Note 169 — BOOK XXII.

Perhaps it does not belong exactly to religious persecution, but as it is a curious trait of the times, I quote the following:—“Reid the mountebank pursues Scot of Harden and his lady for stealing away from him a little girl, called the tumblin-lassie, that danced upon his stage; and he claimed damages and produced a contract, whereby he bought her from her mother for £30 Scots. But we have no slaves in Scotland, and mothers cannot sell their bairns; and physicians attested the employment of tumblin would kill her; and her joints were now grown stiff, and she declined to return; though she was at least a prentice, and so could not run away from her master: yet some cited Moses’ law, that if a servant shelter himself with thee against his master’s cruelty, thou shalt surely not deliver him up. The lords renitente cancellario, in opposition to the Chancellor, assoilzied Harden.”—Fountainhall’s Decis. vol. i. p. 440. A few days after, his lordship adds, “Reid the mountebank is received into the popish church, and one of his blackamores was persuaded to accept of baptism from the popish priests, and to turn christian papist, which was a great trophy. He was called James, after the king, the chancellor, and the Apostle James.”—Ibid. p. 441.