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commonly called jockies, and present them to the state of Venice, ‘to
serve in the galleys against the common enemy of Christendom.’
Most of the patriot’s contemporaries probably acknowledged the
existence of the evil which he described—though he probably
exaggerated it to the extent of at least a third—but there is no
appearance of the slightest movement having ever been made
towards the adoption of his remedy. A modern man can only wonder
at such a scheme proceeding from one whose patriotism was in
general too fine for use, and who held such views of the late
tyrannical governments, that he was for punishing their surviving
instruments several years after the Revolution.[257]
At the date noted, the government was revolving more rational
plans for mitigating the evils of the wide-spread mendicancy. The
Privy Council issued a proclamation, 1699.
adverting to the non-execution of the laws
for the poor during the time of the scarcity, but intimating that better
arrangements were rendered possible by the plentiful harvest just
realised. The plan ordered to be adopted was to build correction-
houses at Edinburgh, Dumfries, Ayr, Glasgow, Stirling, Perth,
Dundee, Aberdeen, and Inverness, each for the county connected
with the burgh, into which the poor should be received: no allusion is
made to the other counties. The poor were to be confined to the
districts in which they had had residence for the last three years. It
was ordained of each correction-house, that it should have ‘a large
close sufficiently enclosed for keeping the said poor people, that they
be not necessitat to be always within doors to the hurt and hazard of
their health.’ And the magistrates of the burghs were commanded to
take the necessary steps for raising these pauper-receptacles under
heavy penalties.[258]

It was customary for the Lords of Privy Nov. 9.

Council to grant exclusive right to print and
vend books for certain terms—being all that then existed as
equivalent to our modern idea of copyright. Most generally, this right
was given to booksellers and printers, and bore reference rather to
the mercantile venture involved in the expense of producing the
book, than to any idea of a reward for authorcraft. Quite in
conformity with this old view of literary rights, the Council now
conferred on George Mossman, stationer in Edinburgh, ‘warrant to
print and sell the works of the learned Mr George Buchanan, in ane
volume in folio, or by parts in lesser volumes,’ and discharged ‘all
others to print, import, or sell, the whole or any part of the said Mr
George his works in any volume or character, for the space of
nineteen years.’
In conformity with the same view of copyright, another Edinburgh
stationer, who, in 1684, had obtained a nineteen years’ title to print
Sir George Mackenzie’s Institutes of the Law of Scotland, soon after
this day was favoured with a renewal of the privilege, on his
contemplating a second edition.
Robert Sanders, printer in Glasgow, had printed a large
impression of a small book, entitled Merchandising Spiritualised, or
the Christian Merchant Trading to Heaven, by Mr James Clark,
minister at Glasgow; which, in Sanders’s opinion, was calculated to
be ‘of excellent use to good people of all 1699.
ranks and degrees.’ For his encouragement
in the undertaking, he petitioned the Privy Council (July 13, 1703)
for an exclusive right of publishing the book; and he was fortified in
his claim by a letter from the author, as well as a ‘testificat from Mr
James Woodrow, professor of divinity at Glasgow, anent the
soundness of the said book.’ The Council, taking all these things into
account, gave Sanders a licence equivalent to copyright for nineteen
years.[259]

The abundant harvest of 1699 was Nov. 30.

acknowledged by a general thanksgiving.
But, that the people might not be too happy on the occasion, the
king, in the proclamation for this observance, was made to
acknowledge that the late famine and heavy mortality had been a just
retribution of the Almighty for the sins of the people; as likewise had
been ‘several other judgments, specially the frustrating the
endeavours that have been made for advancing the trade of this
nation.’ [The royal councillors were too good Christians, or too polite
towards their master, to insinuate as a secular cause the subserviency
of the king to English merchants jealous of Scottish rivalry.] For
these reasons, he said, it was proper, on the same day, that there be
solemn and fervent prayers to God, entreating him to look mercifully
on the sins of the people, and remove these, ‘the procuring causes of
all afflictions,’ and permit that ‘we may no more abuse his goodness
into wantonness and forgetfulness.’
The people of Scotland were poor, and lived in the most sparing
manner. When they made an honourable attempt to extend their
industry, that they might live a little better, their sovereign permitted
the English to ‘frustrate the endeavour.’ He then told them to humble
themselves for the sins which had procured their afflictions, and
reproached them with a luxury which they had never enjoyed. The
whole affair reminds one of the rebuke administered by Father Paul
to the starved porter in The Duenna: ‘Ye eat, and swill, and drink,
and gormandise,’ &c.

Notwithstanding the abundance of the Dec. 14.

harvest, universally acknowledged a
fortnight before by solemn religious rites, there was already some
alarm beginning to arise about the future, chiefly in consequence of
the very natural movements observed among possessors of and
dealers in grain, for reserving the stock against eventual demands.
There now, therefore, appeared a 1699.
proclamation forbidding export and
encouraging import, the latter step being ‘for the more effectual
disappointing of the ill practices of forestalled and regraters.’[260]

We have at this time a curious illustration Dec. 7.

of the slowness of all travelling in Scotland,
in a petition of Robert Irvine of Corinhaugh to the Privy Council. He
had been cited to appear as a witness by a particular day, in the case
of Dame Marjory Seton, relict of Lewis Viscount of Frendraught, but
he did not arrive till the day after, having been ‘fully eight days upon
the journey that he usually made in three,’ in consequence of the
unseasonableness of the weather, by which even the post had been
obstructed. The denunciation against him for nonappearance was
discharged.[261]

1700. Jan.
 A case of a singular character was brought before the Court of
Justiciary. In the preceding July, a boy named John Douglas, son of
Douglas of Dornock, attending the school of Moffat, was chastised by
his teacher, Mr Robert Carmichael, with such extreme severity that
he died on the spot. The master is described in the indictment as
beating and dragging the boy, and giving him three lashings without
intermission; so that when ‘let down’ for the third time, he ‘could
only weakly struggle along to his seat, and never spoke more, but
breathed out his last, and was carried dying, if not dead, out of the
school.’ Carmichael fled, and kept out of sight for some weeks, ‘but
by the providence of God was discovered and seized.’
‘The Lords decerned the said Mr Robert to be taken from the
Tolbooth of Edinburgh by the hangman under a sure guard to the
middle of the Landmarket, and there lashed by seven severe stripes;
then to be carried down to the Cross, and there severely lashed by six
sharp stripes; and then to be carried to the Fountain Well, to be
severely lashed by five stripes; and then to be carried back by the
hangman to the Tolbooth. Likeas, the Lords banish the said Mr
Robert furth of this kingdom, never to return thereto under all
highest pains.’[262]
Robert Carmichael was perhaps only unfortunate in some
constitutional weakness of his victim. An energetic use of the lash
was the rule, not the exception, in the old 1700.
school—nay, even down to times of which
many living persons may well say, ‘quæque miserrima vidi, et
quorum pars magna fui.’ In the High School of Edinburgh about
1790, one of the masters (Nicol) occasionally had twelve dunces to
whip at once, ranking them up in a row for the purpose. When all
was ready, he would send a polite message to his colleague, Mr
Cruikshank, ‘to come and hear his organ.’ Cruikshank having come,
Mr Nicol would proceed to administer a rapid cursory flagellation
along and up and down the row, producing a variety of notes from
the patients, which, if he had been more of a scientific musician, he
might have probably called a bravura. Mr Cruikshank was sure to
take an early opportunity of inviting Mr Nicol to a similar treat.

One of the most conspicuous persons at Jan.

this time in Scotland—one of the few,
moreover, known out of his own country, or destined to be
remembered in a future age—was Dr Archibald Pitcairn. He
practised as a physician in Edinburgh, without an equal in
reputation; but he was also noted as a man of bright general talents,
and of great wit and pleasantry. His habits were convivial, after the
manner of his time, or beyond it; and his professional Delphi was a
darkling tavern in the Parliament Close, which he called the Greping
Office (Latinè, ‘Greppa’), by reason of the necessity of groping in
order to get into it. Here, in addition to all difficulties of access, his
patients must have found it a somewhat critical matter to catch him
at a happy moment, if it was true, as alleged, that he would
sometimes be drunk twice a day. It is also told of him that, having
given an order at home, that when detained overnight at this same
Greping Office, he should have a clean shirt sent to him by a servant
next morning, the rule was on one occasion observed till the number
of clean shirts amounted to six, all of which he had duly put on; but,
behold, when he finally re-emerged and made his way home, the
whole were found upon him, one above the other! Perhaps these are
exaggerations, shewing no more than that the habits of the clever
doctor were such as to have excited the popular imagination. It was a
matter of more serious moment, that Pitcairn was insensible to the
beauties of the Presbyterian polity and the logic of the Calvinistic
faith—being for this reason popularly labelled as an atheist—and
that, in natural connection with this frame of opinion, he was no
admirer of the happy revolution government.
He had, about this time, written a letter to his friend, Dr Robert
Gray, in London; and Captain Bruce, a 1700.
person attached to the service of the Duke
of Hamilton, had sent it to its destination under a cover. It fell, in
London, into the hands of the Scottish Secretary, Seafield, who
immediately returned it to the Lord Chancellor in Edinburgh, as one
of a dangerous character towards the government. The Lord
Chancellor immediately caused Dr Pitcairn and Captain Bruce to be
apprehended and put into the Tolbooth, each in a room by himself.
On the letter being immediately after read to the Privy Council
(January 16), they entirely approved of what had been done, and
gave orders for a criminal process being instituted before them
against the two gentlemen.
 Dr Pitcairn.

On the 25th of January, Pitcairn was brought before the Council

on a charge of contravening various statutes against leasing-making
—that is, venting and circulating reproaches and false reports against
the government. He was accused of having, on a certain day in
December, written a letter to Dr Gray in reference to an address
which was in course of signature regarding 1700.
the meeting of parliament. This, he said,
was going on unanimously throughout the nation, only a few
courtiers and Presbyterian ministers opposing it, and that in vain;
‘twice so many have signed since the proclamation anent petitioning
as signed it before.’ ‘He bids him [Dr Gray] take notice that there is
one sent to court, with a title different, to beguile the elect of the
court, if it were possible.’ ‘And all the corporations and all the
gentlemen have signed the address, and himself among the rest; and
it is now a National Covenant, and, by Jove, it would produce a
national and universal ——; to which he adds that he is thinking after
a lazy way to reprint his papers, but hopes there shall be news ere
they are printed, and that he is calculating the force of the musculi
abdominis in digesting meat, and is sure they can do it, une belle
affaire.’
In the letters of charge brought forward by the Lord Advocate, it
was alleged that there were here as many falsehoods as statements,
and the object of the whole to throw discredit on the government was
manifest. One of his allegations was the more offensive as he had
sought to confirm it ‘by swearing profanely as a pagan, and not as a
Christian, “by Jove, it will produce a national and universal ——,”
which blank cannot be construed to have a less import than a
national and universal overturning.’ Seeing it clearly evidenced that
he had ‘foolishly and wickedly meddled in the affairs of his majesty
and his estate, he ought to be severely punished in his person and
goods, to the terror of others to do the like in time coming.’
Dr Pitcairn, knowing well the kind of men he had to deal with,
made no attempt at defence; neither did he utter any complaint as to
the violation of his private correspondence. He pleaded that he had
written in his cups with no evil design against the government, and
threw himself entirely on the mercy of the Council. His submission
was accepted, and he got off with a reprimand from the Lord
Chancellor, after giving bond with his friend Sir Archibald
Stevenson, under two hundred pounds sterling, to live peaceably
under the government, and consult and contrive nothing against it.
[263]

This is the date of a conflagration in Feb. 3.

Edinburgh, which made a great impression
at the time, and was long remembered. It 1700.
broke out in one of the densest parts of the
city, in a building between the Cowgate and Parliament Close, about
ten o’clock of a Saturday night. Here, in those days, lived men of no
small importance. We are told that the fire commenced in a closet of
the house of Mr John Buchan, being that below the residence of Lord
Crossrig, one of the judges. Part of his lordship’s family was in bed,
and he was himself retiring, when the alarm was given, and he and
his family were obliged to escape without their clothes. ‘Crossrig,
naked, with a child under his oxter [armpit], happing for his life,’ is
cited as one of the sad sights of the night. ‘When people were sent
into his closet to help out with his cabinet and papers, the smoke was
so thick that they only got out a small cabinet with great difficulty.
Albeit his papers were lying about the floor, or hung about the walls
of his closet in pocks, yet they durst not stay to gather them up or
take them ... so that that cabinet, and his servant [clerk]‘s lettron
[desk], which stood near the door of the lodging, with some few other
things, was all that was saved, and the rest, even to his lordship’s
wearing-clothes, were burnt.’[264] According to an eye-witness, the
fire continued to burn all night and till ten o’clock on Sunday
morning, ‘with the greatest frayor and vehemency that ever I saw a
fire do, notwithstanding that I saw London burn.’[265] ‘The flames
were so terrible, that none durst come near to quench it. It was a very
great wind, which blew to such a degree, that, with the sparks that
came from the fire, there was nothing to be seen through the whole
city, but as it had been showers of sparks, like showers of snow, they
were so thick.’[266]
‘There are burnt, by the easiest computation, between three and
four hundred families; the pride of Edinburgh is sunk; from the
Cowgate to the High Street, all is burnt, and hardly one stone left
upon another. The Commissioner, the President of Parliament, the
President of the Court of Session [Sir Hugh Dalrymple], the Bank [of
Scotland], most of the lords, lawyers, and clerks were burnt, besides
many poor families. The Parliament House very nearly [narrowly]
escaped; all registers confounded [the public registers being kept
there]; clerks’ chambers and processes in such a confusion, that the
lords and officers of state are just now met in Ross’s tavern, in order
to adjourn the session by reason of the 1700.
disorder. Few people are lost, if any at all;
but there was neither heart nor hand left among them for saving
from the fire, nor a drop of water in the cisterns. Twenty thousand
hands flitting [removing] their trash, they knew not where, and
hardly twenty at work. Many rueful spectacles, &c.’[267]
The Town Council recorded their sense of this calamity as a ‘fearful
rebuke of God,’ and the Rev. Mr Willison of Dundee did not omit to
improve the occasion. ‘In Edinburgh,’ says he, ‘where Sabbath-
breaking very much abounded, the fairest and stateliest of its
buildings, in the Parliament Close and about it (to which scarce any
in Britain were comparable), were on the fourth of February (being
the Lord’s Day), burnt down and laid in ashes and ruins in the space
of a few hours, to the astonishment and terror of the sorrowful
inhabitants, whereof I myself was an eye-witness. So great was the
terror and confusion of that Lord’s Day, that the people of the city
were in no case to attend any sermon or public worship upon it,
though there was a great number of worthy ministers convened in
the place (beside the reverend ministers of the city) ready to have
prayed with or preached to the people on that sad occasion, for the
General Assembly was sitting there at the time. However, the Lord
himself, by that silent Sabbath, did loudly preach to all the
inhabitants of the city,’ &c.[268]
Some of the houses burnt on this occasion, forming part of the
Parliament Square, were of the extraordinary altitude of fourteen
stories, six or seven of which, however, were below the level of the
ground on the north side. These had been built about twenty years
before by Thomas Robertson, brewer, a thriving citizen, who is
described in his epitaph in the Greyfriars’ churchyard as ‘remarkable
for piety towards God, loyalty towards his prince, love to his country,
and civility towards all persons;’ while he was also, by these
structures, ‘urbis exornator, si non conditor.’[269] But Robertson, as
youngest bailie, had given the Covenant out of his hand to be burnt
at the Cross in 1661; and ‘now God in his providence hath sent a
burning among his lands, so that that which was eleven years a-
building, was not six hours of burning. Notwithstanding this, he was
a good man, and lamented to his death the burning of the Covenant;
he was also very helpful to the Lord’s prisoners during the late
persecution.’[270]
There being no insurance against fire in 1700.
those days, the heirs of Robertson were
reduced from comparative affluence to poverty, and the head of the
family was glad to accept the situation of a captain in the city guard,
and at last was made a pensioner upon the city’s charge.[271]
Amongst the burnt out has been mentioned the Bank of Scotland.
‘The directors and others concerned did with great care and diligence
carry off all the cash, bank-notes, books, and papers in the office;
being assisted by a party of soldiers brought from the Castle by the
Earl of Leven, then governor thereof, and governor of the bank, who,
with the Lord Ruthven, then a director, stood all the night directing
and supporting the soldiers, in keeping the stair and passage from
being overcrowded. But the Company lost their lodging and whole
furniture in it.’[272]
Lord Crossrig, who suffered so much by this fire, tells us in his
Diary, that in the late evil times—that is, before the Revolution—he
had been a member of a society that met every Monday afternoon
‘for prayer and conference.’ Since their deliverance, such societies
had gone out of fashion, and profanity went on increasing till it came
to a great height. Hearing that there were societies setting up in
England ‘for reformation of manners,’ and falling in with a book that
gave an account of them, he bethought him how desirable it was that
something of the sort should be attempted in Edinburgh, and spoke
to several friends on the subject. There was, consequently, a meeting
at his house in November 1699, at which were present Mr Francis
Grant (subsequently Lord Cullen); Mr Matthew Sinclair; Mr William
Brodie, advocate; Mr Alexander Dundas, physician, and some other
persons, who then determined to form themselves into such a
society, under sanction of some of the clergy. The schedule of rules
for this fraternity was signed on the night when the fire happened.
‘This,’ says Crossrig, ‘is a thing I remark as notable, which
presently was a rebuke to some of us for some fault in our solemn
engagement there, and probably Satan blew that coal to witness his
indignation at a society designedly entered into in opposition to the
Kingdom of Darkness, and in hopes that such an occurrence should
dash our society in its infancy, and discourage us to proceed therein.
However, blessed be our God, all who then met have continued
steadfast ever since ... and we have had many meetings since that
time, even during the three months that I 1700.
lived at the Earl of Winton’s lodging in the
Canongate.... Likeas, there are several other societies of the same
nature set up in this city.’[273]

The burning out of the Bank of Scotland Feb.

was not more than twenty days past, when a
trouble of a different kind fell upon it. ‘One Thomas M‘Gie, who was
bred a scholar, but poor, of a good genius and ready wit, of an
aspiring temper, and desirous to make an appearance in the world,
but wanting a fund convenient for his purpose, was tempted to try
his hand upon bank-notes. At this time all the five kinds of notes—
namely, £100, £50, £20, £10, and £5—were engraven in one and the
same character. He, by artful razing, altered the word five in the five-
pound note, and made it fifty. But good providence discovered the
villainy before he had done any great damage, by means of the check-
book and a record kept in the office; and the rogue was forced to fly
abroad. The check-book and record are so excellently adapted to one
another, and well contrived; and the keeping them right, and
applying thereof, is so easy, that no forgery or falsehood of notes can
be imposed upon the bank for any sum of moment, before it is
discovered. After discovering this cheat of M‘Gie, the company
caused engrave new copper-plates for all their notes, each of a
different character, adding several other checks; so that it is not in
the power of man to renew M‘Gie’s villainy.’[274]

The glass-work at Leith made a great Feb.

complaint regarding the ruinous practice
pursued by the work at Newcastle, of sending great quantities of
their goods into Scotland. The English makers had lately landed at
Montrose no less than two thousand six hundred dozen of bottles,
‘which will overstock the whole country with the commodity.’ On
their petition, the Lords of the Privy Council empowered the Leith
Glass Company to send out officers to seize any such English bottles
and bring them in for his majesty’s use.[275]

The ill-reputed governments of the last Mar. 14.

two reigns put down unlicensed worship
among the Presbyterians, on the ground that the conventicles were
schools of disaffection. The present government acted upon precisely
the same principle, in crushing attempts at the establishment of
Episcopal meeting-houses. The commission 1700.
of the General Assembly at this time
represented to the Privy Council that the parishes of Eyemouth,
Ayton, and Coldingham[276] were ‘very much disturbed by the setting
up of Episcopal meeting-houses, whereby the people are withdrawn
from their duty to his majesty, and all good order of the church
violat.’ On the petition of the presbytery of Chirnside, backed by the
Assembly Commission, the Privy Council ordained that the sheriff
shut up all these meeting-houses, and recommended the Lord
Advocate to ‘prosecute the pretended ministers preaching at the said
meeting-houses, not qualified according to law, and thereby not
having the protection of the government.’[277]
This policy seems to have been effectual for its object, for in the
statistical account of Coldingham, drawn up near the close of the
eighteenth century, the minister reports that there were no
Episcopalians in his parish. It is but one of many facts which might
be adduced in opposition to the popular doctrine, that persecution is
powerless against religious conviction.

Notwithstanding the many serious and the many calamitous things

affecting Scotland, there was an under-current of pleasantries and
jocularities, of which we are here and there fortunate enough to get a
glimpse. For example—in Aberdeen, near the gate of the mansion of
the Earl of Errol, there looms out upon our view a little cozy tavern,
kept by one Peter Butter, much frequented of students in Marischal
College and the dependents of the magnate here named. The former
called it the Collegium Butterense, as affecting to consider it a sort of
university supplementary to, and necessary for the completion of, the
daylight one which their friends understood them to be attending.
Here drinking was study, and proficiency therein gave the title to
degrees. Even for admission, there was a theme required, which
consisted in drinking a particular glass to every friend and
acquaintance one had in the world, with one more. Without these
possibly thirty-nine or more articles being duly and unreservedly
swallowed, the candidate was relentlessly excluded. On being
accepted, a wreath was conferred, and Master James Hay, by virtue
of the authority resting in him under the 1700.
rules of the foundation, addressed the
neophyte:
Potestatem do tibique
Compotandi bibendique,
Ac summa pocula implendi,
Et haustus exhauriendi,
Cujusve sint capacitatis,
E rotundis aut quadratis.
In signum ut manumittaris,
 Adornet caput hic galerus,
Quod tibi felix sit faustumque,
Obnixe comprecor multumque.

There were theses, too, on suitably convivial ideas—as, for example:

’Gainst any man of sense,
Asserimus ex pacto,
Upon his own expense,
Quod vere datur ens
Potabile de facto....

If you expect degrees,

Drink off your cup and fill,
We’re not for what you please:
Our absolute decrees
Admit of no free-will....

The longer we do sit,

The more we hate all quarrels,
(Let none his quarters flit),
The more we do admit
Of vacuum in barrels. &c.

Or else:
For to find out a parallaxis
We’ll not our minds apply,
Save what a toast in Corbreed[278] makes us;
Whether the moon moves on her axis,
Ask Black and Gregory.[279]

That bodies are à parte rei,

To hold we think it meetest;
Some cold, some hot, some moist, some dry,
Though all of them ye taste and try,
The fluid is the sweetest.

Post sextam semi hora

At night, no friend refuses
To come lavare ora;
Est melior quam Aurorâ,
And fitter for the Muses, &c.

1700.
 A diploma conferred upon George Durward, doubtless not without
very grave consideration of his pretensions to the honour, is couched
in much the same strain as the theses:
To all and sundry who shall see this,
Whate’er his station or degree is,
We, Masters of the Buttery College,
Send greeting, and to give them knowledge,
That George Durward, præsentium lator,
Did study at our Alma Mater
Some years, and hated foolish projects,
But stiffly studied liquid logics;
And now he’s as well skilled in liquor
As any one that blaws a bicker;
For he can make our college theme
A syllogism or enthymeme....
Since now we have him manumitted,
In arts and sciences well fitted,
To recommend him we incline
To all besouth and north the line,
To black and white, though they live as far
As Cape Good-Hope and Madagascar,
Him to advance, because he is
Juvenis bonæ indolis, &c.

We have, however, no specimen of the wit of this fluid university

that strikes us as equal to a Catalogus Librorum in Bibliothecâ
Butterensi; to all external appearance, a dry list of learned books,
while in reality comprehending the whole paraphernalia of a tavern.
It is formally divided into ‘Books in large folio,’ ‘Books in lesser folio,’
‘Books in quarto,’ ‘Books in octavo,’ and ‘Lesser Volumes,’ just as we
might suppose the university catalogue to have been. Amongst the
works included are: ‘Maximilian Malt-kist de principiis liquidorum—
Kircherus Kettles de eodem themate—Bucket’s Hydrostaticks—
Opera Bibuli Barrelli, ubi de conservatione liquoris, et de vacuo,
problematice disputatur—Constantinus Chopinus de philosophicis
bibendi legibus, in usum Principalis, curâ Georgii Leith [described in
a note as a particularly assiduous pupil of the college] 12 tom.—
Compendium ejus, for weaker capacities—Barnabius Beer-glass, de
lavando gutture—Manuale Gideonis Gill, de Syllogismis
concludentibus—Findlay Fireside, de 1700.
circulari poculorum motu,’ &c. One may
faintly imagine how all this light-headed nonsense would please Dr
Pitcairn, as he sat regaling himself in the Greping Office, and how the
serious people would shake their heads at it when they perused it at
full length, a few years afterwards, in Watson’s Collection of Scots
Poems.

The commissioners of the General July 31.

Assembly, considering the impending
danger of a late harvest and consequent scarcity, and the other
distresses of the country, called for the 29th day of August being
solemnised by a fast. In the reasons for it, they mention the
unworthy repining at the late providences, and ‘that, under our great
penury and dearth, whilst some provoked God by their profuse
prodigality, the poorest of the people, who suffered most, and who
ought thereby to have been amended, have rather grown worse and
worse.’

Duncan Robertson, a younger son of the deceased Laird of Struan,

had fallen out of all good terms with his mother, apparently in
consequence of some disputes about their respective rights.
Gathering an armed band of idle ruffians, he went with them to his
mother’s jointure-lands, and laid them waste; he went to a ‘room’ or
piece of land occupied by his sister Margaret, and carried off all that
was upon it; he also ‘laid waste any possession his other sister Mrs
Janet had.’ When a military party, posted at Carie, came to protect
the ladies, he fired on it, and afterwards plainly avowed to the
commander that his object was to dispossess his mother and her
tenants. By this cruel act, Lady Struan and her other children had
been ‘reduced to these straits and difficulties, that they had not
whereupon to live.’
The Privy Council gave orders for the Aug. 2.
capture of Duncan Robertson, and his being
put in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and kept there till further orders.
[280]

Nov. 16.
 A band of persons, usually called Egyptians or gipsies, used to go
about the province of Moray in armed fashion, helping themselves
freely to the property of the settled population, and ordinarily
sleeping in kilns near the farmhouses. There seems to have been
thirty of them in all, men and women; but it was seldom that more
than eight or ten made their appearance in 1700.
any one place. It was quite a familiar sight,
at a fair or market in Banff, Elgin, Forres, or any other town of the
district, to see nearly a dozen sturdy Egyptians march in with a piper
playing at their head, their matchlocks slung behind them, and their
broadswords or dirks by their sides, to mingle in the crowd, inspect
the cattle shewn for sale, and watch for bargains passing among
individuals, in order to learn who was in the way of receiving money.
They would be viewed with no small suspicion and dislike by the
assembled rustics and farmers; but the law was unable to put them
entirely down.
James Macpherson, who was understood to be the natural son of a
gentleman of the district by a gipsy mother, was a conspicuous or
leading man in the band; he was a person of goodly figure and great
strength and daring, always carrying about with him—how acquired
we cannot tell—an example of the two-handed swords of a former
age, besides other weapons. He had a talent for music, and was a
good player on the violin. It has been stated that some traits of a
generous nature occasionally shone out in him; but, on the whole, he
was merely a Highland cateran, breaking houses and henroosts,
stealing horses and cattle, and living recklessly on the proceeds, like
the tribe with which he associated.
Duff, Laird of Braco, founder of the honours and wealth of the
Earls of Fife, took a lead at this time in the public affairs of his
district. He formed the resolution of trying to give a check to the
lawless proceedings of the Egyptians, by bringing their leaders to
justice. It required some courage to face such determined ruffians
with arms in their hands, and he had a further difficulty in the
territorial prejudices of the Laird of Grant, who regarded some of the
robbers as his tenants, and felt bound, accordingly, to protect them
from any jurisdiction besides his own.[281] This remark bears
particularly upon two named Peter and Donald Brown, who had
lived for half a year at a place closely adjacent to Castle-Grant, and
 the former of whom 1700.
was regarded as
captain of the band.
Finding Macpherson, the Browns, and
others at the ‘Summer’s Eve Fair in Keith, the
stout-hearted Braco made up his mind to
attack them. To pursue a narrative which
appears to be authentic: ‘As soon as he
observed them in the fair, he desired his
brother-in-law, Lesmurdie, to bring him a
dozen stout men, which he did. They attacked
the villains, who, as they had several of their
accomplices with them, made a desperate
resistance. One of them made a pass at Braco
with his hanger, intending to run him through
the heart; but it slanted along the outside of
the ribs, and one of his men immediately
stabbed the fellow dead. They then carried
Macpherson and [Peter] Brown to a house in
Keith, and set three or four stout men to
guard them, not expecting any more
opposition, as all the rest of the gang were
fled. Braco and Lesmurdie were sitting in an
upper room, concerting the commitment of
their prisoners, when the Laird of Grant and
thirty men came calling for them, swearing no
Duff in Scotland should keep them from him.
Braco, hearing the noise of the Grants, came
down stairs, and said, with seeming
unconcern and humour: “That he designed to
have sent them to prison; but he saw they
were too strong a party for him to contend
Macpherson’s with, and so he must leave them;” but,
Sword. without losing a moment, he took a turn
through the market, found other two justices
of peace, kept a court, and assembled sixty
stout fellows, with whom he retook the two criminals, and sent them
to prison.’[282]
 James Macpherson, the two Browns, and 1700.
James Gordon, were brought before the
sheriff of Banffshire at Banff, on the 7th of November 1700, charged
with ‘being habit and repute Egyptians and vagabonds, and keeping
the markets in their ordinary manner of thieving and purse-
cutting’ ... being guilty also of ‘masterful bangstrie and oppression.’ A
procurator appeared on the part of the young Laird of Grant,
demanding surrender of the two Browns, to be tried in the court of
his regality, within whose bounds they had lived, and offering a
culreach or pledge for them;[283] but the demand was overruled, on
the ground that the Browns had never been truly domiciliated there.
Witnesses were adduced, who detailed many felonies of the
prisoners. They had stolen sheep, oxen, and horses; they had broken
into houses, and taken away goods; they had robbed men of their
purses, and tyrannously oppressed many poor people. It was shewn
that the band was in the habit of speaking a peculiar language. They
often spent whole nights in dancing and debauchery, Peter Brown or
Macpherson giving animation to the scene by the strains of the
violin. An inhabitant of Keith related how Macpherson came to his
house one day, seeking for him, when, not finding him, he stabbed
the bed, to make sure he was not there, and, on going away, set the
ale-barrel aflowing. The jury gave a verdict against all the four
prisoners; but sentence was for the meantime passed upon only
Macpherson and Gordon, adjudging them to be hanged next market-
day.[284]
Macpherson spent the last hours of his life in composing a tune
expressive of the reckless courage with which he regarded his fate.
He marched to the place of execution, a mile from the town, playing
this air on his violin. He even danced to it under the fatal tree. Then
he asked if any one in the crowd would accept his fiddle, and keep it
as a memorial of Macpherson; and finding no one disposed to do so,
he broke the instrument over his knee, and threw himself
indignantly from the ladder. Such was the life and death of a man of
whom one is tempted to think that, with such qualities as he
possessed, he might, in a happier age, have 1700.
risen to some better distinction than that
which unfortunately he has attained.[285]
 At this date one of the most remarkable of 1701. Jan. 25.
the precursors of Watt in the construction
of the steam-engine, comes in an interesting manner into connection
with Scotland. Captain Thomas Savery, an Englishman, ‘treasurer to
the commissioners of sick and wounded,’ had, in 1696, described an
engine framed by himself, and which is believed to have been
original and unsuggested, ‘in which water is raised not only by the
expansive force of steam, but also by its condensation, the water
being raised by the pressure of the atmosphere into receivers, from
which it is forced to a greater height by the expansive force of the
steam.’[286] He had obtained a patent for this engine in 1698, to last
for thirty-five years.
We have seen that there were busy-brained men in Scotland,
constantly trying to devise new things; and even now, Mr James
Gregory, Professor of Mathematics in the Edinburgh University—a
member of a family in which talent has been inherent for two
centuries—was endeavouring to bring into use ‘a machine invented
by him for raising of water in a continued pipe merely by lifting,
without any suction or forcing, which are the only ways formerly
practised, and liable to a great many inconveniences.’ By this new
machine, according to the inventor, ‘water might be raised to any
height, in a greater quantity, and in less space of time,’ than by any
other means employing the same force. It was useful for ‘coal-pits or
mines under ground.’ On his petition, Mr 1701.
Gregory obtained an exclusive right to make
and use this machine for thirty-one years.
Another such inventive genius was Mr James Smith of Whitehill,
who for several years made himself notable by his plans for
introducing supplies of water into burghs. Smith had caught at
Savery’s idea, and made a paction with him for the use of his engine
in Scotland, and now he applied to the Estates for ‘encouragement.’
He says that, since his bargain with Captain Savery, he ‘has made
additions to the engine to considerable advantage, so that, in the
short space of an hour, there may be raised thereby no less than the
quantity of twenty tuns of water to the height of fourteen fathoms.’
Any member of the honourable house was welcome to see it at work,
and satisfy himself of its efficiency; whence we may infer that an
example of it had come down to Edinburgh. In compliance with his
petition, Smith was invested with the exclusive power of making the
engine and dealing with parties for its use during the remainder of
the English patent.[287]
Savery’s steam-engine, however, was a seed sown upon an infertile
soil, and after this date, we in Scotland at least hear of it no more.

It pleased the wisdom of the Scottish July 10.

legislature (as it did that of the English
parliament likewise) to forbid the export of wool and of woolly skins,
an encouragement to woollen manufacturers at home, at the
expense, as usual, of three or four times the amount in loss to the
rest of the community. At this date, Michael Allan, Dean of Guild in
Edinburgh, came before the Privy Council to shew that, in
consequence of the extreme coldness and backwardness of the late
spring, producing a mortality of lambs, there were many thousands
of lambs’ skins, or morts, which could not be manufactured in the
kingdom, and would consequently be lost, but which would be of
value at Dantzig and other eastern ports, where they could be
manufactured into clothing. He thought that property to the value of
about seven thousand pounds sterling might thus be utilised for
Scotland, which otherwise ‘must of a necessity perish at home, and
will be good for nothing;’ and the movement was the more desirable,
as the return for the goods would be in ‘lint, hemp, iron, steel, pot-
ashes, and knaple, very useful for our 1701.
manufactures, and without which the
nation cannot possibly be served.’
The Council called in skinners, furriers, and others to give them
the best advice, and the result was a refusal to allow the skins to be
exported.
Rather more than a twelvemonth before (June 4, 1700), it was
intimated to the Privy Council by ‘the manufactory of Glasgow,’ that
one Fitzgerard, an Irish papist, ‘has had a constant trade these three
years past of exporting wool and woollen yarn to France, and that he
has at this present time combed wool and woollen yarn to the value
of three thousand pounds sterling ready to be exported, to the great
ruin of the nation, and of manufactories of that kind.’ The Council
immediately sent orders to the magistrates of Glasgow to take all