Robert Stuart was brought to trial in Edinburgh, and condemned to
death. He was a youth of only twenty-two, ‘of a tall stature and
comely countenance;’ and it is to be remembered in his favour, that
he withstood all the persuasions of the Earl of Caithness to give up
Kirkwall Castle, foreseeing that he should be tortured into revealing
his father’s guilt; he only surrendered on finding that Halcro was
going to betray him. He died penitent, with five of his company.
The doom of the earl, the prime mover of the rebellion, followed. He
‘took the sentence impatiently.’ An attempt was made to excite the
king to spare the royal blood, but without effect. ‘The ministers,
finding him so ignorant that he could scarce rehearse the Lord’s
Prayer, entreated the Council to delay his execution some few days,
till he were better informed, and received the Lord’s Supper.... So he
communicate on the Lord’s day, the 5th of February, and was beheaded
at the market-cross of Edinburgh upon Monday the 6th of February; when
Sir Robert Ker, the Earl of Rochester, was decourted. The king laid the
blame of his death upon him [Rochester], but late, as his custom was,
when matters was past remedy.’--_Cal._ _G. H. S._ _Pit._
An entry in the session record of Perth, under September 1632, forms a
curious and striking pendant to the history of this unfortunate branch
of the Stuart family. ‘Disbursed at the command of the ministers to
ane young man called Stewart, son to umwhile the Earl of Orkney, seven
shillings.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: FEB. 28.]
This day, John Ogilvie, a Jesuit, was hanged in Glasgow, being the
first priest who had suffered in that way in Scotland since the
execution of the Archbishop of St Andrews at Stirling in 1571.[356]
[Sidenote: 1615.]
Ogilvie was a Scotsman of good family, who had lived for twenty-one
years in a Jesuit college at Gratz. He came to Scotland in the autumn
of 1613, and spent some time amongst the Catholics in the north, then
went to London, and finally came back to Scotland in June 1614. For
three months he lived skulkingly in Glasgow, occasionally performing
mass, but was at length apprehended in October, along with thirteen or
fourteen persons who had been present at those ceremonies. The latter
were thrown into Dumbarton Castle, and only liberated on payment of
large fines. Ogilvie himself was subjected to examination and trial.
The only account he would give of himself was that he came to Scotland
at the command of his superiors, ‘to save souls.’ To induce further
confession, he was put on low diet and kept from sleep for several
nights in succession; and being thus made ‘light in the head,’ he
‘began to discover certain particulars, but, howsoon he was permitted
to take any rest, he denied all, and was as obstinate in denying as at
first.’
The king, who was tolerant of the religion of the papists, as apart
from their anarchical doctrines regarding papal supremacy, told his
Council to let Ogilvie go unharmed into banishment, if he was but
a Jesuit who had said mass, and only to deal severely with him if
he had been a practiser of sedition, or refused to take the oath of
allegiance. They soon found from his answers to certain questions that
he was a bold and decided adherent of the doctrines of his order,
holding that the pope was superior to the king, and might excommunicate
him, and not clearly denying that the subjects might thus be absolved
from their allegiance to their sovereign, and even slay him. He
denied that he had been guilty of any real crime, saying that acts of
parliament were but the dicta of partial men. The king’s authority came
from predecessors who had acknowledged the supremacy of the pope: ‘if
he will be to me as his predecessors were to mine, I will acknowledge
him,’ not otherwise. In declining the king’s authority in such matters,
he did no more than the best of the Presbyterian clergy did--a course
in which they would persevere if they were wise. ‘I have done no
offence,’ said he, ‘neither will I beg mercy. If I were even now forth
of the kingdom, I should return. If all the hairs in my head were
priests, they should all come into the kingdom.’
The one chance which Ogilvie had in the tolerant spirit of the king
was thus closed. The zealous Presbyterians had of course nothing to
say in arrest of judgment. According to their historian, the bishops
felt it to be necessary that they should do something decided against
the papists ‘_for honesty’s sake_‘--that is, some unmistakably sound
and good thing on the right side, such as the hanging of a Jesuit
clearly was--lest they should appear more inclined to persecute the
ministers of the true, than those of a false religion. Accordingly,
John Spottiswoode, archbishop of Glasgow, was all along the most
conspicuous man in the prosecution of the unfortunate Jesuit. The trial
took place in the Town-hall of Glasgow, before a commission composed of
the magistrates and a number of noblemen, and condemnation was followed
in _three hours_ by execution.
[Sidenote: 1615.]
‘He continued a while upon his knees at prayer, with a cold devotion;
and when the hour of execution approached, his hands being tied by the
executioner, his spirits were perceived much to fail him. In going
towards the scaffold, the throng of people was great, and he seemed
much amazed; and when he was up, Master Robert Scott and Mr William
Struthers, ministers, very gravely and Christianly exhorted him to a
humble acknowledgment of his offence, and if anything troubled his
mind, to disburden his conscience. In matters of religion, they said,
they would not then enter, but prayed him to resolve and settle his
mind, and seek mercy and grace from God through Jesus Christ, in whom
only salvation is to be found. Ogilvie answered that “he was prepared
and resolved.” Once he said that he died for religion, but uttered this
so weakly as scarce to be heard by them that stood by on the scaffold.
Then addressing himself to execution, he kneeled at the ladder-foot,
and prayed. Master Robert Scott, in that while, declaring to the
people, that his suffering was not for any matter of religion, but for
heinous treason against his majesty, which he prayed God to forgive
him. Ogilvie, hearing this, said: “He doeth me wrong.” One called John
Abercrombie, a man of little wit, replied: “No matter, John, the more
wrongs the better.” This man was seen to attend him carefully, and was
ever heard asking of Ogilvie some token before his death; for which,
and other business he made with him, he was put off the scaffold.
‘Ogilvie, ending his prayer, arose to go up the ladder; but strength
and courage, to the admiration of those who had seen him before, did
quite forsake him. He trembled and shaked, saying he would fall, and
could hardly be helped up on the top of the ladder. He kissed the
hangman, and said: “Maria, Mater gratiae, ora pro me; Omnes Angeli,
orate pro me; Omnes Sancti, Sanctaeque, orate pro me!” but with so low
a voice that they which stood at the ladder-foot had some difficulty to
hear him.
‘The executioner willed him to commend his soul to God, pronouncing
these words unto him: “Say, John, Lord have mercy on me, Lord receive
my soul!” which he did, with such feebleness of voice, that scarce
could he be heard. Then he was turned off, and hung till he was
dead.’[357]
[Sidenote: 1615.]
This hanging would of course have procured some popularity for the
king and bishops, if it had proceeded from the right motive. But the
people saw that no gratitude was really due. ‘Some,’ says Calderwood,
‘interpreted this execution to have proceeded rather of a care to
bless the king’s government, than of _any sincere hatred of the popish
religion_. Some [alleged] that it was done to be a terror to the
sincerer sort of the ministry, not to decline the king’s authority in
ony cause whatever.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAR.]
There was believed to be at this time an unusual number of Jesuits
and seminary priests in Scotland, ‘pressing by all means possible to
subvert the true religion.’ The kirk launched a fast at them, and
ordered a general celebration of ‘the holie communion’ for discovery
of all recusants. In Aberdeen, the elders subsequently reported
three men and two women as having been absent on this occasion. Such
persons were proceeded against, so as to force them, if possible, into
conformity, in which case each person was expected to come forward
publicly, and declare, ‘for the peace of my own conscience,’ I do, ‘by
my own free choice and voluntary consent, renounce all the errors and
superstitions of popery,’ and profess, ‘in the true simplicity of my
heart,’ that ‘I shall own and maintain all the doctrines of the true
Reformed Protestant Religion, and shall adhere to the whole worship
and discipline thereof to my life’s end.’[358] In the present case,
four persons remained recusant, and actually were excommunicated in the
ensuing January; thus, in fact, losing all privileges as subjects of
the realm.
[Sidenote: 1615.]
On the 14th of August, three citizens of Edinburgh, named Sinclair,
Wilkie, and Cruikshanks, all men in respectable circumstances, were
tried for the crime of entertaining in their houses three Jesuits or
trafficking priests, including the unfortunate John Ogilvie. Sinclair
confessed to having reset Mr James Moffat in the preceding October, but
said he did it ‘only upon simplicity.’ The three men were condemned
to be executed as traitors; and, as if to shew the certainty of their
doom, a special order from the king was read in court for proceeding
to both sentence and execution. The zealous multitude were accordingly
in full hope of the punishment being inflicted; but there was no
earnestness in the government in these proceedings. Let Calderwood tell
the remainder of the tale. ‘The day following [the trial], betwixt four
and five in the afternoon, they were brought furth with their hands
bound, to the scaffold set up beside the cross and a gallows in it,
according to the custom of execution. While a great multitude of people
were going to see the execution, there was a warrant presented to the
magistrates of Edinburgh to stay the execution. So they were turned
back again to their wards. The people thought this form of dealing
_rather mockery than punishment_.’
The sentence was commuted by the king’s order to banishment from
Edinburgh for Cruikshanks, and for the other two to banishment from the
king’s dominions, both during his royal pleasure.--_Pit._ _Cal._
A little trait of the domestic circumstances of Catholics of rank at
this time is worthy of notice. The Earl of Errol, as a recusant papist,
was only enabled to remain in his country on condition that he should
not pass beyond a small circle around his own castle in Aberdeenshire.
Being embarrassed by debt, and troubled by his creditors, he found
himself constrained to take some legal steps ‘for the provision of his
mony young children, and settling of some good course for the estate
of his house.’ It was necessary that he should be allowed to break
temporarily through the obligation under which he lay to live within
a certain space round his house. He therefore got a formal licence
(November 9, 1615), ‘to repair to Edinburgh, and there to remain in
some lodging, _not kything ony way in daylight upon the heich street_,
for ten days after the 20th of November.’--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: APR.]
[Sidenote: 1615.]
On the Saturday before Pasch Sunday, ‘ane extraordinar riot’ took place
in the usually quiet little burgh of Burntisland. The gentleman who
acted as chamberlain of the queen in the management of her dotarial
estate of Dunfermline, was called upon, in the course of his duty, to
send ‘precepts of warning to remove’ to Burntisland, ‘according to
common order.’ No immediate steps of a strong character were meditated;
it was merely a form of law. The inhabitants, led, as afterwards
appeared, by their pastor, Mr William Watson, conceived a violent anger
at the proceeding, and determined to give it an active resistance. When
the officer and his witness came to the cross for the execution of his
office, he was assailed by ‘a multitude of women, above ane hundred,
of the bangster Amazon kind’--so states the grave chancellor, Earl of
Dunfermline--and ‘maist uncourteously dung [driven] off his feet, and
his witness with him, they all hurt and bloodit, all his letters and
precepts reft frae him, riven and cast away, and sae staned and chased
out of the town.’ The magistrates are alleged to have looked on without
interference; nay, ‘the bailie’s awn wife’ was ‘the principal leader of
this tumultuary army of Amazons;’ so that there was no room to doubt
that the male inhabitants were the instigators of the riot.
Some sharp measures were taken for the punishment of the rioters, and
the chancellor besought the king to send off Mr Watson to some quieter
part of the country, and ordain Burntisland ‘to be provided with some
minister of mair calm port, to rule and circumsede sic het humours as
may be in that people.’--_M. S. P._
Accordingly, on the 14th of December, the Council decreed that
Mr William Watson should ‘transport himself out of the burgh of
Burntisland’ before the 10th of January next, and thereafter ‘on nae
wise repair to the said burgh, [nor] within aucht miles of the same,
and on nae wise entertein ony intelligence with the inhabitants of
Burntisland in ony matter concerning the government of that town.’--_P.
C. R._ The king sent a warrant from Newmarket for this being carried
into effect.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: APR. 26.]
‘Amang the mony abuses whilk the iniquity of the time and
private respect of filthy lucre and gain has produced within
the commonwealth’--thus gravely commences an act of the Privy
Council--‘there is of late discoverit a most unlawful and pernicious
tred of _transporting of eggs furth of the kingdom_.’ ‘Certain
avaritious and godless persons, void of modesty and discretion,
preferring their awn private commodity to the commonweal, has gone
and goes athort the country and buys the haill eggs that they can
get, barrels the same, and transports them at their pleasure.’ As
an unavoidable consequence, ‘there has been a great scarcity of
eggs this while bygane,’ and any that are to be had have ‘risen to
such extraordinar and heich prices as are not to be sufferit in a
weel-governit commonwealth.’ ‘Moreover,’ proceeds this sage document,
‘if this unlawful tred be sufferit to be of ony langer continuance, it
will fall out that in a very short time _there will no eggs nor poultry
be funden within the country_.’
The Council was therefore prompted to order letters to be directed to
all merchants and owners of vessels, forbidding them to carry eggs out
of the country, on pain of heavy fines and such further punishment as
the Council might see fit to decree.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAY 30.]
John Brand, student of philosophy, son of a former minister of Holyrood
parish, was tried for the murder of a young man named William King,
by stabbing him with a knife ‘upon St Leonard’s Craigs, beside the
park-dyke.’ He was sentenced to be beheaded at the Cross.--_Pit._
‘About this time certain bare and idle gentlemen lay in wait upon
passengers by the ways about Edinburgh, and in parts of East Lothian,
and would needs have money from them. The common people called them
_Whilliwha’s_.’[359]--_Cal._
* * * * *
Francis Hay, son of the late George Hay of Ardletham, and cousin-german
to the Earl of Errol, was on terms of the most friendly intimacy
with Adam Gordon, brother of Gordon of Gight. One day, when living
familiarly together, a quarrel took place between them, followed by a
single combat, in which Adam Gordon had the advantage, taking Hay’s
sword from him, but instantly restoring it. Hay not being able to
digest the affront, challenged Gordon some time after to renew the
fight. Gordon, if we can believe a historian of the same name, ‘desired
him to forbeir, seeing there was enough done already for any quarrel
that was amongst them. Whereupon Francis came to Adam’s dwelling-place
on horseback, with a pair of pistols at his girdle, and finds Adam
walking about the fields, with his sword about him. Francis flies from
his horse, and desires Adam to do him reason. So they go to it. Then
again it was Adam his good hap to overcome Francis, and grants him his
life; but as Adam was returning home, Francis, disdaining to be thus
twice overthrown, shoots Adam behind his back with a pistol, and slays
him.’
[Sidenote: DEC. 18.]
[Sidenote: 1615.]
Gordon of Gight, resolved to revenge his brother’s death, came to the
house of William Hay of Logyruif, and there, without any warrant,
seized Francis Hay, whom he immediately brought along to Aberdeen,
and imprisoned in his own lodging, called the _Bonnie Wife’s Inn_, in
the Gallowgate, where he kept him for forty-eight hours, excluding
all his friends from seeing him. The sheriff-depute of Aberdeen was
also a Gordon, and, of course, felt as a clansman regarding the late
transaction. He therefore consented to preside at an irregular trial,
to which Hay was forthwith subjected. At this trial, no one was allowed
to appear for the alleged culprit. An advocate, who offered to come and
act as his counsel, was told that if he did so, he should scarcely be
down stairs till twenty whingers were put into him. Francis, in short,
was condemned to lose his head, and next morning was actually led out
to a solitary place, and there butchered by the swords of his enemies.
In this wild way did the passions of men work themselves out in the
north of Scotland, at the time when Bacon and Grotius were writing,
when Drummond sang and Napier geometrised.
The Earl of Errol now came into the field, grievously offended
because his relative had undergone law _without his being consulted_.
The Gordons were summoned to answer for the irregularity of their
proceedings at Edinburgh. This, again, drew forth their chief, the
Marquis of Huntly, both to defend his own sheriffship, and to maintain
his kinsmen. ‘Huntly and Errol did appear at Edinburgh, with all their
friends on either side; so that the whole kingdom was divided in two
factions, ready to fall together by the ears.’ The king himself now
interfered, with a request that all proceedings should be suspended
till he should come to Scotland. Accordingly, upwards of a year after,
on his visiting his native kingdom, he brought the parties together,
and persuaded them to be reconciled to each other, dismissing the
offenders with only nominal punishments. ‘So was this controversy
settled and taken away; yet it was not quite extinguished till 1627,
that Viscount Melgum, the Marquis of Huntly’s third son, married ----
Hay, the Earl of Errol’s daughter.’--_Pit._ _G. H. S._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: NOV.]
Adam French of Thornydykes, ‘ane young bairn scarce past fourteen years
of age,’ was attending school at Haddington, under the guardianship of
Sir John Home of North Berwick, ‘donator to the gift of his ward and
marriage,’ when a plot was laid for making that gift of non-effect by
his maternal uncle, William Home of Hardiesmill, in connection with
John Cranston of Moriston and Sir Patrick Chirnside of East Nisbet.
Under divers pretences, the boy was inveigled away from the house where
he resided, and taken to Rimmelton Law in the Merse, the house of John
Cranston, whence he was next removed to East Nisbet, and introduced
to a daughter of the laird, who was destined to become his wife. A
proclamation of bans being made in hasty style, the young pair were
straightway carried to Berwick, and there married.
[Sidenote: 1615.]
At the urgency of Sir John Home, the three persons concerned in the
abduction, together with one Moffat, a servant, were tried before the
supreme court (November 8, 1616), on the charge of ravishing and taking
away Adam French. It was shewn in defence, that Adam, being fully
fourteen years of age, was competent to contract marriage of his own
freewill--the marriage was regular--he himself was satisfied with what
had been done, and was ready to declare that he considered the accused
parties as his friends. There was much discussion between the king’s
advocate and the counsel of the accused on points of law; and, finally,
the case was remitted to the sheriff of Berwickshire, the parties
giving surety that they would not, in the meantime, fall foul of each
other.--_Pit._
Just about this time, an heiress of the same age as Adam French was
the victim of similar selfishness on the part of her ‘friends.’ A
narrative laid before the Privy Council represented Helen Graham,
daughter of the deceased Sir John Graham of Knockdolian, as having been
left by her father in the hands of persons in whom he had confidence,
and with ‘a reasonable provision.’ Now that she was approaching her
majority, being ‘about the hinder end of the fourteen year of her age,’
‘there has fallen out some contestation betwixt them and others of her
friends anent the keeping of her person, and she has been coupit fra
hand to hand betwixt them, and twice exhibite before the lords of the
secret council.’ In this contestation, ‘there is no regard had by ony
of them to her will, but all of them, seeking their awn advantage,
do what in them lies to procure her wrack and undoing.’ At her last
exhibition before the Council, she had been committed to the care of
John Muirhead of Brydonhill, who, being no relation to her, had no
just pretension to the care of her person nor to the management of her
estate. It was now apparent that John had ‘made merchandise of her,’
for, ‘against all modesty and good conscience,’ he had agreed and
colluded with James Muirhead of Lawhope ‘for bestowing her in marriage
upon Arthur Muirhead, his bastard son, who has no means, moyen, nor
provision whatsoever;’ and she had been carried to the house of this
James Muirhead, and thence by Arthur ‘transported agaitward toward
the realm of England, there to have causit some priest marry her upon
him.’ To all appearance, this project would have been accomplished, but
for the interference of certain justices by the way. The complainer
had, however, been carried back to John Muirhead’s house, and was now
‘deteinit as a prisoner by him, secludit and debarrit fra access,
conference, and advice with ony person who professes her guid will.’
She demanded to be restored to liberty, and to have the free choice
of her own curators; ‘for gif she be deteinit under the power of thir
persons, who, without ony affection to herself, do only respect her
estate and geir, she will be miserably undone and wracked.’
[Sidenote: 1615.]
John Muirhead appeared in answer to a summons, and succeeded in
freeing himself from blame regarding Helen Graham’s abduction; while
Arthur Muirhead was denounced rebel for non-appearance. John, who is
described as ‘ane gentleman of ane honest and upright disposition,’
professed to be animated by the best wishes towards Helen, being
‘mindit, with the advice of the Earl of Montrose, her chief, and others
her friends, to provide and foresee the best occasion for her weal.’
The lords appointed that Helen should remain with him till she should
choose curators; and they at the same time indicated a few gentlemen,
including John Muirhead, whom they thought suitable for the trust.
A few years earlier (June 1612), Mistress Isobel Montgomery, daughter
of the deceased Robert Master of Eglintoun, was represented as being
kept in durance by Hugh Lord Loudon and Mistress Margaret Montgomery,
sister of Isobel, while they endeavoured to compel her to make ‘such
disposition to the lands, guids, and geir appertaining to her, as to
them sall seem expedient.’ The accused parties, being summoned to
appear and bring Isobel before the lords, answered that the complainer
was too sickly to travel; to test which allegation, a medical man was
despatched to her residence, charged with the duty of reporting on her
condition before a certain day.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC. 15.]
The Privy Council recommended to the charity of the public the case
of Andrew Robertson, John Cowie, John Dauling, James Pratt, and some
others, formerly mariners of Leith, who, being lately on the coast of
Barbary, had fought a bloody skirmish with the merciless Turks, by
whom they were led into captivity, and presented for sale in Algiers.
James Fraser, a resident in Algiers, had been moved with pity to redeem
these poor men by an advance of £140, which they undertook to repay at
a certain time. They, however, being in such poverty as to be unable
to reimburse Fraser, were now throwing themselves upon the compassion
of the public. On the recommendation of the Privy Council, there were
collections made for them in churches.
[Sidenote: 1615.]
Captivity among the Moors of Northern Africa was no uncommon fate with
Scottish mariners of that age. In 1625, there was a church collection
‘for the relief of some folks of Queensferry and Kinghorn, deteinit
under slavery by the Turks at Sallee.’ In 1618, John Harrison sent
to King James an account of his unsuccessful attempts to obtain the
liberation of certain British subjects detained under Muley Sidan,
Emperor of Morocco. Muley seems to have been inaccessible to all
pleadings but those which came in the form of money.[360] A collection
was made, August 1621, in all the parish churches in Scotland, and
amounted to a large sum, ‘for the relief of the Scots prisoners in
Tunis and Algiers.’--_Bal._
[Sidenote: 1616.