1726
The Tennis Court theatricals of spring 1715 probably did not long hold
their ground. Thereafter, we
hear of no further amusement of the kind
being in any fashion attempted in Edinburgh till 1719, when ‘some young
gentlemen’ performed The Orphan and the Gheats of
Scapin, but most probably in a
very private manner, though Allan Ramsay consented to introduce the
performance with a prologue. Among the Wodrow pamphlets
preserved in the Advocates’ Library, is a broadside containing ‘Verses
spoken after the performance of Otwav’s tragedy, called The Orphan,
at a private meeting in Edinburgh, December 9, 1719, by a boy in the
University (added in manuscript, “Mr Mitchell”). He ends with a threat
to meet adverse critics in the King’s Park. Edinburgh was about the
same time occasionally regaled with the visits of a certain Signora
Violante, who trooped about the three kingdoms for the exhibition of
feats in tumbling and posture-making.
It would appear that the first Scottish
theatricals not quite insignificant were presented in the winter
1725—26, when Anthony Aston, a performer not without his fame, came to
Edinburgh with a company of comedians, and was so far favourably
received that he ventured to return in the ensuing year. On that
occasion, Allan Ramsay composed for him the following prologue,
conveying to us some notion of the feelings with which the venture was
regarded:
‘Tis I, dear Caledonians, blythesome
Tony,
That oft, last winter, pleased the brave and bonny,
With medley, merry song, and comic scene:
Your kindness then has brought me here again,
After a circuit round the Queen of Isles,
To gain your friendship and approving smiles.
Experience bids me hope—though, south the Tweed,
The dastards said: "He never will succeed
What such a country look for any good in,
That does not relish plays, nor pork, nor pudding !”
Thus great Columbus, by an idiot crew,
Was ridiculed at first for his just view;
Yet his undaunted spirit ne’er gave ground,
Till he a new and better world had found.
So I—laugh on—the simile is bold;
But, faith ! ‘tis just : for till this body’s cold,
Columbus-like, I’ll push for fame and gold.’
The prevalent feeling on the subject in
authoritative circles may be inferred from the conduct of the magistracy
and clergy. An act of council being passed, prohibiting Mr Aston from
acting within the limits of their jurisdiction, the presbytery met, and
appointed a deputation to wait upon the magistrates, and thank them ‘for
the just zeal they had shewn in the matter.’ A committee was at the same
time appointed to draw up an act and exhortation against the
frequenting of stage-plays, which, by their order, was read from all the
pulpits in the district.
Wodrow talks of Aston’s proceedings as
‘filling up our cup of sin.’ ‘Three or four noblemen—some of them ruling
elders— combined to favour the comedians, giving them such a warrant as
they thought their peerage entitled them to give. Three or four of the
Lords of Session were favourable to them, and yet no direct interlocutor
was given them, empowering them to set up. The matter took several
different shapes, and many different decisions were given by the Lords,
which concerned circumstances rather than the direct lawfulness of their
plays.’ Wodrow speaks of a large attendance, especially at their
tragedies, the Mourning Bride having
had a run of three nights. ‘A vast deal
of money, In this time of scarcity, is spent this
way
most sinfully. They even
‘talk of building a public playhouse at Edinburgh.’
To the great vexation of the
ecclesiastical authorities, the decree of the magistrates was appealed
against in the Court of Session, with what were believed to be good
hopes of success. Just at that crisis, we find Mr Wodrow writing in
great concern on the subject, from his Renfrewshire manse, to Mr George
Drummond, commissioner of customs in Edinburgh (November 27, 1727). He
states that his parishioner, Lord Pollock, one of the judges, was
unfortunately detained at home, being ‘considerably failed, and very
crazy;’ so he could not attend the court to give his vote. ‘I pray God
may order matters so as to prevent my fears in this matter…. I desire to
have it on my heart, and shall stir up some who, I hope, are praying
persons, to be concerned in it. However it go, I think the magistrates
of Edinburgh may have peace in the honest appearance they have made
against those seminaries of idleness, looseness, and sin.’
There was, however, no legal means of
putting down Mr Aston. The magistrates’ interdict was suspended, and
from that time the players had only to contend with public opinion.
Feb 12
Serious onlookers are eager to note other symptoms of the alarming
progress of levity. A private letter-writer remarks, under our marginal
date, that, ‘notwithstanding the general complaint of scarcity of
money, there were never so many diversions in one winter. There is
scarce one night passes without either medley, concert, or assembly, and
these entertainments generally conclude with some private marriage, of
which we have a vast number . .
. . such as Sir Edward Gibson and
Mrs Maitland, a cousin of the Earl of Lauderdale; M’Dowal and a daughter
of Dr Stirling; a son of Bailie Hay with Regent Scott’s daughter; and my
Lord Bruce is to be married regularly to Mrs Robertson, who has above
£3000, this very night.’
A few days after, the same writer
reports a private marriage as discovered between the son of Sir John
Dalrymple and ‘Matthew Crawford’s daughter.’ ‘Sir John seems pretty much
disobliged that his son should not have asked his consent, though it ‘s
thought he will soon get over all difficulties.’ The eccentric Earl of
Rosebery ‘has been for a considerable time in prison, where it‘s
believed he will spend the remainder of his days with his good friend
Burnbank.’
A few weeks later, an abduction in the
old style was perpetrated by a Highlander upon ‘a niece of Mr Moubray
the wright,’ not above twelve years of age, whose gouvernante had
betrayed her upon a promise of a thousand merks, the young lady having
£3000 of fortune. Mr Moubray ‘luckily catched them near to Queensferry,
as they were coming to town to be married.’ ‘The gouvernante is
committed to prison, as is also the gentleman.’
In May, Mr Wodrow adverts to a rumour
that there were some clubs in Edinburgh, very secretly conducted,
composed of gentlemen of atheistical opinions. They were understood to
be offshoots of a similar fraternity in London, rejoicing in the name of
the Hell-fire Club, as signifying the disregard of the members for the
thing referred to. Wodrow whispers with horror, that the secretary of
the Hell-fire Club, a Scotsman, was reported to have come to Edinburgh
to plant these affiliated societies. ‘He fell into melancholy, as it was
called, but probably horror of conscience and despair, and at length
turned mad. Nobody was allowed to see him, and physicians prescribed
bathing for him, and he died mad at the first bathing. The Lord pity
us,’ concludes Mr Wodrow; ‘wickedness is come to a terrible height!’
There is among the Wodrow pamphlets a
broadside giving an account of the Hell-fire Clubs, Sulphur Societies,
and Demirep Dragons then in vogue. It includes a list of persons of
quality engaged in these fraternities, and the various names they
bore—as Elisha the Prophet, the King of Hell, Old Pluto, the Old Dragon,
Lady Envy, the Lady Gomorrah, &c. An edict had been issued against them
by the government, reciting that there was reason to suspect that, in
the cities of London and Westminster, there were scandalous clubs or
societies of young persons, who meet together, and in blasphemous
language insult God and his holy religion, and corrupt the morals of one
another. The
Justices of the peace were enjoined to be diligent in rooting out such
schools of profanity.
The Hell-fire Club seems to have
projected itself strongly on the popular imagination in Scotland, for
the peasantry still occasionally speak of it with bated breath and
whispering horror. Many wicked lairds are talked of; who belonged to the
hell-fire Club, and who came to bad ends, as might have been expected on
grounds involving no reference to miracle.
Public combats with sword and rapier
were among the amusements of the age. They took place regularly in
London, at a place called the Bear Garden, and at an amphitheatre in the
Oxford Road; likewise at Hockley. It seems scarcely credible that not
only was this practice permitted, but it was customary far the men who
were to cut and slash at each other in the evening, to parade through
the streets in the forenoon, in fancy dresses, with drums beating and
colours flying, as an advertisement of the performance.
Sometimes, when one of these modern
gladiators attained to fame, he would go to a provincial city, and
announce himself as willing to fight all-comers on
a public stage for any sum that might be
agreed upon. Such persons seem most frequently to have been natives of
the sister-island. One Andrew Bryan, an Irishman, described as ‘a clean
young man‘—that is, a well-made, nimble person—came to Edinburgh, in
June 1726, as a gladiatorial star, and challenged any who might choose
to take him up. For days he paraded the streets with his drum, without
meeting a combatant, and several gentlemen of the city began to feel
annoyed at his vapourings, when at length the challenger was answered.
There had at this time retired to Edinburgh an old Killiecrankie
soldier, named Donald Bane—a man who had attained the distinction of a
sergeantcy, who had taught the broad-sword exercise, who had fought
creditably in all the wars of William and Anne in
succession, hut was withal much of a
scape— grace, though a good-humoured one, as fully appears from a little
autobiography which he published, along with the rules of the art of
defence. Though now sixty-two, and inclined to repent of much of his
earlier career, Donald retained enough of his original spirit to he
disposed to try a turn at sharps with Bryan; so, meeting him in the
street one day, he sent his foot through the drum, as an indication that
he accepted the challenge. Gentle-folks were interested when they heard
of it, and one learned person thought proper to compose for Bane a
regular answer to the challenge in Latin verse—
Ipso ego, Ponaldus Banus, forma
arms et altus,
Nunc huie Andrere thrasoni oecurrere deero,’ &c.
The combat took Place at
the date noted, (June 23) on
a stage erected for the purpose behind
Holyrood Palace, in the presence of a great number of noblemen,
gentlemen, military officers, and others. It was
conducted with much formality, and
lasted several hours, with a variety of weapons; and not till Bryan had
received seven wounds from his unscathed antagonist, did he feel the
necessity of giving in. The victory of the Highland veteran seems to
have given rise to great exultation, and he was crowned with praises in
both prose and rhyme. He was compared to Ajax overcoming Thersites; and
one Latin wit remarked in a quatrain, that the stains of the two former
Donald Banes of Scottish history were wiped off by the third. A more
fortunate result for us was the publication of Bane’s autobiography,
containing a number of characteristic anecdotes.
Little more than two years after the
combat of Bane and Bryan, a similar encounter is noted in the
Edinburgh Courant as taking place in the Tennis Court at Holyrood,
between ‘Campbell the Scots, and Clerk the Irish gladiator,’ when the
former received a wound in the face, and the second sustained seven in
the body.
Aug 8
At an election for the county of Roxburgh at Jedburgh, a quarrel arose
between Sir Gilbert Elliot of Stobbs, a candidate, and Colonel Stewart
of Stewartfield, who opposed him. Colonel Stewart, who was ‘a huffing,
hectoring person,’ is said to have given great provocation, and
gentlemen afterwards admitted that Stobbs was called upon by the laws of
honour to take notice of the offence. According to a petition to the
Court of Session from the son of Stewart, Elliot stabbed him as he sat
in his chair on the opposite side of a table, with his sword in his
side.
The homicide took refuge in Holland, but
was soon enabled by a pardon to return to his own country.
Aug 9
The correspondence of General Wade with the Secretary of State Townsend,
makes us aware that at this time
several of the attainted gentlemen of 1715 had returned to Scotland, in
the hope of obtaining a pardon, or at least of being permitted to remain
undisturbed. The general humanely pleads for their being pardoned on a
formal submission. Amongst them was Alexander Robertson of Struan, chief
of the clan Robertson, a gentleman who had fought for the Stuarts both
at Killiecrankie and Sheriffmuir, and who is further memorable for his
convivial habits and his gifts in the writing of pure, but somewhat dull
English poetry.
In the year of the Revolution, being a
youth of twenty at the university of St Andrews, Struan accepted a
commission in some forces then hastily proposed to he raised for James
VII.; and, keeping up this military connection, he joined the highland
army of Lord Dundee, but was taken prisoner by the enemy, September
1689, and thrown into the Edinburgh Tolbooth. Here a piece of Highland
gratitude served him a good turn. Four years before, when the Perthshire
loyalists were hounded out to ravage the lands of the unfortunate
Argyle, the late Laird of Struan had, for humane reasons, pleaded for
leave to stay at home and take care of the country. The now restored
Earl of Argyle, remembering this kindness to his family, interceded for
young Robertson, and procured his liberation in exchange for Sir Robert
Maxwell of Pollock, who was in
the hands of the Highlanders. Struan then passed into France, and joined
the exiled king, hoping ere long to return and see the old regime
restored; and in his absence, the Scottish parliament declared him
forfaulted. He spent many years of melancholy exile in France, enduring
the greatest hardships that a gentleman could be subjected to, having no
dependence but upon occasional remittances from his mother. Being at
length enabled to return to Perthshire, he once more forfeited all but
life by joining in the insurrection of 1715. For nine years more he
underwent a new exile in the greatest poverty and hardship, while, to
add to his mortifications, a disloyal sister, hight ‘Mrs Margaret,’
contrived to worm herself into the possession of his forfeited estates.
In France, Struan had for a fellow in
misfortune a certain Professor John Menzies, under whom he had studied
at St Andrews, and who seems to have been an old gentleman of some
humour. There is extant a letter of Menzies to Struau, giving him advice
about his health, and which seems worthy of preservation for the hints
it gives as to the habits of these expatriated Scotch Jacobites. It
bears to have been written in answer to one in which Struan had spoken
of being ill:
‘PARIS,
March
20.
‘D. S.—I have been out of town a little
for my own health, which has kept me some days from receiving or
answering your last, in which you speak of some indisposition of yours.
I hope that before now it is over of itself by a little quiet and
temperance, and that thereby nature has done its own business, which it
rarely fails to do when one gives it elbow-room, and when it is not
quite spent. When that comes, the house soon comes down altogether. This
I have always found in my own case. Whenever I was jaded by ill hours
and company, and the consequences of that, I have still retired a
little to some convenient hermitage in the country, with two or three
doses of rhubarb, and as many of salts. That washes the Augean stable,
and for the rest I drink milk and whey, and sometimes a very little wine
and water. No company but Horace and Homer, and such old gentlemen that
drink no more now. I walk much, eat little, and sleep a great deal. And
by this cool and sober and innocent diet, nature gets up its head again,
and the horse that was jaded and worn out grows strong again, so that he
can jog on some stages of the farce of life without stumbling or
breaking his neck. This is a consultation I give you gratis from my own
practice and never-failing experience, which is always the best
physician. And I am satisfied it would do in your ease, where I reckon
nature is haill at the heart still, after all your cruel usage of it.
‘As to all those pricklings and
startings of the nerves, they come from the ill habit of the blood and
body, brought on by ill diet and sharp or earthy wine, as your Orleans
wine is reckoned to be—for there are crab-grapes as there are
crab-apples, and sloes as well as muscadines.
‘There are great differences of
constitutions. Those of a sanguine can drink your champagne or cyder
all their life, and old Davy Flood has drunk punch these fifty years
daily. Whereas a short time of the lemons that‘s in punch would eat out
the bottom of my stomach, or make me a cripple. Much champagne, too,
would destroy my nerves, though I like its spirit and taste dearly. But
it will not do, that is, it never did well with me when I was young and
strong; now much less. My meaning in this dissertation about wine and
constitutions is plainly this, first, to recommend to you frequent
retraites, in order to be absolutely cool, quiet, and sober, with a
little gentle physic now and then, in order to give time and help to
nature to recover. And when you will needs drink wine—that it be of the
haill and old south-country wines, Hermitage, Coté Rotis, Cahors, &c.,
with a little water still, since there is a heat in them.
‘As to any external tremblings or
ailings of the nerves, pray make constant usage of Hungary
-
water to your head and nosethrills, and
behind your cars—of which 1 have found an infinite effect and advantage
of a long time, for I have been very often in the very same ease you
describe, and these have always been my certain cures. Repetatur
ejuantum
sufficit,
and I will warrant you.
‘Write again,
and God bless you.’
Struan was
now successful in obtaining a pardon,
and for the remainder of his days he lived in the cultivation of the
bottle and the muse at his estate in Rannoch. Only prevented by old age
from risking all once again in the adventure of Prince Charlie, he died
quietly in 1749, having reached his eighty-first year. So
venerable a chief, who had used both the
sword of Mars and the lyre of Apollo in the cause of the Stuarts, could
not pass from the world notelessly. His funeral was of a character to be
described as a great provincial
fete. It was computed that
two thousand persons, including the noblemen and gentlemen of the
district, assembled at his house to carry him to his last resting-place,
which was distant eighteen English miles; and for all of these there was
entertainment provided according to their different ranks.
Having taken personal
surveys of the Highlands in the two
preceding years, General Wade was prepared, in this, to commence the
making of those roads which he reported to be so necessary for the
reduction of the country to obedience, peace, and civilisation. He
contemplated that, after the example set by the Romans sixteen hundred
years before, the work might be done by the soldiers, on an allowance of
extra pay; and five hundred were selected as sufficient for the purpose.
Engineers and surveyors he brought down from England, one being the
Edmund Burt to whom we have been indebted for so much information
regarding the Highlands at this period, through the medium of the
letters he wrote during his long residence in this country.
‘In the summer seasons (during eleven
years), five hundred of the soldiers from the barracks and other
quarters about the Highlands were employed in those works in different
stations. The private men were allowed sixpence a day, over and above
their pay as soldiers. A corporal had eightpence, and a sergeant a
shilling. But this extra pay was only
for working-days, which were often
interrupted by violent storms of wind and rain. These parties of men
were under the command of proper officers, who were all subalterns, and
received two shillings and sixpence per diem, to defray their
extraordinary expense in building huts, making necessary provision for
their tables from distant parts (unavoidable, though unwelcome visits),
and other incidents arising from their wild situation.
A Scottish gentleman, who visited the
Highlands in 1737, discovered the roads completed, and was surprised by
the improvements which he found to have arisen from them, amongst which
he gratefully notes the existence of civilised places for the
entertainment of travellers. It pleased him to put his observations
into verse—rather dull and prosaic verse it is, one must admit—yet on
that very account the more useful now-a-days, by reason of the clearness
of the information it gives. After speaking of Wade’s success
in carrying out the Disarming Act, and his suppression of disorders by
the garrisons and Highland companies, he proceeds to treat of the roads,
which had impressed him as a work of great merit. It seemed to him as an
undertaking in no slight degree arduous, considering the limited means
and art which then existed, to extend firm roads across Highland
morasses, to cut out paths along rough hillsides, and to protect the way
when it was formed from the subsequent violent action of Highland
torrents and inundations. One of the most difficult parts of the first
road was that traversing the broad, lofty mountain called Corryarrack,
near to Fort Augustus. It is ascended on the south side by a series of
zigzags, no less than thirteen in number. The general expended great
care and diligence in the work, even to the invention of a balsam for
healing the wounds and hurts inflicted on the men by accident.
In the forming of the numerous bridges
required upon the roads, there was one natural difficulty, in addition
to all others, in the want of easily hewn stone. The bridge of five
arches across the Tay at Weem was considered as a marvellous work at the
time. In another part of the
country, an unusually rugged river gave Wade and his people a great deal
of trouble. The men, oppressed with heat during the day,
and chilled with frosts as they
bivouacked on the ground at night, were getting dispirited, when the
general bethought him of a happy expedient.
‘A fatted ox he ordered to be bought,
The best through all the country could be sought.
His horns well polished and with ribbons graced,
A piper likewise played before the beast.
Such were in days of yore for victims led,
And on the sacrifice a feast was made.
The ox for slaughter he devotes, and then
Gives for a gratis feast unto his men.
Quick and with joy a
bonfire they prepare,
Of turf and heath,
and brushwood fagots, where
The fatted ox is roasted all together;
Next of the hide they make a pot of leather,
In which the lungs and tripe cut down they boil,
With flour and tallow mixed in lieu of oil.
Then beef and pudding plentifully eat,
With store of cheering Husque to their meat.
Their spir’ts thus raised, their work becomes a play,
New vigour drives all former stops away.
The place from that received another name,
And Ox-BRIDGE
rises to all future fame.’
We derive some interesting facts about
Wade’s proceedings at this time from his correspondence, still in
manuscript.
Writing to the Secretary of State, Lord
Townsend, Edinburgh, 9th August 1726, he says: ‘I can with satisfaction
assure your lordship that the Disarming Act has fully answered all that
was proposed by it, there being no arms carried in the Highlands but by
those who are legally qualified; depredations are effectually prevented
by the Highland companies; and the Pretender’s iaterest is so
low, that I think it can hope for no
effectual assistance from that quarter.’
Dating from Killiwhimmen (Fort Augustus]
on the 16th of the ensuing mouth, he tells his lordship:
‘I have inspected the new roads between
this place and Fort William, and ordered it to be enlarged and carried
on for wheel-carriage over the mountains on the south side of Loch Ness,
as far as the town of Inverness, so that before midsummer next there
will be a good coach-road from
that place, which before was not passable on horseback in many places.
This work is carried on by the military with less expense and difficulty
than I at first imagined it could be performed, and the Highlanders,
from the ease and convenience of transporting their merchandise, begin
to approve and applaud what they at first repined at and submitted to
with reluctancy.’
Writing, in September 1727,
to Lord Townsend, he states that he had
lately found the Highlands in perfect tranquillity, ‘and the great road
of communication so far advanced, that I travelled to Fort
William in my coach-and-six, to the
great wonder of the country people, who had never seen such a machine in
those parts. I have likewise given directions for carrying on
another great road southward through the
Highlands from Inverness to Perth, which will open a communication with
the low country, and facilitate the march of a body of troops when his
majesty’s service may require it.’
The general’s coach-and-six had been
brought to Inverness by the coast-road from the south, and Burt assures
us that ‘an elephant exposed in one of the streets of London could not
have excited greater admiration. One asked what the chariot was.
Another, who had seen the gentleman alight, told the first, with a sneer
at his ignorance, it was a great cart to carry people in, and such like.
But since the making of some of the roads, I have passed through them
with a friend, and was greatly delighted to see the Highlanders run from
their huts close to the chariot, and, looking up, how with their bonnets
to the coachman, little regarding us that were within. It is not
unlikely that they looked upon him as a kind of prime minister, that
guided so important a machine.’
Wade writing to Mr Pelham from Blair,
20th July 1728, says:
‘I am now with all possible diligence
carrying on the new road for wheel-carriage between Dunkeld and
Inverness, of about eighty measured English miles in length; and that no
time may he lost in a work so necessary for his majesty’s service, I
have employed 300 men on different parts of this road, that the work may
be done during this favourable season of the year, and hope, by the
progress they have already made, to have forty miles of it completed
before the end of October, at which time the heavy rains make it
impracticable to proceed in the work till the summer following.
‘There is so great a scarcity of
provisions in this barren country, that I am obliged to bring my
biscuit, cheese, &c., for the support of the workmen, from Edinburgh by
land-carriage, which, though expensive, is of absolute necessity. There
is about fifteen miles of this road completely finished, and, I may
venture to assure you, it is as good and as practicable for
wheel-carriage as any in England. There are two stone-bridges building
on the road that was finished last year between Inverness and Fort
William, and two more are begun on this road, all which will, I hope, be
completed by the middle of October. The rest that will be wanting will
be eight or tea in number to complete the communication, which must be
deferred to the next year.’
July
The Society of Improvers at this date made a suggestion to the governors
of George Heriot’s hospital (magistrates and clergy of Edinburgh) which
marks a degree of liberality and judgment far beyond what was to be
expected of the age. They recommended that the boys of that institution,
all being children of persons in reduced circumstances, should have
instruction in useful arts imparted to them along with the ordinary
elements of learning. Such a practice had already been introduced in
Holland and France, and even in England (in workhouses), with the best
effects. They at the same time recommended that the girls in the
Merchant Maiden Hospital should be taught the spinning of flax and
worsted, and be put in twos and threes weekly into the kitchen to learn
house affairs. A committee was appointed to confer with the magistrates
upon this plan; but the matter was afterwards put into the hands of the
Trustees for the Encouragement of Manufactures.’
It would appear as if some practical
result had followed, at least for a time, as in December 1730, the
Edinburgh newspapers advert in terms of admiration to two girls of the
Merchant Maiden Hospital, who, ‘upon being only three weeks tanght the
French method of spinning, have spun exceeding fine yarn at the rate of
twelve and a half spindle to the pound avoirdupois, which is thought to
be the best and finest that ever was done in this country.’
Sep 10
Inoculation, or, as it was at
first called, engrafting for the smallpox, was reported from the
East to British physicians as early as 1 714, bnt neglected. Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, visiting Turkey with her husband, the British
ambassador, found it in full vogue there, and reported it at once so
safe and so effectual, that people came together as to a party of
pleasure to have it performed upon them by old women. It was in March
1718 that her ladyship, viewing the matter in entire independence of all
silly fears, submitted her infant son to the process. Finding it
successful, she exerted herself, on her return to England, to have the
practice introduced there, and, by favour of Caroline, Princess of
Wales, gained her point against the usual host of objectors. Her own
daughter was the first person inoculated in Great Britain. It was then
tried on four criminals, reprieved for the purpose, and found
successful. Two of the princess’s children followed, in April 1722.
The process was simultaneously introduced into Boston, in
Massachusetts.
Lady Mary tells us next year, that
inoculation was beginning to be a good deal practised. ‘I am,’ says she,
‘so much pulled about and solicited to visit people, that I am forced to
run into the country to hide myself.’’ Yet the fact is, that it made its
way very slowly, having to encounter both the prejudices of medical men,
who misapprehended its scientific nature, and the objections of certain
serious people, who denounced it as ‘taking the Almighty’s work out of
his hands.’ 2
Just as the two young princesses
were recovering, appeared a pamphlet, in which the author argued that
this new invention is utterly unlawful, an audacious presumption, and a
thing forbid in Scripture, in that express command: “Thou shalt not
tempt the Lord thy God.” It would appear as if there never yet was any
valuable discovery made for the alleviation of misery, or the conferring
of positive benefits on mankind, but there are some persons who find it
irreligious, and would be rejoiced in seeing it fail. It must have been
under such a spirit that some one inserted in the prints of the day a
notice desiring ‘oil persons who know anything of the ill success of
inoculation, to send a particular account thereof to Mr Roberts, printer
in Warwickshire.’ Only 897 persons (of whom seventeen died) were
inoculated during the first eight years.’
The operation appears not to have been
introduced in Scotland till upwards of five years after its introduction
in London. A letter of the date noted, from Mr R. Boyd in Edinburgh to
the Rev. Mr Wodrow at Eastwood, gives the following among other matters
of familiar intelligence: ‘The story of Abercromby of Glassaugh’s child
being inoculated in this country, and recovered of the small-pox, is in
the written letter and some of the prints.’’ From the reference to a
written letter—namely, a periodical holograph sheet of news from
London—we may infer that the infant in question was inoculated there,
and that the practice was as yet unknown in our country.
Oct 19
An interesting and singular scene was this day presented in the streets
of Edinburgh. Five men, named Garnock, Foreman, Stewart, Ferrie, and
Russell, were executed at the Gallowlee on the 10th of October 1681, and
their heads put up at the Cowgate Port, while their bodies were interred
under the gallows. Some of their friends lifted and re-interred the
bodies in the West Churchyard, and also took down the heads for a
similar purpose; but, being scared, were obliged to inhume these relics,
enclosed in a box, in a garden at Lauriston, on the south side of the
city. On the 7th October of this year, the heads were discovered as they
had been laid there forty-five years before, the box only being
consumed. Mr Shaw, the owner of the garden, had them lifted and laid out
in a summer-house, where the friends of the old cause had access to see
them. Patrick Walker relates what followed. ‘I rejoiced,’ he says, 'to
see so many concerned grave men and women favouring the dust of our
martyrs. There were six of us concluded to bury them upon the nineteenth
day of October 1726, and every one of us to acquaint friends of the day
and hour, being Wednesday, the day of the week upon which most of them
were executed, and at 4 of the clock at night, being the hour that most
of them went to their resting graves. We caused make a compleat coffin
for them in black, with four yards of fine linen, the way that our
martyrs’ corps were man aged; and, having the happiness of friendly
magistrates at the time, we went to the present Provost Drummond, and
Baillie Nimmo, and acquainted them with our conclusions anent them; with
which they were pleased, and said, if we were sure that they were our
martyrs’ heads, we might bury them decently and orderly.
Accordingly, we kept the foresaid day
and hour, and doubled the linen, and laid the half of it below them,
their nether jaws being parted from their heads; but being young men,
their teeth remained. All were witness to the holes in each of their
heads, which the hangman broke with his hammer; and, according to the
bigness of their skulls, we laid their jaws to them, and drew the other
half of the linen above them, and stufft the coffin with shavings. Some
pressed hard to go thorow the chief parts of the city, as was done at
the Revolution; but this we refused, considering that it looked airy
and frothy, to make such show of them, and inconsistent with the solid
serious observing of such an affecting, surprising, unheard-of
dispensation: but took the ordinary way of other burials from that
place—to wit, we went east the back of the wall, and in at Bristo Port,
and down the way to the head of the Cowgate, and turned up to the
churchyard, where they were interred doss to the Martyrs’ Tomb, with the
greatest multitude of people, old and young, men and women, ministers
and others, that ever I saw together.’
A citizen of Edinburgh heard from a lady
born in 1736 an account, at second-hand, of this remarkable
solemnity—with one fact additional to what is stated by Walker. ‘In the
procession was a number of genteel females, all arrayed in white satin,
as emblematical of innocence.’
A proceeding in which the same spirit
was evinced is noted in the Edinburgh Courant of November 4,
1728. ‘We hear that the separatists about Dumfries, who retain the title
of Cameronians, have despatched three of their number to Magus Muir, in
Fife, to find out the burial-place of Thomas Brown, Andrew.
. . . ,
James Wood, John Clyde, and John
Weddell, who were there execute during the Caroline persecution for
being in arms at Bothwell Bridge, and have marked the ground, in order
to erect a monument with an inscription like that of the Martyrs’ Tomb
in Greyfriars’ Churchyard, to perpetuate the zeal and sufferings of
these men.’
A few months later, we learn from the
same sententious chronicler: ‘The Martyrs’ Tomb in the Greyfriars’
Churchyard is repaired, and there is added to it a compartment, on which
is cut a head and a hand on pikes, as emblems of their sufferings,
betwixt which is to be engraved a motto alluding to both.’
1727, Mar 20
Died Sir Alexander Ogilvy of Forglen, Baronet, a judge of the Court of
Session under the designation of Lord Forglen. There is no particular
reason for chronicling the demise of a respectable but noteless senator
of the College of Justice, beyond the eccentric and characteristic
circumstances attending it. According to a note in the unpublished diary
of James Boswell, the biographer of Dr Johnson—when Lord Forglen was
approaching the end of his life, lie received a visit from his friend Mr
James Boswell, advocate, the grandfather of the narrator of the
anecdote. The old judge was quite cheerful, and said to his visitor:
‘Come awa, Mr Boswell, and learn to dee: I ‘m gaun awa to see your
auld freend Cullen and mine. (This was Lord Cullen, another
judge, who had died exactly a year before.) He was a guid honest man;
but his walk and yours was nae very steady when you used to come in frae
Maggy Johnston’s upon the Saturday afternoons.’ That the reader may
understand the force of this address, it is necessary to explain that
Mrs Johnston kept a little inn near Bruntsfield Links, which she
contrived to make attractive to men of every grade in life by her
home-brewed ale. It here appears that among her customers were Mr
Boswell, a well-employed advocate, and Lord Cullen, a judge—one, it may
be observed, of good reputation, a writer on moral themes, and with
whose religious practice even Mr Wodrow was not dissatisfied.
Dr Clerk, who attended Lord Forglen at
the last, told James Boswell’s father, Lord Auchinleck, that, calling on
his patient the day his lordship died, he was let in by his clerk, David
Reid. How does my lord do?’ inquired Dr Clerk. ‘I houp he‘s weel,’
answered David with a solemnity that
told what he meant. He then conducted the doctor into a room, and shewed
him two dozen of wine under a table. Other doctors presently came in,
and David, making them all sit down, proceeded to tell them his deceased
master’s last words, at the same time pushing the bottle about briskly.
After the company had taken a glass or two, they rose to depart; but
David detained them. ‘No, no, gentlemen; not so. It was the express will
o’ the dead that I should fill ye a’ fou, and I maun fulfil the will o’
the dead. All the time, the tears were streaming down his cheeks. ‘And,
indeed,’ said the doctor afterwards in telling the story, ‘he did fulfil
the will o’ the dead, for before the end o’ ‘t there was na ane o’ us
able to bite his ain thoomb.’