John, late Archbishop of Glasgow, having applied to the king for permission to go to Scotland ‘for recovery of his health,’ obtained a letter granting him the desired liberty under certain restrictions. On the ensuing 16th of March, there is an ordinance of the Privy Council, appointing the town of Cupar, in Fife, and four miles about the same, as the future residence of the ex-prelate, provided he give sufficient caution for keeping within these bounds, and entering into no contrivance or correspondence against the government.

On the 15th of April, the archbishop, having found no ‘convenient lodging for his numerous family in Cupar,’ was permitted, on his petition, to reside in the mansion of Airth, under the same conditions. Two months later, this was changed to ‘the mansion-house of Gogar, near to Airth, within the shire of Clackmannan.’ The archbishop does not appear to have been released from his partial restraint till February 1701.[[198]]

Feb.

Commenced an inquiry by a commission from the Privy Council into the celebrated case of Bargarran’s Daughter—namely, Christian Shaw, a girl of eleven years old, the daughter of John Shaw of Bargarran, in Renfrewshire. A solemn importance was thus given to circumstances which, if they took place now, would be slighted by persons in authority, and scarcely heard of beyond the parish, or at most the county. It was, however, a case highly characteristic of the age and country in which it happened.

In the parish of Erskine, on the south bank of the Clyde, stands Bargarran House, a small old-fashioned mansion, with some |1697.| inferior buildings attached, the whole being enclosed, after the fashion of a time not long gone by, in a wall capable of some defence. Here dwelt John Shaw, a man of moderate landed estate, with his wife and a few young children. His daughter Christian had as yet attracted no particular attention from her parents or neighbours, though observed to be a child of lively character and ‘well-inclined.’

One day (August 17, 1696), little Christian having informed her mother of a petty theft committed by a servant, the woman broke out upon her with frightful violence, wishing her soul might be harled [dragged] through hell, and thrice imprecating the curse of God upon her. Considering the pious feelings of old and young in that age, we shall see how such an assault of terrible words might well impress the mind of a child, to whom all such violences must have been a novelty. The results, however, were of a kind which could scarcely have been anticipated. Five days afterwards, when Christian had been a short while in bed, and asleep, she suddenly started up with a great cry, calling, ‘Help! help!’ and immediately sprung into the air, in a manner astonishing to her parents and others who were in the room. Then being put into another bed, she remained stiff and to appearance insensible for half an hour; after which, for forty-eight hours, she continued restless, complaining of violent pains through her whole body, or, if she dozed for a moment, immediately starting up with the same cry of irrepressible terror, ‘Help! help!’

For eight days the child had fits of extreme violence, under which she was ‘often so bent and rigid that she stood like a bow on her feet and neck at once,’ and continued without the power of speech, except at short intervals, during which she seemed perfectly well. A doctor and apothecary were brought to her from Paisley; but their bleedings and other applications had no perceptible effect. By and by, her troubles assumed a different aspect. She seemed to be wrestling and fighting with an unseen enemy, and there were risings and fallings of her belly, and strange shakings of her whole body, that struck the beholders with consternation. She now began, in her fits, to denounce Catherine Campbell, the woman-servant, and an old woman of evil fame, named Agnes Naismith, as the cause of her torments, alleging that they were present in person cutting her side, when in reality they were at a distance. At this crisis, fully two months after the beginning of her ailments, her parents took her to Glasgow, to consult an eminent physician, named Brisbane, |1697.| regarding her case. He states in his deposition,[[199]] that at first he thought the child quite well; but after a few minutes, she announced a coming fit, and did soon after fall into convulsions, accompanied by heavy groanings and murmurings against two women named Campbell and Naismith; all of which he thought ‘reducible to the effect of a hypochondriac melancholy.’ He gave some medicines suitable to his conception of the case, and for eight days, during which the girl remained in Glasgow, she was comparatively well, as well as for eight days after her return home. Then the fits returned with even increased violence; she became as stiff as a corpse, without sense or motion; her tongue would be drawn out of her mouth to a prodigious length, while her teeth set firmly upon it; at other times it was drawn far back into her mouth. Her parents set out with her again to Glasgow, that she might be under the doctor’s care; but as they were going, a new fact presented itself. She spat or took from her mouth, every now and then, parcels of hair of different colours, which she declared her two tormentors were trying to force down her throat. She had also fainting-fits every quarter of an hour. Dr Brisbane saw her again (November 12), and from that time for some weeks was frequently with her. He says: ‘I observed her narrowly, and was confident she had no human correspondent to subminister the straw, wool, cinders, hay, feathers, and such like trash to her; all which, upon several occasions, I have seen her pull out of her mouth in considerable quantities, sometimes after several fits, and sometimes after no fit at all, whilst she was discoursing with us; and for the most part she pulled out those things without being wet in the least; nay, rather as if they had been dried with care and art; for one time, as I remember, when I was discoursing with her, she gave me a cinder out of her mouth, not only dry, but hot, much above the degree of the natural warmth of a human body.’ ‘Were it not,’ he adds, ‘for the hairs, hay, straw, and other things wholly contrary to human nature, I should not despair to reduce all the other symptoms to their proper classes in the catalogue of human diseases.’ Thereafter, as we are further informed, there were put out of her mouth bones of various sorts and sizes, small sticks of candle-fir, some stable-dung mingled with hay, a quantity of fowl’s feathers, a gravel-stone, a whole gall-nut, and some egg-shells.

1697.

Sometimes, during her fits, she would fall a-reasoning, as it were, with Catherine Campbell about the course she was pursuing, reading and quoting Scripture to her with much pertinence, and entreating a return of their old friendship. The command which she shewed of the language of the Bible struck the bystanders as wonderful for such a child; but they easily accounted for it. ‘We doubt not,’ says the narrator of the case, ‘that the Lord did, by his good spirit, graciously afford her a more than ordinary measure of assistance.’

Before leaving Glasgow for the second time, she had begun to speak of other persons as among her tormentors, naming two, Alexander and James Anderson, and describing other two whose names she did not know.