REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE: 1702–1714. (continued 3)

The two murderers having made their way into Mr Strahan’s house, broke open his study, and the chest where his cash was kept. They found there a thousand pounds sterling, in bags of fifty pounds each, ‘all milled money,’ except one hundred pounds, which was in gold; all of which they carried off. Robertson proposed to set the house on fire before their departure; but Thomson said he had done wickedness enough already, and was resolved not to commit more, even though Robertson should attempt to murder him for his refusal.

Mr Strahan advertised a reward of five hundred merks for the detection of the perpetrator or perpetrators of these atrocities;^[395] but for some weeks no trace of the guilty men was discovered. At length, some suspicion lighting upon Thomson, he was taken up, and, having made a voluntary 335|1707.| confession of the murder and robbery, he expiated his offence in the Grassmarket.^[396]

Dec. 9.

A poor man named Hunter, a shoemaker in the Potterrow, Edinburgh, had become possessed of a ‘factory’ for the uplifting of ten or eleven pounds of wages due to one Guine, a seaman, for services in a ship of the African Company. The money was now payable out of the Equivalent, but certain signatures were required which it was not possible to obtain. With the aid of a couple of low notaries and two other persons, these signatures were forged, and the money was then drawn.

Detection having followed, the case came before the Court of Session, who viewed it in a light more grave than seems now reasonable, and remitted it to the Lords of Justiciary. The result reminds us of the doings of Justice, when she did act, in the reign of James VI. Hunter and Strachan, a notary, were hanged on the 18th of February, ‘as an example to the terror of others,’ says Fountainhall. Three other persons, including a notary, were glad to save themselves from a trial, by voluntary banishment. ‘Some moved that they might be delivered to a captain of the recruits, to serve as soldiers in Flanders; but the other method was judged more legal.’^[397]

Dec. 30.

The parish of Spott, in East Lothian, having no communion-cups of its own, was accustomed to borrow those of the neighbouring parish of Stenton, when required. The Stenton kirk-session latterly tired of this benevolence, and resolved to charge half-a-crown each time their cups were borrowed by Spott. Spott then felt a little ashamed of its deficiency of communion-cups, and resolved to provide itself with a pair. Towards the sum required, the minister was directed to take all the foreign coin now in the box, as it was to be no longer current, and such further sum as might be necessary.

The parish is soon after found sanctioning the account of Thomas Kerr, an Edinburgh goldsmith, for ‘ane pair of 336|1707.| communion-cups, weighing 33 oz. 6 drops, at £3, 16s. per oz.,’ being £126, 12s. in all, Scots money, besides ‘two shillings sterling of drink-money given to the goldsmith’s men.’^[398]

1708.

The Union produced some immediate effects of a remarkable nature on the industry and traffic of Scotland—not all of them good, it must be owned, but this solely by reason of the erroneous laws in respect of trade which existed in England, and to which Scotland was obliged to conform.

Scotland had immediately to cease importing wines, brandy, and all things produced by France; with no remeed but what was supplied by the smuggler. This was one branch of her public or ostensible commerce now entirely destroyed. She had also, in conformity with England, to cease exporting her wool. This, however, was an evil not wholly unalleviated, as will presently be seen.

Before this time, as admitted by Defoe, the Scotch people had ‘begun to come to some perfection in making broad cloths, druggets, and [woollen] stuffs of all sorts.’ Now that there was no longer a prohibition of English goods of the same kinds, these began to come in in such great quantity, and at such prices, as at once extinguished the superior woollen manufacture in Scotland. There remained the manufacture of coarse cloths, as Stirling serges, Musselburgh stuffs, and the like; and this now rather flourished, partly because the wool, being forbidden to be sent abroad, could be had at a lower price, and partly because these goods came into demand in England. Of course, the people at large were injured by not getting the best price for their wool, and benefited by getting the finer English woollen goods at a cheaper rate than they had formerly paid for their own manufactures of the same kinds; but no one saw such matters in such a light at that time. The object everywhere held in view was to benefit trade—that is, everybody’s peculium, as distinguished from the general good. The general good was left to see after itself, after everybody’s peculium had been served; and small enough were the crumbs usually left to it.

On the other hand, duties being taken off Scottish linen introduced into England, there was immediately a large increase to that branch of the national industry. Englishmen came down and established works for sail-cloth, for damasks, and other linen 337|1708.| articles heretofore hardly known in the north; and thus it was remarked there was as much employment for the poor as in the best days of the woollen manufacture.

The colonial trade being now, moreover, open to Scottish enterprise, there was an immediate stimulus to the building of ships for that market. Cargoes of Scottish goods went out in great quantity, in exchange for colonial products brought in. According to Defoe, ‘several ships were laden for Virginia and Barbadoes the very first year after the Union.’^[399]

We get a striking idea of the small scale on which the earlier commercial efforts were conducted, from a fact noted by Wodrow, as to a loss made by the Glasgow merchants in the autumn of 1709. ‘In the beginning of this month [November],’ says he, ‘Borrowstounness and Glasgow have suffered very much by the fleet going to Holland, its being taken by the French. It’s said that in all there is about eighty thousand pounds sterling lost there, whereof Glasgow has lost ten thousand pounds. I wish trading persons may see the language of such a providence. I am sure the Lord is remarkably frowning upon our trade, in more respects than one, since it was put in the room of religion, in the late alteration of our constitution.’^[400]

When one thinks of the present superb wealth and commercial distinction of the Queen of the West, it is impossible to withhold a smile at Wodrow’s remarks on its loss of ten thousand pounds. Yet the fact is, that up to this time Glasgow had but a petty trade, chiefly in sugar, herrings, and coarse woollen wares. Its tobacco-trade, the origin of its grandeur, is understood to date only from 1707, and it was not till 1718 that Glasgow sent any vessel belonging to itself across the Atlantic. Sir John Dalrymple, writing shortly before 1788, says: ‘I once asked the late Provost Cochrane of Glasgow, who was eminently wise, and who has been a merchant there for seventy years, to what causes he imputed the sudden rise of Glasgow. He said it was all owing to four young men of talents and spirit, who started at one time in business, and whose success gave example to the rest. The four had not ten thousand pounds amongst them when they began.’^[401]

1708.

338Defoe tells us that, within little more than a year after the Union, Scotland felt the benefit of the liberation of her commerce in one article to a most remarkable extent. In that time, she sent 170,000 bolls of grain into England, besides a large quantity which English merchants bought up and shipped directly off for Portugal. The hardy little cattle of her pastures, which before the Union had been sent in large droves into England, being doubtless the principal article represented in the two hundred thousand pounds which Scotland was ascertained to obtain annually from her English customers, were now transmitted in still larger numbers, insomuch that men of birth and figure went into the trade. Even a Highland gentleman would think it not beneath him to engage in so lucrative a traffic, however much in his soul he might despise the Saxons whose gluttony he considered himself as gratifying. It has often been told that the Honourable Patrick Ogilvie, whom the reader has already seen engaged in a different career of activity, took up the cattle-trade, and was soon after remonstrated with by his brother, the Earl of Seafield, who, as Chancellor of Scotland, had been deeply concerned in bringing about the Union. The worthy scion of nobility drily remarked in answer: ‘Better sell nowte than sell nations.’^[402]

A sketch given of a cattle-fair at Crieff in 1723 by an intelligent traveller, shews that the trade continued to prosper. ‘There were,’ says he, ‘at least thirty thousand cattle sold there, most of them to English drovers, who paid down above thirty thousand guineas in ready money to the Highlanders; a sum they had never before seen. The Highland gentlemen were mighty civil, dressed in their slashed waistcoats, a trousing (which is, breeches and stockings of one piece of striped stuff), with a plaid for a cloak, and a blue bonnet. They have a poniard knife and fork in one sheath, hanging at one side of their belt, their pistol at the other, and their snuff-mill before; with a great broadsword by their side. Their attendance was very numerous, all in belted plaids, girt like women’s petticoats down to the knee; their thighs and half of the leg all bare. They had also each their broadsword and poniard, and spake all Irish, an unintelligible language to the English. However, these poor creatures hired themselves out for a shilling a day, to drive the cattle to England, and to return home at their own charge.’^[403]

1708. May 1.

339Previous to the Union, the Customs and Excise of Scotland were farmed respectively at £30,000 and £35,000 per annum,^[404] which, after every allowance is made for smuggling, must be admitted as indicative of a very restricted commercial system, and a simple and meagre style of living on the part of the people. At the Union, the British government took the Customs and Excise of Scotland into its own hands, placing them severally under commissions, partly composed of Englishmen, and also sending English officers of experience down to Scotland, to assist in establishing proper arrangements for collection. We learn from Defoe that all these new fiscal arrangements were unpopular. The anti-union spirit delighted in proclaiming them as the outward symptoms of that English tyranny to which poor Scotland had been sold. Smuggling naturally flourished, for it became patriotic to cheat the English revenue-officers. The people not only assisted and screened the contrabandist, but if his goods chanced to be captured, they rose in arms to rescue them. Owing to the close of the French trade, the receiving of brandy became a favourite and flourishing business. It was alleged that, when a Dutch fleet approached the Scottish shores some months after the Union, several thousands of small casks of that liquor were put ashore, with hardly any effort at concealment.

Assuming the Excise as a tolerably fair index to the power of a people to indulge in what they feel as comforts and luxuries, the progress of this branch of the public revenue may be esteemed as a history of wealth in Scotland during the remarkable period following upon the Union. The summations it gives us are certainly of a kind such as no Scotsman of the reign of Queen Anne, adverse or friendly to the incorporation of the two countries, could have dreamed of. The items in the account of the first year ending at May 1, 1708, are limited to four—namely, for beer, ale, and vinegar, £43,653; spirits, £901; mum,^[405] £50; fines and forfeitures, £58; giving—when £6350 for salaries, and some other deductions, were allowed for—a net total of £34,898, as a contribution to the revenue of the country.

The totals, during the next eleven years, go on thus: £41,096, £37,998, £46,795, £51,609, £61,747, £46,979, £44,488, £45,285—this 340|1708.| refers to the year of the Rebellion—£48,813, £46,649, £50,377. On this last sum the charges of management amounted to £15,400. After this, the total net produce of the Excise, exclusive of malt, never again came up to fifty thousand pounds, till the year 1749. The malt tax, which was first imposed in 1725, then amounted to £22,627, making the entire Excise revenue of Scotland in the middle of the eighteenth century no more than £75,987. It is to be feared that increase of dexterity and activity in the smuggler had some concern in keeping down these returns at so low an amount;^[406] yet when large allowance is made on that score, we are still left to conclude that the means of purchasing luxuries remained amongst our people at a very humble point.

I am informed by a gentleman long connected with the Excise Board in Scotland, that the books exhibited many curious indications of the simplicity, as well as restrictedness, of all monetary affairs as relating to our country in the reigns of Anne and the first George. According to a recital which he has been kind enough to communicate in writing, ‘The remittances were for the most part made in coin, and various entries in the Excise accounts shew that what were called broad pieces frequently formed a part of the moneys sent. The commissioners were in the habit of availing themselves of the opportunity of persons of rank travelling to London, to make them the bearers of the money; and it is a curious historical fact, that the first remittance out of the Excise duties, amounting to £20,000, was sent by the Earl of Leven, who delivered £19,000 of the amount at the proper office in London, retaining the other thousand pounds for his trouble and risk in the service. As the Board in Scotland could only produce to their comptroller a voucher for the sum actually delivered in London, he could not allow them credit for more. The £1000 was therefore placed “insuper” upon the accounts, and so remained for several years; until at last a warrant was issued by the Treasury, authorising the sum to be passed to the credit of the commissioners.’

After the middle of the century, the progress is such as to shew that, whether by the removal of repressive influences, or the imparting of some fresh spring of energy, the means of the people were at length undergoing a rapid increase. In 1761, 341|1708.| including part of the first year of George III., the net total Excise revenue had sprung up to £100,985. It included taxes on glass (£1151), candles (£6107), leather (£8245), soap and paper (£2992), and wheel-carriages (£2308). The total had, however, receded fully fourteen thousand pounds by 1775. After that time, war increased the rate of taxation, and we therefore need not be surprised to find the Scottish Excise producing £200,432 in 1781. In 1790, when Robert Burns honoured this branch of the revenue by taking an office in it, it had reached but to the comparatively insignificant sum of £331,117. In 1808, being the hundredth year of its existence, it yielded £1,793,430, being rather more than fifty-one times its produce during the first year.^[407]

June 1.

The Duke of Argyle resigning his place as an extraordinary Lord of Session, in order to follow his charge in the army, his younger brother, the Earl of Ilay, succeeded him, though under twenty-five years of age; not apparently that he might take part in the decisions of the bench, but rather that he might be a learner there, it ‘being,’ says Fountainhall, ‘the best school for the nobility to learn that is in Europe.’

June 26.

The election of a knight to represent Ross-shire in the British parliament took place at Fortrose, under the presidency of the sheriff, Hugh Rose, of Kilravock. There was much dissension in the county, and the sheriff, whose son was elected, had probably reasons of his own for appointing the last day of the week for the ceremony. This, however, having led to travelling on Sunday, was taken into consideration by the synod some months later, as a breach of decorum on the part of the sheriff, who consequently received a letter from one of their number who had been appointed to administer their censure. It set forth how, even if the meeting had been dissolved on the Saturday evening, many could not have got home without breaking the fourth commandment; but Kilravock had caused worse than this, for, by making the meeting late in the day, he had ‘occasioned the affair to be protracted till the Sabbath began more than to dawn [two o’clock],’ and there had been ‘gross disorders,’ in consequence of late drinking in taverns. ‘Some,’ says the document, ‘who were in your own 342|1708.| company, are said to have sung, shott, and danced in their progress to the ferry, without any check or restraint, as if they meant to spit in the face of all sacred and civil laws,’ The synod had found it impossible to keep silence and allow such miscarriages to remain unreproved.

It is to be feared that Kilravock was little benefited by their censure, as he left the paper docketed in his repositories as ‘a comical synodical rebuke.’^[408]

Aug. 18.

That remarkable property of human nature—the anxiety everybody is under that all other people should be virtuous—had worked itself out in sundry famous acts of parliament, general assembly, and town-council, throughout our history subsequent to the Reformation. There was an act of Queen Mary against adultery, and several of Charles II. against profaneness, drunkenness, and other impurities of life. There was not one of William and Mary for the enforcement of the fifth commandment; but the general principle operated in their reign very conspicuously nevertheless, particularly in regard to profaneness and profanation of the Lord’s Day. King William had also taken care in 1698 to issue a proclamation containing an abbreviate of all the acts against immorality, and in which that of Charles II. against cursing and beating of parents was certainly not overlooked, as neither were those against adultery. So far had the anxiety for respectable conduct in others gone in the present reign, that sheriffs and magistrates were now enjoined by proclamation to hold courts, once a month at least, for taking notice of vice and immorality, fining the guilty, and rewarding informers; moreover, all naval and military officers were ordered to exemplify the virtues for the sake of those under them, and, above all, see that the latter duly submitted themselves to kirk discipline.

An act of the town-council of Edinburgh ‘anent prophaneness,’ in August 1693, threatened a rigorous execution of all the public statutes regarding immoral conduct, such as swearing, sitting late in taverns, and desecration of the Lord’s Day. It strictly prohibited all persons within the city and suburbs ‘to brew, or to work any other handiwork, on the Lord’s Day, or to be found on the streets, standing or walking idly, or to go in company or vague to the Castlehill [the only open space then within the city 343|1708.| walls], public yards, or fields.’ It discharged all going to taverns on that day, unseasonably or unnecessarily, and forbade ‘all persons to bring in water from the wells to houses in greater quantities than single pints.’ By another act in 1699, tavern-keepers were forbidden to have women for servants who had not heretofore been of perfectly correct conduct. All these denunciations were renewed in an act of February 1701, in which, moreover, there was a severe threat against barbers who should shave or trim any one on Sunday, and against all who should be found on that day carrying periwigs, clothes, or other apparel through the streets.

Not long after this, the Edinburgh council took into their consideration three great recent calamities—namely, the fire in the Kirk-heugh in February 1700; another fire ‘which happened on the north side of the Land market, about mid-day upon the 28th of October 1701, wherein several men, and women, and children were consumed in the flames, and lost by the fall of ruinous walls;’ and finally, ‘that most tremendous and terrible blowing up of gunpowder in Leith, upon the 3d of July last;’ and, reflecting on these things as tokens of God’s wrath, came to the resolution, ‘to be more watchful over our hearts and ways than formerly, and each of us in our several capacities to reprove vice with zeal and prudence, and promote the execution of the laws for punishing the vicious.’

All originality is taken from a notorious parliamentary enactment of our time by a council act of April 1704, wherein, after reference to the great decay of virtue and piety, and an acknowledgment that ‘all manner of scandals and immoralities do daily abound,’ it is ordered that taverners, under strong penalties, shall shut at ten o’clock at night, all persons harbouring there at a later hour to be likewise punished.

Inordinate playing at cards and dice in taverns is instanced in a council act of about the same period, as one of the most flagrant vices of the time.

It is to be understood that the discipline of the church over the morals of congregations was at the same time in full vigour, although not now fortified by a power of excommunication, inferring loss of civil rights, as had been the case before the Revolution. Much was done in this department by fines, proportioned to the quality of offenders, and for the application of these to charitable uses there was a lay-officer, styled the Kirk-treasurer, who naturally became a very formidable person. The 344|1708.| poems of Ramsay and others during the earlier half of the eighteenth century are full of waggish allusions to the terrible powers of even the ‘man’ or servant of the Kirk-treasurer; and in a parody of the younger Ramsay on the Integer Vitæ of Horace, this personage is set forth as the analogue of the Sabine wolf:

‘For but last Monday, walking at noon-day,

Conning a ditty, to divert my Betty,

By me that sour Turk (I not frighted) our Kirk-

Treasurer’s man passed.

And sure more horrid monster in the Torrid

Zone cannot be found, sir, though for snakes renowned, sir;

Nor does Czar Peter’s empire boast such creatures,

Of bears the wet-nurse.’^[409]

Burt, who, as an English stranger, viewed the moral police of Scotland with a curious surprise, broadly asserts that the Kirk-treasurer employed spies to track out and report upon private individuals; so that ‘people lie at the mercy of villains who would perhaps forswear themselves for sixpence.’ Sometimes, a brother and sister, or a man and his wife, walking quietly together, would find themselves under the observation of emissaries of the Kirk-treasurer. Burt says he had known the town-guard in Edinburgh under arms for a night besetting a house into which two persons had been seen to enter. He at the same time remarks the extreme anxiety about Sabbath observance. It seemed as if the Scotch recognised no other virtue. ‘People would startle more at the humming or whistling of a tune on a Sunday, than if anybody should tell them you had ruined a family.’^[410]

It must have been a great rejoicement to the gay people, when a Kirk-treasurer—as we are told by Burt^[411]—‘having a round sum of money in his keeping, the property of the kirk, marched off with the cash, and took his neighbour’s wife along with him to bear him company and partake of the spoil.’

The very imperfect success of acts and statutes for improving the habits of the people, is strongly hinted at by their frequent repetition or renewal. We find it acknowledged by the Town Council of Edinburgh, in June 1709, that the Lord’s Day is still ‘profaned by people standing on the streets, and vaguing to fields and gardens, and to the Castlehill; also by standing idle gazing 345|1708.| out at windows, and children, apprentices, and other servants playing on the streets.’^[412]

Nov. 22.

James Stirling of Keir, Archibald Seton of Touch, Archibald Stirling of Carden, Charles Stirling of Kippendavie, and Patrick Edmondstone of Newton, were tried for high treason in Edinburgh, on the ground of their having risen in arms in March last, in connection with the French plan of invasion, and marched about for several days, encouraging others to rise in like manner, and openly drinking the health of the Pretender. Considering the openness of this treason, the charges against the five gentlemen were remarkably ill supported by evidence, the only witnesses being David Fenton, a tavern-keeper at Dunkeld; John Macleran, ‘change-keeper’ at Bridge of Turk; and Daniel Morison and Peter Wilson, two servants of the Laird of Keir. These persons were all free to testify that the gentlemen carried swords and pistols, which few people travelled without in that age; but as for treasonable talk, or drinking of treasonable healths, their memories were entirely blank. Wilson knew of no reason for Keir leaving his own house but dread of being taken up on suspicion by the soldiers in Stirling Castle. A verdict of Not Proven unavoidably followed.^[413]

It has been constantly remembered since in Keir’s family, that as he was riding home after the trial, with his servant behind him—probably Wilson—he turned about, and asked from mere curiosity, how it came to pass that his friend had forgotten so much of what passed at their parade for the Chevalier in March last, when the man responded: ‘I ken very weel what you mean, laird; but my mind was clear to trust my saul to the mercy o’ Heaven, rather than your honour’s body to the mercy o’ the Whigs.’

Nov.

Sir James Hall of Dunglass was proprietor of a barony called Old Cambus. Within it was a ‘room’ or small piece of land belonging to Sir Patrick Home of Renton, a member of a family of whose hotness of blood we have already seen some evidences. To save a long roundabout, it had been the custom for the tenants of the ‘room’ to drive peats from Coldingham Muir through the Old Cambus grounds, but only on sufferance, and when the corn 346|1708.| was off the fields, nor even then without a quart of ale to make matters pleasant with Sir James’s tenants. Some dispute having now arisen between the parties, the tenant of Headchester forbade Sir Patrick Home’s people to pass through his farm any more with their peats; and they, on the other hand, determined that they should go by that short passage as usual. The winter stock of fuel being now required, the time had come for making good their assumed right. Mr John Home, eldest son of Sir Patrick, accompanied the carts, with a few servants to assist in making way. A collision took place, attended with much violence on both sides, but with no exhibition of weapons that we hear of, excepting Mr John’s sword, which, he alleged, he did not offer to draw till his horse had been ‘beat in the face with a great rung [stick].’ The affair was nevertheless productive of serious consequences, for a blacksmith was trod to death, and several persons were hurt. Had it happened eighty years earlier, there would have been both swords and pistols used, and probably a dozen people would have been killed.

The justices of the peace for Berwickshire took up the matter, and imposed a fine of fifty pounds upon Mr John Home, as the person chiefly guilty of the riot. He appealed to the Court of Session, setting forth several objections to the sentence. The Earl of Marchmont, whose daughter had married Sir James Hall, and two other members of the justice-court, ought to be held as disqualified by affinity to sit in judgment in the case. To this it was answered, that Sir James was not the complainer, and his lady was dead. Home then alleged a right to the passage. It was shewn, on the other hand, that there never had been a passage save by tolerance and on consideration of the quart of ale; and though it had been otherwise, he ought to have applied to the magistrates, and not taken the law into his own hands: ‘however one enters into possession, though cast in with a sling-stone, yet he must be turned out by order of law. The Lords would not hear of reversing the award of the justices; but they reduced the fine to thirty pounds.’^[414]

1709. Mar.

The family of the antiquary, Sir James Balfour, to whom we owe the preservation of so many historical manuscripts, appears to have been a very unfortunate one. We have seen that his youngest son and successor, Sir Robert, was slaughtered in the 347|1709.| reign of Charles II. by M‘Gill of Rankeillour.^[415] The head of a succeeding generation of the family, Sir Michael Balfour, was a quiet country gentleman, with a wife and seven children, residing at the semi-castellated old manor-house, which we now see standing a melancholy ruin, in a pass through the Fife hills near Newburgh. He appears to have had debts; but we do not anywhere learn that they were of serious extent, and we hear of nothing else to his disadvantage. One day in this month, Sir Michael rode forth at an early hour ‘to visit some friends and for other business,’ attended by a servant, whom, on his return home, he despatched on an errand to Cupar, telling him he would be home before him. From that hour, Denmill was never again seen. He was searched for in the neighbourhood. Inquiries were made for him in the towns at a distance. There were even advertisements inserted in London and continental newspapers, offering rewards for any information that might enable his friends to ascertain his fate. All in vain. ‘There were many conjectures about him,’ says a contemporary judge of the Court of Session, ‘for some have been known to retire and go abroad upon melancholy and discontent; others have been said to be transported and carried away by spirits; a third set have given out they were lost, to cause their creditors compound, as the old Lord Belhaven was said to be drowned in Solway Sands, and so of Kirkton, yet both of them afterwards appeared. The most probable opinion was, that Denmill and his horse had fallen under night into some deep coal-pit, though these were also searched which lay in his way home.’ At the distance of ten months from his disappearance, his wife applied to the Court of Session, setting forth that her husband’s creditors were ‘falling upon his estate, and beginning to use diligence,’ and she could not but apprehend serious injury to the means of the family, though these far exceeded the debts, unless a factor were appointed. We learn that the court could better have interposed if the application had come from the creditors; but, seeing ‘the case craved some pity and compassion,’ they appointed a factor for a year, to manage the estate for both creditors and relict, hoping that, before that time elapsed, it would be ascertained whether Denmill were dead or alive.^[416]

The year passed, and many more years after it, without clearing up the mystery. We find no trace of further legal proceedings regarding the missing gentleman, his family, or property. The 348|1709.| fact itself remained green in the popular remembrance, particularly in the district to which Sir Michael belonged. In November 1724, the public curiosity was tantalised by a story published on a broadside, entitled Murder will Out, and professing to explain how the lost gentleman had met his death. The narrative was said to proceed on the death-bed confession of a woman who had, in her infancy, seen Sir Michael murdered by her parents, his tenants, in order to evade a debt which they owed him, and of which he had called to crave payment on the day of his disappearance. Stabbing him with his own sword as he sat at their fireside, they were said to have buried his body and that of his horse, and effectually concealed their guilt while their own lives lasted. Now, it was said, their daughter, who had involuntarily witnessed a deed she could not prevent, had been wrought upon to disclose all the particulars, and these had been verified by the finding of the bones of Sir Michael, which were now transferred to the sepulchre of his family. But this story was merely a fiction trafficking on the public curiosity. On its being alluded to in the Edinburgh Evening Courant as an actual occurrence, ‘the son and heir of the defunct Sir Michael’ informed the editor of its falsity, which was also acknowledged by the printer of the statement himself; and pardon was craved of the honourable family and their tenants for putting it into circulation. On making inquiry in the district, I have become satisfied that the disappearance of this gentleman from the field of visible life was never explained, as it now probably never will be. In time, the property was bought by a neighbouring gentleman, who did not require to use the mansion as his residence. Denmill Castle accordingly fell out of order, and became a ruin. The fathers of people still living thereabouts remembered seeing the papers of the family—amongst which were probably some that had belonged to the antiquarian Sir James—scattered in confusion about a garret pervious to the elements, under which circumstances they were allowed to perish.

May.

There was at this time a dearth of victual in Scotland, and it was considered to be upon the increase. The magistrates and justices of Edinburgh arranged means for selling meal in open market, though in quantities not exceeding a firlot, at twelve shillings Scots per peck. They also ordered all possessors of grain to have it thrashed out and brought to market before the 20th of May, reserving none to themselves, and forbade, 349|1709.| on high penalties, any one to buy up grain upon the road to market.^[417]

A well-disposed person offered in print an expedient for preventing the dearth of victual. He discommended the fixing of a price at market, for when this plan was tried in the last dearth, farmers brought only some inferior kind of grain to market, ‘so that the remedy was worse than the disease.’ Neither could he speak in favour of the plan of the French king—namely, the confiscating of all grain remaining after harvest—for it had not succeeded in France, and would still less suit a country where the people were accustomed to more liberty. He suggested the prohibition of exportation; the recommending possessors of grain to sell it direct to the people, instead of victual-mongers; and the use of strict means for fining all who keep more than a certain quantity in reserve. This writer thought that the corn was in reality not scarce; all that was needed was, to induce possessors of the article to believe it to be best for their interest to sell immediately.^[418]

July 21.

There is an ancient and well-known privilege, still kept up, in connection with the palace and park of Holyroodhouse, insuring that a debtor otherwise than fraudulent, and who has not the crown for his creditor, cannot have diligence executed against him there; consequently, may live there in safety from his creditors. At this time, the privilege was taken advantage of by Patrick Haliburton, who was in debt to the extraordinary amount of nearly £3000 sterling, and who was believed to have secretly conveyed away his goods.

It being also part of the law of Scotland that diligence cannot be proceeded with on Sunday, the Abbey Lairds, as they were jocularly called, were enabled to come forth on that day and mingle in their wonted society.

It pleased Patrick Haliburton to come to town one Sunday, and call upon one of his creditors named Stewart, in order to treat with him regarding some proposed accommodation of the matters that stood between them. Mr Stewart received Patrick with apparent kindness, asked him to take supper, and so plied his hospitality as to detain him till past twelve o’clock, when, as he was leaving the house, a messenger appeared with a writ of caption, and conducted him to prison. Patrick considered himself as 350|1709.| trepanned, and presented a complaint to the Court of Session, endeavouring to shew that a caption, of which all the preparatory steps had been executed on the Sunday, was the same as if it had been executed on the Sunday itself; that he had been treacherously dealt with; and that he was entitled to protection under the queen’s late indemnity. The Lords repelled the latter plea, but ‘allowed trial to be taken of the time of his being apprehended, and the manner how he was detained, or if he offered to go back to the Abbey, and was enticed to stay and hindered to go out.’^[419] The termination of the affair does not appear.

A case with somewhat similar features occurred in 1724. Mrs Dilks being a booked inmate of the Abbey sanctuary, one of her creditors formed a design of getting possession of her person. He sent a messenger-at-law, who, planting himself in a tavern within the privileged ground, but close upon its verge, sent for the lady to come and speak with him. She, obeying, could not reach the house without treading for a few paces beyond ‘the girth,’ and the messenger’s concurrents took the opportunity to lay hold of her. This, however, was too much to be borne by a fairplay-loving populace. The very female residents of the Abbey rose at the news, and, attacking the party, rescued Mrs Dilks, and bore her back in triumph within the charmed circle.^[420]

The Rev. James Greenshields, an Irish curate, but of Scottish birth and ordination—having received this rite at the hands of the deposed Bishop of Ross in 1694—set up a meeting-house in a court near the Cross of Edinburgh, where he introduced the English liturgy, being the first time a prayer-book had been publicly presented in Scotland since the Jenny Geddes riot of July 1637. Greenshields was to be distinguished from the nonjurant Scottish Episcopalian clergy, for he had taken the oath of abjuration (disclaiming the ‘Pretender’), and he prayed formally for the queen; but he was perhaps felt to be, on this account, only the more dangerous to the Established Church. It was necessary that something should be done to save serious people from the outrage of having a modified idolatry practised so near them. The first effort consisted of a process raised by the landlord of the house against Mr Greenshields, in the Dean 351|1709.| of Guild’s court, on account of his having used part of the house, which he took for a dwelling, as a chapel, and for that purpose broken down certain partitions. The Dean readily ordained that the house should be restored to its former condition. Mr Greenshields having easily procured accommodation elsewhere, it became necessary to try some other method for extinguishing the nuisance. A petition to the presbytery of Edinburgh, craving their interference, was got up and signed by two or three hundred persons in a few hours. The presbytery, in obedience to their call, cited Mr Greenshields to appear before them. He declined their jurisdiction, and they discharged him from continuing to officiate, under high pains and penalties.

Sep.

Mr Greenshields having persisted, next Sunday, in reading prayers to his congregation, the magistrates, on the requirement of the presbytery, called him before them, and formally demanded that he should discontinue his functions in their city. Daniel Defoe, who could so cleverly expose the intolerance of the Church of England to the dissenters, viewed an Episcopalian martyrdom with different feelings. He tells us that Greenshields conducted himself with ‘haughtiness’ before the civic dignitaries—what his own people of course regarded as a heroic courage. He told them positively that he would not obey them; and accordingly, next Sunday, he read the service as usual in his obscure chapel. Even now, if we are to believe Defoe, the magistrates would not have committed him, if he had been modest in his recusancy; but, to their inconceivable disgust, this insolent upstart actually appeared next day at the Cross, among the gentlemen who were accustomed to assemble there as in an Exchange, and thus seemed to brave their authority! For its vindication, they were, says Defoe, ‘brought to an absolute necessity to commit him;’ and they committed him accordingly to the Tolbooth.

Here he lay till the beginning of November, when, the Court of Session sitting down, he presented a petition, setting forth the hardship of his case, seeing that there was no law forbidding any one to read the English liturgy, and he had fully qualified to the civil government by taking the necessary oaths. It was answered for the magistrates, that ‘there needs no law condemning the English service, for the introducing the Presbyterian worship explodes it as inconsistent,’ and the statute had only promised that the oath-taking should protect ministers who had been in possession of charges. ‘The generality of the 352|1709.| Lords,’ says Fountainhall, ‘regretted the man’s case;’^[421] but they refused to set him at liberty, unless he would engage to ‘forbear the English service.’ Amongst his congregation there was a considerable number of English people, who had come to Edinburgh as officers of Customs and Excise. It must have bewildered them to find what was so much venerated in their own part of the island, a subject of such wrathful hatred and dread in this.

Greenshields, continuing a prisoner in the Tolbooth, determined, with the aid of friends, to appeal to the House of Lords against the decision of the Court of Session. Such appeals had become possible only two years ago by the Union, and they were as yet a novelty in Scotland. The local authorities had never calculated on such a step being taken, and they were not a little annoyed by it. They persisted, nevertheless, in keeping the clergyman in his loathsome prison, till, after a full year, an order of the House of Lords came for his release. Meanwhile, other troubles befell the church, for a Tory ministry came into power, who, like the queen herself, did not relish seeing the Episcopalian clergy and liturgy treated contumeliously in Scotland. The General Assembly desired to have a fast on account of ‘the crying sins of the land, irreligion, popery, many errors and delusions;’ and they chafed at having to send for authority to Westminster, where it was very grudgingly bestowed. It seemed as if they had no longer a barrier for the protection of that pure faith which it was the happy privilege of Scotland, solely of all nations on the face of the earth, to enjoy. Their enemies, too, well saw the advantage that had been gained over them, and eagerly supported Greenshields in his tedious and expensive process, which ended (March 1711) in the reversal of the Session’s decision. ‘It is a tacit rescinding,’ says Wodrow, ‘of all our laws for the security of our worship, and that unhappy man [an Irish curate of fifteen pounds a year, invited to Edinburgh on a promise of eighty] has been able to do more for the setting up of the English service in Scotland than King Charles the First was able to do.’

Nov. 9.

The Lords of Session decided this day on a critical question, involving the use of a word notedly of uncertain meaning. John Purdie having committed an act of immorality on which a parliamentary act of 1661 imposed a penalty of a hundred pounds in 353|1709.| the case of ‘a gentleman,’ the justices of peace fined him accordingly, considering him a gentleman within the construction of the act, as being the son of ‘a heritor,’ or land-proprietor. ‘When charged for payment by Thomas Sandilands, collector of these fines, he suspended, upon this ground that the fine was exorbitant, in so far as he was but a small heritor, and, as all heritors are not gentlemen, so he denied that he had the least pretence to the title of a gentleman. The Lords sustained the reason of suspension to restrict the fine to ten pounds Scots, because the suspender had not the face or air of a gentleman: albeit it was alleged by the charger [Sandilands] that the suspender’s profligateness and debauchery, the place of the country where he lives, and the company haunted by him, had influenced his mien.’^[422]

An anonymous gentleman of Scotland, writing to the Earl of Seafield, on the improvement of the salmon-fishing in Scotland, informs us how the fish were then, as now, massacred in their pregnant state, by country people. ‘I have known,’ he says, ‘a fellow not worth a groat kill with a spear in one night’s time a hundred black fish or kipper, for the most part full of rawns unspawned.’ He adds: ‘Even a great many gentlemen, inhabitants by the rivers, are guilty of the same crimes,’ little reflecting on ‘the prodigious treasure thus miserably dilapidated.’

Notwithstanding these butcheries, he tells us that no mean profit was then derived from the salmon-fishing in Scotland; he had known from two to three thousand barrels, worth about six pounds sterling each, exported in a single year. ‘Nay, I know Sir James Calder of Muirton alone sold to one English merchant a thousand barrels in one year’s fishing.’ He consequently deems himself justified in estimating the possible product of the salmon-fishing, if rightly protected and cultivated, at forty thousand barrels, yielding £240,000 sterling, per annum.^[423]

1710. Feb.

At Inchinnan, in Renfrewshire, there fell out a ‘pretty peculiar accident.’ One Robert Hall, an elder, and reputed as an estimable man, falling into debt with his landlord, the Laird of Blackston, was deprived of all he had, and left the place. Two months before this date, he returned secretly, and being unable to live 354|1710.| contentedly without going to church, he disguised himself for that purpose in women’s clothes. It was his custom to go to Eastwood church, but curiosity one day led him to his own old parish-church of Inchinnan. As he crossed a ferry, he was suspected by the boatman and a beadle of being a man in women’s clothes, and traced on to the church. The minister, apprised of the suspicion, desired them not to meddle with him; but on a justice of peace coming up, he was brought forward for examination. He readily owned the fact, and desired to be taken to the minister, who, he said, would know him. The minister protected him for the remainder of the day, that he might escape the rudeness of the mob; and on the ensuing day, he was taken to Renfrew, and liberated, at the intercession of his wife’s father.^[424]

May.

The General Assembly passed an act, declaring the marriage of Robert Hunter, in the bounds of the presbytery of Biggar, with one John [Joan] Dickson to be incestuous, the woman having formerly been the mother of a child, the father of which was grand-uncle to her present husband. The act discharged the parties from remaining united under pain of highest censure.

The church kept up long after this period a strict discipline regarding unions which involved real or apparent relationship. In May 1730, we find John Baxter, elder in Tealing parish, appealing against a finding of the synod, that his marriage with his deceased wife’s brother’s daughter’s daughter, was incestuous. Two years later, the General Assembly had under its attention a case, which, while capable of being stated in words, is calculated to rack the very brain of whoever would try to realise it in his conceptions. A Carrick man, named John M‘Taggart, had unluckily united himself to a woman named Janet Kennedy, whose former husband, Anthony M‘Harg, ‘was a brother to John M‘Taggart’s grandmother, which grandmother was said to be natural daughter of the said Anthony M‘Harg’s father!’ The presbytery of Ayr took up the case, and M‘Taggart was defended by a solicitor, in a paper full of derision and mockery at the law held to have been offended; ‘a new instance,’ says Wodrow,’ of the unbounded liberty that lawyers take.’^[425] The presbytery having condemned the marriage as incestuous, M‘Taggart appealed in wonted form to the synod, which affirmed the former decision, and ordered a retractation of the offensive paper on pain of 355|1710.| excommunication. The case then came before the General Assembly, who left it to be dealt with by its commission. It hung here for six years, during which it may be presumed that M‘Taggart and his wife were either separated or only lived together under the load of presbyterial censure; and at length, in March 1738, it was sent back, along with the still older case of Baxter, by the commission to the Assembly itself.^[426] How it was ultimately disposed of, I have not learned.

What would these church authorities have thought of a recent act of the state of Indiana, which permits marriages with any of the relations of a deceased partner, and forbids the union of cousins!

June.

‘Some ill-disposed persons, said to be of the suppressed parish of Barnweil [Ayrshire], set fire to the new church of Stair in the night-time; but it was quickly smothered. The occasion was thought to be the bringing the bell from Barnweil to Stair. I have scarce heard of such are instance of fire being wilfully set to a church.’—Wodrow.^[427] The parish of Barnweil having been suppressed, and half the temporalities assigned to the new parish of Stair, the inhabitants appear to have been exasperated beyond all bounds, and hence this offence.

Aug. 19.

David Bruce, a youth of fifteen, accompanied by five companions of about the same age, all of the city of St Andrews, went out in a boat to amuse themselves, but, losing one of their oars, and being carried out to sea, they were unable to return. It was late in the evening before their friends missed them. A boat was sent in the morning in quest of them, but in vain. Meanwhile, the boys were tossed up and down along the waters, without being able to make any shore, although they were daily in sight of land. At length, after they had been six days at sea without food or drink, an easterly wind brought them ashore at a place called Hernheuch, four miles south of Aberdeen, and fifty north of St Andrews. They were all of them in an exhausted condition, and two of them near death. By the direction of an honest countryman, John Shepherd, two of the boys were able to climb up the steep cliff beneath which their skiff had touched shore. Shepherd received them into his house, and lost no time in sending for help to Aberdeen. Presently, the Dean of Guild, 356|1710.| Dr Gregory a physician, and Mr Gordon a surgeon, were on the spot, exerting themselves by all judicious means to preserve the lives of the six boys, five of whom entirely recovered.

Robert Bruce, goldsmith in Edinburgh, father of David Bruce, ‘in thankful commemoration of the preservation of his son,’ had a copperplate engraved by Virtue, with a full-length portrait of the lad, and a view of the six boys coming ashore in the boat. David Bruce was for many years head cashier of Drummond’s bank at Charing Cross, and lived till 1771.^[428]

Sep.

‘One Robert Fleming, a very poor man, who taught an English school at Hamilton, was taken up for cheating some poor people with twenty-shilling notes, all wrote with his own hand, and a dark impression made like the seal of the Bank [of Scotland]. He was prosecuted for the forgery; and, on his own confession, found guilty, and condemned to death; but having been reprieved by her majesty several times, and at last during pleasure, he, after her majesty’s death, obtained a remission.’^[429]

This poor man, in his confession before the Lords who examined him, said he had forged fifty, but only passed four notes, the first being given for a shawl to his wife. ‘He declared that he intended to have coined crown-pieces; and the stamp he had taken in clay, which he shewed; but, which is most remarkable of all, [he] confessed that he made use of one of the Psalms, that he might counterfeit the print of the notes the better by practice, in writing over those letters that were in the Psalm, and which he had occasion to write in the bank-notes. My Lord Forglen had forgot what Psalm it was; but the man said the first words of the Psalm which appeared to him was to this purpose: “The eyes of the Lord behold the children of men;” which was truly remarkable.’^[430]

Nov. 30.

Died at Paisley Abbey, of small-pox, the Countess of Dundonald, celebrated for her beauty, and not less remarkable for her amiable and virtuous character. She left three infant daughters, all of whom grew in time to be noted ‘beauties,’ and of whom one became Duchess of Hamilton, and the other two the Countesses of Strathmore and Galloway. The death of the lovely young Lady Dundonald of a disease so loathsome and 357|1710.| distressing, was deeply deplored by a circle of noble kindred, and lamented by the public in general, notwithstanding the drawback of her ladyship being an adherent of the Episcopal communion. Wodrow, who condemns the lady as ‘highly prelatical in her principles,’ but admits she was ‘very devote and charitable,’ tells us how, at the suggestion of Dr Pitcairn, Bishop Rose waited on the dying lady, while the parish minister came to the house, but was never admitted to her chamber. Wodrow also states, that for several Sundays after her death, the earl had sermon preached in his house every Sunday by Mr Fullarton, an Episcopalian, ‘or some others of that gang;’ and on Christmas Day there was an administration of the communion, ‘for anything I can hear, distributed after the English way.’ ‘This,’ adds Wodrow, ‘is the first instance of the communion at Yule so openly celebrate in this country’ since the Revolution.^[431]

The last time we had the Post-office under our attention (1695), it was scarcely able to pay its own expenses. Not long after that time, in accordance with the improved resources of the country, it had begun to be a source of revenue, though to a very small amount. It was conducted for three years before the Union by George Main, jeweller in Edinburgh, with an average yearly return to the Exchequer of £1194, 8s. 10d., subject to a deduction for government expresses and the expense (£60) of the packet-boat at Portpatrick. Immediately after that time, the business of the central office in Edinburgh was conducted in a place no better than a common shop, by seven officials, the manager George Main having £200 a year, while his accountant, clerk, and clerk’s assistant had respectively £56, £50, and £25, and three runners or letter-carriers had each 5s. per week.

An act of the British parliament^[432] now placed the Scottish Post-office under that of England, but with ‘a chief letter-office’ to be kept up in Edinburgh. The charge for a letter from London to Edinburgh was established at sixpence, and that for other letters at twopence for distances within fifty English miles, greater distances being in proportion. For the five years following the Union, there was an annual average gain of £6000—a striking improvement upon 1698, when Sir Robert Sinclair found he could not make it pay expenses, even with the benefit of a pension of £300 a year.

1711. Sep.

358The light-thoughted part of the public was at this time regaled by the appearance of a cluster of small brochures printed in blurred type on dingy paper, being the production of William Mitchell, tin-plate worker in the Bow-head of Edinburgh, but who was pleased on his title-pages to style himself the Tinklarian Doctor. Mitchell had, for twelve years, been employed by the magistrates of the city as manager of the lighting of the streets, at the moderate salary of five pounds. He represented that his predecessor in the office had ten pounds; but ‘I took but five, for the town was in debt.’ The magistrates, doubtless for reasons satisfactory to themselves, and which it is not difficult to divine, had deprived him of his post. ‘Them that does them a good turn,’ says he, ‘they forget; but they do not forget them that does them an ill turn; as, for example, they keep on a captain [of the town-guard, probably] for love of Queensberry, for making the Union—I believe he never did them a good turn, but much evil to me, [as] he would not let me break up my shop-door the time of the fire, before my goods was burnt.’ The poor man here alludes to a calamity which perhaps had some share in driving his excitable brain out of bounds. Being now in comparative indigence, and full of religious enthusiasm, he took up at his own hands an office of which he boasted that no magistrate could deprive him, no less than that of giving ‘light’ to the ministers of the Church of Scotland, who, he argued, needed this service at his hands—‘otherwise God would not have raised me up to write to them.’ The ministers, he candidly informs us, did not relish his taking such a duty upon him, since he had never received any proper call to become a preacher: some of them called him a fool, and the principal of a college at St Andrews went the length of telling him to burn his books. But he acted under an inward call which would not listen to any such objections. He thought the spirit of God ‘as free to David and Amos the herds, and to James, John, and Simon the fishers, and Matthew and Levi the customers, as to any that will bide seven years at college.’ And, if to shepherds and fishermen, why not to a tin-plate worker or tinkler? ‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ &c.

The Tinkler’s Testament, which was the great work of Mitchell, was heralded by an Introduction, dedicating his labours to Queen Anne. He claimed her majesty’s protection in his efforts to illuminate the clergy, and hinted that a little money to help in printing his books would also be useful. He would willingly go to converse with her majesty; but he was without the means of travelling, 359|1711.| and his ‘loving wife and some small children’ hindered him. This brings him to remark that, while he lived upon faith, ‘my wife lives much upon sense,’ as the wives of men of genius are very apt to do. After all, ‘although I should come, I am nothing but a little black man, dull-like, with two scores upon my brow and a mole on my right cheek;’ which marks ‘I give to your majesty, in case any person come up in a counterfeit manner;’ nevertheless, ‘if I had clothes, I would look as big as some gentlemen.’^[433]

In this pamphlet, Mitchell abuses the ministers roundly for neglect of their flocks, telling that for six years the pastor of his parish had never once inquired for him. They would go and play at bowls, alleging it was for their health, and allow suffering souls to perish. It was as if he were employed by a gentleman to make lanterns—took the money—but never made the articles required, for want of which the gentleman’s servants were hindered in their work, and perished in pits. ‘Now whether think ye an immortal soul or my lanterns of most value? I will sell a good lantern at ten shillings [Scots], though it be made of brass; but the whole world cannot balance one soul.’

The Tinkler’s Testament he dedicated to the Presbyterian ministers of Scotland, telling them ‘not to be offended, although I be set over you by providence,’ nor ‘think that I shall be like the bishops that were before me—necessity gives me a right to be your overseer—necessity that hath neither law nor manners.’ ‘I know you will not hear of a bishop over you, and therefore I shall be over you, as a coachman to drive you to your duty.’ He saw their deficiencies in what had happened in his own case. In his evil days, they never told him sufficiently of his sins. He might almost have supposed he was on the way to heaven for anything they said to him. It was affliction, not their ministrations, which had loosed him from the bonds of sin. Their own preachings were cold and worthless, and so were those of the young licentiates whom they so often engaged to hold forth in their stead. Here he applied another professional parable. ‘You employ me to make a tobacco-box. I spoil it in the making. Whether is you 360|1711.| or I obliged to pay the loss? I think ye are not obliged to pay it. Neither am I obliged to take these sermons off your hand.’ ‘Perhaps,’ he adds, ‘you trust in your elders.’ But ‘I may keep strange women in my house for them; I may stay out till twelve o’clock at night and be drunk for them: a cart-horse, when he comes up the Bow, may teach them their duty, for it will do its duty to the outmost of its power; and before it will disobey, it will fall to the ground.’ In short, the Tinkler had been used by these clergy with a lenity which he felt to be utterly inexcusable.

It is to be feared that the Tinkler was one of those censors whom no kind of conduct in persons of authority will please, for we find him in this brochure equally furious at the ministers for not preaching evangelical discourses, and for being so slack in telling their flocks of the weighty matters of the law. He threatens to tell very sad things of them at the great day, and yet he protests that it is not from hatred to them. If such were his feelings, he would not be at the pains to reprove them; still less would he have ever given Dean of Guild Neilson a speaking-trumpet for a seat in the kirk, not worth twenty shillings sterling, seeing it is but a back-seat, where he may fall asleep, and the minister never once call on him to sit up. ‘This,’ however, ‘is only a word by the by.’

One great charge which the Tinkler has to make against the clergy is, that they are afraid to preach freely to the consciences of men, for fear of angering the great. ‘If ye be feared to anger them, God will not be feared to anger you. “Cry aloud and spare not; tell the poor their transgressions, and the great folk their sins.”’ Then he proposes to relate something of the justice he had himself experienced. ‘The Laird of Cramond hath laid down a great cairn of stones before my shop-door, which takes away my light. They have lain near these two years (because he is rich). If I lay down but two carts-full, I believe they would not lie twenty-four hours. I pursued a man at court; I could both have sworn and proved that he was owing me; yet, because he had a blue cloak and a campaign wig, the judge would not take his oath, and would not take my word. I had a mind to buy a blue cloak, that I might get justice; but I was disappointed by the dreadful fire. I bought some wool from a man. He would not give it out of his house till I gave my bill. The goods was not weighed, and I feared they came not to so much money; yet the man persuaded me if it was not so, he would 361|1711.| restore me the money back. I believed his word, because I am a simple man. So I pursued the man, thinking to get my money. The judge told me I would get no money, although there were a hundred pounds of it; so I went home with less money than I came out.... Ye will say, what is the reason there is so little justice; I shall tell you my opinion of it. I have a vote for choosing our deacon. A man comes to me and offers me a pint to vote for such a man. I take it because he never did me no ill, and because I am a fool-body. I vote for the man. So fool-tradesmen make fool-deacons, and fool-deacons make fool-magistrates, and fool-magistrates make fool-ministers. That is the reason there is so little justice in the city.’ The crazy whitesmith has here touched a point of failure in democratic institutions which wiser men have overlooked.

This singular genius afterwards published a brochure, entitled The Great Tinklarian Doctor Mitchell his Fearful Book, to the Condemnation of all Swearers, at the end of which he announced another ‘concerning convictions;’ ‘the like of it ye have not heard since Cromwell’s days.’ But probably the reader has now heard enough of the effusions of the white-ironsmith of the Bow-head.^[434]

1711. Nov. 6.

362Notwithstanding the severity of the laws against Catholic priests, and particularly that of 1701, which a proclamation two years back put into fresh vigour, there was at least one minister of the hated faith of Rome sheltered in Edinburgh. It would be curious to learn under what disguise he contrived to live in a city where all, except a handful of people, were disposed to tear him in pieces. From its being mentioned that his paraphernalia for worship belonged to Lady Seaforth, it may be surmised that he lived under her protection. Thomas Mackie, being now at last apprehended by the magistrates, and ordained to remove immediately out of Britain, was so bold as to call for a suspension of their act in the Court of Session, setting forth that he had lived for many years inoffensively in Edinburgh—the vestments, altar, crucifixes, &c., found in his house belonged to the Countess of Seaforth—he had not been taken in the act of saying mass, and it had not been proved that he was a priest—finally, and above all, the magistrates of Edinburgh were going beyond their powers in banishing any one forth of the island. The magistrates having answered these objections, the Lords ‘ordained him to enact himself to remove betwixt and a day out of the kingdom; and in case of refusal, to be imprisoned till a ship was ready to transport him.’^[435]

1712. Jan. 14.

Immemorial custom gave a right to the steward-depute of the stewartry of Kirkcudbright to get a mart cow out of every parish in his jurisdiction, being twenty-nine in number. He was not required to observe any particular form or ceremony in raising this mail, beyond sending an officer to the parish to pitch upon and seize the cow, and offer the owner five shillings Scots, called the Queen’s Money, which entitled him to relief from his fellow-parishioners, according to the value of their respective estates. In October 1711, William Lindsay of Mains, steward-depute under the Marquis of Annandale, principal steward, sent his officer, William Hislop, to take a cow from the parish of Southwick, and the man pitched upon a beast belonging to John Costein of Glensoane. John, however, ‘did violently oppose the officer in the execution of his office to uplift the cow; and making a convocation of his tenants and others, his complices, by force of arms resisted the officer, whom he beat and bruised with many strokes, and rescued his cow.’

1712.

363For this offence, Costein and his associates were now brought before the Court of Justiciary. They pleaded several objections to the custom, as a defence of their conduct; but all these were overruled by the Lords, and their offence was declared to be liable to an arbitrary punishment.^[436]

Feb.

‘About the beginning of this month, Whiston’s Primitive Christianity came down to Edinburgh, and was seized in the booksellers’ shops by the magistrates.’^[437]

Mar.

‘The end of this last and the beginning of this month, we have some accounts of a sickness in Fife, from some of the crew of a ship that came out before their quarantine was performed; but it seems the Lord hath hitherto prevented it. It’s, indeed, a wonder we are not visited with some heavy rod.’^[438]

The art of printing had fallen sadly off in Scotland during the latter half of the seventeenth century. James Watson^[439] points out truly that Bassandyne’s folio Bible of 1576, Arbuthnot’s first edition of Buchanan’s History in 1582, Andro Hart’s Bible of 1610, and the Muses’ Welcome to King James in 1618, were well printed books; the last of these Bibles so much so, that ‘many after-impressions of the Bible in folio, had, as the greatest commendation that could be made of them, at the foot of their title-pages, that they were “conform to the edition printed by Andro Hart.”’ Watson adds: ‘The folio Common Prayer-book, printed before the Troubles by Robert Young, then printer for this kingdom to the Royal Martyr, is a pregnant instance of this. I have with great pleasure viewed and compared that book with the English one in the same volume, printed about the same time by the king’s printer in England; and Mr Young’s book so far exceeded the other, that there could be no comparison made between them. You’ll see by that printed here, the master furnished with a very large fount, four sheets being inset together; a vast variety of curiously cut head-pieces, finis’s, blooming letters, fac-totums, flowers, &c. You’ll see the compositor’s part done with the greatest regularity and niceness in the Kalendar, and throughout the rest of the book; the pressman’s part done to a wonder in the red and black, and the whole printed in so 364|1712.| beautiful and equal a colour, that there is not any appearance of variation. But this good and great master was ruined by the Covenanters for doing this piece of work, and forced to fly the kingdom.’

After the Restoration, one Archibald Hislop, a bookseller, with William Carron as his workman, produced a neat edition of Thomas à Kempis and some other small books. Some Dutchmen, who had been brought over to assist Hislop’s successor, John Cairns, also printed a few respectable volumes, including the acts of parliament, and Sir Robert Sibbald’s Prodromus; but all tendency to attain or maintain the level formerly attained, was checked by a monopoly which was granted to one Andrew Anderson in 1671. This Anderson, who seems to have come from Glasgow, was early in that year condemned by the Privy Council for a very faulty edition of the New Testament; yet, for ‘payment of a composition in exchequer and other weighty reasons,’ they immediately after granted him, as king’s printer, an exclusive right to print all kinds of lawful books in Edinburgh, with a right of supervision over all other typographers within the kingdom. He died in 1679; but his widow succeeded to the monopoly, and exercised it for some years with the greatest rigour, persecuting all who attempted to interfere with the business of printing. As might be expected, the productions of her own press were miserable beyond all example; she both produced bad and erroneous editions of the Bible, and much fewer of them than were required to satisfy the demands of the public. A restriction was at length put upon her privilege, so as to allow general printing to be executed by others; but she continued through the whole term of her patent to be the sole printer of the Scriptures in Scotland. Fac-similes of a few pages from her Bibles—in poor blurred type, almost unintelligible with errors, with italic letters employed wherever the Roman fount fell short, and some lines wholly without spaces between the words—would appal the reader. It plainly appears that no such functionary as a corrector was at any time kept by Mrs Anderson; nor was she herself able to supply the deficiency. The Bible being then almost the only school-book in use, we may imagine what unrequired difficulties were added to the task of gaining a knowledge of the elements of the English language. What, for example, was a poor child to make of the following passage in her duodecimo Bible of 1705: ‘Whyshoulditbethoug tathingincredi ble w^tyou, y^t God should raise the dead?’ Mrs Anderson’s Bibles being of such 365|1712.| a character, there was a great importation of English and foreign copies, but only in despite of strenuous efforts on her part to keep them out. Strange to say, when now her government patent expired, she contrived to obtain the appointment of printer to the Church of Scotland. Her ability to buy up a heavy stock of acts of the General Assembly was what secured her this piece of otherwise most unmerited patronage.

Had the government patent expired a few years earlier, she might, for anything that appears, have obtained a renewal of it also. But, now that a Tory ministry was in power, this lucrative privilege was conferred on two zealous Jacobites—Mr Robert Freebairn, publisher, and Mr James Watson, printer. These gentlemen were better typographers than Mrs Anderson; and the Bibles they issued were much superior. But their Tory principles prevented them from long enjoying the privilege. Probably acting in the spirit of their patrons, they ‘seem to have exercised a discretionary power of declining to publish royal proclamations when they were not consonant with their own views; otherwise it is difficult to discover why the queen’s proclamation against unlawful intruders into churches and manses was printed, not by either of her majesty’s printers, but by John Reid in Bell’s Wynd.’^[440] This zeal led Freebairn, on the breaking out of the rebellion in 1715, to go to Perth with printing apparatus and materials, to act as printer for the person whom he called James the Eighth; and he consequently forfeited his patent.^[441] Politics now favoured Mrs Anderson. In partnership with an Englishman named Baskett, the king’s printer for England, she once more became the exclusive printer of the Scriptures in Scotland, and for forty-one years more! The Bibles produced during the greater part of that time were indeed a little better than those under the former patent—the general progress of the country necessitated some little improvement—but they were still far inferior to the unprivileged productions of the Scottish press during the same epoch.

There is a reflection which must, or ought somewhat to modify 366|1712.| our feeling regarding this monstrous absurdity; namely, that the printing of the Scriptures was kept upon the footing of a monopoly, with the effect of poor work and high prices, till our own age, and that so lately as 1823 the patentees, in a legal document, set forth their expenses in erecting a printing-office and ‘other charges of various descriptions,’ as entitling them ‘to enjoy the relative profits and emoluments without interference from any quarter.’

Mar.

Encouraged by the triumph of Mr Greenshields, and the popularity of the Tory administration, the Scottish Episcopalians began in many places to introduce the liturgy of the Church of England. The old Scottish horror for that form of devotion was excited in a high degree; church-courts were full of terror and grief; in some parts, the mob was ready to make a new reformation. In the course of 1711, a good deal of pretty effectual work was done for the appeasing of the popular anxiety. According to a contemporary narration—‘Mr Honeyman, for using the Church of England liturgy at Crail, was prosecuted and deposed by the presbytery, and if the magistrates and people were not Episcopal, he had fallen under very severe punishments. It is but few months since Mr Dunbreck was libelled by the presbytery, prosecuted by the magistrates, and threatened by the Lord Advocate, for using the English liturgy in the Earl Marischal’s own house at Aberdeen, to whom he was chaplain. The Earl of Carnwath this summer was threatened to have his house burned over his head, if he continued the English service in it, and his chaplain thereafter forced to leave his family.’ In November 1711, the presbytery of Perth deposed Henry Murray, a pre-Revolution incumbent of Perth hitherto undisturbed, because he used the English service at baptisms and burials, and the liturgy in worship.^[442]

At the date of the present article, the two parties had what Wodrow calls ‘a little ruffle’ at Auchterarder—a bleak parish in Strathearn, which has at various times contrived to make a prominent appearance in ecclesiastical politics. The trouble arose in consequence of an attempt to use the funeral-service of the English Church at a funeral. ‘The common people,’ says Wodrow, ‘though not very Presbyterian in their principles, yet they reckoned the service popery, and could not away with it. When the corpse came to 367|1712.| the churchyard, the women and country-people began and made a great mutiny. The Lord Rollo, a justice of the peace, interposed, but to no purpose. The Duke of Montrose’s bailie, Graham of Orchil, was there; and writes it was not Presbyterians, but the whole of the common people there; and they chased off the liturgy-man, and they behoved to bury in their wonted manner.’

Just at this crisis, the Tory administration of the Church-of-England-loving Anne interposed with an act of toleration for the distressed Episcopalians of Scotland, enabling clergymen, who had orders from Protestant bishops, and took the oaths of allegiance, assurance, and abjuration, to celebrate divine service—using, if they chose, the English liturgy—and to perform baptisms and marriages, without molestation; only further enjoining such clergymen to pray for the queen, the Princess Sophia, and the rest of the royal family, under a penalty of twenty pounds. The church commission had fasts, and prayers, and addresses against the measure—even spoke of reviving the Solemn League and Covenant—but their resistance was in vain.

Hitherto, the western section of the country had been clear of this abomination; but, in November, to the great distress of the serious people of Glasgow, an attempt was made there to set up the Episcopal form of worship. The minister officiating was one Cockburn, ‘an immoral profane wretch, and very silly,’ according to Mr Wodrow, ‘a tool fit enough for beginning such a work;’ who, however, had prepared well his ground by qualifying to the government. A number of persons of social importance joined the congregation. ‘The Earl of Marr, and [the Laird of] Bannockburn were there lately with two coaches, and many go out of curiosity to see it.’^[443] The boys took the matter up in their usual decisive manner; but the Toleration Act compelled protection from the magistrates, and three town-officers stood guard at the chapel door. On the 27th of December, an English soldier having died, his officers wished to have him buried according to the solemn ritual of his church, and Mr Cockburn performed the ceremony in canonicals in the cathedral cemetery, the company all uncovered, and a rabble looking on with suppressed rage. The clergy took a look into the statute-book, to see if they should be obliged to endure this kind of insolence as well as the liturgy. Wodrow had hopes that Cockburn’s congregation would tire of 368|1712.| supporting him, though his ‘encouragement’ did not exceed twenty-two pounds a year, or that his free conversation and minced oaths would make them put him away. A foolish shoemaker who attended his chapel having lost his wife, Cockburn wished to have a second exhibition of the funeral-service; but the magistrates would not allow it. One day, he was baptising a soldier’s child at a house in the Gorbals, and great was the commotion which it occasioned among the multitude. On coming out, he was beset by a host of boys calling to him ‘Amen, Amen!’ the use of this word in the service being so odious to the public, that it had stuck to Cockburn as a nickname. For nearly two years were the religious feelings of the people outraged by the open and avowed practice of the ‘modified idolatry’ in the midst of them, when at length a relief came with the Hanover succession. As soon as it was known that Queen Anne was no more, occidental human nature could no longer be restrained. On the evening of the 6th of August 1714, the little chapel was fairly pulled down, and the minister and his wife were glad to flee for their lives. So ended Episcopalian worship in Glasgow for a time.^[444] A few verses from a popular ballad will assist in giving us some idea of the local feelings of the hour:

‘We have not yet forgot, sir,

How Cockburn’s kirk was broke, sir,

The pulpit-gown was pulled down,

And turned into nought, sir.

· · · · ·

Long-neckèd Peggie H[ome], sir,

Did weep and stay at home, sir,

Because poor Cockburn and his wife

Were forced to flee the town, sir.

· · · · ·

The chess-window did reel, sir,

Like to a spinning-wheel, sir,

For Dagon he is fallen now;

I hope he’ll never rise, sir.’^[445]

Mar.

A Dumfriesshire minister communicated to Wodrow an account he had got from the Laird of Waterside, a factor of the Duke of Queensberry, of a spectacle which the laird and many others had 369|1712.| seen about sunset one evening in this month, about a mile from Penpont. ‘There appeared to them, towards the sea, two large fleets of ships, near a hundred upon every side, and they met together and fairly engaged. They very clearly saw their masts, tackling, guns, and their firing one at another. They saw several of them sunk; and after a considerable time’s engagement they sundered, and one part of them went to the west and another to the south.’

Wodrow goes on to relate what Mr James Boyes told him of shootings heard one morning about the same time in Kintyre. ‘The people thought it had been thunder, and went out to see what sort of day it was like to be. All appears clear, and nothing like thunder. There were several judicious people that saw, at some distance from them, several very great companies of soldiers marching with their colours flying and their drums beating, which they heard distinctly, and saw the men walking on the ground in good order; and yet there were no soldiers at all in that country, nor has been a long time. They heard likewise a very great shooting of cannon: ... so distinct and terrible, that many of the beasts broke the harrow and came running home.’

May.

Wodrow notes, at this time, a piece of bad taste on the part of Sir James Hall of Dunglass, whose family had in recent times acquired by purchase that ancient possession of the Home family. The old burial-place of the Earls of Home had been turned by Sir James into a stable, and he resisted both the clamour of the public and the private remonstrance of the aggrieved family on the subject. ‘Because the minister shewed some dislike at this unnatural thing, he is very uneasy to him.’

This act of Sir James Hall necessarily shocked Episcopalians; and to such an extent was the feeling carried, that a distinct pamphlet on the subject was published in London. The writer of this tells us, that, having made an excursion into Scotland in the summer of 1711, he tarried for a while at the post-house of Cockburnspath, and thus had an opportunity of seeing the ‘pretty little church’ near Dunglass House. He found that Sir James had gathered off all the grave-stones from the churchyard, to give scope for the growing of grass. He had ‘made the nave of the church a stable for his coach-mares, and dug up the graves of the dead, throwing away their bones, to make way for a pavement for his horses.... He has made the choir a coach-house, and 370|1712.| broken down the great east end wall, to make a great gate to let his coaches in, that they may stand where the altar of God did stand. The turret is a pigeon-house, and over this new stable he has made a granary. There is also a building called an aile, adjoining the north side of the church, which is still a burying-place (still belonging to the Earl of Home), in which Sir James keeps hay for his horses, though his own first lady, who was daughter to Sir Patrick Home of Polwarth (now Earl of Marchmont), and his own only son, lie buried there.’

The writer states that Sir James’s father, though ‘of no family,’ but only a lord mayor of Edinburgh, had kept this church in good repair all his lifetime, and bestowed upon it a new pulpit. The neighbouring gentlemen had remonstrated against the desecration, and one had offered to build for him separate conveniences such as he wanted, provided he would spare the church; but all in vain. He adds: ‘Sir James is still as well esteemed by the whole party as ever he was, and in full communion with their kirk; nor could I learn of any reproof he ever had from his spiritual guides, the Mass Johns, upon this account; though ’tis most apparent that, had his Presbyterian holders-forth interposed, as they might and ought to have done, and as in other cases they are very apt to do when religion or even morality are not near so much concerned as here, Sir James durst not have attempted the doing this wicked thing.’

The writer goes on to remark what he calls the inconsistency of the Presbyterians in insisting that baptism shall always be performed in a church. ‘There are instances to be given, if need were, of their letting infants die without their baptism, rather than sprinkle them out of a church.’ ‘I shall mention but one other of their inconsistencies; ’tis that of their Judaical, if not Pharisaical observation of the Lord’s Day, which they call the Sabbath. This they set up most rigidly as their characteristic, though they pretend to admit of nothing as a principle, nor allow of any stated practice ecclesiastic, for which they have not a positive command in the Holy Scriptures. They despise the decrees and canons of the church, even in the early ages of it; nor does the unanimous consent of the primitive fathers of the first three centuries weigh with them; and yet I humbly think they must either take the observation of the first day of the week as the Lord’s Day or weekly Easter from the authority of the church; else it would puzzle them to get clear of the observation of the seventh day or 371|1712.| Jewish Sabbath from the morality of the fourth commandment by any positive gospel precept.’^[446]

May 29.

An ingenious piece of masked Jacobitism is described in a newspaper as taking place in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. ‘Thursday last’—so runs the paragraph—‘being the anniversary of the birth and happy restoration of King Charles II., of ever-blessed memory, was solemnly observed by Charles Jackson, merchant in Edinburgh, who had the honour to have his majesty stand godfather to him in the church of Keith at his baptism; and his majesty, by assuming the name of Jackson, was happily preserved from his enemies’ hands, after his escape out of the Royal Oak. In consideration of these honours conferred upon him by his sacred majesty, and being lineally descended from a stock of the loyalists, he invited all such, by public advertisement, to solemnise that memorable day, at an enclosure called Charles’s Field, lying a mile south from this city (where he hath erected a very useful bleaching-field), and there entertained them with diversity of liquors, fine music, &c. He had likewise a splendid bonfire, and a spacious standard erected, with a banner displayed upon it, whereon was very artfully drawn his sacred majesty in the Royal Oak, the bark wherein he made his escape, and the colonel who conducted him on board, taking leave of his majesty. The company round the bonfire drank her majesty, Queen Anne’s [health], and the memory of the happy Restoration, with great joy and demonstrations of loyalty. The night concluded with mirth; and the standard being brought back to Mr Jackson’s lodgings, carried by a loyal gentleman bareheaded, and followed by several others with trumpets, hautboys, and bagpipes playing before them, where they were kindly entertained.’^[447]

June 10.

Whatever might be the personal delinquencies and shortcomings of the judges, they never could be charged with a disposition to let other people off too easily. On the contrary, one is always struck by the appearances of severity in their treatment of those who fell into their hands. Two men of a humble order, named Rutherford and Gray, had been induced by a low agent, 372|1712.| named Alexander Pitblado, to adhibit their names as witnesses to a paper bearing to be a guarantee by Dean of Guild Warrender for the rent of a house occupied by one Isabel Guild, being the insignificant sum of £25 Scots. It became Pitblado’s fortune—doubtless, not undeservedly—to be carried away as a recruit to Flanders. The guarantee was detected to be a forgery. Rutherford and Gray were taken into custody, and carried before the magistrates, where they readily admitted that Pitblado had induced them to give their signatures, on the assurance that Warrender had signed the paper.

The Lord Advocate thought the case worthy of the notice of the judges; so the two men were brought up to the court, with a statement of their offence against the 5th act 1681. It was determined that the matter was proper to be decided summarily, and the culprits made no objection to this course, for, as they said, they had not means of living in jail to wait for a more deliberate trial. It was also determined that the Lords could decide in the case with shut doors. Rutherford, now fearing that his fault inferred death, withdrew his former confession, but was at length prevailed on to confess once more, telling, what we can well believe to have been the truth, that he had been ensnared by Gray to do what he did in pure simplicity. ‘The Lords considered that, though it was a very small sum, yet it was a dangerous case to let witnesses escape on pretence of simplicity, where they neither see the party sign nor own the subscription; therefore resolved to impose some stigma and censure to terrify others; and so ordained them to be brought on Wednesday, being the market-day, to the great door of the Parliament House, by the hand of the hangman, with a paper on their breasts bearing their crime, and there to stand betwixt ten and eleven in the forenoon, and from that to be conducted to the pillory at the Tron, and there to stand the other hour between eleven and twelve, with papers on their breast: and in regard Gray had seduced Rutherford to sign, they ordained his lug to be nailed to the Tron; and being informed that Rutherford was a notar, they deprived him, and declared them both infamous.’

Four days later, having in the interval undergone their sentence, they petitioned for liberation from jail, which was granted. Then, however, came in George Drummond, the Goodman of the Tolbooth, with a claim for his dues, which they were totally unable to pay. Before the Union, the Lords in such a case could throw the expense upon the Treasury; but now they were 373|1712.| without any such resource, and neither could they force the jailer to pass from his demand. In this dilemma, they after all acted a humane part, and made up the necessary sum out of their own pockets.^[448]

June 21.

The Edinburgh Courant intimated, in an advertisement, that ‘Robert Campbell, commonly known by the name of Rob Roy Macgregor, being lately intrusted by several noblemen and gentlemen with considerable sums for buying cows for them in the Highlands, has treacherously gone off with the money, to the value of £1000 sterling, which he carries along with him.’ This is the first public reference to a person who has become the theme of popular legend in Scotland to an extent little short of Robin Hood in England, and finally has had the fortune to be embalmed in a prose fiction by one of the greatest masters in modern literature.

It is generally admitted that Rob Roy was a man of good birth and connections, though belonging to a family or clan which for upwards of a century had been under proscription, and obliged to live a rather skulking kind of life. He had become possessed in an honourable manner of certain lands on the skirts of Ben Lomond, in the county of Stirling, composed wholly of mountain-ground, and of little annual value, yet sufficient to maintain him, the principal place being Inversnaid, on the isthmus between the Lochs Lomond and Katrine, where hundreds of tourists now pass every summer-day, but which was considered a very outlandish situation in the time of Queen Anne. His family name being illegal by act of parliament, he had adopted that of Campbell, in compliment to the Argyle family, which patronised him. The business of purchasing Highland cattle at the Crieff and other markets, and getting them transferred to England, where they were to be fattened and consumed, was for some years after the Union a favourite one amongst gentlemen of good rank, and it attracted the sagacious and active mind of Robert Macgregor Campbell. With some funds supplied by his neighbours, and part of which, at least, is said to have come primarily from the Duke of Montrose, on an understanding that the lenders were to share in the profits, he entered on the traffic with spirit, and conducted it for a time with success; but the defalcations of a subordinate agent or partner, named Macdonald, cut short his 374|1712.| career in trade, and left him in serious pecuniary difficulties. The aspect which the affair took at the Court of Session in Edinburgh was, that Robert Macgregor Campbell drew bills on Graham of Gorthie and other gentlemen for cattle he was to buy for them, realised the money, and then ‘did most fraudulently withdraw, and fled, without performing anything on his part, and thereby became unquestionably a notour and fraudulent bankrupt;’^[449] while in reality he was probably only the victim of a fraud, and obliged to keep out of the way in consequence of the unreasonable severities of the law towards men in his situation. It was a sufficiently barbarous measure to advertise an unfortunate man as a fraudulent bankrupt seeking to screen himself from justice; but the Duke of Montrose—in some other respects but a poor representative of his illustrious great-grandfather—went further: he caused his factor, Mr Graham of Killearn, to fall upon Macgregor’s poor little holding of Craigrostan and Inversnaid, and thrust out from it the wife and family of the late owner.

This treatment turned the milk of Macgregor’s nature to bitterness, and it is not surprising, when the general condition of the country, and the ordinary strain of men’s ideas in that age are considered, that he sought in a wild and lawless way to right himself with his oppressors—above all with the Duke of Montrose. From the rough country round Ben Lomond, he could any night stoop upon his Grace’s Lowland farms, and make booty of meal and cattle. Strange to say, while thus setting the law at defiance, he obtained a certain steady amount of countenance and protection from both of the great Campbell chiefs, Argyle and Breadalbane. The government made an effort to impose a check upon his career by planting a little fort at Inversnaid;^[450] but Rob Roy, nevertheless, continued in his lawless course of 375|1712.| life. On the side of Loch Lomond, near Inversnaid, there is a cave formed by a flexure in the stratification of the mountain: here Rob occasionally took refuge when hard pressed. It is curious to reflect that this strange exemplification of predatory life was realised in a not very remote part of our island, in the days when Addison and Pope were regaling the refined people of London with the productions of their genius. Rob is described as a short, robust man, with bushy hair and beard, and legs covered so thickly with red hair as to resemble those of a Highland bull. His cognomen ‘Roy’ expresses his ruddy complexion. It is admitted that, amidst his wild life, he was not without humanity or feeling for the unfortunate, and, what is perhaps more strange, that he was a sagacious and politic sort of person, who never would go into any quarrel or contention which was not likely to result in some practical benefit or advantage. It was probably owing to this cool temperament, that, though he mustered a body of clansmen for the Stuart cause in 1715, he yet stood neutral at the battle of Sheriffmuir, alike afraid to offend King James, on the one hand, and his patron, the Duke of Argyle, on the other.