In March 1682, the Duke of York returned to England, in order to hold a conference with the king. Coming back in May for his family, his vessel was wrecked on a sandbank near Yarmouth, when a hundred and fifty persons perished, including some of the first quality. After spending about a week in Edinburgh, he returned to England.
The ancient Presbyterian spirit was now reduced so low, or so many of the clergy of that kind were destroyed and imprisoned, that there was not a single individual who preached in defiance of the king’s supremacy. The united societies, as the more unsubmissive termed themselves, were obliged to send a youth named Renwick to Groningen, in Belgium, in order to study divinity and receive ordination, as they could not in any other way obtain a preacher. A general disposition to emigration began to arise; and some gentlemen proposed to sell their property, and become settlers in the new colony of Carolina. While engaged at London in making the proper arrangements, they came in contact with the patriots of the House of Commons, who, defeated in the Exclusion Bill, were concerting measures for bringing about a change of government. Common desperation made them friends; and a correspondence was opened with the Earl of Argyle in Holland, for an invasion from that quarter, in connection with an insurrection in England. Some subordinate members of the conspiracy plotted the assassination of the king; and, being discovered, the whole affair was brought to light. Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney suffered death. Baillie of Jerviswood was sent to Scotland, and there, under the most iniquitous circumstances, consigned to the executioner. It was now hardly possible, by any course of conduct, to gain assurance of not being prosecuted. Masters were held liable for servants; landlords for their tenants; fathers for their wives and children; and to have the least intercourse with a proscribed person was the same as to be actually guilty. The soldiery were now permitted by an act of parliament to execute the laws without trial. If any one, therefore, refused to answer certain questions, or gave rise to suspicion by running away, he was shot. Numbers thus perished in the fields and on the highways. In short, the reign of Charles II. terminated, February 6, 1685, amidst a scene of oppression, bloodshed, and spoil, such as was never before witnessed in the country, even in the most barbarous times.
1673. June.
1673.
Died Sir Robert Murray of Craigie, Justice-clerk, and an eminent councillor; memorable above all as one of a small group of learned and thoughtful men who, in 1662, founded the Royal Society, of which illustrious body Sir Robert was the first president, and for a time ‘the life and soul.’ For the last six years of his life, he bore a leading part in the government of Scotland. Not a Whig had been fined, tortured, or banished; not a commission against ‘the horrid crime of witchcraft’ had been issued; but the act was sanctioned by this gentleman, ‘the most universally beloved and esteemed by men of all sides and sorts, of any man I have ever known in my whole life,’ and who ‘knew the history of nature beyond any man I ever yet knew;’ who ‘had a most diffused love to all mankind, and delighted in every occasion of doing good;’ and who ‘had a superiority of genius and comprehension to most men.’—Burnet. Sir Robert’s father was a younger son of a distinguished Perthshire family, Murray of Abercairney. He himself had been the friend of Charles I. and of Richelieu, and latterly he was a favourite of Charles II. When the daughter of Sir Robert was married in London to Lord Yester, eldest son of the Earl of Tweeddale, ‘the king himself led the bride uncovered to church.’—Kir.
To find two such amiable men as the Earl of Tweeddale and Sir Robert Murray taking part for many years in the severe measures against the Scottish Presbyterians—though, it must be admitted, with the effect of infusing a certain mildness—and to find day after day the bloody edicts of the Privy Council sanctioned by not only their names, but by those of the Duke of Hamilton and the Earl of Argyle, the latter of whom was to die the death of a martyred patriot, while the former was to preside in the convention which settled the Stuarts’ forfeited crown on William and Mary, certainly presents a striking view of the mixed nature of human tendencies. As regards, too, the philosophical character of the founder of the Royal Society, it can never be forgotten that one of his contributions to the Transactions of that sage body was an account of the development of barnacles into sea-birds—a most noted example of the power of preconceived notions to blind the perceptions of even a faithful and intelligent observer. His testimony on this subject was thus presented in the Philosophical Transactions:
1673.
‘Being in the isle of East [Uist], I saw lying upon the shore a cut of a large fir-tree, of about 2-1/2 foot diameter, and nine or ten foot long; which had lain so long out of the water that it was very dry; and most of the shells that formerly covered it were worn or rubbed off. Only on the parts that lay next the ground there still hung multitudes of little shells, having within them little birds perfectly shaped, supposed to be barnacles. These shells hang at the tree by a neck longer than the shell, of a kind of filmy substance, round and hollow, and creased, not unlike the windpipe of a chicken, spreading out broadest where it is fastened to the tree, from which it seems to draw and convey the matter, which serves for the growth and vegetation of the shell and the little bird within it. This bird, in every shell that I opened, as well the least as the biggest, I found so curiously and completely formed, that there appeared nothing wanting as to the external parts, for making up a perfect sea-fowl; every little part appearing so distinctly, that the whole looked like a large bird seen through a concave or diminishing glass, colour and features being everywhere so clear and neat. The little bill like that of a goose, the eyes marked, the head, neck, breast, wing, tail, and feet formed; the feathers everywhere perfectly shaped and blackish coloured; and the feet like those of other water-fowl, to my best remembrance. All being dead and dry, I did not look after the inward parts of them. But having nipped off and broken a great many of them, I carried about twenty or twenty-four away with me.... Nor did I ever see any of the little birds alive, nor met with anybody that did. Only, some credible persons have assured me they have seen some as big as their fist.’
After all, it must be acknowledged there is something very perplexing about these cirripeds, and calculated to excuse the mistake which so long existed regarding them, since it was not till about 1840 that naturalists could determine whether they belonged to the articulate or the molluscan division of the animal kingdom. It is scarcely necessary to remark that they are now concluded to be articulates, of the crustacean class. Even Cuvier had placed them under the mollusca, though regarding them as intermediate between these and the articulata. As to the eyes spoken of by Sir Robert Murray, it may be observed that the barnacle has latterly been found to have visual organs in an early period of its existence, and to lose them when at full growth. When Mr Thomson of Cork, about 1830, described the actual characters of the animal, many naturalists for a long time refused to believe in his statements.