[526]. Edin. Ev. Courant, Feb. 18, 1850.
[527]. Those who are desirous of further light upon the Marrow Controversy, may be referred to Struthers’s History of Scotland from the Union, &c., 2 vols. 8vo, which, by the way, is a book entitled to more notice than it has received. The worthy author, a self-educated working-man, has been led by his own taste to give details, not elsewhere to be easily met with, of the ecclesiastical proceedings of the earlier half of the eighteenth century, all of which he treats in the spirit of a strenuous old-fashioned west-country Presbyterian. He is copious and severe about the Jacobite and Episcopalian movements, but slights the troubles of the Catholics as ‘beneath the dignity of history.’
[528]. Letter of Alexander Jaffray of Kingsmills, to Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk.—Spalding Club Miscellany, ii. 98.
[529]. Jaffray’s letter, as above.
[530]. ‘London, September 3, 1720.—Last Wednesday, the York Buildings Company sent down to Scotland about sixty thousand pounds in guineas, guarded by a party of horse, being part of the purchase-money for forfeited estates. The same is to be lodged in the Exchequer at Edinburgh.’—Newspapers of the day.
[531]. The Commissioners, who were engaged in their task for nearly nine years, seem to have had £1000 per annum each.
[532]. 5 George I. cap. 20. Statutes at large, v. 152.
[533]. Mr James Drummond, on the 26th May 1720, writes from Blair-Drummond to ‘Mr David Drummond, Treasurer of the Bank, Edinburgh:’ ‘I’m heartily glad the Bank holds out so well. Ther’s great pains taken in the countrey to raise evill reports upon it. I had occasion to find so in a pretty numerous company the other day; yet I did not find any willing to part with your notes at the least discount.’—MSS. in possession of N. Fergusson Blair of Balthayock.
[534]. The arrangement of the Friendly Society consisted simply in a combination of house-proprietors, each paying in 100 merks per £1000 Scots, or a fifteenth of the value of the property, as a stock out of which to compensate for all damage by fire.
[535]. The Scribblers Lashed. Ramsay’s Poems, i. 316.