Early in the ensuing year—if we may depend upon the authority quoted below[[668]]—two poor Highland women, mother and daughter, natives of the parish of Loth, in Sutherlandshire, were accused of witchcraft before the sheriff-depute, Captain David Ross of Littledean, and condemned to death. The mother was charged with having ridden on the daughter, who had been transformed on the occasion into a pony, and shod by the devil. The girl made her escape, and was noted ever after, in confirmation of the charge, to be lame in both hands and feet. The mother suffered at Dornoch in June, being burned in a pitch-barrel. It has been handed down by tradition, that, ‘after being brought out to execution, the weather proving very severe, she sat composedly warming herself by the fire prepared to consume her, while the other instruments of death were making ready.’[[669]] ‘It does not appear,’ says Sir Walter Scott in 1830, ‘that any punishment was inflicted for this cruel abuse of the law on the person of a creature so helpless; but the son of the lame daughter—himself distinguished by the same misfortune—was living so lately as to receive the charity of the present Marchioness of Stafford, Countess of Sutherland in her own right.’[[670]]
For a generation, the linen manufacture had been passing through what might be called a prosperous infancy. A public paper in 1720 states that there was annually imported from Scotland into England the value of £100,000 in white linen, and as much in brown, the flax being of ‘a spunsie quality,’ which gave it a preference over the similar products of both Ireland and Germany.[[671]] [The same document estimated the English woollen cloths exported to Scotland at £400,000 per annum.]
By an act of parliament passed this year, a Board of Trustees was established in Scotland for the administration of an annual sum set aside for the encouragement of manufactories and fisheries. The sum at first given was four thousand pounds, which might be considered as calculated to go a great way in so poor a country. The activity and serviceableness of the Board was, in its earlier years, chiefly shewn in the promotion of the linen manufacture, |1727.| which, under the stimulus afforded by premiums, rose from an export sale of 2,183,978 yards in 1727, to 4,666,011 in 1738, 7,358,098 in 1748, and 12,823,048 in 1764. It is curious, regarding an institution which has since occupied, as it still does, so conspicuous a place in the public eye, to trace the difficulties it had to contend with at starting, in consequence of the monetary vacuum produced by the conflict of the two banks. The Lord Advocate, Duncan Forbes, wrote on the 26th June 1728 to the Duke of Newcastle: ‘The trustees appointed by his majesty for taking care of the manufactures, proceed with great zeal and industry; but at present credit is run so low, by a struggle between the bank lately erected by his majesty and the old bank, that money can scarcely be found to go to market with.’[[672]]
Oct.
Wodrow, who never failed to hear of and note any misfortune that happened to Glasgow—hopeful, always, that it would be ‘laid to heart’—makes us aware of an obscure sorrow which was now beginning to beset the thriving burghers. ‘The vermin called bugs,’ he says, ‘are at present extremely troublesome at Glasgow. They say they are come over with timber and other goods from Holland. They are in many houses there, and so extremely prolific, there is no getting rid of them, though many ways have been tried. It’s not twenty year since they were known, and such as had them kept them secret. These six or seven years, they are more openly compleened of, and now the half of the town are plagued with them. This is chiefly attributed to the frequent alterations of servants, who bring them from house to house.’[[673]]
Soon after, having occasion to deplore the death of Provost Peady, a person of great firmness and piety, he speaks of the many ‘strokes’ which the industrious city had met with of late. Their losses during 1727 had been reckoned at not less than twenty-eight thousand pounds sterling! ‘It’s a wonder to me how they stand throo.’ The worthy pastor of Eastwood would evidently have not been greatly distressed had his Glasgow neighbours been subjected to a repetition of a few of the plagues of Egypt, so needful were they of something to check their growing fatness and pride. He might have been expected to hail the frogs with a fraternal feeling; and we can imagine him marking with hopefulness, not unmingled with sympathy, the spread of the |1727.| murrain among the burghers’ kine at the Cowcaddens. The present entomological corrective was evidently regarded by him with a satisfaction too deep to admit of many words.
1728. Feb. 8.
Mr John Boyd gives his friend Wodrow an account of a duelling affair which had befallen in Edinburgh. ‘Ane officer in the Dutch Guards, son to Mr Walter Stewart, late Solicitor, was ill wounded by are officer in the Canongate [Lieutenant Pilkington, of Grove’s Regiment]. The officer, when in custody of the constables, was rescued by the guard there, who carried him off; but at Musselburgh, the people there apprehended him, and made him and twenty-two guards prisoners, who were all brought to prison here.’ There were hopes of the wounded man’s recovery.[[674]]
Mar. 1.
At four o’clock in the morning, a smart shock of an earthquake was experienced in Edinburgh and throughout the south of Scotland, if not in other quarters. At Selkirk, every house was shaken, and some people were tumbled out of bed, but no damage was done.[[675]]