There were theses, too, on suitably convivial ideas—as, for example:
Or else:
A diploma conferred upon George Durward, doubtless not without very grave consideration of his pretensions to the honour, is couched in much the same strain as the theses:
We have, however, no specimen of the wit of this fluid university that strikes us as equal to a Catalogus Librorum in Bibliothecâ Butterensi; to all external appearance, a dry list of learned books, while in reality comprehending the whole paraphernalia of a tavern. It is formally divided into ‘Books in large folio,’ ‘Books in lesser folio,’ ‘Books in quarto,’ ‘Books in octavo,’ and ‘Lesser Volumes,’ just as we might suppose the university catalogue to have been. Amongst the works included are: ‘Maximilian Malt-kist de principiis liquidorum—Kircherus Kettles de eodem themate—Bucket’s Hydrostaticks—Opera Bibuli Barrelli, ubi de conservatione liquoris, et de vacuo, problematice disputatur—Constantinus Chopinus de philosophicis bibendi legibus, in usum Principalis, curâ Georgii Leith [described in a note as a particularly assiduous pupil of the college] 12 tom.—Compendium ejus, for weaker capacities—Barnabius Beer-glass, de lavando gutture—Manuale Gideonis Gill, de Syllogismis concludentibus—Findlay |1700.| Fireside, de circulari poculorum motu,’ &c. One may faintly imagine how all this light-headed nonsense would please Dr Pitcairn, as he sat regaling himself in the Greping Office, and how the serious people would shake their heads at it when they perused it at full length, a few years afterwards, in Watson’s Collection of Scots Poems.
The commissioners of the General Assembly, considering the impending danger of a late harvest and consequent scarcity, and the other distresses of the country, called for the 29th day of August being solemnised by a fast. In the reasons for it, they mention the unworthy repining at the late providences, and ‘that, under our great penury and dearth, whilst some provoked God by their profuse prodigality, the poorest of the people, who suffered most, and who ought thereby to have been amended, have rather grown worse and worse.’
Duncan Robertson, a younger son of the deceased Laird of Struan, had fallen out of all good terms with his mother, apparently in consequence of some disputes about their respective rights. Gathering an armed band of idle ruffians, he went with them to his mother’s jointure-lands, and laid them waste; he went to a ‘room’ or piece of land occupied by his sister Margaret, and carried off all that was upon it; he also ‘laid waste any possession his other sister Mrs Janet had.’ When a military party, posted at Carie, came to protect the ladies, he fired on it, and afterwards plainly avowed to the commander that his object was to dispossess his mother and her tenants. By this cruel act, Lady Struan and her other children had been ‘reduced to these straits and difficulties, that they had not whereupon to live.’
The Privy Council gave orders for the capture of Duncan Robertson, and his being put in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and kept there till further orders.[280]
A band of persons, usually called Egyptians or gipsies, used to go about the province of Moray in armed fashion, helping themselves freely to the property of the settled population, and ordinarily sleeping in kilns near the farmhouses. There seems to have been thirty of them in all, men and women; but it was |1700.| seldom that more than eight or ten made their appearance in any one place. It was quite a familiar sight, at a fair or market in Banff, Elgin, Forres, or any other town of the district, to see nearly a dozen sturdy Egyptians march in with a piper playing at their head, their matchlocks slung behind them, and their broadswords or dirks by their sides, to mingle in the crowd, inspect the cattle shewn for sale, and watch for bargains passing among individuals, in order to learn who was in the way of receiving money. They would be viewed with no small suspicion and dislike by the assembled rustics and farmers; but the law was unable to put them entirely down.
Macpherson’s Sword.
James Macpherson, who was understood to be the natural son of a gentleman of the district by a gipsy mother, was a conspicuous or leading man in the band; he was a person of goodly figure and great strength and daring, always carrying about with him—how acquired we cannot tell—an example of the two-handed swords of a former age, besides other weapons. He had a talent for music, and was a good player on the violin. It has been stated that some traits of a generous nature occasionally shone out in him; but, on the whole, he was merely a Highland cateran, breaking houses and henroosts, stealing horses and cattle, and living recklessly on the proceeds, like the tribe with which he associated.
Duff, Laird of Braco, founder of the honours and wealth of the Earls of Fife, took a lead at this time in the public affairs of his district. He formed the resolution of trying to give a check to the lawless proceedings of the Egyptians, by bringing their leaders to justice. It required some courage to face such determined ruffians with arms in |1700.| their hands, and he had a further difficulty in the territorial prejudices of the Laird of Grant, who regarded some of the robbers as his tenants, and felt bound, accordingly, to protect them from any jurisdiction besides his own.[281] This remark bears particularly upon two named Peter and Donald Brown, who had lived for half a year at a place closely adjacent to Castle-Grant, and the former of whom was regarded as captain of the band.
Finding Macpherson, the Browns, and others at the ‘Summer’s Eve Fair in Keith, the stout-hearted Braco made up his mind to attack them. To pursue a narrative which appears to be authentic: ‘As soon as he observed them in the fair, he desired his brother-in-law, Lesmurdie, to bring him a dozen stout men, which he did. They attacked the villains, who, as they had several of their accomplices with them, made a desperate resistance. One of them made a pass at Braco with his hanger, intending to run him through the heart; but it slanted along the outside of the ribs, and one of his men immediately stabbed the fellow dead. They then carried Macpherson and [Peter] Brown to a house in Keith, and set three or four stout men to guard them, not expecting any more opposition, as all the rest of the gang were fled. Braco and Lesmurdie were sitting in an upper room, concerting the commitment of their prisoners, when the Laird of Grant and thirty men came calling for them, swearing no Duff in Scotland should keep them from him. Braco, hearing the noise of the Grants, came down stairs, and said, with seeming unconcern and humour: “That he designed to have sent them to prison; but he saw they were too strong a party for him to contend with, and so he must leave them;” but, without losing a moment, he took a turn through the market, found other two justices of peace, kept a court, and assembled sixty stout fellows, with whom he retook the two criminals, and sent them to prison.’[282]
James Macpherson, the two Browns, and James Gordon, were brought before the sheriff of Banffshire at Banff, on the 7th of November 1700, charged with ‘being habit and repute Egyptians and vagabonds, and keeping the markets in their ordinary manner of thieving and purse-cutting’ ... being guilty also of ‘masterful bangstrie and oppression.’ A procurator appeared on the part of the young Laird of Grant, demanding surrender of the two Browns, to be tried in the court of his regality, within whose bounds they had lived, and offering a culreach or pledge for them;[283] but the demand was overruled, on the ground that the Browns had never been truly domiciliated there. Witnesses were adduced, who detailed many felonies of the prisoners. They had stolen sheep, oxen, and horses; they had broken into houses, and taken away goods; they had robbed men of their purses, and tyrannously oppressed many poor people. It was shewn that the band was in the habit of speaking a peculiar language. They often spent whole nights in dancing and debauchery, Peter Brown or Macpherson giving animation to the scene by the strains of the violin. An inhabitant of Keith related how Macpherson came to his house one day, seeking for him, when, not finding him, he stabbed the bed, to make sure he was not there, and, on going away, set the ale-barrel aflowing. The jury gave a verdict against all the four prisoners; but sentence was for the meantime passed upon only Macpherson and Gordon, adjudging them to be hanged next market-day.[284]
Macpherson spent the last hours of his life in composing a tune expressive of the reckless courage with which he regarded his fate. He marched to the place of execution, a mile from the town, playing this air on his violin. He even danced to it under the fatal tree. Then he asked if any one in the crowd would accept his fiddle, and keep it as a memorial of Macpherson; and finding no one disposed to do so, he broke the instrument over his knee, and threw himself indignantly from the ladder. Such was the life and death of a man of whom one is tempted to think that, with such qualities as he possessed, he might, in a happier age, |1700.| have risen to some better distinction than that which unfortunately he has attained.[285]
At this date one of the most remarkable of the precursors of Watt in the construction of the steam-engine, comes in an interesting manner into connection with Scotland. Captain Thomas Savery, an Englishman, ‘treasurer to the commissioners of sick and wounded,’ had, in 1696, described an engine framed by himself, and which is believed to have been original and unsuggested, ‘in which water is raised not only by the expansive force of steam, but also by its condensation, the water being raised by the pressure of the atmosphere into receivers, from which it is forced to a greater height by the expansive force of the steam.’[286] He had obtained a patent for this engine in 1698, to last for thirty-five years.
We have seen that there were busy-brained men in Scotland, constantly trying to devise new things; and even now, Mr James Gregory, Professor of Mathematics in the Edinburgh University—a member of a family in which talent has been inherent for two centuries—was endeavouring to bring into use ‘a machine invented by him for raising of water in a continued pipe merely by lifting, without any suction or forcing, which are the only ways formerly practised, and liable to a great many inconveniences.’ By this new machine, according to the inventor, ‘water might be raised to any height, in a greater quantity, and in less space of time,’ than by any other means employing the same force. It was useful for ‘coal-pits or mines under ground.’ On his petition, |1701.| Mr Gregory obtained an exclusive right to make and use this machine for thirty-one years.
Another such inventive genius was Mr James Smith of Whitehill, who for several years made himself notable by his plans for introducing supplies of water into burghs. Smith had caught at Savery’s idea, and made a paction with him for the use of his engine in Scotland, and now he applied to the Estates for ‘encouragement.’ He says that, since his bargain with Captain Savery, he ‘has made additions to the engine to considerable advantage, so that, in the short space of an hour, there may be raised thereby no less than the quantity of twenty tuns of water to the height of fourteen fathoms.’ Any member of the honourable house was welcome to see it at work, and satisfy himself of its efficiency; whence we may infer that an example of it had come down to Edinburgh. In compliance with his petition, Smith was invested with the exclusive power of making the engine and dealing with parties for its use during the remainder of the English patent.[287]
Savery’s steam-engine, however, was a seed sown upon an infertile soil, and after this date, we in Scotland at least hear of it no more.
It pleased the wisdom of the Scottish legislature (as it did that of the English parliament likewise) to forbid the export of wool and of woolly skins, an encouragement to woollen manufacturers at home, at the expense, as usual, of three or four times the amount in loss to the rest of the community. At this date, Michael Allan, Dean of Guild in Edinburgh, came before the Privy Council to shew that, in consequence of the extreme coldness and backwardness of the late spring, producing a mortality of lambs, there were many thousands of lambs’ skins, or morts, which could not be manufactured in the kingdom, and would consequently be lost, but which would be of value at Dantzig and other eastern ports, where they could be manufactured into clothing. He thought that property to the value of about seven thousand pounds sterling might thus be utilised for Scotland, which otherwise ‘must of a necessity perish at home, and will be good for nothing;’ and the movement was the more desirable, as the return for the goods would be in ‘lint, hemp, iron, steel, pot-ashes, and knaple, very useful for our |1701.| manufactures, and without which the nation cannot possibly be served.’
The Council called in skinners, furriers, and others to give them the best advice, and the result was a refusal to allow the skins to be exported.
Rather more than a twelvemonth before (June 4, 1700), it was intimated to the Privy Council by ‘the manufactory of Glasgow,’ that one Fitzgerard, an Irish papist, ‘has had a constant trade these three years past of exporting wool and woollen yarn to France, and that he has at this present time combed wool and woollen yarn to the value of three thousand pounds sterling ready to be exported, to the great ruin of the nation, and of manufactories of that kind.’ The Council immediately sent orders to the magistrates of Glasgow to take all means in law for preventing the exportation of the articles in question.[288]
A petition on an extraordinary subject from the magistrates and town-council of Elgin, was before the Privy Council. Robert Gibson of Linkwood had been imprisoned in their Tolbooth as furious, at the desire of the neighbouring gentry, and for the preservation of the public peace. In the preceding October, when the magistrates were in Edinburgh on business before the Privy Council, Gibson set fire to the Tolbooth in the night-time, and there being no means of quenching the flames, it was burnt to the ground. Their first duty was to obtain authority from the Privy Council to send the incendiary in shackles to another place of confinement, and now they applied for an exemption from the duty of receiving and confining prisoners for private debts till their Tolbooth could be rebuilt. They obtained the required exemption until the term of Whitsunday 1703.
Wodrow relates a story of the mysterious disappearance of a gentleman (chamberlain of a countess) dwelling at Linlithgow, and esteemed as a good man. A gentleman at Falkirk, with whom he had dealings, sent a servant one afternoon desiring him to come immediately. His wife would not allow him to travel that evening, and the servant departed without him. Long before daylight next morning, the chamberlain rose and prepared for his journey, but did not omit family worship. In the part of Scripture which he read (Acts xx.), occurred the sentence, ‘you shall |1701.| see my face no more.’ Whether this occurred by chance or not is not known, but he repeated the passage twice. After departing, he returned for his knife; again he returned to order one of his sons not to go out that day. By daylight his horse was found, with an empty saddle, near Linlithgow Bridge (a mile west of the town), and no search or inquiry made then, or for a considerable time after, sufficed to discover what had become of him. Wodrow states the suspicion of his being murdered, but as he had taken only some valuable papers with him, and viewing the fact of his being a steward, it does not seem difficult to account for his disappearance on a simpler hypothesis.[289]
The contract for a marriage between Sir John Shaw of Greenock and Margaret Dalrymple, eldest daughter of the Lord President of the Court of Session, being signed to-day, ‘there was an entire hogshead of claret drunk’ by the company assembled on the occasion. At the marriage, not long after, of Anne, a younger daughter of the Lord President, to James Steuart, son of the Lord Advocate, ‘the number of people present was little less,’ being just about as many as the house would hold. A marriage was, in those days, an occasion for calling the whole connections of a couple of families together; and where the parties belonged, as in these cases, to an elevated rank in society, there was no small amount of luxury indulged in. Claret was, in those days, indeed, but fifteen, and sack eighteen pence, while ale was three-halfpence, per bottle, so that a good deal of bibulous indulgence cost little.
The expenditure upon the clothes of a bride of quality was very considerable. Female fineries were not then produced in the country as they are now, and they cost probably twice the present prices. We find that, at the marriage of a daughter of Smythe of Methven to Sir Thomas Moncrieff of that Ilk, Bart., in December of this very year, there was a head suit and ruffles of cut work at nearly six pounds ten shillings; a hood and scarf at two pounds fifteen shillings; a silk under-coat nearly of the same cost; a gown, petticoat, and lining, at between sixteen and seventeen pounds; garters, at £1, 3s. 4d.: the entire outfit costing £109, 18s. 3d.[290]
When Mrs Margaret Rose, daughter of the Laird of Kilravock, was married in 1701, there was an account from Francis Brodie, |1701.| merchant in Edinburgh, for her wedding-clothes, including seventeen and a quarter ells of flowered silk, £11, 13s.; nine and a quarter ells of green silk shagreen for lining, £2, 14s.; six and a half ells of green galloon, 19s. 6d.; with other sums for a gown and coat, for an under-coat, and an undermost coat; also, for a pair of silk stockings, 12s.; a necklace and silk handcurcher, 8s.; and some thirty or forty other articles, amounting in all to £55, 8s. 9d. sterling. This young lady carried a tocher of 9000 merks—about nine times the value of her marriage outfit—to her husband, John Mackenzie, eldest son of Sir Alexander Mackenzie of Coul.
At the marriage of Anne Dalrymple to Mr James Steuart, ‘the bride’s favours were all sewed on her gown from top to bottom, and round the neck and sleeves. The moment the ceremony was performed, the whole company ran to her, and pulled off the favours; in an instant, she was stripped of them all. The next ceremony was the garter [we have seen what it cost], which the bridegroom’s man attempted to pull from her leg, but she dropped it on the floor; it was a white and silver ribbon, which was cut in small parcels, [a piece] to every one in company. The bride’s mother then came in with a basket of favours belonging to the bridegroom; those and the bride’s were the same with the bearings of their families—hers, pink and white; his, blue and gold colour.’ ‘The company dined and supped together, and had a ball in the evening; the same next day at Sir James Steuart’s. On Sunday, there went from the President’s house to church three-and-twenty couple, all in high dress. Mr Barclay, then a boy, led the youngest Miss Dalrymple, who was the last of them. They filled the galleries of the [High] Church from the king’s seat to the wing loft. The feasting continued till they had gone through all the friends of the family, with a ball every night.’[291]
It was not yet three years since the people of Scotland were dying of starvation, and ministers were trying to convince their helpless flocks that it was all for their sins, and intended for their good. Yet now we have a commission issued by the government, headed as usual with the king’s name, commanding that all loads of grain which might be brought from Ireland into the west of Scotland, should be staved and sunk, and this, so far as appears, without a remark from any quarter as to the horrible impiety of |1701.| the prohibition in the first place, and the proposed destruction of the gifts of Providence in the second.[292]
An example of the simple inconvenience of these laws in the ordinary affairs of life is presented in July 1702. Malcolm M‘Neill, a native of Kintyre, had been induced, after the Revolution, to go to Ireland, and become tenant of some of the waste lands there. Being now anxious to settle again in Argyleshire, on some waste lands belonging to the Duke of Argyle, he found a difficulty before him of a kind now unknown, but then most formidable. How was he to get his stock transported from Ballymaskanlan to Kintyre? Not in respect of their material removal, but of the laws prohibiting all transportation of cattle from Ireland to Scotland. It gives a curious idea of the law-made troubles of the age, that Malcolm had to make formal application to the Privy Council in Edinburgh for this purpose. On his petition, leave to carry over two hundred black-cattle, four hundred sheep, and forty horses, was granted. It is a fact of some significance, that the duke appears in the sederunt of the day when this permission was given. That without such powerful influence no such favour was to be obtained, is sufficiently proved by the rare nature of the transaction.
We find, in January 1700, that the execution of the laws against the importation of Irish cattle and horses had been committed to Alexander Maxwell, postmaster at Ayr, who seems to have performed his functions with great activity, but not much good result. He several times went over the whole bounds of his commission, establishing spies and waiters everywhere along the coast. By himself and his servants, sometimes with the assistance of soldiers, he made a great number of seizures, but his profits never came up to his costs. Often, after a seizure, he had to sustain the assaults of formidable rabbles, and now and then the cattle or horses were rescued out of his hands. For six weeks at a time he was never at home, and all that time not thrice in his bed—for he had to ride chiefly at night—but on all hands he met with only opposition, even from the king’s troops, ‘albeit he maintains them and defrays all their charges when he employs them.’ On his petition (January 9, 1700), he was allowed a hundred pounds by the Privy Council as an encouragement to persevere in his duty.
In the autumn of 1703, an unusual anxiety was shewn to enforce the laws against the importation of provisions from Ireland and |1700.| from England. Mr Patrick Ogilvie of Cairns, a brother of the Lord Chancellor, Earl of Seafield, was commissioned to guard the coasts between the Sound of Mull and Dumfries, and one Cant of Thurston to protect the east coast between Leith and Berwick, with suitable allowances and powers. It happened soon after that an Irish skipper, named Hyndman, appeared with a vessel of seventy tons, full of Irish meal, in Lamlash Bay, and was immediately pounced upon by Ogilvie. It was in vain that he represented himself as driven there by force of weather on a voyage from Derry to Belfast: in spite of all his pleadings, which were urged with an air of great sincerity, his vessel was condemned.
Soon after, a Scottish ship, sailing under the conduct of William Currie to Londonderry, was seized by the Irish authorities by way of reprisal for Hyndman’s vessel. The Scottish Privy Council (February 15, 1704) sent a remonstrance to the Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, setting forth this act as ‘an abuse visibly to the breach of the good correspondence that ought to be kept betwixt her majesty’s kingdoms.’ How the matter ended does not appear; but the whole story, as detailed in the record of the Privy Council, gives a striking idea of the difficulties, inconveniences, and losses which nations then incurred through that falsest of principles which subordinates the interests of the community to those of some special class, or group of individuals.
Ogilvie was allowed forty foot-soldiers and twenty dragoons to assist him in his task; but we may judge of the difficulty of executing such rules from the fact stated by him in a petition, that, during the interval of five weeks, while these troops were absent at a review in the centre of the kingdom, he got a list of as many as a hundred boats which had taken that opportunity of landing from Ireland with victual. Indeed, he said that, without a regular independent company, it was impossible to prevent this traffic from going on.[293]
We do not hear much more on this subject till January 1712, when Thomas Gray, merchant in Irvine, and several other persons, were pursued before the Court of Session for surreptitious importation of Irish victual, by Boswell and other Ayrshire justices interested in the prices of Scottish produce. The delinquents were duly fined. Fountainhall, after recording the decision, adds a note, in which he debates on the principles involved in the free trade in corn. ‘This importation of meal,’ says he, ‘is good for |1700.| the poor, plenty making it cheap, but it sinks the gentlemen’s rents in these western shires. Which of the two is the greater prejudice to the bulk of the nation? Problema esto: where we must likewise balance the loss and damage we suffer by the exporting so much of our money in specie to a foreign country to buy it, which diminishes our coin pro tanto: But if the victual was purchased in Ireland by exchange of our goods given for it, that takes away that objection founded on the exporting of our money.’[294]
John Lawson, burgess of Edinburgh, was projector of an Intelligence-office, to be established in the Scottish capital, such as were already planted in London, Paris, Amsterdam, and other large cities, for ‘recording the names of servants, upon trial and certificate of their manners and qualifications, whereby masters may be provided with honest servants of all sorts, and servants may readily know what masters are unprovided’—and ‘the better and more easy discovery of all bargains, and the communication and publishing all proposals and other businesses that the persons concerned may think fit to give notice and account of, for the information of all lieges.’
He had been at pains to learn how such offices were conducted in foreign countries, and had already set up a kind of register-office for servants in Edinburgh, ‘to the satisfaction and advantage of many, of all ranks and degrees.’ There was, however, a generation called wed-men and wed-wives, who had been accustomed, in an irregular way, to get employers for servants and nurses, and servants and nurses for masters and mistresses. It was evident to John that his intelligence-office could never duly thrive unless these practitioners were wholly suppressed. He craved exclusive privileges accordingly from the Privy Council—that is, that these wed-men and wed-wives be discharged ‘on any colour or pretence’ from meddling with the hire of servants, or giving information about bargains and proposals—though ‘without prejudice [he was so far modest] to all the lieges to hire servants and enter into bargains, and do all other business upon their own proper knowledge, or upon information gratuitously given.’
Honest John seems to have felt that something was necessary to reconcile the authorities to a plan obviously so much for his own interest. The religious feeling was, as usual, a ready resource. He reminded the Lords that there had been great inconveniences |1701.| from the dishonest and profligate servants recommended by the wed-men and wed-wives; nay, some had thus been intruded into families who had not satisfied church-discipline, and did not produce testimonials from ministers! He held out that he was to take care ‘that all such as offer themselves to nurse children shall produce a certificate of their good deportment, in case they be married, and if not, that they have satisfied the kirk for their scandal, or have found a caution so to do.’
One great advantage to the public would be, that gentlemen or ladies living in the country could, by correspondence with the office, and no further trouble or expense, obtain servants of assured character, ‘such as master-households, gentlemen, valets, stewards, pages, grieves, gardeners, cooks, porters, coachmen, grooms, footmen, postilions, young cooks for waiting on gentlemen, or for change-houses; likewise gentlewomen for attending ladies, housekeepers, chambermaids, women-stewards and cooks, women for keeping children, ordinary servants for all sorts of work in private families, also taverners and ticket-runners, with all sorts of nurses who either come to gentlemen’s houses, or nurse children in their own’—for so many and so various were the descriptions of menials employed at that time even in poor Scotland.
With regard to the department for commercial intelligence, it was evident that ‘men are often straitened how and where to inquire for bargains they intend,’ while others are equally ‘at a loss how to make known their offers of bargains and other proposals.’ The latter were thus ‘obliged to send clapps, as they call them,[295] through the town, and sometimes to put advertisements in gazettes, which yet are noways sufficient for the end designed, for the clapps go only in Edinburgh, and for small businesses, and the gazette is uncertain, and gazettes come not to all men’s hands, nor are they oft to be found when men have most to do with them, whereas a standing office would abide all men, and be ever ready.’
The Council complied with Lawson’s petition in every particular, only binding him to exact no more fee than fourteen shillings Scots (1s. 2d.), where the fee is twelve pounds Scots (£1 sterling) or upwards, and seven shillings Scots where the fee is below that sum.
The infant library of the Faculty of Advocates having been |1701.| burnt out of its original depository in the Parliament Square, a new receptacle was sought for it in the rooms under the Parliament House—the Faculty and the Edinburgh magistrates concurring in the request—and the Privy Council complied, only reserving the right of the high constable to view and search the place ‘the time of the sitting of parliament’—a regulation, doubtless, held necessary to prevent new examples of the Gunpowder Treason.
Lord Basil Hamilton, sixth son of the Duchess of Hamilton—a young man endeared to his country by the part he had taken in vindicating her rights in the Darien affair—lost his life by a dismal accident, leaving but one consolation to his friends, that he lost it in the cause of humanity. Passing through Galloway, with his brother the Earl of Selkirk and some friends, he came to a little water called the Minnick, swelled with sudden rain. A servant went forward to try the ford, and was carried away by the stream. Lord Basil rushed in to save the man, caught him, but was that moment dismounted, and carried off by the torrent; so he perished in the sight of his brother and friends, none being able to render him any assistance. It was a great stroke to the Hamilton family, to the country party, and indeed to the whole of the people of Scotland. Lord Basil died in his thirtieth year.
On the evening of the next day, the Earl of Selkirk came, worn with travel, to the gate of Hamilton Palace, to tell his widowed mother of her irreparable loss. But, according to a story related by Wodrow, her Grace was already aware of what had happened. ‘On the Wednesday’s night [the night of the accident] the duchess dreamed she saw Lord Basil and Lord Selkirk drowned in a water, and she thought she said to Lady Baldoon [Lord Basil’s wife], “Charles and Basil are drowned,” Charles being the Earl of Selkirk. The Lady Baldoon, she thought, answered: “Lord Selkirk is safe, madam; there is no matter.” The duchess thought she answered: “The woman’s mad; she knows not her lord is dead;” and that she [Lady Baldoon] added: “Is Basil dead? then let James [the duke] take all: I will meddle no more with the world.” All this she [the duchess] told in the Thursday morning, twelve hours or more before Lord Selkirk came to Hamilton, who brought the first word of it.’[296]
Four men were tried at Perth for theft by the commissioners |1701.| for securing the peace of the Highlands, and, being found guilty, were liable to the punishment of death. The Lords, however, were pleased to adjudge them to the lighter punishment of perpetual servitude, not in the plantations, as we have seen to be common, but at home, and the panels to be ‘at the court’s disposal.’ One of them, Alexander Steuart, they bestowed as a gift on Sir John Areskine of Alva, probably with a view to his being employed as a labourer in the silver-mine which Sir John about this time worked in a glen of the Ochils belonging to him.[297] Sir John was enjoined to fit a metal collar upon the man, bearing the following inscription: ‘Alexr. Steuart, found guilty of death for theft, at Perth, the 5th of December 1701, and gifted by the justiciars as a perpetual servant to Sir John Areskine of Alva;’ and to remove him from prison in the course of the ensuing week.[298] The reality of this strange proceeding has been brought home to us in a surprising manner, for the collar, with this inscription, was many years ago dredged up in the Firth of Forth, in the bosom of which it is surmised that the poor man found a sad refuge from the pains of slavery. As a curious memorial of past things, it is now preserved in our National Museum of Antiquities.
The reader will perhaps be surprised to hear of a silver-mine in the Ochils, and it may therefore be proper, before saying anything more, that we hear what has been put on record on this subject.
‘In the parish of Alva, a very valuable mine of silver was discovered about the commencement of the last century[299] by Sir James [John] Erskine of Alva, in the glen or ravine which separates the Middle-hill from the Wood-hill. It made its first appearance in small strings of silver ore, which, being followed, led to a large mass of that metal. A part of this had the appearance of malleable silver, and was found on trial to be so rich as to produce twelve ounces of silver from fourteen ounces of ore. Not more than £50 had been expended when this valuable discovery was made. For the space of thirteen or fourteen weeks, it is credibly affirmed that the proprietor obtained ore from this mine to the value of £4000 per week. When this mass was exhausted, the silver ore began to appear in smaller quantities; |1701.| symptoms of lead and other metals presented themselves, and the search was for the present abandoned.’[300]
It is related that Sir John, walking with a friend over his estate, pointed out a great hole, and remarked: ‘Out of that hole I took fifty thousand pounds.’ Then presently, walking on, he came to another excavation, and, continued he: ‘I put it all into that hole.’
Nevertheless, the search was renewed by his younger brother, Charles Areskine, Lord Justice-Clerk, but without the expected fruit, though a discovery was made of cobalt, and considerable quantities of that valuable mineral were extracted even from the rubbish of his predecessor’s works. In 1767, Lord Alva, the son of the Lord Justice-Clerk, bestowed a pair of silver communion-cups upon the parish of Alva, with an inscription denoting that they were fashioned from silver found at the place.
The granting of Steuart as ‘a perpetual servant’ to Sir John Areskine sounds strangely to modern ears; but it was in perfect accordance with law and usage in Scotland in old times; and there was even some vestige of the usage familiar to Englishmen at no remote date, in laws for setting the poor to work in workhouses. The act of the Highland justiciars was the more natural, simple, and reasonable, that labourers in mines and at salt-works were regarded by the law of Scotland as ‘necessary servants,’ who, without any paction, by merely coming and taking work in such places, became bound to servitude for life, their children also becoming bound if their fathers in any way used them as assistants. Such is the view of the matter coolly set down in the Institutes of Mr John Erskine (1754), who further takes leave to tell his readers that ‘there appears nothing repugnant, either to reason, or to the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, in a contract by which one binds himself to perpetual service under a master, who, on his part, is obliged to maintain the other in all the necessaries of life.’ It appears that the salters and miners were transferred with the works when these were sold; but a right in the masters to dispose of the men otherwise, does not appear to have been a part of the Scots law.
In the year 1743, there appears to have been a disposition among the bondsmen of the coal-mines in Fife and Lothian to assert their freedom. Fifteen men who worked in the Gilmerton coal-works having absented themselves in October, and gone to |1701.| work at other collieries, their master, Sir John Baird of Newbyth, advertised them, so that no other master might break the act of parliament by entertaining them, and also that the deserters might be secured. In the same year, the Marquis of Lothian had to complain of three boys who ran away from his colliery at Newbattle, and took refuge amongst the people of another estate, supposed to have been that of the Viscount Oxenford. He accordingly addressed the following letter to that nobleman: