Part 31
Notwithstanding this treatment, we find it reported in 1709, that ‘papists do openly and avowedly practise within the city of Edinburgh and suburbs.’ It was intimated at the same time, that there is ‘now also a profane and deluded crew of enthusiasts, set up in this place, who, under pretence to the spirit of prophecy, do utter most horrid blasphemies against the ever-glorious Trinity, such as ought not to be suffered in any Christian church or nation.’[356]
Sir George Maxwell of Orchardton, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, having gone over to the Church of Rome, and the next heir, who was a Protestant, being empowered by the statute of 1700 to claim his estate, his uncle, Thomas Maxwell of Gelstoun, a man of seventy years of age, came forward on this adventure (June 1704), further demanding that the young baronet should be decerned to pay him six thousand merks as a year’s rent of his estate for employing George Maxwell of Munshes, a known [Sidenote: 1704.] papist, to be his factor, and five hundred more from Munshes himself for accepting the trust.
A petition presented by the worthy Protestant uncle to the Privy Council, makes us aware that George Maxwell of Munshes, ‘finding he would be reached for accepting the said factory, out of malice raised a lawburrows,’ in which Orchardton concurred, though out of the kingdom, against Gelstoun and his son, as a mere pretext for stopping proceedings; but he trusted the Lords would see through the trick, and defeat it by accepting the cautioners he offered for its suspension. The Council, doubtless duly indignant that a papist should so try to save his property, complied with Gelstoun’s petition.[357]
[Sidenote: APR. 12.]
A statute of the Sixth James, anno 1621—said to have been borrowed from one of Louis XIII. of France—had made it unlawful for any tavern-keeper to allow individuals to play in his house at cards and dice, or for any one to play at such games in a private house, unless where the master of the house was himself playing; likewise ordaining, that any sum above a hundred merks gained at horse-racing, or in less than twenty-four hours at other play, should be forfeited to the poor of the district. During the ensuing period of religious strictness, we hear little of gambling in Scotland, but when the spring was relaxed, it began to reappear with other vices of ease and prosperity. A case, reported in the law-books under July 1688, makes us aware, as by a peep through a curtain, that gentlemen were accustomed at that time to win and lose at play sums which appear large in comparison with incomes and means then general. It appears that Captain Straiton, who was well known afterwards as a busy Jacobite partisan, won from Sir Alexander Gilmour of Craigmillar, at cards, in one night, no less than six thousand merks, or £338, 6_s._ 8_d._ sterling. The captain first gained four thousand, for which he obtained a bond from Sir Alexander; then he gained two thousand more, and got a new bond for the whole. An effort was made to reduce the bond, but without success.
Francis Charteris, a cadet of an ancient and honourable family in Dumfriesshire, and who had served in Marlborough’s wars, was now figuring in Edinburgh as a member of the _beau monde_, with the reputation of being a highly successful gambler. There is a story told of him—but I cannot say with what truth—that, being at the Duke of Queensberry’s one evening, and playing with the [Sidenote: 1704.] duchess, he was enabled, by means of a mirror, or more probably a couple of mirrors placed opposite each other, to see what cards she had in her hand, through which means he gained from her Grace no less a sum than three thousand pounds. It is added that the duke was provoked by this incident to get a bill passed through the parliament over which he presided, for prohibiting gambling beyond a certain moderate sum; but this must be a mistake, as no such act was then passed by the Scottish Estates; nor was any such statute necessary, while that of 1621 remained in force. We find, however, that the Town Council at this date issued an act of theirs, threatening vigorous action upon the statute of 1621, as concerned playing at cards and dice in public houses, as ‘the occasion of horrid cursing, quarrelling, tippling, loss of time, and neglect of necessary business—the constables to be diligent in detecting offenders, on pain of having to pay the fines themselves.’ Perhaps it was at the instigation of the duke that this step was taken.
From Fountainhall we learn that, about 1707, Sir Andrew Ramsay of Abbotshall lost 28,000 merks, to Sir Scipio Hill, at cards and dice, and granted a bond upon his estate for the amount. This being in contravention of the act of 1621, the kirk-treasurer put in his claim for all above 100 merks on behalf of the poor, but we do not learn with what success.
[Sidenote: JULY 4.]
Sir Thomas Dalyell of Binns—grandson of the old bearded persecutor of the times of the Charleses—had for a long time past been ‘troubled with a sore disease which affects his reason, whereby he is continually exposed to great dangers to his own person, by mobs, and others that does trouble him.’ It was also found that ‘by the force of his disease, he is liable to squander away and dilapidate his best and readiest effects, as is too notourly known.’ Such is the statement of Sir Thomas’s nephew, Robert Earl of Carnwath; his sister, Magdalen Dalyell; and her husband, James Monteith of Auldcathie, craving authority, ‘for the preservation of his person and estate, and also for the public peace,’ to take him into custody in his house of Binns, ‘till means be used for his recovery;’ likewise power to employ a factor ‘for uplifting so much of his rents as may be necessar for his subsistence, and the employing doctors and apothecaries, according to the exigence of his present condition.’
The Council not only granted the petition, but ordained that the petitioners might order up a soldier or two at any [Sidenote: 1704.] time from Blackness, to assist in restraining the unfortunate gentleman.
This Sir Thomas Dalyell died unmarried, leaving his estates and baronetcy to a son of his sister Magdalen, grandfather of the present baronet. The case is cited as shewing the arrangements for a lunatic man of rank in the days of Queen Anne.
[Sidenote: JULY.]
The central authorities were now little inclined to take up cases of sorcery; but it does not appear that on that account witches ceased to be either dreaded or punished. Country magistrates and clergy were always to be found who sympathised with the popular terrors on the subject, and were ready to exert themselves in bringing witches to justice.
At the village of Torryburn, in the western part of Fife, a woman called Jean Neilson experienced a tormenting and not very intelligible ailment, which she chose to attribute to the malpractices of a woman named Lillias Adie. Adie was accordingly taken up by a magistrate, and put in prison. On the 29th July, the minister and his elders met in session, called Lillias before them, and were gratified with an instant confession, to the effect that she had been a witch for several years, having met the devil at the side of a ‘stook’ on the harvest-field, and renounced her baptism to him, not without a tender embrace, on which occasion she found that his skin was cold, and observed his feet cloven like those of a stirk. She had also joined in midnight dances where he was present. Once, at the back of Patrick Sands’s house in Valleyfield, the festivity was lighted by a light that ‘came from darkness,’ not so bright as a candle, but sufficient to let them see each other’s faces, and shew the devil, who wore a cap covering his ears and neck. Several of the women she saw on these occasions she now delated as witches. The session met again and again to hear such recitals, and to examine the newly accused persons. There was little reported but dance-meetings of the alleged witches, and conversations with the devil, the whole bearing very much the character of what we have come to recognise as hallucinations or spectral illusions. Yet the case of Adie was considered sufficient to infer the pains of death, and she was burned within the sea-mark. There were several other solemn meetings of the session to inquire into the cases of the other women accused by Adie; but we do not learn with what result.
The extreme length to which this affair was carried may be partly attributed to the zeal of the minister, the Rev. Allan [Sidenote: 1704.] Logan, who is said to have been particularly knowing in the detection of witches. At the administration of the communion, he would cast his eye along, and say: ‘You witch-wife, get up from the table of the Lord,’ when some poor creature, perhaps conscience-struck with a recollection of wicked thoughts, would rise and depart, thus exposing herself to the hazard of a regular accusation afterwards. He used to preach against witchcraft, and we learn that, in 1709, a woman called Helen Key was accused before the Torryburn session of using some disrespectful language about him in consequence. She told a neighbour, it appears, that on hearing him break out against the witches, she thought him ‘daft’ [mad], and took up her stool and left the kirk. For this she was convicted of profanity, and ordained to sit before the congregation and be openly rebuked.[358]
Rather earlier in the year, there was a remarkable outbreak of diablerie at the small seaport burgh of Pittenweem, in the eastern part of Fife. Here lived a woman named Beatrix or Beatie Laing, described as ‘spouse to William Brown, tailor, late treasurer of the burgh,’ and who must therefore be inferred to have been not quite amongst the poorer class of people. In a petition from the magistrates (June 13, 1704) to the Privy Council, it was stated that Patrick Morton was a youth of sixteen, ‘free of any known vice,’ and that, being employed by his father to make some nails for a ship belonging to one of the merchants in Pittenweem, he was engaged at that work in his father’s smithy, when Beatrix Laing came and desired him to make some nails for her. He modestly refused, alleging that he was engaged in another job requiring haste, whereupon she went away ‘threatening to be revenged, which did somewhat frighten him, because he knew she was under a bad fame and reputed for a witch.’
Next day, as he passed Beatrix’s door, ‘he observed a timber vessel with some water and a fire-coal in it at the door, which made him apprehend that it was a charm laid for him, and the effects of her threatening; and immediately he was seized with such a weakness in his limbs, that he could hardly stand or walk.’ He continued for many weeks in a languishing condition, in spite of all that physicians could do for him, ‘still growing worse, having no appetite, and his body strangely emaciated. About the beginning of May, his case altered to the worse by his having [Sidenote: 1704.] such strange and unusual fits as did astonish all onlookers. His belly at times was distended to a great height; at other times, the bones of his back and breast did rise to a prodigious height, and suddenly fell,’ while his breathing ‘was like to the blowing of a bellows.’ At other times, ‘his body became rigid and inflexible, insomuch that neither his arms nor legs could be bowed or moved by any strength, though frequently tried.’ His senses were ‘benumbed, and yet his pulse [continued] in good order.’ His head sometimes turned half about, and no force could turn it back again. He suffered grievous agonies. His tongue was occasionally drawn back in his throat, ‘especially when he was telling who were his tormentors.’ Sometimes the magistrates or minister brought these people to his house, and before he saw them, he would cry out they were coming, and name them. The bystanders would cover his face, bring in the women he had accused of tormenting him, besides others, and cause them to touch him in succession; when he expressed pain as the alleged tormentors laid their hands upon him, and in the other instances ‘no effect followed.’ It seemed to the magistrates that the young man was in much the same condition with ‘that of Bargarran’s daughter in the west.’
Beatrix, and the other accused persons, were thrown into the jail of the burgh by the minister and magistrates, with a guard of drunken fellows to watch over them. Beatrix steadily refused to confess being a witch, and was subjected to pricking, and kept awake for five days and nights, in order to bring her to a different frame of mind. Sorely wounded, and her life a burden to her, she at length was forced, in order to be rid of the torment, to admit what was imputed to her. It will thus be observed that the humane practice maintained during the whole of the late cavalier reigns, of only accepting _voluntary_ confessions from persons taxed with witchcraft, was no longer in force. The poor woman afterwards avowing that what she had told them of her seeing the devil and so forth was false, ‘they put her in the stocks, and then carried her to the Thieves’ Hole, and from that transported her to a dark dungeon, where she was allowed no manner of light, or human converse, and in this condition she lay for five months.’ During this interval, the sapient magistrates, with their parish minister, were dealing with the Privy Council to get the alleged witches brought to trial. At first, the design was entertained of taking them to Edinburgh for that purpose; but ultimately, through the humane interference of the Earl of [Sidenote: 1704.] Balcarres and Lord Anstruther,[359] two members of council connected with the district, the poor women were set at liberty on bail (August 12). This, however, was so much in opposition to the will of the rabble, that Beatrix Laing was obliged to decamp from her native town. ‘She wandered about in strange places, in the extremity of hunger and cold, though she had a competency at home, but dared not come near her own house for fear of the fury and rage of the people.’
It was indeed well for this apparently respectable woman that she, for the meantime, remained at a distance from home. While she was wandering about, another woman, named Janet Cornfoot, was put in confinement at Pittenweem, under a specific charge from Alexander Macgregor, a fisherman, to the effect that he had been beset by her and two others one night, along with the devil, while sleeping in his bed. By torture, Cornfoot was forced into acknowledging this fact, which she afterwards denied privately, under equal terror for the confession and the retractation. However, her case beginning to attract attention from some persons of rank and education in the neighbourhood, the minister seems to have become somewhat doubtful of it, and by his connivance she escaped. Almost immediately, an officious clergyman of the neighbourhood apprehended her again, and sent her back to Pittenweem in the custody of two men.
Falling there into the hands of the populace, the wretched woman was tied hard up in a rope, beaten unmercifully, and then dragged by the heels through the streets and along the shore. The appearance of a bailie for a brief space dispersed the crowd, but only to shew how easily the authorities might have protected the victim, if they had chosen. Resuming their horrible work, the rabble tied Janet to a rope stretching between a vessel in the harbour and the shore, swinging her to and fro, and amusing themselves by pelting her with stones. Tiring at length of this sport, they let her down with a sharp fall upon the beach, beat her again unmercifully, and finally, covering her with a door, pressed her to death (January 30, 1705). A daughter of the [Sidenote: 1704.] unhappy woman was in the town, aware of what was going on, but prevented by terror from interceding. This barbarity lasted altogether three hours, without any adequate interruption from either minister or magistrates. Nearly about the same time, Thomas Brown, one of those accused by the blacksmith, died in prison, ‘after a great deal of hunger and hardship;’ and the bodies of both of these victims of superstition were denied Christian burial.
The matter attracted the attention of the Privy Council, who appointed a committee to inquire into it, but the ringleaders of the mob had fled; so nothing could be immediately done. After some time, they were allowed to return to the town free of molestation on account of the murder. Well, then, might Beatrix Laing dread returning to her husband’s comfortable house in this benighted burgh. After a few months, beginning to gather courage, she did return, yet not without being threatened by the rabble with the fate of Janet Cornfoot; wherefore it became necessary for her to apply to the Privy Council for a protection. By that court an order was accordingly issued to the Pittenweem magistrates, commanding them to defend her from any tumults, insults, or violence that might be offered to her.
At the close of this year, George and Lachlan Rattray were in durance at Inverness, ‘alleged guilty of the horrid crimes of mischievous charms, by witchcraft and malefice, sorcery or necromancy.’ It being inconvenient to bring them to Edinburgh for trial, the Lords of Privy Council issued a commission to Forbes of Culloden, Rose of Kilravock, ... Baillie, commissary of Inverness, and some other gentlemen, to try the offenders. The judges, however, were enjoined to transmit their judgment for consideration, and not allow it to be put in execution without warrant from the Council.
On the 16th July 1706, a committee of Council took into consideration the verdict in the case of the two Rattrays, and finding it ‘agreeable to the probation,’ ordained the men to be executed, under the care of the magistrates of Inverness, on the last Wednesday of September next to come. This order is subscribed by Montrose, Buchan, Northesk, Forfar, Torphichen, Elibank, James Stewart, Gilbert Elliot, and Alexander Douglas.
[Sidenote: AUG. 25.]
The functions of the five Lords Commissioners of Justiciary being of the utmost importance, ‘concerning both the lives and fortunes of her majesty’s lieges,’ the parliament settled on these [Sidenote: 1704.] officers a salary of twelve hundred pounds Scots each, being about one hundred pounds sterling.[360] They had previously had the same income nominally, but being payable by precept of the commissioners of the treasury, or the cash-keeper, it was, like most such dues, difficult to realise, and, perhaps, could scarcely be said to exist.
At this time, the fifteen judges of the Court of Session had each two hundred pounds sterling per annum, the money being derived from a grant of £20,000 Scots out of the customs and interest on certain sums belonging to the court.[361] Five of them, who were lords of the criminal court also, were, as we here see, endowed with a further salary, making three hundred in all. The situation of president—‘ane imployment of great weight, requiring are assiduous and close application,’ says the second President Dalrymple[362]—had usually, in addition to the common salary, a pension, and a present of wines from the Treasury, making up his income to about a thousand a year. By the grace of Queen Anne, after the Union, the puisne judges of the Court of Session got £300 a year additional, making five hundred in all;[363] and this was their income for many years thereafter, the president continuing to have one thousand per annum. In the salaries of the same officers at the present day—£3000 to a puisne civil judge, with expenses when he goes on circuit; £4800 to the President; and to the Lord Justice-clerk, £4500—we see, as powerfully as in anything, the contrast between the Scotland of a hundred and fifty years ago, and the Scotland of our own time.
[Sidenote: AUG. 30.]
Patrick Smith professed to have found out a secret ‘whereby malt may be dried by all sorts of fuel, whether coals, wood, or turf, so as to receive no impression from the smoke thereof, and that in a more short and less expensive manner than hath been known in the kingdom.’ He averred that ‘the drink brewn of the said malt will be as clear as white wine, free of all bad tincture, more relishing and pleasant to the taste, and altogether more agreeable to human health than the ale hath been heretofore known in the kingdom.’ Seeing how ‘ale is the ordinary drink of the inhabitants thereof,’ the public utility of the discovery was obvious. Patrick announced himself to the Privy Council as [Sidenote: 1704.] willing to communicate his secret for the benefit of the country, if allowed during a certain term to use it in an exclusive manner, and sell the same right to others.
Their Lordships granted the desired privilege for nine years.
[Sidenote: AUG. 30.]
Ever since the year 1691, there had been a garrison of government soldiers in Invergarry House, in Inverness-shire, the residence of Macdonald of Glengarry. The proprietor esteemed himself a sufferer to the extent of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, by damages to his lands and woods, besides the want of the use of his house, which had been reduced to a ruinous condition; and he now petitioned the government for some redress, as well as for a removal of the garrison, the ‘apparent cause’ of planting which had long ago ceased, ‘all that country being still peaceable and quiet in due obedience to authority, without the least apprehension of disturbance or commotion.’
The Council ordered Macdonald to be heard in his own cause before the Lords of the Treasury, in presence of Brigadier Maitland, governor of Fort-William, that a statement might be drawn up and laid before the queen. ‘His circumstances,’ however, ‘being such, that he cannot safely appear before their Lordships without ane personal protection,’ the Council had to grant a writ discharging all macers and messengers from putting any captions to execution against him up to the 20th of September.
Before the time for the conference arrived, the Duke of Argyle put in a representation making a claim upon Glengarry’s estate, so that it became necessary to call in the aid of the Lord Advocate to make up the statement for the royal consideration.
[Sidenote: SEP. 16.]
The family of the Gordons of Gicht have already attracted our attention by their troubles as Catholics under Protestant persecution, and their tendency to wild and lawless habits. After two generations of silence, the family comes up again in antagonism to the law, but in the person of the husband of an heiress. It appears that the Miss Gordon of Gicht who gave birth to George Lord Byron, was not the first heiress who married unfortunately.
The _heretrix_ of this period had taken as her husband Alexander Davidson, younger of Newton, who, on the event, became with his father (a rich man) bound to relieve the mother of his bride—‘the old Lady Gicht’—of the debts of the family, in requital for certain advantages conferred upon him. The mother had married as a [Sidenote: 1704.] second husband Major-general Buchan, who commanded the Cavalier army after the death of Lord Dundee, till he was defeated by Sir Thomas Livingstone at Cromdale. By and by, Alexander Davidson, under fair pretences, through James Hamilton of Cowbairdie, borrowed from his mother-in-law her copy of the marriage-contract, which had not yet been registered; and when the family creditors applied for payment of their debts, he did not scruple to send them, or allow them to go to the old Lady Gicht and her husband for payment. They, beginning to feel distressed by the creditors, sought back the copy of the contract for their protection; but as no entreaty could induce Davidson to return it to Cowbairdie, they were obliged at last to prosecute the latter gentleman for its restitution.