Strong by the sea’s protection, safe by his!
Express your gratitude the only way,
And humbly own a debt too vast to pay,’ &c.
Nov. 24.
1681.
The test being a puzzle and a bewilderment to some of the sagest statesmen of the day, it is not surprising that it should have somewhat confounded the magistrates of a simple Scotch burgh. At this date, there was a petition to the Privy Council from William Plenderleith, provost; John Hope, bailie; and John Givan, treasurer of Peebles, in name of the council of that burgh, setting forth that, ‘being desired to take the test, they were always willing;’ yet, ‘the town being very inconsiderable, and the petitioners very illiterate and ignorant, and living in a remote place where they could get no person to inform them of the difference betwixt the act of parliament and the act of Council, and not having the act of parliament in all the country, nor yet the confession of faith, to which it related, the petitioners humbly desired a time to advise as concerning the test.’ At their late election, they had contented themselves with taking the Declaration, ‘thinking that the first of January was sufficient to take the test.’ But now, understanding what was required of them, they protested their eager willingness to take the test, ‘having always been very loyal,’ as they had shewn by their conduct on the occasion of the Bothwell Bridge rebellion, for which they had received the thanks of the Council. The Lords seem to have looked leniently on the omission of this innocent little municipality, and now accepted their signatures in good part.
The magistrates of Peebles were, not long after, involved in a trouble of a different complexion, in consequence of an unpopular movement for the letting of a piece of commonty near the walls of the town, which they had found to be ‘a pretext for incomers to the said burgh, and the poor people, to eat up their neighbours’ corns.’ While they were engaged in their Tolbooth or court-house (March 1, 1682) in the administration of justice, a mob of irate burgesses, of whom thirty-seven are named, came to express their disapprobation of a late act of Council on that subject, and, if possible, frighten them from proceeding with it; ‘menacing the provost that if he did so, he should be sticked as Provost Dickison was.’[285] The magistrates put two of their assailants in jail; but these were soon liberated by force. Then the magistrates got the two burgesses and five of their liberators clapped up in prison; but, behold, next day, taking a leaf out of the history of the troubles of 1637, a mob of women assembled—namely, Marion Bennett, Marion Grieve, Margaret Wilson, Isobel Wilson, Isobel Robertson, Janet Ewmond, Isobel Ewmond, and Helen Steel—the names of such heroines are worth preserving—and ‘did in a tumultuous and irregular way take out of prison the persons of William Porteous, Andrew Halden [the original prisoners], Thomas Stoddart, Alexander Jonkieson, John Tweedie, Thomas King, James Waldie, and William Leggat, and went to the Cross of Peebles with them, and there drank their good healths as protectors of the liberties of the poor, and the confusion of the said magistrates and council, and took up with them stones to stone to death such as should oppose them; and thereafter, they being about three hundred persons, divided themselves in several companies, and every company convoyed home a prisoner, and drank their good health, to the great astonishment of all honest and well-meaning people.’
1681.
This affair being brought as a gross riot before the Privy Council, five of the men liberated, including the two who had first been in prison, were deprived of their burgess privileges, and committed to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh during pleasure, while the magistrates were enjoined to ‘convene before them the haill rest of the inhabitants that were accessory to the tumult and riot libelled, and to proceed against them therefor, in fining, imprisonment, or ryving their burgess-tickets, as they shall find cause.’