Chapter VIII: Part 8

William Morison of Prestongrange was desirous of setting up a glass-work at a place within the bounds of his estate, called Aitchison’s Haven or New Haven, ‘for making of all sorts of glass, as bottles, vials, drinking, window, mirror, and warck [?] glasses.’ ‘In order thereto, he conduced with strangers for carrying on the said work, who find great encouragement for the same, within the said bounds.’ On his petition, this proposed work, with the workmen and stock employed, was endowed by the Privy Council (April 27, 1697) with the privileges accorded to manufactories by acts of parliament.

Connected with Prestongrange in this business was a French refugee named Leblanc, who had married a Scotchwoman, and got himself entered as a burgess and guild-brother of Edinburgh, designing to spend the remainder of his life in the country of his adoption. It was his part to polish the glass for the making of mirrors, an art never before practised in Scotland; and this business he carried on in a workshop in the Canongate. It was found, however, that ‘the glasses must have mullers and head-pieces of timber, and sometimes persons of honour and quality desired also tables, drawers, and stands agreeable to the glass for making up a suit.’ Leblanc offered to employ for this work the wrights of the corporation of the Canongate; but they plainly acknowledged that they could not execute it. He was obliged to employ wrights of Edinburgh. Then came forth the same Canongate wrights, with complaints of this infraction of their rights. It was a plain case of the dog in the manger—and the consequence was the stoppage of a branch of industry of some importance to the community. On Leblanc’s petition, the Privy [Sidenote: 1696.] Council gave him permission to make up the upholstery work connected with his mirrors, on the simple condition of his making a first offer of it to the wrights of the Canongate.

One George Sanders had obtained, in 1681, an exclusive privilege, for seventeen years, for a work for the twisting and throwing all sorts of raw silk; but he never proceeded with the undertaking. ‘Joseph Ormiston and William Elliot, merchants,’ proposed (June 1697) to set up such a work, which they conceived would be useful in giving employment to the poor, and in opening a profitable trade between Scotland and Turkey; also in ‘advancing the manufactories of buttons, galloons, silk stockings, and the like.’ They designed ‘to bring down several families who make broad silks, gold and silver thread, &c.,’ and entertained ‘no doubt that many of the Norwich weavers may be encouraged to come and establish in this country, where they may live and work, at easy rates.’ On their petition, the adventurers had their proposed work invested by the Privy Council with the privileges and immunities of a manufactory.

On the 22d February 1698, David Lord Elcho, for himself and copartners, besought the favour of the Council for a glass-work which they proposed to erect at Wemyss. They were to bring in strangers expert in the art, and did not doubt that they would also afford considerable employment to natives and to shipping; besides which, they would cause money to be kept at home, and some to come in from abroad. They asked no monopoly or ‘the exclusion of any others from doing their best, and setting up in any other part of the kingdom they please;’ all they craved was a participation in the privileges held out by the acts of parliament. Their petition was cordially granted.

Viscount Tarbat and Sir George Campbell of Cessnock, ‘being resolved to enter into a society for shot-casting, whereby not only the exportation of money for foreign shot will be restrained, but also the product of our own kingdom considerably improved,’ petitioned (February 1698) for and obtained for the said society all the privileges accorded by statute to a manufactory for nineteen years.

It was well known, said a petition in September 1698, ‘how much the burgh of Aberdeen and inhabitants thereof had in all times been disposed to the making of cloth and stuffs, stockings, plaids, and all other profitable work in wool.’ It therefore appeared reasonable to certain persons of that burgh—Thomas Mitchell, John Allardyce, Alexander Forbes, John Johnstone, [Sidenote: 1696.] and others—that a woollen manufactory should be set up there, and they petitioned the Privy Council for permission to do so, and to have the usual privileges offered by the statute; which were granted.[189]

In 1703, a cloth manufactory was in full operation at Gordon’s Mills, near Aberdeen, under the care of Mr William Black, advocate. Though established but a year ago, it already produced broad cloths, druggets, and stuffs of all sorts, ‘perhaps as good in their kind as any that have been wrought in this kingdom.’ Mr Black had French workmen for the whitening and scouring of his cloths, and boasted that he had created a new trade in supplying the country people with sorted fleece-wool, ‘which is a great improvement in itself.’ Amongst his products were ‘half-silk serges, damasks, and plush made of wool, which looks near as fine as that made of hair.’ Unlike most enterprisers in that age, he desired to breed up young people who might afterwards set up factories of the same kind, ‘which,’ he said, ‘will be the only way to bring our Scots manufactories to reasonable prices.’ But he did not propose to do this upon wholly disinterested principles. He petitioned parliament to make a charge upon the county of Aberdeen, for the support of boys working at his manufactory, during the first five years of their apprenticeships;[190] and his desire was in a modified manner complied with.

About the same time, William Hog of Harcarse had a cloth manufactory at his place in Berwickshire, where he ‘did make, dress, and lit as much red cloth as did furnish all the Earl of Hyndford’s regiment of dragoons with red cloaths this last year, and that in a very short space.’[191]

It would appear that up to 1703 there was no such thing in Scotland as a work for making earthenware; a want which, of course, occasioned ‘the yearly export of large sums of money out of the kingdom,’ besides causing all articles of that kind to be sold at ‘double charges of what they cost abroad.’ William Montgomery of Macbie-hill, and George Linn, merchant in Edinburgh, now made arrangements for setting up ‘a Pot-house and all conveniences for making of laim, purslane, and earthenware,’ and for bringing home from foreign countries the men required for such a work. As necessary for their encouragement in this undertaking, the parliament gave them an exclusive [Sidenote: 1696.] right of making laim, purslane, and earthenware for fifteen years.[192]

[Sidenote: DEC 1.]

On a low sandy plain near the mouth of the Eden, in Fife, in sight of the antique towers of St Andrews, stands the house of Earlshall, now falling into decay, but in the seventeenth century the seat of a knightly family of Bruces, one of whom has a black reputation as a persecutor, having been captain of one of Claverhouse’s companies. The hall in the upper part of the mansion—a fine room with a curved ceiling, bearing pictures of the virtues and other abstractions, with scores of heraldic shields—testifies to the dignity of this family, as well as their taste. Some months before this date, Andrew Bruce of Earlshall had granted to his son Alexander a disposition to the corns and fodder of the estate, as also to those of the ‘broad lands of Leuchars;’ and Alexander had entered into a bargain for the sale of the produce to John Lundin, younger of Baldastard, for the use of the army. Against this arrangement there was a resisting party in the person of Sir David Arnot of that Ilk.

Sir David, on the day noted, came with a suitable train to Earlshall, and there, with many violent speeches, proceeded to possess himself of the keys of the barns and stables; caused the corns to be thrashed; brought his own oxen to eat part of the straw; and finally forced Earlshall’s tenants to carry off the whole grain to Pitlethie. The produce thus disposed of is described as follows: ‘The Mains [home-farm] of Earlshall paid, and which was in the corn-yard at the time, six chalders victual, corn, and fodder, estimat this year [1697] at fourteen pounds the boll, is ane thousand three hundred and forty-four pounds Scots; and nine chalders of teind out of the lands of Leuchars-Bruce, corn and fodder, estimat at the foresaid price to two thousand and sixteen pounds.’

The Privy Council took up this case of ‘high and manifest oppression and bangstrie,’ examined witnesses on both sides, and then remitted the matter to the Court of Session.

A similar case of violently disputed rights occurred about the same time. John Leas had a tack from the Laird of Brux in Aberdeenshire, for a piece of land called Croshlachie, and finding it a prosperous undertaking, he was ‘invyed’ in it by Mr Robert Irving, minister of Towie. The minister frequently [Sidenote: 1696.] threatened Leas to cause the laird dispossess him of his holding, possibly expecting to harass him out of it. Leas stood his ground against such threats; but, being simple, he was induced to let Mr Irving have a sight of his ‘assedation,’ which the minister no sooner got into his hands, than he tore it in pieces. A few weeks after, May 8, 1693, Irving came to Croshlachie, and causing men to divide the farm, took possession of one part, put his cattle upon it, and pulled down two houses belonging to Leas, who was thus well-nigh ruined.

Still unsatisfied with what he had gained, Irving came, in March 1694, with Roderick Forbes, younger of Brux, whom he had brought over to his views, and made a personal attack upon Leas, as he was innocently sowing his diminished acres. ‘Tying his hands behind his back, [Irving] brought him off the ground, and carried him prisoner like a malefactor to his house.’ While they were there preparing papers which they were to force him to subscribe, Leas ‘did endeavour to shake his hands lowse of their bonds; but Mr Robert Irving came and ordered the cords to be more severely drawn, which accordingly was done.’ He was detained in that condition ‘till he was almost dead,’ and so was compelled to sign a renunciation of his tack, and also a disposition of the seed he had sown.

On a complaint from Leas coming before the Privy Council, Irving and young Brux did not appear; for which reason they were denounced rebels. Afterwards (June 16, 1698), they came forward with a petition for a suspension of the decreet, alleging that they had come to the court, but were prevented from appearing by accident. ‘It was the petitioners’ misfortune,’ they said, ‘that the time of the said calling they were gone down to the close, and the macers not having called over the window, or they not having heard, Maister Leas himself craved [that] the letters might be found orderly proceeded.’ On this petition, the decreet was suspended.

In August 1697, we are regaled with an example of female ‘bangstrie’ in an elevated grade of society. It was represented to the Privy Council that the wife of Lumsden of Innergellie, in Fife—we may presume, under some supposed legal claim—came at midnight of the 22d July, with John and Agnes Harper, and a few other persons, to the house of Ellieston, in Linlithgowshire—ostensibly the property of the Earl of Rutherglen—which was fast locked; and there, having brought ladders with them, they scaled the house, and violently broke open the windows, at which they [Sidenote: 1696.] entered; after which they broke open the doors. Having thus taken forcible possession of the mansion, they brought cattle, which they turned loose, to eat whatever fodder the place afforded.

On the petition of the Earl of Rutherglen, this affair came before the Council, when, the accused lady not appearing, the Lords gave orders that she and her servants should be cast out of the house of Ellieston, and that John and Agnes Harper should pay a hundred pounds Scots as damages, and to be confined (if caught) until that sum was paid.[193]

[Sidenote: 1697.]

Jean Douglas, styled Lady Glenbucket, as being the widow of the late Gordon of Glenbucket, had been endowed by her husband, in terms of her marriage-contract, with a thousand pounds Scots of free rent out of the best of his lands ‘nearest adjacent to the house.’ At his death in 1693, she ‘entered on the possession of the mains and house of Glenbucket, and uplifted some of the rents, out of which she did aliment her eight children till May [1696],’ when an unhappy interruption took place in consequence of a dispute with her eldest son about their respective rights.

According to the complaint afterwards presented by the lady—though it seems scarce credible—‘she was coming south to take advice regarding her affairs, when her son, Adam Gordon, followed her with an armed force, and, on her refusal to comply with his request that she would return, avowed his determination to have her back, though he should drag her at a horse’s tail. Then seizing her with violence, he forced her to return to Glenbucket, three miles, and immured her there as a prisoner for thirty days, without attendance or proper aliment; indeed, she could have hardly eaten anything that was offered for fear of poison; and ‘if it had not been for the charity of neighbours, who in some part supplied her necessity, she must undoubtedly have starved.’ The young man meanwhile possessed himself of everything in the house, including the legal writings of her property; he left her and her children no means of subsistence, ‘yea, not so much as her wearing clothes,’ and she ‘was glad to escape with her life.’ He also proceeded to uplift her rents.

The lady craved redress from the Privy Council, which seems [Sidenote: 1697.] to have become satisfied of the truth of her complaint; but what steps they took in the case does not appear.[194]

[Sidenote: 1696. DEC. 12.]

Every now and then, amidst the mingled harmonies and discords proceeding from the orchestra of the national life, we hear the deep diapason of the voice of the church, proclaiming universal hopeless wickedness, and threatening divine judgments. At this time, a solemn fast was appointed to be held on the 21st of January next, to deprecate ‘the wrath of God,’ which is ‘very visible against the land, in the judgments of great sickness and mortality in most parts of the kingdom, as also of growing dearth and famine threatened, with the imminent hazard of ane invasion from our cruel and bloody enemies abroad; all the just deservings and effects of our continuing and abounding sins, and of our great security and impenitency under them.’

[Sidenote: DEC. 23.]

It was while the public mind was excited by the complicated evils of famine and threatened invasion, that an importation of atheistical books was found to have been made into Edinburgh, and several young men were denounced to the authorities as having become infected with heterodox opinions. At a time when every public evil was attributed to direct judgment for sins, we may in some faint degree imagine how even an incipient tendency to irreligion would be looked upon by the more serious-minded people, including the clergy, and how just and laudable it would appear to take strong measures for the repression of such wickedness. We have to remember, too, the temper of Sir James Steuart, the present public prosecutor. One delinquent—John Fraser—had, upon timely confession and penitence, been lightly dealt with; but there was another youthful offender, who, meeting accusation in a different frame of mind, at least at first, was to have a different fate.

Thomas Aikenhead, a youth of eighteen, ‘son to the deceest James Aikenhead, chirurgeon in Edinburgh,’ was now tried by the High Court of Justiciary for breach of the 21st act of the first parliament of Charles II., ‘against the crime of blasphemy,’ which act had been ratified by the 11th act of the fifth session of the parliament of the present reign. It was alleged in the indictment that the young man had, for a twelvemonth past, been accustomed to speak of theology as ‘a rhapsody of feigned and ill-invented nonsense,’ calling the Old Testament _Ezra’s fables_, [Sidenote: 1696.] and the New _the history of the Impostor Christ_, further ‘cursing Moses, Ezra, and Jesus, and all men of that sort.’ ‘Likeas,’ pursued this document, ‘you reject the mystery of the blessed Trinity, and say it is not worth any man’s refutation, and you also scoff at the mystery of the incarnation of Jesus Christ ... as to the doctrine of redemption by Jesus, you say it is a proud and presumptuous device ... you also deny spirits ... and you have maintained that God, the world, and nature, are but one thing, and that the world was from eternity.... You have said that you hoped to see Christianity greatly weakened, and that you are confident it will in a short time be utterly extirpat.’

Aikenhead, though impenitent at first, no sooner received this indictment in prison, than he endeavoured to stop proceedings by addressing to the Lords of Justiciary a ‘petition and retraction,’ in which he professed the utmost abhorrence of the expressions attributed to him, saying he trembled even to repeat them to himself, and further avowing his firm faith in the gospel, in the immortality of the soul, in the doctrine of the Trinity, and in the divine authority of Scripture. He alleged, like Fraser, that the objectionable expressions had only been repeated by him, as sentiments of certain atheistical writers whose works had been put into his hands by a person now cited as a witness against him, and ‘who constantly made it his work to interrogate me anent my reading of the said atheistical principles and arguments.’ ‘May it therefore please your Lordships,’ said the petitioner in conclusion, ‘to have compassion on my young and tender years (not being yet major), and that I have been so innocently betrayed and induced to the reading of such atheistical books ... that I do truly own the Protestant religion ... and am resolved, by the assistance of Almighty God, to make my abhorrence of what is contained in the libel appear to the world in my subsequent life and conversation ... to desert the diet against me.’ This appeal, however, was in vain.

The case was conducted by Sir James Steuart, the king’s advocate, and Sir Patrick Hume, the king’s solicitor.

The witnesses were three students, and a ‘writer,’ all of them about twenty years of age, being the companions of the culprit, and one of them (named Mungo Craig) known to be the person who had lent Aikenhead the books from which he derived the expressions charged in the indictment. It was proved by the ample depositions of these young men, that Aikenhead had been accustomed [Sidenote: 1696.] to speak opprobriously of the Scriptures and their authors, as well as of the doctrines of Christianity; by Mungo Craig alone it was averred that he had cursed Jesus Christ, along with Moses and Ezra. Thus there was not _full_ proof against the accused on the principal point of the statute charged upon—namely, the cursing of God or any other person of the blessed Trinity. The jury nevertheless unanimously found it proven ‘that the panel, Thomas Aikenhead, has railed against the first person, and also cursed and railed our blessed Lord, the second person, of the holy Trinity.’ They further found ‘the other crimes libelled proven—namely, the denying the incarnation of our Saviour, the holy Trinity, and scoffing at the Holy Scriptures.’ Wherefore the judges ‘decern and adjudge the said Thomas Aikenhead to be taken to the Gallowlee, betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, upon Friday the eighth day of January next to come, and there to be hanged on a gibbet till he be dead, and his body to be interred at the foot of the gallows.’

It struck some men in the Privy Council that it was hard to take the life of a lad of eighteen, otherwise irreproachable, for a purely metaphysical offence, regarding which he had already expressed an apparently sincere penitence; and this feeling was probably increased when a petition was received from Aikenhead, not asking for life, which he had ceased to hope for, but simply entreating for delay of a sentence which he acknowledged to be just, on the ground that it had ‘pleased Almighty God to begin so far in His mercy to work upon your petitioner’s obdured heart, as to give him some sense and conviction of his former wicked errors ... and he doth expect ... if time were allowed ... through the merits of Jesus, by a true remorse and repentance, to be yet reconciled to his offended God and Saviour.’ I desire, he said, this delay, that ‘I may have the opportunity of conversing with godly ministers in the place, and by their assistance be more prepared for an eternal rest.’

Lord Anstruther and Lord Fountainhall, two members of the Council, were led by humane feeling to visit the culprit in prison. ‘I found a work on his spirit,’ says the former gentleman, ‘and wept that ever he should have maintained such tenets.’ He adds that he desired for Aikenhead a short reprieve, as his eternal state depended on it. ‘I plead [pleaded] for him in Council, and brought it to the Chan[cellor’s] vote. It was told it could not be granted _unless the ministers would intercede_.... The ministers, out of a pious, though I think ignorant zeal, spoke and preached [Sidenote: 1696.] for cutting him off ... our ministers being,’ he adds, ‘generally of a narrow set of thoughts and confined principles, and not able to bear things of this nature.’ It thus appears that the clergy were eager for the young man’s blood, and the secular powers so far under awe towards that body, that they could not grant mercy. The Council appears in numberless instances as receiving applications for delay and pardon from criminals under sentence, and so invariably assents to the petition, that we may infer there having been a routine practice in the case, by which petitions were only sent after it was ascertained that they would probably be complied with. There being no petition for pardon from Aikenhead to the Council after his trial, we may fairly presume that he had learned there was no relaxation of the sentence to be expected.

As the time designed for his execution drew nigh, Aikenhead wrote a paper of the character of a ‘last speech’ for the scaffold, in which he described the progress of his mind throughout the years of his education. From the age of ten, he had sought for grounds on which to build his faith, having all the time an insatiable desire of attaining the truth. He had bewildered himself amongst the questions on morals and religion which have bewildered so many others, and only found that the more he thought on these things the further he was from certainty. He now felt the deepest contrition for the ‘base, wicked, and irreligious expressions’ he had uttered—‘although I did the same out of a blind zeal for what I thought the truth.’ ‘Withal, I acknowledge and confess to the glory of God, that in all he hath brought upon me, either one way or other, he hath done it most wisely and justly.... Likeas I bless God I die in the true Christian Protestant apostolic faith.’ He then alluded in terms of self-vindication to aspersions regarding him which had been circulated in a satire by Mr Mungo Craig, ‘whom I leave,’ said he, ‘to reckon with God and his own conscience, if he was not as deeply concerned in those hellish notions for which I am sentenced, as ever I was: however, I bless the Lord, I forgive him and all men, and wishes the Lord may forgive him likewise.’ Finally, he prayed that his blood might ‘give a stop to that raging spirit of atheism which hath taken such a footing in Britain both in practice and profession.’ Along with this paper, he left a letter to his friends, dated the day of his execution, expressing a hope that what he had written would give them and the world satisfaction, ‘and after I am gone produce more charity than [it] hath been my fortune to be trysted hitherto with, and remove [Sidenote: 1696.] the apprehensions which I hear are various with many about my case.’[195]

There was at that time in Edinburgh an English Nonconformist clergyman, of Scottish birth, named William Lorimer, who had come to fill the chair of divinity at St Andrews. While Aikenhead was under sentence, Mr Lorimer preached before the Lord Chancellor and other judges and chief magistrates, _On the Reverence due to Jesus Christ_, being a sermon apropos to the occasion; and we find in this discourse not one word hinting at charity or mercy for Aikenhead, but much to encourage the audience in an opposite temper. It would appear, however, that the preacher afterwards found some cause for vindicating himself from a concern in bringing about the death of Aikenhead, and therefore, when he published his sermon, he gave a preface, in which he at once justified the course which had been taken with the youth, and tried to shew that he, and at least one other clergyman, had tried to get the punishment commuted. The prosecution, he tells us, was undertaken entirely on public grounds, in order to put down a ‘plague of blasphemous deism’ which had come to Edinburgh. The magistrates, being informed of the progress of this pestilence among the young men, had two of them apprehended. ‘One [John Fraser] made an excuse ... humbly confessed that it was a great sin for him to have uttered with his mouth such words of blasphemy against the Lord; professed his hearty repentance ... and so the government pardoned him, but withal ordered that he should confess his sin, and do public penance in all the churches in Edinburgh. And I believe the other might have been pardoned also, if he had followed the example of his companion; but he continued sullen and obstinate, I think for some months; and the party were said to be so very bold and insolent, as to come in the night and call to him by name at his chamber-window in the prison, and to tell him that he had a good cause, and to exhort him to stand to it, and suffer for it bravely. This influenced the government to execute the law.’

With regard to efforts in favour of Aikenhead, Mr Lorimer’s statement is as follows: ‘I am sure the ministers of the Established Church used him with an affectionate tenderness, and took much pains with him to bring him to faith and repentance, and to save his soul; yea, and some of the ministers, to my certain knowledge, and particularly the late reverend, learned, prudent, peaceable, and pious Mr George Meldrum, then minister of the Tron Church, interceded for him with the government, and solicited for his pardon; and when that could not be obtained, he desired a reprieve for him, and I joined with him in it. This was the day before his execution. The chancellor was willing to have granted him a reprieve, but could not do it without the advice of the Privy Council and judges; and, to shew his willingness, he called the Council and judges, who debated the matter, and then carried it by a plurality of votes for his execution, according to the sentence of the judges, that there might be a stop put to the spreading of that contagion of blasphemy.’[196]

Mr Lorimer’s and Lord Anstruther’s statements are somewhat discrepant, and yet not perhaps irreconcilable. It may be true that, at the last moment, _one_ of the city clergy, accompanied by an English stranger, tried to raise his voice for mercy. It is evident, however, that no very decided effort of the kind was made, for the records of the Privy Council contain no entry on the subject, although, only three days before Aikenhead’s execution, we find in them a reprieve formally granted to one Thomas Weir, sentenced for housebreaking. The statement itself, implying a movement entirely exceptive, only makes the more certain the remarkable fact, derived from Lord Anstruther’s statement, that the clergy, _as a body_, did not intercede, but ‘spoke and preached for cutting him off,’ for which reason the civil authorities were unable to save him. The clergy thus appear unmistakably in the character of the persecutors of Aikenhead, and as those on whom, next to Sir James Steuart, rests the guilt of his blood.

The _Postman_, a journal of the day, relates the last moments of the unhappy young man. ‘He walked thither [to the place of execution—a mile from the prison] on foot, between a strong guard of fusiliers drawn up in two lines. Several ministers assisted him in his last moments; and, according to all human appearance, he died with all the marks of a true penitent. When he was called out of the prison to the City Council-house, before his going to the place of execution, as is usual on such occasions, he delivered his thoughts at large in a paper written by him, and signed with his own hand, and then requested the ministers that were present [Sidenote: 1696.] to pray for him, which they did; and afterwards he himself prayed, and several times invocated the blessed Trinity, as he did likewise at the place of execution, holding all the time the Holy Bible in his hand; and, being executed, he was buried at the foot of the gallows.’

[Sidenote: 1697. JAN. 16.]

There had been for two years under process in the Court of Session a case in which a husband was sued for return of a deceased wife’s _tocher_ of eight thousand merks (£444, 8_s._ 10_d._⅔), and her _paraphernalia_ or things pertaining to her person. It came, on this occasion, to be debated what articles belonging to a married woman were to be considered as _paraphernalia_, or _jocalia_, and so destined in a particular way in case of her decease. The Lords, after long deliberation, fixed on a rule to be observed in future cases, having a regard, on the one hand, to ‘the dignity of wives,’ and, on the other, to the restraining of extravagances. First was ‘the _mundus_ or _vestitus muliebris_—namely, all the body-clothes belonging to the wife, acquired by her at any time, whether in this or any prior marriage, or in virginity or viduity; and whatever other ornaments or other things were peculiar or proper to her person, and not proper to men’s use or wearing, as necklaces, earrings, breast-jewels, gold chains, bracelets, &c. Under childbed linens, as _paraphernal_ and proper to the wife, are to be understood only the linen on the wife’s person in childbed, but not the linens on the child itself, nor on the bed or room, which are to be reckoned as common movables; therefore found the child’s spoon, porringer, and whistle contained in the condescendence [in this special case] are not paraphernal, but fall under the communion of goods; but that ribbons, cut or uncut, are paraphernal, and belong to the wife, unless the husband were a merchant. All the other articles that are of their own nature of promiscuous and common use, either to men or women, are not paraphernal, but fall under the communion of goods, unless they become peculiar and paraphernal by the gift and appropriation of the husband to her, such as a marriage-watch, rings, jewels, and medals. A purse of gold or other movables that, by the gift of a former husband, became properly the wife’s goods and paraphernal, exclusive of the husband, are only to be reckoned as common movables _quoad_ a second husband, unless they be of new gifted and appropriated by him to the wife again. Such gifts and presents as one gives to his bride before or on the day of the marriage, are paraphernal and irrevokable by the husband [Sidenote: 1697.] during that marriage, and belong only to the wife and her executors; but any gifts by the husband to the wife after the marriage-day are revokable, either by the husband making use of them himself, or taking them back during the marriage; but if the wife be in possession of them during the marriage or at her death, the same are not revokable by the husband thereafter. Cabinets, coffers, &c., for holding the paraphernalia, are not paraphernalia, but fall under the communion of goods. Some of the Lords were for making anything given the next morning after the marriage, paraphernalia, called the _morning gift_ in our law; but the Lords esteemed them man and wife then, and [the gift] so irrevokable.’[197]

[Sidenote: JAN. 30.]

John, late Archbishop of Glasgow, having applied to the king for permission to go to Scotland ‘for recovery of his health,’ obtained a letter granting him the desired liberty under certain restrictions. On the ensuing 16th of March, there is an ordinance of the Privy Council, appointing the town of Cupar, in Fife, and four miles about the same, as the future residence of the ex-prelate, provided he give sufficient caution for keeping within these bounds, and entering into no contrivance or correspondence against the government.

On the 15th of April, the archbishop, having found no ‘convenient lodging for his numerous family in Cupar,’ was permitted, on his petition, to reside in the mansion of Airth, under the same conditions. Two months later, this was changed to ‘the mansion-house of Gogar, near to Airth, within the shire of Clackmannan.’ The archbishop does not appear to have been released from his partial restraint till February 1701.[198]

[Sidenote: FEB.]

Commenced an inquiry by a commission from the Privy Council into the celebrated case of _Bargarran’s Daughter_—namely, Christian Shaw, a girl of eleven years old, the daughter of John Shaw of Bargarran, in Renfrewshire. A solemn importance was thus given to circumstances which, if they took place now, would be slighted by persons in authority, and scarcely heard of beyond the parish, or at most the county. It was, however, a case highly characteristic of the age and country in which it happened.

In the parish of Erskine, on the south bank of the Clyde, stands Bargarran House, a small old-fashioned mansion, with some [Sidenote: 1697.] inferior buildings attached, the whole being enclosed, after the fashion of a time not long gone by, in a wall capable of some defence. Here dwelt John Shaw, a man of moderate landed estate, with his wife and a few young children. His daughter Christian had as yet attracted no particular attention from her parents or neighbours, though observed to be a child of lively character and ‘well-inclined.’

One day (August 17, 1696), little Christian having informed her mother of a petty theft committed by a servant, the woman broke out upon her with frightful violence, wishing her soul might be harled [dragged] through hell, and thrice imprecating the curse of God upon her. Considering the pious feelings of old and young in that age, we shall see how such an assault of terrible words might well impress the mind of a child, to whom all such violences must have been a novelty. The results, however, were of a kind which could scarcely have been anticipated. Five days afterwards, when Christian had been a short while in bed, and asleep, she suddenly started up with a great cry, calling, ‘Help! help!’ and immediately sprung into the air, in a manner astonishing to her parents and others who were in the room. Then being put into another bed, she remained stiff and to appearance insensible for half an hour; after which, for forty-eight hours, she continued restless, complaining of violent pains through her whole body, or, if she dozed for a moment, immediately starting up with the same cry of irrepressible terror, ‘Help! help!’

For eight days the child had fits of extreme violence, under which she was ‘often so bent and rigid that she stood like a bow on her feet and neck at once,’ and continued without the power of speech, except at short intervals, during which she seemed perfectly well. A doctor and apothecary were brought to her from Paisley; but their bleedings and other applications had no perceptible effect. By and by, her troubles assumed a different aspect. She seemed to be wrestling and fighting with an unseen enemy, and there were risings and fallings of her belly, and strange shakings of her whole body, that struck the beholders with consternation. She now began, in her fits, to denounce Catherine Campbell, the woman-servant, and an old woman of evil fame, named Agnes Naismith, as the cause of her torments, alleging that they were present in person cutting her side, when in reality they were at a distance. At this crisis, fully two months after the beginning of her ailments, her parents took her to Glasgow, to consult an eminent physician, named Brisbane, [Sidenote: 1697.] regarding her case. He states in his deposition,[199] that at first he thought the child quite well; but after a few minutes, she announced a coming fit, and did soon after fall into convulsions, accompanied by heavy groanings and murmurings against two women named Campbell and Naismith; all of which he thought ‘reducible to the effect of a hypochondriac melancholy.’ He gave some medicines suitable to his conception of the case, and for eight days, during which the girl remained in Glasgow, she was comparatively well, as well as for eight days after her return home. Then the fits returned with even increased violence; she became as stiff as a corpse, without sense or motion; her tongue would be drawn out of her mouth to a prodigious length, while her teeth set firmly upon it; at other times it was drawn far back into her mouth. Her parents set out with her again to Glasgow, that she might be under the doctor’s care; but as they were going, a new fact presented itself. She spat or took from her mouth, every now and then, parcels of hair of different colours, which she declared her two tormentors were trying to force down her throat. She had also fainting-fits every quarter of an hour. Dr Brisbane saw her again (November 12), and from that time for some weeks was frequently with her. He says: ‘I observed her narrowly, and was confident she had no human correspondent to subminister the straw, wool, cinders, hay, feathers, and such like trash to her; all which, upon several occasions, I have seen her pull out of her mouth in considerable quantities, sometimes after several fits, and sometimes after no fit at all, whilst she was discoursing with us; and for the most part she pulled out those things without being wet in the least; nay, rather as if they had been dried with care and art; for one time, as I remember, when I was discoursing with her, she gave me a cinder out of her mouth, not only dry, but hot, much above the degree of the natural warmth of a human body.’ ‘Were it not,’ he adds, ‘for the hairs, hay, straw, and other things wholly contrary to human nature, I should not despair to reduce all the other symptoms to their proper classes in the catalogue of human diseases.’ Thereafter, as we are further informed, there were put out of her mouth bones of various sorts and sizes, small sticks of candle-fir, some stable-dung mingled with hay, a quantity of fowl’s feathers, a gravel-stone, a whole gall-nut, and some egg-shells.

[Sidenote: 1697.]

Sometimes, during her fits, she would fall a-reasoning, as it were, with Catherine Campbell about the course she was pursuing, reading and quoting Scripture to her with much pertinence, and entreating a return of their old friendship. The command which she shewed of the language of the Bible struck the bystanders as wonderful for such a child; but they easily accounted for it. ‘We doubt not,’ says the narrator of the case, ‘that the Lord did, by his good spirit, graciously afford her a more than ordinary measure of assistance.’

Before leaving Glasgow for the second time, she had begun to speak of other persons as among her tormentors, naming two, Alexander and James Anderson, and describing other two whose names she did not know.

Returned to Bargarran about the 12th of December, she was at ease for about a week, and then fell into worse fits than ever. She now saw the devil in various shapes threatening to devour her. Her face and body underwent frightful contortions. She would point to places where her tormentors were standing, wondering why others did not see them as well as she. One of these ideal tormentors, Agnes Naismith, came in the body to see the child, spoke kindly, and prayed God to restore her health; after which Christian always spoke of her as her defender from the rest. Catherine Campbell was of a different spirit. She could by no means be prevailed on to pray for the child, but cursed her and all her family, imprecating the devil to let her never grow better, for all the trouble she had brought upon herself. This woman being soon after imprisoned, it seemed as if from that time she also disappeared from among the child’s tormentors. We are carefully informed that in her pocket was found a ball of hair, which was thrown into the fire, and after that time the child vomited no more hair.

The devil’s doings at Bargarran having now effectually roused public attention, the presbytery sent relays of their members to be present in the house, and lend all possible spiritual help. One evening, Christian was suddenly carried off with an unaccountable motion through the chamber and hall, down the long winding stair, to the outer gate, laughing wildly, while ‘her feet did not touch the ground, so far as anybody was able to discern.’ She was brought back in a state of rigidity, and declared when she recovered that she had felt as one carried in a swing. On the ensuing evening, she was carried off in the same manner, and borne to the top of the house; thence, as she stated, by some men [Sidenote: 1697.] and women, down to the outer gate, where, as formerly, she was found lying like one dead. The design of her bearers, she said, was to throw her into the well, when the world would believe she had drowned herself. On a third occasion, she moved in the same unaccountable manner down to the cellar, when the minister, trying to bring her up again, felt as if some one were pulling her back out of his arms. On several occasions, she spoke of things which she had no visible means of knowing, but which were found to be true, thus manifesting one of the assigned proofs of possession, and of course further confirming the general belief regarding her ailments and their cause. She said that some one spoke over her head, and distinctly told her those things.

The matter having been reported with full particulars to the Privy Council, the commission before spoken of was issued, and on the 5th February it came to Bargarran, under the presidency of Lord Blantyre, who was the principal man in the parish. Catherine Campbell, Agnes Naismith, a low man called Anderson, and his daughter Elizabeth, Margaret Fulton, James Lindsay, and a Highland beggar-man, all of whom had been described as among Christian’s tormentors, were brought forward and confronted with her; when it was fully seen that, on any of these persons touching her, she fell into fits, but not when she was touched by any other person. It is stated that, even when she was muffled up, she distinguished that it was the Highland beggar who touched her. The list of the culprits, however, was not yet complete. There was a boy called Thomas Lindsay, who for a half-penny would pronounce a charm, and turn himself about _withershins_, or contrary to the direction of the sun, and so stop a plough, and cause the horse to break the yoke. He was taken up, and speedily confessed being in paction with the devil, and bearing his marks. At the same time, Elizabeth Anderson confessed that she had been at several meetings with the devil, and declared her father and the Highland beggar to have been active instruments for tormenting Christian Shaw. There had been one particular meeting of witches with the devil in the orchard of Bargarran, where the plan for the affliction of the child had been made up. Amongst the delinquents was a woman of rather superior character, a midwife, commonly called Maggie Lang, together with her daughter, named Martha Semple. These two women, hearing they were accused, came to Bargarran, to demonstrate their innocence; nor could Christian at first accuse Maggie; but after a while, a ball of hair was found where she had sat, and the [Sidenote: 1697.] afflicted girl declared this to be a charm which had hitherto imposed silence upon her. Now that the charm was broken, she readily pronounced that Mrs Lang had been amongst her tormentors.

In the midst of these proceedings, by order of the presbytery, a solemn fast was kept in Erskine parish, with a series of religious services in the church. Christian was present all day, without making any particular demonstrations.

On the 18th of February—to pursue the contemporary narration—‘she being in a light-headed fit, said the devil now appeared to her in the shape of a man; whereupon being struck in great fear and consternation, she was desired to pray with an audible voice: “The Lord rebuke thee, Satan!” which trying to do, she presently lost the power of her speech, her teeth being set, and her tongue drawn back into her throat; and attempting it again, she was immediately seized with another severe fit, in which, her eyes being twisted almost round, she fell down as one dead, struggling with her feet and hands, and, getting up again suddenly, was hurried violently to and fro through the room, deaf and blind, yet was speaking to some invisible creature about her, saying: “With the Lord’s strength, thou shalt neither put straw nor sticks into my mouth.” After this she cried in a pitiful manner: “The bee hath stung me.” Then, presently sitting down, and untying her stockings, she put her hand to that part which had been nipped or pinched; upon which the spectators discerned the lively marks of nails, deeply imprinted on that same part of her leg. When she came to herself, she declared that something spoke to her as it were over her head, and told her it was Mr M. in a neighbouring parish (naming the place) that had appeared to her, and pinched her leg in the likeness of a bee.’

At another time, while speaking with an unseen tormentor, she asked how she had got those red sleeves; then, making a plunge along the bed at the supposed witch, she was heard as it were tearing off a piece of cloth, when presently a piece of red cloth rent in two was seen in her hands, to the amazement of the bystanders, who were certain there had been no such cloth in the room before.

On the 28th of March, while the inquiries of the commission were still going on, Christian Shaw all at once recovered her usual health; nor did she ever again complain of being afflicted in this manner.

The case was in due time formally prepared for trial; and seven persons were brought before an assize at Paisley, with the Lord Advocate as prosecutor, and an advocate assigned, according to the custom of Scotland, for the defence of the accused. It was a new commission which sat in judgment, comprehending, we are told, several persons not only ‘of honour,’ but ‘of singular knowledge and experience.’ The witnesses were carefully examined; full time was allowed to every part of the process, which lasted twenty hours; and six hours more were spent by the jury in deliberating on their verdict. The crimes charged were the murders of several children and persons of mature age, including a minister, and the tormenting of several persons, and particularly of Bargarran’s daughter. It is alleged by the contemporary narrator, Francis Cullen, advocate, that all things were carried on ‘with tenderness and moderation;’ yet the result was that the alleged facts were found to be fully proved, and a judgment of guilty was given.

It is fitting to remember here, that the Lord Advocate, Sir James Steuart, in his address to the jury, holds all those instances of clairvoyance and of flying locomotion which have been mentioned, as completely proved, and speaks as having no doubt of the murders and torments effected by the accused. He insisted strongly on the devil’s marks which had been found upon their persons; also on the coincidence between many things alleged by Christian Shaw and what the witches had confessed. From such records of the trial as we have, it fully appears that the whole affair was gone about in a reasoning way: the premises granted, everything done and said was right, as far as correct logic could make it so.

On the 10th of June, on the Gallow Green of Paisley, a gibbet and a fire were prepared together. Five persons, including Maggie Lang, were brought out and hung for a few minutes on the one, then cut down and burned in the other. A man called John Reid would have made a sixth victim, if he had not been found that morning dead in his cell, hanging to a pin in the wall by his handkerchief, and believed to have been strangled by the devil. And so ended the tragedy of _Bargarran’s Daughter_.

The case has usually, in recent times, been treated as one in which there were no other elements than a wicked imposture on her part, and some insane delusions on that of the confessing victims; but probably in these times, when the phenomena of mesmerism have forced themselves upon the belief of a large and respectable portion of society, it will be admitted as more likely [Sidenote: 1697.] that the maledictions of Campbell threw the child into an abnormal condition, in which the ordinary beliefs of her age made her sincerely consider herself as a victim of diabolic malice. How far she might be tempted to put on appearances and make allegations, in order to convince others of what she felt and believed, it would be difficult to say. To those who regard the whole affair as imposture, an extremely interesting problem is presented for solution by the original documents, in which the depositions of witnesses are given—namely, how the fallaciousness of so much, and, to appearance, so good testimony on pure points of fact, is to be reconciled with any remaining value in testimony as the verifier of the great bulk of what we think we know.

[Sidenote: MAR.]

About thirty years before this date, a certain Sir Alexander M‘Culloch of Myreton, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, with two sons, named Godfrey and John, attracted the attention of the authorities by some frightfully violent proceedings against a Lady Cardiness and her two sons, William and Alexander Gordon, for the purpose of getting them extruded from their lands.[200] Godfrey in time succeeded to the title, and to all the violent passions of his father; but his property was wholly compromised for the benefit of his creditors, who declared it to be scarcely sufficient to pay his debts. Desperate for a subsistence, he attempted, in the late reign, by ‘insinuations with the Chancellor Perth,’ and putting his son to the Catholic school in Holyrood Palace, to obtain some favour from the law, and succeeded so far as to get assigned to him a yearly aliment of five hundred merks (about £28) out of his lands, being allowed at the same time to take possession of the family mansion of Bardarroch. From a complaint brought against him in July 1689 before the Privy Council, it would appear that he intromitted with the rents of the estate, and did no small amount of damage to the growing timber; moreover, he attempted to embezzle the writs of the property, with the design of annihilating the claims of his creditors. Insufferable as his conduct was, the Council assigned him six hundred merks of aliment, but only on condition of his immediately leaving Bardarroch, and giving up the writs of the estate. Yielding in no point to their decree, he was soon after ordered to be summarily ejected by the sheriff.[201]