‘A play made by Robert Semple,’ was ‘played before the Lord Regent and diverse others of the nobility.’—Bir. There have been several conjectures as to this play and its author, with little satisfactory result. It was probably a very simple representation of some historical scene or transaction, such as we can imagine the life of the execrable Bothwell to have gratefully furnished before such a company. Semple appears to have been in such a rank of life as not to be above ordinary pecuniary rewards for his services, as on the 12th of February there is an entry in the treasurer’s books of £66, 13s. 4d. ‘to Robert Semple.’ He was a fruitful, but dull writer, being the author of The Regentis Trajedie, 1570; The Bishopis Lyfe and Testament, 1571; My Lord Methvenis Trajedie, 1572; and The Siege of the Castle of Edinburgh, 1573: besides various poems preserved in the Bannatyne Manuscript.
Feb. 24.
Seeing that ‘in the spring of the year all kinds of flesh decays and grows out of season, and that it is convenient for the commonweal that they be sparit during that time, to the end that they may be mair plenteous and better cheap the rest of the year,’ the Privy Council forbade the use of flesh of any kind during ‘Lentern.’ Fleshers, hostelers, cooks, and taverners, were forbidden to slay any animals for use during that season hereafter, under pain of confiscation of their movable goods.—P. C. R. This order was kept up in the same terms for many years, a forced economy preserving a rule formerly based on a religious principle.
Mar. 4.
The Regent granted a licence to Cornelius De Vois, a Dutchman, for nineteen years, to search for gold and silver in any part of Scotland, ‘break the ground, mak sinks and pots therein, and to put labourers thereto,’ as he might think expedient, with assurance of full protection from the government, paying in requital for every hundred ounces of gold or silver which could be purified by washing, eight ounces, and for every hundred of the same which required the more expensive process of a purification by fire, four ounces.—P. C. R.
1567-8.
Stephen Atkinson, who speculated in the gold-mines of Scotland a generation later, gives us[53] some account of Cornelius De Vois, whom he calls a German lapidary, and who, he says, had come to Scotland with recommendations from Queen Elizabeth. According to this somewhat foolish writer, ‘Cornelius went to view the said mountains in Clydesdale and Nydesdale, upon which mountains he got a small taste of small gold. This was a whetstone to sharpen his knife upon; and this natural gold tasted so sweet as the honey-comb in his mouth. And then he consulted with his friends at Edinburgh, and by his persuasions provoked them to adventure with him, shewing them at first the natural gold, which he called the temptable gold, or alluring gold. It was in sterns, and some like unto birds’ eyes and eggs: he compared it unto a woman’s eye, which entiseth her lover into her bosom.’ Cornelius was not inferior to his class in speculative extravagance. He found in his golden dreams a solution for the question regarding the poor. He saw Scotland and England ‘both oppressed with poor people which beg from door to door for want of employment, and no man looketh to it.’ But all these people were to find good and profitable employment if his projects were adopted. We are not accustomed to consider our countrymen inferior in energy and enterprise to the Germans. Yet Cornelius stated, that if he had been able to shew in his own country such indications of mineral wealth as he had found in Scotland, ‘then the whole country would confederate, and not rest till young and old that were able be set to work thereat, and to discover this treasure-house from whence this gold descended; and the people, from ten years old till ten times ten years old, should work thereat: no charges whatsoever should be spared, till mountains and mosses were turned into valleys and dales, but this treasure-house should be discovered.’
It appears that Cornelius so far prevailed on the Scots to ‘confederate,’ that they raised a stock of £5000 Scots, equal to about £416 sterling, and worked the mines under royal privileges. According to Atkinson, this adventurer ‘had sixscore men at work in valleys and dales. He employed both lads and lasses, idle men and women, which before went a-begging. He profited by their work, and they lived well and contented.’ They sought for the valuable metal by washing the detritus in the bottoms of the valleys, receiving from their employer a mark sterling for every ounce they realised. So long after as 1619, one John Gibson survived in the village of Crawford to relate how he had gathered gold in these valleys in pieces ‘like birds’ eyes and birds’ eggs,’ the best being found, he said, in Glengaber Water, in Ettrick, which he sold for 6s. 8d. sterling per ounce to the Earl of Morton. Cornelius, within the space of thirty days, sent to the cunyie-house in Edinburgh as much as eight pound-weight of gold, a quantity which would now bring £450 sterling.