The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

Some remarkable pieces of ancient artillery also figure in Scottish history, one or two of which have escaped the perils of siege and the waste of time, though the most of them live only in the quaint records of Scottish chroniclers, like the famed Seven Sisters, cast by Robert Borthwick, the master-gunner of James IV., which did their last Scottish service on Flodden Field. A better fate has attended the still more celebrated Mons Meg, whose unwieldy proportions probably proved her safety, by inducing the impetuous king to leave her behind, when he carried the flower of Scottish chivalry to that fatal field. The ancient barrier gateway of Edinburgh Castle, built most probably soon after the siege of 1572, was surmounted with a curious piece of sculpture, occupying a long narrow panel, which is chiefly filled with representations of artillery and munitions of war, and among these Mons Meg plays a prominent part. The old-fashioned narrow wheel carriages of the sixteenth century having given place to more substantial modern artillery waggons, the highly ornamental but narrow gateway was demolished in the beginning of the present century, and one-half of its sculptured panel, figured here, now surmounts the entrance to the Ordnance Office in the Castle. At the left side is the famed Mons Meg—or, as she is designated in the list of ordnance delivered to Monk, on the surrender of the Castle in 1650, "The great iron murderer, Muckle Meg"—mounted, in all probability, on her "new cradill, with xiii stane of irne graith," which, as we learn from the Treasurer's accounts, was provided in 1497, not long after her safe return from the siege of Dumbarton Castle. This remarkable piece of ordnance is not cast like a modern cannon, but built of wrought iron hoops and bars, or staves, and with a narrow fixed chamber in the breach for containing the charge. It appears to be of enormous strength; but after doing good service for upwards of two centuries, both in peace and war, it burst on the 29th October 1680, when firing a salute in honour of James, Duke of York, on his arrival in Edinburgh; an occurrence which, as Fountainhall records, failed not to be regarded as an evil omen. This mode of fashioning artillery with separate staves and hoops is the oldest method of which we have any account, and was probably universally employed on the first introduction of gunpowder in constructing what our old Scottish poet designates, in the earliest known allusion to field artillery, crakys of war. This curious reference of the old metrical historian, Barbour, is to the first expedition of Edward III. against the Scots in 1327, and consequently may be accepted as fixing the precise date of the introduction of artillery into Scotland:—

"Twa noweltyeis that dai thai saw,
That forouth in Scotland had been nane;
Tymmris for helmys were the tane,
That t'other crakys wer of war,
That thai before heard never er:
Of thai tua things thai had ferly
That nycht thai walkyt stalwartly."

Among the specimens of ancient pieces of ordnance in the Scottish Museum is a curious pair of cannons, built in a similar manner to Mons Meg, with hoops and staves of iron, bound with copper, measuring each twenty-nine inches in length, and designed for mounting on one stock. This double cannon was formerly stationed on the walls of Wemyss Castle, Fifeshire, and is said to have belonged to the celebrated Scottish admiral, Sir Andrew Wood of Largo. Double guns of the same description, mounted on one carriage, are figured in the beautifully illuminated MSS. of Froissart, believed to have been executed about the beginning of the fifteenth century. They are also shewn on wheel carriages among the Scottish artillery at the battle of Pinkie in a very curious print belonging to the Bannatyne Club, entitled, "The Englishe victore agaynste the Schottes, by Muskelbroghe, 1547." Another piece of ancient artillery in the Scottish collection consists of a still more complicated group of cannons of similar construction, four being mounted on one carriage, and the whole united by an iron rod at the breach. They are evidently designed to be fired at once, so as to discharge a broadside on the enemy; and however tardy and inconvenient the reloading of these pieces may have been, the first broadside from a park of such artillery must have had no slight effect on an advancing foe.

The second half of the curious sculptured memorial of ancient Scottish artillery in Edinburgh, divorced from the group which includes Mons Meg, on the demolition of the barrier gateway in 1800, lay long neglected and buried in rubbish. It was at length rescued from impending destruction, and safely lodged in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. It includes a singular group of ancient ordnance and warlike appliances; chamber pieces or patereros, with chambers or moveable breeches—frequently used separately for throwing small shot; bombards, chiefly employed for throwing great stones; a curious hexagonal cannon of large proportions, constructed, it may be presumed, of separate bars; hand-cannons, or the earliest class of portable fire-arms; with lintstocks, shot, barrels of powder, &c. Along with these are also large guns of symmetrical form, which may be presumed to represent brass cannon, as the art of casting cannon was introduced at a much earlier period than the date suggested for the rebuilding of the barrier gateway, though it is by no means improbable that the sculpture may have belonged to a still older structure. Cannon are said to have been cast even in the middle of the fourteenth century;[710] and a brass cannon is still preserved at Toulouse, made in the year 1438.

One other class of relics, singularly characteristic of medieval customs and civilisation, includes the instruments both of punishment and of torture, of which Scotland may lay claim to the questionable boast of having some peculiarly national examples. At a period when criminal punishment avowedly assumed the character of retaliation and revenge, and when torture was recognised as a legitimate means of eliciting evidence, Scotland was not behind the other countries of Europe in the full use of both. The execution at Edinburgh, in 1436, of the murderers of James I., the poet king, and especially the horrible scenes attending on the death of Sir Robert Graham and the Earl of Athole,—crowned, in fearful mockery, with a red-hot iron diadem as king of traitors,—sufficiently illustrate the ferocious spirit which went hand in hand with medieval chivalry. One of the most curious historical relics of this class is the Scottish Maiden, employed, so far as we know, for the first time in the execution of some of the inferior agents in the assassination of Rizzio. By this instrument were beheaded the Regent Morton, Sir John Gordon of Haddo, President Spottiswoode, the Marquis and Earl of Argyle, and many more of the noblest and best blood in Scotland. The Earl of Argyle is reported to have said, with a grave humour worthy of Sir Thomas More: it was the sweetest maiden he had ever kissed. It now forms one of the most remarkable national relics in the Scottish Museum, having, it may be presumed, performed its last office as the instrument of death. It is impossible to look without feelings of peculiar interest upon this ancient Scottish guillotine, so directly associated with the great of past ages; though the vindictive spirit which sought at times to give an added ignominy to a violent death cheated it of the blood of the gallant Kirkaldy, of Montrose and Warriston, as well as of others of lesser note, who figure in the Scottish chronicles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Scottish Maiden.

The Boots and Thumbkins are two instruments of judicial torture, especially associated in Scotland with the sufferings of the Covenanters during the reign of Charles II. Neither of them, however, were invented so recently. Torture, which the Roman law permitted only to be used in compelling the evidence of slaves, bore no such limitation in medieval Europe; and the name of the Question, commonly applied to it, abundantly shews the direct purpose for which it was employed. Examples of this barbarous mode of seeking to elicit the truth are frequently to be met with in the earlier Acts of Sederunt of the Court of Session: as in a case of suspected perjury, 29th June 1579, where the King's Advocate produces a royal warrant for examining "Jhone Souttar, notar, dwelland in Dundee, and Robert Carmylie, vicar of Ruthwenis, witnes in the action of improbatioun of ane reversioun of the lands of Wallace-Craigy; and for the mair certane tryall of the veritie in the said matter, to put thaim in the buttis, genis, or ony uther tormentis, and thairby to urge them to declair the treuth." One pair of thumb-screws in the Scottish Museum, of unusually large size, is said to have been the instrument employed by the authorities of the ancient burgh of Montrose for eliciting confession; and a ruder pair, of peculiar form, in the Abbotsford collection, is figured in the illustrated edition of the Waverley Novels.[711] Sir Walter Scott has given fearfully vivid life, in his "Old Mortality," to the tribunal of the Scottish Privy Council, where such horrible appliances were last in vogue. Happily they too are consigned to the cabinet of the antiquary, telling of times which are, we may hope, as truly left behind as the aboriginal Stone Period, with its primitive arts and superstitions, and its simple sepulchral rites.

Thumb-Screws, Antiq. Museum.