Part 41
A strange scene was presented in the Parliament Close in Edinburgh. As the members of the Council approached their house of meeting, they found fifteen ladies prepared to present a petition, ‘desiring that a gospel ministry might be presented for the starving congregations of Scotland.’ There were present amongst them the widows of Mr Robert Blair and Mr John Neave, noted as entirely ‘faithful’ clergymen during the troubles; Lady Crimond, a daughter of Johnston of Warriston; a sister-in-law of the Laird of Dundas and a sister of the Earl of Melville; the rest being generally the wives of Edinburgh citizens. Seeing it was dangerous for men to appear in the form of remonstrants, these ladies had volunteered to undertake the duty. The singularity of the occasion had brought together a crowd, which filled the close, and which is said to have comprised a large proportion of the fair sex. The press was so great and so tumultuous around the councillors, that they could scarcely make their way to the council-house. As the chancellor descended from his coach, Archbishop Sharpe went close behind him, fearing bodily harm. It is alleged by Sir George Mackenzie that a design for doing some serious injury to the primate was entered into on this occasion, and that the ladies were to ‘set upon him’ when a certain member of the corps should raise her hand as a signal; but this would need confirmation. He was saluted with reproaches and cries of Judas! and Traitor! but the only approach to personal violence was a slap on the neck from one of the sisterhood, who at the same time took leave to tell him that _that_ (meaning the neck) should yet pay for it ere all was done! One of the ladies, presenting her petition to the chancellor, he received it with a courteous salute, and listened to her with an inclined head till he got to the door of the council-chamber. Lord Stair tossed his copy to the ground, whereupon the fair petitioner reminded him he had not acted in that manner with the famous Remonstrance of 1651, which he helped to pen.
The Council took this matter in high dudgeon. They resented the personal disrespect of the scene in the Parliament Close, and they denounced the matter of the petition as tending to stir up hatred against his majesty’s government. For one thing, it ‘most falsely and scandalously bears that they [the supplicants] had long been deprived of the inestimable blessing of the public worship and ordinances of God, whereas it is notour that his majesty’s subjects do enjoy [those blessings] in great purity and peace, [there being] ane orderly ministry authorised and countenanced and established by law.’ In short, it was a seditious libel, calling for sharp punishment. Two of the ladies being brought before the Council, refused to take an oath or give evidence; the rest failed to appear on citation. The whole were put to the horn as rebels, and three suffered a short confinement.--_Kir._ _P. C. R._
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[Sidenote: 1674.]
The Macleans had been a loyal clan, fighting with Montrose for the king, and suffering not a little in the royal cause. What the Campbells had been during the same period need not be particularised. Yet, when the clemency of the government had restored the Argyle estates to the earl, he was not the less disposed on that account to urge certain claims of his family upon its more loyal neighbours. Fountainhall speaks of them as ‘patched-up claims and decreets of his own courts for contumacy;’ while the fact was that the Macleans durst not make appearance in the grounds of their enemy, ‘and pretended casualties of superiority, as escheats, wards, non-entries, reliefs, &c.,’ a particularly hard case, as these arose in many instances from the deaths of Macleans in the king’s service, while their superior, the late Marquis of Argyle, had been ‘the great transgressor.’ Argyle, however, according to the alleged genius of his family in that age, ‘walked warily in all he did,’ and, the Macleans imprudently despising his efforts, and neglecting legal measures of resistance, he succeeded ultimately in obtaining a letter of fire and sword against them.[249] Behold, then, in the summer of this year, a clan muster of the Campbells and their connections, to the amount of 2000 men, designed to enforce certain payments from the Tutor of Maclean in Mull--the Maclean of the day being a minor under the care of an uncle so called. The Tutor, on his part, has seven or eight hundred kilted followers to make resistance; but either his means were inadequate, or his measures had been ill concerted. The earl ‘besetting the isle with ships and boats, enters at three several places; at one place, Lord Niel, the earl’s brother, lights upon the cows which the Highlanders had driven to that place for safety, and caused cut down and hough [hamstring] a considerable number of them; which occasioned a great cry by the women and children keeping them, and running to their husbands and friends to acquaint them how it stood; whereupon the islanders, being amazed, fainted and came to a composition of the matter. The earl gets the castle of Duart into his own hand, and mans it for himself. They all yield and submit, and promise payment and subjection to the said earl.’--_Law._ See further transactions next year.
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[Sidenote: OCT.]
There was no shearing this year till October, and much of the corn green when cut even then. Consequently, meal, though of bad quality, went to a pound sterling the boll. ‘Yet there was not any time cows found fatter than in this harvest, and no scarcity either of cows or sheep for slaughter. Thus the Lord, who casts down with one hand, lifts up with the other.’--_Law._
[Sidenote: 1674.]
It is rather surprising that sheep and cattle should so quickly have become plentiful after the great destruction of such stock from the storms of the preceding January. But in as far as the fact was true, the good condition of the animals might be readily accounted for by the very humidity of the summer and autumn, producing an abundance of herbage, while destructive to cereal crops.
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[Sidenote: 1675.]
The winter of 1674-5 is stated to have been singularly mild and free of rain in Ireland, and probably it was of the same character in Scotland. In our country, as in Ireland, there was a good harvest; yet victual continued to be dear by reason of the stock of the preceding scanty season being so thoroughly exhausted. Another winter of extraordinary mildness followed. The weather, at the end of November and beginning of December, is described as very warm. Many people fell sick, and died. A feverish cold--what might now be called influenza--was epidemic in town and country, ‘whereof moe die than was observed in other years before.’--_Law._
Patrick Walker tells us that one night in August of this year, but more probably the fact occurred in 1674, Mr Donald Cargill, being at Cowhill in Livingstone parish, saw a great mist come on, and told the family to be careful of it, keeping close within their houses. He also desired them to mark where it stood thickest, ‘for there they would see the effects saddest.’ There was a small place called Craigs, where they observed the mist unusually thick, and, within four months after, thirty persons died there. It is probable that Mr Donald’s predictions in this case were founded upon simple observation of natural facts.
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[Sidenote: SEP.]
The Macleans having failed in their agreement with the Earl of Argyle, and set his claims at nought, his lordship now prepared a second expedition against Mull, and this time he added to his own forces some regular soldiers and militia. The Macleans, on the other hand, had obtained assistance to a considerable amount from Macdonnell of Glengarry, Cameron of Locheil, and Maclean of Lochbuy. There were probably not less than fifteen hundred armed Highlanders on each side.
[Sidenote: 1675.]
The Campbells, proceeding in a great fleet of ships and _birlins_, under the command of the earl’s brother, Lord Niel, encountered a severe storm on the 21st and 22d of September, by which they were damaged and driven back, though fortunately no lives were lost. ‘This storm was so great, that ... great oaks were blown up by the roots ... old trees of two hundred years standing broken in the midst ... and the corns so shaken, that the people got little more than straw to cut down. A rumour went that there was a witch-wife, named Muddock, had promised to the Macleans that, so long as she lived, the Earl of Argyle should not enter Mull; and indeed many of the people imputed the rise of that great storm unto her paction with the devil, how true I cannot assert.’--_Law._ Might not the autumnal equinox somewhat better account for the fact?
The Earl of Argyle was so far baffled by this storm, that he had to give up for the meantime the design of vindicating his rights by force.
We find next year the cause of the Macleans taken up by the Earl of Seaforth, the Marquis of Athole, and some other chiefs, by whose means a suspension of Argyle’s powers was obtained, and his account subjected to a severe reckoning, ‘which he was most averse to.’ They also hounded out a creditor of his own upon him, and he was obliged to make a precipitate retreat from Edinburgh to escape caption, and to carry off the furniture of his Stirling mansion to a secure place in the Highlands, lest it should be seized for the debt.
The earl and the Macleans are found next year again at legal tilt, but with no particular result that appears. His own forfeiture for treason, which soon after occurred, probably saved them from further annoyance.
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[Sidenote: 1676.]
The winter of 1675-6 being singularly mild, was followed by a favourable spring, and there consequently was an abundant harvest. The characteristic mutability of our climate was, however, shewn immediately after. There was a drought in latter autumn, and about the 18th of December the temperature fell to an extraordinary degree, ‘the most aged never remembered the like. The birds fell down frae the air dead; the rats in numbers found dead; all liquors froze, even the strongest ale; and the distilled waters of apothecaries in warm rooms froze in whole, and the glasses broke.’--_Law._
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[Sidenote: JAN.]
[Sidenote: 1676.]
Two boys, named Clark and Ramsay, the one seventeen, and the other fifteen years of age, suffered in Edinburgh for an offence which had perhaps been suggested by the rumours attending the celebrated case of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers. John Anderson, a merchant, the master of Ramsay, had long been pining under an enfeebling malady, which was likely to have in time brought him to the grave. During his sickness, Ramsay, in conjunction with his companion Clark, purloined several articles of value belonging to his master, trusting that he would die, and that consequently no discovery would take place. Finding Anderson’s disease taking a turn, the young thieves became alarmed; and took into counsel another boy named Kennedy, an apothecary’s apprentice, who supplied them with a drug calculated to keep up the malady under which Anderson had suffered. The man receiving this in small doses, grew ill again, and in time died. No suspicion of foul play was entertained, and apparently the two lads would have been allowed to remain unnoticed, if they had not offered for sale a gold chain which formed part of their plunder. Being detained and questioned, they fell into such terror, that an ingenuous confession of their guilt was easily obtained from them, accompanied with many expressions of sorrow. They were hanged, ‘both in regard to the theft clearly proven, and for terror that the Italian trick of sending men to the other world in figs and possets might not come over seas to our island.’ Kennedy, ‘an outed minister’s son,’ was detained for want of proof, and ultimately banished.--_Foun._
Wodrow adds a tale of wonder, as told him by his mother-in-law, Mrs Warner, who had visited the two boys in prison. After the burial of Anderson, his nephew, Sir John Clerk of Pennycuick, ‘was one night lying in his own house, in a room with some others, sleeping. In his sleep he imagined he heard a voice calling to him: “Avenge the blood of your uncle!” and wakened, and asked if any of them had been speaking to him. They declared not. He composed himself to sleep, and had it repeated; and he asked the former question the second time, and those in the room denied, as above. He slept again, and had the same repeated the third time; on which he got up, and went immediately to Edinburgh and made a particular inquiry into the circumstances of his uncle’s death, at the two apprentices, but found nothing to fix on at this time. In a little, Sir John met with a medal in a goldsmith’s shop which he knew to belong to his uncle. This he traced up till he landed it on the apprentices, who, upon this, confessed they had opened their master’s cabinet and taken out money, &c.’
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[Sidenote: 1676.]
Mr James Mitchell, who made an attempt on Archbishop Sharpe’s life in 1668, and wounded the Bishop of Orkney, was taken prisoner in February 1674, and being subjected to examination, and promised his life if he would confess, did make a confession--which, however, he afterwards retracted before the Court of Justiciary, having in the interval been told that nothing could be proved against him, and warned that perhaps the promise made to him might not be respected. This conduct put the government to a difficulty, and irritated them the more against him. At length, after keeping him in a very hard confinement for two years, they resolved to subject him to the torture, as the only means left to bring him back to his confession.
It is not proposed here to detail the sufferings of the wretched Mitchell; but those who know the courts of law, as they now exist, will probably view with some interest the arrangements that were made beforehand for that kind of procedure.
[Sidenote: JAN. 6.]
The resolution having been formed to put Mitchell to the torture of the _boot_, the Council ‘do hereby nominate the Earls of Linlithgow, Wigton, Seaforth, the Lords Ross and Treasurer Depute as a committee of Council to meet on the 24th day of January next, at nine o’clock in the forenoon in the Parliament House, where the justices do ordinarily hold their courts, and to cause put the said Mr James Mitchell to the question and torture concerning his being in the rebellion in the year 1666, and appoints the commissioners of justiciary in a fenced court to be present then and assistant, in their robes, with their clerks and other officers of court; and recommends to the said committee, or any three of them with the commissioners of justiciary, to meet before that time and consider of the way and manner of the said torture,’ &c.
The Council afterwards ordered that a bailie of Edinburgh should be present, ‘to receive and put in execution such orders as the lords shall think fit to give.’--_P. C. R._
The unfortunate Mitchell sustained the torture with surprising firmness, and without making any admission criminative of himself. A proposal being afterwards made to torture him in the other leg, one of his friends (so the report went) dropped an anonymous hint to Archbishop Sharpe, that if he persisted in the resolution, _he should have a shot from a steadier hand_; ‘whereupon he was let alone, but still kept in prison.’--_Law._ At length the unhappy man was brought to a regular trial, when the state-officers all denied in the witness-box that fact of the promise of life upon confession, which their own record bore, and which Mitchell alleged had taken place. It is just possible that the record misrepresented what took place; but it is very difficult to make so largely charitable an allowance. Mitchell suffered in the Grassmarket (January 1678).
[Sidenote: 1676.
JULY 9.]
‘A star was seen at twelve hours of the day by a great company of people met for sermon on Gargunnock Hills, and that when the sun was shining.’--_Law._
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[Sidenote: SEP.]
One John Scott, a Quaker in Leith, was fined by Bailie Carmichael there, in a hundred dollars, and banished from the town, for brewing upon the Sunday, and answering, when challenged for it by the bailie and Mr Hamilton the minister, that ‘he might as weel brew on the Sunday as Mr Hamilton might take money for going up to a desk, and talking and throwing water upon a bairn’s face.’ He appealed to the Privy Council against the sentence as over-severe and beyond the power of the magistrate; but ‘he was ill set, for he had both the magistracy and the clergy--who solicited strongly--against him, for both of them would be baffled if the sentence were found unjust. The Council ratified the bailie’s sentence ... whereupon Bailie Carmichael arrested and seized eighty bolls of malt, the said Scott had paid ten or eleven pound the boll for, when victual was dear, and caused apprise and judge it to him, for his hundred dollars.’--_Foun._
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[Sidenote: DEC.]
For several years there had been a remarkable lull in the spiritual world, and, whether from the judicious mildness of the government in ordering that no women should be condemned for witchcraft except upon voluntary confession, or any other cause, witch cases had wholly ceased. All at once, the devil’s work recommenced, and a series of dismal tragedies ensued. It seems to have been primarily owing to a vagrant girl named Janet Douglas, who appeared deaf and dumb, and who may be reasonably set down as one of those singular young persons who, acting under a morbid love of mischief, have at the same time marvellous powers of deception. Whether she was the same person who figures in the anecdote below,[250] we have no means of ascertaining.
[Sidenote: 1676.]
Sir George Maxwell of Pollock had for some weeks been very unwell, with a pain in his side and one in his shoulder. The illness had first come upon him suddenly in the night, when at Glasgow, in the form of a violent heat, attended with pain. At the time noted in the margin, Janet Douglas came to the neighbouring village, and began to frequent Pollock House. Attracting the attention of Sir George’s sister and daughter, she endeavoured to apprise them by signs that, at a certain cottage not far off, there was a picture of wax turning at a fire; and she expressed in her imperfect way a wish that a couple of men should go with her thither. Lady Maxwell, not being inclined to superstition, would have denied the girl’s request; but the two other gentlewomen consented. So Janet went away with two men-servants, and straight conducted them to the cottage of an old woman of evil fame, named Janet Mathie, whose son the laird had some time before imprisoned for stealing his fruit. ‘She going in with the men, the woman on some occasion stepping to the door, the dumb lass instantly put her hand behind the chimney, and takes out a picture of wax wrapped in a linen cloth, gives it to the men; away they all come with it, and let the gentlewomen see it. They find two pins stuck in the right side of it, and a pin on the shoulder downward, which they take out, and keeps quiet; and that night the laird had good rest, and mended afterward, though slowly, for he was sore brought down in his body: and in two or three days they made him understand the matter. The woman is apprehended, and laid up in prison in Paisley.’ On being searched, several _witch-marks_--that is, spots insensible to pain--were found upon her.
[Sidenote: 1677.]
On the 4th of January, Sir George’s illness recurred with the same violence as before, and his face assumed the leaden hue of death. Amidst the anxieties which this occasioned, the dumb girl sent to inform the family that John Stewart, Mathie’s son, had made a new image of clay, for the purpose of taking away Sir George’s life. Two gentlemen went next day with the girl to Mathie’s cottage, and keeping her at a distance, but acting under her directions, found such an image under the bolster of a bed, with three pins sticking in it. The young man and his sister Annaple were immediately apprehended. From that day, it was said that Sir George began to recover his health.
[Sidenote: 1677.]
Stewart at first denied all concern in the images, but, on witch-marks being found on his person, he was ‘confounded,’ and joined his sister in a confession, which described witch-conventions in their mother’s house, along with ‘a man dressed in black, with a blue band and white hand-cuffs, with hoggars over his bare feet, which were cloven!’ Three women of the neighbourhood, Bessie Weir, Margaret Jackson, and Marjory Craig, were accordingly apprehended and examined, when the second gave a confession to much the same effect, but the other two proved ‘obdurate.’
In the subsequent judicial proceedings, Annaple Stewart gave a clear statement regarding the making of the first wax image in October last in the presence of the Black Man, her mother, and the other three women. They bound it on a spit, and turned it round before the fire, saying: ‘Sir George Pollock! Sir George Pollock!’ The young man, who was not then at home, had returned and been present at the making of the second image in January. ‘After he had gone to bed, the Black Man came in, and called him quietly by his name, upon which he arose from the bed and put on his clothes. Margaret Jackson, Bessie Weir, and Marjory Craig did enter in at the window in the gable.... The first thing that the Black Man required was that he should renounce his baptism and deliver up himself wholly unto him, putting one of his hands on the crown of his head, and the other to the sole of his foot ... promising he should not want any pleasure, and that he should get his heart sythe on all that should do him wrong. [All having given their consent to the making of the clay image, which was meant as a revenge for Sir George Maxwell taking away his mother], they wrought the clay, and the Black Man did make the head and face, and the two arms. The devil set three pins in the same, one in each side, and one in the breast; and John did hold the candle all the time the picture was making.... The picture was placed by Bessie Weir in his bed-straw.’ On this occasion, they had all had nicknames given them by the devil, who himself bore the name of Ejool.[251]
It is noted that when the girl, after confession in bed in Pollock House, was asked what the devil’s name had been to her, ‘she, being about to tell, was stopped, the bed being made to shake, and her clothes under her blown up with a wind.’
[Sidenote: 1677.]