1591. Oct. 28.
On this day are entered in the records of the Privy Council two complaints which illustrate in a remarkable manner the state of society at that time. First, James Lord Ogilvie of Airly, ancestor of the Earls of Airly, complains that, while he was living quietly in the protection of the law, and dreading harm from no man, the Earl of Argyle, without any provocation from him, hounded out a set of broken Highlandmen to the number of about five hundred, to attack him, and spoil his lands. He had ‘retired in sober and quiet manner, to dwell and make his residence in Glen Isla,’ when, on the 21st of August, they entered the district under silence of night, ‘with sic force and violence, that the said lord, lying far from his friends, was not able to resist them, but with great difficulty and short advertisement, he, his wife and bairns, escaped.’ The invading party are described as having slain all the people they could lay their hands on, eighteen or twenty in number; besides, they ‘spulyit and away-took ane grit number of nolt, sheep, and plenishing [furniture], to the utter wreck and undoing of the haill poor inhabitants of the country.’ Having at the command of the king retired, they still hovered on the neighbouring hills, and some weeks after made a new attack upon Glen Isla, as well as Glen Clova, slaying three or four persons, and taking away much spoil; ‘sae that the poor men dwelling in Glen Clova, Glen Isla, and other parts adjacent to the Month, wha are not able to make resistance, are sae oppressed by the broken men and sorners hounded out by the Earl of Argyle and his friends, and maintainit and reset by them, that neither by his majesty’s protection, nor assurance of the party, can their lives and gudes be in surety.’
This seems very mysterious, till we read the second entry, which is a complaint that, on the 16th of August bypast (five days previous to the above incident), Leighton of Usan and sundry of the Ogilvies, to the number of about threescore persons, had, at the instigation of Lord Ogilvie, gone with jacks, spears, harquebuses, and other weapons, and attacked Robert Campbell in Millhorn, William of Soutarhouse, Thomas Campbell of Keithock, and John Campbell of Muirton, whom they had mercilessly slain. How this outrage had been provoked, does not appear; but there can be no doubt that the invasion of Lord Ogilvie’s privacy in Glen Isla was a consequence of this earlier and similar incident.
The frightful cutaneous disease of leprosy prevailed in Scotland, as in most other European countries, from an early age. There was a hospital for the reception of its victims at Kingcase, near Ayr, believed to have existed from the reign of King Robert I. At Glasgow, such an establishment was planted by the Lady of Lochow, daughter of Robert, Duke of Albany, and in 1584 it had six inmates. In a solitary spot between Old and New Aberdeen, there was a leper-house, but rather poorly endowed, for in this year King James is found granting the inmates a right to one peat out of every load of peats sold in the town, in consideration that their rents were ‘unable to sustene them in meat and fire, wherethrough they live very miserably.’[184] There were a few other such refuges of hopeless misery throughout the land.
1591. Nov. 21.
In a sheltered spot called Greenside, near the northern skirts of the Calton Hill, a small monastery of Carmelite Friars had had a brief existence before the Reformation. On its desolate site, a merchant-burgess of Edinburgh, John Robertson by name (whom we soon after find in the office of bailie), now erected a small house for the reception of lepers, led thereto, it is stated, by a sense of gratitude to God for a signal deliverance vouchsafed to him. The town-council concurred in his object, and undertook the oversight and direction of the establishment. A committee of their number, in conjunction with a minister of the city, and John Robertson himself, drew up rules for the house, and arranged the means of its support. Five men afflicted with leprosy, and two women, the wives of two of these men, but not themselves lepers, were admitted, each leper being allowed four shillings Scots money—equal to 4d. sterling—weekly, and also having a privilege of begging under certain restrictions. They were on no account to go about for alms, or to stir from the house at all, or to admit any visitor, under penalty of death, and, to shew how earnest was the spirit of this rule, a gibbet was erected at the gable of the hospital, ready for the instant execution of any transgressor. From sunset to sunrise, their door was to be kept fast locked, under the same penalty. Each patient was to take his turn of sitting at the door ‘with ane clapper,’ to attract the attention of people passing between Edinburgh and Leith, and to beg from them for the general benefit. The rest were meanwhile to stay within doors. The two wives, Isobel Barear and Jonet Gatt, were to be allowed to go to market, to purchase vivres for the lepers and for themselves, but not to call anywhere else in town, under penalty of death. A person was appointed to read prayers to the inmates each Sunday, and a weekly oversight was confided to the Masters of Trinity Hospital. It serves curiously to realise the whole arrangement to our minds, that this hospital still exists, though the leper-house seems to have been extinct since the middle of the seventeenth century.[185]
1591. Dec. 10.
We have under this date a curious specimen of the administration of justice under King James. Letters are raised at the instance of ‘Helen Henderson, spouse of William Murray elder of Romanno; Margaret Tweedie, spouse of John Murray younger of Romanno; and —— Nisbet, spouse of William Murray, third Laird of Romanno, with the puir tenants, cotters, and labourers of the ground of the lands of Romanno, lying within the sheriffdom of Peebles:’ stating that these three lairds, with sundry other persons, had been denounced at the horn for their concern in the slaughter of John Hamilton of Coitquott[186] and his son; and, on the complaint of the widow and children of the said John, with a false report that the Lairds of Romanno were fortifying their tower of Romanno, there to defend themselves against the powers of the law, ‘his majesty appointit the same to be keepit by four persons, allowing them monthly the sum of twenty merks ... to be payit out of the living of Romanno,’ and caused letters to be directed to the complainers, charging them with this payment. The three ladies appeal against this order, on the ground that they had not been previously heard in their own cause. Had they been so, they could have shewn reasons to the contrary—‘the house of Romanno was never keepit agains his hieness, but the same, as alsae the country, is left by the said rebels, and that immediately after committing the fact (gif in their awn defence and by procurement of other persons God knaws and time will try), and therefore needit nae sic keepers, it being bot ane auld and ruinous touir, not meet for nae man to keep or hazard his life into, and, besides this, the said Helen Henderson, Margaret Tweedie, and —— Nisbet, are infeft in conjunct fee and liferent in the haill lands of Romanno, whilk is bot a puir ten-pund land, in effect barren of the self, and subject to the incursion and stouthreif of the broken men and thieves of baith the borders, and, as is mair nor notour, will not sustene the said complenars nor their families, they having nae manner of thing else whereupon to live.’ The ladies further pointed out the hardship of punishing the innocent for the guilty, and pleaded how they had already made a great composition with the representatives of the slaughtered persons. Nevertheless, on parties being heard before the Council, the letters complained of were found to be legal and proper, and so the garrison imposed on the old tower would remain for the meantime a burden on the estate.—P. C. R.