The English government was thrown into great anxiety by this violent proceeding, but they could make no effectual resistance to the current of public feeling in Scotland. There the general belief in the guilt of Green and his associates was corroborated after the trial by three several confessions, admitting the piratical seizing of Drummond’s vessel, and the subsequent murder of himself and his crew—confessions which can now only be accounted for, like those of witches, on the theory of a desire to conciliate favour, and perhaps win pardon, by conceding so far to the popular prejudices. The queen sent down affidavits shewing that Drummond’s ship had in reality been taken by pirates at Madagascar, while himself was on shore—a view of the fact which there is now ample reason to believe to have been true. She also sent to the Privy Council the expression of her desire that the men should be respited for a time. But, beyond postponement for a week, all was in vain. The royal will was treated respectfully, but set aside on some technical irregularity. When the day approached for the execution of the first batch of the condemned, it became evident that there was no power in Scotland which could have saved these innocent men. The Council, we may well believe, would have gladly conceded to the royal will, but, placed as it was amidst an infuriated people, it had no freedom to act. On the fatal morning (11th April), its movements were jealously watched by a vast multitude, composed of something more than the ordinary citizens of Edinburgh, for on the previous day all the more ardent and determined persons living within many miles round had poured into the city to see that justice was done. No doubt can now be entertained that, if the authorities had attempted to save the condemned from punishment, the mob would have torn them from the Tolbooth, and hung every one of them up in the street. What actually took place is described in a letter from Mr Alexander Wodrow to his father, the minister of Eastwood: ‘I wrote last night,’ he says, ‘of the uncertainty anent the condemned persons, and this morning things were yet at a greater uncertainty, for the current report was that ane express was come for a reprieve. |1705.| How this was, I have not yet learned; but the councillors went down to the Abbey [Palace of Holyrood] about eight, and came up to the Council-house about nine, against which time there was a strange gathering in the streets. The town continued in great confusion for two hours, while the Council was sitting, and a great rabble at the Netherbow port. All the guards in the Canongate were in readiness if any mob had arisen. About eleven, word came out of the Council [sitting in the Parliament Square] that three were to be hanged—namely, Captain Green, Mather, and Simson. This appeased the mob, and made many post away to Leith, where many thousands had been [assembled], and were on the point of coming up in a great rage. When the chancellor came out, he got many huzzas at first; but at the Tron Kirk, some surmised to the mob that all this was but a sham; upon which they assaulted his coach, and broke the glasses, and forced him to come out and go into Mylne’s Square, and stay for a considerable time.
‘The three prisoners were brought with the Town-guards, accompanied with a vast mob. They went through all the Canongate, and out at the Water-port to Leith. There was a battalion of foot-guards, and also some of the horse-guards, drawn up at some distance from the place of execution. There was the greatest confluence of people there that ever I saw in my life, for they cared not how far they were off, so be it they saw. Green was first execute, then Simson, and last of all Mather. They every one of them, when the rope was about their necks, denied they were guilty of that for which they were to die. This indeed put all people to a strange demur. There’s only this to alleviate it, that they confessed no other particular sins more than that, even though they were posed anent their swearing and drunkenness, which was weel known.’[[375]]
Sep. 11.
The Scottish parliament was not much given to the patronising of literature. We have, indeed, seen it giving encouragement to Adair’s maps of the coasts, and Slezer’s views of the king’s and other mansions; but it was in a languid and ineffective way, by reason of the lack of funds. At this time, the assembled wisdom of the nation was pleased to pass an act enabling the town-council of Glasgow to impose two pennies (⅕th of a penny sterling) upon the pint of ale brewn and vended in that town; and out of this |1705.| ‘gift in favours of the town of Glasgow,’ as it was quite sincerely called, there was granted three thousand six hundred pounds (£300 sterling) to Mr James Anderson, writer to her majesty’s signet, ‘for enabling him to carry on an account of the ancient and original charters and seals of our kings in copper-plates.’ Why the ale-drinkers of Glasgow should have been called upon to furnish the country with engraved copies of its ancient charters, was a question which probably no one dreamed of asking.
In February 1707, the parliament, then about to close its existence, ordered to Mr Anderson the further sum of £590 sterling, to repay him for his outlay on the work, with a further sum of £1050 to enable him to go on and complete it. This was done after due examination by a committee, which reported favourably of the curious and valuable character of his collections. Soon after, the parliament, in consideration of the great sufferings of the town of Dundee in the time of the troubles and at the Revolution, and of ‘the universal decay of trade, especially in that burgh,’ granted it an imposition of two pennies Scots on every pint of ale or beer made or sold in the town for twenty-four years; but this gift was burdened with a hundred pounds sterling per annum for six years to Mr James Anderson, as part of the sum the parliament had agreed to confer upon him for the encouragement of his labours.[[376]]
Nov.
Died Alexander third Earl of Kincardine, unmarried, a nobleman of eccentric character. His father, the second earl, is spoken of by Burnet in the highest terms; his mother was a Dutch lady, Veronica, daughter of Corneille, Lord of Sommelsdyk and Spycke. [Readers of Boswell will remember his infant daughter Veronica, with whom Johnson was pleased, so named from the biographer’s great-grandmother, Veronica, Countess of Kincardine.] The earl now deceased, probably through his parental connection with the Low Countries, had contracted the religious principles of the Flemish saint or seeress, Antonia Bourignon, which, like every other departure from pure Presbyterianism and the Westminster Confession, were detested in Scotland. Wodrow tells us: ‘I have it from very good hands, Lieutenant-colonel Erskine[[377]] and Mr Allan Logan, |1705.| who were frequently with him, that the late Earl of Kincardine did fast forty days and nights after he turned Burrignianist, [and] lived several years after. He was very loose before he turned to these errors; and after a while being in them, he turned loose again, and died in a very odd manner. Many thought him possessed. He would have uttered the most dreadful blasphemies that can be conceived, and he told some things done at a distance, and repeated Mr Allan Logan’s words, which he had in secret, and told things it was impossible for anybody to know.’[[378]]
The more active minds of the country continued constantly seething with schemes for the promotion of industry, and the remedy of the standing evil of poverty. In this year there was published an Essay on the New Project of a Land Mint, which might be considered a type of the more visionary plans. It rested on what would now be called one of the commonplaces of false political economy. The proposed Land Mint was a kind of bank for the issue of notes, to be given only on landed security. Any one intending to borrow, say a thousand pounds of these notes, pledged unentailed land-property to that amount, plus interest and possible expenses, undertaking to pay back a fifth part each year, with interest on the outstanding amount, till all was discharged. It was thought that, by these means, money would be, as it were, created; the country would be spirited up to hopeful industrial undertakings; and—everything requiring a religious aspect in those days—the people would be enabled to resist the designs of a well-known sovereign, ‘aiming now at a Catholic monarchy;’ for, while Louis XIV. might become sole master of the plate (that is, silver) of the world, what would it matter ‘if we and other nations should substitute another money, equal in all cases to plate?’ The only fear the author could bring himself to entertain, was as to possible counterfeiting of the notes. This being provided against by an ingenious expedient suggested by himself, there remained no difficulty and no fear whatever.[[379]]
1706. Mar.
Although the incessant violences which we have seen mark an early period embraced by our Annals were no more, it cannot be |1705.| said that the crimes of violent passion had become infrequent. On the contrary, it appeared as if the increasing licence of manners since the Revolution, and particularly the increasing drunkenness of the upper classes, were now giving occasion for a considerable number of homicides and murders. We have seen a notable example of reckless violence in the case of the Master of Rollo in 1695. There was about the same time a Laird of Kininmont, who—partly under the influence of a diseased brain—was allowed to commit a considerable number of manslaughters before it was thought necessary to arrest him in his course.