Dec.
Notwithstanding the extreme poverty now universally complained of, whenever a man of any figure or importance died, there was enormous expense incurred in burying him. On the death, at this time, of Lachlan Mackintosh of Mackintosh—that is, the chief of the clan Mackintosh—there were funeral |1704.| entertainments at his mansion in Inverness-shire for a whole month. Cooks and confectioners were brought from Edinburgh, at great expense, to provide viands for the guests, and liquors were set aflowing in the greatest profusion. On the day of the interment, the friends and dependants of the deceased made a procession, reaching all the way from Dalcross Castle to the kirk of Petty, a distance of four miles! ‘It has been said that the expense incurred on this occasion proved the source of pecuniary embarrassments to the Mackintosh family to a recent period.’[[368]]
In the same month died Sir William Hamilton, who had for several years held the office of a judge under the designation of Lord Whitelaw, and who, for the last two months of his life, was Lord Justice-clerk, and consequently, in the arrangements of that period, an officer of state. It had pleased his lordship to assign the great bulk of his fortune, being £7000 sterling, to his widow, the remainder going to his heir, Hamilton of Bangour, of which family he was a younger son. Lord Whitelaw was buried in the most pompous style, chiefly under direction of the widow, but, to all appearance, with the concurrence of the heir, who took some concern in the arrangements, or at least was held as sanctioning the whole affair by his presence as chief mourner. The entire expenses were £5189 Scots, equal to £432, 8s. 4d. sterling, being more than two years’ salary of a judge of the Court of Session at that time. The lady paid the tradesmen’s bills out of her ‘donative,’ which was thought a singularly large one; but, by and by, marrying again, she raised an action against Bangour, craving allowance for Lord Whitelaw’s funeral charges ‘out of her intromission with the executry’—that is, out of the proceeds of the estate, apart from her jointure. The heir represented that the charges were inordinate, while his inheritance was small; but this view of the matter does not appear to have been conclusive, for the Lords, by a plurality, decided that the funeral expenses of a deceased person ‘must be allowed to the utmost of what his character and quality will admit, without regard to what small part of his fortune may come to his heir.’[[369]] They did, indeed, afterwards modify this decision, allowing only just and necessary expenses; but, what is to our present purpose, they do not appear to have been startled at the idea of spending as much as two years of a man’s income in laying him under the soil.
1704.
The account of expenses at the funeral of a northern laird—Sir Hugh Campbell of Calder, who died in March 1716—gives us, as it were, the anatomy of one of these ruinous ceremonials. There was a charge of £55, 15s. ‘to buy ane cow, ane ox, five kids, two wedders, eggs, geese, turkeys, pigs, and moorfowl,’ the substantials of the entertainment. Besides £40 for brandy to John Finlay in Forres, £25, 4s. for claret to John Roy in Forres, £82, 6s. to Bailie Cattenach at Aberdeen for claret, and £35 to John Fraser in Clunas for ‘waters’—that is, whisky—there was a charge by James Cuthbert, merchant, of £407, 8s. 4d. for ‘22 pints brandy at 48s. per pint, 18 wine-glasses, 6 dozen pipes, and 3 lb. cut tobacco, 2 pecks of apples, 2 gross corks, one large pewter flagon at £6, and one small at £3, currants, raisins, cinnamon, nutmegs, mace, ginger, confected carvy, orange and citron peel, two pair black shambo gloves for women,’ and two or three other small articles. There was also £40 for flour, £39, 12s. to the cooks and baxters, and ‘to malt brewn from the said Sir Hugh’s death to the interment, sixteen bolls and ane half,’ £88. [Sir Hugh’s body lay from the 11th to the 29th March, and during these eighteen days there had been ale for all comers.] The outlay for ‘oils, cerecloth, and frankincense,’ used for the body, was £60; for ‘two coffins, tables, and other work,’ £110, 13s. 4d.; for the hearse and adornments connected with it (inclusive of ‘two mortheads at 40s. the piece’), £358. With the expenses for the medical attendant, a suit of clothes to the minister, and some few other matters, the whole amounted to £1647, 16s. 4d., Scots money.[[370]] This sum, it will be observed, indicates a comparatively moderate funeral for a man of such eminence; and we must multiply everything by three, in order to attain a probable notion of the eating, the drinking, and the pomp and grandeur which attended Lord Whitelaw’s obsequies.
The quantity of liquor consumed at the Laird of Calder’s funeral suggests that the house of the deceased must have been, on such occasions, the scene of no small amount of conviviality. It was indeed expected that the guests should plentifully regale themselves with both meat and drink, and in the Highlands especially the chief mourner would have been considered a shabby person if he did not press them to do so. At the funeral of Mrs Forbes of Culloden, or, to use the phrase of the day, Lady Culloden, her son Duncan, who afterwards became Lord President |1704.| of the Court of Session, conducted the festivities. The company sat long and drank largely, but at length the word being given for what was called the lifting, they rose to proceed to the burialground. The gentlemen mounted their horses, the commonalty walked, and all duly arrived at the churchyard, when, behold, no one could give any account of the corpse! They quickly became aware that they had left the house without thinking of that important part of the ceremonial; and Lady Culloden still reposed in the chamber of death. A small party was sent back to the house to ‘bring on’ the corpse, which was then deposited in the grave with all the decorum which could be mustered in such anti-funereal circumstances.[[371]]
Strange as this tale may read, there is reason to believe that the occurrence was not unique. It is alleged to have been repeated at the funeral of Mrs Home of Billie, in Berwickshire, in the middle of the eighteenth century.
In our own age, we continually hear of the vice of living for appearances, as if it were something quite unknown heretofore; but the truth is, that one of the strongest points of contrast between the past and the present times, is the comparative slavery of our ancestors to irrational practices which were deemed necessary to please the eye of society, while hurtful to the individual. This slavery was shewn very strikingly in the customs attending funerals, and not merely among people of rank, but in the humblest grades of the community. It was also to be seen very remarkably in the custom of pressing hospitality on all occasions beyond the convenience of guests, in drinking beyond one’s own convenience to encourage them, and in the customs of the table generally; not less so in the dresses and decorations of the human figure, in all of which infinitely more personal inconvenience was submitted to, under a sense of what was required by fashion, than there is at the present day.
1705. Jan.
Roderick Mackenzie, secretary to the African Company, advertised what was called An Adventure for the Curious—namely, a raffle for the possession of ‘a pair of extraordinary fine Indian screens,’ by a hundred tickets at a guinea each. The screens were described as being on sight at his office in Mylne’s Square, but only by ticket (price 5d.), in order to prevent that pressure of the |1705.| mob which might otherwise be apprehended. In these articles, the public was assured, ‘the excellence of art vied with the wonderfulness of nature,’ for they represented a ‘variety of several kinds of living creatures, intermixed with curious trees, plants, and flowers, all done in raised, embossed, loose, and coloured work, so admirably to the life, that, at any reasonable distance, the most discerning eye can scarcely distinguish those images from the real things they represent,’ Nothing of the kind, it was averred, had ever been seen in Scotland before, ‘excepting one screen of six leaves only, that is now in the palace at Hamilton.’[[372]]