh, the company reaching from the head of
the close in which his lordship lived, in the Luckenbooths, to the
Greyfriars’ Churchyard. For several years, bodily infirmity confined him
to a chair; but his mind continued clear to the last. Sir James had
shewn some unsteadiness to his principles in the reign of James II., but
nevertheless was forced to fly his country, and he only returned along
with King William, whose manifesto for Scotland he is understood to have
written.
Great general learning, legal skill, and worldly policy, marked Sir
James Steuart; but the most remarkable characteristic of the man,
considering his position, was his deep piety. Wodrow, who speaks of him
from personal knowledge, says: ‘His death was truly Christian, and a
great instance of the reality of religion.... He had a great value for
religion and persons of piety. He was mighty in the Scriptures;
perfectly master of [them]; wonderful in prayer. That winter, 1706–7,
when he was so long ill, he was in strange raptures in his prayers
sometimes in his family. He used to speak much of his sense of the
advantage of the prayers of the church, and in a very dangerous sickness
he had about thirteen years ago, he alleged he found a sensible turn of
his body in the time of Mr George Meldrum’s prayer for him. He never
fell into any trouble but he gave up his name to be [Sidenote: 1713.]
prayed for in all the churches of the city of Edinburgh. His temper was
most sweet and easy, and very pleasant. He was a kind and fast friend,
very compassionate and charitable.’[460]
[Sidenote: MAY 11.]
The Lord Drummond, eldest son of the exiled Earl of Perth, and his wife,
Jean Gordon, daughter of the Duke of Gordon, had a son and heir born to
them, the same who afterwards took a conspicuous part in the rebellion
of 1745, which he did not long outlive. Politics, long adverse to the
house of Drummond, smiled on the birth of this infant heir, for never
since the Revolution did the Whig interest seem more depressed. Lord
Drummond was encouraged by these circumstances to take a step which
would have been dangerous a few years before. It is related as follows
by Wodrow: ‘The baptism of my Lord Drummond’s son [was performed in
October] at his own house by a popish bishop with great solemnity. The
whole gentlemen and several noblemen about, were gathered together; and
when the mass was said, there were very few of them went out. Several
justices of peace and others were there. This is a fearful reproach upon
the lenity of our government, to suffer such open insults from
papists.’[461]
Two months later, Wodrow notes: ‘The papists are turning very open at
Edinburgh, and all over Scotland there is a terrible openness in the
popish party.’ It is alleged in a popular contemporary publication, that
there were fully forty Catholic priests living with little effort at
concealment in Scotland; some of them very successful in winning over
ignorant people to their ‘damnable errors;’ while ‘one Mr Bruce, a
popish bishop, had his ordinary residence in Perthshire, where he had
his gardens, cooks, and other domestic servants, and thither the priests
and emissaries of inferior rank resorted for their directions and
orders.... Their peats and other fuel were regularly furnished them ...
[they had] also their mass-houses, to which their blind votaries
resorted almost as publicly as the Protestants did to their parish
churches.’[462]
[Sidenote: OCT. 20.]
Died Dr Archibald Pitcairn, a man in most respects so strongly
contrasted with his recently deceased countryman, Sir James Steuart, as
to impress very strongly the absurdity of trying to ascribe any
particular line of character to a nation or any other [Sidenote: 1713.]
large group of people. To nearly every idea associated with the word
Scotsman, Pitcairn, like Burns and many other notable Caledonians,
stands in direct antagonism: he was gay, impulsive, unworldly, full of
wit and geniality, a dissenter from Calvinism, and a lover of the exiled
house of Stuart. Conviviality shortened his life down to the same
measure which a worn-out brain gave to Sir Walter Scott—sixty-one years.
But he parted with the world in great serenity and good-humour, studying
to make his last year useful for the future by writing out some of his
best professional observations, and penning cheerful verses to his
friends on his death-bed. In these, to the refutation of vulgar
calumnies, he failed not to express his trust in a future and brighter
existence:
‘Animas morte carere cano:
Has ego, corporibus profugas, ad Sidera mitto,
Sideraque ingressis otia blanda dico.’
Adding, in the Horatian spirit which marked him all through life:
‘Sed fuerint nulli, forsan, quos spondeo, coeli,
Nullaque sint Ditis numina, nulla Jovis;
· · · · ·
Attamen esse hilares, et inanes mittere curas
Proderit, ac vitæ commoditate frui,
Et festos agitâsse dies, ævique fugacis
Tempora perpetuis detinuisse jocis.’[463]
A few months before his death, Pitcairn had completed a volume of his
medical essays, to which he prefixed a page strongly significant of his
political predilections: it contained the following words in large
characters: ‘TO GOD AND HIS PRINCE _this Work is humbly Dedicated by_
ARCHIBALD PITCAIRN,’ with the date, ‘June [Sidenote: 1713.] 10, 1713,’
being the well-known birthday of the said prince—namely, the Chevalier
St George. Where practical matters are concerned, one sees in this
volume the acuteness and good sense which gave the author his
professional eminence. In theoretical matters, we find the absurdities
which may be said to have been inseparable from medical science before
either physiology or organic chemistry was understood. The phenomena of
digestion are described by Pitcairn as wholly physical and mechanical.
It is also rather startling to find him patronising poultices of ovine
and bovine excreta, and powders made of the human skull.
The volume was published posthumously, and in the friendly biography
prefixed to it, we find a charming professional portrait—‘always ready
to serve every one to the utmost of his power, and even at the risk of
his own life—never sacrificing the health of his patients for any humour
or caprice’—‘not concerned about fees’—‘went with greater cheerfulness
to those from whom he could expect nothing but good-will, than to
persons of the highest condition’—often, where needful, left marks of
his charity, as well as his art, with the sick. ‘This virtue of charity
was indeed quite his own in its manner, for he usually conducted it in
such a way that those benefiting by it remained ignorant of his being
their benefactor.’ It is also stated of him that he was of ‘a pleasant
engaging humour; that life sat easy upon him in all circumstances; that
he _despised many, but hated none_.’
In a country journey, Pitcairn discovered the learning and genius of
Thomas Ruddiman, and he succeeded in bringing this remarkable man into a
position which enabled him to exercise his talents. Ruddiman afterwards
repaid the favour by gathering the many clever Latin poems of his
patron, which he gave to the world in 1727. They are chiefly
complimentary to the famous men on the cavalier side, or directly
expressive of his political feelings; but some are general, and include
such happy turns of thought as make us regret their not being in
English. One of the most noted of his pieces was a brief elegy on the
death of Dundee, which was translated into English by Dryden; and it
must be acknowledged as _something_ for a Scottish writer of Latin
verses in that age, to have had men like Dryden and Prior for
translators.
One cannot but reflect with pleasure on such connections amongst men of
genius as that between Pitcairn and Ruddiman; and the association of
ideas leads us to another anecdote connected with Pitcairn and to a
similar purport. When the learned [Sidenote: 1713.] physician acted as
professor at Leyden, he had amongst his pupils two men of great eventual
eminence, Herman Boerhaave and Richard Mead, both of whom entertained a
high sense of the value of his instructions. A son of Pitcairn having
forfeited his life by appearing in the rebellion of 1715, Mead, then in
great favour in high places, went to Sir Robert Walpole to plead for the
young man’s pardon. ‘If I have been able,’ he said, ‘to save your or any
other man’s life, I owe the power to this young man’s father.’ The claim
was too strong, and put in too antithetic terms, to be resisted.
My old friend Alexander Campbell, editor of _Albyn’s Anthology_, was
intimately acquainted with a maiden daughter of Pitcairn, who lived till
the closing decade of the eighteenth century. He spoke of having once
asked her to accompany him to the theatre, to see Mrs Siddons, when the
old lady said gaily: ‘Aih, na, laddie; I have not been at ony playhouse
since I gaed to ane in the Canongate wi’ papa, in the year ten.’
[Sidenote: NOV.]
‘This month there was an incident at Glasgow which made a very great
noise in the country. Mr Gray [one of the clergy] was visiting [his
flock], and in some house meets with one Andrew Watson, a journeyman
shoemaker, lately come into the town from Greenock.’ On inquiry, he
learned that this man did not attend his ministrations, and, asking the
reason, he was told it was because he, the minister, had taken the oath
of abjuration. He seemed a stiff, pragmatical fellow, and in the course
of an altercation which ensued, he called Mr Gray perjured. A lay elder,
accompanying Mr Gray, resented this expression of the shoemaker, and
reported it to Bailie Bowman, who, sending for Watson, demanded if he
called Mr Gray perjured. ‘Yes, and I will so call every one who takes
the oath of abjuration.’ ‘Do you own Mr Gray as your minister?’ ‘I will
own no one who took that oath.’ ‘Do you own the magistrates?’ ‘No, if
they have taken that oath.’ Here was a rebel for the worthy magistrates
and ministers of Glasgow to be cherishing in their community. It was not
to be borne. Bailie Bowman clapped the man up in jail, till it should be
determined what was to be his ultimate fate. After a day or two, the
magistrates sent for him, and questioned him as he had been questioned
before, when he not only gave the same answers, but subscribed a paper
disowning both ministers and magistrates, on the ground of their having
taken the aforesaid oath. ‘They kept him in prison ten or twelve
[Sidenote: 1713.] days, but could make nothing of him. They offered to
let him out if he would confess he had given offence to the magistrates;
but that he would not do.’ There were some who cried out against this
procedure as ‘persecution,’ and they took care that the man did not want
for maintenance. The last we hear of the matter is, that the magistrates
‘resolve to banish him the town.’ Wodrow, who relates this
occurrence,[464] soon after makes the observation, that ‘the
Presbyterians are ill termed bigot and narrow-spirited:’ that character
‘does best agree to papists and prelatists.’
[Sidenote: DEC.]
It was remarked that an unwholesome air prevailed at this time, causing
many hasty deaths, and favouring small-pox, of which eighty children
died within a little time in Eglesham parish. ‘I hear it observed,’ says
Wodrow, ‘that in the summer-time never was known such a quantity of
flees [flies.]’
[Sidenote: 1714. JAN. 10.]
Campbell of Lochnell having died about this day, his son, a Jacobite,
kept the corpse unburied till the 28th, in order that the burial might
be turned to account, or made use of, for political purposes. It was
customary for the obsequies of a Highland chief or gentleman to be
attended by a vast multitude of people, who usually received some
entertainment on the occasion. It seems to have been understood that
those who came to Lochnell’s funeral were making a masked demonstration
in favour of the exiled Stuart. Those of the opposite inclination deemed
it necessary to attend also, in order to be a check upon the Jacobites.
Hence it came to pass, that the inhumation of Lochnell was attended by
two thousand five hundred men, well armed and appointed, five hundred
being of Lochnell’s own lands, commanded by the famous Rob Roy, carrying
with them a pair of colours belonging to the Earl of Breadalbane, and
accompanied by the screams of thirteen bagpipes. Such a subject for a
picture![465]
[Sidenote: FEB.]
Keeping in view the article under September 1690, regarding the marriage
of Walter Scott of Kelso with Mary Campbell of Silvercraigs, we may read
with additional interest a letter by that person, written from Glasgow
to his wife in February 1714, [Sidenote: 1714.] giving an account of the
peculiar arrangements regarding her father’s funeral:
‘GLASGOW, _Feb. 2, 1714_.
‘MY DEAR—I left Edin^r upon fryday the 29th of the last. Dean of
[Guild] Allane nor your sister either durst venture to travell to
Glasgow with [me], on account of the season, but said that Mr Bell,
Lisis younge husband, was there, whom Dean of Guild Allane had trusted
with any business that could bee done for him. I called at Lithkow and
saw Lissie, who was very kinde, was at Kilsyth all that night, came to
Glasgow the next day, beeing Saturday, at twelve of the clock, and at
two of the clock that day went down to the chesting of your father. He
was buried yesterday att four a clock afternoon, beeing Monday the
first instant, very devoutlie and honourablie, for Blythswood had
ordered all things proper and suitable to a nicety. All the gentlemen
in the place, the magistrates, and the citiezens of best esteem and
substance, accompanied the funerall in very good order. I carried his
head, Blythswood on my right, and Alex. Bell, Lissies husband, on my
left hand; other nerest relations and Sr James Campbell of Auchinbrook
carried all the way. After the funerall, there was prepared in the
large room of the Coffee-house a very handsome and genteele treat, to
w^h the Magistrates and Gentlemen and friends were invited. The treat
consisted of confections, sweet breads, and bisket of divers sorts,
very fine and well done, and wines. There were at it upwards of
thirtie. Wee are this day to look to his papers in presence of Bailie
Bowman and town-clark, wherof you shall have account of after this. I
have sent a letter to Sir Robert Pollock just now, whose answer I will
wait. I am like to stay five days after this here, and the time I may
stay in Edi^r depends on my success from Sir Ro^t Pollock. In the mean
time let Robie[466] be making himself ready, for his master told Dean
of Guild that he thought he would bee readie to saill about the middle
of this instant. When I come to Ed^r I shall know whither it will be
needfull to send for him before I come home myselfe or not. I
recommend you all to the protection of God, and am,
‘My dear, your
‘W. SCOTT.