REIGN OF GEORGE II.: 1727–1748.
The accession of George II., while not disturbing in England that predominance of the great Whig nobles which had existed since the Revolution, and leaving the practical administration, as before, in the hands of Sir Robert Walpole, produced no change in the system of improvement which the Union had inaugurated. Under the rule of the Argyles, the Dalrymples, and one or two other eminent Whig families, with the mild and virtuous Duncan Forbes as Lord Advocate, the country enjoyed peace, and was enabled to develop its long dormant energies, in the pursuits of agriculture, of manufactures, and of commerce. All but a few of the Highland clans had apparently given their final submission to the Guelph dynasty; and though the Stuart cause was known to be upheld by some, it was generally thought that there was very little chance of further civil war on that subject.
The general tranquillity was broken in 1737 by a riot in Edinburgh, arising out of the harsh measures required for the enforcement of the Excise laws, and ending in the violent death of a public officer who had rendered himself obnoxious to the populace. For an account of this affair, reference is made to the chronicle.
About the same period, there was considerable agitation in the church, in consequence of the insubordination of a small group of clergymen, of ultra-evangelical views, who were at length, in 1740, expelled, and became the founders of a separate church under the name of the Associate Synod.
In 1744, Great Britain was engaged in a war which involved most of the great powers of Europe. The French minister, Cardinal de Tencin, conceived that an invasion of England on behalf of the House of Stuart would be an excellent diversion in favour of the arms of his country. The time was in reality long past for any effective movement of this kind. New men and new things had extinguished all rational hopes in the Jacobite party. Still there were some chiefs in the Highlands who had never abandoned the Stuart cause. In the Lowlands, there were discontents which seemed capable of being turned to some account in effecting the desired revolution. Prince Charles Edward, the eldest son of the so-called Pretender, was an ardent-minded youth, eager to try a last chance for the restoration of his family. The Cardinal really made some preparations for an expedition to be conducted by the Prince; but it was prevented by a storm and an opposing English armament, from leaving the French coast. Disappointed of the promised aid, Charles secretly voyaged with seven friends to the western coast of Inverness-shire, and, landing there towards the close of July 1745, was soon surrounded by a few hundreds of friendly Camerons and Macdonalds. He raised his standard at Glenfinnan on the 19th of August, and expressed himself as determined with such as would follow him, to win back a crown, or perish in the attempt.
The best of the national troops being engaged in service abroad, the government could only oppose to this enterprise a few raw regiments under the commander-in-chief for Scotland, Sir John Cope. But Sir John, making an unlucky lateral movement to Inverness, permitted Prince Charles, with about eighteen hundred clansmen, to descend upon Perth unopposed, and even to take possession of Edinburgh. On the 21st of September, having returned by sea to the low country, Cope was encountered at Prestonpans by the Highlanders, and driven in a few minutes from the field. For several weeks, Prince Charles Edward held court at Holyrood, in undisputed possession of Scotland. Marching in November into England by the western border, he captured Carlisle, was well received at Manchester, and pushed on to Derby, where he was only a hundred and twenty-seven miles from London. But here the courage of his little council of chiefs gave way before the terrors of the three armies by which they seemed surrounded. Accomplishing a hurried, yet well-managed retreat to Scotland, they laid Glasgow under contribution, and came to a halt at Stirling, where many fresh clans joined them, making up an army of nine thousand men.
A well-appointed English army under General Hawley met Prince Charles Edward at Falkirk (January 17, 1746), and was driven back to Edinburgh with the loss of camp, cannon, and baggage. The king’s second son, the Duke of Cumberland, soon after took command of the forces in Scotland, and on his advancing to Stirling, the Highland army made a hasty retreat to Inverness, where they spent the remainder of the winter. As soon as the return of spring permitted the English army to march, it was conducted against the rebels by its royal commander. In a regular engagement which took place on Culloden Moor, near Inverness (April 16), the Highland army was broken and dispersed with great slaughter. Prince Charles fled to the west coast, and after several months of fugitive life, during which he endured incredible hardships, escaped back to France. The Duke advanced to Fort Augustus, and there superintended a system of burning, slaughtering, and despoliation, throughout the disaffected territory, by which he hoped to make further efforts for the House of Stuart impossible. These acts, and his having ordered a general slaughter of the wounded Highlanders on the field of battle, have fixed on him indelibly the appellation of ‘the Butcher.’
Further to strike terror into the Jacobite party, two leaders of the rebel army, the Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino, with about seventy prisoners of inferior rank, were put to death as traitors. Lord Lovat, who, while preserving an appearance of loyalty, had sent out his clan under his son, was afterwards tried and executed for treason. Scotland generally suffered for some time under a military oppression, for the government, in their ignorance of the country, did not see by how small a part of the community the late insurrection had been supported. It now effected, however, some measures which enlightened men had long felt to be wanting for the cause of civilisation. One of these was for a more effectual disarmament of the Highlanders; another for abolishing the use of their tartan habiliments, which it was supposed had a certain effect in keeping up their warlike spirit. There remained two acts of much more importance, passed in 1748. One took away the hereditary sheriffships and other jurisdictions of the nobility and gentry, so as to render the sovereign in Scotland, as heretofore in England, the fountain of all law and justice. In terms of this statute, the privileges taken away were compensated for by sums of money, amounting in all to £152,000. The other act abolished what was called the tenure of ward-holdings—that is, the holding of lands on the condition of going out to war whenever the superior desired. Tenants and the common people were thus for the first time in Scotland rendered independent of their landlords, or of the great men on whose property they lived. In fact, they now became for the first time a free people.
1727. June.
From the eagerness of the proprietors of the Equivalent Stock to be engaged in some profitable business, as detailed under December 1719, it might have been expected that they would sooner or later fall upon some mode of effecting their wishes. All attempts to come into connection with the Bank of Scotland having failed, they at length formed the bold design of setting up a new bank—bold, in as far as it was entirely a novelty, there being no thought of a second bank even in England, where business was conducted upon so much greater a scale than in Scotland. It seems to have been by engaging the good-will or interest of the Earl of Islay, that the object was attained. The Bank of Scotland in vain published a statement shewing how it was quite competent, with its thirty thousand pounds of paid-up capital, to conduct the business of the country, and really was conducting it satisfactorily. In vain did Scottish jealousy try to raise a cry about the large proportion of English shareholders in the new concern. It received a royal charter, which was the last document |1727.| of the kind prepared before the king set out on his fatal visit to Hanover, and required a warrant from the new sovereign before the seal could be appended to it. The Earl of Islay was made governor, and the Lord President Dundas became deputy-governor. In December they opened their office, with a capital of £111,000; and in the first week of the new year, they began to issue notes ‘having his present majesty King George II.’s picture in front.’[[661]] At first, these notes were expressed in Scots money; but the time had now come when the people of Scotland began pretty generally to adopt the English denominations, both in their accounts and in common parlance; so this fashion was not kept up by the Royal Bank above two years. It is unnecessary to remark that the new bank prospered, and now ranks second to none in respectability. But this only makes the more remarkable the dreary anticipations which were formed at the time by those whom it rivalled.
‘Whatever was said while the Equivalent Society’s charter with banking powers was a-seeking, or what has been said since the passing thereof, that there was no design of prejudicing the Old Bank—nobody that knows the nature of banking does believe that two banks can be carried on in the same country; for it is impossible to manage and keep them up, without interfering and rubbing upon one another, unless rules and regulations could be made to prevent it; and it is impossible to digest regulations for executing such a design, but what must make the interests of the two companies reciprocal, and the product of their trade mutually to be communicated; and so two different offices, under distinct management and direction, would be a needless charge and trouble. Therefore the gentlemen of the [Old] Bank did from the beginning lay their account with an attack from an enemy, and a foreign one too, with home alliances.’[[662]]
Following up this terrible view of the case, the Bank of Scotland, for some time before the new establishment was opened, discontinued lending money, as a matter of precaution, thus creating considerable distress among the mercantile classes, and of course justifying, so far, the establishment of a new source of accommodation. When the Royal Bank was fairly afloat, the Bank of Scotland proceeded to the yet greater extremity of calling up former loans, thus deepening the distress. ‘The country,’ says Mr Wodrow in a kind of despair, ‘is not able to bear both banks. The new bank would fain have the old coalescing with them; but |1727.| they bear off. It’s a wonder to me how there’s any money at all in the country.’[[663]]
A pamphlet having been published in the interest of the Bank of Scotland on this occasion—being the Historical Account already more than once quoted—another soon after appeared in justification of the Royal Bank, though professedly by a person unconnected with it.[[664]] ‘It can be no secret,’ says this writer, ‘that a great number of people of all ranks were creditors to the public in Scotland by reason of offices civil and military, and that the Equivalent stipulated by the act of Union fell short of their payment; that in 1714 they obtained an act of parliament constituting the debts due to them, but that no parliament provision was made for a fund for their payment till the year 1719, when a second act was made, appropriating to that purpose a yearly fund of £10,000 sterling, payable out of the revenues of customs, Excise, &c., preferable to all payments except the civil list. Between the first and the second act, many of the proprietors, being doubtful that any provision would be made for them by parliament, and others being pressed by necessity, chose to dispose of their debentures (these were the legal vouchers ascertaining the debts due to the persons named in them) as they best could, and to the best bidder. Many of them were carried to London, but a very considerable part of them still remains in the hands of Scots proprietors, partly out of choice, partly by reason of some legal bars that lay in the way of issuing debentures, and partly by purchasing them back from England.’
In consequence of powers in the act of 1719, ‘his late majesty did, by letters-patent in 1724, incorporate all persons who then were, or thereafter should be, proprietors of the debentures whereby that public debt was constituted, to the end that they might receive and distribute their annuity.’ His majesty having at the same time promised powers and privileges to the corporation as they might request, it petitioned him for those of a bank in Scotland, which he and his successor complied with, limiting the power to ‘such of the company as should, on or before Michaelmas 1727, subject their stock, or any share of it, to the trade of banking.’
There is, further, a great deal of angry controversial remark on the Old Bank; but the most material point is the allegation, that |1727.| that institution ‘divided 35, 40, 50 per cent.’ by the use of ‘other people’s money.’ The author adverts with bitterness to the harsh measures adopted by the Old Bank in prospect of rivalry. ‘It is a hard thing,’ says he, ‘to defend the conduct of the Old Bank upon the prospect of a rivalship. Lending is superseded; a tenth is called from the proprietors, and all their debtors threatened with diligence for a certain part or for the whole of their debts, which diligence has since been executed.... Why did they carry their revenge (as it is universally known they did) to every one who had the least relation, alliance, friendship, or connection with the proprietors of that bank [the Royal]?... Why were the first examples of their wrath made out of the most known friends of the present establishment, and why were the disaffected remarkably and visibly spared?’
Considering that the Bank of Scotland had never yet had more than thirty thousand pounds sterling of capital paid up, the fact of the larger stock of the Royal, and their having £30,000 of specie to trade with distinct from their stock,[[665]] become features of importance, as shewing the increasing business of the country.
From a folio broadside[[666]] containing the ‘Rules to be observed by such Persons as keep a Cash-accompt with the Royal Bank of Scotland,’ it appears that ‘no sum paid into the bank or drawn out of it, be less than 10l. sterling, nor have in it any fraction or part of a pound; and in case of fractions arising by the addition of interest at settling an accompt, such fractions are to be taken off by the first draught or payment thereafter made.’ Sums of five pounds and upwards are now taken in and given out at all the Scottish banks (1860).
June.
Witchcraft, now generally slighted by persons in authority in the south, was still a subject of judicial investigation in the far north. Wodrow, in his Renfrewshire manse, continued to receive accounts of any transactions in that way which might be going on in any quarter, and, under 1726, he is careful to note ‘some pretty odd accounts of witches’ which he had received from a couple of Ross-shire brethren. One of them, ‘at death,’ he says, and it is to be feared that her death was at the stake, ‘confessed that they had by sorcery taken away the sight of one of the eyes of an |1727.| Episcopal minister, who lost the sight of his eye upon a sudden, and could give no reason of it.’[[667]]
Early in the ensuing year—if we may depend upon the authority quoted below[[668]]—two poor Highland women, mother and daughter, natives of the parish of Loth, in Sutherlandshire, were accused of witchcraft before the sheriff-depute, Captain David Ross of Littledean, and condemned to death. The mother was charged with having ridden on the daughter, who had been transformed on the occasion into a pony, and shod by the devil. The girl made her escape, and was noted ever after, in confirmation of the charge, to be lame in both hands and feet. The mother suffered at Dornoch in June, being burned in a pitch-barrel. It has been handed down by tradition, that, ‘after being brought out to execution, the weather proving very severe, she sat composedly warming herself by the fire prepared to consume her, while the other instruments of death were making ready.’[[669]] ‘It does not appear,’ says Sir Walter Scott in 1830, ‘that any punishment was inflicted for this cruel abuse of the law on the person of a creature so helpless; but the son of the lame daughter—himself distinguished by the same misfortune—was living so lately as to receive the charity of the present Marchioness of Stafford, Countess of Sutherland in her own right.’[[670]]
For a generation, the linen manufacture had been passing through what might be called a prosperous infancy. A public paper in 1720 states that there was annually imported from Scotland into England the value of £100,000 in white linen, and as much in brown, the flax being of ‘a spunsie quality,’ which gave it a preference over the similar products of both Ireland and Germany.[[671]] [The same document estimated the English woollen cloths exported to Scotland at £400,000 per annum.]
By an act of parliament passed this year, a Board of Trustees was established in Scotland for the administration of an annual sum set aside for the encouragement of manufactories and fisheries. The sum at first given was four thousand pounds, which might be considered as calculated to go a great way in so poor a country. The activity and serviceableness of the Board was, in its earlier years, chiefly shewn in the promotion of the linen manufacture, |1727.| which, under the stimulus afforded by premiums, rose from an export sale of 2,183,978 yards in 1727, to 4,666,011 in 1738, 7,358,098 in 1748, and 12,823,048 in 1764. It is curious, regarding an institution which has since occupied, as it still does, so conspicuous a place in the public eye, to trace the difficulties it had to contend with at starting, in consequence of the monetary vacuum produced by the conflict of the two banks. The Lord Advocate, Duncan Forbes, wrote on the 26th June 1728 to the Duke of Newcastle: ‘The trustees appointed by his majesty for taking care of the manufactures, proceed with great zeal and industry; but at present credit is run so low, by a struggle between the bank lately erected by his majesty and the old bank, that money can scarcely be found to go to market with.’[[672]]
Oct.
Wodrow, who never failed to hear of and note any misfortune that happened to Glasgow—hopeful, always, that it would be ‘laid to heart’—makes us aware of an obscure sorrow which was now beginning to beset the thriving burghers. ‘The vermin called bugs,’ he says, ‘are at present extremely troublesome at Glasgow. They say they are come over with timber and other goods from Holland. They are in many houses there, and so extremely prolific, there is no getting rid of them, though many ways have been tried. It’s not twenty year since they were known, and such as had them kept them secret. These six or seven years, they are more openly compleened of, and now the half of the town are plagued with them. This is chiefly attributed to the frequent alterations of servants, who bring them from house to house.’[[673]]
Soon after, having occasion to deplore the death of Provost Peady, a person of great firmness and piety, he speaks of the many ‘strokes’ which the industrious city had met with of late. Their losses during 1727 had been reckoned at not less than twenty-eight thousand pounds sterling! ‘It’s a wonder to me how they stand throo.’ The worthy pastor of Eastwood would evidently have not been greatly distressed had his Glasgow neighbours been subjected to a repetition of a few of the plagues of Egypt, so needful were they of something to check their growing fatness and pride. He might have been expected to hail the frogs with a fraternal feeling; and we can imagine him marking with hopefulness, not unmingled with sympathy, the spread of the |1727.| murrain among the burghers’ kine at the Cowcaddens. The present entomological corrective was evidently regarded by him with a satisfaction too deep to admit of many words.
1728. Feb. 8.
Mr John Boyd gives his friend Wodrow an account of a duelling affair which had befallen in Edinburgh. ‘Ane officer in the Dutch Guards, son to Mr Walter Stewart, late Solicitor, was ill wounded by are officer in the Canongate [Lieutenant Pilkington, of Grove’s Regiment]. The officer, when in custody of the constables, was rescued by the guard there, who carried him off; but at Musselburgh, the people there apprehended him, and made him and twenty-two guards prisoners, who were all brought to prison here.’ There were hopes of the wounded man’s recovery.[[674]]
Mar. 1.
At four o’clock in the morning, a smart shock of an earthquake was experienced in Edinburgh and throughout the south of Scotland, if not in other quarters. At Selkirk, every house was shaken, and some people were tumbled out of bed, but no damage was done.[[675]]
Mar.
Mr Wodrow was at this time informed ‘by very good hands,’ that there had been for some years in Edinburgh a little gambling fraternity, who made it their business to trace out and decoy young men of rank and fortune, and make plunder of them. ‘One of them will lose fifty pounds in a night till the young spark be engaged; and then another comes and soon gains the whole; and, it may be, a third comes, and stands at the back of the person they design to rifle, and by signs and words unknown to others, discovers his game to the other; so by one method or other they are sure to win all at last.’ It was alleged that the society would divide 25,000 merks [about £1400] a year by these vile practices—much calculated ‘to fill our cup of judgments.’
As a trait of the time—On the news reaching Glasgow that an attempt to unseat Campbell of Shawfield had failed, his friends went down to Govan, to celebrate the affair, and write a letter of congratulation to him. Mr William Wishart, a clergyman, deserted the synod then sitting, to go with them, and help in drawing up the letter. By and by, the minister left them; but they sat still till they became so befuddled, that it became necessary to bundle them into a boat, and so carry them back to the |1728.| city. That evening, some other gentlemen of the same way of thinking, went through the streets of Glasgow, with a fiddler playing before them, and singing: ‘Up with the Campbells, and down with the Grahams!’ and it was a wonder that a riot was avoided.
About the same date, Mr Wodrow adverts to the fact, that Anthony Aston’s playhouse in Edinburgh was ‘much frequented;’ and amongst ‘persons of substance and leisure,’ there was consequently a great tendency to laxity of morals. There was even a talk of building a playhouse in Edinburgh. The manager, however, was not without his troubles. One Ross, ‘master of the Beau’s Coffee-house’—a son of Bishop Ross, and a great encourager of the playhouse—had sold a quantity of tickets, on which he was to be allowed a penny each; but he ultimately refused to take this commission, though amounting to about ten pounds—‘a vast sum,’ says Wodrow, ‘for tickets at a penny apiece in one coffee-house.’ Aston having reserved this money to himself, instead of accounting for it to his company, according to agreement, a terrible squabble arose among them, and a process was threatened before the magistrates, or some other court. How the matter ended, we do not hear.
To complete his general picture of the profaneness of the age, Mr Wodrow tells us that Allan Ramsay, the poet, got down books of plays from London, and lent them out at an easy rate—the beginning of Circulating Libraries in Scotland. Boys, servantwomen, and gentlemen, all alike took advantage of this arrangement, whereby ‘vice and obscenity were dreadfully propagated.’ Lord Grange complained of the practice to the magistrates, and induced them to make inspection of Ramsay’s book containing the names of the borrowers of the plays. ‘They were alarmed at it, and sent some of their number to his shop to look through some of his books; but he had notice an hour before, and had withdrawn some of the worst, and nothing was done to purpose.’[[676]]
Mar. 27.
The conflict between the Bank of Scotland and its young and pretentious Whig rival, the Royal Bank, led to a temporary stoppage of payments at the former establishment, the last that ever took place. The Royal Bank ‘having all the public money given in to them, has at present worsted [the Bank of Scotland], |1728.| and run them out of cash.’[[677]] In their own advertisement on the occasion, they attribute the calamity to ‘the great embarrassment that has been upon credit and circulation of money in payments for some months bygone, arising from causes and by means well known both in city and country.’ In this very crisis, the Bank announced its dividend of four per cent, on its capital stock, but appropriating it as part of ten per cent, now called up from the shareholders, ‘the other sixty pounds Scots on each share to be paid in before the 15th of June.’ The directors at the same time ordered their notes to bear interest during the time that payment should be suspended.
It must have been a draught of very bitter gall to the Old Bank, when their young rival came ostentatiously forward with an announcement that, for the ‘relief of such people as wanted to go to market,’ they would give specie for the twenty-shilling notes of the Bank of Scotland till further notice.
The Bank of Scotland resumed paying its twenty-shilling notes on the 27th of June.
May 9.
The convivialities indulged in at funerals were productive to-day of a tragedy long remembered in Scotland. Mr Carnegie of Lour, residing in the burgh of Forfar, had a daughter to be buried, and before the funeral, he entertained the Earl of Strathmore, his own brother James Carnegie of Finhaven, Mr Lyon of Bridgeton, and some others of the company, at dinner in his house. After the ceremony, these gentlemen adjourned to a tavern, and drank a good deal. Carnegie of Finhaven got extremely drunk. Lyon of Bridgeton was not so much intoxicated; but the drink made him rude and unmannerly towards Finhaven. Afterwards, the Earl of Strathmore went to call at the house of Mr Carnegie’s sister, Lady Auchterhouse, and the other gentlemen followed. Here it may be remarked that the whole of this group of persons were, like a large proportion of the Forfarshire gentry, of Jacobite prepossessions. The earl’s late brother and predecessor in the title had fallen at Sheriffmuir, on the Chevalier’s side; so had Patrick Lyon of Auchterhouse, husband of the lady now introduced to notice, and brother of Bridgeton. The presence of a lady, and that lady a widowed sister-in-law, failed to make Bridgeton conduct himself discreetly. He continued his boisterous rudeness towards Finhaven; rallied him coarsely about his not |1728.| being willing to marry one of his daughters to Lord Rosehill, about his having no sons, about his debts; took him offensively by the breast; and even used some rudeness towards the lady herself. In the dusk of the evening, the party sallied out to the street, and here Bridgeton went so far in his violence towards Finhaven as to push him into a deep and dirty kennel, which nearly covered him from head to foot with mire. Finhaven, now fully incensed, rose, and drawing his sword, ran up to Bridgeton, with deadly design; but the earl, seeing him advance, pushed Bridgeton aside, and unhappily received the lunge full in the middle of his own body. He died forty-nine hours after the incident.
Carnegie of Finhaven was tried on the ensuing 2d of August for premeditated murder; an absurd charge absurdly supported by long arguments and quotations of authority, in the style of that day. In his ‘information,’ the accused man called God to witness that he had borne no malice to the earl; on the contrary, he had the greatest kindness and respect for him. ‘If it shall appear,’ said he, ‘that I was the unlucky person who wounded the earl, I protest before God I would much rather that a sword had been sheathed in my own bowels.’ All that he admitted was: ‘I had the misfortune that day to be mortally drunk, for which I beg God’s pardon.’ He declared that, being in this state at the time, he did not so much as remember that he had seen the earl when he came out of the kennel. The defence proposed for him by his counsel was, that, the circumstances of the case considered, he was not guilty of murder, but of manslaughter. Strange to say, the court, sacrificing rationality to form and statute, overruled the defence: they found the fact that the prisoner having really given the wound whereof the Earl of Strathmore died, to be relevant to infer the pains of law against him. The killing being indisputable, Carnegie would have been condemned if the jury should merely give a verdict on the point of fact. In these circumstances, his counsel, Robert Dundas of Arniston, stood forth to tell the jury that they were entitled to judge on the point of law as well as the point of fact. He asserted that the only object for their deliberation, was whether they could conscientiously say that Carnegie had committed murder, or whether his guilt was not diminished or annihilated by the circumstances of the case. The jury, almost beyond expectation, gave a verdict of ‘Not Guilty,’ thus establishing a great constitutional principle.[[678]]
1728. Aug. 15.
The noted fierté of the Scottish nobility and gentry was beginning at this time to give way somewhat, under the general desire to promote the arts of industry, and partly because of the hopelessness of public employments for young scions of aristocracy in all but favoured Whig circles. We must not, therefore, be surprised when a tragical tale of this date brings before us the fact that Patrick Lindsay, described as heir-male of the grand old House of Lindsay of the Byres, and who, a few years afterwards, married a daughter of the sixteenth Earl of Crawford, was now an upholsterer in the Parliament Close of Edinburgh, and dean of guild for the city. Neither ought it to appear as incredible that one of his apprentices was a youth named Cairns, younger son of a gentleman of good estate residing at Cupar-Fife.
The tale was simply this—that, on the evening noted, between eight and nine o’clock, Cairns was found in the shop expiring from the effects of a violent blow on the head, apparently inflicted by a hammer, while the box containing the guildry treasure was missing. It was believed that some vile people who then haunted the city, knowing of the box being kept in Lindsay’s shop, had formed a design to possess themselves of it, and had effected their end at the expense of murder, at the moment when the place was about to be closed for the night. A number of vagrants were taken up on suspicion, and the box was soon after found, empty.[[679]]
Aug. 18.
Aaron Hill, a well-born English gentleman, who had been manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and wrote many well-received plays and poems—who, moreover, had travelled over Europe and some parts of Asia and Africa—is at this date found writing to his wife from what he calls ‘the Golden Groves of Abernethy,’ meaning the great natural forest of that name on Speyside, in the county of Elgin. It is a strange association of persons and things for a period when even of civilised Scotsmen scarcely ever one made his way north of the Grampians. It had come about, however, in a very natural way.
The York-Buildings Company, which had already formed connections with Scotland by the purchase of several of the forfeited estates, was induced to take a lease from Sir James Grant of Grant, of the magnificent but hitherto useless pine-forest |1728.| of Abernethy, thinking they should be able to apply the timber for the use of the navy. Had the wood been only removable by land-carriage, it would have been useless, as before; but they had been led to understand that there was no difficulty in floating it down the Spey to the sea, where it might be shipped off for the south. Aaron Hill, who was a very speculative genius, having before this time headed a scheme for making olive-oil out of beech-nuts, and concocted a plan for settling a part of Carolina, made a journey to the Spey in 1726, and easily convinced himself of the practicability of the project. The Company, accordingly, commenced operations in 1728, with Mr Hill as their clerk. They sent a hundred and twenty-five work-horses, with a competent number of wagons, and apparatus of all the kinds required; they erected substantial wooden-houses, saw-mills, and an iron-foundry, all of them novelties regarded with wonder by the simple natives.[[680]] They had also a salaried commissary to furnish provisions and forage. Tracks being formed through the forest, and men trained to the work, trees were felled to the number of forty or fifty in a day, and brought down to the bank of the river. There, under the direction of Mr Hill, they were bound in rafts of sixty or eighty, with deals laid upon the surface to form a platform; and for each such raft two men were held as sufficient to navigate it to the sea, one sitting with a guiding-oar at one end, and another at the other. Before this time, the natives had been accustomed to float down rafts of three or four trees tied together with a rope, the attendant sitting in a curragh, or boat of hide, from which he was ready to plunge into the stream when any impediment called for his interference.[[681]] What a Drury Lane manager would think on witnessing a mode of navigation coeval with the first state of savagery, we cannot tell; but he had no little difficulty in inducing the people to adopt a more civilised mode of conducting his grand timber-rafts. Till he first went in one himself, to shew that there was no danger, not one of the Abernethy foresters would venture in so prodigious a craft. There was, in reality, something problematical in the undertaking, for the river was in some places partially blocked by sunken rocks; but the genius of Hill was |1728.| equal to all emergencies. Taking advantage of a dry season, when these shoals were exposed, he kindled immense wood-fires upon them, and when the rock was thus heated, he caused water to be thrown upon it, thus making it splinter, and so enable his men to break it up and clear the passage.
It was in high spirits that our poet wrote to his wife from the Golden Groves of Abernethy, for they were really productive of gold, no less than £7000 worth of timber being realised by his Company. ‘The shore of the Spey,’ says he, ‘is all covered with masts from 50 to 70 feet long, which they are daily bringing out of the wood, with ten carriages, and above a hundred horses.... In the middle of the river lies a little fleet of our rafts, which are just putting off for Findhorn harbour; and it is one of the pleasantest sights possible to observe the little armies of men, women, and children who pour down from the Highlands to stare at what we have been doing.’ What seems chiefly to have impressed the natives, was the liberality with which the business of wood-cutting was conducted. It seemed to them a wasteful extravagance, and if it be true that barrels of tar would be burned in bonfires, and barrels of brandy broached on joyful occasions among the people, five of whom died in one night in consequence, the imputation was not unjust. Nevertheless, the work was highly successful, and might have been carried on longer than it was, if the Company had not called away their people to work at their lead-mines.[[682]]
During the time which Mr Hill spent in Scotland, he was received with great civilities by the Duke of Gordon and other eminent persons, and was complimented with the freedom of Aberdeen, Inverness, and other burghs. In his collected poems are found a number of short epigrammatic pieces which he wrote during his residence in Scotland; among the rest, his oft-printed epigram, beginning: ‘Tender-handed stroke a nettle.’ But Burt adds another, which he found scribbled on a window ‘at the first stage on this side Berwick:’
‘Scotland, thy weather’s like a modish wife,
Thy winds and rains for ever are at strife;
So Termagant awhile her bluster tries,
And when she can no longer scold—she cries!’
The engineer could not but wonder at Hill taking leave of the country in this strain, ‘after he had been so exceedingly |1728.| complaisant to it, when here, as to compare its subterranean riches with those of Mexico and Peru.’
Aug.
We must again return to Mr Wodrow for an account of the continued progress of gaiety in Scotland. It appears that part of Anthony Aston’s company of comedians migrated from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and were there favoured by Bailie Murdoch, ‘who is too easy,’ with permission to perform the Beggars’ Opera in the Weigh-house. They had a good audience the first night, but on the few other nights of performance ‘got not so much as to pay their music.’ On the magistrates being blamed for the permission they had given, they recriminated on the ministers, who should have interfered in time. Mr Wodrow considered the ministers as here in fault; yet he could not exonerate the magistrates. ‘Considering the noise made at Edinburgh by these strollers, and the brisk opposition made by the magistrates of Edinburgh, they [the magistrates of Glasgow] should have considered better before they allowed them.’
‘Sabbath after, the ministers preached against going to these interludes and plays.... Mr Rob, of Kilsyth, went through all that was agoing about meeting-houses, plays, errors, and profaneness; and spared none, as I hear.’
This classing of the Episcopal meeting-houses with the ungodly theatre, reminds us of the ranging of popery and adultery together by the reformers. It would appear that in the summer of 1728 there was another histrionic company in Scotland, under a Mr Phipps, who announced that on the 29th October he would, ‘at the desire of severals of the nobility and gentry of East Lothian,’ act the Beggars’ Opera at Haddington.
In March 1729, the Edinburgh Courant informs us that ‘the Scots Company of Comedians, as they call themselves, have all of a sudden eloped, without counting with their creditors.’
Wodrow reports with much bitterness, in 1731, the rumours going about as to the success of the English comedians in Edinburgh. He says: ‘It is incredible what numbers of chairs, with men, are carried to these places;’ ‘men’ not choosing to walk to such amusements. ‘For some weeks, they made fifty pound sterling every night, and that for six nights a week.’ ‘It’s a dreadful corruption of our youth, and an eyelet to prodigality and vanity.’[[683]]
1728. Oct. 1.
A valuable Dutch East Indiaman having been lost in March, near the island of Lewis, an effort, involving some ingenuity, was made to recover the treasure on board, which was understood to amount to about £16,000 sterling. The Edinburgh newspapers remark to-day, the arrival of a Dutchman with ‘a curious machine’ designed for this purpose. Mr Mackenzie, younger of Delvin, a principal clerk of Session, and depute-admiral of those shores, was joined with Mr Alexander Tait, a merchant, in furnishing the expenses of this undertaking, in the hope of profit for themselves. The business was proceeded with during October, and with success. On the 19th, the populace of Edinburgh were regaled with the sight of several cart-loads of the recovered money, passing through their streets. The Dutch East India Company presently gave in a petition to the Court of Admiralty for an account of the treasure; which was accordingly furnished by Mr Mackenzie, and shewed that he had fished up £14,620, at an expense of £9000.
Mr Mackenzie was allowed to retain twenty thousand crowns and some doubloons, and ordered to deposit the rest in a box, subject to the future orders of the court.
‘The divers fishing for the spoils of the Dutch ship, found in and about her the dead bodies of two hundred and forty men, which they brought to land and buried.’[[684]]
A few years ago, a coronation gold medal of Augustus II. of Poland was exhumed in the garden of the minister of Barra. At first, there was a difficulty of comprehending how such an object could have come there; at length the shipwreck of the Dutch vessel was called to recollection, as an explanation of the mystery.
About the close of 1728, the Edinburgh newspapers speak of a gentleman named Captain Row, who had come to Scotland invested with a privilege for raising treasure and other articles out of shipwrecked vessels, to last for ten years. For the next twelvemonth, we hear of him as exercising his ingenuity upon the remains of one of the Spanish Armada, which was sunk off Barra. Two brass cannon are first spoken of as recovered, and afterwards we hear of ‘several things of value.’
Nov.
That extraordinary person, Simon Lord Lovat, who had resisted the troops of King William, and been outlawed by the Edinburgh Justiciary Lords, was now in the enjoyment of his title and |1728.| estate, an active friend and partisan of the Whig-Hanoverian government, and captain of one of the six companies of its Highland militia In the early part of this month, he led sixty of these local soldiers on an expedition against the thieves of the north-west districts, and captured no fewer than twenty-six in the course of a week. He searched for arms at the same time, but reported that these had been now pretty well gathered in; so he found none.
Although few Scotsmen have been the subjects of so much biography as Lord Lovat, there is one aspect in which he remains to be now for the first time viewed; and that is, as a newspaper paragraphist. During the dozen prosperous years which followed this date, the Courant and Mercury are every now and then presenting extracts of private letters from Inverness regarding the grand doings of ‘Simon Lord Lovat, chief of the clan Fraser,’ all of them in such a puffing style as would leave little doubt of their having been his own composition, even if we were not possessed of facts which betray it but too clearly.
On one occasion (May 1728) he is described as riding out from Inverness, with eighty well-mounted gentlemen of his clan, to meet and escort the Lords of the Circuit Court of Justiciary, as they were approaching the town. At another (September 1729), we find him parading his company of ‘a hundred men, besides officers, sergeants, and drums,’ before General Wade, when ‘they made a very fine appearance, both as to the body of men and their new clothings, and they performed their exercises and firings so well, that the general seemed very well satisfied. And he told my Lord Lovat that he was much pleased at the performance and good appearance of his company.’ We of course hear nothing of what the general’s engineer, Mr Burt, has been so ill-natured as record, that Lovat had stripped private clansmen of any good plaids they had, in order to enable his company to make the better show.
In June 1733, we are informed through the Mercury, that a commission appointing Lord Lovat to be sheriff of the county, having come to Inverness, it was read in court, where Alexander Fraser of Fairfield sat to administer justice as his lordship’s deputy. ‘The gentlemen of the name of Fraser, who are very numerous in this town, together with the several relations and friends of the family of Lovat, expressed an uncommon satisfaction on seeing this commission renewed in his lordship’s person, whose ancestors, above three hundred years ago, were |1728.| sheriffs-principal of the shires of Inverness and Moray. And we learn that the rejoicings made all over the country, by the Frasers and their friends, were in nothing short of those we had in town.’ So says a letter from Inverness, marked in the office-copy of the paper as ‘paid (2s. 6d.).’
Ten days afterwards appeared another paragraph: ‘Last week, the Right Honourable Simon Fraser of Lovat was married at Roseneath, in Dumbartonshire, to the Honourable Miss Primrose Campbell, daughter to the late John Campbell of Mamore, Esq.; sister to John Campbell, Esq., one of the Grooms of the Bedchamber to his Majesty, and first-cousin to his Grace the Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. A young lady of great beauty and merit.’ This was also ‘paid (2s. 6d.).’
The reader will perhaps relish another specimen: ‘Inverness, July 18, 1735.—Last post brought us the agreeable news of the Hon. John Campbell of Mamore his being appointed Lieutenant-colonel of the Inniskillen Regiment of Foot, a part whereof is now quartered here. This news gave great joy to all the Frasers, and well-wishers of the family of Lovat in this town, the Lord Lovat being married to a sister of the said Colonel Campbell; and there being for many ages a great friendship between the Campbells and the Frasers, last night all the gentlemen of the Frasers in this place, and the Grants, Monroes, and Cuthberts, relations and allies of the family of Lovat, met, and invited all the officers of the corps, garrison, and custom-house, with many other gentlemen of the first rank, to the Lord Lovat’s lodgings, where Baillie William Fraser, his lordship’s landlord and merchant, had prepared an elegant entertainment. There was great plenty of wine, when the healths of his Majesty, the Queen, Prince, Duke, and all the royal family were drunk, with those of the ministry, his Majesty’s forces by sea and land, Duke of Argyle, Earl of Ilay, General Wade, Colonel John Campbell, Lord Lovat, Colonel Hamilton and the corps; the healths of the Frasers, Grants, Monroes, &c., and all the fast friends of the family of Argyle, with many other loyal toasts. There were large bonfires, not only at my Lord Lovat’s lodgings, but on every hill in his lordship’s extensive country round this town. During the solemnity, the music-bells played, drums beat, and the private men of the company here were handsomely entertained, agreeable to their own taste, with barrels of beer, which they drank to the health of their new commander. After the gentlemen had stayed several hours at his lordship’s lodgings, they, with the music playing |1728.| before them, proceeded to the market-cross, where was a table covered, with the foresaid toasts repeated, with huzzas and acclamations of joy.’ Marginally marked in the office-copy, ‘Paid 4s.’
Nov.
The influenza, in a very virulent form, after passing over the continent, came to England, and a fortnight after had made its way into Scotland. A cold and cough, with fever, laid hold of nearly every person, sometimes in a moment as they stood on their feet, and in some instances attended with raving. Wodrow of course entertained hopes that Glasgow would receive a good share of the calamity; but it proved less severe there than in some other places. He adverts, however, to the fact, that, owing to the ailment, ‘there was no hearing sermon for some time.’[[685]]
Nov. 28.
The death of Alexander, second duke of Gordon, proved, through connected circumstances, a domestic event of great importance. We have seen the adherence of this powerful family to the Catholic faith a source of frequent trouble ever since the Reformation. Latterly, under the protection of the second duke, the ancient religion had been receiving fresh encouragement in the north. For this family to be at variance in so important a respect with the country at large, was unfortunate both for themselves and the country. It was an evil now at length to be brought to an end.
The Duchess—Henrietta Mordaunt, daughter of the Earl of Peterborough[[686]]—finding herself left with the charge of a large family in tender years—the young duke only eight years old—took it upon her to have them educated in her own Protestant principles, and with a respect for the reigning family. It was such an opportunity as might not have occurred again for a century. We can see from her history as an introducer of improvements in agriculture, that she must have been a woman of considerable intellectual vigour; and hence it is the less surprising that she fully accomplished her object. She of course got great credit in all loyal quarters for what she did with her children. The General Assembly, in 1730, sent her a cordial letter of thanks. The government, in 1735, settled upon her a pension of £1000 a year. She survived her husband upwards of thirty years, living |1729.| for the most part at Prestonhall, in the county of Edinburgh—a forfeited estate which she had bought at a moderate price.
After all, there were some drawbacks to her Grace’s soundness in Protestant loyalty. While one of her sons, Lord Lewis—the ‘Lewie Gordon’ of Jacobite minstrelsy—‘went out’ for the House of Stuart in 1745, she herself shewed a certain tendency that way, by laying out a breakfast for the Young Chevalier on the roadside at her park-gate, as he marched past, target on shoulder, on his way to England, for which single act of misapplied hospitality her Grace was deprived of her pension.
1729. Feb.
The Edinburgh Courant of February 24th gravely records that, ‘some days ago, died a young man in the parish of Glencorse, who since Hallarday last hath been grievously tormented by wicked spirits, who haunted his bed almost every night. There was no formed disease upon him; yet he had extraordinary paroxysms, which could not proceed from natural causes. He vomited vast quantities of blood, which was like roasted livers, and at last, with violent cries, his lungs.’
Mar. 20.
Alexander, ninth Earl of Eglintoun, having died on the 18th of February, was this day buried in the family tomb in the west country, with the parade proper to his rank, according to the ideas of the age. One feature of the ceremonial was considered as so peculiar, that the Caledonian Mercury makes a paragraph of it alone. ‘There were between nine hundred and a thousand beggars assembled, many of whom came over from Ireland, who had £50 of that nobleman’s charity distribute among them.’
July.
William Ged, ‘of the family of Balfarg,’ a goldsmith in Edinburgh, and noted for the improvements he effected in his own business, chanced to be brought into connection with the art of typography by having to pay the workpeople of a printer to whom he was related. Possessing an ingenious and inventive mind, he conceived a plan for economising means in printing, by subjecting to the press, not ‘forms of types,’ as usual, but plates made by casting from those forms, thus at once saving the types from wear, and obtaining a means of printing successive editions of any amount without the necessity of setting up the types anew. He talked of this invention to a friend so early as 1725; but it was not till now that any active steps were taken towards realising it. With one Fenner, a bookseller of London, who happened to |1729.| visit Edinburgh, he entered at this date into a contract, by virtue of which the project was to be prosecuted by Ged in England, with pecuniary means furnished by Fenner, the profits to be divided betwixt the parties. It was in a manner necessary to go to England for this purpose, as peculiar types were required, and there was not now any letter-founder in Scotland.
Ged was a simple, pure-hearted man, perhaps a good deal carried away from prudential considerations by the interest he felt in his invention. Fenner, and others with whom Ged came in contact in the south, were sharp and selfish people, not over-disposed to use their associate justly. The unfortunate projector had also to encounter positive treacheries, arising from the fear that his plan would injure interests already invested in the trade of printing. He spent several years between London and the university of Cambridge, and never got beyond some abortive experiments, which, however, might have been sufficient to convince any skilful printer of the entire practicability, as well as advantageousness of the scheme. With a deep sense of injury from Fenner and others, Ged returned to Edinburgh in 1733, a poorer, if not a wiser man than he had been eight years before.
It was impossible, however, that so magnificent an addition to the invention of Scheffer and Guttenberg as stereotyping should be suppressed. A few kind neighbours entered into a subscription to enable Ged to make a new effort in Scotland. Having a son named James, about twelve years old, he put him apprentice to a printer, that the boy might supply that technical skill which was wanting in himself. Before this child had been a year at his business, being allowed by his master to return to the office by himself at night for his father’s work, he had begun to set up the types for an edition of Sallust in an 18mo size; and plates from the forms were finished by Ged in 1736. The impression from these constituted the first stereotyped book.
Several persons beyond the limits of the book-producing trades had a sense of Ged’s merits. In 1740, when he sent a plate of nine pages of Sallust, and a copy of the book, to the Faculty of Advocates, as an explanation of his invention, they passed a resolution to appoint him some suitable gratification ‘when their stock should be in good condition.’[[687]] Mr Robert Smith, chancellor of the university of Cambridge, and the bishop of St Asaph’s, were |1729.| so favourably disposed to him, that in 1742 they made a movement for getting him established as printer to the university, that he might there introduce his plan; but it came to nothing. William Ged, the author of an invention which has unspeakably extended the utility of the printing-press, died a poor man in 1749. The boy James, who had set the types of the Sallust, joined Prince Charles—for the family was of Jacobite inclinations—and, being apprehended in Carlisle in December 1745, he was condemned to death along with Colonel Townley. The only benefit ever derived by the Geds from their father’s invention, was that the aforesaid Mr Robert Smith, by his interest with the Duke of Newcastle, saved the young stereotypist from the gallows.[[688]]
The subsequent history of James Ged was unfortunate. ‘After he had obtained his pardon, he followed his business for some time as a journeyman with Mr Bettenham: afterwards, he commenced master for himself in Denmark Court, in the Strand. Unsuccessful there, he privately shipped off himself and his materials for the other side of the Atlantic.’ ‘He went to Jamaica, where his younger brother was settled as a reputable printer, and died soon after his arrival in that island.’[[689]]
Aug. 6.
The ancient church was honourably distinguished by its charity towards the poor, and more especially towards the diseased poor; and it was a dreary interval of nearly two centuries which intervened between the extinction of its lazar-houses and leper-houses, and the time when merely a civilised humanity dictated the establishment of a regulated means of succour for the sickness-stricken of the humbler classes. The date here affixed is an interesting one, as that when a hospital of the modern type was first opened in Scotland for the reception of poor patients.
The idea of establishing such an institution in Edinburgh was first agitated in a pamphlet in 1721, and there is reason to believe that the requirements of the rising medical school were largely concerned in dictating it. The matter fell asleep, but was revived in 1725, with a proposal to raise a fund of at least two thousand pounds sterling to carry it out. Chiefly by the activity of the |1729.| medical profession, this fund was realised; and now the first step of practical beneficence was taken by the opening of a house, and the taking in of a small number of patients, for whom six physicians and surgeons undertook to give attendance and medicine. The total number here received during the first year was the modest one of thirty-five, of whom nineteen were dismissed as cured.
Such was the origin of the Edinburgh Infirmary, which, small as it was at first, was designed from its very origin as a benefit to the whole kingdom, no one then dreaming that a time would come when every considerable county town would have a similar hospital. In 1735, the contributors were incorporated, and three years later, they began to rear a building for their purpose, calculated to accommodate seventeen hundred patients per annum, allowing six weeks’ residence for each at an average. It is remarkable how cordially the upper classes and the heads of the medical profession concurred in raising and managing this noble institution, and how readily the industrious orders all over the country responded to the appeals made to their charity for its support. While many contributed money, ‘others gave stones, lime, wood, slate, and glass, which were carried by the neighbouring farmers gratis. Not only many master masons, wrights, slaters, and glaziers gave their attendance, but many journeymen and labourers frequently gave their labour gratis; and many joiners gave sashes for the windows.’ A Newcastle glass-making company generously glazed the whole house. By correspondence and personal intervention, money was drawn for the work, not only throughout England and Ireland, but in other parts of Europe, and even in America.[[690]]
It has always been admitted that the prime moving spirit in the whole undertaking was George Drummond, one of the Commissioners of Customs, and on three several occasions Lord Provost of Edinburgh; a man of princely aspect and character, further memorable as the projector of the New Town. His merits in regard to the Infirmary have, indeed, been substantially acknowledged by the setting up of a portrait of him in the council-room, and a bust by Nollekins in the hall, the latter having this inscription, dictated by Principal Robertson: ‘George Drummond, to whom this country is indebted for all the benefit which it derives from the Royal Infirmary.’[[691]]
1729.
It is not unworthy of being kept in mind that, in the business of levying means from a distance, Drummond was largely assisted by an eccentric sister, named May, who had adopted the tenets of Quakerism, and occasionally made tours through various parts of Great Britain for the purpose of preaching to the people, of whom vast multitudes used to flock to hear her. She was a gentle enthusiast, of interesting appearance, and so noted did her addresses become, that Queen Caroline at length condescended to listen to one. We get some idea of her movements in the summer of 1735, from a paragraph regarding her then inserted in a London newspaper: ‘We hear that the famous preaching maiden Quaker (Mrs Drummond, who preached before the queen), lately arrived from Scotland, intends to challenge the champion of England, Orator Henley, to dispute with him at the Bull and Mouth, upon the doctrines and tenets of Quakerism, at such time as he shall appoint.’
In the pages, moreover, of Sylvanus Urban, ‘a Lady’ soon after poured forth strains of the highest admiration regarding this
‘——happy virgin of celestial race,
Adorned with wisdom, and replete with grace;’
proclaiming that she outshone Theresa of Spain, and was sufficient in herself to extinguish the malignant ridicule with which men sometimes assail the capacities of women.[[692]]
Human nature, however, is a ravelled hasp of rather mixed yarn, and it will be heard with pity that this amiable missionary of piety and charity was one of those anomalous beings who, without necessity or temptation, are unable to restrain themselves from picking up and carrying away articles belonging to their neighbours. The propensity, though as veritable a disease as any ever treated within the walls of her brother’s infirmary, threw a shade, deepening that of poverty, over the latter years of May Drummond. Only the enlightened and generous few could rightly apprehend such a case. Amongst some memoranda on old-world local matters, kindly communicated to me many years ago by Sir Walter Scott, I find one touching gently on the memory of this unfortunate lady, and directing my attention to ‘a copy of tolerably good elegiac verses,’ written on a picture in which she was represented in the character of Winter. Of these he quoted |1729.| from memory, with some slight inaccuracies, the first and third of the following three:
‘Full justly hath the artist planned
In Winter’s guise thy furrowed brow,
And rightly raised thy feeble hand
Above the elemental glow.
I gaze upon that well-known face;
But ah, beneath December’s frost,
Lies buried all its vernal grace,
And every trait of May is lost.
Nor merely on thy trembling frame,
Thy wrinkled cheek, and deafened ear,
But on thy fortunes and thy fame,
Relentless Winter frowns severe.’[[693]]
Sep.
Sir Robert Monro of Foulis, in Ross-shire, ‘a very ancient gentleman,’ and chief of a considerable clan, died in the enjoyment of general esteem. Four counties turned out to shew their respect at his funeral. There were above six hundred horsemen, tolerably mounted and apparelled. ‘The corpse was carried on a bier betwixt two horses, fully harnessed in deepest mourning. A gentleman rode in deep mourning before the corpse, uncovered, attended by two grooms and four running-footmen, all in deep mourning. The |1729.| friends followed immediately behind the corpse, and the gentlemen [strangers] in the rear. The scutcheons,’ says the reporter, ‘were the handsomest I ever saw; the entertainment magnificent and full.’[[694]]
Sep.
General Wade was now dating from ‘my hutt at Dalnacardoch,’ having been obliged for some time to station himself in the wilderness of Drumnachter, in order to get the road from Dunkeld to Inverness finished, and a shorter one planned as a branch to Crieff. The Lord Advocate Forbes wrote to him sympathisingly, acknowledging that ‘never was penitent banished into a more barren desert for his sins.’ Both gentlemen had their eyes open regarding a plotting among the Jacobites, of which the government had got some inkling, but of which nothing came.
In the latter part of the month, the general advanced to Ruthven, in Badenoch, and there the people for the first time beheld that modern luxury—a coach. Everybody turned out to see it, for it was next to a prodigy among that simple people. Here Forbes met General Wade, and some sort of court of judicature was held by them; after which they parted, the advocate to return to Inverness, and Wade to Dalnacardoch.
The good-natured general had arranged for a fête to be held by those whom he jocularly called his highwaymen; and it must have been a somewhat picturesque affair. On a spot near Dalnaspidal, and opposite to the opening of Loch Garry, the working-parties met under their officers, and formed a square surrounding a tent. Four oxen were roasted whole, ‘in great order and solemnity,’ and four ankers of brandy were broached. The men dined al fresco; the general and his friend Sir Robert Clifton, with Sir Duncan Campbell, Colonel Guest, Major Duroure, and a number of other gentlemen, were regaled in the tent. The beef, according to the general’s own acknowledgment, was ‘excellent,’ and after it was partaken of, a series of loyal toasts was drunk amidst demonstrations of general satisfaction, the names of the Lord Advocate and his brother, John Forbes of Culloden, being not forgotten. There is something interesting in these simple jocosities, considering the grand engine of civilisation they were connected with.[[695]]
1729.
The road from Ruthven to Fort Augustus, involving the steep and difficult mountain of Corryarrick, and the most difficult part of the whole undertaking, was in the course of being completed in October 1731, when a gentleman signing himself ‘N. M‘Leod,’ being probably no other than the Laird of Dunvegan, chanced to pass that way on his road to Skye, and gave in the newspapers an account of what he saw. ‘Upon entering,’ he says, ‘into a little glen among the hills, lately called Laggan a Vannah, but now by the soldiers Snugburgh, I heard the noise of many people, and saw six great fires, about each of which a number of soldiers were very busy. During my wonder at the cause of this, an officer invited me to drink their majesties’ healths. I attended him to each fire, and found that these were the six working-parties of Tatton’s, Montague’s, Mark Ker’s, Harrison’s, and Handyside’s regiments, and the party from the Highland Companies, making in all about five hundred men, who had this summer, with indefatigable pains, completed the great road for wheel-carriages between Fort Augustus and Ruthven. It being the 30th of October, his majesty’s birthday, General Wade had given to each detachment an ox-feast, and liquor; six oxen were roasted whole, one at the head of each party. The joy was great, both upon the occasion of the day, and the work’s being completed, which is really a wonderful undertaking.’
Before dismissing General Wade, it may be mentioned that a permanent record of his engineering skill and courage in building Tay Bridge, in the form of a Latin inscription, was put upon that structure itself, being the composition of Dr Friend, master of Westminster School. But this, if the most classic, was not destined to be the most memorable memorial of the worthy general’s labours. ‘To perpetuate the memory of the marshal’s chief exploit, in making the road from Inverness to Inverary, an obelisk is erected near Fort William, on which the traveller is reminded of his merits by the following naïf couplet:
“Had you seen these roads before they were made,
You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade.”’[[696]]
‘Long before the improvements of the Highlands were seriously |1729.| thought of, Lord Kames, being, in 1773, at Inverness on the circuit, gave, as a toast after dinner, “Roads and Bridges.” Captain Savage, of the 37th regiment, then at Fort George, sat near his lordship, and, being next asked for a toast, gave “Chaises and Horses,” to the annoyance of the entertainers, who thought it done in ridicule, though doubtless the captain only meant to follow out the spirit of Lord Kames’s sentiment.’—Letter of the late H. R. Duff of Muirton to the author, 31st March 1827.
Oct. 18.
In Scotland, oil-painting had had a morning-star in the person of George Jameson. Two ages of darkness had followed. About the beginning of the eighteenth century, a foreign artist, John Medina, found for a few years a fair encouragement for his pencil in the painting of portraits; and the Duke of Queensberry, as royal commissioner, conferred upon him the honour of knighthood.[[697]] Then arose two native portrait-painters of some merit—John Alexander, who, moreover, was able to decorate a staircase in Gordon Castle with a tolerable picture of the Rape of Proserpine; and John Scougal, who has handed down to us not a few of the lords and gentlemen of the reign of Queen Anne.[[698]] William Aikman, a disciple of Medina, followed, and was in vogue as a painter of portraits in Edinburgh about 1721. Such was the meagre history of oil-painting in Scotland till the end of the reign of the first George.
At that time, when wealth was following industry, and religious gloom beginning to give way to a taste for elegant amusements, the decorative arts were becoming comparatively prominent. Roderick Chalmers and James Norie, while ostensibly house-painters, aspired to a graceful use of the pencil, seldom failing, when they painted a set of panelled rooms, to leave a tolerable landscape from their own hands over the fireplaces; and in some of the houses in the Old Town of Edinburgh, these pieces are still seen to be far from contemptible. William Adam, father of the celebrated brothers, William and Robert, was the principal architect of the day. There was even a |1729.| respectable line-engraver in Richard Cooper, the person from whom Strange, some years after, derived his first lessons. While these men had a professional interest in art, there were others who viewed it with favour on general grounds, and, from motives of public spirit, were willing to see it encouraged in the Scottish capital.
There was, accordingly, a design formed at this date for the erection of a sort of academy in Edinburgh, under the name of the School of St Luke, ‘for the encouragement of painting, sculpture, architecture, &c.’ A scheme of it, drawn up on parchment, described the principal practical object to be, to have a properly lighted and furnished room, where the members could meet periodically to practise drawing, &c., from the figure, or from draughts; lots to be drawn for the choice of seats. Private gentlemen who chose to contribute were invited to join in the design, though they might not be disposed to use the pencil. We find a surprisingly liberal list of subscribers to this document, including Lord Linton, Lord Garlies, and Gilbert Elliot; James M‘Ewen, James Balfour, and Allan Ramsay, booksellers; the artists above mentioned, and about fifteen other persons. Amongst the rest was the name of Allan Ramsay, junior, now a mere stripling, but who came to be portrait-painter to George III.[[699]]
The above is all that we know about this proposed School of St Luke. Very pleasant it is to know so much, to be assured that, in 1729, there was even a handful of men in the Scottish capital so far advanced in taste for one of the elegant arts, as to make a movement for its cultivation. As to the preparedness of the general mind of the country for the appreciation of high art, the following little narrative will enable the modern reader to form some judgment.
In December 1734, there was shewn in Edinburgh, ‘at Mr Yaxley Davidson’s, without the Cowgate Port,’ a collection of curiosities, amongst which was included a said-to-be-valuable picture of Raphael, probably representing the Saviour on the Cross; also a view of the interior of St Peter’s at Rome, as illuminated for the jubilee of 1700, ‘the like never seen in Great Britain.’ The exhibition lingered for a few weeks in the city with tolerable success, and was then removed to the tavern of one Murray at the Bridge-end, opposite to Perth.
1729.
Here, in consequence of ‘a pathetic sermon’ preached by one of the ministers, and certain printed letters industriously circulated on the subject of these works of art, a crowd of the meaner sort of people rose tumultuously on the 10th of July, and, crossing the Tay by the ferry-boat, proceeded to Murray’s house, crying out: ‘Idolatry! molten and graven images! popery!’ and so forth. Then, surrounding the door, they attempted to enter for the purpose of dragging forth the pictures, and were only with difficulty withstood by the landlord, who, backed by his hostler, planted himself with a drawn cutlass in the doorway. Time was thus given for some gentlemen of Perth to come to the rescue, and also to allow of the Earl of Kinnoull’s bailie of regality to come forward in behalf of the peace; ‘whereupon the men concerned in the mob withdrew, the women still standing at the doors of the house, crying out: “Idolatry, idolatry, and popery!” and threatening still to burn the house, or have the pictures and graven images destroyed, till some dozens of the female ringleaders were carried over the river to Perth, the rest dispersing gradually of their own accord. Immediately after, the poor stranger was glad to make the best of his way, and went straight in a boat to Dundee, which the mobbers no sooner perceived, but they sent an express by land to that place to prompt some of the zealous there to mob him at landing.’
Apparently this message had taken effect, for we learn, a few days after, that the collection of curiosities, ‘having made a fine retreat from the late attack at the Bridge-end of Perth,’ are again on view in Edinburgh.[[700]]
Amongst the ‘signs and causes of the Lord’s departure,’ adduced by the Seceders in a testimony published by them soon after this time, is the fact that ‘an idolatrous picture of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was well received in some remarkable places of the land.’
Nov.
Mr Wodrow was regaled at this time with a few additional chastisements for the city of Glasgow. Mrs Glen, who dealt largely in silks and Hollands, had broken down under a bill for three hundred pounds, with debt to tradesmen in the city for weaving cloth to the amount of five hundred! In the ensuing June, the town sustained ‘a very great loss’ by the breaking of a Scottish factor in Holland; no less than two |1729.| thousand pounds sterling: only—and here was the great pity in the case—it was diffused over too many parties to be very sensibly felt.[[701]]
About fifteen months after this date, the worthy pastor of Eastwood adverted to the ‘great losses, hardships, and impositions’ which the trade of Glasgow had recently undergone, and to the ‘several hundreds of working poor’ which hung as a burden upon the city. Notwithstanding all that—and we can imagine his perplexity in recording the fact—the citizens were getting up a house of refuge for distressed people. ‘In a week or two, twelve hundred pounds was signed for, besides two hundred Mr Orr gives,’ and certain sums to be contributed by public bodies. What would he have thought if he could have been assured that, in little more than a century, Glasgow would, in a few weeks, and without difficulty, raise forty-five thousand pounds as its quota towards a national fund for the succour of the sufferers in the British army by a single campaign!
Dec. 24.
Lord Balmerino, son of the lord who had been the subject of a notable prosecution under the tyrannical government of Charles I.,[[702]] was now residing in advanced age at his house in Coatfield Lane, in Leith. One of his younger sons, named Alexander (the immediate younger brother of Arthur, who made so gallant a death on Tower Hill in 1746), was leading a life of idleness and pleasure at the same place. As this young gentleman was now to be involved in a bloody affair which took place in Leith Links, it may be worth while to recall that, five years back, he was engaged on the same ground in an affair of gaiety and sport, which yet had some ominous associations about it. It was what a newspaper of the day calls ‘a solemn match at golf’ played by him for twenty guineas with Captain Porteous of the Edinburgh Town-guard; an affair so remarkable on account of the stake, that it was attended by the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Morton, and a vast mob of the great and little besides, Alexander Elphinstone ending as the winner.[[703]] No one could well have imagined, as that cheerful game was going on, that both the players were, not many years after, to have blood upon their hands, one of them to take on the murderer’s mark upon this very field.
On the 23d of December 1729, the Honourable Alexander |1729.| Elphinstone met a Lieutenant Swift of Cadogan’s regiment at the house of Mr Michael Watson, merchant in Leith. Some hot words having risen between them, Elphinstone rose to depart, but before he went, he touched Swift on the shoulder with his sword, and dropped a hint that he would expect to receive satisfaction next morning on the Links. Next day, accordingly, the two gentlemen met at eleven in the forenoon in that comparatively public place (as it now appears), and fought a single combat with swords, which ended in Swift receiving a mortal wound in the breast.
Elphinstone was indicted for this act before the High Court of Justiciary; but the case was never brought forward, and the young man died without molestation at Leith three years after.
1730.
The merit of the invention of that noble instrument, the Reflecting Telescope, is allowed to rest with David Gregory, a native of Scotland, although that of first completing one (in 1671) is due to the illustrious Newton. It was thought very desirable by Sir Isaac to substitute glass for metallic reflectors; but fifty years elapsed without the idea being realised, when at length, about this date, a very young Edinburgh artist, named James Short, ‘executed no fewer than six reflecting telescopes with glass specula, three of which were fifteen inches, and three nine inches in focal length,’ to which Professor Maclaurin gave his approbation, though ultimately their light was found fainter than was deemed necessary.
Two years afterwards, when Short had only attained the age of twenty-two, he began to enter into competition with the English makers of reflecting telescopes, but without attempting to make specula of glass. ‘To such perfection did he carry the art of grinding and polishing metallic specula, and of giving them the true parabolic figure, that, with a telescope of fifteen inches in focal length, he and Mr Bayne, Professor of Law in the University of Edinburgh, read the Philosophical Transactions at the distance of five hundred feet, and several times, particularly on the 24th of November and the 7th of December 1734, they saw the five satellites of Saturn together, an achievement beyond the reach of Hadley’s six-feet telescope.’
This ingenious man, attaining some celebrity for the making of reflecting telescopes, was induced, in 1742, to settle in London, where for a number of years he continued to use his remarkable |1730.| talents in this way, occasionally furnishing instruments at high prices to royal personages throughout Europe.[[704]]
Oct. 26.
One William Muir, brother of two men who had recently been hanged at Ayr for theft, was this day tried before a jury, for housebreaking, by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, acting as ‘High Sheriff within burgh.’ The man was condemned to death, and the sentence was duly executed on the ensuing 2d of December, he dying penitent.[[705]]
It seems strange to us, but about this time the condemnation of criminals to capital punishment by sheriffs of counties, and by the chief-magistrate of Edinburgh, was by no means infrequent, being entirely in accordance with the statutory arrangements of the country. Nay more, great territorial lords, especially in the Highlands, still acted upon their ancient privileges of pit and gallows. It is related that the Duke of Athole one day received at Blair an application from his baron-bailie for pardon to a man whom he had condemned to be hanged for theft, but who was a person of such merits otherwise that it seemed a pity to put justice in force against him. The Lord President Forbes, who had stopped to dine with his Grace in the course of a journey to Edinburgh, expressed his surprise that the power of pardoning a condemned criminal should be attributed to any person but the king. ‘Since I have the power of punishing,’ said the duke, ‘it is but right that I should have the power of pardoning.’ Then, calling a servant, he quietly added: ‘Send an express to Logierait, and order Donald Stewart, presently under sentence, to be set at liberty.’[[706]]
We are now arrived at a time which seems to mark very decidedly a transition in Scotland from poverty to growing wealth, from the puritanic manners of the seventeenth century to the semi-licence and ease of the eighteenth, from narrow to liberal education, and consequently from restricted to expanded views. It may, therefore, be proper here to introduce a few general observations.
Although, only a few years back, we find Wodrow speaking of the general poverty, it is remarkable that, after this time, complaints on that point are not heard in almost any quarter. The |1730.| influx of commercial prosperity at Glasgow had now fairly set in, and the linen manufacture and other branches of industry begin to be a good deal spoken of. Agricultural improvements and the decoration of the country by wood had now been commenced. There was great chafing under the taxation introduced after the Union, and smuggling was popular, and the revenue-officers were detested; yet the people had become able to endure the deductions made from their income. Thus did matters go on during the time between 1725 and 1745, making a slow but sensible advance—nothing like what took place after the question of the dynasty had been settled at Culloden, but yet such as to very considerably affect the condition of the people. Much of this was owing to the pacific policy of Sir Robert Walpole, to whom, with all his faults, the British people certainly owe more than to any minister before Sir Robert Peel.
If we wish to realise the manners before this period, we must think of the Scotch as a people living in a part of Britain remote from the centre—peninsulated and off at a side—enjoying little intercourse with strangers; but, above all, as a people on whom the theology of the Puritans, with all their peculiar views regarding the forms of religion and the arrangements of a church, had taken a powerful hold. Down to 1730, all respectable persons in Scotland, with but the slightest exceptions, maintained a strictly evangelical creed, went regularly to church, and kept up daily family-worship. Nay, it had become a custom that every house should contain a small closet built on purpose, to which the head of the family could retire at stated times for his personal or private devotions, which were usually of a protracted kind, and often accompanied by great motions and groanings, expressive of an intense sense of human worthlessness without the divine favour. On Sunday, the whole family, having first gathered for prayers in the parlour, proceeded at ten to church. At half-past twelve, they came home for a light dinner of cold viands (none being cooked on this sacred day), to return at two for an afternoon service of about two hours. The remainder of the day was devoted to private devotions, catechising of children, and the reading of pious books, excepting a space of time set aside for supper, which in many families was a comfortable meal, and an occasion, the only one during the day, when a little cheerful conversation was indulged in. Invariably, the day was closed with a repetition of family prayers.
It was customary for serious people to draw up a written paper, |1730.| in which they formally devoted themselves to the service of God—a sort of personal covenant with their Maker—and to renew this each year at the time of the celebration of the communion by a fresh signature with the date. The subscriber expressed his entire satisfaction with the scheme of Christian salvation, avowed his willingness to take the Lord to be his all-sufficient portion, and to be resigned to his will and providence in all things. He also expressed his resolution to be mortified to the world, and to engage heartily and steadfastly persevere in the performance of all religious duties. An earnest prayer for the divine help usually closed this document.
As all were trained to look up to the Deity with awe and terror, so, with the same feelings, were children accustomed to look up to their parents, and servants to their masters. Amongst the upper classes, the head of the family was for the most part an awful personage, who sat in a special chair by the fireside, and at the head of the table, with his hat on, often served at meals with special dishes, which no one else, not even guests, partook of. In all the arrangements of the house, his convenience and tastes were primarily studied. His children approached him with fear, and never spoke with any freedom before him. At meals, the lady of the house helped every one as she herself might choose. The dishes were at once ill-cooked and ill-served. It was thought unmeet for man that he should be nice about food. Nicety and love of rich feeding were understood to be hateful peculiarities of the English, and unworthy of the people who had been so much more favoured by God in a knowledge of matters of higher concern.
There was, nevertheless, a great amount of hospitality. And here it is to be observed, that the poverty of those old times had less effect on the entertainments of the higher classes than might have been expected. What helped the gentlefolks in this respect, was the custom of receiving considerable payments from their tenants in kind. This enabled them to indulge in a rude abundance at home, while their means of living in a town-house, or in an inn while travelling, was probably very limited. We must further remember the abundance of game in Scotland, how every moor teemed with grouse and black-cock, and every lake and river with fish. These furnished large supplies for the table of the laird, both in Lowlands and Highlands; and I feel convinced that the miserable picture drawn by a modern historian of the way of living among the northern chiefs is untrue to a |1730.| large extent, mainly by his failure to take such resources into account.
A lady, born in 1714, who has left a valuable set of reminiscences of her early days, lays great stress on the home-staying life of the Scottish gentry. She says that this result of their narrow circumstances kept their minds in a contracted state, and caused them to regard all manners and habits different from their own with prejudice. The adult had few intelligent books to read; neither did journals then exist to give them a knowledge of public affairs. The children, kept at a distance by their parents, lived much amongst themselves or with underlings, and grew up with little of either knowledge or refinement. Restrained within a narrow social circle, they often contracted improper marriages. It was not thought necessary in those days that young ladies should acquire a sound knowledge of even their own language, much less of French, German, or Italian; nor were many of them taught music or any other refined accomplishment. ‘The chief thing required was to hear them psalms and long catechisms, in which they were employed an hour or more every day, and almost the whole day on Sunday. They were allowed to run about and amuse themselves in the way they choosed, even to the age of woman, at which time they were generally sent to Edinburgh for a winter or two, to learn to dress themselves, and to dance, and see a little of the world. The world was only to be seen at church, at marriages, burials, and baptisms.... When in the country, their employment was in coloured work, beds, tapestry, and other pieces of furniture; imitations of fruits and flowers, with very little taste. If they read any, it was either books of devotion or long romances, and sometimes both.’
Previous to this time, the universal dress of the middle classes was of plain country cloth, much of it what was called hodden gray—that is, cloth spun at home from the undyed wool. Gentlemen of figure wore English or foreign cloth, and their clothes were costly in comparison with other articles. We find, for instance, a gentleman at his marriage, in 1711, paying £340 Scots for two suits, a night-gown, and a suit to his servant. Linen being everywhere made at home—the spinning executed by the servants during the long winter evenings, and the weaving by the village webster—there was a general abundance of napery and of under-clothing. Holland, being about six shillings an ell, was worn only by men of refinement. ‘I remember,’ says the lady aforesaid, ‘in the ‘30 or ‘31, of a ball where it was agreed |1730.| that the company should be dressed in nothing but what was manufactured in the country. My sisters were as well dressed as any, and their gowns were striped linen at 2s. 6d. per yard. Their heads and ruffles were of Paisley muslins, at 4s. 6d., with fourpenny edging from Hamilton; all of them the finest that could be had.... At the time I mention, hoops were constantly worn four and a half yards wide, which required much silk to cover them; and gold and silver were much used for trimming, never less than three rows round the petticoat; so that, though the silk was slight, the price was increased by the trimming. Then the heads were all dressed in laces from Flanders; no blondes or course-edging used: the price of these was high, but two suits would serve for life; they were not renewed but at marriage, or some great event. Who could not afford these wore fringes of thread.’ In those days, the ladies went to church, and appeared on other public occasions, in full dress. A row of them so rigged out, taking a place in the procession at the opening of the General Assembly, used to be spoken of by old people as a fine show. When a lady appeared in undress on the streets of Edinburgh, she generally wore a mask, which, however, seems to have been regarded as simply an equivalent for the veil of modern times.
One marked peculiarity of old times, was the union of fine parade and elegant dressing with vulgarity of thought, speech, and act. The seemliness and delicacy observed now-a-days regarding both marriages and births were unknown long ago. We have seen how a bridal in high life was conducted in the reign of Queen Anne.[[707]] Let us now observe the ceremonials connected with a birth at the same period. ‘On the fourth week after the lady’s delivery, she is set on her bed on a low footstool; the bed covered with some neat piece of sewed work or white sattin, with three pillows at her back covered with the same; she in full dress with a lappet head-dress and a fan in her hand. Having informed her acquaintance what day she is to see company, they all come and pay their respects to her, standing, or walking a little through the room (for there’s no chairs). They drink a glass of wine and eat a bit of cake, and then give place to others. Towards the end of the week, all the friends are asked to what was called the Cummers’ Feast.[[708]] This was a supper where every gentleman brought a pint of wine to be drunk by |1730.| him and his wife. The supper was a ham at the head, and a pyramid of fowl at the bottom. This dish consisted of four or five ducks at bottom, hens above, and partridges at top. There was an eating posset in the middle of the table, with dried fruits and sweetmeats at the sides. When they had finished their supper, the meat was removed, and in a moment everybody flies to the sweetmeats to pocket them. Upon which a scramble ensued; chairs overturned, and everything on the table; wrestling and pulling at one another with the utmost noise. When all was quiet, they went to the stoups (for there were no bottles), of which the women had a good share; for though it was a disgrace to be seen drunk, yet it was none to be a little intoxicat in good company.’
Any one who has observed the conduct of stiff people, when on special occasions they break out from their reserve, will have no difficulty in reconciling such childish frolics with the general sombreness of old Scottish life.
It is to be observed that, while puritanic rigour was characteristic of the great bulk of society, there had been from the Restoration a minority of a more indulgent complexion. These were generally persons of rank, and adherents of Episcopacy and the House of Stuart. Such tendency as there was in the country to music, to theatricals, to elegant literature, resided with this party almost exclusively. After the long dark interval which ensued upon the death of Drummond, Sir George Mackenzie, the ‘persecutor,’ was the first to attempt the cultivation of the belles-lettres in Scotland. Dr Pitcairn was the centre of a small circle of wits who, a little later, devoted themselves to the Muses, but who composed exclusively in Latin. When Addison, Steele, Pope, and Swift were conferring Augustine glories on the reign of Anne in England, there was scarcely a single writer of polite English in Scotland; but under George I., we find Ramsay tuning his rustic reed, and making himself known even in the south, notwithstanding the peculiarity of his language. These men were all of them unsympathetic with the old church Calvinism of their native country—as, indeed, have been nearly all the eminent cultivators of letters in Scotland down to the present time. We learn that copies of the Tatler and Spectator found their way into Scotland; and we hear not only of gentlemen, but of clergymen reading them. Allan Ramsay lent out the plays of Congreve and Farquhar at his shop in Edinburgh. Periodical amateur concerts were commenced, as we have seen, as early as 1717. The Easy Club—to |1730.| which Ramsay belonged—and other social fraternities of the same kind, were at the same time enjoying their occasional convivialities in Edinburgh. A small miscellany of verse, published in Edinburgh in 1720, makes us aware that there were then residing there several young aspirants to the laurel, including two who have since obtained places in the roll of the British poets—namely, Thomson and Mallet—and also Mr Henry Home of Kames, and Mr Joseph Mitchell: moreover, we gather from this little volume, that there was in Edinburgh a ‘Fair Intellectual Club,’ an association, we must presume, of young ladies who were disposed to cultivate a taste for the belles-lettres. About this time, the tea-table began to be a point of reunion for the upper classes. At four in the afternoon, the gentlemen and ladies would assemble round a multitude of small china cups, each recognisable by the number of the little silver spoon connected with it, and from these the lady of the house would dispense an almost endless series of libations, while lively chat and gossip went briskly on, but it is to be feared, in most circles, little conversation of what would now be called an intellectual cast. On these occasions, the singing of a Scottish song to an accompaniment on the spinet was considered a graceful accomplishment; and certainly no superior treat was to be had.
Lady playing on Spinet, with Violoncello Accompaniment.—From a volume entitled Music for Tea-table Miscellany, published by Allan Ramsay.
Two things at this period told powerfully in introducing new ideas and politer manners: first, the constant going and coming |1730.| of sixty-one men of importance between their own country and London in attendance on parliament; and second, the introduction of a number of English people as residents or visitors into the country, in connection with the army, the excise and customs, and the management of the forfeited estates. This intercourse irresistibly led to greater cleanliness, to a demand for better house accommodation, and to at once greater ease and greater propriety of manners. The minority of the tasteful and the gay being so far reinforced, assemblies for dancing, and even in a modest way theatricals, were no longer to be repressed. The change thus effected was by and by confirmed, in consequence of young men of family getting into the custom of travelling for a year or two on the continent before settling at their professions or in the management of their affairs at home. This led, too, to a somewhat incongruous ingrafting of French politeness on the homely manners and speech of the general flock of ladies and gentlemen. Reverting to the matter of house accommodation, it may be remarked that a floor of three or four rooms and a kitchen was then considered a mansion for a gentleman or superior merchant in Edinburgh. We ought not to be too much startled at the idea of a lady receiving gentlemen along with ladies in her bedroom, when we reflect that there were then few rooms which had not beds in them, either openly or behind a screen. It is a significant fact that, in 1745, there was in Inverness only one house which contained a room without a bed—namely, that in which Prince Charles took up his lodgings.
As a consequence of the narrowness of house accommodation in those days, taverns were much more used than they are now. A physician or advocate in high practice was to be consulted at his tavern, and the habits of each important practitioner in this regard were studied, and became widely known. Gentlemen met in tavern clubs each evening for conversation, without much expense, a shilling’s reckoning being thought high—more generally, it was the half of that sum. ‘In some of these clubs they played at backgammon or catch-honours for a penny the game.’ At the consultations of lawyers, the liquor was sherry, brought in mutchkin stoups, and paid for by the employer. ‘It was incredible the quantity that was drunk sometimes on those occasions.’ Politicians met in taverns to discuss the affairs of state. One situated in the High Street, kept by Patrick Steil, was the resort of a number of the patriots who urged on the Act of Security and resisted the Union; and the phrase, Pate Steil’s Parliament, |1730.| occasionally appears in the correspondence of the time. It was in the same place, as we have seen, that the weekly concert was commenced. In the freer days which ensued upon this time, it was not thought derogatory to ladies of good rank that they should occasionally join oyster-parties in these places of resort.
Miss Mure, in her invaluable memoir, remarks on the change which took place in her youth in the religious sentiments of the people. A dread of the Deity, and a fear of hell and of the power of the devil, she cites as the predominant feelings of religious people in the age succeeding the Revolution. It was thought a mark of atheistic tendencies to doubt witchcraft, or the reality of apparitions, or the occasional vaticinative character of dreams. When the generation of the Revolution was beginning to pass away, the deep convictions as well as the polemical spirit, of the seventeenth century gave place to an easier and a gentler faith. There was no such thing as scepticism, except in the greatest obscurity; but a number of favourite preachers began to place Christianity in an amiable light before their congregations. ‘We were bid,’ says Miss Mure, ‘to draw our knowledge of God from his works, the chief of which is the soul of a good man; then judge if we have cause to fear.... Whoever would please God must resemble him in goodness and benevolence.... The Christian religion was taught as the purest rule of morals; the belief of a particular providence and of a future state as a support in every situation. The distresses of individuals were necessary for exercising the good affections of others, and the state of suffering the post of honour.’ At the same time, dread of parents also melted away. ‘The fathers would use their sons with such freedom, that they should be their first friend; and the mothers would allow of no intimacies but with themselves. For their girls the utmost care was taken that fear of no kind should enslave the mind; nurses were turned off who would tell the young of ghosts and witches. The old ministers were ridiculed who preached up hell and damnation; the mind was to be influenced by gentle and generous motives alone.’
A country gentleman, writing in 1729, remarks the increase in the expense of housekeeping which he had seen going on during the past twenty years. While deeming it indisputable that Edinburgh was now less populous than before the Union, ‘yet I am informed,’ says he, ‘there is a greater consumption since, than before the Union, of all provisions, especially fleshes and wheatbread. The butcher owns he now kills three of every species of |1730.| cattle for every one he killed before the Union.’ Where formerly he had been accustomed to see ‘two or three substantial dishes of beef, mutton, and fowl, garnished with their own wholesome gravy,’ he now saw ‘several services of little expensive ashets, with English pickles, yea Indian mangoes, and catch-up or anchovy sauces.’ Where there used to be the quart stoup of ale from the barrel, there was now bottled ale for a first service, and claret to help out the second, or else ‘a snaker of rack or brandy punch.’ Tea in the morning and tea in the evening had now become established. There were more livery-servants, and better dressed, and more horses, than formerly. French and Italian silks for the ladies, and English broadcloth for the gentlemen, were more and more supplanting the plain home-stuffs of former days.[[709]] This writer was full of fears as to the warrantableness of this superior style of living, but his report of the fact is not the less valuable.
1731. July.
It will be remembered that the Bank of Scotland, soon after its institution in 1696, settled branches at Glasgow, Aberdeen, Montrose, and Dundee, all of which proving unsuccessful, were speedily withdrawn. Since then, no new similar movement had been made; neither had a native bank arisen in any of those towns. But now, when the country seemed to be making some decided advances in industry and wealth, the Bank resolved upon a new attempt, and set up branches in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, and Berwick. It was found, however, that the effort was yet premature, and, after two years’ trial, these branches were all recalled.[[710]]
It is to be observed that Glasgow, though yet unable to support a branch of a public bank, was not inexperienced in banking accommodation. The business was carried on here, as it had long ago been in Edinburgh, by private traders, and in intimate connection with other business. An advertisement published in the newspapers in July 1730 by James Blair, merchant, at the head of the Saltmarket in Glasgow, makes us aware that at his shop there, ‘all persons who have occasion to buy or sell bills of exchange, or want money to borrow, or have money to lend on interest, or have any sort of goods to sell, or want to buy any kind of goods, or who want to buy sugar-house notes or other good bills, or desire to have such notes or bills discounted, or who want to have |1731.| policies signed, or incline to underwrite policies in ships or goods, may deliver their commands.’[[711]]
Oct.
The latter part of the year 1730 and earlier part of 1731 were made memorable in England by the ‘Malicious Society of Undertakers.’ An inoffensive farmer or a merchant would receive a letter threatening the conflagration of his house unless he should deposit six or eight guineas under his door before some assigned time. The system is said to have begun at Bristol, where the house of a Mr Packer was actually set fire to and consumed. When a panic had spread, many ruined gamblers and others adopted the practice, in recklessness, or with a view to gain; but the chief practitioners appear to have been ruffians of the lower classes, as the letters were generally very ill-spelt and ill-written.
In the autumn of 1731, the system spread to Scotland, beginning in Lanarkshire. According to Mr Wodrow, the parishes of Lesmahago and Strathaven were thrown into great alarm by a number of anonymous letters being dropped at night, or thrown into houses, threatening fire-raising unless contributions were made in money. Mr Aiton of Walseley, a justice of peace, was ordered to bring fifty guineas to the Cross-boat at Lanark; otherwise his house would be burnt. He went to the place, but found no one waiting. At the same time, there were rumours of strangers being seen on the moors. So great was the consternation, that parties of soldiers were brought to the district, but without discovering any person that seemed liable to suspicion.[[712]]
1732. Jan. 22.
James Erskine of Grange, brother of the attainted Earl of Mar, and who had been a judge of the Court of Session since 1707, was fitted with a wife of irregular habits and violent temper, the daughter of the murderer Chiesley of Dalry.[[713]] After agreeing, in 1730, to live upon a separate maintenance, she continued to persecute her husband in a personal and indecent manner, and further vented some threats as to her power of exposing him to the ministry for dangerous sentiments. The woman was scarcely mad enough to justify restraint, and, though it had been otherwise, there were in those days no asylums to which she could have been consigned. In these circumstances, the husband felt himself at liberty in conscience—pious man as he notedly was—to have his wife spirited away by night from her lodgings in Edinburgh, |1732.| hurried by night-journeys to Loch Hourn on the West Highland coast, and thence transported to the lonely island of Heskir, and put under the care of a peasant-farmer, subject to Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat. After two years, she was taken to the still more remote island of St Kilda, and there kept amongst a poor and illiterate people, though not without the comforts of life, for seven years more. It was not till 1740 that any friends of hers knew where she was. A prosecution of the husband being then threatened, the lady was taken to a place more agreeable to her, where she soon after died.
Lord Grange was one of those singular men who contrive to cherish and act out the most intense religious convictions, to appear as zealous leaders in church judicatories, and stand as shining lights before the world, while yet tainted with the most atrocious secret vices. Being animated with an extreme hatred of Sir Robert Walpole, he was tempted, in 1734, to give up his seat on the bench, in order that he might be able to go into parliament and assist in hunting down the minister. Returned for Clackmannanshire, he did make his appearance in the House of Commons, fully believing that he should ere long be secretary of state for Scotland under a new ministry. It unluckily happened that one of the first opportunities he obtained for making a display of oratory was on the bill that was introduced for doing away with the statutes against witchcraft.[[714]] Erskine was too faithful a Presbyterian of the old type to abandon a code of beliefs that seemed fully supported by Scripture. He rose, and delivered himself of a pious speech on the reality of necromantic arts, and the necessity of maintaining the defences against them. Sir Robert is said to have felt convinced from that moment, that he had not much to fear from the new member for Clackmannanshire.
Disappointed, impoverished, out of reverence with old friends, perhaps somewhat galled in conscience, Erskine ere long retired in a great measure from the world. For some years before his death in 1754, he is said to have lived principally in a coffee-house in the Haymarket, as all but the husband of its mistress; certainly a most lame and impotent conclusion for one who had made such a figure in political life, and passed as such a ‘professor,’ in his native country.
Feb.
On a stormy night in this month, Colonel Francis Charteris |1732.| died at his seat of Stonyhill, near Musselburgh. The pencil of Hogarth, which represents him as the old profligate gentleman in the first print of the Harlot’s Progress, has given historical importance to this extraordinary man. Descended from an old family of very moderate fortune in Dumfriesshire—Charteris of Amisfield—he acquired an enormous fortune by gambling and usury, and thus was enabled to indulge in his favourite vices on a scale which might be called magnificent. A single worthy trait has never yet been adduced to redeem the character of Charteris, though it is highly probable that, in some particulars, that character has been exaggerated by popular rumour.[[715]]
A contemporary assures us, that the fortune of Charteris amounted to the then enormous sum of fourteen thousand a year; of which ten thousand was left to his grandson, Francis, second son of the Earl of Wemyss.
‘Upon his death-bed,’ says the same writer, ‘he was exceedingly anxious to know if there were any such thing as hell; and said, were he assured there was no such place (being easy as to heaven), he would give thirty thousand.... Mr Cumming the minister attended him on his death-bed. He asked his daughter, who is exceedingly narrow, what he should give him. She replied that it was unusual to give anything on such occasions. “Well, then,” says Charteris, “let us have another flourish from him!” so calling his prayers. There accidentally happened, the night he died, a prodigious hurricane, which the vulgar ascribed to his death.’[[716]]
Mar. 12.
A transaction, well understood in Scotland, but unknown and probably incomprehensible in England—‘an inharmonious settlement’—took place in the parish of St Cuthbert’s, close to Edinburgh. A Mr Wotherspoon having been presented by the crown to this charge, to the utter disgust of the parishioners, the Commission of the General Assembly sent one of their number, a Mr Dawson, to effect the ‘edictal service.’ The magistrates, knowing the temper of the parishioners, brought the City Guard to protect the ceremony as it proceeded in the church; so the people could do nothing there. Their rage, however, being irrepressible, they came out, tore down the edict from the kirk-door, |1732.| and seemed as if they would tear down the kirk itself. The City Guard fired upon them, and wounded one woman.[[717]]
June 24.
Owing to the difficulty of travelling, few of the remarkable foreigners who came to England found their way to Scotland; but now and then an extraordinary person appeared. At this date, there came to Edinburgh, and put up ‘at the house of Yaxley Davidson, at the Cowgate Port,’ Joseph Jamati, Baculator or Governor of Damascus. He appeared to be sixty, was of reddish-black complexion, grave and well-looking, wearing a red cloth mantle trimmed with silver lace, and a red turban set round with white muslin; had a gray beard about half a foot long; and was described as ‘generally a Christian.’ Assistance under some severe taxation of the Turkish pacha was what he held forth as the object of his visit to Europe. He came to Edinburgh, with recommendations from the Duke of Newcastle and other persons of distinction, and proposed to make a round of the principal towns, and visit the Duke of Athole and other great people. He was accompanied by an interpreter and another servant. It appears that this personage had a public reception from the magistrates, who bestowed on him a purse of gold. In consequence of receiving a similar contribution from the Convention of Burghs, he ultimately resolved to return without making his proposed tour.
Four years later, Edinburgh received visits, in succession, from two other Eastern hierarchs, one of them designated as archbishop of Nicosia in Cyprus, of the Armenian Church, the other being Scheik Schedit, from Berytus, near Mount Lebanon, of the Greek Church, both bringing recommendatory letters from high personages, and both aiming at a gathering of money for the relief of their countrymen suffering under the Turks. Scheik Schedit had an interpreter named Michel Laws, and two servants, and the whole party went formally in a coach ‘to hear sermon in the High Church.’[[718]]
July 11.
The Scottish newspapers intimate that on this day, between two and three afternoon, there was felt at Glasgow ‘a shock of an earthquake, which lasted about a second.’
July 28.
The six Highland companies were reviewed at Ruthven, in |1732.| Badenoch, by General Wade, and were praised for their good state of discipline. ‘We of this country,’ says the reporter of the affair, ‘and, indeed, all the Highland and northern parts of the kingdom, have substantial reason to be well satisfied with them, since for a long time there has not been the least ground to complain of disorders of any kind; which we attribute to the vigilance of their officers, and a right distribution and position of the several companies.’[[719]]
Robert Trotter, schoolmaster of Dumfries, published a Compendium of Latin Grammar, ‘the conceitedness, envy, and errors’ of which were next year exposed in a brochure of Animadversions by John Love, the schoolmaster of Dumbarton. Not long after Love had thus disposed of Mr Trotter, he was himself put on the defensive before the kirk-session of his parish, on a charge of brewing on a Sunday. Probably the verb was only applicable in a neuter form—that is, nature, by continuing her fermenting process on the Sabbath, was the only delinquent—for the minister, ‘after a juridical trial, was obliged to make a public apology for having maliciously accused calumniated innocence.’[[720]] Love, who was the preceptor of Tobias Smollett, afterwards distinguished himself by a controversy with the notorious Lauder, who, by forgery, tried to derogate from the fame of Milton.
1733. May 14.
Since 1598 we have not heard of any foreigners coming into Scotland to play dangerous tricks upon long tight ropes; but now, unexpectedly, a pair of these diverting vagabonds, one described as an Italian who had performed his wonders in all the cities of Europe, the other as his son, presented themselves. A rope being fixed between the Half-moon Battery in the Castle, and a place on the south side of the Grassmarket, two hundred feet below, the father slid down in half a minute. The son performed the same feat, blowing a trumpet all the way, to the astonishment of ‘an infinite crowd of spectators.’ Three days afterwards, there was a repetition of the performance, at the desire of several persons of quality, when, after sliding down, the father made his way up again, firing a pistol, beating a drum, and playing a variety of antics by the way, proclaiming, moreover, that here he could defy all messengers, sheriffs’ officers, and macers of the Court of Session. Being sore fatigued at the end of the performance, he |1733.| offered a guinea to the sutler of the Castle for a draught of ale, which the fellow was churlish enough to refuse.
The two funambuli failed on a subsequent trial, ‘their equipage not at all answering.’ Not many weeks after, we learn that William Hamilton, mason in the Dean, trying the like tricks on a rope connected with Queensferry steeple, fell off the rope, and was killed.[[721]]
In the course of this year, a body called the Edinburgh Company of Players performed plays in the Tailors’ Hall, in the Cowgate. On the 6th June, they had the Beggars’ Opera for the benefit of the Edinburgh Infirmary. They afterwards acted Othello, Hamlet, Henry IV., Macbeth, and King Lear, ‘with great applause.’ In December, they presented before a large audience the Tempest, ‘every part, and even what required machinery, being performed in great order.’ In February 1734, the Conscious Lovers was performed ‘for the benefit of Mrs Woodward,’ ‘the doors not to be opened till four of the clock, performance to begin at six.’ In March, the Wonder is advertised, ‘the part of the Scots colonel by Mr Weir, and that of his servant Gibby, in Highland dress, by Mr Wescomb; and all the other parts to the best advantage.’ Allan Ramsay must have been deeply concerned in the speculation, because he appears in the office-copy of the newspaper (Caledonian Mercury) as the paymaster for the advertisements.
Nor was this nascent taste for the amusements of the stage confined to Edinburgh. In August, the company is reported as setting out early one morning for Dundee, Montrose, Aberdeen, &c., ‘in order to entertain the ladies and gentlemen in the different stations of their circuit.’ We soon after hear of their being honoured at Dundee with the patronage of the ancient and honourable society of freemasons, who marched in a body, with the grand-master at their head, to the playhouse, ‘in their proper apparel, with hautboys and other music playing before them;’ all this to hear the Jubilee and The Devil to Pay.
In December, the Edinburgh company was again in the Tailors’ Hall, and now it ventured on ‘a pantomime in grotesque characters,’ costing something in the getting up; wherefore ‘nothing less than full prices will be taken during the whole performance.’ In consideration of the need for space, it was ‘hoped that no gentleman whatever will take it amiss if they are refused admittance |1733.| behind the scenes.’ Soon after, we hear of the freemasons patronising the play of Henry IV., marching to the house ‘in procession, with aprons and white gloves, attended with flambeaux.’ Mrs Bulkely took her benefit on the 22d January in Oroonoko and a farce, in both of which she was to play; but ‘being weak, and almost incapable to walk, [she] cannot acquit herself to her friends’ satisfaction as usual; yet hopes to be favoured with their presence.’
It is observable that the plays represented in the Cowgate house were all of them of classic merit. This was, of course, prudential with regard to popular prejudices. Persons possessed of a love of literature were very naturally among those most easily reconciled to the stage; and amongst these we may be allowed to class certain schoolmasters, who about this time began to encourage their pupils to recite plays as a species of rhetorical exercise.
On Candlemas, 1734—when by custom the pupils in all schools in Scotland brought gifts to their masters, and had a holiday—the pupils of the Perth Grammar School made an exhibition of English and Latin readings in the church before the clergy, magistrates, and a large miscellaneous auditory. ‘The Tuesday after, they acted Cato in the school, which is one of the handsomest in Scotland, before three hundred gentlemen and ladies. The youth, though they had never seen a play acted, performed surprisingly both in action and pronunciation, which gave general satisfaction. After the play, the magistrates entertained the gentlemen at a tavern.’[[722]]
In August, ‘the young gentlemen of Dalkeith School acted, before a numerous crowd of spectators, the tragedy of Julius Cæsar and comedy of Æsop, with a judgment and address inimitable at their years.’ At the same time, the pupils in the grammar school of Kirkcaldy performed a piece composed by their master, entitled The Royal Council for Advice, or the Regular Education of Boys the Foundation of all other National Improvements. ‘The council consisted of a preses and twelve members, decently and gravely seated round a table like senators. The other boys were posted at a due distance in a crowd, representing people come to attend this meeting for advice: from whom entered in their turn and order, a tradesman, a farmer, a country gentleman, a nobleman, two schoolmasters, &c., and, last of all, a gentleman who complimented and congratulated the council on |1733.| their noble design and worthy performances.’ The whole exhibition is described as giving high satisfaction to the audience.
This sort of fair weather could not last. At Candlemas, 1735, the Perth school-boys acted George Barnwell—certainly an ill-chosen play—twice before large audiences, comprising many persons of distinction; and it was given out that on the succeeding Sunday ‘a very learned moral sermon, suitable to the occasion, was preached in the town.’ Immediately after came the corrective. The kirk-session had nominated a committee to take measures to prevent the school from being ‘converted into a playhouse, whereby youth are diverted from their studies, and employed in the buffooneries of the stage;’ and as for the moral sermon, it was ‘directed against the sins and corruptions of the age, and was very suitable to the resolution of the session.’
July.
England was pleasingly startled in 1721 by the report which came home regarding a singularly gallant defence made by an English ship against two strongly armed pirate vessels in the Bay of Juanna, near Madagascar. The East India Company was peculiarly gratified by the report, for, though it inferred the loss of one of their ships, it told them of a severe check given to a system of marine depredation, by which their commerce was constantly suffering.
It appeared that the Company’s ship Cassandra, commanded by Captain Macrae, on coming to the Bay of Juanna in July 1720, heard of a shipwrecked pirate captain being engaged in fitting out a new vessel on the island of Mayotta, and Macrae instantly formed the design of attacking him. When ready, on the 8th of August, to sail on this expedition, along with another vessel styled the Greenwich, he was saluted with the unwelcome sight of two powerful pirate vessels sailing into the bay, one being of 30, and the other of 34 guns. Though he was immediately deserted by the Greenwich, the two pirates bearing down upon him with their black flags, did not daunt the gallant Macrae. He fought them both for several hours, inflicting on one some serious breaches between wind and water, and disabling the boats in which the other endeavoured to board him. At length, most of his officers and quarter-deck men being killed or wounded, he made an attempt to run ashore, and did get beyond the reach of the two pirate vessels. With boats, however, they beset his vessel with redoubled fury, and in the protracted fighting which ensued, he suffered severely, though not without inflicting fully as much |1733.| injury as he received. Finally, himself and the remains of his company succeeded in escaping to the land, though in the last stage of exhaustion with wounds and fatigue. Had he, on the contrary, been supported by the Greenwich, he felt no doubt that he would have taken the two pirate vessels, and obtained £200,000 for the Company.[[723]]
The hero of this brilliant affair was a native of the town of Greenock, originally there a very poor boy, but succoured from misery by a kind-hearted musician or violer named Macguire, and sent by him to sea. By the help of some little education he had received in his native country, his natural talents and energy quickly raised him in the service of the East India Company, till, as we see, he had become the commander of one of their goodly trading-vessels. The conflict of Juanna gave him further elevation in the esteem of his employers, and, strange to say, the poor barefooted Greenock laddie, the protégé of the wandering minstrel Macguire, became at length the governor of Madras! He now returned to Scotland, in possession of ‘an immense estate,’ which the journals of the day are careful to inform us, ‘he is said to have made with a fair character’—a needful distinction, when so many were advancing themselves as robbers, or little better, or as truckling politicians. One of Governor Macrae’s first acts was to provide for the erection of a monumental equestrian statue of King William at Glasgow, having probably some grateful personal feeling towards that sovereign. It was said to have cost him £1000 sterling. But the grand act of the governor’s life, after his return, was his requital of the kindness he had experienced from the violer Macguire. The story formed one of the little romances of familiar conversation in Scotland during the last century. Macguire’s son, with the name of Macrae, succeeded to the governor’s estate of Holmains, in Dumfriesshire,[[724]] which he handed down to his son.[[725]] The three daughters, highly educated, and handsomely dowered, were married to men of figure, the eldest to the Earl of Glencairn (she was the mother of Burns’s well-known patron); the second to Lord Alva, a judge in the Court of Session; the third to Charles Dalrymple of Orangefield, near Ayr. Three years after his return from the East Indies, Governor Macrae |1733.| paid a visit to Edinburgh, and was received with public as well as private marks of distinction, on account of his many personal merits.
An amusing celebration of the return of the East India governor took place at Tain, in the north of Scotland. John Macrae, a near kinsman of the great man, being settled there in business, resolved to shew his respect for the first exalted person of his hitherto humble clan. Accompanied by the magistrates of the burgh and the principal burgesses, he went to the Cross, and there superintended the drinking of a hogshead of wine, to the healths of the King, Queen, Prince of Wales, and the Royal Family, and those of ‘Governor Macrae and all his fast friends.’ ‘From thence,’ we are told, ‘the company repaired to the chief taverns in town, where they repeated the aforesaid healths, and spent the evening with music and entertainments suitable to the occasion.’[[726]]
Dec. 6.
The tendency which has already been alluded to, of a small portion of the Scottish clergy to linger in an antique orthodoxy and strenuousness of discipline, while the mass was going on in a progressive laxity and subserviency to secular authorities, was still continuing. The chief persons concerned in the Marrow Controversy of 1718[[727]] and subsequent years, had recently made themselves conspicuous by standing up in opposition to church measures for giving effect to patronage in the settlement of ministers, and particularly to the settlement of an unpopular presentee at Kinross; and the General Assembly, held this year in May, came to the resolution of rebuking these recusant brethren. The brethren, however, were too confident in the rectitude of their course to submit to censure, and the commission of the church in November punished their contumacy by suspending from their ministerial functions, Ebenezer Erskine of Stirling, William Wilson of Perth, Alexander Moncrieff of Abernethy, and James Fisher of Kinclaven.
The suspended brethren, being all of them men held in the highest local reverence, received much support among their flocks, as well as among the more earnest clergy. Resolving not to abandon the principles they had taken up, it became necessary that they should associate in the common cause. They accordingly met at this date in a cottage at Gairney Bridge near Kinross, and constituted themselves into a provisional presbytery, though |1733.| without professing to shake off their connection with the Established Church. It is thought that the taking of a mild course with them at the next General Assembly would have saved them from an entire separation. But it was not to be. The church judicatories went on in their adopted line of high-handed secularism, and the matter ended, in 1740, with the deposition of the four original brethren, together with four more who took part with them. Thus, unexpectedly to the church, was formed a schism in her body, leading to the foundation of a separate communion, by which a fourth of her adherents, and those on the whole the most religious people, were lost.
An immense deal of devotional zeal, mingled with the usual alloys of illiberality and intolerance, was evoked through the medium of ‘the Secession,’ The people built a set of homely meeting-houses for the deposed ministers, and gave them such stipends as they could afford. In four years, the new body appeared as composed of twenty-six clergy, in three presbyteries. It was the first of several occasions of the kind, on which, it may be said without disrespect, both the strength and the weakness of the Scottish character have been displayed. A single anecdote, of the truth of which there is no reason to doubt, will illustrate the spirit of this first schism. There was a family of industrious people at Brownhills, near St Andrews, who adhered to the Secession. The nearest church was that of Mr Moncrieff at Abernethy, twenty miles distant. All this distance did the family walk every Sunday, in order to attend worship, walking of course an equal distance in returning. All that were in health invariably went. They had to set out at twelve o’clock of the Saturday night, and it was their practice to make all the needful preparations of dress and provisioning without looking out to see what kind of weather was prevailing. When all were ready, the door was opened, and the whole party walked out into the night, and proceeded on their way, heedless of whatever might fall or blow.
1734. Jan.
Our Scottish ancestors had a peculiar way of dealing with cases of ill-usage of women by their husbands. The cruel man was put by his neighbours across a tree or beam, and carried through the village so enthroned, while some one from time to time proclaimed his offence, the whole being designed as a means of deterring other men from being cruel to their spouses.
We have a series of documents at this date, illustrating the regular procedure in cases of Riding the Stang [properly, sting—meaning |1734.| a beam]. John Fraser, of the burgh of regality of Huntly, had gone to John Gordon, bailie for the Duke of Gordon, complaining that some of his neighbours had threatened him with the riding of the stang, on the ground of alleged ill-usage of his wife. The first document is a complaint from Ann Johnston, wife of Fraser, and some other women, setting forth the reality of this bad usage: the man was so cruel to his poor spouse, that her neighbours were forced occasionally to rise from their beds at midnight, in order to rescue her from his barbarous hands. They justified the threat against him, as meant to deter him from continuing his atrocious conduct, and went on to crave of the bailie that he would grant them a toleration of the stang, as ordinarily practised in the kingdom, ‘being, we know, no act of parliament to the contrary.’ If his lordship could suggest any more prudent method, they said they would be glad to hear of it ‘for preventing more fatal consequences.’ ‘Otherwise, upon the least disobligement given, we must expect to fall victims to our husbands’ displeasure, from which libera nos, Domine.’ Signed by Ann Johnston, and ten other women, besides two who give only initials.
Fraser offered to prove that he used his wife civilly, and was allowed till next day to do so. On that next day, however, four men set upon him, and carried him upon a tree through the town, thus performing the ceremony without authority. On Fraser’s complaint, they were fined in twenty pounds Scots, and decerned for twelve pounds of assythment to the complainer.[[728]]
1735. Sep.
The execution of the revenue laws gave occasion for much bad blood. In June 1734, a boat having on board several persons, including at least one of gentlemanlike position in society, being off the shore of Nairn with ‘unentrable goods,’ the custom-house officers, enforced by a small party from the Hon. Colonel Hamilton’s regiment, went out to examine it. In a scuffle which ensued, Hugh Fraser younger of Balnain was killed, and two of the soldiers, named Long and Macadam, were tried for murder by the Court of Admiralty in Edinburgh, and condemned to be hanged on the 19th of November within flood-mark at Leith.
An appeal was made for the prisoners to the Court of Justiciary, |1735.| which, on the 11th of November, granted a suspension of the Judge-admiral’s sentence till the 1st of December, that the case might before that day be more fully heard. Next day, the Judge-admiral, Mr Graham, caused to be delivered to the magistrates sitting in council a ‘Dead Warrant,’ requiring and commanding them to see his sentence put in execution on the proper day. The magistrates, however, obeyed the Court of Justiciary. Meanwhile, four of those who had been in the boat, and who had given evidence against the two soldiers on their trial, were brought by the custom-house authorities before the Judge-admiral, charged with invading and deforcing the officers, and were acquitted.
On the 5th December, the Court of Justiciary found that the Judge-admiral, in the trial of Long and Macadam, had ‘committed iniquity,’ and therefore they suspended the sentence indefinitely. On a petition three weeks after, the men were liberated, after giving caution to the extent of 300 merks, to answer on any criminal charge that might be exhibited against them before the Court of Justiciary.[[729]]
Nov. 18.
Dancing assemblies, which we have seen introduced at Edinburgh in 1723, begin within the ensuing dozen years to be heard of in some of the other principal towns. There was, for example, an assembly at Dundee at this date, and an Edinburgh newspaper soon after presented a copy of verses upon the ladies who had appeared at it, celebrating their charms in excessively bad poetry, but in a high strain of compliment:
‘Heavens! what a splendid scene is here,
How bright those female seraphs shine!’ &c.
From the indications afforded by half-blank names, we may surmise that damsels styled Bower, Duncan, Reid, Ramsay, Dempster, and Bow—all of them names amongst the gentlefolks of the district—figured conspicuously at this meeting—
‘Besides a much more numerous dazzling throng,
Whose names, if known, should grace my artless song.’
The poet, too, appears to have paid 2s. 6d. for the insertion of his lines in the Caledonian Mercury.
From this time onward, an annual ball, given by ‘the Right Honourable Company of Hunters’ in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, is regularly chronicled. At one which took place on the 8th |1735.| January 1736—the Hon. Master Charles Leslie being ‘king,’ and the Hon. Lady Helen Hope being ‘queen’—‘the company in general made a very grand appearance, an elegant entertainment and the richest wines were served up, and the whole was carried on and concluded with all decency and good order imaginable.’ A ball given by the same fraternity in the same place, on the ensuing 21st of December, was even more splendid. There were two rooms for dancing, and two for tea, illuminated with many hundreds of wax-candles. ‘In the Grand Hall [the Gallery?], a table was covered with three hundred dishes en ambiqu, at which sate a hundred and fifty ladies at a time ... illuminated with four hundred wax-candles. The plan laid out by the council of the company was exactly followed out with the greatest order and decency, and concluded without the least air of disturbance.’
On the 27th January 1737, ‘the young gentlemen-burghers’ of Aberdeen gave ‘a grand ball to the ladies, the most splendid and numerous ever seen there;’ all conducted ‘without the least confusion or disorder.’ The anxiety to shew that there was no glaring impropriety in the conduct of the company on these occasions, is significant, and very amusing.[[730]]
The reader of this work has received—I fear not very thankfully—sundry glimpses of the frightful state of the streets of Edinburgh in previous centuries; and he must have readily understood that the condition of the capital in this respect represented that of other populous towns, all being alike deficient in any recognised means of removing offensive refuse. There was, it must be admitted, something peculiar in the state of Edinburgh in sanitary respects, in consequence of the extreme narrowness of its many closes and wynds, and the height of its houses. How it was endured, no modern man can divine; but it certainly is true that, at the time when men dressed themselves in silks and laces, and took as much time for their toilets as a fine lady, they had to pass in all their bravery amongst piles of dung, on the very High Street of Edinburgh, and could not make an evening call upon Dorinda or Celia in one of the alleys, without the risk of an ablution from above sufficient to destroy the most elegant outfit, and put the wearers out of conceit with themselves for a fortnight.
The struggles of the municipal authorities at sundry times to |1735.| get the streets put into decent order against a royal ceremonial entry, have been adverted to in our earlier volumes. It would appear that things had at last come to a sort of crisis in 1686, so that the Estates then saw fit to pass an act[[731]] to force the magistrates to clean the city, that it might be endurable for the personages concerned in the legislature and government, ordaining for this purpose a ‘stent’ of a thousand pounds sterling a year for three years on the rental of property. A vast stratum of refuse, through which people had made lanes towards their shop-doors and close-heads, was then taken away—much of it transported by the sage provost, Sir James Dick, to his lands at Prestonfield, then newly enclosed, and the first that were so—which consequently became distinguished for fertility[[732]]—and the city was never again allowed to fall into such disorder. There was still, however, no regular system of cleaning, beyond what the street sewers supplied; and the ancient practice of throwing ashes, foul water, &c., over the windows at night, graced only with the warning-cry of Gardez l’eau, was kept up in full vigour by the poorer and more reckless part of the population.
An Edinburgh merchant and magistrate, named Sir Alexander Brand, who has been already under our attention as a manufacturer of gilt leather hangings, at one time presented an overture to the Estates for the cleaning of the city. The modesty of the opening sentence will strike the reader: ‘Seeing the nobility and gentry of Scotland are, when they are abroad, esteemed by all nations to be the finest and most accomplished people in Europe, yet it’s to be regretted that it’s always casten up to them by strangers, who admire them for their singular qualifications, that they are born in a nation that has the nastiest cities in the world, especially the metropolitan.’ He offered to clean the city daily, and give five hundred a year for the refuse.[[733]] But his views do not seem to have been carried into effect.
After 1730, when, as we have seen, great changes were beginning to take place in Scotland, increased attention was paid to external decency and cleanliness. The Edinburgh magistrates were anxious to put down the system of cleaning by ejectment. We learn, for example, from a newspaper, that a servant-girl having thrown foul water from a fourth story in Skinners’ Close, ‘which much abused a lady passing by, was brought before the bailies, |1735.| and obliged to enact herself never to be guilty of the like practices in future. ’Tis hoped,’ adds our chronicler, ‘that this will be a caution to all servants to avoid this wicked practice.’
There lived at this time in Edinburgh a respectable middle-aged man, named Robert Mein, the representative of the family which had kept the post-office for three generations between the time of the civil war and the reign of George I., and who boasted that the pious lady usually called Jenny Geddes, but actually Barbara Hamilton, who threw the stool in St Giles’s in 1637, was his great-grandmother. Mein, being a man of liberal ideas, and a great lover of his native city, desired to see it rescued from the reproach under which it had long lain as the most fetid of European capitals, and he accordingly drew up a paper, shewing how the streets might be kept comparatively clean by a very simple arrangement. His suggestion was, that there should be provided for each house, at the expense of the landlord, a vessel sufficient to contain the refuse of a day, and that scavengers, feed by a small subscription among the tenants, should discharge these every night. Persons paying what was then a very common rent, ten pounds, would have to contribute only five shillings a year; those paying fifteen pounds, 7s. 6d., and so on in proportion. The projector appears to have first explained his plan to sundry gentlemen of consideration—as, for example, Mr William Adam, architect, and Mr Colin Maclaurin, professor of mathematics, who gave him their approbation of it in writing—the latter adding: ‘I subscribe for my own house in Smith’s Land, Niddry’s Wynd, fourth story, provided the neighbours agree to the same.’ Other subscribers of consequence were obtained, as ‘Jean Gartshore, for my house in Morocco’s Close, which is £15 rent,’ and ‘the Countess of Haddington, for the lodging she possessed in Bank Close, Lawnmarket, valued rent £20.’ Many persons agreed to pay a half-penny or a penny weekly; some as much as a half-penny per pound of rent per month. One lady, however, came out boldly as a recusant—‘Mrs Black refuses to agree, and acknowledges she throws over.’[[734]]
Mr Mein’s plan was adopted, and acted upon to some extent by the magistrates; and the terrible memory of the ‘Dirty Luggies,’ which were kept in the stairs, or in the passages within doors, as a necessary part of the arrangement, was fresh in the minds of old people whom I knew in early life. The city was in 1740 |1735.| divided into twenty-nine districts, each having a couple of scavengers supported at its own expense, who were bound to keep it clean; while the refuse was sold to persons who engaged to cart it away at three half-pence per cart-load.[[735]]
1736. Jan. 9.
Five men, who had suffered from the severity of the excise laws, having formed the resolution of indemnifying themselves, broke into the house of Mr James Stark, collector of excise, at Pittenweem, and took away money to the extent of two hundred pounds, besides certain goods. They were described as ‘Andrew Wilson, indweller in Pathhead; George Robertson, stabler without Bristoport [Edinburgh]; William Hall, indweller in Edinburgh; John Frier, indweller there; and John Galloway, servant to Peter Galloway, horse-hirer in Kinghorn.’ Within three days, the whole of them were taken and brought to Edinburgh under a strong guard.
Wilson, Robertson, and Hall were tried on the 2d of March, and condemned to suffer death on the ensuing 14th of April. Five days before that appointed for the execution—Hall having meanwhile been reprieved—Wilson and Robertson made an attempt to escape from the condemned cell of the Old Tolbooth, but failed in consequence of Wilson, who was a squat man, sticking in the grated window. Two days later, the two prisoners being taken, according to custom, to attend service in the adjacent church, Wilson seized two of the guard with his hands, and a third with his teeth, so as to enable Robertson, who knocked down the fourth, to get away. The citizens, whose sympathies went strongly with the men as victims of the excise laws, were much excited by these events, and the authorities were apprehensive that the execution of Wilson would not pass over without an attempt at rescue. The apprehension was strongly shared by John Porteous, captain of the town-guard, who consequently became excited to a degree disqualifying him for so delicate a duty as that of guarding the execution. When the time came, the poor smuggler was duly suspended from the gallows in the Grassmarket, without any disturbance; but when the hangman proceeded to cut down the body, the populace began to throw stones, and the detested official was obliged to take refuge among the men of the guard. Porteous, needlessly infuriated by this demonstration, seized a musket, and fired among the crowd, commanding his men to do the same. |1735.| There was consequently a full fusillade, attended by the instant death of six persons, and the wounding of nine more.
The magistrates being present at the windows of a tavern close by, it was inexcusable of Porteous to have fired without their orders, even had there been any proper occasion for so strong a measure. As it was, he had clearly committed manslaughter on an extensive scale, and was liable to severe punishment. By the public at large he was regarded as a ferocious murderer, who could scarcely expiate with his own life the wrongs he had done to his fellow-citizens. Accordingly, when subjected to trial for murder on the ensuing 5th of July, condemnation was almost a matter of course.
The popular antipathy to the excise laws, the general hatred in which Porteous was held as a harsh official, and a man of profligate life, and the indignation at his needlessly taking so many innocent lives, combined to create a general rejoicing over the issue of the trial. There were some, however, chiefly official persons and their connections, who were not satisfied as to the fairness of his assize, and, whether it was fair or not, felt it to be hard to punish what was at most an excess in the performance of public duty, with death. On a representation of the case to the queen, who was at the head of a regency during the absence of her husband in Hanover, a respite of six weeks was granted, five days before that appointed for the execution.[[736]]
1736.
The consequent events are so well known, that it is unnecessary here to give them in more than outline. The populace of Edinburgh heard of the respite of Porteous with savage rage, and before the eve of what was to have been his last day, a resolution was formed that, if possible, the original order of the law should be executed. The magistrates heard of mischief being designed, but disregarded it as only what they called ‘cadies’ clatters;’ that is, the gossip of street-porters. About nine in the evening of the 7th September, a small party of men came into the city at the West Port, beating a drum, and were quickly followed by a considerable crowd. Proceeding by the Cowgate, they shut the two gates to the eastward, and planted a guard at each. The ringleaders then advanced with a large and formidable mob towards the Tolbooth, in which Porteous lay confined. The magistrates came out from a tavern, and tried to oppose the progress of the conspirators, but were beat off with a shower of stones. Other persons of importance whom they met, were civilly treated, but turned away from the scene of action. Reaching the door of the prison, they battered at it for a long time in vain, and at length it was found necessary to burn it. This being a tedious |1736.| process, it was thought by the magistrates that there might be time to introduce troops from the Canongate, and so save the intended victim. Mr Patrick Lindsay, member for the city, at considerable hazard, made his way over the city wall, and conferred with General Moyle at his lodging in the Abbeyhill; but the general hesitated to act without the authority of the Lord Justice Clerk (Milton), who lived at Brunstain House, five miles off. Thus time was fatally lost. After about an hour and a half, the rioters forced their way into the jail, and seized the trembling Porteous, whom they lost no time in dragging along the street towards the usual place of execution. As they went down the West Bow, they broke open a shop, took a supply of rope, and left a guinea for it on the table. Then coming to the scene of what they regarded as his crime, they suspended the wretched man over a dyer’s pole, and having first waited to see that he was dead, quietly dispersed.
The legal authorities made strenuous efforts to identify some of the rioters, but wholly without success. The subsequent futile endeavour of the government to punish the corporation of Edinburgh by statute, belongs to the history of the country.
June 24.
Considering how important have been the proceedings under the act of the ninth parliament of Queen Mary Anentis Witchcrafts, it seems proper that we advert to the fact of its being from this day repealed in the parliament of Great Britain, along with the similar English act of the first year of King James I. It became from that time incompetent to institute any suit for ‘witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration,’ and only a crime to pretend to exercise such arts, liable to be punished by a year’s imprisonment, with the pillory. There seems to be little known regarding the movement for abolishing these laws. We only learn that it was viewed with disapprobation by the more zealously pious people in Scotland, one of whom, Mr Erskine of Grange, member for Clackmannanshire, spoke pointedly against it in the House of Commons. Seeing how clearly the offence is described in scripture, and how direct is the order for its punishment, it seemed to these men a symptom of latitudinarianism that the old statute should be withdrawn. When the body of dissenters, calling themselves the Associate Synod in 1742, framed their Testimony against the errors of the established church and of the times generally, one of the specific things condemned was the repeal of the acts against witchcraft, which was declared to be ‘contrary to |1736.| the express letter of the law of God, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”’
Nov. 8.
Amongst the gay and ingenious, who patronised and defended theatricals, Allan Ramsay stood conspicuous. He entertained a kind of enthusiasm on the subject, was keenly controversial in behalf of the stage, and willing to incur some risk in the hope of seeing his ideal of a sound drama in Scotland realised. We have seen traces of his taking an immediate and personal interest in the performances carried on for a few years by the ‘Edinburgh Company of Comedians’ in the Tailors’ Hall. He was now induced to enter upon the design of rearing, in Edinburgh, a building expressly adapted as a theatre; and we find him going on with the work in the summer of this year, and announcing that ‘the New Theatre in Carrubber’s Close’ would be opened on the 1st of November. The poet at the same time called upon gentlemen and ladies who were inclined to take annual tickets, of which there were to be forty at 30s. each, to come forward and subscribe before a particular day, after which the price would be raised to two guineas.
Honest Allan knew he would have to encounter the frowns of the clergy, and be reckoned as a rash speculator by many of his friends; but he never expected that any legislative enactment would interfere to crush his hopes. So it was, however. The theatre in Carrubber’s Close was opened on the 8th of November, and found to be, in the esteem of all judges, ‘as complete and finished with as good a taste as any of its size in the three kingdoms.’[[737]] A prologue was spoken by Mr Bridges, setting forth the moral powers of the drama, and attacking its enemies—those who
‘From their gloomy thoughts and want of sense,
Think what diverts the mind gives Heaven offence.’
The Muse, it was said, after a long career of glory in ancient times, had reached the shores of England, where Shakspeare taught her to soar:
‘At last, transported by your tender care,
She hopes to keep her seat of empire here.
For your protection, then, ye fair and great,
This fabric to her use we consecrate;
On you it will depend to raise her name,
And in Edina fix her lasting fame.’
1736.
Alas! all these hopes of a poet were soon clouded. Before the Carrubber’s Close playhouse had seen out its first season, an act was passed (10 Geo. II. chap. 28) explaining one of Queen Anne regarding rogues and vagabonds, the whole object in reality being to prevent any persons from acting plays for hire, without authority or licence by letters-patent from the king or his Lord Chamberlain.[[738]] This put a complete barrier to the poet’s design, threw the new playhouse useless upon his hands,[[739]] and had nearly shipwrecked his fortunes. He addressed a poetical account of his disappointment to the new Lord President of the Court of Session, Duncan Forbes, a man who united a taste for elegant literature with the highest Christian graces. He recites the project of the theatre:
‘Last year, my lord, nae farther gane,
A costly wark was undertane
By me, wha had not the least dread
An act would knock it on the head:
A playhouse new, at vast expense,
To be a large, yet bien defence,
In winter nights, ’gainst wind and weet,
To ward frae cauld the lasses sweet;
While they with bonny smiles attended,
To have their little failings mended.’
He asks if he who has written with the approbation of the entire country, shall be confounded with rogues and rascals, be twined of his hopes, and
‘Be made a loser, and engage
With troubles in declining age,
While wights to whom my credit stands
For sums, make sour and thrawn demands?’
Shall a good public object be defeated?
‘When ice and snaw o’ercleads the isle,
Wha now will think it worth their while
To leave their gousty country bowers,
For the ance blythesome Edinburgh’s towers,
Where there’s no glee to give delight,
And ward frae spleen the langsome night?’
He pleads with the Session for at least a limited licence.
‘... I humbly pray
Our lads may be allowed to play,
At least till new-house debts be paid off,
The cause that I’m the maist afraid of;
Which lade lies on my single back,
And I maun pay it ilka plack.’
1736.
Else let the legislature relieve him of the burden of his house,
‘By ordering frae the public fund
A sum to pay for what I’m bound;
Syne, for amends for what I’ve lost,
Edge me into some canny post.’
All this was of course but vain prattle. The piece appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine (August 1737), and no doubt awoke some sympathy; but the poet had to bear single-handed the burden of a heavy loss, as a reward for his spirited attempt to enliven the beau monde of Edinburgh.
Nov. 28.
Amongst other symptoms of a tendency to social enjoyments at this time, we cannot overlook a marked progress of free-masonry throughout the country. This day, the festival of the tutelar saint of Scotland, the Masters and Wardens of forty regular lodges met in St Mary’s Chapel, in Edinburgh, and unanimously elected as their Grand Master, William Sinclair, of Roslin, Esq., representative of an ancient though reduced family, which had been in past ages much connected with free-masonry.
On St John’s Day, 27th December, this act was celebrated by the freemasons of Inverness, with a procession to the cross in white gloves and aprons, and with the proper badges, the solemnity being concluded with ‘a splendid ball to the ladies.’[[740]]
1737. June 30.
The Edinburgh officials who had been taken to London for examination regarding the Porteous Riot, being now at liberty to return, there was a general wish in the city to give them a cordial reception. The citizens rode out in a great troop to meet them, and the road for miles was lined with enthusiastic pedestrians. The Lord Provost, Alexander Wilson, from modesty, eluded the reception designed for him; but the rest came through the city, forming a procession of imposing length, while bells rang and bonfires blazed, and the gates of the Netherbow, which had been removed since the 7th of September last, were put up again amidst the shouts of the multitude.
A month later, one Baillie, who had given evidence before the Lords’ Committee tending to criminate the magistrates, returned |1737.| in a vessel from London, and had no sooner set his foot on shore than he found himself beset by a mighty multitude bent on marking their sense of his conduct. To collect the people, some seized and rang a ship’s bell; others ran through the streets ringing small bells. ‘Bloody Baillie is come!’ passed from mouth to mouth. The poor man, finding that thousands were gathered for his honour, flung himself into the stage-coach for Edinburgh, and was solely indebted to a fellow-passenger of the other sex for the safety in which he reached his home.
Captain Lind, of the Town-guard, having given similar evidence, was discharged by the town-council; but the government immediately after appointed him ‘lieutenant in Tyrawley’s regiment of South British Fusiliers at Gibraltar.’[[741]]
1738. Feb. 3.
It was still customary to keep recruits in prison till an opportunity was obtained of shipping them off for service. A hundred young men, who had been engaged for the Dutch republic in Scotland, had been for some time confined in the Canongate Tolbooth, where probably their treatment was none of the best. Disappointed in several attempts at escape, they turned at length mutinous, and it was necessary to carry four of the most dangerous to a dungeon in the lower part of the prison. By this the rest were so exasperated, ‘that they seized one of their officers and the turnkey, whom they clapped in close custody, and, barricading the prison-door, bade defiance to all authority. At the same time they intimated that, if their four comrades were not instantly delivered up to them, they would send the officer and turnkey to where the d—— sent his mother; so that their demand was of necessity complied with.’
During all the next day (Saturday) they remained in their fortress without any communication either by persons coming in or by persons going out. The authorities revolved the idea of a forcible attempt to reduce them to obedience; but it seemed better to starve them into a surrender. On the Sunday evening, their provisions being exhausted, they beat a chamade and hung out a white flag; whereupon some of their officers and a few officers of General Whitham’s regiment entered into a capitulation with them; and, a general amnesty being granted, they delivered up their stronghold. ‘It is said they threatened, in case of non-compliance with their articles, to fall instantly about eating the turnkey.’[[742]]
1738. Aug.
Isabel Walker, under sentence of death at Dumfries for child-murder, obtained a reprieve through unexpected means. According to a letter dated Edinburgh, August 10, 1738, ‘This unhappy creature was destitute of friends, and had none to apply for her but an only sister, a girl of a fine soul, that overlooked the improbability of success, and helpless and alone, went to London to address the great; and solicited so well, that she got for her, first, a reprieve, and now a remission. Such another instance of onerous friendship can scarce be shewn; it well deserved the attention of the greatest, who could not but admire the virtue, and on that account engage in her cause.’[[743]]
Helen Walker, who acted this heroic part, was the daughter of a small farmer in the parish of Irongray. Her sister, who had been under her care, having concealed her pregnancy, it came to be offered to Helen as a painful privilege, that she could save the accused if she could say, on the trial, that she had received any communication from Isabel regarding her condition. She declared it to be impossible that she should declare a falsehood even to save a sister’s life; and condemnation accordingly took place. Helen then made a journey on foot to London, in the hope of being able to plead for her sister’s life; and, having almost by accident gained the ear and interest of the Duke of Argyle, she succeeded in an object which most persons would have said beforehand was next to unattainable.
Isabel afterwards married her lover, and lived at Whitehaven for many years. Helen survived till 1791, a poor peasant woman, living by the sale of eggs and other small articles, or doing country work, but always distinguished by a quiet self-respect, which prevented any one from ever talking to her of this singular adventure of her early days. Many years after she had been laid in Irongray kirkyard, a lady who had seen and felt an interest in her communicated her story to Sir Walter Scott, who expanded it into a tale (The Heart of Mid-Lothian) of which the chief charm lies in the character and actings of the self-devoted heroine. It was one of the last, and not amongst the least worthy, acts of the great fictionist to raise a monument over her grave, with the following inscription:
‘This stone was erected by the Author of Waverley to the memory of Helen Walker, who died in the year of God 1791. This humble individual practised in real life the virtues with which |1738.| fiction has invested the imaginary character of Jeanie Deans; refusing the slightest departure from veracity, even to save the life of a sister, she nevertheless shewed her hardiness and fortitude in rescuing her from the severity of the law, at the expense of personal exertions which the time rendered as difficult as the motive was laudable. Respect the grave of poverty when combined with love of truth and dear affection.’
1739. Jan.
This month was commenced in Edinburgh a monthly miscellany and chronicle, which long continued to fill a useful place in the world under the name of the Scots Magazine. It was framed on the model of the Gentleman’s Magazine, which had commenced in London eight years before, and the price of each number was the modest one of sixpence. Being strictly a magazine or store, into which were collected all the important newspaper matters of the past month, it could not be considered as a literary effort of much pretension, though its value to us as a picture of the times referred to is all the greater. Living persons connected with periodical literature will hear with a smile that this respectable miscellany was, about 1763 and 1764, conducted by a young man, a corrector of the press in the printing-office which produced it, and whose entire salary for this and other duties was sixteen shillings a week.[[744]]
Jan. 14.
A hurricane from the west-south-west, commencing at one in the morning, and accompanied by lightning, swept across the south of Scotland, and seems to have been beyond parallel for destructiveness in the same district before or since. The blowing down of chimneys, the strewing of the streets with tiles and slates, were among the lightest of its performances. It tore sheet-lead from churches and houses, and made it fly through the air like paper. In the country, houses were thrown down, trees uprooted by hundreds, and corn-stacks scattered. A vast number of houses took fire. At least one church, that of Killearn, was prostrated. Both on the west and east coast, many ships at sea and in harbour were damaged or destroyed. ‘At Loch Leven, in Fife, great shoals of perches and pikes were driven a great way into the fields; so that the country people got horse-loads of them, and sold them at one penny per hundred.’ The number of casualties to life and limb seems, after all, to have been small.[[745]]
1730.
James, second Earl of Rosebery, was one who carried the vices and follies of his age to such extravagance as to excite a charitable belief that he was scarcely an accountable person. In his father’s lifetime, he had been several times in the Old Tolbooth for small debts. In 1726, after he had succeeded to the family title, he was again incarcerated there for not answering the summons of the Court of Justiciary ‘for deforcement, riot, and spulyie.’ A few years later, his estates are found in the hands of trustees.
At this date, he excited the merriment of the thoughtless, and the sadness of all other persons, by advertising the elopement of a girl named Polly Rich, who had been engaged for a year as his servant; describing her as a London girl, or ‘what is called a Cockney,’ about eighteen, ‘fine-shaped and blue-eyed,’ having all her linen marked with his cornet and initials. Two guineas reward were offered to whoever should restore her to her ‘right owner,’ either at John’s Coffee-house, or ‘the Earl of Roseberry, at Denham’s Land, Bristow, and no questions will be asked.’[[746]]
The potato—introduced from its native South American ground by Raleigh into Ireland, and so extensively cultivated there in the time of the civil wars, as to be a succour to the poor when all cereal crops had been destroyed by the soldiery—transplanted thence to England, but so little cultivated there towards the end of the seventeenth century, as to be sold in 1694 at sixpence or eightpence a pound[[747]]—is first heard of in Scotland in 1701, when the Duchess of Buccleuch’s household-book mentions a peck of the esculent as brought from Edinburgh, and costing 2s. 6d.[[748]] We hear of it in 1733, as used occasionally at supper in the house of the Earl of Eglintoun, in Ayrshire.[[749]] About this time, it was beginning to be cultivated in gardens, but still with a hesitation about its moral character, for no reader of Shakspeare requires to be told that some of the more uncontrollable passions of human nature were supposed to be favoured by its use.[[750]]
1739.
At the date here noted, a gentleman, styled Robert Graham of Tamrawer, factor on the forfeited estate of Kilsyth, ventured on the heretofore unknown step of planting a field of potatoes. His experiment was conducted on a half-acre of ground ‘on the croft of Neilstone, to the north of the town of Kilsyth.’ It appears that the root was now, and for a good while after, cultivated only on lazy beds. Many persons—amongst whom was the Earl of Perth, who joined in the insurrection of 1745—came from great distances to witness so extraordinary a novelty, and inquire into the mode of culture.
The field-culture of the potato was introduced about 1746 into the county of Edinburgh by a man named Henry Prentice, who had made a little money as a travelling-merchant, and was now engaged in market-gardening.[[751]] His example was soon extensively followed, and before 1760 the root was very generally reared in fields, as it is at present.
1740. Jan.
A frost, which began on the 26th of the previous month, lasted during the whole of this, and was long remembered for its severity, and the many remarkable circumstances attending it. We nowhere get a scientific statement of the temperature at any period of its duration; but the facts related are sufficient to prove that this was far below any point ordinarily attained in this country. The principal rivers of Scotland were frozen over, and there was such a general stoppage of water-mills, that the knocking-stones usually employed in those simple days for husking grain in small quantities, and of which there was one at nearly every cottage-door, were used on this occasion as means of grinding it. Such mills as had a flow of water, were worked on Sundays as well as |1740.| ordinary days. In some harbours, the ships were frozen up. Food rose to famine prices, and large contributions were required from the rich to keep the poor alive.
The frost was severe all over the northern portion of Europe. The Thames at London being thickly frozen over, a fair was held upon it, with a multitude of shows and popular amusements. At Newcastle, men digging coal in the pits were obliged to have fires kindled to keep them warm; and one mine was through this cause ignited permanently. In the metropolis, coal became so scarce as to reach 70s. per chaldron; and there also much misery resulted among the poor. People perished of cold in the fields, and even in the streets, and there was a prodigious mortality amongst birds and other wild animals.
Oct.
In consequence of the failure of the crop of this year, Scotland was now undergoing the distresses attendant upon the scarcity and high price of provisions. The populace of Edinburgh attacked the mills, certain granaries in Leith, and sundry meal-shops, and possessed themselves of several hundred bolls of grain, the military forces being too limited in number to prevent them. Several of the rioters being captured, a mob attempted their rescue, and thus led to a fusillade from the soldiery, by which three persons were wounded, one of them mortally. Great efforts were made by the magistracy to obtain corn at moderate prices for the people, by putting in force the laws against reservation of grain from market, and the dealing in it with a view to profit; also by the more rational method of subscriptions among the rich for the sale of meal at comparatively low rates to the poor. The magistrates of Edinburgh also invited importations of foreign grain (December 19), proclaiming that, in case of any being seized by mobs, the community should make good the loss.[[752]]
1741. July.
George Whitfield, whose preachings had been stirring up a great commotion in England for some years past, came to Scotland, and for a time held forth at various places in the open air, particularly on the spot where the Edinburgh Theatre afterwards stood. ‘This gentleman,’ says a contemporary chronicler, ‘recommends the essentials of religion, and decries the distinguishing punctilios of parties; exclaims against the moral preachers of the age; preaches the doctrine of free grace according to the |1741.| predestinarian scheme; mentions often the circumstance of his own regeneration, and what success he has had in his ministerial labours.’[[753]] Having heard of the late secession from the Church of Scotland by a set of clergymen reputed to be unusually sanctimonious, he was eager to fraternise with them, and lost no time in preaching to the congregation of Mr Ralph Erskine at Dunfermline. But here he met unexpected difficulties. The Scottish seceders could not hold out the right hand of fellowship to one who did not unite with them in their testimony against defective churches. He was a man of too broad sympathies to suit them; so they parted; and Whitfield from that time fraternised solely with the established clergy.
1742. Feb.
About this time began a series of religious demonstrations, chiefly centering at Cambuslang on the Clyde, and long after recognised accordingly as the Camb’slang Wark. Mr Whitfield, in his visit of some months last year, had stirred up a new zeal in the Established Church. Mr M‘Culloch, minister of Cambuslang, was particularly inflamed by his eloquence, and he had all winter been addressing his flock in an unusually exciting manner. The local fervour waxing stronger and stronger, a shoemaker and a weaver at length lent their assistance to it, and now it was breaking out in those transports of terror of hell-fire, prostrate penitence, and rejoicing re-assurance, which mark what is called a revival. The meetings chiefly took place in a natural amphitheatre or holm, on the river’s side, and were externally very picturesque. There seldom was wanting a row of patients in front of the minister, with their heads tied up, and pitchers of water ready to recover those who fainted. Early in the summer, Mr Whitfield returned to Scotland, and immediately came to lend his assistance to the work, both at Cambuslang, and in the Barony parish of Glasgow. ‘From that time the multitudes who assembled were more numerous than they had ever been, or perhaps than any congregation which had ever before been collected in Scotland; the religious impressions made on the people were apparently much greater and more general; and the visible convulsive agitations which accompanied them, exceeded everything of the kind which had yet been observed.’[[754]] The clergy of the establishment were pleased with what was going on, as it served to shew that their lamp was not gone out, thereby enabling them to hold up their heads against the taunts of the Secession as to growing |1742.| lukewarmness and defection. And they pointed with pathetic earnestness to the many sinners converted from evil ways, as a proof that real good was done. On the other hand, the seceders loudly deplored ‘the present awful symptom of the Lord’s anger with the church and land, in sending them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie,’ and ordained a day to be observed as a fast, in order to avert the evils they apprehended in consequence.[[755]] A fierce controversy raged for some time between the two bodies, as to whether the Camb’slang Wark was of God or of the Devil, each person being generally swayed in his decision by his love for, or aversion to, the Established Church. A modern divine just quoted (Erskine), disclaims for them a miraculous character, but asserts, as matter of historic verity, that fully four hundred persons at Cambuslang underwent a permanent religious change, independent of those who were converted in like manner at Kilsyth. It is understood that the proceedings of the Associate Synod on the occasion have since been much deplored by their successors.
Oct. 10.
Public attention was strongly roused by an accident of an uncommon kind which happened in the lowlands of Ross-shire. The church of Fearn parish was an old Gothic structure covered with a heavy roof of flagstone. This day, being Sunday, while the parishioners were assembled at worship, the roof and part of the side-wall gave way, under the pressure of a load of prematurely fallen snow; and the bulk of the people present were buried under the ruins. The fortunate arrangement of the seats of the gentry in the side recesses saved most of that class from injury; and the minister, Mr Donald Ross, was protected by the sounding-board of his pulpit. There chanced to be present Mr James Robertson, the minister of Lochbroom, a man of uncommon personal strength and great dexterity and courage. He, planting his shoulder under a falling lintel, sustained it till a number of the people escaped. Forty poor people were dug out dead, and in such a state of mutilation that it was found necessary to huddle them all into one grave.[[756]]
1743.
The period of the extinction of wild and dangerous animals in a country is of some importance, as an indication of its |1743.| advance in civilisation, and of the appropriation of its soil for purely economic purposes. One learns with a start how lately the wolf inhabited the Highlands of Scotland. It is usually said that the species was extirpated about 1680 by the famous Sir Ewen Cameron of Locheil; but the tradition to that effect appears to be only true of Sir Ewen’s own district of Western Inverness-shire, and there is reason to believe that the year at which this chronicle has arrived is the date of the death of the last wolf in the entire kingdom. The slayer of the animal is represented as being a notable Highland deer-stalker of great stature and strength, named Macqueen of Pall-a’-chrocain, and the Forest of Tarnaway in Morayland is assigned as the scene of the incident. The popular Highland narration on the subject is as follows:
‘One winter’s day, about the year before mentioned, Macqueen received a message from the Laird of Macintosh that a large “black beast,” supposed to be a wolf, had appeared in the glens, and the day before killed two children, who, with their mother, were crossing the hills from Calder; in consequence of which a “Tainchel,” or gathering to drive the country, was called to meet at a tryst above Fi-Giuthas, where Macqueen was invited to attend with his dogs. Pall-a’-chrocain informed himself of the place where the children had been killed, the last tracks of the wolf, and the conjectures of his haunts, and promised his assistance.
‘In the morning the “Tainchel” had long assembled, and Macintosh waited with impatience, but Macqueen did not arrive; his dogs and himself were, however, auxiliaries too important to be left behind, and they continued to wait until the best of a hunter’s morning was gone, when at last he appeared, and Macintosh received him with an irritable expression of disappointment.
‘“Ciod e a’ chabhag?—“What was the hurry?” said Pall-a’-chrocain.
‘Macintosh gave an indignant retort, and all present made some impatient reply.
‘Macqueen lifted his plaid, and drew the black bloody head of the wolf from under his arm—“Sin e dhùibh”—“There it is for you!” said he, and tossed it on the grass in the midst of the surprised circle.
‘Macintosh expressed great joy and admiration, and gave him the land called Sean-achan for meat to his dogs.’[[757]]
1743. May.
Owing to a severe spring, a malady called ‘fever and cold’ prevailed in Edinburgh, and was spreading all over the country. On Sunday, the 8th May, fifty sick people were prayed for in the city churches, and in the preceding week there had been seventy burials in the Greyfriars, being three times the usual number.
July.
For a number of years, the six independent companies of armed Highlanders, commonly called the Reicudan Dhu, or Black Watch, had been effective in keeping down that system of cattle-lifting which ancient prejudice had taught the Highlanders generally to regard as only a kind of clan warfare. But in 1739, the government was induced to form these companies into a regular regiment for service in the foreign war then entered upon; and in March of this year, they were actually sent into England, leaving the Highlands without adequate protection. The consequence was an immediate revival of old practices.
In July of this year, it was reported to the Edinburgh newspapers that the highlands of Nairnshire were absolutely infested with depredators, who came by day as well as night, and drove off the cattle, not scrupling to kill the inhabitants when they were resisted. The proprietors were trying to form a watch or guard for the country; but these people often fell into complicity with the spoilers, or entered on a similar career themselves. The greatest confusion and difficulty prevailed, and other districts were soon after involved in the same calamitous grievance.
One day in October, a party of nine cearnochs or caterans, well armed, came from Rannoch into Badenoch, and laid a large part of the district under contribution, ‘forcing the people to capitulate for their lives at the expense of all they possessed,’ and carrying off a great quantity of sheep. The gentlemen of the district hastily assembled with some of their people, but felt greatly at a loss on account of their want of arms. Nevertheless, with a few old weapons, they resolved to attack the depredators. A smoke seen on a distant hillside led them to the place where the robbers were halting. Their firearms were by this time useless with wet; yet they fell on with great courage, and obtained a victory, at the expense of a wound to one of their party. Four of the offenders were secured, and carried to the prison at Ruthven.[[758]] It was hoped that the fate of this party would deter others; but the hope was not realised.
1743.
In March 1744, a general meeting of the gentlemen of the district of Badenoch took into consideration the sad state of their country. It was represented that, owing to the frequent thefts committed, the tenants were on the brink of utter ruin: some who paid not above fifteen pounds of rent, had suffered losses to the extent of a hundred. Evan Macpherson of Cluny, the leading man of the district, and a person of activity and intelligence, had been repeatedly entreated to undertake the formation and management of an armed watch, to be supported from such small contributions as could be raised; but he regarded the country as too poor to support such an establishment as would be necessary. Yet he now told them that, unless the king could protect them, he could suggest no other course than the putting of their own and the neighbouring districts under persons who could guard the country by their own armed retainers, and guarantee the restitution of lost goods to all such as would contribute to the necessary funds.
On the entreaty of his neighbours, Cluny, in May, did muster a number of his people, of honest character, whom he planted at the several passes through which predatory incursions were made, ‘giving them most strict orders that these passes should be punctually travelled and watched night and day, for keeping off, intercepting, seizing, and imprisoning the villains, as occasion offered, and as strictly forbidding and discharging them to act less or more in the ordinary way of other undertakers [leviers of black-mail], who, instead of suppressing theft, do greatly support it, by currying the favour of the thieves, and gratifying them for their diverting of the weight of theft from such parts of the countries as pay the undertaker for their protection, to such parts as do not pay them.’
Cluny is allowed to have tolerably well effected his purpose. The thieves, being hemmed in by him, and reduced to great straits, offered to keep his own lands skaithless if he would cease to guard those of his neighbours, a proposal to which, as might be expected, he gave no heed. They tried to evade his vigilance by taking a spreath of cattle from Strathnairn by boats across Loch Ness, instead of by the ordinary route; but he then set guards on the ferries of Loch Ness, albeit at a great additional expense. The lands of gentlemen who declined to contribute were as safe as those in the opposite circumstances. He was even able to restore some cattle taken from distant places, as Banffshire, Strathallan, and the Colquhoun’s grounds near Dumbarton.[[759]]
1743.
The Rev. Mr Lapslie, writing in 1795 the statistical account of his parish of Campsie, remarks with a feeling of wonder the fact that, so recently as 1744, his father ‘paid black-mail to Macgregor of Glengyle, in order to prevent depredations being made upon his property; Macgregor engaging, upon his part, to secure him from suffering any hardship [hership, that is, despoliation], as it was termed; and he faithfully fulfilled the contract; engaging to pay for all sheep which were carried away, if above the number of seven, which he styled a lifting; if below seven, he only considered it a piking; and for the honour of this warden of the Highland march, Mr John Lapslie having got fifteen sheep lifted in the commencement of the year 1745, Mr Macgregor actually had taken measures to have their value restored, when the rebellion broke out, and put an end to any further payment of black-mail, and likewise to Mr Macgregor’s self-created wardenship of the Highland borders.’[[760]]
Oct.
We have seen that an abortive attempt was made in 1678 to set up a stage-coach between Edinburgh and Glasgow.[[761]] Nothing more is heard of such a scheme till the present date, when John Walker, merchant in Edinburgh, proposed to the town council of Glasgow the setting up of a stage-coach between the two towns, for six persons, twice a week, for twenty weeks in summer, and once a week during the rest of the year, receiving ten shillings per passenger, provided that he should have the sale of two hundred tickets per annum guaranteed.[[762]] This effort was likewise abortive.
It was not till 1758, when the population of Glasgow had risen to about thirty-five thousand, that a regular conveyance for passengers was established between the two cities. It was drawn by four horses, and the journey of forty-two miles was performed in twelve hours, the passengers stopping to dine on the way. Such was the only stage-coach on that important road for thirty years, nor during that time did any acceleration take place. A young lady of Glasgow, of distinguished beauty, having to travel to Edinburgh about 1780, a lover towards whom she was not very favourably disposed, took all the remaining tickets, was of course her sole companion on the journey, entertained her at dinner, and otherwise found such means of pressing his suit, that she soon after became his wife. This was, so far as it goes, a very pretty piece |1743.| of stage-coach romance; but, unluckily, the lover was unworthy of his good-fortune, and the lady, in a state of worse than widowhood, was, a few years after, the subject of the celebrated Clarinda correspondence of Burns.
Mr Palmer, the manager of the Bath Theatre, having succeeded in introducing his smart stage-coaches, one was established, in July 1788, between London and Glasgow, performing the distance (405 miles) in sixty-five hours. This seems to have led to an improvement in the conveyances between Edinburgh and the western city. Colin M‘Farlane, of the Buck’s Head Inn of Glasgow, announced, in the ensuing October, his having commenced a four-seated coach between the two cities every lawful day at eleven o’clock, thus permitting mercantile men to transact business at the banks and public offices before starting. ‘In most of the coaches running at present,’ says he, ‘six are admitted, and three into a chaise, which proves very disagreeable for passengers to be so situated for a whole day. The inconvenience is entirely removed by the above plan.... Owing to the lightness of the carriage, and frequent change of horses, she arrives at Glasgow and Edinburgh as soon as the carriages that set off early in the morning.’ ‘Price of the tickets from both towns, 9s. 6d.’[[763]] Notwithstanding this provocative to emulation, ‘the Diligence’ for Edinburgh was announced in 1789 as starting from the Saracen’s Head each morning at nine, ‘or at any other hour the two first passengers might agree on.’[[764]] It was not till 1799 that the time occupied by a stage-coach journey between these two cities was reduced so low as even six hours, being still an hour and a half beyond the time ultimately attained before the opening of the railway in 1842.
1744.
For some years the use of tea had been creeping in amongst nearly all ranks of the people. It was thought by many reflecting persons, amongst whom was the enlightened Lord President Forbes, to be in many respects an improper diet, expensive, wasteful of time, and calculated to render the population weakly and effeminate. During the course of this year, there was a vigorous movement all over Scotland for getting the use of tea abated. Towns, parishes, and counties passed resolutions condemnatory of the Chinese leaf, and pointing strongly to the manlier attractions of beer. The tenants of William Fullarton |1744.| of Fullarton, in Ayrshire, in a bond they entered into on the occasion, thus delivered themselves: ‘We, being all farmers by profession, think it needless to restrain ourselves formally from indulging in that foreign and consumptive luxury called tea; for when we consider the slender constitutions of many of higher rank, amongst whom it is used, we conclude that it would be but an improper diet to qualify us for the more robust and manly parts of our business; and therefore we shall only give our testimony against it, and leave the enjoyment of it altogether to those who can afford to be weak, indolent, and useless.’
1745. Oct.
Lord Lovat, writing to the Lord President Forbes on the 20th of this month, adverts to the effect of the civil broils in giving encouragement to men of prey in the Highlands. He says: ‘This last fortnight, my cousin William [Fraser], Struie’s uncle, that is married to Kilbockie’s daughter, and who is a very honest man, and she a good woman, had twenty fine cows stolen from him. The country [that is, the country people] went upon the track, and went into Lochaber and to Rannoch, and came up with the thieves in my Lord Breadalbane’s forest of Glenurchy. The thieves, upon seeing the party that pursued them, abandoned the cattle, and ran off; and William brought home his cattle, but had almost died, and all that was with him, of fatigue, cold, and hunger; but, indeed, it is the best-followed track that ever I heard of in any country. You see how loose the whole country is, when four villains durst come a hundred miles, and take up the best cattle they could find in this country; for they think there is no law, and that makes them so insolent.’[[765]]
The practice of stealing cattle in the Highlands has already been several times alluded to, as well as the system of compromise called black-mail, by which honest people were enabled in some degree to secure themselves against such losses. Down to 1745, there does not appear to have been any very sensible abatement of this state of things, notwithstanding the keeping up of the armed companies, professedly for the maintenance of law and order. Perhaps the black-mail caused there being less robbery than would otherwise have been the case, and also the occasional restoration of property which had been taken away; but it was of course necessary for the exactors of the mail to allow at least as much despoliation as kept up the occasion for the tax. |1745.| Mr Graham of Gartmore, writing on this subject immediately after the close of the rebellion, enters into a calculation of the entire losses to the Highlands through robbery and its consequences.
‘It may be safely affirmed,’ he says, ‘that the horses, cows, sheep, and goats yearly stolen in that country are in value equal to £5000, and that the expenses lost in the fruitless endeavours to recover them, will not be less than £2000; that the extraordinary expenses of keeping [neat-]herds and servants to look more narrowly after cattle on account of stealing, otherwise not necessary, is £10,000. There is paid in black-mail or watch-money, openly or privately, £5000; and there is a yearly loss, by understocking the grounds, by reason of thefts, of at least £15,000; which is altogether a loss to landlords and farmers in the Highlands of £37,000 a year.
‘... The person chosen to command this watch, as it is called, is commonly one deeply concerned in the thefts himself, or at least that hath been in correspondence with the thieves, and frequently who hath occasioned thefts in order to make this watch, by which he gains considerably, necessary. The people employed travel through the country armed, night and day, under pretence of inquiring after stolen cattle, and by this means know the situation and circumstances of the whole country. And as the people thus employed are the very rogues that do these mischiefs, so one half of them are continued in their former businesses of stealing, that the business of the other half may be necessary in recovering.... Whoever considers the shameful way these watches were managed, particularly by Barrisdale and the Macgregors, in the west ends of Perth and Stirling shires, will easily see into the spirit, nature, and consequences of them.’[[766]]
Pennant informs us that many of the lifters of black-mail ‘were wont to insert an article by which they were to be released from their agreement, in case of any civil commotion; thus, at the breaking out of the last rebellion, a Macgregor (who assumed the name of Graham), who had with the strictest honour till that event preserved his friends’ cattle, immediately sent them word that from that time they were out of his protection, and must now take care of themselves.’
The same author justly remarks the peculiar code of morality which circumstances, partly political, had brought into existence |1745.| in the Highlands, whereby cattle-stealing came to be considered rather as a gallant military enterprise than as theft. He says the young men regarded a proficiency in it as a recommendation to their mistresses. Here, however, it must be admitted, we only find the disastrous results of a general civil disorder arising from political disaffection and antagonisms.
Both Gartmore and Mr Pennant speak of ‘Barrisdale’ as a person who at this time stood in great notoriety as a levier of black-mail, or, as Barrisdale himself might have called it, a protector of the country. Descended from a branch of the Glengarry family, his father had obtained from the contemporary Glengarry, on wadset, permission to occupy a considerable tract of ground named Barrisdale, on the south side of Loch Hourn, and from this he had hereditarily derived the appellative by which he was most generally known, while his real name was Coll MacDonell, and his actual residence was at Inverie, on Loch Nevis. Although the government had kept up a barrack and garrison at Glenelg since 1723, Barrisdale carried on his practice as a cattle-protector undisturbed for a course of years, drawing a revenue of about five hundred a year from a large district, in which there were many persons that might have been expected to give him opposition. According to Pennant, ‘he behaved with genuine honour in restoring, on proper consideration, the stolen cattle of his friends.... He was indefatigable in bringing to justice any rogues that interfered with his own. He was a man of a polished behaviour, fine address, and fine person. He considered himself in a very high light, as a benefactor to the public, and preserver of general tranquillity, for on the silver plates, the ornaments of his baldric, he thus addresses his broadsword:
“Hæ tibi sunt artes, pacis componere mores;
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.”[[767]]
At the breaking out of the rebellion, Barrisdale and his son acted as partisans of the Stuart cause, the latter in an open manner, the consequence of which was his being named in the act of attainder. During the frightful time of vengeance that followed upon Culloden, the father made some sort of submission to the government troops, which raised a rumour that he had undertaken to assist in securing and delivering up the fugitive |1745.| prince. What truth or falsehood there might be in the allegation, no one could now undertake to certify; but certain it is, that, when a party of the Camerons were preparing, in September 1746, to leave the country with Prince Charles in a French vessel, they seized the Barrisdales, father and son, as culprits, and carried them to France, where they underwent imprisonment, first at St Malo, and afterwards at Saumur, for about a year. It was at the same time reported to London that the troops had found, in Barrisdale’s house, ‘a hellish engine for extorting confession, and punishing such thieves as were not in his service. It is all made of iron, and stands upright; the criminal’s neck, hands, and feet are put into it, by which he’s in a sloping posture, and can neither sit, lie, nor stand.’[[768]] This report must also remain in some degree a matter of doubt.
The younger Barrisdale, making his escape from the French prison, returned to the wilds of Inverness-shire, and was there allowed for a time to remain in peace. The father, liberated when Prince Charles was expelled from France, also returned to Scotland; but he had not been more than two days at his house in Knoydart, when a party from Glenelg apprehended him. Being placed as a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle, he died there in June 1750, after a confinement of fourteen months. The son was in like manner seized in July 1753, in a wood on Loch-Hourn-side, along with four or five other gentlemen in the same circumstances, and imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle. He was condemned upon the act of attainder to die in the Grassmarket on the 22d of May 1754, and while he lay under sentence, his wife, who attended him, brought a daughter into the world.[[769]] He was, however, reprieved from time to time, and ultimately, after nine years’ confinement, received a pardon in March 1762, took the oath of allegiance to George III., and was made a captain in Colonel Graeme’s regiment, being the same which was afterwards so noted under the name of the Forty-second. When Mr John Knox made his tour of the West Highlands in 1786, to propagate the faith in herring-curing and other modern arts of peace, he found ‘Barrisdale’—that name so associated with an ancient and ruder state of things—residing at the place from which he was named. ‘He lives,’ says the traveller, ‘in silent retirement upon a slender income, and seems by his appearance, conversation, and deportment, to have merited a better fate. He is about six feet high, |1745.| proportionally made, and was reckoned one of the handsomest men of the age. He is still a prisoner, in a more enlarged sense, and has no society excepting his own family, and that of Mr Macleod of Arnisdale. Living on opposite sides of the loch, their communications are not frequent.’[[770]]
It seems not inappropriate that this record of the old life of Scotland should end with an article in which we find the associations of the lawless times of the Highlands inosculating with the industrial proceedings of a happier age. A further extension of our domestic annals would shew how the good movements of the last fifteen years were now accelerated, and how our northern soil became, in the course of little more than a lifetime, one of the fairest scenes of European civilisation. Fully to describe this period—its magnificent industries, its rapid growth of intelligence, of taste, of luxury, the glories it achieved in literature, science, and art—would form a noble task; but it is one which would need to be worked out on a plan different from the present work, and which I should gladly see undertaken by some son of Caledonia who may have more power than I to do her story justice, though he cannot love or respect her more.