1695, July 7
The Bank of England, projected by the noted William Paterson, amidst and
by favour of the difficulties of the public exchequer during King
William’s expensive continental wars, may he said to have commenced its
actual banking operations on the first day of this year. Considerable
attention was drawn to the subject in London, and the establishment of a
similar public bank in both Ireland and Scotland became matter of
speculation. There was in London an almost retired merchant named John
Holland, who thought hereafter of spending his time chiefly in rural
retirement. To him came one day a friend, a native of Scotland, who was
inspired with a strong desire to see a bank established in his country. He
desired that Mr Holland would think of it. ‘Why,’ said the latter, ‘I have
nearly withdrawn from all such projects, and think only of how I may spend
the remainder of my days in peace.’ ‘Think of it,’ said his Scottish
friend, ‘and if you will enter into the scheme, I can assure you of having
an act of our parliament for it on your own conditions.’
Mr Holland accordingly drew out a
sketch of a plan for a bank in Scotland, which his friend, in a very few
days thereafter, had transfused into a parliamentary bill of the Scottish
form. He had also spoken, he said, to most of his countrymen of any
mercantile importance in London to engage their favour for the scheme. Mr
Holland was readily induced to lend his aid in further operations, and the
project appears to have quickly come to a bearing, for, little more than
six months from the opening of the Bank of England, the act for the Bank
of Scotland had passed the native parliament.
In our country, as in England,
exchanges and other monetary transactions, such as are now left to banking
companies, had hitherto been solely in the hands of a few leading
merchants; some such place as the back-shop of a draper in the High Street
of Edinburgh, or an obscure counting-room in the Saltmarket of Glasgow,
was all that we could shew as a bank before this period; aad the business
transaeted, being proportioned to the narrow resources and puny industry
of the country, was upon a scale miserably small. Yet there was now, as we
have seen, an expansive tendency in Scotland, and the time seems to have
arrived when at least a central establishment for the entire country might
properly be tried in the capital.
While, unluckily, we do not know the
name of’ the Scottish gentleman who propounded the scheme to Mr Holland,
we are enabled, by the recital of the act, to ascertain who were the first
patrons and nurses of the project generally, of merchants in London,
besides the English name of Mr Holland, we find those of Mr James Foulis;
Mr David Nairn, Mr Walter Stuart, Mr Hugh Frazer, Mr Thomas Coutts, and Mr
Thomas Deans, who were all of them probably Scotsmen. Of Edinburgh
merchants, there were Mr William Erskine, Sir John Swinton, Sir Robert
Dickson, Mr George Clark, junior, and Mr John Watson. Glasgow was wholly
unrepresented. These individuals were empowered by the act to receive
subscriptions between the ensuing 1st of November and 1st of January. The
whole scheme was modest, frugal, and prudential in a high degree.
It was contemplated that the Bank of Scotland
should start with a subscribed capital of £1,200,000 Scots—that is,
£100,000 sterling, in shares of £1000 Scots each; two-thirds to be
subscribed by individuals residing in Scotland, and one-third by
individuals residing in England, no person to hold more than two shares.
The company was to be under the rule of a governor, deputy-governor, and
twenty-four directors, of the last of whom twelve should be English, these
being ‘thought better acquainted with the nature and management of a bank
than those of Scotland.’ As a further encouragement to English assistance,
the act ordained that any person subscribing for a part of the stock,
should be considered as ipso facto naturalised.
The subscription of the £66,666, 18s. 4d.
allowed to Scotland began at the appointed time, the Marquis of Tweeddale,
his majesty’s commissioner to parliament, and his son, Lord Yester, being
the first who put down their names. The subscription of the remaining
£33,333, 6s. 8d. was effected in London in one day, the chief
adventurers being Scotsmen resident there. The heads of the concern in
Edinburgh felt themselves sadly ignorant of the arrangements required for
a public bank, and deemed it absolutely necessary that Mr Holland should
come down to advise and superintend their proceedings. He very generously
agreed to do so, reside for some time in Edinburgh, and return upon his
own charges; while they, as liberally, took care, by a rich present to his
wife, that he should be no loser by the journey. He relates that his
proposals were all at first objected to and controverted by the Scotch
managers, in consequence of their utter ignorance of banking, yet all in
perfect good-humour, and manifestly from a pure desire to get at the
expedients which were best; and all were ultimately agreed to. This
occasioned a difficulty at starting, and to this was added no small amount
of jealous opposition and distrust; nevertheless, Mr Holland remarks that,
within two months, and even while the Bank of England was notoriously
unable to pay its bills, those of the Scottish establishment had attained
to a surprising degree of credit. It may here be remarked, that, ere long,
by consent of the English proprietors, the whole twenty-four directors
were elected from the Scottish shareholders, leaving thirteen English ones
to act as trustees, to manage what affairs the company should have at
London; and in time, when there were no longer so many as thirteen
proprietors in England, even this arrangement was abandoned.
Several of the prominent Scottish
shareholders were members of the African Company; but it appears that
there was anything but a concert or good agreement between the two sets of
projectors. Paterson regarded the Bank of Scotland as in some degree a
rival to his scheme, and talked of the act appointing it as having been
surreptitiously gained! While so sanguine about the African Company, he
thought the bank unlikely to prove a good thing to those concerned in it,
little foreseeing that it would flourish for centuries after the Indian
Company had sunk in its first calamitous venture.
The Bank of Scotland set up in a
floor in the Parliament Close, with a moderate band of officials, and
ten thousand pounds sterling
of paid-up capital. It
had scarcely started, when the African Company added a banking business to
its other concerns, meaning thus to overpower the project of Mr Holland.
That gentleman was in Edinburgh at the time. He saw that the African
Company was in the highest vogue with the public, while few took any
notice of his modest establishment. As governor, he prudently counselled
that they should make no attempt to enforce, the exclusive privilege which
the statute had conferred upon them for twenty-one years, but to limit
themselves to standing on their guard against that mighty Company, lest it
should try to injure or ‘affront’ them by a run upon their cash. For this
reason, by his advice, twenty thousand pounds of the capital was called
up, in addition to the ten thousand lodged at first. The smallness of
these sums is amusing to men who know what banking in Scotland now is; yet
it appears that from the first the Bank of Scotland had five, ten, twenty,
fifty, and hundred pound notes. After a little while, it was found that
banking did not succeed with the African Company, chiefly .because they
lent money in too large sums to their own shareholders, and the Bank of
Scotland was then allowed to go on without any competition. The capital
lately called up was then paid back, leaving the original sum of £10,000
alone in the hands of the bank.
The chief business of the bank at
first was the lending of money on heritable bonds and other securities.
The giving of bills of exchange - the great business of the private
bankers—was, after deliberation at a general meeting of the ‘adventurers,’
tried, with a view to extending the usefulness of the concern as far as
possible. In pursuance of the same object, and ‘for carrying the
circulation of their notes through the greatest part of the kingdom,’
branch-offices were erected at Glasgow, Dundee, Montrose, and Aberdeen,
‘with cashiers and overseers at each place, for receiving and paying
money, in the form of inland exchange, by notes and bills made for that
purpose.’ But, after what appeared a fair trial, the directors ‘found that
the exchange trade was not proper for a banking company.’ A bank
they conceived to be ‘chiefly designed as a common repository of the
nation’s cash—a ready fund for affording credit and loans, and for making
receipts and payments of money easy by the company’s notes.’ To deal in
exchange was ‘to interfere with the trade and business of private
merchants.’ The Bank of Scotland found it ‘very troublesome, unsafe, and
improper.’ One reason cited some years afterwards, by a person connected
with the bank, was—’There is so much to be done in that business without
doors, at all hours by day and night, with such variety of circumstances
and conditions, as are inconsistent with the precise hours of a public
office, and the rules and regulations of a well-governed company; and no
company like the bank can be managed without fixing stated office-hours
for business, and establishing rules and regulations which will never
answer the management of the exchange trade.’ As for the branch-offices,
the inland exchange contemplated there failed from another cause,
strikingly significant of the small amount of commercial intercourse then
existing between the capital and the provinces of. Scotland. The bank, we
are told, found it impracticable to support the four sub-offices ‘but at
an expense far exceeding the advantage and conveniency rising therefrom;
for, though the company would willingly have been at some moderate charge
to keep them up, if they could thereby have, effectuated an answerable
circulation of bank notes about these places, for accommodating the lieges
in their affairs, yet they found that those offices did contribute to
neither of those ends; for the money that was once lodged at any of those
places by the cashiers issuing bills payable at Edinburgh, could not be
redrawn thence by bills from Edinburgh’—of course, because of there
being so little owing in Edinburgh to persons residing in the provinces.
So, after a considerable outlay in trying the branch-offices, the
directors were obliged to give them up, and ‘bring back their money to
Edinburgh by horse-carriage.’
The company’s business was
thenceforward for many years ‘wholly restricted to lending money, which
seems to be the only proper business of a bank, and all to be transacted
at Edinburgh.’
July 17
The estates of Duncan Forbes of Culloden, in sundry parishes, near
Inverness, having been much wasted in 1689 and 1690, both by the ravages
of the king’s enemies and the necessary sustentation of his troops, he now
gave in a petition shewing that his damages had in all amounted to the sum
of £47,400, 6s. 8d. Scots. The parliament recommended his case to the
gracious consideration of his majesty, and the result was a requital, not
in money, but in the form of a perpetual privilege to the Laird of
Culloden of distilling from the grain raised on his estate of Ferintosh,
upon paying of only a small composition in lieu of excise.
The estate of Ferintosh consisted of
about eighteen hundred arabic acres, and the produce of barley was so
considerable that a very large quantity of whisky came to be produced
within its bounds; Hugo Arnot says nearly as much as in all the rest of
Scotland together—but Hugo, it must be admitted, is a remarkably
unstatistical author. Whatever might be the exact truth, there was
certainly a surprising quantity of usquebaugh issued forth from the
domains of Forbes, insomuch that Ferintosh came to be that quasi
synonym for whisky which ‘Kilbagie’ and ‘Glenlivet’ afterwards were in
succession. The privilege of course yielded a large revenue to the family,
and in time made ample compensation for all their patriotic sufferings
past and potential. In 1784, when at length the government was inclined to
purchase it back, there was such a demonstration made of its
lucrativeness, that the capital sum of £21,500 assigned for it was thought
to be but a poor equivalent.
The minister of Dingwall, in his
account of the parish, written a few years after the abolition of the
Ferintosh privilege, tells of a remarkable consequence of that measure.
During the continuance of the privilege, quarrels and breaches of the
peace were abundant among the inhabitants, yielding a good harvest of
business to the procurators (i.e. solicitors) of Dingwall. When the
privilege ceased, the people became more peaceable, and the prosperity of
attorney jam in Dingwafl sustained a marked abatement.
1695, May 16
It was not so subscribing a world at the close of the seventeenth
century as it is now; yet, poor as our country then was, she kept her
heart open for important public objects, and for works in which faith and
charity were concerned.
There was no bridge over the Clyde
between Bothwell Bridge and Little-gill Bridge, a space of eighteen miles.
At Lanark, there was a ferry-boat; but the river was frequently
impassable, and there were repeated instances of the whole passengers
being swept down and engulfed in the Stonebyres Linn. Arrangements were
now made, chiefly by a collection at all the church-doors in the kingdom,
for building ‘a sufficient stone bridge’ at the foot of the Inch of
Clydeholm—this charitable measure being rendered necessary by the poverty
to which the burgh of Lanark had been reduced by spoliation during the
late reign, ‘by exactions, of fines, free quarters for soldiers, and the
like.’
By order of parliament, a collection
of money was made, in July 1695, in the parish churches of the kingdom,
for the benefit of Andrew Watson, skipper, and eight mariners of his
vessel, who, in a voyage from Port Glasgow to Madeira, on the 19th of
November in the preceding year, in latitude 38 degrees, had been attacked
by two Salee rovers, and by them carried as captives to Mamora, in
Marocco. In their petition to parliament, they described themselves as
resting in a slavery more cruel and barbarous than they could express,
without the proper necessaries of life, and ‘above all, deprived of the
precious gospel, which they to much slighted when they enjoyed it,’ with
no prospect before them but to die in misery and torment, unless they have
some speedy relief. The contributions were to be handed to John Spreul,
merchant in Glasgow, he finding caution to apply them to their proper end.
Aug 15
‘Those of the Scots nation residing at Konigsberg, in Prussia,’ petitioned
the Privy Council by their deputy, Mr Francis Hay, for assistance in
building a kirk for their use, for which they had obtained a liberty from
the Duke of Brandenburg. A collection at all the church-doors in the
kingdom was ordained for this purpose; and it is surprising with what
sympathy the poor commons of Scotland would enter on a movement of this
kind,. We find that the little parish of Spott, in East Lothian,
contributed nearly three pounds sterling towards the Konigsberg kirk.
At the ‘break of a storm ‘—by which
is meant the melting of a great fall of snow—in November 1698, the
southern streams were flooded, and the bridge of Ancrum was so broken and
damaged that it could be no longer serviceable. This being the only bridge
upon the water of Teviot, on an important line of communication between
the north and south in the centre of the Borders, and there being no
ferry-boat on the river but one seven miles further up, it was most
desirable that it should be rebuilt; but the calculated expense was
betwixt eight and nine thousand merks (from £450 to £500 sterling), and an
act of Council offering a pontage to any one who would undertake this
business altogether failed of its object. In these circumstances, the only
alternative was a collection at all the church-doors in the kingdom, and
permission to make such a levy was accordingly granted by the Privy
Council.
Aug
The vicissitudes of witchcraft jurisprudence in Scotland are remarkable.
While Presbyterianism of the puritanic type reigned uncontrolled between
1640 and 1651, witches were tortured to confession and savagely burnt, in
vast numbers, the clergy not merely concurring, but taking a lead in the
proceedings. During the Cromwell ascendency, English squeamishness greatly
impeded justice in this department, to the no small dissatisfaction of the
more zealous. On the Restoration, the liberated energies of the native
powers fell furiously on, and got the land in a year or two pretty well
cleared of those vexatious old women who had been allowed to accumulate
during the past decade. From 1662 to the Revolution, prosecutions for
witchcraft were comparatively rare, and, however cruel the government
might be towards its own opponents, it must be acknowledged to have
introduced and acted consistently upon rules to some extent enlightened
and humane with regard to witches—namely, that there should be no torture
to extort confession, and no conviction without fair probation. I am not
sure if the opposite party would not have ascribed it mainly to the
latitudinarianism of Episcopacy, that the whole history of witchcraft,
throughout the two last Stuart reigns, betrayed an appearance as if the
authorities were not themselves clear for such prosecutions, and, in
dictating them, oniy made a concession to the popular demands.
For a few years after the
Revolution, the subject rested in the quiescence which had fallen upon it
some years before. But at length the General Assembly began to see how
necessary it was to look after witches and charmers, and some salutary
admonitions about these offenders were from time to time issued. The
office of Lord Advocate, or public prosecutor, had now fallen into the
hands of Sir James Steuart of Goodtrees, a person who shared in the
highest convictions of the religious party at present in power, including
reverence for the plain meaning of the text, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a
witch to live.’ The consequence was, that the reign of William III. became
a new Witch Period in Scotland, and one involving many notable cases.
Aug 8
In August 1695, two married women, named M’Rorie and M’Quicken, residing
respectively at the Mill-burn and Castlehill of Inverness, were in the
Tolbooth of that northern burgh, under a suspicion of being witches; and
the Privy Council, seeing the inconvenience of having them brought to an
inquest in Edinburgh, issued a commission for their being tried on the
spot by David Polson of Kinmilnes, sheriff-depute of Inverness; William
Baillie, commissar there; Alexander Chishoim, ballie to Lord Lovat; Duncan
Forbes of Culloden; —— Cuthbert of Castlehill; and —Duff, provost of
Inverness, any three of them to be a quorum. The arrangements for the
trial were all carefully specified in this commission; and. it was
intimated in the end that, ‘in case the said judges shall find the said
panels guilty of the said horrid crime laid to their charge,’ the
commissioners should adjudge theta ‘to be burned or otherwise execute to
death.’
In March 1696, a commission was
issued in similar terms for the trial of ‘Janet Widdrow, in the parish of
Kilmacolm, presently prisoner in the Tolbooth of Paisley, alleged guilty
of the horrid crime of witchcraft.’ Two months later, the Lord Advocate
applied to the Council for an extension of power to the commission against
Janet Widdrow, as ‘it is now informed that the said Janet doth fyle and
put out several others, and as there are some persons in these bounds
against whom there are probable and pregnant grounds of suspicion.’ The
request was complied with.
Some months later (December 3,
1696), we hear of some informalities in the process against Janet Widdrow
and Isobel Coclirane, and the Lord Advocate was requested to report on the
matter.
So much for the present; but let the
reader see onward under February 1697, March 1, 1698, &c.
Aug
It is remarked by a Presbyterian historian of the popular class, that the
time of the ‘Persecution’ was one of general abundance. God, he believed,
did not choose to let his people suffer in more ways than one. But, not
long after King William had brought days of religious security, the
seasons began to be bad, and much physical suffering ensued. According to
this historian, Alexander Peden foretold how it would be. ‘As long,’ said
he, ‘as the lads are upon the hills, you will have bannocks o’er night;
but if once you were beneath the bield of the brae, you will have clean
teeth and many a black and pale face in Scotland.’
Nevertheless, the country was so
much at its ease in the matter of food in July 1695, that the Estates then
passed an act for encouraging the export of grain, allowing it to go out
duty free, and ordaining that so it should be whenever wheat was at or
under twelve pounds (Scots) the boll; bear, barley, and malt under eight;
pease and oats, under six; provided these grains should be carried in
Scottish ships.
By an act passed in 1672, it was
forbidden to import meal from Ireland while the price in Scotland remained
below a certain rate. And that this was a serious matter, is proved by an
order of Council in April 1695, for staving the grain brought from
Carrickfergus in two vessels, named the James and the Isobel,
and for handing over the vessels themselves to Sir Duncan Campbell of
Auchinbreck, who had seized them on their way to a Scottish port. It never
occurred to a legislator of those days that there was a kind of absurdity,
as well as a glaring selfishness, in arranging for his own country
receiving while it should not give.
As if to rebuke such policy, the
very month after good food prospects had induced the Scottish Estates to
permit of exportation, the crop was stricken in one night by an easterly
fog, and ‘got little more good of the ground.’ The corn was both bad and
dear. So early as November, this produced a disorder of the cholera type,
accompanied by severe fevers: ‘all our old physicians had never seen the
like, and could make no help.’ It was not in all cases the direct result
of bad unwholesome victual, for several, who used old corn, or sent to
Glasgow for Irish meal, were nevertheless smitten with the prevailing
malady, ‘in a more violent and infectious manner than the poorest in the
land.’
The price of victual having, in the
western shires, ascended beyond the importation rate fixed in 1672,
the Privy Council (December 13), ‘in consideration of the present scarcity
in. those parts, and the distress ensuing upon it,’ gave allowance for the
importation of meal, ‘but of no other grain,’ from Ireland, to ‘any port
between the mouth of Annan and the head of Kintyre,’ between this date and
the 1st of February exclusive.
A few days later, the Council took
measures for fining certain baxters of Glasgow and others who had imported
grain before the issue of the above licence.
On the 7th of February 1696, the
Council extended the period during which Irish meal might be imported to
the 15th of April, seeing that the price of the article in the western
shires still continued above that set down in the act of 1672. On the 25th
of February, the period was further extended to the 15th of May.
In June, the evil having become more
serious, the whole ports of the kingdom were opened to foreign grain,
while the usual denunciations were launched against persons keeping up
victual in girnels and stacks. Now the summer was passing into autumn, and
the weather was of such a character, or, as the Privy Council expressed
it, the season was so ‘unnatural,’ ‘as doth sadly threaten the misgiving
and blasting of the present crop, to the increase of that distress whereby
the kingdom is already afflicted.’ For these reasons, at the request of
the church, a fast was proclaimed for the 25th of August in churches south
of the Tay, and on the 8th of September in ‘all the planted churches of
the rest of this kingdom.’
Viewing the 'pinching straits and
wants’ of the poor at this crisis, and the demands which these make upon
Christian charity and compassion, the Council recommended that on the day
of the fast, and the Lord’s Day thereafter, there should be a ‘cheerful
and liberal contribution’ at the church-doors for the indigent, ‘as the
best and most answerable expression of earnestness in the aforesaid duty.’
Another edict held out a bounty of one pound Scots for every boll of
foreign victual imported.’
Some Englishmen having brought a
parcel of corn to the market of Kelso, William Kerr of Chatto’s servants
exacted from them a custom he had a right to from all victual there
sold—this right being one of which his family had been ‘in immemorial
possession.’ The Englishmen resisted the exaction with scorn and violence,
and Chatto was obliged to appeal for protection of his right to the Privy
Council. Such, however, was at that time the need for foreign grain, that
the Council suspended Chatto’s right for the next three months.
July 30
Some gentlemen in Edinburgh received information from their correspondents
in Aberdeenshire, that that county and the one next adjacent were nearly
destitute of victual, and that if they be not speedily supplied, and
victual transported [thither], a good part of that and the next county
will undoubtedly starve.’ Already, within the last fortnight, several had
died from want. In these circumstances, George Fergussoii, baillie of Old
Meldrum, and Alexander Smith, writer in Edinburgh, proposed to purchase a
thousand or twelve hundred bolls of corn and bear in the north of England,
and have it carried by sea to Aberdeen, there to sell it at any rate the
proper authorities might appoint above the cost and the expense of
carriage, and the surplus to be used for any suitable public object, the
proposers having no desire of profit for themselves, ‘but allenarly the
keeping of the poor in the said shire from starving.’ They were anxious,
however, to be protected from the risk of losing their outlay, in case the
vessel should be taken by the French privateers, and they petitioned the
Privy Council accordingly. Their wishes were recommended to the
consideration of the Lords of the Treasury.
It was reported from Roxburghshire,
on the 22d December 1696, that, in consequence of the ‘great frosts,
excessive rains, and storms of snow,’ the corns in many places ‘are
neither cut down nor led in, nor is the samen ripened nor fit for any use,
albeit it were cut down and led in.’ The boll of meal was already at
twenty-four pounds Scots, and bear, wheat, and rye at fourteen or fifteen
pounds per boll. Already many poor people and honest householders were
‘reduced to pinching straits and want,’ and still more extreme scarcity
was to be expected.
In these circumstances, the Lords of
the Privy Council granted permission to Thomas Porteous, late provost,
and. Robert Ainslie, late bailie in Jedburgh, to import victual from
England without duty, overland. If any of the said victual should
be imported by sea, it would be confiscated for the use of the poor,
‘unless it can be made appear that the victual imported by sea was bought
and paid for by the product of this kingdom, and not by transporting money
out of the kingdom for the same.’
Nov 22
The Feast of St Cecilia was celebrated in Edinburgh with a concert of
vocal and instrumental music, shewing a more advanced state of the art
than might have been expected. The scheme of the performances exhibits a
series of pieces by Italian masters: as Corelli and Bassani, to be
executed by first and second violins, flutes and hautbois, and basses; the
opening piece giving seven first violins, five second violins, six flutes
and two hautbois. There were thirty performers in all, nineteen of them
gentlemen-amateurs, and eleven teachers of music. Among the former were
Lord Colville, Sir John Pringle, Mr Seton of Pitmedden, Mr Falconer of
Phesdo, Mr John (afterwards General) Middleton, Lord Elcho, and Mr John
Corse, keeper of the Low Parliament House Records. Some of these gentlemen
are described as having been skilled in music, and good players on the
violin, harpsichord, flute, and hauthois. Among the professional men were
Henry Crumbden, a German, ‘long the Orpheus in the music-school of
Edinburgh;’ Matthew M’Gibbon, father of William M’Gibbon, noted for his
sets of Scots airs with variations and basses; Adam Craig, a good
orchestra-player on the violin; Daniel Thomson, one of the king’s
trumpets; and William Thomson, a boy, son of the above, afterwards editor
of a well-known collection (being the first) of Scots songs, with the
music.
See under 1718 for further notices
of the rise and progress of music in Scotland.
Nov
In this age, every person of any note who died became the subject of a
metrical elegy, which was printed on a broadside, and cried through the
streets. Allan Ramsay, a few years later, makes satiric allusion to the
practice:
None of all the rhyming herd
Are more encouraged and revered,
By heavy souls to theirs allied,
Than such who tell who lately died.
No sooner is the spirit flown
From its clay cage to lands unknown,
Than some rash hackney gets his name,
And through the town laments the same.
An honest burgess cannot die,
But they must weep in elegy:
Even when the virtuous soul is soaring
Through middle air, he hears it roaring.
The poetry of these mortuary verses
is usually as bad as the typography, and that is saying a great deal; yet
now and then one falls in with a quaint couplet or two— as, for example,
in the piece:
ON THE MUCH TO BE LAMENTED DEATH OF WORTHY UMPHREY MILNE, WATCHMAKER,
BURGESS OF THE METROPOLITAN CITY OF SCOTLAND, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE,
NOVEMBER THE 18TH, 1695.
In gloomy shades of darksome night, where
Phoebus hides his head,
I heard an echo cry aloud, that Umphrey Milne was dead.
My stupid senses rose aloft and wakened with a cry,
Let Pegasus, the Muses’ horse, go through the air and fly,
To tell the ends of all the earth that he has lost his breath—
* * * *
I will not name his parentage, his breeding, nor
his birth;
But lie that runs may read his life—he was a man of worth.
He valued not this earth below, although he had it satis,
He loved to lay his stock above, and now he is
beatus.
* * * *
Since none can well describe his worth that in
this land doth dwell,
He’ll waken at the trumpet’s blow, and answer for himsell.
The street elegists got a capital
subject in July 1700, when Lady Elcho died in youth and beauty, in
consequence of her clothes catching fire. Of her it is said:
Were it the custom now to canonise,
We might her in the Aib of Saints comprise.
She either was as free from faults as they,
Or had she faults, the flame purged these away.
As to her ladyship’s surviving husband:
Only well-grounded hopes of her blest state
Can his excessive agonies abate,
And the two hopeful boys she left behind,
May mitigate the sorrows of his mind.
Dec 13
The dies and punches required for the new coinage now about to be issued,
were the work of James Clarke, being the first time the work had ever been
executed within the kingdom. James had done the whole business in less
than a year, ‘which used to take no less than two or three years when
executed in England, and cost the general and master of the Mint great
attendance and much expenses;’ but as yet ‘he had not received one
farthing for his work,’ although it had been agreed that he should have a
half of his charges beforehand. The Privy Council, on his petition,
recommended the
Treasury to pay him two hundred pounds sterling, being the sum agreed
upon.
Dec
In Scotland, justice had at this time, as heretofore, a geographical
character. It did not answer for a Highlander to be tried too near the
lands of his feudal enemies. If, on the other hand, he was to be tried in
Edinburgh, his accusers were likely to find the distance inconveniently
great, and prefer letting him go free.
James Macpherson of Invernahaven was
under citation to appear before the Lords of Justiciary at Inverness, on a
charge of having despoiled John Grant of Conygass of certain oxen, sheep,
and other goods in June or July 1689, ‘when Dundee was in the hills.’ The
Laird of Grant being sheriff of Inverness, and other Grants engaged in the
intended trial, Macpherson, though protesting his entire innocence,
professed to have no hope of ‘impartial justice;’ yet he appeared at the
citation, and was immediately committed close prisoner to the Tolbooth of
Inverness, where he was denied the use of pen and ink, and the access of
his friends, so that he ‘expected nothing but a summary execution.’
On his petition, the Privy Council
ordained (December 10) that he should be liberated under caution, and
allowed to undergo a trial before the Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh. He
accordingly presented himself before the Lords on the last day of the
year, and was committed to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. On the 28th of
January, he petitioned for entire liberation, as Grant of Conygass failed
to appear to urge the prosecution; and, with the concurrence of the Laird
of Grant, a member of the Privy Council, this petition was complied with.
Not content with the proper Physic
Garden assigned to him at the end of the North Loch, James Sutherland had,
in February last, extended his operations to ‘the north yard of the Abbey
where the great Dial stands, and ‘which is near to the Tennis Court.’
Under encouragement from the Lords of the Treasury, he had been active in
levelling and dressing the ground. He ‘had there this summer a good crop
of melons;’ he had ‘raised many other curious annuals, fine flowers, and
other plants not ordinary in this country.’ He entertained no doubt of
being able in a few years ‘to have things in as good order as they are
about London,’ if supplied with such moderate means as were required to
defray charges and make the needful improvements, ‘particularly
reed-hedges to divide, shelter, and lay the ground lown and warm,
and a greenhouse and a store to preserve oranges, lemons, myrtles, with
other tender greens, and fine exotic plants in winter.’
Fifty pounds sterling had been
assigned to Sutherland out of the vacant stipends of Tarbat and Fearn in
:Ross-shire; but of this only about a half had been forthcoming, and he
had expended of his own funds upwards of a thousand pounds Scots (£83,
13s. 4d. sterling). He entreated the Lords of the Privy Council to
grant reimbursement and further encouragement, ‘without which the work
must cease, and the petitioner suffer in reputation and interest, what he
is doing being more for the honour of the nation, the ornament and use of
his majesty’s palace, than his own private behoof.’
The Council recommended the matter
to the Lords of the Treasury.
1696, Jan 14
Margaret Balfour, Lady Rollo, had brought her husband relief from a burden
of forty thousand merks resting on his estate, being a debt owing to her
father; and without this relief he could not have enjoyed the family
property. She had, according to her own account, endeavoured to live with
him as a dutiful and loving wife, and they had children grown up; yet he
had been led into a base course of life with a female named Isobel
Kininmont, and in October last he had deserted his family, and gone
abroad. The lady now petitioned the Privy Council for ailment to herself
and her six children. The estate, she said, being eight thousand merks per
annum (£444, 8s. 10d), she conceived that four thousand was the least that
could be modified for her behalf, along with the mansion of Duncrub, which
had been assigned to her as her jointure-house.
The Lords of the Council ordained
that Lord Rollo should be cited for a particular day, and that for the
time past, and till that day, the tenants should pay her ladyship a
thousand pounds Scots, she meanwhile enjoying the use of Duncrub House.
Lord Rob, failing to appear on the day cited, was declared rebel, and the
lady’s petition was at the same time complied with in its whole extent.
Jan
William Murray, tavern-keeper in the Canongate, was again a prisoner on
account of an offensive news-letter. He had suffered close imprisonment
for twenty-one weeks, till ‘his health is so far decayed, that, if he were
any longer where he is, the recovery thereof will be absolutely
desperate.’ his house having been shut up by the magistrates, his liquors
and furniture were spoiled, and ‘his poor wife and family exposed to the
greatest extremity and hazard of being starved for cold and hunger in this
season of the year.’ He represented to the Privy Council that he was
willing to be tried for any crime that could be laid to his charge. ‘Ane
Englishman’s directing,’ however, ‘of ane news-letter to him was neither a
crime nor any fault of his. In case there was anything unwarrantable in
the letter, the postmaster was obliged in duty to have suppressed the
same, after he had read and perused it.’ His having, on the contrary,
delivered it, ‘after he had read and perused it,’ was ‘sufficient to put
him in bond fide to believe that the letter might thereafter be
made patent.’
Murray went on to say that ‘this
summar usage of himself and his poor family, being far above the greatest
severity that ever was inflicted by their Lordships or any sovereign court
of the nation, must be conceived to be illegal, arbitrary, and
unwarrantable, and contrair both to,. the claim of right and established
laws and inviolable practice of the nation.’
The Council did so far grant grace
to Murray as to order him out of jail, but to be banished from Lothian,
with certification that, if found in those bounds after ten days, he
should be taken off to the plantations.
Jan 16
The imbecile Laird of Drum was recently dead, and the lady who had
intruded herself into the position of his wife—Marjory Forbes by
name—professed a strong conviction that she would ere long become the
mother of an heir to the estate. For this consummation, however, it was
necessary that she should have fair-play, and this she was not likely to
get. Alexander Irvine of Murtle, heir of tailzie to the estate in default
of issue of the late laird, had equally strong convictions regarding the
hopes which Lady Drum asserted herself to entertain. He deemed himself
entitled to take immediate possession of the castle, while Marjory, on her
part, was resolved to remain there till her expected accouchement. Here
arose a fine case of contending views regarding a goodly succession,
worthy to be worked out in the best style of the country and the time.
Marjory duly applied to the Privy
Council with a representation of her circumstances, and of the savage
dealings of Murtle. When her condition and hopes were first spoken of some
months ago, ‘Alexander Irvine, pretended heir of tailzie to the estate of
Drum’—so she designated him—’ used all methods in his power to occasion
her abortion, particularly by such representations to the Privy Council as
no woman of spirit, in her condition, could safely bear.’ When her husband
died, and while his corpse lay in the house, Murtle ‘convocat a band of
armed men to the number of twenty or thirty, with swords, guns, spears,
fore-hammers, axes, and others, and under silence of night did barbarously
assault the house of Drum, scaled the walls, broke up the gates and doors,
teared off the locks, and so far possessed themselves of all the rooms,
that the lady is confined in a most miserable condition in a remote,
obscure, narrow corner, and no access allowed to her but at ane indecent
and most inconvenient back-entry, not only in hazard of abortion, but
under fear of being murdered by the said outrageous band of men, who
carouse and roar night and day to her great disturbance.’
The lady petitioned that she should
be left unmolested till it should appear in March next whether she was to
bring forth an heir; and the Lords gave orders to that effect. Soon after,
on hearing representations from both parties, four ladies—namely, the
spouses of Alexander Walker and John Watson of Aberdeen, on Murtle’s part,
and the wife of Count Leslie of Balquhain and the Lady Pitfoddels, on Lady
Drum’s part—were appointed to reside with her ladyship till her delivery,
Murtle meanwhile keeping away from the house.’
If I am to believe Mr Burke, Marjory
proved to have been under a fond illusion, and as even a woman’s tenacity
must sometimes give way, especially before decrees of law, I fear that
Murtle would have her drummed out of that fine old Aberdeenshire château
on the ensuing 1st of April.
Sir Robert Grierson of Lagg, the
notable ‘persecutor,’ who had been not a little persecuted himself after
the Revolution as a person dangerous to the new government, was now in
trouble on a different score. He was accused of the crimes of ‘clipping of
good money and coining of false money, and vending the samen when clipped
and coined,’ inferring the forfeiture of life, land, and goods.
It appears that Sir Robert had let
his house of Rockhill to a person named John Shochon, who represented
himself as a gun-smith speculating in new modes of casting lead shot and
stamping of cloth. A cloth-stamping work he had actually established at
Rockhill, and he kept there also many engraving tools which he had
occasion to use in the course of his business. But a suspicion of clipping
and coining having arisen, a search was made in the house, and though no
false or clipped coin was found, the king’s advocate deemed it proper to
prosecute both Shochon and his landlord on the above charge.
June 22
The two cases were brought forward separately at the Court of Justiciary,
and gave rise to protracted proceedings; but the result was, that Sir
Robert and Shochon appeared to have been denounced by enemies who, from
ignorance, were unable to understand the real character of their
operations, and the prosecution broke down before any assize had been
called.
Shochon was residing in Edinburgh in
1700, and then petitioned parliament for encouragement to a manufactory of
arras, according to a new method invented by him, ‘the ground whereof is
linen, and the pictures thereof woollen, of all sorts of curious colours,
figures, and pictures.’
‘Lagg ‘—who had drowned religious
women at stakes on the sands of Wigton—had the fortune to survive to a
comparatively civiised age. He died in very advanced life, at Dumfries,
about the close of 1733.
Apr 10
Some printed copies of certain ‘popish books ‘—namely,
The Exposition of the True Doctrine of the Catholic Church in Matters
of Controversy, An Answer to M. Dereden’s Funeral of the Mass, and
The Question of Questions, which is, Who ought to be our Judges in all
Differences in Religion?—having been seized upon in a private house in
Edinburgh, and carried to the lodging of Sir Robert Chiesley, lord provost
of the city, the Privy Council authorised Sir Robert ‘to cause burn the
said books in the back-close of the town council by the hand of the common
executioner, until they be consumed to ashes.’
Six months later, the Privy Council
ordered a search of the booksellers’ shops in Edinburgh for books
‘atheistical, erroneous, profane, or vicious.’
We find the cause of this order in
the fact, that John Fraser, book-keeper to Alexander Innes, factor, was
before the Council on a charge from the Lord Advocate of having had the
boldness, some day in the three preceding months, ‘to deny, impugn, argue,
or reason against the being of a God;’ also he had denied the immortality
of the soul, and the existence of a devil, and ridiculed the divine
authority of the Scriptures, affirming they were only made to frighten
folks and keep them in order.’
Fraser appeared to answer this
charge, which he did by declaring himself of quite a contrary strain of
opinions, as became the son of one who had suffered much for religion’s
sake in the late reigns. He had only, on one particular evening, when in
company with the simple couple with whom he lived, recounted the opinions
he had seen stated in a book entitled Oracles of Reason, by Charles
Blunt; not adverting to the likelihood of these persons misunderstanding
the opinions as his own. He professed the greatest regret for what he had
done, and for the scandal he had given to holy men, and threw himself upon
their Lordships’ clemency; calling them to observe that, by the late act
of parliament, the first such offence may be expiated by giving public
satisfaction for removing the scandal.
The Lords found it sufficiently
proven, that Fraser had argued against the being of a God, the persons of
the Trinity, the immortality of the soul, and the authority of the
Scriptures, and ordained him to remain a prisoner ‘until he make his
application to the presbytery of Edinburgh, and give public satisfaction
in sackcloth at the parish kirk where the said crime was committed.’
Having done his penance to the satisfaction of the presbytery, he was
liberated on the 25th of February.
The Council at the same time ordered
the booksellers of Edinburgh to give in exact catalogues of the books they
had for sale in their shops, under certification that all they did not
include should be confiscated for the public use.’
Apr 15
In the austerity of feeling which reigned through the Presbyterian Church
on its re-establishment, there had been but little disposition to assume a
clerical uniform, or any peculiar pulpit vestments. It is reported, that
when the noble commissioner of one of the first General Assemblies was
found fault with by the brethren for wearing a scarlet cloak, he told them
he thought it as indecent for them to appear in gray cloaks and cravats.
When Mr Calamy visited Scotland in 1709, he was surprised to find the
clergy generally preaching in ‘neckcloths and coloured cloaks.’ We find at
the date here marginally noted, that the synod of Dumfries was anxious to
see a reform in these respects. ‘The synod ‘—so runs their
record—’considering that it’s a thing very decent and suitable, so it hath
been the practice of ministers in this kirk formerly, to wear black gowns
in the pulpit, and for ordinary to make use of bands, do therefore, by
their act, recommend it to all their brethren within their bounds to keep
up that laudable custome, and to study gravitie in their apparel and
deportment every manner of way.’
From a poem of this time, in which a
Fife laird, returned from the grave, gives his sentiments on old and new
manners, we learn that formerly
We had no garments in our land,
But what were spun by th’ goodwife’s hand,
No drap-de-berry, cloths of seal,
No stuffs ingrained in cochineal;
No plush, no tissue, cramosie,
No China, Turkey, taffety;
No proud Pyropus, paragon,
Or Chackarally there was none;
No figurata, water shamlet,
No Bishop sattin, or silk camblet;
No cloth of gold or beaver hats,
* * * *
No windy-flourished flying feathers,
No sweet, permusted shambo leathers, &c.
And things were on an equally plain
and simple footing with the ladies; whereas now they invent a thousand
toys and vanities—
As scarfs, shefroas, tuffs, and rings,
Fairdings, facings, and powderings,
Rebats, ribands, bands, and ruffs,
Lapbends, shagbands, cuffs, and muffs;
Folding o’erlays, pearling sprigs,
Atries, fardingales, periwigs;
Hats, hoods, wires, and also kells,
Washing balls and perfuming smells;
French gowns cut and double-banded,
Jet rings to make her pleasant-handed;
A fan, a feather, bracelets, gloves—
All new-come busks she dearly loves.
The spirit which dictated these
lines was one which in those days forced its way into the legislation of
the country. In September 1696, an overture was read before parliament
‘for ane constant fashion of clothes for men, and another for ane constant
fashion of clothes for women.’ What came of this does not appear; but two
years later, the parliament took under consideration an act for
restraining expenses of apparel. There was a debate as to whether the
prohibition of gold and silver on clothes should be extended to
horse-furniture, and carried that it should. Some one put to the vote
whether gold and silver lace manufactured within the kingdom might not be
allowed, and the result was for the negative. It was a painful
starving-time, and men seem to have felt that, while so many were
wretched, it was impious for others to indulge in expensive vanities of
attire. The act, passed on the 30th August 1698, discharged the wearing of
‘any clothes, stuffs ribbons, fringes, tracing, loops, agreements,
buttons, made of silver or gold thread, wire, or philagram.’ |