ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
[The Author’s Portracture], Frontispiece
[Facsimile of the Title Page of the Edition of 1632], xxvii
[The Author’s Portracture], 110
The Author in his Turkish Dress,
From The Pilgrimes Farewell to his Native Countrey of Scotland.		128
[The Armes of Jerusalem], 252
[King James his foure Crownes], 252
[The Model of the Great Seale of the Guardians of the Holy Grave], 254
[The Modell of the Great City of Fez], 322
[The Author in the Libyan Desart], 328
[The Author beset with Six Murderers in Moldavia], 364
[The Author in Irons in the Governour’s Palace at Malaga], 396
[The Author in the Racke at Malaga], 402

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

William Lithgow was born in Lanark about 1582. The actual date of his birth is uncertain, but he states (page 377) that he was thirty-three in 1615, and in ‘The present Surveigh of London’ ‘past threescore years’ in April, 1643. He was the eldest son of James Lithgow, Burgess of Lanark, and Alison Grahame, his wife. He was educated at Lanark Grammar School, and, according to Sir Walter Scott,[1] was ‘bred a tailor.’ Scott does not, however, give his authority for this statement. Lithgow seems to have started his travels at a very early age, having ‘a large infusion of the wandering spirit common to his country-men.’[2] He says himself that ‘neither ambition, too much curiosity, nor any reputation I ever sought did expose me to such long peregrinations and dangerous adventures past’—but ‘that undeserved Dalida wrong.’ What this mysterious ‘Dalida wrong’ was is unknown, but family tradition has it that the four brothers, ‘foure blood-shedding wolves,’ of a certain Miss Lockhart, finding their sister with Lithgow, set upon him and cut off his ears, and from this arose his local nickname of ‘ “Cutlugged” or “Lugless” Will.’ Be this as it may, by 1609, Lithgow had made ‘two voyages to the Orcadian and Zetlandian Isles, in the stripling age of mine adolescency, and there after surveighing all Germany, Bohemia, Helvetia, and the Low-Countreys from end to end; I visited Paris, where I remained ten moneths.’

From Paris, on March 7th, 1609, Lithgow set out on the first of the three journeys of which he gives an account in his ‘Totall Discourse,’ where he claims that his ‘paynefull feet traced over (beside my passages of Seas and Rivers) thirty-six thousand and odde miles, which draweth neare to twice the circumference of the whole Earth.’

It was on the third of these journeys, when passing through Spain with the intention of seeing ‘Great Prester Jehan and his Empire,’ that he was thrown into prison in Malaga as a spy and severely tortured. He was released by the intervention of the English Consul there and the English Ambassador at Madrid, backed by a division of King James’ Navy which, under the command of Sir Robert Maunsell, happened opportunely to be lying in Malaga Roads, on its return from the expedition against Algiers.

On his arrival at Dartford, fifty days after leaving Malaga, Lithgow was carried to the Court at Theobalds, and exhibited his ‘martyrd anatomy’ to the whole Court, ‘even from the King to the Kitchin.’ At the King’s expense he was sent twice to Bath, where he recovered his health, although his left arm and crushed bones were incurable. Early in 1622 he was sent to the Marshalsea prison for a long period[3] for assaulting, in the presence chamber, the Spanish Ambassador Gondomar, whose empty promises of redress for his sufferings at Malaga had exasperated Lithgow beyond endurance.

In 1624 Lithgow preferred a Bill of Grievance to the House of Lords, which he daily followed for seventeen weeks, but ‘the house breaking up abruptly their order for my suite could take none effect as then, nor yet since, in regard it was no Session Parliament.’ In the spring of 1627 he left the Court for Scotland; he traversed the Western Isles, and was ‘kindly intertayned’ in Brodick Castle by James, Marquess of Hamilton.