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Solution Manual for Introduction to

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questionable as it was in every respect, was sure to meet with general
approbation.
Before Captain Green and the others had been many days in
custody, strange hints were heard amongst them of a piratical attack
they had committed in the preceding year upon a vessel off the coast
of Malabar. The African Company had three years ago sent out a
vessel, called the Speedy Return, to India, with one Drummond as its
master, and it had never since been heard of. It was concluded that
the people of the Worcester had captured the Speedy Return, and
murdered its crew, and that Providence had arranged for their
punishment, by sending them for shelter from a storm to the
neighbourhood of Edinburgh. Vainly might it have been pointed out
that there was no right evidence for even the fact of the piracy, still
less for the Speedy Return being the subject of the offence. Truth and
justice were wholly lost sight of in the universal thirst for vengeance
against England and its selfish mercantile companies.
Green, the captain of the Worcester, Mather, the chief-mate,
Reynolds, the second-mate, and fifteen others, were tried at this date
before the Court of Admiralty, for the alleged crime of attacking a
ship, having English or Scotch aboard, off 1705.
the coast of Malabar, and subsequently
murdering the crew—no specific vessel or person being mentioned as
the subjects of the crime, and no nearer date being cited than the
months of February, March, April, or May 1703. The jury had no
difficulty in bringing them in guilty, and they were all condemned to
be hanged on the sands of Leith, the usual place for the execution of
pirates.
The English government was thrown into great anxiety by this
violent proceeding, but they could make no effectual resistance to the
current of public feeling in Scotland. There the general belief in the
guilt of Green and his associates was corroborated after the trial by
three several confessions, admitting the piratical seizing of
Drummond’s vessel, and the subsequent murder of himself and his
crew—confessions which can now only be accounted for, like those of
witches, on the theory of a desire to conciliate favour, and perhaps
win pardon, by conceding so far to the popular prejudices. The queen
sent down affidavits shewing that Drummond’s ship had in reality
been taken by pirates at Madagascar, while himself was on shore—a
view of the fact which there is now ample reason to believe to have
been true. She also sent to the Privy Council the expression of her
desire that the men should be respited for a time. But, beyond
postponement for a week, all was in vain. The royal will was treated
respectfully, but set aside on some technical irregularity. When the
day approached for the execution of the first batch of the
condemned, it became evident that there was no power in Scotland
which could have saved these innocent men. The Council, we may
well believe, would have gladly conceded to the royal will, but, placed
as it was amidst an infuriated people, it had no freedom to act. On
the fatal morning (11th April), its movements were jealously watched
by a vast multitude, composed of something more than the ordinary
citizens of Edinburgh, for on the previous day all the more ardent
and determined persons living within many miles round had poured
into the city to see that justice was done. No doubt can now be
entertained that, if the authorities had attempted to save the
condemned from punishment, the mob would have torn them from
the Tolbooth, and hung every one of them up in the street. What
actually took place is described in a letter from Mr Alexander
Wodrow to his father, the minister of Eastwood: ‘I wrote last night,’
he says, ‘of the uncertainty anent the condemned persons, and this
morning things were yet at a greater uncertainty, for the current
report was that ane express was come for a reprieve. How this was, I
have not yet learned; but the councillors 1705.
went down to the Abbey [Palace of
Holyrood] about eight, and came up to the Council-house about
nine, against which time there was a strange gathering in the streets.
The town continued in great confusion for two hours, while the
Council was sitting, and a great rabble at the Netherbow port. All the
guards in the Canongate were in readiness if any mob had arisen.
About eleven, word came out of the Council [sitting in the Parliament
Square] that three were to be hanged—namely, Captain Green,
Mather, and Simson. This appeased the mob, and made many post
away to Leith, where many thousands had been [assembled], and
were on the point of coming up in a great rage. When the chancellor
came out, he got many huzzas at first; but at the Tron Kirk, some
surmised to the mob that all this was but a sham; upon which they
assaulted his coach, and broke the glasses, and forced him to come
out and go into Mylne’s Square, and stay for a considerable time.
‘The three prisoners were brought with the Town-guards,
accompanied with a vast mob. They went through all the Canongate,
and out at the Water-port to Leith. There was a battalion of foot-
guards, and also some of the horse-guards, drawn up at some
distance from the place of execution. There was the greatest
confluence of people there that ever I saw in my life, for they cared
not how far they were off, so be it they saw. Green was first execute,
then Simson, and last of all Mather. They every one of them, when
the rope was about their necks, denied they were guilty of that for
which they were to die. This indeed put all people to a strange
demur. There’s only this to alleviate it, that they confessed no other
particular sins more than that, even though they were posed anent
their swearing and drunkenness, which was weel known.’[375]

The Scottish parliament was not much Sep. 11.


given to the patronising of literature. We
have, indeed, seen it giving encouragement to Adair’s maps of the
coasts, and Slezer’s views of the king’s and other mansions; but it
was in a languid and ineffective way, by reason of the lack of funds.
At this time, the assembled wisdom of the nation was pleased to pass
an act enabling the town-council of Glasgow to impose two pennies
(⅕th of a penny sterling) upon the pint of ale brewn and vended in
that town; and out of this ‘gift in favours of 1705.
the town of Glasgow,’ as it was quite
sincerely called, there was granted three thousand six hundred
pounds (£300 sterling) to Mr James Anderson, writer to her
majesty’s signet, ‘for enabling him to carry on an account of the
ancient and original charters and seals of our kings in copper-plates.’
Why the ale-drinkers of Glasgow should have been called upon to
furnish the country with engraved copies of its ancient charters, was
a question which probably no one dreamed of asking.
In February 1707, the parliament, then about to close its existence,
ordered to Mr Anderson the further sum of £590 sterling, to repay
him for his outlay on the work, with a further sum of £1050 to enable
him to go on and complete it. This was done after due examination
by a committee, which reported favourably of the curious and
valuable character of his collections. Soon after, the parliament, in
consideration of the great sufferings of the town of Dundee in the
time of the troubles and at the Revolution, and of ‘the universal
decay of trade, especially in that burgh,’ granted it an imposition of
two pennies Scots on every pint of ale or beer made or sold in the
town for twenty-four years; but this gift was burdened with a
hundred pounds sterling per annum for six years to Mr James
Anderson, as part of the sum the parliament had agreed to confer
upon him for the encouragement of his labours.[376]

Died Alexander third Earl of Kincardine, Nov.


unmarried, a nobleman of eccentric
character. His father, the second earl, is spoken of by Burnet in the
highest terms; his mother was a Dutch lady, Veronica, daughter of
Corneille, Lord of Sommelsdyk and Spycke. [Readers of Boswell will
remember his infant daughter Veronica, with whom Johnson was
pleased, so named from the biographer’s great-grandmother,
Veronica, Countess of Kincardine.] The earl now deceased, probably
through his parental connection with the Low Countries, had
contracted the religious principles of the Flemish saint or seeress,
Antonia Bourignon, which, like every other departure from pure
Presbyterianism and the Westminster Confession, were detested in
Scotland. Wodrow tells us: ‘I have it from very good hands,
Lieutenant-colonel Erskine[377] and Mr Allan Logan, who were
frequently with him, that the late Earl of 1705.
Kincardine did fast forty days and nights
after he turned Burrignianist, [and] lived several years after. He was
very loose before he turned to these errors; and after a while being in
them, he turned loose again, and died in a very odd manner. Many
thought him possessed. He would have uttered the most dreadful
blasphemies that can be conceived, and he told some things done at a
distance, and repeated Mr Allan Logan’s words, which he had in
secret, and told things it was impossible for anybody to know.’[378]

The more active minds of the country continued constantly


seething with schemes for the promotion of industry, and the remedy
of the standing evil of poverty. In this year there was published an
Essay on the New Project of a Land Mint, which might be
considered a type of the more visionary plans. It rested on what
would now be called one of the commonplaces of false political
economy. The proposed Land Mint was a kind of bank for the issue
of notes, to be given only on landed security. Any one intending to
borrow, say a thousand pounds of these notes, pledged unentailed
land-property to that amount, plus interest and possible expenses,
undertaking to pay back a fifth part each year, with interest on the
outstanding amount, till all was discharged. It was thought that, by
these means, money would be, as it were, created; the country would
be spirited up to hopeful industrial undertakings; and—everything
requiring a religious aspect in those days—the people would be
enabled to resist the designs of a well-known sovereign, ‘aiming now
at a Catholic monarchy;’ for, while Louis XIV. might become sole
master of the plate (that is, silver) of the world, what would it matter
‘if we and other nations should substitute another money, equal in all
cases to plate?’ The only fear the author could bring himself to
entertain, was as to possible counterfeiting of the notes. This being
provided against by an ingenious expedient suggested by himself,
there remained no difficulty and no fear whatever.[379]

Although the incessant violences which 1706. Mar.


we have seen mark an early period
embraced by our Annals were no more, it cannot be said that the
crimes of violent passion had become 1705.
infrequent. On the contrary, it appeared as
if the increasing licence of manners since the Revolution, and
particularly the increasing drunkenness of the upper classes, were
now giving occasion for a considerable number of homicides and
murders. We have seen a notable example of reckless violence in the
case of the Master of Rollo in 1695. There was about the same time a
Laird of Kininmont, who—partly under the influence of a diseased
brain—was allowed to commit a considerable number of
manslaughters before it was thought necessary to arrest him in his
course.
Archibald Houston, writer to the signet in Edinburgh, acted as
factor for the estate of Braid, the property of his nephew, and in this
capacity he had incurred the diligence of the law on account of some
portion of Bishops’ rents which he had failed to pay. Robert Kennedy
of Auchtyfardel, in Lanarkshire, receiving a commission to uplift
these arrears, found it to be his duty to give Houston a charge of
horning for his debt.
One day, Kennedy and his two sons left Mar. 20.
their house in the Castle Hill of Edinburgh,
to go to the usual place of rendezvous at the Cross, when, passing
along the Luckenbooths, he was accosted by Mr Houston with violent
language, referring to the late legal proceedings. Kennedy, if his own
account is to be trusted, gave no hard language in return, but made
an effort to disengage himself from the unseemly scene, and moved
on towards the Cross. Houston, however, followed and renewed the
brawl, when it would appear that Gilbert Kennedy, Auchtyfardel’s
eldest son, was provoked to strike his father’s assailant on the face.
The people now began to flock about the party—Kennedy again
moved on; but before he had got many paces away, he heard the
sounds of a violent collision, and turned back with his cane uplifted
to defend his son. It is alleged that Kennedy fell upon Houston with
his cane—he had no weapon on his person—and while he did so,
young Gilbert Kennedy drew his sword, and, rushing forward,
wounded Houston mortally in the belly. The unfortunate man died a
few days afterwards.[380]
Auchtyfardel’s share in this transaction was held to infer his
liability to an arbitrary punishment. Gilbert fled, and was outlawed,
but afterwards was permitted to return home, and in time he
succeeded to his father’s estate. We hear of him in 1730, as having
been brought by that sad act of his youth 1705.
into a very serious and religious frame of
life. He was an elder of the church, and took great care of the morals
of his servants. A maid, whom he on one occasion reproved severely,
was led, by a diabolic spite, to mix some arsenic with the bread and
milk which she prepared for the family breakfast, and the death of
Houston had very nearly been avenged at the distance of twenty-four
years from its occurrence. Happily, through the aid of a physician,
the laird and his family escaped destruction.[381]
A case more characteristic of the age than that of young
Auchtyfardel occurred in the ensuing year. David Ogilvie of Cluny,
having first thrust himself upon a funeral-party at the village of
Meigle, and there done his best to promote hard drinking, insisted
on accompanying two or three of the gentlemen on their way home,
though his own lay another way. While proceeding along, he gave
extreme annoyance to Andrew Cowpar, younger of Lochblair, by
practical jokes of a gross kind, founded on the variance of sex in their
respective horses. At length, Cowpar giving the other’s horse a switch
across the face, to make it keep off, Ogilvie took violent offence at the
act, demanded Cowpar’s whip under a threat of being otherwise
pistolled, and, on a refusal, actually took out a pistol and shot his
companion dead. The wretched murderer escaped abroad.
In January 1708, Robert Baird, son of Sir James Baird of
Sauchtonhall, had a drinking-match in a tavern at Leith, where he
particularly insisted on his friend, Mr Robert Oswald, being filled
drunk. On Oswald resisting repeated bumpers, Baird demanded an
apology from him, as if he had committed some breach of good-
manners. He refused, and thus a drunken sense of resentment was
engendered in the mind of Baird. At a late hour, they came up to
Edinburgh in a coach, and leaving the vehicle at the Nether Bow,
were no sooner on the street, than Baird drew his sword, and began
to push at Oswald, upon whom he speedily inflicted two mortal
wounds. He fled from the scene, leaving a bloody and broken sword
beside his expiring victim.
On the ground of its not being ‘forethought felony,’ Baird was
some years afterwards allowed by the Court of Justiciary to have the
benefit of Queen Anne’s act of indemnity.

Early in this month, Scotland was 1706. Oct.


honoured with a visit from the celebrated
Daniel Defoe. His noted power and probity 1705.
as a Whig pamphleteer suggested to the
English ministry the propriety of sending him down for a time to
Edinburgh, to help on the cause of the Union. He came with
sympathies for the people of Scotland, founded on what they had
suffered under the last Stuart reigns. Instead of believing all to be
barren and hopeless north of the Tweed, he viewed the country as
one of great capabilities, requiring only peace and industry to
become a scene of prosperity equal to what prevailed in England. To
this end he deemed an incorporating union of the two countries
necessary, and it was therefore with no small amount of good-will
that he undertook the mission assigned to him.
Even, however, from one regarding it so fraternally as Defoe,
Scotland was little disposed to accept a recommendation of that
measure. It was in vain that he published a complaisant poem about
the people, under the name of Caledonia, in which he commended
their bravery, their learning, and abilities. Vainly did he declare
himself their friend, anxious to promote their prosperity by pointing
to improved agriculture, to fisheries, to commerce, and to
manufactures. The Edinburgh people saw him daily closeted with the
leaders of the party for the hated union, and that was enough. His
pen displayed its wonted activity in answers to the objectors, and his
natural good-humour seems never to have failed him, even when he
was assailed with the most virulent abuse. But his enemies did not
confine themselves to words: threats of assassination reached him.
His lodgings were marked, and his footsteps were tracked; yet he
held serenely on in his course. He even entered upon some little
enterprises in the manufacture of linen, for the purpose of shewing
the people what they might do for themselves, if they would adopt
right methods. It appears that, during the tumults which took place
in Edinburgh while the measure was passing through parliament, he
was in real danger. One evening, when the mob was raging in the
street, he looked out of his window to behold their proceedings, and
was nearly hit by a large stone which some one threw at him, the
populace making a point that no one should look over windows at
them, lest he might recognise faces, and become a witness against
individual culprits.
Defoe spent sixteen months in Scotland on this occasion,
rendering much modest good service to the country, and receiving
for it little remuneration besides abuse. Amongst other fruits of his
industry during the period is his laborious work, The History of the
Union of Great Britain. One could have 1706.
wished a record tracing the daily life of this
remarkable man in Scotland. “We only get an obscure idea of some of
his public transactions. One of the few private particulars we have
learned, is that he paid a visit to the Duke of Queensberry at
Drumlanrig, and by his Grace’s desire, took a view of his estates, with
a view to the suggestion of improvements.
Defoe revisited Scotland in the summer of 1708, on a mission the
purpose of which has not been ascertained; and again in the summer
of 1709. His stay on the last occasion extended to nearly two years,
during part of which time, in addition to constant supplies of articles
for his Review in London, he acted as editor of the Edinburgh
Courant newspaper.[382] (See the next article).

In a folio published this day by Captain 1707. Mar. 6.


James Donaldson, under the title of the
Edinburgh Courant Reviewed, we learn that the Edinburgh Gazette,
which, as we have seen, was commenced in 1699, had now
succumbed to fate: damaged by the persevering policy of Adam Boig
of the Courant, the Gazette ‘of late has been laid aside, as a thing that
cannot be profitably carried on.’
Donaldson here reviews the charges made against his paper, as to
partiality and staleness of news, defends it to some extent, but
practically admits the latter fault, by stating that he was about to
remedy it. He was going to recommence the Edinburgh Gazette in a
new series, in which he would ‘take a little more liberty, and give
stories as they come,’ without waiting, as before, for their
authentication, though taking care where they were doubtful to
intimate as much. The Gazette did, accordingly, resume its existence
on the 25th of the same month, as a twice-a-week paper. The first
number contains three advertisements, one of a sale of house-
property, another of the wares of the Leith glass-work, and a third as
follows: ‘There is a gentleman in town, who has an secret which was
imparted to him by his father, an eminent physician in this kingdom,
which by the blessing of God cures the Phrensie and Convulsion Fits.
He takes no reward for his pains till the cure be perfyted. He will be
found at the Caledonian Coffee-house.’
In a series of the Gazette extending from the commencement to
the 140th number, published on the 2d September 1708, there is a
remarkable sterility of home-news, and anything that is told is told,
in a dry and sententious way. The following 1707.
alone seem worthy of transcription:
‘Leith, May 19 [1707].—Last Saturday, about 50 merchant-ships,
bound for Holland, sailed from our Road, under convoy of two Dutch
men-of-war.’
‘Edinburgh, August 5.—This day the Equivalent Money came in
here from South Britain, in thirteen waggons drawn by six horses.’
Sep. 30.—‘Dyer’s Letter says: Daniel de Foe is believed by this time
in the hands of justice at the complaint of the Swedish minister, and
now a certain man of law may have an opportunity to reckon with
him for a crime which made him trip to Scotland, and make him
oblige the world with another Hymn to the Pillory.’
Strange to say, less than three years after this date, namely, in
February 1710, the ‘unabashed Defoe’ was conducting the rival
newspaper in Edinburgh—the Courant—succeeding in this office
Adam Boig, who had died in the preceding month. The authority of
Defoe for his editorship appears in the following decree of the Town
Council:

‘Att Edinburgh the first day of February


jm. vijc. and ten years:

‘The same day The Councill authorized Mr Daniel Defoe to print


the Edinburgh Currant in place of the deceast Adam Bog
Discharging hereby any other person to print News under the name
of the Edinburgh Currant.’
The advertisements are also very scanty, seldom above three or
four, and most of these repeated frequently, as if they were reprinted
gratuitously, in order to make an appearance of business in this line.
The following are selected as curious:
May 13, 1707.—‘This is to give notice to all who have occasion for a
black hersse, murning-coach, and other coaches, just new, and in
good order, with good horses well accoutred, that James Mouat,
coachmaster in Lawrence Ord’s Land at the foot of the Canongate,
will serve them thankfully at reasonable rates.’
‘Ralph Agutter of London, lately come to Edinburgh, Musical
Instrument-maker, is to be found at Widow Pool’s, perfumer of
gloves, at her house in Stonelaw’s Close, a little below the Steps;
makes the Violin, Bass Violin, Tenor Violin, the Viol de Gambo, the
Lute Quiver, the Trumpet Marine, the Harp; and mendeth and
putteth in order and stringeth all those instruments as fine as any
man whatsoever in the three kingdoms, or elsewhere, and mendeth
1707.
the Virginal, Spinnat, and Harpsichord, all at reasonable rates.’
Oct. 16.—‘There is just now come to town the Excellent Scarburray
Water, good for all diseases whatsomever except consumption; and
this being the time of year for drinking the same, especially at the fall
of the leaf and the bud, the price of each chopin bottle is fivepence,
the bottle never required, or three shilling without the bottle. Any
person who has a mind for the same may come to the Fountain Close
within the Netherbow of Edinburgh, at William Mudie’s, where the
Scarsburray woman sells the same.’
August 12, 1708.—‘George Williamson, translator [alias cobbler]
in Edinburgh, commonly known by the name of Bowed Geordie, who
swims on face, back, or any posture, forwards or backwards; plums,
dowks, and performs all the antics that any swimmer can do, is
willing to attend any gentleman, and to teach them to swim, or
perform his antics for their divertisement: is to be found in Luckie
Reid’s at the foot of Gray’s Close, on the south side of the street,
Edinburgh.’
In September 1707, it is advertised that at the Meal Girnel of
Primrose, oatmeal, the produce of the place, was sold at four pounds
Scots the boll for the crop of 1706, while the crop of the preceding
year was £3, 13s. 4d.; in the one case, 6s. 8d.; in the other, 6s. 4d.
sterling.

The Master of Burleigh—eldest son of Apr. 9.


Lord Balfour of Burleigh, a peer possessed
of considerable estates in Fife—had fallen in love with a girl of
humble rank, and was sent abroad by his friends, in the hope that
time and change of scene would save him from making a low
marriage. He was heard to declare before going, that if she married
in his absence, he would take the life of her husband. The girl was,
nevertheless, married to Henry Stenhouse, schoolmaster of
Inverkeithing. The Master was one of those hot-headed persons
whom it is scarcely safe to leave at large, and who yet do not in
general manifest the symptoms that justify restraint. Learning that
his mistress was married, and to whom, he came at this date with
two or three mounted servants to the door of the poor schoolmaster,
who, at his request, came forth from amongst his pupils to speak to
the young gentleman.
‘Do you know me?’ said Balfour.
‘No.’
‘I am the Master of Burleigh. You have 1707.
spoken to my disadvantage, and I am come
to fight you,’
‘I never saw you before,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘and I am sure I
never said anything against you.’
‘I must nevertheless fight with you, and if you won’t, I will at once
shoot you.’
‘It would be hard,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘to force a man who
never injured you into a fight. I have neither horse nor arms, and it is
against my principles to fight duels.’
‘You must nevertheless fight,’ said the Master, ‘or be shot
instantly;’ and so saying, he held a pistol to Stenhouse’s breast.
The young man continuing to excuse himself, Balfour at length
fired, and gave the schoolmaster a mortal wound in the shoulder,
saying with savage cruelty: ‘Take that to be doing with.’ Then, seeing
that an alarm had arisen among the neighbours, he rode off,
brandishing a drawn sword, and calling out: ‘Hold the deserter!’ in
order to divert the attention of the populace. The unfortunate
schoolmaster died in a few days of his wound.
The Master for a time escaped pursuit, but at length he was
brought to trial, July 28, 1709, and adjudged to be beheaded at the
Cross of Edinburgh, on the ensuing 6th of January. During this
unusually long interval, he escaped from the Tolbooth by changing
clothes with his sister. He was not again heard of till May 1714, when
he appeared amongst a number of Jacobite gentlemen at the Cross of
Lochmaben, to drink the health of James VIII. The family title had
by this time devolved on him by the death of his father; but his
property had all been escheat by sentence of the Court of Justiciary.
His appearance in the rebellion of 1715, completed by attainder the
ruin of his family, and he died unmarried and in obscurity in 1757.
[383]
A great flock of the Delphinus Deductor, Apr. 25.
or Ca’ing Whale—a cete about twenty-five
feet long—came into the Firth of Forth, ‘roaring, plunging, and
threshing upon one another, to the great terror of all who heard the
same.’ It is not uncommon for this denizen of the arctic seas to
appear in considerable numbers on the coasts of Zetland; and
occasionally they present themselves on the shores of Caithness and
Sutherlandshire; but to come so far south as the Firth of Forth is very
rare: hence the astonishment which the incident seems to have
created. The contemporary chronicler goes 1707.
on to state: ‘Thirty-five of them were run
ashore upon the sands of Kirkcaldy, where they made yet a more
dreadful roaring and tossing when they found themselves aground,
insomuch that the earth trembled.’ ‘What the unusual appearance of
so great a number of them at this juncture [the union of the
kingdoms] may portend shall not be our business to inquire.’[384]

The fifteenth article of the treaty of Union Aug.


provided that England should pay to
Scotland the sum of £398,085, 10s., because of the arrangement for
the equality of trade between the two countries having necessitated
that Scotland should henceforth pay equal taxes with England—a
rule which would otherwise have been inequitable towards Scotland,
considering that a part of the English revenue was required for
payment of the interest on her seventeen millions of national debt. It
was likewise provided by the act of Union, that out of this Equivalent
Money, as it was called, the commissioners to be appointed for
managing it should, in the first place, pay for any loss to be incurred
by the renovation of the coin; in the second, should discharge the
losses of the African Company, which thereupon was to cease; the
overplus to be applied for payment of the comparatively trifling
state-debts of Scotland, and to furnish premiums to the extent of
£2000 a year for the improvement of the growth of wool for seven
years—afterwards for the improvement of fisheries and other
branches of the national industry.
Defoe, who was now living in Scotland, tells how those who hated
the Union spoke and acted about the Equivalent. The money not
being paid in Scotland on the very day of the incorporation of the two
countries, the first talk was—the English have cheated us, and will
never pay; they intended it all along. Then an idea got abroad, that
by the non-payment the Union was dissolved; ‘and there was a
discourse of some gentlemen who came up to the Cross of
Edinburgh, and protested, in the name of the whole Scots nation,
That, the conditions of the treaty not being complied with, and the
terms performed, the whole was void.’ At length, in August, the
money came in twelve wagons, guarded by a party of Scots dragoons,
and was carried directly to the Castle. Then those who had formerly
been loudest in denouncing the English for not forwarding the
money, became furious because it was 1707.
come. They hooted at the train as it moved
along the street, cursing the soldiers who guarded it, and even the
horses which drew it. One person of high station called out that those
who brought that money deserved to be cut to pieces. The excitement
increased so much before the money was secured in the Castle, that
the mob pelted the carters and horses on their return into the streets,
and several of the former were much hurt.
It was soon discovered that, after all, only £100,000 of the money
was in specie, the rest being in Exchequer bills, which the Bank of
England had ignorantly supposed to be welcome in all parts of her
majesty’s dominions. This gave rise to new clamours. It was said the
English had tricked them by sending paper instead of money. Bills,
only payable four hundred miles off, and which, if lost or burned,
would be irrecoverable, were a pretty price for the obligation
Scotland had come under to pay English taxes. The impossibility of
satisfying or pleasing a defeated party was never better exemplified.
The commissioners of the Equivalent soon settled themselves in
one of Mr Robert Mylne’s houses in Mylne’s Court, and proceeded to
apply the money in terms of the act. One of their first proceedings
was to send to London for £50,000 in gold, in substitution for so
much of paper-money, that they might, as far as possible, do away
with the last clamour. ‘Nor had this been able to carry them through
the payment, had they not very prudently taken all the Exchequer
bills that any one brought them, and given bills of exchange for them
payable in London.’[385] Defoe adverts to a noble individual—
doubtless the Duke of Hamilton—who came for payment of his share
of the African Company’s stock (£3000), with the interest, and who
refused to take any of the Exchequer bills, probably thinking thus to
create some embarrassment; but the commissioners instantly
ordered the claim to be liquidated in gold.
Notwithstanding all the ravings and revilings about the
Equivalent, Defoe assures us that, amongst the most malcontent
persons he never found any who, having African stock, refused to
take their share of the unhallowed money in exchange for it. Even the
despised Exchequer bills were all despatched so quickly, that, in six
months, not one was to be seen in the country.
Out of the Equivalent, the larger portion—namely, £229,611, 4s.
8d.—went to replace the lost capital of the African Company, and so
could not be considered as rendered to the 1707.
nation at large. For ‘recoining the Scots and
foreign money, and reducing it to the standard of the coin of
England,’ £49,888, 14s. 11 ⅙ d. was expended. There was likewise
spent out of this fund, for the expenses of the commissioners and
secretaries who had been engaged in carrying through the Union,
£30,498, 12s. 2d. After making sundry other payments for public
objects, there remained in 1713 but £16,575, 14s. 0½d. unexpended.
[386]

We shall afterwards see further proceedings in the matter of the


Equivalent.

Walter Scott of Raeburn, grandson of the Oct. 3.


Quaker Raeburn who suffered so long an
imprisonment for his opinions in the reign of Charles II.,[387] fought a
duel with Mark Pringle, youngest son of Andrew Pringle of Clifton. It
arose from a quarrel the two gentlemen had the day before at the
head-court of Selkirk. They were both of them young men, Scott
being only twenty-four years of age, although already four years
married, and a father. The contest was fought with swords in a field
near the town, and Raeburn was killed. The scene of this melancholy
tragedy has ever since been known as Raeburn’s Meadow-spot.
Pringle escaped abroad; became a merchant in Spain; and falling,
on one occasion, into the hands of the Moors, underwent such a
series of hardships, as, with the Scottish religious views of that age,
he might well regard as a Heaven-directed retribution for his rash
act. Eventually, however, realising a fortune, he returned with
honour and credit to his native country, and purchased the estate of
Crichton in Edinburghshire. He died in 1751, having survived the
unhappy affair of Raeburn’s Meadow-spot for forty-four years; and
his grandson, succeeding to the principal estate of the family,
became Pringle of Clifton.

The sixteenth article of the act of Union, while decreeing that a


separate mint should be kept up in Scotland ‘under the same rules as
the mint in England’—an arrangement afterwards broken through—
concluded that the money thereafter used should be of the same
standard and fineness throughout the United Kingdom. It thus
became necessary to call in all the existing coin of Scotland, and
substitute for it money uniform with that of England. It was at the
same time provided by the act of Union, that any loss incurred by the
renewal of the coin of Scotland should be 1707.
compensated out of the fund called the
Equivalent.[388]
The business of the change of coinage being taken into
consideration by the Privy Council of Scotland, several plans for
effecting it were laid before that august body; but none seemed so
suitable or expedient as one proposed by the Bank of Scotland, which
was to this effect: ‘The Directors undertook to receive in all the
species that were to be recoined, at such times as should be
determined by the Privy Council, and to issue bank-notes or current
money for the same, in the option of the ingiver of the old species,
and the Privy Council allowing a half per cent. to the Bank for
defraying charges;’[389] the old money to be taken to the mint and
coined into new money, which should afterwards replace the notes.
Mr David Drummond, treasurer of the Bank, ‘a gentleman of
primitive virtue and singular probity,’ according to Thomas
Ruddiman—a hearty Jacobite, too, if his enemies did not belie him—
had a chief hand in the business of the renovation of the coin, about
which he communicated to Ruddiman some memoranda he had
taken at the time.
‘There was brought into the Bank of Scotland in the year 1707:
Value in Sterling
Money.
Of foreign silver money, £132,080 : 17 : 00
Milled Scottish coins [improved coinage subsequent
to 1673], 96,856 : 13 : 00
Coins struck by hammer [the older Scottish coin], 142,180 : 00 : 00
English milled coin, 40,000 : 00 : 00

Total, £411,117 : 10 : 00

‘This sum, no doubt, made up by far the greatest part of the silver
coined money current in Scotland at that time; but it was not to be
expected that the whole money of that kind could be brought into the
bank; for the folly of a few misers, or the fear that people might have
of losing their money, or various other dangers and accidents,
prevented very many of the old Scots coins from being brought in. A
great part of these the goldsmiths, in aftertimes, consumed by
melting them down; some of them have been exported to foreign
countries; a few are yet [1738] in private hands.’[390]
Ruddiman, finding that, during the time 1707.
between December 1602 and April 1613,
there was rather more estimated value of gold than of silver coined in
the Scottish mint, arrived at the conclusion (though not without
great hesitation), that there was more value of gold coin in Scotland
in 1707 than of silver, and that the sum-total of gold and silver
money together, at the time of the Union, was consequently ‘not less
than nine hundred thousand pounds sterling.’ We are told, however,
in the History of the Bank of Scotland, under 1699, that ‘nothing
answers among the common people but silver-money, even gold
being little known amongst them;’ and Defoe more explicitly says,
‘there was at this time no Scots gold coin current, or to be seen,
except a few preserved for antiquity.’[391] It therefore seems quite
inadmissible that the Scottish gold coin in 1707 amounted to nearly
so much as Ruddiman conjectures. More probably, it was not
£30,000.
It would appear that the Scottish copper-money was not called in
at the Union, and Ruddiman speaks of it in 1738 as nearly worn out
of existence, ‘so that the scarcity of copper-money does now occasion
frequent complaints.’
If the outstanding silver-money be reckoned at £60,000, the gold
at £30,000, and the copper at £60,000, the entire metallic money in
use in Scotland in 1707 would be under six hundred thousand
pounds sterling in value. It is not unworthy of observation, as an
illustration of the advance of wealth in the country since that time,
that a private gentlewoman died in 1841, with a nearly equal sum at
her account in the banks, besides other property to at least an equal
amount.
In March 1708, while the renovation of the coinage was going on,
the French fleet, with the Chevalier de St George on board, appeared
at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, designing to invade the country.
The Bank got a great alarm, for it ‘had a very large sum lying in the
mint in ingots,’ and a considerable sum of the old coin in its own
coffers, ‘besides a large sum in current species; all of which could not
have easily been carried off and concealed.’[392] The danger, however,
soon blew over. ‘Those in power at the time, fearing lest, all our
silver-money having been brought into our treasury, or into the
Bank, a little before, there should be a want of money for the
expenses of the war, ordered the forty- 1707.
shilling pieces to be again issued out of the
banks; of which sort of coin there was great plenty at that time in
Scotland, and commanded these to be distributed for pay to the
soldiers and other exigencies of the public; but when that
disturbance was settled, they ordered that kind of money also to be
brought into the bank; and on a computation being made, it was
found that the quantity of that kind, brought in the second time,
exceeded that which was brought in the first time [by] at least four
thousand pounds sterling.’[393]
We are told by the historian of the Bank, that ‘the whole nation
was most sensible of the great benefit that did redound from the
Bank’s undertaking and effectuating the recoinage, and in the
meantime keeping up an uninterrupted circulation of money.’ Its
good service was represented to the queen, considered by the Lords
of the Treasury and Barons of Exchequer, and reported on
favourably. ‘But her majesty’s death intervening, and a variety of
public affairs on that occasion and since occurring, the directors have
not found a convenient opportunity for prosecuting their just claim
on the government’s favour and reward for that seasonable and very
useful service.’

Mr John Strahan, Writer to the Signet in Nov. 3.


Edinburgh, was at this time owner of
Craigcrook, a romantically situated old manor-house under the lee of
Corstorphine Hill—afterwards for many years the residence of Lord
Jeffrey. Strahan had also a house in the High Street of Edinburgh. He
was the owner of considerable wealth, the bulk of which he
ultimately ‘mortified’ for the support of poor old men, women, and
orphans; a charity which still flourishes.
Strahan had a servant named Helen Bell to keep his town
mansion, and probably she was left a good deal by herself. As other
young women in her situation will do, she admitted young men to
see her in her master’s house. On Hallowe’en night this year, she
received a visit from two young artisans, William Thomson and John
Robertson, whom she happened to inform that on Monday morning
—that is, the second morning thereafter—she was to go out to
Craigcrook, leaving the town-house of course empty.
About five o’clock on Monday morning, accordingly, this innocent
young woman locked up her master’s house, and set forth on her
brief journey, little recking that it was the 1707.
last she would ever undertake in this world.
As she was proceeding through the silent streets, her two male
friends joined her, telling her they were going part of her way; and
she gave them a couple of bottles and the key of the house to carry, in
order to lighten her burden. On coming to a difficult part of the way,
called the Three Steps, at the foot of the Castle Rock, the two men
threw her down and killed her with a hammer. They then returned to
town, with the design of searching Mr Strahan’s house for money.
According to the subsequent confession of Thomson, as they
returned through the Grassmarket, they swore to each other to give
their souls and bodies to the devil, if ever either of them should
inform against the other, even in the event of their being captured. In
the empty streets, in the dull gray of the morning, agitated by the
horrid reflections arising from their barbarous act and its probable
consequences, it is not very wonderful that almost any sort of
hallucination should have taken possession of these miserable men.
It was stated by them that, on Robertson proposing that their
engagement should be engrossed in a bond, a man started up
between them in the middle of the West Bow, and offered to write
the bond, which they had agreed to subscribe with their blood; but,
on Thomson’s demurring, this stranger immediately disappeared. No
contemporary of course could be at any loss to surmise who this
stranger was.[394]
The two murderers having made their way into Mr Strahan’s
house, broke open his study, and the chest where his cash was kept.
They found there a thousand pounds sterling, in bags of fifty pounds
each, ‘all milled money,’ except one hundred pounds, which was in
gold; all of which they carried off. Robertson proposed to set the
house on fire before their departure; but Thomson said he had done
wickedness enough already, and was resolved not to commit more,
even though Robertson should attempt to murder him for his refusal.
Mr Strahan advertised a reward of five hundred merks for the
detection of the perpetrator or perpetrators of these atrocities;[395]
but for some weeks no trace of the guilty men was discovered. At
length, some suspicion lighting upon Thomson, he was taken up,
and, having made a voluntary confession of 1707.
the murder and robbery, he expiated his
offence in the Grassmarket.[396]

A poor man named Hunter, a shoemaker Dec. 9.


in the Potterrow, Edinburgh, had become
possessed of a ‘factory’ for the uplifting of ten or eleven pounds of
wages due to one Guine, a seaman, for services in a ship of the
African Company. The money was now payable out of the
Equivalent, but certain signatures were required which it was not
possible to obtain. With the aid of a couple of low notaries and two
other persons, these signatures were forged, and the money was then
drawn.
Detection having followed, the case came before the Court of
Session, who viewed it in a light more grave than seems now
reasonable, and remitted it to the Lords of Justiciary. The result

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