A few years earlier (June 1612), Mistress Isobel Montgomery, daughter of the deceased Robert Master of Eglintoun, was represented as being kept in durance by Hugh Lord Loudon and Mistress Margaret Montgomery, sister of Isobel, while they endeavoured to compel her to make ‘such disposition to the lands, guids, and geir appertaining to her, as to them sall seem expedient.’ The accused parties, being summoned to appear and bring Isobel before the lords, answered that the complainer was too sickly to travel; to test which allegation, a medical man was despatched to her residence, charged with the duty of reporting on her condition before a certain day.—P. C. R.
Dec. 15.
The Privy Council recommended to the charity of the public the case of Andrew Robertson, John Cowie, John Dauling, James Pratt, and some others, formerly mariners of Leith, who, being lately on the coast of Barbary, had fought a bloody skirmish with the merciless Turks, by whom they were led into captivity, and presented for sale in Algiers. James Fraser, a resident in Algiers, had been moved with pity to redeem these poor men by an advance of £140, which they undertook to repay at a certain time. They, however, being in such poverty as to be unable to reimburse Fraser, were now throwing themselves upon the compassion of the public. On the recommendation of the Privy Council, there were collections made for them in churches.
1615.
Captivity among the Moors of Northern Africa was no uncommon fate with Scottish mariners of that age. In 1625, there was a church collection ‘for the relief of some folks of Queensferry and Kinghorn, deteinit under slavery by the Turks at Sallee.’ In 1618, John Harrison sent to King James an account of his unsuccessful attempts to obtain the liberation of certain British subjects detained under Muley Sidan, Emperor of Morocco. Muley seems to have been inaccessible to all pleadings but those which came in the form of money.[360] A collection was made, August 1621, in all the parish churches in Scotland, and amounted to a large sum, ‘for the relief of the Scots prisoners in Tunis and Algiers.’—Bal.
1616. Jan. 27.
‘About five afternoon, there was a great fiery star, in the form of a dragon with a tail, running through the firmament, and in the running giving great light and spouting fire, which continued a pretty space before it vanished. Others describe it thus: that the night being fair and frosty, there arose a great fiery light in the south-west, after the setting of the sun, and ran to the north-east, having at the end thereof, as it were, the shape of the moon; and when it vanished out of sight, there were two great cracks heard, as if they had been thunder-claps. There followed a great calmness and frost for eight or ten days; but the month following was bitter and stormy weather.’—Cal.
Feb. 20.