471. Preface to the Journal of Mr James Hart. Edinburgh, 1832.
472. Meaning the total solar eclipse which happened on the 29th of March 1652, of which see an account in Domestic Annals, vol. ii. p. 215.
473. Historical Summary of the Post-office in Scotland. By T. B. Lang. (For private circulation.) Edinburgh, 1856.
474. Justiciary Record. Sir John, soon after his collision with Mr Houston, was actively engaged in raising volunteers at Greenock for the suppression of the Rebellion.
475. Hist. Acc. Bank of Scotland, p. 10.
476. Orig. letter in Paper Office, quoted by George Chalmers, Caledonia, i. 870, note.
477. Private Letters, &c., Edin., 1829, p. 17.
478. Life of Carstares, prefixed to his State Papers. Edinburgh, 1774.
479. Notes on Old Tolbooth, Scottish Journal, p. 299.
480. Chalmers’s Life of Ruddiman, p. 37.
481. Justiciary Record.
482. Caldwell Papers, i. 235.
483. St James’s Evening Post.
484. Newspaper advertisements.
485. See Domestic Annals under those dates.
486. Reports of the Commissioners, fol.
487. The original subscription list is in possession of N. Fergusson Blair, of Balthayock, Esq.
488. Burton’s History of Scotland, ii. 218.
489. Colonel Patrick Vans of Barnbarroch.
490. Scottish Elegiac Verses, 1842.
491. See Lockhart’s Life of Scott, index.
492. Justiciary Record.
493. Notes to Peveril of the Peak.
494. Pope’s Works, Roscoe’s ed., ix. 34, 35.
495. The Scots Courant.
496. Scots Courant, Oct 24, 1716.
497. A Treatise on Forest Trees, in a Letter, &c., published at Edinburgh in 1761.
498. Perhaps Sir Archibald was wrong here. See the account of Baldoon Park in this volume, under the date October 1696.
499. Spalding Club Miscellany, ii. 97.
500. The above facts are gathered from an anonymous volume, published in 1729, entitled An Essay on the Means of Enclosing and Fallowing Scotland.
501. MS. of Graham of Gartmore, App. to Burt’s Letters, 2d ed., ii. 349.
502. Gordon of Ellon, son to a farmer in Bourtie—a merchant in Edinburgh, and once a bailie there, and a rich man. By him the house of Ellon was built anew in a handsome style.—View of Diocese of Aberdeen, Spal. Club, p. 301 (written about beginning of the 18th century).
503. In February 1721, John Webster, a gardener, having committed murder upon a young woman named Campbell, ‘on Heriot’s Hospital ground, behind our town-wall,’ was tried in the barony of Broughton, and condemned to die.
504. Celebrated Trials, iii. 272 (name and date of incident there given erroneously). Scottish Journal, Oct. 23, 1847. Contemporary confession. Notes and Queries, Dec. 1859, quoting three numbers of the contemporary newspaper, the Scots Courant.
505. Broadside reprinted in Analecta Scotica, i. 246.
506. Letter of Rev. Mr Murray, dated Comrie Manse, 2d July, 1717; Ant. Scot. Transactions, iii. 296.
In a letter of Mr James Anderson, editor of the Diplomata Scotiæ, to his son, Edinburgh, June 20, 1717, it is noted, as a recent event, that ‘Rob Roi surrendered to D. Atholl, but not meeting with such things as he expected, has made his escape.’—MSS., Adv. Library.
507. Steele’s Correspondence, edited by John Nicholls. 2 vols. 1787.
508. Streams from Helicon, 1720, p. 48.
509. He wrote to his daughter on the 17th September and 7th October, 1720, from Edinburgh.—Steele’s Letters.
510. Analecta Scotica, i. 16.
511. Cibber’s [Shiels’s] Lives of the Poets, iv. 118.
512. Gibson’s History of Glasgow, 1777, p. 208. It was asserted that the duties paid to government for tobacco brought to Glasgow between August 1716 and March 1722, amounted to no more than £2702. A representation for the Glasgow merchants shewed that the real sum was £38,047, 17s. 0¾d.—Edin. Ev. Courant, Jan. 21, 1723.
513. Wodrow’s Analecta, iii. 129.
514. The City of Edinburgh’s Address to the Country, Ramsay’s Poems, i. 19.
515. Journey through Scotland [by Macky?], 1723, p. 274.
516. Edinburgh Evening Courant, June 14, 1722. ‘On Tuesday last [19th January 1725], being the birthday of Prince Frederick, there was an extraordinary appearance of ladies and persons of distinction, at a musick opera in this city.’—Ibid.
517. M‘Gibbon died on the 3d October 1756, bequeathing the whole of his means to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
518. ‘My Lord Colville died in March last, and about Culross it is very currently believed that he has appeared more than once, and has been seen by severals. Some say that he appeared to Mr Logan, his brother-in-law [minister of Torry]; but he does not own it. Two of his servants were coming to the house, and saw him walking near them; and, if I remember, he called to them just in the same voice and garb he used to be in; but they fled from him, and came in, in a great fright. They are persons of credibility and gravity, as I am told.”[521]
519. Arnot’s Hist. Edinburgh, p. 379.
520. Adam Craig died in October 1741. For this and several facts involved in the above article, I have to express my obligation to Mr David Laing’s Introduction to Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum.
521. Wodrow’s Analecta, iii. 519.
522. Analecta Scotica, i. 195.
523. Ibid. ii. 830.
524. From documents printed in Law’s Memorials.
525. George Chalmers’s Life of Ruddiman, p. 83.
526. Edin. Ev. Courant, Feb. 18, 1850.
527. Those who are desirous of further light upon the Marrow Controversy, may be referred to Struthers’s History of Scotland from the Union, &c., 2 vols. 8vo, which, by the way, is a book entitled to more notice than it has received. The worthy author, a self-educated working-man, has been led by his own taste to give details, not elsewhere to be easily met with, of the ecclesiastical proceedings of the earlier half of the eighteenth century, all of which he treats in the spirit of a strenuous old-fashioned west-country Presbyterian. He is copious and severe about the Jacobite and Episcopalian movements, but slights the troubles of the Catholics as ‘beneath the dignity of history.’
528. Letter of Alexander Jaffray of Kingsmills, to Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk.—Spalding Club Miscellany, ii. 98.
529. Jaffray’s letter, as above.
530. ‘London, September 3, 1720.—Last Wednesday, the York Buildings Company sent down to Scotland about sixty thousand pounds in guineas, guarded by a party of horse, being part of the purchase-money for forfeited estates. The same is to be lodged in the Exchequer at Edinburgh.’—Newspapers of the day.
531. The Commissioners, who were engaged in their task for nearly nine years, seem to have had £1000 per annum each.
532. 5 George I. cap. 20. Statutes at large, v. 152.
533. Mr James Drummond, on the 26th May 1720, writes from Blair-Drummond to ‘Mr David Drummond, Treasurer of the Bank, Edinburgh:’ ‘I’m heartily glad the Bank holds out so well. Ther’s great pains taken in the countrey to raise evill reports upon it. I had occasion to find so in a pretty numerous company the other day; yet I did not find any willing to part with your notes at the least discount.’—MSS. in possession of N. Fergusson Blair of Balthayock.
534. The arrangement of the Friendly Society consisted simply in a combination of house-proprietors, each paying in 100 merks per £1000 Scots, or a fifteenth of the value of the property, as a stock out of which to compensate for all damage by fire.
535. The Scribblers Lashed. Ramsay’s Poems, i. 316.
536. From a contemporary account appended to Satan’s Invisible World Discovered.
537. Private Letters, &c.
538. See under September 1711.
539. Dr Mitchell’s Strange and Wonderful Discourse concerning the Witches and Warlocks in Calder, quoted in Sharpe’s edition of Law’s Memorials.
540. Edin. Evening Courant.
541. Ibid.
542. Bishop Keith’s Catalogue of the Scottish Bishops.
543. Edin. Evening Courant.
544. From the documents printed in Criminal Trials illustrative of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. Edinburgh, 1818.
545. Edinburgh, 1835.
546. Private Letters, &c., p. 29.
547. Sir Walter Scott mentions this little fact in the Border Minstrelsy.
548. For a short time before the insurrection, he had acted as factor to Sir John Preston of Preston Hall, in Mid-Lothian, now also a forfeited estate, but of minor value.
549. Memorial of William and Robert Ross to the Commissioners on Forfeited Estates. Report of Commissioners, printed for Jacob Tonson, 1724.—Traditional and topographical notes from a relative of Donald Murchison.
550. It may be curious to contrast with the above account of the fight of Aa-na-Mullich, framed mainly from authentic documents, the following traditionary account, which has been communicated by Mr F. Macdonald, residing at Druidag Lodge, Lochalsh.
‘The first encounter that this famous man [Donald Murchison] had with the royal commissioner and troops was at the pass of Aa-na-Mullich, about a hundred yards from the end of Loch Affaric. He stationed himself and his Kintail men at the pass, on the north side of the river which empties itself into Loch Affaric, on a place called Tor-an-beithe, or Birch Hillock, where they had a good view of the enemy some miles off. On advancing towards this pass, Captain Monro of Fearn [mistake for Ross of Easterfearn], the royal commissioner, sent his son forward to reconnoitre on horseback, and when he appeared on the opposite side of the river, the poor fellow was shot at once, receiving a mortal wound. Upon hearing the report, and that Monro’s son was shot, the bulk of the royal troops wheeled round, and took to their heels, leaving Captain Monro with very few of his men to help in the painful duty of conveying his wounded son back. In this emergency, he implored Murchison to lend him some of his men to assist in carrying the wounded young man till he should be able to join his own fugitive troops; which, with his wonted generosity, he immediately complied with. They constructed a litter the best way they could, and retraced their steps to Beauly, which, however, they did not reach before the young man died. Murchison and his men followed, lest those troops who formerly fled should turn round and assault the men he had given to assist them. He followed as far as Knockfin on the heights of Strathglass.’ [Mr Macdonald ends by quoting two or three stanzas of a Gaelic poem composed by an old woman at Beauly, as they were passing with the dead body.]
551. Edinburgh Ev. Courant.
552. Caledonian Mercury, May 7, 1722.
553. Wodrow Correspondence, ii. 640.
554. Arnot’s Crim. Trials, p. 335.
555. Wodrow Correspondence, ii. 646.
556. Cal. Mercury, Aug. 7, 1722.
557. Caledonian Mercury.
558. English contemporary journals. Broadside account of the skirmish. Information from Lochcarron, MS.
559. Wade’s Report in App. to 2d ed. of Burt’s Letters, 1822, vol. ii. p. 280.
560. Lockhart Papers.
561. MS. poem on Wade’s Roads in Scotland, dated 1737, in possession of the Junior United Service Club.
562. The traditional account of Donald Murchison, communicated by Mr F. Macdonald, states that the heroic commissioner had been promised a handsome reward for his services; but Seaforth proved ungrateful. ‘He was offered only a small farm called Bundalloch, which pays at this day to Mr Matheson, the proprietor, no more than £60 a year; or another place opposite to Inverinate House, of about the same value. It is no wonder he refused these paltry offers. He shortly afterwards left this country, and died in the prime of life near Conon. On his death-bed, Seaforth went to see him, and asked how he was. He said: “Just as you will be in a short time,” and then turned his back. They never met again.’
563. Wodrow’s Analecta, ii. 368.
564. New Statistical Account of Scotland, art. Tranent.
565.
566. Edinburgh Ev. Courant, Jan. 29, 1723.
567. Edinburgh Ev. Courant, April 1, 1723. Scot. Elegiac Verses, p. 247.
568. MS., Advocates’ Library.
569. Letter by Andrew M‘Dowall (subsequently Lord Bankton) and J. M‘Gowan. Nugæ Scoticæ, Edinburgh, 1829.
570. Edinburgh Ev. Courant, May 1723.
571. From pamphlets published by Sir Alexander Murray.
572. Probably some attempt had been made to turn to account the foliated gypsum beds which exist near Kelso.
573. Poem on the Highland Roads, Wade’s MSS., in possession of Junior United Service Club.
574. Edin. Ev. Courant, August 22, 1743.
575. Memoirs of George Baillie of Jerviswood and of Lady Grizel Baillie, &c. 1822.
576. Chalmers’s Brit. Poets, xiv. 576.
577. Celebrated Trials, 6 vols. 1825. Vol. iii. p. 395.
578. Memoirs of Lady Grizel Baillie.
579. Edin. Ev. Courant, May 9, 1723.
580. Wodrow’s Analecta.
581. This was the place of worship which Dr Johnson attended when in Edinburgh in 1773. It is now demolished.
582. Analecta.
583. It may be satisfactory to local antiquaries to know that this hall was situated in what was consequently called the Assembly (latterly, Old Assembly) Close, on the south side of the High Street. The assembly to be held on the 25th May 1736 was advertised as to take place ‘in their new hall, behind the City Guard.’ This last site was that afterwards occupied by a building used as an office by the Commercial Bank, now the Free Church of the Tron parish. A rent of £55 was paid for this new hall, which continued to be used for fifty years, although confessedly too small, and very inconvenient.
584. Burt’s Letters, i. 193.
585. The Horn Order and Crispin Knights are satirised in several pasquils of the time of Queen Anne as fraternities practising debauchery to an unusual degree. A satire on the Union says:
586. Burt’s Letters, i. 193.
587. Caledonian Mercury, November 14, 1723.
588. Edinburgh Ev. Courant.
589. Letters from the North of Scotland, ii. 143.
590. Chalmers’s Life of Ruddiman, p. 75.
591. Wodrow’s Analecta, iii. 142.
592. Mortgage.
593. Burt’s Letters, ii. 73.
594. Alexander Pennecuik, of Edinburgh, has a poem entitled A Curse on the Clan Macphersons, occasioned by the News of Glenbucket being murdered by them:
595. Wade’s MSS., in possession of Junior United Service Club.
596. Edinburgh Ev. Courant, April 9, 1724.
597. Private Letters, &c., p. 37.
598. Analecta.
599. Letter of John Maxwell of Munshes, writing, in 1811, from personal recollection of the incidents.—Murray’s Lit. Hist. Galloway, p. 337.
600. Wodrow’s Analecta, iii. 152, 157, 170.
601. ‘A ewe which has given over bearing.’—Jamieson.
602. That is, a native of Ireland.
603. Letter of John Maxwell of Munshes to W. M. Herries of Spottes, dated February 1811.—Murray’s Lit. Hist. of Galloway, Appendix, p. 337.
604. See Domestic Annals of Scotland, under September 1583.
605. Caledonian Mercury of the day.
606. Edin. Ev. Courant.
607. Lovat’s Memorial to the King, Burt’s Letters, 2d ed., ii. 264, App.
608. Letter of General Guest, Spalding Club Miscellany, iii. 229.
609. Edinburgh Ev. Courant, September 6, 1725. This paper remarks that the extent of country which belonged to the late Earl of Seaforth, and disarmed on this occasion, was no less than sixty miles in length and forty in breadth.
610. Lockhart Papers.
611. Miscellany Papers, Adv. Lib.
612. Ed. Ev. Courant.
613. D. Webster’s Account of Roslin Chapel, &c., Edinburgh, 1819.
614. Transactions of the Society of Improvers.
615. Caledonian Mercury, July 1735.
616. [Sinclair’s] Stat. Acc. Scot., xx. 74.
617. [Sinclair’s] Stat. Acc. Scot., viii. 525. A drawing and description of a winnowing-machine used in Silesia appears in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1747, as a thing unknown in England.
618. Old Mortality, chap. vii.
619. Newspapers of the day.
620. Introduction to the Pirate—a novel, it need scarcely be remarked, founded on the story of Gow.
621. ‘London, March 29, 1720.—Sunday evening the Duke of Douglas and the Earl of Dalkeith fought a duel behind Montague House, and both were wounded.’—Newspapers of the day.
622. Wodrow’s Analecta, iii. 208.