Chapter XXXII: Section II: After the Reformation (2)

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 19, 31, 146, 148,
197, 262, 269, 306, 333, 377, 524, 539, 953; _Acts of the
Parliaments of Scotland_, Volumes III., IV.; _Register of
the Privy Council_, Volume II., page 7.

Some account has already been given of the measures taken for the relief of the poor in the period preceding the Reformation. From the first, the Reformed Church endeavoured to make provision for the really indigent poor, and also to relieve the labourers of the ground and the oppressed tenants, from some of their burdens. The first General Assembly resolved to petition the government to make better laws for the protection of pupils and orphans. In 1565, the Assembly took into consideration what should be done to those who oppressed children, and it was resolved in 1568, that oppressors of children, should be admonished by the Church to make public repentance in sackcloth, bareheaded and barefooted, as often as the particular congregation shall appoint.¹ The following year, the General Assembly petitioned the government to make provision for the poor, suggesting that a portion of the tithes should be applied to that purpose, and requesting that the poor labourers of the ground should have intromission to take their own tithes upon a reasonable composition. It is quite evident that after the nobles obtained possession of the Church lands, they then oppressed the tenants by exacting tithes, rents, and other dues, so that for a considerable time the occupiers of these lands were much harder pressed than before the Reformation. The reformed clergy in many ways exerted themselves to improve the material well-being of the people, as well as their moral and social state: and there is ample evidence of this throughout the records of the period.²

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 6, 75, 125.

² _Ibid._, pages 146, 306, 353, 339, 417, 425, 603. In 1587,
the General Assembly petitioned the King: “That order should
be taken with the poor, who in such multitudes wandered up
and down the country without law or religion.” _Ibid._, page
715. The next year, the Assembly made a proposal that every
minister should endeavour to deal with this moving mass of
poor within his own parish. _Ibid._, page 731. Concerning
the tenants and labourers of the ground, the Assemblies
made repeated appeals to the Government to take measures to
relieve them, pages 22, 40, 49, 60, 108, 507, 511.

Collections were made in the churches every Sunday for the poor; other sources of revenue that should have fallen to them, had been diverted by the Revolution into other channels. The government in 1574 ordered the provost and magistrates of Aberdeen to remove the organs out of their churches, and dispose of them, and to give the proceeds to the poor. They were ordered to sell the Gray Friars’ church and grounds to the highest bidder, except what was required for lodging the poor, and all the proceeds of the sale to be applied to sustain the poor. At the same time the Town Council of Aberdeen came under an obligation to build an hospital for the poor and impotent, and to put the croft and the mire and the house belonging to the leper folk, which lies between Old and New Aberdeen, into proper repair, for the support of the leper men and women, as was originally intended. The community of the city the same year resolved that alms should be collected weekly by one of the elders of the Church, and delivered to the keeping of the minister, to be distributed among the poor every month, according to the discretion of the session. Beggars not born in the town were ordered to be removed, and the poor citizens were directed to wear the town’s token on their outer garments that they might be known.¹ The Lords of Council passed an act in 1575 for the punishment of sturdy and idle beggars, and for providing support for the poor and helpless. In 1578 there was a great dearth in Scotland, and the Lords of Council discharged the customs on victuals imported, in order to mitigate the suffering of the poor.²

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume II., pages 391‒393,
402; _Burgh Records of Aberdeen_, Volume II., pages 20, 21.

² _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume II., pages 435, 680.

One difficulty of dealing with the poor arose from the defective police organisation. There was no adequate means for handling the multitude of strong beggars, “such as make themselves fools and bards,” gipsies, and a host of other vagabonds, who moved about and continually multiplied. It was difficult to separate these from the really deserving poor, and this long hampered the laws relating to the latter class. The city of Aberdeen had an official whose duty it was to keep the town free from extraneous beggars “not born and bred within the burgh.” In 1577 the council agreed to give him forty shillings to buy a garment to himself, on which the town’s arms was to be put, and then remitted “him to the session, to be helped and aided by them also, as his office concerns for the most part the ecclesiastical jurisdiction.”¹ When mixed notions of this kind prevailed regarding the jurisdiction of the civil and ecclesiastical spheres of action, we can easily see how the beggars would succeed. In 1574 Parliament passed an Act re-enacting the former Acts against beggars and all idle persons between the age of fourteen and seventy, and proposed to inflict severe penalties upon them. This Act also provided for the support of the poor, the aged, and the helpless, and it may be considered the first Poor-law Act of Scotland. It was repeated in 1579, and again, with some additions, in 1592, and once more in 1597. But the beggars and vagabonds still increased.² The centuries of feudal anarchy had entailed a legacy of vagrancy which the Government and the Church endeavoured to suppress. Years and generations passed, yet all the influences of religion and the restraints of the law appeared equally powerless to remove the idle and the ruffian population who preyed upon the industrious inhabitants of the kingdom. A long train of circumstances had concurred to feed the natural inclination to idleness and wandering among the people. A large portion of mankind have always manifested a similar tendency. But notwithstanding all the anarchy and the wretchedness of the nation, there was a core of vigour and health; and the moral discipline which the Church was so earnestly inculcating soon began to take root in the heart of the people.

¹ _Burgh Records of Aberdeen_, Volume II., page 29.

² _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages
86‒89, 139, 579; Volume IV.

The subject now to be noticed is one of melancholy interest, for the sad aberration of the faculties of the human mind which it manifested. A belief in magic, sorcery, witchcraft, and necromancy is a phenomenon which has afflicted mankind from the earliest ages onward to the present day. The forms they assumed are innumerable and endless; but whether it originated from ignorance, and has been sustained and continued by this; or whether something akin to it must naturally arise from the constitution of man, and the circumstances in which he was placed in the universe, as some eminent philosophers seem to hold; or whether it springs up gradually from a confused consciousness, at first tinged with an inclination, and afterwards with a deliberate intention to impose upon and deceive the people for interested ends, is a problem that cannot be decidedly answered.¹ The manifestation of the mind and feeling of the human race has been so diversified and unequally developed, that what is superstition and necromancy to one nation, may appear to another to be the only true form of religion; while that which another community believes and professes to be true and holy, a different people may believe to be the very work of the enemy himself. The beliefs of mankind, so far as they are known, have always contained opposing and directly exclusive elements of this character, which is mainly a result of the varied degrees of civilisation that have prevailed throughout the world. Even the same nation, at different periods of her life and development, may entertain the most opposite beliefs, as we find in the history of our own country. The difference between a believer in witchcraft and a believer in modern spiritualism is only one of degree and development; and if witchcraft and spiritualism are both founded upon the same class of notions, it is the higher development of morality and intelligence which renders the latter more harmless in the nineteenth century than the former was in the sixteenth. Among all the forms of belief in evil spirits, that which assumes the reality of a union between the evil spirit and a human being for the purpose of doing injury to other people is the most mischievous in its action on society. When men believed that the devil was an enormously powerful being, and that he could give an almost unlimited portion of this power to his confederates――the witches, for working all manner of evil――we need not be surprised that the King and the clergy were very anxious to purge the land of witches.

¹ On the rise and development of the notions of ghosts,
spirits, demons, divination, exorcism, and sorcery, there
is much valuable information in Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_,
and in the First Volume of Herbert Spencer’s _Principles of
Sociology_.

It seems to be pretty well ascertained that the belief in ghosts, spirits, and demons, has descended from the early cult of the prehistoric ages. One cause of the continuance of the belief in such imaginary beings into comparatively advanced stages of civilisation, appears to be the extreme credulity of uncultured and uncritical man, and another is the craving for the marvellous――a notable trait even in recent times. In the early stages of culture there seems to have been scarcely any distinction between the facts of inspiration and the facts of divination. The diviner employed his power for practical ends. The medicine-man of the savage stage operated in a somewhat similar way as an exorcist does; he invoked the aid of supernatural agents, and then endeavoured to make the body of the patient so disagreeable that the demon became glad to depart. In the more developed forms of exorcism, one demon was employed to expel another, or the officiating priest might summon a friendly spirit to his assistance. This power of the exorcist over evil spirits, when further developed, was used for many other purposes, and assumed the forms of sorcery and magic. The belief in the agency of evil spirits which the human race has manifested is a perplexing problem in the history of religion. In the earlier forms of religion the evil spirit or god was most feared, and hence a kind of devil worship seems to have prevailed. In the neo-platonic philosophy――that curious mixture of subjective thought, ecstasy, and theosophy, which flourished from the beginning of the third century to the sixth――there was a large element of theurgy and magic, and some of the most eminent of these philosophers were addicted to sorcery, and professed to have received divine communications to foresee ♦the future, and to perform miracles. The trials and executions for witchcraft in the sixteenth century present painful evidence of the continuance of the belief of demoniac agency. The belief in the power of the devil as something which manifested itself in the life of men and women was universal; the Reformation failed to shake it. The seventy-third canon of the Church of England, enacted in 1603, prohibited the clergy from casting out devils; in the present century the belief in demoniac possession of the body, which continued among the lower classes of the people in Germany in spite of the progress of civilisation, was revived among educated Protestants; and even yet it is not quite extinct in any nation in Europe.

♦ duplicate word “the” removed

In 1563, witchcraft was declared by Act of Parliament to be punishable by death. Probably the sudden shaking and the suppression of the traditions and notions of the people at the Reformation, had tended to arouse and revive other ideas of the demoniac order. However, witches soon became numerous after the revolution. The clergy and the kirk-sessions were very active in searching for witches. When these poor creatures were apprehended, they were placed in solitary confinement, and often fearfully tortured, to extort a confession of their guilt. They were systematically deprived of their natural rest; they had to endure cold, hunger, and thirst; and then the branks were applied to the unhappy victims, who were soon reduced to a fit state for confessing what was required. Their trial followed on the emission of one or more of the confessions thus obtained, which usually formed the groundwork of the public accusation and prosecution for this imaginary crime.¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume II.; Pitcairn’s
_Criminal Trials_, Volume I., pages 38, 49‒58.

It was stated in the General Assembly of 1563, that four witches had been delated for witchcraft by the superintendent of Fife and Galloway. The Assembly requested the Lords of Council to take order with them, and the complainers were commanded to give in their information. The General Assembly, in 1573, passed an act touching those who consult with witches, and ordered that persons suspected of conferring with them should be called before the superintendents; and, if they were found to have consulted witches, then they had to undergo public repentance in sackcloth, on Sunday in the church, under the penalty of excommunication. “If they be disobedient, to proceed after due admonition, and excommunicate them.” The popular party in the Church accused Bishop Adamson of consulting witches. Under the year 1583, James Melville records that Adamson was lying sick in his castle, “and oftentimes under the care of a woman suspected of witchcraft.... This woman being examined by the presbytery, and found to be a witch, in their judgment, was given to the bishop to be kept in his castle for execution, but he suffered her to slip away; but within three or four years thereafter, she was taken, and executed in Edinburgh for a witch.”¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 44, 283; Melville’s
_Diary_, page 137.

It is well known that James VI. was a firm believer in witchcraft, and he greatly encouraged the prosecution of the wretched creatures accused of this crime. During the last twenty years of the sixteenth century, a considerable number of witches were tried and executed in every quarter of the kingdom. They were accused, tried, burnt, and drowned, for doing and attempting to do, many curious and wonderful things; but most of the points in the accusations appear to us very ridiculous and absurd. Making a clay picture of the individual whom the witch intended to injure or to kill, was a very common point of the indictment. One count of the indictment against Bessy Rory, who was tried in 1590 for witchcraft, but acquitted, was this: “Thou art indicted for a common awaytaker of women’s milk in the whole country, and detaining the same at thy pleasure, as the whole country will testify.” Much of the records of the trials for witchcraft are quite unfit for publication. One of the most extraordinary stories in these indictments is the account of the meeting of the witches with the devil in the church of Berwick. The company who met his satanic majesty on this occasion consisted of a hundred persons, of whom six were men, and the rest women. The old enemy boldly ascended the pulpit, and delivered an address to his servants. He inquired what they had done since their last meeting; then, after giving them some more instructions, he concluded by commanding them to do all the evil that they could. Before the company separated, the witches showed their respect for their master in an unmistakable and exceedingly becoming fashion. On this night, the devil was respectably dressed――he wore a fine black gown and a hat.¹

¹ Pitcairn’s _Criminal Trials_, Volume I., pages 76, 101,
161‒165, 186, 201‒204, 207‒213, 230‒241.

Many of the witches were accused of conspiring and attempting by their devilry to destroy the King; and this aroused the weak-minded monarch to greater efforts against them.

Francis Stewart, Earl Bothwell and High Admiral of Scotland, was a son of John Stewart, prior of Coldingham, a natural son of James V.; thus the Earl was a nephew of Queen Mary and the Regent Moray, and a cousin of James VI. He became a powerful personage, and by his daring exploits often threw the King into a state of extreme alarm and terror. Politically he was wayward and reckless, and acquired a reputation for dissipation. For a considerable time many of his offences were condoned; but at last he was accused of trafficking with witches in a treasonable manner, and for treasonable purposes, and on these charges he was brought before the King and Council on the 15th of April, 1591, and committed to prison in Edinburgh Castle to await his trial; while two of his servants were summoned on similar charges to appear before the King and Council on the 6th of May. Bothwell escaped from the Castle of Edinburgh on the morning of the 21st of June; and on the 25th a royal proclamation was issued denouncing him as a wicked traitor who had entered into a conspiracy “against his Majesty’s own person, consulted with necromancers and witches, both in and without this country, for the purpose of taking his Highness’s life, which was confessed by some of the same class already executed, and by some others yet alive, ready to be executed for the same crime.... For which cause, and the former treasonable offence whereof he was convicted, his Majesty now at last has caused the doom of forfeiture to be pronounced against him, so that he is now a declared rebel, a traitor, an enemy to God, his Majesty, and this his native country.” Yet Bothwell was not extinguished, for, on the night of the 27th of December, he suddenly entered Holyrood Palace and battered at the doors of the King’s chamber, the Queen’s chamber, and the apartments of Maitland, the Chancellor. It seems that he intended to seize the King, to murder the Chancellor if necessary, and thus effect such a revolution in the Government as he desired in his own interest; but his attempt failed, though it appeared that he was abetted by several persons in the King’s court. The hue and cry against the bold rebel and consulter of witches was redoubled, and proclamations against his accomplices were issued, still the daring Bothwell, with his witchery, almost drove the King, the Chancellor, and the Council, into utter distraction. Meantime the prosecution and execution of the witches and the sorcerers had been proceeding. Euphame MacCalyean, the wife of a notable Edinburgh advocate, was accused on various charges of witchcraft. Her trial lasted from the 9th to the 13th of June, and one of the chief counts in her indictment was that she had kept intercourse with the witches who had formed a conspiracy for the destruction of the King. She was convicted and sentenced to death, and the poor woman, “on her conscience, protested that she was innocent of the crimes laid to her charge.” On the 25th of June, 1591, the very day on which Bothwell was proclaimed a rebel, Euphame was executed on the castle hill of Edinburgh. Barbara Napier of Edinburgh was another reputed witch, and was also accused of treasonable witchcraft against the King’s own person. On the 11th of May, 1591, she was convicted, and sentenced to be strangled and burned; but, after the stake was set in the Castlehill, and everything prepared for her execution, some of her friends alleged that she was pregnant, whereupon the execution was delayed. As it was considered hard to execute her after this, her life was spared, whereat the King was much displeased. James was enraged at the jury for acquitting her of the charge of treasonable witchcraft against his own person, and he purposely went to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh and delivered an oration on the subject to enlighten the minds of jurymen and the people touching “The use of witchcraft, and the enormity of the crime; its punishment according to Scripture, the ignorance of thinking such matters were fantasies, the cause of his own interference, the ignorance of the jury in the late trial, the cause of their finding, and his own opinion of what witches really are.” His Majesty explicated the above points at great length; and it appears that his oratory had been effective, for on the 26th of October the Privy Council appointed a Special Commission, consisting of six members, viz., Cockburne, the Justice-Clerk; MacGill, the King’s advocate; two burgesses of Edinburgh, and two Presbyterian ministers. This Commission was empowered to deal with all persons suspected, delated, or accused of witchcraft, sorcery, and all such devilish devices, and to examine, imprison, and torture them, and then report in writing the depositions to the King and his Council in order that the witches and sorcerers might be tried by a jury and justice executed upon them. Moreover, the King granted, and also sold, many commissions to earls, barons, sheriffs, stewards, and to the local authorities of burghs and towns, which empowered them to search for all persons suspected of witchcraft within the districts included in the commissions, to examine and torture them, put them to trial and execute them. For many years this cruel mania against witches raged throughout the kingdom, and was mainly instigated by the conceit and timidity of the King.

Richard Graham, the great sorcerer of the time, who had been connected with the alleged evil practices of Euphame MacCalyean, Barbara Napier, Earl Bothwell, and others, was himself at last brought to trial and condemned. He appears to have been a thorough rascal; but he adhered to the declarations which he had emitted, that Bothwell had held magical consultations touching the King’s death, and he also asserted that Ex-Chancellor Arran had dealt in witchcraft. He confessed to several raisings of the devil, especially once in the house of John Boswell of Auchinleck, “and once in the yard of the house in the Canongate belonging to Sir Lewis Ballenden, the late Justice-Clerk.” On the 29th of February, 1592, Graham was strangled and burned at the Cross of Edinburgh.

Bothwell still continued his exploits. On the night of the 28th of June, 1592, he re-appeared with an armed company of his followers and besieged the King and Queen in Falkland Castle, intending to carry them off, and putting them in terror of their lives; but the people of Fifeshire mustered and went to the rescue of the King, and on their approach Bothwell retired, having been frustrated in his main object. Great efforts were made to drive him out of the kingdom, yet, though repeatedly chased, condemned and forfeited, and proclaimed a traitor and an outlaw, under every possible form, still he was at liberty, and supported by an unknown number of followers; and thus he was a cause of constant anxiety to the Government and of terror to the King. Early on the morning of the 24th of July, 1593, Bothwell was again in the Palace of Holyrood by the connivance of the Duke of Lennox, Lord Ochiltree, and other courtiers. The King was then forced to capitulate to his detested archenemy; in fact, Bothwell for five or six weeks was master of the political situation; so on the 26th of July the King granted an act of remission and condonation of all the crimes of Bothwell and his accomplices. This was obtained, however, under menacing circumstances, when Bothwell and a band of his armed followers stood around the King, who was in terror of his life. Bothwell then had such a number of associates in Edinburgh that he offered to stand his trial to clear himself of the charges of witchcraft against the King’s life, which had been the chief cause of all the trouble with him. Accordingly a jury was summoned, and on the 10th of August he was tried before it, and unanimously acquitted of all the charges of witchcraft against the King’s person. For a time Bothwell and his party had the King in their hands, and his Majesty was sorely vexed at the restraint of his liberty, and extremely perplexed as to how he could extricate himself from his embarrassed position. On the 7th of September, a Convention of Estates was assembled at Stirling, in which Bothwell’s party seems to have sunk into a feeble minority. On the initiative of the King, the Convention intimated to him that he was not in any way bound by the conditions extorted from him at Holyrood Palace, and an Act was immediately passed declaring “that his Majesty, with the advice of the Estates, had recalled the grant made to Bothwell in August last.” This was intimated to Bothwell, and shortly after he assumed a threatening attitude. On the 11th of October he was summoned, along with two of his adherents, to appear before the King and the Council on the 25th, under the penalty of rebellion, and having failed to appear he was denounced; still, he was not extinguished. On the 3rd of April, 1594, he appeared at Leith with a body of armed followers, attacked the royal army under the King’s own command, and forced them to retire, and nearly obtained possession of the capital. The following year, early in April, however, he was obliged to leave Scotland. It was reported that he had gone to France, thence into Spain, and finally to Naples, where he died in poor circumstances, about the year 1606.

It appears that no other man of public mark had been so much connected with the alleged practices of witchcraft as Bothwell, or so incessant in consultations with the noted witches and warlocks of the period, and especially with the arch warlock Richard Graham. In the charge of high treason on which he was arrested and imprisoned in April 1591, which had driven him into his subsequent career of rebellion, the main count had been that he conspired with such infernal agencies for the death of the King, and thus to attain his own ambitious aims in the State. This was the view that the King entertained of Bothwell’s proceedings and exploits.

It is quite evident that the belief in witchcraft was entertained by all classes, the parliament, the Lords of Council, and the Judges of the Court of Session; none of them indicated any doubt of the reality of infernal agency, nor any inkling of the absurdity of the devil appearing in a human form, and assisting persons to accomplish all manner of mischief.¹

¹ Pitcairn’s _Criminal Trials_, Volume I., pages 242‒257,
Volume II., pages 361, 397‒400. Witchcraft was a crime for
which no remission or respite was given. _Register of the
Privy Council_, Volume II., pages 198, 318; Volume IV.,
pages 392, 609, 624, 643, 666, 680, 705; _et seq._, Volume
V., pages 4‒5, 14, 72, 91‒98, 100, 137‒139, _et seq._

The Church also continued to search and hunt for witches. The General Assembly, in 1587, had before them the case of a witch who was lying in prison at St. Andrews; but it seems the evidence in her case was insufficient, and James-Melville was ordered by the Assembly to travel on the coast side and collect matter for an indictment against her. In 1597, it was reported to the Assembly that several persons had been convicted of witchcraft, yet the magistrates not only refused to punish them according to the law of the country, but in contempt set them at liberty. The Assembly then ordered that the presbyteries should proceed in all severity with the censures of the Church against such magistrates as liberated convicted witches. About the end of the century a great number of witches were burnt in Aberdeen; yet it seems the city was not free of them, as in the beginning of the year 1600 the council resolved――“That the commission purchased to the provost of the burgh and the sheriff of the county, for holding of justice courts on witches and sorcerers, should be prosecuted upon all persons in this burgh and the freedom thereof, who were delated for this crime, so that the city should be purged of such contagious enemies of the commonweal.”¹ Indeed the local authorities and the clergy were intently bent on reforming the nation, and with the Catholics, the Jesuits, the troops of beggars, the poor, and the mass of crime and vice, it must be admitted that their hands were full enough. They never wavered, however, but steadfastly fought against everything which they deemed an evil; and, although we must candidly confess that their ideas of what constituted an evil or a crime were often confused and mistaken, and that their judgments were frequently wanting in discrimination, nevertheless, the evidence proves that they struggled manfully to improve the social state of the people.

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 725, 938‒939; _Burgh
Records of Aberdeen_, Volume II., pages 144, 155‒6, 204‒5.
There are many books on witchcraft; but those who wish to
make a study of Scottish witchcraft will find a mass of
original information on the subject in Pitcairn’s _Criminal
Trials_, 3 volumes, in the _Old Spalding Club Miscellany_,
and in the _Records of the Proceedings of the Church Courts_;
and also in the volumes of the _Register of the Privy
Council_.

The number of trials and executions for witchcraft in Scotland was not comparatively greater than in other European countries. Barrington estimated that in England, during a period of two centuries, 30,000 witches were executed. Matthew Hopkins, the witch finder, by his allegations caused the execution of one hundred persons in 1645‒47, in the counties of Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. In 1515, five hundred witches were burned at Geneva in the space of three months. In 1520, a great number were burned in France, and one sorcerer confessed to having twelve associates; while in Lorraine, between the years 1580 and 1595, nine hundred witches and warlocks were burned; and in Bretagne twenty poor women were executed as witches in 1654. In Germany upwards of 100,000 were executed for witchcraft; while in Wurtemburg alone, between the years 1627 and 1629, one hundred and fifty-seven persons were burned.

The discipline of the Reformed Church not only aimed at the suppression of crime and vice, but also, according to its light, endeavoured to strike at the roots of evil. The General Assembly in 1563 passed an act prohibiting the publication of any book either printed or written, if it touched upon religion, till it was presented to the superintendent of the district and approved by him and the most learned of his brethren within his bounds; but if they could not agree on the points raised in the book, then it should be placed before the General Assembly for a final decision on its merits and orthodoxy. In 1568 the Assembly found that Thomas Bassandyne had printed a book in Edinburgh, entitled _The Fall of the Roman Church_, “naming our King supreme head of the primitive Church,” and that he had printed a psalm book at the end of which was a profane song called “Welcome Fortune”; and that these books had been issued without the license of the magistrates or the Church. The Assembly unanimously agreed to order the printer to call in all the copies of the book which had been sold, to alter the title and expunge the profane song, and in the future to refrain from printing anything without the license of the supreme magistrate, and the revision of such matters as related to religion by the committee appointed for that purpose.¹ Though the Church was thus careful in guarding against the spread of immoral writings, and what she held to be erroneous doctrine, she was not an enemy to the press. Robert Lekpreuik, the Edinburgh printer, had fallen into straitened circumstances; and in 1569 the General Assembly, after considering his position, and the money which he had expended on his establishment, resolved to give him fifty pounds yearly out of the funds of the Church. The Assembly in several other instances encouraged printers, and petitioned the government to treat them liberally.²

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 35, 125‒126.

² _Ibid._, pages 164, 306, 462.

The Privy Council in 1574 passed an act prohibiting the printing of any book without a license from the government. The act directed that the authorities throughout the kingdom should proclaim to the people, that none of them may presume to print or sell any books, ballads, rhymes or tragedies, either in Latin or English until they were seen and examined, and allowed by the Chancellor and other persons appointed by the King, and at the least three of these must concur before the King’s license could be granted for the publication. The penalty attached to the contravention of this act was death and confiscation of goods.¹

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume II., page 387;
Volume III., pages 587, 549, 583; Volume IV., page 459;
Volume V., page 313; Volume VI., pages 18, 185; _Acts of
the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume IV., page 187.

In the secular affairs of life, the citizens still exhibited the same restriction and monopoly, which was described in the tenth chapter of the first volume. This greatly hampered the internal industry and the trade of the country. While the wars with England and the disturbed state of the nation before the Reformation, and the troubles which ensued after it, were all inimical to trade and commerce. Owing to these circumstances, industry and trade made comparatively little progress in the sixteenth century; this period was more remarkable for moral and religious change and transformation than for material prosperity.

During the reigns of James V. and Queen Mary, many acts of parliament were passed relating to the coinage of the kingdom. A great variety of gold, silver, and copper coins were struck. In 1525 it was ordered that a gold coin should be struck, called a crown, of the fineness of twenty-one carats and a-half and two grains; nine of these were to be coined out of the ounce of gold, and each to pass current for twenty shillings. For every ounce of gold brought to the mint, the seller was to get seven pounds, and out of every ounce of coined gold the King was to get twenty-five shillings. In 1527 the Crown entered into a contract with two men for coining of silver money. According to this agreement, one hundred and seventy-six coins were to be made out of the pound of silver, and each was to be of the value of eighteen pence Scots. The coins of Queen Mary are numerous and present a variety of types. In 1547 the Regent and Lords of Council passed an act stating that the pennies and half-pennies were mostly all gone out of the country; and thus the people, but especially the poor, suffered for want of them. The Council ordered twelve stones of silver to be coined into pennies and half-pennies, of the fineness and weight of the old pennies; and commanded that they should have currency throughout the kingdom. In 1554 the Bishop of Ross was going to France in the character of ambassador, and the Regent and Council ordered James Atcheson, the master coiner, to receive a silver vessel and coin it into babies to defray the ambassador’s expenses. In the end of the year 1565 directions were issued for coining the silver piece called the Mary Rall; it was to pass for thirty shillings, and the two-thirds and the one-third of the same to pass for twenty, and ten shillings respectively. During the reign of Queen Mary, the intrinsic value of the currency underwent several remarkable changes. As in 1544 the value of a pound of silver was £9 10 shillings, in 1556, £13, and in 1565 it was raised to £18. At this time, in England the pound of silver was worth from £2 8 shillings to £3, which pretty plainly shows that money was scarce in Scotland.¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume II.; _Register
of the Privy Council_, Volume I., pages 71, 151‒152, 154,
413; Lindsay’s _View of the Coinage of Scotland_, pages
39‒52, 141‒145; 1865.

In 1565, the Lords of Council ordered the false coins called hardheads, brought from Flanders, to be melted, and to have no currency in the kingdom. The same year an act was passed against the importation of false coin; and in 1566, several persons were convicted in Aberdeen for this offence. The following year, in May, a proclamation was issued against importing false coins――hardheads, placks, babies, or any other light money; and in 1568, Forbes of Monymusk and Forbes of Pitsligo, two brothers, were cited for coining false babies.¹

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume I., pages 325, 335,
468, 510, 642‒643. “Owing to the constant exporting of good
coin and the importing of bad, the circulating medium of the
country was in a wretched state. There seems to have been a
regular system of coining base placks and lions (otherwise
called hardheads) in the Low Countries, to be introduced by
merchants into Scotland.”――Chambers’s _Domestic Annals_,
Volume I., page 102.

Many acts touching the coinage were passed in the reign of James VI. In 1567, the regent and council passed an act ordering the coinage of a silver piece, to be called the James Rall, of the weight of an ounce troy, and to pass for thirty shillings in Scotland, two-parts of the same for twenty shillings, and the third-part for ten shillings. This year, in December, the parliament passed an act dealing with the coinage, and with false and clipped coins. It was stated that the King with the consent of the Regent, may coin gold and silver pieces of the same fineness as that of other countries, and that no gold or silver coin should be melted. The Lords of Council, in 1572, stated that parliament had authorised a new silver coin to be sent out, “for payment and support of the charges of this present civil and intestine war, raised against his highness’ authority by certain declared traitors, rebels, and conspirators, who, after the murder of the King’s dearest father, and of his uncle the Regent of this realm, have never ceased to resist his highness’ authority and to seek his own life, and, as far as in them lies, to pull his royal crown off his head.” This money was coined in whole and in half-pieces――the first to be called the half mark, and to pass for six shillings and eightpence; the second to be called the forty-penny piece, and to pass for three shillings and fourpence. The council ordered that the new coinage should be made known to the people by proclamation: “And to command and charge them to receive the said money in thankful and ready payment, and no one may presume to refuse the same upon any pretence whatever, under the penalty of treason; certifying to those that fail, that they shall be condemned to death with all rigour as an example to others.”¹ This act gives some indication of the difficulties connected with the currency, which mainly arose from the scarcity of specie, and the confused ideas of what constituted wealth; as yet there was no paper currency to make up the deficiency. Only three months after the issue of these two pieces of money, the Council had to proclaim that it was counterfeited by some persons to the great injury of the people.² It may be inferred that the motive for counterfeiting these coins so quickly arose from their being further debased than the money before in circulation. In the copper coinage, as well as in the gold and silver, there seems to have been much counterfeiting practised.³ During the later half of the century numerous acts were passed prohibiting the exportation of gold and silver; and injunctions were issued for bringing all the gold and silver to the master coiner, who was to pay the ordinary price for it.⁴

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume I., page 556; Volume
II., pages 135‒136.

² _Ibid._, Volume II., page 160.

³ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III.

⁴ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume I., pages 212‒213,
330; Volume II., pages 410, 554, 615‒616; _Acts of the
Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., page 216.

In 1579 parliament enacted that there should be a piece of gold coined of twenty-one carats, containing ten in the ounce, to be called the Scottish crown, and to pass for forty shillings. At the same time it was proclaimed that the ounce of the finest gold was to be bought for twenty-one pounds of the money of the realm, and the price of all other gold to be according to its fineness. A silver piece was to be coined of the fineness of eleven deniers, in whole and in half pieces――the first to pass for twenty-six shillings and eightpence, and to be called the two-mark coin; and the half piece to pass for thirteen shillings and fourpence, and to be called the half-mark. The price to be given for the finest silver was thirty-six shillings the ounce, and for other silver in proportion to its quality. But in 1580, parliament ordered that all the money in the kingdom, except the stamped placks and pennies, should be reformed and reduced to the fineness of eleven deniers, and a new gold coin was also ordered to be struck. The next year, the King and parliament thought that the last silver coinage had been fixed at too high a value, and this had caused great injury to the people, and had also been the occasion of a dearth and many other inconveniences. The new act, therefore, directed that the last coinage, which extended to two hundred and eleven stones and ten pounds of silver, should be brought in again to be recoined into ten shilling pieces, containing four in the ounce. In 1584, parliament passed another act, reciting that the gold of the kingdom had been continually exported, and that of other countries introduced to the loss and injury of the people; and it was then ordered that two pieces of gold, of the fineness of twenty-one carats and a-half, should be coined――the one of six coins to the ounce, each to pass for three pounds fifteen shillings; and the other nine to the ounce, and to pass for fifty shillings. In 1597, it was stated in an act of parliament that the current money of the kingdom was scarce, and that gold and silver had risen to exorbitant prices owing to the liberty which all persons took of raising the price of money at their pleasure, far above the value prescribed by the laws and acts of parliament. Through this, and constant exporting of the money, great confusion had been caused; and it was then enacted that parties transgressing the laws would be severely punished. The scarcity of money is very apparent from the high value which the laws set upon it. The ounce of foreign gold of twenty-two carats was twenty-eight pounds sixteen shillings, Scots money, in 1598; and in 1601, the price given at the mint for gold was thirty-three pounds the ounce; at the same time the ounce of silver was about forty-eight shillings, Scotch money.¹ In 1587, parliament passed an act limiting the rate of interest on money and on grain to ten per cent.

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages
150, 191, 310, 311; Volume IV., 134‒135. Lindsay’s _View of
the Coinage of Scotland_, pages 53‒59, 145‒151.

At the time of the union of the crowns the relative value of English and Scotch money was as twelve to one; the gold pieces which passed in England for twenty-one shillings each, in Scotland passed for twelve pounds.

Some early attempts at mining were noticed in the preceding volume. In the reign of James IV., the gold mines of Crawfurd Moor were discovered; and in the years 1511, 1512, and 1513, many payments were made by the crown to Sir James Pettigrew for working these gold mines. Payments were also made to Sebald Northberge, the master finer, Andrew Ireland, finer, and Gerard Essemer, the melter; and in 1513 the Abbot of Tungland received payment from the King to visit the mines of Crawfurd Moor. These mines engaged the attention of the government in 1515. In 1524 a court was ordered to be held at Edinburgh to deal with those who had broken the order of the mine, and conveyed gold out of the kingdom; and the gold of the mine was then ordered to be coined in the coining house. The Albany medal of 1524 was made from gold found in Crawfurd Moor; and it seems that some of the gold coinage of James V. was minted of native metal. In 1526 a lease was granted to a party of Germans and Dutchmen of all the mines of gold, silver, and other metals for a term of forty-three years; and in the following year a contract was made with them to coin certain gold and silver money for ten years, but it appears that the enterprise was not successful as the foreigners departed homeward in 1531. In 1535 a Commission was appointed to inquire into the working of the mines, and in 1539 miners from Lorraine were brought to Scotland to work the mines. They were placed under the management of John Mossman, a goldsmith, and a considerable quantity of gold seems to have been found by them; and shortly after forty-one ounces of native gold were used in making a crown for James V., and thirty-five ounces for a crown to his Queen, while seventeen ounces were added to the King’s great chain, and nineteen and a half ounces for making a belt to the Queen; a quantity was also used for the coinage of gold bonnet pieces and other purposes. During the minority of Queen Mary little was done in gold mining. In 1565 the Privy Council granted a licence to John Stewart of Tarlair, and his son William, to search for all kinds of minerals, and to work the mines of gold and silver and other metal between the Tay and Orkney, on the condition that they should pay to the government one stone of metal out of every ten which they found. They were also authorised to work all the gold and silver mines throughout the country, on the condition that they brought all the gold and silver to the coining-house; for every ounce of gold they were to receive ten pounds, and for each ounce of silver twenty-four shillings. If in the course of their explorations they discovered coal haughs, not within ten miles of any royal residence, then they should be free to work them, and only pay the tenth penny of the proceeds to the Crown. Their licence was to endure for nine years. In March, 1568, the Regent Moray granted a licence to Cornelius Vois, a Dutchman, to work the gold and silver mines for nineteen years in every quarter of the kingdom, and he undertook to pay to the Crown for every hundred ounces of gold and silver which was found, purified by washing, eight ounces, and if purified by fire, four ounces; while there were other alternative arrangements. Cornelius was allowed to employ as many of the Scots as he pleased, but not more than twenty foreigners. He had, as one of his partners, Nicolas Hilliard, the noted medallist, and also the Earl of Morton, who had ten shares, and some of the Scottish merchants.

In 1576 Abraham Paterson and his partners obtained a licence to work all the gold, silver, lead, and copper mines in Scotland, excepting the lead mines of Glengonar and Orkney, which were then worked by George Douglas of Parkhead, and Adam Fullerton, a burgess of Edinburgh. Lengthy and very minute stipulations occur in this licence; he was to pay six ounces out of every hundred of gold or silver to the Crown, and the licence was to continue for twelve years. In 1583 a general grant of all the mines and minerals in the country for twenty-one years was given to Eustachius Roche, mediciner. He was authorised to search anywhere for minerals, and to use timber, coals, and peats from the royal territories on the condition of paying seven ounces out of every hundred of gold found, and of all the other metals ten ounces out of every hundred, and all the rest of the gold and silver was to be brought to the coining-house at the price of twenty-two pounds Scots per ounce of fine gold, and forty shillings per ounce for fine silver. All other persons were prohibited from working minerals unless authorised by Roche. Further privileges were granted to him by contract, which was ratified by Parliament in August, 1584; but certain mines which belonged to the Earl of Arran were exempted from the scope of Roche’s lease; afterwards Roche obtained a separate lease of Arran’s mines, but when Roche attempted to transport the lead, in 1585, which had been got in the mines of Glengonar and Wanlock (on Arran’s territory) it was arrested in Leith by the Treasurer, although, on appeal to the Privy Council, the claim was abandoned and the lead permitted to be transported on payment of the royal duty according to the contract.

George Douglas of Parkhead, mentioned above, had obtained a grant of the mines in the Leadhills district in 1576, but he was forfeited in 1581, and fled to England. On the turn of the political wheel, however, he was restored in 1585, and in 1592 he was permitted to work the mines of Waterhead, “otherwise called Over-Glengonar,” on the condition of paying fifty ounces of fine silver out of every thousand stone of lead ore. He was allowed to sell one thousand stone weight of the ore for the advancement of the work. The following year the master of the metals complained to the Privy Council that Douglas had worked much more ore than his licence permitted, and so he was summoned to pay the whole duty due from the commencement of his lease. This resulted in an agreement between Douglas and Thomas Foullis, a goldsmith and burgess of Edinburgh, by which all the rights of Douglas in connection with the mines were transferred to Foullis for an annual rent of five hundred merks. Foullis then obtained an Act of the Privy Council, confirmed by Parliament, granting to him all the minerals and metals in the lands of the Friar’s Moor, in the sheriffdom of Lanark, for twenty-one years, at a yearly rent of one thousand merks; but he ceased to search for the precious metals on any extensive scale, and directed his attention to develop the lead mines.¹

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume I., pages 232, 330,
612‒614; Volume II., pages 506‒514; also Volumes III. and
IV.; _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume II.;
_Early Records Relating to Mining in Scotland_, by R. W.
Cochran-Patrick, 1878.

A long Act of Parliament touching the mines was passed in 1592. This Act explicitly stated that all mines belonged to the Crown, and that in the past these mines had not been made so profitable as they might have been, owing mainly to there not having been a specially qualified man appointed to look after the whole work connected with them. Therefore, it was enacted that henceforth there should be an officer appointed by the Government to oversee the whole matter of the metals and minerals, who should be called the Master of the Metals, with full powers touching the management and working of the mines. The Act appointed Mr. John Lindsay, a brother of Sir David Lindsay of Edzell, Master of the Metals for life. One clause of the Act stated that the King, if he thought fit, with the advice of the Treasurer and the Master of the Metals, for a reasonable composition, might let in feu to every earl, baron, or other freeholder in the kingdom, all mines of gold, silver, copper, lead, or other metals and minerals “which is or may be found in their own lands, giving to them power to seek and to work such mines on the condition of paying the Crown one-tenth part of the whole metals found.” It appears that Roche had not been very successful in his mining operations, and it was resolved to reduce his contract. Accordingly he was charged with having neither worked the mines in operation before the date of his contract, nor those which he had discovered himself, that he had also neglected to pay the duty owing to the Crown, and he was ordered to appear before the Privy Council to answer these charges, and at the same time to produce all his papers and titles. Roche appeared and answered the charges against him, but the contract with him was reduced, and his connection with the mines then ceased.¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., page 556;
Balcarres’ _Papers_; _Lives of the Lindsays_, Volume II.