Part 28

Long after this period—in 1738—the Earl of Ilay, writing to Sir Robert Walpole from Edinburgh, said: ‘I am forced to send this letter by a servant twenty miles out of town, _where the Duke of Argyle’s attorney cannot handle it_.’ It sounds strangely that Lord Hay should thus have had to complain of his own brother; that one who was supreme in Scotland, should have been under such a difficulty from an opposition noble; and that there should have been, at so recent a period, a disregard to so needful a principle. But this is not all. Lord Ilay, in time succeeding his brother as Duke of Argyle, appears to have also taken up his part at the Edinburgh Post-office. In March 1748, General Bland, commander of the forces in Scotland, wrote to the Secretary of State, ‘that his letters were opened at the Edinburgh Post-office; and I think this is done _by order of a noble duke_, in order to know my secret sentiments of the people and of his Grace. If this practice is not stopped, the ministers cannot hope for any real information.’ Considering the present sound administration of the entire national institution by the now living inheritor of that peerage, one cannot without a smile hear George Chalmers telling[323] how the Edinburgh Post-office, in the reign of the second George, was ‘infested by two Dukes of Argyle!’

It will be heard, however, with some surprise, that the Lord Advocate may still be considered as having the power, in cases where the public interests are concerned, to order the examination of letters in the Post-office. So lately as 1789, when the unhappy duellist, Captain Macrae, fled from justice, his letters were seized at the Post-office by order of the Justice-clerk Braxfield.

The sport of cock-fighting had lately been introduced into Scotland, and a cock-pit was now in operation in Leith Links, where the charges for admission were 10_d._ for the front row, 7_d._ for the second, and 4_d._ for the third. Soon after, ‘the passion for cock-fighting was so general among all ranks of the people, that the magistrates [of Edinburgh] discharged its being practised on the streets, on account of the disturbances it occasioned.’[324]

[Sidenote: 1702.]

William Machrie, who taught in Edinburgh what he called ‘the severe and serious, but necessary exercise of the sword,’ had also given a share of his attention to cock-fighting—a sport which he deemed ‘as much an art, as the managing of horses for races or for the field of battle.’ It was an art in vogue over all Europe—though ‘kept up only by people of rank, and never sunk down to the hands of the commonalty’—and he, for his part, had studied it carefully: he had read everything on the subject, conversed and corresponded on it with ‘the best cockers in Britain,’ carefully observing their practice, and passing through a long experience of his own.

Thus prepared, Mr Machrie published in Edinburgh, in 1705, a brochure, styled _An Essay on the Innocent and Royal Recreation and Art of Cocking_, consisting of sixty-three small pages; from which we learn that he had been the means of introducing the sport into Edinburgh. The writer of a prefixed set of verses evidently considered him as one of the great reformers of the age:

‘Long have you taught the art of self-defence, Improved our safety then, but now our sense, Teaching us pleasure with a small expense.’

For his own part, considering the hazard and expense which attended horse-racing and hawking, he was eager to proclaim the superior attractions of cocking, as being a sport from which no such inconveniences arose. The very qualities of the bird recommended it—namely, ‘his Spanish gait, his Florentine policy, and his Scottish valour in overcoming and generosity in using his vanquished adversary.’ The ancients called him an astronomer, and he had been ‘an early preacher of repentance, even convincing Peter, the first pope, of his holiness’s fallibility.’ ‘Further,’ says he, ‘if variety and change of fortune be any way prevalent to engage the minds of men, as commonly it is, to prefer one recreation to another, it will beyond all controversy be found in cocking more than any other. Nay, the eloquence of Tully or art of Apelles could never with that life and exactness represent fortune metamorphosed in a battle, as doth cocking; for here you’ll see brave attacks and as brave defiances, bloody strugglings, and cunning and handsome retreats; here you’ll see generous fortitude ignorant of interest,’ &c.

Mr Machrie, therefore, goes _con amore_ into his subject, fully trusting that his treatise on ‘this little but bold animal could not [Sidenote: 1702.] be unacceptable to a nation whose martial temper and glorious actions in the field have rendered them famed beyond the limits of the Christian world;’ a sentence from which we should have argued that our author was a native of a sister-island, even if the fact had not been indicated by his name.

Mr Machrie gives many important remarks on the natural history of the animal—tells us many secrets about its breeding; instructs us in the points which imply strength and valour; gives advices about feeding and training; and exhibits the whole policy of the pit. Finally, he says, ‘I am not ashamed to declare to the world that I have a special veneration and esteem for those gentlemen, within and about this city, who have entered in society for propagating and establishing the royal recreation of cocking (in order to which they have already erected a cock-pit in the Links of Leith); and I earnestly wish that their generous and laudable example may be imitated in that degree that, in cock-war, village may be engaged against village, city against city, kingdom against kingdom, nay, the father against the son, until all the wars in Europe, wherein so much Christian blood is spilt, be turned into the innocent pastime of cocking.’

Machrie advertised, in July 1711, that he was not the author of a little pamphlet on Duelling, which had been lately published with his name and style on the title-page—‘William Machrie, Professor of both Swords.’ He denounced this publication as containing ridiculous impossibilities in his art, such as ‘pretending to parry a pistol-ball with his sword.’ Moreover, it contained ‘indiscreet reflections on the learned Mr Bickerstaff [of the _Tatler_],’ ‘contrary to his [Machrie’s] natural temper and inclination, as well as that civility and good manners which his years, experience, and conversation in the world have taught him.’[325]

The amusement of cock-fighting long kept a hold of the Scottish people. It will now be scarcely believed that, through the greater part of the eighteenth century, and till within the recollection of persons still living, the boys attending the parish and burghal schools were encouraged to bring cocks to school at Fasten’s E’en (Shrove-tide), and devote an entire day to this barbarising sport. The slain birds and _fugies_ (so the craven birds were called) became the property of the schoolmaster. The minister of Applecross, in Ross-shire, in his account of the parish, written about 1790, [Sidenote: 1702.] coolly tells us that the schoolmaster’s income is composed of two hundred merks, with payments from the scholars of 1_s._ 6_d._ for English, and 2_s._ 6_d._ for Latin, and ‘the cock-fight dues, which are equal to one quarter’s payment for each scholar.’[326]

_A Short Account of Scotland_, written, it is understood, by an English gentleman named Morer, and published this year, presents a picture of our country as it appeared to an educated stranger before the union. The surface was generally unenclosed; oats and barley the chief grain products; wheat little cultivated; little hay made for winter, the horses then feeding chiefly on straw and oats. The houses of the gentry, heretofore built for strength, were now beginning to be ‘modish, both in fabric and furniture.’ But ‘still their avenues are very indifferent, and they want their gardens, which are the beauty and pride of our English seats.’ Orchards were rare, and ‘their apples, pears, and plums not of the best kind;’ their cherries tolerably good; ‘for gooseberries, currants, strawberries, and the like, they have of each, but growing in gentlemen’s gardens; and yet from thence we sometimes meet them in the markets of their boroughs.’ The people of the Lowlands partly depended on the Highlands for cattle to eat; and the Highlanders, in turn, carried back corn, of which their own country did not grow a sufficiency.

Mr Morer found that the Lowlanders were dressed much like his own countrymen, excepting that the men generally wore bonnets instead of hats, and plaids instead of cloaks; the women, too, wearing plaids when abroad or at church. Women of the humbler class generally went barefoot, ‘especially in summer.’ The children of people of the better sort, ‘lay and clergy,’ were likewise generally without shoes and stockings. Oaten-cakes, baked on a plate of iron over the fire, were the principal bread used. Their flesh he admits to have been ‘good enough,’ but he could not say the same for their cheese or butter. They are ‘fond of tobacco, but more from the snish-box than the pipe.’ Snuff, indeed, had become so necessary to them, that ‘I have heard some of them say, should their bread come in competition with it, they would rather fast than their snish should be taken away. Yet mostly it consists of the coarsest tobacco, dried by the fire, and powdered in a little engine after the form of a _tap_, which they [Sidenote: 1702.] carry in their pockets, and is both a _mill_ to grind and a _box_ to keep it in.’

Stage-coaches did not as yet exist, but there were a few hackneys at Edinburgh, which might be hired into the country upon urgent occasions. ‘The truth is, the roads will hardly allow them those conveniences, which is the reason that the gentry, men and women, choose rather to use their horses. However, their great men often travel with coach-and-six, but with so little caution, that, besides their other attendance, they have a lusty running-footman on each side of the coach, to manage and keep it up in rough places.’

Another Englishman, who made an excursion into Scotland in 1704, gives additional particulars, but to the same general purport. At Edinburgh, he got good French wine at 20_d._, and Burgundy at 10_d._ a quart. The town appeared to him scarcely so large as York or Newcastle, but extremely populous, and containing abundance of beggars. ‘The people here,’ he says, ‘are very proud, and call the ordinary tradesmen merchants.’ ‘At the best houses they dress their victuals after the French method, though perhaps not so cleanly, and a soup is commonly the first dish; and their reckonings are dear enough. The servant-maids attended without shoes or stockings.’

At Lesmahago, a village in Lanarkshire, he found the people living on cakes made of pease and barley mixed. ‘They ate no meat, nor drank anything but water, all the year round; and the common people go without shoes or stockings all the year round. I pitied their poverty, but observed the people were fresh and [Sidenote: 1702.] lusty, and did not seem to be under any uneasiness with their way of living.’

In the village inn, ‘I had,’ says he, ‘an enclosed room to myself, with a chimney in it, and dined on a leg of veal, which is not to be had at every place in this country.’ At another village—Crawford-John—‘the houses are either of earth or loose stones, or are _raddled_, and the roofs are of turf, and the floors the bare ground. They are but one story high, and the chimney is a hole in the roof, and the fireplace is in the middle of the floor. Their seats and beds are of turf earthed over, and raddled up near the fireplace, and serve for both uses. Their ale is pale, small, and thick, but at the most common minsh-houses [taverns], they commonly have good French brandy, and often French wine, so common are these French liquors in this country.’

Our traveller, being at Crawford-John on a Sunday, went to the parish church, which he likens to a barn. He found it ‘mightily crowded, and two gentlemen’s seats in it with deal-tops over them. They begin service here about nine in the morning, and continue it till about noon, and then rise, and the minister goes to the minsh-house, and so many of them as think fit, and refresh themselves. The rest stay in the churchyard for about half an hour, and then service begins again, and continues till about four or five. I suppose the reason of this is, that most of the congregations live too far from the church to go home and return to church in time.’[327]

The general conditions described by both of these travellers exhibit little, if any advance upon those presented in the journey of the Yorkshire squire in 1688,[328] or even that of Ray the naturalist in 1661.[329]

[Sidenote: 1703. JAN. 24.]

George Young, a shopkeeper in the High Street of Edinburgh, was appointed by the magistrates as a constable, along with several other citizens in the like capacity, ‘to oversee the manners and order of the burgh and inhabitants thereof.’ On the evening of the day noted, being Sunday, he went ‘through some parts of the town, to see that the Lord’s Day and laws made for the observance thereof were not violat.’ ‘Coming to the house of Marjory Thom, relict of James Allan, vintner, a little before ten o’clock, and [Sidenote: 1703.] finding in the house several companies in different rooms, [he] did soberly and Christianly expostulate with the mistress of the house for keeping persons in her house at such unseasonable hours, and did very justly threaten to delate her to the magistrates, to be rebuked for the same. [He] did not in the least offer to disturb any of her guests, but went away, and as [he was] going up the close to the streets, he and the rest was followed by Mr Archibald Campbell, eldest son to Lord Niel Campbell, who quarrelled him for offering to delate the house to the magistrates, [telling him] he would make him repent it.’ So runs George Young’s own account of the matter. It was rather unlucky for him, in his turn at this duty, to have come into collision with Mr Campbell, for the latter was first-cousin to the Duke of Argyle, and a person of too much consequence to be involved in a law which only works sweetly against the humbler classes, being, indeed, mainly designed for their benefit.

To pursue Young’s narrative. ‘Mr Archibald came next day with some others towards the said George his shop, opposite to the Guard [house], and called at his shop, which was shut by the hatch or half-door: “Sirrah, sirrah!” which George not observing, nor apprehending his discourse was directed to him, Mr Archibald called again to this purpose: “I spoke to you, Young the constable.” Whereupon, George civilly desiring to know his pleasure, he expressed himself thus: “Spark, are you in any better humour to-day than you was last night?” George answered, he was the same to-day he was last night. “I was about my duty last night, and am so to-day. I hope I have not offended you; and pray, sir, do not disturb me.” Mr Archibald, appearing angry, and challenging George for his taking notice of Mrs Allan’s house, again asked him if he was in any better temper, or words to that purpose; [to which] George again replied, He was the same he was, and prayed him to be gone, because he seemed displeased. Whereupon Mr Archibald taking hold of his sword, as [if] he would have drawn it, George, being within the half-door, fearing harm, threw open the door, and came out to Mr Archibald, and endeavoured to catch hold of his sword. Mr Archibald did beat him upon the eye twice or thrice, and again took hold of his sword to draw and run at him; which he certainly had done, if not interrupted by the bystanders, who took hold of his sword and held him, till that the Town-guard seized Mr Archibald, and made him prisoner.’

Mr Campbell, being speedily released upon bail, did not wait to [Sidenote: 1702.] be brought before the magistrates, but raised a process against Young before the Privy Council, ‘intending thereby to discourage all laudable endeavours to get extravagancy and disorder [repressed].’ In the charge which he brought forward, Mr Campbell depicts himself as walking peaceably on the High Street, when Young attacked him, seized his sword, and declared him prisoner, without any previous offence on his part. The Guard thereafter dragged him to their house, maltreating him by the way, and kept him a prisoner till his friends assembled and obtained his liberation. The process went through various stages during the next few weeks, and at length, on the 9th of March, the Council found Young guilty of a riot, and fined him in four hundred merks (upwards of £22 sterling), to be paid to Mr Campbell for his expenses; further ordaining the offender to be imprisoned till the money was forthcoming.

To do the Duke of Argyle justice, his name does not appear in the list of the councillors who sat that day.

[Sidenote: MAR. 6.]

Sir John Bell, a former magistrate of Glasgow, kept up a modest frame of Episcopal worship in that Presbyterian city, having occasionally preachers, who were not always qualified by law, to officiate in his house. On the 30th of January, a boy-mob assailed the house while worship was going on, and some windows were broken. However, the magistrates were quickly on the spot, and the tumult was suppressed.

A letter from the queen to the Privy Council, dated the 4th February, glanced favourably at the Episcopalian dissenters of Scotland, enjoining that the clergy of that persuasion should live peaceably in relation to the Established Church, and that they should, while doing so, be protected in the exercise of their religion. It was a sour morsel to the more zealous Presbyterians, clergy and laity, who, not from any spirit of revenge, but merely from bigoted religious feelings, would willingly have seen all Episcopalians banished at the least. At Glasgow, where a rumour got up that some Episcopalian places of worship would be immediately opened under sanction of her majesty’s letter, much excitement prevailed. Warned by a letter from the Lord Chancellor, the magistrates of the city took measures for preserving the peace, and they went to church on the 7th of March, under a full belief that there was no immediate likelihood of its being broken. The Episcopalians, however, were in some alarm about the symptoms of popular feeling, and it was deemed [Sidenote: 1703.] necessary to plant a guard of gentlemen, armed with swords, in front of the door of Sir John Bell’s house, where they were to enjoy the ministrations of a clergyman named Burgess. Some rude boys gathered about, and soon came to rough words with this volunteer guard, who, chasing them with their swords, and, it is said, violent oaths, along the Saltmarket, roused a general tumult amongst all who were not at church. The alarm soon passed into the churches. The people poured out, and flocked to the house where they knew that the Episcopalians were gathered. The windows were quickly smashed. The worshippers barricaded and defended themselves; but the crowd broke in with fore-hammers, though apparently hardly knowing for what purpose. The magistrates came with some soldiers; reasoned, entreated, threatened; apprehended a few rioters, who were quickly rescued; and finally thought it best to limit themselves to conducting the scared congregation to their respective homes—a task they successfully accomplished. ‘Afterwards,’ say the magistrates, ‘we went and did see Sir John Bell in his house, where Mr Burgess, the minister, was; and, in the meantime, when we were regretting the misfortune that had happened to Sir John and his family, who had merited much from his civil carriage when a magistrate in this place, it was answered to us by one of his sons present, that they had got what they were seeking, and would rather that that had fallen out than if it had been otherways.’

The Privy Council, well aware how distasteful any outrages against the Episcopalians would be at court, took pains to represent this affair in duly severe terms in their letters to the secretaries of state in London. They also took strong measures to prevent any similar tumult in future, and to obtain reparation of damages for Sir John Bell.

Generally, the condition of Episcopal ministers continued to be uncomfortable. In February 1705, Dr Richard Waddell, who had been Archdean of St Andrews before the Revolution, and was banished from that place in 1691, but had lately returned under protection of her majesty’s general indemnity, became the subject of repressive measures on the part of the Established Church. Letters of horning were raised against him by ‘John Blair, agent for the kirk,’ and, notwithstanding strong protestations of loyalty to the queen, he was ordained by the Privy Council once more ‘to remove furth of the town and parochine of St Andrews, and not return thereto.’[330]

[Sidenote: 1703. APR.]

An elderly woman named Marion Lillie, residing at Spott, in East Lothian, was in the hands of the kirk-session, on account of the general repute she lay under as a witch. Amidst the tedious investigations of her case in the parish register, it is impossible to see more than that she occasionally spoke ungently to and of her neighbours, and had frightened a pregnant woman to a rather unpleasant extremity by handling her rudely. The _Rigwoodie Witch_,[331] as a neighbour called her, was now turned over to a magistrate, to be dealt with according to law; but of her final fate we have no account.

Spott is a place of sad fame, its minister having basely murdered his wife in 1570,[332] and the estate having belonged to a gentleman named Douglas, whom we have seen concerned in the slaughter of Sir James Home of Eccles, and who on that account became a forfeited outlaw.[333] The wife of a subsequent proprietor, a gambler named Murray, was daughter to the Lord Forrester, who was stabbed with his own sword by his mistress at Corstorphine in 1679.[334] There is extant a characteristic letter of this lady to Lord Alexander Hay, son of the Earl of Tweeddale, on his bargaining, soon after this time, for the estate, with her husband, without her consent—in which she makes allusion to the witches of Spott:

‘THES TO LORD ALEXANDER HAY.

‘SPOTT, _19 May_.

‘This way of proceeding, my lord, will seem verey abrupte and inconsiderat to you; but I laye my count with the severest censer you or may malicious enemies can or will saye of me. So, not to be tedious, all I have to speak is this: I think you most absurd to [have] bought the lands of Spott from Mr Murray without my consent, which you shall never have now; and I hope to be poseser of Spott hous when you are att the divel; and believe me, my childrin’s curse and mine will be a greater moth in your estate than all your ladey and your misirable wretchedness can make up and pray [pay].

‘This is no letter of my lord Bell Heavins, and tho you saye, in spite of the divell, you’le buy it befor this time twell month, you may come to repent it; but thats non of my bisnes. I shall only saye this, you are basely impertinent to thrust me away in a hurrey from my houss at Whitsunday, when I designed not [Sidenote: 1703.] to go till Martinmis: and I wish the ghosts of all the witches that ever was about Spott may haunt you, and make you the unfortountest man that ever lived, that you may see you was in the wrong in makeing aney such bargain without the consent of your mortal enemy,

CLARA MURRAY.’[335]

[Sidenote: JULY 1.]