Dame Mary Norvill, widow of Sir David Falconer, president of the Court of Session, and now wife of John Home of Ninewells, was obliged to petition the Privy Council for maintenance to her children by her first husband, their uncle, the Laird of Glenfarquhar, having failed to make any right arrangement in their behalf. From what the lords ordained, we get an idea of the sums then considered as proper allowances for the support and education of a set of children of good fortune. David, the eldest son, ten years of age, heir to his father’s estate of 12,565 merks (about £698 sterling) per annum, over and above the widow’s jointure, was to be allowed ‘for bed and board, clothing, and other necessaries, and for educating him at schools and colleges as becomes |1691.| his quality, with a pedagogue and a boy to attend him, the sum of a thousand merks yearly (£55, 11s. 1⅓d. sterling).’ To Mistress Margaret, twelve and a half years old, whose portion is twelve thousand merks, they assigned an aliment for ‘bed and board, clothing, and other necessaries, and for her education at schools and otherwise as becomes her quality,’ five hundred merks per annum (£27, 15s. 6½d. sterling). Mistress Mary, the second daughter, eleven years of age, with a portion of ten thousand merks, was allowed for ‘aliment and education’ four hundred and fifty merks. For Alexander, the second son, nine years of age, with a provision of fifteen thousand merks, there was allowed, annually, six hundred merks. Mistress Katherine, the third daughter, eight years of age, and Mistress Elizabeth, seven years of age, with portions of eight thousand merks each, were ordained each an annual allowance of three hundred and sixty merks. George, the third son, six years old, with a provision of ten thousand merks, was to have four hundred merks per annum. These payments to be made to John Home and his lady, while the children should dwell with them.[69]
‘Mistress Katherine’ became the wife of Mr Home’s son Joseph, and in 1711 gave birth to the celebrated philosopher, David Hume. Her brother succeeded a collateral relative as Lord Falconer of Halkerton, and was the lineal ancestor of the present Earl of Kintore. It is rather remarkable that the great philosopher’s connection with nobility has been in a manner overlooked by his biographers.
That the sums paid for the young Falconers, mean as they now appear, were in accordance with the ideas of the age, appears from other examples. Of these, two may be adduced:
The Laird of Langton, ‘who had gotten himself served tutor-of-law’ to two young persons named Cockburn, fell about this time into ‘ill circumstances.’ There then survived but one of his wards—a girl named Ann Cockburn—and it appeared proper to her uncle, Lord Crossrig, that she should not be allowed to stay with a broken man. He accordingly, though with some difficulty, and at some expense, got the tutory transferred to himself. ‘When Ann Cockburn,’ he says, ‘came to my house, I did within a short time put her to Mrs Shiens, mistress of manners, where she was, as I remember, about two years, at £5 sterling in the quarter, besides presents. Thereafter she |1691.| stayed with me some years, and then she was boarded with the Lady Harvieston, then after with Wallyford, where she still is, at £3 sterling per quarter.’[70]
In 1700, the Laird of Kilravock, in Nairnshire, paid an account to Elizabeth Straiton, Edinburgh, for a quarter’s education to his daughter Margaret Rose; including, for board, £60; dancing, £14, 10s.; ‘singing and playing and virginalls,’ £11, 12s.; writing, £6; ‘satin seame,’ £6; a set of wax-fruits, £6; and a ‘looking-glass that she broke,’ £4, 16s.; all Scots money.[71]
It thus appears that both Mrs Shiens and Mrs Straiton charged only £5 sterling per quarter for a young lady’s board.
The subject is further illustrated by the provision made by the Privy Council, in March 1695, for the widowed Viscountess of Arbuthnot (Anne, daughter of the Earl of Sutherland), who had been left with seven children all under age, and whose husband’s testament had been ‘reduced.’ In her petition, the viscountess represented that the estate was twenty-four thousand merks per annum (£1333 sterling). ‘My lord, being now eight years of age, has a governor and a servant; her two eldest daughters, the one being eleven, and the other ten years of age, and capable of all manner of schooling, they must have at least one servant; as for the youngest son and three youngest daughters, they are yet within the years of seven, so each of them must have a woman to wait upon them.’ Lady Arbuthnot was provided with a jointure of twenty-five chalders of victual; and as her jointure-house was ruinous, she desired leave to occupy the family mansion of Arbuthnot House, which her son was not himself of an age to possess.
The Lords, having inquired into and considered the relative circumstances, ordained that two thousand pounds Scots (£166, 13s. 4d. sterling) should be paid to Lady Arbuthnot out of the estate for the maintenance of her children, including the young lord.
The lady soon after dying, the earl her father came in her place as keeper of the children at the same allowance.[72]
The Quakers residing at Glasgow gave in to the Privy Council a representation of the treatment they received at the hands of their neighbours. It was set forth, that the severe dealings with |1691.| the consciences of men under the late government had brought about a revolution, and some very tragical doings. Now, when at last the people had wrestled out from beneath their grievances, ‘it was matter of surprise that those who had complained most thereupon should now be found acting the parts of their own persecutors against the petitioners [the Quakers].’ It were too tedious to detail ‘what they have suffered since the change of the government, through all parts of the nation, by beating, stoning, and other abuses,’ In Glasgow, however, ‘their usage had been liker French dragoons’ usage, and furious rabbling, than anything that dare own the title of Christianity.’ Even there they would have endured in silence ‘the beating, stoning, dragging, and the like which they received from the rabble,’ were it not that magistrates connived at and homologated these persecutions, and their continued silence might seem to justify such doings. They then proceeded to narrate that, on the 12th of November, ‘being met together in their hired house for no other end under heaven than to wait upon and worship their God,’ a company of Presbyterian church elders, ‘attended with the rude rabble of the town, haled them to James Sloss, bailie, who, for no other cause than their said meeting, dragged them to prison, where some of them were kept the space of eight days.’ During that time, undoubted bail was offered for them, but refused, ‘unless they should give it under their hand [that] they should never meet again there.’ At the same time, their meeting-house had been plundered, and even yet the restoration of their seats was refused. ‘This using of men that are free lieges would, in the case of others, be thought a very great riot,’ &c.
The feeling of the supreme administrative body in Scotland on this set of occurrences, is chiefly marked by what they did not do. They recommended to the Glasgow magistrates that, if any forms had been taken away from the Quakers, they should be given back![73]
There were no bounds to the horror with which sincere Presbyterians regarded Quakerism in those days. Even in their limited capacity as disowners of all church-politics, they were thought to be most unchristian. Patrick Walker gravely relates an anecdote of the seer-preacher, Peden, which powerfully proves this feeling. This person, being in Ireland, was indebted one night to a Quaker for lodging. Accompanying his host to the meeting, Peden |1691.| observed a raven come down from the ceiling, and perch itself, to appearance, on a particular person’s head, who presently began to speak with great vehemence. From one man’s head, the appearance passed to another’s, and thence to a third. Peden told the man: ‘I always thought there was devilry amongst you, but I never thought he appeared visibly to you; but now I see it.’ The incident led to the conversion of the Quaker unto orthodox Christianity.[74]
On the 5th of April 1694, there was a petition to the Privy Council from a man named James Macrae, professing to be a Quaker, setting forth that he had been pressed as a soldier, but could not fight, as it was contrary to his principles and conscience; wherefore, if carried to the wars, he could only be miserable in himself, while useless to others. He was ordered to be liberated, provided he should leave a substitute in his place.[75]
It would have been interesting to see a contemporary Glasgow opinion on this case.
Irregularities of the affections were not now punished with the furious severity which, in the reign of Charles I., ordained beheading to a tailor in Currie for wedding his first wife’s half-brother’s daughter.[76] But they were still visited with penalties much beyond what would now be thought fitting. For example, a woman of evil repute, named Margaret Paterson, having drawn aside from virtue two very young men, James and David Kennedy, sons of a late minister of the Trinity College Church, was adjudged to stand an hour in the jougs at the Tron, and then to be scourged from the Castle Hill to the Netherbow, after which a life of exile in the plantations was her portion. The two young men, having been bailed by their uncle, under assurance for five thousand merks, the entire amount of their patrimony, broke their bail rather than stand trial with their associate in guilt. There was afterwards a petition from the uncle setting forth the hardship of the case, and this was replied to with a recommendation from the lords of Justiciary to the lords of the treasury for a modification of the penalty, ‘if their lordships shall think fit.’ In the case of Alison Beaton, where the co-relative offender was a man who had married her mother’s sister, the poor woman was condemned to be scourged in like manner with |1692.| Paterson, and then transported to the plantations. It was a superstitious feeling which dictated such penalties for this class of offences. The true aim of jurisprudence, to repress disorders which directly affect the interests of others, and these alone, was yet far from being understood.
In January 1694, there came before the notice of the Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, a case of curiously complicated wickedness. Daniel Nicolson, writer, and a widow named Mrs Pringle, had long carried on an infamous connection, with little effort at concealment. Out of a bad spirit towards the unoffending Jean Lands, his wife, Nicolson and Pringle, or one or other of them, caused to be forged a receipt as from her to Mr John Elliot, doctor of medicine, for some poison, designing to raise a charge against her and a sister of hers, of an attempt upon her husband’s life. The alleged facts were proved to the satisfaction of a jury, and the court, deeming the adultery aggravated by the forgery, adjudged the guilty pair to suffer in the Grassmarket—Nicolson by hanging, and Pringle by ‘having her head severed from her body.’
There were, however, curious discriminations in the judgments of the Justiciary Court. A Captain Douglas, of Sir William Douglas’s regiment, assisted by another officer and a corporal of the corps, was found guilty of a shocking assault upon a serving-maid in Glasgow, in 1697. A meaner man, or an equally important man opposed to the new government, would have, beyond a doubt, suffered the last penalty for this offence; Captain Douglas, being a gentleman, and one engaged in the king’s service, escaped with a fine of three hundred merks.[77]
King William felt impatient at the unsubmissiveness of the Jacobite clans, chiefly Macdonalds of Glengarry, Keppoch, and Glencoe, the Grants of Glenmoriston, and the Camerons of Locheil, because it caused troops to be kept in Scotland, which he much wanted for his army in Flanders. His Scottish ministers, and particularly Sir John Dalrymple, Master of Stair, the Secretary of State, carried towards those clans feelings of constantly growing irritation, as latterly the principal obstacle to a settlement of the country under the new system of things. At length, in August 1691, the king issued an indemnity, promising pardon to all that had been in arms against him |1692.| before the 1st of June last, provided they should come in any time before the 1st of January next year, and swear and sign the oath of allegiance.
The letters of Sir John Dalrymple from the court at London during the remainder of the year, shew that he grudged these terms to the Highland Jacobites, and would have been happy to find that a refusal of them justified harsher measures. It never occurred to him that there was anything but obstinacy, or a hope of immediate assistance from France to enable them to set up King James again, in their hesitation to swear that they sincerely in their hearts accepted King William and Queen Mary as the sovereigns of the land equally by right and in fact. He really hoped that at least the popish clan of the Macdonalds of Glencoe would hold out beyond the proper day, so as to enable the government to make an example of them. It was all the better that the time of grace expired in the depth of winter, for ‘that,’ said he (letter to Colonel Hamilton, December 3, 1691), ‘is the proper season to maul them, in the cold long nights.’ On the 9th of January, under misinformation about their having submitted, he says: ‘I am sorry that Keppoch and M‘Ian of Glencoe[78] are safe.’ It was the sigh of a savage at the escape of a long-watched foe. Still he understood Glengarry, Clanranald, and Glenmoriston to be holding out, and he gave orders for the troops proceeding against them, granting them at the utmost the terms of prisoners of war. In the midst of a letter on the subject, dated the 11th January,[79] he says: ‘Just now my Lord Argyle tells me that Glencoe hath not taken the oaths; at which I rejoice—it’s a great work of charity to be exact in rooting out that damnable sect, the worst in all the Highlands.’ Delighted with the intelligence—‘it is very good news here,’ he elsewhere says—he obtained that very day a letter from the king anent the Highland rebels, commanding the troops to cut them off ‘by all manner of hostility,’ and for this end to proclaim high penalties to all who should give them assistance or protection. Particular instructions subscribed by the king followed on the 16th, permitting terms to be offered to Glengarry, whose house was strong enough to give trouble, but adding: ‘If M‘Ian of Glencoe and that tribe can be well separated from the rest, it will be a proper vindication of the public justice to extirpate that sect of thieves.’ On the same day, Dalrymple himself wrote to Colonel |1692.| Hill, governor of Inverlochy, ‘I shall entreat you that, for a just vengeance and public example, the thieving tribe of Glencoe be rooted out to purpose. The Earls of Argyle and Breadalbane have promised they shall have no retreat in their bounds.’ He felt, however, that it must be ‘quietly done;’ otherwise they would make shift both for their cattle and themselves. There can be no doubt what he meant; merely to harry the people, would make them worse thieves than before—they must be, he elsewhere says, ‘rooted out and cut off.’
In reality, the old chief of the Glencoe Macdonalds had sped to Inverlochy or Fort William before the end of the year, and offered his oath to the governor there, but, to his dismay, found he had come to the wrong officer. It was necessary he should go to Inverary, many miles distant, and there give in his submission to the sheriff. In great anxiety, the old man toiled his way through the wintry wild to Inverary. He had to pass within a mile of his own house, yet stopped not to enter it. After all his exertions, the sheriff being absent for two days after his arrival, it was not till the 6th of January that his oath was taken and registered. The register duly went thereafter to the Privy Council at Edinburgh; but the name of Macdonald of Glencoe was not found in it: it was afterwards discovered to have been by special pains obliterated, though still traceable.
Here, then, was that ‘sect of thieves’ formally liable to the vengeance which the secretary of state meditated against them. The commander, Livingstone, on the 23d January, wrote to Colonel Hamilton of Inverlochy garrison to proceed with his work against the Glencoe men. A detachment of the Earl of Argyle’s regiment—Campbells, hereditary enemies of the Macdonalds of Glencoe—under the command of Campbell of Glenlyon, proceeded to the valley, affecting nothing but friendly intentions, and were hospitably received. Glenlyon himself, as uncle to the wife of one of the chief’s sons, was hailed as a friend. Each morning, he called at the humble dwelling of the chief, and took his morning-draught of usquebaugh. On the evening of the 12th of February, he played at cards with the chief’s family. The final orders for the onslaught, written on the 12th at Ballachulish by Major Robert Duncanson (a Campbell also), were now in Glenlyon’s hands. They bore—‘You are to put all to the sword under seventy. You are to have a special care that the old fox and his son do on no account escape your hands. You’re to secure all avenues, that none escape; this you are to put in execution at five o’clock |1692.| precisely, and by that time, or very shortly after it, I’ll strive to be at you with a stronger party. If I do not come to you at five, you are not to tarry for me, but to fall on.’
Glenlyon was but too faithful to his instructions. His soldiers had their orders the night before. John Macdonald, the chief’s eldest son, observing an unusual bustle among the soldiers, took an alarm, and inquired what was meant. Glenlyon soothed his fears with a story about a movement against Glengarry, and the lad went to bed. Meanwhile, efforts were making to plant guards at all the outlets of that alpine glen; but the deep snow on the ground prevented the duty from being fully accomplished. At five, Lieutenant Lindsay came with his men to the house of the chief, who, hearing of his arrival, got out of bed to receive him. He was shot dead as he was dressing himself. Two of his people in the house shared his fate, and his wife, shamefully treated by the soldiers, died next day. At another hamlet called Auchnaion, the tacksman and his family received a volley of shot as they were sitting by their fireside, and all but one were laid dead or dying on the floor. The survivor entreated to be killed in the open air, and there succeeded in making his escape. There were similar scenes at all the other inhabited places in the glen, and before daylight, thirty-eight persons had been murdered. The rest of the people, including the chief’s eldest son, fled to the mountains, where many of them are believed to have perished. When Colonel Hamilton came at breakfast-time, he found one old man alive mourning over the bodies of the dead; and this person, though he might have been even formally exempted as above seventy, was slain on the spot. The only remaining duty of the soldiers was to burn the houses and harry the country. This was relentlessly done, two hundred horses, nine hundred cattle, and many sheep and goats being driven away.
A letter of Dalrymple, dated from London the 5th March, makes us aware that the Massacre of Glencoe was already making a sensation there. It was said that the people had been murdered in their beds, after the chief had made the required submission. The secretary professed to have known nothing of the last fact, but he was far from regretting the bloodshed. ‘All I regret is that any of the sect got away.’ When the particulars became fully known—when it was ascertained that the Campbells had gone into the glen as friends, and fallen upon the people when they were in a defenceless state and when all suspicion was lulled asleep—the transaction assumed the character which it has ever |1692.| since borne in the public estimation, as one of the foulest in modern history.
The Jacobites trumpeted it as an offset against the imputed severities of the late reigns. Its whole details were given in the French gazettes, as an example of the paternal government now planted in Britain. The government was compelled, in self-defence, to order an inquiry into the affair, and the report presented in 1695 fully brought out the facts as here detailed, leaving the principal odium to rest with Dalrymple. The king himself, whose signature follows close below the savage sentence, ‘If M‘Ian of Glencoe,’ &c., did not escape reproach. True it is, that so far from punishing his secretary, he soon after this report gave him a full remission, and conferred on him the teinds of the parish in which lay his principal estates.[80]
The Privy Council had before them a petition from Lieutenant Brisbane of Sir Robert Douglas’s regiment, regarding one Archibald Baird, an Irish refugee, imprisoned at Paisley for housebreaking. The sheriff thought the probation ‘scrimp’ (scanty), and besides, was convinced that ‘extreme poverty had been a great temptation to him to commit the said crime.’ Seeing he was, moreover, ‘a proper young man fit for service,’ and ‘willing and forward to go over to Flanders to fight against the French,’ the sheriff had hitherto delayed to pronounce sentence upon him. Without any ceremony, the Council ordered that Baird be delivered to Brisbane, that he might be transported to Flanders as a soldier.
The reader will probably be amused by the sheriff’s process of ideas—first, that the crime was not proved; and, second, that it had been committed under extenuating circumstances. The leniency of the Privy Council towards such a culprit, in ordering him out of the country as a soldier, is scarcely less characteristic. The truth is, the exigencies of the government for additional military force were now greater than ever, so that scruples about methods of recruiting had come to be scarcely recognisable. Poor people confined in jail on suspicion of disaffection, were in many instances brought to a purchase of liberty by taking on as soldiers; criminals, who had pined there for months or years, half-starved, were glad to take soldiering as their punishment. Sturdy vagrants |1692.| were first gathered into the jails for the offence of begging, and then made to know that, only by taking their majesties’ pay, could they regain their freedom. But freedom was not to be instantly gained even in this way. The recruits were kept in jail, as well as the criminals and the disaffected—little distinction, we may well believe, observed between them. Not till ready to go on board for Flanders, were these gallant Britons permitted to breathe the fresh air.
An appearance of regard for the liberty of the subject was indeed kept up, and on the 23d February 1692, a committee of the Privy Council was appointed to go to the prisons of Edinburgh and Canongate, and inspect the recruits kept there, so as to ascertain if there were any who were unjustly detained against their will. But this was really little more than an appearance for decency’s sake, the instances of disregard for individual rights being too numerous even in their own proceedings to allow any different conclusion being arrived at.[81]
Two ministers at Dumfries, who had been ‘preachers before prelacy was abolished,’ gave displeasure to the populace by using the Book of Common Prayer. On a Sunday, early in this month, a party of about sixteen ‘mean country persons living about four or five miles from Dumfries, who disowned both Presbyterian and Episcopal ministers, and acknowledged none but Mr Houston,’ came and dragged these two clergymen out of the town, took from each his prayer-book, and gave them a good beating, after which they were liberated, and allowed to return home. At an early hour next morning, the same party came into the town and burned one of the books at the Cross, on which they affixed a placard, containing, we may presume, a declaration of their sentiments. The Privy Council indignantly called the provost of Dumfries before them, and while censuring him for allowing such a riot to take place, enjoined him to take care ‘that there be no occasions given for the like disorders in time coming.’ That is to say, the Privy Council did not desire the Dumfries magistrates to take any measures for preventing the attacks of ‘mean country persons’ upon unoffending clergymen using the forms of prayer sanctioned in another and connected kingdom not thirty miles distant, but to see that such clergymen were not allowed to give provocations of that kind to ‘mean country persons.’
Dumfries had at this time another trouble on its hands. Marion Dickson in Blackshaw, Isobel Dickson in Locherwood, Agnes Dickson (daughter of Isobel), and Marion Herbertson in Mousewaldbank, had for a long time been ‘suspected of the abominable and horrid crime of witchcraft,’ and were believed to have ‘committed many grievous malefices upon several persons their neighbours and others.’ It was declared to be damnifying ‘to all good men and women living in the country thereabouts, who cannot assure themselves of safety of their lives by such frequent malefices as they commit.’
Under these circumstances, James Fraid, John Martin, William Nicolson, and Thomas Jaffrey in Blackshaw, John Dickson in Slop of Locherwoods, John Dickson in Locherwoods, and John Dickson in Overton of Locherwoods, took it upon them to apprehend the women, and carried them to be imprisoned at Dumfries by the sheriff, which, however, the sheriff did not consent to till after the six men had granted a bond engaging to prosecute. Fortified with a certificate from the presbytery of Dumfries, who were ‘fully convinced of the guilt [of the women] and of the many malefices committed by them,’ the men applied to the Privy Council for a commission to try the delinquents.
The Lords ordered the women to be transported to Edinburgh for trial.[82]
The government beginning to relax a little the severity it had hitherto exercised towards captive Jacobites, the Earl of Perth, on a showing of the injury his health was suffering from long imprisonment in Stirling Castle, was liberated on a caution for five thousand pounds sterling, being a sum equal to the annual income of the highest nobles of the land.
William Livingstone, brother to the Viscount Kilsyth, and husband of Dundee’s widow, had been a prisoner in the Edinburgh Tolbooth from June 1689 till November 1690—seventeen months—thereafter, had lived in a chamber in Edinburgh under a sentry for a year—afterwards was allowed to live in a better lodging, and to go forth for a walk each day, but still under a guard. In this condition he now continued. The consequence of his being thus treated, and of his rents being all the time sequestrated, was a great confusion of his affairs, threatening the entire ruin of his |1692.| fortune. On his petition, the Council now allowed him ‘to go abroad under a sentinel each day from morning to evening furth of the house of Andrew Smith, periwig-maker, at the head of Niddry’s Wynd, in Edinburgh, to which he is confined,’ he finding caution under fifteen hundred pounds sterling to continue a true prisoner as heretofore; at the same time, the sequestration of his rents was departed from.
On the 19th April, Mr Livingstone was allowed to visit Kilsyth under a guard of dragoons, in order to arrange some affairs. But this leniency was of short duration. We soon after find him again in strict confinement in Edinburgh Castle; nor was it till September 1693, that, on an earnest petition setting forth his declining health, he was allowed to be confined to ‘a chamber in the house of Mistress Lyell, in the Parliament Close,’ he giving large bail for his peaceable behaviour. This, again, came to a speedy end, for, being soon after ordered to re-enter his strait confinement in the Castle, he petitioned to be allowed the Canongate Jail instead, and was permitted, as something a shade less wretched than the Castle, to become a prisoner in the Edinburgh Tolbooth. On the 4th of January 1693, he was again allowed the room in the Parliament Close, but on the 8th of February this was exchanged for Stirling Castle. In the course of the first five years of British liberty, Mr Livingstone must have acquired a tolerably extensive acquaintance with the various forms and modes of imprisonment, so far as these existed in the northern section of the island.
Captain John Crighton, once a dragoon in the service of King James, and whose memoirs were afterwards written from his own information by Swift, was kept in jail for twenty-one months after June 1689; then for ten months in a house under a sentinel; since that time in a house, with permission to get a daily walk; ‘which long imprisonment and restraint has been very grievous and expensive to the petitioner (Crighton),’ and ‘has redacted him and his small family to a great deal of misery and want, being a stranger in this kingdom.’ His restraint was likewise relaxed on his giving caution to the extent of a hundred pounds to remain a true prisoner.
Soon after arose the alarm of invasion from France, and all the severities against the suspected Jacobites were renewed. William Livingstone was, in June, confined once more to his chamber at the periwig-maker’s, and Captain John Crighton had to return to a similar restraint. The Earl of Perth, so recently liberated from |1691.| Stirling Castle, was again placed there. At that time, there were confined in Edinburgh Castle the Earls of Seaforth and Home, the Lord Bellenden, and Paterson, Ex-archbishop of Glasgow. In Stirling Castle, besides Lord Perth, lay his relation, Sir John Drummond of Machany,[83] and the Viscount Frendraught, the latter having only six hundred merks per annum (about £34), so that it became of importance that his wife should be allowed to come in and live with him, instead of requiring a separate maintenance; to so low a point had civil broils and private animosities brought this once flourishing family. Neville Payne lay a wretched prisoner in Edinburgh Castle. Sir Robert Grierson of Lagg was contracting sore ailments under protracted confinement in the Canongate Jail. A great number of other men were undergoing their second, and even their third year of confinement, in mean and filthy tolbooths, where their health was unavoidably impaired.
On the 2d of June, Crighton gave in a petition reciting that he had been again put under restraint, and for no just cause, as he had always since the Revolution been favourable to the new government, and on the proclamation of the Convention, had deserted his old service in the Castle, bringing with him thirty-nine soldiers. He was relieved from close confinement, and ordered to be subjected to trial. On the 10th of June, he was ordered to be set at liberty, on caution. Less than two months after, failing to appear on summons, his bond for £100 was forfeited, and the money, when obtained from his security, to be given to Adair the geographer.
On the 14th of June 1692, Captain Wallace represented that he had now been three years a captive, ‘whereby his health is impaired, his body weakened, and his small fortune entirely ruined.’ ‘Yet hitherto, there has been no process against him.’ He entreated that he might be liberated on signing ‘a volunteer banishment,’ and he would ‘never cease to pray that God may bless the nation with ane lasting peace, of [which] he would never be a disturber.’ An order for a process against him was issued.
It was difficult, however, even for the Scottish Privy Council to make a charge of treason against an officer whose only fault was that, being appointed by a lawful authority to defend a post, he had performed the duty assigned to him, albeit at the expense |1692.| of a few lives to the rabble which he was commanded to resist. Still, when the solicitor-general, Lockhart, told them he could not process Captain Wallace for treason ‘without a special warrant to that effect,’ they divided on the subject, and the negative was only carried by a majority.[84]
Happened an affair of private war and violence, supposed to be the last that took place in the county of Renfrew. John Maxwell of Dargavel had ever since the Reformation possessed a seat and desk in the kirk of Erskine, along with a right to bury in the subjacent ground. William Hamilton of Orbieston, proprietor of the estate of Erskine, disputed the title of Dargavel to these properties or privileges, and it came to a high quarrel between the two gentlemen. Finding at length that Dargavel would not peaceably give up what he and his ancestors had so long possessed, Orbieston—who, by the way, was a partisan of the old dynasty, and perhaps generally old-fashioned in his ideas—resolved to drive his neighbour out of it by force. A complaint, afterwards drawn up by Dargavel for the Privy Council, states that William Hamilton of Orbieston, George Maxwell, bailie of Kilpatrick, Robert Laing, miller in Duntocher, John Shaw of Bargarran, Gavin Walkingshaw, sometime of that ilk, came, with about a hundred other persons, ‘all armed with guns, pistols, swords, bayonets, and other weapons invasive,’ and, having appointed George Maxwell, ‘Orbieston’s own bailie-depute,’ to march at their head, they advanced in military order, and with drums beating and trumpets sounding, to the parish kirk of Erskine, where, ‘in a most insolent and violent manner, they did, at their own hand, and without any order of law, remove and take away the complainer’s seat and dask, and sacrilegiously bring away the stones that were lying upon the graves of the complainer’s predecessors, and beat and strike several of the complainer’s tenants and others, who came in peaceable manner to persuade them to desist from such unwarrantable violence.’
Dargavel instantly proceeded with measures for obtaining redress from the Privy Council, when his chief, Sir John Maxwell of Pollock, a member of that all-powerful body, interfered to bring about an agreement between the disputants. With the consent of the Earl of Glencairn, principal heritor of the parish, Dargavel ‘yielded for peace-sake to remove his seat from that |1692.| place of the kirk, where it had stood for many generations;’ while Orbieston on his part agreed that Dargavel ‘should retain his room of burial-place in the east end of the kirk, with allowance to rail it in, and strike out a door upon the gable of it, as he should see convenient.’ This did not, however, end the controversy.
The first glimpse of further procedure which we obtain is from a letter of John Shaw of Bargarran, professing to be a friend of both parties, though he had appeared amongst the armed party led by Orbieston’s bailie-depute. He writes, 23d August, as follows to William Cunningham of Craigends, a decided friend of Dargavel: ‘Sir—The Laird of Orbieston heard when he was last here that Dargavel was intendit to put through a door to his burial-place, which will be (as he says) very inconvenient for Orbieston’s laft [gallery]; so he desired me to acquaint you therewith, that ye wold deall with Dargavel to forbear; otherways he wold take it very ill, and has given orders to some people here to stop his design, if he do it not willingly; wherefor, to prevent further trouble and emulation betwixt the two gentlemen, ye wold do well to advyse him to the contrair either by a lyn or advyse, as ye think most proper. I desyre not to be seen in this, because they are both my friends, and I a weel-wisher to them both. I thought to have waited on you myself; bot, being uncertain of your being at home, gives you the trouble of this lyne, which is all from, sir, your most humble servant, J. Shaw. Ye wold do this so soon as possible.’
There are letters from Craigends to Dargavel, strongly indicating the likelihood that violent measures would again be resorted to by Orbieston, and advising how these might best be met and resisted. But the remainder of the affair seems to have been peaceable. Orbieston applied to the Privy Council for an order to stop Dargavel, apparently proceeding upon the rule long established, but little obeyed, against burying in churches; and the Council did send an order, dated the 29th August, ‘requiring you to desist from striking any door or breaking any part of the church-wall of Erskine, until your right and Orbieston’s right be discusst by the judges competent for preventing further abuse.’ Dargavel immediately sent a petition, shewing how he was only acting upon an agreement with Orbieston, and hereupon the former order was recalled, and Dargavel permitted to have the access he required, however incommodious it might be to Orbieston’s ‘laft.’[85]
The prisoners in the Canongate Tolbooth forced the key from the jailer, and took possession of their prison, which they held out against the magistrates for a brief space. A committee of Privy Council was ordered to go and inquire who had been guilty of this act of rebellion.[86] Viewing the manner in which jails were provided, there can be no doubt that it was a rebellion of the stomach.
Under our present multiplication of newspapers, a piece of false intelligence is so quickly detected, that there is no temptation for the most perverse politician to put such a thing in circulation. In King William’s days, when the printed newspaper barely existed, and the few who were curious about state-affairs had to content themselves with what was called a news-letter—a written circular emanating from a centre in London—a falsehood would now and then prove serviceable to a party, particularly a depressed one.
We get an idea of a piece of the social economy of the time under notice, from a small matter which came under the attention of the Privy Council. William Murray kept a tavern in the Canongate. Each post brought him a news-letter for the gratification of his customers, and which doubtless served to maintain their allegiance to his butt of claret. Just at this time, when there were alarms of an invasion from France, a lie about preparations on the French shore was worth its ink. The lord high chancellor now informed the Council that Murray’s letter was generally full of false news; that he caused destroy the one brought by last post, merely to keep Murray out of trouble; and he had kept up the one just come, ‘in respect there is a paper therein full of cyphers which cannot be read.’ Matters having now become so serious, he had caused Murray to be brought before the Council.
Murray declared before a committee ‘he knows not what person writes the news-letter to him ... he never writes any news from this to London ... he knows not what the cyphers in the paper sent in his letter with this post does signify.’ They sent him under care of a macer to the Tolbooth, to be kept there in close prison, and his papers at home to be searched for matter against their majesties or the government.
On the 2d of June, William Murray represented that he had |1692.| now been a fortnight in jail, and his poor family would be ruined if he did not immediately regain his liberty. The Council caused him to be examined about the cypher-letter, and asked who was his correspondent. We do not learn what satisfaction he gave on these points; but a week later, he was liberated.
On the 15th November, the Privy Council ordered the magistrates of Edinburgh to shut up the Exchange Coffee-house, and bring the keys to them, ‘in respect of the seditious news vented in and dispersed from the said coffee-house.’ A month after, the owners, Gilbert Fyfe and James Marjoribanks, merchants, shewed that, some of their news-letters having once before been kept up from them on account of the offensive contents, they had changed their correspondent, in order that the government might have no such fault to find with them. Moved, however, by malice against them, their old correspondent had addressed to them a letter sure by its contents to bring them into trouble with the officers of state, and it had been the cause of their house being shut up accordingly. Seeing how innocently on their part this had come about, and how prejudicial it was to their interest, the men petitioned for re-possession of their house, which was granted, under caution that they were to vent no news until it was approved of by their majesties’ solicitor, or whoever the Privy Council might appoint, ‘the reviser always setting his name thereto, or at least ane other mark, as having revised the same.’
Not long after, we find the Council in such trouble on account of false news as to be under the necessity of considering some general measure on the subject.
In December, one William Davidson, described as a ‘writer,’ was taken up and put into the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, ‘for writing and spreading of lies and false news;’ and the Privy Council issued an order ‘for delivering of the said William to ane of the officers come from Flanders, to have been carried there as a soldier.’ On its appearing, however, that William ‘is but a silly cripple boy, having had his leg and thigh-bones broke,’ they ordered the magistrates of Edinburgh to banish him from their city, ‘in case they shall find him guilty of the said crime.’
On the 12th of July 1694, we hear something more of this William Davidson. For inadvertently adding to a news-letter a postscript ‘bearing some foolish thing offensive to the government, without affirming whether it was true or false, but only that it was reported,’ he had been condemned to banishment from the city, and also disinherited by a Whiggish father, now |1692.| deceased. He had since lived upon the charity of his relations and acquaintances; but these were now weary of maintaining him, and he was consequently ‘redacted to extream misery.’ Having broken his thigh-bone six several times, he was incapable of any employment but that of writing in a chamber, from which, however, he was debarred by his banishment from Edinburgh. He therefore craved a relaxation of his sentence, offering ‘to take the oath of allegiance and subscribe the assurance, to evidence his sincerity towards the government.’ The poor lad’s petition was complied with.[87]