Part 51

He had a natural son, Robert, a fitting instrument for his designs. Under his instructions, this youth proceeded to Orkney in 1614, and there assembling a company, took possession of the castle of Kirkwall, at the same time fortifying the church and steeple. Voluntarily or by compulsion, a great number of the islanders signed a bond, engaging to support him; and it was soon understood that Orkney was in rebellion against the crown. The Privy Council met to consider what should be done. The Earl of Caithness was now in Edinburgh, attempting to obtain remission for offences of his own, one of which consisted in his waging war in the preceding year against the Earl of Sutherland. It readily occurred to his wily mind, that, for a culprit like himself, nothing could be so good as to offer to help the government to punish the crimes of others. It was, moreover, rather a pleasure than a duty to carry war into Orkney. His offered services were accepted, and he quickly sailed with a strong military party for Kirkwall. He found the fortress strong, the country people generally in favour of the rebels, and great deficiency of provision for his troops. He nevertheless beleaguered the castle for about a month, during which time some damage was done by ordnance on both sides. At length, by adroit dealing with one Patrick Halcro, the chief associate of Robert Stuart, he brought about a surrender of the house and all it contained (September 29, 1614), with a condition for the saving of Halcro’s life, but for no favour to any other.

[Sidenote: 1615.

JAN. 6.]

Robert Stuart was brought to trial in Edinburgh, and condemned to death. He was a youth of only twenty-two, ‘of a tall stature and comely countenance;’ and it is to be remembered in his favour, that he withstood all the persuasions of the Earl of Caithness to give up Kirkwall Castle, foreseeing that he should be tortured into revealing his father’s guilt; he only surrendered on finding that Halcro was going to betray him. He died penitent, with five of his company.

The doom of the earl, the prime mover of the rebellion, followed. He ‘took the sentence impatiently.’ An attempt was made to excite the king to spare the royal blood, but without effect. ‘The ministers, finding him so ignorant that he could scarce rehearse the Lord’s Prayer, entreated the Council to delay his execution some few days, till he were better informed, and received the Lord’s Supper.... So he communicate on the Lord’s day, the 5th of February, and was beheaded at the market-cross of Edinburgh upon Monday the 6th of February; when Sir Robert Ker, the Earl of Rochester, was decourted. The king laid the blame of his death upon him [Rochester], but late, as his custom was, when matters was past remedy.’--_Cal._ _G. H. S._ _Pit._

An entry in the session record of Perth, under September 1632, forms a curious and striking pendant to the history of this unfortunate branch of the Stuart family. ‘Disbursed at the command of the ministers to ane young man called Stewart, son to umwhile the Earl of Orkney, seven shillings.’

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[Sidenote: FEB. 28.]

This day, John Ogilvie, a Jesuit, was hanged in Glasgow, being the first priest who had suffered in that way in Scotland since the execution of the Archbishop of St Andrews at Stirling in 1571.[356]

[Sidenote: 1615.]

Ogilvie was a Scotsman of good family, who had lived for twenty-one years in a Jesuit college at Gratz. He came to Scotland in the autumn of 1613, and spent some time amongst the Catholics in the north, then went to London, and finally came back to Scotland in June 1614. For three months he lived skulkingly in Glasgow, occasionally performing mass, but was at length apprehended in October, along with thirteen or fourteen persons who had been present at those ceremonies. The latter were thrown into Dumbarton Castle, and only liberated on payment of large fines. Ogilvie himself was subjected to examination and trial. The only account he would give of himself was that he came to Scotland at the command of his superiors, ‘to save souls.’ To induce further confession, he was put on low diet and kept from sleep for several nights in succession; and being thus made ‘light in the head,’ he ‘began to discover certain particulars, but, howsoon he was permitted to take any rest, he denied all, and was as obstinate in denying as at first.’

The king, who was tolerant of the religion of the papists, as apart from their anarchical doctrines regarding papal supremacy, told his Council to let Ogilvie go unharmed into banishment, if he was but a Jesuit who had said mass, and only to deal severely with him if he had been a practiser of sedition, or refused to take the oath of allegiance. They soon found from his answers to certain questions that he was a bold and decided adherent of the doctrines of his order, holding that the pope was superior to the king, and might excommunicate him, and not clearly denying that the subjects might thus be absolved from their allegiance to their sovereign, and even slay him. He denied that he had been guilty of any real crime, saying that acts of parliament were but the dicta of partial men. The king’s authority came from predecessors who had acknowledged the supremacy of the pope: ‘if he will be to me as his predecessors were to mine, I will acknowledge him,’ not otherwise. In declining the king’s authority in such matters, he did no more than the best of the Presbyterian clergy did--a course in which they would persevere if they were wise. ‘I have done no offence,’ said he, ‘neither will I beg mercy. If I were even now forth of the kingdom, I should return. If all the hairs in my head were priests, they should all come into the kingdom.’

The one chance which Ogilvie had in the tolerant spirit of the king was thus closed. The zealous Presbyterians had of course nothing to say in arrest of judgment. According to their historian, the bishops felt it to be necessary that they should do something decided against the papists ‘_for honesty’s sake_‘--that is, some unmistakably sound and good thing on the right side, such as the hanging of a Jesuit clearly was--lest they should appear more inclined to persecute the ministers of the true, than those of a false religion. Accordingly, John Spottiswoode, archbishop of Glasgow, was all along the most conspicuous man in the prosecution of the unfortunate Jesuit. The trial took place in the Town-hall of Glasgow, before a commission composed of the magistrates and a number of noblemen, and condemnation was followed in _three hours_ by execution.

[Sidenote: 1615.]

‘He continued a while upon his knees at prayer, with a cold devotion; and when the hour of execution approached, his hands being tied by the executioner, his spirits were perceived much to fail him. In going towards the scaffold, the throng of people was great, and he seemed much amazed; and when he was up, Master Robert Scott and Mr William Struthers, ministers, very gravely and Christianly exhorted him to a humble acknowledgment of his offence, and if anything troubled his mind, to disburden his conscience. In matters of religion, they said, they would not then enter, but prayed him to resolve and settle his mind, and seek mercy and grace from God through Jesus Christ, in whom only salvation is to be found. Ogilvie answered that “he was prepared and resolved.” Once he said that he died for religion, but uttered this so weakly as scarce to be heard by them that stood by on the scaffold. Then addressing himself to execution, he kneeled at the ladder-foot, and prayed. Master Robert Scott, in that while, declaring to the people, that his suffering was not for any matter of religion, but for heinous treason against his majesty, which he prayed God to forgive him. Ogilvie, hearing this, said: “He doeth me wrong.” One called John Abercrombie, a man of little wit, replied: “No matter, John, the more wrongs the better.” This man was seen to attend him carefully, and was ever heard asking of Ogilvie some token before his death; for which, and other business he made with him, he was put off the scaffold.

‘Ogilvie, ending his prayer, arose to go up the ladder; but strength and courage, to the admiration of those who had seen him before, did quite forsake him. He trembled and shaked, saying he would fall, and could hardly be helped up on the top of the ladder. He kissed the hangman, and said: “Maria, Mater gratiae, ora pro me; Omnes Angeli, orate pro me; Omnes Sancti, Sanctaeque, orate pro me!” but with so low a voice that they which stood at the ladder-foot had some difficulty to hear him.

‘The executioner willed him to commend his soul to God, pronouncing these words unto him: “Say, John, Lord have mercy on me, Lord receive my soul!” which he did, with such feebleness of voice, that scarce could he be heard. Then he was turned off, and hung till he was dead.’[357]

[Sidenote: 1615.]

This hanging would of course have procured some popularity for the king and bishops, if it had proceeded from the right motive. But the people saw that no gratitude was really due. ‘Some,’ says Calderwood, ‘interpreted this execution to have proceeded rather of a care to bless the king’s government, than of _any sincere hatred of the popish religion_. Some [alleged] that it was done to be a terror to the sincerer sort of the ministry, not to decline the king’s authority in ony cause whatever.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: MAR.]

There was believed to be at this time an unusual number of Jesuits and seminary priests in Scotland, ‘pressing by all means possible to subvert the true religion.’ The kirk launched a fast at them, and ordered a general celebration of ‘the holie communion’ for discovery of all recusants. In Aberdeen, the elders subsequently reported three men and two women as having been absent on this occasion. Such persons were proceeded against, so as to force them, if possible, into conformity, in which case each person was expected to come forward publicly, and declare, ‘for the peace of my own conscience,’ I do, ‘by my own free choice and voluntary consent, renounce all the errors and superstitions of popery,’ and profess, ‘in the true simplicity of my heart,’ that ‘I shall own and maintain all the doctrines of the true Reformed Protestant Religion, and shall adhere to the whole worship and discipline thereof to my life’s end.’[358] In the present case, four persons remained recusant, and actually were excommunicated in the ensuing January; thus, in fact, losing all privileges as subjects of the realm.

[Sidenote: 1615.]

On the 14th of August, three citizens of Edinburgh, named Sinclair, Wilkie, and Cruikshanks, all men in respectable circumstances, were tried for the crime of entertaining in their houses three Jesuits or trafficking priests, including the unfortunate John Ogilvie. Sinclair confessed to having reset Mr James Moffat in the preceding October, but said he did it ‘only upon simplicity.’ The three men were condemned to be executed as traitors; and, as if to shew the certainty of their doom, a special order from the king was read in court for proceeding to both sentence and execution. The zealous multitude were accordingly in full hope of the punishment being inflicted; but there was no earnestness in the government in these proceedings. Let Calderwood tell the remainder of the tale. ‘The day following [the trial], betwixt four and five in the afternoon, they were brought furth with their hands bound, to the scaffold set up beside the cross and a gallows in it, according to the custom of execution. While a great multitude of people were going to see the execution, there was a warrant presented to the magistrates of Edinburgh to stay the execution. So they were turned back again to their wards. The people thought this form of dealing _rather mockery than punishment_.’

The sentence was commuted by the king’s order to banishment from Edinburgh for Cruikshanks, and for the other two to banishment from the king’s dominions, both during his royal pleasure.--_Pit._ _Cal._

A little trait of the domestic circumstances of Catholics of rank at this time is worthy of notice. The Earl of Errol, as a recusant papist, was only enabled to remain in his country on condition that he should not pass beyond a small circle around his own castle in Aberdeenshire. Being embarrassed by debt, and troubled by his creditors, he found himself constrained to take some legal steps ‘for the provision of his mony young children, and settling of some good course for the estate of his house.’ It was necessary that he should be allowed to break temporarily through the obligation under which he lay to live within a certain space round his house. He therefore got a formal licence (November 9, 1615), ‘to repair to Edinburgh, and there to remain in some lodging, _not kything ony way in daylight upon the heich street_, for ten days after the 20th of November.’--_P. C. R._

* * * * *

[Sidenote: APR.]

[Sidenote: 1615.]

On the Saturday before Pasch Sunday, ‘ane extraordinar riot’ took place in the usually quiet little burgh of Burntisland. The gentleman who acted as chamberlain of the queen in the management of her dotarial estate of Dunfermline, was called upon, in the course of his duty, to send ‘precepts of warning to remove’ to Burntisland, ‘according to common order.’ No immediate steps of a strong character were meditated; it was merely a form of law. The inhabitants, led, as afterwards appeared, by their pastor, Mr William Watson, conceived a violent anger at the proceeding, and determined to give it an active resistance. When the officer and his witness came to the cross for the execution of his office, he was assailed by ‘a multitude of women, above ane hundred, of the bangster Amazon kind’--so states the grave chancellor, Earl of Dunfermline--and ‘maist uncourteously dung [driven] off his feet, and his witness with him, they all hurt and bloodit, all his letters and precepts reft frae him, riven and cast away, and sae staned and chased out of the town.’ The magistrates are alleged to have looked on without interference; nay, ‘the bailie’s awn wife’ was ‘the principal leader of this tumultuary army of Amazons;’ so that there was no room to doubt that the male inhabitants were the instigators of the riot.

Some sharp measures were taken for the punishment of the rioters, and the chancellor besought the king to send off Mr Watson to some quieter part of the country, and ordain Burntisland ‘to be provided with some minister of mair calm port, to rule and circumsede sic het humours as may be in that people.’--_M. S. P._

Accordingly, on the 14th of December, the Council decreed that Mr William Watson should ‘transport himself out of the burgh of Burntisland’ before the 10th of January next, and thereafter ‘on nae wise repair to the said burgh, [nor] within aucht miles of the same, and on nae wise entertein ony intelligence with the inhabitants of Burntisland in ony matter concerning the government of that town.’--_P. C. R._ The king sent a warrant from Newmarket for this being carried into effect.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: APR. 26.]

‘Amang the mony abuses whilk the iniquity of the time and private respect of filthy lucre and gain has produced within the commonwealth’--thus gravely commences an act of the Privy Council--‘there is of late discoverit a most unlawful and pernicious tred of _transporting of eggs furth of the kingdom_.’ ‘Certain avaritious and godless persons, void of modesty and discretion, preferring their awn private commodity to the commonweal, has gone and goes athort the country and buys the haill eggs that they can get, barrels the same, and transports them at their pleasure.’ As an unavoidable consequence, ‘there has been a great scarcity of eggs this while bygane,’ and any that are to be had have ‘risen to such extraordinar and heich prices as are not to be sufferit in a weel-governit commonwealth.’ ‘Moreover,’ proceeds this sage document, ‘if this unlawful tred be sufferit to be of ony langer continuance, it will fall out that in a very short time _there will no eggs nor poultry be funden within the country_.’

The Council was therefore prompted to order letters to be directed to all merchants and owners of vessels, forbidding them to carry eggs out of the country, on pain of heavy fines and such further punishment as the Council might see fit to decree.--_P. C. R._

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[Sidenote: MAY 30.]

John Brand, student of philosophy, son of a former minister of Holyrood parish, was tried for the murder of a young man named William King, by stabbing him with a knife ‘upon St Leonard’s Craigs, beside the park-dyke.’ He was sentenced to be beheaded at the Cross.--_Pit._

‘About this time certain bare and idle gentlemen lay in wait upon passengers by the ways about Edinburgh, and in parts of East Lothian, and would needs have money from them. The common people called them _Whilliwha’s_.’[359]--_Cal._

* * * * *

Francis Hay, son of the late George Hay of Ardletham, and cousin-german to the Earl of Errol, was on terms of the most friendly intimacy with Adam Gordon, brother of Gordon of Gight. One day, when living familiarly together, a quarrel took place between them, followed by a single combat, in which Adam Gordon had the advantage, taking Hay’s sword from him, but instantly restoring it. Hay not being able to digest the affront, challenged Gordon some time after to renew the fight. Gordon, if we can believe a historian of the same name, ‘desired him to forbeir, seeing there was enough done already for any quarrel that was amongst them. Whereupon Francis came to Adam’s dwelling-place on horseback, with a pair of pistols at his girdle, and finds Adam walking about the fields, with his sword about him. Francis flies from his horse, and desires Adam to do him reason. So they go to it. Then again it was Adam his good hap to overcome Francis, and grants him his life; but as Adam was returning home, Francis, disdaining to be thus twice overthrown, shoots Adam behind his back with a pistol, and slays him.’

[Sidenote: DEC. 18.]

[Sidenote: 1615.]

Gordon of Gight, resolved to revenge his brother’s death, came to the house of William Hay of Logyruif, and there, without any warrant, seized Francis Hay, whom he immediately brought along to Aberdeen, and imprisoned in his own lodging, called the _Bonnie Wife’s Inn_, in the Gallowgate, where he kept him for forty-eight hours, excluding all his friends from seeing him. The sheriff-depute of Aberdeen was also a Gordon, and, of course, felt as a clansman regarding the late transaction. He therefore consented to preside at an irregular trial, to which Hay was forthwith subjected. At this trial, no one was allowed to appear for the alleged culprit. An advocate, who offered to come and act as his counsel, was told that if he did so, he should scarcely be down stairs till twenty whingers were put into him. Francis, in short, was condemned to lose his head, and next morning was actually led out to a solitary place, and there butchered by the swords of his enemies. In this wild way did the passions of men work themselves out in the north of Scotland, at the time when Bacon and Grotius were writing, when Drummond sang and Napier geometrised.

The Earl of Errol now came into the field, grievously offended because his relative had undergone law _without his being consulted_. The Gordons were summoned to answer for the irregularity of their proceedings at Edinburgh. This, again, drew forth their chief, the Marquis of Huntly, both to defend his own sheriffship, and to maintain his kinsmen. ‘Huntly and Errol did appear at Edinburgh, with all their friends on either side; so that the whole kingdom was divided in two factions, ready to fall together by the ears.’ The king himself now interfered, with a request that all proceedings should be suspended till he should come to Scotland. Accordingly, upwards of a year after, on his visiting his native kingdom, he brought the parties together, and persuaded them to be reconciled to each other, dismissing the offenders with only nominal punishments. ‘So was this controversy settled and taken away; yet it was not quite extinguished till 1627, that Viscount Melgum, the Marquis of Huntly’s third son, married ---- Hay, the Earl of Errol’s daughter.’--_Pit._ _G. H. S._

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[Sidenote: NOV.]

Adam French of Thornydykes, ‘ane young bairn scarce past fourteen years of age,’ was attending school at Haddington, under the guardianship of Sir John Home of North Berwick, ‘donator to the gift of his ward and marriage,’ when a plot was laid for making that gift of non-effect by his maternal uncle, William Home of Hardiesmill, in connection with John Cranston of Moriston and Sir Patrick Chirnside of East Nisbet. Under divers pretences, the boy was inveigled away from the house where he resided, and taken to Rimmelton Law in the Merse, the house of John Cranston, whence he was next removed to East Nisbet, and introduced to a daughter of the laird, who was destined to become his wife. A proclamation of bans being made in hasty style, the young pair were straightway carried to Berwick, and there married.

[Sidenote: 1615.]

At the urgency of Sir John Home, the three persons concerned in the abduction, together with one Moffat, a servant, were tried before the supreme court (November 8, 1616), on the charge of ravishing and taking away Adam French. It was shewn in defence, that Adam, being fully fourteen years of age, was competent to contract marriage of his own freewill--the marriage was regular--he himself was satisfied with what had been done, and was ready to declare that he considered the accused parties as his friends. There was much discussion between the king’s advocate and the counsel of the accused on points of law; and, finally, the case was remitted to the sheriff of Berwickshire, the parties giving surety that they would not, in the meantime, fall foul of each other.--_Pit._