And shake the green leaf aff the tree?
O gentle death, when wilt thou come,
And take a life that wearies me?’
The prose reality of all this was, that the marchioness by and by obtained a decree of the Privy Council, allowing her a provision out of her husband’s estate.
The marquis, by a subsequent marriage, was the father of the semi-mad Duke of Douglas and of the celebrated Lady Jane Douglas.
1671. Jan. 19.
William Head and John Fergusson, who had ‘practised a lottery by authority in the kingdom of England,’ were authorised by the Privy Council to set up a similar adventure in any part of Scotland they pleased, ‘without let or molestation, they behaving themselves as becometh.’—P. C. R.
Mar. 2.