Almost as a matter of course, while these Presbyterian recusants were
in hands, the state authorities took some order with papistry. John
Gordon of Craig in Aberdeenshire had attracted their notice as ‘an
excommunicat trafficking papist,’ who, not content with blaspheming the
truth and its preachers himself, did all that he could to ‘withhold
his people from coming to the kirk, boasting [threatening] some,
and persuading others;’ thus, it is alleged, ‘he steirs up mony not
weel satled in their religion to imitate him in his contemptuous
and lawless proceedings, and in effect has cassen that pairt of the
country lowss.’ The Council now charged Gordon to appear and answer
for his offences. They likewise despatched an order to the magistrates
of Aberdeen, for the routing up of a set of Catholics who for some
time had been allowed to live peaceably there, commanding that they
be taken and warded till further orders.--_P. C. R._ The government
could calculate with tolerable security on the feeling of the great
bulk of the people, that by thus striking a blow at popery, they would
be allowed without much remonstrance to deal that severity towards
puritanism which would frighten it from a troublesome opposition to the
now semi-episcopalian establishment.
John Gordon of Craig was obliged for the time to leave the kingdom; but
somehow the king was always forgiving to papists, and we accordingly
find that in January 1625, having made submission and promised good
behaviour in future, this ‘excommunicat trafficking papist’ was allowed
to return to Scotland (_P. C. R._), but not ultimately to rest there,
as will hereafter be seen.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JULY 21.]
A Border thief, described as Adie Usher in Birkinhaugh, servant of
Robert Elliot of Redheugh, was condemned and hanged at Edinburgh for
sundry acts of cattle-stealing. In most of his proceedings he had
been accompanied by his son, Willie Usher, a mere boy, who was also
presented for trial, but spared on account of his youth.--_Pit._ After
Willie Usher had spent some months in the Thieves’ Hole in Edinburgh,
the Lords of the Privy Council received a complaint from him, ‘heavily
regretting his hard estate and condition by his detention, thir mony
owks bygane, miserably in ward in the Thieves’ Hole of Edinburgh,
without possibility or mean to entertein himself, he being a young
innocent boy not past the age of fourteen years, and his umwhile father
having underlain his punishment and sufferit death for the crime laid
to the said Willie’s charge.’ The Lords consequently ordered the
magistrates ‘to attend the commodity of some ship going to the Low
Countries,’ and see Willie set aboard thereof, ‘and mak intimation to
the said Willie that if at ony time hereafter he sall return without
licence, it sall be capital unto him.’--_P. C. R._
[Sidenote: 1624.]
The master of Adie Usher seems to have been under suspicion of a
concern in his delinquencies. In November, when about to fly from the
city on account of infection, the Privy Council entered an order in the
case of Lady Jean Stewart, whose husband, Robert Elliot of Redheugh,
had been for some time a prisoner in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. She
had represented ‘the utter distress, misery, and want whereunto she
and her poor children are reduced, having contracted great debts
and impandit her abulyiements and clothes for enterteinment of her
husband in ward--and she is brocht to that pitch of necessity, that
she has nowther means to live nor credit to afford him ony further
supply.’ The Council ordered her a hundred merks for past charges,
and granted her the sum of ‘threttein shillings and four pennies’
during pleasure--apparently meaning a daily allowance of 1s. 1-1/3d.
sterling.--_P. C. R._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: AUG. 30.]
Poland is described as in this age swarming with Scotch pedlers. Its
port, Dantzig, contained a number of settled merchants of a respectable
order, some of whom were seen from time to time returning to their
native country with considerable realised wealth. Formerly, the Scotch
merchants at Dantzig, having a kind of rule and governance among
themselves, lived in such a way as to secure the esteem of the people
of the country. But latterly, ‘discipline being dissolved, the most
part of them use such a dissolute form of living, that they are odious
to the inhabitants, hurtful to themselves, and despised by strangers,
to the great ignominy of the whole nation.’ There was also a continual
immigration of multitudes of miserable, debauched, and weakly people
from Scotland, including ‘exorbitant numbers of young boys and maids
unfit for any service,’ reminding us of the overflowings of the Irish
population into England, Scotland, and the United States of America in
more recent days.[415] During this summer, owing, doubtless, to the
pressure of the famine, this scandalous system had been carried to such
a height, that the Scotch merchants were threatened with expulsion
from the city. In this exigency, they wrote to the king, craving his
intercession. Patrick Gordon, who acted as agent for the king in
Dantzig, also wrote, apparently, at the same time, shewing how matters
stood, and entreating that some order and rule should be established
among his countrymen, as they should not otherwise be able much longer
to withstand the strength of their enemies.[416]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: NOV. 1.]
[Sidenote: 1624.]
The king wrote to the Earl of Mar, requesting him to send into
Argyleshire and Glenorchy, for four or five couples of _earth-dogs_
(terriers), which he was desirous of obtaining in order to transmit
them to France. His majesty further requested ‘that ye have a special
care that the oldest of them be not passing three years of age, and
that ye send them not all in one ship, but some in one ship, and other
some in another, lest one ship should miscarry.’[417]
The same Earl of Mar, having to spend the winter of 1631 in Stirling,
and designing to amuse himself with fox-hunting, sent a letter to his
cousin, the Laird of Glenurchy, entreating the favour of ‘a couple of
good earth-dogs;’ and adding, what shews the importance of the favour,
‘I pray you use me as familiarly as I do you, for without ceremony,
cousin, you shall not have a friend over whom ye have greater power
than over me.’ _P. S._--‘What ye send me, let it be good, although it
be but one.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: NOV. 2.]
There is at this time a glimpse of rationality regarding witchcraft
in the public authorities, in as far as the Privy Council deemed it
right to hesitate about the granting of commissions for the trial of
persons charged with that crime. The Council had been troubled by the
importunity of persons seeking for such commissions, and at the same
time concerned to find that the informations on which the commissions
were sought for ‘seemed to be very obscure and dark.’ As anxious for
the truth, and to the intent that neither should the innocent be
molested nor the guilty escape, they now arranged that all informations
should henceforth pass through the hands of the bishop of the diocese,
‘to be seen and considered by him, and such of the ministry as he shall
call unto him.’--_P. C. R._
We have here a revelation of that doubt about the reality of witchcraft
which is suspected to have lurked in the minds of all the principal
official people throughout the seventeenth century. It was a time of
comparative triumph for the established church. The bishops were not
particularly in need of popularity. They could afford to be easy with
both Romanists and necromancers. It was precisely in such circumstances
that we could expect to find the chief administrative body letting slip
a doubt as to the soundness of many of the alleged instances of sorcery
lately subjected to trial.
[Sidenote: NOV. 23.]
[Sidenote: 1624.]
The pest, which had been for some time before in Holland, broke out
‘in sundry houses in Edinburgh, to the great terror of the whole
town. It began in Paul Hay[418] a merchant’s house, a month before,
and was not known till now; therefore the more dangerous, because
hard to discern the clean from the unclean. Upon the last day of
November, the president and other lords of Council and Session, meeting
together, resolve to rise, and continue the session till the 8th of
Januar.’--_Cal._
One consequence of the occurrence of the pest at this time was, that
the king’s design of enforcing a communion at Christmas, where all
the people should kneel, was frustrated. Another result generally
satisfactory was a relaxation of the severity against the Edinburgh
citizens who were banished and imprisoned for opposing the new
ceremonies. William Rig was allowed to leave his prison of Blackness,
and remain for fifteen days with his wife at his house of Morton, where
she was ‘very heavily visite with infirmity and sickness.’ Mean, having
‘a numerous family and his wife grit with child, and nane to have ane
care for order-taking with them, how they sall be providit for and
governit in this [time of] danger,’ was in like manner permitted to
repair to Edinburgh, to see after them, and there remain till the 15th
of January. So also John Hamilton was relieved from the Tolbooth to
attend on his wife, who chanced to be in the same delicate condition as
Mrs Mean. After all, ‘the pest raged not; few houses were infected with
it; so that it appeared the chief end wherefore the Lord had sent it,
was to disappoint the king by scattering the people.’--_Cal._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC.]
Amidst the alarms regarding the pest, people heard of a strange case
of personal quarrel and vindictiveness. One William Hamilton, a
soldier, son of the deceased William Hamilton, ‘called of Inchmachan,’
was lately come from the Low Countries, avowing ‘a settled purpose
and resolution to appeal Captain Harie Bruce to the single combat,
or otherwise to watch the opportunity to bereave him of his life.’
The Privy Council was obliged to take means for preventing a hostile
collision.--_P. C. R._
[Sidenote: DEC. 8.]
[Sidenote: 1624.]
The Privy Council readily apprehended that the prosecution of ‘this
damnable and cruel intention’ would both breed danger to the parties
and produce great trouble and controversy among their friends, to the
disturbance of his majesty’s peace, if timous remeed be not provided.
They therefore summoned the parties before them to give assurance of
their good behaviour.
Deeming, as was formerly remarked, anything that illustrates the
progress of the arts as worthy of notice in this record, though perhaps
trifling in itself, we may advert to Mr Alexander Hamilton, brother
to the secretary Earl of Melrose, as having now obtained a patent of
twenty-one years for a new _cart_ invented by him, ‘wherein greater
weight and burdens may with far less force be drawn, and conveniently
carried, than hath been done with ony other kind of cart hitherto known
or heretofore used.’[419]
‘Sandy Hamilton,’ or ‘Dear Sandy,’ as he was called, was a man of note
on account of his skill in some of the useful arts, particularly in
those connected with the munitions of war. He practised these arts for
some time in Germany, whence he was recalled to England, where the king
granted him pensions and allowances to the amount of £800 sterling _per
annum_. When the Civil War broke out, he joined his countrymen, and
helped to fit out the Covenanting army of 1640 with a species of short
but effective gun, which was carried slung between two horses, and the
serviceableness of which was proved at the battle of Newburn-ford, when
the Scots crossed the Tyne in the face of the enemy and became masters
of Newcastle.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1624.]
In this year we have the latest known notice of a woman of
extraordinary attainments who had lived for many years in Edinburgh,
practising an art in which she was long after pronounced to have never
been excelled. Caligraphy, or the art of beautiful writing, was in
greater vogue in the seventeenth century than in our more utilitarian
days. Under what circumstances Esther Inglis, a Frenchwoman residing
in the Scottish capital, came to give her days to so laborious an art,
we do not learn. Neither are we aware how it was that Esther came to
live in the Scottish capital. There, however, we find her, so early as
1599, writing one of the little manuscript volumes which have given her
celebrity. This book, preserved in the Bodleian Library, is entitled
_Les Proverbes de Salomon, escrites en diverses sortes de Lettres,
par Esther Anglois, Françoise. A Lislesbourg en Ecosse._ 1599. ‘This
delicate performance,’ says Ballard,[420] ‘gains the admiration of
all who see it; every chapter is wrote in a different hand; as is the
dedication, and some other things at the beginning of the book, which
makes near forty several sorts of hands. The beginnings and endings
of the chapters are adorned with most beautiful head and tail pieces,
and the margins are elegantly decorated with the pen, in imitation, I
suppose, of the beautiful old manuscripts. The book is dedicated to the
Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth’s great favourite. At the beginning are
his arms, neatly drawn, with all its quarterings--in number fifty-six.
In the fifth leaf is her own picture, done with the pen, in the habit
of that time. In her right hand, a pen, the left resting upon a book
opened; in one of the leaves of which is written _De l’Eternel le bien:
de moi le mal, ou rien_. On the table before her there is likewise a
music-book lying open, which perhaps intimates that she had some skill
in that art. Under the picture is an epigram in Latin, made by Andrew
Melvin; and on the next page another, composed by the same author,
which is as follows:
Æmula naturæ manus exprimit una figuras
Mille, animans pictis Signa pusilla notis,
Signa creans animata, polûm spirantia signa:
Quæ picturata margine limbus obit.
Mirum opus: at mage mira Manus; mira omnia vincit
Mens manui moderans, dum manus urget opus.