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1696, Apr
Two young men, Matthew M’Kail, son of an advocate of the
same name, and Mr William Trent, writer,
hitherto intimate friend; quarrelled about a trifling matter, and resolved
to fight a duel. Accompanied by John Veitch, son of John Veitch,
‘presentee of the signator,’ and William Drummond, son of Logie Drummond,
youths scarcely out of their minority, they went two days after—a Sunday
having intervened—to the park of Holyrood Palace, and there fought - it
does not appear with what weapons— but both were slain on the spot; after
which the seconds absconded.
July
A preacher named John Hepburn, who had been called to the parish of Urr in
Galloway, before the regular establishment of the church in 1690,
continued ever since to minister there and in the neighbouring parish of
Kirkgunzeon, without any proper authority. Enjoying the favour of an
earnest, simple people, and cherishing
scruples about the established church, he
maintained his ground for several years, in defiance of all that
presbyteries, synods, and general assemblies could do for his suppression.
Holding a
fast
amongst his own people (June 25, 1696), he was
interrupted by a deputation from the presbytery of Dumfries, but
nevertheless persisted in preaching to his people in the open air, though,
as far as appears, without any outward disorderliness. It affords a
curious idea of the new posture of Presbyterianism in Scotland, that one
of the deputation was Mr William Veitch, a noted sufferer for opinion in
the late reign.The Privy
Council took up this affair as a scandalous tumult and riot, and had Mr
Hepburn brought before them, and condemned to give bond under a large
forfeiture that he would henceforth live in the town of Brechin and within
two miles of the same—a place where they of course calculated that he
could do no harm, the inhabitants being so generally Episcopalian.
Meanwhile, he was laid up in the Old Tolbooth, and kept there for nearly a
month. There were people who wished to get in to hear him. There were
individuals amongst his fellow-prisoners also anxious to listen to his
ministrations. The Council denied the necessary permission. We hear,
however, of Mr Hepburn preaching every Sunday from a window of his prison
to the people in the street. He was then conducted to Stirling Castle, and
kept in durance there for several months. It was three years before he was
enabled to return to his Galloway flock. The whole story reads like a bit
of the history of the reign of Charles II. misplaced, with presbyteries
for actors instead of prelates.
Sep
A crew of English, Scots, and foreigners, under an Englishman named Henry
Evory or Bridgman, had seized a ship of forty-six guns at Corunna, and had
commenced in her a piratical career throughout the seas of India and
Persia. Having finally left their ship in the isle of Providence, these
pirates had made their way to Scotland, and there dispersed, hoping thus
to escape the vengeance of the laws which they had outraged. The Privy
Council issued a proclamation, commanding all officers whatsoever in the
kingdom to be diligent in trying to
catch the
pirates, ‘who may probably be known and discovered by the great quantities
of Persian and Indian gold and silver which they have with them,’ a
bundred pounds of reward being offered for apprehending Bridgman, and
fifty for each of the others.
Sep
Since the Reformation, there had been various public decrees for the
establishment of schools throughout
Scotland; but they had been very partially successful in their object, and
many parishes continued to be without any stated means of instruction for
the young. The Presbyterian or ultra-Protestant party, sensible how
important an ability to read the Scriptures was for keeping up a power in
the people to resist the pretensions of the Romish Church, had always, on
this account, been favourable to the maintenance of schools whereby the
entire people might be instructed. Now, that they were placed securely in
ascendency, they took the opportunity to obtain a parliamentary enactment
‘for settling of schools,’ by virtue of which it was ordered that the
heritors (landowners) of each parish in the realm should ‘meet and provide
a commodious house for a school, and settle and modify a salary to a
schoolmaster, which shall not be under one hundred nor above two hundred
merks {£5, 11s. 1d.and £11, 2s 2d] It was thus made a duty
incidental to the possession of land in each parish, that a school and
schoolmaster should be maintained, and that the poorest poor should be
taught; and, in point of fact, the community of Scotland became thus
assured of access to education, excepting in the Highlands, where the vast
extent of the parishes and other circumstances interfered to make the act
inoperative. The history of the commencement of our parochial school
establishment occupies but a page in this record; but the effects of the
measure in promoting the economic and moral interests of the Scottish
people are indefinite. It would be wrong to attribute to that act solely,
as has sometimes been done, all the credit which the nation has attained
in arts, in commerce, in moral elevation, and in general culture. But
certainly the native energies have been developed, and the national moral
character dignified, to a marked extent, through the means of these parish
schools - an effect the more conspicuous and, unmistakable from the fact
of there having been no similar
institution to improve the mass of society in the sister-kingdom.
Oct 15
It is a rather whimsical association of ideas, that Sir David
Dunbar, the hero of the sad story of
the Bride of Baldoon —the bridegroom in the case—was an active
improver of the wretched rural economy of his day. Some years before his
unfortunate death in 1682, he had formed the noted park
of Baldoon, for the rearing of a
superior breed of cattle, with a view to the demands of the market in
England. It was, as far as I can lean, the first effort of the kind made
in Scotland, and the example was not without imitation in various parts of
the southwestern province of Scotland.
Andro Sympson, in his gossiping
.Deseription of
Galloway, written before the Revolution, speaks
of the park of Baldoon as a rich pastoral domain, of two and a half miles
in length and one and a half in breadth, to the south of the river
Blednoch. It ‘can,’ he says, ‘keep in it, winter and summer, about a
thousand bestial, part whereof he [Sir David Dunbar] buys from the
country, and grazeth there all winter, other part whereof is his own
breed; for he hath nearly two hundred milch kine, which for the most part
have calves yearly. He buys also in the summer-time from the country many
bestial, oxen for the most part, which be keeps till August or September;
so that yearly he either sells at home to drovers, or sends to St Faith’s,
and other fairs in England, about eighteen or twenty score of bestial.
Those of his own breed at four year old are very large; yea, so large,
that, in August or September 1682, nine-and-fifty of that sort, which
would have yielded betwixt five and six pound sterling the piece, were
seized upon in England for Irish cattle; and because the person to whom
they were intrusted had not witnesses there ready at the precise hour to
swear that they were seen calved in Scotland, they were, by sentence of
Sir J. L. and some others, who knew well enough that they were bred in
Scotland, knocked on the head and killed.’
The estate of Baldoon
having, by the marriage of the heiress, Mary Dunbar, come into the
possession of Lord Basil Hamilton, a younger son of the Duke and Duchess
of Hamilton, we now find that young nobleman petitioning the Privy Council
for permission to import from Ireland ‘six score young cows of the largest
breed for making up his lordship’s stock in the park of Baldoon,’ he
giving security that he would import no more, and employ these for no
other end.
The example of the Baldoon
park was followed by the Laird of Lochnaw and other great proprietors, and
the growing importance of the cattle-rearing trade of Galloway is soon
after marked by a demand for a road whereby the stock might be driven to
the English market. In June 1697, the matter came before the Privy
Council. it was represented that, while there was a customary way between
the burgh of New Galloway and Dumfries, there was no defined or made road.
It was the line of passage taken by immense herds of cattle which were
continually passing from the green pastures of the Galloway hills into
England—a branch of economy held to be the main support of the inhabitants
of the district, and the grand source of its rents. Droves of cattle are,
however, apt to be troublesome to the owners and tenants of the grounds
through or near which they pass; and such was the ease here. ‘Several
debates have happened of late in the passage of droves from New Galloway
to Dumfries, the country people endeavouring by violence to stop the
droves, and impose illegal exactions of money upon the cattle, to the
great damage of the trade; whereby also riots and blood-sheds have been
occasioned, which had gone greater length, if those who were employed to
carry up the cattle had not managed with great moderation and prudence.’
On a petition from the
great landlords of the district, James Earl of Galloway, Lord Basil
Hamilton, Alexander Viscount of Kenmure, John Viscount of Stair, Sir
Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw, Sir Charles Hay of Park, &c., a commission was
appointed by the Privy Council ‘to make and mark a highway for droves frae
New Galloway to Dumfries,’ holding ‘the high and accustomed travelling way
betwixt the said two burghs.'
Amongst Sir David Dunbar’s
imitators, it appears that we have to class Sir George Campbell of
Cessnock, in Ayrshire, so noted for his sufferings under the late reign.
The parks of Cessnock had formerly been fnrnished with ‘ane brood of great
cattle’ and a superior breed of horses, both from Ireland; but, on the
unjust forfeiture of the estate, the stock had been taken away and
destroyed, so that it was ‘entirely decayed out of that country.’ Sir
George, to whom the estate had been restored at the Revolution, obtained,
in March 1697, permission from the Privy Council ‘to import from Ireland
sixty cows and bulls, thretty-six horses and mares, and six score of
sheep, for plenishing of his
park.’ Soon after, the Council recalled the permission for the sheep.
Oct
The rolls of parliament and the books of the Privy Council contain about
this time abundant proofs of the tendency to manufacturing enterprise. Sir
John Shaw of Greenock and others were encouraged in a proposed making of
salt ‘after a new manner.’ There was a distinct act in favour of certain
other enterprising persons who designed to make ‘salt upon salt.’ John
Hamilton, merchant-burgess of Edinburgh, was endowed with privileges for
an invention of his for mills and engines to sheel and prepare barley.
James Melville of Halhill got a letter of gift to encourage him in a
manufacture of sail-cloth. Inventions for draining of mines are frequently
spoken of.
William Morison of Prestongrange was
desirous of setting up a glass-work at a place within the bounds of his
estate, called Aitchison’s Haven or New Haven, ‘for making of all sorts of
glass, as bottles, vials, drinking, window, mirror, and warck [?]
glasses.’ ‘In order thereto, he conduced with strangers for carrying on
the said work, who find great encouragement for the same, within the said
bounds.’ On his petition, this proposed work, with the workmen and stock
employed, was endowed by the Privy Council (April 27, 1697) with the
privileges accorded to manufactories by acts of parliament.
Connected with Prestongrange in this
business was a French refugee named Leblanc, who had married a
Scotchwoman, and got himself entered as a burgess and guild-brother of
Edinburgh, designing to spend the remainder of his life in the country of
his adoption. It was his part to polish the glass for the making of
mirrors, an art never before practised in Scotland; and this business he
carried on in a workshop in the Canongate. It was found, however, that
‘the glasses must have mailers and bead-pieces of timber, and sometimes
persons of honour and quality desired also tables, drawers and stands
agreeable to the glass for making up a suit.’ Leblanc offered to employ
for this work the wrights of the corporation of the Canongate; but they
plainly acknowledged that they could not execute it. He was obliged to
employ wrights of Edinburgh. Then came forth the same Canon-gate wrights,
with complaints of this infraction of their rights. It was a plain case of
the dog in the manger—and the consequence was the stoppage of a branch of
industry of some importance to the community. On Leblanc’s petition, the
Privy Council gave him permission to make up the upholstery work connected
with his mirrors, on the simple condition of his making a first offer of
it to the wrights of the Canougate.
One George Sanders had obtained, in
1681, an exclusive privilege,
for seventeen years, for a work for the twisting and throwing all sorts of
raw silk; but he never proceeded with the undertaking. ‘Joseph Ormiston
mid William Elliot, merchants,’ proposed (June 1697) to set up such a
work, which they conceived would be useful in giving employment to the
poor, and in opening a profitable trade between Scotland and Turkey; also
in ‘advancing the manufactories of buttons, galloons, silk stocking; and
the like.’ They designed ‘to bring down several families who make broad
silks, gold and silver thread, &c.,’ and entertained ‘no doubt that many
of the Norwich weavers may be encouraged to come and establish in this
country, where they may live and work, at easy rates.’ On their petition,
the adventurers had their proposed work invested by the Privy Council with
the privileges and immunities of a manufactory.
On the 22d February 1698, David Lord
Elcho, for himself and copartners, besought the favour of the Council for
a glass-work which they proposed to erect at Wemyss. They were to bring
its strangers expert in the art, and did not doubt that they would also
afford considerable employment to natives and to shipping; besides which,
they would cause money to be kept at home, and some to come in from
abroad. They asked no monopoly or ‘the exclusion of any others from doing
their best, and setting up in any other part of the kingdom they please;’
all they craved was a participation in the privileges held out by the acts
of parliament. Their petition was cordially granted.
Viscount Tarbat and Sir George
Campbell of Cessnock, ‘being resolved to enter into a society for
shot-casting, whereby not only the exportation of money for foreign shot
will be restrained, but also the product of our own kingdom considerably
improved,’ petitioned (February 1698) for and obtained for the said
society all the privileges accorded
by
statute to a manufaetory for nineteen years.
It was well known, said a petition
in September 1698, ‘how much the burgh of Aberdeen and inhabitants thereof
had in all times been disposed to the making of cloth and stuffs,
stockings, plaids, and all other profitable work in wool.’ It therefore
appeared reasonable to certain persons of that burgh—Thomas Mitchell, John
Allardyce. Alexander Forbes, John Johnstone, and others—that a woollen
manufactory should be set up there, and they petitioned the Privy Council
for permission to do so, and to have the usual privileges offered by the
statute; which were granted.’
In 1703, a cloth manufactory was in
full operation at Gordon’s Mills, near
Aberdeen, under the care of Mr William Black, advocate. Though established
but a year ago, it
already produced
broad cloths, druggets, and stuffs of all sorts, ‘perhaps as good in their
kind as any that have been wrought in this kingdom.’ Mr Black had French
workmen for the whitening and scouring of his cloths, and boasted that he
had created a new trade in supplying the country people with sorted
fleece-wool, ‘which is a great improvement in itself.’ Amongst his
products were half-silk serges, damasks, and plush made of wool, which
looks near as fine as that made of hair.’ Unlike most enterprisers in that
age, he desired to breed up young people who might afterwards act up
factories of the same kind, ‘which,’ he said, ‘will be the only way to
bring our Scots manufactories to reasonable prices.’ But he did not
propose to do this upon wholly disinterested principles. He petitioned
parliament to make a charge upon the county of
Aberdeen, for the support of boys working at
his manufactory, during the first five years of their apprenticeships;
and his desire
was in a modified manner complied with.
About the same time, William Hog of
Harcarse had a cloth manufactory at his place in Berwickshire, where he
‘did make, dress, and lit as much. red cloth as did furnish all the Earl
of Hyndford’s regiment of dragoons with red cloaths this last year, and
that in a very short space.’
It would appear that up to 1703
there was no such thing in Scotland as a work for making earthenware; a
want which, of course, occasioned ‘the yearly export of large sums of
money out of the kingdom,’ besides causing all articles of that kind to be
sold at ‘double charges of what they cost abroad.’ William Montgomery of
Maebie-hill, and George Linn, merchant in Edinburgh, now made arrangements
for setting up ‘a Pot-house and all conveniences for making of laim,
purslane, and earthenware,’ and for bringing home from foreign countries
the men required for such a work. As necessary for their encouragement in
this undertaking, the parliament gave them an exclusive right of making
laim, purslane, and earthenware for fifteen years.’
Dec 1
On a low sandy plain near the mouth of the Eden, in Fife, in sight of the
autique towers of St Andrews, stands the house of Earlshall, now falling
into decay, but in the seventeenth century the seat of a knightly family
of Bruces, one of whom has a black reputation as a persecutor, having been
captain of one of Claverhouse’s companies. The hall in the upper part of
the mansion—a line room with a curved ceiling, bearing pictures of the
virtues and other abstractions, with scores of heraldic shields—testifies
to the diginty of this family, as well as their taste. Some months before
this date, Andrew Bruce of Earlshall had granted to his son Alexander a
disposition to the corns and fodder of the estate, as also to those of the
‘broad lands of Leuchars;’ aad Alexander had entered into a bargain for
the sale of the produce to John Lundin, younger of Baldastard, for the use
of the army. Against this arrangement there was a resisting party in the
person of Sir David Arnot of that Ilk.
Sir David, on the day noted, came
with a suitable train to Earlshall, and there, with many violent speeches,
proceeded to possess himself of the keys of the barns and stables; caused
the corns to be thrashed; brought his own oxen to eat part of the straw;
and finally forced Earlshall’s tenants to carry off the whole grain to
Pitlethie. The produce thus disposed of is described as follows: ‘The
Mains [home-farm] of Earlshall paid, and which was in the corn-yard
at the time, six
chalders victual, corn, and fodder, estimat this year [1697] at fourteen
pounds the boll, is ane thousand three hundred and forty-four pounds
Scots; and nine chalders of teind out of the lands of Lenehars-Bruce corn
and fodder, estirnat at the foresaid price to two thousand and sixteen
pounds.’
The Privy
Council took up this
case of ‘high and manifest oppression and hangstrie,’
examined witnesses on both sides, and then remitted the matter to the
Court of
Session.
A similar ease of violently disputed
rights occurred about the same time. John Leas had a tack from the Laird
of Brux in Aherdeenshire for a piece of land called Croshlachie, and
finding it a prosperous undertaking, he was ‘invyed’ in it by Mr Robert
Irving, minister of Towie. The minister frequently threatened Leas to
cause the laird dispossess him of his holding, possibly expecting to
harass him out of it. Leas stood his ground against such threats; but,
being simple, he was induced to let Mr Irving have a sight of his
‘assedation,’ which the minister no sooner got into his hands, than he
tore it in pieces. A few weeks after, May 8, 1693, Irving came to
Croshlachie, and causing men to divide the farm, took possession of one
part, put his cattle upon it, and pulled down two houses belonging to
Leas, who was thus well-nigh ruined.
Still unsatisfied with what he had
gained, Irving came, in March 1694, with Roderick Forbes, younger of Brux,
whom he had brought over to his views, and made a personal attack upon
Leas, as he was innocently sowing his diminished acres. ‘Tying his hands
behind his back, [Irving] brought him off the ground, and carried him
prisoner like a malefactor to his house.’ While they were there preparing
papers which they were to force him to subscribe, Leas ‘did endeavour to
shake his hands lowse of their bonds; but Mr Robert Irving came and
ordered the cords to be more severely drawn, which accordingly was done.’
He was detained in that condition ‘till he was almost dead,’ and so was
compelled to sign a renunciation of his tack, and also a disposition of
the seed be had sown.
On a complaint from Leas coming
before the Privy Council, Irving and young Brux did not appear; for which
reason they were denounced rebels. Afterwards (June 16, 1698), they came
forward with a petition for a suspension of the decreet, alleging that
they had come to the court, but were prevented from appearing by accident.
‘It was the petitioners’ misfortune,’ they said, ‘that the time of the
said calling they were gone down to the close, and the macers not having
called over the window, or they not having heard, Maister Leas himself
craved [that] the letters might be found orderly proceeded.’ On this
petition, the decreet was
suspended.
In August 1697, we are regaled with
an example of female ‘bangstrie’ in an elevated grade of society. It was
represented to the Privy Council that the wife of Lumsden of Innergellie,
in Fife—we may presume, under some supposed legal claim—came at midnight
of the 22d July, with John and Agnes Harper, and a few other persons, to
the house of Ellieston, in Linlithgowshire— ostensibly the property of the
Earl of Rutherglen—which was fast locked; and there, having brought
ladders with them, they sealed the house, and violently broke open the
windows, at which they entered; after which they broke open the doors.
Having thus taken forcible possession of the mansion, they brought cattle,
which they turned loose, to eat whatever fodder the place afforded.
On the petition of the Earl of
Rutherglen, this affair came before the Council, when, the accused lady
not appearing, the Lords gave orders that she and her servants should be
cast out of the house of Ellieston, and that John and Agnes Harper
should pay a hundred pounds Scots as damages, and to be confined (if
caught) until that sum was paid.’
1697
Jean Douglas, styled Lady Gleubucket, as being the widow of the late
Gordon of Glenbucket, had been endowed by her husband, in terms of her
marriage contract with a thousand pounds Scots of free rent out of the
best of his lands ‘nearest adjacent to the house.’ At his death in 1693,
she centered on the possession of the mains and house of Glenbucket, and
uplifted some of the rents, out of which she did aliment her eight
children till May [1696],' when an unhappy interruption took place in
conscquence of a dispute with her eldest son about their respective
rights.
According to the complaint
afterwards presented by the lady—though it seems scarce credible - she was
coming south to take advice regarding her affairs, when her son, Adam
Gordon, followed her with an armed force, and, on her refusal to comply
with his request that she would return, avowed his determination to have
her back, though he should drag her at a horse’s tail. Then seizing her
with violence, he forced her to return to Glenbucket, three miles, and
immured her there as a prisoner for thirty days, without attendance or
proper ailment; indeed, she could have hardly eaten anything that was
offered for fear of poison; and ‘if it had not been for the charity of
neighbours, who in some part supplied her necessity, she must undoubtedly
have starved.’ The young man meanwhile possessed himself of everything in
the house, including the legal writings of her property; he left her and
her children no means of subsistence, ‘yea, not so much as her wearing
clothes,’ and she ‘was glad to escape with her life.’ He also proceeded to
uplift her rents.
The lady craved redress from the
Privy Council, which seems to have become satisfied of the truth of her
complaint; but what steps they took in the case does not appear.’
1696, Dec 12
Every now and then, amidst the mingled harmonies and discords proceeding
from the orchestra of the national life, we hear the deep diapason of the
voice of the church, proclaiming universal hopeless wickedness, and
threatening divine judgments. At this time, a solemn fast was appointed to
be held on the 21st of January next, to deprecate ‘the wrath of God,’
which is ‘very visible against the land, in the judgments of great
sickness and mortality in most parts of the kingdom, as also of growing
dearth and famine threatened, with the imminent hazard of ane invasion
from our cruel and bloody enemies abroad; all the just deservings and
effects of our continuing and abounding sins, and of our great security
and impenitency under them.’
Dec 23
It was while the public mind was excited by the complicated evils of
famine and threatened invasion, that an importation of atheistical books
was found to have been made into Edinburgh, and several young men were
denounced to the authorities as having become infected with heterodox
opinions. At a time when every public evil was attributed to direct
judgment for sins, we may in some faint degree imagine how even an
incipient tendency to irreligion would be looked upon by the more
serious-minded people, including the clergy, and how just and laudable it
would appear to take strong measures for the repression of such
wickedness. We have to remember, too, the temper of Sir James Stenart, the
present public prosecutor. One delinquent—John Fraser— had, upon timely
confession and penitence, been lightly dealt with; but there was another
youthful offender, who, meeting accusation in a different frame of mind,
at least at first, was to have a different fate.
Thomas Aikenhead, a youth of
eighteen, ‘son to the deceest James Aikenhead, chirurgeon in Edinburgh,’
was now tried by the High Court of Justiciary for breach of the 21st act
of the first parliament of Charles II., ‘against the crime of blasphemy,’
which act had been ratified by the 11th act of the fifth session of the
parliament of the present reign. It was alleged in the indictment that the
young man had, for a twelve-month past, been accustomed to speak of
theology as ‘a rhapsody of feigned and ill-invented nonsense,’ calling the
Old Testament Ezra’s fables, and
the New the history of the Impostor Christ,
further ‘cursing Moses, Ezra, and Jesus, and all men of that sort.’
‘Likeas,’ pursued this document, ‘you reject the mystery of the blessed
Trinity and say it is not worth any man’s refutation, and you also scoff
at the mystery of the incarnation of Jesus Christ....as to the doctrine of
redemption by Jesus, you say it is a proud and presumptuous device . . . .
you also deny spirits....and you have maintained that God, the world, and
nature, are but one thing, and that the world was from eternity. . . . You
have said that you hoped to see Christianity greatly weakened, and that
you are confident it will in a short time be utterly extirpat.’
Aikenhead, though impenitent at
first, no sooner received this indictment in prison, than he endeavoured
to stop proceedings by addressing to the Lords of Justiciary a ‘petition
and retraction,’ in which he professed the utmost abhorrence of the
expressions attributed to him, saying he trembled even to repeat them to
himself and further avowing his firm faith in the gospel, in the
immortality of the soul, in the doctrine of the Trinity, and in the divine
authority of Scripture. He alleged, like Fraser, that the objectionable
expressions had only been repeated by him, as sentiments of certain
atheistical writers whose works had been put into his hands by a person
now cited as a witness against him, and ‘who constantly made it his work
to interrogate me anent my reading of the said atheistical principles and
arguments,’ ‘May it therefore please your Lordships,’ said the petitioner
in conclusion, ‘to have compassion on my yonng and tender years (not being
yet major), and that I have been so innocently betrayed and induced
to the reading of such atheistical books . . . . that I do truly own the
Protestant religion . . . . and am resolved, by the assistance of Almighty
God, to make my abhorrence of what is contained in the libel appear to the
world in my subsequent life and conversation . . . . to desert the diet
against me.’ This appeal, however, was in vain.
The case was conducted by Sir James
Steuart, the king’s advocate, aud Sir Patrick Hume, the king’s solicitor.
The witnesses were three students,
and a ‘writer,’ all of them about twenty years of age, being the
companions of the culprit, and one of them (named Mungo Craig) known to be
the person who had lent Aikenhead the books from which he derived the
expressions charged in the indictment. It was proved by the ample
depositions of these young men, that Aikenhead had been accustomed to
speak opprobriously of the Scriptures and their authors, as well as of the
doctrines of Christianity; by Mungo Craig alone it was averred that he had
cursed Jesus Christ, along with Moses and Ezra. Thus there was not full
proof against the accused on the principal, point of the statute
charged upon—namely, the cursing of God or any other person of the blessed
Trinity. The jury nevertheless unanimously found it proven ‘that the
panel, Thomas Aikenhead, has railed against the first person, and also
cursed and railed our blessed Lord, the sccond person, of the holy
Trinity.’ They further found ‘the other crimes libelled proven—namely, the
denying the incarnation of our Saviour, the holy Trinity, and scoffing at
the Holy Scriptures.’ Wherefore the judges ‘decern and adjudge the said
Thomas Aikenhead to be taken to the Gallowlee, betwixt Leith and
Edinburgh, upon Friday the eighth day of January next to come, and there
to be hanged on a gibbet till he be dead, and his body to be interred at
the foot of the gallows.’
It struck some men in the Privy
Council that it was hard to take the life of a lad of eighteen, otherwise
irreproachable, for a purely metaphysical offence, regarding which he had
already expressed an apparently sincere penitence; and this feeling was
probably increased when a petition was received from Aikenhead, not asking
for life, which he had ceased to hope for, but simply entreating for delay
of a sentence which he acknowledged to be just, on the gronnd that it had
‘pleased Almighty God to begin so far in His mercy to work upon your
petitioner’s obdured heart, as to give him some sense and conviction of
his former wicked errors . . . . and he doth expect . . if time were
allowed... through the merits of Jesus, by a true remorse and repentance,
to be yet reconciled to his offended God and Saviour.’ I desire, he said,
this delay, that ‘I may have the opportunity of conversing with godly
ministers in the place, and by their assistance be more prepared for an
eternal rest.’
Lord Anstrnther and Lord
Fountainhall, two members of the Council, were led by humane feeling to
visit the culprit in prison. ‘I found a work on his spirit,’ says the
former gentleman, ‘and wept that ever he should have maintained such
tenets.’ He adds that he desired for Aikenhead a short reprieve, as his
eternal state depended on it. ‘I plead [pleaded] for him in Council, and
brought it to the Chancellor’s vote. It was told it could not be granted
unless the ministers would intercede.... The ministers, out of a
pious, though I think ignorant zeal, spoke and preached for cutting him
off. . . . our ministers being,’ he adds, generally of a narrow set of
thoughts and confined principles, and not able to bear things of this
nature.’ It thus appears that the clergy were eager for the young man’s
blood, and the secular powers so far
under awe towards that body, that they could not grant mercy.
The Council appears in numberless instances as
receiving applications for delay and pardon from criminals under sentence,
and so invariably assents to the petition, that we may infer there having
been a routine practice in the case, by which petitions were only sent
after it was ascertained that they would probably be complied with. There
being no petition for pardon from Aikenhead to the Council after his
trial, we may fairly presume that he had learned there was no relaxation
of the sentence to be expected.
As the time designed for his
execution drew nigh, Aikenhead wrote a paper of the character of a ‘last
speech’ for the scaffold, in which he described the progress of his mind
throughout the years of his education. From the age of ten, he had sought
for grounds on which to build his faith, having all the time an insatiable
desire of attaining the truth. He had bewildered himself amongst the
questions on morals and. religion which have bewildered so many others,
and only found that the more be thought on these things the further he was
from certainty, he now felt the deepest contrition for the ‘base, wicked,
and irreligious expressions’ he had uttered—’ although I did the same out
of a blind zeal for what I thought the truth.’ ‘Withal, I acknowledge and
confess to the glory of God, that in all he hath brought upon me, either
one way or other, he hath done it most wisely and justly. Likeas I bless
God I die in the true Christian Protestant apostolic faith.’ He then
alluded in terms of self-vindication to aspersions regarding him which had
been circulated in a satire by Mr Mungo
Craig, ‘whom I leave,’ said he, ‘to reckon with
God and his own conscience, if he was not as deeply concerned in those
hellish notions for which I am sentenced, as ever I was: however, I bless
the Lord, I forgive him and all men, and wishes the Lord may forgive him
likewise.’ Finally, he prayed that his blood might ‘give a stop to that
raging spirit of atheism which hath taken such a footing in Britain both
in practice and profession! Along with this paper, he left a letter to his
friends, dated the day of his execution, expressing a hope that what he
had written would give them and the world satisfaction, ‘and after I am
gone produce more charity than [it] hath been my fortune to be trysted
hitherto with, and remove the apprehensions which I hear are various with
many about my case." [The above account of the prosecution of Aikenhead is
derived from Howell’s State Trials, in which there has been printed
a collection of documents on the case, collected by John Locke.]
There was at that time in Edinburgh
an English Nonconformist clergyman, of Scottish birth, named William
Lorimer, who had come to fill the chair of divinity at St Andrews. While
Aikenhead was under sentence, Mr Lorimer preached before the Lord
Chancellor and other judges and chief magistrates,
On the Reverence due to Jesus Ghrist,
being a sermon apropos to the occasion; and we find in
this discourse not one word hinting at charity or mercy for Aikenhead, but
much to encourage the audience in an opposite temper. It would appear,
however, that the preacher afterwards found some cause for vindicating
himself from a concern in bringing about the death of Aikenhead, and
therefore, when he published his sermon, he gave a preface, in which he at
once justified the course which had been taken with the youth, and tried
to shew that he, and at least one other clergyman, had tried to get the
punishment commuted. The prosecution, he tells us, was undertaken entirely
on public grounds, in order to put down a ‘plague of blasphemous deism’
which had come to Edinburgh. The magistrates, being informed of the
progress of this pestilence among the young men, had two of them
apprehended. ‘One [John Fraser] made an excuse . . . . humbly confessed
that it was a great sin for him to have uttered with his mouth such words
of blasphemy against the Lord; professed his hearty repentance. . . and so
the government pardoned him, but withal ordered that he should confess his
sin, and do public penance in all the churches in Edinburgh. And I believe
the other might have been pardoned also, if he had followed the example of
his companion; but he continued sullen and obstinate, I think for some
months; and the party were said to be so very bold and insolent, as to
come in the night and call to him by name at his chamber-window in the
prison, and to tell him that he had a good cause, and to exhort him to
stand to it, and suffer for it bravely. This influenced the government to
execute the law.’
With regard to efforts in favour of
Aikenhead, Mr Lorimer’s statement is as follows: ‘I am sure the ministers
of the Established Church used him with an affectionate tenderness, and
took much pains with him to bring him to faith and repentance, and to save
his soul; yea, and some of the ministers, to my certain knowledge, and
particularly the late reverend, learned, prudent, peaceable and pious Mr
George Meldrum, then minister of the Tron Church, interceded for him with
the government, and solicited for his pardon; and when that could not be
obtained, he desired a reprieve for him, and I joined with him in it. This
was the day before his execution. The chancellor was willing to have
granted him a reprieve, but could not do it without the advice of the
Privy Council and judges; and, to shew his willingness, he called the
Council and judges, who debated the matter, and then carried it by a
plurality of votes for his execution, according to the sentence of the
judges, that there might be a stop put to the spreading of that contagion
of blasphemy."
Mr Lorimer’s and Lord Anstruther’s
statements are somewhat discrepant, and yet not perhaps irreconcilable. It
may be true that, at the last moment, one of the city clergy,
accompanied by an English stranger, tried to raise his voice for mercy. It
is evident, however, that no very decided effort of the kind was made, for
the records of the Privy Council contain no entry on the subject,
although, only three days before Aikenhead’s execution, we find in them a
reprieve formally granted to one Thomas Weir, sentenced for housebreaking.
The statement itself, implying a movement entirely exceptive, only makes
the more certain the remarkable fact, derived from Lord Anstruther’s
statement, that the clergy, as a body, did not intercede, but ‘spoke and
preached for cutting him off,’ for which reason the civil authorities were
unable to save him. The clergy thus appear unmistakably in the character
of the persecutors of Aikenhead, and as those on whom, next to Sir James
Steuart, rests the guilt of his blood.
The Postman, a journal of the
day, relates the last moments of the unhappy young man. ‘He walked thither
[to the place of execution - a mile from the prison] on foot, between a
strong guard of fusiliers drawn up in two lines. Several ministers
assisted him in his last moments; and, according to all human appearance,
he died with all the marks of a true penitent. When he was called out of
the prison to the City Council-house, before his going to the place of
execution, as is usual on such occasions, he delivered his thoughts at
large in a paper written by him, and signed with his own hand, and then
requested the ministers that were present to pray for him, which they did;
and afterwards he himself prayed, and several times invocated the blessed
Trinity, as he did likewise at the place of execution, holding all the
time the Holy Bible in his hand; and, being executed, he was buried at the
foot of the gallows!
1697, Jan 16
There had been for two years under process in the Court of Session a case
in which a husband was sued for return of a deceased wife’s tocker
of eight thousand merks (£444, 8s 10d), and her paraphernalia or
things pertaining to her person. It came on this occasion, to be debated
what articles belonging to a married woman were to be considercd as
paraphernalia, or jocalia, and so destined in a particular way
in case of her decease. The Lords, after long deliberation, fixed on a
rule to be observed in future cases, having a regard, on the one hand, to
‘the dignity of wives,’ and, on the other, to the restraining of
extravagances. First was ‘the mundus or vestitus muliebris—namely,
all the body-clothes belonging to the wife, acquired by her at any
time, whether in this or any prior marriage, or in virginity or viduity;
and whatever other ornaments or other things were peculiar or proper to
her person, and not proper to men’s use or wearing, as necklaces,
earrings, breast-jewels, gold chains, bracelets, &c. Under child-bed
linens, as paraphernal and proper to the wife, are to be understood
only the linen on the wife’s person in childbed, but not the linens on the
child itself; nor on the bed or room, which are to be reckoned as common
movables; therefore found the child’s spoon, porringer, and whistle
contained in the condescendence [in this special case] are not
paraphernal, but fall under the communion of goods; but that ribbons, cut
or uncut, are paraphernal, and belong to the wife, unless the husband were
a merchant. All the other articles that are of their own nature of
promiscuous and common use, either to men or women, are not paraphernal,
but fall under the communion of goods, unless they become peculiar and
paraphernal by the gift and appropriation of the husband to her, such as a
marriage-watch, rings, jewels, and medals. A purse of gold or other
movables that, by the gift of a former husband, became properly the wife’s
goods and paraphernal, exclusive of the husband, are only to be reckoned
as common movables quoad a second husband, unless they be of new
gifted and appropriated by him to the wife again. Such gifts and presents
as one gives to his bride before or on the day of the marriage, are
paraphernal and irrevokable by the husband during that marriage, and
belong only to the wife and her executors; but any gifts by the husband to
the wife after the marriage-day are revokable, either by the husband
making use of them himself; or taking them back during the marriage; but
if the wife be in possession of them during the marriage or at her death,
the same are not revokable by the husband thereafter. Cabinets, coffers,
&c., for holding the paraphernalia, are not paraphernalia, but fall under
the communion of goods. Some of the Lords were for making anything given
the next morning after the marriage, paraphernalia, called the morning
gjft in our law; but the Lords esteemed them man and wife then, and
[the gift] so irrevokable.'
Jan 20
John, late Archbishop of Glasgow, having applied to the king for
permission to go to Scotland ‘for recovery of his health,’ obtained a
letter granting him the desired liberty under certain restrictions. On the
ensuing 16th of March, there is an ordinance of the Privy Council,
appointing the town of Cupar, in Fife, and four miles about the same, as
the future residence of the ex-prelate, provided he give sufficient
caution for keeping within these bounds, and entering into no contrivance
or correspondence against the government.
On the 15th of April, the
archbishop, having fonnd no ‘convenient lodging for his numerous family in
Cupar,’ was permitted, on his petition, to reside in the mansion of Airth,
under the same conditions. Two months later, this was changed to ‘the
mansion-house of Gogar, near to Airth, within the shire of Clackmannan,’
The archbishop does not appear to have been released from his partial
restraint till February 1701. |
