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1684, Apr 8
We have already seen several instances of a considerable town burnt down
by accidental fire, with the inevitable consequence to the inhabitants, of
their being driven into the shelterless fields, in a state of utter
desolation; all reminding us of a time when as yet no mechanical
arrangements had been made for checking such conflagrations, and no
process of assurance had been instituted for providing against the loss
and penury following. We have now another and highly characteristic
example, in the almost entire destruction of the town of Kelso. It will be
observed that the town, being probably composed of thatched houses, in few
instances exceeding two stories in height, was extremely inflammable, and
therefore the fire was rapid.
The fire began, between three and four in the
afternoon, in a malt-kiln, and quickly caused the destruction of several
stacks of corn. Thence, under the influence of a violent wind, it spread
over the whole town, and so quickly, ‘that these who were helping their
neighbours did not know when their own houses were burning. Before nine
o’clock at night, not only all the houses, but the most part of all the
goods therein, and several merchants’ shops of considerable value, and
above four thousand bolls of victual lying in girnels, and all the
corn-stacks in the town, were laid in ashes. The fury of the flame and
rage of the smoke were so great in all places of the town, that with great
difficulty sick and infirm persons and infant children could be carried
away from the danger to the open fields. Three hundred and six families
had their houses utterly burnt down, and of these not twenty will ever be
able to rebuild upon their own means. The loss of merchants is so great
that it cannot weel be known, the particular loss of some of them being
valued above twenty thousand pounds Scots, and of others, above ane
thousand pounds sterling. The more indigent sort of people have lost the
whole sustenance of their livelihood.’ If we are to understand that the
three hundred and six burnt-out families composed the whole
population, we may estimate that this town,
now so remarkable for its beauty, and which contains a population of 5000,
was then a comparatively poor village of about 1400
inhabitants. It is remarkable, however, to find that it
contained merchants’ shops so well stocked with goods.
The usual and only resource of that age for such cases
of public calamity was taken advantage of by the Privy Council, to whom
the inhabitants appealed for succour; namely, a collection at the parish
churches on one Sunday throughout the kingdom. And till this collection
could take place, it was ordered that some of the money now in the course
of being raised for the relief of prisoners in the hands of the Turks,
should be given to the distressed people of Kelso, to be afterwards
replaced from the money collected on account of the fire. Some time
afterwards, we find a petition from the magistrates of Glasgow, setting
forth that a sum of money had been collected there for the unfortunate
people at Kelso, but in the meantime Glasgow had had a conflagration of
its own, resulting in the destitution of a number of people; so they had
thought proper to ask for permission to apply the money for the relief of
the distress in their own community—which was granted.
Apr
Cornelius a-Tilbourne, a German mountebank, craved from the Privy Council
licence to erect a stage in Edinburgh. It was granted, notwithstanding
opposition from the College of Physicians. He had made a successful
experiment on himself, in London, in presence of the king, for
counteracting some poisons which the physicians there had prescribed to
him, the secret consisting in drinking a considerable quantity of oil. But
it appears that he expressly excluded mercury, aqua-fortis, and other
corrosives from the trial. The king, who had a curiosity about chemical
experiments, had granted Cornelius
a
medal and chain. He repeated the experiment in Edinburgh, on his man or
servant, who died under it.
Men of this class appear to have
also practised surgery. In March 1683, the Town Council of Glasgow
disbursed five pounds to John Maxwell, to replace a like sum ‘whilk he
payit to the mountebank for cutting off umwhile Archibald Bishop’s
leg.’— M. of G.
Apr 22
A petition from the Earl of Errol to the Privy Council set forth that it
was the custom of the north country for ‘the seamen of fish-boats’ to be
‘tied and obliged to the same servitude and service that coal-hewers and
salters are here in the south,’ and ‘it is not lawful for any man
whatsomever to resett, harbour, or entertein the fishers and boatmen who
belong to another.’ His lordship complained of Alexander Brodie and Andrew
Buchlay, who were fishermen in his service, having ‘fled away from him
without leave, to his damage and prejudice;’ and he demanded warrants for
reclaiming them. The petition was complied with.—P.
C. R.
Apr 24
A proclamation proceeding upon the recent sumptuary act, makes us aware
that it had comparatively failed to accomplish its object. ‘Several women,
even [!] in our capital city of
Edinburgh and elsewhere, have presumed to go abroad with clothes made of
the prohibited stuffs, upon pretext that they are only night-gowns,
undresses, or manteaux, whereas all manner of wearing of the said stuffs
was discharged.’ In like manner, to elude that part of the law forbidding
mourning cloaks, or ‘in downright mockery’ of the same, ‘several persons
have presumed to wear mantle-cloaks (albeit more expensive than the cloaks
formerly worn) at burials and other occasions upon the death of their
relations.’ ‘Also several persons have lately run to that height of
extravagancy, as to cause cover the coffins of persons to be buried with
fine black cloth and fringes.’ Others, since the passing of the act, ‘have
presumed to make penny-weddings, where great confluence of our subjects
have resorted, which is a most extravagant expense to our lieges.’
The public was now therefore
forbidden by regular proclamation to wear the prohibited stuffs in any
manner of way. Tailors were discharged from making or setting out, and
gentlemen from wearing, the long black mantle-coats. All were prohibited
from ‘making use of any coffin covered with silk cloth or fringes,’ or
which bore any ornamental metal-work. Penny-weddings were denounced in the
strongest terms. And all these prohibitions were enforced by the threat of
a full exaction of the fines specified in the act.—P. C. R.
July 22
A strong representation was made to the Privy Council against the Messrs
Fountain, who have ‘gone almost through all Scotland and charged every
person both in town and country who keeps a change, who has in their house
a pair of tables, cards, or kylles, and others of that nature for
gentlemen’s divertisement, upon pretence that they ought
not to have any such plays in their house without licence from them as
Masters of the Revels.’ It was reckoned that they had forced six thousand
people to compound with them, and had thus realised
about £16,000 sterling, ‘which is a most gross and manifest oppression.’
The lords forbade the Fountains to take any further legal steps.—P.C.R.
Aug
An instrument of torture, called the Thumbikens, was introduced
into practice by the Privy Council, as a means of extorting confessions.
This was done at the recommendation of Generals Dalyell and Drummond, who
had seen the thumbikens used in Russia. One of the first persons, if not
the first, subjected to this torture, was Mr William Spence, a servant of
the Earl of Argyle, who for some weeks had been tortured in various less
compulsory ways to make him confess what he knew of the rebellious designs
of his master. He had maintained firmness under the
boots, and
contrived to endure without flinching the torture of being kept awake for
five nights, though driven by it ‘half distracted.’ But after his thumbs
had been crushed by the thumbikens, on the boots being again presented to
him, his firmness gave way.
The thumbikens consists of a bar of iron, moving loose
upon a vertical screw, and under which, by the use of a nut moving on the
screw, provided with a handle, the thumbs of the victim can be squeezed so
as to produce the most exquisite pain.
In September of this year, Mr William Carstairs, who
had been concerned in some of the plots of the day, was tortured by the
thumbikens before the Privy Council. He bore the pain with firmness,
though not without giving vent to his agony by cries, until the Dukes of
Hamilton and Queensberry left the room, unable any longer to witness the
revolting spectacle. He was at length induced by these means, to give some
information regarding Baillie of Jerviswood and others.
After the Revolution, this remarkable man became, as is
well known, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and the confidential
adviser of King William regarding the affairs of Scotland; he was
familiarly recognised as Cardinal Carstairs. The identical
thumbikens by which he had been tortured, was presented to him by the
Privy Council, and it was long preserved by his family. An anecdote was
handed down by his descendants
respecting the horrible little instrument. ‘I have heard,
Principal,’ said King William to him, ‘that you were tortured with
something they call thumbikens; pray, what sort of instrument of
torture is it?’ ‘I will shew it you,’ answered Carstairs, ‘the next time I
have the honour to wait upon your majesty.’ Soon after, accordingly, the
Principal brought the thumbikens to be shewn to the king. ‘I must try it,’
said the king; ‘I must put in my thumbs here—now, Principal, turn the
screw. O not so gently—another turn—another. Stop, stop! no more! Another
turn, I am afraid, would make me confess anything.’
Aug 15
Monro, the Edinburgh executioner, having beaten a beggar with
undue severity, was deprived of his post, and moreover
punished by being thrown into the Thieves’ Hole. One hears with surprise
of such an interference for humanity, amidst the atrocious cruelties to
which political and religious exasperations were provoking the government.
The vacant post was conferred on one George Ormiston, whom Fountainhall
describes as ‘a well-favoured discreet fellow.’ If we are to believe
Milne’s Account of the Parish of Melrose, 1743, this man was a member, if
not the representative, of the Ormistons of Westhouse, a family once of
some account, possessing a tower on the Tweed, near Melrose, and having
the custom of a bridge across the river at that place; ‘a memorandum to
old families not to be puffed up with pride, on account of their
antiquity, for they know not what mean offices they or theirs may be
obliged to stoop to.’
Sep 10
Colonel Graham of Claverhouse, as constable of Dundee, represented to the
Privy Council that he found several persons in prison there for petty
thefts, ‘which will be fitter to be punished arbitrarily than by death.’
In compliance with his humane suggestion, he was empowered to restrict the
treatment of these persons and any others that might hereafter commit the
like offences, ‘to ane arbitrary punishment, such as whipping or
banishment, as he shall find cause.’—P. C. R.
It will excite surprise to find the Bloody Claverse
interposing for a gentler justice in behalf of ordinary criminals—he
who coolly ordered the summary death of so many people in Clydesdale and
Galloway, for merely sentimental offences. But, while the nil admirari
is nowhere more applicable than in matters concerning human
inconsistency, it were perhaps no more than justice to one who was at
least a gallant soldier and a steadfast friend in adversity to the
sovereign who had employed him, if we remembered how amiable in private
life have been many modern statesmen noted for severity in public action.
Claverhouse was a political enthusiast, who had made up his mind to the
particular course—rather a rough one—by which the interests of his country
were to be protected and advanced; and with the help of a strong will, and
under the call of what came to him as duty, he scrupled not to walk in
that path, though by no means inhumane or harsh in the matters of ordinary
life. In a letter to the Earl of Aberdeen, written in June 1683, he
reveals to us his principle of action in a sentence: ‘I am,’ says he, ‘as
sorry to see a man die, even a Whig, as any of themselves; but when one
dies justly for his own faults, and may save a hundred to fall in the
like, I have no scruple.’
Oct
One Marion Purdie, dwelling at the West Port of Edinburgh, once a
milk-wife, and now a beggar, was apprehended and imprisoned as a witch.
She was accused of laying diseases and frenzies upon her neighbours. The
king’s advocate was now giving little heed to such cases, and so poor
Marion ‘dies of cold and poverty in prison about the Christmas.’—Foun.
It is remarked at this time that Colonel Douglas was
training and exercising his regiment with extreme diligence. He studied to
get his men all of one height, and would allow none to keep their beards
long or have had cravats or cravat-strings, being anxious that they should
all look young and brisk. When they were deficient in these articles, he
bought them new ones with their pay. He also ‘caused them all tie their
hair back with a ribbon, so it cannot blow in their eyes when they visy at
their firing.’ (Can this have been the origin of tied hair?) A more
important regulation still of this commander—’ He discharges any of
their officers to keep cellars, whereby they made their soldiers waste
their pay in drinking.’—Foun.
A tempest which took place at the end of this month,
accompanied both by snow and thunder, caused the throwing ashore of ‘a new
kind of fish like a mackerel or herring, but with a long snout like a
snipe’s beak. Dr Sibbald says it is the Acus marinus, the Sea
Needle, described by him in his Naturalis Historia. They have been
seen before, but are not frequent, and therefore are looked upon by the
vulgar as ominous.’ —Foun.
When Charles II. died three months after, Fountainhall
remarked there having been few or no prognostics of the event, ‘unless we
recur to the comet, which is remote, or to the strange fishes mentioned
above, or the vision of blue bonnets . . . . in
none of which is there anything for a rational man to fix his belief
upon.’
By an act of the second parliament of Charles II.,
fines were appointed for all who withdrew themselves from the regular
parish churches; but as, because of the law which gives the husband
exclusive power over the goods held by him and his wife in communion, it
was impossible to exact any fine for the delinquency of a married woman,
it had become necessary to make the husband answerable when his wife
offended. Under this arrangement, some ladies of rank, addicted to
attending conventicles, had brought no small trouble upon their partners.
The Council, at length feeling it was a hard law where the husband was a
conformist, requested power from the king to remit the fines in such
cases. Soon after the following case occurred.
Dec 4
David Balcanquel of that Ilk, having been, in virtue of the act, amerced
in three years of his valued rent or fifteen hundred pounds, ‘upon the
account of his wife not keeping the church,’ represented the matter very
pathetically to the Privy Council, setting forth how he himself had always
kept his parish church, and, ‘notwithstanding the distractions and
disorders that have been in the country where he lives [Fife], has always
demeaned himself as ane dutiful and loyal subject.’ The Council took the
case into favourable consideration, and, ‘seeing it never was the
intention of his majesty that his weel-affected subjects should be ruined
by the mad and wilful opinions of phanatick wives, without any
fault of their own ‘—seeing, moreover, that Balcanquel protested ‘it is
not in his power to persuade his wife to go to church, notwithstanding
of all the endeavours he has used for that effect, and he is willing to
deliver her up to the Council to be disposed of at their pleasure
‘—they agreed to discharge his fine, taking him only bound ‘to deliver up
his wife to justice whenever required.’—P. C. R.
It was not always as in this case in regard to
conventicle troubles. Wodrow had heard the following converse case ‘very
wee! attested:' About the time of the Circuit Court in 1685, there was an
honest man in the parish of Baldernock, who was sore bested with a
graceless and imperious wife, a hater of alk seriousness. When he
performed family worship, she interrupted him; when he went to a
conventicle, she cursed him; and when he came home, she threw stools at
him. Scarce durst the poor man return from these meetings without a few
neighbours to protect him from his wife’s violence. Being denounced and
cited to the court at Glasgow, he failed to appear; but she came
forward, and, on his name being called, cried out: ‘My lords, it’s all
true—he is a rebel; there is not a conventicle in all the country but he
is at it. He deserves to be hanged. Hang him, my lords!’ The lords asked
who she was, and on being told, and hearing her go on further in the same
strain, they ordered the man to be scored out of the roll, saying: ‘That
poor fellow suffers enough already from such a wife!’
Dec
Amongst those now suffering under the severities of government, there was
no one more remarkable than Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, a Berwickshire
gentleman of large fortune, of vigorous character, and great zeal as a
Presbyterian and Whig. Though only recognised by the government as ‘a
factious person,’ he had been several times rather severely handled. Being
now under suspicion of a concern in the Rye-house plot, he was denounced
on the 13th of November as guilty of treason, and obliged to go out of the
way. The harshness with which his friend Robert Baillie of Jerviswood was
treated, was sufficient to shew that the more closely he concealed himself
the better.
Polwarth, ‘who was a man of forty-three years of age,
had a wife and ten children, all young, residing at his house of Redbraes
in the Merse. Patrick, the eldest son, was taken up and put in prison; and
on the 26th of December, there was a petition from him to the Privy
Council, setting forth the piteous condition of the family now deprived of
their father and threatened with the loss of their estate. He was but ‘a
poor afflicted young boy,’ he said, who could do no harm to the state; he,
moreover, cherished loyal principles and a hatred of plots. All he craved
was liberty, that he might ‘see to some livelihood for himself,’ and ‘be
in some condition to help and serve his disconsolate mother and the rest
of his father’s ten starving children.’ The boon was granted grudgingly,
the young man being obliged first to obtain security for his
good-behaviour to the extent of two thousand pounds sterling.—P. C. R.
The first concealment of Sir Patrick was the family
burial vault, under the east end of the parish church of Polwarth, a place
where he had no fire, and only during the day light from an open slit in
the wall. With the comfort of a bed and bedclothes, he endured life in
this singular Patmos for a whole winter month, supplied nightly with food
by his daughter Grizzel, and having no sort of entertainment to beguile
the tedium of the day but his own reflections, and the repetition of
Buchanan’s Psalms, which had long been charged on his memory. Each night,
the young Grizzel came with a packet of provisions, and stayed with him as
long as she could, so as to get home before day. According to an
interesting family memoir, written by her daughter, Lady Murray of
Stanhope: ‘In all this time, my grandfather shewed the same constant
composure and cheerfulness of mind, that he continued to possess to his
death, which was at the age of eighty-four; all which good qualities she
inherited from him in a high degree. Often did they laugh heartily in that
doleful habitation, at different accidents that happened. She at that time
had a terror for a church-yard, especially in the dark, as is not uncommon
at her age, by idle nursery stories; but when engaged by concern for her
father, she stumbled over the graves every night alone, without fear of
any kind entering her thoughts, but for soldiers and parties in search of
him, which the least noise or motion of a leaf put her in terror for. The
minister’s house was near the church; the first night she went, his dogs
kept such a barking, as put her in the utmost fear of a discovery; my
grandmother sent for the minister the next day, and, under pretence of a
mad dog, got him to hang all his dogs. There was also difficulty of
getting victuals to carry him without the servants suspecting; the only
way it was done, was by stealing it off her plate at dinner into her lap.
Many a diverting story she has told about this, and other things of a like
nature. Her father liked sheep’s head, and while the children were eating
their broth, she had conveyed most of one into her lap; when her brother
Sandy (the late Lord Marchmont) had done, he looked up with astonishment,
and said: "Mother, will ye look at Grizzel; while we have been eating our
broth, she has ate up the whole sheep’s head." This occasioned so much
mirth among them, that her father at night was greatly entertained by it,
and desired Sandy might have a share in the next. As the gloomy habitation
my grandfather was in, was not to be long endured but from necessity, they
were contriving other places of safety for him; amongst others,
particularly one under a bed which drew out, in a ground-floor, in a room
of which my mother kept the key. She and the same man worked in the night,
making a hole in the earth, after lifting the boards, which they did by
scratching it up with their hands, not to make any noise till she had left
not a nail upon her fingers; she helping the man to carry the earth as
they dug it, in a sheet on his back out at the window into the garden; he
then made a box at his own house, large enough for her father to lie in,
with bed and bed-clothes, and bored holes in the boards for air. When all
this was finished, for it was long about, she thought herself the most
secure happy creature alive. When it had stood the trial for a month of no
water coming into it, which was feared from being so low, and every day
examined by my mother, and the holes for air made clear, and kept clean
picked, her father ventured home, having that to trust to. After being at
home a week or two, the bed daily examined as usual, one day, in lifting
the boards, the bed bounced to the top, the box being full of water; in
her life she was never so struck, and had near dropt down, it, being at
that time their only refuge. Her father, with great composure, said to his
wife and her, he saw they must tempt providence no longer, and that it was
now fit and necessary for him to go off, and leave them; in which he was
confirmed, by the carrier telling for news he had brought from Edinburgh,
that the day before, Mr Baillie of Jerviswood had his life taken from him
at the Cross, and that everybody was sorry, though they durat not shew it.
As all intercourse by letters was dangerous, it was the first notice they
had of it, and the more shocking, that it was not expected. They
immediately set about preparing for my grandfather’s going away. My mother
worked night and day in making some alterations in his clothes for
disguise; they were then obliged to trust John Allan, their grieve, who
fainted away when he was told his master was in the house, and that he was
to set out with him on horseback before day, and, pretend to the rest of
the servants that he had orders to sell some horses at Morpeth fair.
Accordingly, my grandfather getting out at a window to the stables, they
set out in the dark. Though, with good reason, it was a sorrowful parting,
yet after he was fairly gone, they rejoiced, and thought themselves happy
that he was in a way of being safe, though they were deprived of him, and
little knew what was to be either his fate or their own.
‘My grandfather, whose thoughts were much employed, and
went on as his horse carried him, without thinking of his way, found
himself at Tweedside, out of his road, and at a place not fordable, and no
servant. After pausing, and stopping a good while, he found means to get
over, and get into the road on the other side, where, after some time, he
met his servant, who shewed inexpressible joy at meeting him, and told
him, as he rode first, he thought he was always following him, till upon a
great noise of the galloping of horses, he looked about and missed him;
this was a party sent to his house to take him up, where they searched
very narrowly, and possibly hearing horses were gone from the house,
suspected the truth and followed. They examined this man, who, to his
great joy and astonishment, missed his master, and was too cunning for
them, that they were gone back before my grandfather came up with him. He
immediately quitted the high road, after a warning by so miraculous an
escape, and in two days sent back his servant, which was the first notice
they had at home of his not having fallen into their hands.’
Sir Patrick escaped to Holland, whence he returned with
the Prince of Orange to take a high place in the councils of his country
under a happier régime.
We have seen many instances of Catholics deprived,
under acts of parliament, of the privilege of educating their own
children. This statutory power was now applied by the government to
gentlefolk of what were called fanatical principles. The Lady Colville was
imprisoned in the Edinburgh Tolbooth for her irregularities of religious
practice, and particularly for ‘breeding up her son Lord Colville in
fanaticism and other disloyal principles’—Foun. Dec.
1685, Jan
‘One James Cathcart, a pretended mathematician and astrologer, emitted a
printed paper at Edinburgh, inviting any to come to him, and get
resolutions of any difficult questions they had to ask, such as anent
their death, their marriage, what husbands or wives they would get, and if
they would prosper and succeed in such projects of love, or journeys, &c.;
as also professed skill to cure diseases. This was a great impudence in a
Christian commonwealth to avow such an art; for if he had it by magic,
then he was a sorcerer; if not, he was an impostor and abuser of the
people, which even is death.... In his paper, he cited some texts of
Scripture, allowing an influence to the stars.’-—-Foun.
Mons Meg |
