Such accounts of this outrage as reached the low country excited general horror, and Tullibardine easily obtained military assistance and letters of fire and sword against the Master of Lovat and his accomplices. The Master was not only supported by his father and other clansmen in what he had done, but even by the Earl of Argyle, who felt as a relative and old friend of the house, as well as an opponent of Tullibardine. On the approach of troops, he retired with his reluctant bride to the isle of Agais, a rough hill surrounded by the waters of the Beauly, where Sir Robert Peel spent the last summer of his life in an elegant modern villa, but which was then regarded as a Highland fastness. A herald, who ventured so far into the Fraser territory to deliver a citation, left the paper on a cleft stick opposite to the island. Fraser had several skirmishes with the government troops; took prisoners, and dismissed them, after exacting their oaths to harass him no more; and, in short, for a year carried on a very pretty guerrilla war, everywhere dragging about with him his wretched wife, whose health completely gave way through exposure, fatigue, |1697.| and mental distress. In September 1698, he and nineteen other gentlemen were tried in absence, and forfaulted for their crimes, which were held as treasonable—a stretch of authority which has since been severely commented on. At length, the Master—become, by the death of his father, Lord Lovat—tired of the troublous life he was leading, and by the advice of Argyle, went to London to solicit a pardon from the king. Strong influence being used, the king did remit all charges against him for raising war, but declined to pardon him for his violence to the Lady Lovat, from fear of offending Tullibardine. He was so emboldened as to resolve to stand trial for the alleged forced marriage; but it was to be in the style of an Earl of Bothwell or an Earl of Caithness in a former age. With a hundred Frasers at his back, did this singular man make his appearance in Edinburgh, in the second year before the beginning of the eighteenth century, to prefer a charge against the Earl of Tullibardine—perhaps the very last attempt that was made in Scotland to overbear justice. On the morning, however, of the day when the charge was to be made, his patron, Argyle, was informed by Lord Aberuchil, one of the judges (a Campbell), that if Fraser appeared he would find the judges had been corrupted, and his own destruction would certainly follow. He lost heart, and fled to England.[[217]]
Nov. 9.
Sir Robert Dickson of Sorn-beg was one of a group of Edinburgh merchants of this age, who carried on business on a scale much beyond what the general circumstances of the country would lead us to expect. He at this time gave in a memorial to the king in London, bearing—‘In the year 1691, I with some others who did join with me, did engage ourselves to the Lords of your majesty’s Treasury in Scotland, by a tack [lease] of your customs and foreign excise, by which we did oblige ourselves to pay yearly, for the space of five years, the sum of twenty thousand three hundred pounds sterling. Conform to which tack, we continued as tacksmen during all the years thereof, and did punctually, without demanding the least abatement or defalcation, make payment of our whole tack-duty, save only the sum of six hundred pounds, which still remains in my hand unpaid, and which I am most willing to pay, upon the Lords of the Treasury granting me and my partners ane general discharge.’ Nevertheless, ‘the Lords of the Treasury have granted a warrant for seizing of my |1697.| person, and committing me prisoner until I make payment of the sum of two thousand and three hundred pounds sterling more, which they allege to be due to the officers of state for wines, and which I humbly conceive I and my partners can never be obliged to pay, it being no part of my contract. And I humbly beg leave to inform your majesty that, if such a custom be introduced, it will very much diminish your majesty’s revenue; for it is not to be thought that we nor any other succeeding tacksmen can give such gratification over and above our tack-duty without a considerable allowance, and this still prejudges your majesty’s interest. [Sir Robert seems to mean that, if farmers of revenue have to give gratuities to officers of state, these must be deducted from the sum agreed to be paid to his majesty.] They were so forward in the prosecution of the said warrant, that I was necessitat to leave the kingdom, and come here and make my application to your majesty.’ The memorial finally craved of the king that he would remit ‘the determination of the said wines’ to the Lords of Session.
The Lords of the Privy Council had, of course, the usual dislike of deputies and commissions for seeing appeals taken against their decisions to the principal authority, and they embraced the first opportunity of laying hold of the customs tacksman and putting him up in the Tolbooth. There he did not perhaps change his mind as to his non-liability in justice for two thousand three hundred pounds for presents of wine to the officers of state in connection with the farming or tack of the customs, being a good ten per cent. upon the whole transaction; but he probably soon became sensible that the Privy Council of Scotland was not a body he could safely contend with. The Lord Advocate speedily commenced a process against him, on the ground of his memorial to the king falling under the statute of King James V. for severe punishment to those who murmur any judge spiritual or temporal, and prove not the same; and on this charge he was brought before the Council (1st of February 1698). It was shewn that the charge for gratuities was ‘according to use and wont,’ and that the memorial was a high misdemeanour against their lordships; therefore inferring a severe punishment. As might have been expected, Sir Robert was glad to submit, and on his knee to crave pardon of their lordships, who thereupon discharged him.[[218]]
1697.
The reader, who has just seen some other Edinburgh merchants punished for imputing to state-officers the possibility of their being bribed with money, will probably smile when he sees another in trouble so soon after, for remonstrating against the necessity he had been under of actually giving them bribes.
Dec. 28.
It had occurred to Mr Charles Ritchie, minister of the gospel, to be asked by Lieutenant Whitehead, of Colonel Sir John Hill’s regiment at Fort-William, to join him in marriage with the colonel’s daughter, and the ceremony was performed in the presence of several of the officers of the regiment, the minister professing to know of no impediment to the union of the young couple. For this fact, Mr Charles had been carried to Edinburgh, and put up in the Tolbooth, where he languished without trial for several months. He now petitioned for release or banishment, stating that he had been kept in jail all this time ‘without any subsistence,’ and ‘is reduced to the greatest extremity, not only for want of any mean of subsistence, but also by want of any measure of health.’
The Council, viewing his consent to banishment, granted him that boon, he enacting himself bound to depart ‘furth of the kingdom’ before the 1st of February, and never to return without his majesty’s or the Council’s warrant to that effect.[[219]]
Throughout this year, there were protracted legal proceedings before the Privy Council, between Blair of Balthayock, in Perthshire, and Carnegie of Finhaven, in Forfarshire, in consequence of the latter having brought on a marriage between his daughter and a young minor, his pupil, Blair of Kinfauns, the relative of Balthayock. The affair ended in a condemnation of Finhaven and a fine of one hundred and fifty pounds, to be paid to Balthayock for his expenses in the action.