There is something affecting in the history of the families concerned
in this tumult. A mural tablet in Glasgow cathedral commemorated the
names of six or eight Stewarts of Minto in succession, ‘knights created
under the banner,’ and men of great sway in the district. But when
M‘Ure wrote his _History of Glasgow_ in 1736, the family was ‘mouldered
so quite away, that the heir in our time was reduced to a state of
penury little short of beggary.’ A memorandum of Paton, the antiquary,
queried, ‘If true that the last of the family was a poor boy sent into
Edinburgh barefooted with a letter to Stewart of Coltness, who [being]
promising, was recommended to the Duke of Hamilton, got some education,
and afterwards went abroad to Darien, where he died.’ Sir George
Elphinstone, who had been the familiar servant and friend of King
James, acquired a great estate at Glasgow, and after this time rose
to be Lord Justice-clerk, nevertheless ‘died so poor, that his corpse
was arrested by his creditors, and his friends buried him privately in
his own chapel adjoining his house.’ His family went out in the second
generation.
While the attention of the people was absorbed by the matter of the
bishops and their robes and renewed dignity, the consequences of the
continual neglect of those natural conditions on which their physical
health depended were about to be once more and most severely felt.
The _pest_ broke out and spread over the more populous districts with
frightful rapidity. ‘It raged so extremely in all the corners of the
kingdom, that neither burgh nor land in any part was free. The burghs
of Ayr and Stirling were almost desolate; and all the judicatories of
the land were deserted.’--_Bal._ It was not till the middle of winter
that it sensibly declined.
The chancellor wrote to the king in October, that scarcely any part of
the country was free of the scourge. ‘This calamity,’ he says, ‘hinders
all meetings of Council, and all public functions for ministration of
justice and maintenance of good rule and government, except sic as we
tak at starts, with some few, at Edinburgh, or in sic other place for a
day, to keep some countenance of order.’
The unconforming clergy now imprisoned at Blackness wrote a petition
for mercy to the king (August 23), in which they describe the state of
the country under its present affliction. They speak of ‘the destroying
angel hewing down day and night continually, in sic a number in some
of our congregations, that the like thereof has not been heard many
years before.’ They add: ‘What is most lamentable, they live and die
comfortless under the fearful judgment, filling the heaven and the
earth with their sighs, sobs, and cries of their distressed souls,
for being deprived not only of all outward comforts (whilk were great
also), but also of all inward consolation, through the want of the
ordinary means of their peace and life, to wit, the preaching of the
word of our ministry.’[318]
[Sidenote: 1606.]
We have a remarkable trait of the treatment of the pest in outlying
districts, in a bond granted on this occasion by some Aberdeenshire
gentlemen to the burgh of Dundee for five hundred merks, as requital
for their sending two professional _clengers_ from their town to
the valley of the Dee, that they might deal with an infection which
had fallen forth in the house of Mr Thomas Burnet, minister of
Strathauchan, and in the house of John Burnet of Slowy--two places
divided by the river, but both on the line of the great road leading
from the south to the north of Scotland. The country gentlemen, on
hearing of the infection in their district, had been obliged to convene
and devise measures for meeting the calamity.
Their first step was to send for two _clengers_ a hundred miles off to
come with all speed, although at a high cost, which the gentlemen, as
we see, were obliged to pay in behalf of themselves and neighbours.[319]
Another trait of the public economy regarding this pestilence occurs
in the record of the Privy Council. It was represented to that august
body on the 2d of September, that ‘certain lodges’ had been ‘biggit by
James Lawrieston and David and George Hamiltons, upon the common muir
of Gogar, for the ease and relief of certain their tenants, infectit
with the pest;’ but Thomas Majoribanks, portioner of Ratho, and other
persons had cast down these lodges, apparently on the plea that the
erecting of them was an intrusion on their property. The Council
found that the muir was common property, and ordered the lodges to
be rebuilt by those who had originally set them up, on the part of
the muir nearest to their own grounds, ‘where they may have the best
commodity of water,’ the other party being at the same time forbidden
to interfere under heavy penalties.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP. 4.]
The Chancellor Dunfermline intimated to the king the pitiful case
of the inhabitants of Dumbarton, their town being unable to defend
themselves against ‘the surges and inundations of the sea, which is
likely to destroy and tak away their haill town, and cannot be repulsit
by nae moyen their poor ability and fortunes are able to furnish.’
Those who were appointed to inquire into the matter now reported that
it would require at least thirty thousand pounds Scots to make a
proper bulwark. It was proposed to defray this charge by a tax on the
country.[320]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP.]
[Sidenote: 1606.]
‘George, Earl of Dunbar, his majesty’s commissioner for ordering the
Borders, took such a course with the broken men and sorners [there],
that, in two justiciary-courts halden by him, he condemned and caused
hang above a hundred and forty of the nimblest and most powerful
thieves in all the Borders ... and fully reduced the other inhabitants
there to the obedience of his majesty’s laws.’--_Bal._ The chancellor
told the king next month that the Borders were now ‘satled, far by
onything that ever has been done there before.’[321]
It was declared a few months later (November 20), that one of the
principal difficulties experienced by the emissaries of government in
executing justice on the Borders lay in the strength of the houses in
which the ‘thieves and limmers’ dwelt or took refuge, and particularly
the ‘iron yetts’ with which these houses were furnished. The Privy
Council therefore ordained that all iron yetts in houses belonging
to persons below the rank of barons, should be ‘removit and turnit
in plew irons or sic other necessar wark as to the awners sall seem
expedient.’--_P. C. R._
These iron gates, of which many specimens still survive in ancient
country-houses in Scotland, are composed grill-wise, the bars curiously
interlacing with each other, and generally with huge staples and
padlocks. Such a gate, made in 1568 for Kilravock Castle, Nairnshire,
by George Robertson, smith in Elgin, weighed thirty-four stone three
pounds, and cost ‘£34, 3s. 9d. usual money, together with three bolls
meal, ane stane butter, and ane stane cheese.’[322]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: NOV. 7.]
The six clergymen who had been tried for treason, on account of their
refusal to break up the General Assembly at Aberdeen, and who had been
condemned to banishment, were sent forth of the kingdom at Leith,
after a long confinement in Blackness Castle. The punishment, it may
be remarked, would have been remitted if they would have acknowledged
their alleged offence and come in the king’s will.
[Sidenote: 1606.]
‘The 6 of November, about four afternoon, they were desired to come to
the boat whilk was prepared for them by the water-bailie of Leith and
Edinburgh; who, obeying, came, accompanied with some of their dearest
friends and wives, to the pier, where there was a good number of people
waiting on, to tak the guid-night at them, and to see them; but after
their coming thither, Mr John Welch conceived a prayer, whilk bred
great motion in the hearts of all the hearers. Prayers ended, they took
guid-night of their friends, wives, and many other weel-wishers who
were present, [and] entered into the boat, where they remained a guid
space waiting on the skipper.’ The skipper not being ready to weigh
that night, ‘they were desired by the water-bailie either to go aboard
and lie in the ship that night, or else to go to their lodging, and be
ready at the next call.
‘They, by God’s special providence, chused to go to their lodging;
for that night came on a great storm, [so] that the ship was forced
to save herself in Kinghorn road all that night. They were called
again by two hours in the morning, who, obeying, came to the shore
and pier, accompanied as the night before, no small concourse of
people being with them, beyond expectation, so early to see them boat.
Prayer conceived as before by Mr John Welch, they embarked, giving
many exhortations to all to hold fast the truth of the doctrine whilk
they had delivered; for the whilk they doubted nothing to lay down
their lives, let be to suffer banishment; adding thereto, that whilk
they suffered was the great joy of their conscience. In the meantime,
the mariners hasted them away ... they departed out of our sight,
making us hear the comfortable joy whilk they had in God, in singing a
psalm.’[323]
[Sidenote: 1606.]
While Protestant clergymen of the puritan type were thus suffering,
and evoking by their fortitude the deserved sympathy and admiration
of large masses of their countrymen, they were so far from being
alone in martyrdom, that suffering was inflicted upon another class
of religionists, if not at their dictation, at least with their full
approval. The Earl of Angus, one of the three Catholic lords whose
correspondence with Spain caused so much trouble sixteen years before,
had since lived at home in quietness and obedience. It was not many
months after the embarkation of the six Presbyterian ministers at
Leith, that we find his lordship pleading that, to avoid imprisonment
for his religion, he might be allowed to go into exile--thus calling
for the punishment inflicted upon the six clergymen, as a kind of
relief from the more severe penalties demanded against him by the party
to which these clergymen belonged. In a letter to the king, August
10, 1608, adverting to the fact of the General Assembly having given
forth an act for his immediate excommunication, he says: ‘What grief
and sorrow this brings to my heart, God knows; because my greatest
care has ever been, and sall be, that I might end my days (whilk, I am
persuaded, will not be many) at peace with God, and in your majesty’s
obedience.... The permission whilk of grace only I crave (gif it please
not your hieness to ease me with a better) is either to depart this
country ... with surety not to return, or else that it wald please
your majesty to confine me in ane of mine awn houses, and so mony
miles about the same, where I am glad to live as ane private subject,
and never to meddle me with public affairs, but by your majesty’s
direction.’
The earl was compelled to leave his country, and he died at Paris
three years after, aged fifty-seven. In his epitaph, he is made to
say--‘jussus, religionis causâ, patriâ excedere aut in custodiam
pergere, vitæ quietiori turbinibus averruncandis delegeram Galliam,
caram alteram Scotis patriam.’
The utter unconsciousness of the persecuted Presbyterians of there
being any harm in visiting the papists with the like severities might
almost provoke a smile. While the six ministers lay in expectation of
banishment, their brethren detained in England received a visit from
Law, Bishop of Orkney. The conversation turned on the present state of
the church in Scotland, and the bishop endeavoured to convince them
that the royal policy was right, as the same Linlithgow convention
which had condemned the six recusant ministers had ‘taken strait order
with the papists.’ Seeing they appeared to have no great faith in that
demonstration, the bishop endeavoured to reassure them. ‘_They shall
call me a false knave_,’ said he, ‘_and never to be believed again, if
the papists be not sae handled as they never were in Scotland._‘[324]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC. 23.]
The Privy Council had some time ago issued a proclamation, forbidding
what was called the _backing of pairties to the bar_--that is, each
party in a lawsuit coming into court with a number of friends and
favourers behind him, with a view to exercising some influence over
the course of justice. Finding that the former denouncement of ‘this
indecent and unseemly custom’ had not been attended with any effect,
partly through the public being unacquainted with it, and partly
through the negligence of the officers of the law, the Council now
renewed their proclamation, with assurance that their orders would in
future be strictly acted upon. The reader will find that the practice
continued in force some years later.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1607.