July 5.
The magistrates of Dumfries had a man called Richard Storie in their jail, on a charge of murder, and were put to great charges in keeping and guarding him, because several of his friends from the Borders daily threatened to force the prison and permit him to make his escape ‘if he shall remain any longer there.’[293] It was therefore found necessary to order that Storie should be transferred by the sheriff under a sufficient guard to the next sheriff upon the road to Edinburgh, and so on to Edinburgh itself, where he should be placed in firmance in the Tolbooth.
1682.
There was the more reason for the magistrates of Dumfries being anxious about the detention of Richard Storie, that George Storie, an associate in his crime, had already escaped. These two men were accused of having basely and cruelly murdered Francis Armstrong in Alisonbank, in the preceding month of June. The witnesses being Englishmen, it was necessary (December 7, 1682) to recommend to the sheriff of Cumberland to take measures for insuring their appearance before the Court of Justiciary at the approaching trial. This proving ineffectual, the widow and six children of Francis Armstrong petitioned in March for further and more effectual efforts; and the lords agreed to address the English secretary of state on the subject.
Not long after (April 30, 1684), the Council was informed that, ‘by the throng of prisoners in the Tolbooth of Dumfries, the same has been already broken, and is yet in the same hazard.’ Being at the same time made aware ‘that, within the castle of Dumfries, there are some strong vaults fit for the keeping of prisoners,’ they gave orders to have these prepared for the
July 7.
A poor Quaker, named Thomas Dunlop, had taken a house in Musselburgh, and was endeavouring by humble industry to support himself and his family, without being burdensome to any. But other Quakers came occasionally about him, to the annoyance of the magistrates of the town; and finding he broke a local law, in having no certificate of character from the minister of the parish in which he had last resided, they took advantage of the circumstance to get quit of him. Poor Thomas and his wife and little children were thrust out of their home into the fields, notwithstanding his entreaties for delay till he should get letters certifying his respectability from persons they knew. He had now been lodging for thirteen days and nights in the fields, the magistrates resisting all pleadings in his favour from charitable persons, and disregarding the misery which he was manifestly enduring. On his petition to that body which almost every week was sending recusant Whigs to the scaffold, they lent him a patient hearing, and summoned the Musselburgh magistrates before them; but all that the laws permitted them to do in the case, was to ordain that Thomas might have recourse to a legal action if the magistrates had not ‘removed him in ane orderly manner.’—P. C. R.
July 8.