[93] Newcastle Papers, British Museum, Add. MS. 32710, f. 491.
[94] Record Office, State Papers Dom., George II., Bundle 98.
[95] Newcastle Papers, previously quoted.
[96] Family Papers.
[97] See pp. 336 and 402. Grossett’s statement, corroborated by Fawkener and Sharpe, is elaborated in the Newcastle Papers quoted above. ‘He performed his duties at great hazard to his life. The Rebells robbed and plundered his house at Alloa and his house in the country [Logie] to such a degree that they did not leave his infant children even a shirt to shift them, and pursued his wife and daughter to an uncle’s house, to whose estate they knew Mr. Grosett was to succeed, plundered that house [Bredisholm, near Coatbridge], stript his wife and daughter of the very clothes they had upon their backs and used them otherwise in a most cruel and barbarous manner.’
[98] Scots Magazine, vol. vii. p. 538.
[99] Record Office, State Papers Dom., George II., bundle 91.
[100] This is one of the very rarest of Jacobite pamphlets. There is a long account of the harsh proceedings of the Edinburgh magistrates towards Robert Drummond, the Jacobite printer who published the poem, in Hugo Arnot’s History of Edinburgh, 1778, book III. chap. iv. See also Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. viii., in which the poem is reprinted for the first time.
[101] Mr. J. R. N. Macphail, K.C., has sent me a copy of Accusations laid against Grossett in December 1747. These are nine in number: he is accused (1) Of keeping an open trade at Alloa for smugglers ‘particularly in the tobacco way.’ (2) Of secreting the public revenue for a tract of years and of vitiating and forging the accounts. (3) Of granting land permits for wine to smugglers all over the kingdom. (4) Of arranging false prices with merchants who purchased at roup goods seized from smugglers. (5) Of suborning evidence even to perjury in connection with the sale of goods taken from the Rebels. (6) Of being an accomplice of smugglers in trade and profits. (7) Of passing goods after seizure and of accepting a bribe. (8) Of mutilating the books of the public office. (9) Of fraud, circumvention and oppression in many different cases.
[102] Scots Peerage, vol. i. p. 495.