Captain Rutherford was kept in prison seven years, while justice hesitated about his deservings; but at length, on Sir George Mackenzie coming in as king’s advocate, with resolutions to be more vigorous, the culprit was tried along with William Rutherford, messenger, for the crime of forging writs, and both were soon after (November 28, 1678) executed in the Grassmarket.
Aug.
1670.
The Privy Council was pretty fully occupied at this time in summoning and fining individuals who had been present at unauthorised religious meetings. For example, ‘Robert Burnes, merchant in Glasgow,’ expiated by a fine of 300 merks his having been at a conventicle lately held at Kirkintilloch. Four persons, described as merchants, were fined each in £100 Scots for being at such a meeting in Hilderston House, Linlithgowshire. A fifth, who had not only been there, but had a child baptised on the occasion, suffered to double the amount. A great number were brought into trouble by having been present at a famous conventicle held a short time before at the Hill of Beith, near Dunfermline. Adam Stobie and eight other men, who had been at both that conventicle and another at Livingseat, and who refused to take an oath regarding them, were ‘ordained to be carried to the plantations in America, and discharged to return under pain of death.’ In thus so harshly thwarting the extreme Presbyterians in their predilections as to clergymen and meetings for worship, the government must have calculated on a certain support from the reactionary feeling engendered by the recent twenty-two years of troubles—that feeling under which we may presume they themselves acted. But a constant repetition of such proceedings against members of the community who were only exercising a natural privilege, and meaning no harm to their fellow-creatures, could not fail to create very bitter feelings, and gradually muster elements for the destruction of the existing régime. There was at the same time an effort to deal what was doubtless intended to be equal justice towards the various dissenters whom the Presbyterians themselves were accustomed to persecute when in the possession of power. There were even now Quakers in the tolbooths of Aberdeen, Inverury, Montrose, Edinburgh, and other towns, charged with no other offence than that of holding meetings for their own kind of devotion. Professors of the Catholic faith were also from time to time assailed in ways which, one would think, must have been sufficiently annoying to them, although, there is reason to believe, not quite up to that point of severity which would have been satisfactory to the people on the opposite extreme.
On a slight eminence beside the pastoral Doveran in Banffshire, is a little old-fashioned manor-house, surrounded as usual by a few trees, and bearing the descriptive name of Kinnairdie. Rothiemay and Frendraught—names of painful memory—are in the neighbourhood. Kinnairdie was occupied by the Crichtons of Frendraught, zealous, though unobtrusive Catholics. Word came to the Council as it sat in Edinburgh (August 1670), that in this retired villa ‘there is usual resort publicly to mass every Lord’s day, and four families of the heritors in the parish do, upon the ringing of a bell, go to a room in the said house where there is ane altar erected, and priests do officiate.’ The sheriff of the county was immediately ordered to go and inquire into the matter, to apprehend the priest if he could, and also ‘seize upon any vestments or other popish ornaments made use of in their superstitious worship.’
1670.
The sheriff soon after reported that he had seized a Mr Patrick Primrose, who was believed to have officiated as priest at Kinnairdie. He was ordered by the Council to keep this person strictly secured till he should be subjected to trial. By and by, however, ‘being informed that Mr Patrick Primrose, prisoner in the Tolbooth of Banff, doeth belong to the queen’s majesty as one of her servants,’ the Council ordered his liberation, ‘he always obliging himself to depart furth of the kingdom, and shall never return thereto under the pain of death.’ This was a comparatively merciful dealing; but poor Primrose was not destined to be benefited by it. Whether the Tolbooth of Banff had not agreed with his health, or some natural disease fell upon him, so it was that he soon after died.
On the 3d of August 1671, severe proceedings were taken with several north-country Catholic families, Gordon of Carmellie, Gordon of Littlemill, and Grant of Ballindalloch, for harbouring papist priests, and being present at mass; also against four priests named Leith, Ross, Forsyth, and Burnet, for saying mass, baptising children, and performing the ceremony of marriage, contrary to divers acts of parliament. On the 1st of February 1672, the Council, understanding that the Countess of Traquair, ‘being popishly affected, doth keep in family with her her son, the Earl of Traquair, and endeavours to educate him in the popish profession, and for that effect doth keep ... Irving, a priest, to instruct him therein,’ ordered messengers-at-arms to apprehend her ladyship, or if she could not be laid hold of, to summon her at the Cross of Edinburgh, that she and her son might come before them, in order that they might arrange for his ‘education and breeding conform to act of parliament.’
Accordingly, eight days after, the countess having obeyed the citation, the Council ordained that before the 22d instant she should ‘send her son to Glasgow, and cause deliver him to Mr Gilbert Burnet, Professor of Divinity, to be educat and bred at the College of Glasgow, in the company of the said Mr Gilbert, at the sight, and by the advice, of the Archbishop of Glasgow,’ no servants to be allowed to attend the young earl ‘bot such as are of the reformed religion.’ On the same day, Wauchope, younger of Niddry, and the Lord Semple, were ordered to bring and deliver up their children, ‘in order to their education with some Protestant friend,’ Lord Semple being at the same time called to account ‘for sending his eldest son abroad contrair to the Council’s order.’ Wauchope was on this occasion ordered to give up his eldest son into the charge of his own father, the elder laird, and the parents were forbidden to have for the future any intercourse with their child, except in presence of the Protestant preceptor, into whose charge he was to be put.