1617.
‘They christen without the cross, marry without a ring, receive the sacrament without reverence, die without repentance, and bury without divine service. They keep no holidays, nor acknowledge any saint but St Andrew, who, they say, got that honour by presenting Christ with ane oaten cake after his forty days’ fast.... They hold their noses if you speak of bear-bating, and stop their ears if you speak of play.... I am verily persuaded if [the] angels at the last day should come down in their white garments, they would run away, and cry: “The children of the chapel are come again to torment us!”... For the graven images in the new beautified chapel, they threaten to pull them down after his departure, and make of them a burnt-offering to appease the indignation they imagine is conceived against them in the breast of the Almighty for suffering such idolatry to enter their kingdom. The organs, I think, will find mercy, because they say there is some affinity between them and their bagpipes.[372] The shipper that brought the singing-men with their papistical vestments, complains that he hath been much troubled with a strange singing in his head ever since they came aboard his ship; for remedy whereof the pastor of the parish hath persuaded him to sell the profaned vessel, and distribute the money among the faithful brethren.’
Our scribbler speaks of the women as huge-boned monsters, whereof the upper class are ‘kept like lions in iron grates. The merchants’ wives are likewise prisoners, but not in such strongholds. They have wooden cages [meaning the timber galleries in front of the houses], through which, peeping to catch the air, we are almost choked with the sight of them.... To draw you down from the citizen’s wife to the country gentlewomen, and so convey you to the common dames, were to bring you from Newgate to Bridewell.’
In an answer to this satire, a strong defence is entered on the subject of victuals and other materials of conviviality. ‘Except meat should have rained down from heaven, it could not be imagined more cheap, more plentiful. Ane of those twelve pies that were sold for a penny, might have stopped your mouth for his quarrel.... What else would you have had? You know there were some subjects that kept open butteries and cellars from morning till night.... The man is angry that all the taps were not pulled out, that every guid fellow might swim in sack and claret.’[373]
June 30.
July 10.
The king commenced a second excursion in his native dominions, by Stirling, Perth, St Andrews—thence back to Stirling, where he received a deputation of Edinburgh professors, who disputed before him in the Chapel-royal of the Castle, in the presence of the English and Scottish nobility and many learned men. Here the British Solomon was quite in his element. The first question discussed ‘by the learned doctors was, “Ought sheriffs and other inferior magistrates to be hereditary?”—a question at this time agitated in the national senate, where it was the earnest wish of King James that it should be decided in the negative. As might have been expected, the oppugners of the question soon got the advantage; for the weighty arguments of royalty were thrown into that scale.
‘The king was highly delighted with their success; and turning to the Marquis of Hamilton (hereditary sheriff of Clydesdale), who stood behind his chair, said: “James, you see your cause is lost, and all that can be said for it is clearly answered and refuted.”
1617.