Chapter XXIV: Part 24

It would appear, however, that the idea of a machine for thrashing had, after this time, completely fallen out of notice, as the one which has long been in use was, in its original form, the invention of Michael Stirling, farmer at Craighead, in the parish of Dunblane, who died in 1796, in the eighty-ninth year of his age.

‘This venerable man, when in the prime of life, had a strong propensity to every curious invention; and, after much thought [Sidenote: 1724.] and study, he prepared and finished, in 1748, a machine for thrashing his corn. The axis of the thrashing-board was placed perpendicular, and was moved by an inner wheel on the same axis with an outer one that went by water. The men stood round about these boards like lint-cleaners, each man with his sheaf, and performed the work with great rapidity [at the rate of sixteen bolls of oats _per diem_]. Mr Stirling’s neighbours were by no means struck with the invention, but laughed at it, and called him a maggoty fellow. The wonderful powers of the machine, however, drew the attention of strangers, who came and picked up models, and so were enabled to erect others both in Scotland and England.’[616] Subsequently, Mr Meikle, at Alloa, obviated the inconvenience of the perpendicular arrangement of the axis, by laying it down in a horizontal form.

A machine for the winnowing of corn was, as far as can be ascertained, for the first time made in this island by Andrew Rodger, a farmer on the estate of Cavers in Roxburghshire, in the year 1737. It was after retiring from his farm to indulge a bent for mechanics, that he entered on this remarkable invention, and began circulating what were called _Fanners_ throughout the country, which his descendants continued to do for many years.[617] This machine is well known to have been the subject of a religious prejudice among our more rigid sectaries, as indicated anachronously by Scott in the conversation between Mause Headrig and her mistress—‘a new-fangled machine for dighting the corn frae the chaff, thus impiously thwarting the will o’ Divine Providence by raising wind for your leddyship’s use by human art, instead of soliciting it by prayer, or patiently waiting for whatever dispensation of wind Providence was pleased to send upon the shielinghill.’[618] The ‘seceders’ are understood to have taken very strong ground in resistance to the introduction of fanners, deeming the wind as specially a thing made by God (‘he that createth the wind,’ _Amos_ iv. 13), and therefore regarding an artificial wind as a daring and impious attempt to usurp what belonged to him alone. The author has been informed that an uncle of the late national poet, Robert Gilfillan, was extruded from a Fife congregation of this kind because of his persisting to use fanners.

[Sidenote: 1725. JAN.]

About the end of this month, the people of Orkney were thrown into some excitement by the arrival of a suspicious-looking vessel among their usually quiet islands. She professed to be a merchantman bound for Stockholm; but her twenty-two guns and crew of thirty-eight men belied the tale. In reality, she was a pirate-ship, recently taken under the care of a reckless man named Gow, or Smith, who had already made her the means of perpetrating some atrocious villainies in more southern seas. His alleged connection with Caithness by nativity, and Orkney by education, was perhaps the principal reason for his selecting this part of the world as a temporary refuge till some of his recent acts should be forgotten. His conduct, however, was marked by little prudence. He used to come ashore with armed men, and hold boisterous festivities with the islanders. He also made some attempts to enter into social relations with the gentlemen of the country. It was even said that, during his brief stay, he made some way in the affections of a young gentlewoman, who little imagined his real character. It was the more unaccountable that he lingered thus in the islands, after ten of his people, who had recently been pressed into his service, left his vessel, and made their escape in a boat—a circumstance that ought to have warned him that he could not long evade the notice of the law. In point of fact, the character of his ship and crew were known at Leith while he was still dallying with time in the taverns of Stromness.

At length, about the 20th of February, Gow left the southern and more frequented part of the Orkney group, and sailed to Calf Sound, at the north part of the island of Eday, designing to apply for fresh provisions and assistance to a gentleman residing there, who had been his school-fellow, Mr Fea, younger of Clestran. Chancing to cast anchor too near the island, the pirate found that his first duty must be to obtain the assistance of a boat to assist his men in bringing off the vessel. He sent an armed party of five under the boatswain to solicit this help from Mr Fea, who received them civilly, but immediately sent private orders to have his own boat sunk and the sails hidden. He took the party to a public-house, where he entertained them, and so adroitly did he manage matters, that ere long they were all disarmed and taken into custody. The people of the country and some custom-house officers had by this time been warned to his assistance.

Next day, a violent wind drove the vessel ashore on Calf Island, and Gow, without a boat, began to feel himself in a serious difficulty. He hung out a flag for a conference with Mr Fea, who [Sidenote: 1725.] consequently sent him a letter, telling him that his only chance now was to yield himself, and give evidence against his company. The wretch offered goods to the value of a thousand pounds for merely a boat in which he could leave the coast; but Mr Fea only replied by renewing his former advice. Some conferences, attended with considerable danger to Mr Fea, took place; and Gow ultimately came ashore on Calf Island, and was secured. It is narrated that when he found himself a prisoner, he entreated to be shot before he should have to surrender his sword. His men were afterwards made prisoners without much difficulty.

Gow and his company were transported to London, and tried by the Court of Admiralty on the 27th of May. Himself and eleven others were found guilty, and condemned. There was at first some difficulty in consequence of his refusing to plead. The court, finding him refractory on this point of form, at first tried to bring him to reason by gentle means; but when these proved ineffectual, he was ordered to the press-yard, there to be pressed to death, after the old custom with those refusing to plead. His obstinacy then gave way, and his trial proceeded in due form, and he was condemned upon the same evidence as his companions. Nine were executed, of whom two—namely, Gow and his lieutenant, named Williams—were afterwards hung in chains.[619]

The Scottish newspaper which first narrated the singular story of the capture of these men, remarked: ‘The gentleman who did this piece of good service to his country, will no doubt be taken notice of, and rewarded by the government.’ Sir Walter Scott relates from the tradition of the country what actually happened to Mr Fea in consequence of his gallantry. ‘So far from receiving any reward from government, he could not obtain even countenance enough to protect him against a variety of sham suits, raised against him by Newgate solicitors, who acted in the name of Gow and others of the pirate crew; and the various expenses, vexatious prosecutions, and other legal consequences in which his gallantry involved him, utterly ruined his fortune and his family.’[620]

[Sidenote: MAY.]

The Duke of Douglas, last direct descendant of the ancient and once powerful House of Douglas, was a person of such weak character as to form a dismal antithesis to the historical honours of the family—entitled to the first vote in parliament, to lead the [Sidenote: 1725.] van of the Scottish army, and to carry the king’s crown in all processions. Just turned thirty years of age, his Grace lived at his ancestral castle in Lanarkshire, taking no such part as befitted his rank and fortune in public affairs, but content to pass his time in the commonest pleasures, not always in choice society.[621] Amongst his visitors was a young man named Ker, a natural son of Lord John Ker, the younger brother of the late Marquis of Lothian, and also brother to the Dowager-countess of Angus, the duke’s mother. This youth, as cousin to the duke, though under the taint of illegitimacy, presumed to aspire to the affections of his Grace’s only sister, the celebrated Lady Jane; and it is also alleged that he presumed to give the duke some advice about the impropriety of his keeping company with a low man belonging to his village. Under a revengeful prompting, it is said, from this fellow, the poor duke stole by night into the chamber of Mr Ker, and shot him dead as he lay asleep. Some servants, hearing the noise, came to his Grace’s room, and found him in great distress at the frightful act which he had committed, and which he made no attempt to deny. He was as speedily as possible conducted to Leith, and sent off in a vessel to Holland, there to remain until he could safely return.[622]

The peerages being politely silent about this affair, we do not learn how or when the duke was restored to Scottish society. More than thirty years after, when turned of sixty, he married the daughter of a Dumbartonshire gentleman, a lady well advanced in life, by whom he had no children. Dr Johnson, who met the duchess as a widow at Boswell’s house in 1773, speaks of her as an old lady who talked broad Scotch with a paralytic voice, and was scarcely intelligible even to her countrymen. Had the doctor seen her ten years earlier, when she was in possession of all her faculties, he would have found how much comicality and rough wit could be expressed in broad Scotch under the coif of a duchess. I have had the advantage of hearing it described by the late Sir James Steuart of Coltness, who was in Paris with her Grace in 1762, when she was also accompanied by a certain Laird of Boysack, and one or two other Scotch gentlemen, all bent on making the utmost of every droll or whimsical circumstance that came in their way. Certainly the language and style [Sidenote: 1725.] of ideas in which the party indulged was enough to make the hair of the _fastest_ of our day stand on end. There was great humour one day about a proposal that the duchess should go to court, and take advantage of the privilege of the _tabouret_, or right of sitting on a low stool in the queen’s private chamber, which it was alleged she possessed, by virtue of her late husband’s ancestors having enjoyed a French dukedom (Touraine) in the fifteenth century. The old lady made all sorts of excuses in her homely way; but when Boysack started the theory, that the real objection lay in her Grace’s fears as to the disproportioned size of the tabouret for the co-relative part of her figure, he was declared, amidst shouts of laughter, to have divined the true difficulty—her Grace enjoying the joke fully as much as any of them. Let this be a specimen of the mate of the last of the House of Douglas.

[Sidenote: JUNE 24.]

We have already seen that the favourite and ordinary beverage of the people before this date was a light ale, not devoid of an exhilarating power, which, being usually sold in pints (equal to two English quarts) at 2_d._, passed in prose and verse, as well as common parlance, under the name of Twopenny. The government, conceiving they might raise twenty thousand pounds per annum out of this modest luxury of the Scotch, imposed a duty of sixpence a bushel upon malt; and now this was to be enforced by a band of Excise officers.

The Scotch, besides the ignorant impatience of taxation natural to a people to whom fiscal deductions were a novelty, beheld in this measure a mark of the oppressive imperiousness of the British senate, and bitterly thought of what the Union had brought upon them. At Glasgow, this was a peculiarly strong feeling, its member of parliament, Mr Campbell of Shawfield, having taken a leading part in getting the malt-tax imposed. On the 23d June, when the act came into force, the populace gave many tokens of the wrath they entertained towards the excisemen who were putting it in practice; but no violence was used. Next day, there was shewn a continual disposition to gather in the streets, which the magistrates as constantly endeavoured to check; and a military party was introduced to the town. At length, evening having drawn on, the indignation of the populace could no longer be restrained. An elegant house which Shawfield had built for himself, and furnished handsomely, was attacked, and reduced to desolation, notwithstanding every effort of the magistrates to induce the mob to disperse. Next day, the mob rose again, and [Sidenote: 1725.] came to the town-house in the centre of the town, but in no formidable numbers. The military party was then drawn out by their commander, Captain Bushell, in a hollow square, in the centre of the crossing at the town-house, each side facing along one of the four streets which meet there; when, some stones being thrown at the soldiers, the officer gave way to anger, and without any order from the provost, fired upon the multitude, of whom eight were killed and many wounded. The multitude then flew to a guard-house where arms were kept, armed themselves, and, ringing the town-bell to give an alarm, were prepared to attack and destroy the comparatively small military party, when, at the urgency of the provost, the latter withdrew from the town, and sought refuge at Dumbarton.

The news of this formidable riot, or rather insurrection, created great excitement among a set of government authorities which had lately come into office, amongst whom was Mr Duncan Forbes as Lord Advocate. They took up the matter with a high hand. Attended by a large body of troops, Forbes marched to Glasgow, and seized the magistrates, under accusation of having favoured the mob, and bringing them to Edinburgh, clapped them up in the Tolbooth. Such, however, was the view generally taken of the malt-tax, that the Glasgow provost and bailies were everywhere treated as martyrs for their country, and as they passed through the streets of Edinburgh to prison, some of the lately displaced government officials walked bareheaded before them. By an appeal to the Court of Justiciary, as to the legality of their mittimus, they were quickly liberated. The only effectual vengeance the government could inflict, was an act ordaining the community of Glasgow to pay Shawfield five thousand pounds as compensation for the destruction of his house. The feelings of the people of the west were grievously outraged by the conduct of the government in this affair, and the more so that they considered it as an injustice inflicted by friends. Was it for this, they asked, that they had stood so stoutly for the Whig cause on every trying occasion since the Revolution?

In August, the officials had a new trouble on their hands. The Edinburgh brewers intimated an intention to discontinue brewing ale. Duncan Forbes stood aghast at the idea of what might happen if the people were wholly deprived of their accustomed beverage. After all, the difficulty involved in a proposal to force men to go on in a trade against their will was not too great to be encountered in those days. The _Edinburgh Evening Courant_ [Sidenote: 1725.] of the 26th of August, quietly informs us that ‘Mr Carr, engraver to the Mint, who kept a brewery in this city, and several others of the brewers, are incarcerate in the Canongate Tolbooth, for not enacting themselves to continue their trade of brewing, in terms of the Act of Sederunt of the Lords of Council and Session.’ ‘The Twopenny ale,’ adds this respectable chronicle, ‘begins to grow scarce here; notwithstanding which the city remains in perfect tranquillity.’ Long before the unimaginable crisis of an entire exhaustion of beer had arrived, forty of the brewers of Edinburgh, and ten of Leith, thought proper to resume work, and the dissolution of society was averted.[623]

Such were the troubles which Scotland experienced a hundred and thirty-five years ago, at the prospect of a tax of twenty thousand pounds per annum!

[Sidenote: JULY.]

Christian Shaw, daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, has been presented in her girlhood as the cause of a number of prosecutions for witchcraft, ending in the burning of no fewer than five women on Paisley Green.[624] As this young lady grew up to woman’s estate, she attained distinction of a better kind, as the originator of one of the great branches of industry for which her native province has since been remarkable. She was actually the first person who introduced the spinning of fine linen thread into Scotland. ‘Having acquired a remarkable dexterity in spinning fine yarn, she conceived the idea of manufacturing it into thread. Her first attempts in this way were necessarily on a small scale. She executed almost every part of the process with her own hands, and bleached her materials on a large slate in one of the windows of the house. She succeeded so well, however, in these essays, as to have sufficient encouragement to go on, and to take the assistance of her younger sister and neighbours. The then Lady Blantyre carried a parcel of her thread to Bath, and disposed of it advantageously to some manufacturers of lace.... About this time, a person who was connected with the family, happening to be in Holland, found means to learn the secrets of the thread-manufacture, which was carried on to a great extent in that country, particularly the art of sorting and numbering the threads of different sizes, and packing them up for sale, and the construction and management of the twisting and twining machines. [Sidenote: 1725.] This knowledge he communicated, on his return, to his friends in Bargarran, and by means of it they were enabled to conduct their manufacture with more regularity, and to a greater extent. The young women of the neighbourhood were taught to spin fine yarn, twining-mills were erected, correspondences were established, and a profitable business was carried on. _Bargarran thread_ became extensively known, and being ascertained by a stamp, bore a good price.’[625] By and by, the work was undertaken by others, and in time it became a leading manufacture of the district. About 1718, Christian Shaw married Mr Miller, the minister of Kilmaurs parish, and it is presumed she passed through the remainder of her life much in the same manner as other persons in that respectable grade.

The newspapers of the time at which we are now arrived, present the following advertisement: ‘The Lady Bargarran and her daughters having attained to a great perfection in making, whitening, and twisting of SEWING THREED, which is as cheap and white, and known by experience to be much stronger than the Dutch, to prevent people’s being imposed upon by other Threed, which may be sold under the name of Bargarran Threed, the Papers in which the Lady Bargarran, and her daughters at Bargarran, or Mrs Miller, her eldest daughter, at Johnston, do put up their Threed, shall, for direction, have thereupon the above coat of arms. Those who want the said Threed, which is to be sold from fivepence to six shillings per ounce, may write to the Lady Bargarran at Bargarran, or Mrs Miller at Johnston, near Paisley, to the care of the Postmaster of Glasgow; and may call for the samen in Edinburgh, at John Seton, merchant, his shop in the Parliament Close, where they will be served either in wholesale or retail: and will be served in the same manner at Glasgow, by William Selkirk, merchant in Trongate.’

Crawford, in his _History of Renfrewshire_, tells us that the coat-armorial worn by the Shaws of Bargarran bore—‘_azure_, three covered cups _or_.’ There is something amusingly characteristic in the wife and daughter of a far-descended Scottish gentleman beginning a business in ‘threed,’ and putting the family arms on their wares.

[Sidenote: 1725. OCT.]

After the long period during which religious and political contentions absorbed or repressed the intellectual energies of the people, the first native who exhibited in his own country a purely scientific genius was Colin Maclaurin—a man of Highland extraction (born in 1698), whose biography relates that he was fitted to enter a university at eleven, mastered at twelve the first six books of Euclid in a few days without assistance, and gained the chair of mathematics in Marischal College, Aberdeen, at nineteen, after a competitive examination of ten days. Having gone to London, and there been introduced to Sir Isaac Newton, Dr Clark, Sir Martin Folks, and other cultivators of science, Maclaurin was encouraged to publish several mathematical treatises which gave him an established reputation while still a young man.

At this time, the advanced years of Mr James Gregory, professor of mathematics in the university of Edinburgh, making it necessary that he should have an assistant, who should also be his successor, Mr Maclaurin became a candidate for the situation, with the recommendation of the illustrious Newton. The appointment lay with the magistrates and town council of Edinburgh, who were the patrons of the university—an arrangement which has been abolished in our age, with little regard to the rights of property, and still less to the practical good working of the connection. On this occasion there were some circumstances alike honourable to Maclaurin, to Newton, and to the Edinburgh municipality. Sir Isaac, hearing there was a difficulty about salary for the new professor, the emoluments being reserved for the old one, wrote to the lord provost of the city as follows: ‘I am glad to understand that Mr Maclaurin is in good repute amongst you for his skill in mathematics, for I think he deserves it very well, and, to satisfy you that I do not flatter him, and also to encourage him to accept the place of assisting Mr Gregory, in order to succeed him, I am ready (if you please to give me leave) to contribute twenty pounds per annum towards a provision for him till Mr Gregory’s place becomes void, if I live so long.’ The town council respectfully declined this generous offer, and made suitable arrangements otherwise for the young professor.

Colin Maclaurin amply justified the recommendation of Sir Isaac by the distinction he attained as a teacher, and his various original contributions to geometry and physics. A general impulse was given by him to the cultivation of science. When any remarkable experiment was reported from other countries, [Sidenote: 1725.] there was a general wish in Edinburgh to see it repeated by Maclaurin; and when any comet or eclipse was pending, his telescopes were sure to be in requisition. Unfortunately, the career of this brilliant geometer was cut short in consequence of a cold he caught while assisting to improve the defences of Edinburgh against the army of Prince Charles Edward. He lies under the south-west corner of the Greyfriars’ Church, where a plain mural tablet arrests the attention of the student by telling that he was elected to his chair, NEWTONO SUADENTE, and calls on all to take as a consolation, in that field of grief and terror, the thought that the mind which was capable of producing such works must survive the frail body.

[Sidenote: NOV. 20.]

The post from Edinburgh to London continued to be carried on horseback, and was of course liable to casualties of what now appear to us of a strange character. That which left Edinburgh on Saturday the 20th November 1725, was never heard of after it passed Berwick. ‘A most diligent search has been made, but neither the boy, the horse, nor the packet, has yet been heard of. The boy, after passing Goswick, having a part of the sands to ride which divide the Holy Island from the mainland, it is supposed he has missed his way, and rode towards the sea, where he and his horse have both perished.’[626]

A mail due at Edinburgh one day at the close of January 1734, was apologised for by the postmaster as late. ‘It seems the post-boy who rides the stage from Haddington to Edinburgh is perished in the river Tyne, the mail this morning being taken out of that river.’ That due on the 10th of October in the preceding year did not reach its destination till the evening of the 11th. ‘It seems the post-boy [so called, although most likely a middle-aged man], who made the stage between Dunbar and Haddington, being in liquor, fell off. The horse was afterwards found at Linplum, but without the mail, saddle, or bridle.’[627]

On the 9th December 1735, we have the following announcement: ‘The London post did not come on till this day at noon, on occasion of the badness of the roads.’—_Cal. Merc._

As a variety upon these kinds of accident, and equally indicating the simplicity of the institution in those days, may be noticed a mistake of February 1720, when, ‘instead of the [Sidenote: 1725.] mail should have come in yesterday (Sunday), _we had our own mail of Thursday last returned_‘—the presumption being that the mail for Edinburgh had been in like manner sent back from some unknown point in the road, to London. And this mistake happened once more in December 1728, the bag despatched on a Saturday night being returned the _second Sunday morning after_; ‘’tis reckoned this mistake happened about half-way on the road.’[628]

The immediate practical business of the Post-office of Edinburgh appears to have been conducted, down to the reign of George I., in a shop in the High Street, by a succession of persons named Mean or Mein, the descendants of the lady who threw her stool at the bishop’s head in St Giles’s in 1637; thence it was promoted to a _flat_ in the east side of the Parliament Close; thence, again, in the reign of George III., to a detached house behind the north side of the Cowgate. We find that, in 1718, it had a ‘manager’ at two hundred a year, a clerk at fifty, a comptroller, an assistant at an annual salary of twenty-five pounds, and three letter-carriers at five shillings a week. In 1748, this establishment was little changed, excepting that there were added an ‘apprehender of private letter-carriers,’ and a ‘clerk to the Irish correspondents.’[629] There is a faithful tradition in the office, which I see no reason to doubt, that one day, not long after the rebellion of 1745, the London bag came to Edinburgh with but one letter in it, being one addressed to the British Linen Company.

In 1758, a memorial of traders to the Convention of Burghs expressed impatience with the existing arrangements of the post between Edinburgh and London, which, owing to a delay of about a day at Newcastle, and a pause at York, with other impediments, occupied 131 hours. It was urged that the three posts which passed weekly between the two capitals should depart from Edinburgh at such a time as, reaching Newcastle in 21 hours, they might be in time for immediate dispatch by the post thence to London, and so give a return to correspondence with the metropolis in seven or eight days, instead of about eleven, as at present.[630]

It may be curious to trace the progress of business in this important office, as far as the central Scottish establishment is concerned. The number of persons employed in 1788 was 31; [Sidenote: 1725.] in 1828, it was 82; in 1840, when the universal penny post was set on foot, it reached 136; in 1860, it was 244. The number of letters delivered in Edinburgh in a week in 1824 was 27,381; in 1860, it amounted to 156,000. The number of letters passing through Edinburgh per week in 1824 was 53,000; in 1860, it was 420,000. At the same time, the number of bags despatched from Edinburgh daily was 369, weighing forty-nine hundredweight. At the time when these notes were drawn up, the establishment had become too large for a spacious and handsome building erected in 1819, and another office of ampler proportions was about to be erected.

[Sidenote: DEC.]

Wodrow notes that at this time the merchants of Glasgow, in despair of the colonial tobacco-trade, were beginning to think of ventures in other directions, as the East Indies, and the Greenland whale-fishing. Meanwhile, a Fishery Company, some time since set up at Edinburgh, was languishing, the officials eating up more than the profit. ‘As far as I can see,’ says the worthy minister of Eastwood, ‘till the Lord send more righteousness and equity, and of a public spirit, no company or copartnery among us will do any good.’

In the ensuing August, the same chronicler notes some important points in the progress of Glasgow, without giving us any hint of improvement in respect of righteousness. ‘This summer,’ says he, ‘there seems to be a very great inclination through the country to improve our manufactory, and especially linen and hemp. They speak of a considerable society in Glasgow of the most topping merchants, who are about to set up a manufactory of linen, which will keep six hundred poor people at work. The gentlemen, by their influence, seem much to stir up country-people, and to encourage good tradesmen, and some care is taken to keep linen and webs exactly to standard, and to see that the stuff be good and marketable.... What will come of it, I know not. I have seen frequent attempts of this nature come to very little.’[631]

It is gratifying to think that the year 1725, which is so sadly memorable in the history of Glasgow on account of the ‘Shawfield Mob,’ really did become the epoch of that vast system of textile manufacture for which the city has since been so celebrated. The first efforts of her looms were confined to linen [Sidenote: 1725.] cloth, lawns, and cambrics. Seven years later, one of her enterprising citizens, a Mr Alexander Harvie, ‘at the risk of his life, brought away from Haerlem two inkle-looms and a workman,’[632] and was thus enabled to introduce the manufacture of inkles into his native town, where it long flourished. The establishment of the cotton-manufacture in and around Glasgow was the work of a subsequent age, and need not be dwelt upon here.

Considering the engrossing nature of the pursuits of commerce, it is remarkably creditable to Glasgow that her university has always been maintained in a high state of efficiency, and that she has never allowed the honours of literature to be wholly diverted to her more serene sister of the east. So far had printing and publishing advanced in Glasgow in the reign of the second George, that, in 1740, a type-founding establishment was commenced there, being the first to the north of the Tweed. The immediate credit of this good work is due to Mr Alexander Wilson, a native of St Andrews. He subsequently became professor of practical astronomy in the Glasgow University, and there, in 1769, worked out the long-received theory of the solar spots, which suggests their being breaches in a luminous envelope of the sun’s body.

Favoured by the presence of a type-foundry, two citizens of Glasgow named Faulls, but who subsequently printed their name as Foulis, commenced the business of typography in 1741, and soon became distinguished for their accurate and elegant work, particularly in the printing of the classics. Eager to produce what might be esteemed an immaculate edition of Horace, they caused the successive proof-sheets, after revision, to be hung up at the gate of the university, with the offer of a reward for the discovery of an error. Before 1747, the Messrs Foulis had produced editions of eighteen classics, all of them beautiful specimens of typography.

After all, the merchants of infant Glasgow were able to overcome the difficulties which an iniquitous rivalry threw in the way of their tobacco-trade. It went on gradually increasing till a sudden stop was put to it by the revolt of the American colonies, when it had reached an annual importation of about fifty thousand hogsheads, being the great bulk of what was consumed in the three kingdoms. In the early days of the trade, when capital was not abundant, the custom was for a very small group of the more considerable merchants to advance two or three hundred pounds [Sidenote: 1725.] each, and ask the lesser men around them to add such shares as they pleased; by these means to make purchase of goods suited for use in Virginia, which were sent out under the care of a supercargo, to be exchanged for a lading of tobacco. ‘The first adventure ... was sent under the sole charge of the captain of the vessel. This person, though a shrewd man, knew nothing of accounts; and when he was asked by his employers, on his return, for a statement of how the adventure had turned out, told them he could give them none, but there were its proceeds, and threw down upon the table a large _hoggar_ (stocking) stuffed to the top with coin [being of course the money-surplus of the goods sent out, after the cargo of tobacco was paid for]. The company conceived that if an uneducated person had been so successful, their gains would have been still greater if a person versed in accounts had been sent out. Under this impression, they immediately despatched a second adventure with a supercargo highly recommended for a knowledge of accounts, who produced to them a beautifully made-out statement of his transactions, but no _hoggar_.’[633]

Afterwards, the groups of adventurers associated little more than their credit in the getting up of cargoes of goods for the colonial market, and these were not in general paid till the return of the tobacco, at the distance perhaps of a twelvemonth. When the manager of the copartnery was ready to discharge its obligations, he summoned the various furnishers of the goods to a tavern, where, over a measure of wine to each, paid for by themselves, he handed them the amount of their various claims, receiving a discharged account in return. In such retreats all important matters of business were then transacted. They were in many instances kept by the female relations of merchants who had not been successful in business; and in selecting one whereto to summon the furnishers of goods for payment, the manager would generally have an eye to a benevolent design in favour of the family of an associate of former days.

As the century rolled on, and transactions increased in magnitude, luxury and pride crept in, men learned to garnish their discourse with strange oaths, and the Wodrow pre-requisite of ‘righteousness’ was always less and less heard of. The wealth of the _Tobacco Lords_, as the men pre-eminent in the trade were called, reached an amount which made them the wonder of their [Sidenote: 1725.] country. One named Glassford, during the Seven Years’ War, had twenty-five vessels engaged in the business, and was said to trade for half a million.[634] They formed a kind of aristocracy in their native city, throwing all tolerably successful industry in other walks into the shade. Old people, not long deceased, used to describe them as seen every day on the Exchange, or a piece of pavement in Argyle Street so called, walking about in long scarlet cloaks and bushy wigs, objects of awful respect to their fellow-citizens, who, if desirous of speaking to one of them on business, found it necessary to walk on the other side of the street, till they should be fortunate enough to catch his eye, and be signalled across. All this came to an end with the breaking out of the American war; when, however, the irrepressible energies and wealth of that wonderful people of the west speedily found new fields of operation—cotton, timber, iron, chemicals, ship-building, and (in sober sincerity) _what not?_

[Sidenote: 1726.]

The Tennis Court theatricals of spring 1715 probably did not long hold their ground. Thereafter, we hear of no further amusement of the kind being in any fashion attempted in Edinburgh till 1719, when ‘some young gentlemen’ performed _The Orphan_ and the _Cheats of Scapin_, but most probably in a very private manner, though Allan Ramsay consented to introduce the performance with a prologue.[635] Among the Wodrow pamphlets preserved in the Advocates’ Library, is a broadside containing ‘Verses spoken after the performance of Otway’s tragedy, called _The Orphan_, at a private meeting in Edinburgh, December 9, 1719, by a boy in the University [added in manuscript, “Mr Mitchell”].’ He ends with a threat to meet adverse critics in the King’s Park. Edinburgh was about the same time occasionally regaled with the visits of a certain Signora Violante, who trooped about the three kingdoms for the exhibition of feats in tumbling and posture-making.[636]

It would appear that the first Scottish theatricals not quite insignificant were presented in the winter 1725–26, when Anthony Aston, a performer not without his fame, came to Edinburgh with a company of comedians, and was so far favourably received that he ventured to return in the ensuing year. On that occasion, Allan Ramsay composed for him the following prologue, [Sidenote: 1726.] conveying to us some notion of the feelings with which the venture was regarded:

‘“Tis I, dear Caledonians, blythesome Tony,
That oft, last winter, pleased the brave and bonny,
With medley, merry song, and comic scene:
Your kindness then has brought me here again,
After a circuit round the Queen of Isles,
To gain your friendship and approving smiles.
Experience bids me hope—though, south the Tweed,
The dastards said: “He never will succeed:
What! such a country look for any good in,
That does not relish plays, nor pork, nor pudding!”
Thus great Columbus, by an idiot crew,
Was ridiculed at first for his just view;
Yet his undaunted spirit ne’er gave ground,
Till he a new and better world had found.
So I—laugh on—the simile is bold;
But, faith! ’tis just: for till this body’s cold,
Columbus-like, I’ll push for fame and gold.’[637]

The prevalent feeling on the subject in authoritative circles may be inferred from the conduct of the magistracy and clergy. An act of council being passed, prohibiting Mr Aston from acting within the limits of their jurisdiction, the presbytery met, and appointed a deputation to wait upon the magistrates, and thank them ‘for the just zeal they had shewn in the matter.’ A committee was at the same time appointed to draw up an _act and exhortation_ against the frequenting of stage-plays, which, by their order, was read from all the pulpits in the district.[638]

Wodrow talks of Aston’s proceedings as ‘filling up our cup of sin.’ ‘Three or four noblemen—some of them ruling elders—combined to favour the comedians, giving them such a warrant as they thought their peerage entitled them to give. Three or four of the Lords of Session were favourable to them, and yet no direct interlocutor was given them, empowering them to set up. The matter took several different shapes, and many different decisions were given by the Lords, which concerned circumstances rather than the direct lawfulness of their plays.’ Wodrow speaks of a large attendance, especially at their tragedies, the _Mourning Bride_ having had a run of three nights. ‘A vast deal of money, [Sidenote: 1726.] in this time of scarcity, is spent this way most sinfully.’ They even ‘talk of building a public playhouse at Edinburgh.’

To the great vexation of the ecclesiastical authorities, the decree of the magistrates was appealed against in the Court of Session, with what were believed to be good hopes of success. Just at that crisis, we find Mr Wodrow writing in great concern on the subject, from his Renfrewshire manse, to Mr George Drummond, commissioner of customs in Edinburgh (November 27, 1727). He states that his parishioner, Lord Pollock, one of the judges, was unfortunately detained at home, being ‘considerably failed, and very crazy;’ so he could not attend the court to give his vote. ‘I pray God may order matters so as to prevent my fears in this matter.... I desire to have it on my heart, and shall stir up some who, I hope, are praying persons, to be concerned in it. However it go, I think the magistrates of Edinburgh may have peace in the honest appearance they have made against those seminaries of idleness, looseness, and sin.’[639]

There was, however, no legal means of putting down Mr Aston. The magistrates’ interdict was suspended, and from that time the players had only to contend with public opinion.[640]

[Sidenote: FEB. 12.]

Serious onlookers are eager to note other symptoms of the alarming progress of levity. A private letter-writer remarks, under our marginal date, that, ‘notwithstanding the general complaint of scarcity of money, there were never so many diversions in one winter.... There is scarce one night passes without either medley, concert, or assembly, and these entertainments generally conclude with some private marriage, of which we have a vast number ... such as Sir Edward Gibson and Mrs Maitland, a cousin of the Earl of Lauderdale; M‘Dowal and a daughter of Dr Stirling; a son of Bailie Hay with Regent Scott’s daughter; and my Lord Bruce is to be married regularly to Mrs Robertson, who has above £3000, this very night.’

A few days after, the same writer reports a private marriage as discovered between the son of Sir John Dalrymple and ‘Matthew Crawford’s daughter.’ ‘Sir John seems pretty much disobliged that his son should not have asked his consent, though it’s [Sidenote: 1726.] thought he will soon get over all difficulties.’ The eccentric Earl of Rosebery ‘has been for a considerable time in prison, where it’s believed he will spend the remainder of his days with his good friend Burnbank.’

A few weeks later, an abduction in the old style was perpetrated by a Highlander upon ‘a niece of Mr Moubray the wright,’ not above twelve years of age, whose gouvernante had betrayed her upon a promise of a thousand merks, the young lady having £3000 of fortune. Mr Moubray ‘luckily catched them near to Queensferry, as they were coming to town to be married.’ ‘The gouvernante is committed to prison, as is also the gentleman.’[641]

In May, Mr Wodrow adverts to a rumour that there were some clubs in Edinburgh, very secretly conducted, composed of gentlemen of atheistical opinions. They were understood to be offshoots of a similar fraternity in London, rejoicing in the name of the Hell-fire Club, as signifying the disregard of the members for the thing referred to. Wodrow whispers with horror, that the secretary of the Hell-fire Club, a Scotsman, was reported to have come to Edinburgh to plant these affiliated societies. ‘He fell into melancholy, as it was called, but probably horror of conscience and despair, and at length turned mad. Nobody was allowed to see him, and physicians prescribed bathing for him, and he died mad at the first bathing. The Lord pity us,’ concludes Mr Wodrow; ‘wickedness is come to a terrible height!’[642]

There is among the Wodrow pamphlets a broadside giving an account of the Hell-fire Clubs, Sulphur Societies, and Demirep Dragons then in vogue. It includes a list of persons of quality engaged in these fraternities, and the various names they bore—as Elisha the Prophet, the King of Hell, Old Pluto, the Old Dragon, Lady Envy, the Lady Gomorrah, &c. An edict had been issued against them by the government, reciting that there was reason to suspect that, in the cities of London and Westminster, there were scandalous clubs or societies of young persons, who meet together, and in blasphemous language insult God and his holy religion, and corrupt the morals of one another. The justices of the peace were enjoined to be diligent in rooting out such schools of profanity.

The Hell-fire Club seems to have projected itself strongly on the popular imagination in Scotland, for the peasantry still occasionally speak of it with bated breath and whispering horror. [Sidenote: 1726.] Many wicked lairds are talked of, who belonged to the Hell-fire Club, and who came to bad ends, as might have been expected on grounds involving no reference to miracle.

Public combats with sword and rapier were among the amusements of the age. They took place regularly in London, at a place called the Bear Garden, and at an amphitheatre in the Oxford Road; likewise at Hockley. It seems scarcely credible that not only was this practice permitted, but it was customary for the men who were to cut and slash at each other in the evening, to parade through the streets in the forenoon, in fancy dresses, with drums beating and colours flying, as an advertisement of the performance.

Sometimes, when one of these modern gladiators attained to fame, he would go to a provincial city, and announce himself as willing to fight all-comers on a public stage for any sum that might be agreed upon. Such persons seem most frequently to have been natives of the sister-island. One Andrew Bryan, an Irishman, described as ‘a clean young man’—that is, a well-made, nimble person—came to Edinburgh, in June 1726, as a gladiatorial star, and challenged any who might choose to take him up. For days he paraded the streets with his drum, without meeting a combatant, and several gentlemen of the city began to feel annoyed at his vapourings, when at length the challenger was answered. There had at this time retired to Edinburgh an old Killiecrankie soldier, named Donald Bane—a man who had attained the distinction of a sergeantcy, who had taught the broadsword exercise, who had fought creditably in all the wars of William and Anne in succession, but was withal much of a scapegrace, though a good-humoured one, as fully appears from a little autobiography which he published, along with the rules of the art of defence. Though now sixty-two, and inclined to repent of much of his earlier career, Donald retained enough of his original spirit to be disposed to try a turn at sharps with Bryan; so, meeting him in the street one day, he sent his foot through the drum, as an indication that he accepted the challenge. Gentlefolks were interested when they heard of it, and one learned person thought proper to compose for Bane a regular answer to the challenge in Latin verse—

‘Ipse ego, Donaldus Banus, formâ albus et altus,
Nunc huic Andreæ thrasoni occurrere deero,’ &c.

The combat took place at the date noted, on a stage erected for [Sidenote: 1726. JUNE 23.] the purpose behind Holyrood Palace, in the presence of a great number of noblemen, gentlemen, military officers, and others. It was conducted with much formality, and lasted several hours, with a variety of weapons; and not till Bryan had received seven wounds from his unscathed antagonist, did he feel the necessity of giving in. The victory of the Highland veteran seems to have given rise to great exultation, and he was crowned with praises in both prose and rhyme. He was compared to Ajax overcoming Thersites; and one Latin wit remarked in a quatrain, that the stains of the two former Donald Banes of Scottish history were wiped off by the third. A more fortunate result for us was the publication of Bane’s autobiography,[643] containing a number of characteristic anecdotes.

Little more than two years after the combat of Bane and Bryan, a similar encounter is noted in the _Edinburgh Courant_ as taking place in the Tennis Court at Holyrood, between ‘Campbell the Scots, and Clerk the Irish gladiator,’ when the former received a wound in the face, and the second sustained seven in the body.

[Sidenote: AUG. 8.]

At an election for the county of Roxburgh at Jedburgh, a quarrel arose between Sir Gilbert Elliot of Stobbs, a candidate, and Colonel Stewart of Stewartfield, who opposed him. Colonel Stewart, who was ‘a huffing, hectoring person,’ is said to have given great provocation, and gentlemen afterwards admitted that Stobbs was called upon by the laws of honour to take notice of the offence. According to a petition to the Court of Session from the son of Stewart, Elliot stabbed him as he sat in his chair on the opposite side of a table, with his sword by his side.

The homicide took refuge in Holland, but was soon enabled by a pardon to return to his own country.[644]

[Sidenote: AUG. 9.]

The correspondence of General Wade with the Secretary of State Townsend,[645] makes us aware that at this time several of the attainted gentlemen of 1715 had returned to Scotland, in the hope of obtaining a pardon, or at least of being permitted to remain undisturbed. The general humanely pleads for their being pardoned on a formal submission. Amongst them was Alexander Robertson of Struan, chief of the clan Robertson, a gentleman [Sidenote: 1726.] who had fought for the Stuarts both at Killiecrankie and Sheriffmuir, and who is further memorable for his convivial habits and his gifts in the writing of pure, but somewhat dull English poetry.

In the year of the Revolution, being a youth of twenty at the university of St Andrews, Struan accepted a commission in some forces then hastily proposed to be raised for James VII.; and, keeping up this military connection, he joined the Highland army of Lord Dundee, but was taken prisoner by the enemy, September 1689, and thrown into the Edinburgh Tolbooth. Here a piece of Highland gratitude served him a good turn. Four years before, when the Perthshire loyalists were hounded out to ravage the lands of the unfortunate Argyle, the late Laird of Struan had, for humane reasons, pleaded for leave to stay at home and take care of the country. The now restored Earl of Argyle, remembering this kindness to his family, interceded for young Robertson, and procured his liberation in exchange for Sir Robert Maxwell of Pollock, who was in the hands of the Highlanders. Struan then passed into France, and joined the exiled king, hoping ere long to return and see the old _régime_ restored; and in his absence, the Scottish parliament declared him forfaulted. He spent many years of melancholy exile in France, enduring the greatest hardships that a gentleman could be subjected to, having no dependence but upon occasional remittances from his mother. Being at length enabled to return to Perthshire, he once more forfeited all but life by joining in the insurrection of 1715. For nine years more he underwent a new exile in the greatest poverty and hardship, while, to add to his mortifications, a disloyal sister, hight ‘Mrs Margaret,’ contrived to worm herself into the possession of his forfeited estates.

In France, Struan had for a fellow in misfortune a certain Professor John Menzies, under whom he had studied at St Andrews, and who seems to have been an old gentleman of some humour. There is extant a letter of Menzies to Struan, giving him advice about his health, and which seems worthy of preservation for the hints it gives as to the habits of these expatriated Scotch Jacobites. It bears to have been written in answer to one in which Struan had spoken of being ill:

‘PARIS, _March 20_.

‘D. S.—I have been out of town a little for my own health, which has
kept me some days from receiving or answering your last, in which you
speak of some indisposition of yours. I [Sidenote: 1726.] hope that
before now it is over of itself by a little quiet and temperance, and
that thereby nature has done its own business, which it rarely fails
to do when one gives it elbow-room, and when it is not quite spent.
“When that comes, the house soon comes down altogether. This I have
always found in my own case. Whenever I was jaded by ill hours and
company, and the consequences of that, I have still retired a little
to some convenient hermitage in the country, with two or three doses
of rhubarb, and as many of salts. That washes the Augean stable, and
for the rest I drink milk and whey, and sometimes a very little wine
and water. No company but Horace and Homer, and such old gentlemen
that drink no more now. I walk much, eat little, and sleep a great
deal. And by this cool and sober and innocent diet, nature gets up its
head again, and the horse that was jaded and worn out grows strong
again, so that he can jog on some stages of the farce of life without
stumbling or breaking his neck. This is a consultation I give you
gratis from my own practice and never-failing experience, which is
always the best physician. And I am satisfied it would do in your
case, where I reckon nature is haill at the heart still, after all
your cruel usage of it.