Chapter XI: Part 11

Bessie Roy, nurse in the family of Lesly of Balquhain, was tried for sundry points of witchcraft, leading to the death of several persons. One minor offence, particularly insisted on in this woman’s case, was her being ‘a common away-taker of women’s milk.’ It was alleged that, while living in the family of William King at Barra, she had bewitched away the milk of a poor woman named Bessie Steel, who came seeking alms. ‘Sitting down by the fire,’ says the dittay, ‘to give her bairn souk [suck], thou being ane nourice thyself, and perceiving the poor woman to have mair abundance of milk than thou had; and seeing that the goodwife, thy hussie [housewife], should have deteinit the poor woman and given her the bairn to foster; thou, by thy devilish incantations and witchcraft, abstracted and took away her milk. And immediately after the poor woman was past out of the house, she perceived her milk to be taken away, came again to the said house, and compleinit to the goodwife, that the nurse had taken away her milk, and said: “Gif she were not restorit to her milk, she should divulgate the same through the country, and shaw how ye had used her.” And thou, fearing thy devilish craft to be revealed, said to the poor woman: “Gif I have thy milk, come sic a night to me to this house, and ask it for God’s sake, and thou sall have it.” Likeas the poor woman, being glad to receive her milk again, came that same night as thou appointed her, and lay in the house beside ye all night; and about the mids of the night, thou cried upon her and wakened her, and bade her receive her milk; and incontinent she wakened, and her paps sprang out full of milk, and remained with her thereafter.’

Bessie was pronounced innocent by the jury.--_Pit._

* * * * *

The great Highland family now represented by the Marquis of Breadalbane had at this time for its head Sir Duncan Campbell of Glenurchy, ordinarily called _Donacha Dhu nan Curich_ (Black Duncan of the Cowl), a man of considerable force of character, and, for his time, large means, who died at an advanced age in 1631. He was distinguished for building, planting, and _improving_; had the taste to hire artists to decorate his house; and, some years after this time, was one of the most prominent patrons of the Scottish Vandyke, George Jameson.

[Sidenote: 1590.]

The household books of this great Celtic chief exhibit his style of life about the time here noted. His rents were principally paid in kind, and the corn, cattle, and poultry thus supplied by the tenantry went directly to the support of the laird and his household. ‘In 1590, the family spent their time between Balloch and Finlarig. The oatmeal consumed was 364 bolls; the malt, 207 bolls (deducting a small quantity of _struck_ barley used in the kitchen). They used 90 beeves (“neats,” “stirks,” or “fed oxen”), more than two-thirds consumed fresh; 20 swine; 200 sheep; 424 salmon, far the greater portion being from the western rivers; 15,000 herrings; 30 dozen of hard fish; 1805 “heads” of cheese, new and old, weighing 325 stone; 49 stones of butter; 26 dozen loaves of wheaten bread; of wheat flour, 3-1/4 bolls. The wine brought from Dundee was claret and white wine, old and new, in no very large quantities. [The malt furnished abundance of ale of three kinds--ostler ale, household ale, and best ale, serving, doubtless, for the different grades of persons in the family.] Of spices and sweetmeats, we find only notice on one occasion of small quantities of saffron, mace, ginger, pepper, “raises of cure,” plumdamas, and _one_ sugar-loaf.’[177]

While the Laird of Glenurchy thus kept house in Strathtay, Lord Lovat supported a _ménage_ not greatly different in Inverness-shire. The weekly expenditure of provisions in his house included seven bolls of malt, seven bolls of meal, and one of flour. Each year seventy beeves were consumed, besides venison, fish, poultry, kid, lamb, veal, and all sorts of feathered game in profusion. His lordship imported wines, sugars, and spices from France, in return for the salmon produced by his rivers. He was celebrated for a liberal hospitality; and when he died in 1631, five thousand armed followers and friends attended his funeral, for all of whom there would be entertainment provided.[178]

The rude abundance shewn in these two establishments, taken in connection with the account presently to be given of the outward state of the Marquis of Huntly,[179] the reports afforded by the Water Poet of the hospitalities he experienced in the braes of Aberdeenshire and Morayshire,[180] and other particulars involved in our chronicle, ought somewhat to modify the prevalent notions as to the poverty of the Celtic part of Scotland in this age. There was, indeed, no manufacturing industry worth speaking of; but the natural wealth of the country, the cattle, the wild animals, and the grain, seem to have furnished the people with no inconsiderable share of the comforts of life. It will be found, too, that the mansions of Glenurchy and Huntly, a few years after this date, exhibited elegant architecture and decoration.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: 1590.

OCT.]

The rich temporalities of the Abbey of Deir, in Aberdeenshire, had been held since the Reformation by one who was no friend to the Reformed clergy--Robert Keith, second son of William, fourth Earl Marischal. In 1587, they had been erected into a temporal lordship, under the name of the Lordship of Altrie, in their possessor’s favour, to descend, after his death, to his nephew, George Earl Marischal. There was one malcontent with this arrangement--Robert Keith of Benholm, brother of the earl--probably because he had concluded in his own mind that the abbey-lands formed a more appropriate estate for a cadet than for the chief of the family, the latter being already a rich man. It would appear, however, that the earl was understood to have requited the king for the gift by the splendid style in which he conducted his ambassage to Denmark, when negotiating the royal marriage.

At the present date, Robert Keith made an attempt to take forcible possession of the abbey--an act which would have been rash and dangerous at any ordinary time, but might look feasible enough in an age so full of violences of all kinds as the present. We learn that he kept the abbey for six weeks, at the end of which he was driven out by an armed company brought against him by the Earl Marischal. Then retiring to the castle of Fedderat, he stood a siege of three days, which ended in his coming to a truce with his brother, upon what terms does not appear.

The abbacy was well worthy of a struggle, as in 1565 it comprehended a rental of £572, 8s. 6d., with thirteen and a half bolls of wheat, fourteen chalders and ten bolls of beir, and sixty-three chalders nine bolls of meal. The revenue of the earldom to which this became an addition on the death of Lord Altrie in 1593, has been stated at an amount for which there may be some difficulty in obtaining credence--namely, 270,000 merks. Lord Marischal could enter Scotland at Berwick, and travel in the leisurely style of those days through the country to John o’ Groat’s House, and never need to take a meal or a night’s rest off his own lands. That he used his wealth generously, no one can deny, when it is remembered that he bestowed part of it in founding the Marischal College in Aberdeen. Yet, in the eyes of the common people, a weird hung over him. It was thought he did ill to stain his hands with the plunder of the old Cistercian monastery on the banks of the Ugie.

[Sidenote: 1590.]

‘This Earl George, his first wife, daughter to the Lord Home, being a woman of a high spirit and of a tender conscience, forbids her husband to have such a consuming moth in his house as was the sacrilegious meddling with the abbacy of Deir. But fourteen score chalders of meal and beir was a sore tentation; and he could not weel endure the rendering back of such a morsel. Upon his absolute refusal of her demand, she had this vision ... she saw a great number of religious men, in their habit, come forth of that abbey to the strong craig of Dunnottar, which is the principal residence of that family. She also saw them set themselves round about the rock, to get it down and demolish it, having no instruments but only penknives; wherewith they foolishly (as it seemed to her) began to pick at the craig. She smiled to see them intend so fruitless an enterprise, and went to call her husband, to scoff and jeer them out of it. When she had fand him, and brought him to see these silly monks at their foolish work, behold! the whole craig, with all his strong and stately buildings, was by their penknives undermined and fallen in the sea, so as there remained nothing but the rack of their rich furniture and stuff floating on the waves of a raging and tempestuous sea.’[181]

The earl is believed to have mocked the popular notions and his wife’s foreboding dream, by inscribing on a tower he built at Deir, and likewise on the wall of his new college, the defying legend:

THAY. HAIF. SAID : QUHAT. SAY. THAY : LAT. THAME. SAY.

The greatness of the Keith Marischal family probably seemed to him as firmly set as the old Castle of Dunnottar itself on its conglomerate basis beside the sea. When the above story was put down in writing, sixty years had elapsed, and the narrator could not but remark the reduction which the civil war and usurpation of Cromwell had by that time wrought upon the once enormous wealth of the house of Keith Marischal. What would he have felt, could he have known that in sixty years from his time, the family would be out of lands and titles, exiles from their native country; or that in sixty more, there would not be a male descendant of the Earls Marischal in existence, of cadency later than the fifteenth century, while the ancient fortress of Dunnottar would stand roofless and grass-grown, and, except for the melancholy interest of the passing visitor, might as well be crumbled beneath the waves that beat upon the subjacent cliffs!

* * * * *

A series of extraordinary trials for witchcraft and other crimes commenced at this date.

[Sidenote: 1590.]

One David Seaton, dwelling in Tranent, suspected his servant-maid, Geilie Duncan, of a supernatural power of curing sickness, and, having subjected her to the torture of the pilniewinks (a screw for the fingers), soon extorted from her, not only a confession that the devil had given her the power of a witch, but information inculpating a number of persons in the like criminality. Among these were John Fian (_alias_ Cunningham), schoolmaster at Prestonpans; Agnes Sampson, a midwife at Keith; Barbara Napier, the wife of a citizen of Edinburgh; and Eupham M‘Calyean, a lady of rank, daughter of a deceased judge of the Court of Session. The confessions of these persons, for the most part wrung from them by torture, form a strange jumble of possible and impossible, of horrible and ludicrous things; nor are they even devoid of historical importance, seeing that they involved the honour of the Earl of Bothwell, who was thus apparently led into those troubles from which he never got free, and by which the peace of the king and his kingdom was for some years seriously compromised.

Fian, who was a young man, confessed to some wicked arts which he had practised for obtaining the love of a young woman of his neighbourhood. There was nothing in them or their effects but what is easily reconcilable with natural fact, even to the striking of a rival with a sort of madness, under which, when brought into the king’s chamber, where Fian was under examination, he fell abounding and capering with an energy which it required many persons to restrain, and this for an hour together, at the end of which he declared that he had been in a sound sleep. But Fian also admitted, though only under torture, his having had conferences with the devil; he had attended various meetings of witches with the Enemy of Man, some of which took place in North Berwick Kirk, and on these occasions he had acted as registrar or clerk of proceedings. He had also been one of a party of witches which went off from Prestonpans one night to a ship at sea, which they sunk by their incantations. He had chased a cat at Tranent, with the design of throwing it into the sea, in order to raise storms for the destruction of shipping; and in this chase it was alleged that he was borne above the ground, and had leaped a wall, the head of which he could not, but for witchcraft, have touched with his hand. Out of many facts laid to his charge at his trial, there is one which modern science has no difficulty in explaining upon natural principles--‘Passing to Tranent on horseback, and ane man with him, [he] by his devilish craft, raisit up four candles upon the horse’s twa lugs [ears], and ane other candle upon the staff whilk the man had in his hand, and gave sic licht as gif it had been daylicht; like as the said candles returnit with the said man at his hame-coming, and causit him fall dead at the entry within the house.’

[Sidenote: 1590.]

After his first examination and confession, Fian was put into a separate room, where he quickly came to a state of penitence, renounced the devil and his works, and professed to have returned to God. Next day he told his keepers that he had had a vision of the devil, who, finding him a determined rebel against his authority, said: ‘Once ere thou die thou shalt be mine;’ after which he broke a white wand which he held in his hand, and vanished. Fian soon after contrived to escape from prison, but was retaken and brought back, when, being found to deny his former confession, the king expressed his belief that he must have entered into a new compact with the Prince of Darkness. His person was searched for marks, but in vain; and he was then subjected to tortures of the direst kind, with a view to bringing him back to his confession. The nails of the poor wretch were torn away with pincers; needles were thrust up to the heads in his fingers, and his legs were crushed in the boots till ‘the blood and marrow spouted forth.’ He resisted all, and thus only impressed the king and others with the conviction that the devil had entered into his heart. He was then arraigned, condemned, and burned.

The trials of three of the women inculpated took place in the course of a few ensuing months--that of Agnes Sampson on the 27th of January 1591. At the previous examinations, the king presided, manifesting a deep interest in the declarations of the prisoners, as if he read therein the materials of a new branch of science; and, indeed, there can be little doubt that what he now learned formed the groundwork of his subsequent work on _Demonology_.

The cases were the more remarkable on account of the apparent character and station of the culprits. Sampson was a grave, matron-like woman, who gave composed, pertinent answers to all that was put to her; while Napier and M‘Calyean belonged to the upper class of society. Sampson’s dittay consists of no fewer than fifty-three articles, each charging some distinct form or act of sorcery, most of them cures or attempts to cure, or else prophecies of events which actually came to pass, all being done with the assistance of her familiar, the devil. The various articles, numerous as they are, must have been founded on the confessions previously drawn from the accused by means of the inhuman torture of a rope twisted round the head, which she is said to have endured for an hour unmoved. It was alleged that for her cures she uttered incantations in rhyme; but these appear to have had nothing devilish in them, one being merely a rough version of the Apostles’ Creed, while another runs as follows:

‘All kinds of ills that ever may be,
In Christ’s name I conjure ye;
I conjure ye baith mair and less,
With all the vertues of the Mess;
And richt sae, by the nailis sae,
That nailit Jesus and nae mae;

[Sidenote: 1590.]

And richt sae, by the samen blude,
That reekit o’er the ruthful rood:
Furth of the flesh and of the bane,
And in the erd and in the stane,
I conjure ye in God’s name!’

In two or three cases, one is reminded of the doctrines of modern mesmerism. Being called to see a sick boy at Prestonpans, she only _graipit him_--that is, felt him over--and he was healed. Some cattle she had cured by going up between them in their stalls, ‘straking their backs and wames [stroking their backs and bellies], and saying _Ave Maria_ oft ower.’ The thirty-fifth count charges her with ‘curing Robert Kerse in Dalkeith, wha was heavily tormented with witchcraft and disease laid on him by ane westland warlock, when he was in Dumfries; whilk sickness she took upon herself, and keepit with great groaning and torment till the morn; on whilk time there was ane great din heard in the house; whilk sickness she cast off herself in the close, to the effect ane cat or dog might have gotten the same; and, notwithstanding, the same was laid upon Alexander Douglas in Dalkeith, wha dwined and departed therewith, and the said Robert Kerse was made hale.’

[Sidenote: 1590.]

A curious affair is related as taking place at a gentleman’s house near Edinburgh. ‘When she was sent for to heal the auld Lady Edmestone, when she lay sick, before the said Agnes departit she tauld to the gentlewomen that she should tell them that night whether the lady wald heal or nocht; and appointit them to be in the garden after supper, betwix five and sax at even. She passit to the garden to devise upon her prayer, on what time she chargit the devil, calling him _Elva_, to come and speak to her; wha came in ower the dyke, in likeness of ane dog, and came sae near her, that she was afraid, and chargit him “on the law that he lived on,” to come nae nearer, but to answer her; and she demandit “whether the lady wald live or not.” He said: “Her days were gane.” When he demandit: “Gif the gentlewomen her dochters, where they were?” And she said: “That the gentlewomen said, that they were to be there.” He answerit: “Ane of them sould be in peril, and that he sould have ane of them.” She answerit: “It sould not be sae;” and sae [he] departit frae her yowling. Frae this time till after supper, he remainit in the wall [well]. When the gentlewomen came in, the dog came out of the wall, and appearit to them; whereat they were affrayit. In the meantime, ane of the said gentlewomen, the Lady Torsonce, ran to the wall, being forcit and drawn by the devil, wha wald have drownit her, were not the said Agnes and the rest of the gentlewomen gat ane grip of her, and with all their forces drew her back again, whilk made them all affrayit. The dog passit away thereafter with ane yowl. Then she said to the gentlewomen that she could not help the lady, in respect that her prayer stoppit, and that she was sorry for it....’

On Sampson’s trial, some of the transactions first revealed in Fian’s case came out in greater detail, particularly the night-meeting of the sorcerers of the district with their grisly master at North Berwick Kirk. What follows was the woman’s own confession before the king: ‘The devil, in man’s likeness, met her going out in the fields from her awn house in Keith, betwix five and sax at even, being her alane, and commandit her to be at North Berwick Kirk the next nicht. She passit there on horseback, convoyit by her good-son, called John Couper, and lichtit at the kirk-yard: a little before she came to it, about eleven hours at even, they dancit alangs the kirk-yard. Geilie Duncan playit to them on ane trump. John Fian, missalit [masked], led all the rest; the said Agnes and her daughter followit next; besides thir, wee [little] Kate Gray, George Mowat’s wife, Robert Grierson, Catherine Duncan, Bessie Wright, Isobel Gylour, John Ramsay’s wife, Annie Richardson, Jonet Gaw, Nicol Murray’s wife tailor, Christian Carrington _alias_ Lukit, Maisie Aitchison, Marion Paterson, Alexander Whitelaw, Marion Nicholson, Marion Bailie, Jonet Nicholson, John Graymeal, Isobel Lauder, Helen White, Margaret Thomson, Marion Shiel, Helen Lauder, Archy Hennel’s wife, Duncan Buchanan, Marion Congleton, Bessie Gullan, Bessie Brown the smith’s wife, Thomas Burnhill and his wife, Gilbert M‘Gill, John M‘Gill, Catherine M’Gill, with the rest of their complices, above ane hundred persons, whereof there was sax men, and all the rest women. The women first made their homage, and next the men. The men were turned nine times withershins about [contrary to the direction of the sun], and the women sax times.’ Another account, from Sampson’s confessions, states that the witches took hands and danced a reel to Geilie Duncan’s music, singing in one voice:

‘Cummer, go ye before; cummer, go ye;
Gif ye will not go before, cummer, let me.’

Geilie Duncan, being sent for, came and played the very tune over again, upon a Jew’s harp, before the king.

[Sidenote: 1590.]

To proceed with the narrative as given in the dittay: ‘John Fian blew up the doors, and blew in the lichts, whilk were like meikle black candles sticking round about the pulpit. The devil start up himself in the pulpit, like ane meikle black man, and callit every man by his name, and every ane answerit: “Here, Master.” Robert Grierson being namit, they ran all hirdy-girdy, and were angry; for it was promisit, that he should be callit “Robert the Comptroller, _alias_ Rob the Rower,” for expreming of his name. The first thing he demandit was, “Gif they [had] keepit all promise and been guid servants?” and “What they had done since the last time they had convenit?” On his command, they openit up the graves, twa within and ane without the kirk, and took off the joints of their fingers, taes, and knees, and partit them amang them; and the said Agnes Sampson gat for her part ane winding-sheet and twa joints, whilk she tint negligently. The devil commandit them to keep the joints upon them, while [till] they were dry, and then to make ane powder of them, to do evil withal. Then he commandit them to keep his commandments, whilk were to do all the evil they could.’ The devil then ordered them to perform an act of homage towards himself, which does not admit of description, but which may be said to have been at least one degree more humiliating than the kissing of the papal great toe. In the account of the confessions, it is stated that he inveighed against the king, and, being asked why he had such a hatred to him, answered: ‘By reason the king is the greatest enemy he hath in the world.’ According to the dittay, the devil ‘had on him ane gown and ane hat, whilk were baith black; and they that were assembled, part stood and part sat. John Fian was ever nearest the devil, at his left elbock; Graymeal keepit the door.’

Mrs Sampson was adjudged to be taken to the Castle-hill, and there strangled at a stake, and her body burned to ashes.

Barbara Napier was tried, May 8, 1591, on charges similar to those preferred against Sampson: she was found guilty of a few of the less important articles, but acquitted of being at the North Berwick convention and other more grave charges; nevertheless, she was condemned to death. The king was highly incensed at the partial acquittal, and came in person to court to preside at a trial of the jurors for wilful error, when they contrived to avert his wrath by throwing themselves on his mercy. After all, Napier had execution delayed on account of pregnancy, and in the end was set at liberty. Of the royal leniency on this occasion, the clergy did not fail to take note. It will be found that they twitted the king with it some time after.

[Sidenote: 1590.]

At Sampson’s trial, the only charge against her in which the safety of the king was involved, was the helping to raise a storm to stop the coming of the queen to Scotland. But now, on the trial of Napier, more serious charges were preferred. It was alleged that at Lammas last there had been a witch-meeting at Aitchison’s Haven, and in the midst of it was the devil, ‘in likeness of ane black man.’ ‘Agnes Sampson proponit the destruction of his hieness’ person, saying to the devil: “We have ane turn to do, and we wald be at it if we could, and therefore help us to it.” The devil answerit, “he sould do what he could, but it wald be lang to, because it wald be thorterit [thwarted];” and he promisit to her and them ane picture of wax, and ordenit her and them to hing, roast, and drop ane taid [toad], and to lay the drops of the taid, mixed with strong wash, ane adder-skin, and the thing in the forehead of ane new foalit foal, in his hieness’ way, where it micht drop upon his hieness’ head or his body, for his hieness’ destruction.... Agnes Sampson was appointit to mak the picture [of the king], and to give it to the devil to be enchantit, whilk she made indeed, and gave it to him; and he promisit to give it to the said Barbara [Napier] and to Effie M‘Calyean, at the next meeting, to be roastit.... There was ane appointit to seek some of his hieness’ linen claiths, to do the turn with.’ At the North Berwick meeting on All-hallow even, ‘Robert Grierson said thir words: “Where is the thing ye promisit?” meaning the picture of wax devisit for roasting and undoing his hieness’ person, whilk Agnes Sampson gave him.... He answerit: “It sould be gotten at next meeting.”... Barbara and Effie M‘Calyean gat then ane promise of the devil, that his hieness’ picture sould be gotten to them twa, and that right soon.’ It is highly noteworthy that none of these particulars appear either in the indictments against Fian and Sampson, or in the accounts of their confessions which came out about the time of their trials.

The trial of Eupham M‘Calyean commenced on the 9th of June. She was taxed with many acts of sorcery of a common kind--such as this: ‘Consulting and seeking help at Anny Sampson, ane notorious witch, for relief of your pain in the time of the birth of your twa sons, and receiving frae her to that effect ane bored stane, to be laid under the bowster, put under your head, enchanted moulds [earth] and powder put in ane piece paper, to be usit and rowit in your hair; and at the time of your drowis [throes], your guidman’s sark to be presently ta’en off him and laid wimplit round your bed feet. The whilk being practisit by you ... your sickness was casten off you, unnaturally, in the birth of your first son, upon ane dog, whilk ran away and never was seen again: and in the birth of your last son, the same practice was usit, and your natural and kindly pain unnaturally casten off you upon the wanton cat in the house; whilk likewise was never seen thereafter.’ It was also alleged of Eupham, that, eighteen years before, she had ‘consulted with Jonet Cunningham in the Canongate-head, _alias_ callit Lady Bothwell, ane auld indytit witch of the finest champ, for poisoning of Joseph Douglas of Pumfrastown, and that by ane potion of composit water whilk she send her servant John Tweedale for, to be brought up to Barbara Towers’s house in ane chopin stoup.’ What was more to the purpose, she was accused of her concern in the affair of the waxen picture, and of having conspired to raise a storm for stopping or drowning the queen on her way from Denmark. After a trial of three days, a verdict was returned against her on the chief points, and this unfortunate lady was condemned to be burned alive at a stake on the Castle-hill.

[Sidenote: 1590.]

Throughout all the proceedings connected with these trials, as far as they have been preserved, there is no appearance of any imputation against the Earl of Bothwell; but Spottiswoode affirms that Sampson, in her confessions, had attributed to him the guilt of suggesting the picture device, adding that the devil, finding his plans of no avail against the king, said: ‘Il est un homme de Dieu.’ It also appears that James discovered further matter against Bothwell, in the course of examining the wizard Richard Graham.[182] The turbulent lord was therefore committed to ward, from which he broke out only three days before the death of M’Calyean, June 22d. He was now forfaulted on a former sentence, and henceforth became a broken man, though one still able to create no small trouble to his sovereign.

A review of these circumstances leaves a strange feeling on the mind, as if we were reading that which was deficient in some of the most necessary elements of human action. It is difficult to see to what extent the so-called wizards and witches were deluders and deluded. Was there any basis in fact for the affair at North Berwick Kirk, confessed to by two or three of the culprits, though, it may be remarked, with varying circumstances? Was Geilie Duncan’s dance-tune truly repeated before the king? Or were these matters of mere hallucination? Did these women really aim at doing harm to any one, or were they only lunatics? The story reads the more inexplicably when we see so many names as of simple villagers involved in it, and find a king and all his court and clergy viewing it in a serious light.

* * * * *

This year was marked by ‘a plague amang the bestial.’--_Chron. Perth._

REIGN OF JAMES VI.: 1591-1603.

In this period we see a continuation of the struggles of the clergy for the independence of the kirk, and those of the king for a supremacy over it; the merciless measures for repressing the Catholic faith, and the desperate practices of the Catholics for relief; the weak rule of the king in all administrative matters; and the efforts of ambitious courtiers to gain an ascendency in his councils. The first transactions of any note were those arising from the condemnation and forfeiture of Stuart, Earl of Bothwell, an illegitimate cousin of the king, and nephew by his mother to the noted Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, the murderer of Darnley. Conceiving himself to be simply a victim of the jealousy of the Chancellor Maitland, this vivacious noble was indisposed to submit to his doom; he thought, if he could reach the king’s ear, he might regain lost power and place. His consequent intrusions by night into the palace, and appearances at the head of armed parties in the field, form a strange chapter in the history of the period.

Our chronicle gives details of an unfortunate collision between the houses of Huntly and Moray, which resulted in the barbarous slaughter of the latter nobleman. The loss of public esteem which the king and the chancellor sustained through their suspected concern in this affair, and through the undoubted lenity which was shewn to the Earl of Huntly, reduced the government to such a degree of weakness, that it became necessary to give way somewhat to the demands of the clergy. To obtain their support, the episcopal arrangements of 1584 were in a great measure done away with (June 1592), and James himself passed a glowing eulogium on the Presbyterian system.

Towards the end of this year, new troubles arose, in consequence of the discovery of a treasonable correspondence between the Catholic nobles, Huntly, Errol, and Angus, with the king of Spain. These chiefs, finding themselves harassed beyond endurance by the now triumphant Presbyterians, who would allow them no freedom for the exercise of their religion, resorted to the desperate step of seeking assistance from a foreign and a Catholic sovereign. Under the urgency of Elizabeth and the kirk, James proceeded with vigour against these nobles, whose force he easily dispelled, and whom he prosecuted to forfeiture, but without meaning to effect their entire destruction. As a set-off to this procedure, he demanded that Elizabeth should cease to harbour and support his enemy the Earl of Bothwell. The English queen answered this with all smoothness, but in secret conspired with certain persons in Scotland for re-instating Bothwell in power. The unruly earl obtained by this means a temporary mastery over James (July, August 1593). The king, having contrived by craft and some share of resolution to emancipate himself, once more resumed his authority. In February 1593-4, while the queen lay in confinement after her first child, James mustered some forces, and met the Bothwell faction in the field. The rebels were overthrown, and Bothwell fell into a low and despicable state.

The general lawlessness of the country at this period, and the frightful atrocities which were almost daily committed, make some appearance in the chronicle. Amidst the universal broils, the Presbyterian clergy formed a virtuous element, zealous for an improvement of manners and the advance of the ‘evangel,’ but equally so in using means to force their own convictions upon others, and often interfering with matters which did not properly fall within their province. The rashness of the synod of Fife in excommunicating the papist lords (September 1593), and the freedom of speech which the members used in discussing and railing at the king’s slackness regarding the putting down of popery, gave James great disgust. He spoke sharply of their ‘proud enterprises,’ and declared he should re-erect the estate of bishops, for the purpose of correcting the insolence of the Presbyterian clergy, and suppressing the liberties which they were abusing.

The Catholic lords, being driven to extremities, collected their vassals and appeared in the field. A royal host under the youthful Earl of Argyle was sent to meet them, and in a bloody fight which took place at Glenlivet on the 3d of October 1594, they gained a victory. This, however, only made it necessary for the king to proceed in person with a larger host against them. He spent many weeks in the north, destroying their castles and harassing their vassalage, yet in his heart was far from coming up to that standard of severity against the ancient faith which would have conciliated the Presbyterian ministers. After a little time, the papist nobles yielded to pass into exile. The Earl of Bothwell, finding his case desperate, also left his native country, and, as it proved, for ever. He died in obscurity abroad.

A singular riot in Edinburgh in December 1596, of which an account is given in the chronicle, led to a reaction in favour of the king against the ultra-zealous Presbyterians. James was enabled to acquire considerable influence in the church-courts, to obtain seats in parliament for certain ministers, as representing the ancient bishops, and to secure a peaceable restoration for the popish lords. His brightening prospects of the English succession added to his power within Scotland, and the latter years of his Scottish reign were marked by comparatively few events of importance.

The most remarkable was the mysterious Gowrie Conspiracy (August 5, 1600). The young Earl of Gowrie and his brother Alexander Ruthven, sons of the Gowrie who suffered in 1584, appeared to have formed a plan to entrap the king, and by the possession of his person, to work out some project for placing themselves at the head of affairs. James was induced to visit their house at Perth by a tempting story about a man who knew of a concealed treasure. After dinner, he was conducted by Alexander Ruthven into a solitary room at the end of a long gallery, and put into the hands of an armed man. At the same time a false alarm was given to his attendants, that he had left the house, and was riding homeward. While they were hurrying to their horses in the court-yard, the king had a struggle with Ruthven, who first attempted to bind, and then to poniard him. With great difficulty, and not without the exercise of considerable presence of mind, he succeeded in giving an alarm to his attendants; one of whom, named John Ramsay, rushed to his rescue, and slew the two brothers on the spot. The death of the conspirators, and the very folly of their alleged plot, caused the tale of the king’s preservation to be received at the time, by a few persons, as an obscure and doubtful matter; and in this light it is still regarded by some; but a dispassionate estimate of probabilities will, we think, make the affair appear as a true, though foolish scheme of two hot-headed young men, animated partly by ambition, and partly by a feeling of revenge. Their bodies were dealt with as those of traitors on the same day (November 19) on which the king’s second son, afterwards Charles I., first saw the light.

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[Sidenote: 1590-1.

JAN. 7.]

The imbecility of the king amidst his rude and quarrelsome courtiers, is strongly marked by several occurrences of this particular time. The Presbyterian historian tells us that, on the day noted on the margin, as his majesty was coming down the High Street from the Tolbooth, where he had been attending the administration of justice, his two chief friends, the Duke of Lennox and Lord Home, meeting the Laird of Logie, pulled out their swords and assaulted him. The quarrel was that Logie, a valet of the royal chamber, had refused to ‘ish’ at the duke’s order, till he was put out by force; whereupon he had given the duke foul words. While the two nobles set upon the valet, ‘the king fled into a close-head, and incontinent retired to a skinner’s booth, where it is said ... fear.’ Six days after, King James was sitting in the Tolbooth, hearing the case of the Laird of Craigmillar, who was suing a divorce against his wife, when the Earl of Bothwell forcibly took away one of the most important witnesses, carried him to Crichton Castle, and there threatened him with the gallows. It seemed ‘as if there had been no king in Israel.’--_Cal._

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[Sidenote: 1591.]

[Sidenote: APR. 19]

During this age of general violence, the rights of women were, as a matter of course, little respected. Abductions, both under the impulse of passion and from motives of cupidity, were frequent. The young Duke of Lennox, the cousin and favourite of the king, had contracted a violent attachment to Lady Sophia Ruthven, one of the numerous children left by the unfortunate Earl of Gowrie at his death in 1584. At the order of the king, the young lady was secluded from the duke’s resort at Easter Wemyss in Fife. The duke, crossing the Firth, took the Lady Sophia out of the house where she lived, and ‘carried her away on his awn horse all the night, and on the morn married the said gentlewoman, contrair the ordinance of the kirk; whereat the king was greatly commoved.’[183]--_Jo. Hist._

In June 1593, an abduction, of which Plutus was the prompting deity, took place under extraordinary circumstances. A young lady, daughter and apparent heir of John Carnegie, had become an object of attention to James Gray, brother of that dexterous _diplomat_ the Master of Gray, whose treachery has made him so noted a figure at this period of Scottish history. She had already been once in the hands of her disinterested lover, but rendered back to her father, at the command of the Council. She and her father were now living in the strong house of Robert Gourlay, the merchant, in Edinburgh, when a new and successful effort was made.

[Sidenote: 1591.]

On a Sunday, being the 10th of June, Lord Home, who was one of the king’s chief courtiers, came to the High Street with an armed party, designed to repress any attempt at rescue. Thus favoured, Gray and his immediate accomplices took the young lady out of her home, and, dragging her down a narrow alley to the North Loch, crossed over with her to the other side, where ten or twelve men were ready to receive her. ‘They set her upon a man’s saddle, and conveyed her away, her hair hanging about her face.’ The ravisher was ‘a gentleman of the king’s bed-chamber!’

The magistrates of Edinburgh went to Holyrood on Tuesday to complain of this outrage. ‘The king desired to know if they could complean of any that was about him. In the meantime, my Lord Home, who was chief author of the riot, was standing by. They answered nothing, because they expected for no justice.’--_Cal._

On the 6th of September 1594, Margaret Hay, a girl of only fourteen years, was forcibly taken from her mother’s house at Shiplaw, Peeblesshire, by Thomas Hay, brother of Hay of Smithfield, John and Thomas Govan, brothers, and ‘Willie Hay callit the Bastard.’ She was rescued by Cockburn of Skirling, who refused to give her up. The end of the matter does not appear.--_P. C. R._

Birrel notes, under 14th August 1595, how Christian Johnston, a widow, was carried off from Edinburgh by Patrick Aikenhead. ‘The town was put in ane great fray by the ringing of the common bell,’ and ‘the said Christian was followit and brought back.’ On the 27th of November 1600, a number of persons were denounced and intercommuned for taking away the daughter of George Carkettle, burgess of Edinburgh, ‘furth of his awn house of Monkrig, where she was for the time [living] with her mother in peaceable and quiet manner.’ It afterwards appeared that the chief guilty party was Robert Hepburn of Alderston, in East Lothian.--_P. C. R._

[Sidenote: 1591.]

About two miles to the south-west of Edinburgh, on the slope of the Craig-Lockhart Hill, there is a mansion called Craig House of the period of James VI., and which in that time belonged to a branch of the old family of Kincaid. On the 17th of December 1600, John Kincaid of Craig House, attended by a party of friends and servants, all ‘bodin in feir of weir, with swords, secrets, and other weapons,’ came to the village of Water of Leith, also closely adjacent to Edinburgh, and there attacked the house of Bailie John Johnston, ‘where Isobel Hutcheon, widow, was in sober, quiet, and peaceable manner for the time, dreading nae evil, harm, injury, or pursuit of ony persons, but to have lived under God’s peace and our sovereign lord’s.’ Kincaid ‘violently and forcibly brak up the doors of the said dwelling-house, entered therein, and pat violent hands on the said Isobel’s person, took her captive, reft, ravished, and took her away with him to his place of Craig House; where he deteined her, while [till] his majesty being upon the fields, accompanied with John, Earl of Mar, Sir John Ramsay, and divers others, hearing of the committing of sic ane horrible fact, directed the said John, Earl of Mar, Sir John Ramsay, and divers others his hieness’ servants, to follow him, and relieve her furth of his hands. Wha having come to his place of Craig House, and requiring for her relief, he refusit to grant the same, while [till] they menaced to bring his majesty about his said house and raise fire therein; and sae compellit him to relieve her.’

Kincaid underwent trial for this outrage, January 13, 1601, and his doom was ordered by the king to be a fine of 2500 merks, payable ‘to us and our treasurer’--‘as also he sall deliver to us and our treasurer _his brown horse_.’--_Pit._

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[Sidenote: APR. 30.]

‘John Dickson, younger of Belchester, being apprehended, ta’en, and brought to Edinburgh, was put to the knawledge of ane assize for the slaughter of his awn natural father [in July 1588], and also for the lying for the said offence at the process of excommunication. [Being convicted, he was] brought to the scaffold, and at the Cross broken on ane rack, [and] worried--where he lay all that night, and on the morn [was] carried to the gallows of the Burgh-moor, where the rack was set up, and the corpse laid thereupon.’--_Jo. Hist._

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[Sidenote: JUNE 6.]

In the midst of the proceedings regarding the witches, two ministers of Edinburgh broke out against the king in their sermons for his feeble administration of justice. One spoke of the universal contempt of his subjects; the other said he did not seem to have any power over even a witch-wife, meaning Barbara Napier. James sent for them two days after, at the Tolbooth, where he often sat beside the judges of the session. He remonstrated with them for the freedom they had used, but could not bring them to acknowledge any fault. In the conversation which ensued, they argued with the king about their respective powers. An apostle said: ‘We shall judge the angels;’ and Christ had said: ‘Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones and judge.’ Here was sufficient warrant for the parish ministers of Scotland lording it over the head of the state. After all, they protested they loved him, and he parted with them in good-humour.

[Sidenote: 1591.]

On the ensuing 8th of December, a highly characteristic scene took place at Holyrood--three of the ministers ‘visiting’ the royal family as censors, ‘to try what negligence was in pastors, and abuses in the family.’ They went again upon Friday the 10th, when the king himself was present. They urged the king to have the Scriptures read at dinner and supper, and ‘willed that new elders could be chosen and the comptroller left out.’ A week after, one of them, Mr John Davidson, called in a private capacity at the palace to admonish the king about his failures in the exercise of king-craft, particularly in appointing bad men to offices, and pardoning great criminals. ‘The king answered, he found not concurrence in inferior magistrates ... there were diverse officers claimed their places by heritage. As for known pardons, he would answer for every one he gave by law and reason. As for unknown, such was the multitude of his businesses, that some about him deceived him by importunity, and got stolen subscriptions, from which kind of dealing he thought no flesh in his place could always be free. Further, he saw not where to make choice of fit officers, for when any man’s particular cometh in question, then their partiality may be seen.’--_Cal._

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[Sidenote: 1591.

OCT. 28.]

On this day are entered in the records of the Privy Council two complaints which illustrate in a remarkable manner the state of society at that time. First, James Lord Ogilvie of Airly, ancestor of the Earls of Airly, complains that, while he was living quietly in the protection of the law, and dreading harm from no man, the Earl of Argyle, without any provocation from him, hounded out a set of broken Highlandmen to the number of about five hundred, to attack him, and spoil his lands. He had ‘retired in sober and quiet manner, to dwell and make his residence in Glen Isla,’ when, on the 21st of August, they entered the district under silence of night, ‘with sic force and violence, that the said lord, lying far from his friends, was not able to resist them, but with great difficulty and short advertisement, he, his wife and bairns, escaped.’ The invading party are described as having slain all the people they could lay their hands on, eighteen or twenty in number; besides, they ‘spulyit and away-took ane grit number of nolt, sheep, and plenishing [furniture], to the utter wreck and undoing of the haill poor inhabitants of the country.’ Having at the command of the king retired, they still hovered on the neighbouring hills, and some weeks after made a new attack upon Glen Isla, as well as Glen Clova, slaying three or four persons, and taking away much spoil; ‘sae that the poor men dwelling in Glen Clova, Glen Isla, and other parts adjacent to the Month, wha are not able to make resistance, are sae oppressed by the broken men and sorners hounded out by the Earl of Argyle and his friends, and maintainit and reset by them, that neither by his majesty’s protection, nor assurance of the party, can their lives and gudes be in surety.’

This seems very mysterious, till we read the second entry, which is a complaint that, on the 16th of August bypast (five days previous to the above incident), Leighton of Usan and sundry of the Ogilvies, to the number of about threescore persons, had, at the instigation of Lord Ogilvie, gone with jacks, spears, harquebuses, and other weapons, and attacked Robert Campbell in Millhorn, William of Soutarhouse, Thomas Campbell of Keithock, and John Campbell of Muirton, whom they had mercilessly slain. How this outrage had been provoked, does not appear; but there can be no doubt that the invasion of Lord Ogilvie’s privacy in Glen Isla was a consequence of this earlier and similar incident.

* * * * *

The frightful cutaneous disease of leprosy prevailed in Scotland, as in most other European countries, from an early age. There was a hospital for the reception of its victims at Kingcase, near Ayr, believed to have existed from the reign of King Robert I. At Glasgow, such an establishment was planted by the Lady of Lochow, daughter of Robert, Duke of Albany, and in 1584 it had six inmates. In a solitary spot between Old and New Aberdeen, there was a leper-house, but rather poorly endowed, for in this year King James is found granting the inmates a right to one peat out of every load of peats sold in the town, in consideration that their rents were ‘unable to sustene them in meat and fire, wherethrough they live very miserably.’[184] There were a few other such refuges of hopeless misery throughout the land.

[Sidenote: 1591.

NOV. 21.]

In a sheltered spot called Greenside, near the northern skirts of the Calton Hill, a small monastery of Carmelite Friars had had a brief existence before the Reformation. On its desolate site, a merchant-burgess of Edinburgh, John Robertson by name (whom we soon after find in the office of bailie), now erected a small house for the reception of lepers, led thereto, it is stated, by a sense of gratitude to God for a signal deliverance vouchsafed to him. The town-council concurred in his object, and undertook the oversight and direction of the establishment. A committee of their number, in conjunction with a minister of the city, and John Robertson himself, drew up rules for the house, and arranged the means of its support. Five men afflicted with leprosy, and two women, the wives of two of these men, but not themselves lepers, were admitted, each leper being allowed four shillings Scots money--equal to 4d. sterling--weekly, and also having a privilege of begging under certain restrictions. They were on no account to go about for alms, or to stir from the house at all, or to admit any visitor, under penalty of death, and, to shew how earnest was the spirit of this rule, a gibbet was erected at the gable of the hospital, ready for the instant execution of any transgressor. From sunset to sunrise, their door was to be kept fast locked, under the same penalty. Each patient was to take his turn of sitting at the door ‘with ane clapper,’ to attract the attention of people passing between Edinburgh and Leith, and to beg from them for the general benefit. The rest were meanwhile to stay within doors. The two wives, Isobel Barear and Jonet Gatt, were to be allowed to go to market, to purchase _vivres_ for the lepers and for themselves, but not to call anywhere else in town, under penalty of death. A person was appointed to read prayers to the inmates each Sunday, and a weekly oversight was confided to the Masters of Trinity Hospital. It serves curiously to realise the whole arrangement to our minds, that this hospital still exists, though the leper-house seems to have been extinct since the middle of the seventeenth century.[185]

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[Sidenote: 1591.

DEC. 10.]