‘The end of this last and the beginning of this month, we have some accounts of a sickness in Fife, from some of the crew of a ship that came out before their quarantine was performed; but it seems the Lord hath hitherto prevented it. It’s, indeed, a wonder we are not visited with some heavy rod.’[[438]]
The art of printing had fallen sadly off in Scotland during the latter half of the seventeenth century. James Watson[[439]] points out truly that Bassandyne’s folio Bible of 1576, Arbuthnot’s first edition of Buchanan’s History in 1582, Andro Hart’s Bible of 1610, and the Muses’ Welcome to King James in 1618, were well printed books; the last of these Bibles so much so, that ‘many after-impressions of the Bible in folio, had, as the greatest commendation that could be made of them, at the foot of their title-pages, that they were “conform to the edition printed by Andro Hart.”’ Watson adds: ‘The folio Common Prayer-book, printed before the Troubles by Robert Young, then printer for this kingdom to the Royal Martyr, is a pregnant instance of this. I have with great pleasure viewed and compared that book with the English one in the same volume, printed about the same time by the king’s printer in England; and Mr Young’s book so far exceeded the other, that there could be no comparison made between them. You’ll see by that printed here, the master furnished with a very large fount, four sheets being inset together; a vast variety of curiously cut head-pieces, finis’s, blooming letters, fac-totums, flowers, &c. You’ll see the compositor’s part done with the greatest regularity and niceness in the Kalendar, and throughout the rest of the book; the pressman’s part done to a wonder in the red and black, and the whole printed in so |1712.| beautiful and equal a colour, that there is not any appearance of variation. But this good and great master was ruined by the Covenanters for doing this piece of work, and forced to fly the kingdom.’
After the Restoration, one Archibald Hislop, a bookseller, with William Carron as his workman, produced a neat edition of Thomas à Kempis and some other small books. Some Dutchmen, who had been brought over to assist Hislop’s successor, John Cairns, also printed a few respectable volumes, including the acts of parliament, and Sir Robert Sibbald’s Prodromus; but all tendency to attain or maintain the level formerly attained, was checked by a monopoly which was granted to one Andrew Anderson in 1671. This Anderson, who seems to have come from Glasgow, was early in that year condemned by the Privy Council for a very faulty edition of the New Testament; yet, for ‘payment of a composition in exchequer and other weighty reasons,’ they immediately after granted him, as king’s printer, an exclusive right to print all kinds of lawful books in Edinburgh, with a right of supervision over all other typographers within the kingdom. He died in 1679; but his widow succeeded to the monopoly, and exercised it for some years with the greatest rigour, persecuting all who attempted to interfere with the business of printing. As might be expected, the productions of her own press were miserable beyond all example; she both produced bad and erroneous editions of the Bible, and much fewer of them than were required to satisfy the demands of the public. A restriction was at length put upon her privilege, so as to allow general printing to be executed by others; but she continued through the whole term of her patent to be the sole printer of the Scriptures in Scotland. Fac-similes of a few pages from her Bibles—in poor blurred type, almost unintelligible with errors, with italic letters employed wherever the Roman fount fell short, and some lines wholly without spaces between the words—would appal the reader. It plainly appears that no such functionary as a corrector was at any time kept by Mrs Anderson; nor was she herself able to supply the deficiency. The Bible being then almost the only school-book in use, we may imagine what unrequired difficulties were added to the task of gaining a knowledge of the elements of the English language. What, for example, was a poor child to make of the following passage in her duodecimo Bible of 1705: ‘Whyshoulditbethoug tathingincredi ble wtyou, yt God should raise the dead?’ Mrs Anderson’s Bibles being of such |1712.| a character, there was a great importation of English and foreign copies, but only in despite of strenuous efforts on her part to keep them out. Strange to say, when now her government patent expired, she contrived to obtain the appointment of printer to the Church of Scotland. Her ability to buy up a heavy stock of acts of the General Assembly was what secured her this piece of otherwise most unmerited patronage.
Had the government patent expired a few years earlier, she might, for anything that appears, have obtained a renewal of it also. But, now that a Tory ministry was in power, this lucrative privilege was conferred on two zealous Jacobites—Mr Robert Freebairn, publisher, and Mr James Watson, printer. These gentlemen were better typographers than Mrs Anderson; and the Bibles they issued were much superior. But their Tory principles prevented them from long enjoying the privilege. Probably acting in the spirit of their patrons, they ‘seem to have exercised a discretionary power of declining to publish royal proclamations when they were not consonant with their own views; otherwise it is difficult to discover why the queen’s proclamation against unlawful intruders into churches and manses was printed, not by either of her majesty’s printers, but by John Reid in Bell’s Wynd.’[[440]] This zeal led Freebairn, on the breaking out of the rebellion in 1715, to go to Perth with printing apparatus and materials, to act as printer for the person whom he called James the Eighth; and he consequently forfeited his patent.[[441]] Politics now favoured Mrs Anderson. In partnership with an Englishman named Baskett, the king’s printer for England, she once more became the exclusive printer of the Scriptures in Scotland, and for forty-one years more! The Bibles produced during the greater part of that time were indeed a little better than those under the former patent—the general progress of the country necessitated some little improvement—but they were still far inferior to the unprivileged productions of the Scottish press during the same epoch.
There is a reflection which must, or ought somewhat to modify |1712.| our feeling regarding this monstrous absurdity; namely, that the printing of the Scriptures was kept upon the footing of a monopoly, with the effect of poor work and high prices, till our own age, and that so lately as 1823 the patentees, in a legal document, set forth their expenses in erecting a printing-office and ‘other charges of various descriptions,’ as entitling them ‘to enjoy the relative profits and emoluments without interference from any quarter.’
Mar.
Encouraged by the triumph of Mr Greenshields, and the popularity of the Tory administration, the Scottish Episcopalians began in many places to introduce the liturgy of the Church of England. The old Scottish horror for that form of devotion was excited in a high degree; church-courts were full of terror and grief; in some parts, the mob was ready to make a new reformation. In the course of 1711, a good deal of pretty effectual work was done for the appeasing of the popular anxiety. According to a contemporary narration—‘Mr Honeyman, for using the Church of England liturgy at Crail, was prosecuted and deposed by the presbytery, and if the magistrates and people were not Episcopal, he had fallen under very severe punishments. It is but few months since Mr Dunbreck was libelled by the presbytery, prosecuted by the magistrates, and threatened by the Lord Advocate, for using the English liturgy in the Earl Marischal’s own house at Aberdeen, to whom he was chaplain. The Earl of Carnwath this summer was threatened to have his house burned over his head, if he continued the English service in it, and his chaplain thereafter forced to leave his family.’ In November 1711, the presbytery of Perth deposed Henry Murray, a pre-Revolution incumbent of Perth hitherto undisturbed, because he used the English service at baptisms and burials, and the liturgy in worship.[[442]]
At the date of the present article, the two parties had what Wodrow calls ‘a little ruffle’ at Auchterarder—a bleak parish in Strathearn, which has at various times contrived to make a prominent appearance in ecclesiastical politics. The trouble arose in consequence of an attempt to use the funeral-service of the English Church at a funeral. ‘The common people,’ says Wodrow, ‘though not very Presbyterian in their principles, yet they reckoned the service popery, and could not away with it. When the corpse came to |1712.| the churchyard, the women and country-people began and made a great mutiny. The Lord Rollo, a justice of the peace, interposed, but to no purpose. The Duke of Montrose’s bailie, Graham of Orchil, was there; and writes it was not Presbyterians, but the whole of the common people there; and they chased off the liturgy-man, and they behoved to bury in their wonted manner.’
Just at this crisis, the Tory administration of the Church-of-England-loving Anne interposed with an act of toleration for the distressed Episcopalians of Scotland, enabling clergymen, who had orders from Protestant bishops, and took the oaths of allegiance, assurance, and abjuration, to celebrate divine service—using, if they chose, the English liturgy—and to perform baptisms and marriages, without molestation; only further enjoining such clergymen to pray for the queen, the Princess Sophia, and the rest of the royal family, under a penalty of twenty pounds. The church commission had fasts, and prayers, and addresses against the measure—even spoke of reviving the Solemn League and Covenant—but their resistance was in vain.
Hitherto, the western section of the country had been clear of this abomination; but, in November, to the great distress of the serious people of Glasgow, an attempt was made there to set up the Episcopal form of worship. The minister officiating was one Cockburn, ‘an immoral profane wretch, and very silly,’ according to Mr Wodrow, ‘a tool fit enough for beginning such a work;’ who, however, had prepared well his ground by qualifying to the government. A number of persons of social importance joined the congregation. ‘The Earl of Marr, and [the Laird of] Bannockburn were there lately with two coaches, and many go out of curiosity to see it.’[[443]] The boys took the matter up in their usual decisive manner; but the Toleration Act compelled protection from the magistrates, and three town-officers stood guard at the chapel door. On the 27th of December, an English soldier having died, his officers wished to have him buried according to the solemn ritual of his church, and Mr Cockburn performed the ceremony in canonicals in the cathedral cemetery, the company all uncovered, and a rabble looking on with suppressed rage. The clergy took a look into the statute-book, to see if they should be obliged to endure this kind of insolence as well as the liturgy. Wodrow had hopes that Cockburn’s congregation would tire of |1712.| supporting him, though his ‘encouragement’ did not exceed twenty-two pounds a year, or that his free conversation and minced oaths would make them put him away. A foolish shoemaker who attended his chapel having lost his wife, Cockburn wished to have a second exhibition of the funeral-service; but the magistrates would not allow it. One day, he was baptising a soldier’s child at a house in the Gorbals, and great was the commotion which it occasioned among the multitude. On coming out, he was beset by a host of boys calling to him ‘Amen, Amen!’ the use of this word in the service being so odious to the public, that it had stuck to Cockburn as a nickname. For nearly two years were the religious feelings of the people outraged by the open and avowed practice of the ‘modified idolatry’ in the midst of them, when at length a relief came with the Hanover succession. As soon as it was known that Queen Anne was no more, occidental human nature could no longer be restrained. On the evening of the 6th of August 1714, the little chapel was fairly pulled down, and the minister and his wife were glad to flee for their lives. So ended Episcopalian worship in Glasgow for a time.[[444]] A few verses from a popular ballad will assist in giving us some idea of the local feelings of the hour: