1684.
A tempest which took place at the end of this month, accompanied both by snow and thunder, caused the throwing ashore of ‘a new kind of fish like a mackerel or herring, but with a long snout like a snipe’s beak. Dr Sibbald says it is the Acus marinus, the Sea Needle, described by him in his Naturalis Historia. They have been seen before, but are not frequent, and therefore are looked upon by the vulgar as ominous.’—Foun.
When Charles II. died three months after, Fountainhall remarked there having been few or no prognostics of the event, ‘unless we recur to the comet, which is remote, or to the strange fishes mentioned above, or the vision of blue bonnets ... in none of which is there anything for a rational man to fix his belief upon.’
By an act of the second parliament of Charles II., fines were appointed for all who withdrew themselves from the regular parish churches; but as, because of the law which gives the husband exclusive power over the goods held by him and his wife in communion, it was impossible to exact any fine for the delinquency of a married woman, it had become necessary to make the husband answerable when his wife offended. Under this arrangement, some ladies of rank, addicted to attending conventicles, had brought no small trouble upon their partners. The Council, at length feeling it was a hard law where the husband was a conformist, requested power from the king to remit the fines in such cases. Soon after the following case occurred.
Dec. 4.
1684.
David Balcanquel of that Ilk, having been, in virtue of the act, amerced in three years of his valued rent or fifteen hundred pounds, ‘upon the account of his wife not keeping the church,’ represented the matter very pathetically to the Privy Council, setting forth how he himself had always kept his parish church, and, ‘notwithstanding the distractions and disorders that have been in the country where he lives [Fife], has always demeaned himself as ane dutiful and loyal subject.’ The Council took the case into favourable consideration, and, ‘seeing it never was the intention of his majesty that his weel-affected subjects should be ruined by the mad and wilful opinions of phanatick wives, without any fault of their own’—seeing, moreover, that Balcanquel protested ‘it is not in his power to persuade his wife to go to church, notwithstanding of all the endeavours he has used for that effect, and he is willing to deliver her up to the Council to be disposed of at their pleasure‘—they agreed to discharge his fine, taking him only bound ‘to deliver up his wife to justice whenever required.’—P. C. R.
It was not always as in this case in regard to conventicle troubles. Wodrow had heard the following converse case ‘very weel attested:‘[314] About the time of the Circuit Court in 1685, there was an honest man in the parish of Baldernock, who was sore bested with a graceless and imperious wife, a hater of all seriousness. When he performed family worship, she interrupted him; when he went to a conventicle, she cursed him; and when he came home, she threw stools at him. Scarce durst the poor man return from these meetings without a few neighbours to protect him from his wife’s violence. Being denounced and cited to the court at Glasgow, he failed to appear; but she came forward, and, on his name being called, cried out: ‘My lords, it’s all true—he is a rebel; there is not a conventicle in all the country but he is at it. He deserves to be hanged. Hang him, my lords!’ The lords asked who she was, and on being told, and hearing her go on further in the same strain, they ordered the man to be scored out of the roll, saying: ‘That poor fellow suffers enough already from such a wife!’