1676.
The winter of 1675-6 being singularly mild, was followed by a favourable spring, and there consequently was an abundant harvest. The characteristic mutability of our climate was, however, shewn immediately after. There was a drought in latter autumn, and about the 18th of December the temperature fell to an extraordinary degree, ‘the most aged never remembered the like. The birds fell down frae the air dead; the rats in numbers found dead; all liquors froze, even the strongest ale; and the distilled waters of apothecaries in warm rooms froze in whole, and the glasses broke.’—Law.
Jan.
1676.
Two boys, named Clark and Ramsay, the one seventeen, and the other fifteen years of age, suffered in Edinburgh for an offence which had perhaps been suggested by the rumours attending the celebrated case of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers. John Anderson, a merchant, the master of Ramsay, had long been pining under an enfeebling malady, which was likely to have in time brought him to the grave. During his sickness, Ramsay, in conjunction with his companion Clark, purloined several articles of value belonging to his master, trusting that he would die, and that consequently no discovery would take place. Finding Anderson’s disease taking a turn, the young thieves became alarmed; and took into counsel another boy named Kennedy, an apothecary’s apprentice, who supplied them with a drug calculated to keep up the malady under which Anderson had suffered. The man receiving this in small doses, grew ill again, and in time died. No suspicion of foul play was entertained, and apparently the two lads would have been allowed to remain unnoticed, if they had not offered for sale a gold chain which formed part of their plunder. Being detained and questioned, they fell into such terror, that an ingenuous confession of their guilt was easily obtained from them, accompanied with many expressions of sorrow. They were hanged, ‘both in regard to the theft clearly proven, and for terror that the Italian trick of sending men to the other world in figs and possets might not come over seas to our island.’ Kennedy, ‘an outed minister’s son,’ was detained for want of proof, and ultimately banished.—Foun.
Wodrow adds a tale of wonder, as told him by his mother-in-law, Mrs Warner, who had visited the two boys in prison. After the burial of Anderson, his nephew, Sir John Clerk of Pennycuick, ‘was one night lying in his own house, in a room with some others, sleeping. In his sleep he imagined he heard a voice calling to him: “Avenge the blood of your uncle!” and wakened, and asked if any of them had been speaking to him. They declared not. He composed himself to sleep, and had it repeated; and he asked the former question the second time, and those in the room denied, as above. He slept again, and had the same repeated the third time; on which he got up, and went immediately to Edinburgh and made a particular inquiry into the circumstances of his uncle’s death, at the two apprentices, but found nothing to fix on at this time. In a little, Sir John met with a medal in a goldsmith’s shop which he knew to belong to his uncle. This he traced up till he landed it on the apprentices, who, upon this, confessed they had opened their master’s cabinet and taken out money, &c.’
1676.