Early Travellers in Scotland. Edited by P. Hume Brown

Preface

. The present volume contains a collection, as complete as I have been able to make it, of all the accounts of Scotland published by travellers who visited the country before 1700. Although I have spared no pains to find them, there are doubtless other narratives which have eluded my search, and which would have been an interesting addition to this collection. I specially regret that in my list there is only one traveller from Denmark, and that there are none from Norway or Sweden. It is by the standard of these three countries that Scotland before the eighteenth century can alone be fairly judged ; to measure her by the standard of England and France, as the travellers from these countries have naturally done, leaves us with impressions which must to a certain degree be misleading. On inquiry at the best sources, however, both in Norway and Sweden, I have been assured that no traveller in Scotland from these countries before 1700 has left any account of his visit.

I here take the opportunity of thanking Mr David Patrick, editor of Chambers' s Encyclopædia, and Mr F. H. Groome, editor of the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland, for their kindness in revising my proofs, and for much valuable assistance besides. I am also indebted to Mr Hew Morrison of the Edinburgh Public Library for the solution of certain topographical difficulties which occurred in the course of my

PREFACE.

. VI work. To Sheriff Mackay I owe assistance on special points, which I have acknowledged in the proper place. The vignette on the title-page has been copied, by the kind permission of Messrs M'Gibbon & Eoss, from an oak panel described in their Castellated and Domestic Architecture from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century. As the primary object of this collection is to throw light on certain aspects of Scotland and its people, which cannot be presented in ordinary histories, notes have been freely added wherever the text seemed to need correction or illustration. I take the liberty of adding that I should gratefully receive information regarding any narrative which has escaped my search, and which would deserve a place in the series here presented. P. H. B. September 1891. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction, ..... ix-xxvi Travellers — EDWARD I. (1295), ...... 1 jean froissart (reign of David II.), . . .7 JOHN hardyng (reign of James I), . . . . 16 æneas sylvius (reign cf James I.), . . . .24 JACQUES DE LALAIN (1448), ... .30 PEDRO DE AYALA (1498), ...... 39 ANDREA TREVISANO (1498), . ..... 50 PEDER SWAVE (1535), ...... 55 NICANDER NUCIUS (1545), ...... 59 JEAN DE BEAUGUlS (l548), ...... 63 ESTIENNE PERLIN (l55l), . . . . . .71 FYNES MORYSON (1598), ...... 80 HENRI, DUC DE ROHAN (l600), . . . . .91 SIR ANTHONY WELDON (?)

(1617), .... 96 TAYLOR THE WATER-POET (1618), . . . 104 SIR WILLIAM BRERETON (1636), . . . . .132 CONTEXTS. VIII Travellers — continued — PAGE JAMES HOWELL (1639), . . . . • .159 THOMAS TUCKER (1655), . . - • ■ .16-. RICHARD FRANCK (l656), . . . . • .182 JOREVIN DE ROCHEFORD (1661 1), ..... 217 JOHN RAY (1662), 230 JAMES BROME (l669), . . . . • . .241 THOMAS KIRKE (1679), . . • . ' ■ ■ 251 THOMAS MORER (1689), 266 MAPS. Map of Scotland of the 13th Century, with Key Map of Scotland, by Matthew Paris, with Key. Map of Scotland from Mercator's Atlas, 1595. [To follow Introduction.]