‘They took frae Aberdeen ten thousand merks to save it from plundering, and took twelve pieces of ordnance also from them.... The town, seeing themselves sore oppressed by the feeding and susteining of thir armies without payment, besides other slaveries, began heavily to regret their miseries to the general and rest of the nobles and commanders, saying they had subscribed the Covenant.... There was no compassion had to their complaints.... So the country anti-Covenanters was pitifully plagued and plundered in their victuals, fleshes, fowls, and other commodities, whilk bred great scarcity in this land....’
This was but a beginning of the troubles and damages of Aberdeen from civil war. In the very next month, in consequence of the town being taken possession of by a royalist band under the Earl of Aboyne, a Covenanting army came against it, and forcing its way in, subjected it to further fining and spoiling. Altogether, the Aberdonians considered themselves as having been injured to the extent of £12,000 sterling in the first half of this year, besides thirty-two of the citizens being fined specially in 42,000 merks. It would be tedious to enumerate the losses of the city during the few subsequent years.
May.
1639.
Gordon of Rothiemay notes a quasi prodigy as happening at Dunse Law while the Scottish army lay there. It has a whimsical character, as connecting the Covenanting war with a geological fact. The matter consisted of ‘the falling of a part of a bank upon the steep side of a hill near by to the Scottish camp, which of its own accord had shuffled downward, and by its fall discovered innumerable stones, round, for the most part, in shape, and perfectly spherical, some of them oval-shapen. They were of a dark gray colour, some of them yellowish, and for quantity they looked like ball of all sizes, from a pistol to field-pieces, such as sakers or robenets, or battering-pieces upwards. Smooth they were, and polished without, but lighter than lead by many degrees, so that they were only for show, but not for use. Many of them were carried about in men’s pockets, to be seen for the rarity. Nor wanted there a few who interpreted this stone magazine at Dunse Hill as a miracle, as if God had sent this by ane hid providence for the use of the Covenanters; for at this time all things were interpreted for the advantage of the Covenant. Others looked upon these pebble-stones as prodigious, and the wiser sort took no notice of them at all. I suppose that at this present the quarry is extant, where they are yet to be seen, no more a miracle; but whether the event has determined them to be a prodigy or not, I shall not take it upon me to define pro or con.’
A modern writer may feel little difficulty in defining this magazine of pebbles as merely part of an ancient alluvial terrace, such as are found in most mountain valleys in Scotland, being, in geological theory, the relics of gravel-beds deposited in these situations by the streams, when, from a lower relative position of the land, the sea partially occupied these glens in the form of estuaries. On the banks of the Whitadder, close to Dunse Law, we still see such banks of pebbles, the water-rolled spoils of the Lammermuirs, and chiefly of the transition or Silurian rocks. It gives a lively impression of the excited state of men’s minds in the time and place, to find them accepting, or disposed to accept, so simple a natural phenomenon as something significant of the attention of Providence to the strife which they were unhappily waging.
July.
At this time we hear of some strangers from England and Ireland who had crept in and drawn the people to certain religious practices, accordant with the general strain of the period, but not exactly with the specific regulations prescribed by the Presbyterian Kirk. At their own hands, without the allowance of minister or elders, the people had begun to convene themselves confusedly about bedtime in private houses, where, for the greater part of the night, they would expound Scripture, pray, and sing psalms, besides ‘discussing questions of divinity, whereof some sae curious that they do not understand, and some so ridiculous that they cannot be edified by them.’ The consequence was, that they began to ‘lichtly and set at naught the public worship of God.’ Seeing in this a movement towards Brownism, the kirk-session of Stirling called on the presbytery to take the matter into consideration, and meanwhile discharged the congregation from giving any favour to such practices.[86]