REIGN OF GEORGE II.: 1727–1748. (continued 2)

Two things at this period told powerfully in introducing new ideas and politer manners: first, the constant going and coming 575|1730.| of sixty-one men of importance between their own country and London in attendance on parliament; and second, the introduction of a number of English people as residents or visitors into the country, in connection with the army, the excise and customs, and the management of the forfeited estates. This intercourse irresistibly led to greater cleanliness, to a demand for better house accommodation, and to at once greater ease and greater propriety of manners. The minority of the tasteful and the gay being so far reinforced, assemblies for dancing, and even in a modest way theatricals, were no longer to be repressed. The change thus effected was by and by confirmed, in consequence of young men of family getting into the custom of travelling for a year or two on the continent before settling at their professions or in the management of their affairs at home. This led, too, to a somewhat incongruous ingrafting of French politeness on the homely manners and speech of the general flock of ladies and gentlemen. Reverting to the matter of house accommodation, it may be remarked that a floor of three or four rooms and a kitchen was then considered a mansion for a gentleman or superior merchant in Edinburgh. We ought not to be too much startled at the idea of a lady receiving gentlemen along with ladies in her bedroom, when we reflect that there were then few rooms which had not beds in them, either openly or behind a screen. It is a significant fact that, in 1745, there was in Inverness only one house which contained a room without a bed—namely, that in which Prince Charles took up his lodgings.

As a consequence of the narrowness of house accommodation in those days, taverns were much more used than they are now. A physician or advocate in high practice was to be consulted at his tavern, and the habits of each important practitioner in this regard were studied, and became widely known. Gentlemen met in tavern clubs each evening for conversation, without much expense, a shilling’s reckoning being thought high—more generally, it was the half of that sum. ‘In some of these clubs they played at backgammon or catch-honours for a penny the game.’ At the consultations of lawyers, the liquor was sherry, brought in mutchkin stoups, and paid for by the employer. ‘It was incredible the quantity that was drunk sometimes on those occasions.’ Politicians met in taverns to discuss the affairs of state. One situated in the High Street, kept by Patrick Steil, was the resort of a number of the patriots who urged on the Act of Security and resisted the Union; and the phrase, Pate Steil’s Parliament, 576|1730.| occasionally appears in the correspondence of the time. It was in the same place, as we have seen, that the weekly concert was commenced. In the freer days which ensued upon this time, it was not thought derogatory to ladies of good rank that they should occasionally join oyster-parties in these places of resort.

Miss Mure, in her invaluable memoir, remarks on the change which took place in her youth in the religious sentiments of the people. A dread of the Deity, and a fear of hell and of the power of the devil, she cites as the predominant feelings of religious people in the age succeeding the Revolution. It was thought a mark of atheistic tendencies to doubt witchcraft, or the reality of apparitions, or the occasional vaticinative character of dreams. When the generation of the Revolution was beginning to pass away, the deep convictions as well as the polemical spirit, of the seventeenth century gave place to an easier and a gentler faith. There was no such thing as scepticism, except in the greatest obscurity; but a number of favourite preachers began to place Christianity in an amiable light before their congregations. ‘We were bid,’ says Miss Mure, ‘to draw our knowledge of God from his works, the chief of which is the soul of a good man; then judge if we have cause to fear.... Whoever would please God must resemble him in goodness and benevolence.... The Christian religion was taught as the purest rule of morals; the belief of a particular providence and of a future state as a support in every situation. The distresses of individuals were necessary for exercising the good affections of others, and the state of suffering the post of honour.’ At the same time, dread of parents also melted away. ‘The fathers would use their sons with such freedom, that they should be their first friend; and the mothers would allow of no intimacies but with themselves. For their girls the utmost care was taken that fear of no kind should enslave the mind; nurses were turned off who would tell the young of ghosts and witches. The old ministers were ridiculed who preached up hell and damnation; the mind was to be influenced by gentle and generous motives alone.’

A country gentleman, writing in 1729, remarks the increase in the expense of housekeeping which he had seen going on during the past twenty years. While deeming it indisputable that Edinburgh was now less populous than before the Union, ‘yet I am informed,’ says he, ‘there is a greater consumption since, than before the Union, of all provisions, especially fleshes and wheatbread. The butcher owns he now kills three of every species of 577|1730.| cattle for every one he killed before the Union.’ Where formerly he had been accustomed to see ‘two or three substantial dishes of beef, mutton, and fowl, garnished with their own wholesome gravy,’ he now saw ‘several services of little expensive ashets, with English pickles, yea Indian mangoes, and catch-up or anchovy sauces.’ Where there used to be the quart stoup of ale from the barrel, there was now bottled ale for a first service, and claret to help out the second, or else ‘a snaker of rack or brandy punch.’ Tea in the morning and tea in the evening had now become established. There were more livery-servants, and better dressed, and more horses, than formerly. French and Italian silks for the ladies, and English broadcloth for the gentlemen, were more and more supplanting the plain home-stuffs of former days.^[709] This writer was full of fears as to the warrantableness of this superior style of living, but his report of the fact is not the less valuable.

1731. July.

It will be remembered that the Bank of Scotland, soon after its institution in 1696, settled branches at Glasgow, Aberdeen, Montrose, and Dundee, all of which proving unsuccessful, were speedily withdrawn. Since then, no new similar movement had been made; neither had a native bank arisen in any of those towns. But now, when the country seemed to be making some decided advances in industry and wealth, the Bank resolved upon a new attempt, and set up branches in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, and Berwick. It was found, however, that the effort was yet premature, and, after two years’ trial, these branches were all recalled.^[710]

It is to be observed that Glasgow, though yet unable to support a branch of a public bank, was not inexperienced in banking accommodation. The business was carried on here, as it had long ago been in Edinburgh, by private traders, and in intimate connection with other business. An advertisement published in the newspapers in July 1730 by James Blair, merchant, at the head of the Saltmarket in Glasgow, makes us aware that at his shop there, ‘all persons who have occasion to buy or sell bills of exchange, or want money to borrow, or have money to lend on interest, or have any sort of goods to sell, or want to buy any kind of goods, or who want to buy sugar-house notes or other good bills, or desire to have such notes or bills discounted, or who want to have 578|1731.| policies signed, or incline to underwrite policies in ships or goods, may deliver their commands.’^[711]

Oct.

The latter part of the year 1730 and earlier part of 1731 were made memorable in England by the ‘Malicious Society of Undertakers.’ An inoffensive farmer or a merchant would receive a letter threatening the conflagration of his house unless he should deposit six or eight guineas under his door before some assigned time. The system is said to have begun at Bristol, where the house of a Mr Packer was actually set fire to and consumed. When a panic had spread, many ruined gamblers and others adopted the practice, in recklessness, or with a view to gain; but the chief practitioners appear to have been ruffians of the lower classes, as the letters were generally very ill-spelt and ill-written.

In the autumn of 1731, the system spread to Scotland, beginning in Lanarkshire. According to Mr Wodrow, the parishes of Lesmahago and Strathaven were thrown into great alarm by a number of anonymous letters being dropped at night, or thrown into houses, threatening fire-raising unless contributions were made in money. Mr Aiton of Walseley, a justice of peace, was ordered to bring fifty guineas to the Cross-boat at Lanark; otherwise his house would be burnt. He went to the place, but found no one waiting. At the same time, there were rumours of strangers being seen on the moors. So great was the consternation, that parties of soldiers were brought to the district, but without discovering any person that seemed liable to suspicion.^[712]

1732. Jan. 22.

James Erskine of Grange, brother of the attainted Earl of Mar, and who had been a judge of the Court of Session since 1707, was fitted with a wife of irregular habits and violent temper, the daughter of the murderer Chiesley of Dalry.^[713] After agreeing, in 1730, to live upon a separate maintenance, she continued to persecute her husband in a personal and indecent manner, and further vented some threats as to her power of exposing him to the ministry for dangerous sentiments. The woman was scarcely mad enough to justify restraint, and, though it had been otherwise, there were in those days no asylums to which she could have been consigned. In these circumstances, the husband felt himself at liberty in conscience—pious man as he notedly was—to have his wife spirited away by night from her lodgings in Edinburgh, 579|1732.| hurried by night-journeys to Loch Hourn on the West Highland coast, and thence transported to the lonely island of Heskir, and put under the care of a peasant-farmer, subject to Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat. After two years, she was taken to the still more remote island of St Kilda, and there kept amongst a poor and illiterate people, though not without the comforts of life, for seven years more. It was not till 1740 that any friends of hers knew where she was. A prosecution of the husband being then threatened, the lady was taken to a place more agreeable to her, where she soon after died.

Lord Grange was one of those singular men who contrive to cherish and act out the most intense religious convictions, to appear as zealous leaders in church judicatories, and stand as shining lights before the world, while yet tainted with the most atrocious secret vices. Being animated with an extreme hatred of Sir Robert Walpole, he was tempted, in 1734, to give up his seat on the bench, in order that he might be able to go into parliament and assist in hunting down the minister. Returned for Clackmannanshire, he did make his appearance in the House of Commons, fully believing that he should ere long be secretary of state for Scotland under a new ministry. It unluckily happened that one of the first opportunities he obtained for making a display of oratory was on the bill that was introduced for doing away with the statutes against witchcraft.^[714] Erskine was too faithful a Presbyterian of the old type to abandon a code of beliefs that seemed fully supported by Scripture. He rose, and delivered himself of a pious speech on the reality of necromantic arts, and the necessity of maintaining the defences against them. Sir Robert is said to have felt convinced from that moment, that he had not much to fear from the new member for Clackmannanshire.

Disappointed, impoverished, out of reverence with old friends, perhaps somewhat galled in conscience, Erskine ere long retired in a great measure from the world. For some years before his death in 1754, he is said to have lived principally in a coffee-house in the Haymarket, as all but the husband of its mistress; certainly a most lame and impotent conclusion for one who had made such a figure in political life, and passed as such a ‘professor,’ in his native country.

Feb.

On a stormy night in this month, Colonel Francis Charteris 580|1732.| died at his seat of Stonyhill, near Musselburgh. The pencil of Hogarth, which represents him as the old profligate gentleman in the first print of the Harlot’s Progress, has given historical importance to this extraordinary man. Descended from an old family of very moderate fortune in Dumfriesshire—Charteris of Amisfield—he acquired an enormous fortune by gambling and usury, and thus was enabled to indulge in his favourite vices on a scale which might be called magnificent. A single worthy trait has never yet been adduced to redeem the character of Charteris, though it is highly probable that, in some particulars, that character has been exaggerated by popular rumour.^[715]

A contemporary assures us, that the fortune of Charteris amounted to the then enormous sum of fourteen thousand a year; of which ten thousand was left to his grandson, Francis, second son of the Earl of Wemyss.

‘Upon his death-bed,’ says the same writer, ‘he was exceedingly anxious to know if there were any such thing as hell; and said, were he assured there was no such place (being easy as to heaven), he would give thirty thousand.... Mr Cumming the minister attended him on his death-bed. He asked his daughter, who is exceedingly narrow, what he should give him. She replied that it was unusual to give anything on such occasions. “Well, then,” says Charteris, “let us have another flourish from him!” so calling his prayers. There accidentally happened, the night he died, a prodigious hurricane, which the vulgar ascribed to his death.’^[716]

Mar. 12.

A transaction, well understood in Scotland, but unknown and probably incomprehensible in England—‘an inharmonious settlement’—took place in the parish of St Cuthbert’s, close to Edinburgh. A Mr Wotherspoon having been presented by the crown to this charge, to the utter disgust of the parishioners, the Commission of the General Assembly sent one of their number, a Mr Dawson, to effect the ‘edictal service.’ The magistrates, knowing the temper of the parishioners, brought the City Guard to protect the ceremony as it proceeded in the church; so the people could do nothing there. Their rage, however, being irrepressible, they came out, tore down the edict from the kirk-door, 581|1732.| and seemed as if they would tear down the kirk itself. The City Guard fired upon them, and wounded one woman.^[717]

June 24.

Owing to the difficulty of travelling, few of the remarkable foreigners who came to England found their way to Scotland; but now and then an extraordinary person appeared. At this date, there came to Edinburgh, and put up ‘at the house of Yaxley Davidson, at the Cowgate Port,’ Joseph Jamati, Baculator or Governor of Damascus. He appeared to be sixty, was of reddish-black complexion, grave and well-looking, wearing a red cloth mantle trimmed with silver lace, and a red turban set round with white muslin; had a gray beard about half a foot long; and was described as ‘generally a Christian.’ Assistance under some severe taxation of the Turkish pacha was what he held forth as the object of his visit to Europe. He came to Edinburgh, with recommendations from the Duke of Newcastle and other persons of distinction, and proposed to make a round of the principal towns, and visit the Duke of Athole and other great people. He was accompanied by an interpreter and another servant. It appears that this personage had a public reception from the magistrates, who bestowed on him a purse of gold. In consequence of receiving a similar contribution from the Convention of Burghs, he ultimately resolved to return without making his proposed tour.

Four years later, Edinburgh received visits, in succession, from two other Eastern hierarchs, one of them designated as archbishop of Nicosia in Cyprus, of the Armenian Church, the other being Scheik Schedit, from Berytus, near Mount Lebanon, of the Greek Church, both bringing recommendatory letters from high personages, and both aiming at a gathering of money for the relief of their countrymen suffering under the Turks. Scheik Schedit had an interpreter named Michel Laws, and two servants, and the whole party went formally in a coach ‘to hear sermon in the High Church.’^[718]

July 11.

The Scottish newspapers intimate that on this day, between two and three afternoon, there was felt at Glasgow ‘a shock of an earthquake, which lasted about a second.’

July 28.

The six Highland companies were reviewed at Ruthven, in 582|1732.| Badenoch, by General Wade, and were praised for their good state of discipline. ‘We of this country,’ says the reporter of the affair, ‘and, indeed, all the Highland and northern parts of the kingdom, have substantial reason to be well satisfied with them, since for a long time there has not been the least ground to complain of disorders of any kind; which we attribute to the vigilance of their officers, and a right distribution and position of the several companies.’^[719]

Robert Trotter, schoolmaster of Dumfries, published a Compendium of Latin Grammar, ‘the conceitedness, envy, and errors’ of which were next year exposed in a brochure of Animadversions by John Love, the schoolmaster of Dumbarton. Not long after Love had thus disposed of Mr Trotter, he was himself put on the defensive before the kirk-session of his parish, on a charge of brewing on a Sunday. Probably the verb was only applicable in a neuter form—that is, nature, by continuing her fermenting process on the Sabbath, was the only delinquent—for the minister, ‘after a juridical trial, was obliged to make a public apology for having maliciously accused calumniated innocence.’^[720] Love, who was the preceptor of Tobias Smollett, afterwards distinguished himself by a controversy with the notorious Lauder, who, by forgery, tried to derogate from the fame of Milton.

1733. May 14.

Since 1598 we have not heard of any foreigners coming into Scotland to play dangerous tricks upon long tight ropes; but now, unexpectedly, a pair of these diverting vagabonds, one described as an Italian who had performed his wonders in all the cities of Europe, the other as his son, presented themselves. A rope being fixed between the Half-moon Battery in the Castle, and a place on the south side of the Grassmarket, two hundred feet below, the father slid down in half a minute. The son performed the same feat, blowing a trumpet all the way, to the astonishment of ‘an infinite crowd of spectators.’ Three days afterwards, there was a repetition of the performance, at the desire of several persons of quality, when, after sliding down, the father made his way up again, firing a pistol, beating a drum, and playing a variety of antics by the way, proclaiming, moreover, that here he could defy all messengers, sheriffs’ officers, and macers of the Court of Session. Being sore fatigued at the end of the performance, he 583|1733.| offered a guinea to the sutler of the Castle for a draught of ale, which the fellow was churlish enough to refuse.

The two funambuli failed on a subsequent trial, ‘their equipage not at all answering.’ Not many weeks after, we learn that William Hamilton, mason in the Dean, trying the like tricks on a rope connected with Queensferry steeple, fell off the rope, and was killed.^[721]

In the course of this year, a body called the Edinburgh Company of Players performed plays in the Tailors’ Hall, in the Cowgate. On the 6th June, they had the Beggars’ Opera for the benefit of the Edinburgh Infirmary. They afterwards acted Othello, Hamlet, Henry IV., Macbeth, and King Lear, ‘with great applause.’ In December, they presented before a large audience the Tempest, ‘every part, and even what required machinery, being performed in great order.’ In February 1734, the Conscious Lovers was performed ‘for the benefit of Mrs Woodward,’ ‘the doors not to be opened till four of the clock, performance to begin at six.’ In March, the Wonder is advertised, ‘the part of the Scots colonel by Mr Weir, and that of his servant Gibby, in Highland dress, by Mr Wescomb; and all the other parts to the best advantage.’ Allan Ramsay must have been deeply concerned in the speculation, because he appears in the office-copy of the newspaper (Caledonian Mercury) as the paymaster for the advertisements.

Nor was this nascent taste for the amusements of the stage confined to Edinburgh. In August, the company is reported as setting out early one morning for Dundee, Montrose, Aberdeen, &c., ‘in order to entertain the ladies and gentlemen in the different stations of their circuit.’ We soon after hear of their being honoured at Dundee with the patronage of the ancient and honourable society of freemasons, who marched in a body, with the grand-master at their head, to the playhouse, ‘in their proper apparel, with hautboys and other music playing before them;’ all this to hear the Jubilee and The Devil to Pay.

In December, the Edinburgh company was again in the Tailors’ Hall, and now it ventured on ‘a pantomime in grotesque characters,’ costing something in the getting up; wherefore ‘nothing less than full prices will be taken during the whole performance.’ In consideration of the need for space, it was ‘hoped that no gentleman whatever will take it amiss if they are refused admittance 584|1733.| behind the scenes.’ Soon after, we hear of the freemasons patronising the play of Henry IV., marching to the house ‘in procession, with aprons and white gloves, attended with flambeaux.’ Mrs Bulkely took her benefit on the 22d January in Oroonoko and a farce, in both of which she was to play; but ‘being weak, and almost incapable to walk, [she] cannot acquit herself to her friends’ satisfaction as usual; yet hopes to be favoured with their presence.’

It is observable that the plays represented in the Cowgate house were all of them of classic merit. This was, of course, prudential with regard to popular prejudices. Persons possessed of a love of literature were very naturally among those most easily reconciled to the stage; and amongst these we may be allowed to class certain schoolmasters, who about this time began to encourage their pupils to recite plays as a species of rhetorical exercise.

On Candlemas, 1734—when by custom the pupils in all schools in Scotland brought gifts to their masters, and had a holiday—the pupils of the Perth Grammar School made an exhibition of English and Latin readings in the church before the clergy, magistrates, and a large miscellaneous auditory. ‘The Tuesday after, they acted Cato in the school, which is one of the handsomest in Scotland, before three hundred gentlemen and ladies. The youth, though they had never seen a play acted, performed surprisingly both in action and pronunciation, which gave general satisfaction. After the play, the magistrates entertained the gentlemen at a tavern.’^[722]

In August, ‘the young gentlemen of Dalkeith School acted, before a numerous crowd of spectators, the tragedy of Julius Cæsar and comedy of Æsop, with a judgment and address inimitable at their years.’ At the same time, the pupils in the grammar school of Kirkcaldy performed a piece composed by their master, entitled The Royal Council for Advice, or the Regular Education of Boys the Foundation of all other National Improvements. ‘The council consisted of a preses and twelve members, decently and gravely seated round a table like senators. The other boys were posted at a due distance in a crowd, representing people come to attend this meeting for advice: from whom entered in their turn and order, a tradesman, a farmer, a country gentleman, a nobleman, two schoolmasters, &c., and, last of all, a gentleman who complimented and congratulated the council on 585|1733.| their noble design and worthy performances.’ The whole exhibition is described as giving high satisfaction to the audience.

This sort of fair weather could not last. At Candlemas, 1735, the Perth school-boys acted George Barnwell—certainly an ill-chosen play—twice before large audiences, comprising many persons of distinction; and it was given out that on the succeeding Sunday ‘a very learned moral sermon, suitable to the occasion, was preached in the town.’ Immediately after came the corrective. The kirk-session had nominated a committee to take measures to prevent the school from being ‘converted into a playhouse, whereby youth are diverted from their studies, and employed in the buffooneries of the stage;’ and as for the moral sermon, it was ‘directed against the sins and corruptions of the age, and was very suitable to the resolution of the session.’

July.

England was pleasingly startled in 1721 by the report which came home regarding a singularly gallant defence made by an English ship against two strongly armed pirate vessels in the Bay of Juanna, near Madagascar. The East India Company was peculiarly gratified by the report, for, though it inferred the loss of one of their ships, it told them of a severe check given to a system of marine depredation, by which their commerce was constantly suffering.

It appeared that the Company’s ship Cassandra, commanded by Captain Macrae, on coming to the Bay of Juanna in July 1720, heard of a shipwrecked pirate captain being engaged in fitting out a new vessel on the island of Mayotta, and Macrae instantly formed the design of attacking him. When ready, on the 8th of August, to sail on this expedition, along with another vessel styled the Greenwich, he was saluted with the unwelcome sight of two powerful pirate vessels sailing into the bay, one being of 30, and the other of 34 guns. Though he was immediately deserted by the Greenwich, the two pirates bearing down upon him with their black flags, did not daunt the gallant Macrae. He fought them both for several hours, inflicting on one some serious breaches between wind and water, and disabling the boats in which the other endeavoured to board him. At length, most of his officers and quarter-deck men being killed or wounded, he made an attempt to run ashore, and did get beyond the reach of the two pirate vessels. With boats, however, they beset his vessel with redoubled fury, and in the protracted fighting which ensued, he suffered severely, though not without inflicting fully as much 586|1733.| injury as he received. Finally, himself and the remains of his company succeeded in escaping to the land, though in the last stage of exhaustion with wounds and fatigue. Had he, on the contrary, been supported by the Greenwich, he felt no doubt that he would have taken the two pirate vessels, and obtained £200,000 for the Company.^[723]

The hero of this brilliant affair was a native of the town of Greenock, originally there a very poor boy, but succoured from misery by a kind-hearted musician or violer named Macguire, and sent by him to sea. By the help of some little education he had received in his native country, his natural talents and energy quickly raised him in the service of the East India Company, till, as we see, he had become the commander of one of their goodly trading-vessels. The conflict of Juanna gave him further elevation in the esteem of his employers, and, strange to say, the poor barefooted Greenock laddie, the protégé of the wandering minstrel Macguire, became at length the governor of Madras! He now returned to Scotland, in possession of ‘an immense estate,’ which the journals of the day are careful to inform us, ‘he is said to have made with a fair character’—a needful distinction, when so many were advancing themselves as robbers, or little better, or as truckling politicians. One of Governor Macrae’s first acts was to provide for the erection of a monumental equestrian statue of King William at Glasgow, having probably some grateful personal feeling towards that sovereign. It was said to have cost him £1000 sterling. But the grand act of the governor’s life, after his return, was his requital of the kindness he had experienced from the violer Macguire. The story formed one of the little romances of familiar conversation in Scotland during the last century. Macguire’s son, with the name of Macrae, succeeded to the governor’s estate of Holmains, in Dumfriesshire,^[724] which he handed down to his son.^[725] The three daughters, highly educated, and handsomely dowered, were married to men of figure, the eldest to the Earl of Glencairn (she was the mother of Burns’s well-known patron); the second to Lord Alva, a judge in the Court of Session; the third to Charles Dalrymple of Orangefield, near Ayr. Three years after his return from the East Indies, Governor Macrae 587|1733.| paid a visit to Edinburgh, and was received with public as well as private marks of distinction, on account of his many personal merits.

An amusing celebration of the return of the East India governor took place at Tain, in the north of Scotland. John Macrae, a near kinsman of the great man, being settled there in business, resolved to shew his respect for the first exalted person of his hitherto humble clan. Accompanied by the magistrates of the burgh and the principal burgesses, he went to the Cross, and there superintended the drinking of a hogshead of wine, to the healths of the King, Queen, Prince of Wales, and the Royal Family, and those of ‘Governor Macrae and all his fast friends.’ ‘From thence,’ we are told, ‘the company repaired to the chief taverns in town, where they repeated the aforesaid healths, and spent the evening with music and entertainments suitable to the occasion.’^[726]

Dec. 6.

The tendency which has already been alluded to, of a small portion of the Scottish clergy to linger in an antique orthodoxy and strenuousness of discipline, while the mass was going on in a progressive laxity and subserviency to secular authorities, was still continuing. The chief persons concerned in the Marrow Controversy of 1718^[727] and subsequent years, had recently made themselves conspicuous by standing up in opposition to church measures for giving effect to patronage in the settlement of ministers, and particularly to the settlement of an unpopular presentee at Kinross; and the General Assembly, held this year in May, came to the resolution of rebuking these recusant brethren. The brethren, however, were too confident in the rectitude of their course to submit to censure, and the commission of the church in November punished their contumacy by suspending from their ministerial functions, Ebenezer Erskine of Stirling, William Wilson of Perth, Alexander Moncrieff of Abernethy, and James Fisher of Kinclaven.

The suspended brethren, being all of them men held in the highest local reverence, received much support among their flocks, as well as among the more earnest clergy. Resolving not to abandon the principles they had taken up, it became necessary that they should associate in the common cause. They accordingly met at this date in a cottage at Gairney Bridge near Kinross, and constituted themselves into a provisional presbytery, though 588|1733.| without professing to shake off their connection with the Established Church. It is thought that the taking of a mild course with them at the next General Assembly would have saved them from an entire separation. But it was not to be. The church judicatories went on in their adopted line of high-handed secularism, and the matter ended, in 1740, with the deposition of the four original brethren, together with four more who took part with them. Thus, unexpectedly to the church, was formed a schism in her body, leading to the foundation of a separate communion, by which a fourth of her adherents, and those on the whole the most religious people, were lost.

An immense deal of devotional zeal, mingled with the usual alloys of illiberality and intolerance, was evoked through the medium of ‘the Secession,’ The people built a set of homely meeting-houses for the deposed ministers, and gave them such stipends as they could afford. In four years, the new body appeared as composed of twenty-six clergy, in three presbyteries. It was the first of several occasions of the kind, on which, it may be said without disrespect, both the strength and the weakness of the Scottish character have been displayed. A single anecdote, of the truth of which there is no reason to doubt, will illustrate the spirit of this first schism. There was a family of industrious people at Brownhills, near St Andrews, who adhered to the Secession. The nearest church was that of Mr Moncrieff at Abernethy, twenty miles distant. All this distance did the family walk every Sunday, in order to attend worship, walking of course an equal distance in returning. All that were in health invariably went. They had to set out at twelve o’clock of the Saturday night, and it was their practice to make all the needful preparations of dress and provisioning without looking out to see what kind of weather was prevailing. When all were ready, the door was opened, and the whole party walked out into the night, and proceeded on their way, heedless of whatever might fall or blow.

1734. Jan.

Our Scottish ancestors had a peculiar way of dealing with cases of ill-usage of women by their husbands. The cruel man was put by his neighbours across a tree or beam, and carried through the village so enthroned, while some one from time to time proclaimed his offence, the whole being designed as a means of deterring other men from being cruel to their spouses.

We have a series of documents at this date, illustrating the regular procedure in cases of Riding the Stang [properly, sting—meaning 589|1734.| a beam]. John Fraser, of the burgh of regality of Huntly, had gone to John Gordon, bailie for the Duke of Gordon, complaining that some of his neighbours had threatened him with the riding of the stang, on the ground of alleged ill-usage of his wife. The first document is a complaint from Ann Johnston, wife of Fraser, and some other women, setting forth the reality of this bad usage: the man was so cruel to his poor spouse, that her neighbours were forced occasionally to rise from their beds at midnight, in order to rescue her from his barbarous hands. They justified the threat against him, as meant to deter him from continuing his atrocious conduct, and went on to crave of the bailie that he would grant them a toleration of the stang, as ordinarily practised in the kingdom, ‘being, we know, no act of parliament to the contrary.’ If his lordship could suggest any more prudent method, they said they would be glad to hear of it ‘for preventing more fatal consequences.’ ‘Otherwise, upon the least disobligement given, we must expect to fall victims to our husbands’ displeasure, from which libera nos, Domine.’ Signed by Ann Johnston, and ten other women, besides two who give only initials.

Fraser offered to prove that he used his wife civilly, and was allowed till next day to do so. On that next day, however, four men set upon him, and carried him upon a tree through the town, thus performing the ceremony without authority. On Fraser’s complaint, they were fined in twenty pounds Scots, and decerned for twelve pounds of assythment to the complainer.^[728]

1735. Sep.

The execution of the revenue laws gave occasion for much bad blood. In June 1734, a boat having on board several persons, including at least one of gentlemanlike position in society, being off the shore of Nairn with ‘unentrable goods,’ the custom-house officers, enforced by a small party from the Hon. Colonel Hamilton’s regiment, went out to examine it. In a scuffle which ensued, Hugh Fraser younger of Balnain was killed, and two of the soldiers, named Long and Macadam, were tried for murder by the Court of Admiralty in Edinburgh, and condemned to be hanged on the 19th of November within flood-mark at Leith.

An appeal was made for the prisoners to the Court of Justiciary, 590|1735.| which, on the 11th of November, granted a suspension of the Judge-admiral’s sentence till the 1st of December, that the case might before that day be more fully heard. Next day, the Judge-admiral, Mr Graham, caused to be delivered to the magistrates sitting in council a ‘Dead Warrant,’ requiring and commanding them to see his sentence put in execution on the proper day. The magistrates, however, obeyed the Court of Justiciary. Meanwhile, four of those who had been in the boat, and who had given evidence against the two soldiers on their trial, were brought by the custom-house authorities before the Judge-admiral, charged with invading and deforcing the officers, and were acquitted.

On the 5th December, the Court of Justiciary found that the Judge-admiral, in the trial of Long and Macadam, had ‘committed iniquity,’ and therefore they suspended the sentence indefinitely. On a petition three weeks after, the men were liberated, after giving caution to the extent of 300 merks, to answer on any criminal charge that might be exhibited against them before the Court of Justiciary.^[729]

Nov. 18.

Dancing assemblies, which we have seen introduced at Edinburgh in 1723, begin within the ensuing dozen years to be heard of in some of the other principal towns. There was, for example, an assembly at Dundee at this date, and an Edinburgh newspaper soon after presented a copy of verses upon the ladies who had appeared at it, celebrating their charms in excessively bad poetry, but in a high strain of compliment:

‘Heavens! what a splendid scene is here,

How bright those female seraphs shine!’ &c.

From the indications afforded by half-blank names, we may surmise that damsels styled Bower, Duncan, Reid, Ramsay, Dempster, and Bow—all of them names amongst the gentlefolks of the district—figured conspicuously at this meeting—

‘Besides a much more numerous dazzling throng,

Whose names, if known, should grace my artless song.’

The poet, too, appears to have paid 2s. 6d. for the insertion of his lines in the Caledonian Mercury.

From this time onward, an annual ball, given by ‘the Right Honourable Company of Hunters’ in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, is regularly chronicled. At one which took place on the 8th 591|1735.| January 1736—the Hon. Master Charles Leslie being ‘king,’ and the Hon. Lady Helen Hope being ‘queen’—‘the company in general made a very grand appearance, an elegant entertainment and the richest wines were served up, and the whole was carried on and concluded with all decency and good order imaginable.’ A ball given by the same fraternity in the same place, on the ensuing 21st of December, was even more splendid. There were two rooms for dancing, and two for tea, illuminated with many hundreds of wax-candles. ‘In the Grand Hall [the Gallery?], a table was covered with three hundred dishes en ambiqu, at which sate a hundred and fifty ladies at a time ... illuminated with four hundred wax-candles. The plan laid out by the council of the company was exactly followed out with the greatest order and decency, and concluded without the least air of disturbance.’

On the 27th January 1737, ‘the young gentlemen-burghers’ of Aberdeen gave ‘a grand ball to the ladies, the most splendid and numerous ever seen there;’ all conducted ‘without the least confusion or disorder.’ The anxiety to shew that there was no glaring impropriety in the conduct of the company on these occasions, is significant, and very amusing.^[730]

The reader of this work has received—I fear not very thankfully—sundry glimpses of the frightful state of the streets of Edinburgh in previous centuries; and he must have readily understood that the condition of the capital in this respect represented that of other populous towns, all being alike deficient in any recognised means of removing offensive refuse. There was, it must be admitted, something peculiar in the state of Edinburgh in sanitary respects, in consequence of the extreme narrowness of its many closes and wynds, and the height of its houses. How it was endured, no modern man can divine; but it certainly is true that, at the time when men dressed themselves in silks and laces, and took as much time for their toilets as a fine lady, they had to pass in all their bravery amongst piles of dung, on the very High Street of Edinburgh, and could not make an evening call upon Dorinda or Celia in one of the alleys, without the risk of an ablution from above sufficient to destroy the most elegant outfit, and put the wearers out of conceit with themselves for a fortnight.

The struggles of the municipal authorities at sundry times to 592|1735.| get the streets put into decent order against a royal ceremonial entry, have been adverted to in our earlier volumes. It would appear that things had at last come to a sort of crisis in 1686, so that the Estates then saw fit to pass an act^[731] to force the magistrates to clean the city, that it might be endurable for the personages concerned in the legislature and government, ordaining for this purpose a ‘stent’ of a thousand pounds sterling a year for three years on the rental of property. A vast stratum of refuse, through which people had made lanes towards their shop-doors and close-heads, was then taken away—much of it transported by the sage provost, Sir James Dick, to his lands at Prestonfield, then newly enclosed, and the first that were so—which consequently became distinguished for fertility^[732]—and the city was never again allowed to fall into such disorder. There was still, however, no regular system of cleaning, beyond what the street sewers supplied; and the ancient practice of throwing ashes, foul water, &c., over the windows at night, graced only with the warning-cry of Gardez l’eau, was kept up in full vigour by the poorer and more reckless part of the population.

An Edinburgh merchant and magistrate, named Sir Alexander Brand, who has been already under our attention as a manufacturer of gilt leather hangings, at one time presented an overture to the Estates for the cleaning of the city. The modesty of the opening sentence will strike the reader: ‘Seeing the nobility and gentry of Scotland are, when they are abroad, esteemed by all nations to be the finest and most accomplished people in Europe, yet it’s to be regretted that it’s always casten up to them by strangers, who admire them for their singular qualifications, that they are born in a nation that has the nastiest cities in the world, especially the metropolitan.’ He offered to clean the city daily, and give five hundred a year for the refuse.^[733] But his views do not seem to have been carried into effect.

After 1730, when, as we have seen, great changes were beginning to take place in Scotland, increased attention was paid to external decency and cleanliness. The Edinburgh magistrates were anxious to put down the system of cleaning by ejectment. We learn, for example, from a newspaper, that a servant-girl having thrown foul water from a fourth story in Skinners’ Close, ‘which much abused a lady passing by, was brought before the bailies, 593|1735.| and obliged to enact herself never to be guilty of the like practices in future. ’Tis hoped,’ adds our chronicler, ‘that this will be a caution to all servants to avoid this wicked practice.’

There lived at this time in Edinburgh a respectable middle-aged man, named Robert Mein, the representative of the family which had kept the post-office for three generations between the time of the civil war and the reign of George I., and who boasted that the pious lady usually called Jenny Geddes, but actually Barbara Hamilton, who threw the stool in St Giles’s in 1637, was his great-grandmother. Mein, being a man of liberal ideas, and a great lover of his native city, desired to see it rescued from the reproach under which it had long lain as the most fetid of European capitals, and he accordingly drew up a paper, shewing how the streets might be kept comparatively clean by a very simple arrangement. His suggestion was, that there should be provided for each house, at the expense of the landlord, a vessel sufficient to contain the refuse of a day, and that scavengers, feed by a small subscription among the tenants, should discharge these every night. Persons paying what was then a very common rent, ten pounds, would have to contribute only five shillings a year; those paying fifteen pounds, 7s. 6d., and so on in proportion. The projector appears to have first explained his plan to sundry gentlemen of consideration—as, for example, Mr William Adam, architect, and Mr Colin Maclaurin, professor of mathematics, who gave him their approbation of it in writing—the latter adding: ‘I subscribe for my own house in Smith’s Land, Niddry’s Wynd, fourth story, provided the neighbours agree to the same.’ Other subscribers of consequence were obtained, as ‘Jean Gartshore, for my house in Morocco’s Close, which is £15 rent,’ and ‘the Countess of Haddington, for the lodging she possessed in Bank Close, Lawnmarket, valued rent £20.’ Many persons agreed to pay a half-penny or a penny weekly; some as much as a half-penny per pound of rent per month. One lady, however, came out boldly as a recusant—‘Mrs Black refuses to agree, and acknowledges she throws over.’^[734]

Mr Mein’s plan was adopted, and acted upon to some extent by the magistrates; and the terrible memory of the ‘Dirty Luggies,’ which were kept in the stairs, or in the passages within doors, as a necessary part of the arrangement, was fresh in the minds of old people whom I knew in early life. The city was in 1740 594|1735.| divided into twenty-nine districts, each having a couple of scavengers supported at its own expense, who were bound to keep it clean; while the refuse was sold to persons who engaged to cart it away at three half-pence per cart-load.^[735]

1736. Jan. 9.

Five men, who had suffered from the severity of the excise laws, having formed the resolution of indemnifying themselves, broke into the house of Mr James Stark, collector of excise, at Pittenweem, and took away money to the extent of two hundred pounds, besides certain goods. They were described as ‘Andrew Wilson, indweller in Pathhead; George Robertson, stabler without Bristoport [Edinburgh]; William Hall, indweller in Edinburgh; John Frier, indweller there; and John Galloway, servant to Peter Galloway, horse-hirer in Kinghorn.’ Within three days, the whole of them were taken and brought to Edinburgh under a strong guard.

Wilson, Robertson, and Hall were tried on the 2d of March, and condemned to suffer death on the ensuing 14th of April. Five days before that appointed for the execution—Hall having meanwhile been reprieved—Wilson and Robertson made an attempt to escape from the condemned cell of the Old Tolbooth, but failed in consequence of Wilson, who was a squat man, sticking in the grated window. Two days later, the two prisoners being taken, according to custom, to attend service in the adjacent church, Wilson seized two of the guard with his hands, and a third with his teeth, so as to enable Robertson, who knocked down the fourth, to get away. The citizens, whose sympathies went strongly with the men as victims of the excise laws, were much excited by these events, and the authorities were apprehensive that the execution of Wilson would not pass over without an attempt at rescue. The apprehension was strongly shared by John Porteous, captain of the town-guard, who consequently became excited to a degree disqualifying him for so delicate a duty as that of guarding the execution. When the time came, the poor smuggler was duly suspended from the gallows in the Grassmarket, without any disturbance; but when the hangman proceeded to cut down the body, the populace began to throw stones, and the detested official was obliged to take refuge among the men of the guard. Porteous, needlessly infuriated by this demonstration, seized a musket, and fired among the crowd, commanding his men to do the same. 595|1735.| There was consequently a full fusillade, attended by the instant death of six persons, and the wounding of nine more.

The magistrates being present at the windows of a tavern close by, it was inexcusable of Porteous to have fired without their orders, even had there been any proper occasion for so strong a measure. As it was, he had clearly committed manslaughter on an extensive scale, and was liable to severe punishment. By the public at large he was regarded as a ferocious murderer, who could scarcely expiate with his own life the wrongs he had done to his fellow-citizens. Accordingly, when subjected to trial for murder on the ensuing 5th of July, condemnation was almost a matter of course.

The popular antipathy to the excise laws, the general hatred in which Porteous was held as a harsh official, and a man of profligate life, and the indignation at his needlessly taking so many innocent lives, combined to create a general rejoicing over the issue of the trial. There were some, however, chiefly official persons and their connections, who were not satisfied as to the fairness of his assize, and, whether it was fair or not, felt it to be hard to punish what was at most an excess in the performance of public duty, with death. On a representation of the case to the queen, who was at the head of a regency during the absence of her husband in Hanover, a respite of six weeks was granted, five days before that appointed for the execution.^[736]

1736.

596The consequent events are so well known, that it is unnecessary here to give them in more than outline. The populace of Edinburgh heard of the respite of Porteous with savage rage, and before the eve of what was to have been his last day, a resolution was formed that, if possible, the original order of the law should be executed. The magistrates heard of mischief being designed, but disregarded it as only what they called ‘cadies’ clatters;’ that is, the gossip of street-porters. About nine in the evening of the 7th September, a small party of men came into the city at the West Port, beating a drum, and were quickly followed by a considerable crowd. Proceeding by the Cowgate, they shut the two gates to the eastward, and planted a guard at each. The ringleaders then advanced with a large and formidable mob towards the Tolbooth, in which Porteous lay confined. The magistrates came out from a tavern, and tried to oppose the progress of the conspirators, but were beat off with a shower of stones. Other persons of importance whom they met, were civilly treated, but turned away from the scene of action. Reaching the door of the prison, they battered at it for a long time in vain, and at length it was found necessary to burn it. This being a tedious 597|1736.| process, it was thought by the magistrates that there might be time to introduce troops from the Canongate, and so save the intended victim. Mr Patrick Lindsay, member for the city, at considerable hazard, made his way over the city wall, and conferred with General Moyle at his lodging in the Abbeyhill; but the general hesitated to act without the authority of the Lord Justice Clerk (Milton), who lived at Brunstain House, five miles off. Thus time was fatally lost. After about an hour and a half, the rioters forced their way into the jail, and seized the trembling Porteous, whom they lost no time in dragging along the street towards the usual place of execution. As they went down the West Bow, they broke open a shop, took a supply of rope, and left a guinea for it on the table. Then coming to the scene of what they regarded as his crime, they suspended the wretched man over a dyer’s pole, and having first waited to see that he was dead, quietly dispersed.

The legal authorities made strenuous efforts to identify some of the rioters, but wholly without success. The subsequent futile endeavour of the government to punish the corporation of Edinburgh by statute, belongs to the history of the country.

June 24.

Considering how important have been the proceedings under the act of the ninth parliament of Queen Mary Anentis Witchcrafts, it seems proper that we advert to the fact of its being from this day repealed in the parliament of Great Britain, along with the similar English act of the first year of King James I. It became from that time incompetent to institute any suit for ‘witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration,’ and only a crime to pretend to exercise such arts, liable to be punished by a year’s imprisonment, with the pillory. There seems to be little known regarding the movement for abolishing these laws. We only learn that it was viewed with disapprobation by the more zealously pious people in Scotland, one of whom, Mr Erskine of Grange, member for Clackmannanshire, spoke pointedly against it in the House of Commons. Seeing how clearly the offence is described in scripture, and how direct is the order for its punishment, it seemed to these men a symptom of latitudinarianism that the old statute should be withdrawn. When the body of dissenters, calling themselves the Associate Synod in 1742, framed their Testimony against the errors of the established church and of the times generally, one of the specific things condemned was the repeal of the acts against witchcraft, which was declared to be ‘contrary to 598|1736.| the express letter of the law of God, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”’

Nov. 8.

Amongst the gay and ingenious, who patronised and defended theatricals, Allan Ramsay stood conspicuous. He entertained a kind of enthusiasm on the subject, was keenly controversial in behalf of the stage, and willing to incur some risk in the hope of seeing his ideal of a sound drama in Scotland realised. We have seen traces of his taking an immediate and personal interest in the performances carried on for a few years by the ‘Edinburgh Company of Comedians’ in the Tailors’ Hall. He was now induced to enter upon the design of rearing, in Edinburgh, a building expressly adapted as a theatre; and we find him going on with the work in the summer of this year, and announcing that ‘the New Theatre in Carrubber’s Close’ would be opened on the 1st of November. The poet at the same time called upon gentlemen and ladies who were inclined to take annual tickets, of which there were to be forty at 30s. each, to come forward and subscribe before a particular day, after which the price would be raised to two guineas.

Honest Allan knew he would have to encounter the frowns of the clergy, and be reckoned as a rash speculator by many of his friends; but he never expected that any legislative enactment would interfere to crush his hopes. So it was, however. The theatre in Carrubber’s Close was opened on the 8th of November, and found to be, in the esteem of all judges, ‘as complete and finished with as good a taste as any of its size in the three kingdoms.’^[737] A prologue was spoken by Mr Bridges, setting forth the moral powers of the drama, and attacking its enemies—those who

‘From their gloomy thoughts and want of sense,

Think what diverts the mind gives Heaven offence.’

The Muse, it was said, after a long career of glory in ancient times, had reached the shores of England, where Shakspeare taught her to soar:

‘At last, transported by your tender care,

She hopes to keep her seat of empire here.

For your protection, then, ye fair and great,

This fabric to her use we consecrate;

On you it will depend to raise her name,

And in Edina fix her lasting fame.’

1736.

599Alas! all these hopes of a poet were soon clouded. Before the Carrubber’s Close playhouse had seen out its first season, an act was passed (10 Geo. II. chap. 28) explaining one of Queen Anne regarding rogues and vagabonds, the whole object in reality being to prevent any persons from acting plays for hire, without authority or licence by letters-patent from the king or his Lord Chamberlain.^[738] This put a complete barrier to the poet’s design, threw the new playhouse useless upon his hands,^[739] and had nearly shipwrecked his fortunes. He addressed a poetical account of his disappointment to the new Lord President of the Court of Session, Duncan Forbes, a man who united a taste for elegant literature with the highest Christian graces. He recites the project of the theatre:

‘Last year, my lord, nae farther gane,

A costly wark was undertane

By me, wha had not the least dread

An act would knock it on the head:

A playhouse new, at vast expense,

To be a large, yet bien defence,

In winter nights, ’gainst wind and weet,

To ward frae cauld the lasses sweet;

While they with bonny smiles attended,

To have their little failings mended.’

He asks if he who has written with the approbation of the entire country, shall be confounded with rogues and rascals, be twined of his hopes, and

‘Be made a loser, and engage

With troubles in declining age,

While wights to whom my credit stands

For sums, make sour and thrawn demands?’

Shall a good public object be defeated?

‘When ice and snaw o’ercleads the isle,

Wha now will think it worth their while

To leave their gousty country bowers,

For the ance blythesome Edinburgh’s towers,

Where there’s no glee to give delight,

And ward frae spleen the langsome night?’

He pleads with the Session for at least a limited licence.

‘... I humbly pray

Our lads may be allowed to play,

600At least till new-house debts be paid off,

The cause that I’m the maist afraid of;

Which lade lies on my single back,

And I maun pay it ilka plack.’

1736.

Else let the legislature relieve him of the burden of his house,

‘By ordering frae the public fund

A sum to pay for what I’m bound;

Syne, for amends for what I’ve lost,

Edge me into some canny post.’

All this was of course but vain prattle. The piece appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine (August 1737), and no doubt awoke some sympathy; but the poet had to bear single-handed the burden of a heavy loss, as a reward for his spirited attempt to enliven the beau monde of Edinburgh.

Nov. 28.

Amongst other symptoms of a tendency to social enjoyments at this time, we cannot overlook a marked progress of free-masonry throughout the country. This day, the festival of the tutelar saint of Scotland, the Masters and Wardens of forty regular lodges met in St Mary’s Chapel, in Edinburgh, and unanimously elected as their Grand Master, William Sinclair, of Roslin, Esq., representative of an ancient though reduced family, which had been in past ages much connected with free-masonry.

On St John’s Day, 27th December, this act was celebrated by the freemasons of Inverness, with a procession to the cross in white gloves and aprons, and with the proper badges, the solemnity being concluded with ‘a splendid ball to the ladies.’^[740]

1737. June 30.

The Edinburgh officials who had been taken to London for examination regarding the Porteous Riot, being now at liberty to return, there was a general wish in the city to give them a cordial reception. The citizens rode out in a great troop to meet them, and the road for miles was lined with enthusiastic pedestrians. The Lord Provost, Alexander Wilson, from modesty, eluded the reception designed for him; but the rest came through the city, forming a procession of imposing length, while bells rang and bonfires blazed, and the gates of the Netherbow, which had been removed since the 7th of September last, were put up again amidst the shouts of the multitude.

A month later, one Baillie, who had given evidence before the Lords’ Committee tending to criminate the magistrates, returned 601|1737.| in a vessel from London, and had no sooner set his foot on shore than he found himself beset by a mighty multitude bent on marking their sense of his conduct. To collect the people, some seized and rang a ship’s bell; others ran through the streets ringing small bells. ‘Bloody Baillie is come!’ passed from mouth to mouth. The poor man, finding that thousands were gathered for his honour, flung himself into the stage-coach for Edinburgh, and was solely indebted to a fellow-passenger of the other sex for the safety in which he reached his home.

Captain Lind, of the Town-guard, having given similar evidence, was discharged by the town-council; but the government immediately after appointed him ‘lieutenant in Tyrawley’s regiment of South British Fusiliers at Gibraltar.’^[741]

1738. Feb. 3.

It was still customary to keep recruits in prison till an opportunity was obtained of shipping them off for service. A hundred young men, who had been engaged for the Dutch republic in Scotland, had been for some time confined in the Canongate Tolbooth, where probably their treatment was none of the best. Disappointed in several attempts at escape, they turned at length mutinous, and it was necessary to carry four of the most dangerous to a dungeon in the lower part of the prison. By this the rest were so exasperated, ‘that they seized one of their officers and the turnkey, whom they clapped in close custody, and, barricading the prison-door, bade defiance to all authority. At the same time they intimated that, if their four comrades were not instantly delivered up to them, they would send the officer and turnkey to where the d—— sent his mother; so that their demand was of necessity complied with.’

During all the next day (Saturday) they remained in their fortress without any communication either by persons coming in or by persons going out. The authorities revolved the idea of a forcible attempt to reduce them to obedience; but it seemed better to starve them into a surrender. On the Sunday evening, their provisions being exhausted, they beat a chamade and hung out a white flag; whereupon some of their officers and a few officers of General Whitham’s regiment entered into a capitulation with them; and, a general amnesty being granted, they delivered up their stronghold. ‘It is said they threatened, in case of non-compliance with their articles, to fall instantly about eating the turnkey.’^[742]

1738. Aug.

602Isabel Walker, under sentence of death at Dumfries for child-murder, obtained a reprieve through unexpected means. According to a letter dated Edinburgh, August 10, 1738, ‘This unhappy creature was destitute of friends, and had none to apply for her but an only sister, a girl of a fine soul, that overlooked the improbability of success, and helpless and alone, went to London to address the great; and solicited so well, that she got for her, first, a reprieve, and now a remission. Such another instance of onerous friendship can scarce be shewn; it well deserved the attention of the greatest, who could not but admire the virtue, and on that account engage in her cause.’^[743]

Helen Walker, who acted this heroic part, was the daughter of a small farmer in the parish of Irongray. Her sister, who had been under her care, having concealed her pregnancy, it came to be offered to Helen as a painful privilege, that she could save the accused if she could say, on the trial, that she had received any communication from Isabel regarding her condition. She declared it to be impossible that she should declare a falsehood even to save a sister’s life; and condemnation accordingly took place. Helen then made a journey on foot to London, in the hope of being able to plead for her sister’s life; and, having almost by accident gained the ear and interest of the Duke of Argyle, she succeeded in an object which most persons would have said beforehand was next to unattainable.

Isabel afterwards married her lover, and lived at Whitehaven for many years. Helen survived till 1791, a poor peasant woman, living by the sale of eggs and other small articles, or doing country work, but always distinguished by a quiet self-respect, which prevented any one from ever talking to her of this singular adventure of her early days. Many years after she had been laid in Irongray kirkyard, a lady who had seen and felt an interest in her communicated her story to Sir Walter Scott, who expanded it into a tale (The Heart of Mid-Lothian) of which the chief charm lies in the character and actings of the self-devoted heroine. It was one of the last, and not amongst the least worthy, acts of the great fictionist to raise a monument over her grave, with the following inscription:

‘This stone was erected by the Author of Waverley to the memory of Helen Walker, who died in the year of God 1791. This humble individual practised in real life the virtues with which 603|1738.| fiction has invested the imaginary character of Jeanie Deans; refusing the slightest departure from veracity, even to save the life of a sister, she nevertheless shewed her hardiness and fortitude in rescuing her from the severity of the law, at the expense of personal exertions which the time rendered as difficult as the motive was laudable. Respect the grave of poverty when combined with love of truth and dear affection.’

1739. Jan.

This month was commenced in Edinburgh a monthly miscellany and chronicle, which long continued to fill a useful place in the world under the name of the Scots Magazine. It was framed on the model of the Gentleman’s Magazine, which had commenced in London eight years before, and the price of each number was the modest one of sixpence. Being strictly a magazine or store, into which were collected all the important newspaper matters of the past month, it could not be considered as a literary effort of much pretension, though its value to us as a picture of the times referred to is all the greater. Living persons connected with periodical literature will hear with a smile that this respectable miscellany was, about 1763 and 1764, conducted by a young man, a corrector of the press in the printing-office which produced it, and whose entire salary for this and other duties was sixteen shillings a week.^[744]

Jan. 14.

A hurricane from the west-south-west, commencing at one in the morning, and accompanied by lightning, swept across the south of Scotland, and seems to have been beyond parallel for destructiveness in the same district before or since. The blowing down of chimneys, the strewing of the streets with tiles and slates, were among the lightest of its performances. It tore sheet-lead from churches and houses, and made it fly through the air like paper. In the country, houses were thrown down, trees uprooted by hundreds, and corn-stacks scattered. A vast number of houses took fire. At least one church, that of Killearn, was prostrated. Both on the west and east coast, many ships at sea and in harbour were damaged or destroyed. ‘At Loch Leven, in Fife, great shoals of perches and pikes were driven a great way into the fields; so that the country people got horse-loads of them, and sold them at one penny per hundred.’ The number of casualties to life and limb seems, after all, to have been small.^[745]

1730.

604James, second Earl of Rosebery, was one who carried the vices and follies of his age to such extravagance as to excite a charitable belief that he was scarcely an accountable person. In his father’s lifetime, he had been several times in the Old Tolbooth for small debts. In 1726, after he had succeeded to the family title, he was again incarcerated there for not answering the summons of the Court of Justiciary ‘for deforcement, riot, and spulyie.’ A few years later, his estates are found in the hands of trustees.

At this date, he excited the merriment of the thoughtless, and the sadness of all other persons, by advertising the elopement of a girl named Polly Rich, who had been engaged for a year as his servant; describing her as a London girl, or ‘what is called a Cockney,’ about eighteen, ‘fine-shaped and blue-eyed,’ having all her linen marked with his cornet and initials. Two guineas reward were offered to whoever should restore her to her ‘right owner,’ either at John’s Coffee-house, or ‘the Earl of Roseberry, at Denham’s Land, Bristow, and no questions will be asked.’^[746]

The potato—introduced from its native South American ground by Raleigh into Ireland, and so extensively cultivated there in the time of the civil wars, as to be a succour to the poor when all cereal crops had been destroyed by the soldiery—transplanted thence to England, but so little cultivated there towards the end of the seventeenth century, as to be sold in 1694 at sixpence or eightpence a pound^[747]—is first heard of in Scotland in 1701, when the Duchess of Buccleuch’s household-book mentions a peck of the esculent as brought from Edinburgh, and costing 2s. 6d.^[748] We hear of it in 1733, as used occasionally at supper in the house of the Earl of Eglintoun, in Ayrshire.^[749] About this time, it was beginning to be cultivated in gardens, but still with a hesitation about its moral character, for no reader of Shakspeare requires to be told that some of the more uncontrollable passions of human nature were supposed to be favoured by its use.^[750]

1739.

605At the date here noted, a gentleman, styled Robert Graham of Tamrawer, factor on the forfeited estate of Kilsyth, ventured on the heretofore unknown step of planting a field of potatoes. His experiment was conducted on a half-acre of ground ‘on the croft of Neilstone, to the north of the town of Kilsyth.’ It appears that the root was now, and for a good while after, cultivated only on lazy beds. Many persons—amongst whom was the Earl of Perth, who joined in the insurrection of 1745—came from great distances to witness so extraordinary a novelty, and inquire into the mode of culture.

The field-culture of the potato was introduced about 1746 into the county of Edinburgh by a man named Henry Prentice, who had made a little money as a travelling-merchant, and was now engaged in market-gardening.^[751] His example was soon extensively followed, and before 1760 the root was very generally reared in fields, as it is at present.

1740. Jan.

A frost, which began on the 26th of the previous month, lasted during the whole of this, and was long remembered for its severity, and the many remarkable circumstances attending it. We nowhere get a scientific statement of the temperature at any period of its duration; but the facts related are sufficient to prove that this was far below any point ordinarily attained in this country. The principal rivers of Scotland were frozen over, and there was such a general stoppage of water-mills, that the knocking-stones usually employed in those simple days for husking grain in small quantities, and of which there was one at nearly every cottage-door, were used on this occasion as means of grinding it. Such mills as had a flow of water, were worked on Sundays as well as 606|1740.| ordinary days. In some harbours, the ships were frozen up. Food rose to famine prices, and large contributions were required from the rich to keep the poor alive.

The frost was severe all over the northern portion of Europe. The Thames at London being thickly frozen over, a fair was held upon it, with a multitude of shows and popular amusements. At Newcastle, men digging coal in the pits were obliged to have fires kindled to keep them warm; and one mine was through this cause ignited permanently. In the metropolis, coal became so scarce as to reach 70s. per chaldron; and there also much misery resulted among the poor. People perished of cold in the fields, and even in the streets, and there was a prodigious mortality amongst birds and other wild animals.

Oct.

In consequence of the failure of the crop of this year, Scotland was now undergoing the distresses attendant upon the scarcity and high price of provisions. The populace of Edinburgh attacked the mills, certain granaries in Leith, and sundry meal-shops, and possessed themselves of several hundred bolls of grain, the military forces being too limited in number to prevent them. Several of the rioters being captured, a mob attempted their rescue, and thus led to a fusillade from the soldiery, by which three persons were wounded, one of them mortally. Great efforts were made by the magistracy to obtain corn at moderate prices for the people, by putting in force the laws against reservation of grain from market, and the dealing in it with a view to profit; also by the more rational method of subscriptions among the rich for the sale of meal at comparatively low rates to the poor. The magistrates of Edinburgh also invited importations of foreign grain (December 19), proclaiming that, in case of any being seized by mobs, the community should make good the loss.^[752]

1741. July.

George Whitfield, whose preachings had been stirring up a great commotion in England for some years past, came to Scotland, and for a time held forth at various places in the open air, particularly on the spot where the Edinburgh Theatre afterwards stood. ‘This gentleman,’ says a contemporary chronicler, ‘recommends the essentials of religion, and decries the distinguishing punctilios of parties; exclaims against the moral preachers of the age; preaches the doctrine of free grace according to the 607|1741.| predestinarian scheme; mentions often the circumstance of his own regeneration, and what success he has had in his ministerial labours.’^[753] Having heard of the late secession from the Church of Scotland by a set of clergymen reputed to be unusually sanctimonious, he was eager to fraternise with them, and lost no time in preaching to the congregation of Mr Ralph Erskine at Dunfermline. But here he met unexpected difficulties. The Scottish seceders could not hold out the right hand of fellowship to one who did not unite with them in their testimony against defective churches. He was a man of too broad sympathies to suit them; so they parted; and Whitfield from that time fraternised solely with the established clergy.

1742. Feb.

About this time began a series of religious demonstrations, chiefly centering at Cambuslang on the Clyde, and long after recognised accordingly as the Camb’slang Wark. Mr Whitfield, in his visit of some months last year, had stirred up a new zeal in the Established Church. Mr M‘Culloch, minister of Cambuslang, was particularly inflamed by his eloquence, and he had all winter been addressing his flock in an unusually exciting manner. The local fervour waxing stronger and stronger, a shoemaker and a weaver at length lent their assistance to it, and now it was breaking out in those transports of terror of hell-fire, prostrate penitence, and rejoicing re-assurance, which mark what is called a revival. The meetings chiefly took place in a natural amphitheatre or holm, on the river’s side, and were externally very picturesque. There seldom was wanting a row of patients in front of the minister, with their heads tied up, and pitchers of water ready to recover those who fainted. Early in the summer, Mr Whitfield returned to Scotland, and immediately came to lend his assistance to the work, both at Cambuslang, and in the Barony parish of Glasgow. ‘From that time the multitudes who assembled were more numerous than they had ever been, or perhaps than any congregation which had ever before been collected in Scotland; the religious impressions made on the people were apparently much greater and more general; and the visible convulsive agitations which accompanied them, exceeded everything of the kind which had yet been observed.’^[754] The clergy of the establishment were pleased with what was going on, as it served to shew that their lamp was not gone out, thereby enabling them to hold up their heads against the taunts of the Secession as to growing 608|1742.| lukewarmness and defection. And they pointed with pathetic earnestness to the many sinners converted from evil ways, as a proof that real good was done. On the other hand, the seceders loudly deplored ‘the present awful symptom of the Lord’s anger with the church and land, in sending them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie,’ and ordained a day to be observed as a fast, in order to avert the evils they apprehended in consequence.^[755] A fierce controversy raged for some time between the two bodies, as to whether the Camb’slang Wark was of God or of the Devil, each person being generally swayed in his decision by his love for, or aversion to, the Established Church. A modern divine just quoted (Erskine), disclaims for them a miraculous character, but asserts, as matter of historic verity, that fully four hundred persons at Cambuslang underwent a permanent religious change, independent of those who were converted in like manner at Kilsyth. It is understood that the proceedings of the Associate Synod on the occasion have since been much deplored by their successors.

Oct. 10.

Public attention was strongly roused by an accident of an uncommon kind which happened in the lowlands of Ross-shire. The church of Fearn parish was an old Gothic structure covered with a heavy roof of flagstone. This day, being Sunday, while the parishioners were assembled at worship, the roof and part of the side-wall gave way, under the pressure of a load of prematurely fallen snow; and the bulk of the people present were buried under the ruins. The fortunate arrangement of the seats of the gentry in the side recesses saved most of that class from injury; and the minister, Mr Donald Ross, was protected by the sounding-board of his pulpit. There chanced to be present Mr James Robertson, the minister of Lochbroom, a man of uncommon personal strength and great dexterity and courage. He, planting his shoulder under a falling lintel, sustained it till a number of the people escaped. Forty poor people were dug out dead, and in such a state of mutilation that it was found necessary to huddle them all into one grave.^[756]

1743.

The period of the extinction of wild and dangerous animals in a country is of some importance, as an indication of its 609|1743.| advance in civilisation, and of the appropriation of its soil for purely economic purposes. One learns with a start how lately the wolf inhabited the Highlands of Scotland. It is usually said that the species was extirpated about 1680 by the famous Sir Ewen Cameron of Locheil; but the tradition to that effect appears to be only true of Sir Ewen’s own district of Western Inverness-shire, and there is reason to believe that the year at which this chronicle has arrived is the date of the death of the last wolf in the entire kingdom. The slayer of the animal is represented as being a notable Highland deer-stalker of great stature and strength, named Macqueen of Pall-a’-chrocain, and the Forest of Tarnaway in Morayland is assigned as the scene of the incident. The popular Highland narration on the subject is as follows:

‘One winter’s day, about the year before mentioned, Macqueen received a message from the Laird of Macintosh that a large “black beast,” supposed to be a wolf, had appeared in the glens, and the day before killed two children, who, with their mother, were crossing the hills from Calder; in consequence of which a “Tainchel,” or gathering to drive the country, was called to meet at a tryst above Fi-Giuthas, where Macqueen was invited to attend with his dogs. Pall-a’-chrocain informed himself of the place where the children had been killed, the last tracks of the wolf, and the conjectures of his haunts, and promised his assistance.

‘In the morning the “Tainchel” had long assembled, and Macintosh waited with impatience, but Macqueen did not arrive; his dogs and himself were, however, auxiliaries too important to be left behind, and they continued to wait until the best of a hunter’s morning was gone, when at last he appeared, and Macintosh received him with an irritable expression of disappointment.

‘“Ciod e a’ chabhag?—“What was the hurry?” said Pall-a’-chrocain.

‘Macintosh gave an indignant retort, and all present made some impatient reply.

‘Macqueen lifted his plaid, and drew the black bloody head of the wolf from under his arm—“Sin e dhùibh”—“There it is for you!” said he, and tossed it on the grass in the midst of the surprised circle.

‘Macintosh expressed great joy and admiration, and gave him the land called Sean-achan for meat to his dogs.’^[757]

1743. May.

610Owing to a severe spring, a malady called ‘fever and cold’ prevailed in Edinburgh, and was spreading all over the country. On Sunday, the 8th May, fifty sick people were prayed for in the city churches, and in the preceding week there had been seventy burials in the Greyfriars, being three times the usual number.

July.

For a number of years, the six independent companies of armed Highlanders, commonly called the Reicudan Dhu, or Black Watch, had been effective in keeping down that system of cattle-lifting which ancient prejudice had taught the Highlanders generally to regard as only a kind of clan warfare. But in 1739, the government was induced to form these companies into a regular regiment for service in the foreign war then entered upon; and in March of this year, they were actually sent into England, leaving the Highlands without adequate protection. The consequence was an immediate revival of old practices.

In July of this year, it was reported to the Edinburgh newspapers that the highlands of Nairnshire were absolutely infested with depredators, who came by day as well as night, and drove off the cattle, not scrupling to kill the inhabitants when they were resisted. The proprietors were trying to form a watch or guard for the country; but these people often fell into complicity with the spoilers, or entered on a similar career themselves. The greatest confusion and difficulty prevailed, and other districts were soon after involved in the same calamitous grievance.

One day in October, a party of nine cearnochs or caterans, well armed, came from Rannoch into Badenoch, and laid a large part of the district under contribution, ‘forcing the people to capitulate for their lives at the expense of all they possessed,’ and carrying off a great quantity of sheep. The gentlemen of the district hastily assembled with some of their people, but felt greatly at a loss on account of their want of arms. Nevertheless, with a few old weapons, they resolved to attack the depredators. A smoke seen on a distant hillside led them to the place where the robbers were halting. Their firearms were by this time useless with wet; yet they fell on with great courage, and obtained a victory, at the expense of a wound to one of their party. Four of the offenders were secured, and carried to the prison at Ruthven.^[758] It was hoped that the fate of this party would deter others; but the hope was not realised.

1743.

611In March 1744, a general meeting of the gentlemen of the district of Badenoch took into consideration the sad state of their country. It was represented that, owing to the frequent thefts committed, the tenants were on the brink of utter ruin: some who paid not above fifteen pounds of rent, had suffered losses to the extent of a hundred. Evan Macpherson of Cluny, the leading man of the district, and a person of activity and intelligence, had been repeatedly entreated to undertake the formation and management of an armed watch, to be supported from such small contributions as could be raised; but he regarded the country as too poor to support such an establishment as would be necessary. Yet he now told them that, unless the king could protect them, he could suggest no other course than the putting of their own and the neighbouring districts under persons who could guard the country by their own armed retainers, and guarantee the restitution of lost goods to all such as would contribute to the necessary funds.

On the entreaty of his neighbours, Cluny, in May, did muster a number of his people, of honest character, whom he planted at the several passes through which predatory incursions were made, ‘giving them most strict orders that these passes should be punctually travelled and watched night and day, for keeping off, intercepting, seizing, and imprisoning the villains, as occasion offered, and as strictly forbidding and discharging them to act less or more in the ordinary way of other undertakers [leviers of black-mail], who, instead of suppressing theft, do greatly support it, by currying the favour of the thieves, and gratifying them for their diverting of the weight of theft from such parts of the countries as pay the undertaker for their protection, to such parts as do not pay them.’

Cluny is allowed to have tolerably well effected his purpose. The thieves, being hemmed in by him, and reduced to great straits, offered to keep his own lands skaithless if he would cease to guard those of his neighbours, a proposal to which, as might be expected, he gave no heed. They tried to evade his vigilance by taking a spreath of cattle from Strathnairn by boats across Loch Ness, instead of by the ordinary route; but he then set guards on the ferries of Loch Ness, albeit at a great additional expense. The lands of gentlemen who declined to contribute were as safe as those in the opposite circumstances. He was even able to restore some cattle taken from distant places, as Banffshire, Strathallan, and the Colquhoun’s grounds near Dumbarton.^[759]

1743.

612The Rev. Mr Lapslie, writing in 1795 the statistical account of his parish of Campsie, remarks with a feeling of wonder the fact that, so recently as 1744, his father ‘paid black-mail to Macgregor of Glengyle, in order to prevent depredations being made upon his property; Macgregor engaging, upon his part, to secure him from suffering any hardship [hership, that is, despoliation], as it was termed; and he faithfully fulfilled the contract; engaging to pay for all sheep which were carried away, if above the number of seven, which he styled a lifting; if below seven, he only considered it a piking; and for the honour of this warden of the Highland march, Mr John Lapslie having got fifteen sheep lifted in the commencement of the year 1745, Mr Macgregor actually had taken measures to have their value restored, when the rebellion broke out, and put an end to any further payment of black-mail, and likewise to Mr Macgregor’s self-created wardenship of the Highland borders.’^[760]

Oct.

We have seen that an abortive attempt was made in 1678 to set up a stage-coach between Edinburgh and Glasgow.^[761] Nothing more is heard of such a scheme till the present date, when John Walker, merchant in Edinburgh, proposed to the town council of Glasgow the setting up of a stage-coach between the two towns, for six persons, twice a week, for twenty weeks in summer, and once a week during the rest of the year, receiving ten shillings per passenger, provided that he should have the sale of two hundred tickets per annum guaranteed.^[762] This effort was likewise abortive.

It was not till 1758, when the population of Glasgow had risen to about thirty-five thousand, that a regular conveyance for passengers was established between the two cities. It was drawn by four horses, and the journey of forty-two miles was performed in twelve hours, the passengers stopping to dine on the way. Such was the only stage-coach on that important road for thirty years, nor during that time did any acceleration take place. A young lady of Glasgow, of distinguished beauty, having to travel to Edinburgh about 1780, a lover towards whom she was not very favourably disposed, took all the remaining tickets, was of course her sole companion on the journey, entertained her at dinner, and otherwise found such means of pressing his suit, that she soon after became his wife. This was, so far as it goes, a very pretty piece 613|1743.| of stage-coach romance; but, unluckily, the lover was unworthy of his good-fortune, and the lady, in a state of worse than widowhood, was, a few years after, the subject of the celebrated Clarinda correspondence of Burns.

Mr Palmer, the manager of the Bath Theatre, having succeeded in introducing his smart stage-coaches, one was established, in July 1788, between London and Glasgow, performing the distance (405 miles) in sixty-five hours. This seems to have led to an improvement in the conveyances between Edinburgh and the western city. Colin M‘Farlane, of the Buck’s Head Inn of Glasgow, announced, in the ensuing October, his having commenced a four-seated coach between the two cities every lawful day at eleven o’clock, thus permitting mercantile men to transact business at the banks and public offices before starting. ‘In most of the coaches running at present,’ says he, ‘six are admitted, and three into a chaise, which proves very disagreeable for passengers to be so situated for a whole day. The inconvenience is entirely removed by the above plan.... Owing to the lightness of the carriage, and frequent change of horses, she arrives at Glasgow and Edinburgh as soon as the carriages that set off early in the morning.’ ‘Price of the tickets from both towns, 9s. 6d.’^[763] Notwithstanding this provocative to emulation, ‘the Diligence’ for Edinburgh was announced in 1789 as starting from the Saracen’s Head each morning at nine, ‘or at any other hour the two first passengers might agree on.’^[764] It was not till 1799 that the time occupied by a stage-coach journey between these two cities was reduced so low as even six hours, being still an hour and a half beyond the time ultimately attained before the opening of the railway in 1842.

1744.

For some years the use of tea had been creeping in amongst nearly all ranks of the people. It was thought by many reflecting persons, amongst whom was the enlightened Lord President Forbes, to be in many respects an improper diet, expensive, wasteful of time, and calculated to render the population weakly and effeminate. During the course of this year, there was a vigorous movement all over Scotland for getting the use of tea abated. Towns, parishes, and counties passed resolutions condemnatory of the Chinese leaf, and pointing strongly to the manlier attractions of beer. The tenants of William Fullarton 614|1744.| of Fullarton, in Ayrshire, in a bond they entered into on the occasion, thus delivered themselves: ‘We, being all farmers by profession, think it needless to restrain ourselves formally from indulging in that foreign and consumptive luxury called tea; for when we consider the slender constitutions of many of higher rank, amongst whom it is used, we conclude that it would be but an improper diet to qualify us for the more robust and manly parts of our business; and therefore we shall only give our testimony against it, and leave the enjoyment of it altogether to those who can afford to be weak, indolent, and useless.’

1745. Oct.

Lord Lovat, writing to the Lord President Forbes on the 20th of this month, adverts to the effect of the civil broils in giving encouragement to men of prey in the Highlands. He says: ‘This last fortnight, my cousin William [Fraser], Struie’s uncle, that is married to Kilbockie’s daughter, and who is a very honest man, and she a good woman, had twenty fine cows stolen from him. The country [that is, the country people] went upon the track, and went into Lochaber and to Rannoch, and came up with the thieves in my Lord Breadalbane’s forest of Glenurchy. The thieves, upon seeing the party that pursued them, abandoned the cattle, and ran off; and William brought home his cattle, but had almost died, and all that was with him, of fatigue, cold, and hunger; but, indeed, it is the best-followed track that ever I heard of in any country. You see how loose the whole country is, when four villains durst come a hundred miles, and take up the best cattle they could find in this country; for they think there is no law, and that makes them so insolent.’^[765]

The practice of stealing cattle in the Highlands has already been several times alluded to, as well as the system of compromise called black-mail, by which honest people were enabled in some degree to secure themselves against such losses. Down to 1745, there does not appear to have been any very sensible abatement of this state of things, notwithstanding the keeping up of the armed companies, professedly for the maintenance of law and order. Perhaps the black-mail caused there being less robbery than would otherwise have been the case, and also the occasional restoration of property which had been taken away; but it was of course necessary for the exactors of the mail to allow at least as much despoliation as kept up the occasion for the tax. 615|1745.| Mr Graham of Gartmore, writing on this subject immediately after the close of the rebellion, enters into a calculation of the entire losses to the Highlands through robbery and its consequences.

‘It may be safely affirmed,’ he says, ‘that the horses, cows, sheep, and goats yearly stolen in that country are in value equal to £5000, and that the expenses lost in the fruitless endeavours to recover them, will not be less than £2000; that the extraordinary expenses of keeping [neat-]herds and servants to look more narrowly after cattle on account of stealing, otherwise not necessary, is £10,000. There is paid in black-mail or watch-money, openly or privately, £5000; and there is a yearly loss, by understocking the grounds, by reason of thefts, of at least £15,000; which is altogether a loss to landlords and farmers in the Highlands of £37,000 a year.

‘... The person chosen to command this watch, as it is called, is commonly one deeply concerned in the thefts himself, or at least that hath been in correspondence with the thieves, and frequently who hath occasioned thefts in order to make this watch, by which he gains considerably, necessary. The people employed travel through the country armed, night and day, under pretence of inquiring after stolen cattle, and by this means know the situation and circumstances of the whole country. And as the people thus employed are the very rogues that do these mischiefs, so one half of them are continued in their former businesses of stealing, that the business of the other half may be necessary in recovering.... Whoever considers the shameful way these watches were managed, particularly by Barrisdale and the Macgregors, in the west ends of Perth and Stirling shires, will easily see into the spirit, nature, and consequences of them.’^[766]