We hear at this time of a number of ‘louss and idle men in the Hielands,’ who had gathered themselves together in companies, and were employed in ‘carrying away spraichs of cattle and other bestial to the hills, and committing many other insolencies:’ that is to say, the more active spirits on the Highland border were taking advantage of this interval of regular authority to help themselves from the pastures of their Lowland neighbours. The newly reassembled Committee of Estates, having no force at their command for the repression of these disorders, were glad to revert to the old practice of holding the chiefs of clans ‘bund for the peaceable behaviour of their clan, kinsmen, followers, and tenants.’ They therefore (August 29) sent letters to the Earls of Seaforth, Tullibardine, Athole, Airlie, and Aboyne, the Lords Reay and Lovat, the Lairds of Ballingowan, Foulis, Assynt, Glengarry, M‘Leod, Locheil, Macintosh, Grant, Glenurchy, Auchinbreck, Luss, Macfarlane, Buchanan, and Edzell, Sir James Macdonald, the Captain of Clanranald, Callum Macgregor Tutor of Macgregor, and others, calling on them to take special notice of their dependents, ‘and of all others travelling through your bounds whom you may stop or let,’ that they carry themselves inoffensively; certifying these heads of clans, that they will be called to account for any depredations or insolencies hereafter committed.
1660.
Having immediately after heard of an assault committed by one Robert Oig Buchanan and a companion upon Robert M‘Capie, a tenant of Lord Napier (they had attacked him in his own house at night, wounded him, and cut off his ear, after which they drove off his cattle), the Committee ordered the Laird of Buchanan to forward the guilty persons to them before a certain day, in order that they might be brought to punishment. The two culprits failed to appear on summons, and their chief was then commissioned to seize them wherever they could be found.
At the beginning of October, the chancellor received a letter from the Laird of Grant, stating that he had apprehended ‘ane noted robber named Halkit Stirk.’[186] The Committee of Estates immediately sent an answer heartily thanking the laird ‘for doing so good a work for his majesty and the peace of the kingdom;’ further informing him that they would protect and maintain him against all injury that might be done to him or his followers on that account. They soon after gave the laird a commission to raise a band of forty men for the taking of Highland sorners and robbers.
The Halkit Stirk was subsequently ordered to be handed by the Laird of Grant to the magistrates of Aberdeen; by them to the magistrates of Montrose; from these again to those of Dundee; thence to Cupar and Burntisland in succession, under a suitable guard; to rest in the Tolbooth of Burntisland till further orders.
At the same time, the Highland bandit, John Dhu Ger, whom we have seen killed three times about twenty years before, is ordered to be brought under a sufficient guard from Stirling to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh.—R. C. E.
Sep. 13.
The Letter-office at Edinburgh was in 1649 under the care of Mr John Mean, a merchant noted throughout the reign of Charles I. for his zeal as a Presbyterian; which, however, had not forbidden him to be also a strenuous loyalist.[187] Latterly, the same function had been bestowed upon Messrs Mew and Barringer, who, from their names, may be supposed to have been Englishmen, friends of the Cromwellian rule. At the date now noted, the king bestowed the office upon Robert Mean, superseding the two above-mentioned officials, and the Committee of Estates accordingly inducted him, ‘requiring the postmaster of Haddington to direct the packets constantly from time to time to the said Robert Mean, and cause the same to be delivered to him at Edinburgh.’—R. C. E.
1660.