REIGN OF CHARLES I.: 1637-1649.
It was a terrible and most exciting crisis for Scotland, when the people found themselves constrained by all they held sacred to resist their sovereign. Revering the institution of monarchy, and long accustomed to yield to the powerful king of Great Britain a deference which had neither been asked by nor paid to the sovereign of their own rude and inferior state, nothing could have brought them into such an attitude but their anxiety for the avoidance of soul-endangering errors. Even after the riots of July—such was the unwillingness to adopt strong measures—they might have been induced to remain at peace under bishops and Perth articles, if the king had been so far well counselled as at once and gracefully to withdraw the Service-book. So might a moderate Episcopacy have been preserved in Scotland, and the Civil War itself avoided or postponed. The king unfortunately determined to persevere in his unlucky course. The consequence was that the great mass of the people, including many of the nobility and gentry, was led into measures, at first of protestation, and latterly of resistance. There was indeed a district in the north-east where Episcopacy was the favourite system. In some other places, papist nobles exercised a limited local influence. The Highlanders were an uninstructed people, with no religious predilections. But in the Lowland provinces generally, a people far from void of intelligence were intensely earnest in favour of their old simple forms of worship and model of church-government. In the agitation of the subject during a few months, their prepossessions acquired a strength and fervour which never had been known before. It were quite impossible for any individual of our cool and temperate age, to form an adequate idea of the earnest feelings of the men who now arrayed themselves against Charles’s Episcopal innovations, without a careful perusal of the numberless documents in which these feelings found expression.
In the latter part of 1637, the Service-book not being withdrawn, four committees, called Tables, respectively representing the nobles, gentry, clergy, and burgesses, met in Edinburgh to concert measures for giving it an effective resistance. When it became evident, in the ensuing February, that the king was obdurate, the Tables framed a National Covenant, binding all who should sign it to spare nothing which might save their religion. It was signed by a large majority of the people, in a paroxysm of enthusiasm beyond all example in our history. The king, at length alarmed, sent the Marquis of Hamilton (June 1638) as a commissioner to treat with the Covenanters; and he soon after was induced to offer concessions far beyond what would have been grasped at a twelvemonth before—namely, to withdraw the Service-book and an equally unpopular Book of Canons, to abrogate the Court of High Commission, and place the Perth articles on a footing of indifferency. But while the people at large were at first disposed to be at peace on these terms, the leaders were by this time influenced with higher views. Feeling their power, they now hoped by perseverance to obtain a complete abolition of Episcopacy. Accordingly, when the matter came to be debated in a General Assembly of the Church, which sat at Glasgow in November, the royal commissioner proved unable to keep them within moderate bounds. On his formally dissolving the Assembly, they sat still under a clerical president, until they had deposed the bishops and declared Episcopacy wholly at an end.
The king, notwithstanding that a respect for his person and rule was still professed, could not acquiesce in a movement so contrary to the policy he had so long maintained, and which interfered so violently with his own religious convictions. He began to prepare an army for the subjugation of the Covenanters. They on their part made ready for an armed resistance, not professedly to their sovereign, but to the statesmen who guided his counsels. By a great effort, he got together twenty thousand men, and (May 1639) led them towards the Border. A fleet, having a few thousand troops on board, at the same time entered the Firth of Forth, under the command of the Marquis of Hamilton. Under their nobles, gentry, and clergy, the Scots mustered forces to defend their shores from the fleet, to meet the anti-Covenanting party in the north, and to oppose the king at the Border. To the number of about twenty thousand men, commanded by Sir Alexander Leslie, an experienced officer from the German wars, they took post on Dunse Law, while the king advanced with his army towards the Tweed. What with constant praying, preaching, and fasting, it was such a camp as perhaps never existed before or since. The king, seeing their resolution and discipline, and feeling that he had but slack support from his own army, was induced to offer a pacification. He could not sanction the acts of a General Assembly which had defied his authority; but he proposed that everything should Be submitted to another such body sitting under his representative, and to a subsequent parliament. His hope was that time and his personal influence with the leaders might bring things to some passable issue. At the worst, he should meanwhile prepare a greater army for enforcing subjection.
The new General Assembly and the parliament met in the course of summer (1639) under royal commissioners, but with only the effect of formally affirming the abolition of Episcopacy. The king accordingly resolved on a second expedition against the Scots. After trying in vain to induce an English parliament to grant supplies, he obtained some assistance from a convocation of the English clergy, and from a number of friends among the gentry. He calculated much on the public fortresses of Scotland being now in his hands, and on the zeal of a small loyal party. All his hopes were frustrated. In the early part of 1640, the Scots mustered a second army as good as his own. They succeeded in seizing the most of the fortresses. His expectations of co-operation from the loyalists in Aberdeenshire proved fallacious. The attention of a patriotic party in England was now hopefully fixed on the proceedings of the Scots. The truth is, Charles was leading the army of a party of his English subjects through a country generally disaffected to his policy, against a country altogether hostile. In such circumstances, a great blow to his authority was inevitable.
The Covenanters did not now deem it necessary to confine themselves to a defence of their own borders. They crossed the Tweed with a gallant army (August 28, 1640), and advanced on the Tyne. After a smart action, in which they were victorious, they crossed that river, and took possession of Newcastle. With a disaffected army, and all but a few zealots muttering around him, the king could only come a second time to a convention, but now it was upon less favourable terms than before. It was arranged that a new parliament should be called in England for the settlement of the affairs of the kingdom, and that meanwhile the Scottish army should remain in the north under English pay; thus the patriotic party calculated on having a guard to protect them while reforming the state. Efforts were made to raise resentment against the Scots as invaders of the English territory; but the Scots took care, by their published declarations, to shew that they solely aimed at the preservation of the religious forms which had long before been established among them, and that they desired nothing more than the friendship of the English people. Among the English themselves, objections to Episcopal authority and a formal style of worship had been advancing since early in the reign of Elizabeth; giving rise to what was called the Puritanic party. English Puritans, aiming at the same objects as the Scottish Covenanters, readily gave them their sympathy. Thus it was with the cordial concurrence of a large portion of the English nation that the Covenanters rested under arms in England.
The parliament which now sat down, and which was not to rise again for eleven years, proceeded to take into consideration a number of grievances under which the country was considered as having suffered during the king’s reign. His prime advisers, Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, and the Earl of Strafford, were imprisoned. Other ministers of the king—opprobriously styled Malignants—were obliged to fly from the kingdom. It became evident that the church itself was in danger. Strafford, after a trial in which it has never been pretended that he got fair-play, was (May 1641) condemned and beheaded. While thus sorely pressed by his English parliament, Charles began to think that his Scottish subjects might be conciliated so as to become his friends, and perhaps to some degree his partisans. In August 1641, he revisited Edinburgh, in order to preside at a meeting of the Estates; and there he sanctioned all the measures they had themselves taken, and distributed honours and rewards among the Covenanting leaders. He spent three months in Edinburgh, doing all in his power to cultivate the affections of the Covenanters, and apparently with success, though there were not wanting some troubles, occasioned by a small loyalist party, who wished to act more energetically in his behalf than was convenient for him. He at length returned, as he said, a contented prince from a contented people. Before this time, the Scottish army had been satisfied of their pay by the English parliament, and had returned from Newcastle, and been disbanded.
While the king still remained in Scotland (November 1641), intelligence arrived of a frightful outbreak of the Catholics in Ireland, and the dreadful vengeance executed by them upon their Protestant fellow-subjects. Ten thousand Scottish troops were quickly mustered, and sent over to assist in preserving the king’s authority in that country.
The arbitrary rule which King Charles had exercised down to 1637, had in four years been brought low in both Scotland and England. A severe lesson had been read to him, if he had had the wisdom to profit by it. After such a struggle, it is not easy, either for the monarch to rest corrected, or for his subjects to make moderate uses of their victory. Bigoted views on his part as to both state and church, fostered by the support of a loyal party more generous than wise; a strong sense in the patriotic or parliamentary party that the king and his friends would resume the system of arbitrary authority if possible, and use it mercilessly against all who had taken part in the late movements; made it in a manner impossible that things should rest at the point now attained. Accordingly, soon after the return of the king to London, the popular party in the English parliament presented to him their famous Remonstrance, recapitulating all the errors of his past government, and recommending that he should put himself into the hands of ministers who enjoyed the confidence of the people. His imperious spirit, strengthened by his hopes of support in Scotland, refused to yield to such counsels. When he made his unfortunate attempt (January 1642) to seize the five leading patriots in the House of Commons, the distrust of the parliament was completed, and reconciliation became impossible. The king had for some time contemplated warlike means of recovering his lost ground; but it was not till the bishops had been impeached, and he had been asked to surrender the command of the militia to the parliament, that he raised his standard at Nottingham (August 1642), with the support of a large body of loyal gentry.
In this civil war, the Scottish nation had no formal reason or pretext for joining on one side or the other; but their sympathies and interests were all engaged in behalf of the parliamentary cause. When the first two campaigns, therefore, made it seem likely that the king would be triumphant, they naturally felt some uneasiness, as fearful that if he should put down the parliament, their recovered liberties and reinstated church would be in danger. The temptation to assist the English patriots thus became irresistible. A set of commissioners from the English parliament came into Scotland to court its alliance; they were instructed to give the Scottish nation hopes that, in the event of success against the king, the Presbyterian model should supersede the Episcopalian both in England and Ireland. With the enthusiastic conceptions the Scots then had of the value of Presbyterianism, as the only pure and saving vehicle of the gospel, they were unable to resist this bait, though it was after all put into an ambiguous shape. Their Estates, accordingly, entered into what was called a Solemn League and Covenant with the English parliament (August 1643), one of the provisions of which engaged them to send an army against the king. Eighteen thousand foot and three thousand horse, to be supported by English pay at the rate of £30,000 a month, crossed the Tweed in the depth of winter (January 1644). With a view to gratify and encourage them, their enemy, Laud, was taken from his prison in the Tower, tried, and sent to the block—a piece of political revenge merely, as the old man was unable to have done any one further harm. Joining the parliamentary troops at York, the Scots assisted materially in gaining the important victory of Marston Moor, from which the king’s party never entirely recovered. They also besieged and took Newcastle, preserving a laudable moderation in their triumph. The season ended with a marked depression of the royal cause.
While affairs in Scotland were wholly managed by a Committee of the Estates and the Commission of the kirk, several of the nobles and the inhabitants of certain districts, chiefly in the Highlands, formed a tacitly royalist party. The young Earl of Montrose, raised to the rank of marquis, and invested by the king with a commission, set up the royal standard in Perthshire (August 1644), and was soon surrounded, by three thousand men, part of whom were Irish papists. Montrose was a man of extraordinary genius, with conceptions far beyond his narrow sphere. Originally a zealous Covenanter, he had changed when he thought the king too hard pressed by his subjects. A generous loyalty and romantic heroism enabled him to perform wonderful exploits; but it is at the same time to be owned that he was fearfully unscrupulous about plunder and the shedding of blood. With his ill-armed followers, he overthrew a carefully embodied army of militia, of twice his number, at Tippermuir (September 1644). Then marching to Aberdeen, he defeated a second army under Lord Burleigh, and entering the city, subjected it to a pillage even severer than any he had inflicted on it as a Covenanter. The Marquis of Argyle pursued him round the Highlands without gaining any advantage. Suddenly breaking off his course, he invaded Argyleshire in the depth of winter, and ravaged it without mercy, killing a great number of the men fit to bear arms. The Marquis of Argyle came to revenge this frightful proceeding at Inverlochy, but was there defeated with immense slaughter (February 1645). Montrose then made a deliberate march through Inverness-shire, Moray, Banffshire, and the east coast, using fire and sword wherever the king’s cause was not at once acknowledged and supported. It was a warfare such as had not taken place in England since the contentions of the Roses, and strongly marks the lower civilisation of Scotland at this date. At Dundee, he received a check from a Covenanting army under General Baillie, and with some difficulty succeeded in obtaining a refuge in the mountains. Descending again to the plains in Nairnshire, he defeated with great slaughter a small army under Colonel Urry at Auldearn; soon after, he in like manner overthrew Baillie’s forces at Alford. He was now confident enough to promise King Charles the speedy recovery of Scotland; and the king, finding his affairs becoming more and more discouraging in England, was inclined to trust to this promise, and migrate northward. Montrose, however, only distressed his country; he did not conquer or convert it to loyalty. He never accomplished any solid or permanent advantage, but was as much the mere guerrilla chief at the last as at the first. One other victory, gained over a large militia force at Kilsyth (August 1645), left him without any apparent opposition in Scotland. Yet within a few weeks (September 13), he was completely defeated at Philiphaugh, in Selkirkshire, by a body of horse detached under David Leslie from the Scottish army in England; and he was soon after obliged to retire to the continent. Montrose’s course was like that of a meteor, which alarms and excites wonder, but passes without leaving any tangible effects.
Meanwhile the battle of Naseby and the second battle of Newbury had left the king’s cause in a hopeless condition, and at the close of 1645, he was scarcely able to keep the field. It was now absolutely necessary for him to make peace with his subjects, if he hoped to retain even a nominal power or place in the state, and, seeing that the resources of the pure royalists had proved insufficient for his support, his best course would have been to place himself in the hands of the party next in the sentiment of regard for his person. This was the party of Presbyterians, as distinguished from a more extreme party, which had latterly sprang into importance in England, under the name of Independents, who professed to support a primitive form of Christianity without any ecclesiastical organisation whatever. The Presbyterians hated Episcopacy; but they were not averse to a moderate or limited monarchy; while the Independents were generally of republican principles. Charles, unfortunately a bigot for Episcopacy, could not bring himself to sanction the Presbyterian model, even for a limited time on trial. He hoped to bring out a better issue for himself by the dangerous game of playing off the various parties against each other. Having thus lost a good opportunity of treating, he was obliged, in May 1646, to take refuge with the Scottish army at Newark.
Whatever may be thought of the conduct of the Scots in entering into the Solemn League and Covenant, and sending troops against a sovereign who had so thoroughly redressed their own national grievances, there can be no reasonable doubt that they were prompted on that occasion by a pure zeal for their church establishment, and a sympathy with those of the neighbouring nation who desired to be equally free from the rule of bishops. But it cannot be denied that in engaging themselves to ‘endeavour, without respect of persons, the extirpation of popery, prelacy, superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, and whatsoever shall be contrary to sound doctrine’—for such are the terms of the League—they had wholly changed the nature of their policy. From a laudable defence of cherished institutions of their own, menaced with danger, they passed into a very questionable system of propagandism and aggression. It might be said that they were committing the same mistake as King Charles had done in his original policy towards themselves, going against the religious traditions and prepossessions of a people; for, while Puritans and Independents had an apparent ascendency in England, ‘the church,’ nursed by the blood of martyrs, and endeared by long habit, had still a great hold on the bulk of the English nation. Success in such a movement, if it could by any be considered as deserved, was scarcely by common sense to be expected. As if in natural punishment for a great error, nothing had gone well with the Scots ever since. An Assembly of Divines, including commissioners from Scotland, had sat at Westminster for two years, in deliberation on the proper ecclesiastical system and articles of faith to be adopted by both nations; and its decision was substantially for the Presbyterian forms and Calvinistic doctrines so much beloved in the north. But the English House of Commons could never be induced to take any active measures for imposing this decision on the nation, doubtless feeling that it was not generally acceptable. Pure presbytery never came into true operation except in London and in Lancashire. To the Scottish leaders, who had been accustomed to impose and enforce doctrine upon all recusants in their own country, this slackness seemed inexcusable, and occasioned the deepest disappointment. They also found that their army, after the first useful service at Marston Moor, was comparatively neglected in England, and its pay allowed to fall into arrear. Themselves courted at first as allies, they had latterly been little inquired for or consulted; their advices and their remonstrances were alike overlooked. Sternest punishment of all, while their best troops were kept idle and half mendicant in England, Montrose avenged the king’s sense of injury by sweeping their defenceless provinces with the besom of destruction, and putting thousands of hastily armed citizens to the sword. It was a most melancholy result of a movement entered on, as they in all sincerity protested, purely for the glory of God.
There still remained an event most unfortunate for Scotland before the war could be concluded. The arrears of pay due by the English parliament to the Scottish army had been allowed to run up to £1,400,000. The House of Commons tried to abate the sum to a comparative trifle, but ultimately (August 1646) agreed to pay £400,000, the one half immediately, after which the Scots were to retire into their own country. But, meanwhile, the Scots were awkwardly placed by the king being in their camp. If he had agreed to the propositions of the parliament, all would have been well, for then he would have proceeded in peace and honour to London. As he could not be induced to assent to these propositions, a question arose between the two nations as to the disposal of his person. The English parliament affected the sole right to deal with it. The Scottish Estates could not agree to this; but as they were not disposed to take up the king’s cause against the English—and, indeed, such a step would have been ruinous—it was not easy for them on any terms or understanding to retain him within their grasp. After much troublesome negotiation, they were induced by some of the leading English Presbyterians to give up the king, in order to facilitate the disbanding of the English army, which latterly was manifesting a refractory spirit. There was scarcely a relation, if any, between the receiving of the arrears of pay and the surrender of the king; nevertheless, as the events took place about the same time, they have become connected in popular conception, to the discredit of the Scottish name. It will be ages before the English commonalty ceases to believe that the Scots sold their king, and for slaughter too, although such a tragical end for his life was certainly not dreamed of by anybody till long after.
The king being now a captive, and his friends reduced to silence, the English parliament set themselves to two objects—a re-establishment of the royal authority on suitable terms, and the disbanding of the army. The king’s obstinacy defeated the one object; the growth of sectarianism in the army balked the other. Charles hoped to thrive by the disunion of these two bodies, and coquetted with both. The army seized his person; but he afterwards escaped, and fell under the care of a kind of neutral power, in the person of the governor of Carisbrook Castle, in the Isle of Wight. The Scots, hating sectarianism, still maintained a modified loyalty. Under the influence of the Duke of Hamilton and a few other nobles, who had come to an understanding or engagement with the king regarding a possible restoration of his authority, the Estates in spring 1648 raised an army in his behalf, thus renewing the Civil War; and with this movement the remaining English loyalists concurred. The more zealous Presbyterians of Scotland denounced it on that account, notwithstanding many plausible pretences set forth in its favour. The English Presbyterians gave it their good-will, but could do little in its behalf. In July, a too hastily prepared army of 15,000 Scots entered England under the command of Hamilton, and proceeded as far as Preston, while a small army of English loyalists marched near by, but, for the sake of appearances, carefully abstained from a junction. A portion of the English army, under Oliver Cromwell, attacked the small body of loyalists and destroyed it; then met and overthrew the Scottish army; soon after which, the Duke of Hamilton was taken prisoner. Cromwell came to Edinburgh, and fraternised with the more zealous Presbyterian leaders, who had by that time resumed an ascendency. Then, returning as a victor to London, with no force to oppose him in any part of the island, he joined with a number of other men of his own stamp, in putting an end to the English monarchy. In January 1649, the king was tried for the alleged crime of raising war upon his subjects, and publicly beheaded.
1637. July.
Till the occurrence of the tumult this month, there was, according to the confession of Clarendon, so little curiosity felt in England, either in the court or country, ‘to know anything of Scotland, or what was done there, that, when the whole nation was solicitous to know what passed weekly in Germany, Poland, and other parts of Europe, no man ever inquired what was doing in Scotland, nor had that kingdom a place or mention in one page of any gazette.’
Oct. 3.
1637.
This day began a fall of rain in Moray-land, of ten days’ continuance, and attended by effects which remind us of the celebrated flood of 1829; ‘waters and burns flowing up over bank and brae; corn-mills and mill-houses washen down; houses, kilns, cots, faulds wherein beasts were keipit, all destroyed. The corns, weel stacked, began to moch[75] and rot till they were casten over again. Lamentable to see, and whereof the like was never seen before.... There were four ships lying at anchor in the harbour of Aberdeen; in one of which ships Major Ker and Captain Lumsden had a number of soldiers. Through a great spate[76] of the water of Dee, occasioned by this extraordinary rain, thir haill four ships brake loose, for neither tow nor anchor could hold them, and were driven out at the water mouth, upon the night, and by a south-east wind were driven to the north shore, where thir ships were miserably bladded [beaten] with leaks by striking upon the sands. The soldiers, sleeping carelessly in the bottom of the ship upon heather, were all in a swim, to their great amazement and dread. They got up, with horrible crying and shouting; some escaped, other some pitifully perished. About the number of fourscore and twelve soldiers were wanting, drowned or got away.’—Slightly altered from Spalding.
Oct. 19.
A quantity of gold had been brought into the kingdom by ‘the adventurers of Guinee.’ It was ordered to be formed into coin by Nicolas Briot and John Falconer, masters of the cunyie-house, according to the arrangements ordered by the Privy Council in April 1625.—P. C. R. Some gold subsequently brought from the same country to England by the African Company, ‘administered the first occasion,’ as Clarendon tells us, ‘for the coinage of those pieces which, from thence, had the denomination of guineas.’[77]
The digging of gold in Guinea is connected in a melancholy way with Scotland, for fifteen hundred of the Scottish prisoners taken at Worcester in September 1651, were granted to the Guinea merchants, ‘to be transported to Guinea to work in the mines there.’[78]
Dec. 4.
In the night arose ‘ane horrible high wind,’ which blew down the rafters of the choir of Elgin Cathedral, left without the slates eighty years before. This fact reminds us how much of the destruction of our ancient ecclesiastical buildings was owing, not to actual or immediate damage at the Reformation, but to neglect afterwards.
Dec. 26.
1637.
This day, in consequence of the late inundation and storms, a bar made its appearance athwart the mouth of the river Dee, ‘mixed with marble, clay, and stones.’ The contemplation of so fatal a stoppage to their harbour threw the citizens of Aberdeen into a state of the greatest anxiety. ‘They fell to with fasting, praying, preaching, mourning, and weeping all day and night. Then they went out with spades, shools, mattocks, and mells, in great numbers, men and women, young and old, at low-water, to cast down this dreadful bar; but all for nought, for as fast as they cast down at a low-water, it gathered again as fast at a full sea.’ The people had resigned themselves to despair, when ‘the Lord, of his great mercy, without help of mortal man, removed and swept clean away this fearful bar, and made the water mouth to keep its own course, as it was before.’—Slightly altered from Spalding.
1637-8.
On the hill of Echt, in Aberdeenshire, famous for its ancient fortification called the Barmkyn of Echt, there was heard, almost every night, all this winter, a prodigious beating of drums, supposed to foretell the bloody civil wars which soon after ensued. The parade and retiring of guards, their tattoos, their reveilles, and marches, were all heard distinctly by multitudes of people. ‘Ear-witnesses, soldiers of credit, have told me,’ says Gordon of Rothiemay, ‘that when the parade was beating, they could discern when the drummer walked towards them, or when he turned about, as the fashion is for drummers, to walk to and again, upon the head or front of a company drawn up. At such times, also, they could distinguish the marches of several nations; and the first marches that were heard there were the Scottish March; afterwards, the Irish March was heard; then the English March. But before these noises ceased, those who had been trained up much of their lives abroad in the German wars, affirmed that they could perfectly, by their hearing, discern the marches upon the drum of several foreign nations of Europe—such as the French, Dutch, Danish, &c. These drums were so constantly heard, that all the country people next adjacent were therewith accustomed; and sometimes these drummers were heard off that hill, in places two or three miles distant. Some people in the night, travelling near by the Loch of Skene, within three mile of that hill, were frighted with the loud noise of drums, struck hard by them, which did convoy them along the way, but saw nothing; as I had it often from such as heard these noises, from the Laird of Skene and his lady, from the Laird of Echt, and my own wife then living in Skene, almost immediately after the people thus terrified had come and told it. Some gentlemen of known integrity and truth affirmed that, near these places, they heard as perfect shot of cannon go off as ever they heard at the battle of Nordlingen, where themselves some years before had been present.’[79]
1638. Feb. 8 or 9.
By order of the king, in consideration of the rebellious proceedings in Edinburgh, ‘the session sat down in Stirling. Ye may guess if the town of Edinburgh was angry or not.’—Chron. Perth.
Feb. 28.
1633.
This day commenced at Edinburgh the signing of that National Covenant which for some years exercised so strong an influence over the affairs of Scotland. Public feeling, as far as the great bulk of the people was concerned, had been wrought up to a paroxysm of anxiety and enthusiasm regarding the preservation of the Presbyterian model. An eternal interest was supposed to depend on their not allowing their religion to be assimilated to that of England, and, weighed against this, everything else looked mean and of no account. After the document had been subscribed by the congregation at the Greyfriars’ Church, before whom it was first presented, it went through the city, every one contesting who might be first, many blindly following the example of others—not only men, but ‘women, young people, and servants did swear and hold up their hands to the Covenant.’ Many copies, written out on parchment, and signed by the leading nobles, were carried into the country, and laid before the people of the several towns and districts. ‘The greater that the number of subscribents grew,’ says the parson of Rothiemay, ‘the more imperious they were in exacting subscriptions from others who refused to subscribe; so that by degrees they proceeded to contumelies, and exposing of many to injuries and reproaches, and some were threatened and beaten who durst refuse, especially in greatest cities.... Gentlemen and noblemen carried copies of it about in their portmantles and pockets, requiring subscriptions thereto, and using their utmost endeavours with their friends in private for to subscribe.... All had power to take the oath, and were licensed and welcome to come in.... Such was the zeal of many subscribents, that, for a while, many subscribed with tears on their cheeks; and it is constantly reported that some did draw their own blood, and used it in place of ink to underwrite their names. Such ministers as spoke for it were heard so passionately and with such frequency, that churches could not contain their hearers in cities; some of the devouter sex (as if they had kept vigils) keeping their seats from Friday to Sunday, to get the communion given them sitting; some sitting alway let before such sermons in the churches, for fear of losing a room or place of hearing; or at the least some of their handmaids sitting constantly there all night till their mistresses came to take up their places and to relieve them; so that several (as I heard from very sober and credible men) under that religious confinement, were——These things will scarce be believed, but I relate them upon the credit of such as knew this to be truth.’
The Rev. John Livingstone says: ‘I was present at Lanark, and at several other parishes, when, on a Sabbath, after the forenoon sermon, the Covenant was read and sworn, and may truly say that in all my lifetime, except one day at the Kirk of Shotts, I never saw such motions from the Spirit of God; all the people generally and most willingly concurring; where I have seen more than a thousand persons all at once lifting up their hands, and the tears falling down from their eyes.’
Maitland, describing the Edinburgh copy of the Covenant, says: ‘It is written on a parchment of the length of four feet, and the depth of three feet eight inches, and is so crowded with names on both sides, that there is not the smallest space left for more. It appears that, when there was little room left to sign on, the subscriptions were shortened by only inserting the initials of the Covenanters’ names; which the margin and other parts are so full of, and the subscriptions so close, that it were a difficult task to number them. However, by a cursory view, I take them to be about five thousand in number.—Hist. Ed.
Apr.
The household book of the Dowager-countess of Mar[80] commencing at this time, and running on for several years, affords a few rays of scattered light regarding the domestic life of the aristocracy of the period.[81] They are not susceptible of being worked up to any general effect, and the reader must therefore take them as they occur.
1638.
‘April 21, to ane little boy for two buiks of the Covenant, 12s.[82] May 4, for pressing ane red scarlet riding-coat for John the Bairn s. May 16, to ane blind singer who sang the time of dinner, 12s. May 17, ane quire paper, 5s. May 18, to ane of the nourices who dwells at the Muir, who came to thig [beg], 29s. May 25, for ane belt to Lord James [an elder grandson of the countess], 18s.; for ane powder-horn to him, 4s. 6d.; for raisins to Lord James and Charles, 10s. June, to William Shearer his wife for ane pair hose to Lord James, £3. Paid for contribution to the Confederat Lords, £4. To ane old blind man as my lady came from prayers, 4s. Edinburgh, July 18, for a periwig to Lord James, £8, 2s. July 19, ane pound and ane half pound of candles, 6s. July 21, ane pound raisins to keep the fasting Sunday, 6s. 8d. July 27, given to the kirk brodd [board], as my lady went to sermon in the High Kirk, 6s. Stirling, August 17, to my lady to give to the French lacquey that served my Lord Erskine when he went back to France, 4s. August 25, sent to my lady, to play with the Lady Glenurchy after supper, 4s. September 1, for making a chest [coffin] to Katherine Ramsay, who deceased the night before, 20s.; for two half pounds tobacco ane eighteen pipes to spend at her lykewake, 21s.; to the bellman that went through the town to warn to her burial, 12s.; to the makers of the graff, 12s. 4d. September 8, to twa Highland singing-women, at my lady’s command, 6s. September 23, to ane lame man callit Ross, who plays the plaisant, 3s. Paid for ane golf-club to John the Bairn, 5s. 9th November, to Andrew Erskine, to give to the poor at my lady’s onlouping, 12s. December, paid to John, that he gave to ane woman who brought ane dwarf by my lady, 12s. [Edinburgh], January 23, 1639, to my lady as she went to Lord Belhaven his burial, and to visit my Lady Hume, £5, 8s. February, to Charles [son of the countess], the night he was married, to give the poor, £5, 8s. 3d. February 23, paid for ane pound of raisins to my lady again’ the fasting Sunday, 8s. June 11, to Thom Eld, sent to Alloa for horses to take my lady’s children ane servants to the army then lying at the Border, 2s. Paid to the Lady Glenurchy for aqua-vitæ that she bought to my lady, 6s. Paid for carrying down the silver wark to the Council house, to be weighed ane delivered to the town-treasurer of Edinburgh, 10s.[83] August 23, paid for twa pair sweet gloves to Lord James and Mr Will. Erskine, £3. September 9, to Lord James to play at the totum with John Hamilton, 1s. 4d. To my lady as she went to dine with my Lord Haddington [for vails to the servants?], ane dollar and four shillings. Paid in contribution to Edward the fool, 12s. Paid to Gilbert Somerville, for making ane suit clothes to Lord James of red lined with satin, £7, 10s. November 29, paid to the Lady Glenurchy her man, for ane little barrel of aqua-vitæ, £3. May 27, 1640, to ane man who brought the parroquet her cage, 4s. June 15, to ane poor woman as my lady sat at the fishing, 6d. August, for tobacco to my lady’s use, 1s. March 4, 1641, to Blind Wat the piper that day, as my lady went to the Exercise, 4s. March 6, given to John Erskine to buy a cock to fight on Fasten’s Even [Shrovetide], 6s. June 8, to ane masterful beggar who did knock at the gate, my lady being at table, 2s. [It was then customary to lock the outer door during dinner.] November 15, [the countess having visited Edinburgh to see the king], given for two torches to lighten in my lady to court, to take her leave of the king, 24s. February 21, 1642, sent to Sir Charles Erskine to buy escorse de sidrone and marmolat, £5, 6s. 8d. March 21, to ane woman clairshocher [harper] who usit the house in my lord his time, 12s. August 10, to John Erskine to buy a bladder for trying a mathematical conclusion. December 7, paid for three white night-mutches [caps] to my Lord of Buchan, £3, 12s. January 13, 1643, for ane Prognostication [an almanac], 8d. February 17, for dressing ane red four-tailed coat of Mr William’s, 1s. 8d. February 13, to my lady in her own chamber, when the Valentines were a-drawing, £10, 12s. 4d. April 13, to Mr William Erskine, to go to the dwarf’s marriage, 7s. 6d.’
July 20.
While the generality of the Lowland people of Scotland were wrought up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm in favour of Presbyterianism, the inhabitants of Aberdeen and the surrounding district remained faithful to a moderate Episcopacy, and therefore disinclined to accept the Covenant. It was a crisis to make men impatient of dissent in a milder age than the seventeenth century. As men then felt about religion—perfectly assured that they themselves were right, and that dissent was perdition—this Aberdonian recusancy could look for no gentle treatment; and it met with none. The first assault, however, was not of a very deadly character.
1638.
It was under the leadership of the young Earl of Montrose—afterwards so energetic on the other side—that a Covenanting deputation came to Aberdeen with the bond into which most of the nation had entered. ‘The provost and bailies courteously salute them at their lodging, offers them wine and comfits, according to their laudable custom, for their welcome; but this their courteous offer was disdainfully refused, saying they would drink none with them while [till] first the Covenant was subscribed; whereat the provost and bailies were somewhat offended. Always they took their leave, [and] suddenly cause deal the wine in the Bede-house amang the puir men, whilk they so disdainfully had refused; whereof the like was never done to Aberdeen in no man’s memory.’—Spal.
This discourteous party included, besides the Earl of Montrose, Lord Arbuthnot, the Lairds of Morphy and Dun, and three ministers, Cant, Dickson, and Henderson. ‘Because they could not get entres to our church to preach, they went to the Earl of Marischal his close in the Castle Gate, and preached three sermons on Sunday, where they had such enticing sermons for the common people, that after ages will not believe it. I was both an eye and ear witness to them. At that time, they were [sae] cried up and doated upon, that the Laird of Leys (otherwise ane wise man) did carry Mr Andrew Cant his books. Yet at that time there was but very few that subscribed, only fourteen men, [including] Provost Lesly, ane ringleader, but afterwards he did repent it ... Alexander Jaffray, Alexander Burnet ... and some others, but not of great quality; for at this time, good reader, thou shalt understand that there was worthy preachers in Aberdeen, as Britain could afford.... Thir men had many disputes with the Covenanters, for they wrote against other plies, replies, duplies, thriplies, and quadruplies; but in all these disputes the Covenanters came as short to the ministers of Aberdeen as are grammarian to a divine.’—Ab. Re.
1638.
The Aberdeen doctors, as they were called, formed a remarkable body of men, learned much above Scotch divines in general, of that or any subsequent age. Dr John Forbes of Corse, professor of divinity; Dr William Leslie, principal and professor of divinity in King’s College; Dr Robert Barron, principal and professor of divinity in Marischal College; and Drs Scroggie, Sibbald, and Ross, ministers; were all prepared to defend the moderate Episcopacy against which the Covenanters were waging war; and there exists an unchallenged and uniform report of their having had the superiority in the argument, though all incompetent to stem the torrent of enthusiasm which had set in against them. It was under the dignified patronage and care of the late Bishop Patrick Forbes, that these men had grown up in Aberdeen, ‘a society more learned and accomplished than Scotland had hitherto known.’[84] Connected with them in locality were other men of talents and accomplishment—Arthur Johnston, John Leech, and David Wedderburn, all writers of elegant Latin poetry—thus adding to the reputation which Aberdeen enjoyed as a seat of learning, that of a favourite seat of the Muses. For some years this system of things had flourished at the northern city, amidst handsome collegiate buildings, tasteful churches, and scenes of elegant domestic life. One cannot reflect without a pang on the wreck it was destined to sustain under the rude shocks imparted by a religious enthusiasm which regarded nothing but its own dogmas, and for these sacrificed everything. The university sustained a visitation from the Presbyterian Assembly of 1640, and was thenceforth much changed. ‘The Assembly’s errand,’ says Gordon of Rothiemay, ‘was thoroughly done; these eminent divines of Aberdeen either dead, deposed, or banished; in whom fell more learning than was left in all Scotland beside at that time. Nor has that city, nor any city in Scotland, ever since seen so many learned divines and scholars at one time together as were immediately before this in Aberdeen. From that time forwards, learning began to be discountenanced; and such as were knowing in antiquity and in the writings of the fathers, were had in suspicion as men who smelled of popery; and he was most esteemed of, who affected novelism and singularity most; and the very form of preaching, as weel as the materials, was changed for the most part. Learning was nicknamed human learning, and some ministers so far cried it down in their pulpits, as they were heard to say: “Down doctrine, and up Christ!”’
Aug. 8.
1638.
As a characteristic incident of the period—an outlaw of the Macgregor clan, named John Dhu Ger, came this day with his associates to the lands of Stuart, Laird of Corse, in the upper vales of Aberdeenshire, and began to despoil them, pretending to be the king’s man, and that what he did was only justice, as against a rebellious Covenanter. ‘Wherever he came in Strylay and other places, he would take their horse, kine, and oxen, and cause the owners compound and pay for their own geir.... He took out of the Laird of Corse’s bounds a brave gentleman-tenant dwelling there, and carried him with him, and sent word to the laird, desiring him to send him a thousand pounds, whilk the lords of Council had given his name [the Stuarts of Athole] for taking of Gilderoy, or then he would send this man’s head to him. The Laird of Corse rode shortly to Strathbogie, and told the marquis, who quickly wrote to Macgregor, to send back Mr George Forbes again, or then he would come himself for him. But he was obeyed, and [Forbes] came to Strathbogie, haill and sound upon the 15th of August, but [without] payment of any ransom.’—Altered from Spalding.
‘This year was ane very dry year, for about the end of August all the corns was within the yards.’—Ab. Re.
Oct.
1638.
Amidst the excitement of the time, a young woman named Mitchelson, who had been subject to fits, attracted attention in Edinburgh by becoming a sort of prophetess or Pythoness of the Covenant. ‘She was acquainted with the Scripture, and much taken with the Covenant, and in her fits spoke much to its advantage, and much ill to its opposers, that would, or at least that she wished to befall them. Great numbers of all ranks of people were her daily hearers; and many of the devouter sex prayed and wept, with joy and wonder, to hear her speak. When her fits came upon her, she was ordinarily thrown upon a down bed, and there prostrate, with her face downwards, spoke such words as were for a while carefully taken from her mouth by such as were skilful in brachygraphy. She had intermissions of her discourses for days and weeks; and before she began to speak, it was made known through Edinburgh. Mr Harry Rollock [one of the clergymen of Edinburgh], who often came to see her, said that he thought it was not good manners to speak while his Master was speaking, and that he acknowledged his Master’s voice in her. Some misconstered her to be suborned by the Covenanters, and at least that she had nothing that savoured of a rapture, but only of memory, and that still she knew what she spoke, and, being interrupted in her discourse, answered pertinently to the purpose. Her language signified little: she spoke of Christ, and called him Covenanting Jesus; that the Covenant was approved from heaven; that the king’s covenant was Satan’s invention; that the Covenant should prosper, but the adherents to the king’s covenant should be confounded; and much other stuff of this nature, which savoured at best of senseless simplicity. The Earl of Airth, upon a time, getting a paper of her prophecies, which was inscribed, “that, such a day and such a year, Mrs Mitchelson awoke and spoke gloriously,” in place of the word “gloriously,” which he blotted out, writt over it the word “gowkedly” or foolishly, [and] was so much distested for a while among the superstitious admirers of this maid, that he had like to have run the fate of one of the bishops, by a charge with stones upon the street. But this blazing star quickly vanished....’[85]
There seems no reason to doubt that Mrs Mitchelson was a sincere young woman, but in an unsound nervous condition. Ecstatics like her are common in the Romish Church, in which case there is much tendency to visions of St Catherine, instead of ravings about the Covenant. From analogous cases of persons under hallucinations, the giving pertinent answers to ordinary questions, which Gordon adduces as a ground of doubt, does not necessarily infer that Mrs Mitchelson was a cunning woman playing a part.
1639. Feb.
The Earl of Montrose went about in the north country with a large armed band, forcing the Covenant upon those who were disinclined to sign it, and raising funds for the use of the Covenanting party. As it never once occurred to the ‘Tables’ that anybody could have a conscientious scruple on the subject, much less that any scruple called for respect and forbearance, force seemed quite fair as a means of attaining to uniformity. The city of Aberdeen, looking with apprehension to this kind of mission, ‘began to choose out captains, ensigns, sergeants, and other officers for drilling their men in the Links, and learning them to handle their arms;’ also ‘to big up their back yetts, close their ports, have their catbands in readiness, their cannons clear, and had ane strict watch day and night keepit.’—Spal. All this to battle off an Idea. Still they feared it might not be sufficient. So, looking to the victual they had against a siege, they began to cast ditches, and towards the south raised up timber sconces, clad with deals. They had eleven pieces of ordnance, each provided with a sconce, planted commodiously on the streets. In short, it was a town pretty well fortified, as such things were in those days, and no doubt the worthy citizens were in good hopes of resisting the storm of Christian reformation which was mustering against them. Alas!
1639.
It soon became evident to the poor Aberdonians that, however well their doctors might argue, the Covenant was not to be resisted. Dismayed at the accounts they got of large forces mustering against them, they abandoned all design of defence. All that the more notable friends of the king and church could do was to fly.
Spalding’s account of the entry of the Covenanting militia under Montrose and Leslie into Aberdeen is highly picturesque.
Mar. 30.
1839.
‘... they came in order of battle, weel armed both on horse and foot, ilk horseman having five shot at the least, ... ane carabine on his hand, two pistols by his sides, and two at his saddle-tore. The pikemen in their ranks [with] pike and sword; the musketeers in their ranks with musket, musket-staff, bandelier, sword, powder, ball, and match. Ilk company both on horse and foot had their captains, lieutenants, ensigns, sergeants, and other officers and commanders, all for the most part in buff coats and goodly order. They had five colours or ensigns.... They had trumpeters to ilk company of horsemen, and drummers to ilk company of footmen. They had their meat, drink, and other provision, bag and baggage, carried with them, done all by advice of his Excellency Field-marshal Leslie.... Few of this army wanted ane blue ribbon hung about his craig [neck] down under his left arm, whilk they called the Covenanter’s Ribbon.... [Having passed to the Links], muster being made, all men was commanded to go to breakfast, either in the Links or in the town. The general himself, the nobles, captains, commanders, for the most part, and soldiers, sat down, and of their awn provision, upon ane serviet on their knee, took their breakfast.’ Here was a sight for a poor town of Episcopalian prepossessions—eleven thousand men come to convert them to proper views! This was on Saturday: on the Tuesday, all persons of any note, and all persons in any authority in the city, were glad to come before the marching committee and subscribe and swear the Covenant, ‘albeit they had sworn the king’s covenant before.’ A week later, a solemn fast was kept; and after sermon by one of the marching clergy, the Covenant was read out, and he ‘causit the haill town’s people convened, who had not yet subscribed, to stand up before him in the kirk, both men and women, and the men subscribed this Covenant. Thereafter, both men and women was urged to swear by their uplifted hands to God, that they did subscribe and swear this Covenant willingly, freely, and from their hearts, and not from any fear or dread that could happen. Syne the kirk sealed and dissolved. But the Lord knows that thir town’s people were brought under perjury for plain fear, and not from a willing mind, by tyranny and oppression of thir Covenanters, who compelled them to swear and subscribe, suppose they knew it was against their hearts.’—Spal.
As a pleasant finale, to compensate in some degree for the trouble they had given, the citizens were laid under a contribution of ten thousand merks, besides being forced to promise their taking share in all expenses that might thereafter be necessary for promotion of the good cause.
May 25.
Aberdeen had not kept steady in the Covenanting faith—since so solemnly and sincerely signing the bond in April, it had maintained a loyal correspondence with the king. The Covenanters, now on the eve of their expedition to Dunse Law, had to take order with it; and as the movement at such a moment was inconvenient, they were in no good-humour. What happened, as described in the simple notes of the town-clerk Spalding, gives such a picture of civil war as it may be salutary to keep in mind.
‘They were estimate to 4000 men, foot and horse, by [besides] baggage-horse 300, having and carrying their provision, with thirteen field-pieces. They enterit the town at the over Kirkgate in order of battle, with sounding of trumpets, touting of drams, and displayed banners; went down through the Braid-gate, through the Castle-gate, and to the Queen’s Links march they.... Now Aberdeen began to groan and make sore lamentation at the incoming of this huge army, whom they were unable to sustein, or get meat to buy.
1639.
‘Upon the 26th, being Sunday, the Earl of Montrose, with the rest of the nobles, heard devotion; but the renegate soldiers, in time of both preachings, is abusing and plundering New Aberdeen pitifully, without regard to God or man. And in the meantime, garse and corn eaten and destroyed about both Aberdeens, without fear of the maledictions of the poor labourers of the ground.... The bishop’s servants saved his books, and other insight and plenishing, and hid them in neighbours’ houses of the town, from the violence of the soldiers, who brake down and demolishit all they could get within the bishop’s house, without making any great benefit to themselves.... Richt sae, the corns were eaten and destroyed by the horse of this great army, both night and day, during their abode. The salmon-fishers, both of Dee and Don, masterfully oppressed, and their salmon taken from them.... The country round about was pitifully plundered, meal girnels broken up, eaten, and consumed; no fowl, cock or hen, left unkilled. The haill house-dogs, messans, and whelps within Aberdeen, fellit and slain upon the gate, so that neither hound nor messan nor other dog was left that they could see. The reason was, when the first army came here, ilk captain, commander, servant, and soldier had ane blue ribbon about his craig [neck]; in despite and derision whereof, when they removed frae Aberdeen, some women, as was alleged, knit blue ribbons about their messans’ craigs, whereat their soldiers took offence, and killit all the dogs for this cause.
‘They took frae Aberdeen ten thousand merks to save it from plundering, and took twelve pieces of ordnance also from them.... The town, seeing themselves sore oppressed by the feeding and susteining of thir armies without payment, besides other slaveries, began heavily to regret their miseries to the general and rest of the nobles and commanders, saying they had subscribed the Covenant.... There was no compassion had to their complaints.... So the country anti-Covenanters was pitifully plagued and plundered in their victuals, fleshes, fowls, and other commodities, whilk bred great scarcity in this land....’
This was but a beginning of the troubles and damages of Aberdeen from civil war. In the very next month, in consequence of the town being taken possession of by a royalist band under the Earl of Aboyne, a Covenanting army came against it, and forcing its way in, subjected it to further fining and spoiling. Altogether, the Aberdonians considered themselves as having been injured to the extent of £12,000 sterling in the first half of this year, besides thirty-two of the citizens being fined specially in 42,000 merks. It would be tedious to enumerate the losses of the city during the few subsequent years.
May.
1639.
Gordon of Rothiemay notes a quasi prodigy as happening at Dunse Law while the Scottish army lay there. It has a whimsical character, as connecting the Covenanting war with a geological fact. The matter consisted of ‘the falling of a part of a bank upon the steep side of a hill near by to the Scottish camp, which of its own accord had shuffled downward, and by its fall discovered innumerable stones, round, for the most part, in shape, and perfectly spherical, some of them oval-shapen. They were of a dark gray colour, some of them yellowish, and for quantity they looked like ball of all sizes, from a pistol to field-pieces, such as sakers or robenets, or battering-pieces upwards. Smooth they were, and polished without, but lighter than lead by many degrees, so that they were only for show, but not for use. Many of them were carried about in men’s pockets, to be seen for the rarity. Nor wanted there a few who interpreted this stone magazine at Dunse Hill as a miracle, as if God had sent this by ane hid providence for the use of the Covenanters; for at this time all things were interpreted for the advantage of the Covenant. Others looked upon these pebble-stones as prodigious, and the wiser sort took no notice of them at all. I suppose that at this present the quarry is extant, where they are yet to be seen, no more a miracle; but whether the event has determined them to be a prodigy or not, I shall not take it upon me to define pro or con.’
A modern writer may feel little difficulty in defining this magazine of pebbles as merely part of an ancient alluvial terrace, such as are found in most mountain valleys in Scotland, being, in geological theory, the relics of gravel-beds deposited in these situations by the streams, when, from a lower relative position of the land, the sea partially occupied these glens in the form of estuaries. On the banks of the Whitadder, close to Dunse Law, we still see such banks of pebbles, the water-rolled spoils of the Lammermuirs, and chiefly of the transition or Silurian rocks. It gives a lively impression of the excited state of men’s minds in the time and place, to find them accepting, or disposed to accept, so simple a natural phenomenon as something significant of the attention of Providence to the strife which they were unhappily waging.
July.
At this time we hear of some strangers from England and Ireland who had crept in and drawn the people to certain religious practices, accordant with the general strain of the period, but not exactly with the specific regulations prescribed by the Presbyterian Kirk. At their own hands, without the allowance of minister or elders, the people had begun to convene themselves confusedly about bedtime in private houses, where, for the greater part of the night, they would expound Scripture, pray, and sing psalms, besides ‘discussing questions of divinity, whereof some sae curious that they do not understand, and some so ridiculous that they cannot be edified by them.’ The consequence was, that they began to ‘lichtly and set at naught the public worship of God.’ Seeing in this a movement towards Brownism, the kirk-session of Stirling called on the presbytery to take the matter into consideration, and meanwhile discharged the congregation from giving any favour to such practices.[86]
1639. Nov. 1.
Owing to the confusions, the Court of Session did not sit down as usual for the winter session to-day; ‘but was vacant the haill winter session, to the great grief of the true creditor, and the pleasure of the debtor unwilling to pay his debt.’—Spal.
Nov. 2.
A base coin called Turners had been struck by the Earl of Stirling under royal licence, and were to him a source of considerable gain, at the expense of the rest of the community. On the day marginally noted, ‘King Charles’s turners stricken by the Earl of Stirling, was, by proclamation at the Cross of Edinburgh, cryit down frae twa pennies to ane penny; King James’s turners to pass for twa pennies, because they were no less worth; and the caird turners[87] simpliciter discharged as false cunyie. But this proclamation was shortly recalled, because there was no other money passing to make change.’ April 1640.—‘You see before some order taken with the passing of turners, whereof some was appointit to pass for ane penny. Now they would give nothing, penny nor half-penny, for King Charles’s turners; but King James’s turners only should pass. Whereby all change and trade was taken away through want of current money, because thir slight turners was the only money almost passing through all Scotland.’—Spal.
Nov.
John Dhu Ger, the Highland robber, came with twenty-four men to William Stewart’s house on Speyside, set out watches, and took up house there. From this post he sent armed emissaries here and there to raise money by practising on the terrors of the people. The people gave fair words, but privately were active in collecting men for an effectual resistance. ‘And John Dhu Ger, being informed of their gathering by his watches, shortly takes both the ferry-boats, and carries over his men to the Stannars, whilk is in the midst of the water of Spey, and keepit the ferry-boats close beside himself, so that there was no other boat near enough to follow them.’ The country people had then to commence firing at the robbers from the bank, exposing themselves of course to be fired at in return. At length, by a shot from the gun of one Alexander Anderson, John Dhu Ger fell dead, and his followers dispersed.—Spal.
1639.
The Viscountess Melgum, widow of the young nobleman who had been burnt in Frendraught Castle, lived for several years in Aboyne Castle on the Dee, a gentle, charitable, and devout life, being a strict Catholic. A certain Father Blackhall, who was her domestic chaplain or frere from July 1638 till her death in March 1642, has left a copious gossiping narrative of his career as a priest in Scotland, including much that is curious regarding the private life of the lady, as well as the state of the country in that agitated time. He tells us that he had an apartment to himself, where four dishes of meat, as well as wine and ale, were sent to him at every meal, till, remonstrating about the expensiveness of this practice to the lady, he was allowed by her to eat at her own table. It was customary, he says, for a domestic priest in those days to confine himself very much to his chamber; and if he but opened his window, ‘the people would run to get a sight of him as a monstrous thing.’ But he, going freely about, soon ceased to be an object of curiosity.
By permission of his lady—whom, by the by, he always calls by her inferior title of Lady Aboyne—he made professional tours through the country, to confess and communicate the Catholics scattered about, usually staying a night in each house, or convening the poorer sort in a tavern. He does not speak of any dangers or difficulties encountered in performing this duty. He tells us, however, of some considerable troubles he had in defending the widow lady’s castle from the armed bands of Highlanders and others who were continually going about the country in consequence of the Covenanting wars. If he is to be believed, he was as much his lady’s captain as her priest.
1639.
On one occasion, a party of the Clan Cameron, forty or fifty in number, vassals of the Huntly family, came into the court of Aboyne Castle, asking to see my lady, with the hope of obtaining money from her. Blackhall, finding there was no other man in the house besides a porter and himself, amused them with fair speeches till he obtained assistance, and then closing the gates against them, sent them out some food, as all that Lady Aboyne was willing to bestow upon them. They went away grumbling, and presently quartered themselves upon one of her ladyship’s tenants, named Finlay, who kept a tavern, compelling him to kill poultry and mutton for their supper; and next day, they plundered the house, and set out for another, the Mill of Bountie, which they seemed likely to treat in the same way. Blackhall, hearing of their doings, mustered an armed party of sixteen, and set out to surprise the depredators. The dispositions he made shewed a good deal of sagacity, and were attended with the desired effect.
Marching in single file, after the Highland fashion, and in perfect silence, they had got near the house before the Cameron sentinel observed them. ‘Having discovered us, he did run to the house, and we after him, so near that he had not leisure to shut the gate of the court behind him. All the vantage that he had before us was to win the house, and shut that door behind him, which chanced well for both parties; for if we could have entered the house with him, we should have killed every one another, for we were in great fury to be revenged of them, and they could do no less than defend themselves, selling their lives at the dearest rate they could, as men in despair should do. They would have had a great advantage upon us, for they, being in a dark house, would have seen us well, and we, coming in from the snow, would have been blind for some length of time, in the which they might have done us great skaith, before we could have done them any, not seeing them. But God provided better for us.
1639.
‘How soon we were in the court, I said with a loud voice: “Every one to his post;” which was done in the twinkling of an eye. Then I went to the door, thinking to break it up with my foot: but it was a thick double door, and the lock very strong. Whilst I was at the door, one of them did come to bolt it, and I hearing him at it, did shoot a pistolet at him. He said afterwards that the balls did pass through the hair of his head; whether he said true or not, I know not. I did go from the door to the windows, and back again, still encouraging them, and praying them at the windows to hold their eyes still upon our enemies, and to kill such as would lay their hands to a weapon; and to these at the door to have their guns ever ready to discharge at such as would choose to come forth without my leave. And I still threatened to burn the house, and them all into it, if they would not render themselves at my discretion, which they were loath to do, until they saw the light of bits of straw, that I had kindled to throw upon the thatch of the house, although I did not intend to do it, nor burn our friends with our foes. But if Malcolm Dorward, and his wife and servants, and his son George Dorward, and John Cordoner, all whom the Highlanders had lying in bonds by them, had been out, I would have made no scruple to have burned the house and all the Highlanders within it, to give terror to others who would be so brutal as to oppress ladies who never wronged them.
‘They seeing the light of the burning straw coming in at the windows, and the keepers of the windows bidding them render themselves before they be burned, they called for quarters. I told them they should get no other quarters but my discretion, unto which, if they would submit themselves faithfully, they would find the better quarters; if not, be it at their hazard. Thereupon I bid their captain come and speak with me all alone, with his gun under his arm, disbended, and the stock foremost. Then I went to the door and bid the keepers thereof let out one man all alone, with his gun under his arm, and the stock foremost; but if any did press to follow him, that they should kill both him and them who pressed to follow him. He did come out as I ordained, and trembled as the leaf of a tree. I believe he thought we would kill him there. I did take his gun from him, and discharged it, and laid it down upon the earth by the side of the house. Then, after I had threatened him, and reproached their ingratitude, who durst trouble my lady or her tenants, who was and yet is the best friend that their chief, Donald Cameron, hath in all the world. “For,” said I, “he will tell you how I and another man of my lady’s went to him where he was hiding himself, with his cousin, Ewen Cameron, in my lady’s land, and brought them in croup to Aboyne, where they were kept secretly three weeks, until their enemies, the Covenanters, had left off the seeking of them; and you, unthankful beast as you are, have rendered a displeasure to my lady for her goodness toward you.” He pretended ignorance of that courtesy that she had done to his chief.
1639.
‘“Be not afraid, sir,” said I; “you shall find my discretion to you better than any quarters that you could have gotten by capitulation; for I shall impose nothing to you but that which you shall confess to be just.” This encouraged him, for he was exceeding feared. Then I said: “Think you it is not just that you pay this poor man, Alexander Finlay, what you spent in his house, and render what you plundered from him?” He said: “It is very just,” and paid him what he asked; to wit, four crowns in ready money; and promised to restore what other things they had plundered from him as soon as his companions, who had the things, were come out. All which he performed. “Is it not just,” said I, “that you render to Malcolm Dorward, in whose house you are here, and to his son, George Dorward, and to their friend, John Cordoner, all whatsoever you have taken from them?” “It is just,” said he; “and I shall not go out of his court in which I stand, until I have satisfied everybody.” “Is it not just,” said I, “that you promise and swear that you shall go out of the land pertaining to my lady peaceably, untroubling any of her tenants or servants any more; and that you promise and swear never to molest her tenants hereafter?” “It is just,” said he; and did swear to perform all these things. When he had sworn by his part of Heaven to keep these articles, I made him swear by the soul of his father, that neither he, nor none whom he could hinder, should ever thereafter trouble or molest my lady, nor any of her tenants. Then I sent him into his company in the house to see if they would stand to all that he had promised and sworn. He said: “They have all sworn fidelity and obedience to me, and therefore they must stand to whatsoever I promise, and perform it.” “Notwithstanding,” said I, “send me them out as you did come—their guns under their arms, the stocks foremost; and send no more out but one at a time; and let no more out until he who is out return in again; and when you have all come out severally, and made the same oath which you have made, you shall have leave to take up all your guns, but upon your oaths that you shall not charge them again until you be out of the lands pertaining to my lady.”
1639.
“They did all come out severally as I had commanded, and as they did come to me, I discharged their guns to the number of six or eight and forty, which made the tenants convene to us from the parties where the shots were heard; so that, before they had all come out, we were near as many as they, armed with swords, and targes, and guns. When they all had made their oaths to me, I ranked our people like two hedges, five paces distance from one another rank, and but one pace every man from another in that same rank, and turn[ed] the mouths of their guns and their faces one rank to another, so as the Highlanders might pass two and two together betwixt their ranks. They passed so from the door of the hall in which they were, to the place where their guns were lying all empty. They trembled passing, as if they had been in a fever quartan. I asked their captain, when they had taken up their guns, what way they would hold to go out of my lady’s land. He said, they desired to go to Birse. I said we would convoy them to the boat of Birse, a good mile from the place where we were. I did so, because I had promised never to come in my lady’s sight if I did not put them out of her lands; and therefore, to come in her house, I would see them pass over the water of Dye, out of her lands, which went to the water-side, and we stood by the water-side until the boat did take them over in three voyages; and when they were all over the water, we returned home. Alexander Davidson returned from Bountie how soon they began to march away. He told to my lady the event of our siege, who was very joyful that no blood was shed on either side.”
‘Their captain and I going together to the water-side, [he] said to me: “Sir, you have been happy in surprising us, for if our watchman had advertised us before your entry into the court, but only so long as we might have taken our arms in our hands and gone to the court, we could have killed you all before you had come near us, we being covered from you, and you in an open field to us; or if we had but gone the first to the windows, we could have beaten you out of the court, or killed you all in it.” “Good friend,” said I, “you think you had to do with children; but know that I was a soldier before you could wipe your own nose, and could have ranged my men so by the side of the house wherein you was, that you should not have seen them through the windows, and in that posture kept the door so well that none of you should have come out unkilled, and so kept you within until the country had convened against you. I confess, if you had been masters of the court, and we in open fields, you might have done what you say; but we were not such fools as to lay ourselves wide open to you, being covered from us. If any house had been near us, we could have made a sconce of it to cover ourselves; if none were near us, we could retire in order, and you could not pursue us, unlaid yourselves as open to us as we were to you, and there we should have seen who did best.”
1639.
‘In the parish of Birse, these same fellows did call away a prey of cattle, and killed some men who resisted them. Then they went to Craigyvar, and although he was esteemed the most active man in all the name of Forbes, they plundered his tenants, and carried away a prey of cattle, for all that he could do against them. And this I say, to shew that these Highlanders were active and stout fellows, and that, consequently, it was God, and not I with sixteen boys, that did put them out of the lands of that pious and devout lady, whom he did protect, and would not suffer to be oppressed. And to shew that it was he himself, and none other, he made choice of weak and unfit instruments; to wit, a poor priest, who made no profession of arms, unless charity, as at this time, or his own just defence obliged him to it, and sixteen boys, who had never been at such play before, to whom he gave on this occasion both resolution and courage, and to me better conduct than could have proceeded from my simple spirit, without his particular inspiration; to whom I render, as I should, with unfeigned submission, all the glory of that action.’
(Nov.?)
The Marquis of Huntly being at this time resident in the Canongate, two of his daughters were married there ‘with great solemnities’—Lady Anne, who was ‘ane precise puritan,’ to Lord Drummond; and Lady Henrietta, who was a Roman Catholic, to Lord Seton, son of the Earl of Wintoun. The ladies had each 40,000 merks, Scots money, as her fortune, their uncle the Earl of Argyle being cautioner for the payment, ‘for relief whereof he got the wadset of Lochaber and Badenoch.’—Spal. Lady Jean, the third daughter, was married in the ensuing January to the Earl of Haddington, with 30,000 merks as her ‘tocher good.’
1640. Mar.
In Aberdeenshire, there were ‘in this ait-seed time, great frosts and snaw, no ploughs going, and little seed sawing, so vehement was this storm. No peats could be had to burn, for ane lead [horse-burden] would have cost 13s. 4d. [1s. 1-1/3d. sterling], whilk would have been cost [bought] other years for 2s. [2d. sterling]. The brewsters left aff to brew for want of fire. The reason of this scarcity was, because the Covenanters, coming here in March 1639, causit the haill servants, who should have casten the peats for serving of both Aberdeens, flee out of the country for fear; and so not only was our peats dear, but, through the unseasonableness of the spring, the victual also became very dear.’—Spal.
May 8.
1640.
As the young Earl Marischal was returning from Aberdeen to his castle of Dunnottar, a quarrel arose amongst some of the large party of gentlemen convoying him; and in a fight between Forbes, the young Laird of Tolquhon, and Mr George Leslie, the former was wounded in the head. Leslie was returned in shackles to Aberdeen, along with an associate named Fraser, to be punished. At the command of the earl, who acted as general and governor of the district for the Covenanters, a stock or block with an axe beside it was raised at the market-cross, with a scaffold round about, and a fire; these being meant as preparations for cutting off Leslie’s hand. The hangman stood ready to do his office, when the young man was brought out, amidst the pitiful cries of the populace, who deemed the punishment a monstrous cruelty. The arm had been laid down on the block, and the axe was raised for the stroke, when, past the expectation of the beholders, the Master of Forbes suddenly approached and forbade the execution; ‘whereat the people mightily rejoiced.’ The general did this for satisfying of young Tolquhon, but was believed to have from the first designed to grant a pardon.—Spal.
July.
Eight hundred Covenanting troops, under the command of General Munro, marched from Aberdeen, to take rule in the estate of the Marquis of Huntly at Strathbogie, the marquis himself being now with the king in England. They carried six putters, or short pieces of ordnance. On approaching Strathbogie, where there was no resistance, ‘they took horse, nolt, sheep, and kine, drove the bestial before them, slew and did eat at their pleasure. They brak up girnels wherever they came, to furnish themselves bread. Coming after this manner to Strathbogie, the first thing they entered to do was hewing down the pleasant planting about Strathbogie, to be huts for the soldiers to sleep in upon the night.... Then they fell to and meddled with the meal girnels, whereof there was store within that place, took in the office-houses, began shortly to bake and brew, and make ready good cheer; and when they wanted, took in beef, mutton, hen, capon, and such-like, out of Glenfiddich and Auchindown, where the country people had transported their bestial, of purpose out of the way, from the bounds of Strathbogie. Always they wanted not good cheer for a little pains.’
1640.
Seeing the world run in this fashion, John Dhu Ger, the Highland rogue, broke loose also,[88] and fell to plundering throughout the land of Moray. Munro, hearing that he had collected an immense spreath of cattle and sheep at Auchindown, sent Rittmaster Forbes with a small party to rescue the goods out of his hands; but John stood his ground, and defended his prey manfully. The Rittmaster retired with his party, and told Munro in excuse that he did not find it good riding-ground. Afterwards Munro made good his point, and took out of Auchindown John Dhu Ger’s plunder and other bestial, to the amount of ‘2500 head of horse, mares, nolt, and kine, with great number of sheep, and brought them to Strathbogie,’ where, it is said, ‘they were sold by the soldiers to the owners back again, for 13s. 4d. the sheep, and ane dollar the nolt,’ the horse remaining unsold.
The head men of the country, deprived of the presence of their chief, the marquis, were obliged to bow to the rule of General Munro. Some came in, and undertook to join the Covenanting army; others, who did not do so, submitted to large fines. ‘Neither work-horse nor saddle-horse was left about Strathbogie, but either the master was forced to buy his own horses, or let them go for the service of the army;’ all arms being likewise taken from them. ‘Baron, gentleman, herd, and hireman,’ all alike suffered. Amongst other spoil, Munro seized a great quantity of home-made cloth which he found bleaching about the country, hanging it over the lofty walls of Strathbogie Castle to dry—‘pity to behold!’ At length, after oppressing the country for upwards of a month, this Covenanting party ‘flitted their camp,’ previously setting fire to their wooden lodges, and emptying out what was unspent from the girnels. ‘They left that country almost manless, moneyless, horseless, and armless.’—Spal.
Aug. 5.
At the command of a committee of the General Assembly, some memorials of the ancient worship, hitherto surviving in Aberdeen, were removed. In Machar Kirk, they ‘ordained our blessed Lord Jesus Christ his arms to be hewen out of the front of the pulpit, and to take down the portrait of our blessed Virgin Mary, and her dear son baby Jesus in her arms, that had stood since the up-putting thereof, in curious work, under the sill-ring at the west end of the pend whereon the great steeple stands.... Besides, where there was ane crucifix set in glassen windows, this he [the Master of Forbes] caused pull out in honest men’s houses. He caused ane mason strike out Christ’s arms in hewen wark on ilk end of Bishop Gavin Dunbar’s tomb, and siclike chisel out the name of Jesus, drawn cypher-wise IHS, out of the timber wall on the fore-side of Machar aile, anent the consistory door. The crucifix on the Old Town cross dung down; the crucifix on the New Town cross closed up, being loath to break the stone; the crucifix on the west end of St Nicholas’ Kirk in New Aberdeen dung down, whilk was never troubled before.’—Spal.
Aug. 30.
1640.
This day, being Sunday, a dismal accident happened, of some consequence for its bearing on the interests of the Covenant, as it caused the destruction of a considerable number of gentlemen who were preparing to act in that cause. The Earl of Haddington was at this time stationed at Dunglass Castle, in Berwickshire, along with a number of other Covenanting chiefs, and a store of ammunition. On the day noted, the house was blown up by the explosion of the powder, which was placed in a vault underneath. There perished the earl himself, his brother Robert, and a bastard brother; Colonel Alexander Erskine, son of the Earl of Mar; Sir John Hamilton of Redhouse; Sir Gideon Baillie of Lochend; James Inglis of Ingliston; John Coupar of Gogar; Sir Alexander Hamilton of Innerwick; and some others, including about fifty-four servants, men and women; while thirty gentlemen, and others of inferior degree, were sore hurt, but not irrecoverably. It was thought that an English page, named Edward Paris, who was trusted by the earl with the key of the vault, set fire to the powder voluntarily, in consequence of pet; but accident is much more probable. ‘No part of him was ever found but ane arm, holding ane iron spoon in his hand.’
‘One thing wonderful happened, about eight of the clock, on the Thursday at night, before the blowing up of the house of Dunglass. There appeared a very great pillar of fire to arise from the north-east of Dunbar, as appeared to them in Fife who did behold it, and so ascended towards the south, until it approached the vertical point of our hemisphere, yielding light as the moon at her full, and by little evanishing until it became like a parallax, and so quite evanished about eleven of the clock in the night.’—Bal.
The Earl of Haddington, being only the second generation of a family raised by state employment and royal favour to extraordinary wealth, might have been expected to take no part against King Charles. It is stated that when the king heard of the accident, he remarked that ‘albeit Lord Haddington had been very ungrateful to him, yet he was sorry that he had not at his dying some time to repent.’[89]
Amongst the killed was Colonel Alexander Erskine, a younger son of the late Earl of Mar. He was a handsome and gallant soldier, originally in the French service, and is noted as the lover whose faithlessness is bewailed in Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament:
‘I wish I were within the bounds,
Where he lies smothered in his wounds,
Repeating, as he pants for air,
My name whom once he called his fair:
No woman’s yet so fiercely set,
But she’ll forgive, though not forget.’
1640.
The orders for the discipline of the school at the kirk of Dundonald, in Ayrshire, in this year, have been preserved,[90] and exhibit arrangements and rules surprisingly little different from what might now be found in a good Scotch parish school. There were to be prayers morning and evening, and a lesson each day on the Lord’s Prayer, Belief, Commands, Graces, or Catechism. Somewhat unexpectedly, we find it enjoined on the master, that he teach his scholars good manners, ‘how to carry themselves fashionably towards all ... the forms of courtesy to be used towards himself in the schule, their parents at hame, gentlemen, eldermen, and others of honest fashion, abroad.’ One arrangement seems of questionable tendency, and certainly has not taken root amongst us—namely, ‘for the mair perfyte understanding of the children’s behaviour, there shall be a clandestine censor, of whom nane shall know but the master, that he may secretly acquaint the master with all things, and, according to the quality of the faults, the master shall inflict punishment, striking some on the lufe with a birk wand or pair of taws, others on the hips, as their faults deserve, but none at ony time or in ony case on the head or cheeks.’ The conclusion conveys an impression of good sense in the deviser of the rules. ‘Especially is the master to kythe [shew] his prudence in taking up the several inclinations of his scholars, and applying himself thereunto, commendations, allurements, fair words, drawing from vice, and provoking to virtue, such as may be won thereby, and others by moderate severity, if that be fund maist convenient for their stubbornness. And let the wise master rather by a grave and an authoritative countenance repress insolence, and gain every one to his duty, than by strokes, yet not neglecting the rod when it is needful.’
Dec. 28.
1640.
At the command of the minister of the parish, accompanied by several gentlemen of the Covenanting party, the timber-screen of Elgin Cathedral, which had outlived the Reformation, was cast down. ‘On the west side was painted in excellent colours, illuminate with stars of bright gold, the crucifixion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This piece was so excellently done, that the colours and stars never faded nor evanished, but keepit hale and sound, as they were at the beginning, notwithstanding this college or canonry kirk wanted the roof since the Reformation, and no hale window therein to save the same from storm, snow, sleet, nor weet; whilk myself saw.... On the other side of this wall, towards the east, was drawn the Day of Judgment.... It was said, this minister caused bring home to his house the timber thereof, and burn the same for serving his kitchen and other uses; but ilk night the fire went out wherein it was burnt, and could not be holden in to kindle the morning fire, as use is; whereat the servants and others marvelled, and thereupon the minister left off any further to bring in or burn any more of that timber in his house. This was marked and spread through Elgin, and credibly reported to myself.’—Spal.
1641. June.
1641.
The present was a sad time for the professors of the Catholic religion in Scotland. Spalding relates in feeling terms the unavoidable exile of the Dowager-marchioness of Huntly, a lady (daughter of Esme Duke of Lennox) who had been born and educated in France, and could not now, with one foot in the grave, alter her religion, while neither could her high rank and powerful connections avail to obtain for her toleration. ‘Thus, resolutely she settles her estate, rents, and living, and leaves with woe heart her stately building of the Bog, beautified with many yards, parks, and pleasures—closes up the yetts, and takes journey with about sixteen horse; and upon Saturday, the 26th of June, comes to Aberdeen, lodged in Mr Alexander Reid’s house; and upon Monday thereafter, she rides frae Aberdeen towards Edinburgh. A strange thing to see a worthy lady, near seventy years of age, put to such trouble and travail, being a widow, her eldest son the Lord Marquis being out of the kingdom, her bairns and oyes dispersed and spread—and, albeit nobly born, yet left helpless and comfortless, and so put at by the kirk, that she behoved to go or else to bide excommunication, and thereby lose her estate and living, whilk she was loath to do! She left her oye [grandson] Charles, son to the marquis, being but ane bairn, with Robert Gordon, bailie of the Enzie, to be entertained by him, when she came from the Bog; and she also sent another of his bairns, called Lady Mary, to Anna Countess of Perth, her own eldest sister, to remain with her.... She remains [in Edinburgh] till about the end of September, but help or remede, syne rides directly to Berwick, there to abide during her pleasure. It is said she had about 300,000 merks in gold and jewels with her, by and attour the gold and silver plate of both houses of Bog and Strathbogie; which did little good to the distressed estate of that noble house.’—Spal. It is the more remarkable that the marchioness found no remedy in Edinburgh, as King Charles was there during her stay, and he, as her relative, and the friend of her loyal family, must have been disposed to interfere in her behalf, if in his power to do so. The marchioness died in France in the ensuing year.
When the highest rank could not procure the slightest toleration for a professor of the Romish faith, it was not to be expected that Catholics of mean estate should be unmolested. In April 1642, Peter Jop, sailor in Aberdeen, gave in a supplication to the Privy Council, representing his ‘miserable condition upon occasion of the imprisonment of Isobel Robertson, his spouse, ane excommunicat papist.’ The Lords wrote to the magistrates and ministers of Aberdeen, requesting Isobel’s ‘enlargement upon assurance of conformity, or of removal out of the country;’ and accordingly she was allowed till the 15th of October to make up her mind about these alternatives. Now, in the month of July, Peter Jop represents that his wife is in a delicate condition, and will be undergoing confinement of another kind about the time assigned as her longest day. ‘The soonest she can be transported out of the country, if she do not conform, will be about the month of March’—so declares Peter; but he humbly assures the Lords that if they will so far extend the term assigned to her, she will then give obedience without further delay. The Lords were mercifully inclined, and allowed Isobel to remain unmolested till the last day of March.—P. C. R.
Aug.
‘In this month, ane great death, both in burgh and land, of young bairns in the pox; so that nine or ten children would be buried in New Aberdeen in one day, and continued a long time. All for our sins, and yet not taken to heart.’ ‘There was reckoned buried in Aberdeen about twelve score bairns in this disease,’
Spalding, who notes these particulars, remarks that, since the beginning of the troubles, there had been no sea-mews seen in the lochs of New or Old Aberdeen, ‘who before flocked and clecked in so great abundance, that it was pleasure to behold them flying above our heads, yea, and some made use of their eggs and birds. In like manner, few or no corbies seen in either Aberdeens at the water-side of Dee or Don, or shore, where they wont to flock abundantly for salmon gouries.’
1641.
He tells us that the 14th of September was kept as a solemn thanksgiving throughout Scotland, on account of the settlement between the king and Estates. ‘Here it is to be marked, that this day of thanksgiving was strictly kept, the weather being wonderful fair, and the poor country people rather wishing to have been at home winning their corns.... Which is more to be noted, this day of thanksgiving, being ane wonderful fair day, fit for harvest, whereon they are forced to sit idle; thereafter there was nothing but tempestuous rains till the 10th of October, whilk was again ane day of fast; whereby the people’s hearts were casten down, fearing the loss of their harvest through this wicked weather.’
Oct. 28.
At the meeting of the Estates this day, the king communicated intelligence of the outbreak in Ireland, but without as yet being able to state whether it was a small or a great revolt. It was not till Monday, the 1st of November, that he came to the house with the statement that it appeared to be a general rebellion, from which only Dublin was safe.[91] He, on that occasion, urged the Estates to send an armament as soon as possible, to aid in maintaining order in that distracted country.
Mr Tytler of Woodhouselee had learned, through the medium of tradition, that the king was engaged in a match at golf, on Leith Links, when a letter was delivered into his hands, giving him the first intelligence of the Irish rebellion. ‘On reading which,’ adds Mr Tytler, ‘he suddenly called for his coach, and leaning on one of his attendants, and in great agitation, drove to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, from whence next day he set out for London.[92]
This anecdote is certainly wrong in the last particular, as the king did not leave Edinburgh on his return to England till the 18th of November. The remainder of the anecdote may be true. Mr Tytler states that the king was fond of the game of golf. In Wodrow’s Analecta, the story is related with a wholly different cast, from two sources. It is here said that the king had been participant in hatching the Irish rebellion for his own ends, and, when the accounts of the massacre came, ‘he was playing at the gowf in the Links of Leith. When he opened the letters and had looked at them, he seemed not in the least concerned, but ruffled the letter up, and called to his company to play about.’[93]
1641. Dec. 25.
The town-clerk of Aberdeen bewails the suppression of old kindly Christian customs at this time, as gentle Izaak Walton might have done, if it had been vouchsafed to him to exercise his rod upon the Dee. Whereas, in former times, Christmas or Yule-day had been observed with preachings, and praises, and thanksgiving, ‘in remembrance of the birth of our blessed Saviour,’ and friends and neighbours made merry with each other and had good cheer, ‘now this day,’ says Spalding, ‘no such preachings nor such meetings with merriness, walking up and down,’ in Aberdeen, but, on the contrair, it was ‘commanded to be keepit as ane work-day, ilk burgess to keep his booth, ilk craftsman his wark, feasting and idleset forbidden out of pulpits.... The people was otherwise inclined, but durst not disobey; yet little merchandise was sold, and as little work done on this day in either Aberdeens. The colliginers and other scholars keep the school against their wills.’
1642. Feb. 16.
Owing to the sending of forces from Scotland to put down the Irish rebellion, a considerable intercourse had sprung up between the two countries. The Privy Council accordingly found it necessary to establish postages betwixt Port-Patrick and Edinburgh, and betwixt Port-Patrick and Carlisle, for the conveyance of packets of letters. In this movement, England was more concerned than Scotland, and she therefore cordially agreed to bear all the expense that should be required. It is interesting to trace the first steps in a system now so important as the Post-office.
1642.
On a resolution being formed by the parliament of England and the Scottish commissioners, to establish a line of posts between Edinburgh and Port-Patrick, and Port-Patrick and Carlisle, the business of making the arrangements was confided to Robert Glencorse, merchant in Dumfries, under a duty of consulting ‘Mr Burlmakie, master of the letter-office.’ Robert was himself ‘established postmaster betwix Annan and Dumfries, twelve mile; and Mark Loch, betwix Carlisle and Annan, twelve mile; Andrew M‘Min betwix Dumfries and Steps of Orr, twelve mile; Ninian Mure betwix the Steps of Orr and Gatehouse of Fleet, twelve mile; and George Bell from thence to the Pethhouse, eleven mile; and John Baillie from thence to the Kirk of Glenluce, thirteen mile; and John M‘Caig from that to the port, ten mile.’ These persons were considered ‘the only ones fit for that employment, as being innkeepers and of approved honesty in these parts.’ The lords of the Privy Council were (September 27) supplicated to ratify the arrangements, and to ‘allow John M‘Caig, postmaster in Port-Patrick, to have a post bark.’ The supplication was at once complied with.
Apr.
At this time of general strife and trouble, when civil war was beginning to appear inevitable, a monster passed through the country for exhibition to the curious. It was an Italian of about twenty-four years of age, ‘having from his birth, growing from the breast upwards, face to face, as it were ane creature having a head and syde [long] hair, like the colour of the man’s hair; the head still drooping backward and downward. He had eyes, but closed, not opened. He had ears, two arms, two hands, three fingers on ilk hand, ane body, ane leg, ane foot with six taes; the other leg within the flesh, inclining to the left side.... It had a kind of life and feeling, but void of all other senses; fed by the man’s own nourishment.... This great wark of God was admired of by many in Aberdeen and through the country, as he travelled; yet such was the goodness of God, that he would go and walk where he listed, carrying this birth without any pain, yea unespied when his clothes was on. When he came to the town, he had two servants waiting upon him, who with himself were well clad. He had his portraiture with the monster drawn, and hung out at his lodging to the view of the people. The one servant [was] ane trumpeter, who sounded at such time as the people should come to see this monster, who flocked abundantly into his lodging. The other servant received the monies frae ilk person for sight, some more, some less. And after there was so much collected as could be gotten, he, with his servants, shortly left the town and went south again.’—Spal.
It may somewhat stay our smiles at the simplicity of Spalding’s narration, that it was not till the present century that the true theory of such monsters was arrived at—to wit, that they are twin-births, in which, through some simple disturbing cause, development has been arrested or taken a wrong course.
1642.
There is an account of this remarkable person, illustrated by a portrait, in Palfyn’s Traité des Monstres, de leur Causes, de leur Nature, &c. (Leyden, 1708). The author had first seen him at Copenhagen, and afterwards at Bâle, while he was still a young man. He bore the name of Lazare Colloredon Genois, and the attached figure had been baptised separately under the name of Jean Baptiste. Lazare is described as a man of good stature and appearance, and of agreeable manners. He wore a large cloak, to conceal the unsightly brother whom nature had attached to his breast. Usually he shewed a good deal of vivacity, but was now and then depressed in thinking of what should be his fate, if, as was likely, his brother should die before him. Jean Baptiste was a very imperfect being, nourished only by what Lazare ate; his eyes nearly closed, and his respiration scarcely perceptible.
Apr. 10.
As it had been with Christmas, so it now was with Pasch. According to Spalding, ‘no flesh durst be sold in Aberdeen for making good cheer, as wont was to be. So ilk honest man [Episcopalian] did the best he could for himself. A matter never before heard of in this land, that Pasch-day should be included within Lentron time, because it was now holden superstitious; nor nae communion given on Good Friday nor this Pasch-day, as was usit before. Marvellous in Aberdeen to see no market, fowl or flesh, to be sold on Pasch-even.’
June.
Up to this time, from the beginning of the year, there was a scarcity of white fish along the east coast, ‘to the hurt and hunger of the poor ... and beggaring of the fishermen. It was reported that when the fishers had laid their lines and taken fishes abundantly, there came ane beast called the Sea Dog to the lines, and ate and destroyed the haill bodies, and left nothing on the lines but the heads. A judgment surely from God Almighty, for the like scarcity of fishes to continue so long has scarcely been seen here in Scotland; whilk bred great dearth of meal and malt, at aucht, nine, or ten pounds the boll, and all other meats also very dear.’—Spal.
The honest town-clerk of Aberdeen probably by sea-dog means the well-known dog-fish, one of the cartilaginous family, which is a constant enemy of our fisheries at this day.
The same authority informs us that dearth continued throughout the ensuing winter. ‘White meal,’ he says, probably meaning flour, ‘was at eight pounds the boll.’ The people had been accustomed to dear summers—the stock of grain of the preceding year usually getting low at that season—but this was the first dear winter for many years. ‘There was also great rains, whereby none was able to travel; great storms in the sea, and few fish gotten, to the great grief of the people.’
1642.
In November, when the recent commencement of hostilities between the king and the English parliament must have been thrilling men’s minds in Scotland, Spalding notes, that ‘in ane seaman’s house in Peterhead, there was heard, upon the night, beating of drums, other times sounding of trumpets, playing on piffers, and ringing of bells, to the astonishment of the hearers. Troubles followit.’
Oct. 18.
The preservation of the strict rule of the church was at this time sought in the most earnest manner, no one dreaming of any such thing on the other side as the rights of conscience, or the danger of creating a reaction to contrary purposes. At a provincial assembly held in Aberdeen, there was much business regarding the few symptoms of Brownism or independency lately presented throughout the country. Gilbert Garden, younger of Tillifroskie, in the parish of Birse, was denounced by his parish minister for forsaking the kirk, and affecting to regard his private family devotions as sufficient. Being brought before the court, he confessed that such was his case, but defended himself; whereupon the minister was enjoined to excommunicate him if he proved obdurate. (About a twelvemonth after, young Tillifroskie was seized ‘upon the causey of Edinburgh,’ and put in the Tolbooth there, on account of his Brownism.) One Ferendale was afterwards proceeded with in the same sharp way, but was induced to deny the Brownist tenets in time to save himself. Another man, named Maxwell, ‘a silly wheel-wright of his calling,’ who had also been summoned for Brownism, deemed it most prudent to vanish from the town. After an ineffectual search for this important recusant, the ministers out of their pulpits forbade all men to ‘reset’ him.—Spal.
1642.
One of the means of keeping up the excitement necessary for sustaining the war against the king was to thunder constantly in the pulpits about the papists. The difficulty seems to have been to find a real live papist, to give some sort of countenance to these fulminations, for at this time, in the simple but expressive words of Spalding, ‘none durst be seen.’ Now and then, a smart razzia brought out one or two cowed professors of the abhorred faith. A small clerical party, supported by a couple of bailies, went out of Aberdeen on the evening of Sunday the 16th of April (1643), ‘with caption to tak Alexander Hervie in Grandhame for popery, who was lying bedfast in the gut [gout], to have taken him as ane excommunicat papist; but they could not find him. His son they saw upon horseback, excommunicat likewise; but they had no commission against him.’ Two days later, the young Laird of Birkenbog seized a priest named Robertson in the house of Forbes of Blackton, and brought him to Aberdeen. Being soon after transported to Edinburgh, this priest was sent to West Flanders, with a hint that, if he reappeared in Scotland, he should be hanged.
On the 8th of October 1643, Thomas Blackhall and his wife, and the wife of one Collieson, were excommunicated as papists by Andrew Cant, minister of Aberdeen. ‘Strange to see,’ says Spalding, ‘the wife to be excommunicat, and the husband not to keep company with her!’
One of the saddest acts of discipline that proceeded from the dominant party at this time, was the banishment of Dr Forbes of Corse, who had been professor of divinity in Aberdeen under the Episcopal Church. Learned above his fellows, modest and peaceable even in his opposition, and protesting that he was sound in the controversies against papists, Socinians, and Arminians, he was, nevertheless, compelled to leave his country, April 1644, because he could not be induced to sign the Covenant. He had purchased a house for the professors of divinity, but neglected to reserve his own liferent; so he was obliged to leave it to his Covenanting successor, at the same time breaking up his library and selling a part of his books. ‘Surely,’ says Spalding, ‘this was ane excellent religious man, who feirit God, charitable to the poor, and ane singular scholar; yet he was put fra his calling, his country, his friends, and all, for not subscryving our Covenant, to the grudge and grief of the best.’
1643. Feb. 1.
The Aberdeen annalist tells a wild story of a complex murder which befell to-day. The young Laird of Calder was married to a daughter of the Laird of Cromarty, who, having no pleasure in him, prepared a potion for his destruction. Hutcheon Ross of Auchincloch and two other gentlemen, visiting the house this evening, ‘were made welcome, supped merrily, and were all three found dead in their beds on the morn,’ having through some mistake received the poison meant for young Calder, ‘who by his friends was hastily removed out of that place, and never more tried.’
Feb.
1643.
Whilst the first battles of the Civil War were causing universal excitement, some further rumours of prodigies were circulated in the country. It was stated that a battle was seen at the hill of Manderlee, four miles from Banff; and so strongly did the vision impress itself on the beholders, that many ran to bury their valuables in the earth. At Bankafair and Drum, touking of drums was heard. Mr Andrew Leitch, minister of Ellon in Aberdeenshire, sitting at supper one night, ‘heard touking of drums vively, sometimes appearing near at hand, and sometimes far off. On the 7th of February, it was written here to Aberdeen, that Kentoun battle at Banbury,[94] wherein his majesty was victorious, has in vision been seen seven sundry times sin-syne.’—Spal. On the 12th, about eight in the morning, being a misty day, ‘visions seen at the hill of Brimman, within four miles of Aberdeen. William Anderson, tenant in Crabstone, told me he saw ane great army as appeared to him, both of horse and foot, about eight hours in the morning, being misty, and visibly continued till sunrising; syne vanished away in his sight with noise, into ane moss hard beside. Likewise in the muir of Forfar, armies of men seen in the air. Whilk visions the people thought to be prodigious tokens, as it fell out over true.’—Spal.
The same minister of Ellon, happening to step out of his manse one night between twelve and one o’clock, ‘did see the sun to shine, as if it had been mid-day, and, much astonished at so fearful a prodigy, he called up his bedral to see it also; and, lest the truth hereof should not win belief, he caused the bedral to raise a number of the neighbours from their beds, all which did testify the same, when the preacher was questioned about it by the committee sitting at Aberdeen.’—Pa. Gordon. To make up for this unusual solar demonstration, the sun by day ‘was seen in divers parts to shine with a faint beam, yielding a dim and shadowy light even in a clear heaven, and sometime did shew like a deep and large pond or lake of blood.’
1643.
We learn from the same authority, that ‘at Rethine, in Buchan, there was about the time of morning-prayer, for divers days together heard in a church a choir of music, both of voices, organs, and other instruments, and with such a ravishing sweetness, that they were transported, which in numbers resorted to hear it.... The preacher one day being much taken with the harmony, went, with divers of his parishioners into the church, to try if their eyes could bear witness to what their ears had heard; but they were no sooner entered when, lo! the music ceased with a long note or stroke of the viol di gambo; and the sound came from ane upper loft, where the people used to hear service, but they could see nothing.’
Gordon adds an account of a prodigious noise which was heard all over the kingdom at the moment when Alaster Macdonald landed with his Irish in the west of Scotland, to join Montrose in behalf of the king—that ‘warning piece shot from heaven as the last signal that should be given us of our near approaching punishment; this I am sure the whole kingdom can testify, since the report did ring in the ears of every man, woman, and child throughout the kingdom, as if it had been levelled at themselves, as well in the houses as the fields, not only in one day and one hour, but at one moment of time.’
When we read the history of two centuries ago, we little reflect on the mental condition and furniture of the principal actors, or the manner in which the public at large was prepared to receive and treat events. Yet it cannot be doubted that history must have in a great measure taken its bent and character from these circumstances. In reviewing the events of the Civil War, it is most essential to keep in view the style of religious convictions under which men acted, and even their superstitions.
1643.
The Diary of Sir Thomas Hope, the king’s advocate under Charles I., and a leader in all the proceedings of the Covenanters, shews us that Sir Thomas, in most affairs of difficulty, accepted the thoughts which occurred to his mind after prayer as a divine impulse to the right course of action.[95] It reveals not merely the generally devout life of the man, his frequent prayers and communions, and his entire resignation to the divine will, but his being subject to superstitions at which a child would now smile. He has frequently such entries as the following: ‘June 24, 1643.—This night I thought that a tooth (whilk was loose) fell out of my gums, and that I took it up in my hands and kep it; and it seemed so real that while [till] I awakit, I thought it really true, and could scarcely believe it otherwise when I had awakit. Thir repeated dreams portends some calamity to me or mine; but I have resolved to submit myself to my good Lord, and to adore his providence; and the Lord give me grace to bear it patiently.’ ‘June 25.—At night I dreamed that while I was pulling on my left buit, both the tongues of it brake. This fell out really on the 26 September thereafter.... God prepare me. The Lord prepare me, for I look certainly to suffering in such way as my Lord pleases.’ ‘April 8, 1644.—This night a dream occurrit, whilk carries some fear with it; but I wait on the Lord. It was, that the rod wherewith I walk was broken in pieces, and nothing left of it but the silver head.’
Apr.
‘Horribly uncouth and unkindly weather at this time ... marvellous to see in April! Fishes, fowls, and all other commodities scarce gettable in Aberdeen. White meal at nine pound ... the boll.’ Merchants, expecting still greater prices elsewhere, bought up and exported all the grain they could collect, ‘to the wreck of our country,’ and not without ‘the country people’s malison.’ Spalding, who relates these circumstances, tells us that this malison was ‘heard;’ for on the 29th of May, a ship loading with meal in the Ythan river in Aberdeenshire, slipped a plank, so as to let in the salt water and destroy the cargo.
Nov.
‘There came to Aberdeen ane Doctor Pont[hus], who had some stage plays, whilk drew the people to behold the sport; syne, upon the stage sold certain balms, oils, and other physical ointments, whereof he made great gain. Thereafter he went north to other burghs, and did the like.’—Spal.
1643.
If it were allowable to use the language of the day, we might say that the devil had at this time broken out in unusual activity. Accordingly, the public authorities had not only to prepare an army for the aid of the parliament against the king in England, and make vigorous crusades in Strathbogie and other over-loyal districts, but to meet the powers of darkness with all the terrors of the criminal law. The number of old women who suffered for offending at once against the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy and the 73d act of the ninth parliament of Queen Mary,[96] in Fife alone, was thirty.[97] One noted case was that of Agnes Finnie, a poor woman dealing in small articles at the Potterrow Port in Edinburgh, who was convicted and burned in 1644. Mr Charles K. Sharpe has presented us with the articles of her dittay, and as they afford a highly characteristic picture of the acts then attributed to a witch, and give some curious glimpses of the private life of the period, I make no apology for transferring them to these pages.
‘Having threatened Mr William Fairlie’s son to send him halting hame, because, going by her door, he, in a nickname, called her Annie Winnie, he within twenty-four hours after, lost the power of his left side by her witchcraft, and languished in so incurable a disease, that the whole physicians called it supernatural, and the haill substance of his body ran out at his cute [ankle]; and the boy laid the whole wyte [blame] of his death constantly upon the panel.
‘She laid upon Beatrix Nisbet a fearful disease, so that she lost the power of her tongue! because she paying the said Agnes two dollars owing her by her father, would not give her annual rent [interest] therefor. She laid a grievous sickness upon Jonet Grinton, whom ye threatened that she should never eat more in this world, because she had brought again two herring she had bought from you, they not being caller [fresh], and sought back her eight pennies [two-thirds of a penny sterling], and of which she died, without eating or drinking conform to your threatening.
‘Ye came in to visit John Buchanan’s bairn, being sick of a palsy, and bade the father and mother go ben the house [remove to the inner apartment] a while and pray to God for him; and in the meanwhile ye stayed with him, and when they returned, they fand him violently sick that he could neither stir hand nor foot, and that by your devilry; and fand on his right buttock about the breadth of one’s loof, the same so sore as if a collop had been ta’en out of it; and he died in eight days in great dolour.
1643.
‘Falling a scolding with Betty Currie, the said bairn’s mother, about the changing of a sixpence which ye alleged to be ill, ye, in great rage, threatened that ye should gar [cause] the devil tak a bite of her. Ye laid a grievous sickness on her husband, John Buchanan, that he burned a whole night as if he had been in a fire, for taking his wife Betty Currie’s part against you, and boasting [threatening] to cast you over the stair, and calling you a witch; whereon ye threatened to make him repent his speeches; and for taking the same off him, he coming the next day and drinking a pint of ale with you, and telling you that if you tormented him so another night, he should make all the town hear tell of it; whereon he was weel. The said John being offended at you because ye would not trust his wife a twelvepenny cake [penny roll], ye bade him go his way, and as he had begun with witches, so he should end; after which threatening, he straight contracted a long and grievous sickness, whereof he was like to melt away in sweating.
‘In your scolding with Euphame Kincaid, ye calling her a drunkard, and she calling you a witch, ye replied: “That if ye was a witch, she and hers should have better cause to call ye so;” accordingly, a great joist fell on the said Euphame’s daughter’s leg, being playing near your house, and crushed the same, and that by your sorcery.
‘Ye, ending an account with Isobel Acheson, and because ye could not get all your unreasonable demands, bade the devil ride about the town with her and hers; whereupon, the next day, she brake her leg by a fall from a horse, and ye came and saw her, and said: “See that ye say not that I have bewitched you, as other neighbours say.”
‘Robert Watt, deacon of the cordwainers, having fined Robert Pursell, your son-in-law, for a riot, ye came where he and the rest of the craft were convened, and cursed them most outrageously, whereon Robert Watt broke the cap upon your head; since which time he fell away in his worldly means, till long after, he being in your good-son’s house, where ye likewise was, ye asked “if he remembered since he broke the cap on your head? and that he had never thriven since, nor should, till you had amends of him;” whereon, he being reconciled with you, he prospered in his worldly state as before.
‘The laying on of a grievous sickness on Christian Harlaw, for sending back a plack’s worth of salt which ye had sent her, it being too little; ye having threatened her that it should be the dearest salt that ever she saw with her eyes, and then, at her entreaty, ye came to her house, and she became presently weel; whereon Christian said, that “if ought ailed her thereafter, she should wyte [blame] you.” Christian Simpson being owing you some money, and because she craved only eight days’ delay to pay it, ye threatened in great rage, that “she should have a sore heart ere that day eight days;” according whereto, the said Christian’s husband broke his leg within the said eight days.
1643.
‘John Robison, having called you a witch, you, in malice, laid a flux on him by your sorcery. Appearing to John Cockburn in the night, when both doors and windows were fast closed, and terrifying him in his sleep, because he had discorded with your daughter the day before. Causing all William Smith’s means to evanish, to the intent he might never be able to relieve some clothes he had pawned beside you, worth an 100 lb., for 14 merks Scots only. Onlaying a grievous sickness on Janet Walker lying in childbed; and then ye being sent for, and the said Janet’s sister begging her health at you for God’s sake, ye assented, and she recovered of her sickness presently by your sorcery.
‘Being disappointed of having Alexander Johnston’s bairn’s name, ye, in a great rage and anger, told him, that “it should be telling him 40 lb. betwixt and that time twelvemonth, that he had given you his bairn’s name;” whereon he took a strange sickness, and languished long; and at length, by persuasive of neighbours, he came to your house, and after he had eaten and drunken with you, ye with your sorcery made him whole. Item, the child whose name ye got not was past eleven years ere he could go.
‘Having fallen in a controversy with Margaret Williamson, ye most outrageously wished the devil to blow her blind; after which she by your sorcery took a grievous sickness, whereof she went blind. Laying a madness on Andrew Wilson, conform to your threatening, wishing the devil to rive the soul out of him (which words, the time of his frenzy, were never out of his mouth), and that because he had fallen in a brawling with your daughter. Item, for taking off it.
‘Bearing company with the devil these twenty-eight years by-past; for consulting with him for laying on and taking off diseases, as weel on men as women and bestial; which is notourly known.’
1643.
It clearly appears that this woman had, at the utmost, been guilty of bad wishes towards her neighbours, and that if these had any effect, it was only through their superstitious apprehensions. We may suppose such to be the type of a class of cases—the simply maledictory. It is fairly presumable, however, that, while the community was so ignorant as to believe that malediction could have positively injurious effects, it would occasionally have these effects by its influence on the imagination, and consequently become an active evil. In this we can see a possible cause of the long persistence of the belief in witches. The ignorant, seeing an effect, and not observing the influence of the imagination in the case, would of course find no objection to laying it all to the account of witchcraft. The enlightened, again, disbelieving witchcraft, but at the same time ignorant of the influence of imagination, would have no alternative but to deny the facts; and this unreasoning and unsound scepticism, being contrary to the experience of the ignorant, would fail to disabuse them of their superstitions.
In this year (December 31, 1643) is an entry in the parish register of Markinch, Fifeshire—‘Compeared Janet Brown, and being posed if she used charms, she confessed that she did charm two several persons—viz., James Hullock and Janet Scott, but no moe. The words of the charm are these:
“Our Lord forth raide,
His foal’s foot slade:
Our Lord down lighted,
His foal’s foot righted;
Saying: Flesh to flesh, blood to blood, and bane to bane,
In our Lord his name.”
Being posed who learned her the foresaid charm, answered, ane man in the parish of Strathmiglo.’[98]
There is reason to believe that this is a charm of great antiquity for the healing of bruises and sprains.[99]
1643.
The faith in necromantic power being wholly a part of the religious earnestness of the time, it is only to be expected that the clergy should appear deeply interested in prosecutions of this class, and sedulous that suspected persons should be duly tried and the guilty brought to punishment. In October 1644, Margaret Young, spouse of William Morison, merchant in Dysart, described herself, in a petition to the Privy Council, as having lain miserably in prison for ten weeks, in consequence of a false accusation got up against her as ‘a consulter of spirits,’ by a few neighbours acting under a feeling of ‘spleen and envy,’ ‘albeit she is ane honest young woman, of good reputation, without any scandal or blot, and never knew nothing of that is put to her charge.’ She had petitioned the Privy Council to have the bailies and ministers of Dysart summoned before them, and ordained to set her at liberty; and on an appointed day, one of the ministers came forward, and craved to have a longer time ‘to see if any dittay sould be given in against her.’ Even that time was now expired, and yet, with no charge against her, she continued to languish in her wretched imprisonment. The lords agreed to liberate Margaret, on her husband giving security to the extent of five hundred merks, that she would compear if afterwards called upon.—P. C. R.
In the ensuing month—so frequent were accusations of witchcraft at this time—one Margaret Thomson, wife of Alexander Gray in Calder, complained before the same tribunal, against the Tutor of Calder and the minister of that parish, for ‘waking her the space of twenty days naked, and having nothing on her but a sackcloth,’ under a charge of witchcraft. She had been ‘laid in the stocks, and kept separate from all company and worldly comfort;’ nor could she ‘see any end of her misery by lawful trial.’ The lords, having the woman’s husband before them, and also the tutor and minister, and no regular charge being forthcoming, ordained her to be liberated upon security.
1644. July 7.
(Sunday) A solemn fast and humiliation was kept throughout Scotland, on account of backsliding from the Covenant, and the prevalence of vice and godlessness; as also to entreat the favour of Heaven for the parliamentary arms, and to pray for the filling of the king’s heart with the love of reformation. A fast in those days was a reality. In Old Aberdeen, the people entered the church at nine o’clock, and continued hearing prayers and sermons till two. They might have then dismissed for a space, but they sat still hearing ‘reading’ till the commencement of afternoon service, which ended at six. Then the bell rang for evening-prayers, which continued till seven. ‘Thus was the people wearied with fasting and praying, under colour of zeal, whilk rather appeared a plain mockery of God.’ On the ensuing Thursday, a similar fast was kept, when the king and queen were prayed for, in a manner, it may be suspected, for which their majesties would not be duly thankful. ‘No prayer to confound the armies raised against him, but rather prayer for their good success.’—Spal.
Sep.
1644.
Immediately after Montrose had gained his first victory at Tippermuir, and while his army lay at Collace, in Perthshire, his adherent, Lord Kilpont, eldest son of the Earl of Airth, lost his life in a lamentable manner. His friend and associate in arms, James Stewart of Ardvoirlich, had been incensed at some outrages committed on his lands by the Irish auxiliaries under Alaster Macdonald or MacCol-keitoch, while they were advancing to join Montrose. He had complained to Montrose, had had a violent altercation with Alaster MacCol, and it had been found necessary to place both him and MacCol under arrest. This step was taken at the recommendation of Lord Kilpont. To pursue the narrative of a descendant of Stewart: ‘Montrose, seeing the evil of such a feud at such a critical time, effected a sort of reconciliation between them, and forced them to shake hands in his presence; when it was said that Ardvoirlich, who was a very powerful man, took such a hold of Macdonald’s hand as to make the blood start from his fingers. Still, it would appear, Ardvoirlich was by no means reconciled.
‘A few days after the battle of Tippermuir, when Montrose with his army encamped at Collace, an entertainment was given by him to his officers, in honour of the victory he had obtained, and Kilpont and his comrade Ardvoirlich were of the party. After returning to their quarters, Ardvoirlich, who seemed still to brood over his quarrel with Macdonald, and being heated with drink, began to blame Lord Kilpont for the part he had taken in preventing his obtaining redress, and reflecting against Montrose for not allowing him what he considered proper reparation. Kilpont of course defended the conduct of himself and his relative Montrose, till their arguments came to high words; and, finally, from the state they were both in, by an easy transition to blows, when Ardvoirlich with his dirk struck Kilpont dead on the spot. He immediately fled, and under cover of a thick mist escaped pursuit, leaving his eldest son, Henry, who had been mortally wounded at Tippermuir, on his death-bed.’[100]
1644.
This story will be generally recognised as one which has supplied some leading incidents in the Legend of Montrose. The present version of it, more favourable in some features to Ardvoirlich than that which occurs in Wishart’s Life of Montrose, was communicated to Sir Walter Scott in 1830 by Robert Stewart of Ardvoirlich, who stated that it had come to his father from a man who lived to a hundred years of age, the great-grandson of the homicide laird by a natural son, who was present with him at the time of the deplorable incident.[101]
Oct.
After the taking of Newcastle in this month by the Scottish Covenanting army, ‘the pest’ came from that place[102] into Scotland, where it met a field highly calculated for its diffusion. There had been dearth the preceding year from deficient harvest, and since then, what with the drawing away of men for the army, the grievance of a heavy excise to support it, the incessant harassment of many districts by hostile and plundering armies, and the extreme anxiety and distress of mind occasioned by the civil war, assisted, doubtless, by the generally depressing effect of incessant preachings, prayings, fastings, and thanksgivings, by which the whole sunshine of life was, as it were, squeezed out of the community—those vital powers which resist and beat off disease must have been reduced to a point much below average. It is not surprising, therefore, that the plague took deadly hold of the country, and rapidly spread from Edinburgh to Borrowstounness, Kelso, Perth, and other towns, all of which were grievously afflicted by it during the next year.
1645.
1645.
Of the ecclesiastical discipline of this period, and its bearing upon the habits of the people, we get a good idea from the Presbytery Record of Strathbogie, which has been published by the Spalding Club. The whole moral energy of the country appears as concentrated in an effort to fix a certain code of theological views, including a rigid observance of the Sabbath, the suppression of witchcraft, the maintenance of a serious style of manners, and the extirpation of popery.
A committee of the presbytery made periodical visits to the several parishes, called the minister and chief parishioners before them, and examined the parties separately as to each other’s spiritual condition and religious practice. For example, at Rhynie, the minister, Henry Ross, being removed, the elders were sworn and interrogated as to his efficiency. They ‘all in ane voice deponed that concerning his literature he was very weak, and gave them little or no comfort in his ministry; but, as concerning his life, he was mended, and was blameless now in his conversation.’ The elders being in their turn removed, the minister was called in and examined regarding them. He ‘regretted that the parishioners frequented not the church, nor assisted him in his discipline, but despised him.’
To be absent any considerable number of times from church was punishable; and if the parishioner proved contumacious, he was liable to be excommunicated—a doom inferring a loss of all civil rights, and a complete separation from human converse.[103] To refuse to take the Covenant, or to have any dealings with the loyalist Huntly, brought men into similar troubles. Old women using charms for healing, persons ‘kindling needfire’ for the cure of cattle,[104] or reserving a field for the devil (the Guidman’s Croft), and females pilgrimising to holy wells, according to old custom, were all vigorously proceeded against, in obedience to repeated acts of the General Assembly for uprooting of all superstition. Irregularities between the sexes, and even quarrelling and scolding, had to be expiated in sackcloth before the congregation. Drunkenness and swearing were also censured. In dealing with these offences, an unsparing inquisition into domestic and family matters was used, and no rank, age, or sex seems to have afforded the subject any protection.
1645.
As specimens of religious offences—a gentleman was prosecuted for bringing home a millstone on a Sunday; another, for gathering gooseberries in time of sermon. It was found regarding Patrick Wilson, that he had sat up with a company drinking till after cockcrow, consuming in all eleven pints—that is, about two dozen quart bottles—of ale; he had struck a man, and railed in his drink at several gentlemen of the parish. ‘The brethren ordained Patrick to stand in sackcloth two Sabbaths, and pay four merks penalty.’
The Lady Frendraught,[105] who now lived at Kinnairdie, in the parish of Aberchirder, is a conspicuous subject of the discipline of the Strathbogie presbytery, on account of her being a papist. To leave this inoffensive lady in the quiet exercise of her own religious forms was not within the capabilities of the Christian charity of that day. It is no over-statement of the case that this ecclesiastical body set themselves to simply harass her out of her peculiar convictions—or rather professions; for they seem to have been content when they could effect an external conformity, and the horrible guilt of forcing a fellow-creature into a mere hypocrisy, seems never to have been present to their minds.
1645.
So early as 1636, the synod had sent one of their number to deal with her, and induce her to go to church; for a time she conformed. Two years after, a similar visitation of the lady had become necessary; so she and her daughter Elizabeth were summoned for ‘not hearing of the word, and not communicating.’ What came of this does not appear; but in 1643, a deputation of ministers was sent to deal with her according to the ordinance of the General Assembly, and to report her answer. It was soon after reported that ‘she promised to hear the word, and desired a time for further resolution.’ It was then agreed to give her some short space to decide on becoming ‘a daily hearer,’ but ‘if she refused, the process to go on against her.’ The poor lady once more promised ‘to hear the word, as she had done before,’ and it was resolved to ask the advice of the General Assembly on the point. Years passed on, without bringing her further than to agree to go to the church which her husband frequented—which was out of the bounds of this presbytery. What immediately happened after this does not appear; but, on the presbytery resolving (January 1647) again to proceed against her ladyship, it was reported that she was out of the country. A few months later, the commissioners of the General Assembly ‘granted her liberty to be ane ordinar hearer of the word at Forgue for a time.’ This, however, did not stop the process. The lady was hunted into another presbytery, where she seems to have kept them at bay for a little while. In June 1648, Mr John Reidford reported that he had spoken her, but ‘found no effect of his travels;’ he required further time. Soon after, the same minister reported that on a second interview, she expressed herself as ‘willing to hear the word in any kirk save Aberchirder and such as are within the presbytery of Strathbogie.’ This was not to be endured. She was immediately summoned as a contumacious person. On the day of call, she ‘compeared not;’ and Mr John Reidford, her parish minister, proceeded to give from his pulpit, on successive Sundays, a series of three admonitions addressed to her; then, in like manner, a series of three prayers. As her ladyship continued to disregard all proceedings in her case, the presbytery prepared itself to pass the awful doom of excommunication, when, behold! another act of concession on her part stays all: she agrees to be present at family worship in her own house—her husband was all this time a leading Covenanter—and promised also to hear sermon; whereupon the sentence was suspended for a time. In August 1649, the minister Reidford reported that she had ‘keepit sermon at Innerkeithing the last Lord’s day, and daily keepit family worship.’ This was not enough. They instruct Reidford ‘to shew her that, if she did not conform in all points, the sentence of excommunication would be pronounced before the next assembly.’ Reidford soon after pleaded for her, that she had heard three sermons; but the brethren ‘thought not that kind of hearing satisfactory.’ They ordained him to put her to a decided test at once, by offering her the Covenant: failing her subscribing that, Reidford was to pronounce sentence.
1645.
The lady, with the ingenuity of her sex, contrived once more to put them off—she told Reidford she would take a thought about it. Meanwhile, she amused them with hopes by continuing to attend church; telling them ‘she was not fully satisfied for subscribing the Covenant.’ But even female wit could not hold out for ever against such a siege. In June 1650, after an incessant harassment of fourteen years, she gave them ‘satisfaction’ by subscribing the Covenant, and thus abjuring in words the faith she still held in her heart. Little more than two years had elapsed, when the presbytery learned that she had ‘relapsed to popery,’ and appointed commissioners to confer with her on the subject. It was found she was now obstinate in her original belief, ‘professing, moreover, that she repented of her former repentance more than of any sin that ever she committed, and thought that she had reason to repent all her lifetime for subscribing the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant.’ Then took place a renewal of the same tedious dealings with the lady, ending at last in 1654, in a peremptory order for her excommunication. By that time, however, excommunication had lost much of its terrors, as Cromwell, then master of Scotland, would not allow the sentence to have any consequences in respect of civil rights.
Many traits of barbarous manners occur in the record, shewing that the clergy had somewhat rough materials to deal with, in their efforts to build up a perfect system. Many offences of a violent, and even sanguinary character, are noticed. There were also several persons so far left to a wicked nature as to hold the dicta of the reverend presbytery itself in contempt. For instance, John Tulloch, on being summoned regarding an irregularity with Elspeth Gordon, answered, ‘the devil a care cared he for their excommunication; excommunicate him the morn [to-morrow] if they pleased.’ Three witnesses attested regarding James Middleton, that, on his being rebuked by the minister, they heard him say that ‘he cared not for him, nor any minister in Scotland;’ and when the minister threatened to put him in the jougs, they heard him say that ‘neither he nor the best minister within seven miles durst do so much.’ One William Gordon, in Dumbennan parish, declined (June 1652) the authority of the presbytery, in consideration of the many sad experiences he had had of the usurpation of civil power by the Presbyterian government, and its ‘tyrannous persecuting of men’s consciences who, out of tender scruples, did differ from their opinions in matters indifferent and circumstantial; as also, finding that the greatest part of their prayer and preaching doth more tender the advancement of their private interest and faction than the propagation of the gospel; and seeing their frequent railing against the authority and civil power which God hath set over us, whereby the people’s minds are kept unsettled and averse from the cordial union of both nations, which, by God’s great mercy, we are now like to enjoy.’ He declared himself separate from them, and that he would ‘no more esteem of their excommunication than they did formerly of the pope.’ On sentence of excommunication being passed on this recusant, ‘he lookit very frowardly, and uttered himself most proudly and maliciously.’
1645.
The opinion of the royalist party regarding the general condition of the nation at the time when the Covenanting spirit was at its height is sketched by one of their number. ‘Seven years,’ says he, ‘had this terrible distemper of the unparalleled Covenant ruled, or rather overruled this kingdom.... It was now grown to ane height, and had cast this nation in a new mould, for the laws were rolled up in oblivion, the College of Justice was discharged from sitting, and over all the land the ordinary seats of justice were no more frequented, only the private committees in every shire and county ordained what they list, and must not be controlled, under pain of a fearful plunder. Nor was it right or wrong that must be decided by these committees, but grievous exactions and heavy subsidies, with new stents, almost every quarter, of horse and foot levies.... The poor was not pitied nor the rich respected; the good man was not remembered nor the virtuous man rewarded: only the soldier was in esteem and enriched, who could murder, kill, and oppress.’—Pa. Gordon.
At the same time, the general expressions of the church of the day involve heavy charges against the clergy themselves, partly founded perhaps on actual offences in their case, and partly the result merely of the disposition to think every grace of poor human nature insufficient, in comparison with the ideal religious standard set up. Thus we find the Commissioners of the General Assembly denouncing ‘the enormities and corruptions observed to be in the ministry,’ and making out a list which is difficult to reconcile with our ideas of the boasted golden age of the Scottish Presbyterian polity. There is ‘much fruitless conversing in company,’ ‘great worldliness,’ ‘slighting of God’s worship in families,’ ‘want of gravity in carriage and apparel,’ ‘tippling and bearing company in untimeous drinking in taverns,’ ‘discountenancing of the godly,’ even a want of decent observance of the Sabbath. ‘There are also to be found amongst us [some] who use small and minced oathes.’[106]
Feb. 13.
Notwithstanding the high pressure exercised by the kirk at this time in matters of discipline, we have ample evidence that there were many sad and pestilent escapes of human nature, occasioning infinite distress to sessions, presbyteries, and assemblies. There was one old popular institution, called the Penny Bridal, which has been under notice before, as producing a suspicious amount of happiness among the commonalty. The General Assembly now saw proper to launch a solemn act against these merry assemblies, ordaining the presbyteries to put them under the severest restrictions.[107]
1645.
Two years after, February 7, 1647, the presbyteries of Haddington and Dunbar are found taking measures for putting this act in force; and from their proceedings, we incidentally learn how far the late religious fervours were from decidedly reforming or purifying manners. Multitudes exceeding twenty assembled on these occasions. The paying of extravagant sums—sums exceeding 12s. for a man and 8s. for a woman (that is, one shilling and eightpence respectively)—caused great immoralities—‘piping and dancing before and after dinner or supper,’ drinking after dinner, and so forth. ‘Moreover, loose speeches, singing of licentious songs, and profane minstrelling, in time of dinner or supper, tends to great deboshry.’ ‘Through all which causes, penny bridals, in our judgment, become seminaries of all profanation.’ They therefore ordained that not above twenty persons should ever gather on such occasions; that the men should never give above a shilling, and the women eightpence; and that all piping, dancing, singing, and loose speeches, should cease. To make sure that these rules should be observed, it was further ordained that a pair about to marry and to hold a penny bridal, should not have the ceremony performed till they had lodged twenty pounds or other guarantee, to be forfeited in the event of disobedience.[108]
Feb. 27.
The arrangements for the maintenance of a militia in Scotland were fixed by the Estates. Each county and burgh was ordered to raise and maintain a certain number of foot-soldiers (exclusive of horse), according to their respective amounts of population, at £9 Scots per month for each man. The lists are curious, as informing us of the assumed comparative population of the several counties and burghs in that age.
1645.
Counties.—Aberdeen, 727; Ayr, 674; Argyle, 323; Banff, 159; Berwick, 395; Bute, 51; Caithness, 105; Clackmannan, 58; Cromarty, 11; Dumbarton, 137; Dumfries, 494; Edinburgh, 463; Elgin, 210; Fyfe, 738; Forfar, 556; Haddington, 376; Inverness, 464; Kincardine, 174; Kinross, 16; Lanark, 598; Linlithgow, 194; Nairn, 35; Peebles, 182; Perth, 889; Renfrew, 245; Roxburgh, 642; Selkirk, 142; Stirling, 282; Sutherland, 47; Wigton and Kirkcudbright, 486. Burghs.—Aberdeen, 160; Aberbrothock, 10; Ayr, 41; Annan, 3; Anstruther Easter, 31; Anstruther Wester, 6; Banff, 8; Brechin, 20; Burntisland, 16; Crail, 24; Cupar, 24; Culross, 12; Cullen, 4; Dumfries, 44; Dunbar, 12; Dumbarton, 12; Dunfermline, 12; Dundee, 186; Dysart, 30; Edinburgh, 574; Elgin, 20; Forfar, 6; Forres, 6; Galloway, 1; Glasgow, 110; Haddington, 36; Jedburgh, 18; Inverkeithing, 10; Inverness, 40; Irvine, 23; Kilrenny, 3; Kinghorn, 14; Kirkcaldy, 46; Kirkcudbright, 20; Lanark, 16; Lauder, 5; Linlithgow, 30; Lochmaben, 3; Montrose, 53; Nairn, 4; North Berwick, 4; Peebles, 10; Perth, 110; Pittenweem, 15; Queensferry, 7; Renfrew, 10; Rothesay, 5; Rutherglen, 5; Sanquhar, 3; St Andrews, 60; Selkirk, 10; Stirling, 36; Tain, 12; Wigton, 15; Whithorn, 5.
The total number is, for counties, 9873; for burghs, 1879—total, 11,772. If we assume that the aim was to call out one soldier for every sixty souls, the entire population would be 706,320. Edinburgh would have 34,440 inhabitants; Glasgow and Perth, each 6600; Stirling and Haddington, each 2160; Ayr, 2460; Dundee, 11,160; Inverness, 2400; St Andrews, 3600; Dumfries, 2640; Montrose, 3180; &c.
Apr. 1.
‘This day, Kelso, with the haill houses, corns, barns, barn-yards, burnt by fire, caused by a clenging of ane of the houses thereof whilk was infected with the plague.’—Hope’s Diary.
The pest appears by this time to have reached Edinburgh. The Town Council agreed (April 10) with Joannes Paulitius, M.D., that he should visit the infected at a salary of eighty pounds Scots per month. A great number of people affected by the malady were quartered in huts in the King’s Park; others were kept at home; and for the relief of these, the aid of the charitable was invoked from the pulpits. The session of the Holyroodhouse or Canongate parish ordained (June 27) that ‘to avoid contention in this fearful time,’ those who should die in the Park ‘shall be buried therein, and not within the church-yard, except they mortified (being able to do so) somewhat ad pios usus, for the relief of the other poor, being in extreme indigence.’
The Estates, then sitting in Edinburgh, were pleased (August 2) to order five hundred bolls of meal to be given from the public magazine ‘for relief of the poor of Leith, which are sorely visited with the pestilence.’—Bal.
1645.
Under the pressing exigencies caused by the epidemic, the Town Council of Edinburgh came to the resolution (August 13) of liberating those confined for debt in the Tolbooth, obtaining first the consent of creditors. They retained, however, several political prisoners, particularly the Earl of Crawford and Lord Ogilvie, who had signalised themselves by their fidelity to the king. A few weeks after, Montrose having at Kilsyth overthrown the last militia army that had been mustered against him, came to Bothwell, and thence despatched a letter to the Edinburgh magistrates, demanding the liberation of these captives, under threats of fire and sword; and they then completed their jail delivery. The marquis was solely prevented by the plague from advancing and taking possession of the city.
Among the regulations established during the time of this pestilence was one for preventing people from travelling into any district suspected of being under the influence of the disease. We find it proclaimed, for example, in the parish kirk of Humbie, August 10, ‘that none presume, either masters or servants, men or women, to go out of the bounds that they dwell, upon whatsomever errand or business, to any suspected place, without special leave of the masters of the ground.’ If any transgressed this order, ‘they sall not be received back to their own houses or dwellings, but their houses sall be locked and closed up.’ No stranger could be received into a house without ‘liberty from the masters of the ground and the kirk-session conjointly.’[109]
On this occurrence of the plague, a Scotch gentleman is found copying and sending to a friend the following specific for the disease, an invention of Dr Burgess:
‘Tak three mutchkins of Malvoysie, and ane handfull of red sage, and a handfull of rue, and boil them till a mutchkin be wasted. Then strain it, and set it over the fire again; then put thereinto ane pennyworth of long pepper, half ane of ginger, and ane quarter of ane unce of nutmegs, all beaten together; then let it boil a little, and put thereto five pennyworth of Mithridate and two of treacle, and a quarter of a mutchkin of the best Angelic water.
‘Keep this all your life, above all bodily treasures. Tak it always warm, both morning and evening, ane half spoonfull if ye be in health, and one or two if ye be infected; and sweat thereupon.
‘In all your plague-time, under God, trust to this; for there was never man, woman, nor child, that this deceived.
‘This is not only for the common plague which is called the Sickness, but also for the small-pox, missles, surfeat, and divers other diseases.’[110]
1645.
It is understood that those who died by the plague were usually buried in places apart from churchyards, from an apprehension that the infection might burst out and spread, if the graves should be reopened. We find that the Estates ordained (August 4), ‘since that it pleased God to call the Laird of Craigies of the pest, who was lodged in the sheriff-clerk’s house, that these that are within the house shall inter him in a remote place of the ordinary burial-place of the town.’—Bal. In the parish of Cramond, there are four graves of victims of the plague, in solitary situations; two of them at a place called the Whinny Haugh, in King’s Cramond Park, marked with small head-stones, on which are these inscriptions: ‘Here lies Janet Dalmahoy, who deceased the 20th of October 1647,’ and ‘Here lies John D——, who died the 20th of November 1647.’[111]
On this occasion, the pest lingered in the country for a considerable time. It was in full force in Glasgow towards the close of 1646. The infected were either shut up in their houses or sent out to a muir at some distance from the town. ‘December 12, compeared the haill tacksmen of the mill, ladles, tron, and brig,’ complaining to the Council that, ‘in respect of the sickness and visitation, they could get naething of their duties.’ Graves of persons who were suspected of having died of pest were ordered to be marked. The disease does not appear to have entirely ceased in Glasgow till October 1647.—M. of G.
1645.
An anecdote illustrating the terrors inspired in private circles by the plague, is related with regard to this occurrence of the disease, in the memoir of the Stewarts of Coltness by Sir Archibald Stewart Denham of Westshield, a gentleman born in 1683. Speaking of Sir Thomas Stewart, he says: ‘A remarkable incident happened him in his youth, when the pestilence broke out in Edinburgh in 1645. He with a son of Westshield, a merchant apprentice, had gone to a public-house, and received change of some money, and next day that house was shut up, as infected with the plague. This gave a strong alarm at home. James Denham was sent for, and both were strictly examined as to every circumstance. Thomas had received the money in change, and so frightened were all, that none would touch the pocket in which the money was, but at a distance; and after the pocket was cut out, it was with tongs cast in a fire, and both lads were shut up in a bed-chamber, sequestrate from all company, and had victuals at proper times handed into them. While they thus stood their quarantine, by strength of imagination or power of fancy, some fiery spots broke out on their arms and thighs, and they imagined no less than unavoidable death. They mutually lamented; Thomas had more courage and Christian resignation than his companion. “James,” said he, “let us trust in God and in the family prayers, for Jesus’ sake, who, as he cures the plague of the heart, can, if we are infected, cure the most noisome disease of the body.” They both went to their knees, and joined in most solemn prayer, had much spiritual comfort, and in a fortnight were set at liberty, and the family retired to the country.’[112]
As far as appears, the plague did not visit Scotland after this time—a circumstance the more remarkable, as it was so deadly in London in 1665, and even reappeared there in the ensuing year. In connection with the plague, the tale of Bessie Bell and Mary Gray has obtained a large currency in Scotland. According to a report on the subject, communicated to the Antiquarian Society in 1781 by Major Barry of Lednoch,[113] the incident took place in the year 1666; but this is probably a mistake, arising from an assumption that the last great pestilence of London was general over the country (1665 being further mistaken for 1666). Major Barry says:
‘When I first came to Lednoch, I was shewn (in a part of my ground called the Dronoch Haugh) a heap of stones almost covered with briers, thorns, and fern, which they assured me was the burial-place of Bessie Bell and Mary Gray.
1645.
‘The tradition of the country relating to these ladies is, that Mary’s father was Laird of Lednoch, and Bessie Bell’s of Kinvaid, a place in this neighbourhood, and an intimate friendship subsisted between them: that, while Miss Bell was on a visit to Miss Gray, the plague broke out in the year 1666; in order to avoid which, they built themselves a bower about three-quarters of a mile west from Lednoch House, in a very retired and romantic place called Burn Braes, on the side of the Beanchie Burn. Here they lived for some time; but the plague raging with great fury, they caught the infection (it is said) from a young gentleman who was in love with them both. He used to bring them their provision. They died in this bower, and were buried in the Dronoch Haugh, at the foot of a brae of the same name, and near to the bank of the river Almond. The burial-place lies about half a mile west from the present house of Lednoch [now called Lyndoch].’[114]
The major adds: ‘I have removed all the rubbish from this little spot of classic ground, enclosed it with a wall, planted it round with flowering shrubs, made up the grave double, and fixed a stone in the wall, on which are engraved the names of Bessie Bell and Mary Gray.’
It will be found that while the plague raged in London in 1665, Scotland was free of it; neither is there any notice of the malady occurring in 1666, either in Lamont’s or Nicol’s Diary, where it could not have failed to be mentioned if it had occurred. It therefore seems necessary to place the story of Bessie Bell and Mary Gray under 1645.[115]
The sad fate of the two girls became the subject of a ballad, which commenced thus:
‘Bessie Bell and Mary Gray,
They were twa bonnie lasses,
They biggit a bower on yon burn brae,
And theekit it ower wi’ rashes.’
The rest has been lost, except the concluding stanza:
‘They wadna lie in Methven kirk-yard,
Amang their gentle kin;
But they wad lie in Dronoch Haugh,
To beek fornent the sin.’[116]
1646. Oct.
A set of ‘malignants’ intruded themselves into the magistracy of Glasgow, ‘and at the very same time did the pestilence arrive in the town.’ Spreull, the town-clerk, with Mr George Porterfield and Mr John Graham, had to go to Edinburgh to complain of this intrusion before the Estates. During the winter, while they were absent, the plague was so severe, that the malignants would fain have been quit of the magistracy. ‘In February 1648,’ says Spreull, ‘having carried the point at the parliament, we came home and were reponed; whereupon, though there were several hundreds of families shut up for the sickness, yet for twenty days after, there died not so much as one person thereof, and frae thenceforth it did abate till it evanished.’[118]
1647. Sep. 17.
A letter of this date, from James Morphie, tailor in Edinburgh, to the Earl of Airly, has been preserved, and is in its way a curious memorial of the past. When found a few years ago in Cortachie Castle, it contained five pieces of cloth, being, we may presume, those alluded to by the writer, and all as fresh as on the day they were cut.
1647.
‘Right Honourable Lord—I received your lordship’s letter, and have tried for the nearest swatches of cloths I could find, conform to the orders received, and has enclosed them in this letter, with the prices written by them. As for the Kentish cloths your lordship desired, there is few or none to be found; but we expect some to be home shortly. There is only ane swatch of Kentish cloth here, with the price thereof. Likewise receive the piece that was taken out of the tail of your lordship’s doublet. Any of thir clothes your lordship pleases, send for them by the first occasion, or [ere] they be gone. Not troubling your lordship ony forder, but rests your lordship’s humble and obedient servant, James Morphie. From Edinburgh, the 17 day of September 1647. [Addressed] For the Right Honourable the Earl of Airly.’
The letter and pieces of cloth were placed in the Arbroath Museum.[119]
1647.
‘Two years before this, one Captain George Scott came to Inverness, and built a ship of a prodigious bigness for bulk and burden—never such a one seen in our north seas. The carpenters he brought with him to the north, and my Lord Lovat gave him wood—fir and oak—in Dalcattack Woods. I myself was aboard of her in the Road of Kessock, April 1645, and many more, to whom it was a wonder. She set sail the day before the battle of Auldearn; and among other passengers that went in her south were—Colonel Fraser, and his lady, Christina Baillie; Hugh Fraser, younger of Clanvacky, and Andrew Fraser in Leys; also John and William Fraser in Leys. This ship rode at anchor in the river mouth of Nairn, when the battle of Auldearn was fought in view. Captain Scott enlarged the ship afterwards, as a frigate, for war, and sailed with her to the Straits, his brother William with him. William was made a colonel, at Venice, and his martial achievements in defence of that state against the Turks may very well admit him to be ranked amongst our worthies. He became vice-admiral to the Venetian fleet, and the bane and terror of Mussulman navigators. Whether they had gallies, galloons, or galliasses, or great war-ships, it was all one to him. He set upon all alike, saying, the more they were the more he would kill, and the stronger the rencounter should be, the greater should be his honour, and the richer his prize. He oftentimes so scourged the Archipelago of the Mussulmans, that the Ottoman power, and the very gates of Constantinople, would quake at the report of his victories; and he did so ferret them out of all the creeks of the Adriatic Gulf, and so sharply put them to it, that they hardly knew in what part of the Mediterranean they should best shelter themselves from the fury of his blows. He died in his bed of a fever, in the Isle of Candy, in 1652. He was truly the glory of his nation and country, and was honoured, after his death, with a statue of marble, which I saw, near the Rialto of Venice, April 1659.’—Fraser of Wardlaw’s MS., 1666.
1648. June.
Amongst those who looked ill upon the expedition which the Duke of Hamilton was preparing for the relief of the king in England, was his Grace’s own parish minister at Hamilton, Mr James Naismith. Wodrow records, as a traditionary story, that, on the Sunday before the Duke went to England, Mr Naismith preached before his Grace on the text: ‘Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country,’ Jer. xxii. 10. The preacher said that God would regard neither dukes nor generals, and as sure as the Bible was the word of God, any who went on in a course of opposition to him, should not return in peace. ‘On the Monday after, when the duke was leaving Hamilton, there was a crowd of women looking on. Mr Naismith said: “Hold him! hold him! for you will never see his face any more.” The Duke at his death in England,[120] said he would give never so much to see his own faithful minister, Mr Naismith.’—Wod. An.
July 28.
The Shorter Catechism recently framed by the Westminster Assembly of Divines, for the instruction ‘of such as are of weaker capacity,’ and which has since been in constant and universal use in Scotland, was this day sanctioned by the General Assembly, sitting in Edinburgh.
Oct. 4.
1648.
Oliver Cromwell paid his first visit to Edinburgh. He came hot from the destruction of the Duke of Hamilton’s semi-royalist Scotch army at Preston, designing to confer with the heads of the ultra-presbyterian party for the extinction of that kind of opposition in the northern part of the island. The Earl of Kirkcudbright and Major-general Holburn conducted him into the city, where he was lodged very handsomely in the Earl of Moray’s house in the Canongate; a strong guard of his own troops was mounted at the gate. ‘The Earl of Moray’s house,’ says Thomas Carlyle, ‘still stands in the Canongate, well known to the inhabitants there—a solid spacious mansion, which, when all bright and new two hundred years ago, must have been a very adequate lodging.’ ‘As soon as he came there, the Chancellor [Loudon], the Marquis of Argyle, the Earl of Cassillis, the Lord Burleigh, the Provost of Edinburgh,[121] with many other lords and gentlemen, went to pay their respects to him; and the next day, the Earl of Cassillis and Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston went to visit him on the part of the Committee of Estates, to know what he had to communicate to them. Cromwell presented them a writing, whereby he demanded that, in order to keep Hamilton’s party from being able to rise up again in Scotland, where they might embroil the two kingdoms, they would be pleased to order that none of those who had carried arms under his command, or who had consented to the invasion of England, should have any public employment in Scotland. The committee granted him that article.’ Such was the ostensible, and, as far as appears on any good evidence, the real business between Cromwell and the committee men. Bishop Guthry adds the vulgar royalist rumour: ‘While Cromwell remained in the Canongate, those that haunted him most were, besides the Marquis of Argyle, Loudon the chancellor, the Earl of Lothian, the Lords Arbuthnot, Elcho, and Burleigh; and of ministers, Mr David Dickson, Mr Robert Blair, and Mr James Guthrie. What passed among them came not to be known infallibly; but it was talked very loud, that he did communicate to them his design in reference to the king, and had their assent thereto.’
Cromwell was only three days in Edinburgh on this occasion. On Saturday, all business being adjusted, ‘“when we were about to come away, several coaches were sent to bring up the lieutenant-general, the Earl of Leven [governor of the Castle and Scotch commander-in-chief], with Sir Arthur Haselrig, and the rest of the officers, to Edinburgh Castle; where was provided a very sumptuous banquet [old Leven doing the honours], my Lord Marquis of Argyle and divers other lords being present to grace the entertainment. At our departure, many pieces of ordnance and a volley of small shot was given us from the Castle; and some lords convoying us out of the city, we were parted.” The lord provost had defrayed us all the while in the handsomest manner.’—Carlyle.
1648.
To the fall of this year is to be traced the origin of the term Whig, as applicable to a well-known party in the state. Burnet, who was likely to know the facts well, makes the following statement: ‘The south-west counties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to serve them round the year; and the northern parts producing more than they need, those in the west come in the summer to buy at Leith the stores that come from the north. From a word Whiggan, used in driving their horses, all that drove were called the Whiggamores, and, shorter, the Whigs.... After the news came down of Duke Hamilton’s defeat, the ministers animated their people to rise and march to Edinburgh; and they came up marching on the head of their parishes, with an unheard-of fury, praying and preaching all the way as they came. The Marquis of Argyle and his party came and headed them, they being about 6000. This was called the Whiggamores’ Inroad [strictly the Whigs’ Raid]; and ever after that, all that opposed the court came in contempt to be called Whigs.’
We find John Nicoll, the diarist, in 1666, speaking of the west-country Presbyterians as ‘commonly called the Whigs,’ implying that the term was new. The sliding of the appellation from these obscure people to the party of the opposition in London a few years later, is indicated by Daniel Defoe as occurring immediately after the affair of Bothwell Bridge in 1679. The Duke of Monmouth then returning from his command in Scotland, instead of thanks for his good service, found himself under blame for using the insurgents too mercifully. ‘And Lauderdale told Charles, with an oath, that the Duke had been so civil to the Whigs, because he was himself a Whig in his heart. This made it a court-word; and in a little while, all the friends and followers of the Duke began to be called Whigs.’[122]
1648.
The time of the Whigs’ Raid, and from that to the execution of Montrose (May 1650), may be considered as that of an entire supremacy of the religious or rather ecclesiastical system for which the majority of the nation had been struggling for several years. The view of it taken by the royalists is sketched in strong terms by the writers on their side. ‘The kingdom groaned under the most cruel tyranny that ever scourged and afflicted the sons of men. The jails were crammed full of innocent people; the scaffolds daily smoked with the blood of our best patriots. The bones of the dead were dug out of their graves, and their living friends were compelled to ransom them at exorbitant sums. Such as they were pleased to call Malignants were taxed and pillaged at discretion. The Committee of the Kirk sat at the helm, and they were supported by a small number of fanatical persons and others who called themselves the Committee of Estates, but were truly nothing else but the barbarous executioners of their wrath and vengeance. Nor were they ill satisfied with their office, on account of the profits it brought them by fines, sequestrations, and forfeitures, besides the other opportunities it gave them of amassing riches. Every parish had a tyrant, who made the greatest lord in his district stoop to his authority. The kirk was the place where he kept his court; the pulpit, his throne, or tribunal, from whence he issued his terrible decrees; and twelve or fourteen sour enthusiasts, under the title of elders, composed his council. If any, of what quality soever, had the assurance to disobey his edicts, the dreadful sentence of excommunication was immediately thundered out against him, his goods and chattels confiscated and seized, and he himself being looked upon as actually in the possession of the devil, and irretrievably doomed to eternal perdition, all that conversed with him were in no better esteem.’
The moderates involved in the late expedition of Duke Hamilton for the king, were now brought to punishment. ‘They compelled every one that escaped to sit several Sundays in sackcloth before them, mounted, as a spectacle of reproach and infamy, upon the stool of repentance in view of “the elect,” and to undergo such other penance as they were pleased to impose.’[123]
Amongst the penitents was the Chancellor Earl of Loudon, of whom it was scarcely to have been expected that he should join in the Engagement. His submission is alleged by Burnet to have been enforced by his wife, a high Covenanter and an heiress, who threatened him with a process for conjugal unfaithfulness, ‘in which she could have had very copious proofs.’ So he made a public repentance in the church of Edinburgh, ‘with many tears confessing his weakness in yielding to the temptation of what had a show of honour and loyalty.’