1688.
The Privy Council considered a legal case about a very small matter. The beautiful lake of Duddingston, under the southeast front of Arthur’s Seat, and adjoining to the royal park of Holyrood, had been graced by the late Duke of Lauderdale with a few swans. His too clever duchess—who had for years been carrying on terrible legal wars with his heirs—deemed herself entitled to take out five of these birds at her own pleasure. Sir James Dick, the proprietor of the lake, determined to recover the swans; so he caught three of them, and broke a lockfast place in order to get the remaining two; and then placed them all once more upon the loch. Hereupon the duchess raised a process, which was now decided in her favour, on the ground that the birds had been brought to the loch by the late duke, and that Sir James’s tolerance of them there did not make them his. The baronet, indignant at being thus balked, turned all the rest of the swans off his lake; but here he was met by the Duke of Hamilton, heritable keeper of the palace, alleging that, as the lake bounded the royal park, the wild animals upon it belonged to him. So he caused the swans to be once again restored to their haunt.—Foun. Dec.
Mar.
One Niven, a musician in Inverness, caused a girl of twelve years, his pupil, to marry him under basely deceptious pretences. To induce a minister to perform the ceremony, he suborned a youth to personate the girl’s brother, and convey the consent of the father, who was himself a clergyman. For this ‘abominable imposture and treachery,’ he was condemned to stand with his ear nailed to the pillory, and then banished.—Foun. Dec.
July.
For some time, we have heard little of witches; but now one appears. An old woman at Dunbar having threatened some people who refused to give her money, and ‘some evil accidents befalling them shortly after,’ she was seized and tried before a commission. She at first confessed, but afterwards retracted; nevertheless, the commission condemned her. Before proceeding to any greater extremity, they thought it well to bring her before the Council itself, who were at first inclined to ‘assoilzie’ her; but afterwards, ‘she was remitted back to Dunbar, to be burnt there, if her judges pleased.’—Foun.
1688. July 22.