Volume 2 — REIGN OF CHARLES II.: 1673-1685. (continued 2)

1677.

The Florida, a large vessel of the Spanish Armada of 1588, carrying sixty guns, had been blown up and sunk in the Bay of Tobermory, in the island of Mull:255 an old and consistent tradition represents it as having come to this fate by means of Smollett of Dumbarton, presumed to have been the ancestor of the celebrated novelist. The guns, treasure, and other valuable things, known or supposed to have been on board, made the incident a memorable one, and induced a desire, if possible, to weigh up the vessel, or at least to fish up from it such things as might be accessible to divers. In the seventeenth century, the recovery of sunk vessels and their contents was a favourite project among ingenious and adventurous men. The late Marquis of Argyle had obtained from the Duke of Lennox, Lord High Admiral of Scotland, a formal gift of this vessel, and had become ‘clad with possession’ by taking guns and other things out of it. In 1665, a more vigorous attempt was made to get up some of its treasures by the present Earl of Argyle, the immediate operator being, apparently, Maule of Melgum, a Forfarshire gentleman, who had invented an apparatus precisely of the nature of what was a century later revived as the Diving-bell. Another person engaged in the business was the almost sole active cultivator of physics in Scotland during this age—the celebrated George Sinclair, professor of philosophy in the University of Glasgow—who also obliged the world some years later with a treatise, entitled Satan’s Invisible World Discovered. Sinclair, in a work named below,256 tells us that on this occasion they brought up three pieces of ordnance, one of brass, one of copper, and one of iron, two of which were eleven feet in length, and more things might have been recovered but for the coming on of tempestuous weather. He says they were surprised to find that the bullets employed for these guns were of stone, instead of metal.

July 27.

1677.

Hearing of these experiments of the Earl of Argyle, the eminent lawyer, Sir George Lockhart, prompted the Duke of York to claim the property as the present Lord High Admiral; and so there arose a litigation on the subject. Various arguments were presented against Argyle’s right, particularly that to make possession complete it was necessary that he should have stirred the ship from the place where it was when his father got the gift. The earl himself appeared in court, and made a few remarks, shewing the large expense he had laid out on the discovery of the lost vessel, and concluding with a wish that it were brought above board ere any dispute took place about the property, ‘lest it should verify the story of the king of Spain’s gold.’ The court gave the case in favour of Argyle.

It is curious to find these two men engaged in such a plea only seven or eight years before standing in the relative positions of rebellious subject and vengeful sovereign. Still more curious it is to hear of this unpopular prince, that ‘he wrote down a very complimentary letter to Argyle, approving the justice of the lords’ sentence, and shewing his hearty compliance and acquiescence therein.’—Foun.

It is worthy of notice that after ‘unfortunate Argyle’ had passed from life—namely, in May 1686—a warrant was given by James VII. for a patent to William Harrington and three others, merchants of London, for enabling them to ‘weigh up, recover, and obtain from under water, in the roads and seas of Scotland, ships, or ship guns, treasure, and other goods, which have been shipwrecked, lost, and sunk, and particularly one ship of the Spanish Armada, sunk in the western seas of his majesty’s kingdom of Scotland’—the patent to endure for fourteen years.257

Oct. 1.

1677.

The Egyptians or gipsies still roamed in a lawless manner over the country, without attracting much notice from the authorities, their conduct being now probably less troublesome than it had been in the reign of King James. Two bands of these people, the Faws and the Shaws, on their way from Haddington fair to Harestanes, in Peeblesshire, where they expected to meet and fight two other tribes, the Bailies and Browns, fell out among themselves at Romanno about the spoil they had lately acquired, and immediately engaged in battle. ‘Old Sandie Faw, a bold and proper fellow,’ and his wife, then pregnant, were killed on the spot, while his brother George was very dangerously wounded. The Laird of Romanno apprehended ‘Robert Shaw; Margaret Faw, his spouse; James, Patrick, Alexander, and Thomas Shaws, their sons; and Helen Shaw, their daughter; Robert and John Faws; John Faw younger; Agnes and Isobel Shaws; Isobel Shaw younger; and George Faw, and did commit them prisoners within the Tolbooth of Peebles;’ whence they were speedily removed to Edinburgh to be tried. We soon after find the Council despatching a warrant to the Laird of Romanno and Mr Patrick Purdie, to send to Edinburgh ‘the money, gold, gold rings, and other things which were upon these persons;’ likewise the weapons with which they had fought. An account of expenses sent by the magistrates of Peebles was disallowed, excepting only £15 Scots (£1, 6s. 8d. sterling) for the sustenance of the company while in jail.—P. C. R.

In February next year, ‘Old Robin Shaw’ and his three sons were hanged in the Grassmarket for this murder, and John Faw was executed in the following week for another murder. Two or three years after, the Laird of Romanno—a quaint physician named Pennecuik, who wrote verses—erected a pigeon-house on the scene of the conflict, with this inscription over the door:

Nov. 3.

A great fire took place in Glasgow, by which a large part of the Saltmarket on both sides was burnt. It commenced near the Cross, through the instrumentality of a smith’s apprentice, who being beaten by his master, set the workshop on fire at night, and fled. This conflagration was considered an equal calamity to that of 1652. It threw between six and seven hundred families out of their homes, in a ruined and starving condition.—P. C. R. ‘The heat was so great, that it fired the horologe of the Tolbooth. There being some prisoners in it, of whom the Laird of Carsland [Kersland] was one [who had been confined in various jails for eight years on account of his concern in the Pentland rising], the people broke open the doors, and set them free.... Great was the cry of the poor people, and lamentable to see their confusion.’—Law.

1677.

The Town Council, in a minute of December 4, speak of ‘the great impoverishment this burgh is reduced to’ by the fire, which they regard as a just punishment from God for their iniquities, ‘which we pray him to mak us sensible of, that we may turn from the evil of our ways to himself, so his wrath may be averted.’ Yet, they go on to say, ‘because such things are more incident to burghs, by reason of their joining houses to houses ... especially being reared up of timber, without so much as the window of stone,’ therefore the Council think it well to enact that whenever any of the people are in a condition to rebuild their houses, they shall rebuild them of stone.—M. of G. On a petition from the magistrates, the Privy Council ordered a charitable collection to be made throughout the country for the poor starving people.

It does not appear that the engine made in 1657 for quenching of fire was of any use on this occasion. It had probably been allowed to fall out of order, as in December 1680, we find an order from the Town Council to ‘see if it can be yet made use of in case of need.’—M. of G. In 1725, another fire-engine was got from London, at an expense of £50.—Strang.

1677.

The late Laird of Ayton, in Berwickshire, had left an only daughter, under age, in the care of the Countess of Home. He had bequeathed to this young lady, Jean Home, his whole estate, though it was more customary in such cases in Scotland to destine land-property to the next heir-male. Home of Plendergast, who stood in that relation, was of course disappointed, but he hoped that a reparation might be made by the young lady marrying a member of his own family. When, in December 1677, the time approached for her choosing her curators—being then, we presume, twelve years of age—Plendergast presented a petition to the Privy Council, desiring that she should be brought as usual to their bar in order to pass through that ceremony in the presence of her general kindred. This gentleman, however, appears to have been in disfavour with the other gentlemen of his name in that province, as well as with the Countess of Home and Charles Home, the brother of the earl, with whom the young lady of Ayton at that time lived. On the evening of the very day when the petition was presented to the Council, Charles Home, accompanied by Alexander Home of Linthill, Sir Patrick Home of Polwarth, John Home of Ninewells, Robert Home of Kimmerghame elder, and Joseph Johnston of Hilton, proceeded to the residence of the young lady, and carried her off across the Border. ‘There they, in a most undutiful and unchristian manner, carried the poor young gentlewoman up and down like a prisoner and malefactor, protracting time till they should know how to make the best bargain in bestowing her, and who should offer most. They did at last send John Home of Ninewells259 to Edinburgh, and take a poor young boy, George Home, son to Kimmerghame, out of his bed and marry him to the said Jean, the very day she should have been presented to the Council.’ The ceremony was wholly irregular, and performed by an English minister, ‘opening thereby a new way to slight the clergy of Scotland.’ At the same time, the countess appeared before the Council, and apologised for the absence of her ward, ‘as being sickly and tender, and not able to travel, and not fit for marriage for many years to come.’

1678. Mar. 16.

The Council took this matter up in high style, and dealt with the offending parties in strict terms of the statutes which they had broke. The young husband lost his interest jure mariti; the young wife hers jure relictæ. The former was fined in £500 Scots, and the latter in a thousand merks, for their clandestine marriage. Further, for contempt of the Council, the young wife was fined in a thousand merks, to be paid to Home of Plendergast. Ninewells and Hilton suffered amercement respectively in 1000 and 2000 merks, the former sum to be paid to Plendergast. The young couple were, moreover, to suffer three months’ imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle.—P. C. R.

1678. Mar. 7.

Three enterprising persons at Haddington, including William Lamb, one of the bailies, and Mr James Lauder, sheriff-clerk, formed a project for a twice-a-week stage-coach ‘to pass through the whole year betwixt Edinburgh and Haddington, which will be of great conveniency for travellers of all sorts who may have occasion to repair to Edinburgh from the eastward.’260 It was their resolution ‘to employ a considerable stock of money for erecting the said stage-coaches, buying of horses, and all other furniture requisite, in expectation of some small profit by progress of time.’ Wherefore they petitioned for the exclusive right to have stage-coaches upon that road. The right was granted for seven years.—P. C. R.

July 29.

1678.

A very few months after this date, William Hume, merchant in Edinburgh, appears to have set up a stage-coach between his own city and Glasgow, encouraged thereto by the liberality of the two municipalities. The city of Glasgow undertook to pay four hundred merks annually for two years.—M. of G. Hume proposed that his conveyance should carry only six passengers, at £4, 16s. Scots each in summer, and £5, 8s. in winter (respectively 8s. and 9s. sterling), being at the rate of 2s. 8d. a mile in summer, and 3s. in winter. The Privy Council, on his petition, gave him an exclusive privilege for seven years, and assured him against his horses being pressed for any kind of public service.—P. C. R.

These are the first conveniences of the kind we hear of as established between one place and another in Scotland, except the coach between Edinburgh and Leith, first in December 1610, and secondly in September 1660 (which see). It is, however, probable that none of all these enterprises proved successful, or was carried on for any considerable length of time. A traveller in Scotland in 1688 tells us: ‘Stage-coaches they have none.... The truth is, the roads will hardly allow them those conveniences, which is the reason that their gentry, men and women, choose rather to use their horses. However, their great men often travel with coach and six, but with so much caution, that, besides their other attendance, they have a lusty running footman on each side of the coach, to manage and keep it up in rough places.’ It is added: ‘This carriage of persons from place to place might be better spared, were there opportunities and means for the speedier conveyance of business by letters. They have no horse-posts besides those which ply betwixt Berwick and Edinburgh, and from thence to Port-Patrick for the sake of the Irish packets.... From Edinburgh to Perth, and so to other places, they use foot-posts and carriers, which, though a slow way of communicating our concerns to one another, yet is such as they acquiesce in till they have a better.’261

What makes it the more improbable that William Hume’s enterprise was successful, notwithstanding the well-meant patronage of the Glasgow magistrates, is that, in October 1743, the Town Council of the western city was found considering a similar project of one John Walker, merchant in Edinburgh, who proposed to ‘erect’ a stage-coach betwixt the two cities, with six horses, and holding six passengers, to go twice a week from the one to the other in summer, and once in winter. The corporation was called upon to guarantee that as many as two hundred tickets should be sold each year. The proposal does not appear to have been entertained.

1678.

In 1749, a caravan—a kind of covered spring-cart—passed twice a week from the one city to the other, taking a day and a half to the journey!—Strang.

May 2.

Two old women, belonging to the village of Prestonpans, were tried for witchcraft by a commission, and, ‘on their confession, no ways extorted, were burnt.’ Before their death, they gave information regarding some other persons who, they said, were also witches; and, one telling on another, there were in September as many as eight or ten collected from the parishes of Ormiston, Pencaitland, and Crichton, besides seven who belonged to Loanhead of Lasswade. The justices shewed a disinclination to treat all these poor creatures as witches; and Sir John Clerk of Pennicuik—first baronet of a family which has produced many scholars, judges, antiquaries, and men of general talent—declined to be upon the commission appointed for the seven of Loanhead, ‘alleging drily that he did not feel himself warlock (that is, conjuror) enough to be judge upon such an inquisition.’262 The leniency of the justices was cried out upon by some, as interfering with the discovery of these enemies of mankind. As usually happened, the accused made confession of guilt, telling much the same story of intercourse with the devil, renouncing their baptism, and going about in the form of ravens, &c., as was set forth by the witches of Auldearn in 1661—a traditionary set of hallucinations, they may be called, the uniformity of which ought in itself to have put judges sooner on their guard against a misjudgment of these unfortunate beings. Fountainhall, who conversed with a few of the present group, speaks somewhat rationally about them, and it is evident he was inclined to regard their adventures with the devil as mere dreams. ‘Only,’ he says, ‘in these diabolic transports their sleep is so deep, that no pinching will awake them scarce’—an intimation, some will think, of the sleep being mesmeric. Sad to say, however, nine of the East Lothian women were condemned on their confession, although seeming rational and penitent; and were burnt, five between Edinburgh and Leith, and four at Painston, while the seven of Loanhead were reserved for future procedure.

1678.

The statement of this case has induced Fountainhall to mention one or two others by way of digression. In the time of James VI., a Scottish gentleman, being troubled with a disease, sought relief from a magician in Italy, but was told he need not have come so far from home, as there was a person in Scotland who could cure him, and this person he particularly described, so that the gentleman might know him. Some years after, being returned, the patient met, on the Bridge of Earn, one to whom the description in every particular applied; and, having accosted him, and asked for his aid, he was cured by this stranger with a few simple herbs. The story being told, the curer of the disease was prosecuted as a necromancer, in compact with the devil, and found guilty, notwithstanding his protestation that the cure was natural, and the devil’s having named or described him was no fault of his. In this narration, the reader will recognise a story which has been told with many variations, as to person, place, and circumstances, but always with the assumption of what would now in certain circles be described as an exercise of the power of clairvoyance regarding a person unknown and living at a great distance.

1678.

The other story is even more curious in its details. Fountainhall says: ‘As for the rencontre between Mr Williamson, schoolmaster at Cupar (he has writ a grammar), and the Rosicrucians, I never trusted it till I heard it from his own son, who is present minister of Kirkcaldy.’ A stranger coming to Cupar called for Mr Williamson, and they went to drink together at a tavern. When the reckoning came to be paid, the stranger whistled for spirits, and one in the shape of a boy came and gave him some gold. It is to be remarked that no servant had been seen attending the stranger while riding into the town, or at his inn. ‘He caused his spirits next day bring him noble Greek wines from the pope’s cellar, and tell the freshest news then was at Rome.’ Some time after, Mr Williamson, being in London, and passing along London Bridge, heard himself called by name, and turning about, discovered it was his Rosicrucian. At the request of the stranger, he met him at dinner in a house to which he was directed, and there found a magnificently spread table, with a company of good fashion, all being served by spirits. The conversation turned on the advantage of being served by spirits, and Mr Williamson was asked to join their happy society; but he started back with dismay, when it was mentioned as a necessary preliminary, that he should abstract his spirit from all materiality, and renounce his baptism. In his alarm, he fell a praying, whereupon they all disappeared. He was then in a new alarm, dreading to have to pay a huge reckoning; but the boy who answered his summons, told him that ‘there was nothing to pay, for they had done it, and were gone about their affairs in the city.’ It is barely necessary to remark to those who have seen and believed in the wonders of what is called electro-biology, there is nothing in Mr Williamson’s case which might not be explained on that principle—namely, a condition of brain artificially produced, in which the suggestion of objects and events is enough to make the patient believe them real.

After this date, witch-cases before the high court are rare, and there had evidently set in a disrelish for such prosecutions. The fact may reasonably be attributed in some degree to the publication, in 1677, of Webster’s rational treatise, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft.

July 19.

James Gray, a ‘litster,’ that is, dyer, in Dalkeith, went to Glasgow in March this year as a lieutenant in the Midlothian Militia. He there met, over a bottle, a young man, named Archibald Murray, son of the Laird of Newton, and who was a trooper in the king’s Life Guard. When heated with liquor, Gray began to boast that to be a lieutenant under the Duke of Lauderdale was as good as to ride in the king’s Life Guard—rather a petulant speech from a Dalkeith craftsman to the son of a laird in its neighbourhood. Murray stormed and called him a base fellow, to compare himself with gentlemen! They went out and fought, and Gray soon returned, saying: ‘I trow I have pricked him,’ never imagining that he had taken the young man’s life. Such, however, proved to be the case. Gray, who was a handsome, vigorous man, of about fifty, was tried for the act, and much interest was felt in his behalf, as it was believed that he had meant nothing like murder. Five thousand merks were offered to the friends of the deceased, by way of assythment. But all was in vain. On the day noted in the margin, ‘he was beheaded, dying with courage, and declaring that ambition, leading to discontents and quarrels, joined to marrying an old woman, had ruined him.’—Foun.

Aug. 15.

1678.

Scotland now had a visitor of an extraordinary kind. In a petition presented to the Privy Council, he described himself as Mercurius Lascary, a Grecian priest, a native of the island of Samos. He stated that himself, his brother Demetrius, who was also a priest, and two sons, had been seized by night by Algerine pirates; and his brother had now been detained for three years in a most miserable condition in Barbary. Testimonials from the patriarch of Constantinople and various Greek bishops confirmed this sad tale; and on his petition, a general charitable contribution was ordered to be raised in his behalf.—P. C. R.

Sep. 12.

In the history of the introduction of the more refined arts into Scotland, there is no reason why one so ingenious as cabinet-making should not be included. We now first hear of it on the occasion of a petition from one James Turner, styling himself ‘cabinet-maker and mirror-glass maker.’ He having, as he says, ‘with much labour, pains, and expenses, attained to the art of making cabinets, mirror-glasses, dressing-boxes, chests of drawers, comb-boxes, and the like curious work, of the finest olive and princes’ wood, not formerly practised by any native of this country,’ had been peaceably exercising his craft, when he was assailed by the deacon of the corporation of wrights as an unfreeman. He had first been forbidden to work, and then they took away his tools and materials. On his petition, however, he received the protection of the Council.—P. C. R.

Not long after (February 1682), we hear of a kindred trade as being practised in Edinburgh. Hugh M‘Gie, mirror-maker in the Canongate, gave in a bill to the Privy Council, representing that, by the practice of other nations, any tradesman having seven sons together, without the intervention of a daughter, is declared free of all public burdens and taxes, and has other encouragements bestowed on him, to enable him to bring up the said children for the use and benefit of the commonwealth; and claiming a similar privilege on the strength of his having that qualification. The Council recommended the magistrates to take Hugh’s seven sons into consideration when they laid their ‘stents’ upon him.—Foun.

Some years later (January 1685), Turner being again troubled by the wrights’ corporation, the Privy Council, on his producing an essay piece of ‘an indented cabinet and standishes,’ gave him a licence to set up as a freeman.—Foun. Dec.

Sep. 13.

1678.

At Prestonpans dwelt a respectable old widow named Katharine Liddell, or Keddie. During the late panic in East Lothian regarding witches, she had been seized by John Rutherford, bailie of Prestonpans, as one liable to suspicion of that crime. With the assistance of a drummer, two salt-makers, and other persons, he barbarously tormented her in prison in order to extort a confession, ‘by pricking of pins in several parts of her body, to the great effusion of her blood, and whereby her skin is raised and her body highly swelled, and she is in danger of her life.’ She had also been kept from sleep for several nights and days. It was not till she had undergone this treatment for six weeks, that on her petition an order was obtained from the Privy Council for her liberation.

There must have been some unusual force of character about Katharine Liddell, for not only had she stood her tortures without confessing falsehood, as most of her sister unfortunates did, but she turned upon her tormentors by presenting a petition to the Council, in which she charged them with defamation, false imprisonment, and open and manifest oppression, and demanded that they should be exemplarily punished in their persons and goods. After hearing the accused in answer, the Council declared Liddell entirely innocent and free, and condemned Rutherford and his associates for their unwarrantable proceedings. In respect, however, of ‘the common error and vulgar practice of others in the like station and capacity,’ they let him off without any punishment. ‘David Cowan, pricker,’ the most active of the tormentors, they sentenced to be confined during pleasure in the Tolbooth.—P. C. R.

Oct.

At this time, eighty persons were detained in prison in Edinburgh, on account of matters of religion, waiting till they should be transported as slaves to Barbadoes.263—Foun. Dec.

In connection with this distressing fact may be placed one of a different complexion, which Fountainhall states elsewhere. The magistrates, he tells us, were sensible of the inadequacy of their Old Tolbooth for the purposes of justice in these days of pious zeal. Consequently, one Thomas Moodie leaving them twenty thousand merks to build a church, they—declaring ‘they have no use for a church’—offered to build with the money a new Tolbooth, above the West Port, ‘and to put Thomas Moodie’s name and arms thereon!‘—Foun.

1678.

In the entire history of the municipality of Edinburgh, this is not the worst of its attempts at the perversion of funds intended for the building of a church. And it really appears that our ancestors looked upon the building of a jail as a public act of some dignity and importance. Patriae et Posteris [for our country and posterity] is the self-complacent inscription on the front of the Canongate Tolbooth.

Nov. 13.

A civil process of this date between Sir R. Hepburn of Keith and David Borthwick his tenant, reveals the fact that lime was ‘the usual way of improving and gooding land in East Lothian, at least in that corner of it.’—Foun. Dec.

1679.

So early as 1590 a foreigner came to Scotland, and applied for some encouragement to his design of erecting a paper-work within the kingdom.264 There is reason to believe that this design proved abortive, and that there was no further attempt at a native manufacture of paper till 1675, when a work was established at Dalry Mills, a place on the Water of Leith, in the immediate vicinity of Edinburgh. This work obtained the benefit of an act passed in 1662, offering privileges to those who should erect such manufactories within the kingdom, and French workmen were introduced as necessary for the instruction of the natives. After suffering a temporary stoppage in consequence of the burning of the buildings, the work was again in such a condition in 1679, that it was able, according to the statement of its owners, to produce ‘gray and blue paper much finer than ever this country formerly offered to the Council.’

Mar. 7.

1679.

At this date, Alexander Daes, merchant, one of the proprietors, presented a petition setting forth how this work not only supplied good paper, but promised another general usefulness in the ‘improvement of rags, which formerly were put to no good use,’ and in the gathering of which many poor and infirm people could make their bread: in the work itself, moreover, ‘many Scotsmen and boys are already, and many mo may be, instructed in the art of making paper.’ There was but one thing wanting for the due encouragement of the work, and that was the suppression of ‘a faulty custom, not practised anywhere else,’ of employing fine rags in the making of wicks for candles. This custom, it was alleged, involved a cheat to the lieges, in as far as these rags, not exceeding eight or ten shillings (8d. or 10d. sterling) per stone in value, formed part of the weight of the candles, of which the price was three pounds ten shillings (5s. 10d. sterling). It was represented that cotton-wicks should be employed, which, if dearer, were also better, as they gave more light. Thus it was that, in those days, hardened as every one was in the spirit of monopoly, one trade made no scruple in interfering with another, if its own selfish ends could thereby be advanced.

The Council did actually ‘discharge the candlemakers to make use of clouts and rags for the wicks of candles.’

A subordinate branch of the petition for an extension of the time during which the privileges granted by statute were to last, was silently overlooked.—P. C. R.

There is reason to conclude that this paper-mill was not continued, and that paper-making was not successfully introduced into Scotland till the middle of the succeeding century.

July 11.

Robert Mean, keeper of the letter-office in Edinburgh, was brought before the Privy Council, accused of ‘sending up a bye-letter with the flying packet upon the twenty-two day of June last, giving ane account to the postmaster of England of the defeat of the rebels in the west, which was by the said postmaster communicated to the king before it could have been done by his majesty’s secretary for Scotland, and which letter contains several untruths in matter of fact.’ Notwithstanding an abject apology, Mean was sent to the Tolbooth, there to remain during the Council’s pleasure.—P. C. R.

Mr Mean’s office was at this time a somewhat critical one. On the 19th of August 1680, he was imprisoned by a committee of the Privy Council ‘for publishing the news-letter before it was revised by a councillor or their clerk; though he affirmed he had shewn it to the Earl of Linlithgow before he divulged it.’ What offended them was a false piece of intelligence contained in it, to the disparagement of the Duke of Lauderdale. Robert was liberated in a day or two with a rebuke.265

1679.

The bringing of the news of the defeat of the rebels at Bothwell Bridge seems to have been looked upon as a matter of a high degree of consequence. The instrument was one James Ker, a barber in the Canongate, who acted as a messenger between the royal army and the capital, under favour of the Chancellor Duke of Rothes, whom he had perhaps attended professionally in Holyroodhouse. The lords of the Privy Council were so over-joyed at the intelligence, that they promised James some signal mark of their gratitude; and he soon after asked them, by way of discharging the obligation, to get him entered as a freeman in the city corporation of chirurgeons. They used influence with the deacon of this important body to get Ker’s wish gratified; but it could not be done—he had not served the proper apprenticeship. He went to London, and petitioned the king on the subject, ‘who, finding that the corporation stuck upon their privilege, was graciously pleased to refer [him] back to the Council, to be rewarded as the Council should judge fit.’ Upwards of three years after (December 14, 1682), he is found petitioning the Council for this suitable reward, representing that by the expense of his journey to London and the loss of his employment, he and his wife and numerous family had been reduced to ‘great straits and necessity.’ They could only refer him to the Bishop of Edinburgh, that he might deal with the magistrates, to see their first recommendation made effectual.—P. C. R.

In 1673, two brothers, probably of English birth, Edward Fountain of Lochhill and Captain James Fountain, had their patent formally proclaimed throughout Scotland, as Masters of the Revels within the kingdom. They thus possessed a privilege of licensing and authorising balls, masks, plays, and such-like entertainments; nor was this quite such an empty or useless privilege as our traditionary notions of the religious objections formerly cherished against public amusements might have led us to suppose.

July 24.

At the date noted, the two Fountains petitioned the Privy Council against sundry dancing-masters who took upon them to make ‘public balls, dances, masks, and other entertainments in their schools, upon mercenary designs, without any licence or authority from the petitioners.’ It was set forth that this practice not only invaded their privileges, but tended to ‘the eminent discouragement of the playhouse,’ which ‘the petitioners had been at great charge in erecting.’ Agreeing with the views of the petitioners, the Council ordered all dancing-masters to desist from the above-described practice, and in particular prohibited ‘Andrew Devoe to keep any ball to morrow, or at any other time,’ without proper licence.—P. C. R.

1679.

This as far as I am aware, is the only notice we possess of a theatre in Edinburgh about 1679. It sounds strange to hear of a dancing-master’s ball in our city little more than a month after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and while a thousand poor men were lodging on the cold ground in the Greyfriars’ Church-yard.

We find in September 1680 the two Fountains adverting to their playhouse as still kept up—‘at great expenses;’ and they then petition for redress against such as ‘keep public games, plays, and lotteries’ without that licence which they, as masters of the revels, were alone entitled to grant. The Council on that occasion directed letters of horning to be issued against the persons complained of. Soon after, February 10, 1681, Andrew Devoe, who made his bread by teaching the children of noblemen and gentlemen to dance, complained that he was troubled by the two Fountains demanding from him that he should give caution not to have any more balls in his school. It was an unheard-of thing in Europe, in Andrew’s opinion, that a school-ball should be regarded as an infringement of the patent of a master of revels. The Lords, entering into his views, ordered that any former acts they had passed in favour of the Messrs Fountain should be held as restricted to public shows, balls, and lotteries.

The privilege of the Messrs Fountain must have in time become an insupportable grievance to the lieges, or at least such of them as were inclined to embroider a little gaiety on the dull serge of common life. While the parliament sat in August 1681, an act was projected, though not brought forward, to complain of some oppressive monopolies, and ‘particularly of Mr Fountain’s gifts as Master of the Revels, by which he exacts so much off every bowling-green, kyle-alley, &c., through the kingdom, as falling under his gift of lotteries.’266 In June 1682, Hugh Wallace appeared before the Privy Council as agent for ‘the haill royal burghs of the kingdom,’ shewing that individuals were daily charged by these gentlemen ‘upon pretence of gaming at cards and dice, and other games, or having such plays at their houses,’ acting thus on the pretended powers derived from certain general letters of the Council, and proceeding in due course to hornings and captions where their demands for money were not complied with. The Council ordained letters to be directed to the Masters of the Revels, if the petitioner could ‘condescend upon particular acts of exaction.’

Aug. 26.

1679.

The little village of Corstorphine, three miles from Edinburgh, was disturbed by a frightful occurrence. The title of Lord Forrester was at this time borne by a gentleman of mature years, who had acquired it by his marriage to the heiress, and had subsequently had a family by a second wife. He lived in the Castle of Corstorphine, the ancient seat of the family. It appears that he sided with the Presbyterians, and was zealous enough in their cause to build a meeting-house for their worship. He had nevertheless formed an improper connection with the wife of one Nimmo, a merchant in Edinburgh; and, what made this scandal the greater, the unfortunate woman was niece to his first wife, besides being grand-daughter of a former Lord Forrester. She was a woman of violent character, accustomed, it was alleged, to carry a weapon under her clothes. We are further informed that Mrs Bedford, an adulteress who had murdered her husband a few years back, was her cousin; and that Lady Warriston, who suffered for the same offence in 1600, was of the same family.267

It was pretty evident that this was a woman not to be rashly offended. Lord Forrester had nevertheless spoken opprobriously of her in his drink, and the fact came to her knowledge. She proceeded to his house at Corstorphine, and, finding he was at the village tavern, sent for him. The meeting took place in the garden. After a violent altercation, the unhappy woman stabbed her paramour with his own sword. ‘He fell under a tree near the pigeon-house, both of which still remain, and died immediately. The lady took refuge in the garret of the castle, but was discovered by one of her slippers, which fell through a crevice of the floor.’268 Being seized and brought before the sheriffs of Edinburgh, she made a confession of her crime, though seeking to extenuate it, and, two days after, she was tried, and condemned to die. Taking advantage of a humanity of the law, she contrived by deception to postpone the execution of the sentence for upwards of two months. And in this interval, notwithstanding the great care of her enjoined to John Wan, the keeper of the Tolbooth, she succeeded in making her escape in men’s apparel, but was found next day at Fala Mill, and brought back to prison. On the 12th of November, Mrs Nimmo was beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh, appearing on the scaffold in mourning, with a large veil, which, before laying down her head, she put aside, baring her shoulders at the same time, ‘with seeming courage enough.’269

1679.

Connected with the murder, a circumstance characteristic of the age took place. The deceased nobleman, leaving only heirs of his second marriage, who took the name of Ruthven from their mother, and who were in possession of his house, the family honours and estates, which came by his first wife, by whom he had no surviving progeny, passed, according to a deed of entail, to another branch of the family. In that day, no offence was more common than that of violently seizing and interfering with the legal writings connected with landed properties. Well knowing this, William Baillie of Torwoodhead and his mother dreaded that the young Ruthvens might play foul with the late lord’s charter-chest, and so prejudice their succession. They went with friends to the house, while the murdered nobleman’s body still lay in it, and intruded in a violent manner, by way of taking possession of their inheritance. Their chief aim, as they afterwards alleged, was to see that no documents should be embezzled or made away with. On a complaint from the Ruthvens, the Lords adjudged Baillie and his mother to lie in prison during their pleasure, and fined their assistant, a Mr Gourlay, in a hundred pounds Scots. The court at the same time took measures to secure the charter-chest.

Oct. 26.

1679.

The Duke of York arrived in Scotland, designing to reside in the country till the storm of the Exclusion Bill should blow over. He and his family experienced a favourable reception in Edinburgh. In July 1681, he was joined by his daughter, styled the Lady Anne (subsequently Queen Anne). The royal party occupied the palace of Holyroodhouse, which had recently received such large additions as to give them handsome accommodation. According to the report of Mr William Tytler,270 who had conversed with many who remembered the duke’s visit, the gaiety and brilliancy of the court of Holyroodhouse on this occasion was a subject of general satisfaction. ‘The princesses were easy and affable, and the duke studied to make himself popular among all ranks of men.’ It was indeed an unpropitious time for the duke to be in his father’s native kingdom—when a large portion of the people were at issue with the government about matters of faith, and men were daily suffering extreme severities on account of their religious practice. Nevertheless, he was far from being unpopular. It is clearly intimated by Fountainhall that his birthday came to be observed with more cordial demonstrations than the king’s.271 Though the contrary has been insinuated, there are many instances, credibly reported, of his shewing humanity towards the unfortunate ‘phanatiques,’ as they were called, who came under the notice of the local authorities during the period of his visit.272

Mr Tytler reports that the duke and the princesses gave balls, plays, and masquerades, much to the enjoyment of the nobility and gentry who attended them, though to the disgust and horror of the more rigid Presbyterians. It will be found that Nat Lee’s play of Mithridates, King of Pontus, was acted privately at the palace (November 15, 1681), with Lady Anne and the maids of honour as the only performers. It was probably afterwards that a portion of the duke’s company of players came down to Edinburgh to give regular performances. Mr Tytler had a dim recollection of seeing one of their playbills, advertising in capital letters The Indian Emperor, as to be played by them at the Queen’s Chocolate House, which, he thought, would be near the palace, though we must regard the High Street as a much more likely situation. This was Dryden’s play on the sad story of Montezuma. The great English poet comes into connection in another way with this histrionic expedition to the north, for, when the remainder of the company appeared at Oxford, he had to write a prologue apologising for the weakness of the corps, and did it ludicrously at the expense of Scotland.

1679.

Mr Tytler also states that ‘tea, for the first time heard of in Scotland, was given as a treat by the princesses to the Scottish ladies who visited at the abbey.’ He adds: ‘The duke was frequently seen in a party at golf on the Links of Leith, with some of the nobility and gentry. I remember in my youth to have often conversed with an old man, named Andrew Dickson, a golf-club maker, who said that, when a boy, he used to carry the duke’s golf-clubs, and to run before him and announce where the balls fell.’

In July 1681, hearing that the Duke and Duchess of York were now residing in Scotland, an Irish theatrical company thought it might be a good speculation to visit Edinburgh, ‘to set up a playhouse for the diversion and entertainment of such as shall desire the same.’ They, to the number of thirty persons, landed at Irvine in Ayrshire, bringing with them ‘clothes necessar for their employment, mounted with gold and silver lace,’ when a difficulty was encountered, arising from the late act of parliament regarding laced clothes. The company was obliged to send a petition to the Privy Council in Edinburgh, shewing that ‘trumpeters and stage-players’ were exempted from the said act, and supplicating a pass to be exhibited to the tax-collector at Irvine. His Royal Highness and the Council at once acceded to the prayer of this petition.—P. C. R.

The Duke of York left Edinburgh by sea, on the 6th of March 1682, ‘being desired to see his majesty at Newmarket. There was great solemnity and attendance at his parture.’273 He returned to Scotland, on the 7th of May, also by sea, on which occasion occurred the disastrous shipwreck of the Gloucester frigate in which he sailed. His purpose at this time was to bring back his family from Scotland, and, accordingly, he and the princesses finally departed on the 15th of the month.

Dec. 19.

1679.

A commission composed of country gentlemen and advocates sat in the Tolbooth of Borrowstounness to try a number of poor people for the crime of witchcraft. There was Annaple Thomson, who had had a meeting with the devil in the time of her widowhood, before she was married to her last husband, on her coming betwixt Linlithgow and Borrowstounness, when he, ‘in the likeness of ane black man, told you, that you was ane poor puddled body, and had an evil life, and difficulty to win through the world, and promised if you would follow him, and go alongst with him, you should never want, but have ane better life; and about five weeks thereafter the devil appeared to ye when you was going to the coal-hill about seven o’clock in the morning. Having renewed his former tentation, you did condescend thereto, and declared yourself content to follow him and become his servant.’ There were also women called Margaret Pringle, Margaret Hamilton (two of the name), and Bessie Vicker, besides a man called William Craw. ‘Ye and each person of you was at several meetings with the devil in the links of Borrowstounness, and in the house of you Bessie Vicker, and ye did eat and drink with the devil, and with one another, and with witches in her house in the night-time; and the devil and the said William Craw brought the ale which ye drank, extending to about seven gallons, from the house of Elizabeth Hamilton, and you, the said Annaple, had ane other meeting about five weeks ago, when you was going to the coal-hill of Grange, and he invited you to go along with him and drink with him in the Grange-pans.’ Two of the other accused women were said to have in like manner sworn themselves into the devil’s service and become his paramours, one eight years, the other thirty years ago. It was charged against Margaret Pringle, that ‘the devil took you by the right hand, whereby it was for eight years grievously pained, but [he] having touched it of new again, it immediately became haill;’ against Margaret Hamilton—‘the devil gave you ane five-merk piece of gold, whilk a little after becam ane sklaitt stane.’ And finally, ‘you and ilk ane of you was at ane meeting with the devil and other witches at the cross of Muirstane, above Kinneil, upon the thretteen of October last, where you all danced, and the devil acted the piper.’274

These poor people were solemnly tried by the commissioners before an assize of fifty persons, and, notwithstanding that the indictment charges scarcely any hurtful attempts against individuals, the whole were adjudged to be taken four days after to the west end of the town, and there worried at a stake and burnt.

1679.

Thomas Kirke, a Yorkshire squire, this year published a Modern Account of Scotland, containing an extraordinary effusion of bile against the country, but also preserving a few traits probably not far from the truth. He describes the gentlemen’s houses as generally of a fortified character, ‘with strong iron grates before the windows—the lower part whereof is only a wooden shutter, and the upper part glass—so that they look more like prisons than houses of reception. Some few houses there are of late erection, that are built in a better form, with good walks and gardens about them; but their fruit rarely comes to any perfection. The houses of the commonality are very mean, mud-wall and thatch the best. But the poorer sort live in such miserable huts as never eye beheld; men, women, and children pig together in a poor mouse-hole of mud, heath, and such-like matter.... The Lowland gentry go well enough habited, but the poorer sort almost naked, only an old cloak or part of their bed-clothes thrown over them. The Highlanders wear slashed doublets, commonly without breeches, only a plaid tied about their waists and thrown over one shoulder, with short stockings to the gartering-place, their knees and part of their thighs being naked. Others have breeches and stockings all of a piece of plaid ware, close to their thighs [trews]. In one side of their girdle sticks a durk or skene [knife], about a foot or half a yard long ... on the other side a brace at least of brass pistols: nor is this honour sufficient; if they can purchase more, they must have a long swinging sword.

‘The highways in Scotland are tolerably good, which is the greatest comfort a traveller meets with amongst them. They have not inns, but change-houses [taverns], poor small cottages where you must be content to take what you find.... The Scotch gentry generally travel from one friend’s house to another; so seldom require a change-house. Their way is to hire a horse and a man for twopence a mile;275 they ride on the horse thirty or forty miles a day, and the man who is his guide foots it beside him and carries his luggage to boot.’

1680. Feb. 26.

1680.

In 1647, while the thoughts of men were engrossed by frightful civil broils, one quiet country gentleman, Sir Robert Bruce of Clackmannan, occupied himself in some measure with things of a practically useful nature. It was a most uncommon way of bestowing spare mental energy in those days, and perhaps was owing in a great degree to Sir Robert’s situation in the midst of the fine coal-field still worked so industriously under the skirts of the Ochils. He was then found beseeching the attention of the Committee of Estates—amidst military arrangements, payments of public creditors, punishments of malignants, sharpening of the weapons of persecution against dissidents of all kinds—to a mechanical invention of his own—‘ane water-work, never invented, heard, nor seen heretofore, for drying of all water-heuchs [coal-mines] within the kingdom, how deep soever the sumptis and growth of the water-springs be within the samen, by the supplie of two men allenarly, going by pace,276 peise, or swey.’277 The laird, as usual, sought for his reward in an exclusive right to the use of this engine for nineteen years, which was granted.

What, if anything, came of this contrivance we do not learn. Most likely, it was never effectually tried, but fell asleep amongst the troubles of the time. Yet it would appear that the idea was somehow kept alive, for at the date noted in the margin, Peter Bruce278 made application to the Privy Council for their favour towards an engine for drawing water out of coal-pits and quarries, which promised to do more work with a couple of men than six horses could effect by any other machine now in use; also towards a cutting-mill ‘for ane easy way of cutting all sorts of great goads and bars of iron in small lengths, stanchells, or strings, whereby smiths and other artificers in iron will be able to make nails and other iron works at least £2 Scots cheaper of every hundredweight of iron.’ He had spent much on these projects, and more was yet required, wherefore he thought himself entitled to some public encouragement. The Privy Council granted him an exclusive privilege of making the proposed machines for thirteen years.—P. C. R.

1680.

A curious trait of the simplicity of Scotland in regard to some of the mechanical arts occurs in Fountainhall’s Decisions under 1679, where he tells of plumbers that ‘they cannot subsist in Scotland as a distinct trade, there being so little to do; only our curiosity is daily increasing.’

June 15.

Great efforts were made during this reign for the building of bridges and repairing of roads, but generally with little good effect. As an example of the actual condition of a road near the capital of the country at this time, we find the first four miles of that from Edinburgh to London—namely, from the Clockmill Bridge to Magdalen Bridge—are described as being in so ruinous a state, that passengers were in danger of their lives, ‘either by their coaches overturning, their horse falling, their carts breaking, their loads casting, and horse stumbling, the poor people with the burdens on their backs sorely grieved and discouraged:’ moreover, ‘strangers do often exclaim thereat.’ A toll of a halfpenny for a laden cart, and a sixth of a penny for a laden horse, was authorised in order to get this piece of road kept in repair.—P. C. R.

Oct.

In one week died Lady Kilbirnie and her husband of a pestilential fever. ‘The death of thir spouses was much lamented by all sorts of people.... In the day of the sickening of the laird and lady, his dogs went into the close, and an unco dog coming amongst them, they all set up a barking, with their faces up to heaven, howling, yelling, and youphing; and when the laird called to them, they would not come to him as in former times.’—Law.

The same author relates that, before the death of Colquhoun of Luss, ‘the dogs went up to a chamber in the night-time, and made a hideous lamentable-like noise, and tore down the curtains of the bed, there being none in it.’ At the sickening of Lord Ross, who died in May 1682, ‘his dogs came up the stair towards his chamber, howling lamentably; he caused shoot them all one after another.’

[Nov. ?]

The Duke of York paying a visit to the Castle of Edinburgh, the huge cannon called Mons Meg was fired in his honour. The charge, which was done by an English cannoneer, had probably been too large, for it caused the piece to burst. This ‘some foolishly called a bad omen. The Scots resented it extremely, thinking the Englishman might of malice have done it purposely, they having no cannon in all England so big as she.’—Foun.

1680.

Mons Meg, with a breach in her side, still adorns the ancient battlements of Edinburgh Castle, ‘to the great admiration of people,’ being upwards of thirteen feet long, and of twenty inches bore; formed of longitudinal bars of iron, hooped with rings fused into one mass. It is an example of a colossal kind of artillery which the sovereigns of Europe had a craze for making in the middle and latter half of the fifteenth century—this specimen being probably prepared at the command of James II. of Scotland.

Nov.

An elephant which had been bought for £2000 sterling, and brought to England for exhibition, was shewn in Scotland, being the first of the species ever seen in the country. It was a male, eleven years old, ‘a great beast, with a great body and a great head, small eyes and dull, lugs like two skats (?) lying close to its head; having a large trunk coming down from the nether end of the forehead, of length a yard and a half, in the undermost part small, with a nostril; by which trunk it breathed and drank, casting up its meat and drink in its mouth below it; having two large and long bones or teeth, of a yard length, coming from the upper jaw of it, and at the far end of it inclining one to another, by which it digs the earth for roots ... it was backed like a sow, the tail of it like a cow’s: the legs were big, like pillars or great posts, and broad feet with toes like round lumps of flesh. When it drinks it sucks up the water with its trunk, which holds a great deal of water, and then putting the low end in its mouth, by winding it in, it jaws in the water in its mouth, as from a great spout. It was taught to flourish the colours with the trunk of it, and to shoot a gun, and to bow the knees of it, and to make reverence with its big head. They also rode upon it.... Let this great creature on earth and the whale at sea be compared with a midge or minnow, and behold what great wisdom and power is with the great God, the creator and preserver of both!‘—Law.

It appears that Alexander Deas and others farmed this elephant from its owners for several months at £400, in order to shew it through the country. They refused to pay in full, on the ground of several failures as to the terms of the contract, alleging, for instance, that the owners had not shewn all it might do—namely, its drinking, &c. It was replied, ‘it could not drink every time it was shewn.’ How the litigation ended does not appear.—Foun.

Dec. 10.

1680.

A great comet, which had been observed in Germany a month earlier, was first seen in Scotland this evening, ‘the night being clear and frosty; between five and seven at night, it set in the west, and was seen in the south-east in the morning of the following days.279 [It] had a great [tail] blazing frae the root of it, was pointed as it came from the star, and then spread itself; was of a broad and large ascent up to the heavens ... the stream of it all the night over is seen.... [It] had its recess from the west every night by degrees, as the moon has from the sun after her change, and being every night more elevate by degrees in its first after daylight was gone, then the stream of it mounted to our zenith, and beyond it, very wonderfully. No history ever made mention of the like comet ... and [it] is certainly prodigious of great alterations and of great judgments on these lands and nations for our sins; for never was the Lord more provoked by a people.... [It] continued till the 16th or 17th day of January, growing smaller and smaller to its end.’—Law.

‘When Mr M‘Ward, who was then a-dying, heard of it, he desired Mr Shields and other friends to carry him out, that he might see it. When he saw it, he blest the Lord that was now about to close his eyes, and was not to see the woful days that were coming upon Britain and Ireland, especially upon sinful Scotland.’—P. Walker.

1680.

Lord Fountainhall, in noting the appearance of a smaller comet for two weeks in August 1682, being the time when ‘semblances of joy’ were presented in Edinburgh for the accouchement of the Duchess of York of a daughter, adds: ‘I have seen a late French book, proving that comets prognosticate nothing that’s fatal or dangerous, but rather prosperous things; yet, at the time it shone, the Duke of Lauderdale, that great minister of state, died.’—Hist. Ob. This ‘yet’ is exceedingly amusing. He elsewhere states the opinions of those who believe in the ominousness of comets. According to them, ‘the effects’ do not always follow immediately: some indeed think a comet ‘takes as many years to operate, as it appears nights.’ He estimates the tail of the comet of 1680 at near [upwards of] 3000 miles in length, because it extends over 60 degrees, ‘and each degree is 60 miles!’ This learned judge, however, was himself of opinion that comets do not hold forth any prognostics of blood and desolation, further than by their natural effects in infecting the air, so as to occasion sterility, pestilential diseases, and famine.

Lord Fountainhall probably deemed 3000 miles a considerable length for a comet’s tail. How must he have been surprised to learn that it was in reality nearly as long as the distance of the earth from the sun, or not much short of a hundred millions of miles. Equally great must have been his wonder to learn (as appears from Enke’s recent calculations) that this illustrious stranger only comes to our part of space once in 8814 years!

Dec.

During this month, the public mind was in a highly excited state, owing to the terrific appearance of the comet overhead, in connection with the presence of the Duke of York in Edinburgh, and the news of the struggles in parliament for his exclusion from the throne. One Gray, a merchant in Edinburgh, gave out that, as he and a country friend called Yule were looking at the comet, ‘he saw a fire descend from the Castle down the city of Edinburgh to the Abbey’ [the duke’s residence], while Yule heard a voice saying: ‘This is the sword of the Lord!’ A man in a soldier’s apparel came up to Sir George Monro at mid-day in the street, and bade him go down and tell the Duke of York, if he did not counsel his brother the king to extirpate the Papists, both he and the king were dead men. Sir George turned about to call witnesses to what the man had said, and when he looked again, the man had mysteriously vanished. To crown all, ‘a hypochondriac fellow’ came out to the street, and proclaimed openly that the Day of Judgment would take place next day, offering himself to be hanged if it should prove otherwise. He was clapped up in the Canongate Tolbooth; rather a prosaic fate for a prophet. The two first circumstances are clearly to be referred to the hallucination which is apt to be engendered on occasions of great public excitement.

Dec. 25.

1680.

The boys at the college in Edinburgh resolved to follow the example of the London apprentices in getting up a demonstration against the pope. What gave piquancy to the design was, that the Duke of York was now living in Edinburgh, under exile from London on account of his adherence to the Romish faith. They were very cunning and dexterous in making their arrangements, having first prepared their effigy of the pope, and then sent a small party with a portrait to the Castle Hill, in order to make the authorities think that they designed to have a procession from that place down the High Street to Holyrood Palace, where the duke lived. While this feint drew off the attention of the military, the youths brought out the true effigy to the High School Yard, and then marched with it up Blackfriars’ Wynd to the High Street. It was a rude statue of timber, with a painted face; on the head, a gray periwig and triple crown; and in the hands a cross, a candle, and a piece of money. The figure was clothed in a calico gown, and sat in a chair. Having set it down on the street, they set fire to it, causing a quantity of powder within the body to explode and burst it all in pieces. Notwithstanding their expedition, they were attacked, while performing the ceremony, by the swords of the Earl of Linlithgow and a few other friends of the Duke of York; but they stood their ground, warning the assailants that they might hurt some they would not like to hurt. When all was over, they dispersed. Many regretted the act, as inhospitable towards the duke, and we may well believe, if General Dalyell had not been led with his troops on a false scent, he would have made the lads repent of their frolic. ‘For a further testimony and bravado, the school-boys, apprentices, and many other people, mounted blue ribbons, inscribed with, “No Pope—no Priest—no Bishop—no Atheist;” which, again, caused the loyal to hoist the rival legend, “I am no fanatic.”’

One George Redpath, tutor to a gentleman’s two sons, was brought before the Privy Council, and examined on the accusation of having drawn up a bond for the execution of this project. But after a few days’ detention, he was set at liberty ‘by the goodness of his royal highness, who was always too compassionate to that generation of vipers,’ says Sir William Paterson.280 This same Redpath lived to be an active Whig pamphleteer in London after the Revolution, and was the author of the Answer to the Scots Presbyterian Eloquence.

1681. Jan. 11.

1681.

The house of Priestfield, under the south front of Arthur’s Seat, was burnt this evening between seven and eight o’clock. Political circumstances gave importance to what would otherwise have been a trivial occurrence. Sir James Dick, the owner, was provost of Edinburgh, and a friend of the Duke of York. His having adopted energetic measures with some college youths concerned in the Christmas anti-papal demonstration, was supposed to have excited a spirit of retaliation in their companions; and hence a suspicion arose that the fire was designed and executed by them. The Privy Council were so far convinced of this being the case, that they shut up the college, and banished the pupils fifteen miles, unless they could give caution for their good-behaviour. Sir James’s house was rebuilt at the public expense, as it now exists in the possession of his descendant, Sir William Cunningham Keith Dick, Bart.

Jan. 20.

Six women were hanged in Edinburgh. Two of them, Janet Alison from Perth, and Marion Harvey from Borrowstounness, ‘were of Cameron’s faction, bigot and sworn enemies to the king and bishops,’ and, ‘for all the pains taken, would not once acknowledge the king to be their lawful prince, but called him a perjured bloody man.’ ‘Some thought the threatening to drown them privately in the North Loch, without giving them the credit of a public suffering, would have more effectually reclaimed them nor any arguments which were used; and the bringing them to a scaffold but disseminates the infection.’—Foun.

The other four women were hanged for murdering their own children, born out of wedlock. It would be hard to say which of the two cases reflects the most discredit upon the wisdom and humanity of the age.

On the ensuing 13th of April, another woman was hanged in the Grassmarket for murdering her child, declaring that she had committed the deed in order ‘to shun the ignominy of the church pillory.’ The frequency of such cases, and the declaration of this poor woman, attracted the attention of the Duke of York. He was surprised to hear of a custom used in no other Christian country, which ‘rather made scandals than buried them.’ The duke, we are told, ‘was displeased, and thought it would be a more efficacious restraint, if the civil magistrate should punish them, either by a pecuniary mulct, or a corporal punishment.’ Fountainhall, however, thought the practice justifiable, on the text, ‘They who sin openly should be rebuked openly,’ and from the penances imposed in the primitive church.

Feb. 21.

1681.

A company of distracted people was this day brought into Edinburgh, under the guardianship of a troop of dragoons. They were commonly known as the Sweet Singers of Borrowstounness, from their noted habit of frequent chanting of psalms. The religious exasperations of the times, the execution of a Bo’ness man named Stewart, with two others, on the preceding 1st of December, and perhaps in addition to these causes, the terrors diffused by the comet, had now produced in that little town an epidemic mania of a type only too well known. These people felt as if all was wrong in church and state, and professed to deny all kinds of institutions, even the names of the days of the week; nay, the commonest social obligations, as that of working for one’s own bread. They protested against taxes, confessions, and covenants; disowned the king and his government; and called for vengeance on the murderers of the two late martyrs, Stewart and Potter, whose blood they carried on a handkerchief. They ran up and down the town in a furious manner, sometimes uttering prayers which consisted chiefly of curses invoked against individuals, more frequently singing psalms of lamentation (74th, 79th, 80th, 83d, and 137th) for the sins of the land. Such of the females as were married deserted their homes and husbands, and if the husband, in his endeavours to win his wife back to rationality, took hold of any part of her dress, she indignantly washed the place, as to remove an impurity. They followed a gigantic fellow, commonly called Muckle John Gibb, but who passed among them under the name of King Solomon, and at length, ‘leaving their homes and soft warm beds and covered tables,’ six-and-twenty of them went forth from their native town, notwithstanding the entreaties of weeping husbands, fathers, and children, calling on them to stay; ‘some women taking the sucking children in their arms to desert places, to be free of all snares and sins, and communion with all others, and mourn for their own sins, the land’s tyranny and defections, and there to be safe from the land’s utter ruin and desolation by judgments; some of them going to the Pentland Hills, with a resolution to sit there to see the smoke and utter ruin of the sinful, bloody city of Edinburgh.... Immediately after they came to these desert places, they kept a day of fasting and confessing of their sins one to another; yea, some of them confessed sins which the world had not heard of, and so not called to confess them to men.’—Pat. Walker.

1681.

Even the Whig clergymen who had gone to the wilderness rather than own an uncovenanted king, were surprised at the more extreme feelings of the Sweet Singers. Walker tells how he was with the Rev. Mr Cargill at Darmead Muirs, when the Gibbites were ‘lying in the Deer Slunk, in the midst of a great flow-moss betwixt Clydesdale and Lothian about a mile distant.’ Gibb and another man came armed, and held a conference with Mr Cargill in a barn, but it led to no good. After resting a while, the chief of the Sweet Singers rose in haste and went to the muir all night. ‘I well remember,’ says Walker, ‘it was a cold easterly wet fog.’ Cargill was shocked by the state of mind he had found them in. They were afterwards all taken by a troop of dragoons at the Woolhill Craigs, betwixt Lothian and Tweeddale, a very desert place, and carried to Edinburgh, where the men were put into the Canongate Tolbooth, and the women into the Correction-house, where they were soundly scourged. After a little time, these poor people cooled down somewhat, and were one by one set at liberty. Walker says the most of them ultimately returned to their right mind, and he had had some edifying conversations with them since.

Mar. 1.

1681.

Articles used in clothing in Scotland had hitherto been almost wholly of home manufacture. As in Sweden to this day, the great bulk of the people spun their own wool and flax, each family for itself, and had the yarn woven into cloth by the village webster. There were as yet but the merest attempts at a manufacture of cloths or hosen for general sale and use. We have seen a modest attempt made by certain foreigners in Edinburgh so early as 1609.281 It is stated that in the reign of Charles I., there were cloth-works on a small scale at Newmills in Haddingtonshire, at Bonnington near Edinburgh, and at Ayr. That at Newmills was in a thriving condition till Dundee was stormed and sacked by Monk in 1651, when a store of its cloth was taken, and the troubles soon after closed the work.282 Latterly, it could scarcely be said there was any general manufacture of articles of attire except at Aberdeen. There one George Pyper had a number of country-people engaged in working stockings with the needles, paying them at the rate of five groats (equal to 1-2/3d. sterling) a pair for the making; and he raised the working to such a fineness in some instances, ‘that he hath given twenty shillings sterling and upward for the pair.’283 In this province there was also a manufacture of plaiden stuffs and fingrams, which was the more meritorious as the wool was mostly brought by sea-carriage from the southern parts of the kingdom. It is related that a Mr Barnes, ‘a substantious merchant in Edinburgh,’ thought he might make a saving by getting the same stuffs made in his own neighbourhood, and have an advantage over the Aberdeen merchants in sending out his cloth to the Dutch market. But, on trying an experiment with ‘ten sea-packs of plaiden, which might be worth £20,000,’ he found that he had scarcely produced his cloth at as low a rate as that at which the Aberdeen merchants sold theirs. The explanation, which he obtained from Mr Alexander Farquhar, a merchant in Aberdeen, might be worthy of Mr Babbage’s attention for a new edition of his Economy of Manufactures. It was, that the people who worked these cloths in the north ‘had not by far such entertainment as his [Mr Barnes’s] servants had—they oftener drank clear spring-water than ale.’ When Mr Barnes heard this, he gave up his manufacture. Of late years, even this frugally conducted manufacture, which had in some years brought a hundred thousand rix-dollars into the country, and greatly facilitated the payment of rents, was much decayed—the goods reduced to half their wonted prices, and yet not the half exported that was—and all from a cause also of much significance in the philosophy of business—namely, ‘deceitful mismanagement,’ leading of course to loss of confidence, and a consequent checking of orders.

The faculties for business which the Duke of York possessed in so respectable a degree, seem to have now begun to tell upon the country in which he found a refuge. While joining in the unhappy severities dictated by the Privy Council against the poor Whigs, he gave attention to the solid interests of the nation at large, and had consultations with such men of mercantile spirit as the country then possessed, with a view to the planting of cloth-factories similar to those which had long been realising good results in England. It was pointed out that the making of the better kinds of cloth within the country was becoming a matter of most serious concernment, because, owing to the great drain of money which was occasioned by the importation of such cloths from the south, ‘English money was not to be had under 6 or 7 per cent., scarce at any rate,’ and exchange between Edinburgh and London had risen against the former place as high as 12 or 15 per cent. ‘Our four-merk pieces,’ it was added, ‘the best coin of our kingdom, were almost wholly exported, and above £20,000 sterling in dollars left the country in the year 1680.’

1681.

The result of the duke’s patriotic deliberations was the passing of acts of Council in March and April, and the passing of an act of parliament in September 1681, for the encouragement of trade and manufactories. Through his personal exertions, a body of men, including Mr Robert Blackwood and several other merchants in Edinburgh, was induced to associate for the setting up of a new work at Newmills, the produce of which was to be disposed of by them under peculiar regulations. It was to be under the care of an enterprising Englishman named Sir James Stanfield, who for some time had been settled there. In August, six sheermen and a foreman having been brought down from England, this work commenced with two looms—soon increased to eight—soon after to twenty-five; and in 1683 it was still extending. ‘We began,’ says the pamphleteer formerly quoted, ‘to make the coarsest of white cloths first, wherein we continued till October 1682; then we turned part of our people to coarse mixed cloth, and so on gradually to finer, and now we are upon superfine cloths, and have brought the spinners and rest of the work-people that length, that we hope against May next to have superfine cloths as good as generally are made in England.’ There was also a manufacture of silk-stockings going on at Newmills. The whole work seems to have then been in a hopeful condition, albeit on the unsound footing of a monopoly, all English goods of the same kinds being prohibited under severe penalties.

The act was, indeed, too sweeping in its tendency, for it forbade the importing of a great number of stuffs—as silks, embroideries, gold lace, ribbons, silk fringes, cambrics, and damasks, which it was not in the power of any native manufacturer to supply, and which certain classes of the people were little inclined to dispense with. It was thought necessary by these means to save the money of the country. It led to a strange scene one day on the High Street of Edinburgh. George Fullerton, a merchant of that city, had committed a gross violation of the law, first in smuggling in some packs of English cloth, and afterwards, when they were seized by the authorities, repossessing himself of them by violence. The Privy Council ordered him to be declared fugitive, had the two ‘waiters’ of the West Port scourged for allowing the goods to be introduced, and ordained the cloth itself to be burnt at the Cross by the hand of the hangman. The common people beheld this last spectacle with feelings of their own, for they thought it might have been better to distribute the cloth among the poor: however, says Fountainhall in a whisper, it was only the worst bales that were burned: the best were ‘privily preserved.’

1681.

Absurd as all this procedure may appear, it precisely represents the existing policy of Sweden and some other continental countries in respect of British manufactures.

One natural result of the act very soon appears, in the magistrates of Edinburgh being called before the Privy Council at the suggestion of the Duke of York, and recommended to call up the merchants, in order to discharge them from ‘extortioning the lieges, by taking exorbitant prices for the merchandises now prohibited ... on the pretence that there no more of that kind to be imported within the kingdom.’

In February 1683, General Dalyell, finding ‘that he cannot be provided in this kingdom with as much cloth of one colour as will be clothes to the regiment of dragoons,’ obtained a licence from the Privy Council permitting the cloth-manufacturing company at Newmills ‘to import 2536 ells of stone-gray cloth from England, for clothing the said regiment of dragoons,’ they finding caution under £500 sterling to limit the importation strictly to that quantity. About a month later, the Council made a change in this order, to the effect that the general might appoint a person to import the cloth—not exceeding five shillings sterling the ell—instead of the Newmills company.

In May 1683, Captain John Graham of Claverhouse was permitted by the Privy Council, on petition, to import from England, for the use of his troops, 150 ells of red cloth, 40 ells of white cloth, and 550 dozen of buttons; giving security that no advantage should be taken of this licence to bring in any other cloth.

Of a small cloth-work in Leith it was declared (December 1683) that the partners engaged ‘are excellently skilled in their trade, and can dye and mix wool and cloth, and takes in wool from the merchant or other person, and does dye and mix it; and when they get in yarn, does weave and dress it, and deliver it in broadcloth; and has already made good broadcloth to many of the merchants of Edinburgh.’ ‘Seeing that this is so good a work,’ the Privy Council, on petition, extended to it the privileges proposed in the act for encouraging manufactures.—P. C. R.

1681.

Still the Council itself does not seem to have been a consistent patron of such native works. The dress of the infantry of the royal army having hitherto been of a plain kind, it was reported as necessary to have coats for them ‘of such a dye as shall be thought fit to distinguish sojors from other skulking and vagrant persons, who have hitherto imitated the livery of the king’s sojors.’ The Newmills Cloth Manufacturing Company offered (August 28, 1684) from their own work, to furnish a suitable cloth ‘of what dye should be desired,’ and as cheaply and expeditiously as it could be had from England. They would shew ‘swatches’ [samples] within a fortnight, and give security for the fulfilment of their undertaking. But the lords decided to use English cloth.

Patrick Graham, ‘captain of his majesty’s company of foot within the town of Edinburgh’ (the Town Guard), was empowered (January 8, 1685) to import ‘three hundred ells of English cloth of a scarlet colour, with wrappings and other necessars’ for the clothing of his corps, this being ‘in regard the manufactories are not able to furnish his majesty’s forces with cloth and other necessars.’ Several other commanders of troops got similar licences. The Newmills Company looked on with outraged feelings, and presented a petition desiring that a stop might be put to the importation of English cloth for the soldiery, as the needful article could be furnished as cheaply and of as good quality from the native factory. In order that they might not be ‘utterly ruined and broke,’ they begged that a committee might be appointed to ascertain that such was the case; and a committee was accordingly appointed, but with no result that appears. Meanwhile, we find the Newmills copartnery trying to protect their monopoly against infractions by private parties.

1681.

It made an attack in April 1684 upon five merchants of Edinburgh who continued, in defiance of the law, to deal in English cloth. It was complained of against Robert Cunningham that ‘he sold a suit of clothes of English cloth to Daniel Lockhart; item, a suit to Boghall; item, a suit to Lord Forfar; item, a suit to William Lockhart; which clothes was made by William Cowan, tailor.’ He had likewise ‘sold ane coat of ... ells to the Laird of Blackadder, made by Hugh Galloway, tailor; to the Marquis of Athole, a suit, made by Lachlan M‘Pherson, tailor; item to Mr Thomas Chalmers, two ells and a half English cloth; item to the Bishop of the Isles, two ells and a half English cloth ... item, a suit to the Marquis of Montrose.’ It was alleged that he had imported and sold in all ‘five hundred ells of prohibite cloth, ane thousand ells of prohibite stuffs and serges, and two hundred pair of English worsted and silk stockings less or more.’ James Weir, Andrew Irving, William Fullerton, and Thomas Smith had all committed delinquencies of the same kind, the enumeration of which would only tire the reader; and all this notwithstanding they had been kindly invited by the Newmills Company to join their concern. What made the matter the more insufferable, a complaint made against them in August last had been graciously superseded in their behalf by royal proclamation; and they, as if to shew ‘their incorrigibleness and obstinacy,’ ‘slighting that so great mark of clemency,’ imported more during the few months since elapsed than they did for two whole years before, ‘in open contempt of his majesty’s laws, to the destruction of trade and commerce within the kingdom, to the cheating, abusing, and oppressing of his majesty’s lieges, and manifest endangering of the said manufactory and ruining of the persons therein concerned.’

The offenders, having been oft called before the Privy Council, and having failed to appear, were held as confessing their guilt, and accordingly decerned to deliver up the prohibited cloths and stockings to be burned, and at the same time to recompense his majesty’s cashkeeper for them ‘at twelve shillings sterling for the ell of cloth, two shillings sterling for the ell of stuff, and five pound sterling for ilk dozen of prohibite stockings.’—P. C. R.

While these strenuous measures were taken for preventing the free importation of English woollen cloth into Scotland, a petition came (December 2, 1684) from persons interested in the linen manufacture of Scotland, complaining of the usage which had lately been experienced by Scotsmen selling their linens in England. Hitherto there had been a free trade for Scotch linen-weavers in the south; and, as ten or twelve thousand persons were employed in such weaving, the results were important not merely to the workers, but to landlords, for the payment of their rents, and to the government, as each of a thousand or twelve hundred packs exported to England paid a custom of three pounds sterling. Latterly, however, the men selling Scotch linen in England had been taken up and whipped as malefactors, and many obliged to give bonds that they would discontinue their traffic.

The Council recommended the secretary of state to interpose with his majesty, that merchants and others might have liberty to sell linen in England as formerly; never once adverting to the fact that they had an act of parliament conceived in the same illiberal spirit towards English woollen manufactures.

1681.

Such were the early struggles of an important branch of industry in Scotland. It was not, after all, to be in this age that good woollen cloth was to be produced in our northern clime. A writer in 1697 says: ‘We have tried to make several things, and particularly hats and broadcloth, and yet we cannot make our ware so good as what we can have from abroad.’ He adds, however, as a ground of hope: ‘Those who would propagate any new manufacture must lay their account to labour under several disadvantages at first. When soap-manufactures were first set up in this kingdom, the soap was not so good as what we had from abroad by far. These at Glasgow gave it over, as a thing they could not accomplish; these at Leith continued to work, and now they have acquired so much knowledge in that art, that their soap is better than that we have brought from abroad.’284

Mar. 2.

Three men, named Gogar, Miller, and Sangster, were hanged in the Grassmarket ‘for disowning the king’s authority, and adhering to Cargill’s covenant, declaration, and excommunication, and thinking it lawful to kill the king and his judges.’—Foun. It is to make the rulers of that day somewhat worse than they were, to suppose that they ordered these horrible executions in a purely unfeeling manner, and without any hesitation. It is stated by Fountainhall, a Whig, that the Duke of York sent the Earl of Roscommon to see these men on the scaffold, and try to bring them to such a point as would have allowed of their lives being spared. Had they but pronounced the words, ‘God save the king,’ they would not have been executed. But they refused life on such terms—the more surprising, as there was no want of Scripture texts to warrant them in praying for the reigning sovereign, even supposing him a monster of wickedness. ‘Daniel,’ remarks Fountainhall, ‘wishes Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, heathen kings, to live for ever.’ It would be curious to know what the accomplished Roscommon felt regarding these singular examples of Scottish religious pertinacity.

1681.

On the other hand, it is surprising that when the Duke of York went so far as to offer the poor men their lives on what appear such easy terms, he did not go a little further and see the absurdity of treating such tempers as treasonable. ‘It would have been better,’ says Fountainhall, ‘to have kept them in bonds as madmen, or to have employed physicians to use their skill upon them as on hypochondriac persons.’ One would have thought that the manifest and acknowledged maniacal condition of the Borrowstounness saints might have suggested the true theory as to the obduracy of such men as Gogar, Miller, and Sangster.

Mar. 11.

A process stood at law between Alexander Robertson, laird of Struan, and the Marquis of Athole, arising from a service of Struan as heir to an ancestor who lived two hundred and fifty years before; and amongst the points debated was an alleged superiority of the marquis over some lands held by Struan. These were both Highland chiefs of some importance, but, dwelling near the Lowland Border, might be considered as of those who were most likely to exhibit a tinge of Lowland habits. The marquis was indeed a political character of some figure, holding the office of Lord Privy Seal and a place in the Council.

The Highland laird of those days was acquainted with law, and had often enough occasion to resort to it; but there was an element in his nature which placed him more or less above law. Law-giver and law-executor in his own territory and over his own people, almost without control, it was difficult for him to accommodate himself to the idea of submitting to the formal, pedantic rules and awards of the Session or the Council. So much being premised, we must figure to ourselves the doughty Struan walking about in the Council-chamber on the day noted in the margin, not bearing his ordinary arms, pistol and durk, externally—for that was forbidden—but carrying them in his bosom under his clothes, and no doubt very wrathful at the arrogance of his proud neighbour, the marquis, in claiming any superiority over him.

His business being under consideration, he told the clerk that he was no vassal of the Marquis of Athole. One John Fleming, ‘servitor’ to the marquis—a kind of gentleman dependant—quietly contradicted him, saying that not only did his sasine of the lands of Tulloch clearly shew him as a vassal of the marquis, but there was a mutual contract between him and the marquis, obliging him to hold these lands in that manner, and on this a decreet had been obtained from the Court of Session. The blood of the chief of the Clan Donochy could not brook such an opposition. He broke out upon Fleming with passionate violence, calling him rascal, knave, and villain. He would see the Marquis of Athole hanged before he would be his vassal. And as for the Court of Session, he cared not a snuff for its decreet. Then thrusting his hand under the breast of his upper coat, ‘where his durk and pistol are secretly keeped,’ he said he knew not what held his hand from writing his case on Fleming’s skin.

1681.

This conduct was of course sure to turn to the injury of Struan himself. In a very few days, Fleming had him up by petition before the Privy Council, who, finding the charge proved, sentenced Struan to imprisonment during pleasure in the Tolbooth, to crave pardon first of the Council, and then of the Marquis of Athole, ‘on his knees,’ and to give Fleming security for the expenses (limited to £100 Scots) incurred by the action and by the interruption it had given him in his business.—P. C. R.

Apr. 8.

A case before the Privy Council reveals the treatment of the insane in this age. It was a complaint from Mr Alexander Burton against his brother John for putting him into Hopkirk the surgeon’s hands as a madman. It was alleged, on John Burton’s part, that Alexander was really melancholic and furious; so required restraint: also that he was misusing and dilapidating his fortune; hence a bill had been applied for to put his affairs under curators. Alexander answered that ‘he had only craved his annual rents, and to refuse him his own, and treat him as a fool, would raise pepper and passion in any man’s nose, and then they termed the acts fury.’ To settle the matter, the Duke of York, who was present, desired that the alleged fool might be permitted to speak; whereupon he delivered himself so extravagantly, that the Council found it only right that he should be put under restraint, and his affairs placed in charge of his brother. Fountainhall adds: ‘In Scotland, we, having no Bedlam, commit the better sort of mad people to the care and taming of chirurgeons, and the inferior to the scourge [or] the poor.’

May 5.

1681.

M‘Gill of Rankeillour gave in a petition to the Privy Council, craving

permission for his son, Sir James M‘Gill, to come to see him, as he was about to depart from this life. The son had about eight years before been so unfortunate as to kill Sir Robert Balfour of Denmill, and the king had granted him a remission, on the condition that, in order to prevent further bloodshed,

he should never again be seen in Fife

. The father, being eighty years of age, anxious to take farewell of his son, begged the Council to relax this condition for a few days. The Council doubted if they had power to grant the petition; but the Duke of York ‘affirming that he believed the king would not refuse this desire of an old dying gentleman, they granted it in thir terms, that he should go with a guard like a prisoner, and

stay but twenty-four hours, and then depart out of Fife, where the friends of him that was killed live.’—

Foun.

Sir Robert Balfour was the only surviving son and successor of Sir James Balfour of Denmill, the well-known antiquary. He fell in a duel with Sir James M‘Gill, at a spot closely adjacent to the M‘Duff Cross in the parish of Newburgh in Fife. A cairn of stones raised in commemoration of the sad event, and called Sir Robert’s Prap, was in existence a few years ago. This unfortunate gentleman must have fallen in the very morning of life, as he was born in 1652.

Dec. 8.

1681.

Encouraged by the liberality of the Council, Sir James M‘Gill petitioned them anew in December for a removal of all restriction upon his remission, alleging that it was required on account of the decayed and infirm condition of his parents (he being their only son), and the ruin into which his affairs had fallen in consequence of his long exile. Against this petition, however, the friends of Sir Robert Balfour gave in answers, shewing how green such a family wound could then be kept for eight years. They urged that the slaughter of their kinsman, so far from being done as alleged by Sir James in self-defence, was in forethought felony, and it was only owing to an undeserved clemency on his majesty’s part that he had not been brought to condign punishment. The pretexts regarding his parents and estate were frivolous, when the nature of his offence was considered. ‘Though it is insinuate that the said Sir James desires only to live in the parish of Monimail, and not in the parish of Ebdie, where Sir Robert’s nearest relations are, this is a very silly pretence, for this is the very next parish, and Sir Robert’s nearest relations have their interests in this parish itself, and it may be easily considered that, if this be allowed, Sir Robert’s friends will be punished for Sir James’s crime, since they must, to shun his company, neither go to meetings of the shire, baptisms, nor marriages, burials or churches, nay, nor to see their friends nor neighbours, lest they should fall in inconveniences with him, which was the ground upon which the restriction was granted at first.’ To prove how unworthy Sir James was even of the favour extended to him in May last, it was set forth that on that occasion ‘he must ride insolently by the very gate of the gentleman whom he had murdered, with a great train of his friends, and in passing the road they did also very insolently boast and upbraid the poor people with whom they met.’ If this, it was added, ‘was done in the very first time, what may be expected when his confidence is increased by renewed favours, and when Denmill’s friends see that the only satisfaction they got (which was not to see him at all) is taken from them.’