Publications of the Scottish History Society, Volume 36 / Journals of Sir John Lauder Lord Fountainhall with His Observations on Public Affairs and Other Memoranda 1665-1676

by Lord John Lauder Fountainhall

REPORT OF THE THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY

THE THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SOCIETY was held on TUESDAY, November 21, 1899, in Dowell's Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh,—Emeritus Professor MASSON in the chair.

The HON. SECRETARY read the Report of the Council, as follows:—

During the past year the Society has lost twenty members, ten by death and ten by resignation. When the vacancies are filled up there will remain seventy names on the list of candidates for admission. In addition to the 400 individual members of the Society there are now 64 Public Libraries subscribing for the Society's publications.

The Council particularly desire to express their regret at the death of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Mitchell, formerly Professor of Ecclesiastical History at St. Andrews University, and of the Rev. A.W. Cornelius Hallen. From the foundation of the Society, Dr. Mitchell had been a corresponding member of the Council. He took a great interest in the Society's work, and, in conjunction with the Rev. Dr. Christie, edited for us two volumes of The Records of the Commissions of the General Assembly of the Years 1646- 49. Mr. Hallen was also an active member of the Council for many years, and edited The Account Book of Sir John Foulis of Ravelston.

The Society's publications belonging to the issue of the past year, viz., Mr. Ferguson's first volume of Papers Illustrating the History of the Scots Brigade, and Mr. Firth's volume on Scotland and the Protectorate, have been for some months in the hands of members. But members for this year, 1898-99, are to be congratulated on their good fortune in receiving, in addition to the ordinary issue of the Society, two other volumes as a gift. It will be remembered that at our last Annual Meeting Mr. Balfour Paul announced on behalf of the trustees of the late Sir William Fraser, K.C.B., that, acting on the terms of the trust, they were prepared to print and present to members on the roll for the year 1898-99, at least one, and perhaps two volumes of documents having the special object of illustrating the family history of Scotland. The work then suggested, and subsequently determined upon, was the Macfarlane Genealogical Collections relating to families in Scotland, MSS. in the Advocates' Library, now passing through the press in two volumes, under the editorial care of Mr. J.T. Clark, the Keeper of the Library. The whole of the first volume and the greater part of the second are already in type. The Council, who very highly appreciate this welcome donation, desire to convey to the trustees the cordial thanks of the Society for their share in the presentation.

The following are the publications assigned to the coming year, 1899-1900:

(1.) The second volume of the Scots Brigade which is already printed, bound, and ready for issue.

(2.) The Journal of a Foreign Tour in 1665 and 1666, and portions of other Journals, by Sir John Lauder, Lord Fountainhall, edited by Mr. Donald Crawford, Sheriff of Aberdeen, Kincardine and Banff. The greater part of this book also is in type.

(3.) Dispatches of the Papal Envoys to Queen Mary during her reign in Scotland, edited by the Rev. J. Hungerford Pollen, S.J. The editor expects to send his manuscripts to the printer in January next.

Several new works have been proposed and provisionally accepted by the Council. Dr. J.H. Wallace-James offers a collection of Charters and Documents of the Grey Friars of Haddington and of the Cistercian Nunnery of Haddington. They will be the more welcome, as the desire has been frequently expressed that the Society should deal more fully with the period preceding the Reformation.

Mr. Firth has suggested the publication of certain unedited or imperfectly edited papers concerning the Negotiations for the Union of England and Scotland in 1651-1653, and Mr. C. Sandford Terry of Aberdeen has kindly consented to edit them.

The three retiring members of Council are Dr. Hume Brown, Mr. G.W. Prothero, and Mr. Balfour Paul. The Council propose that Mr. Prothero should be removed to the list of corresponding members, that Dr. Hume Brown and Mr. Balfour Paul be re-elected, and that Mr. John Scott, C.B., be appointed to the Council in the place of Mr. Prothero.

The Accounts of the Hon. Treasurer show that there was a balance in November 1898 of £172, 12s. 9d., and that the income for the year 1898-99 was £521, 15s. 5d. The expenditure for this same year was £438, 14s. 1d., leaving a balance in favour of the Society of £255, 14s. 1d.

The CHAIRMAN, in moving the adoption of the Report, which, he said, was very satisfactory, said that in the first place they had kept their promises and arrangements in the past year, and, in the second place, they had a very good bill of fare for the current year, even if there were nothing additional to their programme as already published. The books that had been announced as forthcoming were just the kind of books that it was proper the Society should produce. But, in addition, they would see there was forthcoming a very important publication which had come to them out of the ordinary run. The late Sir William Fraser, in addition to his other important bequests, which would for the future affect the literature of Scottish history, gave power to his trustees that they might, if they saw occasion, employ a certain portion of his funds on some specific publications of the nature of those materials in which he had been spending his life. The result had been that the trustees, chiefly he believed by the advice of their Lyon King of Arms, Mr. Balfour Paul, had offered as a gift to this Society those very important genealogical documents, the Macfarlane documents, which had been lying in the Advocates' Library, and to which a great many people at various times had been referring, to such an extent that he believed Mr. Clark, the librarian of the Advocates' Library, had been almost incommoded by the number of such applications. Henceforth this would not be the case, as the Macfarlane genealogical documents were to be published under the editorship of Mr. Clark. That was a windfall for which he had no doubt all the members of the Society would be thankful, and when he moved the adoption of the report he meant specially to propose their adoption of a hearty vote of thanks to the trustees of Sir William Fraser.

Professor MASSON then alluded to the proposal of Mr. C. Stanford Terry to produce the silent records relating to the union of Scotland with England in the years 1651 to 1653. That was a portion of Scottish history that had been almost forgotten, but a very important and interesting portion of Scottish history it was. In 1651, after the battle of Dunbar, and after Cromwell's occupation of Scotland, and after he had gone back to England and had left Monk in charge in Scotland, with about eight thousand Englishmen in Scotland, distributed in garrisons here and there, it occurred to the Long Parliament of England, then masters of affairs in Great Britain, that there ought to be an incorporating union of Scotland with the English Commonwealth. That proposal came before the Long Parliament in October 1651. It was agreed upon, by way of declaration, that it might be very desirable, and a committee of eight members of the Long Parliament was appointed to negotiate in the matter. They came to Scotland, and there was a kind of convention, a quasi Scottish Parliament, held at Dalkeith, where the matter was discussed. Of course, it was a very serious matter, giving rise to various feelings. To part with the old Scottish nationality was a prospect that had to be faced with regret. To this Parliament the Commissioners proposed what was called the Tender, or an offer of incorporating union. The variety of elements in Scotland— Royalists, Presbyterians, Independents—in the main said that they must yield, although they were reluctant. Even those who were most in sympathy with the English Commonwealth politically shrank for a while, and they tried whether the Long Parliament might not accept a kind of compromise, whether Scotland might not be erected into a little independent Republic allied to the English Commonwealth or Republic. But at last all these feelings gave way, and the English Commissioners were able to report before the end of the year, or in January—what we should now call 1652, but then called 1651—that twenty of the Scottish shires out of thirty-five had accepted the Tender, and that almost all the burghs had accepted it, Edinburgh and Aberdeen and all the chief burghs —Glasgow being the sole outstanding one. At last, however, Glasgow, on thinking over the thing, agreed, and the consequence was that in April 1652 the Act incorporating Scotland with the English Commonwealth passed the first and second readings in the Long Parliament. From April 1652 Scotland was, they might say, united with England, and in the Protectorate Parliaments, in Cromwell's first and second Parliaments, there were thirty members from Scotland sitting at Westminster with the English members, and so through the protectorate of his son Richard, and it was not till the Restoration that there came the rebound. Then the order universally was: 'As you were,' and a period of Scottish history was sponged out, so much so that they had forgotten it, and many of them rather regretted it. At all events, it was a very important period of Scottish history, and the proposed publication will give us flashes of light into the feelings and the state of the country between 1652 and 1660.

Proceeding, Professor MASSON said the Society had kept strictly to their announcements, and they had already contributed a great many publications, which, at all events, had proved, and were proving, new materials for the history of Scotland, giving new conceptions of that history. They would observe in the first place how the publications had been dotted in respect of dates, some of them comparatively recent, others going far back. They would observe, in the second place, that the documents had been of almost all kinds—all those kinds that were of historical value; all those that really pertained to the history of Scotland—that was to say, the history of that little community which, with a small population, they named Scotland. There were various theories and conceptions of history. The main and common and the capital conception of the day was to give the story of the succession of events of all kinds. In that respect Scottish history, though the history of a small nation, would compete in interest with the history of any nation that had ever been. Small, but the variety, the intensity of the life, the changes, the vicissitudes, the picturesque incidents, no history could compete for that kind of interest with the history of that little torrent that had flowed through such a rocky, narrow bed. Crimes or illegalities got easily into books, and this was a little unfortunate, because people dwelt on such crimes and illegalities as constituting history. But they did not. No more would the digest of the trials of their Police Courts and of their chief Courts. They figured, of course, in history, but there ought to be a caution against allowing too great a proportion of those records of crimes and illegalities to affect their views. Then there was a notion of history very much in favour with their scholars at present, that it should consist merely of a narrative of the actions of the Government and the formation of institutions—what they should call constitutional history. There had been a school of historical writers of late who would almost confine history to that record—nothing else was proper history, and the consequence was that the constitution of history was in the publication of documents and in the changes in the manner of government. That was an essential and a very important part of history, but by itself it would be a very dreich kind of history. History was the authentic record of whatever happened in the world, and Scottish history of whatever had happened in the Scottish world. If he had been told that on a certain date King James V., the Red Fox, rode over Cramond Bridge with five horsemen, one of them on a white horse, they might say what use was it to him to know that, but he did want to know it and have that picture in his mind. It was a piece of history, and any one who was bereft of interest in that sort of thing—however little use it might be turned to—was bereft of the historical faculty. Then there was a conception of history that it should consist in pictures of the generation, of the people, how they were housed, how they were fed, and so on. That was a capital notion. But he was not sure that there were not certain overdoings of that notion. In the first place, they would observe that they must take a succession of generations in order to accomplish that descriptive history of the state of Scotland at one time, then at another, then at a third, and so on. A description at one time would not apply to the society of Scotland at another.

'Quhan Alysander, oure Kyng, was deid,
Quhan Scotland led in luve and le,
Awa' wes sons of ail and brede,
Of wyne and wax, of gamyn and glee.'

That was to say, it was a tradition before that time that there was abundance and even luxury in Scotland. There had been a tendency in history of late to dwell on the poverty and squalor of Scotland in comparison with other countries—all that should be produced, and made perfectly conceivable—and then also to dwell on the records of kirk- sessions and presbyteries, showing the state of morality in Scotland. All that it was desirable should be produced in abundance if they were not wrongly construed—but they were apt to be. A notion had arisen what a comical country Scotland must have been with its Shorter Catechism, and its presbytery records, and its miserable food, and so on. That was a wrong notion, and ought to be dismissed, because if they thought of it the life of a community consisted in how it felt, how it acted. In those days of poverty and squalor of external surroundings there were as good men, as brave men, and as good women as there were in Scotland now. And at all events, if there was anything in Scotland now, any power in the world, it had sprung from these progenitors. They must have some corrective for an exaggeration of that notion, which was very natural. One was biography. They would be surprised if they were to know how many biographies there might be along the course of Scottish history, say from the Reformation. If they fastened on a single individual, and told the story of his life, they not only told the story of his community in a very interesting manner, but they got straight to some of those faults which they were apt to be impressed by if they gazed vaguely at the community. Dr. Hume Brown had written an admirable summary of the history of Scotland, but he had contributed to the history of Scotland in another way by his two biographies of Buchanan and Knox, and especially by his biography of Buchanan. Another corrective was literature. There had been no sufficient perception of how literature might illustrate history; and why should it not if their aim was to recover the past mind of Scotland? Every song, every fiction—was not that a transmitted piece of the very mind that they wanted to investigate? Here was matter already at their hand. Then, in a similar way, if a noble thought, if a fine feeling, was in any way expressed in verse or in prose, that came out of some moment or moments in the mind of some individual, and it must have corresponded and been in sympathy with the community in which it was expressed. Nothing noble had come out of any man at any one time, but that man, in the way of expression of literature, must have had a constituency of people who felt as he felt. Unfortunately there was a long gap in what we called the finer history of Scotland from the time of the Reformation to Allan Ramsay—in literature of certain kinds. There were muses in those days, but they were muses of ecclesiastical and political controversy—very grim muses, but still they were muses. But from Allan Ramsay's time to this, to study the history of the literature was to know more of the history of the country than we would otherwise. David Hume, Adam Smith, Burns, Scott—all these men were born and bred in Scotland so poor and so squalid that we should say we would not belong to it now. Nobody was asking us to belong to it. But these men, their roots were in a soil capable of sustaining their genius and of pouring into their works those things in the way of thought and feeling that delighted us now, and that were our pride throughout the world.

Mr. D.W. KEMP seconded the adoption of the Report, which was agreed to.

The vacancies in the Council were filled by the re-election of Dr. Hume Brown and Mr. Balfour Paul, and the election of Mr. John Scott, C.B., in room of Mr. G.W. Prothero.

In reply to Mr. James Bruce, W.S., Dr. LAW said that the death of Dr. Mitchell had caused some delay in the preparation of the third volume of the Records of the General Assembly, but it had already been transcribed for the printer.

A vote of thanks to Professor Masson concluded the proceedings.