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1711, Sep
The light-thoughted part of the public was at this time regaled by the
appearance of a cluster of small brochures printed in blurred type on
clingy paper, being the production of William Mitchell, tin-plate worker
in the Bow-head of Edinburgh, but who was pleased on his title-pages to
style himself the Tinklarian Doctor. Mitchell had, for twelve
years, been employed by the magistrates of the city as manager of the
lighting of the streets, at the moderate salary of five pounds. He
represented that his predecessor in the office had ten pounds; but ‘I took
but five, for the town was in debt.’ The magistrates, doubtless for
reasons satisfactory to themselves, and which it is not difficult to
divine, had deprived him of his post. ‘Them that does them a good turn,’
says he, ‘they forget; but they do not forget them that does them an ill
turn; as, for example, they keep on a captain of the town-guard, probably
for love of Queensberry, for making the Union—I believe he never did them
a good turn, but much evil to me, as he would not let me break up my
shop-door the time of the fire, before my goods was burnt.’ The poor man
here alludes to a calamity which perhaps had some share in driving his
excitable brain out of bounds. Being now in comparative indigence, and
full of religious enthusiasm, he took up at his own hands an office of
which he boasted that no magistrate could deprive him, no less than that
of giving ‘light’ to the ministers of the Church of Scotland, who, he
argued, needed this service at his hands— ‘otherwise God would not have
raised me up to write to them.’ The ministers, he candidly informs us, did
not relish his taking such a duty upon him, since he had never received
any proper call to become a preacher: some of them called him a fool, and
the principal of a college at St Andrews went the length of telling him to
burn his books, But he acted under an inward call which would not listen
to any such objections. He thought the spirit of God ‘as free to David and
Amos the herds, and to James, John, and Simon the fishers, and Matthew and
Levi the customers, as to any that will bide seven years at college.’ And,
if to shepherds and fishermen, why not to a tin-plate worker or tinker?
‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ &c.
The Tinkler's Testament, which was the great
work of Mitchell, was heralded by an lntroduction, dedicating his labours
to Queen Anne. He claimed her majesty’s protection in his efforts to
illuminate the clergy, and hinted that a little money to help in printing
his books would also be useful. He would willingly go to converse with her
majesty; but he was without the means of travelling, and his ‘loving wife
and some small children’ hindered him. This brings him to remark that,
while he lived upon faith, ‘my wife lives much upon sense,’ as the wives
of men of genius are very apt to do. After all, ‘although I should come, I
am nothing but a little black man, dull-like, with two scores upon my brow
and a mole on my right cheek;’ which marks ‘I give to your majesty, in
case any person come up in a counterfeit manner;’ nevertheless, ‘if I had
clothes, I would look as big as some gentlemen.'
In this pamphlet, Mitchell abuses the ministers roundly
for neglect of their flocks, telling that for six years the pastor of his
parish had never once inquired for him. They would go and play at bowls,
alleging it was for their health, and allow suffering souls to perish. It
was as if he were employed by a gentleman to make lanterns—took the
money—but never made the articles required, for want of which the
gentleman’s servants were hindered in their work, and perished in pits.
‘Now whether think ye an immortal soul or my lanterns of most value? I
will sell a good lantern at ten shillings Scots, though it be made of
brass; but the whole world cannot balance one soul,’
The Tinker's Testament he dedicated to the
Presbyterian ministers of Scotland, telling them ‘not to be offended,
although I be set over you by providence,’ nor ‘think that I shall be like
the bishops that were before me—necessity gives me a right to be your
overseer—necessity that hath neither law nor manners.’ ‘I know you will
not hear of a bishop over you, and therefore I shall be over you, as a
coachman to drive you to your duty.’ He saw their deficiencies in what had
happened in his own case. In his evil days, they never told him
sufficiently of his sins. He might almost have supposed he was on the way
to heaven for anything they said to him. It was affliction, not their
ministrations, which had loosed him from the bonds of sin. Their own
preachings were cold and worthless, and so were those of the young
licentiates whom they so often engaged to hold forth in their stead. Here
he applied another professional parable. ‘You employ me to make a
tobacco-box. I spoil it in the making. Whether is you or I obliged to pay
the loss? I think
ye are not obliged to pay
it. Neither am I
obliged to take these sermons off your hand.’ ‘Perhaps,’ he adds, ‘you
trust in your elders.’ But ‘I may keep strange women in my house for
them; I may stay out till twelve o’clock at night and be drunk for them:
a cart-horse, when he comes up the Bow, may teach them their duty, for
it will do its duty to the outmost of its power; and before it will
disobey, it will fall to the ground.’ In short, the Tinkler had been
used
by these clergy with a lenity which he
felt to be utterly
inexcusable.
It is to be feared
that the Tinkler was one of those censors whom no kind of conduct in
persons of authority will please, for we find him in this brochure
equally furious at the ministers for not preaching evangelical
discourses, and for being so slack in telling their flocks of the
weighty matters of the law. He threatens to tell very sad things of them
at the great day, and yet he protests that it is not from hatred to
them. If such were his feelings, he would not be at the pains to reprove
them; still less would he have ever given Dean of Guild Neilson a
speaking-trumpet for a seat in the kirk, not worth twenty shillings
sterling, seeing it is but a back-seat, where he may fall asleep, and
the minister never once call on him to sit up. ‘This, however, ‘is only
a word
by the by.’
One great charge
which the Tinkler has to make against the clergy is, that they are
afraid to preach freely to the consciences of men, for fear of angering
the great. ‘If ye be feared to anger them, God will not be feared to
anger you. “Cry aloud and spare not; tell the poor their transgressions,
and the great folk their sins.”’ Then he proposes to relate something of
the justice he had himself experienced. ‘The Laird of Cramond hath laid
down a great cairn of stones before my shop-door, which
takes
away my light. They
have lain near these two years (because he is rich). If I lay down but
two carts-full, I believe they would not lie twenty-four hours. I
pursued a man at court; I could both have sworn and proved that he was
owing me; yet, because he had a blue cloak and a campaign wig, the judge
would
not take his
oath, and would not take my word. I had a mind
to buy
a blue cloak, that I
might get justice; but I was
disappointed
by the dreadful fire. I bought some wool from a man. He would not give
it
out of his
house till I
gave my
bill. The
goods
was not weighed, and
I feared they came not to so much money
yet
the man persuaded use
if it
was not so, he would
restore me the money back. I believed his word, because I am
a
simple man. So I pursued the man, thinking to get my money.
The judge told me I
would get no money, although there were a hundred pounds of it; so I
went home with less money than I came out. Ye will say, what is
the reason there is so little justice; I shall tell you my opinion of
it. I have a vote for choosing our deacon. A man comes to me and offers
me a pint to vote for such a man. I take it because he never did me no
ill, and because I am a fool-body. I ‘vote for the man. So
fool-tradesmen make fool-deacons, and fool-deacons make
fool-magistrates, and fool-magistrates make fool-ministers. That is the
reason there is so little justice in the city.’ The crazy whitesmith has
here touched a
point
of failure in
democratic institutions which wiser men have overlooked.
This singular genius
afterwards published a brochure, entitled The Great Tinklarian Doctor
Mitchell his Fearful Book, to the Condmnation of all Swearers,
at the
end of which he announced
another ‘concerning convictions;’ ‘the
like of it ye have not heard since Cromwell’s days.’ But probably the
reader has now heard enough of the effusions of the white-ironsmith of
the Bowhead.’
1711, Nov 6
Notwithstanding the
severity of the laws against Catholic priests, and particularly that of
1701, which a proclamation two years back put into fresh rigour, there
was at least one minister of the hated faith of Rome sheltered in
Edinburgh. It would be curious to learn under what disguise he contrived
to live in a city where all, except a handful of people, were disposed
to tear him in pieces. From its being mentioned that his paraphernalia
for worship belonged to Lady Seaforth, it may be surmised that he lived
under her protection. Thomas Mackie, being now at last apprehended by
the magistrates, and ordained to remove immediately out of Britain, was
so bold as to call for a suspension of their act in the Court of
Session, setting forth that he had lived for many years inoffensively in
Edinburgh—the vestments, char, crucifixes, &c., found in his house
belonged to the Countess of Seaforth—he had not been taken in the act of
saying mass, and it had not been proved that he was a priest—finally,
and above all, the magistrates of Edinburgh were going beyond their
powers in banishing any one forth of the island. The magistrates having
answered these objections, the Lords ‘ordained him to enact himself to
remove betwixt and a day out of the kingdom; and in ease of refusal, to
be imprisoned till a ship was ready to transport him.'
1712, Jan 14
Immemorial custom
gave a right to the steward-depute of the stewartry of Kirkcudbright to
get a mart cow out of every parish in his jurisdiction, being
twenty-nine in number. He was not required to observe any particular
form or ceremony in raising this mail, beyond sending an officer to the
parish to pitch upon and seize the cow, and offer the owner five
shillings Scots, called the Queen’s Money, which entitled him to relief
from his fellow parishioners, according to the value of their
respective estates. In October 1711, William Lindsay of Mains,
steward-depute under the Marquis of Annandale, principal steward, sent
his officer, William Hislop, to take a cow from the parish of Southwick,
and the man pitched upon a beast belonging to John Costein of Glensoane.
John, however, did violently oppose the officer in the execution of his
office to uplift the cow; and making a convocation of his tenants and
others, his complices, by force of arms resisted the officer, whom he
beat and bruised with many strokes, and rescued his cow.’
For this offence,
Costein and his associates were now brought before the Court of
Justiciary. They pleaded several objections to the custom, as a defence
of their conduct; but all these were overruled by the Lords, and their
offence was declared to be liable to an arbitrary punishment.’
Feb
‘About the beginning
of this month, Whiston’s Primitive Christianity came down to
Edinburgh, and was seized in the booksellers’ shops
by the
magistrates.’
Mar
‘The end of this last
and the beginning of this month, we have some accounts of a sickness in
Fife, from some of the crew of a ship that came out before their
quarantine was performed; but it seems the Lord hath hitherto prevented
it. It’s, indeed, a wonder we are not visited with some heavy rod.’
The art of printing
had fallen sadly off in Scotland during the latter half of the
seventeenth century. James Watson points out truly that
Bassandyne’s folio Bible of 1576, Arbuthnot’s first edition of
Buchanan’s History in 1582, Andro Hart’s Bible of 1610, and the
Muses’ Welcome to King James in 1618, were well printed
books; the last of these Bibles so much so, that ‘many after-impressions
of the Bible in folio, had, as the greatest commendation that could be
made of them, at the foot of their title-pages, that they were “conform
to the edition printed by Andro Hart.” Watson adds: ‘The folio Common
Prayer-book, printed before the Troubles by Robert Young, then printer
for this kingdom to the Royal Martyr, is a pregnant instance of this. I
have with great pleasure viewed and compared that book with the English
one in the same volume, printed about the same time by the king’s
printer in England; and Mr Young’s book so far exceeded the other, that
there could be no comparison made between them. You‘ll see by that
printed here, the master furnished with a very large fount, four sheets
being inset together; a vast variety of curiously cut head-pieces,
finis’s, blooming letters, fac-totums, flowers, &e. You’ll see the
compositor’s part done with the greatest regularity and niceness in the
Kalendar, and throughout the rest of the book; the pressman’s part done
to a wonder in the red and black, and the whole printed in so beautiful and equal a
colour, that there is not any appearance of variation. But this good and
great master was ruined by the Covenanters for doing this piece of work,
and forced to fly the kingdom.’
After the
Restoration, one Archibald Hislop, a bookseller, with William Carron as
his workman, produced a neat edition of Thomas
à
Kempis and some other small books. Some Dutchmen, who had been brought
over to assist Hislop’s successor, John Cairns, also printed a few
respectable volumes, including the acts of parliament, and Sir Robert
Sibbald’s Prodromus; but all tendency to attain or maintain the
level formerly attained, was checked by a monopoly which was granted to
one Andrew Anderson in 1671. This Anderson, who seems to have come from
Glasgow, was early in that year condemned by the Privy Council for a
very faulty edition of the New Testament; yet, for ‘payment of a
composition in exchequer and other weighty reasons,’ they immediately
after granted him, as king’s printer, an exclusive right to print all
kinds of lawful books in Edinburgh, with a right of supervision over all
other typographers within the kingdom. He died in 1679; but his widow
succeeded to the monopoly, and exercised it for some years with the
greatest rigour, persecuting all who attempted to interfere with the
business of printing. As might be expected, the productions of her own
press were miserable beyond all example; she both produced bad and
erroneous editions of the Bible, and much fewer of them than were
required to satisfy the demands of the public. A restriction was at
length put upon her privilege, so as to allow general printing to be
executed by others but she continued through the whole term of her
patent to be the sole printer of the Scriptures in Scotland.
Fac-similes of a few
pages from her Bibles— in poor blurred
type, almost unintelligible with errors, with italic letters employed
wherever the Roman fount fell short; and some lines wholly without
spaces between the words—would appal the reader. It plainly appears that
no such functionary as a corrector was at any time kept by Mrs Anderson;
nor was she herself able to supply the deficiency. The Bible being then
almost the only school-book in use, we may imagine what unrequired
difficulties were added to the task of gaining a knowledge of the
elements of the English language. What, for example, was a poor child to
make of the following passage in her duodecimo Bible of 1705
‘Whyshoulditbethoug tathingincredi File wtyou,
it
God should raise the
dead?’ Mrs Anderson’s Bibles being of such a character, there was a
great importation of English and foreign copies, but only in despite of
strenuous efforts on her part to keep them out. Strange to say, when now
her government patent expired, she contrived to obtain the appointment
of printer to the Church of Scotland. Her ability to buy up a heavy
stock of acts of the General Assembly was what secured her this piece of
otherwise most unmerited patronage.
Had the government
patent expired a few years earlier, she might, for anything that
appears, have obtained a renewal of it also. But, now that a Tory
ministry was in power, this lucrative privilege was conferred on two
zealous Jacobites—Mr Robert Freebairn, publisher, and Mr James Watson,
printer. These gentlemen were better typographers than Mrs Anderson; and
the Bibles they issued were much superior. But their Tory principles
prevented them from long enjoying the privilege. Probably acting in the
spirit of their patrons, they ‘seem to have exercised a discretionary
power of declining to publish royal proclamations when they were not
consonant with their own views; otherwise it is difficult to discover
why the queen’s proclamation against unlawful intruders into churches
and manses was printed, not by either of her majesty’s printers, but by
John Reid. in Bell’s Wynd.’ This zeal led Freebairn, on the breaking out
of the rebellion in 1715, to go to Perth with printing apparatus and
materials, to act as printer for the person whom he called James the
Eighth; and he consequently forfeited his patent, Polities now favoured
Mrs Anderson. In partnership with an Englishman named Baskett, the
king’s printer for England, she once more became the exclusive printer
of the Scriptures in Scotland, and for forty-one years more! The Bibles
produced during the greater part of that time were indeed a little
better than those under the former patent—the general progress of the
country necessitated some little improvement—but they were still far
inferior to the unpriviliged productions of the Scottish press during
the same epoch.
There is a reflection
which must, or ought somewhat to modify
our feeling regarding
this monstrous absurdity; namely, that the printing of the Scriptures was
kept upon the footing of a monopoly, with the effect of poor work and
high prices, till our own age, and that so lately as 1823 the patentees,
in a legal document, set forth their expenses in erecting a
printing-office and ‘other charges of various descriptions,’ as entitling
them ‘to enjoy the relative profits and emoluments without interference
from any quarter.’
Mar
Encouraged by the
triumph of Mr Greenshields, and the popularity of the Tory administration,
the Scottish Episcopalians began in many places to introduce the liturgy
of the Church of England. The old Scottish horror for that form of
devotion was excited in a high degree; church-courts were full of terror
and grief; in some parts, the mob was ready to make a new reformation. In
the course of 1711, a good deal of pretty effectual work was done for the
appeasing of the popular anxiety. According to a contemporary narration—’
Mr Honeyman, for using the Church of England liturgy at Crail, was
prosecuted and deposed by the presbytery, and if the magistrates and
people were not Episcopal, he had fallen under very severe punishments. It
is but few months since Mr Dunbreck was libelled by the presbytery,
prosecuted by the magistrates, and threatened by the Lord Advocate, for
using the English liturgy in the Earl Marischal’s own house at Aberdeen,
to whom he was chaplain. The Earl of Carnwath this summer was threatened
to have his house burned over his head, if he continued the English
service in it, and
his chaplain thereafter forced to leave
his family. In November 1711, the presbytery of Perth deposed Henry
Murray, a pre-Revolution incumbent of Perth hitherto undisturbed, because
be used the English service at baptisms and burials, and the liturgy in
worship.
At the date of the
present article, the two parties had what Wodrow calls ‘a little ruffle’
at Auchterarder—a bleak parish in Strathearn, which has at various times
contrived to make a prominent appearance in ecclesiastical politics. The
trouble arose in consequence of an attempt to use the funeral-service of
the English Church at a funeral. ‘The common people,’ says Wodrow, ‘though
not very Presbyterian in their principles, yet they reckoned the service
popery, and could not away with it. When the corpse came to the
churchyard, the women and country-people began and made a great mutiny.
The Lord Rollo, a justice of the peace, interposed, but to no purpose.
The Duke of Montrose’s ‘bailie, Graham of Orcitil, was there; and writes
it was not Presbyterians, but the whole of the common people there; and
they chased off the liturgy-man, and they behoved to bury in their wonted
manner.
Just at this
crisis, the Tory
administration of the Church-of-England-loving Anne interposed with an act
of toleration for the distressed Episcopalians of Scotland, enabling
clergymen, who had orders from Protestant bishops, and took the oaths of
allegiance, assurance, and abjuration, to celebrate divine service—using,
if they chose, the English liturgy—and to perform baptisms and marriages,
without molestation; only further enjoining such clergymen to pray for the
queen, the Princess Sophia, and the rest of the royal family, under a
penalty of twenty pounds. The church commission had fasts, and prayers,
and addresses against the measure—even spoke of reviving the Solemn League
and Covenant—but their resistance was in vain.
Hitherto, the western
section of the country had been clear of this abomination; but, in
November, to the great distress of the serious people of Glasgow, an
attempt was made there to set up the Episcopal form of worship. The
minister officiating was one Cockburn, ‘an immoral profane wretch, and
very silly,’ according to Mr Wodrow, ‘a tool fit enough for beginning such
a work;’ who, however, had prepared well his ground by qualifying to the
government. A number of persons of social importance joined the
congregation. ‘The Earl of Marr, and [the Laird of ] Bannockburn were
there lately with two coaches, and many go out of curiosity to see it. The
boys took the matter up in their usual decisive manner,
but the Toleration
Act compelled protection from the magistrates, and three town-officers
stood guard at the chapel door. On the 27th of December, an English
soldier having died, his officers wished
to have him buried according to the solemn
ritual of his church, and Mr Cockburn performed the ceremony in canonicals
in the cathedral cemetery, the company all uncovered, and a rabble looking
on with suppressed rage. The clergy took a look into the statute-book, to
see if they should be obliged to endure this kind of Insolence as well as
the liturgy. Wodrow had hopes that Cockburn’s congregation would tire of
supporting him, though his ‘encouragement’ did
not exceed twenty-two pounds a
year, or that his free conversation and minced oaths would make them put
him away. A foolish shoemaker who attended his chapel having lost his
wife, Cockburn wished to have a second exhibition of the funeral-service;
but the magistrates would not allow it. One day, he was baptising a
soldier’s child at a house in the Gorbals, and great was the commotion
which it occasioned among the multitude. On coming out, he was beset by a
host of boys calling to him ‘Amen, Amen!’ the use of
this word in the
service being so odious to the public, that it had stuck to Cockburn as a
nickname. For nearly two years were the religious feelings of the people
outraged by the open and avowed practice of the ‘modified idolatry’ in the
midst of them, when at length a relief came with the Hanover succession.
As soon as it was known that Queen Anne was no more, occidental human
nature could no longer be restrained. On the evening of the 6th of August
1714, the little chapel was fairly pulled down, and the minister and his
wife were glad to flee for their lives. So ended Episcopalian worship in
Glasgow for a time. A few verses from a popular ballad will assist in
giving us some idea of the local feelings of the hour:
‘We have not yet
forgot, sir,
How Cockburn’s kirk was
broke, sir,
The pulpit-gown was pulled down,
And turned into nought, sir.
Long-necked Peggie
II[ome], sir,
Did weep and stay at
home, sir,
Because poor Cockburn
and his wife
Were forced to flee the
town, sir.
The chess-window did
reel, sir,
Like to a
spinning-wheel, sir,
For Dagon he is fallen
now;
I hope he‘11 never
rise, sir.’
May
A Dumfriesshire
minister communicated to Wodrow an account he had got from the Laird of
Waterside, a factor of the Duke of Queensberry, of a spectacle which the
laird and many others had seen about sunset one evening in this month,
about a mile from Penpont. ‘There appeared to them, towards the sea, two
large fleets of ship; near a hundred upon every side, and they met
together and fairly engaged. They very clearly saw their masts, tackling,
gun; and their firing one at another. They saw several of them sunk; and
after a considerable time’s engagement they sundered, and one part of them
went to the west and another to the south.’
Wodrow goes on to
relate what Mr James Boyes told him of shootings heard one morning about
the same time in Kintyre. ‘The people thought it had been thunder, and
went out to see what sort of day it was like to be. All appears clear, and
nothing like thunder. There were several judicious people that saw, at
some distance from them, several very great companies of soldiers marching
with their colours flying and their drums beating, which they heard
distinctly, and saw the men walking on the ground in good order; and yet
there were no soldiers at all in that country, nor has been a long time.
They heard likewise a very great shooting of cannon, so distinct and
terrible, that many of the beasts broke the harrow and came running home.’
May
Wodrow notes, at this
time, a piece of bad taste on the part of Sir James Hall of Dunglass,
whose family had in recent times acquired by purchase that ancient
possession of the Home family. The old burial-place of the Earls of Home
had been turned by Sir James into a stable, and be resisted both the
clamour of the public and the private remonstrance of the aggrieved family
on the subject. ‘Because the minister shewed some dislike at this
unnatural thing, he is very uneasy to him.’
This act of Sir James
Hall necessarily shocked Episcopalians; and to such an extent was the
feeling carried, that a distinct pamphlet on the subject was published in
London. The writer of this tells us, that, having made an excursion into
Scotland in the summer of 1711, he tarried for a while at the post-house
of Cockburnspath, and thus had an opportunity of seeing the ‘pretty little
church’ near Dunglass House. He found that Sir James had gathered off all
the grave-stones from the churchyard, to give scope for the growing of
grass. He had the nave of the church a stable for his coach-mares, and dug
up the graves of the dead, throwing away their bones, to make way for a
pavement for his horses. He has made the choir a coach-house, and broken
down the great east end wall, to make a great gate to let his coaches in,
that they may stand where the altar of God did stand. The turret is a
pigeon-house, and over this new stable he has made a granary. There is
also a building called an aile, adjoining the north side of the church,
which is still a burying-place (still belonging to the Earl of home), in
which Sir James keeps hay for his horses, though his own first lady, who
was daughter to Sir Patrick home of Polwarth (now Earl of Marchmont), and
his own only son, lie buried there.’
The writer states that
Sir James’s father, though of no family, but only a lord mayor of
Edinburgh, had kept this church in good repair all his lifetime, and
bestowed upon it a new pulpit. The neighbouring gentlemen had remonstrated
against the desecration, and one had offered to build for him separate
conveniences such
as he wanted, provided be would spare the
church; but all in vain. He adds: ‘Sir James is still as well esteemed by
the whole party as ever he was, and in full communion with their kirk; nor
could I learn of any reproof he ever had from his spiritual guides, the
Mass Johns, upon this account; though ‘tis most apparent that, had his
Presbyterian holders-forth interposed, as they might and ought to have
done, and as in other cases they are very apt to do when religion or even
morality are not near so much concerned as here, Sir James durst not have
attempted the doing this wicked thing.’
The writer goes on to
remark what he calls the inconsistency of the Presbyterians in insisting
that baptism shall always be performed in a church. ‘There are instances
to be given, if need were, of their letting infants die without their
baptism, rather than sprinkle them out of a church.’ I shall mention but
one other of their inconsistencies; ‘tis that of their Judaical, if not
Pharisaical observation of the Lord’s Day, which they call the Sabbath.
This they set up most rigidly as their characteristic, though they pretend
to admit of nothing as a principle, nor allow of any stated practice
ecclesiastic, for which they have not a positive command in the Holy
Scriptures. They despise the decrees and canons of the church, even in the
early ages of it; nor does the unanimous consent of the primitive fathers
of the first three centuries weigh with them; and yet I humbly think they
must either take the observation of the first day of the week as the
Lord’s Day or weekly Easter from the authority of the church; else it
would puzzle them to get clear of the observation of the seventh day or
Jewish Sabbath from the morality of the fourth commandment by any positive
gospel precept’
May 28
An ingenious piece of
masked Jacobitism is described in a newspaper
as taking place in the
neighbourhood of Edinburgh. ‘Thursday last’—so runs the paragraph—’ being
the anniversary of the birth and happy restoration of King Charles II., of
ever-blessed memory, was solemnly observed by Charles Jackson, merchant in
Edinburgh, who had the honour to have his majesty stand godfather to him
in the church of Keith at his baptism; and his majesty, by assuming the
name of Jackson, was happily preserved from his enemies’ hands, after his
escape out of the Royal Oak. In consideration of these honours conferred
upon him by his sacred majesty, and being lineally descended from a stock
of the loyalists, he invited all such, by public advertisement, to
solemnise that memorable day, at an enclosure called Charles’s Field,
lying a mile south from this city (where he hath erected a very useful
bleaching-field), and there entertained them with diversity of liquors,
fine music, &c. He had likewise a splendid bonfire, and a spacious
standard erected, with a banner displayed upon it, whereon was very
artfully drawn his sacred majesty in the Royal Oak, the bark wherein he
made his escape, and the colonel who conducted him on board, taking leave
of his majesty. The company round the bonfire drank her majesty, Queen
Anne’s, and the memory of the happy Restoration, with great joy and
demonstrations of loyalty. The night concluded with mirth; and the
standard being brought back to Mr Jackson’s lodgings, carried by a loyal
gentleman bareheaded, and followed by several others with trumpets,
hautboys, and bagpipes playing before them, where they were kindly
entertained.’
June 10
Whatever might be the
personal delinquencies and short-comings of the judges, they never could
be charged with a disposition to let other people off too easily. On the
contrary, one is always struck by the appearances of severity in their
treatment of those who fell into their hands. Two men of a humble order,
named Rutherford and Gray, had been induced by a low agent, named
Alexander Pitblado, to adhibit their names as witnesses to a paper bearing
to be a guarantee by Dean of Guild Warrender for the rent of a house
occupied by one Isabel Guild, being the insignificant sum of £25 Scots. It
became Pitblado’s fortune— doubtless, not undeservedly—to be carried away
as a recruit to Flanders. The guarantee was detected to be a forgery.
Rutherford and Gray were taken into custody, and carried before the
magistrates, where they readily admitted that Pitblado had induced them to
give their signatures, on the assurance that Warrender had signed the
paper.
The Lord Advocate
thought the case worthy of the notice of the judges; so the two men were
brought up to the court, with a statement of their offence against the 5th
act 1681. It was determined that the matter was proper to be decided
summarily, and the culprits made no objection to this course, for, as they
said, they had not means of living in jail to wait for a more deliberate
trial. It was also determined that the Lords could decide in the case with
shut doors. Rutherford, now fearing that his fault inferred death,
withdrew his former confession, but was at length prevailed on to confess
once more, telling, what we can well believe to have been the truth, that
he had been ensnared by Gray to do what he did in pure simplicity. The
Lords considered that, though it was a very small sum, yet it was a
dangerous case to let witnesses escape on pretence of simplicity, where
they neither see the party sign nor own the subscription; therefore
resolved to impose some stigma and censure to terrify others; and so
ordained them to be brought on Wednesday, being the market-day, to the
great door of the Parliament House, by the hand of the hangman, with a
paper on their breasts bearing their crime, and there to stand betwixt ten
and eleven in the forenoon, and from that to be conducted to the pillory
at the Tron, and there to stand the other hour between eleven and twelve,
with papers on their breast: and in regard Gray had seduced Rutherford to
sign, they ordained his lug to be nailed to the Tron; and being informed
that Rutherford was a notar, they deprived him, and declared them both
infamous.
Four days later, having
in the interval undergone their sentence, they petitioned for liberation
from jail, which was granted. Then, however, came in George Drummond, the
Goodman of the Tolbooth, with a claim, for his dues, which they were
totally unable to pay. Before the Union, the Lords in such a case could
throw the expense upon the Treasury; but now they were without any such
resource, and neither could they force the jailer to pass from his demand.
In this dilemma, they after all acted a humane part, and made up the
necessary sum out of their own pockets.
June 21
The Edinburgh
Courant intimated, in an advertisement, that ‘Robert Campbell,
commonly known by the name of Rob Roy Macgregor, being lately intrusted by
several noblemen and gentlemen with considerable sums for buying cows for
them in the Highlands, has treacherously gone off with the money, to the
value of £1000 sterling, which he carries along with him.’ This is the
first public reference to a person who has become the theme of popular
legend in Scotland to an extent little short of Robin Hood in England, and
finally has had the fortune to be embalmed in a prose fiction by one of
the greatest masters in modern literature.
It is generally
admitted that Rob Roy was a man of good birth and connections, though
belonging to a family or clan which for upwards of a century had been
under proscription, and obliged to live a rather skulking kind of life. He
had become possessed in an honourable manner of certain lands on the
skirts of Ben Lomond, in the county of Stirling, composed wholly of
mountain-ground, and of little annual value, yet sufficient to maintain
him, the principal place being Inversnaid, on the isthmus between the
Lochs Lomond and Katrine, where hundreds of tourists now pass every
summer-day, but which was considered a very outlandish situation in the
time of Queen Anne. His family name being illegal by act of parliament, he
had adopted that of Campbell, in compliment to the Argyle family, which
patronised him. The business of purchasing Highland cattle at the Crieff
and other markets, and getting them transferred to England, where they
were to he fattened and consumed, was for some years after the Union a
favourite one amongst gentlemen of good rank, and it attracted the
sagacious and active mind of Robert Macgregor Campbell. With some funds
supplied by his neighbours, and part of which, at least, is said to have
come primarily from the Duke of Montrose, on an understanding that the
lenders were to share in the profits, he entered on the traffic with
spirit, and conducted it for a time with success; but the defalcations of
a subordinate agent or partner, named Macdonald, cut short his career in
trade, and left him in serious pecuniary difficulties. The aspect which
the affair took at the Court of Session in Edinburgh was, that Robert
Macgregor Campbell drew bills on Graham of Gorthie and other gentlemen for
cattle he was to buy for them, realised the money, and then ‘did most
fraudulently withdraw, and fled, without performing anything on his part,
and thereby became unquestionably a notour and fraudulent bankrupt;’
while in reality he was probably only the victim of a fraud, and obliged
to keep out of the way in consequence of the unreasonable severities of
the law towards men in his situation. It was a sufficiently barbarous
measure to advertise an unfortunate man as a fraudulent bankrupt seeking
to screen himself from justice; but the Duke of Montrose—in some other
respects but a poor representative of his illustrious
great-grandfather—went further: he caused his factor, Mr Graham of
Killearn, to fall upon Macgregor’s poor little holding of Craigrostan and
Inversnaid, and thrust out from it the wife and family of the late owner.
This treatment turned
the milk of Macgregor’s nature to bitterness, and it is not surprising,
when the general condition of the country, and the ordinary strain of
men’s ideas in that age are considered, that he sought in a wild and
lawless way to right himself with his oppressors—above all with the Duke
of Montrose. From the rough country round Ben Lomond, he could any night
stoop upon his Grace’s Lowland farms, and make booty of meal and cattle.
Strange to say, while thus setting the law at defiance, he obtained a
certain steady amount of countenance and protection from both of the great
Campbell chiefs, Argyle and Breadalbane. The government made an effort to
impose a check upon his career by planting a little fort at Inversnaid but
Rob Roy, nevertheless, continued in his lawless course of life. On the
side of Loch Lomond, near Inversnaid, there is a cave formed by a flexure
in the stratification of the mountain: here Rob occasionally took refuge
when hard pressed. It is curious to reflect that this strange
exemplification of predatory life was realised in a not very remote part
of our island in the days when Addison and Pope were regaling the refined
people of London with the productions of their genius. Rob is described as
a short, robust man, with bushy hair and beard, and legs covered so
thickly with red hair as to resemble those of a Highland bull. His
cognomen ‘Roy’ expresses his ruddy complexion. It is admitted that, amidst
his wild life, he was not without humanity or feeling for the unfortunate,
and, what is perhaps more strange, that he was a sagacious and politic
sort of person who never would go into any quarrel or contention which was
not likely to result in some practical benefit or advantage. It was
probably owing to this cool temperament, that, though he mustered a body
of clansmen for the Stuart cause in 1715, he yet stood neutral at the
battle of Sheriffmuir, alike afraid to offend King James, on the one hand,
and his patron, the Duke of Argyle, on the other.
June
A singular and not very
decent lawsuit took place at this time between the Earl of Bute and his
stepmother, the Dowager Countess, widow of the first earl, by whom this
family was first raised to any considerable distinction. When the deceased
peer went to Bath in the spring of 1710, a few mouths before his death, he
granted a liferent of 3300 merks (£183, 6s. 8d. sterling) to his lady. The
present peer—father, by the way, of George III.’s celebrated
minister—refused to pay this annuity, and the countess raised an action
against him for it, and also for the annual rents of her own son’s
patrimony. The only objection presented by the earl in his defence was,
that the lady had profited unduly already out of her husband’s property,
having at his death appropriated large sums of ‘lying money.’ The matter
being referred to her oath, she acknowledged having had in hand at her
lord’s death forty pounds, with a purse containing sundry medals and
purse-pennies given by the earl and others to her and her son, in which
number there were some guineas; and the whole might be about £60
sterling.’ She averred that ‘she had nothing as the product of any trade
she drove, except two or three ells of alaniode; she had made
nothing in her husband’s lifetime by lending money; there had been
presents from the tenants in kind and in money, and her husband had given
them to her. The peer seems to have gained nothing by challenging the
claims of his stepmother beyond the forty pounds of lying money.’
June 23
The stricter
Presbyterians, commonly called Cameronians—the people chiefly involved in
the persecutions of the Stuart reigns— had been left unsatisfied by the
Revolution, and were now as antagonistic to the presbyterian church as
they had ever been to the late episcopacy. For years they held together,
without ministers, or the means of getting any trained in their peculiar
walk of doctrine; but at length one or two schismatics cast off by the
church put themselves at their head, the chief being Mr John Macmillan,
formerly minister of Balmaghie in Galloway. Oaths to the state, neglect of
the Covenant, and general compliances with the spirit of the times, were
the stumbling-blocks which these people regarded as disqualifying the
national establishment for their allegiance.
The Cameronians chiefly
abounded in the counties of Lanark, Dumfries, and Kirkcudbright, and their
Canterbury was the small burgh of Sanquhar in Nithsdale. Whenever any
remarkable political movement was going on in the country, these peculiar
people were pretty sure to come to the cross of Sanquhar and utter a
testimony on the subject. The last occasion when this was done was at the
Union, a measure which it pleased ‘the Antipopish, Antiprelatie,
Antierastian, Antiseetarian, True Presbyterian Church of Scotland’
(for so they styled themselves), to regard as ‘sinful,’ because it
involved a sanction to that English prelatic system which the Solemn
League and Covenant had bound the Scottish nation to extirpate.
While still brooding
over the ‘land-ruining, God-provoking, soul-destroying, and
posterity-ensnaring-and-enslaving Union,’ the act of toleration, so
manifestly designed for a relief to the prelatists, came like a bellows
to blow up the fire. Sundry meetings were held, and at length a general
one at the upland village of Crawford-John (26th of May 1712), where it
was finally decided on that the faithful and true church should renew the
Solemn League and Covenant.
It was at a place
called Auchensaugh, on the top of a broad mountain behind the village of
Douglas, that the meeting was held for this purpose. The transaction
occupied several days. On the first, there was a prayer for a proper frame
of spirit, followed by a sermon, as this was again by an engagement to
duties, amongst which the uprooting of all opinions different from their
own was the most conspicuous. The people were dismissed with an
exhortation from Mr Macmillan upon their ‘unconcerned carriage and
behaviour.’ On the second day, it was reckoned that about seventeen
hundred were present, including, however, many onlookers brought by
curiosity. There was now read an acknowledgment of sins, and the people
were invited to clear their consciences by declaring any of which they had
been guilty. One confessed having made a rash oath; another that he had
attended the Established Church; several that they had been married by the
Erastian clergy. One, hearing of the sinfulness of tests and oaths, rather
unluckily confessed his having sworn the Covenant at Lesmahago. A number
had to deplore their having owned William and Mary as their lawful
sovereigns. Mr Macmillan seems to have been a little perplexed by the
innocent nature of their sins. After all this was at an end, the Solemn
League was read and sworn to, article by article, with uplifted hands. A
day of interval being allowed, there was a third of devotion. On the
fourth, a Sunday, there was an administration of the communion, which must
have been a striking sight, as eight tables were set out upon the moor,
each capable of accommodating sixty persons. ‘It was a very extraordinary
rain the whole time of the action.’
Even Wodrow, who has
taken such pains to commemorate the sufferings of these people under
prelacy, seems to have been unable to look with patience on their making
such demonstrations against the church now established. Such
earnestness in intolerance, such self-confidence in opinion, cannot be
read of in our age without strange feelings. After all, the Covenanters of
Auchensaugh were good enough to invite the rest of the community to join
them, ‘being anxious to get the divisions which have long wrecked this
church removed and remedied;’ nay, they were ‘willing, for peace and
unity, to acknowledge and forsake whatever we can rationally be convinced
to be had in our conduct and management,’ though it would have probably
been a serious task for a General Assembly of augcls to produce such a
conviction.
About this time, and
for long after, there flourished an enthusiast named John Halden, who
considered himself, and a friend of his named James Leslie, as above all
and peculiarly the proper representatives of the martyrs Cameron, Cargill,
Hackston, Hall, Skeen, Balfour, &c., according to the tenor of the
Rutherglen, Sanquhar, and Lanark Declarations. John, like his
predecessors, declared not merely spiritual but temporal war against all
the existing powers, seeing they had declined from the Covenant, exercised
an Erastian power in the church, and were tyrants over the state. Nay, he
declared war against ‘the enemies of Christ’ all over the world,
denouncing the curse of Meros against all who would not join him. Halden
and Leslie, since there was no government they could submit to, professed
their desire and endeavour to ‘set up a godly magistracy, and form a civil
state’ themselves; and it is to be feared that the community remained
grievously insensible to the offered blessing. The Lord Advocate did not
even do them the honour to consider them dangerous. The only active step
we hear of John Halden taking was to burn the Abjuration Oath at the Cross
of Edinburgh, on the point of a dagger (October 28, 1712), proclaiming
with a loud voice, as he went off up the High Street: ‘Let King Jesus
reign, and let his enemies be scattered!’ |
