The case has usually, in recent times, been treated as one in which there were no other elements than a wicked imposture on her part, and some insane delusions on that of the confessing victims; but probably in these times, when the phenomena of mesmerism have forced themselves upon the belief of a large and respectable portion of society, it will be admitted as more likely |1697.| that the maledictions of Campbell threw the child into an abnormal condition, in which the ordinary beliefs of her age made her sincerely consider herself as a victim of diabolic malice. How far she might be tempted to put on appearances and make allegations, in order to convince others of what she felt and believed, it would be difficult to say. To those who regard the whole affair as imposture, an extremely interesting problem is presented for solution by the original documents, in which the depositions of witnesses are given—namely, how the fallaciousness of so much, and, to appearance, so good testimony on pure points of fact, is to be reconciled with any remaining value in testimony as the verifier of the great bulk of what we think we know.
Mar.
About thirty years before this date, a certain Sir Alexander M‘Culloch of Myreton, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, with two sons, named Godfrey and John, attracted the attention of the authorities by some frightfully violent proceedings against a Lady Cardiness and her two sons, William and Alexander Gordon, for the purpose of getting them extruded from their lands.[[200]] Godfrey in time succeeded to the title, and to all the violent passions of his father; but his property was wholly compromised for the benefit of his creditors, who declared it to be scarcely sufficient to pay his debts. Desperate for a subsistence, he attempted, in the late reign, by ‘insinuations with the Chancellor Perth,’ and putting his son to the Catholic school in Holyrood Palace, to obtain some favour from the law, and succeeded so far as to get assigned to him a yearly aliment of five hundred merks (about £28) out of his lands, being allowed at the same time to take possession of the family mansion of Bardarroch. From a complaint brought against him in July 1689 before the Privy Council, it would appear that he intromitted with the rents of the estate, and did no small amount of damage to the growing timber; moreover, he attempted to embezzle the writs of the property, with the design of annihilating the claims of his creditors. Insufferable as his conduct was, the Council assigned him six hundred merks of aliment, but only on condition of his immediately leaving Bardarroch, and giving up the writs of the estate. Yielding in no point to their decree, he was soon after ordered to be summarily ejected by the sheriff.[[201]]
There was a strong, unsubdued Celtic element in the |1697.| Kirkcudbright population, and Sir Godfrey M‘Culloch reminds us entirely of a West Highland Cameron or Macdonald of the reign of James VI. What further embroilments took place between him and his old family enemies, the Gordons of Cardiness, we do not learn; but certain it is, that on the 2d of October 1690, he came to Bush o’ Bield, the house of William Gordon, whom twenty years before he had treated so barbarously, with the intent of murdering him. Sending a servant in to ask Gordon out to speak with some one, he no sooner saw the unfortunate man upon his threshold, than ‘with a bended gun he did shoot him through the thigh, and brak the bane thereof to pieces; of which wound William Gordon died within five or six hours thereafter.’[[202]]
The homicide made his way to a foreign country, and thus for some years escaped justice. He afterwards returned to England, and was little taken notice of. William Stewart of Castle-Stewart, husband of the murdered Gordon’s daughter, offered to intercede for a remission in his behalf, if he would give up the papers of the Cardiness estate; but he did not accept of this offer. Perhaps he became at length rather too heedless of the vengeance that might be in store for him. It is stated that, being in Edinburgh, he was so hardy as to go to church, when a gentleman of Galloway, who had some pecuniary interest against him, rose, and called out with an air of authority: ‘Shut the doors—there’s a murderer in the house!’[[203]] He was apprehended, and immediately after subjected to a trial before the High Court of Justiciary, and condemned to be beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh. The execution was appointed to take place on the 5th of March 1697;[[204]] but on the 4th he presented a petition to the Privy Council, in which, while expressing submission to his sentence, he begged liberty to represent to their Lordships, ‘that as the petitioner hath been among the most unhappy of mankind in the whole course of his life, so he hath been singularly unfortunate in what hath happened to him near the period of it.’ He thought that ‘nobody had any design upon him after the course of so many years, and he flattered himself with hopes of life on many considerations, and specially believing that the only two proving witnesses would not have been admitted. Being now found guilty, he is exceedingly surprised and unprepared to die.’ On his |1697.| petition for delay, the execution was put forward to the 25th March.
Sir Walter Scott has gravely published, in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a strange story about Sir Godfrey M‘Culloch, to the effect that he had made friendship in early life with an old man of fairyland, by diverting a drain which emptied itself into the fairies’ chamber of dais; and when he came to the scaffold on the Castle Hill, this mysterious personage suddenly came up on a white palfrey, and bore off the condemned man to a place of safety. There is, however, too much reason to believe that Sir Godfrey really expiated the murder of William Gordon at the market-cross of Edinburgh. The fact is recorded in a broadside containing the unhappy man’s last speech, which has been reprinted in the New Statistical Account of Scotland. In this paper, he alleged that the murder was unpremeditated, and that he came to the place where it happened contrary to his own inclination. He denied a rumour which had gone abroad that he was a Roman Catholic, and recommended his wife and children to God, with a hope that friends might be stirred up to give them some protection. It has been stated, however, that he was never married. He left behind him several illegitimate children, who, with their mother, removed to Ireland on the death of their father; and there a grandson suffered capital punishment for robbery about the year 1760.[[205]]
Mar.
The Privy Council had an unpleasant affair upon its hands. Alexander Brand, late bailie of Edinburgh—a man of enterprise, noted for having introduced a manufacture of gilt leather hangings—had vented a libel under the title of ‘Charges and Gratuities for procuring the additional fifteen hundred pounds of my Tack-duty of Orkney and Zetland, which was the surplus of the price agreed by the Lords,’ specifying ‘sums of money, hangings, or other donatives given to the late Secretary Johnston; the Marquis of Tweeddale, late Lord High Chancellor; the Duke of Queensberry, then Lord Drumlanrig; the Earl of Cassillis; the Viscount of Teviot, then Sir Thomas Livingstone; the Lord Basil Hamilton; the Lord Raith, and others.’ He had, in 1693, along with Sir Thomas Kennedy of Kirkhill and Sir William Binning, late provosts of Edinburgh, entered into a contract with the government for five thousand stands of arms, at a pound sterling each, which, it was alleged, would have allowed them a good profit; yet, when abroad for the purchase of the arms, he wrote to his partners in the transaction, that they could not be purchased under twenty-six shillings the piece; and his associates had induced the Council to agree to this increased price, the whole affair being, as was alleged, a contrivance for cheating the government. To obtain payment of the extra sum (£1500), the two knights had entered into a contract for giving a bribe of two hundred and fifty guineas to the Earls of Linlithgow and Breadalbane, ‘besides a gratuity to James Row, who was to receive the arms.’ But no such sum had ever been paid to these two nobles, ‘they being persons of that honour and integrity that they were not capable to be imposed upon that way.’ Yet Kennedy and Binning had allowed the contract to appear in a legal process before the Admiralty Court, ‘to the great slander and reproach of the said two noble persons.’ In short, it appeared that the three contractors had proceeded upon a supposition of what was necessary for the effecting of their business with the Privy Council, and while not actually giving any bribes—at least, so they now acknowledged—had been incautious enough to let it appear as if they had. For the compound fault of contriving bribery and defaming the nobles in question, they were cast in heavy fines—Kennedy in £800, Binning in £300, and Brand in £500, to be imprisoned till payment was made.
Notwithstanding this result, there is no room to doubt that it had become a custom for persons doing business for the government to make ‘donatives’ to the Lords of the Privy Council. Fountainhall reports a case (November 23, 1693) wherein Lord George Murray, who had been a partner with Sir Robert Miln of Barnton in a tack of the customs in 1681, demurred, amongst other things in their accounts, to 10,000 merks given yearly to the then officers of state. ‘As to the donatives, the Lords [of Session] found they had grown considerably from what was the custom in former years, and that it looked like corruption and bribery: [they] thought it shameful that the Lords, by their decreet, should own any such practice; therefore they recommended to the president to try what was the perquisite payment in wine by the tacksmen to every officer of state, and to study to settle [the parties].’[[206]]
From the annual accounts of the Convention of Royal Burghs, |1697.| it appears that fees or gratuities to public officers with whom they had any dealing were customary. For example, in 1696, there is entered for consulting with the king’s advocate anent prisoners, &c., £84, 16s. (Scots); to his men, £8, 14s.; to his boy, £1, 8s. Again, to the king’s advocate, for consulting anent the fishery, bullion, &c., £58; and to his men, £11, 12s. Besides these sums, £333, 6s. 8d. were paid to the same officer as pension, and to his men, £60. There were paid in the same year, £11, 12s. to the chancellor’s servants; £26, 13s. 4d. to the macers of the Council; and an equal sum to the macers of the Court of Session.