Nov. 20.
1603.
It was found at Aberdeen, that, great numbers of people resorting thither at Whitsunday and Martinmas ‘for their leesome affairs, some to receive in their debts, others to uplift and give out siller on profit,’ quarrels were extremely apt to fall out amongst them, on account of old ‘feids standing unreconcilit.’ Hence, it sometimes happened that this commercial city became a scene of wide-spread tumult, the strangers dividing into hostile parties and fighting with each other, in defiance of all that the magistrates could do to make them desist. Nay, ‘the magistrates and neighbours of this burgh, standing betwixt the said parties, for redding and staunching the said tumults, has been divers and sundry times in great danger and peril, and some of them hurt and woundit, not being of power to resist the said parties.’
For these reasons, the town-council, at this date, passed a strict act for the preservation of the peace, but probably with very little immediate effect.
1604. Apr.
‘Ane servant woman of Mr John Hall, minister, died in his awn house, alleged to be the pest, as God forbid: yet he and his house was clengit.’—Bir. The fear of pestilence, here so strikingly expressed, was too well founded. The disease spread in May, and increased in the heat of July. The people fled from the town, and we find that one William Kerr, a blacksmith, thought it a good opportunity for helping himself to property not his own, and was hanged in December for having opened the doors of several of the empty houses.—Bir.
June 15.