I. Introductory.
From the earliest period
of which we have any historical knowledge, Inverness has been the
principal town in the territory which we now know as the Highlands. In
the sixth century it was the-capital of the kingdom of the Northern
Picts, and at or near it was the king’s palace, to which St Columba made
his memorable journey in 565. From its position at the head of the Moray
Filth, and at the crossing of the ancient routes from the east to the
west and from the north to the south, its standing as a trade centre
must always have been an important one. Long before the Norseman or the
Saxon visited our shores Pictish merchants bought and sold within its
narrow bounds, and supplied the men of the hills and glens with such
rude wares as were at their command, in exchange for the produce of the
country and the spoils of the chase. The union of the kingdoms of the
Picts and the Scots introduced fresh blood, greatly to the advantage of
trade; and the little town’s prosperity was further increased by the
settlement of Flemish and Frisian immigrants. The remote community was
favoured and protected by the early Scottish kings, and charters
bestowing exceptional rights and privileges on the burgh were granted by
William the Lion and his successors. After that king’s time Saxon names
prevailed among the burgesses, but Celts are also found—descendants of
the old inhabitants, remaining Pictish in blood, but now speaking the
Gaelic instead of the Pictish tongue. The foreign settlers intermarried
with native families, and in time became more Celt than Saxon. The view
that Inverness was a Saxon colony is only partially correct, and there
is no ground for the assumption that the general Highlander was an enemy
to the community. A Lord of the Isles or an Earl of Ross might, in the
course of his wars and feuds, attack Inverness Castle and the town which
flourished under its wing, just as he attacked the castles of Urquhart
and Ruthven and the districts protected by them. But the Highland
Capital existed for the benefit and’ convenience of the Highlands, and
the fact was fully appreciated by chief and clansman alike. For a long
period, it is true, the Saxon took more kindly to trade than the Celt,
who rejoiced more in the free and open life of the country; but the
Celt’s prejudice against town life and commercial pursuits gradually
wore away, and by the sixteenth century we find men of Gaelic names
generally engaged as merchants, churchmen, and lawyers, not only in our
burgh, but all over the Highlands. In the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, while we meet such well-known Inverness names as Vass,
Cuthbert, Schivez, Dunbar, Barbour, Hossack, Alves, and Inglis, which
reveal their Saxon or at least their southern origin, although they were
frequently borne by men in whose veins much Celtic blood flowed, we also
find that the great majority of the traders and business men bore Gaelic
names, or names which had come to be considered Gaelic, Many of those
Highlanders were small lairds, or the younger sons of larger lairds. The
families of Mackintosh and Grant gave prominent merchants to Inverness;
the Chisholms of Sfcrathglass, the Cummings of Dulshangie in
Glen-Urquhart, and the Macleans of Dochgarroch, gave merchants and
lawyers; and as an instance of historical repetition, I may be allowed
to mention that my own great-great-grandfather, John Mackay, laird of
Achmonie, in Glen-Urquhart, practised law in Inverness from about 1680
till after 1715, and that he acted as solicitor in connection with the
Grant estates in that glen, as I happen to do today. . The Forbeses of
Culloden and the Robertsons of Inshes found the ancient burgh a
profitable field of enterprise; and among the gentlemen who came from a
greater distance was Alexander Stuart, of the family of Kinchardine in
Strathspey, who settled as a merchant in Inverness about the middle of
the seventeenth century, and whose son, Bailie John Stuart (or Steuart,
as he wrote the name), was a merchant of position in the town from about
1700 till 1752.
Early travellers and
writers have pictured the Highlands and the condition of the Highland
people in gloomy colours, and if their accounts are true we must believe
that our forefathers were the most miserable of men. There is, however,
no ground for such belief. The men who described the Highlands in the
old days were English or Lowland Scots, and before the time of Oliver
Cromwell few of them ventured within the Highland bounds. Their
descriptions are mainly founded upon the marvellous tales which floated
among the Lowlanders concerning the “Wild Scots” who inhabited the
mountains, and are not to be relied upon for historical accuracy. Even
after Cromwell's soldiers made the Highlands comparatively well known,
the Southrons who visited them and recorded their experiences strained
after the marvellous to an extent which renders their accounts
unreliable. Burt's Letters have been taken seriously by historians, and
Lord Macaulay founded upon them his picturesque but untrustworthy
description of Inverness and the Highlands at the time of the
Revolution. But Burt, who wrote for the amusement of a friend in
England, and perhaps also for his own, exaggerated greatly, and in many
points his picture is a caricature. The mountains and glens are still
with us, and we know that the mountains are not so high or the glens so
dark and deep as he depicts them. We know that a traveller from
Inverness to the barracks of Bernera in Glenelg had not to ride over the
stupendous perpendicular precipices or through the bottomless bogs which
he encountered, and that there is no lake in Strathglass which is so
high and so shut in by top-joining mountains that the sun’s rays never
reach it, and that it is covered with ice all the year round*. We also
know that Highland eagles do not steal colts and calves. These pictures,
which he draws of the country, are not more distorted than his picture
of the town. According to him, Inverness was a collection of thatched
and almost windowless hovels. The letter-books of Bailie John Stuart,
upon which this paper is chiefly based, [These letter-books caver the
period from 1715 to 1752. For the use of them I am indebted to the
courtesy of the Bailie’s descendant, W. Hay-Hewton, Esq., of Newton,
East Lothian.] toll us that large cargoes of slates and consignments of
glass, were regularly brought into Inverness long before Burt’s time, as
well as during his years of residence in the town. [According- to the
introduction to his Letters, Burt came to Inverness about 1730. He
himself, however, states that he was there in 1725. He repeatedly
appears in the Bailie’s letter-books between 1726 and the end of 1729.]
Well built and commodious houses, which he daily saw during those years,
still stand, and more of a similar character have only been swept away
within living memory. The plan which he himself gives of the burgh, and
which is drawn from a careful survey, shows it to have been a
regularly-built town of four main streets—Bridge Street, East Street
(High Street), Castle Street, and Church Street. In those streets the
merchants and lawyers had their residences and shops and offices—Bailie
John Stuart’s house being about the middle of Church Street. It appears
to have been a prominent buildings On 26th September, 1721, the
magistrates and town council, in appointing constables for the ensuing
year, allocated the part of Church Street above the Bailie’s house to
Alexander Fraser and William Binnie, and the part of the street below
his house to John Gibson and John Monro.
The export trade of
Inverness consisted from early times of cattle, horses, fish, skins,
wool, and furs. According to Boece, “mony wild hors” were reared in the
Loch Ness district, and we know from other sources that that was the
case. He also tells us that in the same district there were “mony
martrikis [martens], bevers, quhitredis [weasels], and toddis [foxes];
the furringis and skinnis of thaim ar coft [bought] with gret price
amang uncouth murchitudis.” Native timber, floated down from
Glenmaristcn and Loch Ness-side, or from the glens of Strathglass, was
also exporter!, or made into trading vessels, or into galleys for the
chiefs and chieftains of the Hebrides and the West Coast. As early as
1249, the Earl of St. Pol and Blois had built for him in Inverness a “
wonderful ship,” which carried himself and his followers to the Holy
Land. In exchange for the exports, the manufactures and productions of
England and the South of Scotland, and of the Continent, were brought to
Inverness, and sent into the glens. In 1578, Leslie, Bishop of Ross,
describes our bur^li as “a toune nocht of smal reputatione”; but in
common with other Scottish towns it for years suffered severely from the
removal of the Scottish Court to London in 1603, and from the wars and
troubles of the reign of Charles the First; and Tucker, who in 1655
prepared a Report for Cromwell on the Scottish ports, records that there
was then connected with our town only one merchant and one small vessel.
But it soon entered on a new career of prosperity, and the
correspondence of Bailie Stuart shows that in his time it had an
extensive home and foreign trade. Neighbouring chiefs and lairds had
their town houses within its bounds and sent their boys to its grammar
school, the annual “ haranguing ” at which was an event of interest.
That school was not its only educational institution. In 1752' the
Bailie writes to a married daughter in the South: —“ Wee have verie good
schools of all kinds here, and vast many young girles sent here to be
educat.”
II. Bailie John Stuart.
The Barons of Kinchardine
were of royal descent, the first of them being Walter Stewart, son of
Alexander Stewart, the Wolf of Badenoch, who was a son of King Robert
the Second. Walter was knighted for his valour at the battle of Harlaw,
and he and his descendants continued to hold their beautiful estate in
Strathspey until 1661, when it was sold to the Gordons. The eighth Baron
was also named Walter, and from him was descended the Bailie, who was
the son of Alexander, son. of Robert Og, son of Robert, son of Walter.
In the Bailie’s veins there flowed not only royal blood, but also the
blood of the chiefs of Grant, Mackintosh, Macgregor, and Cameron; and he
and his first and second wives were by blood or marriage connected with
almost every leading family within the central Highlands. His father,
whom we find engaged in Continental trade, and seriously ill in 1718,
probably died in that year. In any case, he was dead before September,
1728, when his widow’s death is referred to by her son, the Bailie, who
records that she was “a vertuous good woman.”
The Bailie himself was
bom on 2nd September, 1676, and was actively engaged in business on his
own account before 1700. His correspondence shows him to have been a man
of education and culture, well trained in mercantile matters and in law.
He was married, first, to Marion, daughter of Bailie Robert Rose, of the
family of Kilravock. She died early in life, and, for his second wife,
he took Ann, daughter of Norman Macleod of Drynoch in Skye, who survived
him.
During his long business
career—from about 1700 to about 1752—he led a life of extreme activity.
For years he appeared to prosper—giving the closest attention to his
business as merchant, and to his duties as factor on the Earl of Moray’s
Lordship of Petty. He also devoted time to municipal affairs, serving on
the town council of Inverness from 1703 to 1716. He was a magistrate of
the burgh from September, 1713, to 1715, and was ever afterwards known
as Bailie Stuart. He was a man of speculative disposition and sanguine
temperament, and he ventured and trusted too much. The result was that
while other Inverness merchants of his class, such as Forbes of
Culloden, Dunbar of i )alcross, Barbour of Aldourie, the Duffs of
Drummuir and Muir-town, Fraser of Fairfield, and, at a later period,
Inglis of Kings-millc;, and Robertson of Aultnaskiach, made money and
became landed proprietors, he, who exceeded them all in industry and
enterprise, died in poverty.
III. The Bailie’s Thade.
Bailie Stuart was a
merchant in the larger sense of the word, and not in the Scottish sense
of shopkeeper. So far as his letter-books show, he had no shop—his
business being entirely a counting-house one. Nothing came amiss to him,
and for more than half a century he carried on a home and foreign trade
of a very extensive and varied kind. He purchased oatmeal on the
seaboard of the Moray Firth and all round the coast to Montrose, and to
an even larger extent in Caithness, and shipped it to the West Coast and
the Hebrides in large quantities. His best customers were the garrisons
of Fort-William, of Beraera in Glenelg, and of Duart in Mull, and the
men who worked the lead mines of Strontian and Glenelg. To the West he,
as a rule, sent the meal by ship round Cape Wrath; but sometimes he
forwarded it on horseback to the east end of Loch Ness, from where it
was taken by small boats or the Government frigate to Kilchuimen (now
Fort-Augustus), whence it was again conveyed on horseback to Inverlochy.
In 1717 he supplied the military Governor of Fort-William with 1000
bolls, and he continued for many years to supply that fort, as well as
the other garrisons which I have mentioned. He also supplied the chiefs
and gentlemen of the Highlands and Islands with that useful article of
food, as well as with other commodities. What his wares were, and what
the return cargoes consisted of, may be gathered from the following
letters, which are selected at random from many of the same kind.
The first is addressed to
the Bailie’s cousin, Donald Stuart, master of the ship “Margaret,” of
Inverness, and is dated, Inverness, 7th July, 1722 : —
“This serves to order you
to proceed to Cromarty to receive aboard my ship, ‘The Margaret’ of this
place, five last herrin cask with salt. From thence you are to proceed
without loss of time to Gerloch, where you are to address yourself to
John Mackenzie, uncle to the Laird of Gerloch, to whom you are to
deliver the sixtie salmon barrels with oat meall [in them], 39 barrs
iron, 50 rolls of tobacco, and ane anker brandy, with timber balk and
broads [boards], a fifty weight and a ston weight iron. You are likeways
to deliver to the Laird of Gerloch’s order 5 last of herrin cask
containing 200 bushels forraign salt; for which salt and cask you are to
gett the Laird’s receipt. And you are likeways to get John Mackenzie's
for the meall, iron, balk, broad, and 2 weights .... which receipts you
are to transmit to me by the cupar, John Gibson, who goes to pack the
salmon; for which purpose see that John Mackenzie takes this meall
immediacy out of the barrels, that the salmon be immediatly packed and
shiped. And you are to take on board the cod fish, from 24,000 to
25,000, and see you receive only good merchant ware. And if any be bad
you are not to receive it as good cod fish, but two for one, and if any
be under 14 inches in length you are likeways to receive two for one, in
terms of the Contract. If you touch at Orkney it’s fitt you take a
pyllot, or, if you do not, you must call at Stornoway, and in that event
it’s fitt you get a coast coquet for 25,000 cod fish cured with forraign
salt, and 60 barrels salmon, and cause the Land waiter endorse the same.
And from Gerloch you are to proceed to this road [Inverness] and waite
my furder orders. Mind you are to grant receipt for what fish you are to
receive : and nota there are 300 barrels hoops aboard for packing the
salmon.”
The second letter which I
quote is addressed to Donald Macintyre—“ane honest sensible lad who has
the Irish [i.e., Gaelic] language”—on 27th April, 1725 :—
“You are immediatly to
repair to Portsoy, where you are to deliver my letter to Alexander Wood,
master of the ship1 Thistle, of Bamif, who has loaded a full loadning of
meall and bear for my account, which is shipped by Arthur Gordon of
Camnue, to whom I wrote last week countermanding the bear I formerly
ordered, or at most to ship only 50 bolls, with 700 bolls meall, so that
if you find there is no bear to be shipt, you must forward my letter
herewith given you to said Carnnue per express, by which I have advised
him to ship 100 bolls more meall, making in all 800 bolls meall, for
which Alexander Wood is to pass his receipt or bill of loading. How soon
the said cargoe is fully shipt, you are to advise me by the Elgin post,
and immediatly, without loss of anny time, you are to make the best of
your way for Stomway in Lews, where you may dispose of a part of your
cargoe if you can doe at 8 merks per boll of 8 ston, reddy money]—but
does suppose you see non there, and, therefore, how soon you arrive you
are to bespeak a skillfull pyllot to bring you from, thence to Loch
Fallord in the Isle of Sky, where you are to address yourself to
Roderick Macleod of Contliech, who will assist you in the disposal of a
part of your cargoe there, and whose directions you are to follow in
shifting of porta, and giving out of the cargoe, untill all is disposed.
How soon you arrive in the Isle of Sky you are to acquaint my
father-in-law, Norman Macleod of Drynoch. per express, who will likevays
assist you with his best advice. I doe not incline to sell the meall
under 8 merk per boll of 8 ston, and if you can get reddy money for the
whole it’s the better, but, if not, you may trust to the following
gentlemen what quantity of the cargoe they will order you to deliver
them by their letters, viz.: —William Macdonald, tutor of Macdonald,
Roderick Mac-lecd of Contliech, Roderick Macleod of Ullinish, Donald
Macleod of Ballamemach, William Macleod of Uibust, who is married to my
wife’s sister, or anny other that those gentlemen will desire to trust,
or my father-in-law, Drynoch; and what payment you cannot gett in reddy
money take their accepted bills payable here or at William Cumming’s
shop in Edinburgh, again the 10th day of October nixt. And how soon you
have disposed of all or as much as possible of the cargoe for the Isle
of Sky, Herries and North Uist, if anny remain after these countrys are
served, ycu are to repair to the Keyle near Glenelg, and there you are
to address yourself to my father-in-law, who will dispose of what may
remain of the cargoe, or will give proper directions anent the sama
You’ll take notice that if anny bear is shipt at Portsoy you cannot
dispose of the same under 9 merks per boll, and'for that end it’s fitt
the skipper or you borrow a firlot at Portsoy to carry allongs with you.
Not a you have likeways on board, to be disposed of for my account, 100
half barrs iron, containing 113 ston 9 lbs. old weight, which you are to
sell at the best rate you can, not under 3/6 per ston. There is likeways
17 dozen of bottles of claret, to be soid at 16/ per dozen, bottles and
all, or the wine without the bottle at 15/. There is likeways a bag of
hops, No. 14, containing 1 cwt. 1 qr. 14 lbs., which you’ll see to
dispose of at Stomway at the best price you can—I suppose may reach 1/
per lb., but failing of that, it must be sold at Glenelg or Duart Castle
in Mull. Notwithstanding the prices of the meall and bear I mentioned, I
must leave it to yourself, with the assistance of my friends, to make
the best of it you can, according as you find it in demand in the
several countrys, but not under five Pounds Scots per boll of 8 ston
until you heal furder from me—that is, for the meall. How soon the
cargoe is fully disposed, and that you have gott payment of the same in
money or bills as above directed, you’ll give Alexander Wood, on
receipt, twenty five pounds sterling to purchase his loading of scleat
[slate] at Mull, and five pounds more if he takes any part payment of
his freight, likeways on his receipt. And when you have so cleared fully
with all and sundry, you are to repair to Glenelg, and make the best of
your way home with such convoy and directions as my father-in-law will
give you, or if you find it more advisable you may deliver to him the
whole money and bills, on receipt. And for your trouble I am to give you
four pounds sterling, and pay your necessary charges. I wish you a good
voyag.”
Stuart addresses similar
instructions to Wood, in which he states: —“After your cargoe is out
you'll proceed to the Isle of Mull, where you will deliver my letter to
John Stevenson, scleat quarrier, who will furnish you your cargoe, which
will be about 30,000, suppose; and Donald Macintyre will furnish you
money to pay for them at £10 Scots per 1000, and as much cheapper as you
can.”
The necessity of being
guarded by a “convoy” on Macintyre's journey across country from Glenelg
to Inverness, shows that the arm of the law was still weak in the
Highlands.
Sometimes Stuart sends
large cargoes to Macleod of Macleod and Sir Donald Macdonald of Sleat;
and in one letter he mentions that these chiefs purchase meal from
Irishmen, to whom they pay ready money, instead of granting bills as
they do to him. Dublin merchants also appeared on the West Coast and
purchased the lairds’ cod and ling for ready money, which unfortunately
the Bailie had net always at command. Sometimes, also, he was
forestalled in connection with the Inverlochy salmon by Glasgow
merchants. But notwithstanding all this, he for many years had the
largest fish trade in the North of Scotland. Only a few of his
transactions can be referred to. In 1718 he purchases 99 barrels of
salmon from Lord Moray, at 43s per barrel. In 1720 he buys a cargo of
herring in the Lews, where Zachary Macaulay, a remote relative of Lord
Macaulay, was his agent, and he also has an interest in a great herring
venture in Loch-"broom. In 1723 he purchases 40,000 cod in Gairloch and
Stornoway—the Gairloch fish being, he declares, better than that of
Newfoundland, where the Gairloch curer gained his experience. In 1728
there was excellent herring fishing in the Inverness Firth, and he
secured the bulk of the catch. In 1730 he acquires the salmon of
Burdyards, Lethen, Lord Moray, Cawdor, and Lord Lovat. In 1735 he takes
Lovat’s yield of 120 barrels, and in 1736 and subsequent years the
salmon “crop” of the Earl of Seaf orth’s fishings of Kintail, until in
1743 Seaforth arrested the purchase on the shores of Loch Dilich.
Herring and cod \vere cured for him from time to time by “Lady Assynt”—Mrs
Mackenzie of Assynt—the Earl of Cromartie, Sir Alexander Mackenzie of
Gairloch, Sir Colin Mackenzie of Coul, and other Highland chiefs and
chieftains. Gentlemen of this class have been painted as far above
trafficking of this kind, but the truth is that the old Highland landed
proprietor had a keen eye to business, and was an expert at a bargain.
The Lady of Assynt appears to have conducted her negotiations with a
skill against which the Bailie found it necessary to be on his guards “
Madam," wrote he to her on 16th December, 1733, “ I received your
acceptable favour, and I find you have accepted of my offer for your
herrings. So I hereby oblige myself to receive them, being good
sufficient merchantable ware, in the term of my last letter to your
Ladyship and your last to me, 'twixt this and the first day of May nixt.
But I think fitt to caution your Ladyship that to make them all good
merchantable ware they need to be all repact: at shipedng, which will
cost you no great expences.”
An offer, dated 31st
January, 1734, to the Earl of Cromartier for his Coigeach herring may
also be quoted : —
“My Lord,—I received your
Lordship’s favour of 30th curt.,, and am willing to take your Lop.’s
eighteen lasts herrins at the rate of Seven pounds Ster. p. Last,
including ye Bounty—to be' received any time before ye midle of Aprile
next, payable in six Moneths after Delivery. But it is not in my power
to advance part of ye price just now, being extreamly stretned by many
great Disapointments from Good Men, and obliged to goe South against
Tuesday next. So if you let me have the herin payable six moneths after
Delivery, or at Lamas next, you may send your obligation to Deliver the
herins, per Express, and-mention that they must be Good, Sufficient,
well Cured, well Packed herin, Cured wt. Foraing Salt, and in good tight
Cask of ye Legall Gadge; and lie send my answer to such letter,
Concluding our Bargain, which is all that can be done, by, My Lord, Your
Lordship’s most humble-
“John Steuart.”
The Bailie’s slate trade
was very considerable. We have, already seen his instructions to Wood to
bring a cargo of 30,000 from Mull in 1725. In 1722 and 1723 he brings
ship-loads from Mull and Easdale. In 1725 he supplies Colonel Urquhart
of Newhall, in the Black Isle, with 20,000 Easdale slates for his “New
Hall.” In 1734 he delivers 20,000, and in the following year 12,000, to
Lord Seaforth, in the Cromarty Firth, for the Castle of Kildin; and in
1737 he sends a cargo from Easdale to London. Hugh Miller informs us in
his “Scotch Merchant of the Eighteenth Century/' that coal did not find
its way into the Cromarty Firth till 1750; but we find the Bailie
bringing coals from Newcastle to Cromarty and Inverness as early as
1721, and the probability is that he did so even earlier. In 1729, his
correspondent and agent, John Coutts, of Edinburgh, sends him a cargo of
coal for those two towns, and gets in exchange a cargo of herring. The
Bailie is continually bringing coals from Leith and Newcastle. In the
latter town, indeed, his ships were well known. “Newcastle, he writes in
January, 1722, to his brother-in-law, John Macleod, master of one of his
vessels, who had arrived from the Continent with a cargo of iron, and
general merchandize—“Newcastle, I find, will be your proper ; market,
where at least you will find reddy money for the plank and pype staves,
&c., perhaps for the iron too . . . and when your cargoe is disposed you
are to reload the ship with coalls, and 20 gross of chapin bottles for
my accot., and if you please to ship 20 gross more for your accot., you
can have no loss by them; and if you can find good barrell hoops from
16/ to 18/ per thousand, you may fill up all the waste room in the ship
with them. You are likeways to buy for my accot. a hyde of bend leather
and half a dozen drest calves skins, with a pair of boots fitt for me,
as also the value of ten shillings- of wine glasses, mugs, tea pots. . .
.
Please order Mr George
Ouchterlonie at London to insure a hundred and fifty pounds ster. for
ship and cargoe from Newcastle homeward, and place the premium to my
accot/’ He also brings hides of leather and dressed calves’ skins from
London and other southern ports, as well as such things as tea, powdered
white sugar, pewter plates, clothes for himself, and silks and other
articles of raiment for his wife and daughters and lady friends. He
liked to have nice things about him. In 1723 he orders from London two
iron grates—one for his dining-room, and another for a bedroom—and he
insists on their being “ hansom.” He was also fond of books, which he
ordered, as a rule, from Strachan, of London. Of the more substantial
home products, he brought large quantities of salt from the southern
Scottish ports; hops from London, for the brewers of Inverness,
Cromarty, and Stornoway; window glass from Newcastle; and building
bricks from London.
Much of the salmon
purchased by the Bailie was consigned to London, but much more was
shipped to various Continental ports. To the Continent he also sent
almost his whole purchases of cod and herring. In 1715, when his
letter-books, so far as existing, begin, he sends cargoes of herring and
cod to France, Spain, Minorca, and Danzig; and £or the next twenty-five
yeprs his ships sail regularly between Inverness or the West Coast and
all parts of the Continental seaboard from Sweden and Norway to the
Adriatic, carrying fish, flesh, com, and other produce. Only a few of
these voyages need be referred to. In 1715 he sends 73 barrels of
pickled beef to Rotterdam, and a cargo of barley to Amsterdam; in 1716 a
cargo of herring to Marseilles and Leghorn, and salmon and grilse to
Rouen; in 1720 a oargo of “lamskins, commonly called mortskins,” to
Danzig; in 1721, herring to Copenhagen, herring, salmon, and codfish to
Venice, and salmon to Leghorn; in 1725, salmon to Holland and Spain, and
herring to Stockholm; in 1735, com to Leghorn, and salmon from Lochbroom
to St Valery; in 1736, salmon from Loch Duich to Leghorn, and potters’
ore and smelted lead from the mines of Strontian to Amsterdam; and, in
1738, lead ore from Glenelg to Rotterdam.
His return cargoes were
made up of such goods as were then obtainable at those foreign ports:
timber and barrel staves from Christiania, Stockholm, and Danzig; iron
and sheet copper from Stockholm; tea, brandy, wine, tobacco, indigo, and
iron from Amsterdam and Rotterdam: linseed, flax, and onion and other
seeds from Campvere; salt from St Valery, Rouen, and the Spanish ports;
claret from Bordeaux; sherry from Cadiz and Lisbon: and oranges, lemons,
and other fruits from the Mediterranean ports. As a specimen of his
instructions to his correspondents abroad, I shall quote his letter to
John Andrew, Rotterdam, dated 24th March, 1721: —
“You are to ship for
mvaccount in said ship [the ‘Christian ’] 4 chests best Burgundy wine,
each chest to contain 50 flasks; and four half hogsheads of best Spanish
Sake [Sack], to be bought new of the Keys if possible; 8 rehms writting
wheat [white] paper of such as is commonly shipt for this place, from 50
t>o 60 Stivers per rehm; 120 single and ten duble ankers best French
Brandy; another Chest of Burgundy, and one chest of 40 flasks for James
Russell and me in company; item, for my proper accot. 50 lb. best
Indigoe, and a tun of best strong French Claret, to be bought of the
Keys; a warming pan; a waste ditto; and a large black bear’s Skin
dressed on the inside.”
To the foreign wine
merchants he occasionally sends, as a rare gift, a small quantity of
whisky, which he sometimes calls “mountain wine,” and sometimes “Skye
champagne.” Beer, brandy, and wines were at the time the drinks of the
Highlands, but whisky was becoming more common than it was in previous
times. In 1735, Stuart quotes its price at £12 per hogshead.
IV.—The Bailie’s Ships,
Tucker’s Report of 1655,
to which reference has already been made, gives Inverness credit for
only one merchant, and only one ship, of ten tons. Trie Bailie’s
letter-books show that in his time Tucker’s solitary merchant was
represented by at least a score of men of standing—mostly Celts, and all
of good family. Among them were the Bailie himself and his father
Alexander Stuart, Duff of Drummuir, Poison of Kinmylies, Fraser of
Fairfield, Mackintosh of Termit, Schivez of Muirtown, John, Donald, and
William Mackay, sons of Mackay of Scourie, Angus Mackintosh, Lachlan
Mackintosh, William Mackintosh, Kenneth Mackenzie, Simon Mackenzie, John
Duff, John Shaw, Thomas Alves, Ludovick Gordon, and Bailies Robertson
and Hossack. Another merchant who did business in Inverness was Duff of
Braco, ancestor of the present Duke of Fife. We find him. in 1725 in
partnership with the Bailie in a timber and iron speculation. These
gentlemen required ships for their operations, and Tucker’s single ship
was represented by a considerable number. The Bailie himself owned,
wholly or in part, about a dozen—almost all named after members of his
family, and all commanded by gentlemen. The “Alexander” bore the name of
his father, to whom she originally belonged, and was under the charge of
his cousin, Alexander Stuart. The “John” bore his own name, and the
“Ann” that of his wife; while the “ Marjorie,” the “Margaret,” the
“Helen,” the “Janet,” the “Agnes,” and the “Christian ” tell of the
daughters who sat by his fireside. The “Marjorie” was commanded by John
Mackay, and afterwards, by Donald Fraser; the “Ann” by Alexander Rose,
brother of the Bailies first wife, who subsequently sailed the “Helen,”
and thereafter the “Janet”; the “Margaret,” succeasively by the Bailie’s
brothers-in-law, Donald and John Macleod; the “Agnes” by his cousin,
Donald Stuart; and the "Christian’' by John Baillie, of the family of
Dunain—names which show that the Celt had taken to the sea .as readily
as to the counter. There were also the Good Success,” the “Pledger" the
“Swallow" and the “Lark ”; and the “Adventure” was for many years sailed
to all parts of Britain and the Continent by John Reid, the Bailie’s
son-in-law, and his best friend in his old age.
Some at least of those
vessels were built by the Bailie at the Shore of Inverness, the oak
being brought from Damaway and Loch Ness-side, and .part of the iron and
timber frame-work ready-made from Danzig. At that time the southern
Scottish ports had their ships built in Holland or on the Baltic ooast,
owing to the scarcity and inaccessability of home timber. Tlie “
Marjorie” is described by him in 1721 as “a clever well manned vessel”
of 50 tons; and next year he builds a new barque of 40 tons. The
probability is that none of his ships exceeded 50. But, small though
they were, they were continually ploughing the stormiest seas—sometimes
braving the winds and currents of the Pentland Firth, sometimes crossing
the Minch to Stornoway, or the North Sea to some Scandinavian or Dutch
port; to-day at Leith, London, or Cork; to-morrow on their way across
the Bay of Biscay and round Gibraltar to uie Spanish and Mediterranean
ports or the head of the Adriatic. In 1743 we find John Reid in Jamaica.
It would be interesting to know that he had made his way there in the
good ship the “Adventure".
The Bailie was careful to
insure his ships and cargoes against the various perils of the sea—the
insurances being effected sometimes in Edinburgh, sometimes in London,
but more frequently by his friend, John Andrew, of Rotterdam. Here again
it is only necessary to give a few instances. In 1716 he insures a ship
with her cargo of salmon, from the West Coast to Rotterdam “against risk
from Swedish privateers.” Next year Andrew effects for him an insurance
of 900 guilders on a ship and cargo “from Poleu [Poolewe] on our West
Coast or ye Preades [the Hebrides] to the Port of Campheer [Campvere],”
and on another ship “from Famburg to Christiansand in Norway, and from
there to Inverness, and from Inverness to Cork.” In 1730 William Cuming
of Ediuburgh insures ship and cargo of salmon from Inverness to Leghorn
against all hazards, and in 1735, Udney, of London, ship and cargo of
beiring and salmon from Loch Kennard and Loch-broom to St Valery.
The shipping risks were
great and many. Swedish privateers scoured the Northern seas; the
Southern were swept by Moorish pirates, who sometimes ventured even into
British waters, seizing ships and taking their crews to Morocco or
Algeria, where they served as slaves until released by death or a heavy
ransom. The wars between Britain arid France and Spain made voyaging
dangerous, and there were of course the ordinary perils of the sea.
On 8th October, 1717, the
barque “Alexander,” laden with herring, sailed from Inverness for Cork,
with instructions to dispose of her cargo there, and then to proceed to
Rochelle for wine and brandy. Her captain, Alexander Stuart, was ill at
the time, and Thomas Greig took his place. The good ship sailed along
the East Cnast of Scotland and England, until it rounded the North
Foreland, when it was met and captured by a Swedish privateer, of which
an Englishman named Norcross was commander. Norcross proceeded to take
his prize to Gothenburg in Sweden, but, landing in France, he was
apprehended and sent to England to suffer for his misdeeds. The
privateer, however, with the “Alexander,” sailed on without him. But
when off the coast of Norway Greig and his Inverness lads suddenly
attacked and overcame the Swedes who were on board their ship, and,
sending them adrift, ran the vessel into a Norwegian harbour. A Danish
war ship, who witnessed the daring deed, took the “Alexander” under her
protection, and, claiming her as a prize, took her to Lairwick in
Norway, and thereafter to Copenhagen. The claim was resisted by the
Bailie, who had a good friend in Alexander Ross, merchant in Copenhagen.
The British Ambassador was appealed to, and he brought the matter before
the Danish Court, with the result that the ship and crew and cargo were
released, and in 1718 Greig returned in triumph to Inverness, having
sold his herring, not in Cork, but in the Baltic. But the “Alexander”
did not long survive. She went to the bottom in 1720.
In 1718 Alexander Stuart
sailed from Inverness for the Mediterranean; but his ship was taken by
the Moors, and he and his crew were captives in Morocco until the end of
1721, when they found their way back to Inverness. On their return the
Bailie negotiated a bill for £20, “the money being designed to supply my
poor friends come out of captivity.”
On 12th November, 1718,
the “Good Success,” in which the Bailie was interested, was wrecked “on
a blind rock off ye Illeland of Sandsartone, off ye coast of Swedeland,”
Captain Alexander Dunbar and the crew narrowly saving themselves by
taking to a small boat three minutes before she sank in forty fathoms.
They made their way to Danzig, and reached Inverness in the “Janet" on
4th January. In December, 1720, the “Marjorie ” was crushed in the ice
near Copenhagen, and Captain Donald Fraser and all the crew, except two,
were drowned. In the following December a barque bringing meal, nuts,
and oak-bark to the Bailie was stranded on the coast of Aberdeenshire.
Immediately the unfortunate vessel struck, the native fishermen “fell on
her,” and carried the riggings and the cargo to their houses. “ Baillie
Forbes,’7 writes Stuart, “ who seems to be ane honest gentleman and
Baillie in those bounds, was so convinced of there barbarity from there
own confession that he fined them in ten pounds ster.
By a lait Act of
Parliament medling with wreckt good where all the crew come safe ashoare
is made Felonie and to be punished with death, and if some rascall was
hanged for such a crime it would be a good service done the nation, and
probable deter from such proceedings again.”
The “Ann,” laden with
wine from Bordeaux, was wrecked on the still-dreaded coast of Usshant in
Brittany in December, 1725. Next year the “Margaret” was lost near
Montrose; and in 1728 the “Agnes” was wrecked in the Orkneys, uninsured,
involving the unfortunate Bailie in a loss of 5000 merks. In his latter
years the “Christian” alone remained to him—“my poor Christian,” he
tenderly calls her. She escaped the perils of the sea, but she met a
less glorious fate. She was seized and dismantled by sheriff-officers at
Leith, and, to her owner’s undying sorrow, sold for his debts.
V.—The Bailie as Factor.
When the first of his
letter-books now existing opens in 1715, we find Bailie Stuart factor
for the Earl of Moray on the fair and fertile Lordship of Petty, whose
castle—Castle Stuart—has undergone hardly a change since his time. One
of his letters tells that before 1712 he was also factor for Lord Bute
on an estate in Ross-shire. He continued Lord Moray’s factorship till
1734—not only acting as the administrator of his property, but also, as
baron-bailie, presiding over the baron court, which, until its powers
were curtailed by Parliament in 1747, exercised an almost unlimited
jurisdiction, the right of pit and gallows not excepted.
I have referred to Stuart
as the administrator of Lord Moray’s property, but little administration
was in his day required. The land was reclaimed by the tenants, who also
erected the farm buildings, and, when they left, received “melioration”
for them from their successors. The factor of the olden time had little
to do with the work of reclamation and building, and his duties were
almost exclusively confined to those of convicting and giving judgment
in the baron court, collecting money rents and feu-duties, gathering in
the rents payable in kind and realising them, removing defaulting
tenants and letting their holdings to others. He had to perform the
unpleasant part of his modem representative’s duty without the pleasant;
and his class consequently acquired a reputation for severity and
oppression which in some parts still lingers.
That the Bailie was in
his own day looked upon as an oppressor of poor tenants is very
probable; that he was their friend is clearly shown by his letters,
which are now brought to light for the first time. He never lost a fair
opportunity of pleading their cause with the Earl whom he represented.
The troubles connected with the rising of 1715 were followed by
distress, which, in some districts, developed into a famine. The people
of Petty were among the sufferers, and they found it difficult to pay
the rent for the crop of 1715, part of which was payable in
money—“custom” or “custom money”—and part in grajn—“ferm” or
“farm”—which was gathered into the grange barn which still stands at
Castle Stuart, and converted into meal or sold to maltsters and brewers.
The Bailie’s cousin, John
Stuart, Commissary of Inverness, and brother of Alexander Stuart, the
shipmaster to whom reference has repeatedly been made, was the Earl’s
“doer” or solicitor in Edinburgh, as well as the Bailie’s agent there;
and there was constant correspondence between the cousins. On 21st
April, 1716, the Bailie writes the Commissary with money for various
purposes, and he concludes his letter thus:—“I entreat how soon this
comes to hand you pay the Earle of Morray £50 sterling more, and gett
his Lordship’s receipt to me for the same, and forward the enclosed
letter to his Lordship after reading and sealling. I think the Earle
should give down to his tennants of Pettie a year’s custom money, which
is no great matter, in consideration of their Losses, which they will
not recover in heast; and I wish you would advise this.”
The advice was given and
taken, as is shown by the following letter dated 28th December, 1716,
which I give as a specimen of the Bailie’s epistles to the Earl, It will
be observed that the factor’s cautioners or sureties for his
intromissions threatened to withdraw, and that he was consequently
disposed to resign. The feu-duties referred to are sti 11 paid, to the
Earls of Moray for certain lands in Strathnaim and Strathdearn. “May it
please your Lordship,—Severall considerations relaiting to your Lop’s
interest oblidged me to run this by express, which accom-panys the
inclosed papers came some time agofc to my hands from Commissar Steuart.
I hade returned them much sooner, but that I could not prevail with
Dunmagless and John Mackgilvray to signe them till verie laitly; they
making Demur annent Alex. Mackpherson of Craggie, who, they say, is much
in arrear and quite broke. They insinuat they are to recall their
Cautionrie in the factorie again [against] Whitsunday, in which case I
think your Lop. must think of a new manadger on the estate again that
time. In the meantime, I return your Lop. a coppie of my interim
Factorie subscrived, as also a Duble of the rentall, with bill on Mr
James Muchelson, jeweller in Edinburgh, for fiftie pound sterling on
four days’ sight, which I understand will answer punctually, and is what
I have received of these feu duties as yett, and I shall send what more
money comes to my hand as I gett it. I have indorsed the bill to your
Lop., so that your Lop. may indorse it blank, and send it over for
payment to your doer at Edinburgh. I sent a good time agoe some funds
for answering your Lop., about two hundred pound sterling, which I hope
has answered your Lop. or now, and is much more than I could make good
as yet of last year’s farms [i.e., grain rents] of Pettie. However I doe
hope again Candlemas shall bring your Lop. one hundred pounds sterling
more, all by the hands of Commissar Steuart. As to the £ sterling sent
by ye bearer, I expect a receipt in return of this, mentioning it is a
pairt of the feu duetys of Strathern [Strathdearn] and Strathnern in
consequence of my factorie.
“Now, my Lord, I come to
writ to you Lop. annent current farms [grain rents] of Pettie. Your Lop.
wrot me some time agoe to dispose of the same the best I could, which
certainly I inclyne to doe; but iaitly happening to meet with old James
Russell he insinuat that bear this year would be worth six libs Scots
per boll, and I doe not know but he may have writ your Lop. soe. My
Lord, I have done what I could here lo get your Lop. a price, but I find
it will be difficult to reach eight marks; therefore without your Lop/s
express orders would not sell. I confess the Cropt in Morray this year
is much less than last, but I believe likeways that the Demand from
Abroad will be also less. Considering what of old Victuall is yet on
hand here, the price of Corns can not rise much. However I will be glad
your Lop. imploy the old Chamberlain to try what can be done here with
the bear of Pettie, and Fie heartily concurr with him. Your Lop.’s
further orders on this head will l>e necessarie without loss of time,
seeing the tennants are begun to thrash their farms, and the sooner they
pay it I am sure the better for your Lop..
“I wrot to Commissar
Steuart severall months agoe shewing that the people of Pettie had
suffered verie much dureing the time of the lait unhappy civil wars, and
that therefore they expected some compassion from your Lop. on that
head. I humblie proposed to give down to such as were really sufferers
discount of a year’s customs, which he told me your Lop. com-plyed with.
Now I want some orders on this head under your Lop.’s own hand, and
shall observe them.”
In July, 1717, the factor
wrote his constituent fiom Castle Stuart,, referring to the poverty of
the tenants, his own factorial troubles and disappointments, and the
poor remuneration he received for his services. His salary was 200 merks
(£\ 1 2s 2½d) per annum. In 1720 he returns to the same subject, and
declares he is sick of the factorship, for which, he repeats, he is not
adequately rewarded. Next year he pleads for tenants whom the Earl
ordered to be evicted; and in 1722 he absolutely refuses to carry out a
removal. In 1723, however, a number of evictions took place; but the new
men who came in were not more prosperous than the old, and in 1733 the
tenants of the Lordship are described as being in a most wretched
condition. In that year there was a famine in the land.
Although the Bailie was
himself of gentle blood, or rather, perhaps, because of that
circumstance, he never, if he could avoid it, sacrificed the common
people for meu of family. In March, 1717, he wrote the Earl protesting
against his instructions to turn out tenants in Petty to make room for
William Macgillivray, a brother of the Laird of Dunmaglass. “I think,”
he states, “It will be u hardship to remove such honest tennents on so
short advertisement. ... I must say I am already sick of too many
gentlemen tennents in Pettie.”
The landed gentlemen of
Strathnaim and Strathdearn, who were the Earl’s vassals, gave him much
trouble. Not only, were they constantly in arrear with their feu-duties
and casualties, but, what was even a more heinous sin against feudal
law, they often absented themselves from the baron courts which they
were legally bound to attend, and defied the baron-bailie. The latter’s
complaints grew in strength and frequency, until, in February, 1734, he
made his last journey to Donibristle, his constituent’s seat in Fife,
squared his accounts, and terminated his factorial career. He boasted
that he travelled home from Donibristle in two days and a half. Perhaps
the consciousness of having left a heavy burden of cares and worries
behind added to his speed.
VI.—The Bailie’s Customers
and Correspondents.
I can only refer to a few
of the Bailie’s customers and correspondents. During the period of forty
years covered by his letter-books almost every Highland lord and laird,
chief and chieftain, wadsetter and tacksman, is found crossing aud
recrossing the stage. We have seen how long and close was his
relationship with the Earl of Moray. With the Duke of Gordon and Sir
Henry Innes of Innes he trafficked in salmon ; with the Earl of
Findlater in salmon and meal. The Earl of Seaforth, who was out in the
Fifteen, and led the Spanish expedition which came to grief at the
battle of Glenshiel, sold his salmon to him, and bought his slates; and
Seaforth*s famous factor, Donald Murchison, dealt with him, and granted
bills which he found it difficult to meet. The Earl of Cromartie, who
fought for Prince Charles, and was saved from the block by the devotion
of his wife, entered into herring and meal transactions with him with a
shrewdness which has no savour of romance. Simon of Lovat, who was not
so fortunate, was his constant friend— “my best friend; Lord Lovat,” he
calls him— selling the Beauly fish to him, buying his salt and other
commodities, and accommodating him with money and bills when his purse
was empty. The Bailie’s second wife was Lovat’s near relation, and the
nobleman addresses the merchant as his dear cousin, and entertains
himself aud his wife and daughters at Castle Dounie. The Countess of
Sutherland likewise invites the young ladies to Dunrobin, while her son,
Lord Strathnaver, grants their father bills which he takes years to pay.
In the far North the Earl of Caithness and his brother Francis, Sinclair
of Ulbster, and Lord Reay, have extensive dealings with our merchant.
Nearer home his principal customers are Lord President Forbes, who long
delays payment of a wine bill due by him as representative of his
brother, “Bumper John;” Mackintosh of Mackintosh, who fought for King
George, while his wife, Colonel Ann, fought for Prince Charles;
Mackintosh of Borlum, the famous Brigadier of the Fifteen; the renowned
Alasdair Dubh, Chief of Glengarry, who fought at Killiecrankie and
Sheriftmuir ; his less worthy grandson, “Young Glengarry,” who, after
the Forty-Five, led a mysterious life in France, and whom Mr Andrew Lang
identifies with Pickle the Spy : Macdonell of Scotas, who fell at
Culloden ; Macdonald of Kinlochmoidart, who did good service at
Killiecrankie and Sheriffmuir, and his son, who fought at Culloden, and
was executed at Carlisle; Stewart of Appin and Stewart of Ardshiel, who
both suffered for their loyalty to the Stewart Line; Sir Alexander
Macdonald of Sleat and Macleod of Macleod, who were accused of
encouraging Prince Charles and betraying his cause; the Laird of Grant,
who during the conflict sat on the fence; and the Gentle Lochiel, who
joined the Prince despite his conviction that his cause was hopeless.
Another noted Jacobite
whose name frequently appears in the letter-books is the Bailie’s
cousin, Colonel John Roy Stuart. So little is known of the personal
history of this brave soldier and excellent Gaelic poet that what the
letter-books tell of him may be of interest. In 1727 he is an officer in
the service of King George, and recruiting in the Highlands. “Our
cousin, the Dragoon,” writes the Bailie, “is taking 20 handsome men to
his regiment.” Captain Burt was in Inverness at the same time, and the
two must have met. In 1736 John Roy is again in Inverness, and, through
Lord Lovat’s influence, and perhaps also through the good offices of the
Bailie, is allowed to escape from prison. Next year he is in Loudon, and
writes promising to pay his bill of ,£17 14s to the Bailie. In 1739 he
grants a renewal of the bill. From that year till 1745 he is in France,
the Bailie’s letters to him being addressed to the care of Mr Smith,
Boulogne. The bill remains unpaid, and in November, 1743, the Bailie,
without effect, endeavours to got him to send home brandy in payment. In
August, 1745, news comes that he is in Ghent, wearing the Highland
dress, and in much favour for having saved the life of a lady. In
September, 1745, he is in the Highlands in the interests of Prince
Charles— “in very good credit and esteem" writes his cousin. After
Culloden, he for a time wandered in his native Strathspey, composing
“psalms” in English and laments in Gaelic, and in the end found his way
back to Boulogne, where he died. In November, 1749, his widow is
referred to. His brother, Captain Donald Stuart, of Lord Lewis
Drummond’s Regiment, is repeatedly mentioned.
That the Bailie was a
Jacobite and a friend of the Jacobites is clear; but he did not allow
that circumstance to interfere with his intercourse with the
Hanoverians. Between 1715 and 1735 he is on intimate terms with General
Wightman, who won the battle of Glenshiel; Lieutenant Allardyce, of the
Fusiliers, who was defeated by Donald Murchison at Ath-nam-Muileach, in
Glen Affaric; Sir Patrick Strachan of Glenkindy, Surveyor-General to the
Forfeited Estates Commissioners; Sir Robert Pollock and General Siburg.
Governors of Fort-William; Lieutenant Wainsbarow, Governor of Duart
Castle ; General Wade, the pacifier of the Highlands, and the maker of
the famous roads; Captain Burt, who wrote the “ Letters from the North
of Scotland;” General Guest, Governor of Inverness; Colonel Lie, whose
regiment was stationed in our town in 1728; and General Sabius, whose
regiment was there in 1734. With these officers he traded and drank
healths—avoiding, we may assume, that of “the King over the water.”
Guest lived for a time in his house, and continued to be his friend long
after he left the North. In 1723 the Inverness magistrates had the
tide-waiter and a soldier whipped by the common hangman. The military
were greatly incensed, and threatened vengeance. The Bailie got Guest to
intervene, and peace was restored. In 1728 there was a somewhat similar
quarrel between the town and Colonel Lie, which was brought to an end by
Wade, through the good offices of Guest. In 1729 Guest and Burt assisted
Stuart in recovering the price of meal sold by him in Argyllshire.
Stuart, in return, obliged the Hanoverian officers. In 1725 he
discounted' a bill by his friend, Captain Mungo Herdman, on Richard
Whitehall for the cost of a frigate on Loch Ness for King Jeorge’s
service—Whitehall being the builder. In 1728 we find him arranging for
the conveyance of baggage and invalid soldiers from the Barracks of
Bemera, in Glenelg, to Fort-William.
Some of the Bailie’s
business agents and correspondents at home and abroad may be mentioned.
His principal correspondent for many years was John Coutts of Edinburgh,
the founder of the great house of Coutts «fc Co. Coutts discounted
bills, but his business mainly consisted of ventures in herring, cod,
salmon, corn, and meal. Stuart also did much business with Alexander and
James Coutts and George Ochterlony, London; Marjory -banks and Coutts,
Dantzig; John and Alexander Andrew, Rotterdam ; Jacob Ferray, Havre ;
Desoby Brothers & Co., Amsterdam ;
Henry Grahame, Stromness;
and James Fall and Brothers, Dunbar. But to the student of Highland
history it is more interesting to note that the great majority of his
business correspondents bore Highland names—in Edinburgh, James Cumming
and Patrick Cumming, of the family of Dulshangie in Glen-Urquhart; in
Glasgow, Roderick Macleod and Macfarlane &c M‘Carroll; in Fort-William,
William Macdougall &c Co. ; in Dingwall, Alexander Mackenzie ; in
Stornoway, Zachary Macaulay; in London, William Cumming, John Maclean,
Donald Mackay, David Ross, Charles Mackintosh (“who is everyday on
’Change”), and Alexander Mackintosh of Kyjlachy, grandfather of Sir
James Mackintosh, the historian of England ; James Campbell, in
Stockholm; Hugh Ross, in Gothenburg; Alexander Ross, in Copenhagen ;
Robert Mackay, in Rotterdam; John Macdonald “in Holland;” in Bordeaux,
Robert Gordon and John Macleod: in Barbadoes, “Mr Mac hay on the wharf
;” and in Jamaica, “Donald Macdonald,” my father’s grandfather, who was
transported to Barbadoes for his part in the Forty-five, and, escaping
to Jamaica, changed his surname—and who now rests in his native Glen of
Urquhart under a tombstone to the memory of Donald Mackay-Macdonald,
Esq., late Planter in Jamaica, and Representative of the Ancient Family
of Achmonie.” Even the Bailie’s periwigmaker was a Celt—Maciver,
Edinburgh ; and so,, with perhaps one or two exceptions, were his
lawyers—in Edinburgh, John Macleod, advocate, who was concerned in
the-abduction of Lady Grange ; Roderick Macleod, W.S. ; William Fraser,
W.S., proprietor of Balnain in Stratherriek, founder of the family of
Aldourie, and grandfather of Patrick Fraser-Tytler, the historian of
Scotland; and John Stuart, W.S., Commissary of Inverness. In Inverness
Stuart’s legal advisers were Evan Baillie of Abriachan, a successful “
doer,” whose most prominent client was Simon, Lord Lovat; and John
Taylor, who held some land right in virtue of which be- was one of the
few “ barons” or freeholders who were entitled to vote for a member of
Parliament for the County of Inverness, and whose name still lives in
Baron Tavlor’s Lane. Baron Taylor appears in the letter-books from 1720
to 1743.
VII.—Miscellaneous.
The Bailie’s letter-books
throw interesting side-lights on the mercantile and social life of his
time.
Money was extremely
scarce, and credit was consequently extremely long. The ready-money
system was virtually unknown, and sellers and buyers lived in an
atmosphere of bills and bonds which frequently floated unpaid for many
years. Reference has already been made to some of these obligations. A
few more may be mentioned. In 1706 The Mackintosh granted the Bailie a
bill for £15. In 1716 it was protested for non-payment. It was still
past due in 1736. In 1738 the principal was paid; but the Bailie writes
that he had lost thirty-two years’ interest. “ Too simple ! ” is his
comment. In 1717 he is dunning Colonel Grant of Ballindalloch, whose
name has come down to us as one of the raisers of the Black Watch, for
the contents of a bill ; in 1728 the •dunning is still going on. A bill
by the Chief of Glengarry and Macdonell of Scotas, which was past due in
1722, was in the same condition in 1730. Lochiel’s obligation, granted
prior to 1720, was “not yet paid” in 1729. Brigadier Mackintosh of
Borlum’s bill, signed before his gallant invasion of England in 1715,
was unpaid in 1737. Colonel Donald Murchison’s document for ,£6 7s was
unpaid for years, and so, as we have seen, was John Roy Stuart’s paper
for £17 14s. Some time before 1735 the Laird of Mackinnon granted his
bill for the then large sum of £114 19s 2d. Notwithstanding persistent
pressure, it was still due in 1742. William Macculloch, a Ross-shire
laird, signed a bill in 1728. In 1743 it is recorded that he is in
Virginia, and that payment is -expected when he returns. The bill is
unpaid in 1749. About 1710 the Bailie’s father took an acceptance from
Angus Mackintosh of Kyllachy, who was taken prisoner at the battle of
Preston in 1715. In 1735 the Bailie is pressing Kyllac'hy’s son
Alexander, the London merchant, for payment of it. In 1722 Stuart refers
to the difficulty he has in recovering from Bumper John of Culloden a
bill for £25, which represents a quantity of Culloden’s famous claret.
He experiences the same difficulty in 1740 in recovering the debt from
John’s successor and representative, Lord President Forbes. In 1717 our
merchant is urging Lord Strathnaver and Lord Reay for payment of
obligations long past due. The English officers who were then stationed
in the Highlands, and whose paper the Bailie was always ready to take,
were also frequently in default—among them being General Siburg,
Governor of Fort-William, in 1725; Colonel Long and Major Ormsby in
1726; Captain John Trelawney m 1727 ; and our friend Edmund Burt, the
critic of Highland customs, in 1729.
Although the Bailie found
it difficult to get payment of his bills, they were not all allowed to
lie fallow in his desk. In a measure they served him the purpose of
bank-notes. He frequently sends them to his correspondents in
satisfaction of his own obligations; and sometimes they return to him
after many days, and after passing through many hands. Highland bills
were as a rule made payable at Crieff, where a great cattle tryst took
place every year in September. The market was regularly attended by
Highland lairds, tacksmen, and drovers, and Stuart was frequently
present personally or by proxy, and did his best to exchange his paper
for the gold produced by the black cattle.
There was in his time no
bank within the Highland bounds, and no way of remitting money except in
specie, notes, or bill-transmitted by the ordinary posts, or by
“expresses”—that is, special messengers. A post walked from Inverness to
Edinburgh with more or less regularity every week, returning the
following week. These posts—we have the names of some of them, Colin
Dunbar, Robert Cattach, James Gilmour, Donald Jack, and William
Macdonald—were selected for their strength, courage, and fidelity to
trust, and during the Bailie’s half century of business there is but one
single charge against them—the post of 1722 was a drunken careless
fellow. Their adventures were many, but they seldom failed to carry
their mails and treasures to their destination. There were periods,
however, of special danger. During the troubles of the Fifteen and the
Forty-Five the service was suspended. In 1721 Stuart is unable to risk a
remittance to Edinburgh “for fear of robbery, which is very frequent of
late in the Highlands.” He is at all times careful to seal the bag
containing the money, or what represents money, and to send a separate
letter specifying the bag’s contents—the individual coins, the
bank-notes and their numbers, the amounts, dates, drawers, and acceptors
of the bills. The contents were of necessity mixed. In 1718 a remittance
to Banff consisted of a bank note, 67 gold guineas, 5s in silver, and
28d in copper. In the same year a special messenger was sent to the Earl
of Moray in Fife, carrying in gold £157 stg, all in guineas and half
guineas, except "Luidores.” Some idea of the rate at which these
messengers were remunerated will be got from the following payments in
1735—to an express from Inverness to Lochbroom and back, 8s stg.; to one
from Inverness to Loch Kennard, on the west coast, of Sutherland—"50
long Highland miles”—and back, 7s 6d stg. In 1727 an express was sent to
the Bailie from Dunbeath, Caithness, with a letter closing a meal
bargain; in 1728 one from Orkney to report the lo3S of the Agnes; and in
1733 an express from Ardshiel, in Argyllshire. In 1726 Stuart sent an
express to Dunvegan with a £300 bill for signature by Mncleod of Macleod
and Macleod of Ulinish. The sums paid to those messengers are not
stated.
The prices of meal, iron,
claret, hops, hoops, salmon, and slates have been referred to. In 1729,
when there was a famine in Ireland and the Highlands, meal rose to 13s
per boll of 8 stones— equal, considering the scarcity and value of money
at that time, to not less than ten times that sum to-day. The price was
frequently as high as 9s 6d and 10s. No wonder the poor people had, in
times of distress, to depend on dulse and shell-fish, wild roots,
nettles, and the blood of their living cattle. Coarse salt fluctuated
from 1s 1d to 2s 6d per bushel; herring, from £6 to £7 per last; cod,
from 13s to 14s per “qutte.” Sherry, delivered on board in Spain or
Portugal, cost £23 per pipe. Tea cost 14s per lb. For a tea table, which
the Bailie bought in Edinburgh in 1734, he paid 30s. He bought butter in
Kintail and Glenelg, in 1718, at 5 merks per stone, and cheese at 2s per
stone. Tallow candles were sold at 6d per lb. Lemons, which were freely
used to flavour drink, and which Burt tells us made even whisky
tolerable, cost in Inverness 4s per dozen. “There are no lemons here to
be had for anie money,” writes the Bailie to the Governor of
Fort-William in 1729, “but how soon anie arrive, which will be verie
soon, I shall send as manie as a horse can carrie.”
One would suppose, from
the scarcity of money and the excessive prices which prevailed, that men
of the Bailie’s class, living quietly in remote Inverness, would have
tried to exist without luxuries in food and raiment; but that was not
the case. Not satisfied with the produce of the country, he bought his
own clothes, stockings, shoes, and hats, and his wife’s and daughters’
silks and damasks, in London. From the same city, as well as from
Newcastle and Leith, he brought such articles as coffee, tea, flour,
biscuits, mustard, drugs, Epsom salts, washing rubbers, hair brooms,
branders, 'Spits, skewers, flesh crooks, flamers, pewter dishes, and
even pear trees, apple trees, yews, laurels, and varigated hollies for
his garden. The time-honoured deal cradle was not good enough for him,
and in 1722 he bought a “wand cradle” from Rotterdam, and when that was
used up he, in 1735, sent to Leghorn for a “watlin cradle.” The walls of
his rooms were covered with wall-paper from London. In the same city he
purchased his books, including “coper plate coppie books for assisting
my boys in their writing.” Edinburgh sent him his newspaper, the
Caledonian Mercury. Direct from the Mediterranean he got his lemons,
oranges, olives, raisins, anchovies, and “best Florence eating oil.”
London and Rotterdam furnished his coffee beans and the “best Bohea,”
which his wife carefully kept for the refreshment of the county ladies
who did her the honour to call..With the leaf at 14s per lb., and the
shillings rare, the delectable beverage had to be sipped sparingly.
VIII.—The Close.
The extent of the
Bailie’s business notwithstanding, it cannot be gathered from his
letter-books that he ever really made money. As has already been said,
he ventured and trusted too much ; and his losses were great. His
household and family expenses were heavy. He appears, however, to have
made ends meet until about the year 1735, when he began to be in
financial straits. After that things went from bad to worse. He made
strenuous efforts to convert his bills into cash, but without much
success. His creditors gave him trouble. The newsagent who sent him his
weekly paper from Edinburgh served a summons on him in 1741, and so did
Maciver, the periwigmaker. In December of that year he was threatened
with horning and caption, and the other legal processes which were the
dread of the impecunious. “I cannot pay these claims,” he writes, “was I
to be hang’d as well as imprisoned. I care not to go to a stinking gaol
at this time of the year, in my old age.” In January, 1742, he declares
that “ all the diligence [i.e., legal execution] in Scotland cannot
squeeze money out of me at present.” But the law could not be
restrained; and the Earl of Seaforth dealt him a great blow by arresting
his salmon on the shores of Loch Duich. In 1743 he was “prodigiously
straitned for pressing demands, and for the sustenance of my family.” He
was “ perplexed and dunned to death by poor people.” He got relief for a
time, but pinching poverty returned, and in 1749 “ swarms of small
creditors are on my back.” He is incessantly importuning his friends,
and such of his sons as are doing for themselves. Some of his friends
and several of his children, as well as his son-in-law, Captain Reid,
did what they could for him, but his distress continued. His last
letter, which is dated 28th September, 1752, is pathetic. At great
length he gives his son John, who was then settled in South Carolina, an
account of the family, and he concludes:—“Thus have I given you an
account of all our family, so have only to add that your mother and I
have laboured under great troubles of late years, and only subsisted by
the bounty of our children—and few or non other of late—and our schemes
have misgiven. May God sanctify every dispensation of his providence to
us, as I am now very old, and of lait feel the effects of it. Your
mother, Meg, and brothers give you their blessing, and to your spouse
and child—in which I join.” It was the last of his many epistles, and he
did not long survive the effort.
Stuart, as has been seen,
did not allow politics to interfere with his friendships or his
business. He was; nevertheless, a sincere and hopeful Jacobite. In
August, 1716, he contributes £1 sterling to a fund for the relief of the
Jacobite prisoners in Edinburgh Castle, and three months later he sends
a contribution to Carlisle, for the relief of “the poor gentlemen”
incarcerated there. In 1717 he notes with evident approval that his
father prays God for the restoration of the ancient royal line. His
letter-books make no allusion at the time to the events of the
Forty-Five, but in October, 1748, his son Francis hands Bishop Forbes a
written account of the cruelties that followed Culloden, and in the
following m6nth he himself writes the Bishop on the same subject. “I do
not think,” he writes, “there were ever greater inhuman barbaritys and
cruelties of all kinds perpetrat in anie countrie, either Cristian or
Infidel, than was in this at that period ; and all by order of the
Commander.”
Soon after the close of
the war Stuart is in correspondence with the Highland exiles on the
Continent; and in March, 1751, he makes a journey to France, where he
remains till November. He records his cordial reception by his friends
there, through whose hospitality he “lived at little expense,” and who
made an effort to get for him a “share of the pension settled by the
Court of France for certain gentlemen in distress.” The effort was
without success, “as I wanted certain qualifications without which my
project could not doe, but at the same time I got assurance that at a
proper time I would be provided for.” The proper time did not come, and
notwithstanding his son John’s offer to allow him £20 a year if he
settled in Boulogne, the disappointed old man returned to his native
Highlands to resume for a few months his struggle for existence.
In Church politics, it is
almost needless to say, the Bailie was an Episcopalian. In 1717, when
factor of Petty, he declares that he has “no stomach for planting
[Presbyterian] kirks.” In 1734 the Rev. Robert Jameson, “minister of the
Gospell to the Episcopall Congregation of Inverness,” made over his
library in crust for the congregation—among the trustees being Stuart
and “John Taylor, writer”—Baron Taylor. In his letter of November, 1748,
to Bishop Forbes, he states—“We are here in a Deprest confin’d condition
as to the public profession of our religion, though our good worthie
Pastor [Mr James Hay] does all he can; but I dare say matters will not
long continue so. Meantime, God grant us patience and resignation to His
unerring Providence.” When the Bishop visited Inverness in 1762, and
again in 1770, he found the good Bailie’s memory still green in the
Highland Episcopal fold.
Stuart’s family was a
large one. Of his children, Ann married Richard Hay-Newton of Newton, in
East Lothian, and it is to her descendant, the present Laird of Newton,
that I am indebted for the use of the letterbooks. Another daughter
married Captain Reid, and another Captain Wedderbum. His son Alexander
was a wine-merchant in Leith. James went to India, where he prospered.
John, after spending some years at sea, and going round the world with
Lord Anson as purser of the famous “Centurion,” settled in Charleston,
South Carolina, where he was appointed British agent for the Carolinas,
He is said to have been the sole survivor of the massacre at Fort
Loudoun, on the Tennessee River, in 1760. In the American War of
Independence he took the British side, and, on the conclusion of the
war, left" America for ever and settled in England, bringing home with
him a young- son, who was destined to become famous as Sir John Stuart,
Count of Maida—the victor of Maida, where, to the surprise of the world,
“the veterans of Napoleon fled before the British steel.”
The Bailie’s sons,
Francis, Patrick, and Henry, also settled in South Carolina, where
descendants of Francis are now well-known citizens. Many Highlanders
emigrated to the same state in the early years of the eighteenth
century, and for generations Gaelic was as much spoken there as in the
parish of Inverness. The Gaelic is now dead in the state, but in
Charleston the “ Old Stuart House,” built by John and Francis, still
stands.
I shall conclude by
referring to a trait in the Bailie’s character, which, although
trifling, is pleasing and not without interest. He was fond of gardening
and flowers, and was in the habit of placing sprigs of southern wood,
balm, and other sweet-smelling herbs between the leaves of his
letter-books, many of which lay there undisturbed until I perused the
volumes after the lapse of almost two centuries.
The Bailie’s Signature Download the full Letter-Book of
Baillie John Steuart here |