The Quakers of Edinburgh were no better used by the rest of the public than those of Glasgow. Although notedly, as they alleged, ‘an innocent and peaceable people,’ yet they could not meet in their own hired house for worship without being disturbed by riotous men and boys; and these, instead of being put down, were rather encouraged by the local authorities. On their complaining to the magistrates of one outrageous riot, Bailie Halyburton did what in him lay to add to their burden by taking away the key of their meeting-house, thus compelling them to meet in the street in front, where ‘they were further exposed to the fury of ane encouraged rabble.’ They now entreated the Privy Council to ‘find out some method whereby the petitioners (who live as quiet and peaceable subjects under a king who loves not that any should be oppressed for conscience’ sake) may enjoy a free exercise of their consciences, and that those who disturb them may be discountenanced, reproved, and punished.’ This they implore may be speedily done, ‘lest necessity force them to apply to the king for protection.’
The Council remitted to the magistrates ‘to consider the said representation, and to do therein as they shall find just and right.’[207]
St Kilda, a fertile island of five miles’ circumference, placed fifty miles out from the Hebrides, was occupied by a simple community of about forty families, who lived upon barley-bread and sea-fowl, with their eggs, undreaming of a world which they had only heard of by faint reports from a factor of their landlord ‘Macleod,’ who annually visited them. Of religion they had only |1697.| caught a confused notion from a Romish priest who stayed with them a short time about fifty years ago. It was at length thought proper that an orthodox minister should go among these simple people, and the above is the date of his visit.
‘M. Martin, gentleman,’ who accompanied the minister, and afterwards published an account of the island, gives us in his book[208] a number of curious particulars about a personage whom he calls Roderick the Impostor, who, for some years bypast, had exercised a religious control over the islanders. He seems to have been, in reality, one of those persons, such as Mohammed, once classed as mere deceivers of their fellow-creatures for selfish purposes, but in whom a more liberal philosophy has come to see a basis of what, for want of a better term, may in the meantime be called ecstaticism or hallucination.
Roderick was a handsome, fair-complexioned man, noted in his early years for feats of strength and dexterity in climbing, but as ignorant of letters and of the outer world as any of his companions, having indeed had no opportunities of acquiring any information which they did not possess. Having, in his eighteenth year, gone out to fish on a Sunday—an unusual practice—he, on his return homeward, according to his own account, met a man upon the road, dressed in a Lowland dress—that is, a cloak and hat; whereupon he fell flat upon the ground in great disorder. The stranger announced himself as John the Baptist, come direct from heaven, to communicate through Roderick divine instructions for the benefit of the people, hitherto lost in ignorance and error. Roderick pleaded unfitness for the commission imposed upon him; but the Baptist desired him to be of good cheer, for he would instantly give him all the necessary powers and qualifications. Returning home, he lost no time in setting about his mission. He imposed some severe penances upon the people, particularly a Friday’s fast. ‘He forbade the use of the Lord’s Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments, and instead of them, prescribed diabolical forms of his own. His prayers and rhapsodical forms were often blended with the name of God, our blessed Saviour, and the immaculate Virgin. He used the Irish word Phersichin—that is, verses, which is not known in St Kilda, nor in the Northwest Isles, except to such as can read the Irish tongue. But what seemed most remarkable in his obscure prayers was his mentioning ELI, with the character of our preserver. He used |1697.| several unintelligible words in his devotions, of which he could not tell the meaning himself; saying only that he had received them implicitly from St John the Baptist, and delivered them before his hearers without any explication.’ ‘This impostor,’ says Martin, ‘is a poet, and also endowed with that rare faculty, the second-sight, which makes it the more probable that he was haunted by a familiar spirit.’
He stated that the Baptist communicated with him on a small mount, which he called John the Baptist’s Bush, and which he forthwith fenced off as holy ground, forbidding all cattle to be pastured on it, under pain of their being immediately killed. According to his account, every night after he had assembled the people, he heard a voice without, saying: ‘Come you out,’ whereupon he felt compelled to go forth. Then the Baptist, appearing to him, told him what he should say to the people at that particular meeting. He used to express his fear that he could not remember his lesson; but the saint always said: ‘Go, you have it;’ and so it proved when he came in among the people, for then he would speak fluently for hours. The people, awed by his enthusiasm, very generally became obedient to him in most things, and apparently his influence would have known no restriction, if he had not taken base advantage of it over the female part of the community. Here his quasi-sacred character broke down dismally. The three lambs from one ewe belonging to a person who was his cousin-german, happened to stray upon the holy mount, and when he refused to sacrifice them, Roderick denounced upon him the most frightful calamities. When the people saw nothing particular happen in consequence, their veneration for him experienced a further abatement. Finally, when the minister arrived, and denounced the whole of his proceedings as imposture, he yielded to the clamour raised against him, consented to break down the wall round the Baptist’s Bush, and peaceably submitted to banishment from the island. Mr Martin brought him to Pabbay island in the Harris group, whence he was afterwards transferred to the laird’s house of Dunvegan in Skye. He is said to have there confessed his iniquities, and to have subsequently made a public recantation of his quasi-divine pretensions before the presbytery of Skye.[209]
Mr Martin, in his book, stated a fact which has since been the subject of much discussion—namely, that whenever the steward |1697.| and his party, or any other strangers, came to St Kilda, the whole of the inhabitants were, in a few days, seized with a severe catarrh. The fact has been doubted; it has been explained on various hypotheses which were found baseless: visitors have arrived full of incredulity, and always come away convinced. Such was the case with Mr Kenneth Macaulay, the author of the amplest and most rational account of this singular island. He had heard that the steward usually went in summer, and he thought that the catarrh might be simply an annual epidemic; but he learned that the steward sometimes came in May, and sometimes in August, and the disorder never failed to take place a few days after his arrival, at whatever time he might come, or how often so ever in a season. A minister’s wife lived three years on the island free of the susceptibility, but at last became liable to it. Mr Macaulay did not profess to account for the phenomenon; but he mentions a circumstance in which it may be possible ultimately to find an explanation. It is, that not only is a St Kildian’s person disagreeably odoriferous to a stranger, but ‘a stranger’s company is, for some time, as offensive to them,’ who complain that ‘they find a difficulty in breathing a light sharp air when they are near you.’
The Privy Council, in terms of the 27th act of Queen Mary—rather a far way to go back for authority in such a matter—discharged all printers ‘to print or reprint any pamphlets, books, or others, relating to the government, or of immediate public concern, until the same be seen, revised, and examined by the Earls of Lauderdale and Annandale, the Lord Advocate, Lord Anstruther, and Sir John Maxwell of Pollock,’ under heavy penalties.[210]
Margaret Halket, relict of the deceased Mr Henry Erskine, late minister of Chirnside, petitioned the Privy Council for the stipend of the bypast half year during which the parish had been vacant, she being ‘left in a verie low and mean condition, with four fatherless children no way provided for, and other burdensome circumstances under which the petitioner is heavily pressed.’ The petition was complied with.[211]
This was the mother of the two afterwards famous preachers, Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine. The application of Mrs Erskine is given here as the type of many such, rendered unavoidable before |1697.| the present humane arrangements in behalf of the surviving relatives of the established clergy.
James Hamilton, keeper of the Canongate Tolbooth, gave in a humble petition to the Privy Council, setting forth that ‘for a long while bygone’ he has ‘kept and maintained a great many persons provided for recruiting the army in Flanders.’ In this last spring, ‘the prisoners became so tumultuous and rebellious, that they combined together and assassinat the petitioner’s servants, and wounded them, and took the keys from them, and destroyed the bread, ale, and brandy that was in the cellar, to the value of eight pounds sterling.’ ‘Seeing the petitioner’s due as formerly is two shillings Scots per night for himself, and twelve pennies Scots for the servants for each person,’ in respect whereof he was ‘liable for ane aliment of twenty merks monthly to the poor, besides the expense of a great many servants,’ payment was ordered to him of £837, 17s. for house-dues for the recruits, during a certain term, and £107, 8s. for damages done by the mutiny.[212]
In July 1697, in the prospect of a good harvest, the permission to import grain free of duty was withdrawn. About the same time, a great quantity of victual which had been imported into Leith, was, on inspection, found to be unfit to be eaten, and was therefore ordered to be destroyed.
On the 28th of December, the Privy Council was informed of a cargo of two hundred bolls of wheat shipped in order to be transported to France, and, considering that ‘wheat is not yet so low as twelve pounds Scots per boll,’ it was proposed by the Lord Chancellor that it should be stopped; but this the Council thought ‘not convenient.’
The Master of Kenmure, Craik of Stewarton, and Captain Dalziel, son to the late Sir Robert Dalziel of Glenae, were accused before the Privy Council of having met in April last at a place called Stay-the-Voyage, near Dumfries, and there drunk the health of the late King James under the circumlocution of The Old Man on the other Side of the Water, as also of drinking confusion to his majesty King William, these being acts condemned by the late Convention as treasonable. The Master was absent, but the |1697.| two other gentlemen were present as prisoners. The Lords, after hearing evidence, declared the charge not proven, and caused Craik and Dalziel to be discharged.[213]
An Edinburgh tavern-bill of this date—apparently one for supper to a small party—makes us acquainted with some of the habits of the age. It is as follows, the sums being expressed in Scottish money:
| SIR JOHN SWINTON TO MRS KENDALL. | |
|---|---|
| For broth, | £00 : 03 : 00 |
| For rost mutton and cutlets, | 01 : 16 : 00 |
| For on dish of hens, | 03 : 00 : 00 |
| For harenes, | 00 : 05 : 00 |
| For allmonds and rasens, | 01 : 06 : 00 |
| For 3 lb. of confectiones, | 07 : 16 : 00 |
| For bread and ale, | 01 : 00 : 00 |
| For 3 pynts of clarite, | 06 : 00 : 00 |
| For sack, | 02 : 16 : 00 |
| For oysters fryed and raw, | 03 : 16 : 00 |
| For brandie and sugare, | 00 : 06 : 00 |
| For servants, | 02 : 02 : 00 |
| £30 : 06 : 00 | |
The sum in English money is equal to £2, 10s. 6½d. One remarkable fact is brought out by the document—namely, that claret was then charged at twenty pence sterling per quart in a public-house. This answers to a statement of Morer, in his Short Account of Scotland, 1702, that the Scots have ‘a thin-bodied claret at 10d. the mutchkin.’ Burt tells us that when he came to Scotland in 1725, this wine was to be had at one-and-fourpence a bottle, but it was soon after raised to two shillings, although no change had been made upon the duty.[214] It seems to have continued for some time at this latter price, as in an account of Mr James Hume to John Hoass, dated at Edinburgh in 1737 and 1739, there are several entries of claret at 2s. per bottle, while white wine is charged at one shilling per mutchkin (an English pint).
An Edinburgh dealer advertises liquors in 1720 at the following prices: ‘Neat claret wine at 11d., strong at 15d.; white wine at 12d.; Rhenish at 16d.; old Hock at 20d.—all per bottle.’ Cherry |1697.| sack was 28d. per pint. The same dealer had English ale at 4d. per bottle.[215]
Burt, who, as an Englishman, could not have any general relish for a residence in the Scotland of that day, owns it to be one of the redeeming circumstances attending life in our northern region, that there was an abundance of ‘wholesome and agreeable drink’ in the form of French claret, which he found in every public-house of any note, ‘except in the heart of the Highlands, and sometimes even there.’ For what he here tells us, there is certainly abundance of support in the traditions of the country. The light wines of France for the gentlefolk, and twopenny ale for the commonalty, were the prevalent drinks of Scotland in the period we are now surveying, while sack, brandy, and punch for the one class, and usquebaugh for the other, were but little in use.
Comparatively cheap as claret was, it is surprising, considering the general narrowness of means, how much of it was drunk. In public-houses and in considerable mansions, it was very common to find it kept on the tap. A rustic hostel-wife, on getting a hogshead to her house, would let the gentlemen of her neighbourhood know of the event, and they would come to taste, remain to enjoy, and sometimes not disperse till the barrel was exhausted. The Laird of Culloden, as we learn from Burt, kept a hogshead on tap in his hall, ready for the service of all comers; and his accounts are alleged to shew that his annual consumpt of the article would now cost upwards of two thousand pounds. A precise statement as to quantity, even in a single instance, would here obviously be of importance, and fortunately it can be given. In Arniston House, the country residence of President Dundas, when Sheriff Cockburn was living there as a boy about 1750, there were sixteen hogsheads of claret used per annum.
Burt enables us to see how so much of the generous fluid could be disposed of in one house. He speaks of the hospitality of the Laird of Culloden as ‘almost without bounds. It is the custom of that house,’ says he, ‘at the first visit or introduction, to take up your freedom by cracking his nut (as he terms it), that is, a cocoa-shell, which holds a pint filled with champagne, or such other wine as you shall choose. You may guess, by the introduction, at the conclusion of the volume. Few go away sober at any time; and for the greatest part of his guests, in the conclusion, they cannot go at all.
‘This,’ it is added, ‘he partly brings about by artfully proposing after the public healths (which always imply bumpers) such private ones as he knows will pique the interest or inclinations of each particular person of the company, whose turn it is to take the lead to begin it in a brimmer; and he himself being always cheerful, and sometimes saying good things, his guests soon lose their guard, and then—I need say no more.
‘As the company are one after another disabled, two servants, who are all the while in waiting, take up the invalids with short poles in their chairs, as they sit (if not fallen down), and carry them to their beds; and still the hero holds out.’[216]
Mr Burton, in his Life of President Forbes, states that it was the custom at Culloden House in the days of John Forbes—Bumper John, he was called—to prize off the top of each successive cask of claret, and place it in the corner of the hall, to be emptied in pailfuls. The massive hall-table, which bore so many carouses, is still preserved as a venerable relic; and the deep saturation it has received from old libations of claret, prevents one from distinguishing the description of wood of which it was constructed. Mr Burton found an expenditure of £40 sterling a month for claret in the accounts of the President.
At an early hour in the morning, seven gentlemen and two servants, all well armed, might have been seen leaving Inverness by the bridge over the Ness, and proceeding along the shore of the Moray Firth. Taking post in the wood of Bunchrew, they waited till they saw two gentlemen with servants coming in the opposite direction, when they rushed out into the road with an evidently hostile intent. The leader, seizing one of the gentlemen with his own hand, called out to his followers to take the other dead or alive, and immediately, by levelling their pistols at him, they induced him to give himself up to their mercy. The victorious party then caused the two gentlemen to dismount and give up their arms, mounted them on a couple of rough ponies, and rode off with them into the wild country.
This was entirely a piece of private war, in the style so much in vogue in the reign of the sixth James, but which had since declined, and was now approaching its final extinction. The leader of the assailants was Captain Simon Fraser, otherwise called the Master of Lovat, the same personage who, as Lord Lovat, fifty years after, came to a public death on Tower-hill.
The father of this gentleman had recently succeeded a grandnephew as Lord Lovat; but his title to the peerage and estates, although really good, had been opposed under selfish and reckless views by the Earl of Tullibardine, son of the Marquis of Athole, and brother of the widow of the late Lovat; and as this earl chanced to be a secretary of state and the king’s commissioner to parliament, his opposition was formidable. Tullibardine’s wish was to establish a daughter of the late lord, a child of eleven years old, as the heiress, and marry her to one of his own sons. His sons, however, were boys; so he had to bethink him of a more suitable bridegroom in the person of Lord Salton, another branch of the house of Fraser. Meanwhile, Captain Simon, wily as a cat, and as relentless, sought to keep up his juster interest by similar means. He first tried to get the young lady into his power by help of a follower named Fraser of Tenechiel; but Tenechiel took a fit of repentance or terror in the midst of his enterprise, and replaced the child in her mother’s keeping. Lord Salton was then hurried northward to the Dowager Lady Lovat’s house of Castle Downie, to woo his child-bride, and arrange for her being brought to safer lodgings in Athole. He went attended by Lord Mungo Murray, brother at once to the Earl of Tullibardine and the Dowager Lady Lovat. The Master, seeing no time was to be lost, brought a number of the chief gentlemen of his clan together at a house belonging to Fraser of Strichen, and had no difficulty in taking them bound under oaths to raise their followers for the advancement of his cause. It was by their aid that he had seized on Lord Salton and Lord Mungo Murray at the wood of Bunchrew.
Lord Salton and his friend were conducted amidst savage shouts and drawn dirks to the house of Fanellan, and there confined in separate apartments. The fiery cross was sent off, and the coronach cried round the country, to bring the faithful Frasers to the help of their young chief. A gallows was raised before the windows of the imprisoned gentlemen, as a hint of the decisive measures that might be taken with them. They saw hundreds of the clansmen arrive at muster on the green, with flags flying and bagpipes screaming, and heard their chief taking from them oaths of fidelity on their bare daggers. When five hundred were assembled—a week having now elapsed since the first assault—the Master put himself at their head, and went with his prisoners to Castle Downie, which he took into his care along with its mistress. The child, however, was safe from him, for |1697.| she had been already transferred to a refuge in her uncle’s country of Athole. Fraser was, of course, mortified by her escape; but he was a man fertile in expedients. He first dismissed his two prisoners, though not till Salton had bound himself under a forfeiture of eight thousand pounds to ‘interfere’ no more in his affairs. His plan was now to secure, at least, the dowager’s portion of the late lord’s means by marrying her. So, too, he calculated, would he embarrass the powerful Tullibardine in any further proceedings against himself.
That night, the lady’s three female attendants were removed from her by armed men; and one of them, on being brought back afterwards to take off her ladyship’s clothes, found her sitting in the utmost disorder and distress on the floor, surrounded by Fraser and his friends, himself trying by burned feathers to prevent her senses from leaving her, and the others endeavouring to divest her of her stays. Robert Monro, minister of Abertarf, then pronounced the words of the marriage-ceremony over her and the Master of Lovat. As the woman hurried out, she heard the screams of her mistress above the noise of the bagpipes played in the apartment adjacent to her bedroom; and when she came back next morning, she found the lady to appearance out of her judgment, and deprived of the power of speech. Lady Lovat was at this time a woman of about thirty-five years of age.
Such accounts of this outrage as reached the low country excited general horror, and Tullibardine easily obtained military assistance and letters of fire and sword against the Master of Lovat and his accomplices. The Master was not only supported by his father and other clansmen in what he had done, but even by the Earl of Argyle, who felt as a relative and old friend of the house, as well as an opponent of Tullibardine. On the approach of troops, he retired with his reluctant bride to the isle of Agais, a rough hill surrounded by the waters of the Beauly, where Sir Robert Peel spent the last summer of his life in an elegant modern villa, but which was then regarded as a Highland fastness. A herald, who ventured so far into the Fraser territory to deliver a citation, left the paper on a cleft stick opposite to the island. Fraser had several skirmishes with the government troops; took prisoners, and dismissed them, after exacting their oaths to harass him no more; and, in short, for a year carried on a very pretty guerrilla war, everywhere dragging about with him his wretched wife, whose health completely gave way through exposure, fatigue, |1697.| and mental distress. In September 1698, he and nineteen other gentlemen were tried in absence, and forfaulted for their crimes, which were held as treasonable—a stretch of authority which has since been severely commented on. At length, the Master—become, by the death of his father, Lord Lovat—tired of the troublous life he was leading, and by the advice of Argyle, went to London to solicit a pardon from the king. Strong influence being used, the king did remit all charges against him for raising war, but declined to pardon him for his violence to the Lady Lovat, from fear of offending Tullibardine. He was so emboldened as to resolve to stand trial for the alleged forced marriage; but it was to be in the style of an Earl of Bothwell or an Earl of Caithness in a former age. With a hundred Frasers at his back, did this singular man make his appearance in Edinburgh, in the second year before the beginning of the eighteenth century, to prefer a charge against the Earl of Tullibardine—perhaps the very last attempt that was made in Scotland to overbear justice. On the morning, however, of the day when the charge was to be made, his patron, Argyle, was informed by Lord Aberuchil, one of the judges (a Campbell), that if Fraser appeared he would find the judges had been corrupted, and his own destruction would certainly follow. He lost heart, and fled to England.[217]
Sir Robert Dickson of Sorn-beg was one of a group of Edinburgh merchants of this age, who carried on business on a scale much beyond what the general circumstances of the country would lead us to expect. He at this time gave in a memorial to the king in London, bearing—‘In the year 1691, I with some others who did join with me, did engage ourselves to the Lords of your majesty’s Treasury in Scotland, by a tack [lease] of your customs and foreign excise, by which we did oblige ourselves to pay yearly, for the space of five years, the sum of twenty thousand three hundred pounds sterling. Conform to which tack, we continued as tacksmen during all the years thereof, and did punctually, without demanding the least abatement or defalcation, make payment of our whole tack-duty, save only the sum of six hundred pounds, which still remains in my hand unpaid, and which I am most willing to pay, upon the Lords of the Treasury granting me and my partners ane general discharge.’ Nevertheless, ‘the Lords of the Treasury have granted a warrant for seizing of my |1697.| person, and committing me prisoner until I make payment of the sum of two thousand and three hundred pounds sterling more, which they allege to be due to the officers of state for wines, and which I humbly conceive I and my partners can never be obliged to pay, it being no part of my contract. And I humbly beg leave to inform your majesty that, if such a custom be introduced, it will very much diminish your majesty’s revenue; for it is not to be thought that we nor any other succeeding tacksmen can give such gratification over and above our tack-duty without a considerable allowance, and this still prejudges your majesty’s interest. [Sir Robert seems to mean that, if farmers of revenue have to give gratuities to officers of state, these must be deducted from the sum agreed to be paid to his majesty.] They were so forward in the prosecution of the said warrant, that I was necessitat to leave the kingdom, and come here and make my application to your majesty.’ The memorial finally craved of the king that he would remit ‘the determination of the said wines’ to the Lords of Session.
The Lords of the Privy Council had, of course, the usual dislike of deputies and commissions for seeing appeals taken against their decisions to the principal authority, and they embraced the first opportunity of laying hold of the customs tacksman and putting him up in the Tolbooth. There he did not perhaps change his mind as to his non-liability in justice for two thousand three hundred pounds for presents of wine to the officers of state in connection with the farming or tack of the customs, being a good ten per cent. upon the whole transaction; but he probably soon became sensible that the Privy Council of Scotland was not a body he could safely contend with. The Lord Advocate speedily commenced a process against him, on the ground of his memorial to the king falling under the statute of King James V. for severe punishment to those who murmur any judge spiritual or temporal, and prove not the same; and on this charge he was brought before the Council (1st of February 1698). It was shewn that the charge for gratuities was ‘according to use and wont,’ and that the memorial was a high misdemeanour against their lordships; therefore inferring a severe punishment. As might have been expected, Sir Robert was glad to submit, and on his knee to crave pardon of their lordships, who thereupon discharged him.[218]
The reader, who has just seen some other Edinburgh merchants punished for imputing to state-officers the possibility of their being bribed with money, will probably smile when he sees another in trouble so soon after, for remonstrating against the necessity he had been under of actually giving them bribes.
It had occurred to Mr Charles Ritchie, minister of the gospel, to be asked by Lieutenant Whitehead, of Colonel Sir John Hill’s regiment at Fort-William, to join him in marriage with the colonel’s daughter, and the ceremony was performed in the presence of several of the officers of the regiment, the minister professing to know of no impediment to the union of the young couple. For this fact, Mr Charles had been carried to Edinburgh, and put up in the Tolbooth, where he languished without trial for several months. He now petitioned for release or banishment, stating that he had been kept in jail all this time ‘without any subsistence,’ and ‘is reduced to the greatest extremity, not only for want of any mean of subsistence, but also by want of any measure of health.’
The Council, viewing his consent to banishment, granted him that boon, he enacting himself bound to depart ‘furth of the kingdom’ before the 1st of February, and never to return without his majesty’s or the Council’s warrant to that effect.[219]
Throughout this year, there were protracted legal proceedings before the Privy Council, between Blair of Balthayock, in Perthshire, and Carnegie of Finhaven, in Forfarshire, in consequence of the latter having brought on a marriage between his daughter and a young minor, his pupil, Blair of Kinfauns, the relative of Balthayock. The affair ended in a condemnation of Finhaven and a fine of one hundred and fifty pounds, to be paid to Balthayock for his expenses in the action.
On the 20th September 1703, by which time Balthayock was dead, Finhaven presented a petition to the Privy Council, setting forth that he had not submitted to the sentence, but placed the sum of the fine in consignment, and thereupon was liberated. Balthayock had never called for the suspension; her majesty’s late gracious indemnity had discharged the fine, ‘the cause of which,’ he alleged, ‘was natural and ordinary, and the marriage every way suitable.’ There might be demur to the last |1697.| particular, as young Kinfauns, when led into the marriage with Carnegie’s daughter, was only a boy. Nevertheless, the Council now ordained the money to be rendered back to the petitioner.[220]
The Court of Session had before it a remarkable case, involving matters of the highest delicacy, regarding two prominent members of society. David Lord Cardross—son of the Lord Cardross whose piety had exposed him to sufferings all but the highest in the late reigns—was married in February 1697 to the daughter of Henry Fairfax of Hurst, in Berkshire, an heiress of ten thousand pounds. They were the grand-parents of the Chancellor Lord Erskine. He had been helped in the obtaining of this match by Sir John Cochrane, another eminent sufferer in the late times of trial. To secure his best services as proxenata, or, as it is called in Scotland, black-foot, Lord Cardross had given Sir John a bond, securing him a thousand pounds, if he should be able to effect the marriage. When the marriage was completed, Cochrane applied for the promised sum, but was met with the assertion that no money was fairly due, as the lady’s hand had been obtained without his assistance. He sued Lord Cardross first in Westminster Hall, where the bond was declared void by the Lord Chancellor, as granted ob turpem causam, and now in the Court of Session for similar reasons, much to the enjoyment of all the lovers of gossip. Sir John, probably seeing public sentiment to be against him, gave up his claim to the whole £1000 as a reward for his services, and restricted it to £600, as required to repay him for expenses he had incurred in Lord Cardross’s lovesuit. Even this was denied to him, unless he could ‘condescend’ upon an account of special outlays in Lord Cardross’s behalf. We do not hear of his doing anything in consequence of this award, and it is to be suspected that he lost some character by the transaction, as well as legal expenses, and got nothing in return.[221]
Those who looked back with feelings of sympathy and pride to the sufferings of the patriots under the late reigns, must have had some painful feelings when they reflected on the present doings of some of them and their descendants. The Argyle of this day, though a man of both ability and spirit, highly qualified to serve his country, was now living in circumstances which certainly formed a marked contrast with the history of his grandfather and |1698.| father. Being married unhappily—his wife was a daughter of the Duchess of Lauderdale—he was induced to associate himself with another lady, for whose sake he seems to have in a great measure abandoned public life. Purchasing a house called Chirton, near Newcastle (which he bequeathed to his mistress), he was content to spend there in inglorious self-indulgence the days which ought to have been consecrated to the service of his country. Sad to say, this representative of pious martyrs died of bruises received in a house of evil fame at North Shields (September 1703). Even worse was the story of his Grace’s brother, James, who carried off Miss Wharton, an heiress of thirteen, and forcibly married her (November 1690)—a crime, the proper consequences of which he escaped, while his instrument and assistant, Sir John Johnston of Caskieben, paid the penalty of an ignominious death at Tyburn. Worse still, the actual Gordon of Earlstoun, so renowned for his resolute conduct in the evil days, fell, more than twenty years after, under censure for a lapse in virtue of the highest class, and underwent the higher excommunication; ‘but,’ says Wodrow, ‘they find the intimation of it will not be for edification, and people will still converse with him, do as they will; so the sentence is not pronounced.’
We have seen something of an old clan-feud between the Laird of Mackintosh and his vassal, Macdonald of Keppoch. The Keppoch who had overthrown the chief at Inverroy in 1688, and afterwards burned down his house of Dunachtan, was now dead; but in his son, Coll Macdonald, he had left a worthy successor. Coll was as defiant of the Mackintosh claims as his father had been, and, though he lived within ten miles of the well-established garrison of Fort-William, he seemed as utterly beyond the reach of the law as if he had haunted the wilds of Canada. It now became necessary to take sharp measures with him, in order to make good the rights of his superior.
The king, seeing ‘it is below the justice of our government that any of our loyal subjects should be disappointed of the benefit of our laws,’ was pleased to resort once more to that desperate remedy of letters of fire and sword which he had, to all subsequent appearance, employed once too often six years before in the case of the Glencoe Macdonalds. A commission was accordingly granted to Lachlan Mackintosh of that Ilk, to the governor for the time of Fort-William, Farquharson of Monaltrie, Farquharson of Invercauld, and a number of other gentlemen, ‘to convocate |1698.| our lieges in arms, and pass and search, seek, hunt, follow and take, and in case of resistance, pursue to the death Coll Macdonald [and a multitude of other persons specified, outlaws and fugitives from justice], and if any of them shall happen to flee to houses or strengths [then grants full power] to asseige the said houses or strengths, raise fire, and use all force and warlike engines that can be had for winning thereof,’ slaughter of the persons pursued not to be imputed as a crime.[222]
There was, in reality, nothing to prevent the same class of inhumanities flowing from this order as had followed on the Glencoe commission, if the officers intrusted with it had been disposed, as in the other case, to carry it out to the letter. It was effectual for its purpose without any extreme atrocities, and, three months after, we hear of a detachment from Fort-William to assist Mackintosh ‘in maintaining his own lands against Keppoch and others, who may disturb him in the peaceable possession thereof.’
In a poem written in 1737, Coll Macdonald of Keppoch is spoken of as a kind of Rob Roy, who had fought against the government at Killiecrankie, Cromdale, and Dunblane; who had resisted the law regarding lands which he occupied, and been denounced rebel on that account; who ‘from thefts and robberies scarce did ever cease;’ but who had, nevertheless, not merely kept possession of his territory, but rather improved his circumstances; and finally, four years ago, had died at home in peace. He was, says the poet in a note, ‘a man of low stature, but full of craft and enterprise: his life, if printed, would make an entertaining piece, whether one considers the depth of his genius, the boldness of his adventures, or the various turns of adverse fortune which he bore with uncommon steadiness, and had the art to surmount.’
A commission was granted by the Privy Council to Sir John Maxwell of Pollock, —— Maxwell of Dalswinton, Hugh M‘Guffock of Rusco, Adam Newall of Barskeroch, and four other gentlemen, to try, and, if guilty, adjudge to death, Elspeth M‘Ewen and Mary Millar, now prisoners in the tolbooth of Kirkcudbright, ‘alleged guilty of the horrid crime of witchcraft, and [who] has committed several malefices.’
On the 26th of July, a committee of Privy Council reported that they had examined the proceedings of the commissioners in |1698.| the case of Elspeth M‘Ewen (the report signed by the Lord Advocate), who had been pronounced guilty upon her own confession and the evidence of witnesses, ‘of a compact and correspondence with the devil, and of charms and of accession to malefices.’ It was ordered that the sentence of death against Elspeth should be executed, under care of the steward of Kirkcudbright and his deputies, on the 24th of August.
In July, a number of noblemen and gentlemen of Renfrewshire sent a letter to the Privy Council, setting forth the case of a young woman named Margaret Laird, of the Earl of Glencairn’s land in the parish of Kilmacolm. Since the 15th of May, ‘she hath been under ane extraordinary and most lamentable trouble, falling into strange and horrible fits, judged by all who have seen her to be preternatural, arising from the devil and his instruments.’ In these fits, ‘she sees and distinctly converses with divers persons whom she constantly affirms to be her tormentors, and that both while the fits continue, and in the intervals wherein she is perfectly free of all trouble and composed.’ The persons named were of those formerly accused by ‘confessing witches.’ ‘In some of these fits there is such obstruction upon her external senses, that she neither sees nor feels bystanders, though in the meantime she sees and converses with any of her alleged tormentors when we cause any of them come before her; and at the sight or touch of any of them, yea, even upon her essaying to name them when not present, she’s thrown into the fits, and therein gives such an account of their circumstances (though otherwise unknown to her) as is very convincing.’ The writers had been so impressed by the various facts brought under their notice, as proving fascination or witchcraft, that they found themselves obliged to make a representation of the case ‘out of pity to the poor distressed damsel;’ and they were the more solicitous about the affair, that the country people were in a state of such excitement, and so incensed against the alleged witches, that ‘we fear something may fall out in their hands that the government would willingly prevent.’
The Council appointed a committee of inquiry, and ordered the sheriff of the county—the Earl of Eglintoun—to apprehend the suspected witches, ‘that it may appear whether, after their being seized and committed, the said Margaret shall complain of their tormenting her or not.’
In September, Mary Morison, spouse of Francis Duncan, skipper, Greenock, was under accusation of witchcraft, but allowed to be at liberty within the city of Edinburgh, ‘the said |1698.| Francis her husband first giving bond that the said Mary shall keep the said confinement, and that he shall produce her before the Lords of Justiciary at any time to which she shall be cited before the 15th of November next, under a penalty of ten thousand pounds Scots.’
Mrs Duncan was detained as a prisoner in Edinburgh till the 15th November, although no such proof could be found against her as the Advocate could raise an action upon, her husband kept all the time away from his employment, and her ‘numerous poor family’ starving in neglect at home. On a petition setting forth these circumstances, and re-asserting her entire innocence, she was set at liberty.
The Lord Advocate soon after reported to the Privy Council a letter he had received from the sheriff of Renfrewshire, stating that ‘the persons imprisoned in that country as witches are in a starving condition, and that those who informed against them are passing from them, and the sheriff says he will send them in prisoners to Edinburgh Tolbooth, unless they be quickly tried.’ His lordship was recommended to ask the sheriff to support the witches till November next, when they would probably be tried, and the charges would be disbursed by the treasury. A distinct allowance of a groat a day was ordered on the 12th of January 1699 for each of the Renfrewshire witches.[223]
While the works of Satan were thus coming into new prominence, the clergy were determined not to prove remiss in their duty. We find the General Assembly of this year remitting to their ‘commission,’ ‘to give advice to presbyteries and ministers, upon application, against witchcraft, sorcery, and charming.’ In the ensuing year, they deliberated on an address to the Privy Council, for punishing witches and charmers; and the same subject comes up in the two subsequent years, in one instance in connection with ‘masquerades, balls, and stage-plays.’[224]