Occurred this day at Edinburgh a thunder-storm, attended with such remarkable effects, that an account of it was published on a broadside. It was little, perhaps, that it frightened the people off the streets, caused the garrison at the Castle to look well to the powder-magazine, and killed a man and a woman at Lasswade. What attracted particular attention was the fate of a tavern company at Canonmills, where two barbers from the Lawnmarket had come to celebrate the Pretender’s birthday over a bottle of ale. They had just drunk to the health of their assumed monarch—one of the company had remarked with a curse how the bells were not rung or the Castle guns fired on ‘the king’s’ birthday—when a great thunder-clap broke over the house. ‘The people on earth,’ cried one of the party, ‘will not adore their king; but you hear the Almighty is complimenting him with a volley from heaven.’ At that moment came a second stroke, which instantaneously killed one of the barbers and a woman, and scorched a gentleman so severely that he died in a few hours. The rest of the company, being amazed, sent to Edinburgh for doctors to take blood of the gentleman; but the doctors told them they could do no good. They tried to let blood of him, but found none. ‘Their bodies were as soft as wool.’
‘There is none more blind than them that will not see: these men may see, if they wilfully will not shut their eyes, that Providence many times hath blasted their enterprises.... These men were contending for that which did not concern them; they were drinking, cursing, and passing reflections—which in all probability hath offended the King of Heaven to throw down his thunder, &c., a warning to all blasphemers, drunkards, swearers, licentious livers, and others.’[505] It is a little awkward for this theory, that among the killed was but one of the Jacobite barbers, the other and equally guilty one escaping.
The capture of the fugitate Rob Roy seeming now an object worthy of the regard of the Duke of Athole, a negotiation took place between them, which ended in Rob being taken into custody of a strong party at Logierait, the place where his Grace usually exercised his justiciary functions, and where his prison accordingly was situated. The outlaw felt he had been deceived, but it did not appear that he could help himself. Meanwhile, the duke sent intelligence of the capture of Rob to Edinburgh, desiring a company of troops to be sent to receive him. Ultimately, however, the duke countermanded the military, finding he could send a sufficiently strong party of his own people to hand over the outlaw to justice.
While preparations were making for his transmission to the Lowlands, Rob entertained his guards with whisky, and easily gained their confidence. One day, when they were all very hearty, he made a business to go to the door to deliver a letter for his wife to a man who was waiting for it, and to whom he pretended he had some private instructions to give. One of the guard languidly accompanied him, as it were for form’s sake, having no fear of his breaking off. Macgregor was thus allowed to lounge about outside for a few minutes, till at last getting near his horse, he suddenly mounted, and was off to Stirlingshire like the wind.[506]
To have set two dukes upon thief-catching within a twelvemonth or so, and escaped out of the clutches of both, was certainly a |1717.| curious fate for a Highland cateran, partisan warrior, or whatever name he may be called by.
Sir Richard Steele appears not to have attended the business of the Forfeited Estates Commission in Edinburgh during the year 1716, but given his time, as usual, to literary and political pursuits in London, and to a project in which he had become concerned for bringing fish ‘alive and in good health’ to the metropolis. It was reported that he would get no pay for the first year, as having performed no duty; but those who raised this rumour must have had a very wrong notion of the way that public affairs were then administered. He tells his wife, May 22, 1717, in one of those most amorous of marital letters of his which Leigh Hunt has praised so much, that ‘five hundred pounds for the time the commission was in Scotland is already ordered me.’ It is strange to reflect that payment of coach-horses, which he, as a man of study, rarely used, and condemned as vain superfluities, was among the things on which was spent the property wrung out of the vitals of the poor Scotch Jacobites.
When the second year’s session of the commissioners was about to commence in September 1717, Sir Harry Houghton appears to have proposed that Steele should go at the first, in which case the baronet proposed to relieve him in November; in case he did not go now, he would have to go in November, and stay till the end of January. He dallied on in London, only scheming about his journey, which, it must be admitted, was not an easy one in 1717. He informs his wife: ‘I alter the manner of taking my journey every time I think of it. My present disposition is to borrow what they call a post-chaise of the Duke of Roxburgh [Secretary of State for Scotland]. It is drawn by one horse, runs on two wheels, and is led by a servant riding by. This rider and leader is to be Mr Willmot, formerly a carrier, who answers for managing on a road to perfection, by keeping tracks, and the like.’ Next it was: ‘I may possibly join with two or three gentlemen, and hire a coach for ourselves.’ On the 30th of September, he tells Lady Steele: ‘The commission in Scotland stands still for want of me at Edinburgh. It is necessary there should be four there, and there are now but two; three others halt on the road, and will not go forward till I have passed by York. I have therefore taken places in the York coach for Monday next.’ On the 20th of October: ‘After many resolutions and irresolutions concerning my way of going, I go, God willing, to-morrow morning, |1717.| by the Wakefield coach, on my way to York and Edinburgh.’ And now he did go, for his next letter is dated on the 23d from Stamford, to which place two days’ coaching had brought him.
An odd but very characteristic circumstance connected with Steele’s first journey to Scotland was, that he took a French master with him, in order that the long idle days and evenings of travelling might be turned to some account in his acquisition of that language, which he believed would be useful to him on his return. ‘He lies in the same room with me; and the loquacity which is usual at his age, and inseparable from his nation, at once contributes to my purpose, and makes him very agreeable.’
Steele was in Edinburgh on the 5th of November, and we know that about the 9th he set out on his return to London, because on the 11th he writes to his wife from Ayton on the third day of his journey, one (a Sunday) having been spent in inaction on the road. ‘I hope,’ says he, ‘God willing, to be at London, Saturday come se’ennight:’ that is to say, the journey was to take a fortnight. In accordance with this view of the matter, we find him writing on Friday the 15th from Pearce Bridge, in the county of Durham, ‘with my limbs much better than usual after my seven days’ journey from Edinburgh towards London.’ He tells on this occasion: ‘You cannot imagine the civilities and honours I had done me there, and [I] never lay better, ate or drank better, or conversed with men of better sense, than there.’[507]
Brief as his visit had been, he was evidently pleased with the men he met with in the Scottish capital. All besides officials must have felt that he came about a business of malign aspect towards their country; but his name was an illustrious one in British literature, he was personally good-natured, and they could separate the great essayist from the Whig partisan and servant of the ministry. Allan Ramsay would be delighted to see him in his shop ‘opposite to Niddry’s Wynd head.’ Thomson, then a youth at college, would steal a respectful look at him as he stood amongst his friends at the Cross. From ‘Alexander Pennecuik, gentleman,’ a bard little known to fame, he received a set of complimentary verses,[508] ending thus:
Sir Richard spent part of the summer of 1718 in Edinburgh, in attendance upon the business of the commission. We find him taking a furnished house for the half-year beginning on the 15th of May (the Whitsunday term in Scotland), from Mr James Anderson, the editor of the Diplomata Scotiæ. But on the 29th July he had not come to take possession: neither could he say when he would arrive, till his ‘great affair’ was finished. He promised immediately thereupon to take his horses for Scotland, ‘though I do not bring my coach, by reason of my wife’s inability to go with me.’ ‘I shall,’ he adds, ‘want the four-horse stable for my saddle-horses.’
He appears to have taken the same house for the same period in 1719, and to have revisited Scotland in the same manner in 1720, when he occupied the house of Mr William Scott, professor of Greek in the Edinburgh University.[509] There is a letter to him from Mr James Anderson in February 1721, thanking him for the interest he had taken in forwarding a scheme of the writer, to induce the government to purchase his collection of historical books. Steele was again residing in Edinburgh in October 1721, when we find him in friendly intercourse with Mr Anderson. ‘Just before I received yours,’ he says on one occasion, ‘I sent a written message to Mr Montgomery, advising that I designed the coach [Steele’s own carriage?] should go to your house, to take in your galaxy, and afterwards call for his star:’ pleasant allusions these probably to some party of pleasure in which the female members of Mr Anderson’s and Mr Montgomery’s families were to be concerned. In the ensuing month, he writes to Mr Anderson from the York Buildings Office in London, regarding an application he had had from a poor woman named Margaret Gow. He could not help her with her petition; but he sent a small bill representing money of his own for her relief. ‘This trifle,’ he says, ‘in her housewifely hands, will make cheerful her numerous family at Collingtown.’[510]
These are meagre particulars regarding Steele’s visits to |1718.| Scotland, but at least serviceable in illustrating his noted kind-heartedness.
as he is called by Allan Ramsay, who doubtless made his personal acquaintance at this time.
There is a traditionary anecdote of Steele’s visits to Scotland, which has enough of truth-likeness to be entitled to preservation. It is stated that, in one of his journeys northward, soon after he had crossed the Border, near Annan, he observed a shepherd resting on a hillside and reading a book. He and his companions rode up, and one of them asked the man what he was reading. It proved to be the Bible. ‘And what do you learn from this book?’ asked Sir Richard. ‘I learn from it the way to heaven.’ ‘Very well,’ replied the knight, ‘we are desirous of going to the same place, and wish you would shew us the way.’ Then the shepherd, turning about, pointed to a tall and conspicuous object on an eminence at some miles’ distance, and said: ‘Weel, gentlemen, ye maun just gang by that tower.’ The party, surprised and amused, demanded to know how the tower was called. The shepherd answered: ‘It is the Tower of Repentance.’
It was so in verity. Some centuries ago, a Border cavalier, in a fit of remorse, had built a tower, to which he gave the name of Repentance. It lies near Hoddam House, in the parish of Cummertrees, rendered by its eminent situation a conspicuous object to all the country round.
We are informed by Richard Shiels that Steele, while in Scotland, had interviews with a considerable number of the Presbyterian clergy, with the view of inducing them to agree to a union of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches—a ‘devout imagination,’ which one would have thought a very few such interviews would have been required to dispel. He was particularly struck with the singular and original character of James Hart, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, who is universally admitted to have been an excellent man, as he was a most attractive preacher. That strange enthusiast, Mrs Elizabeth West, speaks of a discourse she once heard from him on a passage in Canticles: ‘The king hath brought me into his chambers; we will be glad,’ where he held forth, she says, ‘on the sweet fellowship Christ and believers have together.’ ‘Oh,’ she adds, ‘but this was a soul-refreshing sermon to me!’ What had most impressed the English moralist was the contrast between the good-humour and |1718.| benevolence of Hart in his private character, and the severe style in which he launched forth in the pulpit on the subject of human nature, and on the frightful punishments awaiting the great mass of mankind in another state of existence. Steele called him on this account ‘the Hangman of the Gospel.’[511]
The only other recollection of Steele in Edinburgh which has ever come under the notice of the author, represents him, characteristically, as assembling all the eccentric-looking mendicants of the Scottish capital in a tavern in Lady Stair’s Close, and there pleasing the whimsical taste of himself and one or two friends by witnessing their happiness in the enjoyment of an abundant feast, and observing all their various humours and oddities. Shiels also relates this circumstance, and adds that Steele afterwards confessed he had drunk in enough of native drollery to compose a comedy.
Lord Grange tells us, in his Diary, of a woman in humble life, residing in the Potterrow in Edinburgh, who had religious experiences reminding us of those of St Theresa and Antonia Bourignon, but consonant with orthodox Presbyterianism. Being taken, along with Mr Logan, the minister of Culross, to see her at ‘Lady Aytoun’s, at the back of the College,’ he found her a woman between thirty and forty. At the communion in Leith, a month ago, she had striven to dwell upon the thought of Christ, and came to have ‘clear uptakings of his sufferings.’ She saw him on the cross, and his deserted sepulchre, ‘as plainly as if she had been actually present when these things happened, though there was not any visible representation thereof made to her bodily eyes. She also got liberty to speak to him, and ask several questions at him, to which she got answers, as if one had spoken to her audibly, though there was no audible voice.’ Lord Grange admits that all this was apt to look like enthusiasm or delusion; but ‘far be it from me to say it is delusion.’ Being once at a communion in Kirkcaldy, ‘it was born in upon her—“Arise and eat, for thou hast a journey to make, a Jordan to pass through.”’ In passing across the Firth of Forth that afternoon, she was upset into the water, but sustained till a boat came to her rescue.
The pious judge seems to have desired much to keep up acquaintance with Jean Brown—for such was her name—and he went several times to see her at her little shop; but the place |1717.| was so much crowded with ‘children and people coming in to buy such things as she sells,’ that his wish was frustrated. ‘Afterwards,’ he tells us, ‘I employed her husband [a shoemaker] to make some little things for me, mostly to give them business, and that I might thereby get opportunity now and then to talk with such as, I hope, are acquainted with the ways of God.’
Immediately after the Union, the shrewd-witted people of Glasgow saw the opportunity which was afforded them of making a profitable trade with the American colonies. They had as yet no vessels of their own, and little means of purchasing cargoes; but diligence, frugality, and patience made up for all deficiencies. There is scarcely anything in our national history more truly interesting than the early efforts of Glasgow in commerce. Her first ventures to Maryland and Virginia were in vessels chartered from Whitehaven. In each vessel, filled with goods, there went a supercargo, whose simple instructions were to sell as many as he could for tobacco, and return home as soon as he had sold all, or had got enough of the plant to fill his vessel, whether the goods were all sold or not, bringing home with him any that remained unsold. In this cautious way were the foundations of the wondrous wealth of Glasgow laid. It was not till now, eleven years after the Union, that the first vessel belonging to Glasgow crossed the Atlantic.
By that time, much of the tobacco-trade had come into the hands of Glasgow merchants. Bristol, Liverpool, and Whitehaven, which had heretofore been the great entrepôts of the trade, opened their eyes with some little surprise when they began to find Glasgow underselling them in this article even among their own retailers. It was the mere frugality of the Scottish traders which gave them this advantage. But the jealousy of their rivals refused to see the true cause. They entered in 1721 into a confederacy to destroy the tobacco-trade of Glasgow, petitioning in succession the House of Lords and the House of Commons, with utterly unfounded complaints on the subject. The charges of fraud were declared groundless by the upper house; but, in the lower, the just defences of Glasgow were disregarded, through the interest made by her adversaries. ‘New officers were appointed at the ports of Greenock and Port-Glasgow, whose private instructions seem to have been to ruin the trade, if possible, by putting all imaginable hardships upon it; bills of equity were exhibited against the merchants in the Court of Exchequer for no less than |1718.| thirty-three ships’ cargoes, by which they were commanded to declare, on oath, whether or not they had imported in these ships any, and how much, more tobacco than what had been exported, or had paid the king’s duty. Vexatious lawsuits of every kind were stirred up against them. Every species of persecution, which malice, assisted by wealth and interest, could invent, to destroy the trade of Glasgow, was put in practice,’ and in part successfully, the trade being reduced to a languishing condition, in which it remained for a number of years.[512]
Quiet Mr Wodrow, in his neighbouring Renfrewshire parish, seems to have rather relished any loss or difficulty sustained by this industrious community, being apparently under an impression that wealth was apt to abate the godly habits of the people. He already recognised a party in the city who mocked at the ministry, and everything that was serious. Instead of seventy-two meetings for prayer, which he had known some years before, there were now but four or five; while in their place flourished club-meetings, at which foolish questions were discussed. He adverts to the blow struck at the tobacco-trade through the House of Commons, ‘which they say will be twenty thousand pounds loss to that place. I wish it may be sanctified to them.’[513]
We have seen a concert taking place in Edinburgh in 1694, and a very grand one, partly supported by amateurs, presented in celebration of St Cecilia’s Day, in the ensuing year. We learn that there was now a weekly meeting of amateurs at the Cross Keys Tavern, kept by one Steil, who is noted as an excellent singer of Scottish songs, and who appears to have possessed a collection of instruments for the use of his guests. This meeting admitted of visitors of both sexes, and was a point of reunion for the beau monde of Edinburgh in days while as yet there were neither balls nor theatres. Its being held in a tavern would be no objection to the ladies. Allan Ramsay, in singing the winter attractions of the city, does not forget that
And then adds a picture of the scene:
A writer of some ability and acuteness, who travelled over Scotland, and wrote an account of his journey, published in 1723, tells us that he was at several ‘consorts’ in Edinburgh, and had much reason to be pleased with the appearance of the ladies. He had never in any country seen ‘an assembly of greater beauties.’ It is not in point here, but it may be stated that he also admired their stately firm way of walking ‘with the joints extended and the toes out,’ and thought their tartan head-mantles of scarlet and green at church as gay as a parterre of flowers. At the same time, he knew them to be good housewives, and that many gentlemen of good estate were not ashamed to wear clothes of their wives’ and servants’ spinning.[515]
To return to music—it looks like a mark of rising taste for sweet sounds, that we have a paragraph in the Edinburgh Courant for July 12, 1720, announcing that Mr Gordon, who had lately been travelling in Italy for his improvement in music, was daily expected in Edinburgh, ‘accompanied with Signor Lorenzo Bocchi, who is considered the second master of the violoncello in Europe, and the fittest hand to join Mr Gordon’s voice in the consorts which he designs to entertain his friends with before the rising of the session.’ On the 28th of May 1722, at the request of several gentlemen of Glasgow, Mr Gordon was to give a ‘consort’ in that city; and immediately after we hear of him publishing ‘proposals for the improvement of music in Scotland, together with a most reasonable and easy scheme for establishing a Pastoral Opera in Edinburgh.’[516] Signor Bocchi seems to have been able |1718.| to carve a professional position for himself in Edinburgh, for in 1726 we find him publishing there an opera of his own composition, containing twelve sonatas for different instruments—violin, flute, violoncello, &c., with a libretto in broad Scotch by Allan Ramsay, beginning:
It was about this time that the native music of Scotland—those beautiful melodies which seem to have sprung up in the country as naturally and unperceivedly as the primroses and the gowans—were first much heard of to the south of the Tweed. William Thomson, who was a boy at the Feast of St Cecilia in 1695, had since grown up in the possession of a remarkably sweet voice for the singing of Scots songs, and having migrated to London, he was there so well received, that Scottish music became fashionable even amidst the rage there was at the same time for the opera and the compositions of Handel. A collection of Scottish songs, with the music, under the title of Orpheus Caledonius, was published by Thomson in London in 1725, with a dedication to the Princess of Wales, and republished in an extended form in 1733.
Of the other performers at the Feast of St Cecilia, a few were still flourishing. Adam Craig, a teacher of music, played second violin at the gentlemen’s concerts with high approbation. Matthew M‘Gibbon was no more; but he had left a superior representative in his son William, who had studied under Corbet in London, and was now leader and first-violin at the concerts, playing the music of Corelli, Geminiani, and Handel with great skill and judgment. A collection of Scots tunes by William M‘Gibbon, published in 1742 and subsequent years, was long in high repute.[517] Of the St Cecilia amateurs we only hear now of Lord Colville, who seems to have been a great enthusiast, ‘a thorough master of music,’ and is said to have ‘understood counterpoint well.’ His instruments were the harpsichord and organ. He had made a large collection of music, much of it brought home to him from Italy.
Robert Lord Colville of Ochiltree (for it is necessary so to distinguish him from Lord Colville of Culross) died unmarried in March 1728, after having been in possession of the peerage for fifty-seven years. Wodrow tells a gossip’s story about his lordship having ‘walked’ for some time after his apparent departure from the earth.[518]
After a comparatively private form of entertainment had been in vogue some years, the lovers of harmony in Edinburgh constituted themselves in 1728 into a regular society, with a governor and directors, the entire number of members being seventy, and, for the sake of room, transferred their meetings to St Mary’s Chapel, where they continued to assemble for a long course of years.[519] The progress of their gay science is marked by the publication, in 1730, of a collection of Scots tunes for the harpsichord or spinet by Adam Craig, appropriately dedicated to the Honourable Lords and Gentlemen of the Musical Society of Mary’s Chapel, as ‘generous encouragers and promoters of music’—this collection being the first of the kind that was published,[520] although there were several previous collections containing Scottish tunes, mingled with others.
At this time the house of the Rev. Mr M‘Gill, minister of Kinross, was represented as troubled with spirits. The first fact that excited attention, was the disappearance of some silver spoons and knives, which were soon after found in the barn, stuck up in straw, with a big dish all nipped in pieces. Next it was found that no meat was brought to table but what was stuck full of pins. The minister found one in an egg. His wife, to make sure against trick, cooked some meat herself; but behold, when presented at table, ‘there were several pins in it, particularly a big pin the minister used for his gown. Another day, there was a pair of
|1718.| sheets put to the green, among other people’s, which were all nipped to pieces, and none of the linens belonging to others troubled. A certain night several went to watch the house, and as one was praying, down falls the press, wherein was abundance of lime-vessels, all broke to pieces; also at one other time the spirits, as they call them, not only tore the clothes that were locked up in a coffer, to pieces, but the very laps of a gentlewoman’s hood, as she was walking along the floor, were clipped away, as also a woman’s gown-tail and many other things not proper to mention. A certain girl, eating some meat, turned so very sick, that, being necessitate to vomit, [she] cast up five pins. A stone thrown down the chimney wambled a space on the floor, and then took a flight out at the window. There was thrown in the fire the minister’s Bible, which would not burn; but a plate and two silver spoons melted immediately. What bread is fired, were the meal never so fine, it’s all made useless. Is it not very sad that such a godly family, that employ their time no otherwise but by praying, reading, and serious meditation, should be so molested, while others who are wicked livers, and in a manner avowedly serve the Wicked One, are never troubled?’[522]
Wodrow, who relates these particulars, soon after enters in his note-book: ‘I hear of a woman in Carstairs parish, that has been for some time troubled with apparitions, and needs much sympathy.’[523]
It seems to have been a season of unusual spiritual activity. During September, and for some time after, the house of William Montgomery, mason, at Burnside, Scrabster, near Thurso, in the extreme north of Scotland, was tormented in an unusual manner by cats, which flocked in great numbers in and about his dwelling, making a frightful noise. Montgomery himself was from home; but his wife was so much troubled by this unaccountable pest, as to be obliged to write to him requiring his return, as otherwise she would be obliged to remove to Thurso. The goodman did return, and became witness to the torment that was going on, as many as eight cats, totally unknown in the neighbourhood, being sometimes assembled about his fireside in a single evening, ‘making the night hideous.’ One servant-girl left service on account of the nightly disturbance. Another, who came in her place, called to her master one evening that ‘the cats |1718.| were speaking among themselves,’ for so it had appeared to her they were doing, so human-like were their cries.
On a particular night, the 28th of November, Montgomery became unusually exasperated by these four-footed tormentors, and resolved to attack them with lethal weapons. One having got into a chest which had a hole in it, he watched with his drawn sword till he saw the creature put her head out at the hole, when he struck hard, yet failed to effect decapitation. Opening the chest, a servant named Geddes struck the animal with his master’s dirk in her hinder quarter, pinning her to the timber; yet after all she got out. Ultimately, Montgomery battered this cat pretty effectually, and threw her out as dead; nevertheless, they found she had disappeared by the morning. Five nights thereafter, some of the cats coming in upon Geddes in his bed, Montgomery dirked one, and battered its head, till it appeared dead, when he flung it out of doors. Before morning, it too had disappeared. He remarked that the wounds he inflicted brought no blood.
As it had been threatened that none should thrive in his house, William Montgomery entertained no doubt that there was witchcraft in the visitation. When an old woman in the neighbourhood fell ill, he became confirmed in his surmise, and thought himself justified in seeking the interference of the sheriff, though without particularising any delinquent. By this officer, the case was slighted as a piece of popular credulity and ignorance, till, one day in the ensuing February, a certain old woman named Margaret Nin-Gilbert, living in Owst, about a mile and a half from Montgomery’s house, ‘was seen by some of her neighbours to drop at her own door one of her legs from the middle.’ So narrates the sheriff. He adds: ‘She being under bad fame for witchcraft, the leg, black and putrefied, was brought to me; and immediately thereafter I ordered her to be apprehended and incarcerated.’
When old ladies begin to unhook their legs, and leave them in public places, it is evident there must be something in it. On the 8th of February, Margaret was examined in presence of two ministers, a bailie, and four merchants of Thurso, and confessed that she was in compact with the devil, who sometimes appeared to her as a great black horse, sometimes as a black cloud, and sometimes like a black hen. She owned to having been present as a cat in Montgomery’s house, along with other women similarly transformed, when two of the latter had |1718.| died of the wounds inflicted by Montgomery, and she had had her leg broken by him, so that in time it mortified and broke off. Margaret Olson, one of the women she accused, was examined for witch-marks; and several small coloured spots being detected, a needle was thrust in almost to the eye without exciting the least pain; but neither she nor any other person besides Nin-Gilbert could be induced to confess the practice of witchcraft.
Lord Advocate Dundas heard, some weeks after, what was going on in this remote corner of Scotland, and wrote a letter to the sheriff, finding fault with him for proceeding without consultation with the central authority. The local officer apologised on the ground, that he only acted for the Earl of Breadalbane and Mr Sinclair of Ulbster, and had deemed it proper to communicate directly with them. In the course of a short time, Nin-Gilbert died in prison, and this seems to have been an end to the affair.[524]
Hitherto, no sort of literary or scientific association had been formed in Scotland. For a long time bypast, almost the only learning that existed was theological, and there was but little of that. In this year, Thomas Ruddiman, who had distinguished himself in Edinburgh by editing the works of Buchanan, and composing the well-known Rudiments of the Latin Tongue, joined with the masters of the High School of the city in establishing there an association for improving each other in classical lore, ‘without meddling with the affairs of church or state.’ This body was afterwards joined by a young advocate, subsequently eminent as a judge and a philosophical writer under the name of Lord Kames; afterwards, Mr Archibald Murray and Mr James Cochran, advocates, and Mr George Wishart, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, with some others, became members. ‘Whether their conversations were preserved, or their dissertations published, cannot now be ascertained.’[525]
This day was commenced a newspaper in Edinburgh, the first that succeeded in thoroughly planting itself in Scotland, so as to obtain more than an ephemeral existence. It was the adventure of James M‘Ewen, bookseller in Edinburgh, and came out under |1718.| the title of The Edinburgh Evening Courant. The paper appeared in virtue of a formal authority from the magistrates and town-council, to whom M‘Ewen was to be answerable for what he should print and publish; and, that this rule might be enforced, he was, ‘before publication, to give ane coppie of his print to [the] magistrates.’[526] The Courant was announced as to contain ample accounts of foreign occurrences, and these derived, not through London prints, but directly from foreign journals. It was intended as a decidedly Whig print, in this respect differing from the Caledonian Mercury, which was not long after started in the Jacobite interest.
The Courant was from the first successful. James M‘Ewen, writing from Edinburgh, January 17, 1719, to the Rev. Mr Wodrow, says: ‘As to our newspaper, it thrives so far as to be very well liked by all, excepting the violent Jacobites, who hate it, for no other reason but because it is a true and impartial paper. Several gentlemen who were to have had the London papers sent them, have laid them aside, because this contains the substance not only of them, but of the foreign post also.’
In looking over, as it has been my fate to do, the early volumes of the Courant, one cannot but groan over the long, dry ‘advices’ from nearly all parts of Europe, and the wretched meagreness of the department of home intelligence, whole months often elapsing without so much as an obituary notice, or a ship’s arrival at Leith. The reason of this unfortunate peculiarity was no other than the civic censorship under which the paper, as we see, was from the beginning placed. Even intelligence in the interest of the government was not in every instance safe. In the course of February 1723, the magistrates seized all the copies of a particular number of the paper, in which there had been an apparently simple paragraph. It regarded Mr Patrick Halden, then under trials before the judges of the Court of Session as presentee of the crown for a seat on the bench—he being a mere creature of the ministry unfit for the position. Fired at the words: ‘We do not hear of any great discoveries yet made to his prejudice,’ the judges inflicted this punishment upon the publisher, M‘Ewen, who then announced the suppression of his paper, ‘that our customers in the country may know why they cannot be served with that day’s Courant, as also why we have been so sparing all along of home news.’
It is at the same time evident that the meagreness of the |1718.| home news was in part caused by mere difficulty of obtaining authentic accounts of such matters. A rumour as to the death of a person of importance at a distance would arrive. Owing to the sluggishness of posts, its verity could not readily be ascertained. Inserting it on trust, the journalist too often found, in the course of a few days, that the announcement was unfounded. Such is a fair specimen of the way in which false intelligence occasionally got into circulation; and every such case, of course, operated as a motive to caution in future. The publishers, moreover, could not afford to keep sub-editors to go about and ascertain the verity of rumours. As an illustration of the difficulties hence arising—the Caledonian Mercury of March 3, 1724, contained the following paragraph: ‘We hear that my Lord Arniston, one of the ordinary Lords of Session, is dead;’ which was followed in the next number by: ‘It was by mistake in our last that my Lord Arniston was dead, occasioned by the rendezvous of coaches, &c., hard by his lordship’s lodging, that were to attend the funeral of a son of the Right Honourable the Earl of Galloway; wherefore his lordship’s pardon and family’s is humbly craved.’
It affords a pleasing idea of the possible continuousness of sublunary things, that the then Whig, but now Conservative Edinburgh Evening Courant, which began its career in 1718, and its then Tory, but since liberal rival, the Caledonian Mercury, which originated about two years later, are still published in Edinburgh.
The enjoyment during thirty years of ‘position’ as an establishment, combined with the progressive ideas of the age, was now working some notable changes in the spirit of the Scottish Church.
There was still, of course, a general maintenance of the old doctrines and habits; all was to appearance as it had been—places of worship attended, Sunday observed, discipline kept up; in particular outlying presbyteries, there would even be found a majority of men of the old leaven. When, however, any strenuous Dumfriesshire or Galloway pastor seemed animated by aught of the zeal of a past age, and thereby excited troubles which came under the attention of the General Assembly, he was sure to be snubbed, and, if contumacious, deposed. If a presbytery of the ancient orthodoxy, labouring under fears of backslidings and defections, ventured to reassert, in a public manner, a doctrine that was beginning to be unfashionable, the General |1718.| Assembly frowned on its forwardness. At the same time, Mr John Simson, professor of divinity at Glasgow, openly taught doctrines leaning to Arminianism, and even Arianism, and the same venerable court could not, for a number of years, be brought to do more than administer a gentle admonition.
It chanced, one day, that a worthy pastor, Mr Thomas Boston, found in a house which he was visiting a tattered treatise of the bright days of the civil war, written by one Edward Fisher, and entitled The Marrow of Modern Divinity. Turning over its leaves, he found it asserting orthodox Puritan doctrines with a simplicity and pathos all its own, particularly one which had lately been condemned by the General Assembly—namely, that, Christ being all in all, a forsaking of sins was not necessary ‘to reinstate us in covenant with God.’ Here seemed the proper remedy for the alarming rationalism of the church, and very soon there appeared a new edition of the Marrow, under the care of Mr Thomas Hogg, minister of Carnock. The book immediately got into wide circulation, and produced a very decided impression on the public mind, insomuch that the General Assembly felt called upon to issue a prohibition against its being recommended or read.
Thus arose a once famous conflict generally recognised as the Marrow Controversy. Dissatisfied with the pronouncement of the church, twelve ministers, including Boston and Hogg, came forward with a Representation, in which they remonstrated in very free terms with the General Assembly, expressing themselves as grieved in an especial manner to find any disfavour shewn to that freedom from the covenant of works which true believers felt to be the chief branch of the precious liberty which Christ had given them, and ‘in which the eternal salvation of souls is wrapped up.’ For sending this paper, the twelve brethren were taken in hand by the Assembly’s commission, condemned, and ordered to stand a rebuke (1723); but, while submitting, for the sake of peace, they took care to utter a protest, which left no room for doubt that they remained unshaken in their opinions. The entire proceedings are far too voluminous for modern patience; but the importance of the affair is undoubted. The ‘Twelve Marrow Men’ may be said to have formed the nucleus of the dissent which was a few years after matured under the name of the Secession.[527]