Domestic annals of Scotland

by Robert Chambers

REIGN OF GEORGE I.: 1714–1727.

The Tory ministry of Anne, which had certainly meditated some attempt at the restoration of the Stuart line, were paralysed, as we have seen, by her death, and allowed the accession of George of Hanover to take place without opposition. The new king had no sooner settled himself in London, than he displaced the late queen’s advisers, and surrounded himself with the Whigs, whom he knew to be his only true friends. The sharpness of this proceeding, added to the general discontent, produced an almost immediate insurrection. Two of the ex-ministers—the Duke of Ormond and Lord Bolingbroke—went to France, and attached themselves to the exiled court. The Earl of Mar, after in vain attempting to obtain the favour of King George, repaired to his native country, and, on the 6th of September 1715, set up the standard of rebellion in Aberdeenshire, although he is said to have had no commission to that effect from the rival prince. This nobleman, who had acted as Secretary of State under the late government, was speedily surrounded with hundreds of armed men, chiefly of the Highland clans, who were willing to be led by him to battle.

The government had at this time only a few regiments in Scotland, not exceeding in all fifteen hundred men, and these could not be concentrated in one place, without leaving the rest of the country exposed. They were, however, put under the command of the Duke of Argyle, a young soldier who had served under Marlborough, and at one time commanded the British troops in Spain. The government could not well spare more men for service in Scotland, as England, being threatened with a corresponding invasion from France, required a large number of the disposable troops for its own defence, and also for the purpose of preventing a rising among the native Jacobites. An attempt was made to surprise Edinburgh Castle in behalf of the Chevalier, and it would have in all likelihood succeeded, but for the folly of one or two of the conspirators. By this enterprise, if successful, the Duke of Argyle must have been disabled for keeping together his small army, and the whole of the south of Scotland would at once have fallen into the hands of the insurgent general, if he had been gifted with common energy to take it into his possession.

Mar entered Perth on the 28th of September, having with him about five thousand horse and foot, fully armed. Among his Highland adherents were the chieftains of Clanranald and Glengarry, the Earl of Breadalbane, and the Marquis of Tullibardine (eldest son of the Duke of Athole), all of whom brought their clansmen into the field. Among the Lowland Jacobites who had already joined him were the Earls of Panmure and Strathmore, with many of the younger sons of considerable families. On the 2d of October, a party of his troops performed the dexterous exploit of surprising a government vessel on the Firth of Forth opposite to Burntisland, and taking from it several hundred stand of arms, which it was about to carry to the north, for the purpose of arming the Whig Earl of Sutherland against his Jacobite neighbours. This gave a little éclat to the enterprise.

The government, in order to encourage loyalty at this dangerous crisis, obtained an act, adjudging the estates of the insurgents to such vassals, holding of them, as should remain at peace. The state-officers were also very active in apprehending suspected persons, especially in England. Some gentlemen in the northern counties, fearing that this would be their fate, met on the 6th of October at Rothbury, and soon increased to a considerable party. Among them were Mr Forster, member of parliament for Northumberland, and Lord Widdrington. They made an advance to Newcastle, but were deterred from attacking it. They then concentrated themselves at Hexham, and opened a communication with Lord Mar. About the same time, the Viscount Kenmure, and the Earls of Nithsdale, Wintoun, and Carnwath appeared in arms in the south of Scotland, with a considerable band of followers, and a junction was soon after effected between the two parties.

As the Earl of Mar was loath to leave the Highlands, where immense bands were mustering to join him, he resolved to make no attempt upon the Duke of Argyle, who had now posted his small force at Stirling Bridge, which forms the only free pass between the north and south of Scotland. The earl, however, thought it expedient to send a detachment of upwards of two thousand of his infantry across the Firth of Forth, in order to co-operate with him, when the proper time should arrive, by falling upon the duke in flank. This party was placed under the command of Brigadier Mackintosh of Borlum, an old officer, who had been regularly trained under Marlborough. By making a feint at Burntisland, to which point they attracted the war-vessels on the firth, about sixteen hundred got safely over to East Lothian, and immediately marched upon Edinburgh, which was then defenceless. The provost, however, had time to call the Duke of Argyle to his aid, who entered the west gate of the city with five hundred horse, at the same time that Mackintosh was approaching its eastern limit. The insurgent chief turned aside to Leith, and barricaded his men in the old dismantled citadel of Cromwell. There he was called to surrender next day by the duke, but returned a haughty defiance, and the assailing party had to retire to wait for cannon. The brigadier took the opportunity that night to march back to East Lothian, where for a day or two he garrisoned Seton House, the princely seat of the Earl of Wintoun. The Duke of Argyle was obliged to leave him unmolested, in order to return to Stirling, upon which he learned that the Earl of Mar was marching with his whole force. The insurgent general was in reality only anxious to call him off from the party under Mackintosh. The capital being now protected by volunteers, that officer, in obedience to the commands of the Earl of Mar, marched to Kelso, where he formed a junction with the English and Lowland cavaliers.

There were now two Jacobite armies in Scotland—one at Perth, and another at Kelso. It was the obvious policy of both to have attempted to break up the Duke of Argyle’s encampment, which was the sole obstacle to their gaining possession of Scotland; but this the Earl of Mar either found inconvenient or imprudent, and the party at Kelso was soon diverted to another scene of action. After a delay of some days, and much unhappy wrangling among themselves, it was determined by the leaders of this body to march into the west of England, where, as the country abounded with Jacobites, they expected to raise a large reinforcement. They therefore moved along the Border by Jedburgh, Hawick, and Langholm, followed by a government force much inferior to themselves in numbers, under the command of General Carpenter. On the 31st of October they entered England, all except a few hundred Highlanders, who had determined to go home, and who were mostly seized by the country people upon the march.

Hitherto, the insurrection had been a spontaneous movement of the friends of the Chevalier, under the self-assumed direction of the Earl of Mar. It was now put into proper form by the earl receiving a commission as generalissimo from the royal personage in whose behalf he was acting. Henceforth the insurgent forces were supported by a regular daily pay of threepence in money, with a certain quantity of provisions, the necessary funds being raised by virtue of the earl’s commission, in the shape of a land-tax, which was rendered severer to the enemies than to the friends of the cause. The army was now increased by two thousand five hundred men brought by the Marquis of Huntly, eldest son of the Duke of Gordon, and nearly four thousand who arrived, under the charge of the Earl of Seaforth, from the North Highlands. Early in November, there could not be fewer than sixteen thousand men in arms throughout the country for the Stuarts, a force tripling that with which Prince Charles penetrated into England at a later and less auspicious period. Yet even with all, or nearly all this force at his command, the Earl of Mar permitted the Duke of Argyle to protect the Lowlands and the capital with about three thousand men.

At length, on the 10th of November, having gathered nearly all the forces he could expect, he resolved to force the pass so well guarded by his opponent. When the Duke of Argyle learned that Mar was moving from Perth, he resolved to cross the Forth and meet his enemy on as advantageous ground as possible on the other side, being afraid that the superior numbers of the insurgents might enable them to advance upon more points of the river than he had troops to defend. He drew up his forces on the lower part of a swelling waste called the Sheriffmuir, with the village of Dunblane in his rear. His whole force amounted to three thousand three hundred men, of whom twelve hundred were cavalry. Mar, reinforced on the march by the West Highland clans under General Gordon, advanced to battle with about nine thousand men, including some squadrons of horse, which were composed, however, of only country gentlemen and their retainers. Although the insurgents thus greatly outnumbered their opponents, the balance was in some measure restored by Mar’s total ignorance of the military art, and the undisciplined character of his troops; while Argyle, on the other hand, had conducted armies under the most critical circumstances, and his men were not only perfectly trained, but possessed that superiority which consists in the mechanical regularity and firmness with which such troops must act. On the night of the 12th, the two armies lay within four miles of each other. Next morning, they were arranged by their respective commanders in two lines, the extremities of which were protected by horse. On meeting, however, at the top of the swelling eminence which had been interposed between them, it was found that the right wing of each greatly outflanked the left wing of the other army. The commanders, who were stationed at this part of their various hosts, immediately charged, and as in neither case there was much force opposed to them, they were both to some extent successful. The Duke of Argyle beat back the left wing of the insurgents, consisting of Highland foot and Lowland cavalry, to the river Allan. The Earl of Mar, in like manner, drove the left wing of the royal army, which was commanded by General Whitham, to the Forth. Neither of these triumphant parties knew of what was done elsewhere, but both congratulated themselves upon their partial success. In the afternoon, the Earl of Mar returned with the victorious part of his army to an eminence in the centre of the field, whence he was surprised, soon after, to observe the Duke of Argyle leading back the victorious part of his army by the highway to Dunblane. The total want of intelligence on each side, and the fear which ignorance always engenders, prevented these troops mutually from attacking each other. The duke retired to the village; the earl drew off towards Perth, whither a large part of his army had already fled in the character of defeated troops: and thus the action was altogether indecisive. Several hundreds were slain on both sides; the Earl of Strathmore and the chieftain of Clanranald fell on the side of the insurgents; the Earl of Forfar on that of the royalists. The Duke of Argyle reappeared next morning on the field, in order to renew the action; but finding that Mar was in full retreat to Perth, he was enabled to retire to Stirling with all the spoils of the field, and the credit of having frustrated the design of the insurgent general to cross the Forth. Even that part of his army which was discomfited by the Earl of Mar, had nevertheless become possessed of the principal standard of the enemy.

This day was fatal to the cause of the Chevalier in another part of the kingdom. The large party of united Scots and English, under Forster, had penetrated to Lancashire, without gaining any such accessions of force as had been expected. On the 12th of November they were assailed in the town of Preston by a considerable force under General Willis, who had concentrated the troops of a large district in order to oppose their march. For this day, they defended themselves effectually by barricading the streets; but next day the enemy was increased by a large force under General Carpenter, and the unfortunate Jacobites then found it necessary to surrender, upon the simple condition that they should not be immediately put to the sword. Forster, Kenmure, Nithsdale, Wintoun, and Mackintosh, with upwards of a hundred other persons of distinction, including a brave and generous young nobleman, the Earl of Derwentwater, were taken prisoners. The common men, in number about fourteen hundred, were disposed about the country in prisons, while their superiors were conducted to London, and, after being exposed in an ignominious procession on the streets—a mark of the low taste as well as of the political animosity of the time—imprisoned in Newgate on a charge of high treason.

The affairs of the Chevalier now began to decline in Scotland. The Earl of Sutherland, having established a garrison at Inverness, afforded to the Earl of Seaforth and the Marquis of Huntly an excuse for withdrawing their forces from Perth. Some of the other clans went home to deposit their spoil, or because they could not endure to be taunted for their bad behaviour at Sheriffmuir. The army being thus reduced to about four thousand men, various officers began to think of capitulating with the Duke of Argyle. To this there was one serious objection. In compliance with a pressing invitation which they had despatched in better times, they were daily expecting their prince to arrive amongst them. Nevertheless, the Earl of Mar was compelled to open a negotiation with the royalist general. In answer to their message, the duke informed them that he had no power to treat with them as a body, but would immediately send to court to ask for the required instructions. They were in this posture when the unfortunate son of James VII. landed (December 22) at Peterhead, and advanced to the camp to put himself at their head. The Earl of Mar and some other officers went to Fetteresso to meet him, and to apprise him of the present state of his affairs. Although greatly dejected by what he heard, and much reduced in health by a severe ague, he resolved to establish himself in royal state at Perth, in the hope of reanimating the cause. Advancing through Brechin and Dundee, he entered Perth in a ceremonious manner on the 9th of January; but he could not conceal his mortification, on finding how much his forces were reduced in number. It was, nevertheless, determined that he should be crowned at Scone on the 23d. If he was disappointed with his adherents, they were no less so with him. Whether from natural softness of character, or through the influence of his late malady, or from despair of his present circumstances, he appeared exceedingly tame and inanimate; quite the reverse, in every respect, of the bold and stirring chief required for such an enterprise.

The Duke of Argyle, having now received large reinforcements from England, besides three thousand Dutch troops, sent in terms of the treaty of Utrecht, found himself as superior in numbers to the Earl of Mar as that general had been to him in the early part of the campaign. On the 23d of January, the day on which the Chevalier was to have been crowned, the royalist troops commenced their march upon Perth, through deep snow. To retard their progress, all the villages upon the road were burned by the insurgents. It was now debated at Perth whether they ought to remain within the town and defend themselves against the royal forces, who, in this weather, must suffer severely in the fields, or to march northward and disperse. A great part of the clans were anxious in the highest degree for a battle with the duke; but the safety of the Chevalier’s person was a consideration which precluded all desperate hazards. It was resolved to vacate Perth. Accordingly, on the 30th of January, a day ominous to the House of Stuart, from its being the anniversary of the death of Charles I., the remains of the Highland army deployed across the river, then covered with thick ice, and marched to Dundee. The duke entered the town with his vanguard, only twelve hours after the rear-guard of the insurgents had left it. But the state of the roads rendered it impossible for him, with all the appurtenances of a regular army, to overtake the light-footed mountaineers. He followed on their track towards Aberdeen, at the distance of one or two marches behind them. At Montrose, the Chevalier and the Earl of Mar provided for their own safety by going on board a French vessel. The army, which had been fast declining by the way, was finally disbanded on the 7th of February at Aberdeen, after which every man shifted for himself. Thus ended the insurrection of 1715, an enterprise begun without concert or preparation, and which languished so much throughout all its parts, that it could hardly be considered in any other light than as an appearance of certain friends of the House of Stuart in arms.

The Earl of Derwentwater and the Viscount Kenmure were the only individuals of distinction who suffered death for this rebellion. They were beheaded on Tower Hill on the 24th of February. All the rest of the noblemen and gentlemen taken at Preston either made their escape from Newgate, which on this occasion manifested a peculiar irretentiveness, or were pardoned. About twenty inferior persons were executed. There were, however, at least forty families of distinction in Scotland whose estates were forfeited. It is to be mentioned, to the honour of the Argyle family, that they counselled lenient measures, and set the example by not taking advantage of the law against such of their vassals as had forfeited their estates into their hands as superiors.

The miserable failure of this effort for the House of Stuart, and its dismal consequences, neither allayed the wishes nor extinguished the hopes of the Jacobite party. Firm in the principle of hereditary right, convinced that the prosperity and happiness of the country could only be secured through their legitimate prince, seeing in every shortcoming and error of the reigning house and ministry confirmation of their doctrines, they never once faltered in believing that a restoration was worthy of a civil war. They only admitted now, that, for success, the assistance of some foreign state was indispensable.

Unfortunately for the hopes of the party, the favour of France for the Stuart cause was at this time lost, in consequence of the necessity which the Regent Orleans felt himself under of cultivating the alliance of Britain, that he might strengthen himself against the Spanish branch of the House of Bourbon. Even a home could no longer be afforded by France for the unfortunate son of James VII.; and it now occurs, as a curious instance of the vicissitudes of fortune among historical persons, that the diplomate who negotiated for his expulsion beyond the Alps (the Earl of Stair) was the grandson of one whom James VII. had driven to Holland little more than thirty years before.

Rather oddly, while the Stuart party lost France, prospects opened to them in quarters wholly new. It pleased the half-crazed Charles XII. of Sweden to take umbrage at George I. for aid given to some of his enemies; and he formed the resolution to dethrone the British monarch, and replace his rival. There was only a total want of ships of war and transports for effecting this object. Even from the great rival of the Swede, Peter of Russia, some hopes were at one time entertained. At length, Spain, under the ambitious politics of her celebrated minister Alberoni, found it for her interest to take up in a decided manner the cause of the Stuart. In spring 1719, an expedition, comprehending a few companies of infantry and a considerable quantity of arms, passed from St Sebastian to the isle of Lewis, under the care of the Earl Marischal and the Marquis of Tullibardine, designing to raise and arm the Highland clans. A landing was effected in Loch Alsh amongst the friendly Mackenzies, whose chief, the Earl of Seaforth, accompanied the expedition, and very quickly there were a thousand natives in arms, in addition to the Spanish companies. But a foreign force of such a trivial character was quite insufficient to induce a general rising. While the Jacobite chiefs lingered in Glenshiel, with only about fifteen hundred men in arms, a government force of rather superior numbers was conducted northward by General Wightman. It would have been easy to prevent this force from entering the Mackenzie country; but no attempt to that effect was made. The two parties came into conflict on the 11th of June, and the royal commander had 142 men killed and wounded, without accomplishing a decisive victory. It was seen, however, by the Jacobite chiefs, two of whom were wounded, that nothing more could be effected at present; and it was therefore arranged that the Spanish troops should next day surrender themselves, while the Highlanders should disperse. General Wightman was happy to carry southwards 274 Spanish prisoners, without attempting to inflict any punishment upon the rebels.

For some years afterwards, the agents of the Stuart prince were actively engaged in keeping up his interest in Scotland. A large proportion of the Highland clans and of the Lowland nobility and gentry, along with the entire body of the Episcopalian clergy, were his friends; but with the great bulk of the Presbyterian middle classes his pretensions found little favour, and in the constantly increasing comfort of the people through the pursuits of peaceful industry his chance was always becoming less. Having married a Polish princess, he became in 1720 the father of a prince named Charles Edward, who was destined to make one last and brilliant, but unsuccessful effort for the restoration of the family.

King George I., dying in June 1727, was quietly succeeded by his son George II., with little change in the Whig set of statesmen by which the affairs of the country had long been conducted. During the latter years of the first Hanover sovereign, the Duke of Argyle and his brother, the Earl of Ilay, were the men of chief influence in Scotland. It was a period remarkable in several respects, but particularly for the first decided development of the industrial energies of the people, and for considerable changes in their manners and habits. For a number of minor incidents, verging or trenching on the domain of political history, reference must be made to the chronicle.

1714. Oct.

The strong sense of religious duty at this time connected with the observance of Sunday, is strikingly shewn in the conduct of the deputation sent by the Church of Scotland to present a loyal address to George I. on his accession. Reaching Barnby Moor on a Saturday night, and finding there was no place of public worship which they were ‘clear’ to attend within a reachable distance, ‘we resolved,’ says Mr Hart, ‘to spend the Lord’s Day as well as we could. So each having retired alone for some time in the morning, we breakfasted about ten of the clock, and after that Messrs Linning, Ramsay, Adams, Mr Linning’s man, and I, did shut our chamber-door, and went about worship. I read, sung, and prayed, and then we retired again to our several chambers, and met about two of the clock, and Mr Ramsay read, sung, and prayed; and after that we retired to our several chambers, and met between four and five, supped, and, after supper, Mr Linning read, sung, and prayed, and after we had sat a while we retired, and so prepared for bed. Thus we spent the Lord’s Day at Barnby Moor.’

It may be imagined that no small distress was given to the clergy generally two years after, when it was reported that Mr William Hamilton and Mr William Mitchell, in returning recently from London, had travelled post on a Sabbath-day, with the horn sounding before them. The presbytery of Edinburgh took up the case in great grief and concern, and called the two reverend brethren to give an explanation of their conduct, which fortunately they were able to do very satisfactorily. Arriving at Stilton on a Saturday night, and finding there was no accommodation for the next day but in a public-house, while there was no place where they could rightly join in worship nearer than Stamford—that is to say, no Presbyterian or dissenting meeting-house—they had been induced to start on their journey to the latter place next morning, when, as they were upon post-horses, it was a matter of course, and needful for safety, that they should have a boy going before to blow a horn. The presbytery was satisfied; but one strenuous brother, Mr James Webster, who was not distinguished by a charitable temper, or much moderation of words, broke out upon them on this score in his pulpit—not in a sermon, but in the course of his prayer—and was rebuked on this account by the presbytery.[^[467]]

1715. Feb.

For many years after the Revolution, the sombre religious |1715.| feelings of the community forbade even an attempt at the revival of theatrical performances. If there was anywhere an inclination to see Shakspeare, Otway, Congreve, or Addison, put into living forms on the stage, it was restricted to the same obscurity in the breast which entertained it, as devotion to the mass or doubts regarding witchcraft. The plays and other examples of light literature of the age of Anne did at length begin to find their way from London to Edinburgh, there to meet a not wholly ungenial reception from at least that portion of society which professed Episcopacy, not to speak of a certain minority of the gay, who have usually contrived to exist even amidst the most gloomy puritanism. Time, moreover, was continually removing the stern men of the seventeenth century, to be replaced by others of gentler convictions. The natural love of amusement began to assert itself against the pride of asceticism and self-denial. Englishmen were constantly coming in as government officers, or in pursuit of business, and bringing with them new ideas. Thus it came to pass that, about the beginning of the Hanover dynasty, Scotland began to think that it might indulge now and then in a little merriment, and no great harm come of it. It must be owned, however, that during much of the eighteenth century, there was great truth in a simile employed in the preface to a play published in Edinburgh in 1668, which likened the drama in Scotland to ‘a swaggerer in a country church.’[^[468]]

The very first presentment of any public theatricals that can be authenticated, occurred in the early part of 1715, just before the breaking out of the unfortunate insurrection. We know little about it besides that a corps was then acting plays at the Tennis Court, near Holyrood Palace.[^[469]]

‘We have now,’ says a contemporary letter-writer, ‘got a playhouse set up here in the Tennis Court, to the great grief of all sober good people; and I am surprised to see such diversions as tend so much to corrupt men’s manners patronised and countenanced by some of whom I expected better things.... Mr Webster and several other ministers have given a testimony against them; and for so doing are mocked by a great many that |1715.| you would scarce suspect. Particularly, Mr Webster is very much cried out against for saying no more but that whoever in his parish did attend these plays should be refused tokens to the sacrament of the Supper.’[^[470]]

The presbytery of Edinburgh was alive to the danger of allowing stage-plays to be acted within their borders, and adverted to the Canongate theatricals in great concern on the 23d of March 1715. ‘Being informed,’ they said, ‘that some comedians have lately come to the bounds of this presbytery, and do act within the precincts of the Abbey, to the great offence of many, by trespassing upon morality and those rules of modesty and chastity which our holy religion obligeth all its professors to a strict observance of, therefore the presbytery recommends to all their members to use all proper and prudent methods to discourage the same.’[^[471]] It is at the same time rather startling to find that three of the ministers who went as a deputation to pay the respects of the Church of Scotland to George I. on his accession in 1714—namely, Mitchell, Ramsay, and Hart—went at Kendal to see the comedy of Love for Love acted.

Apr. 22.

A celebrated total eclipse of the sun, which happened about nine o’clock in the morning of this day, made a great impression in Scotland, as in other parts of Europe, over which the entire shadow passed. The darkness lasted upwards of three minutes, during which the usual phenomena were observed among the lower animals. The Edinburgh bard, Allan Ramsay, heralded the event with a set of verses, embracing all the commonplaces connected with it; adding,

‘The unlearned clowns, who don’t our era know,

From this dark Friday will their ages shew,

As I have often heard old country men

Talk of Dark Monday[^[472]] and their ages then.’

Whiston, in his Memoirs, relates what will be to philosophical persons an amusing anecdote of this eclipse. When the accounts of it were published beforehand in the streets of London, telling when it would commence, and that it would be total, a Mohammedan envoy, from Tripoli, thought the English people were distracted |1715.| in pretending to know what God Almighty would do; which his own countrymen could not do. ‘He concluded thus, that God Almighty would never reveal so great a secret to us unbelievers, when he did not reveal it to those whom he esteemed true believers. However, when the eclipse came exactly as we all foretold, he was asked again what he thought of the matter now; his answer was, that he supposed we knew this by art magique; otherwise he must have turned Christian upon such an extraordinary event as this was.’

July.

Mr James Anderson, so honourably known as editor of the Diplomata Scotiæ, was rewarded for his public services by the appointment of Deputy Postmaster-general, in place of George Mein. A mass of his correspondence, preserved in the Advocates’ Library, makes us acquainted with the condition in which he found postal matters, and the improvements which he effected during two or three subsequent years.

We learn that the horse-posts which existed many years back on some of the principal roads, had, ere this time, been given up, and foot-runners substituted, excepting perhaps upon what might be called the aorta of the system, from Edinburgh to Berwick. In this manner direct bags were conveyed as far north as Thurso, and westwards to Inverary. There were three mails a week from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and three in return; the runners set out from Edinburgh each Tuesday and Thursday, at twelve o’clock at night, and on Sundays in the morning, and the mails arrived at Glasgow on the evening of Wednesday and Friday, and on the forenoon of Monday. For this service the Post-office paid £40 sterling per annum, but from the fraudulent dealing of the postmaster of Falkirk, who made the payments, the runners seldom received more than from £20 to £25.

‘After his appointment, Mr Anderson directed his attention to the establishment of horse-posts on the western road from Edinburgh. The first regular horse-post in Scotland appears to have been from Edinburgh to Stirling; it started for the first time on the 29th November 1715. It left Stirling at two o’clock afternoon, each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and reached Edinburgh in time for the night-mail to England. In March 1717, the first horse-post between Edinburgh and Glasgow was established, and we have the details of the arrangement in a memorial addressed to Lord Cornwallis and James Craggs, who jointly filled the office of Postmaster-general of Great Britain. |1715.| The memorial states that the “horse-post will set out for Edinburgh each Tuesday, and Thursday, at eight o’clock at night, and on Sunday about eight or nine in the morning, and be in Glasgow (a distance of thirty-six miles by the post-road of that time) by six in the morning on Wednesday and Friday in summer, and eight in winter, and both winter and summer will be on Sunday night.” There appears to have been a good deal of negotiation connected with the settlement of this post, in which the provost and bailies of Glasgow took part. After some delay, the matter appears to have been arranged to the satisfaction of all parties.

‘A proposition was made at this time to establish a horse-post between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, at a cost of £132, 12s. per annum, to supersede the foot-posts, which were maintained at a cost of £81, 12s. The scheme, however, appears not to have been entertained at that time by the Post-office authorities.

‘In the year 1715, Edinburgh had direct communication with sixty post-towns in Scotland, and in the month of August the total sum received for letters passing to and from these offices and Edinburgh, was £44, 3s. 1d. The postage on letters to and from London in the same month amounted to £157, 3s. 2d., and the postage for letters per the London road, amounted to £9, 19s., making the total sum for letters to and from Edinburgh, during that month, amount to £211, 5s. 3d.—equal to £2535, 3s. per annum.

‘In 1716, the Duke of Argyle, who had then supreme control in Scotland, gave orders to Mr Anderson to place relays of horses from Edinburgh to Inverness, for the purpose of forwarding dispatches to, and receiving intelligence from, the army in the Highlands under General Cadogan. These posts worked upon two lines of roads—the one went through Fife, and round by the east coast, passing through Aberdeen; the other took the central road viâ Perth, Dunkeld, and Blair Athole. These horse-posts were, however, discontinued immediately after the army retired.’[^[473]]

In October 1723, the authorities of the Edinburgh Post-office announced a thrice-a-week correspondence with Lanark, by means of the horse-post to Glasgow, and a runner thence to Lanark. The official annonce candidly owns: ‘This at first sight appears far about’ (it was transforming a direct distance of thirty-one miles into sixty-six). But ‘the Glasgow horse-post running all |1715.| night makes the dispatch so quick, that the letters come this way to Lanark in twenty, or at most twenty-two hours, and from Lanark to Edinburgh in twenty-four hours at most.’

July 18.

Two Renfrewshire gentlemen, of whose previous dealings with each other in friendship or business we get but an obscure account, came to a hostile collision in Edinburgh. Mr James Houston, son of the deceased Sir Patrick Houston of that Ilk, was walking on a piece of pavement called the Plainstones, near the Cross, when Sir John Shaw of Greenock came up with a friend, and the two gentlemen, designedly or not, slightly jostled each other. Mr Houston put his hand to his sword, but had not time to draw it before Sir John fell a-beating him about the head and shoulders with his cane, which, however, flying out of his hand, he instantly took to his sword, and before the bystanders could interfere, passed it twice through Mr Houston’s body.

It was at first thought the man was slain outright; but he was surviving in a sickly state in the ensuing January, when he raised a criminal prosecution against the knight of Greenock, and succeeded in obtaining from him a solatium to the amount of five hundred pounds.[^[474]]

Sep.

On the breaking out of the Rebellion this month, there was a run upon the Bank of Scotland, rather encouraged by the directors than otherwise, from a desire to escape the responsibility and danger of keeping money during such a critical time. When the whole coin was drawn out, the Bank rendered up about thirty thousand pounds of public money which lay in its hands, that it might be lodged in the Castle, and then very calmly stopped payment, or rather discontinued business, intimating that their notes should bear interest till better times should return. In May 1716, the troubles being over, the Bank began to take in their notes and resume business as usual.[^[475]]

Sep. 29.

At this crisis, when a formidable insurrection was breaking out, the officers intrusted with the support of the government were not in the enjoyment of that concord which is said to give strength. The Justice-clerk (Cockburn of Ormiston) was on bad terms with both the Earl of Ilay and the Lord Advocate, Sir David |1715.| Dalrymple. The animosity between two of these men came to a consummation which might be said to prefigure the celebrated wig-pulling of Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Townshend. The Earl of Ilay writes at this date from Edinburgh: ‘There has happened an accident which will suspend the Justice-clerk’s fury against me; for he and the King’s Advocate have had a corporal dispute; I mean literally, for I parted them.’[^[476]]

Oct. 18.

In a letter of this date, written at Musselburgh by the Rev. J. Williamson, minister of that place, some recent domestic events are alluded to—as ‘the lamentable murder of Doctor Rule last week by Craigmillar’s second son, and the melancholy providence of a jeweller’s servant, who was under some dejection for some time, and did, on Monday last, immediately after sermon, at Leith, run into the sea deliberately, and drown himself.’ There had been a new election of Scots peers at Holyrood for the first parliament of the new reign, and they were all of one sound loyal type—‘a plain evidence of our further slavery to the English court.’ In reference to this, a fruit-woman went about the Palace-yard, crying: ‘Who would buy good pears, old pears, new pears, fresh pears—rotten pears, sixteen of them for a plack!’[^[477]]

Dec. 28.

Died, William Carstares, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, noted as having been the intimate friend of King William, and his adviser about all Scottish affairs; for which reason, and his influence over the fortunes of the church, he was popularly known by the name of Cardinal Carstares. It must ever be considered a great honour to the Church of Scotland to have had the affectionate support of such a man. A sufferer under the severities of the pre-Revolution government, he inclined, when his day of power came, to use it with moderation. His temperate counsels and practice are believed to have had a great effect in smoothing the difficulties which at first surrounded the Presbyterian establishment. His probity and disinterestedness have been above all question. King William said ‘he had known him long and well, and he knew him to be an Honest Man.’ In the midst of the contentious proceedings of this period, to light upon the gentle prudence, the unostentatious worth, and the genial unselfishness of Carstares, has the effect of a fine, soothing |1715.| melody amidst discord. There are a few anecdotes of this eminent man, which no one can read without feeling his heart improved.

A newly widowed sister coming from the country to see him, when he was engaged in consultations of importance with some of the officers of state, he instantly left these personages and came to her; insisted, against her remonstrances, on staying a short while with her, and giving her a prayer of consolation; then, having appointed a more leisurely interview, he returned with the tears scarcely effaced from his countenance, to his noble company.

His charities, which were truly diffusive, were often directed to the unfortunate Episcopal clergy. One, named Caddell, having called upon him, he observed that the poor man’s clothes were worn out, and discreditable to his sacred calling. Instantly ordering a suit to be prepared for a man of Caddell’s size, he took care to have them first tried upon his own person when his friend next waited upon him. ‘See,’ said he, ‘how this silly fellow has misfitted me! They are quite useless to me. They will be lost if they don’t fit some of my friends. And, by the by, I daresay they might answer you. Please try them on, for it is a pity they should be thrown away.’ Caddell, after some hesitation, complied, and found that the clothes fitted him exactly. With his hard-wrung permission, they were sent home to him, and he found a ten-pound note in one of the pockets.

It is said that many of the ‘outed’ clergy were in the custom of receiving supplies, the source of which they never knew till Mr Carstares’s death. At his funeral, two men were observed to turn aside together, quite overcome by their grief. Upon inquiry, it was found they were two nonjurant ministers, whose families, for a considerable time, had been supported by the benefactions of him they were laying in the grave.[^[478]]

If the partisans of particular doctrines and formulæ were to try occasionally upon each other the effect of kindly good offices such as these, might they not sometimes make a little way with their opponents, instead of merely exasperating and hardening them, as, under existing circumstances, they almost invariably do?

1716. Apr. 21.

John Kellie, corporal in the Earl of Stair’s regiment, was put into the Edinburgh Tolbooth for killing John Norton, sergeant of |1716.| the same regiment, in a duel near Stirling. He was liberated at the bar, on the 23d July ensuing.[^[479]]

The fighting of duels by private soldiers, now never heard of, seems then to have been not uncommon. The Edinburgh Courant of February 16, 1725, states: ‘This morning, two soldiers of the regiment that lies in the Canongate were whipped for fighting a duel.’

May 21.

The Whig government of George I., having now got the lay Jacobites effectually put down, bethought itself of the clergy of the defeated party, the Episcopalians, who had made several active demonstrations during the late insurrection, and constantly stood in a sort of negative rebellion, in as far as they never prayed for the king de facto. Under a prompting from a high quarter, the Commissioners of Justiciary now ordered the advocate-depute, Duncan Forbes, to proceed against such of the Episcopal clergy in Scotland as had not prayed for King George, or otherwise obeyed the late Toleration Act by registering orders from a Protestant bishop. The consequent proceedings reveal to us a curious view of the condition of Episcopacy at that time in Edinburgh—at once comprehending a large number of clergy, and existing in the greatest obscurity.

There were Mr William Abercrombie and Mr David Freebairn, Mr Robert Marshall and Mr William Wylie, each described as ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Bailie Fyfe’s Close;’ Mr George Johnston, Mr Robert Keith, and Mr Andrew Lumsdain, severally described as ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Barrenger’s Close;’ Mr Jasper Kellie, ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house below the Fountain-well;’ Mr Thomas Rhind, ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Sandilands’ Close;’ Mr George Grahame, ‘preacher and user of the English Liturgy in his own house, to which many do resort as an Episcopal meeting-house, in Canongate-head;’ Mr Andrew Cant, Mr David Lambie, Mr David Rankine, and Mr Patrick Middleton, ‘preachers in the Episcopal meeting-house in Skinner’s Close;’ Mr Henry Walker and Mr Patrick Home, each described as ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Todrig’s Wynd;’ Mr Robert Calder, ‘preacher, sometimes in Edinburgh, sometimes in Tranent’ [the reputed author of Scots Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed]; Mr William Milne and Mr William Cockburn, |1716.| ‘preachers in the Episcopal meeting-house in Blackfriars’ Wynd’ [the latter probably he who had lately been chased by the mob out of Glasgow]; Mr James Walker, ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Dickson’s Close;’ Mr Alexander Sutherland, senior, and Mr Robert Chein, ‘preachers in the Episcopal meeting-house at the back of Bell’s Wynd.’ Thus, we see there were ten places of worship in Edinburgh—all in retired situations, and, strange to say, all within two hundred yards or so of each other; having in all twenty-two ministers; being considerably more than the number of the Established clergy then in Edinburgh; but in what poverty they lived may be partly inferred from the fact, that Thomas Ruddiman, the grammarian, when attending an Episcopal meeting-house in Edinburgh in 1703, paid only ‘forty shillings’ (3s. 4d.) for his seat for two years.[^[480]]

Besides the twenty-two Edinburgh clergy, there were Mr Arthur Miller, ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Leith,’ and Mr Robert Coult and Mr James Hunter, ‘Episcopal preachers in Mussleburgh,’ all involved in the same prosecution.

The result of their trial was a sentence, applicable to all except Mr William Cockburn, forbidding them to exercise their ministerial functions till they should have fulfilled the requirements of the law, and amerciating them in twenty pounds each for not praying for King George. The only visible difference between the old persecutions and this was, that there was a populace to howl in the one case, and not in the other. However, the authorities were humane. The magistrates of Edinburgh were content to see that letters of ordination were registered. When the Prince of Wales, acting as regent, some time after sent them a secretary of state’s letter, complaining that the sentence was not fully carried out—the object being to compel a praying for his father—the magistrates applied for instructions to the commissioners of Justiciary, and were told that, having once passed sentence, the court could do nothing more in the case. So the Episcopal meeting-houses in Bailie Fyfe’s, Barrenger’s, Sandilands’, and other closes went on as before.[^[481]]

Aug.

William Mure of Caldwell travelling with a party of friends from Edinburgh to Ross-shire, came the first stage—namely, to the Queensferry—in a coach, and afterwards proceeded on horseback. Writing an account of his journey to his wife, from |1716.| Chanonry, August 30, he says: ‘We came in coach to the Ferry on Friday; and though we were once overturned, yet none of us had any misfortune.’ Probably Mr Mure considered himself as getting off very well with but one overturn in a coach-journey of eleven English miles. He goes on: ‘We came that night to Perth, where the Master of Ross and Lady Betty met us. On Saturday, we came to Dunkeld, and were all night with the Duke of Athole. On Sunday, after sermon, we left the ladies there, and came to the Blair.’ The ladies probably had scruples about Sunday travelling; but Mr Mure, although a man of notedly religious character, appears to have had none. ‘On Monday,’ he adds, ‘we made a long journey, and went to Glenmore, where my Lord Huntly’s fir-woods are. On Tuesday, we came to Kilravock’s house [Kilravock], and yesternight came here, which is the first town in the shire of Ross.’[^[482]] Thus a journey of about 170 miles occupied in all six days.

In April 1722, the king being about to visit Hanover, certain Scottish lords, amongst others, were appointed to attend him. It is intimated in a London paper of April 28,[^[483]] that they set out from Edinburgh for this purpose on the previous Monday, the 23d; and ‘the roads being laid with post-horses, they are expected here as to-morrow.’ That is, the journey would occupy in the way of posting from Monday to Sunday, or seven days. It was one day more than the time occupied in a journey from London to Edinburgh by the Duke of Argyle in September 1715, when he posted down in the utmost haste, with some friends, to take command of the troops for the resistance to the insurgent Earl of Mar.

It appears that about this time there were occasional packet-ships, by which people could travel between Edinburgh and London. In 1720, the Bon Accord, Captain Buchanan, was advertised as to sail for London on the 30th June, having good accommodation for passengers, and ‘will keep the day, goods or no goods.’ Two years later, the ‘Unity packet-boat of Leith’ was in like manner announced as to proceed to London on the 1st September, ‘goods or no goods, wind and weather serving, having good accommodation for passengers, and good entertainment.’ The master to be spoke with in the Laigh Coffee-house.[^[484]] But this mode of transit was occasionally attended with vicissitudes |1716.| not much less vexatious than those of the pious voyager of the Æneid. For example, we learn from a paragraph in an Edinburgh newspaper, on the 15th November 1743, that the Edinburgh and Glasgow packet from London, ‘after having great stress of weather for twenty days, has lately arrived safe at Holy Island, and is soon expected in Leith harbour.’

During the decade 1720–30, return chaises for London, generally with six horses, are occasionally advertised. The small amount of travelling which then prevailed is marked by the fact, that we find such a conveyance announced on the 11th of May to set out homeward on the 15th or 16th, and on the 18th re-advertised as to go on the 2d or 3d of June, no one having come forward in the interval to take advantage of the opportunity. We find, however, in 1732, that a periodical conveyance had at length been attempted. The advertisement states, ‘that the Stage Coach continues to go from the Canongate for London, or any place on the road, every Wednesday fortnight. And if any gentleman want a by-coach, they may call at Alexander Forsyth’s, opposite to the Duke of Queensberry’s Lodging, where the coach stands.’

In May 1734, a comparatively spirited effort in the way of travelling was announced by John Dale and three other persons—namely, a coach to set out towards the end of this week [pleasant indefiniteness!] for London, or any place on the road, to be performed in nine days, or three days sooner than any other coach that travels the road.’

The short space between the two populous towns of Edinburgh and Leith must have been felt as a particularly favourable field for this kind of enterprise; and, accordingly, a ‘Leith stage’ was tried both in 1610 and 1660,[^[485]] but on both occasions failed to receive sufficient encouragement. In July 1722, we are informed that, on the 9th instant, ‘two stage-coaches are to begin to serve betwixt Edinburgh and Leith, and are to go with or without company every hour of the day. They are designed to contain six persons, each paying threepence during the summer, and fourpence during the winter for their fare.’

Sep. 1.

This day met at Edinburgh a set of commissioners appointed under a late act ‘to inquire of the estates of certain traitors, and of popish recusants, and of estates given to superstitious uses, in order to raise money out of them for the use of the public.’ The |1716.| first and most prominent object was to appropriate the lands of the Scottish nobles and gentlemen who had taken part in the late insurrection for the House of Stuart. Four out of the six commissioners were Englishmen, members of the House of Commons, and among these was the celebrated Sir Richard Steele, fresh from the literary glories he had achieved in the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, from his sufferings in the Whig cause under Anne, and the consolatory honours he attained under the new monarch.

It was a matter of course that strangers of such distinction should be honoured in a city which received few such guests; and doubtless the government officials in particular paid them many flattering attentions. But the commissioners very soon found that their business was not an easy or agreeable one. There was in Scotland plenty of hatred to the Jacobite cause; but battling off its adherents at Sheriffmuir, and putting down its seminaries, the Episcopal chapels, was a different thing from seeing an order come from England which was to extinguish the names and fortunes of many old and honourable families, and turn a multitude of women and children out of house and home, and throw them upon the charity of their friends or the public. Most of the unfortunates, too, had connections among the Whigs themselves, with claims upon them for commiseration, if not assistance; and we all know the force of the old Scottish maxim—eternal blessings rest on the nameless man who first spoke it!—that bluid is thicker than water.

It was with no little surprise and no little irritation that these English Whig gentlemen discovered how hard it was to turn the forfeited estates into money, or indeed to make any decent progress at all in the business they came about. The first and most vexatious discovery they made was, that there was a code of law and frame of legal procedure north of the Tweed different from what obtained to the south of it. The act was framed with a regard to the practices of English law, which were wholly unknown and could not be recognised in Scotland. Then as to special impediments—first came the Scotch Court of Exchequer, with a claim under an act of the preceding year, imposing a penalty of five hundred pounds and loss of liferents and whole movables on every suspected man who did not deliver himself up before a certain day: all of the men engaged in the late insurrection had incurred this penalty; the affair came under the Exchequer department; and it was necessary to discriminate between what was forfeited by the one act and what was forfeited by the other. |1716.| There was something more obstructive, however, than even the Scottish Exchequer. The commissioners discovered this in the form of a body called the Court of Session, or, in common language, ‘the Fifteen,’ who sat periodically in Edinburgh, exercising a mysterious influence over property throughout the country, and indulging in certain phrases of marvellous potency, though utterly undreamed of in Southern Britain. Here is how it was. The act had, of course, admitted the preferable claims of the creditors of the traitors, and of those who had claims for marriage and other provisions on their estates. On petitions from these persons—in whose reality the commissioners had evidently a very imperfect faith—this Court of Session had passed what, in their barbarous jargon, they called sequestrations of the said estates, at the same time appointing factors to uplift the rents, for the benefit of the aforesaid persons in the first place, and only the commissioners in the second. What further seemed to the commissioners very strange was, that these factors were all of them men notedly disaffected to the Revolution interest, most of them confidential friends, some even the relatives, of the forfeited persons, and therefore all disposed to make the first department of the account as large, and the second as small, as possible. Nor was even this all, for, as had been pointed out to them by some of the Established clergy of Forfarshire, these factors were persons dangerous to the government. For example, Sir John Carnegie of Pitarrow, factor on the Earl of Southesk’s estate, was the man who, on the synod of Angus uttering a declaration in 1712 for the House of Hanover, had caused it to be burned at the head burgh of the shire. John Lumsdain, who was nominated to the charge of the estates of the Earl of Panmure, had greatly obstructed the establishment of the church in the district, and proved altogether ‘very uneasy to presbyteries and synods.’ Suppose the unruly king of Sweden should land on the east of Scotland, there were all the tenants of those large estates in the obedience of men who would hail his arrival and forward his objects!

The general result was, that the commissioners found themselves stranded in Edinburgh, as powerless as so many porpoises on Cramond sands, only treated with a little more outward respect. One proposal, indeed, they did receive (January 1717), that seemed at first to be a Scottish movement in their favour—namely, an offer from the Lord Advocate (Sir David Dalrymple), with their concurrence, to commence actions in the Court of Session for |1716.| determining the claims of creditors; but, seeing in this only an endless vista of vexatious lawsuits, they declined it, preferring to leave the whole matter to be disposed of by further acts of the legislature.[^[486]]

Sep. 3.

By virtue of the treason-law for Scotland, passed immediately after the Union, the government this day suddenly removed eighty-nine rebel prisoners from Edinburgh to Carlisle, to be there tried by English juries, it being presumed that there was no chance of impartiality in Scotland. The departing troop was followed by a wail of indignant lament from the national heart. Jacobites pointing to it with mingled howls and jeers as a proof of the enslavement of Scotland—Whigs carried off by irresistible sympathy, and unable to say a word in its defence—attested how much the government did by such acts to retard the desirable amalgamation of the two nations. Under the warm feeling of the moment, a subscription was opened to provide legal defences for the unfortunate Scotsmen, and contributions came literally from all sorts and conditions of men. Even the Goodman of the Tolbooth gave his pound. The very government officials in some instances were unable to resist an appeal so thrilling.

The list includes the names of nineteen of the nobility—namely, Errol, Haddington, Rosebery, Morton, Hopetoun, Dundonald, Moray, Rutherglen, Cassillis, Traquair, March, Galloway, Kinnoull, Eglintoune, Elibank, Colville, Blantyre, Coupar, and Deskford, all for considerable sums. Amongst other entries are the following: Lady Grizel Cochrane, £6, 9s.; the Commissioners of Excise, £7, 10s. 6d.; Mr George Drummond, Goodman of the Tolbooth [Edinburgh], £1; John M‘Farlane, Writer to the Signet, 10s. 9d.; the Merchant Company, £5; the Incorporation of Goldsmiths, £5; the Incorporation of Tailors, £5; the Incorporation of Chirurgeons, £5; the four Incorporations of Leith (aggregate), £53, 16s. 7d.; the Episcopal Clergy of Edinburgh, £8, 8s.; Magistrates of Haddington (and collected by them), £28; Society of Periwigmakers in Edinburgh, £24, 4s. 3d.; Inhabitants of Musselburgh, Inveresk, and Fisherrow, £20; collected by Lady Grizel Cochrane, at Dumbarton, £30; Colonel Charteris’s lady, £5, 7s. 6d.; collected by Lady Grizel Cochrane, from sundry persons specified, £180.[^[487]]

1716.

To do the government justice, the rebel prisoners were treated mildly, not one of them being done to death, though several were transported. An attempt was made, two years later, by a commission of Oyer and Terminer sent into Scotland, to bring a number of other Jacobite delinquents to punishment. It sat at Perth, Dundee, and Kelso, without being able to obtain true bills: only at Cupar was it so far effective as to get bills against Lord George Murray, of the Athole family; Sir James Sharpe, representative of the too famous archbishop; Sir David Threipland of Fingask; and a son of Moir of Stonywood; but it was to no purpose, for the trials of these gentlemen were never proceeded with.[^[488]]

Oct. 2.

Captain John Cayley (son of Cornelius Cayley of the city of York), one of the commissioners of his majesty’s customs, was a conspicuous member of that little corps of English officials whom the new arrangements following on the Union had sent down to Scotland. He was a vain gay young man, pursuing the bent of his irregular passions with little prudence or discretion. Amongst his acquaintance in Edinburgh was a pretty young married woman—the daughter of Colonel Charles Straiton, well known as a highly trusted agent of the Jacobite party—the wife of John M‘Farlane, Writer to the Signet, who appears to have at one time been man of business to Lord Lovat. Cayley had made himself notedly intimate with Mr and Mrs M‘Farlane, often entertained them at his country-house, and was said to have made some valuable presents to the lady. To what extent there was truth in the scandals which connected the names of Commissioner Cayley and Mrs M‘Farlane, we do not know; but it is understood that Cayley, on one occasion, spoke of the lady in terms which, whether founded in truth or otherwise, infinitely more condemned himself. Perhaps drink made him rash; perhaps vanity made him assume a triumph which was altogether imaginary; perhaps he desired to realise some wild plan of his inflamed brain, and brought on his punishment in self-defence. There were all sorts of theories on the subject, and little positively known to give any of them much superiority over another in point of plausibility. A gentleman,[^[489]] writing from Edinburgh the second day after, says: ‘I can hardly offer you anything but matter of fact, which was—that |1716.| upon Tuesday last he came to her lodging after three o’clock, where he had often been at tea and cards: she did not appear till she had changed all her clothes to her very smock. Then she came into a sort of drawing-room, and from that conveyed him into her own bedchamber. After some conversation there, she left him in it; went out to a closet which lay at some distance from the chamber; [thence] she brought in a pair of charged pistols belonging to Mr Cayley himself, which Mr M‘Farland, her husband, had borrowed from him some days before, when he was about to ride to the country. What further expressions there were on either side I know not; but she fired one pistol, which only made a slight wound on the shackle-bone of his left hand, and slanted down through the floor—which I saw. The other she fired in aslant on his right breast, so as the bullet pierced his heart, and stuck about his left shoulder-blade behind. She went into the closet, [and] laid by the pistols, he having presently fallen dead on the floor. She locked the door of her room upon the dead body, [and] sent a servant for her husband, who was in a change-house with company, being about four afternoon. He came, and gave her what money he had in the house, and conducted her away; and after he had absented himself for about a day, he appeared, and afterwards declared before the Lords of Justiciary he knew nothing about it till she sent for him.... I saw his corps after he was cereclothed, and saw his blood where he lay on the floor for twenty-four hours after he died, just as he fell, so as it was a difficulty to straight him.’[^[490]]

Miss Margaret Swinton, a grand-aunt of Sir Walter Scott, used to relate to him and other listeners to her fireside-tales,[^[491]] that, when she was a little girl, being left at home at Swinton House by herself one Sunday, indisposed, while all the rest of the family were at church, she was drawn by curiosity into the dining-room, and there saw a beautiful female, whom she took for ‘an enchanted queen,’ pouring out tea at a table. The lady seemed equally surprised as herself, but presently recovering self-possession, addressed the little intruder kindly, in particular desiring her to speak first to her mother by herself of what she had seen. Margaret looked for a moment out of the window, and, when she turned about, the enchanted queen was gone! On the return of the family, she spoke to her mother of the vision, was praised for her discretion, and desired to keep the matter from all other |1716.| persons—an injunction she strictly followed. The stranger was Mrs M‘Farlane, who, being a relative of the family, had here received a temporary shelter after the slaughter of Captain Cayley. She had vanished from Margaret Swinton’s sight through a panel-door into a closet which had been arranged for her concealment. The family always admired the sagacity shewn in asking Margaret to speak to her mother of what she had seen, but to speak to her alone in the first instance, as thus the child’s feelings found a safe vent. It will be remembered that Scott has introduced the incident as part of his fiction of Peveril of the Peak.

In the ensuing February, criminal letters were raised against Mrs M‘Farlane by the Lord Advocate, Sir David Dalrymple, and the father and brother of the deceased, reciting that ‘John Cayley having, on the 2d of October last, come to the house of John M‘Farlane in order to make a civil visit, she did then and there shoot a pistol at John Cayley, and thereby mortally wounded him.’ Not appearing to stand her trial, she was declared outlaw.[^[492]] Sir Walter Scott states it as certain, that she was afterwards enabled to return to Edinburgh, where she lived and died;[^[493]] but I must own that some good evidence would be required to substantiate such a statement.

The romantic nature of the incident, and the fact of the sufferer being an Englishman, caused the story of Mrs M‘Farlane to be famed beyond the bounds of Scotland. Pope, writing about the time to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, breaks out thus: ‘Let them say I am romantic; so is every one said to be that either admires a fine thing or does one. On my conscience, as the world goes, ’tis hardly worth anybody’s while to do one for the honour of it. Glory, the only pay of generous actions, is now as ill-paid as other just debts; and neither Mrs Macfarland for immolating her lover, nor you for returning to your lord, must ever hope to be compared to Lucretia or Portia.’[^[494]]

Oct. 20.

A newspaper which enjoyed a temporary existence in Edinburgh[^[495]]—each number consisting of five small leaves—is vociferous with the celebrations of the anniversary of King George’s coronation in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Perth, and other Scottish towns. Ten days later, it proclaims with equal vehemence the |1716.| rejoicings in the same places in honour of the birthday of the Prince of Wales. Paradings and firings of musketry by the troops, drinkings of loyal toasts from covered tables at the Cross, bonfires, ringings of bells, form the chief demonstrations. And it is notable that in Dundee, Brechin, and Aberdeen, which we know to have been in those days full of Jacobites, the symptoms of loyalty to Hanover are by many degrees the most ostentatious, there being the more need of course for the friends of the reigning house to exert themselves. In Dundee (where in reality the Jacobites were probably two to one), ‘everybody looked cheerful, and vied who should outdo other in rejoicing, except some few of our Jacobite neighbours, who, being like owls, loved darkness; but care will be taken that they spared not their money by being singular.’

Loyalty is altogether a paradox, appearances with it being usually in the inverse ratio of its actual existence, and the actuality in the inverse ratio of the deserving. No monarch ever enjoyed so much of it as Charles I. Since the days of his sons, when the bulk of the people of Scotland felt themselves under a civil and ecclesiastical tyranny, the demonstrations at market-crosses on royal birthdays had not been so violent as now, when a new family, about whom nobody cared or could care, occupied the throne. Nor did these again become equally loud till the time of George III., when Wilkes prosecutions, losses of American colonies, and unjustifiable wars with French reformers, made loyalty again a needful article, and king’s-health-drinkings in the highest degree desirable. On the other hand, when rulers are truly worthy of a faithful affection on the part of their people—as in our happy age—one never hears the word loyalty mentioned.

All through the reign of the first George and a great part of that of his successor, the newspaper estimate of human character seems to have had but one element—the attachment of the individual to ‘our present happy establishment in church and state.’ At the end of every paragraph announcing a choice of magistrates in Scotland, it is pointedly stated that they are all friends of the Hanover succession. Such things are, of course, simply the measure of the extent of hatred and indifferency with which the happy establishment and dynasty were regarded, as well as of the danger in which it was the fate of both to exist, from the eagerness of many to get them destroyed.

The same newspaper, while telling us of such grave things as Scottish nobles and gentlemen waiting in the Tower and in |1716.| Carlisle Castle for death or for life, as an incensed government might please to dictate, gives us other notices, reminding us of the affecting truism breathed from every sheet of the kind in our own day, that all the affairs of human life, the serious, the comic, the important, the trivial, are constantly going on shoulder to shoulder together. We glance from a hard-wrung pardon for a dozen rebels, or an account of the execution of Sergeant Ainslie, hung over the wall of Edinburgh Castle for an attempt to render the fortress up to the Jacobites—to the let of the lands of Biggarshiels, which ‘sow above eighty bolls of oats,’ and have a good ‘sheepgang’ besides—or to David Sibbald’s vessel, the Anne of Kirkcaldy, which now lies in Leith harbour for the benefit of all who wish to transport themselves or their goods to London, and is to sail with all expedition—or to the fact that yesterday the Duke of Hamilton left Edinburgh for his country-seat, attended by a retinue of gentlemen—or to an announcement of Allan Ramsay’s forthcoming poem of the Morning Interview—for all these things come jostling along together in one month. Nor may the following quaint advertisement be overlooked:

‘A young gentlewoman, lately come from London, cuts hair extremely well, dresses in the newest fashion, has the newest fashioned patterns for beads, ruffles, &c., and mends lace very fine, and does all sort of plain work; also teaches young gentlewomen to work, and young women for their work. She does all manner of quilting and stitching. All the ladies that come to her on Monday and Thursday, have their hair cut for sixpence; at any other time, as reasonably as any in town; and dresses the beads on wires cheaper than any one. She lodges in the Luckenbooths, over against the Tolbooth, at one Mr Palmer’s, a periwig-maker, up one pair of stairs.’[^[496]]

Since the Revolution, there had been a constant and eager pressure towards commerce and manufactures as a means of saving the nation from the wretched poverty with which it was afflicted. But as yet there had been scarcely the slightest movement towards the improvement of another great branch of the national economy—namely, the culture of the ground. The country was unenclosed; cultivation was only in patches near houses; farm establishments were clusters of hovels; the rural people, among whom the distinction of master and servant was |1716.| little marked, lived in the most wretched manner. A large part of rent was paid in produce and by services. Old systems of husbandry reigned without disturbance. Little had yet been done to facilitate communications in the country by roads, as indeed little was required, for all goods were carried on horseback.

The first notable attempt at planting was by Thomas, sixth Earl of Haddington, about the time of the Union. From a love of common country sports, this young nobleman was called away by his wife, a sister of the first Earl of Hopetoun, who desired to see him engaged in planting, for which she had somehow acquired a taste. The domain they had to work upon was a tract of low ground surrounding their mansion of Tyninghame, composing part of the coast of the Firth of Forth between North Berwick and Dunbar. Their first experiment was upon a tract of about three hundred acres, where it was believed that no trees could grow on account of the sea-air. To the marvel of all, Lord Haddington included, the Binning Wood, as it was called, soon became a beautiful sylvan domain, as it continues to this day. To pursue his lordship’s own recital: ‘I now took pleasure in planting and improving; but, because I did not like the husbandry practised in this country, I got some farmers from Dorsetshire. This made me divide my ground; but, as I knew the coldness of the climate, and the bad effects the winds had, I made stripes of planting between every enclosure, some forty, fifty, or sixty feet broad, as I thought best.... From these Englishmen we came to the knowledge of sowing and the management of grass-seeds. After making the enclosures, a piece of ground that carried nothing but furze was planted; and my wife, seeing the unexpected success of her former projects, went on to another.... There was a warren of four hundred acres, vastly sandy [near the mouth of the Tyne]. A gentleman who had lived some time at Hamburg, one day walking with her, said that he had seen fine trees growing upon such a soil. She took the hint, and planted about sixty or seventy acres of warren. All who saw it at the time thought that labour and trees were thrown away; but to their amazement, they saw them prosper as well as in the best grounds. The whole field was dead sand, with scarce any grass on it; nor was it only so poor on the surface, but continued so some yards down.’[^[497]] Such was the origin of the famous Tyninghame Woods, which now present eight hundred acres of the finest timber in |1716.| the country. By means of his Dorsetshire farmers, too, Lord Haddington became the introducer of the practice of sowing clover and other grass-seeds.

Another early improver of the surface was Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk (second baronet of the title), whose merits, moreover, are the more remarkable, as his operations took place in a remote part of the north. ‘In my early days,’ says he, ‘soon after the Union, husbandry and manufactures were in low esteem. Turnips [raised] in fields for cattle by the Earl of Rothes and very few others, were wondered at. Wheat was almost confined to East Lothian. Enclosures were few, and planting very little; no repair of roads, all bad, and very few wheel-carriages. In 1720, I could not, in chariot, get my wife from Aberdeen to Monymusk. Colonel Middleton [was] the first who used carts or wagons there; and he and I [were] the first benorth Tay who had hay, except very little at Gordon Castle. Mr Lockhart of Carnwath, author of Memoirs, [was] the first that attempted raising or feeding cattle to size.’[^[498]]

‘By the indulgence of a very worthy father,’ says Sir Archibald, ‘I was allowed [in] 1716, though then very young, to begin to enclose and plant, and provide and prepare nurseries. At that time there was not one acre upon the whole estate enclosed, nor any timber upon it but a few elm, sycamore, and ash, about a small kitchen-garden adjoining to the house [^[499]]

By Sir Archibald’s exertions, Monymusk became in due time a beautiful domain, well cultivated and productive, checkered with fine woods, in which are now some of the largest trees to be seen in that part of Scotland.

There is reason to believe that the very first person who was effective in introducing any agricultural improvements into Scotland was an English lady. It was in 1706—the year before the Union—that Elizabeth Mordaunt, daughter of the famous Earl of Peterborough, married the eldest son of the Duke of Gordon, and came to reside in Scotland. A spark of her father’s enterprising genius made her desire to see her adopted country put on a better aspect, and she took some trouble to effect the object, by bringing down to some of her father-in-law’s estates English ploughs, with men to work them, and who were acquainted with the business of fallowing—heretofore utterly unknown in Scotland. Her ladyship instructed the people of her neighbourhood in the proper way of making hay, of which they were previously ignorant; and set an example in the planting of muirs and the laying out of gardens. Urged by her counsels, during the first twenty years of her residence in Scotland, two Morayland proprietors, Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonston, and a gentleman named Dunbar, and one Ross-shire laird, Sir William Gordon of Invergordon, set about the draining and planting of their estates, and the introduction of improved modes of culture, including the sowing of French |1716.| grasses.[^[500]] It is rather remarkable that Scotland should have received her first impulse towards agricultural improvements from England, which we have in recent times seen, as it were, sitting at her feet as a pupil in all the various particulars of a superior rural economy.

Nov.

We are informed that, after the close of the Rebellion, owing to the number of people cast loose thereby from all the ordinary social bonds, ‘thefts, robberies, rapines, and depredations became so common [in the Highlands and their borders], that they began to be looked upon as neither shameful nor dishonourable, and people of a station somewhat above the vulgar, did sometimes countenance, encourage, nay, head gangs of banditti in those detestable villanies.’ The tenants of great landlords who had joined the Whig cause were particularly liable to despoliation, and to this extent the system bore the character of a kind of guerilla warfare. Such a landlord was the Duke of Montrose, whose lands lying chiefly in the western parts of Perth, Stirling, and Dumbarton shires, were peculiarly exposed to this kind of rapine. His Grace, moreover, had so acted towards Rob Roy, as to create in that personage a deep sense of injury, which the Highland moral code called for being wreaked out in every available method. Rob had now constituted himself the head of the broken men of his district, and having great sagacity and address, he was by no means a despicable enemy.

At the date noted, the duke’s factor, Mr Graham of Killearn, came in the usual routine, to collect his Grace’s Martinmas rents at a place called Chapel-eroch, about half-way between Buchanan House and the village of Drymen. The farmers were gathered together, and had paid in about two hundred and sixty pounds, when Rob Roy, with twenty followers, descended upon the spot from the hills of Buchanan. Having planted his people about the house, he coolly entered, took Mr Graham prisoner, and possessed himself of the money that had been collected, as well as the account-books, telling the factor that he would answer for all to the duke, as soon as his Grace should pay him three thousand four hundred merks, being the amount of what he professed himself to have been wronged of by the havoc committed by the duke upon his house at Craigrostan, and subsequently by the burning |1716.| of his house at Auchinchisallen by the government troops. Mr Graham was permitted to write to the duke, stating the case, and telling that he was to remain a prisoner till his Grace should comply with Rob’s demands, with ‘hard usage if any party are sent after him.’

Mr Graham was marched about by Rob Roy from place to place, ‘under a very uneasy kind of restraint,’ for a week, when at length the outlaw, considering that he could not mend matters, but might only provoke more hostility by keeping his prisoner any longer, liberated him with his books and papers, but without the money.

Part of the duke’s rents being paid in kind, there were girnels or grain stores near Chapel-eroch, into which the farmers of the district used to render their quotas of victual, according to custom. ‘Whenever Rob and his followers were pressed with want, a party was detached to execute an order of their commanders, for taking as much victual out of these girnels as was necessary for them at the time.’ In this district, ‘the value of the thefts and depredations committed upon some lands were equal to the yearly rent of the lands, and the persons of small heritors were taken, carried off, and detained prisoners till they redeemed themselves for a sum of money, especially if they had at elections for parliament voted for the government man.’[^[501]]

The duke got his farmers armed, and was preparing for an inroad on the freebooter’s quarters, when, in an unguarded moment, they were beset by a party of Macgregors under Rob’s nephew, Gregor Macgregor of Glengyle, and turned adrift without any of their military accoutrements. The duke renewed the effort with better success, for, marching into Balquhidder with some of his people, he took Rob Roy prisoner. But here good-fortune and native craft befriended the outlaw. Being carried along on horseback, bound by a belt to the man who had him in charge, he contrived so to work on the man’s feelings as to induce him to slip the bond, as they were crossing a river, when, diving under the stream, he easily made his escape. Sir Walter Scott heard this story recited by the grandson of Rob’s friend, and worked it up with his usual skill in the novel bearing the outlaw’s name.

While these operations were going on, the commissioners on the Forfeited Estates were coolly reckoning up the little patrimony |1716.| of Rob Roy as part of the public spoil of the late rebellion. It is felt as a strange and uncouth association that Steele, of Tatler and Spectator memory—kind-hearted, thoughtless Dicky Steele—should have been one of the persons who administered in the affairs of the cateran of Craigrostan. In the final report of the commissioners, we have the pitiful account of the public gains from the ruin of poor Rob, Inversnaid being described as of the yearly value of £53, 16s. 8½d., and the total realised from it of purchase-money and interest, £958, 10s. There is all possible reason to believe, that it would have been a much more advantageous as well as humane arrangement for the public, to allow these twelve miles of Highland mountains to remain in the hands of their former owner.

1717. Jan.

Wonder-seekers were at this time regaled with a brochure stating how Mr John Gardner, minister near Elgin, fell into a trance, and lay as dead for two days, in the sight of many; and how, being put into a coffin, and carried to his parish church in order to be buried, he was heard at the last moment to make a noise in the coffin; which being opened, he was found alive, ‘to the astonishment of all present.’ Being then carried home, and put into a warm bed, he in a little time coming to himself, ‘related many strange things which he had seen in the other world.’ In the same publication was a sermon which the worthy man had preached after his recovery.

Apr. 29.

Mr Gordon of Ellon, a rich merchant of Edinburgh, lived in a villa to the north of the city, with a family composed of a wife, two sons, and a daughter, the children being all of tender age.[^[502]] He had for a tutor to his two boys a licentiate of the church, named Robert Irvine, who was considered of respectable attainments, but remarked for a somewhat melancholic disposition. A gloomy view of predestination, derived from a work by Flavel, had taken hold of Irvine’s mind, which, perhaps, had some native infirmity, ready to be acted upon by external circumstances to dismal results.

The tutor, having cast eyes of affection upon a servant-girl in his employer’s house, was tempted, one day, to take some liberties |1717.| with her, which were observed and reported by his two pupils. He was reprimanded by Mr Gordon for this breach of decorum, which, on an apology from him, was forgiven. The incident sunk into the man’s sensitive nature, and he brooded upon it till it assumed proportions beyond the reality, and raised in his heart an insane thirst for revenge. For three days did the wretch revolve the idea of cutting off Mr Gordon’s three children, and on the day here noted he found an opportunity of partially accomplishing his morbid desire. It was Sunday, and Mr and Mrs Gordon went to spend the latter part of the day with a friend in the city, taking their little daughter along with them. Irvine, left with the two boys, took them out for a walk along the then broomy slope where St Andrew Square and York Place are now situated. The children ran about gathering flowers and pursuing butterflies, while this fiend-transformed man sat whetting a knife wherewith to cut short their days. Calling the two boys to him, he upbraided them with their informing upon him, and told them that they must suffer for it. They ran off, but he easily overtook and seized them. Then keeping one down upon the grass with his knee, he cut the other’s throat; after which he despatched in like manner the remaining one.

The insane nature of the action was shewn by its being committed in daylight in an open place, exposed to the view of multitudes who might chance to look that way from the adjacent city. A gentleman, enjoying his evening walk upon the Castle Hill, did obtain a tolerably perfect view of the incident, and immediately gave an alarm. Irvine, who had already attempted to cut his own throat, but unsuccessfully, ran from his pursuers to the Water of Leith, thinking to drown himself there; but he was taken, and brought in a cart to prison, and there chained down to the floor, as if he had been a wild beast.

There was a summary process of law for murderers taken as he was with the red hand. It was only necessary to bring him next day before the judge of the district, and have sentence passed upon him. In this case, the judge was the Baron Bailie of Broughton, a hamlet now overwhelmed in the spreading streets of the New Town of Edinburgh, but whose court-house existed so lately as 1827.[^[503]] Till the abolition of heritable jurisdictions in 1747, the bailie of the Baron of Broughton could arraign a |1717.| criminal before a jury of his own people, and do the highest judgment upon him. Irvine was tried by the bailie upon the 30th of April, and received sentence of death. During the brief interval before execution, which was but a day, the unhappy wretch was addressed by several clergymen on the heinousness of his crime, and the need of repentance, and, after a time, he began to exhibit signs of contrition. The bloody clothes of the poor children being then exhibited before him, he broke out in tears and groans, as if a new light was shed upon his mind, and he had been able to see his offence in its true character. He then sent a message to the bereaved parents, beseeching their Christian forgiveness to a dying man; and this they very kindly gave.

Irvine was next day hanged at Greenside, having first had his hands hacked off, and stuck upon the gibbet by the knife with which he had committed the murder. His body was thrown into a neighbouring quarry-hole.[^[504]]

June 10.

Occurred this day at Edinburgh a thunder-storm, attended with such remarkable effects, that an account of it was published on a broadside. It was little, perhaps, that it frightened the people off the streets, caused the garrison at the Castle to look well to the powder-magazine, and killed a man and a woman at Lasswade. What attracted particular attention was the fate of a tavern company at Canonmills, where two barbers from the Lawnmarket had come to celebrate the Pretender’s birthday over a bottle of ale. They had just drunk to the health of their assumed monarch—one of the company had remarked with a curse how the bells were not rung or the Castle guns fired on ‘the king’s’ birthday—when a great thunder-clap broke over the house. ‘The people on earth,’ cried one of the party, ‘will not adore their king; but you hear the Almighty is complimenting him with a volley from heaven.’ At that moment came a second stroke, which instantaneously killed one of the barbers and a woman, and scorched a gentleman so severely that he died in a few hours. The rest of the company, being amazed, sent to Edinburgh for doctors to take blood of the gentleman; but the doctors told them they could do no good. They tried to let blood of him, but found none. ‘Their bodies were as soft as wool.’

1717.

‘There is none more blind than them that will not see: these men may see, if they wilfully will not shut their eyes, that Providence many times hath blasted their enterprises.... These men were contending for that which did not concern them; they were drinking, cursing, and passing reflections—which in all probability hath offended the King of Heaven to throw down his thunder, &c., a warning to all blasphemers, drunkards, swearers, licentious livers, and others.’[^[505]] It is a little awkward for this theory, that among the killed was but one of the Jacobite barbers, the other and equally guilty one escaping.

June.

The capture of the fugitate Rob Roy seeming now an object worthy of the regard of the Duke of Athole, a negotiation took place between them, which ended in Rob being taken into custody of a strong party at Logierait, the place where his Grace usually exercised his justiciary functions, and where his prison accordingly was situated. The outlaw felt he had been deceived, but it did not appear that he could help himself. Meanwhile, the duke sent intelligence of the capture of Rob to Edinburgh, desiring a company of troops to be sent to receive him. Ultimately, however, the duke countermanded the military, finding he could send a sufficiently strong party of his own people to hand over the outlaw to justice.

While preparations were making for his transmission to the Lowlands, Rob entertained his guards with whisky, and easily gained their confidence. One day, when they were all very hearty, he made a business to go to the door to deliver a letter for his wife to a man who was waiting for it, and to whom he pretended he had some private instructions to give. One of the guard languidly accompanied him, as it were for form’s sake, having no fear of his breaking off. Macgregor was thus allowed to lounge about outside for a few minutes, till at last getting near his horse, he suddenly mounted, and was off to Stirlingshire like the wind.[^[506]]

To have set two dukes upon thief-catching within a twelvemonth or so, and escaped out of the clutches of both, was certainly a |1717.| curious fate for a Highland cateran, partisan warrior, or whatever name he may be called by.

Nov.

Sir Richard Steele appears not to have attended the business of the Forfeited Estates Commission in Edinburgh during the year 1716, but given his time, as usual, to literary and political pursuits in London, and to a project in which he had become concerned for bringing fish ‘alive and in good health’ to the metropolis. It was reported that he would get no pay for the first year, as having performed no duty; but those who raised this rumour must have had a very wrong notion of the way that public affairs were then administered. He tells his wife, May 22, 1717, in one of those most amorous of marital letters of his which Leigh Hunt has praised so much, that ‘five hundred pounds for the time the commission was in Scotland is already ordered me.’ It is strange to reflect that payment of coach-horses, which he, as a man of study, rarely used, and condemned as vain superfluities, was among the things on which was spent the property wrung out of the vitals of the poor Scotch Jacobites.

When the second year’s session of the commissioners was about to commence in September 1717, Sir Harry Houghton appears to have proposed that Steele should go at the first, in which case the baronet proposed to relieve him in November; in case he did not go now, he would have to go in November, and stay till the end of January. He dallied on in London, only scheming about his journey, which, it must be admitted, was not an easy one in 1717. He informs his wife: ‘I alter the manner of taking my journey every time I think of it. My present disposition is to borrow what they call a post-chaise of the Duke of Roxburgh [Secretary of State for Scotland]. It is drawn by one horse, runs on two wheels, and is led by a servant riding by. This rider and leader is to be Mr Willmot, formerly a carrier, who answers for managing on a road to perfection, by keeping tracks, and the like.’ Next it was: ‘I may possibly join with two or three gentlemen, and hire a coach for ourselves.’ On the 30th of September, he tells Lady Steele: ‘The commission in Scotland stands still for want of me at Edinburgh. It is necessary there should be four there, and there are now but two; three others halt on the road, and will not go forward till I have passed by York. I have therefore taken places in the York coach for Monday next.’ On the 20th of October: ‘After many resolutions and irresolutions concerning my way of going, I go, God willing, to-morrow morning, |1717.| by the Wakefield coach, on my way to York and Edinburgh.’ And now he did go, for his next letter is dated on the 23d from Stamford, to which place two days’ coaching had brought him.

An odd but very characteristic circumstance connected with Steele’s first journey to Scotland was, that he took a French master with him, in order that the long idle days and evenings of travelling might be turned to some account in his acquisition of that language, which he believed would be useful to him on his return. ‘He lies in the same room with me; and the loquacity which is usual at his age, and inseparable from his nation, at once contributes to my purpose, and makes him very agreeable.’

Steele was in Edinburgh on the 5th of November, and we know that about the 9th he set out on his return to London, because on the 11th he writes to his wife from Ayton on the third day of his journey, one (a Sunday) having been spent in inaction on the road. ‘I hope,’ says he, ‘God willing, to be at London, Saturday come se’ennight:’ that is to say, the journey was to take a fortnight. In accordance with this view of the matter, we find him writing on Friday the 15th from Pearce Bridge, in the county of Durham, ‘with my limbs much better than usual after my seven days’ journey from Edinburgh towards London.’ He tells on this occasion: ‘You cannot imagine the civilities and honours I had done me there, and [I] never lay better, ate or drank better, or conversed with men of better sense, than there.’[^[507]]

Brief as his visit had been, he was evidently pleased with the men he met with in the Scottish capital. All besides officials must have felt that he came about a business of malign aspect towards their country; but his name was an illustrious one in British literature, he was personally good-natured, and they could separate the great essayist from the Whig partisan and servant of the ministry. Allan Ramsay would be delighted to see him in his shop ‘opposite to Niddry’s Wynd head.’ Thomson, then a youth at college, would steal a respectful look at him as he stood amongst his friends at the Cross. From ‘Alexander Pennecuik, gentleman,’ a bard little known to fame, he received a set of complimentary verses,[^[508]] ending thus:

‘Scotia....

Grief more than age hath furrowèd her brow,

She sobs her sorrows, yet she smiles on you;

Tears from her crystal lambics do distil,

With throbbing breast she dreads th’ approaching ill,

Yet still she loves you, though you come to kill,

In midst of fears and wounds, which she doth feel,

Kisses the hurting hand, smiles on the wounding Steele.’

1718.

Sir Richard spent part of the summer of 1718 in Edinburgh, in attendance upon the business of the commission. We find him taking a furnished house for the half-year beginning on the 15th of May (the Whitsunday term in Scotland), from Mr James Anderson, the editor of the Diplomata Scotiæ. But on the 29th July he had not come to take possession: neither could he say when he would arrive, till his ‘great affair’ was finished. He promised immediately thereupon to take his horses for Scotland, ‘though I do not bring my coach, by reason of my wife’s inability to go with me.’ ‘I shall,’ he adds, ‘want the four-horse stable for my saddle-horses.’

He appears to have taken the same house for the same period in 1719, and to have revisited Scotland in the same manner in 1720, when he occupied the house of Mr William Scott, professor of Greek in the Edinburgh University.[^[509]] There is a letter to him from Mr James Anderson in February 1721, thanking him for the interest he had taken in forwarding a scheme of the writer, to induce the government to purchase his collection of historical books. Steele was again residing in Edinburgh in October 1721, when we find him in friendly intercourse with Mr Anderson. ‘Just before I received yours,’ he says on one occasion, ‘I sent a written message to Mr Montgomery, advising that I designed the coach [Steele’s own carriage?] should go to your house, to take in your galaxy, and afterwards call for his star:’ pleasant allusions these probably to some party of pleasure in which the female members of Mr Anderson’s and Mr Montgomery’s families were to be concerned. In the ensuing month, he writes to Mr Anderson from the York Buildings Office in London, regarding an application he had had from a poor woman named Margaret Gow. He could not help her with her petition; but he sent a small bill representing money of his own for her relief. ‘This trifle,’ he says, ‘in her housewifely hands, will make cheerful her numerous family at Collingtown.’[^[510]]

These are meagre particulars regarding Steele’s visits to |1718.| Scotland, but at least serviceable in illustrating his noted kind-heartedness.

‘Kind Richy Spec, the friend of a’ distressed,’

as he is called by Allan Ramsay, who doubtless made his personal acquaintance at this time.

There is a traditionary anecdote of Steele’s visits to Scotland, which has enough of truth-likeness to be entitled to preservation. It is stated that, in one of his journeys northward, soon after he had crossed the Border, near Annan, he observed a shepherd resting on a hillside and reading a book. He and his companions rode up, and one of them asked the man what he was reading. It proved to be the Bible. ‘And what do you learn from this book?’ asked Sir Richard. ‘I learn from it the way to heaven.’ ‘Very well,’ replied the knight, ‘we are desirous of going to the same place, and wish you would shew us the way.’ Then the shepherd, turning about, pointed to a tall and conspicuous object on an eminence at some miles’ distance, and said: ‘Weel, gentlemen, ye maun just gang by that tower.’ The party, surprised and amused, demanded to know how the tower was called. The shepherd answered: ‘It is the Tower of Repentance.’

It was so in verity. Some centuries ago, a Border cavalier, in a fit of remorse, had built a tower, to which he gave the name of Repentance. It lies near Hoddam House, in the parish of Cummertrees, rendered by its eminent situation a conspicuous object to all the country round.

We are informed by Richard Shiels that Steele, while in Scotland, had interviews with a considerable number of the Presbyterian clergy, with the view of inducing them to agree to a union of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches—a ‘devout imagination,’ which one would have thought a very few such interviews would have been required to dispel. He was particularly struck with the singular and original character of James Hart, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, who is universally admitted to have been an excellent man, as he was a most attractive preacher. That strange enthusiast, Mrs Elizabeth West, speaks of a discourse she once heard from him on a passage in Canticles: ‘The king hath brought me into his chambers; we will be glad,’ where he held forth, she says, ‘on the sweet fellowship Christ and believers have together.’ ‘Oh,’ she adds, ‘but this was a soul-refreshing sermon to me!’ What had most impressed the English moralist was the contrast between the good-humour and |1718.| benevolence of Hart in his private character, and the severe style in which he launched forth in the pulpit on the subject of human nature, and on the frightful punishments awaiting the great mass of mankind in another state of existence. Steele called him on this account ‘the Hangman of the Gospel.’[^[511]]

The only other recollection of Steele in Edinburgh which has ever come under the notice of the author, represents him, characteristically, as assembling all the eccentric-looking mendicants of the Scottish capital in a tavern in Lady Stair’s Close, and there pleasing the whimsical taste of himself and one or two friends by witnessing their happiness in the enjoyment of an abundant feast, and observing all their various humours and oddities. Shiels also relates this circumstance, and adds that Steele afterwards confessed he had drunk in enough of native drollery to compose a comedy.

1717. Nov.

Lord Grange tells us, in his Diary, of a woman in humble life, residing in the Potterrow in Edinburgh, who had religious experiences reminding us of those of St Theresa and Antonia Bourignon, but consonant with orthodox Presbyterianism. Being taken, along with Mr Logan, the minister of Culross, to see her at ‘Lady Aytoun’s, at the back of the College,’ he found her a woman between thirty and forty. At the communion in Leith, a month ago, she had striven to dwell upon the thought of Christ, and came to have ‘clear uptakings of his sufferings.’ She saw him on the cross, and his deserted sepulchre, ‘as plainly as if she had been actually present when these things happened, though there was not any visible representation thereof made to her bodily eyes. She also got liberty to speak to him, and ask several questions at him, to which she got answers, as if one had spoken to her audibly, though there was no audible voice.’ Lord Grange admits that all this was apt to look like enthusiasm or delusion; but ‘far be it from me to say it is delusion.’ Being once at a communion in Kirkcaldy, ‘it was born in upon her—“Arise and eat, for thou hast a journey to make, a Jordan to pass through.”’ In passing across the Firth of Forth that afternoon, she was upset into the water, but sustained till a boat came to her rescue.

The pious judge seems to have desired much to keep up acquaintance with Jean Brown—for such was her name—and he went several times to see her at her little shop; but the place |1717.| was so much crowded with ‘children and people coming in to buy such things as she sells,’ that his wish was frustrated. ‘Afterwards,’ he tells us, ‘I employed her husband

1718.

Immediately after the Union, the shrewd-witted people of Glasgow saw the opportunity which was afforded them of making a profitable trade with the American colonies. They had as yet no vessels of their own, and little means of purchasing cargoes; but diligence, frugality, and patience made up for all deficiencies. There is scarcely anything in our national history more truly interesting than the early efforts of Glasgow in commerce. Her first ventures to Maryland and Virginia were in vessels chartered from Whitehaven. In each vessel, filled with goods, there went a supercargo, whose simple instructions were to sell as many as he could for tobacco, and return home as soon as he had sold all, or had got enough of the plant to fill his vessel, whether the goods were all sold or not, bringing home with him any that remained unsold. In this cautious way were the foundations of the wondrous wealth of Glasgow laid. It was not till now, eleven years after the Union, that the first vessel belonging to Glasgow crossed the Atlantic.

By that time, much of the tobacco-trade had come into the hands of Glasgow merchants. Bristol, Liverpool, and Whitehaven, which had heretofore been the great entrepôts of the trade, opened their eyes with some little surprise when they began to find Glasgow underselling them in this article even among their own retailers. It was the mere frugality of the Scottish traders which gave them this advantage. But the jealousy of their rivals refused to see the true cause. They entered in 1721 into a confederacy to destroy the tobacco-trade of Glasgow, petitioning in succession the House of Lords and the House of Commons, with utterly unfounded complaints on the subject. The charges of fraud were declared groundless by the upper house; but, in the lower, the just defences of Glasgow were disregarded, through the interest made by her adversaries. ‘New officers were appointed at the ports of Greenock and Port-Glasgow, whose private instructions seem to have been to ruin the trade, if possible, by putting all imaginable hardships upon it; bills of equity were exhibited against the merchants in the Court of Exchequer for no less than |1718.| thirty-three ships’ cargoes, by which they were commanded to declare, on oath, whether or not they had imported in these ships any, and how much, more tobacco than what had been exported, or had paid the king’s duty. Vexatious lawsuits of every kind were stirred up against them. Every species of persecution, which malice, assisted by wealth and interest, could invent, to destroy the trade of Glasgow, was put in practice,’ and in part successfully, the trade being reduced to a languishing condition, in which it remained for a number of years.[^[512]]

Quiet Mr Wodrow, in his neighbouring Renfrewshire parish, seems to have rather relished any loss or difficulty sustained by this industrious community, being apparently under an impression that wealth was apt to abate the godly habits of the people. He already recognised a party in the city who mocked at the ministry, and everything that was serious. Instead of seventy-two meetings for prayer, which he had known some years before, there were now but four or five; while in their place flourished club-meetings, at which foolish questions were discussed. He adverts to the blow struck at the tobacco-trade through the House of Commons, ‘which they say will be twenty thousand pounds loss to that place. I wish it may be sanctified to them.’[^[513]]

We have seen a concert taking place in Edinburgh in 1694, and a very grand one, partly supported by amateurs, presented in celebration of St Cecilia’s Day, in the ensuing year. We learn that there was now a weekly meeting of amateurs at the Cross Keys Tavern, kept by one Steil, who is noted as an excellent singer of Scottish songs, and who appears to have possessed a collection of instruments for the use of his guests. This meeting admitted of visitors of both sexes, and was a point of reunion for the beau monde of Edinburgh in days while as yet there were neither balls nor theatres. Its being held in a tavern would be no objection to the ladies. Allan Ramsay, in singing the winter attractions of the city, does not forget that

‘Others can with music make you gay,

With sweetest sounds Corelli’s art display;’

1718.

And then adds a picture of the scene:

‘To visit and take tea the well-dressed fair

May pass the crowd unruffled in her chair;

No dust or mire her shining foot shall stain,

Or on the horizontal hoop give pain.

For beaux and belles no city can compare,

Nor shew a galaxy so made, so fair;

The ears are charmed, and ravished are the eyes,

When at the concert my fair stars arise;

What poets of fictitious beauties sing,

Shall in bright order fill the dazzling ring;

From Venus, Pallas, and the spouse of Jove,

They’d gain the prize, judged by the god of Love.’[^[514]]

A writer of some ability and acuteness, who travelled over Scotland, and wrote an account of his journey, published in 1723, tells us that he was at several ‘consorts’ in Edinburgh, and had much reason to be pleased with the appearance of the ladies. He had never in any country seen ‘an assembly of greater beauties.’ It is not in point here, but it may be stated that he also admired their stately firm way of walking ‘with the joints extended and the toes out,’ and thought their tartan head-mantles of scarlet and green at church as gay as a parterre of flowers. At the same time, he knew them to be good housewives, and that many gentlemen of good estate were not ashamed to wear clothes of their wives’ and servants’ spinning.[^[515]]

To return to music—it looks like a mark of rising taste for sweet sounds, that we have a paragraph in the Edinburgh Courant for July 12, 1720, announcing that Mr Gordon, who had lately been travelling in Italy for his improvement in music, was daily expected in Edinburgh, ‘accompanied with Signor Lorenzo Bocchi, who is considered the second master of the violoncello in Europe, and the fittest hand to join Mr Gordon’s voice in the consorts which he designs to entertain his friends with before the rising of the session.’ On the 28th of May 1722, at the request of several gentlemen of Glasgow, Mr Gordon was to give a ‘consort’ in that city; and immediately after we hear of him publishing ‘proposals for the improvement of music in Scotland, together with a most reasonable and easy scheme for establishing a Pastoral Opera in Edinburgh.’[^[516]] Signor Bocchi seems to have been able |1718.| to carve a professional position for himself in Edinburgh, for in 1726 we find him publishing there an opera of his own composition, containing twelve sonatas for different instruments—violin, flute, violoncello, &c., with a libretto in broad Scotch by Allan Ramsay, beginning:

‘Blate Johnnie faintly tauld fair Jean his mind.’

It was about this time that the native music of Scotland—those beautiful melodies which seem to have sprung up in the country as naturally and unperceivedly as the primroses and the gowans—were first much heard of to the south of the Tweed. William Thomson, who was a boy at the Feast of St Cecilia in 1695, had since grown up in the possession of a remarkably sweet voice for the singing of Scots songs, and having migrated to London, he was there so well received, that Scottish music became fashionable even amidst the rage there was at the same time for the opera and the compositions of Handel. A collection of Scottish songs, with the music, under the title of Orpheus Caledonius, was published by Thomson in London in 1725, with a dedication to the Princess of Wales, and republished in an extended form in 1733.

Of the other performers at the Feast of St Cecilia, a few were still flourishing. Adam Craig, a teacher of music, played second violin at the gentlemen’s concerts with high approbation. Matthew M‘Gibbon was no more; but he had left a superior representative in his son William, who had studied under Corbet in London, and was now leader and first-violin at the concerts, playing the music of Corelli, Geminiani, and Handel with great skill and judgment. A collection of Scots tunes by William M‘Gibbon, published in 1742 and subsequent years, was long in high repute.[^[517]] Of the St Cecilia amateurs we only hear now of Lord Colville, who seems to have been a great enthusiast, ‘a thorough master of music,’ and is said to have ‘understood counterpoint well.’ His instruments were the harpsichord and organ. He had made a large collection of music, much of it brought home to him from Italy.

‘The god of Music joins when Colvil plays,

And all the Muses dance to Haddington’s essays;

The charms are mutual, piercing, and compleat—

This in his art excels, and that in wit.’

Defoe’s Caledonia, 1706.

1718.

Robert Lord Colville of Ochiltree (for it is necessary so to distinguish him from Lord Colville of Culross) died unmarried in March 1728, after having been in possession of the peerage for fifty-seven years. Wodrow tells a gossip’s story about his lordship having ‘walked’ for some time after his apparent departure from the earth.[^[518]]

After a comparatively private form of entertainment had been in vogue some years, the lovers of harmony in Edinburgh constituted themselves in 1728 into a regular society, with a governor and directors, the entire number of members being seventy, and, for the sake of room, transferred their meetings to St Mary’s Chapel, where they continued to assemble for a long course of years.[^[519]] The progress of their gay science is marked by the publication, in 1730, of a collection of Scots tunes for the harpsichord or spinet by Adam Craig, appropriately dedicated to the Honourable Lords and Gentlemen of the Musical Society of Mary’s Chapel, as ‘generous encouragers and promoters of music’—this collection being the first of the kind that was published,[^[520]] although there were several previous collections containing Scottish tunes, mingled with others.

June.

At this time the house of the Rev. Mr M‘Gill, minister of Kinross, was represented as troubled with spirits. The first fact that excited attention, was the disappearance of some silver spoons and knives, which were soon after found in the barn, stuck up in straw, with a big dish all nipped in pieces. Next it was found that no meat was brought to table but what was stuck full of pins. The minister found one in an egg. His wife, to make sure against trick, cooked some meat herself; but behold, when presented at table, ‘there were several pins in it, particularly a big pin the minister used for his gown. Another day, there was a pair of

1728. May.

|1718.| sheets put to the green, among other people’s, which were all nipped to pieces, and none of the linens belonging to others troubled. A certain night several went to watch the house, and as one was praying, down falls the press, wherein was abundance of lime-vessels, all broke to pieces; also at one other time the spirits, as they call them, not only tore the clothes that were locked up in a coffer, to pieces, but the very laps of a gentlewoman’s hood, as she was walking along the floor, were clipped away, as also a woman’s gown-tail and many other things not proper to mention. A certain girl, eating some meat, turned so very sick, that, being necessitate to vomit, [she] cast up five pins. A stone thrown down the chimney wambled a space on the floor, and then took a flight out at the window. There was thrown in the fire the minister’s Bible, which would not burn; but a plate and two silver spoons melted immediately. What bread is fired, were the meal never so fine, it’s all made useless. Is it not very sad that such a godly family, that employ their time no otherwise but by praying, reading, and serious meditation, should be so molested, while others who are wicked livers, and in a manner avowedly serve the Wicked One, are never troubled?’[^[522]]

Wodrow, who relates these particulars, soon after enters in his note-book: ‘I hear of a woman in Carstairs parish, that has been for some time troubled with apparitions, and needs much sympathy.’[^[523]]

It seems to have been a season of unusual spiritual activity. During September, and for some time after, the house of William Montgomery, mason, at Burnside, Scrabster, near Thurso, in the extreme north of Scotland, was tormented in an unusual manner by cats, which flocked in great numbers in and about his dwelling, making a frightful noise. Montgomery himself was from home; but his wife was so much troubled by this unaccountable pest, as to be obliged to write to him requiring his return, as otherwise she would be obliged to remove to Thurso. The goodman did return, and became witness to the torment that was going on, as many as eight cats, totally unknown in the neighbourhood, being sometimes assembled about his fireside in a single evening, ‘making the night hideous.’ One servant-girl left service on account of the nightly disturbance. Another, who came in her place, called to her master one evening that ‘the cats |1718.| were speaking among themselves,’ for so it had appeared to her they were doing, so human-like were their cries.

On a particular night, the 28th of November, Montgomery became unusually exasperated by these four-footed tormentors, and resolved to attack them with lethal weapons. One having got into a chest which had a hole in it, he watched with his drawn sword till he saw the creature put her head out at the hole, when he struck hard, yet failed to effect decapitation. Opening the chest, a servant named Geddes struck the animal with his master’s dirk in her hinder quarter, pinning her to the timber; yet after all she got out. Ultimately, Montgomery battered this cat pretty effectually, and threw her out as dead; nevertheless, they found she had disappeared by the morning. Five nights thereafter, some of the cats coming in upon Geddes in his bed, Montgomery dirked one, and battered its head, till it appeared dead, when he flung it out of doors. Before morning, it too had disappeared. He remarked that the wounds he inflicted brought no blood.

As it had been threatened that none should thrive in his house, William Montgomery entertained no doubt that there was witchcraft in the visitation. When an old woman in the neighbourhood fell ill, he became confirmed in his surmise, and thought himself justified in seeking the interference of the sheriff, though without particularising any delinquent. By this officer, the case was slighted as a piece of popular credulity and ignorance, till, one day in the ensuing February, a certain old woman named Margaret Nin-Gilbert, living in Owst, about a mile and a half from Montgomery’s house, ‘was seen by some of her neighbours to drop at her own door one of her legs from the middle.’ So narrates the sheriff. He adds: ‘She being under bad fame for witchcraft, the leg, black and putrefied, was brought to me; and immediately thereafter I ordered her to be apprehended and incarcerated.’

When old ladies begin to unhook their legs, and leave them in public places, it is evident there must be something in it. On the 8th of February, Margaret was examined in presence of two ministers, a bailie, and four merchants of Thurso, and confessed that she was in compact with the devil, who sometimes appeared to her as a great black horse, sometimes as a black cloud, and sometimes like a black hen. She owned to having been present as a cat in Montgomery’s house, along with other women similarly transformed, when two of the latter had |1718.| died of the wounds inflicted by Montgomery, and she had had her leg broken by him, so that in time it mortified and broke off. Margaret Olson, one of the women she accused, was examined for witch-marks; and several small coloured spots being detected, a needle was thrust in almost to the eye without exciting the least pain; but neither she nor any other person besides Nin-Gilbert could be induced to confess the practice of witchcraft.

Lord Advocate Dundas heard, some weeks after, what was going on in this remote corner of Scotland, and wrote a letter to the sheriff, finding fault with him for proceeding without consultation with the central authority. The local officer apologised on the ground, that he only acted for the Earl of Breadalbane and Mr Sinclair of Ulbster, and had deemed it proper to communicate directly with them. In the course of a short time, Nin-Gilbert died in prison, and this seems to have been an end to the affair.[^[524]]

Hitherto, no sort of literary or scientific association had been formed in Scotland. For a long time bypast, almost the only learning that existed was theological, and there was but little of that. In this year, Thomas Ruddiman, who had distinguished himself in Edinburgh by editing the works of Buchanan, and composing the well-known Rudiments of the Latin Tongue, joined with the masters of the High School of the city in establishing there an association for improving each other in classical lore, ‘without meddling with the affairs of church or state.’ This body was afterwards joined by a young advocate, subsequently eminent as a judge and a philosophical writer under the name of Lord Kames; afterwards, Mr Archibald Murray and Mr James Cochran, advocates, and Mr George Wishart, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, with some others, became members. ‘Whether their conversations were preserved, or their dissertations published, cannot now be ascertained.’[^[525]]

Dec. 15.

This day was commenced a newspaper in Edinburgh, the first that succeeded in thoroughly planting itself in Scotland, so as to obtain more than an ephemeral existence. It was the adventure of James M‘Ewen, bookseller in Edinburgh, and came out under |1718.| the title of The Edinburgh Evening Courant. The paper appeared in virtue of a formal authority from the magistrates and town-council, to whom M‘Ewen was to be answerable for what he should print and publish; and, that this rule might be enforced, he was, ‘before publication, to give ane coppie of his print to [the] magistrates.’[^[526]] The Courant was announced as to contain ample accounts of foreign occurrences, and these derived, not through London prints, but directly from foreign journals. It was intended as a decidedly Whig print, in this respect differing from the Caledonian Mercury, which was not long after started in the Jacobite interest.

The Courant was from the first successful. James M‘Ewen, writing from Edinburgh, January 17, 1719, to the Rev. Mr Wodrow, says: ‘As to our newspaper, it thrives so far as to be very well liked by all, excepting the violent Jacobites, who hate it, for no other reason but because it is a true and impartial paper. Several gentlemen who were to have had the London papers sent them, have laid them aside, because this contains the substance not only of them, but of the foreign post also.’

In looking over, as it has been my fate to do, the early volumes of the Courant, one cannot but groan over the long, dry ‘advices’ from nearly all parts of Europe, and the wretched meagreness of the department of home intelligence, whole months often elapsing without so much as an obituary notice, or a ship’s arrival at Leith. The reason of this unfortunate peculiarity was no other than the civic censorship under which the paper, as we see, was from the beginning placed. Even intelligence in the interest of the government was not in every instance safe. In the course of February 1723, the magistrates seized all the copies of a particular number of the paper, in which there had been an apparently simple paragraph. It regarded Mr Patrick Halden, then under trials before the judges of the Court of Session as presentee of the crown for a seat on the bench—he being a mere creature of the ministry unfit for the position. Fired at the words: ‘We do not hear of any great discoveries yet made to his prejudice,’ the judges inflicted this punishment upon the publisher, M‘Ewen, who then announced the suppression of his paper, ‘that our customers in the country may know why they cannot be served with that day’s Courant, as also why we have been so sparing all along of home news.’

It is at the same time evident that the meagreness of the |1718.| home news was in part caused by mere difficulty of obtaining authentic accounts of such matters. A rumour as to the death of a person of importance at a distance would arrive. Owing to the sluggishness of posts, its verity could not readily be ascertained. Inserting it on trust, the journalist too often found, in the course of a few days, that the announcement was unfounded. Such is a fair specimen of the way in which false intelligence occasionally got into circulation; and every such case, of course, operated as a motive to caution in future. The publishers, moreover, could not afford to keep sub-editors to go about and ascertain the verity of rumours. As an illustration of the difficulties hence arising—the Caledonian Mercury of March 3, 1724, contained the following paragraph: ‘We hear that my Lord Arniston, one of the ordinary Lords of Session, is dead;’ which was followed in the next number by: ‘It was by mistake in our last that my Lord Arniston was dead, occasioned by the rendezvous of coaches, &c., hard by his lordship’s lodging, that were to attend the funeral of a son of the Right Honourable the Earl of Galloway; wherefore his lordship’s pardon and family’s is humbly craved.’

It affords a pleasing idea of the possible continuousness of sublunary things, that the then Whig, but now Conservative Edinburgh Evening Courant, which began its career in 1718, and its then Tory, but since liberal rival, the Caledonian Mercury, which originated about two years later, are still published in Edinburgh.

The enjoyment during thirty years of ‘position’ as an establishment, combined with the progressive ideas of the age, was now working some notable changes in the spirit of the Scottish Church.

There was still, of course, a general maintenance of the old doctrines and habits; all was to appearance as it had been—places of worship attended, Sunday observed, discipline kept up; in particular outlying presbyteries, there would even be found a majority of men of the old leaven. When, however, any strenuous Dumfriesshire or Galloway pastor seemed animated by aught of the zeal of a past age, and thereby excited troubles which came under the attention of the General Assembly, he was sure to be snubbed, and, if contumacious, deposed. If a presbytery of the ancient orthodoxy, labouring under fears of backslidings and defections, ventured to reassert, in a public manner, a doctrine that was beginning to be unfashionable, the General |1718.| Assembly frowned on its forwardness. At the same time, Mr John Simson, professor of divinity at Glasgow, openly taught doctrines leaning to Arminianism, and even Arianism, and the same venerable court could not, for a number of years, be brought to do more than administer a gentle admonition.

It chanced, one day, that a worthy pastor, Mr Thomas Boston, found in a house which he was visiting a tattered treatise of the bright days of the civil war, written by one Edward Fisher, and entitled The Marrow of Modern Divinity. Turning over its leaves, he found it asserting orthodox Puritan doctrines with a simplicity and pathos all its own, particularly one which had lately been condemned by the General Assembly—namely, that, Christ being all in all, a forsaking of sins was not necessary ‘to reinstate us in covenant with God.’ Here seemed the proper remedy for the alarming rationalism of the church, and very soon there appeared a new edition of the Marrow, under the care of Mr Thomas Hogg, minister of Carnock. The book immediately got into wide circulation, and produced a very decided impression on the public mind, insomuch that the General Assembly felt called upon to issue a prohibition against its being recommended or read.

Thus arose a once famous conflict generally recognised as the Marrow Controversy. Dissatisfied with the pronouncement of the church, twelve ministers, including Boston and Hogg, came forward with a Representation, in which they remonstrated in very free terms with the General Assembly, expressing themselves as grieved in an especial manner to find any disfavour shewn to that freedom from the covenant of works which true believers felt to be the chief branch of the precious liberty which Christ had given them, and ‘in which the eternal salvation of souls is wrapped up.’ For sending this paper, the twelve brethren were taken in hand by the Assembly’s commission, condemned, and ordered to stand a rebuke (1723); but, while submitting, for the sake of peace, they took care to utter a protest, which left no room for doubt that they remained unshaken in their opinions. The entire proceedings are far too voluminous for modern patience; but the importance of the affair is undoubted. The ‘Twelve Marrow Men’ may be said to have formed the nucleus of the dissent which was a few years after matured under the name of the Secession.[^[527]]

1719. Jan. 29.

About eight o’clock this morning, at a spot a little west of Aberdeen, ‘there appeared ane army, computed to be the number of 7000 men. This computation was made by a very judicious man, who had long been a soldier in Flanders, and is now a farmer at this place, who with about thirty other persons were spectators. This army was drawn up in a long line in battle-array, were seen to fall down to the ground, and start up all at once; their drums were seen to be carried on the drummers’ backs. After it remained more than two hours, a person on a white horse rode along the line, and then they all marched towards Aberdeen, where the hill called the Stocket took them out of sight. It was a clear sunshine all that morning.’

October 22d, a second vision of the same kind was seen on the same ground. ‘About two thousand men appeared with blue and white coats, clear arms glancing or shining, white ensigns were seen to slap down, as did the former, at which time a smoke appeared, as if they had fired, but no noise. A person on a white horse also rode along the line, and then they marched towards the bridge of Dee. This vision continued on the ground from three hours in the afternoon, till it was scarce light to see them. It was a clear fine afternoon, and being the same day of the great yearly fair held at Old Aberdeen, was seen by many hundreds of people going home, as well as by above thirty that were at their own houses, about half a mile distant. It’s observable that the people coming from the fair came through them, but saw nothing till they came up to the crowd that was standing gazing, who caused them to look back.’[^[528]]

Nov. 2.

On the night of the 2d of November, the river Don was dried up from a little below Kemnay down to near Old Aberdeen. It was so dry at Inverury and Kintore, that children of five or six years of age gathered up the fish, trouts, and eels, and many people going to a fair passed over dry-shod. The water slowly returned about the middle of the day. The same phenomenon was said to have happened in the Doveran at Banff two days later.[^[529]]

1719.

The Commissioners on the Forfeited Estates were left in 1716 in a position of discomfiture, in consequence of the impediments presented by Scottish law and Scottish national feeling. Acts of the legislature enabled them in subsequent years to overcome some of their difficulties, and accomplish a tolerable portion of their mission. Not indeed without further impediments from the Court of Session, which, when their former decrees of sequestration were rendered void, and could no longer protect the friends of the forfeited persons in possession, gave efficacy to a new device of these friends, in the form of exceptions which declared that the forfeited persons had never been the real owners of the estates! In their report of 1720, they pathetically advert to this new difficulty, and, as an illustration of its absurdity, state a few cases, in which there had been decrees in favour of more pretended owners than one—Seaforth’s estates, for instance, were by one decree found to belong in full and absolute right to Kenneth Mackenzie of Assint, by another to William Martin of Harwood, by another to Hugh Wallace of Inglistown. For Mar’s estates, there were four of these visionary owners, and for Kenmure’s five! The exceptions were generally founded on conveyances and dispositions of the lands which were alleged to have been formerly executed by the attainted persons in favour of children and others. Notwithstanding these obstructions, the commissioners were enabled, in October 1719, to sell Panmure’s estates at £60,400 sterling, Winton’s at £50,482, Kilsyth’s at £16,000, and that of Robert Craw of East Reston at £2364.

By reversals of the decrees in the House of Lords, and the help of a new act, the Commissioners were enabled, in October 1720, to sell a further lot of estates—Southesk’s for £51,549, Marischal’s for £45,333, Linlithgow’s for £18,769, Stirling of Keir’s for £16,450, Threipland of Fingask’s for £9606, Paterson of Bannockburn’s for £9671, besides two others of trifling value. The purchase was in nearly all these cases made by a speculative London company, entitled The Governor and Company of Undertakers for raising the Thames Water in York Buildings (commonly called the ‘York Buildings Company’).[^[530]] The exceptions in the cases of Keir and Bannockburn were purchases probably made by friends of the former owners. For any other persons connected |1719.| with Scotland to have come forward to buy these properties on their own account, inferred such an amount of public indignation, if not violence, as made the act impossible, even if there had been any recreant Scot, Whig or Tory, capable in his heart of such conduct.

We shall have occasion, under subsequent dates, to notice certain difficulties of a different and more romantic kind which beset the Commissioners. But, meanwhile, it may be well to complete the history of their ordinary transactions.

Out of thirty estates left unsold in October 1720, they had succeeded within the ensuing three years in selling nineteen, of which the chief were Lord Burleigh’s at £12,610, Macdonald of Sleat’s at £21,000, and Mackenzie of Applecross’s at £3550, the rest being of inconsiderable amount, though raising the entire sum to £66,236. The principal estate afterwards sold was that of John Earl of Mar at £36,000.

When the Commissioners closed their accounts in March 1725, it appeared that there was a total of £411,082 sterling paid and to be paid into the Exchequer, from which, however, was to be deducted no less than £303,995 of debts sanctioned by the Commissioners, and for which they had issued or were to issue debentures, and £26,120 allowed in the form of grants from the crown. There thus remained, of money realised for public use and to pay the expenses of the Commission, the sum of £84,043, 17s. 5¾d., while properties to the yearly value of £2594 remained undisposed of, including an item so small as ‘Feu-duty of some cellars at Leith, part of the Abbacy of Aberbrothick, belonging to the late Earl of Panmure, 11s. 3½d.’

Some curiosity will naturally be felt to know the aggregate expenses of the Commission,[^[531]] and the balance of results which these left out of the eighty-four thousand pounds. There is a mixture of the ludicrous and sad in the problem, which may be expressed thus: money from the destruction (for public objects) of about fifty of the good old families of Scotland, £84,043; charges for the expense of the destruction, £82,936 = £1107! Walpole would find it hardly a decent purchase-money for a vote in the House of Commons.

Dec.

By statute passed in 1718,[^[532]] arrangements had been made |1719.| regarding the sum of £16,575, 14s. 0½d., which had been left over of the Equivalent money at the Union, after paying sundry claims out of it, and for a further debt of £230,308, 9s. 10d., due by England to Scotland since in equalisation of duties, together with a small sum of interest—the whole amounting to £248,550—also for enabling the king to constitute the bond-holders of this debt into a corporation, which, after St John’s Day, 1719, should receive £10,000 annually as interest, until the debt should be redeemed.

Now, the Bank of Scotland had been going on very quietly for some years, with its ten thousand pounds of paid-up capital, realising, as we can infer from some particulars, about a thousand a year of profit from its business. A prosperity so great could not then exist in Scotland without exciting some degree of envy, and also raising up thoughts of rivalry in a certain ardent class of minds. It began to be alleged that the Bank, as it was commonly called, was stinted in its means and frigid in its dealings; that it lacked enterprise; that it would be the better of an infusion of fresh blood, and so forth. It had many positive enemies, who tried to detract from its merits, and were constantly raising evil reports about it.[^[533]] Most deadly of all, there was now this Equivalent Company, with about a quarter of a million of debentures wherewith to engage in further mercantile enterprise, so as to make their ten thousand a year a little better. The boy, with his first shilling burning a hole in his pocket, was but a type of it.

In December 1719, a proposal came from a proprietor of Equivalent stock, to the effect that that stock should be added to the £100,000 stock of the Bank, but with nine-tenths of it returned by the Bank in notes, so that only £25,000 of it should in reality remain active in the new concern. It was proposed that, of the £10,000 of annual interest upon the Equivalent, the proprietors of Bank stock should thenceforward draw two-sevenths, being the proportion of £100,000 to £250,000; and of the £600 a year allowed for management of the Equivalent, the Bank was also to be allowed a proportion. In such a way might the Bank and Equivalent be brought into a union presumed to be beneficial to both parties.

1719.

The directors of the Bank received the proposition as an insidious attempt by a number of outsiders to get into the enjoyment of a portion of their time-bought advantages. They pointed out, in their answer, that the Equivalent stock being only in the receipt of 4 per cent. interest, while the profits of the Bank stock might be reckoned at not lower than 10, the proposal was inequitable towards the Bank. Besides, they did not want this additional stock, finding their present working capital quite sufficient. The proposer was thus repelled for the meantime; but he very quickly returned to the attack.

Under the guidance of this person, there was now formed what was called ‘The Edinburgh Society for insuring of Houses against Loss by Fire’—an arrangement of social life heretofore unknown in Scotland. But, as often happens, no sooner was this design broached than another set of people projected one of the same kind, with only this slight difference, that, instead of being a company trading for profits, it was a mutual insurance society reserving all profits for the insured. Such was the origin, in 1720, of what afterwards, under the name of ‘the Friendly Society,’[^[534]] became a noted institution of the Scottish capital, and is still in a certain sense existing amongst us. The Edinburgh Society consequently got no insurance business.

It nevertheless kept together, under the care of a committee of secrecy, who gave out that they contemplated a still better project. For some time, they talked loudly of great, though unripe plans, by which they expected to ‘make Scotland flourish beyond what it ever did before.’ Then there arose a repetition of the old clamours about the Bank—it was too narrow, both in its capital and in its ideas; the directors were too nice about securities; the public required enlarged accommodation. At last, the Society plainly avowed that they were determined either to run down the Bank, or force a coalition with it. It was precisely one of the last century heiress-abductions, adapted to the new circumstances of the country and the advanced ideas of the age.

The opportunity seemed to be afforded by the share which Scotland took in the South-Sea scheme, large sums of specie being sent southward to purchase stock in that notable bubble. In such circumstances, it was assumed that the stock of coin in the Bank must have sunk to rather a low ebb. Having then gradually and |1719.| unperceivedly gathered up the monstrous sum of £8400 in notes of the Bank, our Edinburgh Society came in upon it one morning demanding immediate payment. To their surprise, the money was at once paid, for in reality the kind of coin sent by speculators to London was different from that usually kept by the Bank, so that there had been hardly any abatement of its usual resources in coin. The Society tried to induce the cashiers of all the public establishments to follow their example, and draw out their money, but without success in any instance but that of the trustees of the Equivalent, who came very ostentatiously, and taking out their money, stored it up in the Castle. The public preserved a mortifying tranquillity under all these excitements, and the Bank remained unaffected.

The Edinburgh Society soon after sent the Bank a proposal of union, ‘for the prevention of mutual injuries, and the laying of a solid foundation for their being subservient and assisting to one another.’ It mainly consisted in an offer to purchase six hundred shares of the Bank, not as a new stock, but by surrender of shares held by the present proprietors, at £16, 13s. 4d. per share, or £10,000 in all, being apparently a premium of £6, 13s. 4d. on each £10 of the Bank’s paid-in capital. The Bank, however, as might have been expected, declined the proposal.

The passing of the famous Bubble Act soon after rendered it necessary for the Edinburgh Society to dissolve; but the Bank, nevertheless, like a rich heiress, continued to be persecuted by undesired offers of alliance. One, strange to say, came from the London Exchange Assurance Company. By this time (1722), it appears that the Bank had twenty thousand pounds of its capital paid up. It was proposed on the part of the London Assurance, that they should add £20,000, and have a half of the Bank’s profits, minus only an annual sum of £2500 to the old proprietors; which the Bank considered as equivalent to a borrowing of a sum of money at a dear rate from foreigners, when, if necessary, they could advance it themselves. Suppose, said the directors, that, after the London company had paid in their £20,000, the Bank’s profits were to rise to £7000 a year—and the authors of the proposal certainly contemplated nothing so low—this sum would fall to be divided thus: first, £2500 to the old Bank proprietors; second, the remaining £4500 to be divided between the Bank and the Exchange Assurance Company—that is, £2250 to the latter, being interest at the rate of 11 per cent. upon the money it had advanced—which money would be lying |1719.| the same as dead in the Bank, there being no need for it. The Bank of Scotland declined the proposal of the London Royal Exchange Assurance Company, which doubtless would not be without its denunciations of Scotch caution on the occasion.

Robert Ker, who seems to have been an inhabitant of Lasswade, was a censor of morals much after the type of the Tinklarian Doctor. He at this time published A Short and True Description of the Great Incumbrances and Damages that City and Country is like to sustain by Women’s Girded Tails, if it be not speedily prevented, together with a Dedication to those that wear them. By girded tails he meant skirts framed upon hoops of steel, like those now in vogue. According to Robert Ker, men were ‘put to a difficulty how to walk the streets’ from ‘the hazard of breaking their shin-bones’ against this metal cooperage, not to speak of the certainty of being called ill-bred besides. ‘If a man,’ says he, ‘were upon the greatest express that can be, if ye shall meet them in any strait stair or entry, you cannot pass them by without being stopped, and called impertinat to boot.’ Many are ‘the other confusions and cumbrances, both in churches and in coaches.’ He calls for alterations in staircases, and new lights to be broken out in dark entries, to save men from unchancy collisions with the fairer part of creation. Churches, too, would need to be enlarged, as in the old Catholic times, and seats and desks made wider, to hold these monstrous protuberances.

‘I wonder,’ says Ker, ‘that those who pretend to be faithful ministers do not make the pulpits and tents ring about thir sins, amongst many others. Had we the like of John Knox in our pulpits, he would not spare to tell them their faults to their very faces. But what need I admonish about thir things, when some ministers have their wives and daughters going with these fashions themselves?’

The ladies found a defender on this occasion in Allan Ramsay. He says:

‘If Nelly’s hoop be twice as wide

As her two pretty limbs can stride,

What then? will any man of sense

Take umbrage, or the least offence?....

Do not the handsome of our city,

The pious, chaste, the kind, the witty,

Who can afford it, great and small,

Regard well-shapen fardingale?....

Who watch their conduct, mien, and guise,

To shape their weeds as fits their case,

And place their patches as they please.’[^[535]]

1719.

We learn with grief that our pathetic censor of the fair sex lived on bad terms with his own wife, and was imprisoned both in Dalkeith and in Edinburgh for alleged miscarriages towards her. One of his most furious outpourings was against a minister who had baptised a child born to him during his Dalkeith imprisonment, the rite being performed without his order or sanction.

1720. Jan. 5.

‘All persons [in Edinburgh] desirous to learn the French tongue’ were apprised by an advertisement in the Edinburgh Courant, that ‘there is a Frenchman lately come to this city who will teach at a reasonable price.’ This would imply that there was no native French teacher in Edinburgh previously. In 1858, there were eleven, besides three belonging to our own country.

Jan.

Public attention was at this time attracted by a report of devilish doings at Calder in Mid-Lothian, and of there being one sufferer of no less distinction than a lord’s son. It was stated that the Hon. Patrick Sandilands, a boy, the third son of Lord Torphichen, was for certain bewitched. He fell down in trances, from which no horse-whipping could rouse him. The renal secretion was as black as ink. Sometimes he was thrown unaccountably about the room, as if some unseen agent were buffeting him. Candles went out in his presence. When sitting in a room with his sisters, he would tell them of things that were going on at a distance. He had the appearance occasionally of being greatly tormented. As he lay in bed one night, his tutor, who sat up watching him, became sleepy, and in this state saw a flash of fire at the window. Roused by this, he set himself to be more careful watching, and in a little time he saw another flash at the window. The boy then told him that between these two flashes, he had been to Torryburn taken away several times; he could tell them when it was to happen; and it was then necessary to watch him, to prevent his being carried off. ‘One day that he was to be waited on, when he was to be taken away, they kept |1720.| the door and window close; but a certain person going to the door, he made shift and got there, and was lifted in the air, but was catched by the heels and coat-tails, and brought back.’ Many other singular and dreadful things happened, which unfortunately were left unreported at the time, as being so universally known.[^[536]]

Lord Torphichen became at length convinced that his son was suffering under the diabolic incantations of a witch residing in his village of Calder, and he had the woman apprehended and put in prison. She is described as a brutishly ignorant creature, ‘knowing scarce anything but her witchcraft.’ She readily confessed her wicked practices; told that she had once given the devil the body of a dead child of her own to make a roast of; and inculpated two other women and one man, as associates in her guilt. The baron, the minister, and the people generally accepted it as a time case of witchcraft; and great excitement prevailed. The minister of Inveresk, writing to his friend Wodrow (February 19), says: ‘It’s certain my lord’s son has been dreadfully tormented. Mr Brisbane got one of the women to acknowledge ane image of the child, which, on search, was found in another woman’s house; but they did not know what kind of matter it was made of.’[^[537]] The time, however, was past for any deadly proceedings in such a case in the southern parts of Scotland; and it does not appear that anything worse than a parish fast was launched at the devil on the occasion. This solemnity took place on the 14th of January.

For the crazed white-ironsmith of the West Bow,[^[538]] the case of the Bewitched Boy of Calder had great attractions. He resolved—unfavourable as was the season for travelling—to go and examine the matter for himself. So, on the day of the fast, January 14, he went on foot in ill weather, without food, to Lord Torphichen’s house at Calder, a walk of about twelve miles. ‘I took,’ says he, ‘the sword of the spirit at my breast, and a small wand in my hand, as David did when he went out to fight against Goliah.’ He found the servants eating and drinking, as if there had been no fast proclaimed; they offered him entertainment, which he scrupulously refused. ‘Then I went to my lord and said, I was sent by God to cast the devil out of his son, by faith in Christ. He seemed to be like that lord who had the charge of the gate in Samaria. Then I said to him: “My lord, do you not |1720.| believe me?” Then he bade me go and speak to many ministers that was near by him; but I said I was not sent to them. Then he went to them himself, and spoke to them what I said; but they would not hear of it; so I went to three witches and a warlock, to examine them, in sundry places. Two of them denied, and two of them confessed. I have no time to relate here all that I said to them, and what they said; but I asked them, “When they took on in that service?” The wife said: “Many years;” and the man said: “It was ten years to him.” Then I asked the wife: “What was her reason for taking on with the devil?” And she said: “He promised her riches, and she believed him.” Then she called him many a cheat and liar in my hearing. Then I went to the man, because he was a great professor, and could talk of religion with any of the parish, as they that was his neighbours said, and he was at Bothwell Bridge fighting against the king; and because of that, I desired to ask questions at him; but my lord’s officer said: “His lord would not allow me.” I said I would not be hindered neither by my lord nor by the devil, before many there present. Then I asked: “What iniquity he found in God, that he left his service?” He got up and said: “Oh, sir, are ye a minister?” So ye see the devil knows me to be a minister better than the magistrates. He said: “He found no fault in God; but his wife beguiled him;” and he said: “Wo be to the woman his wife!” and blamed her only, as Adam did his wife, and the woman blamed the devil; so ye see it is from the beginning. This is a caution to us all never to hearken to our wives except they have Scripture on their side. Then I asked at him: “Did he expect heaven?” “Yes,” said he. Then I asked at him if he could command the devil to come and speak to me? He said: “No.” Then I said again: “Call for him, that I may speak with him.” He said again: “It was not in his power.” Then my lord sent more servants, that hindered me to ask any more questions, otherwise I might have seen the devil, and I would have spoken about his son.’[^[539]]

On this fast-day, a sermon was preached in Calder kirk by the Rev. Mr John Wilkie, minister of Uphall, the alleged sorcerers being all present. Lord Torphichen subsequently caused the discourse to be printed. His boy in time recovered, and going to sea, rose by merit to the command of an East Indiaman, but perished in a storm. It brings us strangely near to this |1720.| wild-looking affair, that the present tenth Lord Torphichen (1860) is only nephew to the witch-boy of Calder.

Feb. 5.

The exportation of some corn from Dundee being connected unfavourably in the minds of the populace with a rise of the markets, a tumult took place, with a view to keeping the grain within the country. The mob not only took possession of two vessels loaded with bear lying in the harbour, the property of Mr George Dempster, merchant, but attacked and gutted the house, shops, cellars, and lofts of that gentleman, carrying off everything of value they contained, including twelve silver spoons, a silver salver, and two silver boxes, one of them containing a gold chain and twelve gold rings, some hair ones, and others set with diamonds. Dempster advertised that whoever shall discover to him ‘the havers of his goods,’ should have ‘a sufficient reward and the owner’s kindness, and no questions asked.’[^[540]]

A similar affair took place at Dundee nine years later. The country-people in and about the town then ‘carried their resentment so high against the merchants for transporting of victual, that they furiously mobbed them, carried it out of lofts, and cut the sacks of those that were bringing it to the barks.’[^[541]]

Mar. 20.

Died, Alexander Rose, who had been appointed Bishop of Edinburgh just before the Revolution. He was the last survivor of the unfortunate episcopate of Scotland, and also outlived all the English bishops who forfeited their sees at the Revolution. Though strenuous during all these thirty-one years as a nonjuror—for which in 1716 he was deprived of a pension assigned him by Queen Anne—he is testified to by his presbyter Robert Keith as ‘a sweet-natured man.’[^[542]] His aspect, latterly, was venerable, and the gentleness of his life secured him the respect of laymen of all parties. Descended of the old House of Kilravock, he had married a daughter of Sir Patrick Threipland of Fingask, a family which maintained fidelity to the House of Stuart with a persistency beyond all parallel, never once swerving in affection from the days of the Commonwealth down to recent times. ‘Mr John Rose, son of the Bishop of Edinburgh,’ is in the list of rebels who pled guilty at Carlisle in December 1716. The good bishop, having come to his sister’s house in the Canongate, to see a brother who was there lying sick, had a sudden fainting-fit, |1720.| and calmly breathed his last. He was buried in the romantic churchyard of Restalrig, which has ever since been a favourite resting-place of the members of the Scottish Episcopal communion.

Apr. 28.

There was a jubilation in Edinburgh on what appears to us an extraordinary occasion. The standing dryness between the king and Prince of Wales had come to a temporary end. The latter had gone formally to the palace, and been received by his father ‘with great marks of tenderness’ [the king was sixty, and the prince thirty-seven]. At a court held on the occasion, ‘the officers and servants on both sides, from the highest to the lowest, caressed one another with mutual civilities,’ and there were great acclamations from the crowd outside. The agreeable news having been received in the northern metropolis, the magistrates set the bells a-ringing, and held an entertainment for all persons of note then in town, at which loyal toasts were drunk, with feux de joie from the City Guard. Demonstrations of a like nature took place at Glasgow—the music-bells rung—the stairs of the town-house covered with carpets—toast-drinking—and discharges of firearms from the Earl of Stair’s regiment. Nor was there a similar expression of joy wanting even in the Cavalier city of Aberdeen—where, however, such expressions were certainly more desirable.[^[543]]

May 2.

One is startled at finding in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of this date the following advertisement: ‘Taken up a stolen negro: whoever owns him, and gives sufficient marks of his being theirs, before the end of two weeks from the date hereof, may have him again upon payment of expenses laid out upon him; otherwise the present possessor must dispose of him at his pleasure.’

Yet true it is that colonial negro slaves who had accompanied their masters to the British shores, were, till fifty-five years after this period, regarded as chattels. One named Joseph Knight came with his master, John Wedderburn, Esq., to Glasgow in 1771, and remained with him as his bound slave for two years. A love-affair then set the man upon the idea of attempting to recover his liberty, which a recent decision by Lord Mansfield in England seemed to make by no means hopeless. With the help of friends, he carried his claim through a succession of courts, till a |1720.| decision of the Court of Session in 1775 finally established that, however he might be a slave while in the West Indies, he, being now in Scotland, was a free man.

Horse-racing had for many years been considerably in vogue in Scotland. There were advertised in the course of this year—a race at Cupar in Fife; one at Gala-rig, near Selkirk, for a piece of plate given by the burgh, of £12 value; a race at Hamilton Moor for £10; a race on Lanark Moor for a plate of £12, given by the burgh; a race on the sands of Leith for a gold cup of about a hundred guineas value, and another, for a plate of £50 value, given by the city of Edinburgh; finally, another race at Leith for a silver punch-bowl and ladle, of £25 value, given by the captains of the Trained Bands of Edinburgh—the bowl bearing an inscription which smacks wonderfully like the produce of the brain of Allan Ramsay:

‘Charge me with Nantz and limpid spring,

Let sour and sweet be mixt;

Bend round a health syne to the king,

To Edinburgh captains next,

Wha formed me in sae blithe a shape,

And gave me lasting honours;

Take up my ladle, fill and lap,

And say: “Fair fa’ the donors.”’

Oct. 17.

The genius of Scott has lent an extraordinary interest to a murder perpetrated at this date. Nicol Mushet appears to have been a young man of some fortune, being described as ‘of Boghall,’ and he had studied for the profession of a surgeon; but for some time he had led an irregular and dissipated life in Edinburgh, where he had for one of his chief friends a noted profligate named Campbell of Burnbank, ordnance store-keeper in the Castle. The unhappy young man was drawn into a marriage with a woman named Hall, for whom he soon discovered that he had neither affection nor respect; and he then became so eager to be free from the connection, as to listen to a project by Burnbank for obtaining a divorce by dishonourable means. An obligation passed between the parties in November 1719, whereby a claim of Burnbank for an old debt of nine hundred merks (about £50) was to be discharged by Mushet, as soon as Burnbank should be able to furnish evidence calculated to criminate the woman. Burnbank then deliberately hired a wretch like himself, one Macgregor, a teacher of languages, to enter into a plot for placing Mrs Mushet |1720.| in criminative circumstances; and some progress was made in this plan, which, however, ultimately misgave. It was then suggested by Burnbank that they should go a step further, and remove the woman by poison. One James Mushet and his wife—a couple in poor circumstances—readily undertook to administer it. Several doses were actually given, but the stomach of the victim always rejected them. Then the project for debauching her was revived, and Mushet undertook to effect it; but it was not carried out. Dosing with poison was resumed, without effect; other plans of murder were considered. James Mushet undertook to knock his sister-in-law on the head for twenty guineas, and got one or two in hand by anticipation, part of which he employed in burying a child of his own. These diabolically wicked projects occupied Mushet, his brother, his brother’s wife, and Burnbank, in the Christian city of Edinburgh, during a course of many months, without any one, to appearance, ever feeling the slightest compunction towards the poor woman, though it is admitted she loved her husband, and no real fault on her side has ever been insinuated.

At length, the infatuated Nicol himself borrowed a knife one day, hardly knowing what he wanted it for, and, taking his wife with him that night, as on a walk to Duddingston, he embraced the opportunity of killing her at a solitary place in the King’s Park. He went immediately after to his brother’s, to tell him what he had done, but in a state of mind which made all afterwards seem a blank to him. Next morning, the poor victim was found lying on the ground, with her throat cut to the bone, and many other wounds, which she had probably received in struggling with her brutal murderer.

Mushet was seized and examined, when he readily related the whole circumstances of the murder and those which had led to it. He was adjudged to be hanged in the Grassmarket on the ensuing 6th of January. His associate Burnbank was declared infamous, and sentenced to banishment. The common people, thrilled with horror by the details of the murder, marked their feelings in the old national mode by raising a cairn on the spot where it took place; and Mushet’s Cairn has ever since been a recognised locality.[^[544]]

There was published this year in Edinburgh a small treatise at |1720.| the price of a shilling, under the title of Rules of Good Deportment and Good Breeding. The author was Adam Petrie, who is understood as having commenced life as domestic tutor in the family of Sinclair of Stevenston, and to have ended it in the situation of a parish schoolmaster in East Lothian. He dedicated his treatise to the magistrates of Edinburgh, acknowledging them to be ‘so thoroughly acquainted with all the steps of civility and good breeding, that it is impossible for the least misrepresentation of them to escape your notice.’

Adam sets out with the thesis, that ‘a courteous way gilds a denial, sweetens the sharpness of truth ... sets off the defects of reason, varnishes slights, paints deformities ... in a word, disguises everything that is unsavoury.’ Everything, however, required to have some reference to religion in that age, and Adam takes care to remind us that civility has a divine basis, in the injunctions, ‘Be courteous to all men,’ and ‘Give honour to whom honour is due.’

As to ordinary demeanour, Mr Petrie was of opinion that ‘a gentleman ought not to run or walk too fast in the streets, lest he be suspected to be going a message.’ ‘When you walk with a superior, give him the right hand; but if it be near a wall, let him be next to it.’ The latter rule, he tells us, was not yet followed in Scotland, though established in England and Ireland. ‘When you give or receive anything from a superior, be sure to pull off your glove, and make a show of kissing your hand, with a low bow after you have done.’ In this and some other instances, it strikes us that a too ceremonious manner is counselled; but such was the tendency of the time. There was, however, no want of rude persons. ‘I have,’ says Adam, ‘seen some noblemen treat gentlemen that have not been their dependents, and men of ancienter families than they could pretend to, like their dependents, and carry to the ambassadors of Jesus Christ as if they had been their footmen.’

Mr Petrie deemed it proper not to come amongst women abruptly, ‘without giving them time to appear to advantage: they do not love to be surprised.’ He also thought it was well ‘to carry somewhat reserved from the fair sex.’ One should not enter the house or chamber of a great person with a great-coat and boots, or without gloves—though ‘it is usual in many courts that they deliver up their gloves with their sword before they enter the court, because some have carried in poison on their gloves, and have conveyed the same to the sovereign that way.’ |1720.| Women, on their part, are equally advised against approaching superiors of their own sex with their gown tucked up. ‘Nor,’ says he, ‘is it civil to wear a mask anywhere in company of superiors, unless they be travelling together on a journey.’ In that case, ‘when a superior makes his honours to her, she is to pull off her mask, and return him his salute, if it be not tied on.’

There is a good deal about the management of the handkerchief, with one general recommendation to ‘beware of offering it to any, except they desire it.’ We also are presented with a rule which one could wish to see more universally observed than it is, against making any kind of gesticulations or noises in company.

There were customs of salutation then, which it is now difficult to imagine as having ever been practised. ‘In France,’ says Adam, ‘they salute ladies on the cheek; but in Britain and Ireland they salute them on the lips.’ Our Scottish Chesterfield seems to have felt that the custom should be abated somewhat; or perhaps it was going out. ‘If,’ says he, ‘a lady of quality advance to you, and tender her cheek, you are only to pretend to salute her by putting your head to her hoods: when she advances, give her a low bow, and when you retreat, give her another.’ He adds: ‘It is undecent to salute ladies but in civility.’

Formulæ of address and for the superscription of letters are fully explained; but Adam could not allow ‘the Right Reverend Father in God the Lord Bishop of London’ to pass as an example of Episcopal style, without remarking that many have not ‘clearness’ to use such titles. Adam is everywhere inclined to an infusion of piety. He denounces ‘an irreligious tippling’ of coffee, tea, and chocolate, which he observed to be continually going on in coffee-houses, ‘because not one in a hundred asks a blessing to it.’ He is very much disposed, too, to launch out into commonplace morals. Rather unexpectedly in a lover of the politenesses, he sets his face wholly against cards and dice, stage-plays, and promiscuous dancing, adducing a great number of learned references in support of his views.

The editor of a very scarce reprint of this curious volume,[^[545]] remarks that, from the manifest sincerity of the author’s delineations of good breeding, and the graphic character of many of his scenes, it may fairly be presumed that they were painted from nature. We are told by the same writer, that ‘Helen Countess of Haddington, who died in 1768, at the advanced age of ninety-one, |1720.| and to whom Petrie was well known, used to describe his own deportment and breeding as in strict accordance with his rules.’

1721. Jan. 4.

James Dougal, writing the news of Edinburgh to his friend Wodrow at Eastwood, has a sad catalogue to detail. ‘There was four pirates hanged at Leith this day ... very hardened. They were a melancholy sight, and there is three to be hanged next Wednesday. Nicol Mushet is to be hanged on Friday ... for murdering his wife: he appears to be more concerned than he was before. Ane woman brought from Leith is to die the first Wednesday of February for putting down [destroying] a child. Another man is laid up in prison, that is thought to have murdered his wife. The things falling out now are very humbling.’

He goes on to tell that several persons ‘in trouble of mind’ are frequently prayed for in Edinburgh churches. ‘But they do not name them but after such a manner—A man there is in such trouble (or a woman), and desires the congregation to praise God with them for signal deliverance that the Lord hath given them from great troubles that they have been in.’

The end of the letter is terrible: ‘There is some of the Lord’s people that lives here, that are feared for melancholy days, iniquity doth so abound, and profanity; and if there were not a goodly remnant in this town, it would sink.’[^[546]]

Jan. 30.

A sperm whale, ‘the richest that has ever been seen in this country,’ was advertised in the Courant as having come ashore in the Firth of Forth near Culross, and to be sold by public roup.

At the end of June 1730, three wounded whales ran ashore at Kilrenny in Fife, on the property of Mr Bethune of Balfour. The produce, consisting of a hundred and forty-six barrels of speck, or blubber, and twenty-three barrels of spermaceti speck, was afterwards advertised for sale.

Oct.

With regard to several of the forfeited estates which lay in inaccessible situations in the Highlands, the Commissioners had been up to this time entirely baffled, having never been able even to get surveys of them effected. In this predicament in a special manner lay the immense territory of the Earl of Seaforth, extending from Brahan Castle in Easter Ross across the island to |1721.| Kintail, and including the large though unfertile island of Lewis. The districts of Lochalsh and Kintail, on the west coast, the scene of the Spanish invasion of 1719, were peculiarly difficult of access, there being no approach from the south, east, or north, except by narrow and difficult paths, while the western access was only assailable to a naval force. To appearance, this tract of ground, the seat of many comparatively opulent ‘tacksmen’ and cattle-farmers, was as much beyond the control of the six Commissioners assembled at their office in Edinburgh, as if it had been amongst the mountains of Tibet or upon the shores of Madagascar.

During several years after the insurrection, the rents of this district were collected, without the slightest difficulty, for the benefit of the exiled earl, and regularly transmitted to him. At one time, a considerable sum was sent to him in Spain, and the descendants of the man who carried it continued for generations to bear ‘the Spanyard’ as an addition to their name.[^[547]] The chief agent in the business was Donald Murchison, descendant of a line of faithful adherents of the ‘high chief of Kintail’—the first of whom, named Murcho, had come from Ireland with Colin the son of Kenneth, the founder of the clan Mackenzie in the thirteenth century. The later generations of the family had been intrusted in succession with the keeping of Ellan Donan Castle, a stronghold dear to the modern artist as a picturesque ruin, but formerly of serious importance as commanding a central point from which radiate Loch Alsh and Loch Duich, in the midst of the best part of the Mackenzie country. Donald was a man worthy of a more prominent place in his country’s annals than he has yet attained; he acted under a sense of right which, though unfortunately defiant of acts of parliament, was still a very pure sense of right; and in the remarkable actions which he performed, he looked solely to the good of those towards whom he had a feeling of duty. A more disinterested hero—and he was one—never lived.

When Lord Seaforth brought his clan to fight for King James in 1715, Donald Murchison and a senior brother, John, went as field-officers of the regiment—Donald as lieutenant-colonel, and John as major. Sir Roderick I. Murchison, the distinguished geologist, great-grandson of John, possesses a large ivory and silver ‘mill,’ which once contained the commission sent from France to Donald, as colonel, bearing the inscription: ‘James |1721.| Rex: Forward and Spare not.’ John fell at Sheriffmuir, in the prime of life; Donald, returning with the remains of the clan, was intrusted by the banished earl with the management of estates no longer legally his, but still virtually so, through the effect of Highland feelings in connection with very peculiar local circumstances. And for this task Donald was in various respects well qualified, for, strange to say, the son of the castellan of Ellan Donan—the Sheriffmuir colonel—had been ‘bred a writer’ in Edinburgh, and was as expert at the business of a factor or estate-agent as in wielding the claymore.[^[548]]

In bold and avowed insubordination to the government of George the First, the Mackenzie tenants continued for ten years to pay their rents to Donald Murchison, on account of their forfeited and exiled lord, setting at nought all fear of ever being compelled to repeat the payment to the commissioners.

In 1720, these gentlemen made a movement for asserting their claims upon the property. In William Ross of Easterfearn, and Robert Ross, a bailie of Tain, they found two men bold enough to undertake the duty of stewardship in their behalf over the Seaforth property, and also the estates of Grant of Glenmorriston and Chisholm of Strathglass. Little, however, was done that year beyond sending out notices to the tenants, and preparing for strenuous measures to be entered upon next year. The stir they made only produced excitement, not dismay. Some of the duine-wassels from about Loch Carron, coming down with their cattle to the south-country fairs, were heard to declare that the two factors would never get anything but leaden coin from the Seaforth tenantry. Donald was going over the whole country, shewing a letter he had got from the earl, encouraging his people to stand out; at the same time telling them that the old countess was about to come north with a factory for the estate, when she would allow as paid any rents which they might now hand to him. The very first use to be made of this money was, indeed, to bring both the old and the young countesses home immediately to Brahan Castle, where they would live as they used to do. Part of the funds thus acquired, he used in keeping on foot a party of about sixty armed Highlanders, whom, in virtue of his commission as colonel, he proposed to employ in resisting any troops of George the First which might be sent to Kintail. |1721.| Nor did he wait to be attacked, but, in June 1720, hearing of a party of excisemen passing near Dingwall with a large quantity of aqua-vitæ, he fell upon them, and rescued their prize. The collector of the district reported this transaction to the Board of Excise; but no notice was taken of it.

In February 1721, the two factors sent officers of their own into the western districts, to assure the tenants of good usage, if they would make a peaceable submission; but the men were seized, robbed of their papers, money, and arms, and quietly remanded over the Firth of Attadale, though only after giving solemn assurance that they would never attempt to renew their mission. Resenting this procedure, the two factors caused a constable to take a military party from Bernera barracks into Lochalsh, and, if possible, capture those who had been guilty. They made a stealthy night-march, and took two men; but the alarm was given, the two men escaped, and began to fire down upon their captors from a hillside; then they set fire to the bothy as a signal, and such a coronach went over all Kintail and Lochalsh, as made the soldiers glad to beat a quick retreat.

After some further proceedings, all of them ineffectual, the two factors were enabled, on the 13th of September, to set forth from Inverness with a party of thirty soldiers and some armed servants of their own, with the design of enforcing submission to their legal claims. Let it be remembered there were then no roads in the Highlands, nothing but a few horse-tracks along the principal lines in the country, where not the slightest effort had ever been made to smooth away the natural difficulties of the ground. In two days, the factors had got to Invermorriston; but here they were stopped for three days, waiting for their heavy baggage, which was storm-stayed in Castle Urquhart, and there nearly taken in a night-attack by a partisan warrior bearing the name of Evan Roy Macgillivray. The tenantry of Glenmorriston at first fled with their bestial; but afterwards a number of them came in and made at least the appearance of submission. The party then moved on towards Strathglass, while Evan Roy respectfully followed, to pick up any man or piece of baggage that might be left behind. At Erchless Castle, and at Invercannich, seats of the Chisholm, they held courts, and received the submission of a number of the tenants, whom, however, they subsequently found to be ‘very deceitful.’

There were now forty or fifty miles of the wildest Highland country before them, where they had reason to believe they should |1721.| meet groups of murderous Camerons and Glengarry Macdonalds, and also encounter the redoubted Donald Murchison, with his guard of Mackenzies, unless their military force should be of an amount to render all such opposition hopeless. An appointment having been made that they should receive an addition of fifty soldiers from Bernera, with whom to pass through the most difficult part of their journey, it seemed likely that they would appear too strong for resistance; and, indeed, intelligence was already coming to them, that ‘the people of Kintail, being a judicious opulent people, would not expose themselves to the punishments of law,’ and that the Camerons were absolutely determined to give no further provocation to the government. Thus assured, they set out in cheerful mood along the valley of Strathglass, and, soon after passing a place called Knockfin, were reinforced by Lieutenant Brymer, with the expected fifty men from Bernera. There must have now been about a hundred well armed men in the invasive body. They spent the next day (Sunday) together in rest, to gather strength for the ensuing day’s march of about thirty arduous miles, by which they hoped to reach Kintail.

At four in the morning of Monday the 2d October, the party set forward, the Bernera men first, and the factors in the rear. They were as yet far from the height of the country, and from its more difficult passes; but they soon found that all the flattering tales of non-resistance were groundless, and that the Kintail men had come a good way out from their country in order to defend it. The truth was, that Donald Murchison had assembled not only his stated band of Mackenzies, but a levy of the Lewis men under Seaforth’s cousin, Mackenzie of Kildun; also an auxiliary corps of Camerons, Glengarry and Glenmorriston men, and some of those very Strathglass men who had been making appearances of submission. Altogether, he had, if the factors were rightly informed, three hundred and fifty men with long Spanish firelocks, under his command, and all posted in the way most likely to give them an advantage over the invading force.

The rear-guard, with the factors, had scarcely gone a mile, when they received a platoon of seven shots from a rising ground near them to the right, with, however, only the effect of piercing a soldier’s hat. The Bernera company, as we are informed, left the party at eight o’clock, as they were passing Lochanachlee, and from this time is heard of no more: how it made its way out of the country does not appear. The remainder still advancing, Easterfearn, as he rode a little before his men, had eight shots |1721.| levelled at him from a rude breastwork near by, and was wounded in two places, but was able to appear as if he had not been touched. Then calling out some Highlanders in his service, he desired them to go before the soldiers, and do their best, according to their own mode of warfare, to clear the ground of such lurking parties, so that the troops might advance in safety. They performed this service pretty effectually, skirmishing as they went on, and the main body advanced safely about six miles. They were here arrived at a place called Aa-na-Mullich (Ford of the Mull People), where the waters, descending from the Cralich and the lofty mountains of Kintail, issue eastwards through a narrow gorge into Loch Affaric. It was a place remarkably well adapted for the purposes of a resisting party. A rocky boss, called Tor-an-Beatich, then densely covered with birch, closes up the glen as with a gate. The black mountain stream, ‘spear-deep,’ sweeps round it. A narrow path wound up the rock, admitting only of passengers in single file. Here lay Donald with the best of his people, while inferior adherents were ready to make demonstrations at a little distance. As the invasive party approached, they received a platoon from a wood on the left, but nevertheless went on. When, however, they were all engaged in toiling up the pass, forty men concealed in the heather close by fired with deadly effect, inflicting a mortal wound on Walter Ross, Easterfearn’s son, while Bailie Ross’s son was also hurt by a bullet which swept across his breast. The bailie called to his son to retire, and the order was obeyed; but the two wounded youths and Bailie Ross’s servant were taken prisoners, and carried up the hill, where they were quickly divested of clothes, arms, money, and papers. Young Easterfearn died next morning. The troops faced the ambuscade manfully, and are said to have given their fire thrice, and to have beat the Highlanders from the bushes near by; but, observing at this juncture several parties of the enemy on the neighbouring heights, and being informed of a party of sixty in their rear, Easterfearn deemed it best to temporise.

He sent forward a messenger to ask who they were that opposed the king’s troops, and what they wanted. The answer was that, in the first place, they required to have Ross of Easterfearn delivered up to them. This was pointedly refused; but it was at length arranged that Easterfearn should go forward, and converse with the leader of the opposing party. The meeting took place at Bal-aa-na-Mullich (the Town of the Mull Men’s Ford), and Easterfearn found himself confronted with Donald Murchison. |1721.| It ended with Easterfearn giving up his papers, and covenanting, under a penalty of five hundred pounds, not to officiate in his factory any more; after which he gladly departed homewards with his associates, under favour of a guard of Donald’s men, to conduct them safely past the sixty men lurking in the rear. It was alleged afterwards that the commander was much blamed by his own people for letting the factors off with their lives and baggage, particularly by the Camerons, who had been five days at their post with hardly anything to eat; and Murchison only pacified them by sending them a good supply of meat and drink. He had in reality given a very effectual check to the two gentlemen-factors, to one of whom he imparted in conversation that any scheme of a government stewardship in Kintail was hopeless, for he and sixteen others had sworn that, if any person calling himself a factor came there, they would take his life, whether at kirk or at market, and deem it a meritorious action, though they should be cut to pieces for it next minute.[^[549]]

A bloody grave for young Easterfearn in Beauly Cathedral concluded this abortive attempt to take the Seaforth estates within the scope of a law sanctioned by statesmen, but against which the natural feelings of nearly a whole people revolted.[^[550]]

1721. Dec.

A newspaper advertisement informed the world that ‘There is a certain gentleman living at Glasgow, who has put forth a problem to the learned—proposing, if no man answer it, to do it himself in a few weeks—viz., Whether or not it is possible so to dispose a ship, either great or small, that, although she, or it, be rent in the bottom, and filled full of water, or however tossed with tempest, she, or it, shall never sink below the water; and also that the same may be reduced to practice.’[^[551]]

1722. Apr. 27.

An election of a member of parliament for a Highland county was apt to bring forth somewhat strenuous sentiments, and the scene sometimes partook a good deal of the nature of a local civil war.

A representative of Ross-shire being to be chosen, there came, the night before, to Fortrose, the greatest man of the north, the Earl of Sutherland, heading a large body of armed and mounted retainers, who made a procession round the streets, while an English sloop-of-war, in friendly alliance with him, came up to the town and fired its guns. Hundreds of Highlanders, his lordship’s retainers, at the same time lounged about. The reason of all this was, that the opposition interest was in a decided majority, and a defeat to the Whig candidate seemed impending. When the election came on, there were thirty-one barons present, of whom eighteen gave their votes for General Charles Ross of Balnagowan, the remainder being for Captain Alexander Urquhart of Newhall. Hereupon, Lord Sutherland’s relative and friend, Sir William Gordon of Invergordon, sheriff of the county, retired with the minority, and went through the form of electing their own man, notwithstanding a protest from the other candidate. ‘Immediately after this separation, Colin Graham of Drynie, one of the deputy-lieutenants of the county, came into the court-house, with his sword in his hand, accompanied by Robert Gordon of Haughs and Major John Mackintosh, with some of the armed Highlanders whom they had posted at the door, with drawn swords and cocked firelocks, and did require the majority (who remained to finish the election), in the name of the Earl of Sutherland, to remove out of the house, otherwise they must expect worse treatment. Major Mackintosh said they would be dragged out by the heels. Upon which the barons protested against those violent proceedings, declaring their resolution to |1722.| remain in the court-house till the election was finished, though at the hazard of their lives; which they accordingly did.’[^[552]]

Apr. 29.

The Catholics had of late been getting up their heads in the north, especially in districts over which the Gordon family held sway; and the open practice of the Romish rites before large congregations in the Banffshire valleys, was become a standing subject of complaint and alarm in the church-courts. When at length the government obtained scent of the Jacobite plot in which Bishop Atterbury was concerned, it sympathised with these groans of the laden spirits in Scotland, and permitted some decided measures of repression to be taken.

Accordingly, this day, being Sunday, as the Duchess-Dowager of Gordon—Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk—was having mass performed at her house in the Canongate, Edinburgh, in the presence of about fifty professors like herself of the Catholic religion, Bailie Hawthorn, a magistrate of the Canongate, broke open the doors, and seized the whole party. The ladies were bailed, and allowed to depart; but the priest, Mr John Wallace, was marched to prison. We are informed by Wodrow that Wallace had been ordained a Protestant minister thirty-five years before.[^[553]] The Lord Advocate would not at first listen to any proposal for his liberation, though several persons of distinction came to plead for it; but at length bail was taken for him to the extent of a thousand merks Scots. Being indicted under the statute of 1700, he failed to stand his trial, and was outlawed.[^[554]]

Before the upbreak of this plot, considerable numbers of gentlemen under attainder daily presented themselves on the streets of Edinburgh, emboldened of course by the mildness of the government; but, one or two of them having been seized and put up in the Castle, it came to pass, 15th May, that not one was any longer to be seen. Mr Wodrow, who records these circumstances, expresses the feeling of the hour. ‘It’s certain we are in a most divided and defenceless state; divisions on the one hand, rancour and malice on the other, and a wretched indolence among too many. But the Lord liveth!’[^[555]]

Aug. 3.

The Canongate, which had so often, in the sixteenth century, |1722.| been reddened with the best blood in Scotland, was still occasionally the scene of wild transactions, though arising amongst a different class of persons and from different causes. A local journalist chronicles a dreadful tragedy as occurring on its pavé at this date.

‘In the afternoon, Captain Chiesley and Lieutenant Moodie, both of Cholmly’s Regiment, which lies encamped at Bruntsfield Links, having quarrelled some time before in the camp, meeting on the street of the Canongate, the captain, as we are told, asked Mr Moodie whether he had in a certain company called him a coward? And he owning he had, the captain beat him first with his fist, and then with a cane; whereupon Mr Moodie drew his sword, and, shortening it, run the captain into the great artery. The captain, having his sword drawn at the same time, pushed at Mr Moodie, who was rushing on him with his sword shortened, and thus run him into the lower belly, of which in a few minutes he died, without speaking one word, having had no more strength or life left him than to cross the street, and reach the foot of the stair of his lodgings, where he dropped down dead. The captain lived only to step into a house near by, and to pray shortly that God might have mercy on his soul, without speaking a word more. ’Tis said Mr Moodie’s lady was looking over the window all the while this bloody tragedy was acting.’[^[556]]

A duel which happened about the same time between Captains Marriot and Scroggs proved fatal to both.

Aug. 7.

‘Four of those poor deluded people called Quakers, two men and two women, came about noon to the Cross [of Edinburgh], when one of the women, who by her accent seemed to be of Yorkshire, after several violent agitations, said, that she was appointed by God to preach repentance to this sinful city; that a voice of mortality, as she called it, had sounded in her ears, and that desolation and all kinds of miseries would befall the inhabitants if they did not repent. After she had spoke about a quarter of an hour, a party of the city-guard carried her and the other three prisoners to the main guard.’

Some years after, one Thomas Erskine, a brewer, made himself conspicuous as a Quaker preacher in Edinburgh. One Saturday, January 17, 1736, he ‘made a religious peregrination through this city. He made his first station at the Bow-head [reputed as |1722.| the head-quarters of the saints in Edinburgh], where he pronounced woes and judgments on the inhabitants of the Good Town, if they did not speedily repent. Thence he walked to the Cross, where he recapitulated what he had evangelised by the way, and concluded with desiring his auditory to remember well what he had told them. However, he gave them forty days to think on’t.’

One day, in the ensuing July, Erskine sent a notice to the quiet little country town of Musselburgh, to the effect that the Spirit had appointed him to hold forth to them in the marketplace at five in the afternoon; and, accordingly, at the appointed hour, he mounted the Cross, and discoursed to a large audience.[^[557]]

Aug. 29.

A second attempt was now made to obtain possession of the forfeited Seaforth estates for the government. It was calculated that what the two factors and their attendants, with a small military force, had failed to accomplish in the preceding October, when they were beat back with a fatal loss at Aa-na-Mullich, might now be effected by means of a good military party alone, if they should make their approach through a less critical passage. A hundred and sixty of Colonel Kirk’s regiment left Inverness under Captain M‘Neil, who had at one time been commander of the Highland Watch. They proceeded by Dingwall, Strath Garve, and Loch Carron, a route to the north of that adopted by the factors, and an easier, though a longer way. Donald Murchison, nothing daunted, got together his followers, and advanced to the top of Maam Attadale, a high pass from Loch Carron to the head of Loch Long, separating Lochalsh from Kintail. Here a gallant relative named Kenneth Murchison, and a few others, volunteered to go forward and plant themselves in ambush in the defiles of the Choille Van [White Wood], while the bulk of the party should remain where they were. It would appear that this ambush party consisted of thirteen men, all peculiarly well armed.

On approaching this dangerous place, the captain went forward with a sergeant and eighteen men to clear the wood, while the main body came on slowly in the rear. At a place called Altanbadn, in the Choille Van, he encountered Kenneth and his associates, whose fire wounded himself severely, killed one of his grenadiers, and wounded several others of the party. He persisted in advancing, and attacked the handful of natives with |1722.| sufficient resolution. They slowly withdrew, as unable to resist; but the captain now obtained intelligence that a large body of Mackenzies was posted in the mountain-pass of Attadale. It seemed as if there was a design to draw him into a fatal ambuscade. His own wounded condition probably warned him that a better opportunity might occur afterwards. He turned his forces about, and made the best of his way back to Inverness. Kenneth Murchison quickly rejoined Colonel Donald on Maam Attadale, with the cheering intelligence that one salvo of thirteen guns had repelled the hundred and sixty sidier roy.[^[558]] After this, we hear of no renewed attempt to comprise the Seaforth property.

Strange as it may seem, Donald Murchison, two years after thus a second time resisting the government troops, came down to Edinburgh with eight hundred pounds of the earl’s rents, that he might get the money sent abroad for his lordship’s use. He remained a fortnight in the city unmolested. He would on this occasion appear in the garb of a Lowland gentleman; he would mingle with old acquaintances, ‘doers’ and writers; and appear at the Cross amongst the crowd of gentlemen who assembled there every day at noon. Scores would know all about his doings at Aa-na-Mullich and the Choille Van; but thousands might have known, without the chance of one of them betraying him to government.

General Wade, writing a report to the king in 1725, states that the Seaforth tenants, formerly reputed the richest of any in the Highlands, are now become poor, by neglecting their business, and applying themselves to the use of arms. ‘The rents,’ he says, ‘continue to be collected by one Donald Murchison, a servant of the late earl’s, who annually remits or carries the same to his master into France. The tenants, when in a condition, are said to have sent him free gifts in proportion to their several circumstances, but are now a year and a half in arrear of rent. The receipts he gives to the tenants are as deputy-factor to the Commissioners of the Forfeited Estates, which pretended power he extorted from the factor (appointed by the said commissioners to collect those rents for the use of the public), whom he attacked with above four hundred armed men, as he was going to enter upon the said estate, having with him a party of thirty of your majesty’s troops. The last year this Murchison marched in a public manner to Edinburgh, to remit eight hundred pounds to France for his master’s use, and remained fourteen days there |1722.| unmolested. I cannot omit observing to your majesty, that this national tenderness the subjects of North Britain have one for the other, is a great encouragement for rebels and attainted persons to return home from their banishment.’[^[559]]

Donald was again in Edinburgh about the end of August 1725. On the 2d of September, George Lockhart of Carnwath, writing from Edinburgh to the Chevalier St George, states, amongst other matters of information regarding his party in Scotland, that Daniel Murchison (as he calls him) ‘is come to Edinburgh, on his way to France’—doubtless charged with a sum of rents for Seaforth. ‘He’s been in quest of me, and I of him,’ says Lockhart, ‘these two days, and missed each other; but in a day or two he’s to be at my country-house, where I’ll get time to talk fully with him. In the meantime, I know from one that saw him, that he has taken up and secured all the arms of value in Seaforth’s estate, which he thought better than to trust them to the care and prudence of the several owners; and the other chieftains, I hear, have done the same.’[^[560]]

The Commissioners on the Forfeited Estates conclude their final report in 1725 by stating that they had not sold the estate of William Earl of Seaforth, ‘not having been able to obtain possession, and consequently to give the same to a purchaser.’

In a Whig poem on the Highland Roads, written in 1737, Donald is characteristically spoken of as a sort of cateran, while, in reality, as every generous person can now well understand, he was a high-minded gentleman. The verses, nevertheless, as well as the appended note, are curious:

‘Keppoch, Rob Roy, and Daniel Murchisan,

Cadets or servants to some chief of clan,

From theft and robberies scarce did ever cease,

Yet ‘scaped the halter each, and died in peace.

This last his exiled master’s rents collected,

Nor unto king or law would be subjected.

Though veteran troops upon the confines lay,

Sufficient to make lord and tribe a prey,

Yet passes strong through which no roads were cut,

Safe-guarded Seaforth’s clan, each in his hut.

Thus in strongholds the rogue securely lay,

Neither could they by force be driven away,

Till his attainted lord and chief of late

By ways and means repurchased his estate.’[^[561]]

1722.

‘Donald Murchison, a kinsman and servant to the Earl of Seaforth, bred a writer, a man of small stature, but full of spirit and resolution, fought at Dunblane against the government anno 1715, but continued thereafter to collect Seaforth’s rents for his lord’s use, and had some pickerings with the king’s forces on that account, till, about five years ago, the government was so tender as to allow Seaforth to re-purchase his estate, when the said Murchison had a principal hand in striking the bargain for his master. How he fell under Seaforth’s displeasure, and died thereafter, is not to the purpose here to mention.’

The end of Donald’s career can scarcely now be passed over in this slighting manner. The story is most painful. The Seaforth of that day—very unlike some of his successors—was unworthy of the devotion which this heroic man had shewn to him. When his lordship took possession of the estates which Donald had in a manner preserved for him, he discountenanced and neglected him. Murchison’s noble spirit pined away under this treatment, and he died in the very prime of his days of a broken heart.[^[562]] He lies in a remote little churchyard on Cononside, in the parish of Urray, where, I am happy to say, his worthy relative, Sir Roderick I. Murchison, is at this time preparing to raise a suitable monument over his grave.

When Dr Johnson and James Boswell, in their journey to the Hebrides, 1773, came to the inn at Glenelg, they found the most wretched accommodation, and would have been without any comfort whatever, had not Mr Murchison, factor to Macleod in Glenelg, sent them a bottle of rum and some sugar, ‘with a polite message,’ says Boswell, ‘to acquaint us, that he was very sorry he did not hear of us till we had passed his house, otherwise he should have insisted on our sleeping there that night.’ ‘Such extraordinary attention,’ he adds, ‘from this gentleman to entire strangers, deserves the most honourable commemoration.’ This gentleman, to whom Johnson also alludes with grateful admiration of his courtesy in the Journey to the Western Islands, was a near relative of Donald Murchison.

Sep. 1.

A high wind shook the crops of Lothian, particularly damaging the pease. It was considered ‘a heavy stroke,’ as the people thereabouts |1722.| lived much on pease-meal. Apropos to this fact, Wodrow speaks of an individual who had much ploughing to execute, and who found it advantageous to feed his horses on pease-bannocks: ‘he finds it a third cheaper [than corn], and his horses fatter and better.’[^[563]] It is curious that this farmer, ‘abnormis sapiens,’ came to the same point which Baron Liebig has attained in our age, by scientific investigation, as to the nutritive qualities of pease.

The extensive coal-field of East Lothian gave occasion for several efforts in the mechanical arts, which might be regarded as early and before their time, when the general condition of the country is considered. Some years before the Revolution, the Earl of Winton had drained his coal-pits in Tranent parish, by tunnels cut for a long way through solid rock, on such a scale as to attract the attention of George Sinclair, professor of natural philosophy in Glasgow, who, in the preface to his extraordinary work, Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, speaks of them as something paralleling the cutting of the Alps by Hannibal. Such a mode of taking off the water from a coal-mine, where the form of the ground admitted it, was certainly of great use in days when as yet there were no steam-engines to make the driving of pumps easy.[^[564]]

The forfeited estate of the Earl of Winton having been bought in 1719 by the York Buildings Company, a new and equally surprising addition was at this time made to the economy of the coal-works, in the form of a wooden railway, between one and two miles long, connecting the pits with the salt-works at Prestonpans and the harbour at Port-Seton. A work so ingenious, so useful, and foreshewing the iron ways by which, in our age, the industrial prospects of the world have been so much advanced, comes into strong relief when beheld in connection with the many barbarisms amidst which it took its rise. But the oddity of its associations does not end here, for, when a Highland army came down to the Lowlands twenty-three years afterwards, seeking with primitive arms to restore the House of Stuart, the first of its battles was fought on the ground crossed by this railway, and General Cope’s cannon were actually fired against the clouded Camerons[^[565]] from a position on the railway itself!

1723. Jan.

There was published in Edinburgh a poem, entitled the Mock Senator—‘pretended to be translated from an Arabian manuscript, wherein, under feigned and disguised names, the author seems to lash some persons in the present administration.’ The magistrates—whom we have seen exercising a pretty sharp censorship over the newspaper press—‘committed to prison Mr Alexander Pennecuik, the supposed author of this poem, and discharged the hawkers to sell or disperse the same.’[^[566]]

Mar.

At this time, two criminalities of the highest class occurred amongst persons of rank in Scotland.

On the 30th of March, Mrs Elizabeth Murray, ‘lady to Thomas Kincaid, younger, of Gogar-Mains,’ was found dead on the road from Edinburgh to that place, with all the appearance of having been barbarously murdered. It was at once, with good reason, concluded that the horrible act had been perpetrated by her own husband. He succeeded in escaping to Holland.[^[567]]

Pennecuik, the burgess-poet, has a poem on the murder of Mrs Kincaid by her husband, from which it would appear that she had been an amiable and long-suffering woman, and he a coarse and dissolute man. He adds a note at the end, ‘Ensign Hugh Skene engaged in the plot.’[^[568]]

Only three weeks later (April 22), Sir James Campbell of Lawers was foully murdered at Greenock by his apparent friend, Duncan Campbell of Edramurkle. The facts are thus related in a contemporary letter. ‘Lawers had been in a treaty of marriage with [Campbell of] Finab’s daughter, which Edramurkle was very active to get accomplished, out of a seeming friendship for Lawers. After the marriage articles were agreed upon, they went together to make a visit to the young lady, and, in return, came to Greenock on Friday the 19th last [April], where they remained Saturday and Sunday—Edramurkle all the while shewing the greatest friendship for Lawers, and Lawers confiding in him as his own brother. Upon the Saturday, pretending to Lawers that he had use for a pistol, he got money from him to buy one, which accordingly he did, with ball and powder. The use he made of this artillery was to discharge two balls into Lawers’s head, while he was fast asleep, betwixt three and four on Monday’s morning; and which balls were levelled under his left eye, and went through |1723.| his head, sloping to the back-bone of his neck ... he was found in a sleeping posture, and had not moved either eye or hand.

‘The fellow went immediately off in a boat for Glasgow, and from thence came here [Edinburgh], the people in the house having no suspicion but that Lawers was asleep, till about eleven o’clock, when they found him as above, swimming in his blood. Upon recollection on several passages which happened with respect to Duncan Campbell, they presently found him to have been the murderer, and caused the magistrates of Greenock write to the magistrates of Glasgow to apprehend him; but he being gone for Edinburgh, the provost wrote in to our provost here, whereupon there was a search here ... but the villain is not as yet found.

‘The occasion of this execrable murder is said by the murderer’s friends to be to prevent Lawers going back in the marriage, whereof he was then apprehensive; and being a relation of the bride’s, and very active in bringing on that courtship, the devil tempted him to that unparalleled cruelty. But we rather believe that it was to rifle his pockets, for his breeches were from under his head, and nothing but a Carolus and four shillings in them; whereas it is most certain that Lawers always carried a purse of gold with him, and more especially could not but have it when he intended to celebrate his marriage.’[^[569]]

Campbell was extensively advertised for as ‘a tall thin man, loot-shouldered, pock-pitted, with a pearl or blindness in the right eye,’ dressed in ‘a suit of gray Duroy clothes, plain-mounted, a big red coat, and a thin light wig, rolled up with a ribbon;’ ‘betwixt 30 and 40 years of age;’[^[570]] and a hundred guineas were offered for his apprehension; but we do not hear of his having ever been brought to justice.

Sir Alexander Murray of Stanhope, Peeblesshire, was one of those men who, possessed of some talent and insight, are so little under the government of common prudence and good temper, that they prove rather a trouble than a benefit to their fellow-creatures. In youth, during the life of his father, he married a beautiful and accomplished woman, Grizel Baillie, grand-daughter by her father of the patriot Robert Baillie of Jerviswood, unjustly put to death in 1684, and by her mother |1723.| of the eminent statesman Patrick Hume, Earl of Marchmont; but after four years of unhappy life, the lady had been separated from him in 1714, after which time she lived for a long series of years in her father’s family, in the enjoyment of universal esteem and respect. Sir Alexander was led by his ardent speculative mind into a series of projects which left him in the middle of life a broken man, and an object of pity to the public. His case is the more deplorable, that many of his ideas were founded upon a just conception of the wants and the capabilities of his country, and only required means and favourable circumstances to have been carried out to his own and the general advantage.

At this date, he bought a great peninsula of Argyleshire territory, named Ardnamurchan, which he desired, by mining and improved methods of agriculture and social economy, to make a model for the redemption of the entire kingdom from barbarism, sloth, and poverty. He believed the mountains throughout much of the West Highlands and Hebrides to be crossed by mineral veins of great value, and that it was possible from these to realise a great amount of wealth. As to improvement of the surface, it was his belief—contrary to the general impression—that the best plan was to commence a course of improvement upon the tops of the hills. He had observed traces of ancient tillage on the high grounds of Peeblesshire, and, pondering on the matter, had come to see that, the high grounds being naturally most liable to humidity, from the clouds settling upon them, it was of importance to the low grounds that the higher should be drained first. This being effected, and the surplus water led along the hillsides in trenches or canals, he would have the administration of moisture over the surface in a great measure in his own hands. What the Argyleshire and Inverness chiefs thought of such a plan amidst their semi-diluvial existence, we do not learn, but we may imagine something of it.

Sir Alexander tells us that he found his barony of twenty-four Scots miles long occupied by 1352 persons, among whom there was not one devoted to any mechanic art or trade. He tells us that, in one year, he drained a large tract of hilly and boggy ground, one-fourth part of which next year yielded him a hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of hay at fourpence per stone. He also commenced mining works, in connection with which there rose a village named New York, containing about 500 persons, many of whom were skilled English workmen. These mines, however, he afterwards leased to the York Buildings Company. He was the |1723.| first person who introduced any kind of trade into the district, and he assures us that, in his efforts at general improvement he spent large sums of his own patrimony. Yet, while benefiting the inhabitants in this way, he was the subject of jealousy amongst the better class of people, who regarded him as an alien, a Lowlander, and a spy upon their actions. His cattle were ham-strung or stolen, and his sheep forced over precipices. The buildings on his property were set on fire. There were even plans formed to murder him, from which it was a wonder that he escaped. Strange to say, ten years of such difficulties did not suffice to disgust him with Ardnamurchan, and he is found, first in 1732, and again in 1740, appealing to Walpole and to parliament for assistance to carry out his plans, all that he required being an abolition of the heritable jurisdictions which enslaved the lower classes to their landlords, and a flotilla of gun-boats to maintain law and order in the country.[^[571]]

An Edinburgh newspaper notices the death, on the 18th of May 1743, of Sir Alexander Murray of Stanhope, baronet, ‘to whom may be justly applied that beautiful passage from Seneca: “Ecce spectaculum dignum, ad quod respiciat Deus! ecce par Deo dignum, vir fortis cum malâ fortunâ compositus!”’ The writer of the article on Ardnamurchan in the New Statistical Account of Scotland, states that the plough has long passed over the site of New York, and that no trace of it remains in the district, excepting in a few English names scattered among the native population.

It may be remarked as to Sir Alexander’s mining schemes in Ardnamurchan, that in a portion of the district—namely, the valley of Strontian—lead-mines have been successfully worked at intervals since his time, the proprietor occasionally realising from £1000 to £1500 a year. The mineral strontites, from which was deduced the earth strontia, was discovered here, and named from Strontian. There was a prevalent belief in the reign of George II. that many valuable minerals might be obtained amongst the Highland mountains, if there were a possibility of working them. The actual discovery of marble in a few places served to support the notion. A very prosaic poet thus alludes to the matter about 1737:

‘No more with stucco need we vessels lade,

Enough thereof has been at Kelso made.[^[572]]

Nor need our jamms with foreign marble shine,

There’s beauteous marble at the Craig of Boin.

Yea, Ross and Sutherland rocks of marble shew,

Which vie in whiteness with the driven snow,

And black-veined marble is in Perthshire found,

Wherewith Banffhouse is ribatted around.’

1723.

The poet adds by way of explanation: ‘Craig of Boin is a rock of marble, veined and diversified with various colours, now a part of the Earl of Findlater’s estate, but formerly belonging to Mr Ogilvie of Boin, from whom Louis XIV. of France got so much of the said marble as finished one of the finest closets in Versailles.’ ‘Sir James Ramsay of Banff, in Perthshire, after he had built his mansion-house, found out a quarry of jet-black marble, whereupon he pulled the freestone ribats out of the windows, and put marble ones in their place.’[^[573]]

Soon after this time, we find a society in activity at Edinburgh, ‘for promoting Natural Knowledge,’ which in 1743 invited ‘noblemen, gentlemen, and others, who have discovered or may discover any unusual kinds of earths, stones, bitumens, saline or vitriolic substances, marcasites, ores of metals, and other native fossils, whose uses and properties they may not have an opportunity of inquiring into by themselves, to send sufficient samples of them, with a short account of the places where and the manner in which they are found, directed to Dr Andrew Plummer, one of the secretaries to the Philosophical Society, and the Society undertake, by some of their number, to make the proper trials at their own charge, for discovering the nature and uses of the Minerals, and to return an answer to the person by whom they were sent, if they are judged to be of any use or can be wrought to advantage.’[^[574]]

To return to personal matters connected with the speculative baronet of Stanhope—the beauty, accomplishments, and moral graces of Lady Murray made it the more unfortunate that she should have been united to one who, with whatever merits, was of too unsteady nature to have ever made any woman happy. It is alleged that, on the second day of their wedded life, a ferocious and unsatisfiable jealousy took possession of his mind, in consequence of seeing his young wife dancing with a friend of his own named Hamilton. He could not dispossess himself of the idea that she loved another better than him. His behaviour to her |1723.| would have proved him to have a slight touch of insanity in his composition, even if his ill-calculated projects had not been sufficient to do so. Lady Murray was an admired and popular person in both Scottish and English society. Amongst her friends, the chief authors of the day stood high. Gay introduces her into the group of goodly dames who welcomed Pope back from Greece—that is, congratulated him on his completion of the translation of Homer. After speaking of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he says:

‘The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends.’

He here alluded to her fascinating powers as a songstress, which she is said to have exercised with marvellous effect in singing the songs of her native land. Lady Murray wrote in her latter days a memoir of her parents, which was published in 1822, and is one of the most charming pieces of biography in the language.[^[575]]

On the 14th of October 1721, when Lady (then Mrs) Murray was living in her father’s house in Westminster, a footman of her brother-in-law, Lord Binning, named Arthur Gray, a Scotsman, was led by an insane passion to invade her chamber in the middle of the night, armed with a drawn sword in one hand and a pistol in the other. All the rest of the family being asleep, she felt how far removed she was from help and protection, and therefore parleyed with the man in the gentlest terms she could use, to induce him to leave her room; but half an hour was thus spent in vain. At length, watching an opportunity, she pushed him against the wall, seized his pistol with one hand, and with another rang the bell. Gray then ran off. He was tried for the offence, and condemned to death, but reprieved. The affair made of course a great deal of noise, and was variously regarded, according to the feelings of individuals. All persons, good and amiable, like Mrs Murray herself, sympathised with her in the distress and agitation which it gave her, and admired the courage and presence of mind she had displayed. The poor outcast poet Boyse represented this generous view of the case in the verses To Serena, which he wrote in Mrs Murray’s honour:

‘’Twas night, when mortals to repose incline,

And none but demons could intrude on thine,

When wild desire durst thy soft peace invade,

And stood insulting at thy spotless bed.

Urged all that rage or passion could inspire,

Death armed the wretch’s hand, his breast was fire.

You more than Briton saw the dreadful scene,

Nor lost the guard that always watched within,’ &c.[^[576]]

1723.

A different class of feelings was represented by Mrs Murray’s friend, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who wrote a ballad on the occasion, full of levity and something worse, which may be found in the work quoted below.[^[577]] This jeu d’esprit Mrs Murray resented in a manner which was felt to be unpleasant by Lady Mary, who with difficulty obtained a reconciliation through the intercession of her sister, the Countess of Mar.[^[578]]

May 9.

An Edinburgh newspaper of this date makes an announcement of a very homely and simple kind, but from which one may nevertheless draw a few inferences illustrative of the age. It is ‘to give notice, that there is a fine bullock to the value of £20 sterling to be killed at Dalkeith the 14th of May, and to be exposed to sale the 16th instant; and whoever has a mind for any of the said bullock, let them repair to the fleshmarket of Dalkeith against the hours of nine and ten o’clock in the morning, on the said 16th day of May, where they shall be kindly entertained by the owners of the said ox: likewise you shall have him more reasonable in proportion than any beef was sold in Scotland this year of God. For your encouragement, you shall have his principal pieces, such as his back-sayes, his fore-sayes, breasts, runners, flanks, hook-bones, marrow-bones, collop-pieces, and rump-pieces, all at 4s. Scots per pound, and his other pieces at 3s. per pound; or, if you please to buy it by the lump without weighing, they shall be welcome. The said ox is two ells and one inch high; in length from the root of the ear to his hip-bone, two yards three quarters; it is calculated by all tradesmen that ever did see him, that he will have ten stone-weight of tallow in his belly. He is one of the same country breed, bought by George Lamb, drover in Greenlaw, from the Right Honourable Lord Hopetoun in the year 1721. There is none in this age ever did see any in this place of Britain like him; I doubt if any such as him be, or to be equalised in England at this day. He has been fed this two years, and he is only six years old just now.’[^[579]]

1723. Aug.

Mr Wodrow was never long without some perilous affair to grieve over. ‘We have,’ says he at this date, ‘lamentable accounts of the growth of Episcopal Jacobite meeting-houses in the north, especially in Angus. The Commission [of the General Assembly] has sent up an address about them.’[^[580]]

In the summer of the previous year, a chapel for the use of those in communion with the Church of England according to law, was opened at the foot of Blackfriars’ Wynd, in Edinburgh, with ‘an altar and pulpit handsomely adorned.’ The newspapers of the day inform us—‘Some impious persons, in contempt of all laws human and divine, have demolished several of the glass-windows; but it’s hoped that care will be taken to prevent such scandalous abuses in time coming.’[^[581]]

The summer of this year was remarked to be unusually dry and sultry, with little wind. The air seemed stagnant, and the water unwholesome. Vast abundance of flies resulted, and a bloody flux became prevalent. ‘In one quarter of the parish [of Eastwood, in Renfrewshire],’ says Wodrow, ‘I saw nineteen sick persons in one day [August 23], and all of them save one of the flux.’ ‘I have never seen so much sickness in Eastwood for twenty years.’[^[582]]

Nov. 7.

A symptom of the gradual softening away of the sombre habits of the people was exhibited in the earlier part of this year, in the commencement of what was called the Assembly in Edinburgh, by which was meant an arrangement for a weekly meeting of the younger people of both sexes, for the purpose of dancing. The adventure was at first on a very modest scale, and the place of meeting—‘in the great hall in Patrick Steil’s Close’—might be considered as obscure.[^[583]] The people who patronised it were chiefly of those at once Tories in politics and Episcopalians in religion, |1723.| who, all through the last century, stood in opposition to the general feelings and habits of their countrymen. They were doubtless well satisfied of the legitimate and even laudable character of their design; yet it appears they felt themselves put on the defensive before the public, and were not a little solicitous to give their project a fair appearance. It was loudly proclaimed that the improvement of manners, the imparting of a ‘genteel behaviour,’ was in view; the utility of healthful exercise was insinuated; and a great point was made of the balances to be handed to the poor, for whose benefit no regulated charitable institution as yet existed. Great care was also professedly taken to insure perfect propriety on the part of the company. The ball opened at four in the afternoon, and was rigorously closed at eleven. Without tickets, at half-a-crown each, there could be no admission. Discreet matrons held indisputable sovereignty over the scene, before whom no vice could dare to shew its face.

The Assembly, of course, met with opposition from the square-toed part of society. ‘Some of the ministers published their warnings and admonitions against promiscuous dancing, and in one of their printed papers, which was cried about the streets, it was said that the devils were particularly busy upon such occasions.’[^[584]] A paper pellet was launched, under the title of A Letter from a Gentleman in the Country to his Friend in the City, with an Answer thereto, concerning the New Assembly; from which we learn that there were serious apprehensions, not only that these weekly meetings would introduce effeminate habits amongst the nobility and gentry, preventing them from serving their country in ‘the useful arts and sciences,’ but that they would encourage vice and prodigality, and thus prove ‘scandalous to religion, and of dangerous consequence to human society.’ The gentleman of the city was particularly distressed in remarking, that ‘the ordinary time spent in public worship each Lord’s Day comes short of the seven hours spent in the Assembly.’ He remarked, moreover, that Edinburgh was a place to which young men were sent for their education, and also to learn ‘merchandising’ and mechanical employments. These young persons would now be liable to be diverted from their proper pursuits in order to study how best to dress themselves for the Assembly, and how in that scene of levity they might best make favour with the fair. After attending there, they would most likely go to taverns. In |1723.| short, they would be thoroughly depraved, and the objects of their parents in sending them to town entirely frustrated.

The institution was viewed with especial horror by the more stern professors of Presbyterianism, as folly appears from a book of Patrick Walker, written soon after, in which he reviews the vanities of the age generally. ‘Some years ago,’ he says, ‘we had a profane, obscene meeting, called the Horn Order;[^[585]] and now we have got a new assembly and public meeting called Love for Love ... all nurseries of profanity and vanity, and excitements to base lusts; so that it is a shame to speak of these things that are said and done amongst them. Some years ago, our women deformed their heads with cock-ups’ [‘some of them half a yard high, set with wires’]; ‘and now they deform their bodies with farthingales nine yards about; some of them in three stories, very unbecoming women professing godliness.... If we would allow ourselves to think or consider, we need not be so vain or look so high, being born heirs of wrath, and our bodies to go to a consuming stinking grave ... and considering the end of our clothing and how we came by them, to cover our nakedness and for warmness to our bodies, and that the sheep’s old clothes are our new.’

Patrick fairly wondered how any one that ever knew what it was to bow a knee in prayer, ‘durst crook a hough to fyke and fling at a piper’s and fiddler’s springs. I bless the Lord,’ says he, ‘that so ordered my lot in my dancing-days, that made the fear of the bloody rope and bullets to my neck and head, the pain of boots, thumbikens, and irons, cold and hunger, wetness and weariness, to stop the lightness of my head and the wantonness of my feet.’ He felt bound to denounce dancing as a ‘common evil,’ especially among young professors, and he was peculiarly indignant at there being a dancing tune called the Cameronian March, which he conceived to be a mockery of the worthy name of Richard Cameron. In Patrick’s view, however, dancing was |1723.| but a symptom of a general departure from the grave, correct habits of former times. ‘In our speech,’ says he, ‘our Scripture and old Scots names are gone out of request; instead of Father and Mother, Mamma and Papa, training children to speak nonsense, and what they do not understand.’ He likewise complains of ‘a scandalous omission of the worship of God in families ... abounding amongst us in Edinburgh, the most part singing only a verse of a psalm and reading a chapter; on the Sabbath evening some pray and many not, and no more till the next Sabbath evening.’ The open profanation of the Lord’s Day he saw to be more and more abounding in Scotland. ‘The throng streets, particularly fields, milk-houses, ale-houses in and about sinful Edinburgh, is a sad evidence of this; many going to the fields before sermons, and after sermons multitudes go to their walks.’ He states that ‘three in one parish in 1716, and nine together in a neighbour parish in 1717, all of them professors, went to the cornfields in these Sabbath mornings, and did shear so many sheaves of corn.’

The poet Allan Ramsay, who maintained a Horatian code of gaiety and enjoyment in the midst of puritanic soberness, strongly took part with the Assembly, and addressed its fair adherents in a poem which, with its prose dedication, has supplied us with some of the above facts. Allan may have had his heart in his theme, but little is to be said for the eloquence of his verses; nor were some of his views as to the pleasures of the Assembly at all calculated to do away with the prejudices of its opponents. We are told, however, that both in the case of the Assembly and that of the Playhouse, hereafter to be noticed, ‘the ministers lost ground, to their great mortification, for the most part of the ladies turned rebels to their remonstrances.’[^[586]]

Two young men destined to be remembered by their country were in the habit of attending the Assembly: one of them a hard-headed, yet speculative genius, rising at the bar; the other a philandering, sentimental being, absorbed in poetry and Jacobitism; their names Henry Home of Kames and William Hamilton of Bangour; at this time, living in bonds of strongest friendship. Hamilton one day addressed Home ‘in the Assembly,’ thus:

‘While, crowned with radiant charms divine,

Unnumbered beauties round thee shine;

When Erskine leads her happy man,

And Johnston shakes the fluttering fan;

When beauteous Pringle shines confest,

And gently heaves her swelling breast,

Her raptured partner still at gaze,

Pursuing through each winding maze;

Say, youth, and canst thou keep secure

Thy heart from conquering beauty’s power?

· · · · ·

For me, my happier lot decrees

The joys of love that constant please....

My Hume, my beauteous Hume, constrains

My heart in voluntary chains....

Has she not all the charms that lie

In Gordon’s blush and Lockhart’s eye;

The down of lovely Haya’s hair,

Killochia’s shape or Cockburn’s air?’...

1723.

This affords us some idea of the beauties who gave its first attractions to the Assembly.

Nov. 9.

As a symptom of a good tendency, it is pleasant to notice at this date the establishment of a Society for Improving in the Knowledge of Agriculture, which proposed to hold quarterly general meetings in Edinburgh. The Marquis of Lothian, the Earl of Kinnoull, Lord Elibank, John Campbell, Esq., Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Sir George Dunbar of Mochrum, Sir Alexander Hope of Kerse, Mr Lumsden of Innergellie, Mr John Murray, one of the Clerks of Session, and Ronald Campbell of Balerno, W.S., are enumerated as amongst the constituent members.[^[587]] The Society in a short time comprehended three hundred of the principal landholders of Scotland. The centre and animating spirit of the fraternity is understood to have been a young Galloway gentleman, Robert Maxwell of Arkland, who about this time took a lease of the farm of Clifton-hall, near Edinburgh, and was there disposed to make experiments in improved husbandry.

The Improvers, as they were called, from the very first shewed a spirit of activity. In September 1724, we hear of them as being about to publish a book upon the fallowing of ground, the method of ordering ground for grass-seeds, the winning and cleaning of flax, and rules for bleaching linen cloth. At the same time, they patriotically entered into a resolution to discourage the use of smuggled foreign spirits by their personal example, and to use means for promoting the manufacture of spirits from native products.[^[588]]

1723.

A few of their doings appear to us in a somewhat ludicrous light. For example—in July 1732, they figure in a tradesman’s advertisement of Punch Brandy, as certifying it to be ‘a very nice and exact composition,’ after ‘trials of it both in drams and punch.’

Two years later, it goes equally out of its way, but with better excuse, in recommending the woollen cloths made by Andrew Gardner, merchant in Edinburgh, and Andrew Ross, clothier in Musselburgh, as ‘sufficient cloths’ from five to fifteen shillings a yard; the encouraging of which will tend to advance a branch of native industry, and prevent the pernicious exportation of wool.

Nevertheless, there is all fair reason to believe that the Improvers were really worthy of their name. A volume of their Transactions, which Maxwell edited in 1743, enables us to judge of the general scope of their efforts. Meeting once a fortnight at a house near Hope Park, they received queries from individuals throughout the country on agricultural subjects, took these into consideration, and prepared answers. Fallowing, manuring, enclosing, how to treat different kinds of soils, the merits of the Lucerne and St Foin grasses, were the chief subjects discussed; and it must be acknowledged that their transactions bear a general air of judgment and good sense, in addition to a most earnest desire to make two blades grow where one grew before, and so increase the general wealth of the country.

The president for a number of years was Thomas Hope of Rankeillor, a man who deserves to be better remembered than he is. He took, in 1722, a long lease of a marshy meadow to the south of Edinburgh, drained it, and made it into a fine park with shady walks for the recreation of the citizens. He had travelled in England, France, and Holland, to pick up hints for the improvement of agriculture, and he was indefatigable in his efforts to get these introduced at home. It was somewhere in prospect of his park that the Society held its meetings. His relative, the contemporaneous Earl of Hopetoun, the Earl of Stair, the Earl of Ilay, Lord Cathcart, Lord Drummore, Sir John Dalrymple of Cousland, and Mr Cockburn of Ormiston, were other special zealots in the business of the Society, and whose names figure honourably in its transactions. It is particularly remembered, to the honour of the Earl of Stair, that he was the first to raise turnips in the open fields, and so laid the foundation of the most important branch of the store-husbandry of modern times.

1723. Dec.

When cattle were stolen in the Highlands, one of the means commonly taken for their recovery was to send an emissary into the supposed country of the thief, and offer a reward for his discovery. This was known among the Highlanders as tascal-money, and held in general abhorrence; yet it was sometimes effectual for its purpose.

The Camerons, living at issue with the government, had many disorderly men among them, and tascal-money became accordingly with them a peculiar abomination. To so great a height did this run, that a large portion of the clan voluntarily took oath to each other, over a drawn dirk, according to their custom, that they would never receive any such reward; otherwise might the weapon be employed in depriving them of their lives.

A creagh had taken place, and one of the Camerons was strongly suspected of having given information and taken the unclean thing. A few of his companions consequently called at his house one evening, and, pretending to have some business with him, took him out from his wife and family to a place at such distance as to be out of hearing, where they coolly deprived him of his life. The story is only related in the pages of Burt;[^[589]] but there is too good reason to believe in its verity. The reporter adds, that for the same offence, another was made away with, and never more heard of.

1724. Jan.

A more gay and easy style of ideas was everywhere creeping in, to replace the stern and sombre manners of former less happy times. The ever-watchful Mr Wodrow observed the process going on even in the comparatively serious city of Glasgow. He remarks at this time how the young men of that city are less religiously educated than formerly, and how, going abroad in mercantile capacities, they come back with the loose habits of other countries. At the university, the students were beginning to evince a tendency to freedom of thought, and the statement of Trinitarian doctrines by the professors sometimes excited amongst them appearances of dissent and of derision. In the city where there had been a few years back seventy-two regular meetings for prayer, there were now four, while clubs for debating on miscellaneous, and often irreverent questions, were coming into vogue. The discipline of the church was beginning to be less regarded; delinquents receive countenance from society; women of improper |1724.| character were occasionally seen on the open street! It seemed to Mr Wodrow that some desolating stroke was impending over the western city. Indeed, they had already lost twenty thousand pounds through the Custom-house difficulties regarding tobacco. ‘I wish it may be sanctified to them.’

The worthy minister of Eastwood received soon after a small piece of comforting information from Orkney. A minister in that archipelago, being one Saturday detained from crossing a ferry to preach next day, was induced to break the Sabbath in order to fulfil his engagement, for which, as ‘scandalous,’ the presbytery processed him. It ‘shews they are stricter there in discipline than we are.’ On the other hand, the College lads at Glasgow, excited by the process of the presbytery and synod against the liberal Professor Simson, went the length of writing a play taking off the city clergy. ‘Matters are come to a sad pass when people begin openly to mock and ridicule gospel ministers; that strikes at the root of all religion!’

Mr Wodrow’s report about the state of religion in the army is contradictory. On one page, we hear a lamentation for some serious Christian officers who had left no successors; on another, there is rejoicing over several still living, of the highest religious practice, as Colonel Blackader, Colonel Erskine, Lieut.-colonel Cunninghame, and Major Gardiner of ‘Stair’s Gray Horse.’ These were all of them men of the strictest morals, and who gave much of their time to religious exercises, Gardiner spending four hours every morning in ‘secret religion.’ Regarding the conversion of this last gentleman, whose fate it was to die on the field of Prestonpans, and to have his life written by Doddridge, Wodrow rather unexpectedly fails to give any trace of the strange tale told by his biographer regarding his conversion, remarking, on the contrary, that the change wrought on him a few years ago was ‘gradual and insensible.’

Jan. 29.

The treatment of a bad class of insolvents at this period seems to have been considerably different from anything of the kind now in fashion. On this day, according to an Edinburgh newspaper, ‘one George Cowan, a Glasgow merchant, stood in the pillory here, with this inscription on his breast: George Cowan, a notorious fraudulent bankrupt.’

Feb.

A Society for cultivating historical literature was established in Edinburgh, though not destined to make any great or permanent |1724.| mark on the age. It took its rise among men of Whig professions, and, perhaps, its having party objects in view was mainly what forbade it to acquire stability or perfect any considerable work. At its head is found a man of no small merit as an editor of historical muniments, James Anderson. It included the names of the Rev. George Logan, afterwards noted for his controversies with Ruddiman; Charles M‘Ky, professor of history in the Edinburgh University; and two or three other persons of less note.[^[590]] Mr Wodrow, whose laborious History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland had now been a couple of years before the world, was invited to join. The first business before this Society was to consider what could be done towards a new edition of the works of George Buchanan. These had been published in goodly form by Robert Freebairn in 1715—a credit to the Scottish press in externals, and in the learning of the editor, Thomas Ruddiman; but the Whigs had to regret that the annotations were in a strain sadly out of harmony with that of a democratic author; and hence their desire to see another edition. The Society was now holding meetings once a fortnight for the preparation of such a work, and were even disposed to ask that an edition contemplated in Holland should be delayed till theirs came out, in order that their views should obtain additional circulation;[^[591]] yet it never came to perfection, and the curtain of oblivion soon after falls upon the Historical Society.

Mar.

Gordon of Glenbucket had been invested by the Duke of Gordon in some lands in Badenoch by virtue of a wadset.[^[592]] The tenants, Macphersons, felt aggrieved at having a new landlord put over them, and refused to pay any rent. Glenbucket consequently raised a process at law for their ejection, a measure which was then as much calculated to engender murderous feelings in Scotland, as it has since been in Ireland.

Five or six of them, young fellows, the sons of gentlemen, including Alexander Macpherson, son of Breakachie; Andrew Macpherson, son of Benchar; and John Macpherson, nephew of Killihuntly, came one evening to Glenbucket’s house, which they entered as seeming friends. He was sickly and under the influence of medicine, and was sitting on his low-framed bedstead, preparing to go to rest. They told him they had come to express their regret for the dispute which had happened—they were now resolved |1724.| to acknowledge him as their landlord, and pay him rent—and they had only to entreat that he would withdraw from the legal proceedings he had entered upon. While addressing him in this manner, they gradually drew close to him, in order to prevent him from defending himself against their contemplated onslaught, for they knew his courage and vigour, and that he was not far from his arms. They then suddenly fell upon him with their dirks, and, having him for the moment at advantage, they gave him many wounds, though none that were deadly. He contrived, amidst the bustle, to lay hold of his broadsword, which lay on the tester of his bed; and thus armed, he soon drove his assassins from the house. Burt, who relates this incident,[^[593]] remarks, with just surprise, that it took place within sight of the barrack at Ruthven.[^[594]]

The young men above named, being believed to be the perpetrators of this crime, were soon after outlawed for failing to attend the summons of the Court of Justiciary. They were so far under terror of the law, that they found it necessary to ‘take to the bent;’ but they nevertheless continued with arms in their hands, and, in company with others who had joined them, lived tolerably well by spulyie committed on the Duke of Gordon’s tenants in Badenoch.

In November 1725, General Wade is found sending a circular to the officers commanding the six Highland companies, ordering them, in compliance with a request from the duke, to use diligence in discovering and taking these outlaws, and any who might harbour them, in order to their being brought to justice. This effort, however, seems to have been attended with no good effect; and in the ensuing July, the duke wrote to the general, expressing his ‘free consent that application be made for taking off the sentence of fugitation’ against six associates of the assassins—namely, |1724.| John Macpherson in Bellachroan; Elias Macpherson in Coraldie; Alexander Macpherson, nephew to Killihuntly; William Macpherson, son to Essick; Donald Macpherson, son to John Oig Macpherson in Muccoul; and Lachlan Macpherson of Laggan, provided they delivered up their arms, and promised to live as obedient subjects to King George in future. His Grace at the same time expressed his opinion, that it was ‘absolutely necessary for the peace of Badenoch’ that the three principals in the attack on Glenbucket should be brought to justice. The general accordingly ordered fresh and vigorous efforts to be made for the apprehension of these persons.[^[595]] We learn from Burt that they were ultimately forced to take refuge in foreign countries.

Apr. 8.

The people of Edinburgh were regaled with the amusing spectacle of a bank beat through the city, by permission of King George, for recruits to the king of Prussia’s regiment of ultra-tall grenadiers. Two guineas of earnest-money were administered. A local chronicler assures his readers, that ‘those listed are men of such proper size and good countenances, as we need not be ashamed of them in foreign services.’[^[596]] A recruiting for the same regiment is noticed in Edinburgh four years later.

Apr. 10.

The Rev. Mr J. Anderson, in a letter of this date, gives Mr Wodrow an account of a dumb gentleman, a Mr Gordon, who attracted great attention on account of the knowledge he appeared to have of things not patent to ordinary observation, and with which he had no visible means of becoming acquainted. The powers of clairvoyance occasionally attributed in old times to dumb persons have already been adverted to. Gordon, who was a man of respectable connections, and seventy years of age, a widower with three grown children, and supported chiefly by going about among his friends, had thoroughly excited the wonder of Mr Anderson.

A lady, missing some brandy, asked Mr Gordon who had taken it; ‘upon which he went to the kitchen, and brought up one of the maid-servants, to whom, before her lady, he signed that she had stolen the keys of the cellar and taken it away ... the servant was forced to own all.’

On another occasion, ‘a gauger coming in, whom he had never |1724.| seen before, he signed before the company present what was his business; that he had been a soldier, and how long he had been a gauger in this country, and how long in Fife, and that he had once been suspended, and again reponed, with several other particulars, which astonished the man, who owned all to be truth.’

‘A child of seven years of age engaging one of the company to play with pins at Heads and Points, the person soon got all his pins, the child having no skill to hide them. The lady, the mother of the child, told the person in jest she would win back the child’s pins; and, Gordon drawing near, he still directed her how to lay when the other person was hiding, and she never failed to win till all were got back.... When he gets money from ministers, he very oft signs whether they give it out of their own pocket or out of the poor’s box.... To a minister’s family here he signed, when he came to the house, where he was, and sometimes what he was doing—particularly at a certain hour, if he was shaving; which, upon the minister’s return, he owned to be true.’

Some, adds Mr Anderson, ‘think he has converse with a familiar spirit; and it’s certain that dumb people have frequently been their tools.’[^[597]]

May.

There was profound peace, and the seasons for twelve years past had been favourable; yet we hear at this time of a general poverty in the land, and that, too, from a reporter in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, where, if anywhere, there had been some fruitful industry in consequence of the Union. Mr Wodrow’s statements are, indeed, to be taken with some caution, as his views of national wellbeing are apt to be distorted by his fears regarding changes of religious feeling and practice. Still, the picture he draws must have involved some, though not the whole truth.

He tells that under this peace ‘we are growing much worse. The gentry and nobility are either discontent or Jacobite, or profane; and the people are turning loose, worldly, and very disaffected. The poverty and debts of many are increasing, and I cannot see how it can be otherwise. There are no ways to bring specie into this country. Trade is much failed [the tobacco-trade of the Clyde had temporarily declined under the malignant efforts of the English ports]. Any trade we have is of that kind that takes money from among us, and brings in French brandy, Irish meal [oatmeal was but fourpence a peck], tea, &c. Unless it be |1724.| a few coals from the west [the coal-field of Ayr and Renfrewshires], and some black-cattle from the south [Galloway], and many of these are not our breed, but Irish, I see no branch of our business that brings in any money. The prodigious run of our nobility and gentry to England, their wintering there, and educating their children there ... takes away a vast deal of money every year. It’s plain we are overstocked with people, considering their idleness, and that makes the consumpt very great;’ which ‘will infallibly at length impoverish us. To say nothing of the vast losses many have sustained by the South Sea, York Buildings, our Fishing Company, and other bubbles. The Lord, for our sins, is angry, and frowns upon us, in outwards [i. e., outward circumstances].’[^[598]]

In the district of Galloway (Kirkcudbright and Wigtonshires), where the basis of the population is Celtic, the idleness and consequent poverty of the people was peculiarly great. There was a prodigious number of small tenantry, of very indolent character, and who were accustomed to ‘run out’ or exhaust their land to the last extremity, cropping it two years for one of lea, of course without manure, and being at the same time generally several years behind in their rents. It was a state of things very like what our own advanced age has been fated strangely to see prevalent over large tracts of Ireland and of the Highlands of Scotland—a fearful misapplication and misplacement of human nature, with frightful natural consequences in chronic misery and disorganisation. The landlords, anxious to introduce a better system, began to subdivide and enclose their lands, in order to stock them with black-cattle, and to eject tenants hopelessly sunk in idleness and poverty.

Among those ejected on the estates of Gordon of Earlstoun and the Viscountess Kenmure, were two farmers of better means, whose only fault was that they would not engage for the solvency of their sub-tenantry; and these two now banded together to support each other in keeping possession of their holdings. Others readily came into this covenant. A common sense of suffering, if not wrong, pervading the country, raised up large bands of the miserable people, who, deeming the enclosures a symbol of the antagonist system, began to pull these down wherever they came. ‘Their manner was to appoint a meeting on Tuesday, and continue together till Thursday, and then separate. They prepared |1724.| gavelochs [levers] and other instruments, and did their work most dexterously. Herds and young boys first turned over the head and loose stones; then the women, with the hand and shoulders, turned down the dike; the men came last, and turned up the foundation.’ A band of thirty of the Levellers, as they were ominously called, went to Kirkcudbright, and there published a manifesto, declaring the government of the country to be now in the hands of the tenantry, and ordering all who had any debates to come to them and get them determined.

The gentlemen of the district, irritated, and to some extent alarmed, called in a military force under Lord Crichton and a French Protestant refugee officer, Major Du Carry, to preserve the peace. The lairds of Heron and Murdoch, and Gordon of Earlstoun, were for strong measures; Murray of Broughton and Colonel Maxwell inclined to leniency and persuasion. Seven or eight of the ringleaders being taken up, a sort of fiery cross went through the country on the ensuing day, though a Sunday, ordering the people to assemble at three points for their defence; and a stand was actually made by about thirty against the attack of the troops. One of the gentlemen of the district had a horse wounded under him by a rioter. It seems to have been a fierce and determined encounter on the part of the Levellers; but it ended, as such encounters always end, in the defeat of the insurgent party, of whom sixteen were taken prisoners. As these were being carried away, a mob of women, strong in their weakness and their misery, assailed the soldiers, and one sprang like a wildcat upon a trooper, but only to be trampled under his horse. The soldiers succeeded in lodging their prisoners in Kirkcudbright tolbooth. At the trials which ensued, ‘those who had any funds were fined; some were banished to the plantations; others were imprisoned. A respectable man, of the name of M‘Laherty, who lived in Balmaghie parish ... on his being brought to trial, one of the justices admired a handsome Galloway which he rode, and the justice told him, if he would give him the Galloway, he would effect his acquittal, which he accordingly did.’[^[599]]

These severities brought the levelling system to a close in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright; it was kept up for some time later in Wigtonshire, but gradually died away there also. The country was left in the hands of the gentry and soldiery, without any |1724.| effectual remedy being applied to the evils out of which the dike-breaking had sprung. Herds of miserable people continued going about Galloway, a subject of painful but fruitless compassion to the rest of their countrymen.[^[600]]

A venerable gentleman, just quoted, was able, in 1811, to give the following striking picture of the general manner of living of the Galloway rural population of 1724. ‘The tenants, in general,’ he says, ‘lived very meanly on kail, groats, milk, gradden grinded in querns turned by the hand, and the grain dried in a pot, together with a crock ewe[^[601]] now and then about Martinmas. They were clothed very plainly, and their habitations were most uncomfortable. Their general wear was of cloth, made of waulked plaiding, black and white wool mixed, very coarse, and the cloth rarely dyed. Their hose were made of white plaiding cloth, sewed together, with single-soled shoes, and a black or blue bonnet, none having hats but the lairds, who thought themselves very well dressed for going to church on Sunday with a black kelt-coat of their wife’s making.... The distresses and poverty felt in the country during these times ... continued till about the year 1735. In 1725, potatoes were first introduced into the stewartry [of Kirkcudbright] by William Hyland, from Ireland,[^[602]] who carried them on horses’ backs to Edinburgh, where he sold them by pounds and ounces. During these times, when potatoes were not generally raised in the country, there was for the most part a great scarcity of food, bordering on famine; for in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright and county of Dumfries, there was not as much victual produced as was necessary for supplying the inhabitants; and the chief part of what was required for that purpose was brought from the sand-beds of Esk in tumbling cars, on the Wednesdays, to Dumfries; and when the waters were high by reason of spates—there being no bridges—so that these cars could not come with the meal, I have seen the tradesmen’s wives, in the streets of Dumfries, crying because there was none to be got. At that period there was only one baker in Dumfries, and he made bawbee baps of coarse flour, chiefly bran, which he occasionally carried in creels to the fairs of Urr and Kirkpatrick. The produce of the country in general was gray corn, and you might have travelled from Dumfries to Kirkcudbright, which is twenty-seven miles, without seeing any other grain, except in a gentleman’s |1724.| croft, which, in general, produced bear or bigg for one-third part, another third in white oats, and the remaining third in gray oats. At that period there was no wheat raised in the country: what was used was brought from Teviot; and it was believed that the soil would not produce wheat.... Cattle were very low. I remember being present at the Bridge-end of Dumfries in 1736, when Anthony M‘Kie, of Netherlaw, sold five score of five-year-old Galloway cattle in good condition to an Englishman at £2, 12s. 6d. each; and old Robert Halliday, who was tenant of a great part of the Preston estate, told me that he reckoned he could graze his cattle on his farms for 2s. 6d. a head—that is to say, his rent corresponded to that sum.’[^[603]]

July 6.

Allan Ramsay, in some jocular verses, compliments Mr David Drummond, advocate, for the victory he this day gained as an archer, in ‘shooting for the bowl’ at Musselburgh. The old gentleman had gained the prize of the silver arrow exactly fifty years before. These trivial facts suggest the existence of what was called a Royal Company of Archers all through the reigns of Anne and the first George, a sodality composed almost exclusively of the Jacobite aristocracy, and, in fact, a sort of masked muster for the cause of the exiled Stuart. Besides private convivial meetings, where doubtless much enigmatical affection for the old line of princes found vent, there was an annual meeting for a shooting-match, attended by a showy procession through the streets of Edinburgh, in order to impress the public with an idea of their numbers, and the rank and influence of the members. They had their captain-general, usually a nobleman of the highest rank; their first and second lieutenant-generals, their adjutant, and other officers; their colours, music, and uniforms; in short, a pretty effective military organisation and appearance. The dress, which they innocently believed to be after the ancient Roman model, was of tartan trimmed with green silk fringe, with a blue bonnet trimmed with green and white ribbons, and the badge of St Andrew in the front; their bows and swords hung with green and white ribbons; the officers being further distinguished by having the dress laid over with silver lace. The cavalier spirit of Allan Ramsay glowed at seeing these elegant specimens of the Aristoi of Scotland engaged at butts and rovers, and often poured itself forth in verses to their praise. Pitcairn, |1724.| Sir William Bennet of Grubbet, and Sir William Scott of Thirlstain, were equally ready to celebrate in Latin sapphics their contentions for the bowl and silver arrow at Musselburgh—drolly translated Conchipolis in their verses. There was a constant and obvious wish on the part of the society to look as ‘braid’[^[604]] as possible, and so let the world slily understand how many men of mark were in their hearts favourable to the still hoped for restoration.

The Royal Company had a particularly ostentatious parade in Edinburgh on the 10th of July 1732. Having assembled in the Parliament Square, a party of thirty-six was despatched under the Earl of Wemyss to the Duke of Hamilton’s lodging in Holyrood, to bring up the standard, on which, besides other insignia, was depicted the national lion ramping in gold, with the significant motto, ‘Pro patria dulce periculum.’ They then marched through the city to the Links in the following order, as described by a sympathising contemporary record:

‘The Duke of Hamilton, captain-general, preceded by the Lord Bruce on horseback, with fine Turkish furniture, who acted as major-general in absence of the Earl of Crawford; next, the music, consisting of trumpets, hautboys, cors-de-chasse, alternately playing the proper march of the company, and answered by nine drums (all in the company’s livery), and they again by the music-bells. Mr David Drummond, advocate, president of the council; Sir Archibald Primrose of Dunipace, and William Sinclair of Roslin, brigadiers, at the head of the first brigade. My Lord Viscount Oxford, brigadier, marched up the second brigade; my Lord Kinnaird, brigadier, the third; George Lockhart of Carnwath, brigadier, the fourth. The Earl of Wigton, second lieutenant-general, before the colours, which were carried by the Earl of Cassillis; and the Lord Rollo, supported by the Earl of Kilmarnock, and Master Thomas Lyon, brigadiers, led up the centre brigade; David Smith of Methven, brigadier, the sixth brigade; Sir Robert Stewart of Tillicultry, brigade the seventh; the eighth and last brigade by the Lord Cranston, brigadier, followed up by James Hepburn of Keith, and the Lord Gairlies, brigadiers, and closed in the rear by the Earl of Wemyss, first lieutenant-general; Colonel John Stewart, brother to Grantully, and Arthur Forbes of Pittencrief, acting as adjutants-general, on horseback, on the wings of the several brigades.

1724.

‘In front of all marched the several decked horses, and other equipage, &c., of the several officers, which, being very rich and magnificent, made a very fine show; and after them, the silver arrow, carried by the company’s officer.

‘There was on this occasion an infinite crowd of spectators, who came from all quarters to see this splendid appearance, and who expressed their satisfaction by loud acclamations.

‘The lord provost and magistrates saw the procession from a window, and were saluted by the several officers, as did General Wade from a balcony in the Earl of Murray’s lodgings. The governor of Damascus came likewise to see the ceremony. Betwixt one and two o’clock, the company arrived in the Links, whence, after shooting for the arrow (which was won by Mr Balfour of Forret), they marched into Leith in the same order; and after dinner, returned to the city, and saw acted the tragedy called Macbeath.’[^[605]]

It is very sad to reflect how the Earl of Kilmarnock and some others of this noble company came to ruin a few years after by carrying the play a little too far.

July 15.

The magistrates of Edinburgh issued an edict proceeding upon a recital that disturbances have arisen, and may further arise, from gentlemen carrying firearms, and their servants wearing dirks and broadswords, in the streets, a practice ‘contrary to the rules of decency and good order;’ wherefore it was now strictly forbidden.[^[606]] It is to be remarked that in this prohibition there is no notice taken of the swords worn by gentlemen.

July.

The danger arising to the government from having a rude people of disaffected sentiments and hardy warlike character seated in the north-west parts of Scotland, was now brought before it with sufficient urgency to cause the adoption of remedial measures. An effectual disarming act, the raising of armed companies in the pay of the government, the completion of a line of forts, and the formation of roads by which these should be accessible and the benefits of civilisation imparted to the country, were the chief means looked to for doing away with the Highland difficulty. A sensible English officer, General George Wade, was sent down to act as commander-in-chief of the troops in Scotland, and carry these measures into effect.

1724.

If we may believe a statement which there is all reason to believe except one—the character of its author, who was no other than Simon Lord Lovat—it was high time that something was done to enforce the laws in the Highlands. In William’s reign, there had been an armed watch and a severe justiciary commission; but they had long been given up; so, after a temporary lull, things had returned to their usual course. The garrisons at Fort William, Killicummin, and Inverness proved ineffectual to restrain the system of spoliation, or to put down a robbers’ tax called black-mail [nefarious rent], which many paid in the hope of protection.

The method by which the country was brought under this tax is thus stated: ‘When the people are almost ruined by continual robberies and plunders, the leader of the band of thieves, or some friend of his, proposes that for a sum of money to be annually paid, he will press a number of men in arms to protect such a tract of ground, or as many parishes as submit to pay the contribution. When the contributions are paid, he ceases to steal, and thereby the contributors are safe. If he refuse to pay, he is immediately plundered. To colour all this villainy, those concerned in the robberies pay the tax with the rest, and all the neighbourhood must comply, or be undone.’[^[607]] Black-mail naturally prevailed in a marked manner in fertile lowland districts adjacent to the Highlands, as Easter Ross, Moray, and the Lennox.

Directly with a view to the prevention of robberies, and the suppression of this frightful impost, the government established six companies of native soldiery, selected from clans presumedly loyal, and respectively commanded by Lord Lovat, Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochnell, Colonel Grant of Ballandalloch, Colonel Alexander Campbell of Finab, John Campbell of Carrick, and George Monro of Culcairn. The whole, consisting of four hundred and eighty men, were dressed in plain dark-coloured tartan, and hence were called the Reicudan Dhu, or Black Watch. Burt reports an allegation, that one of the commanders [Lord Lovat?] used to strip his tenants of their best plaids, wherewith to invest his men at a review. On the other hand, there were men of such birth and breeding in the corps, that they had gillies to do drudgery for them. They were posted in small parties throughout the more lawless parts of the country, and are represented as having been reasonably effective for their purpose.

1724.

For the disarming of the disaffected clans, Wade had his six native companies and four hundred troops of the line ready at Inverness to proceed with the work in June 1725; but the riot about the malt-tax at Glasgow delayed his measures, and it was not till the 10th of August that he marched in force towards the rendezvous of the Mackenzies at Brahan Castle. The heads of the clan saw it to be necessary to obey, or to appear to obey, and also to promise that in future the rents of their chief, the forfeited Earl of Seaforth, should be paid to the state, instead of to Donald Murchison. The general on his part allowed them to understand that, very probably, if they made this submission, their chief would be pardoned and restored. One little concession they had to ask from the English general—let him spare them the humiliation of delivering their arms in the presence of the Reicudan Dhu. To this the general consented. He sent the native loyalists to guard the passes to the westward.

It must have been a solemn and interesting sight to an English officer of impressionable feelings, if such a being then existed, when the troops took up their position in front of that grand old Highland fortress, amidst scenery of the most magnificent kind, to receive the submission of a high-spirited people, who had resisted as long as resistance was possible. First came the gentlemen or duine-wassels, about fifty in number, to pay their respects to the general. Then followed in slow procession along the great avenue, the body of the clansmen, in parishes, forty or fifty in each, marching four and four, and bringing their arms on horses. On arriving in front of the house, they unloaded and deposited the weapons, drank the king’s health, and slowly turned away.[^[608]] ‘The chiefs of the several tribes, and other principal gentlemen of the country, dined the same day with the general, and great civilities and mutual assurances of good offices passed on both sides. They promised the general that the rents of the estate should be punctually paid to the crown, for the use of the public, and a dutiful submission [rendered] to his majesty’s government.’[^[609]] Weapons to the number of 784 were given in; but in reality they were only the oldest and most worn of the arms possessed by this great clan. Donald Murchison had taken |1724.| care previously to gather up all their best arms into some central store unknown to the government.[^[610]]

Following this example, and partly, it is alleged, induced by little favours extended or promised by the general, the rest of the Jacobite clans, the Macdonalds, Camerons, Macleods, &c., made an appearance of surrendering their arms at various appointed stations during the autumn. The entire number of articles given in was 2685. The total expense of the collection was about £2000, and the general gives us an idea of the true state of the case, beyond what he possessed himself, when he tells us that the articles for the most part were worth little more than the price of old iron.

General Wade received submissive letters from many of the chiefs and others who had been in the insurrection of 1715, all professing anxiety for pardon, and promising a quiet life in future. There was none more submissive than one from Rob Roy, who contrived to make it appear that his treason was against his will. ‘It was my misfortune,’ says he, ‘at the time the Rebellion broke out, to be liable to legal diligence and caption, at the Duke of Montrose’s instance, for debt alleged due to him. To avoid being flung into prison, as I must certainly have been, had I followed my real inclinations in joining the king’s troops at Stirling, I was forced to take party with the adherents of the Pretender; for the country being all in arms, it was neither safe nor possible for me to stand neuter.’ Of course, this was meant by Rob as merely a civil apology for deliberate rebellion. To give it confirmation, he told the general: ‘I not only avoided acting offensively against his majesty’s forces upon all occasions, but, on the contrary, sent his Grace the Duke of Argyle all the intelligence I could from time to time, of the situation and strength of the rebels; which I hope his Grace will do me the justice to acknowledge.’ It is to be hoped that Rob was not here so dishonest as to speak the truth. There is ample reason to believe that the frank English general was imposed upon by the professions made by the Jacobite chiefs, for he reported to government that disaffection was much abated, and interested himself zealously for the pardon of several of the attainted gentlemen.

A poor woman named Margaret Dickson, an inhabitant of the parish of Inveresk, was tried under the act of 1690 for concealment |1724.| of pregnancy in the case of a dead child. A defence was made for her that she was a married woman, though living separate from her husband; but it was of no avail. |Sep. 2.| A broadside—which proceeds upon a strong approval of the text, that ‘the works of God are works of wonder, and his ways past finding out’—gives a minute recital of the circumstances of her execution in the Grassmarket; how the hangman did his usual office of pulling down her legs; and how the body, having hung the usual time, was taken down and put into a coffin, the cooms of which were nailed fast at the gibbet-foot. It then proceeds. ‘Being put into a cart, to transport her corpse to be interred in the churchyard of Inveresk, whither the magistrates had allowed her friends to carry her, there happened a scuffle betwixt her friends and some surgeon-apprentices and others, their accomplices, on this side of the Society Port. One, with a hammer, broke down one of the sides of the cooms of the chest; which, having given some air, and, together with the jolting of the cart, set the blood and vitals agoing. The people intrusted with transporting her body having stopped at Peffermill to take a refreshment, and left her upon a cart in the highway, two joiners, from curiosity, came from a house to view the coffin, and, to their surprise, heard a noise within. Acquainting the persons concerned, they proposed to open the other side of the cooms of the chest, which, after some opposition, was agreed to. The coom being taken off, they perceived her to draw up her limbs. One Peter Purdie, a practitioner of phlebotomy, providentially breathed a vein, from which streamed blood, which recovered her so far, that twice she said: “O dear!” Being brought to her feet, she was supported by two to a brae-side, where the blood returned to her lips and cheeks, which promised a sudden recovery. Being laid upon blankets in a corn-cart, her head and body upheld by a woman, she was driven to Musselburgh, where she remained, at the magistrates’ command, all night; had restoratives and means of sustenance given her; was visited by Mr Robert Bonally, one of the ministers of that place, who prayed over her; and next morning was laid in a bed in her brother James Dickson, weaver, his house, whither a great many flock every day to see her, and not a few gave her money. She had little appearance of recovering her health or senses next day, and cried out to let her be gone, for she was to be executed on Wednesday, but is now pretty well—only complains of a pain in her neck. She went to church on Sunday last, and heard sermon, where the people were so anxious to see her, |1724.| that the minister was obliged to conduct her out of the churchyard to keep her from being trodden down by the multitude. She still remains in a hopeful way of recovering strength and judgment. May this amazing dispensation of Providence be sanctioned to her, and teach all who shall hear it to act a needy dependence upon, and live to the glory of God, to whom belong the issues of life and death!’[^[611]]

Another brief chronicler of the time informs us, that Maggie devoted the Wednesday ensuing upon that on which she was executed to solemn fasting and prayer, in gratitude for her deliverance, and had formed the resolution so to employ each recurring Wednesday during the remainder of her life.[^[612]] It is also stated that her husband, struck with a forgiving interest in her, took her ultimately back to his house. She lived to have several children creditably born, and cried salt for many a day through the streets of Edinburgh, universally recognised and constantly pointed out to strangers as ‘Half-hangit Maggie Dickson.’

At the village of Gilmerton, four miles to the south of Edinburgh, the soft, workable character of the sandstone of the carboniferous formation, there cropping to the surface, tempted a blacksmith named George Paterson to an enterprise of so extraordinary a character, as to invest his name with distinction in both prose and rhyme. In the little garden at the end of his house, he excavated for himself a dwelling in the rock, composed of several apartments. Besides a smithy, with a fireplace or forge, there were—a dining-room, fourteen and a half feet long, seven broad, and six feet high, furnished with a bench all round, a table, and a bed-recess; a drinking-parlour, rather larger; a kitchen and bed-place for the maid; a liquor-cellar upwards of seven feet long; and a washing-house. In each apartment there was a skylight-window, and the whole were properly drained. The work cost the poor man five years of hard labour, being finished in the present year. Alexander Pennecuik, the burgess-bard of Edinburgh, furnished an inscription, which was carved on a stone at the entrance:

‘Here is a House and Shop Hewn in this Rock with my own Hands.

George Paterson.

‘Upon the earth thrives villainy and wo,

But happiness and I do dwell below;

My hands hewed out this rock into a cell,

Wherein from din of life I safely dwell:

On Jacob’s pillow nightly lies my head,

My house when living, and my grave when dead:

Inscribe upon it when I’m dead and gone:

“I lived and died within my mother’s womb.”’

1724.

It is kept in remembrance that Paterson actually lived and practised his calling in this subterranean mansion for eleven years. Holiday-parties used to come from the neighbouring capital to see him and his singular dwelling; even judges, it is alleged, did not disdain to sit in George’s stone-parlour, and enjoy the contents of his liquor-cellar. The ground was held in feu, and the yearly duty and public burdens were forgiven him, on account of the extraordinary labour he had incurred in making himself a home.[^[613]]

The idea of improving agricultural implements was hitherto unheard of in Scotland; but now a thrashing-machine was invented by Mr Michael Menzies, a member of the Scottish bar. On his request, the Society of Improvers sent a deputation to see it working at Roseburn, near Edinburgh; and these gentlemen reported upon it favourably.[^[614]] I am unable to say whether it was identical with a thrashing-machine advertised in July 1735, as to be had of Andrew Good, wright in College Wynd, Edinburgh; one to thrash as much as four men, £30; one to do as much as six, £45; and so on in proportion, ‘being about £7, 10s. for each man’s labour that the machine does, which is but about the expense of a servant for one year.’ It was held forth, regarding this machine, that for the driving of one equal to four men, most water-mills would suffice, and one so working was to be seen at Dalkeith.[^[615]]

It would appear, however, that the idea of a machine for thrashing had, after this time, completely fallen out of notice, as the one which has long been in use was, in its original form, the invention of Michael Stirling, farmer at Craighead, in the parish of Dunblane, who died in 1796, in the eighty-ninth year of his age.

‘This venerable man, when in the prime of life, had a strong propensity to every curious invention; and, after much thought |1724.| and study, he prepared and finished, in 1748, a machine for thrashing his corn. The axis of the thrashing-board was placed perpendicular, and was moved by an inner wheel on the same axis with an outer one that went by water. The men stood round about these boards like lint-cleaners, each man with his sheaf, and performed the work with great rapidity [at the rate of sixteen bolls of oats per diem]. Mr Stirling’s neighbours were by no means struck with the invention, but laughed at it, and called him a maggoty fellow. The wonderful powers of the machine, however, drew the attention of strangers, who came and picked up models, and so were enabled to erect others both in Scotland and England.’[^[616]] Subsequently, Mr Meikle, at Alloa, obviated the inconvenience of the perpendicular arrangement of the axis, by laying it down in a horizontal form.

A machine for the winnowing of corn was, as far as can be ascertained, for the first time made in this island by Andrew Rodger, a farmer on the estate of Cavers in Roxburghshire, in the year 1737. It was after retiring from his farm to indulge a bent for mechanics, that he entered on this remarkable invention, and began circulating what were called Fanners throughout the country, which his descendants continued to do for many years.[^[617]] This machine is well known to have been the subject of a religious prejudice among our more rigid sectaries, as indicated anachronously by Scott in the conversation between Mause Headrig and her mistress—‘a new-fangled machine for dighting the corn frae the chaff, thus impiously thwarting the will o’ Divine Providence by raising wind for your leddyship’s use by human art, instead of soliciting it by prayer, or patiently waiting for whatever dispensation of wind Providence was pleased to send upon the shielinghill.’[^[618]] The ‘seceders’ are understood to have taken very strong ground in resistance to the introduction of fanners, deeming the wind as specially a thing made by God (‘he that createth the wind,’ Amos iv. 13), and therefore regarding an artificial wind as a daring and impious attempt to usurp what belonged to him alone. The author has been informed that an uncle of the late national poet, Robert Gilfillan, was extruded from a Fife congregation of this kind because of his persisting to use fanners.

1725. Jan.

About the end of this month, the people of Orkney were thrown into some excitement by the arrival of a suspicious-looking vessel among their usually quiet islands. She professed to be a merchantman bound for Stockholm; but her twenty-two guns and crew of thirty-eight men belied the tale. In reality, she was a pirate-ship, recently taken under the care of a reckless man named Gow, or Smith, who had already made her the means of perpetrating some atrocious villainies in more southern seas. His alleged connection with Caithness by nativity, and Orkney by education, was perhaps the principal reason for his selecting this part of the world as a temporary refuge till some of his recent acts should be forgotten. His conduct, however, was marked by little prudence. He used to come ashore with armed men, and hold boisterous festivities with the islanders. He also made some attempts to enter into social relations with the gentlemen of the country. It was even said that, during his brief stay, he made some way in the affections of a young gentlewoman, who little imagined his real character. It was the more unaccountable that he lingered thus in the islands, after ten of his people, who had recently been pressed into his service, left his vessel, and made their escape in a boat—a circumstance that ought to have warned him that he could not long evade the notice of the law. In point of fact, the character of his ship and crew were known at Leith while he was still dallying with time in the taverns of Stromness.

At length, about the 20th of February, Gow left the southern and more frequented part of the Orkney group, and sailed to Calf Sound, at the north part of the island of Eday, designing to apply for fresh provisions and assistance to a gentleman residing there, who had been his school-fellow, Mr Fea, younger of Clestran. Chancing to cast anchor too near the island, the pirate found that his first duty must be to obtain the assistance of a boat to assist his men in bringing off the vessel. He sent an armed party of five under the boatswain to solicit this help from Mr Fea, who received them civilly, but immediately sent private orders to have his own boat sunk and the sails hidden. He took the party to a public-house, where he entertained them, and so adroitly did he manage matters, that ere long they were all disarmed and taken into custody. The people of the country and some custom-house officers had by this time been warned to his assistance.

Next day, a violent wind drove the vessel ashore on Calf Island, and Gow, without a boat, began to feel himself in a serious difficulty. He hung out a flag for a conference with Mr Fea, who |1725.| consequently sent him a letter, telling him that his only chance now was to yield himself, and give evidence against his company. The wretch offered goods to the value of a thousand pounds for merely a boat in which he could leave the coast; but Mr Fea only replied by renewing his former advice. Some conferences, attended with considerable danger to Mr Fea, took place; and Gow ultimately came ashore on Calf Island, and was secured. It is narrated that when he found himself a prisoner, he entreated to be shot before he should have to surrender his sword. His men were afterwards made prisoners without much difficulty.

Gow and his company were transported to London, and tried by the Court of Admiralty on the 27th of May. Himself and eleven others were found guilty, and condemned. There was at first some difficulty in consequence of his refusing to plead. The court, finding him refractory on this point of form, at first tried to bring him to reason by gentle means; but when these proved ineffectual, he was ordered to the press-yard, there to be pressed to death, after the old custom with those refusing to plead. His obstinacy then gave way, and his trial proceeded in due form, and he was condemned upon the same evidence as his companions. Nine were executed, of whom two—namely, Gow and his lieutenant, named Williams—were afterwards hung in chains.[^[619]]

The Scottish newspaper which first narrated the singular story of the capture of these men, remarked: ‘The gentleman who did this piece of good service to his country, will no doubt be taken notice of, and rewarded by the government.’ Sir Walter Scott relates from the tradition of the country what actually happened to Mr Fea in consequence of his gallantry. ‘So far from receiving any reward from government, he could not obtain even countenance enough to protect him against a variety of sham suits, raised against him by Newgate solicitors, who acted in the name of Gow and others of the pirate crew; and the various expenses, vexatious prosecutions, and other legal consequences in which his gallantry involved him, utterly ruined his fortune and his family.’[^[620]]

May.

The Duke of Douglas, last direct descendant of the ancient and once powerful House of Douglas, was a person of such weak character as to form a dismal antithesis to the historical honours of the family—entitled to the first vote in parliament, to lead the |1725.| van of the Scottish army, and to carry the king’s crown in all processions. Just turned thirty years of age, his Grace lived at his ancestral castle in Lanarkshire, taking no such part as befitted his rank and fortune in public affairs, but content to pass his time in the commonest pleasures, not always in choice society.[^[621]] Amongst his visitors was a young man named Ker, a natural son of Lord John Ker, the younger brother of the late Marquis of Lothian, and also brother to the Dowager-countess of Angus, the duke’s mother. This youth, as cousin to the duke, though under the taint of illegitimacy, presumed to aspire to the affections of his Grace’s only sister, the celebrated Lady Jane; and it is also alleged that he presumed to give the duke some advice about the impropriety of his keeping company with a low man belonging to his village. Under a revengeful prompting, it is said, from this fellow, the poor duke stole by night into the chamber of Mr Ker, and shot him dead as he lay asleep. Some servants, hearing the noise, came to his Grace’s room, and found him in great distress at the frightful act which he had committed, and which he made no attempt to deny. He was as speedily as possible conducted to Leith, and sent off in a vessel to Holland, there to remain until he could safely return.[^[622]]

The peerages being politely silent about this affair, we do not learn how or when the duke was restored to Scottish society. More than thirty years after, when turned of sixty, he married the daughter of a Dumbartonshire gentleman, a lady well advanced in life, by whom he had no children. Dr Johnson, who met the duchess as a widow at Boswell’s house in 1773, speaks of her as an old lady who talked broad Scotch with a paralytic voice, and was scarcely intelligible even to her countrymen. Had the doctor seen her ten years earlier, when she was in possession of all her faculties, he would have found how much comicality and rough wit could be expressed in broad Scotch under the coif of a duchess. I have had the advantage of hearing it described by the late Sir James Steuart of Coltness, who was in Paris with her Grace in 1762, when she was also accompanied by a certain Laird of Boysack, and one or two other Scotch gentlemen, all bent on making the utmost of every droll or whimsical circumstance that came in their way. Certainly the language and style |1725.| of ideas in which the party indulged was enough to make the hair of the fastest of our day stand on end. There was great humour one day about a proposal that the duchess should go to court, and take advantage of the privilege of the tabouret, or right of sitting on a low stool in the queen’s private chamber, which it was alleged she possessed, by virtue of her late husband’s ancestors having enjoyed a French dukedom (Touraine) in the fifteenth century. The old lady made all sorts of excuses in her homely way; but when Boysack started the theory, that the real objection lay in her Grace’s fears as to the disproportioned size of the tabouret for the co-relative part of her figure, he was declared, amidst shouts of laughter, to have divined the true difficulty—her Grace enjoying the joke fully as much as any of them. Let this be a specimen of the mate of the last of the House of Douglas.

June 24.

We have already seen that the favourite and ordinary beverage of the people before this date was a light ale, not devoid of an exhilarating power, which, being usually sold in pints (equal to two English quarts) at 2d., passed in prose and verse, as well as common parlance, under the name of Twopenny. The government, conceiving they might raise twenty thousand pounds per annum out of this modest luxury of the Scotch, imposed a duty of sixpence a bushel upon malt; and now this was to be enforced by a band of Excise officers.

The Scotch, besides the ignorant impatience of taxation natural to a people to whom fiscal deductions were a novelty, beheld in this measure a mark of the oppressive imperiousness of the British senate, and bitterly thought of what the Union had brought upon them. At Glasgow, this was a peculiarly strong feeling, its member of parliament, Mr Campbell of Shawfield, having taken a leading part in getting the malt-tax imposed. On the 23d June, when the act came into force, the populace gave many tokens of the wrath they entertained towards the excisemen who were putting it in practice; but no violence was used. Next day, there was shewn a continual disposition to gather in the streets, which the magistrates as constantly endeavoured to check; and a military party was introduced to the town. At length, evening having drawn on, the indignation of the populace could no longer be restrained. An elegant house which Shawfield had built for himself, and furnished handsomely, was attacked, and reduced to desolation, notwithstanding every effort of the magistrates to induce the mob to disperse. Next day, the mob rose again, and |1725.| came to the town-house in the centre of the town, but in no formidable numbers. The military party was then drawn out by their commander, Captain Bushell, in a hollow square, in the centre of the crossing at the town-house, each side facing along one of the four streets which meet there; when, some stones being thrown at the soldiers, the officer gave way to anger, and without any order from the provost, fired upon the multitude, of whom eight were killed and many wounded. The multitude then flew to a guard-house where arms were kept, armed themselves, and, ringing the town-bell to give an alarm, were prepared to attack and destroy the comparatively small military party, when, at the urgency of the provost, the latter withdrew from the town, and sought refuge at Dumbarton.

The news of this formidable riot, or rather insurrection, created great excitement among a set of government authorities which had lately come into office, amongst whom was Mr Duncan Forbes as Lord Advocate. They took up the matter with a high hand. Attended by a large body of troops, Forbes marched to Glasgow, and seized the magistrates, under accusation of having favoured the mob, and bringing them to Edinburgh, clapped them up in the Tolbooth. Such, however, was the view generally taken of the malt-tax, that the Glasgow provost and bailies were everywhere treated as martyrs for their country, and as they passed through the streets of Edinburgh to prison, some of the lately displaced government officials walked bareheaded before them. By an appeal to the Court of Justiciary, as to the legality of their mittimus, they were quickly liberated. The only effectual vengeance the government could inflict, was an act ordaining the community of Glasgow to pay Shawfield five thousand pounds as compensation for the destruction of his house. The feelings of the people of the west were grievously outraged by the conduct of the government in this affair, and the more so that they considered it as an injustice inflicted by friends. Was it for this, they asked, that they had stood so stoutly for the Whig cause on every trying occasion since the Revolution?

In August, the officials had a new trouble on their hands. The Edinburgh brewers intimated an intention to discontinue brewing ale. Duncan Forbes stood aghast at the idea of what might happen if the people were wholly deprived of their accustomed beverage. After all, the difficulty involved in a proposal to force men to go on in a trade against their will was not too great to be encountered in those days. The Edinburgh Evening Courant |1725.| of the 26th of August, quietly informs us that ‘Mr Carr, engraver to the Mint, who kept a brewery in this city, and several others of the brewers, are incarcerate in the Canongate Tolbooth, for not enacting themselves to continue their trade of brewing, in terms of the Act of Sederunt of the Lords of Council and Session.’ ‘The Twopenny ale,’ adds this respectable chronicle, ‘begins to grow scarce here; notwithstanding which the city remains in perfect tranquillity.’ Long before the unimaginable crisis of an entire exhaustion of beer had arrived, forty of the brewers of Edinburgh, and ten of Leith, thought proper to resume work, and the dissolution of society was averted.[^[623]]

Such were the troubles which Scotland experienced a hundred and thirty-five years ago, at the prospect of a tax of twenty thousand pounds per annum!

July.

Christian Shaw, daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, has been presented in her girlhood as the cause of a number of prosecutions for witchcraft, ending in the burning of no fewer than five women on Paisley Green.[^[624]] As this young lady grew up to woman’s estate, she attained distinction of a better kind, as the originator of one of the great branches of industry for which her native province has since been remarkable. She was actually the first person who introduced the spinning of fine linen thread into Scotland. ‘Having acquired a remarkable dexterity in spinning fine yarn, she conceived the idea of manufacturing it into thread. Her first attempts in this way were necessarily on a small scale. She executed almost every part of the process with her own hands, and bleached her materials on a large slate in one of the windows of the house. She succeeded so well, however, in these essays, as to have sufficient encouragement to go on, and to take the assistance of her younger sister and neighbours. The then Lady Blantyre carried a parcel of her thread to Bath, and disposed of it advantageously to some manufacturers of lace.... About this time, a person who was connected with the family, happening to be in Holland, found means to learn the secrets of the thread-manufacture, which was carried on to a great extent in that country, particularly the art of sorting and numbering the threads of different sizes, and packing them up for sale, and the construction and management of the twisting and twining machines. |1725.| This knowledge he communicated, on his return, to his friends in Bargarran, and by means of it they were enabled to conduct their manufacture with more regularity, and to a greater extent. The young women of the neighbourhood were taught to spin fine yarn, twining-mills were erected, correspondences were established, and a profitable business was carried on. Bargarran thread became extensively known, and being ascertained by a stamp, bore a good price.’[^[625]] By and by, the work was undertaken by others, and in time it became a leading manufacture of the district. About 1718, Christian Shaw married Mr Miller, the minister of Kilmaurs parish, and it is presumed she passed through the remainder of her life much in the same manner as other persons in that respectable grade.

Bargarran Coat of Arms.

The newspapers of the time at which we are now arrived, present the following advertisement: ‘The Lady Bargarran and her daughters having attained to a great perfection in making, whitening, and twisting of Sewing Threed, which is as cheap and white, and known by experience to be much stronger than the Dutch, to prevent people’s being imposed upon by other Threed, which may be sold under the name of Bargarran Threed, the Papers in which the Lady Bargarran, and her daughters at Bargarran, or Mrs Miller, her eldest daughter, at Johnston, do put up their Threed, shall, for direction, have thereupon the above coat of arms. Those who want the said Threed, which is to be sold from fivepence to six shillings per ounce, may write to the Lady Bargarran at Bargarran, or Mrs Miller at Johnston, near Paisley, to the care of the Postmaster of Glasgow; and may call for the samen in Edinburgh, at John Seton, merchant, his shop in the Parliament Close, where they will be served either in wholesale or retail: and will be served in the same manner at Glasgow, by William Selkirk, merchant in Trongate.’

Crawford, in his History of Renfrewshire, tells us that the coat-armorial worn by the Shaws of Bargarran bore—‘azure, three covered cups or.’ There is something amusingly characteristic in the wife and daughter of a far-descended Scottish gentleman beginning a business in ‘threed,’ and putting the family arms on their wares.

1725. Oct.

After the long period during which religious and political contentions absorbed or repressed the intellectual energies of the people, the first native who exhibited in his own country a purely scientific genius was Colin Maclaurin—a man of Highland extraction (born in 1698), whose biography relates that he was fitted to enter a university at eleven, mastered at twelve the first six books of Euclid in a few days without assistance, and gained the chair of mathematics in Marischal College, Aberdeen, at nineteen, after a competitive examination of ten days. Having gone to London, and there been introduced to Sir Isaac Newton, Dr Clark, Sir Martin Folks, and other cultivators of science, Maclaurin was encouraged to publish several mathematical treatises which gave him an established reputation while still a young man.

At this time, the advanced years of Mr James Gregory, professor of mathematics in the university of Edinburgh, making it necessary that he should have an assistant, who should also be his successor, Mr Maclaurin became a candidate for the situation, with the recommendation of the illustrious Newton. The appointment lay with the magistrates and town council of Edinburgh, who were the patrons of the university—an arrangement which has been abolished in our age, with little regard to the rights of property, and still less to the practical good working of the connection. On this occasion there were some circumstances alike honourable to Maclaurin, to Newton, and to the Edinburgh municipality. Sir Isaac, hearing there was a difficulty about salary for the new professor, the emoluments being reserved for the old one, wrote to the lord provost of the city as follows: ‘I am glad to understand that Mr Maclaurin is in good repute amongst you for his skill in mathematics, for I think he deserves it very well, and, to satisfy you that I do not flatter him, and also to encourage him to accept the place of assisting Mr Gregory, in order to succeed him, I am ready (if you please to give me leave) to contribute twenty pounds per annum towards a provision for him till Mr Gregory’s place becomes void, if I live so long.’ The town council respectfully declined this generous offer, and made suitable arrangements otherwise for the young professor.

Colin Maclaurin amply justified the recommendation of Sir Isaac by the distinction he attained as a teacher, and his various original contributions to geometry and physics. A general impulse was given by him to the cultivation of science. When any remarkable experiment was reported from other countries, |1725.| there was a general wish in Edinburgh to see it repeated by Maclaurin; and when any comet or eclipse was pending, his telescopes were sure to be in requisition. Unfortunately, the career of this brilliant geometer was cut short in consequence of a cold he caught while assisting to improve the defences of Edinburgh against the army of Prince Charles Edward. He lies under the south-west corner of the Greyfriars’ Church, where a plain mural tablet arrests the attention of the student by telling that he was elected to his chair, Newtono suadente, and calls on all to take as a consolation, in that field of grief and terror, the thought that the mind which was capable of producing such works must survive the frail body.

Nov. 20.

The post from Edinburgh to London continued to be carried on horseback, and was of course liable to casualties of what now appear to us of a strange character. That which left Edinburgh on Saturday the 20th November 1725, was never heard of after it passed Berwick. ‘A most diligent search has been made, but neither the boy, the horse, nor the packet, has yet been heard of. The boy, after passing Goswick, having a part of the sands to ride which divide the Holy Island from the mainland, it is supposed he has missed his way, and rode towards the sea, where he and his horse have both perished.’[^[626]]

A mail due at Edinburgh one day at the close of January 1734, was apologised for by the postmaster as late. ‘It seems the post-boy who rides the stage from Haddington to Edinburgh is perished in the river Tyne, the mail this morning being taken out of that river.’ That due on the 10th of October in the preceding year did not reach its destination till the evening of the 11th. ‘It seems the post-boy [so called, although most likely a middle-aged man], who made the stage between Dunbar and Haddington, being in liquor, fell off. The horse was afterwards found at Linplum, but without the mail, saddle, or bridle.’[^[627]]

On the 9th December 1735, we have the following announcement: ‘The London post did not come on till this day at noon, on occasion of the badness of the roads.’—Cal. Merc.

As a variety upon these kinds of accident, and equally indicating the simplicity of the institution in those days, may be noticed a mistake of February 1720, when, ‘instead of the |1725.| mail should have come in yesterday (Sunday), we had our own mail of Thursday last returned‘—the presumption being that the mail for Edinburgh had been in like manner sent back from some unknown point in the road, to London. And this mistake happened once more in December 1728, the bag despatched on a Saturday night being returned the second Sunday morning after; ‘’tis reckoned this mistake happened about half-way on the road.’[^[628]]

The immediate practical business of the Post-office of Edinburgh appears to have been conducted, down to the reign of George I., in a shop in the High Street, by a succession of persons named Mean or Mein, the descendants of the lady who threw her stool at the bishop’s head in St Giles’s in 1637; thence it was promoted to a flat in the east side of the Parliament Close; thence, again, in the reign of George III., to a detached house behind the north side of the Cowgate. We find that, in 1718, it had a ‘manager’ at two hundred a year, a clerk at fifty, a comptroller, an assistant at an annual salary of twenty-five pounds, and three letter-carriers at five shillings a week. In 1748, this establishment was little changed, excepting that there were added an ‘apprehender of private letter-carriers,’ and a ‘clerk to the Irish correspondents.’[^[629]] There is a faithful tradition in the office, which I see no reason to doubt, that one day, not long after the rebellion of 1745, the London bag came to Edinburgh with but one letter in it, being one addressed to the British Linen Company.

In 1758, a memorial of traders to the Convention of Burghs expressed impatience with the existing arrangements of the post between Edinburgh and London, which, owing to a delay of about a day at Newcastle, and a pause at York, with other impediments, occupied 131 hours. It was urged that the three posts which passed weekly between the two capitals should depart from Edinburgh at such a time as, reaching Newcastle in 21 hours, they might be in time for immediate dispatch by the post thence to London, and so give a return to correspondence with the metropolis in seven or eight days, instead of about eleven, as at present.[^[630]]

It may be curious to trace the progress of business in this important office, as far as the central Scottish establishment is concerned. The number of persons employed in 1788 was 31; |1725.| in 1828, it was 82; in 1840, when the universal penny post was set on foot, it reached 136; in 1860, it was 244. The number of letters delivered in Edinburgh in a week in 1824 was 27,381; in 1860, it amounted to 156,000. The number of letters passing through Edinburgh per week in 1824 was 53,000; in 1860, it was 420,000. At the same time, the number of bags despatched from Edinburgh daily was 369, weighing forty-nine hundredweight. At the time when these notes were drawn up, the establishment had become too large for a spacious and handsome building erected in 1819, and another office of ampler proportions was about to be erected.

Dec.

Wodrow notes that at this time the merchants of Glasgow, in despair of the colonial tobacco-trade, were beginning to think of ventures in other directions, as the East Indies, and the Greenland whale-fishing. Meanwhile, a Fishery Company, some time since set up at Edinburgh, was languishing, the officials eating up more than the profit. ‘As far as I can see,’ says the worthy minister of Eastwood, ‘till the Lord send more righteousness and equity, and of a public spirit, no company or copartnery among us will do any good.’

In the ensuing August, the same chronicler notes some important points in the progress of Glasgow, without giving us any hint of improvement in respect of righteousness. ‘This summer,’ says he, ‘there seems to be a very great inclination through the country to improve our manufactory, and especially linen and hemp. They speak of a considerable society in Glasgow of the most topping merchants, who are about to set up a manufactory of linen, which will keep six hundred poor people at work. The gentlemen, by their influence, seem much to stir up country-people, and to encourage good tradesmen, and some care is taken to keep linen and webs exactly to standard, and to see that the stuff be good and marketable.... What will come of it, I know not. I have seen frequent attempts of this nature come to very little.’[^[631]]

It is gratifying to think that the year 1725, which is so sadly memorable in the history of Glasgow on account of the ‘Shawfield Mob,’ really did become the epoch of that vast system of textile manufacture for which the city has since been so celebrated. The first efforts of her looms were confined to linen |1725.| cloth, lawns, and cambrics. Seven years later, one of her enterprising citizens, a Mr Alexander Harvie, ‘at the risk of his life, brought away from Haerlem two inkle-looms and a workman,’[^[632]] and was thus enabled to introduce the manufacture of inkles into his native town, where it long flourished. The establishment of the cotton-manufacture in and around Glasgow was the work of a subsequent age, and need not be dwelt upon here.

Considering the engrossing nature of the pursuits of commerce, it is remarkably creditable to Glasgow that her university has always been maintained in a high state of efficiency, and that she has never allowed the honours of literature to be wholly diverted to her more serene sister of the east. So far had printing and publishing advanced in Glasgow in the reign of the second George, that, in 1740, a type-founding establishment was commenced there, being the first to the north of the Tweed. The immediate credit of this good work is due to Mr Alexander Wilson, a native of St Andrews. He subsequently became professor of practical astronomy in the Glasgow University, and there, in 1769, worked out the long-received theory of the solar spots, which suggests their being breaches in a luminous envelope of the sun’s body.

Favoured by the presence of a type-foundry, two citizens of Glasgow named Faulls, but who subsequently printed their name as Foulis, commenced the business of typography in 1741, and soon became distinguished for their accurate and elegant work, particularly in the printing of the classics. Eager to produce what might be esteemed an immaculate edition of Horace, they caused the successive proof-sheets, after revision, to be hung up at the gate of the university, with the offer of a reward for the discovery of an error. Before 1747, the Messrs Foulis had produced editions of eighteen classics, all of them beautiful specimens of typography.

After all, the merchants of infant Glasgow were able to overcome the difficulties which an iniquitous rivalry threw in the way of their tobacco-trade. It went on gradually increasing till a sudden stop was put to it by the revolt of the American colonies, when it had reached an annual importation of about fifty thousand hogsheads, being the great bulk of what was consumed in the three kingdoms. In the early days of the trade, when capital was not abundant, the custom was for a very small group of the more considerable merchants to advance two or three hundred pounds |1725.| each, and ask the lesser men around them to add such shares as they pleased; by these means to make purchase of goods suited for use in Virginia, which were sent out under the care of a supercargo, to be exchanged for a lading of tobacco. ‘The first adventure ... was sent under the sole charge of the captain of the vessel. This person, though a shrewd man, knew nothing of accounts; and when he was asked by his employers, on his return, for a statement of how the adventure had turned out, told them he could give them none, but there were its proceeds, and threw down upon the table a large hoggar (stocking) stuffed to the top with coin [being of course the money-surplus of the goods sent out, after the cargo of tobacco was paid for]. The company conceived that if an uneducated person had been so successful, their gains would have been still greater if a person versed in accounts had been sent out. Under this impression, they immediately despatched a second adventure with a supercargo highly recommended for a knowledge of accounts, who produced to them a beautifully made-out statement of his transactions, but no hoggar.’[^[633]]

Afterwards, the groups of adventurers associated little more than their credit in the getting up of cargoes of goods for the colonial market, and these were not in general paid till the return of the tobacco, at the distance perhaps of a twelvemonth. When the manager of the copartnery was ready to discharge its obligations, he summoned the various furnishers of the goods to a tavern, where, over a measure of wine to each, paid for by themselves, he handed them the amount of their various claims, receiving a discharged account in return. In such retreats all important matters of business were then transacted. They were in many instances kept by the female relations of merchants who had not been successful in business; and in selecting one whereto to summon the furnishers of goods for payment, the manager would generally have an eye to a benevolent design in favour of the family of an associate of former days.

As the century rolled on, and transactions increased in magnitude, luxury and pride crept in, men learned to garnish their discourse with strange oaths, and the Wodrow pre-requisite of ‘righteousness’ was always less and less heard of. The wealth of the Tobacco Lords, as the men pre-eminent in the trade were called, reached an amount which made them the wonder of their |1725.| country. One named Glassford, during the Seven Years’ War, had twenty-five vessels engaged in the business, and was said to trade for half a million.[^[634]] They formed a kind of aristocracy in their native city, throwing all tolerably successful industry in other walks into the shade. Old people, not long deceased, used to describe them as seen every day on the Exchange, or a piece of pavement in Argyle Street so called, walking about in long scarlet cloaks and bushy wigs, objects of awful respect to their fellow-citizens, who, if desirous of speaking to one of them on business, found it necessary to walk on the other side of the street, till they should be fortunate enough to catch his eye, and be signalled across. All this came to an end with the breaking out of the American war; when, however, the irrepressible energies and wealth of that wonderful people of the west speedily found new fields of operation—cotton, timber, iron, chemicals, ship-building, and (in sober sincerity) what not?

1726.

The Tennis Court theatricals of spring 1715 probably did not long hold their ground. Thereafter, we hear of no further amusement of the kind being in any fashion attempted in Edinburgh till 1719, when ‘some young gentlemen’ performed The Orphan and the Cheats of Scapin, but most probably in a very private manner, though Allan Ramsay consented to introduce the performance with a prologue.[^[635]] Among the Wodrow pamphlets preserved in the Advocates’ Library, is a broadside containing ‘Verses spoken after the performance of Otway’s tragedy, called The Orphan, at a private meeting in Edinburgh, December 9, 1719, by a boy in the University [added in manuscript, “Mr Mitchell”].’ He ends with a threat to meet adverse critics in the King’s Park. Edinburgh was about the same time occasionally regaled with the visits of a certain Signora Violante, who trooped about the three kingdoms for the exhibition of feats in tumbling and posture-making.[^[636]]

It would appear that the first Scottish theatricals not quite insignificant were presented in the winter 1725–26, when Anthony Aston, a performer not without his fame, came to Edinburgh with a company of comedians, and was so far favourably received that he ventured to return in the ensuing year. On that occasion, Allan Ramsay composed for him the following prologue, |1726.| conveying to us some notion of the feelings with which the venture was regarded:

‘“Tis I, dear Caledonians, blythesome Tony,

That oft, last winter, pleased the brave and bonny,

With medley, merry song, and comic scene:

Your kindness then has brought me here again,

After a circuit round the Queen of Isles,

To gain your friendship and approving smiles.

Experience bids me hope—though, south the Tweed,

The dastards said: “He never will succeed:

What! such a country look for any good in,

That does not relish plays, nor pork, nor pudding!”

Thus great Columbus, by an idiot crew,

Was ridiculed at first for his just view;

Yet his undaunted spirit ne’er gave ground,

Till he a new and better world had found.

So I—laugh on—the simile is bold;

But, faith! ’tis just: for till this body’s cold,

Columbus-like, I’ll push for fame and gold.’[^[637]]

The prevalent feeling on the subject in authoritative circles may be inferred from the conduct of the magistracy and clergy. An act of council being passed, prohibiting Mr Aston from acting within the limits of their jurisdiction, the presbytery met, and appointed a deputation to wait upon the magistrates, and thank them ‘for the just zeal they had shewn in the matter.’ A committee was at the same time appointed to draw up an act and exhortation against the frequenting of stage-plays, which, by their order, was read from all the pulpits in the district.[^[638]]

Wodrow talks of Aston’s proceedings as ‘filling up our cup of sin.’ ‘Three or four noblemen—some of them ruling elders—combined to favour the comedians, giving them such a warrant as they thought their peerage entitled them to give. Three or four of the Lords of Session were favourable to them, and yet no direct interlocutor was given them, empowering them to set up. The matter took several different shapes, and many different decisions were given by the Lords, which concerned circumstances rather than the direct lawfulness of their plays.’ Wodrow speaks of a large attendance, especially at their tragedies, the Mourning Bride having had a run of three nights. ‘A vast deal of money, |1726.| in this time of scarcity, is spent this way most sinfully.’ They even ‘talk of building a public playhouse at Edinburgh.’

To the great vexation of the ecclesiastical authorities, the decree of the magistrates was appealed against in the Court of Session, with what were believed to be good hopes of success. Just at that crisis, we find Mr Wodrow writing in great concern on the subject, from his Renfrewshire manse, to Mr George Drummond, commissioner of customs in Edinburgh (November 27, 1727). He states that his parishioner, Lord Pollock, one of the judges, was unfortunately detained at home, being ‘considerably failed, and very crazy;’ so he could not attend the court to give his vote. ‘I pray God may order matters so as to prevent my fears in this matter.... I desire to have it on my heart, and shall stir up some who, I hope, are praying persons, to be concerned in it. However it go, I think the magistrates of Edinburgh may have peace in the honest appearance they have made against those seminaries of idleness, looseness, and sin.’[^[639]]

There was, however, no legal means of putting down Mr Aston. The magistrates’ interdict was suspended, and from that time the players had only to contend with public opinion.[^[640]]

Feb. 12.

Serious onlookers are eager to note other symptoms of the alarming progress of levity. A private letter-writer remarks, under our marginal date, that, ‘notwithstanding the general complaint of scarcity of money, there were never so many diversions in one winter.... There is scarce one night passes without either medley, concert, or assembly, and these entertainments generally conclude with some private marriage, of which we have a vast number ... such as Sir Edward Gibson and Mrs Maitland, a cousin of the Earl of Lauderdale; M‘Dowal and a daughter of Dr Stirling; a son of Bailie Hay with Regent Scott’s daughter; and my Lord Bruce is to be married regularly to Mrs Robertson, who has above £3000, this very night.’

A few days after, the same writer reports a private marriage as discovered between the son of Sir John Dalrymple and ‘Matthew Crawford’s daughter.’ ‘Sir John seems pretty much disobliged that his son should not have asked his consent, though it’s |1726.| thought he will soon get over all difficulties.’ The eccentric Earl of Rosebery ‘has been for a considerable time in prison, where it’s believed he will spend the remainder of his days with his good friend Burnbank.’

A few weeks later, an abduction in the old style was perpetrated by a Highlander upon ‘a niece of Mr Moubray the wright,’ not above twelve years of age, whose gouvernante had betrayed her upon a promise of a thousand merks, the young lady having £3000 of fortune. Mr Moubray ‘luckily catched them near to Queensferry, as they were coming to town to be married.’ ‘The gouvernante is committed to prison, as is also the gentleman.’[^[641]]

In May, Mr Wodrow adverts to a rumour that there were some clubs in Edinburgh, very secretly conducted, composed of gentlemen of atheistical opinions. They were understood to be offshoots of a similar fraternity in London, rejoicing in the name of the Hell-fire Club, as signifying the disregard of the members for the thing referred to. Wodrow whispers with horror, that the secretary of the Hell-fire Club, a Scotsman, was reported to have come to Edinburgh to plant these affiliated societies. ‘He fell into melancholy, as it was called, but probably horror of conscience and despair, and at length turned mad. Nobody was allowed to see him, and physicians prescribed bathing for him, and he died mad at the first bathing. The Lord pity us,’ concludes Mr Wodrow; ‘wickedness is come to a terrible height!’[^[642]]

There is among the Wodrow pamphlets a broadside giving an account of the Hell-fire Clubs, Sulphur Societies, and Demirep Dragons then in vogue. It includes a list of persons of quality engaged in these fraternities, and the various names they bore—as Elisha the Prophet, the King of Hell, Old Pluto, the Old Dragon, Lady Envy, the Lady Gomorrah, &c. An edict had been issued against them by the government, reciting that there was reason to suspect that, in the cities of London and Westminster, there were scandalous clubs or societies of young persons, who meet together, and in blasphemous language insult God and his holy religion, and corrupt the morals of one another. The justices of the peace were enjoined to be diligent in rooting out such schools of profanity.

The Hell-fire Club seems to have projected itself strongly on the popular imagination in Scotland, for the peasantry still occasionally speak of it with bated breath and whispering horror. |1726.| Many wicked lairds are talked of, who belonged to the Hell-fire Club, and who came to bad ends, as might have been expected on grounds involving no reference to miracle.

Public combats with sword and rapier were among the amusements of the age. They took place regularly in London, at a place called the Bear Garden, and at an amphitheatre in the Oxford Road; likewise at Hockley. It seems scarcely credible that not only was this practice permitted, but it was customary for the men who were to cut and slash at each other in the evening, to parade through the streets in the forenoon, in fancy dresses, with drums beating and colours flying, as an advertisement of the performance.

Sometimes, when one of these modern gladiators attained to fame, he would go to a provincial city, and announce himself as willing to fight all-comers on a public stage for any sum that might be agreed upon. Such persons seem most frequently to have been natives of the sister-island. One Andrew Bryan, an Irishman, described as ‘a clean young man’—that is, a well-made, nimble person—came to Edinburgh, in June 1726, as a gladiatorial star, and challenged any who might choose to take him up. For days he paraded the streets with his drum, without meeting a combatant, and several gentlemen of the city began to feel annoyed at his vapourings, when at length the challenger was answered. There had at this time retired to Edinburgh an old Killiecrankie soldier, named Donald Bane—a man who had attained the distinction of a sergeantcy, who had taught the broadsword exercise, who had fought creditably in all the wars of William and Anne in succession, but was withal much of a scapegrace, though a good-humoured one, as fully appears from a little autobiography which he published, along with the rules of the art of defence. Though now sixty-two, and inclined to repent of much of his earlier career, Donald retained enough of his original spirit to be disposed to try a turn at sharps with Bryan; so, meeting him in the street one day, he sent his foot through the drum, as an indication that he accepted the challenge. Gentlefolks were interested when they heard of it, and one learned person thought proper to compose for Bane a regular answer to the challenge in Latin verse—

‘Ipse ego, Donaldus Banus, formâ albus et altus,

Nunc huic Andreæ thrasoni occurrere deero,’ &c.

The combat took place at the date noted, on a stage erected for |1726. June 23.| the purpose behind Holyrood Palace, in the presence of a great number of noblemen, gentlemen, military officers, and others. It was conducted with much formality, and lasted several hours, with a variety of weapons; and not till Bryan had received seven wounds from his unscathed antagonist, did he feel the necessity of giving in. The victory of the Highland veteran seems to have given rise to great exultation, and he was crowned with praises in both prose and rhyme. He was compared to Ajax overcoming Thersites; and one Latin wit remarked in a quatrain, that the stains of the two former Donald Banes of Scottish history were wiped off by the third. A more fortunate result for us was the publication of Bane’s autobiography,[^[643]] containing a number of characteristic anecdotes.

Little more than two years after the combat of Bane and Bryan, a similar encounter is noted in the Edinburgh Courant as taking place in the Tennis Court at Holyrood, between ‘Campbell the Scots, and Clerk the Irish gladiator,’ when the former received a wound in the face, and the second sustained seven in the body.

Aug. 8.

At an election for the county of Roxburgh at Jedburgh, a quarrel arose between Sir Gilbert Elliot of Stobbs, a candidate, and Colonel Stewart of Stewartfield, who opposed him. Colonel Stewart, who was ‘a huffing, hectoring person,’ is said to have given great provocation, and gentlemen afterwards admitted that Stobbs was called upon by the laws of honour to take notice of the offence. According to a petition to the Court of Session from the son of Stewart, Elliot stabbed him as he sat in his chair on the opposite side of a table, with his sword by his side.

The homicide took refuge in Holland, but was soon enabled by a pardon to return to his own country.[^[644]]

Aug. 9.

The correspondence of General Wade with the Secretary of State Townsend,[^[645]] makes us aware that at this time several of the attainted gentlemen of 1715 had returned to Scotland, in the hope of obtaining a pardon, or at least of being permitted to remain undisturbed. The general humanely pleads for their being pardoned on a formal submission. Amongst them was Alexander Robertson of Struan, chief of the clan Robertson, a gentleman |1726.| who had fought for the Stuarts both at Killiecrankie and Sheriffmuir, and who is further memorable for his convivial habits and his gifts in the writing of pure, but somewhat dull English poetry.

In the year of the Revolution, being a youth of twenty at the university of St Andrews, Struan accepted a commission in some forces then hastily proposed to be raised for James VII.; and, keeping up this military connection, he joined the Highland army of Lord Dundee, but was taken prisoner by the enemy, September 1689, and thrown into the Edinburgh Tolbooth. Here a piece of Highland gratitude served him a good turn. Four years before, when the Perthshire loyalists were hounded out to ravage the lands of the unfortunate Argyle, the late Laird of Struan had, for humane reasons, pleaded for leave to stay at home and take care of the country. The now restored Earl of Argyle, remembering this kindness to his family, interceded for young Robertson, and procured his liberation in exchange for Sir Robert Maxwell of Pollock, who was in the hands of the Highlanders. Struan then passed into France, and joined the exiled king, hoping ere long to return and see the old régime restored; and in his absence, the Scottish parliament declared him forfaulted. He spent many years of melancholy exile in France, enduring the greatest hardships that a gentleman could be subjected to, having no dependence but upon occasional remittances from his mother. Being at length enabled to return to Perthshire, he once more forfeited all but life by joining in the insurrection of 1715. For nine years more he underwent a new exile in the greatest poverty and hardship, while, to add to his mortifications, a disloyal sister, hight ‘Mrs Margaret,’ contrived to worm herself into the possession of his forfeited estates.

In France, Struan had for a fellow in misfortune a certain Professor John Menzies, under whom he had studied at St Andrews, and who seems to have been an old gentleman of some humour. There is extant a letter of Menzies to Struan, giving him advice about his health, and which seems worthy of preservation for the hints it gives as to the habits of these expatriated Scotch Jacobites. It bears to have been written in answer to one in which Struan had spoken of being ill:

‘Paris, March 20.

‘D. S.—I have been out of town a little for my own health, which has kept me some days from receiving or answering your last, in which you speak of some indisposition of yours. I |1726.| hope that before now it is over of itself by a little quiet and temperance, and that thereby nature has done its own business, which it rarely fails to do when one gives it elbow-room, and when it is not quite spent. “When that comes, the house soon comes down altogether. This I have always found in my own case. Whenever I was jaded by ill hours and company, and the consequences of that, I have still retired a little to some convenient hermitage in the country, with two or three doses of rhubarb, and as many of salts. That washes the Augean stable, and for the rest I drink milk and whey, and sometimes a very little wine and water. No company but Horace and Homer, and such old gentlemen that drink no more now. I walk much, eat little, and sleep a great deal. And by this cool and sober and innocent diet, nature gets up its head again, and the horse that was jaded and worn out grows strong again, so that he can jog on some stages of the farce of life without stumbling or breaking his neck. This is a consultation I give you gratis from my own practice and never-failing experience, which is always the best physician. And I am satisfied it would do in your case, where I reckon nature is haill at the heart still, after all your cruel usage of it.

‘As to all those pricklings and startings of the nerves, they come from the ill habit of the blood and body, brought on by ill diet and sharp or earthy wine, as your Orleans wine is reckoned to be—for there are crab-grapes as there are crab-apples, and sloes as well as muscadines.

‘There are great differences of constitutions. Those of a sanguine can drink your champagne or cyder all their life, and old Davy Flood has drunk punch these fifty years daily. Whereas a short time of the lemons that’s in punch would eat out the bottom of my stomach, or make me a cripple. Much champagne, too, would destroy my nerves, though I like its spirit and taste dearly. But it will not do, that is, it never did well with me when I was young and strong; now much less. My meaning in this dissertation about wine and constitutions is plainly this, first, to recommend to you frequent retraites, in order to be absolutely cool, quiet, and sober, with a little gentle physic now and then, in order to give time and help to nature to recover. And when you will needs drink wine—that it be of the haill and old south-country wines, Hermitage, Coté Rotis, Cahors, &c., with a little water still, since there is a heat in them.

‘As to any external tremblings or ailings of the nerves, pray make constant usage of Hungary-water to your head and |1726.| nosethrills, and behind your ears—of which I have found an infinite effect and advantage of a long time, for I have been very often in the very same case you describe, and these have always been my certain cures. Repetatur quantum sufficit, and I will warrant you.

‘Write again, and God bless you.’[^[646]]

Struan was now successful in obtaining a pardon, and for the remainder of his days he lived in the cultivation of the bottle and the muse at his estate in Rannoch. Only prevented by old age from risking all once again in the adventure of Prince Charlie, he died quietly in 1749, having reached his eighty-first year. So venerable a chief, who had used both the sword of Mars and the lyre of Apollo in the cause of the Stuarts, could not pass from the world notelessly. His funeral was of a character to be described as a great provincial fête. It was computed that two thousand persons, including the noblemen and gentlemen of the district, assembled at his house to carry him to his last resting-place, which was distant eighteen English miles; and for all of these there was entertainment provided according to their different ranks.[^[647]]

Having taken personal surveys of the Highlands in the two preceding years, General Wade was prepared, in this, to commence the making of those roads which he reported to be so necessary for the reduction of the country to obedience, peace, and civilisation. He contemplated that, after the example set by the Romans sixteen hundred years before, the work might be done by the soldiers, on an allowance of extra pay; and five hundred were selected as sufficient for the purpose. Engineers and surveyors he brought down from England, one being the Edmund Burt to whom we have been indebted for so much information regarding the Highlands at this period, through the medium of the letters he wrote during his long residence in this country.[^[648]]

1726.

‘In the summer seasons [during eleven years], five hundred of the soldiers from the barracks and other quarters about the Highlands were employed in those works in different stations. The private men were allowed sixpence a day, over and above their pay as soldiers. A corporal had eightpence, and a sergeant a shilling. But this extra pay was only for working-days, which were often interrupted by violent storms of wind and rain. These parties of men were under the command of proper officers, who were all subalterns, and received two shillings and sixpence per diem, to defray their extraordinary expense in building huts, making necessary provision for their tables from distant parts (unavoidable, though unwelcome visits), and other incidents arising from their wild situation.’[^[649]]

A Scottish gentleman, who visited the Highlands in 1737, discovered the roads completed, and was surprised by the improvements which he found to have arisen from them, amongst which he gratefully notes the existence of civilised places for the entertainment of travellers. It pleased him to put his observations into verse—rather dull and prosaic verse it is, one must admit—yet on that very account the more useful now-a-days, by reason of the clearness of the information it gives.[^[650]] After speaking of Wade’s success in carrying out the Disarming Act, and his suppression of disorders by the garrisons and Highland companies, he proceeds to treat of the roads, which had impressed him as a work of great merit. It seemed to him as an undertaking in no slight degree arduous, considering the limited means and art which then existed, to extend firm roads across Highland morasses, to cut out paths along rough hillsides, and to protect the way when it was formed from the subsequent violent action of Highland torrents and inundations. One of the most difficult parts of the first road was that traversing the broad, lofty mountain called Corryarrack, near to Fort Augustus. It is ascended on the south side by a series of zigzags, no less than thirteen in number. The general expended great care and diligence in the work, even to the invention of a balsam for healing the wounds and hurts inflicted on the men by accident.

In the forming of the numerous bridges required upon the roads, there was one natural difficulty, in addition to all others, in the want of easily hewn stone. The bridge of five arches across the Tay at Weem was considered as a marvellous work at the |1726.| time. In another part of the country, an unusually rugged river gave Wade and his people a great deal of trouble. The men, oppressed with heat during the day, and chilled with frosts as they bivouacked on the ground at night, were getting dispirited, when the general bethought him of a happy expedient.

‘A fatted ox he ordered to be bought,

The best through all the country could be sought.

His horns well polished and with ribbons graced,

A piper likewise played before the beast.

Such, were in days of yore for victims led,

And on the sacrifice a feast was made.

The ox for slaughter he devotes, and then

Gives for a gratis feast unto his men.

Quick and with joy a bonfire they prepare,

Of turf and heath, and brushwood fagots, where

The fatted ox is roasted all together;

Next of the hide they make a pot of leather,

In which the lungs and tripe cut down they boil,

With flour and tallow mixed in lieu of oil.

Then beef and pudding plentifully eat,

With store of cheering Husque[^[651]] to their meat.

Their spir’ts thus raised, their work becomes a play,

New vigour drives all former stops away.

The place from that received another name,

And Oxbridge rises to all future fame.’

We derive some interesting facts about Wade’s proceedings at this time from his correspondence, still in manuscript.[^[652]]

Writing to the Secretary of State, Lord Townsend, Edinburgh, 9th August 1726, he says: ‘I can with satisfaction assure your lordship that the Disarming Act has fully answered all that was proposed by it, there being no arms carried in the Highlands but by those who are legally qualified; depredations are effectually prevented by the Highland companies; and the Pretender’s interest is so low, that I think it can hope for no effectual assistance from that quarter.’

Dating from Killiwhimmen [Fort Augustus] on the 16th of the ensuing month, he tells his lordship:

‘I have inspected the new roads between this place and Fort William, and ordered it to be enlarged and carried on for wheel-carriage over the mountains on the south side of Loch Ness, as far as the town of Inverness, so that before midsummer next there will be a good coach-road from that place, which before was not |1726.| passable on Horseback in many places. This work is carried on by the military with less expense and difficulty than I at first imagined it could be performed, and the Highlanders, from the ease and convenience of transporting their merchandise, begin to approve and applaud what they at first repined at and submitted to with reluctancy.’

Writing, in September 1727, to Lord Townsend, he states that he had lately found the Highlands in perfect tranquillity, ‘and the great road of communication so far advanced, that I travelled to Fort William in my coach-and-six, to the great wonder of the country people, who had never seen such a machine in those parts. I have likewise given directions for carrying on another great road southward through the Highlands from Inverness to Perth, which will open a communication with the low country, and facilitate the march of a body of troops when his majesty’s service may require it.’

The general’s coach-and-six had been brought to Inverness by the coast-road from the south, and Burt assures us that ‘an elephant exposed in one of the streets of London could not have excited greater admiration. One asked what the chariot was. Another, who had seen the gentleman alight, told the first, with a sneer at his ignorance, it was a great cart to carry people in, and such like. But since the making of some of the roads, I have passed through them with a friend, and was greatly delighted to see the Highlanders run from their huts close to the chariot, and, looking up, bow with their bonnets to the coachman, little regarding us that were within. It is not unlikely that they looked upon him as a kind of prime minister, that guided so important a machine.’[^[653]]

Wade, writing to Mr Pelham from Blair, 20th July 1728, says: ‘I am now with all possible diligence carrying on the new road for wheel-carriage between Dunkeld and Inverness, of about eighty measured English miles in length; and that no time may be lost in a work so necessary for his majesty’s service, I have employed 300 men on different parts of this road, that the work may be done during this favourable season of the year, and hope, by the progress they have already made, to have forty miles of it completed before the end of October,[^[654]] at which time the heavy rains make it impracticable to proceed in the work till the summer following.

1726.

‘There is so great a scarcity of provisions in this barren country, that I am obliged to bring my biscuit, cheese, &c., for the support of the workmen, from Edinburgh by land-carriage, which, though expensive, is of absolute necessity. There is about fifteen miles of this road completely finished, and, I may venture to assure you, it is as good and as practicable for wheel-carriage as any in England. There are two stone-bridges building on the road that was finished last year between Inverness and Fort William, and two more are begun on this road, all which will, I hope, be completed by the middle of October. The rest that will be wanting will be eight or ten in number to complete the communication, which must be deferred to the next year.’

July.

The Society of Improvers at this date made a suggestion to the governors of George Heriot’s Hospital (magistrates and clergy of Edinburgh) which marks a degree of liberality and judgment far beyond what was to be expected of the age. They recommended that the boys of that institution, all being children of persons in reduced circumstances, should have instruction in useful arts imparted to them along with the ordinary elements of learning. Such a practice had already been introduced in Holland and France, and even in England (in workhouses), with the best effects. They at the same time recommended that the girls in the Merchant Maiden Hospital should be taught the spinning of flax and worsted, and be put in twos and threes weekly into the kitchen to learn house affairs. A committee was appointed to confer with the magistrates upon this plan; but the matter was afterwards put into the hands of the Trustees for the Encouragement of Manufactures.[^[655]]

It would appear as if some practical result had followed, at least for a time, as in December 1730, the Edinburgh newspapers advert in terms of admiration to two girls of the Merchant Maiden Hospital, who, ‘upon being only three weeks taught the French method of spinning, have spun exceeding fine yarn at the rate of twelve and a half spindle to the pound avoirdupois, which is thought to be the best and finest that ever was done in this country.’

Sep. 10.

Inoculation, or, as it was at first called, engrafting for the small-pox, was reported from the East to British physicians as early as |1726.| 1714, but neglected. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, visiting Turkey with her husband, the British ambassador, found it in full vogue there, and reported it at once so safe and so effectual, that people came together as to a party of pleasure to have it performed upon them by old women. It was in March 1718 that her ladyship, viewing the matter in entire independence of all silly fears, submitted her infant son to the process. Finding it successful, she exerted herself, on her return to England, to have the practice introduced there, and, by favour of Caroline, Princess of Wales, gained her point against the usual host of objectors. Her own daughter was the first person inoculated in Great Britain. It was then tried on four criminals, reprieved for the purpose, and found successful. Two of the princess’s children followed, in April 1722. The process was simultaneously introduced into Boston, in Massachusetts.

Lady Mary tells us next year, that inoculation was beginning to be a good deal practised. ‘I am,’ says she, ‘so much pulled about and solicited to visit people, that I am forced to run into the country to hide myself.’[^[656]] Yet the fact is, that it made its way very slowly, having to encounter both the prejudices of medical men, who misapprehended its scientific nature, and the objections of certain serious people, who denounced it as ‘taking the Almighty’s work out of his hands.’[^[657]] Just as the two young princesses were recovering, appeared a pamphlet, in which the author argued that this new invention is ‘utterly unlawful, an audacious presumption, and a thing forbid in Scripture, in that express command: “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”’ It would appear as if there never yet was any valuable discovery made for the alleviation of misery, or the conferring of positive benefits on mankind, but there are some persons who find it irreligious, and would be rejoiced in seeing it fail. It must have been under such a spirit that some one inserted in the prints of the day a notice desiring ‘all persons who know anything of the ill success of inoculation, to send a particular account thereof to Mr Roberts, printer in Warwickshire.’ Only 897 persons (of whom seventeen died) were inoculated during the first eight years.[^[658]]

The operation appears not to have been introduced in Scotland till upwards of five years after its introduction in London. A letter of the date noted, from Mr R. Boyd in Edinburgh to the |1726.| Rev. Mr Wodrow at Eastwood, gives the following among other matters of familiar intelligence: ‘The story of Abercromby of Glassaugh’s child being inoculated in this country, and recovered of the small-pox, is in the written letter and some of the prints.’[^[659]] From the reference to a written letter—namely, a periodical holograph sheet of news from London—we may infer that the infant in question was inoculated there, and that the practice was as yet unknown in our country.

Oct. 19.

An interesting and singular scene was this day presented in the streets of Edinburgh. Five men, named Garnock, Foreman, Stewart, Ferrie, and Russell, were executed at the Gallowlee on the 10th of October 1681, and their heads put up at the Cowgate Port, while their bodies were interred under the gallows. Some of their friends lifted and re-interred the bodies in the West Churchyard, and also took down the heads for a similar purpose; but, being scared, were obliged to inhume these relics, enclosed in a box, in a garden at Lauriston, on the south side of the city. On the 7th October of this year, the heads were discovered as they had been laid there forty-five years before, the box only being consumed. Mr Shaw, the owner of the garden, had them lifted and laid out in a summer-house, where the friends of the old cause had access to see them. Patrick Walker relates what followed. ‘I rejoiced,’ he says, ‘to see so many concerned grave men and women favouring the dust of our martyrs. There were six of us concluded to bury them upon the nineteenth day of October 1726, and every one of us to acquaint friends of the day and hour, being Wednesday, the day of the week upon which most of them were executed, and at 4 of the clock at night, being the hour that most of them went to their resting graves. We caused make a compleat coffin for them in black, with four yards of fine linen, the way that our martyrs’ corps were managed; and, having the happiness of friendly magistrates at the time, we went to the present Provost Drummond, and Baillie Nimmo, and acquainted them with our conclusions anent them; with which they were pleased, and said, if we were sure that they were our martyrs’ heads, we might bury them decently and orderly.... Accordingly, we kept the foresaid day and hour, and doubled the linen, and laid the half of it below them, their nether jaws being parted from their heads; but being young men, their teeth |1726.| remained. All were witness to the holes in each of their heads, which the hangman broke with his hammer; and, according to the bigness of their skulls, we laid their jaws to them, and drew the other half of the linen above them, and stufft the coffin with shavings. Some pressed hard to go thorow the chief parts of the city, as was done at the Revolution; but this we refused, considering that it looked airy and frothy, to make such show of them, and inconsistent with the solid serious observing of such an affecting, surprising, unheard-of dispensation: but took the ordinary way of other burials from that place—to wit, we went east the back of the wall, and in at Bristo Port, and down the way to the head of the Cowgate, and turned up to the churchyard, where they were interred closs to the Martyrs’ Tomb, with the greatest multitude of people, old and young, men and women, ministers and others, that ever I saw together.’

A citizen of Edinburgh heard from a lady born in 1736 an account, at second-hand, of this remarkable solemnity—with one fact additional to what is stated by Walker. ‘In the procession was a number of genteel females, all arrayed in white satin, as emblematical of innocence.’

A proceeding in which the same spirit was evinced is noted in the Edinburgh Courant of November 4, 1728. ‘We hear that the separatists about Dumfries, who retain the title of Cameronians, have despatched three of their number to Magus Muir, in Fife, to find out the burial-place of Thomas Brown, Andrew ..., James Wood, John Clyde, and John Weddell, who were there execute during the Caroline persecution for being in arms at Bothwell Bridge, and have marked the ground, in order to erect a monument with an inscription like that of the Martyrs’ Tomb in Greyfriars’ Churchyard, to perpetuate the zeal and sufferings of these men.’

A few months later, we learn from the same sententious chronicler: ‘The Martyrs’ Tomb in the Greyfriars’ Churchyard is repaired, and there is added to it a compartment, on which is cut a head and a hand on pikes, as emblems of their sufferings, betwixt which is to be engraved a motto alluding to both.’

1727. Mar. 30.

Died Sir Alexander Ogilvy of Forglen, Baronet, a judge of the Court of Session under the designation of Lord Forglen. There is no particular reason for chronicling the demise of a respectable but noteless senator of the College of Justice, beyond the eccentric and characteristic circumstances attending it. According to a note in the unpublished diary of James Boswell, the biographer |1727.| of Dr Johnson—when Lord Forglen was approaching the end of his life, he received a visit from his friend Mr James Boswell, advocate, the grandfather of the narrator of the anecdote. The old judge was quite cheerful, and said to his visitor: ‘Come awa, Mr Boswell, and learn to dee: I’m gaun awa to see your auld freend Cullen and mine. [This was Lord Cullen, another judge, who had died exactly a year before.] He was a guid honest man; but his walk and yours was nae very steady when you used to come in frae Maggy Johnston’s upon the Saturday afternoons.’ That the reader may understand the force of this address, it is necessary to explain that Mrs Johnston kept a little inn near Bruntsfield Links, which she contrived to make attractive to men of every grade in life by her home-brewed ale. It here appears that among her customers were Mr Boswell, a well-employed advocate, and Lord Cullen, a judge—one, it may be observed, of good reputation, a writer on moral themes, and with whose religious practice even Mr Wodrow was not dissatisfied.

Dr Clerk, who attended Lord Forglen at the last, told James Boswell’s father, Lord Auchinleck, that, calling on his patient the day his lordship died, he was let in by his clerk, David Reid. ‘How does my lord do?’ inquired Dr Clerk. ‘I houp he’s weel,’ answered David with a solemnity that told what he meant. He then conducted the doctor into a room, and shewed him two dozen of wine under a table. Other doctors presently came in, and David, making them all sit down, proceeded to tell them his deceased master’s last words, at the same time pushing the bottle about briskly. After the company had taken a glass or two, they rose to depart; but David detained them. ‘No, no, gentlemen; not so. It was the express will o’ the dead that I should fill ye a’ fou, and I maun fulfil the will o’ the dead.’ All the time, the tears were streaming down his cheeks. ‘And, indeed,’ said the doctor afterwards in telling the story, ‘he did fulfil the will o’ the dead, for before the end o’‘t there was na ane o’ us able to bite his ain thoomb.’[^[660]]