Law had not yet so well asserted her supremacy in Scotland as to entirely banish the old inclination to enforce an assumed right by the strong hand. Of the occasional violences still used in debatable matters of property, a fair specimen is presented by a case which occurred at this time between Andrew Johnstone of Lockerby and Mrs Margaret Johnstone, the widow of his eldest |1690.| son. For a year or two past, Mrs Margaret, supported by her father, Sir James Johnstone of Westerhall, and with the aid of sundry servants of her own and her father, had been accustomed to molest Andrew Johnstone, his friends and tenants, in the possession of their lands, and to threaten them with acts of violence. They had been obliged to take out a writ of lawborrows against the wrathful lady and her ‘accomplices;’ but it had proved of no avail in inducing peaceful measures.

One day in the last spring, as Johnstone’s tenants were labouring their lands at Turrie-muir, his furious daughter-in-law and her ‘accomplices’ came upon them, loosed the horses from their ploughs and harrows, cut the harness, and beat the workmen. James Johnstone, a younger son of Lockerby, was present, and on his trying to prevent these outrages, they fell upon him violently, and wounded him under the eye with a penknife, ‘to the great hazard of the loss of his eye.’

In June, a set of Mrs Margaret’s friends, headed by David Carlyle, and his sons William and Robert, took an opportunity of making a deadly personal assault upon Mrs Mary Johnstone, wife of the Laird of Lockerby. The poor lady was cut down, and left as dead, while her friend, Mrs Barbara Hill, was run through the thigh with a sword. These ladies had since lain under the care of surgeons, and it was uncertain whether they would live or die. Janet Geddes, servant of Mungo Johnstone of Netherplace, a friend of Lockerby, had also been assailed by the Carlyles, pulled to the ground by the hair of her head, cruelly beaten and wounded, and nearly choked with a horn snuff-box which they endeavoured to force down her throat.

In May, a group of Mrs Margaret’s friends came armed to the lands of Hass and Whitwyndhill, with ‘horrid and execrable oaths,’ and ‘masterfully drove away the sheep and bestial.’ The poor tenants and their wives came to rescue their property, when the assailing party rode them down, and beat them so sore, that several had to be taken home in blankets. Not long after, Westerhall’s servants came to the same lands, and took by violence from Robert Johnstone of Roberthill fourteen kine and oxen, ‘which were reset by Sir James, being carried home to his house and put in his byres, and set his mark upon them, and thereafter sold ten of the said beasts, ilk ane being worth forty pounds.’

Last, and worst of all, Walter Johnstone, brother of Mrs Margaret, had come with attendants to the house of Netherplace by night, broke in, and beat the owner, Mungo Johnstone, in a |1690.| most outrageous manner, besides squeezing the hands of his son, a boy, that the blood sprung below his nails.

The matter was brought before the Privy Council by complaints from both parties, and as the awards went rather against Lockerby and his son for keeping his daughter-in-law out of her rights, than against her and her friends for their violent procedure on the other side, we may reasonably infer that the James VI. style of justice was far from extinct in the land.

A case of violent procedure on the part of a landlord towards a tenant occurred about the same time. Catherine Herries possessed the lands of Mabie, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, in liferent. In the early part of 1689, she entered into a communing with one Robert Sturgeon, to set to him the small farm of Crooks, promising him a nine years’ lease; and he was admitted to possession, though upon a verbal agreement only. He immediately addressed himself to the improvement of the ground by ditching and draining, and in a year laid out upon it two hundred merks, or something more than eleven pounds sterling. Meanwhile, the lady united herself to John Maxwell of Carse, ‘a notorious papist,’ who had not long before been searched for as a person dangerous to the new government. When the lady learned that Sturgeon had been active among the searchers, she seems to have resolved to discontinue his connection with her estate. At Lammas 1690, alleging that he had been warned away at the preceding Pasch, she caused him to be summoned before the steward-depute of Kirkcudbright, who decreed him to remove within an irregularly brief period. He had no resource but to go to Edinburgh, and sue for a suspension of the decree; but when he returned with this document, he found that the lady, the day before, had violently ejected his wife, bairns, and bestial, ‘whereof many were lost.’ He intimated the suspension; but Lady Mabie, disregarding it, obtained a precept from the steward-depute, ordering him to answer for a thousand merks on account of his unlawful intrusion upon her estate, and authorising his imprisonment till this was paid. Without any other warrant, as Sturgeon complains to the Council, the lady, under cloud of night, sends fifteen or sixteen persons, whereof John Lanerick, writer in Dumfries, was ringleader, with swords and staves, and takes the complainer out of his bed, as if he had been a notorious malefactor, and carries him bound prisoner to the Tolbooth of Kirkcudbright, where he lay six weeks, his wife, bairns, and goods being again ejected, and his house shut up.

1690.

In such a relation of parties, even had the proceedings of Lady Mabie and her husband been more regular, the Lords of the Privy Council could have no difficulty in deciding. They fined the lady and her husband in two hundred merks, one half to go as compensation to the ejected tenant.[[42]]

Sep.