1681. Jan. 11.
1681.
The house of Priestfield, under the south front of Arthur’s Seat, was burnt this evening between seven and eight o’clock. Political circumstances gave importance to what would otherwise have been a trivial occurrence. Sir James Dick, the owner, was provost of Edinburgh, and a friend of the Duke of York. His having adopted energetic measures with some college youths concerned in the Christmas anti-papal demonstration, was supposed to have excited a spirit of retaliation in their companions; and hence a suspicion arose that the fire was designed and executed by them. The Privy Council were so far convinced of this being the case, that they shut up the college, and banished the pupils fifteen miles, unless they could give caution for their good-behaviour. Sir James’s house was rebuilt at the public expense, as it now exists in the possession of his descendant, Sir William Cunningham Keith Dick, Bart.
Jan. 20.
Six women were hanged in Edinburgh. Two of them, Janet Alison from Perth, and Marion Harvey from Borrowstounness, ‘were of Cameron’s faction, bigot and sworn enemies to the king and bishops,’ and, ‘for all the pains taken, would not once acknowledge the king to be their lawful prince, but called him a perjured bloody man.’ ‘Some thought the threatening to drown them privately in the North Loch, without giving them the credit of a public suffering, would have more effectually reclaimed them nor any arguments which were used; and the bringing them to a scaffold but disseminates the infection.’—Foun.
The other four women were hanged for murdering their own children, born out of wedlock. It would be hard to say which of the two cases reflects the most discredit upon the wisdom and humanity of the age.
On the ensuing 13th of April, another woman was hanged in the Grassmarket for murdering her child, declaring that she had committed the deed in order ‘to shun the ignominy of the church pillory.’ The frequency of such cases, and the declaration of this poor woman, attracted the attention of the Duke of York. He was surprised to hear of a custom used in no other Christian country, which ‘rather made scandals than buried them.’ The duke, we are told, ‘was displeased, and thought it would be a more efficacious restraint, if the civil magistrate should punish them, either by a pecuniary mulct, or a corporal punishment.’ Fountainhall, however, thought the practice justifiable, on the text, ‘They who sin openly should be rebuked openly,’ and from the penances imposed in the primitive church.