Chapter XIX: Part 19

The Duke of Argyle, having now received large reinforcements from England, besides three thousand Dutch troops, sent in terms of the treaty of Utrecht, found himself as superior in numbers to the Earl of Mar as that general had been to him in the early part of the campaign. On the 23d of January, the day on which the Chevalier was to have been crowned, the royalist troops commenced their march upon Perth, through deep snow. To retard their progress, all the villages upon the road were burned by the insurgents. It was now debated at Perth whether they ought to remain within the town and defend themselves against the royal forces, who, in this weather, must suffer severely in the fields, or to march northward and disperse. A great part of the clans were anxious in the highest degree for a battle with the duke; but the safety of the Chevalier’s person was a consideration which precluded all desperate hazards. It was resolved to vacate Perth. Accordingly, on the 30th of January, a day ominous to the House of Stuart, from its being the anniversary of the death of Charles I., the remains of the Highland army deployed across the river, then covered with thick ice, and marched to Dundee. The duke entered the town with his vanguard, only twelve hours after the rear-guard of the insurgents had left it. But the state of the roads rendered it impossible for him, with all the appurtenances of a regular army, to overtake the light-footed mountaineers. He followed on their track towards Aberdeen, at the distance of one or two marches behind them. At Montrose, the Chevalier and the Earl of Mar provided for their own safety by going on board a French vessel. The army, which had been fast declining by the way, was finally disbanded on the 7th of February at Aberdeen, after which every man shifted for himself. Thus ended the insurrection of 1715, an enterprise begun without concert or preparation, and which languished so much throughout all its parts, that it could hardly be considered in any other light than as an appearance of certain friends of the House of Stuart in arms.

The Earl of Derwentwater and the Viscount Kenmure were the only individuals of distinction who suffered death for this rebellion. They were beheaded on Tower Hill on the 24th of February. All the rest of the noblemen and gentlemen taken at Preston either made their escape from Newgate, which on this occasion manifested a peculiar irretentiveness, or were pardoned. About twenty inferior persons were executed. There were, however, at least forty families of distinction in Scotland whose estates were forfeited. It is to be mentioned, to the honour of the Argyle family, that they counselled lenient measures, and set the example by not taking advantage of the law against such of their vassals as had forfeited their estates into their hands as superiors.

The miserable failure of this effort for the House of Stuart, and its dismal consequences, neither allayed the wishes nor extinguished the hopes of the Jacobite party. Firm in the principle of hereditary right, convinced that the prosperity and happiness of the country could only be secured through their legitimate prince, seeing in every shortcoming and error of the reigning house and ministry confirmation of their doctrines, they never once faltered in believing that a restoration was worthy of a civil war. They only admitted now, that, for success, the assistance of some foreign state was indispensable.

Unfortunately for the hopes of the party, the favour of France for the Stuart cause was at this time lost, in consequence of the necessity which the Regent Orleans felt himself under of cultivating the alliance of Britain, that he might strengthen himself against the Spanish branch of the House of Bourbon. Even a home could no longer be afforded by France for the unfortunate son of James VII.; and it now occurs, as a curious instance of the vicissitudes of fortune among historical persons, that the diplomate who negotiated for his expulsion beyond the Alps (the Earl of Stair) was the grandson of one whom James VII. had driven to Holland little more than thirty years before.

Rather oddly, while the Stuart party lost France, prospects opened to them in quarters wholly new. It pleased the half-crazed Charles XII. of Sweden to take umbrage at George I. for aid given to some of his enemies; and he formed the resolution to dethrone the British monarch, and replace his rival. There was only a total want of ships of war and transports for effecting this object. Even from the great rival of the Swede, Peter of Russia, some hopes were at one time entertained. At length, Spain, under the ambitious politics of her celebrated minister Alberoni, found it for her interest to take up in a decided manner the cause of the Stuart. In spring 1719, an expedition, comprehending a few companies of infantry and a considerable quantity of arms, passed from St Sebastian to the isle of Lewis, under the care of the Earl Marischal and the Marquis of Tullibardine, designing to raise and arm the Highland clans. A landing was effected in Loch Alsh amongst the friendly Mackenzies, whose chief, the Earl of Seaforth, accompanied the expedition, and very quickly there were a thousand natives in arms, in addition to the Spanish companies. But a foreign force of such a trivial character was quite insufficient to induce a general rising. While the Jacobite chiefs lingered in Glenshiel, with only about fifteen hundred men in arms, a government force of rather superior numbers was conducted northward by General Wightman. It would have been easy to prevent this force from entering the Mackenzie country; but no attempt to that effect was made. The two parties came into conflict on the 11th of June, and the royal commander had 142 men killed and wounded, without accomplishing a decisive victory. It was seen, however, by the Jacobite chiefs, two of whom were wounded, that nothing more could be effected at present; and it was therefore arranged that the Spanish troops should next day surrender themselves, while the Highlanders should disperse. General Wightman was happy to carry southwards 274 Spanish prisoners, without attempting to inflict any punishment upon the rebels.

For some years afterwards, the agents of the Stuart prince were actively engaged in keeping up his interest in Scotland. A large proportion of the Highland clans and of the Lowland nobility and gentry, along with the entire body of the Episcopalian clergy, were his friends; but with the great bulk of the Presbyterian middle classes his pretensions found little favour, and in the constantly increasing comfort of the people through the pursuits of peaceful industry his chance was always becoming less. Having married a Polish princess, he became in 1720 the father of a prince named Charles Edward, who was destined to make one last and brilliant, but unsuccessful effort for the restoration of the family.

King George I., dying in June 1727, was quietly succeeded by his son George II., with little change in the Whig set of statesmen by which the affairs of the country had long been conducted. During the latter years of the first Hanover sovereign, the Duke of Argyle and his brother, the Earl of Ilay, were the men of chief influence in Scotland. It was a period remarkable in several respects, but particularly for the first decided development of the industrial energies of the people, and for considerable changes in their manners and habits. For a number of minor incidents, verging or trenching on the domain of political history, reference must be made to the chronicle.

[Sidenote: 1714. OCT.]

The strong sense of religious duty at this time connected with the observance of Sunday, is strikingly shewn in the conduct of the deputation sent by the Church of Scotland to present a loyal address to George I. on his accession. Reaching Barnby Moor on a Saturday night, and finding there was no place of public worship which they were ‘clear’ to attend within a reachable distance, ‘we resolved,’ says Mr Hart, ‘to spend the Lord’s Day as well as we could. So each having retired alone for some time in the morning, we breakfasted about ten of the clock, and after that Messrs Linning, Ramsay, Adams, Mr Linning’s man, and I, did shut our chamber-door, and went about worship. I read, sung, and prayed, and then we retired again to our several chambers, and met about two of the clock, and Mr Ramsay read, sung, and prayed; and after that we retired to our several chambers, and met between four and five, supped, and, after supper, Mr Linning read, sung, and prayed, and after we had sat a while we retired, and so prepared for bed. Thus we spent the Lord’s Day at Barnby Moor.’

It may be imagined that no small distress was given to the clergy generally two years after, when it was reported that Mr William Hamilton and Mr William Mitchell, in returning recently from London, had travelled post on a Sabbath-day, with the horn sounding before them. The presbytery of Edinburgh took up the case in great grief and concern, and called the two reverend brethren to give an explanation of their conduct, which fortunately they were able to do very satisfactorily. Arriving at Stilton on a Saturday night, and finding there was no accommodation for the next day but in a public-house, while there was no place where they could rightly join in worship nearer than Stamford—that is to say, no Presbyterian or dissenting meeting-house—they had been induced to start on their journey to the latter place next morning, when, as they were upon post-horses, it was a matter of course, and needful for safety, that they should have a boy going before to blow a horn. The presbytery was satisfied; but one strenuous brother, Mr James Webster, who was not distinguished by a charitable temper, or much moderation of words, broke out upon them on this score in his pulpit—not in a sermon, but in the course of his prayer—and was rebuked on this account by the presbytery.[467]

[Sidenote: 1715. FEB.]

For many years after the Revolution, the sombre religious [Sidenote: 1715.] feelings of the community forbade even an attempt at the revival of theatrical performances. If there was anywhere an inclination to see Shakspeare, Otway, Congreve, or Addison, put into living forms on the stage, it was restricted to the same obscurity in the breast which entertained it, as devotion to the mass or doubts regarding witchcraft. The plays and other examples of light literature of the age of Anne did at length begin to find their way from London to Edinburgh, there to meet a not wholly ungenial reception from at least that portion of society which professed Episcopacy, not to speak of a certain minority of the gay, who have usually contrived to exist even amidst the most gloomy puritanism. Time, moreover, was continually removing the stern men of the seventeenth century, to be replaced by others of gentler convictions. The natural love of amusement began to assert itself against the pride of asceticism and self-denial. Englishmen were constantly coming in as government officers, or in pursuit of business, and bringing with them new ideas. Thus it came to pass that, about the beginning of the Hanover dynasty, Scotland began to think that it might indulge now and then in a little merriment, and no great harm come of it. It must be owned, however, that during much of the eighteenth century, there was great truth in a simile employed in the preface to a play published in Edinburgh in 1668, which likened the drama in Scotland to ‘a swaggerer in a country church.’[468]

The very first presentment of any public theatricals that can be authenticated, occurred in the early part of 1715, just before the breaking out of the unfortunate insurrection. We know little about it besides that a corps was then acting plays at the Tennis Court, near Holyrood Palace.[469]

‘We have now,’ says a contemporary letter-writer, ‘got a playhouse set up here in the Tennis Court, to the great grief of all sober good people; and I am surprised to see such diversions as tend so much to corrupt men’s manners patronised and countenanced by some of whom I expected better things.... Mr Webster and several other ministers have given a testimony against them; and for so doing are mocked by a great many that [Sidenote: 1715.] you would scarce suspect. Particularly, Mr Webster is very much cried out against for saying no more but that whoever in his parish did attend these plays should be refused tokens to the sacrament of the Supper.’[470]

The presbytery of Edinburgh was alive to the danger of allowing stage-plays to be acted within their borders, and adverted to the Canongate theatricals in great concern on the 23d of March 1715. ‘Being informed,’ they said, ‘that some comedians have lately come to the bounds of this presbytery, and do act within the precincts of the Abbey, to the great offence of many, by trespassing upon morality and those rules of modesty and chastity which our holy religion obligeth all its professors to a strict observance of, therefore the presbytery recommends to all their members to use all proper and prudent methods to discourage the same.’[471] It is at the same time rather startling to find that three of the ministers who went as a deputation to pay the respects of the Church of Scotland to George I. on his accession in 1714—namely, Mitchell, Ramsay, and Hart—went at Kendal to see the comedy of _Love for Love_ acted.

[Sidenote: APR. 22.]

A celebrated total eclipse of the sun, which happened about nine o’clock in the morning of this day, made a great impression in Scotland, as in other parts of Europe, over which the entire shadow passed. The darkness lasted upwards of three minutes, during which the usual phenomena were observed among the lower animals. The Edinburgh bard, Allan Ramsay, heralded the event with a set of verses, embracing all the commonplaces connected with it; adding,

‘The unlearned clowns, who don’t our era know,
From this dark Friday will their ages shew,
As I have often heard old country men
Talk of Dark Monday[472] and their ages then.’

Whiston, in his _Memoirs_, relates what will be to philosophical persons an amusing anecdote of this eclipse. When the accounts of it were published beforehand in the streets of London, telling when it would commence, and that it would be total, a Mohammedan envoy, from Tripoli, thought the English people were distracted [Sidenote: 1715.] in pretending to know what God Almighty would do; which his own countrymen could not do. ‘He concluded thus, that God Almighty would never reveal so great a secret to us unbelievers, when he did not reveal it to those whom he esteemed true believers. However, when the eclipse came exactly as we all foretold, he was asked again what he thought of the matter now; his answer was, that he supposed we knew this by _art magique_; otherwise he must have turned Christian upon such an extraordinary event as this was.’

[Sidenote: JULY.]

Mr James Anderson, so honourably known as editor of the _Diplomata Scotiæ_, was rewarded for his public services by the appointment of Deputy Postmaster-general, in place of George Mein. A mass of his correspondence, preserved in the Advocates’ Library, makes us acquainted with the condition in which he found postal matters, and the improvements which he effected during two or three subsequent years.

We learn that the horse-posts which existed many years back on some of the principal roads, had, ere this time, been given up, and foot-runners substituted, excepting perhaps upon what might be called the _aorta_ of the system, from Edinburgh to Berwick. In this manner direct bags were conveyed as far north as Thurso, and westwards to Inverary. There were three mails a week from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and three in return; the runners set out from Edinburgh each Tuesday and Thursday, at twelve o’clock at night, and on Sundays in the morning, and the mails arrived at Glasgow on the evening of Wednesday and Friday, and on the forenoon of Monday. For this service the Post-office paid £40 sterling per annum, but from the fraudulent dealing of the postmaster of Falkirk, who made the payments, the runners seldom received more than from £20 to £25.

‘After his appointment, Mr Anderson directed his attention to the establishment of horse-posts on the western road from Edinburgh. The first regular horse-post in Scotland appears to have been from Edinburgh to Stirling; it started for the first time on the 29th November 1715. It left Stirling at two o’clock afternoon, each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and reached Edinburgh in time for the night-mail to England. In March 1717, the first horse-post between Edinburgh and Glasgow was established, and we have the details of the arrangement in a memorial addressed to Lord Cornwallis and James Craggs, who jointly filled the office of Postmaster-general of Great Britain. [Sidenote: 1715.] The memorial states that the “horse-post will set out for Edinburgh each Tuesday, and Thursday, at eight o’clock at night, and on Sunday about eight or nine in the morning, and be in Glasgow (a distance of thirty-six miles by the post-road of that time) by six in the morning on Wednesday and Friday in summer, and eight in winter, and both winter and summer will be on Sunday night.” There appears to have been a good deal of negotiation connected with the settlement of this post, in which the provost and bailies of Glasgow took part. After some delay, the matter appears to have been arranged to the satisfaction of all parties.

‘A proposition was made at this time to establish a horse-post between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, at a cost of £132, 12_s._ per annum, to supersede the foot-posts, which were maintained at a cost of £81, 12_s._ The scheme, however, appears not to have been entertained at that time by the Post-office authorities.

‘In the year 1715, Edinburgh had direct communication with sixty post-towns in Scotland, and in the month of August the total sum received for letters passing to and from these offices and Edinburgh, was £44, 3_s._ 1_d._ The postage on letters to and from London in the same month amounted to £157, 3_s._ 2_d._, and the postage for letters per the London road, amounted to £9, 19_s._, making the total sum for letters to and from Edinburgh, during that month, amount to £211, 5_s._ 3_d._—equal to £2535, 3_s._ per annum.

‘In 1716, the Duke of Argyle, who had then supreme control in Scotland, gave orders to Mr Anderson to place relays of horses from Edinburgh to Inverness, for the purpose of forwarding dispatches to, and receiving intelligence from, the army in the Highlands under General Cadogan. These posts worked upon two lines of roads—the one went through Fife, and round by the east coast, passing through Aberdeen; the other took the central road viâ Perth, Dunkeld, and Blair Athole. These horse-posts were, however, discontinued immediately after the army retired.’[473]

In October 1723, the authorities of the Edinburgh Post-office announced a thrice-a-week correspondence with Lanark, by means of the horse-post to Glasgow, and a runner thence to Lanark. The official _annonce_ candidly owns: ‘This at first sight appears far about’ (it was transforming a direct distance of thirty-one miles into sixty-six). But ‘the Glasgow horse-post running all [Sidenote: 1715.] night makes the dispatch so quick, that the letters come this way to Lanark in twenty, or at most twenty-two hours, and from Lanark to Edinburgh in twenty-four hours at most.’

[Sidenote: JULY 18.]

Two Renfrewshire gentlemen, of whose previous dealings with each other in friendship or business we get but an obscure account, came to a hostile collision in Edinburgh. Mr James Houston, son of the deceased Sir Patrick Houston of that Ilk, was walking on a piece of pavement called the Plainstones, near the Cross, when Sir John Shaw of Greenock came up with a friend, and the two gentlemen, designedly or not, slightly jostled each other. Mr Houston put his hand to his sword, but had not time to draw it before Sir John fell a-beating him about the head and shoulders with his cane, which, however, flying out of his hand, he instantly took to his sword, and before the bystanders could interfere, passed it twice through Mr Houston’s body.

It was at first thought the man was slain outright; but he was surviving in a sickly state in the ensuing January, when he raised a criminal prosecution against the knight of Greenock, and succeeded in obtaining from him a solatium to the amount of five hundred pounds.[474]

[Sidenote: SEP.]

On the breaking out of the Rebellion this month, there was a run upon the Bank of Scotland, rather encouraged by the directors than otherwise, from a desire to escape the responsibility and danger of keeping money during such a critical time. When the whole coin was drawn out, the Bank rendered up about thirty thousand pounds of public money which lay in its hands, that it might be lodged in the Castle, and then very calmly stopped payment, or rather discontinued business, intimating that their notes should bear interest till better times should return. In May 1716, the troubles being over, the Bank began to take in their notes and resume business as usual.[475]

[Sidenote: SEP. 29.]

At this crisis, when a formidable insurrection was breaking out, the officers intrusted with the support of the government were not in the enjoyment of that concord which is said to give strength. The Justice-clerk (Cockburn of Ormiston) was on bad terms with both the Earl of Ilay and the Lord Advocate, Sir David [Sidenote: 1715.] Dalrymple. The animosity between two of these men came to a consummation which might be said to prefigure the celebrated wig-pulling of Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Townshend. The Earl of Ilay writes at this date from Edinburgh: ‘There has happened an accident which will suspend the Justice-clerk’s fury against me; for he and the King’s Advocate have had a _corporal dispute_; I mean literally, for I parted them.’[476]

[Sidenote: OCT. 18.]

In a letter of this date, written at Musselburgh by the Rev. J. Williamson, minister of that place, some recent domestic events are alluded to—as ‘the lamentable murder of Doctor Rule last week by Craigmillar’s second son, and the melancholy providence of a jeweller’s servant, who was under some dejection for some time, and did, on Monday last, immediately after sermon, at Leith, run into the sea deliberately, and drown himself.’ There had been a new election of Scots peers at Holyrood for the first parliament of the new reign, and they were all of one sound loyal type—‘a plain evidence of our further slavery to the English court.’ In reference to this, a fruit-woman went about the Palace-yard, crying: ‘Who would buy good pears, old pears, new pears, fresh pears—rotten pears, sixteen of them for a plack!’[477]

[Sidenote: DEC. 28.]

Died, William Carstares, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, noted as having been the intimate friend of King William, and his adviser about all Scottish affairs; for which reason, and his influence over the fortunes of the church, he was popularly known by the name of _Cardinal Carstares_. It must ever be considered a great honour to the Church of Scotland to have had the affectionate support of such a man. A sufferer under the severities of the pre-Revolution government, he inclined, when his day of power came, to use it with moderation. His temperate counsels and practice are believed to have had a great effect in smoothing the difficulties which at first surrounded the Presbyterian establishment. His probity and disinterestedness have been above all question. King William said ‘he had known him long and well, and he knew him to be an Honest Man.’ In the midst of the contentious proceedings of this period, to light upon the gentle prudence, the unostentatious worth, and the genial unselfishness of Carstares, has the effect of a fine, soothing [Sidenote: 1715.] melody amidst discord. There are a few anecdotes of this eminent man, which no one can read without feeling his heart improved.

A newly widowed sister coming from the country to see him, when he was engaged in consultations of importance with some of the officers of state, he instantly left these personages and came to her; insisted, against her remonstrances, on staying a short while with her, and giving her a prayer of consolation; then, having appointed a more leisurely interview, he returned with the tears scarcely effaced from his countenance, to his noble company.

His charities, which were truly diffusive, were often directed to the unfortunate Episcopal clergy. One, named Caddell, having called upon him, he observed that the poor man’s clothes were worn out, and discreditable to his sacred calling. Instantly ordering a suit to be prepared for a man of Caddell’s size, he took care to have them first tried upon his own person when his friend next waited upon him. ‘See,’ said he, ‘how this silly fellow has misfitted me! They are quite useless to me. They will be lost if they don’t fit some of my friends. And, by the by, I daresay they might answer you. Please try them on, for it is a pity they should be thrown away.’ Caddell, after some hesitation, complied, and found that the clothes fitted him exactly. With his hard-wrung permission, they were sent home to him, _and he found a ten-pound note in one of the pockets_.

It is said that many of the ‘outed’ clergy were in the custom of receiving supplies, the source of which they never knew till Mr Carstares’s death. At his funeral, two men were observed to turn aside together, quite overcome by their grief. Upon inquiry, it was found they were two nonjurant ministers, whose families, for a considerable time, had been supported by the benefactions of him they were laying in the grave.[478]

If the partisans of particular doctrines and formulæ were to try occasionally upon each other the effect of kindly good offices such as these, might they not sometimes make a little way with their opponents, instead of merely exasperating and hardening them, as, under existing circumstances, they almost invariably do?

[Sidenote: 1716. APR. 21.]

John Kellie, corporal in the Earl of Stair’s regiment, was put into the Edinburgh Tolbooth for killing John Norton, sergeant of [Sidenote: 1716.] the same regiment, in a duel near Stirling. He was liberated at the bar, on the 23d July ensuing.[479]

The fighting of duels by private soldiers, now never heard of, seems then to have been not uncommon. The _Edinburgh Courant_ of February 16, 1725, states: ‘This morning, two soldiers of the regiment that lies in the Canongate were whipped for fighting a duel.’

[Sidenote: MAY 21.]

The Whig government of George I., having now got the lay Jacobites effectually put down, bethought itself of the clergy of the defeated party, the Episcopalians, who had made several active demonstrations during the late insurrection, and constantly stood in a sort of negative rebellion, in as far as they never prayed for the king _de facto_. Under a prompting from a high quarter, the Commissioners of Justiciary now ordered the advocate-depute, Duncan Forbes, to proceed against such of the Episcopal clergy in Scotland as had not prayed for King George, or otherwise obeyed the late Toleration Act by registering orders from a Protestant bishop. The consequent proceedings reveal to us a curious view of the condition of Episcopacy at that time in Edinburgh—at once comprehending a large number of clergy, and existing in the greatest obscurity.

There were Mr William Abercrombie and Mr David Freebairn, Mr Robert Marshall and Mr William Wylie, each described as ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Bailie Fyfe’s Close;’ Mr George Johnston, Mr Robert Keith, and Mr Andrew Lumsdain, severally described as ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Barrenger’s Close;’ Mr Jasper Kellie, ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house below the Fountain-well;’ Mr Thomas Rhind, ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Sandilands’ Close;’ Mr George Grahame, ‘preacher and user of the English Liturgy in his own house, to which many do resort as an Episcopal meeting-house, in Canongate-head;’ Mr Andrew Cant, Mr David Lambie, Mr David Rankine, and Mr Patrick Middleton, ‘preachers in the Episcopal meeting-house in Skinner’s Close;’ Mr Henry Walker and Mr Patrick Home, each described as ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Todrig’s Wynd;’ Mr Robert Calder, ‘preacher, sometimes in Edinburgh, sometimes in Tranent’ [the reputed author of _Scots Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed_]; Mr William Milne and Mr William Cockburn, [Sidenote: 1716.] ‘preachers in the Episcopal meeting-house in Blackfriars’ Wynd’ [the latter probably he who had lately been chased by the mob out of Glasgow]; Mr James Walker, ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Dickson’s Close;’ Mr Alexander Sutherland, senior, and Mr Robert Chein, ‘preachers in the Episcopal meeting-house at the back of Bell’s Wynd.’ Thus, we see there were ten places of worship in Edinburgh—all in retired situations, and, strange to say, all within two hundred yards or so of each other; having in all twenty-two ministers; being considerably more than the number of the Established clergy then in Edinburgh; but in what poverty they lived may be partly inferred from the fact, that Thomas Ruddiman, the grammarian, when attending an Episcopal meeting-house in Edinburgh in 1703, paid only ‘forty shillings’ (3_s._ 4_d._) for his seat for two years.[480]

Besides the twenty-two Edinburgh clergy, there were Mr Arthur Miller, ‘preacher in the Episcopal meeting-house in Leith,’ and Mr Robert Coult and Mr James Hunter, ‘Episcopal preachers in Mussleburgh,’ all involved in the same prosecution.

The result of their trial was a sentence, applicable to all except Mr William Cockburn, forbidding them to exercise their ministerial functions till they should have fulfilled the requirements of the law, and amerciating them in twenty pounds each for not praying for King George. The only visible difference between the old persecutions and this was, that there was a populace to howl in the one case, and not in the other. However, the authorities were humane. The magistrates of Edinburgh were content to see that letters of ordination were registered. When the Prince of Wales, acting as regent, some time after sent them a secretary of state’s letter, complaining that the sentence was not fully carried out—the object being to compel a praying for his father—the magistrates applied for instructions to the commissioners of Justiciary, and were told that, having once passed sentence, the court could do nothing more in the case. So the Episcopal meeting-houses in Bailie Fyfe’s, Barrenger’s, Sandilands’, and other closes went on as before.[481]

[Sidenote: AUG.]

William Mure of Caldwell travelling with a party of friends from Edinburgh to Ross-shire, came the first stage—namely, to the Queensferry—in a coach, and afterwards proceeded on horseback. Writing an account of his journey to his wife, from [Sidenote: 1716.] Chanonry, August 30, he says: ‘We came in coach to the Ferry on Friday; and though we were once overturned, yet none of us had any misfortune.’ Probably Mr Mure considered himself as getting off very well with but one overturn in a coach-journey of eleven English miles. He goes on: ‘We came that night to Perth, where the Master of Ross and Lady Betty met us. On Saturday, we came to Dunkeld, and were all night with the Duke of Athole. On Sunday, after sermon, we left the ladies there, and came to the Blair.’ The ladies probably had scruples about Sunday travelling; but Mr Mure, although a man of notedly religious character, appears to have had none. ‘On Monday,’ he adds, ‘we made a long journey, and went to Glenmore, where my Lord Huntly’s fir-woods are. On Tuesday, we came to Kilravock’s house [Kilravock], and yesternight came here, which is the first town in the shire of Ross.’[482] Thus a journey of about 170 miles occupied in all six days.

In April 1722, the king being about to visit Hanover, certain Scottish lords, amongst others, were appointed to attend him. It is intimated in a London paper of April 28,[483] that they set out from Edinburgh for this purpose on the previous Monday, the 23d; and ‘the roads being laid with post-horses, they are expected here as to-morrow.’ That is, the journey would occupy in the way of posting from Monday to Sunday, or seven days. It was one day more than the time occupied in a journey from London to Edinburgh by the Duke of Argyle in September 1715, when he posted down in the utmost haste, with some friends, to take command of the troops for the resistance to the insurgent Earl of Mar.

It appears that about this time there were occasional packet-ships, by which people could travel between Edinburgh and London. In 1720, the _Bon Accord_, Captain Buchanan, was advertised as to sail for London on the 30th June, having good accommodation for passengers, and ‘_will keep the day, goods or no goods_.’ Two years later, the ‘_Unity_ packet-boat of Leith’ was in like manner announced as to proceed to London on the 1st September, ‘goods or no goods, wind and weather serving, having good accommodation for passengers, and good entertainment.’ The master to be spoke with in the Laigh Coffee-house.[484] But this mode of transit was occasionally attended with vicissitudes [Sidenote: 1716.] not much less vexatious than those of the pious voyager of the _Æneid_. For example, we learn from a paragraph in an Edinburgh newspaper, on the 15th November 1743, that the Edinburgh and Glasgow packet from London, ‘after having great stress of weather for _twenty days_, has lately arrived safe at Holy Island, and is _soon_ expected in Leith harbour.’

During the decade 1720–30, return chaises for London, generally with six horses, are occasionally advertised. The small amount of travelling which then prevailed is marked by the fact, that we find such a conveyance announced on the 11th of May to set out homeward on the 15th or 16th, and on the 18th re-advertised as to go on the 2d or 3d of June, no one having come forward in the interval to take advantage of the opportunity. We find, however, in 1732, that a periodical conveyance had at length been attempted. The advertisement states, ‘that the Stage Coach continues to go from the Canongate for London, or any place on the road, every Wednesday fortnight. And if any gentleman want a _by-coach_, they may call at Alexander Forsyth’s, opposite to the Duke of Queensberry’s Lodging, where the coach stands.’

In May 1734, a comparatively spirited effort in the way of travelling was announced by John Dale and three other persons—namely, a coach to set out towards the end of this week [pleasant indefiniteness!] for London, or any place on the road, to be performed in nine days, or three days sooner than any other coach that travels the road.’

The short space between the two populous towns of Edinburgh and Leith must have been felt as a particularly favourable field for this kind of enterprise; and, accordingly, a ‘Leith stage’ was tried both in 1610 and 1660,[485] but on both occasions failed to receive sufficient encouragement. In July 1722, we are informed that, on the 9th instant, ‘two stage-coaches are to begin to serve betwixt Edinburgh and Leith, and are to go _with or without company_ every hour of the day. They are designed to contain six persons, each paying threepence during the summer, and fourpence during the winter for their fare.’

[Sidenote: SEP. 1.]

This day met at Edinburgh a set of commissioners appointed under a late act ‘to inquire of the estates of certain traitors, and of popish recusants, and of estates given to superstitious uses, in order to raise money out of them for the use of the public.’ The [Sidenote: 1716.] first and most prominent object was to appropriate the lands of the Scottish nobles and gentlemen who had taken part in the late insurrection for the House of Stuart. Four out of the six commissioners were Englishmen, members of the House of Commons, and among these was the celebrated Sir Richard Steele, fresh from the literary glories he had achieved in the _Tatler_, _Spectator_, and _Guardian_, from his sufferings in the Whig cause under Anne, and the consolatory honours he attained under the new monarch.

It was a matter of course that strangers of such distinction should be honoured in a city which received few such guests; and doubtless the government officials in particular paid them many flattering attentions. But the commissioners very soon found that their business was not an easy or agreeable one. There was in Scotland plenty of hatred to the Jacobite cause; but battling off its adherents at Sheriffmuir, and putting down its seminaries, the Episcopal chapels, was a different thing from seeing an order come from England which was to extinguish the names and fortunes of many old and honourable families, and turn a multitude of women and children out of house and home, and throw them upon the charity of their friends or the public. Most of the unfortunates, too, had connections among the Whigs themselves, with claims upon them for commiseration, if not assistance; and we all know the force of the old Scottish maxim—eternal blessings rest on the nameless man who first spoke it!—that _bluid is thicker than water_.

It was with no little surprise and no little irritation that these English Whig gentlemen discovered how hard it was to turn the forfeited estates into money, or indeed to make any decent progress at all in the business they came about. The first and most vexatious discovery they made was, that there was a code of law and frame of legal procedure north of the Tweed different from what obtained to the south of it. The act was framed with a regard to the practices of English law, which were wholly unknown and could not be recognised in Scotland. Then as to special impediments—first came the Scotch Court of Exchequer, with a claim under an act of the preceding year, imposing a penalty of five hundred pounds and loss of liferents and whole movables on every suspected man who did not deliver himself up before a certain day: all of the men engaged in the late insurrection had incurred this penalty; the affair came under the Exchequer department; and it was necessary to discriminate between what was forfeited by the one act and what was forfeited by the other. [Sidenote: 1716.] There was something more obstructive, however, than even the Scottish Exchequer. The commissioners discovered this in the form of a body called the Court of Session, or, in common language, ‘the Fifteen,’ who sat periodically in Edinburgh, exercising a mysterious influence over property throughout the country, and indulging in certain phrases of marvellous potency, though utterly undreamed of in Southern Britain. Here is how it was. The act had, of course, admitted the preferable claims of the creditors of the traitors, and of those who had claims for marriage and other provisions on their estates. On petitions from these persons—in whose reality the commissioners had evidently a very imperfect faith—this Court of Session had passed what, in their barbarous jargon, they called _sequestrations_ of the said estates, at the same time appointing factors to uplift the rents, for the benefit of the aforesaid persons in the first place, and only the commissioners in the second. What further seemed to the commissioners very strange was, that these factors were all of them men notedly disaffected to the Revolution interest, most of them confidential friends, some even the relatives, of the forfeited persons, and therefore all disposed to make the first department of the account as large, and the second as small, as possible. Nor was even this all, for, as had been pointed out to them by some of the Established clergy of Forfarshire, these factors were persons dangerous to the government. For example, Sir John Carnegie of Pitarrow, factor on the Earl of Southesk’s estate, was the man who, on the synod of Angus uttering a declaration in 1712 for the House of Hanover, had caused it to be burned at the head burgh of the shire. John Lumsdain, who was nominated to the charge of the estates of the Earl of Panmure, had greatly obstructed the establishment of the church in the district, and proved altogether ‘very uneasy to presbyteries and synods.’ Suppose the unruly king of Sweden should land on the east of Scotland, there were all the tenants of those large estates in the obedience of men who would hail his arrival and forward his objects!

The general result was, that the commissioners found themselves stranded in Edinburgh, as powerless as so many porpoises on Cramond sands, only treated with a little more outward respect. One proposal, indeed, they did receive (January 1717), that seemed at first to be a Scottish movement in their favour—namely, an offer from the Lord Advocate (Sir David Dalrymple), _with their concurrence_, to commence actions in the Court of Session for [Sidenote: 1716.] determining the claims of creditors; but, seeing in this only an endless vista of vexatious lawsuits, they declined it, preferring to leave the whole matter to be disposed of by further acts of the legislature.[486]

[Sidenote: SEP. 3.]

By virtue of the treason-law for Scotland, passed immediately after the Union, the government this day suddenly removed eighty-nine rebel prisoners from Edinburgh to Carlisle, to be there tried by English juries, it being presumed that there was no chance of impartiality in Scotland. The departing troop was followed by a wail of indignant lament from the national heart. Jacobites pointing to it with mingled howls and jeers as a proof of the enslavement of Scotland—Whigs carried off by irresistible sympathy, and unable to say a word in its defence—attested how much the government did by such acts to retard the desirable amalgamation of the two nations. Under the warm feeling of the moment, a subscription was opened to provide legal defences for the unfortunate Scotsmen, and contributions came literally from all sorts and conditions of men. Even the Goodman of the Tolbooth gave his pound. The very government officials in some instances were unable to resist an appeal so thrilling.

The list includes the names of nineteen of the nobility—namely, Errol, Haddington, Rosebery, Morton, Hopetoun, Dundonald, Moray, Rutherglen, Cassillis, Traquair, March, Galloway, Kinnoull, Eglintoune, Elibank, Colville, Blantyre, Coupar, and Deskford, all for considerable sums. Amongst other entries are the following: Lady Grizel Cochrane, £6, 9_s._; the Commissioners of Excise, £7, 10_s._ 6_d._; Mr George Drummond, Goodman of the Tolbooth [Edinburgh], £1; John M‘Farlane, Writer to the Signet, 10_s._ 9_d._; the Merchant Company, £5; the Incorporation of Goldsmiths, £5; the Incorporation of Tailors, £5; the Incorporation of Chirurgeons, £5; the four Incorporations of Leith (aggregate), £53, 16_s._ 7_d._; the Episcopal Clergy of Edinburgh, £8, 8_s._; Magistrates of Haddington (and collected by them), £28; Society of Periwigmakers in Edinburgh, £24, 4_s._ 3_d._; Inhabitants of Musselburgh, Inveresk, and Fisherrow, £20; collected by Lady Grizel Cochrane, at Dumbarton, £30; Colonel Charteris’s lady, £5, 7_s._ 6_d._; collected by Lady Grizel Cochrane, from sundry persons specified, £180.[487]

[Sidenote: 1716.]

To do the government justice, the rebel prisoners were treated mildly, not one of them being done to death, though several were transported. An attempt was made, two years later, by a commission of Oyer and Terminer sent into Scotland, to bring a number of other Jacobite delinquents to punishment. It sat at Perth, Dundee, and Kelso, without being able to obtain true bills: only at Cupar was it so far effective as to get bills against Lord George Murray, of the Athole family; Sir James Sharpe, representative of the too famous archbishop; Sir David Threipland of Fingask; and a son of Moir of Stonywood; but it was to no purpose, for the trials of these gentlemen were never proceeded with.[488]

[Sidenote: OCT. 2.]

Captain John Cayley (son of Cornelius Cayley of the city of York), one of the commissioners of his majesty’s customs, was a conspicuous member of that little corps of English officials whom the new arrangements following on the Union had sent down to Scotland. He was a vain gay young man, pursuing the bent of his irregular passions with little prudence or discretion. Amongst his acquaintance in Edinburgh was a pretty young married woman—the daughter of Colonel Charles Straiton, well known as a highly trusted agent of the Jacobite party—the wife of John M‘Farlane, Writer to the Signet, who appears to have at one time been man of business to Lord Lovat. Cayley had made himself notedly intimate with Mr and Mrs M‘Farlane, often entertained them at his country-house, and was said to have made some valuable presents to the lady. To what extent there was truth in the scandals which connected the names of Commissioner Cayley and Mrs M‘Farlane, we do not know; but it is understood that Cayley, on one occasion, spoke of the lady in terms which, whether founded in truth or otherwise, infinitely more condemned himself. Perhaps drink made him rash; perhaps vanity made him assume a triumph which was altogether imaginary; perhaps he desired to realise some wild plan of his inflamed brain, and brought on his punishment in self-defence. There were all sorts of theories on the subject, and little positively known to give any of them much superiority over another in point of plausibility. A gentleman,[489] writing from Edinburgh the second day after, says: ‘I can hardly offer you anything but matter of fact, which was—that [Sidenote: 1716.] upon Tuesday last he came to her lodging after three o’clock, where he had often been at tea and cards: she did not appear till she had changed all her clothes to her very smock. Then she came into a sort of drawing-room, and from that conveyed him into her own bedchamber. After some conversation there, she left him in it; went out to a closet which lay at some distance from the chamber; [thence] she brought in a pair of charged pistols belonging to Mr Cayley himself, which Mr M‘Farland, her husband, had borrowed from him some days before, when he was about to ride to the country. What further expressions there were on either side I know not; but she fired one pistol, which only made a slight wound on the shackle-bone of his left hand, and slanted down through the floor—which I saw. The other she fired in aslant on his right breast, so as the bullet pierced his heart, and stuck about his left shoulder-blade behind. She went into the closet, [and] laid by the pistols, he having presently fallen dead on the floor. She locked the door of her room upon the dead body, [and] sent a servant for her husband, who was in a change-house with company, being about four afternoon. He came, and gave her what money he had in the house, and conducted her away; and after he had absented himself for about a day, he appeared, and afterwards declared before the Lords of Justiciary he knew nothing about it till she sent for him.... I saw his corps after he was cereclothed, and saw his blood where he lay on the floor for twenty-four hours after he died, just as he fell, so as it was a difficulty to straight him.’[490]

Miss Margaret Swinton, a grand-aunt of Sir Walter Scott, used to relate to him and other listeners to her fireside-tales,[491] that, when she was a little girl, being left at home at Swinton House by herself one Sunday, indisposed, while all the rest of the family were at church, she was drawn by curiosity into the dining-room, and there saw a beautiful female, whom she took for ‘an enchanted queen,’ pouring out tea at a table. The lady seemed equally surprised as herself, but presently recovering self-possession, addressed the little intruder kindly, in particular desiring her to speak first to her mother _by herself_ of what she had seen. Margaret looked for a moment out of the window, and, when she turned about, the enchanted queen was gone! On the return of the family, she spoke to her mother of the vision, was praised for her discretion, and desired to keep the matter from all other [Sidenote: 1716.] persons—an injunction she strictly followed. The stranger was Mrs M‘Farlane, who, being a relative of the family, had here received a temporary shelter after the slaughter of Captain Cayley. She had vanished from Margaret Swinton’s sight through a panel-door into a closet which had been arranged for her concealment. The family always admired the sagacity shewn in asking Margaret to speak to her mother of what she had seen, but to speak to her _alone_ in the first instance, as thus the child’s feelings found a safe vent. It will be remembered that Scott has introduced the incident as part of his fiction of _Peveril of the Peak_.

In the ensuing February, criminal letters were raised against Mrs M‘Farlane by the Lord Advocate, Sir David Dalrymple, and the father and brother of the deceased, reciting that ‘John Cayley having, on the 2d of October last, come to the house of John M‘Farlane in order to make a civil visit, she did then and there shoot a pistol at John Cayley, and thereby mortally wounded him.’ Not appearing to stand her trial, she was declared outlaw.[492] Sir Walter Scott states it as certain, that she was afterwards enabled to return to Edinburgh, where she lived and died;[493] but I must own that some good evidence would be required to substantiate such a statement.

The romantic nature of the incident, and the fact of the sufferer being an Englishman, caused the story of Mrs M‘Farlane to be famed beyond the bounds of Scotland. Pope, writing about the time to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, breaks out thus: ‘Let them say I am romantic; so is every one said to be that either admires a fine thing or does one. On my conscience, as the world goes, ’tis hardly worth anybody’s while to do one for the honour of it. Glory, the only pay of generous actions, is now as ill-paid as other just debts; and neither Mrs Macfarland for immolating her lover, nor you for returning to your lord, must ever hope to be compared to Lucretia or Portia.’[494]

[Sidenote: OCT. 20.]

A newspaper which enjoyed a temporary existence in Edinburgh[495]—each number consisting of five small leaves—is vociferous with the celebrations of the anniversary of King George’s coronation in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Perth, and other Scottish towns. Ten days later, it proclaims with equal vehemence the [Sidenote: 1716.] rejoicings in the same places in honour of the birthday of the Prince of Wales. Paradings and firings of musketry by the troops, drinkings of loyal toasts from covered tables at the Cross, bonfires, ringings of bells, form the chief demonstrations. And it is notable that in Dundee, Brechin, and Aberdeen, which we know to have been in those days full of Jacobites, the symptoms of loyalty to Hanover are by many degrees the most ostentatious, there being the more need of course for the friends of the reigning house to exert themselves. In Dundee (where in reality the Jacobites were probably two to one), ‘everybody looked cheerful, and vied who should outdo other in rejoicing, except some few of our Jacobite neighbours, who, being like owls, loved darkness; but care will be taken that they spared not their money by being singular.’

Loyalty is altogether a paradox, appearances with it being usually in the inverse ratio of its actual existence, and the actuality in the inverse ratio of the deserving. No monarch ever enjoyed so much of it as Charles I. Since the days of his sons, when the bulk of the people of Scotland felt themselves under a civil and ecclesiastical tyranny, the demonstrations at market-crosses on royal birthdays had not been so violent as now, when a new family, about whom nobody cared or could care, occupied the throne. Nor did these again become equally loud till the time of George III., when Wilkes prosecutions, losses of American colonies, and unjustifiable wars with French reformers, made loyalty again a needful article, and king’s-health-drinkings in the highest degree desirable. On the other hand, when rulers are truly worthy of a faithful affection on the part of their people—as in our happy age—one never hears the word loyalty mentioned.

All through the reign of the first George and a great part of that of his successor, the newspaper estimate of human character seems to have had but one element—the attachment of the individual to ‘our present happy establishment in church and state.’ At the end of every paragraph announcing a choice of magistrates in Scotland, it is pointedly stated that they are all friends of the Hanover succession. Such things are, of course, simply the measure of the extent of hatred and indifferency with which the happy establishment and dynasty were regarded, as well as of the danger in which it was the fate of both to exist, from the eagerness of many to get them destroyed.