Volume 2 — REIGN OF CHARLES II.: 1673-1685. (continued 3)

The pleading of Denmill’s friends was too reasonable to be resisted, and M‘Gill’s petition was refused.—P. C. R.

June 2.

On a complaint from the master of the High School of Edinburgh to the Privy Council, two or three private teachers were imprisoned till they should give caution, not to teach Latin without a licence from the bishop, and even then to carry the boys no further than ‘the rudiments and vocables;’ after which it was thought they might be of sufficient strength to go to the High School. What disposed the Council to support the complaint was that there were several private teachers now in Edinburgh, who were ‘outed ministers,’ and accordingly were suspected of poisoning their pupils with disloyal principles.—P. C. R.

June 24.

From March up to this date, there was a cold drought, which at length inspired so much dread of famine and consequent pestilence, that a fast was proclaimed throughout the kingdom ‘for deprecating God’s wrath and obtaining rain.’ The evil was generally regarded as an effect of the great comet of the past winter; ‘and certainly,’ says Fountainhall, ‘it may drain the moisture from the earth, and influence the weather; but there is a higher hand of Providence above all these signs, pointing out to us our luxury, abuse of plenty, and other crying sins.’ He adds: ‘God thought fit to prevent our applications and addresses, and on the 24th of June and following days, sent plentiful showers.’

July 20.

1681.

Died this evening in his lodgings in Holyrood Palace, the Duke of Rothes, Chancellor of the kingdom, an able and magnificent man, who, by his licentious life, was believed to have set a bad example to the Scottish nobility of his day. The cumbrous grandeur of his funeral excited much attention. The body was carried from St Giles’s Church to Holyrood Chapel, amidst a procession of soldiery, state officials, personal retinue, noblemen and gentlemen mourners, and heraldic personages, which fills six quarto pages in Arnot’s History of Edininburgh. It was next day conducted in a hearse to Leith, thence conveyed across the Forth to Burntisland, and ‘the next day after, it was met by the gentlemen of Fife, of which his grace was high-sheriff, and by them accompanied to the family burying-place at Leslie, being laid in the grave with sound of trumpets, and the honours placed above the grave.’

Sep. 1.

Leather stamped and gilded—believed to be originally a Spanish fashion—was a favourite cover for the walls of rooms in the better class of houses in Scotland as well as in England. Some examples of the style still survive, and speak so strongly in its favour, that we might justly wonder at its going out of fashion. Hitherto such ornamental leather was introduced from abroad; but now Alexander Brand, merchant in Edinburgh, by a considerable outlay, had brought workmen and materials into the kingdom, and for the first time was about to set up a work, in which he expected to produce the article ‘at as easy rates as it could be imported.’ On a favourable report from ‘the Committee of Trade,’ the Privy Council gave Brand a privilege of exclusive manufacture for nineteen years.—P. C. R.

Thomas Kennedy and John Trotter, merchants, were at the same time proposing to set up a manufacture of linen and woollen cloth stuffs and stockings in the place called Paul’s Work in Edinburgh, where, so long ago as 1609, there had been an attempt at a woollen work. And as an encouragement, the Council ordained them to have all the privileges offered to manufactories in Scotland by the twelfth act of the present parliament regarding manufactures.

Oct. 1.

The ‘whole settled revenue’ of the king in Scotland was this day leased to Bailie Baird, Charles Murray, and Robert Milne, for seven years, at £90,000 per annum, they advancing £16,000 to pay the army. It appears that the pensions then paid out of the Scottish exchequer amounted to £25,000 a year. It is a curious consideration that at present the Times newspaper pays considerably more revenue than the whole taxation of Scotland in the latter part of the seventeenth century.

Oct. 1.

1681. Oct. 10.

Colonel Gage, commander of a regiment in the service of the King of Spain, proposed to the Duke of York to take a few of the phanatiques now in custody into his regiment, and so relieve the authorities of all further charge of them. The duke caused six, named Forman, Garnock, Lapsley, Stewart, Fairie, and Russell, ‘most of them young fellows,’ to be brought before the Council, with the design of sentencing them to be delivered to Colonel Gage. The men, however, ‘did so misbehave, in declining the king, duke, and Council, and speaking such notorious treason,’ that it was thought necessary to send them instead to the criminal court. There it was only too easy to prove the treasonable nature of their language. Forman had a knife, with a posy, ‘This is to cut the throat of tyrants.’ It appeared that Garnock had at the Council so railed at General Dalyell, calling him ‘a Muscovy beast who used to roast men,’ that the old soldier struck him with the pommel of his sword on the face till the blood sprung. One alone obtained mercy; the other five were doomed to death, Forman having the special sentence to lose his hand before hanging, on account of his knife. These men all died ‘obdurately,’ as their enemies called it, ‘heroically,’ according to their friends, ‘reviling and condemning their judges and all who differed from them,’ says Fountainhall. Patrick Walker adds some curious particulars. ‘The never-to-be forgotten Mr James Renwick told me that he was witness to this public murder at the Gallow-lee, betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, where he saw the hangman hash and hag off their five heads, with Patrick Forman’s right hand. Their bodies were all buried at the gallow’s foot; their heads, with Patrick’s hand, were brought and put on five pikes on the Pleasance Port.... Mr Renwick told me also, that it was the first public action that his hand was at, to convene friends and lift their murdered bodies, and carry them to the West Churchyard, and bury them there. Then they came about the city to the Nether-Bow Port, with a design to retake the heads, hands, and other parts of our martyrs down; but a woman, holding over a candle to let some people see the street, marred them. Then they took down these five heads and that hand, and the day being come, they went quickly up the Pleasance, and when they came to Lauriston yards, upon the south side of the city, they durst not venture, being so light, to go and bury their heads with their bodies, which they designed, it being present death if any of them had been found. Alexander Tweedie, a friend, being with them, who at that time was gardener in these yards, concluded to bury them in his yard, being in a box (wrapped in linen), where they lay forty-five years....’ These relics were exhumed in 1726, with all manifestations of rejoicing.

1681.

The day after the five men had suffered at the Gallow-lee, the duke had other four called before the Council, with a view to their being sent away with Colonel Gage. ‘When they were brought in, they began in the very same strain with their neighbours who were hanged the day before; but the duke caused hastily remove them, that they might not also hang themselves with their own tongue.’—Foun.

Nov. 15.

Amongst the gaieties of this day at Holyroodhouse, in celebration of the queen’s birthday, was ‘the acting a comedy called Mithridates, King of Pontus, wherein Lady Anne, the duke’s daughter, and the ladies of honour, were the only actors.’ Fountainhall, who states this occurrence, only adds the remark: ‘Not only the canonists, both Protestant and Popish, but the very heathen Roman lawyers, declared all scenic and stage players infamous, and will scarce admit them to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.’ On this occasion, there was a prologue by the Earl of Roscommon, addressed specially to the duke, and conceived in a strain of extravagant flattery ludicrously in contrast with the feelings of a large body of the people:

Nov. 24.

1681.

The test being a puzzle and a bewilderment to some of the sagest statesmen of the day, it is not surprising that it should have somewhat confounded the magistrates of a simple Scotch burgh. At this date, there was a petition to the Privy Council from William Plenderleith, provost; John Hope, bailie; and John Givan, treasurer of Peebles, in name of the council of that burgh, setting forth that, ‘being desired to take the test, they were always willing;’ yet, ‘the town being very inconsiderable, and the petitioners very illiterate and ignorant, and living in a remote place where they could get no person to inform them of the difference betwixt the act of parliament and the act of Council, and not having the act of parliament in all the country, nor yet the confession of faith, to which it related, the petitioners humbly desired a time to advise as concerning the test.’ At their late election, they had contented themselves with taking the Declaration, ‘thinking that the first of January was sufficient to take the test.’ But now, understanding what was required of them, they protested their eager willingness to take the test, ‘having always been very loyal,’ as they had shewn by their conduct on the occasion of the Bothwell Bridge rebellion, for which they had received the thanks of the Council. The Lords seem to have looked leniently on the omission of this innocent little municipality, and now accepted their signatures in good part.

The magistrates of Peebles were, not long after, involved in a trouble of a different complexion, in consequence of an unpopular movement for the letting of a piece of commonty near the walls of the town, which they had found to be ‘a pretext for incomers to the said burgh, and the poor people, to eat up their neighbours’ corns.’ While they were engaged in their Tolbooth or court-house (March 1, 1682) in the administration of justice, a mob of irate burgesses, of whom thirty-seven are named, came to express their disapprobation of a late act of Council on that subject, and, if possible, frighten them from proceeding with it; ‘menacing the provost that if he did so, he should be sticked as Provost Dickison was.’285 The magistrates put two of their assailants in jail; but these were soon liberated by force. Then the magistrates got the two burgesses and five of their liberators clapped up in prison; but, behold, next day, taking a leaf out of the history of the troubles of 1637, a mob of women assembled—namely, Marion Bennett, Marion Grieve, Margaret Wilson, Isobel Wilson, Isobel Robertson, Janet Ewmond, Isobel Ewmond, and Helen Steel—the names of such heroines are worth preserving—and ‘did in a tumultuous and irregular way take out of prison the persons of William Porteous, Andrew Halden [the original prisoners], Thomas Stoddart, Alexander Jonkieson, John Tweedie, Thomas King, James Waldie, and William Leggat, and went to the Cross of Peebles with them, and there drank their good healths as protectors of the liberties of the poor, and the confusion of the said magistrates and council, and took up with them stones to stone to death such as should oppose them; and thereafter, they being about three hundred persons, divided themselves in several companies, and every company convoyed home a prisoner, and drank their good health, to the great astonishment of all honest and well-meaning people.’

1681.

This affair being brought as a gross riot before the Privy Council, five of the men liberated, including the two who had first been in prison, were deprived of their burgess privileges, and committed to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh during pleasure, while the magistrates were enjoined to ‘convene before them the haill rest of the inhabitants that were accessory to the tumult and riot libelled, and to proceed against them therefor, in fining, imprisonment, or ryving their burgess-tickets, as they shall find cause.’

On the same day in which this case was judged, a petition was presented from the five ex-burgesses, representing themselves as ‘poor and ignorant persons,’ who had not meant any harm—as most of them valetudinary and unable to bear confinement in jail—and, moreover, as required to be now engaged in the labours of the season; wherefore their liberation was craved. This was soon after acceded to, on their giving security to reappear if called upon, and that they would go and confess their fault, and crave pardon of the Peebles magistrates.—P. C. R.

Dec. 22.

As an example of the benevolence of the Privy Council of this time, in cases where the reigning political prepossessions were not offended—we find, on the very same day with some strong proceedings against Presbyterian recusants, a representation from John Riddell, merchant in Edinburgh, setting forth some recent heavy losses of merchandise at sea, and certain obligations he was under in the way of cautionry, whereby he had been reduced for eleven months past to the sad condition of a prisoner in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, with ‘nothing left to maintain himself and three motherless children, unless that that the charitable supply of tender-hearted Christians doth support and help him.’ Though he had no claim on public benevolence beyond some sufferings long ago for the king at and before Worcester, the Council gave warrant to the Archbishop of St Andrews and the Bishop of Edinburgh for a voluntary contribution on Riddell’s behalf throughout these two dioceses, enjoining them to cause the ministers to ‘make due and lawful intimation thereof.’—P. C. R.

Dec.

1681.

Poor as Scotland was universally reputed to be, foreign adventurers in search of fortune would occasionally resort to it. Peter Bruce or de Bruis was one of these—a native of Flanders, and a Catholic. We have already (February 1680) seen him asking public favour for a water-pumping engine and an iron-cutting mill which he had invented. We hear of him in Fountainhall, about that time, as building a harbour at Cockenzie for the Earl of Winton, and having a long litigation about the payment. He seems to have been an active spirit. In December 1681, he succeeded in obtaining from the Privy Council a patent for the exclusive manufacture and sale of playing-cards, under the usual pretence that money would thus be retained within the country. Within a very few months, he had erected a work near Leith for this manufacture, and brought home from Holland and Flanders ‘expert masters’ for making the cards, and ‘carvers for making the patterns,’ all of whom he took bound to instruct native workmen. In a very short time, we find him at war with two merchants who were accustomed to import playing-cards, and not disposed to brook his monopoly. Perhaps Peter was too vehement in his proceedings for the Scotch people among whom he cast his lot; perhaps they were unduly jealous of this keen-witted stranger. How it came we cannot tell; but before the work had been long erected, the tacksman of Canonmills set upon it and did somewhat to demolish it, and, horrid to relate, threw Madame de Bruis into the dam, besides using opprobrious words; for which he was fined in £50, and imprisoned. Not long after, Peter gained a triumph over the two importers of cards, for they were ordered by the Council to compound with him at so much a pack before they could be allowed to sell them.286

1682. Feb. 16.

In the ensuing February, Peter was again in trouble. Alexander Daes, owner of the paper-manufactory at Dalry Mills, complained that his privilege of making paper and playing-cards had been infringed by Peter Bruce and James Lithgow, who had clandestinely obtained a licence for a playing-card manufactory. They had likewise enticed away a workman named Nicolas de Champ, whom he had brought from France, and caused the abstraction from his work of some of his haircloths. The Council freed Peter and his associate from everything but the charge of taking away the haircloths, which they left to be dealt with by the ordinary judge.—P. C. R.

1681.

Altogether, Peter seems to have found great difficulty in preventing a sale of foreign cards. It was difficult to detect the importation of such articles. A package containing a quantity of them had lately been brought by the ship of one Adam Watt; and even the custom-house officer winked at its being smuggled ashore. Peter craved the Council (June 7, 1682) for general letters against the contraveners of his privilege; but the Council, apparently warned by the complaints about the Messrs Fountain, would only, on that occasion, agree to give warrant for particular cases. Afterwards (July 5), they gave a more general warrant, but still declaring that Bruce, in the event of making a wrong charge, should be liable to a fine.

Finally, persecuted out of Edinburgh, Peter betook himself to Glasgow, and tried to set up a paper-mill at Woodside, near that city; but here, too, he encountered a variety of troubles and oppressions, designed for the purpose of neutralising his monopoly of the manufacture of playing-cards, his builders failing in their engagements, his men being seduced away from him, his mill-course defrauded of water, and so forth. He complained to the Privy Council (January 6, 1685), and got a decree against his two chief persecutors, John Campbell and James Peddie, for a thousand merks as compensation for the injuries he had suffered. When everything else failed, Peter seems to have turned his religious professions to some account, as he is last seen acting as printer to the Catholic chapel and college at Holyrood—where, doubtless, the Revolution gave him a disagreeable surprise.

Dec. 26.

The college youths renewed the demonstration of last year. ‘Their preparations were so quiet, that none suspected it this year. They brought [the pope] to the Cross, and fixed his chair in that place where the gallows stands. He was tricked up in a red gown and a mitre, with two keys over his arm, a crucifix in one hand, and the oath of the Test in the other. Then they put fire to him, and it burnt lengthy till it came to the powder, at which he blew up in the air.

‘At this time, many things were done in mockery of the Test: one I shall tell. The children of Heriot’s Hospital, finding that the dog which kept the yards of that hospital had a public charge and office, ordained him to take the Test, and offered him a paper. But he, loving a bone better than it, absolutely refused it. They then rubbed it over with butter, which they called an Explication of the Test, in imitation of Argyle, and he licked off the butter, but did spit out the paper; for which they held a jury upon him, and, in derision of the sentence on Argyle, they found the dog guilty of treason, and actually hanged him.’—Foun.

1682. Jan. 16.

1682.

Alexander Cockburn, the hangman of Edinburgh, was tried before the magistrates as sheriffs, for the murder, in his own house, of one Adamson or Mackenzie, a blue-gown beggar. The proof was slender, and chiefly of the nature of presumption—as, that he had denied Adamson’s being in his house on the alleged day, the contrary being proved, groans having been heard, and bloody clothes found in the house; and this evidence, too, was chiefly from women. Yet he was condemned to be hanged within three suns. One Mackenzie, whom Cockburn had caused to lose his place of hangman at Stirling, performed the office.—Foun.

Feb. 11.

Three men were drowned this day, by falling through the ice on the North Loch. ‘We have a proverb that the fox will not set his foot on the ice after Candlemas, especially in the heat of the sun, as this was at two o’clock; and at any time the fox is so sagacious as to lay his ear to the ice, to see if it be frozen to the bottom, or if he hear the murmuring and current of the water.’—Foun.

Feb.

1682.

A strange story was circulated regarding a servant lass in the burgh of Irvine. Her mistress, the wife of the Honourable Major Montgomery, having had some silver articles stolen, blamed the lass, who, taking the accusation much amiss, and protesting her innocence, said she would learn who took those things, though she should raise the devil for it. The master and mistress let this pass as a rash speech; but the girl, being resolute, on a certain day ‘goes down to a laigh cellar, takes a Bible with her, and draws a circle about her, and turns a riddle on end twice from south to north, or from the right hand to the left hand, having in her hand nine feathers, which she pulled out of the tail of a black cock, and having read the 21st [psalm] forward, she reads backward chap. ix., verse 19, of the book of Revelation; he appears in a seaman’s clothing, with a blue cap, and asks what she would. She puts one question to him, and he answers it; and she casts three of the feathers at him, charging him to his place again; then he disappears. He seemed to her to rise out of the earth to the middle of his body. She reads the same verse backward the second time, and he appears the second time, rising out of the ground, with one leg above the ground; she asks him a second question, and she casts other three feathers at him, charging him to his place; he again disappears. She reads again the third time the verse backward, and he appears the third time with his body above ground (the last two times in the shape of a black grim man in black clothing, and the last time with a long tail); she asks a third question at him, and casts the three last feathers at him, charging him to his place; and he disappears. The major-general and his lady, being above stairs, though not knowing what was a-working, were sore afraid, and could give no reason of it; the dogs in the city making a hideous barking round about. This done, the woman, aghast, and pale as death, comes and tells her lady who had stolen the things she missed, and they were in such a chest in her house, belonging to some of the servants; which being searched, was found accordingly. Some of the servants, suspecting her to be about this work, tells the major of it, and tells him they saw her go down to the cellar; he lays her up in prison, and she confesses as is before related, telling them that she learned it in Dr Colvin’s house in Ireland, who used to practise this.’—Law.

Fountainhall relates this story more briefly as ‘a strange accident,’ and remarks that the divination per cribrum (by the sieve) is very ancient, having been practised among the Greeks. He is puzzled about her confession, as it may be from frenzy and hatred of life; but if the fact of the consultation can be proved, he is clear that it infers death.

Divination by a sieve was performed in this manner: ‘The sieve being suspended, after repeating a certain form of words, it is taken between the two fingers only, and the names of the parties suspected, repeated: he at whose name the sieve turns, trembles, or shakes, is reputed guilty of the evil in question.... It was sometimes practised by suspending the sieve by a thread, or fixing it to the points of a pair of scissors, giving it room to turn, and naming as before the parties suspected: in this manner Coscinomancy is still practised in some parts of England.’—Demonologia. By J. S. F. London, 1827; p. 146.

Feb.

‘Strange apparitions were seen in and about Glasgow, and strange voices and wild cries [were heard], particularly one night about the Deanside well, was heard a cry, Help, help!‘—Law. Many such occurrences are noted about this time and for four or five years before. In March 1679, for instance, a voice was heard at Paisley Abbey, crying: ‘Wo, wo, wo—pray, pray, pray!’ Such reports reveal the excited state of the public mind and a general sense of anxiety under the religious variances of the time.

1682. Mar.

Major Learmont, an old soldier of the Covenant, though only a tailor to his trade, was taken in his own house near Lanark, or rather in a vault connected with it which he had contrived for hiding. ‘It had its entry in his house, upon the side of a wall, and closed up with a whole stone, so close that none could have judged it but to be a stone of the building. It descended below the foundation of the house, and was in length about forty yards, and in the far end, the other mouth of it, was closed with feal [turf], having a feal dyke built upon it; so that with ease, when he went out, he shot out the feal and closed it again. Here he sheltered for the space of sixteen years, taking to it at every alarm, and many times hath his house been searched for him by the soldiers; but where he sheltered none was privy to it but his own domestics, and at length it is discovered by his own herdsman.’—Law.

Mar. 9.

Thomas Barclay of Collerine in Fife was a youth of eighteen, in possession of ‘an opulent estate,’ and likewise of a considerable jurisdiction in his county. His predecessors were loyalists; but Thomas himself, by the remarriage of his mother to Mure of Rowallan in Ayrshire, was, according to the allegation of his uncle John Barclay, in the way of being ‘bred up in a family of fanatical and disloyal principles, not being permitted to visit or be acquainted with his nearest relations and friends, and denied all manner of education suitable to his quality ... not being sent to college’—he had, moreover, been influenced to choose ‘curators altogether strangers to his family, of known disaffected and disloyal principles.’ It seemed, in John Barclay’s judgment, unavoidable in these circumstances that a supporter would be lost to his majesty’s interests, unless a remedy were provided.

It seems so far creditable to a government which has a good many sins at its charge, that, when this case came before the Duke of York and the Privy Council, on John Barclay’s petition, and both sides had been heard—namely, the uncle on one side, and the Lady Rowallan, with the three curators, Montgomery younger of Skelmorley, the Laird of Dunlop, and Mr John Stirling, minister of Irvine, on the other—they decided that the young Barclay was of age to act and choose curators for himself, and that the defenders were not bound to produce him in court; thus frankly consenting that the young man should rest in the danger of being perverted from the loyalty of his family.— P. C. R.

1682. Apr.

A severe murrain commenced amongst the cattle, thought to be owing to the deficient herbage of the preceding year, and the heavy rains of the intermediate season.287 The support of cattle during winter was at all times a trying difficulty in those days of no turnip-husbandry; but on an occasion like this it was scarcely possible. It was remarked that the farmers had to cut heather for their beasts to lie upon, and pull the old straw out of the coverings of their houses to feed them with. The murrain lasted till May, when some tenants in the Highlands lost as many as forty cows by it.

Apr. 18.

A complaint presented to the Privy Council by Janet Stewart, servant to Mr William Dundas, advocate, set forth that James Aikenhead, apothecary in Edinburgh, took upon him ‘to compose and vent poisonous tablets,’ and ‘Mistress Elizabeth Edmonstoun, having got notice of these tablets, and that they would work strange wanton affections and humours in the bodies of women,’ sent James Chalmers for some of them, which she caused to be administered to the complainer, in presence of several persons, ‘as a sweetmeat tablet.’ Janet having innocently accepted of the tablet, ate of it, and in consequence ‘fell into a great fever, wherein she continued for twenty days, before anybody knew what was the cause of it; so that the poison has crept into her bones, and she is like never to recover.’

Fountainhall tells us that Janet would not have recovered, ‘had not Doctor Irvine given her an antidote.’ The Council remitted the case to the College of Physicians, as being skilled in such matters (periti in arte), ‘who,’ says Fountainhall, ‘thought such medicaments not safe to be given without first taking their own advice.’288

May 3.

1682.

A riot took place in the streets of Edinburgh, in consequence of an attempt to carry away, as soldiers to serve the Prince of Orange, some young men who had been imprisoned for a trivial offence. As the lads were marched down the street under a guard, to be put on board a ship in Leith Road, some women called out to them: ‘Pressed or not pressed?’ They answered: ‘Pressed,’ and so caused an excitement in the multitude. A woman who sat on the street selling pottery, threw a few sherds at the guard, and some other people, finding a supply of missiles at a house which was building, followed her example. ‘The king’s forces,’ says Fountainhall, ‘were exceedingly assaulted and abused.’ Under the order of their commander, Major Keith, they turned and fired upon the crowd, when, as usual, only innocent bystanders were injured. Seven men and two women were killed, and twenty-five wounded—a greater bloodshed than ‘has been at once these sixty years done in the streets of Edinburgh.’ One of the women being pregnant, the child was cut from her and baptised in the streets. Three of the most active individuals in this mob were seized and tried, but the assize would not find them guilty. The magistrates were severely blamed for their negligence and cowardice in this affair.

It gave origin to the well-known Town-guard of Edinburgh, for, under the recommendation of the Privy Council, and with the sanction of the king, it was agreed to raise a body of a hundred and eight men, to serve as a protection to the city in all emergencies. The inhabitants were taxed to pay for it, ‘some a groat, some fivepence, and the highest at sixpence a week;’ but this being found oppressive, the support of the corps, which cost 22,000 merks a year, was soon after put upon the town’s common good.289 Patrick Graham, a younger son of Graham of Inchbrakie, was appointed captain, at the dictation of the Duke of York, who, says Fountainhall, ‘would give a vast sum to have such a breach in London’s walls.’

Many who remember the Town-guard, with their rusty brown uniform, their Lochaber axes, and fierce Highland faces, as a curiosity of the streets of Edinburgh in their young days, will be perhaps unpleasingly surprised to learn that the corps was originally an engine of the government of the last Stuarts. Captain Graham, who was a sincere loyalist by blood, being descended from the Inchbrakie who sheltered Montrose on his commencing the insurrection of 1644, figured with his guards on various occasions during the remainder of the Stuart reigns, particularly at the bringing in of the Earl of Argyle to be executed in 1685, when he and the hangman received the unhappy Maccallummore at the Watergate, and conducted him along the street to prison.

1682.

The Town-guard was disbanded in November 1817, by which time it had been reduced to twenty-five privates, two sergeants, two corporals, and two drummers.

May 6.

The Gloucester frigate, on her voyage from London to Edinburgh with the Duke of York and his friends, and attended by some smaller vessels, was by a blunder wrecked on Yarmouth Sands. A signal-gun brought boats from the other vessels to the rescue of the distressed party, and the duke and several other men of importance were taken from the vessel, just before she went to pieces. A hundred and fifty persons, of whom eighty were men of quality, including the Earl of Roxburgh, the Laird of Hopetoun, Sir Joseph Douglas of Pumpherston, and Lord O’Brian of the Irish peerage, were drowned. Sir George Gordon of Haddo, president of the Court of Session, and who had just received the high appointment of Chancellor of Scotland, escaped by leaping into the water, whence he was drawn by the hair of the head into a boat. The Earl of Roxburgh had been heard crying for a boat, and offering twenty thousand guineas for one. His servant in the water took him on his back, and was swimming with him to a boat, when a drowning person clutched at them, and the unfortunate earl fell off and perished, his servant barely escaping for the moment, and dying an hour after. The duke and the rest of the survivors arrived in Leith next day, without further accident.

‘The pilot, one Aird, of Borrowstounness, was threatened with hanging for going to sleep and giving wrong directions ... he was condemned to perpetual imprisonment.’—Foun.

It is remarkable that the widow of the Earl of Roxburgh survived him in widowhood for seventy-one years, dying in 1753.

June 13.

1682.

Sir Alexander Lindsay of Evelick—an ancient castle on the high grounds overlooking the Carse of Gowrie—had married as a second wife the widow of Mr William Douglas, ‘the advocate and poet.’290 Both had children approaching maturity, and William Douglas, the lady’s son, became very naturally the playfellow of Sir Alexander’s heir Thomas. Whether jealousy on account of the superior prospects of Thomas Lindsay had entered William Douglas’s heart, we cannot tell; but the two boys being out one day in the Den of Pitrodie, a romantic broomy dell near Evelick, Douglas was tempted to stab Lindsay with a clasp-knife, and so murder him.

The wretched boy gave a confession next day, fully admitting his guilt. It commences thus: ‘I have been over proud and rash all my life. I was never yet firmly convinced there was a God or a devil, a heaven or a hell, till now. To tell the way how I did the deed my heart doth quake [and] head ryves. As I was playing and kittling at the head of the brae, I stabbed him with the only knife which I have, and I tumbled down the brae with him to the burn; all the way he was struggling with me, while I fell upon him in the burn, and there he uttered one or two pitiful words. The Lord Omnipotent and all-seeing God learn my heart to repent.’ On this occasion, ‘he also produced the little knife called Jock the leig, with ane iron haft.’

Being on the ensuing day brought before the sheriff-court of Perth, it was there alleged against him that ‘he did conceive ane deadly hatred and evil [will] against Thomas Lindsay, son to Sir Alexander Lindsay of Evelick, with a settled resolution to bereave him of life; he did upon the thretteen day of this instant month, being Tuesday last, about seven hours in the afternoon or thereby, as he was coming along the Den of Pitrodie in company with the said Thomas Lindsay, fall upon the said Thomas, and with his knife did give him five several stabs and wounds in his body, whereof one about the mouth of his stomach, and thereafter dragged him down the brae of the den to the burn, and there with his feet did trample upon the said Thomas lying in the water, and as yet he not being satisfied with all that cruelty which he did to the said Thomas, he did with a stone dash him upon the head, so that immediately the said Thomas died.’

1682.

To the great concern of his friends, the boy now retracted his confession, alleging that he found Thomas Lindsay lying in the burn, and in trying to help him up had fallen upon him. The trial was consequently postponed to a future day. Meanwhile his friends exerted themselves to bring back the culprit to a sense of his guilt, and after a few days, they seem to have succeeded. On the 25th of June, his mother is found writing to the Laird of Balhaivie, a cousin of the murdered youth, relating how she had been witness to the power of God in changing the heart of the obstinate. ‘In a very little,’ says she, ‘after you went to the door, he rose up in such a passion of grief and sorrow, crying out in such bitterness, rapping on the table, and cursing the hour it entered into his head to recant, and promised through the Lord’s strength, nothing should persuade him to do it again, but that he should constantly affirm the truth of his first declaration. He took out the declaration the devil had belied him to write, and cried to cast it in the fire, with so much sorrow and tears, as he took his head in his hand and said he feared to distract [become distracted], and prayed that the Lord would help him in his right judgment, that he might still adhere to truth. This,’ continues the wretched mother, ‘was some consolation to my poor confounded mind; but when I consider that deceitful bow the heart, and his frequent distemper, my spirit fails.... I desire you and the rest of your worthy friends no to pit yourself to needless charges in the affair, for I, his nearest relation, being not only convinced justice should be satisfied, but am desirous nothing may occur to hinder. And as I know, though both he and I hath creditable friends, they will be ashamed to own me in this. The good God that best knows my pitiful case bear [me] up under this dismal lot, and give you and all Christians a heart to pray for him, and your poor afflicked servant, Rachel Kirkwood.’

The Laird of Balhaivie seems to have entered kindly into the lady’s feelings. His answer contains a few traits highly characteristic of the time. ‘Much honoured madam, as soon as Sir Pat[rick Threipland] gave me account yesternight of your son’s second confession, I went alongs with Sir Patrick and saw him, and I swear to outward appearance he seemed very serious, and I pray God Almighty continue him so.... My cousin, young Evelick, and all his relations are very sensible of your ladyship’s extraordinary and wonderful good carriage in ane affair so astounding as this has been, and ye renew it in your letter, wherein ye desire they should not be put to needless trouble and charges in the affair. The truth is, madam, there is none of us but are grieved to the bottom of our hearts that we should be obliged to pursue your son to death; but we keep evil consciences if we suffer the murder of so near a relation to go unpunished; and his life for the taking away of the other’s is the least atonement that credit and conscience can allow.... His dying by the hand of justice will be the only way to expiate so great a crime, and likewise be a means to take away all occasion of grudge which otherwise could not but continue in the family....’291

1682.

The youth was brought to trial in Edinburgh, and condemned to suffer death on the 4th of August. After the trial, he confessed that it was he who in the January preceding ‘put fire in Henry Graham’s writing-chamber, out of revenge, and that he had first stolen some books there.’ He was subjected to a new trial for this crime, because, being treason, it would have inferred a forfeiture of his estate, worth upwards of £2000; but on this occasion he retracted his confession, nor could any thing prevail with him to renew it judicially. The jury, who were honest Edinburgh citizens, seeing that the design was to enrich certain courtiers at the expense of the sisters of the young homicide, acquitted him of the new charge, to the great irritation of the king’s advocate, who ‘swore that the next assizers he should choose should be Linlithgow’s soldiers, to curb the phanaticks.’292

July 5.

The magistrates of Dumfries had a man called Richard Storie in their jail, on a charge of murder, and were put to great charges in keeping and guarding him, because several of his friends from the Borders daily threatened to force the prison and permit him to make his escape ‘if he shall remain any longer there.’293 It was therefore found necessary to order that Storie should be transferred by the sheriff under a sufficient guard to the next sheriff upon the road to Edinburgh, and so on to Edinburgh itself, where he should be placed in firmance in the Tolbooth.

1682.

There was the more reason for the magistrates of Dumfries being anxious about the detention of Richard Storie, that George Storie, an associate in his crime, had already escaped. These two men were accused of having basely and cruelly murdered Francis Armstrong in Alisonbank, in the preceding month of June. The witnesses being Englishmen, it was necessary (December 7, 1682) to recommend to the sheriff of Cumberland to take measures for insuring their appearance before the Court of Justiciary at the approaching trial. This proving ineffectual, the widow and six children of Francis Armstrong petitioned in March for further and more effectual efforts; and the lords agreed to address the English secretary of state on the subject.

Not long after (April 30, 1684), the Council was informed that, ‘by the throng of prisoners in the Tolbooth of Dumfries, the same has been already broken, and is yet in the same hazard.’ Being at the same time made aware ‘that, within the castle of Dumfries, there are some strong vaults fit for the keeping of prisoners,’ they gave orders to have these prepared for the

July 7.

A poor Quaker, named Thomas Dunlop, had taken a house in Musselburgh, and was endeavouring by humble industry to support himself and his family, without being burdensome to any. But other Quakers came occasionally about him, to the annoyance of the magistrates of the town; and finding he broke a local law, in having no certificate of character from the minister of the parish in which he had last resided, they took advantage of the circumstance to get quit of him. Poor Thomas and his wife and little children were thrust out of their home into the fields, notwithstanding his entreaties for delay till he should get letters certifying his respectability from persons they knew. He had now been lodging for thirteen days and nights in the fields, the magistrates resisting all pleadings in his favour from charitable persons, and disregarding the misery which he was manifestly enduring. On his petition to that body which almost every week was sending recusant Whigs to the scaffold, they lent him a patient hearing, and summoned the Musselburgh magistrates before them; but all that the laws permitted them to do in the case, was to ordain that Thomas might have recourse to a legal action if the magistrates had not ‘removed him in ane orderly manner.’—P. C. R.

July 8.

1682.

James Somerville, younger of Drum, riding home to that place from Edinburgh, found on the way two friends fighting with swords—namely, Thomas Learmont, son of Mr Thomas Learmont, an advocate, and Hew Paterson, younger of Bannockburn. These two young men had quarrelled over their cups. Young Somerville dismounted, and tried to separate them, but received a mortal wound from Paterson’s sword, though inflicted by the hand of Learmont, the two combatants having perhaps, like Hamlet and Laertes, exchanged weapons. The wounded man lived two days, and expressed his forgiveness of Learmont, who, by his advice, fled. ‘Some alleged his wounds were not mortal, but misguided.’ Somerville was the progeny of the marriage described as having taken place at Corehouse in November 1650. He left an infant son, who carried on the line of the family.—Foun.

Aug. 17.

A comet began to appear in the north-west. ‘The star was big, and the tail broad and long, at the appearance of four yards.’ It continued visible for twenty days.—Law.

This was the celebrated Halley’s Comet, so called in honour of the illustrious astronomer who first ascertained, by his calculations regarding it, the periodicity of comets. The same object had been observed by Kepler in 1607, and by Apian in 1531. ‘The identity of these meteors seeming to Halley unquestionable, he ventured to predict that the same comet would reappear in 1758, and that it would be found to revolve in a very elongated ellipse in about seventy-six years. As the critical period approached, which was to decide so momentous a question regarding the system of the world, the greatest mathematicians endeavoured to track the comet’s course with a minuteness which Halley’s opportunities did not permit him to reach. The illustrious Clairhaut, feeling that a general prediction was not enough, undertook the most complex problem as to the disturbing effects of the planets through whose orbits it must pass.... He succeeded in predicting one of the positions for the comet for the middle of April; stating, however, that he might be in error by thirty days. The comet occupied the position referred to on the 12th of March.’—Nichol’s Contemplations on the Solar System.

1682.

It is humiliating to have to remark, that the notices of comets which we derive from Scotch writers down to this time, contain nothing but accounts of the popular fancies regarding them. Practical astronomy seems to have then been unknown in our country; and hence, while in other lands men were carefully observing, computing, and approaching to just conclusions regarding these illustrious strangers of the sky, our diarists could only tell us how many yards long they seemed to be, what effects were apprehended from them in the way of war and pestilence, and how certain pious divines ‘improved’ them for spiritual edification. Early in this century, Scotland had produced one great philosopher—who had supplied his craft with the mathematical instrument by which complex problems, such as the movement of comets, were alone to be solved. It might have been expected that the country of Napier, seventy years after his time, would have had many sons capable of applying his key to such mysteries of nature. But not one had arisen—nor did any rise for fifty years onward, when at length Colin Maclaurin unfolded in the Edinburgh University the sublime philosophy of Newton. There could not be a more expressive signification of the character of the seventeenth century in Scotland. Our unhappy contentions about external religious matters had absorbed the whole genius of the people, rendering to us the age of Cowley, of Waller, and of Milton, as barren of elegant literature, as that of Horrocks, of Halley, and of Newton, was of science.

Nov. 23.

John Corse, Andrew Armour, and Robert Burne, merchants in Glasgow, were now arranging for the setting up of a manufactory ‘for making of damaties, fustines, and stripped vermiliones,’ expecting it would be ‘a great advantage to the country, and keep in much money therein which is sent out thereof for import of the same.’ Seeing ‘it undoubtedly will require a great stock and many servants, strangers, which are come and are to be sent for,’ the enterprisers deemed themselves entitled to have their work declared a manufactory, so that it might enjoy the privileges accorded to such by act of parliament. This favour was granted by the Council for nine years, ‘but prejudice to any other persons to set up and work in the said work.’—P. C. R.

Dec.

1682.

Daniel Mure of Gledstanes,294 out of health and mental vigour, and believed to be on his death-bed, was induced to make a disposition of his estate to Thomas Carmichael of Eastend. Such a disposition, however, could not be valid by the law of Scotland, unless the testator appeared afterwards ‘at kirk and market’—an arrangement designed to insure that natural heirs should not be cheated. By ‘a most devilish contrivance’ of William Chiesley, writer in Edinburgh, Thomas Bell, Carmichael’s servant, was dressed up to personate the sick man, and taken with all due form to the public places appointed by the law. The notary before whom the man presented himself was so doubtful of his being Daniel Mure, that he caused him to take his oath that he was truly that person. When Carmichael and his man afterwards retired to a tavern with the notary, the latter once more expressed his doubt, saying: ‘This person is certainly not like Daniel Mure;’ to which Carmichael answered, that he was really the man, but much altered by sickness. On the death of Daniel Mure soon after, Carmichael accordingly appeared as the inheritor of the estate of Gledstanes, to the exclusion of Francis Mure, merchant in Edinburgh, the brother of the deceased. The affair was the more wicked, as the estate was one which had been long in Mure’s family.

Dec. 21.

On the whole matter being brought before the Privy Council by Francis Mure, the truth became clear, and Carmichael was punished by a fine of five thousand merks, whereof two thousand were assigned to Francis, as a compensation for the damage he had sustained; while Chiesley, the writer, was mulcted in three thousand merks for being accessory to the cheat. An obligation which Francis Mure had been induced to give to Carmichael, binding himself never to expose or pursue the forgery, was at the same time discharged. It is not unworthy of remark, that Chiesley, who had devised this forgery and drawn up the iniquitous obligation aforesaid, was one of those members of the legal profession who had refused, from scruples of conscience, to take the Test.—P. C. R.

Dec. 23.

Alexander Nisbet of Craigentinny and Macdougall of Makerston had gone abroad to fight a duel, attended by Sir William Scott of Harden and —— Douglas, ‘ensign to Colonel Douglas,’ as seconds. The Privy Council hearing of it, ordered the four gentlemen to be confined in the Tolbooth in different rooms, until it should be inquired into. The principals were, on petition, set at liberty in a few days, after giving caution for reappearance.—P. C. R.

1683. Jan. 5.

1683.

The widow of Andrew Anderson at this time carried on business in Edinburgh as the king’s printer, by virtue of a royal gift debarring others from exercising the like art. The bibles produced by her are said by Fountainhall to have been wretchedly executed. One David Lindsay having now got a similar gift, Mrs Anderson endeavoured to keep him out of the trade, setting forth that she had been previously invested with the privilege, and ‘one press is sufficiently able to serve all Scotland, our printing being but inconsiderable.’295 The Lords ordained that Mrs Anderson’s monopoly should be held as only including the printing of such things as had been specified in the gift to her husband’s predecessor Tyler.

There were at this time printers in Glasgow and Aberdeen, but probably no other part of Scotland—though St Andrews had had a press before the Reformation. The business of the printer has been of slow growth in our country. Edinburgh contained in 1763 only six printing-offices; in 1790, sixteen;296 there are, in 1858, sixty-two printing firms, besides several publishing offices, in which special printing work is executed.

Feb. 1.

It was represented to the Privy Council by the Bishop of Aberdeen that the Quakers in his diocese were now proceeding to such insolency, as to erect meeting-houses for their worship and ‘schools for training up their children in their godless and heretical opinions;’ providing funds for the support of these establishments, and in some instances adding burial-grounds for their own special use. The Council issued orders to have proper investigations made amongst the leading Quakers concerned and the proprietors of the ground on which the said meeting-houses and schools had been built.—P. C. R.

Apr. 5.

At the funeral of the Duke of Lauderdale at Haddington, while the usual dole of money was distributing among the beggars, one, named Bell, stabbed another. ‘He was apprehended, and several stolen things found on him; and, he being made to touch the corpse, the wound bled afresh. The town of Haddington, who it seems have a sheriff’s power, judged him presently, and hanged him over the bridge next day.’—Foun.

Apr. 19.

1683.

Alexander Robertson of Struan, whom we saw two years back breaking out with mortal fury against an agent of the Marquis of Athole in the chamber of the Privy Council, now comes before us in a more agreeable light—namely, as one seeking to cultivate an industrial economy in the midst of the vicious idleness and barbarism of the Highlands. Far up among the Perthshire alps, on the dreary shores of Loch Rannoch, there was then ‘a considerable wood,’ the property of Struan. This would have been useless to him and the country—being in so remote a wilderness—‘if he had not, with great expenses and trouble, caused erect saw-mills, in which, these divers years past, there has been made the number of 176,000 deals.’ This had redounded ‘to the great benefit and conveniency of the country adjacent, besides the keeping of many persons at work’ who would otherwise have been idle and in wretchedness. Struan, however, could not obtain a market for the great bulk of his timber, without sending it in floats along Loch Rannoch, and down the water of Tummel into the Tay; and in this long and tedious passage, it was sometimes driven by storms and spates [floods] on shore, or on the banks of the rivers, where it was made prey of by the country people, ‘thinking they would be no further liable than to a dead spulyie.’ Occasionally, ‘louss and broken men’ attacked his mills in the night-time, and helped themselves to such timber as they wanted. ‘So that his work was likely to be broken and ruined.’ The Privy Council, on Struan’s petition, issued a strong edict for the prevention of these spoliations, and further gave him power to make roads between his saw-mills in Carrie and Apnadull, and to take a charge of those from Rannoch to Perth, so that he might have the alternative of land-carriage for his timber.—P. C. R.

The chance of getting the spoliations put down must have been very small, for thieving raged like a very pestilence in the Highlands. The Earl of Perth, writing from Drummond in July 1682, says expressively: ‘We are so plagued with thieving here, it would pity any heart to see the condition the poor people are in.’297

Apr.

Sir Thomas Stewart of Coltness298 was obliged to fly to Holland, in consequence of a vague threat held out by Sir George Mackenzie, supposed to have been designed to frighten the unfortunate gentleman away, that his estate might be seized. The subsequent circumstances, as related by his son, give a striking view of the troubles in which a Presbyterian family of rank might then be involved, even while making no active demonstrations against the government.

1683.

‘The day after he was gone, came one of the Lord Advocate’s emissaries, Irvine of Bonshaw, with a party of dragoons heated with fury and with liquor.... They demanded the family horses, though their warrant bore no more than to apprehend the person of Thomas Stewart of Coltness; and when Irvine was told by Mr James Stewart, Coltness’s second son, that he was acting beyond orders in offering to seize horses or goods, he swore and blasphemed against rebels and assassins, and that any treatment was warrantable against such. The child Robert made some childish noise, and he threw down the boy of eight years old from a high leaping-on stone. The lady, seven months gone with child, came down to reason with him, but he was so much the more enraged. He offered to shoot the groom [who] stood behind, for denying the keys of the stable, and at length carried off the young gentlemen David and James’s horses.... There was a complaint given in at Edinburgh, and the horses were returned, jaded and abused by ramblers. This Mr Irvine, some months after, in a drunken quarrel at Lanark, was stabbed to death on a dunghill by one of his own gang: a proper exit for such a blood-hound.’

The lady immediately displenished her house, and, notwithstanding the delicate state in which she was, prepared to follow her husband to Holland. Taking with her her step-son David, and a niece of three years, the child of Mr James Stewart, also an exile in Holland, she set sail from Borrowstounness in the beginning of June. The ship encountered a severe storm. ‘The sea was so boisterous, the lady was in danger of being tossed from her bed, and her step-son was alarmed, and got up staggering in the hold, and bewailing; but she composedly said: “David, go to your cabin-bed, and be more quiet, for there is no back-door here to fly out by.” In some days after, they got safe to harbour. They took the treck-scuit from Rotterdam to Utrecht, and a surprising accident happened by the way, and in the scuit close by her: a Dutch minister’s wife, a fellow-traveller and with child, miscarried and died instantly. The husband was as one distracted, and would not be persuaded she was dead, but in a swoon. He made lamentable outcries, but all to no effect. This was alarming to the lady, and made her reflect and acknowledge the kind Providence had preserved her and the fruit of her womb, when in danger both in the journey and the stormy voyage. Coltness has a remark of thanksgiving on this in his diary, and concludes with this, “God makes our hymn sound both of mercy and judgment.”

1683.

‘Her husband, with Mr Pringle of Torwoodlee, came half-way on to Leyden, and met these recent fugitives, and conducted them to Utrecht, where trouble was in part forgot, and sorrow in some measure fled, upon the first transports of being safe and together. Here was the ingenuous, upright Archibald Earl of Argyle, too virtuous for so licentious a court as that of King Charles. Here was the Earl of Loudon, who died anno 1684, and lies buried in the English church at Leyden. There was here the Lord Viscount Stair, and with him for education his son, Sir David Dalrymple, in better times Lord Advocate, and his grandson John, that great general under Queen Anne, and the ambassador of elegant figure in France, and a field-marshal under King George. Here was also Lord Melville, [who became] High Commissioner to the Restitution Parliament under King William, and secretary of state, and with him his son the Earl of Leven, who went to the king of Prussia’s service, and after this was commander-in-chief in Scotland, and governor of Edinburgh Castle in Queen Anne’s reign. But it were endless to name all the honest party of gentry and ministers, outlawed, banished, and forfaulted, for the cause of religion and civil liberty.’

In July, Lady Coltness brought into the world the person who relates the above particulars. ‘The occasion was joyful to the parents; but the mother had not the blessing of the breasts, and there was hard procuring a nurse for a stranger. This gave a damp; but a Dutch lady was so kind as wean her daughter a little sooner, and so a careful and experienced nurse was procured.’

1683.

‘... Coltness fell in straits ... for he soon spent the little he brought with him, and remittances were uncertain and but small. His friends at home were under a cloud. Alertoun, his brother-in-law, was imprisoned and fined; Sir John Maxwell, his other brother-in-law, was fined £10,000 and imprisoned; and his younger children had none to care for them, but their grandmother, Sir James Stewart’s widow. She had a large jointure [that] was not affected, and acted the part of a kind parent.... In this present situation, the old widow lady could give little relief to those banished. It was chargeable supporting the expenses of a family in Holland, and all visible sources were stopped or withdrawn; yet a kind Providence raised up friends in a strange land. Of these the most sympathising was Mr Andrew Russell, merchant-factor at Rotterdam; he generously proffered money, and genteelly, as it were, forced it upon Coltness (and so he did to Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, Mr James Stewart, advocate, and others), though he could have no probable prospect of recovering it; and yet all was thankfully repaid after the Revolution.’

‘In the end of 1684, Coltness removed to Rotterdam, and there he received many civilities and friendships from his countrymen, merchants, and others, and had some remittances, and in part provisions, transmitted in Scotch ships. Here he had much society of fellow-sufferers, and they had select meetings for conference and intelligence. The badge of such select club was a seal in wax, upon a bit of rounded card, with a blue ribbon and a knot, all in a small spale-box. I have seen Coltness’s ticket; the device was handsome, the motto Omne tulit punctum, the seal was upon a single spot of the heart suite card.’299

1683.

1683.

These severities against the Coltness family form a striking example of those now practised every day upon the known adherents of the more extreme Presbyterian views, and the whole would be quite unintelligible to a candid mind in our times, if we were not aware that, thirty years before, the party in which Sir Thomas Stewart’s father was a leader, were subjecting their dissidents to precisely similar treatment:300 see, for example, the case of the family of Menzies of Pitfoddels, fined, confiscated, driven from their native land and means of living, and the lady and one of her sons lost in a storm at sea;301 see the case of Dr Forbes of Corse, thrust from his college and country because he scrupled to subscribe the Solemn League and Covenant; his very bones refused burial in his own ground! It happened that, in the very same month which saw Sir Thomas Stewart’s family subjected to the harsh treatment above described, there was an application to the Privy Council regarding the sufferings of an Episcopalian family through two generations, in consequence of the rigours exercised partly under the dictation of Sir Thomas’s father. It is in the form of a petition from Mr John Ross, minister of Foveran in Aberdeenshire, and Mr Alexander Ross, parson of Perth. Their grandfather, Mr John Ross, parson of Birse in Aberdeenshire, had been turned out of his ministry in 1647, merely for his ‘opposition to the rebellious and seditious principles and practices which at that time had overspread the land.’ He was likewise ‘fined at several times in five thousand merks, and imprisoned in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh for the space of nine months together, and forced to lend the sum of four thousand merks on the public bands, as they were called, for carrying on that unnatural war.’ He had ‘his house frequently plundered by the rebellious armies then on foot, so that [he] was prejudged in at least the sum of twenty thousand pounds Scots.’ Thus pillaged, and kept out of his ministry for thirteen years, he had been reduced to great straits, and left his family in poverty. The claim of the sufferer and his family was acknowledged at the Restoration by an order of two hundred pounds out of the vacant stipends; but it had never been paid. His eldest son, parson of Monymusk, the father of the petitioners, and who had likewise suffered for his loyalty, was kept poor all his days through the losses of his father, and had lately died, leaving a widow and eight children alive, besides the petitioners, with no means of support but what the petitioners could contribute.302 Here, in short, was a clerical family originally of some substance, reduced to poverty through the oppressions which had been exercised upon it by those now in their turn suffering, or their predecessors.303 In such facts there is certainly no valid excuse for the severities of the present time; but they tell us how these severities came to be practised. The reaction, however, from the Presbyterian reign of terror in the middle of the century was now beginning to strain and crack, and a settlement of the political pendulum was not far distant.

June 5.

At the circuit court at Stirling, a man was tried for reviling a parson, ‘in causing the piper play The Deil stick the Minister. Sundry pipers were there present as witnesses, to declare it was the name of ane spring.’304—Foun.

July 12.

Captain Thomas Hamilton, merchant in Edinburgh, who had for some years carried on a considerable trade with the American plantations in the importation of beaver and racoon skins, craved and obtained privileges for a manufactory of beaver hats which he proposed to set up, being the first ever attempted in Scotland. He set forth his design as one which ‘will do no prejudice to any felt-makers,’ while it would benefit the kingdom by furnishing a particular class of articles ‘at easy rates.’ He expected also to be able to export his hats.—P. C. R.

Sep.

Alexander Young, Bishop of Ross, ‘a moderate and learned man,’ being afflicted with stone, was obliged, like his predecessor in the like circumstances above a hundred years before,305 to travel to Paris for the purpose of having a surgical operation performed for his relief. Like his predecessor, also, he sank under the consequences of the operation.—Foun.

Sep. 10.

1683.

It was believed that much native copper existed in Scotland; yet all attempts at realising it by mining had failed. A German named Joachim Gonel, highly skilled in copper-mining, now proposed to the Privy Council to work a copper-mine in the parish of Currie with proper workmen brought from abroad, all at his own expense, provided only he got a present of the mine from the state. The Council, deeming such a work calculated to be useful to the public interest, recommended the government to comply with the request.—P. C. R.

Nov.

At this time began a frost which lasted with great severity till March, ‘with some storms and snow now and then.’ ‘The rivers at Dundee, Borrowstounness, and other places where the sea ebbs and flows, did freeze, which hath not been observed in the memory of man before; and thereby the cattle, especially the sheep, were reduced to great want ... the like not seen since the winter 1674.’—Foun.

This frost prevailed equally in England and Ireland, producing ice on the Thames below Gravesend. One remarkable circumstance arising from it is noted by a gentleman residing in London, that printing was hindered for a quarter of a year (by the hardening of the ink).306

Patrick Walker speaks emphatically of this frost, and says: ‘Even before the snow fell, when the earth was as iron, how many graves were in the west of Scotland in desert places, in ones, twos, threes, fours, fives together, which was no imaginary thing! Many yet alive, who measured them with their staves, [found them] exactly the deepness, breadth, and length of other graves, and the lump of earth lying whole together at their sides, which they set their feet upon and handled with their hands. Which many concluded afterwards did presage the two bloody slaughter years that followed, when eighty-two of the Lord’s people were suddenly and cruelly murdered in desert places.’

‘An old minister, Mr Bennet, records in his manuscripts, that, before our late troubles [the Civil War], there were a number of graves cast open in a moor in the south.’—Law.

Dec.

A scandal broke forth against Mr John M‘Queen, one of the ministers of Edinburgh. It was alleged that, having fallen besottedly in love with Mrs Euphame Scott, who despised him, he contrived by a trick to obtain possession of one of her under-garments, out of which he made a waistcoat and pair of drawers, by wearing which he believed the lady would infallibly be induced to give him her affections. ‘He was suspended for thir fooleries; but in the beginning of February 1684, the bishop reponed him.’—Foun.

1683.

If the Presbyterian satirists are not altogether fable-mongers, the bishop (Paterson) must have had a strong fellow-feeling for M‘Queen. ‘He is said to have kissed his band-strings in the pulpit, in the midst of an eloquent discourse, which was the signal agreed upon betwixt him and a lady to whom he was suitor, to shew he could think upon her charms even while engaged in the most solemn duties of his profession. Hence he was nicknamed Bishop Band-strings.’307

It appears there were now two sugar-works in the kingdom, and only two—being placed at Glasgow308—and one of them was in danger of being stopped in consequence of the death of Peter Gemble, one of the four partners, his widow refusing to advance her share of what was necessary for carrying on of the work. Materials, utensils, and men, to the extent of £16 sterling of wages monthly, were thus thrown idle—a general calamity. The Privy Council (December 20) enjoined the magistrates of Glasgow to use their endeavours to get the difference composed and the work kept up.—P. C. R.

Dec. 26.

1683.

A dismally tragical incident occurred at the Hirsel, the seat of the Earl of Home near Coldstream. The earl having been long detained in London, the countess, to beguile the time during the Christmas holidays, had a party of the neighbouring gentlemen invited to the house. Amongst these were Johnston of Hilton, Home of Ninewells, and the Hon. William Home, brother of the earl, and the sheriff of Berwickshire—three gentlemen who, like the countess, have all been before us lately in connection with the abduction of the young Lady Ayton. Cards and dice being resorted to, and William having lost a considerable sum, a quarrel took place among the gentlemen, and Johnston, who was of a haughty and hot temper, gave William a slap in the face. The affair seemed to have been amicably composed, and all had gone to bed, when William Home rose and went to Johnston’s chamber, to call him to account for the affront he conceived himself to have suffered. What passed in the way of conversation between the two is not known; but certain it is that Home stabbed Johnston in his bed with nine severe wounds. Home of Ninewells, who slept near by, came to see what caused the disturbance, and, as he entered the room, received a sword-thrust from the sheriff, who was now retiring, and who immediately fled into England upon Johnston’s horse.

The unfortunate Hilton died in a few days. Ninewells recovered. The sheriff—of whom it was shudderingly remarked that this bloody fact happened exactly a twelvemonth after the execution of a Presbyterian rebel whom he had apprehended—was never caught. He was supposed to have entered some foreign service, and died in battle. In advanced life, he is said to have made an experiment to ascertain if he could be allowed to spend the remainder of his days in his native country. A son of the slaughtered Johnston, while at a public assembly, ‘was called out to speak with a person, who, it was said, brought him some particular news from abroad. The stranger met him at the head of the staircase, in a sort of lobby which led into the apartment where the company were dancing. He told young Johnston of Hilton, that the man who had slain his father was on his death-bed, and had sent him to request his forgiveness before he died. Before granting his request, Johnston asked the stranger one or two questions; and observing that he faltered in his answers, he suddenly exclaimed: “You yourself are my father’s murderer,” and drew his sword to stab him. Home—for it was the homicide himself—threw himself over the balustrade of the staircase, and made his escape.’309

1683.

This year a great alarm was excited by a conjunction of the planets Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation of Leo. It was announced as an extraordinary conjunction, which had only happened twice before since the creation of the world; and ‘our prognosticators all spoke of it as very ominous,’ ‘portending great alterations in Europe.’ Mr George Sinclair, Professor of Natural Philosophy in Glasgow, considered it as nothing less than ‘terrible.’ To add to the general uneasiness, some one brought out a treatise on comets, promising a further one under the title of Catastrophe Mundi. Fountainhall was evidently puzzled, for from November 1682 to March 1683, the season had been ‘like a spring for mildness,’ and he really could not say whether such an event as this could be ascribed to the conjunction. Had he waited a little, he might have seen the matter in a clearer light, for in April there took place pestilential fevers, with other terrible and uncommon disorders. ‘In Montrose, several families were taken with an unco disease, like unto convulsion fits, their face thrawing about to their neck, their hands griping close together, so as the very nails of their fingers make holes in their looves; lose their senses, and have a devouring appetite, eat much, yet not satisfied.’—Law.

1684. Apr. 8.

We have already seen several instances of a considerable town burnt down by accidental fire, with the inevitable consequence to the inhabitants, of their being driven into the shelterless fields, in a state of utter desolation; all reminding us of a time when as yet no mechanical arrangements had been made for checking such conflagrations, and no process of assurance had been instituted for providing against the loss and penury following. We have now another and highly characteristic example, in the almost entire destruction of the town of Kelso. It will be observed that the town, being probably composed of thatched houses, in few instances exceeding two stories in height, was extremely inflammable, and therefore the fire was rapid.

1684.

The fire began, between three and four in the afternoon, in a malt-kiln, and quickly caused the destruction of several stacks of corn. Thence, under the influence of a violent wind, it spread over the whole town, and so quickly, ‘that these310 who were helping their neighbours did not know when their own houses were burning. Before nine o’clock at night, not only all the houses, but the most part of all the goods therein, and several merchants’ shops of considerable value, and above four thousand bolls of victual lying in girnels, and all the corn-stacks in the town, were laid in ashes. The fury of the flame and rage of the smoke were so great in all places of the town, that with great difficulty sick and infirm persons and infant children could be carried away from the danger to the open fields. Three hundred and six families had their houses utterly burnt down, and of these not twenty will ever be able to rebuild upon their own means. The loss of merchants is so great that it cannot weel be known, the particular loss of some of them being valued above twenty thousand pounds Scots, and of others, above ane thousand pounds sterling. The more indigent sort of people have lost the whole sustenance of their livelihood.’ If we are to understand that the three hundred and six burnt-out families composed the whole population, we may estimate that this town, now so remarkable for its beauty, and which contains a population of 5000, was then a comparatively poor village of about 1400 inhabitants. It is remarkable, however, to find that it contained merchants’ shops so well stocked with goods.

The usual and only resource of that age for such cases of public calamity was taken advantage of by the Privy Council, to whom the inhabitants appealed for succour; namely, a collection at the parish churches on one Sunday throughout the kingdom. And till this collection could take place, it was ordered that some of the money now in the course of being raised for the relief of prisoners in the hands of the Turks, should be given to the distressed people of Kelso, to be afterwards replaced from the money collected on account of the fire. Some time afterwards, we find a petition from the magistrates of Glasgow, setting forth that a sum of money had been collected there for the unfortunate people at Kelso, but in the meantime Glasgow had had a conflagration of its own, resulting in the destitution of a number of people; so they had thought proper to ask for permission to apply the money for the relief of the distress in their own community—which was granted.

Apr.

Cornelius a-Tilbourne, a German mountebank, craved from the Privy Council licence to erect a stage in Edinburgh. It was granted, notwithstanding opposition from the College of Physicians. He had made a successful experiment on himself, in London, in presence of the king, for counteracting some poisons which the physicians there had prescribed to him, the secret consisting in drinking a considerable quantity of oil. But it appears that he expressly excluded mercury, aqua-fortis, and other corrosives from the trial. The king, who had a curiosity about chemical experiments, had granted Cornelius a medal and chain. He repeated the experiment in Edinburgh, on his man or servant, who died under it.

Men of this class appear to have also practised surgery. In March 1683, the Town Council of Glasgow disbursed five pounds to John Maxwell, to replace a like sum ‘whilk he payit to the mountebank for cutting off umwhile Archibald Bishop’s leg.’—M. of G.

Apr. 22.

1684.

A petition from the Earl of Errol to the Privy Council set forth that it was the custom of the north country for ‘the seamen of fish-boats’ to be ‘tied and obliged to the same servitude and service that coal-hewers and salters are here in the south,’ and ‘it is not lawful for any man whatsomever to resett, harbour, or entertein the fishers and boatmen who belong to another.’ His lordship complained of Alexander Brodie and Andrew Buchlay, who were fishermen in his service, having ‘fled away from him without leave, to his damage and prejudice;’ and he demanded warrants for reclaiming them. The petition was complied with.—P. C. R.

Apr. 24.

A proclamation proceeding upon the recent sumptuary act, makes us aware that it had comparatively failed to accomplish its object. ‘Several women, even [!] in our capital city of Edinburgh and elsewhere, have presumed to go abroad with clothes made of the prohibited stuffs, upon pretext that they are only night-gowns, undresses, or manteaux, whereas all manner of wearing of the said stuffs was discharged.’ In like manner, to elude that part of the law forbidding mourning cloaks, or ‘in downright mockery’ of the same, ‘several persons have presumed to wear mantle-cloaks (albeit more expensive than the cloaks formerly worn) at burials and other occasions upon the death of their relations.’ ‘Also several persons have lately run to that height of extravagancy, as to cause cover the coffins of persons to be buried with fine black cloth and fringes.’ Others, since the passing of the act, ‘have presumed to make penny-weddings, where great confluence of our subjects have resorted, which is a most extravagant expense to our lieges.’

The public was now therefore forbidden by regular proclamation to wear the prohibited stuffs in any manner of way. Tailors were discharged from making or setting out, and gentlemen from wearing, the long black mantle-coats. All were prohibited from ‘making use of any coffin covered with silk cloth or fringes,’ or which bore any ornamental metal-work. Penny-weddings were denounced in the strongest terms. And all these prohibitions were enforced by the threat of a full exaction of the fines specified in the act.—P. C. R..

July 22.

1684.

A strong representation was made to the Privy Council against the Messrs Fountain, who have ‘gone almost through all Scotland and charged every person both in town and country who keeps a change, who has in their house a pair of tables, cards, or kylles, and others of that nature for gentlemen’s divertisement, upon pretence that they ought not to have any such plays in their house without licence from them as Masters of the Revels.’ It was reckoned that they had forced six thousand people to compound with them, and had thus realised about £16,000 sterling, ‘which is a most gross and manifest oppression.’ The lords forbade the Fountains to take any further legal steps. P. C. R.

Aug.

An instrument of torture, called the Thumbikens, was introduced into practice by the Privy Council, as a means of extorting confessions. This was done at the recommendation of Generals Dalyell and Drummond, who had seen the thumbikens used in Russia. One of the first persons, if not the first, subjected to this torture, was Mr William Spence, a servant of the Earl of Argyle, who for some weeks had been tortured in various less compulsory ways to make him confess what he knew of the rebellious designs of his master. He had maintained firmness under the boots, and contrived to endure without flinching the torture of being kept awake for five nights, though driven by it ‘half distracted.’ But after his thumbs had been crushed by the thumbikens, on the boots being again presented to him, his firmness gave way.311

The thumbikens consists of a bar of iron, moving loose upon a vertical screw, and under which, by the use of a nut moving on the screw, provided with a handle, the thumbs of the victim can be squeezed so as to produce the most exquisite pain.

In September of this year, Mr William Carstairs, who had been concerned in some of the plots of the day, was tortured by the thumbikens before the Privy Council. He bore the pain with firmness, though not without giving vent to his agony by cries, until the Dukes of Hamilton and Queensberry left the room, unable any longer to witness the revolting spectacle. He was at length induced by these means, to give some information regarding Baillie of Jerviswood and others.

1684.

After the Revolution, this remarkable man became, as is well known, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and the confidential adviser of King William regarding the affairs of Scotland; he was familiarly recognised as Cardinal Carstairs. The identical thumbikens by which he had been tortured, was presented to him by the Privy Council, and it was long preserved by his family. An anecdote was handed down by his descendants respecting the horrible little instrument. ‘I have heard, Principal,’ said King William to him, ‘that you were tortured with something they call thumbikens; pray, what sort of instrument of torture is it?’ ‘I will shew it you,’ answered Carstairs, ‘the next time I have the honour to wait upon your majesty.’ Soon after, accordingly, the Principal brought the thumbikens to be shewn to the king. ‘I must try it,’ said the king; ‘I must put in my thumbs here—now, Principal, turn the screw. O not so gently—another turn—another. Stop, stop! no more! Another turn, I am afraid, would make me confess anything.’312

Aug. 15.

Monro, the Edinburgh executioner, having beaten a beggar with undue severity, was deprived of his post, and moreover punished by being thrown into the Thieves’ Hole. One hears with surprise of such an interference for humanity, amidst the atrocious cruelties to which political and religious exasperations were provoking the government. The vacant post was conferred on one George Ormiston, whom Fountainhall describes as ‘a well-favoured discreet fellow.’ If we are to believe Milne’s Account of the Parish of Melrose, 1743, this man was a member, if not the representative, of the Ormistons of Westhouse, a family once of some account, possessing a tower on the Tweed, near Melrose, and having the custom of a bridge across the river at that place; ‘a memorandum to old families not to be puffed up with pride, on account of their antiquity, for they know not what mean offices they or theirs may be obliged to stoop to.’

Sep. 10.

Colonel Graham of Claverhouse, as constable of Dundee, represented to the Privy Council that he found several persons in prison there for petty thefts, ‘which will be fitter to be punished arbitrarily than by death.’ In compliance with his humane suggestion, he was empowered to restrict the treatment of these persons and any others that might hereafter commit the like offences, ‘to ane arbitrary punishment, such as whipping or banishment, as he shall find cause.’—P. C. R.

1684.

It will excite surprise to find the Bloody Claverse interposing for a gentler justice in behalf of ordinary criminals—he who coolly ordered the summary death of so many people in Clydesdale and Galloway, for merely sentimental offences. But, while the nil admirari is nowhere more applicable than in matters concerning human inconsistency, it were perhaps no more than justice to one who was at least a gallant soldier and a steadfast friend in adversity to the sovereign who had employed him, if we remembered how amiable in private life have been many modern statesmen noted for severity in public action. Claverhouse was a political enthusiast, who had made up his mind to the particular course—rather a rough one—by which the interests of his country were to be protected and advanced; and with the help of a strong will, and under the call of what came to him as duty, he scrupled not to walk in that path, though by no means inhumane or harsh in the matters of ordinary life. In a letter to the Earl of Aberdeen, written in June 1683, he reveals to us his principle of action in a sentence: ‘I am,’ says he, ‘as sorry to see a man die, even a Whig, as any of themselves; but when one dies justly for his own faults, and may save a hundred to fall in the like, I have no scruple.’313

Oct.

One Marion Purdie, dwelling at the West Port of Edinburgh, once a milk-wife, and now a beggar, was apprehended and imprisoned as a witch. She was accused of laying diseases and frenzies upon her neighbours. The king’s advocate was now giving little heed to such cases, and so poor Marion ‘dies of cold and poverty in prison about the Christmas.’—Foun.

Oct.

It is remarked at this time that Colonel Douglas was training and exercising his regiment with extreme diligence. He studied to get his men all of one height, and would allow none to keep their beards long or have bad cravats or cravat-strings, being anxious that they should all look young and brisk. When they were deficient in these articles, he bought them new ones with their pay. He also ‘caused them all tie their hair back with a ribbon, so it cannot blow in their eyes when they visy at their firing.’ (Can this have been the origin of tied hair?) A more important regulation still of this commander—‘He discharges any of their officers to keep cellars, whereby they made their soldiers waste their pay in drinking.’—Foun.

Oct.

1684.

A tempest which took place at the end of this month, accompanied both by snow and thunder, caused the throwing ashore of ‘a new kind of fish like a mackerel or herring, but with a long snout like a snipe’s beak. Dr Sibbald says it is the Acus marinus, the Sea Needle, described by him in his Naturalis Historia. They have been seen before, but are not frequent, and therefore are looked upon by the vulgar as ominous.’—Foun.

When Charles II. died three months after, Fountainhall remarked there having been few or no prognostics of the event, ‘unless we recur to the comet, which is remote, or to the strange fishes mentioned above, or the vision of blue bonnets ... in none of which is there anything for a rational man to fix his belief upon.’

By an act of the second parliament of Charles II., fines were appointed for all who withdrew themselves from the regular parish churches; but as, because of the law which gives the husband exclusive power over the goods held by him and his wife in communion, it was impossible to exact any fine for the delinquency of a married woman, it had become necessary to make the husband answerable when his wife offended. Under this arrangement, some ladies of rank, addicted to attending conventicles, had brought no small trouble upon their partners. The Council, at length feeling it was a hard law where the husband was a conformist, requested power from the king to remit the fines in such cases. Soon after the following case occurred.

Dec. 4.

1684.

David Balcanquel of that Ilk, having been, in virtue of the act, amerced in three years of his valued rent or fifteen hundred pounds, ‘upon the account of his wife not keeping the church,’ represented the matter very pathetically to the Privy Council, setting forth how he himself had always kept his parish church, and, ‘notwithstanding the distractions and disorders that have been in the country where he lives [Fife], has always demeaned himself as ane dutiful and loyal subject.’ The Council took the case into favourable consideration, and, ‘seeing it never was the intention of his majesty that his weel-affected subjects should be ruined by the mad and wilful opinions of phanatick wives, without any fault of their own’—seeing, moreover, that Balcanquel protested ‘it is not in his power to persuade his wife to go to church, notwithstanding of all the endeavours he has used for that effect, and he is willing to deliver her up to the Council to be disposed of at their pleasure‘—they agreed to discharge his fine, taking him only bound ‘to deliver up his wife to justice whenever required.’—P. C. R.

It was not always as in this case in regard to conventicle troubles. Wodrow had heard the following converse case ‘very weel attested:‘314 About the time of the Circuit Court in 1685, there was an honest man in the parish of Baldernock, who was sore bested with a graceless and imperious wife, a hater of all seriousness. When he performed family worship, she interrupted him; when he went to a conventicle, she cursed him; and when he came home, she threw stools at him. Scarce durst the poor man return from these meetings without a few neighbours to protect him from his wife’s violence. Being denounced and cited to the court at Glasgow, he failed to appear; but she came forward, and, on his name being called, cried out: ‘My lords, it’s all true—he is a rebel; there is not a conventicle in all the country but he is at it. He deserves to be hanged. Hang him, my lords!’ The lords asked who she was, and on being told, and hearing her go on further in the same strain, they ordered the man to be scored out of the roll, saying: ‘That poor fellow suffers enough already from such a wife!’

Dec.

Amongst those now suffering under the severities of government, there was no one more remarkable than Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, a Berwickshire gentleman of large fortune, of vigorous character, and great zeal as a Presbyterian and Whig. Though only recognised by the government as ‘a factious person,’ he had been several times rather severely handled. Being now under suspicion of a concern in the Rye-house plot, he was denounced on the 13th of November as guilty of treason, and obliged to go out of the way. The harshness with which his friend Robert Baillie of Jerviswood was treated, was sufficient to shew that the more closely he concealed himself the better.

1684.

Polwarth, who was a man of forty-three years of age, had a wife and ten children, all young, residing at his house of Redbraes in the Merse. Patrick, the eldest son, was taken up and put in prison; and on the 26th of December, there was a petition from him to the Privy Council, setting forth the piteous condition of the family now deprived of their father and threatened with the loss of their estate. He was but ‘a poor afflicted young boy,’ he said, who could do no harm to the state; he, moreover, cherished loyal principles and a hatred of plots. All he craved was liberty, that he might ‘see to some livelihood for himself,’ and ‘be in some condition to help and serve his disconsolate mother and the rest of his father’s ten starving children.’ The boon was granted grudgingly, the young man being obliged first to obtain security for his good-behaviour to the extent of two thousand pounds sterling.—P. C. R.

1684.

1684.

The first concealment of Sir Patrick was the family burial vault, under the east end of the parish church of Polwarth, a place where he had no fire, and only during the day light from an open slit in the wall. With the comfort of a bed and bed-clothes, he endured life in this singular Patmos for a whole winter month, supplied nightly with food by his daughter Grizzel, and having no sort of entertainment to beguile the tedium of the day but his own reflections, and the repetition of Buchanan’s Psalms, which had long been charged on his memory. Each night, the young Grizzel came with a packet of provisions, and stayed with him as long as she could, so as to get home before day. According to an interesting family memoir, written by her daughter, Lady Murray of Stanhope: ‘In all this time, my grandfather shewed the same constant composure and cheerfulness of mind, that he continued to possess to his death, which was at the age of eighty-four; all which good qualities she inherited from him in a high degree. Often did they laugh heartily in that doleful habitation, at different accidents that happened. She at that time had a terror for a church-yard, especially in the dark, as is not uncommon at her age, by idle nursery stories; but when engaged by concern for her father, she stumbled over the graves every night alone, without fear of any kind entering her thoughts, but for soldiers and parties in search of him, which the least noise or motion of a leaf put her in terror for. The minister’s house was near the church; the first night she went, his dogs kept such a barking, as put her in the utmost fear of a discovery; my grandmother sent for the minister the next day, and, under pretence of a mad dog, got him to hang all his dogs. There was also difficulty of getting victuals to carry him without the servants suspecting; the only way it was done, was by stealing it off her plate at dinner into her lap. Many a diverting story she has told about this, and other things of a like nature. Her father liked sheep’s head, and while the children were eating their broth, she had conveyed most of one into her lap; when her brother Sandy (the late Lord Marchmont) had done, he looked up with astonishment, and said: “Mother, will ye look at Grizzel; while we have been eating our broth, she has ate up the whole sheep’s head.” This occasioned so much mirth among them, that her father at night was greatly entertained by it, and desired Sandy might have a share in the next.... As the gloomy habitation my grandfather was in, was not to be long endured but from necessity, they were contriving other places of safety for him; amongst others, particularly one under a bed which drew out, in a ground-floor, in a room of which my mother kept the key. She and the same man worked in the night, making a hole in the earth, after lifting the boards, which they did by scratching it up with their hands, not to make any noise, till she had left not a nail upon her fingers; she helping the man to carry the earth as they dug it, in a sheet on his back out at the window into the garden; he then made a box at his own house, large enough for her father to lie in, with bed and bed-clothes, and bored holes in the boards for air. When all this was finished, for it was long about, she thought herself the most secure happy creature alive. When it had stood the trial for a month of no water coming into it, which was feared from being so low, and every day examined by my mother, and the holes for air made clear, and kept clean picked, her father ventured home, having that to trust to. After being at home a week or two, the bed daily examined as usual, one day, in lifting the boards, the bed bounced to the top, the box being full of water; in her life she was never so struck, and had near dropt down, it being at that time their only refuge. Her father, with great composure, said to his wife and her, he saw they must tempt providence no longer, and that it was now fit and necessary for him to go off, and leave them; in which he was confirmed, by the carrier telling for news he had brought from Edinburgh, that the day before, Mr Baillie of Jerviswood had his life taken from him at the Cross, and that everybody was sorry, though they durst not shew it. As all intercourse by letters was dangerous, it was the first notice they had of it, and the more shocking, that it was not expected. They immediately set about preparing for my grandfather’s going away. My mother worked night and day in making some alterations in his clothes for disguise; they were then obliged to trust John Allan, their grieve, who fainted away when he was told his master was in the house, and that he was to set out with him on horseback before day, and pretend to the rest of the servants that he had orders to sell some horses at Morpeth fair. Accordingly, my grandfather getting out at a window to the stables, they set out in the dark. Though, with good reason, it was a sorrowful parting, yet after he was fairly gone, they rejoiced, and thought themselves happy that he was in a way of being safe, though they were deprived of him, and little knew what was to be either his fate or their own.