Chapter XVI: Part 16

The commissioners of the Equivalent soon settled themselves in one of Mr Robert Mylne’s houses in Mylne’s Court, and proceeded to apply the money in terms of the act. One of their first proceedings was to send to London for £50,000 in gold, in substitution for so much of paper-money, that they might, as far as possible, do away with the last clamour. ‘Nor had this been able to carry them through the payment, had they not very prudently taken all the Exchequer bills that any one brought them, and given bills of exchange for them payable in London.’[385] Defoe adverts to a noble individual—doubtless the Duke of Hamilton—who came for payment of his share of the African Company’s stock (£3000), with the interest, and who refused to take any of the Exchequer bills, probably thinking thus to create some embarrassment; but the commissioners instantly ordered the claim to be liquidated in gold.

Notwithstanding all the ravings and revilings about the Equivalent, Defoe assures us that, amongst the most malcontent persons he never found any who, having African stock, refused to take their share of the unhallowed money in exchange for it. Even the despised Exchequer bills were all despatched so quickly, that, in six months, not one was to be seen in the country.

Out of the Equivalent, the larger portion—namely, £229,611, 4_s._ 8_d._—went to replace the lost capital of the African Company, [Sidenote: 1707.] and so could not be considered as rendered to the nation at large. For ‘recoining the Scots and foreign money, and reducing it to the standard of the coin of England,’ £49,888, 14_s._ 11⅙_d._ was expended. There was likewise spent out of this fund, for the expenses of the commissioners and secretaries who had been engaged in carrying through the Union, £30,498, 12_s._ 2_d._ After making sundry other payments for public objects, there remained in 1713 but £16,575, 14_s._ 0½_d._ unexpended.[386]

We shall afterwards see further proceedings in the matter of the Equivalent.

[Sidenote: OCT. 3.]

Walter Scott of Raeburn, grandson of the Quaker Raeburn who suffered so long an imprisonment for his opinions in the reign of Charles II.,[387] fought a duel with Mark Pringle, youngest son of Andrew Pringle of Clifton. It arose from a quarrel the two gentlemen had the day before at the head-court of Selkirk. They were both of them young men, Scott being only twenty-four years of age, although already four years married, and a father. The contest was fought with swords in a field near the town, and Raeburn was killed. The scene of this melancholy tragedy has ever since been known as _Raeburn’s Meadow-spot_.

Pringle escaped abroad; became a merchant in Spain; and falling, on one occasion, into the hands of the Moors, underwent such a series of hardships, as, with the Scottish religious views of that age, he might well regard as a Heaven-directed retribution for his rash act. Eventually, however, realising a fortune, he returned with honour and credit to his native country, and purchased the estate of Crichton in Edinburghshire. He died in 1751, having survived the unhappy affair of Raeburn’s Meadow-spot for forty-four years; and his grandson, succeeding to the principal estate of the family, became Pringle of Clifton.

The sixteenth article of the act of Union, while decreeing that a separate mint should be kept up in Scotland ‘under the same rules as the mint in England’—an arrangement afterwards broken through—concluded that the money thereafter used should be of the same standard and fineness throughout the United Kingdom. It thus became necessary to call in all the existing coin of Scotland, and substitute for it money uniform with that of England. It was at the same time provided by the act of Union, that any [Sidenote: 1707.] loss incurred by the renewal of the coin of Scotland should be compensated out of the fund called the Equivalent.[388]

The business of the change of coinage being taken into consideration by the Privy Council of Scotland, several plans for effecting it were laid before that august body; but none seemed so suitable or expedient as one proposed by the Bank of Scotland, which was to this effect: ‘The Directors undertook to receive in all the species that were to be recoined, at such times as should be determined by the Privy Council, and to issue bank-notes or current money for the same, in the option of the ingiver of the old species, and the Privy Council allowing a half _per cent._ to the Bank for defraying charges;’[389] the old money to be taken to the mint and coined into new money, which should afterwards replace the notes.

Mr David Drummond, treasurer of the Bank, ‘a gentleman of primitive virtue and singular probity,’ according to Thomas Ruddiman—a hearty Jacobite, too, if his enemies did not belie him—had a chief hand in the business of the renovation of the coin, about which he communicated to Ruddiman some memoranda he had taken at the time.

‘There was brought into the Bank of Scotland in the year 1707:

Value in Sterling
Money.

Of foreign silver money, £132,080 : 17 : 00

Milled Scottish coins [improved coinage subsequent
to 1673], 96,856 : 13 : 00

Coins struck by hammer [the older Scottish coin], 142,180 : 00 : 00

English milled coin, 40,000 : 00 : 00

——————————————————

Total, £411,117 : 10 : 00

‘This sum, no doubt, made up by far the greatest part of the silver coined money current in Scotland at that time; but it was not to be expected that the whole money of that kind could be brought into the bank; for the folly of a few misers, or the fear that people might have of losing their money, or various other dangers and accidents, prevented very many of the old Scots coins from being brought in. A great part of these the goldsmiths, in aftertimes, consumed by melting them down; some of them have been exported to foreign countries; a few are yet [1738] in private hands.’[390]

[Sidenote: 1707.]

Ruddiman, finding that, during the time between December 1602 and April 1613, there was rather more estimated value of gold than of silver coined in the Scottish mint, arrived at the conclusion (though not without great hesitation), that there was more value of gold coin in Scotland in 1707 than of silver, and that the sum-total of gold and silver money together, at the time of the Union, was consequently ‘not less than nine hundred thousand pounds sterling.’ We are told, however, in the _History of the Bank of Scotland_, under 1699, that ‘nothing answers among the common people but silver-money, _even gold being little known amongst them_;’ and Defoe more explicitly says, ‘there was at this time _no Scots gold coin current, or to be seen, except a few preserved for antiquity_.’[391] It therefore seems quite inadmissible that the Scottish gold coin in 1707 amounted to nearly so much as Ruddiman conjectures. More probably, it was not £30,000.

It would appear that the Scottish copper-money was not called in at the Union, and Ruddiman speaks of it in 1738 as nearly worn out of existence, ‘so that the scarcity of copper-money does now occasion frequent complaints.’

If the outstanding silver-money be reckoned at £60,000, the gold at £30,000, and the copper at £60,000, the entire metallic money in use in Scotland in 1707 would be under six hundred thousand pounds sterling in value. It is not unworthy of observation, as an illustration of the advance of wealth in the country since that time, that a private gentlewoman died in 1841, with a nearly equal sum at her account in the banks, besides other property to at least an equal amount.

In March 1708, while the renovation of the coinage was going on, the French fleet, with the Chevalier de St George on board, appeared at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, designing to invade the country. The Bank got a great alarm, for it ‘had a very large sum lying in the mint in ingots,’ and a considerable sum of the old coin in its own coffers, ‘besides a large sum in current species; all of which could not have easily been carried off and concealed.’[392] The danger, however, soon blew over. ‘Those in power at the time, fearing lest, all our silver-money having been brought into our treasury, or into the Bank, a little before, there should be a want of money for the expenses of the war, ordered the [Sidenote: 1707.] forty-shilling pieces to be again issued out of the banks; of which sort of coin there was great plenty at that time in Scotland, and commanded these to be distributed for pay to the soldiers and other exigencies of the public; but when that disturbance was settled, they ordered that kind of money also to be brought into the bank; and on a computation being made, it was found that the quantity of that kind, brought in the second time, exceeded that which was brought in the first time [by] at least four thousand pounds sterling.’[393]

We are told by the historian of the Bank, that ‘the whole nation was most sensible of the great benefit that did redound from the Bank’s undertaking and effectuating the recoinage, and in the meantime keeping up an uninterrupted circulation of money.’ Its good service was represented to the queen, considered by the Lords of the Treasury and Barons of Exchequer, and reported on favourably. ‘But her majesty’s death intervening, and a variety of public affairs on that occasion and since occurring, the directors have not found a convenient opportunity for prosecuting their just claim on the government’s favour and reward for that seasonable and very useful service.’

[Sidenote: NOV. 3.]

Mr John Strahan, Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, was at this time owner of Craigcrook, a romantically situated old manor-house under the lee of Corstorphine Hill—afterwards for many years the residence of Lord Jeffrey. Strahan had also a house in the High Street of Edinburgh. He was the owner of considerable wealth, the bulk of which he ultimately ‘mortified’ for the support of poor old men, women, and orphans; a charity which still flourishes.

Strahan had a servant named Helen Bell to keep his town mansion, and probably she was left a good deal by herself. As other young women in her situation will do, she admitted young men to see her in her master’s house. On Hallowe’en night this year, she received a visit from two young artisans, William Thomson and John Robertson, whom she happened to inform that on Monday morning—that is, the second morning thereafter—she was to go out to Craigcrook, leaving the town-house of course empty.

About five o’clock on Monday morning, accordingly, this innocent young woman locked up her master’s house, and set forth on [Sidenote: 1707.] her brief journey, little recking that it was the last she would ever undertake in this world. As she was proceeding through the silent streets, her two male friends joined her, telling her they were going part of her way; and she gave them a couple of bottles and the key of the house to carry, in order to lighten her burden. On coming to a difficult part of the way, called the _Three Steps_, at the foot of the Castle Rock, the two men threw her down and killed her with a hammer. They then returned to town, with the design of searching Mr Strahan’s house for money.

According to the subsequent confession of Thomson, as they returned through the Grassmarket, they swore to each other to give their souls and bodies to the devil, if ever either of them should inform against the other, even in the event of their being captured. In the empty streets, in the dull gray of the morning, agitated by the horrid reflections arising from their barbarous act and its probable consequences, it is not very wonderful that almost any sort of hallucination should have taken possession of these miserable men. It was stated by them that, on Robertson proposing that their engagement should be engrossed in a bond, a man started up between them in the middle of the West Bow, and offered to write the bond, which they had agreed to subscribe with their blood; but, on Thomson’s demurring, this stranger immediately disappeared. No contemporary of course could be at any loss to surmise who this stranger was.[394]

The two murderers having made their way into Mr Strahan’s house, broke open his study, and the chest where his cash was kept. They found there a thousand pounds sterling, in bags of fifty pounds each, ‘all milled money,’ except one hundred pounds, which was in gold; all of which they carried off. Robertson proposed to set the house on fire before their departure; but Thomson said he had done wickedness enough already, and was resolved not to commit more, even though Robertson should attempt to murder him for his refusal.

Mr Strahan advertised a reward of five hundred merks for the detection of the perpetrator or perpetrators of these atrocities;[395] but for some weeks no trace of the guilty men was discovered. At length, some suspicion lighting upon Thomson, he was taken up, and, having made a voluntary [Sidenote: 1707.] confession of the murder and robbery, he expiated his offence in the Grassmarket.[396]

[Sidenote: DEC. 9.]

A poor man named Hunter, a shoemaker in the Potterrow, Edinburgh, had become possessed of a ‘factory’ for the uplifting of ten or eleven pounds of wages due to one Guine, a seaman, for services in a ship of the African Company. The money was now payable out of the Equivalent, but certain signatures were required which it was not possible to obtain. With the aid of a couple of low notaries and two other persons, these signatures were forged, and the money was then drawn.

Detection having followed, the case came before the Court of Session, who viewed it in a light more grave than seems now reasonable, and remitted it to the Lords of Justiciary. The result reminds us of the doings of Justice, when she _did_ act, in the reign of James VI. Hunter and Strachan, a notary, were hanged on the 18th of February, ‘as an example to the terror of others,’ says Fountainhall. Three other persons, including a notary, were glad to save themselves from a trial, by voluntary banishment. ‘Some moved that they might be delivered to a captain of the recruits, to serve as soldiers in Flanders; but the other method was judged more legal.’[397]

[Sidenote: DEC. 30.]

The parish of Spott, in East Lothian, having no communion-cups of its own, was accustomed to borrow those of the neighbouring parish of Stenton, when required. The Stenton kirk-session latterly tired of this benevolence, and resolved to charge half-a-crown each time their cups were borrowed by Spott. Spott then felt a little ashamed of its deficiency of communion-cups, and resolved to provide itself with a pair. Towards the sum required, the minister was directed to take all the foreign coin now in the box, as it was to be no longer current, and such further sum as might be necessary.

The parish is soon after found sanctioning the account of Thomas Kerr, an Edinburgh goldsmith, for ‘ane pair of [Sidenote: 1707.] communion-cups, weighing 33 oz. 6 drops, at £3, 16_s._ per oz.,’ being £126, 12_s._ in all, Scots money, besides ‘two shillings sterling of drink-money given to the goldsmith’s men.’[398]

[Sidenote: 1708.]

The Union produced some immediate effects of a remarkable nature on the industry and traffic of Scotland—not all of them good, it must be owned, but this solely by reason of the erroneous laws in respect of trade which existed in England, and to which Scotland was obliged to conform.

Scotland had immediately to cease importing wines, brandy, and all things produced by France; with no remeed but what was supplied by the smuggler. This was one branch of her public or ostensible commerce now entirely destroyed. She had also, in conformity with England, to cease exporting her wool. This, however, was an evil not wholly unalleviated, as will presently be seen.

Before this time, as admitted by Defoe, the Scotch people had ‘begun to come to some perfection in making broad cloths, druggets, and [woollen] stuffs of all sorts.’ Now that there was no longer a prohibition of English goods of the same kinds, these began to come in in such great quantity, and at such prices, as at once extinguished the superior woollen manufacture in Scotland. There remained the manufacture of coarse cloths, as Stirling serges, Musselburgh stuffs, and the like; and this now rather flourished, partly because the wool, being forbidden to be sent abroad, could be had at a lower price, and partly because these goods came into demand in England. Of course, the people at large were injured by not getting the best price for their wool, and benefited by getting the finer English woollen goods at a cheaper rate than they had formerly paid for their own manufactures of the same kinds; but no one saw such matters in such a light at that time. The object everywhere held in view was to benefit _trade_—that is, everybody’s peculium, as distinguished from the general good. The general good was left to see after itself, after everybody’s peculium had been served; and small enough were the crumbs usually left to it.

On the other hand, duties being taken off Scottish linen introduced into England, there was immediately a large increase to that branch of the national industry. Englishmen came down and established works for sail-cloth, for damasks, and other linen [Sidenote: 1708.] articles heretofore hardly known in the north; and thus it was remarked there was as much employment for the poor as in the best days of the woollen manufacture.

The colonial trade being now, moreover, open to Scottish enterprise, there was an immediate stimulus to the building of ships for that market. Cargoes of Scottish goods went out in great quantity, in exchange for colonial products brought in. According to Defoe, ‘several ships were laden for Virginia and Barbadoes the very first year after the Union.’[399]

We get a striking idea of the small scale on which the earlier commercial efforts were conducted, from a fact noted by Wodrow, as to a loss made by the Glasgow merchants in the autumn of 1709. ‘In the beginning of this month [November],’ says he, ‘Borrowstounness and Glasgow have suffered very much by the fleet going to Holland, its being taken by the French. It’s said that in all there is about eighty thousand pounds sterling lost there, _whereof Glasgow has lost ten thousand pounds_. I wish trading persons may see the language of such a providence. I am sure the Lord is remarkably frowning upon our trade, in more respects than one, since it was put in the room of religion, in the late alteration of our constitution.’[400]

When one thinks of the present superb wealth and commercial distinction of the Queen of the West, it is impossible to withhold a smile at Wodrow’s remarks on its loss of ten thousand pounds. Yet the fact is, that up to this time Glasgow had but a petty trade, chiefly in sugar, herrings, and coarse woollen wares. Its tobacco-trade, the origin of its grandeur, is understood to date only from 1707, and it was not till 1718 that Glasgow sent any vessel belonging to itself across the Atlantic. Sir John Dalrymple, writing shortly before 1788, says: ‘I once asked the late Provost Cochrane of Glasgow, who was eminently wise, and who has been a merchant there for seventy years, to what causes he imputed the sudden rise of Glasgow. He said it was all owing to four young men of talents and spirit, who started at one time in business, and whose success gave example to the rest. _The four had not ten thousand pounds amongst them when they began._’[401]

[Sidenote: 1708.]

Defoe tells us that, within little more than a year after the Union, Scotland felt the benefit of the liberation of her commerce in one article to a most remarkable extent. In that time, she sent 170,000 bolls of grain into England, besides a large quantity which English merchants bought up and shipped directly off for Portugal. The hardy little cattle of her pastures, which before the Union had been sent in large droves into England, being doubtless the principal article represented in the two hundred thousand pounds which Scotland was ascertained to obtain annually from her English customers, were now transmitted in still larger numbers, insomuch that men of birth and figure went into the trade. Even a Highland gentleman would think it not beneath him to engage in so lucrative a traffic, however much in his soul he might despise the Saxons whose gluttony he considered himself as gratifying. It has often been told that the Honourable Patrick Ogilvie, whom the reader has already seen engaged in a different career of activity, took up the cattle-trade, and was soon after remonstrated with by his brother, the Earl of Seafield, who, as Chancellor of Scotland, had been deeply concerned in bringing about the Union. The worthy scion of nobility drily remarked in answer: ‘Better sell nowte than sell nations.’[402]

A sketch given of a cattle-fair at Crieff in 1723 by an intelligent traveller, shews that the trade continued to prosper. ‘There were,’ says he, ‘at least thirty thousand cattle sold there, most of them to English drovers, who paid down above thirty thousand guineas in ready money to the Highlanders; a sum they had never before seen. The Highland gentlemen were mighty civil, dressed in their slashed waistcoats, a trousing (which is, breeches and stockings of one piece of striped stuff), with a plaid for a cloak, and a blue bonnet. They have a poniard knife and fork in one sheath, hanging at one side of their belt, their pistol at the other, and their snuff-mill before; with a great broadsword by their side. Their attendance was very numerous, all in belted plaids, girt like women’s petticoats down to the knee; their thighs and half of the leg all bare. They had also each their broadsword and poniard, and spake all Irish, an unintelligible language to the English. However, these poor creatures hired themselves out for a shilling a day, to drive the cattle to England, and to return home at their own charge.’[403]

[Sidenote: 1708. MAY 1.]

Previous to the Union, the Customs and Excise of Scotland were farmed respectively at £30,000 and £35,000 per annum,[404] which, after every allowance is made for smuggling, must be admitted as indicative of a very restricted commercial system, and a simple and meagre style of living on the part of the people. At the Union, the British government took the Customs and Excise of Scotland into its own hands, placing them severally under commissions, partly composed of Englishmen, and also sending English officers of experience down to Scotland, to assist in establishing proper arrangements for collection. We learn from Defoe that all these new fiscal arrangements were unpopular. The anti-union spirit delighted in proclaiming them as the outward symptoms of that English tyranny to which poor Scotland had been sold. Smuggling naturally flourished, for it became patriotic to cheat the English revenue-officers. The people not only assisted and screened the contrabandist, but if his goods chanced to be captured, they rose in arms to rescue them. Owing to the close of the French trade, the receiving of brandy became a favourite and flourishing business. It was alleged that, when a Dutch fleet approached the Scottish shores some months after the Union, several thousands of small casks of that liquor were put ashore, with hardly any effort at concealment.

Assuming the Excise as a tolerably fair index to the power of a people to indulge in what they feel as comforts and luxuries, the progress of this branch of the public revenue may be esteemed as a history of wealth in Scotland during the remarkable period following upon the Union. The summations it gives us are certainly of a kind such as no Scotsman of the reign of Queen Anne, adverse or friendly to the incorporation of the two countries, could have dreamed of. The items in the account of the first year ending at May 1, 1708, are limited to four—namely, for beer, ale, and vinegar, £43,653; spirits, £901; mum,[405] £50; fines and forfeitures, £58; giving—when £6350 for salaries, and some other deductions, were allowed for—a net total of £34,898, as a contribution to the revenue of the country.

The totals, during the next eleven years, go on thus: £41,096, £37,998, £46,795, £51,609, £61,747, £46,979, £44,488, £45,285—this [Sidenote: 1708.] refers to the year of the Rebellion—£48,813, £46,649, £50,377. On this last sum the charges of management amounted to £15,400. After this, the total net produce of the Excise, exclusive of malt, never again came up to fifty thousand pounds, till the year 1749. The malt tax, which was first imposed in 1725, then amounted to £22,627, making the entire Excise revenue of Scotland in the middle of the eighteenth century no more than £75,987. It is to be feared that increase of dexterity and activity in the smuggler had some concern in keeping down these returns at so low an amount;[406] yet when large allowance is made on that score, we are still left to conclude that the means of purchasing luxuries remained amongst our people at a very humble point.

I am informed by a gentleman long connected with the Excise Board in Scotland, that the books exhibited many curious indications of the simplicity, as well as restrictedness, of all monetary affairs as relating to our country in the reigns of Anne and the first George. According to a recital which he has been kind enough to communicate in writing, ‘The remittances were for the most part made in coin, and various entries in the Excise accounts shew that what were called _broad pieces_ frequently formed a part of the moneys sent. The commissioners were in the habit of availing themselves of the opportunity of persons of rank travelling to London, to make them the bearers of the money; and it is a curious historical fact, that the first remittance out of the Excise duties, amounting to £20,000, was sent by the Earl of Leven, who delivered £19,000 of the amount at the proper office in London, retaining the other thousand pounds for his trouble and risk in the service. As the Board in Scotland could only produce to their comptroller a voucher for the sum actually delivered in London, he could not allow them credit for more. The £1000 was therefore placed “insuper” upon the accounts, and so remained for several years; until at last a warrant was issued by the Treasury, authorising the sum to be passed to the credit of the commissioners.’

After the middle of the century, the progress is such as to shew that, whether by the removal of repressive influences, or the imparting of some fresh spring of energy, the means of the people were at length undergoing a rapid increase. In 1761, [Sidenote: 1708.] including part of the first year of George III., the net total Excise revenue had sprung up to £100,985. It included taxes on glass (£1151), candles (£6107), leather (£8245), soap and paper (£2992), and wheel-carriages (£2308). The total had, however, receded fully fourteen thousand pounds by 1775. After that time, war increased the rate of taxation, and we therefore need not be surprised to find the Scottish Excise producing £200,432 in 1781. In 1790, when Robert Burns honoured this branch of the revenue by taking an office in it, it had reached but to the comparatively insignificant sum of £331,117. In 1808, being the hundredth year of its existence, it yielded £1,793,430, being rather more than _fifty-one_ times its produce during the first year.[407]

[Sidenote: JUNE 1.]

The Duke of Argyle resigning his place as an extraordinary Lord of Session, in order to follow his charge in the army, his younger brother, the Earl of Ilay, succeeded him, though under twenty-five years of age; not apparently that he might take part in the decisions of the bench, but rather that he might be a learner there, it ‘being,’ says Fountainhall, ‘the best school for the nobility to learn that is in Europe.’

[Sidenote: JUNE 26.]

The election of a knight to represent Ross-shire in the British parliament took place at Fortrose, under the presidency of the sheriff, Hugh Rose, of Kilravock. There was much dissension in the county, and the sheriff, whose son was elected, had probably reasons of his own for appointing the last day of the week for the ceremony. This, however, having led to travelling on Sunday, was taken into consideration by the synod some months later, as a breach of decorum on the part of the sheriff, who consequently received a letter from one of their number who had been appointed to administer their censure. It set forth how, even if the meeting had been dissolved on the Saturday evening, many could not have got home without breaking the fourth commandment; but Kilravock had caused worse than this, for, by making the meeting late in the day, he had ‘occasioned the affair to be protracted till the Sabbath began more than to dawn [two o’clock],’ and there had been ‘gross disorders,’ in consequence of late drinking in taverns. ‘Some,’ says the document, ‘who were in your own [Sidenote: 1708.] company, are said to have sung, shott, and danced in their progress to the ferry, without any check or restraint, as if they meant to spit in the face of all sacred and civil laws,’ The synod had found it impossible to keep silence and allow such miscarriages to remain unreproved.

It is to be feared that Kilravock was little benefited by their censure, as he left the paper docketed in his repositories as ‘a comical synodical rebuke.’[408]

[Sidenote: AUG. 18.]

That remarkable property of human nature—the anxiety everybody is under that all other people should be virtuous—had worked itself out in sundry famous acts of parliament, general assembly, and town-council, throughout our history subsequent to the Reformation. There was an act of Queen Mary against adultery, and several of Charles II. against profaneness, drunkenness, and other impurities of life. There was not one of William and Mary for the enforcement of the fifth commandment; but the general principle operated in their reign very conspicuously nevertheless, particularly in regard to profaneness and profanation of the Lord’s Day. King William had also taken care in 1698 to issue a proclamation containing an abbreviate of all the acts against immorality, and in which that of Charles II. against cursing and beating of parents was certainly not overlooked, as neither were those against adultery. So far had the anxiety for respectable conduct in others gone in the present reign, that sheriffs and magistrates were now enjoined by proclamation to hold courts, once a month at least, for taking notice of vice and immorality, fining the guilty, and rewarding informers; moreover, all naval and military officers were ordered to exemplify the virtues for the sake of those under them, and, above all, see that the latter duly submitted themselves to kirk discipline.

An act of the town-council of Edinburgh ‘anent prophaneness,’ in August 1693, threatened a rigorous execution of all the public statutes regarding immoral conduct, such as swearing, sitting late in taverns, and desecration of the Lord’s Day. It strictly prohibited all persons within the city and suburbs ‘to brew, or to work any other handiwork, on the Lord’s Day, or to be found on the streets, standing or walking idly, or to go in company or vague to the Castlehill [the only open space then within the city [Sidenote: 1708.] walls], public yards, or fields.’ It discharged all going to taverns on that day, unseasonably or unnecessarily, and forbade ‘all persons to bring in water from the wells to houses in greater quantities than single pints.’ By another act in 1699, tavern-keepers were forbidden to have women for servants who had not heretofore been of perfectly correct conduct. All these denunciations were renewed in an act of February 1701, in which, moreover, there was a severe threat against barbers who should shave or trim any one on Sunday, and against all who should be found on that day carrying periwigs, clothes, or other apparel through the streets.

Not long after this, the Edinburgh council took into their consideration three great recent calamities—namely, the fire in the Kirk-heugh in February 1700; another fire ‘which happened on the north side of the Land market, about mid-day upon the 28th of October 1701, wherein several men, and women, and children were consumed in the flames, and lost by the fall of ruinous walls;’ and finally, ‘that most tremendous and terrible blowing up of gunpowder in Leith, upon the 3d of July last;’ and, reflecting on these things as tokens of God’s wrath, came to the resolution, ‘to be more watchful over our hearts and ways than formerly, and each of us in our several capacities to reprove vice with zeal and prudence, and promote the execution of the laws for punishing the vicious.’

All originality is taken from a notorious parliamentary enactment of our time by a council act of April 1704, wherein, after reference to the great decay of virtue and piety, and an acknowledgment that ‘all manner of scandals and immoralities do daily abound,’ it is ordered that taverners, under strong penalties, shall shut at ten o’clock at night, all persons harbouring there at a later hour to be likewise punished.

Inordinate playing at cards and dice in taverns is instanced in a council act of about the same period, as one of the most flagrant vices of the time.

It is to be understood that the discipline of the church over the morals of congregations was at the same time in full vigour, although not now fortified by a power of excommunication, inferring loss of civil rights, as had been the case before the Revolution. Much was done in this department by fines, proportioned to the quality of offenders, and for the application of these to charitable uses there was a lay-officer, styled the Kirk-treasurer, who naturally became a very formidable person. The [Sidenote: 1708.] poems of Ramsay and others during the earlier half of the eighteenth century are full of waggish allusions to the terrible powers of even the ‘man’ or servant of the Kirk-treasurer; and in a parody of the younger Ramsay on the _Integer Vitæ_ of Horace, this personage is set forth as the analogue of the Sabine wolf:

‘For but last Monday, walking at noon-day,
Conning a ditty, to divert my Betty,
By me that sour Turk (I not frighted) our Kirk-
Treasurer’s man passed.

And sure more horrid monster in the Torrid
Zone cannot be found, sir, though for snakes renowned, sir;
Nor does Czar Peter’s empire boast such creatures,
Of bears the wet-nurse.’[409]

Burt, who, as an English stranger, viewed the moral police of Scotland with a curious surprise, broadly asserts that the Kirk-treasurer employed spies to track out and report upon private individuals; so that ‘people lie at the mercy of villains who would perhaps forswear themselves for sixpence.’ Sometimes, a brother and sister, or a man and his wife, walking quietly together, would find themselves under the observation of emissaries of the Kirk-treasurer. Burt says he had known the town-guard in Edinburgh under arms for a night besetting a house into which two persons had been seen to enter. He at the same time remarks the extreme anxiety about Sabbath observance. It seemed as if the Scotch recognised no other virtue. ‘People would startle more at the humming or whistling of a tune on a Sunday, than if anybody should tell them you had ruined a family.’[410]

It must have been a great rejoicement to the gay people, when a Kirk-treasurer—as we are told by Burt[411]—‘having a round sum of money in his keeping, the property of the kirk, marched off with the cash, and took his neighbour’s wife along with him to bear him company and partake of the spoil.’

The very imperfect success of acts and statutes for improving the habits of the people, is strongly hinted at by their frequent repetition or renewal. We find it acknowledged by the Town Council of Edinburgh, in June 1709, that the Lord’s Day is still ‘profaned by people standing on the streets, and vaguing to fields and gardens, and to the Castlehill; also by standing idle gazing [Sidenote: 1708.] out at windows, and children, apprentices, and other servants playing on the streets.’[412]

[Sidenote: NOV. 22.]

James Stirling of Keir, Archibald Seton of Touch, Archibald Stirling of Carden, Charles Stirling of Kippendavie, and Patrick Edmondstone of Newton, were tried for high treason in Edinburgh, on the ground of their having risen in arms in March last, in connection with the French plan of invasion, and marched about for several days, encouraging others to rise in like manner, and openly drinking the health of the Pretender. Considering the openness of this treason, the charges against the five gentlemen were remarkably ill supported by evidence, the only witnesses being David Fenton, a tavern-keeper at Dunkeld; John Macleran, ‘change-keeper’ at Bridge of Turk; and Daniel Morison and Peter Wilson, two servants of the Laird of Keir. These persons were all free to testify that the gentlemen carried swords and pistols, which few people travelled without in that age; but as for treasonable talk, or drinking of treasonable healths, their memories were entirely blank. Wilson knew of no reason for Keir leaving his own house but dread of being taken up on suspicion by the soldiers in Stirling Castle. A verdict of Not Proven unavoidably followed.[413]

It has been constantly remembered since in Keir’s family, that as he was riding home after the trial, with his servant behind him—probably Wilson—he turned about, and asked from mere curiosity, how it came to pass that his friend had forgotten so much of what passed at their parade for the Chevalier in March last, when the man responded: ‘I ken very weel what you mean, laird; but my mind was clear to trust my saul to the mercy o’ Heaven, rather than your honour’s body to the mercy o’ the Whigs.’

[Sidenote: NOV.]

Sir James Hall of Dunglass was proprietor of a barony called Old Cambus. Within it was a ‘room’ or small piece of land belonging to Sir Patrick Home of Renton, a member of a family of whose hotness of blood we have already seen some evidences. To save a long roundabout, it had been the custom for the tenants of the ‘room’ to drive peats from Coldingham Muir through the Old Cambus grounds, but only on sufferance, and when the corn [Sidenote: 1708.] was off the fields, nor even then without a quart of ale to make matters pleasant with Sir James’s tenants. Some dispute having now arisen between the parties, the tenant of Headchester forbade Sir Patrick Home’s people to pass through his farm any more with their peats; and they, on the other hand, determined that they should go by that short passage as usual. The winter stock of fuel being now required, the time had come for making good their assumed right. Mr John Home, eldest son of Sir Patrick, accompanied the carts, with a few servants to assist in making way. A collision took place, attended with much violence on both sides, but with no exhibition of weapons that we hear of, excepting Mr John’s sword, which, he alleged, he did not offer to draw till his horse had been ‘beat in the face with a great rung [stick].’ The affair was nevertheless productive of serious consequences, for a blacksmith was trod to death, and several persons were hurt. Had it happened eighty years earlier, there would have been both swords and pistols used, and probably a dozen people would have been killed.

The justices of the peace for Berwickshire took up the matter, and imposed a fine of fifty pounds upon Mr John Home, as the person chiefly guilty of the riot. He appealed to the Court of Session, setting forth several objections to the sentence. The Earl of Marchmont, whose daughter had married Sir James Hall, and two other members of the justice-court, ought to be held as disqualified by affinity to sit in judgment in the case. To this it was answered, that Sir James was not the complainer, and his lady was dead. Home then alleged a right to the passage. It was shewn, on the other hand, that there never had been a passage save by tolerance and on consideration of the quart of ale; and though it had been otherwise, he ought to have applied to the magistrates, and not taken the law into his own hands: ‘however one enters into possession, though cast in with a sling-stone, yet he must be turned out by order of law. The Lords would not hear of reversing the award of the justices; but they reduced the fine to thirty pounds.’[414]

[Sidenote: 1709. MAR.]

The family of the antiquary, Sir James Balfour, to whom we owe the preservation of so many historical manuscripts, appears to have been a very unfortunate one. We have seen that his youngest son and successor, Sir Robert, was slaughtered in the [Sidenote: 1709.] reign of Charles II. by M‘Gill of Rankeillour.[415] The head of a succeeding generation of the family, Sir Michael Balfour, was a quiet country gentleman, with a wife and seven children, residing at the semi-castellated old manor-house, which we now see standing a melancholy ruin, in a pass through the Fife hills near Newburgh. He appears to have had debts; but we do not anywhere learn that they were of serious extent, and we hear of nothing else to his disadvantage. One day in this month, Sir Michael rode forth at an early hour ‘to visit some friends and for other business,’ attended by a servant, whom, on his return home, he despatched on an errand to Cupar, telling him he would be home before him. From that hour, Denmill was never again seen. He was searched for in the neighbourhood. Inquiries were made for him in the towns at a distance. There were even advertisements inserted in London and continental newspapers, offering rewards for any information that might enable his friends to ascertain his fate. All in vain. ‘There were many conjectures about him,’ says a contemporary judge of the Court of Session, ‘for some have been known to retire and go abroad upon melancholy and discontent; others have been said to be transported and carried away by spirits; a third set have given out they were lost, to cause their creditors compound, as the old Lord Belhaven was said to be drowned in Solway Sands, and so of Kirkton, yet both of them afterwards appeared. The most probable opinion was, that Denmill and his horse had fallen under night into some deep coal-pit, though these were also searched which lay in his way home.’ At the distance of ten months from his disappearance, his wife applied to the Court of Session, setting forth that her husband’s creditors were ‘falling upon his estate, and beginning to use diligence,’ and she could not but apprehend serious injury to the means of the family, though these far exceeded the debts, unless a factor were appointed. We learn that the court could better have interposed if the application had come from the creditors; but, seeing ‘the case craved some pity and compassion,’ they appointed a factor for a year, to manage the estate for both creditors and relict, hoping that, before that time elapsed, it would be ascertained whether Denmill were dead or alive.[416]

The year passed, and many more years after it, without clearing up the mystery. We find no trace of further legal proceedings regarding the missing gentleman, his family, or property. The [Sidenote: 1709.] fact itself remained green in the popular remembrance, particularly in the district to which Sir Michael belonged. In November 1724, the public curiosity was tantalised by a story published on a broadside, entitled _Murder will Out_, and professing to explain how the lost gentleman had met his death. The narrative was said to proceed on the death-bed confession of a woman who had, in her infancy, seen Sir Michael murdered by her parents, his tenants, in order to evade a debt which they owed him, and of which he had called to crave payment on the day of his disappearance. Stabbing him with his own sword as he sat at their fireside, they were said to have buried his body and that of his horse, and effectually concealed their guilt while their own lives lasted. Now, it was said, their daughter, who had involuntarily witnessed a deed she could not prevent, had been wrought upon to disclose all the particulars, and these had been verified by the finding of the bones of Sir Michael, which were now transferred to the sepulchre of his family. But this story was merely a fiction trafficking on the public curiosity. On its being alluded to in the _Edinburgh Evening Courant_ as an actual occurrence, ‘the son and heir of the defunct Sir Michael’ informed the editor of its falsity, which was also acknowledged by the printer of the statement himself; and pardon was craved of the honourable family and their tenants for putting it into circulation. On making inquiry in the district, I have become satisfied that the disappearance of this gentleman from the field of visible life was never explained, as it now probably never will be. In time, the property was bought by a neighbouring gentleman, who did not require to use the mansion as his residence. Denmill Castle accordingly fell out of order, and became a ruin. The fathers of people still living thereabouts remembered seeing the papers of the family—amongst which were probably some that had belonged to the antiquarian Sir James—scattered in confusion about a garret pervious to the elements, under which circumstances they were allowed to perish.

[Sidenote: MAY.]

There was at this time a dearth of victual in Scotland, and it was considered to be upon the increase. The magistrates and justices of Edinburgh arranged means for selling meal in open market, though in quantities not exceeding a firlot, at twelve shillings Scots per peck. They also ordered all possessors of grain to have it thrashed out and brought to market before the 20th of May, reserving none to themselves, and forbade, [Sidenote: 1709.] on high penalties, any one to buy up grain upon the road to market.[417]

A well-disposed person offered in print an expedient for preventing the dearth of victual. He discommended the fixing of a price at market, for when this plan was tried in the last dearth, farmers brought only some inferior kind of grain to market, ‘so that the remedy was worse than the disease.’ Neither could he speak in favour of the plan of the French king—namely, the confiscating of all grain remaining after harvest—for it had not succeeded in France, and would still less suit a country where the people were accustomed to more liberty. He suggested the prohibition of exportation; the recommending possessors of grain to sell it direct to the people, instead of victual-mongers; and the use of strict means for fining all who keep more than a certain quantity in reserve. This writer thought that the corn was in reality not scarce; all that was needed was, to induce possessors of the article to believe it to be best for their interest to sell immediately.[418]

[Sidenote: JULY 21.]

There is an ancient and well-known privilege, still kept up, in connection with the palace and park of Holyroodhouse, insuring that a debtor otherwise than fraudulent, and who has not the crown for his creditor, cannot have diligence executed against him there; consequently, may live there in safety from his creditors. At this time, the privilege was taken advantage of by Patrick Haliburton, who was in debt to the extraordinary amount of nearly £3000 sterling, and who was believed to have secretly conveyed away his goods.

It being also part of the law of Scotland that diligence cannot be proceeded with on Sunday, the Abbey Lairds, as they were jocularly called, were enabled to come forth on that day and mingle in their wonted society.

It pleased Patrick Haliburton to come to town one Sunday, and call upon one of his creditors named Stewart, in order to treat with him regarding some proposed accommodation of the matters that stood between them. Mr Stewart received Patrick with apparent kindness, asked him to take supper, and so plied his hospitality as to detain him till past twelve o’clock, when, as he was leaving the house, a messenger appeared with a writ of caption, and conducted him to prison. Patrick considered himself as [Sidenote: 1709.] trepanned, and presented a complaint to the Court of Session, endeavouring to shew that a caption, of which all the preparatory steps had been executed on the Sunday, was the same as if it had been executed on the Sunday itself; that he had been treacherously dealt with; and that he was entitled to protection under the queen’s late indemnity. The Lords repelled the latter plea, but ‘allowed trial to be taken of the time of his being apprehended, and the manner how he was detained, or if he offered to go back to the Abbey, and was enticed to stay and hindered to go out.’[419] The termination of the affair does not appear.

A case with somewhat similar features occurred in 1724. Mrs Dilks being a booked inmate of the Abbey sanctuary, one of her creditors formed a design of getting possession of her person. He sent a messenger-at-law, who, planting himself in a tavern within the privileged ground, but close upon its verge, sent for the lady to come and speak with him. She, obeying, could not reach the house without treading for a few paces beyond ‘the girth,’ and the messenger’s concurrents took the opportunity to lay hold of her. This, however, was too much to be borne by a fairplay-loving populace. The very female residents of the Abbey rose at the news, and, attacking the party, rescued Mrs Dilks, and bore her back in triumph within the charmed circle.[420]

The Rev. James Greenshields, an Irish curate, but of Scottish birth and ordination—having received this rite at the hands of the deposed Bishop of Ross in 1694—set up a meeting-house in a court near the Cross of Edinburgh, where he introduced the English liturgy, being the first time a prayer-book had been publicly presented in Scotland since the Jenny Geddes riot of July 1637. Greenshields was to be distinguished from the nonjurant Scottish Episcopalian clergy, for he had taken the oath of abjuration (disclaiming the ‘Pretender’), and he prayed formally for the queen; but he was perhaps felt to be, on this account, only the more dangerous to the Established Church. It was necessary that something should be done to save serious people from the outrage of having a modified idolatry practised so near them. The first effort consisted of a process raised by the landlord of the house against Mr Greenshields, in the Dean [Sidenote: 1709.] of Guild’s court, on account of his having used part of the house, which he took for a dwelling, as a chapel, and for that purpose broken down certain partitions. The Dean readily ordained that the house should be restored to its former condition. Mr Greenshields having easily procured accommodation elsewhere, it became necessary to try some other method for extinguishing the nuisance. A petition to the presbytery of Edinburgh, craving their interference, was got up and signed by two or three hundred persons in a few hours. The presbytery, in obedience to their call, cited Mr Greenshields to appear before them. He declined their jurisdiction, and they discharged him from continuing to officiate, under high pains and penalties.

[Sidenote: SEP.]

Mr Greenshields having persisted, next Sunday, in reading prayers to his congregation, the magistrates, on the requirement of the presbytery, called him before them, and formally demanded that he should discontinue his functions in their city. Daniel Defoe, who could so cleverly expose the intolerance of the Church of England to the dissenters, viewed an Episcopalian martyrdom with different feelings. He tells us that Greenshields conducted himself with ‘haughtiness’ before the civic dignitaries—what his own people of course regarded as a heroic courage. He told them positively that he would not obey them; and accordingly, next Sunday, he read the service as usual in his obscure chapel. Even now, if we are to believe Defoe, the magistrates would not have committed him, if he had been modest in his recusancy; but, to their inconceivable disgust, this insolent upstart actually appeared next day at the Cross, among the gentlemen who were accustomed to assemble there as in an Exchange, and thus seemed to brave their authority! For its vindication, they were, says Defoe, ‘brought to an absolute necessity to commit him;’ and they committed him accordingly to the Tolbooth.