[222]1648; thirty in one day. One of them confessed that she had been at a gathering of more than five hundred witches.
[223]In 1652, the kirk-session of Glasgow "brot boyes and servants before them, for breaking the sabbath, and other faults. They had clandestine censors, and gave money to some for this end."—Note 28, taken from Wodrow's "Analecta"; Buckle, "History of Civilization in England," 3 vols. 1867, III. 208.
Even early in the eighteenth century, "the most popular divines" in Scotland affirmed that Satan "frequently appears clothed in a corporeal substance."—Ibid. III. 233, note 76, taken from Memoirs of C. L. Lewes.
"No husband shall kiss his wife, and no mother shall kiss her child on the Sabbath day."—Note 135. Ibid. III. 253; from Rev. C. J. Lyon's "St. Andrews," vol. I. 458, with regard to government of a colony. (It would have been satisfactory if Mr. Lyon had given his authority.)—Tr.
"(Sept. 22, 1649) The quhilk day the Sessioune caused mak this act, that ther sould be no pypers at brydels," etc.—Ibid. III. 258, note 153. In 1719, the Presbytery of Edinburgh indignantly declares: "Yea, some have arrived at that height of impiety, as not to be ashamed of washing in waters, and swimming in rivers upon the holy Sabbath."—Note 187. Ibid. III. 266.
"I think David had never so sweet a time as then, when he was pursued as a partridge by his son Absalom."—Note 190. Gray's "Great and Precious Promises."
See the whole of Chapter III. vol. III. in which Buckle has described, by similar quotations, the condition of Scotland, chiefly in the seventeenth century.
[224]See, in Richardson, Swift, and Fielding, but particularly in Hogarth, the delineation of brutish debauchery.
[225]The king was playing at backgammen; a doubtful throw occurs: "Ah, here is Grammont, who'll decide for us; Grammont, come and decide. Sire, you have lost. What: you do not yet know."... "Ah, sire, if the throw had been merely doubtful, these gentlemen would not have failed to say you had won."
[226]Hamilton says of Grammont, "He sought out the unfortunate only to succor them."