1618. Dec. 23.
This comet is also remarkable as the only one, besides another in 1607, which was observable by the naked eye in the first half of the seventeenth century; whereas in other spaces of time of the same extent, as many as thirteen have been detected. The comet of 1607, which is the same with that seen in 1682, 1759, and 1835, and usually known as Halley’s comet, is not mentioned by any of our contemporary chroniclers as having been visible in Scottish skies.
Christmas was observed in Edinburgh at the command of the king, and two churches opened for service; but the attendance was scant. ‘The Great Kirk was not half filled, notwithstanding the provost, bailies, and council’s travels.... The dogs were playing in the flure of the Little Kirk, for rarity of people, and these were of the meaner sort.... Mr Patrick [Galloway] denounced judgments ... famine of the word, deafness, blindness, lameness, inability to come to the kirk to hear and see, to fall upon those who came not to his Christmas sermon.’—Cal.
A few weeks afterwards, Richard Lawson, James Cathkin, and John Mean, merchants, were obliged to appear before the Court of High Commission, accused of ‘not coming to the kirk on Christmas-day, for opening of their booth-doors, walking before them in time of sermon, dissuading others from going to the kirk, and reasoning against preaching on that day. They answered they did nothing of contempt; they reasoned to receive instruction, and to try what warrant others had. They were dismissed, with an admonition to be modest in their speeches and behaviour in time coming.’—Cal.
On Christmas-day 1621, there was service in the Old Kirk in St Giles, which the magistrates and state officials attended; but no other church was open, and Calderwood informs us that ‘one hundred and six booth-doors or thereby stood open’—a proof of the general disregard of the festival.
1618.
Patrick Anderson, doctor of physic, and who is usually said to have been physician to Charles I., published a tract on the ‘Cold spring of Kinghorn,’ its admirable properties for the cure of sundry diseases. He took care to draw a distinction between the simply natural efficacy of this well and ‘the superstitious mud-earth wells of Menteith, or our Lady Well of Strathern, and our Lady Well of Ruthven, with a number of others in this country, all tapestried about with old rags, as certain signs and sacraments, wherewith they arle the devil.’[391] He further assured the public that the ‘clear and delicate cauld water’ of this spring, being drunk in great quantity, ‘is never for all that felt in the belly.’ Modern physiologists, it may be remarked, admit the rapid absorption of saline waters by the stomach; and the drinking of nine tumblers before breakfast is at this day not uncommon at Airthry.
Dr Patrick Anderson was the inventor of a pill of aloetic character, which long had a great celebrity in Scotland, and is still in such repute that an agency-office for its sale may be found in both Edinburgh and London. He is the more entitled to some notice here, as our work has been somewhat indebted to a History of Scotland by him, to be found in manuscript in the Advocates’ Library.