Robert Logan of Restalrig is one of the darkest characters of this
bloody and turbulent time. A few years later, he was plotting with the
Ruthvens of Gowrie for an assault upon the king. So early as February
1592-3, he was denounced for trafficking with the turbulent Bothwell.
In June of this year, he was again denounced, and for a more serious
matter--his sending out two servants, Jockie Houlden and Peter Craik,
to rob travellers on the highway, near his house of Fast Castle in
Berwickshire. They had attacked Robert Gray, burgess of Edinburgh, as
he was passing the Boundrod, near Berwick, and taken from him nine
hundred and fifty pounds, besides battering him to the peril of his
life.--_P. C. R._ His residence, as is well known, was a fortalice
perched on an almost inaccessible crag overhanging the waves of the
sea, with black cliffs above, below, and nearly all round--perhaps the
most romantically situated house in our ancient kingdom. Here, it is
known, Logan had Bothwell for his occasional guest.
In July of this year, Logan entered into a contract with John Napier
of Merchiston, proceeding upon the fact of ‘diverse auld reports,
motives, and appearances, that there should be within the said Robert’s
dwelling-place of Fast Castle a sowm of money and pose, hid and huirdit
up secretly.’ John Napier undertook that he ‘sall do his utter and
exact diligence to search and seek out, and be all craft and ingyne
that he dow [can], to tempt, try, and find out the same, and, be the
grace of God, either sall find out the same, or than mak sure that
nae sic thing has been there.’ For this he was to have a third of any
money found. He was also to be convoyed back in safety to Edinburgh,
unspoiled of his gains.
As Logan was competent to make simple mechanical search for the
supposed treasure without the aid of a philosopher, there is much
reason to believe that Napier designed to use some pseudo-scientific
mode or modes of investigation, such as the divining-rod, or the
so-called magic numbers. The affair, therefore, throws a curious light
on the state of philosophy even in the minds of the ablest philosophers
of that age, the time when Tycho kept an idiot on account of his gift
of prophecy, and Kepler perplexed himself with the _Harmonices Mundi_.
It is not known whether Napier did actually journey to the spray-beaten
tower of Fast Castle, and there practise his craft and ingyne. Probably
he did, and was disappointed in more ways than one, as, two years
after, he is found letting a portion of his property to a gentleman on
the strict condition that no part of it shall be sub-let to any one of
the name of Logan.[200]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1594.]
‘This year, in the Merse, there was a great business about sorcery
and the trial of witches, and many was there burnt, as, namely, one
Roughhead, and Cuthbert Hume’s mother of Dunse, the parson of Dunse’s
wife, and sundry of Eyemouth and Coldingham; near a dozen moe, and
many fugitives, as the old Lady A. Sundry others were delated, and
the Ladies of Butt: and Lady B.: the Laird of B.: his sister; one in
Liddesdale by virtue of [a] superstitious well, whereat was professed
great skill; one Dick’s sister, who had her mother hanged before in
Waughton. They confessed the death of the whole goods [live-stock] of
the country.’--_Pa. And._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: NOV.]
The disposition to violent and lawless acts at this time is strikingly
shewn in the proceedings against Claud and Alexander, two sons of James
Hamilton of Livingstone, in Linlithgowshire. Having some ground of
offence against David Dundas of Priestinch, they had gone at mid-day
with an armed party to his fold, and, there barbarously mutilated and
slaughtered a number of his cattle. They and their elder brother,
Patrick, also destroyed a mill leased by the same person, and further
set fire to his barn-yard at Duddington. Two months afterwards, when
John Yellowlees, a messenger, went with two assistants to the Peel of
Livingstone, to deliver letters of citation against these young men,
the laird, with his wife and four sons, came forth to the gate, and
taking him first by the throat, proceeded to beat him unmercifully, and
then, with a bended pistol at his breast, and many violent threats,
forced him to eat and swallow his four letters, and to promise never
to attempt to bring any such documents against them in future; besides
which, they struck the two witnesses with swords and pistols, and left
them for dead. The family were denounced as rebels.--_Pit._
[Sidenote: 1594-5.