Under strong external professions of religious conviction, rigorous Sabbath observance, and a general severity of manners, there prevailed great debauchery, which would now and then come to the surface. On this evening there had assembled a party in Edinburgh, who carried drink and excitement to such a pitch, that nothing less than a dance in the streets would satisfy them. There was Ensign Fleming of a Scots regiment in the Dutch service (son of Sir James Fleming, late provost of Edinburgh); there were Thomas Burnet, one of the guards; and John, son of the late George Galbraith, merchant. The ten o’clock bell had rung, to warn all good citizens home. The three bacchanals were enjoying their frolic in the decent Lawnmarket, where there was no light but what might come from the windows of the neighbouring houses; when suddenly there approaches a sedan-chair, attended by one or two footmen, one of them carrying a lantern. It was the Earl of Leven, governor of the Castle, and a member of the Privy Council, passing home to his aërial lodging. Most perilous was it to meddle with such a person; but the merry youths were too far gone in their madness to inquire who it was or think of consequences; so, when Galbraith came against one of the footmen, and was warned off, he answered with an imprecation, and, turning to Fleming and Burnet, told them what |1705.| had passed. Fleming said it would be brave sport for them to go after the chair and overturn it in the mud; whereupon the three assailed Lord Leven’s servants, and broke the lantern. His lordship spoke indignantly from his chair, and Fleming, drawing his sword, wounded one of the servants, but was quickly overpowered along with his companions.
The young delinquents speedily became aware of the quality of the man they had insulted, and were of course in great alarm, Fleming in particular being apprehensive of losing his commission. After a month’s imprisonment, they were glad to come and make public profession of penitence on their knees before the Council, in order to obtain their liberty.[373]
On a Sunday, early in the same month, four free-living gentlemen, including Lord Blantyre—then a hot youth of two-and-twenty—drove in a hackney-coach to Leith, and sat in the tavern of a Mrs Innes all the time of the afternoon-service. Thereafter they went out to take a ramble on the sands, but by and by returned to drinking at the tavern of a Captain Kendal, where they carried on the debauch till eight o’clock in the evening. Let an Edinburgh correspondent of Mr Wodrow tell the remainder of the story. Being all drunk—‘when they were coming back to Edinburgh, in the very street of Leith, they called furiously to the coachman and post-boy to drive. The fellows, I think, were drunk, too, and ran in on the side of the causey, dung down [knocked over] a woman, and both the fore and hind wheel went over her. The poor woman cried; however, the coach went on; the woman died in half an hour. Word came to the Advocate to-morrow morning, who caused seize the two fellows, and hath been taking a precognition of the witnesses ... it will be a great pity that the gentlemen that were in the coach be not soundly fined for breach of Sabbath. One of them had once too great a profession to [make it proper that he should] be guilty now of such a crime.’[374]
The desire to see these scapegraces punished for what was called breach of Sabbath, without any regard to that dangerous rashness of conduct which had led to the loss of an innocent life, is very characteristic of Mr Wodrow’s style of correspondents.
Donaldson’s paper, The Edinburgh Gazette, which had been established in 1699, continued in existence; and in the intermediate |1705.| time there had also been many flying broadsides printed and sold on the streets, containing accounts of extraordinary occurrences of a remarkable nature, often scandalous. The growing inclination of the public for intelligence of contemporary events was now shewn by the commencement of a second paper in Edinburgh, under the title of The Edinburgh Courant. The enterpriser, Adam Boig, announced that it would appear on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, ‘containing most of the remarkable foreign news from their prints, and also the home news from the ports within this kingdom, when ships comes and goes, and from whence, which it is hoped will prove a great advantage to merchants and others within this nation (it being now altogether neglected).’ Having obtained the sanction of the Privy Council, he, at the date noted, issued the first number, consisting of a small folio in double columns, bearing to be ‘printed by James Watson in Craig’s Close,’ and containing about as much literary matter as a single column of a modern newspaper of moderate size. There are two small paragraphs regarding criminal cases then pending, and the following sole piece of mercantile intelligence: ‘Leith, Feb. 16.—This day came in to our Port the Mary Galley, David Preshu, commander, laden with wine and brandy.’ There are also three small advertisements, one intimating the setting up of post-offices at Wigton and New Galloway, another the sale of lozenges for the kinkhost [chincough] at 8s. the box.
The superior enterprise shewn in the conducting of the Courant, aided, perhaps, by some dexterous commercial management, seems to have quickly told upon the circulation of the Gazette; and we must regret, for the sake of an old soldier, that the proprietor of the latter was unwise enough to complain of this result to the Privy Council, instead of trying to keep his ground by an improvement of his paper. He insinuated that Boig, having first undersold him by ‘giving his paper to the ballad-singers four shillings [4d. sterling] a quire below the common price, as he did likewise to the postmaster,’ did still ‘so practise the paper-criers,’ as to induce them to neglect the selling of the Gazette, and set forth the Courant as ‘preferable both in respect of foreign and domestic news.’ By these methods, ‘the Courant gained credit with some,’ though all its foreign news was ‘taken verbatim out of some of the London papers, and most part out of Dyer’s Letter and the London Courant, which are not of the best reputation.’ He, on the other hand, ‘did never omit any domestic news that he judged pertinent, though he never meddled |1705.| with matters that he had cause to believe would not be acceptable [flattery to the Privy Council], nor every story and trifling matter he heard.’
A triumphant answer to such a complaint was but too easy. ‘The petitioner,’ says Boig, ‘complains that I undersold him; that my Courant bore nothing but what was collected from foreign newspapers; and that it gained greater reputation than his Gazette. As to the first, it was his fault if he kept the Gazette too dear; and I must say that his profit cannot but be considerable when he sells at my price, for all my news comes by the common post, and I pay the postage; whereas John Bisset, his conjunct [that is, partner], gets his news all by the secretary’s packet free of postage, which is at least eight shillings sterling a week free gain to them. As to the second, I own that the foreign news was collected from other newspapers, and I suppose Mr Donaldson has not his news from first hands more than I did. But the truth is, the Courant bore more, for it always bore the home news, especially anent our shipping, which I humbly suppose was one of the reasons for its having a good report; and Mr Donaldson, though he had a yearly allowance from the royal burghs, never touched anything of that nature, nor settled a correspondent at any port in the kingdom, no, not so much as at Leith. As to the third, it’s left to your Grace and Lordships to judge if it be a crime in me that the Courant had a greater reputation than the Gazette.’
Connected, however, with this controversy, was an unlucky misadventure into which Boig had fallen, in printing in his paper a petition to the Privy Council from Evander M‘Iver, tacksman of the Scots Manufactory Paper-mills, and James Watson, printer, for permission to complete the reprinting of an English book, entitled War betwixt the British Kingdoms Considered. While these petitioners thought only of their right to reprint English books ‘for the encouragement of the paper-manufactory and the art of printing at home, and for the keeping of money as much as may be in the kingdom,’ the Council saw political inconvenience and danger in the book, and every reference to it, and at once stopped both the Courant, in which the advertisement appeared, and the Gazette, which piteously as well as justly pleaded that it had in no such sort offended. It was in the course of this affair that Donaldson complained of Boig’s successful rivalry, and likewise of an invasion by another person of his monopoly of burial-letters.
After an interruption of three months, Adam Boig was allowed to resume his publication, upon giving strong assurance of more |1705.| cautious conduct in future. His paper continued to flourish for several years. (See under March 6, 1706.)
In the early part of 1704, the sense of indignity and wrong which had been inspired into the national mind by the Darien disasters and other circumstances, was deepened into a wrathful hatred by the seizure of a vessel named the Annandale, which the African Company was preparing for a trading voyage to India. This proceeding, and the subsequent forfeiture of the vessel before the Court of Exchequer, were defensive acts of the East India Company, and there can be little doubt that they were grossly unjust. In the subsequent autumn, an English vessel, named the Worcester, belonging to what was called the Two Million Company (a rival to the East India Company), was driven by foul weather into the Firth of Forth. It was looked upon by the African Company as fair game for a reprisal. On the 12th August, the secretary, Mr Roderick Mackenzie, with a few associates, made an apparently friendly visit to the ship, and was entertained with a bowl of punch. Another party followed, and were received with equal hospitality. With only eleven half-armed friends, he that evening overpowered the officers and crew, and took the vessel into his possession. In the present temper of the nation, the act, questionable as it was in every respect, was sure to meet with general approbation.
Before Captain Green and the others had been many days in custody, strange hints were heard amongst them of a piratical attack they had committed in the preceding year upon a vessel off the coast of Malabar. The African Company had three years ago sent out a vessel, called the Speedy Return, to India, with one Drummond as its master, and it had never since been heard of. It was concluded that the people of the Worcester had captured the Speedy Return, and murdered its crew, and that Providence had arranged for their punishment, by sending them for shelter from a storm to the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. Vainly might it have been pointed out that there was no right evidence for even the fact of the piracy, still less for the Speedy Return being the subject of the offence. Truth and justice were wholly lost sight of in the universal thirst for vengeance against England and its selfish mercantile companies.
Green, the captain of the Worcester, Mather, the chief-mate, Reynolds, the second-mate, and fifteen others, were tried at this date before the Court of Admiralty, for the alleged crime of |1705.| attacking a ship, having English or Scotch aboard, off the coast of Malabar, and subsequently murdering the crew—no specific vessel or person being mentioned as the subjects of the crime, and no nearer date being cited than the months of February, March, April, or May 1703. The jury had no difficulty in bringing them in guilty, and they were all condemned to be hanged on the sands of Leith, the usual place for the execution of pirates.
The English government was thrown into great anxiety by this violent proceeding, but they could make no effectual resistance to the current of public feeling in Scotland. There the general belief in the guilt of Green and his associates was corroborated after the trial by three several confessions, admitting the piratical seizing of Drummond’s vessel, and the subsequent murder of himself and his crew—confessions which can now only be accounted for, like those of witches, on the theory of a desire to conciliate favour, and perhaps win pardon, by conceding so far to the popular prejudices. The queen sent down affidavits shewing that Drummond’s ship had in reality been taken by pirates at Madagascar, while himself was on shore—a view of the fact which there is now ample reason to believe to have been true. She also sent to the Privy Council the expression of her desire that the men should be respited for a time. But, beyond postponement for a week, all was in vain. The royal will was treated respectfully, but set aside on some technical irregularity. When the day approached for the execution of the first batch of the condemned, it became evident that there was no power in Scotland which could have saved these innocent men. The Council, we may well believe, would have gladly conceded to the royal will, but, placed as it was amidst an infuriated people, it had no freedom to act. On the fatal morning (11th April), its movements were jealously watched by a vast multitude, composed of something more than the ordinary citizens of Edinburgh, for on the previous day all the more ardent and determined persons living within many miles round had poured into the city to see that justice was done. No doubt can now be entertained that, if the authorities had attempted to save the condemned from punishment, the mob would have torn them from the Tolbooth, and hung every one of them up in the street. What actually took place is described in a letter from Mr Alexander Wodrow to his father, the minister of Eastwood: ‘I wrote last night,’ he says, ‘of the uncertainty anent the condemned persons, and this morning things were yet at a greater uncertainty, for the current report was that ane express was come for a reprieve. |1705.| How this was, I have not yet learned; but the councillors went down to the Abbey [Palace of Holyrood] about eight, and came up to the Council-house about nine, against which time there was a strange gathering in the streets. The town continued in great confusion for two hours, while the Council was sitting, and a great rabble at the Netherbow port. All the guards in the Canongate were in readiness if any mob had arisen. About eleven, word came out of the Council [sitting in the Parliament Square] that three were to be hanged—namely, Captain Green, Mather, and Simson. This appeased the mob, and made many post away to Leith, where many thousands had been [assembled], and were on the point of coming up in a great rage. When the chancellor came out, he got many huzzas at first; but at the Tron Kirk, some surmised to the mob that all this was but a sham; upon which they assaulted his coach, and broke the glasses, and forced him to come out and go into Mylne’s Square, and stay for a considerable time.
‘The three prisoners were brought with the Town-guards, accompanied with a vast mob. They went through all the Canongate, and out at the Water-port to Leith. There was a battalion of foot-guards, and also some of the horse-guards, drawn up at some distance from the place of execution. There was the greatest confluence of people there that ever I saw in my life, for they cared not how far they were off, so be it they saw. Green was first execute, then Simson, and last of all Mather. They every one of them, when the rope was about their necks, denied they were guilty of that for which they were to die. This indeed put all people to a strange demur. There’s only this to alleviate it, that they confessed no other particular sins more than that, even though they were posed anent their swearing and drunkenness, which was weel known.’[375]
The Scottish parliament was not much given to the patronising of literature. We have, indeed, seen it giving encouragement to Adair’s maps of the coasts, and Slezer’s views of the king’s and other mansions; but it was in a languid and ineffective way, by reason of the lack of funds. At this time, the assembled wisdom of the nation was pleased to pass an act enabling the town-council of Glasgow to impose two pennies (⅕th of a penny sterling) upon the pint of ale brewn and vended in that town; and out of this |1705.| ‘gift in favours of the town of Glasgow,’ as it was quite sincerely called, there was granted three thousand six hundred pounds (£300 sterling) to Mr James Anderson, writer to her majesty’s signet, ‘for enabling him to carry on an account of the ancient and original charters and seals of our kings in copper-plates.’ Why the ale-drinkers of Glasgow should have been called upon to furnish the country with engraved copies of its ancient charters, was a question which probably no one dreamed of asking.
In February 1707, the parliament, then about to close its existence, ordered to Mr Anderson the further sum of £590 sterling, to repay him for his outlay on the work, with a further sum of £1050 to enable him to go on and complete it. This was done after due examination by a committee, which reported favourably of the curious and valuable character of his collections. Soon after, the parliament, in consideration of the great sufferings of the town of Dundee in the time of the troubles and at the Revolution, and of ‘the universal decay of trade, especially in that burgh,’ granted it an imposition of two pennies Scots on every pint of ale or beer made or sold in the town for twenty-four years; but this gift was burdened with a hundred pounds sterling per annum for six years to Mr James Anderson, as part of the sum the parliament had agreed to confer upon him for the encouragement of his labours.[376]
Died Alexander third Earl of Kincardine, unmarried, a nobleman of eccentric character. His father, the second earl, is spoken of by Burnet in the highest terms; his mother was a Dutch lady, Veronica, daughter of Corneille, Lord of Sommelsdyk and Spycke. [Readers of Boswell will remember his infant daughter Veronica, with whom Johnson was pleased, so named from the biographer’s great-grandmother, Veronica, Countess of Kincardine.] The earl now deceased, probably through his parental connection with the Low Countries, had contracted the religious principles of the Flemish saint or seeress, Antonia Bourignon, which, like every other departure from pure Presbyterianism and the Westminster Confession, were detested in Scotland. Wodrow tells us: ‘I have it from very good hands, Lieutenant-colonel Erskine[377] and Mr Allan Logan, |1705.| who were frequently with him, that the late Earl of Kincardine did fast forty days and nights after he turned Burrignianist, [and] lived several years after. He was very loose before he turned to these errors; and after a while being in them, he turned loose again, and died in a very odd manner. Many thought him possessed. He would have uttered the most dreadful blasphemies that can be conceived, and he told some things done at a distance, and repeated Mr Allan Logan’s words, which he had in secret, and told things it was impossible for anybody to know.’[378]
The more active minds of the country continued constantly seething with schemes for the promotion of industry, and the remedy of the standing evil of poverty. In this year there was published an Essay on the New Project of a Land Mint, which might be considered a type of the more visionary plans. It rested on what would now be called one of the commonplaces of false political economy. The proposed Land Mint was a kind of bank for the issue of notes, to be given only on landed security. Any one intending to borrow, say a thousand pounds of these notes, pledged unentailed land-property to that amount, plus interest and possible expenses, undertaking to pay back a fifth part each year, with interest on the outstanding amount, till all was discharged. It was thought that, by these means, money would be, as it were, created; the country would be spirited up to hopeful industrial undertakings; and—everything requiring a religious aspect in those days—the people would be enabled to resist the designs of a well-known sovereign, ‘aiming now at a Catholic monarchy;’ for, while Louis XIV. might become sole master of the plate (that is, silver) of the world, what would it matter ‘if we and other nations should substitute another money, equal in all cases to plate?’ The only fear the author could bring himself to entertain, was as to possible counterfeiting of the notes. This being provided against by an ingenious expedient suggested by himself, there remained no difficulty and no fear whatever.[379]
Although the incessant violences which we have seen mark an early period embraced by our Annals were no more, it cannot be |1705.| said that the crimes of violent passion had become infrequent. On the contrary, it appeared as if the increasing licence of manners since the Revolution, and particularly the increasing drunkenness of the upper classes, were now giving occasion for a considerable number of homicides and murders. We have seen a notable example of reckless violence in the case of the Master of Rollo in 1695. There was about the same time a Laird of Kininmont, who—partly under the influence of a diseased brain—was allowed to commit a considerable number of manslaughters before it was thought necessary to arrest him in his course.
Archibald Houston, writer to the signet in Edinburgh, acted as factor for the estate of Braid, the property of his nephew, and in this capacity he had incurred the diligence of the law on account of some portion of Bishops’ rents which he had failed to pay. Robert Kennedy of Auchtyfardel, in Lanarkshire, receiving a commission to uplift these arrears, found it to be his duty to give Houston a charge of horning for his debt.
One day, Kennedy and his two sons left their house in the Castle Hill of Edinburgh, to go to the usual place of rendezvous at the Cross, when, passing along the Luckenbooths, he was accosted by Mr Houston with violent language, referring to the late legal proceedings. Kennedy, if his own account is to be trusted, gave no hard language in return, but made an effort to disengage himself from the unseemly scene, and moved on towards the Cross. Houston, however, followed and renewed the brawl, when it would appear that Gilbert Kennedy, Auchtyfardel’s eldest son, was provoked to strike his father’s assailant on the face. The people now began to flock about the party—Kennedy again moved on; but before he had got many paces away, he heard the sounds of a violent collision, and turned back with his cane uplifted to defend his son. It is alleged that Kennedy fell upon Houston with his cane—he had no weapon on his person—and while he did so, young Gilbert Kennedy drew his sword, and, rushing forward, wounded Houston mortally in the belly. The unfortunate man died a few days afterwards.[380]
Auchtyfardel’s share in this transaction was held to infer his liability to an arbitrary punishment. Gilbert fled, and was outlawed, but afterwards was permitted to return home, and in time he succeeded to his father’s estate. We hear of him in |1705.| 1730, as having been brought by that sad act of his youth into a very serious and religious frame of life. He was an elder of the church, and took great care of the morals of his servants. A maid, whom he on one occasion reproved severely, was led, by a diabolic spite, to mix some arsenic with the bread and milk which she prepared for the family breakfast, and the death of Houston had very nearly been avenged at the distance of twenty-four years from its occurrence. Happily, through the aid of a physician, the laird and his family escaped destruction.[381]
A case more characteristic of the age than that of young Auchtyfardel occurred in the ensuing year. David Ogilvie of Cluny, having first thrust himself upon a funeral-party at the village of Meigle, and there done his best to promote hard drinking, insisted on accompanying two or three of the gentlemen on their way home, though his own lay another way. While proceeding along, he gave extreme annoyance to Andrew Cowpar, younger of Lochblair, by practical jokes of a gross kind, founded on the variance of sex in their respective horses. At length, Cowpar giving the other’s horse a switch across the face, to make it keep off, Ogilvie took violent offence at the act, demanded Cowpar’s whip under a threat of being otherwise pistolled, and, on a refusal, actually took out a pistol and shot his companion dead. The wretched murderer escaped abroad.
In January 1708, Robert Baird, son of Sir James Baird of Sauchtonhall, had a drinking-match in a tavern at Leith, where he particularly insisted on his friend, Mr Robert Oswald, being filled drunk. On Oswald resisting repeated bumpers, Baird demanded an apology from him, as if he had committed some breach of good-manners. He refused, and thus a drunken sense of resentment was engendered in the mind of Baird. At a late hour, they came up to Edinburgh in a coach, and leaving the vehicle at the Nether Bow, were no sooner on the street, than Baird drew his sword, and began to push at Oswald, upon whom he speedily inflicted two mortal wounds. He fled from the scene, leaving a bloody and broken sword beside his expiring victim.
On the ground of its not being ‘forethought felony,’ Baird was some years afterwards allowed by the Court of Justiciary to have the benefit of Queen Anne’s act of indemnity.
Early in this month, Scotland was honoured with a visit from |1705.| the celebrated Daniel Defoe. His noted power and probity as a Whig pamphleteer suggested to the English ministry the propriety of sending him down for a time to Edinburgh, to help on the cause of the Union. He came with sympathies for the people of Scotland, founded on what they had suffered under the last Stuart reigns. Instead of believing all to be barren and hopeless north of the Tweed, he viewed the country as one of great capabilities, requiring only peace and industry to become a scene of prosperity equal to what prevailed in England. To this end he deemed an incorporating union of the two countries necessary, and it was therefore with no small amount of good-will that he undertook the mission assigned to him.
Even, however, from one regarding it so fraternally as Defoe, Scotland was little disposed to accept a recommendation of that measure. It was in vain that he published a complaisant poem about the people, under the name of Caledonia, in which he commended their bravery, their learning, and abilities. Vainly did he declare himself their friend, anxious to promote their prosperity by pointing to improved agriculture, to fisheries, to commerce, and to manufactures. The Edinburgh people saw him daily closeted with the leaders of the party for the hated union, and that was enough. His pen displayed its wonted activity in answers to the objectors, and his natural good-humour seems never to have failed him, even when he was assailed with the most virulent abuse. But his enemies did not confine themselves to words: threats of assassination reached him. His lodgings were marked, and his footsteps were tracked; yet he held serenely on in his course. He even entered upon some little enterprises in the manufacture of linen, for the purpose of shewing the people what they might do for themselves, if they would adopt right methods. It appears that, during the tumults which took place in Edinburgh while the measure was passing through parliament, he was in real danger. One evening, when the mob was raging in the street, he looked out of his window to behold their proceedings, and was nearly hit by a large stone which some one threw at him, the populace making a point that no one should look over windows at them, lest he might recognise faces, and become a witness against individual culprits.
Defoe spent sixteen months in Scotland on this occasion, rendering much modest good service to the country, and receiving for it little remuneration besides abuse. Amongst other fruits of his industry during the period is his laborious work, |1706.| The History of the Union of Great Britain. One could have wished a record tracing the daily life of this remarkable man in Scotland. “We only get an obscure idea of some of his public transactions. One of the few private particulars we have learned, is that he paid a visit to the Duke of Queensberry at Drumlanrig, and by his Grace’s desire, took a view of his estates, with a view to the suggestion of improvements.
Defoe revisited Scotland in the summer of 1708, on a mission the purpose of which has not been ascertained; and again in the summer of 1709. His stay on the last occasion extended to nearly two years, during part of which time, in addition to constant supplies of articles for his Review in London, he acted as editor of the Edinburgh Courant newspaper.[382] (See the next article).
In a folio published this day by Captain James Donaldson, under the title of the Edinburgh Courant Reviewed, we learn that the Edinburgh Gazette, which, as we have seen, was commenced in 1699, had now succumbed to fate: damaged by the persevering policy of Adam Boig of the Courant, the Gazette ‘of late has been laid aside, as a thing that cannot be profitably carried on.’
Donaldson here reviews the charges made against his paper, as to partiality and staleness of news, defends it to some extent, but practically admits the latter fault, by stating that he was about to remedy it. He was going to recommence the Edinburgh Gazette in a new series, in which he would ‘take a little more liberty, and give stories as they come,’ without waiting, as before, for their authentication, though taking care where they were doubtful to intimate as much. The Gazette did, accordingly, resume its existence on the 25th of the same month, as a twice-a-week paper. The first number contains three advertisements, one of a sale of house-property, another of the wares of the Leith glass-work, and a third as follows: ‘There is a gentleman in town, who has an secret which was imparted to him by his father, an eminent physician in this kingdom, which by the blessing of God cures the Phrensie and Convulsion Fits. He takes no reward for his pains till the cure be perfyted. He will be found at the Caledonian Coffee-house.’
In a series of the Gazette extending from the commencement to the 140th number, published on the 2d September 1708, there is a remarkable sterility of home-news, and anything that is |1707.| told is told, in a dry and sententious way. The following alone seem worthy of transcription:
‘Leith, May 19 [1707].—Last Saturday, about 50 merchant-ships, bound for Holland, sailed from our Road, under convoy of two Dutch men-of-war.’
‘Edinburgh, August 5.—This day the Equivalent Money came in here from South Britain, in thirteen waggons drawn by six horses.’
Sep. 30.—‘Dyer’s Letter says: Daniel de Foe is believed by this time in the hands of justice at the complaint of the Swedish minister, and now a certain man of law may have an opportunity to reckon with him for a crime which made him trip to Scotland, and make him oblige the world with another Hymn to the Pillory.’
Strange to say, less than three years after this date, namely, in February 1710, the ‘unabashed Defoe’ was conducting the rival newspaper in Edinburgh—the Courant—succeeding in this office Adam Boig, who had died in the preceding month. The authority of Defoe for his editorship appears in the following decree of the Town Council:
‘The same day The Councill authorized Mr Daniel Defoe to print the Edinburgh Currant in place of the deceast Adam Bog Discharging hereby any other person to print News under the name of the Edinburgh Currant.’
The advertisements are also very scanty, seldom above three or four, and most of these repeated frequently, as if they were reprinted gratuitously, in order to make an appearance of business in this line. The following are selected as curious:
May 13, 1707.—‘This is to give notice to all who have occasion for a black hersse, murning-coach, and other coaches, just new, and in good order, with good horses well accoutred, that James Mouat, coachmaster in Lawrence Ord’s Land at the foot of the Canongate, will serve them thankfully at reasonable rates.’
‘Ralph Agutter of London, lately come to Edinburgh, Musical Instrument-maker, is to be found at Widow Pool’s, perfumer of gloves, at her house in Stonelaw’s Close, a little below the Steps; makes the Violin, Bass Violin, Tenor Violin, the Viol de Gambo, the Lute Quiver, the Trumpet Marine, the Harp; and mendeth and putteth in order and stringeth all those instruments as fine as any man whatsoever in the three kingdoms, or elsewhere, and |1707.| mendeth the Virginal, Spinnat, and Harpsichord, all at reasonable rates.’
Oct. 16.—‘There is just now come to town the Excellent Scarburray Water, good for all diseases whatsomever except consumption; and this being the time of year for drinking the same, especially at the fall of the leaf and the bud, the price of each chopin bottle is fivepence, the bottle never required, or three shilling without the bottle. Any person who has a mind for the same may come to the Fountain Close within the Netherbow of Edinburgh, at William Mudie’s, where the Scarsburray woman sells the same.’
August 12, 1708.—‘George Williamson, translator [alias cobbler] in Edinburgh, commonly known by the name of Bowed Geordie, who swims on face, back, or any posture, forwards or backwards; plums, dowks, and performs all the antics that any swimmer can do, is willing to attend any gentleman, and to teach them to swim, or perform his antics for their divertisement: is to be found in Luckie Reid’s at the foot of Gray’s Close, on the south side of the street, Edinburgh.’
In September 1707, it is advertised that at the Meal Girnel of Primrose, oatmeal, the produce of the place, was sold at four pounds Scots the boll for the crop of 1706, while the crop of the preceding year was £3, 13s. 4d.; in the one case, 6s. 8d.; in the other, 6s. 4d. sterling.
The Master of Burleigh—eldest son of Lord Balfour of Burleigh, a peer possessed of considerable estates in Fife—had fallen in love with a girl of humble rank, and was sent abroad by his friends, in the hope that time and change of scene would save him from making a low marriage. He was heard to declare before going, that if she married in his absence, he would take the life of her husband. The girl was, nevertheless, married to Henry Stenhouse, schoolmaster of Inverkeithing. The Master was one of those hot-headed persons whom it is scarcely safe to leave at large, and who yet do not in general manifest the symptoms that justify restraint. Learning that his mistress was married, and to whom, he came at this date with two or three mounted servants to the door of the poor schoolmaster, who, at his request, came forth from amongst his pupils to speak to the young gentleman.
‘Do you know me?’ said Balfour.
‘No.’
‘I am the Master of Burleigh. You have spoken to my disadvantage, and I am come to fight you,’
‘I never saw you before,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘and I am sure I never said anything against you.’
‘I must nevertheless fight with you, and if you won’t, I will at once shoot you.’
‘It would be hard,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘to force a man who never injured you into a fight. I have neither horse nor arms, and it is against my principles to fight duels.’
‘You must nevertheless fight,’ said the Master, ‘or be shot instantly;’ and so saying, he held a pistol to Stenhouse’s breast.
The young man continuing to excuse himself, Balfour at length fired, and gave the schoolmaster a mortal wound in the shoulder, saying with savage cruelty: ‘Take that to be doing with.’ Then, seeing that an alarm had arisen among the neighbours, he rode off, brandishing a drawn sword, and calling out: ‘Hold the deserter!’ in order to divert the attention of the populace. The unfortunate schoolmaster died in a few days of his wound.
The Master for a time escaped pursuit, but at length he was brought to trial, July 28, 1709, and adjudged to be beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh, on the ensuing 6th of January. During this unusually long interval, he escaped from the Tolbooth by changing clothes with his sister. He was not again heard of till May 1714, when he appeared amongst a number of Jacobite gentlemen at the Cross of Lochmaben, to drink the health of James VIII. The family title had by this time devolved on him by the death of his father; but his property had all been escheat by sentence of the Court of Justiciary. His appearance in the rebellion of 1715, completed by attainder the ruin of his family, and he died unmarried and in obscurity in 1757.[383]
A great flock of the Delphinus Deductor, or Ca’ing Whale—a cete about twenty-five feet long—came into the Firth of Forth, ‘roaring, plunging, and threshing upon one another, to the great terror of all who heard the same.’ It is not uncommon for this denizen of the arctic seas to appear in considerable numbers on the coasts of Zetland; and occasionally they present themselves on the shores of Caithness and Sutherlandshire; but to come so far south as the Firth of Forth is very rare: hence the astonishment which the incident seems to have created. The contemporary |1707.| chronicler goes on to state: ‘Thirty-five of them were run ashore upon the sands of Kirkcaldy, where they made yet a more dreadful roaring and tossing when they found themselves aground, insomuch that the earth trembled.’ ‘What the unusual appearance of so great a number of them at this juncture [the union of the kingdoms] may portend shall not be our business to inquire.’[384]
The fifteenth article of the treaty of Union provided that England should pay to Scotland the sum of £398,085, 10s., because of the arrangement for the equality of trade between the two countries having necessitated that Scotland should henceforth pay equal taxes with England—a rule which would otherwise have been inequitable towards Scotland, considering that a part of the English revenue was required for payment of the interest on her seventeen millions of national debt. It was likewise provided by the act of Union, that out of this Equivalent Money, as it was called, the commissioners to be appointed for managing it should, in the first place, pay for any loss to be incurred by the renovation of the coin; in the second, should discharge the losses of the African Company, which thereupon was to cease; the overplus to be applied for payment of the comparatively trifling state-debts of Scotland, and to furnish premiums to the extent of £2000 a year for the improvement of the growth of wool for seven years—afterwards for the improvement of fisheries and other branches of the national industry.
Defoe, who was now living in Scotland, tells how those who hated the Union spoke and acted about the Equivalent. The money not being paid in Scotland on the very day of the incorporation of the two countries, the first talk was—the English have cheated us, and will never pay; they intended it all along. Then an idea got abroad, that by the non-payment the Union was dissolved; ‘and there was a discourse of some gentlemen who came up to the Cross of Edinburgh, and protested, in the name of the whole Scots nation, That, the conditions of the treaty not being complied with, and the terms performed, the whole was void.’ At length, in August, the money came in twelve wagons, guarded by a party of Scots dragoons, and was carried directly to the Castle. Then those who had formerly been loudest in denouncing the English for not forwarding the money, became furious because |1707.| it was come. They hooted at the train as it moved along the street, cursing the soldiers who guarded it, and even the horses which drew it. One person of high station called out that those who brought that money deserved to be cut to pieces. The excitement increased so much before the money was secured in the Castle, that the mob pelted the carters and horses on their return into the streets, and several of the former were much hurt.
It was soon discovered that, after all, only £100,000 of the money was in specie, the rest being in Exchequer bills, which the Bank of England had ignorantly supposed to be welcome in all parts of her majesty’s dominions. This gave rise to new clamours. It was said the English had tricked them by sending paper instead of money. Bills, only payable four hundred miles off, and which, if lost or burned, would be irrecoverable, were a pretty price for the obligation Scotland had come under to pay English taxes. The impossibility of satisfying or pleasing a defeated party was never better exemplified.
The commissioners of the Equivalent soon settled themselves in one of Mr Robert Mylne’s houses in Mylne’s Court, and proceeded to apply the money in terms of the act. One of their first proceedings was to send to London for £50,000 in gold, in substitution for so much of paper-money, that they might, as far as possible, do away with the last clamour. ‘Nor had this been able to carry them through the payment, had they not very prudently taken all the Exchequer bills that any one brought them, and given bills of exchange for them payable in London.’[385] Defoe adverts to a noble individual—doubtless the Duke of Hamilton—who came for payment of his share of the African Company’s stock (£3000), with the interest, and who refused to take any of the Exchequer bills, probably thinking thus to create some embarrassment; but the commissioners instantly ordered the claim to be liquidated in gold.
Notwithstanding all the ravings and revilings about the Equivalent, Defoe assures us that, amongst the most malcontent persons he never found any who, having African stock, refused to take their share of the unhallowed money in exchange for it. Even the despised Exchequer bills were all despatched so quickly, that, in six months, not one was to be seen in the country.
Out of the Equivalent, the larger portion—namely, £229,611, 4s. 8d.—went to replace the lost capital of the African Company, |1707.| and so could not be considered as rendered to the nation at large. For ‘recoining the Scots and foreign money, and reducing it to the standard of the coin of England,’ £49,888, 14s. 11⅙d. was expended. There was likewise spent out of this fund, for the expenses of the commissioners and secretaries who had been engaged in carrying through the Union, £30,498, 12s. 2d. After making sundry other payments for public objects, there remained in 1713 but £16,575, 14s. 0½d. unexpended.[386]
We shall afterwards see further proceedings in the matter of the Equivalent.