The accession of George II., while not disturbing in England that
predominance of the great Whig nobles which had existed since the
Revolution, and leaving the practical administration, as before, in the
hands of Sir Robert Walpole, produced no change in the system of
improvement which the Union had inaugurated. Under the rule of the
Argyles, the Dalrymples, and one or two other eminent Whig families,
with the mild and virtuous Duncan Forbes as Lord Advocate, the country
enjoyed peace, and was enabled to develop its long dormant energies, in
the pursuits of agriculture, of manufactures, and of commerce. All but a
few of the Highland clans had apparently given their final submission to
the Guelph dynasty; and though the Stuart cause was known to be upheld
by some, it was generally thought that there was very little chance of
further civil war on that subject.
The general tranquillity was broken in 1737 by a riot in Edinburgh,
arising out of the harsh measures required for the enforcement of the
Excise laws, and ending in the violent death of a public officer who had
rendered himself obnoxious to the populace. For an account of this
affair, reference is made to the chronicle.
About the same period, there was considerable agitation in the church,
in consequence of the insubordination of a small group of clergymen, of
ultra-evangelical views, who were at length, in 1740, expelled, and
became the founders of a separate church under the name of the Associate
Synod.
In 1744, Great Britain was engaged in a war which involved most of the
great powers of Europe. The French minister, Cardinal de Tencin,
conceived that an invasion of England on behalf of the House of Stuart
would be an excellent diversion in favour of the arms of his country.
The time was in reality long past for any effective movement of this
kind. New men and new things had extinguished all rational hopes in the
Jacobite party. Still there were some chiefs in the Highlands who had
never abandoned the Stuart cause. In the Lowlands, there were
discontents which seemed capable of being turned to some account in
effecting the desired revolution. Prince Charles Edward, the eldest son
of the so-called Pretender, was an ardent-minded youth, eager to try a
last chance for the restoration of his family. The Cardinal really made
some preparations for an expedition to be conducted by the Prince; but
it was prevented by a storm and an opposing English armament, from
leaving the French coast. Disappointed of the promised aid, Charles
secretly voyaged with seven friends to the western coast of
Inverness-shire, and, landing there towards the close of July 1745, was
soon surrounded by a few hundreds of friendly Camerons and Macdonalds.
He raised his standard at Glenfinnan on the 19th of August, and
expressed himself as determined with such as would follow him, to win
back a crown, or perish in the attempt.
The best of the national troops being engaged in service abroad, the
government could only oppose to this enterprise a few raw regiments
under the commander-in-chief for Scotland, Sir John Cope. But Sir John,
making an unlucky lateral movement to Inverness, permitted Prince
Charles, with about eighteen hundred clansmen, to descend upon Perth
unopposed, and even to take possession of Edinburgh. On the 21st of
September, having returned by sea to the low country, Cope was
encountered at Prestonpans by the Highlanders, and driven in a few
minutes from the field. For several weeks, Prince Charles Edward held
court at Holyrood, in undisputed possession of Scotland. Marching in
November into England by the western border, he captured Carlisle, was
well received at Manchester, and pushed on to Derby, where he was only a
hundred and twenty-seven miles from London. But here the courage of his
little council of chiefs gave way before the terrors of the three armies
by which they seemed surrounded. Accomplishing a hurried, yet
well-managed retreat to Scotland, they laid Glasgow under contribution,
and came to a halt at Stirling, where many fresh clans joined them,
making up an army of nine thousand men.
A well-appointed English army under General Hawley met Prince Charles
Edward at Falkirk (January 17, 1746), and was driven back to Edinburgh
with the loss of camp, cannon, and baggage. The king’s second son, the
Duke of Cumberland, soon after took command of the forces in Scotland,
and on his advancing to Stirling, the Highland army made a hasty retreat
to Inverness, where they spent the remainder of the winter. As soon as
the return of spring permitted the English army to march, it was
conducted against the rebels by its royal commander. In a regular
engagement which took place on Culloden Moor, near Inverness (April 16),
the Highland army was broken and dispersed with great slaughter. Prince
Charles fled to the west coast, and after several months of fugitive
life, during which he endured incredible hardships, escaped back to
France. The Duke advanced to Fort Augustus, and there superintended a
system of burning, slaughtering, and despoliation, throughout the
disaffected territory, by which he hoped to make further efforts for the
House of Stuart impossible. These acts, and his having ordered a general
slaughter of the wounded Highlanders on the field of battle, have fixed
on him indelibly the appellation of ‘the Butcher.’
Further to strike terror into the Jacobite party, two leaders of the
rebel army, the Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino, with about
seventy prisoners of inferior rank, were put to death as traitors. Lord
Lovat, who, while preserving an appearance of loyalty, had sent out his
clan under his son, was afterwards tried and executed for treason.
Scotland generally suffered for some time under a military oppression,
for the government, in their ignorance of the country, did not see by
how small a part of the community the late insurrection had been
supported. It now effected, however, some measures which enlightened men
had long felt to be wanting for the cause of civilisation. One of these
was for a more effectual disarmament of the Highlanders; another for
abolishing the use of their tartan habiliments, which it was supposed
had a certain effect in keeping up their warlike spirit. There remained
two acts of much more importance, passed in 1748. One took away the
hereditary sheriffships and other jurisdictions of the nobility and
gentry, so as to render the sovereign in Scotland, as heretofore in
England, the fountain of all law and justice. In terms of this statute,
the privileges taken away were compensated for by sums of money,
amounting in all to £152,000. The other act abolished what was called
the tenure of ward-holdings—that is, the holding of lands on the
condition of going out to war whenever the superior desired. Tenants and
the common people were thus for the first time in Scotland rendered
independent of their landlords, or of the great men on whose property
they lived. In fact, they now became for the first time a free people.
[Sidenote: 1727. JUNE.]
From the eagerness of the proprietors of the Equivalent Stock to be
engaged in some profitable business, as detailed under December 1719, it
might have been expected that they would sooner or later fall upon some
mode of effecting their wishes. All attempts to come into connection
with the Bank of Scotland having failed, they at length formed the bold
design of setting up a new bank—bold, in as far as it was entirely a
novelty, there being no thought of a second bank even in England, where
business was conducted upon so much greater a scale than in Scotland. It
seems to have been by engaging the good-will or interest of the Earl of
Islay, that the object was attained. The Bank of Scotland in vain
published a statement shewing how it was quite competent, with its
thirty thousand pounds of paid-up capital, to conduct the business of
the country, and really was conducting it satisfactorily. In vain did
Scottish jealousy try to raise a cry about the large proportion of
English shareholders in the new concern. It received a royal charter,
which was the last document [Sidenote: 1727.] of the kind prepared
before the king set out on his fatal visit to Hanover, and required a
warrant from the new sovereign before the seal could be appended to it.
The Earl of Islay was made governor, and the Lord President Dundas
became deputy-governor. In December they opened their office, with a
capital of £111,000; and in the first week of the new year, they began
to issue notes ‘having his present majesty King George II.’s picture in
front.’[661] At first, these notes were expressed in Scots money; but
the time had now come when the people of Scotland began pretty generally
to adopt the English denominations, both in their accounts and in common
parlance; so this fashion was not kept up by the Royal Bank above two
years. It is unnecessary to remark that the new bank prospered, and now
ranks second to none in respectability. But this only makes the more
remarkable the dreary anticipations which were formed at the time by
those whom it rivalled.
‘Whatever was said while the Equivalent Society’s charter with banking
powers was a-seeking, or what has been said since the passing thereof,
that there was no design of prejudicing the Old Bank—_nobody that knows
the nature of banking does believe that two banks can be carried on in
the same country_; for it is impossible to manage and keep them up,
without interfering and rubbing upon one another, unless rules and
regulations could be made to prevent it; and it is impossible to digest
regulations for executing such a design, but what must make the
interests of the two companies reciprocal, and the product of their
trade mutually to be communicated; and so two different offices, under
distinct management and direction, would be a needless charge and
trouble. Therefore the gentlemen of the [Old] Bank did from the
beginning lay their account with an attack from an enemy, and a foreign
one too, with home alliances.’[662]
Following up this terrible view of the case, the Bank of Scotland, for
some time before the new establishment was opened, discontinued lending
money, as a matter of precaution, thus creating considerable distress
among the mercantile classes, and of course justifying, so far, the
establishment of a new source of accommodation. When the Royal Bank was
fairly afloat, the Bank of Scotland proceeded to the yet greater
extremity of calling up former loans, thus deepening the distress. ‘The
country,’ says Mr Wodrow in a kind of despair, ‘is not able to bear both
banks. The new bank would fain have the old coalescing with them; but
[Sidenote: 1727.] they bear off. It’s a wonder to me how there’s any
money at all in the country.’[663]
A pamphlet having been published in the interest of the Bank of Scotland
on this occasion—being the _Historical Account_ already more than once
quoted—another soon after appeared in justification of the Royal Bank,
though professedly by a person unconnected with it.[664] ‘It can be no
secret,’ says this writer, ‘that a great number of people of all ranks
were creditors to the public in Scotland by reason of offices civil and
military, and that the Equivalent stipulated by the act of Union fell
short of their payment; that in 1714 they obtained an act of parliament
constituting the debts due to them, but that no parliament provision was
made for a fund for their payment till the year 1719, when a second act
was made, appropriating to that purpose a yearly fund of £10,000
sterling, payable out of the revenues of customs, Excise, &c.,
preferable to all payments except the civil list. Between the first and
the second act, many of the proprietors, being doubtful that any
provision would be made for them by parliament, and others being pressed
by necessity, chose to dispose of their debentures (these were the legal
vouchers ascertaining the debts due to the persons named in them) as
they best could, and to the best bidder. Many of them were carried to
London, but a very considerable part of them still remains in the hands
of Scots proprietors, partly out of choice, partly by reason of some
legal bars that lay in the way of issuing debentures, and partly by
purchasing them back from England.’
In consequence of powers in the act of 1719, ‘his late majesty did, by
letters-patent in 1724, incorporate all persons who then were, or
thereafter should be, proprietors of the debentures whereby that public
debt was constituted, to the end that they might receive and distribute
their annuity.’ His majesty having at the same time promised powers and
privileges to the corporation as they might request, it petitioned him
for those of a bank in Scotland, which he and his successor complied
with, limiting the power to ‘such of the company as should, on or before
Michaelmas 1727, subject their stock, or any share of it, to the trade
of banking.’
There is, further, a great deal of angry controversial remark on the Old
Bank; but the most material point is the allegation, that [Sidenote:
1727.] that institution ‘divided 35, 40, 50 per cent.’ by the use of
‘other people’s money.’ The author adverts with bitterness to the harsh
measures adopted by the Old Bank in prospect of rivalry. ‘It is a hard
thing,’ says he, ‘to defend the conduct of the Old Bank upon the
prospect of a rivalship. Lending is superseded; a tenth is called from
the proprietors, and all their debtors threatened with diligence for a
certain part or for the whole of their debts, which diligence has since
been executed.... Why did they carry their revenge (as it is universally
known they did) to every one who had the least relation, alliance,
friendship, or connection with the proprietors of that bank [the
Royal]?... Why were the first examples of their wrath made out of the
most known friends of the present establishment, and why were the
disaffected remarkably and visibly spared?’
Considering that the Bank of Scotland had never yet had more than thirty
thousand pounds sterling of capital paid up, the fact of the larger
stock of the Royal, and their having £30,000 of specie to trade with
distinct from their stock,[665] become features of importance, as
shewing the increasing business of the country.
From a folio broadside[666] containing the ‘Rules to be observed by such
Persons as keep a Cash-accompt with the Royal Bank of Scotland,’ it
appears that ‘no sum paid into the bank or drawn out of it, be less than
10_l._ sterling, nor have in it any fraction or part of a pound; and in
case of fractions arising by the addition of interest at settling an
accompt, such fractions are to be taken off by the first draught or
payment thereafter made.’ Sums of five pounds and upwards are now taken
in and given out at all the Scottish banks (1860).
[Sidenote: JUNE.]
Witchcraft, now generally slighted by persons in authority in the south,
was still a subject of judicial investigation in the far north. Wodrow,
in his Renfrewshire manse, continued to receive accounts of any
transactions in that way which might be going on in any quarter, and,
under 1726, he is careful to note ‘some pretty odd accounts of witches’
which he had received from a couple of Ross-shire brethren. One of them,
‘at death,’ he says, and it is to be feared that her death was at the
stake, ‘confessed that they had by sorcery taken away the sight of one
of the eyes of an [Sidenote: 1727.] Episcopal minister, who lost the
sight of his eye upon a sudden, and could give no reason of it.’[667]
Early in the ensuing year—if we may depend upon the authority quoted
below[668]—two poor Highland women, mother and daughter, natives of the
parish of Loth, in Sutherlandshire, were accused of witchcraft before
the sheriff-depute, Captain David Ross of Littledean, and condemned to
death. The mother was charged with having ridden on the daughter, who
had been transformed on the occasion into a pony, and shod by the devil.
The girl made her escape, and was noted ever after, in confirmation of
the charge, to be lame in both hands and feet. The mother suffered at
Dornoch in June, being burned in a pitch-barrel. It has been handed down
by tradition, that, ‘after being brought out to execution, the weather
proving very severe, she sat composedly warming herself by the fire
prepared to consume her, while the other instruments of death were
making ready.’[669] ‘It does not appear,’ says Sir Walter Scott in 1830,
‘that any punishment was inflicted for this cruel abuse of the law on
the person of a creature so helpless; but the son of the lame
daughter—himself distinguished by the same misfortune—was living so
lately as to receive the charity of the present Marchioness of Stafford,
Countess of Sutherland in her own right.’[670]
For a generation, the linen manufacture had been passing through what
might be called a prosperous infancy. A public paper in 1720 states that
there was annually imported from Scotland into England the value of
£100,000 in white linen, and as much in brown, the flax being of ‘a
_spunsie_ quality,’ which gave it a preference over the similar products
of both Ireland and Germany.[671] [The same document estimated the
English woollen cloths exported to Scotland at £400,000 per annum.]
By an act of parliament passed this year, a Board of Trustees was
established in Scotland for the administration of an annual sum set
aside for the encouragement of manufactories and fisheries. The sum at
first given was four thousand pounds, which might be considered as
calculated to go a great way in so poor a country. The activity and
serviceableness of the Board was, in its earlier years, chiefly shewn in
the promotion of the linen manufacture, [Sidenote: 1727.] which, under
the stimulus afforded by premiums, rose from an export sale of 2,183,978
yards in 1727, to 4,666,011 in 1738, 7,358,098 in 1748, and 12,823,048
in 1764. It is curious, regarding an institution which has since
occupied, as it still does, so conspicuous a place in the public eye, to
trace the difficulties it had to contend with at starting, in
consequence of the monetary vacuum produced by the conflict of the two
banks. The Lord Advocate, Duncan Forbes, wrote on the 26th June 1728 to
the Duke of Newcastle: ‘The trustees appointed by his majesty for taking
care of the manufactures, proceed with great zeal and industry; but at
present credit is run so low, by a struggle between the bank lately
erected by his majesty and the old bank, that money can scarcely be
found to go to market with.’[672]
[Sidenote: OCT.]
Wodrow, who never failed to hear of and note any misfortune that
happened to Glasgow—hopeful, always, that it would be ‘laid to
heart’—makes us aware of an obscure sorrow which was now beginning to
beset the thriving burghers. ‘The vermin called bugs,’ he says, ‘are at
present extremely troublesome at Glasgow. They say they are come over
with timber and other goods from Holland. They are in many houses there,
and so extremely prolific, there is no getting rid of them, though many
ways have been tried. It’s not twenty year since they were known, and
such as had them kept them secret. These six or seven years, they are
more openly compleened of, and now the half of the town are plagued with
them. This is chiefly attributed to the frequent alterations of
servants, who bring them from house to house.’[673]
Soon after, having occasion to deplore the death of Provost Peady, a
person of great firmness and piety, he speaks of the many ‘strokes’
which the industrious city had met with of late. Their losses during
1727 had been reckoned at not less than twenty-eight thousand pounds
sterling! ‘It’s a wonder to me how they stand throo.’ The worthy pastor
of Eastwood would evidently have not been greatly distressed had his
Glasgow neighbours been subjected to a repetition of a few of the
plagues of Egypt, so needful were they of something to check their
growing fatness and pride. He might have been expected to hail the frogs
with a fraternal feeling; and we can imagine him marking with
hopefulness, not unmingled with sympathy, the spread of the [Sidenote:
1727.] murrain among the burghers’ kine at the Cowcaddens. The present
entomological corrective was evidently regarded by him with a
satisfaction too deep to admit of many words.
[Sidenote: 1728. FEB. 8.]
Mr John Boyd gives his friend Wodrow an account of a duelling affair
which had befallen in Edinburgh. ‘Ane officer in the Dutch Guards, son
to Mr Walter Stewart, late Solicitor, was ill wounded by are officer in
the Canongate [Lieutenant Pilkington, of Grove’s Regiment]. The officer,
when in custody of the constables, was rescued by the guard there, who
carried him off; but at Musselburgh, the people there apprehended him,
and made him and twenty-two guards prisoners, who were all brought to
prison here.’ There were hopes of the wounded man’s recovery.[674]
[Sidenote: MAR. 1.]
At four o’clock in the morning, a smart shock of an earthquake was
experienced in Edinburgh and throughout the south of Scotland, if not in
other quarters. At Selkirk, every house was shaken, and some people were
tumbled out of bed, but no damage was done.[675]
[Sidenote: MAR.]
Mr Wodrow was at this time informed ‘by very good hands,’ that there had
been for some years in Edinburgh a little gambling fraternity, who made
it their business to trace out and decoy young men of rank and fortune,
and make plunder of them. ‘One of them will lose fifty pounds in a night
till the young spark be engaged; and then another comes and soon gains
the whole; and, it may be, a third comes, and stands at the back of the
person they design to rifle, and by signs and words unknown to others,
discovers his game to the other; so by one method or other they are sure
to win all at last.’ It was alleged that the society would divide 25,000
merks [about £1400] a year by these vile practices—much calculated ‘to
fill our cup of judgments.’
As a trait of the time—On the news reaching Glasgow that an attempt to
unseat Campbell of Shawfield had failed, his friends went down to Govan,
to celebrate the affair, and write a letter of congratulation to him. Mr
William Wishart, a clergyman, deserted the synod then sitting, to go
with them, and help in drawing up the letter. By and by, the minister
left them; but they sat still till they became so befuddled, that it
became necessary to bundle them into a boat, and so carry them back to
the [Sidenote: 1728.] city. That evening, some other gentlemen of the
same way of thinking, went through the streets of Glasgow, with a
fiddler playing before them, and singing: ‘Up with the Campbells, and
down with the Grahams!’ and it was a wonder that a riot was avoided.
About the same date, Mr Wodrow adverts to the fact, that Anthony Aston’s
playhouse in Edinburgh was ‘much frequented;’ and amongst ‘persons of
substance and leisure,’ there was consequently a great tendency to
laxity of morals. There was even a talk of building a playhouse in
Edinburgh. The manager, however, was not without his troubles. One Ross,
‘master of the Beau’s Coffee-house’—a son of Bishop Ross, and a great
encourager of the playhouse—had sold a quantity of tickets, on which he
was to be allowed a penny each; but he ultimately refused to take this
commission, though amounting to about ten pounds—‘a vast sum,’ says
Wodrow, ‘for tickets at a penny apiece in one coffee-house.’ Aston
having reserved this money to himself, instead of accounting for it to
his company, according to agreement, a terrible squabble arose among
them, and a process was threatened before the magistrates, or some other
court. How the matter ended, we do not hear.
To complete his general picture of the profaneness of the age, Mr Wodrow
tells us that Allan Ramsay, the poet, got down books of plays from
London, and lent them out at an easy rate—the beginning of Circulating
Libraries in Scotland. Boys, servantwomen, and gentlemen, all alike took
advantage of this arrangement, whereby ‘vice and obscenity were
dreadfully propagated.’ Lord Grange complained of the practice to the
magistrates, and induced them to make inspection of Ramsay’s book
containing the names of the borrowers of the plays. ‘They were alarmed
at it, and sent some of their number to his shop to look through some of
his books; but he had notice an hour before, and had withdrawn some of
the worst, and nothing was done to purpose.’[676]
[Sidenote: MAR. 27.]
The conflict between the Bank of Scotland and its young and pretentious
Whig rival, the Royal Bank, led to a temporary stoppage of payments at
the former establishment, the last that ever took place. The Royal Bank
‘having all the public money given in to them, has at present worsted
[the Bank of Scotland], [Sidenote: 1728.] and run them out of
cash.’[677] In their own advertisement on the occasion, they attribute
the calamity to ‘the great embarrassment that has been upon credit and
circulation of money in payments for some months bygone, arising from
causes and by means well known both in city and country.’ In this very
crisis, the Bank announced its dividend of four per cent, on its capital
stock, but appropriating it as part of ten per cent, now called up from
the shareholders, ‘the other sixty pounds Scots on each share to be paid
in before the 15th of June.’ The directors at the same time ordered
their notes to bear interest during the time that payment should be
suspended.
It must have been a draught of very bitter gall to the Old Bank, when
their young rival came ostentatiously forward with an announcement that,
for the ‘relief of such people as wanted to go to market,’ they would
give specie for the twenty-shilling notes of the Bank of Scotland till
further notice.
The Bank of Scotland resumed paying its twenty-shilling notes on the
27th of June.
[Sidenote: MAY 9.]
The convivialities indulged in at funerals were productive to-day of a
tragedy long remembered in Scotland. Mr Carnegie of Lour, residing in
the burgh of Forfar, had a daughter to be buried, and before the
funeral, he entertained the Earl of Strathmore, his own brother James
Carnegie of Finhaven, Mr Lyon of Bridgeton, and some others of the
company, at dinner in his house. After the ceremony, these gentlemen
adjourned to a tavern, and drank a good deal. Carnegie of Finhaven got
extremely drunk. Lyon of Bridgeton was not so much intoxicated; but the
drink made him rude and unmannerly towards Finhaven. Afterwards, the
Earl of Strathmore went to call at the house of Mr Carnegie’s sister,
Lady Auchterhouse, and the other gentlemen followed. Here it may be
remarked that the whole of this group of persons were, like a large
proportion of the Forfarshire gentry, of Jacobite prepossessions. The
earl’s late brother and predecessor in the title had fallen at
Sheriffmuir, on the Chevalier’s side; so had Patrick Lyon of
Auchterhouse, husband of the lady now introduced to notice, and brother
of Bridgeton. The presence of a lady, and that lady a widowed
sister-in-law, failed to make Bridgeton conduct himself discreetly. He
continued his boisterous rudeness towards Finhaven; rallied him coarsely
about his not [Sidenote: 1728.] being willing to marry one of his
daughters to Lord Rosehill, about his having no sons, about his debts;
took him offensively by the breast; and even used some rudeness towards
the lady herself. In the dusk of the evening, the party sallied out to
the street, and here Bridgeton went so far in his violence towards
Finhaven as to push him into a deep and dirty kennel, which nearly
covered him from head to foot with mire. Finhaven, now fully incensed,
rose, and drawing his sword, ran up to Bridgeton, with deadly design;
but the earl, seeing him advance, pushed Bridgeton aside, and unhappily
received the lunge full in the middle of his own body. He died
forty-nine hours after the incident.
Carnegie of Finhaven was tried on the ensuing 2d of August for
premeditated murder; an absurd charge absurdly supported by long
arguments and quotations of authority, in the style of that day. In his
‘information,’ the accused man called God to witness that he had borne
no malice to the earl; on the contrary, he had the greatest kindness and
respect for him. ‘If it shall appear,’ said he, ‘that I was the unlucky
person who wounded the earl, I protest before God I would much rather
that a sword had been sheathed in my own bowels.’ All that he admitted
was: ‘I had the misfortune that day to be mortally drunk, for which I
beg God’s pardon.’ He declared that, being in this state at the time, he
did not so much as remember that he had seen the earl when he came out
of the kennel. The defence proposed for him by his counsel was, that,
the circumstances of the case considered, he was not guilty of murder,
but of manslaughter. Strange to say, the court, sacrificing rationality
to form and statute, overruled the defence: they found the fact that the
prisoner having really given the wound whereof the Earl of Strathmore
died, to be relevant to infer the pains of law against him. The killing
being indisputable, Carnegie would have been condemned if the jury
should merely give a verdict on the point of fact. In these
circumstances, his counsel, Robert Dundas of Arniston, stood forth to
tell the jury that they were entitled to judge on the point of law as
well as the point of fact. He asserted that the only object for their
deliberation, was whether they could conscientiously say that Carnegie
had committed _murder_, or whether his guilt was not diminished or
annihilated by the circumstances of the case. The jury, almost beyond
expectation, gave a verdict of ‘Not Guilty,’ thus establishing a great
constitutional principle.[678]
[Sidenote: 1728. AUG. 15.]
The noted _fierté_ of the Scottish nobility and gentry was beginning at
this time to give way somewhat, under the general desire to promote the
arts of industry, and partly because of the hopelessness of public
employments for young scions of aristocracy in all but favoured Whig
circles. We must not, therefore, be surprised when a tragical tale of
this date brings before us the fact that Patrick Lindsay, described as
heir-male of the grand old House of Lindsay of the Byres, and who, a few
years afterwards, married a daughter of the sixteenth Earl of Crawford,
was now an upholsterer in the Parliament Close of Edinburgh, and dean of
guild for the city. Neither ought it to appear as incredible that one of
his apprentices was a youth named Cairns, younger son of a gentleman of
good estate residing at Cupar-Fife.
The tale was simply this—that, on the evening noted, between eight and
nine o’clock, Cairns was found in the shop expiring from the effects of
a violent blow on the head, apparently inflicted by a hammer, while the
box containing the guildry treasure was missing. It was believed that
some vile people who then haunted the city, knowing of the box being
kept in Lindsay’s shop, had formed a design to possess themselves of it,
and had effected their end at the expense of murder, at the moment when
the place was about to be closed for the night. A number of vagrants
were taken up on suspicion, and the box was soon after found,
empty.[679]
[Sidenote: AUG. 18.]
Aaron Hill, a well-born English gentleman, who had been manager of Drury
Lane Theatre, and wrote many well-received plays and poems—who,
moreover, had travelled over Europe and some parts of Asia and Africa—is
at this date found writing to his wife from what he calls ‘the Golden
Groves of Abernethy,’ meaning the great natural forest of that name on
Speyside, in the county of Elgin. It is a strange association of persons
and things for a period when even of civilised Scotsmen scarcely ever
one made his way north of the Grampians. It had come about, however, in
a very natural way.
The York-Buildings Company, which had already formed connections with
Scotland by the purchase of several of the forfeited estates, was
induced to take a lease from Sir James Grant of Grant, of the
magnificent but hitherto useless pine-forest [Sidenote: 1728.] of
Abernethy, thinking they should be able to apply the timber for the use
of the navy. Had the wood been only removable by land-carriage, it would
have been useless, as before; but they had been led to understand that
there was no difficulty in floating it down the Spey to the sea, where
it might be shipped off for the south. Aaron Hill, who was a very
speculative genius, having before this time headed a scheme for making
olive-oil out of beech-nuts, and concocted a plan for settling a part of
Carolina, made a journey to the Spey in 1726, and easily convinced
himself of the practicability of the project. The Company, accordingly,
commenced operations in 1728, with Mr Hill as their clerk. They sent a
hundred and twenty-five work-horses, with a competent number of wagons,
and apparatus of all the kinds required; they erected substantial
wooden-houses, saw-mills, and an iron-foundry, all of them novelties
regarded with wonder by the simple natives.[680] They had also a
salaried commissary to furnish provisions and forage. Tracks being
formed through the forest, and men trained to the work, trees were
felled to the number of forty or fifty in a day, and brought down to the
bank of the river. There, under the direction of Mr Hill, they were
bound in rafts of sixty or eighty, with deals laid upon the surface to
form a platform; and for each such raft two men were held as sufficient
to navigate it to the sea, one sitting with a guiding-oar at one end,
and another at the other. Before this time, the natives had been
accustomed to float down rafts of three or four trees tied together with
a rope, the attendant sitting in a _curragh_, or boat of hide, from
which he was ready to plunge into the stream when any impediment called
for his interference.[681] What a Drury Lane manager would think on
witnessing a mode of navigation coeval with the first state of savagery,
we cannot tell; but he had no little difficulty in inducing the people
to adopt a more civilised mode of conducting his grand timber-rafts.
Till he first went in one himself, to shew that there was no danger, not
one of the Abernethy foresters would venture in so prodigious a craft.
There was, in reality, something problematical in the undertaking, for
the river was in some places partially blocked by sunken rocks; but the
genius of Hill was [Sidenote: 1728.] equal to all emergencies. Taking
advantage of a dry season, when these shoals were exposed, he kindled
immense wood-fires upon them, and when the rock was thus heated, he
caused water to be thrown upon it, thus making it splinter, and so
enable his men to break it up and clear the passage.
It was in high spirits that our poet wrote to his wife from the Golden
Groves of Abernethy, for they were really productive of gold, no less
than £7000 worth of timber being realised by his Company. ‘The shore of
the Spey,’ says he, ‘is all covered with masts from 50 to 70 feet long,
which they are daily bringing out of the wood, with ten carriages, and
above a hundred horses.... In the middle of the river lies a little
fleet of our rafts, which are just putting off for Findhorn harbour; and
it is one of the pleasantest sights possible to observe the little
armies of men, women, and children who pour down from the Highlands to
stare at what we have been doing.’ What seems chiefly to have impressed
the natives, was the liberality with which the business of wood-cutting
was conducted. It seemed to them a wasteful extravagance, and if it be
true that barrels of tar would be burned in bonfires, and barrels of
brandy broached on joyful occasions among the people, five of whom died
in one night in consequence, the imputation was not unjust.
Nevertheless, the work was highly successful, and might have been
carried on longer than it was, if the Company had not called away their
people to work at their lead-mines.[682]
During the time which Mr Hill spent in Scotland, he was received with
great civilities by the Duke of Gordon and other eminent persons, and
was complimented with the freedom of Aberdeen, Inverness, and other
burghs. In his collected poems are found a number of short epigrammatic
pieces which he wrote during his residence in Scotland; among the rest,
his oft-printed epigram, beginning: ‘Tender-handed stroke a nettle.’ But
Burt adds another, which he found scribbled on a window ‘at the first
stage on this side Berwick:’
‘Scotland, thy weather’s like a modish wife,
Thy winds and rains for ever are at strife;
So Termagant awhile her bluster tries,
And when she can no longer scold—she cries!’
The engineer could not but wonder at Hill taking leave of the country in
this strain, ‘after he had been so exceedingly [Sidenote: 1728.]
complaisant to it, when here, as to compare its subterranean riches with
those of Mexico and Peru.’
[Sidenote: AUG.]
We must again return to Mr Wodrow for an account of the continued
progress of gaiety in Scotland. It appears that part of Anthony Aston’s
company of comedians migrated from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and were there
favoured by Bailie Murdoch, ‘who is too easy,’ with permission to
perform the _Beggars’ Opera_ in the Weigh-house. They had a good
audience the first night, but on the few other nights of performance
‘got not so much as to pay their music.’ On the magistrates being blamed
for the permission they had given, they recriminated on the ministers,
who should have interfered in time. Mr Wodrow considered the ministers
as here in fault; yet he could not exonerate the magistrates.
‘Considering the noise made at Edinburgh by these strollers, and the
brisk opposition made by the magistrates of Edinburgh, they [the
magistrates of Glasgow] should have considered better before they
allowed them.’
‘Sabbath after, the ministers preached against going to these interludes
and plays.... Mr Rob, of Kilsyth, went through all that was agoing about
meeting-houses, plays, errors, and profaneness; and spared none, as I
hear.’
This classing of the Episcopal meeting-houses with the ungodly theatre,
reminds us of the ranging of popery and adultery together by the
reformers. It would appear that in the summer of 1728 there was another
histrionic company in Scotland, under a Mr Phipps, who announced that on
the 29th October he would, ‘at the desire of severals of the nobility
and gentry of East Lothian,’ act the _Beggars’ Opera_ at Haddington.
In March 1729, the _Edinburgh Courant_ informs us that ‘the Scots
Company of Comedians, as they call themselves, have all of a sudden
eloped, without counting with their creditors.’
Wodrow reports with much bitterness, in 1731, the rumours going about as
to the success of the English comedians in Edinburgh. He says: ‘It is
incredible what numbers of _chairs, with men_, are carried to these
places;’ ‘men’ not choosing to walk to such amusements. ‘For some weeks,
they made fifty pound sterling every night, and that for six nights a
week.’ ‘It’s a dreadful corruption of our youth, and an eyelet to
prodigality and vanity.’[683]
[Sidenote: 1728. OCT. 1.]
A valuable Dutch East Indiaman having been lost in March, near the
island of Lewis, an effort, involving some ingenuity, was made to
recover the treasure on board, which was understood to amount to about
£16,000 sterling. The Edinburgh newspapers remark to-day, the arrival of
a Dutchman with ‘a curious machine’ designed for this purpose. Mr
Mackenzie, younger of Delvin, a principal clerk of Session, and
depute-admiral of those shores, was joined with Mr Alexander Tait, a
merchant, in furnishing the expenses of this undertaking, in the hope of
profit for themselves. The business was proceeded with during October,
and with success. On the 19th, the populace of Edinburgh were regaled
with the sight of several cart-loads of the recovered money, passing
through their streets. The Dutch East India Company presently gave in a
petition to the Court of Admiralty for an account of the treasure; which
was accordingly furnished by Mr Mackenzie, and shewed that he had fished
up £14,620, at an expense of £9000.
Mr Mackenzie was allowed to retain twenty thousand crowns and some
doubloons, and ordered to deposit the rest in a box, subject to the
future orders of the court.
‘The divers fishing for the spoils of the Dutch ship, found in and about
her the dead bodies of two hundred and forty men, which they brought to
land and buried.’[684]
A few years ago, a coronation gold medal of Augustus II. of Poland was
exhumed in the garden of the minister of Barra. At first, there was a
difficulty of comprehending how such an object could have come there; at
length the shipwreck of the Dutch vessel was called to recollection, as
an explanation of the mystery.
About the close of 1728, the Edinburgh newspapers speak of a gentleman
named Captain Row, who had come to Scotland invested with a privilege
for raising treasure and other articles out of shipwrecked vessels, to
last for ten years. For the next twelvemonth, we hear of him as
exercising his ingenuity upon the remains of one of the Spanish Armada,
which was sunk off Barra. Two brass cannon are first spoken of as
recovered, and afterwards we hear of ‘several things of value.’
[Sidenote: NOV.]
That extraordinary person, Simon Lord Lovat, who had resisted the troops
of King William, and been outlawed by the Edinburgh Justiciary Lords,
was now in the enjoyment of his title and [Sidenote: 1728.] estate, an
active friend and partisan of the Whig-Hanoverian government, and
captain of one of the six companies of its Highland militia In the early
part of this month, he led sixty of these local soldiers on an
expedition against the thieves of the north-west districts, and captured
no fewer than twenty-six in the course of a week. He searched for arms
at the same time, but reported that these had been now pretty well
gathered in; so he found none.
Although few Scotsmen have been the subjects of so much biography as
Lord Lovat, there is one aspect in which he remains to be now for the
first time viewed; and that is, as a newspaper paragraphist. During the
dozen prosperous years which followed this date, the _Courant_ and
_Mercury_ are every now and then presenting extracts of private letters
from Inverness regarding the grand doings of ‘Simon Lord Lovat, chief of
the clan Fraser,’ all of them in such a puffing style as would leave
little doubt of their having been his own composition, even if we were
not possessed of facts which betray it but too clearly.
On one occasion (May 1728) he is described as riding out from Inverness,
with eighty well-mounted gentlemen of his clan, to meet and escort the
Lords of the Circuit Court of Justiciary, as they were approaching the
town. At another (September 1729), we find him parading his company of
‘a hundred men, besides officers, sergeants, and drums,’ before General
Wade, when ‘they made a very fine appearance, both as to the body of men
and their new clothings, and they performed their exercises and firings
so well, that the general seemed very well satisfied. And he told my
Lord Lovat that he was much pleased at the performance and good
appearance of his company.’ We of course hear nothing of what the
general’s engineer, Mr Burt, has been so ill-natured as record, that
Lovat had stripped private clansmen of any good plaids they had, in
order to enable his company to make the better show.
In June 1733, we are informed through the _Mercury_, that a commission
appointing Lord Lovat to be sheriff of the county, having come to
Inverness, it was read in court, where Alexander Fraser of Fairfield sat
to administer justice as his lordship’s deputy. ‘The gentlemen of the
name of Fraser, who are very numerous in this town, together with the
several relations and friends of the family of Lovat, expressed _an
uncommon satisfaction_ on seeing this commission renewed in his
lordship’s person, whose ancestors, above three hundred years ago, were
[Sidenote: 1728.] sheriffs-principal of the shires of Inverness and
Moray. And we learn that the rejoicings made all over the country, by
the Frasers and their friends, were in nothing short of those we had in
town.’ So says a letter from Inverness, marked in the office-copy of the
paper as ‘paid (2_s._ 6_d._).’
Ten days afterwards appeared another paragraph: ‘Last week, the Right
Honourable Simon Fraser of Lovat was married at Roseneath, in
Dumbartonshire, to the Honourable Miss Primrose Campbell, daughter to
the late John Campbell of Mamore, Esq.; sister to John Campbell, Esq.,
one of the Grooms of the Bedchamber to his Majesty, and first-cousin to
his Grace the Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. A young lady of great beauty
and merit.’ This was also ‘paid (2_s._ 6_d._).’
The reader will perhaps relish another specimen: ‘INVERNESS, _July 18,
1735_.—Last post brought us the agreeable news of the Hon. John Campbell
of Mamore his being appointed Lieutenant-colonel of the Inniskillen
Regiment of Foot, a part whereof is now quartered here. This news gave
great joy to all the Frasers, and well-wishers of the family of Lovat in
this town, the Lord Lovat being married to a sister of the said Colonel
Campbell; and there being for many ages a great friendship between the
Campbells and the Frasers, last night all the gentlemen of the Frasers
in this place, and the Grants, Monroes, and Cuthberts, relations and
allies of the family of Lovat, met, and invited all the officers of the
corps, garrison, and custom-house, with many other gentlemen of the
first rank, to the Lord Lovat’s lodgings, where Baillie William Fraser,
his lordship’s landlord and merchant, had prepared an elegant
entertainment. There was great plenty of wine, when the healths of his
Majesty, the Queen, Prince, Duke, and all the royal family were drunk,
with those of the ministry, his Majesty’s forces by sea and land, Duke
of Argyle, Earl of Ilay, General Wade, Colonel John Campbell, Lord
Lovat, Colonel Hamilton and the corps; the healths of the Frasers,
Grants, Monroes, &c., and all the fast friends of the family of Argyle,
with many other loyal toasts. There were large bonfires, not only at my
Lord Lovat’s lodgings, but on every hill in his lordship’s extensive
country round this town. During the solemnity, the music-bells played,
drums beat, and the private men of the company here were handsomely
entertained, agreeable to their own taste, with barrels of beer, which
they drank to the health of their new commander. After the gentlemen had
stayed several hours at his lordship’s lodgings, they, with the music
playing [Sidenote: 1728.] before them, proceeded to the market-cross,
where was a table covered, with the foresaid toasts repeated, with
huzzas and acclamations of joy.’ Marginally marked in the office-copy,
‘Paid 4_s._’
[Sidenote: NOV.]
The influenza, in a very virulent form, after passing over the
continent, came to England, and a fortnight after had made its way into
Scotland. A cold and cough, with fever, laid hold of nearly every
person, sometimes in a moment as they stood on their feet, and in some
instances attended with raving. Wodrow of course entertained hopes that
Glasgow would receive a good share of the calamity; but it proved less
severe there than in some other places. He adverts, however, to the
fact, that, owing to the ailment, ‘there was no hearing sermon for some
time.’[685]
[Sidenote: NOV. 28.]
The death of Alexander, second duke of Gordon, proved, through connected
circumstances, a domestic event of great importance. We have seen the
adherence of this powerful family to the Catholic faith a source of
frequent trouble ever since the Reformation. Latterly, under the
protection of the second duke, the ancient religion had been receiving
fresh encouragement in the north. For this family to be at variance in
so important a respect with the country at large, was unfortunate both
for themselves and the country. It was an evil now at length to be
brought to an end.
The Duchess—Henrietta Mordaunt, daughter of the Earl of
Peterborough[686]—finding herself left with the charge of a large family
in tender years—the young duke only eight years old—took it upon her to
have them educated in her own Protestant principles, and with a respect
for the reigning family. It was such an opportunity as might not have
occurred again for a century. We can see from her history as an
introducer of improvements in agriculture, that she must have been a
woman of considerable intellectual vigour; and hence it is the less
surprising that she fully accomplished her object. She of course got
great credit in all loyal quarters for what she did with her children.
The General Assembly, in 1730, sent her a cordial letter of thanks. The
government, in 1735, settled upon her a pension of £1000 a year. She
survived her husband upwards of thirty years, living [Sidenote: 1729.]
for the most part at Prestonhall, in the county of Edinburgh—a forfeited
estate which she had bought at a moderate price.
After all, there were some drawbacks to her Grace’s soundness in
Protestant loyalty. While one of her sons, Lord Lewis—the ‘Lewie Gordon’
of Jacobite minstrelsy—‘went out’ for the House of Stuart in 1745, she
herself shewed a certain tendency that way, by laying out a breakfast
for the Young Chevalier on the roadside at her park-gate, as he marched
past, target on shoulder, on his way to England, for which single act of
misapplied hospitality her Grace was deprived of her pension.
[Sidenote: 1729. FEB.]
The _Edinburgh Courant_ of February 24th gravely records that, ‘some
days ago, died a young man in the parish of Glencorse, who since
Hallarday last hath been grievously tormented by wicked spirits, who
haunted his bed almost every night. There was no formed disease upon
him; yet he had extraordinary paroxysms, which could not proceed from
natural causes. He vomited vast quantities of blood, which was like
roasted livers, and at last, with violent cries, his lungs.’
[Sidenote: MAR. 20.]
Alexander, ninth Earl of Eglintoun, having died on the 18th of February,
was this day buried in the family tomb in the west country, with the
parade proper to his rank, according to the ideas of the age. One
feature of the ceremonial was considered as so peculiar, that the
_Caledonian Mercury_ makes a paragraph of it alone. ‘There were between
nine hundred and a thousand beggars assembled, many of whom came over
from Ireland, who had £50 of that nobleman’s charity distribute among
them.’
[Sidenote: JULY.]
William Ged, ‘of the family of Balfarg,’ a goldsmith in Edinburgh, and
noted for the improvements he effected in his own business, chanced to
be brought into connection with the art of typography by having to pay
the workpeople of a printer to whom he was related. Possessing an
ingenious and inventive mind, he conceived a plan for economising means
in printing, by subjecting to the press, not ‘forms of types,’ as usual,
but plates made by casting from those forms, thus at once saving the
types from wear, and obtaining a means of printing successive editions
of any amount without the necessity of setting up the types anew. He
talked of this invention to a friend so early as 1725; but it was not
till now that any active steps were taken towards realising it. With one
Fenner, a bookseller of London, who happened to [Sidenote: 1729.] visit
Edinburgh, he entered at this date into a contract, by virtue of which
the project was to be prosecuted by Ged in England, with pecuniary means
furnished by Fenner, the profits to be divided betwixt the parties. It
was in a manner necessary to go to England for this purpose, as peculiar
types were required, and there was not now any letter-founder in
Scotland.
Ged was a simple, pure-hearted man, perhaps a good deal carried away
from prudential considerations by the interest he felt in his invention.
Fenner, and others with whom Ged came in contact in the south, were
sharp and selfish people, not over-disposed to use their associate
justly. The unfortunate projector had also to encounter positive
treacheries, arising from the fear that his plan would injure interests
already invested in the trade of printing. He spent several years
between London and the university of Cambridge, and never got beyond
some abortive experiments, which, however, might have been sufficient to
convince any skilful printer of the entire practicability, as well as
advantageousness of the scheme. With a deep sense of injury from Fenner
and others, Ged returned to Edinburgh in 1733, a poorer, if not a wiser
man than he had been eight years before.
It was impossible, however, that so magnificent an addition to the
invention of Scheffer and Guttenberg as _stereotyping_ should be
suppressed. A few kind neighbours entered into a subscription to enable
Ged to make a new effort in Scotland. Having a son named James, about
twelve years old, he put him apprentice to a printer, that the boy might
supply that technical skill which was wanting in himself. Before this
child had been a year at his business, being allowed by his master to
return to the office by himself at night for his father’s work, he had
begun to set up the types for an edition of Sallust in an 18mo size; and
plates from the forms were finished by Ged in 1736. The impression from
these constituted the _first stereotyped book_.
Several persons beyond the limits of the book-producing trades had a
sense of Ged’s merits. In 1740, when he sent a plate of nine pages of
Sallust, and a copy of the book, to the Faculty of Advocates, as an
explanation of his invention, they passed a resolution to appoint him
some suitable gratification ‘when their stock should be in good
condition.’[687] Mr Robert Smith, chancellor of the university of
Cambridge, and the bishop of St Asaph’s, were [Sidenote: 1729.] so
favourably disposed to him, that in 1742 they made a movement for
getting him established as printer to the university, that he might
there introduce his plan; but it came to nothing. William Ged, the
author of an invention which has unspeakably extended the utility of the
printing-press, died a poor man in 1749. The boy James, who had set the
types of the Sallust, joined Prince Charles—for the family was of
Jacobite inclinations—and, being apprehended in Carlisle in December
1745, he was condemned to death along with Colonel Townley. The only
benefit ever derived by the Geds from their father’s invention, was that
the aforesaid Mr Robert Smith, by his interest with the Duke of
Newcastle, saved the young stereotypist from the gallows.[688]
The subsequent history of James Ged was unfortunate. ‘After he had
obtained his pardon, he followed his business for some time as a
journeyman with Mr Bettenham: afterwards, he commenced master for
himself in Denmark Court, in the Strand. Unsuccessful there, he
privately shipped off himself and his materials for the other side of
the Atlantic.’ ‘He went to Jamaica, where his younger brother was
settled as a reputable printer, and died soon after his arrival in that
island.’[689]
[Sidenote: AUG. 6.]
The ancient church was honourably distinguished by its charity towards
the poor, and more especially towards the diseased poor; and it was a
dreary interval of nearly two centuries which intervened between the
extinction of its lazar-houses and leper-houses, and the time when
merely a civilised humanity dictated the establishment of a regulated
means of succour for the sickness-stricken of the humbler classes. The
date here affixed is an interesting one, as that when a hospital of the
modern type was first opened in Scotland for the reception of poor
patients.
The idea of establishing such an institution in Edinburgh was first
agitated in a pamphlet in 1721, and there is reason to believe that the
requirements of the rising medical school were largely concerned in
dictating it. The matter fell asleep, but was revived in 1725, with a
proposal to raise a fund of at least two thousand pounds sterling to
carry it out. Chiefly by the activity of the [Sidenote: 1729.] medical
profession, this fund was realised; and now the first step of practical
beneficence was taken by the opening of a house, and the taking in of a
small number of patients, for whom six physicians and surgeons undertook
to give attendance and medicine. The total number here received during
the first year was the modest one of thirty-five, of whom nineteen were
dismissed as cured.
Such was the origin of the Edinburgh Infirmary, which, small as it was
at first, was designed from its very origin as a benefit to the whole
kingdom, no one then dreaming that a time would come when every
considerable county town would have a similar hospital. In 1735, the
contributors were incorporated, and three years later, they began to
rear a building for their purpose, calculated to accommodate seventeen
hundred patients per annum, allowing six weeks’ residence for each at an
average. It is remarkable how cordially the upper classes and the heads
of the medical profession concurred in raising and managing this noble
institution, and how readily the industrious orders all over the country
responded to the appeals made to their charity for its support. While
many contributed money, ‘others gave stones, lime, wood, slate, and
glass, which were carried by the neighbouring farmers _gratis_. Not only
many master masons, wrights, slaters, and glaziers gave their
attendance, but many journeymen and labourers frequently gave their
labour _gratis_; and many joiners gave sashes for the windows.’ A
Newcastle glass-making company generously glazed the whole house. By
correspondence and personal intervention, money was drawn for the work,
not only throughout England and Ireland, but in other parts of Europe,
and even in America.[690]
It has always been admitted that the prime moving spirit in the whole
undertaking was George Drummond, one of the Commissioners of Customs,
and on three several occasions Lord Provost of Edinburgh; a man of
princely aspect and character, further memorable as the projector of the
New Town. His merits in regard to the Infirmary have, indeed, been
substantially acknowledged by the setting up of a portrait of him in the
council-room, and a bust by Nollekins in the hall, the latter having
this inscription, dictated by Principal Robertson: ‘George Drummond, to
whom this country is indebted for all the benefit which it derives from
the Royal Infirmary.’[691]
[Sidenote: 1729.]
It is not unworthy of being kept in mind that, in the business of
levying means from a distance, Drummond was largely assisted by an
eccentric sister, named May, who had adopted the tenets of Quakerism,
and occasionally made tours through various parts of Great Britain for
the purpose of preaching to the people, of whom vast multitudes used to
flock to hear her. She was a gentle enthusiast, of interesting
appearance, and so noted did her addresses become, that Queen Caroline
at length condescended to listen to one. We get some idea of her
movements in the summer of 1735, from a paragraph regarding her then
inserted in a London newspaper: ‘We hear that the famous preaching
maiden Quaker (Mrs Drummond, who preached before the queen), lately
arrived from Scotland, intends to challenge the champion of England,
Orator Henley, to dispute with him at the Bull and Mouth, upon the
doctrines and tenets of Quakerism, at such time as he shall appoint.’
In the pages, moreover, of Sylvanus Urban, ‘a Lady’ soon after poured
forth strains of the highest admiration regarding this
‘——happy virgin of celestial race,
Adorned with wisdom, and replete with grace;’
proclaiming that she outshone Theresa of Spain, and was sufficient in
herself to extinguish the malignant ridicule with which men sometimes
assail the capacities of women.[692]
Human nature, however, is a ravelled hasp of rather mixed yarn, and it
will be heard with pity that this amiable missionary of piety and
charity was one of those anomalous beings who, without necessity or
temptation, are unable to restrain themselves from picking up and
carrying away articles belonging to their neighbours. The propensity,
though as veritable a disease as any ever treated within the walls of
her brother’s infirmary, threw a shade, deepening that of poverty, over
the latter years of May Drummond. Only the enlightened and generous few
could rightly apprehend such a case. Amongst some memoranda on old-world
local matters, kindly communicated to me many years ago by Sir Walter
Scott, I find one touching gently on the memory of this unfortunate
lady, and directing my attention to ‘a copy of tolerably good elegiac
verses,’ written on a picture in which she was represented in the
character of Winter. Of these he quoted [Sidenote: 1729.] from memory,
with some slight inaccuracies, the first and third of the following
three:
‘Full justly hath the artist planned
In Winter’s guise thy furrowed brow,
And rightly raised thy feeble hand
Above the elemental glow.
I gaze upon that well-known face;
But ah, beneath _December’s_ frost,
Lies buried all its vernal grace,
And every trait of _May_ is lost.
Nor merely on thy trembling frame,
Thy wrinkled cheek, and deafened ear,
But on thy _fortunes_ and thy _fame_,
Relentless Winter frowns severe.’[693]
[Sidenote: SEP.]
Sir Robert Monro of Foulis, in Ross-shire, ‘a very ancient gentleman,’
and chief of a considerable clan, died in the enjoyment of general
esteem. Four counties turned out to shew their respect at his funeral.
There were above six hundred horsemen, tolerably mounted and apparelled.
‘The corpse was carried on a bier betwixt two horses, fully harnessed in
deepest mourning. A gentleman rode in deep mourning before the corpse,
uncovered, attended by two grooms and four running-footmen, all in deep
mourning. The [Sidenote: 1729.] friends followed immediately behind the
corpse, and the gentlemen [strangers] in the rear. The scutcheons,’ says
the reporter, ‘were the handsomest I ever saw; the entertainment
magnificent and full.’[694]
[Sidenote: SEP.]
General Wade was now dating from ‘my hutt at Dalnacardoch,’ having been
obliged for some time to station himself in the wilderness of
Drumnachter, in order to get the road from Dunkeld to Inverness
finished, and a shorter one planned as a branch to Crieff. The Lord
Advocate Forbes wrote to him sympathisingly, acknowledging that ‘never
was penitent banished into a more barren desert for his sins.’ Both
gentlemen had their eyes open regarding a plotting among the Jacobites,
of which the government had got some inkling, but of which nothing came.
In the latter part of the month, the general advanced to Ruthven, in
Badenoch, and there the people for the first time beheld that modern
luxury—a coach. Everybody turned out to see it, for it was next to a
prodigy among that simple people. Here Forbes met General Wade, and some
sort of court of judicature was held by them; after which they parted,
the advocate to return to Inverness, and Wade to Dalnacardoch.
The good-natured general had arranged for a fête to be held by those
whom he jocularly called his _highwaymen_; and it must have been a
somewhat picturesque affair. On a spot near Dalnaspidal, and opposite to
the opening of Loch Garry, the working-parties met under their officers,
and formed a square surrounding a tent. Four oxen were roasted whole,
‘in great order and solemnity,’ and four ankers of brandy were broached.
The men dined _al fresco_; the general and his friend Sir Robert
Clifton, with Sir Duncan Campbell, Colonel Guest, Major Duroure, and a
number of other gentlemen, were regaled in the tent. The beef, according
to the general’s own acknowledgment, was ‘excellent,’ and after it was
partaken of, a series of loyal toasts was drunk amidst demonstrations of
general satisfaction, the names of the Lord Advocate and his brother,
John Forbes of Culloden, being not forgotten. There is something
interesting in these simple jocosities, considering the grand engine of
civilisation they were connected with.[695]
[Sidenote: 1729.]
The road from Ruthven to Fort Augustus, involving the steep and
difficult mountain of Corryarrick, and the most difficult part of the
whole undertaking, was in the course of being completed in October 1731,
when a gentleman signing himself ‘N. M‘Leod,’ being probably no other
than the Laird of Dunvegan, chanced to pass that way on his road to
Skye, and gave in the newspapers an account of what he saw. ‘Upon
entering,’ he says, ‘into a little glen among the hills, lately called
Laggan a Vannah, but now by the soldiers Snugburgh, I heard the noise of
many people, and saw six great fires, about each of which a number of
soldiers were very busy. During my wonder at the cause of this, an
officer invited me to drink their majesties’ healths. I attended him to
each fire, and found that these were the six working-parties of
Tatton’s, Montague’s, Mark Ker’s, Harrison’s, and Handyside’s regiments,
and the party from the Highland Companies, making in all about five
hundred men, who had this summer, with indefatigable pains, completed
the great road for wheel-carriages between Fort Augustus and Ruthven. It
being the 30th of October, his majesty’s birthday, General Wade had
given to each detachment an _ox-feast_, and liquor; six oxen were
roasted whole, one at the head of each party. The joy was great, both
upon the occasion of the day, and the work’s being completed, which is
really a wonderful undertaking.’
Before dismissing General Wade, it may be mentioned that a permanent
record of his engineering skill and courage in building Tay Bridge, in
the form of a Latin inscription, was put upon that structure itself,
being the composition of Dr Friend, master of Westminster School. But
this, if the most classic, was not destined to be the most memorable
memorial of the worthy general’s labours. ‘To perpetuate the memory of
the marshal’s chief exploit, in making the road from Inverness to
Inverary, an obelisk is erected near Fort William, on which the
traveller is reminded of his merits by the following naïf couplet:
“Had you seen these roads before they were made,
You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade.”’[696]
‘Long before the improvements of the Highlands were seriously [Sidenote:
1729.] thought of, Lord Kames, being, in 1773, at Inverness on the
circuit, gave, as a toast after dinner, “Roads and Bridges.” Captain
Savage, of the 37th regiment, then at Fort George, sat near his
lordship, and, being next asked for a toast, gave “Chaises and Horses,”
to the annoyance of the entertainers, who thought it done in ridicule,
though doubtless the captain only meant to follow out the spirit of Lord
Kames’s sentiment.’—_Letter of the late H. R. Duff of Muirton to the
author, 31st March 1827._
[Sidenote: OCT. 18.]
In Scotland, oil-painting had had a morning-star in the person of George
Jameson. Two ages of darkness had followed. About the beginning of the
eighteenth century, a foreign artist, John Medina, found for a few years
a fair encouragement for his pencil in the painting of portraits; and
the Duke of Queensberry, as royal commissioner, conferred upon him the
honour of knighthood.[697] Then arose two native portrait-painters of
some merit—John Alexander, who, moreover, was able to decorate a
staircase in Gordon Castle with a tolerable picture of the Rape of
Proserpine; and John Scougal, who has handed down to us not a few of the
lords and gentlemen of the reign of Queen Anne.[698] William Aikman, a
disciple of Medina, followed, and was in vogue as a painter of portraits
in Edinburgh about 1721. Such was the meagre history of oil-painting in
Scotland till the end of the reign of the first George.
At that time, when wealth was following industry, and religious gloom
beginning to give way to a taste for elegant amusements, the decorative
arts were becoming comparatively prominent. Roderick Chalmers and James
Norie, while ostensibly house-painters, aspired to a graceful use of the
pencil, seldom failing, when they painted a set of panelled rooms, to
leave a tolerable landscape from their own hands over the fireplaces;
and in some of the houses in the Old Town of Edinburgh, these pieces are
still seen to be far from contemptible. William Adam, father of the
celebrated brothers, William and Robert, was the principal architect of
the day. There was even a [Sidenote: 1729.] respectable line-engraver in
Richard Cooper, the person from whom Strange, some years after, derived
his first lessons. While these men had a professional interest in art,
there were others who viewed it with favour on general grounds, and,
from motives of public spirit, were willing to see it encouraged in the
Scottish capital.
There was, accordingly, a design formed at this date for the erection of
a sort of academy in Edinburgh, under the name of the School of St Luke,
‘for the encouragement of painting, sculpture, architecture, &c.’ A
scheme of it, drawn up on parchment, described the principal practical
object to be, to have a properly lighted and furnished room, where the
members could meet periodically to practise drawing, &c., from the
figure, or from draughts; lots to be drawn for the choice of seats.
Private gentlemen who chose to contribute were invited to join in the
design, though they might not be disposed to use the pencil. We find a
surprisingly liberal list of subscribers to this document, including
Lord Linton, Lord Garlies, and Gilbert Elliot; James M‘Ewen, James
Balfour, and Allan Ramsay, booksellers; the artists above mentioned, and
about fifteen other persons. Amongst the rest was the name of Allan
Ramsay, junior, now a mere stripling, but who came to be
portrait-painter to George III.[699]
The above is all that we know about this proposed School of St Luke.
Very pleasant it is to know so much, to be assured that, in 1729, there
was even a handful of men in the Scottish capital so far advanced in
taste for one of the elegant arts, as to make a movement for its
cultivation. As to the preparedness of the general mind of the country
for the appreciation of high art, the following little narrative will
enable the modern reader to form some judgment.
In December 1734, there was shewn in Edinburgh, ‘at Mr Yaxley
Davidson’s, without the Cowgate Port,’ a collection of curiosities,
amongst which was included a said-to-be-valuable picture of Raphael,
probably representing the Saviour on the Cross; also a view of the
interior of St Peter’s at Rome, as illuminated for the jubilee of 1700,
‘the like never seen in Great Britain.’ The exhibition lingered for a
few weeks in the city with tolerable success, and was then removed to
the tavern of one Murray at the Bridge-end, opposite to Perth.
[Sidenote: 1729.]
Here, in consequence of ‘a pathetic sermon’ preached by one of the
ministers, and certain printed letters industriously circulated on the
subject of these works of art, a crowd of the meaner sort of people rose
tumultuously on the 10th of July, and, crossing the Tay by the
ferry-boat, proceeded to Murray’s house, crying out: ‘Idolatry! molten
and graven images! popery!’ and so forth. Then, surrounding the door,
they attempted to enter for the purpose of dragging forth the pictures,
and were only with difficulty withstood by the landlord, who, backed by
his hostler, planted himself with a drawn cutlass in the doorway. Time
was thus given for some gentlemen of Perth to come to the rescue, and
also to allow of the Earl of Kinnoull’s bailie of regality to come
forward in behalf of the peace; ‘whereupon the men concerned in the mob
withdrew, the women still standing at the doors of the house, crying
out: “Idolatry, idolatry, and popery!” and threatening still to burn the
house, or have the pictures and graven images destroyed, till some
dozens of the female ringleaders were carried over the river to Perth,
the rest dispersing gradually of their own accord. Immediately after,
the poor stranger was glad to make the best of his way, and went
straight in a boat to Dundee, which the mobbers no sooner perceived, but
they sent an express by land to that place to prompt some of the zealous
there to mob him at landing.’
Apparently this message had taken effect, for we learn, a few days
after, that the collection of curiosities, ‘having made a fine retreat
from the late attack at the Bridge-end of Perth,’ are again on view in
Edinburgh.[700]
Amongst the ‘signs and causes of the Lord’s departure,’ adduced by the
Seceders in a testimony published by them soon after this time, is the
fact that ‘an idolatrous picture of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
was well received in some remarkable places of the land.’
[Sidenote: NOV.]
Mr Wodrow was regaled at this time with a few additional chastisements
for the city of Glasgow. Mrs Glen, who dealt largely in silks and
Hollands, had broken down under a bill for three hundred pounds, with
debt to tradesmen in the city for weaving cloth to the amount of five
hundred! In the ensuing June, the town sustained ‘a very great loss’ by
the breaking of a Scottish factor in Holland; no less than two
[Sidenote: 1729.] thousand pounds sterling: only—and here was the great
pity in the case—it was diffused over too many parties to be very
sensibly felt.[701]
About fifteen months after this date, the worthy pastor of Eastwood
adverted to the ‘great losses, hardships, and impositions’ which the
trade of Glasgow had recently undergone, and to the ‘several hundreds of
working poor’ which hung as a burden upon the city. Notwithstanding all
that—and we can imagine his perplexity in recording the fact—the
citizens were getting up a house of refuge for distressed people. ‘In a
week or two, twelve hundred pounds was signed for, besides two hundred
Mr Orr gives,’ and certain sums to be contributed by public bodies. What
would he have thought if he could have been assured that, in little more
than a century, Glasgow would, in a few weeks, and without difficulty,
raise forty-five thousand pounds as its quota towards a national fund
for the succour of the sufferers in the British army by a single
campaign!
[Sidenote: DEC. 24.]
Lord Balmerino, son of the lord who had been the subject of a notable
prosecution under the tyrannical government of Charles I.,[702] was now
residing in advanced age at his house in Coatfield Lane, in Leith. One
of his younger sons, named Alexander (the immediate younger brother of
Arthur, who made so gallant a death on Tower Hill in 1746), was leading
a life of idleness and pleasure at the same place. As this young
gentleman was now to be involved in a bloody affair which took place in
Leith Links, it may be worth while to recall that, five years back, he
was engaged on the same ground in an affair of gaiety and sport, which
yet had some ominous associations about it. It was what a newspaper of
the day calls ‘a solemn match at golf’ played by him for twenty guineas
with Captain Porteous of the Edinburgh Town-guard; an affair so
remarkable on account of the stake, that it was attended by the Duke of
Hamilton, the Earl of Morton, and a vast mob of the great and little
besides, Alexander Elphinstone ending as the winner.[703] No one could
well have imagined, as that cheerful game was going on, that both the
players were, not many years after, to have blood upon their hands, one
of them to take on the murderer’s mark upon this very field.
On the 23d of December 1729, the Honourable Alexander [Sidenote: 1729.]
Elphinstone met a Lieutenant Swift of Cadogan’s regiment at the house of
Mr Michael Watson, merchant in Leith. Some hot words having risen
between them, Elphinstone rose to depart, but before he went, he touched
Swift on the shoulder with his sword, and dropped a hint that he would
expect to receive satisfaction next morning on the Links. Next day,
accordingly, the two gentlemen met at eleven in the forenoon in that
comparatively public place (as it now appears), and fought a single
combat with swords, which ended in Swift receiving a mortal wound in the
breast.
Elphinstone was indicted for this act before the High Court of
Justiciary; but the case was never brought forward, and the young man
died without molestation at Leith three years after.
[Sidenote: 1730.]
The merit of the invention of that noble instrument, the Reflecting
Telescope, is allowed to rest with David Gregory, a native of Scotland,
although that of first completing one (in 1671) is due to the
illustrious Newton. It was thought very desirable by Sir Isaac to
substitute glass for metallic reflectors; but fifty years elapsed
without the idea being realised, when at length, about this date, a very
young Edinburgh artist, named James Short, ‘executed no fewer than six
reflecting telescopes with glass specula, three of which were fifteen
inches, and three nine inches in focal length,’ to which Professor
Maclaurin gave his approbation, though ultimately their light was found
fainter than was deemed necessary.
Two years afterwards, when Short had only attained the age of
twenty-two, he began to enter into competition with the English makers
of reflecting telescopes, but without attempting to make specula of
glass. ‘To such perfection did he carry the art of grinding and
polishing metallic specula, and of giving them the true parabolic
figure, that, with a telescope of fifteen inches in focal length, he and
Mr Bayne, Professor of Law in the University of Edinburgh, read the
_Philosophical Transactions_ at the distance of five hundred feet, and
several times, particularly on the 24th of November and the 7th of
December 1734, they saw the five satellites of Saturn together, an
achievement beyond the reach of Hadley’s six-feet telescope.’
This ingenious man, attaining some celebrity for the making of
reflecting telescopes, was induced, in 1742, to settle in London, where
for a number of years he continued to use his remarkable [Sidenote:
1730.] talents in this way, occasionally furnishing instruments at high
prices to royal personages throughout Europe.[704]
[Sidenote: OCT. 26.]
One William Muir, brother of two men who had recently been hanged at Ayr
for theft, was this day tried before a jury, for housebreaking, by the
Lord Provost of Edinburgh, acting as ‘High Sheriff within burgh.’ The
man was condemned to death, and the sentence was duly executed on the
ensuing 2d of December, he dying penitent.[705]
It seems strange to us, but about this time the condemnation of
criminals to capital punishment by sheriffs of counties, and by the
chief-magistrate of Edinburgh, was by no means infrequent, being
entirely in accordance with the statutory arrangements of the country.
Nay more, great territorial lords, especially in the Highlands, still
acted upon their ancient privileges of pit and gallows. It is related
that the Duke of Athole one day received at Blair an application from
his baron-bailie for pardon to a man whom he had condemned to be hanged
for theft, but who was a person of such merits otherwise that it seemed
a pity to put justice in force against him. The Lord President Forbes,
who had stopped to dine with his Grace in the course of a journey to
Edinburgh, expressed his surprise that the power of pardoning a
condemned criminal should be attributed to any person but the king.
‘Since I have the power of punishing,’ said the duke, ‘it is but right
that I should have the power of pardoning.’ Then, calling a servant, he
quietly added: ‘Send an express to Logierait, and order Donald Stewart,
presently under sentence, to be set at liberty.’[706]
We are now arrived at a time which seems to mark very decidedly a
transition in Scotland from poverty to growing wealth, from the
puritanic manners of the seventeenth century to the semi-licence and
ease of the eighteenth, from narrow to liberal education, and
consequently from restricted to expanded views. It may, therefore, be
proper here to introduce a few general observations.
Although, only a few years back, we find Wodrow speaking of the general
poverty, it is remarkable that, after this time, complaints on that
point are not heard in almost any quarter. The [Sidenote: 1730.] influx
of commercial prosperity at Glasgow had now fairly set in, and the linen
manufacture and other branches of industry begin to be a good deal
spoken of. Agricultural improvements and the decoration of the country
by wood had now been commenced. There was great chafing under the
taxation introduced after the Union, and smuggling was popular, and the
revenue-officers were detested; yet the people had become able to endure
the deductions made from their income. Thus did matters go on during the
time between 1725 and 1745, making a slow but sensible advance—nothing
like what took place after the question of the dynasty had been settled
at Culloden, but yet such as to very considerably affect the condition
of the people. Much of this was owing to the pacific policy of Sir
Robert Walpole, to whom, with all his faults, the British people
certainly owe more than to any minister before Sir Robert Peel.
If we wish to realise the manners before this period, we must think of
the Scotch as a people living in a part of Britain remote from the
centre—peninsulated and off at a side—enjoying little intercourse with
strangers; but, above all, as a people on whom the theology of the
Puritans, with all their peculiar views regarding the forms of religion
and the arrangements of a church, had taken a powerful hold. Down to
1730, all respectable persons in Scotland, with but the slightest
exceptions, maintained a strictly evangelical creed, went regularly to
church, and kept up daily family-worship. Nay, it had become a custom
that every house should contain a small closet built on purpose, to
which the head of the family could retire at stated times for his
personal or private devotions, which were usually of a protracted kind,
and often accompanied by great motions and groanings, expressive of an
intense sense of human worthlessness without the divine favour. On
Sunday, the whole family, having first gathered for prayers in the
parlour, proceeded at ten to church. At half-past twelve, they came home
for a light dinner of cold viands (none being cooked on this sacred
day), to return at two for an afternoon service of about two hours. The
remainder of the day was devoted to private devotions, catechising of
children, and the reading of pious books, excepting a space of time set
aside for supper, which in many families was a comfortable meal, and an
occasion, the only one during the day, when a little cheerful
conversation was indulged in. Invariably, the day was closed with a
repetition of family prayers.
It was customary for serious people to draw up a written paper,
[Sidenote: 1730.] in which they formally devoted themselves to the
service of God—a sort of personal covenant with their Maker—and to renew
this each year at the time of the celebration of the communion by a
fresh signature with the date. The subscriber expressed his entire
satisfaction with the scheme of Christian salvation, avowed his
willingness to take the Lord to be his all-sufficient portion, and to be
resigned to his will and providence in all things. He also expressed his
resolution to be mortified to the world, and to engage heartily and
steadfastly persevere in the performance of all religious duties. An
earnest prayer for the divine help usually closed this document.
As all were trained to look up to the Deity with awe and terror, so,
with the same feelings, were children accustomed to look up to their
parents, and servants to their masters. Amongst the upper classes, the
head of the family was for the most part an awful personage, who sat in
a special chair by the fireside, and at the head of the table, with his
hat on, often served at meals with special dishes, which no one else,
not even guests, partook of. In all the arrangements of the house, his
convenience and tastes were primarily studied. His children approached
him with fear, and never spoke with any freedom before him. At meals,
the lady of the house helped every one as she herself might choose. The
dishes were at once ill-cooked and ill-served. It was thought unmeet for
man that he should be nice about food. Nicety and love of rich feeding
were understood to be hateful peculiarities of the English, and unworthy
of the people who had been so much more favoured by God in a knowledge
of matters of higher concern.
There was, nevertheless, a great amount of hospitality. And here it is
to be observed, that the poverty of those old times had less effect on
the entertainments of the higher classes than might have been expected.
What helped the gentlefolks in this respect, was the custom of receiving
considerable payments from their tenants in _kind_. This enabled them to
indulge in a rude abundance at home, while their means of living in a
town-house, or in an inn while travelling, was probably very limited. We
must further remember the abundance of game in Scotland, how every moor
teemed with grouse and black-cock, and every lake and river with fish.
These furnished large supplies for the table of the laird, both in
Lowlands and Highlands; and I feel convinced that the miserable picture
drawn by a modern historian of the way of living among the northern
chiefs is untrue to a [Sidenote: 1730.] large extent, mainly by his
failure to take such resources into account.
A lady, born in 1714, who has left a valuable set of reminiscences of
her early days, lays great stress on the home-staying life of the
Scottish gentry. She says that this result of their narrow circumstances
kept their minds in a contracted state, and caused them to regard all
manners and habits different from their own with prejudice. The adult
had few intelligent books to read; neither did journals then exist to
give them a knowledge of public affairs. The children, kept at a
distance by their parents, lived much amongst themselves or with
underlings, and grew up with little of either knowledge or refinement.
Restrained within a narrow social circle, they often contracted improper
marriages. It was not thought necessary in those days that young ladies
should acquire a sound knowledge of even their own language, much less
of French, German, or Italian; nor were many of them taught music or any
other refined accomplishment. ‘The chief thing required was to hear them
psalms and long catechisms, in which they were employed an hour or more
every day, and almost the whole day on Sunday. They were allowed to run
about and amuse themselves in the way they choosed, even to the age of
woman, at which time they were generally sent to Edinburgh for a winter
or two, to learn to dress themselves, and to dance, and see a little of
the world. The world was only to be seen at church, at marriages,
burials, and baptisms.... When in the country, their employment was in
coloured work, beds, tapestry, and other pieces of furniture; imitations
of fruits and flowers, with very little taste. If they read any, it was
either books of devotion or long romances, and sometimes both.’
Previous to this time, the universal dress of the middle classes was of
plain country cloth, much of it what was called _hodden gray_—that is,
cloth spun at home from the undyed wool. Gentlemen of figure wore
English or foreign cloth, and their clothes were costly in comparison
with other articles. We find, for instance, a gentleman at his marriage,
in 1711, paying £340 Scots for two suits, a night-gown, and a suit to
his servant. Linen being everywhere made at home—the spinning executed
by the servants during the long winter evenings, and the weaving by the
village webster—there was a general abundance of napery and of
under-clothing. Holland, being about six shillings an ell, was worn only
by men of refinement. ‘I remember,’ says the lady aforesaid, ‘in the ‘30
or ‘31, of a ball where it was agreed [Sidenote: 1730.] that the company
should be dressed in nothing but what was manufactured in the country.
My sisters were as well dressed as any, and their gowns were striped
linen at 2_s._ 6_d._ per yard. Their heads and ruffles were of Paisley
muslins, at 4_s._ 6_d._, with fourpenny edging from Hamilton; all of
them the finest that could be had.... At the time I mention, hoops were
constantly worn four and a half yards wide, which required much silk to
cover them; and gold and silver were much used for trimming, never less
than three rows round the petticoat; so that, though the silk was
slight, the price was increased by the trimming. Then the heads were all
dressed in laces from Flanders; no blondes or course-edging used: the
price of these was high, but two suits would serve for life; they were
not renewed but at marriage, or some great event. Who could not afford
these wore fringes of thread.’ In those days, the ladies went to church,
and appeared on other public occasions, in full dress. A row of them so
rigged out, taking a place in the procession at the opening of the
General Assembly, used to be spoken of by old people as a fine show.
When a lady appeared in undress on the streets of Edinburgh, she
generally wore a mask, which, however, seems to have been regarded as
simply an equivalent for the veil of modern times.
One marked peculiarity of old times, was the union of fine parade and
elegant dressing with vulgarity of thought, speech, and act. The
seemliness and delicacy observed now-a-days regarding both marriages and
births were unknown long ago. We have seen how a bridal in high life was
conducted in the reign of Queen Anne.[707] Let us now observe the
ceremonials connected with a birth at the same period. ‘On the fourth
week after the lady’s delivery, she is set on her bed on a low
footstool; the bed covered with some neat piece of sewed work or white
sattin, with three pillows at her back covered with the same; she in
full dress with a lappet head-dress and a fan in her hand. Having
informed her acquaintance what day she is to see company, they all come
and pay their respects to her, standing, or walking a little through the
room (for there’s no chairs). They drink a glass of wine and eat a bit
of cake, and then give place to others. Towards the end of the week, all
the friends are asked to what was called the _Cummers’ Feast_.[708] This
was a supper where every gentleman brought a pint of wine to be drunk by
[Sidenote: 1730.] him and his wife. The supper was a ham at the head,
and a pyramid of fowl at the bottom. This dish consisted of four or five
ducks at bottom, hens above, and partridges at top. There was an eating
posset in the middle of the table, with dried fruits and sweetmeats at
the sides. When they had finished their supper, the meat was removed,
and in a moment everybody flies to the sweetmeats to pocket them. Upon
which a scramble ensued; chairs overturned, and everything on the table;
wrestling and pulling at one another with the utmost noise. When all was
quiet, they went to the stoups (for there were no bottles), of which the
women had a good share; for though it was a disgrace to be seen drunk,
yet it was none to be a little intoxicat in good company.’
Any one who has observed the conduct of stiff people, when on special
occasions they break out from their reserve, will have no difficulty in
reconciling such childish frolics with the general sombreness of old
Scottish life.
It is to be observed that, while puritanic rigour was characteristic of
the great bulk of society, there had been from the Restoration a
minority of a more indulgent complexion. These were generally persons of
rank, and adherents of Episcopacy and the House of Stuart. Such tendency
as there was in the country to music, to theatricals, to elegant
literature, resided with this party almost exclusively. After the long
dark interval which ensued upon the death of Drummond, Sir George
Mackenzie, the ‘persecutor,’ was the first to attempt the cultivation of
the belles-lettres in Scotland. Dr Pitcairn was the centre of a small
circle of wits who, a little later, devoted themselves to the Muses, but
who composed exclusively in Latin. When Addison, Steele, Pope, and Swift
were conferring Augustine glories on the reign of Anne in England, there
was scarcely a single writer of polite English in Scotland; but under
George I., we find Ramsay tuning his rustic reed, and making himself
known even in the south, notwithstanding the peculiarity of his
language. These men were all of them unsympathetic with the old church
Calvinism of their native country—as, indeed, have been nearly all the
eminent cultivators of letters in Scotland down to the present time. We
learn that copies of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ found their way into
Scotland; and we hear not only of gentlemen, but of clergymen reading
them. Allan Ramsay lent out the plays of Congreve and Farquhar at his
shop in Edinburgh. Periodical amateur concerts were commenced, as we
have seen, as early as 1717. The Easy Club—to [Sidenote: 1730.] which
Ramsay belonged—and other social fraternities of the same kind, were at
the same time enjoying their occasional convivialities in Edinburgh. A
small miscellany of verse, published in Edinburgh in 1720, makes us
aware that there were then residing there several young aspirants to the
laurel, including two who have since obtained places in the roll of the
British poets—namely, Thomson and Mallet—and also Mr Henry Home of
Kames, and Mr Joseph Mitchell: moreover, we gather from this little
volume, that there was in Edinburgh a ‘Fair Intellectual Club,’ an
association, we must presume, of young ladies who were disposed to
cultivate a taste for the belles-lettres. About this time, the tea-table
began to be a point of reunion for the upper classes. At four in the
afternoon, the gentlemen and ladies would assemble round a multitude of
small china cups, each recognisable by the number of the little silver
spoon connected with it, and from these the lady of the house would
dispense an almost endless series of libations, while lively chat and
gossip went briskly on, but it is to be feared, in most circles, little
conversation of what would now be called an intellectual cast. On these
occasions, the singing of a Scottish song to an accompaniment on the
spinet was considered a graceful accomplishment; and certainly no
superior treat was to be had.
[Illustration: Lady playing on Spinet, with Violoncello
Accompaniment.—From a volume entitled _Music for Tea-table Miscellany_,
published by Allan Ramsay.]
Two things at this period told powerfully in introducing new ideas and
politer manners: first, the constant going and coming [Sidenote: 1730.]
of sixty-one men of importance between their own country and London in
attendance on parliament; and second, the introduction of a number of
English people as residents or visitors into the country, in connection
with the army, the excise and customs, and the management of the
forfeited estates. This intercourse irresistibly led to greater
cleanliness, to a demand for better house accommodation, and to at once
greater ease and greater propriety of manners. The minority of the
tasteful and the gay being so far reinforced, assemblies for dancing,
and even in a modest way theatricals, were no longer to be repressed.
The change thus effected was by and by confirmed, in consequence of
young men of family getting into the custom of travelling for a year or
two on the continent before settling at their professions or in the
management of their affairs at home. This led, too, to a somewhat
incongruous ingrafting of French politeness on the homely manners and
speech of the general flock of ladies and gentlemen. Reverting to the
matter of house accommodation, it may be remarked that a floor of three
or four rooms and a kitchen was then considered a mansion for a
gentleman or superior merchant in Edinburgh. We ought not to be too much
startled at the idea of a lady receiving gentlemen along with ladies in
her bedroom, when we reflect that there were then few rooms which had
not beds in them, either openly or behind a screen. It is a significant
fact that, in 1745, there was in Inverness only one house which
contained a room without a bed—namely, that in which Prince Charles took
up his lodgings.
As a consequence of the narrowness of house accommodation in those days,
taverns were much more used than they are now. A physician or advocate
in high practice was to be consulted at his tavern, and the habits of
each important practitioner in this regard were studied, and became
widely known. Gentlemen met in tavern clubs each evening for
conversation, without much expense, a shilling’s reckoning being thought
high—more generally, it was the half of that sum. ‘In some of these
clubs they played at backgammon or catch-honours for a penny the game.’
At the consultations of lawyers, the liquor was sherry, brought in
mutchkin stoups, and paid for by the employer. ‘It was incredible the
quantity that was drunk sometimes on those occasions.’ Politicians met
in taverns to discuss the affairs of state. One situated in the High
Street, kept by Patrick Steil, was the resort of a number of the
patriots who urged on the Act of Security and resisted the Union; and
the phrase, _Pate Steil’s Parliament_, [Sidenote: 1730.] occasionally
appears in the correspondence of the time. It was in the same place, as
we have seen, that the weekly concert was commenced. In the freer days
which ensued upon this time, it was not thought derogatory to ladies of
good rank that they should occasionally join oyster-parties in these
places of resort.
Miss Mure, in her invaluable memoir, remarks on the change which took
place in her youth in the religious sentiments of the people. A dread of
the Deity, and a fear of hell and of the power of the devil, she cites
as the predominant feelings of religious people in the age succeeding
the Revolution. It was thought a mark of atheistic tendencies to doubt
witchcraft, or the reality of apparitions, or the occasional
vaticinative character of dreams. When the generation of the Revolution
was beginning to pass away, the deep convictions as well as the
polemical spirit, of the seventeenth century gave place to an easier and
a gentler faith. There was no such thing as scepticism, except in the
greatest obscurity; but a number of favourite preachers began to place
Christianity in an amiable light before their congregations. ‘We were
bid,’ says Miss Mure, ‘to draw our knowledge of God from his works, the
chief of which is the soul of a good man; then judge if we have cause to
fear.... Whoever would please God must resemble him in goodness and
benevolence.... The Christian religion was taught as the purest rule of
morals; the belief of a particular providence and of a future state as a
support in every situation. The distresses of individuals were necessary
for exercising the good affections of others, and the state of suffering
the post of honour.’ At the same time, dread of parents also melted
away. ‘The fathers would use their sons with such freedom, that they
should be their first friend; and the mothers would allow of no
intimacies but with themselves. For their girls the utmost care was
taken that fear of no kind should enslave the mind; nurses were turned
off who would tell the young of ghosts and witches. The old ministers
were ridiculed who preached up hell and damnation; the mind was to be
influenced by gentle and generous motives alone.’