In such a relation of parties, even had the proceedings of Lady Mabie and her husband been more regular, the Lords of the Privy Council could have no difficulty in deciding. They fined the lady and her husband in two hundred merks, one half to go as compensation to the ejected tenant.[42]
If the author could be allowed to indulge in a little personality, he would recall a walk through the streets of Edinburgh with Sir Walter Scott in the year 1824—one of many which he was privileged to enjoy, and during which many old Scottish matters, such as fill this work, were discussed. Sir Walter, having stopped for a moment in the crowd to exchange greetings with a portly middle-aged man, said, on coming up to continue his walk: ‘That was Campbell of Blythswood—we always shake hands when we meet, for there is some old cousinred between us.’ Let this occurrence, only redeemed from triviality by its bringing up a peculiar Scotch phrase unknown to Jamieson, be introduction to a characteristic letter of the year 1690, which seems worthy of a place here. First be it noted, the ‘cousinred’ between the illustrious fictionist of our century and the great laird of the west, took its origin two centuries earlier, thus forming a curious example of the tenacity of the Scottish people regarding relationships. The paternal great-grandfather of Sir Walter Scott was a person of his own name, the younger of the two sons of that Scott of Raeburn whom we have seen in 1665 set aside from the use of his property, the education of his family, and the enjoyment of his liberty, in consequence of his becoming a Quaker. The young Walter Scott spent his mature life in Kelso; we find him spoken of in a case under the attention of the Privy Council as a ‘merchant’ there: from devotion to the House of Stuart, he never shaved after the Revolution, and consequently acquired the nickname of Beardie. It was his fortune, in the month of September 1690, to ride to Glasgow, and there wed a lady of a noted mercantile family, being daughter to Campbell of Silvercraigs, whose uncle was the first Campbell of Blythswood, provost of Glasgow in 1660. The house of the Campbells of Silvercraigs in the Saltmarket was a handsome and spacious one, which Cromwell had selected for his residence when he visited Glasgow.[43] Here, of course, took place the wedding of this young offshoot of Roxburghshire gentility |1690.| with Mary Campbell, the niece of Blythswood, the result, most probably, of a line of circumstances originating in that tyrannical decreet of the Privy Council which ordained the Quaker Raeburn’s bairns to be taken from him, and educated in a sound faith at the schools of Glasgow (see under July 5, 1666).
The letter in question is one which Walter Scott wrote to his mother immediately after his marriage, stating the fact, and giving her directions about horses and certain articles to be sent to him against his intended return home with his bride. It is merely curious as illustrating the personal furnishings of a gentleman in that age, and the manner in which he travelled.
‘Dear Mother—The long designed marriadge betwixt Mary Campbell and mee was accomplished upon the 18th of this instant, and I having stayed here longer than I thought to doe, thought fitt to lett you know soe much by this. I have sent home Mr Robert Ellott his mare with many thanks, and tell him she has been fed since I came from home with good hay and corne, and been more idle as rideing. I have sent you the key of the studdy, that you may send mee with Robt Paterson and my horses my two cravatts that are within, and one pare I suppose within my desk the key and keep till I come home. As also send mee ane clene shirt, my hatt that is within my trunk send hither, and give to Robert Paterson, to putt one, another hat that is in itt—the trunk is open already. Send me out of ane bagge of rix dollars that you shall find in my desk, 30 rix dollars, and my little purse with the few pieces of gold. You will find there also two pairs of sleives and a plain cravatt: give with my hatts to Rot. my coat and old , to putt one, if they bee meet for him. Let Rot. come in by Edr and call at Dykes the shoe maker for my boots and one of the pairs of the shoes he has making for me, if they be ready, and bring them with him hither. Let him bring my own sadle and pistolls upon the one horse, and borrow my good sisters[44] syde sadle and bring upon the other. Lett him be sure to bee here upon Tuesday the thirteenth [thirtieth?] instant and desire him to be careful of all thir things. William Anderson[45] says he will come home with us. We are all in good health here. My wife with all the rest of us gives our service to you. Wee hope to see you upon the Saturday night after Rot. Paterson comes hither. We pray for God’s blessing |1690.| and yours. I have writt to desire my brother to come again thatt time hither and come home with us. God be with you, dear mother. I am your loving sonne,
‘Iff my brother could bee here sooner, I wish he would come, and Robt. also, for I mean to stay from home, and our time will much depend on their coming.’
For a notice of a visit paid by Beardie to Glasgow in February 1714, on the occasion of the death of his father-in-law, see under that date.
The Bible, New Testament, and a catechism, having recently been prepared in the Irish language, mainly for the use of the Irish population, it was thought by some religiously disposed persons in England, including some of Scottish extraction, that the same might serve for the people of the Highlands of Scotland, whose language was very nearly identical. It was accordingly part of the duty of the General Assembly to-day to make arrangements for receiving and distributing throughout the Highlands a gift of three thousand Bibles, one thousand New Testaments, and three thousand catechisms, which was announced to be at their disposal in London. A thousand pounds Scots was petitioned for from the Privy Council, to pay the expense of transporting the books from London and sending them to the various northern parishes.[46] It is to be regretted that so important an event as the first introduction of an intelligible version of the Scriptures to a large section of our population should be so meagrely chronicled. We shall hereafter have much to tell regarding further operations of the same kind in the northern portion of Scotland.
The domestic condition of the people is so much affected by certain sacred principles of law, that the history and progress of these becomes a matter of the first consequence. We have seen how the new rulers acted in regard to the sacredness of the subject from imprisonment not meant to issue in trial; we shall now see how they comported themselves respecting the unlawfulness of torture, which they had proclaimed as loudly in their Declaration or Claim of Rights.[47] We find the Duke of Hamilton, within three months of his presiding at the passing of this ‘Declaration,’ |1690.| writing to Lord Melville about a little Jacobite conspiracy—‘Wilson can discover all: if he does not confess freely, it’s like he may get either the boots or the thumbikens.’[48] When, at the crisis of the battle of the Boyne, the plot of Sir James Montgomery of Skelmorley, the Earl of Annandale, Lord Ross, and Robert Fergusson, for the restoration of King James, broke upon the notice of the new government, a Catholic English gentleman named Henry Neville Payne, who had been sent down to Scotland on a mission in connection with it, was seized by the common people in Dumfriesshire, and brought to Edinburgh. Sir William Lockhart, the solicitor-general for Scotland, residing in London, then coolly wrote to the Earl of Melville, secretary of state at Edinburgh, regarding Payne, that there was no doubt he knew as much as would hang a thousand; ‘but,’ says he, ‘except you put him to the torture, he will shame you all. Pray you put him in such hands as will have no pity on him; for, in the opinion of all, he is a desperate cowardly fellow.’
The Privy Council had in reality by this time put Payne to the torture; but the ‘cowardly fellow’ proved able to bear it without confession. On the 10th of December, under instructions signed by the king, and countersigned by the Earl of Melville, the process was repeated ‘gently,’ and again next day after the manner thus described by the Earl of Crawford, who presided on the occasion: ‘About six this evening, we inflicted [the torture] on both thumbs and one of his legs, with all the severity that was consistent with humanity, even unto that pitch that we could not preserve life and have gone further, but without the least success.... He was so manly and resolute under his suffering, that such of the Council as were not acquainted with all the evidences, were brangled and began to give him charity, that he might be innocent. It was surprising to me and others, that flesh and blood could, without fainting, and in contradiction to the grounds we had insinuat of our knowledge of his accession in matters, endure the heavy penance he was in for two hours.... My stomach is truly so far out of tune, by being a witness to an act so far cross to my natural temper, that I am fitter for rest than anything else.’
The earl states, that he regarded Payne’s constancy under the torture as solely owing to his being assured by his religion that it would save his soul and place him among the saints. His |1690.| lordship would never have imagined such self-consideration as supporting a westland Whig on the ladder in the Grassmarket.[49] The conviction doubtless made him the more resolute in acting as ‘the prompter of the executioner to increase the torture to so high a pitch’—his own expression regarding his official connection with the affair. It is curious that none ever justly apprehend, or will admit, the martyrdoms of an opposite religious party. Always it is obstinacy, vanity, selfishness, or because they have no choice. Sufferings for conscience’ sake are only acknowledged where one’s own views are concerned. It must be admitted as something of a deduction from the value of martyrdom in general.
We after this hear of Payne being in a pitiable frame of body under close confinement in Edinburgh Castle, no one being allowed to have access to him but his medical attendants. For a little time there was a disposition to give him the benefit of the rule of the Claim of Rights regarding imprisonment, and on the 6th January 1691, it was represented to King William that to keep Payne in prison without trial was ‘contrare to law.’ Nevertheless, and notwithstanding repeated demands for trial and petitions for mercy on his part, Neville Payne was kept in durance more or less severe for year after year, until ten had elapsed! During this time, he became acquainted with the principal state-prisons of Scotland, including the Edinburgh Tolbooth.
At length, on the 4th of February 1701, the wretched man sent a petition to the Privy Council, shewing ‘that more than ten years’ miserable imprisonment had brought [him] to old age and extreme poverty, accompanied with frequent sickness and many other afflictions that are the constant attendants of both.’ He protested his being all along wholly unconscious of any guilt. He was then ordered to be liberated, without the security for reappearance which was customary in such cases.[50]
Scotland is sometimes alluded to in the south, with an imperfect kind of approbation, as an excessively strait-laced country; but if our neighbours were to consult the records of the General Assembly |1691.| on the subject, they would find it powerfully defended from all such charges. An act was passed by that venerable body for a national fast to be held on the second Thursday of this month, and the reasons stated for the pious observance are certainly of a kind to leave the most free-living Englishman but little room for reproach. It is said: ‘There hath been a great neglect of the worship of God in public, but especially in families and in secret. The wonted care of sanctifying the Lord’s day is gone ... cities full of violence ... so that blood touched blood. Yea, Sodom’s sins have abounded amongst us, pride, fulness of blood, idleness, vanities of apparel, and shameful sensuality.’ Even now, it is said, ‘few are turned to the Lord; the wicked go on doing wickedly, and there is found among us to this day shameful ingratitude for our mercies [and] horrid impenitency under our sins.... There is a great contempt of the gospel, and great barrenness under it ... great want of piety towards God and love towards man, with a woful selfishness, every one seeking their own things, few the public good or ane other’s welfare.’
The document concludes with one noble stroke of, shall we say, self-portraiture?—‘the most part more ready to censure the sins of others, than to repent of their own.’[51]
John Adair, mathematician, had been proceeding for some years, under government patronage and pay, in his task of constructing maps of the counties of Scotland, ‘expressing therein the seats or houses of the nobility and gentry, the most considerable rivers, waters, lochs, bays, firths, roads, woods, mountains, royal burghs, and other considerable towns of each shire’—a work ‘honourable, useful, and necessary for navigation.’ He was now hindered in his task, as he himself expressed the matter, ‘by the envy, malice, and oppression of Sir Robert Sibbald, Doctor of Medicine, who, upon pretence of a private paction and contract, extorted through the power he pretended, took the petitioner [Adair] bound not to survey any shire or pairt thereof without Sir Robert his special advice and consent, and that he should not give copies of these maps to any other person without Sir Robert his special permission, under a severe penalty.’
The Lords of the Privy Council, on Adair’s petition, were at no loss to see how unjust the Jacobite Sir Robert’s proceedings |1691.| were towards the nation, which, by parliamentary grant, was paying Adair for his work. They therefore ordered the hydrographer to go on with his work, notwithstanding Sibbald’s opposition, ordering the latter to deliver up the contract on which it rested.
Sir Robert Sibbald afterwards reclaimed against the award of the Privy Council, setting forth a great array of rights connected with the case; but he spoke from the wrong side of the hedge, and his claim was refused.[52]
Captain Burnet of Barns was now recruiting in Edinburgh for a regiment in Holland. As the service was so much to be approved of, it was the less important to be scrupulous about the means of promoting it. A fatherless boy of fourteen, named George Miller, was taken up to Burnet’s chamber, and there induced to accept a piece of money of the value of fourteen shillings Scots, which made him a soldier in the captain’s regiment. He seems to have immediately expressed unwillingness to be a soldier; but the captain caused him instantly to be dragged to the Canongate Tolbooth, and there kept in confinement. Some friend put in a petition for him to the Privy Council, setting forth that he had been trepanned, and ‘had no inclination to be a soldier, but to follow his learning, and thereafter other virtuous employments for his subsistence.’ It was even hinted that the boy’s father, Robert Miller, apothecary in Edinburgh, had been ‘a great sufferer in the late times.’ All was in vain; two persons having given evidence that the boy had ‘taken on willingly’ with Captain Burnet, the Council ordained him to be delivered to that gentleman, ‘that he may go alongst with him to Holland in the said service.’
Burnet’s style of recruiting was by no means a singularity. A few days after the above date, as John Brangen, servant to Mr John Sleigh, merchant in Haddington, was going on a message to a writer’s chamber in Edinburgh with his master’s cloak over his arm, he was seized by Sergeant Douglas, of Douglas of Kelhead’s company, carried to the Canongate Tolbooth, and thence hurried like a malefactor on board a ship in the road of Leith bound for Flanders. This man, though called servant, was properly clerk and shopman to his master, who accordingly felt deeply aggrieved by his abduction. At the same time, Christian Wauchope |1691.| petitioned for the release of her husband, William Murdoch, who had been ‘innocently seized’ and carried off eight days ago by Captain Douglas’s men, ‘albeit he had never made any paction with them;’ ‘whereby the petitioner and her poor children will be utterly starved.’ Even the town-piper of Musselburgh, James Waugh by name, while playing at the head of the troop, and thinking of no harm, had been carried off for a soldier. ‘If it was true,’ said his masters the magistrates, ‘that he had taken money from the officers, it must have been through the ignorance and inadvertency of the poor man, thinking it was given him for his playing as a piper.’ He had, they continued, been ‘injuriously used in the affair by sinistrous designs and contrair to that liberty and freedom which all peaceable subjects ought to enjoy under the protection of authority.’
The government seems to have felt so far the necessity of acting up to their professions as the destroyers of tyranny that, in these and a few other cases, they ordered the liberation of the prisoners.
A few months later, occurred a private case in which something very like manstealing was committed by one of the parties in connection with this unscrupulous recruiting system.
Robert Wilson, son of Andrew Wilson in Kelso, was servant to Mrs Clerkson, a widow, at Damhead (near Edinburgh?). On finding that his mistress was about to take a second husband, he raised a scandal against her, in which his own moral character was concerned, and she immediately appealed for redress to Master David Williamson, minister of St Cuthbert’s parish. Two elders came to inquire into the matter—Wilson evaded them, and could not be found. Then she applied for, and obtained a warrant from a justice of peace to apprehend Wilson, who now took to hiding. Four friends of hers, James Bruntain, farmer at Craig Lockhart; David Rainie, brewer in Portsburgh; James Porteous, gardener at Saughton; and James Borthwick, weaver at Burrowmuirhead, accompanied by George Macfarlane, one of the town-officers of Edinburgh, came in search of Wilson, and finding him sleeping in the house of William Bell, smith in Merchiston, dragged him from bed, and in no gentle manner hurried him off to Macfarlane’s house, where they kept him tanquam in privato carcere for twenty-four hours. On his pleading for permission to go to the door for but a minute, swords were drawn, and he was threatened with instant death, if he offered to stir. Professedly, they were to take him before the justices; but a better conclusion to the adventure occurred to them. Captain Hepburn, an officer |1691.| about to sail with his corps to Holland, was introduced to the terror-stricken lad, who readily agreed to enlist with him, and accepted a dollar as earnest. Before he quitted the care of his captors, he signed a paper owning the guilt of raising scandal against his late mistress.
The father of the young man complained before the Privy Council of the outrage committed on his son, as an open and manifest riot and oppression, for which a severe punishment ought to be inflicted. He himself had been ‘bereaved of a son whom he looked upon to be a comfort, support, and relief to him in his old age.’ On the other hand, the persons complained of justified their acts as legal and warrantable. The Lords decided that Robert Wilson had ‘unjustly been kept under restraint, and violence done to him;’ but the reparation they allowed was very miserable—a hundred merks to the aggrieved father.[53]
Nothing, in the former state of the country, is more remarkable in contrast with the present, than the miserable poverty of the national exchequer. The meagreness and uncertainty of the finances required for any public purpose prior to those happy times when a corrupt House of Commons was ready to vote whatever the minister wanted—the difficulties consequently attendant upon all administrative movements—it is impossible for the reader to imagine without going into an infinity of details. At a time, of course, when Scotland had a revenue of only a hundred thousand pounds a year, and yet a considerable body of troops to keep up for the suppression of a discontented portion of the people, the troubles arising from the lack of money were beyond description. The most trivial furnishings for the troops and garrisons remained long unpaid, and became matter of consideration for the Lords of the Privy Council. A town where a regiment had lain, was usually left in a state of desolation from unpaid debt, and had to make known its misery in the same quarter with but small chance of redress; and scores of state-prisoners in Edinburgh, Blackness, Stirling, and the Bass, were starving for want of the common necessaries of life.
On the 18th of April 1690, the inhabitants of Kirkcaldy, Dysart, and Pathhead complained to the Privy Council, that for ten weeks of this year they had had Colonel Cunningham’s regiment quartered amongst them. The soldiers, ‘having nothing |1690.| to maintain themselves, were maintained and furnished in meat and drink, besides all other necessars, by the petitioners,’ who, ‘being for the most part poor and mean tradesmen, seamen, and workmen, besides many indigent widows and orphans,’ were thus ‘reduced to that extreme necessity as to sell and dispose of their household plenishing, after their own bread and anything else they had was consumed for maintenance of the soldiers.’ They regarded the regiment as in their debt to the extent of £336, 6s. sterling, of which sum they craved payment, ‘that they might not be utterly ruined, and they and their families perish for want of bread.’ Payment was ordered, but when, or whether at all, it was paid, we cannot tell.
Another case of this nature, going far to justify the jokes indulged in by the English regarding the contemporary poverty of Scotland, occurs in the ensuing August, when the Council took up the case of James Wilkie of Portsburgh (a suburb of Edinburgh), complaining that the soldiers of three regiments lately quartered there, had gone away indebted to him for meat and drink to the extent of seventeen pounds Scots (£1, 8s. 4d.). ‘Seeing the petitioner is very mean and poor, and not in a capacity to want that small sum, having nothing to live by but the trust of selling a tree of ale, his credit would be utterly broke for want thereof, unless the Council provide a remeed.’ The Council ordained that the commanders of the regiments should see the petitioner satisfied by their soldiers.
In January 1691, the Council is found meditating on means for the satisfaction of James Hamilton, innkeeper, Leith, who had sent in accounts against officers of Colonel Cunningham’s regiment for board and lodging, amounting to such sums as eight pounds each. At the same time, it had to treat regarding shoemakers’ accounts owing by the same officers, to the amount of two and three pounds each. Even Ensign Houston’s hotel-bill for ‘thretteen shillings’ is gravely deliberated on. And all these little bills were duly recommended to the lords of their majesties’ treasury, in hopes they might be paid out of ‘the three months’ cess and hearth money.’[54]
That such small bills, however, might infer a considerable amount of entertainment, would appear by no means unlikely, if we could believe a statement of Mr Burt, that General Mackay himself was accustomed, during his commandership in Scotland, |1690.| to dine at public-houses, ‘where he was served with great variety, and paid only two shillings and sixpence Scots—that is, twopence half-penny—for his ordinary.’[55] The fact has been doubted; but I can state as certain, that George Watson, the founder of the hospital in Edinburgh, when a young man residing in Leith, about 1680, used to dine at a tavern for fourpence. Even in the middle of the eighteenth century, Mr Colquhoun Grant, writer to the Signet, and a friend who associated with him, dined every day in a tavern in the Lawnmarket, for ‘twa groats the piece,’ as they used to express it.
Amongst other claims on which the Council had to deliberate, was a very pitiable one from Mr David Muir, surgeon at Stirling. When General Mackay retreated to that town from ‘the ruffle at Killiecrankie,’[56] Muir had taken charge of the sick and wounded of the government troops, ‘there being none of their own chirurgeons present,’ He ‘did several times send to Edinburgh for droggs and other necessaries,’ and was ‘necessitat to buy a considerable quantity of claret wine for bathing and fomenting of their wounds.’ His professional efforts had been successful; but as yet—after the lapse of eighteen months—he had received no remuneration; neither had he been paid for the articles he had purchased for the men; at the same time, the salary due to him, of ten pounds a year as chirurgeon of the castle, was now more than two years in arrear. It was the greater hardship, as those who had furnished the drugs and other articles were pressing him for the debt, ‘for which he is like to be pursued.’ Moreover, he protested, as something necessary to support a claim of debt against the state, that ‘he has been always for advancing of his majesty’s interest, and well affected to their majesties’ government.’
The Council, in this case too, could only recommend the accounts to the lords of the treasury.[57]
Sinclair of Mey, and a friend of his named James Sinclair, writer in Edinburgh, were lodging in the house of John Brown, vintner, in the Kirkgate of Leith, when, at a late hour, the Master of Tarbat and Ensign Andrew Mowat came to join the party. The Master, who was eldest son of the Viscount Tarbat, a statesman of no mean note, was nearly related to Sinclair of Mey. There was no harm meant by any one that night in the hostelry of John Brown; but before midnight, the floor was reddened with slaughter.
The Master and his friend Mowat, who are described on the occasion as excited by liquor, but not beyond self-control, were sitting in the hall drinking a little ale, while beds were getting ready for them. A girl named Jean Thomson, who had brought the ale, was asked by the Master to sit down beside him, but escaped to her own room, and bolted herself in. He, running in pursuit of her, blunderingly went into a room occupied by a Frenchman named George Poiret, who was quietly sleeping there. An altercation took place between Poiret and the Master, and Mowat, hearing the noise, came to see what was the matter. The Frenchman had drawn his sword, which the two gentlemen wrenched out of his hand. A servant of the house, named Christian Erskine, had now also arrived at the scene of strife, besides a gentleman who was not afterwards identified. At the woman’s urgent request, Mowat took away the Master and the other gentleman, the latter carrying the Frenchman’s sword. There might have now been an end to this little brawl, if the Master had not deemed it his duty to go back to the Frenchman’s room to beg his pardon. The Frenchman, finding a new disturbance at his door, which he had bolted, seems to have lost patience. He knocked on the ceiling of his room with the fire-tongs, to awaken two brothers, Elias Poiret, styled Le Sieur de la Roche, and Isaac Poiret, who were sleeping there, and to bring them to his assistance.
These two gentlemen presently came down armed with swords and pistols, and spoke to their defenceless and excited brother at |1691.| his door. Presently there was a hostile collision between them and the Master and Mowat in the hall. Jean Thomson roused her master to come and interfere for the preservation of the peace; but he came too late. The Master and Mowat were not seen making any assault; but a shot was heard, and, in a few minutes, it was found that the Sieur de la Roche lay dead with a swordwound through his body, while Isaac had one of his fingers nearly cut off. A servant now brought the guard, by whom Mowat was soon after discovered hiding under an outer stair, with a bent sword in his hand, bloody from point to hilt, his hand wounded, and the sleeves of his coat also stained with blood. On being brought where the dead man lay, he viewed the body without apparent emotion, merely remarking he wondered who had done it.
The Master, Mowat, and James Sinclair, writer, were tried for the murder of Elias Poiret; but the jury found none of the imputed crimes proven. The whole affair can, indeed, only be regarded as an unfortunate scuffle arising from intemperance, and in which sudden anger caused weapons to be used where a few gentle and reasonable words might have quickly re-established peace and good-fellowship.[59]
The three Frenchmen concerned in this affair were Protestant refugees, serving in the king’s Scottish guards. The Master of Tarbat in due time succeeded his father as Earl of Cromarty, and survived the slaughter of Poiret forty years. He was the father of the third and last Earl of Cromarty, so nearly brought to Tower-hill in 1746, for his concern in the rebellion of the preceding year, and who on that account lost the family titles and estates.
Down to this time, it was still customary for gentlemen to go armed with walking-swords. On the borders of the Highlands, dirks and pistols seem to have not unfrequently been added. Accordingly, when a quarrel happened, bloodshed was very likely to take place. At this time we have the particulars of such a quarrel, serving to mark strongly the improvements effected by modern civilisation.
Some time in August 1690, a young man named William Edmondstone, described as apprentice to Charles Row, writer to the Signet, having occasion to travel to Alloa, called on his master’s brother, William Row of Inverallan in passing, and had an interview |1691.| with him at a public-house in the hamlet of Bridge of Allan. According to a statement from him, not proved, but which it is almost necessary to believe in order to account for subsequent events, Inverallan treated him kindly to his face, but broke out upon him afterwards to a friend, using the words rascal and knave, and other offensive expressions. The same unproved statement goes on to relate how Edmondstone and two friends of his, named Stewart and Mitchell, went afterwards to inquire into Inverallan’s reasons for such conduct, and were violently attacked by him with a sword, and two of them wounded.
The proved counter-statement of Inverallan is to the effect that Edmondstone, Stewart, and Mitchell tried, on the 21st of April 1691, to waylay him, with murderous intent, as he was passing between Dumblane and his lands near Stirling. Having by chance evaded them, he was in a public-house at the Bridge of Allan, when his three enemies unexpectedly came in, armed as they were with swords, dirks, and pistols, and began to use despiteful expressions towards him. ‘He being all alone, and having no arms but his ordinary walking-sword, did rise up in a peaceable manner, of design to have retired and gone home to his own house.’ As he was going out at the door, William Edmondstone insolently called to him to come and fight him, a challenge which he disregarded. They then followed him out, and commenced an assault upon him with their swords, Mitchell, moreover, snapping a pistol at him, and afterwards beating him over the head with the but-end. He was barely able to protect his life with his sword, till some women came, and drew away the assailants.
A few days after, the same persons came with seven or eight other ‘godless and graceless persons’ to the lands of Inverallan, proclaiming their design to burn and destroy the tenants’ houses and take the laird’s life, and to all appearance would have effected their purpose, but for the protection of a military party from Stirling.
For these violences, Edmondstone and Mitchell were fined in five hundred merks, and obliged to give large caution for their keeping the peace.[60]
Upon petition, Sir James Don of Newton, knight-baronet, with his lady and her niece, and a groom and footman, were permitted |1691.| ‘to travel with their horses and arms from Scotland to Scairsburgh Wells in England, and to return again, without trouble or molestation, they always behaving themselves as becometh.’[61]
This is but a single example of the difficulties attending personal movements in Scotland for some time after the Revolution. Owing to the fears for conspiracy, the government allowed no persons of eminence to travel to any considerable distance without formal permission.
An act, passed this day in the Convention of Royal Burghs for a commission to visit the burghs as to their trade, exempted Kirkwall, Wick, Inverary, and Rothesay, on account of the difficulty of access to these places!
The records of this ancient court present many curious details. A tax-roll of July 1692, adjusting the proportions of the burghs in making up each £100 Scots of their annual expenditure on public objects, reveals to us the comparative populousness and wealth of the principal Scottish towns at that time. For Edinburgh, it is nearly a third of the whole, £32, 6s. 8d.; for Glasgow, less than a half of Edinburgh, £15; Perth, £3; Dundee, £4, 13s. 4d.; Aberdeen, £6; Stirling, £1, 8s.; Linlithgow, £1, 6s.; Kirkcaldy, £2, 8s.; Montrose, £2; Dumfries, £1, 18s. 4d.; Inverness, £1, 10s.; Ayr, £1, 1s. 4d.; Haddington, £1, 12s.
All the rest pay something less than one pound. In 1694, Inverary is found petitioning for ‘ease’ from the four shillings Scots imposed upon them in the tax-roll, as ‘they are not in a condition by their poverty and want of trade to pay any pairt thereof.’ The annual outlay of the Convention was at this time about £6000 Scots. Hence the total impost on Inverary would be £240, or twenty pounds sterling. For the ‘ease’ of this primitive little Highland burgh, its proportion was reduced to a fourth.
The burghs used to have very curious arrangements amongst themselves: thus, the statute Ell was kept in Edinburgh; Linlithgow had charge of the standard Firlot; Lanark of the Stoneweight; while the regulation Pint-stoup was confided to Stirling. A special measure for coal, for service in the customs, was the Chalder of Culross. The burgh of Peebles had, from old time, the privilege of seizing ‘all light weights, short ellwands, and |1691.| other insufficient goods, in all the fairs and mercats within the shire of Teviotdale.’ They complained, in 1696, of the Earl of Traquair having interfered with their rights, and a committee was appointed to deal with his lordship on the subject.[62]
To these notices it may be added that the northern burgh of Dingwall, which is now a handsome thriving town, was reduced to so great poverty in 1704 as not to be able to send a commissioner to the Convention. ‘There was two shillings Scots of the ten pounds then divided amongst the burghs, added to the shilling we used formerly to be in the taxt roll [that is, in addition to the one shilling Scots we formerly used to pay on every hundred pounds Scots raised for general purposes, we had to pay two shillings Scots of the new taxation of ten pounds then assessed upon the burghs], the stenting whereof was so heavy upon the inhabitants, that a great many of them have deserted the town, which is almost turned desolate, as is weel known to all our neighbours; and there is hardly anything to be seen but the ruins of old houses, and the few inhabitants that are left, having now no manner of trade, live only by labouring the neighbouring lands, and our inhabitants are still daily deserting us.’ Such was the account the town gave of itself in a petition to the Convention of Burghs in 1724.[63]
Though Dingwall is only twenty-one and a half miles to the northward of Inverness, so little travelling was there in those days, that scarcely anything was known by the one place regarding the other. It is at this day a subject of jocose allusion at Inverness, that they at one time sent a deputation to see Dingwall, and inquire about it, as a person in comfortable circumstances might send to ask after a poor person in a neighbouring alley. Such a proceeding actually took place in 1733, and the report brought back was to the effect, that Dingwall had no trade, though ‘there were one or two inclined to carry on trade if they had a harbour;’ that the place had no prison; and for want of a bridge across an adjacent lake, the people were kept from both kirk and market.[64]
Licence was granted by the Privy Council to Dr Andrew Brown to print, and have sole right of printing, a treatise he had written, entitled A Vindicatorie Schedule about the New Cure of Fevers.[65]
This Dr Andrew Brown, commonly called Dolphington, from his estate in Lanarkshire, was an Edinburgh physician, eminent in practice, and additionally notable for the effort he made in the above-mentioned work to introduce Sydenham’s treatment of fevers—that is, to use antimonial emetics in the first stage of the disorder. ‘This book and its author’s energetic advocacy of its principles by his other writings and by his practice, gave rise to a fierce controversy, and in the library of the Edinburgh College of Physicians there is a stout shabby little volume of pamphlets on both sides—“Replies” and “Short Answers,” and “Refutations,” and “Surveys,” and “Looking-glasses,” “Defences,” “Letters,” “Epilogues,” &c., lively and furious once, but now resting as quietly together as their authors are in the Old Greyfriars’ Churchyard, having long ceased from troubling. There is much curious, rude, hard-headed, bad-Englished stuff in them, with their wretched paper and print, and general ugliness; much also to make us thankful that we are in our own now, not their then. Such tearing away, with strenuous logic and good learning, at mere clouds and shadows, with occasional lucid intervals of sense, observation, and wit!’[66]
Dolphington states in his book that he visited Dr Sydenham in London, to study his system under him, in 1687, and presently after returning to Edinburgh, introduced the practice concerning fevers, with such success, that of many cases none but one had remained uncured.
Some idea of an amateur unlicensed medical practice at this time may be obtained from a small book which had a great circulation in Scotland in the early part of the eighteenth century. It used to be commonly called Tippermallochs Receipts, being the production of ‘the Famous John Moncrieff of Tippermalloch’ in Strathearn, ‘a worthy and ingenious gentleman,’ as the preface describes him, whose ‘extraordinary skill in physic and successful and beneficial practice therein’ were so well known, ‘that few readers, in this country at least, can be supposed ignorant thereof.’[67]
When a modern man glances over the pages of this dusky |1691.| ill-printed little volume, he is at a loss to believe that it ever could have been the medical vade-mecum of respectable families, as we are assured it was. It has a classification of diseases under the parts of the human system, the head, the breast, the stomach, &c., presenting under each a mere list of cures, with scarcely ever a remark on special conditions, or even a tolerable indication of the quantity of any medicine to be used. The therapeutics of Tippermalloch include simples which are now never heard of in medicine, and may be divided into things capable of affecting the human system, and things of purely imaginary efficacy, a large portion of both kinds being articles of such a disgusting character as could not but have doubled the pain and hardship of all ailments in which they were exhibited. For cold distemper of the brain, for instance, we have snails, bruised in their shells, to be applied to the forehead; and for pestilential fever, a cataplasm of the same stuff to be laid on the soles of the feet. Paralysis calls for the parts being anointed with ‘convenient ointments’ of (among other things) earthworms. For decay of the hair, mortals are enjoined to ‘make a lee of the burnt ashes of dove’s dung, and wash the head;’ but ‘ashes of little frogs’ will do as well. Yellow hair, formerly a desired peculiarity, was to be secured by a wash composed of the ashes of the ivy-tree, and a fair complexion by ‘the distilled water of snails.’ To make the whole face well coloured, you are coolly recommended to apply to it ‘the liver of a sheep fresh and hot.’ ‘Burn the whole skin of a hare with the ears and nails: the powder thereof, being given hot, cureth the lethargy perfectly.’ ‘Powder of a man’s bones burnt, chiefly of the skull that is found in the earth, cureth the epilepsy: the bones of a man cure a man; the bones of a woman cure a woman.’ The excreta of various animals figure largely in Tippermalloch’s pharmacopœia, even to a bath of a certain kind for iliac passion: ‘this,’ says he, ‘marvellously expelleth wind.’ It is impossible, however, to give any adequate idea of the horrible things adverted to by the sage Moncrieff, either in respect of diseases or their cures. All I will say further on this matter is, that if there be any one who thinks modern delicacy a bad exchange for the plain-spokenness of our forefathers, let him glance at the pages of John Moncrieff of Tippermalloch, and a change of opinion is certain.
In the department of purely illusive recipes, we have for wakefulness or coma, ‘living creatures applied to the head to dissolve the humour;’ for mania, amulets to be worn about the neck; and a girdle of wolf’s skin certified as a complete preventive of |1691.| epilepsy. We are told that ‘ants’ eggs mixed with the juice of an onion, dropped into the ear, do cure the oldest deafness,’ and that ‘the blood of a wild goat given to ten drops of carduus-water doth powerfully discuss the pleurisy.’ It is indicated under measles, that ‘many keep an ewe or wedder in their chamber or on the bed, because these creatures are easily infected, and draw the venom to themselves, by which means some ease may happen to the sick person.’ In like manner, for colic a live duck, frog, or sucking-dog applied to the part, ‘draweth all the evil to itself, and dieth.’ The twenty-first article recommended for bleeding at the nose is hare’s hair and vinegar stuffed in; ‘I myself know this to be the best of anything known.’ He is equally sure that the flowing blood of a wound may be repelled by the blood of a cow put into the wound, or by carrying a jasper in the hand; while for a depraved appetite nothing is required but the stone ætites bound to the arm. Sed jam satis.
In Analecta Scotica is to be found a dream about battles and ambassadors by Sir J. Moncrieff of Tippermalloch, who at his death in 1714, when eighty-six years of age, believed it was just about to be fulfilled. The writer, who signs himself William Moncrieff, and dates from Perth, says of Tippermalloch: ‘The gentleman was, by all who knew him, esteemed to be eminently pious. He spent much of his time in reading the Scripture—his delight was in the law of the Lord. The character of the blessed man did belong to him, for in that he did meditate day and night, and his conversation was suitable thereto—his leaf did not wither—he was fat and flourishing in his old age.’[68]