The friends of the deceased nevertheless continued to suspect the stepson, and caused him to be apprehended and thrown into Aberdeen jail. He lay there unaccused for three months, ‘to the ruin of himself and his small family,’ till at length they agreed to have him charged before the Commissioners of Justiciary for the Highlands. Hereupon (March 6, 1699) he petitioned the Privy Council for trial before the High Court of Justiciary; which was granted.[[238]] What was the upshot of the affair does not appear.
Nov. 29.
It was reported by the Lord Advocate to the Privy Council that there had just been put into his hand a challenge at sharps, which had been sent by one fencing-master to another, ‘to be performed in the face of the school.’ He was told ‘it was but a business of sport, and that there was no hazard in it.’ Nevertheless, the Council recommended his lordship to inquire further into the matter, and report, or act as he might think of it.[[239]]
Dec. 1.
Mr George Brown, a minister under banishment from Edinburgh |1698.| on account of the performance of irregular marriages, came before the Privy Council for their favour in behalf of an instrument he had invented—called Rotula Arithmetica—‘whereby he is able to teach those of a very ordinary capacity who can but read the figures, to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, though they are not able otherwise readily to condescend [specify] whether seven and four be eleven or twelve.’ This instrument he set forth as calculated ‘for freeing the mind from that rack of intortion to which it is obliged in long additions, as some honourable persons of their Lordships’ number (with whom he had the honour to converse on that head) are able to instruct.’
The Lords treated this arithmetical nonjurant relentingly, and both gave him a copyright in the Rotula for fourteen years, and allowed him to return to Edinburgh.
On the 13th December 1698, the Lords of the Council recommended the Lords of the Treasury to give ‘a reasonable allowance to Mr George Brown, minister, to be ane encouragement to him for his inventing and making of his Rotula Arithmetica.’
His arithmetical machine comes up again three or four times in the Privy Council books during the next few years.
Dec. 22.
Charles Hope of Hopetoun had a band of workmen constantly engaged at his mines in the Leadhills, far up one of the higher vales of Lanarkshire. It not being worth while for each man to go singly some miles for his victuals, the proprietor was desirous of arranging that one should go and make marketing for himself and all the rest; but there was an obstacle—under terror of a late act against forestalling, no one could venture to sell so much grain to any single person as was required for this body of miners. Hopetoun[[240]] was therefore obliged to address the Privy Council, setting forth the case, and craving a permission for his bailie to make purchases to the required amount, on full security that the victual so bought should not be ‘laid up or girnelled, or sold out to any other persons except the said workmen,’ and that it should |1698.| be ‘given out and sold to the workmen at the price it was bought for in the market, and no higher.’ A dispensation from the act was granted to Hopetoun accordingly.