James Gray, a ‘litster,’ that is, dyer, in Dalkeith, went to Glasgow in March this year as a lieutenant in the Midlothian Militia. He there met, over a bottle, a young man, named Archibald Murray, son of the Laird of Newton, and who was a trooper in the king’s Life Guard. When heated with liquor, Gray began to boast that to be a lieutenant under the Duke of Lauderdale was as good as to ride in the king’s Life Guard—rather a petulant speech from a Dalkeith craftsman to the son of a laird in its neighbourhood. Murray stormed and called him a base fellow, to compare himself with gentlemen! They went out and fought, and Gray soon returned, saying: ‘I trow I have pricked him,’ never imagining that he had taken the young man’s life. Such, however, proved to be the case. Gray, who was a handsome, vigorous man, of about fifty, was tried for the act, and much interest was felt in his behalf, as it was believed that he had meant nothing like murder. Five thousand merks were offered to the friends of the deceased, by way of assythment. But all was in vain. On the day noted in the margin, ‘he was beheaded, dying with courage, and declaring that ambition, leading to discontents and quarrels, joined to marrying an old woman, had ruined him.’—Foun.
Aug. 15.
1678.
Scotland now had a visitor of an extraordinary kind. In a petition presented to the Privy Council, he described himself as Mercurius Lascary, a Grecian priest, a native of the island of Samos. He stated that himself, his brother Demetrius, who was also a priest, and two sons, had been seized by night by Algerine pirates; and his brother had now been detained for three years in a most miserable condition in Barbary. Testimonials from the patriarch of Constantinople and various Greek bishops confirmed this sad tale; and on his petition, a general charitable contribution was ordered to be raised in his behalf.—P. C. R.
Sep. 12.
In the history of the introduction of the more refined arts into Scotland, there is no reason why one so ingenious as cabinet-making should not be included. We now first hear of it on the occasion of a petition from one James Turner, styling himself ‘cabinet-maker and mirror-glass maker.’ He having, as he says, ‘with much labour, pains, and expenses, attained to the art of making cabinets, mirror-glasses, dressing-boxes, chests of drawers, comb-boxes, and the like curious work, of the finest olive and princes’ wood, not formerly practised by any native of this country,’ had been peaceably exercising his craft, when he was assailed by the deacon of the corporation of wrights as an unfreeman. He had first been forbidden to work, and then they took away his tools and materials. On his petition, however, he received the protection of the Council.—P. C. R.
Not long after (February 1682), we hear of a kindred trade as being practised in Edinburgh. Hugh M‘Gie, mirror-maker in the Canongate, gave in a bill to the Privy Council, representing that, by the practice of other nations, any tradesman having seven sons together, without the intervention of a daughter, is declared free of all public burdens and taxes, and has other encouragements bestowed on him, to enable him to bring up the said children for the use and benefit of the commonwealth; and claiming a similar privilege on the strength of his having that qualification. The Council recommended the magistrates to take Hugh’s seven sons into consideration when they laid their ‘stents’ upon him.—Foun.
Some years later (January 1685), Turner being again troubled by the wrights’ corporation, the Privy Council, on his producing an essay piece of ‘an indented cabinet and standishes,’ gave him a licence to set up as a freeman.—Foun. Dec.