Social Life in Scotland
Chapter VIII. - The Municipal and Mercantile

In a portion of the forest enclosed with a bank and ditch, the early Briton in times of danger sought shelter for his family and cattle. In celtic speech this enclosure was called dun, a word which literally described its intention and use. Within the earthen enclosure or dun was subsequently reared the castle or stronghold. Castles were at first constructed within those enclosures which occupied heights, and which could be readily defended; hence the word dun is a common prefix in the names of many eminences throughout the country. At a further stage the followers of the chief who obtained shelter in the castle or within the surrounding ditch and rampart, built their huts in the locality, a circumstance which led to the name dun, pronounced town, being applied to any collection of dwellings in the proximity of a castle, or under the government of a municipality or overlord.

Roman municipia did not perish with the fall of the empire. In Western Italy those cities which had formerly been the centres of liberty and scenes of self-government began in the ninth century to reassume their importance as the nurseries of commerce. Through the energy of those fishermen who prosecuted their calling on the lagoons which bordered the Adriatic, arose the city of Venice, and therewith the first germ of a distinct municipal independence. Thereupon supervened the trading privileges associated with commercial centres in Spain, France, and the Netherlands; privileges drawn from kings and nobles, and which though occasionally suppressed, might not be wholly set aside. Chiefly founded on the Roman municipica, there were in England at the time of the Norman Conquest about one hundred commercial centres. The merchants and traders which these centres contained were severally governed by their own laws.

Of Scottish trading communities, the early history is obscure. The greater number certainly took origin at the castellated enclosures of the chiefs, latterly at the monasteries and great churches; also at sheltered points of the sea-board and the mouths of estuaries. If we accept the authority of Wyntoun, Macbeth, who reigned from 1039 to 1056, was distinguished for his agricultural and commercial wealth. By Bishop Turgot, in his life of Queen Margaret, we are informed that in the reign of her husband, Malcolm Canmore, merchants who came by land and sea from various countries into Scotland brought with them precious wares previously unknown. At the queen's instigation, the natives purchased from foreign traders clothing of various colours, decorated with ornaments, and by the wearing which they seemed to become as a new race. [Turgot's "Life of St Margaret," translated by W. F orbes-Leitli, Edin., 1883, 4to, p. 40.]

Scottish commerce, which derived an important impulse from Queen Margaret, was, under the government of her son, David I., materially advanced. Around trading communities David threw the protection of the law, and so became in a sense the founder of our municipal system. In his reign arose a century prior to the commercial confederation of the Baltic, two trading confederacies, one beyond the Munth, [The Munth or Mount was the old name of the eastern section of the great chain of hills extending from the Clyde to the Dee, and now known as the Grampians. `Till the fifteenth century the Munth constituted a grand line of division between the north and south of Scotland. By Wyntoun it is named as ''the Mowynth."] the other comprehending the burgles of Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling. To each of these southern towns David granted municipal charters, while he together formed them into a commercial court.

What David I. initiated, was by his royal grandson William the Lion effectively extended and fully carried out. Incorporating the principal towns by royal charters, he gave them the power of electing magistrates and of exercising self-government. Each trading community was now called a burgh, a designation which though originally signifying a mud-house, now conveyed rank and royal recognition. The burgess of a royal burgh was privileged to swear fealty to the sovereign with his hand upon the scriptures, and not subservientIy as between the hands of an overlord. ["Scotland under her Early Kings" 2 vols., 1862, Vol. i., pp. 294-9.]

In constituting his royal burghs, William the Lion made important stipulations. With other limitations, every burgess behoved to possess a toft or rood of land within the burgh, and every magistrate chosen by the community was required to qualify himself by swearing fidelity both to the sovereign and to the electors. During the reign of Robert the Bruce, royal burghs were invited to obtain charters of feu-fertile from the Crown, so that the burghaless might be retained for local purposes, on the annual payment of a reddendo to the Exchequer. From the period of their incorporation, the burgles yielded a large proportion of the national revenue in the rents of tenements and in mercantile customs. Long before the principle of representation can be discovered elsewhere, Scottish burghs sent delegates to a court of their own, where they framed laws for the common benefit, and determined what taxes they ought to contribute for the public service.

From the twelfth century, the course of trade is distinctly traceable. Prior to 1191, the monks of Melrose sent wool to the Netherlands, and obtained from Philip, Count of Flanders, the privilege of conveying their goods through his provinces without cess. And to the abbot of Melrose Henry III. of England, in 1225, granted permission to send a vessel to Flanders laden with wool and other merchandise. Henry gave a similar license to the abbot of Cupar.

At points of convenient harborage towns arose upon the sea-board. These, so early as the thirteenth century, had become numerous, some of them important. On the east coast, many traders from Flanders effected settlements during the reins of Alexander II and Alexander III. By the unexpected death of the latter in 1286, and the troubles which supervened, the continuance of traffic became impracticable, and it was on the part of the brave Wallace in act of consummate statesmanship that, when in 1297 he had recovered the national independence, he, with Sir Andrew Murray, his colleague in the Governorship, despatched to the Hanseatic towns of Hamburg and Lubeck a state missive desiring that the suspended trade might be renewed.

What Wallace sought to restore, King Robert the Bruce actively advanced. The northern ansus or confederation had ceased soon after the reign of William the Lion, but the southern confederacy was firmly maintained. From King Robert it received additional privileges, and was under the presidentship of the High Chamberlain constituted as a commercial Parliament. As the "Court of Four Burghs," it enacted rules of trading, which from time to time were altered or modified. It underwent various changes, till by an order of Parliament in 1487 it was superseded by the Convention of Burghs.

From the reign of David II. till the close of the regency in 1424, Scottish trade received imperfect recognition. James I. energetically promoted it. To commerce, James III. was not indifferent, for in 1478 he despatched ambassadors to the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy to seek a renewal of the privileges granted to those Scottish merchants who passed into Flanders. During the reign of James IV. foreign trade obtained that solid basis on which it has rested ever since.

By the early Scottish merchants were exported skins of sheep and rabbits, also the furs of the marten and weasel. During the reign of David I. hides and furs of greater variety were included among the exports, such as the skins of the deer, fox, hog, goat, beaver, and sable. Wool and salt were exported largely, also different kinds of fish, including salmon, cod, ling, haddock, whiting, herring, and oysters.

Among the earlier imports were gold, silver, copper, and other metals; household furniture, silk, and cloth of different kinds; also wines, oils, and fruits. In the sixteenth century the desire for decorated garments became a species of mania; it led to the importation of costly textiles. Paper, apothecaries' drugs, and articles in gold and silver, including jewelled rings, were also imported.

In the fourteenth century the principal shipping Ports were Lerwick and St Andrews, while business was conducted chiefly with Bruges. Younger sons of the landed gentry sought admission into mercantile guilds, and some traded prosperously. Merchandise, whether with foreign countries or in the
home trade, was honoured, and successful traders privileged with municipal honours. Of the cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Perth, the chief magistrate was allowed the designation of "honourable," and was addressed as "Your Lordship." Craftsmen and mechanics, who worked with their hands, were held as ranking lower in the municipal scale.

To the nobility and barons was allowed the privilege of exporting the produce of their own lands, and of importing commodities necessary to their households. But from traders were exacted stated dues. The earlier duties are not clearly defined, but in 1597 Parliament enacted that all merchandise brought into the realm should pay a custom of twelvepence on every pound's worth. The customs were farmed. In 1609, the export and import duties were leased for 115,000 merks. Goods were not admitted to England without payment of a heavy duty, but by an ordinance passed during the Protectorate in 1654, these custom rates were abolished. Re-imposed after the Restoration, the sentiments of friendship between the two nations which had begun to develop were considerably beclouded. During the earlier part of the century, a mercantile spirit had been created at Edinburgh and other ports, while the marked success of the East India Company, composed of English merchants, induced enterprising Scotsmen to embark readily in a similar adventure. An intelligent Scotsman, William Paterson, had already established the Bank of England, and on the counsel of this financier, northern capitalists ardently supported his proposal for instituting "The Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies." In 1605 the Scottish Parliament gave their sanction to the undertaking, and in the following year was procured a capital of upwards of £600,000 sterling, of which one-half was obtained in Scotland, the other half being subscribed chiefly in England. Thereupon a large and handsome structure for conducting the company's affairs was reared at Edinburgh, and arrangements entered upon for opening with Central America a general trade. On the 26th July 1698, a fleet of six ships built in Holland, and containing 1200 selected persons, was despatched from Leith. On the 4th November, reaching the Gulf of Darien, the intending colonists proceeded to rear and fortify the headquarters of a new Caledonia. But one misfortune after another supervened, and there were hot disputes, and a terrible privation. The ships of a second expedition sailed in May 1699, but when these reached Darien, the voyagers found the place as a desert studded with graves. A third expedition followed, only to intensify the disaster. Of all who had sailed from Scotland from first to last about thirty persons only survived, or were privileged to return home. The unhappy collapse was largely due to the unexpected withdrawal of dearly half the capital, consequent on the opposition of the English government. To Scotland the result was most injurious, owing to the large amount of money which had been irretrievably lost. But the event indirectly hastened the political union of the kingdoms, attended with the uprooting of international jealousies, and which secured to the inhabitants of North Britain the earliest of an unrestricted commerce.

So early as the fourteenth century woollen garments were imported, the finer chiefly from Lille and Rouen. Silks were purchased in the markets of Aleppo, Damascus, and Alexandria, and dyed at Venice and Genoa. Taffeta, a light silk, was produced in France; velvet and satin in Italy. Linen was imported from the Low Countries, cotton from India, Egypt, and Cyprus, fur from Lombardy. The bed-sheets of James IV., composed of Holland linen, cost from eight to fifteen shillings per ell; his shirts, made of the same material, were at breast and collar embroidered with gold thread.

During the fifteenth century, foreign fruits were used by the opulent. Sugar, moist and in loaf, was procured from Italian marts, figs from Malaga, and dried fruits, spices, and confections from all parts of Europe.

Wine was imported at an early period. French wine was used at the court of Alexander III., and red and white wines are mentioned in the reigns of Robert the Bruce and David II. The wines chiefly used in the fifteenth century were those of Gascony, Burgundy, the Rhine countries, and the Levant.

Rhenish wine was brought from Middleburg or Campvere. Malmsey —held in high favour—was obtained at Candia and Cyprus.

Scottish merchants effected agencies at foreign ports. From 1493 to 1505 Andrew Halyburton acted as Scottish consul at Middleburg, transacting business. Also at Bruges and Antwerp, — his official appointrnent being that of "Conservator of the Privileges of the Scottish Nation in the Low Countries." His "Ledger," which has been edited by Professor Cosmo Innes, is an important repertory. Through his negotiation wine was largely imported by Scottish merchants. Wine dealers from France opened marts at Dunbarton, and at other towns on the coast. The wine trade was protected by statute—adulteration being made a capital offence. Foreign wine merchants received goods in barter, such as wool and salmon.

Romany wine, a species of Burgundy, used in the monasteries, was, in the sixteenth century, accepted in payment of rent. Claret and Rhenish wine were mulled and drunk hot.

During the reign of James IV. claret was by Scottish traders imported from Bordeaux. The importation of claret from the mainland into the Western Isles was prohibited in 1609, and again in 1616 and 1622. In 1622 the Privy Council set forth "that one of the cheiff causes whilk procures the continewance of the inhabitants of the Ilis in their barbarous and incivile forme of living is the grate quantitie of wylles yeirlle conveyed to the Ilis, with the vusatiable desire quhairof the saidis inhabitantis are so far possest, that quhen thair arrives any ship or other veshell thair with wynes, they spend both dayis and nightis in thair
excesse of drinking, and seldome do they leave thair drinking, so long as thair is any of the wyne left, and sua that being overcome with drink thair fallis out many inconvenientis amangis them to the brek of his majesteis peace." The penalty for introducing wines to the islanders was fixed at "twenty pundis to be incurrit be every contravenare toties quotes." By a further ordinance confiscation of the liquor was added as a punishment. But the prohibitions of the Privy Council, which on account of prevailing excess denied wine to the common people, did not abridge the privileges of the opulent. Landowners had permission to purchase claret according to the extent of their rent-rolls. To the humblest landowners were allowed 220 dozen of bottles, and by Macleod of Dunvegan might be purchased 876 dozen.

During the sixteenth century claret was the usual beverage of the better class of burgesses. On the 24th December 1574, the Town Council of Edinburgh ordained "that na wyne sek be sauld darrer nor fyve schillingis sax penneis [per pint]; and that the tavern durris be lialdin oppin, and the said wyne sauld commounlie." By the Town Council it was ruled on the 29th December 1577, that wine was not to be sold at a price higher than £4, 6s. per tun. Claret, which in the first half of the sixteenth century was sold from sixpence to sixteenpence per pint, had at the end of that century nearly tripled in price.

Prior to 1780, when a heavy duty on its importation was imposed by Parliament, claret was a common beverage. For ordinary claret was paid fivepence, for the best tenpence a bottle. Visitors of all grades at the country mansion received a cup or bowl of claret when they entered, another on departing. In the family of the Lord President Dundas at Arniston House, about the middle of the eighteenth century, sixteen hogsheads were consumed annually. A cure for all ailments, claret in winter was reputed for diffusing warmth, in summer as neutralizing the pernicious effects of more potent beverages. When a vessel laden with claret arrived at Leith, the owners notified the occurrence by carting a number of hogsheads through the streets, and causing an attendant to proclaim where the liquor might be purchased.

Among the statutes of James I. providing for a higher degree of culture was included the enactment that hostelries be established in all burgh and market towns with accommodation for man and horse. By a further statute in the same reign it was ruled that no mail, travelling whether on horse or foot, might presume to lodge elsewhere than in the hostelries, while any, save innkeepers, who ventured to entertain travellers, would become liable to a penalty of forty shillings. From the poet William Dunbar's description in his "Friars of Berwick," it may be assumed that certain innkeepers of the sixteenth century enjoyed comfortable surroundings. But the majority of inns then and long subsequently were poor and mean. Sir Walter Scott has in Marmion described the rural hostel in these lines:—

Soon, by the chimney's merry blaze,
Through the rude hostel might you gaze
Might see, where in dark nook aloof
The rafters of the sooty roof
Bore wealth of winter cheer
Of sea-fowl dried, and soland's store,
And gammons of the tusky boar,
And savoury haunch of deer."

During the seventeenth century taverns abounded. In 1669 the magistrates of the Canongate enacted that drinking in taverns should cease when at night "the ten-hour bell was tolled." A considerable inn in the White Horse Close at the foot of the Canongate, accommodated in the seventeenth century and subsequently those travellers who came to Edinburgh from the south. During the eighteenth century a hostelry in St Mary's Wynd, Edinburgh, had stalling for an hundred horses and sheds for twenty carriages.

Those innkeepers or stablers who a century ago kept horses for hire, seldom provided accommodation for their riders. When travellers arrived at their establishments, they conducted them to private lodgings, but gave lodgment to the attendants.

At a period when travellers were few, tavern-keepers chiefly depended upon local traffic. A. century ago the principal lawyers and physicians of Edinburgh met their clients and patients in the public taverns. In his autobiographical sketch, Dr Thomas Somerville remarks that in the eighteenth century the first and last item in a lawyer's bill of costs was a tavern bill. The celebrated physician, Dr Archibald Pitcairn, who died in 1713, had his consulting-rooms in the dingy underground apartments of a tavern near St Giles church, known as the groping office. At Fortune's tavern, in the Stamp-Office Close, the high Commissioner to the General Assembly held his levees, and men of fashion held their clubs and social gatherings. Lawyers met their clients at Douglas's Tavern in the Anchor Close. Magistrates and town councillors feasted at a tavern in Writer's Court, known as the Star and Garter. John Douie's tavern in Liberton's Wynd was a noted supper-house. [For a vivid representation of tavern-life in the capital during the eighteenth century, see Dr Robert Chambers' "Traditions of Edinburgh," 1868, 12mo, pp. 174-191.] At a time when Edinburgh citizens were content to transact business and dine and sup in the ordinary taverns, it may readily be conceived that their home comforts were few and circumscribed. On the event of his marriage in 1730, John Coutts, afterwards Lord Provost of the city, established his residence in one of the lofty tenements in the High Street approached from the Parliament Close. His dwelling, which consisted of five apartments, was on the second floor; it was reached by a flight of steps known as the President's Stair, a Lord President of the Court of Session having at a former period resided on the premises. Within his very small dwelling Mr Coutts conducted an important banking-house, and gave liberal feasts. In 1773 James Boswell entertained Dr Samuel Johnson in his house in James's Court, Lawnmarket, which, though containing only a few small rooms, had formerly been the residence of the celebrated David Hume, also of Dr Hugh Blair, the eminent preacher.

Prior to the third decade of the eighteenth century, when an improved system of domiciliary arrangement became common, few families in Edinburgh possessed self-contained dwellings. The judges and other members of the College of Justice, also the clergy and more opulent citizens, lived in flats or floors, often approached from ill-ventilated courts or alleys. And it is difficult to understand how those who maintained a restricted correspondence received the missives sent to them, for the houses were without numbers and also without names. The great northern family of Dunbar, when they had occasion to communicate with any of their members in the capital, addressed their letters with a minuteness which could hardly fail to guide the postman. Thus: "For Mr Archibald Dunbar of Thundertoune, to be left at Captain Dumbar's writing chamber, at the Iron Revell, third stone below the Cross, north end of the close, at Edinburgh."

Though at different times inferior in trading importance to Aberdeen and Berwick, and even St Andrews, Edinburgh has steadily, from the eleventh century, maintained its position as the national capital. Yet in 1385, when it was destroyed by the English, it is described as composed of houses chiefly built of mud and roofed with thatch. Subsequently its dwellings for a course of centuries were of timber, with the result that when a fire broke out every habitation in the neighbourhood was reduced to ashes. At different times were burned the towns of Aberdeen, Montrose, Stirling, Haddington, Forfar, and Lanark. On the 17th July 1652 a fire broke out at Glasgow in a narrow lane east in the High Street. The city being almost wholly of timber, the flames speedily swallowed up a third of the dwellings, rendering homeless about a thousand families.

A. conflagration occurred at Edinburgh on the 3rd February 1700. About ten o'clock in the evening flames bean to issue from a building situated between the Cowgate and the Parliament Close. Lord Crossrig, whose residence adjoined, made a narrow escape, all his family property being destroyed. Several houses fourteen storeys high, also the buildings of the Bank of Scotland, were wrecked. Only by extraordinary precautions the Parliament House, which then contained the records of the kingdom, was preserved.

In the absence of insurance companies, the destruction of buildings by fire in the seventeenth century entailed a heavy loss upon individuals. But the public benefited, for by a contribution made in every parish, the dwellings were rebuilt, and these were raised of stone instead of timber. Two fires, which occurred at Edinburgh on the 15th and 16th November 1824, especially conduced to the architectural improvement of the city. At the earlier conflagration was destroyed the wooden steeple of the Tron Church, which was substituted by an erection in stone. In the second fire perished the south-east side of Parliament Square, of which the ugly and unwholesome tenements of fourteen storeys made way for an elegant fabric in harmony with the Parliament House. Till about a century ago, the principal streets of the larger burghs presented an uneven and dangerous surface. The main streets of St Andrews in 1790 were paved with large boulders drawn from the adjacent fields, and which, stink at intervals, served as stopping-stones in winter and after floods. Side pavement was rare; what did exist was detached and broken. Street lamps were few in number, and were supplied with inferior oil and badly managed. On the 10th October 1688, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh reported to the Town Council that he had bought at London "twenty-four lanthrons for the use of the good toun," whereupon the Council ordered them to be fixed "upon iron sweyes upon the most convenient places of the High Street and Cowgate." The burgh of Canongate was under separate government, but other thoroughfares of the capital were probably at night left in darkness. During the eighteenth century the citizens of Glasgow were, when visiting of a winter's evening, accompanied by men servants, who bore a lamp in one hand and carried a bludgeon in the other. Evening street robberies were common. At Perth, banditti from the mountains drew ropes across the streets in order to trip those whom they intended to rob. Up to 1809 the streets of Edinburgh had lamps only in winter, and prior to 1830, few provincial towns possessed lamps at any season. Many industrious shopkeepers both at Stirling and Dumfermline were ruined through nocturnal plundering.

The insalubrious condition of Scottish towns during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even at a period nearer to our own times, was such as to create disgust. The magistrates were not inactive, but the habits of the burgesses and their servants were essentially filthy. While ventilation was unpractised, there was no sewerage, and heaps of offensive rubbish abounded at every turn. On these heaps which accumulated on the streets of Edinburgh hogs were fed.

The desirableness of checking so enormous an evil must have appealed strongly to the Town Council, when, on the 30th April 1585, they ordained, "for avoyding of all filth and evill favour quhairby any inconvenient may aryse in this somer seasoun, that na miner of persouns suffer thair swyne to pas in the hie streits, commoun clossis, or vinells, or furth of bandis in any oppin places, fra this day furth, vnder the payne of slawchter of the swyne and payment of ane vnlaw of xls. swa oft as thai failyie, and the awner to be putt in the thevis hoill or tolbuith quhill the said vnlaw be payet." With respect to the matter of swine-feeding, this injunction did not prove, permanently efficacious, for nearly two centuries later—namely, in 1760—children attending the High School, and even the daughters of gentle citizens, obtained diversion by mounting upon the backs of hogs, which then were daily wanderers in the streets and alleys.

Subsequent to a state visit by Queen Mary in 1561, the Town Council of Dundee issued "an edict for the daily inspection of middens." And on the 27th July 1591, they appointed "the common officer for executions to attend upon keeping clean of all the calsays, streets, and the kirkyard." And in order to his effectually fulfilling the duties, they ordered for the officer's use "ane wheill-barrow upon the tounis chairges," "disponed to him the haill fuilzie," and further gave him liberty to "slay and appropriate all swine that he can apprehend within the burgh." These were perquisites additional to "twa shillings and eightpence," which the officer received "ouklie" (weekly) in salary as executioner.

In 1692 the magistrates of Edinburgh arranged with several farmers for the employment of "muckmen" or scavengers to cleanse the city from time to time; also to watch the streets, and to apprehend those who cast out nuisance. At a later period the city rubbish was cast upon "the Barefoot Park," beyond the North Loch, on which the new town was subsequently reared.

A practice obtained at Edinburgh, which, amidst many efforts for its suppression, long persistently defied municipal authority. Every night from ten to twelve o'clock liquid filth was, from the windows, thrown upon the street. Before perpetrating the nuisance, the thrower was understood to call out in French, gardez l'eau, while the passer by was expected to arrest the discharge by exclaiming in the vernacular, "haud yere haund." Yet many persons were daily soused in the polluted waters. This loathsome habit and other repulsive social practices of the capital having attracted the attention of the legislature, an Act was passed in 1686 compelling magisterial interference. But the troubles which attended the Revolution caused the statutory provision to be overlooked, so that about sixty years later, namely, on the 14th August 1745, the Town Council, considering that inasmuch as the several Acts as to the throwing over foul water, filth, dirt, and other nastiness in the high streets, venuels, and closes, had not been put into due execution, each family should now provide vessels in their houses for holding their excrements and foul water, at least for forty-eight hours." They further prohibited any kind of filth to be caster out of doors, or any filth or water to be casten over the windows, either back or fore, under the pail of four shilling Scots." For offending a second time it was ruled that "the servant shall stand on the pillory between ten and twelve o'clock in the forenoon," and for the third fault that she be whipt by the hand of the Hangman, and banished the city." In the enactment, it is set forth that the Council had proceeded "by advice of the Lords of Session."

In 1749 the Council's order was renewed, but the obnoxious habit continued as before. In 1772, Robert Fergusson made the window nuisance the subject of these satiric rhymes:

"With an inundation big as
The burn that 'neath the Nor' Loch brig is,
They kindly shower Edina's roses
To quicken and regale our noses.
For stink, instead of perfumes, grow,
And clarty odours fragrant flow."

At length a method was devised by which cleanliness, both in the house and on the street was made secure. At the landlord's cost, a vessel sufficient to contain a day's refuse was provided to every dwelling, while scavengers employed by the corporation removed the contents each morning, to be carried off by them in carts and waggons.

While noisomeness prevailed in the capital, a higher sanitary condition was not to be expected elsewhere. When Queen Mary made a second visit to Dundee in 1564, she found that "the deid of the haill burgh is buryit in the midst thereof, quhairn the common traffic of merchandeese is usit, and that throw occasion of the said burial, pest and vtlher contagious sickness is engenderit." The evil her Majesty remedied by granting to the burgh as a place of sepulchre, the site of the Greyfriars' monastery. From his father the present writer had some particulars as to the wretched condition of St Andrews upwards of a century ago, when he entered as a student its ancient university. Within the centre of the city an open space was known as the Foul Waste; into this was thrown rubbish of every sort, which accumulated in festering heaps. The ruins of the venerable cathedral and of Blackfriars Monastery were tainted by ordure, while the alleys and lanes and courts were receptacles of filth. The city of Perth, of which the condition was, a century ago, equally loathsome, was partially cleansed by frequent inundations of the Tay, on the banks of which it rests. On a day, about midsummer, a century ago, the inhabitants of Stirling left the place, while carters and their assistants cleansed the many cesspools, and removed the dust heaps which during the preceding twelve months had accumulated at every door. Where filth abounded pestilential sickness prevailed and dominated. From the thirteenth to the seventeenth century upwards of thirty epidemics swept across the country, some of which decimated the population. These epidemics were called "visitations," owing to the general belief that they were sent as a Divine scourge and in direct punishment of sin. Calderwood informs us that after two ministers, Mr John Forbes and Mr John Welsh, had been subjected to imprisonment for attending the General Assembly held at Aberdeen in July 1605, the pest "broke out at Edinburgh, Leith, St Andrews and other parts." The historian adds that of this pest died the eldest son and brother's daughter of Sir Alexander Seton, the High Chancellor. The epidemic lingered at Perth, where the infected were borne from their dwellings to the burgh muir. In order to defray the cost of removal and otherwise to provide for the sick, the Magistrates and Kirksession agreed to commute to social offenders the usual sentences as to appearing on the repentance-stool for certain penalties or money payments. When this course had some time been pursued, a notion arose that the relaxation of discipline bad provoked the Divine wrath so as to induce a continuance of the distemper. Severity was therefore determined on. With the approval of the Kirksession the Magistrates revived a dormant statute, and so sentenced to death two persons, a man and woman, who were charged with adultery. That the expiation might be more effective, we learn from Mercer, the local chronicler, that the woman was hanged. "fore-anent her mother's yett." ["Chronicles chiefly of remarkable occurrences in Perth," by John Mercer, Town Clerk. MS. in the Advocates' Library. Mercer was elected Town Clerk of Perth in 1623.]

It was probably during the prevalence at Perth of the lingering pestilence of 1605, that an event occurred, attended by the production of a popular ballad. Two damsels belonging to burgess families at Perth, had during the pest sought refuge together in the country, in order to avoid the dreaded contagion. Better to insure safety they made. their retreat to the banks of the Lednock stream, several miles from the city, where they built a bower or rustic hut as a temporary Bone. But the damsels were admired by a youthful townsman who visited them at the Lednock. Unhappily lie bore the infection, and the maidens being smitten, both of them were cut off. The ballad which relates the tragic story begins thus-

"O Bossy Bell and Mary Gray,
They are twa bonnie lasses;
They bibg'd a bower on yon burn brae,
And theek'd it o'er wi' rashes."

"The plague of the pock," as it was called, ravaged at Aberdeen in 1608, and this, it has been held, was the first time that smallpox was experienced in that northern district. From that period till it was subdued by means of vaccination, very many children and adults became victims to the complaint. In several epidemics the existence of the disease was indicated by a redness of the skin and the breaking out of boils.

Many distempers or pests were not infectious, these being contracted through rigid exposure, imperfect nourishment, or unsavoury surroundings. A widely prevailing malady was known as the leprosy; it was a form of scurvy. With this complaint King Robert the Bruce was afflicted, as, subsequent to his coronation, he was exposed to many painful privations. When in his extremity he was harboured by the men of Prestwick near Ayr, he discovered in the vicinity a mineral spring, by using which he was cured. Subsequent to his victory at Bannockburn, he gave token of his gratitude by rearing at the spring a small hospital, which he endowed for the benefit of indigent persons who might suffer from his complaint. The hospital, which was known as the King's Casa or case, is now a ruin, but the endowment, though diverted from its original use, is administered by the Poor Law authorities at Ayr on behalf of certain pensioners. Whether from the example of King Robert, or owing to a prevailing necessity, spittals or hospitals for lepers or those suffering from scurvy were erected in the vicinity of every town. When the patients were destitute of funds, and prolonged treatment was needful, the inhabitants were taxed.

Between those diseases which spread by contagion and those which did not, Scottish physicians in the fifteenth century could not intelligently discriminate. The abbot and monks of Cupar salaried "a mediciner," and, by his counsel, at Pentecost 1466, one of their tenants who suffered from an ailment not exanthematous was compelled to make pledge that "after the first year's sowing he would freely depart from his wife and healthy children to a place which he shall choose, suitable to his infirmity, and that he would not return."

The dread of contagion proved an intolerable bugbear. When in 1574 it was reported that a "pest" had appeared at Leith, and that a Frenchman lodging there had brought it from London, the Town Council of Edinburgh charged all who resided under the same roof with him to keep within doors. And when, eleven days afterwards, it appeared that the disease was spreading both at Leith and on the shores of Fife, the Town Council enjoined "that na manor of persoun, inhabitant of this burgh, nor otheris resoirtand to and fra the samyn, vse ony kynde of trafficque with the indwelIaris of the tovne of Leith or Kirkaldie, nor nane of the saidis tovnis resoirt to this tovne, souther ony boitis or pepile of the said tovne of Kirkcaldie, thair gizdes or geir, to be resauit or resett in the said tovne of Leith, ... vnder the payee of deid."

There, after the sick were ordered to "inclois thame selfis, keip clois, and vse na traficque with thair nychtbouris." Further, the ports of the burgh were closed, save the Netherbow and West Port, which six persons were appointed to guard. Thereafter the Burgh Muir was converted into an Hospital, and other localities designated for use by families who had removed from the scene of infection. When in 1585 the pest reappeared, a watch was set on those who occupied any plague-smitten dwelling, that they "might not escaip or rin away." As the disease spread, lodges for the sick were reared on the Burgh Muir, while at the Sciennes, another portion of Burghal property, the inmates of infected houses were accommodated. That beggars might not spread the infection, they were committed to "the thievis hole." Conventions of idle persons were prohibited, the sale of vegetables forbidden, and a great caldron for the cleansing of infected clothing purchased and put to use. To provide effectively against contagion, it was determined that all suffering from the lest, and "concealing the same," should be subjected to instant trial, and if found guilty should be "execut to the deyth at the stray mercat." In order to the carrying out of this enactment an additional executioner was appointed, and a gibbet placed at the Burgh Muir. For minor offences during the plague, a pair of irons with their shackillis were borne from the Tolbooth to the Burgh Muir. While these proceedings were enacted, the Town Council met thrice a-week for deliberation, and assembled daily for "prayers and sermon." But as better drainage and improved ventilation were unthought of the epidemic continued till congregations were without elders, and all the students of the University had dispersed in terror. During the same year 1427 persons died of the plague at Perth, or about one-fourth of the inhabitants.

In 1645-6 an epidemic arising from miasma devastated the central districts. At Stirling, the Town Council held their meetings in the open fields, and at Perth in the following year the church doors were closed from the 22nd August 1646 till the 3rd January 1647.

Among the various devices for suppressing the progress of disease, one of the most reasonable least obtained favour. When in 1553 it was suggested to the Town Council of Edinburgh that for the more efficient treatment of the sick an hospital should be built which might contain forty beds, and be provided with physicians and surgeons, the proposal was rejected. And while in 1585 "fowle clengers" were by the Town Council appointed to remove from the streets fetid accumulations, the cleansing process was simply a nominal one. To the counsel of physicians, that it is easier to prevent the occurrence of an epidemic than when it has obtained hold to check or overcome it, magistrates and the clergy gave no heed. Those indeed who in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries practised medicine according to the rules of science or of common sense were generally disapproved. Burgesses and their wives reposed the greatest confidence in the half-educated barber-surgeons, while by many persons of a lower grade even these were discountenanced. Unlicensed practitioners possessed the popular confidence. A book of pretended medicine, entitled "Tippermalloch's receipts," obtained wide acceptance. Ascribed to John Moncrieff of Tippermalloch in Perthshire (who if really the author must have been insane), the receipts assigned as a remedy for fever an application of the common snail, while ordinary diseases were to be cured by swallowing the powder of Human bones. To such an extent prevailed the nostrums of quacks, that an order of persons in the highlands derived subsistence by pretending to cure ailments by counteracting the influence of "an evil eye," or the power of enchantment by which they had been produced. At Lochawe, a properly qualified physician of the eighteenth century was, in order to continue his practice, driven to the expedient of distributing with his medicines sprigs of the mountain ash and other amulets.

In rural districts, cutaneous complaints and rheumatic and pulmonary, ailments, also intermittent fever, lingered in districts flit and undrained. On the carse lands of Stirling and Monteith, the inhabitants usually died at forty and fifty; those who survived were diseased and feeble. Since the introduction of a. thorough system of drainage, ague has ceased, and rheumatic and pulmonary ailments have proportionally diminished.

The great fires which destroyed towns and hamlets purged and purified them. By the conflagration at Edinburgh in February 1700 was rooted out a noxious focus of disease and death. But the Town Council of the city regarded the event as "a. fearful rebuke of God."

Dementia is largely though not exclusively the product of the marsh; when blood poisoned by malaria circulates in the brain, it vitiates and corrupts its substance and texture. Insanity engendered, the victim transmits to his descendants a terrible inheritance. Passing one generation, the malady may with renewed strength assert itself in the next. Marsh poison in madness taints for generations, so long indeed as subsist the conditions under which it was generated. Those persons who were burned for sorcery, on confessions that they had held interviews with the devil, were victims of lunacy. During the period which preceded the abolition of trial for sorcery, the ordinary provision for the insane were the stake and the funeral pile.

Persons were executed as assassins and traitors who, properly characterised, were dangerous lunatics. John Cheislie of Dairy was descended from a crofter at Quothquhan in Clydesdale. In boyhood his paternal grandfather, who bore the same Christian name, attracted the notice of Sir James Lockhart of Lee, to whom the lands of Quothquhan belonged. At Sir James's expense he was educated for the, ministry, and in 1617 was appointed minister of his native parish. Of his three sons, John, the eldest, was secretary to the celebrated Mr Alexander Henderson. In compliment to his employer, he was knighted by Charles I.; he obtained charters of the lands of Kerswell and Symontoun. William, the second son, a Writer to the Signet, became proprietor of Drumgray. The third son, Walter, brewer in Edinburgh, purchased in 1655 a portion of the estate of Dairy in the vicinity of the city; to this his only son John eventually succeeded.

That blood-poisoning which had been contracted by his progenitors in the marshes of Clydesdale produced in John Cheislie actual madness. Violent and self-opinionative, he only recognised as worthy of deference the members of that house through whose patronage his family had gained their original elevation, while in their turn the Lockharts continued to hold in affection a family socially created by their beneficence. When Dean of Faculty, Sir George Lockhart, grandson and representative of Sir James of Lee, was, along with John Cheislie, witness to a baptism in 1676 in the Huntly of John's uncle William. And, unreasonable as he was, when John Cheislie, twelve years later, drove his wife and children from his dwelling, and thereafter refused to contribute to their support, he chose as umpire with another in settling the dispute, Sir George Lockhart, now Lord President. But, contrary to his insane hope, his Lordship, along with his co-umpire, Lord Kenmay, decided that he should contribute £93 a year towards the family maintenance, a result which, changing Cheislie's reverence into hate, also excited his revenge. He would shoot the Lord President, he said to his uncle William, who warned his Lordship of his danger. Some time after Cheislie went to London, but speedily returned. On Sunday, the 31st March 1639, he endeavoured to obtain access to a pew in St Giles' church behind that occupied by the President. Failing in this, he refused to enter the church, but walked about in the vestibule till the service was concluded. He then proceeded to the lane conducting from the Lawnmarket to the President's house, when one of his Lordship's family remarked to him: "I thought you had been in London." ''I am there now," responded the lunatic, who, as the President came up, drew a pistol from his dress and took mortal aim. The President fell and the desperate maniac stood unmoved. On being informed that the President was dead, he remarked that he "was not used to do things by halves." Subjected to a trial in the municipal court, he was illegally examined by torture, and, though clearly insane, was sentenced to mutilation and death; his body was hung in irons.

The lunacy of John Cheislie was inherited by his children. Walter, one of his sons, in 1722, perished in a conflict with a. brother officer to whom he had been insolent. His daughter, Rachel, had a remarkable career. Wife of the Hon. James Erskine, Lord Grange, she became a noted virago, indulging imprecation and an unreasonable resentment. Her sister-in-law, who had not interfered with her wayward fancies, she publicly denounced in presence of the congregation which on a Sunday issued from the Tron Church. At a further stage she cursed her children. She menaced that she would attack, with words of execration, her husband as he sat upon the bench, and actually made several attempts upon his life. Efforts to soothe or gratify her proved utterly unavailing. She was a dangerous lunatic, and there was in Scotland at the time no asylum for persons of her rank who suffered from her malady. With the approval of her children, all being of mature years, Lord Grange adopted the desperate measure of forcibly sending her into exile. The story of her deportation has been surrounded with romance; it was simply a necessity. Mrs Erskine. was borne from Edinburgh on the 22d April 1732; she died at Skye in 1745.

In 1676 the Town Council of Edinburgh appointed four of their number to procure in the House of Correction "roume for keeping the distracted people," and in 1684 a payment of £36 was made from the Kirk Treasurer's Account to the keeper of the Correction House "for prisoners, whoors, and mad people." At length in 1698 the Town Council resolved to erect a Bethlehem or Hospital for the Insane, but though a sum of £8000 Scots was appropriated to the object, the intention failed.

When, in 1738, the Infirmary at Edinburgh was founded, a portion of the lower floor was allocated to lunatics. And in 1745 twenty-one cells for distracted persons were reared in the workhouse, while the Darien House was also adapted as an asylum. But the question of treating medically those labouring under cerebral disease continued to excite only a partial interest, for when in 1763 was rendered available a bequest by John Watson, Writer to the Signet, which was to be applied at Edinburgh for a charitable purpose, it was ruled by the executors that an institution for foundlings was more beneficent than a refuge for the insane. The Foundling Hospital was established, and as this led to the public exposure of illegitimate children, it was by Lord Kames strongly characterised as "more noxious than a pestilence or famine." In reality the offspring of the dissolute were accommodated in a palace, while those mentally afflicted continued objects of neglect. When Robert Fergusson, the poet, was seized with that violent mania, the precursor of his early death, he was borne to the parish workhouse, and there deposited among loose straw upon the earthen floor. In this condition he was allowed to close his life; he died upon the floor of the Edinburgh workhouse on the 16th October 1774.

Fergusson was under the medical care of Dr Andrew Duncan, and the deplorable state of his last surroundings left on the mind of that benevolent physician a powerful and lasting impression. Dr Duncan continued to urge upon his fellow' citizens the importance of providing a proper place of refuge for lunatic patients. At length in 1791 a definite proposal for establishing an asylum at Edinburgh was submitted to the public, and contributions solicited. But the combined influence of the Lord Provost and Magistrates, and of the College of Physicians and the College of Surgeons, failed to awaken any due concern in an undertaking than which none more truly philanthropic could possibly have been devised. Even at the expiry of fifteen years, the contributions did not exceed the sum of one hundred pounds. But in 1806 the movement fortunately secured the support of Sir John Sinclair, through whose benevolent efforts a grant of £2000 was obtained from the funds of the Forfeited Estates. A charter of incorporation followed, and after an interval the Royal Edinburgh Asylum was fully established. Other asylums in different districts were reared subsequently. Latterly the proper treatment of the insane has been secured by a Parliamentary statute. [For many of these particulars we are indebted to a privately printed Memorandum by Dr Arthur Mitchell, one of the Commissioners of the Board of Lunacy, who has obligingly communicated a copy for our use.]

Co-ordinate with the Church in upholding and maintaining the liberties of the people, the Royal Burghs have long been a centre of moral and intellectual activity. From burgesses at Edinburgh, Perth, Dundee, Ayr and Stirling, and latterly at Glasgow, have sprung many persons who have filled positions of honour both in the Church and State. From traders at Edinburgh descend the notable families of Hope, Earls of Hopetoun, Dick of Prestonfield, Clerk of Penicuik, Inglis of Cramond and Fowlis of Ravelston. Yet it is to he remarked that with the advancement of a material prosperity civic independence retreated and fell short. During the seventeenth century, and though less conspicuously so, also in the eighteenth, neighbouring landowners, their visitors and even their grooms and other retainers were from time to time placed by Town Councils on their burgess rolls. When at Edinburgh, regiments were changed in the castle, burghal diploma-forms, kept in readiness, were filled up with the names of the officers and left at their quarters.

Deriving their privileges from kings, the burgles were necessarily loyal. When James VI. was in as financial extremity, which frequently happened, he appealed to the Town Council of Edinburgh, who upon proper security advanced the necessary funds. When at the Revolution all the burghs accepted the political change, many persons in the magistracy were more time-serving than cordial. The arbitrary measures of James VI. had generally repelled from his house every sentiment of loyalty, yet within four months after the pious Renwick had suffered in the Grassmarket, we find the Town Council of Edinburgh ready to testify their strong attachment to the royal person. For on the 14th June 1688, the Town Council "in Honour of the Queen's majestie's happie deliverie of the Prince and Steward of Scotland," whom they devoutly added "God long presarve," gave orders that "their great joy for so great a mercie to this kingdom" should be intimated by tuck of drum, so that "in the city and all the suburbs bonfires be kindled, bells be rung and cannon discharged." And while the Trained Bands were enjoined to turn out in their best apparel, each citizen was, under the penalty of one hundred merles, ordered to unite in the public rejoicing. Nor here did the Corporation pause, for at their meeting on the 6th July when the Lord Provost reported that by the Convention of Burghs he had been appointed to proceed to London to offer congratulations, it was agreed to defray his lordship's costs.

The landing of the Prince of Orange in the following November, and his assumption of the reins of government rendered imperative on the part of the Council some decisive action. On the 11th December they obtempered an order of the Privy Council by summoning Captain John Wallace, who occupied Holyroodhouse, to surrender his authority. And when, two weeks later, tidings of the King's flight, and the arrival of the Prince of Orange at St James's indicated a safe line of policy, the Town Council, assembling on the 2Sth December, unanimously resolved to approach the Prince with these words of welcome: "We now see our fear of Popery and slaverie have been as just as they were great, and we are persuaded the Almightie God bath raised your Highnes to counteract the restles and malicious designes of Rome against this island. We cannot upon this occasion hide the satisfaction and joy wherewith our hearts are filled when wee heare dayly your Highnes expedition into Britaine (equally hazardous as it is generous) hath been hitherto prosperous without effusion of blood." "May," add the congratulators, "the Heavens crown all your glorious undertakings with constant success, as now they are sincerely attended with the prayers and acclamations of all good men." These were well-ordered words, and justified the expression of hope with which the address concludes that the "city and its privileges and the persons of its rulers and councillors might be under his Highness's protection."

Subscribed by every member of the corporation, the address to the Prince of Orange was entrusted to deputies, who for its presentation were expected to proceeds to London. But difficulties supervened. The Lord Provost and Magistrates were ordered to publish the Prince's "Declaration," in which he described the government of King James as despotic and arbitrary, especially in "hanging, shooting, and drowning innocent persons without fear of law or respect to age or sex." In the same manifesto the Prince also expressed his belief that the son, whose birth the Town Council had lately celebrated, was not a genuine product of the royal house. To sanction a "Declaration" of this sort, the Town Council felt, was a step which allowed no chance of receding should the Revolution government be ultimately overwhelmed. And as they hesitated, the younger citizens hoisted an orange banner, and with noisy demonstrations celebrated the dynastic change. Driven to extremity, the magistrates convened "a great council" of the citizens, less for consultation as to political affairs than to obtain general co-operation in the maintenance of order. Confident that their plan would divert attention from the main question, they prepared a minute, which, in anticipation of its being passed, the Depute Town Clerk thus notified on the margin of the Council Book: "Act of Council consenting to the resisting of the persones that resolve without authoritie of the Magistrates and Council to convocat in a hostile manner upon pretence to display his highness, the Prince of Orange his banner." As the Act did not pass, the page of the Register was left blank, the margin receiving these words of explanation: "The reason why there wes no wryt in the scroll book wes becaus ther wes about this tyme great disorder in the city by tumults and robins of houses." This course of dissembling did not escape the notice of the Government, and consequently it was fixed that the commissioners to serve in the Convention summoned for the 14th March should be nominated by the burgesses and not by their representatives in the Council.

At Dundee, Jacobite sentiments prevailed strongly. From the "Justiciary Record" we learn that on the 10th June 1714, about seven weeks before the death of Queen Anne, three of the magistrates and William Lyon, younger of Ogill, the Town Clerk, had proceeded to the cross, and there drank the health of "King" James the eight." Among them was a special offender, Bailie Laurence Oliphant, of the Perthshire family of Gask, who had ventured publicly to imprecate curses upon King George. Tried at the High Court of Justiciary on the 28th June 1715, all were convicted; and while each was subjected to imprisonment and declared incapable of holding any municipal office, Oliphant was amerced in 200 merles. [Laurence Oliphant was, on the 28th January 1697, indentured as apprentice to Robert Rankin, "skiper in Dundee for learning the mariner's calling." In the indenture it is stipulated that he was to "keep all holy ordinances," and further, that should he "commit fornication," he would be bound to extend his apprenticeship for three years "after committing the said fact."—"The Jacobite Lairds of Gask," by T. L. Kingston Oliphant, Esq. Grampian Club, 1870, 8vo, p, 9.]

The enterprise of Prince Charles Edward in 1745 to recover the throne of his ancestors was somewhat less desperate than is commonly believed. For in the event of a further effort being made by the exiled house, several persons in authority throughout the country, and not a few of the Highland chiefs, had pledged themselves to support the cause with their substance and followers. That many in the hour of trial stood aloof, or joined the other side, was mainly owing to the patriotic efforts of Duncan Forbes of Culloden, the Lord President. Besides raising a number of companies on behalf of order, this patriotic Scotsman induced many of his landed neighbours to withdraw their sympathy from a cause of which the success implied the renewal of arbitrary government, and the failure, personal forfeiture and degradation. Through his well-directed efforts the Jacobite interests were deprived of the support of at least two thousand men. And with that loss was combined the lack of military and other important stores. Those who did join the Prince's standard were half-fed, besides being mainly without arms or other military accoutrements. So utterly wretched indeed were the Prince's followers, when on their southward march, sheltering in the fastnesses of Corriaric, that had Sir John Cope with the royal troops waited their arrival at Perth, their discomfiture would have been easy and certain. But as Cope, with a stupidity difficult to realise, marched his troops northwards to Inverness, and so allowed the rebels to proceed to Perth unmolested, they were there provided with food and money through a contribution levied upon the inhabitants. Under the guidance of Lord George Murray, the Prince resumed Isis march, and crossing the Forth by the ford at Frew in the parish of Gargunnock, avoided a possible interruption by Colonel Gardiner's dragoons at Stirling Castle. After a five clays' march from Perth, the rebel army, on the 16th September, reached the village of Corstorphine within four miles of Edinburgh. From thence the Prince requested the magistrates to admit him to the city as Regent for his fattier, King James the Eighth. From secret information, the Prince well knew that the city was open to him, and that by the authorities he would be welcomed. And here it is necessary slightly to retrace the progress of events. The Prince landed with seven followers at Kinloch Moidart on the 19th July. To a communication from the Marquis of Tweeddale, Secretary of State for Scotland, stating that the "Pretender's son had landed, or was about to land, in Scotland," Archibald Stewart, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, replied on the 13th August that " the town was never better affected," and emphatically added that he and his brother magistrates would keels " a watchful eye so as to conserve the peace. In token of loyalty, the Town Council, at the instance of the Provost, ten days later resolved to add "thirty centinells" to the city guard ; they also authorised the high Constables to keel) watch on all strangers who entered the place, and gave orders for the construction of a gunpowder magazine. Further, " to render abortive the attempts of those who are enemies to his majestic and our present Bally constitution," they convened a meeting of the inhabitants. On the 7th September "an Address" was, on the Provost's motion, voted by the Council to the King, in which his Majesty was assured that "the city had always distinguished herself by a firm and steady attachment to Revolution and Whig principles, and a hearty abhorrence of all Popish and arbitrary governments." After a reference to the "zeal of the citizens in suppressing the Rebellion of 1715," the Council proceed: "We will stand by you and your royal family with our lives and fortunes to baffle the vain hopes of this rash adventurer who has been audacious enough to attempt to darken and disturb the tranquillity of your Majesty's happy Government." Two days subsequent to the despatch of "the Address," the Lord Provost and his fellow-councillors agreed to raise and maintain a thousand men in defence of the government.

The dissimulation was intense. The bulk of the citizens were indeed faithful to the constitution, but Provost Stewart and a large majority of the Council were treacherous and false. Their sympathies lay wholly on the Jacobite side, which they determined resolutely to support. Hence every serious attempt to defend the city the Provost strenuously resisted. He was "loyal," he affirmed, but his loyalty consisted in seeking to outrage public sentiment, in insulting those who offered service to the Crown, and in casting contempt on every movement for maintaining the defence of the city. Powerful ordnance rested upon the walls, but Stewart would not permit the seamen from Leith Roads to prepare or use the guns. While on the 9th September he had publicly agreed to recruit a thousand men on behalf of the reigning house, he privately objected to their embodiment. He rejected the offer of volunteers to serve under his command; and when warned that the Trained Bands were in many of their members disaffected, he warmly acceded to their being called out and armed. When on the 16th September he received a message from the rebel camp at Corstorphine, he convened the Council and submitted a letter of Prince Charles Edward as a "summons from the Regent." On the same day he presided at a meeting of the citizens, when he adroitly contrived to influence a decision whereby the Prince's approach was not to be resisted. While enacting this crooked policy, he rejected a proposition by the military authorities of the castle to spike the cannon on the walls, nor would he listen to proposals as to storing in the castle the contents of the city armory.

Then on the 17th September the Highland army marched into the city, and the Prince, possessing himself of Holyrood Palace, issued therefrom proclamations and mandates, the Provost gave forth that the municipal election fixed to take place on the following day might not be safely proceeded with. The object of this new movement was, by a surrender of magisterial authority, to leave the city under the government of the Prince with his Highland soldiery; also, in the event of a collapse of the new administration, to avoid being personally brought to trial for malversation and treachery.

Provost Stewart was persistent, for when on the 1st October an effort was put forth by the well-affected minority of the Council to proceed with the election, he succeeded in inducing a portion of the magistrates to absent themselves, and many other persons to decline the acceptance of municipal offices. The consequences of his procedure were sufficiently serious. The efforts of the Lord President Forbes to check the rebellion at its inception were all but negatived. The Prince's followers who had entered the city, generally without armour other than bows and scythes and hedge-blades, were now equipped with the twelve hundred stand of armour snatched from the municipal armory, while many loyal citizens were compelled to surrender their weapons. The gunpowder magazine, formed for defence of existing order, was also appropriated by the invaders. By means of the weapons and ammunition so provided to them, the rebels obtained an easy victory over Cope at Prestonpans. The success, indeed, which attended the Jacobite cause from the 16th September 1745 till its overthrow at Culloden on the 16th April 1746 was wholly due to municipal tergiversation.

The Town Council of Edinburgh by refusing, on the counsel of Provost Stewart, to proceed with the annual election in 1745, suppressed its legal existence. In the municipal records there is a hiatus from the 1st October 1745 till the 3rd of January 1747. Prior to the latter date, the several elective bodies were authorised by the Privy Council to form a new Corporation and re-establish the magisterial offices. Among its early acts the new Council framed an address to the King denunciatory of the late "infamous rebellion," and congratulating his Majesty on its suppression, while to the Duke of York they voted the freedom of the city "in testimony of their grateful sense of his glorious services in happily-crushing the late detestable rebellion."

The conduct of Provost Stewart might not be overlooked. He was apprehended, and after being imprisoned fourteen months was liberated on finding bail for £5000. Indicted at the instance of the Lord Advocate in the High Court of Justiciary, he was charged "with neglect of duty and misbehaviour in office." After a prolonged discussion on its relevancy the indictment was submitted to a jury on the 27th October 1747, and the trial continued four days. At the outset it had been contemplated to continue the sittings according to practice without adjournment, save for meals, and as the trial actually lasted ninety-four hours, the result might have been fatal to the court. After a sitting of forty hours, an adjournment for sleep was permitted with "consent of parties." Ultimately the jury, by their chancellor Sir Alexander Nesbit of Dean, "found the pannel not guilty," a benevolent conclusion in direct contravention of the recorded evidence. Respecting the Provost's refusal to allow the sailors of the Royal Navy at Leith to manage the city artillery, Bailie James Stewart testified that when the proposal was made to him, the Provost "fell into some heat of temper," and said "By God, while I am Provost of Edinburgh, sailors shall not be admitted;" and on further remonstrance re-expressed his determination. At the same time, he objected to the use of cannon on the ground that the city "had not anybody who knew how to manage them."

Burghal tergiversation or self-seeking was not confined to the age of Jacobatisrn. When in 1762, Mr George Dempster of Dunnichen was elected Parliamentary representative of the Fife and Forfar burghs, the election was set aside owing to the bribery of Town Councillors having been proved against the candidate. Mr Dempster informed the writer's father that a Town Councillor at St Andrews, had accepted money both from himself and from his opponent.

The burgh of Stirling was in 1775 disfranchised for corrupt practices. Three members of Council including the Provost had entered into a bond "to secure the total management of the burgh during their lives." For that purpose they became mutually bound to introduce into the Council only such persons "as came under engagement to support their joint interests," also to effect the exclusion from the Council of one Nicol Bryce, whose interference they repelled. All offices connected with the burgh and the public charities were as they fell vacant to be in rotation filled by their relatives or friends. The sum of £25 yearly paid by the junior Town-Clerk for their voting him into office, was to be divided among them in equal shares. And when occurred a Parliamentary election, the bribes landed them by opposing candidates were to be fairly apportioned. In conclusion the engagers agreed that to render "their management acceptable to the whole inhabitants" they would as patrons of the burgh churches appoint "evangelical ministers as preachers to the several cures." A copy of this extraordinary instrument having been found in the repositories of an engager subsequent to his decease, was brought under the cognisance of the law. By the Court of Session, the compact was pronounced as "illegal, unwarrantable and contra bonos moves," those concerned in it were reprimanded; the two preceding elections of councillors were reduced, and the burghal privileges withdrawn. On an appeal the House of Lords confirmed the decision of the inferior court, and for six years the burgh of Stirling was disfranchised.

The Guildry or company of merchants were usually consulted in the appointment of freemen and they otherwise exercised a municipal authority. They annually elected a chairman or Dean and a body of assessors as his council or Court. By the Dean of Guild were regulated weights and measures, also the construction of buildings, while burgesses were protected by him from the intrusion of interlopers. At Stirling the Dean of Guild formerly held a municipal rank higher than that of the chief magistrate.

The "Incorporated Trades" formerly exercised an important jurisdiction. In the larger burghs the Trades formed from ten to fourteen separate bodies, each governing the affairs of its own craft. By each was elected a president or deacon, while the deacons of the united trades together formed a convention, of whom the chairman was known as the Deacon Convener. By this convention or committee, the general concerns of the crafts were regulated or supervised.

Narrow views of trading were common. In 1485 the municipal authorities of Edinburgh ruled that no merchant of the city should take into partnership an inhabitant of Leith under a penalty of forty shillings, also in being for a year deprived of his civic freedom. Provincial burghs repelled new settlers by a variety of expedients; they personally dissuaded them from perilous risks, imposed upon them heavy exactions, and allowed idle rumours respecting them to spread and dominate. Nor were strangers only obnoxious. If a brother craftsman became inventive, and sought by machinery to lessen manual labour, he was held as a common enemy. When at Edinburgh in 1727 William Ged produced his invention of stereotyping or block-printing, lie was so assailed by the letterpress printers that he was compelled, for personal safety, to quit the place. To London, whither he repaired, his opponents followed Liza with rumours that he had conspired the destruction of their craft. Returning to Edinburgh, as the best means of allaying prejudices which at a distance might not be overborne, Ged experienced a renewal of the former oppression, which no reasoning on his part might subdue or modify. He (lied in 1729, the victim of a trade which has largely profited by his skill. When in 1757 the hammer trade at Glasgow sought to suppress, as an inventor, the celebrated James Watt, he obtained harbour and employment Within the walls of the College.

The possession of corporate privileges conferred the right to exercise a particular craft, but beyond this no other immunity or privilege. Accepted craftsmen had severally to meet the usual imposts. And the hours of labour were unlimited. In 1587 John Thomson, drummer of the Carnongate, found security to "pass thro' the burgh wi' his drum at four houris in the morning and aucht at e'en." And on the 4th October 1761 the town drummer of Elgin made pledge to arouse the inhabitants at four A.M., and at nine P.M. to summon them to rest.

Merchants' booths and craftsmen's workshops were small and rude. A century ago the ordinary craftsman worked in a dingy and ill-ventilated slung. Traders of the period occupied long arched passages, which were preserved from damp by perpetual fires. Many traders preferred the salubrity of the public street, and served their customers from covered platforms.

Municipal exclusiveness was not universal. A class of traders, known as Dusty-feet, were allowed to traffic at fairs; also during the summer months ruining from Ascension Day to Lammas. Latterly the privilege was extended, and small dealers pro-scented trade in the different burgles all the year round.

Itinerant vendors were a century ago common alike in the capital and in the rural burghs. They prosecuted their vocation from morn till twilight. In the opening line of "Tam o' Shanter" Burns refers to the late evening hour,

"Whan chapman billies leave the street."

One of the merrymakers in James I.'s ballad of "Peblis to the Play" is "the cadger on the mereat gait," who is described as "tumbling the creels" from the back of his "great grey meir." By James I. chapmen (cheap-men) were specially favoured; he appointed games for their amusement in the valley of Stirling Rock; also on the green at Leslie in Fifeshire.

Chapmen of the lowland counties assembled annually on the second Tuesday of July at the village of Prestonpans, where they elected a president and other officers of guild. Of these were six bailies, who, each in his district, field courts, and by whose decisions in all trading concerns the members pledged themselves to abide. Fines were added to a common fund for the benefit of widows.

Chapmen of a higher grade used pack-horses those in humbler rank were by wailing on foot known as pedlars. The mounted chapman, on attaining adequate substance, dispensed with locomotion, and established a mercantile store in some commercial centre. By his deputies he collected from his customers weekly payments; and at fairs periodically disposed of his surplus stock. By itinerant trading have been founded many of the great commercial houses which on the Clyde, the Forth, and the Tay receive shipments from every port. John Cowan or Colquhoun, a successful chapman, and ultimately a prosperous wool stapler at Stirling, died in 1634, bequeathing to the Guildry of that place a portion of money for behoof of decayed burgesses and their families, His bequest, invested in an estate of 800 acres, yields a revenue of £3000.

By conveying to rural districts the intelligence obtained in commercial centres, chapmen became the earlier newsmen; they also bore as a portion of their stock the Glasgow and Falkirk chap-books, consisting of ballads and entertaining tales.

From among the chapmen arose the earlier bankers. Transacting business for the country people, they were at length entrusted with their savings, for which they pail mail or rent. The earliest notices of banking transactions occur in Halyburton's "Ledger." Both as "conservator" and on his own personal account he negotiated bills; he also facilitated the transmission of money to Rome in discharge of bulls and dispensations. At length Scottish craftsmen who dealt in the precious metals established themselves as money-lenders and dealers in exchange. Of these the most notable was George Heriot. As the convenience of the banking system was generally recognised, banking corporations were instituted. In 1694 the Bank of England was established by William Paterson, a Scotsman, while the Bank of Scotland was in the year following founded by John Holland, a native of England. The original capital of the Bank of Scotland was £1,200,000 Scots, or £100,000 sterling, which was raised in shares. In 1696 the Bank erected branches, issued one pound notes in 1704, and in 1729 received deposits on interest. The Royal Bank was established in 1727, with a capital of £151,000 sterling. The British Linen Company, which in 1746 started with the view of encouraging the linen trade, gradually adopted the business of banking. The other Scottish Banking Houses arose subsequently. County and District Banks have seldom prospered. Several of the more considerable Banking Companies, notably the Western Bank in 1855, and the City of Glasgow Bank at a date considerably more recent, have collapsed to the general embarrassment of the shareholders. But in no instance have depositors in Scottish Banks sustained loss or damage.

Till the middle of the fourteenth century the pound sterling and the pound Scots were equal in value, each being actually one pound of silver. In 1366 the pound of silver was worth twenty-five shillings in both countries, but in 1373 the Scottish currency was reduced to three-fourths of that of England. At the beginning of the reign of Queen Mary, the pound of silver in England was coined into £3, and in Scotland into £9, 12s. In Scotland it increased in 1562 to £15, 15s., while in England the value remained. stationary. In 1565 the pound weight of silver was £3 sterling in tale, and £18 in Scottish money. By Keith we are informed that in 1570 a pound Scots was seven times more valuable than when in 1734 he composed his history. And it is estimated that in purchasing the necessaries of life, the pound Scots of 1570 would be at least sixteen tinges more valuable than at the present time.

Taking into account the difference in the value of money, John Knox's stipend of 400 merks as minister of Edinburgh was equal in present money value to £700 or £800 sterling money. [ee an elaborate and valuable paper entitled "Provision for the Ministry after the Reformation," in Dr John Lee's "Lectures on the Church of ScotIand," Edin., 1860, 8vo, vol. ii. pp. 349-362.]

Upon feudal government was founded the municipal, with this difference, that while the lord of regality might within his jurisdiction follow arbitrary and despotic courses, the chief of the municipality was responsible both to the sovereign and to his co-burgesses. The Provost though ostensibly the municipal chief (the mayor of Belfast, a Scottish settlement, was usually styled "the sovereign ") was practically under the guidance of the Town Clerk, an official who held a life office, in order to his greater independence. But the security of the tenure and the considerable emoluments attached to the office not infrequently led to its being conferred on the highest bidder. In 1502 the Town Clerkship of Aberdeen was purchased for forty merks, while the actual salary annexed to it irrespective of fees was twelve merks only. And as the purchaser was not personally qualified to exercise the clerkly functions, he discharged his duties by deputy. Acquired without qualification, the office was nevertheless retained by members of the same family for several generations. When in 1745, Provost Archibald Stewart and his abettors abnegated their magisterial functions, and so suspended the municipal continuity, the Town Clerk of Edinburgh registered an emphatic protest that his emoluments should not be interfered with, inasmuch that for his appointment he had lmicl heavily. The office of Burgh Treasurer or Chamberlain was financially unimportant. Tillie Treasurer's office at Stirling about the middle of the seventeenth century was held by a shoemaker, who could not write; he kept the accounts in a pair of boots. In 1694, Provost Anderson of Glasgow discharged duty as City Chamberlain, rewarded by the small salary of fifteen pounds sterling.

When royal burghs were founded upon ancient constabularies, the castle was adopted as the civic; court-house, while the office of constable generally merged into that of sheriff or provost or bailie. The bailie derived his appellative from the Latin gallium, a stronghold. Till the latter part of the seventeenth century, those who were chosen by the Guildry as burgesses were presented to the Magistrates and Council for admission "sufficientlie airmit with ane furnisht corslet or hagbut," which weapons were kept in readiness for the occasion. The ceremonial pointed to an ancient usage, when those invested with burghal honours were held competent to use arms in defence of the place. Rural burghs, which had acquired recognition as centres of trade, initiated burgesses by simpler rites. The burgh of Selkirk, formerly a place of shoemaking, caused each burgess on admission to Iick a birse or bristle previously mouthed by each member of the corporation. Admission to ordinary burghal privileges was at Edinburgh, Dundee, and other towns specially guarded the registers which contained the names of those admitted was "a lokkit buik, to be opened but in the tolbuith before the Provost, Bailies, and Council." At Dundee, in 1611, a burgess's fee was £40; the payment was increased to one hundred merks.

Every burgh has its common seal. In burghs originally associated with strongholds was represented as a principal charge in its escutcheon, a tower or fort. Triple towers or castles appear on the seals of Edinburgh and Ayr; single towers on those of Stirling and Dunfermline. Sea-board towns deriving their existence from trade by sea have their origin denoted. by their insignia. Thus in their armorial charges the towns of Crail and Anstruther-Wester severally exhibit a galley voyaging by star-light and a group of fishes. The burgh seal of St Andrews has the apostle Andrew on his cross, with the representation of a boar in a forest or wood, in symbolical allusion to the early history of the place. Of Aberdeen, the common seal has an ecclesiastical reference; it represents Saint Nicholas standing at the porch of his church. By the emblems of a tree, a bird, a bell, and a fish, the city of Glasgow on its common sell points to the period when the site was a forest and a fishing station, and when the early inhabitants were summoned to worship by the bell of St Mungo.

Along with a triple castle are in the civic seal of Edinburgh represented a sword and a mace. On the 8th May 1627 Charles I. expressed his command that "a sword, with a red and blak goun," should be purchased for the Provost of Edinburgh. A sword-bearer formerly preceded the magistrates of the capital when in their judicial capacity they took their seats in the Burgh Court.

When the fort which constituted the original headquarters of municipal business became a ruin, or where had existed no constabulary or stronghold, the burgesses reared civic muster-places. Styled the Tolbooth, that is, the booth in which the burgle toll or cess was collected, the structure included a burghal prison. With its grated windows, the prison occupied the lower floor, though occasionally the upper rooms were also used as a place of detention. On the second floor, or in the central rooms, were accommodated the Town Council, the Town Clerk, and the cess collector. The New Tolbooth of Edinburgh, reared by the citizens in 1561, stood on the West side of St Giles' Church, to which it was attached. Within its Laigh Hall, a spacious apartment with oak-panelled walls and an elaborately decorated ceiling, Parliaments were held, also the General Assembly. In the structure were also accommodated the Courts of Justice; there, were likewise a common and a debtors' prison. In 1639, when a new Parliament House was built, the Tolbooth ceased to accommodate the Legislature, while subsequent to the Union in 1707 the Court of Session removed from it to the Parliament House. But the New Tolbooth, as it was called, continued to be used as a prison and for municipal offices till the year 1817, when the structure was taken down. As the "Heart of Midlothian," the genius of Sir Walter Scott has associated with it an interesting romance.

In rural burghs an open space at or near the Tolbooth was used for the weekly market of agricultural and dairy produce. On the supplies weekly offered in the market-place (which included oatmeal, pease, poultry, cows, cheese, and butter) were the inhabitants dependent for their ordinary provision. And when the supplies were not forthcoming, destitution impended. In the year 1720, owing to a rise in the foreign market, and increased facilities of export, tenant-fanners and millers in eastern Fifeshire withheld their produce from the local markets, with the result that the townspeople were subjected to actual want. When the evil had reached a height, James Duncan, shoemaker at Anstruther, sword in hand, called on his able-bodied neighbours to follow him. With these he proceeded forcibly to seize that food which was essential to subsistence. His first seizure took place at the mill of Stravithie, in the parish of Dunino, six miles north of Anstruther. Entering the mill, and seizing twenty-four loads of meal, He also appropriated the miller's horses and the horses of the neighbouring farmers to bear off the supplies. Other adventurous burgesses followed Duncan's example. With bands of followers they entered granaries and ships'-holds, removing therefrom grain and flour. The usual prices were tendered, and, it is to be assumed, accepted, since rioting was the only charge ever preferred against the seizers. But these lawless acts could not be overlooked, since "a contagion of revolt" might have accompanied designs less worthy. Indictments were served upon the leaders, and by order of the Justiciary Court a special assize was held at Cupar, the county town of Fife. At this assize the seizers were generally dismissed on verdicts of "not proven." Duncan was convicted of appropriating meal at Stravithic, but sentence was permanently "deferred." No punishment, not even a judicial rebuke, could with any propriety be inflicted. By his promptitude and enterprise the prisoner had rescued a community from perishing for actual want, for it was shown that on the market-day preceding his exploit one boll of oatmeal and one boll of pease were all which could be obtained as food for several hundred. families.

At Edinburgh dairy and other farm produce were sold at an open space known as the Tron. There by all instrument of that name, and consisting of two horizontal bars attached to a wooden pillar, articles were weighed. In country towns weighing apparatus were usually erected in a shed or enclosure adjoining the Tolbooth.

Originally held on saints' days, and within the courts of cathedrals, in churchyards, and in monastic alleys, public fairs came to be associated with ecclesiastical arrangements. As the cathedral spire or the turrets of the monastery directed the stranger to the district market-place, so when fairs were transferred to burghs a stoic cross of an ecclesiastical pattern was erected at a central point or open space, partly to denote the new use, but also to commemorate the time when commerce was mainly prosecuted by those associated with religion.

The Senzie Fair at St Andrews was held within the enclosures of the Priory; it continued three weeks, the articles of merchandise being provided by one hundred vessels which from different countries landed in the harbour. During the fourteenth century a fair was annually held at Dundee, lasting eight days; the merchandise consisted chiefly of fish brought in numerous vessels from Aberdeen and other fishing stations on the coast.

In 1564 the Privy Council confirmed the statute of James IV. prohibiting the holding of markets on holy days and in churches and churchyards; while in 1569 Sunday marketing was forbidden on the authority of the Regent. To prevent Sunday trading in the flesh-market the Town Council of Glasgow in 1574 instructed one of the bailies to seize flesh exposed for sale on Sundays after nine A.M., and to confiscate the same for the use of the poor. In 1590 Sunday marketing at Edinburgh was prohibited by the General Assembly. A Sunday fair at the abbey of Cambuskenneth,—the articles sold being fruit and vegetables,—was carried on till within the last thirty years.

A chief duty of burgh magistrates was the maintenance of order. By each burghaI corporation were employed one or two civic officers, who waited upon the magistrates, bore the halberts before them on state occasions, and fenced and regulated their courts. In earlier times the protection of Edinburgh was undertaken by the Incorporated Trades, who, as their rallying point, displayed a great banner anciently consecrated to their use. In place of the older standard a new banner, known as the Blue Blanket, was granted them by James III. in 1482, on account of the assistance rendered him by the citizens when at the instance of the nobles he was suffering restraint in the castle. The Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh assembled under the "Blue Blanket" on many occasions of civic strife, notably when Queen Mary, subsequent to her surrender at Carberry Hill in June 1569, was subjected to the insult of the populace.

But the craftsmen of the capital were found unequal to the systematic maintenance of order, and on occasions of public disturbance it became necessary to employ soldiers from the castle. Under a Privy Council order, the Town Council on the 6th September 1611 constituted as constables a number of able-bodied citizens. The appointment was approved by Parliament, and in an Act passed on the 28th June 1617 it was ruled that in all royal burgh constables should be chosen by the magistrates at elections to be held twice a year. Half-yearly elections being found inconvenient, an annual election of constables was instituted at Edinburgh in October 1626; and with some intervals it has been continued. The body so elected has long been known as the high Constables, probably to distinguish them from the salaried conservators of the peace. Since 1651 the records of the High Constables have been preserved. The president is styled "Moderator," and business is transacted by a council. By the Town Council of 1728 the High Constables were enjoined to arrest and punish blasphemous drunkards and Sabbath-breakers. When at Michaelmas 1745 the Magistrates abdicated their functions by refusing to proceed with the annual elections, the High Constables were by warrant from the Lords of Justiciary appointed to attend to the maintenance of order. Till the restoration of the municipal privileges in 1747 the Moderator of the High Constables discharged the duties of Chief Magistrate.

After the battle of Flodden in 1513, the Town Council of Edinburgh enjoined the inhabitants to unite in the common defence, every fourth man taking duty in night-watching. A special guard of twenty-four men was also constituted. The Edinburgh Trained Bands were first appointed in 1626, when the Town Council determined that the citizens should be mustered, and divided into eight companies, each to contain 200 men. In 1627 the merchants, the craftsmen, and the city youths were severally embodied. The Trained Bands, under a captain-commandant, assembled yearly on the king's birthday, but were also understood always to be at the call of the Lord Provost, their honorary colonel. During the eighteenth century they were popularly known as the "Yellow Colours."

The system of "watching and warding" at Edinburgh, which began in 1513, at length proved irksome. Accordingly in 1648 the Town Council appointed a corps of sixty, under a Captain and two Lieutenants, to discharge duty as watchers. After several changes the Town Guard, as it was called, was, in 1682, at the suggestion of the Duke of York, increased to 108 men and officers. Other changes supervened till early in the eighteenth century, a corps of two hundred were employed.

While in a high state of efficiency the Edinburgh City Guard obtained an unhappy notoriety. In 1736 the commander, Captain John Porteous, having failed to quell some disturbance at the execution of one Wilson, a smuggler, rashly ordered the Guard to fire upon the crowd. The command was obeyed, and six persons fell mortally wounded, while eleven others, including several women, were seriously injured. At an assize Captain Porteous was convicted of murder, but he was reprieved by Queen Caroline, who acted as regent in the absence of George II., at Hanover. The citizens of Edinburgh, who had viewed Wilson's rigorous punishment with displeasure, were exasperated at the escape of one who had recklessly sacrificed human life. Congregating in large lumbers they deforced the Town Guard, and burning the door of the Tolbooth prison, seized Porteous, and dragging him to the Grassmarket, there hanged him on a pole. In avenging this act of popular violence, Government thrust the Lord Provost into prison, disbanded the Town Guard, and amerced the city in £2000 as a provision for Porteous's widow.

The Town Guard is humorously celebrated by Robert Fergusson. They had a guard-room in the High Street, into the black hole of which they confined those who disturbed public tranquillity. Their imposing uniform attracted strangers. Each guardsman wore a red coat turned up with blue, a red waistcoat, red breeches, long black gaiters, white belts, and a cocked hat. They were severally armed with a musket or a Lochaber axe. In 1803 the three cornpanies, of which the corps consisted, were reduced, and in their stead appointed an unarmed police force. Of the old force, thirty members were retained as a guard of honour to the Provost; these in November 1817 were disbanded.

In some of the rural burghs the duty of "watching and warding" was continued till a recent period. When in the spring of 1855 the writer established his residence at Stirling, he was waited upon by a burghal official with an intimation that it was his turn to "watch and ward " during the two following nights. When the order was complained of, the official, surprised at the remonstrance, exclaimed "It's juist a peyment o' twa shillings; ilka substitute gets a shillin' a nicht." It may be added that in those times shop-breaking was common.

Burgh magistrates might repress crime by exercising a summary jurisdiction. Each burgh maintained an executioner, by whose hand were inflicted all degrees of corporal punishment. Those who cheated in the market were "jagged," that is borne by the executioner to the cross, and thereto by the neck made fast with "a jagg" or iron collar. Besides being disgraceful, this punishment was attended with singular discomfort, since the staple was affixed at such a distance from the ground that the offender could neither stand nor sit, nor even comfortably lean. Jagging, which was primarily applied to fraudulent traders, became an ordinary municipal punishment, while at the Reformation a jagg was attached to the walls of churches, to be used in the degradation of those who contemned ecclesiastical authority. About the year 1750 the justices at Marykirk sentenced to the jag; several persons who had been riotous at the village fair. In 1785 a shopkeeper's assistant at Haddington was, by order of the magistrates, jagged at the cross for stealing whisky; and in the same year a farmer convicted of chicanery was jagged at Stirling. The Stirling jagg has been preserved; it encloses both neck and wrists. Edinburgh delinquents were jagged "at the Tron."

By an Act passed on the 2d October 1559 the Town Council of Dundee ordained that those guilty of a relapse in fornication should "stand three hours in the gyves [fetters] and be thrice doukit in the sea." On the 22d May 1562 the Town Council of Edinburgh, to effectually punish fornication, appointed their treasurer and three of the citizens to "red and dres the dowkeing hole in the forth Loch," also "to repair the pullis" [pulleys]. The same Town Council, on the 6tli November following, requested the magistrates to put "adulterars and fornicatours fast in the irnehouse, thair to be fed be the space of ane moneth with breid and water ananerlic" [only]; further, that those convicted a second time, "baith the man and the woman be skurgeit at the cairters and banist the town." The Town Council of Dundee, on the 6th October 1564, ordained that every woman chargeable with impurity "sall be brocht to the market croce, there her hair to be cuttit aff and nailit upon the cuckstule." Any woman who relapsed in fornication, the Council decreed should be deprived of her hair, and thereafter "carryit in ane carte throw all the pairts of the town at her own cost."

While scourging and ducking and other municipal punishments were inflicted by the executioner, civic authorities authorized the burgesses to exercise discipline within their own dwellings. On the 2d October 1581 the Town Council of Dundee, to check the practice of blasphemy, enacted that every burgess should have "ane buist or box hung above his buird, with ane puline hung thereat, for correcting of banners and swearers in their own houses."

During the eighteenth century few rural traders or their customers were skilled in arithmetic. For every customer and each article of merchandise, the dealer used a notch-stick, and in supplying any particular article to a customer he made on the stick a small notch, which counted for a delivery. When on the stick had been made twenty or thirty notches a settlement was expected, when a new stick was procured. Each family had its own notch-stick.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century the opulent traders of Edinburgh and Glasgow began to imitate their professional neighbours in personal demeanour The fashionable street costume of Edinburgh in 1784, or one hundred years ago, may be described. Under a cocked hat was displayed a wig, richly powdered. The face was shaved closely—only a very small whisker being allowed. At the breast were displayed cambric ruffles, dexterously plaited; these were also exhibited at the wrists. A yellow-striped vest rested on buckskin breeches, secured at the knees by buttons and and there met by boots with detached leather "tops". Shoes, when worn, were accompanied with silk stockings; also silver buckles adorned with gems. In walking out, each fashionable citizen raised before him a long staff, mounted with silver or gold. In the top of his staff the physician got inserted a box of perfume this he delicately sniffed on entering and also in leaving a sick-chamber.

A costume so exquisitely arranged implied considerable state and a liberal expenditure. A century ago Edinburgh clothiers speedily became rich, while hair dealers and wig-makers greatly prospered. Many persons employed themselves as "gentlemen's servants;" and from the Edinburgh registers, the order would seem to have been especially numerous from the middle of the last century onwards to its close. A considerable proportion of the class were well educated, and amply qualified to attend to domestic arrangements both as butlers and clerks. By the Lords of Session, the Professors, the city clergy, and some of the more opulent merchants, "serving men" were statedly maintained. John Hay, the personal attendant of the Lord President Forbes, was an expert caligrapher, and occasionally aided his employer in his considerable correspondence. Several of Hay's letters have been preserved by descendants of the family of Culloden, and by them have been rendered available to the present writer. During the President's last illness, Hay evinced a most affectionate solicitude, and ungrudgingly rendered attendance both day and night. To the family from time to time he reported the condition of their honoured relative. In a letter to the President's widowed sister, Mrs Ross of Kindeace, dated 3d December 1747, he writes:-

"I am sorry to acquaint you that my dear Lord and Master has been very ill since I wrote you last, and continues so still. God grant my next may give you better comfort . . . . I am writting this in my Lord's bed chamber while he is now slumbering. I have not bade my cloaths off since the 4th of the last month. If my life would borrow his it would be good for Scotland."

When a few days afterwards the President breathed his last, Hay communicated the sad intelligence to Mrs Ross in these words:—

"Edin., 10th December 1747.

"Madam,—The ever to be lamented my dear master, Lord President dyed this morning at eight of the clock, and is to be interred in Sr David Forbes tomb and in his dear brother's ground. I have not words to express the greif that is among all the people here on account of his death, and as for my self I believe I shall soon follow him. The young Square arrived here on Sunday last. I can write no more for grief but ever am the Family of Culodens and your affect. Servant. John Hay."

Such retainers as Hay were under no circumstances dispensed with; each became as a family attache and was led to feel that with his employer were bound up his interests, his privileges and his hopes. Of their sons one or more were educated at the Universities, and were afterwards helped into factorships, or farms, or livings in the Church.

At Edinburgh the requisite employment of "serving men" was experienced as no inconsiderable incubus by those whose position implied, yet whose circumstances did not warrant such a costly attendance. Captain Matthew Henderson of Tunnochside, whose social worth has been commemorated by Burns, was one of those persons of quality, who, residing in the capital, felt that it was essential to employ a liveried servant. He died oil the 21st November 1788, and among other liabilities in excess of his estate, he was found due to his man-servant the wages of the year, with considerable arrears.

Ordinary serving men waited in the hall, delivered messages, served at table, and when any of the family went out to supper, guarded their way homeward.

Those persons who desired to maintain a genteel rank, yet who might not employ a liveried retainer, arranged to receive every morning a visit from a hairdresser. Robert Heron, the historical writer whose misfortunes and sad fate will be detailed subsequently, had while he sojourned at Edinburgh the daily services of a hairdresser. On the 10th August 1790, he in his Diary thus complacently expresses himself, "As my barber did not come, I, without fretting or blustering, dressed in the best way I could."

While at Edinburgh a century ago, members of the upper circles and opulent citizens employed male attendants or toilet men, ordinary burgesses and strangers obtained occasional service from an intelligent body of men known as caddies. These persons lingered at the Cross, at the Tron, at the doors of taverns and at street corners, and could be readily summoned by a sharp whistle or a "halloo." The caddy was ready for every species of service. Familiar with streets and alleys and courts, he was skilful as a conductor, and was as a messenger expert and intelligent. By Captain Burt, the caddy is facetiously described as "a very useful blackguard, who attend the coffee-houses and public places to go errands;" he adds, "and though they are wretches, that in rags lye upon the stairs, and in the streets at night, yet are they often considerably trusted and . . . have seldom or never proved unfaithful." This description is supplemented in 1774 by Major Topham, who writes: "There are a Society of men who constantly attend the Cross in the High Street, and whose office it is to do anything that anybody can want, and discharge any kind of business. On this account it is necessary for them to make themselves acquainted with the residence and negotiation of all the inhabitants ; and they are of great utility, as without them it would be very difficult to find anybody, on account of the great height of the houses, and the number of families in every building."

Caddies who ranked a degree higher than those who lingered about the streets, were employed as "chairmen;" they carried sedan-chairs, the long handles of which were attached to their shoulders by leathern bands. Sedan-chairs were used by gentlewomen in being conveyed to and from evening parties. Their use was confined to the capital. In Glasgow and other towns gentlewomen proceeded to evening parties on foot, muffled in shawls and plaids, and attended by bare-footed hand-maidens. In like fashion they returned home.

In his work, "De Jure Regni," George Buchanan contrasts the refinement of his own times with the barbarism of a past age. Yet the refinement of the sixteenth century was nearly of the lowest type. Even a century later controversialists attacked each other with coarse and bitter words, while discourses, both public and social were interpersed with vulgarities.

The eighteenth century showed a considerable advance. Referring to the year 1700, Dr Alexander Carlyle, remarks in his "Autobiography" that the vernacular was in refined circles losing its hold. In his "Journey," published in 1773, Dr Samuel Johnson writes: "The conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to the English; their peculiarities wear fast away; their dialect is likely to become in half a century provincial and rustic even to themselves. The great, the learned and the ambitious, and the vain all cultivate the English phrase, and the English pronunciation, and in splendid companies Scotch is not much heard, except now and then from an old lady."

With respect to forms of speech northern culture has continued to make an even and steady progress. Writing about forty years ago, Lord Cockburn contrasted the generally prevailing use of the English idiom with the modes of talk which had obtained in his early manhood. When in the closing decade of the century he attended the Edinburgh High School, "no Englishman," he writes, "could have addressed the city populace, without making them stare, or probably laugh." In general conversation, the use of Scottish phrases has all but ceased, and provincial dialects are, than twenty years ago, less to be remarked. Yet there obtains, though not universally, a ruggedness of manner which may not favourably impress the southern visitor. As he meets an acquaintance the untravelled Scotsman at once descants upon the weather, while to the Englishman's salutation of "good morning," he responds by an ungracious umph. With increased means of travel, and an improved scholastic system, will no doubt disappear uncultured modes, while genial utterances will be discovered as not in any degree implying a surrender of that sturdy independence, which is unquestionably the best characteristic of national greatness.

The inhabitants of Edinburgh in 1385 did not exceed 2000. They were in 1741, 50,000, and in 1801 upwards of 60,000. By the census of 1881 the population was 230,000. During the fourteenth century the city presented a meagre line of houses occupying that ridge which extends between the castle and Holyrood abbey. Now the city covers an area of about 2 miles in length by 2 miles in breadth. Yet it is most painful to learn from statistics that one third of the inhabitants occupy dwellings of only one apartment, while only 19 per cent. possess habitations which contain more than four rooms. Of the wealthier city of Glasgow the domiciliary condition is even less favourable, for while only 8 per cent. of the citizens are accommodated in dwellings of more than four rooms, 41 per cent. are lodged in houses of one apartment.

Such an abnormal state cannot be lasting. Deterrents to social amelioration are being stoutly overcome; the flood of intemperance is assuaged, and the dust of the snuff-mull no longer taints the peasant's board or impairs the preacher's voice. As self-indulgence is repressed, philanthropy takes root. The proper lodgment of the people, long the theme of the social reformer, has at length awakened the echoes of the senate-house. No question is of an importance more real and vital if the race is to gain that higher civilization, of which the ultimate attainment is at once the poet's vision and the patriot's hope.

Return to Book Index Page