REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE: 1702–1714. (continued 2)

A petition presented by the worthy Protestant uncle to the Privy Council, makes us aware that George Maxwell of Munshes, ‘finding he would be reached for accepting the said factory, out of malice raised a lawburrows,’ in which Orchardton concurred, though out of the kingdom, against Gelstoun and his son, as a mere pretext for stopping proceedings; but he trusted the Lords would see through the trick, and defeat it by accepting the cautioners he offered for its suspension. The Council, doubtless duly indignant that a papist should so try to save his property, complied with Gelstoun’s petition.^[357]

Apr. 12.

A statute of the Sixth James, anno 1621—said to have been borrowed from one of Louis XIII. of France—had made it unlawful for any tavern-keeper to allow individuals to play in his house at cards and dice, or for any one to play at such games in a private house, unless where the master of the house was himself playing; likewise ordaining, that any sum above a hundred merks gained at horse-racing, or in less than twenty-four hours at other play, should be forfeited to the poor of the district. During the ensuing period of religious strictness, we hear little of gambling in Scotland, but when the spring was relaxed, it began to reappear with other vices of ease and prosperity. A case, reported in the law-books under July 1688, makes us aware, as by a peep through a curtain, that gentlemen were accustomed at that time to win and lose at play sums which appear large in comparison with incomes and means then general. It appears that Captain Straiton, who was well known afterwards as a busy Jacobite partisan, won from Sir Alexander Gilmour of Craigmillar, at cards, in one night, no less than six thousand merks, or £338, 6s. 8d. sterling. The captain first gained four thousand, for which he obtained a bond from Sir Alexander; then he gained two thousand more, and got a new bond for the whole. An effort was made to reduce the bond, but without success.

Francis Charteris, a cadet of an ancient and honourable family in Dumfriesshire, and who had served in Marlborough’s wars, was now figuring in Edinburgh as a member of the beau monde, with the reputation of being a highly successful gambler. There is a story told of him—but I cannot say with what truth—that, being at the Duke of Queensberry’s one evening, and playing with the 297|1704.| duchess, he was enabled, by means of a mirror, or more probably a couple of mirrors placed opposite each other, to see what cards she had in her hand, through which means he gained from her Grace no less a sum than three thousand pounds. It is added that the duke was provoked by this incident to get a bill passed through the parliament over which he presided, for prohibiting gambling beyond a certain moderate sum; but this must be a mistake, as no such act was then passed by the Scottish Estates; nor was any such statute necessary, while that of 1621 remained in force. We find, however, that the Town Council at this date issued an act of theirs, threatening vigorous action upon the statute of 1621, as concerned playing at cards and dice in public houses, as ‘the occasion of horrid cursing, quarrelling, tippling, loss of time, and neglect of necessary business—the constables to be diligent in detecting offenders, on pain of having to pay the fines themselves.’ Perhaps it was at the instigation of the duke that this step was taken.

From Fountainhall we learn that, about 1707, Sir Andrew Ramsay of Abbotshall lost 28,000 merks, to Sir Scipio Hill, at cards and dice, and granted a bond upon his estate for the amount. This being in contravention of the act of 1621, the kirk-treasurer put in his claim for all above 100 merks on behalf of the poor, but we do not learn with what success.

July 4.

Sir Thomas Dalyell of Binns—grandson of the old bearded persecutor of the times of the Charleses—had for a long time past been ‘troubled with a sore disease which affects his reason, whereby he is continually exposed to great dangers to his own person, by mobs, and others that does trouble him.’ It was also found that ‘by the force of his disease, he is liable to squander away and dilapidate his best and readiest effects, as is too notourly known.’ Such is the statement of Sir Thomas’s nephew, Robert Earl of Carnwath; his sister, Magdalen Dalyell; and her husband, James Monteith of Auldcathie, craving authority, ‘for the preservation of his person and estate, and also for the public peace,’ to take him into custody in his house of Binns, ‘till means be used for his recovery;’ likewise power to employ a factor ‘for uplifting so much of his rents as may be necessar for his subsistence, and the employing doctors and apothecaries, according to the exigence of his present condition.’

The Council not only granted the petition, but ordained that the petitioners might order up a soldier or two at any 298|1704.| time from Blackness, to assist in restraining the unfortunate gentleman.

This Sir Thomas Dalyell died unmarried, leaving his estates and baronetcy to a son of his sister Magdalen, grandfather of the present baronet. The case is cited as shewing the arrangements for a lunatic man of rank in the days of Queen Anne.

July.

The central authorities were now little inclined to take up cases of sorcery; but it does not appear that on that account witches ceased to be either dreaded or punished. Country magistrates and clergy were always to be found who sympathised with the popular terrors on the subject, and were ready to exert themselves in bringing witches to justice.

At the village of Torryburn, in the western part of Fife, a woman called Jean Neilson experienced a tormenting and not very intelligible ailment, which she chose to attribute to the malpractices of a woman named Lillias Adie. Adie was accordingly taken up by a magistrate, and put in prison. On the 29th July, the minister and his elders met in session, called Lillias before them, and were gratified with an instant confession, to the effect that she had been a witch for several years, having met the devil at the side of a ‘stook’ on the harvest-field, and renounced her baptism to him, not without a tender embrace, on which occasion she found that his skin was cold, and observed his feet cloven like those of a stirk. She had also joined in midnight dances where he was present. Once, at the back of Patrick Sands’s house in Valleyfield, the festivity was lighted by a light that ‘came from darkness,’ not so bright as a candle, but sufficient to let them see each other’s faces, and shew the devil, who wore a cap covering his ears and neck. Several of the women she saw on these occasions she now delated as witches. The session met again and again to hear such recitals, and to examine the newly accused persons. There was little reported but dance-meetings of the alleged witches, and conversations with the devil, the whole bearing very much the character of what we have come to recognise as hallucinations or spectral illusions. Yet the case of Adie was considered sufficient to infer the pains of death, and she was burned within the sea-mark. There were several other solemn meetings of the session to inquire into the cases of the other women accused by Adie; but we do not learn with what result.

The extreme length to which this affair was carried may be partly attributed to the zeal of the minister, the Rev. Allan 299|1704.| Logan, who is said to have been particularly knowing in the detection of witches. At the administration of the communion, he would cast his eye along, and say: ‘You witch-wife, get up from the table of the Lord,’ when some poor creature, perhaps conscience-struck with a recollection of wicked thoughts, would rise and depart, thus exposing herself to the hazard of a regular accusation afterwards. He used to preach against witchcraft, and we learn that, in 1709, a woman called Helen Key was accused before the Torryburn session of using some disrespectful language about him in consequence. She told a neighbour, it appears, that on hearing him break out against the witches, she thought him ‘daft’ [mad], and took up her stool and left the kirk. For this she was convicted of profanity, and ordained to sit before the congregation and be openly rebuked.^[358]

Rather earlier in the year, there was a remarkable outbreak of diablerie at the small seaport burgh of Pittenweem, in the eastern part of Fife. Here lived a woman named Beatrix or Beatie Laing, described as ‘spouse to William Brown, tailor, late treasurer of the burgh,’ and who must therefore be inferred to have been not quite amongst the poorer class of people. In a petition from the magistrates (June 13, 1704) to the Privy Council, it was stated that Patrick Morton was a youth of sixteen, ‘free of any known vice,’ and that, being employed by his father to make some nails for a ship belonging to one of the merchants in Pittenweem, he was engaged at that work in his father’s smithy, when Beatrix Laing came and desired him to make some nails for her. He modestly refused, alleging that he was engaged in another job requiring haste, whereupon she went away ‘threatening to be revenged, which did somewhat frighten him, because he knew she was under a bad fame and reputed for a witch.’

Next day, as he passed Beatrix’s door, ‘he observed a timber vessel with some water and a fire-coal in it at the door, which made him apprehend that it was a charm laid for him, and the effects of her threatening; and immediately he was seized with such a weakness in his limbs, that he could hardly stand or walk.’ He continued for many weeks in a languishing condition, in spite of all that physicians could do for him, ‘still growing worse, having no appetite, and his body strangely emaciated. About the beginning of May, his case altered to the worse by his having 300|1704.| such strange and unusual fits as did astonish all onlookers. His belly at times was distended to a great height; at other times, the bones of his back and breast did rise to a prodigious height, and suddenly fell,’ while his breathing ‘was like to the blowing of a bellows.’ At other times, ‘his body became rigid and inflexible, insomuch that neither his arms nor legs could be bowed or moved by any strength, though frequently tried.’ His senses were ‘benumbed, and yet his pulse [continued] in good order.’ His head sometimes turned half about, and no force could turn it back again. He suffered grievous agonies. His tongue was occasionally drawn back in his throat, ‘especially when he was telling who were his tormentors.’ Sometimes the magistrates or minister brought these people to his house, and before he saw them, he would cry out they were coming, and name them. The bystanders would cover his face, bring in the women he had accused of tormenting him, besides others, and cause them to touch him in succession; when he expressed pain as the alleged tormentors laid their hands upon him, and in the other instances ‘no effect followed.’ It seemed to the magistrates that the young man was in much the same condition with ‘that of Bargarran’s daughter in the west.’

Beatrix, and the other accused persons, were thrown into the jail of the burgh by the minister and magistrates, with a guard of drunken fellows to watch over them. Beatrix steadily refused to confess being a witch, and was subjected to pricking, and kept awake for five days and nights, in order to bring her to a different frame of mind. Sorely wounded, and her life a burden to her, she at length was forced, in order to be rid of the torment, to admit what was imputed to her. It will thus be observed that the humane practice maintained during the whole of the late cavalier reigns, of only accepting voluntary confessions from persons taxed with witchcraft, was no longer in force. The poor woman afterwards avowing that what she had told them of her seeing the devil and so forth was false, ‘they put her in the stocks, and then carried her to the Thieves’ Hole, and from that transported her to a dark dungeon, where she was allowed no manner of light, or human converse, and in this condition she lay for five months.’ During this interval, the sapient magistrates, with their parish minister, were dealing with the Privy Council to get the alleged witches brought to trial. At first, the design was entertained of taking them to Edinburgh for that purpose; but ultimately, through the humane interference of the Earl of 301|1704.| Balcarres and Lord Anstruther,^[359] two members of council connected with the district, the poor women were set at liberty on bail (August 12). This, however, was so much in opposition to the will of the rabble, that Beatrix Laing was obliged to decamp from her native town. ‘She wandered about in strange places, in the extremity of hunger and cold, though she had a competency at home, but dared not come near her own house for fear of the fury and rage of the people.’

It was indeed well for this apparently respectable woman that she, for the meantime, remained at a distance from home. While she was wandering about, another woman, named Janet Cornfoot, was put in confinement at Pittenweem, under a specific charge from Alexander Macgregor, a fisherman, to the effect that he had been beset by her and two others one night, along with the devil, while sleeping in his bed. By torture, Cornfoot was forced into acknowledging this fact, which she afterwards denied privately, under equal terror for the confession and the retractation. However, her case beginning to attract attention from some persons of rank and education in the neighbourhood, the minister seems to have become somewhat doubtful of it, and by his connivance she escaped. Almost immediately, an officious clergyman of the neighbourhood apprehended her again, and sent her back to Pittenweem in the custody of two men.

Falling there into the hands of the populace, the wretched woman was tied hard up in a rope, beaten unmercifully, and then dragged by the heels through the streets and along the shore. The appearance of a bailie for a brief space dispersed the crowd, but only to shew how easily the authorities might have protected the victim, if they had chosen. Resuming their horrible work, the rabble tied Janet to a rope stretching between a vessel in the harbour and the shore, swinging her to and fro, and amusing themselves by pelting her with stones. Tiring at length of this sport, they let her down with a sharp fall upon the beach, beat her again unmercifully, and finally, covering her with a door, pressed her to death (January 30, 1705). A daughter of the 302|1704.| unhappy woman was in the town, aware of what was going on, but prevented by terror from interceding. This barbarity lasted altogether three hours, without any adequate interruption from either minister or magistrates. Nearly about the same time, Thomas Brown, one of those accused by the blacksmith, died in prison, ‘after a great deal of hunger and hardship;’ and the bodies of both of these victims of superstition were denied Christian burial.

The matter attracted the attention of the Privy Council, who appointed a committee to inquire into it, but the ringleaders of the mob had fled; so nothing could be immediately done. After some time, they were allowed to return to the town free of molestation on account of the murder. Well, then, might Beatrix Laing dread returning to her husband’s comfortable house in this benighted burgh. After a few months, beginning to gather courage, she did return, yet not without being threatened by the rabble with the fate of Janet Cornfoot; wherefore it became necessary for her to apply to the Privy Council for a protection. By that court an order was accordingly issued to the Pittenweem magistrates, commanding them to defend her from any tumults, insults, or violence that might be offered to her.

At the close of this year, George and Lachlan Rattray were in durance at Inverness, ‘alleged guilty of the horrid crimes of mischievous charms, by witchcraft and malefice, sorcery or necromancy.’ It being inconvenient to bring them to Edinburgh for trial, the Lords of Privy Council issued a commission to Forbes of Culloden, Rose of Kilravock, ... Baillie, commissary of Inverness, and some other gentlemen, to try the offenders. The judges, however, were enjoined to transmit their judgment for consideration, and not allow it to be put in execution without warrant from the Council.

On the 16th July 1706, a committee of Council took into consideration the verdict in the case of the two Rattrays, and finding it ‘agreeable to the probation,’ ordained the men to be executed, under the care of the magistrates of Inverness, on the last Wednesday of September next to come. This order is subscribed by Montrose, Buchan, Northesk, Forfar, Torphichen, Elibank, James Stewart, Gilbert Elliot, and Alexander Douglas.

Aug. 25.

The functions of the five Lords Commissioners of Justiciary being of the utmost importance, ‘concerning both the lives and fortunes of her majesty’s lieges,’ the parliament settled on these 303|1704.| officers a salary of twelve hundred pounds Scots each, being about one hundred pounds sterling.^[360] They had previously had the same income nominally, but being payable by precept of the commissioners of the treasury, or the cash-keeper, it was, like most such dues, difficult to realise, and, perhaps, could scarcely be said to exist.

At this time, the fifteen judges of the Court of Session had each two hundred pounds sterling per annum, the money being derived from a grant of £20,000 Scots out of the customs and interest on certain sums belonging to the court.^[361] Five of them, who were lords of the criminal court also, were, as we here see, endowed with a further salary, making three hundred in all. The situation of president—‘ane imployment of great weight, requiring are assiduous and close application,’ says the second President Dalrymple^[362]—had usually, in addition to the common salary, a pension, and a present of wines from the Treasury, making up his income to about a thousand a year. By the grace of Queen Anne, after the Union, the puisne judges of the Court of Session got £300 a year additional, making five hundred in all;^[363] and this was their income for many years thereafter, the president continuing to have one thousand per annum. In the salaries of the same officers at the present day—£3000 to a puisne civil judge, with expenses when he goes on circuit; £4800 to the President; and to the Lord Justice-clerk, £4500—we see, as powerfully as in anything, the contrast between the Scotland of a hundred and fifty years ago, and the Scotland of our own time.

Aug. 30.

Patrick Smith professed to have found out a secret ‘whereby malt may be dried by all sorts of fuel, whether coals, wood, or turf, so as to receive no impression from the smoke thereof, and that in a more short and less expensive manner than hath been known in the kingdom.’ He averred that ‘the drink brewn of the said malt will be as clear as white wine, free of all bad tincture, more relishing and pleasant to the taste, and altogether more agreeable to human health than the ale hath been heretofore known in the kingdom.’ Seeing how ‘ale is the ordinary drink of the inhabitants thereof,’ the public utility of the discovery was obvious. Patrick announced himself to the Privy Council as 304|1704.| willing to communicate his secret for the benefit of the country, if allowed during a certain term to use it in an exclusive manner, and sell the same right to others.

Their Lordships granted the desired privilege for nine years.

Aug. 30.

Ever since the year 1691, there had been a garrison of government soldiers in Invergarry House, in Inverness-shire, the residence of Macdonald of Glengarry. The proprietor esteemed himself a sufferer to the extent of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, by damages to his lands and woods, besides the want of the use of his house, which had been reduced to a ruinous condition; and he now petitioned the government for some redress, as well as for a removal of the garrison, the ‘apparent cause’ of planting which had long ago ceased, ‘all that country being still peaceable and quiet in due obedience to authority, without the least apprehension of disturbance or commotion.’

The Council ordered Macdonald to be heard in his own cause before the Lords of the Treasury, in presence of Brigadier Maitland, governor of Fort-William, that a statement might be drawn up and laid before the queen. ‘His circumstances,’ however, ‘being such, that he cannot safely appear before their Lordships without ane personal protection,’ the Council had to grant a writ discharging all macers and messengers from putting any captions to execution against him up to the 20th of September.

Before the time for the conference arrived, the Duke of Argyle put in a representation making a claim upon Glengarry’s estate, so that it became necessary to call in the aid of the Lord Advocate to make up the statement for the royal consideration.

Sep. 16.

The family of the Gordons of Gicht have already attracted our attention by their troubles as Catholics under Protestant persecution, and their tendency to wild and lawless habits. After two generations of silence, the family comes up again in antagonism to the law, but in the person of the husband of an heiress. It appears that the Miss Gordon of Gicht who gave birth to George Lord Byron, was not the first heiress who married unfortunately.

The heretrix of this period had taken as her husband Alexander Davidson, younger of Newton, who, on the event, became with his father (a rich man) bound to relieve the mother of his bride—‘the old Lady Gicht’—of the debts of the family, in requital for certain advantages conferred upon him. The mother had married as a 305|1704.| second husband Major-general Buchan, who commanded the Cavalier army after the death of Lord Dundee, till he was defeated by Sir Thomas Livingstone at Cromdale. By and by, Alexander Davidson, under fair pretences, through James Hamilton of Cowbairdie, borrowed from his mother-in-law her copy of the marriage-contract, which had not yet been registered; and when the family creditors applied for payment of their debts, he did not scruple to send them, or allow them to go to the old Lady Gicht and her husband for payment. They, beginning to feel distressed by the creditors, sought back the copy of the contract for their protection; but as no entreaty could induce Davidson to return it to Cowbairdie, they were obliged at last to prosecute the latter gentleman for its restitution.

Cowbairdie, being at length, at the instance of old Lady Gicht and her husband, taken upon a legal caption, was, with the messenger, John Duff, at the Milton of Fyvie, at the date noted, on his way to prison, when Davidson came to him with many civil speeches, expressive of his regret for what had taken place. He entreated Duff to leave Cowbairdie there on his parole of honour, and go and intercede with General Buchan and his wife for a short respite to his prisoner, on the faith that the contract should be registered within a fortnight, which he pledged himself should be done. Duff executed this commission successfully; but when he came back, Davidson revoked his promise. It chanced that another gentleman had meanwhile arrived at the Milton, one Patrick Gordon, who had in his possession a caption against Davidson for a common debt of a hundred pounds due to himself. Seeing of what stuff Davidson was made, he resolved no longer to delay putting this in execution; so he took Duff aside, and put the caption into his hand, desiring him to take Gicht, as he was called, into custody, which was of course immediately done.

In the midst of these complicated proceedings, a message came from the young Lady Gicht, entreating them to come to the family mansion, a few miles off, where she thought all difficulties might be accommodated. The whole party accordingly went there, and were entertained very hospitably till about two o’clock in the morning (Sunday), when the strangers rose to depart, and Davidson came out to see them to horse, as a host was bound to do in that age, but with apparently no design of going along with them. Duff was not so far blinded by the Gicht hospitality, as to forget that he would be under a very heavy responsibility if he should allow Davidson to slip through his fingers. Accordingly, 306|1704.| he reminded the laird that he was a prisoner, and must come along with them; whereupon Davidson drew his sword, and called his servants to the rescue, but was speedily overpowered by the messenger and his assistant, and by the other gentlemen present. He and Cowbairdie were, in short, carried back as prisoners that night to the Milton of Fyvie.

This place being on the estate of Gicht, Duff bethought him next day that, as the tenants were going to church, they might gather about their captive laird, and make an unpleasant disturbance; so he took forward his prisoners to the next inn, where they rested till the Sabbath was over. Even then, at Davidson’s entreaty, he did not immediately conduct them to prison, but waited over Monday and Tuesday, while friends were endeavouring to bring about an accommodation. This was happily so far effected, the Earl of Aberdeen, and his son Lord Haddo, paying off Mr Gordon’s claim on Davidson, and certain relatives becoming bound for the registration of the marriage-contract.

From whatever motive—whether, as alleged, to cover a vitiation in the contract, or merely out of revenge—Davidson soon after raised a process before the Privy Council against Cowbairdie, Gordon, and Duff, for assault and private imprisonment, concluding for three thousand pounds of damages; but after a long series of proceedings, in the course of which many witnesses were examined on both sides, the case was ignominiously dismissed, and Davidson decerned to pay a thousand merks as expenses.^[364]

Dec.

Cash being scarce in the country, a rumour arose—believed to be promoted by malicious persons—that the Privy Council intended by proclamation to raise the value of the several coins then current. The unavoidable consequence was a run upon the Bank of Scotland, which lasted twenty days, and with such severity, that at last the money in its coffers was exhausted, and payments at the bank were suspended; being the only stoppage or suspension, properly so called, which has ever taken place in this venerable institution since its starting in 1695, down to the present day, besides one of an unimportant character, to be afterwards adverted to. ‘That no person possessed of bank-notes should be a loser, by having their money lie dead and useless, the proprietors of the bank, in a general meeting, declared all bank-notes then current to bear interest from the day that payments 307|1704.| were stopped, until they should be called in by the directors in order to payment.’^[365]

Dec. 19.

The Court of Directors (December 19) petitioned the Privy Council to send a committee to inspect their books, and ‘therein see the sufficiency of the security to the nation for the bank-notes that are running, and to take such course as in their wisdom they might think fit, for the satisfaction of those who might have bank-notes in their hands.’

Accordingly, a committee of Council, which included Lord Belhaven, the President of the Court of Session, the Lord Advocate, and the Treasurer-depute, met in the bank-office at two o’clock next day; and having examined the accounts both in charge and discharge, found that ‘the bank hath sufficient provisions to satisfy and pay all their outstanding bills and debts, and that with a considerable overplus, exceeding by a fourth part at least the whole foresaid bills and debts, conform to ane abstract of the said account left in the clerk of Council’s hands for the greater satisfaction of all concerned.’^[366]

This report being, by permission of the Privy Council, printed, ‘gave such universal satisfaction, that payments thereafter were as current as ever, and no stop in business, everybody taking bank-notes, as if no stop had been for want of specie, knowing that they would at last get their money with interest.

‘At this time, the Company thought fit to call in a tenth of stock [£10,000] from the adventurers, which was punctually paid by each adventurer [being exactly a duplication of the acting capital, which was only £10,000 before]; and in less than five months thereafter, the Company being possessed of a good cash, the directors called in the notes that were charged with interest, and issued new notes, or made payments in money, in the option of the possessors of the old notes. And very soon the affairs and negotiations of the bank went on as formerly, and all things continued easy until the year 1708.’^[367]

Dec.

Notwithstanding the extreme poverty now universally complained of, whenever a man of any figure or importance died, there was enormous expense incurred in burying him. On the death, at this time, of Lachlan Mackintosh of Mackintosh—that is, the chief of the clan Mackintosh—there were funeral 308|1704.| entertainments at his mansion in Inverness-shire for a whole month. Cooks and confectioners were brought from Edinburgh, at great expense, to provide viands for the guests, and liquors were set aflowing in the greatest profusion. On the day of the interment, the friends and dependants of the deceased made a procession, reaching all the way from Dalcross Castle to the kirk of Petty, a distance of four miles! ‘It has been said that the expense incurred on this occasion proved the source of pecuniary embarrassments to the Mackintosh family to a recent period.’^[368]

In the same month died Sir William Hamilton, who had for several years held the office of a judge under the designation of Lord Whitelaw, and who, for the last two months of his life, was Lord Justice-clerk, and consequently, in the arrangements of that period, an officer of state. It had pleased his lordship to assign the great bulk of his fortune, being £7000 sterling, to his widow, the remainder going to his heir, Hamilton of Bangour, of which family he was a younger son. Lord Whitelaw was buried in the most pompous style, chiefly under direction of the widow, but, to all appearance, with the concurrence of the heir, who took some concern in the arrangements, or at least was held as sanctioning the whole affair by his presence as chief mourner. The entire expenses were £5189 Scots, equal to £432, 8s. 4d. sterling, being more than two years’ salary of a judge of the Court of Session at that time. The lady paid the tradesmen’s bills out of her ‘donative,’ which was thought a singularly large one; but, by and by, marrying again, she raised an action against Bangour, craving allowance for Lord Whitelaw’s funeral charges ‘out of her intromission with the executry’—that is, out of the proceeds of the estate, apart from her jointure. The heir represented that the charges were inordinate, while his inheritance was small; but this view of the matter does not appear to have been conclusive, for the Lords, by a plurality, decided that the funeral expenses of a deceased person ‘must be allowed to the utmost of what his character and quality will admit, without regard to what small part of his fortune may come to his heir.’^[369] They did, indeed, afterwards modify this decision, allowing only just and necessary expenses; but, what is to our present purpose, they do not appear to have been startled at the idea of spending as much as two years of a man’s income in laying him under the soil.

1704.

309The account of expenses at the funeral of a northern laird—Sir Hugh Campbell of Calder, who died in March 1716—gives us, as it were, the anatomy of one of these ruinous ceremonials. There was a charge of £55, 15s. ‘to buy ane cow, ane ox, five kids, two wedders, eggs, geese, turkeys, pigs, and moorfowl,’ the substantials of the entertainment. Besides £40 for brandy to John Finlay in Forres, £25, 4s. for claret to John Roy in Forres, £82, 6s. to Bailie Cattenach at Aberdeen for claret, and £35 to John Fraser in Clunas for ‘waters’—that is, whisky—there was a charge by James Cuthbert, merchant, of £407, 8s. 4d. for ‘22 pints brandy at 48s. per pint, 18 wine-glasses, 6 dozen pipes, and 3 lb. cut tobacco, 2 pecks of apples, 2 gross corks, one large pewter flagon at £6, and one small at £3, currants, raisins, cinnamon, nutmegs, mace, ginger, confected carvy, orange and citron peel, two pair black shambo gloves for women,’ and two or three other small articles. There was also £40 for flour, £39, 12s. to the cooks and baxters, and ‘to malt brewn from the said Sir Hugh’s death to the interment, sixteen bolls and ane half,’ £88. [Sir Hugh’s body lay from the 11th to the 29th March, and during these eighteen days there had been ale for all comers.] The outlay for ‘oils, cerecloth, and frankincense,’ used for the body, was £60; for ‘two coffins, tables, and other work,’ £110, 13s. 4d.; for the hearse and adornments connected with it (inclusive of ‘two mortheads at 40s. the piece’), £358. With the expenses for the medical attendant, a suit of clothes to the minister, and some few other matters, the whole amounted to £1647, 16s. 4d., Scots money.^[370] This sum, it will be observed, indicates a comparatively moderate funeral for a man of such eminence; and we must multiply everything by three, in order to attain a probable notion of the eating, the drinking, and the pomp and grandeur which attended Lord Whitelaw’s obsequies.

The quantity of liquor consumed at the Laird of Calder’s funeral suggests that the house of the deceased must have been, on such occasions, the scene of no small amount of conviviality. It was indeed expected that the guests should plentifully regale themselves with both meat and drink, and in the Highlands especially the chief mourner would have been considered a shabby person if he did not press them to do so. At the funeral of Mrs Forbes of Culloden, or, to use the phrase of the day, Lady Culloden, her son Duncan, who afterwards became Lord President 310|1704.| of the Court of Session, conducted the festivities. The company sat long and drank largely, but at length the word being given for what was called the lifting, they rose to proceed to the burialground. The gentlemen mounted their horses, the commonalty walked, and all duly arrived at the churchyard, when, behold, no one could give any account of the corpse! They quickly became aware that they had left the house without thinking of that important part of the ceremonial; and Lady Culloden still reposed in the chamber of death. A small party was sent back to the house to ‘bring on’ the corpse, which was then deposited in the grave with all the decorum which could be mustered in such anti-funereal circumstances.^[371]

Strange as this tale may read, there is reason to believe that the occurrence was not unique. It is alleged to have been repeated at the funeral of Mrs Home of Billie, in Berwickshire, in the middle of the eighteenth century.

In our own age, we continually hear of the vice of living for appearances, as if it were something quite unknown heretofore; but the truth is, that one of the strongest points of contrast between the past and the present times, is the comparative slavery of our ancestors to irrational practices which were deemed necessary to please the eye of society, while hurtful to the individual. This slavery was shewn very strikingly in the customs attending funerals, and not merely among people of rank, but in the humblest grades of the community. It was also to be seen very remarkably in the custom of pressing hospitality on all occasions beyond the convenience of guests, in drinking beyond one’s own convenience to encourage them, and in the customs of the table generally; not less so in the dresses and decorations of the human figure, in all of which infinitely more personal inconvenience was submitted to, under a sense of what was required by fashion, than there is at the present day.

1705. Jan.

Roderick Mackenzie, secretary to the African Company, advertised what was called An Adventure for the Curious—namely, a raffle for the possession of ‘a pair of extraordinary fine Indian screens,’ by a hundred tickets at a guinea each. The screens were described as being on sight at his office in Mylne’s Square, but only by ticket (price 5d.), in order to prevent that pressure of the 311|1705.| mob which might otherwise be apprehended. In these articles, the public was assured, ‘the excellence of art vied with the wonderfulness of nature,’ for they represented a ‘variety of several kinds of living creatures, intermixed with curious trees, plants, and flowers, all done in raised, embossed, loose, and coloured work, so admirably to the life, that, at any reasonable distance, the most discerning eye can scarcely distinguish those images from the real things they represent,’ Nothing of the kind, it was averred, had ever been seen in Scotland before, ‘excepting one screen of six leaves only, that is now in the palace at Hamilton.’^[372]

Jan. 5.

A general arming being now contemplated under the Act of Security, it became important that arms should be obtained cheaply within the country, instead of being brought, as was customary, from abroad. James Donaldson, describing himself as ‘merchant in Edinburgh,’ but identical with the Captain Donaldson who had established the Edinburgh Gazette in 1699, came forward as an enterpriser who could help the country in this crisis. He professed to have, ‘after great pains, found out ane effectual way to make machines, whereby several parts of the art and calling of smith-craft, particularly with relation to the making of arms, may be performed without the strength and labour of men, such as blowing with bellows, boring with run spindles, beating with hammers, [and] striking of files.’ He craved permission of the Privy Council to set up a work for the making of arms in this economical way, with exclusive privileges for a definite period, as a remuneration.

The Council remitted the matter to the deacon of the smiths, for his judgment, which was very much putting the lamb’s case to the wolf’s decision. The worshipful deacon by and by reported that James Donaldson was well known to possess no mechanic skill, particularly in smith-work, so that his proposal could only be looked upon as ‘ane engine to inhaunce a little money to supply his necessity.’ The ordinary smiths were far more fit to supply the required arms, and had indeed a right to do so, a right which Donaldson evidently meant to infringe upon. In short, Donaldson was an insufferable interloper in a business he had nothing to do with. The Council gave force to this report by refusing Donaldson’s petition.

Not satisfied with this decision, Donaldson, a few days later, 312|1705.| presented a new petition, in which he more clearly explained the kinds of smith-work which he meant to facilitate—namely, ‘forging, boring, and beating of gun-barrels, cutting of files, [and] grinding and polishing of firearms,’ He exhibited ‘the model of the engine for boring and polishing of gun-barrels, and demonstrated the same, so that their lordships commended the same as ingenious and very practicable.’ He further disclaimed all idea of interfering with the privileges of the hammermen of Edinburgh, his ‘motive being nothing else than the public good and honour of his country,’ and his intention being to set up his work in a different place from the capital. What he claimed was no more than what had been granted to other ‘inventors of engines and mechanical improvements, as the manufactures for wool and tow cards, that for gilded leather, the gunpowder manufacture, &c.’

The Lords, learning that much of the opposition of the hammermen was withdrawn, granted the privileges claimed, on the condition that the work should not be set up in any royal burgh, and should not interfere with the rights of the Edinburgh corporation.

Feb. 2.

Under strong external professions of religious conviction, rigorous Sabbath observance, and a general severity of manners, there prevailed great debauchery, which would now and then come to the surface. On this evening there had assembled a party in Edinburgh, who carried drink and excitement to such a pitch, that nothing less than a dance in the streets would satisfy them. There was Ensign Fleming of a Scots regiment in the Dutch service (son of Sir James Fleming, late provost of Edinburgh); there were Thomas Burnet, one of the guards; and John, son of the late George Galbraith, merchant. The ten o’clock bell had rung, to warn all good citizens home. The three bacchanals were enjoying their frolic in the decent Lawnmarket, where there was no light but what might come from the windows of the neighbouring houses; when suddenly there approaches a sedan-chair, attended by one or two footmen, one of them carrying a lantern. It was the Earl of Leven, governor of the Castle, and a member of the Privy Council, passing home to his aërial lodging. Most perilous was it to meddle with such a person; but the merry youths were too far gone in their madness to inquire who it was or think of consequences; so, when Galbraith came against one of the footmen, and was warned off, he answered with an imprecation, and, turning to Fleming and Burnet, told them what 313|1705.| had passed. Fleming said it would be brave sport for them to go after the chair and overturn it in the mud; whereupon the three assailed Lord Leven’s servants, and broke the lantern. His lordship spoke indignantly from his chair, and Fleming, drawing his sword, wounded one of the servants, but was quickly overpowered along with his companions.

The young delinquents speedily became aware of the quality of the man they had insulted, and were of course in great alarm, Fleming in particular being apprehensive of losing his commission. After a month’s imprisonment, they were glad to come and make public profession of penitence on their knees before the Council, in order to obtain their liberty.^[373]

On a Sunday, early in the same month, four free-living gentlemen, including Lord Blantyre—then a hot youth of two-and-twenty—drove in a hackney-coach to Leith, and sat in the tavern of a Mrs Innes all the time of the afternoon-service. Thereafter they went out to take a ramble on the sands, but by and by returned to drinking at the tavern of a Captain Kendal, where they carried on the debauch till eight o’clock in the evening. Let an Edinburgh correspondent of Mr Wodrow tell the remainder of the story. Being all drunk—‘when they were coming back to Edinburgh, in the very street of Leith, they called furiously to the coachman and post-boy to drive. The fellows, I think, were drunk, too, and ran in on the side of the causey, dung down [knocked over] a woman, and both the fore and hind wheel went over her. The poor woman cried; however, the coach went on; the woman died in half an hour. Word came to the Advocate to-morrow morning, who caused seize the two fellows, and hath been taking a precognition of the witnesses ... it will be a great pity that the gentlemen that were in the coach be not soundly fined for breach of Sabbath. One of them had once too great a profession to [make it proper that he should] be guilty now of such a crime.’^[374]

The desire to see these scapegraces punished for what was called breach of Sabbath, without any regard to that dangerous rashness of conduct which had led to the loss of an innocent life, is very characteristic of Mr Wodrow’s style of correspondents.

Feb. 19.

Donaldson’s paper, The Edinburgh Gazette, which had been established in 1699, continued in existence; and in the intermediate 314|1705.| time there had also been many flying broadsides printed and sold on the streets, containing accounts of extraordinary occurrences of a remarkable nature, often scandalous. The growing inclination of the public for intelligence of contemporary events was now shewn by the commencement of a second paper in Edinburgh, under the title of The Edinburgh Courant. The enterpriser, Adam Boig, announced that it would appear on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, ‘containing most of the remarkable foreign news from their prints, and also the home news from the ports within this kingdom, when ships comes and goes, and from whence, which it is hoped will prove a great advantage to merchants and others within this nation (it being now altogether neglected).’ Having obtained the sanction of the Privy Council, he, at the date noted, issued the first number, consisting of a small folio in double columns, bearing to be ‘printed by James Watson in Craig’s Close,’ and containing about as much literary matter as a single column of a modern newspaper of moderate size. There are two small paragraphs regarding criminal cases then pending, and the following sole piece of mercantile intelligence: ‘Leith, Feb. 16.—This day came in to our Port the Mary Galley, David Preshu, commander, laden with wine and brandy.’ There are also three small advertisements, one intimating the setting up of post-offices at Wigton and New Galloway, another the sale of lozenges for the kinkhost [chincough] at 8s. the box.

The superior enterprise shewn in the conducting of the Courant, aided, perhaps, by some dexterous commercial management, seems to have quickly told upon the circulation of the Gazette; and we must regret, for the sake of an old soldier, that the proprietor of the latter was unwise enough to complain of this result to the Privy Council, instead of trying to keep his ground by an improvement of his paper. He insinuated that Boig, having first undersold him by ‘giving his paper to the ballad-singers four shillings [4d. sterling] a quire below the common price, as he did likewise to the postmaster,’ did still ‘so practise the paper-criers,’ as to induce them to neglect the selling of the Gazette, and set forth the Courant as ‘preferable both in respect of foreign and domestic news.’ By these methods, ‘the Courant gained credit with some,’ though all its foreign news was ‘taken verbatim out of some of the London papers, and most part out of Dyer’s Letter and the London Courant, which are not of the best reputation.’ He, on the other hand, ‘did never omit any domestic news that he judged pertinent, though he never meddled 315|1705.| with matters that he had cause to believe would not be acceptable [flattery to the Privy Council], nor every story and trifling matter he heard.’

A triumphant answer to such a complaint was but too easy. ‘The petitioner,’ says Boig, ‘complains that I undersold him; that my Courant bore nothing but what was collected from foreign newspapers; and that it gained greater reputation than his Gazette. As to the first, it was his fault if he kept the Gazette too dear; and I must say that his profit cannot but be considerable when he sells at my price, for all my news comes by the common post, and I pay the postage; whereas John Bisset, his conjunct [that is, partner], gets his news all by the secretary’s packet free of postage, which is at least eight shillings sterling a week free gain to them. As to the second, I own that the foreign news was collected from other newspapers, and I suppose Mr Donaldson has not his news from first hands more than I did. But the truth is, the Courant bore more, for it always bore the home news, especially anent our shipping, which I humbly suppose was one of the reasons for its having a good report; and Mr Donaldson, though he had a yearly allowance from the royal burghs, never touched anything of that nature, nor settled a correspondent at any port in the kingdom, no, not so much as at Leith. As to the third, it’s left to your Grace and Lordships to judge if it be a crime in me that the Courant had a greater reputation than the Gazette.’

Connected, however, with this controversy, was an unlucky misadventure into which Boig had fallen, in printing in his paper a petition to the Privy Council from Evander M‘Iver, tacksman of the Scots Manufactory Paper-mills, and James Watson, printer, for permission to complete the reprinting of an English book, entitled War betwixt the British Kingdoms Considered. While these petitioners thought only of their right to reprint English books ‘for the encouragement of the paper-manufactory and the art of printing at home, and for the keeping of money as much as may be in the kingdom,’ the Council saw political inconvenience and danger in the book, and every reference to it, and at once stopped both the Courant, in which the advertisement appeared, and the Gazette, which piteously as well as justly pleaded that it had in no such sort offended. It was in the course of this affair that Donaldson complained of Boig’s successful rivalry, and likewise of an invasion by another person of his monopoly of burial-letters.

After an interruption of three months, Adam Boig was allowed to resume his publication, upon giving strong assurance of more 316|1705.| cautious conduct in future. His paper continued to flourish for several years. (See under March 6, 1706.)

Mar. 5.

In the early part of 1704, the sense of indignity and wrong which had been inspired into the national mind by the Darien disasters and other circumstances, was deepened into a wrathful hatred by the seizure of a vessel named the Annandale, which the African Company was preparing for a trading voyage to India. This proceeding, and the subsequent forfeiture of the vessel before the Court of Exchequer, were defensive acts of the East India Company, and there can be little doubt that they were grossly unjust. In the subsequent autumn, an English vessel, named the Worcester, belonging to what was called the Two Million Company (a rival to the East India Company), was driven by foul weather into the Firth of Forth. It was looked upon by the African Company as fair game for a reprisal. On the 12th August, the secretary, Mr Roderick Mackenzie, with a few associates, made an apparently friendly visit to the ship, and was entertained with a bowl of punch. Another party followed, and were received with equal hospitality. With only eleven half-armed friends, he that evening overpowered the officers and crew, and took the vessel into his possession. In the present temper of the nation, the act, questionable as it was in every respect, was sure to meet with general approbation.

Before Captain Green and the others had been many days in custody, strange hints were heard amongst them of a piratical attack they had committed in the preceding year upon a vessel off the coast of Malabar. The African Company had three years ago sent out a vessel, called the Speedy Return, to India, with one Drummond as its master, and it had never since been heard of. It was concluded that the people of the Worcester had captured the Speedy Return, and murdered its crew, and that Providence had arranged for their punishment, by sending them for shelter from a storm to the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. Vainly might it have been pointed out that there was no right evidence for even the fact of the piracy, still less for the Speedy Return being the subject of the offence. Truth and justice were wholly lost sight of in the universal thirst for vengeance against England and its selfish mercantile companies.

Green, the captain of the Worcester, Mather, the chief-mate, Reynolds, the second-mate, and fifteen others, were tried at this date before the Court of Admiralty, for the alleged crime of 317|1705.| attacking a ship, having English or Scotch aboard, off the coast of Malabar, and subsequently murdering the crew—no specific vessel or person being mentioned as the subjects of the crime, and no nearer date being cited than the months of February, March, April, or May 1703. The jury had no difficulty in bringing them in guilty, and they were all condemned to be hanged on the sands of Leith, the usual place for the execution of pirates.

The English government was thrown into great anxiety by this violent proceeding, but they could make no effectual resistance to the current of public feeling in Scotland. There the general belief in the guilt of Green and his associates was corroborated after the trial by three several confessions, admitting the piratical seizing of Drummond’s vessel, and the subsequent murder of himself and his crew—confessions which can now only be accounted for, like those of witches, on the theory of a desire to conciliate favour, and perhaps win pardon, by conceding so far to the popular prejudices. The queen sent down affidavits shewing that Drummond’s ship had in reality been taken by pirates at Madagascar, while himself was on shore—a view of the fact which there is now ample reason to believe to have been true. She also sent to the Privy Council the expression of her desire that the men should be respited for a time. But, beyond postponement for a week, all was in vain. The royal will was treated respectfully, but set aside on some technical irregularity. When the day approached for the execution of the first batch of the condemned, it became evident that there was no power in Scotland which could have saved these innocent men. The Council, we may well believe, would have gladly conceded to the royal will, but, placed as it was amidst an infuriated people, it had no freedom to act. On the fatal morning (11th April), its movements were jealously watched by a vast multitude, composed of something more than the ordinary citizens of Edinburgh, for on the previous day all the more ardent and determined persons living within many miles round had poured into the city to see that justice was done. No doubt can now be entertained that, if the authorities had attempted to save the condemned from punishment, the mob would have torn them from the Tolbooth, and hung every one of them up in the street. What actually took place is described in a letter from Mr Alexander Wodrow to his father, the minister of Eastwood: ‘I wrote last night,’ he says, ‘of the uncertainty anent the condemned persons, and this morning things were yet at a greater uncertainty, for the current report was that ane express was come for a reprieve. 318|1705.| How this was, I have not yet learned; but the councillors went down to the Abbey [Palace of Holyrood] about eight, and came up to the Council-house about nine, against which time there was a strange gathering in the streets. The town continued in great confusion for two hours, while the Council was sitting, and a great rabble at the Netherbow port. All the guards in the Canongate were in readiness if any mob had arisen. About eleven, word came out of the Council [sitting in the Parliament Square] that three were to be hanged—namely, Captain Green, Mather, and Simson. This appeased the mob, and made many post away to Leith, where many thousands had been [assembled], and were on the point of coming up in a great rage. When the chancellor came out, he got many huzzas at first; but at the Tron Kirk, some surmised to the mob that all this was but a sham; upon which they assaulted his coach, and broke the glasses, and forced him to come out and go into Mylne’s Square, and stay for a considerable time.

‘The three prisoners were brought with the Town-guards, accompanied with a vast mob. They went through all the Canongate, and out at the Water-port to Leith. There was a battalion of foot-guards, and also some of the horse-guards, drawn up at some distance from the place of execution. There was the greatest confluence of people there that ever I saw in my life, for they cared not how far they were off, so be it they saw. Green was first execute, then Simson, and last of all Mather. They every one of them, when the rope was about their necks, denied they were guilty of that for which they were to die. This indeed put all people to a strange demur. There’s only this to alleviate it, that they confessed no other particular sins more than that, even though they were posed anent their swearing and drunkenness, which was weel known.’^[375]

Sep. 11.

The Scottish parliament was not much given to the patronising of literature. We have, indeed, seen it giving encouragement to Adair’s maps of the coasts, and Slezer’s views of the king’s and other mansions; but it was in a languid and ineffective way, by reason of the lack of funds. At this time, the assembled wisdom of the nation was pleased to pass an act enabling the town-council of Glasgow to impose two pennies (⅕th of a penny sterling) upon the pint of ale brewn and vended in that town; and out of this 319|1705.| ‘gift in favours of the town of Glasgow,’ as it was quite sincerely called, there was granted three thousand six hundred pounds (£300 sterling) to Mr James Anderson, writer to her majesty’s signet, ‘for enabling him to carry on an account of the ancient and original charters and seals of our kings in copper-plates.’ Why the ale-drinkers of Glasgow should have been called upon to furnish the country with engraved copies of its ancient charters, was a question which probably no one dreamed of asking.

In February 1707, the parliament, then about to close its existence, ordered to Mr Anderson the further sum of £590 sterling, to repay him for his outlay on the work, with a further sum of £1050 to enable him to go on and complete it. This was done after due examination by a committee, which reported favourably of the curious and valuable character of his collections. Soon after, the parliament, in consideration of the great sufferings of the town of Dundee in the time of the troubles and at the Revolution, and of ‘the universal decay of trade, especially in that burgh,’ granted it an imposition of two pennies Scots on every pint of ale or beer made or sold in the town for twenty-four years; but this gift was burdened with a hundred pounds sterling per annum for six years to Mr James Anderson, as part of the sum the parliament had agreed to confer upon him for the encouragement of his labours.^[376]

Nov.

Died Alexander third Earl of Kincardine, unmarried, a nobleman of eccentric character. His father, the second earl, is spoken of by Burnet in the highest terms; his mother was a Dutch lady, Veronica, daughter of Corneille, Lord of Sommelsdyk and Spycke. [Readers of Boswell will remember his infant daughter Veronica, with whom Johnson was pleased, so named from the biographer’s great-grandmother, Veronica, Countess of Kincardine.] The earl now deceased, probably through his parental connection with the Low Countries, had contracted the religious principles of the Flemish saint or seeress, Antonia Bourignon, which, like every other departure from pure Presbyterianism and the Westminster Confession, were detested in Scotland. Wodrow tells us: ‘I have it from very good hands, Lieutenant-colonel Erskine^[377] and Mr Allan Logan, 320|1705.| who were frequently with him, that the late Earl of Kincardine did fast forty days and nights after he turned Burrignianist, [and] lived several years after. He was very loose before he turned to these errors; and after a while being in them, he turned loose again, and died in a very odd manner. Many thought him possessed. He would have uttered the most dreadful blasphemies that can be conceived, and he told some things done at a distance, and repeated Mr Allan Logan’s words, which he had in secret, and told things it was impossible for anybody to know.’^[378]

The more active minds of the country continued constantly seething with schemes for the promotion of industry, and the remedy of the standing evil of poverty. In this year there was published an Essay on the New Project of a Land Mint, which might be considered a type of the more visionary plans. It rested on what would now be called one of the commonplaces of false political economy. The proposed Land Mint was a kind of bank for the issue of notes, to be given only on landed security. Any one intending to borrow, say a thousand pounds of these notes, pledged unentailed land-property to that amount, plus interest and possible expenses, undertaking to pay back a fifth part each year, with interest on the outstanding amount, till all was discharged. It was thought that, by these means, money would be, as it were, created; the country would be spirited up to hopeful industrial undertakings; and—everything requiring a religious aspect in those days—the people would be enabled to resist the designs of a well-known sovereign, ‘aiming now at a Catholic monarchy;’ for, while Louis XIV. might become sole master of the plate (that is, silver) of the world, what would it matter ‘if we and other nations should substitute another money, equal in all cases to plate?’ The only fear the author could bring himself to entertain, was as to possible counterfeiting of the notes. This being provided against by an ingenious expedient suggested by himself, there remained no difficulty and no fear whatever.^[379]

1706. Mar.

Although the incessant violences which we have seen mark an early period embraced by our Annals were no more, it cannot be 321|1705.| said that the crimes of violent passion had become infrequent. On the contrary, it appeared as if the increasing licence of manners since the Revolution, and particularly the increasing drunkenness of the upper classes, were now giving occasion for a considerable number of homicides and murders. We have seen a notable example of reckless violence in the case of the Master of Rollo in 1695. There was about the same time a Laird of Kininmont, who—partly under the influence of a diseased brain—was allowed to commit a considerable number of manslaughters before it was thought necessary to arrest him in his course.

Archibald Houston, writer to the signet in Edinburgh, acted as factor for the estate of Braid, the property of his nephew, and in this capacity he had incurred the diligence of the law on account of some portion of Bishops’ rents which he had failed to pay. Robert Kennedy of Auchtyfardel, in Lanarkshire, receiving a commission to uplift these arrears, found it to be his duty to give Houston a charge of horning for his debt.

Mar. 20.

One day, Kennedy and his two sons left their house in the Castle Hill of Edinburgh, to go to the usual place of rendezvous at the Cross, when, passing along the Luckenbooths, he was accosted by Mr Houston with violent language, referring to the late legal proceedings. Kennedy, if his own account is to be trusted, gave no hard language in return, but made an effort to disengage himself from the unseemly scene, and moved on towards the Cross. Houston, however, followed and renewed the brawl, when it would appear that Gilbert Kennedy, Auchtyfardel’s eldest son, was provoked to strike his father’s assailant on the face. The people now began to flock about the party—Kennedy again moved on; but before he had got many paces away, he heard the sounds of a violent collision, and turned back with his cane uplifted to defend his son. It is alleged that Kennedy fell upon Houston with his cane—he had no weapon on his person—and while he did so, young Gilbert Kennedy drew his sword, and, rushing forward, wounded Houston mortally in the belly. The unfortunate man died a few days afterwards.^[380]

Auchtyfardel’s share in this transaction was held to infer his liability to an arbitrary punishment. Gilbert fled, and was outlawed, but afterwards was permitted to return home, and in time he succeeded to his father’s estate. We hear of him in 322|1705.| 1730, as having been brought by that sad act of his youth into a very serious and religious frame of life. He was an elder of the church, and took great care of the morals of his servants. A maid, whom he on one occasion reproved severely, was led, by a diabolic spite, to mix some arsenic with the bread and milk which she prepared for the family breakfast, and the death of Houston had very nearly been avenged at the distance of twenty-four years from its occurrence. Happily, through the aid of a physician, the laird and his family escaped destruction.^[381]

A case more characteristic of the age than that of young Auchtyfardel occurred in the ensuing year. David Ogilvie of Cluny, having first thrust himself upon a funeral-party at the village of Meigle, and there done his best to promote hard drinking, insisted on accompanying two or three of the gentlemen on their way home, though his own lay another way. While proceeding along, he gave extreme annoyance to Andrew Cowpar, younger of Lochblair, by practical jokes of a gross kind, founded on the variance of sex in their respective horses. At length, Cowpar giving the other’s horse a switch across the face, to make it keep off, Ogilvie took violent offence at the act, demanded Cowpar’s whip under a threat of being otherwise pistolled, and, on a refusal, actually took out a pistol and shot his companion dead. The wretched murderer escaped abroad.

In January 1708, Robert Baird, son of Sir James Baird of Sauchtonhall, had a drinking-match in a tavern at Leith, where he particularly insisted on his friend, Mr Robert Oswald, being filled drunk. On Oswald resisting repeated bumpers, Baird demanded an apology from him, as if he had committed some breach of good-manners. He refused, and thus a drunken sense of resentment was engendered in the mind of Baird. At a late hour, they came up to Edinburgh in a coach, and leaving the vehicle at the Nether Bow, were no sooner on the street, than Baird drew his sword, and began to push at Oswald, upon whom he speedily inflicted two mortal wounds. He fled from the scene, leaving a bloody and broken sword beside his expiring victim.

On the ground of its not being ‘forethought felony,’ Baird was some years afterwards allowed by the Court of Justiciary to have the benefit of Queen Anne’s act of indemnity.

1706. Oct.

Early in this month, Scotland was honoured with a visit from 323|1705.| the celebrated Daniel Defoe. His noted power and probity as a Whig pamphleteer suggested to the English ministry the propriety of sending him down for a time to Edinburgh, to help on the cause of the Union. He came with sympathies for the people of Scotland, founded on what they had suffered under the last Stuart reigns. Instead of believing all to be barren and hopeless north of the Tweed, he viewed the country as one of great capabilities, requiring only peace and industry to become a scene of prosperity equal to what prevailed in England. To this end he deemed an incorporating union of the two countries necessary, and it was therefore with no small amount of good-will that he undertook the mission assigned to him.

Even, however, from one regarding it so fraternally as Defoe, Scotland was little disposed to accept a recommendation of that measure. It was in vain that he published a complaisant poem about the people, under the name of Caledonia, in which he commended their bravery, their learning, and abilities. Vainly did he declare himself their friend, anxious to promote their prosperity by pointing to improved agriculture, to fisheries, to commerce, and to manufactures. The Edinburgh people saw him daily closeted with the leaders of the party for the hated union, and that was enough. His pen displayed its wonted activity in answers to the objectors, and his natural good-humour seems never to have failed him, even when he was assailed with the most virulent abuse. But his enemies did not confine themselves to words: threats of assassination reached him. His lodgings were marked, and his footsteps were tracked; yet he held serenely on in his course. He even entered upon some little enterprises in the manufacture of linen, for the purpose of shewing the people what they might do for themselves, if they would adopt right methods. It appears that, during the tumults which took place in Edinburgh while the measure was passing through parliament, he was in real danger. One evening, when the mob was raging in the street, he looked out of his window to behold their proceedings, and was nearly hit by a large stone which some one threw at him, the populace making a point that no one should look over windows at them, lest he might recognise faces, and become a witness against individual culprits.

Defoe spent sixteen months in Scotland on this occasion, rendering much modest good service to the country, and receiving for it little remuneration besides abuse. Amongst other fruits of his industry during the period is his laborious work, 324|1706.| The History of the Union of Great Britain. One could have wished a record tracing the daily life of this remarkable man in Scotland. “We only get an obscure idea of some of his public transactions. One of the few private particulars we have learned, is that he paid a visit to the Duke of Queensberry at Drumlanrig, and by his Grace’s desire, took a view of his estates, with a view to the suggestion of improvements.

Defoe revisited Scotland in the summer of 1708, on a mission the purpose of which has not been ascertained; and again in the summer of 1709. His stay on the last occasion extended to nearly two years, during part of which time, in addition to constant supplies of articles for his Review in London, he acted as editor of the Edinburgh Courant newspaper.^[382] (See the next article).

1707. Mar. 6.

In a folio published this day by Captain James Donaldson, under the title of the Edinburgh Courant Reviewed, we learn that the Edinburgh Gazette, which, as we have seen, was commenced in 1699, had now succumbed to fate: damaged by the persevering policy of Adam Boig of the Courant, the Gazette ‘of late has been laid aside, as a thing that cannot be profitably carried on.’

Donaldson here reviews the charges made against his paper, as to partiality and staleness of news, defends it to some extent, but practically admits the latter fault, by stating that he was about to remedy it. He was going to recommence the Edinburgh Gazette in a new series, in which he would ‘take a little more liberty, and give stories as they come,’ without waiting, as before, for their authentication, though taking care where they were doubtful to intimate as much. The Gazette did, accordingly, resume its existence on the 25th of the same month, as a twice-a-week paper. The first number contains three advertisements, one of a sale of house-property, another of the wares of the Leith glass-work, and a third as follows: ‘There is a gentleman in town, who has an secret which was imparted to him by his father, an eminent physician in this kingdom, which by the blessing of God cures the Phrensie and Convulsion Fits. He takes no reward for his pains till the cure be perfyted. He will be found at the Caledonian Coffee-house.’

In a series of the Gazette extending from the commencement to the 140th number, published on the 2d September 1708, there is a remarkable sterility of home-news, and anything that is 325|1707.| told is told, in a dry and sententious way. The following alone seem worthy of transcription:

‘Leith, May 19 [1707].—Last Saturday, about 50 merchant-ships, bound for Holland, sailed from our Road, under convoy of two Dutch men-of-war.’

‘Edinburgh, August 5.—This day the Equivalent Money came in here from South Britain, in thirteen waggons drawn by six horses.’

Sep. 30.—‘Dyer’s Letter says: Daniel de Foe is believed by this time in the hands of justice at the complaint of the Swedish minister, and now a certain man of law may have an opportunity to reckon with him for a crime which made him trip to Scotland, and make him oblige the world with another Hymn to the Pillory.’

Strange to say, less than three years after this date, namely, in February 1710, the ‘unabashed Defoe’ was conducting the rival newspaper in Edinburgh—the Courant—succeeding in this office Adam Boig, who had died in the preceding month. The authority of Defoe for his editorship appears in the following decree of the Town Council:

‘Att Edinburgh the first day of February

j^m. vij^c. and ten years:

‘The same day The Councill authorized Mr Daniel Defoe to print the Edinburgh Currant in place of the deceast Adam Bog Discharging hereby any other person to print News under the name of the Edinburgh Currant.’

The advertisements are also very scanty, seldom above three or four, and most of these repeated frequently, as if they were reprinted gratuitously, in order to make an appearance of business in this line. The following are selected as curious:

May 13, 1707.—‘This is to give notice to all who have occasion for a black hersse, murning-coach, and other coaches, just new, and in good order, with good horses well accoutred, that James Mouat, coachmaster in Lawrence Ord’s Land at the foot of the Canongate, will serve them thankfully at reasonable rates.’

‘Ralph Agutter of London, lately come to Edinburgh, Musical Instrument-maker, is to be found at Widow Pool’s, perfumer of gloves, at her house in Stonelaw’s Close, a little below the Steps; makes the Violin, Bass Violin, Tenor Violin, the Viol de Gambo, the Lute Quiver, the Trumpet Marine, the Harp; and mendeth and putteth in order and stringeth all those instruments as fine as any man whatsoever in the three kingdoms, or elsewhere, and 326|1707.| mendeth the Virginal, Spinnat, and Harpsichord, all at reasonable rates.’

Oct. 16.—‘There is just now come to town the Excellent Scarburray Water, good for all diseases whatsomever except consumption; and this being the time of year for drinking the same, especially at the fall of the leaf and the bud, the price of each chopin bottle is fivepence, the bottle never required, or three shilling without the bottle. Any person who has a mind for the same may come to the Fountain Close within the Netherbow of Edinburgh, at William Mudie’s, where the Scarsburray woman sells the same.’

August 12, 1708.—‘George Williamson, translator [alias cobbler] in Edinburgh, commonly known by the name of Bowed Geordie, who swims on face, back, or any posture, forwards or backwards; plums, dowks, and performs all the antics that any swimmer can do, is willing to attend any gentleman, and to teach them to swim, or perform his antics for their divertisement: is to be found in Luckie Reid’s at the foot of Gray’s Close, on the south side of the street, Edinburgh.’

In September 1707, it is advertised that at the Meal Girnel of Primrose, oatmeal, the produce of the place, was sold at four pounds Scots the boll for the crop of 1706, while the crop of the preceding year was £3, 13s. 4d.; in the one case, 6s. 8d.; in the other, 6s. 4d. sterling.

Apr. 9.

The Master of Burleigh—eldest son of Lord Balfour of Burleigh, a peer possessed of considerable estates in Fife—had fallen in love with a girl of humble rank, and was sent abroad by his friends, in the hope that time and change of scene would save him from making a low marriage. He was heard to declare before going, that if she married in his absence, he would take the life of her husband. The girl was, nevertheless, married to Henry Stenhouse, schoolmaster of Inverkeithing. The Master was one of those hot-headed persons whom it is scarcely safe to leave at large, and who yet do not in general manifest the symptoms that justify restraint. Learning that his mistress was married, and to whom, he came at this date with two or three mounted servants to the door of the poor schoolmaster, who, at his request, came forth from amongst his pupils to speak to the young gentleman.

‘Do you know me?’ said Balfour.

‘No.’

1707.

327‘I am the Master of Burleigh. You have spoken to my disadvantage, and I am come to fight you,’

‘I never saw you before,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘and I am sure I never said anything against you.’

‘I must nevertheless fight with you, and if you won’t, I will at once shoot you.’

‘It would be hard,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘to force a man who never injured you into a fight. I have neither horse nor arms, and it is against my principles to fight duels.’

‘You must nevertheless fight,’ said the Master, ‘or be shot instantly;’ and so saying, he held a pistol to Stenhouse’s breast.

The young man continuing to excuse himself, Balfour at length fired, and gave the schoolmaster a mortal wound in the shoulder, saying with savage cruelty: ‘Take that to be doing with.’ Then, seeing that an alarm had arisen among the neighbours, he rode off, brandishing a drawn sword, and calling out: ‘Hold the deserter!’ in order to divert the attention of the populace. The unfortunate schoolmaster died in a few days of his wound.

The Master for a time escaped pursuit, but at length he was brought to trial, July 28, 1709, and adjudged to be beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh, on the ensuing 6th of January. During this unusually long interval, he escaped from the Tolbooth by changing clothes with his sister. He was not again heard of till May 1714, when he appeared amongst a number of Jacobite gentlemen at the Cross of Lochmaben, to drink the health of James VIII. The family title had by this time devolved on him by the death of his father; but his property had all been escheat by sentence of the Court of Justiciary. His appearance in the rebellion of 1715, completed by attainder the ruin of his family, and he died unmarried and in obscurity in 1757.^[383]

Apr. 25.

A great flock of the Delphinus Deductor, or Ca’ing Whale—a cete about twenty-five feet long—came into the Firth of Forth, ‘roaring, plunging, and threshing upon one another, to the great terror of all who heard the same.’ It is not uncommon for this denizen of the arctic seas to appear in considerable numbers on the coasts of Zetland; and occasionally they present themselves on the shores of Caithness and Sutherlandshire; but to come so far south as the Firth of Forth is very rare: hence the astonishment which the incident seems to have created. The contemporary 328|1707.| chronicler goes on to state: ‘Thirty-five of them were run ashore upon the sands of Kirkcaldy, where they made yet a more dreadful roaring and tossing when they found themselves aground, insomuch that the earth trembled.’ ‘What the unusual appearance of so great a number of them at this juncture [the union of the kingdoms] may portend shall not be our business to inquire.’^[384]

Aug.

The fifteenth article of the treaty of Union provided that England should pay to Scotland the sum of £398,085, 10s., because of the arrangement for the equality of trade between the two countries having necessitated that Scotland should henceforth pay equal taxes with England—a rule which would otherwise have been inequitable towards Scotland, considering that a part of the English revenue was required for payment of the interest on her seventeen millions of national debt. It was likewise provided by the act of Union, that out of this Equivalent Money, as it was called, the commissioners to be appointed for managing it should, in the first place, pay for any loss to be incurred by the renovation of the coin; in the second, should discharge the losses of the African Company, which thereupon was to cease; the overplus to be applied for payment of the comparatively trifling state-debts of Scotland, and to furnish premiums to the extent of £2000 a year for the improvement of the growth of wool for seven years—afterwards for the improvement of fisheries and other branches of the national industry.

Defoe, who was now living in Scotland, tells how those who hated the Union spoke and acted about the Equivalent. The money not being paid in Scotland on the very day of the incorporation of the two countries, the first talk was—the English have cheated us, and will never pay; they intended it all along. Then an idea got abroad, that by the non-payment the Union was dissolved; ‘and there was a discourse of some gentlemen who came up to the Cross of Edinburgh, and protested, in the name of the whole Scots nation, That, the conditions of the treaty not being complied with, and the terms performed, the whole was void.’ At length, in August, the money came in twelve wagons, guarded by a party of Scots dragoons, and was carried directly to the Castle. Then those who had formerly been loudest in denouncing the English for not forwarding the money, became furious because 329|1707.| it was come. They hooted at the train as it moved along the street, cursing the soldiers who guarded it, and even the horses which drew it. One person of high station called out that those who brought that money deserved to be cut to pieces. The excitement increased so much before the money was secured in the Castle, that the mob pelted the carters and horses on their return into the streets, and several of the former were much hurt.

It was soon discovered that, after all, only £100,000 of the money was in specie, the rest being in Exchequer bills, which the Bank of England had ignorantly supposed to be welcome in all parts of her majesty’s dominions. This gave rise to new clamours. It was said the English had tricked them by sending paper instead of money. Bills, only payable four hundred miles off, and which, if lost or burned, would be irrecoverable, were a pretty price for the obligation Scotland had come under to pay English taxes. The impossibility of satisfying or pleasing a defeated party was never better exemplified.

The commissioners of the Equivalent soon settled themselves in one of Mr Robert Mylne’s houses in Mylne’s Court, and proceeded to apply the money in terms of the act. One of their first proceedings was to send to London for £50,000 in gold, in substitution for so much of paper-money, that they might, as far as possible, do away with the last clamour. ‘Nor had this been able to carry them through the payment, had they not very prudently taken all the Exchequer bills that any one brought them, and given bills of exchange for them payable in London.’^[385] Defoe adverts to a noble individual—doubtless the Duke of Hamilton—who came for payment of his share of the African Company’s stock (£3000), with the interest, and who refused to take any of the Exchequer bills, probably thinking thus to create some embarrassment; but the commissioners instantly ordered the claim to be liquidated in gold.

Notwithstanding all the ravings and revilings about the Equivalent, Defoe assures us that, amongst the most malcontent persons he never found any who, having African stock, refused to take their share of the unhallowed money in exchange for it. Even the despised Exchequer bills were all despatched so quickly, that, in six months, not one was to be seen in the country.

Out of the Equivalent, the larger portion—namely, £229,611, 4s. 8d.—went to replace the lost capital of the African Company, 330|1707.| and so could not be considered as rendered to the nation at large. For ‘recoining the Scots and foreign money, and reducing it to the standard of the coin of England,’ £49,888, 14s. 11⅙d. was expended. There was likewise spent out of this fund, for the expenses of the commissioners and secretaries who had been engaged in carrying through the Union, £30,498, 12s. 2d. After making sundry other payments for public objects, there remained in 1713 but £16,575, 14s. 0½d. unexpended.^[386]

We shall afterwards see further proceedings in the matter of the Equivalent.

Oct. 3.

Walter Scott of Raeburn, grandson of the Quaker Raeburn who suffered so long an imprisonment for his opinions in the reign of Charles II.,^[387] fought a duel with Mark Pringle, youngest son of Andrew Pringle of Clifton. It arose from a quarrel the two gentlemen had the day before at the head-court of Selkirk. They were both of them young men, Scott being only twenty-four years of age, although already four years married, and a father. The contest was fought with swords in a field near the town, and Raeburn was killed. The scene of this melancholy tragedy has ever since been known as Raeburn’s Meadow-spot.

Pringle escaped abroad; became a merchant in Spain; and falling, on one occasion, into the hands of the Moors, underwent such a series of hardships, as, with the Scottish religious views of that age, he might well regard as a Heaven-directed retribution for his rash act. Eventually, however, realising a fortune, he returned with honour and credit to his native country, and purchased the estate of Crichton in Edinburghshire. He died in 1751, having survived the unhappy affair of Raeburn’s Meadow-spot for forty-four years; and his grandson, succeeding to the principal estate of the family, became Pringle of Clifton.

The sixteenth article of the act of Union, while decreeing that a separate mint should be kept up in Scotland ‘under the same rules as the mint in England’—an arrangement afterwards broken through—concluded that the money thereafter used should be of the same standard and fineness throughout the United Kingdom. It thus became necessary to call in all the existing coin of Scotland, and substitute for it money uniform with that of England. It was at the same time provided by the act of Union, that any 331|1707.| loss incurred by the renewal of the coin of Scotland should be compensated out of the fund called the Equivalent.^[388]

The business of the change of coinage being taken into consideration by the Privy Council of Scotland, several plans for effecting it were laid before that august body; but none seemed so suitable or expedient as one proposed by the Bank of Scotland, which was to this effect: ‘The Directors undertook to receive in all the species that were to be recoined, at such times as should be determined by the Privy Council, and to issue bank-notes or current money for the same, in the option of the ingiver of the old species, and the Privy Council allowing a half per cent. to the Bank for defraying charges;’^[389] the old money to be taken to the mint and coined into new money, which should afterwards replace the notes.

Mr David Drummond, treasurer of the Bank, ‘a gentleman of primitive virtue and singular probity,’ according to Thomas Ruddiman—a hearty Jacobite, too, if his enemies did not belie him—had a chief hand in the business of the renovation of the coin, about which he communicated to Ruddiman some memoranda he had taken at the time.

‘There was brought into the Bank of Scotland in the year 1707:

Value in Sterling Money.

Of foreign silver money, £132,080 : 17 : 00

Milled Scottish coins [improved coinage subsequent to 1673], 96,856 : 13 : 00

Coins struck by hammer [the older Scottish coin], 142,180 : 00 : 00

English milled coin, 40,000 : 00 : 00

Total, £411,117 : 10 : 00

‘This sum, no doubt, made up by far the greatest part of the silver coined money current in Scotland at that time; but it was not to be expected that the whole money of that kind could be brought into the bank; for the folly of a few misers, or the fear that people might have of losing their money, or various other dangers and accidents, prevented very many of the old Scots coins from being brought in. A great part of these the goldsmiths, in aftertimes, consumed by melting them down; some of them have been exported to foreign countries; a few are yet [1738] in private hands.’^[390]

1707.

332Ruddiman, finding that, during the time between December 1602 and April 1613, there was rather more estimated value of gold than of silver coined in the Scottish mint, arrived at the conclusion (though not without great hesitation), that there was more value of gold coin in Scotland in 1707 than of silver, and that the sum-total of gold and silver money together, at the time of the Union, was consequently ‘not less than nine hundred thousand pounds sterling.’ We are told, however, in the History of the Bank of Scotland, under 1699, that ‘nothing answers among the common people but silver-money, even gold being little known amongst them;’ and Defoe more explicitly says, ‘there was at this time no Scots gold coin current, or to be seen, except a few preserved for antiquity.’^[391] It therefore seems quite inadmissible that the Scottish gold coin in 1707 amounted to nearly so much as Ruddiman conjectures. More probably, it was not £30,000.

It would appear that the Scottish copper-money was not called in at the Union, and Ruddiman speaks of it in 1738 as nearly worn out of existence, ‘so that the scarcity of copper-money does now occasion frequent complaints.’

If the outstanding silver-money be reckoned at £60,000, the gold at £30,000, and the copper at £60,000, the entire metallic money in use in Scotland in 1707 would be under six hundred thousand pounds sterling in value. It is not unworthy of observation, as an illustration of the advance of wealth in the country since that time, that a private gentlewoman died in 1841, with a nearly equal sum at her account in the banks, besides other property to at least an equal amount.

In March 1708, while the renovation of the coinage was going on, the French fleet, with the Chevalier de St George on board, appeared at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, designing to invade the country. The Bank got a great alarm, for it ‘had a very large sum lying in the mint in ingots,’ and a considerable sum of the old coin in its own coffers, ‘besides a large sum in current species; all of which could not have easily been carried off and concealed.’^[392] The danger, however, soon blew over. ‘Those in power at the time, fearing lest, all our silver-money having been brought into our treasury, or into the Bank, a little before, there should be a want of money for the expenses of the war, ordered the 333|1707.| forty-shilling pieces to be again issued out of the banks; of which sort of coin there was great plenty at that time in Scotland, and commanded these to be distributed for pay to the soldiers and other exigencies of the public; but when that disturbance was settled, they ordered that kind of money also to be brought into the bank; and on a computation being made, it was found that the quantity of that kind, brought in the second time, exceeded that which was brought in the first time [by] at least four thousand pounds sterling.’^[393]

We are told by the historian of the Bank, that ‘the whole nation was most sensible of the great benefit that did redound from the Bank’s undertaking and effectuating the recoinage, and in the meantime keeping up an uninterrupted circulation of money.’ Its good service was represented to the queen, considered by the Lords of the Treasury and Barons of Exchequer, and reported on favourably. ‘But her majesty’s death intervening, and a variety of public affairs on that occasion and since occurring, the directors have not found a convenient opportunity for prosecuting their just claim on the government’s favour and reward for that seasonable and very useful service.’

Nov. 3.

Mr John Strahan, Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, was at this time owner of Craigcrook, a romantically situated old manor-house under the lee of Corstorphine Hill—afterwards for many years the residence of Lord Jeffrey. Strahan had also a house in the High Street of Edinburgh. He was the owner of considerable wealth, the bulk of which he ultimately ‘mortified’ for the support of poor old men, women, and orphans; a charity which still flourishes.

Strahan had a servant named Helen Bell to keep his town mansion, and probably she was left a good deal by herself. As other young women in her situation will do, she admitted young men to see her in her master’s house. On Hallowe’en night this year, she received a visit from two young artisans, William Thomson and John Robertson, whom she happened to inform that on Monday morning—that is, the second morning thereafter—she was to go out to Craigcrook, leaving the town-house of course empty.

About five o’clock on Monday morning, accordingly, this innocent young woman locked up her master’s house, and set forth on 334|1707.| her brief journey, little recking that it was the last she would ever undertake in this world. As she was proceeding through the silent streets, her two male friends joined her, telling her they were going part of her way; and she gave them a couple of bottles and the key of the house to carry, in order to lighten her burden. On coming to a difficult part of the way, called the Three Steps, at the foot of the Castle Rock, the two men threw her down and killed her with a hammer. They then returned to town, with the design of searching Mr Strahan’s house for money.

According to the subsequent confession of Thomson, as they returned through the Grassmarket, they swore to each other to give their souls and bodies to the devil, if ever either of them should inform against the other, even in the event of their being captured. In the empty streets, in the dull gray of the morning, agitated by the horrid reflections arising from their barbarous act and its probable consequences, it is not very wonderful that almost any sort of hallucination should have taken possession of these miserable men. It was stated by them that, on Robertson proposing that their engagement should be engrossed in a bond, a man started up between them in the middle of the West Bow, and offered to write the bond, which they had agreed to subscribe with their blood; but, on Thomson’s demurring, this stranger immediately disappeared. No contemporary of course could be at any loss to surmise who this stranger was.^[394]