‘A play made by Robert Semple,’ was ‘played before the Lord Regent
and diverse others of the nobility.’--_Bir._ There have been several
conjectures as to this play and its author, with little satisfactory
result. It was probably a very simple representation of some historical
scene or transaction, such as we can imagine the life of the execrable
Bothwell to have gratefully furnished before such a company. Semple
appears to have been in such a rank of life as not to be above ordinary
pecuniary rewards for his services, as on the 12th of February there is
an entry in the treasurer’s books of £66, 13s. 4d. ‘to Robert Semple.’
He was a fruitful, but dull writer, being the author of _The Regentis
Trajedie_, 1570; _The Bishopis Lyfe and Testament_, 1571; _My Lord
Methvenis Trajedie_, 1572; and _The Siege of the Castle of Edinburgh_,
1573: besides various poems preserved in the Bannatyne Manuscript.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: FEB. 24.]
Seeing that ‘in the spring of the year all kinds of flesh decays and
grows out of season, and that it is convenient for the commonweal that
they be sparit during that time, to the end that they may be mair
plenteous and better cheap the rest of the year,’ the Privy Council
forbade the use of flesh of any kind during ‘Lentern.’ Fleshers,
hostelers, cooks, and taverners, were forbidden to slay any animals for
use during that season hereafter, under pain of confiscation of their
movable goods.--_P. C. R._ This order was kept up in the same terms
for many years, a forced economy preserving a rule formerly based on a
religious principle.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAR. 4.]
The Regent granted a licence to Cornelius De Vois, a Dutchman, for
nineteen years, to search for gold and silver in any part of Scotland,
‘break the ground, mak sinks and pots therein, and to put labourers
thereto,’ as he might think expedient, with assurance of full
protection from the government, paying in requital for every hundred
ounces of gold or silver which could be purified by washing, eight
ounces, and for every hundred of the same which required the more
expensive process of a purification by fire, four ounces.--_P. C. R._
[Sidenote: 1567-8.]
Stephen Atkinson, who speculated in the gold-mines of Scotland a
generation later, gives us[53] some account of Cornelius De Vois,
whom he calls a German lapidary, and who, he says, had come to
Scotland with recommendations from Queen Elizabeth. According to this
somewhat foolish writer, ‘Cornelius went to view the said mountains in
Clydesdale and Nydesdale, upon which mountains he got a small taste of
small gold. This was a whetstone to sharpen his knife upon; and this
natural gold tasted so sweet as the honey-comb in his mouth. And then
he consulted with his friends at Edinburgh, and by his persuasions
provoked them to adventure with him, shewing them at first the natural
gold, which he called the temptable gold, or alluring gold. It was in
sterns, and some like unto birds’ eyes and eggs: he compared it unto a
woman’s eye, which entiseth her lover into her bosom.’ Cornelius was
not inferior to his class in speculative extravagance. He found in his
golden dreams a solution for the question regarding the poor. He saw
Scotland and England ‘both oppressed with poor people which beg from
door to door for want of employment, and no man looketh to it.’ But
all these people were to find good and profitable employment if his
projects were adopted. We are not accustomed to consider our countrymen
inferior in energy and enterprise to the Germans. Yet Cornelius stated,
that if he had been able to shew in his own country such indications
of mineral wealth as he had found in Scotland, ‘then the whole country
would confederate, and not rest till young and old that were able be
set to work thereat, and to discover this treasure-house from whence
this gold descended; and the people, from ten years old till ten times
ten years old, should work thereat: no charges whatsoever should be
spared, till mountains and mosses were turned into valleys and dales,
but this treasure-house should be discovered.’
It appears that Cornelius so far prevailed on the Scots to
‘confederate,’ that they raised a stock of £5000 Scots, equal to about
£416 sterling, and worked the mines under royal privileges. According
to Atkinson, this adventurer ‘had sixscore men at work in valleys and
dales. He employed both lads and lasses, idle men and women, which
before went a-begging. He profited by their work, and they lived well
and contented.’ They sought for the valuable metal by washing the
detritus in the bottoms of the valleys, receiving from their employer a
mark sterling for every ounce they realised. So long after as 1619, one
John Gibson survived in the village of Crawford to relate how he had
gathered gold in these valleys in pieces ‘like birds’ eyes and birds’
eggs,’ the best being found, he said, in Glengaber Water, in Ettrick,
which he sold for 6s. 8d. sterling per ounce to the Earl of Morton.
Cornelius, within the space of thirty days, sent to the cunyie-house in
Edinburgh as much as eight pound-weight of gold, a quantity which would
now bring £450 sterling.
What ultimately came of Cornelius’s adventure does not appear. He
vanishes notelessly from the field. We are told by Atkinson that the
adventure was subsequently taken up by one Abraham Grey, a Dutchman
heretofore resident in England, commonly called _Greybeard_, from his
having a beard which reached to his girdle. He hired country-people at
4d. a day, to wash the detritus of the valleys around Wanlock-head for
gold; and it is added, that enough was found to make ‘a very fair deep
basin of natural gold,’ which was presented by the Regent Morton to the
French king, filled with gold pieces, also the production of Scotland.
[Sidenote: 1567-8.]
The same valleys were afterwards searched for gold by an Englishman
named George Bowes, who also sunk shafts in the rock, but probably with
limited success, as has hitherto been experienced in ninety-nine out of
every hundred instances, according to Sir Roderick Murchison.
* * * * *
In consequence of an extremely dry summer, the yield of grain and
herbage in 1567 was exceedingly defective. The ensuing winter being
unusually severe, there was a sad failure of the means of supporting
the domestic animals. A stone of hay came to be sold in Derbyshire at
fivepence,[54] which seems to have been regarded as a starvation price.
There was a general mortality among the sheep and horses. In Scotland,
the opening of 1568 was marked by scarcity and all its attendant
evils. ‘There was,’ says a contemporary chronicler, ‘exceeding dearth
of corns, in respect of the penury thereof in the land, and that
beforehand a great quantity thereof was transported to other kingdoms:
for remeed whereof inhibitions were made sae far out of season, that
nae victual should be transported furth of the country under the pain
of confiscation, even then when there was no more left either to
satisfy the indigent people, or to plenish the ordinar mercats of the
country as appertenit.’--_H. K. J._
* * * * *
During his short administration, the Regent Moray gave a large portion
of his time and attention to the repression of lawless people. Justice
was executed in no sparing manner. March 8, 1567-8, ‘the Regent went
to Glasgow, and there held ane justiceaire, where there was execute
about the number of _twenty-eight persons_ for divers crimes.’ July
1568, he ‘rade to St Andrews, and causit drown a man callit Alexander
Macker and six more, for piracy.’ Sep. 13, ‘the Lord Regent rade
to the fair to Jedburgh, to apprehend the thieves; but they being
advertised of his coming, came not to the fair; sae he was frustrate
of his intention, excepting three thieves whilk he took, and caused
hang within the town there.’--_Bir._ April 1569, the Regent made a raid
to the Border against the thieves, accompanied by a party of English.
‘But the thieves keepit themselves in sic manner, that the Regent gat
nane thereof, nor did little other thing, except he brint and reft the
places of Mangerton and Whithope, with divers other houses belonging to
the said thieves.’--_D. O._
[Sidenote: 1567-8.]
In the same month, a number of the most considerable persons in the
southern counties entered into a bond at Kelso, agreeing to be obedient
subjects to the Regent Earl of Moray, and to do all in their power
for the putting down of the thieves of Liddesdale, Ewesdale, Eskdale,
and Annandale, especially those of the names Armstrong, Elliot,
Nickson, Croser [Grozart?], Little, Bateson, Thomson, Irving, Bell,
Johnston, Glendoning, Routledge, Henderson, and Scott; not resetting or
intercommuning with them, their wives, bairns, tenants, and servants,
or suffering any meat or drink to be carried to them, ‘where we may
let;’ also, if, ‘in case of the resistance or pursuit of any of the
said thieves, it sall happen to ony of them to be slain or brint, or
ony of us and our friends to be harmit by them, we sall ever esteem the
quarrel and deadly feid equal to us all, and sall never agree with the
said thieves but together, with ane consent and advice.’[55]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1568.