Part 42
When the two young people had been committed to Paisley prison, Janet, their mother, desired to see her son, and the request being granted, ‘they make a third and new picture of clay, which the dumb lass again discovers.’ It was supposed that this was intended for Sir George’s daughter-in-law, who had taken an active interest in detecting the diabolic conspiracy, and who fell ill about this time.
In consideration of her nonage and penitency, Annaple Stewart was not brought to trial, though retained in prison. On the 15th of February, the rest of the party were tried and condemned, Janet Mathie, Bessie Weir, and Marjory Craig continuing to deny their guilt to the last. The obduracy of Mathie was considered the more horrible, as her two children seriously exhorted her to confession, Annaple with tears reminding her of her many meetings with the devil, but all in vain. The four women and the boy actually suffered in Paisley (20th February). Mathie was first hanged, and then burned, along with the wax and clay effigies. When Weir, the last of the four, was turned off the gallows, ‘there appears a raven, and approaches the hangman within an ell of him, and flies away again.’--_Law._
[Sidenote: 1677.]
It is perhaps the most singular fact regarding this case, that the particulars of it are narrated with all seriousness by Sir George’s son and successor, Sir John Maxwell, who was subsequently Lord Justice-clerk--that is, supreme criminal judge in Scotland. He intimates not the least doubt of any of the facts, neither of any of the popular inferences from them. Other intelligent men in that age were struck by the manner in which the doings of the witches were detected, and Janet Douglas was for some time the subject of general attention. In the same month which saw the witches done to death on Paisley green, she detected a similar conspiracy against Mr Hugh Smith, the minister of Eastwood, who ‘was much afflicted with pain and sweating, to the changing of half-a-dozen shirts some days, and was brought very low, but after the discovery, and the effigy gotten, and the prins taken out, grew well again.’ It was given out regarding the girl, that she understood any language in which she was addressed. When she had somewhat recovered the use of her own tongue, which was about two months after these events, she told that three years before, she had had ‘an impression on her spirit’ to come to Pollock. ‘Being asked how she had knowledge of detecting witches and other secrets, she declared that she knew not from what spirit; only things were suggested to her; but denied that she had any correspondence with Satan.’--_Law._ According to Sir John Lauder, she stated that ‘she had all things revealed to her in her sleep by vision.’ This learned gentleman adds: ‘What made her very suspect to be haunted only by a familiar, was her dissolute idle life, having ... not so much as a show or semblance of piety in it, but much lightness and vanity.’[252]
The Privy Council, hearing much rumour of these things from the west, sent orders to search for and apprehend Janet Douglas, and she was brought to Edinburgh in May, and lodged in the Canongate Tolbooth. People flocked to see her, and she began to exercise her art of witch-finding amongst them, but with no particular effect. In June, nevertheless, five or six women of the west, whom she had detected in killing Hamilton of Barns by a wax image, were burned for their imaginary crime at Dumbarton. Next month we find a reference to her in another case.
[Sidenote: 1677.]
Two sons of Douglas of Barloch having been drowned in crossing a river at one time, the father was induced by Janet Douglas to believe that the calamity was an effect of witchcraft. Barloch consequently caused John Gray, Janet M‘Nair, Thomas and Mary Mitchell, to be apprehended and carried to Stirling Tolbooth. There, ‘their bodies being searched by the _ordinar_ pricker, there were witch-marks found upon each of them, and Janet M‘Nair confessed that she got these marks from the grip of a grim black man, and had a great pain for a time thereafter.’ After keeping these four persons in jail on his own charges for fourteen weeks, Barloch found the expense more than he was able to undergo, ‘being but a gentleman of a mean fortune;’ and on his petition, the Council ordered (July 5, 1677) that the magistrates of Stirling should in the meantime ‘entertein the prisoners.’ Against this ordinance, the magistrates immediately reclaimed, ‘seeing it is a great burden to the town, who have so many other contingencies to undergo;’ and the lords, reconsidering the matter, commissioned the Lairds of Kier, Touch, and Herbertshire, to examine the prisoners, and ‘try what they find anent these persons’ guilt of the crime of witchcraft, and report.’
What was ultimately done with the four Stirling prisoners, we do not learn. As to Janet Douglas, the Council began to feel that she was something of an inconvenience in the country; so they determined to banish her beyond seas. At first, no skipper could be found who was willing to take her in his vessel; some were disposed to set sail without a pass, to avoid being compelled to take such a dangerous commodity on board. But Janet was ultimately banished and heard of no more.
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[Sidenote: 1676-7.]
Lord Fountainhall notes a remarkable homicide as taking place this winter, at the village of Abernethy in Fife. A butcher and another man, sitting in an ale-house together, quarrelled, and in a sudden fit of passion, the butcher inflicted a mortal stab upon his companion. Some gentlemen sitting in a neighbouring room heard the fray, and, rushing in, found the butcher with the bloody knife in his hand. Excited by the atrocity of the deed, they hurried off the murderer to the regality gallows, and instantly hanged him, though they had no sort of authority to act in that manner. They probably acted upon a popular notion, that a murderer taken _red-hand_, or fresh from the act, may be instantly done to death by the bystanders; which appears, however, to be a mistake.
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[Sidenote: 1677.
JAN.]
The celebrated Beau Fielding is supposed to have at this time paid a visit to Edinburgh, while in difficulties on account of his suspected share in the murder of Robert Perceval--a young libertine found dead one morning near the Maypole in the Strand. He and two Scotch gentlemen of his own sort, being met one evening at their cups in a house in Edinburgh, were reputed to have drunk three toasts, ‘horrid to think on’--namely, the Trinity, their own confusion, and the devil.--_Law._ The allegation is but too credible, for about this time there begins to appear an extreme form of profligacy and impiety--confined, indeed, to a few of the upper classes--such as had never before been known in Scotland.
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[Sidenote: JAN. 18.]
[Sidenote: 1677.]
The system formerly adopted for keeping peace and maintaining law in the Highlands--namely, the making heads of clans answerable for their dependents and inferiors--was now declared to have been found not to answer, ‘in respect the said duty doth lie upon many persons in general, and no person doth make it his work.’ Consequently, ‘the insolency and villainy of thieves, sorners, and other wicked and lawless persons do abound and increase, to the affront of our authority and oppression of the lieges.’ The government therefore deemed it necessary to try the effect of a different plan, and granted a commission to Sir James Campbell of Lawers to use means for apprehending thieves and broken men in the Highlands, in order that they might be brought to justice. It was also arranged that when any cattle or other property was stolen, Sir James should make restitution to the owners, only taking them bound to support him in the legal processes by which he should endeavour to rescue the goods from the thieves, and get due punishment inflicted. All sheriffs, chiefs, landlords, and others were enjoined to assist and countenance Sir James in this thief-taking commission.
Eneas Lord Macdonald was afterwards conjoined with Sir James Campbell; and for his service during the year ending the 1st of September 1677, Sir James was ordered the sum of _one hundred and fifty pounds!_ But this seems to have been regarded as rather scanty remuneration, and it was (September 8, 1677) decreed that for the fture there should be a salary of two hundred pounds to ‘ilk ane of the said two persons.’
As necessary to support the two gentlemen in their task, a garrison of a hundred soldiers was sent to Inverlochy, care being previously taken to have dwellings built for them, ‘as the house there is altogether out of repair and unlodgeable.’ The Marquis of Huntly and the Laird of Grant were called upon to exert themselves to convince the minor chiefs in their several districts that the government was now determined to put down the lawless system in the Highlands. It was intimated by other means that letters of fire and sword would be granted against any district in which gentler means had been found unavailing.
[Sidenote: 1677.]
In February 1680, James M‘Nab in Achessan represented to the Privy Council that, being engaged by Sir James Campbell of Lawers to assist in apprehending Highland robbers, he had, at the hazard of his life, taken John, Callum, and Duncan M‘Gibbons, and delivered them to the governor of the garrison at Finlarig--an unusually perilous piece of duty, for which he had been promised the sum of eight hundred merks, now refused by Sir James. As a plea at law ‘against a person of such dexterity’ would have exhausted the reward, he had had no alternative but to apply to the Council. Sir James was ordered to pay the reward as claimed.--_P. C. R._
A very compendious view of some of the customs of the Highlanders in the seventeenth century was given by Mr John Fraser, an Episcopal minister, author of a _Treatise on Second-Sight_: ‘In general they were litigious, ready to take arms upon a small occasion, _very predatory_, much given to tables, carding, and dicing. Their games was military exercise, and such as rendered them fittest for war, as arching, running, jumping, with and without race, swimming, continual hunting and fowling, feasting, especially upon their holidays, the which they had enough, borrowed from popery. Their marriage and funeral solemnities were much like [those of] their neighbours in the low country; only at their funerals, there was fearful howling, screeching, and crying, with very bitter lamentation, and a complete narration of the descent of the dead person, the valorous acts of himself and his predecessors, sung with tune in measure, continual piping, if the person was of any quality or professing arms. Their chiliarchy had their ushers that gaed out and came in before them, in full arms. I cannot pass by a cruel custom that’s hardly yet extinct. They played at cards or tables (to pass the time in the winter nights) in parties, perhaps four on a side; the party that lost, was obliged to make his man sit down on the midst of the floor; then there was a single-soled shoe, well plated, wherewith his antagonist was to give him [the man] six strokes on end, upon his bare loof [palm], and the doing of that with strength and art was thought gallantry.’[253]
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[Sidenote: FEB. 1.]
A travelling doctor, styling himself Joannes Baptista Marentini, under licence from the king, and with the permission of the magistrates of Edinburgh, had a stage erected in that city, ‘for practising his skill in physic and otherwise.’ His term of permission being about to expire, and the magistrates unwilling to renew it, he found it necessary to apply to the Privy Council for a further term, on the ground that he needed some more time for effecting the cure of certain persons under his hands. The Council gratified him with a prolongation till the 1st of April, in order that, ‘having finished the said undertaken cures, he may the more freely, and with the greater approbation, depart from this city to some other.’
[Sidenote: 1677.]
A little case of the heart comes in as a pendant to the above narrative. Four days after the end of the term assigned in the act of the Privy Council, James Baynes, wright, came before that august body with a petition, setting forth how ‘one Monsieur Devoe, servant to the mountebank who was lately in this place, hath, by sinistrous and indirect means, secured and enticed the petitioner’s daughter and only child to desert her parents, and to live with him upon pretence of a clandestine marriage.’ There being reason to fear that he might escape, unless very prompt measures were taken, the Council granted warrant to have the offender imprisoned in the Tolbooth. After escaping from these matrimonial troubles, Devoe settled in Edinburgh as a dancing-master, and we shall find his name coming before us several times on other occasions.
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[Sidenote: FEB.]
The deaf and dumb Laird of Duntreath, a noted person in those days, being at Paisley, ‘made signs to some of great fightings and troubles to be in the land in a few months.’--_Law._
This gentleman, who was said to be, notwithstanding his deficiencies, of a very devout frame of mind, had in the preceding December made a more special divination. ‘There was one of his acquaintance went forth to a water at a good distance frae him upon the ice, and had fallen in; and he, at that instant of time, gave warning of it by a sign.’ On another occasion, when the Dumb Laird was sitting in his own house at Duntreath, ‘two of his neighbours falling out at two miles’ distance from him, the one striking the other with a whinger in the arm, he, in the same instant of time, makes a sign of it.’
It was a general belief that many persons born deaf and dumb possessed this supposed gift of clairvoyance or second-sight. One, attended by another man, coming to the Boat of Balloch, at the foot of Loch Lomond, and seeing a salmon-net drawing in, signed that there were five fish in it, and one of them with a hook in its mouth, indicating the hook by crooking his finger and putting it in his cheek. ‘The other man, being curious to know the truth of it, causes reckon the fishes, and see if any of them had a hook; and it was found so as it was signed by the dumb man. He tells the fishers what the dumb man had signed, and they gave the dumb man one of them.’--_Law._
[Sidenote: 1677.]
At Colzium House, the seat of Sir Archibald Edmondstone of Duntreath, there is a portrait of his predecessor, the Deaf and Dumb Laird, presenting an aspect of intelligence much beyond what could have been anticipated regarding one subject to so great an infirmity. It is a tradition in the family that, in early life, finding himself much overlooked on account of his inability to communicate, and being in particular left at home when the rest went to church, he was found one day, on the family returning from worship, sitting among the horses in the stable. When his mother let him know that this conduct excited surprise, he imparted to her by such means as were at his command, that, seeing himself treated as if he were something less than a human being, he had thought it only right and proper that he should place himself in the society of the animals which had the same deficiency as himself. The reproach was felt, and he was thenceforth treated more on a footing of equality, and allowed to go to church with the rest of the family.
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[Sidenote: JUNE.]
The public mind being again morbidly excited about witchcraft, the usual result of a fresh crop of cases--a witch-storm, it may be called--ensued. In the beginning of this month, a serving-woman, named Lizzy Mudie, was burnt at Haddington for witchcraft. Her mistress, Margaret Kirkwood, had hanged herself in her own house on a Sunday forenoon, while the people were at church. Lizzy on that occasion made some disturbance, by running aloud over the numbers, one, two, three, &c., till she came to fifty-nine, when she cried: ‘The turn is done!’ It being found that Margaret Kirkwood, whose age was fifty-nine, had ended her life at that moment, Lizzy was taken up on suspicion, and examined for witch-marks. These were found upon her, and she confessed herself to be a witch. She also _delated_ five other women (two of them midwives) and a man, as likewise guilty of witchcraft, relating particular circumstances of their alleged guilt; but they denied all. Fountainhall says: ‘I did see the man’s body searched and pricked in two sundry places, one at the ribs, and the other at his shoulder. He seemed to find pain, but no blood followed.... The marks were bluish, very small, and had no protuberancy above the skin.’ He adds, with regard to the official pricker: ‘I remained very dissatisfied with this way of trial, as most fallacious; and the fellow could give me no account of the principles of his art, but seemed to be a drunken foolish rogue.’
[Sidenote: 1677.]
The trade of a pricker of witches, which had some time before been a regular and a prosperous one, was beginning to fall under suspicion among the authorities. One Cowan, of Tranent, who had learned the art from ‘Kincaid, a famous pricker,’[254] was complained of by one Catherine Liddel, before the Privy Council, about this time, for subjecting her to the process on suspicion of witchcraft; and he was by that tribunal condemned to prison during their pleasure. It fully appears, indeed, that the present rulers of Scotland, while so ruthless towards religious dissenters, were more enlightened and humane than any of their predecessors in the matter of necromancy. While introducing the use of torture in the one case, they discontinued it in the other. They did, indeed, as we see, still allow of witch prosecutions; but this perhaps it was beyond their power to resist, and it must be admitted in their favour that the requirement of voluntary confessions was a great step in the right direction. On the other hand, the fact of voluntary confessions being so often made, where death was the certain consequence, and where a stout denial usually seems to have saved the accused, is one of a highly remarkable character, and which might give scope to some interesting speculations. One remark forcibly occurs regarding such cases, that the accused must have had intentions towards necromantic results and a full conviction of their possibility, if not of their occurrence; consequently must have _felt_ guilty.
One of the persons accused by Lizzy Mudie was Marion Phin, a woman of eighty years of age, living in Haddington. Being consequently thrown into jail, she lay there three months in a most miserable condition, suffering much, we presume, from the severity of the treatment, so unsuitable to her great age, and also distressed by the loss of her good name, she having hitherto ‘lived always under a good report, never being stained with the least ignominy, far less with the abominable crime of witchcraft.’ ‘It were hard,’ she said in a petition to the Privy Council, ‘that, being of so known integrity, she should suffer upon the account of such lying accusers, who may and ordinarily do blunder the best of God’s servants.’ Her petition for being liberated on caution (August 10) was not yielded to by the Council. They contented themselves for the meantime with ordering the commission for her examination to proceed with their duty.
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[Sidenote: 1677.]
The _Florida_, a large vessel of the Spanish Armada of 1588, carrying sixty guns, had been blown up and sunk in the Bay of Tobermory, in the island of Mull:[255] an old and consistent tradition represents it as having come to this fate by means of Smollett of Dumbarton, presumed to have been the ancestor of the celebrated novelist. The guns, treasure, and other valuable things, known or supposed to have been on board, made the incident a memorable one, and induced a desire, if possible, to weigh up the vessel, or at least to fish up from it such things as might be accessible to divers. In the seventeenth century, the recovery of sunk vessels and their contents was a favourite project among ingenious and adventurous men. The late Marquis of Argyle had obtained from the Duke of Lennox, Lord High Admiral of Scotland, a formal gift of this vessel, and had become ‘clad with possession’ by taking guns and other things out of it. In 1665, a more vigorous attempt was made to get up some of its treasures by the present Earl of Argyle, the immediate operator being, apparently, Maule of Melgum, a Forfarshire gentleman, who had invented an apparatus precisely of the nature of what was a century later revived as the _Diving-bell_. Another person engaged in the business was the almost sole active cultivator of physics in Scotland during this age--the celebrated George Sinclair, professor of philosophy in the University of Glasgow--who also obliged the world some years later with a treatise, entitled _Satan’s Invisible World Discovered_. Sinclair, in a work named below,[256] tells us that on this occasion they brought up three pieces of ordnance, one of brass, one of copper, and one of iron, two of which were eleven feet in length, and more things might have been recovered but for the coming on of tempestuous weather. He says they were surprised to find that the bullets employed for these guns were of stone, instead of metal.
[Sidenote: JULY 27.]
[Sidenote: 1677.]
Hearing of these experiments of the Earl of Argyle, the eminent lawyer, Sir George Lockhart, prompted the Duke of York to claim the property as the present Lord High Admiral; and so there arose a litigation on the subject. Various arguments were presented against Argyle’s right, particularly that to make possession complete it was necessary that he should have stirred the ship from the place where it was when his father got the gift. The earl himself appeared in court, and made a few remarks, shewing the large expense he had laid out on the discovery of the lost vessel, and concluding with a wish that it were brought above board ere any dispute took place about the property, ‘lest it should verify the story of the king of Spain’s gold.’ The court gave the case in favour of Argyle.
It is curious to find these two men engaged in such a plea only seven or eight years before standing in the relative positions of rebellious subject and vengeful sovereign. Still more curious it is to hear of this unpopular prince, that ‘he wrote down a very complimentary letter to Argyle, approving the justice of the lords’ sentence, and shewing his hearty compliance and acquiescence therein.’--_Foun._
It is worthy of notice that after ‘unfortunate Argyle’ had passed from life--namely, in May 1686--a warrant was given by James VII. for a patent to William Harrington and three others, merchants of London, for enabling them to ‘weigh up, recover, and obtain from under water, in the roads and seas of Scotland, ships, or ship guns, treasure, and other goods, which have been shipwrecked, lost, and sunk, and particularly one ship of the Spanish Armada, sunk in the western seas of his majesty’s kingdom of Scotland’--the patent to endure for fourteen years.[257]