On this day are entered in the records of the Privy Council two
complaints which illustrate in a remarkable manner the state of society
at that time. First, James Lord Ogilvie of Airly, ancestor of the Earls
of Airly, complains that, while he was living quietly in the protection
of the law, and dreading harm from no man, the Earl of Argyle, without
any provocation from him, hounded out a set of broken Highlandmen to
the number of about five hundred, to attack him, and spoil his lands.
He had ‘retired in sober and quiet manner, to dwell and make his
residence in Glen Isla,’ when, on the 21st of August, they entered the
district under silence of night, ‘with sic force and violence, that the
said lord, lying far from his friends, was not able to resist them,
but with great difficulty and short advertisement, he, his wife and
bairns, escaped.’ The invading party are described as having slain all
the people they could lay their hands on, eighteen or twenty in number;
besides, they ‘spulyit and away-took ane grit number of nolt, sheep,
and plenishing [furniture], to the utter wreck and undoing of the haill
poor inhabitants of the country.’ Having at the command of the king
retired, they still hovered on the neighbouring hills, and some weeks
after made a new attack upon Glen Isla, as well as Glen Clova, slaying
three or four persons, and taking away much spoil; ‘sae that the poor
men dwelling in Glen Clova, Glen Isla, and other parts adjacent to
the Month, wha are not able to make resistance, are sae oppressed
by the broken men and sorners hounded out by the Earl of Argyle and
his friends, and maintainit and reset by them, that neither by his
majesty’s protection, nor assurance of the party, can their lives and
gudes be in surety.’
This seems very mysterious, till we read the second entry, which is a
complaint that, on the 16th of August bypast (five days previous to the
above incident), Leighton of Usan and sundry of the Ogilvies, to the
number of about threescore persons, had, at the instigation of Lord
Ogilvie, gone with jacks, spears, harquebuses, and other weapons, and
attacked Robert Campbell in Millhorn, William of Soutarhouse, Thomas
Campbell of Keithock, and John Campbell of Muirton, whom they had
mercilessly slain. How this outrage had been provoked, does not appear;
but there can be no doubt that the invasion of Lord Ogilvie’s privacy
in Glen Isla was a consequence of this earlier and similar incident.
* * * * *
The frightful cutaneous disease of leprosy prevailed in Scotland,
as in most other European countries, from an early age. There was
a hospital for the reception of its victims at Kingcase, near Ayr,
believed to have existed from the reign of King Robert I. At Glasgow,
such an establishment was planted by the Lady of Lochow, daughter of
Robert, Duke of Albany, and in 1584 it had six inmates. In a solitary
spot between Old and New Aberdeen, there was a leper-house, but rather
poorly endowed, for in this year King James is found granting the
inmates a right to one peat out of every load of peats sold in the
town, in consideration that their rents were ‘unable to sustene them in
meat and fire, wherethrough they live very miserably.’[184] There were
a few other such refuges of hopeless misery throughout the land.
[Sidenote: 1591.