June 16.
For several years after the Restoration, a very frequent entry in the record of the Privy Council is an application from a Scotsman of good family, resident abroad for aborbrieff[birth-letter], or certificate of his lineage and family connections, to be drawn up and transmitted to him, that he might be enabled to appear in a proper light before the strangers amongst whom he lived. At the date noted, there is an application of this kind from a lady! ‘Maria Margaret Urrie, eldest lawful daughter of the deceased Sir John Urrie of that Ilk, being abroad in a strange country, where her birth and pedigree is not known, to the prejudice of her fortune in those parts,’ had ‘purchased a certificate of her pedigree under the hands of the Earl of Panmure and several other noblemen and gentlemen of quality;’ and she now petitioned for ‘aborbrieffin her favours, conform to the said certificate.’—P. C. R.The requisite warrant for the Chancery was at once granted. We soon after (29th September 1670) hear of an application of the same nature from a lady of greater note, Elizabeth, Countess of Grammont, who states that she had obtained the needful ‘certificate of her descent and pedigree under the hand of the Earl of Lauderdale, his majesty’s High Commissioner; the Lord Duke of Hamilton, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls Marischal, Argyle, and divers other noblemen.’ She was a descendant of the Abercorn family. Her brother’s Memoirs of her husband, have made the world generally acquainted with this elegant woman.
1669.
Among applications forborbrieffswas one in June 1670, from ‘Thomas Kirkpatrick, secretary to the king of France and Councillor Lord Duplosse in Dunua, in France, son lawful ofThomas Kirkpatrick, a Scotsman and sometime one of the twenty-five Scots gentlemen soldiers of the life-guard of the king of France.’ Another, in 1686, was from the celebrated Colbert, minister of Louis XIV. of France, in whose behalf an act of parliament was passed, authorising the required document. It stated the descent of the Sieur Colbert, Marquis of Seignelay, at seven removes from Edward Culbert, a son of Culbert or Cuthbert of Castlehill, near Inverness, a family of king’s barons who often represented their county in parliament, and whose connections spread through the best branches of the peerage.—S. Acts.
Aug. 24.
The marriage-day of the unfortunateBride of Baldoon. The story of this lady has been related with all the graces of fiction in the tale of theBride of Lammermuir; but in its actual circumstances it is sufficiently impressive. She was the Honourable Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair, so distinguished as a lawyer and by the part he took in the politics of his day. While still in girlish years, the young lady contracted a passionate attachment to Lord Rutherford, the distant relative and heir of that noble champion, Andrew Rutherford, Earl of Teviot, who is alluded to so respectfully in this chronicle under 1663. The young nobleman returned this affection, and the pair plighted their troth in the usual manner, by parting a coin between them, and imprecating dismal evils upon whoever should withdraw from or violate the compact. But this alliance did not suit the views of the parents, whether from deficient fortune in the young lord, or from contrarious politics, does not appear. They favoured a new suitor who appeared in the person of David Dunbar, younger of Baldoon in Wigtonshire.
1669.
On learning that Dunbar was advancing in his suit, Lord Rutherford wrote to his mistress to remind her of her engagement, but received an answer from her mother, to the effect that she was now sensible of the error she had committed in entering into an engagement unsanctioned by the parental authority; and this engagement it was not her intention to fulfil. The lover refused to take an answer which did not come directly from his mistress, and insisted on an interview. It took place, but in presence of the mother, a woman whom public report represented as master of her husband and whole family, and indebted for this influence to witchcraft, though for no reason that can be discerned beyond her uncommon talents and force of character.It may readily be supposed that even the resources of love would be of poor avail against the skill and resolution of such a person. When Rutherford was introduced, he found her ready to meet his arguments with what was then an unanswerable defence, a text of Scripture (Numbersxxx., 2, 3, 4, 5), clearly absolving a woman from a bond entered into in her youth, if her father shall disallow her fulfilment of it, and promising that, in that case, ‘the Lord shall forgive her.’ The poor girl herself sat mute and overwhelmed, while the lover vainly pleaded against the application of this text; and the scene ended with her surrender of her portion of the broken coin, and his flying distracted from the house, after telling her that she would be a world’s wonder from what she had done and was yet to do.
The union with young Baldoon went on, but entirely under the management of the mother, for it is inconceivable that the young man could have pressed his suit, if he had known the extent to which the bride was under constraint. The wedding was celebrated, as was customary in those days, in the presence of the relatives of both parties, and with great festivity; but the bride remained like one lost in a reverie, and who only moves and acts mechanically. A younger brother lived long enough to state to a lady who communicated the fact to Sir Walter Scott, that he had the duty of carrying her on horseback behind him to church, and he remembered that the hand with which she clasped his waist was ‘cold and damp as marble.’ ‘Full of his new dress, and the part he acted in the procession, the circumstance, which he long afterwards remembered with bitter sorrow and compunction, made no impression on him at the time.’
1669.
In the evening, the newly wedded pair retired to their chamber, while the merry-making still proceeded in the hall. The room had been locked, and the key taken possession of by the brideman, to prevent any of the unseemly frolics which, it would seem, were sometimes played off on such occasions. But, suddenly there was heard to proceed from the bridal-chamber a loud and piercing outcry, followed by dismal groans. On its being opened, the alarmed company found the bridegroom weltering in his blood on the threshold, and the bride cowering in a corner of the chimney, with no covering but her shift, and that dabbled in gore. She told them ‘to take up their bonny bridegroom.’ It was evident she was insane, and the general belief was that she had franticly stabbed her husband. From that moment,she made no other rational communications, but pined away and died in less than three weeks. Young Baldoon recovered, but would never enter into explanations regarding the tragic occurrence. Perhaps it is this mystery alone which has given rise to the favourite belief of the many descendants of Lord Stair,219that the wound was not inflicted by their unhappy relative, but by Lord Rutherford, who, they say, secreted himself in the chamber beforehand, and escaped afterwards by a window. This notion seems to us contrary to all probability, not merely because the conception of such an act was too gross for a man of rank even in that day, but because, had it been acted on, something must have come of it, either in the way of private revenge or of procedure before a criminal court. The idea was prevalent at the time; but it may be classed, we think, with another recorded by the credulous Law, that the poor bride was taken from her bed andharledthrough the house by spirits.
David Dunbar is described in an elegy by Mr Andro Simpson, as a most respectable country gentleman, an agricultural improver,220and yet of studious habits. He died by a fall from his horse while riding between Leith and Edinburgh in 1682, and was interred in Holyrood Chapel. Andrew Lord Rutherford is stated in the Peerage to have died childless in 1685.
Aug. 24.
An old man named George Wood, who died this day at the Grange above Elie in Fife, was interred at Kilconquhar in the evening of the next day, ‘his funerals being hastened for fear of arresting his corpse by his creditors.’—Lam.
1669.
This sufficiently shews that creditors were supposed in Scotland to have such a power by the law. In June 1677, it became a debate among the advocates in the Court of Session, whether a dead body could be arrested and stopped from interment on account of debt. What raised the question was the death of the Countess of Wemyss, and the clamour made by her numerous creditors among the merchants of Edinburgh, who feared that her husband, from whom she had been separated, would not own her obligations beyond her annuity of 6000 merks, all of which was already ‘fornailed.’ They talked seriously of arrestingher ladyship’s body. Lord Fountainhall says that, though it is a custom in Holland and some other places, it is reprobated amongst us as a barbarity, and could in no way be done, except on an express supplication to the Lords of Session, or the Privy Council, ‘which would never be granted.’221
Nov.
Robert Donaldson, of Birdstown in Campsie, being in Edinburgh on business, fell into the company of one Thomas Scott, an English borderer, who travelled in the equipage of a gentleman. Scott, learning that Donaldson possessed money, pretended an errand to Glasgow, and so accompanied him on his way home. The two dined at Falkirk together, and then set forward, Donaldson inviting Scott to spend the night with him at his house. Just as they were turned off the main road into that leading to Donaldson’s house, Scott gave his travelling companion a stab in the neck with his rapier, and thrust him to the ground, where he cut his throat. Donaldson was, it seems, a strong man, and might have defended himself, if he had not been taken by surprise and encumbered with his cloak, which was buttoned down and heavy with rain. Scott carried off the horse and money of his victim.
Donaldson’s servants went in search of the murderer, and had gone many miles in his track when they came up to a carrier wearing their master’s hood. Immediately the man was interrogated, and told that he had got the hood from a person now riding on in advance, near Haddington. They soon came up with the said rider, and laid hands on him. He being struck with a panic fear, confessed his guilt, for which he was soon after hanged in Edinburgh.—Law.
1669.Nov.
After an interval of a few years, during which no witch-cases appear on the Privy Council Record, we find a considerable number in the autumn of this year, some at Aberdeen, some at Fogo in Berwickshire, some at Castle Tirrim in Inverness-shire. On the 11th of November, the Council issued a commission for the trial of Grizzel Jaffray, spouse of James Butchard, maltman, now prisoner in the Tolbooth of Dundee, on suspicion of ‘the horrid crime of witchcraft.’ The gentlemen of the commission were empowered to put her to the knowledge of an assize, ‘and if, by her own confession without any sort of torture or other indirect means used, it shall be found she hath renounced her baptism, entered into paction with the devil, or otherwise that malefices be legally proven against her, that then and no otherwise they cause the sentence of death to be execute upon her.’ It is believed that, notwithstanding these enlightened orders, Grizzel suffered incremation.
Tradition connects an affecting anecdote with the case of Grizzel Jaffray. It is stated that her only son, having been long absent at sea, returned in command of his vessel to Dundee, and entered the port at the very time that the execution of his mother was proceeding in the Sea-gate. On hearing the cause of the unusual bustle seen in the town, he set sail again, and was never more seen in Dundee.
On the 6th of January 1670, we find the Privy Council engaged in a new kind of proceeding regarding witchcraft. A woman called Mary M‘Donald, ‘being maliciously pursued by the captain of Clanranald and M‘Donald of Morar for the alleged crime of witchcraft,’ came before the Council for protection, being ‘in fear to be apprehended by the said persons,’ notwithstanding her having given caution to appear and underlie the law in June next. The desired protection was given.
1669.
Amidst the incessant religious troubles of the period, there were some symptoms of a disposition to mercantile enterprise. At the suggestion of sundry ‘expert merchants,’ a Society for Fishing was formed, with the design of prosecuting that employment around the coast, where it was notorious that the Dutch were driving a profitable trade. One of the considerations that weighed with the enterprisers was, that there were many poor people who would work cheaper than the Dutch, ‘and by this the country would get vent for their meal and beasts, which gave no price.’ No one was admitted who did not subscribe at least£100 sterling. The king subscribed £5000, and ‘obliged himself that all materials should be freed from custom and excise. Yet many gentlemen refused to enter, fearing that the merchants, who behoved to manage all, would cheat the other partners; and many merchants refused to enter a society where so many noblemen were engaged, by whom they were afraid to be overawed. Yet the stock did soon increase to £25,000 sterling.’222
Every mercantile design in that age was clogged by the spirit of monopoly. If a man proposed to set up a stage-coach, there must be no other stage-coaches but his upon the road. If a company designed to introduce the manufacture of glass, or soap, or any other article, they must have the exclusive right of making the article for a generation. The Royal Company, as it was called, began as usual by securing monopolies. ‘No others might import or export salt or fish for certain months of the year but only of that company.’ This ‘impoverished many families which traded that way,’ and ‘did occasion great grumbling among the people.’—Law.
In 1677, the Royal Company passed an ordinance for strictly enforcing their exclusive right to fish around the Scottish shores, demanding that any other party fishing should take out a licence from them. They themselves being bound only to fish for the service of the country, and not to send any fish abroad, by this restriction, says Fountainhall, ‘many in Glasgow, Dunbar, &c., will be great losers, who, by the export of fish on their own private adventures, brought in above 400,000 merks yearly.’ ‘The remedy,’ he adds, ‘will be to enter into the said company; only, theywould be abler with £50 sterling alone to manage the said trade, than with £200 given in there.’
We have here a curious complication of errors in political economy—private enterprise and fair competition checked, and foreign trade forbidden. One would think that the most ingenious contrivances of an enemy could scarcely have devised a state of things more harassingly detrimental to a country; and the wonder is that even selfishness should have been so blind as not to see that the free industry of all was calculated to give better results.
1669.
There is so much in the religious troubles of this period to attract attention, that history takes little note of anything else. Yet there was also a complete suite of chronic evils arising fromthe little advancement made in the arts and economy of life. The king appropriated an exclusive right to make salt, though only to hand it over to a courtier; the salt was consequently bad and dear. In some districts—as Galloway, the west, and the Highlands—to which the native article could not be carried, salt was wholly wanting, and the people used salt-water instead, ‘by which many of them died as of a plague; others being forced to buy at intolerable rates, as sixteen shillings the boll, though they formerly had it for four.’ Another statesman, married to a niece of Lauderdale, had a control over the importation of brandy, and managed to make that liquor to some extent supersede both native ‘strong waters’ and Spanish wines. A third, Sir John Nicolson, was allowed to put a tax on tobacco. He was grandson of Sir William Dick, and it was thought by this means to repay in some measure the public debt incurred to that famous merchant in the time of the Civil War. Moralists of a loyal type tried to make out that it was well to check the use of ‘an unnecessary and expensive drug;’ but ‘custom had made tobacco as necessary as nature had made meat and drink, and consequently this imposition was as grievous as if bread or ale had been burdened.’223Add to these vexing imposts a coin debased for the profit of the mint-master—a brother of Lauderdale—and it will be seen that the evils of Scotland during this reign were not wholly of a sentimental nature.
1670.Apr. 11.
1670.
Major Weir was strangled at a stake and burnt in Edinburgh, for a series of sexual offences of the most abominable kinds. His sister, Jean Weir, who was involved in her brother’s guilt, suffered next day the less severe penalty of hanging. These were old people, and hitherto of good character.224The major, indeed,was a religious professor of the highest style of sanctity, making unusual pretensions to strictness in piety, and noted for his power in prayer. He seems to have been a singular example of a paradox in human nature far from uncommon, and which may well make us all humble—an exalted strain of moral sentiment, refining overmuch, in coexistence with secret and inexpressibly degrading propensities. The poor man seems to have been at length unable any longer to endure the sense of secret guilt and hypocrisy; he sent to the public authorities to come and take him up. Unable to believe in the turpitude of one externally so well reputed, they sent physicians of his own religious party to see if he were not speaking from a disordered mind; and it was only when these reported him perfectly sane and collected, that he was taken into custody. It appeared that he had been addicted to his loathsome offences for a long course of years. The major was condemned upon his own confession, and thenceforth remained stupid and inaccessible to all that was said to him. He would not hear any minister pray to or for him, telling them, when they offered, that it was in vain—‘his condemnation was sealed; and since he was to go to the devil, he did not wish to anger him!‘—Law.
Jean Weir confessed, besides, to intercourse with evil spirits. The devil had supplied her with lint to her wheel, and when she lived at Dalkeith, she had had afamiliar, ‘who used to spin extraordinary quantities of yarn for her in a shorter time than three or four women could have done the same.’ That this wretched old woman was under the influence of hallucinations, there can be no doubt. When she and her brother were apprehended, ‘she desired the guards to keep him from laying hold of a certain staff, which, she said, if he chanced to get into his hands, he would certainly drive them out of doors, notwithstanding all the resistance they could make. This magical staff was all of one piece of thornwood, with a crooked head; she said he received it of the devil, and did many wonderful things with it.... It was ordered by the judges to be burnt with his body.’225
July 29.
1670.
Lord Rutherford, whom we have seen so recently figuring in the romantic affair of theBride of Baldoon, was now engaged in one of a very different kind—prosecuting a Captain Rutherfordfor the improbation of certain documents believed to have been forged by him, in order to establish claims on the estate of his lordship’s late brother, the second lord. The captain, after lying a long time in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, was sent for by the Lords of Session (July 27, 1671) to be interrogated about the case. As he was coming along under the care of Robert Hamilton, macer of the court, ‘he pretends there were some papers in Colliston’s chamber in Bess Wynd, which would be of great use to him if he took them with him; and therefore begged leave to fetch them, and paroled he should presently return. The macer trusting him simply, Rutherford makes his escape; the rumour whereof running up and down the town, Towie Barclay, who was but lately released from his confinement in Glasgow, comes in to the Lords in the Inner House, and proffered to find him out and fetch him again within an hour; which accordingly he did with a great deal of zeal, expressing that he could not abide cheatry by anything in the world; such persons know one another’s lurking-places so weel.’—Foun.
Captain Rutherford was kept in prison seven years, while justice hesitated about his deservings; but at length, on Sir George Mackenzie coming in as king’s advocate, with resolutions to be more vigorous, the culprit was tried along with William Rutherford, messenger, for the crime of forging writs, and both were soon after (November 28, 1678) executed in the Grassmarket.
Aug.
1670.
The Privy Council was pretty fully occupied at this time in summoning and fining individuals who had been present at unauthorised religious meetings. For example, ‘Robert Burnes, merchant in Glasgow,’ expiated by a fine of 300 merks his having been at a conventicle lately held at Kirkintilloch. Four persons, described as merchants, were fined each in £100 Scots for being at such a meeting in Hilderston House, Linlithgowshire. A fifth, who had not only been there, but had a child baptised on the occasion, suffered to double the amount. A great number were brought into trouble by having been present at a famous conventicle held a short time before at the Hill of Beith, near Dunfermline. Adam Stobie and eight other men, who had been at both that conventicle and another at Livingseat, and who refused to take an oath regarding them, were ‘ordained to be carried to the plantations in America, and discharged to return under pain of death.’ In thus so harshly thwarting the extreme Presbyterians in their predilections as to clergymen and meetingsfor worship, the government must have calculated on a certain support from the reactionary feeling engendered by the recent twenty-two years of troubles—that feeling under which we may presume they themselves acted. But a constant repetition of such proceedings against members of the community who were only exercising a natural privilege, and meaning no harm to their fellow-creatures, could not fail to create very bitter feelings, and gradually muster elements for the destruction of the existingrégime. There was at the same time an effort to deal what was doubtless intended to be equal justice towards the various dissenters whom the Presbyterians themselves were accustomed to persecute when in the possession of power. There were even now Quakers in the tolbooths of Aberdeen, Inverury, Montrose, Edinburgh, and other towns, charged with no other offence than that of holding meetings for their own kind of devotion. Professors of the Catholic faith were also from time to time assailed in ways which, one would think, must have been sufficiently annoying to them, although, there is reason to believe, not quite up to that point of severity which would have been satisfactory to the people on the opposite extreme.
On a slight eminence beside the pastoral Doveran in Banffshire, is a little old-fashioned manor-house, surrounded as usual by a few trees, and bearing the descriptive name of Kinnairdie. Rothiemay and Frendraught—names of painful memory—are in the neighbourhood. Kinnairdie was occupied by the Crichtons of Frendraught, zealous, though unobtrusive Catholics. Word came to the Council as it sat in Edinburgh (August 1670), that in this retired villa ‘there is usual resort publicly to mass every Lord’s day, and four families of the heritors in the parish do, upon the ringing of a bell, go to a room in the said house where there is ane altar erected, and priests do officiate.’ The sheriff of the county was immediately ordered to go and inquire into the matter, to apprehend the priest if he could, and also ‘seize upon any vestments or other popish ornaments made use of in their superstitious worship.’
1670.
The sheriff soon after reported that he had seized a Mr Patrick Primrose, who was believed to have officiated as priest at Kinnairdie. He was ordered by the Council to keep this person strictly secured till he should be subjected to trial. By and by, however, ‘being informed that Mr Patrick Primrose, prisoner in the Tolbooth of Banff, doeth belong to the queen’s majesty as one of her servants,’ the Council ordered his liberation, ‘healways obliging himself to depart furth of the kingdom, and shall never return thereto under the pain of death.’ This was a comparatively merciful dealing; but poor Primrose was not destined to be benefited by it. Whether the Tolbooth of Banff had not agreed with his health, or some natural disease fell upon him, so it was that he soon after died.
On the 3d of August 1671, severe proceedings were taken with several north-country Catholic families, Gordon of Carmellie, Gordon of Littlemill, and Grant of Ballindalloch, for harbouring papist priests, and being present at mass; also against four priests named Leith, Ross, Forsyth, and Burnet, for saying mass, baptising children, and performing the ceremony of marriage, contrary to divers acts of parliament. On the 1st of February 1672, the Council, understanding that the Countess of Traquair, ‘being popishly affected, doth keep in family with her her son, the Earl of Traquair, and endeavours to educate him in the popish profession, and for that effect doth keep ... Irving, a priest, to instruct him therein,’ ordered messengers-at-arms to apprehend her ladyship, or if she could not be laid hold of, to summon her at the Cross of Edinburgh, that she and her son might come before them, in order that they might arrange for his ‘education and breeding conform to act of parliament.’
Accordingly, eight days after, the countess having obeyed the citation, the Council ordained that before the 22d instant she should ‘send her son to Glasgow, and cause deliver him to Mr Gilbert Burnet, Professor of Divinity, to be educat and bred at the College of Glasgow, in the company of the said Mr Gilbert, at the sight, and by the advice, of the Archbishop of Glasgow,’ no servants to be allowed to attend the young earl ‘bot such as are of the reformed religion.’ On the same day, Wauchope, younger of Niddry, and the Lord Semple, were ordered to bring and deliver up their children, ‘in order to their education with some Protestant friend,’ Lord Semple being at the same time called to account ‘for sending his eldest son abroad contrair to the Council’s order.’ Wauchope was on this occasion ordered to give up his eldest son into the charge of his own father, the elder laird, and the parents were forbidden to have for the future any intercourse with their child, except in presence of the Protestant preceptor, into whose charge he was to be put.
1670.
We soon after hear of the Countess of Traquair being subjected to a horning for disobeying the Council’s order, while Lord Semple was put into ward in Edinburgh Castle for sending his son toDoway, and only liberated on a petition craving pardon for his offence, and giving caution to the extent of ten thousand merks for ‘sending his third son to be educat in schools in Glasgow.’
Lord and Lady Semple yielded to the order of the Council regarding their third son; but the result appears to have been of a kind satisfactory to neither party. In April 1678, Lady Semple (her husband being then dead) complained to the Council regarding her son, that, ‘either through the neglect of those he was recommended to, or throughthe general humour and corruption of the place, he has been frequently withdrawn from the public ordinances, and so seduced and poisoned with bad principles anent his majesty’s government and laws, as may not only hazard his small fortune, but render his loyalty altogether suspect.’ At her ladyship’s request, the Council gave commission to the Bishop of Argyle and Lord Ross to appoint ‘a person of sound principles’ to attend the boy as his pedagogue.
In March 1672, the Council sent orders to the sheriffs of Aberdeen and Banff for taking stern measures with the papists of their bounds. Sayers and hearers of mass were to be summoned to answer for their ‘crimes,’ to be excommunicated and escheat, and their estates given to the universities. The sheriffs were enjoined to give their support to the bishop and clergy of the diocese in ‘suppressing and rooting out of Popery and Quakerism.’ And ‘whereas we are informed that there is a superstitious monument erected upon the grave of the late Mr Patrick Primrose, priest, in St Peter’s Chapel in the parish of Botarie, we authorise and require you to cause demolish the same.’ Very likely, some of Patrick’s skulking flock had ventured to put upon his tomb that emblem which most expressively recalls what the Saviour suffered for all sects alike. No such thing could be for a moment endured.
1670.
The Presbyterian historians of the age speak of these papist persecutions as not springing from a right zeal. Wodrow says the rulers could not ‘for shame’ but do something of that sort, while at the same time doing so much against the Whigs. Indeed, Sir George Mackenzie plainly confesses, it was for ‘allaying the humour of the people,’ to convince them that the rulers were themselves disinclined to popery, the people being ‘bred to believe that episcopacy was a limb of antichrist.’226A most deplorable exhibition of Christian feeling on all hands truly. As regards the persecution of the extreme Presbyterians, which was beyond allcomparison the deadliest then going on, it takes one of its most curious aspects when, as sometimes happened, an element of benevolence towards some other kind of person intruded. For example, Mr Walter Birnie, preacher, having shewn that he was thrown out of bread in his own profession, and, being blind, could go about no other employment, the Council ordered him two hundred merks to be taken in equal parts out of fines lately imposed on John Tennant in Moss-side and the Lady Glanderston. The pages of Wodrow have familiarised us so much with the idea of the Privy Council as a kind of inquisition for the suppression of a respectable dissent, that we can scarcely think of it in any other character. Yet a survey of its records would shew many beneficent and merciful edicts mingling with the severe orders against conventiclers. Petitions for freedom from sickly prisoners or for an abatement of fines, are yielded to in numberless instances—indeed, they appear to have never been refused. In all matters apart from the unhappy religious disputes, there is no lack of humane feeling or of a desire to promote the good of the community.
Aug. 16.
1670.
Francis Irving, brother of the Laird of Drum, was before the Privy Council, on account of some very offensive demonstrations which he had lately made. Being a convert from the Protestant faith, he was unusually given to the entertaining of Jesuit priests and the getting up of masses. Under his favour and that of a few similar zealots, a priest had been emboldened to hold a public disputation in favour of his religion, an ‘insolency’ of which there had not been an example in Scotland since Quentin Kennedy argued with John Knox at Maybole. On a recent occasion, at Aberdeen, when certain persons were to be burned for sorcery and witchcraft, and a great crowd was assembled, ‘though he knew that it is a Christian and usual custom that the ministers and people do join in prayers to God for the persons who are to suffer, yet he ... when the minister and people went to prayer, stood covered to the great offence of the people, who knew him,’ and when some reminded him of his duty, ‘he quarrelled, at least caused his servant quarrel them.’ His sister Elizabeth, also a papist, being deceased, he resolved to have her buried in a public way in St Nicolas’ Church in Aberdeen, being the principal church there, and for this purpose he collected a great company of his own persuasion, and ‘that the strength, interest, and boldness of the papists there might the more appear,’he ‘in a most insolent and treasonable way, did raise in arms and bring to the town, from Comar, a band of Highlandmen, armed with guns, hagbuts, pistols, bows and arrows, and other weapons.’ These, ‘after they had entered at the —— Port, albeit they might have taken a nearer and more private way to the Lady Drum her lodging, where the corpse lay, in the Guestraw,’ being resolved to affront and provoke the magistrates and people, ‘had the confidence to march to the said house alongst ——, being the most populous and public street in the said town, in rank and order and in warlike posture, a commander marching before and another behind, to the great astonishment and grief of his majesty’s good subjects, affected to the purity of religion.’ On the morning of the day of the funeral, a gentleman went at the order of Francis to the provost of the burgh, told him what was to be done that night, and warned him that, if the people thronged about the funeral company, and any ‘inconvenience ensue therethrough,’ it should be at the peril of the magistracy, who ought to restrain their people—‘which was a practice without parallel for insolency and boldness.’ ‘About eleven o’clock that night, the corpse being lifted was carried to the church of Aberdeen, with great show and in a public way, with many torches, a great multitude of persons accompanying, the coffin being covered with velvet or cloth, with a cross upon the same, and a priest or some other person going before the corpse, holding out his arms before him, and carrying a crucifix under his cloak or using some other superstitious ceremony.’ The Highlandmen, having their swords drawn, guarded the corpse and torches, ‘and when they came to the church-door, divers others of the company drew their swords and did hold them drawn in the church all the time the corpse was [being] buried.’ ‘In the throng, two of the inhabitants of the town was wounded.’ ‘Next morning, the Highlandmen having marched out of the town, many of them in a braving and insulting manner did shoot and discharge their guns as they went by the provost’s lodging.’
1670.
Francis was found guilty of ‘a high and insolent riot,’ and condemned to be imprisoned in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh during pleasure, besides paying the expenses incurred in his prosecution. It does not appear that he suffered much confinement in jail; but he was forbidden to approach within a mile of Aberdeen. It was only on petition that he obtained so far a relaxation from this sentence as to be permitted to visit his mother there, in orderto settle some weighty affairs of hers, on which he acted as trustee. On a subsequent petition in July 1671, he was freed from this restraint.—P. C. R.
Sep. 12.
One Campbell, a writer in Edinburgh, having obtained decreet for a debt against Sir Alexander Cunningham of Robertland, sent a messenger to the baronet’s house with a band of armed Highlanders to poind goods for the amount. Sir Alexander being from home, the party found no difficulty in taking some horses from his grounds, and bringing them to the cross of Irvine to be sold. ‘Sir Alexander gets notice of it; he runs to the Earl of Eglintoun, as bailie of the district; complains how he was affronted, that some had come and plundered his horse under pretence of poinding; [and] procures from him some twenty men to go and recover them. With thir men he enters Irvine, and with violence offers to hinder their poinding. The provost being present, entreated them to behave civilly, and remember they were in a burgh-royal. Robertland’s man [Alexander Kennedy], after much insolent boasting, drew his sword and ran at the provost, and would undoubtedly have slain him, had he not been immediately knocked down by some of the town-officers, and killed.’
The baronet prosecuted the burgh for this slaughter, before the Privy Council, but without success. How the burgh sped, in a counter-prosecution for riot in their bounds, does not appear.—Foun.
Sep.
The Marquis of Douglas, a young man, after being engaged for marriage with the daughter of one Widow Jack, a taverner at Perth, was wedded at Alloa House to Lady Barbara Erskine, daughter of the Earl of Mar.—Lam.
This was an unfortunate marriage for the lady. The marquis, a man of profligate conduct, was subsequently led by his factor, Lowrie of Blackwood (said to have been a rejected suitor of the lady), to suspect his marchioness of infidelity, and they were consequently separated, after she had born him one child. The sorrows of the Marchioness of Douglas were described in a popular ballad of the day, some verses of which constitute the favourite song ofWaly, waly!
‘O wherefore should I busk my head,Or wherefore should I kaim my hair,Since my true love has me forsook,And says he’ll never love me mair.
‘O wherefore should I busk my head,Or wherefore should I kaim my hair,Since my true love has me forsook,And says he’ll never love me mair.
‘O wherefore should I busk my head,Or wherefore should I kaim my hair,Since my true love has me forsook,And says he’ll never love me mair.
‘O wherefore should I busk my head,
Or wherefore should I kaim my hair,
Since my true love has me forsook,
And says he’ll never love me mair.
1670.
Now Arthur’s Seat shall be my bed,The sheets shall ne’er be pressed by me,St Anton’s Well shall be my drink,Since my true love’s forsaken me.O Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw,And shake the green leaf aff the tree?O gentle death, when wilt thou come,And take a life that wearies me?’
Now Arthur’s Seat shall be my bed,The sheets shall ne’er be pressed by me,St Anton’s Well shall be my drink,Since my true love’s forsaken me.O Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw,And shake the green leaf aff the tree?O gentle death, when wilt thou come,And take a life that wearies me?’
Now Arthur’s Seat shall be my bed,The sheets shall ne’er be pressed by me,St Anton’s Well shall be my drink,Since my true love’s forsaken me.
Now Arthur’s Seat shall be my bed,
The sheets shall ne’er be pressed by me,
St Anton’s Well shall be my drink,
Since my true love’s forsaken me.
O Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw,And shake the green leaf aff the tree?O gentle death, when wilt thou come,And take a life that wearies me?’
O Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw,
And shake the green leaf aff the tree?
O gentle death, when wilt thou come,
And take a life that wearies me?’
The prose reality of all this was, that the marchioness by and by obtained a decree of the Privy Council, allowing her a provision out of her husband’s estate.
The marquis, by a subsequent marriage, was the father of the semi-mad Duke of Douglas and of the celebrated Lady Jane Douglas.
1671.Jan. 19.
William Head and John Fergusson, who had ‘practised a lottery by authority in the kingdom of England,’ were authorised by the Privy Council to set up a similar adventure in any part of Scotland they pleased, ‘without let or molestation, they behaving themselves as becometh.’—P. C. R.
Mar. 2.
During the early years of the reign of Charles II., a custom prevailed to a great extent of obtaining from the Privy Council protections against the diligence of creditors. Sometimes a Highland chief could not come to Edinburgh on important affairs of his own, without this safeguard; sometimes the Council could not otherwise be favoured with the company of some man of local influence, whom it desired to see upon important public business. Sir Mungo Murray was unable to attend the funeral of his cousin and namesake, ‘late lieutenant of one of his majesty’s troops of guards,’ unless he got ‘protection against the rigidity of his creditors.’ At this date, the Council received an application for a protection from James Arnot, postmaster at Cockburnspath, an important station on the road from Edinburgh to Berwick. James having involved himself in debt, not only was his person ‘in hazard to be taken with captions, but the horses and furniture reserved for the public use of the lieges upon the post-road are threatened to be poindit.’ As the government owed him as much as would pay his debts, it seemed but reasonable that they should save him from his creditors, which they accordingly did by granting him and his horses protection for a year.—P. C. R.
1671.May 14.
A young woman named Elizabeth Low had an excrescence upon her forehead, eleven inches long, and usually regarded as a horn. It was this day cut out by Arthur Temple of Ravelrig, and deposited in the museum of the Edinburgh University, with a silver plate attesting its history. Law notes that the girl was alive in 1682, and had another horn growing out of the same place.
June 1.
Heriot’s Hospital having been for some years established, with sixty boys as inmates, it was customary to hold the 1st of June as a holiday in honour of the founder, one part of the formalities being a procession of the magistrates to the Hospital at nine in the morning ‘to hear sermon.’ David Pringle, ‘nearest of kin to the founder,’ acted as surgeon and barber to the boys, these two heterogeneous crafts being somehow combined by our ancestors. To prepare the boys for appearance this morning before the civic dignitaries, it was necessary that they should be polled; accordingly, about seven in the morning, Mr Pringle, his other servants being absent about his business, sent a boy to the Hospital, desiring him to take with him any person he could readily get to further the work. The boy unluckily omitted to look for a barber free of the city corporation of barber-chirurgeons, and took with him one William Wood, who was only free of the suburban district of Portsburgh.
1671.
This coming to the ears of Archibald Temple, deacon of the said city corporation, a court was speedily held, and David Pringle summoned before it, to answer for the irregularity committed by his boy. The medical officer of Heriot’s Hospital ingenuously confessed the error; but represented his boy as having simply taken the readiest assistant he could get, ‘without the least intention to give the calling offence:’ he added his solemn promise that no such impropriety should ever again occur. The court was disposed to pass over the matter as trivial; but the deacon, having reason to believe that Pringle designedly employed Wood, pressed for punishment, and solemnly vowed he would see it inflicted. He very soon caused Wood to be put up in the Tolbooth. Pringle hereupon appealed to the Town Council for the liberation of Wood, and so further incensed the corporation against himself. By using influence with the magistrates, they obtained a warrant for the apprehension of Pringle, by which he was ‘necessitat for some time to keep his house, and durst not come abroad, they having officers both at the head andfoot of the close to watch and catch him.’ Notwithstanding a petition from him to the Town Council, representing the case, Temple and some of his colleagues persevered till they got Pringle put up in jail, there to be during the Council’s pleasure, and till he should give satisfaction to ‘the calling.’ They also, during his confinement, passed an ordinance depriving him of all the benefits of his own connection with the corporation, till he should have made full acknowledgment of his offence in writing, and submitted to appropriate censure. In short, the affair, trivial at first, came to be a passionate contention between the barber corporation and their delinquent member, they determined to assert their privileges, and he resolute to make no unworthy submission. After much altercation, the affair came before the Privy Council, who employed the Earl of Argyle and the Earl of Linlithgow to inquire into and report upon it, and it was not till the 11th of January 1672 that the case was adjusted by Pringle making an apology, and the corporation reponing him in his privileges.—P. C. R.