It was also still customary to resort to certain wells and other waters, on account of their supposed healing virtues, as we have seen to be the case a century earlier. Either the patient was brought to the water, and dipped into it, or a fragment of his |1702.| clothing was brought and cast into, or left on the side of it, a shackle or tether of a cow serving equally when such an animal was concerned. If such virtues had continued to be attributed only to wells formerly dedicated to saints, it would not have been surprising; but the idea of medicinal virtue was sometimes connected with a lake or other piece of water, which had no such history. There was, for example, on the high ground to the west of Drumlanrig Castle, in Nithsdale, a small tarn called the Dow [i. e. black] Loch, which enjoyed the highest medical repute all over the south of Scotland. People came from immense distances to throw a rag from a sick friend, or a tether from an afflicted cow, into the Dow Loch, when, ‘these being cast in, if they did float, it was taken for a good omen of recovery, and a part of the water carried to the patient, though to remote places, without saluting or speaking to any one they met by the way; but, if they did sink, the recovery of the party was hopeless.’[[318]] The clergy exerted themselves strenuously to put down the superstition. The trouble which the presbytery of Penpont had, first and last, with this same Dow Loch, was past expression. But their efforts were wholly in vain.[[319]]
1702. July 3.
‘It pleased the great and holy God to visit this town [Leith], for their heinous sins against him, with a very terrible and sudden stroke, which was occasioned by the firing of thirty-three barrels of powder; which dreadful blast, as it was heard even at many miles distance with great terror and amazement, so it hath caused great ruin and desolation in this place. It smote seven or eight persons at least with sudden death, and turned the houses next adjacent to ruinous heaps, tirred off the roof, beat out the windows, and broke out the timber partitions of a great many houses and biggings even to a great distance. Few houses in the town did escape some damage, and all this in a moment of time; so that the merciful conduct of Divine Providence hath been very admirable in the preservation of hundreds of people, whose lives were exposed to manifold sudden dangers, seeing they had not so much previous warning as to shift a foot for their own preservation, much less to remove their plenishing.’ So proceeded a petition from ‘the distressed inhabitants of Leith’ to the Privy Council, on the occasion of this sore calamity. ‘Seeing,’ they went on to say, ‘that part of the town is destroyed and damnified to the value of thirty-six thousand nine hundred and thirty-six pounds, Scots money, by and attour several other damages done in several back-closes, and by and attour the household plenishing and merchant goods destroyed in the said houses, and victual destroyed and damnified in lofts, and the losses occasioned by the houses lying waste; and seeing the owners of the said houses are for the most part unable to repair them, so that a great part of the principal seaport of the nation will be desolate and ruinous, if considerable relief be not provided,’ they implored permission to make a charitable collection throughout the kingdom at kirk-doors, and by going from house to house; which prayer was readily granted.[[320]]
July 8.
The Earl of Kintore, who had been made Knight Marischal of Scotland at the Restoration, and afterwards raised to the peerage for his service in saving the regalia from the English in 1651, was still living.[[321]] He petitioned the Privy Council at this date on account of a pamphlet published by Sir William Ogilvie of Barras, in which his concern in the preservation of the regalia was unduly depreciated. His lordship gives a long recital on the subject, from which it after all appears that his share of the business was confined to his discommending obedience to |1702.| be paid to a state order for sending out the regalia from Dunnottar Castle—in which case it was likely they might have been taken—and afterwards doing what he could to put the English on a false scent, by representing the regalia as carried to the king at Paris. He denounces the pamphlet as an endeavour ‘to rob him of his just merit and honour, and likewise to belie his majesty’s patents in his favour,’ and he craved due punishment. Sir William, being laid up with sickness at Montrose, was unable to appear in his own defence, and the Council, accordingly, without hesitation, ordered the offensive brochure to be publicly burnt at the Cross of Edinburgh by the common hangman.
David Ogilvie, younger of Barras, was soon after fined in a hundred pounds for his concern in this so-called libel.[[322]]
There is something unaccountable in the determination evinced at various periods to assign the glory of the preservation of the regalia to the Earl of Kintore, the grand fact of the case being that these sacred relics were saved by the dexterity and courage of the unpretending woman—Mrs Grainger—the minister’s wife of Kineff, who, by means of her servant, got them carried out of Dunnottar Castle through the beleaguering lines of the English, and kept them in secrecy under ground for eight years. See under March 1652.
Aug.
The arrangements of the Post-office, as established by the act of 1695, were found to be not duly observed, in as far as common carriers presumed to carry letters in tracts where post-offices were erected, ‘besides such as relate to goods sent or to be returned to them.’ A very strict proclamation was now issued against this practice, and forbidding all who were not noblemen or gentlemen’s servants to ‘carry, receive, or deliver any letters where post-offices are erected.’
Inviolability of letters at the Post-office was not yet held in respect as a principle. In July 1701, two letters from Brussels, ‘having the cross upon the back of them,’ had come with proper addresses under cover to the Edinburgh postmaster. He ‘was surprised with them,’ and brought them to the Lord Advocate, who, however, on opening them, found they were ‘of no value, being only on private business;’ wherefore he ordered them to be delivered by the postmaster to the persons to whom they were directed.