And crown thy sons with everlasting bays.
My beams that reach thee shall employ their powers
To ripen souls of men, not fruits and flowers,
Let warmer climes my fading favours boast,
Poets and stars shine brightest in the frost.’
Sydserf was now conducting a theatre in the Canongate, depending in all probability upon the yet unfaded spirit of cavalierism evoked at the Restoration, for a slender support which it was not in the nature of Scotland to give at ordinary times to such an establishment. It appeared that Mungo Murray broke into Sydserf’s theatre in time of rehearsal, and attacked him with his drawn sword, but was overpowered before he could inflict any hurt. He was found guilty, and sentenced to ask Sydserf’s pardon, and abstain from molesting him in future under pain of banishment from the city.[218]
June 16.
For several years after the Restoration, a very frequent entry in the record of the Privy Council is an application from a Scotsman of good family, resident abroad for a borbrieff [birth-letter], or certificate of his lineage and family connections, to be drawn up and transmitted to him, that he might be enabled to appear in a proper light before the strangers amongst whom he lived. At the date noted, there is an application of this kind from a lady! ‘Maria Margaret Urrie, eldest lawful daughter of the deceased Sir John Urrie of that Ilk, being abroad in a strange country, where her birth and pedigree is not known, to the prejudice of her fortune in those parts,’ had ‘purchased a certificate of her pedigree under the hands of the Earl of Panmure and several other noblemen and gentlemen of quality;’ and she now petitioned for ‘a borbrieff in her favours, conform to the said certificate.’—P. C. R. The requisite warrant for the Chancery was at once granted. We soon after (29th September 1670) hear of an application of the same nature from a lady of greater note, Elizabeth, Countess of Grammont, who states that she had obtained the needful ‘certificate of her descent and pedigree under the hand of the Earl of Lauderdale, his majesty’s High Commissioner; the Lord Duke of Hamilton, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls Marischal, Argyle, and divers other noblemen.’ She was a descendant of the Abercorn family. Her brother’s Memoirs of her husband, have made the world generally acquainted with this elegant woman.
1669.