Chapter 35

174Baillie’sLetters, iii. 323.

175About July 1655, a woman in Suffolk was taken possession of by a devil at a Quaker meeting, and carried home, where she soon after died. A circumstance which figures in the diagnosis of many cases of alleged possession, is related regarding her. ‘Something ran up and down in her body under the skin, that bellowed in her like a calf.’—Nic.

176In an act of the Estates, March 22, 1647, it is acknowledged that, at Martinmas of the preceding year, the debt owing to Sir William Dick by the public was £533,971, 6s. 9d. Scots. In a supplication, he set forth ‘his hard and distrest condition for want thereof.’

177The English parliament, March 3, 1660, granted a protection to Sir Andrew Dick, andcontinuedto him a pension of £5 a week which had been for some time in arrears, recommending him at the same time to the Council of State for such preferment in Scotland as he is capable of.—Mercurius Politicus: March 15, 1660.

178Mercurius Politicus, May 20, 1658.

179Baillie’sLetters, iii. 387.

180Lives of the Lyndsays, i. 296.

181Parliamentary Diary, iv. 168. Desborough, along with one Downing, represented Edinburgh in the parliament which Cromwell assembled at Westminster in 1654.

182Baillie.Letters, iii. 438. The countess is said by Baillie to have been the medium through which the Scottish nobility acted on General Monk, in prompting him to go to London, just before the Restoration.

183A Journey through Scotland, in Familiar Letters, &c. 8vo. London, 1723.

184In August 1657, his son, Lord Linton, was cited before the presbytery of Peebles for certain scandalous miscarriages—as, frequent absence from church, drinking, and swearing. He submitted, and was rebuked. On the 3d of December of the same year, ‘the presbytery, taking into their consideration a letter of complaint formerly sent unto them by the Lord Linton, complaining of his father as slandering him of unnatural dealing towards his parents,’ appointed a committee to speak with them both, and report. Lord Linton was afterwards asked to give in particulars of his complaint, but he does not appear to have complied with the request.

185Inverness Courier, January 1851.

186Stirk, a young ox.Hawkit, white-faced.

187John Mean had assisted Montrose and the Engagement, and incurred losses on these accounts.Acts of S. Parl., vii.,App.93.

188We only know of this act from its being alluded to in the Privy Council Record.

189Cosmo Innes’s Preface to the Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, 1844.

190Thomson’sScottish Acts, xi.,App.p. 139.

191See under March 1652.

192In the parish of Aberdour, on the north coast of Aberdeenshire, is the house of Auchmedden, once belonging to a family named Baird. A local writer in 1724 reports that, among some high rocks near the Auchmedden millstone quarry, ‘there is an eagle’s nest; and the pair which breed there have continued in that place time out of mind, sending away their young ones every year, so that there is never more stays but the old pair.’193‘At one period,’ says a writer of our own day, ‘there was a pair of eagles that regularly nestled and brought forth their young in the rocks of Pennan; but, according to the tradition of the country, when the late Earl of Aberdeen purchased the estate from the Bairds, the former proprietors, the eagles disappeared, in fulfilment of a prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer, “that there should be an eagle in the crags while there was a Baird in Auchmedden.” But the most remarkable circumstance, and what certainly appears incredible, is, that when Lord Haddo, eldest son of the Earl of Aberdeen, married Miss Christian Baird of New Byth, the eagles returned to the rocks, and remained until the estate passed into the hands of the Hon. William Gordon, when they again fled, and have never since been seen in the country. These facts, marvellous as they may appear, are attested by a cloud of famous witnesses.’194

193View of Dio. of Aberdeen, Spal. Club, p. 447.

194New Stat. Acc. of Scot.

195See under May 21, 1650.

196SeeSpottiswoode Miscellany, vol. ii., for a series of extracts.

197Life of Thomas Ruddiman, 117.

198Wodrow’sAnalecta, i. 301.

199Analecta, i. 106.

200Law’sMemorials. By C. K. Sharpe, p. lxviii.

201Contemporary with Kincaid flourished, in the north country, a pricker named John Dick. One named John Hay, a messenger in Tain, who had reached sixty without any discredit attaching to his name, was denounced by a distracted woman as a wizard, and immediately seems to have fallen into the hands of Dick, who, without any authority, pricked him all over his body, having first shaved his head to ascertain that there were no insensible parts in that region. He was then transferred to Edinburgh, a journey of nearly two hundred miles, and locked up in the Tolbooth. On a petition from Hay, and the exhibition of certificates of character, he was ordered by the Lords of Council to be liberated.

202Kincaid lay nine weeks in jail, and then petitioned for his liberty, representing that, being an old man, he had suffered much in health by his confinement, and, if longer confined, might be brought to mortal sickness; whereupon the Lords liberated him, on condition of his giving security that he would prick no more without warrant.

203The full confessions of Isobel Gowdie and Janet Braidhead, being perhaps the two most remarkable witch-cases on record in Scotland, are given in Mr Pitcairn’sCriminal Trials, iii. 600. From these confessions, the following narration is made up.

204The hiatus here supplied are a consequence of mutilation of the manuscript.

205Stubble.

206A Dismal Account of the Burning of our Solemn League and National Covenant ... at Linlithgow, May 29, 1662.Reprinted by Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1832.

207Wood’sPeerage, quoting Morison’sDecisions, 5626.

208In those days, there being as yet nohabeas corpusact, it was quite common for persons suspected of crimes to lie several years untried in prison. On the 15th of February 1666, William Drew petitioned for trial or liberation, after having beenfive yearsconfined in Glasgow jail, on a charge of murder exhibited against him by the Laird of Keir.

209In Richard Baxter’s treatise on theDivine Lifeare some consolatory remarks which he addressed on this occasion to the bereaved mother of the young earl.

210View of Diocese of Aberdeen, Spal. Club.

211Pepys’sDiary, 3d ed., ii. 408, 437.

212In compliance with his petition, Leslie was relieved from the duty of the collection.

213Men near akin to the chief.

214Introduction to theHeart of Midlothian.

215M‘Ure’sHist. of Glasgow(reprint), p. 166.

216London Gazette, Feb. 18, 1667.

217London Gazette, May 6, 1667.

218Abbotsford Miscellany.Mungo Murray seems to have been a lieutenant of the king’s guard, and to have enjoyed a pension of £200. SeeMaitland Misc., iii. 154.

219See a letter from Sir Robert Dalrymple Horn Elphinstone to Sir James Stewart Denham, inserted in the Abbotsford edition of the Waverley Novels.

220About the time of his marriage, there are several entries regarding him in the Privy Council Record, as having contravened the law in the introduction and keeping of Irish cattle and horses.

221The editor of Lamont’s Diary gives the following note on George Wood’s funeral: ‘The revolting practice of attaching the corpse of a debtor seems from this entry to have been known in Scotland, even at this late period; while there does not appear to have been any legal authority for its adoption. The notion of its legality, however, still prevails among the vulgar in England; and although the late Lord Ellenborough held it to be contrary to the law of England, it was observed by the unfeeling creditors of Weivitzer the actor, and of the celebrated Richard Brinsley Sheridan. How absurd soever this notion may seem, a still more glaring error is known in the north of Scotland. It is there believed by the common people, that a widow is relieved of her husband’s debts, if she follow his corpse to the door, and, in the presence of the assembled mourners, openly call upon him to return and pay his debts, as she is unable! Strange and unfeeling as this ceremony may be, the editor recollects an instance in which it was practised by the widow of a man in good society.’325

222Sir George Mackenzie’sMem. Affairs Scot., 4to, p. 183.

223Mackenzie’sMem. Affairs Scot., p. 244.

224Weir had been an officer on the popular side in the Civil War. In the registers of Estates, under March 3, 1647, reference is made to a supplication of Major Thomas Weir, in which he craved payment of 600 merks due to him by an act of the Committee of Estates of date the 17th of December 1644, and also payment of what might be due to him ‘for his service as major in the Earl of Lanark’s regiment by the space of twell months, and his service in Ireland as ane captain-lieutenant in Colonel Robert Home his regiment by the space of nineteen months;’ further asking ‘that the parliament wald ordain John Acheson, keeper of the magazine, to re-deliver to the supplicant the band given by him to the said John upon the receipt of ane thousand pound weight of poulder, twa thousand weight of match, and ane thousand pound weight of ball, sent with the supplicant to Dumfries for furnishing that part of the country.’ The matter was given over to a committee.

225Ravaillac Redivivus, p. 64.

226Mem. Affairs Scotland, p. 62.

227See under August 1660.

228Memorials, p. 43.

229Analecta Scotica, ii. 167.

230Sir George Mackenzie,Memoirs of Affairs of Scot., p. 217.

231Mackenzie’sMem. Scot. Affairs, p. 226.

232A tight body-coat, from Fr.just-au corps.

233See vol. i., p. 427.

234See vol. ii., p. 318.

235Edin. Council Record.

236Arnot’sHist. Edinburgh, 1779, p. 598.

237It is usually stated that the first coffee-house in England was set up in 1654 in a shed in the church-yard of St Michael, Cornhill, by one Pasqua, a Greek, servant of Mr Daniel Edwards, a Smyrna merchant.

238A tall house of several stories so called in Edinburgh.

239Crookshanks’sHist. Ch. of Scot., ii. 127.

240Sketches of Perthshire(1812), quoted inLetters on Demonology.

241Sir George Mackenzie’sHist. Affairs of Scot., p. 7.

242See Wodrow’sAnalecta, i. 84.

243Balbegno is the name of a small estate in that county, near Middleton’s patrimonial property. It was bought in 1690 by Middleton’s brother.—Wood’s Peerage.

244Law cites the following couplet, apparently as the last words of the apparition:‘Plumashes above, and gramashes below,It’s no wonder to see how the world doth go.’Plumashes are plumages; gramashes, coarse hose used as gaiters. The words seem to be used allegorically to express the two opposite conditions of life—that of the gay cavalier and the plain hard-working man.

244Law cites the following couplet, apparently as the last words of the apparition:

‘Plumashes above, and gramashes below,It’s no wonder to see how the world doth go.’

Plumashes are plumages; gramashes, coarse hose used as gaiters. The words seem to be used allegorically to express the two opposite conditions of life—that of the gay cavalier and the plain hard-working man.

245‘Lord Middleton used to assert that a certain palmister, whom he met in his youth, had predicted his elevation to the supreme command of his country; but the end of this prediction he always concealed, which made his companions suspect it was tragical, as afterwards it did indeed prove.’—Kirkton’s Church History.

246Blackwood’s Magazine, v. 75. Mr Hogg mis-states the year as 1620.

247Rec. of Justiciary, Arnot’sCrim. Trials, p. 138.

248Answer to Scots Presbyterian Eloquence.

249A copy of this document, extracted from the Record of the Privy Council, is printed in full in the appendix to Pennant’s Tour. It recites that Lachlan Maclean of Broloies, Hector Og Maclean his brother, and others, had been denounced rebels for refusing to answer to the Earl of Argyle, justiciar of Argyle, for having in the preceding April assembled three or four hundred men by the fire-process (the fiery cross) in Mull, Moveran, and other places, and taken warlike possession of the lands of Knockersmartin, &c. It grants commission to Lord Niel Campbell, and nine other gentlemen, to raise forces and proceed in warlike manner against the rebels, assuring them that no slaughter or fire-raising they may commit will be imputed to them as a crime, provided only they give an account of their proceedings before next New-year’s Day.

250A daughter of Hamilton of Bardowie, in Baldernoch parish, designed to pay a visit to her sister-in-law at Hamilton, when a deaf and dumb woman, who had a year before given a remarkable warning, came to the house, and, with many signs, endeavoured to dissuade the young lady from her journey. ‘She takes her down to the yard, and cuts at the root of a tree, making signs that it would fall and kill her. That not being understood by her nor any of them, she takes her journey, the dumb lass holding her to stay. When the young gentle-woman is at Hamilton, her sister-in-law and she go forth to walk in the park; and in their walking they both come under a tree that is cut through at the root, and leaning by the top upon another tree. In that very instant, they hear it shaking and coming down; her sister-in-law turns to the right hand, and she herself flees to the left, that way that the tree fell, and so it crushed her and wounded her sore, so that she dies in two or three days’ sickness.’—Law.

251Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, p. 4-10.

252The idea of familiar spirits was entertained in this age by persons of the most dignified character. In October 1675, the bishop and synod of Aberdeen were engaged in considering ‘divers complaints that some, under pretence of trances and familiarity with spirits, by going with these spirits commonly called the fairies, hath spoken reproachfully of some persons, whereof some are dead, and some living.’ The synod threatened both theseducersand theconsulterswith censure, ‘if, after admonition publicly given, they forbear not such practices, or to vent and spread such reproachful speeches, whereof the seducers are the authors.’—A. S. R.

253Analecta Scotica, i. 117.

254See under July 25, 1661, and April 1, 1662.

255Several of the inhabitants of Mull told me, that they had conversed with their relatives that were living at the harbour when the ship was blown up, and they gave an account of a remarkable providence that appeared, in the preservation of one Dr Beaton (the famous physician of Mull), who was on board the ship when she blew up, and was then sitting on the upper deck, which was blown up entire, and thrown a good way off; yet the doctor was saved, and lived several years after.—Martin’s Descrip. West. Isles, 1703. See of the present work, vol. i. p. 189.

256Ars Nova et Magna Gravitatis et Levitatis.In a subsequent work, entitledHydrostatical Experiments, Sinclair described a kind of diving-bell of his own invention, which he called anArk.

257Archæologia Scot., iv. 437.

258Works of Dr Alexander Pennecuik, p. 178.

259The grandfather of the celebrated David Hume.

260The distance is seventeen miles.

261A Short Account of Scotland.Published in London in 1702.

262Sir Walter Scott,Letters on Demonology, p. 323. Sir Walter attributes the anecdote to a generation too late.

263See under November 1665.

264See under February 1589-90.

265Fountainhall’sDecisions, i. 113.

266Fountainhall’sDecisions, i. 157.

267Fountainhall.

268This is the traditionary account, from Sharpe’sNotes to Kirkton’s History, p. 182.

269Fountainhall.

270Archæologia Scotica, i. 499.

271Historical Observes, p. 49.

272See Fountainhall’sDecisions,passim.

273Fountainhall’sHistorical Observes, p. 62.

274The documents connected with this curious witch-trial are printed in theScots Magazinefor 1772, and again in the same work in 1814.

275VideFynes Moryson on Scottish travelling,sub anno1598.

276Pace, the weight of a clock, from Fr.le poids.

277Swey, a kind of crane moving on a hinge against a wall.

278It might have been supposed that this was a descendant of Sir Robert Bruce; but the account of the Clackmannan family in Douglas’sBaronagetakes no notice of such a person; and it was beyond doubt Peter de Bruis, ‘a Flandrian,’ who is mentioned several times in Fountainhall’sDecisionsas building a harbour at Cockenzie, and obtaining a privilege for making playing-cards.

279It was at its perihelion on the 17th of December, when it was only 128,000 geographical miles from the sun.

280Abbotsford Miscellany, i. 356.

281See vol. i. p. 421.

282Pamphlet on Woollen Manufactories, printed at Edinburgh in 1683.

283Memorials for the Gov. of Royal Burghs in Scotland.By Philopoliteios [Bailie Skene of Aberdeen]. Aberdeen, 1685.

284Husbandry Anatomised, or an Inquiry into the Present Manner of Tilling the Ground in Scotland, &c. By Ja. Donaldson. Edinburgh, 1697.

285Provost Dickison was assassinated in 1572. See vol. i. p. 81.

286Fount.Decisions, i. 189, 193.

287This epizootic raged also in England and other countries. It was a disease styledAngina Maligna(probablypneumonia); a blue mist was seen on the pastures.—Short’s Chron. Hist. of Air Meteors, &c., 1748.

288This curious case is stated more briefly in the present volume, p. 227.

289The common men were paid at the rate of 6d. a day; drummers, 1s.; sergeants, 1s. 6d.

290Fountainhall’sDecisions, i. 187.

291From original documents.

292Fountainhall’sDecisions, i, 188. In January 1686, the widow of Patrick Cunningham, apothecary, successfully pursued Lady Evelick for two hundred merks, being a sum the lady had promised in writing ‘for the skaith the said Patrick suffered when her son James Douglas put fire in Harry Graham’s chamber.’—Foun. Dec.

293The jail of Dumfries seems to have then been either insecure or ill-conducted. In May 1683 there was a complaint before the Privy Council from Sir Patrick Maxwell of Springkell, regarding a notorious robber named Ludovick Irving, whom he had caused to be followed to Ireland, there apprehended, and then brought to Dumfries at an expense to himself of two hundred pounds sterling. The man was first put into ‘a sure vault,’ but was removed by the magistrates into ‘ane utter room, which had no sure posts nor doors;’ so he had no difficulty in escaping. Sir Patrick claimed his expenses from the magistrates, and demanded their punishment.—P. C. R.

294Strictly Wester Gledstanes, situated in the barony of Carnwath and county of Lanark.

295From a petition of the workmen employed in the king’s printing-office in 1678, craving exemption from watching and warding, it appears they werefifteenin number.—P. C. R.

296Creech’sFugitive Pieces, p. 82.

297Letters to Earl Aberdeen (Spal. Club), p. 36.

298The same with Mr Thomas Stewart noticed at p. 245 of this volume.

299Coltness Collections.

300Sir Thomas’s father, Sir James Stewart of Coltness, presided as provost of Edinburgh at the execution of Montrose. Ho suffered imprisonment after the Restoration, and is said to have been only rescued from something worse by the intercession of a cavalier gentleman whose son’s life he had saved by his humane intercession some years before.

301Adverted to in this volume, p. 211.

302The Council (April 23) ordered three hundred pounds to the Rosses out of vacant stipends; but it is most unlikely that the money or any part of it was ever realised.

303In April 1684, Mrs Jean Barron, relict of the minister of Birse, craved charity of the Privy Council as the daughter of Mr Robert Barron, professor of divinity at Aberdeen, who ‘having had the honour to be the first who opposed the Covenant,’ was pursued for his life and banished on that account, finally dying in exile, in such poverty that any means he might have had for the maintenance of his family was lost; nor had any benefit ever been derived from his nomination to the bishopric of Orkney, by which King Charles I. had endeavoured to recompense his sufferings. Mrs Jean was now with three fatherless children reduced to great misery, in which she humbly hoped that the Council would not allow the daughter of so great a sufferer to remain. The Council recommended her case to the Lord Treasurer.Anna Morton represented herself to the Council (July 20, 1685) as the daughter of Mr William Morton, formerly minister of South Leith, who, in 1640, for his refusal of the Covenant, was ‘not only thrust out of his church, and plundered of all his goods and gear, but, from the violent malice of these bloody persecutors, the Covenanters, was necessitat for shelter of his life to leave his native country and fly to England, where, thereafter, through their cruel malice, he was most pitifully used, being apprehended and incarcerat within the prison of York, and continued there in a most miserable and penurious condition, to the utter ruin of himself, his family, his fortune, and estate;’ all of which was fully testified by competent witnesses. The petitioner was now a widow with a charge of children, in helpless poverty and wretchedness, all traceable to the impoverishment of her father. The Council ordered her two thousand merks out of the vacant stipends of the diocese of Argyle.

Anna Morton represented herself to the Council (July 20, 1685) as the daughter of Mr William Morton, formerly minister of South Leith, who, in 1640, for his refusal of the Covenant, was ‘not only thrust out of his church, and plundered of all his goods and gear, but, from the violent malice of these bloody persecutors, the Covenanters, was necessitat for shelter of his life to leave his native country and fly to England, where, thereafter, through their cruel malice, he was most pitifully used, being apprehended and incarcerat within the prison of York, and continued there in a most miserable and penurious condition, to the utter ruin of himself, his family, his fortune, and estate;’ all of which was fully testified by competent witnesses. The petitioner was now a widow with a charge of children, in helpless poverty and wretchedness, all traceable to the impoverishment of her father. The Council ordered her two thousand merks out of the vacant stipends of the diocese of Argyle.

304The death of the old Laird of Dumbiedykes in Scott’s tale of theHeart of Mid-Lothian, involves an allusion to this piece of national music: ‘He drank three bumpers of brandy continuously, and “soughed awa’,” as Jenny expressed it, in an attempt to singDeil stick the Minister.’

305See vol. i. p. 24.

Back to Index Next