Chapter XVIII: Part 18

It is generally admitted that Rob Roy was a man of good birth and connections, though belonging to a family or clan which for upwards of a century had been under proscription, and obliged to live a rather skulking kind of life. He had become possessed in an honourable manner of certain lands on the skirts of Ben Lomond, in the county of Stirling, composed wholly of mountain-ground, and of little annual value, yet sufficient to maintain him, the principal place being Inversnaid, on the isthmus between the Lochs Lomond and Katrine, where hundreds of tourists now pass every summer-day, but which was considered a very outlandish situation in the time of Queen Anne. His family name being illegal by act of parliament, he had adopted that of Campbell, in compliment to the Argyle family, which patronised him. The business of purchasing Highland cattle at the Crieff and other markets, and getting them transferred to England, where they were to be fattened and consumed, was for some years after the Union a favourite one amongst gentlemen of good rank, and it attracted the sagacious and active mind of Robert Macgregor Campbell. With some funds supplied by his neighbours, and part of which, at least, is said to have come primarily from the Duke of Montrose, on an understanding that the lenders were to share in the profits, he entered on the traffic with spirit, and conducted it for a time with success; but the defalcations of a subordinate agent or partner, named Macdonald, cut short his [Sidenote: 1712.] career in trade, and left him in serious pecuniary difficulties. The aspect which the affair took at the Court of Session in Edinburgh was, that Robert Macgregor Campbell drew bills on Graham of Gorthie and other gentlemen for cattle he was to buy for them, realised the money, and then ‘did most fraudulently withdraw, and fled, without performing anything on his part, and thereby became unquestionably a notour and fraudulent bankrupt;’[449] while in reality he was probably only the victim of a fraud, and obliged to keep out of the way in consequence of the unreasonable severities of the law towards men in his situation. It was a sufficiently barbarous measure to advertise an unfortunate man as a fraudulent bankrupt seeking to screen himself from justice; but the Duke of Montrose—in some other respects but a poor representative of his illustrious great-grandfather—went further: he caused his factor, Mr Graham of Killearn, to fall upon Macgregor’s poor little holding of Craigrostan and Inversnaid, and thrust out from it the wife and family of the late owner.

This treatment turned the milk of Macgregor’s nature to bitterness, and it is not surprising, when the general condition of the country, and the ordinary strain of men’s ideas in that age are considered, that he sought in a wild and lawless way to right himself with his oppressors—above all with the Duke of Montrose. From the rough country round Ben Lomond, he could any night stoop upon his Grace’s Lowland farms, and make booty of meal and cattle. Strange to say, while thus setting the law at defiance, he obtained a certain steady amount of countenance and protection from both of the great Campbell chiefs, Argyle and Breadalbane. The government made an effort to impose a check upon his career by planting a little fort at Inversnaid;[450] but Rob Roy, nevertheless, continued in his lawless course of [Sidenote: 1712.] life. On the side of Loch Lomond, near Inversnaid, there is a cave formed by a flexure in the stratification of the mountain: here Rob occasionally took refuge when hard pressed. It is curious to reflect that this strange exemplification of predatory life was realised in a not very remote part of our island, in the days when Addison and Pope were regaling the refined people of London with the productions of their genius. Rob is described as a short, robust man, with bushy hair and beard, and legs covered so thickly with red hair as to resemble those of a Highland bull. His cognomen ‘Roy’ expresses his ruddy complexion. It is admitted that, amidst his wild life, he was not without humanity or feeling for the unfortunate, and, what is perhaps more strange, that he was a sagacious and politic sort of person, who never would go into any quarrel or contention which was not likely to result in some practical benefit or advantage. It was probably owing to this cool temperament, that, though he mustered a body of clansmen for the Stuart cause in 1715, he yet stood neutral at the battle of Sheriffmuir, alike afraid to offend King James, on the one hand, and his patron, the Duke of Argyle, on the other.

[Sidenote: JUNE.]

A singular and not very decent lawsuit took place at this time between the Earl of Bute and his stepmother, the Dowager Countess, widow of the first earl, by whom this family was first raised to any considerable distinction. When the deceased peer went to Bath in the spring of 1710, a few months before his death, he granted a liferent of 3300 merks (£183, 6_s._ 8_d._ sterling) to his lady. The present peer—father, by the way, of George III.’s celebrated minister—refused to pay this annuity, and the countess raised an action against him for it, and also for the annual rents of her own son’s patrimony. The only objection presented by the earl in his defence was, that the lady had profited unduly already out of her husband’s property, having at his death appropriated large sums of ‘lying money.’ The matter being referred to her oath, she acknowledged having had in hand at her lord’s death forty pounds, with a purse containing ‘sundry medals and purse-pennies given by the earl and others to her and her son, in which number there were some guineas; and the whole might be about £60 sterling.’ She averred that ‘she had nothing as the product of any trade she drove, except two or three ells of _alamode_;’[451] [Sidenote: 1712.] she had made nothing in her husband’s lifetime by lending money; there had been presents from the tenants in kind and in money, and her husband had given them to her. The peer seems to have gained nothing by challenging the claims of his stepmother beyond the forty pounds of ‘lying money.’[452]

[Sidenote: JULY 23.]

The stricter Presbyterians, commonly called Cameronians—the people chiefly involved in the persecutions of the Stuart reigns—had been left unsatisfied by the Revolution, and were now as antagonistic to the presbyterian church as they had ever been to the late episcopacy. For years they held together, without ministers, or the means of getting any trained in their peculiar walk of doctrine; but at length one or two schismatics cast off by the church put themselves at their head, the chief being Mr John Macmillan, formerly minister of Balmaghie in Galloway. Oaths to the state, neglect of the Covenant, and general compliances with the spirit of the times, were the stumbling-blocks which these people regarded as disqualifying the national establishment for their allegiance.

The Cameronians chiefly abounded in the counties of Lanark, Dumfries, and Kirkcudbright, and their Canterbury was the small burgh of Sanquhar in Nithsdale. Whenever any remarkable political movement was going on in the country, these peculiar people were pretty sure to come to the cross of Sanquhar and utter a testimony on the subject. The last occasion when this was done was at the Union, a measure which it pleased ‘the Antipopish, Antiprelatic, Antierastian, Antisectarian, _True_ Presbyterian Church of Scotland’ (for so they styled themselves), to regard as ‘sinful,’ because it involved a sanction to that English prelatic system which the Solemn League and Covenant had bound the Scottish nation to extirpate.

While still brooding over the ‘land-ruining, God-provoking, soul-destroying, and posterity-ensnaring-and-enslaving Union,’ the act of toleration, so manifestly designed for a relief to the prelatists, came like a bellows to blow up the fire. Sundry meetings were held, and at length a general one at the upland village of Crawford-John (26th of May 1712), where it was finally decided on that the faithful and true church should renew the Solemn League and Covenant.

It was at a place called Auchensaugh, on the top of a broad [Sidenote: 1712.] mountain behind the village of Douglas, that the meeting was held for this purpose. The transaction occupied several days. On the first, there was a prayer for a proper frame of spirit, followed by a sermon, as this was again by an engagement to duties, amongst which the uprooting of all opinions different from their own was the most conspicuous. The people were dismissed with an exhortation from Mr Macmillan upon their ‘unconcerned carriage and behaviour.’ On the second day, it was reckoned that about seventeen hundred were present, including, however, many onlookers brought by curiosity. There was now read an acknowledgment of sins, and the people were invited to clear their consciences by declaring any of which they had been guilty. One confessed having made a rash oath; another that he had attended the Established Church; several that they had been married by the Erastian clergy. One, hearing of the sinfulness of tests and oaths, rather unluckily confessed his having sworn the Covenant at Lesmahago. A number had to deplore their having owned William and Mary as their lawful sovereigns. Mr Macmillan seems to have been a little perplexed by the innocent nature of their sins. After all this was at an end, the Solemn League was read and sworn to, article by article, with uplifted hands. A day of interval being allowed, there was a third of devotion. On the fourth, a Sunday, there was an administration of the communion, which must have been a striking sight, as eight tables were set out upon the moor, each capable of accommodating sixty persons. ‘It was a very extraordinary rain the whole time of the action.’

Even Wodrow, who has taken such pains to commemorate the sufferings of these people under prelacy, seems to have been unable to look with patience on their making such demonstrations against the church now established.[453] Such earnestness in intolerance, such self-confidence in opinion, cannot be read of in our age without strange feelings. After all, the Covenanters of Auchensaugh were good enough to invite the rest of the community to join them, ‘being anxious to get the divisions which have long wrecked this church removed and remedied;’ nay, they were ‘willing, for peace and unity, to acknowledge and forsake whatever we can rationally be convinced to be bad in our conduct and management,’[454] though it would have probably been a serious [Sidenote: 1712.] task for a General Assembly of angels to produce such a conviction.

About this time, and for long after, there flourished an enthusiast named John Halden, who considered himself, and a friend of his named James Leslie, as above all and peculiarly the proper representatives of the martyrs Cameron, Cargill, Hackston, Hall, Skeen, Balfour, &c., according to the tenor of the Rutherglen, Sanquhar, and Lanark Declarations. John, like his predecessors, declared not merely spiritual but temporal war against all the existing powers, seeing they had declined from the Covenant, exercised an Erastian power in the church, and were tyrants over the state. Nay, he declared war against ‘the enemies of Christ’ all over the world, denouncing the curse of Meroz against all who would not join him. Halden and Leslie, since there was no government they could submit to, professed their desire and endeavour to ‘set up a godly magistracy, and form a civil state’ themselves; and it is to be feared that the community remained grievously insensible to the offered blessing. The Lord Advocate did not even do them the honour to consider them dangerous. The only active step we hear of John Halden taking was to burn the Abjuration Oath at the Cross of Edinburgh, on the point of a dagger (October 28, 1712), proclaiming with a loud voice, as he went off up the High Street: ‘Let King Jesus reign, and let his enemies be scattered!’

[Sidenote: JULY.]

Dr Pitcairn, the prince of wits and physicians in his day, being an Episcopalian and a Jacobite, moreover a man of gay and convivial habits, did not stand in good repute among the severer of the Presbyterian clergy. Regarding many things connected with religion from a peculiar point of view, which was not theirs, he sometimes appeared to them, by the freedom of speech he assumed on such points, and by the cast of comicality which he gave them, to be little better than an unbeliever. Wodrow in his Renfrewshire parish heard of him and his associates with serious concern. It was reported, he tells us, that ‘Dr Pitcairn and others do meet very regularly every Lord’s Day, and read the Scriptures, in order to lampoon and ridicule it. It’s such wickedness that, though we had no outward evidences, might make us apprehensive of some heavy rod.’[455]

The Rev. James Webster, one of the Edinburgh clergy of that [Sidenote: 1712.] day, was distinguished by the highest graces as an evangelical preacher. He had been a sufferer under the ante-Revolution government, and hated a Jacobite with a perfect hatred. To the Jacobites, on the other hand, his high Calvinism and general severity of style were a subject of continual sarcasm and epigram; and it is not unlikely that Pitcairn had launched at him a few jokes which he did not feel over meekly. In a poem of Pitcairn’s, _Ad Adenas_, there is, indeed, a passage in which Mr Webster, as minister of the Tolbooth kirk, a part of St Giles’s, is certainly glanced at:

‘Protinus Ægidii triplicem te confer in ædem,
_Tres ubi Cyclopes fanda nefanda boant_.’

Perhaps this very remark gave rise to all that followed.

One day, in a company where the magistrates of Edinburgh were present, Mr Webster fell into conversation with Mr Robert Freebairn, the bookseller. The minister complained that, in his auctions, Freebairn sold wicked and prohibited books; in particular, he had lately sold a copy of Philostratus’s _Life of Apollonius Tyanæus_, which deists and atheists were eager to purchase, because it set forth the doings of that impostor as on a level with the miracles of Jesus. It being insinuated that these auctions ministered to an infamous taste, Mr Freebairn asked Mr Webster to ‘condescend upon persons;’ whereupon the latter unguardedly said: ‘Such persons, for example, as Dr Pitcairn, who is known to be a professed deist. As a proof of what I say, at that very sale where you found so many eager to purchase the _Life of Apollonius_, when some one remarked that a copy of the Bible hung heavy in comparison on your hands, Pitcairn remarked: “No wonder, for, you know, _Verbum Dei manet in æternum_,” which was a direct scoffing at the sacred volume.’

Pitcairn, having this conversation reported to him by Freebairn, took it with lamentable thin-skinnedness, and immediately raised an action against Webster before the sheriffs for defamation. Webster advocated the case to the Lords, on the ground that the sheriffs were not the proper judges in such a matter; and, after a good deal of debating, the Lords, considering that the pursuer shewed too much keenness, while the defender appeared willing to give reasonable satisfaction, recommended the Lord-justice Clerk ‘to endeavour to settle the parties amicably;’ and so the affair seems to have ended.[456]

[Sidenote: 1712. SEP.]

In the early part of this month, the Rev. Mr Wodrow made an excursion into Galloway, and noted on the way several characteristic circumstances. ‘I find,’ he says, ‘they have no great quantity of straw, and necessity has learned them to make thrift of fern or breckans, which grow there very throng [close]. They thatch their houses with them ... stript of the leaves ... and say it lasts six or eight years in their great storms.’ He adverts to the moat-hills near some of the parish churches, and great cairns of stones scattered over the moors. Of a loch near Partan, he says: ‘There seem to be tracks of roads into it upon all hands;’ a description reminding us of the glacial grooves and scratches seen on rocks dipping into several of the Scottish lakes. ‘I notice,’ he says, ‘all through the stewartry [of Kirkcudbright] the houses very little and low, and but a foot or two of them of stone, and the rest earth and thatch. I observe all the country moorish. I noticed the stones through many places of far more regular shapes than in this country [Renfrewshire]. On the water of Ken they are generally spherical [boulders]. Through much of the moorish road to Crogo, they are square and long. The strata that with us lie generally horizontally, there in many places lie vertical.’

The worthy martyrologist received from a Galloway minister, on this tour, an account of the witches who were rife in the parish of Balmaclellan immediately after the Revolution. ‘One of them he got discovered and very clear probation of persons that saw her in the shape of a hare; and when taken she started up in her own shape. When before the judge, he observed her inclinable to confess, when of a sudden, her eyes being fixed upon a particular part of the room, she sank down in the place. He lifted her up and challenged her, whether her master had not appeared in that place. She owned it was so, confessed, and was execute. All this process is in the records of the presbytery, of which I am promised ane abstract.’[457]

Wodrow seems to have had a taste for geology, though the word did not then exist. He thus wrote to Edward Lluyd, August 26, 1709: ‘My house [is] within a quarter of a mile of the Aldhouse Burn, where you and I were _lithoscoping_. My pastoral charge does not allow me that time I once had, to follow out these subterranean studies, but my inclination is just the same as when I saw you, or rather greater, and I take it to be one of [Sidenote: 1712.] the best diversions from more serious work, and in itself a great duty, to view and admire my Maker in his works, as well as his word. I have got together some stone of our fossils hereabout, from our marl, our limestone, &c.’[458]

[Sidenote: SEP. 24.]

The _Edinburgh Courant_ newspaper contains several notices of a flood which happened this day in the west of Scotland, generally admitted to be the greatest in memory. Wodrow, who calls it ‘the greatest for ane age,’ says it prevented all travelling for the time between Glasgow and Edinburgh. The lower parts of the western city were, as usual on such occasions, deep in water, to the ruin of much merchandise, and the imprisonment of (it is said) twelve hundred families in the upper parts of the houses. A boat sailed about in the Briggate. The house of Sir Donald Macdonald—a gentleman regarded with great jealousy in Glasgow on account of his unpopular religion—is described in one account as immersed to the depth of three fathoms; which is probably an exaggeration. But we may believe Wodrow when he tells us that ‘the water came up to the well in the Saltmarket.’

Great anxiety was felt at Glasgow for the safety of the fine old bridge, which had its arches ‘filled to the bree.’ Vast quantities of country produce and of domestic articles of all descriptions were brought down on the surface of the Clyde and other rivers of the province involved by the flood. Several lives were lost. At Irvine and other parts of Ayrshire, as well as in Renfrewshire, bridges were carried away, and great general damage inflicted. ‘A man and a woman were lost upon the water of Kelvin, and if the Laird of Bardowie had not sent his boat from his loch, to the said water of Kelvin, there had been a great many more people lost therein.’

If we are to believe the observant minister of Eastwood, the whole air at this season seemed ‘infected.’ He notes the frequency of madness in dogs, and that, owing to various epidemics, as ‘the galloping fever,’ sore throat, and measles, scarce a third of the people of Glasgow were able to appear in church.

‘I am told,’ he adds, ‘the Blantyre Doctor did presage this evil harvest and the floods; and they talk, but whether true or false I know not, that there is to be another and greater flood, wherein the Clyde shall be three steps up the Tolbooth stair in Glasgow.’

[Sidenote: 1712. DEC.]

Mr Robert Monteath was at this time preparing his celebrated _Theater of Mortality_, a collection of the sepulchral inscriptions existing throughout Scotland. It had already cost him ‘eight years sore travel, and vast charges and expenses.’ He now advertised for assistance in his task, ‘desiring all persons who have any valuable epitaphs, Latin, prose or verse, English verse only, or any historical, chronological, or moral inscriptions,’ to send just and authentic copies of them to him ‘at his house in the College Wynd, Edinburgh.’ He took that opportunity of stating his hope that ‘all generous persons will cheerfully subscribe his proposals in a matter so pious, _pleasant_, profitable, and national.’[459]

[Sidenote: 1713. MAY 1.]

Died, Sir James Steuart, Lord Advocate for Scotland, aged about seventy-eight, greatly lamented by the Presbyterians, to whom he had ever been a steadfast friend. The General Assembly, in session at the time, came in a body to his funeral, which was the most numerously attended ever known in Edinburgh, the company reaching from the head of the close in which his lordship lived, in the Luckenbooths, to the Greyfriars’ Churchyard. For several years, bodily infirmity confined him to a chair; but his mind continued clear to the last. Sir James had shewn some unsteadiness to his principles in the reign of James II., but nevertheless was forced to fly his country, and he only returned along with King William, whose manifesto for Scotland he is understood to have written.

Great general learning, legal skill, and worldly policy, marked Sir James Steuart; but the most remarkable characteristic of the man, considering his position, was his deep piety. Wodrow, who speaks of him from personal knowledge, says: ‘His death was truly Christian, and a great instance of the reality of religion.... He had a great value for religion and persons of piety. He was mighty in the Scriptures; perfectly master of [them]; wonderful in prayer. That winter, 1706–7, when he was so long ill, he was in strange raptures in his prayers sometimes in his family. He used to speak much of his sense of the advantage of the prayers of the church, and in a very dangerous sickness he had about thirteen years ago, he alleged he found a sensible turn of his body in the time of Mr George Meldrum’s prayer for him. He never fell into any trouble but he gave up his name to be [Sidenote: 1713.] prayed for in all the churches of the city of Edinburgh. His temper was most sweet and easy, and very pleasant. He was a kind and fast friend, very compassionate and charitable.’[460]

[Sidenote: MAY 11.]

The Lord Drummond, eldest son of the exiled Earl of Perth, and his wife, Jean Gordon, daughter of the Duke of Gordon, had a son and heir born to them, the same who afterwards took a conspicuous part in the rebellion of 1745, which he did not long outlive. Politics, long adverse to the house of Drummond, smiled on the birth of this infant heir, for never since the Revolution did the Whig interest seem more depressed. Lord Drummond was encouraged by these circumstances to take a step which would have been dangerous a few years before. It is related as follows by Wodrow: ‘The baptism of my Lord Drummond’s son [was performed in October] at his own house by a popish bishop with great solemnity. The whole gentlemen and several noblemen about, were gathered together; and when the mass was said, there were very few of them went out. Several justices of peace and others were there. This is a fearful reproach upon the lenity of our government, to suffer such open insults from papists.’[461]

Two months later, Wodrow notes: ‘The papists are turning very open at Edinburgh, and all over Scotland there is a terrible openness in the popish party.’ It is alleged in a popular contemporary publication, that there were fully forty Catholic priests living with little effort at concealment in Scotland; some of them very successful in winning over ignorant people to their ‘damnable errors;’ while ‘one Mr Bruce, a popish bishop, had his ordinary residence in Perthshire, where he had his gardens, cooks, and other domestic servants, and thither the priests and emissaries of inferior rank resorted for their directions and orders.... Their peats and other fuel were regularly furnished them ... [they had] also their mass-houses, to which their blind votaries resorted almost as publicly as the Protestants did to their parish churches.’[462]

[Sidenote: OCT. 20.]

Died Dr Archibald Pitcairn, a man in most respects so strongly contrasted with his recently deceased countryman, Sir James Steuart, as to impress very strongly the absurdity of trying to ascribe any particular line of character to a nation or any other [Sidenote: 1713.] large group of people. To nearly every idea associated with the word Scotsman, Pitcairn, like Burns and many other notable Caledonians, stands in direct antagonism: he was gay, impulsive, unworldly, full of wit and geniality, a dissenter from Calvinism, and a lover of the exiled house of Stuart. Conviviality shortened his life down to the same measure which a worn-out brain gave to Sir Walter Scott—sixty-one years. But he parted with the world in great serenity and good-humour, studying to make his last year useful for the future by writing out some of his best professional observations, and penning cheerful verses to his friends on his death-bed. In these, to the refutation of vulgar calumnies, he failed not to express his trust in a future and brighter existence:

‘Animas morte carere cano:
Has ego, corporibus profugas, ad Sidera mitto,
Sideraque ingressis otia blanda dico.’

Adding, in the Horatian spirit which marked him all through life:

‘Sed fuerint nulli, forsan, quos spondeo, coeli,
Nullaque sint Ditis numina, nulla Jovis;

· · · · ·

Attamen esse hilares, et inanes mittere curas
Proderit, ac vitæ commoditate frui,
Et festos agitâsse dies, ævique fugacis
Tempora perpetuis detinuisse jocis.’[463]

A few months before his death, Pitcairn had completed a volume of his medical essays, to which he prefixed a page strongly significant of his political predilections: it contained the following words in large characters: ‘TO GOD AND HIS PRINCE _this Work is humbly Dedicated by_ ARCHIBALD PITCAIRN,’ with the date, ‘June [Sidenote: 1713.] 10, 1713,’ being the well-known birthday of the said prince—namely, the Chevalier St George. Where practical matters are concerned, one sees in this volume the acuteness and good sense which gave the author his professional eminence. In theoretical matters, we find the absurdities which may be said to have been inseparable from medical science before either physiology or organic chemistry was understood. The phenomena of digestion are described by Pitcairn as wholly physical and mechanical. It is also rather startling to find him patronising poultices of ovine and bovine excreta, and powders made of the human skull.

The volume was published posthumously, and in the friendly biography prefixed to it, we find a charming professional portrait—‘always ready to serve every one to the utmost of his power, and even at the risk of his own life—never sacrificing the health of his patients for any humour or caprice’—‘not concerned about fees’—‘went with greater cheerfulness to those from whom he could expect nothing but good-will, than to persons of the highest condition’—often, where needful, left marks of his charity, as well as his art, with the sick. ‘This virtue of charity was indeed quite his own in its manner, for he usually conducted it in such a way that those benefiting by it remained ignorant of his being their benefactor.’ It is also stated of him that he was of ‘a pleasant engaging humour; that life sat easy upon him in all circumstances; that he _despised many, but hated none_.’

In a country journey, Pitcairn discovered the learning and genius of Thomas Ruddiman, and he succeeded in bringing this remarkable man into a position which enabled him to exercise his talents. Ruddiman afterwards repaid the favour by gathering the many clever Latin poems of his patron, which he gave to the world in 1727. They are chiefly complimentary to the famous men on the cavalier side, or directly expressive of his political feelings; but some are general, and include such happy turns of thought as make us regret their not being in English. One of the most noted of his pieces was a brief elegy on the death of Dundee, which was translated into English by Dryden; and it must be acknowledged as _something_ for a Scottish writer of Latin verses in that age, to have had men like Dryden and Prior for translators.

One cannot but reflect with pleasure on such connections amongst men of genius as that between Pitcairn and Ruddiman; and the association of ideas leads us to another anecdote connected with Pitcairn and to a similar purport. When the learned [Sidenote: 1713.] physician acted as professor at Leyden, he had amongst his pupils two men of great eventual eminence, Herman Boerhaave and Richard Mead, both of whom entertained a high sense of the value of his instructions. A son of Pitcairn having forfeited his life by appearing in the rebellion of 1715, Mead, then in great favour in high places, went to Sir Robert Walpole to plead for the young man’s pardon. ‘If I have been able,’ he said, ‘to save your or any other man’s life, I owe the power to this young man’s father.’ The claim was too strong, and put in too antithetic terms, to be resisted.

My old friend Alexander Campbell, editor of _Albyn’s Anthology_, was intimately acquainted with a maiden daughter of Pitcairn, who lived till the closing decade of the eighteenth century. He spoke of having once asked her to accompany him to the theatre, to see Mrs Siddons, when the old lady said gaily: ‘Aih, na, laddie; I have not been at ony playhouse since I gaed to ane in the Canongate wi’ papa, in the year ten.’

[Sidenote: NOV.]

‘This month there was an incident at Glasgow which made a very great noise in the country. Mr Gray [one of the clergy] was visiting [his flock], and in some house meets with one Andrew Watson, a journeyman shoemaker, lately come into the town from Greenock.’ On inquiry, he learned that this man did not attend his ministrations, and, asking the reason, he was told it was because he, the minister, had taken the oath of abjuration. He seemed a stiff, pragmatical fellow, and in the course of an altercation which ensued, he called Mr Gray perjured. A lay elder, accompanying Mr Gray, resented this expression of the shoemaker, and reported it to Bailie Bowman, who, sending for Watson, demanded if he called Mr Gray perjured. ‘Yes, and I will so call every one who takes the oath of abjuration.’ ‘Do you own Mr Gray as your minister?’ ‘I will own no one who took that oath.’ ‘Do you own the magistrates?’ ‘No, if they have taken that oath.’ Here was a rebel for the worthy magistrates and ministers of Glasgow to be cherishing in their community. It was not to be borne. Bailie Bowman clapped the man up in jail, till it should be determined what was to be his ultimate fate. After a day or two, the magistrates sent for him, and questioned him as he had been questioned before, when he not only gave the same answers, but subscribed a paper disowning both ministers and magistrates, on the ground of their having taken the aforesaid oath. ‘They kept him in prison ten or twelve [Sidenote: 1713.] days, but could make nothing of him. They offered to let him out if he would confess he had given offence to the magistrates; but that he would not do.’ There were some who cried out against this procedure as ‘persecution,’ and they took care that the man did not want for maintenance. The last we hear of the matter is, that the magistrates ‘resolve to banish him the town.’ Wodrow, who relates this occurrence,[464] soon after makes the observation, that ‘the Presbyterians are ill termed bigot and narrow-spirited:’ that character ‘does best agree to papists and prelatists.’

[Sidenote: DEC.]

It was remarked that an unwholesome air prevailed at this time, causing many hasty deaths, and favouring small-pox, of which eighty children died within a little time in Eglesham parish. ‘I hear it observed,’ says Wodrow, ‘that in the summer-time never was known such a quantity of flees [flies.]’

[Sidenote: 1714. JAN. 10.]

Campbell of Lochnell having died about this day, his son, a Jacobite, kept the corpse unburied till the 28th, in order that the burial might be turned to account, or made use of, for political purposes. It was customary for the obsequies of a Highland chief or gentleman to be attended by a vast multitude of people, who usually received some entertainment on the occasion. It seems to have been understood that those who came to Lochnell’s funeral were making a masked demonstration in favour of the exiled Stuart. Those of the opposite inclination deemed it necessary to attend also, in order to be a check upon the Jacobites. Hence it came to pass, that the inhumation of Lochnell was attended by two thousand five hundred men, well armed and appointed, five hundred being of Lochnell’s own lands, commanded by the famous Rob Roy, carrying with them a pair of colours belonging to the Earl of Breadalbane, and accompanied by the screams of thirteen bagpipes. Such a subject for a picture![465]

[Sidenote: FEB.]

Keeping in view the article under September 1690, regarding the marriage of Walter Scott of Kelso with Mary Campbell of Silvercraigs, we may read with additional interest a letter by that person, written from Glasgow to his wife in February 1714, [Sidenote: 1714.] giving an account of the peculiar arrangements regarding her father’s funeral:

‘GLASGOW, _Feb. 2, 1714_.

‘MY DEAR—I left Edin^r upon fryday the 29th of the last. Dean of
[Guild] Allane nor your sister either durst venture to travell to
Glasgow with [me], on account of the season, but said that Mr Bell,
Lisis younge husband, was there, whom Dean of Guild Allane had trusted
with any business that could bee done for him. I called at Lithkow and
saw Lissie, who was very kinde, was at Kilsyth all that night, came to
Glasgow the next day, beeing Saturday, at twelve of the clock, and at
two of the clock that day went down to the chesting of your father. He
was buried yesterday att four a clock afternoon, beeing Monday the
first instant, very devoutlie and honourablie, for Blythswood had
ordered all things proper and suitable to a nicety. All the gentlemen
in the place, the magistrates, and the citiezens of best esteem and
substance, accompanied the funerall in very good order. I carried his
head, Blythswood on my right, and Alex. Bell, Lissies husband, on my
left hand; other nerest relations and Sr James Campbell of Auchinbrook
carried all the way. After the funerall, there was prepared in the
large room of the Coffee-house a very handsome and genteele treat, to
w^h the Magistrates and Gentlemen and friends were invited. The treat
consisted of confections, sweet breads, and bisket of divers sorts,
very fine and well done, and wines. There were at it upwards of
thirtie. Wee are this day to look to his papers in presence of Bailie
Bowman and town-clark, wherof you shall have account of after this. I
have sent a letter to Sir Robert Pollock just now, whose answer I will
wait. I am like to stay five days after this here, and the time I may
stay in Edi^r depends on my success from Sir Ro^t Pollock. In the mean
time let Robie[466] be making himself ready, for his master told Dean
of Guild that he thought he would bee readie to saill about the middle
of this instant. When I come to Ed^r I shall know whither it will be
needfull to send for him before I come home myselfe or not. I
recommend you all to the protection of God, and am,

‘My dear, your
‘W. SCOTT.

REIGN OF GEORGE I.: 1714–1727.

The Tory ministry of Anne, which had certainly meditated some attempt at the restoration of the Stuart line, were paralysed, as we have seen, by her death, and allowed the accession of George of Hanover to take place without opposition. The new king had no sooner settled himself in London, than he displaced the late queen’s advisers, and surrounded himself with the Whigs, whom he knew to be his only true friends. The sharpness of this proceeding, added to the general discontent, produced an almost immediate insurrection. Two of the ex-ministers—the Duke of Ormond and Lord Bolingbroke—went to France, and attached themselves to the exiled court. The Earl of Mar, after in vain attempting to obtain the favour of King George, repaired to his native country, and, on the 6th of September 1715, set up the standard of rebellion in Aberdeenshire, although he is said to have had no commission to that effect from the rival prince. This nobleman, who had acted as Secretary of State under the late government, was speedily surrounded with hundreds of armed men, chiefly of the Highland clans, who were willing to be led by him to battle.

The government had at this time only a few regiments in Scotland, not exceeding in all fifteen hundred men, and these could not be concentrated in one place, without leaving the rest of the country exposed. They were, however, put under the command of the Duke of Argyle, a young soldier who had served under Marlborough, and at one time commanded the British troops in Spain. The government could not well spare more men for service in Scotland, as England, being threatened with a corresponding invasion from France, required a large number of the disposable troops for its own defence, and also for the purpose of preventing a rising among the native Jacobites. An attempt was made to surprise Edinburgh Castle in behalf of the Chevalier, and it would have in all likelihood succeeded, but for the folly of one or two of the conspirators. By this enterprise, if successful, the Duke of Argyle must have been disabled for keeping together his small army, and the whole of the south of Scotland would at once have fallen into the hands of the insurgent general, if he had been gifted with common energy to take it into his possession.

Mar entered Perth on the 28th of September, having with him about five thousand horse and foot, fully armed. Among his Highland adherents were the chieftains of Clanranald and Glengarry, the Earl of Breadalbane, and the Marquis of Tullibardine (eldest son of the Duke of Athole), all of whom brought their clansmen into the field. Among the Lowland Jacobites who had already joined him were the Earls of Panmure and Strathmore, with many of the younger sons of considerable families. On the 2d of October, a party of his troops performed the dexterous exploit of surprising a government vessel on the Firth of Forth opposite to Burntisland, and taking from it several hundred stand of arms, which it was about to carry to the north, for the purpose of arming the Whig Earl of Sutherland against his Jacobite neighbours. This gave a little _éclat_ to the enterprise.

The government, in order to encourage loyalty at this dangerous crisis, obtained an act, adjudging the estates of the insurgents to such vassals, holding of them, as should remain at peace. The state-officers were also very active in apprehending suspected persons, especially in England. Some gentlemen in the northern counties, fearing that this would be their fate, met on the 6th of October at Rothbury, and soon increased to a considerable party. Among them were Mr Forster, member of parliament for Northumberland, and Lord Widdrington. They made an advance to Newcastle, but were deterred from attacking it. They then concentrated themselves at Hexham, and opened a communication with Lord Mar. About the same time, the Viscount Kenmure, and the Earls of Nithsdale, Wintoun, and Carnwath appeared in arms in the south of Scotland, with a considerable band of followers, and a junction was soon after effected between the two parties.

As the Earl of Mar was loath to leave the Highlands, where immense bands were mustering to join him, he resolved to make no attempt upon the Duke of Argyle, who had now posted his small force at Stirling Bridge, which forms the only free pass between the north and south of Scotland. The earl, however, thought it expedient to send a detachment of upwards of two thousand of his infantry across the Firth of Forth, in order to co-operate with him, when the proper time should arrive, by falling upon the duke in flank. This party was placed under the command of Brigadier Mackintosh of Borlum, an old officer, who had been regularly trained under Marlborough. By making a feint at Burntisland, to which point they attracted the war-vessels on the firth, about sixteen hundred got safely over to East Lothian, and immediately marched upon Edinburgh, which was then defenceless. The provost, however, had time to call the Duke of Argyle to his aid, who entered the west gate of the city with five hundred horse, at the same time that Mackintosh was approaching its eastern limit. The insurgent chief turned aside to Leith, and barricaded his men in the old dismantled citadel of Cromwell. There he was called to surrender next day by the duke, but returned a haughty defiance, and the assailing party had to retire to wait for cannon. The brigadier took the opportunity that night to march back to East Lothian, where for a day or two he garrisoned Seton House, the princely seat of the Earl of Wintoun. The Duke of Argyle was obliged to leave him unmolested, in order to return to Stirling, upon which he learned that the Earl of Mar was marching with his whole force. The insurgent general was in reality only anxious to call him off from the party under Mackintosh. The capital being now protected by volunteers, that officer, in obedience to the commands of the Earl of Mar, marched to Kelso, where he formed a junction with the English and Lowland cavaliers.

There were now two Jacobite armies in Scotland—one at Perth, and another at Kelso. It was the obvious policy of both to have attempted to break up the Duke of Argyle’s encampment, which was the sole obstacle to their gaining possession of Scotland; but this the Earl of Mar either found inconvenient or imprudent, and the party at Kelso was soon diverted to another scene of action. After a delay of some days, and much unhappy wrangling among themselves, it was determined by the leaders of this body to march into the west of England, where, as the country abounded with Jacobites, they expected to raise a large reinforcement. They therefore moved along the Border by Jedburgh, Hawick, and Langholm, followed by a government force much inferior to themselves in numbers, under the command of General Carpenter. On the 31st of October they entered England, all except a few hundred Highlanders, who had determined to go home, and who were mostly seized by the country people upon the march.

Hitherto, the insurrection had been a spontaneous movement of the friends of the Chevalier, under the self-assumed direction of the Earl of Mar. It was now put into proper form by the earl receiving a commission as generalissimo from the royal personage in whose behalf he was acting. Henceforth the insurgent forces were supported by a regular daily pay of threepence in money, with a certain quantity of provisions, the necessary funds being raised by virtue of the earl’s commission, in the shape of a land-tax, which was rendered severer to the enemies than to the friends of the cause. The army was now increased by two thousand five hundred men brought by the Marquis of Huntly, eldest son of the Duke of Gordon, and nearly four thousand who arrived, under the charge of the Earl of Seaforth, from the North Highlands. Early in November, there could not be fewer than sixteen thousand men in arms throughout the country for the Stuarts, a force tripling that with which Prince Charles penetrated into England at a later and less auspicious period. Yet even with all, or nearly all this force at his command, the Earl of Mar permitted the Duke of Argyle to protect the Lowlands and the capital with about three thousand men.

At length, on the 10th of November, having gathered nearly all the forces he could expect, he resolved to force the pass so well guarded by his opponent. When the Duke of Argyle learned that Mar was moving from Perth, he resolved to cross the Forth and meet his enemy on as advantageous ground as possible on the other side, being afraid that the superior numbers of the insurgents might enable them to advance upon more points of the river than he had troops to defend. He drew up his forces on the lower part of a swelling waste called the Sheriffmuir, with the village of Dunblane in his rear. His whole force amounted to three thousand three hundred men, of whom twelve hundred were cavalry. Mar, reinforced on the march by the West Highland clans under General Gordon, advanced to battle with about nine thousand men, including some squadrons of horse, which were composed, however, of only country gentlemen and their retainers. Although the insurgents thus greatly outnumbered their opponents, the balance was in some measure restored by Mar’s total ignorance of the military art, and the undisciplined character of his troops; while Argyle, on the other hand, had conducted armies under the most critical circumstances, and his men were not only perfectly trained, but possessed that superiority which consists in the mechanical regularity and firmness with which such troops must act. On the night of the 12th, the two armies lay within four miles of each other. Next morning, they were arranged by their respective commanders in two lines, the extremities of which were protected by horse. On meeting, however, at the top of the swelling eminence which had been interposed between them, it was found that the right wing of each greatly outflanked the left wing of the other army. The commanders, who were stationed at this part of their various hosts, immediately charged, and as in neither case there was much force opposed to them, they were both to some extent successful. The Duke of Argyle beat back the left wing of the insurgents, consisting of Highland foot and Lowland cavalry, to the river Allan. The Earl of Mar, in like manner, drove the left wing of the royal army, which was commanded by General Whitham, to the Forth. Neither of these triumphant parties knew of what was done elsewhere, but both congratulated themselves upon their partial success. In the afternoon, the Earl of Mar returned with the victorious part of his army to an eminence in the centre of the field, whence he was surprised, soon after, to observe the Duke of Argyle leading back the victorious part of his army by the highway to Dunblane. The total want of intelligence on each side, and the fear which ignorance always engenders, prevented these troops mutually from attacking each other. The duke retired to the village; the earl drew off towards Perth, whither a large part of his army had already fled in the character of defeated troops: and thus the action was altogether indecisive. Several hundreds were slain on both sides; the Earl of Strathmore and the chieftain of Clanranald fell on the side of the insurgents; the Earl of Forfar on that of the royalists. The Duke of Argyle reappeared next morning on the field, in order to renew the action; but finding that Mar was in full retreat to Perth, he was enabled to retire to Stirling with all the spoils of the field, and the credit of having frustrated the design of the insurgent general to cross the Forth. Even that part of his army which was discomfited by the Earl of Mar, had nevertheless become possessed of the principal standard of the enemy.

This day was fatal to the cause of the Chevalier in another part of the kingdom. The large party of united Scots and English, under Forster, had penetrated to Lancashire, without gaining any such accessions of force as had been expected. On the 12th of November they were assailed in the town of Preston by a considerable force under General Willis, who had concentrated the troops of a large district in order to oppose their march. For this day, they defended themselves effectually by barricading the streets; but next day the enemy was increased by a large force under General Carpenter, and the unfortunate Jacobites then found it necessary to surrender, upon the simple condition that they should not be immediately put to the sword. Forster, Kenmure, Nithsdale, Wintoun, and Mackintosh, with upwards of a hundred other persons of distinction, including a brave and generous young nobleman, the Earl of Derwentwater, were taken prisoners. The common men, in number about fourteen hundred, were disposed about the country in prisons, while their superiors were conducted to London, and, after being exposed in an ignominious procession on the streets—a mark of the low taste as well as of the political animosity of the time—imprisoned in Newgate on a charge of high treason.

The affairs of the Chevalier now began to decline in Scotland. The Earl of Sutherland, having established a garrison at Inverness, afforded to the Earl of Seaforth and the Marquis of Huntly an excuse for withdrawing their forces from Perth. Some of the other clans went home to deposit their spoil, or because they could not endure to be taunted for their bad behaviour at Sheriffmuir. The army being thus reduced to about four thousand men, various officers began to think of capitulating with the Duke of Argyle. To this there was one serious objection. In compliance with a pressing invitation which they had despatched in better times, they were daily expecting their prince to arrive amongst them. Nevertheless, the Earl of Mar was compelled to open a negotiation with the royalist general. In answer to their message, the duke informed them that he had no power to treat with them as a body, but would immediately send to court to ask for the required instructions. They were in this posture when the unfortunate son of James VII. landed (December 22) at Peterhead, and advanced to the camp to put himself at their head. The Earl of Mar and some other officers went to Fetteresso to meet him, and to apprise him of the present state of his affairs. Although greatly dejected by what he heard, and much reduced in health by a severe ague, he resolved to establish himself in royal state at Perth, in the hope of reanimating the cause. Advancing through Brechin and Dundee, he entered Perth in a ceremonious manner on the 9th of January; but he could not conceal his mortification, on finding how much his forces were reduced in number. It was, nevertheless, determined that he should be crowned at Scone on the 23d. If he was disappointed with his adherents, they were no less so with him. Whether from natural softness of character, or through the influence of his late malady, or from despair of his present circumstances, he appeared exceedingly tame and inanimate; quite the reverse, in every respect, of the bold and stirring chief required for such an enterprise.