THE accession of George II., while not
disturbing in England that predominance of the great Whig nobles which
had existed since the Revolution, and leaving the practical
administration, as before, in the hands of Sir Robert Walpole,
produced no change ill the
system of improvement which the Union had inaugurated. Under the rule
of the Argyles, the Dalrymples, and one or two
other eminent Whig families, with the
mild and virtuous Duncan Forbes as Lord Advocate, the country enjoyed
peace, and was enabled to develop its long dormant energies, in the
pursuits of agriculture, of manufactures, and of commerce. All but a
few of the Highland clans had apparently given their final submission
to the Guelph dynasty; and though the Stuart cause was known to be
upheld by some, it was generally thought that there was very little
chance of further civil war on that subject.
The general tranquillity was broken in
1737 by a riot in Edinburgh, arising out of the harsh measures
required for the enforcement of the Excise laws, and ending in the
violent death of a public officer who had rendered himself obnoxious
to the populace. For an account of this affair, reference is made to
the chronicle.
About the same period, there was
considerable agitation in the church, in consequence of the
insubordination of a small group of clergymen, of ultra-evangelical
views, who were at length, in 1740, expelled, and became the founders
of a separate church under the name of the Associate Synod.
In 1744, Great Britain was engaged in
a war which involved most of the great powers of Europe. The French
minister, Cardinal de Tencin, conceived that an invasion of England on
behalf of the House of Stuart would be an excellent diversion in
favour of the arms of his country. The time was in reality long past
for any effective movement of this kind. New men and new things had
extinguished all rational hopes in the Jacobite party. Still there
were some chiefs in the Highlands who had never abandoned the Stuart
cause. In the Lowlands, there were discontents which seemed capable of
being turned to some account in effecting the desired revolution.
Prince Charles Edward, the eldest son of the so-called Pretender, was
an ardent-minded youth, eager to try a last chance for the restoration
of his family. The Cardinal really made some preparatioiis for an
expedition to be conducted by the Prince; but it was prevented by a
storm and an opposing English armament, from leaving the French coast.
Disappointed of the promised aid, Charles secretly voyaged with seven
friends to the western coast of Inverness-shire, and, landing there
towards the close of July 1745, was soon surrounded by a few hundreds
of friendly Camerons and Macdonalds. lie raised his standard at
Glenfinnan on the 19th of August, and expressed himself as determined
with such as would follow him, to win back a crown, or perish in the
attempt.
The best of the national troops being
engaged in service abroad, the government could only oppose to this
enterprise a few raw regiments under the commander-in-chief for
Scotland, Sir John Cope. But Sir John, making an unlucky lateral
movement to Inverness, permitted Prince Charles, with about eighteen
hundred clansmen, to descend upon Perth unopposed, and even to take
possession of Edinburgh. On the 21st of September, having returned by
sea to the low country, Cope was encountered at Prestonpans by the
Highlanders, and driven in a few minutes from the field. For several
weeks, Prince Charles Edward held court at Holyrood, in undisputed
possession of Scotland. March-big in November into England by the
western border, he captured Carlisle, was well received at Manchester,
and pushed on to Derby, where lie was only a hundred and twenty—seven
miles from London. But here the courage of his little council of
chiefs gave way before the terrors of the three armies by which they
seemed surrounded. Accomplishing a hurried, yet
well-managed retreat to Scotland, they
mid Glasgow under contribution, and came to a halt at Stirling, where
many fresh clans joined them, making up an army of nine thousand men.
A well—appointed English army under
General Hawley met Prince Charles Edward at Falkirk (January 17,
1746), and was driven back to Edinburgh with the loss of camp, cannon,
and baggage. The king’s second son, the Duke of Cumberland, soon after
took command of the forces in Scotland, and on his advancing to
Stirling, the Highland army made a hasty retreat to Inverness, where
they spent the remainder of the winter. As soon as the return of
spring permitted the English army to march, it was conducted against
the rebels by its royal commander. In a regular engagement which took
placo on Culloden Moor, near Inverness (April 16), the Highland army
was broken and dispersed with great slaughter. Prince Charles fled to
the west coast, and after several months of fugitive life, during
which he endured incredible hardships, escaped back to France. The
Duke advanced to Fort Augustus, and there superintended a system of
burning, slaughtering, and despoliation, throughout the disaffected
territory, by which he hoped to make further efforts for the House of
Stuart impossible. These acts, and his having ordered a general
slaughter of the wounded Highlanders on the field of battle, have
fixed on him indelibly the appellation of ‘the Butcher.’
Further to strike terror into the
Jacobite party, two leaders of the rebel army, the Earl of Kilmarnock
and Lord Balmerino, with about seventy prisoners of inferior rank,
were put to death as traitors. Lord Lovat, who, while preserving an
appearance of loyalty, had sent out his clan under his son, was
afterwards tried and executed for treason. Scotland generally suffered
for some time under a military oppression, for the government, in
their ignorance of the country, did not see by how small a part of the
community the late insurrection had boon supported. It now effected,
however, some measures which enlightened men had long felt to he
wanting for the cause of civilisation. One of these was for a more
effectual disarmament of the Highlanders; another for abolishing the
use of their tartan habiliments, which it was supposed had a certain
effect in keeping up their warlike spirit. There remained two acts of
much more importance, passed in 1748. One took away the hereditary
sheriffships and other jurisdictions of the nobility and gentry, so as
to render the sovereign in Scotland, as heretofore in England, the
fountain of all law and justice. In terms of this statute, the
privileges taken away were compensated for by sums of money, amounting
in all to £152,000. The other act abolished what was called the tenure
of ward—holdings-—that is, the holding of lands on the condition of
going out to war whenever the superior desired. Tenants and the common
people wore thus for the first time in Scotland rendered independent
of their landlords, or of the great men on whose property they lived.
In fact, they now became for the first time a free people.
1722, June
From the eagerness of the proprietors of the Equivalent Stock to be
engaged in some profitable business, as detailed under December 1719,
it might have been expected that they would sooner or later fall upon
some mode of effecting their wishes. All attempts to come into
connection with the Bank of Scotland having failed, they at length
formed the bold design of setting up a new hank—bold, in as far as it
was entirely a novelty, there being no thought of a second bank even
in England, where business was conducted upon so much greater a scale
than in Scotland. It seems to have been by engaging the good-will or
interest of the Earl of Islay, that the object was attained. The Bank
of Scotland in vain published a statement shewing how it was quite
competent, with its thirty thousand pounds of paid-up capital, to
conduct the business of the country, and really was conducting it
satisfactorily. In vain did Scottish jealousy try to raise a cry about
the large proportion of English shareholders in the new concern. It
received a royal charter, which was the last document of the kind
prepared before the king set out on his fatal visit to Hanover, and
required a warrant from the new sovereign before the seal could he
appended to it. The Earl of Islay was made governor, and the Lord
President Dundas became deputy-governor. In December they opened their
office, with a capital of £111,000; and in the first week of the new
year, they began to issue notes ‘having his present majesty King
George II’s picture in front.’ 1 At first, these notes were expressed
in Scots money; but the time had now come when the people of Scotland
began pretty generally to adopt the English denominations, both in
their accounts and in common parlance; so this fashion was not kept up
by the Royal Bank above two years. It is unnecessary to remark that
the new bank prospered, and now ranks second to none in
respectability. But this only makes the more remarkable the dreary
anticipations which were formed at the time by those whom it rivalled.
‘Whatever was said while the
Equivalent Society’s charter with banking powers was
a-seeking, or what has been said since
the passing thereof; that there
was no design of prejudicing
the Old Bank—nobody that knows the nature of banking does believe
that two banks can be carried on in the same country; for it is
impossible to manage and keep them up, without interfering and
rubbing upon one another, unless rules and regulations could be made
to prevent it; and it is impossible to digest regulations for
executing such a design, but what must make the interests of the two
companies reciprocal, and the product of their trade mutually to be
communicated; and so two different offices, under distinct management
and direction, would be a needless charge and trouble. Therefore the
gentlemen of the (Old) Bank did from the beginning lay their account
with an attack from an enemy, and a foreign one too, with home
alliances.’
Following up this terrible view of the
case, the Bank of Scotland, for some time before the new
establishment was opened, discontinued lending money, as a matter of
precaution, thus creating considerable distress among the mercantile
classes, and of course justifying, so far, the establishment of a new
source of accommodation. When the Royal Bank was fairly afloat, the
Bank of Scotland proceeded to the yet greater extremity of calling up
former loans, thus deepening the distress. ‘The country,’ says Mr
Wodrow in a kind of despair, ‘is not able to bear both banks. The new
bank would fain have the old coalescing with them; but they bear off.
It‘s a wonder to me how there‘s any money at all in the country.’
A pamphlet having been published in
the interest of the Bank of Scotland on this occasion—being the
Historical Account already more than once quoted—another soon
after appeared in justification of the Royal Bank, though professedly
by a person unconnected with it. ‘It can be no secret,’
says this writer, ‘that a great number of people of all ranks were
creditors to the public in Scotland by reason of offices civil and
military, and that the Equivalent stipulated by the act of Union fell
short of their payment; that in 1714 they obtained an act of
parliament constituting the debts due to them, but that no parliament
provision was made for a fund for their payment till the year 1719,
when a second act was made, appropriating to that purpose a yearly
fund of £10,000 sterling, payable out of the revenues of customs,
Excise, &c., preferable to all payments except the civil list. Between
the first and the second act, many of the proprietors, being doubtful
that any provision would be made for them by parliament., and others
being pressed by necessity, chose to dispose of their debentures
(these were the legal vouchers ascertaining the debts due to the
persons named in them) as they best could, and to the best bidder.
Many of them were carried to London, but a very considerable part of
them still remains in the hands of Scots proprietors, partly out of
choice, partly by reason of some legal bars that lay in the way of
issuing debentures, and partly by purchasing them back from England.’
In consequence of powers in the act of
1719, ‘his late majesty did, by letters-patent in 1724, incorporate
all persons who then were, or thereafter should be, proprietors of the
debentures whereby that public debt was constituted, to the end that
they might receive and distribute their annuity.' His majesty having
at the same time promised powers and privileges to the corporation as
they might request, it petitioned him for those of a bank in Scotland,
which he and his successor complied with, limiting the power to ‘such
of the company as should, on or before Michaelmas 1727, subject their
stock, or any share of it, to the trade of banking.’
There is, further, a great deal of
angry controversial remark on the Old Bank; but the most material
point is the allegation, that
that institution ‘divided 35, 40, 50 per cent.’ by the use of ‘other
people’s money.’ The author adverts with bitterness to the harsh
measures adopted by the Old
Bank in prospect of rivalry. ‘It is a hard thing,’ says he, ‘to defend
the conduct of the Old Bank upon the prospect of a rivalship. Lending
is superseded; a tenth is called from the proprietors, and all their
debtors threatened with diligence for a certain part or for the whole
of their debts, which diligence has since been executed Why did
they carry their revenge (as it is universally known they did) to
every one who had the least relation, alliance, friendship, or
connection with the proprietors of that bank (the Royal)?
Why were the first examples of
their wrath made out of the most known friends of the present
establishment, and why were the disaffected remarkably and visibly
spared?’
Considering that the Bank of Scotland
had never yet had more than thirty thousand pounds sterling of capital
paid up, the fact of the larger stock of the Royal, and their having
£30,000 of specie to trade with distinct from their stock, become
features of importance, as shewing the increasing business of the
country.
From a folio broadside containing the
‘Rules to be observed by such Persons as keep a Cash-accompt with the
Royal Bank of Scotland,’ it appears that ‘no sum paid into the bank or
drawn out of it, be less than 10l. sterling, nor have in it any
fraction or part of a pound; and in case of fractions arising by the
addition of interest at settling an accompt, such fractions are to be
taken off by the first draught or payment thereafter made.’ Sums of
five pounds and upwards
are now taken in and given out at all
the Scottish banks (1860).
June
Witchcraft, now generally slighted by persons in authority in
the south, was still a subject of judicial investigation in the far
north. Wodrow, in his Renfrewshire manse, continued to receive
accounts of any transactions in that way which might be going on in
any quarter, and, under 1726, he is careful to note ‘some pretty odd
accounts of witches’ which he had received from a couple of Ross-shire
brethren. One of them, ‘ at
death,’ he says, and it is to be feared that her death was at the
stake, ‘confessed that they had by sorcery taken away the sight of one
of the eyes of an Episcopal minister, who lost the sight of his eye
upon a sudden, and could give no reason of it.”
Early in the ensuing year—if we may
depend upon the authority quoted below—two poor Highland women,
mother and daughter, natives of the parish of Loth, in
Sutherlandshire, were accused of witchcraft before the sheriff-depute,
Captain David Ross of Littledean, and condemned to death. The mother
was charged with having ridden on the daughter, who had been
transformed on the occasion into a pony, and shod by the devil. The
girl made her escape, and was noted ever after, in confirmation of the
charge, to be lame in both hands and feet. The mother suffered at
Dornoch in June, being burned in a pitch-barrel. It has been handed
down by tradition, that, ‘after being brought out to execution, the
weather proving very severe, she sat composedly warming herself by
the fire prepared to consume her, while the other instruments of death
were making ready.’ ‘It does not appear,’ says Sir Walter Scott in
1830, ‘that any punishment was inflicted for this cruel abuse of the
law on the person of a creature so helpless; but the son of the lame
daughter— himself distinguished by the same misfortune—was living so
lately as to receive the charity of the present Marchioness of
Stafford, Countess of Sutherland in her own right.’
For a generation, the linen
manufacture had been passing through what might be called a prosperous
infancy. A public paper in 1720 states that there was annually
imported from Scotland into England the value of £100,000 in white
linen, and as much in brown, the flax being of ‘ a spunsie quality,’ which gave
it a preference over the similar products of both Ireland and
Germany.’ (The same document estimated the English woollen cloths
exported to Scotland at £400,000 per annum.)
By an act of parliament passed this
year, a Board of Trustees was established in Scotland for the
administration of an annual sum set aside for the encouragement of
manufaetories and fisheries. The sum at first given was four thousand
pounds, which might be considered as calculated to go a great way in
so poor a country. The activity and serviceableness of the Board was,
in its earlier years, chiefly shewn in the promotion of the linen
manufacture, which, under the stimulus afforded by premiums, rose from
the export sale of 2,183,978 yards in 1727, to 4,666,011 in 1738,
7,358,098 in 1748, and 12,823,048 in 1764. It is curious, regarding an
institution which has since occupied, as it still does, so conspicuous
a place in the public eye, to trace the difficulties it had to contend
with at starling, in consequence of the monetary vacuum produced by
the conflict of the two banks. The Lord Advocate, Duncan Forbes, wrote
on the 26th June 1728 to the Duke of Newcastle: ‘The trustees
appointed by his majesty for taking care of the manufactures, proceed
with great zeal and industry; but at present credit is run so low, by
a struggle between the bank lately erected by his majesty and the old
bank, that money can scarcely be found to go to market with.’
Oct
Wodrow, who never failed to
hear of and note any misfortune that happened to Glasgow—hopeful,
always, that it would be ‘laid to heart’—makes ns aware of an obscure
sorrow which was now beginning to beset the thriving burghers. ‘The
vermin called bugs,’ he says, ‘are at present extremely troublesome at
Glasgow. They say they are come over with timber and other goods from
Holland. They are in many
houses there, and so extremely prolific, there is no getting rid of
them, though many ways have been tried. It’s not twenty year since
they were known, and such as had them kept them secret. These six or
seven years, they are more openly complained of; and now the half of
the town are plagued with them. This is chiefly attributed to
the frequent alterations of servants,
who bring them from house to house.’
Soon after, having occasion to deplore
the death of Provost Peady, a person of great firmness and piety, he
speaks of the many ‘strokes’ which the industrious city had met with
of late. Their losses during 1727 had been reckoned at not less than
twenty-eight thousand pounds sterling! ‘It’s a wonder to me how they
stand throo.’ The worthy pastor of Eastwood would evidently have not
been greatly distressed had his Glasgow neighbours been subjected to
a repetition of a few of the plagues of Egypt, so needful were they of
something to cheek their growing fatness and pride. He might have been
expected to hail the frogs with a fraternal feeling; and we can
imagine him marking with hopefulness, not unmingled with sympathy, the
spread of the murrairi among the burghers’ kine at the Cowcaddens. The
present entomological corrective was evidently regarded by him with a
satisfaction too deep to admit of many words.
1728, Feb
Mr John Boyd gives his friend
Wodrow an account of a duelling affair which had befallen in
Edinburgh. ‘Ane officer in the Dutch Guards, son to Mr Walter Stewart,
late Solicitor, was ill wounded by ane officer in the Canongate
(Lieutenant Pilkington, of Grove’s Regiment). The officer, when in
custody of the constables, was
rescued by the guard there, who carried him off; but at Musselburgh,
the people there apprehended him, and made him and twenty-two guards
prisoners, who were all brought to prison
here.’ There were hopes of the wounded
man’s recovery.’
Mar 1
At four o’clock in the morning, a smart shock of an earthquake was
experienced in Edinburgh and throughout the south of Scotland, if not
in other quarters. At Selkirk, every house was shaken, and some people
were tumbled out of bed, but no damage was done.’
Mar
Mr Wodrow was at this time informed ‘by very good hands,’ that there
had been for some years in Edinburgh a little gambling fraternity, who
made it their business to trace out and decoy young men of rank and
fortune, and make plunder of them. ‘One of them will lose fifty pounds
in a night till the young spark be engaged; and then another comes and
soon gains the whole; and, it may be, a third comes, and stands at the
back of the person they design to rifle, and by signs and words
unknown to others, discovers his game to the other; so by one method
or other they are sure to win all at last.’ It was alleged that the
society would divide 25,000 merks (about £1400) a year by these vile
practices—much calculated ‘to fill our cup of judgments.’
As a trait of the time—On the news
reaching Glasgow that an attempt to unseat Campbell of Shawfield had
failed, his friends went down to Govan, to celebrate the affair, and
write a letter of congratulation to him. Mr William Wishart, a
clergyman, deserted the synod then sitting, to go with them, and help
in drawing up the letter. By and by, the minister left them; but they
sat still till they became so befuddled, that it became necessary to
bundle them into a boat, and so carry them back to the city. That
evening, some other gentlemen of the same way of thinking, went
through the streets of Glasgow, with a fiddler playing before them,
and singing: ‘Up with the Campbells, and down with the Grahams!’ and
it was a wonder that a riot was avoided.
About the same date, Mr Wodrow adverts
to the fact, that Anthony Aston’s playhouse in Edinburgh was ‘much
frequented;’ and amongst ‘persons of substance and leisure,’ there was
consequently a great tendency to laxity of morals. There was even a
talk of building a playhouse in Edinburgh. The manager, however, was
not without his troubles. One Ross, master of the Bean’s
Coffee-house—a son of Bishop Ross, and a great encourager of the
playhouse—had sold a quantity of tickets, on which he was to be
allowed a penny each; but he ultimately refused to take this
commission, though amounting to about ten pounds— a vast sum, says
Wodrow, ‘for tickets at a penny apiece in one coffee-house.’ Aston
having reserved this money to himself, instead of accounting for it to
his company, according to agreement, a terrible squabble arose among
them, and a process was threatened before the magistrates, or some
other court. How the matter ended, we do not hear.
To complete his general picture of the
profaneness of the age, Mr Wodrow tells us that Allan Ramsay, the
poet, got down books of plays from London, and lent them out at an
easy rate—the beginning of Circulating Libraries in Scotland. Boys,
servant-women, and gentlemen, all alike took advantage of this
arrangement, whereby ‘vice and obscenity were dreadfully propagated.’
Lord Grange complained of the practice to the magistrates, and induced
them to make inspection of Ramsay’s hook containing the names of the
borrowers of the plays. ‘They were alarmed at it, and sent some of
their number to his shop to look through some of his books; but he had
notice an hour before, and had withdrawn some of the worst, aud
nothing was done to purpose.’
Mar 27
The conflict between the Bank of Scotland and its yonng and
pretentions Whig rival, the Royal Bank, led to a temporary stoppage of
payments at the former establishment, the last
that ever took place. The Royal Bank
‘having all the public money given in to them, has at present worsted
(the Bank of Scotland), and run them out of cash.’ In their own
advertisement on the occasion, they attribute the calamity to ‘the
great embarrassment that has been upon credit and circulation of money
in payments for some months bygone, arising from causes and by means
well known both in city and country.’ In this very crisis, tire Bank
announced its dividend of four per cent. on its capital stock, but
appropriating it as part of ten per cent. now called up from the
shareholders, ‘the other sixty pounds Scots on each share to be paid
in before the 15th of June.’ The directors at the same time ordered
their notes to bear interest during the time that payment should be
suspended.
It must have been a draught of very
bitter gall to the Old Bank, when their young rival came
ostentatiously forward with an announcement that, for the ‘relief of
such people as wanted to go to market,’ they would give specie for the
twenty—shilling notes of the Bank of Scotland till further notice.
The Bank of Scotland resumed paying
its twenty-shilling notes on the 27th of June.
Mar 9
The convivialities indulged in at funerals were productive
to-day of a tragedy long remembered in Scotland. Mr Carnegie of Lour,
residing in the burgh of Forfar, had a daughter to be buried, and
before the funeral, he entertained the Earl of Strathmore, his own
brother James Carnegie of Finhaven, Mr Lyon of Bridgeton, and some
others of the company, at dinner in his house. After the ceremony,
these gentlemen adjourned to a tavern, and drank a good deal. Carnegie
of Finhaven got extremely drunk. Lyon of Bridgeton was not so much
intoxicated; but the drink made him rude and unmannerly towards
Finhaven. Afterwards, the Earl of Strathmore went to call at the house
of Mr Carnegie’s sister, Lady Auchterhouse, and the other gentlemen
followed. Here it may be remarked that the whole of this group of
persons were, like a large proportion of the Forfarshire gentry, of
Jacobite prepossessions. The earl’s late brother and predecessor in
the title had fallen at Sheriffmuir, on the Chevalier’s side; so had
Patrick Lyon of Auchterhouse, husband of the lady now introduced to
notice, and brother of Bridgeton. The presence of a lady, and that
lady a widowed sister—in—law, failed to make Bridgeton conduct himself
discreetly. He continued his boisterous rudeness towards Finhaven
rallied him coarsely about his not being willing to marry one of his
daughters to Lord Rosehill, about his having no sons, about his debts;
took him offensively by the breast; and even used some rudeness
towards the lady herself. In the dusk of the evening, the party
sallied out to the street, and here Bridgeton went so far in his
violence towards Finhaven as to push him into a deep and dirty kennel,
which nearly covered him from head to foot with mire. Finhaven, now
fully incensed, rose, and drawing his sword, ran up to Bridgeton, with
deadly design; but the earl, seeing him advance, pushed Bridgeton
aside, and unhappily received the lunge full in the middle of his own
body. He died forty-nine hours after the incident.
Carnegie of Finhaven was tried on the
ensuing 2d of August for premeditated murder; an absurd charge
absurdly supported by long arguments and quotations of authority, in
the style of that day. In his
C information,’ the accused man
called God to witness that he had borne uo malice to the earl; on the
contrary, he had the greatest kindness and respect for him. ‘If it
shall appear,’ said he, ‘that I was the unlucky person who wounded the
earl, I protest before God I would much rather that a sword had been
sheathed in my own bowels.’ All that lie admitted was: ‘I had the
misfortune that day to be mortally drunk, for which I beg God’s
pardon.’ He declared that, being in this state at the time, he did not
so much as remember that he bad
seen the earl when he came out
of the kennel. The defence proposed for him by his counsel was, that,
the circumstances of the case considered, he was not guilty of
murder, but of manslaughter. Strange
to say, the court, sacrificing rationality to form and statute,
overruled the defence: they found the fact that the prisoner having
really given the wound whereof the Earl of Strathmore died, to be
relevant to infer the pains of law against him. The killing being
indisputable, Carnegie would have been condemned if the jury should
merely give a verdict on the point of fact. In these circumstances,
his counsel, Robert Dundas of Arniston, stood forth to tell the jury
that they were entitled to judge on the point of law as well as the
point of fact. He asserted that the only object for their
deliberation, was whether they could conscientiously say that Carnegie
had committed murder, or whether his guilt was not diminished
or annihilated by the circumstances of the ease. The jury, almost
beyond expectation, gave a verdict of ‘Not Guilty,’ thus establishing
a great constitutional principle.
1728,
Aug 15
The noted fierte of the Scottish nobility
and gentry was beginning at this time to give way somewhat,
under the general desire to promote
the arts of industry, arid partly because of the hopelessness of
public employments for young scions of aristocracy in all but favoured
Whig circles. We must not, therefore, be surprised when
a tragical tale of this date brings
before us the fact that Patrick Lindsay, described as heir-male of the
grand old House of Lindsay of the Byres, and who, a few years
afterwards, married a daughter of the sixteenth Earl of Crawford, was
now an upholsterer in the Parliament Close of Edinburgh, and dean of
guild for the city. Neither ought it to appear as incredible that one
of his apprentices was a youth named Cairns, younger son of a
gentleman of good estate residing at Cupar-Fife.
The tale was simply this—that, on the
evening noted, between eight and nine o’clock, Cairns was found in the
shop expiring from the effects of a violent blow on the head,
apparently inflicted by a hammer, while the box containing the guildry
treasure was missing. It was believed that some vile people who then
haunted the city, knowing of the box being kept in
Lindsay’s shop, had formed a design to
possess themselves of it, and had effected their end at the expense of
murder, at the moment when the place was about to be closed for the
night. A number of vagrants were taken up on suspicion, and the box
was soon after found, empty.’
Aug 18
Aaron Hill, a well-born English gentleman, who had been manager of
Drury Lane Theatre, and wrote many well-received plays and poems—who,
moreover, had travelled over Europe and some parts of Asia and
Africa—is at this date found writing to his wife from what he calls
‘the Golden Groves of Abernethy,’ meaning the great natural forest of
that name on Speyside, in the county of Elgin. It is a strange
association of persons and things for a period when even of civilised
Scotsmen scarcely ever one made his way north of the Grampians. It had
come about, however, in a very natural way.
The York-Buildings Company, which had
already formed connections with Scotland by the purchase of several of
the forfeited estates, was induced to take a lease from Sir James
Grant of Grant, of the magnificent but hitherto useless pine-forest of
Abernethvy thinking they should be able to apply the timber for the
use of the navy. Had the wood been only removable by
landcarriage, it would have been useless, as before; but they had
been led to understand that there was no difficulty in floating it
down the Spey to the sea, where it might be shipped off for the south.
Aaron Hill, who was a very speculative genius, having before this time
headed a scheme for making olive-oil out of beech-nuts, and concocted
a plan for settling a part of Carolina, made a journey to the Spey in
1726, and easily convinced himself of the practicability of the
project. The Company, accordingly, commenced operations in 1728, with
Mr Hill as their clerk. They sent a hundred and twenty-five
work-horses, with a competent number of wagons, and apparatus of all
the kinds required; they erected substantial wooden—houses, saw-mills,
and an iron-foundry, all of them novelties regarded with wonder by the
simple natives. They had also a salaried commissary to furnish
provisions and forage. Tracks being formed through the forest, and men
trained to the work, trees were felled to the number of forty or fifty
in a day, and brought down to the bank of the river. There, under the
direction of Mr Hill, they were bound in rafts of sixty or eighty,
with deals laid upon the surface to form a platform; and for each such
raft two men were held as sufficient to navigate it to the sea, one
sitting with a guiding-oar at one end, and another at the other.
Before this time, the natives had been accustomed to float down rafts
of three or four trees tied together with a rope, the attendant
sitting in a curragh or boat of hide, from which he was ready
to plunge into the stream when any impediment called for his
interference. What a Drury Lane manager would think on
witnessing a mode of navigation coeval with the first state of
savagery, we cannot tell; but he had no little difficulty in inducing
the people to adopt a more civilised mode of conducting his grand
timber-rafts. Till he first went in one himself, to shew that there
was no danger, not one of the Abernethy foresters would venture in so
prodigious a craft. There was, in reality, something problematical in
the undertaking, for the river was in some places partially blocked by
sunken rocks; but the genius of Hill was equal to all emergencies.
Taking advantage of a dry season, when these shoals were exposed, be
kindled immense wood-fires upon them, and when the rock was thus
heated, he caused water to be thrown upon it, thus making it splinter,
and so enable his men to break it up and clear the passage.
It was in high spirits that our poet
wrote to his wife from the Golden Groves of Abernethy, for they were
really productive of gold, no less than £7000 worth of timber being
realised by his Company. ‘The shore of the Spey,’ says he, ‘is all covered with
masts from 50 to 70 feet long, which they are daily bringing out of
the wood, with ten carriages, and above a hundred horses In the
middle of the river lies a little fleet of our rafts, which are just
putting off for Findhorn harbour; and it is one of the pleasantest
sights possible to observe the little armies of men, women, and
children who pour down
from the Highlands to stare at what we
have been doing.’ What seems chiefly to have impressed the natives,
was the liberality with which the business of wood-cutting was
conducted. It seemed to them a wasteful extravagance, and if it be
true that barrels of tar would be burned in bonfires, and barrels of
brandy broached on joyful occasions among the people, five of whom
died in one night in consequence, the imputation was not unjust.
Nevertheless, the work was highly successful, and might have been
carried on longer than it was, if the Company had not called away
their people to work at their lead-mines!
During the time which Mr Hill spent in
Scotland, he was received with great civilities by the Duke of Gordon
and other eminent persons, and was
complimented with the freedom of
Aberdeen, Inverness, and other burghs. In his collected poems are
found a number of short epigrammatic pieces which he wrote during his
residence in Scotland;
among the rest, his oft-printed
epigram, beginning: ‘Tender-handed stroke a nettle.’ But Burt adds
another, which he found scribbled on a window ‘ at the first stage on
this side Berwick :‘
Scotland, thy weather’s like a modish
wife,
Thy winds and rains for ever
are at strife
So Termagant awhile her bluster
tries,
And when she can no longer scold—she cries
The engineer could not
but wonder at
Hill taking leave of the
country in this strain, ‘after he had been so exceedingly
complaisant to it, when here, as to
compare its subterranean riches with those of Mexico and Peru.’
Aug
We must again return to Mr Wodrow for an account of the continued
progress of gaiety in Scotland. It appears that part of Anthony
Aston’s company of comedians migrated from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and
were there favoured by Bailie Murdoch, ‘who is too easy,’ with
permission to perform the Beggars’ Opera in the Weigh-house.
They had a good audience the first night, but on the few other nights
of performance ‘got not so much as to pay their music.’ On the
magistrates being blamed for the permission they had given, they
recriminated on the ministers, who should have interfered in time. Mr
Wodrow considered the ministers as here in fault; yet he could not
exonerate the magistrates. ‘Considering the noise made at Edinburgh by
these strollers, and the brisk opposition made by the magistrates of
Edinburgh, they (the magistrates of Glasgow) should have considered
better before they allowed them.’
‘Sabbath after, the ministers preached
against going to these interludes and plays..... Mr Rob, of Kilsyth,
went through all that was a-going about meeting-houses, plays, errors,
and profaneness; and spared none, as I hear.’
This classing of the Episcopal
meeting-houses with the ungodly theatre, reminds us of the ranging of
popery and adultery together by the reformers. It would appear that in
the summer of 1728 there was another histrionic company in Scotland,
under a Mr Phipps, who announced that on the 29th October he would,
‘at the desire of severals of the nobility and gentry of East
Lothian,’ act the Beggars’ Opera at Haddington.
In March 1729, the Edinburgh
Courant informs us that ‘the Scots Company of Comedians, as they
call themselves, have all of a sudden eloped, without counting with
their creditors.’
Wodrow reports with much bitterness,
in 1731, the rumours going about as to the success of the English
comedians in Edinburgh. He says: ‘It is incredible what numbers of
chairs, with men, are carried to these places;’ ‘men’ not choosing
to walk to such amusements. ‘For some weeks, they made fifty pound
sterling every night, and that for six nights a week.’ ‘It ‘5 a dreadful corruption of our youth,
and an eyelet to prodigality and vanity.’
1728, Oct 1
A valuable Dutch East Indiaman having been lost in March, near the
island of Lewis, an effort, involving some ingenuity, was made to
recover the treasure on board, which was understood to amount to about
£16,000 sterling. The Edinburgh newspapers remark to-day, the arrival
of a Dutchman with ‘a Curious machine’ designed for this purpose. Mr
Mackenzie, younger of Delvin, a principal clerk of Session, and
depute-admiral of those shores, was joined with Mr Alexander Tait, a
merchant, in furnishing the expenses of this undertaking, in the hope
of profit for themselves. The business was proceeded with during
October, and with success. On the 19th, the populace of Edinburgh were
regaled with the sight of several cart-loads of the recovered money,
passing through their streets. The Dutch East India Company presently
gave in a petition to the Court of Admiralty for an account of the
treasure; which was accordingly furnished by Mr Mackenzie, and shewed
that he had fished up £14,620, at an expense of £9000.
Mr Mackenzie was allowed to retain
twenty thousand crowns and some doubloons, and ordered to deposit the
rest in a box, subject to the future orders of the court.
‘The divers fishing for the spoils of
the Dutch ship, found in and about her the dead bodies of two hundred
and forty men, which they brought to land and buried.’
A few years ago, a coronation gold
medal of Augustus II. of Poland was exhumed in the garden of the
minister of Barra. At first, there was a difficulty of comprehending
how such an object could have come there; at length the shipwreck of
the Dutch vessel was called to recollection, as an explanation of the
mystery.
About the close of 1728, the Edinburgh
newspapers speak of a gentleman named Captain Row, who had come to
Scotland invested with a privilege for raising treasure and other
articles out of shipwrecked vessels, to last for ten years. For the
next twelve-month, we hear of him as exercising his ingenuity upon the
remains of one of the Spanish Armada, which was sunk off Barra. Two brass cannon are first spoken of as
recovered, and afterwards we hear of ‘several things of value.’
Nov
That extraordinary person, Simon Lord Lovat, who had resisted x the
troops of King William, and been outlawed by the Edinburgh Justiciary
Lords, was now in the enjoyment of his title and • estate, an active
friend and partisan of the Whig-Hanoverian government, and captain of
one of the six companies of its highland militia. In the early part of
this month, he led sixty of these local soldiers on an expedition
against the thieves of the north-west districts, and captured no fewer
than twenty-six in the course of a week. He searched for arms at the
same time, but reported that these had been now pretty well gathered
in; so he found none.
Although few Scotsmen have been the
subjects of so much biography as
Lord Lovat, there is one aspect in
which he remains to be now for the first time viewed; and that is, as
a newspaper paragraphist. During the dozen prosperous years which
followed this date, the Gourant and Mercury are every
now and then presenting extracts of private letters from Inverness
regarding the grand doings of ‘Simon Lord Lovat, chief of the clan
Fraser,’ all of them in such a
pnffing style as would leave little doubt of their having been his own
composition, even if we were
not possessed of facts which betray it but too clearly.
On one occasion (May 1728) lie is
described as riding out from Inverness, with
eighty well-mounted gentlemen of his
clan, to meet and escort the Lords of the Circuit Court of Justiciary,
as they were approaching the town. At another (September 1729),
we find him parading his company of ‘a
hundred men, besides officers, sergeants, and drums,’ before General
Wade, when ‘they made a very fine appearance, both as to the body of
men and their new clothings, and they performed their exercises and
firings so well, that the general seemed very well satisfied. And he
told my Lord Lovat that he was much pleased at the performance and
good appearance of his company.’ We
of course hear nothing of what the
general’s engineer, Mr Burt,
has been so ill-natured as record, that Lovat had stripped private
clansmen of any good plaids they had, in order to enable his company
to make the better show.
In June 1733, we are informed through
the Mercury, that a commission appointing Lord Lovat to be
sheriff of the county, having come to Inverness, it was read in court,
where Alexander Fraser of Fairfield sat to administer justice as his
lordship’s deputy. ‘The gentlemen of the name of Fraser, who are very
numerous in this town, together with the several relations and friends
of the family of Lovat, expressed an uncommon satisfaction on
seeing this commission renewed in his lordship’s person whose
ancestors, above three hundred years ago, were sheriffs-principal of
the shires of Inverness and Moray. And we learn that the rejoicings
made all over the country, by the Frasers and their friends, were in
nothing short of those we had in town.’ So says a letter from
Inverness, marked in the office-copy of the paper as ‘paid (2s.
6d.).’
Ten days afterwards appeared another
paragraph: ‘Last week, the Right Honourable Simon Fraser of Lovat was
married at Roseneath, in Dumbartonshire, to the Honourable Miss
Primrose Campbell, daughter to the late John Campbell of Mamore, Esq.;
sister to John Campbell, Esq., one of the Grooms of the Bedchamber to
his Majesty, and first-cousin to his Grace the Duke of Argyle and
Greenwich. A young lady of great beauty and merit.’ This was also
‘paid (2s. 6d.).’
The reader will perhaps relish another
specimen: ‘INVERNESS, July 18, 1735.—Last post brought us the
agreeable news of the Hon. John Campbell of Mamore his being appointed
Lieutenant-colonel of the Inniskillen Regiment of Foot, a part whereof
is now quartered here. This news gave great joy to all the Frasers,
and well-wishers of the family of Lovat in this town, the Lord Lovat
being married to a sister of the said Colonel Campbell; and there
being for many ages a great friendship between the Campbells and the
Frasers, last night all the gentlemen of the Frasers in this place,
and the Grants, Monroes, and Cuthberts, relations and allies of the
family of Lovat, met, and invited all the officers of the corps,
garrison, and custom-house, with many other gentlemen of the
first rank, to the Lord Lovat’s lodgings, where Baillie William
Fraser, his lordship’s landlord and merchant, had prepared an elegant
entertainment. There was great plenty of wine, when the healths of his
Majesty, the Queen, Prince, Duke, and all the royal family were drunk,
with those of the ministry, his Majesty’s forces by sea and land, Duke
of Argyle, Earl of Ilay, General Wade, Colonel John Campbell, Lord
Lovat, Colonel Hamilton and the corps ; the healths of the
Frasers, Grants, Monroes, &c., and all the fast friends of the family
of Argyle, with many other loyal toasts. There were large bonfires,
not only at my Lord Lovat’s lodgings, bnt on every hill in his
lordship’s extensive country round this town. During the solemnity,
the music-bells played, drums beat, and the private men of the company
here were handsomely entertained, agreeable to their own taste, with
barrels of beer, which they drank to the health of their new
commander. After the gentlemen had stayed several hours at his
lordship’s lodgings, they, with the music playing • before them,
proceeded to the market-cross, where was a table covered, with the
foresaid toasts repeated, with huzzas and acclamations of joy.’
Marginally marked in the office-copy, ‘Paid 4s’
Nov
The influenza, in a very virulent form, after passing over the
continent, came to England, and a fortnight after had made its way
into Scotland. A cold and cough, with fever, laid hold of nearly every
person, sometimes in a moment as they stood on their feet, and in some
instances attended with raving. Wodrow of course entertained hopes
that Glasgow would receive a good share of the calamity; but it proved
less severe there than in some other places. He adverts, however, to
the fact, that, owing to the ailment, ‘there was no hearing sermon for
some time.’
Nov 28
The death of Alexander, second duke of Gordon, proved, through
connected circumstances, a domestic event of great importance. We have
seen the adherence of this powerful family to the Catholic faith a
source of frequent trouble ever since the Reformation. Latterly, under
the protection of the second duke, the ancient religion had been
receiving fresh encouragement iu the north. For this family to be at
variance in so important a respect with the country at large, was
unfortunate both for themselves and the country. It was an evil now at
length to be brought to an end.
The
Duchess—Henrietta Mordaunt, daughter of the Earl of Peterborough
‘—finding herself left with the charge of a large family in tender
years—the young duke only eight years old— took it upon her to have
them educated in her own Protestant principles, and with a respect for
the reigning family. It was such an opportunity as might not have
occurred again for a century. We can see from her history as an
introducer of improvements in agriculture, that she must have been a
woman of considerable intellectual vigour; and hence it is the less
surprising that she fully accomplished her object. She of course got
great credit in all loyal quarters for what she did with her children.
The General Assembly, in 1730, sent her a cordial letter of thanks.
The government, in 1735, settled upon her a pension of £1000 a year.
She survived her husband upwards of thirty years, living for the most
part at Prestonhall, in the county of Edinburgh— a forfeited estate
which she had bought at a moderate price.
After all, there were some drawbacks to her Grace’s soundness in
Protestant loyalty. While one of her sons, Lord Lewis—the ‘Lewie
Gordon’ of Jacobite minstrelsy—’ went out’ for the house of Stuart in
1745, she herself shewed a certain tendency that way, by laying out a
breakfast for the Young Chevalier on the roadside at her park-gate, as
he marched past, target on shoulder, on his way to England, for which
single act of misapplied hospitality her Grace was deprived of her
pension.