‘Upon the earth thrives villainy and wo,
But happiness and I do dwell below;
My hands hewed out this rock into a cell,
Wherein from din of life I safely dwell:
On Jacob’s pillow nightly lies my head,
My house when living, and my grave when dead:
Inscribe upon it when I’m dead and gone:
“I lived and died within my mother’s womb.”’
[Sidenote: 1724.]
It is kept in remembrance that Paterson actually lived and practised his
calling in this subterranean mansion for eleven years. Holiday-parties
used to come from the neighbouring capital to see him and his singular
dwelling; even judges, it is alleged, did not disdain to sit in George’s
stone-parlour, and enjoy the contents of his liquor-cellar. The ground
was held _in feu_, and the yearly duty and public burdens were forgiven
him, on account of the extraordinary labour he had incurred in making
himself a home.[613]
The idea of improving agricultural implements was hitherto unheard of in
Scotland; but now a thrashing-machine was invented by Mr Michael
Menzies, a member of the Scottish bar. On his request, the Society of
Improvers sent a deputation to see it working at Roseburn, near
Edinburgh; and these gentlemen reported upon it favourably.[614] I am
unable to say whether it was identical with a thrashing-machine
advertised in July 1735, as to be had of Andrew Good, wright in College
Wynd, Edinburgh; one to thrash as much as four men, £30; one to do as
much as six, £45; and so on in proportion, ‘being about £7, 10_s._ for
each man’s labour that the machine does, which is but _about the expense
of a servant for one year_.’ It was held forth, regarding this machine,
that for the driving of one equal to four men, most water-mills would
suffice, and one so working was to be seen at Dalkeith.[615]
It would appear, however, that the idea of a machine for thrashing had,
after this time, completely fallen out of notice, as the one which has
long been in use was, in its original form, the invention of Michael
Stirling, farmer at Craighead, in the parish of Dunblane, who died in
1796, in the eighty-ninth year of his age.
‘This venerable man, when in the prime of life, had a strong propensity
to every curious invention; and, after much thought [Sidenote: 1724.]
and study, he prepared and finished, in 1748, a machine for thrashing
his corn. The axis of the thrashing-board was placed perpendicular, and
was moved by an inner wheel on the same axis with an outer one that went
by water. The men stood round about these boards like lint-cleaners,
each man with his sheaf, and performed the work with great rapidity [at
the rate of sixteen bolls of oats _per diem_]. Mr Stirling’s neighbours
were by no means struck with the invention, but laughed at it, and
called him a maggoty fellow. The wonderful powers of the machine,
however, drew the attention of strangers, who came and picked up models,
and so were enabled to erect others both in Scotland and England.’[616]
Subsequently, Mr Meikle, at Alloa, obviated the inconvenience of the
perpendicular arrangement of the axis, by laying it down in a horizontal
form.
A machine for the winnowing of corn was, as far as can be ascertained,
for the first time made in this island by Andrew Rodger, a farmer on the
estate of Cavers in Roxburghshire, in the year 1737. It was after
retiring from his farm to indulge a bent for mechanics, that he entered
on this remarkable invention, and began circulating what were called
_Fanners_ throughout the country, which his descendants continued to do
for many years.[617] This machine is well known to have been the subject
of a religious prejudice among our more rigid sectaries, as indicated
anachronously by Scott in the conversation between Mause Headrig and her
mistress—‘a new-fangled machine for dighting the corn frae the chaff,
thus impiously thwarting the will o’ Divine Providence by raising wind
for your leddyship’s use by human art, instead of soliciting it by
prayer, or patiently waiting for whatever dispensation of wind
Providence was pleased to send upon the shielinghill.’[618] The
‘seceders’ are understood to have taken very strong ground in resistance
to the introduction of fanners, deeming the wind as specially a thing
made by God (‘he that createth the wind,’ _Amos_ iv. 13), and therefore
regarding an artificial wind as a daring and impious attempt to usurp
what belonged to him alone. The author has been informed that an uncle
of the late national poet, Robert Gilfillan, was extruded from a Fife
congregation of this kind because of his persisting to use fanners.
[Sidenote: 1725. JAN.]
About the end of this month, the people of Orkney were thrown into some
excitement by the arrival of a suspicious-looking vessel among their
usually quiet islands. She professed to be a merchantman bound for
Stockholm; but her twenty-two guns and crew of thirty-eight men belied
the tale. In reality, she was a pirate-ship, recently taken under the
care of a reckless man named Gow, or Smith, who had already made her the
means of perpetrating some atrocious villainies in more southern seas.
His alleged connection with Caithness by nativity, and Orkney by
education, was perhaps the principal reason for his selecting this part
of the world as a temporary refuge till some of his recent acts should
be forgotten. His conduct, however, was marked by little prudence. He
used to come ashore with armed men, and hold boisterous festivities with
the islanders. He also made some attempts to enter into social relations
with the gentlemen of the country. It was even said that, during his
brief stay, he made some way in the affections of a young gentlewoman,
who little imagined his real character. It was the more unaccountable
that he lingered thus in the islands, after ten of his people, who had
recently been pressed into his service, left his vessel, and made their
escape in a boat—a circumstance that ought to have warned him that he
could not long evade the notice of the law. In point of fact, the
character of his ship and crew were known at Leith while he was still
dallying with time in the taverns of Stromness.
At length, about the 20th of February, Gow left the southern and more
frequented part of the Orkney group, and sailed to Calf Sound, at the
north part of the island of Eday, designing to apply for fresh
provisions and assistance to a gentleman residing there, who had been
his school-fellow, Mr Fea, younger of Clestran. Chancing to cast anchor
too near the island, the pirate found that his first duty must be to
obtain the assistance of a boat to assist his men in bringing off the
vessel. He sent an armed party of five under the boatswain to solicit
this help from Mr Fea, who received them civilly, but immediately sent
private orders to have his own boat sunk and the sails hidden. He took
the party to a public-house, where he entertained them, and so adroitly
did he manage matters, that ere long they were all disarmed and taken
into custody. The people of the country and some custom-house officers
had by this time been warned to his assistance.
Next day, a violent wind drove the vessel ashore on Calf Island, and
Gow, without a boat, began to feel himself in a serious difficulty. He
hung out a flag for a conference with Mr Fea, who [Sidenote: 1725.]
consequently sent him a letter, telling him that his only chance now was
to yield himself, and give evidence against his company. The wretch
offered goods to the value of a thousand pounds for merely a boat in
which he could leave the coast; but Mr Fea only replied by renewing his
former advice. Some conferences, attended with considerable danger to Mr
Fea, took place; and Gow ultimately came ashore on Calf Island, and was
secured. It is narrated that when he found himself a prisoner, he
entreated to be shot before he should have to surrender his sword. His
men were afterwards made prisoners without much difficulty.
Gow and his company were transported to London, and tried by the Court
of Admiralty on the 27th of May. Himself and eleven others were found
guilty, and condemned. There was at first some difficulty in consequence
of his refusing to plead. The court, finding him refractory on this
point of form, at first tried to bring him to reason by gentle means;
but when these proved ineffectual, he was ordered to the press-yard,
there to be pressed to death, after the old custom with those refusing
to plead. His obstinacy then gave way, and his trial proceeded in due
form, and he was condemned upon the same evidence as his companions.
Nine were executed, of whom two—namely, Gow and his lieutenant, named
Williams—were afterwards hung in chains.[619]
The Scottish newspaper which first narrated the singular story of the
capture of these men, remarked: ‘The gentleman who did this piece of
good service to his country, will no doubt be taken notice of, and
rewarded by the government.’ Sir Walter Scott relates from the tradition
of the country what actually happened to Mr Fea in consequence of his
gallantry. ‘So far from receiving any reward from government, he could
not obtain even countenance enough to protect him against a variety of
sham suits, raised against him by Newgate solicitors, who acted in the
name of Gow and others of the pirate crew; and the various expenses,
vexatious prosecutions, and other legal consequences in which his
gallantry involved him, utterly ruined his fortune and his family.’[620]
[Sidenote: MAY.]
The Duke of Douglas, last direct descendant of the ancient and once
powerful House of Douglas, was a person of such weak character as to
form a dismal antithesis to the historical honours of the
family—entitled to the first vote in parliament, to lead the [Sidenote:
1725.] van of the Scottish army, and to carry the king’s crown in all
processions. Just turned thirty years of age, his Grace lived at his
ancestral castle in Lanarkshire, taking no such part as befitted his
rank and fortune in public affairs, but content to pass his time in the
commonest pleasures, not always in choice society.[621] Amongst his
visitors was a young man named Ker, a natural son of Lord John Ker, the
younger brother of the late Marquis of Lothian, and also brother to the
Dowager-countess of Angus, the duke’s mother. This youth, as cousin to
the duke, though under the taint of illegitimacy, presumed to aspire to
the affections of his Grace’s only sister, the celebrated Lady Jane; and
it is also alleged that he presumed to give the duke some advice about
the impropriety of his keeping company with a low man belonging to his
village. Under a revengeful prompting, it is said, from this fellow, the
poor duke stole by night into the chamber of Mr Ker, and shot him dead
as he lay asleep. Some servants, hearing the noise, came to his Grace’s
room, and found him in great distress at the frightful act which he had
committed, and which he made no attempt to deny. He was as speedily as
possible conducted to Leith, and sent off in a vessel to Holland, there
to remain until he could safely return.[622]
The peerages being politely silent about this affair, we do not learn
how or when the duke was restored to Scottish society. More than thirty
years after, when turned of sixty, he married the daughter of a
Dumbartonshire gentleman, a lady well advanced in life, by whom he had
no children. Dr Johnson, who met the duchess as a widow at Boswell’s
house in 1773, speaks of her as an old lady who talked broad Scotch with
a paralytic voice, and was scarcely intelligible even to her countrymen.
Had the doctor seen her ten years earlier, when she was in possession of
all her faculties, he would have found how much comicality and rough wit
could be expressed in broad Scotch under the coif of a duchess. I have
had the advantage of hearing it described by the late Sir James Steuart
of Coltness, who was in Paris with her Grace in 1762, when she was also
accompanied by a certain Laird of Boysack, and one or two other Scotch
gentlemen, all bent on making the utmost of every droll or whimsical
circumstance that came in their way. Certainly the language and style
[Sidenote: 1725.] of ideas in which the party indulged was enough to
make the hair of the _fastest_ of our day stand on end. There was great
humour one day about a proposal that the duchess should go to court, and
take advantage of the privilege of the _tabouret_, or right of sitting
on a low stool in the queen’s private chamber, which it was alleged she
possessed, by virtue of her late husband’s ancestors having enjoyed a
French dukedom (Touraine) in the fifteenth century. The old lady made
all sorts of excuses in her homely way; but when Boysack started the
theory, that the real objection lay in her Grace’s fears as to the
disproportioned size of the tabouret for the co-relative part of her
figure, he was declared, amidst shouts of laughter, to have divined the
true difficulty—her Grace enjoying the joke fully as much as any of
them. Let this be a specimen of the mate of the last of the House of
Douglas.
[Sidenote: JUNE 24.]
We have already seen that the favourite and ordinary beverage of the
people before this date was a light ale, not devoid of an exhilarating
power, which, being usually sold in pints (equal to two English quarts)
at 2_d._, passed in prose and verse, as well as common parlance, under
the name of Twopenny. The government, conceiving they might raise twenty
thousand pounds per annum out of this modest luxury of the Scotch,
imposed a duty of sixpence a bushel upon malt; and now this was to be
enforced by a band of Excise officers.
The Scotch, besides the ignorant impatience of taxation natural to a
people to whom fiscal deductions were a novelty, beheld in this measure
a mark of the oppressive imperiousness of the British senate, and
bitterly thought of what the Union had brought upon them. At Glasgow,
this was a peculiarly strong feeling, its member of parliament, Mr
Campbell of Shawfield, having taken a leading part in getting the
malt-tax imposed. On the 23d June, when the act came into force, the
populace gave many tokens of the wrath they entertained towards the
excisemen who were putting it in practice; but no violence was used.
Next day, there was shewn a continual disposition to gather in the
streets, which the magistrates as constantly endeavoured to check; and a
military party was introduced to the town. At length, evening having
drawn on, the indignation of the populace could no longer be restrained.
An elegant house which Shawfield had built for himself, and furnished
handsomely, was attacked, and reduced to desolation, notwithstanding
every effort of the magistrates to induce the mob to disperse. Next day,
the mob rose again, and [Sidenote: 1725.] came to the town-house in the
centre of the town, but in no formidable numbers. The military party was
then drawn out by their commander, Captain Bushell, in a hollow square,
in the centre of the crossing at the town-house, each side facing along
one of the four streets which meet there; when, some stones being thrown
at the soldiers, the officer gave way to anger, and without any order
from the provost, fired upon the multitude, of whom eight were killed
and many wounded. The multitude then flew to a guard-house where arms
were kept, armed themselves, and, ringing the town-bell to give an
alarm, were prepared to attack and destroy the comparatively small
military party, when, at the urgency of the provost, the latter withdrew
from the town, and sought refuge at Dumbarton.
The news of this formidable riot, or rather insurrection, created great
excitement among a set of government authorities which had lately come
into office, amongst whom was Mr Duncan Forbes as Lord Advocate. They
took up the matter with a high hand. Attended by a large body of troops,
Forbes marched to Glasgow, and seized the magistrates, under accusation
of having favoured the mob, and bringing them to Edinburgh, clapped them
up in the Tolbooth. Such, however, was the view generally taken of the
malt-tax, that the Glasgow provost and bailies were everywhere treated
as martyrs for their country, and as they passed through the streets of
Edinburgh to prison, some of the lately displaced government officials
walked bareheaded before them. By an appeal to the Court of Justiciary,
as to the legality of their mittimus, they were quickly liberated. The
only effectual vengeance the government could inflict, was an act
ordaining the community of Glasgow to pay Shawfield five thousand pounds
as compensation for the destruction of his house. The feelings of the
people of the west were grievously outraged by the conduct of the
government in this affair, and the more so that they considered it as an
injustice inflicted by friends. Was it for this, they asked, that they
had stood so stoutly for the Whig cause on every trying occasion since
the Revolution?
In August, the officials had a new trouble on their hands. The Edinburgh
brewers intimated an intention to discontinue brewing ale. Duncan Forbes
stood aghast at the idea of what might happen if the people were wholly
deprived of their accustomed beverage. After all, the difficulty
involved in a proposal to force men to go on in a trade against their
will was not too great to be encountered in those days. The _Edinburgh
Evening Courant_ [Sidenote: 1725.] of the 26th of August, quietly
informs us that ‘Mr Carr, engraver to the Mint, who kept a brewery in
this city, and several others of the brewers, are incarcerate in the
Canongate Tolbooth, for not enacting themselves to continue their trade
of brewing, in terms of the Act of Sederunt of the Lords of Council and
Session.’ ‘The Twopenny ale,’ adds this respectable chronicle, ‘begins
to grow scarce here; notwithstanding which the city remains in perfect
tranquillity.’ Long before the unimaginable crisis of an entire
exhaustion of beer had arrived, forty of the brewers of Edinburgh, and
ten of Leith, thought proper to resume work, and the dissolution of
society was averted.[623]
Such were the troubles which Scotland experienced a hundred and
thirty-five years ago, at the prospect of a tax of twenty thousand
pounds per annum!
[Sidenote: JULY.]
Christian Shaw, daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, has been presented
in her girlhood as the cause of a number of prosecutions for witchcraft,
ending in the burning of no fewer than five women on Paisley Green.[624]
As this young lady grew up to woman’s estate, she attained distinction
of a better kind, as the originator of one of the great branches of
industry for which her native province has since been remarkable. She
was actually the first person who introduced the spinning of fine linen
thread into Scotland. ‘Having acquired a remarkable dexterity in
spinning fine yarn, she conceived the idea of manufacturing it into
thread. Her first attempts in this way were necessarily on a small
scale. She executed almost every part of the process with her own hands,
and bleached her materials on a large slate in one of the windows of the
house. She succeeded so well, however, in these essays, as to have
sufficient encouragement to go on, and to take the assistance of her
younger sister and neighbours. The then Lady Blantyre carried a parcel
of her thread to Bath, and disposed of it advantageously to some
manufacturers of lace.... About this time, a person who was connected
with the family, happening to be in Holland, found means to learn the
secrets of the thread-manufacture, which was carried on to a great
extent in that country, particularly the art of sorting and numbering
the threads of different sizes, and packing them up for sale, and the
construction and management of the twisting and twining machines.
[Sidenote: 1725.] This knowledge he communicated, on his return, to his
friends in Bargarran, and by means of it they were enabled to conduct
their manufacture with more regularity, and to a greater extent. The
young women of the neighbourhood were taught to spin fine yarn,
twining-mills were erected, correspondences were established, and a
profitable business was carried on. _Bargarran thread_ became
extensively known, and being ascertained by a stamp, bore a good
price.’[625] By and by, the work was undertaken by others, and in time
it became a leading manufacture of the district. About 1718, Christian
Shaw married Mr Miller, the minister of Kilmaurs parish, and it is
presumed she passed through the remainder of her life much in the same
manner as other persons in that respectable grade.
[Illustration: Bargarran Coat of Arms.]
The newspapers of the time at which we are now arrived, present the
following advertisement: ‘The Lady Bargarran and her daughters having
attained to a great perfection in making, whitening, and twisting of
SEWING THREED, which is as cheap and white, and known by experience to
be much stronger than the Dutch, to prevent people’s being imposed upon
by other Threed, which may be sold under the name of Bargarran Threed,
the Papers in which the Lady Bargarran, and her daughters at Bargarran,
or Mrs Miller, her eldest daughter, at Johnston, do put up their Threed,
shall, for direction, have thereupon the above coat of arms. Those who
want the said Threed, which is to be sold from fivepence to six
shillings per ounce, may write to the Lady Bargarran at Bargarran, or
Mrs Miller at Johnston, near Paisley, to the care of the Postmaster of
Glasgow; and may call for the samen in Edinburgh, at John Seton,
merchant, his shop in the Parliament Close, where they will be served
either in wholesale or retail: and will be served in the same manner at
Glasgow, by William Selkirk, merchant in Trongate.’
Crawford, in his _History of Renfrewshire_, tells us that the
coat-armorial worn by the Shaws of Bargarran bore—‘_azure_, three
covered cups _or_.’ There is something amusingly characteristic in the
wife and daughter of a far-descended Scottish gentleman beginning a
business in ‘threed,’ and putting the family arms on their wares.
[Sidenote: 1725. OCT.]
After the long period during which religious and political contentions
absorbed or repressed the intellectual energies of the people, the first
native who exhibited in his own country a purely scientific genius was
Colin Maclaurin—a man of Highland extraction (born in 1698), whose
biography relates that he was fitted to enter a university at eleven,
mastered at twelve the first six books of Euclid in a few days without
assistance, and gained the chair of mathematics in Marischal College,
Aberdeen, at nineteen, after a competitive examination of ten days.
Having gone to London, and there been introduced to Sir Isaac Newton, Dr
Clark, Sir Martin Folks, and other cultivators of science, Maclaurin was
encouraged to publish several mathematical treatises which gave him an
established reputation while still a young man.
At this time, the advanced years of Mr James Gregory, professor of
mathematics in the university of Edinburgh, making it necessary that he
should have an assistant, who should also be his successor, Mr Maclaurin
became a candidate for the situation, with the recommendation of the
illustrious Newton. The appointment lay with the magistrates and town
council of Edinburgh, who were the patrons of the university—an
arrangement which has been abolished in our age, with little regard to
the rights of property, and still less to the practical good working of
the connection. On this occasion there were some circumstances alike
honourable to Maclaurin, to Newton, and to the Edinburgh municipality.
Sir Isaac, hearing there was a difficulty about salary for the new
professor, the emoluments being reserved for the old one, wrote to the
lord provost of the city as follows: ‘I am glad to understand that Mr
Maclaurin is in good repute amongst you for his skill in mathematics,
for I think he deserves it very well, and, to satisfy you that I do not
flatter him, and also to encourage him to accept the place of assisting
Mr Gregory, in order to succeed him, I am ready (if you please to give
me leave) to contribute twenty pounds per annum towards a provision for
him till Mr Gregory’s place becomes void, if I live so long.’ The town
council respectfully declined this generous offer, and made suitable
arrangements otherwise for the young professor.
Colin Maclaurin amply justified the recommendation of Sir Isaac by the
distinction he attained as a teacher, and his various original
contributions to geometry and physics. A general impulse was given by
him to the cultivation of science. When any remarkable experiment was
reported from other countries, [Sidenote: 1725.] there was a general
wish in Edinburgh to see it repeated by Maclaurin; and when any comet or
eclipse was pending, his telescopes were sure to be in requisition.
Unfortunately, the career of this brilliant geometer was cut short in
consequence of a cold he caught while assisting to improve the defences
of Edinburgh against the army of Prince Charles Edward. He lies under
the south-west corner of the Greyfriars’ Church, where a plain mural
tablet arrests the attention of the student by telling that he was
elected to his chair, NEWTONO SUADENTE, and calls on all to take as a
consolation, in that field of grief and terror, the thought that the
mind which was capable of producing such works must survive the frail
body.
[Sidenote: NOV. 20.]
The post from Edinburgh to London continued to be carried on horseback,
and was of course liable to casualties of what now appear to us of a
strange character. That which left Edinburgh on Saturday the 20th
November 1725, was never heard of after it passed Berwick. ‘A most
diligent search has been made, but neither the boy, the horse, nor the
packet, has yet been heard of. The boy, after passing Goswick, having a
part of the sands to ride which divide the Holy Island from the
mainland, it is supposed he has missed his way, and rode towards the
sea, where he and his horse have both perished.’[626]
A mail due at Edinburgh one day at the close of January 1734, was
apologised for by the postmaster as late. ‘It seems the post-boy who
rides the stage from Haddington to Edinburgh is perished in the river
Tyne, the mail this morning being taken out of that river.’ That due on
the 10th of October in the preceding year did not reach its destination
till the evening of the 11th. ‘It seems the post-boy [so called,
although most likely a middle-aged man], who made the stage between
Dunbar and Haddington, being in liquor, fell off. The horse was
afterwards found at Linplum, but without the mail, saddle, or
bridle.’[627]
On the 9th December 1735, we have the following announcement: ‘The
London post did not come on till this day at noon, on occasion of the
badness of the roads.’—_Cal. Merc._
As a variety upon these kinds of accident, and equally indicating the
simplicity of the institution in those days, may be noticed a mistake of
February 1720, when, ‘instead of the [Sidenote: 1725.] mail should have
come in yesterday (Sunday), _we had our own mail of Thursday last
returned_‘—the presumption being that the mail for Edinburgh had been in
like manner sent back from some unknown point in the road, to London.
And this mistake happened once more in December 1728, the bag despatched
on a Saturday night being returned the _second Sunday morning after_;
‘’tis reckoned this mistake happened about half-way on the road.’[628]
The immediate practical business of the Post-office of Edinburgh appears
to have been conducted, down to the reign of George I., in a shop in the
High Street, by a succession of persons named Mean or Mein, the
descendants of the lady who threw her stool at the bishop’s head in St
Giles’s in 1637; thence it was promoted to a _flat_ in the east side of
the Parliament Close; thence, again, in the reign of George III., to a
detached house behind the north side of the Cowgate. We find that, in
1718, it had a ‘manager’ at two hundred a year, a clerk at fifty, a
comptroller, an assistant at an annual salary of twenty-five pounds, and
three letter-carriers at five shillings a week. In 1748, this
establishment was little changed, excepting that there were added an
‘apprehender of private letter-carriers,’ and a ‘clerk to the Irish
correspondents.’[629] There is a faithful tradition in the office, which
I see no reason to doubt, that one day, not long after the rebellion of
1745, the London bag came to Edinburgh with but one letter in it, being
one addressed to the British Linen Company.
In 1758, a memorial of traders to the Convention of Burghs expressed
impatience with the existing arrangements of the post between Edinburgh
and London, which, owing to a delay of about a day at Newcastle, and a
pause at York, with other impediments, occupied 131 hours. It was urged
that the three posts which passed weekly between the two capitals should
depart from Edinburgh at such a time as, reaching Newcastle in 21 hours,
they might be in time for immediate dispatch by the post thence to
London, and so give a return to correspondence with the metropolis in
seven or eight days, instead of about eleven, as at present.[630]
It may be curious to trace the progress of business in this important
office, as far as the central Scottish establishment is concerned. The
number of persons employed in 1788 was 31; [Sidenote: 1725.] in 1828, it
was 82; in 1840, when the universal penny post was set on foot, it
reached 136; in 1860, it was 244. The number of letters delivered in
Edinburgh in a week in 1824 was 27,381; in 1860, it amounted to 156,000.
The number of letters passing through Edinburgh per week in 1824 was
53,000; in 1860, it was 420,000. At the same time, the number of bags
despatched from Edinburgh daily was 369, weighing forty-nine
hundredweight. At the time when these notes were drawn up, the
establishment had become too large for a spacious and handsome building
erected in 1819, and another office of ampler proportions was about to
be erected.
[Sidenote: DEC.]
Wodrow notes that at this time the merchants of Glasgow, in despair of
the colonial tobacco-trade, were beginning to think of ventures in other
directions, as the East Indies, and the Greenland whale-fishing.
Meanwhile, a Fishery Company, some time since set up at Edinburgh, was
languishing, the officials eating up more than the profit. ‘As far as I
can see,’ says the worthy minister of Eastwood, ‘till the Lord send more
righteousness and equity, and of a public spirit, no company or
copartnery among us will do any good.’
In the ensuing August, the same chronicler notes some important points
in the progress of Glasgow, without giving us any hint of improvement in
respect of righteousness. ‘This summer,’ says he, ‘there seems to be a
very great inclination through the country to improve our manufactory,
and especially linen and hemp. They speak of a considerable society in
Glasgow of the most topping merchants, who are about to set up a
manufactory of linen, which will keep six hundred poor people at work.
The gentlemen, by their influence, seem much to stir up country-people,
and to encourage good tradesmen, and some care is taken to keep linen
and webs exactly to standard, and to see that the stuff be good and
marketable.... What will come of it, I know not. I have seen frequent
attempts of this nature come to very little.’[631]
It is gratifying to think that the year 1725, which is so sadly
memorable in the history of Glasgow on account of the ‘Shawfield Mob,’
really did become the epoch of that vast system of textile manufacture
for which the city has since been so celebrated. The first efforts of
her looms were confined to linen [Sidenote: 1725.] cloth, lawns, and
cambrics. Seven years later, one of her enterprising citizens, a Mr
Alexander Harvie, ‘at the risk of his life, brought away from Haerlem
two inkle-looms and a workman,’[632] and was thus enabled to introduce
the manufacture of inkles into his native town, where it long
flourished. The establishment of the cotton-manufacture in and around
Glasgow was the work of a subsequent age, and need not be dwelt upon
here.
Considering the engrossing nature of the pursuits of commerce, it is
remarkably creditable to Glasgow that her university has always been
maintained in a high state of efficiency, and that she has never allowed
the honours of literature to be wholly diverted to her more serene
sister of the east. So far had printing and publishing advanced in
Glasgow in the reign of the second George, that, in 1740, a
type-founding establishment was commenced there, being the first to the
north of the Tweed. The immediate credit of this good work is due to Mr
Alexander Wilson, a native of St Andrews. He subsequently became
professor of practical astronomy in the Glasgow University, and there,
in 1769, worked out the long-received theory of the solar spots, which
suggests their being breaches in a luminous envelope of the sun’s body.
Favoured by the presence of a type-foundry, two citizens of Glasgow
named Faulls, but who subsequently printed their name as Foulis,
commenced the business of typography in 1741, and soon became
distinguished for their accurate and elegant work, particularly in the
printing of the classics. Eager to produce what might be esteemed an
immaculate edition of Horace, they caused the successive proof-sheets,
after revision, to be hung up at the gate of the university, with the
offer of a reward for the discovery of an error. Before 1747, the Messrs
Foulis had produced editions of eighteen classics, all of them beautiful
specimens of typography.
After all, the merchants of infant Glasgow were able to overcome the
difficulties which an iniquitous rivalry threw in the way of their
tobacco-trade. It went on gradually increasing till a sudden stop was
put to it by the revolt of the American colonies, when it had reached an
annual importation of about fifty thousand hogsheads, being the great
bulk of what was consumed in the three kingdoms. In the early days of
the trade, when capital was not abundant, the custom was for a very
small group of the more considerable merchants to advance two or three
hundred pounds [Sidenote: 1725.] each, and ask the lesser men around
them to add such shares as they pleased; by these means to make purchase
of goods suited for use in Virginia, which were sent out under the care
of a supercargo, to be exchanged for a lading of tobacco. ‘The first
adventure ... was sent under the sole charge of the captain of the
vessel. This person, though a shrewd man, knew nothing of accounts; and
when he was asked by his employers, on his return, for a statement of
how the adventure had turned out, told them he could give them none, but
there were its proceeds, and threw down upon the table a large _hoggar_
(stocking) stuffed to the top with coin [being of course the
money-surplus of the goods sent out, after the cargo of tobacco was paid
for]. The company conceived that if an uneducated person had been so
successful, their gains would have been still greater if a person versed
in accounts had been sent out. Under this impression, they immediately
despatched a second adventure with a supercargo highly recommended for a
knowledge of accounts, who produced to them a beautifully made-out
statement of his transactions, but no _hoggar_.’[633]
Afterwards, the groups of adventurers associated little more than their
credit in the getting up of cargoes of goods for the colonial market,
and these were not in general paid till the return of the tobacco, at
the distance perhaps of a twelvemonth. When the manager of the
copartnery was ready to discharge its obligations, he summoned the
various furnishers of the goods to a tavern, where, over a measure of
wine to each, paid for by themselves, he handed them the amount of their
various claims, receiving a discharged account in return. In such
retreats all important matters of business were then transacted. They
were in many instances kept by the female relations of merchants who had
not been successful in business; and in selecting one whereto to summon
the furnishers of goods for payment, the manager would generally have an
eye to a benevolent design in favour of the family of an associate of
former days.
As the century rolled on, and transactions increased in magnitude,
luxury and pride crept in, men learned to garnish their discourse with
strange oaths, and the Wodrow pre-requisite of ‘righteousness’ was
always less and less heard of. The wealth of the _Tobacco Lords_, as the
men pre-eminent in the trade were called, reached an amount which made
them the wonder of their [Sidenote: 1725.] country. One named Glassford,
during the Seven Years’ War, had twenty-five vessels engaged in the
business, and was said to trade for half a million.[634] They formed a
kind of aristocracy in their native city, throwing all tolerably
successful industry in other walks into the shade. Old people, not long
deceased, used to describe them as seen every day on the Exchange, or a
piece of pavement in Argyle Street so called, walking about in long
scarlet cloaks and bushy wigs, objects of awful respect to their
fellow-citizens, who, if desirous of speaking to one of them on
business, found it necessary to walk on the other side of the street,
till they should be fortunate enough to catch his eye, and be signalled
across. All this came to an end with the breaking out of the American
war; when, however, the irrepressible energies and wealth of that
wonderful people of the west speedily found new fields of
operation—cotton, timber, iron, chemicals, ship-building, and (in sober
sincerity) _what not?_
[Sidenote: 1726.]
The Tennis Court theatricals of spring 1715 probably did not long hold
their ground. Thereafter, we hear of no further amusement of the kind
being in any fashion attempted in Edinburgh till 1719, when ‘some young
gentlemen’ performed _The Orphan_ and the _Cheats of Scapin_, but most
probably in a very private manner, though Allan Ramsay consented to
introduce the performance with a prologue.[635] Among the Wodrow
pamphlets preserved in the Advocates’ Library, is a broadside containing
‘Verses spoken after the performance of Otway’s tragedy, called _The
Orphan_, at a private meeting in Edinburgh, December 9, 1719, by a boy
in the University [added in manuscript, “Mr Mitchell”].’ He ends with a
threat to meet adverse critics in the King’s Park. Edinburgh was about
the same time occasionally regaled with the visits of a certain Signora
Violante, who trooped about the three kingdoms for the exhibition of
feats in tumbling and posture-making.[636]
It would appear that the first Scottish theatricals not quite
insignificant were presented in the winter 1725–26, when Anthony Aston,
a performer not without his fame, came to Edinburgh with a company of
comedians, and was so far favourably received that he ventured to return
in the ensuing year. On that occasion, Allan Ramsay composed for him the
following prologue, [Sidenote: 1726.] conveying to us some notion of the
feelings with which the venture was regarded:
‘“Tis I, dear Caledonians, blythesome Tony,
That oft, last winter, pleased the brave and bonny,
With medley, merry song, and comic scene:
Your kindness then has brought me here again,
After a circuit round the Queen of Isles,
To gain your friendship and approving smiles.
Experience bids me hope—though, south the Tweed,
The dastards said: “He never will succeed:
What! such a country look for any good in,
That does not relish plays, nor pork, nor pudding!”
Thus great Columbus, by an idiot crew,
Was ridiculed at first for his just view;
Yet his undaunted spirit ne’er gave ground,
Till he a new and better world had found.
So I—laugh on—the simile is bold;
But, faith! ’tis just: for till this body’s cold,
Columbus-like, I’ll push for fame and gold.’[637]
The prevalent feeling on the subject in authoritative circles may be
inferred from the conduct of the magistracy and clergy. An act of
council being passed, prohibiting Mr Aston from acting within the limits
of their jurisdiction, the presbytery met, and appointed a deputation to
wait upon the magistrates, and thank them ‘for the just zeal they had
shewn in the matter.’ A committee was at the same time appointed to draw
up an _act and exhortation_ against the frequenting of stage-plays,
which, by their order, was read from all the pulpits in the
district.[638]
Wodrow talks of Aston’s proceedings as ‘filling up our cup of sin.’
‘Three or four noblemen—some of them ruling elders—combined to favour
the comedians, giving them such a warrant as they thought their peerage
entitled them to give. Three or four of the Lords of Session were
favourable to them, and yet no direct interlocutor was given them,
empowering them to set up. The matter took several different shapes, and
many different decisions were given by the Lords, which concerned
circumstances rather than the direct lawfulness of their plays.’ Wodrow
speaks of a large attendance, especially at their tragedies, the
_Mourning Bride_ having had a run of three nights. ‘A vast deal of
money, [Sidenote: 1726.] in this time of scarcity, is spent this way
most sinfully.’ They even ‘talk of building a public playhouse at
Edinburgh.’
To the great vexation of the ecclesiastical authorities, the decree of
the magistrates was appealed against in the Court of Session, with what
were believed to be good hopes of success. Just at that crisis, we find
Mr Wodrow writing in great concern on the subject, from his Renfrewshire
manse, to Mr George Drummond, commissioner of customs in Edinburgh
(November 27, 1727). He states that his parishioner, Lord Pollock, one
of the judges, was unfortunately detained at home, being ‘considerably
failed, and very crazy;’ so he could not attend the court to give his
vote. ‘I pray God may order matters so as to prevent my fears in this
matter.... I desire to have it on my heart, and shall stir up some who,
I hope, are praying persons, to be concerned in it. However it go, I
think the magistrates of Edinburgh may have peace in the honest
appearance they have made against those seminaries of idleness,
looseness, and sin.’[639]
There was, however, no legal means of putting down Mr Aston. The
magistrates’ interdict was suspended, and from that time the players had
only to contend with public opinion.[640]
[Sidenote: FEB. 12.]
Serious onlookers are eager to note other symptoms of the alarming
progress of levity. A private letter-writer remarks, under our marginal
date, that, ‘notwithstanding the general complaint of scarcity of money,
there were never so many diversions in one winter.... There is scarce
one night passes without either medley, concert, or assembly, and these
entertainments generally conclude with some private marriage, of which
we have a vast number ... such as Sir Edward Gibson and Mrs Maitland, a
cousin of the Earl of Lauderdale; M‘Dowal and a daughter of Dr Stirling;
a son of Bailie Hay with Regent Scott’s daughter; and my Lord Bruce is
to be married regularly to Mrs Robertson, who has above £3000, this very
night.’
A few days after, the same writer reports a private marriage as
discovered between the son of Sir John Dalrymple and ‘Matthew Crawford’s
daughter.’ ‘Sir John seems pretty much disobliged that his son should
not have asked his consent, though it’s [Sidenote: 1726.] thought he
will soon get over all difficulties.’ The eccentric Earl of Rosebery
‘has been for a considerable time in prison, where it’s believed he will
spend the remainder of his days with his good friend Burnbank.’
A few weeks later, an abduction in the old style was perpetrated by a
Highlander upon ‘a niece of Mr Moubray the wright,’ not above twelve
years of age, whose gouvernante had betrayed her upon a promise of a
thousand merks, the young lady having £3000 of fortune. Mr Moubray
‘luckily catched them near to Queensferry, as they were coming to town
to be married.’ ‘The gouvernante is committed to prison, as is also the
gentleman.’[641]
In May, Mr Wodrow adverts to a rumour that there were some clubs in
Edinburgh, very secretly conducted, composed of gentlemen of atheistical
opinions. They were understood to be offshoots of a similar fraternity
in London, rejoicing in the name of the Hell-fire Club, as signifying
the disregard of the members for the thing referred to. Wodrow whispers
with horror, that the secretary of the Hell-fire Club, a Scotsman, was
reported to have come to Edinburgh to plant these affiliated societies.
‘He fell into melancholy, as it was called, but probably horror of
conscience and despair, and at length turned mad. Nobody was allowed to
see him, and physicians prescribed bathing for him, and he died mad at
the first bathing. The Lord pity us,’ concludes Mr Wodrow; ‘wickedness
is come to a terrible height!’[642]
There is among the Wodrow pamphlets a broadside giving an account of the
Hell-fire Clubs, Sulphur Societies, and Demirep Dragons then in vogue.
It includes a list of persons of quality engaged in these fraternities,
and the various names they bore—as Elisha the Prophet, the King of Hell,
Old Pluto, the Old Dragon, Lady Envy, the Lady Gomorrah, &c. An edict
had been issued against them by the government, reciting that there was
reason to suspect that, in the cities of London and Westminster, there
were scandalous clubs or societies of young persons, who meet together,
and in blasphemous language insult God and his holy religion, and
corrupt the morals of one another. The justices of the peace were
enjoined to be diligent in rooting out such schools of profanity.
The Hell-fire Club seems to have projected itself strongly on the
popular imagination in Scotland, for the peasantry still occasionally
speak of it with bated breath and whispering horror. [Sidenote: 1726.]
Many wicked lairds are talked of, who belonged to the Hell-fire Club,
and who came to bad ends, as might have been expected on grounds
involving no reference to miracle.
Public combats with sword and rapier were among the amusements of the
age. They took place regularly in London, at a place called the Bear
Garden, and at an amphitheatre in the Oxford Road; likewise at Hockley.
It seems scarcely credible that not only was this practice permitted,
but it was customary for the men who were to cut and slash at each other
in the evening, to parade through the streets in the forenoon, in fancy
dresses, with drums beating and colours flying, as an advertisement of
the performance.
Sometimes, when one of these modern gladiators attained to fame, he
would go to a provincial city, and announce himself as willing to fight
all-comers on a public stage for any sum that might be agreed upon. Such
persons seem most frequently to have been natives of the sister-island.
One Andrew Bryan, an Irishman, described as ‘a clean young man’—that is,
a well-made, nimble person—came to Edinburgh, in June 1726, as a
gladiatorial star, and challenged any who might choose to take him up.
For days he paraded the streets with his drum, without meeting a
combatant, and several gentlemen of the city began to feel annoyed at
his vapourings, when at length the challenger was answered. There had at
this time retired to Edinburgh an old Killiecrankie soldier, named
Donald Bane—a man who had attained the distinction of a sergeantcy, who
had taught the broadsword exercise, who had fought creditably in all the
wars of William and Anne in succession, but was withal much of a
scapegrace, though a good-humoured one, as fully appears from a little
autobiography which he published, along with the rules of the art of
defence. Though now sixty-two, and inclined to repent of much of his
earlier career, Donald retained enough of his original spirit to be
disposed to try a turn at sharps with Bryan; so, meeting him in the
street one day, he sent his foot through the drum, as an indication that
he accepted the challenge. Gentlefolks were interested when they heard
of it, and one learned person thought proper to compose for Bane a
regular answer to the challenge in Latin verse—
‘Ipse ego, Donaldus Banus, formâ albus et altus,
Nunc huic Andreæ thrasoni occurrere deero,’ &c.
The combat took place at the date noted, on a stage erected for
[Sidenote: 1726. JUNE 23.] the purpose behind Holyrood Palace, in the
presence of a great number of noblemen, gentlemen, military officers,
and others. It was conducted with much formality, and lasted several
hours, with a variety of weapons; and not till Bryan had received seven
wounds from his unscathed antagonist, did he feel the necessity of
giving in. The victory of the Highland veteran seems to have given rise
to great exultation, and he was crowned with praises in both prose and
rhyme. He was compared to Ajax overcoming Thersites; and one Latin wit
remarked in a quatrain, that the stains of the two former Donald Banes
of Scottish history were wiped off by the third. A more fortunate result
for us was the publication of Bane’s autobiography,[643] containing a
number of characteristic anecdotes.
Little more than two years after the combat of Bane and Bryan, a similar
encounter is noted in the _Edinburgh Courant_ as taking place in the
Tennis Court at Holyrood, between ‘Campbell the Scots, and Clerk the
Irish gladiator,’ when the former received a wound in the face, and the
second sustained seven in the body.
[Sidenote: AUG. 8.]
At an election for the county of Roxburgh at Jedburgh, a quarrel arose
between Sir Gilbert Elliot of Stobbs, a candidate, and Colonel Stewart
of Stewartfield, who opposed him. Colonel Stewart, who was ‘a huffing,
hectoring person,’ is said to have given great provocation, and
gentlemen afterwards admitted that Stobbs was called upon by the laws of
honour to take notice of the offence. According to a petition to the
Court of Session from the son of Stewart, Elliot stabbed him as he sat
in his chair on the opposite side of a table, with his sword by his
side.
The homicide took refuge in Holland, but was soon enabled by a pardon to
return to his own country.[644]
[Sidenote: AUG. 9.]
The correspondence of General Wade with the Secretary of State
Townsend,[645] makes us aware that at this time several of the attainted
gentlemen of 1715 had returned to Scotland, in the hope of obtaining a
pardon, or at least of being permitted to remain undisturbed. The
general humanely pleads for their being pardoned on a formal submission.
Amongst them was Alexander Robertson of Struan, chief of the clan
Robertson, a gentleman [Sidenote: 1726.] who had fought for the Stuarts
both at Killiecrankie and Sheriffmuir, and who is further memorable for
his convivial habits and his gifts in the writing of pure, but somewhat
dull English poetry.
In the year of the Revolution, being a youth of twenty at the university
of St Andrews, Struan accepted a commission in some forces then hastily
proposed to be raised for James VII.; and, keeping up this military
connection, he joined the Highland army of Lord Dundee, but was taken
prisoner by the enemy, September 1689, and thrown into the Edinburgh
Tolbooth. Here a piece of Highland gratitude served him a good turn.
Four years before, when the Perthshire loyalists were hounded out to
ravage the lands of the unfortunate Argyle, the late Laird of Struan
had, for humane reasons, pleaded for leave to stay at home and take care
of the country. The now restored Earl of Argyle, remembering this
kindness to his family, interceded for young Robertson, and procured his
liberation in exchange for Sir Robert Maxwell of Pollock, who was in the
hands of the Highlanders. Struan then passed into France, and joined the
exiled king, hoping ere long to return and see the old _régime_
restored; and in his absence, the Scottish parliament declared him
forfaulted. He spent many years of melancholy exile in France, enduring
the greatest hardships that a gentleman could be subjected to, having no
dependence but upon occasional remittances from his mother. Being at
length enabled to return to Perthshire, he once more forfeited all but
life by joining in the insurrection of 1715. For nine years more he
underwent a new exile in the greatest poverty and hardship, while, to
add to his mortifications, a disloyal sister, hight ‘Mrs Margaret,’
contrived to worm herself into the possession of his forfeited estates.
In France, Struan had for a fellow in misfortune a certain Professor
John Menzies, under whom he had studied at St Andrews, and who seems to
have been an old gentleman of some humour. There is extant a letter of
Menzies to Struan, giving him advice about his health, and which seems
worthy of preservation for the hints it gives as to the habits of these
expatriated Scotch Jacobites. It bears to have been written in answer to
one in which Struan had spoken of being ill:
‘PARIS, _March 20_.
‘D. S.—I have been out of town a little for my own health, which has
kept me some days from receiving or answering your last, in which you
speak of some indisposition of yours. I [Sidenote: 1726.] hope that
before now it is over of itself by a little quiet and temperance, and
that thereby nature has done its own business, which it rarely fails
to do when one gives it elbow-room, and when it is not quite spent.
“When that comes, the house soon comes down altogether. This I have
always found in my own case. Whenever I was jaded by ill hours and
company, and the consequences of that, I have still retired a little
to some convenient hermitage in the country, with two or three doses
of rhubarb, and as many of salts. That washes the Augean stable, and
for the rest I drink milk and whey, and sometimes a very little wine
and water. No company but Horace and Homer, and such old gentlemen
that drink no more now. I walk much, eat little, and sleep a great
deal. And by this cool and sober and innocent diet, nature gets up its
head again, and the horse that was jaded and worn out grows strong
again, so that he can jog on some stages of the farce of life without
stumbling or breaking his neck. This is a consultation I give you
gratis from my own practice and never-failing experience, which is
always the best physician. And I am satisfied it would do in your
case, where I reckon nature is haill at the heart still, after all
your cruel usage of it.
‘As to all those pricklings and startings of the nerves, they come
from the ill habit of the blood and body, brought on by ill diet and
sharp or earthy wine, as your Orleans wine is reckoned to be—for there
are crab-grapes as there are crab-apples, and sloes as well as
muscadines.
‘There are great differences of constitutions. Those of a sanguine can
drink your champagne or cyder all their life, and old Davy Flood has
drunk punch these fifty years daily. Whereas a short time of the
lemons that’s in punch would eat out the bottom of my stomach, or make
me a cripple. Much champagne, too, would destroy my nerves, though I
like its spirit and taste dearly. But it will not do, that is, it
never did well with me when I was young and strong; now much less. My
meaning in this dissertation about wine and constitutions is plainly
this, first, to recommend to you frequent retraites, in order to be
absolutely cool, quiet, and sober, with a little gentle physic now and
then, in order to give time and help to nature to recover. And when
you will needs drink wine—that it be of the haill and old
south-country wines, Hermitage, Coté Rotis, Cahors, &c., with a little
water still, since there is a heat in them.
‘As to any external tremblings or ailings of the nerves, pray make
constant usage of Hungary-water to your head and [Sidenote: 1726.]
nosethrills, and behind your ears—of which I have found an infinite
effect and advantage of a long time, for I have been very often in the
very same case you describe, and these have always been my certain
cures. _Repetatur quantum sufficit_, and I will warrant you.
‘Write again, and God bless you.’[646]
Struan was now successful in obtaining a pardon, and for the remainder
of his days he lived in the cultivation of the bottle and the muse at
his estate in Rannoch. Only prevented by old age from risking all once
again in the adventure of Prince Charlie, he died quietly in 1749,
having reached his eighty-first year. So venerable a chief, who had used
both the sword of Mars and the lyre of Apollo in the cause of the
Stuarts, could not pass from the world notelessly. His funeral was of a
character to be described as a great provincial _fête_. It was computed
that two thousand persons, including the noblemen and gentlemen of the
district, assembled at his house to carry him to his last resting-place,
which was distant eighteen English miles; and for all of these there was
entertainment provided according to their different ranks.[647]
Having taken personal surveys of the Highlands in the two preceding
years, General Wade was prepared, in this, to commence the making of
those roads which he reported to be so necessary for the reduction of
the country to obedience, peace, and civilisation. He contemplated that,
after the example set by the Romans sixteen hundred years before, the
work might be done by the soldiers, on an allowance of extra pay; and
five hundred were selected as sufficient for the purpose. Engineers and
surveyors he brought down from England, one being the Edmund Burt to
whom we have been indebted for so much information regarding the
Highlands at this period, through the medium of the letters he wrote
during his long residence in this country.[648]
[Sidenote: 1726.]
‘In the summer seasons [during eleven years], five hundred of the
soldiers from the barracks and other quarters about the Highlands were
employed in those works in different stations. The private men were
allowed sixpence a day, over and above their pay as soldiers. A corporal
had eightpence, and a sergeant a shilling. But this extra pay was only
for working-days, which were often interrupted by violent storms of wind
and rain. These parties of men were under the command of proper
officers, who were all subalterns, and received two shillings and
sixpence _per diem_, to defray their extraordinary expense in building
huts, making necessary provision for their tables from distant parts
(unavoidable, though unwelcome visits), and other incidents arising from
their wild situation.’[649]
A Scottish gentleman, who visited the Highlands in 1737, discovered the
roads completed, and was surprised by the improvements which he found to
have arisen from them, amongst which he gratefully notes the existence
of civilised places for the entertainment of travellers. It pleased him
to put his observations into verse—rather dull and prosaic verse it is,
one must admit—yet on that very account the more useful now-a-days, by
reason of the clearness of the information it gives.[650] After speaking
of Wade’s success in carrying out the Disarming Act, and his suppression
of disorders by the garrisons and Highland companies, he proceeds to
treat of the roads, which had impressed him as a work of great merit. It
seemed to him as an undertaking in no slight degree arduous, considering
the limited means and art which then existed, to extend firm roads
across Highland morasses, to cut out paths along rough hillsides, and to
protect the way when it was formed from the subsequent violent action of
Highland torrents and inundations. One of the most difficult parts of
the first road was that traversing the broad, lofty mountain called
Corryarrack, near to Fort Augustus. It is ascended on the south side by
a series of zigzags, no less than thirteen in number. The general
expended great care and diligence in the work, even to the invention of
a balsam for healing the wounds and hurts inflicted on the men by
accident.
In the forming of the numerous bridges required upon the roads, there
was one natural difficulty, in addition to all others, in the want of
easily hewn stone. The bridge of five arches across the Tay at Weem was
considered as a marvellous work at the [Sidenote: 1726.] time. In
another part of the country, an unusually rugged river gave Wade and his
people a great deal of trouble. The men, oppressed with heat during the
day, and chilled with frosts as they bivouacked on the ground at night,
were getting dispirited, when the general bethought him of a happy
expedient.
‘A fatted ox he ordered to be bought,
The best through all the country could be sought.
His horns well polished and with ribbons graced,
A piper likewise played before the beast.
Such, were in days of yore for victims led,
And on the sacrifice a feast was made.
The ox for slaughter he devotes, and then
Gives for a gratis feast unto his men.
Quick and with joy a bonfire they prepare,
Of turf and heath, and brushwood fagots, where
The fatted ox is roasted all together;
Next of the hide they make a pot of leather,
In which the lungs and tripe cut down they boil,
With flour and tallow mixed in lieu of oil.
Then beef and pudding plentifully eat,
With store of cheering _Husque_[651] to their meat.
Their spir’ts thus raised, their work becomes a play,
New vigour drives all former stops away.
The place from that received another name,
And OXBRIDGE rises to all future fame.’
We derive some interesting facts about Wade’s proceedings at this time
from his correspondence, still in manuscript.[652]
Writing to the Secretary of State, Lord Townsend, Edinburgh, 9th August
1726, he says: ‘I can with satisfaction assure your lordship that the
Disarming Act has fully answered all that was proposed by it, there
being no arms carried in the Highlands but by those who are legally
qualified; depredations are effectually prevented by the Highland
companies; and the Pretender’s interest is so low, that I think it can
hope for no effectual assistance from that quarter.’
Dating from Killiwhimmen [Fort Augustus] on the 16th of the ensuing
month, he tells his lordship:
‘I have inspected the new roads between this place and Fort William, and
ordered it to be enlarged and carried on for wheel-carriage over the
mountains on the south side of Loch Ness, as far as the town of
Inverness, so that before midsummer next there will be a good coach-road
from that place, which before was not [Sidenote: 1726.] passable on
Horseback in many places. This work is carried on by the military with
less expense and difficulty than I at first imagined it could be
performed, and the Highlanders, from the ease and convenience of
transporting their merchandise, begin to approve and applaud what they
at first repined at and submitted to with reluctancy.’
Writing, in September 1727, to Lord Townsend, he states that he had
lately found the Highlands in perfect tranquillity, ‘and the great road
of communication so far advanced, that I travelled to Fort William in my
coach-and-six, to the great wonder of the country people, who had never
seen such a machine in those parts. I have likewise given directions for
carrying on another great road southward through the Highlands from
Inverness to Perth, which will open a communication with the low
country, and facilitate the march of a body of troops when his majesty’s
service may require it.’
The general’s coach-and-six had been brought to Inverness by the
coast-road from the south, and Burt assures us that ‘an elephant exposed
in one of the streets of London could not have excited greater
admiration. One asked what the chariot was. Another, who had seen the
gentleman alight, told the first, with a sneer at his ignorance, it was
a great cart to carry people in, and such like. But since the making of
some of the roads, I have passed through them with a friend, and was
greatly delighted to see the Highlanders run from their huts close to
the chariot, and, looking up, bow with their bonnets to the coachman,
little regarding us that were within. It is not unlikely that they
looked upon him as a kind of prime minister, that guided so important a
machine.’[653]
Wade, writing to Mr Pelham from Blair, 20th July 1728, says: ‘I am now
with all possible diligence carrying on the new road for wheel-carriage
between Dunkeld and Inverness, of about eighty measured English miles in
length; and that no time may be lost in a work so necessary for his
majesty’s service, I have employed 300 men on different parts of this
road, that the work may be done during this favourable season of the
year, and hope, by the progress they have already made, to have forty
miles of it completed before the end of October,[654] at which time the
heavy rains make it impracticable to proceed in the work till the summer
following.
[Sidenote: 1726.]
‘There is so great a scarcity of provisions in this barren country, that
I am obliged to bring my biscuit, cheese, &c., for the support of the
workmen, from Edinburgh by land-carriage, which, though expensive, is of
absolute necessity. There is about fifteen miles of this road completely
finished, and, I may venture to assure you, it is as good and as
practicable for wheel-carriage as any in England. There are two
stone-bridges building on the road that was finished last year between
Inverness and Fort William, and two more are begun on this road, all
which will, I hope, be completed by the middle of October. The rest that
will be wanting will be eight or ten in number to complete the
communication, which must be deferred to the next year.’
[Sidenote: JULY.]
The Society of Improvers at this date made a suggestion to the governors
of George Heriot’s Hospital (magistrates and clergy of Edinburgh) which
marks a degree of liberality and judgment far beyond what was to be
expected of the age. They recommended that the boys of that institution,
all being children of persons in reduced circumstances, should have
instruction in useful arts imparted to them along with the ordinary
elements of learning. Such a practice had already been introduced in
Holland and France, and even in England (in workhouses), with the best
effects. They at the same time recommended that the girls in the
Merchant Maiden Hospital should be taught the spinning of flax and
worsted, and be put in twos and threes weekly into the kitchen to learn
house affairs. A committee was appointed to confer with the magistrates
upon this plan; but the matter was afterwards put into the hands of the
Trustees for the Encouragement of Manufactures.[655]
It would appear as if some practical result had followed, at least for a
time, as in December 1730, the Edinburgh newspapers advert in terms of
admiration to two girls of the Merchant Maiden Hospital, who, ‘upon
being only three weeks taught the French method of spinning, have spun
exceeding fine yarn at the rate of twelve and a half spindle to the
pound avoirdupois, which is thought to be the best and finest that ever
was done in this country.’
[Sidenote: SEP. 10.]
Inoculation, or, as it was at first called, _engrafting_ for the
small-pox, was reported from the East to British physicians as early as
[Sidenote: 1726.] 1714, but neglected. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
visiting Turkey with her husband, the British ambassador, found it in
full vogue there, and reported it at once so safe and so effectual, that
people came together as to a party of pleasure to have it performed upon
them by old women. It was in March 1718 that her ladyship, viewing the
matter in entire independence of all silly fears, submitted her infant
son to the process. Finding it successful, she exerted herself, on her
return to England, to have the practice introduced there, and, by favour
of Caroline, Princess of Wales, gained her point against the usual host
of objectors. Her own daughter was the first person inoculated in Great
Britain. It was then tried on four criminals, reprieved for the purpose,
and found successful. Two of the princess’s children followed, in April
1722. The process was simultaneously introduced into Boston, in
Massachusetts.
Lady Mary tells us next year, that inoculation was beginning to be a
good deal practised. ‘I am,’ says she, ‘so much pulled about and
solicited to visit people, that I am forced to run into the country to
hide myself.’[656] Yet the fact is, that it made its way very slowly,
having to encounter both the prejudices of medical men, who
misapprehended its scientific nature, and the objections of certain
serious people, who denounced it as ‘taking the Almighty’s work out of
his hands.’[657] Just as the two young princesses were recovering,
appeared a pamphlet, in which the author argued that this new invention
is ‘utterly unlawful, an audacious presumption, and a thing forbid in
Scripture, in that express command: “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy
God.”’ It would appear as if there never yet was any valuable discovery
made for the alleviation of misery, or the conferring of positive
benefits on mankind, but there are some persons who find it irreligious,
and would be rejoiced in seeing it fail. It must have been under such a
spirit that some one inserted in the prints of the day a notice desiring
‘all persons who know anything of the ill success of inoculation, to
send a particular account thereof to Mr Roberts, printer in
Warwickshire.’ Only 897 persons (of whom seventeen died) were inoculated
during the first eight years.[658]
The operation appears not to have been introduced in Scotland till
upwards of five years after its introduction in London. A letter of the
date noted, from Mr R. Boyd in Edinburgh to the [Sidenote: 1726.] Rev.
Mr Wodrow at Eastwood, gives the following among other matters of
familiar intelligence: ‘The story of Abercromby of Glassaugh’s child
being inoculated in this country, and recovered of the small-pox, is in
the written letter and some of the prints.’[659] From the reference to a
written letter—namely, a periodical holograph sheet of news from
London—we may infer that the infant in question was inoculated there,
and that the practice was as yet unknown in our country.
[Sidenote: OCT. 19.]
An interesting and singular scene was this day presented in the streets
of Edinburgh. Five men, named Garnock, Foreman, Stewart, Ferrie, and
Russell, were executed at the Gallowlee on the 10th of October 1681, and
their heads put up at the Cowgate Port, while their bodies were interred
under the gallows. Some of their friends lifted and re-interred the
bodies in the West Churchyard, and also took down the heads for a
similar purpose; but, being scared, were obliged to inhume these relics,
enclosed in a box, in a garden at Lauriston, on the south side of the
city. On the 7th October of this year, the heads were discovered as they
had been laid there forty-five years before, the box only being
consumed. Mr Shaw, the owner of the garden, had them lifted and laid out
in a summer-house, where the friends of the old cause had access to see
them. Patrick Walker relates what followed. ‘I rejoiced,’ he says, ‘to
see so many concerned grave men and women favouring the dust of our
martyrs. There were six of us concluded to bury them upon the nineteenth
day of October 1726, and every one of us to acquaint friends of the day
and hour, being Wednesday, the day of the week upon which most of them
were executed, and at 4 of the clock at night, being the hour that most
of them went to their resting graves. We caused make a compleat coffin
for them in black, with four yards of fine linen, the way that our
martyrs’ corps were managed; and, having the happiness of friendly
magistrates at the time, we went to the present Provost Drummond, and
Baillie Nimmo, and acquainted them with our conclusions anent them; with
which they were pleased, and said, if we were sure that they were our
martyrs’ heads, we might bury them decently and orderly.... Accordingly,
we kept the foresaid day and hour, and doubled the linen, and laid the
half of it below them, their nether jaws being parted from their heads;
but being young men, their teeth [Sidenote: 1726.] remained. All were
witness to the holes in each of their heads, which the hangman broke
with his hammer; and, according to the bigness of their skulls, we laid
their jaws to them, and drew the other half of the linen above them, and
stufft the coffin with shavings. Some pressed hard to go thorow the
chief parts of the city, as was done at the Revolution; but this we
refused, considering that it looked airy and frothy, to make such show
of them, and inconsistent with the solid serious observing of such an
affecting, surprising, unheard-of dispensation: but took the ordinary
way of other burials from that place—to wit, we went east the back of
the wall, and in at Bristo Port, and down the way to the head of the
Cowgate, and turned up to the churchyard, where they were interred closs
to the Martyrs’ Tomb, with the greatest multitude of people, old and
young, men and women, ministers and others, that ever I saw together.’
A citizen of Edinburgh heard from a lady born in 1736 an account, at
second-hand, of this remarkable solemnity—with one fact additional to
what is stated by Walker. ‘In the procession was a number of genteel
females, all arrayed in white satin, as emblematical of innocence.’
A proceeding in which the same spirit was evinced is noted in the
_Edinburgh Courant_ of November 4, 1728. ‘We hear that the separatists
about Dumfries, who retain the title of Cameronians, have despatched
three of their number to Magus Muir, in Fife, to find out the
burial-place of Thomas Brown, Andrew ..., James Wood, John Clyde, and
John Weddell, who were there execute during the Caroline persecution for
being in arms at Bothwell Bridge, and have marked the ground, in order
to erect a monument with an inscription like that of the Martyrs’ Tomb
in Greyfriars’ Churchyard, to perpetuate the zeal and sufferings of
these men.’
A few months later, we learn from the same sententious chronicler: ‘The
Martyrs’ Tomb in the Greyfriars’ Churchyard is repaired, and there is
added to it a compartment, on which is cut a head and a hand on pikes,
as emblems of their sufferings, betwixt which is to be engraved a motto
alluding to both.’
[Sidenote: 1727. MAR. 30.]
Died Sir Alexander Ogilvy of Forglen, Baronet, a judge of the Court of
Session under the designation of Lord Forglen. There is no particular
reason for chronicling the demise of a respectable but noteless senator
of the College of Justice, beyond the eccentric and characteristic
circumstances attending it. According to a note in the unpublished diary
of James Boswell, the biographer [Sidenote: 1727.] of Dr Johnson—when
Lord Forglen was approaching the end of his life, he received a visit
from his friend Mr James Boswell, advocate, the grandfather of the
narrator of the anecdote. The old judge was quite cheerful, and said to
his visitor: ‘Come awa, Mr Boswell, and learn to dee: I’m gaun awa to
see your auld freend Cullen and mine. [This was Lord Cullen, another
judge, who had died exactly a year before.] He was a guid honest man;
but his walk and yours was nae very steady when you used to come in frae
Maggy Johnston’s upon the Saturday afternoons.’ That the reader may
understand the force of this address, it is necessary to explain that
Mrs Johnston kept a little inn near Bruntsfield Links, which she
contrived to make attractive to men of every grade in life by her
home-brewed ale. It here appears that among her customers were Mr
Boswell, a well-employed advocate, and Lord Cullen, a judge—one, it may
be observed, of good reputation, a writer on moral themes, and with
whose religious practice even Mr Wodrow was not dissatisfied.
Dr Clerk, who attended Lord Forglen at the last, told James Boswell’s
father, Lord Auchinleck, that, calling on his patient the day his
lordship died, he was let in by his clerk, David Reid. ‘How does my lord
do?’ inquired Dr Clerk. ‘I houp he’s _weel_,’ answered David with a
solemnity that told what he meant. He then conducted the doctor into a
room, and shewed him two dozen of wine under a table. Other doctors
presently came in, and David, making them all sit down, proceeded to
tell them his deceased master’s last words, at the same time pushing the
bottle about briskly. After the company had taken a glass or two, they
rose to depart; but David detained them. ‘No, no, gentlemen; not so. It
was the express will o’ the dead that I should fill ye a’ fou, and I
maun fulfil the will o’ the dead.’ All the time, the tears were
streaming down his cheeks. ‘And, indeed,’ said the doctor afterwards in
telling the story, ‘he did fulfil the will o’ the dead, for before the
end o’‘t there was na ane o’ us able to bite his ain thoomb.’[660]