By slow and safe steps, King James was constantly working for the subjection of Scottish ecclesiastical matters to an episcopal model. At this time, his favourite Scottish minister, the Earl of Dunbar, came down from London, accompanied by two eminent English divines, Dr Abbot (subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury) and Dr Higgins, while a third, named Maxy, came by sea.

On the approach of the earl and his clerical associates, ‘the noblemen, barons, and councillors that were in Edinburgh went out to accompany him into the town. So he entered in Edinburgh with a great train. The chancellor, then provost, the bailies, and many of the citizens, met him at the Nether Bow Port. It was spoken broadly that no small sums of money were sent down with him to be distributed among the ministers and sundry others. The English doctors seemed to have no other direction but to persuade the Scots that there was no substantial difference in religion betwixt the two realms, but only in things indifferent concerning government and ceremonies.’—Cal.

Dundee is described as suffering under ‘the contagious sickness of the pest, and a great many of the houses are infectit therewith, and greater infection like to ensue in respect of the few number of magistrates within the same, and the little care and regard had of the government thereof, ane of the said magistrates being departit this life, and ane other of them visited with disease and infirmity, and not able to undergo sae great pains and travels in his person and otherwise as is requisite at sae necessar a time.’ For these reasons, the Privy Council appointed three citizens to act as assistant-magistrates.—P. C. R.

We hear at this time of one of the last attempts to settle a dispute by regular combat; and it is the more remarkable, as several persons were concerned on each side. On the one part stood ‘the Lord Sinclair, David Seton of Parbroth, and John Sinclair elder and John Sinclair younger, sons to the said Lord Sinclair;’ on the other were George Martin of Cardone and his three sons. A mutual challenge had passed between the parties, ‘with special designation of time, place, form, and manner of the combat,’ and the rencontre would have, to all appearance, taken place, had not some neighbours interfered to prevent it. The parties were summoned before the Privy Council, to answer for their conduct.

Martin and his sons were denounced as rebels for not appearing (July 21).—P. C. R.

The slaughter of Captain James Stewart by Sir James Douglas of Parkhead, in 1596, had not been allowed to pass unnoticed by the Ochiltree family, to which the murdered man belonged. At that time, however, a man of rank was not to be punished as a malefactor in Scotland. His offence was expiated by an assythment, or the king interposed to reconcile the friends of the deceased to the culprit and his friends, as if the affair had been merely an unfortunate quarrel. For years there stood a variance between the Ochiltree Stewarts and the murderer of their relation, and from time to time they had to come under heavy sureties to keep the peace towards each other, Lord Ochiltree and Sir James Douglas (now called Lord Torthorald) in £5000 each; and the brothers and nephews of Stewart in lesser sums. This arrangement had been last renewed on the 30th of May, to endure for a year. All seemed composed—a General Assembly was sitting in Edinburgh—no one seems to have been apprehensive of any immediate quarrel or trouble, when a terrible incident suddenly fell out.

Lord Torthorald was walking one morning, between six and seven o’clock, in the High Street, below the Cross, unaccompanied by any friend or servant, dreading no harm, when William Stewart, nephew of the man he had slain twelve years before, observing him, was unable to restrain the rancorous feeling of the moment, and pulling out a short sword he carried, stabbed him in the back, so that he fell to the ground and instantly died.

William Stewart escaped, and we hear no more of him. The Privy Council, horror-struck at the outrage, had two meetings on the same day to consider what should be done. At the first, before noon, they ordered that the Earl of Morton, James commendator of Melrose, Sir George and Sir Archibald Douglas, his uncles, —— Douglas now of Torthorald, William Douglas, apparent of Drumlanrig, Archibald Douglas of Tofts, and Sir James Dundas of Arniston—all friends of the deceased, and presumably eager to revenge his slaughter—should be confined to their lodgings. Lord Ochiltree, on whom the Douglases might be apt to vent their fury, was likewise commanded to keep within doors. At the second meeting, after noon, they gave an order for the apprehension of the culprit.

There is a remarkable connection of murders recalled by this shocking transaction. Not only do we ascend to Torthorald’s slaughter of Stewart in 1596, and Stewart’s deadly prosecution of Morton to the scaffold in 1581; but William Stewart was the son of the Sir William Stewart who was slain by the Earl of Bothwell in Blackfriars’ Wynd in 1588. This, however, is the last open murder of one gentleman by another which we have to record as taking place on a street in Edinburgh.

Lord Torthorald lies buried under a carved slab in Holyrood Chapel, where the guide reads his name daily to hundreds of visitors, few of whom know what a series of tragic circumstances in old Scottish history lies concentered in the body of him who sleeps below.

The progress of persecution against the Catholics may be traced all through this period by the equal progress of the king’s measures for introducing the episcopal system into the church. A General Assembly, which met at Linlithgow in December 1606, was brought by court influence to give a consent to the principle of permanent moderators for presbyteries—a necessary step to the assumption of entire power over dioceses by the bishops. They sent the act to court, with a petition for fresh securities against the Catholic nobles of the north, and their ladies. James affected to listen to their desires, and promised well, but does not seem to have taken any decisive steps till he found that the act for constant moderators, as interpreted by him, met considerable resistance. He then called another General Assembly, mainly for the purpose of taking ‘strait order’ with the adherents of the proscribed faith.

This reverend body professed to consider the country as in unexampled danger from popery. It is found complaining that Jesuit and seminary priests were allowed to traffic within the land, that papistical books were brought from abroad, and that persons in authority often shewed favour to traffickers and excommunicated papists, ‘such as the abbot of New Abbey and other mass priests, demitted, as is thought, out of ward, not without reward [bribery], and without all warrant of his majesty, and presently tolerated in this country without pursuit.’ Amongst some objects petitioned for from the king, were—that papists of rank be imprisoned, and only Protestants have access to them; that orders be given for down-casting of the Laird of Gight’s chapel, and the house of John Cheyne in Kissilmonth, who receipted all Jesuits and seminary priests; and that order be taken with the pilgrimages—namely, to the Chapel called Ordiquhill, and the Chapel of Grace, and to a well in the bounds of Enzie upon the south side of Spey.

The most important of their actual measures bore reference to the Marquis of Huntly, and the Earls of Angus and Errol, who were considered as the prime supports of popery in the northern section of the kingdom. Huntly we have seen (June 1597) received formally and publicly into the Presbyterian Church, with all appearances of sincerity on his part, while the truth was that he only gave a lip-obedience in order to save his estates and place in the country, of which otherwise he would have been deprived. The hollowness of his professions was soon after sufficiently apparent, for he built a popish chapel in his house, and he continued, as before, to ‘reset’ priests. The Presbyterian tutors imposed on his family may be presumed to have made little progress in their work, as his children all grew up Catholics. Processes had been raised against him in the church-courts for ‘relapse in popery;’ and though the king had tried to screen him from the vengeance he had incurred, it was ineffectual. It was now necessary for James, if he would make way with his episcopal innovations, that he should give proof of sincerity in Protestantism, by leaving his old friend and councillor to the mercy of the General Assembly.

Accordingly, the business being ripe for instantly proceeding, the moderator—being the same Bishop Law who had promised such a sore ‘handling’ of the Catholics to James Melville and his friends in London (see under November 7, 1606)—pronounced the sentence of excommunication ‘after a very solemn manner;’ while the Earl of Dunbar, the king’s commissioner, promised that, ‘forty days being expired from the pronouncing of the sentence, the civil sword should strike without mercy or favour to him or his; and although some of his friends should come and buy his escheat, it should be refused.’—Cal. Arrangements were made for taking the same measures with Errol and Angus, Dunbar promising the like severity with them.

While the Assembly continued sitting, a gentleman came on behalf of the Marquis of Huntly, pleading for a little extension of time ‘till he had perfyter resolution,’ shewing that he was not opiniâtre, as had appeared from his ‘yielding to have conference,’ and from his ‘going to the kirk;’ he entreated to be heard for himself before final condemnation. But the petition was set aside as frivolous, and because he had failed to fulfil his promise given by solemn bond a month ago to communicate before a certain day.—Cal.

The plague broke out in Perth, and continued till the ensuing May, ‘wherein deit young and auld five hundred persons.’—Chron. Perth.

It was reported to the Privy Council that a quarrel had arisen between John Napier of Merchiston, and the sons and daughters of the late Sir Archibald Napier of Edinbellie, regarding the right to the teind sheaves of the lands of Merchiston for the crop of the present year. ‘Baith the said parties,’ says the record, ‘intends to convocate their kin, and sic as will do for them in arms, for leading [home-bringing], and withstanding of leading, of the said teinds; whereupon further inconvenients are like to fall out.’ To prevent breach of the peace, William Napier of Wrightshouses, a neutral person, was ordered to collect the teind sheaves of Merchiston, and account to the Council.—P. C. R. ‘Whilk order,’ says John Napier, ‘is guid eneuch for me, and little to their contentment;’ that is, to the contentment of his Edinbellie relatives.330

This, it must be owned, is a new light in which to view the inventor of the logarithms. It is, however, worthy of observation, that a dispute between other parties on the same grounds is described in precisely similar terms, and the same arrangement made to preserve the peace.

‘In the beginning of September, the Duke of Wirtemberg, a prince in Germany, a young man of comely behaviour, accompanied with twenty-four in train, came to see the country. He was convoyed from place to place by noblemen, by the king’s direction, and weel enterteened. His train were all clothed in black.’—Cal.

The duke was a great friend and ally of the king, who, soon after his accession, sent Lord Spencer with a splendid ambassage to Stuttgart, to invest his serene highness with the Order of the Garter.

The records of Privy Council are still full of instances of assaults made by men of rank and others with deadly weapons upon persons against whom they bore hatred. It would be wearisome to enumerate even those which occur throughout a single year. It is to be remembered there were famous acts of parliament against going armed defensively or offensively; yet in every case we find the guilty parties set about their vengeful proceedings in steel bonnets, gauntlets, and plait-sleeves, and with swords and pistolets.

As an example—one Gavin Thomson, burgess of Peebles, was held at hatred by Charles Pringle, another burgess; we do not learn for what cause. One day in September 1608, as Gavin was walking in sober and quiet manner along the High Street of the burgh, Charles Pringle, accompanied by nine or ten persons, all armed with lances and whingers, set upon and ‘cruelly hurt and wounded the said Gavin upon the left hand, drave him perforce back, and housit him within the dwelling-place and lock-fast yetts of Isobel Anderson; and were it not by the providence of God, that the Person and Minister of Peebles, accompanied with some others weel-affected persons to the peace of the said town, and knawing the said Gavin his innocency, come forth to the redding,331 they had not failit, as they had begun, with great jeists, trees, and fore-hammers, to have surprised and strucken up the yetts and doors of the said dwelling-house, and within the same to have unmercifully slain and murdered the said Gavin.’

For several subsequent months, Pringle and his associates had lain in wait at divers times to kill Gavin, so that he had been prevented from attending kirk or market, or going about the business of his farm. At length, on the 2d of December, as he was walking peaceably on the street, they attacked him again, armed as before. ‘Being informit that he had come furth of his house, they first bostit and menaced him aff the hie street, and he retiring himself hame again in quietness, they all followit and pursewit him with drawn swords,’ when one of the party, Alexander Dalmahoy, ‘by his sword, with ane great stane of aucht pund wecht in his hand, hurt the said Gavin his thie-bone.’ The assailants ‘hurt and woundit William Murray of Romanno and divers other gentlemen redders, and in end fiercely pursewit Gavin and housit him within the dwelling-house of the close yetts of William Elliot, and cryit for jeists and fore-hammers, and had not failit to have strucken up the doors and yetts thereof, and to have slain the said Gavin within the same, were not timous relief come at hand.’ The active parties in this wickedness were denounced rebels by the Council.—P. C. R.

William Turnbull of Airdrie lived in Edinburgh, having in his family a daughter, Elizabeth, eleven years of age. He admitted to his house, and often civilly entertained Robert Napier son of William of Wrightshouses—a gentleman who has just been under our notice. On the 4th of October, Turnbull complained to the Privy Council that, on the 29th of September, Robert Napier had by craft and violence taken away his daughter, under cloud of night, and now keeps her in some obscure place, refusing to render and deliver her up to her father. The Council caused Robert Napier to be denounced as a rebel for this fact.

The abduction of women, of which some examples were formerly given, was still an offence of frequent occurrence. On the subsequent 8th of December, there is a complaint before the Council from Margaret Stewart, widow, that as she was walking home from her booth to her dwelling-house in Edinburgh, between seven and eight o’clock in the evening of the 5th of the same month, accompanied by her orphan grandchild, Katherine Weir, fourteen years of age, a young citizen, named William Geddes, had beset her with six men armed like himself with swords, gauntlets, steel bonnets, and plait-sleeves, and violently took the child from her, ‘without pity of her manifold exclamations and crying.’ Geddes was likewise denounced rebel.

‘There was an earthquake at nine hours at night, sensible enough at St Andrews, Cupar, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, but more sensible at Dumbarton; for there the people were so affrayed, that they ran to the kirk, together with their minister, to cry to God, for they looked presently for destruction. It was thought the extraordinar drouth in the summer and winter before was the cause of it.’—Cal.

At Perth, this earthquake shook the east end of the Tolbooth, insomuch that ‘many stones fell aff it.’—Chron. Perth.

At Aberdeen, where the shock excited great alarm, the kirk-session met, and accepting the earthquake as ‘a document that God is angry against the land, and against this city in particular, for the manifold sins of the people,’ appointed a solemn fast to be held on the ensuing day, and ‘the covenant to be renewed by the haill people with God, by halding up of their hands publicly before God in his sanctuary, and promising by his grace to forbear in time coming from their sins.’ There was one particular sin which was thought to have had a great concern in bringing about the earthquake—namely, the salmon-fishing practised on the Dee on Sunday. Accordingly, the proprietors of the salmon-fishings were called before the session, and rebuked. ‘Some,’ says the session record, ‘promist absolutely to forbear, both by himselfs and their servands in time coming; other promised to forbear, upon the condition subscryvant; and some plainly refusit anyway to forbear.’332

‘The Earl of Mar declared to the [Privy] Council that some women were ta’en in Broughton, as witches, and being put to ane assize, and convict, albeit they persevered constant in their denial to the end, yet they were burnt quick [alive], after sic ane cruel manner, that some of them deit in despair, renuncand and blasphemand, and others, half burnt, brak out of the fire, and was cast in quick in it again, while [till] they were burnt to the deid.’333

‘... the wind did blow so boisterously, that the like was not heard in the memory of man. Houses in burgh and land were thrown down with the violence of it; trees rooted up, corn-stacks and hay-stacks blown away. Some men passing over bridges were driven over violently and killed. The wind continued vehement many days and weeks, even till mid-March, howbeit not in the same measure that it blowed this day.’—Cal.

The book entitled Regiam Majestatem, containing the ancient laws of Scotland, seems to have been printed by a contribution from the burghs. In April this year, we find the magistrates of Glasgow charged to make payment of £100 on this account. In September, the learned author, Sir John Skene, had some difficulty with his printer, Thomas Finlayson, of importance enough to come under the attention of the Privy Council. It was alleged that Thomas, after perfyting the Scottish volume, ‘upon some frivole consait and apprehension of his own, without ony warrant of law or pretence of reason,’ maliciously refused to deliver the volume to Sir John, ‘but shifts and delays him fra time to time with foolish and impertinent excuses, to Sir John’s heavy hurt and prejudice.’ The Lords of Council ordered Thomas to deliver the book to its author within eight days, on pain of being denounced rebel; and ‘whereas there is some little difference and question betwixt the said parties anent their comptis,’ a committee was appointed ‘to sort the same, and put them to ane rest.’—P. C. R.

The severities called for by the General Assembly against the papist nobles and others, had been, to appearance, backed up by the royal power. The Marquis of Huntly was actually in prison at Stirling as an excommunicated rebel. The king probably felt this a high price for the soothing of Presbyterian scruples regarding episcopacy; but it had so far been paid. He contemplated having the observance of Christmas brought in at the end of the year; and it was therefore advisable to shew a little further earnestness in the right direction.

By the activity of Spottiswoode, archbishop of Glasgow, John Hamilton, a zealous trafficking priest, was apprehended—an act the more important that this culprit was uncle to the king’s advocate. Another priest, named Paterson, was taken with all his vestments, while celebrating mass in a house in the Canongate in Edinburgh before an audience of thirty persons. These must, of course, have been gratifying proofs of the royal zeal, albeit Calderwood cannot repress a bitter remark as to the ‘tolerable entertainment’ allowed to the prisoners (the allowance made in another case for an incarcerated priest, and probably in these also, was a merk—1s. 1-1/3d. sterling—per diem), while ministers incarcerated for opposition to the king’s episcopal innovations ‘were left to their shifts.’

About the same time, the archbishop went with a party to the town of New Abbey, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, and there broke into the house of Mr Gilbert Brown, former abbot of New Abbey, ‘and having found a great number of popish books, copes, chalices, pictures, images, and such other popish trash, he most worthily and dutifully as became both a prelate and a councillor, on a mercat-day, at a great confluence of people in the hie street of the burgh of Dumfries, did burn all those copes, vestments, and chalices,’ delivering up the books to Maxwell of Kirkconnel, to be afterwards dealt with. The Privy Council (June 13, 1609) allowed this to be good service on the part of the archbishop, and granted him a gift of the books left unburnt.—P. C. R.

In the parliament held a few days after the last date, several acts were passed against popery—one ordaining that pedagogues sent abroad with the sons of noblemen and others, should be duly licensed by a bishop; another that the young persons so sent abroad should remain at places where ‘the religion’ is professed, and ‘where there is no cruel inquisition;’ a third for confiscating the property of papists to the king’s use; a fourth was meant to deprive Catholics of all benefit from the legal system of the country. The more severe class of Presbyterians looked on, with no inclination to object to these measures, but only with a disbelief in the sincerity of the government which had brought them forward. They had begun to see that it was ‘to grace the bishops, and procure them greater credit and authority in the country,’ that popery was thus dealt with.—Cal.

We have seen that, so lately as September 1606, the Borders were reduced to obedience by a moral medicine of considerable sharpness, administered by the Earl of Dunbar; that is to say, one hundred and forty thieves had been hanged. We now find that the effect was only temporary, for it had become necessary for the earl to go once more to Dumfries to hold a justice-court. On this occasion, he was equally severe with such offenders as were in custody, causing many to be hanged.—Cal. The Chancellor Dunfermline wrote to the king that Lord Dunbar ‘has had special care to repress, baith in the in-country and on the Borders, the insolence of all the proud bangsters, oppressors, and nembroths [Nimrods], but [without] regard or respect to ony of them; has purgit the Borders of all the chiefest malefactors, robbers, and brigands as were wont to reign and triumph there, as clean, and by as great wisdom and policy, as Hercules sometime is written to have purged Augeas, the king of Elide, his escuries; and by the cutting aff ... the Laird of Tynwald, Maxwell, sundry Douglases, Johnstons, Jardines, Armstrangs, Beatisons, and sic others, magni nominis luces, in that broken parts, has rendered all those ways and passages betwixt your majesty’s kingdoms of Scotland and England, as free and peaceable, as Phœbus in auld times made free and open the ways to his awn oracle in Delphos, and to his Pythic plays and ceremonies, by the destruction of Phorbas and his Phlegians, all thieves, voleurs, bandsters, and throat-cutters. These parts are now, I can assure your majesty, as lawful, as peaceable, and as quiet, as any part in any civil kingdom of Christianity.’334

This was too happy a consummation to be quite realised. We find, not long after, a representation going up to the king from the well-disposed people of the Borders, shewing that matters were become as bad as ever. It is a curious document, full of Latin quotations. The thieves, it says, are like the beasts of the field, according to the words of Cicero in his oration for Cluentius; quæ, fame dominante, ad eum locum ubi aliquando pastæ sunt, revertuntur. Lord Dunbar being now gone with his justice-courts, they are returned to their old evil courses, and there is nothing which they will not attempt. ‘Wild incests, adulteries, convocations of lieges, shooting and wearing of hagbuts, pistolets, and lances, daily bloodsheds, oppression, and disobedience in civil matters, neither are nor has been punished ... there is no more account made of going to the horn, than to the ale-house.’ Lord Scone and his guard are of no use, for they favour their friends. ‘If diligent search were made ... there would be found ane grit number of idle people, without any calling, industry, or lawful means to live by, except it be upon the blood of the poorest and most obedient sort.’

The final attempt to plant the Lewis took place this year, under the care of only two adventurers, Sir George Hay (subsequently chancellor of Scotland) and Sir James Spens of Wormiston. The Lord of Kintail had in the interval made an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a grant of the island.

The two undertakers went to the island with a force which they considered sufficient to meet the opposition of the pertinacious Niel Macleod. ‘The Lord of Kintail did privately and underhand assist Niel Macleod, and sent his brother, Rorie Mackenzie, openly with some men to aid the undertakers by virtue of the king’s commission. He promised great friendship to the adventurers, and sent unto them a supply of victuals in a ship from Ross. In the meantime he sendeth quietly to Niel Macleod, desiring him to take the ship by the way, that the adventurers, trusting to these victuals, and being disappointed, might thereby be constrained to abandon the island, which fell out accordingly; for Sir George Hay and Sir James Spens failing to apprehend Niel, and lacking victuals for their army, they wearied of the bargain, and dismissed all the neighbouring forces. Sir George Hay and Wormiston retired into Fife, leaving some of their men in the island to keep the fort, until they should send unto them supply of men and victuals. Whereupon Niel Macleod, assisted by his nephew ... and some other of the Lewis men, invaded the undertakers’ camp, burnt the fort, apprehended the men which were left behind them in the island, and sent them home safely into Fife, since which time they never returned again into the island.’—G. H. S.

The Lord of Kintail afterwards obtained possession of the isle of Lewis, and Niel, thoroughly circumvented by the Clan Kenzie, was driven for refuge with a small company to a fortified rock called Berissay. ‘The Clan Kenzie then gathered together the wives and children of those that were in Berissay, and such as, by way of affinity or consanguinity, within the island, did appertein to Niel and his followers, and placed them all upon a rock within the sea, where they might be heard and seen from Berissay. They vowed and protested that they would suffer the sea to overwhelm them the next flood, if Niel did not presently surrender the fort; which pitiful spectacle did so move Niel Macleod and his company to compassion, that immediately they yielded the rock and left the Lewis; whereupon the women and children were rescued and rendered.’—G. H. S.

This unfortunate insular chief, falling into the hands of his enemies, was taken to Edinburgh, and there executed in April 1613.

There was a Presbyterian prejudice against burying in churches, and the blame of kirk-burial had not only been a subject for the pamphleteer, but the legislature. Nevertheless, John Schaw of Sornbeg in Ayrshire, on the death of his wife, resolved to inhume her corpse in his parish kirk of Galston, in spite of all the minister and session could say or do to the contrary. Accompanied by his brother and his ‘bailie,’ and attended by a numerous party, ‘all bodin in feir of weir,’ he came to the church, broke up the door with fore-hammers, and dug a grave, in which he deposited his spouse. He was afterwards glad to make public repentance for this fact, and pay twenty pounds to the box-master of the kirk, besides which the Privy Council ordained him to appear again as a penitent, and solemnly promise never again to attempt to bury any corpse within the church.’—P. C. R.

Notwithstanding Lord Ochiltree’s protestations of innocence regarding the assassination of Lord Torthorald, the relatives of the latter continued to bear a deadly grudge at him, and seemed likely to wreak it out in some wild manner. This came to the knowledge of the king, who felt himself called upon to interfere. The Privy Council, in obedience to the royal letters, had the parties summoned before them. William Lord Douglas and James Lord Torthorald appeared before them that day, and undertook, before the 20th of September, that ‘they sall owther pursue the said Lord Ochiltree criminally before his majesty’s justice in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, for airt, part, rede, and counsel, of the slaughter of umwhile Lord Torthorald, or then that they sould reconceil themselves with the said Lord Ochiltree, and be agreit with him.’—P. C. R.

Under favour of the king, a number of strangers had been introduced into the country to practise the making of cloths of various kinds. A colony of them was settled in the Canongate, Edinburgh, headed by one John Sutherland and a Fleming named Joan Van Headen, and ‘are daily exercised in their art of making, dressing, and litting of stuffis, and gives great licht and knowledge of their calling to the country people.’ These industrious and inoffensive men, notwithstanding the letters of the king, investing them with various privileges, were now much molested by the magistrates of the Canongate, with a view to forcing them to become burgesses and freemen there in the regular way. On an appeal to the Privy Council, their exemption was affirmed.

From London, where the pest had long been, a ship had lately come to Leith, and was now lying at the west side of the bulwark there, prepared to discharge her cargo. The case looked the more alarming, as several of the mariners had died of plague during the voyage. The Lords of Council immediately issued orders that the vessel should be taken to Inchkeith, where her cargo should be taken out and handled, cleansed, and dressed, the inhabitants affording all facilities for that purpose, ‘with such houses and other necessaries as are in the said inch.’—P. C. R.

The time was approaching when, in accordance with a recent act, the Egyptians were to depart from Scotland, under pain of being liable thereafter to be killed by any one without challenge of law. In anticipation of this dread time, one of the nation, named Moses Faw, appeared before the authorities of the kingdom, and pleaded for permission to remain under protection of the laws, on the ground that he had wholly withdrawn himself and his family from that infamous society, and was willing to give surety for his future good behaviour. The desired permission was extended to him on that condition.—P. C. R.

Having of late shewn some zeal against popery, King James thought he might now effect one little change essential to episcopacy, without more than enough of outcry from the earnest Presbyterians. By his order, sent by Chancellor Seton, it was arranged that Christmas-day should henceforth be solemnly held in Scotland. The Court of Session accordingly rose for that day, and till the 8th of January ensuing. ‘This,’ says Calderwood, ‘was the first Christmass vacance of the session keepit since the Reformation. The ministers threatened that the men who devised that novelty for their own advancement, might receive at God’s hand their reward to their overthrow, for troubling the people of God with beggarly ceremonies long since abolished with popery. Christmass was not so weel keepit by feasting and abstinence from work in Edinburgh these thretty years before, an evil example to the rest of the country.’

‘About the end of Januar, the Scotch Secretar, Sir Alexander Hay, came from court with sundry directions, and among the rest, for the habit of the senators of the College of Justice [which the Chancellor had told the king was now, since the departure of the court to England, ‘the special spunk of light and fondament of your majesty’s estate, and only ornament of this land‘],335 advocates, clerks, and scribes; which was proclaimed in the beginning of Februar—viz., that the senators should wear a purple robe or gown in judgment and in the streets, when they were to meet or were dissolved; that advocates, clerks, and scribes should wear black gowns in the judgment-hall and in the streets ... the provost and bailies of burghs and their councillors should wear black when they sat in council and judgment; that ministers should wear black clothes, and in the pulpit black gowns; that bishops and doctors of divinity should wear black cassikins syde to [long enough to reach] their knee, black gowns above, and a black crape about their neck.... On the 15th of Februar, the Lords of the Session and the bishops put on their gowns and came down from the chancellor’s lodging, with their robes, to the Tolbooth [the court-house—a section of St Giles’s Church]. All the robes, except the chancellor’s, were of London cloth, purple coloured, with the fashion of an heckled cloak from the shoulders to the middle, with a long syde hood on the back, the gown and hood lined with red sattin. The people flocked together to behold them. The bishops were ordeened to have their gowns with lumbard sleeves, according to the form of England, with tippets and crapes about their craigs [necks]; which was performed.’—Cal.

On the 20th of June, the lord provost of Edinburgh exhibited in his council ‘twa gowns, the ane red, the other black claith linit in the breists with sable furring, sent to his lordship by the king’s majesty for to be worn by him, and to be patterns of the gowns to be worn by the provost and bailies, and sic of the council and town as are appointed thereto by his majesty.’336

Alexander Kirkpatrick, younger of Closeburn, being in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh for the slaughter of James Carmichael, son to John Carmichael of Spothe, the Lady Amisfield, wife of a neighbour, came to the prison, and entered into conference with the keeper in his private apartments. At her persuasion, the man allowed ‘Young Closeburn’ to come to speak with her; and she then executed her design of exchanging clothes with him, and so allowing him to escape. The lady was warded in the Castle; but what ultimately became of her does not appear.—Pit.

A General Assembly was held at Glasgow, so constituted and managed by royal authority that the king at length accomplished one grand portion of his ecclesiastical scheme for Scotland, in being acknowledged as the head of the kirk. Three English divines, chaplains to the king, Dr Christopher Hampton, Dr Phineas Hodson, and Dr George Meriton, were present to use their influence in reconciling the country to ‘a more comely and peaceable government in our kirk than was presently.’ But for the absence of the six banished ministers, and the confinement of zealous, fiery, fearless Andrew Melville in the Tower, it might not have been possible to carry this measure. The Presbyterian historians also insinuate that bribes were used with the members, whence they take leave to call it the Golden Assembly.

‘Immediately after this, the Bishops of Glasgow and Brechin took journey to court, to report what was done, and got great thanks frae the king. Galloway followed, who all three abode there till the month of November, at what time ... by a special commission from the king to the Bishop of London to that effect, the Archbishop of Glasgow and the other two were solemnly ordained, inaugurat, and consecrated, with anointing of oil and other ceremonies, according to the English fashion.’ [The ceremony, which took place in the chapel at London House, was celebrated by a banquet, at which ‘gifts were bestowed, and gloves were distributed, in token of the solemnisation of the marriage between the bishops and their kirks.’—Cal.] The three new prelates, ‘thereafter [January 23, 1611] returning to Scotland, did to the Archbishop of St Andrews, in St Andrews, as they were done withal at Lambeth, as near as they could possibly imitate; and thereafter the two archbishops consecrated the rest, and the new entrant bishops as they were nominat by the king ... first quietly, as being ashamed of the foolish guises in it, but afterward more and more solemnly, as their estate grew.’—Row. ‘All of them [the whole thirteen] deserted their flocks, and usurped thereafter jurisdiction over the ministers and people of their dioceses.’—Cal.

At the same time the king established in Scotland a court of High Commission, by which the new hierarchy acquired great power over the people.

‘The king was so earnest upon the creating of bishops, that he cared not what it cost him.... In buying in their benefices out of the hands of the noblemen that had them, in buying votes at Assemblies, in defraying of all their other charges, and promoving of all their adoes and business, as coming to, and going from, and living at court prelate-like; that is, sumptuously and gorgeously in apparel, house, diet, attendants, etc., [he] did employ (by the confession of such as were best acquainted with, and were actors in, these businesses) above the sum of £300,000 sterling money, one huge thing indeed; but sin lying heavy on the throne, crying aloud for wrath on him and his posterity, is infinitely sadder nor £300,000 sterling!‘—Row.

The Marquis of Huntly, and other papists of rank, had meanwhile been suffering considerably in order to dispose the Presbyterian opposition to yield to the king’s wishes. But now there was no longer any immediate occasion for severity. The marquis, professing to be once more thoroughly Protestant, was relieved from excommunication, and allowed to return to his palace in the north. With Errol there was greater difficulty. The king, through the Earl of Dunbar, had promised that he should lose his lands. He had, what Huntly happily wanted, a painfully tender conscience. One day, he was brought to promise that he would subscribe; but that very night he fell into such a trouble of mind as to have been on the point of killing himself. ‘Early next morning, the Archbishop of Glasgow being called, he confessed his dissimulation with many tears, and, beseeching them that were present to bear witness of his remorse, was hardly brought to any settling all that day.’ By some treacherous excuse, lenity was extended to Errol also. Such was the way in which the king performed his engagements on this solemn subject. ‘The turn being done,’ says Calderwood, ‘promises were not keepit.’

An act was passed by the Privy Council in favour of Anthony Aurego, Anthony Soubouga, and Fabiano Fantone, allowing them to live in the country, and practise their ‘trade and industry of making hecks and other machines for taking of rottons and mice.’—P. C. R.

Piracy was at this time a flourishing trade, and the Scottish and Irish seas were a favourite walk of its practitioners. Vessels of various countries besides Scotland, were pursued by these marauders and mercilessly plundered, their crews seized, tortured, and sometimes slaughtered, or else set ashore on desolate coasts, that they might not be readily able to take measures of redress. The Long Island, on the west coast of Ireland, appears to have served as a regular station for pirate ships; they also haunted much the Western Isles of Scotland. In 1609, a piratical crew, headed by two captains named Perkins and Randell, started from the Long Island in a vessel of 200 tons, named the Iron Prize, attended by a nimble pinnace of about half that burden; and for some months they roamed about the northern seas, picking up whatever small-craft came in their way. They even had the audacity to shew themselves at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. The attention of the Privy Council being called to their proceedings, three vessels were fitted out in a warlike manner at Leith, and sent in quest of the pirates. Perkins and Randell had meanwhile come to Orkney to refit. They ‘landed at the castle, and came to the town thereof,’ where they ‘behaved themselves maist barbarously, being ever drunk, and fechting amang themselves, and giving over themselves to all manner of vice and villany.’ Three of them attacked a small vessel belonging to the Earl of Orkney, lying on the shore, and were taken prisoners in the attempt by the earl’s brother, James Stewart. A day or two after this event, the three government ships made their appearance, and immediately a great part of the piratical company made off in the pinnace. A pursuit proving vain, the government ships returned and attacked the Iron Prize; and after a desperate conflict, in which they had two men killed and sundry wounded, they succeeded in capturing the whole remaining crew, amounting to nearly thirty men, who, with those previously taken, were brought to Leith and tried (July 26). Being found guilty, twenty-seven of these wretched men, including the two captains, were hung upon a gibbet next day at the pier of Leith. Three were reserved in the hope of their giving useful information.