Glasgow—which in 1556 stood eleventh in the roll of the Scottish burghs, contributing but £202, while Edinburgh afforded £2650—appears, in the list now made up for a monthly cess to defray the expenses of the war, as second, Edinburgh giving £3880; Glasgow, £1800; Aberdeen, £726; Dundee, |1695.| £560; Perth, £360; Kirkcaldy, £288, &c. ‘To account for this comparative superiority of the wealth of Glasgow at this time, I must take notice that since before the Restoration the inhabitants had been in possession of the sale of both refined and raw sugars for the greater part of Scotland; they had a privilege of distilling spirits from their molasses, free from all duty and excise; the herring-fishery was also carried on to what was, at that time, thought a considerable extent; they were the only people in Scotland who made soap; and they sent annually some hides, linen, &c., to Bristol, from whence they brought back, in return, a little tobacco—which they manufactured into snuff and otherwise—sugars, and goods of the manufacture of England, with which they supplied a considerable part of the whole kingdom.’—Gibson’s History of Glasgow, 1777.
It is probable that the population did not then exceed twelve thousand; yet the seeds of that wonderful system of industry, which now makes Glasgow so interesting a study to every liberal onlooker, were already sown, and, even before the extension of English mercantile privileges to Scotland at the Union, there was a face of business about the place—a preparation of power and aptitude for what was in time to come. This cannot be better illustrated than by a few entries in the Privy Council Record regarding the fresh industrial enterprises which were from time to time arising in the west.
December 21, 1699.—A copartnery, consisting of William Cochran of Ochiltree, John Alexander of Blackhouse, and Mr William Dunlop, Principal of the University of Glasgow, with Andrew Cathcart, James Colquhoun, Matthew Aitchison, Lawrence Dunwoodies, William Baxter, Robert Alexander, and Mungo Cochran, merchants of Glasgow, was prepared to set up a woollen manufactory there, designing to make ‘woollen stuffs of all sorts, such as damasks, half-silks, draughts, friezes, drogats, tartains, craips, capitations, russets, and all other stuffs for men and women’s apparel, either for summer or winter.’ Using the native wool, they expected to furnish goods equal to any imported, and ‘at as easie a rate;’ for which end they are ‘providing the ablest workmen, airtiests, from our neighbouring nations.’ They anticipated that by such means ‘a vast soum of ready money will be kept within the kingdom, which these years past has been exported, it being weel known that above ten thousand pound sterling in specie hath been exported from the southern and western parts of this kingdom to Ireland yearly for |1695.| such stuffs, and yearly entered in the custom-house books, besides what has been stolen in without entering.’
In the same year, John Adam, John Bryson, John Alexander, and Harry Smith, English traders, had brought home to Glasgow ‘English workmen skilled to work all hardware, such as pins, needles, scissors, scythes, tobacco-boxes, and English knives, for which a great quantity of money was yearly exported out of the kingdom.’ They designed so far to save this sending out of money by setting up a hardware-manufactory in Glasgow. On their petition, the Privy Council extended to their designed work the privileges and immunities provided by statute for manufactories set up in Scotland.
In the ensuing year, William Marshall, William Gray, John Kirkmyre, and William Donaldson, merchants in Glasgow, projected the setting up of a work there for making of ‘pins and needles,[151] boxes, shears, syshes, knives, and other hardware,’ whereby they expected to keep much money within the country, and give employment to ‘many poor and young boys, who are and have been in these hard and dear times a burden to the kingdom.’ To them likewise, on petition, were extended the privileges of a manufactory.
February, 1701.—Matthew and Daniel Campbell, merchants in Glasgow, designed to set up an additional sugar-work, and, in connection with it, a work ‘for distilling brandy and other spirits from all manner of grain of the growth of this kingdom.’ With this view, they had ‘conduced and engaged several foreigners and other persons eminently skilled in making of sugar and distilling of brandy, &c., whom, with great travel, charges, and expense, they had prevailed with to come to Glasgow.’ All this was in order that ‘the nation may be the more plentifully and easily provided with the said commodities, as good as any that have been in use to be imported from abroad,’ and because ‘the distillery will both be profitable for consumption of the product of the kingdom, and for trade for the coast of Guinea and America, seeing that no trade can be managed to the places foresaid, or the East Indies, without great quantities of the foresaid liquors.’
On their petition, the privileges of a manufactory were granted to them.
In the progress of manufacturing enterprise in the west, an additional soap-work connected with a glass-work came to be thought of (February 1701). James Montgomery, younger, merchant in Glasgow, took into consideration ‘how that city and all the country in its neighbourhood, and further west, is furnished with glass bottles.’ The products of the works at Leith and Morison’s Haven ‘cannot be transported but with a vast charge and great hazard.’ He found, moreover, ‘ferns, a most useful material for that work, to be very plenty in that country.’ There was also, in the West Highlands, great abundance of wood-ashes, ‘which serve for little or no other use, and may be manufactured first into good white soap, which is nowhere made in the kingdom to perfection; and the remains of these wood-ashes, after the soap is made, is a most excellent material for making glass.’ He had, therefore, ‘since March last, been with great application and vast charge seeking out the best workmen in England,’ and making all other needful preparations for setting up such a work.
On his petition, the Council endowed his work with the privileges of a manufactory, ‘so as the petitioner and his partners may make soap and glass of all kinds not secluded by the Laird of Prestongrange and his act of parliament.’[152]
The Bank of England, projected by the noted William Paterson, amidst and by favour of the difficulties of the public exchequer during King William’s expensive continental wars, may be said to have commenced its actual banking operations on the first day of this year. Considerable attention was drawn to the subject in London, and the establishment of a similar public bank in both Ireland and Scotland became matter of speculation. There was in London an almost retired merchant named John Holland, who thought hereafter of spending his time chiefly in rural retirement. To him came one day a friend, a native of Scotland, who was inspired with a strong desire to see a bank established in his country. He desired that Mr Holland would think of it. ‘Why,’ said the latter, ‘I have nearly withdrawn from all such projects, and think only of how I may spend the remainder of my days in peace.’ ‘Think of it,’ said his Scottish friend, ‘and if you will |1695.| enter into the scheme, I can assure you of having an act of our parliament for it on your own conditions.’
Mr Holland accordingly drew out a sketch of a plan for a bank in Scotland, which his friend, in a very few days thereafter, had transfused into a parliamentary bill of the Scottish form. He had also spoken, he said, to most of his countrymen of any mercantile importance in London to engage their favour for the scheme. Mr Holland was readily induced to lend his aid in further operations, and the project appears to have quickly come to a bearing, for, little more than six months from the opening of the Bank of England, the act for the Bank of Scotland had passed the native parliament.
In our country, as in England, exchanges and other monetary transactions, such as are now left to banking companies, had hitherto been solely in the hands of a few leading merchants; some such place as the back-shop of a draper in the High Street of Edinburgh, or an obscure counting-room in the Saltmarket of Glasgow, was all that we could shew as a bank before this period; and the business transacted, being proportioned to the narrow resources and puny industry of the country, was upon a scale miserably small. Yet there was now, as we have seen, an expansive tendency in Scotland, and the time seems to have arrived when at least a central establishment for the entire country might properly be tried in the capital.
While, unluckily, we do not know the name of the Scottish gentleman who propounded the scheme to Mr Holland, we are enabled, by the recital of the act, to ascertain who were the first patrons and nurses of the project generally. Of merchants in London, besides the English name of Mr Holland, we find those of Mr James Foulis,[153] Mr David Nairn, Mr Walter Stuart, Mr Hugh Frazer, Mr Thomas Coutts, and Mr Thomas Deans, who were all of them probably Scotsmen. Of Edinburgh merchants, there were Mr William Erskine, Sir John Swinton, Sir Robert Dickson, Mr George Clark, junior, and Mr John Watson. Glasgow was wholly unrepresented. These individuals were empowered by the act to receive subscriptions between the ensuing 1st of November and 1st of January. The whole scheme was modest, frugal, and prudential in a high degree. |1695.| It was contemplated that the Bank of Scotland should start with a subscribed capital of £1,200,000 Scots—that is, £100,000 sterling, in shares of £1000 Scots each; two-thirds to be subscribed by individuals residing in Scotland, and one-third by individuals residing in England, no person to hold more than two shares. The company was to be under the rule of a governor, deputy-governor, and twenty-four directors, of the last of whom twelve should be English, these being ‘thought better acquainted with the nature and management of a bank than those of Scotland.’ As a further encouragement to English assistance, the act ordained that any person subscribing for a part of the stock, should be considered as ipso facto naturalised.
The subscription of the £66,666, 13s. 4d. allowed to Scotland began at the appointed time, the Marquis of Tweeddale, his majesty’s commissioner to parliament, and his son, Lord Yester, being the first who put down their names. The subscription of the remaining £33,333, 6s. 8d. was effected in London in one day, the chief adventurers being Scotsmen resident there. The heads of the concern in Edinburgh felt themselves sadly ignorant of the arrangements required for a public bank, and deemed it absolutely necessary that Mr Holland should come down to advise and superintend their proceedings. He very generously agreed to do so, reside for some time in Edinburgh, and return upon his own charges; while they, as liberally, took care, by a rich present to his wife, that he should be no loser by the journey. He relates[154] that his proposals were all at first objected to and controverted by the Scotch managers, in consequence of their utter ignorance of banking, yet all in perfect good-humour, and manifestly from a pure desire to get at the expedients which were best; and all were ultimately agreed to. This occasioned a difficulty at starting, and to this was added no small amount of jealous opposition and distrust; nevertheless, Mr Holland remarks that, within two months, and even while the Bank of England was notoriously unable to pay its bills, those of the Scottish establishment had attained to a surprising degree of credit. It may here be remarked, that, ere long, by consent of the English proprietors, the whole twenty-four directors were elected from the Scottish shareholders, leaving thirteen English ones to act as trustees, ‘to manage what affairs the company |1695.| should have at London;’ and in time, when there were no longer so many as thirteen proprietors in England, even this arrangement was abandoned.
Several of the prominent Scottish shareholders were members of the African Company; but it appears that there was anything but a concert or good agreement between the two sets of projectors. Paterson regarded the Bank of Scotland as in some degree a rival to his scheme, and talked of the act appointing it as having been ‘surreptitiously gained.’ While so sanguine about the African Company, he thought the bank unlikely to prove a good thing to those concerned in it, little foreseeing that it would flourish for centuries after the Indian Company had sunk in its first calamitous venture.
The Bank of Scotland set up in a floor in the Parliament Close, with a moderate band of officials, and ten thousand pounds sterling of paid-up capital. It had scarcely started, when the African Company added a banking business to its other concerns, meaning thus to overpower the project of Mr Holland. That gentleman was in Edinburgh at the time. He saw that the African Company was in the highest vogue with the public, while few took any notice of his modest establishment. As governor, he prudently counselled that they should make no attempt to enforce the exclusive privilege which the statute had conferred upon them for twenty-one years, but to limit themselves to standing on their guard against ‘that mighty Company,’ lest it should try to injure or ‘affront’ them by a run upon their cash. For this reason, by his advice, twenty thousand pounds of the capital was called up, in addition to the ten thousand lodged at first. The smallness of these sums is amusing to men who know what banking in Scotland now is; yet it appears that from the first the Bank of Scotland had five, ten, twenty, fifty, and hundred pound notes. After a little while, it was found that banking did not succeed with the African Company, chiefly because they lent money in too large sums to their own shareholders, and the Bank of Scotland was then allowed to go on without any competition. The capital lately called up was then paid back, leaving the original sum of £10,000 alone in the hands of the bank.
The chief business of the bank at first was the lending of money on heritable bonds and other securities. The giving of bills of exchange—the great business of the private bankers—was, after deliberation at a general meeting of the ‘adventurers,’ tried, with a view to extending the usefulness of the concern as far as |1695.| possible. In pursuance of the same object, and ‘for carrying the circulation of their notes through the greatest part of the kingdom,’ branch-offices were erected at Glasgow, Dundee, Montrose, and Aberdeen, ‘with cashiers and overseers at each place, for receiving and paying money, in the form of inland exchange, by notes and bills made for that purpose.’ But, after what appeared a fair trial, the directors ‘found that the exchange trade was not proper for a banking company.’ A bank they conceived to be ‘chiefly designed as a common repository of the nation’s cash—a ready fund for affording credit and loans, and for making receipts and payments of money easy by the company’s notes.’ To deal in exchange was ‘to interfere with the trade and business of private merchants.’ The Bank of Scotland found it ‘very troublesome, unsafe, and improper.’ One reason cited some years afterwards, by a person connected with the bank, was—‘There is so much to be done in that business without doors, at all hours by day and night, with such variety of circumstances and conditions, as are inconsistent with the precise hours of a public office, and the rules and regulations of a well-governed company; and no company like the bank can be managed without fixing stated office-hours for business, and establishing rules and regulations which will never answer the management of the exchange trade.’ As for the branch-offices, the inland exchange contemplated there failed from another cause, strikingly significant of the small amount of commercial intercourse then existing between the capital and the provinces of Scotland. The bank, we are told, found it impracticable to support the four sub-offices ‘but at an expense far exceeding the advantage and conveniency rising therefrom; for, though the company would willingly have been at some moderate charge to keep them up, if they could thereby have effectuated an answerable circulation of bank-notes about these places, for accommodating the lieges in their affairs, yet they found that those offices did contribute to neither of those ends; for the money that was once lodged at any of those places by the cashiers issuing bills payable at Edinburgh, could not be redrawn thence by bills from Edinburgh‘—of course, because of there being so little owing in Edinburgh to persons residing in the provinces. So, after a considerable outlay in trying the branch-offices, the directors were obliged to give them up, and ‘bring back their money to Edinburgh by horse-carriage.’[155]
The company’s business was thenceforward for many years ‘wholly restricted to lending money, which seems to be the only proper business of a bank, and all to be transacted at Edinburgh.’[156]
The estates of Duncan Forbes of Culloden, in sundry parishes near Inverness, having been much wasted in 1689 and 1690, both by the ravages of the king’s enemies and the necessary sustentation of his troops, he now gave in a petition shewing that his damages had in all amounted to the sum of £47,400, 6s. 8d. Scots. The parliament recommended his case to the gracious consideration of his majesty,[157] and the result was a requital, not in money, but in the form of a perpetual privilege to the Laird of Culloden of distilling from the grain raised on his estate of Ferintosh, upon paying of only a small composition in lieu of excise.
The estate of Ferintosh consisted of about eighteen hundred arable acres,[158] and the produce of barley was so considerable that a very large quantity of whisky came to be produced within its bounds; Hugo Arnot says nearly as much as in all the rest of Scotland together—but Hugo, it must be admitted, is a remarkably unstatistical author. Whatever might be the exact truth, there was certainly a surprising quantity of usquebaugh issued forth from the domains of Forbes, insomuch that Ferintosh came to be that quasi synonym for whisky which ‘Kilbagie’ and ‘Glenlivet’ afterwards were in succession. The privilege of course yielded a large revenue to the family, and in time made ample compensation for all their patriotic sufferings past and potential. In 1784, when at length the government was inclined to purchase it back, there was such a demonstration made of its lucrativeness, that the capital sum of £21,500 assigned for it was thought to be but a poor equivalent.
The minister of Dingwall, in his account of the parish, written a few years after the abolition of the Ferintosh privilege, tells of a remarkable consequence of that measure. During the continuance of the privilege, quarrels and breaches of the peace were abundant among the inhabitants, yielding a good harvest of business to the procurators (i. e. solicitors) of Dingwall. When the privilege ceased, the people became more peaceable, and the prosperity of attorneyism in Dingwall sustained a marked abatement.
It was not so subscribing a world at the close of the seventeenth century as it is now; yet, poor as our country then was, she kept her heart open for important public objects, and for works in which faith and charity were concerned.
There was no bridge over the Clyde between Bothwell Bridge and Little-gill Bridge, a space of eighteen miles. At Lanark, there was a ferry-boat; but the river was frequently impassable, and there were repeated instances of the whole passengers being swept down and engulfed in the Stonebyres Linn. Arrangements were now made, chiefly by a collection at all the church-doors in the kingdom, for building ‘a sufficient stone bridge’ at the foot of the Inch of Clydeholm—this charitable measure being rendered necessary by the poverty to which the burgh of Lanark had been reduced by spoliation during the late reign, ‘by exactions of fines, free quarters for soldiers, and the like.’
By order of parliament, a collection of money was made, in July 1695, in the parish churches of the kingdom, for the benefit of Andrew Watson, skipper, and eight mariners of his vessel, who, in a voyage from Port Glasgow to Madeira, on the 19th of November in the preceding year, in latitude 38 degrees, had been attacked by two Salee rovers, and by them carried as captives to Mamora, in Marocco. In their petition to parliament, they described themselves as resting in a slavery more cruel and barbarous than they could express, without the proper necessaries of life, and ‘above all, deprived of the precious gospel, which they too much slighted when they enjoyed it,’ with no prospect before them but to die in misery and torment, unless they have some speedy relief. The contributions were to be handed to John Spreul, merchant in Glasgow, he finding caution to apply them to their proper end.
‘Those of the Scots nation residing at Konigsberg, in Prussia,’ petitioned the Privy Council by their deputy, Mr Francis Hay, for assistance in building a kirk for their use, for which they had obtained a liberty from the Duke of Brandenburg. A collection at all the church-doors in the kingdom was ordained for this purpose; and it is surprising with what sympathy the poor commons of Scotland would enter on a movement of this kind. We find that the little parish of Spott, in East Lothian, contributed nearly three pounds sterling towards the Konigsberg kirk.
At the ‘break of a storm’—by which is meant the melting of a great fall of snow—in November 1698, the southern streams were flooded, and the bridge of Ancrum was so broken and damaged that it could be no longer serviceable. This being the only bridge |1698.| upon the water of Teviot, on an important line of communication between the north and south in the centre of the Borders, and there being no ferry-boat on the river but one seven miles further up, it was most desirable that it should be rebuilt; but the calculated expense was betwixt eight and nine thousand merks (from £450 to £500 sterling), and an act of Council offering a pontage to any one who would undertake this business altogether failed of its object. In these circumstances, the only alternative was a collection at all the church-doors in the kingdom, and permission to make such a levy was accordingly granted by the Privy Council.
The vicissitudes of witchcraft jurisprudence in Scotland are remarkable. While Presbyterianism of the puritanic type reigned uncontrolled between 1640 and 1651, witches were tortured to confession and savagely burnt, in vast numbers, the clergy not merely concurring, but taking a lead in the proceedings. During the Cromwell ascendency, English squeamishness greatly impeded justice in this department, to the no small dissatisfaction of the more zealous. On the Restoration, the liberated energies of the native powers fell furiously on, and got the land in a year or two pretty well cleared of those vexatious old women who had been allowed to accumulate during the past decade. From 1662 to the Revolution, prosecutions for witchcraft were comparatively rare, and, however cruel the government might be towards its own opponents, it must be acknowledged to have introduced and acted consistently upon rules to some extent enlightened and humane with regard to witches—namely, that there should be no torture to extort confession, and no conviction without fair probation. I am not sure if the opposite party would not have ascribed it mainly to the latitudinarianism of Episcopacy, that the whole history of witchcraft, throughout the two last Stuart reigns, betrayed an appearance as if the authorities were not themselves clear for such prosecutions, and, in dictating them, only made a concession to the popular demands.
For a few years after the Revolution, the subject rested in the quiescence which had fallen upon it some years before. But at length the General Assembly began to see how necessary it was to look after witches and charmers, and some salutary admonitions about these offenders were from time to time issued. The office of Lord Advocate, or public prosecutor, had now fallen into the hands of Sir James Steuart of Goodtrees, a person who shared in the highest convictions of the religious party at present in power, |1695.| including reverence for the plain meaning of the text, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ The consequence was, that the reign of William III. became a new Witch Period in Scotland, and one involving many notable cases.
In August 1695, two married women, named M‘Rorie and M‘Quicken, residing respectively at the Mill-burn and Castlehill of Inverness, were in the Tolbooth of that northern burgh, under a suspicion of being witches; and the Privy Council, seeing the inconvenience of having them brought to an inquest in Edinburgh, issued a commission for their being tried on the spot by David Polson of Kinmilnes, sheriff-depute of Inverness; William Baillie, commissar there; Alexander Chisholm, bailie to Lord Lovat; Duncan Forbes of Culloden; —— Cuthbert of Castlehill; and —— Duff, provost of Inverness, any three of them to be a quorum. The arrangements for the trial were all carefully specified in this commission; and it was intimated in the end that, ‘in case the said judges shall find the said panels guilty of the said horrid crime laid to their charge,’ the commissioners should adjudge them ‘to be burned or otherwise execute to death.’
In March 1696, a commission was issued in similar terms for the trial of ‘Janet Widdrow, in the parish of Kilmacolm, presently prisoner in the Tolbooth of Paisley, alleged guilty of the horrid crime of witchcraft.’ Two months later, the Lord Advocate applied to the Council for an extension of power to the commission against Janet Widdrow, as ‘it is now informed that the said Janet doth fyle and put out several others, and as there are some persons in these bounds against whom there are probable and pregnant grounds of suspicion.’ The request was complied with.
Some months later (December 3, 1696), we hear of some informalities in the process against Janet Widdrow and Isobel Cochrane, and the Lord Advocate was requested to report on the matter.[159]
So much for the present; but let the reader see onward under February 1697, March 1, 1698, &c.
It is remarked by a Presbyterian historian of the popular class, that the time of the ‘Persecution’ was one of general abundance. God, he believed, did not choose to let his people suffer in more ways than one. But, not long after King William had brought days of religious security, the seasons began to be bad, and much physical suffering ensued. According to this historian, Alexander |1695.| Peden foretold how it would be. ‘As long,’ said he, ‘as the lads are upon the hills, you will have bannocks o’er night; but if once you were beneath the bield of the brae, you will have clean teeth and many a black and pale face in Scotland.’[160]
Nevertheless, the country was so much at its ease in the matter of food in July 1695, that the Estates then passed an act for encouraging the export of grain, allowing it to go out duty free, and ordaining that so it should be whenever wheat was at or under twelve pounds (Scots) the boll; bear, barley, and malt under eight; pease and oats, under six; provided these grains should be carried in Scottish ships.
By an act passed in 1672, it was forbidden to import meal from Ireland while the price in Scotland remained below a certain rate. And that this was a serious matter, is proved by an order of Council in April 1695, for staving the grain brought from Carrickfergus in two vessels, named the James and the Isobel, and for handing over the vessels themselves to Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, who had seized them on their way to a Scottish port. It never occurred to a legislator of those days that there was a kind of absurdity, as well as a glaring selfishness, in arranging for his own country receiving while it should not give.
As if to rebuke such policy, the very month after good food prospects had induced the Scottish Estates to permit of exportation, the crop was stricken in one night by an easterly fog, and ‘got little more good of the ground.’[161] The corn was both bad and dear. So early as November, this produced a disorder of the cholera type, accompanied by severe fevers: ‘all our old physicians had never seen the like, and could make no help.’ It was not in all cases the direct result of bad unwholesome victual, for several, who used old corn, or sent to Glasgow for Irish meal, were nevertheless smitten with the prevailing malady, ‘in a more violent and infectious manner than the poorest in the land.’[162]
The price of victual having, in the western shires, ascended beyond the importation rate fixed in 1672, the Privy Council (December 13), ‘in consideration of the present scarcity in those parts, and the distress ensuing upon it,’ gave allowance for the importation of meal, ‘but of no other grain,’ from Ireland, to ‘any port between the mouth of Annan and the head of Kintyre,’ between this date and the 1st of February exclusive.
A few days later, the Council took measures for fining certain baxters of Glasgow and others who had imported grain before the issue of the above licence.
On the 7th of February 1696, the Council extended the period during which Irish meal might be imported to the 15th of April, seeing that the price of the article in the western shires still continued above that set down in the act of 1672. On the 25th of February, the period was farther extended to the 15th of May.
In June, the evil having become more serious, the whole ports of the kingdom were opened to foreign grain, while the usual denunciations were launched against persons keeping up victual in girnels and stacks. |1696. Aug.| Now the summer was passing into autumn, and the weather was of such a character, or, as the Privy Council expressed it, the season was so ‘unnatural,’ ‘as doth sadly threaten the misgiving and blasting of the present crop, to the increase of that distress whereby the kingdom is already afflicted.’ For these reasons, at the request of the church, a fast was proclaimed for the 25th of August in churches south of the Tay, and on the 8th of September in ‘all the planted churches of the rest of this kingdom.’
Viewing the ‘pinching straits and wants’ of the poor at this crisis, and the demands which these make upon Christian charity and compassion, the Council recommended that on the day of the fast, and the Lord’s Day thereafter, there should be a ‘cheerful and liberal contribution’ at the church-doors for the indigent, ‘as the best and most answerable expression of earnestness in the aforesaid duty.’ Another edict held out a bounty of one pound Scots for every boll of foreign victual imported.[163]
Some Englishmen having brought a parcel of corn to the market of Kelso, William Kerr of Chatto’s servants exacted from them a custom he had a right to from all victual there sold—this right being one of which his family had been ‘in immemorial possession.’ The Englishmen resisted the exaction with scorn and violence, and Chatto was obliged to appeal for protection of his right to the Privy Council. Such, however, was at that time the need for foreign grain, that the Council suspended Chatto’s right for the next three months.
Some gentlemen in Edinburgh received information from their correspondents in Aberdeenshire, that that county and the one next adjacent were nearly destitute of victual, and that ‘if they be |1696.| not speedily supplied, and victual transported [thither], a good part of that and the next county will undoubtedly starve.’ Already, within the last fortnight, several had died from want. In these circumstances, George Fergusson, bailie of Old Meldrum, and Alexander Smith, writer in Edinburgh, proposed to purchase a thousand or twelve hundred bolls of corn and bear in the north of England, and have it carried by sea to Aberdeen, there to sell it at any rate the proper authorities might appoint above the cost and the expense of carriage, and the surplus to be used for any suitable public object, the proposers having no desire of profit for themselves, ‘but allenarly the keeping of the poor in the said shire from starving.’ They were anxious, however, to be protected from the risk of losing their outlay, in case the vessel should be taken by the French privateers, and they petitioned the Privy Council accordingly. Their wishes were recommended to the consideration of the Lords of the Treasury.
It was reported from Roxburghshire, on the 22d December 1696, that, in consequence of the ‘great frosts, excessive rains, and storms of snow,’ the corns in many places ‘are neither cut down nor led in, nor is the samen ripened nor fit for any use, albeit it were cut down and led in.’ The boll of meal was already at twenty-four pounds Scots, and bear, wheat, and rye at fourteen or fifteen pounds per boll. Already many poor people and honest householders were ‘reduced to pinching straits and want,’ and still more extreme scarcity was to be expected.
In these circumstances, the Lords of the Privy Council granted permission to Thomas Porteous, late provost, and Robert Ainslie, late bailie in Jedburgh, to import victual from England without duty, overland. If any of the said victual should be imported by sea, it would be confiscated for the use of the poor, ‘unless it can be made appear that the victual imported by sea was bought and paid for by the product of this kingdom, and not by transporting money out of the kingdom for the same.’[164]
The Feast of St Cecilia was celebrated in Edinburgh with a concert of vocal and instrumental music, shewing a more advanced state of the art than might have been expected.[165] The scheme of the performances exhibits a series of pieces by Italian masters, as |1695.| Corelli and Bassani, to be executed by first and second violins, flutes and hautbois, and basses; the opening piece giving seven first violins, five second violins, six flutes and two hautbois. There were thirty performers in all, nineteen of them gentlemen-amateurs, and eleven teachers of music. Among the former were Lord Colville, Sir John Pringle, Mr Seton of Pitmedden, Mr Falconer of Phesdo, Mr John (afterwards General) Middleton, Lord Elcho, and Mr John Corse, keeper of the Low Parliament House Records. Some of these gentlemen are described as having been skilled in music, and good players on the violin, harpsichord, flute, and hautbois. Among the professional men were Henry Crumbden, a German, ‘long the Orpheus in the music-school of Edinburgh;’ Matthew M‘Gibbon, father of William M‘Gibbon, noted for his sets of Scots airs with variations and basses; Adam Craig, a good orchestra-player on the violin; Daniel Thomson, one of the king’s trumpets; and William Thomson, a boy, son of the above, afterwards editor of a well-known collection (being the first) of Scots songs, with the music.[166]
See under 1718 for further notices of the rise and progress of music in Scotland.
In this age, every person of any note who died became the subject of a metrical elegy, which was printed on a broadside, and cried through the streets. Allan Ramsay, a few years later, makes satiric allusion to the practice:
The poetry of these mortuary verses is usually as bad as the typography, and that is saying a great deal; yet now and then |1695.| one falls in with a quaint couplet or two—as, for example, in the piece:
ON THE MUCH TO BE LAMENTED DEATH OF WORTHY UMPHREY MILNE, WATCHMAKER, BURGESS OF THE METROPOLITAN CITY OF SCOTLAND, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE, NOVEMBER THE 18TH, 1695.
The street elegists got a capital subject in July 1700, when Lady Elcho died in youth and beauty, in consequence of her clothes catching fire.[168] Of her it is said:
As to her ladyship’s surviving husband:
The dies and punches required for the new coinage now about to be issued, were the work of James Clarke, being the first time the work had ever been executed within the kingdom. James had done the whole business in less than a year, ‘which used to take no less than two or three years when executed in England, and cost the general and master of the Mint great attendance and much expenses;’ but as yet ‘he had not received one farthing for his work,’ although it had been agreed that he should have a half of his charges beforehand. The Privy Council, on his petition, |1695.| recommended the Treasury to pay him two hundred pounds sterling, being the sum agreed upon.[169]
In Scotland, justice had at this time, as heretofore, a geographical character. It did not answer for a Highlander to be tried too near the lands of his feudal enemies. If, on the other hand, he was to be tried in Edinburgh, his accusers were likely to find the distance inconveniently great, and prefer letting him go free.
James Macpherson of Invernahaven was under citation to appear before the Lords of Justiciary at Inverness, on a charge of having despoiled John Grant of Conygass of certain oxen, sheep, and other goods in June or July 1689, ‘when Dundee was in the hills.’ The Laird of Grant being sheriff of Inverness, and other Grants engaged in the intended trial, Macpherson, though protesting his entire innocence, professed to have no hope of ‘impartial justice;’ yet he appeared at the citation, and was immediately committed close prisoner to the Tolbooth of Inverness, where he was denied the use of pen and ink, and the access of his friends, so that he ‘expected nothing but a summary execution.’
On his petition, the Privy Council ordained (December 10) that he should be liberated under caution, and allowed to undergo a trial before the Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh. He accordingly presented himself before the Lords on the last day of the year, and was committed to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. On the 28th of January, he petitioned for entire liberation, as Grant of Conygass failed to appear to urge the prosecution; and, with the concurrence of the Laird of Grant, a member of the Privy Council, this petition was complied with.[170]
Not content with the proper Physic Garden assigned to him at the end of the North Loch,[171] James Sutherland had, in February last, extended his operations to ‘the north yard of the Abbey where the great Dial stands, and which is near to the Tennis Court.’ Under encouragement from the Lords of the Treasury, he had been active in levelling and dressing the ground. He ‘had there this summer a good crop of melons;’ he had ‘raised many other curious annuals, fine flowers, and other plants not ordinary in this country.’ He entertained no doubt of being |1695.| able in a few years ‘to have things in as good order as they are about London,’ if supplied with such moderate means as were required to defray charges and make the needful improvements, ‘particularly reed-hedges to divide, shelter, and lay the ground lown and warm, and a greenhouse and a store to preserve oranges, lemons, myrtles, with other tender greens, and fine exotic plants in winter.’
Fifty pounds sterling had been assigned to Sutherland out of the vacant stipends of Tarbat and Fearn in Ross-shire; but of this only about a half had been forthcoming, and he had expended of his own funds upwards of a thousand pounds Scots (£83, 13s. 4d. sterling). He entreated the Lords of the Privy Council to grant reimbursement and further encouragement, ‘without which the work must cease, and the petitioner suffer in reputation and interest, what he is doing being more for the honour of the nation, the ornament and use of his majesty’s palace, than his own private behoof.’
The Council recommended the matter to the Lords of the Treasury.[172]