In the parliament now sitting, some noticeable acts were passed. One decreed that ‘nae person carry forth of this realm ony gold or silver, under pain of escheating of the same and of all the remainder of their moveable guids,’ merchants going abroad to carry only as much as they strictly require for their travelling expenses. Another enacted, that ‘nae person take upon hand to use ony manner of witchcrafts, sorcery, or necromancy, nor give themselves furth to have ony sic craft or knowledge thereof, therethrough abusing the people;’ also, that ‘nae person seek ony help, response, or consultation at ony sic users or abusers of witchcrafts ... under the pain of death.’ This is the statute under which all the subsequent witch-trials took place.
A third statute, reciting that much coal is now carried forth of the realm, often as mere ballast for ships, causing ‘a maist exorbitant dearth and scantiness of fuel,’ forbade further exportations of the article, under strong penalties. In those early days, coal was only dug in places where it cropped out or could be got with little trouble. As yet, no special mechanical arrangements for excavating it had come into use. The comparatively small quantity of the mineral used in Edinburgh—for there peat was the reigning fuel—was brought from Tranent, nine miles off, in creels on horses’ backs. The above enactment probably referred to some partial and temporary failure of the small supply then required. It never occurred to our simple ancestors, that to export a native produce, such as coal, and get money in return, was tending to enrich the country, and in all circumstances deserved encouragement instead of prohibition.
July 2.
Henry Sinclair, Bishop of Ross and President of the Court of Session—‘a cunning and lettered man as there was,’ remarkable for his ‘singular intelligence in theology and likewise in the laws,’ according to the Diurnal of Occurrents—‘ane perfect hypocrite and conjured enemy to Christ Jesus,’ according to John Knox—left Scotland for Paris, ‘to get remede of ane confirmed stane.’ This would imply that there was not then in our island a person qualified to perform the operation of lithotomy. The reverend father was lithotomised by Laurentius, a celebrated surgeon; but, fevering after the operation, he died in January 1564-5: in the words of Knox, ‘God strake him according to his deservings.’
1563. Sep. 13.
At the same time there were not wanting amongst us pretenders to the surgical art. In this very month, Robert Henderson attracted the favourable notice of the town-council of Edinburgh by performing sundry wonderful cures—namely, healing a man whose hands had been cut off, a man and woman who had been run through the body with swords by the French, and a woman understood to have been suffocated, and who had lain two days in her grave. The council ordered Robert twenty merks as a reward.[23] Two gentlemen became sureties in Edinburgh for Marion Carruthers, co-heiress of Mousewald, in Dumfriesshire, ‘that she shall not marry ane chief traitor nor other broken man of the country,’ under pain of £1000 (Pit)—a large sum to stake upon a young lady’s will.
This was a year of dearth throughout Scotland; wheat being six pounds the boll, oats fifty shillings, a draught-ox twenty merks, and a wedder thirty shillings. ‘All things apperteining to the sustentation of man in triple and more exceeded their accustomed prices.’ Knox, who notes these facts, remarks that the famine was most severe in the north, where the queen had travelled in the preceding autumn: many died there. ‘So did God, according to the threatening of his law, punish the idolatry of our wicked queen, and our ingratitude, that suffered her to defile the land with that abomination again [the mass].... The riotous feasting used in court and country wherever that wicked woman repaired, provoked God to strike the staff of breid, and to give his malediction upon the fruits of the earth.’
It was of the frame of the reformer’s ideas, that a judgment would be sent upon the poor for the errors of their ruler, and that this judgment would be intensified in a particular district merely because the ruler had given it her personal presence. He failed to observe, or threw aside, the fact, that the same famine prevailed in England, where a queen entirely agreeable to him and his friends was now reigning, and certainly indulging in not a few banquetings. Theories of this kind sometimes prove to be two-edged swords, that will strike either way. It might have been replied to him: ‘Accepting your theory that nations, besides suffering from the simple misgovernment of their rulers, are punished for their personal offences, what shall we say of the Protestant Elizabeth, whose people now suffer not merely under famine, as the Scotch are doing, but are visited by a dreadful pestilence besides,[24] from which Scotland is exempt?’