‘... the Duke of Holstein, the queen’s brother, came through England
to Edinburgh, and was conveyed the first night to the Palace of
Holyroodhouse, where he was received and welcomed very gladly by
her majesty, and used every way like a prince. His majesty hasted
to Edinburgh to meet with the duke, and at his coming saluted and
entertained him ... as appertained to his rank. The duke made a
progress from Holyroodhouse to the other side of the Forth, the first
night to Ravensheugh, Lord Sinclair’s house, and from thence to
Balcomie, Pittenweem, Anstruther, St Andrews, Dundee, Foulis, Stirling,
and Linlithgow, and returned again to Edinburgh. He was honourably
received and banqueted all the way. His majesty gave him banquets in
Holyroodhouse and Stirling sundry times, and entertained him with
pastime, and all other things to his great liking and contentment;
likewise he was very largely complimented by their majesties.’ That is,
they gave him large presents.--_Moy. R._
_May 2._ ‘The Duke of Holstein got ane banquet in Macmoran’s
lodging,[233] given by the town of Edinburgh. The king’s majesty and
the queen being both there, there was great solemnity and merriness at
the said banquet.’--_Bir._
_June 3._ ‘The Duke of Holstein took his leave of the king and queen,
and shipped at Leith, having got great propines [gifts]; to wit,
a thousand five-pound pieces, a thousand crowns, with a hat and a
string valued at twelve thousand pounds, besides other rich chains and
jewels.’--_Pa. And._ ‘To his bonalley, sixty shot of ordnance shot off
the bulwark of Leith.’--_Bir._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: APR.
1598.]
Fynes Moryson, gentleman, who had travelled in most of the countries
of Europe, being at Berwick, felt an earnest desire, before returning
southwards, to see the king of Scots’ court. He therefore entered
Scotland, and in one day rode to Edinburgh; after which he proceeded
to Falkland, and designed to visit St Andrews and Stirling, but was
prevented by unexpected business, which recalled him to England. He
tells us little that is remarkable about the localities he visited, but
makes some general observations regarding travelling in Scotland, which
are not devoid of interest.
‘In Scotland,’ he says, ‘a horse may be hired for two shillings the
first day, and eightpence the day till he be brought home; and the
horse-letters used to send a footman to bring back the horse. They
have no such inns as be in England; but in all places some houses
are known where passengers may have meat and lodging; but they have
no bushes or signs hung out, and for the horses, they are commonly
set up in stables in some out-lane, not in the same house where the
passenger lies. And if any man be acquainted with a townsman, he will
go freely to his house, for most of them will entertain a stranger for
his money. A horseman shall pay for oats and straw (for hay is rare in
those parts) some eightpence day and night; and he shall pay no less
in summer for grass, whereof they have no great store. Himself at a
common table shall pay about sixpence for his supper or dinner, and
shall have his bed free; and if he will eat alone in his chamber, he
may have meat at a reasonable rate. Some twenty or thirty years ago,
the first use of coaches came into Scotland; yea, were they rare even
at Edinburgh. At this day, since the kingdoms of England and Scotland
were united, many Scots have been promoted by the king’s favour both in
dignity and estate, and the use of coaches became more frequent, yet
nothing so common as in England. But the use of horse-litters hath been
very ancient in Scotland, as in England, for sickly men and women of
quality.’
[Sidenote: 1598.]
He tells that the Scotch eat much colewort and cabbage, and little
fresh meat. ‘Myself,’ he says, ‘was at a knight’s house, who had many
servants to attend him, that brought in his meat with their heads
covered with blue caps, the table being more than half furnished with
great platters of porridge, each having a little piece of sodden meat.
And when the table was served, the servants did sit down with us; but
the upper mess [those sitting above the salt-vat], instead of porridge,
had a pullet with some prunes in the broth. And I observed no art of
cookery or furniture of household stuff, but rather rude neglect of
both, though myself and companion, sent from the governor of Berwick
about Border affairs, were entertained after their best manner....
They vulgarly eat hearth-cakes of oats [girdles for toasting the cakes
over a fire were subsequently invented at Culross], but in cities have
also wheaten bread, which for the most part was bought by courtiers,
gentlemen, and the best sort of citizens.... They drink pure wines, not
with sugar, as the English; yet at feasts they put comfits in the wine,
after the French manner; but they had not our vintners’ fraud, to mix
the wines....’
‘Their bedsteads were then like cupboards in the wall, with doors to
be opened and shut at pleasure; so we climbed up to our beds. They
used but one sheet, open at the sides and top, but close at the feet,
and so doubled [still practised, and a comfortable custom it is]....
When passengers go to bed, their custom was to present them with a
sleeping-cup of wine at parting.’
‘The husbandmen, the servants, and almost all in the country, did wear
coarse cloth made at home, of gray or sky colour [hodden gray], and
flat blue caps very broad. The merchants in cities were attired in
English or French cloth, of pale colour or mingled black and blue. The
gentlemen did wear English cloth, or silk, or light stuffs, little or
nothing adorned with silk lace, much less with lace of silver or gold,
and all followed at this time the French fashion, especially in court.
Gentlewomen married did wear close upper bodies, after the German
manner, with large whalebone sleeves, after the French manner, short
cloaks like the Germans, French hoods, and large falling bands round
their necks. The unmarried of all sorts did go bareheaded, and wear
short cloaks, with most close linen sleeves on their arms, like the
virgins of Germany. The inferior sort of citizens’ wives, and the women
of the country, did wear cloaks made of a coarse stuff, of two or three
colours in chequer-work, vulgarly called _plodan_.’[234]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAY.]
[Sidenote: 1598.]
‘... Lord Home came to Lauder, [and] asked for William Lauder [bailie
of that burgh, commonly called _William at the West Port_], being the
man who hurt John Cranston (nicknamed _John with the gilt sword_).
[William] fled to the tolbooth, as being the strongest and surest
house, for his relief. But the Lord Home caused put fire to the house,
and burnt it all. The gentleman remained therein till the roof-tree
fell. In end he came desperately out amongst them, and hazard[ed]
a shot of a pistol at John Cranston, and hurt him. But [it] being
impossible to escape with life, they most cruelly without mercy hacked
him with swords and whingers all in pieces.’--_Pa. And._
Lady Marischal, sister of Lord Home, ‘hearing the certainty of the
cruel murder of William Lauder, did mightily rejoice thereat, and writ
it for good news to sundry of her friends in the country. But within
less than twenty-four hours after, the lady took a swelling in her
throat, both without and within, after a great laughter, and could not
be cured till death seized upon her with great repentance.’[235]--_Pa.
And._
A remission for this barbarous slaughter was granted by the king, in
1606, to the Earl of Home, Hume of Hutton Hall, Thomas Tyrie, tutor of
Drumkilbo, John Hume in Kells, and other persons.[236]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE 5.]
It does not appear that any effectual order was taken with the Laird
of Johnston for his resistance to the royal authority at Dryfe’s Sands
and the slaughter of Lord Maxwell (December 6, 1593). His turbulent
proceedings at length caused him to be denounced as a rebel. A few days
before this event, his portrait was hung, head downwards, on the gibbet
at the Cross of Edinburgh, and he declared ‘a mansworn man.’--_Bir._ He
was restored to his honours in 1600.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE 22.]
The king gave a letter of patent to Archibald Napier, apparent of
Merchiston, for an invention of his, a ‘new order of gooding and
manuring of field-land with common salt, whereby the same may bring
forth in more abundance, both of grass and corn of all sorts, and far
cheaper than by the common way of dunging used heretofore in Scotland.’
That nothing came of this plan need not be told.
[Sidenote: 1598.]
The Merchiston Napiers must have been a theme of some curiosity and
no little remark at this time, seeing that three generations were
now living, all of them busy-brained, ingenious, and original-minded
persons. First was the laird himself, master-general of the
cunyie-house, still in the vigour of life, being not more than
sixty-five years of age. Second was John Napier, the fiar or heir, only
sixteen years the junior of his father, constantly engaged in puzzling
out profound problems in mathematics and prophecies in the Apocalypse.
Finally, this grandson of the laird, a youth of four-and-twenty, and
already, as we see, exhibiting the active intellect of the family.
Archibald became a favourite courtier of James VI. and Charles I.,
by the latter of whom he was raised to the peerage. He joined the
anti-covenanting party, and endured some adversity in his latter days.
* * * * *
The carboniferous formation, as is well known, does not extend in
Scotland beyond the Ochils; but in the remote county of Sutherland, on
the coast at Brora, there is a patch of oolite, in the lower section
of which is a workable bed of coal, between three and four feet thick.
John, tenth Earl of Sutherland, had discovered this valuable deposit,
but being cut off by poison (anno 1567), he had no opportunity of
trying to turn it to advantage. The Sutherland estates were now under
the management of a woman of some force of character, and who has by
accident a place in our national history--Lady Jean Gordon. Being
divorced by Bothwell, in order to admit of his marriage to Queen Mary,
she had subsequently married one Earl of Sutherland, and become the
mother of another, for whom she was now acting. By this clever countess
the coal of Brora was for the first time worked, not merely for its use
in domestic purposes, but as a means of establishing a salt-work. Some
pans being erected by her ‘a little by-west the entry of the river,’
there was good salt made there, ‘which served not only Sutherland and
the neighbouring provinces, but also was transported into England and
elsewhere.’ This was a good effort, but, like all similar enterprises
in that rude age, it met with interruptions. One vigorous renewed
effort was made by the countess’s son, Earl John, in 1614. It was
not, however, till our own time, when the first Duke of Sutherland
spent £16,000 on the coal-works, and £2337 on the salt-works, that the
original designs of Countess Jean could be said to be fully realised.
The works are stated to have given forth twenty thousand tons of coal
between the years 1814 and 1826.[237]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JULY 10.]
[Sidenote: 1598.]
‘... ane man, some callit him a juggler, playit sic supple tricks upon
ane tow, whilk was fastenit betwixt the top of St Giles’s Kirk steeple
and ane stair beneath the Cross, callit Josia’s Close head, the like
was never seen in this country, as he rade down the tow and playit sae
mony pavies on it.’--_Bir._
Practitioners of such dangerous arts were not uncommon in those days.
The death, in Edinburgh, of one Kirkaldy, ‘who had before danced at the
cock of the steeple [St Giles’s],’ is noted in the history of the civil
broils of 1571.[238]
Mr James Melville reports in 1600: ‘Being in Falkland, I saw a
funambulus, a Frenchman, play strange and incredible proticks upon
stented tackle in the palace close before the king, queen, and haill
court.’ He adds the vulgar surmise of the day: ‘This was politickly
done, to mitigate the queen and people for Gowrie’s slaughter.’
It appears that these diverting vagabonds were well rewarded. The
juggler of 1598, called an ‘English sporter,’ had twenty pounds from
the king for the steeple-trick. Two months after, six pounds thirteen
shillings and fourpence was ordered to ‘David Weir, sporter,’ supposed
to be the same person. To Peter Bramhill, the French _pavier_--that is,
player of pavies--there is a precept from his majesty, ordering him no
less a sum than £333, 6s. 8d.[239]--but of course Scottish money.
* * * * *
‘This year the wheat was blasted.’--_Chron. Perth._ ‘The ait meal sold
for 6s. the peck.’--_Bir._
There was, consequently, towards the end of the year, ‘ane extraordinar
dearth of all kinds of _pultrie and other vivres_,’ throughout the
realm, but particularly did this kind of scarcity prevail in Edinburgh,
‘where his hieness, his nobility and council, in sundry seasons of the
year, make their chief residence.’ The king issued a proclamation,
fixing a minimum of prices for the said articles, not to be exceeded
under certain penalties. This, however, was now found ‘likely to become
altogether ineffectual, partly through the avaritious greediness of
some persons wha forestalls and buys the pultrie in grit, and keeps
the same in secret houses, and there sells the same far above the
prices exprest in the proclamation,’ and partly by the negligence of
magistrates, who take no care to punish ‘the authors of this disorder.’
For these reasons, a more rigorous and menacing proclamation was now
made.
[Sidenote: 1598.]
A fortnight after, followed an edict of Council against twenty-four
poultrymen of Edinburgh (surprising there should have then been so
many in the business), who, it was said, had contravened the late
proclamation by forestalling and secretly selling their poultry at high
prices, representing the fowls as ‘his majesty’s awn kain fowls, or
that they are bocht by them for his majesty’s awn mouth ... slanderand
his majesty hereby, as if his majesty were the chief cause of the break
of the said proclamation.’
It is amusing to observe the apparent astonishment of the king and
his councillors on finding how little respect was paid to edicts of
this kind, as if it were a most unrighteous and undutiful thing of
the people to try to get prices for articles proportionate to the
small quantity there was to sell. We must not, however, be too ready
to indulge in a smile at the false political economy of the Scottish
monarch of 1598, when we remember that a law-made scarcity of _vivres_
was kept up in Great Britain till 1846, and observe that at the present
day the sovereign of France still dictates the prices at which beef
and mutton are to be sold in Paris. At the very time when this notice
is penned (September 1856), the newspapers describe the conduct of
butchers in Paris as precisely that of the twenty-four poultrymen of
Edinburgh in 1599; that is to say, they sell their meat in secret to
persons who will give suitable prices.
Considering the scarcity which marked the close of 1598, it is not
surprising to find the Chronicle of Perth adverting next year to ‘ane
great deid among the people.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC.]
The Privy Council Record at this date gives an anecdote which reads
like a tale of patriarchal times--the time when Jacob told his sons to
go down into Egypt and buy corn, ‘that we may live and not die.’
[Sidenote: 1598.]
On some recent occasion of pestilence, Dumfries, being specially and
severely afflicted, was, as usual, sequestered from all intercourse and
traffic--its markets became altogether decayed, and the inhabitants, in
addition to all their other distresses, found themselves ‘evil handlit
for want of necessar sustentation.’ In these circumstances, it seemed
good to them to send two of their number, unsuspected of infection, to
the country about the Water of Cree in Galloway, to purchase cattle.
The two men, James Sharpe and John Mertine, set forth on this quest,
and, coming to the burgh of Wigtown, were there well received by
the magistrates, who seemed willing to give them Christian help and
countenance for their object, on the condition that the cattle were
paid for and the burgh of Wigtown satisfied in their customs. Thus
sanctioned, the Dumfries emissaries went into the country and bought
thirty-eight nolt, which they began to drive towards Dumfries, looking
for no interruption or impediment. At Monygaff on the Water of Cree,
they were met by a large armed party under the command of Patrick
Ahannay, provost of Wigtown, and John Edgar and Archibald Tailfer,
bailies, who laid violent hands upon them, and carried them and their
cattle to Wigtown. We do not learn what was the motive of this conduct,
but may reasonably surmise it was some claim in the way of custom which
the Dumfriessians had failed to satisfy. At Wigtown the cattle were
detained eight days, getting gradually leaner for want of food, till
at last they were ‘extreme lean;’ and it was not till their owners had
paid a hundred merks, that they were allowed to proceed with the beeves
to the starving burgh of Dumfries.
This pitiable affair, which reads so strangely of Dumfries, now the
scene of magnificent markets for the transfer of cattle, came under the
notice of the Privy Council, and was remitted to the ordinary judges to
be settled by them as they might think best.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1598-9.