154. See a pamphlet by Mr Holland, published in 1715, under the title of The Ruine of the Bank of England and all Publick Credit inevitable.

155. Exchange was not dealt in by the Bank of England, any more than the Bank of Scotland, during many of its earlier years.

156. Account of the Bank of Scotland, published in 1728.

157. Acts of Scottish Parliament, ix. 465.

158. Culloden Papers, Introduction, p. xliv.

159. Privy Council Record.

160. Patrick Walker’s Life of Donald Cargill, Biog. Pres., ii. 24.

161. Patrick Walker.

162. Ibid.

163. Privy Council Record.

164. Privy Council Record.

165. We have no means of knowing if this concert was connected with the enterprise of Beck and his associates, noticed under January 10, 1694. The name of Beck does not occur in the list of performers on this occasion.

166. W. Tytler, Trans. Soc. of Antiq. of Scotland, i. 506.

167. Ramsay’s Scribblers Lashed.

168. Through her, as daughter of William first Duke of Queensberry, her descendant, the Earl of Wemyss, succeeded in 1810 to large estates in Peeblesshire and the earldom of March.

169. Privy Council Record.

170. Privy Council Record.

171. See under Feb. 2, 1693.

172. Privy Council Record.

173. Ibid.

174. Privy Council Record.

175. Privy Council Record.

176. Printed informations in the case. Justiciary Records.

177. Acts of Scot. Parliament.

178. Privy Council Record.

179. The authority for this is a very bad one—the scurrilous book called Scots Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed; but on such a point, with support from other quarters, it may be admitted.

180. Calamy’s Account of his Own Life.

181. Watson’s Collection of Scots Poems, 1709.

182. Privy Council Record.

183. A tolerably full detail of Mr Hepburn’s persecutions is given in Struthers’s Hist. Scot. from the Union to 1748. 2 vols.

184. Privy Council Record.

185. Scots Acts, vol. iii.

186. See Domestic Annals, under date August 24, 1669.

187. Privy Council Record.

188. Privy Council Record.

189. Records of Parliament and Privy Council.

190. Acts of Scot. Parl., xi. 82.

191. Ibid.

192. Acts of Scot. Parl., xi. 111.

193. Privy Council Record.

194. Privy Council Record.

195. The above account of the prosecution of Aikenhead is derived from Howell’s State Trials, in which there has been printed a collection of documents on the case, collected by John Locke.

196. Preface to Two Sermons, &c., by Mr Lorimer.

197. Foun., Decisions.

198. Privy Council Record, under various dates.

199. Signed at Glasgow, December 31, 1696.

200. Domestic Annals, sub July 9, 1668, vol ii. p. 321.

201. Privy Council Record.

202. Justiciary Record.

203. New Stat. Acc. of Scotland, iv. Wigton, 226.

204. Criminal Proceedings, &c., MS., in possession of Ant. Soc. Scot.

205. New Stat. Acc. Scotland, ut supra.

206. Decisions, i. 522.

207. Privy Council Record.

208. A Voyage to St Kilda, &c., by M. Martin, Gent. 4th ed., 1753.

209. Macaulay’s History of St Kilda, 1766, p. 241.

210. Privy Council Record.

211. Ibid.

212. Privy Council Record.

213. Privy Council Record.

214. Letters from North of Scotland, ii. 134 (2d ed.).

215. Edin. Courant, May 1720.

216. Letters, &c., i. 135.

217. Arnot’s Crim. Trials, Anderson’s Hist. Fam. Fraser, Carstares’s State Papers.

218. Privy Council Record.

219. Privy Council Record.

220. Privy Council Record.

221. Fountainhall’s Decisions, ii. 5.

222. Privy Council Record.

223. Privy Council Record.

224. Acts of General Assembly.

225. Wodrow Pamphlets, Adv. Lib.

226. Under extremity of suffering during the dearth, in September 1699, one David Chapman, belonging to Crieff, broke into a lockfast place, and stole some cheese, a sugar-loaf, and about four shillings sterling of money. His sole motive for the crime, as he afterwards pleaded, was the desire of relieving his family from the pains of want. Apprehended that day, he confessed the crime, and restored the spoil; yet, being tried by the commissioner of justiciary for the Highlands, he was condemned to death.

On a petition, the Privy Council commuted the sentence to scourging through the town of Perth, and banishment to the plantations.^[228]

227. Published in 1702.

228. Privy Council Record.

229. Coltness Collections.

230. Polit. Works of A. Fletcher, edit. 1749, p. 85.

231. Privy Council Record. Fountainhall’s Decisions.

232. Scots Acts, iii. 628.

233. [Leslie’s] Survey of the Province of Moray, p. 280.

234. The father of the present Earl of Stair, Sir John Dalrymple, was born in 1726, and might have heard these particulars from his grand-uncle, the second President Dalrymple, who died in 1737. Sir John’s Memoirs of Great Britain are here followed, therefore, as the best authority available.

235. Dalrymple’s Memoirs.

236. Memoirs of John Macky, Esq., 1733, p. 205.

237. Acts of S. Parl., x. 136. Wodrow’s History, i. 320.

238. Privy Council Record.

239. Ibid.

240. This gentleman, who became Earl of Hopetoun, first of the title, was married, on the 31st August 1699, to ‘the very vertuous Lady Henrietta Johnston,’ daughter of the Earl of Annandale. A congratulatory poem on the occasion contains the following passage:

241. Wodrow Pamphlets, Adv. Lib.

242. See Blackwood’s Magazine, ix. 345.

243. Privy Council Record.

244. Ibid.

245. Of this fact, the use of the word siller for money generally in Scotland is a notable memorial.

246. Account of Bank of Scotland, p. 6.

247. Letter of Earl of Argyle, Carstares Papers, 458.

248. James Donaldson seems to have been engaged in the poetic elegy trade; that is, the writing of deplorations in verse on great personages for sale in the streets: see an example of his verse of this description under November 1695. He seems also to have been the author of Husbandry Anatomised, or an Enquiry into the Present Manner of Tilling and Manuring the Ground in Scotland, 12mo, 1697; and of A Picktooth for Swearers, or a Looking-glass for Atheists and Profane Persons, &c., small 4to, 1698. See Scottish Elegiac Verses, with Notes, 1847.

249. Privy Council Record.

250. Ibid.

251. Privy Council Record.

252. Privy Council Record.

253. Privy Council Record.

254. The Lord Rankeillor who assisted in giving things this favourable turn was paternal grandfather of Dr John Hope, well known towards the close of the last century as Professor of Botany in the Edinburgh University.

255. Quoted in Scots Magazine, Jan. 1810, ‘from a collection of pamphlets in the possession of Mr Blackwood.’

256. Privy Council Record.

257. The irascible temper of Fletcher is well known, and his slaughter of an associate in the Monmouth expedition is a historical fact. A strange story is told of him in Mrs Calderwood of Polton’s account of her journey in Holland (Coltness Collections). ‘Salton,’ she says, ‘could not endure the smoke of toback, and as he was in a night-scoot [in Holland] the skipper and he fell out about his forbidding him to smoke. Salton, finding he could not hinder him, went up and sat on the ridge of the boat, which bows like an arch. The skipper was so contentious that he followed him, and on whatever side Salton sat, he put his pipe in the check next him, and whiffed in his face. Salton went down several times and brought up stones in his pocket from the ballast, and slipped them into the skipper’s pocket that was next the water, and when he found he had loadened him as much as would sink him, he gives him a shove, so that over he hirsled. The boat went on, and Salton came down among the rest of the passengers, who probably were asleep, and fell asleep among the rest. In a little time, bump came the scoot against the side, on which they all damned the skipper; but, behold, when they called, there was no skipper; which would breed no great amazement in a Dutch company.’

258. Privy Council Record.

259. Privy Council Record.

260. Privy Council Record.

261. Ibid.

262. Criminal Proceedings, MS. Ant. Soc.

263. Privy Council Record.

264. Act. Parl. x. 284.

265. Letter of Mr Duncan Forbes of Culloden (father of the President). Culloden Papers.

266. Memoirs of Elizabeth West. Edinburgh, 1733.

267. D. Forbes’s Letter, ut supra.

268. Treatise on the Sanctification of the Lord’s Day.

269. Maitland’s History of Edinburgh, p. 202.

270. Elizabeth West.

271. Coltness Collections.

272. Historical Account of the Bank of Scotland, 4to, p. 6.

273. Diary of David Hume of Crossrig, p. 69.

274. Account of Bank of Scotland, p. 7.

275. Privy Council Record.

276. As to the troubles from the Coldingham meeting-house, see under March 24, 1694.

277. Privy Council Record.

278. A quaigh or drinking-cup.

279. Alluding to a controversy between two of the Aberdeen professors on a question which we have seen revived in great fervour in our own day.

280. Privy Council Record.

281. Alexander Duff was descended from a race of gentry in Morayshire—the Duffs of Muldavit—and it stems to have been by saving, prudence, and good management that he was enabled to increase his share of the family possessions, and so far advance the prospects of his house, that it was ennobled in the next generation, and now ranks among the eight or ten families of highest wealth in Scotland. There is a characteristic story about Braco surveying one day an extensive tract of country containing several tolerable lairdships, when, seeing the houses in various directions all giving out signs of being inhabited by their respective families, he said: ‘A’ that reek sall come out o’ ae lum yet!’ and he made good his word by ultimately buying up the whole of that district.

282. The above narration appeared in the Dumfries Journal (newspaper).

283. The system of culreach or repledgiation was one of great antiquity in Scotland, but last heard of in the Highlands. So lately as 1698, George Earl of Cromarty obtained a charter, giving him this among other powers: If any of the indwellers and tenants of his lands should happen ‘to be arrested or attached before any judge or judges, spiritual or temporal, in any time coming, to repledge and call them back to the privilege and liberty of the said court of bailiery and regality of Tarbat.’

284. Documents of the process in Spalding Club Miscellany, iii. 175.

285. Burns’s fine ode on Macpherson will be remembered:

There was, however, an earlier celebration of the robber’s hardihood on a broadside, a copy of which will be found in Herd’s Collection of Scottish Songs (1776). See also a curious volume, entitled Scottish Ballads and Songs (Edinburgh, T. G. Stevenson, 1859).

A long two-handed sword is shewn in Duff House, the seat of the Earl of Fife, as that of Macpherson. It is a formidable weapon, 4 feet 3 inches long, and having a wavy-edged blade. It is obviously a mediæval weapon, yet, of course, may have been used in a later age.

March 4, 1701.—There was a petition to the Privy Council from Peter and Donald Brown, prisoners in the Tolbooth of Banff, representing that they had been condemned solely as ‘repute vagabond Egyptians,’ to be hanged on the 2d April. They claimed a longer day, ‘either for their relief or due preparation;’ and the Lords granted reprieve till the second Wednesday of June.

286. Edinburgh Encyclopædia, article ‘Steam-engine.’

287. Acts of S. Parl., x. 267.

288. Privy Council Record.

289. See a more remarkable case of the disappearance of a gentleman under March 1709.

290. See account for ‘Mrs Margaret’s wadding-cloaths,’ given in full in the Edinburgh Magazine for October 1817.

291. Memoir by Elizabeth Mure of Caldwell [a lady who died in 1795, at the age of eighty-one], Caldwell Papers, i. 264.

292. Privy Council Record.

293. Privy Council Record.

294. Fountainhall’s Decisions, ii.

295. It was an old mode of advertisement in country towns, down to the author’s early years, to send an old woman through the streets with a wooden dish and a stick, to clap or beat upon it so as to gather a crowd, before whom she then gave her recital.

296. Analecta, i. 10.

297. Sir John had entered at the bar in the preceding year, and it is not improbable that he came into acquaintance with Steuart in a professional capacity.

298. Copy of the sentence printed in Wilson’s Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, from one in the possession of the late Alexander Macdonald, Esq.

299. That is, the eighteenth century.

300. [Sinclair’s] Stat. Acc. of Scot., xviii. 578.

301. Collection of papers in Oxenford Castle.

302. Ed. Ev. Courant, Nov. 21, 1743.

303. Alluding, probably, to the affair of the Impostor Roderick. See under June 1, 1697.

304. Copy of a Letter anent a Project for Erecting a Library in every Presbytery, or at least County, in the Highlands, from a Reverend Minister of the Scots Nation, now in England, to a Minister in Edinburgh. Edinburgh, 1702. Small 4to, 6 leaves.

305. Wodrow Pamphlets, vol. xciii.

306. Analecta Scotica, ii. 366; iv. 235.

307. Anderson’s Prize Essay on the State of Knowledge in the Highlands.

308. See under October 6, 1697.

309. A district on the south side of Loch Ness, in Inverness-shire.

310. Privy Council Record.

311. The daughter of the late peer.

312. Privy Council Record.

313. Mr Campbell had, in 1709, an action at law against Mungo Campbell of Netherplace, for recovery of fifty pounds which he charged for attendance upon him, and performance of the operation of lithotomy. It was represented on the other side that he had done his work with an unskilfulness which resulted in some most distressing injuries to his patient, and the Lords held that the seventeen guineas already paid was guerdon sufficient.—Fountainhall’s Decisions, ii. 510.

314. Dalyell’s Musical Memoirs of Scotland, p. 132.

315. Edinburgh Evening Courant.

316. Edinburgh Evening Courant, December 30, 1725.

317. Edinburgh Evening Courant.

318. From a description of the presbytery of Penpont, App. to Symson’s History of Galloway. Edin. 1823.

319. A fairy legend connected with the Dow Loch, and illustrating the superstitious feeling with which it was regarded, has been communicated by a friend:

‘The farmer of Auchen Naight, near the Dow Loch, was not in opulent circumstances. One day, during the pressure of some unusual calamity, he noticed, to his surprise, a cow browsing tranquilly by the side of the lake, and, on nearer inspection, found it to be a beautiful animal of large size, and perfectly white. She allowed herself to be driven home by him without resistance, and soon commended herself greatly to his wife by her tameness and exceeding opulence in milk. The result of her good qualities, and also her fruitfulness, was that a blessing seemed to have come with her to his house. He became rich in the possession of a herd of twenty fine cattle, all descended from the original White Cow.

‘After some years had elapsed, and all his other cattle had been used up, the goodman had to consider how he was to provide a winter’s “mart” for his family—that is, a bullock to be killed and salted according to the then universal practice of the country. Should it be the mother or one of her comely daughters? The former was still in fine condition, highly suitable for the purpose; but then the feeling connected with her—should they sacrifice in this manner the source of all their good-fortune? A consideration that she might fail in health, and be lost to them, determined them to make her the mart of the year. It is said that, on the morning which was to be her last, she shewed the usual affection to her mistress, who came to bid her a mournful farewell; but when the butcher approached with his rope and axe, she suddenly tore up the stake, and broke away from the byre, followed by the whole of her progeny. The astonished goodman and his wife were only in time to see the herd, in which their wealth consisted, plunge into the waters of the Dow Loch, from which they never re-emerged.’