The chess-window did reel, sir,
Like to a spinning-wheel, sir,
For Dagon he is fallen now;
I hope he’ll never rise, sir.’[[445]]
Mar.
A Dumfriesshire minister communicated to Wodrow an account he had got from the Laird of Waterside, a factor of the Duke of Queensberry, of a spectacle which the laird and many others had |1712.| seen about sunset one evening in this month, about a mile from Penpont. ‘There appeared to them, towards the sea, two large fleets of ships, near a hundred upon every side, and they met together and fairly engaged. They very clearly saw their masts, tackling, guns, and their firing one at another. They saw several of them sunk; and after a considerable time’s engagement they sundered, and one part of them went to the west and another to the south.’
Wodrow goes on to relate what Mr James Boyes told him of shootings heard one morning about the same time in Kintyre. ‘The people thought it had been thunder, and went out to see what sort of day it was like to be. All appears clear, and nothing like thunder. There were several judicious people that saw, at some distance from them, several very great companies of soldiers marching with their colours flying and their drums beating, which they heard distinctly, and saw the men walking on the ground in good order; and yet there were no soldiers at all in that country, nor has been a long time. They heard likewise a very great shooting of cannon: ... so distinct and terrible, that many of the beasts broke the harrow and came running home.’
May.
Wodrow notes, at this time, a piece of bad taste on the part of Sir James Hall of Dunglass, whose family had in recent times acquired by purchase that ancient possession of the Home family. The old burial-place of the Earls of Home had been turned by Sir James into a stable, and he resisted both the clamour of the public and the private remonstrance of the aggrieved family on the subject. ‘Because the minister shewed some dislike at this unnatural thing, he is very uneasy to him.’
This act of Sir James Hall necessarily shocked Episcopalians; and to such an extent was the feeling carried, that a distinct pamphlet on the subject was published in London. The writer of this tells us, that, having made an excursion into Scotland in the summer of 1711, he tarried for a while at the post-house of Cockburnspath, and thus had an opportunity of seeing the ‘pretty little church’ near Dunglass House. He found that Sir James had gathered off all the grave-stones from the churchyard, to give scope for the growing of grass. He had ‘made the nave of the church a stable for his coach-mares, and dug up the graves of the dead, throwing away their bones, to make way for a pavement for his horses.... He has made the choir a coach-house, and |1712.| broken down the great east end wall, to make a great gate to let his coaches in, that they may stand where the altar of God did stand. The turret is a pigeon-house, and over this new stable he has made a granary. There is also a building called an aile, adjoining the north side of the church, which is still a burying-place (still belonging to the Earl of Home), in which Sir James keeps hay for his horses, though his own first lady, who was daughter to Sir Patrick Home of Polwarth (now Earl of Marchmont), and his own only son, lie buried there.’