Part 43
‘Ane combat or tulyie [was] foughten at the Salt Tron of Edinburgh, betwixt the Laird of Ogle [Edzell], younger, and his complices, and the young Laird of Pitarrow, Wishart. The faught lasted frae 9 hours till 11 at night, twa hours. There were sundry hurt on both sides, and ane Guthrie slain, which was Pitarrow’s man, ane very pretty young man. The 18th, they were accusit before the Council, and wardit.’--_Bir._
The Lairds of Edzell and Pitarrow were committed to ward, for not having confined their sons, as the chancellor had commanded. Edzell, foreseeing troubles to himself and his son from the death of Guthrie, sent a surgeon to examine the corpse, with a view to establishing that the young man had not died of the wounds he received in the tulyie, but had been ‘smoored in the throng.’
Edzell was in his way a remarkable man. Possessing a degree of taste uncommon in that age, he had built for himself at Edzell on the Esk in Forfarshire, a mansion of singular elegance, possessing in particular a screen-wall, ornamented with allegorical figures, the remains of which even at this day excite the surprise of the passing traveller. His latter days were clouded by the consequences of the violent passions of his eldest son, one of the principals in the above combat. We shall presently hear more of both him and his son.
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[Sidenote: 1605.]
A man called Alister Mac William Mor, a servant of Hugh Mackay of Far, happening to go into Caithness on some business, was there entrapped by emissaries of the Earl of Caithness, who bore him a grudge for his conduct in a former feud. The earl caused Alister to be beheaded before his eyes next day. The subsequent proceedings are curious. Mackay prosecuted Lord Caithness before the Justiciary Court at Edinburgh; but the Marquis of Huntly brought them together at Elgin; and ‘the Earl of Caithness acknowledged his offence before the friends there present; whereupon they were finally agreed, and all past injuries were again forgiven by either party.’ Not a word of the general claim of justice on behalf of the public!--_G. H. S._
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[Sidenote: JULY.]
At the end of this month, the pest broke out in Edinburgh, Leith, St Andrews, and other parts of the kingdom. Among the first houses infected in Edinburgh was that of the Chancellor Dunfermline. James Melville, looking to the recent proceedings of this statesman against the more zealous ministers, considered him as overtaken by ‘the penalty pronounced by Joshua upon the building up of Jericho.... His eldest and only son died, and a young damosel his niece, so that he was compelled to dissolve his family, and go with his wife alone, as in hermitage, with great fear of the death of his daughter also, on whom the boils brake forth. This was marked and talked of by the people.’
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The Fife adventurers who had been obliged to leave the Lewis in 1601 on a promise never to return, made a new attempt at this time to complete their unhappy undertaking. Attended with considerable forces, led partly by one William Mac Williams, chieftain of the Clan Gunn, they landed in the island, and ‘sent a message unto Tormod Macleod, shewing that if he would yield unto them, in name and behalf of the king [now a more formidable name than it had been], they should transport him safely to London, where his majesty then was; and being arrived there, they would not only obtein his pardon, but also suffer him, without let or hindrance, to deal by his friends for his majesty’s favour, and for some means whereby he might live. Whereunto Tormod Macleod condescended, and would not adventure the hazard of his fortune against so great forces as he perceived ready there to assail him. This did Tormod Macleod against the opinion and advice of his brother, Niel Macleod, who stood out and would not yield.
[Sidenote: 1605.]
‘So the adventurers sent Tormod Macleod to London, where he caused his majesty to be rightly informed of the case; how the Lewis was his just inheritance; how his majesty was sinistrously informed by the undertakers, who had abused his majesty in making him believe that the same was at his disposition, whereupon proceeded much unnecessary trouble and great bloodshed; and thereupon he humbly entreated his majesty to do him justice, and to restore him to his own. The adventurers, understanding that his majesty began to hearken to the complaint of Tormod Macleod, used all their credit at court to cross him. In end, they prevailed so far--some of them being the king’s domestic servants--that they procured him to be taken and sent home prisoner into Scotland, where he remained captive at Edinburgh, until the month of March 1615 years, that the king gave him liberty to pass into Holland, to Maurice, Prince of Orange, where Tormod ended his days.’--_G. H. S._
Tormod being thus put out of the way, ‘the enterprise of the Lewis was again set on foot by Robert Lumsden of Airdrie and Sir George Hay of Netherliffe, to whom some of the first undertakers had made over their right. In August they took journey thither, and by the assistance of Mackay Mackenzie and Donald Gorm, forced the inhabitants to remove forth of the isle, and give surety not to return.
‘Airdrie and his co-partners, thinking all made sure, returned south about Martinmas, leaving some companies to maintain their possession, which they made good all that winter, though now and then they were assaulted by the islesmen. In the spring, Airdrie went back, taking with him fresh provision, and fell to building and manuring the lands. But this continued not long; for, money failing, the workmen went away, and the companies diminishing daily, the islesmen made a new invasion about the end of harvest, and by continual incursions so outwearied the new possessors, as they gave over their enterprise, and were contented for a little sum of money to make away their rights to the Laird of Mackenzie [Mackenzie of Kintail]. This turned to the ruin of divers of the undertakers, who were exhausted in means before they took the enterprise in hand, and had not the power which was required in a business of that importance.’--_Spot._
It will be found that there was a third attempt to plant the Lewis. See under 1609.
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[Sidenote: AUG.]
[Sidenote: 1605.]
Mr Gilbert Brown, called Abbot of New Abbey, had for many years escaped the law while exercising his functions as a priest in the neighbourhood of Dumfries. The Presbyterian historians stigmatise him as ‘a famous excommunicat, forfaulted, perverting papist,’ who ‘kept in ignorance almost the haill south-west parts of Scotland,’ and was ‘continually occupied in practising against the religion.’ He was now taken prisoner by Lord Cranston, ‘not without peril from the country people, who rose to rescue him out of his hands.’ He was brought to Blackness, where, for a night, he was the fellow-prisoner of the recusant Presbyterian brethren. It is to be feared that community of misfortune did not bring the two parties into any greater harmony or charity with each other than they had hitherto been. When the government thus ‘took order’ with a papist priest, the only feeling of the zealous people on the other side was a jealous curiosity to see whether it was in earnest or not. The government, on its part, felt that it was on its good behaviour, and dreaded to be too lenient. Abbot Brown, being taken to Edinburgh Castle, was for some time entertained with an unpopular degree of mildness and liberality, his food being furnished at the king’s expense, and his friends being allowed to see him, while the Presbyterian captives were obliged to live at their own charges. Finally, the ‘excommunicat papist’ was allowed to quit the country with all his priestly furnishings, not without some suspicion of having been allowed to say mass in private before his departure.--_Cal._
It is probable that this leniency was found to have been attended with the effect of exciting a troublesome degree of suspicion against the government, for another ‘priest, who had been a certain time in ward in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, was (September 27, 1607) brought down on the mercat-day to the Mercat Cross, with all his mess clothes upon him, wherewith he was taken, with his chalice in his hand. He stayed at the Cross from ten hours till twelve. Then all his mess clothes and chalice were burned in a fire beside the Cross, and himself carried back to ward.’--_Cal._
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[Sidenote: OCT. 3.]
[Sidenote: 1605.]
The Privy Council, sitting at Perth, dealt with a complaint from Mr Alexander Ireland, minister of Kincleven, against Sir John Crichton of Innernytie, who has already been introduced to our notice as a professor of the ancient faith. It appeared that the minister had had to adopt measures of discipline with Sir John ‘for halding of profane plays on the Sabbath-day, resetting of seminary priests, and divers other offences condemned by the word of God.’ The knight, rebelling against an authority which he bore in no reverence, had resented the interference with his personal freedom by going with an armed party to Ireland’s house and committing sundry outrages, even to the beating of his wife, though she was not far from her confinement. Owing to an imperfection of the record, the end of the affair is unknown.--_P. C. R._
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[Sidenote: NOV. 5.]
On the evening of this day, when the Gunpowder Plot was to have taken effect, a high wind produced some effects in the north of Scotland, which seemed in harmony with that wild affair. ‘All the inner stone pillars of the north side of the cathedral church at Dornoch (lacking the roof before), were blown from the very roots and foundation, quite and clean over the outer walls of the church; which walls did remain nevertheless standing, to the great astonishment of all such as have seen the same. These great winds did even then prognosticate and foreshew some great treason to be at hand; and as the devil was busy then to trouble the air, so was he busy, by these his firebrands, to trouble the estate of Great Britain.’--_G. H. S._
The Privy Council issued sundry proclamations ‘anent the Poulder Treason,’ one for the apprehension of Percy, the prime conspirator. There was a general joy in Scotland at the detection of the plot. In Aberdeen, the people repaired to the church to give formal thanks for the deliverance of the royal family and nobility. Bonfires were lighted on the public ways, and the people went about for an afternoon, singing psalms of thankfulness. The magistrates and others had also a public banquet at the market-cross, where glasses were ‘drunk and cassen,’ in token of their rejoicing for the said merciful delivery.--_Ab. C. R._
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[Sidenote: 1606.
JAN. 21.]
The Earl of Errol wrote from Perth to the king, promising, in compliance with a command just received, to be ‘careful to provide ane tercel[311] to the hawk of Foulsheuch,’ and to be ‘answerable to your majesty for the same, in case the auld tercel be dead.’ Foulsheuch is a sea-cliff about four miles south of Stonehaven, 200 feet in height, where so lately as 1808 a family of hawks, of uncommonly large size, continued to build. James’s love of what old Gervase Markham calls the ‘most princely and serious delight’ of hawking, caused him to keep up a constant correspondence with friends in Scotland for the supply of the needful birds, and of this the earl’s letter is a specimen. His lordship goes on with laudable particularity: ‘Your majesty’s mongrel falcon, whilk I have, sould have been at your hieness lang or now [ere now], but that as my falconer was ready to tak his journey, she contracted ane disease, wherewith he durst not adventure to travel her, in respect of the great frosts and storms. I will be answerable to your majesty that she has been in nae ways stressed, but as weel treated as any hawk could be. Naither shall your majesty suspect that I have reteinit her for my awn plesure, whilk I sall never compare in the greatest thing whatsoever with your majesty’s meanest contentment, nor am I able as yet, even at this present, to travel upon the fields for any game. Albeit, how soon it sall be possible that the hawk may in any sort be travellit, she sall be at your majesty with all diligence. She had the same sickness the last year, in this same season, and was not free of it till near March.’[312]
So keenly interested was James respecting the tercel of Foulsheuch, that he had written to the Earl of Mar regarding it; and this nobleman replied on the same date with Lord Errol, assuring the king that he will see after it carefully. ‘I cannot as yet,’ he says, ‘certify your majesty whether he be alive or not, but, within few days, I think, I sall go near to get the certainty that may be had of so oncertain a matter.’
There is extant a characteristic letter written by James at Perth in March 1597, to Fraser of Philorth, regarding a bird of sport. ‘Hearing that ye have ane gyre-falcon, whilk is esteemed the best hawk in all that country, and meetest for us that have sae guid liking of that pastime, we have therefore taken occasion effectuously to requeest and desire you, _seeing hawks are but gifting geir_, and nae otherwise to be accounted betwix us and you, being sae well acquainted, that of courtesy ye will bestow on us that goshawk, and send her here to us with this bearer, our servant, whom we have on this errand directed to bring and carry her tenderly. Wherein, as he sall report our hearty and special thanks, sae sall ye find us ready to requite your courtesy and good-will with nae less pleasure in any the like gates [ways] as occasion sall present.’
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[Sidenote: MAR. 29 and 30.]
[Sidenote: 1606.]
The equinoctial gale of this year is described by a contemporary chronicler as of extreme violence. He says, with regard to the two days marginally noted: ‘The wind was so extraordinary tempestuous and violent, that it caused great shipwreck in Scotland, England, France, and the Netherlands. It blew trees by the roots, ruined whole villages, and caused the sea and many rivers so to overflow their wonted limits and bounds, that many people and chattels were drowned and perished.’--_Bal._
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An outbreak of touchiness on heraldic matters, which recently took place in Scotland, excited some surprise amongst English statesmen and others. It is certain, however, that wherever two nations are associated under one monarchy, the smaller usually manifests no small amount of jealousy regarding its national flag and every other thing which marks its distinction and may have been associated with the national history. The government of Sweden is at this day under constant anxiety regarding the rampant lion and battle-axe of the Norwegian flag, lest on any occasion due honour should not be paid to it, and feelings of international hostility be thereby engendered.
[Sidenote: APR. 12.]
When the Scottish king added England and Ireland to his dominions, his native subjects manifested the utmost jealousy regarding their heraldic ensigns; and some troubles in consequence arose between them and their English neighbours, especially at sea. We find that at this time, ‘for composing of some difference between his subjects of North and South Britain travelling by seas, anent the bearing of their flags, and for avoiding all such contentions hereafter,’ the king issued a proclamation, ordaining ‘the ships of both nations to carry on their main-tops the flags of St Andrew and St George interlaced, and those of North Britain in their stern that of St Andrew, and those of South Britain that of St George.’--_Bal._
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[Sidenote: MAY 17.]
[Sidenote: 1606.]
In an early and rude state of society, bankruptcy is always looked on with harshness, and punished cruelly; and perhaps it is really then less excusable than it becomes when commerce is more advanced, and the returns of transactions can less certainly be calculated on. Even Venice in old times had its stone of shame for bankrupts. Well, then, might Edinburgh have one in 1606. At the date noted in the margin, the Privy Council ordered the magistrates of that city to erect ‘ane pillory of hewen stone near the Mercat Cross; upon the head thereof ane seat to be made, whereupon in time coming sall be set all _dyvours_,[313] wha sall sit thereon ane mercat-day, from ten hours in the morning till ane hour after dinner.’[314] The unfortunates were obliged to wear a yellow bonnet on these occasions, and for ever after--the livery of slavery in the middle ages, and of which we have a relic in the under-clothes of the Christ’s Hospital boys in London.
An act of the Lords of Session in 1688 is more particular regarding the indignities to be visited upon dyvours. It ‘ordains the magistrates of the burgh (where the debtor is incarcerated), before his liberation out of prison, to cause him take on, and wear upon his head, a bonnet, partly of a brown, and partly of a yellow colour, with uppermost hose, or stockings, on his legs, half-brown and half-yellow coloured, conform to a pattern delivered to the magistrates of Edinburgh, to be keeped in their Tolbooth; and that they cause take the dyvour to the Mercat Cross, betwixt ten and eleven o’clock in the fore noon, with the foresaid habit, where he is to sit upon the dyvour-stone, the space of ane hour, and then to be dismissed; and ordains the dyvour to wear the said habit in all time thereafter; and in case he be found either wanting or disguising the samen, he shall lose the benefit of his bonorum.’[315]
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[Sidenote: JULY 1.]
A parliament met at Perth, chiefly with a view to re-instating the bishops in those revenues which alone could make them efficient in their office. They themselves appeared for the first time during many years in a style calculated to impress the senses of the people. The king had taken care that they, as well as the nobility, should wear ceremonial dresses.[316] In the ‘riding’ or equestrian procession to the parliament house, they took their place immediately after the earls, ‘all in silk and velvet footmantles, by pairs, two and two, and St Andrews, the great Metropolitan, alone by himself, and ane of the ministers of no small quality, named Arthur Futhie, with his cap at his knee, walkit at his stirrup along the street.’ ‘This was called the _Red Parliament_, whilk in old prophecies was talked many years ago sould be keepit in St Johnston, because all the noblemen and officers of estate came riding thereto and sat therein, with red gowns and hoods, after the manner of England, for ane new solemnity; whilk many did interpret a token of the red fire of God’s wrath to be kindled both upon kirk and country.’--_Ja. Mel._
[Sidenote: 1606.]
At this parliament appeared two western nobles between whose families there had long subsisted great enmity--namely, the Earls of Eglintoun and Glencairn. Notwithstanding the known anxiety of the king for an oblivion of all such ‘deidly feids,’ the two earls and their respective attendants came to a collision on the street. ‘It lasted fra seven till ten hours at night, with great skaith,’ one man of the Glencairn party being slain outright. It was not without great exertion on the part of the citizens that the tumult was quelled.
This feud, which was of early origin, acquired fresh stimulus from the murder of the Earl of Eglintoun by Cunningham of Robertland in 1586, the Earl of Glencairn, as head of the Cunninghams, being held as in some degree answerable for, and bound to protect, the actual assassin. The affair now involved the Lord Semple and other men of consequence in the west, and it took no small pains on the part of the king and his Scottish ministers to get it composed.
The reconciliation of the Earl of Glencairn with Lord Semple took place in a formal and public manner, at the command of the Privy Council, nearly three years afterwards (May 22, 1609). The scene of this important transaction was the Green of Glasgow. On the occasion, ‘for eschewing of all inconvenients of trouble whilk may happen (whilk God forbid!),’ the town-council arranged that the provost with one of the bailies and whole council should go to the place, attended by forty citizens in arms, while the other two bailies, each attended by sixty of the citizens with ‘lang weapons and swords,’ should ‘accompany and convoy the said noblemen, with their friends, in and out, in making their reconciliation.’--_M. of G._
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[Sidenote: JULY.]
Glasgow--now a city of 400,000 inhabitants, and the scene of a marvellous concentration of the industrial energies of the nineteenth century--how curious to look in upon it in 1606! when it was only a small burgh and university town, containing perhaps 5000 inhabitants at the utmost, some of them merchants (that is, shopkeepers), others craftsmen--not such folk, however, as would now be found carrying on trade and the useful arts in a burgh of the same size, but men accustomed to the use of arms, and the exercise of the violent passions which call arms into use--not inspired with the independent political ideas of our time, but trained to look up to the great landlords of their neighbourhood as leaders to be in all things followed: in short, a small burgal community, retaining a strong tinge of the old feudal system.
[Sidenote: JULY 5.]
[Sidenote: 1606.]
The city was at this time the scene of ‘a very great trouble and commotion,’ arising from a change which had been made in the system of municipal election. The change seems to have been effected in legal and proper manner by Sir George Elphinstone, the provost; but it was odious to a neighbouring knight, Sir Matthew Stewart of Minto, whose ancient local influence it threatened to subvert. He accordingly wrought upon the ‘crafts’ of the burgh, till he induced them to believe that the new system was a gross tyranny to their order. They consequently held a meeting in the house of a citizen--an act unlawful, without the sanction of the magistrates--ostensibly to get up a petition, but in reality armed for action with swords, targes, and other abulyiements. Climbing up to the platform of the Market Cross, they proclaimed their remonstrance against the new arrangements, in the sight of the magistrates, who sat in their council-house close by. It was believed that the object of the insurgents was to provoke the magistrates to come out and interfere with their proceedings; which might have been made a pretence for involving them in a murderous quarrel. But ‘God furnished the magistrates with patience to abide all their indignities.’ They even so far deferred to the popular party, as to appoint a day when they might meet and argue out their differences.
[Sidenote: 1606.]