Hopetoun’s high mountains fill.’
Jan. 23.
John Acheson, master-cunyer, and John Aslowan, burgess of Edinburgh, now completed an arrangement with Queen Mary, by virtue of which they had licence to work the lead-mines of Glengoner and Wanlock-head, and carry as much as twenty thousand stone-weight of the ore to Flanders, or other foreign countries, for which they bound themselves to deliver at the queen’s cunyie-house before the 1st of August next, forty-five ounces of fine silver for every thousand stone-weight of the ore, ‘extending in the hale to nine hundred unces of utter fine silver.’
Acheson and Aslowan were continuing to work these mines in August 1565, when the queen and her husband, King Henry, granted a licence to John, Earl of Athole, ‘to win forty thousand trone stane wecht, counting six score stanes for ilk hundred, of lead ore, and mair, gif the same may guidly be won, within the nether lead hole of Glengoner and Wanlock.’ The earl agreed to pay to their majesties in requital fifty ounces of fine silver for every thousand stone-weight of the ore.—P. C. R.
How the enterprise of Acheson and Aslowan ultimately succeeded does not appear. We suspect that, to some extent, it prospered, as the name Sloane, which seems the same as Aslowan, continued to flourish at Wanlock-head so late as the days of Burns.
A similar licence, on similar terms, was granted by the king and queen to James Carmichael, Master James Lindsay, and Andrew Stevenson, burgesses of Edinburgh, referring, however, to any part of the realm save ‘the mine and werk of Glengoner and Wanlock.’
1561-2. Feb. 8.
The Lord James, newly created Earl of Mar (subsequently of Moray), ‘was married-upon Annas Keith, daughter to William Earl Marischal, in the kirk of Sanct Geil in Edinburgh, with sic solemnity as the like has not been seen before; the hale nobility of this realm being there present, and convoyit them down to Holyroodhouse, where the banquet was made, and the queen’s grace thereat.’ The solemnity was of a kind which seems rather frisky for so zealous an upholder of the presbyterian cause. ‘At even, after great and divers balling, and casting of fire-balls, fire-spears, and running with horses,’ the queen created sundry knights. Next day, ‘at even, the queen’s grace and the remaining lords came up in ane honourable manner frae the palace of Holyroodhouse to the Cardinal’s lodging in the Blackfrier Wynd, whilk was preparit and hung maist honourably; and there her hieness suppit, and the rest with her. After supper, the honest young men in the town [the youths of the upper classes] came with ane convoy to her, and other some came with merschance, well accouterit in maskery, and thereafter departit to the said palace.’—D. O.