[218] Abbotsford Miscellany. Mungo Murray seems to have been a lieutenant of the king’s guard, and to have enjoyed a pension of £200. See Maitland Misc., iii. 154.
[219] See a letter from Sir Robert Dalrymple Horn Elphinstone to Sir James Stewart Denham, inserted in the Abbotsford edition of the Waverley Novels.
[220] About the time of his marriage, there are several entries regarding him in the Privy Council Record, as having contravened the law in the introduction and keeping of Irish cattle and horses.
[221] The editor of Lamont’s Diary gives the following note on George Wood’s funeral: ‘The revolting practice of attaching the corpse of a debtor seems from this entry to have been known in Scotland, even at this late period; while there does not appear to have been any legal authority for its adoption. The notion of its legality, however, still prevails among the vulgar in England; and although the late Lord Ellenborough held it to be contrary to the law of England, it was observed by the unfeeling creditors of Weivitzer the actor, and of the celebrated Richard Brinsley Sheridan. How absurd soever this notion may seem, a still more glaring error is known in the north of Scotland. It is there believed by the common people, that a widow is relieved of her husband’s debts, if she follow his corpse to the door, and, in the presence of the assembled mourners, openly call upon him to return and pay his debts, as she is unable! Strange and unfeeling as this ceremony may be, the editor recollects an instance in which it was practised by the widow of a man in good society.’[325]
[222] Sir George Mackenzie’s Mem. Affairs Scot., 4to, p. 183.
[223] Mackenzie’s Mem. Affairs Scot., p. 244.
[224] Weir had been an officer on the popular side in the Civil War. In the registers of Estates, under March 3, 1647, reference is made to a supplication of Major Thomas Weir, in which he craved payment of 600 merks due to him by an act of the Committee of Estates of date the 17th of December 1644, and also payment of what might be due to him ‘for his service as major in the Earl of Lanark’s regiment by the space of twell months, and his service in Ireland as ane captain-lieutenant in Colonel Robert Home his regiment by the space of nineteen months;’ further asking ‘that the parliament wald ordain John Acheson, keeper of the magazine, to re-deliver to the supplicant the band given by him to the said John upon the receipt of ane thousand pound weight of poulder, twa thousand weight of match, and ane thousand pound weight of ball, sent with the supplicant to Dumfries for furnishing that part of the country.’ The matter was given over to a committee.
[225] Ravaillac Redivivus, p. 64.
[226] Mem. Affairs Scotland, p. 62.
[227] See under August 1660.