The minister of Dingwall, in his account of the parish, written a few years after the abolition of the Ferintosh privilege, tells of a remarkable consequence of that measure. During the continuance of the privilege, quarrels and breaches of the peace were abundant among the inhabitants, yielding a good harvest of business to the procurators (i. e. solicitors) of Dingwall. When the privilege ceased, the people became more peaceable, and the prosperity of attorneyism in Dingwall sustained a marked abatement.
1695. May 16.
It was not so subscribing a world at the close of the seventeenth century as it is now; yet, poor as our country then was, she kept her heart open for important public objects, and for works in which faith and charity were concerned.
There was no bridge over the Clyde between Bothwell Bridge and Little-gill Bridge, a space of eighteen miles. At Lanark, there was a ferry-boat; but the river was frequently impassable, and there were repeated instances of the whole passengers being swept down and engulfed in the Stonebyres Linn. Arrangements were now made, chiefly by a collection at all the church-doors in the kingdom, for building ‘a sufficient stone bridge’ at the foot of the Inch of Clydeholm—this charitable measure being rendered necessary by the poverty to which the burgh of Lanark had been reduced by spoliation during the late reign, ‘by exactions of fines, free quarters for soldiers, and the like.’
By order of parliament, a collection of money was made, in July 1695, in the parish churches of the kingdom, for the benefit of Andrew Watson, skipper, and eight mariners of his vessel, who, in a voyage from Port Glasgow to Madeira, on the 19th of November in the preceding year, in latitude 38 degrees, had been attacked by two Salee rovers, and by them carried as captives to Mamora, in Marocco. In their petition to parliament, they described themselves as resting in a slavery more cruel and barbarous than they could express, without the proper necessaries of life, and ‘above all, deprived of the precious gospel, which they too much slighted when they enjoyed it,’ with no prospect before them but to die in misery and torment, unless they have some speedy relief. The contributions were to be handed to John Spreul, merchant in Glasgow, he finding caution to apply them to their proper end.
1697. Apr. 15.
‘Those of the Scots nation residing at Konigsberg, in Prussia,’ petitioned the Privy Council by their deputy, Mr Francis Hay, for assistance in building a kirk for their use, for which they had obtained a liberty from the Duke of Brandenburg. A collection at all the church-doors in the kingdom was ordained for this purpose; and it is surprising with what sympathy the poor commons of Scotland would enter on a movement of this kind. We find that the little parish of Spott, in East Lothian, contributed nearly three pounds sterling towards the Konigsberg kirk.
At the ‘break of a storm’—by which is meant the melting of a great fall of snow—in November 1698, the southern streams were flooded, and the bridge of Ancrum was so broken and damaged that it could be no longer serviceable. This being the only bridge |1698.| upon the water of Teviot, on an important line of communication between the north and south in the centre of the Borders, and there being no ferry-boat on the river but one seven miles further up, it was most desirable that it should be rebuilt; but the calculated expense was betwixt eight and nine thousand merks (from £450 to £500 sterling), and an act of Council offering a pontage to any one who would undertake this business altogether failed of its object. In these circumstances, the only alternative was a collection at all the church-doors in the kingdom, and permission to make such a levy was accordingly granted by the Privy Council.
1695. Aug.
The vicissitudes of witchcraft jurisprudence in Scotland are remarkable. While Presbyterianism of the puritanic type reigned uncontrolled between 1640 and 1651, witches were tortured to confession and savagely burnt, in vast numbers, the clergy not merely concurring, but taking a lead in the proceedings. During the Cromwell ascendency, English squeamishness greatly impeded justice in this department, to the no small dissatisfaction of the more zealous. On the Restoration, the liberated energies of the native powers fell furiously on, and got the land in a year or two pretty well cleared of those vexatious old women who had been allowed to accumulate during the past decade. From 1662 to the Revolution, prosecutions for witchcraft were comparatively rare, and, however cruel the government might be towards its own opponents, it must be acknowledged to have introduced and acted consistently upon rules to some extent enlightened and humane with regard to witches—namely, that there should be no torture to extort confession, and no conviction without fair probation. I am not sure if the opposite party would not have ascribed it mainly to the latitudinarianism of Episcopacy, that the whole history of witchcraft, throughout the two last Stuart reigns, betrayed an appearance as if the authorities were not themselves clear for such prosecutions, and, in dictating them, only made a concession to the popular demands.