Aug. 26.
1679.
The little village of Corstorphine, three miles from Edinburgh, was disturbed by a frightful occurrence. The title of LordForrester was at this time borne by a gentleman of mature years, who had acquired it by his marriage to the heiress, and had subsequently had a family by a second wife. He lived in the Castle of Corstorphine, the ancient seat of the family. It appears that he sided with the Presbyterians, and was zealous enough in their cause to build a meeting-house for their worship. He had nevertheless formed an improper connection with the wife of one Nimmo, a merchant in Edinburgh; and, what made this scandal the greater, the unfortunate woman was niece to his first wife, besides being grand-daughter of a former Lord Forrester. She was a woman of violent character, accustomed, it was alleged, to carry a weapon under her clothes. We are further informed that Mrs Bedford, an adulteress who had murdered her husband a few years back, was her cousin; and that Lady Warriston, who suffered for the same offence in 1600, was of the same family.267
It was pretty evident that this was a woman not to be rashly offended. Lord Forrester had nevertheless spoken opprobriously of her in his drink, and the fact came to her knowledge. She proceeded to his house at Corstorphine, and, finding he was at the village tavern, sent for him. The meeting took place in the garden. After a violent altercation, the unhappy woman stabbed her paramour with his own sword. ‘He fell under a tree near the pigeon-house, both of which still remain, and died immediately. The lady took refuge in the garret of the castle, but was discovered by one of her slippers, which fell through a crevice of the floor.’268Being seized and brought before the sheriffs of Edinburgh, she made a confession of her crime, though seeking to extenuate it, and, two days after, she was tried, and condemned to die. Taking advantage of a humanity of the law, she contrived by deception to postpone the execution of the sentence for upwards of two months. And in this interval, notwithstanding the great care of her enjoined to John Wan, the keeper of the Tolbooth, she succeeded in making her escape in men’s apparel, but was found next day at Fala Mill, and brought back to prison. On the 12th of November, Mrs Nimmo was beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh, appearing on the scaffold in mourning, with a large veil, which, before laying down her head, she put aside, baring her shoulders at the same time, ‘with seeming courage enough.’269
1679.
Connected with the murder, a circumstance characteristic of the age took place. The deceased nobleman, leaving only heirs of his second marriage, who took the name of Ruthven from their mother, and who were in possession of his house, the family honours and estates, which came by his first wife, by whom he had no surviving progeny, passed, according to a deed of entail, to another branch of the family. In that day, no offence was more common than that of violently seizing and interfering with the legal writings connected with landed properties. Well knowing this, William Baillie of Torwoodhead and his mother dreaded that the young Ruthvens might play foul with the late lord’s charter-chest, and so prejudice their succession. They went with friends to the house, while the murdered nobleman’s body still lay in it, and intruded in a violent manner, by way of taking possession of their inheritance. Their chief aim, as they afterwards alleged, was to see that no documents should be embezzled or made away with. On a complaint from the Ruthvens, the Lords adjudged Baillie and his mother to lie in prison during their pleasure, and fined their assistant, a Mr Gourlay, in a hundred pounds Scots. The court at the same time took measures to secure the charter-chest.
Oct. 26.
1679.
The Duke of York arrived in Scotland, designing to reside in the country till the storm of the Exclusion Bill should blow over. He and his family experienced a favourable reception in Edinburgh. In July 1681, he was joined by his daughter, styled the Lady Anne (subsequently Queen Anne). The royal party occupied the palace of Holyroodhouse, which had recently received such large additions as to give them handsome accommodation. According to the report of Mr William Tytler,270who had conversed with many who remembered the duke’s visit, the gaiety and brilliancy of the court of Holyroodhouse on this occasion was a subject of general satisfaction. ‘The princesses were easy and affable, and the duke studied to make himself popular among all ranks of men.’ It was indeed an unpropitious time for the duke to be in his father’s native kingdom—when a large portion of the people were at issue with the government about matters of faith, and men were daily suffering extreme severities on account of their religious practice. Nevertheless, he was far from being unpopular. It is clearly intimated by Fountainhall that hisbirthday came to be observed with more cordial demonstrations than the king’s.271Though the contrary has been insinuated, there are many instances, credibly reported, of his shewing humanity towards the unfortunate ‘phanatiques,’ as they were called, who came under the notice of the local authorities during the period of his visit.272
Mr Tytler reports that the duke and the princesses gave balls, plays, and masquerades, much to the enjoyment of the nobility and gentry who attended them, though to the disgust and horror of the more rigid Presbyterians. It will be found that Nat Lee’s play ofMithridates, King of Pontus, was acted privately at the palace (November 15, 1681), with Lady Anne and the maids of honour as the only performers. It was probably afterwards that a portion of the duke’s company of players came down to Edinburgh to give regular performances. Mr Tytler had a dim recollection of seeing one of their playbills, advertising in capital lettersThe Indian Emperor, as to be played by them at theQueen’s Chocolate House, which, he thought, would be near the palace, though we must regard the High Street as a much more likely situation. This was Dryden’s play on the sad story of Montezuma. The great English poet comes into connection in another way with this histrionic expedition to the north, for, when the remainder of the company appeared at Oxford, he had to write a prologue apologising for the weakness of the corps, and did it ludicrously at the expense of Scotland.
1679.
‘Our brethren are from Thames to Tweed departed,And of our sisters all the kinder-hearted,To Edinborough gone, or coached or carted.With bonny Blue-cap there they act all night,For Scotch half-crown, in English threepence hight.One nympth to whom fat Sir John Falstaff’s lean,There with her single person fills the scene.Another, with long use and wont decayed,Dived here old woman, and there rose a maid.Our trusty doorkeepers of former time,There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme.Tack but a copper lace to drugget suit,And there a hero’s made without dispute,And that which was a capon’s tail before,Becomes a plume for Indian emperor.But all his subjects, to express the careOf imitation, go like Indian bare:Laced linen there would be a dangerous thing,It might perhaps a new rebellion bring—The Scot who wore it would be chosen king.’
‘Our brethren are from Thames to Tweed departed,And of our sisters all the kinder-hearted,To Edinborough gone, or coached or carted.With bonny Blue-cap there they act all night,For Scotch half-crown, in English threepence hight.One nympth to whom fat Sir John Falstaff’s lean,There with her single person fills the scene.Another, with long use and wont decayed,Dived here old woman, and there rose a maid.Our trusty doorkeepers of former time,There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme.Tack but a copper lace to drugget suit,And there a hero’s made without dispute,And that which was a capon’s tail before,Becomes a plume for Indian emperor.But all his subjects, to express the careOf imitation, go like Indian bare:Laced linen there would be a dangerous thing,It might perhaps a new rebellion bring—The Scot who wore it would be chosen king.’
‘Our brethren are from Thames to Tweed departed,And of our sisters all the kinder-hearted,To Edinborough gone, or coached or carted.With bonny Blue-cap there they act all night,For Scotch half-crown, in English threepence hight.One nympth to whom fat Sir John Falstaff’s lean,There with her single person fills the scene.Another, with long use and wont decayed,Dived here old woman, and there rose a maid.Our trusty doorkeepers of former time,There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme.Tack but a copper lace to drugget suit,And there a hero’s made without dispute,And that which was a capon’s tail before,Becomes a plume for Indian emperor.But all his subjects, to express the careOf imitation, go like Indian bare:Laced linen there would be a dangerous thing,It might perhaps a new rebellion bring—The Scot who wore it would be chosen king.’
‘Our brethren are from Thames to Tweed departed,
And of our sisters all the kinder-hearted,
To Edinborough gone, or coached or carted.
With bonny Blue-cap there they act all night,
For Scotch half-crown, in English threepence hight.
One nympth to whom fat Sir John Falstaff’s lean,
There with her single person fills the scene.
Another, with long use and wont decayed,
Dived here old woman, and there rose a maid.
Our trusty doorkeepers of former time,
There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme.
Tack but a copper lace to drugget suit,
And there a hero’s made without dispute,
And that which was a capon’s tail before,
Becomes a plume for Indian emperor.
But all his subjects, to express the care
Of imitation, go like Indian bare:
Laced linen there would be a dangerous thing,
It might perhaps a new rebellion bring—
The Scot who wore it would be chosen king.’
Mr Tytler also states that ‘tea, for the first time heard of in Scotland, was given as a treat by the princesses to the Scottish ladies who visited at the abbey.’ He adds: ‘The duke was frequently seen in a party at golf on the Links of Leith, with some of the nobility and gentry. I remember in my youth to have often conversed with an old man, named Andrew Dickson, a golf-club maker, who said that, when a boy, he used to carry the duke’s golf-clubs, and to run before him and announce where the balls fell.’
In July 1681, hearing that the Duke and Duchess of York were now residing in Scotland, an Irish theatrical company thought it might be a good speculation to visit Edinburgh, ‘to set up a playhouse for the diversion and entertainment of such as shall desire the same.’ They, to the number of thirty persons, landed at Irvine in Ayrshire, bringing with them ‘clothes necessar for their employment, mounted with gold and silver lace,’ when a difficulty was encountered, arising from the late act of parliament regarding laced clothes. The company was obliged to send a petition to the Privy Council in Edinburgh, shewing that ‘trumpeters and stage-players’ were exempted from the said act, and supplicating a pass to be exhibited to the tax-collector at Irvine. His Royal Highness and the Council at once acceded to the prayer of this petition.—P. C. R.
The Duke of York left Edinburgh by sea, on the 6th of March 1682, ‘being desired to see his majesty at Newmarket. There was great solemnity and attendance at his parture.’273He returned to Scotland, on the 7th of May, also by sea, on which occasion occurred the disastrous shipwreck of theGloucesterfrigate in which he sailed. His purpose at this time was to bring back his family from Scotland, and, accordingly, he and the princesses finally departed on the 15th of the month.
Dec. 19.
1679.
A commission composed of country gentlemen and advocates sat in the Tolbooth of Borrowstounness to try a number of poor people for the crime of witchcraft. There was Annaple Thomson, who had had a meeting with the devil in the time of her widowhood,before she was married to her last husband, on her coming betwixt Linlithgow and Borrowstounness, when he, ‘in the likeness of ane black man, told you, that you was ane poor puddled body, and had an evil life, and difficulty to win through the world, and promised if you would follow him, and go alongst with him, you should never want, but have ane better life; and about five weeks thereafter the devil appeared to ye when you was going to the coal-hill about seven o’clock in the morning. Having renewed his former tentation, you did condescend thereto, and declared yourself content to follow him and become his servant.’ There were also women called Margaret Pringle, Margaret Hamilton (two of the name), and Bessie Vicker, besides a man called William Craw. ‘Ye and each person of you was at several meetings with the devil in the links of Borrowstounness, and in the house of you Bessie Vicker, and ye did eat and drink with the devil, and with one another, and with witches in her house in the night-time; and the devil and the said William Craw brought the ale which ye drank, extending to about seven gallons, from the house of Elizabeth Hamilton, and you, the said Annaple, had ane other meeting about five weeks ago, when you was going to the coal-hill of Grange, and he invited you to go along with him and drink with him in the Grange-pans.’ Two of the other accused women were said to have in like manner sworn themselves into the devil’s service and become his paramours, one eight years, the other thirty years ago. It was charged against Margaret Pringle, that ‘the devil took you by the right hand, whereby it was for eight years grievously pained, but [he] having touched it of new again, it immediately became haill;’ against Margaret Hamilton—‘the devil gave you ane five-merk piece of gold, whilk a little after becam ane sklaitt stane.’ And finally, ‘you and ilk ane of you was at ane meeting with the devil and other witches at the cross of Muirstane, above Kinneil, upon the thretteen of October last, where you all danced, and the devil acted the piper.’274
These poor people were solemnly tried by the commissioners before an assize offifty persons, and, notwithstanding that the indictment charges scarcely any hurtful attempts against individuals, the whole were adjudged to be taken four days after to the west end of the town, and there worried at a stake and burnt.
1679.
Thomas Kirke, a Yorkshire squire, this year published aModern Account of Scotland, containing an extraordinary effusion of bile against the country, but also preserving a few traits probably not far from the truth. He describes the gentlemen’s houses as generally of a fortified character, ‘with strong iron grates before the windows—the lower part whereof is only a wooden shutter, and the upper part glass—so that they look more like prisons than houses of reception. Some few houses there are of late erection, that are built in a better form, with good walks and gardens about them; but their fruit rarely comes to any perfection. The houses of the commonality are very mean, mud-wall and thatch the best. But the poorer sort live in such miserable huts as never eye beheld; men, women, and children pig together in a poor mouse-hole of mud, heath, and such-like matter.... The Lowland gentry go well enough habited, but the poorer sort almost naked, only an old cloak or part of their bed-clothes thrown over them. The Highlanders wear slashed doublets, commonly without breeches, only a plaid tied about their waists and thrown over one shoulder, with short stockings to the gartering-place, their knees and part of their thighs being naked. Others have breeches and stockings all of a piece of plaid ware, close to their thighs [trews]. In one side of their girdle sticks a durk or skene [knife], about a foot or half a yard long ... on the other side a brace at least of brass pistols: nor is this honour sufficient; if they can purchase more, they must have a long swinging sword.
‘The highways in Scotland are tolerably good, which is the greatest comfort a traveller meets with amongst them. They have not inns, butchange-houses[taverns], poor small cottages where you must be content to take what you find.... The Scotch gentry generally travel from one friend’s house to another; so seldom require a change-house. Their way is to hire a horse and a man for twopence a mile;275they ride on the horse thirty or forty miles a day, and the man who is his guide foots it beside him and carries his luggage to boot.’
1680.Feb. 26.
1680.
In 1647, while the thoughts of men were engrossed by frightful civil broils, one quiet country gentleman, Sir Robert Bruce of Clackmannan, occupied himself in some measure with things of a practically useful nature. It was a most uncommon way ofbestowing spare mental energy in those days, and perhaps was owing in a great degree to Sir Robert’s situation in the midst of the fine coal-field still worked so industriously under the skirts of the Ochils. He was then found beseeching the attention of the Committee of Estates—amidst military arrangements, payments of public creditors, punishments of malignants, sharpening of the weapons of persecution against dissidents of all kinds—to a mechanical invention of his own—‘ane water-work, never invented, heard, nor seen heretofore, for drying of all water-heuchs [coal-mines] within the kingdom, how deep soever the sumptis and growth of the water-springs be within the samen, by the supplie of two men allenarly, going bypace,276peise, orswey.’277The laird, as usual, sought for his reward in an exclusive right to the use of this engine for nineteen years, which was granted.
What, if anything, came of this contrivance we do not learn. Most likely, it was never effectually tried, but fell asleep amongst the troubles of the time. Yet it would appear that the idea was somehow kept alive, for at the date noted in the margin, Peter Bruce278made application to the Privy Council for their favour towards an engine for drawing water out of coal-pits and quarries, which promised to do more work with a couple of men than six horses could effect by any other machine now in use; also towards a cutting-mill ‘for ane easy way of cutting all sorts of great goads and bars of iron in small lengths, stanchells, or strings, whereby smiths and other artificers in iron will be able to make nails and other iron works at least £2 Scots cheaper of every hundredweight of iron.’ He had spent much on these projects, and more was yet required, wherefore he thought himself entitled to some public encouragement. The Privy Council granted him an exclusive privilege of making the proposed machines for thirteen years.—P. C. R.
1680.
A curious trait of the simplicity of Scotland in regard to some of the mechanical arts occurs in Fountainhall’sDecisionsunder 1679, where he tells of plumbers that ‘they cannot subsist inScotland as a distinct trade,there being so little to do; only our curiosity is daily increasing.’
June 15.
Great efforts were made during this reign for the building of bridges and repairing of roads, but generally with little good effect. As an example of the actual condition of a road near the capital of the country at this time, we find the first four miles of that from Edinburgh to London—namely, from the Clockmill Bridge to Magdalen Bridge—are described as being in so ruinous a state, that passengers were in danger of their lives, ‘either by their coaches overturning, their horse falling, their carts breaking, their loads casting, and horse stumbling, the poor people with the burdens on their backs sorely grieved and discouraged:’ moreover, ‘strangers do often exclaim thereat.’ A toll of a halfpenny for a laden cart, and a sixth of a penny for a laden horse, was authorised in order to get this piece of road kept in repair.—P. C. R.
Oct.
In one week died Lady Kilbirnie and her husband of a pestilential fever. ‘The death of thir spouses was much lamented by all sorts of people.... In the day of the sickening of the laird and lady, his dogs went into the close, and an unco dog coming amongst them, they all set up a barking, with their faces up to heaven, howling, yelling, and youphing; and when the laird called to them, they would not come to him as in former times.’—Law.
The same author relates that, before the death of Colquhoun of Luss, ‘the dogs went up to a chamber in the night-time, and made a hideous lamentable-like noise, and tore down the curtains of the bed, there being none in it.’ At the sickening of Lord Ross, who died in May 1682, ‘his dogs came up the stair towards his chamber, howling lamentably; he caused shoot them all one after another.’
[Nov. ?]
The Duke of York paying a visit to the Castle of Edinburgh, the huge cannon calledMons Megwas fired in his honour. The charge, which was done by an English cannoneer, had probably been too large, for it caused the piece to burst. This ‘some foolishly called a bad omen. The Scots resented it extremely, thinking the Englishman might of malice have done it purposely, they having no cannon in all England so big as she.’—Foun.
1680.
Mons Meg, with a breach in her side, still adorns the ancientbattlements of Edinburgh Castle, ‘to the great admiration of people,’ being upwards of thirteen feet long, and of twenty inches bore; formed of longitudinal bars of iron, hooped with rings fused into one mass. It is an example of a colossal kind of artillery which the sovereigns of Europe had a craze for making in the middle and latter half of the fifteenth century—this specimen being probably prepared at the command of James II. of Scotland.
Nov.
An elephant which had been bought for £2000 sterling, and brought to England for exhibition, was shewn in Scotland, being the first of the species ever seen in the country. It was a male, eleven years old, ‘a great beast, with a great body and a great head, small eyes and dull, lugs like two skats (?) lying close to its head; having a large trunk coming down from the nether end of the forehead, of length a yard and a half, in the undermost part small, with a nostril; by which trunk it breathed and drank, casting up its meat and drink in its mouth below it; having two large and long bones or teeth, of a yard length, coming from the upper jaw of it, and at the far end of it inclining one to another, by which it digs the earth for roots ... it was backed like a sow, the tail of it like a cow’s: the legs were big, like pillars or great posts, and broad feet with toes like round lumps of flesh. When it drinks it sucks up the water with its trunk, which holds a great deal of water, and then putting the low end in its mouth, by winding it in, it jaws in the water in its mouth, as from a great spout. It was taught to flourish the colours with the trunk of it, and to shoot a gun, and to bow the knees of it, and to make reverence with its big head. They also rode upon it.... Let this great creature on earth and the whale at sea be compared with a midge or minnow, and behold what great wisdom and power is with the great God, the creator and preserver of both!‘—Law.
It appears that Alexander Deas and others farmed this elephant from its owners for several months at £400, in order to shew it through the country. They refused to pay in full, on the ground of several failures as to the terms of the contract, alleging, for instance, that the owners had not shewn all it might do—namely, its drinking, &c. It was replied, ‘it could not drink every time it was shewn.’ How the litigation ended does not appear.—Foun.
Dec. 10.
1680.
A great comet, which had been observed in Germany a monthearlier, was first seen in Scotland this evening, ‘the night being clear and frosty; between five and seven at night, it set in the west, and was seen in the south-east in the morning of the following days.279[It] had a great [tail] blazing frae the root of it, was pointed as it came from the star, and then spread itself; was of a broad and large ascent up to the heavens ... the stream of it all the night over is seen.... [It] had its recess from the west every night by degrees, as the moon has from the sun after her change, and being every night more elevate by degrees in its first after daylight was gone, then the stream of it mounted to our zenith, and beyond it, very wonderfully. No history ever made mention of the like comet ... and [it] is certainly prodigious of great alterations and of great judgments on these lands and nations for our sins; for never was the Lord more provoked by a people.... [It] continued till the 16th or 17th day of January, growing smaller and smaller to its end.’—Law.
‘When Mr M‘Ward, who was then a-dying, heard of it, he desired Mr Shields and other friends to carry him out, that he might see it. When he saw it, he blest the Lord that was now about to close his eyes, and was not to see the woful days that were coming upon Britain and Ireland, especially upon sinful Scotland.’—P. Walker.
1680.
Lord Fountainhall, in noting the appearance of a smaller comet for two weeks in August 1682, being the time when ‘semblances of joy’ were presented in Edinburgh for the accouchement of the Duchess of York of a daughter, adds: ‘I have seen a late French book, proving that comets prognosticate nothing that’s fatal or dangerous, but rather prosperous things; yet, at the time it shone, the Duke of Lauderdale, that great minister of state, died.’—Hist. Ob.This ‘yet’ is exceedingly amusing. He elsewhere states the opinions of those who believe in the ominousness of comets. According to them, ‘the effects’ do not always follow immediately: some indeed think a comet ‘takes as many years tooperate, as it appears nights.’ He estimates the tail of the comet of 1680 at near [upwards of] 3000 miles in length, because it extends over 60 degrees, ‘and each degree is 60 miles!’ This learned judge, however, was himself of opinion that comets do not hold forth any prognostics of blood anddesolation, further than by their natural effects in infecting the air, so as to occasion sterility, pestilential diseases, and famine.
Lord Fountainhall probably deemed 3000 miles a considerable length for a comet’s tail. How must he have been surprised to learn that it was in reality nearly as long as the distance of the earth from the sun, or not much short of a hundred millions of miles. Equally great must have been his wonder to learn (as appears from Enke’s recent calculations) that this illustrious stranger only comes to our part of space once in 8814 years!
Dec.
During this month, the public mind was in a highly excited state, owing to the terrific appearance of the comet overhead, in connection with the presence of the Duke of York in Edinburgh, and the news of the struggles in parliament for his exclusion from the throne. One Gray, a merchant in Edinburgh, gave out that, as he and a country friend called Yule were looking at the comet, ‘he saw a fire descend from the Castle down the city of Edinburgh to the Abbey’ [the duke’s residence], while Yule heard a voice saying: ‘This is the sword of the Lord!’ A man in a soldier’s apparel came up to Sir George Monro at mid-day in the street, and bade him go down and tell the Duke of York, if he did not counsel his brother the king to extirpate the Papists, both he and the king were dead men. Sir George turned about to call witnesses to what the man had said, and when he looked again, the man had mysteriously vanished. To crown all, ‘a hypochondriac fellow’ came out to the street, and proclaimed openly that the Day of Judgment would take place next day, offering himself to be hanged if it should prove otherwise. He was clapped up in the Canongate Tolbooth; rather a prosaic fate for a prophet. The two first circumstances are clearly to be referred to the hallucination which is apt to be engendered on occasions of great public excitement.
Dec. 25.
1680.
The boys at the college in Edinburgh resolved to follow the example of the London apprentices in getting up a demonstration against the pope. What gave piquancy to the design was, that the Duke of York was now living in Edinburgh, under exile from London on account of his adherence to the Romish faith. They were very cunning and dexterous in making their arrangements, having first prepared their effigy of the pope, and then sent a small party with a portrait to the Castle Hill, in order to make the authorities think that they designed to have a procession from that place down the High Street to Holyrood Palace, where theduke lived. While this feint drew off the attention of the military, the youths brought out the true effigy to the High School Yard, and then marched with it up Blackfriars’ Wynd to the High Street. It was a rude statue of timber, with a painted face; on the head, a gray periwig and triple crown; and in the hands a cross, a candle, and a piece of money. The figure was clothed in a calico gown, and sat in a chair. Having set it down on the street, they set fire to it, causing a quantity of powder within the body to explode and burst it all in pieces. Notwithstanding their expedition, they were attacked, while performing the ceremony, by the swords of the Earl of Linlithgow and a few other friends of the Duke of York; but they stood their ground, warning the assailants that they might hurt some they would not like to hurt. When all was over, they dispersed. Many regretted the act, as inhospitable towards the duke, and we may well believe, if General Dalyell had not been led with his troops on a false scent, he would have made the lads repent of their frolic. ‘For a further testimony and bravado, the school-boys, apprentices, and many other people, mounted blue ribbons, inscribed with, “No Pope—no Priest—no Bishop—no Atheist;” which, again, caused the loyal to hoist the rival legend, “I am no fanatic.”’
One George Redpath, tutor to a gentleman’s two sons, was brought before the Privy Council, and examined on the accusation of having drawn up a bond for the execution of this project. But after a few days’ detention, he was set at liberty ‘by the goodness of his royal highness, who was always too compassionate to that generation of vipers,’ says Sir William Paterson.280This same Redpath lived to be an active Whig pamphleteer in London after the Revolution, and was the author of theAnswer to the Scots Presbyterian Eloquence.
1681.Jan. 11.
1681.
The house of Priestfield, under the south front of Arthur’s Seat, was burnt this evening between seven and eight o’clock. Political circumstances gave importance to what would otherwise have been a trivial occurrence. Sir James Dick, the owner, was provost of Edinburgh, and a friend of the Duke of York. His having adopted energetic measures with some college youths concerned in the Christmas anti-papal demonstration, was supposed to have excited a spirit of retaliation in their companions; and hence a suspicion arose that the fire was designed and executed by them.The Privy Council were so far convinced of this being the case, that they shut up the college, and banished the pupils fifteen miles, unless they could give caution for their good-behaviour. Sir James’s house was rebuilt at the public expense, as it now exists in the possession of his descendant, Sir William Cunningham Keith Dick, Bart.
Jan. 20.
Six women were hanged in Edinburgh. Two of them, Janet Alison from Perth, and Marion Harvey from Borrowstounness, ‘were of Cameron’s faction, bigot and sworn enemies to the king and bishops,’ and, ‘for all the pains taken, would not once acknowledge the king to be their lawful prince, but called him a perjured bloody man.’ ‘Some thought the threatening to drown them privately in the North Loch, without giving them the credit of a public suffering, would have more effectually reclaimed them nor any arguments which were used; and the bringing them to a scaffold but disseminates the infection.’—Foun.
The other four women were hanged for murdering their own children, born out of wedlock. It would be hard to say which of the two cases reflects the most discredit upon the wisdom and humanity of the age.
On the ensuing 13th of April, another woman was hanged in the Grassmarket for murdering her child, declaring that she had committed the deed in order ‘to shun the ignominy of the church pillory.’ The frequency of such cases, and the declaration of this poor woman, attracted the attention of the Duke of York. He was surprised to hear of a custom used in no other Christian country, which ‘rather made scandals than buried them.’ The duke, we are told, ‘was displeased, and thought it would be a more efficacious restraint, if the civil magistrate should punish them, either by a pecuniary mulct, or a corporal punishment.’ Fountainhall, however, thought the practice justifiable, on the text, ‘They who sin openly should be rebuked openly,’ and from the penances imposed in the primitive church.
Feb. 21.
1681.
A company of distracted people was this day brought into Edinburgh, under the guardianship of a troop of dragoons. They were commonly known as theSweet Singers of Borrowstounness, from their noted habit of frequent chanting of psalms. The religious exasperations of the times, the execution of a Bo’ness man named Stewart, with two others, on the preceding 1st of December, and perhaps in addition to these causes, the terrorsdiffused by the comet, had now produced in that little town an epidemic mania of a type only too well known. These people felt as if all was wrong in church and state, and professed to deny all kinds of institutions, even the names of the days of the week; nay, the commonest social obligations, as that of working for one’s own bread. They protested against taxes, confessions, and covenants; disowned the king and his government; and called for vengeance on the murderers of the two late martyrs, Stewart and Potter, whose blood they carried on a handkerchief. They ran up and down the town in a furious manner, sometimes uttering prayers which consisted chiefly of curses invoked against individuals, more frequently singing psalms of lamentation (74th, 79th, 80th, 83d, and 137th) for the sins of the land. Such of the females as were married deserted their homes and husbands, and if the husband, in his endeavours to win his wife back to rationality, took hold of any part of her dress, she indignantly washed the place, as to remove an impurity. They followed a gigantic fellow, commonly called Muckle John Gibb, but who passed among them under the name of King Solomon, and at length, ‘leaving their homes and soft warm beds and covered tables,’ six-and-twenty of them went forth from their native town, notwithstanding the entreaties of weeping husbands, fathers, and children, calling on them to stay; ‘some women taking the sucking children in their arms to desert places, to be free of all snares and sins, and communion with all others, and mourn for their own sins, the land’s tyranny and defections, and there to be safe from the land’s utter ruin and desolation by judgments; some of them going to the Pentland Hills, with a resolution to sit there to see the smoke and utter ruin of the sinful, bloody city of Edinburgh.... Immediately after they came to these desert places, they kept a day of fasting and confessing of their sins one to another; yea, some of them confessed sins which the world had not heard of, and so not called to confess them to men.’—Pat. Walker.
1681.
Even the Whig clergymen who had gone to the wilderness rather than own an uncovenanted king, were surprised at the more extreme feelings of the Sweet Singers. Walker tells how he was with the Rev. Mr Cargill at Darmead Muirs, when the Gibbites were ‘lying in the Deer Slunk, in the midst of a great flow-moss betwixt Clydesdale and Lothian about a mile distant.’ Gibb and another man came armed, and held a conference with Mr Cargill in a barn, but it led to no good. After resting a while,the chief of the Sweet Singers rose in haste and went to the muir all night. ‘I well remember,’ says Walker, ‘it was a cold easterly wet fog.’ Cargill was shocked by the state of mind he had found them in. They were afterwards all taken by a troop of dragoons at the Woolhill Craigs, betwixt Lothian and Tweeddale, a very desert place, and carried to Edinburgh, where the men were put into the Canongate Tolbooth, and the women into the Correction-house, where they were soundly scourged. After a little time, these poor people cooled down somewhat, and were one by one set at liberty. Walker says the most of them ultimately returned to their right mind, and he had had some edifying conversations with them since.
Mar. 1.
1681.
Articles used in clothing in Scotland had hitherto been almost wholly of home manufacture. As in Sweden to this day, the great bulk of the people spun their own wool and flax, each family for itself, and had the yarn woven into cloth by the village webster. There were as yet but the merest attempts at a manufacture of cloths or hosen for general sale and use. We have seen a modest attempt made by certain foreigners in Edinburgh so early as 1609.281It is stated that in the reign of Charles I., there were cloth-works on a small scale at Newmills in Haddingtonshire, at Bonnington near Edinburgh, and at Ayr. That at Newmills was in a thriving condition till Dundee was stormed and sacked by Monk in 1651, when a store of its cloth was taken, and the troubles soon after closed the work.282Latterly, it could scarcely be said there was any general manufacture of articles of attire except at Aberdeen. There one George Pyper had a number of country-people engaged in working stockings with the needles, paying them at the rate of five groats (equal to 1-2/3d. sterling) a pair for the making; and he raised the working to such a fineness in some instances, ‘that he hath given twenty shillings sterling and upward for the pair.’283In this province there was also a manufacture ofplaidenstuffs andfingrams, which was the more meritorious as the wool was mostly brought by sea-carriage from the southern parts of the kingdom. It is related that a Mr Barnes, ‘a substantious merchant in Edinburgh,’ thought he might make a saving by getting thesame stuffs made in his own neighbourhood, and have an advantage over the Aberdeen merchants in sending out his cloth to the Dutch market. But, on trying an experiment with ‘ten sea-packs of plaiden, which might be worth £20,000,’ he found that he had scarcely produced his cloth at as low a rate as that at which the Aberdeen merchants sold theirs. The explanation, which he obtained from Mr Alexander Farquhar, a merchant in Aberdeen, might be worthy of Mr Babbage’s attention for a new edition of hisEconomy of Manufactures. It was, that the people who worked these cloths in the north ‘had not by far such entertainment as his [Mr Barnes’s] servants had—they oftener drank clear spring-water than ale.’ When Mr Barnes heard this, he gave up his manufacture. Of late years, even this frugally conducted manufacture, which had in some years brought a hundred thousand rix-dollars into the country, and greatly facilitated the payment of rents, was much decayed—the goods reduced to half their wonted prices, and yet not the half exported that was—and all from a cause also of much significance in the philosophy of business—namely, ‘deceitful mismanagement,’ leading of course to loss of confidence, and a consequent checking of orders.
The faculties for business which the Duke of York possessed in so respectable a degree, seem to have now begun to tell upon the country in which he found a refuge. While joining in the unhappy severities dictated by the Privy Council against the poor Whigs, he gave attention to the solid interests of the nation at large, and had consultations with such men of mercantile spirit as the country then possessed, with a view to the planting of cloth-factories similar to those which had long been realising good results in England. It was pointed out that the making of the better kinds of cloth within the country was becoming a matter of most serious concernment, because, owing to the great drain of money which was occasioned by the importation of such cloths from the south, ‘English money was not to be had under 6 or 7 per cent., scarce at any rate,’ and exchange between Edinburgh and London had risen against the former place as high as 12 or 15 per cent. ‘Our four-merk pieces,’ it was added, ‘the best coin of our kingdom, were almost wholly exported, and above £20,000 sterling in dollars left the country in the year 1680.’
1681.
The result of the duke’s patriotic deliberations was the passing of acts of Council in March and April, and the passing of an actof parliament in September 1681, for the encouragement of trade and manufactories. Through his personal exertions, a body of men, including Mr Robert Blackwood and several other merchants in Edinburgh, was induced to associate for the setting up of a new work at Newmills, the produce of which was to be disposed of by them under peculiar regulations. It was to be under the care of an enterprising Englishman named Sir James Stanfield, who for some time had been settled there. In August, sixsheermenand a foreman having been brought down from England, this work commenced with two looms—soon increased to eight—soon after to twenty-five; and in 1683 it was still extending. ‘We began,’ says the pamphleteer formerly quoted, ‘to make the coarsest of white cloths first, wherein we continued till October 1682; then we turned part of our people to coarse mixed cloth, and so on gradually to finer, andnow we are upon superfine cloths, and have brought the spinners and rest of the work-people that length, that we hope against May next to have superfine cloths as good as generally are made in England.’ There was also a manufacture of silk-stockings going on at Newmills. The whole work seems to have then been in a hopeful condition, albeit on the unsound footing of a monopoly, all English goods of the same kinds being prohibited under severe penalties.
The act was, indeed, too sweeping in its tendency, for it forbade the importing of a great number of stuffs—as silks, embroideries, gold lace, ribbons, silk fringes, cambrics, and damasks, which it was not in the power of any native manufacturer to supply, and which certain classes of the people were little inclined to dispense with. It was thought necessary by these means to save the money of the country. It led to a strange scene one day on the High Street of Edinburgh. George Fullerton, a merchant of that city, had committed a gross violation of the law, first in smuggling in some packs of English cloth, and afterwards, when they were seized by the authorities, repossessing himself of them by violence. The Privy Council ordered him to be declared fugitive, had the two ‘waiters’ of the West Port scourged for allowing the goods to be introduced, and ordained the cloth itself to be burnt at the Cross by the hand of the hangman. The common people beheld this last spectacle with feelings of their own, for they thought it might have been better to distribute the cloth among the poor: however, says Fountainhall in a whisper, it was only the worst bales that were burned: the best were ‘privily preserved.’
1681.
Absurd as all this procedure may appear, it precisely represents the existing policy of Sweden and some other continental countries in respect of British manufactures.
One natural result of the act very soon appears, in the magistrates of Edinburgh being called before the Privy Council at the suggestion of the Duke of York, and recommended to call up the merchants, in order to discharge them from ‘extortioning the lieges, by taking exorbitant prices for the merchandises now prohibited ... on the pretence that there no more of that kind to be imported within the kingdom.’
In February 1683, General Dalyell, finding ‘that he cannot be provided in this kingdom with as much cloth of one colour as will be clothes to the regiment of dragoons,’ obtained a licence from the Privy Council permitting the cloth-manufacturing company at Newmills ‘to import 2536 ells of stone-gray cloth from England, for clothing the said regiment of dragoons,’ they finding caution under £500 sterling to limit the importation strictly to that quantity. About a month later, the Council made a change in this order, to the effect that the general might appoint a person to import the cloth—not exceeding five shillings sterling the ell—instead of the Newmills company.
In May 1683, Captain John Graham of Claverhouse was permitted by the Privy Council, on petition, to import from England, for the use of his troops, 150 ells of red cloth, 40 ells of white cloth, and 550 dozen of buttons; giving security that no advantage should be taken of this licence to bring in any other cloth.
Of a small cloth-work in Leith it was declared (December 1683) that the partners engaged ‘are excellently skilled in their trade, and can dye and mix wool and cloth, and takes in wool from the merchant or other person, and does dye and mix it; and when they get in yarn, does weave and dress it, and deliver it in broadcloth; and has already made good broadcloth to many of the merchants of Edinburgh.’ ‘Seeing that this is so good a work,’ the Privy Council, on petition, extended to it the privileges proposed in the act for encouraging manufactures.—P. C. R.