When the second year’s session of the commissioners was about to

commence in September 1717, Sir Harry Houghton appears to have proposed

that Steele should go at the first, in which case the baronet proposed

to relieve him in November; in case he did not go now, he would have to

go in November, and stay till the end of January. He dallied on in

London, only scheming about his journey, which, it must be admitted, was

not an easy one in 1717. He informs his wife: ‘I alter the manner of

taking my journey every time I think of it. My present disposition is to

borrow what they call a post-chaise of the Duke of Roxburgh [Secretary

of State for Scotland]. It is drawn by one horse, runs on two wheels,

and is led by a servant riding by. This rider and leader is to be Mr

Willmot, formerly a carrier, who answers for managing on a road to

perfection, by keeping tracks, and the like.’ Next it was: ‘I may

possibly join with two or three gentlemen, and hire a coach for

ourselves.’ On the 30th of September, he tells Lady Steele: ‘The

commission in Scotland stands still for want of me at Edinburgh. It is

necessary there should be four there, and there are now but two; three

others halt on the road, and will not go forward till I have passed by

York. I have therefore taken places in the York coach for Monday next.’

On the 20th of October: ‘After many resolutions and irresolutions

concerning my way of going, I go, God willing, to-morrow morning,

[Sidenote: 1717.] by the Wakefield coach, on my way to York and

Edinburgh.’ And now he did go, for his next letter is dated on the 23d

from Stamford, to which place two days’ coaching had brought him.

An odd but very characteristic circumstance connected with Steele’s

first journey to Scotland was, that he took a French master with him, in

order that the long idle days and evenings of travelling might be turned

to some account in his acquisition of that language, which he believed

would be useful to him on his return. ‘He lies in the same room with me;

and the loquacity which is usual at his age, and inseparable from his

nation, at once contributes to my purpose, and makes him very

agreeable.’

Steele was in Edinburgh on the 5th of November, and we know that about

the 9th he set out on his return to London, because on the 11th he

writes to his wife from Ayton on the third day of his journey, one (a

Sunday) having been spent in inaction on the road. ‘I hope,’ says he,

‘God willing, to be at London, Saturday come se’ennight:’ that is to

say, the journey was to take a fortnight. In accordance with this view

of the matter, we find him writing on Friday the 15th from Pearce

Bridge, in the county of Durham, ‘with my limbs much better than usual

after my seven days’ journey from Edinburgh towards London.’ He tells on

this occasion: ‘You cannot imagine the civilities and honours I had done

me there, and [I] never lay better, ate or drank better, or conversed

with men of better sense, than there.’[507]

Brief as his visit had been, he was evidently pleased with the men he

met with in the Scottish capital. All besides officials must have felt

that he came about a business of malign aspect towards their country;

but his name was an illustrious one in British literature, he was

personally good-natured, and they could separate the great essayist from

the Whig partisan and servant of the ministry. Allan Ramsay would be

delighted to see him in his shop ‘opposite to Niddry’s Wynd head.’

Thomson, then a youth at college, would steal a respectful look at him

as he stood amongst his friends at the Cross. From ‘Alexander Pennecuik,

gentleman,’ a bard little known to fame, he received a set of

complimentary verses,[508] ending thus:

‘Scotia....

Grief more than age hath furrowèd her brow,

She sobs her sorrows, yet she smiles on you;

Tears from her crystal _lambics_ do distil,

With throbbing breast she dreads th’ approaching ill,

Yet still she loves you, though you come to kill,

In midst of fears and wounds, which she doth feel,

Kisses the hurting hand, smiles on the wounding STEELE.’

[Sidenote: 1718.]

Sir Richard spent part of the summer of 1718 in Edinburgh, in attendance

upon the business of the commission. We find him taking a furnished

house for the half-year beginning on the 15th of May (the Whitsunday

term in Scotland), from Mr James Anderson, the editor of the _Diplomata

Scotiæ_. But on the 29th July he had not come to take possession:

neither could he say when he would arrive, till his ‘great affair’ was

finished. He promised immediately thereupon to take his horses for

Scotland, ‘though I do not bring my coach, by reason of my wife’s

inability to go with me.’ ‘I shall,’ he adds, ‘want the four-horse

stable for my saddle-horses.’

He appears to have taken the same house for the same period in 1719, and

to have revisited Scotland in the same manner in 1720, when he occupied

the house of Mr William Scott, professor of Greek in the Edinburgh

University.[509] There is a letter to him from Mr James Anderson in

February 1721, thanking him for the interest he had taken in forwarding

a scheme of the writer, to induce the government to purchase his

collection of historical books. Steele was again residing in Edinburgh

in October 1721, when we find him in friendly intercourse with Mr

Anderson. ‘Just before I received yours,’ he says on one occasion, ‘I

sent a written message to Mr Montgomery, advising that I designed the

coach [Steele’s own carriage?] should go to your house, to take in your

galaxy, and afterwards call for his star:’ pleasant allusions these

probably to some party of pleasure in which the female members of Mr

Anderson’s and Mr Montgomery’s families were to be concerned. In the

ensuing month, he writes to Mr Anderson from the York Buildings Office

in London, regarding an application he had had from a poor woman named

Margaret Gow. He could not help her with her petition; but he sent a

small bill representing money of his own for her relief. ‘This trifle,’

he says, ‘in her housewifely hands, will make cheerful her numerous

family at Collingtown.’[510]

These are meagre particulars regarding Steele’s visits to [Sidenote:

1718.] Scotland, but at least serviceable in illustrating his noted

kind-heartedness.

‘Kind Richy Spec, the friend of a’ distressed,’

as he is called by Allan Ramsay, who doubtless made his personal

acquaintance at this time.

There is a traditionary anecdote of Steele’s visits to Scotland, which

has enough of truth-likeness to be entitled to preservation. It is

stated that, in one of his journeys northward, soon after he had crossed

the Border, near Annan, he observed a shepherd resting on a hillside and

reading a book. He and his companions rode up, and one of them asked the

man what he was reading. It proved to be the Bible. ‘And what do you

learn from this book?’ asked Sir Richard. ‘I learn from it the way to

heaven.’ ‘Very well,’ replied the knight, ‘we are desirous of going to

the same place, and wish you would shew us the way.’ Then the shepherd,

turning about, pointed to a tall and conspicuous object on an eminence

at some miles’ distance, and said: ‘Weel, gentlemen, ye maun just gang

by that tower.’ The party, surprised and amused, demanded to know how

the tower was called. The shepherd answered: ‘It is the _Tower of

Repentance_.’

It was so in verity. Some centuries ago, a Border cavalier, in a fit of

remorse, had built a tower, to which he gave the name of _Repentance_.

It lies near Hoddam House, in the parish of Cummertrees, rendered by its

eminent situation a conspicuous object to all the country round.

We are informed by Richard Shiels that Steele, while in Scotland, had

interviews with a considerable number of the Presbyterian clergy, with

the view of inducing them to agree to a union of the Presbyterian and

Episcopal churches—a ‘devout imagination,’ which one would have thought

a very few such interviews would have been required to dispel. He was

particularly struck with the singular and original character of James

Hart, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, who is universally admitted to

have been an excellent man, as he was a most attractive preacher. That

strange enthusiast, Mrs Elizabeth West, speaks of a discourse she once

heard from him on a passage in Canticles: ‘The king hath brought me into

his chambers; we will be glad,’ where he held forth, she says, ‘on the

sweet fellowship Christ and believers have together.’ ‘Oh,’ she adds,

‘but this was a soul-refreshing sermon to me!’ What had most impressed

the English moralist was the contrast between the good-humour and

[Sidenote: 1718.] benevolence of Hart in his private character, and the

severe style in which he launched forth in the pulpit on the subject of

human nature, and on the frightful punishments awaiting the great mass

of mankind in another state of existence. Steele called him on this

account ‘the Hangman of the Gospel.’[511]

The only other recollection of Steele in Edinburgh which has ever come

under the notice of the author, represents him, characteristically, as

assembling all the eccentric-looking mendicants of the Scottish capital

in a tavern in Lady Stair’s Close, and there pleasing the whimsical

taste of himself and one or two friends by witnessing their happiness in

the enjoyment of an abundant feast, and observing all their various

humours and oddities. Shiels also relates this circumstance, and adds

that Steele afterwards confessed he had drunk in enough of native

drollery to compose a comedy.

[Sidenote: 1717. NOV.]

Lord Grange tells us, in his _Diary_, of a woman in humble life,

residing in the Potterrow in Edinburgh, who had religious experiences

reminding us of those of St Theresa and Antonia Bourignon, but consonant

with orthodox Presbyterianism. Being taken, along with Mr Logan, the

minister of Culross, to see her at ‘Lady Aytoun’s, at the back of the

College,’ he found her a woman between thirty and forty. At the

communion in Leith, a month ago, she had striven to dwell upon the

thought of Christ, and came to have ‘clear uptakings of his sufferings.’

She saw him on the cross, and his deserted sepulchre, ‘as plainly as if

she had been actually present when these things happened, though there

was not any visible representation thereof made to her bodily eyes. She

also got liberty to speak to him, and ask several questions at him, to

which she got answers, as if one had spoken to her audibly, though there

was no audible voice.’ Lord Grange admits that all this was apt to look

like enthusiasm or delusion; but ‘far be it from me to say it is

delusion.’ Being once at a communion in Kirkcaldy, ‘it was born in upon

her—“Arise and eat, for thou hast a journey to make, a Jordan to pass

through.”’ In passing across the Firth of Forth that afternoon, she was

upset into the water, but sustained till a boat came to her rescue.

The pious judge seems to have desired much to keep up acquaintance with

Jean Brown—for such was her name—and he went several times to see her at

her little shop; but the place [Sidenote: 1717.] was so much crowded

with ‘children and people coming in to buy such things as she sells,’

that his wish was frustrated. ‘Afterwards,’ he tells us, ‘I employed her

husband [a shoemaker] to make some little things for me, mostly to give

them business, and that I might thereby get opportunity now and then to

talk with such as, I hope, are acquainted with the ways of God.’

[Sidenote: 1718.]

Immediately after the Union, the shrewd-witted people of Glasgow saw the

opportunity which was afforded them of making a profitable trade with

the American colonies. They had as yet no vessels of their own, and

little means of purchasing cargoes; but diligence, frugality, and

patience made up for all deficiencies. There is scarcely anything in our

national history more truly interesting than the early efforts of

Glasgow in commerce. Her first ventures to Maryland and Virginia were in

vessels chartered from Whitehaven. In each vessel, filled with goods,

there went a supercargo, whose simple instructions were to sell as many

as he could for tobacco, and return home as soon as he had sold all, or

had got enough of the plant to fill his vessel, whether the goods were

all sold or not, bringing home with him any that remained unsold. In

this cautious way were the foundations of the wondrous wealth of Glasgow

laid. It was not till now, eleven years after the Union, that the first

vessel belonging to Glasgow crossed the Atlantic.

By that time, much of the tobacco-trade had come into the hands of

Glasgow merchants. Bristol, Liverpool, and Whitehaven, which had

heretofore been the great entrepôts of the trade, opened their eyes with

some little surprise when they began to find Glasgow underselling them

in this article even among their own retailers. It was the mere

frugality of the Scottish traders which gave them this advantage. But

the jealousy of their rivals refused to see the true cause. They entered

in 1721 into a confederacy to destroy the tobacco-trade of Glasgow,

petitioning in succession the House of Lords and the House of Commons,

with utterly unfounded complaints on the subject. The charges of fraud

were declared groundless by the upper house; but, in the lower, the just

defences of Glasgow were disregarded, through the interest made by her

adversaries. ‘New officers were appointed at the ports of Greenock and

Port-Glasgow, whose private instructions seem to have been to ruin the

trade, if possible, by putting all imaginable hardships upon it; bills

of equity were exhibited against the merchants in the Court of Exchequer

for no less than [Sidenote: 1718.] thirty-three ships’ cargoes, by which

they were commanded to declare, on oath, whether or not they had

imported in these ships any, and how much, more tobacco than what had

been exported, or had paid the king’s duty. Vexatious lawsuits of every

kind were stirred up against them. Every species of persecution, which

malice, assisted by wealth and interest, could invent, to destroy the

trade of Glasgow, was put in practice,’ and in part successfully, the

trade being reduced to a languishing condition, in which it remained for

a number of years.[512]

Quiet Mr Wodrow, in his neighbouring Renfrewshire parish, seems to have

rather relished any loss or difficulty sustained by this industrious

community, being apparently under an impression that wealth was apt to

abate the godly habits of the people. He already recognised a party in

the city who mocked at the ministry, and everything that was serious.

Instead of seventy-two meetings for prayer, which he had known some

years before, there were now but four or five; while in their place

flourished club-meetings, at which foolish questions were discussed. He

adverts to the blow struck at the tobacco-trade through the House of

Commons, ‘which they say will be twenty thousand pounds loss to that

place. I wish it may be sanctified to them.’[513]

We have seen a concert taking place in Edinburgh in 1694, and a very

grand one, partly supported by amateurs, presented in celebration of St

Cecilia’s Day, in the ensuing year. We learn that there was now a weekly

meeting of amateurs at the Cross Keys Tavern, kept by one Steil, who is

noted as an excellent singer of Scottish songs, and who appears to have

possessed a collection of instruments for the use of his guests. This

meeting admitted of visitors of both sexes, and was a point of reunion

for the _beau monde_ of Edinburgh in days while as yet there were

neither balls nor theatres. Its being held in a tavern would be no

objection to the ladies. Allan Ramsay, in singing the winter attractions

of the city, does not forget that

‘Others can with music make you gay,

With sweetest sounds Corelli’s art display;’

[Sidenote: 1718.]

And then adds a picture of the scene:

‘To visit and take tea the well-dressed fair

May pass the crowd unruffled in her chair;

No dust or mire her shining foot shall stain,

Or on the horizontal hoop give pain.

For beaux and belles no city can compare,

Nor shew a galaxy so made, so fair;

The ears are charmed, and ravished are the eyes,

When at the concert my fair stars arise;

What poets of fictitious beauties sing,

Shall in bright order fill the dazzling ring;

From Venus, Pallas, and the spouse of Jove,

They’d gain the prize, judged by the god of Love.’[514]

A writer of some ability and acuteness, who travelled over Scotland, and

wrote an account of his journey, published in 1723, tells us that he was

at several ‘consorts’ in Edinburgh, and had much reason to be pleased

with the appearance of the ladies. He had never in any country seen ‘an

assembly of greater beauties.’ It is not in point here, but it may be

stated that he also admired their stately firm way of walking ‘with the

joints extended and the toes out,’ and thought their tartan head-mantles

of scarlet and green at church as gay as a parterre of flowers. At the

same time, he knew them to be good housewives, and that many gentlemen

of good estate were not ashamed to wear clothes of their wives’ and

servants’ spinning.[515]

To return to music—it looks like a mark of rising taste for sweet

sounds, that we have a paragraph in the _Edinburgh Courant_ for July 12,

1720, announcing that Mr Gordon, who had lately been travelling in Italy

for his improvement in music, was daily expected in Edinburgh,

‘accompanied with Signor Lorenzo Bocchi, who is considered the second

master of the violoncello in Europe, and the fittest hand to join Mr

Gordon’s voice in the consorts which he designs to entertain his friends

with before the rising of the session.’ On the 28th of May 1722, at the

request of several gentlemen of Glasgow, Mr Gordon was to give a

‘consort’ in that city; and immediately after we hear of him publishing

‘proposals for the improvement of music in Scotland, together with a

most reasonable and easy scheme for establishing a Pastoral Opera in

Edinburgh.’[516] Signor Bocchi seems to have been able [Sidenote: 1718.]

to carve a professional position for himself in Edinburgh, for in 1726

we find him publishing there an opera of his own composition, containing

twelve sonatas for different instruments—violin, flute, violoncello,

&c., with a libretto in broad Scotch by Allan Ramsay, beginning:

‘Blate Johnnie faintly tauld fair Jean his mind.’

It was about this time that the native music of Scotland—those beautiful

melodies which seem to have sprung up in the country as naturally and

unperceivedly as the primroses and the gowans—were first much heard of

to the south of the Tweed. William Thomson, who was a boy at the Feast

of St Cecilia in 1695, had since grown up in the possession of a

remarkably sweet voice for the singing of Scots songs, and having

migrated to London, he was there so well received, that Scottish music

became fashionable even amidst the rage there was at the same time for

the opera and the compositions of Handel. A collection of Scottish

songs, with the music, under the title of _Orpheus Caledonius_, was

published by Thomson in London in 1725, with a dedication to the

Princess of Wales, and republished in an extended form in 1733.

Of the other performers at the Feast of St Cecilia, a few were still

flourishing. Adam Craig, a teacher of music, played second violin at the

gentlemen’s concerts with high approbation. Matthew M‘Gibbon was no

more; but he had left a superior representative in his son William, who

had studied under Corbet in London, and was now leader and first-violin

at the concerts, playing the music of Corelli, Geminiani, and Handel

with great skill and judgment. A collection of Scots tunes by William

M‘Gibbon, published in 1742 and subsequent years, was long in high

repute.[517] Of the St Cecilia amateurs we only hear now of Lord

Colville, who seems to have been a great enthusiast, ‘a thorough master

of music,’ and is said to have ‘understood counterpoint well.’ His

instruments were the harpsichord and organ. He had made a large

collection of music, much of it brought home to him from Italy.

‘The god of Music joins when Colvil plays,

And all the Muses dance to Haddington’s essays;

The charms are mutual, piercing, and compleat—

This in his art excels, and that in wit.’

_Defoe’s Caledonia_, 1706.

[Sidenote: 1718.]

Robert Lord Colville of Ochiltree (for it is necessary so to distinguish

him from Lord Colville of Culross) died unmarried in March 1728, after

having been in possession of the peerage for fifty-seven years. Wodrow

tells a gossip’s story about his lordship having ‘walked’ for some time

after his apparent departure from the earth.[518]

After a comparatively private form of entertainment had been in vogue

some years, the lovers of harmony in Edinburgh constituted themselves in

1728 into a regular society, with a governor and directors, the entire

number of members being seventy, and, for the sake of room, transferred

their meetings to St Mary’s Chapel, where they continued to assemble for

a long course of years.[519] The progress of their gay science is marked

by the publication, in 1730, of a collection of Scots tunes for the

harpsichord or spinet by Adam Craig, appropriately dedicated to the

Honourable Lords and Gentlemen of the Musical Society of Mary’s Chapel,

as ‘generous encouragers and promoters of music’—this collection being

the first of the kind that was published,[520] although there were

several previous collections containing Scottish tunes, mingled with

others.

[Sidenote: JUNE.]

At this time the house of the Rev. Mr M‘Gill, minister of Kinross, was

represented as troubled with spirits. The first fact that excited

attention, was the disappearance of some silver spoons and knives, which

were soon after found in the barn, stuck up in straw, with a big dish

all nipped in pieces. Next it was found that no meat was brought to

table but what was stuck full of pins. The minister found one in an egg.

His wife, to make sure against trick, cooked some meat herself; but

behold, when presented at table, ‘there were several pins in it,

particularly a big pin the minister used for his gown. Another day,

there was a pair of

[Sidenote: 1728. MAY.]

[Sidenote: 1718.] sheets put to the green, among other people’s, which

were all nipped to pieces, and none of the linens belonging to others

troubled. A certain night several went to watch the house, and as one

was praying, down falls the press, wherein was abundance of

lime-vessels, all broke to pieces; also at one other time the spirits,

as they call them, not only tore the clothes that were locked up in a

coffer, to pieces, but the very laps of a gentlewoman’s hood, as she was

walking along the floor, were clipped away, as also a woman’s gown-tail

and many other things not proper to mention. A certain girl, eating some

meat, turned so very sick, that, being necessitate to vomit, [she] cast

up five pins. A stone thrown down the chimney _wambled_ a space on the

floor, and then took a flight out at the window. There was thrown in the

fire the minister’s Bible, which would not burn; but a plate and two

silver spoons melted immediately. What bread is fired, were the meal

never so fine, it’s all made useless. Is it not very sad that such a

godly family, that employ their time no otherwise but by praying,

reading, and serious meditation, should be so molested, while others who

are wicked livers, and in a manner avowedly serve the Wicked One, are

never troubled?’[522]

Wodrow, who relates these particulars, soon after enters in his

note-book: ‘I hear of a woman in Carstairs parish, that has been for

some time troubled with apparitions, and _needs much sympathy_.’[523]

It seems to have been a season of unusual spiritual activity. During

September, and for some time after, the house of William Montgomery,

mason, at Burnside, Scrabster, near Thurso, in the extreme north of

Scotland, was tormented in an unusual manner by cats, which flocked in

great numbers in and about his dwelling, making a frightful noise.

Montgomery himself was from home; but his wife was so much troubled by

this unaccountable pest, as to be obliged to write to him requiring his

return, as otherwise she would be obliged to remove to Thurso. The

goodman did return, and became witness to the torment that was going on,

as many as eight cats, totally unknown in the neighbourhood, being

sometimes assembled about his fireside in a single evening, ‘making the

night hideous.’ One servant-girl left service on account of the nightly

disturbance. Another, who came in her place, called to her master one

evening that ‘the cats [Sidenote: 1718.] were speaking among

themselves,’ for so it had appeared to her they were doing, so

human-like were their cries.

On a particular night, the 28th of November, Montgomery became unusually

exasperated by these four-footed tormentors, and resolved to attack them

with lethal weapons. One having got into a chest which had a hole in it,

he watched with his drawn sword till he saw the creature put her head

out at the hole, when he struck hard, yet failed to effect decapitation.

Opening the chest, a servant named Geddes struck the animal with his

master’s dirk in her hinder quarter, pinning her to the timber; yet

after all she got out. Ultimately, Montgomery battered this cat pretty

effectually, and threw her out as dead; nevertheless, they found she had

disappeared by the morning. Five nights thereafter, some of the cats

coming in upon Geddes in his bed, Montgomery dirked one, and battered

its head, till it appeared dead, when he flung it out of doors. Before

morning, it too had disappeared. He remarked that the wounds he

inflicted brought no blood.

As it had been threatened that none should thrive in his house, William

Montgomery entertained no doubt that there was witchcraft in the

visitation. When an old woman in the neighbourhood fell ill, he became

confirmed in his surmise, and thought himself justified in seeking the

interference of the sheriff, though without particularising any

delinquent. By this officer, the case was slighted as a piece of popular

credulity and ignorance, till, one day in the ensuing February, a

certain old woman named Margaret Nin-Gilbert, living in Owst, about a

mile and a half from Montgomery’s house, ‘was seen by some of her

neighbours to drop at her own door one of her legs from the middle.’ So

narrates the sheriff. He adds: ‘She being under bad fame for witchcraft,

the leg, black and putrefied, was brought to me; and immediately

thereafter I ordered her to be apprehended and incarcerated.’

When old ladies begin to unhook their legs, and leave them in public

places, it is evident there must be something in it. On the 8th of

February, Margaret was examined in presence of two ministers, a bailie,

and four merchants of Thurso, and confessed that she was in compact with

the devil, who sometimes appeared to her as a great black horse,

sometimes as a black cloud, and sometimes like a black hen. She owned to

having been present as a cat in Montgomery’s house, along with other

women similarly transformed, when two of the latter had [Sidenote:

1718.] died of the wounds inflicted by Montgomery, and she had had her

leg broken by him, so that in time it mortified and broke off. Margaret

Olson, one of the women she accused, was examined for witch-marks; and

several small coloured spots being detected, a needle was thrust in

almost to the eye without exciting the least pain; but neither she nor

any other person besides Nin-Gilbert could be induced to confess the

practice of witchcraft.

Lord Advocate Dundas heard, some weeks after, what was going on in this

remote corner of Scotland, and wrote a letter to the sheriff, finding

fault with him for proceeding without consultation with the central

authority. The local officer apologised on the ground, that he only

acted for the Earl of Breadalbane and Mr Sinclair of Ulbster, and had

deemed it proper to communicate directly with them. In the course of a

short time, Nin-Gilbert died in prison, and this seems to have been an

end to the affair.[524]

Hitherto, no sort of literary or scientific association had been formed

in Scotland. For a long time bypast, almost the only learning that

existed was theological, and there was but little of that. In this year,

Thomas Ruddiman, who had distinguished himself in Edinburgh by editing

the works of Buchanan, and composing the well-known _Rudiments of the

Latin Tongue_, joined with the masters of the High School of the city in

establishing there an association for improving each other in classical

lore, ‘without meddling with the affairs of church or state.’ This body

was afterwards joined by a young advocate, subsequently eminent as a

judge and a philosophical writer under the name of Lord Kames;

afterwards, Mr Archibald Murray and Mr James Cochran, advocates, and Mr

George Wishart, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, with some others,

became members. ‘Whether their conversations were preserved, or their

dissertations published, cannot now be ascertained.’[525]

[Sidenote: DEC. 15.]

This day was commenced a newspaper in Edinburgh, the first that

succeeded in thoroughly planting itself in Scotland, so as to obtain

more than an ephemeral existence. It was the adventure of James M‘Ewen,

bookseller in Edinburgh, and came out under [Sidenote: 1718.] the title

of _The Edinburgh Evening Courant_. The paper appeared in virtue of a

formal authority from the magistrates and town-council, to whom M‘Ewen

was to be answerable for what he should print and publish; and, that

this rule might be enforced, he was, ‘before publication, to give ane

coppie of his print to [the] magistrates.’[526] The _Courant_ was

announced as to contain ample accounts of foreign occurrences, and these

derived, not through London prints, but directly from foreign journals.

It was intended as a decidedly Whig print, in this respect differing

from the _Caledonian Mercury_, which was not long after started in the

Jacobite interest.

The _Courant_ was from the first successful. James M‘Ewen, writing from

Edinburgh, January 17, 1719, to the Rev. Mr Wodrow, says: ‘As to our

newspaper, it thrives so far as to be very well liked by all, excepting

the violent Jacobites, who hate it, for no other reason but because it

is a true and impartial paper. Several gentlemen who were to have had

the London papers sent them, have laid them aside, because this contains

the substance not only of them, but of the foreign post also.’

In looking over, as it has been my fate to do, the early volumes of the

_Courant_, one cannot but groan over the long, dry ‘advices’ from nearly

all parts of Europe, and the wretched meagreness of the department of

home intelligence, whole months often elapsing without so much as an

obituary notice, or a ship’s arrival at Leith. The reason of this

unfortunate peculiarity was no other than the civic censorship under

which the paper, as we see, was from the beginning placed. Even

intelligence in the interest of the government was not in every instance

safe. In the course of February 1723, the magistrates seized all the

copies of a particular number of the paper, in which there had been an

apparently simple paragraph. It regarded Mr Patrick Halden, then under

trials before the judges of the Court of Session as presentee of the

crown for a seat on the bench—he being a mere creature of the ministry

unfit for the position. Fired at the words: ‘We do not hear of any great

discoveries yet made to his prejudice,’ the judges inflicted this

punishment upon the publisher, M‘Ewen, who then announced the

suppression of his paper, ‘that our customers in the country may know

why they cannot be served with that day’s _Courant_, as also _why we

have been so sparing all along of home news_.’

It is at the same time evident that the meagreness of the [Sidenote:

1718.] home news was in part caused by mere difficulty of obtaining

authentic accounts of such matters. A rumour as to the death of a person

of importance at a distance would arrive. Owing to the sluggishness of

posts, its verity could not readily be ascertained. Inserting it on

trust, the journalist too often found, in the course of a few days, that

the announcement was unfounded. Such is a fair specimen of the way in

which false intelligence occasionally got into circulation; and every

such case, of course, operated as a motive to caution in future. The

publishers, moreover, could not afford to keep sub-editors to go about

and ascertain the verity of rumours. As an illustration of the

difficulties hence arising—the _Caledonian Mercury_ of March 3, 1724,

contained the following paragraph: ‘We hear that my Lord Arniston, one

of the ordinary Lords of Session, is dead;’ which was followed in the

next number by: ‘It was by mistake in our last that my Lord Arniston was

dead, occasioned by the rendezvous of coaches, &c., _hard by his

lordship’s lodging_, that were to attend the funeral of a son of the

Right Honourable the Earl of Galloway; wherefore his lordship’s pardon

and family’s is humbly craved.’

It affords a pleasing idea of the possible continuousness of sublunary

things, that the then Whig, but now Conservative _Edinburgh Evening

Courant_, which began its career in 1718, and its then Tory, but since

liberal rival, the _Caledonian Mercury_, which originated about two

years later, are still published in Edinburgh.

The enjoyment during thirty years of ‘position’ as an establishment,

combined with the progressive ideas of the age, was now working some

notable changes in the spirit of the Scottish Church.

There was still, of course, a general maintenance of the old doctrines

and habits; all was to appearance as it had been—places of worship

attended, Sunday observed, discipline kept up; in particular outlying

presbyteries, there would even be found a majority of men of the old

leaven. When, however, any strenuous Dumfriesshire or Galloway pastor

seemed animated by aught of the zeal of a past age, and thereby excited

troubles which came under the attention of the General Assembly, he was

sure to be snubbed, and, if contumacious, deposed. If a presbytery of

the ancient orthodoxy, labouring under fears of backslidings and

defections, ventured to reassert, in a public manner, a doctrine that

was beginning to be unfashionable, the General [Sidenote: 1718.]

Assembly frowned on its forwardness. At the same time, Mr John Simson,

professor of divinity at Glasgow, openly taught doctrines leaning to

Arminianism, and even Arianism, and the same venerable court could not,

for a number of years, be brought to do more than administer a gentle

admonition.

It chanced, one day, that a worthy pastor, Mr Thomas Boston, found in a

house which he was visiting a tattered treatise of the bright days of

the civil war, written by one Edward Fisher, and entitled _The Marrow of

Modern Divinity_. Turning over its leaves, he found it asserting

orthodox Puritan doctrines with a simplicity and pathos all its own,

particularly one which had lately been condemned by the General

Assembly—namely, that, Christ being all in all, a forsaking of sins was

not necessary ‘to reinstate us in covenant with God.’ Here seemed the

proper remedy for the alarming rationalism of the church, and very soon

there appeared a new edition of the _Marrow_, under the care of Mr

Thomas Hogg, minister of Carnock. The book immediately got into wide

circulation, and produced a very decided impression on the public mind,

insomuch that the General Assembly felt called upon to issue a

prohibition against its being recommended or read.

Thus arose a once famous conflict generally recognised as the _Marrow

Controversy_. Dissatisfied with the pronouncement of the church, twelve

ministers, including Boston and Hogg, came forward with a

Representation, in which they remonstrated in very free terms with the

General Assembly, expressing themselves as grieved in an especial manner

to find any disfavour shewn to that freedom from the covenant of works

which true believers felt to be the chief branch of the precious liberty

which Christ had given them, and ‘in which the eternal salvation of

souls is wrapped up.’ For sending this paper, the twelve brethren were

taken in hand by the Assembly’s commission, condemned, and ordered to

stand a rebuke (1723); but, while submitting, for the sake of peace,

they took care to utter a protest, which left no room for doubt that

they remained unshaken in their opinions. The entire proceedings are far

too voluminous for modern patience; but the importance of the affair is

undoubted. The ‘Twelve Marrow Men’ may be said to have formed the

nucleus of the dissent which was a few years after matured under the

name of the Secession.[527]

[Sidenote: 1719. JAN. 29.]

About eight o’clock this morning, at a spot a little west of Aberdeen,

‘there appeared ane army, computed to be the number of 7000 men. This

computation was made by a very judicious man, who had long been a

soldier in Flanders, and is now a farmer at this place, who with about

thirty other persons were spectators. This army was drawn up in a long

line in battle-array, were seen to fall down to the ground, and start up

all at once; their drums were seen to be carried on the drummers’ backs.

After it remained more than two hours, a person on a white horse rode

along the line, and then they all marched towards Aberdeen, where the

hill called the Stocket took them out of sight. It was a clear sunshine

all that morning.’

October 22d, a second vision of the same kind was seen on the same

ground. ‘About two thousand men appeared with blue and white coats,

clear arms glancing or shining, white ensigns were seen to slap down, as

did the former, at which time a smoke appeared, as if they had fired,

but no noise. A person on a white horse also rode along the line, and

then they marched towards the bridge of Dee. This vision continued on

the ground from three hours in the afternoon, till it was scarce light

to see them. It was a clear fine afternoon, and being the same day of

the great yearly fair held at Old Aberdeen, was seen by many hundreds of

people going home, as well as by above thirty that were at their own

houses, about half a mile distant. It’s observable that the people

coming from the fair came through them, but saw nothing till they came

up to the crowd that was standing gazing, who caused them to look

back.’[528]

[Sidenote: NOV. 2.]

On the night of the 2d of November, the river Don was dried up from a

little below Kemnay down to near Old Aberdeen. It was so dry at Inverury

and Kintore, that children of five or six years of age gathered up the

fish, trouts, and eels, and many people going to a fair passed over

dry-shod. The water slowly returned about the middle of the day. The

same phenomenon was said to have happened in the Doveran at Banff two

days later.[529]

[Sidenote: 1719.]

The Commissioners on the Forfeited Estates were left in 1716 in a

position of discomfiture, in consequence of the impediments presented by

Scottish law and Scottish national feeling. Acts of the legislature

enabled them in subsequent years to overcome some of their difficulties,

and accomplish a tolerable portion of their mission. Not indeed without

further impediments from the Court of Session, which, when their former

decrees of sequestration were rendered void, and could no longer protect

the friends of the forfeited persons in possession, gave efficacy to a

new device of these friends, in the form of exceptions which declared

that the forfeited persons had never been the real owners of the

estates! In their report of 1720, they pathetically advert to this new

difficulty, and, as an illustration of its absurdity, state a few cases,

in which there had been decrees in favour of more pretended owners than

one—Seaforth’s estates, for instance, were by one decree found to belong

in full and absolute right to Kenneth Mackenzie of Assint, by another to

William Martin of Harwood, by another to Hugh Wallace of Inglistown. For

Mar’s estates, there were four of these visionary owners, and for

Kenmure’s five! The exceptions were generally founded on conveyances and

_dispositions_ of the lands which were alleged to have been formerly

executed by the attainted persons in favour of children and others.

Notwithstanding these obstructions, the commissioners were enabled, in

October 1719, to sell Panmure’s estates at £60,400 sterling, Winton’s at

£50,482, Kilsyth’s at £16,000, and that of Robert Craw of East Reston at

£2364.

By reversals of the decrees in the House of Lords, and the help of a new

act, the Commissioners were enabled, in October 1720, to sell a further

lot of estates—Southesk’s for £51,549, Marischal’s for £45,333,

Linlithgow’s for £18,769, Stirling of Keir’s for £16,450, Threipland of

Fingask’s for £9606, Paterson of Bannockburn’s for £9671, besides two

others of trifling value. The purchase was in nearly all these cases

made by a speculative London company, entitled _The Governor and Company

of Undertakers for raising the Thames Water in York Buildings_ (commonly

called the ‘York Buildings Company’).[530] The exceptions in the cases

of Keir and Bannockburn were purchases probably made by friends of the

former owners. For any other persons connected [Sidenote: 1719.] with

Scotland to have come forward to buy these properties on their own

account, inferred such an amount of public indignation, if not violence,

as made the act impossible, even if there had been any recreant Scot,

Whig or Tory, capable in his heart of such conduct.

We shall have occasion, under subsequent dates, to notice certain

difficulties of a different and more romantic kind which beset the

Commissioners. But, meanwhile, it may be well to complete the history of

their ordinary transactions.

Out of thirty estates left unsold in October 1720, they had succeeded

within the ensuing three years in selling nineteen, of which the chief

were Lord Burleigh’s at £12,610, Macdonald of Sleat’s at £21,000, and

Mackenzie of Applecross’s at £3550, the rest being of inconsiderable

amount, though raising the entire sum to £66,236. The principal estate

afterwards sold was that of John Earl of Mar at £36,000.

When the Commissioners closed their accounts in March 1725, it appeared

that there was a total of £411,082 sterling paid and to be paid into the

Exchequer, from which, however, was to be deducted no less than £303,995

of debts sanctioned by the Commissioners, and for which they had issued

or were to issue debentures, and £26,120 allowed in the form of grants

from the crown. There thus remained, of money realised for public use

and to pay the expenses of the Commission, the sum of £84,043, 17_s._

5¾_d._, while properties to the yearly value of £2594 remained

undisposed of, including an item so small as ‘Feu-duty of some cellars

at Leith, part of the Abbacy of Aberbrothick, belonging to the late Earl

of Panmure, 11_s._ 3½_d._’

Some curiosity will naturally be felt to know the aggregate expenses of

the Commission,[531] and the balance of results which these left out of

the eighty-four thousand pounds. There is a mixture of the ludicrous and

sad in the problem, which may be expressed thus: money from the

destruction (for public objects) of about fifty of the good old families

of Scotland, £84,043; charges for the expense of the destruction,

£82,936 = £1107! Walpole would find it hardly a decent purchase-money

for a vote in the House of Commons.

[Sidenote: DEC.]

By statute passed in 1718,[532] arrangements had been made [Sidenote:

1719.] regarding the sum of £16,575, 14_s._ 0½_d._, which had been left

over of the Equivalent money at the Union, after paying sundry claims

out of it, and for a further debt of £230,308, 9_s._ 10_d._, due by

England to Scotland since in equalisation of duties, together with a

small sum of interest—the whole amounting to £248,550—also for enabling

the king to constitute the bond-holders of this debt into a corporation,

which, after St John’s Day, 1719, should receive £10,000 annually as

interest, until the debt should be redeemed.

Now, the Bank of Scotland had been going on very quietly for some years,

with its ten thousand pounds of paid-up capital, realising, as we can

infer from some particulars, about a thousand a year of profit from its

business. A prosperity so great could not then exist in Scotland without

exciting some degree of envy, and also raising up thoughts of rivalry in

a certain ardent class of minds. It began to be alleged that _the Bank_,

as it was commonly called, was stinted in its means and frigid in its

dealings; that it lacked enterprise; that it would be the better of an

infusion of fresh blood, and so forth. It had many positive enemies, who

tried to detract from its merits, and were constantly raising evil

reports about it.[533] Most deadly of all, there was now this Equivalent

Company, with about a quarter of a million of debentures wherewith to

engage in further mercantile enterprise, so as to make their ten

thousand a year a little better. The boy, with his first shilling

burning a hole in his pocket, was but a type of it.

In December 1719, a proposal came from a proprietor of Equivalent stock,

to the effect that that stock should be added to the £100,000 stock of

the Bank, but with nine-tenths of it returned by the Bank in notes, so

that only £25,000 of it should in reality remain active in the new

concern. It was proposed that, of the £10,000 of annual interest upon

the Equivalent, the proprietors of Bank stock should thenceforward draw

two-sevenths, being the proportion of £100,000 to £250,000; and of the

£600 a year allowed for management of the Equivalent, the Bank was also

to be allowed a proportion. In such a way might the Bank and Equivalent

be brought into a union presumed to be beneficial to both parties.

[Sidenote: 1719.]

The directors of the Bank received the proposition as an insidious

attempt by a number of outsiders to get into the enjoyment of a portion

of their time-bought advantages. They pointed out, in their answer, that

the Equivalent stock being only in the receipt of 4 per cent. interest,

while the profits of the Bank stock might be reckoned at not lower than

10, the proposal was inequitable towards the Bank. Besides, they did not

want this additional stock, finding their present working capital quite

sufficient. The proposer was thus repelled for the meantime; but he very

quickly returned to the attack.

Under the guidance of this person, there was now formed what was called

‘The Edinburgh Society for insuring of Houses against Loss by Fire’—an

arrangement of social life heretofore unknown in Scotland. But, as often

happens, no sooner was this design broached than another set of people

projected one of the same kind, with only this slight difference, that,

instead of being a company trading for profits, it was a mutual

insurance society reserving all profits for the insured. Such was the

origin, in 1720, of what afterwards, under the name of ‘the Friendly

Society,’[534] became a noted institution of the Scottish capital, and

is still in a certain sense existing amongst us. The Edinburgh Society

consequently got no insurance business.

It nevertheless kept together, under the care of a committee of secrecy,

who gave out that they contemplated a still better project. For some

time, they talked loudly of great, though unripe plans, by which they

expected to ‘make Scotland flourish beyond what it ever did before.’

Then there arose a repetition of the old clamours about the Bank—it was

too narrow, both in its capital and in its ideas; the directors were too

nice about securities; the public required enlarged accommodation. At

last, the Society plainly avowed that they were determined either to run

down the Bank, or force a coalition with it. It was precisely one of the

last century heiress-abductions, adapted to the new circumstances of the

country and the advanced ideas of the age.

The opportunity seemed to be afforded by the share which Scotland took

in the South-Sea scheme, large sums of specie being sent southward to

purchase stock in that notable bubble. In such circumstances, it was

assumed that the stock of coin in the Bank must have sunk to rather a

low ebb. Having then gradually and [Sidenote: 1719.] unperceivedly

gathered up the monstrous sum of £8400 in notes of the Bank, our

Edinburgh Society came in upon it one morning demanding immediate

payment. To their surprise, the money was at once paid, for in reality

the kind of coin sent by speculators to London was different from that

usually kept by the Bank, so that there had been hardly any abatement of

its usual resources in coin. The Society tried to induce the cashiers of

all the public establishments to follow their example, and draw out

their money, but without success in any instance but that of the

trustees of the Equivalent, who came very ostentatiously, and taking out

their money, stored it up in the Castle. The public preserved a

mortifying tranquillity under all these excitements, and the Bank

remained unaffected.

The Edinburgh Society soon after sent the Bank a proposal of union, ‘for

the prevention of mutual injuries, and the laying of a solid foundation

for their being subservient and assisting to one another.’ It mainly

consisted in an offer to purchase six hundred shares of the Bank, not as

a new stock, but by surrender of shares held by the present proprietors,

at £16, 13_s._ 4_d._ per share, or £10,000 in all, being apparently a

premium of £6, 13_s._ 4_d._ on each £10 of the Bank’s paid-in capital.

The Bank, however, as might have been expected, declined the proposal.

The passing of the famous Bubble Act soon after rendered it necessary

for the Edinburgh Society to dissolve; but the Bank, nevertheless, like

a rich heiress, continued to be persecuted by undesired offers of

alliance. One, strange to say, came from the London Exchange Assurance

Company. By this time (1722), it appears that the Bank had _twenty_

thousand pounds of its capital paid up. It was proposed on the part of

the London Assurance, that they should add £20,000, and have a half of

the Bank’s profits, minus only an annual sum of £2500 to the old

proprietors; which the Bank considered as equivalent to a borrowing of a

sum of money at a dear rate from foreigners, when, if necessary, they

could advance it themselves. Suppose, said the directors, that, after

the London company had paid in their £20,000, the Bank’s profits were to

rise to £7000 a year—and the authors of the proposal certainly

contemplated nothing so low—this sum would fall to be divided thus:

_first_, £2500 to the old Bank proprietors; _second_, the remaining

£4500 to be divided between the Bank and the Exchange Assurance

Company—that is, £2250 to the latter, being interest at the rate of 11

per cent. upon the money it had advanced—which money would be lying

[Sidenote: 1719.] the same as dead in the Bank, there being no need for

it. The Bank of Scotland declined the proposal of the London Royal

Exchange Assurance Company, which doubtless would not be without its

denunciations of Scotch caution on the occasion.

Robert Ker, who seems to have been an inhabitant of Lasswade, was a

censor of morals much after the type of the Tinklarian Doctor. He at

this time published _A Short and True Description of the Great

Incumbrances and Damages that City and Country is like to sustain by

Women’s Girded Tails, if it be not speedily prevented, together with a

Dedication to those that wear them_. By girded tails he meant skirts

framed upon hoops of steel, like those now in vogue. According to Robert

Ker, men were ‘put to a difficulty how to walk the streets’ from ‘the

hazard of breaking their shin-bones’ against this metal cooperage, not

to speak of the certainty of being called ill-bred besides. ‘If a man,’

says he, ‘were upon the greatest express that can be, if ye shall meet

them in any strait stair or entry, you cannot pass them by without being

stopped, and called impertinat to boot.’ Many are ‘the other confusions

and cumbrances, both in churches and in coaches.’ He calls for

alterations in staircases, and new lights to be broken out in dark

entries, to save men from unchancy collisions with the fairer part of

creation. Churches, too, would need to be enlarged, as in the old

Catholic times, and seats and desks made wider, to hold these monstrous

protuberances.

‘I wonder,’ says Ker, ‘that those who pretend to be faithful ministers

do not make the pulpits and tents ring about thir sins, amongst many

others. Had we the like of John Knox in our pulpits, he would not spare

to tell them their faults to their very faces. But what need I admonish

about thir things, when some ministers have their wives and daughters

going with these fashions themselves?’

The ladies found a defender on this occasion in Allan Ramsay. He says:

‘If Nelly’s hoop be twice as wide

As her two pretty limbs can stride,

What then? will any man of sense

Take umbrage, or the least offence?....

Do not the handsome of our city,

The pious, chaste, the kind, the witty,

Who can afford it, great and small,

Regard well-shapen fardingale?....

Who watch their conduct, mien, and guise,

To shape their weeds as fits their case,

And place their patches as they please.’[535]

[Sidenote: 1719.]

We learn with grief that our pathetic censor of the fair sex lived on

bad terms with his own wife, and was imprisoned both in Dalkeith and in

Edinburgh for alleged miscarriages towards her. One of his most furious

outpourings was against a minister who had baptised a child born to him

during his Dalkeith imprisonment, the rite being performed without his

order or sanction.

[Sidenote: 1720. JAN. 5.]

‘All persons [in Edinburgh] desirous to learn the French tongue’ were

apprised by an advertisement in the _Edinburgh Courant_, that ‘there is

a Frenchman lately come to this city who will teach at a reasonable

price.’ This would imply that there was no native French teacher in

Edinburgh previously. In 1858, there were eleven, besides three

belonging to our own country.

[Sidenote: JAN.]

Public attention was at this time attracted by a report of devilish

doings at Calder in Mid-Lothian, and of there being one sufferer of no

less distinction than a lord’s son. It was stated that the Hon. Patrick

Sandilands, a boy, the third son of Lord Torphichen, was for certain

bewitched. He fell down in trances, from which no horse-whipping could

rouse him. The renal secretion was as black as ink. Sometimes he was

thrown unaccountably about the room, as if some unseen agent were

buffeting him. Candles went out in his presence. When sitting in a room

with his sisters, he would tell them of things that were going on at a

distance. He had the appearance occasionally of being greatly tormented.

As he lay in bed one night, his tutor, who sat up watching him, became

sleepy, and in this state saw a flash of fire at the window. Roused by

this, he set himself to be more careful watching, and in a little time

he saw another flash at the window. The boy then told him that between

these two flashes, he had been to Torryburn [a place twenty miles

distant]. He was understood to have been thus _taken away_ several

times; he could tell them when it was to happen; and it was then

necessary to watch him, to prevent his being carried off. ‘One day that

he was to be waited on, when he was to be taken away, they kept

[Sidenote: 1720.] the door and window close; but a certain person going

to the door, he made shift and got there, and was lifted in the air, but

was catched by the heels and coat-tails, and brought back.’ Many other

singular and dreadful things happened, which unfortunately were left

unreported at the time, as being so universally known.[536]

Lord Torphichen became at length convinced that his son was suffering

under the diabolic incantations of a witch residing in his village of

Calder, and he had the woman apprehended and put in prison. She is

described as a brutishly ignorant creature, ‘knowing scarce anything but

her witchcraft.’ She readily confessed her wicked practices; told that

she had once given the devil the body of a dead child of her own to make

a roast of; and inculpated two other women and one man, as associates in

her guilt. The baron, the minister, and the people generally accepted it

as a time case of witchcraft; and great excitement prevailed. The

minister of Inveresk, writing to his friend Wodrow (February 19), says:

‘It’s certain my lord’s son has been dreadfully tormented. Mr Brisbane

got one of the women to acknowledge ane image of the child, which, on

search, was found in another woman’s house; but they did not know what

kind of matter it was made of.’[537] The time, however, was past for any

deadly proceedings in such a case in the southern parts of Scotland; and

it does not appear that anything worse than a parish fast was launched

at the devil on the occasion. This solemnity took place on the 14th of

January.

For the crazed white-ironsmith of the West Bow,[538] the case of the

Bewitched Boy of Calder had great attractions. He resolved—unfavourable

as was the season for travelling—to go and examine the matter for

himself. So, on the day of the fast, January 14, he went on foot in ill

weather, without food, to Lord Torphichen’s house at Calder, a walk of

about twelve miles. ‘I took,’ says he, ‘the sword of the spirit at my

breast, and a small wand in my hand, as David did when he went out to

fight against Goliah.’ He found the servants eating and drinking, as if

there had been no fast proclaimed; they offered him entertainment, which

he scrupulously refused. ‘Then I went to my lord and said, I was sent by

God to cast the devil out of his son, by faith in Christ. He seemed to

be like that lord who had the charge of the gate in Samaria. Then I said

to him: “My lord, do you not [Sidenote: 1720.] believe me?” Then he bade

me go and speak to many ministers that was near by him; but I said I was

not sent to them. Then he went to them himself, and spoke to them what I

said; but they would not hear of it; so I went to three witches and a

warlock, to examine them, in sundry places. Two of them denied, and two

of them confessed. I have no time to relate here all that I said to

them, and what they said; but I asked them, “When they took on in that

service?” The wife said: “Many years;” and the man said: “It was ten

years to him.” Then I asked the wife: “What was her reason for taking on

with the devil?” And she said: “He promised her riches, and she believed

him.” Then she called him many a cheat and liar in my hearing. Then I

went to the man, because he was a great professor, and could talk of

religion with any of the parish, as they that was his neighbours said,

and he was at Bothwell Bridge fighting against the king; and because of

that, I desired to ask questions at him; but my lord’s officer said:

“His lord would not allow me.” I said I would not be hindered neither by

my lord nor by the devil, before many there present. Then I asked: “What

iniquity he found in God, that he left his service?” He got up and said:

“Oh, sir, are ye a minister?” So ye see the devil knows me to be a

minister better than the magistrates. He said: “He found no fault in

God; but his wife beguiled him;” and he said: “Wo be to the woman his

wife!” and blamed her only, as Adam did his wife, and the woman blamed

the devil; so ye see it is from the beginning. This is a caution to us

all never to hearken to our wives except they have Scripture on their

side. Then I asked at him: “Did he expect heaven?” “Yes,” said he. Then

I asked at him if he could command the devil to come and speak to me? He

said: “No.” Then I said again: “Call for him, that I may speak with

him.” He said again: “It was not in his power.” Then my lord sent more

servants, that hindered me to ask any more questions, otherwise I might

have seen the devil, and I would have spoken about his son.’[539]

On this fast-day, a sermon was preached in Calder kirk by the Rev. Mr

John Wilkie, minister of Uphall, the alleged sorcerers being all

present. Lord Torphichen subsequently caused the discourse to be

printed. His boy in time recovered, and going to sea, rose by merit to

the command of an East Indiaman, but perished in a storm. It brings us

strangely near to this [Sidenote: 1720.] wild-looking affair, that the

present tenth Lord Torphichen (1860) is only _nephew_ to the witch-boy

of Calder.

[Sidenote: FEB. 5.]

The exportation of some corn from Dundee being connected unfavourably in

the minds of the populace with a rise of the markets, a tumult took

place, with a view to keeping the grain within the country. The mob not

only took possession of two vessels loaded with _bear_ lying in the

harbour, the property of Mr George Dempster, merchant, but attacked and

gutted the house, shops, cellars, and lofts of that gentleman, carrying

off everything of value they contained, including twelve silver spoons,

a silver salver, and two silver boxes, one of them containing a gold

chain and twelve gold rings, some hair ones, and others set with

diamonds. Dempster advertised that whoever shall discover to him ‘the

havers of his goods,’ should have ‘a sufficient reward and the owner’s

kindness, and no questions asked.’[540]

A similar affair took place at Dundee nine years later. The

country-people in and about the town then ‘carried their resentment so

high against the merchants for transporting of victual, that they

furiously mobbed them, carried it out of lofts, and cut the sacks of

those that were bringing it to the barks.’[541]

[Sidenote: MAR. 20.]

Died, Alexander Rose, who had been appointed Bishop of Edinburgh just

before the Revolution. He was the last survivor of the unfortunate

episcopate of Scotland, and also outlived all the English bishops who

forfeited their sees at the Revolution. Though strenuous during all

these thirty-one years as a nonjuror—for which in 1716 he was deprived

of a pension assigned him by Queen Anne—he is testified to by his

presbyter Robert Keith as ‘a sweet-natured man.’[542] His aspect,

latterly, was venerable, and the gentleness of his life secured him the

respect of laymen of all parties. Descended of the old House of

Kilravock, he had married a daughter of Sir Patrick Threipland of

Fingask, a family which maintained fidelity to the House of Stuart with

a persistency beyond all parallel, never once swerving in affection from

the days of the Commonwealth down to recent times. ‘Mr John Rose, son of

the Bishop of Edinburgh,’ is in the list of rebels who pled guilty at

Carlisle in December 1716. The good bishop, having come to his sister’s

house in the Canongate, to see a brother who was there lying sick, had a

sudden fainting-fit, [Sidenote: 1720.] and calmly breathed his last. He

was buried in the romantic churchyard of Restalrig, which has ever since

been a favourite resting-place of the members of the Scottish Episcopal

communion.

[Sidenote: APR. 28.]

There was a jubilation in Edinburgh on what appears to us an

extraordinary occasion. The standing dryness between the king and Prince

of Wales had come to a temporary end. The latter had gone formally to

the palace, and been received by his father ‘with great marks of

tenderness’ [the king was sixty, and the prince thirty-seven]. At a

court held on the occasion, ‘the officers and servants on both sides,

from the highest to the lowest, caressed one another with mutual

civilities,’ and there were great acclamations from the crowd outside.

The agreeable news having been received in the northern metropolis, the

magistrates set the bells a-ringing, and held an entertainment for all

persons of note then in town, at which loyal toasts were drunk, with

_feux de joie_ from the City Guard. Demonstrations of a like nature took

place at Glasgow—the music-bells rung—the stairs of the town-house

covered with carpets—toast-drinking—and discharges of firearms from the

Earl of Stair’s regiment. Nor was there a similar expression of joy

wanting even in the Cavalier city of Aberdeen—where, however, such

expressions were certainly more desirable.[543]

[Sidenote: MAY 2.]

One is startled at finding in the _Edinburgh Evening Courant_ of this

date the following advertisement: ‘Taken up a stolen negro: whoever owns

him, and gives sufficient marks of his being theirs, before the end of

two weeks from the date hereof, may have him again upon payment of

expenses laid out upon him; otherwise the present possessor must dispose

of him at his pleasure.’

Yet true it is that colonial negro slaves who had accompanied their

masters to the British shores, were, till fifty-five years after this

period, regarded as chattels. One named Joseph Knight came with his

master, John Wedderburn, Esq., to Glasgow in 1771, and remained with him

as his bound slave for two years. A love-affair then set the man upon

the idea of attempting to recover his liberty, which a recent decision

by Lord Mansfield in England seemed to make by no means hopeless. With

the help of friends, he carried his claim through a succession of

courts, till a [Sidenote: 1720.] decision of the Court of Session in

1775 finally established that, however he might be a slave while in the

West Indies, he, being now in Scotland, was a free man.

Horse-racing had for many years been considerably in vogue in Scotland.

There were advertised in the course of this year—a race at Cupar in

Fife; one at Gala-rig, near Selkirk, for a piece of plate given by the

burgh, of £12 value; a race at Hamilton Moor for £10; a race on Lanark

Moor for a plate of £12, given by the burgh; a race on the sands of

Leith for a gold cup of about a hundred guineas value, and another, for

a plate of £50 value, given by the city of Edinburgh; finally, another

race at Leith for a silver punch-bowl and ladle, of £25 value, given by

the captains of the Trained Bands of Edinburgh—the bowl bearing an

inscription which smacks wonderfully like the produce of the brain of

Allan Ramsay:

‘Charge me with Nantz and limpid spring,

Let sour and sweet be mixt;

Bend round a health syne to the king,

To Edinburgh captains next,

Wha formed me in sae blithe a shape,

And gave me lasting honours;

Take up my ladle, fill and lap,

And say: “Fair fa’ the donors.”’

[Sidenote: OCT. 17.]

The genius of Scott has lent an extraordinary interest to a murder

perpetrated at this date. Nicol Mushet appears to have been a young man

of some fortune, being described as ‘of Boghall,’ and he had studied for

the profession of a surgeon; but for some time he had led an irregular

and dissipated life in Edinburgh, where he had for one of his chief

friends a noted profligate named Campbell of Burnbank, ordnance

store-keeper in the Castle. The unhappy young man was drawn into a

marriage with a woman named Hall, for whom he soon discovered that he

had neither affection nor respect; and he then became so eager to be

free from the connection, as to listen to a project by Burnbank for

obtaining a divorce by dishonourable means. An obligation passed between

the parties in November 1719, whereby a claim of Burnbank for an old

debt of nine hundred merks (about £50) was to be discharged by Mushet,

as soon as Burnbank should be able to furnish evidence calculated to

criminate the woman. Burnbank then deliberately hired a wretch like

himself, one Macgregor, a teacher of languages, to enter into a plot for

placing Mrs Mushet [Sidenote: 1720.] in criminative circumstances; and

some progress was made in this plan, which, however, ultimately misgave.

It was then suggested by Burnbank that they should go a step further,

and remove the woman by poison. One James Mushet and his wife—a couple

in poor circumstances—readily undertook to administer it. Several doses

were actually given, but the stomach of the victim always rejected them.

Then the project for debauching her was revived, and Mushet undertook to

effect it; but it was not carried out. Dosing with poison was resumed,

without effect; other plans of murder were considered. James Mushet

undertook to knock his sister-in-law on the head for twenty guineas, and

got one or two in hand by anticipation, part of which he employed in

burying a child of his own. These diabolically wicked projects occupied

Mushet, his brother, his brother’s wife, and Burnbank, in the Christian

city of Edinburgh, during a course of many months, without any one, to

appearance, ever feeling the slightest compunction towards the poor

woman, though it is admitted she loved her husband, and no real fault on

her side has ever been insinuated.

At length, the infatuated Nicol himself borrowed a knife one day, hardly

knowing what he wanted it for, and, taking his wife with him that night,

as on a walk to Duddingston, he embraced the opportunity of killing her

at a solitary place in the King’s Park. He went immediately after to his

brother’s, to tell him what he had done, but in a state of mind which

made all afterwards seem a blank to him. Next morning, the poor victim

was found lying on the ground, with her throat cut to the bone, and many

other wounds, which she had probably received in struggling with her

brutal murderer.

Mushet was seized and examined, when he readily related the whole

circumstances of the murder and those which had led to it. He was

adjudged to be hanged in the Grassmarket on the ensuing 6th of January.

His associate Burnbank was declared infamous, and sentenced to

banishment. The common people, thrilled with horror by the details of

the murder, marked their feelings in the old national mode by raising a

cairn on the spot where it took place; and Mushet’s Cairn has ever since

been a recognised locality.[544]

There was published this year in Edinburgh a small treatise at

[Sidenote: 1720.] the price of a shilling, under the title of _Rules of

Good Deportment and Good Breeding_. The author was Adam Petrie, who is

understood as having commenced life as domestic tutor in the family of

Sinclair of Stevenston, and to have ended it in the situation of a

parish schoolmaster in East Lothian. He dedicated his treatise to the

magistrates of Edinburgh, acknowledging them to be ‘so thoroughly

acquainted with all the steps of civility and good breeding, that it is

impossible for the least misrepresentation of them to escape your

notice.’

Adam sets out with the thesis, that ‘a courteous way gilds a denial,

sweetens the sharpness of truth ... sets off the defects of reason,

varnishes slights, paints deformities ... in a word, disguises

everything that is unsavoury.’ Everything, however, required to have

some reference to religion in that age, and Adam takes care to remind us

that civility has a divine basis, in the injunctions, ‘Be courteous to

all men,’ and ‘Give honour to whom honour is due.’

As to ordinary demeanour, Mr Petrie was of opinion that ‘a gentleman

ought not to run or walk too fast in the streets, lest he be suspected

to be going a message.’ ‘When you walk with a superior, give him the

right hand; but if it be near a wall, let him be next to it.’ The latter

rule, he tells us, was not yet followed in Scotland, though established

in England and Ireland. ‘When you give or receive anything from a

superior, be sure to pull off your glove, and make a show of kissing

your hand, with a low bow after you have done.’ In this and some other

instances, it strikes us that a too ceremonious manner is counselled;

but such was the tendency of the time. There was, however, no want of

rude persons. ‘I have,’ says Adam, ‘seen some noblemen treat gentlemen

that have not been their dependents, and men of ancienter families than

they could pretend to, like their dependents, and carry to the

ambassadors of Jesus Christ as if they had been their footmen.’

Mr Petrie deemed it proper not to come amongst women abruptly, ‘without

giving them time to appear to advantage: they do not love to be

surprised.’ He also thought it was well ‘to carry somewhat reserved from

the fair sex.’ One should not enter the house or chamber of a great

person with a great-coat and boots, or without gloves—though ‘it is

usual in many courts that they deliver up their gloves with their sword

before they enter the court, because some have carried in poison on

their gloves, and have conveyed the same to the sovereign that way.’

[Sidenote: 1720.] Women, on their part, are equally advised against

approaching superiors of their own sex with their gown tucked up. ‘Nor,’

says he, ‘is it civil to wear a mask anywhere in company of superiors,

unless they be travelling together on a journey.’ In that case, ‘when a

superior makes his honours to her, she is to pull off her mask, and

return him his salute, if it be not tied on.’

There is a good deal about the management of the handkerchief, with one

general recommendation to ‘beware of offering it to any, except they

desire it.’ We also are presented with a rule which one could wish to

see more universally observed than it is, against making any kind of

gesticulations or noises in company.

There were customs of salutation then, which it is now difficult to

imagine as having ever been practised. ‘In France,’ says Adam, ‘they

salute ladies on the cheek; but in Britain and Ireland they salute them

on the lips.’ Our Scottish Chesterfield seems to have felt that the

custom should be abated somewhat; or perhaps it was going out. ‘If,’

says he, ‘a lady of quality advance to you, and tender her cheek, you

are only to pretend to salute her by putting your head to her hoods:

when she advances, give her a low bow, and when you retreat, give her

another.’ He adds: ‘It is undecent to salute ladies but in civility.’

Formulæ of address and for the superscription of letters are fully

explained; but Adam could not allow ‘the Right Reverend Father in God

the Lord Bishop of London’ to pass as an example of Episcopal style,

without remarking that many have not ‘clearness’ to use such titles.

Adam is everywhere inclined to an infusion of piety. He denounces ‘an

irreligious tippling’ of coffee, tea, and chocolate, which he observed

to be continually going on in coffee-houses, ‘because not one in a

hundred asks a blessing to it.’ He is very much disposed, too, to launch

out into commonplace morals. Rather unexpectedly in a lover of the

politenesses, he sets his face wholly against cards and dice,

stage-plays, and promiscuous dancing, adducing a great number of learned

references in support of his views.

The editor of a very scarce reprint of this curious volume,[545] remarks

that, from the manifest sincerity of the author’s delineations of good

breeding, and the graphic character of many of his scenes, it may fairly

be presumed that they were painted from nature. We are told by the same

writer, that ‘Helen Countess of Haddington, who died in 1768, at the

advanced age of ninety-one, [Sidenote: 1720.] and to whom Petrie was

well known, used to describe his own deportment and breeding as in

strict accordance with his rules.’

[Sidenote: 1721. JAN. 4.]

James Dougal, writing the news of Edinburgh to his friend Wodrow at

Eastwood, has a sad catalogue to detail. ‘There was four pirates hanged

at Leith this day ... very hardened. They were a melancholy sight, and

there is three to be hanged next Wednesday. Nicol Mushet is to be hanged

on Friday ... for murdering his wife: he appears to be more concerned

than he was before. Ane woman brought from Leith is to die the first

Wednesday of February for putting down [destroying] a child. Another man

is laid up in prison, that is thought to have murdered his wife. The

things falling out now are very humbling.’

He goes on to tell that several persons ‘in trouble of mind’ are

frequently prayed for in Edinburgh churches. ‘But they do not name them

but after such a manner—A man there is in such trouble (or a woman), and

desires the congregation to praise God with them for signal deliverance

that the Lord hath given them from great troubles that they have been

in.’

The end of the letter is terrible: ‘There is some of the Lord’s people

that lives here, that are feared for melancholy days, iniquity doth so

abound, and profanity; and if there were not a goodly remnant in this

town, it would sink.’[546]

[Sidenote: JAN. 30.]

A sperm whale, ‘the richest that has ever been seen in this country,’

was advertised in the _Courant_ as having come ashore in the Firth of

Forth near Culross, and to be sold by public roup.

At the end of June 1730, three wounded whales ran ashore at Kilrenny in

Fife, on the property of Mr Bethune of Balfour. The produce, consisting

of a hundred and forty-six barrels of _speck_, or blubber, and

twenty-three barrels of spermaceti _speck_, was afterwards advertised

for sale.

[Sidenote: OCT.]

With regard to several of the forfeited estates which lay in

inaccessible situations in the Highlands, the Commissioners had been up

to this time entirely baffled, having never been able even to get

surveys of them effected. In this predicament in a special manner lay

the immense territory of the Earl of Seaforth, extending from Brahan

Castle in Easter Ross across the island to [Sidenote: 1721.] Kintail,

and including the large though unfertile island of Lewis. The districts

of Lochalsh and Kintail, on the west coast, the scene of the Spanish

invasion of 1719, were peculiarly difficult of access, there being no

approach from the south, east, or north, except by narrow and difficult

paths, while the western access was only assailable to a naval force. To

appearance, this tract of ground, the seat of many comparatively opulent

‘tacksmen’ and cattle-farmers, was as much beyond the control of the six

Commissioners assembled at their office in Edinburgh, as if it had been

amongst the mountains of Tibet or upon the shores of Madagascar.

During several years after the insurrection, the rents of this district

were collected, without the slightest difficulty, for the benefit of the

exiled earl, and regularly transmitted to him. At one time, a

considerable sum was sent to him in Spain, and the descendants of the

man who carried it continued for generations to bear ‘the Spanyard’ as

an addition to their name.[547] The chief agent in the business was

Donald Murchison, descendant of a line of faithful adherents of the

‘high chief of Kintail’—the first of whom, named Murcho, had come from

Ireland with Colin the son of Kenneth, the founder of the clan Mackenzie

in the thirteenth century. The later generations of the family had been

intrusted in succession with the keeping of Ellan Donan Castle, a

stronghold dear to the modern artist as a picturesque ruin, but formerly

of serious importance as commanding a central point from which radiate

Loch Alsh and Loch Duich, in the midst of the best part of the Mackenzie

country. Donald was a man worthy of a more prominent place in his

country’s annals than he has yet attained; he acted under a sense of

right which, though unfortunately defiant of acts of parliament, was

still a very pure sense of right; and in the remarkable actions which he

performed, he looked solely to the good of those towards whom he had a

feeling of duty. A more disinterested hero—and he was one—never lived.

When Lord Seaforth brought his clan to fight for King James in 1715,

Donald Murchison and a senior brother, John, went as field-officers of

the regiment—Donald as lieutenant-colonel, and John as major. Sir

Roderick I. Murchison, the distinguished geologist, great-grandson of

John, possesses a large ivory and silver ‘mill,’ which once contained

the commission sent from France to Donald, as colonel, bearing the

inscription: ‘JAMES [Sidenote: 1721.] REX: FORWARD AND SPARE NOT.’ John

fell at Sheriffmuir, in the prime of life; Donald, returning with the

remains of the clan, was intrusted by the banished earl with the

management of estates no longer legally his, but still virtually so,

through the effect of Highland feelings in connection with very peculiar

local circumstances. And for this task Donald was in various respects

well qualified, for, strange to say, the son of the castellan of Ellan

Donan—the Sheriffmuir colonel—had been ‘bred a writer’ in Edinburgh, and

was as expert at the business of a factor or estate-agent as in wielding

the claymore.[548]

In bold and avowed insubordination to the government of George the

First, the Mackenzie tenants continued for ten years to pay their rents

to Donald Murchison, on account of their forfeited and exiled lord,

setting at nought all fear of ever being compelled to repeat the payment

to the commissioners.

In 1720, these gentlemen made a movement for asserting their claims upon

the property. In William Ross of Easterfearn, and Robert Ross, a bailie

of Tain, they found two men bold enough to undertake the duty of

stewardship in their behalf over the Seaforth property, and also the

estates of Grant of Glenmorriston and Chisholm of Strathglass. Little,

however, was done that year beyond sending out notices to the tenants,

and preparing for strenuous measures to be entered upon next year. The

stir they made only produced excitement, not dismay. Some of the

duine-wassels from about Loch Carron, coming down with their cattle to

the south-country fairs, were heard to declare that the two factors

would never get anything but leaden coin from the Seaforth tenantry.

Donald was going over the whole country, shewing a letter he had got

from the earl, encouraging his people to stand out; at the same time

telling them that the old countess was about to come north with a

factory for the estate, when she would allow as paid any rents which

they might now hand to him. The very first use to be made of this money

was, indeed, to bring both the old and the young countesses home

immediately to Brahan Castle, where they would live as they used to do.

Part of the funds thus acquired, he used in keeping on foot a party of

about sixty armed Highlanders, whom, in virtue of his commission as

colonel, he proposed to employ in resisting any troops of George the

First which might be sent to Kintail. [Sidenote: 1721.] Nor did he wait

to be attacked, but, in June 1720, hearing of a party of excisemen

passing near Dingwall with a large quantity of _aqua-vitæ_, he fell upon

them, and rescued their prize. The collector of the district reported

this transaction to the Board of Excise; but no notice was taken of it.

In February 1721, the two factors sent officers of their own into the

western districts, to assure the tenants of good usage, if they would

make a peaceable submission; but the men were seized, robbed of their

papers, money, and arms, and quietly remanded over the Firth of

Attadale, though only after giving solemn assurance that they would

never attempt to renew their mission. Resenting this procedure, the two

factors caused a constable to take a military party from Bernera

barracks into Lochalsh, and, if possible, capture those who had been

guilty. They made a stealthy night-march, and took two men; but the

alarm was given, the two men escaped, and began to fire down upon their

captors from a hillside; then they set fire to the bothy as a signal,

and such a _coronach_ went over all Kintail and Lochalsh, as made the

soldiers glad to beat a quick retreat.

After some further proceedings, all of them ineffectual, the two factors

were enabled, on the 13th of September, to set forth from Inverness with

a party of thirty soldiers and some armed servants of their own, with

the design of enforcing submission to their legal claims. Let it be

remembered there were then no roads in the Highlands, nothing but a few

horse-tracks along the principal lines in the country, where not the

slightest effort had ever been made to smooth away the natural

difficulties of the ground. In two days, the factors had got to

Invermorriston; but here they were stopped for three days, waiting for

their heavy baggage, which was storm-stayed in Castle Urquhart, and

there nearly taken in a night-attack by a partisan warrior bearing the

name of Evan Roy Macgillivray. The tenantry of Glenmorriston at first

fled with their bestial; but afterwards a number of them came in and

made at least the appearance of submission. The party then moved on

towards Strathglass, while Evan Roy respectfully followed, to pick up

any man or piece of baggage that might be left behind. At Erchless

Castle, and at Invercannich, seats of the Chisholm, they held courts,

and received the submission of a number of the tenants, whom, however,

they subsequently found to be ‘very deceitful.’

There were now forty or fifty miles of the wildest Highland country

before them, where they had reason to believe they should [Sidenote:

1721.] meet groups of murderous Camerons and Glengarry Macdonalds, and

also encounter the redoubted Donald Murchison, with his guard of

Mackenzies, unless their military force should be of an amount to render

all such opposition hopeless. An appointment having been made that they

should receive an addition of fifty soldiers from Bernera, with whom to

pass through the most difficult part of their journey, it seemed likely

that they would appear too strong for resistance; and, indeed,

intelligence was already coming to them, that ‘the people of Kintail,

being a judicious opulent people, would not expose themselves to the

punishments of law,’ and that the Camerons were absolutely determined to

give no further provocation to the government. Thus assured, they set

out in cheerful mood along the valley of Strathglass, and, soon after

passing a place called Knockfin, were reinforced by Lieutenant Brymer,

with the expected fifty men from Bernera. There must have now been about

a hundred well armed men in the invasive body. They spent the next day

(Sunday) together in rest, to gather strength for the ensuing day’s

march of about thirty arduous miles, by which they hoped to reach

Kintail.

At four in the morning of Monday the 2d October, the party set forward,

the Bernera men first, and the factors in the rear. They were as yet far

from the height of the country, and from its more difficult passes; but

they soon found that all the flattering tales of non-resistance were

groundless, and that the Kintail men had come a good way out from their

country in order to defend it. The truth was, that Donald Murchison had

assembled not only his stated band of Mackenzies, but a levy of the

Lewis men under Seaforth’s cousin, Mackenzie of Kildun; also an

auxiliary corps of Camerons, Glengarry and Glenmorriston men, and some

of those very Strathglass men who had been making appearances of

submission. Altogether, he had, if the factors were rightly informed,

three hundred and fifty men with long Spanish firelocks, under his

command, and all posted in the way most likely to give them an advantage

over the invading force.

The rear-guard, with the factors, had scarcely gone a mile, when they

received a platoon of seven shots from a rising ground near them to the

right, with, however, only the effect of piercing a soldier’s hat. The

Bernera company, as we are informed, left the party at eight o’clock, as

they were passing Lochanachlee, and from this time is heard of no more:

how it made its way out of the country does not appear. The remainder

still advancing, Easterfearn, as he rode a little before his men, had

eight shots [Sidenote: 1721.] levelled at him from a rude breastwork

near by, and was wounded in two places, but was able to appear as if he

had not been touched. Then calling out some Highlanders in his service,

he desired them to go before the soldiers, and do their best, according

to their own mode of warfare, to clear the ground of such lurking

parties, so that the troops might advance in safety. They performed this

service pretty effectually, skirmishing as they went on, and the main

body advanced safely about six miles. They were here arrived at a place

called Aa-na-Mullich (_Ford of the Mull People_), where the waters,

descending from the Cralich and the lofty mountains of Kintail, issue

eastwards through a narrow gorge into Loch Affaric. It was a place

remarkably well adapted for the purposes of a resisting party. A rocky

boss, called Tor-an-Beatich, then densely covered with birch, closes up

the glen as with a gate. The black mountain stream, ‘spear-deep,’ sweeps

round it. A narrow path wound up the rock, admitting only of passengers

in single file. Here lay Donald with the best of his people, while

inferior adherents were ready to make demonstrations at a little

distance. As the invasive party approached, they received a platoon from

a wood on the left, but nevertheless went on. When, however, they were

all engaged in toiling up the pass, forty men concealed in the heather

close by fired with deadly effect, inflicting a mortal wound on Walter

Ross, Easterfearn’s son, while Bailie Ross’s son was also hurt by a

bullet which swept across his breast. The bailie called to his son to

retire, and the order was obeyed; but the two wounded youths and Bailie

Ross’s servant were taken prisoners, and carried up the hill, where they

were quickly divested of clothes, arms, money, and papers. Young

Easterfearn died next morning. The troops faced the ambuscade manfully,

and are said to have given their fire thrice, and to have beat the

Highlanders from the bushes near by; but, observing at this juncture

several parties of the enemy on the neighbouring heights, and being

informed of a party of sixty in their rear, Easterfearn deemed it best

to temporise.

He sent forward a messenger to ask who they were that opposed the king’s

troops, and what they wanted. The answer was that, in the first place,

they required to have Ross of Easterfearn delivered up to them. This was

pointedly refused; but it was at length arranged that Easterfearn should

go forward, and converse with the leader of the opposing party. The

meeting took place at Bal-aa-na-Mullich (_the Town of the Mull Men’s

Ford_), and Easterfearn found himself confronted with Donald Murchison.

[Sidenote: 1721.] It ended with Easterfearn giving up his papers, and

covenanting, under a penalty of five hundred pounds, not to officiate in

his factory any more; after which he gladly departed homewards with his

associates, under favour of a guard of Donald’s men, to conduct them

safely past the sixty men lurking in the rear. It was alleged afterwards

that the commander was much blamed by his own people for letting the

factors off with their lives and baggage, particularly by the Camerons,

who had been five days at their post with hardly anything to eat; and

Murchison only pacified them by sending them a good supply of meat and

drink. He had in reality given a very effectual check to the two

gentlemen-factors, to one of whom he imparted in conversation that any

scheme of a government stewardship in Kintail was hopeless, for he and

sixteen others had sworn that, if any person calling himself a factor

came there, they would take his life, whether at kirk or at market, and

deem it a meritorious action, though they should be cut to pieces for it

next minute.[549]

A bloody grave for young Easterfearn in Beauly Cathedral concluded this

abortive attempt to take the Seaforth estates within the scope of a law

sanctioned by statesmen, but against which the natural feelings of

nearly a whole people revolted.[550]

[Sidenote: 1721. DEC.]