For several subsequent months, Pringle and his associates had lain in wait at divers times to kill Gavin, so that he had been prevented from attending kirk or market, or going about the business of his farm. At length, on the 2d of December, as he was walking peaceably on the street, they attacked him again, armed as before. ‘Being informit that he had come furth of his house, they first bostit and menaced him aff the hie street, and he retiring himself hame again in quietness, they all followit and pursewit him with drawn swords,’ when one of the party, Alexander Dalmahoy, ‘by his sword, with ane great stane of aucht pund wecht in his hand, hurt the said Gavin his thie-bone.’ The assailants ‘hurt and woundit William Murray of Romanno and divers other gentlemen redders, and in end fiercely pursewit Gavin and housit him within the dwelling-house of the close yetts of William Elliot, and cryit for jeists and fore-hammers, and had not failit to have strucken up the doors and yetts thereof, and to have slain the said Gavin within the same, were not timous relief come at hand.’ The active parties in this wickedness were denounced rebels by the Council.—P. C. R.
Oct.
William Turnbull of Airdrie lived in Edinburgh, having in his family a daughter, Elizabeth, eleven years of age. He admitted to his house, and often civilly entertained Robert Napier son of William of Wrightshouses—a gentleman who has just been under our notice. On the 4th of October, Turnbull complained to the Privy Council that, on the 29th of September, Robert Napier had by craft and violence taken away his daughter, under cloud of night, and now keeps her in some obscure place, refusing to render and deliver her up to her father. The Council caused Robert Napier to be denounced as a rebel for this fact.
1608.
The abduction of women, of which some examples were formerly given, was still an offence of frequent occurrence. On the subsequent 8th of December, there is a complaint before the Council from Margaret Stewart, widow, that as she was walking home from her booth to her dwelling-house in Edinburgh, between seven and eight o’clock in the evening of the 5th of the same month, accompanied by her orphan grandchild, Katherine Weir, fourteen years of age, a young citizen, named William Geddes, had beset her with six men armed like himself with swords, gauntlets, steel bonnets, and plait-sleeves, and violently took the child from her, ‘without pity of her manifold exclamations and crying.’ Geddes was likewise denounced rebel.
Nov. 8.
‘There was an earthquake at nine hours at night, sensible enough at St Andrews, Cupar, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, but more sensible at Dumbarton; for there the people were so affrayed, that they ran to the kirk, together with their minister, to cry to God, for they looked presently for destruction. It was thought the extraordinar drouth in the summer and winter before was the cause of it.’—Cal.
At Perth, this earthquake shook the east end of the Tolbooth, insomuch that ‘many stones fell aff it.’—Chron. Perth.