About eight o’clock this morning, at a spot a little west of Aberdeen, ‘there appeared ane army, computed to be the number of 7000 men. This computation was made by a very judicious man, who had long been a soldier in Flanders, and is now a farmer at this place, who with about thirty other persons were spectators. This army was drawn up in a long line in battle-array, were seen to fall down to the ground, and start up all at once; their drums were seen to be carried on the drummers’ backs. After it remained more than two hours, a person on a white horse rode along the line, and then they all marched towards Aberdeen, where the hill called the Stocket took them out of sight. It was a clear sunshine all that morning.’
October 22d, a second vision of the same kind was seen on the same ground. ‘About two thousand men appeared with blue and white coats, clear arms glancing or shining, white ensigns were seen to slap down, as did the former, at which time a smoke appeared, as if they had fired, but no noise. A person on a white horse also rode along the line, and then they marched towards the bridge of Dee. This vision continued on the ground from three hours in the afternoon, till it was scarce light to see them. It was a clear fine afternoon, and being the same day of the great yearly fair held at Old Aberdeen, was seen by many hundreds of people going home, as well as by above thirty that were at their own houses, about half a mile distant. It’s observable that the people coming from the fair came through them, but saw nothing till they came up to the crowd that was standing gazing, who caused them to look back.’[528]
On the night of the 2d of November, the river Don was dried up from a little below Kemnay down to near Old Aberdeen. It was so dry at Inverury and Kintore, that children of five or six years of age gathered up the fish, trouts, and eels, and many people going to a fair passed over dry-shod. The water slowly returned about the middle of the day. The same phenomenon was said to have happened in the Doveran at Banff two days later.[529]
The Commissioners on the Forfeited Estates were left in 1716 in a position of discomfiture, in consequence of the impediments presented by Scottish law and Scottish national feeling. Acts of the legislature enabled them in subsequent years to overcome some of their difficulties, and accomplish a tolerable portion of their mission. Not indeed without further impediments from the Court of Session, which, when their former decrees of sequestration were rendered void, and could no longer protect the friends of the forfeited persons in possession, gave efficacy to a new device of these friends, in the form of exceptions which declared that the forfeited persons had never been the real owners of the estates! In their report of 1720, they pathetically advert to this new difficulty, and, as an illustration of its absurdity, state a few cases, in which there had been decrees in favour of more pretended owners than one—Seaforth’s estates, for instance, were by one decree found to belong in full and absolute right to Kenneth Mackenzie of Assint, by another to William Martin of Harwood, by another to Hugh Wallace of Inglistown. For Mar’s estates, there were four of these visionary owners, and for Kenmure’s five! The exceptions were generally founded on conveyances and dispositions of the lands which were alleged to have been formerly executed by the attainted persons in favour of children and others. Notwithstanding these obstructions, the commissioners were enabled, in October 1719, to sell Panmure’s estates at £60,400 sterling, Winton’s at £50,482, Kilsyth’s at £16,000, and that of Robert Craw of East Reston at £2364.
By reversals of the decrees in the House of Lords, and the help of a new act, the Commissioners were enabled, in October 1720, to sell a further lot of estates—Southesk’s for £51,549, Marischal’s for £45,333, Linlithgow’s for £18,769, Stirling of Keir’s for £16,450, Threipland of Fingask’s for £9606, Paterson of Bannockburn’s for £9671, besides two others of trifling value. The purchase was in nearly all these cases made by a speculative London company, entitled The Governor and Company of Undertakers for raising the Thames Water in York Buildings (commonly called the ‘York Buildings Company’).[530] The exceptions in the cases of Keir and Bannockburn were purchases probably made by friends of the former owners. For any other persons connected |1719.| with Scotland to have come forward to buy these properties on their own account, inferred such an amount of public indignation, if not violence, as made the act impossible, even if there had been any recreant Scot, Whig or Tory, capable in his heart of such conduct.
We shall have occasion, under subsequent dates, to notice certain difficulties of a different and more romantic kind which beset the Commissioners. But, meanwhile, it may be well to complete the history of their ordinary transactions.
Out of thirty estates left unsold in October 1720, they had succeeded within the ensuing three years in selling nineteen, of which the chief were Lord Burleigh’s at £12,610, Macdonald of Sleat’s at £21,000, and Mackenzie of Applecross’s at £3550, the rest being of inconsiderable amount, though raising the entire sum to £66,236. The principal estate afterwards sold was that of John Earl of Mar at £36,000.
When the Commissioners closed their accounts in March 1725, it appeared that there was a total of £411,082 sterling paid and to be paid into the Exchequer, from which, however, was to be deducted no less than £303,995 of debts sanctioned by the Commissioners, and for which they had issued or were to issue debentures, and £26,120 allowed in the form of grants from the crown. There thus remained, of money realised for public use and to pay the expenses of the Commission, the sum of £84,043, 17s. 5¾d., while properties to the yearly value of £2594 remained undisposed of, including an item so small as ‘Feu-duty of some cellars at Leith, part of the Abbacy of Aberbrothick, belonging to the late Earl of Panmure, 11s. 3½d.’
Some curiosity will naturally be felt to know the aggregate expenses of the Commission,[531] and the balance of results which these left out of the eighty-four thousand pounds. There is a mixture of the ludicrous and sad in the problem, which may be expressed thus: money from the destruction (for public objects) of about fifty of the good old families of Scotland, £84,043; charges for the expense of the destruction, £82,936 = £1107! Walpole would find it hardly a decent purchase-money for a vote in the House of Commons.
By statute passed in 1718,[532] arrangements had been made |1719.| regarding the sum of £16,575, 14s. 0½d., which had been left over of the Equivalent money at the Union, after paying sundry claims out of it, and for a further debt of £230,308, 9s. 10d., due by England to Scotland since in equalisation of duties, together with a small sum of interest—the whole amounting to £248,550—also for enabling the king to constitute the bond-holders of this debt into a corporation, which, after St John’s Day, 1719, should receive £10,000 annually as interest, until the debt should be redeemed.
Now, the Bank of Scotland had been going on very quietly for some years, with its ten thousand pounds of paid-up capital, realising, as we can infer from some particulars, about a thousand a year of profit from its business. A prosperity so great could not then exist in Scotland without exciting some degree of envy, and also raising up thoughts of rivalry in a certain ardent class of minds. It began to be alleged that the Bank, as it was commonly called, was stinted in its means and frigid in its dealings; that it lacked enterprise; that it would be the better of an infusion of fresh blood, and so forth. It had many positive enemies, who tried to detract from its merits, and were constantly raising evil reports about it.[533] Most deadly of all, there was now this Equivalent Company, with about a quarter of a million of debentures wherewith to engage in further mercantile enterprise, so as to make their ten thousand a year a little better. The boy, with his first shilling burning a hole in his pocket, was but a type of it.
In December 1719, a proposal came from a proprietor of Equivalent stock, to the effect that that stock should be added to the £100,000 stock of the Bank, but with nine-tenths of it returned by the Bank in notes, so that only £25,000 of it should in reality remain active in the new concern. It was proposed that, of the £10,000 of annual interest upon the Equivalent, the proprietors of Bank stock should thenceforward draw two-sevenths, being the proportion of £100,000 to £250,000; and of the £600 a year allowed for management of the Equivalent, the Bank was also to be allowed a proportion. In such a way might the Bank and Equivalent be brought into a union presumed to be beneficial to both parties.
The directors of the Bank received the proposition as an insidious attempt by a number of outsiders to get into the enjoyment of a portion of their time-bought advantages. They pointed out, in their answer, that the Equivalent stock being only in the receipt of 4 per cent. interest, while the profits of the Bank stock might be reckoned at not lower than 10, the proposal was inequitable towards the Bank. Besides, they did not want this additional stock, finding their present working capital quite sufficient. The proposer was thus repelled for the meantime; but he very quickly returned to the attack.
Under the guidance of this person, there was now formed what was called ‘The Edinburgh Society for insuring of Houses against Loss by Fire’—an arrangement of social life heretofore unknown in Scotland. But, as often happens, no sooner was this design broached than another set of people projected one of the same kind, with only this slight difference, that, instead of being a company trading for profits, it was a mutual insurance society reserving all profits for the insured. Such was the origin, in 1720, of what afterwards, under the name of ‘the Friendly Society,’[534] became a noted institution of the Scottish capital, and is still in a certain sense existing amongst us. The Edinburgh Society consequently got no insurance business.
It nevertheless kept together, under the care of a committee of secrecy, who gave out that they contemplated a still better project. For some time, they talked loudly of great, though unripe plans, by which they expected to ‘make Scotland flourish beyond what it ever did before.’ Then there arose a repetition of the old clamours about the Bank—it was too narrow, both in its capital and in its ideas; the directors were too nice about securities; the public required enlarged accommodation. At last, the Society plainly avowed that they were determined either to run down the Bank, or force a coalition with it. It was precisely one of the last century heiress-abductions, adapted to the new circumstances of the country and the advanced ideas of the age.
The opportunity seemed to be afforded by the share which Scotland took in the South-Sea scheme, large sums of specie being sent southward to purchase stock in that notable bubble. In such circumstances, it was assumed that the stock of coin in the Bank must have sunk to rather a low ebb. Having then gradually and |1719.| unperceivedly gathered up the monstrous sum of £8400 in notes of the Bank, our Edinburgh Society came in upon it one morning demanding immediate payment. To their surprise, the money was at once paid, for in reality the kind of coin sent by speculators to London was different from that usually kept by the Bank, so that there had been hardly any abatement of its usual resources in coin. The Society tried to induce the cashiers of all the public establishments to follow their example, and draw out their money, but without success in any instance but that of the trustees of the Equivalent, who came very ostentatiously, and taking out their money, stored it up in the Castle. The public preserved a mortifying tranquillity under all these excitements, and the Bank remained unaffected.
The Edinburgh Society soon after sent the Bank a proposal of union, ‘for the prevention of mutual injuries, and the laying of a solid foundation for their being subservient and assisting to one another.’ It mainly consisted in an offer to purchase six hundred shares of the Bank, not as a new stock, but by surrender of shares held by the present proprietors, at £16, 13s. 4d. per share, or £10,000 in all, being apparently a premium of £6, 13s. 4d. on each £10 of the Bank’s paid-in capital. The Bank, however, as might have been expected, declined the proposal.
The passing of the famous Bubble Act soon after rendered it necessary for the Edinburgh Society to dissolve; but the Bank, nevertheless, like a rich heiress, continued to be persecuted by undesired offers of alliance. One, strange to say, came from the London Exchange Assurance Company. By this time (1722), it appears that the Bank had twenty thousand pounds of its capital paid up. It was proposed on the part of the London Assurance, that they should add £20,000, and have a half of the Bank’s profits, minus only an annual sum of £2500 to the old proprietors; which the Bank considered as equivalent to a borrowing of a sum of money at a dear rate from foreigners, when, if necessary, they could advance it themselves. Suppose, said the directors, that, after the London company had paid in their £20,000, the Bank’s profits were to rise to £7000 a year—and the authors of the proposal certainly contemplated nothing so low—this sum would fall to be divided thus: first, £2500 to the old Bank proprietors; second, the remaining £4500 to be divided between the Bank and the Exchange Assurance Company—that is, £2250 to the latter, being interest at the rate of 11 per cent. upon the money it had advanced—which money would be lying |1719.| the same as dead in the Bank, there being no need for it. The Bank of Scotland declined the proposal of the London Royal Exchange Assurance Company, which doubtless would not be without its denunciations of Scotch caution on the occasion.
Robert Ker, who seems to have been an inhabitant of Lasswade, was a censor of morals much after the type of the Tinklarian Doctor. He at this time published A Short and True Description of the Great Incumbrances and Damages that City and Country is like to sustain by Women’s Girded Tails, if it be not speedily prevented, together with a Dedication to those that wear them. By girded tails he meant skirts framed upon hoops of steel, like those now in vogue. According to Robert Ker, men were ‘put to a difficulty how to walk the streets’ from ‘the hazard of breaking their shin-bones’ against this metal cooperage, not to speak of the certainty of being called ill-bred besides. ‘If a man,’ says he, ‘were upon the greatest express that can be, if ye shall meet them in any strait stair or entry, you cannot pass them by without being stopped, and called impertinat to boot.’ Many are ‘the other confusions and cumbrances, both in churches and in coaches.’ He calls for alterations in staircases, and new lights to be broken out in dark entries, to save men from unchancy collisions with the fairer part of creation. Churches, too, would need to be enlarged, as in the old Catholic times, and seats and desks made wider, to hold these monstrous protuberances.
‘I wonder,’ says Ker, ‘that those who pretend to be faithful ministers do not make the pulpits and tents ring about thir sins, amongst many others. Had we the like of John Knox in our pulpits, he would not spare to tell them their faults to their very faces. But what need I admonish about thir things, when some ministers have their wives and daughters going with these fashions themselves?’
The ladies found a defender on this occasion in Allan Ramsay. He says:
We learn with grief that our pathetic censor of the fair sex lived on bad terms with his own wife, and was imprisoned both in Dalkeith and in Edinburgh for alleged miscarriages towards her. One of his most furious outpourings was against a minister who had baptised a child born to him during his Dalkeith imprisonment, the rite being performed without his order or sanction.
‘All persons [in Edinburgh] desirous to learn the French tongue’ were apprised by an advertisement in the Edinburgh Courant, that ‘there is a Frenchman lately come to this city who will teach at a reasonable price.’ This would imply that there was no native French teacher in Edinburgh previously. In 1858, there were eleven, besides three belonging to our own country.
Public attention was at this time attracted by a report of devilish doings at Calder in Mid-Lothian, and of there being one sufferer of no less distinction than a lord’s son. It was stated that the Hon. Patrick Sandilands, a boy, the third son of Lord Torphichen, was for certain bewitched. He fell down in trances, from which no horse-whipping could rouse him. The renal secretion was as black as ink. Sometimes he was thrown unaccountably about the room, as if some unseen agent were buffeting him. Candles went out in his presence. When sitting in a room with his sisters, he would tell them of things that were going on at a distance. He had the appearance occasionally of being greatly tormented. As he lay in bed one night, his tutor, who sat up watching him, became sleepy, and in this state saw a flash of fire at the window. Roused by this, he set himself to be more careful watching, and in a little time he saw another flash at the window. The boy then told him that between these two flashes, he had been to Torryburn [a place twenty miles distant]. He was understood to have been thus taken away several times; he could tell them when it was to happen; and it was then necessary to watch him, to prevent his being carried off. ‘One day that he was to be waited on, when he was to be taken away, they kept |1720.| the door and window close; but a certain person going to the door, he made shift and got there, and was lifted in the air, but was catched by the heels and coat-tails, and brought back.’ Many other singular and dreadful things happened, which unfortunately were left unreported at the time, as being so universally known.[536]
Lord Torphichen became at length convinced that his son was suffering under the diabolic incantations of a witch residing in his village of Calder, and he had the woman apprehended and put in prison. She is described as a brutishly ignorant creature, ‘knowing scarce anything but her witchcraft.’ She readily confessed her wicked practices; told that she had once given the devil the body of a dead child of her own to make a roast of; and inculpated two other women and one man, as associates in her guilt. The baron, the minister, and the people generally accepted it as a time case of witchcraft; and great excitement prevailed. The minister of Inveresk, writing to his friend Wodrow (February 19), says: ‘It’s certain my lord’s son has been dreadfully tormented. Mr Brisbane got one of the women to acknowledge ane image of the child, which, on search, was found in another woman’s house; but they did not know what kind of matter it was made of.’[537] The time, however, was past for any deadly proceedings in such a case in the southern parts of Scotland; and it does not appear that anything worse than a parish fast was launched at the devil on the occasion. This solemnity took place on the 14th of January.
For the crazed white-ironsmith of the West Bow,[538] the case of the Bewitched Boy of Calder had great attractions. He resolved—unfavourable as was the season for travelling—to go and examine the matter for himself. So, on the day of the fast, January 14, he went on foot in ill weather, without food, to Lord Torphichen’s house at Calder, a walk of about twelve miles. ‘I took,’ says he, ‘the sword of the spirit at my breast, and a small wand in my hand, as David did when he went out to fight against Goliah.’ He found the servants eating and drinking, as if there had been no fast proclaimed; they offered him entertainment, which he scrupulously refused. ‘Then I went to my lord and said, I was sent by God to cast the devil out of his son, by faith in Christ. He seemed to be like that lord who had the charge of the gate in Samaria. Then I said to him: “My lord, do you not |1720.| believe me?” Then he bade me go and speak to many ministers that was near by him; but I said I was not sent to them. Then he went to them himself, and spoke to them what I said; but they would not hear of it; so I went to three witches and a warlock, to examine them, in sundry places. Two of them denied, and two of them confessed. I have no time to relate here all that I said to them, and what they said; but I asked them, “When they took on in that service?” The wife said: “Many years;” and the man said: “It was ten years to him.” Then I asked the wife: “What was her reason for taking on with the devil?” And she said: “He promised her riches, and she believed him.” Then she called him many a cheat and liar in my hearing. Then I went to the man, because he was a great professor, and could talk of religion with any of the parish, as they that was his neighbours said, and he was at Bothwell Bridge fighting against the king; and because of that, I desired to ask questions at him; but my lord’s officer said: “His lord would not allow me.” I said I would not be hindered neither by my lord nor by the devil, before many there present. Then I asked: “What iniquity he found in God, that he left his service?” He got up and said: “Oh, sir, are ye a minister?” So ye see the devil knows me to be a minister better than the magistrates. He said: “He found no fault in God; but his wife beguiled him;” and he said: “Wo be to the woman his wife!” and blamed her only, as Adam did his wife, and the woman blamed the devil; so ye see it is from the beginning. This is a caution to us all never to hearken to our wives except they have Scripture on their side. Then I asked at him: “Did he expect heaven?” “Yes,” said he. Then I asked at him if he could command the devil to come and speak to me? He said: “No.” Then I said again: “Call for him, that I may speak with him.” He said again: “It was not in his power.” Then my lord sent more servants, that hindered me to ask any more questions, otherwise I might have seen the devil, and I would have spoken about his son.’[539]
On this fast-day, a sermon was preached in Calder kirk by the Rev. Mr John Wilkie, minister of Uphall, the alleged sorcerers being all present. Lord Torphichen subsequently caused the discourse to be printed. His boy in time recovered, and going to sea, rose by merit to the command of an East Indiaman, but perished in a storm. It brings us strangely near to this |1720.| wild-looking affair, that the present tenth Lord Torphichen (1860) is only nephew to the witch-boy of Calder.
The exportation of some corn from Dundee being connected unfavourably in the minds of the populace with a rise of the markets, a tumult took place, with a view to keeping the grain within the country. The mob not only took possession of two vessels loaded with bear lying in the harbour, the property of Mr George Dempster, merchant, but attacked and gutted the house, shops, cellars, and lofts of that gentleman, carrying off everything of value they contained, including twelve silver spoons, a silver salver, and two silver boxes, one of them containing a gold chain and twelve gold rings, some hair ones, and others set with diamonds. Dempster advertised that whoever shall discover to him ‘the havers of his goods,’ should have ‘a sufficient reward and the owner’s kindness, and no questions asked.’[540]
A similar affair took place at Dundee nine years later. The country-people in and about the town then ‘carried their resentment so high against the merchants for transporting of victual, that they furiously mobbed them, carried it out of lofts, and cut the sacks of those that were bringing it to the barks.’[541]
Died, Alexander Rose, who had been appointed Bishop of Edinburgh just before the Revolution. He was the last survivor of the unfortunate episcopate of Scotland, and also outlived all the English bishops who forfeited their sees at the Revolution. Though strenuous during all these thirty-one years as a nonjuror—for which in 1716 he was deprived of a pension assigned him by Queen Anne—he is testified to by his presbyter Robert Keith as ‘a sweet-natured man.’[542] His aspect, latterly, was venerable, and the gentleness of his life secured him the respect of laymen of all parties. Descended of the old House of Kilravock, he had married a daughter of Sir Patrick Threipland of Fingask, a family which maintained fidelity to the House of Stuart with a persistency beyond all parallel, never once swerving in affection from the days of the Commonwealth down to recent times. ‘Mr John Rose, son of the Bishop of Edinburgh,’ is in the list of rebels who pled guilty at Carlisle in December 1716. The good bishop, having come to his sister’s house in the Canongate, to see a brother who was there lying sick, had a sudden fainting-fit, |1720.| and calmly breathed his last. He was buried in the romantic churchyard of Restalrig, which has ever since been a favourite resting-place of the members of the Scottish Episcopal communion.
There was a jubilation in Edinburgh on what appears to us an extraordinary occasion. The standing dryness between the king and Prince of Wales had come to a temporary end. The latter had gone formally to the palace, and been received by his father ‘with great marks of tenderness’ [the king was sixty, and the prince thirty-seven]. At a court held on the occasion, ‘the officers and servants on both sides, from the highest to the lowest, caressed one another with mutual civilities,’ and there were great acclamations from the crowd outside. The agreeable news having been received in the northern metropolis, the magistrates set the bells a-ringing, and held an entertainment for all persons of note then in town, at which loyal toasts were drunk, with feux de joie from the City Guard. Demonstrations of a like nature took place at Glasgow—the music-bells rung—the stairs of the town-house covered with carpets—toast-drinking—and discharges of firearms from the Earl of Stair’s regiment. Nor was there a similar expression of joy wanting even in the Cavalier city of Aberdeen—where, however, such expressions were certainly more desirable.[543]
One is startled at finding in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of this date the following advertisement: ‘Taken up a stolen negro: whoever owns him, and gives sufficient marks of his being theirs, before the end of two weeks from the date hereof, may have him again upon payment of expenses laid out upon him; otherwise the present possessor must dispose of him at his pleasure.’
Yet true it is that colonial negro slaves who had accompanied their masters to the British shores, were, till fifty-five years after this period, regarded as chattels. One named Joseph Knight came with his master, John Wedderburn, Esq., to Glasgow in 1771, and remained with him as his bound slave for two years. A love-affair then set the man upon the idea of attempting to recover his liberty, which a recent decision by Lord Mansfield in England seemed to make by no means hopeless. With the help of friends, he carried his claim through a succession of courts, till a |1720.| decision of the Court of Session in 1775 finally established that, however he might be a slave while in the West Indies, he, being now in Scotland, was a free man.
Horse-racing had for many years been considerably in vogue in Scotland. There were advertised in the course of this year—a race at Cupar in Fife; one at Gala-rig, near Selkirk, for a piece of plate given by the burgh, of £12 value; a race at Hamilton Moor for £10; a race on Lanark Moor for a plate of £12, given by the burgh; a race on the sands of Leith for a gold cup of about a hundred guineas value, and another, for a plate of £50 value, given by the city of Edinburgh; finally, another race at Leith for a silver punch-bowl and ladle, of £25 value, given by the captains of the Trained Bands of Edinburgh—the bowl bearing an inscription which smacks wonderfully like the produce of the brain of Allan Ramsay:
The genius of Scott has lent an extraordinary interest to a murder perpetrated at this date. Nicol Mushet appears to have been a young man of some fortune, being described as ‘of Boghall,’ and he had studied for the profession of a surgeon; but for some time he had led an irregular and dissipated life in Edinburgh, where he had for one of his chief friends a noted profligate named Campbell of Burnbank, ordnance store-keeper in the Castle. The unhappy young man was drawn into a marriage with a woman named Hall, for whom he soon discovered that he had neither affection nor respect; and he then became so eager to be free from the connection, as to listen to a project by Burnbank for obtaining a divorce by dishonourable means. An obligation passed between the parties in November 1719, whereby a claim of Burnbank for an old debt of nine hundred merks (about £50) was to be discharged by Mushet, as soon as Burnbank should be able to furnish evidence calculated to criminate the woman. Burnbank then deliberately hired a wretch like himself, one Macgregor, a teacher of languages, to enter into a plot for placing Mrs Mushet |1720.| in criminative circumstances; and some progress was made in this plan, which, however, ultimately misgave. It was then suggested by Burnbank that they should go a step further, and remove the woman by poison. One James Mushet and his wife—a couple in poor circumstances—readily undertook to administer it. Several doses were actually given, but the stomach of the victim always rejected them. Then the project for debauching her was revived, and Mushet undertook to effect it; but it was not carried out. Dosing with poison was resumed, without effect; other plans of murder were considered. James Mushet undertook to knock his sister-in-law on the head for twenty guineas, and got one or two in hand by anticipation, part of which he employed in burying a child of his own. These diabolically wicked projects occupied Mushet, his brother, his brother’s wife, and Burnbank, in the Christian city of Edinburgh, during a course of many months, without any one, to appearance, ever feeling the slightest compunction towards the poor woman, though it is admitted she loved her husband, and no real fault on her side has ever been insinuated.
At length, the infatuated Nicol himself borrowed a knife one day, hardly knowing what he wanted it for, and, taking his wife with him that night, as on a walk to Duddingston, he embraced the opportunity of killing her at a solitary place in the King’s Park. He went immediately after to his brother’s, to tell him what he had done, but in a state of mind which made all afterwards seem a blank to him. Next morning, the poor victim was found lying on the ground, with her throat cut to the bone, and many other wounds, which she had probably received in struggling with her brutal murderer.
Mushet was seized and examined, when he readily related the whole circumstances of the murder and those which had led to it. He was adjudged to be hanged in the Grassmarket on the ensuing 6th of January. His associate Burnbank was declared infamous, and sentenced to banishment. The common people, thrilled with horror by the details of the murder, marked their feelings in the old national mode by raising a cairn on the spot where it took place; and Mushet’s Cairn has ever since been a recognised locality.[544]
There was published this year in Edinburgh a small treatise at |1720.| the price of a shilling, under the title of Rules of Good Deportment and Good Breeding. The author was Adam Petrie, who is understood as having commenced life as domestic tutor in the family of Sinclair of Stevenston, and to have ended it in the situation of a parish schoolmaster in East Lothian. He dedicated his treatise to the magistrates of Edinburgh, acknowledging them to be ‘so thoroughly acquainted with all the steps of civility and good breeding, that it is impossible for the least misrepresentation of them to escape your notice.’
Adam sets out with the thesis, that ‘a courteous way gilds a denial, sweetens the sharpness of truth ... sets off the defects of reason, varnishes slights, paints deformities ... in a word, disguises everything that is unsavoury.’ Everything, however, required to have some reference to religion in that age, and Adam takes care to remind us that civility has a divine basis, in the injunctions, ‘Be courteous to all men,’ and ‘Give honour to whom honour is due.’
As to ordinary demeanour, Mr Petrie was of opinion that ‘a gentleman ought not to run or walk too fast in the streets, lest he be suspected to be going a message.’ ‘When you walk with a superior, give him the right hand; but if it be near a wall, let him be next to it.’ The latter rule, he tells us, was not yet followed in Scotland, though established in England and Ireland. ‘When you give or receive anything from a superior, be sure to pull off your glove, and make a show of kissing your hand, with a low bow after you have done.’ In this and some other instances, it strikes us that a too ceremonious manner is counselled; but such was the tendency of the time. There was, however, no want of rude persons. ‘I have,’ says Adam, ‘seen some noblemen treat gentlemen that have not been their dependents, and men of ancienter families than they could pretend to, like their dependents, and carry to the ambassadors of Jesus Christ as if they had been their footmen.’
Mr Petrie deemed it proper not to come amongst women abruptly, ‘without giving them time to appear to advantage: they do not love to be surprised.’ He also thought it was well ‘to carry somewhat reserved from the fair sex.’ One should not enter the house or chamber of a great person with a great-coat and boots, or without gloves—though ‘it is usual in many courts that they deliver up their gloves with their sword before they enter the court, because some have carried in poison on their gloves, and have conveyed the same to the sovereign that way.’ |1720.| Women, on their part, are equally advised against approaching superiors of their own sex with their gown tucked up. ‘Nor,’ says he, ‘is it civil to wear a mask anywhere in company of superiors, unless they be travelling together on a journey.’ In that case, ‘when a superior makes his honours to her, she is to pull off her mask, and return him his salute, if it be not tied on.’
There is a good deal about the management of the handkerchief, with one general recommendation to ‘beware of offering it to any, except they desire it.’ We also are presented with a rule which one could wish to see more universally observed than it is, against making any kind of gesticulations or noises in company.
There were customs of salutation then, which it is now difficult to imagine as having ever been practised. ‘In France,’ says Adam, ‘they salute ladies on the cheek; but in Britain and Ireland they salute them on the lips.’ Our Scottish Chesterfield seems to have felt that the custom should be abated somewhat; or perhaps it was going out. ‘If,’ says he, ‘a lady of quality advance to you, and tender her cheek, you are only to pretend to salute her by putting your head to her hoods: when she advances, give her a low bow, and when you retreat, give her another.’ He adds: ‘It is undecent to salute ladies but in civility.’
Formulæ of address and for the superscription of letters are fully explained; but Adam could not allow ‘the Right Reverend Father in God the Lord Bishop of London’ to pass as an example of Episcopal style, without remarking that many have not ‘clearness’ to use such titles. Adam is everywhere inclined to an infusion of piety. He denounces ‘an irreligious tippling’ of coffee, tea, and chocolate, which he observed to be continually going on in coffee-houses, ‘because not one in a hundred asks a blessing to it.’ He is very much disposed, too, to launch out into commonplace morals. Rather unexpectedly in a lover of the politenesses, he sets his face wholly against cards and dice, stage-plays, and promiscuous dancing, adducing a great number of learned references in support of his views.
The editor of a very scarce reprint of this curious volume,[545] remarks that, from the manifest sincerity of the author’s delineations of good breeding, and the graphic character of many of his scenes, it may fairly be presumed that they were painted from nature. We are told by the same writer, that ‘Helen Countess of Haddington, who died in 1768, at the advanced age of ninety-one, |1720.| and to whom Petrie was well known, used to describe his own deportment and breeding as in strict accordance with his rules.’
James Dougal, writing the news of Edinburgh to his friend Wodrow at Eastwood, has a sad catalogue to detail. ‘There was four pirates hanged at Leith this day ... very hardened. They were a melancholy sight, and there is three to be hanged next Wednesday. Nicol Mushet is to be hanged on Friday ... for murdering his wife: he appears to be more concerned than he was before. Ane woman brought from Leith is to die the first Wednesday of February for putting down [destroying] a child. Another man is laid up in prison, that is thought to have murdered his wife. The things falling out now are very humbling.’
He goes on to tell that several persons ‘in trouble of mind’ are frequently prayed for in Edinburgh churches. ‘But they do not name them but after such a manner—A man there is in such trouble (or a woman), and desires the congregation to praise God with them for signal deliverance that the Lord hath given them from great troubles that they have been in.’
The end of the letter is terrible: ‘There is some of the Lord’s people that lives here, that are feared for melancholy days, iniquity doth so abound, and profanity; and if there were not a goodly remnant in this town, it would sink.’[546]
A sperm whale, ‘the richest that has ever been seen in this country,’ was advertised in the Courant as having come ashore in the Firth of Forth near Culross, and to be sold by public roup.
At the end of June 1730, three wounded whales ran ashore at Kilrenny in Fife, on the property of Mr Bethune of Balfour. The produce, consisting of a hundred and forty-six barrels of speck, or blubber, and twenty-three barrels of spermaceti speck, was afterwards advertised for sale.
With regard to several of the forfeited estates which lay in inaccessible situations in the Highlands, the Commissioners had been up to this time entirely baffled, having never been able even to get surveys of them effected. In this predicament in a special manner lay the immense territory of the Earl of Seaforth, extending from Brahan Castle in Easter Ross across the island to |1721.| Kintail, and including the large though unfertile island of Lewis. The districts of Lochalsh and Kintail, on the west coast, the scene of the Spanish invasion of 1719, were peculiarly difficult of access, there being no approach from the south, east, or north, except by narrow and difficult paths, while the western access was only assailable to a naval force. To appearance, this tract of ground, the seat of many comparatively opulent ‘tacksmen’ and cattle-farmers, was as much beyond the control of the six Commissioners assembled at their office in Edinburgh, as if it had been amongst the mountains of Tibet or upon the shores of Madagascar.
During several years after the insurrection, the rents of this district were collected, without the slightest difficulty, for the benefit of the exiled earl, and regularly transmitted to him. At one time, a considerable sum was sent to him in Spain, and the descendants of the man who carried it continued for generations to bear ‘the Spanyard’ as an addition to their name.[547] The chief agent in the business was Donald Murchison, descendant of a line of faithful adherents of the ‘high chief of Kintail’—the first of whom, named Murcho, had come from Ireland with Colin the son of Kenneth, the founder of the clan Mackenzie in the thirteenth century. The later generations of the family had been intrusted in succession with the keeping of Ellan Donan Castle, a stronghold dear to the modern artist as a picturesque ruin, but formerly of serious importance as commanding a central point from which radiate Loch Alsh and Loch Duich, in the midst of the best part of the Mackenzie country. Donald was a man worthy of a more prominent place in his country’s annals than he has yet attained; he acted under a sense of right which, though unfortunately defiant of acts of parliament, was still a very pure sense of right; and in the remarkable actions which he performed, he looked solely to the good of those towards whom he had a feeling of duty. A more disinterested hero—and he was one—never lived.
When Lord Seaforth brought his clan to fight for King James in 1715, Donald Murchison and a senior brother, John, went as field-officers of the regiment—Donald as lieutenant-colonel, and John as major. Sir Roderick I. Murchison, the distinguished geologist, great-grandson of John, possesses a large ivory and silver ‘mill,’ which once contained the commission sent from France to Donald, as colonel, bearing the inscription: ‘James |1721.| Rex: Forward and Spare not.’ John fell at Sheriffmuir, in the prime of life; Donald, returning with the remains of the clan, was intrusted by the banished earl with the management of estates no longer legally his, but still virtually so, through the effect of Highland feelings in connection with very peculiar local circumstances. And for this task Donald was in various respects well qualified, for, strange to say, the son of the castellan of Ellan Donan—the Sheriffmuir colonel—had been ‘bred a writer’ in Edinburgh, and was as expert at the business of a factor or estate-agent as in wielding the claymore.[548]
In bold and avowed insubordination to the government of George the First, the Mackenzie tenants continued for ten years to pay their rents to Donald Murchison, on account of their forfeited and exiled lord, setting at nought all fear of ever being compelled to repeat the payment to the commissioners.
In 1720, these gentlemen made a movement for asserting their claims upon the property. In William Ross of Easterfearn, and Robert Ross, a bailie of Tain, they found two men bold enough to undertake the duty of stewardship in their behalf over the Seaforth property, and also the estates of Grant of Glenmorriston and Chisholm of Strathglass. Little, however, was done that year beyond sending out notices to the tenants, and preparing for strenuous measures to be entered upon next year. The stir they made only produced excitement, not dismay. Some of the duine-wassels from about Loch Carron, coming down with their cattle to the south-country fairs, were heard to declare that the two factors would never get anything but leaden coin from the Seaforth tenantry. Donald was going over the whole country, shewing a letter he had got from the earl, encouraging his people to stand out; at the same time telling them that the old countess was about to come north with a factory for the estate, when she would allow as paid any rents which they might now hand to him. The very first use to be made of this money was, indeed, to bring both the old and the young countesses home immediately to Brahan Castle, where they would live as they used to do. Part of the funds thus acquired, he used in keeping on foot a party of about sixty armed Highlanders, whom, in virtue of his commission as colonel, he proposed to employ in resisting any troops of George the First which might be sent to Kintail. |1721.| Nor did he wait to be attacked, but, in June 1720, hearing of a party of excisemen passing near Dingwall with a large quantity of aqua-vitæ, he fell upon them, and rescued their prize. The collector of the district reported this transaction to the Board of Excise; but no notice was taken of it.
In February 1721, the two factors sent officers of their own into the western districts, to assure the tenants of good usage, if they would make a peaceable submission; but the men were seized, robbed of their papers, money, and arms, and quietly remanded over the Firth of Attadale, though only after giving solemn assurance that they would never attempt to renew their mission. Resenting this procedure, the two factors caused a constable to take a military party from Bernera barracks into Lochalsh, and, if possible, capture those who had been guilty. They made a stealthy night-march, and took two men; but the alarm was given, the two men escaped, and began to fire down upon their captors from a hillside; then they set fire to the bothy as a signal, and such a coronach went over all Kintail and Lochalsh, as made the soldiers glad to beat a quick retreat.
After some further proceedings, all of them ineffectual, the two factors were enabled, on the 13th of September, to set forth from Inverness with a party of thirty soldiers and some armed servants of their own, with the design of enforcing submission to their legal claims. Let it be remembered there were then no roads in the Highlands, nothing but a few horse-tracks along the principal lines in the country, where not the slightest effort had ever been made to smooth away the natural difficulties of the ground. In two days, the factors had got to Invermorriston; but here they were stopped for three days, waiting for their heavy baggage, which was storm-stayed in Castle Urquhart, and there nearly taken in a night-attack by a partisan warrior bearing the name of Evan Roy Macgillivray. The tenantry of Glenmorriston at first fled with their bestial; but afterwards a number of them came in and made at least the appearance of submission. The party then moved on towards Strathglass, while Evan Roy respectfully followed, to pick up any man or piece of baggage that might be left behind. At Erchless Castle, and at Invercannich, seats of the Chisholm, they held courts, and received the submission of a number of the tenants, whom, however, they subsequently found to be ‘very deceitful.’
There were now forty or fifty miles of the wildest Highland country before them, where they had reason to believe they should |1721.| meet groups of murderous Camerons and Glengarry Macdonalds, and also encounter the redoubted Donald Murchison, with his guard of Mackenzies, unless their military force should be of an amount to render all such opposition hopeless. An appointment having been made that they should receive an addition of fifty soldiers from Bernera, with whom to pass through the most difficult part of their journey, it seemed likely that they would appear too strong for resistance; and, indeed, intelligence was already coming to them, that ‘the people of Kintail, being a judicious opulent people, would not expose themselves to the punishments of law,’ and that the Camerons were absolutely determined to give no further provocation to the government. Thus assured, they set out in cheerful mood along the valley of Strathglass, and, soon after passing a place called Knockfin, were reinforced by Lieutenant Brymer, with the expected fifty men from Bernera. There must have now been about a hundred well armed men in the invasive body. They spent the next day (Sunday) together in rest, to gather strength for the ensuing day’s march of about thirty arduous miles, by which they hoped to reach Kintail.
At four in the morning of Monday the 2d October, the party set forward, the Bernera men first, and the factors in the rear. They were as yet far from the height of the country, and from its more difficult passes; but they soon found that all the flattering tales of non-resistance were groundless, and that the Kintail men had come a good way out from their country in order to defend it. The truth was, that Donald Murchison had assembled not only his stated band of Mackenzies, but a levy of the Lewis men under Seaforth’s cousin, Mackenzie of Kildun; also an auxiliary corps of Camerons, Glengarry and Glenmorriston men, and some of those very Strathglass men who had been making appearances of submission. Altogether, he had, if the factors were rightly informed, three hundred and fifty men with long Spanish firelocks, under his command, and all posted in the way most likely to give them an advantage over the invading force.
The rear-guard, with the factors, had scarcely gone a mile, when they received a platoon of seven shots from a rising ground near them to the right, with, however, only the effect of piercing a soldier’s hat. The Bernera company, as we are informed, left the party at eight o’clock, as they were passing Lochanachlee, and from this time is heard of no more: how it made its way out of the country does not appear. The remainder still advancing, Easterfearn, as he rode a little before his men, had eight shots |1721.| levelled at him from a rude breastwork near by, and was wounded in two places, but was able to appear as if he had not been touched. Then calling out some Highlanders in his service, he desired them to go before the soldiers, and do their best, according to their own mode of warfare, to clear the ground of such lurking parties, so that the troops might advance in safety. They performed this service pretty effectually, skirmishing as they went on, and the main body advanced safely about six miles. They were here arrived at a place called Aa-na-Mullich (Ford of the Mull People), where the waters, descending from the Cralich and the lofty mountains of Kintail, issue eastwards through a narrow gorge into Loch Affaric. It was a place remarkably well adapted for the purposes of a resisting party. A rocky boss, called Tor-an-Beatich, then densely covered with birch, closes up the glen as with a gate. The black mountain stream, ‘spear-deep,’ sweeps round it. A narrow path wound up the rock, admitting only of passengers in single file. Here lay Donald with the best of his people, while inferior adherents were ready to make demonstrations at a little distance. As the invasive party approached, they received a platoon from a wood on the left, but nevertheless went on. When, however, they were all engaged in toiling up the pass, forty men concealed in the heather close by fired with deadly effect, inflicting a mortal wound on Walter Ross, Easterfearn’s son, while Bailie Ross’s son was also hurt by a bullet which swept across his breast. The bailie called to his son to retire, and the order was obeyed; but the two wounded youths and Bailie Ross’s servant were taken prisoners, and carried up the hill, where they were quickly divested of clothes, arms, money, and papers. Young Easterfearn died next morning. The troops faced the ambuscade manfully, and are said to have given their fire thrice, and to have beat the Highlanders from the bushes near by; but, observing at this juncture several parties of the enemy on the neighbouring heights, and being informed of a party of sixty in their rear, Easterfearn deemed it best to temporise.
He sent forward a messenger to ask who they were that opposed the king’s troops, and what they wanted. The answer was that, in the first place, they required to have Ross of Easterfearn delivered up to them. This was pointedly refused; but it was at length arranged that Easterfearn should go forward, and converse with the leader of the opposing party. The meeting took place at Bal-aa-na-Mullich (the Town of the Mull Men’s Ford), and Easterfearn found himself confronted with Donald Murchison. |1721.| It ended with Easterfearn giving up his papers, and covenanting, under a penalty of five hundred pounds, not to officiate in his factory any more; after which he gladly departed homewards with his associates, under favour of a guard of Donald’s men, to conduct them safely past the sixty men lurking in the rear. It was alleged afterwards that the commander was much blamed by his own people for letting the factors off with their lives and baggage, particularly by the Camerons, who had been five days at their post with hardly anything to eat; and Murchison only pacified them by sending them a good supply of meat and drink. He had in reality given a very effectual check to the two gentlemen-factors, to one of whom he imparted in conversation that any scheme of a government stewardship in Kintail was hopeless, for he and sixteen others had sworn that, if any person calling himself a factor came there, they would take his life, whether at kirk or at market, and deem it a meritorious action, though they should be cut to pieces for it next minute.[549]
A bloody grave for young Easterfearn in Beauly Cathedral concluded this abortive attempt to take the Seaforth estates within the scope of a law sanctioned by statesmen, but against which the natural feelings of nearly a whole people revolted.[550]