There is so much in the religious troubles of this period to attract attention, that history takes little note of anything else. Yet there was also a complete suite of chronic evils arising from the little advancement made in the arts and economy of life. The king appropriated an exclusive right to make salt, though only to hand it over to a courtier; the salt was consequently bad and dear. In some districts—as Galloway, the west, and the Highlands—to which the native article could not be carried, salt was wholly wanting, and the people used salt-water instead, ‘by which many of them died as of a plague; others being forced to buy at intolerable rates, as sixteen shillings the boll, though they formerly had it for four.’ Another statesman, married to a niece of Lauderdale, had a control over the importation of brandy, and managed to make that liquor to some extent supersede both native ‘strong waters’ and Spanish wines. A third, Sir John Nicolson, was allowed to put a tax on tobacco. He was grandson of Sir William Dick, and it was thought by this means to repay in some measure the public debt incurred to that famous merchant in the time of the Civil War. Moralists of a loyal type tried to make out that it was well to check the use of ‘an unnecessary and expensive drug;’ but ‘custom had made tobacco as necessary as nature had made meat and drink, and consequently this imposition was as grievous as if bread or ale had been burdened.’[223] Add to these vexing imposts a coin debased for the profit of the mint-master—a brother of Lauderdale—and it will be seen that the evils of Scotland during this reign were not wholly of a sentimental nature.
1670. Apr. 11.
1670.
Major Weir was strangled at a stake and burnt in Edinburgh, for a series of sexual offences of the most abominable kinds. His sister, Jean Weir, who was involved in her brother’s guilt, suffered next day the less severe penalty of hanging. These were old people, and hitherto of good character.[224] The major, indeed, was a religious professor of the highest style of sanctity, making unusual pretensions to strictness in piety, and noted for his power in prayer. He seems to have been a singular example of a paradox in human nature far from uncommon, and which may well make us all humble—an exalted strain of moral sentiment, refining overmuch, in coexistence with secret and inexpressibly degrading propensities. The poor man seems to have been at length unable any longer to endure the sense of secret guilt and hypocrisy; he sent to the public authorities to come and take him up. Unable to believe in the turpitude of one externally so well reputed, they sent physicians of his own religious party to see if he were not speaking from a disordered mind; and it was only when these reported him perfectly sane and collected, that he was taken into custody. It appeared that he had been addicted to his loathsome offences for a long course of years. The major was condemned upon his own confession, and thenceforth remained stupid and inaccessible to all that was said to him. He would not hear any minister pray to or for him, telling them, when they offered, that it was in vain—‘his condemnation was sealed; and since he was to go to the devil, he did not wish to anger him!‘—Law.
Jean Weir confessed, besides, to intercourse with evil spirits. The devil had supplied her with lint to her wheel, and when she lived at Dalkeith, she had had a familiar, ‘who used to spin extraordinary quantities of yarn for her in a shorter time than three or four women could have done the same.’ That this wretched old woman was under the influence of hallucinations, there can be no doubt. When she and her brother were apprehended, ‘she desired the guards to keep him from laying hold of a certain staff, which, she said, if he chanced to get into his hands, he would certainly drive them out of doors, notwithstanding all the resistance they could make. This magical staff was all of one piece of thornwood, with a crooked head; she said he received it of the devil, and did many wonderful things with it.... It was ordered by the judges to be burnt with his body.’[225]
July 29.
1670.
Lord Rutherford, whom we have seen so recently figuring in the romantic affair of the Bride of Baldoon, was now engaged in one of a very different kind—prosecuting a Captain Rutherford for the improbation of certain documents believed to have been forged by him, in order to establish claims on the estate of his lordship’s late brother, the second lord. The captain, after lying a long time in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, was sent for by the Lords of Session (July 27, 1671) to be interrogated about the case. As he was coming along under the care of Robert Hamilton, macer of the court, ‘he pretends there were some papers in Colliston’s chamber in Bess Wynd, which would be of great use to him if he took them with him; and therefore begged leave to fetch them, and paroled he should presently return. The macer trusting him simply, Rutherford makes his escape; the rumour whereof running up and down the town, Towie Barclay, who was but lately released from his confinement in Glasgow, comes in to the Lords in the Inner House, and proffered to find him out and fetch him again within an hour; which accordingly he did with a great deal of zeal, expressing that he could not abide cheatry by anything in the world; such persons know one another’s lurking-places so weel.’—Foun.