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WITH the epoch of the Reformation,
the old history of Tain, properly so called, comes to an end, and a wholly
new era of her history begins—an era to which that great religious
revolution affords a key as important as does her connection with St
Duthach to that which we have already considered. The two periods have
certain elements in common, and yet differ greatly. Common to both is a
predominantly religious character, without which our town's history would
have little either to interest strangers or to stir enthusiasm in her own
children; there being hardly an event worthy of note, in either portion of
it, that was not connected, directly or indirectly, with religion. The
religion of the older period was, however, largely external and
superstitious; that of the later was more spiritual and pure. The older
history, fragmentary though our knowledge of it is, has an almost epical
unity, and, therewith, a certain romantic as it does now, as a pretty
little town. Its situation, and the grouping of its principal buildings
into a. cluster in the centre, must even then have given it a picturesque
appearance. The Church of St Duthus was there in its original beauty;
there, I suppose, was also the old "steeple," not the same as that which
now forms so striking a feature of the place, nor even occupying exactly
the site of the present tower, but standing within the churchyard, being
properly, indeed, the bell-tower of the church, though a detached
building, and its style, we may presume, being in keeping with the church,
and, therefore, at least as imposing as its more modern successor. A
castle, the residence of the heritable or royal bailie, stood a little to
the east, on what is still known as the Castle Brae. The old chapel, where
St Duthach had been born, was to be seen below the town, roofless, but its
walls in a less ruinous state than now.
As to its social condition, Tain
was at that time a little capital to the whole country around; for men
were attracted to it by secular and religious motives; combined. At least
three times a year, crowds flocked to the great religious festivals held
in St Duthus' Church; and as is still very commonly the case in Roman
Catholic towns on the Continent, occasion was taken immediately after to
hold fairs or markets in the churchyard (thus under the shadow of the
Church's protection), and from the churchyard extending into the High
Street of the town. To these fairs, country people carried the produce of
their farms and their rude home-manufactures for sale, in
callachi.e8little carts, with railed sides and solid wheels (such as some
of us remember to have often seen loaded with peats from Edderton), in
which likewise they carried home their purchases. Dealers came also from
the far- south with all sorts of goods, and the fairs were in many ways so
important and enjoyable that the neighbouring proprietors and their
families liked to attend them: perhaps even the pilgrim kings may, when
visiting St Duthus, have sometimes waited to be present at them.
The people of the town were
doubtless very similar to what they are now; for the race is the same, and
human nature does not change. There were the two languages as at present;
only that Gaelic was then much more prevalent.
On these festive occasions there
would be much hospitality, kindness, and fun; so liable, however, to be
interrupted by brawls, that the Magistrates. always appointed a
market-guard, under the command of a captain, to keep the peace. One such
brawl is. recorded to have taken place in 1583, which had a fatal
termination. Captain James Ross, "brother's, son to the Laird of Achlossin,
and Patrick Yvat with him, were slain in the chalmer of Andrew Ross, in
Tam, at 8 hours afore noon or thereby, by Nicolas Ross and Walter Ross,
with their complices;" and it may give an idea of the state of public
justice :at this time, when I mention that Nicolas Ross escaped the penal
consequences of the homicide, not in virtue of a trial and acquittal, but
of a Royal remission exempting him from trial; the remission being granted
him ten years after the fact, probably for .a pecuniary payment; but also
through family influence—for the deed of remission expressly designates
him brother of the Laird of Invercarron. The shedding of human blood went
for little in those days; and .only as a more spiritual religion gradually
leavened .the population, did human life come to be estimated as above all
money price.
The external religion of those
times was doubtless imposing. St Duthus' Church, on festal occasions,
would shine resplendent with gold and silver—both -of the vessels used in
the ceremonies, and of the relic cases and other costly gifts of wealthy
devotees. The priests would be seen moving about in gorgeous vestments,
celebrating the mass for the supposed benefit of the souls of those who
had endowed the Church, as well as for the worshippers present, and :a
band of white-robed choristers sang matins and vespers daily for the same
objects. We can imagine the influence which all this pretentious worship
would have on many minds; but we also know how unsatisfactory it would be
to those who were taught by the Spirit of God to hunger and thirst after
righteousness. Of these latter, there would seem to have been at this time
not a few; and to such the doctrine of Divine grace, through the blood of
Christ, and by regeneration of the Holy Ghost,. as preached by the
Reformers, would be as cold waters to a thirsty soul. The oaken pulpit,
which was presented by the Good Regent Moray, the friend of John Knox, to
the people of Tain, "for their zeal in the cause of the Reformation," and
which, as now restored, adorns the .old church, is the standing monument
of the religious feeling of our town at this important epoch.
I have already hinted at some of
the influences that probably led to this state of feeling. The first was
the martyrdom of Patrick Hamilton. The "reek" .of that martyrdom, wherever
else it may have been carried, must have been quickly borne to his own
Monastery of Fearn, and to Tain in its close neighbourhood. It can hardly
have been an accidental .coincidence that within seventeen years, if not
sooner, Nicolas Ross, Hamilton's second successor in the Abbacy of Fearn,
and at the same time Provost of the Collegiate Church of St Duthach,
openly professed the Reformed faith. We know too little of the private
history of this man to be able to determine what was the measure of his
religious influence—how far he led the Reforming movement here, or was
himself led by it. His early life, like that of many Romish dignitaries of
those days, had been by no means exemplary, as is proved by his
application for Royal "letters of legitimation" in behalf of three
illegitimate sons, when purchasing from Balnagown the estate of Easter and
Wester Gany (Geanies), to settle upon them. But as, in addition to his
early profession of Protestantism, we know that in the Parliament of 156()
(in which, as Abbot of Fearn, he had a seat), he voted for the
Reformation, we cannot doubt that his local influence also was now exerted
in the same direction. Whether he himself preached, we do not know; but
his authority, as the great man of the town and district, must have been
great; and out of the revenues which had been his as Provost of St Duthus,
the Protestant ministers of Tain were afterwards. supported. I am
disposed, therefore, to assign him the honourable place of one of the
effective promoters of the Reformation in the North.
The external change which took
place in Tam through the Reformation must have been a very great one. The
collegiate establishment of St Duthus was abolished; its splendid
ceremonial ceased, the daily singing of its choir was no longer heard, nor
were processions of its priests seen any more. Probably also the building
was dismantled; and in various ways a. blank must have been made in the
popular life. What was there to fill the blank? The Word of God; and this,
to those who received it, was everything. A copy of the Bible, strongly
bound in oak, was, says tradition, at this time chained to the
reading-desk in the church, and read aloud daily by a reader specially
appointed, at the hour when people came from the country to do business in
the town. Occasionally there would be visits from George Munro, the
Superintendent and Commissioner for the Plantation of Churches in the
North, who is said to have been an able preacher and very pious man. The
first regular minister of Tam (he had charge also of Edderton, Tarbat, and
Nigg) was named Finlay Manson.
The leaven of spiritual truth
which was now introduced among our ancestors had to work its way, of
course, against many obstacles; and a proportion of the people—we cannot
say, what proportion—doubtless clung long to their old beliefs and habits.
It will not surprise us, therefore, to find remnants of the Romish worship
and of its superstitious practices surviving in some quarters for a
considerable time. The pilgrimages, for example, did not cease
instantaneously—not, indeed, completely for two hundred years. I have it
on good traditional authority that down even to the latter half of last
century, persons were sometimes seen paying religious visits to the old
ruined chapel below the town. Still grosser superstitions survived here
and there, and perhaps in some minds gained even additional force.
Persons, for example, who bad sought the healing of disease or other
benefits from St Duthach's relics, now that they were deprived of these,
were fain to fall back, if they had no higher faith, on witchcraft as
their only resource. Witchcraft and charms were at this time much resorted
to, the belief in, them having come down through the ages as a survival
from old Paganism. The corrupted Christianity of the Middle Ages had
neither destroyed, nor done much to weaken these superstitions; had,
indeed, rather fostered the feelings on which they lived, by setting up
what were virtually rival charms or fetiches of its own, in the guise of
crosses, holy water, relics of the saints, priestly masses, and the like.
The doctrine of the Reformation, by bringing men into conscious, direct
relation with God—the one God of grace, providence, and nature—sapped the
Pagan and the Romish superstitions at their foundation; but time was
needed for this better influence to produce its full effect on men's daily
life, for superstition often survives as a feeling and a practice after
men have become ashamed to avow it as a belief. We know that it has by no
means wholly died out even yet, and in those days it was prevalent in all
ranks of society, in every part of Scotland and of Europe. We shall not
wonder, therefore, to find that it existed in this town and neighbourhood.
Curiously, there have been handed down to us the name, and even nickname,
of a Tain witch of those days—her name, Marjory M'Alister—her nickname,
Loskie Loutart; and the name of a Tain wizard, William M'Gillivray, and
his. nickname, Dame. f Both the witch and the wizard were involved in a
charge of magic and attempted murder by poisoning, said to have been
practised by them at the instigation of Catharine Ross, Lady Foiilis,
second wife of Robert Mor Munro, that first Protestant Baron of Foulis
whom I have already mentioned as taking a prominent part in the
Reformation, and as exercising a high influence in promoting it in Easter
Ross. Marjory M'Alister was said to have made for this lady an image of
clay, to be set up and shot at with elf arrows, the object being to cause
the person whom the image represented (the lady's stepson, her husband's
heir), to pine away and die. William M'Gillivray was sentenced to be burnt
for having sold to the lady a "box of witchcraft," that is, of poison, for
the same end. The woman M'Alister was not similarly dealt with; probably
because a distinction was made between witchcraft that took the effective
form of the administration of poison, and that which confined itself to
the fanciful method of shooting at a clay image. A son, also, of the same
distinguished family was said to have employed a witch to cure him of a
fever, which she pretended to do by having him carried out in a blanket in
a frosty night in January, and laid down in a new-made grave at the
boundary between two baronies, thus to transfer his fever to a
step-brother, who should die instead of him. Both the lady and the son
were subjected to a form of trial before the High Court of Justiciary on
these charges; but were acquitted, as was certain to be the case from the
composition of the juries, who, in both trials, consisted mostly of
clansmen of their own, Rosses and Munroes, many of these being burgesses
of Tam. If, notwithstanding the acquittals so obtained, anyone still
believes the accusations to have been founded in truth, he will only have
an illustration of the frequently remarked fact that good and truly
Christian men may be sorely tried by misconduct in their own families; for
it is satisfactory to be able to say that no taint of suspicion ever fell
on the good Baron himself, but that, on the 'contrary, the actors in the
matter showed the utmost anxiety to prevent their dealings with witches
from coming to his ears.
Tain had received the immunities
of a free trading town from its founder, Malcolm Canmore. It seems to have
had Magistrates called Bailies from a very early date; but I cannot find
that there was any Provost of the Burgh, called by that title, before the
Reformation. The oldest Bailie would be virtually Provost; but the title
seems to have belonged exclusively to the ecclesiastical head of St Duthus,
who was really invested with some civil rights, among which was that of
receiving legal fines when inflicted on delinquents by the heritable
Bailie in name of the King. The ecclesiastical Provost's civil rights
probably ceased with the disestablishment of Popery; and we therefore find
Provost Nicolas Ross, six years after the Reformation, entering into a
singular contract with the heritable Bailie, Innes of The Plaids, by which
the Bailie bound himself to hold courts, as formerly, whenever he should
be required by the Provost so to do, and to pay over to the Provost
two-thirds of all the fines that should be imposed. This was a curious
agreement; the state of public justice which it indicates cannot have been
satisfactory. By what process the title of Provost passed over to the
chief civil magistrate, and when and how the local courts were placed on a
more satisfactory basis, has not been ascertained. The oldest extant
charter of the burgh, a charter of confirmation and novodamus, granted by
King James VI. in the year 1587, pre-supposes the existence of all the
regular burgh authorities, ratifying, but not creating, their powers.
We now approach a period when Tain
was again to assume prominence in Scottish ecclesiastical affairs. Amongst
the endowments of St Duthus' Church had been a number of chaplainries, so
called; that is to say, of annuities presented to priests, who were bound
in return to say masses for the souls of the donors. After the
Reformation, these chaplainries were, in partial carrying out of Knox's
enlightened scheme of education, usually granted as bursaries to young
men, to enable them to study at the University. No better use for them
could have been found. The application of one of them is specially
interesting to us. The chaplainry of Newmore in St Duthus' Church was held
for several years by a student named John Munro, nephew of that first
Protestant Baron of Foulis of whom I have already spoken. This John Munro,
before the end of the century, became minister of Tam. He was also called
Sub-Dean of Ross; this title being probably an accompaniment of a mere
civil right to the emoluments of an office that had once existed in the
Romish Church, but was now abolished. He was no cypher in his ministry: in
the faithful execution of it he came into collision with the King himself.
When James VI. succeeded in the year 1603 to the throne of England, he
formed a scheme to effect a complete union between his two Kingdoms and
their two Churches. But he neither conceived this object aright, nor
pursued it in a right way; for he attempted to force the Church of the
smaller nation into conformity with that of the larger, and in order to
this, set himself deliberately to oppress the consciences of her most
devoted children. Lest the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
should thwart his scheme, he interdicted its meeting; thereby violating
two principles at once— the religions principle of the Church's obligation
and consequent right to meet in name of her Divine Head, whether in
congregations or in General Assembly, for the performance of every duty
which He has imposed on her; and the constitutional principle of the
King's incompetency to forbid the meeting of a General Assembly which had
been summoned in strict accordance with the laws of the kingdom, as
ratified by himself. Doubtless these principles, in their practical
application, involved difficulties which may have perplexed even honest
and enlightened men, or may have made them think the time inopportune for
the practical assertion of them: the more remarkable, therefore, was the
decision and courage .of the few Presbyteries—that of Tain was one of them
—which deputed representatives to the interdicted Assembly; and of the
nineteen ministers—one of them the celebrated John Welsh (John Knox's
son-in- law), of Ayr in the far South; another, John Munro, of Tain in the
far North; who, in spite of the interdict and of tempestuous weather,
actually met at Aberdeen, and constituted the Assembly in the name of
Christ. John Munro was one of three who were put in nomination for the
Moderatorship of this Assembly. The King, calling it a seditious Assembly,
summoned its leading members to appear before his Privy Council to answer
for their conduct. Of the seventeen who appeared, ten, in submission to
the Council, declared themselves to be now persuaded that the Aberdeen
Assembly was "altogether unlawful;" but the remaining seven—one of them "Mr
John Munro Sub-Dean of Ross," confessed and maintained, in presence of the
said Lords, that the said Assembly was "a verie lawful General Assembly."
The Privy Council banished these seven faithful men to the wildest parts
of Scotland - each to the farthest possible distance from his own parish.
The minister of Tain was sentenced to be banished to Kintyre, the,
remotest part of Argyleshire, and was meanwhile imprisoned in the Castle
of Doune in Perthshire. From the prison he and a brother minister
contrived to effect their escape. In visiting the Castle some years ago,
with my interest all awake from my recollection of this history, I
wondered greatly if it had been possible for them to escape from within
those lofty and massive walls. The explanation is that the constable of
the Castle. (whose sympathies must have 'been on their side) afforded them
almost every liberty of holding intercourse with friends, both while
confined in the Castle, and while being removed to their places of
banishment; for which practical sympathy he himself was subsequently
imprisoned. Mr John Munro, making his way home to Tam, resumed his regular
ministrations among his people. But the stipend which had formerly been
paid him through the Crown authorities was now withheld, and must have
been made up to him, if made up at all, by the pure affection of his
people. Thus matters continued for three or four years, during which the
King succeeded in putting down all effectual resistance to his will in the
Church of Scotland; and the General Assembly, while its most faithful men
were silenced or absent, acquiesced in his proposals. But he could not
brook the continued opposition, however powerless, even of a few
ministers, and he directed his Scottish Privy Council to take steps to
compel their submission. :The Council accordingly addressed the following
letter to the Provost and Bailies of Tain:-
We can conceive the sensation which
the arrival of this letter must have created in the town; but our precise
information as to the course of these events ends here, there being no
extant burgh, parochial, or presbytery records of the period. We only know
further that, five years after this, John Munro died at Tain; but
everything we do know of his character and history, as a man who had
boldly resisted the King's invasion of the freedom of the Church, who, had
stood bravely to his principles in the presence of the Privy Council when
the majority of his brethren were succumbing, who had, moreover, resumed
and continued his ministerial labours among his people without his former
legal salary from the Crown,— everything assures us that such a man was
not likely to have been terrified by the threat, or even by the
experience, of imprisonment in his own town (where he would have the
sympathies of all the best of his people) into a violation of his
conscience, such as would be involved in submission, at the end, to the
King's usurped authority in sacred things. We would fain indeed have more
particular information of his latter days; but it is something to know of
him that he, the minister of this small northern town, was one of the few
who first lifted into prominence, and who maintained at the cost of
personal suffering and loss, the true principles of religious
freedom—principles which, after the death of these first witnesses, slept
indeed for a generation, but then revived with a power that shook the
throne of both the kingdoms.
The Magistrates of the town were
busy at this very time in procuring a second charter from King James VI.
for the more exact definition of their magisterial powers, and of the
extent of the burgh lands.
About the year 1626 much interest
was awakened in these northern parts in the great struggle of the Thirty
Years' War in Germany, and two regiments were formed, one, under the
command of Lord Reay, the chief of the Mackays, the other under Munro of
Obsdale, to fight under Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, "the Lion of
the North," for the liberties of the German Protestants, against their
Imperial and Popish enemies. Though containing soldiers from all parts of
Scotland, these regiments were chiefly 'composed of men from Easter Ross
and Sutherland—that is to say, from the district of which Tain was the
market town, and, in almost every sense, the capital; and there can be no
doubt that many of our young townsmen were among the adventurers. It is
not difficult to conceive that this close connection with the great
Continental struggle would excite among our ancestors an interest
intelligent as well as enthusiastic in the principles involved, and would
help to prepare them for the approaching struggle for the like principles
at home. We know, in fact, that a number of these soldiers of fortune
returned from abroad with something better than honour—with religious life
either first found or greatly strengthened through intercourse with
fervent Christians in the army of Gustavus. I think it not an
insignificant remark' that it was in this period, when men's minds were so
influenced here, that there was born and brought up in this town a man,
Thomas Hog, whom we shall meet hereafter as one of the best of the
Covenanting worthies of Scotland, and certainly the most renowned of them
in the North.
We pass over thirty years, crowded
with important vents in the history of our country, to find our town, in
the year 1650, in the very thick of the great national conflict. The
celebrated Marquis of Montrose, once a Covenanter, had passed to the
Royalist side, and had for some time devoted himself, with high courage
and splendid military genius, to reduce Scotland to abject submission to
the King. After various vicissitudes, he landed in Orkney with foreign
troops in 1650, and having crossed to Caithness with these and also with
troops obtained in Orkney, he marched into Sutherland by the Ord, and
after resting at Kintradwell, Rhives, Pitfour, and Lairg, crossed the Shin
and the Oykel to the Ross-shire side, and then marched down along the Kyle
until he reached Carbisdale, near the south end of the present railway
bridge. But while he halted for a few days at Carbisdale to await
reinforcements from the Royalist clans, intelligence of his movements were
carried to Edinburgh, and active preparations were .commenced there to
send a strong army northwards against him. Meanwhile, Lieutenant-Colonel
Strahan hurried in advance with a small troop of horse to Tain. On
arriving here, he was joined by about 500 foot, 300 .of these under the
command of the Earl of Sutherland (who had thought it prudent, after
garrisoning the principal places in his own county, to pass into Ross),
the rest under Ross of Balnagown and Munro of Lumlair. At a council of war
it was resolved that the Earl of' Sutherland should re-cross the firth,
and throw himself into the enemy's rear, both to protect his own county
and to prevent Montrose from being joined by men from the farther North;
whilst Strahan himself and his five troops of horse, together with
theMunroes and Rosses, under their respective leaders,, should march
through Edderton, into Kincardine, on this side of the Firth, to intercept
Montrose- before he could retire to the hills. On Saturday, the 27th of
April, whilst Strahan's officers were deliberating whether to move
immediately forward or wait till Monday, in order to avoid the necessity
of fighting upon the Lord's Day, he received the intelligence of
Montrose's advance from Strath Oykel to Carbisdale. Strahan immediately
advanced unobserved to within a few miles of Montrose's encampment, hiding
his. men amidst the broom, in order to conceal from Montrose's scouts the
fewness of his forces. The great Montrose was thoroughly deceived; and,
supposing the- few horsemen who were seen crossing the hill to be but the
first of a large body of cavalry to follow, he fled to the north-west to
avoid the expected attack, his foreign troops making for the wood, to
which they were followed by the Munroes and Rosses, who out them down in
great numbers. The tumuli which mark where they were buried may, to this
day, be seen extending for two miles in that direction, and not many years
ago dirks and other weapons, and even silver spoons, were found in turning
up the ground. Two. hundred of Montrose's troops attempted to cross the
Kyle, but, mistaking the ford, were drowned; while four hundred were taken
prisoners. The conquerors offered thanks to God in the open field for the
victory obtained, and returned to Tam, carrying the prisoners along with
them. Montrose himself, after wandering about in disguise for a time in
Sutherland, was captured by Macleod of Assynt, who kept him in his Castle
of Ardvreok, whence he was removed to Skibo Castle, thence to Brahan, and
thence to Edinburgh, where; as we all know, he was, ere long,
ignominiously executed. We could have wished, in consideration of his
heroism, however mistakenly directed, that his life could have been spared
in consistency with the safety of his country. The mob. of Edinburgh alone
must be held responsible for the circumstances of unfeeling insult that
attended his execution. We have the gratification of remembering that on
this occasion our ancestors—the men of Easter Ross—fought effectually on
what was the side both of Scottish freedom and of religion.
As to the material condition of
Easter Ross and Tain about this time, we have some curious details in -one
of the few old books of Scottish travels—a book written by Franke, an
English gentleman of Cromwell's army, who, in 1657 and '58, travelled from
Carlisle by land to Inverness, and thence (apparently by sea) to Dunrobin.
In returning, he seems to have crossed the Firth from Sutherland to
Ross-shire, and describes what he saw on landing in this strange, affected
style.* "Where are we now? On terra firma, where should we be? And this is
the town of Tayn in Ross, that equaliseth Dornoch for beautiful buildings,
and as -exemplary as any place for justice; that never use gibbet nor
halter to hang a man, but sacks all their malefactors, and so swim them to
their death." Drowning' was of old the common form of execution -of women
in Scotland; but, curiously, Franke here says —perhaps mistaking the exact
import of what he heard—that in Tain even men were so executed. In another
place he launches out in high-flown praise of the abundance and cheapness
of provisions in Ross— that is, Easter Ross). "So replenished," he says,
"is Ross with fish, as no part of Scotland can boast of;" and after
describing the abundance of other provisions, he concludes, "But what have
I to do to discourse a country where eggs are sold for twenty-four a
penny, and all other accommodations proportionable; nor ever expect to
have it cheaper when we leave these plentiful borders of Ross." He records
as a curious local belief regarding the soil of Ross (what many of us
remember to have heard in youth regarding that of Sutherland), that it had
the quality of expelling rats; and some others," he adds, as ignorant as
themselves, transport the earth of Ross into most parts of Scotland
persuading themselves that if they do but sprinkle it in the fields, it
shall force that enormous vermin, the rat, to become an exile." With
amusing seriousness, he reasons against the credibility of the belief,
saying that, though he never saw a rat here, "as for mice, so great is
their plenty that, were they a commodity, Scotland might boast of it;
and," argues our philosophical traveller, like a Darwinian born before the
time, "mice and rats are cousin-german, as everybody knows that knows
anything, and for the most part keep house together; and what difference
has happened amongst them here, as to make such a feud that the rats in
Ross should relinquish their country, and give possession wholly to the
mice, this is a mystery that I understand not" The puzzle was .not
lessened by the traveller's finding a very different state of matters at
Forres, which he declares "is famous for nothing except that infamous
vermin, the rat, because so numerous in these parts .(of Moray) that a cat
can scarcely get a living amongst them. Why," he supposes some one to ask,
"don't they send and fetch of the earth from Ross!" and he answers, "That
I know not; but this I know, that they snatched the moat off • our
trenchers, and churmed the stockings and apparel of the soldiers. I have
been told that these vermin politicians storm the town once or twice
a-year, to the terrifying amazement of all the inhabitants: and that eats
durst not be seen abroad."
From the turgid sentences of this
pedantic traveller we turn to the burgh records of the period in search of
some indubitable facts regarding the town. The oldest extant of these
records begins in 1660, the year of the restoration of Charles II., and
three years after Franke's visit. Unfortunately, it is much mutilated, in
many places quite illegible, and the legible portion of it contains not
much that is specially interesting. We learn from it that a burgess was
regularly elected to represent the burgh in Parliament, that meetings of
Town Council were regularly held for ordinary business, as were burgh
courts, at which there was transacted a good deal of legal business—almost
as much as there is now at ordinary sheriff courts. The Town Council made
some attempts, as unwise as similar ones found in the history of other
burghs, to regulate the market price of goods in the town. But we find one
interference with free trade which had probably a wiser reason. This was
the imposition by the Magistrates of a high tax on bent-grass turf—a tax
so high that it was apparently meant to be prohibitory. One cannot help
wishing that the tax had been imposed earlier and had proved more
successful; for before the end of the century, if tradition speaks
correctly, the downs of the Morrichmor had been so exposed by turf-cutting
that the .storni of a single night drifted their sand over the Fendom, and
destroyed the previously fertile farms belonging to the burgh and other
proprietors of the locality.
It was a dismal and yet glorious
period for Scotland that had opened with the Restoration—a period 'of more
widespread and longer-continued oppression of conscience, but a period
also of more numerous instances of heroic sacrifice of all things worldly
and of life itself for conscience sake, than our land has ever -witnessed
before or since. The old attempt was renewed to force the Church of
Scotland into conformity with that of England, against the convictions of
the people; :and, as is well known, 400 ministers were ejected from their
parishes for refusing compliance. Mr Andrew Ross, the minister of Tam, was
one of the ejected; but as he died very soon after, we know less of him
than we do of three of his brother ministers within the Synod of Ross who
were similarly treated, viz.—Mr Thomas Ross, minister of Kincardine, a
remarkably pious man, who suffered imprisonment for years in the tolbooth
of Tam, where he was frequently visited by persons from far and near
desiring spiritual counsel :and help; Mr M'Killigan, of Alness, a
similarly devoted man; and, most eminent of them all, Mr Thomas Hog, of
Killearn. He, as I have already mentioned, was a native of this town. He
was a man of the most fervent piety and deepest Christian experience,
whose character was not only thoroughly consistent before men, but who,
living very near to God, was proportionally blessed in his ministerial
labours. When ejected from his parish, he wandered about preaching the
Gospel with great success, especially in Morayshire. For an outed minister
to do, this was then a high crime, and on complaint being made by some of
the conforming ministers of the district where he preached, he was
intercommuned that is to say, all men were prohibited, on pain of fine or
other punishment, from receiving him into their houses, or furnishing him
with the necessaries of life. He was several times imprisoned, and finally
banished from Scotland. Holland was at that time the refuge for Scottish
exiles; there he resided for several years, and so won the esteem of the
Prince of Orange that he when expecting to be called to the British throne
consulted him on Scottish affairs. At the Revolution Mr Hog was restored
to his parish, to form, with a few surviving brethren, the nucleus of the
restored Presbyterian and Evangelical Church of the Northern Highlands.
Hardly, however, had he been resettled among his people when the Prince of
Orange, who was now King William III. of Great Britain, urged his. removal
to London as one of his private chaplains; but health and strength had by
this time failed, and his spirit, which his friends had for some time seen
to be "transported with the hope of glory," was called away into the
presence of his Lord and Saviour before the summons of his earthly King
could take effect. The reverence felt for him by his Christian friends
found expression after his death in the title of "that great and almost
apostolical servant of Christ," and even his most unscrupulous enemies,
while diligently seeking to find something wherewith to blacken his
memory, "could find no fault in him at all, except as touching the law of
his God." It becomes the people of Tain to cherish his memory, as one of
the best and greatest men whom this town, or Ross-shire, has produced.
We ask with interest, What were the
feelings of the people of Tain duing the twenty-eight "black years of
persecution under Charles II. and James VII. 7 We have only a few data for
answering this question. The burgh records of the period are absolutely
silent on the subject: but this very silence may be considered expressive;
the apparent care that is taken to avoid all allusion to national events,
suggesting the idea that the Town Councillors considered it dangerous to
write down the thoughts that were in their hearts. We know that Mr Robert
Rots was settled as the Episcopal incumbent in the year 1666, and
continued in his office for thirty-four years. Yet, not only has his name
absolutely perished out of the oral traditions of the district (in
contrast with the Presbyterian ministers who followed him, whose names and
even characters have all been affectionately handed down), but the burgh
records during his incumbency are almost equally silent regarding him; the
solitary mention of his name being on occasion of a complaint made by him
to the Town Council in a dispute he had about peats with the proprietor of
Tarlogie, on the merits of which dispute the Town Council gavp no opinion,
but appointed a committee to try to settle it. Another negative indication
of the state of feeling may be found in the following circumstance. Tain
received a visit from the Bishop of Ross in the year 1665, and the Town
Council presented him with the freedom of the burgh on the occasion. But
the meeting of Council at which this was done consisted of a bare quorum,
viz., the Provost (who was a neighbouring laird), and two Bailies;
whereas, at the immediately preceding and immediately following meetings,
there was a full attendance of the members —the marked contrast leading us
to suspect that most of them had no desire to meet the Bishop, and that
there was little heart in the compliment paid him. Indeed, when we read a
letter which was written this very year by Archbishop Sharp to Lord Tarbat,
urging, in a characteristically selfish and violent manner, the adoption
of more stringent measures against the outed ministers of Ross-shire and
their followers, we conclude that the Bishops and the Government did not
obtain cordial support even from the proprietors of Ross-shire. Munro of
Foulis and Ross of Balnagown both zealously assisted the outed ministers.
In the parish of Tain also, one proprietor at least, M'Culloch of The
Plaids, was fined for practical sympathy with them. The opposition offered
here to the oppressive measures of the Government did not generally,
however, take such an active form as in some parts of the South.
On the re-establishment of
Presbyterianism at the Revolution, Mr Robert Ross, the Episcopal incumbent
of Tam, professed his willingness to conform to the Presbyterian
government of the Church; but the Presbytery of Ross did not trust him
sufficiently to admit him to sit in Presbytery with them. He held his
incumbency, however, until 1700, when he was charged by the Presbytery
with "errors, gross scandal, and supine negligence," and on his refusal in
the circumstances to plead before that court, was summarily deposed. The
Magistrates at first joined in a petition to the Privy Council on his
behalf, their motive being, probably, one of mere compassion; for when the
case was reviewed by a special Commission of the General Assembly, and the
Presbytery's sentence set aside in form as irregular, but confirmed in
substance by the re-deposition of Mr Ross, the very same Magistrates took
an active part in prosecuting a call to the young Presbyterian minister of
Tarbat, Mr Hugh Munro, to be minister of Tain.
This Mr Munro seems to have been
both a good and able man; and the Presbytery evidently attached importance
to his translation to Tam, which took place in the year 1700, much to the
displeasure of the people of Tarbat, who strenuously resisted the
proceedings, taking occasion at the Presbytery to tax the Magistrates of
Tain to their face with their recent support of the deposed curate. There
is a curious tradition which affirms that the translation had to be
carried out by downright physical force. A party from Tam, it is said,
went out to Tarbat on the Sabbath day, and, actually taking the minister
out of the pulpit, carried him in triumph to Tam, where they placed him in
the Regent Moray's pulpit, to preach the sermon be was to have preached in
Tarbat. I give the story as I have again and again heard it from
intelligent persons.
Now that we have got into the
eighteenth century, let me gather a few incidents of various kinds, that
may afford us glimpses of Tain and its people. In the year 1703, the
steeple of the tolbooth was blown down during a stormy night, "to the
great hazard of the lives of the prisoners, and considerable damage to the
contiguous church." On the petition of the Magistrates, pleading the
poverty of the town, the Privy Council ordained a collection to be made
throughout the country for the reconstruction of the building; ,creditors
being enjoined meanwhile to transport their prisoners to other jails. The
General Assembly accordingly appointed a Sabbath for the collection, and
the people of Tain voluntarily assessed themselves for the same purpose.
Whether the new tower, which forms one of the most distinguishing features
of our town, is after the pattern of its predecessor, we know not. But it
is remarkable that there is an old tower, called the Eschenheim Tower, at
Frankfort in Germany, so very like it, that one of the two must apparently
have been copied from the other.
I have already spoken of the long
prevalent belief in witchcraft. For more than 200 years the belief in this
superstition was productive of terrible misery to many suspected persons
throughout Europe, generally poor old women, who were subjected to the
most barbarous treatment, and finally burnt, on evidence that would be
ridiculous in its insufficiency, were not the consequences to the wretched
creatures so horrible. The Popish Church began these cruelties; and they
were continued for a considerable time even in Protestant countries;
though undoubtedly evangelical principles, thoroughly applied, would have
relieved men of those unreasoning fears of the Evil One which prompted the
cruelties. I am happyto be able to show how one evangelical Presbytery,
that of Tam, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, dealt with
accusations of witchcraft. In 1713, a man in Kincardine became possessed
with the idea that a woman there frequently dragged him out of his bed, to
hunt him with cats, dogs, and other wild creatures, while at the same time
depriving him of the power of speech to make known his sufferings; and he
employed three men to administer an oath of purgation to the woman,
imprecating all the curses of the Bible upon herself if she used any
practices or bore any malice against him. Other persons, who had lost
cattle, or other property, laid these evils to the charge of neighbours
whom they suspected of malice against them, and of witchcraft; and they
forced all these suspected neighbours, by public citation given them on
the Lord's Day, to meet together, and take a similar oath of purgation.
The Presbytery declared this practice to be a horrid profanation of the
Lord's most holy name, an acknowledgment of the Devil in afflictions which
should be taken from the Lord's hand, and a cherishing of heathenish
superstition ;and entreated all their people, in the fear of the Lord not
only to refrain from such practices, but to bear testimony against them in
their several stations. A man in Portmahomack was charged with having, by
advice of a woman there, struck a stroke with an axe on the face of the
couple-tree as soon as his father expired, in order to prevent the
spreading of the disease in his family. The Presbytery simply advised the
session publicly to rebuke the parties. During the reign of James VI., or
even of Charles IL, the suspected persons would probably have been
tortured into confessing themselves to be in league with Satan and then
burnt.
As the people of Tain had shown
themselves in the sixteenth century zealous for the Reformation; and in
the seventeenth for the freedom of the Church and its government; so now
in the eighteenth we find the local feeling decidedly in favour of the
Revolution Settlement, and of the Orange and Hanoverian Governments. This
feeling drew them into much friendly intercourse with the Protestant,
Presbyterian heads of the two clans in the immediate neighbourhood, Ross
of Balnagown, and Munro of Foulis, and with the still more powerful Earl
of Sutherland. General Ross of Balnagown was chosen Provost of the burgh
in the year 1716—Lord Provost he is always styled in the records; and the
Magistrates placed his arms upon the steeple; and he, on his side,
"complimented the town with 100 stand of arms." In 1715, the Town Council,
considering the rumours of confusion like to happen throughout Britain in
consequence of the efforts of the Pretender, ordered the whole inhabitants
to take arms, and appointed a nightly guard of ten men and a captain to
watch the town from eight o'clock at night to six in the morning. All men
between 60 and 16 years of age were called to rendezvous on the Links, and
next day in the High Street, that they might receive orders from the
Magistrates, so as to have the town in a posture of defence against any
who might attempt to enter it to proclaim the Pretender—" as has most
traitorously and rebelliously been done," say the records. The Magistrates
at the same time requested the favour of Mr Hugh Munro, minister, to be
the bearer of a letter to the Earl of Sutherland, thanking his lordship
for his kindly advertisement to the town of the danger, and to assure him
of their loyalty. At the same time they despatched 50 sufficient fencible
men, under command of Hugh Ross of Tollie, with the best clothes and arms
and four days' provisions, to march at once to Alness in order to join
Capt. Robert Munro of Foulis, in defence of the present Government; and
they sent Captain Munro a loan of as many stands of arms as the town could
spare from its own defence. I cannot find that these Tain men were called
to engage in any dangerous service; but at least they showed their
willingness.
After the suppression of the
rebellion of 1715, a number of estates of Jacobite chiefs in the
Highlands, being declared forfeited, were placed under commissioners
authorised to collect the rents for the Government. As to some of these
estates, and especially the immense territory of the Earl of Seaforth,
from Brahan Castle to the island of Lews inclusive, the commissioners were
for a long time entirely baffled. The Earl, on his banishment in 1715, had
entrusted the management of the estates, no longer legally his, to a
faithful retainer, Donald Murchison, ancestor of the celebrated geologist,
Sir Roderick Murchison, and for ten years Murchison collected the rents
from the tenants, and found moans of transmitting them to Lord Seaforth in
France. Not until 1720 did the commissioners find two men bold enough to
undertake the stewardship of this Seaforth property, as well as of those
-of Grant of Glenmoriston and Chisholm of Strathglass. The two men both
belonged to Tam—William Ross of Easter Fearn, ex-Provost of the burgh, and
his brother, Robert Ross, one of the Bailies. These factors, on sending
notice to the Seaforth tenants, received for answer that they should never
get anything from them but leaden coin; and so it proved. The two Tain
magistrates having set forth in person with 30 soldiers, and with some
armed servants of their own, for Kintail, were met in the heights of
Strathglass by Murchison with 350 armed men under his command. The
ex-Provost, Easter - Fearn, received two wounds from the musquetry of his
opponents; his son, Walter, was mortally wounded; and Bailie Robert Ross's
son was also hurt by a bullet. The two youths were taken prisoners, and
young Easter-Fearn died next. morning. The battle was fought bravely on
both sides; but it ended with Easter-Fearn's giving up his. papers, and
binding himself not to officiate in his stewardship any more, after which
he gladly departed homewards with his companions, under an escort of
Murchison's men to conduct them safely past a body of Camerons lurking in
the rear. We need not withhold our sympathy from either side in this
strugg1. we can sympathise with the Kintail men in their fidelity to their
chief; while sympathising still more with the men of Easter Ross in their
loyalty to the Protestant Government.
In the rebellion of 1745 under the
Young Pretender, the burgh of Tain was subjected, say the records, to
great distress and oppression for a time from a large body of the rebel
army quartering therein, and making arbitrary demands for money under pain
of military execution. The Magistrates were forced to make large payments;
but nothing further of special interest seems to have taken place here at
that time.
The political feeling of our burgh
during last century being, from all these indications, sufficiently clear,
we may ask—What was the religious feeling of the population? We might
answer this question from tradition, which has handed down every possible
proof that the atmosphere of the place has, for several generations at
least preceding ours, been religious after a decidedly evangelical and
Puritan type. The memories of our childhood have preserved the distinct
tradition of the personal piety of each one of the ministers of Tain from
the Revolution downwards,, with anecdotes illustrative of their individual
dispositions, and of the popular esteem for them. Even the burgh records
furnish historical evidence of this state of religious feeling. On the
death of Mr Hugh Munro in 1744, the Magistrates exerted themselves to the
utmost to procure a suitable successor to him in the- ministerial charge.
They elected Mr Daniel Munro, minister of Auldearn, of whom "they heard a
universal good character as a pious, godly, worthy man, which evidently
appeared in his most excellent sermons preached in the town last Lord's
Day," and they recommended to one another "to address all the legal
elders, with the heads of families in the burgh and parish, so as, if
possible, to have a call to him unanimous and harmonious, and if any of
the burgher inhabitants will give opposition, the Council will look on the
same as very unkind and undutiful, and calcuhtt allenarly to retard the
settlement, as it is surmised there are base agents of . . . to make
a party for a candidate he is to get up, with a view perhaps to divide,
and then to set a non-jurist meeting-house man in this parish, as he has
done in his neighbourhood, agreeable enough to his own principles. The
Magistrates and Council do therefore detest and declare against such
principles and practices; and, to guard against the same, do instantly
agree to call for the inhabitants to caution them against such intriguing,
hurtful designs." They also resolved as a burgh to bear the whole expenses
of the translation, so as to "forward a speedy, comfortable settlement,
and to prevent the abounding of sin and wickedness in this place, which
has already grown to too great a height." The whole minute is drawn up
with such evident heart and soul as to produce the impression that the
author of it was not merely a staunch Hanoverian and Presbyterian, but an
earnest Christian man. At each successive vacancy during the century it is
evident that patronage was here practically powerless; that the election
was virtually in the hands of the Magistrates and people, who, however,
used every effort to obtain the concurrence of the patron, in order to
secure the legal standing of the minister; the result being that unbroken
succession of true evangelical ministers which I have already mentioned.
Many of us know for ourselves how highly privileged the parish was in the
end of last century, and the earlier part of this, with the ministry of
two men, father and son, in succession, Drs Angus and Charles Mackintosh,
whose deep-toned piety, theological attainments, weight of character, and
preaching power, made their influence be felt wherever they were- known,
and made Tain a rallying place for all the eminent ministers and
Christians of the North—a kind of religious centre, as in its earlier
history, though after a very different fashion.
The traditions heard in boyhood
have made us all very familiar with a sad event which took place early in
last century. There is a sandhill in the Fendom with which is connected
the tradition of a duel fought between two neighbouring proprietors–Ross
of Shandwick and Ross of Achnaclaich, who are said to have quarrelled at
the time of a market. Achnaclaich was killed, and Ross of Shandwick,
escaping on horseback, expatriated himself in Sweden. Bloodshed, it would
appear, was not so lightly thought of then by the judicial authorities as
at the time of the previous homicide I have mentioned. The impression this
event made on the popular mind is evidenced by the careful preservation
and renewal, generation after generation, of the footprints of the
combatants at the spot where they fought, and of the prints of the hoofs
of the fugitive's horse on the moist ground as he galloped over what has
ever since been known as "The Duel Hill." What man here does not remember
the awe with which, as a boy, he looked on those deep-cut marks, while
listening to the story of the duel and of the flight?
The accounts of the Burgh Treasurer
(which are happily extant from about 1720) furnish us with some rather
curious information. First, as to the town's income. In the year 1733,
this was only £757 Scots, or £63 sterling. It was expended chiefly in
salaries to a drummer, a schoolmaster and schoolmistress, a music teacher,
a clockmaster, three town-officers, the town clerk, and the treasurer. The
Magistrates felt this income, which was derived almost wholly from rents
and from customs of goods brought into market, to be too small,
complaining frequently of the poverty of the town. About three years after
this occurs the first entry of some revenue received from the mussel
-scalps, amounting to £48 Scots, that is, £4 sterling. The Magistrates
evidently saw in this sum, small as it was, a good beginning; they ordered
a new hat to Bailie Malcolm, "for his trouble in uplifting the scalp
money," and they made special efforts to encourage the Moray fishermen to
resort to this Firth for mussels. There is an entry of two bottles of wine
drunk by the Council when "met to advise a method to induce the boats in
the Moray Firth to come to the mussel scalps;" and another entry of "drink
to the Moray fishers on their first coming." Whether the 'drink had much
to do with the matter or not, the revc'nue from this source rapidly
increased: I wish I could say that it was always wisely expended. The
increase seems at first to have induced the Council to waste a good deal
of money in "treats." For example, there was a "treat" to Captain Tilmore
and his soldiers at the time of Alexander Scollar's execution, 'When six
bottles of claret and six of ale were drunk; another to David Munro, the
town's agent, at which nine bottles of claret were drunk; and there is an
'entry of a dozen sherry, twenty-two pints of ale, and two glasses—it is
not said of what—drunk on occasion 'of a bonfire, by desire of Calrossie,
on receipt of the news of the action of Dettingen; and so on. Those times
were evidently not better than the present in so far as official drinking
was concerned; and private townsmen followed the Magistrates' example. For
instance, in July 1733, one John Macrae, who was Bettled in business here,
took a strange way of showing his pride in a relative, Governor Macrae, a
native of Greenock, who had pleasingly startled the kingdom some years
before by a gallant defence which he had made with his ship, the
Cassandra, against two strongly-armed pirate vessels near Madagascar. John
Macrae, accompanied by the Magistrates of Tain and the principal
burgesses, went to the Cross, and superintended the drinking of a hogshead
of wine, to the healths of the King, Queen, and Royal family, and of
Governor Macrae and "his fast friends." From thence the company repaired
to the chief taverns in town, where they repeated the said toasts, and
spent the evening with "music and entertainments suitable to the
occasion."
In connection with this free use of
intoxicating drink, which all tradition tells us was in those days far
more prevalent among the respectable classes of society than it is now, I
may refer to a Gaelic rhyme, which I used to hear in childhood, giving a
list of several Tain persons, some of them with very ridiculous nicknames
handed down in it to posterity as
that is, "foolish old bodies, ever
drinking, and seeking more."
Several of the Treasurer's entries
at this period are of a melancholy character, being expenses connected
with executions. I have already quoted one; a second relates to the
execution of John Don, in 1741; we find also, in 1762, a sum paid for
erecting a new gibbet.
There is a touching tradition
connected with this last execution, which was that of a poor servant girl
condemned at the Inverness Circuit Court for child- murder. The popular
pity seems to have been strongly moved in her behalf; and when it was
observed that a pigeon flew round the gibbet during the time of the
execution, and then lighted on her dead body, the opinion was confirmed
that the sentence of death had been unjust. And so, adds the local saying,
this was the last execution that ever took place on the Gallow-Hill of
Tain.
As far back as we can distinctly
trace, education seems to have been well attended to in this town. After
the Reformation, as we have already seen, several chaplainries in St
Duthus were conferred on students in the form of bursaries. Early in last
century, we find the Magistrates anxiously employed in looking out for a
competent burgh schoolmaster to fill the place of one who had retired in
consequence of ill health. Still later, we find salaries paid to a
schoolmaster, schoolmistress, and a music-teacher. Of the quality of the
teaching given in the Grammar School in the latter half of last century,
tradition distinctly speaks. Under a teacher of the name of Campbell, it
was apparently very high; and from his school not a few boys were sent
forth into the world with classical as well as other attainments that
enabled them to shine, and to rise to honourable positions in life. Some
of these pupils became afterwards chief promoters of a movement for
raising the local education to a still higher point.
In the first year of this century,
a meeting of gentlemen connected with the Northern Highlands was held in
London, under the presidency of the Earl of Seaforth, to initiate a
movement for the erection and endowment of a High School or Academy at
Tam. The declared object was to provide "for the youth of the three
northern counties a good education, founded on morality and religion, such
as might be expected to produce the happiest fruits to themselves, their
parents, and connections, and contribute ultimately to the improvement of
the country which gave them birth, and to the general advantage of the
kingdom." Tain was fixed on as the seat of the proposed Institution,
because the position of the town, on the borders of Ross and Sutherland,
adapted it happily to benefit a very large portion of the Highlands, while
its quiet and retired situation exempted it from many temptations to which
youth were exposed in large cities. The healthiness of thern locality, the
populousness and fertility of the neighbourhood, and the cheapness of
provisions were mentioned as additional recommendations. An influential
committee, composed partly of noblemen and proprietors connected with the
North, and partly of wealthy London merchants of northern extraction, was
accordingly formed for the purpose, and they exerted themselves
energetically to raise the necessary funds. Let me name one gentleman,
Hugh Rose of Glastullich, himself a native of Tam (of which his father had
been minister), and a pupil of its Grammar School, as the most energetic
and successful promoter of the scheme. The Institution was opened with
great eclat in the year 1813, and pupils of the upper and middle classes
flocked to it at once, not only from the northern counties, but from other
parts of Scotland, and some even from England and the colonies. It became
a powerful means of raising the standard of education in the whole North;
and it has, during the 70 years of its existence, sent forth a large
number of young men to distinguish themselves in almost every walk of
life, and of ladies to adorn and bless many homes.
We are now, then, fairly within the
nineteenth century, and close upon our own times—too close to be able to
proceed further with ease, for I must avoid even alluding to any persons
now living. But I cannot con- elude without referring, however briefly, to
events in which the political and religious feelings of the generation
immediately preceding ours became manifest;- for to ignore these
altogether would make the history awkwardly incomplete. With reference to
the political feeling of Tain in the days of our own fathers, the earliest
recollection of some of us is how conservative that feeling was—bow
religiously they honoured the King and his Government, and with what dread
and dislike they regarded those who were "given to change." But when the
Reform agitation began—when the prevalent corruption in Parliamentary
elections, and the absurdity of the system that gave electoral rights to
rotten and even non-existent boroughs, were exposed, the popular
conscience here declared itself for reform, and the general feeling in
favour of it became decided. My oldest political recollection is the
enthusiasm exhibited in the town on the novel occasion of the election of
a reforming member for the county.
Some of us recollect equally well
how conservative Tain, in our fathers' days, was in religious and
ecclesiastical matters too; how deep was the general reverence for things
sacred; and how strong the attachment to the National Church. And yet,
juBt because of that veneration for what was most sapred, the popular
feeling in the district had again and again dared to resist even the
Church in such matters as the forced settlement of ministers who did not
commend themselves to the conscience of the people. And we remember how,
amid all the hereditary and habitual attachment to Church and State, when
the minister of Tam, in 1843, felt himself forced by conscience to abandon
the advantages of State Establishment that he might continue free to obey
the will of Christ, the people of Tain followed him in an almost unbroken
mass—our town in this still representing, as of old the general feeling of
Easter Ross and of the Northern Highlands. On the first Sabbath on which
the minister and people met for worship in separation from the State,
there was witnessed a sight here which was seen, as far as I am aware,
only in one other burgh in Scotland. The Magistrates of Tam (as if it were
a little State by itself) walked in procession, preceded by their
red-coated halbert-armed officers, to take their places of honour opposite
the pulpit, in the Free Church, as they had been long wont to do in the
Church Established. And this they continued to do, Sabbath after Sabbath,
until a hint was received from Edinburgh that such an official proceeding
was of questionable legality. Thereupon, the Magistrates discontinued the
official, while continuing their personal, demonstration of ecclesiastical
principle.
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