This conduct was of course sure to turn to the injury of Struan himself. In a very few days, Fleming had him up by petition before the Privy Council, who, finding the charge proved, sentenced Struan to imprisonment during pleasure in the Tolbooth, to crave pardon first of the Council, and then of the Marquis of Athole, ‘on his knees,’ and to give Fleming security for the expenses (limited to £100 Scots) incurred by the action and by the interruption it had given him in his business.—P. C. R.
Apr. 8.
A case before the Privy Council reveals the treatment of the insane in this age. It was a complaint from Mr Alexander Burton against his brother John for putting him into Hopkirk the surgeon’s hands as a madman. It was alleged, on John Burton’s part, that Alexander was really melancholic and furious; so required restraint: also that he was misusing and dilapidating his fortune; hence a bill had been applied for to put his affairs under curators. Alexander answered that ‘he had only craved his annual rents, and to refuse him his own, and treat him as a fool, would raise pepper and passion in any man’s nose, and then they termed the acts fury.’ To settle the matter, the Duke of York, who was present, desired that the alleged fool might be permitted to speak; whereupon he delivered himself so extravagantly, that the Council found it only right that he should be put under restraint, and his affairs placed in charge of his brother. Fountainhall adds: ‘In Scotland, we, having no Bedlam, commit the better sort of mad people to the care and taming of chirurgeons, and the inferior to the scourge [or] the poor.’
May 5.
1681.
M‘Gill of Rankeillour gave in a petition to the Privy Council, craving
permission for his son, Sir James M‘Gill, to come to see him, as he was about to depart from this life. The son had about eight years before been so unfortunate as to kill Sir Robert Balfour of Denmill, and the king had granted him a remission, on the condition that, in order to prevent further bloodshed,
he should never again be seen in Fife