As if there had been some destiny in the matter, the Greyfriars Churchyard became connected with another remarkable event in the religious troubles of the seventeenth century. At the south-west angle, accessible by an old gateway bearing emblems of mortality, and which is fitted with an iron-rail gate of very old workmanship, is a kind of supplement to the burying-ground—an oblong space, now having a line of sepulchral enclosures on each side, but formerly empty. On these enclosures the visitor may remark, as he passes, certain names venerable in the history of science and of letters; as, for instance, Joseph Black and Alexander Tytler. On one he sees the name of Gilbert Innes of Stow, who left a million, to take six feet of earth here. These, however, do not form the matter in point. Every lesser particular becomes trivial beside the extraordinary use to which the place was put by the Government in the year 1679. Several hundred of the prisoners taken at Bothwell Bridge were confined here in the open air, under circumstances of privation now scarcely credible. They had hardly anything either to lie upon or to cover them; their allowance of provision was four ounces of bread per day, with water derived from one of the city pipes, which passed near the place. They were guarded by day by eight and through the night by twenty-four men; and the soldiers were told that if any prisoner escaped, they should answer it life for life by cast of dice. If any prisoner rose from the ground by night, he was shot at. Women alone were permitted to commune with them, and bring them food or clothes; but these had often to stand at the entrance from morning till night without getting access, and were frequently insulted and maltreated by the soldiers, without the prisoners being able to protect them, although in many cases related by the most endearing ties. In the course of several weeks a considerable number of the prisoners had been liberated upon signing a bond, in which they promised never again to take up arms against the king or without his authority; but it appears that about four hundred, refusing mercy on such terms, were kept in this frightful bivouac for five months, being only allowed at the approach of winter to have shingle huts erected over them, which was boasted of as a great mercy. Finally, on the 15th of November, a remnant, numbering two hundred and fifty-seven, were put on board a ship to be sent to Barbadoes. The vessel was wrecked on one of the Orkney Islands, when only about forty came ashore alive.
From the gloom of this sad history there is shed one ray of romance. Amongst the charitable women of Edinburgh who came to minister to the prisoners, there was one attended by a daughter—a young and, at least by right of romance, a fair girl. Every few days they approached this iron gate with food and clothes, either from their own stores or collected among neighbours. Between the young lady and one of the juvenile prisoners an attachment sprang up. Doubtless she loved him for the dangers he had passed in so good a cause, and he loved her because she pitied them. In happier days, long after, when their constancy had been well tried by an exile which he suffered in the plantations, this pair were married, and settled in Edinburgh, where they had sons and daughters. A respectable elderly citizen tells me he is descended from them.[231]
[STORY OF MRS MACFARLANE.]
‘Let them say I am romantic; so is every one said to be that either admires a fine thing or does one. On my conscience, as the world goes, ’tis hardly worth anybody’s while to do one for the honour of it. Glory, the only pay of generous actions, is now as ill paid as other just debts; and neither Mrs Macfarlane for immolating her lover, nor you for constancy to your lord, must ever hope to be compared to Lucretia or Portia.’—Pope to Lady Mary W. Montagu.
Pope here alludes to a tragical incident which took place in Edinburgh on the 2nd of October 1716. The victim was a young Englishman, who had been sent down to Scotland as a Commissioner of Customs. It appears that Squire Cayley, or Captain Cayley, as he was alternatively called, had become the slave of a shameful passion towards Mrs Macfarlane, a woman of uncommon beauty, the wife of Mr John Macfarlane, Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh. One Saturday forenoon Mrs Macfarlane was exposed, by the treachery of Captain Cayley’s landlady, with whom she was acquainted, to an insult of the most atrocious kind on his part, in the house where he lodged, which seems to have been situated in a close in the Cowgate, opposite to what were called the Back Stairs.[232] Next Tuesday Mr Cayley waited upon Mrs Macfarlane at her own house, and was shown into the drawing-room. According to an account given out by his friends, he was anxious to apologise for his former rudeness. From another account, it would appear that he had circulated reports derogatory to the lady’s honour, which she was resolved to punish. A third story represents him as having repeated the insult which he had formerly offered; whereupon she went into another room, and presently came back with a pair of pistols in her hand. On her bidding him leave the house instantly, he said: ‘What, madam, d’ye design to act a comedy?’ To which she answered that ‘he would find it a tragedy if he did not retire.’ The infatuated man not obeying her command, she fired one of the pistols, which, however, only wounded him slightly in the left wrist, the bullet slanting down into the floor. The mere instinct, probably, of self-preservation caused him to draw his sword; but before he could use it she fired the other pistol, the shot of which penetrated his heart. ‘This dispute,’ says a letter of the day, ‘was so close that Mr Cayley’s shirt was burnt at the sleeves with the fire of one of the pistols, and his cravat and the breast of his shirt with the fire of the other.’[233] Mrs Macfarlane immediately left the room, locking the door upon the dead body, and sent a servant for her husband, who was found at a neighbouring tavern. On his coming home about an hour after, she took him by the sleeve, and leading him into the room where the corpse lay, explained the circumstances which had led to the bloody act. Mr Macfarlane said: ‘Oh, woman! what have you done?’ But soon seeing the necessity for prompt measures, he went out again to consult with some of his friends. ‘They all advised,’ says the letter just quoted, ‘that he should convey his wife away privately, to prevent her lying in jail, till a precognition should be taken of the affair, and it should appear in its true light. Accordingly [about six o’clock], she walked down the High Street, followed by her husband at a little distance, and now absconds.
‘The thing continued a profound secret to all except those concerned in the house till past ten at night, when Mr Macfarlane, having provided a safe retreat for his wife, returned and gave orders for discovering it to the magistrates, who went and viewed the body of the deceased, and secured the house and maid, and all else who may become evidence of the fact.’
Another contemporary says: ‘I saw his [Cayley’s] corpse after he was cereclothed, and saw his blood where he lay on the floor for twenty-four hours after he died, just as he fell; so it was a difficulty to straight him.’
A careful investigation was made into every circumstance connected with this fatal affair, but without demonstrating anything except the passionate rashness or magnanimity of the fair homicide. Mr Macfarlane was discharged upon his own affirmation that he knew nothing of the deed till after it had taken place. A pamphlet was published by Mrs Murray, Mr Cayley’s landlady, who seems to have kept a grocery shop in the Cowgate, vindicating herself from the imputation which Mrs Macfarlane’s tale had thrown upon her character; but to this there appeared an answer, from some friend of the other party, in which the imputation was fixed almost beyond the possibility of doubt. Mrs Murray denied that Mrs Macfarlane had been in her house on the Saturday before the murder; but evidence was given that she was seen issuing from the close in which Mrs Murray resided, and, after ascending the Back Stairs, was observed passing through the Parliament Square towards her own house.