During the same just and necessary war for all that was dear to us, in
which the volunteers were raised, one of the severest trials happened to
me that ever any magistrate was subjected to. I had, at the time, again
subsided into an ordinary counsellor; but it so fell out that, by reason
of Mr Shuttlethrift, who was then provost, having occasion and need to go
into Glasgow upon some affairs of his own private concerns, he being
interested in the Kilbeacon cotton-mill; and Mr Dalrye, the bailie, who
should have acted for him, being likewise from home, anent a plea he had
with a neighbour concerning the bounds of their rigs and gables; the
whole authority and power of the magistrates devolved, by a courtesy on
the part of their colleague, Bailie Hammerman, into my hands.
For some time before, there had been an ingathering among us of sailor
lads from the neighbouring ports, who on their arrival, in order to shun
the pressgangs, left their vessels and came to scog themselves with us.
By this, a rumour or a suspicion rose that the men-of-war's men were
suddenly to come at the dead hour of the night and sweep them all away.
Heaven only knows whether this notice was bred in the fears and
jealousies of the people, or was a humane inkling given, by some of the
men-of-war's men, to put the poor sailor lads on their guard, was never
known. But on a Saturday night, as I was on the eve of stepping into my
bed, I shall never forget it--Mrs Pawkie was already in, and as sound as
a door-nail--and I was just crooking my mouth to blow out the candle,
when I heard a rap. As our bed-room window was over the door, I looked
out. It was a dark night; but I could see by a glaik of light from a
neighbour's window, that there was a man with a cocked hat at the door.
"What's your will?" said I to him, as I looked out at him in my nightcap.
He made no other answer, but that he was one of his majesty's officers,
and had business with the justice.
I did not like this Englification and voice of claim and authority;
however, I drew on my stockings and breeks again, and taking my wife's
flannel coaty about my shoulders--for I was then troubled with the
rheumatiz--I went down, and, opening the door, let in the lieutenant.
"I come," said he, "to show you my warrant and commission, and to
acquaint you that, having information of several able-bodied seamen being
in the town, I mean to make a search for them."
I really did not well know what to say at the moment; but I begged him,
for the love of peace and quietness, to defer his work till the next
morning: but he said he must obey his orders; and he was sorry that it
was his duty to be on so disagreeable a service, with many other things,
that showed something like a sense of compassion that could not have been
hoped for in the captain of a pressgang.
When he had said this, he then went away, saying, for he saw my
tribulation, that it would be as well for me to be prepared in case of
any riot. This was the worst news of all; but what could I do? I
thereupon went again to Mrs Pawkie, and shaking her awake, told her what
was going on, and a terrified woman she was. I then dressed myself with
all possible expedition, and went to the town-clerk's, and we sent for
the town-officers, and then adjourned to the council-chamber to wait the
issue of what might betide.
In my absence, Mrs Pawkie rose out of her bed, and by some wonderful
instinct collecting all the bairns, went with them to the minister's
house, as to a place of refuge and sanctuary.
Shortly after we had been in the council-room, I opened the window and
looked out, but all was still; the town was lying in the defencelessness
of sleep, and nothing was heard but the clicking of the town-clock in the
steeple over our heads. By and by, however, a sough and pattering of
feet was heard approaching; and shortly after, in looking out, we saw the
pressgang, headed by their officers, with cutlasses by their side, and
great club-sticks in their hands. They said nothing; but the sound of
their feet on the silent stones of the causey, was as the noise of a
dreadful engine. They passed, and went on; and all that were with me in
the council stood at the windows and listened. In the course of a minute
or two after, two lassies, with a callan, that had been out, came flying
and wailing, giving the alarm to the town. Then we heard the driving of
the bludgeons on the doors, and the outcries of terrified women; and
presently after we saw the poor chased sailors running in their shirts,
with their clothes in their hands, as if they had been felons and
blackguards caught in guilt, and flying from the hands of justice.
The town was awakened with the din as with the cry of fire; and lights
came starting forward, as it were, to the windows. The women were out
with lamentations and vows of vengeance. I was in a state of horror
unspeakable. Then came some three or four of the pressgang with a
struggling sailor in their clutches, with nothing but his trousers on--his
shirt riven from his back in the fury. Syne came the rest of the gang
and their officers, scattered as it were with a tempest of mud and
stones, pursued and battered by a troop of desperate women and weans,
whose fathers and brothers were in jeopardy. And these were followed by
the wailing wife of the pressed man, with her five bairns, clamouring in
their agony to heaven against the king and government for the outrage. I
couldna listen to the fearful justice of their outcry, but sat down in a
corner of the council-chamber with my fingers in my ears.
In a little while a shout of triumph rose from the mob, and we heard them
returning, and I felt, as it were, relieved; but the sound of their
voices became hoarse and terrible as they drew near, and, in a moment, I
heard the jingle of twenty broken windows rattle in the street. My heart
misgave me; and, indeed, it was my own windows. They left not one pane
unbroken; and nothing kept them from demolishing the house to the ground-
stone but the exhortations of Major Pipe, who, on hearing the uproar, was
up and out, and did all in his power to arrest the fury of the tumult. It
seems, the mob had taken it into their heads that I had signed what they
called the press-warrants; and on driving the gang out of the town, and
rescuing the man, they came to revenge themselves on me and mine; which
is the cause that made me say it was a miraculous instinct that led Mrs
Pawkie to take the family to Mr Pittle's; for, had they been in the
house, it is not to be told what the consequences might have been.
Before morning the riot was ended, but the damage to my house was very
great; and I was intending, as the public had done the deed, that the
town should have paid for it. "But," said Mr Keelivine, the town-clerk,
"I think you may do better; and this calamity, if properly handled to the
Government, may make your fortune," I reflected on the hint; and
accordingly, the next day, I went over to the regulating captain of the
pressgang, and represented to him the great damage and detriment which I
had suffered, requesting him to represent to government that it was all
owing to the part I had taken in his behalf. To this, for a time, he
made some scruple of objection; but at last he drew up, in my presence, a
letter to the lords of the admiralty, telling what he had done, and how
he and his men had been ill-used, and that the house of the
chief-magistrate of the town had been in a manner destroyed by the
rioters.
By the same post I wrote off myself to the lord advocate, and likewise to
the secretary of state, in London; commanding, very properly, the prudent
and circumspect manner in which the officer had come to apprize me of his
duty, and giving as faithful an account as I well could of the riot;
concluding with a simple notification of what had been done to my house,
and the outcry that might be raised in the town were any part of the
town's funds to be used in the repairs.
Both the lord advocate and Mr Secretary of State wrote me back by retour
of post, thanking me for my zeal in the public service; and I was
informed that, as it might not be expedient to agitate in the town the
payment of the damage which my house had received, the lords of the
treasury would indemnify me for the same; and this was done in a manner
which showed the blessings we enjoy under our most venerable
constitution; for I was not only thereby enabled, by what I got, to
repair the windows, but to build up a vacant steading; the same which I
settled last year on my dochter, Marion, when she was married to Mr
Geery, of the Gatherton Holme.