This incident has been made the subject of a popular ballad.
Aug. (?)
1592.
About this time, Bothwell was understood to be retired to his great estate in Liddesdale, and to be there engaged in a kind of work which is usually the privilege of royalty. ‘His majesty was informed that Bothwell had ane that cunyied false cunyie in the house of Row in Liddesdale.... His majesty wrate to the Lord Ochiltree, desiring him to go to the said house, and to bring sic men to his majesty as he fand there, together with all sic instruments as could be there had for cunying, with power to raise the haill country if need were.... The Lord Ochiltree gathered to the number of seven or aucht score horse, all in armour, and rade first to Jedburgh, where they stayit that night, and refreshit himself and his company; and Ferniehirst, his brother-in-law, sent with him three score horse upon the morn at night. [They] rade to the house of the Row at Liddesdale, and there took the twa men out of the house beside the tower, and thereafter strake up the doors of the tower, and brought the irons that prentit the cunyie, with all the instruments, together with ane number of thirty-shilling [half-crown] pieces, whilk were cunyied there, and delivered the same to his majesty in the Abbey. The false cunyier was gone in England, and was not to be had; to seek metal to cunyie more, as was reported.’—Moy.
On the high ground which skirts the Carse of Gowrie to the north, near the village of Rait, once stood a fortified house called Gaskenhall. Only a bit of broken garden-wall and a few trees now indicate the site. Here lived, at the end of the sixteenth century, Robert Bruce of Clackmannan, chief of the family which had given Scotland a king three centuries before, and described in the grave pages of Douglas’s Baronage as a most respectable person, ‘in high favour with King James VI., who conferred on him the honour of knighthood at the baptism of his son Prince Henry.’ Let us see, from the actual doings of this knight, what sort of person he was.
In August 1592, some goods belonging to Bruce, having to pass through Perth, were subjected to payment of custom by the magistrates, who, on payment being refused, seized them. Clackmannan sent a letter of remonstrance, threatening, if his goods were not restored, to make the Perth citizens suffer for it when they chanced to pass his house. This not being attended to, he attacked a party of citizens on their way from Dundee, and despoiled them of their weapons; for in those days a party of quiet burghers passing through twenty miles of even this central and comparatively civilised district of Scotland, could not go unarmed. The only reply the laird got to a message offering the weapons back in exchange for his goods, was a visit from a company of Perth citizens, who destroyed a good deal of his growing corn with their horses. He came out to remonstrate, and an altercation ensuing, he was provoked to strike one of the aggressors with a pistol. He then seized the two chief men of the party, William Inglis and John Balsillie, and took them as prisoners into his house of Gaskenhall.
That same night, a large party of the citizens of Perth, headed by the bailies and council, came out in arms to Gaskenhall, where, upon the morrow, before daylight, they sounded their drum, besieged the laird in his house, and discharged hagbuts and pistols in at the doors and windows, whereby a servant of his was wounded. At last setting fire to the house, they entered at the roof, set free their friends, and seized the laird, whom they ‘transportit away with them ane certain space, barefooted and barelegged, not suffering him to put on his awn claithes.’ They likewise ‘spulyit and took away with them his haill silver-wark, bedding, claithes, and all the plenishing of his house.’—P. C. R.
1592.
This affair came before the king, who seems to have taken no step in the case beyond declaring both parties in the wrong, and ordering the laird and the magistrates into divers prisons, there to lie at their own respective costs, until they should be subjected to an assize. A Perth chronicler states: ‘They were thereafter agreed upon the town’s large charges.’ The agreement, however, does not seem to have been effectual, for, on the 28th of April 1593, as John Wilson and John Niven, with other citizens of Perth, were passing the Coble of Rhynd on their way to the market of St Andrews, they were beset by the laird, accompanied with nine horsemen and footmen, all well armed. ‘The said John Wilson and John Niven, being baith hurt and wounded in divers parts of their bodies, to the effusion of their blood in great quantity, the said laird and his accomplices maist shamefully tirrit them baith naked, and in maist barbarous and shameful manner scourgit them with horse bridles through the town of Abernethy, as gif they had been thieves or heinous malefactors; [then] left the said John Niven lying there for dead, and took the said John Wilson, naked, as captive and prisoner away with them.’
On the complaint of the magistrates of Perth, among whom was the afterwards famous Earl of Gowrie, acting as provost, the Laird of Clackmannan was charged to appear before the king, on pain of being denounced as a rebel in case of failure.