Archibald Houston, writer to the signet in Edinburgh, acted as factor for the estate of Braid, the property of his nephew, and in this capacity he had incurred the diligence of the law on account of some portion of Bishops’ rents which he had failed to pay. Robert Kennedy of Auchtyfardel, in Lanarkshire, receiving a commission to uplift these arrears, found it to be his duty to give Houston a charge of horning for his debt.
Mar. 20.
One day, Kennedy and his two sons left their house in the Castle Hill of Edinburgh, to go to the usual place of rendezvous at the Cross, when, passing along the Luckenbooths, he was accosted by Mr Houston with violent language, referring to the late legal proceedings. Kennedy, if his own account is to be trusted, gave no hard language in return, but made an effort to disengage himself from the unseemly scene, and moved on towards the Cross. Houston, however, followed and renewed the brawl, when it would appear that Gilbert Kennedy, Auchtyfardel’s eldest son, was provoked to strike his father’s assailant on the face. The people now began to flock about the party—Kennedy again moved on; but before he had got many paces away, he heard the sounds of a violent collision, and turned back with his cane uplifted to defend his son. It is alleged that Kennedy fell upon Houston with his cane—he had no weapon on his person—and while he did so, young Gilbert Kennedy drew his sword, and, rushing forward, wounded Houston mortally in the belly. The unfortunate man died a few days afterwards.[[380]]
Auchtyfardel’s share in this transaction was held to infer his liability to an arbitrary punishment. Gilbert fled, and was outlawed, but afterwards was permitted to return home, and in time he succeeded to his father’s estate. We hear of him in |1705.| 1730, as having been brought by that sad act of his youth into a very serious and religious frame of life. He was an elder of the church, and took great care of the morals of his servants. A maid, whom he on one occasion reproved severely, was led, by a diabolic spite, to mix some arsenic with the bread and milk which she prepared for the family breakfast, and the death of Houston had very nearly been avenged at the distance of twenty-four years from its occurrence. Happily, through the aid of a physician, the laird and his family escaped destruction.[[381]]
A case more characteristic of the age than that of young Auchtyfardel occurred in the ensuing year. David Ogilvie of Cluny, having first thrust himself upon a funeral-party at the village of Meigle, and there done his best to promote hard drinking, insisted on accompanying two or three of the gentlemen on their way home, though his own lay another way. While proceeding along, he gave extreme annoyance to Andrew Cowpar, younger of Lochblair, by practical jokes of a gross kind, founded on the variance of sex in their respective horses. At length, Cowpar giving the other’s horse a switch across the face, to make it keep off, Ogilvie took violent offence at the act, demanded Cowpar’s whip under a threat of being otherwise pistolled, and, on a refusal, actually took out a pistol and shot his companion dead. The wretched murderer escaped abroad.
In January 1708, Robert Baird, son of Sir James Baird of Sauchtonhall, had a drinking-match in a tavern at Leith, where he particularly insisted on his friend, Mr Robert Oswald, being filled drunk. On Oswald resisting repeated bumpers, Baird demanded an apology from him, as if he had committed some breach of good-manners. He refused, and thus a drunken sense of resentment was engendered in the mind of Baird. At a late hour, they came up to Edinburgh in a coach, and leaving the vehicle at the Nether Bow, were no sooner on the street, than Baird drew his sword, and began to push at Oswald, upon whom he speedily inflicted two mortal wounds. He fled from the scene, leaving a bloody and broken sword beside his expiring victim.
On the ground of its not being ‘forethought felony,’ Baird was some years afterwards allowed by the Court of Justiciary to have the benefit of Queen Anne’s act of indemnity.
1706. Oct.
Early in this month, Scotland was honoured with a visit from |1705.| the celebrated Daniel Defoe. His noted power and probity as a Whig pamphleteer suggested to the English ministry the propriety of sending him down for a time to Edinburgh, to help on the cause of the Union. He came with sympathies for the people of Scotland, founded on what they had suffered under the last Stuart reigns. Instead of believing all to be barren and hopeless north of the Tweed, he viewed the country as one of great capabilities, requiring only peace and industry to become a scene of prosperity equal to what prevailed in England. To this end he deemed an incorporating union of the two countries necessary, and it was therefore with no small amount of good-will that he undertook the mission assigned to him.
Even, however, from one regarding it so fraternally as Defoe, Scotland was little disposed to accept a recommendation of that measure. It was in vain that he published a complaisant poem about the people, under the name of Caledonia, in which he commended their bravery, their learning, and abilities. Vainly did he declare himself their friend, anxious to promote their prosperity by pointing to improved agriculture, to fisheries, to commerce, and to manufactures. The Edinburgh people saw him daily closeted with the leaders of the party for the hated union, and that was enough. His pen displayed its wonted activity in answers to the objectors, and his natural good-humour seems never to have failed him, even when he was assailed with the most virulent abuse. But his enemies did not confine themselves to words: threats of assassination reached him. His lodgings were marked, and his footsteps were tracked; yet he held serenely on in his course. He even entered upon some little enterprises in the manufacture of linen, for the purpose of shewing the people what they might do for themselves, if they would adopt right methods. It appears that, during the tumults which took place in Edinburgh while the measure was passing through parliament, he was in real danger. One evening, when the mob was raging in the street, he looked out of his window to behold their proceedings, and was nearly hit by a large stone which some one threw at him, the populace making a point that no one should look over windows at them, lest he might recognise faces, and become a witness against individual culprits.