Chapter XXIV: Part 24

‘In the year 1686,’ says Patrick Walker, ‘especially in the months of June and July, about Crossford, two miles below Lanark, especially at the Mains on the water of Clyde, many people gathered together for several afternoons, where there were showers of bonnets, hats, guns, and swords, which covered the trees and ground; companies of men in arms marching along the water-side; companies meeting companies all through other, and then all falling to the ground, and disappearing, and other companies appearing the same way. I went there three afternoons together, and, as I could observe, there were two of the people that were together saw, and a _third that saw not_; and _though I could see nothing_, yet there was such a fright and trembling upon those that did see, that was discernible to all from those that saw not. There was a gentleman standing next to me who spoke as too many gentlemen and others speak. He said: “A pack of damned witches and warlocks that have the second-sight! De’il haet do I see!” And immediately there was a discernible change in his countenance, with as much fear and trembling as any woman I saw there; who cried out: “Oh, all ye that do not see, say nothing; for I persuade you it is matter of fact, and discernible to all that is not stone-blind!” Those that did see, told what works the guns had, and their length and wideness; and what handles the swords had, whether small, or three-barred, or Highland guards; and the closing knots of the bonnets, black and blue; and these who did see them there, wherever they went abroad, saw a bonnet and a sword drop by the way.’

The explanation of this kind of marvel has already been given under 1668. In the present instance, the subjective character of the phenomenon is borne out by what Walker tells of some, including himself, not being able to see anything, and of a gentleman suddenly becoming sensible of the vision.

[Sidenote: 1686.]

Honest Patrick acknowledges having been afterwards much twitted and laughed at by ‘learned critics,’ and even ‘young ministers and expectants,’ about his report of the Crossford visions, on the score of his having been himself present, without witnessing the alleged prodigy. He admits that he was there _three days, and saw nothing_, but goes on: ‘Will these wild-ass colts tell me what stopped the eyes of the long clear-sighted Balaam, that saw a star arise out of Jacob, ... yet saw not the angel standing with a drawn sword in his hand, and his dull ass saw him, and stopped three times? And what stopped the eyes of the men that were with Daniel, at the river Hiddekel, when he saw the vision, but they saw not, but greatly quaked? And what stopped the ears of Paul’s companions in wickedness, going the devil’s errand to Damascus, that saw the light and made them fall to the ground, but heard not the words of the voice that spake to him? And what stopped the ears and eyes of the captain of the Castle of Edinburgh, who was alarmed three times at night, while the sentinels were with him; but when they were sent off, he both saw and heard the different beating of drums, both English and Scots, in that strange apparition in the year 1650, before the English came to it?’

* * * * *

‘This winter, there happened three fires at Edinburgh, and all on the Sabbath-day, to signify God’s displeasure at the profanation of his day.’ And yet ‘there is no certain conclusion can be drawn from these providential accidents, for a few would draw just the contrary conclusion--that God was dissatisfied with our worshipping him on that day: so these providences may be variously interpreted.’--_Foun._

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[Sidenote: 1687.

JAN. 13.]

One Reid, a mountebank, was at this time practising in Edinburgh. He was popishly inclined, and actually, four days after this date, was received into the Catholic church with one of his blackamoors; which, Fountainhall tells us, was ‘a great trophy’ to the popish party, now in the ascendency. On the date here noted, Reid had Scott of Harden and his lady in court ‘for stealing away from him a little girl called the _Tumbling Lassie_, who danced upon his stage; she danced in all shapes, and, to make her supple, he daily oiled all her joints; and he claimed damages, and produced a contract, where he had bought her from her mother for £30 Scots. But,’ adds Fountainhall, ‘we have no slaves in Scotland, and mothers cannot sell their bairns; and physicians attested the employment of tumbling would bruise all her bowels and kill her; and her joints were now grown stiff, and she declined to return.’ The mountebank, though favoured by the chancellor on account of his popery, lost his cause.--_Foun. Dec._

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[Sidenote: MAY 1.]

[Sidenote: 1687.]

Being Sunday, a young woman of noted piety, Janet Fraser by name, the daughter of a weaver in the parish of Closeburn, Dumfriesshire, had gone out to the fields with a young female companion, and sat down to read the Bible not far from her father’s house. Feeling thirsty, she went to the river-side (the Nith) to get a drink, leaving her Bible open at the place where she had been reading, which presented the verses of the 34th chapter of Isaiah, beginning--‘My sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment,’ &c. On returning, she found a patch of something like blood covering this very text. In great surprise, she carried the book home, where a young man tasted the substance with his tongue, and found it of a saltless or insipid flavour. On the two succeeding Sundays, while the same girl was reading her Bible in the open air, similar blotches of matter, like blood, fell upon the leaves. She did not perceive it in the act of falling till it was about an inch from the book. ‘It is not blood, for it is as tough as glue, and will not be scraped off by a knife, as blood will; but it is so like blood, as none can discern any difference by the colour.’

Showers of blood are amongst the familiar prodigies by which mankind were alarmed in days of ignorance and superstition. A writer of our time remarks that it is most probable that these bloody waters were never _seen_ falling, but that people, seeing the standing waters blood-coloured, were assured, from their not knowing how else it should happen, that it had rained blood into them. ‘Swammerdam,’ he goes on to say, ‘relates that, one morning in 1670, great excitement was created in the Hague, by a report that the lakes and ditches about the city were found to be full of blood. A certain physician went down to one of the canals, and taking home a quantity of this blood-coloured water, examined it with the microscope, and found that the water was water still, and had not at all changed its colour, but that it was full of prodigious swarms of small red animals, all alive, and very nimble in their motions, the colour and prodigious numbers of which gave a reddish tinge to the whole body of the water in which they lived.... The animals which thus colour the water of lakes and ponds are the _pulices arborescentes_ of Swammerdam, or the water-fleas with branched horns. These creatures are of a reddish-yellow or flame-colour. They live about the sides of ditches, under weeds, and amongst the mud; and are therefore the less visible, except at a certain time, which is the beginning or end of June. It is at this time that these little animals leave their recesses to float about the water, and meet for the propagation of their species; and by this means they become visible in the colour which they give the water. The colour in question is visible, more or less, in one part or other of almost all standing waters at this season; and it is always at the same season that the bloody waters have alarmed the ignorant.’--_Encyc. Brit., 7th ed._, xix. 59. If we can suppose some quantity of the water so discoloured to be carried up by a whirlwind, transported along, and afterwards allowed to fall, such a fact as the depositing of blood-like stains on Janet Fraser’s Bible might be accounted for.

[Sidenote: 1687.]

Medieval history is full of stories of blood being found on or in the host, and of dismal misinterpretations of the phenomenon being accepted. Several massacres of Jews have arisen from this cause alone. Modern science sees the matter in its true light. In 1848, Dr Eckhard, of Berlin, when attending a case of cholera, found potatoes and bread within the house spotted with a red colouring matter, which, being forwarded to Ehrenberg, was found by him to be due to the presence of an animalcule, to which he gave the name of the _Monas Prodigiosa_. It was found that other pieces of bread could be inoculated with this matter. It is curious to reflect that, if Ehrenberg had been present to examine a certain spotted host in Frankfort in 1296, and supposing his rational explanations to be received, the lives of ten thousand unhappy descendants of Abraham might have been saved.

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[Sidenote: JULY 6.]

In compliance with ‘a general outcry and complaint’ from the public, the magistrates of Edinburgh called up the butchers and vintners, and fined them for extortion. It was in vain that these men set forth that there was no rule or law broken, and that when they bought dear they must sell dear. It was held as a sufficient answer to the butchers, that they did exact large profits, besides using sundry arts to pass off their meat as better than it was, and they _regrated the market_ by taking all the parks and enclosures about Edinburgh, so as to prevent any from ‘furnishing’ but themselves. It was alleged of the vintners, that they exacted for a prepared fowl triple what it cost in the market; they sold bread purposely made small; they charged twenty-four pence for the pound of sugar, while the cost to themselves was eightpence, ‘and even so in the measure of tobacco.’--_Foun._

[Sidenote: 1687.]

Though the butchers formed one of the fourteen incorporated trades of Edinburgh, their business was of a limited description, and indeed continued so till a comparatively recent time, owing to the generally prevalent use of meat salted at Martinmas, a practice rendered unavoidable by the scarcity of winter fodder for cattle before the days of turnip husbandry. Of the animals used, cattle formed but a small proportion. John Strachan, a ‘flesh-cady’ or market-porter, who died in 1791 in the 105th year of his age, remembered the time--not long after that now under our attention--‘when no flesher would venture to kill any beast [that is, bullock] till all the different parts were bespoken.’[319] It may also be remarked that Pennant, in his _Tour in Scotland_, 1772, tells us that ‘the gentleman is now living who first introduced stall-fed beef into Perth.’ He adds, with strict truth: ‘Before that time the greater part of Scotland lived on salt meat throughout the winter, as the natives of the Hebrides do at present, and as the English did in the feudal times.’

A truer remedy for the alleged extortions of the butchers was soon after hit upon by the Privy Council, in allowing meat to be brought into town by ‘landward men’ not of the corporation. ‘Some,’ adds Fountainhall timidly, ‘think that all [should be] permitted to bring in bread every day,’ being the same case with that of the maltmen, who were forbidden to form a deaconry.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: NOV. 24.]

The usual rule of the government in the two last reigns against unlicensed printing, was now very rigorously enforced, in order to prevent the issue of controversial pamphlets against the Catholic religion. James Glen, bookseller in Edinburgh, was imprisoned by an order from the Chancellor, for publishing a brochure called _The Root of Romish Ceremonies_, designed ‘to prove popery to be only paganism revived.’ It was a remarkable step for the government to take, while an uncontrolled popish printer was at constant work in the palace. Perhaps Lord Perth, who had become a Catholic (some say to please his wife, some to please the king, no one to please himself), felt sore at a _bon mot_ of Glen, which Fountainhall has thought worthy of being preserved. The Council having (January 1686) issued an edict against the selling of books reflecting on popery, and their macer having brought this to Glen amongst others, he quietly remarked that ‘there was a book in his shop which condemned popery very directly--namely, the _Bible_--might he sell that?’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: 1688.

JAN.]

At this time, so unpropitious to literature, an attempt was made to establish a periodical work of a kind which we only expect to see arising when the affairs of the learned republic are at a comparatively advanced stage. Mr John Cockburn, minister at Ormiston, in Haddingtonshire, printed the first number of a work containing ‘the monthly transactions and an account of books out of the Universal Bibliotheque and others.’ The Chancellor, finding in it some passages reflecting on the Roman Catholic Church, at once suppressed the publication.--_Foun. Dec._

[Sidenote: 1688.

JAN. 19.]

Copious periwigs, with curls flowing down to the shoulders, were now in vogue, both at home and abroad. There being an active exportation of hair for the foreign peruke-makers, the article was found to have become dear, and the native artists began to complain. On their petition, the Privy Council forbade the exporting of hair.--_Foun._

It may give some idea of circumstances attending this fashion, that at a date not long subsequent to the period under our attention, a female living in a town in the south of Scotland was accustomed to dispose of her crop of _yellow hair_ to a travelling merchant at fixed intervals, and always got a guinea for it.

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[Sidenote: FEB.]

Sir James Stanfield was one of the English manufacturers who had been induced to settle and practise their art at Newmills, in Haddingtonshire, in order that Scotch money should not need to be sent away for English-made goods. This respectable man was afflicted with a profligate eldest son, whom he at length saw fit to disinherit. He had become melancholy, probably in consequence of domestic troubles, and on a certain day in November, he was found drowned in a pool of water near his own house. It was debated whether he had been murdered or had drowned himself; and it was noted that the widow and son contended for the latter view of the case, and accordingly, without further ado, took measures for having the body immediately buried. A suspicion, however, arose that Sir James had met with foul play, and two surgeons were sent by the authorities in Edinburgh, to examine the body and report.

[Sidenote: 1688.]

The corpse was raised from the grave, after it had lain there two days; and the surgeons, having made an incision near the neck, became convinced that death had been induced by strangulation; so that the supposition of suicide was set aside. This inspection took place in the church. After the cut had been sewed up, and the body washed, and put into clean linen, James Row, a merchant of Edinburgh, and Philip Stanfield, eldest son of the deceased, took it up, one on each side, to deposit it in the coffin, when, behold, an effusion of blood was observed to take place on the side sustained by the son, so as to defile his hands. He instantly let the body fall, with the exclamation, ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’ and rushed, horror-struck, into the precentor’s desk, where he lay for some time groaning and in great agitation, utterly refusing to touch the corpse again. This incident was at once accepted in the light of a revelation of the young man’s guilt as his father’s murderer; and he was therefore taken into custody and brought to Edinburgh for trial.

The trial took place on the 7th of February, but brought out little evidence worthy of attention. Nevertheless, on the strength of the bleeding, and of his being known to have cursed his father, the unfortunate young man was found guilty, and sentenced to death, with sundry aggravations of punishment.

By pretending an inclination to turn papist, he got a brief respite, but, on the 24th of the month, was hanged, protesting his innocence to the last, and finally dying Protestant. By reason of a slip of the rope, he came down till his knees rested on the scaffold, and it was necessary to use more direct means of strangulation. Then his tongue was cut out, as a retribution for the cursing of his father, and his hand hacked off and sent to be put up on the east port of Haddington, as a memorial of the murder. The body was hung up in chains, but after a few days was stolen away, and found lying in a ditch among water. It was hung up again, but a second time taken down. Both in the strangulation on the scaffold and the being found in a ditch among water, the superstitious remarked something like a providential notice of the facts of the murder of which he was assumedly guilty.

It will be acknowledged that, in the circumstances related, there is not a particle of valid evidence against the young man. The surgeon’s opinion as to the fact of strangulation is not entitled to much regard; but, granting its solidity, it does not prove the guilt of the accused. The horror of the young man on seeing his father’s blood, might be referred to painful recollections of that profligate conduct which he knew had distressed his parent and brought his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave--especially when we reflect that Stanfield would himself be impressed with the superstitious feelings of the age, and might accept the hæmorrhage as an accusation by heaven on account of the concern his conduct had had in shortening the life of his father. The whole case seems to be a lively illustration of the effect of superstitious feelings in blinding justice.

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[Sidenote: MAR. 6.]

[Sidenote: 1688.]

The Privy Council considered a legal case about a very small matter. The beautiful lake of Duddingston, under the southeast front of Arthur’s Seat, and adjoining to the royal park of Holyrood, had been graced by the late Duke of Lauderdale with a few swans. His too clever duchess--who had for years been carrying on terrible legal wars with his heirs--deemed herself entitled to take out five of these birds at her own pleasure. Sir James Dick, the proprietor of the lake, determined to recover the swans; so he caught three of them, and broke a lockfast place in order to get the remaining two; and then placed them all once more upon the loch. Hereupon the duchess raised a process, which was now decided in her favour, on the ground that the birds had been brought to the loch by the late duke, and that Sir James’s tolerance of them there did not make them his. The baronet, indignant at being thus balked, turned all the rest of the swans off his lake; but here he was met by the Duke of Hamilton, heritable keeper of the palace, alleging that, as the lake bounded the royal park, the wild animals upon it belonged to him. So he caused the swans to be once again restored to their haunt.--_Foun. Dec._

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[Sidenote: MAR.]

One Niven, a musician in Inverness, caused a girl of twelve years, his pupil, to marry him under basely deceptious pretences. To induce a minister to perform the ceremony, he suborned a youth to personate the girl’s brother, and convey the consent of the father, who was himself a clergyman. For this ‘abominable imposture and treachery,’ he was condemned to stand with his ear nailed to the pillory, and then banished.--_Foun. Dec._

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[Sidenote: JULY.]

For some time, we have heard little of witches; but now one appears. An old woman at Dunbar having threatened some people who refused to give her money, and ‘some evil accidents befalling them shortly after,’ she was seized and tried before a commission. She at first confessed, but afterwards retracted; nevertheless, the commission condemned her. Before proceeding to any greater extremity, they thought it well to bring her before the Council itself, who were at first inclined to ‘assoilzie’ her; but afterwards, ‘she was remitted back to Dunbar, _to be burnt there, if her judges pleased_.’--_Foun._

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[Sidenote: 1688.

JULY 22.]

The _girdle_--a round iron plate used for baking oaten cakes over a fire--a household article once universal among the middle and humbler classes in Scotland--was invented and first made at the little burgh of Culross, in Fife. In 1599, King James gave the Culrossians an exclusive privilege to make girdles, and this had been confirmed by a gift from Charles II. in 1666. Nevertheless, a neighbouring gentleman, Preston of Valleyfield, had kept girdle-makers (_craticularum fabros_) on his barony, for which he was now challenged at law by the burghers of Culross. He defended himself on various grounds; and the lords, before decision, ‘recommended to Drumcairn to take trial if the girdle-makers of Culross have any other trade or craft than that of making girdles, and at what prices they sell the same; and likewise to try if the men at Valleyfield do make sufficient girdles, and at what prices they make the same, and if they have any other trade than making of girdles, &c.’ How the matter ended we do not learn.--_Foun. Dec._

* * * * *

About this time, an Englishman, apparently a military officer, described Scotland from personal observation, and so has preserved for us some general traits of the people.

‘Their drink,’ he says, ‘is beer, sometimes so new that it is scarce cold when brought to table. But their gentry are better provided, and give it age, yet think not so well of it as to let it go alone, and therefore add brandy, cherry brandy, or brandy and sugar, and [this] is the nectar of their country, at their feasts and entertainments, and carries with it a mark of great esteem and affection. Sometimes they have wine--a thin-bodied claret, at tenpence the mutchkin, which answers our quart.’

It is evident from this that whisky as yet formed no conspicuous indulgence among the Scottish people. They had come, however, to be much given to another stimulant, which has ever since had a great fascination for them. ‘They are fond of tobacco, but more from the sneesh-box [snuff-box] than the pipe. And they have made it so necessary, that I have heard some of them say, that, should their bread come in competition with it, they would rather fast than their _sneesh_ should be taken away. Yet mostly it consists of the coarsest tobacco, dried by the fire, and powdered in a little engine after the form of a _tap_, which they carry in their pockets, and is both a _mill_ to grind, and a _box_ to keep it in.’[320]

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[Sidenote: 1689.]

The infatuated king had fled to France, the ministers of his will had dispersed in terror, and a convention was about to meet and settle the crown upon William and Mary, when a singular instance of private revenge, recalling the rougher days of a century earlier, took place in Edinburgh.

[Sidenote: 1689.]

Sir George Lockhart, long the most eminent counsel at the Scottish bar--‘the most learned lawyer and the best pleader,’ says Burnet, ‘I have ever known of any nation’--and now President of the Court of Session, had had occasion, in the routine of judicial business, to give an award in favour of the unhappy wife and children of Chiesley of Dalry, near Edinburgh--a profligate man of violent passions, the descendant of a noted fanatic of the time of the Civil War. The sum assigned them from the husband and father’s estate was only ninety-three pounds a year. Chiesley openly avowed a resolution to be avenged on the judge; nay, he wrote to him, saying: ‘You have taken the government of my family from me--I desire a remedy at your hands; otherwise, I will not scruple to attack you at kirk or market;’ or using words to that effect.

[Sidenote: 1689.]

On Sunday, the 31st of March--while the town was under the excitement of the siege of the Castle by the troops of the new government--Sir George Lockhart attended worship, as usual, in the New Church, a portion of St Giles’s cathedral. Chiesley came armed, and endeavoured, by money offered to the _bedral_, to get into Lord Castlehill’s seat, which was just behind that of the President, being resolved there to wreak out his vengeance, although certain to lose his own life in consequence. Not succeeding in getting into this seat, he flitted restlessly about the church till the conclusion of the service, when he walked out, and preceded the Lord President to the head of the close near by,[321] in which the latter had his residence. The President came along, attended by Lord Castlehill and Mr Daniel Lockhart, and as he entered the close saluted Chiesley, who gloomily returned his greeting. To pursue the narrative of a contemporary: ‘My Lord Castlehill and Daniel Lockhart convoyed him a piece down the close, and talked a while with him, after which they both departed. The President called back the last, and whilst Daniel was returning, Dalry approached, to whom Daniel said: “I thought you had been at London,” without any other answer than that he was there [that is, here] now. Daniel offered to take him by the hand; but the other shuffled by him, and coming close to the President’s back, discharged his pistol before that any suspected his design. The bullet going in beneath the right shoulder and out at the left pap, was battered on the wall. The President immediately turned about, looked the murderer grievously in the face, and then finding himself beginning to fail, he leant to the wall, and said to Daniel: “Hold me, Daniel, hold me.” These were his last words. He was carried immediately to his own house, and was almost dead before he could reach it. Daniel and the President’s chaplain apprehended in the meanwhile Dalry, who owned the fact, and never offered to flee. He was carried to the guard, kept in the Weigh-house, and afterwards taken to prison. The President’s lady, hearing the shot and a cry in the close, got in her smock out of bed, and took the dead body in her arms; at which sight, swooning, she was taken to her chamber. The corpse were laid in the same room where he used to consult.’--_Father Hay._

The murderer was tortured, but confessed nothing, and in three days he was hanging in chains at Drumsheuch; whence, however, his body was stolen away by his friends. Within the present century, on enlarging a cellar in Dalry house, a skeleton with some rusty irons about it was found in the earth, and concluded to be the remains of Chiesley.

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Here--for the present, at least--ends our record of domestic occurrences and things in Scotland. It brings the life of the nation from the rudeness of the middle of the sixteenth century down to the comparative civilisation of the close of the seventeenth, when the existing political system was nearly settled. A strange phantasmagoria, beginning with the half mail-clad baron and his band of followers in swords and pistols, and ending in the silken and embroidered gallant in full periwig and a rapier for show. We have seen in the earlier years of the period little regard for law amongst the people, and no power in the government to enforce it. But gentlemen have latterly rather fallen out of the custom of stabbing an enemy as he walked the High Street. They no longer go in force and in ‘effeir of weir’ to assail a neighbour in his house, or throw lighted brands into it, or drive off his horses and cattle, by way of making out a point of legal satisfaction from him. The maintenance of any form of peace in Aberdeenshire or Banffshire does not now wholly depend on the good-will of the head of the Gordon family, himself a constant offender against law in as far as he clung to the Romish religion. As regards the protection of life and property, a great improvement has evidently been effected. It is evident from many circumstances that, during the whole time, there was a pressing tendency to improvement--partly to be accounted for, doubtless, by the near neighbourhood of England. But it was impeded by the almost incessant civil strife that was kept up in consequence of the contention between two principles of ecclesiastical polity--an assertion of infallibility and independence in the church on the one hand, and an effort to bend this to supposed state necessities on the other: men, in trying to make each other Episcopalians and Presbyterians, almost ceasing to be Christians. Throughout this broil, some fine traits of earnestness and self-devotion were evoked; but so absorbing a concentration of the general mind on certain theological or _quasi_-theological doctrines could not be healthful, could not be favourable even to a sound spirit of religion, could not but check any enlightened desire for material improvements. Hence, the population was yet small and generally poor, and little had yet been done to advance the arts of life. There had never yet been beyond the most feeble attempts in any kind of manufactures: even such articles as paper and woollen cloth had to be imported. No movement had yet been even thought of for advancing any branch of rural economy. Scotland had sent forth no voice in either literature or science; her universities could not train either the lawyer or the physician. She had not a bank, and there was not perhaps above half a million of coin in circulation. No news-sheet had yet taken root in the country. A post system had only existed on a small scale during the last twenty-five years. No stage-coaches were yet permanently established between our towns, or between Edinburgh and London. The most delicate lady, under noble rank, had to perform journeys on horseback, and if she had not strength or health to ride, she could not travel. No system of police existed in any city of the realm.

In certain intellectual and moral respects, the country was in no better state. The judge was understood to be accessible to private persuasions; and even direct bribes were suspected. The people believed as firmly in witchcraft as in the first principles of their religion, and we are not yet come within thirty years of the last example of a poor wretch burnt for mishaps that chanced to follow her evil wishes. Gentlemen of ancient family and good account were not above using the basest tricks or the grossest violence, in order to secure, by marriage, the fortune of some hapless young heiress of eleven years of age. Fallacies about markets and marketings were rife; monopolies and patents over-rode the people and kept them in poverty, no man being yet quite able to believe that there was room in the world for anybody but himself. Having concluded about any matter of opinion, men could bear with no dissent from that. It seemed to them the highest of earthly duties, that the thing each felt as a religious error should be rooted out, even though that could only be done by the extirpation of the persons entertaining it. This was to be doing God service and saving men from destruction; no one perceiving that the object aimed at was never attained, or that, if attainable, it was an immorality to attempt its attainment. Even the Claim of Rights, in which the sufferings of Presbytery since 1660 were enumerated, and its claims asserted, set forth among its demands that no popish book should henceforth be allowed to be printed.

Such was the Scotland of 1689--an improvement upon the Scotland of 1560, though to no great extent. Perhaps, after all, if we consider how surprisingly late are all the great discoveries, inventions, and social arrangements for convenience; how gaslight, steam-machinery, railways, and the electric-telegraph are of our own day; how lately it is that mankind learned that air and water are gaseous compounds, that gravitation arranges the worlds, that our own little earth passed through a long and wonderful history before man came upon it; how it is but as yesterday that the British people led the way in universal liberation of industry, and unhappily have yet many obvious social evils to be cured; we shall not greatly wonder that this land of mountain and flood, seated far northward and off at a side, was no better than it was at the close of the reign of the last James. We may at least view congratulatingly one thing which has been made out--that the bulk of the people shall be allowed to have, under sanction of law, the style of external Christianity which they prefer; so that, anyhow, it shall not be the majority which is persecuted. That attained--and only smaller denominations treated with harshness--behold, the country begins to make a real, though at first slow advance. In five years from the settlement of its religious troubles, it has its first bank; in a few years more, it has native newspapers. Other troubles or chances of trouble being removed by a union with England, and the suppression of all hopes in favour of a discrowned dynasty, commerce becomes active; an improved agriculture commences; and nearly every kind of manufacture for which England is distinguished, takes hearty root with us. Scotsmen, frugally reared, and endowed with the elements of learning at their parish-schools, go forth into every realm to take leading positions. Literature and science are cultivated at home with the most brilliant success. And the short period of a century sees nearly every disadvantageous contrast between our country and her neighbours obliterated.

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ARTICLE OMITTED.

[Sidenote: 1688.

DEC.]

The break-down of King James’s power in this month let loose a popular feeling which had been long under the restraint of terror. The proceedings of an Edinburgh mob on the 10th of December, when the Catholic chapel and college at Holyrood were rifled and destroyed, and the books, trinkets, and images burned in the court-yard, are detailed in Wodrow. At that time, according to the honest confession of Patrick Walker, the extreme Presbyterians, regarding the Revolution as a _surprising, unexpected, merciful dispensation_, ‘thought it someway belonged to us to go to all the popish houses and destroy their monuments of idolatry, with their priests’ robes, and put in prison [the priests] themselves.’

Such houses were not many, for the religion of Rome has never been able to get any footing worth speaking of in Scotland, and even the patronage of this unfortunate king had done little for it. The mansion of the Maxwells near Dumfries and Traquair House near Peebles, were the only ones in the south which challenged particular attention. In the latter case, the marriage of the second Earl of Traquair to a daughter of the Earl of Winton,[322] had been the means of introducing a form of faith which the family has never since changed. We have seen something of the difficulties which his countess had in rearing her son, the present Earl, in her own religion; but she had succeeded in her object, notwithstanding all that presbyteries and privy councils could do. We learn that he was a quiet inoffensive man, who had never accepted any office under King James;[323] but that did not avail to save his house from the zealous on this occasion.

[Sidenote: 1688.]

Behold a resolute band leaving Edinburgh in December, and making their way ‘through frost and snow’ to that remote stately mansion on the Tweed, where the hated idolatry has for thirty years offended all well-disposed minds. The leader is Donald Ker of Kersland, a name suggestive of sufferings for presbytery in the past reign. They found at Traquair a great quantity of ‘Romish wares,’ but not all they came in search of, for a quantity had been carried off and secreted. Here, however, were an altar, a large crucifix of brass; several other crucifixes; ‘a large brodd opening with two leaves [triptich], covered within with cloth of gold of Arras work, having a veil covering the middle part, wherein were sewed several superstitious pictures;’ a eucharist cup of silver; an _Agnus Dei_ of amber with a picture above; a box of relics, ‘wherein were lying, amongst silk-cotton, several pieces of bone, tied with a red thread, having written upon them the saint they belonged to--namely, St Crescentius, St Marianus, St Angelus, &c.;’ another ‘box of relics of bones, tied with a string--namely, St Victoria, St Theodora, St Donatus, St Benedictus, St Laureata, St Venturiana;’ ‘a harden bag, near full of beads;’ ‘a timber box, with many wafers in it;’ ‘a pot full of holy oil;’ ‘the holy-water sponge;’ ‘Mary and the Babe in a case most curiously wrought in a kind of pearl;’ several other examples of Mary and the Babe; about twelve dozen of wax candles; many papers containing pictures; about one hundred and thirty books, some of them with silver clasps; and a considerable number of other articles of less importance.[324] All of these they seized without any resistance, for the earl and the priests had fled from the house on their approach.

According to the recital of Walker--Ker sent James Harkness and some other persons to the house of a neighbouring clergyman, ‘who had the name of a Presbyterian minister,’ one Mr Thomas Louis, with orders to search it narrowly for the missing articles, but to ‘behave themselves discreetly.’ ‘Mr Louis and his wife mocked them, without offering them either meat or drink, though they had much need of it [!] At last, they found two trunks locked, which they desired to have opened. Mr Louis then left them. They broke up the coffers, wherein they found a golden cradle, with Mary and the Babe in her bosom; in the other trunk, the priests’ robes.’

[Sidenote: 1688.]

The whole of these articles, being brought together, were carried to Peebles (distance seven miles), and ‘all solemnly burned at the cross.’ The spoils of the Maxwells about the same time furnished the materials of a like _solemnity_ at the cross of Dumfries.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Kennedy’s _Annals of Aberdeen_, i. 176.

[2] A marble effigy of this Lord Belhaven, in a reclining posture, is to be seen over his tomb in Holyrood Chapel.

[3] The Hon. Sir William Hamilton. He was long after resident at Rome for Queen Henrietta Maria.

[4] Wodrow’s Life of Trochrig, MS., quoted in _Paisley Magazine_, 1828.

[5] Stevenson’s _Hist. of the Church of Scotland_, quoting _Historical Collections_, MS.

[6] _Spottiswoode Misc._, ii. 379.

[7] Published in thin folio at London in 1637. 23d June 1637, ‘appeared George Deuchar, agent, and in name of Colonel Monro presented one book entitled _Monro his Expeditions_, in token of his affection for the good town.’--_Edinburgh Coun. Register._

[8] John Gordon, of the house of Gight, engaged himself on the other side; and while serving the emperor as governor of Egra in Bohemia, he performed the notable act of the assassination of Wallenstein, for which his imperial master liberally rewarded him.

[9] _Bannatyne Misc._, iii. 221.

[10] Documents quoted in the _Transactions of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland_, iii. 251. _Black Book of Taymouth_, p. 437.

[11] The failure of the Duke of Buckingham’s army to relieve Rochelle, and its shameful retreat from the Isle of Ré.

[12] Stevenson’s _History of the Church of Scotland_ quoting a contemporary history which he supposes to have been written by one who was minister of Carlaverock or Ruthwell.

[13] Sir John is described in other entries as keeping priests in his house of Caddell, and there setting the law at defiance.

[14] Row’s _Hist. Church of Scot._, p. 348.

[15] Stevenson, quoting _Historical Collections_.

[16] _Privy Council Record._ _Book of Adjournal._

[17] In June 1569, the Regent Moray reported to the General Assembly of the church a case which had puzzled him on a justiciary visit to Elgin. It was that of one Nicol Sutherland in Forres, who was convicted by an assize of incest with a woman who had been the paramour of his mother’s brother. The regent hesitated about considering this crime as rightly named, and wished the decision of the assembly on the point. The reverend assembly had no hesitation in pronouncing in the affirmative. Nicol would consequently be hanged.--_B. U. K._

In August 1626, William Hamilton of Cultes was under discipline in the presbytery of Lanark for his incestuous marriage with his good dame’s brother’s wife--that is, we presume, the widow of his step-mother or step-grandmother’s brother.--_R. P. L._

[18] In the General Assembly of 1565, the church found that the marriage of cousins was not forbidden in Scripture; but seeing that it had been attended with inconveniences, desired that the matter should be settled by the civil magistrate.--_B. U. K._

[19] Dalyell’s _Darker Superstitions of Scotland_, p. 641.

[20] In the _Privy Council Record_ is a list of a great number of persons dwelling in the eastern part of Berwickshire, who were summoned to give evidence on this trial, all their landlords being at the same time enjoined to see that they attended.

[21] Martine’s _Gen. Collections, Macfarlane’s MS._ (Adv. Lib.), vol. i., p. 168.

[22] The lands of Powes, Powmill, Carsebrook, and Woodside are mentioned as amongst those destroyed.

[23] From the original in the General Register House.

[24] The life here spoken of was written by Rinuccini, Archbishop of Fermo. From an abridgment of it in the _Scots Magazine_ for March 1802, we derive the few particulars which follow.

[25] Kirkton’s _Church History_, p. 19.

[26] _Blair’s Memoirs_, MS. quoted in Notes to Kirkton.

[27] _Wodrow’s Preface to Dickson’s Truth’s Victory over Error_, _apud Gillies_.

[28] _Livingstone’s Characteristics_, quoted in Notes to Kirkton.

[29] _Analecta_, iii. 450.

[30] £2915.

[31] Father Blackhall’s _Narrative_ (Spalding Club), p. 125.

[32] December 16, 1630, the Privy Council granted commission to a portion of their number, amongst whom was a bishop (Dumblane), to assemble in the Laigh Council-house for the examination of Margaret Wood, ‘and as they shall find occasion to cause put her to some _slight and spare torture_ for the better trial and discovery of the truth of the matter.’

[33] See proceedings in Appendix to Spalding’s _Troubles_, vol. i. (Spalding Club edition).

[34] _New Stat. Acc. of Scotland_--Banffshire, p. 131.

[35] The notes to this article are from another list in the _Spottiswoode Miscellany_, ii. 383.

[36] James Spence of Wormiston. He became Lord of Noreholm and Chancellor of Sweden.

[37] Subsequently Earl of Brentford in the English peerage.

[38] Created Lord Eythan by Charles I. in 1642.

[39] He died of his wounds, a captive, at Gortz.

[40] Betrayed and taken at Hanau, and died in prison.

[41] Killed before Bremen.

[42] Called Dear Sandie--he was subsequently employed in the artillery of the Scottish Covenanting army.

[43] He was assassinated by a lieutenant of his own regiment, whom he had been provoked to batoon. A court-martial of Germans acquitted the lieutenant, on the ground that it was contrary to Swedish discipline to cudgel an officer. General Leslie, being then governor of Staten where the earl was buried, had the lieutenant immediately apprehended and shot at a post.

[44] Stevenson.

[45] Stevenson, quoting _Historical Collections_, MS.

[46] _Book of Adjournal._ _P. C. R._

[47] _Black Book of Taymouth_, p. 75.

[48] _Black Book of Taymouth_, p. 440.

[49] _Black Book of Taymouth_, p. 77.

[50] See Cunningham’s _Lives of British Painters_, &c., v. 22, art. George Jameson.

[51] Mixed with Spalding’s quaint narration, are here inserted some special descriptions from the authorised account, published at the time, as abridged in Jackson’s _History of the Scottish Stage_.

[52] _Muse’s Threnodie_, ii. 118. Some specimens of the dress of the morris-dancers are still preserved at Perth.

[53] _Black Book of Taymouth_, p. 437.

[54] Another account states the number drowned at eight.

[55] From a manuscript of Sir James Balfour. _Ancient Heraldic and Antiquarian Tracts.,_ Edinburgh. 1837.

[56] _Ed. Phil. Journal_, Apr. 1839.

[57] _View of Diocese of Aberdeen_, Spal. Club.

[58] Go-summer and go-har’st are terms applied in Scotland to the mild weather which sometimes occurs between autumn and winter. There is a proverb in Peeblesshire: ‘If the deer lie down dry and rise dry on Rood-e’en (September 18), it’s a sign we’ll have a good go-har’st.’

[59] See Johnson’s _Scots Mus. Museum_, new edition, _notes_.

[60] _Staggering State of Scots Statesmen._

[61] Spalding. Balfour.

[62] Stevenson.

[63] _Rushworth’s Collections._ _Southey’s Commonplace-book, 3d Series_, p. 528.

[64] Oliver and Boyd’s _Almanac_ for 1839, p. 92.

[65] _Collections for the His^t. Aber. and Banff_, Spal. Club.

[66] The chancellor seems to have been involved in an unpleasant affair a short while before his death. Ho had procured the marriage of a young lady, named Inglis, with a good portion, to a nephew of his, named Butter, and thus disappointed the Earl of Traquair, who desired the ‘morsel for a cousin of his awn, with whom he was to have divided the prey.’ Traquair proceeded to ‘raise all the furies of the court against the chancellor,’ and procured a warrant for examination of some of his accounts--which, however, terminated in clearing his lordship of all suspicion. Traquair only shewed ‘his awn base ingratitude towards him who first of all men brought him to have the king’s favour and respect.’--_Bal._

[67] Manuscript of Sir James Balfour, _Heral. and Ant. Tracts_, Edinburgh, 1837.

[68] Notes to Spalding Club edition of Spalding.

[69] _Spalding Club Miscellany_, ii. 73.

[70] For these authentic particulars of Gilderoy’s fate, we are indebted to the extracts from the _Privy Council Record_ printed in the Appendix to the Spalding Club edition of Spalding’s _Troubles_.

[71] Act of Privy Council, quoted in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, i. 66.

[72] ‘... many mouths were there opened to the bishop’s disgrace. “False Antichristian!” “Wolf!” “Beastly belly-god!” and “Crafty fox!” were the best epithets and titles of dignity given him. The dean was mightily upbraided. Some cried: “He’s a son of a witch’s breeding and the de’il’s get. Nae halesome water can come forth from such a polluted fountain!” Others cried: “Ill-hanged thief, if at that time thou went’st to court, thou had been well hanged, thou hadst not been here to be a pest to God’s church this day!” One did cast a stool at him, intending to have given him a ticket of remembrance; but jouking became his safeguard at that time.’--_Brief and True Relation of the Broil_, &c., printed in App. to Rothes’s _Relation_, 1830.

[73] See Vol. I. p. 545.

[74] Rothes’s _Relation of Proceedings Concerning the Affairs of the Kirk_.

[75] Become fusty.

[76] Inundation.

[77] Clarendon’s Life, ii. 333.

[78] Whitelock’s _Memorials_, 485.

[79] Gordon of Rothiemay’s _Hist. Scots Affairs from 1637 to 1641_. Spalding Club, vol. i. 57.

[80] Lady Mary Stewart, daughter of Esme, first Duke of Lennox.

[81] Some extracts from this book were printed by the late Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., 4to, without date.

[82] The moneys are Scots, being but a fraction of sterling money of the same denomination.

[83] The lady thus devoted her plate to the maintenance of the Covenanted cause.

[84] Cosmo Innes--preface to _Fasti Aberdonenses_, Spalding Club, 1854.

[85] Gordon’s _Hist. Scots Affairs_.

[86] _Maitland Club Misc._, i. 476.

[87] Turners made by gipsies (cairds).

[88] The reader cannot fail to have perceived that John Dhu Ger has been twice killed already. How he contrived to outlive so many deaths, I am unable to explain.

[89] Guthry’s _Memoirs_.

[90] _Edinburgh Magazine_, March 1819.

[91] Balfour’s _Annals of Scotland_, iii. 128.

[92] _Archæologia Scotica_, i. 503, _note_.

[93] Wodrow’s _Analecta_, ii. 209, 280.

[94] The battle of Edgehill, fought on the 24th of October 1642.

[95] According to Burnet, Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston did the same thing. ‘He would often pray in his family two hours at a time, and had an unexhausted copiousness that way. What thought soever struck his fancy during those effusions, he looked on as an answer to prayer, and was wholly determined by it.’

[96] This whimsical association actually occurs in the dittay of a witch of this period.

[97] Stevenson’s _History of the Church of Scotland_.

[98] Willis’s _Current Notes_, April 1857.

[99] See Thorpe’s _Northern Mythology_; also article on Sandsting in _New Stat. Acc. Scotland_.

[100] On the 8th of June 1643, a case came before the Privy Council, at the instance of Lawrence Mercer and others, students at St Andrews, who complained of a scandalous charge got up against them by James Stewart of Ardvoirlich and his two sons, Robert and Harry, to the effect that umwhile Alexander Stewart, son of the first party, and brother of the two others, had received deadly injuries from them in a college tumult, and died in consequence. It was shewn that Alexander had provoked a tumult by his insolent speeches, and afterwards lay for a day or two in bed, but was found on inspection to be quite well, and he had lived in good health for nine months after. The lords accordingly declared the complainers to be innocent of what was laid to their charge.

[101] Notes to the Waverley Novels.

[102] In a curious and rare pamphlet, by William Lithgow, descriptive of the siege of Newcastle (_Edinburgh_, _printed by Robert Bryson_, 1645), we get some idea of the wretched state to which the place was reduced in consequence of its investiture of several months. ‘We found great penury and scarcity of victuals, ammunition, and other necessaries within that dejected town; so that they could not have held out ten days longer, unless the one half had devoured the other. The plague was raging in Gateside, Sandside, Sunderland, and many country villages about.’ For this reason, Tynemouth was obliged to surrender also; ‘the pestilence having been five weeks there with a great mortality, they were glad to yield and to scatter themselves abroad, but to the great undoing and infecting of the country about.’

Lithgow, by the way, was dissatisfied with the treatment of Newcastle by his countrymen. ‘As they abused their victory,’ says he, ‘in storming the town, with too much undeserved mercy, so they as unwisely and imprudently overreached themselves, in plundering the town with an _ignorant negligence and careless omission_.... And as they thus defrauded themselves with a whistle in their mouths, so they pitifully prejudged, by this their inveigled course, the common soldiers of their just due and dear-bought advantages.’

[103] ‘At Botarie, 25th October 1648, the brethren ordained to intimat out of their several pulpits, that whosoever receipts and converses with excommunicat persons, should be processed before the presbytery.’--_Strathbogie Presbytery Record._

[104] Producing a fire by the friction of two sticks against each other.

[105] Daughter-in-law of the Lady Frendraught formerly noticed.

[106] _Records of the Kirk of Scotland_, 1838, p. 446.

[107] Peterkin’s _Records of the Kirk of Scotland_, p. 427.

[108] _Maitland Miscell._, i. 436.

[109] _Maitland Miscel._, i. 433.

[110] _Caldwell Papers_, i. 91.

[111] Wood’s _Parish of Cramond_, p. 77.

[112] _Coltness Collections_ (Maitland Club), p. 58.

[113] _Archæologia Scotica_, ii. 108.

[114] Lyndoch lies about seven miles north-west from Perth.

[115] It is certain that Perth was visited by the plague in 1646. See _Memorabilia of Perth_, p. 179.

[116] In a popular publication quoted below[117] occurs the following notice of a well-known land mollusk, in connection with a traditionary story of the plague, which has long had general currency in Scotland: