Dec.
The Quakers residing at Glasgow gave in to the Privy Council a representation of the treatment they received at the hands of their neighbours. It was set forth, that the severe dealings with |1691.| the consciences of men under the late government had brought about a revolution, and some very tragical doings. Now, when at last the people had wrestled out from beneath their grievances, ‘it was matter of surprise that those who had complained most thereupon should now be found acting the parts of their own persecutors against the petitioners [the Quakers].’ It were too tedious to detail ‘what they have suffered since the change of the government, through all parts of the nation, by beating, stoning, and other abuses,’ In Glasgow, however, ‘their usage had been liker French dragoons’ usage, and furious rabbling, than anything that dare own the title of Christianity.’ Even there they would have endured in silence ‘the beating, stoning, dragging, and the like which they received from the rabble,’ were it not that magistrates connived at and homologated these persecutions, and their continued silence might seem to justify such doings. They then proceeded to narrate that, on the 12th of November, ‘being met together in their hired house for no other end under heaven than to wait upon and worship their God,’ a company of Presbyterian church elders, ‘attended with the rude rabble of the town, haled them to James Sloss, bailie, who, for no other cause than their said meeting, dragged them to prison, where some of them were kept the space of eight days.’ During that time, undoubted bail was offered for them, but refused, ‘unless they should give it under their hand [that] they should never meet again there.’ At the same time, their meeting-house had been plundered, and even yet the restoration of their seats was refused. ‘This using of men that are free lieges would, in the case of others, be thought a very great riot,’ &c.
The feeling of the supreme administrative body in Scotland on this set of occurrences, is chiefly marked by what they did not do. They recommended to the Glasgow magistrates that, if any forms had been taken away from the Quakers, they should be given back![[73]]
There were no bounds to the horror with which sincere Presbyterians regarded Quakerism in those days. Even in their limited capacity as disowners of all church-politics, they were thought to be most unchristian. Patrick Walker gravely relates an anecdote of the seer-preacher, Peden, which powerfully proves this feeling. This person, being in Ireland, was indebted one night to a Quaker for lodging. Accompanying his host to the meeting, Peden |1691.| observed a raven come down from the ceiling, and perch itself, to appearance, on a particular person’s head, who presently began to speak with great vehemence. From one man’s head, the appearance passed to another’s, and thence to a third. Peden told the man: ‘I always thought there was devilry amongst you, but I never thought he appeared visibly to you; but now I see it.’ The incident led to the conversion of the Quaker unto orthodox Christianity.[[74]]
On the 5th of April 1694, there was a petition to the Privy Council from a man named James Macrae, professing to be a Quaker, setting forth that he had been pressed as a soldier, but could not fight, as it was contrary to his principles and conscience; wherefore, if carried to the wars, he could only be miserable in himself, while useless to others. He was ordered to be liberated, provided he should leave a substitute in his place.[[75]]
It would have been interesting to see a contemporary Glasgow opinion on this case.
1692.
Irregularities of the affections were not now punished with the furious severity which, in the reign of Charles I., ordained beheading to a tailor in Currie for wedding his first wife’s half-brother’s daughter.[[76]] But they were still visited with penalties much beyond what would now be thought fitting. For example, a woman of evil repute, named Margaret Paterson, having drawn aside from virtue two very young men, James and David Kennedy, sons of a late minister of the Trinity College Church, was adjudged to stand an hour in the jougs at the Tron, and then to be scourged from the Castle Hill to the Netherbow, after which a life of exile in the plantations was her portion. The two young men, having been bailed by their uncle, under assurance for five thousand merks, the entire amount of their patrimony, broke their bail rather than stand trial with their associate in guilt. There was afterwards a petition from the uncle setting forth the hardship of the case, and this was replied to with a recommendation from the lords of Justiciary to the lords of the treasury for a modification of the penalty, ‘if their lordships shall think fit.’ In the case of Alison Beaton, where the co-relative offender was a man who had married her mother’s sister, the poor woman was condemned to be scourged in like manner with |1692.| Paterson, and then transported to the plantations. It was a superstitious feeling which dictated such penalties for this class of offences. The true aim of jurisprudence, to repress disorders which directly affect the interests of others, and these alone, was yet far from being understood.
In January 1694, there came before the notice of the Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, a case of curiously complicated wickedness. Daniel Nicolson, writer, and a widow named Mrs Pringle, had long carried on an infamous connection, with little effort at concealment. Out of a bad spirit towards the unoffending Jean Lands, his wife, Nicolson and Pringle, or one or other of them, caused to be forged a receipt as from her to Mr John Elliot, doctor of medicine, for some poison, designing to raise a charge against her and a sister of hers, of an attempt upon her husband’s life. The alleged facts were proved to the satisfaction of a jury, and the court, deeming the adultery aggravated by the forgery, adjudged the guilty pair to suffer in the Grassmarket—Nicolson by hanging, and Pringle by ‘having her head severed from her body.’
There were, however, curious discriminations in the judgments of the Justiciary Court. A Captain Douglas, of Sir William Douglas’s regiment, assisted by another officer and a corporal of the corps, was found guilty of a shocking assault upon a serving-maid in Glasgow, in 1697. A meaner man, or an equally important man opposed to the new government, would have, beyond a doubt, suffered the last penalty for this offence; Captain Douglas, being a gentleman, and one engaged in the king’s service, escaped with a fine of three hundred merks.[[77]]