The Master for a time escaped pursuit, but at length he was brought to trial, July 28, 1709, and adjudged to be beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh, on the ensuing 6th of January. During this unusually long interval, he escaped from the Tolbooth by changing clothes with his sister. He was not again heard of till May 1714, when he appeared amongst a number of Jacobite gentlemen at the Cross of Lochmaben, to drink the health of James VIII. The family title had by this time devolved on him by the death of his father; but his property had all been escheat by sentence of the Court of Justiciary. His appearance in the rebellion of 1715, completed by attainder the ruin of his family, and he died unmarried and in obscurity in 1757.[[383]]
Apr. 25.
A great flock of the Delphinus Deductor, or Ca’ing Whale—a cete about twenty-five feet long—came into the Firth of Forth, ‘roaring, plunging, and threshing upon one another, to the great terror of all who heard the same.’ It is not uncommon for this denizen of the arctic seas to appear in considerable numbers on the coasts of Zetland; and occasionally they present themselves on the shores of Caithness and Sutherlandshire; but to come so far south as the Firth of Forth is very rare: hence the astonishment which the incident seems to have created. The contemporary |1707.| chronicler goes on to state: ‘Thirty-five of them were run ashore upon the sands of Kirkcaldy, where they made yet a more dreadful roaring and tossing when they found themselves aground, insomuch that the earth trembled.’ ‘What the unusual appearance of so great a number of them at this juncture [the union of the kingdoms] may portend shall not be our business to inquire.’[[384]]
Aug.
The fifteenth article of the treaty of Union provided that England should pay to Scotland the sum of £398,085, 10s., because of the arrangement for the equality of trade between the two countries having necessitated that Scotland should henceforth pay equal taxes with England—a rule which would otherwise have been inequitable towards Scotland, considering that a part of the English revenue was required for payment of the interest on her seventeen millions of national debt. It was likewise provided by the act of Union, that out of this Equivalent Money, as it was called, the commissioners to be appointed for managing it should, in the first place, pay for any loss to be incurred by the renovation of the coin; in the second, should discharge the losses of the African Company, which thereupon was to cease; the overplus to be applied for payment of the comparatively trifling state-debts of Scotland, and to furnish premiums to the extent of £2000 a year for the improvement of the growth of wool for seven years—afterwards for the improvement of fisheries and other branches of the national industry.
Defoe, who was now living in Scotland, tells how those who hated the Union spoke and acted about the Equivalent. The money not being paid in Scotland on the very day of the incorporation of the two countries, the first talk was—the English have cheated us, and will never pay; they intended it all along. Then an idea got abroad, that by the non-payment the Union was dissolved; ‘and there was a discourse of some gentlemen who came up to the Cross of Edinburgh, and protested, in the name of the whole Scots nation, That, the conditions of the treaty not being complied with, and the terms performed, the whole was void.’ At length, in August, the money came in twelve wagons, guarded by a party of Scots dragoons, and was carried directly to the Castle. Then those who had formerly been loudest in denouncing the English for not forwarding the money, became furious because |1707.| it was come. They hooted at the train as it moved along the street, cursing the soldiers who guarded it, and even the horses which drew it. One person of high station called out that those who brought that money deserved to be cut to pieces. The excitement increased so much before the money was secured in the Castle, that the mob pelted the carters and horses on their return into the streets, and several of the former were much hurt.
It was soon discovered that, after all, only £100,000 of the money was in specie, the rest being in Exchequer bills, which the Bank of England had ignorantly supposed to be welcome in all parts of her majesty’s dominions. This gave rise to new clamours. It was said the English had tricked them by sending paper instead of money. Bills, only payable four hundred miles off, and which, if lost or burned, would be irrecoverable, were a pretty price for the obligation Scotland had come under to pay English taxes. The impossibility of satisfying or pleasing a defeated party was never better exemplified.
The commissioners of the Equivalent soon settled themselves in one of Mr Robert Mylne’s houses in Mylne’s Court, and proceeded to apply the money in terms of the act. One of their first proceedings was to send to London for £50,000 in gold, in substitution for so much of paper-money, that they might, as far as possible, do away with the last clamour. ‘Nor had this been able to carry them through the payment, had they not very prudently taken all the Exchequer bills that any one brought them, and given bills of exchange for them payable in London.’[[385]] Defoe adverts to a noble individual—doubtless the Duke of Hamilton—who came for payment of his share of the African Company’s stock (£3000), with the interest, and who refused to take any of the Exchequer bills, probably thinking thus to create some embarrassment; but the commissioners instantly ordered the claim to be liquidated in gold.
Notwithstanding all the ravings and revilings about the Equivalent, Defoe assures us that, amongst the most malcontent persons he never found any who, having African stock, refused to take their share of the unhallowed money in exchange for it. Even the despised Exchequer bills were all despatched so quickly, that, in six months, not one was to be seen in the country.
Out of the Equivalent, the larger portion—namely, £229,611, 4s. 8d.—went to replace the lost capital of the African Company, |1707.| and so could not be considered as rendered to the nation at large. For ‘recoining the Scots and foreign money, and reducing it to the standard of the coin of England,’ £49,888, 14s. 11⅙d. was expended. There was likewise spent out of this fund, for the expenses of the commissioners and secretaries who had been engaged in carrying through the Union, £30,498, 12s. 2d. After making sundry other payments for public objects, there remained in 1713 but £16,575, 14s. 0½d. unexpended.[[386]]