|
1692, Feb 13
King William felt impatient at the unsubmissiveness of the Jacobite clans,
chiefly Macdonalds of Glengarry, Keppoch, and Glencoe, the Grants of
Glenmoriston, and the Camerons of Locheil, because it caused troops to be
kept in Scotland, which he much wanted for his army in Flanders. His
Scottish ministers, and particularly Sir John Dalrymple, Master of Stair,
the Secretary of State, carried towards those clans feelings of constantly
growing irritation, as latterly the principal obstacle to a settlement of
the country under the new system of things. At length, in August 1691, the
king issued an indemnity, promising pardon to all that had been in arms
against him before the 1st of June last, provided they should come in any
time before the 1st of January next year, an swear an sIgn the oath of
allegiance.
The letters of Sir John
Dalrymple from the court at London during the remainder of the year, shew
that he grudged these terms to the Highland Jacobites, and would have been
happy to find that a refusal of them justified harsher measures. It never
occurred to him that there was anything but obstinacy, or a hope of
immediate assistance from France to enable them to set up King James
again, in their hesitation to swear that they sincerely in their hearts
accepted King William and Queen Mary as the sovereigns of the land equally
by right and in fact. He really hoped that at least the popish clan of the
Macdonalds of Glencoe would hold out beyond the proper day, so as to
enable the government to make an example of them. It was all the better
that the time of grace expired in the depth of winter, for 'that,' said he
(letter to Colonel Hamilton, December 3, 1691), 'is the proper season to
maul them, in the cold long nights.' On the 9th of January, under
misinformation about their having submitted, he says: 'I am sorry that
Keppoch and M'Ian of Glencoe are safe.' It was the sigh of a savage at the
escape of a long-watched foe. Still he understood Glengarry, Clanranald,
and Glenmoriston to be holding out, and he gave orders for the troops
proceeding against them, granting them at the utmost the terms of
prisoners of war. In the midst of a letter on the subject, dated the 11th
January, he says: ' Just now my Lord Argyle tells me that Glencoe hath not
taken the oaths; at which I rejoice-it 's a great work of charity
to be exact in rooting out that damnable sect, the worst in all the
Highlands.' Delighted with the intelligence-' it is very good news here,'
he elsewhere says-he obtained that very day a letter from the king anent
the Highland rebels, commanding the troops to cut them off' by all
manner of hostility,' and for this end to proclaim high penalties to
all who should give them assistance or protection. Particular instructions
subscribed by the king followed on the 16th, permitting terms to be
offered to Glengarry, whose house was strong enough to give trouble, but
adding: 'If M'Ian of Glencoe and that tribe can be well separated from
the rest, it will be a proper vindication of the public justice to
extirpate that sect of thieves.' On the same day, Dalrymple himself
wrote to Colonel Hill, governor
of Inverlochy, ‘I shall entreat you that, for a just vengeance and public
example, the thieving tribe of Glencoe be rooted out to purpose.
The Earls of Argyle and Breadalbane have promised they shall have no
retreat in their bounds.’ He felt, however, that it must be ‘quietly
done;’ otherwise they would make shift both for their cattle and
themselves. There can be no doubt what he meant; merely to harry
the people, would make them worse thieves than before—they must be, he
elsewhere says, ‘rooted out and cut off.’
In reality, the old chief of the
Glencoe Macdonalds had sped to Inverlochy or Fort William before the end
of the year, and offered his oath to the governor there, but, to his
dismay, found he had come to the wrong officer. It was necessary he should
go to Inverary, many miles distant, and there give in his submission to
the sheriff. In great anxiety, the old man toiled his way through the
wintry wild to Inverary. He had to pass within a mile of his own house,
yet stopped not to enter it. After all his exertions, the sheriff being
absent for two days after his arrival, it was not till the 6th of January
that his oath was taken and registered. The register duly went thereafter
to the Privy Council at Edinbargh; but the name of Macdonald of Glencoe
was not found in it: it was afterwards discovered to have been by special
pains obliterated, though still traceable.
Here, then, was that ‘sect of
thieves ‘formally liable to the vengeance which the secretary of
state meditated against them. The commander, Livingstone, on the 23d
January, wrote to Colonel Hamilton of Inverlochy garrison to proceed with
his work against the Glencoe men. A detachment of the Earl of Argyle’s
regiment—Campbeils, hereditary enemies of the Maedoualds of Glencoe—under
the command of Campbell of Glenlyon, proceeded to the valley, affecting
nothing but friendly intentions, and were hospitably received. Glenlyon
himself, as uncle to the wife of one of the chiefs sons, was hailed as a
friend. Each morning, he called at the humble dwelling of the chief, and
took his morning-draught of usquebaugh. On the evening of the 12th of
February, he played at cards with the chief’s family. The final orders for
the onslaught, written on the 12th at Ballachulish by Major Robert
Duncanson (a Campbell also), were now in Glenlyon’s handa They bore—’ You
are to put all to the sword under seventy. You are to have a special care
that the old fox and his son do on no account escape your hands. You ‘re
to secure all avenues, that none escape; this you are to put in execution
at five o’clock precisely, and by that time, or very shortly after it,
I‘ll strive to be at you
with a stronger party. If I do not come to you at five, you are not to
tarry for me, but to fall on.’
Glenlyon was but too faithful to his
instructions. His soldiers had their orders the night before. John
Macdonald, the chief’s eldest son, observing an unusual bustle among the
soldiers, took an alarm, and inquired what was meant. Glenlyon soothed his
fears with a story about a movement against Glengarry, and the lad went to
bed. Meanwhile, efforts were making to plant guards at all the outlets of
that alpine glen; but the deep snow on the ground prevented the duty from
being fully accomplished. At five, Lieutenant Lindsay came with his men to
the house of the chief, who, hearing of his arrival, got out of bed to
receive him. He was shot dead as he was dressing himself. Two of his
people in the house shared his fate, and his wife, shamefully treated by
the soldiers, died next day. At another hamlet called Auchnaion, the
tacksman and his family received a volley of shot as they were sitting by
their fireside, and all but one were laid dead or dying on the floor. The
survivor entreated to be killed in the open air, and there succeeded in
making his escape. There were similar scenes at all the other inhabited
places in the glen, and before daylight, thirty-eight persons had been
murdered. The rest of the people, including the chief’s eldest son, fled
to the mountains, where many of them are believed to have perished. When
Colonel Hamilton came at breakfast-time, he found one old man alive
mourning over the bodies of the dead; and this person, though he might
have been even formally exempted as above seventy, was slain on the spot.
The only remaining duty of the soldiers was to burn the houses and harry
the country. This was relentlessly done, two hundred horses, nine hundred
cattle, and many sheep and goats being driven away.
A letter of Dalrymple, dated from
London the 5th March, makes us aware that the Massacre of Glencoe was
already making a sensation there. It was said that the people had been
murdered in their beds, after the chief had made the required submission.
The secretary professed to have kuown nothing of the last fact, but he was
far from regretting the bloodshed. ‘All I regret is that any of the sect
got away.’ When the particulars became fully known—when it was ascertained
that the Campbells had gone into the glen as friends, and fallen upon the
people when they were in a defeneeless state and when all suspicion was
lulled asleep - the transaction assumed the character which it has ever
since borne in the public estimation, as one of the foulest in modern
history.
The Jacobites trumpeted it as an
offset against the imputed seventies of the late reigns. Its whole details
were given in the French gazettes, as an example of the paternal
government now. planted in Britain. The government was compelled, in
self-defence, to order an inquiry into the affair, and the report
presented in 1695 fully brought out the facts as here detailed, leaving
the principal odium to rest with Dalrymple. The king himself, whose
signature follows close below the savage sentence, ‘If M’Ian of Glencoe,’
&c., did not escape reproach. True it is, that so far from
punishing his secretary, he soon after this report gave him a full
remission, and conferred on him the teinds of the parish in which lay his
principal estates. [See Papers Illuatrative of the Political Condition
of the Highlands from 1689 to 1696. Maitland Club. 1845.]
Feb 16
The Privy Council had before them a petition from Lieutenant Brisbane of
Sir Robert Douglas’s regiment, regarding one Archibald Baird, an Irish
refugee, imprisoned, at Paisley for housebreaking. The sheriff thought the
probation ‘scrimp’ (scanty), and besides, was convinced that ‘extreme
poverty had been a great temptation to him to commit the said crime.’
Seeing he was, moreover, ‘a proper young man fit for service,’ and
‘willing and forward to go over to Flanders to fight against the French,’
the sheriff had hitherto delayed to pronounce sentence upon him. Without
any ceremony, the Council ordered that Baird be delivered to Brisbane,
that he might be transported to Flanders as a soldier.
The reader will probably be amused
by the sheriff’s process of ideas—first, that the crime was not proved;
and, second, that it had been committed under extenuating circumstances.
The leniency of the Privy Council towards such a culprit, in ordering him
out of the country as a soldier, is scarcely less characteristic. The
truth is, the exigencies of the government for additional military force
were now greater than ever, so that scruples about methods of recruiting
had come to be scarcely recognisable. Poor people confined in jail on
suspicion of disaffection, were in many instances brought to a purchase of
liberty by taking on as soldiers; criminals, who had pined there for
months or years, half-starved, were glad to take soldiering as their
punishment. Sturdy vagrants were first gathered into the jails for the
offence of begging, and then made to know that, only by taking their
majesties’ pay, could they regain their freedom. But freedom was not to be
instantly gained even in this way. The recruits were kept in jail, as well
as the criminals and the disaffected—little distinction, we may well
believe, observed between them. Not till ready to go on board for
Flanders, were these gallant Britons permitted to breathe the fresh air.
An appearance of regard for the
liberty of the subject was indeed kept up, and on the 23d February 1692, a
committee of the Privy Council was appointed to go to the prisons of
Edinburgh and Canongate, and inspect the recruits kept there, so as to
ascertain if there were any who were unjustly detained against their will.
But this was really little more than an appearance for decency’s sake, the
instances of disregard for individual rights being too numerous even in
their own proceedings to allow any different conclusion being arrived at.
Feb
Two ministers at Dumfries, who had been ‘preachers before prelacy was
abolished,’ gave displeasure to the populace by using the Book of Common
Prayer. On a Sunday, early in this month, a party of about sixteen ‘mean
country persons living about four or five miles from Dumfries, who
disowned. both Presbyterian and Episcopal ministers, and acknowledged none
but Mr Houston,’ came and dragged these two clergymen out of the town,
took from each his prayer-book, and gave them a good beating, after which
they were liberated, and allowed to return home. At an early hour next
morning, the same party came into the town and burned one of the books at
the Cross, on which they affixed a placard, containing, we may presume, a
declaration of their sentiments. The Privy Council indignantly called the
provost of Dumfries before them, and while censuring him for allowing such
a riot to take place, enjoined him to take care ‘that there be no
occasions given for the like disorders in time coming.’ That is to say,
the Privy Council did not desire the Dumfries magistrates to take any
measures for preventing the attacks of ‘mean country persons’ upon
unoffending clergymen using the forms of prayer sanctioned in another and
connected kingdom not thirty miles distant, but to see that such clergymen
were not allowed to give provocations of that kind to ‘mean country
persons.’
1692, Mar
Dumfries had at this time another trouble on its hands. Marion Dickson in
Blackshaw, Isobel Dickson in Locherwood, Agnes Dickson (daughter of
Isobel), and Marion Herbertson in Mousewaldbank, had for a long time been
‘suspected of the abominable and horrid crime of witchcraft,’ and were
believed to have ‘committed many grievous malefices upon several persons
their neighbours and others.’ It was declared to be damnifying ‘to all
good men and women living in the country thereabouts, who cannot assure
themselves of safety of their lives by such frequent malefices as they
commit?
Under these
circumstances, James Fraid, John Martin, Wiffiam Nicolson, and Thomas
Jaffrey in Blackshaw, John Dickson in Slop of Locherwoods, John Dickson in
Locherwoods, and John Dickson in Overton of Locherwoods, took it upon them
to apprehend the women, and carried them to be imprisoned at Dumfries by
the sheriff, which, however, the sheriff did not consent to till after the
six men had granted a bond engaging to prosecute. Fortified with a
certificate from the presbytery of Dumfries, who were ‘fully convinced of
the guilt of the women and of the many malefices committed by them,’ the
men applied to the Privy Council for a commission to try the delinquents.
The Lords ordered the
women to be transported to Edinburgh for trial.
Mar 29
The government
beginning to relax a little the severity it had hitherto exercised towards
captive Jacobites, the Earl of Perth, on a showing of the injury his
health was suffering from long imprisonment in Stirling Castle, was
liberated on a caution for five thousand pounds sterling, being a sum
equal to the annual income of the highest nobles of the land.
William Livingstone,
brother to the Viscount Kilsyth, and husband of Dundee’s widow, had been a
prisoner in the Edinburgh Tolbooth from June 1689 till November
1690—seventeen months—thereafter, had lived in a chamber in Edinburgh
under a sentry for a year—afterwards was allowed to live in a better
lodging, and to go forth for a walk each day, but still under a guard. In
this condition he now continued. The consequence of his being thus
treated, and of his rents being all the time sequestrated, was a great
confusion of his affairs, threatening the entire ruin of his
fortune. On his
petition, the Council now allowed him ‘to go n abroad
under a sentinel each
day from morning to evening furth of the house of Andrew Smith,
periwig-maker, at the head of Niddry’s Wynd, in Edinburgh, to which he is
confined,’ he finding caution under fifteen hundred pounds sterling to
continue a true prisoner as heretofore; at the same time, the
sequestration of his rents was departed from.
On the 19th April, Mr
Livingstone was allowed to visit Kilsyth under a guard of dragoons, in
order to arrange some affairs. But this leniency was of short duration. We
soon after find him again in strict confinement in Edinburgh Castle; nor
was it till September 1693, that, on an earnest petition setting forth his
declining health, he was allowed to be confined to ‘a chamber in the house
of Mistress Lyell, in the Parliament Close,’ he giving large bail for his
peaceable behaviour. This, again, came to a speedy end, for, being soon
after ordered to re-enter his strait confinement in the Castle, he
petitioned to be allowed the Canon-gate jail instead, and was permitted,
as something a shade less wretched than the Castle, to become a prisoner
in the Edinburgh Tolbooth. On the 4th of January 1693, he was again
allowed the room in the Parliament Close, but on the 8th of February this
was exchanged for Stirling Castle. In the course of the first five years
of British liberty, Mr Livingstone must have acquired a tolerably
extensive acquaintance with the various forms and modes of imprisonment,
so far as these existed in the northern section of the island.
Captain John Crighton,
once a dragoon in the service of King James, and whose memoirs were
afterwards written from his own information by Swift, was kept in jail for
twenty-one months after June 1689; then for ten months in a house under a
sentinel; since that time in a house, with permission to get a daily walk;
‘which long imprisonment and restraint has been very grievous and
expensive to the petitioner (Crighton),’ and ‘has redacted him and his
small family to a great deal of misery and want, being a stranger in this
kingdom.’ His restraint was likewise relaxed on his giving caution to the
extent of a hundred pounds to remain a true prisoner.
Soon after arose the
alarm of invasion from France, and all the seventies against the suspected
Jacobites were renewed. William Livingstone was, in June, confined once
more to his chamber at the periwig-maker’s, and Captain John Crighton had
to return to a similar restraint. The Earl of Perth, so recently liberated
from Stirling Castle, was again placed there. At that time, there
were confined in Edinburgh Castle the Earls of Seaforth and Home, the Lord
Bellenden, and Paterson, Ex-archbishop of Glasgow. In Stirling Castle,
besides Lord Perth, lay his relation, Sir John Drummcmd of Machany, [This
was the father of Mr Andrew Drummond, the founder of the celebrated
banking-house in the Strand.], and the Viscount Frendraught,
the latter having only six hundred merks per annum (about £34), so that it
became of importance that his wife should be allowed to come in and live
with him, instead of requiring a separate maintenance; to so low a point
had civil broils and private animosities brought this once flourishing
family. Neville Payne lay a wretched prisoner in Edinburgh Castle. Sir
Robert Grierson of Lagg was ‘contracting sore ailments under ‘protracted
confinement in the Canongate Jail. A great number of other men were
undergoing their second, and even their third year of confinement, in mean
and filthy tolbooths, where their health was unavoidably impaired.
On the 2d of June, Crighton gave in
a petition reciting that he had been again put under restraint, and for no
just cause, as he had always since the Revolution been favourable to the
new government, and on the proclamation of the Convention, had deserted
his old service in the Castle, bringing with him thirty-nine soldiers. He
was relieved from close confinement, and ordered to be subjected to trial.
On the 10th of June, he was ordered to be set at liberty, on caution. Less
than two months after, failing to appear on summons, his bond for £100 was
forfeited, and the money, when obtained from his security, to be given to
Adair the geographer.
On the 14th of June 1692, Captain
Wallace represented that he had now been three years a captive, ‘whereby
his health is impaired, his body weakened, and his small fortune entirely
ruined.’ ‘Yet hitherto, there has been no process against him.’ He
entreated that he might be liberated on signing ‘a volunteer banishment,’
and he would ‘never cease to pray that God may bless the nation with ane
lasting peace, of [which] he would never be a disturber.’ An order
for a process against him was issued.
It was difficult, however, even for
the Scottish Privy Council to make a charge of treason against an officer
whose only fault was that, being appointed by a lawful authority to defend
a post, he had performed the. duty assigned to him, albeit at the expense
of a few lives to the rabble which he was commanded to resist. Still when
the solicitor-general, Lockhart, told them be could not process Captain
Wallace for treason ‘without a special warrant to that effect,’ they
divided on the subject, and the negative was only carried by a majority.
Apr 25
Happened an affair of private war and violence, supposed to be the last
that took place in the county of Renfrew. John Maxwell of Dargavel had
ever since the Reformation possessed a seat and desk in the kirk of
Erakine, along with a right to bury in the subjacent ground. William
Hamilton of Orbieston, proprietor of the estate of Erskine, disputed the
title of Dargavel to these properties or privileges, arid it came to a
high quarrel between the two gentlemen. Finding at length that Dargavel
would not peaceably give up what he and his ancestors had so long
possessed, Orbieston—who, by the way, was a partisan of the old dynasty,
and perhaps generally old-fashioned in his ideas— resolved to drive his
neighbour out of it by force. A complaint, afterwards drawn up by Dargavel
for the Privy Council, states that William Hamilton of Orbieston, George
Maxwell, baillie of Kupatrick, Robert Laing, miller in Duntocher, John
Shaw of Bargarran, Gavin Walkingshaw, sometime of that ilk, came, with
about a hundred other persons, ‘all armed with guns, pistols, swords,
bayonets, and other weapons invasive,’ and, having appointed George
Maxwell, ‘Orbieston’s own bailie-depute,’ to march at their head, they
advanced in military order, and with drums beating and trumpets sounding,
to the parish kirk of Erskine, where, ‘in a most insolent and violent
manner, they did, at their own hand, and without any order of law, remove
and take away the complainer’s seat and dask, and sacrilegiously bring
away the stones that were lying upon the graves of the complainer’s
predecessors, and beat and strike several of the complainer’s tenants and
others, who came in peaceable manner to persuade them to desist from such
unwarrantable violence.’
Dargavel instantly proceeded with
measures for obtaining redress from the Privy Council, when his chief, Sir
John Maxwell of Pollock, a member of that all-powerful body, interfered to
bring about an agreement between the disputants. With the consent of the
Earl of Glencairn, principal heritor of the parish, Dargavel ‘yielded for
peace-sake to remove his seat from that place of the kirk, where it had stood for many generations;’ while Orbieston on his part agreed that Dargavel ‘should retain his room of burial-place in the east end of the kirk, with allowance to rail it in, and strike out a door upon the gable of it, as he should see convenient.’ This did not, however, end the controversy.
The first glimpse of further procedure which we obtain is from a letter of John Shaw of Bargarran, professing to be a Mend of both parties, though he had appeared amongst the armed party led by Orbieston’s bailie-depute. He writes, 23d August, as follows to William Cunningham of Craigends) a decided Mend of Dargavel:
‘SIR—The Laird of Orbieston heard when he
was last here that Dargavel was intendit to put through a door to his
burial-place, which will be (as he says) very inconvenient for Orbieston’s laft’ [gallery]; so he desired me to acquant you therewith, that ye wold deall with Dargavel to forbear; otherways be wold take, it very ill, and has given orders to some people here to stop his design, if he do it not willingly; wherefor, to prevent further trouble and emulation betwixt the two gentlemen, ye wold do well to advyse him to the contrair either by a lyn or advyse, as ye think most proper. I desyre not to be seen in this, because they are both my Mends, and I a weel-wisher to them both. I thought to have ivaited on you myself; bot, being uncertain of your being at home, gives you the trouble of this lyne, which is all from, sir, your most humble servant, J. Shaw. Ye wold do this so soon as possible.’
There are letters from Craigends to Dargavel, strongly indicating the likelihood that violent measures would again be resorted to by Orbieston, and advising how these might best be met and resisted. But the remainder of the affair seems to have been peaceable. Orbieston applied to the Privy Council for an order to stop Dargavel, apparently proceeding upon the rule long established, but little obeyed, against burying in churches; and the Council did send an order, dated the 29th August, ‘requiring you to desist from striking any door or breaking any part of the church- wall of Erskine, until your right and Orbieston’s right be discusst by the judges competent for preventing further abuse.’ Dargavel immediately sent a petition, shewing how he was only acting upon an agreement with Orbieston, and hereupon the former order was recalled, and Dargavel permitted to have the access he required, however incommodious it might be to Orbieston’s ‘laft.’
1692, May 10
The prisoners in the Canongate Tolbooth forced the key from
the jailer, and took possession of their prison, which they held out
against the magistrates for a brief space. A committee of Privy Council was ordered to go and inquire who had been guilty of this act of rebellion.1 Viewing the manner iu which jails were provided, there can be no doubt that it was a rebellion of the stomach.
May 17
Under our present multiplication of newspapers, a piece of false intelligence is so quickly detected, that there is no temptation for the most perverse politician to put such a thing in circulation. In King William’s days, when the printed newspaper barely existed, and the few who were curious about state-affairs had to content themselves with what was called a
news-letter—a written circular emanating from a centre in London—a falsehood would now and then prove serviceable to a party, partieular]y a depressed one.
We get an idea of a piece of the social economy of the time under notice, from a small matter which came under the attention of the Privy Council. William Murray kept a tavern in the Canongate. Each post brought him a news-letter for the gratification of his customers, and which doubtless served to maintain their allegiance to his butt of claret. Just at this time, when’ there were alarms of an invasion from France, a lie about preparations on the French shore was worth its ink. The lord high chancellor now informed the Council that Murray’s letter was generally full of false news; that he caused destroy the one brought by last post, merely to keep Murray out of trouble; and he had kept up the one just come, ‘in respect there is a paper therein full of cyphers which cannot be read.’ Matters having
now
become so serious, he had caused Murray to be brought before the Council.
Murray declared before a committee ‘he knows not what person writes the news-letter to him
. . . .
he never writes any news from this to London
. . . .
he knows not what the cyphers in the paper sent in his letter tth this post “does signify.’ They sent him under care of a macer to the Tolbooth, to be kept there in Close prison, and his pap’rs at home to be searched for matter against their majesties or the government.
On the 2d of June, William Murray represented that he had
now been a fortnight in jail, and his poor family would be ruined if he did not
immediately regain his liberty. The Council caused him to be examined about the
cypher-letter, and asked who was his correspondent. We do not learn what
satisfaction he gave on these points; but a week later, he was liberated.
On the 15th November, the Privy Council ordered the
magistrates of Edinburgh to shut up the Exchange Coffee-house, and bring the
keys to them, ‘in respect of the seditious news vented in and dispersed from the
said coffee-house.’ A month after, the owners, Gilbert Fyfe and James
Marjoribanks, merchants, shewed that, some of their news-letters having once
before been kept up from them on account of the offensive contents, they had
changed their correspondent, in order that the government might have no such
fault to find with them. Moved, however, by malice against them, their old
correspondent had addressed to them a letter sure by its contents to bring them
into trouble with the officers of state, and it had been the cause of their
house being shut up accordingly. Seeing how innocently on their part this had
come about, and bow prejudicial it was to their interest, the men petitioned for
re-possession of their house, which was granted, under caution that they were to
vent no news until it was approved of by their majesties’ solicitor, or whoever
the Privy Council might appoint, ‘the reviser always setting his name thereto,
or at least ane other mark, as having revised the same.’
Not long after, we find the Council in
such trouble on account of false news as to be under the necessity of
considering some general measure on the subject.
In December, one William Davidson,
described as a ‘writer,’ was taken up and put into the Tolbooth of Edinburgh,
‘for writing and spreading of lies an4 false news;’ and the Privy Council issued
an order ‘for delivering of the said William to ane of the officers come from
Flanders, to have been carried there as a soldier.’ On its appearing, however,
that William ‘is but a silly cripple boy, having had his leg and thigh-bones
broke,’ they ordered the magistrates of Edinburgh to banish him from their city,
‘in case they shall find him guilty of the said crime.’
On the 12th of July 1694, we hear
something more of this William Davidson. For inadvertently adding to a
news-letter a postscript ‘bearing some foolish thing offensive to the
governnient, without affirming whether it was true or false, hut only that it
was reported,’ he had been condemned to banishment from’ the city, and also
disinherited by a Whiggish father, now deceased. He had since lived upon the
charity of his relations and acquaintances; but these were now weary of
maintaining him, and be was consequently ‘redacted to extream misery.’ Having
broken his thigh-bone six several times, be was incapable of any employment but
that of writing in a chamber, from which, however, he was debarred by his
banishment from Edinburgh. He therefore craved a relaxation of his sentence,
offering ‘to take the oath of allegiance and subscribe the assurance, to
evidence his sincerity towards the government.’ The poor lad’s petition was
complied with.
July
Sir James Carmichael of Bonnyton, a minor, was proprietor of the lands of
Thankerton, lying on the north side of the river Clyde, in the upper ward of
Lanarkshire. The Clyde had been the march between his estate and those of the
adjacent proprietors—Chancellor of Shieldhill, and George Kellie in Quothquan;
but ‘rivers are bad neighbours and unfaithful boundaries, as Lucan says of the
Po,' and there had happened a mutatio alvei about fifty years before, in
consequence of a violent flood, and now a part of Bonnyton lands was thrown on
the opposite side. Under the name of the Park-holm, it had lain neglected for
many years; but at length, in 1688, the present laird’s father sowed and reaped
it; whereupon the opposite neighbours, considering it as theirs, resolved to
assert their right to it. At the date noted, they came eighty strong, ‘resolved
to take advantage of Sir James his infancy, and by open bangstry and violence to
turn him and his tenants out of his possession.’ Their arms were ‘pitchforks,
great staves, scythes, pistols, swords, and mastive dogs.’ In a rude and violent
manner, they cut down ‘the whole growth of fourteen boils sowing of corn or
thereby,’ drove it home to their own houses, and there made use of it in bedding
their cattle, or threw it upon the dunghills. Thus, ‘corns which would have
yielded at least nine hundred bolls oats at eight pounds Scots the boll, were
rendered altogether useless for man or beast.’ During the progress of this
plunder, the tenants were confined to their houses under a guard. So it was
altogether a riot and oppression, inferring severe punishment, which was
accordingly called for by the curators of the young landlord.
The Council, having heard both parties,
found the rriot proven and ordained Chancellor of Shieldhill to pay three
hundred merks to the pursuer. Afterwards (December 26, 1695), the Lords of
Session confirmed the claim of Bonnyton to the Park-holm.
In this year died the Viscountess
Stair—born Margaret Ross of Balniel, in Wigtonshire—the wife of the ablest man
of his age and country, and mother of a race which has included an extraordinary
number of men of talent and official distinction. The pair had been married very
nearly fifty years, and they were tenderly attached to the last. The glories of
the family history had not been quite free of shade; witness the tragical death
of the eldest daughter Janet, the original of Lucy Ashton in The Bride of
Lammermoor. Lady Stair is admitted to have been a woman of a soaring mind,
of great shrewdness and energy of character, and skilled in the ways of the
world; and to these qualities on her part it was perhaps, in part, owing that
her family, on the whole, prospered so remarkably. The public, however, had such
a sense of her singular power over fortune, as to believe that she possessed
necromantic gifts, and trafficked with the Evil One. An order which she left at
her death regarding the disposal of her body, helped to confirm this popular
notion. ‘She desired that she might not be put under ground,. but that her
coffin should stand upright on one end of it, promising that, while she remained
in that situation, the Dalrymples should continue to .fiourish. What was the old
lady’s motive for the request, or whether she really made such a promise, I
shall not take upon me to determine; but it’s certain her coffin stands upright
in the aile of the church of Kirkliston, the burial-place of the family."
A local historian attributes to her
ladyship 'one of the best puns extant. Graham of Claverhouse (commonly
pronounced Clavers) was appointed sheriff of Wigtonshire in 1682. On one
occasion, when this violent persecutor had been inveighing, in her presence,
against our illustrious reformer, she said: "Why are you so severe on the
character of John Knox? You are both reformers: he gained his point by clavers
[talk]; you attempt to gain yours by knocks."
Aug 13
The boy carrying the post-bag on its last stage from England was robbed by ‘a person mounted on horseback with a sword
about him, and another person on foot with a pistol in his hand, upon the highway from Haddington to Edinburgh, near that place thereof called
Jock’s Lodge [a mile from town], about ten hours of the night.’ The robbers took ‘the packet or common mail with the horse whereon the boy rode.’ The Privy Council issued a proclamations offering a reward of a hundred pounds for the apprehension of the offenders, ‘with a free pardon to any one of them who should inform upon the rest.
Oct 1
The troubles arising from corporation privileges were in these
old times incessant. Any attempt by an unfreeman to execute work within the charmed circle was met with the sternest measures of repression and punishment, often involving great suffering to poor industrious men. Indeed, there is perhaps no class of facts more calculated than this to disenchant modern people out of the idea that the days of old were days of mutual kindliness and brothership.
At the date noted, one William Somerville,
a wright-burgess of Edinburgh, was engaged in some repairs upon the mansion of
the Earl of Roxburgh, in the Canongate, when Thomas Kinloch, deacon of the
wrights of that jurisdiction, came with assistants, and in a violent manner took
away the whole of the tools which the workmen were using. This was done as a
check to Edinburgh wrights coming and doing work in a district of which they
were not free. Somerville, two days after, made a formal demand for the
restoration of his ‘looms;’ but they were positively refused. The Earl of
Roxburgh was a minor; but his curators felt aggrieved by Kinloch’s procedure,
and accordingly concurred with Somerville in charging the Canongate deacon,
before the Privy Council, with the commission of riot and oppression in the
earl’s house. Apparently, if the Roxburgh mansion had been subject to the
jurisdiction of the Canongate, the Council could not have given any redress; but
it so happened, that when the earl’s ancestor, in 1636, gave up the superiority
of the Canougate, he reserved his house as to be holden of the crown; therefore,
the Canongate corporations had no title to interfere with the good pleasure of
his lordship in the selection of workmen to do work in his house. The Council
remitted this point of law to the Court of Session; but meanwhile ordered the
restoration of Somerville’s tools.
As an example of the troubles connected
with mercantile privilege, it may be well to introduce one simple case of the
treatment of an interloper, by the Merchant Company of Edinburgh, the members of
which were the sole legalised dealers in cloth of all kinds in the city. In June
1699, it was reported to the Company that one Mary Flaikfield, who had formerly
been found selling goods 'off the mercat-day,’ and enacted herself to desist
from the practice, had been found sinning again in the same manner. She was
detected in selling some plaids and eight pieces of muslin to a stranger, and
the goods were seized and deposited in the Merchants’ Hall.
The poor woman at first alleged that she
had only been conversing with this stranger, while the goods chanced to be lying
beside her, and the Company was wrought upon to give back her goods, all except
two pieces of the muslin, which they said they would detain till Mary could
prove what she alleged.
Presently, however, there was a change in
their mood, for John Corsbie, came forward with information that Mary Flaikfield
was really a notable interloper. The very person she was lately detected in
dealing with, she had wiled away from Corsbie’s own shop, where he was about to
buy the same goods. She was accustomed to sell a good deal to the family of
Lord Halcraig. Then she had not appeared to prove her innocence. ‘The vote was
put: "Roup the two pieces of muslin or not?" and it carried "Roup."
Accordingly, the muslin being measured, and found to be twenty-two ells, and ane
hour-glass being set up, several persons bid for the same. The greatest offer
made was fourteen shillings per ell, which offer was made by Francis Brodie,
treasurer—the time being run—the said offer was
three several times cried out, and the said two pieces of muslin were declared
to belong to him for £15, 8s. [Scots]; but if she
compear and relieve the same before the next meeting, allows her to have her
goods in payment of the above sum.’
At the meeting of the ensuing week, Mary
Flaikfield not having come forward to redeem her muslin, the treasurer was
instructed to dispose of it as he should think fit, and be comptable to the
Company for £15, 8s. Two days later, however, there was another meeting solely
on account of Mary, when the Master, Baiie Warrender, and his assistants, felt
that Christian charity would not allow them to proceed further. ‘Considering
that Mary Flaikfield is a poor woman, big with child, and has been detained here
about a fortnight, they, in point of pity and compassion for her, order that her two
pieces of muslin be given her back upon payment of fourteen shillings to the
officer.’ She was not dismissed without a caution as to
her future behaviour.
Nov
The stranding of whales in the Firth of
Forth was of such natural and frequent occurrence in early times, that a tithe of all cast ashore between Cockburnspath
and the mouth of the Avon, was one of the gifts conferred by the pious David
upon the Canons Augustine of Holyrood. In modern times, it may be considered as
an uncommon event. At this time, however, one had embayed itself in the harbour
of Limekilns, a little port near Qneensferry. A litigation took place regarding
the property of it, between the chancellor, the Earl of Tweeddale, as lord of
the regality of Dunfermline, and Mr William Erskine, depute to the admiral; and
the Lords finally adjudged it to the chancellor, with seven hundred merks as the
price at which it had been sold.
Dec 1
The Earl of Moray, being pursued at law
for a tradesman’s account, which was referred to his oath, craved the Court of
Session to appoint a commission to take his oath at Dunnibrissle, on the ground
that, if he were obliged to come to Edinburgh for the purpose, he should incur
as much expense as the whole amount of the alleged debt. As Dunnibrissle is
visible from Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth, this must be looked upon as an
eccentrically economical movement on his lordship’s part. The court granted the
commission, but ordained his lordship to pay any expense which might be incurred
by the debtor, or his representative, in travelling to Dunnibrissle to be
present at the oath-taking.
The court had occasionally not less
whimsical cases before it. In February 1698, there was one regarding a copper
caldron, which had been poinded, but not first taken to the Cross to be
‘appreciate.’ The defenders represented that they had done something equivalent
in carrying thither a part of it—the ledges—as a symbol; following here a rule
applicable with heavy movables, as where a salt-pan was represented by two
nails; nay, a symbol not homogeneous, as a wisp of straw for a flock of sheep,
fulfilled the law. The defence was sustained, and the poinding affirmed
Dec
The Privy Council had under its hands three Protestant clergymen—namely, Mr John
Hay, late minister at Falkiand; Mr Alexander Leslie, late minister at Crail; and
Mr Patrick Middleton, late minister at Leslie—in short, three of the 'outed’
Episcopal clergy.—for not praying for William and Mary. They acknowledged that
they prayed ‘only in general terms’ for the king and queen, and were therefore
discharged from thereafter exercising any clerical functions, under severe
penalties. Soon after, the Council judged, in the case of Mr Alexander Lundie,
late minister of Cupar, who stated that, ‘having a mixed auditory, he prayed so
as might please both parties.’ This style of praying, or else the manner of
alluding to it, did not please the Privy Council, and Mr Lundie was ordered ‘to
be carried from the bar, by the macers, to the Tolbooth, there to remain during
the Council’s pleasure.’ Having lain there four days, far from all means of
subsistence, while his wife was ill of a dangerous disease at home, and his
family of small children required his care, Mr Lundie was fain to beg the
Council’s pardon for what he had said, and so obtained his liberation also, but
only with a discharge from all clerical functions till he should properly
qualify himself according to act of parliament.
On the 22d of May 1693, Mr David Angus,
minister of Fortrose, was before the Council on a charge that, although deprived
for not praying for their majesties in terms of the act of parliament, ‘he has
publicly preached and exercised the ministerial function within his own house,
and parish where the same lies, and elsewhere, without qualifying himself by
signing the oath of allegiance.’ So far from evidencing the sense he ought to
have had of the grievous circumstances from which the nation had been relieved,
by reading the proclamation of estates, he had neglected it, and prayed for King
James, thus stirring up the disaffected in opposition to their majesties’
government, and discouraging their loyal subjects. These were ‘crimes which
ought to be severely punished for the terror of others.’ The Lords, therefore,
finding him unable to deny the alleged facts, and indisposed to engage for a
different behaviour in future, confirmed his deprivation, and discharged him
from preaching or exercising any ministerial function within the kingdom.
As a specimen of the equivocating
prayers—Mr Charles Key, one of the ministers of South Leith, was charged, in
September 1694, with using these expressions, ‘"That God would bless our king
and queen, and William and Mary," or our king and queen, William and Mary, and
the rest of the ‘royal family."
Dec 31
A great number of recruits were now drawn together to be sent to Flanders, but
the vessels for their transportation were not ready. The Privy Council therefore
ordered their distribution throughout the jails of Lothian and Fife, sixty,
eighty, a hundred, and even more, to each tolbooth, according to its
capacity—for example, two hundred and forty-four to the jails of Musselburgii,
Haddington, and Leith—there to be furnished with blankets to lie on by the
various magistrates. When it is known that two Jacobite gentlemen had lately
petitioned for liberation from Musselburgh jail, on the ground that it did not
contain a fire-room, and their health was consequently becoming ruined, it will
not seem surprising that a competent troop of horse and foot had to be ordered
‘to keep guard upon the said recruits, and take care that none of them escape.’
That a good many, induced either by the
hardships of their situation, or the enticements of disaffected persons, did
desert the service, is certain: a strict proclamation on this subject came out
in April 1694. At the same time, John M’Lachlan, schoolmaster in Glasgow, was
before the Privy Council on a charge of having induced a number of soldiers in
the regiments lying at that city to desert. ‘Being disaffected,’ it was said,
‘to their majesties’ government, he has, so far as possible for thir three or
four years past, made it his business to weaken the government, and to instigate
and persuade several soldiers to run away.’ He did ‘forge passes for them.’ In
particular, in January last, he did ‘persuade John Fergusson and John M’Leod,
soldiers in Captain Anderson’s company in Lord Strathnaver’s regiment, then
lying at Glasgow, to run away and desert . . . . telling them that they were but
beasts and fools for serving King William, for that he was sure that the late
King James would be soon here again....He had given passes to several of the
regiment formerly in garrison at Glasgow, and offered to go with them to a
gentlewoman’s house without the Steeple-green port, who was a cousin of his, who
would secure them and receive their clothes, and furnish them with others to
make their escape; and told them they were going to Flanders, and would be
felled there, and so it was best for them to desert, and that he would hide
their firelocks underground, and give them other coats and money, and a pass to
carry them safe away.’
The Council, having called evidence, and
found the charge proven, sentenced M’Lachlan to be whipped through the city of
Edinburgh, and banished to the American plantations. They afterwards altered the
sentence, and adjudged the Jacobite schoolmaster, instead of being whipped, to
stand an hour on the pillory at Edinburgh, and an hour on the pillory at
Glasgow, under the care of the hangman, with a paper on his brow, with these
words written or printed thereon—’John M’Laehlan, schoolmaster at Glasgow,
appointed to be set on the pillory at Edinburgh and Glasgow, and sent to the
plantations, for seducing and debauching soldiers to run away from their
colours, and desert their majesties’ service.’
Two days later, the Privy Council
recommended their majesties’ advocate to prosecute M’Lachlan before the
committee anent pressed men, ‘for the disloyal and impertinent speeches uttered
by him yesterday while he stood upon the pillory of Edinburgh.’ What came of
this, we do not learn; but on the 3d of July there is a petition from M’Lachlan,
setting forth that, after a nineteen weeks’ imprisonment, he is sinking under
sickness and infirmity, while his family are starving at home, and craving his
liberty, on giving assurance that he shall not offend again against the
government. His liberation was ordered.
James Hamilton, keeper of the Canongate
Tolbooth (July 16, 1696), represented to the Privy Council that it had been
customary for him and his predecessors to receive two shillings Scots per night
for each recruit kept in the house, with a penny sterling to the servants (being
3d. sterling in all), and their lordships, in consideration of his ‘great
trouble in keeping such unruly prisoners in order’—he ‘being liable to the
payment of ten dollars for every man that shall make his escape ‘—had authorised
him to take ‘obleisements’ from the officers for the payment of these dues, till
lately when the authority was withdrawn. This had led to loss on the part of the
petitioner, who had now spent all his own means, and further run into debt, so
that, ‘through continual hazard of captions,’ he was threatened with becoming a
prisoner in his own jail. He entreated payment of some arrears for General
Mackay’s recruits, as well as these recent arrears, and likewise for the proper
allowance for ‘the coiners and clippers,’ latterly an abundant class of
prisoners, on account of the tempting condition of the coin of the realm for
simulation. The Lords recommended Hamilton to the treasury for payment of the
monies due to him.
|
