XXX. SOCIAL STATE OF THE PEOPLE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

XXX. SOCIAL STATE OF THE PEOPLE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

AFTER the accession of the King of Scotland to the throne of England, it might have been reasonably thought that the administration of justice would have been improved; but such anticipations were not realised, except on the Borders, where in a short time there was a marked improvement. The King unfortunately employed his increased power to enforce unpopular ceremonies and forms of polity upon the people, and thus retarded their social progress. Moreover, in the reign of Charles I., civil war arose with its inseparable confusion; and from the Restoration to the Revolution, the corruption of the Government was notorious. Some improvement was effected before the Union, but ample room for administrative reform still remained.

From the outbreak of the Civil War the administration of justice was mainly in the hands of the Covenanting party, till the kingdom was subjected by Cromwell. The Protector’s mode of ruling Scotland, and his efforts to administer justice, have already been described.¹ For nearly two years after the death of Cromwell, the higher courts of justice in Scotland were in a state of confusion and abeyance.

¹ See under, page 112, et seq.

After the Restoration the old forms were revived; the Court of Session was restored, and Lord Stair appointed one of the judges and vice-president of the Session. In 1671 he was installed president of the Court of Session. Stair was a man of great abilities; but he yielded in some degree to the influences of the times, and for ten years gave a general support to the government of Charles II. It was reported that in his judicial career he perverted justice; but there is no reliable evidence of this, and it has never been shown that he was guilty of malversation. According to the anomalous rules prevailing in Scotland, a judge of the Supreme Court was permitted to act as a member of parliament, and in the session of 1681 Stair sat as the representative of Wigton; while he was on the Committee of Articles, and also a member of the Privy Council. He came into collision with the Duke of York and his supporters in the debates on the terms of the oath, which was proposed to be imposed upon all persons in office. Stair declined to sign the oath, and shortly after he was divested of his functions. Then the Government commenced an inquisitorial investigation with the aim of punishing the ex-president of the Session. In his own words, “I was cited before the criminal judges, before the Council, and before the Parliament; and hundreds of examinations and re-examinations were taken against me, even of my most intimate servants, and my sister-in-law, not in the regular way of probation, but by way of inquisition, to found a process upon any special matter, which was never done, because nothing was found against me.” He retired to Holland in October, 1682, and did not return to Scotland till the Revolution.¹

¹ Sir George Mackenzie’s Memoirs; Graham’s _Annals of the Viscount, and First and Second Earls of Stair_, Volume I., pages 17, 50; see also Sheriff Mackay’s _Memoir of Lord Stair_, pages 133‒138, 141‒150, 178‒186; 1873. During the ten years following his appointment to the presidentship, he composed the first draft of the Institutions of the Law of Scotland. This great work, upon which Stair’s fame as a lawyer mainly rests, was originally intended for his own particular use――“that he might be the more clear and determined in his judgments in the matter of justice.” In the dedication of the first edition of 1681 to the King, he says that “his modesty did not permit him to publish it previously, lest it should be judicially cited where he sat.”

Burnet says: “Dalrymple was president of the Session, a man of great temper, and of very mild deportment, but a false and cunning man, and a great perverter of justice: in which he had a particular dexterity of giving some plausible colours to the greatest injustice.”――History of His Own Time, Volume II., page 45.

In 1674, the question whether there should be appeals to parliament from the decisions of the Court of Session, or not, was disputed. The Government insisted that no appeals to parliament should be allowed; the Scotch bar was divided in opinion on the point, but Lockhart and Cunningham, and about fifty members of the faculty, maintained that there was a right of appeal to parliament. As the Government held a different view, they were suspended from the exercise of their profession, and banished from Edinburgh. The dispute was prolonged for two years, and ended in a kind of compromise.

Lord Stair’s son, Sir John Dalrymple, afterwards first Earl of Stair, was a man of great talents, but impulsive and unscrupulous. About the end of the reign of Charles II., he fell into disfavour with the Government, and was for a time imprisoned. But after the accession of the Duke of York, Dalrymple left Edinburgh for London in December, 1686; and in February, 1687, he returned Lord Advocate.¹ He succeeded Sir George Mackenzie in this office, who it seems had been shocked at the King’s dispensing prerogative, but Dalrymple was not hampered by scruples of conscience, and at once complied with the King’s projects.

¹ “February 14th, 1687. Sir John Dalrymple, now King’s advocate, arrives; lately twice in prison as a malefactor, and in very bad circumstances with the Government, he comes down from London to Edinburgh. His coach broke with him at Tranent. He has got a precept from the King for £1200 sterling, whereof £500 was his fine which Queensberry and Claverhouse exacted from him three years ago; the other £700 for his charges in this last journey to and from London, and for loss of his employment during that time. He has brought with him an ample and comprehensive remission of all crimes to his father, Lord Stair, particularly for their reset and converse with traitors, and to his little son, who accidentally shot his brother.”――Fountainhall’s Historical Notices.

It has been freely admitted that the fountain of justice was utterly polluted during the reigns of Charles II. and James VII. “The Scottish bench had been profligate and subservient to the utmost conceivable extent of profligacy and subservency.” Besides the oppression of the people, which the courts too often sanctioned, even men in high political posts employed their functions to plunder their political opponents, with as little scruple as the victors on a battle-field. A statesman, who had a personal case before the court, sometimes took his seat on the bench, where he had an ex officio right to be, and looking with a significant glance, defied the lawyers, on their peril, to give a decision adverse to him. Some of the remedies attempted by Parliament reveal the abuses which prevailed. These were framed to prevent judges from going out of their course to benefit themselves or their friends: one rule, for example, enjoined that when the court came to a judgment, it should be written out in their presence, and immediately signed, because it seems no officer of the law, however high, could be entrusted to state the decision honestly. In 1693, it was enacted that criminal trials should be held with open doors in presence of the panel or accused, the jury, and all others. The Revolution Parliament claimed the right of choosing the new bench of judges, and passed an act on the point, but it did not receive the royal assent. Parliament then “shut the Signet,” until steps were taken for filling up the bench.¹

¹ Dr. Burton’s History of Scotland, Volume I., pages 72‒74, 1853; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IX., pages 104, 282‒283, 305; Appendix, pages 135‒136.

But King William re-opened the Signet and appointed a new bench of judges in November, 1689, on the strength of his royal prerogative. The commission named the fifteen lords of Session, and the list commenced with Lord Stair, who was re-appointed president of the Court. Three of the new judges had been on the bench before, and the Court immediately met and went through the legal forms of admitting the new judges. The president told them, “that, although he was restored by way of justice according to the King’s declaration, yet he was willing to submit himself to the lords, and if they were not satisfied that he should resume that heavy charge, he would not in so disquiet a time, and in such a charge, subject himself to so much trouble and toil;” and he then retired to another room. Whereupon their Lordships unanimously concurred in the King’s nomination of Sir James Dalrymple of Stair to be president, as a man most worthy to discharge that trust.¹ The fifteen judges being duly installed, justice was restored to its customary channel; and this constitution of the supreme court continued with little variation, till the beginning of the present century.

¹ “This rule of submitting the election of the president to the other judges, the real appointment being with the Crown, could not well have had any other result in the present instance, considering that the whole bench of judges was assorted and the nominations advised by Stair himself. As to this, Forbes of Culloden, father of the president Duncan Forbes, remarks: But one thing at that time became apparent, that however my Lord Stair might profess, he desired petty men to sit with him upon the bench; he shunned any who he thought would debate with him, and took in, so far as he could, none but such as he knew would comply with him.” Culloden Papers, page 326; Graham’s _Annals of Viscount Stair, and the First and Second Earls of Stair_, Volume I., page 89.

There was still much crime in the nation; murder and manslaughter were common, and, as already stated, feuds among the nobles and the Highland chiefs were endless. Captain James Stewart, a member of the Ochiltree family, was slain by Sir James Douglas of Parkhead in 1595. At that period a noble was not usually punished as a malefactor; his crime was either expiated by a fine or by the interposition of the King reconciling the friends of the injured party to the offender and his friends. Thus the feud between the Ochiltree Stewarts and Sir James Douglas and his friends was continued. From time to time they had come under heavy securities to keep the peace towards each other; and so Lord Ochiltree and Sir James Douglas, now Lord Torthorwald, became bound for a sum of £5,000 each to keep the peace, and brothers and nephews of Stewart for smaller sums――an arrangement that was renewed on the 30th of May, 1608, to endure for a year. All seemed quiet in Edinburgh, but on the morning of 14th July, Lord Torthorwald was walking unattended in the High Street, when William Stewart, the nephew of the man who was slain twelve years before, approached and instantly stabbed him in the back, and he immediately expired. The murderer escaped, and no more was heard of him. The same day, the Privy Council held two meetings to consider what should be done. They ordered that the Earl of Morton, James, Commendator of Melrose, Sir George and Sir James Douglas, uncles of Lord Torthorwald, William Douglas, Archibald Douglas, and Sir James Douglas of Muirston, all friends of the murdered man, should be confined to their lodgings; and Lord Ochiltree, whom the Douglases might be eager to attack, was also commanded to remain within doors. This deed recalls a series of murders, which stretched back to the slaughter of Stewart in 1595, and to Stewart’s persecution of the Earl of Morton to the scaffold in 1581; also, this William Stewart was the son of the Sir William Stewart who was slain by the Earl of Bothwell in 1588.¹

¹ Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, Volume III.; _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume VIII., pages 101, 144, 158, 185, 215, 239, 246, 251, 344, 348, 646, 667, et seq.; Volume IX., pages 5, 10, et seq.; Volume X., pages 1, 45.

In the early part of the seventeenth century, the records of the Privy Council are full of cases of assaults, committed by men of rank and by others, upon persons whom they hated. It would be tedious to enumerate even those which occurred in a single year. There were Acts of Parliament forbidding men to carry arms, but in almost every case we find the parties implicated in these acts of violence, described as wearing steel bonnets, gauntlets, plate sleeves, and with swords and pistols.

Gavin Thomson, a burgess of Peebles, was greatly hated by Charles Pringle, another burgess. One day in September, 1608, as Gavin was walking in the High Street, Pringle, with nine others, all armed, attacked and wounded him on the left hand, then thrust him into a house and locked him up, intending to have him slain there; but the minister of the burgh, assisted by other peaceable persons, came and rescued him. For months after this Pringle and his associates lay in wait several times to kill him, and prevented him from going to church or market, or attending to his farm. On the 2nd of December, while he was walking in the street, they again attacked him with weapons, wounded, and threatened to slay him outright, had not timeous relief been at hand. The assailants had wounded several persons of rank in the scuffle, and the Privy Council denounced them as rebels.¹

¹ Burgh Records of Peebles; Register of the Privy Council, Volume VIII., pages 208, 682.

A strife broke out between the Earl of Caithness on the one side, and Sir Robert Gordon of Kinmoninie and Donald Mackay, on the other. This affair is highly illustrative of a condition of society which was gradually changing and improving. In 1599, Arthur Smith, a native of Banff, had got into trouble for coining, but he contrived to escape the punishment of the law by making a lock of a peculiar device, which gained him the favour of the King. Afterwards, having entered the service of the Earl of Caithness, he commenced and continued coining for seven years in a recess under the Earl’s castle. Naturally the counties of Caithness, Sutherland, and Orkney, were soon found to be flooded with counterfeit coins, both of silver and gold. Sir Robert Gordon reported the case, and the Privy Council commissioned him to apprehend Smith and bring him to Edinburgh. While this case was pending, William M‘Angus, a noted freebooter, was captured and imprisoned in the Earl’s castle, but he escaped and fled into Strathnaver. There the Sinclairs made an attempt to seize him, but he eluded them; they, however, took a man, Angus Herriach, who they thought had assisted M‘Angus to escape. This man was also lodged in the Earl’s castle without a warrant; and Mackay then appeared and claimed Angus as his man, and Caithness had to give him up.

Smith, the coiner, was living in Thurso under the protection of the Earl of Caithness, when a party of the Gordons and Mackays arrived to execute the warrant for apprehending him. They had already seized him and a quantity of his counterfeit coins, and were making off, when a party of the Sinclairs came to the rescue, and a fierce conflict ensued on the streets. John Sinclair, the Earl’s nephew, was slain, his brother wounded, and the Earl’s retainers were driven back. During the fight Smith was coolly put to death, lest he should escape, and the invading party then retired. The Earl of Caithness was greatly enraged, and considered the affair a disgraceful encroachment upon him in the heart of his own county. The strife was next transferred to Edinburgh, where the parties raised counter-actions against each other before the Council. Both parties appeared in the capital on the appointed day, accompanied by their friends. With the Earl of Caithness there was his son, Lord Gray, the Lairds of Roslin and Cowdenknowes, the Earl’s two brothers――Lairds of Murkle and Glenland; these were the chief men on Caithness’ side. With Sir Robert Gordon and Donald Mackay there were the Earls of Winton, Eglinton, and their followers, the Earl of Linlithgow with the Livingstons, Lord Elphinstone with his friends, Lord Forbes with his friends, Lord Balfour, Mackay the Laird of Larg, in Galloway, the Laird of Foulis, the Laird of Duffus, and their followers, and others of the name of Gordon. The Earl of Caithness was much grieved, when he saw that his opponents so far outnumbered him. All these parties had come to Edinburgh to see that justice should be done, and to outbrave each other in forcing the Court to give a favourable decision on their own side. While the Privy Council was trying to exact security from the opposing parties for their peaceable behaviour, both parties despatched private messengers to the King to give him a favourable impression of their cases. The King repeatedly sent instructions to proceed against them with all the rigour of law and justice, but this was a difficult matter. While the affair was pending, the Marquis of Huntly’s son, Lord Gordon, arrived at Edinburgh from court, and the Earl of Caithness imagined that he had an unfavourable view of his case, “So, late in the evening, the Lord Gordon, coming from his own lodgings accompanied with Sir Alexander Gordon and others of the Sutherland men, met the Earl of Caithness and his company on the High Street; and, at the first sight, they fell to jostling and to talking, then to drawing of swords, and friends speedily assembled on both sides. Sir Robert and Mackay, with the best of the company, came presently to them; but the Earl of Caithness, after some blows given and received, perceiving that he could not make good his part, left the street and retired to his lodging; and if the darkness of the night had not favoured him, he had not escaped so. The Lord Gordon taking this broil very highly, was not satisfied that the Earl of Caithness had given place, and departed, but moreover, he with all his company crossed thrice to the Earl of Caithness’ lodgings, thereby to provoke him to come forth; but perceiving no appearance thereof, he retired himself to his own lodging. The next day the Earl of Caithness and Lord Gordon were reconciled by the Privy Council.” But several years passed ere these troubles were terminated.¹

¹ Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, Volume III., pages 32, 231‒232; Register of the Privy Council, Volume IX., pages 352, 413, 731; Chambers’ Domestic Annals of Scotland, Volume I., pages 436, 439.

The Earl of Caithness was one of the most unruly men of his time, and in his own district wielded an almost despotic sway. He is represented as a base and selfish man, about half of his life being passed in outlawry. Sometimes he was at war with the Sutherland family, sometimes with the Mackays of Strathnaver; one year he was proclaimed a rebel, at another time he was honoured with a royal commission against some other rebels. He was deeply in debt, but this did not disturb him much; and his son, having become responsible for him, was imprisoned in Edinburgh for five years by his father’s creditors, while Caithness himself enjoyed a life of freedom in the far north. He was denounced a rebel in 1621; and Lord Berridale, his son, asked and obtained a commission to pursue his father, and was released from prison for the purpose of assisting in bringing him within the grasp of the law. In September, 1623, Berridale and Sir Robert Gordon entered Caithness at the head of a strong force, but they had not advanced far when the Earl, perceiving that he was unable to face them, fled, and sought refuge in Orkney, thence intending to go to Norway. Many of the inhabitants received Gordon with civility; and the Commissioners having taken possession of the castles in the Earl’s territory, and made arrangements for the peaceable government of the county, Sir Robert Gordon returned in triumph to Dunrobin Castle, and disbanded his men. This Earl of Caithness died in his own county in comparative obscurity in 1643, at the advanced age of seventy-eight.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council; Pitcairn’s _Criminal Trials_, Volume III., page 310; Gordon’s _History of the Earldom of Sutherland_.

In 1614, he was entrusted with a royal commission to reduce the Earl of Orkney; and a brief notice of this Earl’s career may serve to illustrate the state of society in that remote part of the kingdom. Patrick Stewart, Earl of Orkney, was related to the royal family, as his father was a natural son of James V.; and it seems that he attempted to make himself king over the Orkney Islands. It is stated in contemporary records that he collected a large yearly revenue, and that he rigorously exacted very high rents and dues from his vassals and tenants; further, that “his pomp was so great in Kirkwall, as he never went from his castle to the church, nor abroad otherwise, without a company of fifty musketeers and other gentlemen of guard; and such like, before dinner and supper, there were trumpeters that sounded till the meat of the first service was set at table, and also at the second service, and consequently after the grace. He also had his ships sent to the sea to intercept pirates, and to collect tribute of foreign fishers, that came yearly to these seas. Whereby he made such a collection of great guns and other weapons of war as no house, palace, or castle in all Scotland was furnished with the like.”

On 27th December, 1608, the Earl of Orkney was summoned to answer for acts of usurpation of the royal authority during the preceding twenty years. His indictment contained a long list of charges, but he denied that these were crimes, and maintained that he had sufficient authority to do all that he had done, which he could show at the proper time and place. He was present at a meeting of the Privy Council on the 27th of June, 1609, and on the 4th of July he was imprisoned in the Castle of Edinburgh. The people of Orkney and Shetland were still oppressed by the Earl’s brother, James Stewart, and other deputies and agents whom the Earl had appointed to rule during his absence. Referring to this, the record stated that the King had expected that the proceedings against the Earl would have procured some peace to the “poor distressed people there,” and would have restrained the insolence of his deputies and servants. Yet it appeared that the Earl’s agents and friends, assisted by the captain of the Castle of Kirkwall and the soldiers under him, still “continue all forms of oppression, not only against those who presented their complaints against the Earl, but also against all others of whom they hope to extort any profit; so that the King’s poor subjects within these bounds are in as bad a state and condition now under the tyranny of the persons above mentioned as they were before in the time of the Earl’s own rule.” Stewart, the Earl’s brother, and others were denounced as rebels for non-appearance in court. The Earl’s case was hung up, and he was detained a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle; and it seems that the King was inclined to come to a compromise with him, but he was not disposed to temporise, and still entertained the hope of regaining his island kingdom. He attempted to escape from Edinburgh Castle, and was then removed to Dumbarton Castle, where it was thought he would be more secure. But in spite of this, he found means of instructing his natural son Robert, who proceeded to Orkney in 1614, mustered a company, seized the castle of Kirkwall, and fortified the church. A great number of the inhabitants joined him, and it soon became known that Orkney had rebelled against the Crown. The Earl of Caithness was then in Edinburgh endeavouring to obtain a settlement for crimes and offences of his own, and it occurred to him that it might be easier to make a compromise with the Government by offering his assistance to punish others. His service was accepted, and he immediately sailed for Kirkwall with a strong force to reduce the Lord of Orkney. He found that the castle was strong, and many of the inhabitants in favour of the rebels, while he had great difficulty in finding provision for his men. He besieged the castle for the space of a month; it surrendered in September, 1614, and Lord Robert Stewart was carried to Edinburgh a prisoner.

This youth of twenty-two years was then tried for high treason, condemned to death, and executed on the 6th of January, 1615, with five of his companions. His father, the Earl, the real moving spirit of the rising, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, and beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh on the 6th of February, 1615.¹

¹ Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, Volume III., pages 81‒87, 272‒307, 308, 327; Register of the Privy Council, Volume VIII., pages 214, 306, 312, 433, 611, 619, 845, also Volumes IX. and X.

The Government had several modes of dealing with the feuds and unruly habits of the Highlanders, some of which have already been indicated in the preceding volumes. Sometimes, as in the Lowlands, authority was given by the Government to one party to make private war on another, as in the cases noticed above; in other instances, the Crown entered into an arrangement with Argyle in the south-west, and with Huntly in the north, to restrain and punish, and even “to extirpate the barbarous people.” Lastly, there was the extreme expedient of granting “letters of fire and sword.” These were licences from the Government for the most severe and cruel kind of civil war, with the aid and encouragement of the executive to one side in the strife. These letters authorised the favoured individual or clan to burn, to waste, and to slay, all within the territory of their enemies, or the district specified in the licence; and the licenced parties were freed from any legal annoyance as the result of the conflict. Such letters or commissions usually read thus:――“Whatever slaughter, mutilation, bloodshed, fire-raising or violence, may be committed, shall be regarded as laudable, good, and warrantable service to his Majesty and to his Government.”¹ The frequent granting of letters of fire and sword is a lamentable proof of the weakness of the government, of the law, and of the lack of police organisation.

¹ Register of the Privy Council.

After the accession of the King to the throne of England, various attempts were made to reduce the people of the Highlands and the Western Isles to the authority of the Crown. The efforts of the Government for a time promised considerable success; a number of Highland and Island chiefs were captured and imprisoned, and others placed under caution for their good behaviour. The King commissioned Bishop Knox with power to make arrangements for promoting the peace and obedience of the Isles; and, at his instance, nine chiefs agreed to a bond of obedience to the authority of the King at Icolmkill on the 24th of August 1609. The names of these chiefs were――Angus Macdonald of Dunivaig in Islay; Hector Maclean of Duart in Mull; Donald Gorm Macdonald of Sleat in Skye; Rory Macleod of Harris; Rory Mackinnon of Strathordaill in Skye; Lauchlan Maclean of Coll; Donald Macdonald of Ylanterim in Moydart, Captain of Clanranald; Lauchlan Maclean of Lochbuy in Mull; and Gellespie Macquharrie of Ulva: these bound themselves by solemn oaths to future obedience to the King and the laws of Scotland. This bond is known under the title of “the Statutes of Icolmkill.” The statutes were nine in number and dealt with the following subjects:――1. The ruinous churches to be repaired, and a regular parochial ministry to be established and maintained, with the same discipline as in other parts of the kingdom, the same observance of Sunday and other moral rules, and the suppression of irregular marriages. 2. Inns to be erected in convenient places in all the Islands for the accommodation of travellers, so as to extinguish mere idle wandering, and the burden on the resources of poor tenants and crofters by the habit of indiscriminate quartering. 3. That all idle vagabonds without visible and honest means of living should be cleared out of the Isles; and that the chiefs should cease from capricious exactions upon their clans, and be content with a household retinue of as many gentlemen and servants as his means will support,――that is, Maclean of Duart with eight gentleman, Angus Macdonald, Donald Macdonald, Rory Macleod, and the Captain of Clanranald, with six gentlemen each, and so on with the rest. 4. All sorning and begging, and the custom of conjie to be put down. 5. A main cause of the poverty and disorder of the Islanders being their excessive drinking of strong wines and aqua vitæ, brought in amongst them partly by merchants of the mainland and partly by some traffickers dwelling amongst themselves, all general importation or sale of wine or aqua vitæ to be stopped under penalties, reserving liberty, however, to all persons in the Islands to brew aqua vitæ and other drink to serve their own houses, and to the chiefs and other gentlemen to send to the Lowlands for the purchase of as much wine and whisky as they may require for their households. 6. Every man in the Islands possessing sixty cows, and having children, should send at least his eldest son, or failing sons, his eldest daughter, to some school in the Lowlands, and there to be taught until they be able to speak, read, and write English. 7. An Act of Parliament prohibiting all persons from carrying firearms out of their own houses, or shooting with such at deer, hares, or fowls, to be strictly enforced within the Islands. 8. The chiefs should not entertain wandering bards or other vagabonds of that sort; and all such persons should be apprehended, put in the stocks, and expelled from the Islands. 9. For the better keeping of these statutes, and in accordance with the rule that the principal man of every clan is answerable for all his kinsmen and dependents, this present agreement to be a sufficient warrant to all chiefs and sub-chiefs to apprehend and try malefactors within their bounds, seize their goods for the King’s use, and deliver over their persons to the competent judge to be further dealt with; the chiefs become bound not to reset or maintain within their bounds any malefactor that may be fugitive from the bounds of his own natural superior.¹ The Government of the time seem to have thought the above regulations a great achievement; yet it does not appear that they became operative. The Government continued to pursue the clan Gregor with the utmost extremity of fire and sword.

¹ Register of the Privy Council, Volume IX. pages 24‒30.

The social state of the Highlands, however, was not much improved in the seventeenth century. Old feuds and grudges among neighbouring clans often led to a kind of invasion of the territories of each other, ending in extensive depredations, and frequently in loss of life. About the year 1666, the Government appointed some of the chief men in the disturbed districts to raise a force among their dependents, to put the law into execution against the offenders. The region of Strathspey, and the mountainous tract thence extending towards Perthshire and Aberdeenshire, had often been in a disturbed state during the century; and at this time the Council granted a commission of “fire and sword” to John Lyon of Muiresk, and Alexander, his son, against a large number of outlawed persons, enumerated by name. But before he was prepared to carry his commission into effect, the outlaws attacked his house, set it on fire, and slew him and his son. The lawless party then proceeded to the small town of Keith, attacked and plundered it, and decamped. A commission of fire and sword was given to the Earl of Moray, which had the effect of bringing Patrick Roy Macgregor, who seems to have been the ringleader of the gang, and some others of his confederates to justice. In March, 1667, they were tried at Edinburgh for sorning, fire-raising, theft, and murder, and condemned and executed; and in May, 1668, other two men of this gang were tried and executed.

In 1670, the Privy Council issued an order, stating that many persons in the Highlands were in the habit of travelling through the country attended by idle bands, which occasioned stealing and sorning; all persons were therefore forbidden to travel or congregate in this fashion.

The messenger-at-arms and officers of the law often encountered violent resistance in the Highlands when delivering their summonses, and attempting to apprehend debtors and offenders. In the winter of 1671, John Campbell, with two witnesses, proceeded to Caithness, to execute letters of caption and inhibition against some gentlemen in that region, but they were seized by Captain Sinclair and shipped for France. By the action of winds and waves, however, the ship, after being some time at sea, came back to Thurso, and the three officers of the law were again seized and imprisoned, and guarded as if they had been criminals. The Privy Council ordered that they should be released, on the singular ground that they had given security to answer any charge which Captain Sinclair might bring against them.

Rudeness and contempt of the law were often manifested, and outrages frequently occurred on Sunday, even during public worship. An Act of Parliament had been passed in 1592 against outrages in churches, but it had little effect. In 1608, a complaint was lodged against Alexander Mortimer for assaulting the minister, by taking off his hat and striking him in the face with it. A complaint came before the Synod of Aberdeen, in 1664, against William Creichton and his wife, stating that they had, in the parish church of Auchterless, on a Sunday, blasphemed, cursed and swore, and reproached and threatened the minister in the pulpit. While at the same date, Forbes of Newe, and Forbes of Edinglassie, with their friends, fought and wounded each other on Sunday.

Society in the chief burghs was more peaceful and life more secure than in the Highlands and in some parts of the Lowlands; yet even in them crimes of violence were constantly occurring. In 1608, one of the bailies of Glasgow, James Inglis, in company with James Young, in the exercise of his functions charged Thomas Paterson to go with him to the jail, which he had before broken out of, and while in the act of taking him back, he was interfered with by Robert Macgill, who declared that he would not allow Paterson to go, and immediately threatened the bailie with a dagger, at the same time using abusive language to him. Macgill was convicted for this offence, and sentenced by the council to pay a sum of a hundred pounds to the city treasurer, to be banished from the town for seven years, “and to be put in irons and to remain in them during Bailie Inglis’ pleasure, and lastly, to walk from the place where he assaulted the bailie to the Cross, bareheaded and barefooted, and there upon his knees, to deliver the dagger by the point to the bailie, and ask God’s mercy and the bailie’s forgiveness for his great offence.” In the end of September the following year, Andrew Craig was accused of abusing Matthew Trumble, one of the bailies, in presence of the people. The bailie had ordered him to be imprisoned upon just grounds, but he retorted that the bailie had no power to charge him to be imprisoned, and when the officers had got him up the Tolbooth stair, he said to the bailie――“An thou were out of thy office, I shall be up sides with thee,” to the contempt of the King’s authority as represented in the bailie’s person; and when he was in prison he said that he would set it on fire. When his trial came on he pleaded guilty and threw himself on the mercy of the council, and they ordered him to be detained in prison till they resolved what further punishment was necessary. Other persons were tried and punished for contempt of the dean of guild, and of the town clerk, but in 1612 another bailie was threatened by one of the citizens. In 1610, the town council of Glasgow had under consideration the manifold assaults and wrongs which were committed by notorious tusslers, fighters, and night-walkers, who had nothing to pay their fines or to satisfy the parties whom they injured, and who daily committed breaches of the peace and disturbances, because there was no other severe punishment inflicted upon them. Therefore the council enacted that all persons convicted of assaults and disturbances, who had nothing to pay their fine or to satisfy the injured party, should be punished thus:――If a man, he should be imprisoned for eight days, and if a woman, she should be put in the branks upon a Monday and a Friday, for two hours on each occasion, and thereafter such persons should ask God’s mercy and the forgiveness of the parties injured by them.¹

¹ Records of the Kirk-Session and Presbytery of Aberdeen, pages 61, 277, 278, 1846. Burgh Records of Glasgow, pages 290, 293, 303, 317, 326, 316.

The number of convictions before the bailies of Aberdeen, for the year 1641, seems to indicate that there was much crime in the city. In March, three of the pickmen at the town’s mills were convicted and fined for exacting a handful out of every sackful of malt ground at the mills more than the lawful mulcture and dues allowed to the lessee and his servants for their work. The council enacted that all workmen convicted of this offence should be treated as receivers of stolen malt, and be scourged and banished or otherwise punished at the discretion of the magistrates. On the 19th of March, Helen Vulgine and Margaret Bellie were convicted and fined for “stricking, scratching, and riving of each other’s faces.” On the 4th of May, Helen Sherar was convicted for “throwing a cup and a wooden stoup at Margaret Burnet, and hitting her to the effusion of blood,” and Margaret also was convicted for striking Helen, and for insisting on taking her child from her. Both were sentenced to be put in the stocks if they failed to pay the fines imposed. On the 15th of June, Marjorie Jack was convicted and fined for assaulting another woman. On July 6th, Elspet Fraser was convicted for assaulting Bessie Forbes on the street, both being married women; and Elspet was fined four merks, and also ordered to offer amends to the injured person in the presence of the magistrates. The same day, Christian Watson, wife of John Tough, was convicted “for assaulting a woman and knocking her down on the street and breaking her leg;” at the same time, Robert Massie was convicted “for assaulting William Gordon, a tailor, on Sunday night, by taking off his bonnet and striking him in the face, and chancelling him to combat, which he refused.” Gordon was sentenced to pay four merks to the dean of guild, and other four to the injured person, and to beg his pardon in the presence of the magistrates. On August 3rd, William Walker, a fisher, was convicted “for injuring James Anderson, his master, by provocking him and calling him a thief’s son, pushing him into the water and hitting him with a stone on the breast.” The same day, James Alexander was accused by Alexander Davie, a lister, for assaulting him in a house in the Gallowgate; he was convicted and fined four merks, and ordered to ask the offended party’s pardon. On the 6th of September, Elspet Smith, a servant of a maltman, was convicted “for assaulting Elspet Craig, a tailor’s wife, by tearing down her hair about her eyes, bruising her face, and then dragging her to a sellar ‘and almost wirred her;’” therefore Smith was sentenced to pay a fine of four merks to the dean of guild, and also to crave pardon from God and the offended party, and further, she was bound not to trouble Craig again, under the penalty of banishment. On the 17th of the same month, Peter Crombie, merchant, was accused of going to John Scot’s house and assaulting his wife, by striking her on the breast and throwing her down; he was fined eight merks. On the 20th of November, James Smith, a weaver, and Alexander Kemp, a wright, were both convicted, for going to the house of Alexander Sangster, a weaver, in the silence of night, and breaking up the door with a forehammer, and then entering the house with drawn swords in their hands; for this they were sentenced to be imprisoned for eight days, and thereafter banished from the city. The same day William Duncan, a servant of Thomas Walker, shoemaker, was convicted for going to the house of James Hall, shoemaker, at night, and drawing a sword and threatening to attack him, and also uttering most abusive expressions towards him, because he would not allow his servant to go out of the shop with him to eat a lamb’s leg as he desired. Duncan was sentenced to imprisonment for eight days, and to find caution for his good behaviour in future. The same day Robert Gordon, a tailor, was convicted for drawing a sword to William Walker, and threatening to strike him, both of them being drunk; Gordon was sentenced to imprisonment till he relieved himself by the payment of his fine. The 11th of December, Sara Fowler was convicted for scolding and defaming Andrew Birnie, merchant, by “calling him a cankered carle, exclaiming on the streets and saying to his wife that she was as gentle a woman as herself.” Sara was sentenced to be imprisoned for eight days, with an intimation that if ever she should be again convicted, she would be put in the stocks.¹ Of course this enumeration is not complete, as it does not include the higher class of crimes which were tried before the sheriff and the circuit court.

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume III., pages 255, 256, 259, 261, 264, 265, 267, 269, 271, 272‒274. In 1662, the town council of Aberdeen agreed to give the town’s scourger thirteen shillings and fourpence of weekly wages; and also gave him the two little houses under the Gallowgate Port to dwell in, while he continued scourger.――Burgh Records, Volume IV., page 203.

Theft was not so prevalent in the burghs as it had been at an earlier period. In Glasgow, on the 23rd of November, 1611, two men were banished for theft. The magistrates, in August, 1613, passed an act for preserving the growing crops from thieves; and it was proclaimed by sound of drum, “that no person be found bringing to this burgh any kind of stuff, as peas, beans, corn, barley, wheat, or rye, upon horseback in burdens, after the hour of four in the afternoon during the harvest; and any one found contravening this, shall be held as a thief and an oppressor of his neighbour, and shall pay a fine of five pounds and be placed in the stocks.” It was stated in 1642 that the city was abused by thieves, who escaped punishment.¹

¹ Burgh Records of Glasgow, pages 325, 338, 437.

In preceding chapters the attempts of the Government to provide for the poor and helpless were noticed,¹ and Parliament continued to pass Acts touching the poor, and the repression of beggars and idle vagabonds. These classes were numerous in Scotland, and great difficulty was experienced in dealing with them. By a short Act passed in 1597, the administration of the poor-law was entrusted to the kirk-sessions; and, by an Act of 1600, the sessions were to be assisted by one or two of the presbytery. The common aim of all the early Acts relating to the poor was to prevent begging, as much as to make provision for the aged, the helpless, and the infirm. It was therefore provided that strong beggars and their children――terms which were meant to include all the able-bodied poor――should be employed at common labour. But it seemed this arrangement was not effective, as vagrancy still prevailed. An elaborate act was passed in 1617, entitled “An Act anent the Justices, for keeping of the King’s peace, and their Constables.” The object of this statute appears to have been to establish a more complete local system of police organisation. The various duties of the Justices of the Peace are minutely described. They were directed to hold a session quarterly, and to put the law into full execution against all wilful beggars and vagabonds, against idle men and women, without any trade or certain occupation, lurking in ale-houses, and reputed as vagabonds, and against all those persons commonly called Egyptians. They were also enjoined to punish and to fine those who received or let houses to such persons, and not to permit innkeepers to receive masterless men, rebels, or persons guilty of known crimes. They were empowered to impose a rate on every parish for a weekly portion not exceeding the sum of five shillings Scots, for the support of poor parishioners, who might otherwise starve before the trial came on. They were ordered at their quarter sessions to appoint constables to every parish, two or more according to its extent; but in the royal burghs the constables were to be appointed by the magistrates. Anyone named as a constable, who refused to accept the charge, was to be imprisoned and fined at the discretion of the justices. The duties of the constables were to arrest all vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and Egyptians, and to bring them before the nearest justice of peace. They were further directed to apprehend all idle persons, whom they knew to have no means of livelihood, or who would not betake themselves to any honest labour; and they might also arrest any suspected person, “who sleeps all day and walks all night,” and convey him to the nearest justice of the peace.²

¹ Mackintosh’s History of Civilisation in Scotland, Volume II., pages 238‒39, 266‒68.

² Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IV.

At the same date, an act directly touching the poor was passed, differing from previous ones, inasmuch as it proposed to educate poor children and train them to labour. It recommended that the children and orphans of poor and indigent parents might be taken into families and brought up and educated, and put to learn honest callings. The children to be thus treated were to be certified by a magistrate or the kirk-session in burghs, and by the kirk-session in county parishes, to be poor and without any means of living. When under the age of fourteen, they were, with the consent of their parents, if they had any, and if above that age, with their own consent, to be delivered to their masters with a testimonial, which was to be a warrant for receiving them, and for their masters partaking of the benefit of the act. To encourage people to receive such poor children, it was enacted, “that they should be bound and restricted to their masters, their heirs, and assignees, in all kinds of service which should be enjoined until they be past the age of thirty, and that they should be subject to their master’s discipline in all sorts of punishments, except torture and death.”¹ As this act was permissive it had little effect; but it was objectionable in principle, as it sanctioned a kind of modified slavery. Still, begging and vagrancy were great social evils in Scotland, and any means which promised to check them would appear to have been justifiable to the legislators of those times.

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IV.

In 1649, Parliament took into consideration the great number of poor and distressed persons throughout the kingdom, exposed to misery, because there was no general and regular mode of granting them relief, which was a reproach to their Christian profession. Therefore, it was enacted that each parish and presbytery should be bound to support their own native poor. It was enacted that a list of the poor in every parish should be made up twice a year, on the 1st of December and the 1st of June, at which times parties were requested to intimate to the parish what sum of money or quantity of victuals they were willing to give per month, as a charitable contribution for the support of the poor in every parish. But if the common good and this yearly contribution proved insufficient to support the poor, then the Act authorised a rate to be imposed, to make up the requisite amount. Touching the levying of the rate for the poor, the following occurs in the Act:――“The same shall be imposed on the heritors and others by the elders and deacons of every parish respectively, with as much equality as is possible; wherein they are to have special regard to lay the greater proportion on those masters that deal rigorously with their tenants, and thereby impoverish and put them to beggary, and to deal the more favourably with those masters who endeavour to maintain their tenants, and deal charitably with them: and in distributing of the alms, special regard is to be had to the pious, and a distinction to be made between such and the profane debauchee or drunken sort.” A section of the Act was directed against beggars and other vagabonds and idlers, and power was given to any one “to take and apprehend such idle and sturdy beggars and to employ them, or dispose of them to others to be employed, in working for their meat and clothes only.”¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VI., pages 389‒391.

In 1661, another Act was passed authorising the establishment of manufacturing companies; and with the view of reaching the children of the idle and vagabond class, it was directed that in each parish one or more persons should be appointed at the expense of the heritors for instructing poor children, vagabonds, and other idlers, in mixing wool, spinning worsted, and knitting stockings. The carrying out of this Act was entrusted to the heritors of each parish, but it does not appear to have been put into operation. The same year an Act was passed containing instructions to Justices of Peace, which was mainly a repetition and extension of the Act of 1617, touching the local organisation of police and the administration of the law in petty offences and crimes. The clause concerning the poor enacted that the Justices should, twice in the year, on the 1st of December and the 1st of June, make up a roll of the poor in every parish, to include only those who were unable to work or incapable of gaining their own living. They were then to appoint two or more overseers in every parish, who should inquire and ascertain the state and the number of the poor, the sick, the lame, and the impotent inhabitants, of poor orphans, and destitute children; to provide dwellings for them, and after ascertaining what the necessary expense would amount to weekly, to call for the collections of the parish, or other sums appointed for the support of the poor, which the overseers were directed to distribute among the poor people according to their needs.¹ The powers conferred by this Act on Justices of Peace seems never to have been exercised by them; but the Act clearly indicated what classes of persons were deemed entitled to parochial relief, as it excluded all who were in any way able to gain their own living. Thus the casual or able-bodied poor were not recognised as legally entitled to any relief, the law treating them as bound to earn their own living.

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VII., pages 255‒256, 306‒314; Dunlop’s _Law of Scotland Relating to the Poor_, page 16.

An Act touching beggars and vagabonds was passed in 1663, which, after referring to the failure of the many former acts on this matter, proceeds to declare it lawful “for all persons or companies, who have or may erect manufactories, to seize any vagabonds who shall be found begging, or masterless and out of service, and have nothing to maintain themselves; and then to employ them in their works as they shall think fit; this being done with the advice of the magistrates of the place where these persons are seized; and commands that the parishes where such vagabonds and idle persons were born, or in case the place of their nativity be unknown, then the parishes where they have any residence, haunt, or frequent resort, for the three years preceding their apprehension, which, being thus relieved of the burden of them, to make payment to the persons or companies who may happen to employ them――the sum of twopence per day for the first year, and one penny for the next three years; the one-half of this to be paid by the proprietors of the several parishes, and the other half by the possessors and the inhabitants dwelling upon the land of each heritor.” The Act also directed, that public intimation of a meeting should be made at the parish church, to frame a rate-roll for the support of the poor in their parish, who should be employed as above stated. “The poor thus employed shall continue in the service of their employers, under their direction and correction, not only during the time which the parishes pay for them, but also for seven years thereafter, receiving only their meat and clothing.”¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VII., pages 485‒486.

At the first glance, this Act appears to offer great facilities to commercial companies and corporations, as they were empowered to seize, and compel to work for their benefit, all beggars, vagabonds, and persons out of employment; and instead of paying for their labour, being themselves paid for employing such persons. This was carrying the encouragement of manufactures far enough; and as such companies were also exempted from all import and export duties, and protected from home competitors by a previous Act, and to have labour for nothing, what more could they desire? But work performed under these conditions could hardly have been successful, and it does not appear that any attempt was ever made to put the Act into operation.

In September, 1672, it was stated in Parliament that in bypast times many good laws had been passed for the suppression of beggars, vagabonds, and other idle persons, but still a numerous brood of such persons remained, and were daily increasing, living without law or rule, civil or sacred, and a great burden and a reproach to the kingdom. Therefore it was enacted that the magistrates of all the burghs in the kingdom should provide correction-houses for beggars, vagabonds, and other idle persons, before the month of June, 1673, under the penalty of five hundred merks quarterly until such houses were provided: and the sums raised from these penalties were to be applied for building or purchasing correction-houses. They were directed to be built with an open close, that the health of the poor people might not be hurt by keeping them always within doors. At the same time, it was again declared to be lawful for coal-masters, salt-masters, and manufacturers, “to seize upon any vagabonds and beggars, wherever they can find them, and put them to work in their coal-haughs and manufactories.” The execution of the Act was committed to the Privy Council, with full powers to enforce it. But in spite of all this, no correction-houses were erected in conformity with the provisions of the Act, which remained inoperative.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VIII., pages 89‒91. “There does not exist in Scotland a single correction-house applied to the purposes set forth in the act.”――Dunlop on the Poor-Law of Scotland, page 20.

In the three years from the beginning of 1692 to 1694, the Privy Council emitted several proclamations concerning the poor; and Parliament, in 1695, revived and ratified all the former acts for maintaining paupers, and for the repression and punishment of beggars, and ordered them to be put into vigorous execution. Owing to a succession of bad harvests during the later years of the century, the distress among the lower classes in Scotland was very great, the sufferings of the poor, and mendicancy were increased, and the Government had to endeavour to meet and to mitigate both. In 1698, Parliament passed another Act touching the poor, ratifying former Acts for repressing beggars and for maintaining paupers; reciting portions of the Act of 1617 referring to the employment and upbringing of poor children; quoting the Act of 1663 which empowered the masters of manufactories to seize idle vagabonds and set them to work; and also referring to the Act of 1672, and to the proclamations of the Council, ordering the erection of correction-houses――all of which were commanded to be put into vigorous execution in every point. The Privy Council was empowered to appoint supervisors and inspectors of the poor, to see that the laws were put into effect: and moreover, it was authorised to frame and issue regulations (as far as consistent with the standing laws) to ensure employment and maintenance of the poor, and freeing the kingdom of vagabonds and idle beggars.¹ For a long time the various burghs had their own regulations for the relief of the poor. In the beginning of the year 1639 the magistrates of Glasgow adopted a rule to the effect “that the sum of six hundred pounds be advanced, and for the better collection of it, they have ordered, that there should be a fifth part added to the rate of each parish, and the bailies to collect it with the stint-money.” About the end of April the same year, the magistrates “concluded that the poor be kept in their houses for a quarter to come, and ordered a contribution to be gathered to that effect, and intimation made through the town by sound of drum, to come on Wednesday next at the ringing of the bell, with certification to be poinded for the double of the sum if they failed.”²

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IX., page 463; Volume X., pages 177‒178.

² Burgh Records of Glasgow, page 400.

The preceding is but a brief account of what was attempted to be done to provide for the poor, and to relieve the nation of the mass of vagabondism and vagrancy. Throughout the history of the nation the difficulty of treating the matter effectively resulted from the fact that the country was oppressed with a great number of able-bodied idlers and wandering characters, well able, but determined not to work; being from circumstances and by evil habits engendered through centuries of idleness, socially and morally insensible of the duty of supporting themselves by honest energy and industry. Accordingly the attempt to introduce the labour test was distinctly and repeatedly made, and it has continued as a special feature of the Scotch Poor-Law system down to the present century.

The idle and vagrant population in the later years of the seventeenth century was enormous. Besides the general causes of the prevalence of vagrancy in Scotland, which had engaged the attention of Government from an early period, there were, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particular causes which tended greatly to increase the number of such persons. For a time, at least, the religious revolution of the sixteenth century augmented the pauper classes; and in Scotland this was followed by the Civil War in the first half of the seventeenth century, which again was succeeded by twenty-seven years of misgovernment and persecution. This latter period especially was attended with so much confiscation of property, so many ruinous fines, so many apprehensions, imprisonments, and banishments, so much interruption of regular industry by military occupation and execution, and so much waste of the means and goods of the most industrious classes of the people――all which could not fail to increase their poverty. Thus it was that, toward the close of the seventeenth century, in spite of all the legislative enactments, in spite of the influences of religion, in spite of all the restraints and the inducements to honest exertion, arising from a slowly advancing civilisation, Scotland still presented the gloomy spectacle of an enormous mass of vagrancy.

Fletcher estimated the idle and vagabond population of Scotland at 200,000, living without religious, moral, or domestic restraint, revelling in iniquity, and committing crime with impunity.¹ Though his statement is probably exaggerated, we know from other sources that the amount of vagrancy and wretchedness was very great in proportion to the population, and that several generations later, there was still a large body of poor in Scotland.

¹ Fletcher’s Second Discourse on Public Affairs, published in 1698.

The police arrangements of the kingdom were extremely imperfect; while in many places the local hereditary powers continued intact with all their capriciousness and irregularity. Even in the chief towns there was no regularly organised police force, their place being supplied by the town-sergeants, and in times of special danger or the alarm of impending war, a night-watch was appointed.

From the earliest times the Scots had a vivid and deep sense of the supernatural, and the ideas and dogmas associated with the Reformation had taken a firm hold on their minds. Their leading ideas of religion, indeed, had been modified, and a new external form of polity adopted by the people; yet many of the older notions and customs, interwoven with their former beliefs and habits, still survived here and there in more or less vigour. Their ideas of supernatural powers, of evil spirits, and of witchcraft, were little abated: while they were animated with an earnestness of conviction and a fervency of feeling, which stir the deepest cores of the human heart. In an age when beliefs are firmly held, and ideas and doctrines vividly realised in the mind, when belief in a definite creed is deemed essential to secure salvation and everlasting happiness, when people are fully satisfied and quite certain that they are right, there is an inevitable tendency to intolerance. This was the condition of the nation in the seventeenth century; to expect tolerant views of religion was vain.¹

¹ A good example of the religious ideas and feelings of the time may be seen in the Diary of Alexander Brodie, printed for the Spalding Club, 1863; it embraces the period from 1652 to 1685. Brodie was a Lord of Session, and had held a seat in parliament.

From the Reformation onwards, the laws against Roman Catholics were severe, while they were more or less persecuted throughout the seventeenth century, save during the short reign of James VII. About the middle of the century, the Quakers, against whom the Scots manifested much aversion, began to attract attention. During the government of Cromwell these dissenters began to multiply; they having been allowed at that time more freedom than was usual in Scotland. In 1656, they became bold, and held meetings on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh, which were well attended; about the same time their doctrines began to spread among the people. On the 30th of April, 1657, the presbytery of Lanark excommunicated eight persons for their adherence to Quakerism.

In 1665, three Quakers were imprisoned in Edinburgh. In the end of the year 1663, the town council of Aberdeen ordered that George Keith, William Neper, and William Stuart, three trafficking Quakers, should be conveyed out of the town by the officers, and warned that, if they returned, they would be given in charge to the hangman, and punished as the magistrates thought fit. The inhabitants of the town were forbidden to receive such persons into their houses or families, under the following penalties for each offence: If a burgess of guild, sixty pounds; if a tradesman, thirty pounds; and if one of the lower classes, ten pounds; and for the offence of attending any of their meetings, a penalty of five hundred merks was to be exacted.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council; Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume IV., page 207.

The magistrates of Aberdeen, in 1670, stated, that in spite of the Acts of Parliament, of the Privy Council, and the former acts of the town council, it was found that the Roman Catholics and the Quakers often held meetings in the city. They had expected that at least some respect would have been shown to the laws by the citizens; and to manifest their own earnestness in attempting to reclaim the obstinate and disobedient, they ratified the former acts against such persons, and ordered them to be proclaimed. But only a month after, the authorities again met to consider the fact that, notwithstanding all the acts emitted against the Quakers’ meetings, they still continued to be held. It was then resolved that all persons found at the next Quakers’ meeting should be apprehended and imprisoned, and detained till they became bound to desist from meeting; and lest the female Quakers might also meet, it was commanded that the doors of the houses where they usually met should be closed and the keys taken from them, that the city might be entirely free from their meetings. The hopes of the council were not realised. In November, 1671, they were informed that Thomas Milne, a shoemaker, and a professed Quaker, had buried his child on a Sunday afternoon, in a kail yard, on the east side of the Gallowgate, which was never before used as a burial-place. This was an intolerable encroachment upon the privileges of the burgh and the rights of the citizens, and after deliberation, the magistrates ordered that the body of the child should be disinterred, and carried to Footdee Chapel burial-ground, and there re-interred. At the same time, they resolved to deprive Milne of the rights of a citizen, and ordered his shop to be shut up, and himself to be removed from the burgh within one month. This, however, was not carried out, for the following year his case was again before the council, and he was accused of burying his child in a kail-yard on the east side of the Gallowgate. He was now fined twenty pounds for contempt, and sentenced to be imprisoned till he paid it. The Quakers had enclosed the piece of ground in question with the intention of using it as a burial-place for themselves, but the council ordered the walls to be destroyed, and the place to be used as it was before.¹ The council were, however, unsuccessful, many Quakers afterwards being interred in the same ground.

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume IV., pages 261, 265, 277, 280, 283, 289.

In November, 1674, the town council of Aberdeen received an order from the Government to liberate two Quakers, Thomas Dockey and William Gelley, who had petitioned for liberation. They had been long in prison, and were set free on condition that if they were again found attending meetings, they would be punished according to the laws. At a meeting in 1675, the council had under consideration the increase of Popery and Quakerism in the city, and since the town council was prohibited by Acts of Parliament and Council from letting houses to such persons under penalties, it was resolved that no Catholic or Quaker should hereafter be admitted a burgess or freeman of the city, and that they “are and shall be altogether debarred therefrom, excepting always the sons of burgesses of guild succeeding to their fathers in lands or in waters held by the town, who are and may be allowed the foresaid liberty in virtue of their fathers’ right.” In March, 1676, one of the bailies informed the council that he had discovered that John Forbes was printing a book for the Quakers, and that he had seized a part of it from the printer. The council approved of his action, and resolved to consult the bishop on the matter. The Synod of Aberdeen, in 1668, adopted a special form of excommunication against the Quakers: “Forasmuch as A. B. has fallen from the truth of God and the unity of the Church into pernicious errors and unchristian practices of that lately risen sect, commonly called Quakers, particularly in slighting and reviling the public ordinances of God, and being convicted thereof ... I do, in the name of the Great God, and by the authority of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Head of this Church, excommunicate the said A. B. from the communion of the Church, and reject him from the privileges and fellowship of the faithful, leaving him bound to the judgment of the Lord, until he gives sufficient evidence of his repentance; requiring you, and all Christian people, according to the commandment of Christ, to avoid the said person, and to have no company with him, that he may be ashamed, until he be reconciled to the Church, as you would not incur the displeasure of God and the servants of the Church, which upon such as transgress therein will be inflicted.” The Synod, in 1671, also commanded the ministers of the presbytery of Garioch to use their utmost endeavours to restrain Quakerism.¹

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume IV., pages 289, 292, 294; Selections from the Register of the Synod of Aberdeen, pages 288‒289, 295.

About the year 1671, Robert Barclay of Urie, the author of the well-known work, An Apology for the Quakers, joined this sect. In the dedication of his work to the King, he stated that the Quakers did not intermeddle with politics; and even when they were subjected to the most violent persecution, they boldly stood to their testimony for God, without creeping into holes or corners, or hiding themselves, as other dissenters had done. But the authorities continued to treat the Quakers with great severity. In the beginning of 1672, fifteen of them were imprisoned at once for holding a meeting at Montrose; and in March, 1673, eleven persons were imprisoned at Kelso for holding a meeting. Yea, in 1683, the Bishop of Aberdeen reported to the Privy Council that in this district the Quakers were so bold as to build meeting-houses for their worship, and schools for their children, instructing them “in their godless and heretical opinions;” and also providing funds for supporting these establishments, and in some places adding burial-grounds for their own special use. The council issued orders for an inquiry among the leading Quakers concerning the owners of the ground on which these unnecessary houses and schools had been built. The result of such an inquiry is obvious. Even after the Revolution, the Quakers in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, and in other towns, were very severely treated.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council.

Trials and executions of witches frequently occurred in this century, but it would be tedious to enter into particulars of the trials. Indeed, many of these are quite unfit for publication, such as the descriptions of the dealings of some of the witches with the devil, and the horrible stories which were adduced as evidence.

In 1622, Margaret Wallace, the wife of John Dinning, clothier in Glasgow, was tried before the Justiciary Court at Edinburgh, for various acts of witchcraft, and as a common practiser of witchery. It was stated, as an element against her, that she had been a confederate of Christian Graham, a notable witch, executed in the preceding year. It was affirmed that she had been a witch for eight years, and a common consulter with witches. It was alleged that she had conceived a deadly hatred of Cuthbert Greig, a cooper and a burgess of Glasgow, because he had spoken against Christian Graham. “She avowed that she should make him, within a few days thereafter, unable to work or to win a cake of bread for himself.” Accordingly he was soon after attacked and troubled with a strange, unnatural, and unknown disease, by which he was most cruelly tormented with continual sweating for two weeks, when he was reduced to extreme weakness. The man’s friends endeavoured to induce her to interpose for his recovery, but she for a long time refused. At last she came to his house, and “to manifest her skill for his help, took him by the wrist with the one hand, and laid the other hand upon his breast, and, without speaking a word, save only moving her lips, left him immediately. She returned next morning, took him by the hand and bade him arise, who at that time, and for fifteen days before, was unable to move his limbs without help; having urged him to rise, she took him by the hand, brought him out of his bed, and through the house into the outer room, where, by her sorcery and charming, he walked up and down the floor without any support.” After this, it was stated, that he soon recovered from his illness. She was also associated with Graham in curing children of sickness by unlawful means, “by devilry, sorcery, and witchcraft.” The onlaying and offtaking of sickness among children form a considerable part of the indictment against her, and it was alleged that in one instance, when she had inflicted sickness on a child, she allowed it to die. At her trial she was ably defended; but she was convicted and sentenced to be hanged and burned, and she was accordingly executed on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh.¹

¹ Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, Volume III., pages 508‒536. Margaret Wallace’s trial was a very long one; her counsel contested every point of the indictment, which consisted of ten charges. The jury was unanimous in finding her guilty of the general charge――“as a common consulter with witches these eight or nine years ... and as practising devilry, incantation, and witchcraft, especially forbidden by the laws of Almighty God, and the municipal laws of the realm.”

In 1623, Thomas Grieve was tried in Edinburgh for practising a sort of medical witchcraft. He was accused of having cured a number of persons of sickness and grievous diseases, by sorcery and witchcraft, by making signs and crosses, and the uttering of certain unknown words. “He took sickness off a woman in Fife, and put it upon a cow, which thereafter ran mad and died.” He also cured a woman “of a great and painful sickness, by drawing her nine times backwards and forwards by the leg.” He cured a child of a disease which was rapidly consuming it, “by straiking back the hair of his head, and wrapping him in an anointed cloth, and by that means putting him asleep, and thus through his devilry and witchcraft cured the child.” Another point of his indictment was, “for curing of William Cousine’s wife by sorcery and witchcraft, by causing her husband to heat the coulter of his plough, and to cool the same in water brought from the Holy Well of Hillside, and thereafter making certain conjurations, crosses, and signs upon the water, causing her to drink thereof for her health, and thus, by sorcery, cured her of her sickness.” One point of the indictment described a different mode of curing sickness. “For curing of James Mudie, with his wife and children, of the fever, and namely, in curing of his wife, he caused a great fire to be put on, and a hole to be made in the north wall of the house, and a live fowl to be put forth thereat, at three several times, and taken in at the house-door backwards) or contrary to the course of the sun), and thereafter taking the fowl and putting it under the sick woman’s arm-pit, and then carrying it to the fire, where it was held down and burnt alive; and in that devilish manner, practiced by him, cured her of her sickness.” For this he received twenty pounds from her husband. When curing diseased cattle, he put them thrice through a hesp of yarn, and sprinkled the fire with enchanted water. The hesp of yarn was supposed to possess peculiar healing virtues. Thomas Grieve put several of his patients three times through a hesp of yarn, and then threw it into the fire, where it burned blue, so that his patients were cured. The jury found him guilty of sorcery and witchcraft, and he was sentenced to be executed on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh.¹

¹ Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, Volume III., pages 555‒558. In the appendix to the third volume of Pitcairn’s _Criminal Trials_, the confessions of three women accused of witchcraft, in the years 1649 and 1662, are given at length; and they contain a great mass of the most repulsive details of this degrading superstition. Of all the records of witchcraft which I have examined, these are the most vulgar and absurd.

During the reign of Charles I. many witches were tried and executed in Scotland. When such crude notions prevailed, it was not surprising that pretence and imposture should come to the surface. So in 1633, John Balfour in Corshouse had assumed the profession of a discoverer of witches, “by observing the devil’s mark upon some part of their person, and thrusting of pins in the same.” The Privy Council record mentions that, “upon presumption of this knowledge, he goes through the country, abusing simple and ignorant people, for his own private gains.” It was therefore resolved to inquire into his pretensions to such knowledge, and by what means he acquired it.

In the records of the Church courts many notices of witchcraft, and of persons using charms for curing disease, occur throughout the century. The kirk-session of Aberdeen, in 1630, summoned James Hall to appear in the church before God and the congregation, to confess his fault, and to crave forgiveness for seeking relief of his fever by means of charming. In 1637, Isabel Malcolm appeared before the presbytery of Strathbogie, and when accused of charming, she confessed that she had practised charming for twenty years.¹ The case “was continued in the hope that she should be found yet more guilty.” These cases of witchcraft and charming referred to in the ecclesiastical records were often connected with attempts to cure some severe disease. Associated with this form of the superstition there was a kindred one called “neid-fire,” that is, fire produced by the friction of two pieces of wood; and this was resorted to for curing diseased cattle, and seems to have descended from prehistoric times.

¹ _Selections from the Records of the Kirk-Session of Aberdeen_, page 111; _Extracts from the Presbytery Book of Strathbogie_, page 15. Other notices of charming and sorcery occur in the records of this presbytery.

The General Assembly of 1649 had under consideration the sin of charming and witchcraft, and appointed a commission to deal with the matter. At this time there was a general attack made upon the witches and charmers throughout the kingdom; and in the summer many of these poor creatures were tried, condemned, and executed; while the Committee of Estates issued various commissions for the trial and execution of the witches. It also passed an Act “against consulters with devils and familiar spirits, and against witches and consulters with them,” and ratified all former acts on the subject. These trials were infectious, as when one witch was brought up, she often accused others, and under the influence of this mania strange declarations were uttered. In the month of March, 1650, Janet Couts, a confessed witch then imprisoned in Peebles, accused eleven women in Lanark of witchcraft. They were accordingly apprehended, and Cathie, the pricker, before witnesses, “did prick pins in every one of them, and in several of them without pain when the pin was put in, as the witnesses can testify;” the women were therefore detained in prison. Efforts were made to induce them to confess their guilt, and every exertion was made to collect evidence against them, but hardly anything could be found, though at length charges were framed against three of the women. One of them, however, was liberated upon the statement of Janet Couts herself. The other two were tried by a Commission, and witnesses on oath minutely examined, but nothing could be proved against them; and they were dismissed on giving caution to appear again if required. About this time a man of the name of John Kincaid acted as a pricker of the witches. A quotation from his evidence in a trial for witchcraft will give an idea of this feature of the proceedings. The parties accused, Patrick Watson and Manie Haliburton, were tried in 1649, and the pricker’s testimony was to this effect:――“I, John Kincaid, was desired to use my trial of them, as I have done to others; which, when I had done, I found the devil’s mark upon the back of the said Patrick Watson, a little under the point of his left shoulder; and upon the left side of the said Manie Haliburton’s neck, a little above the left shoulder; whereof they were not sensible, neither came forth thereof any blood, after I had tried the same as exactly as ever I did any others. This I testify to be of verity upon my credit and conscience.” At the same period, there was a pricker in the north of Scotland, called John Dick. And he, without any authority, pricked an old man, John Hay, a messenger in Tain, and then caused him to be sent to Edinburgh and imprisoned. But on a petition from Hay, accompanied with certificates of character, the Lords of Council ordered him to be liberated. In this way suspected women were sometimes subjected to great torture.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VI., pages 447, 464‒465, 492, 359; Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, Volume III., page 599.

Thus it was, that under the influence of a malignant and debasing belief, many innocent persons were insulted, annoyed, injured, and imprisoned, dragged to trial, and sometimes sentenced to death itself.

During Cromwell’s sway in Scotland, the prosecutions for witchcraft were much restrained; but after the Restoration, for two or three years, many were executed. The first session of the Restoration Parliament of 1661 granted many commissions for trying persons accused of witchcraft, to make up for the lenity of the past period. In illustration of the notions adduced as facts at these trials, the case of Margaret Bryson may be taken: she came to words with her husband about selling her cow, “went in a passion to the door of the house in the night-time, and there did imprecate that God or the devil might take her from her husband; and the devil immediately appeared to her, and threatened to take her body and soul, if she did not enter into his service.” Another woman covenanted with the devil, and received a sixpence from him; he said that God bade him give her that, and asked how the minister was, and other questions. A domestic servant named Scott had much intercourse with the devil, and by his aid she raised gales of wind for the destruction of shipping. She often met the devil at night.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VII., pages 123, 196, 233, 235, 247, 248, 268, 283, 336; _Register of the Privy Council_. In the records of the Council there are instances of witches being acquitted, but detained in prison at the request of magistrates and clergymen, in the hope that more conclusive evidence would yet be obtained against them.

During the period of the persecution, the zeal against witches flagged, and the executions for witchcraft decreased. After the Revolution there was a short outburst against them; but from this time onward, the belief began to languish, until it has gradually, and with difficulty in some parts of the country, died out. The last execution for witchcraft in Scotland occurred in 1722. The crude and most pernicious notions associated with witchcraft faded with the advance of education, the diffusion of definite intelligence, and more exacting modes of testing evidence; and lingered longest in the remote corners of the country, least affected by the stirring influences of modern civilisation.

The social morality of the nation in the seventeenth century cannot be characterised as elevated, though in some directions there was evidence of improvement. An account of the means adopted for the amelioration of the morals of the people after the Reformation was given in the second volume of this work, and an indication of its operation on the national character throughout the century under review is all that seems requisite. The discipline exercised by the Presbyterian Church was rather severe and rigid, though from this standpoint it has frequently been greatly exaggerated. It should be distinctly remembered that the presbyterian form of worship and polity was the choice of the people themselves, that they were fully represented in all the Church courts, in the sessions, the presbyteries, the synods, and the General Assemblies; they had a voice in the election of their ministers, and members of every congregation had votes in the election of the elders and deacons, who constituted the session. In fact, in the history of presbyterianism, we meet with evidence at every turn, that the clergy themselves were much under the influence of the people, who in various ways wielded a practical and effective control over their ministers. The Scots submitted to some severe rules and curious forms of punishment for social and moral offences, which emanated from the Church courts; but even in these matters resistance was frequent, and the tyranny of the presbyterians over one another was never of long duration.

All licentious conduct in the relations of the different sexes was severely handled. In the beginning of the century the kirk session of Aberdeen was exercising a strict surveillance over the citizens. John Mitchel was ordered to be imprisoned in the vault of the church, until he found caution that he would adhere to his wife, and maintain her. At the same time, John Davidson, a wright, who had been twice warned to appear and answer to the complaint of his wife, but had failed to appear, was for his contumacy ordered by the session to be apprehended, and put into the steeple until he obeyed their ordinance touching his adhering to his wife and his future behaviour to her. Christian Burnet was ordained to stand a certain time in the session-house, “and then to be led through the town in a cart, with a crown of paper on her head, and to be publicly banished at the market-cross, because she had seduced her sister to harlotry with James Sinclair, which was committed in Christian’s own house; and the reason why she was so punished to be openly proclaimed by the hangman.” It was quite common for the Session to interfere on the side of a wife against her husband, or on the side of a husband against his wife, when either of them had failed in performing their mutual duties.¹

¹ _Selections from the Records of the Kirk-Session of Aberdeen_, pages 23, 40‒1.

The kirk session of Aberdeen adopted the following heads of reformation in 1604, applicable to every family in the city. The whole family should keep the Sabbath, abstaining from all manual labour, attending all the sermons in the parish church, and all those who could read should learn to sing publicly. The heads of families should attend all the sermons on the week days, and should meet to the catechising as often as they were called by the church-officer. All families should humble themselves, privately or openly, twice every day, using divine worship and frequent prayers. There should be no swearing, no profane language, no unseemly behaviour in any family; and if a member of the family transgressed, he was “to be sharply punished with a palmer on the hand, or a penalty in money, and in case of persistence, it should be reported to the visitors. The masters of families should diligently report all persons guilty or suspected of charming, popery, harlotry, drinking, night-walking, or any other inordinate livers. No house proprietor in the town should let houses to, or lodge, persons known or suspected to be excommunicated, or any obstinate Catholic, Jesuit, priest, or other stranger, till they have first informed the magistrates and the minister, and received their permission.” Certain rules were also approved for the guidance of the visitors of the burgh. The ministers resolved that every Thursday afternoon they should wait on their people for examining and catechising them, and to continue this instead of the morning sermons until the people be better acquainted with the knowledge and the grounds of their salvation. The visitors were instructed to assemble the families under them for examination, and to inform the examiners of such faults in the families as required rebuke and admonition, before making any public complaint against them.¹

¹ _Selections from the Records of the Kirk-Session of Aberdeen_, pages 32‒34.

At stated times each presbytery visited the churches within its bounds, when a strict and searching examination was instituted into the life and the work of the pastors, as well as their flocks. An example or two will give an idea of these proceedings, and of the ecclesiastical economy of the time. In September, 1609, the presbytery of Aberdeen visited the church of Durris, and after prayer by the bishop, they proceeded with the matters of the visitation. The elders of the congregation were present, and Alexander Youngson, the minister, was removed, and then the elders gave their opinion of his ministry. The record says that he was well commended both by the eldership and the parishioners, “praising God for him.” The minister and the elders were commanded to put their acts into execution against all who contravened them, and amongst the rest against sleepers in the church during divine service.¹

¹ Ibid., pages 201‒202.

The presbytery of Strathbogie visited the church of Gartly on the 16th of July, 1651, and directly proceeded to business. John Chalmer, the minister of the parish, was called, and gave in a list of the elders and deacons of the parish, containing eighteen names, and they were all sworn “to declare boldly what they knew in their minister, his doctrine, his life, his conversation, and the exercise of his calling among them, as in the sight of God, before whom they were shortly to answer. The minister and the other elders being removed, John Innes of Codrain, one of the elders, was asked whether the minister behaved himself like a man of his calling in his private conversation: answered, he did lead an innocent, blameless life, and exemplary in these points, and that he did not frequent ale-houses or such places, but was diligent in the restraint of such unlawful exercise when occasion offered. Being asked whether he had the worship of God set up in his own family, and reading of the Bible morning and evening: answered, that he had indeed, and that he was not forgetful of such holy exercise to have his children also instructed in this. Being asked concerning his doctrine, how he taught, how often, and if on the week-days: answered, that he did teach them soundly and convincingly out of the Scriptures, and seasonably, bringing forth ordinarily abundance of food, conveniently, sensibly, and articulately delivering the same in such a manner as all might be able to understand it; and that sometimes, as his text led him, as he saw the necessity, he did express himself against the errors of the times, to wit, malignancy and sectarianism; in his sermons he constantly showed himself against both, and argued for obedience to the public resolutions of the times. He preached twice on Sunday, and lectured before sermon in summer, baptised after it, before the blessing, with such reverence and due respect as stirs up all to be attentive and to countenance the ordinance. Sometimes he lectured on the week-days, and sometimes catechised; always had the psalms sung in the time of divine service; and before the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, was more punctual and frequent in examining his people than ordinarily. Moreover, he declared that the minister was exact in discipline, and used no partiality in punishing delinquents, and was careful both in admonishing and in censuring when he saw it expedient; and he visited the sick of his parish, and urged family worship. In a word, he remembered nothing at present to have the minister admonished for.” Gordon of Colithy, the next elder called, concurred in everything that the last one had said, and added: “that their minister had a good popular gift of preaching, and was every day improving, for he applied himself to his work more than before, and engaged less in worldly business.” All the rest of the elders intimated their concurrence, and also said that he was active in the distribution of the poor’s money at set times of the year, according to their necessities, and was not behind anyone in giving them of his own when he saw it needful.

The minister was then recalled, “and gravely encouraged to the work, with serious entreaty to consider the weight of his calling, and to be earnest with God for assistance and direction in it.” The elders were then removed, and the minister reported favourably of their fidelity to the discipline of the Church. When recalled, they were encouraged to further diligence, and exhorted to hold family worship in their own homes.¹

¹ Extracts from the Presbytery Book of Strathbogie, pages 200‒202.

In August, 1651, at a similar visitation by the Presbytery of the Church of Rhynie, Mr. William Watson, the schoolmaster, being removed, “was called a tippler and idle speaker sometimes; but he was careful enough of the children, and had taken much pains in educating them. He was admonished for the time, and exhorted to amend; or otherwise to be removed.” In 1652, James Reid, having been nominated and elected by the session of Grange to be schoolmaster there, appeared before the Presbytery: “and having produced famous testimony of his literature and Christian conversation under the hands of presbytery of Old Aberdeen, his election was approved; and for his trial, prescribed to him the 3rd Ode, book 4, of Horace, to expound and explain, grammatically, logically, and rhetorically.”¹

¹ Extracts from the Presbytery Book of Strathbogie, pages 202, 209, 226.

Under the presbyterian polity, the members of the congregation were generally allowed to choose their own minister, and throughout the local records of the sessions, the presbyteries, and the synods, there is much interesting information on this matter. The people were not the mere slaves of the clergy; they had a pretty strong hold over the ministers. In 1642, James Horne, in the parish of Kinnor, was summoned before the presbytery, and accused of being drunk in the time of divine service. When called before the session for this, he had publicly railed against the minister and the elders. He told them, “all that he had said he would say it again, and worse also; and took up a straw and held it out before the session, and said that he would not give that straw for all they could say or do to him, and that there were none there that would cause him to make his repentance for anything that he had said.” The presbytery ordered him to be summoned again, and if he failed to appear, then to censure him without any more citation. In July, 1643, the case of George Mitchell was reported to a meeting of the presbytery at Gartly; his offence was, that he prevented his wife from satisfying the discipline of the session, for her visiting of wells and chapels, and for assaulting the minister and the elders――especially for upbraiding George Gordon of Colithie: “saying that he would not be corrected by him, and told him to go home and correct his cottars; and that he had as much money as himself; and that he should meet him whenever he pleased, with other abusive speeches, and went out of the session with threatening and menacing words.” The presbytery commanded him to pay a fine of twenty pounds, and to make his public repentance in the church next Sunday. But the same day, Mitchell gave in a complaint against George Gordon of Colithie for slandering him; he was told, however, that he must lodge a pledge to prove it, according to the order. He then answered, “that he saw no law for him here, and would crave no law; ye may direct what ye please, but he would not obey, and he should get a better advocate against the next day.” In 1644, James Middleton of Tullobeg was brought before the presbytery for speeches which he had uttered in the church, and for quarrelling with the minister. The witnesses against him deponed that, “when the minister chided him for his ignorance, he said that he cared not for him nor any minister in Scotland, and bade the minister come out to the churchyard and try himself if he pleased. Also, when the minister said that he should cause him to be put in the stocks, he replied, that neither he nor the best minister within seven miles durst do so much.” The presbytery ordered that he should make satisfaction in sackcloth, and pay ten pounds; but when this was intimated to him, he answered in the hearing of the minister, “that he should as soon go and hang himself as obey anything of the kind.” Thomas Dey in the parish of Glass, was summoned by the presbytery, in October, 1648, because he had failed to give satisfaction for his absence from church. Instead of giving satisfaction on the appointed day when he was called by the minister, he sat in his own seat opposite the pulpit and railed against the minister, “and with execrable oaths said that he would not acknowledge them nor their sentence.” The presbytery ordered him to be again summoned.¹

¹ Extracts from the Presbytery Book of Strathbogie, pages 34, 37‒38, 46, 93.

These are only a few instances out of many of a similar character, which tend to show that the clergy had not always submissive people to deal with; indeed, they often encountered extreme opposition in their efforts to reform the people to regular habits of life. Even during the heat of the Covenanting period, when the Presbyterians attained their greatest height of power, there was no lack of opposition to many of their proceedings.

In the last volume it was stated that the reformed clergy and the authorities continuously exerted themselves to secure the observance of Sunday, but rooted customs and habits are persistent, and it requires a long time to change or to direct them into other channels. It will be remembered that, prior to the Reformation, it was the universal custom to hold markets on Sunday, military musters of the people, and to engage in many other affairs not at all connected with religion. Accordingly, in spite of all the laws enacted after the Reformation, all the efforts of the local magistrates, and all the discipline of the Church, the complete observance of Sunday was not attained till well through the seventeenth century. In the Acts of Parliament, the proceedings of the Privy Council, the records of the burghs, and in the records of all the Church courts, from the sessions to the General Assemblies, there is a great mass of evidence of the vehemence of the struggle for the observance of Sunday; and without entering into long details, I will give illustrative and expository instances to complete this part of social history.

The magistrates of Aberdeen, in 1608, asserted that one of the manifold sins of the city was the breaking of Sunday by openly fishing salmon, though this had been already four times condemned, “the possessors of the waters preferring, as it appears, their own greed and avarice to the glory and the worship of God, the manifest contempt of His law, and the slander of the gospel.” Some promised to desist from this practice of fishing on Sunday if their neighbours would do so, but others refused to abandon it. The following year the session ordered visitors to be appointed at the four chief outlets of the city, to watch those who went out of the town on Sunday. The town’s piper was forbidden to play his pipes on Sunday, under the penalty of losing his office, and banishment from the city; while William Stewart, a fiddler, was admonished not to play on Sunday. The tailors, the shoemakers, and the bakers, were still in the habit of working in their booths every Sunday morning for three or four hours, “to the dishonour of God and the slander of the gospel,” and these parties were henceforth prohibited from working at their trade on Sunday, under the penalty of ten shillings. In 1647 the Town Council passed an act for enforcing a more strict observance of Sunday. Many of the citizens were in the habit of going to the Old Town and to other places, before and in the time of preaching, quite regardless of the laudable acts of the kirk-session which forbade such wandering upon Sunday; therefore, the council not only ratified these acts in all points, but also anew ordained that all should attend the parish church on Sunday in the forenoon and in the afternoon, and hear the Word of God. All who disobeyed the act were to be fined forty shillings, one-half of which was to be applied to maintain the fabric of the church, and the other half to be given to the poor. The council recommended the kirk-session to appoint captains for taking the names of all who were found going to the Old Town fields or walking about; and this was ordered to be intimated to the people from the pulpit.¹

¹ Selections from the Kirk-Session of Aberdeen, pages 64‒68; Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume IV., page 76.

During the Covenanting period, Parliament passed several acts for securing a more complete observance of Sunday. After the custom of holding markets on Sunday was abolished, it was found when they were held on Mondays and Saturdays that they encroached upon the observance of the Sabbath. A series of acts was therefore passed prohibiting markets on Saturdays and Mondays, and everything was done to obtain an entire cessation of all work and business on Sunday. But from the frequent re-enactment of the acts prohibiting work on Sunday, it may be inferred that they were often disregarded. According to the acts of Parliament, the labour most persistently engaged in on Sunday was the working of mills, salt-works, and salmon fishing, which were emphatically specified in all the acts prohibiting labour on Sunday.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume V., pages 300, 301, 302, 473; Volume VI., pages 127, 128, 215, 370.

It was announced from the pulpits of Aberdeen in 1651, that no inhabitant of the town should walk about the fields or go in companies to the Castle Hill on Sunday. The same year, Jane Barclay was sharply rebuked and admonished for going to the Old Town between the sermons, and several other persons were called before the session for travelling on Sunday.¹

¹ _Selections from the Records of the Kirk-Session of Aberdeen_, pages 115, 136, 137.

The subject of Sunday-breaking by salmon fishing in the Dee and the Don came before the synod of Aberdeen in 1657, and the discipline of the Church was ordered to be enforced against all who engaged in such profanation, and the assistance of the magistrates was asked to curb the offenders. In 1663, the synod ordered that the Lord’s Day should be strictly kept, and notice taken of those who travelled on Sunday, who were to be censured according to the degree of their offence. As late as 1680, it was stated that the Lord’s Day was everywhere profaned by drinking, travelling to markets, engaging of servants, and making bargains and contracts.¹

¹ Selections from the Register of the Synod of Aberdeen, pages 234, 271, 272, 285, 332. There is some curious information on the attempts to secure the observance of Sunday in Dr. Davidson’s _History of Inverurie and the Earldom of the Garioch_. This work contains much valuable matter of a varied character, and to those with a taste for local lore it is exceedingly interesting.

But, by the combined application of the means above indicated, and chiefly by the constant exertion of the Church, ultimately an observance of the Sabbath was attained in Scotland, unmatched in any other nation.

Besides the devotion of Sunday to religious exercises, there were daily morning and evening prayers in the churches of the burghs, and preaching on two or three days of the week, and this was continued until near the end of the seventeenth century. In the records of the burghs, and of the Church courts, there are many acts, rules, and notices touching the week-day meeting and preaching. In Edinburgh, in 1650, there was a lecture every afternoon, and the ministers of the city performing the duty by turns. The town council of Aberdeen, in 1694, appointed the week-day sermons to be held in the new church; but the next year, the council found that the morning and evening prayers were not frequented as in former times, and therefore they were to be discontinued.¹ As the energy of the people became more directed to trade and industry, the preaching and the religious exercises in the churches on week-days gradually fell into disuse, though in some towns the practice has lingered on to the present time.

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume IV., pages 315, 317.

But the religious feeling of the age had yet another channel in which it occasionally sought emphatic expression, under the form of the national fast or humiliation. The General Assembly appointed the national fasts, and gave the reasons why they should be held. One was appointed in 1615, to begin on the last Sunday of March, and to be continued to the first Sunday of April; and to enhance the solemnity of the fast, it was enjoined that there should be public preaching in all the burghs of the kingdom every day in the week, preceding the two Sundays. “For many weighty causes moving the Church thereto, and among the rest, by reason of the great number of Jesuits and seminary priests come into this Island, and spread through all the corners thereof, pressing by all possible means to subvert the true religion established in this Isle.” In 1644, a fast was proclaimed throughout the kingdom, chiefly on account of backsliding from the Covenant, the prevalence of vice, and to entreat the favour of God for the parliamentary armies; and also to pray that the King’s heart might be filled with the spirit of reformation. A public fast was appointed to be held on the last Sunday of August, 1649, for the following reasons:――“The sins of the land, especially the sin of witchcraft; and the interruption of the Lord’s work in England and in Ireland; to entreat the Lord to deliver our King from the hands of malignants, and incline his heart to give satisfaction in those things that concern religion; to pray for steadfastness to this land, and especially to those in charge of public affairs; to entreat the Lord to carry on his work in England and in Ireland against all opposers of the same; and lastly, for a blessing upon the harvest.”¹ In 1696, the Assembly appointed a national fast to be observed on the 21st of January, to deprecate the wrath of God, “which is very visible against the land, in the judgments of great sickness and mortality in most parts of the kingdom, as also of growing dearth and famine threatened, with the imminent hazard of an invasion from cruel enemies abroad――all the just deservings and effects of our continuing and abounding sins, and of our great security and impenitence under them.”²

¹ Acts of the General Assembly; _Selections from the Records of the Kirk-Session of Aberdeen_, page 82.

² Acts of the General Assembly.

Besides the national fasts appointed by the Assembly, the local authorities occasionally ordered fasts to be observed within the limits of their jurisdiction. Thus the magistrates of Aberdeen commanded fasts to be observed in the city in January, 1658, and in 1669; and on the latter occasion the council, “considering the prevalence of all sorts of sins within this burgh, such as drunkenness, uncleanness, cursing, and the like, to the effect that the just judgments of God may be averted, finds it expedient to indict a fast, to be kept by the inhabitants of this burgh, and recommends to the magistrates to intimate this to the ministers.” The Synod of Aberdeen ordered a fast to be observed on the 28th of November, 1651, for the sins of the land.¹

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume IV., pages 170, 177, 253.

Drunkenness seems to have been rather prevalent. The light wines of France were the common drink among the gentry, and ale among the people, but stronger spirits were often used. The kirk-sessions frequently took cognisance of cases of drunkenness. In the beginning of the year 1604, the Kirk-Session of Aberdeen had before them Robert Cuthberd, a shoemaker, and Thomas Hay, a tinkler, and they were seriously admonished to abstain from their excessive drinking and night-walking; and that they should never entice Alexander Smith, shoemaker, to drink, or draw him out for that purpose in the night, under the penalty of being punished as night-walkers and drunkards. The Session in 1606 cited Alexander Mortimer and John Leslie for having abused themselves by inordinate drinking of aquavitæ (whisky), and bringing slander on this congregation by their drunkenness. In 1611, the Privy Council renewed the former acts against night-walkers in Edinburgh, and idle and debauched persons who went about the streets at night, indulging their evil passions and frequently committing serious crimes. Direct reference was made to several persons of this character, some of them strangers, who wallowed in all kinds of excesses, riot and drunkenness, committing enormities upon peaceable citizens, and cruelly attacking the officers appointed to watch the city, and unmercifully slaying them. The Council ordered that in future no one should remain on the streets after ten at night. In 1619, Robert Hunter and James Hay were admonished by the Kirk-Session of Aberdeen, to behave themselves better, and to desist from their drinking. The town council of Aberdeen, in 1625, passed an act, “that no person should at any public or private meeting presume to compel his neighbour to drink more wine or beer than what he pleased, under the penalty of forty pounds.”¹

¹ _Selections from the Records of the Kirk-Session of Aberdeen_, pages 29, 50, 78; Register of the Privy Council; Burgh Records of Aberdeen.

It appears from the financial accounts of the burghs that drink was pretty freely used on all public occasions; and in the accounts for work done to the corporations, the sums given as drink-money are frequently stated. For half-a-day’s work at the bridge of Tweed, a workman was paid six shillings and sixpence Scots, and one shilling and eightpence for drink. In the burgh of Peebles, Stephen Grieve and his son were employed a day and a half erecting the gallows on which the witches were to be hung, and they received forty shillings, and eightpence for drink.¹

¹ Burgh Records of Peebles, pages 50, 423, 224.

After the Restoration, among a portion of the upper classes, drunkenness greatly increased. Excessive drinking was indulged in without shame, and some men even gloried in it. Sometimes a company of these gentlemen fell a carousing, and encouraged each other by giving healths, and when they had exhausted their resources in drinking healths, “not knowing whose to give next, one of them gives the devil’s health, and the rest pledges him.”¹

¹ Robert Law’s Memorials, page 43.

Then, as now, habits of drinking and swearing were often associated, and in many of the Acts of Parliament both offences were classed together, and received the same kind of punishment. Besides the Acts of Council, Parliament passed a series of acts from 1617 to 1696, for the punishment of ♦drunkards; and in 1644, an act was passed which imposed penalties upon the keepers of inns and ale-houses, if they sold drink after ten at night or on Sunday. The act of 1617 asserted that the detestable vice of drunkenness was daily increasing. It enacted that public-houses should be closed at ten at night, and proposed a scale of punishments for drunkards, consisting of fines, the stocks, and imprisonment. For the execution of the act, special power was given to the sheriffs, stewards, magistrates of burghs, and to the kirk-session of every parish; and they were directed to meet and try drunkards, and do everything requisite for the execution of the law. Innkeepers who induced parties to become drunk were to be punished. The part of the act of 1617 touching the punishment of offenders is to this effect:――“All persons lawfully convicted of drunkenness, or of haunting taverns or ale-houses after ten at night, or at any time of the day, except when travelling or for ordinary refreshments, shall for the first fault pay three pounds, and in case of inability to pay, to be put in the stocks or into the jail for six hours; for the second offence to pay five pounds, or be kept in the stocks or the jail for twelve hours; for the third fault ten pounds, or twenty-four hours in the stocks or the jail; and afterwards if they transgress, to be imprisoned till they find caution for their good behaviour in time coming.” In an act passed in 1645, “against swearing, drinking, and mocking of piety,” the scale of punishments was stated thus: “Whosoever shall swear or blaspheme, and whosoever shall drink excessively, especially under the name of healths ... who shall be found guilty of all or any one or other of the foresaid vices, by any kirk judicatories to which they are subject, having been once already censured by these courts for the same vice, shall after the second conviction be censurable in the following manner: Each nobleman shall pay twenty pounds for the second conviction, and for each one thereafter; each baron twenty merks; each gentleman, proprietor, and burgess, ten merks; each yeoman forty shillings, each servant twenty shillings, and each minister the fifth part of his year’s stipend. And that wives who offend against this act shall be punished according to the rank of their husbands, and the husbands shall be liable for the payment of their wives’ fines.” The money raised by these fines was to be applied to pious uses in the parishes where the offenders resided. The act against swearing and excessive drinking of 1661 repeats the scale of fines of the act of 1645, with this addition, “and if any of the parties offending be unable to pay the foresaid penalties, then to be exemplarily punished in their bodies according to the degree of their faults.”¹

♦ “drunkarks” replaced with “drunkards”

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IV.; Volume VI., page 128; Volume VII., pages 195, 262.

There was a constant struggle against immorality and drunkenness; and in 1696, parliament passed an act ratifying and renewing “all former laws and acts of parliament made against drunkenness, Sabbath-breaking, swearing, fornication, uncleanness, mocking and reproaching religion and the exercise thereof, and generally all laws made against profaneness, and ordained the same to be put in full and vigorous execution. And further, considering how much profanity and immorality do abound over all the nation, to the dishonour of God, the reproach of religion, and the discredit and weakening of the Government, notwithstanding the many good laws that have been made against profaneness,” therefore it was anew enacted that all those in authority in every parish in the ♦kingdom should be obliged and required to put these acts against profanity and immorality into full and due execution. This act declared “that no pretence of different persuasion in matters of religion shall exempt the offender from being censured and punished for such immoralities as by the laws of this kingdom are declared to be punishable by fining.” The Estates also recommended to the Lords of the Privy Council to take such further steps as seemed requisite “for restraining and punishing of all sorts of profanity and wickedness.”¹

♦ “kingdon” replaced with “kingdom”

¹ Ibid., Volume X. pages 65‒66.

Those at the head of the Government may not always have shown a good example, but the magistrates of the burghs and the kirk-sessions struggled manfully against drunkenness and immorality. In December, 1648, the town council of Aberdeen had before them a request from the ministers, “desiring them to take notice of all the country people found in the town, either drunk, swearing, or otherwise debauching themselves, and notify their names to the ministers, who were then to send such names to their own ministers, so that these offenders may be punished as their own session thinks fit.” The council enacted “that all persons, of whatever rank, found drunk, swearing, or debauching themselves, should be ♦apprehended, imprisoned, and punished, at the discretion of the magistrates.” In 1655, the council enacted that no mariners, masons, stablers, slaters, millers, or any unfree person, should presume to brew, vent, or sell ale, strong waters, or aquavitæ, without a special licence from the council. The synod of Aberdeen, in 1667, commanded all the ministers in the diocese to be careful to execute the censures of the Church on drunkards, swearers, and Sabbath-breakers. But in 1680, the synod had to announce that, notwithstanding the glorious gospel vouchsafed to the people, with plenty of temporal benefits, “iniquity does exceedingly abound in this diocese, and part of the Church and kingdom, and especially the sins of drunkenness, whoredom, and horrid cursing and swearing.”¹ The habit of swearing and using imprecations had descended from pre-Reformation times, and was extremely difficult to eradicate.

♦ “appreheneed” replaced with “apprehended”

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume IV., pages 93, 156; Selections from the Register of the Synod of Aberdeen, pages 284, 332.

Under the authority of the acts of parliament, the town councils throughout the kingdom framed rules from time to time for restraining this heinous offence. In 1642, the town council of Aberdeen stated that the sin of swearing was increasing; and for curbing and punishing all offenders of this character, they resolved “to ratify and approve of all the acts passed by their predecessors in bygone times, and particularly an act of the 7th of December, 1605, and anew ordained that every master and mistress of a family in the burgh, as often as any of them happens to be found banning and swearing any sort of oath, shall pay eighteenpence to the poor, and each servant fourpence, which shall be presently exacted of them by the master of the family, and a box to be kept in every family for this purpose. For restraining of children from swearing, there should be palmers in every family wherewith to punish the children on their hands as often as they were found swearing; and those of the poorer classes thus offending, as beggars, scolds, and vagabonds, having no means to pay the penalties, to be put in the stocks, and to stand there for three hours or longer, according to the degree of their fault.” As swearing was most common on the streets, at the burn-head, the flesh, the fish, the malt, and the meal markets, and at the cross, where coals, fruit, and such things were sold, the magistrates appointed captors and searchers to note all persons found swearing at any of the above places. The names of the captors and their several districts were minutely stated, and they were empowered “to execute the penalties above specified; and if anyone resisted and refused to give obedience, then the captors were to note down their names and hand them to the magistrates, that they may take steps for punishing and censuring the offenders according to the tenor of this act.” These captors were also to visit families once a month, to see if the act was obeyed and if any reformation was effected, and to report those who had failed to obey to the kirk-session, to be treated as they should think fit. Moreover, the captors had to report if parents were careful in training their children, or if they neglected them; and if there were idle and wicked rogues living without all order and persisting in their evil ways, these were to be brought to the correction-house, and there under the eyes of the captors themselves, properly punished.¹ In 1678, the council commanded that all persons found swearing on the streets, or in any other public place, should be sharply punished.

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume III., pages 279‒281.

The relation of the different sexes was still somewhat lax; and complaints were occasionally made of men and women living together as married persons, though not lawfully married. Sometimes parties who could not obtain marriage by the law and constitution of Scotland, went to neighbouring countries and got themselves married; but in 1641, Parliament prohibited this under severe penalties. An act was passed in 1661 against clandestine and unlawful marriages, which also imposed severe fines and penalties on the parties who entered into such unions, and enacted “that the celebrators of such marriages shall be banished from the kingdom, never to return thereto, under the pain of death.” In 1695, an act was passed against clandestine and irregular marriages, and another in 1698. The latter act enjoined for the better suppression of these marriages, “that over and above the penalties contained in the acts of 1661 and 1695 against clandestine and irregular marriages, the celebrator of them shall be liable to be summarily seized and imprisoned by any ordinary magistrate or justice of the peace, and further punished by the Lords of his Majesty’s Privy Council, not only by perpetual banishment, but also by such pecuniary or corporal pains as the council shall think fit to inflict.”¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume V., page 388; Volume VII., page 231; Volume X., page 149.

The church courts had frequently to deal with irregular and scandalous marriages. All incestuous connections were severely treated both by the civil law and by the Church. In 1668, the synod of Aberdeen passed an act for restraining scandals at marriages. “It being represented to the bishop and the synod that there had been frequently disorderly marriages contrary to the authorised custom of the Church, to the great offence of God and scandal of Christian people; therefore, for curbing and restraining these enormities, the bishop and synod have ordained, that ministers take diligent notice in their respective parishes of such scandalous persons, and that whoever shall be convicted of having violently carried away unmarried women, shall be censured to remove the scandal in the same manner as it is enjoined for adulterers, even should he afterwards extort the woman’s consent to marry him; and if it be found that the woman carried away has been privy to the same, and in collusion with the man, without the knowledge of her parents, then the woman also should be censured. And further, it is enacted that all those found guilty of accession to such scandalous violence in covering and assisting any man in carrying away a woman, shall also be enjoined to remove the scandal of his conduct in sackcloth, ... and the persons so censured, in case of disobedience, to be excommunicated.” It was also ordered that persons cohabiting together and pretending that they were married by popish priests, should be proceeded against until they made public acknowledgement of their sin of disorderly marriage, in the face of the congregation. “Also, all persons cohabiting together as married, who allege that they have privately plighted their faith to one another; but if it be found that there was no intimation of their purpose to the congregation, nor the marriage solemnised nor blessed by any minister, then all that have so cohabited shall be censured as fornicators, yea, and until they separate from each other, and having removed the scandal, be lawfully married according to the order of the Church. In like manner, when two persons come before a minister in private or in public, declaring that they take each other as husband and wife, and do forthwith cohabit together, and will not wait the public intimation of their purpose to the congregation, or its solemnisation by the minister, according to the order of the Church, it is ordained that those guilty of this, for the time that is bygone, shall make their public appearance in their own parish church, and there, in the presence of the minister and of the congregation, confess and crave God’s forgiveness of their sin, and thereupon receive the orderly blessing to their marriage from the minister.”¹

¹ Selections from the Register of the ♦Synod of Aberdeen, pages 290‒292. Some of the particulars of irregular marriage indicated in the above quotation are exactly similar to those which the reformed clergy had to deal with after the Reformation in the sixteenth century, which I noticed in the second volume, pages 261‒264.

♦ “Sgnod” replaced with “Synod”

Some of the old customs associated with marriages and burials still survived. The custom of casting knots at marriages was occasionally practised, but then punishable as a form of enchantment. In 1666, James Smith was cited by the minister of Cluny, before the Synod of Aberdeen, “for using enchantment by casting of the knots at marriages, for unlawful ends, and the Synod ordained that he should give evidence of his repentance in sackcloth.”¹ It had been long customary among the people when a young couple were married, to receive a mixed company and hold a sort of ball, while each person contributed something towards the expense, a part of which was usually left over for the benefit of the newly-wedded pair. This custom soon drew the attention of the reformed clergy, and the kirk-sessions endeavoured to suppress these promiscuous merry-makings, called “penny bridals;” and in 1581, Parliament passed an act limiting the expense of marriages and banquets, and similar acts were passed in 1621 and 1681. The General Assembly passed an act against penny bridals, which enjoined the presbyteries to use severe means to restrict them. In the Burgh Records of Aberdeen, references to the act on superfluous banqueting at baptisms and other meetings frequently occur, and in 1633, the Town Council made the following additions to this act: “That none be found dancing through the town at marriage feasts; nor any person invited to night-wakes hereafter, but a few of the nearest neighbours of the deceased, ... and ordains this to be proclaimed from the pulpits of both the churches of the burgh.” They repeated this act, “in all points,” in 1636, again in 1661, and once more in 1671, with this addition, “that no inhabitant of the burgh, of whatever rank, shall invite more persons to the baptism of their children than four men and four women,” under the penalty of a fine for each person above that number. The Act of Parliament of 1681, for restraining the expense of marriages, baptisms, and burials, enacted, “that at marriages, besides the married persons, their parents, children, brothers, and sisters, and the family wherein they live, there shall not be present at any marriage above four friends on either side, with their ordinary domestic servants. And that neither bridegroom nor bride, nor their parents or relations, shall make above two changes of raiment at that time or upon that occasion,” under the penalty of forfeiting the fourth part of their annual income or a fourth part of their goods. The number of the company at baptisms was limited the same as at marriages. The number of persons permitted to attend the funerals of the different ranks are also stated in the act.¹

¹ Selections from the Register of the Synod of Aberdeen, page 280.

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume III., pages 54, 105; Volume IV., pages 213, 274; also, Burgh Records of Glasgow; and Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VIII., page 350.

It seems that at penny marriages fights and other excesses sometimes occurred, and that intoxicating spirits were freely indulged in. In some parts of the country the lairds bound their tenants to hold all their marriages at an alehouse.¹

¹ Dr. Davidson says, “Alehouses were largely established by the lairds in order to the sell and consumption of the bear crops in malt, and their tenants were required to make all their weddings penny bridals, and held at an alehouse; where the innkeeper supplied the eatables on the occasion gratis, finding his profit in the ale consumed during the festivities, which were prolonged for days.”――_Inverurie, and the Earldom of the Garioch_, pages 319, 340.

In 1643 the Town Council of Aberdeen resolved to correct the disorders connected with the dead, as ringing of bells and other superstitious rites at funerals. They henceforth “discharged the tolling of bells at funerals, and laying of the bier and mortcloth on the graves of deceased persons; and prohibited all the inhabitants from inviting the master doctor of the grammar school to sing or read at likewakes, under a penalty of forty pounds.”¹

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume IV., page 6.

The Government deemed it a duty to regulate the dress of the people, and to prescribe the exact habit which each rank should wear. In 1621 Parliament enacted that no one should wear gold or silver lacing on their clothes, nor any velvet, satin, or silks, save the nobles. The King’s councillors, lords of Parliament, lords of session, and barons with a yearly rent of six thousand merks of silver, were allowed to appear in silk and satin apparel; while the provosts and magistrates of the principal burghs, and the rectors of the universities, were to be permitted to wear fine dresses under the condition “that they should have no embroidering or lace or passements upon them, save only a plain welting lace of silk upon the seams and borders of their garments, with belts and hatbands embroidered with silk; and that their wives, their eldest sons, their unmarried daughters, and the children of all noblemen, should wear their dress in the aforesaid manner only, under a penalty of a thousand pounds.” All other persons were prohibited from having pearling or ribboning upon their ruffles, shirts, napkins, and socks; if the people still resolved to have pearling upon their clothes, it should be produced in Scotland. “Further, that no one should wear upon their heads buskings or feathers; that no other persons except those privileged should wear any pearls or precious stones, under the penalty of a thousand merks. It was also stated that no persons should wear upon their bodies tiffanies, under the penalty of a hundred pounds; that no servants should wear any clothing save that made of cloth, fustians, canvas, or stuffs produced in the kingdom; they should have no silk upon their clothes except the buttons and button-holes, and silk garters without pearling or roses, under the penalty of a hundred merks. But it was declared to be lawful for them to wear their masters’ old clothes. It was also declared that heralds, trumpeters, and minstrels, were exempted from the act. It was further enacted that no one save the privileged classes should wear damask napery brought from abroad, under a penalty of a hundred pounds. It was likewise statuted that no more mourning weeds should be made at the death of an Earl or a Countess than twenty-four at the utmost, and for a lord of Parliament or his wife not more than sixteen, and for all other privileged persons, twelve; and that none but these should have any honours carried, and that no mourning weeds should be given to the heralds, trumpeters, or sachs, except by the Earls, the lords of parliament and their wives, and that the number of sachs should be exactly according to the mourning weeds, under the penalty of a thousand pounds. It was enacted that the fashion of clothes then in use should not be changed by man nor woman, under the penalty of forfeiting the clothes and a hundred pounds to be paid by the wearers thereof, and as much by the makers of the clothes. And also that no castor hats should be used or worn but by the privileged classes, under the penalty of a hundred pounds. That the husbandmen and the labourers of the land should wear no clothing but grey, white, blue, and serge black cloth, made in Scotland, and that their wives and their children should wear the same, under the penalty of forty pounds. Finally, it was enjoined that after the publication of this act, no clothes should be made but according to the manner and the style before expressed, and that none of the former discharged clothing be worn by anyone after Martinmas, 1623, under the respective penalties above stated.”¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IV.

This act, with some alterations, was re-enacted in 1672, and again in the following year, with the removal of some of the former restrictions touching the wearing of white lace or pearling made of thread, and some other explanations. But as late as 1696, a proposal was mooted in Parliament for a constant fashion of clothes for men, and another for women. Two years after, Parliament had under consideration an act for restraining the expense of apparel; and a debate ensued on the point whether the prohibition of gold and silver on clothes should be extended to house furniture, and it was carried that it should. It was then put to a division, whether gold and silver lace manufactured in Scotland should be allowed on clothes, and the majority voted against it; and thereupon, an act was passed prohibiting the wearing of gold and silver lace, and also the importation of the same, under the penalties of burning of the articles on which it was found, and five hundred merks of a fine imposed upon the person wearing it.¹

¹ Ibid., Volume VIII., pages 71‒72, 212; Volume X., Appendix, page 6, pages 142, 144, 150.

The dress of the common people was made of a plain cloth, called hodden gray, spun at home and manufactured from the undyed wool. In summer the women usually went barefooted, and the children generally ran about without shoes or stockings in summer.

In the preceding periods, the defective sanitary condition of the towns was noticed, and with it the consequent and frequent recurrence of pestilence. One of the first requisites of a town where a large population is located within a limited space, is a constant and sufficient supply of clean water; but in the seventeenth century, even the capital of Scotland had not a constant supply of pure water. It is recorded in 1654, that owing to the drought of the summer the wells ran dry, and the inhabitants of Edinburgh could not get enough of water for cooking their food, and some of them had to go a mile and more before they could obtain clean water. In Glasgow, notices of the public wells occur in the records of the city from the latter half of the sixteenth century onward to the present time. The magistrates, in 1610, authorised a well to be built upon the side of the Highgate, “so that it be built five quarter height above the ground, with asler work for the safety of the bairns and other persons ... and the well to be common to all men of this town.” In 1630, they ordered that the new well in the Trongate should be slated in the best form, and two pumps attached to it, and that it should be cleaned as soon as possible; and in 1638, some improvements were made on the common wells.¹

¹ Chambers’ Domestic Annals of Scotland, Volume II., page 226; Burgh Records of Glasgow, pages 312, 390. In 1575, the provost and council of Glasgow ordered that “the new common wells in the Gallowgate shall be opened daily in the morning and locked at even, and appointed a man to attend thereto, and to keep the well and the key thereof, and to get forty shillings of fee for his trouble during the year.”――_Burgh Records of Glasgow_, page 39.

In 1632, the town council of Aberdeen had under their consideration the inconvenience which the people suffered for want of clean and pure water. As the most of the water which they were then using, “coming only from the loch, is filthy, defiled, and corrupted, not only by the gutters daily running in the burn, but also by listers, and the washing of clothes, and pollution of the water in several parts, with other sorts of uncleanness,” they therefore resolved that fountains should be erected as soon as possible to supply the town with pure water. Some of the crafts objected to the payment of their share of the requisite tax; but upon the petition of the magistrates, the Privy Council empowered the town council to impose a tax to defray the expense of the new fountains, and to enforce its payment. Yet these efforts to supply the citizens with pure water were only partly successful. In 1683, the deficiency of clean water was again before the magistrates, and it was stated that the bringing in of water and of erecting fountains had often been attempted, but had not as yet been effectively accomplished. The dean of guild was requested to inquire among the inhabitants what they would be willing to contribute to forward this work, and to report; but more than twenty years elapsed ere the city was supplied with pure water. The council granted authority to purchase lead for the pipes and the cisterns required for bringing in the water from Carden well; and James Mackie and John Burnet were engaged to build the first fount at the spring of Carden’s well, for the sum of ten pounds sterling. The treasurer was allowed to borrow money for bringing in this water; and it seems that the work was completed in 1708, as the council then resolved, on account of the many obstacles which Joseph Foster, plumber, had encountered in bringing in the water, to give him a gratuity of two hundred pounds Scots, with thirty-six shillings of drink money to his servants.¹

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume III., pages 50, 51, 55, 58, 303, 333‒334; Volume IV.

As regards cleanness, the state of the towns was most wretched. In March, 1619, the Privy Council communicated with the magistrates of Edinburgh touching the cleaning of the streets in the following terms:――“The city is now become so filthy and unclean, the streets, the vennels, the wynds, and the closes thereof, so overlaid and covered with middings, and with the filth of man and of beast, as that the noble councillors, servants, and others of His Majesty’s subjects, who are lodged in the burgh, cannot have clean or clear passage and entry to their lodgings; and because of this, their lodgings have become so loathsome to them, as they are resolved rather to make choice of lodgings in the Canongate and in Leith, or some other parts about the town, than to abide the sight of this shameful uncleanness, which is so universal and in such abundance throughout all parts of this burgh, as in the heat of summer it corrupts the air and gives great occasion to sickness. And further, this shameful and beastly filthiness is most detestable and odious in the sight of strangers, who, beholding the same, are constrained, with reason, to give out many disgraceful speeches against this burgh, calling it a puddle of filth and uncleanness, the like of which is not to be seen in any part of the world.” The plan proposed by the council was, that each householder should keep the street clean opposite his own door, as was done in other well-governed cities.¹ There was no idea of a cleaning department of police, but there was a sort of arrangement adopted for cleaning the streets of Edinburgh at stated times, though it long remained in a very defective condition. During the reign of Cromwell, more effective measures were taken for cleaning the streets, and for preventing foul water from being thrown out at the windows.

¹ Register of the Privy Council.

In 1686, Parliament passed an act for cleaning the streets of Edinburgh, in which it was stated that there had been many complaints of the nastiness of the streets, wynds, closes, and other places of the city. And the magistrates were commanded to adopt effectual means for freeing the capital of such nastiness; and at the same time to purge it of “those numerous beggars who resort in and about the burgh, and that under the penalty of a thousand pounds Scots yearly, to be paid by the magistrates to the Lords of Session, to be applied by them for the end and use aforesaid.” The magistrates were to be authorised to impose a tax for cleaning the streets of the city.¹

¹ Chambers’ Domestic Annals of Scotland, Volume II., page 212; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VIII., page 595.

The arrangements for cleaning the other burghs of the kingdom were equally defective. In 1674, the town council of Aberdeen stated, that in spite of the many acts of their predecessors emitted for cleaning the streets of the burgh, and removing the middings and filth, yet there had been little observance of them. Therefore, they resolved that a fit person should be employed, and one or two horses and carts furnished to him at the town’s charge, “for keeping the streets and the common passages of the burgh clean, and for taking away the middings and dubs off the streets.” This person was empowered to go through all the streets and lanes of the town every morning, and at all other times which he thought fit, to remove all the middings and dubs which he found upon them. In this act there are some curious and amusing statements. “The man appointed to clean the streets was to apply the dung for the use of the burgh and the freedom lands of the same, and no otherwise, at such price as shall be appointed by the council; and for any red, middings, or filth, that shall be taken out of the closes and laid down upon the front streets, if the owners do not within twenty-four hours after the same is laid down, take away or remove it to a convenient place of the street, that then the aforesaid person is hereby empowered to remove it for his own use; and that if the person appointed for this purpose, coming to any midding to take it away, and the owner at the same time coming and instantly taking it to a convenient place of the street, he shall be permitted to do so. Also, it is and shall be lawful for any labourers or others to take and remove any middings and filth which they shall first attack and apprehend, and apply the same to their own use only, and no otherwise, if the owner thereof shall not instantly remove the same as aforesaid.” In 1679, the town council ordered that no one should throw out at their windows filth upon the streets, or permit it to lie before their doors on the streets, under a penalty of forty shillings.¹

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume IV., pages 291, 299.

It was already mentioned that, in the sixteenth century, swine were allowed to run about the streets of the burghs, and the magistrates of Aberdeen passed many acts for expelling them from the streets of the city. But in spite of this, swine were still kept within the town in greater numbers than formerly; and in 1696, they had become a great nuisance and an unseemly sight in the burgh. Therefore, the council enacted that parties who had swine in the town should remove them all out of the burgh, and a quarter of a mile beyond it, before two o’clock the next day; and that in future all the swine found on the streets or within doors should be confiscated, and one half of the proceeds to be given to the poor, and the other half to those who seized the swine; and anyone who seized swine in the city was to be freed from all trouble. The act was ordered to be proclaimed at the cross and through all the streets of the town, that none might pretend ignorance. It was stated in the council “that there was a great number of swine, which formerly were not permitted to stay within this burgh, and seeing by experience they are found very prejudicial to the yards in and about the town, in digging up the same, as also by their digging in the middings and in all sorts of filth, does rise an intolerable smell, besides the danger to children by them, and the unseemliness of having such creatures within the walls of a city.”¹

¹ Ibid., Volume IV., page 319.

The local trade in the various burghs of the kingdom was still hampered by monopoly. It was as yet common to fix the price of articles of daily use, such as bread, ale, shoes, and tallow. In 1640, the Committee of Estates passed an act fixing the price of shoes, boots, hides, and the tanning of leather, which was approved by Parliament, and proclaimed at the cross of Edinburgh. This act commanded the shoemakers to sell their boots and shoes at the following prices:――Three-soled shoes of the best leather were to be sold at two shillings and twopence per inch, and the third quality of three-soled shoes at twentypence the inch; the best single-soled shoes at sixteenpence the inch, and the second sort at fourteenpence the inch. Children’s double-soled shoes of the best quality, sixteenpence the inch; and the second sort of lighter leather at fourteenpence the inch, and for single-soled shoes, of eight inches and under, twelvepence the inch. Women’s shoes of the best quality, timber-heeled, to be sold at two shillings and twopence per inch; the second sort, with timber heels, at one shilling and eightpence. Touching the price of boots it was enacted, “that there be allowed of the best leather for each inch of the length of the boots eight shillings and eightpence per inch, the tops being long and of the best quality.” For various reasons the Committee of Estates thought fit to fix the price of boots and shoes in Edinburgh at fourpence per inch higher than the above on the best kind of shoes, and so on in proportion for the cheaper classes of the same articles.

The penalties to be imposed on all who refused to sell at the stated prices, and the fines for using insufficient materials, were to be divided, one half to the informer, and the other half to the judge, for the public use. If any of the shoemakers refused to work and left off, they were to be fined forty pounds, besides other punishment which might be inflicted upon their persons.

The Town Council of Aberdeen, in 1656, fixed the price of shoes at the following rates:――Double soled shoes made of foreign leather, three shillings per inch; double-soled shoes made of Scotch leather, two shillings and sixpence the inch; single soled shoes without walts, sixteenpence the inch; and children’s shoes, double-soled, eightpence the inch. Those who broke the above prices rendered themselves liable to a penalty of five pounds.¹

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume IV., page 163.

In the year 1659, the tailors of Inverness petitioned the magistrates, that they were much injured in their trade by its being encroached upon and taken away by outlandish men, dwelling around the burgh, and evading the taxes, and yet they came and stole away the trade of the place, “to our great and apparent ruin.” The authorities listened to their complaint, and empowered them to restrain all outlandish tailors, and to seize their work, and then bring the whole affair before the magistrates. But two years later they were again petitioning the magistrates and complaining of the outlandish hands, and they argued that all unfreemen should be prevented from usurping the rights of freemen, and from keeping apprentices or employing servants.

Troubles of a bitter character sometimes arose from corporation privileges. All attempts of unfreemen to work within the royal burghs were met with measures of obstruction and punishment. In October, 1692, William Somerville, a wright, and a burgess of Edinburgh, was engaged in repairing the Earl of Roxburgh’s house in the Canongate, but Thomas Kinloch, the deacon of the wrights of the latter burgh, assisted by a party of his associates, took away all the workmen’s tools. This was done to prevent the Edinburgh wrights from working in a district where they were not free. Somerville shortly after demanded the restoration of his workmen’s tools, but they were distinctly refused. The Earl of Roxburgh was a minor, but his curators were irritated at the proceedings, and concurred with Somerville in summoning the deacon of the Canongate wrights before the Privy Council, for riot and oppression in the Earl’s house. It seems, if the Earl’s house had been subject to the jurisdiction of the Canongate, the Privy Council would have been precluded from giving any redress, but when the Earl’s ancestor relinquished the superiority of the Canongate, he still continued to hold his mansion of the Crown, so it was argued that the Canongate corporation had no jurisdiction in this case, and consequently no right to interfere with the action of his Lordship in the choice of craftsmen to perform work in his own house. The Council remitted this point to the Court of Session, which at once ordered the restoration of the workmen’s tools.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council. Chambers, in his _Domestic Annals_, gives an instance of oppression by the Merchant Company of Edinburgh, who had the sole right of dealing in cloth of all kinds within the city. Volume III., page 70.

The wage of skilled workmen in Scotland was comparatively low, but then food was usually cheap, and it is the relation which wages bears to the price of the necessaries of life――the purchasing power of the sum at the time――that is the really important point. About the middle of the seventeenth century, from fourpence to sixpence a day, or about three shillings sterling a week, would represent the wages of a tradesman; but direct information on the subject is so scanty that a precise statement of their wages cannot be made. In 1655, two men were employed for twenty-four days slating and pointing a house; they got their food during that time, and twenty-four shillings, or twopence in sterling money per day.

The wages of servants generally, and in particular of domestic servants and agricultural labourers, were very low. As a class these were then, and for long after, in a very humble position, as compared with that which they now hold. The yearly wages of farm servants in the seventeenth century, and till the rise of modern agriculture, were only from twenty-five to thirty-five shillings sterling; women’s wages were about a third less than the men’s.

Any law that existed on the relation between master and servant was mostly on the side of the former, but there was little distinct law on the subject. In 1610, Glasgow was much annoyed with servants “who fee themselves with two masters,” and the Town Council therefore commanded, “that all such servants as hereafter fee themselves to two masters, must pay to the one into whose service they fail to enter, both the fee and the bounty which was promised to them, and also to be imprisoned for twenty days upon bread and water.” In 1610, the magistrates of Peebles had many complaints lodged about the misdeeds of servants――“for drinking on the night, running about, and refusing to do any kind of work.” They therefore enacted that no servant should drink after eight at night, under the penalty of thirteen shillings for each fault, and that no one should sell them drink on Sunday; that servants should not refuse to do any kind of work, either in or out of the house, under the penalty of six shillings and eightpence for each fault, which sum the master may deduct from their wages; that no one should engage another man’s servant, except the servant prove by two witnesses that he warned his master forty days before the term, under the penalty of five pounds, one half for the use of the poor, and the other to the master.¹ By a clause of an Act of Parliament passed in 1617, concerning the establishment of justices of peace, the justices of peace were empowered to fix the rate of wages. At their quarter sessions in August and in February, they were enjoined to fix the wages of labourers, workmen, and servants; and those who refused to work or serve for the wages thus settled, were to be imprisoned, and further punished at the discretion of the justices. To induce the servants to obey their decrees more readily, they were empowered to compel the masters to pay the servants the stated amount of wages when duly earned. This Act was repeated in 1661.² The circumstance affording a measure of justification for it was the comparatively large proportion of the population of the kingdom always living by begging and vagabondism; this class presented a real difficulty, and the Government grasped at any expedient which seemed to encourage the hope of reducing the numbers of the idle and vagrant multitude.

¹ Burgh Records of Glasgow; Burgh Records of Edinburgh; Burgh Records of Aberdeen. Chambers’ _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, Volume II., page 235. Burgh Records of Peebles, pages 358‒360.

² Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IV.; Volume VII., page 308.

Partly owing to these circumstances, and partly owing to other motives, the workmen in coal-mines and at salt-works in Scotland were kept in a state of semi-slavery for more than a century and a half. In 1606, Parliament passed an Act binding this class of workmen to perpetual service at the works in which they were engaged. This Act enjoined that no one should hire salters, colliers, or coal-bearers, without their masters’ consent, or at least an attestation of a reasonable cause for their removing, made in the presence of a magistrate of the district whence they removed. Therefore, if anyone engaged persons of this description, without conforming with the law, their former master could reclaim them, and enforce their re-delivery, under a penalty of one hundred pounds. Further, if the colliers, coal-bearers, and salters, should accept forehand wages, they were to be held and reputed as thieves, and punished in their persons. This law was re-enacted in 1661, with an addition, including the watermen engaged in drawing off the water from the coal pits,――“as they are as necessary to the owners and masters of the pits as the colliers and the bearers.” And because it was found by experience that giving high wages to colliers had been used to seduce them from their masters, therefore, it was enacted that no coalmaster in the kingdom should give a higher wage than twenty merks yearly to each man, that is, one pound two shillings and sixpence sterling. It was also found that colliers and salters, and other workers about the pits, were accustomed to stay from their work on certain holidays, accordingly it was enacted that henceforth they should work all the six days of the week, except Christmas, under the penalty of twenty shillings Scots, to be paid to their masters for each day that they failed to work, and any other corporal punishment which their masters thought fit to inflict upon them.¹

¹ Ibid., Volume VII., page 304.

Thus it was that from the early part of the seventeenth century till near the end of the eighteenth, the colliers and the coal-bearers, and those employed at saltworks in Scotland, remained in a state of semi-slavery. When collieries and saltworks were sold, the right of the service of the workers was transferred to the new proprietor as a portion of fixed stock. By an act of the British Parliament, in 1775, they were emancipated, but a considerable time elapsed ere they were able to take much advantage of their freedom. This act was clogged with special conditions, which many of the colliers failed to comply with, and they continued in bondage, till the act of 1799 was passed, when they became really free.

Though the mining operations of Scotland were not as yet on a great scale, they added to the slowly advancing progress of the nation. In the first part of the century the coal works of Culross were worked some distance under the sea. But it appears from a petition to the Privy Council in 1621, that the proprietors of collieries were not making fortunes, as it was then stated that some of the owners of coal-haughs were ten thousand pounds, and even twenty thousand, out of pocket. The Master of Elphinstone’s coal mine of Little Fawside had been on fire for several years, and another mine of his had entailed an outlay of eight thousand pounds. The pits of Sir James Richardson of Smeaton for some years had been so unproductive as scarcely to supply his own house; the coal of Mickle Fawside had undone the late laird’s estate, and caused him to sell a part of his old heritage. The coal of Pencaitland was wasted and decayed, and past hope of recovery, except at a cost far greater than it was worth. The Council appointed a commission to make inquiry, and to report what prices should be fixed for coal. Upon this report it was ordered that the price of coal “at the hill” should be seven shillings and eightpence per load――that is, ♦about sevenpence three-farthings sterling. It should, however, be mentioned that in these days a load meant a horse’s burden.¹

♦ duplicate word “about” removed

¹ Register of the Privy Council.

The Privy Council passed an act in 1621, in favour of Mr. Johnston, the laird of Elphinstone, because he had expended twenty thousand merks on his coal works, “to his great hurt and apparent ruin.” It was stated that he sustained forty families at the work, that their weekly wages exceeded two hundred merks; and that his coal would be lost, and all his workers thrown out of employment, if something was not done to assist him, as he was unable any longer to struggle with the adverse circumstances in which he found himself. According to his statement, the average weekly wages of a collier’s family reached about five shillings and sixpence sterling.¹

¹ Chambers’ Domestic Annals of Scotland, Volume I., page 516.

As noticed in the preceding volume, the Privy Council from time to time had made regulations for fixing the price of coal, and prohibiting the export of it until all the people of the kingdom were supplied. A duty of six shillings was imposed in 1644 on coal exported in Scotch or English vessels of the value of twelve pounds, but if it was exported in foreign ships the duty was twelve shillings. In 1655 and 1656 the custom on Scotch coal was fixed at four shillings per ton in British ships, but eight shillings if exported in foreign vessels. Small coal was only charged at half the above rates. According to a Parliamentary return of Richard, the Lord Protector, in April, 1659, the annual value of the custom on the export of Scotch coal amounted to £2216 sterling. The Ayr coal fields began to assume importance in the latter part of the century.

Prior to the eighteenth century the quantity of iron produced in Scotland was comparatively small; but there were several lead mines worked. In 1641, Sir James Hope of Hopetoun obtained a grant of the lead mines in Waterhead and Glengonar; and in 1649 an Act of Parliament was passed, which enacted that any one fraudulently intromitting with his lead ore should be punished as resetters of stolen goods. The same year Parliament exempted Sir James Hope’s mines from the valuation of the sheriffdom, because they were the only ones of that kind in the kingdom, and ought to be specially favoured. In 1661 Parliament ratified the former Acts in favour of Sir James Hope; at that time the family possessed the lead mines in Crawford Moor, and also the copper mines in Airthrey, and the Binnie silver mines.

In 1698, Hope of Hopetoun had a party of men constantly employed at his lead mines far up one of the vales of Lanarkshire. As it was extremely inconvenient for every man to go several miles for his food, and the proprietor was anxious to make an arrangement that one should go and purchase necessaries for himself and the rest; but under a recent Act against forestalling, no one could venture to sell to any single person so much victual as the miners needed. Hope, therefore, applied to the Privy Council for permission to his baillie to purchase the quantities of victual required, with the assurance that none of it would be stored or sold out to any other person except his own workmen, and that it should be sold to them at the price which it was bought for in the market. On these grounds the Council granted Hope a license to supply food to his workmen. At the same time licenses were granted to the chamberlain of the Earl of Mar, for the benefit of the workmen engaged in his Lordship’s coal mines; to the Duke of Queensberry, for the workmen at his lead mines; to the Earl of Annandale, for his servants and workmen; and to Alexander Inglis, factor for the collieries on the estate of Clackmannan.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volumes V., VI., and VII. All these noblemen were members of the Privy Council.

Means of intercourse, as roads, bridges, communication by sea, and postal arrangements, are closely connected with trade and national progress. Roads in the order of development naturally precede other modes of transit, and are followed by ferry-boats, canals, improved harbours, and a regular postal system. As civilisation advances, these are rapidly improved, and by and by partly superseded by better expedients and arrangements, as steamships, railways, telegraphic and telephonic communication, all which evince the resources of the human mind. But merely to state results leaves the steps of progress unexplained, and gives no conception of the many difficulties and obstacles which had to be encountered and overcome ere the desired aim was reached; accordingly it is necessary to enter into details in order to render the development of social organisation intelligible, as well as to indicate the obstacles which impede the progress of civilisation.

By an Act of Parliament passed in 1617, Justices of Peace were empowered to give orders for repairing the roads and passages to market towns and seaports, when they deemed it necessary. Those who refused to assist at this work might be punished at the discretion of the Justices; but the arrangement had not proved effective. In 1669, another Act was passed authorising the Sheriff of the county and the Justices of Peace to meet at the head burgh of the shire on the first Tuesday of May every year, and frame measures for repairing the roads, bridges, and ferries within their bounds. They were enjoined to appoint some of their number as overseers of such parts of the roads as were nearest to their residence; and also to appoint some of themselves to survey the roads, the bridges, and the ferries, and then report to the rest, and continue to meet from time to time till the survey was completed. They were authorised to convene all the tenants, their servants, and the cottars within their district, by intimation at the parish churches on Sunday, warning them to have in readiness their horses and carts, sledges, spades, shovels, picks, mallets, and all implements required for repairing the highways. Some of the more expert men should be appointed to direct the rest, at a fixed rate of wages. According to the Act, these parties had to work on the roads, “man and horse,” six days every year for the first three years, and afterwards four days. The Justices of Peace and the overseers were empowered to fine those who absented themselves, twenty shillings for each day a man was absent, and thirty shillings if a man and horse were absent, which money was applied to hire others in their place. It was well understood that this arrangement would not be sufficient for keeping the roads in repair, accordingly all proprietors of each county were authorised to meet once a year, and consider what was necessary for repairing the highways, and for making and repairing bridges and ferries. For this purpose they were empowered to impose a tax not exceeding ten shillings on every hundred pounds of valued rental; and they were authorised to levy moderate custom or toll at bridges and ferries. The Justices were empowered to punish all who injured the roads, by ploughing up, laying stones, rubbish or dung upon them; and where cultivated land lay alongside of the roads it should be fenced with dykes, ditches, or hedging. Where it was necessary to change the line of the road, they were to appoint three of their number to mark the direction of the new road, and upon oath to estimate the damage to the parties whose properties were encroached upon. By this Act the time appointed for repairing the roads was between seed-time and harvest; but on the ground that other seasons of the year were more convenient for working at the roads, Parliament passed another Act in 1670, authorising the Sheriffs and Justices of Peace to convene those liable for this work at any time of the year which they thought fit, excepting always seed-time and harvest.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IV.; Volume VII., pages 574‒576; Volume VIII., page 18.

With the aim of making these Acts still more effective, Parliament in 1686 passed an additional Act touching the highways and bridges. It enjoined the Commissioners of Supply to meet with the Justices of Peace, and to act together in their several counties according to the tenor of the preceding Acts. They were directed to meet every year in the month of June, five to form a quorum, and if a quorum should not assemble, then the Sheriff was empowered to fine each of those who were absent twenty merks, which sum was to be applied for repairing of the roads and bridges.¹

¹ Ibid., Volume VIII., page 590.

According to a series of Acts reaching back to the twelfth century, all the common highways between market towns had to be twenty feet broad at the least, and where they happened to be broader, they were to remain so. Those who put any obstruction upon the highways could be put under caution by the Court of Session not to commit the like again, under a severe ♦penalty.¹ Notwithstanding all this minute legislation, the roads in Scotland, even at the end of the seventeenth century, were in a wretched condition, and it was not till the latter half of the eighteenth century that the roads throughout the country were put in a proper state for traffic.

♦ “penality” replaced with “penalty”

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I.; Volume II.

A single illustration of the actual condition of the roads near the capital of the kingdom in 1680 may suffice on this point. The first four miles of the road from Edinburgh to London, the part from the Clockmill Bridge to Magdalen Bridge, was in such a ruinous state that passengers were in danger of their lives, “either by their coaches overturning, their horses falling, or their carts breaking, their loads casting, and horses stumbling; and the poor people with their burdens upon their backs sorely grieved and discouraged. Also, strangers do often exclaim thereat.” The Council authorised a toll of a half-penny for a loaded cart, and a sixth of a penny for a loaded horse, for the purpose of keeping this portion of the road in repair.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council.

Turning to the means of communication by post, it appears that the arrangements were of the most primitive description. In the sixteenth century there was no regular system for the transmission of letters in Scotland. When anything was unusually pressing and important, a special messenger was dispatched. About the end of the century, Aberdeen had an officer called the common post, and in 1595, the magistrates ordered that he should have a distinctive livery of blue, with the town’s arms on it. In the early part of the seventeenth century there were a kind of posts at certain intervals or places, where horses could be had for travelling, and these were occasionally used for conveying public letters; but such arrangements were limited and very imperfect. Till 1635 there had been no constant intercourse between England and Scotland; but then the King’s postmaster of England, for foreign parts, commanded that there should be “one running post or two, to run day and night between Edinburgh and London, to go thither and come back again in six days, and to take with them all such letters as should be directed to any post town on the said road, and the posts to be placed in several places out of the road, to run, and bring, and carry out of the said road the letters, as there shall ♦be occasion, and to pay twopence for every single letter under eighty miles, and if one hundred and forty miles, fourpence, and if above, then sixpence. The like rule the King is pleased to order to be observed to West Chester, Holyhead, and thence to Ireland, and also to observe the same rule from London to Plymouth, Exeter, and other places on that road; the same for Oxford, Bristol, Colchester, Norwich, and other places. The King commands that no other messenger or foot-posts shall take up, carry, receive, or deliver any letters whatsoever, other than the messengers appointed by Thomas Witherings, Esquire, except common carriers, or a particular messenger purposely sent with a letter to a friend.” The post between London and Edinburgh was conducted on horseback; it commonly went twice a week, but sometimes only once. During the Covenanting struggle, communication became irregular.¹

♦ “he” replaced with “be”

¹ Register of the Privy Council; Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume II.; Burgh Records of Glasgow, pages 327‒347; Rushworth’s Collections.

In 1649, John Mean, the postmaster of Edinburgh, stated that “the benefit arising from letters sent from the capital to London, and coming thence hither by the ordinary post, amounted to four hundred pounds sterling yearly or thereby, all charges being deducted for payment of the postmaster from Newcastle to Edinburgh inclusive, and no proportion thereof laid upon the Berwick packet.” In recompense for his expenses, he was allowed to retain the eighth penny upon all the letters sent from Edinburgh to London, and the fourth upon all those coming from London to Edinburgh.¹

¹ Chambers’ Domestic Annals of Scotland, Volume II., page 187.

During the rule of Cromwell, intercourse between Scotland and London was largely increased; in 1658, a fortnightly stage-coach was running between the two capitals.

After the Restoration, some improvement of the postal system was effected. In 1662, it was ordered that posts should be established between Edinburgh and Portpatrick, the intermediate stations to be Linlithgow, Kilsyth, Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Ayr, and Ballantrae. The charge for each letter from Edinburgh to Glasgow was twopence sterling, thence to any part of the kingdom threepence, and all letters to Ireland sixpence. All other posts, either foot or horse, were prohibited. But this mode of horse-post had not been long in operation, when several persons were found carrying letters along the same line on foot, to the injury of the postmaster, and at his request a warrant was granted against all such persons. Till 1669, there was no regular postal communication between Aberdeen and Edinburgh; and in the former city this had long been felt as a serious want, “not only to the city, but also to the nobility, the gentry, and others in the northern parts of the kingdom.” There had been miscarriage of missives, as well as untimeous delivery and receiving of the same. It was therefore arranged, with the consent of the King’s postmaster-general, that Lieutenant John Wales should establish a regular foot-post carrying letters from Aberdeen to Edinburgh twice a week, and returning every Tuesday and Thursday in the afternoon. Each single letter was to be charged twopence, each double one fourpence, and every packet fivepence per ounce sterling. All other common foot-posts were prohibited from carrying any letters to or from Edinburgh, save those employed by Lieutenant Wales, the postmaster of the city. In 1669, a foot-post was established between Edinburgh and Inverness to go and return twice a week to Aberdeen, and once to Inverness, “if wind and weather served.”¹

¹ Burgh Records of Aberdeen, Volume IV., pages 134‒138.

But at the date of the Revolution, the postal system of Scotland was still extremely imperfect. The postmastership was sold by auction to John Blair in 1689, who undertook to carry on the whole business at various rates for letters, and to pay the government an annual sum of five hundred and fifty pounds for seven years. The charges for single letters were:――to Dumfries, Ayr, Kelso, Jedburgh, Dundee, and Perth, twopence; to Carlisle, Portpatrick, Dunkeld, and Aberdeen, threepence; and to Inverness fourpence.¹ In 1695, Parliament passed an Act for establishing a general post-office in Edinburgh, under a postmaster-general. He was invested with the exclusive privilege of receiving and of dispatching letters; but on roads where there were no regular posts, the common carriers were permitted to convey letters until posts should be established. This system had only one centre, the capital, and letters coming from London to Glasgow arrived first in Edinburgh, and thence sent westward at the earliest opportunity. The Privy Council were enjoined to see that branches were established in the most convenient places all over the kingdom, and the hours of dispatching the posts settled and published. According to this Act, the charges for letters were these:――All single letters to Berwick or to any part of the kingdom within fifty miles of Edinburgh, twopence――double letters, fourpence, and so on proportionally; (declaring, nevertheless, that all single letters with bills of lading or exchange, invoices, or other merchants’ accounts, may be enclosed and sent to any part of the kingdom as single letters).²

¹ Register of the Privy Council; Chambers’ _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, Volume III., page 21.

² Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IX., pages 517‒419.

It appears that the posts were sometimes attacked and the letters and packets seized. In 1690, Parliament enacted that the robbing or seizing of the mails should be punished with death and the confiscation of goods; and by the Act of 1695, any person that molested or impeded the posts in the execution of their duty by night or by day, were liable to a penalty of one thousand pounds Scots, besides reparation and damages.¹

¹ Ibid., Volume IX., pages 241, 418.

We have seen that the roads were not in a fitting condition for wheeled vehicles, indeed carriages or coaches were not used in England or in Scotland till the latter part of the sixteenth century. It was said that coaches were first used in England during the reign of Elizabeth. In 1610, the King granted a licence to Henry Anderson to bring a number of coaches and waggons into Scotland for the purpose of driving his Majesty’s subjects between Edinburgh and Leith. He also obtained for himself and his heirs an exclusive right of this business for fifteen years, on the condition that he should be always ready to serve the people, and charge only the sum of twopence for conveying each passenger between Edinburgh and Leith.¹ As already mentioned, stage-coaches ran from Edinburgh to London during the Commonwealth, and the fare was four pounds ten shillings, “in all cases with good coaches and fresh horses on the roads.” Street carriages did not come into use in Scotland till the latter part of the seventeenth century, and even then they were little used. In Edinburgh sedan-chairs were employed instead of wheeled vehicles down to near the end of the eighteenth century. In 1678, the Privy Council granted an exclusive privilege to three men in Haddington to run a stage-coach between that place and Edinburgh for five years. The same year, William Hume, a merchant in Edinburgh, established a stage-coach between the capital and Glasgow. He proposed that his coach should only carry six passengers, at a fare of six shillings each in summer and nine in winter. The Privy Council granted him an exclusive privilege for seven years, and also assured him that his coach horses would not be pressed for any kind of public service.²

¹ Royal Letters; Chambers’ Domestic Annals of Scotland, Volume I., page 427.

² Register of the Privy Council.

But it seems doubtful if any of these schemes of stage-coaching were really successful. A writer who travelled through Scotland in 1688 has stated: “Stage-coaches they have none.... The truth is, the roads will hardly allow them these conveniences, which is the reason that their gentry, men and women, choose rather to ride on their horses. However, their great gentlemen travel with a coach and six, but with so much caution, that besides their other attendants, they have a lusty running footman on each side of the coach, to manage and keep it up in rough places.” The traveller further remarks: “This carriage of persons from place to place might be better spared were there opportunities and means for the speedier conveyance of business by letters. They have no horse-posts besides those which ply between Berwick and Edinburgh, and from thence to Portpatrick, for the sake of the Irish packet.... From Edinburgh to Perth, and so to other places, they use foot-posts and carriers, which, though a slow way of communicating our concerns to one another, yet it is such as they acquiesce in till they have a better.” But in 1697 the stage-coach from York to London required a week to accomplish its journey. This fact was noted in the Diary of George Home; the truth is, travelling was very slow everywhere throughout Britain at that period, and for long after.¹

¹ A Short Account of Scotland, 1702.

Turning to the shipping of the kingdom, some information may be drawn from the report of Thomas Tucker――one of Cromwell’s officials, upon the settlement of the revenues of excise and customs in Scotland in 1656; and from a Register containing notices of the state of every burgh in the kingdom in the year 1692.¹ For fiscal purposes the Government of the Commonwealth arranged the ports of Scotland into eight groups, and at the head port of each group a custom office was established. Leith, the chief port of Scotland, and the ports attached to its district (of which the most important were Dunbar, Eyemouth, and Musselburgh) had fourteen vessels, of which a few of the largest were of three and two hundred tons burden. Speaking of Leith, Tucker said:――“Leith itself is a pretty small town, having a convenient dry harbour, into which the Firth ebbs and flows every tide; and a convenient quay on the one side thereof, of good length, for the landing of goods. Leith was, and is, indeed, a storehouse, not only for her own traders, but also for the merchants of the city of Edinburgh, and did not that city, jealous of her own safety, obstruct and impede the growing of this place, it would from her slave, in a few years become her rival.”

¹ Both of these Reports were printed for the Scottish Burgh Record Society in 1881.

The next head port was Borrowstounness, to which was attached a number of small ports, but the number of their vessels was not stated; their trade, however, was chiefly in coal and salt. The third head port was Bruntisland, on the north side of the Firth opposite to Leith, and its district extended from Inverkeithing along the shore of Fife to the banks of the Tay. The trade of this district inwards was with Norway, the East, and France, and the outward trade was mostly in coal and salt. This group of ports had fifty vessels, but the greater part of them were small, only three reached up to one hundred tons burden, two of which belonged to Kirkcaldy.

The fourth head port was Dundee, to which was attached Perth, Arbroath, and Montrose. The trade of Dundee inwards, as generally all over Scotland, was with Norway, the East, Holland, and France; and the outward trade consisted mainly of plaiding and salmon. Dundee had ten ships, two of one hundred and twenty tons each, one of ninety tons, one of sixty, and the rest smaller. Tucker said that Perth――“is a handsome walled town, where there is an officer always attending, not so much because of any great treading there, as to prevent the carrying out of wool, skins, and hides, of which commodities great quantities are brought thither out of the Highlands, and there bought up and engrossed by the Londonmen.”

Aberdeen was the fifth head port, and those connected with it were Stonehaven, Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Banff, and a few other small ports. Tucker described the harbour of Aberdeen minutely, and said――“But the wideness of the place, from the inlet of the sea coming in with a narrow winding gut, and beating in store of sand with its waves, has rendered it somewhat shallow in the greater part of it, and so less useful than formerly. But the inhabitants are remedying this by lengthening their quay, and bringing it up close to a neck of land, which jutting out eastwards towards a headland before it, makes the coming in so straight.” He stated that the trade outwards was “with salmon and plaiding, commodities which are caught, and made here in greater quantities than any other place of the nation whatsoever.” Aberdeen had nine ships belonging to her port, one of eighty tons, one of seventy, another of sixty, and the rest smaller; while Peterhead had one small vessel, and Fraserburgh four.

The sixth head port was Inverness, which included in its district the ports of the counties of Moray, Ross, Sutherland, Caithness, and the Orkney Islands; but in these regions there were few ships. Inverness had only one, Garmouth one, Cromarty one, and Thurso two, while the Orkney Islands had three; but it was stated that “lately there were other nine barks belonging to the Islands which had been taken or lost by storm, this and the last year.”

Glasgow was the seventh head port, which appeared according to Tucker’s view, to have been even then taking the lead in trade amongst the Scotch ports. “This town, seated in a pleasant and fruitful soil, consists of four streets, handsomely built in the form of a cross, is one of the most considerable burghs of Scotland, as well for its structure as for its trade. Its inhabitants, all save the students of the College, are traders and dealers: Some go to Ireland with small smiddy coals, in open boats of from four to ten tons burden, whence they bring home hoops, barrel staves, meal, corn, and butter; some to France with plaiding, coals, and herrings, of which there is a great fishing yearly in the western sea; some to Norway for wood; and everyone with their neighbours, the Highlanders, who come hither from the Isles and the Western parts, in summer by the Mull of Cantyre, and in winter by Torban, to the head of Loch Fyne, usually drawing their boats over the small neck of sandy land and into the Firth of Dumbarton, and so pass up the Clyde with plaiding, dry hides, goat, kid, and deer skins, which they sell, and purchase with their price such commodities and provisions as they need from time to time.” Tucker thought that Glasgow was likely to become a great commercial city, owing to the energy of her citizens; but the chief obstacle to her rapid growth appeared to be the shallowness of the Clyde, on which only very small barks could pass up to the town. Glasgow had twelve ships, three of one hundred and fifty tons burden each, one of a hundred and forty tons, two of one hundred tons, and the rest smaller. The other ports associated with Glasgow were noticed in the report thus:――“Dumbarton, a small and very poor burgh, which sometimes gives shelter to a vessel of sixteen tons. Greenock, a small place, the inhabitants being all seamen or fisherman, trading to Ireland or to the Isles in open boats. Saltcoats has only a few houses inhabited by fishermen.”

Ayr was the eighth and last head port, and its district embraced “all the shore which bounds Kyle, Carrick, and Galloway, places fuller of moors and mosses than good towns and people, or trading.” Yet Ayr had three ships and a few small barks. But Tucker stated that this district of ports would scarcely yield any more revenue than would pay the necessary outlay of the Government.

The materials and figures for comparing the shipping at the dates of 1656 and 1692 are very incomplete, as the information of a definite character for the later is imperfect, and only admit of a comparison of the shipping of a few of the chief ports. But the figures in the following table may be taken as approximately correct:――

1656. 1692. ────────────────── ────────────────── Vessels. Tonnage. Vessels. Tonnage. ──────── ──────── ──────── ──────── Leith 12 1000 29 1700 Dundee 10 498 21 1191 Glasgow 12 830 15 1172 Kirkcaldy 12 592 14 1213 Montrose 12 220 18 629 ── ──── ── ──── 58 3140 97 5905

It appears from the above figures that the shipping of these five ports had increased considerably between the two dates. It may also be stated that at the later period, various parties in Glasgow were part-owners of several other ships besides these in the table; while only about one half of the Kirkcaldy vessels belonged to parties in that town: and the vessels belonging to Montrose were all small barks.

The mode of agriculture practised in Scotland was extremely rude; and in no field of industry is there a more striking contrast than between the husbandry of the seventeenth century and that of the ♦nineteenth. In the seventeenth century only a small portion of the land was under tillage, there was no regular rotation of crops, and no improved grasses, such as clover and ryegrass; and though the chief wealth of the farmers consisted of cattle, no efforts were made to improve the breeds, which were all of a small class, and as yet there was no stall-feeding.

♦ “ninteenth” replaced with “nineteenth”

The general system of farming was this. The land which was manured extended to only about a fourth of the farm, or sometimes a fifth or sixth of it. The remaining portion, called the outfields, was never manured, but a certain part of it, after having been pastured on for seven or eight years, was then ploughed up, and after yielding a poor crop or two of oats, by which it was exhausted, it was again rested and pastured on as before, and another portion ploughed, cropped, exhausted, and rested in its turn. Under this system, which kept only the part of the land nearest to the farmyard in a state fit for tillage, the whole arable land of the country could have yielded but little, compared with what it was capable of producing. Several parts of the south, now celebrated as grain-producing districts, were at the end of the seventeenth century merely stony moors and bogs. Although parliament had passed acts touching fences, hedges, and ditches, there were few enclosed fields anywhere in Scotland, and the practice of improving the soil by a regular system of drainage was quite unknown. In 1686 it was enacted that all proprietors, life-renters, tenants, and cottars should cause their cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and swine to be herded the whole year; and during the night to keep them in houses or folds, that they might not eat and destroy other people’s crops, grass, woods, planting, and hedges. Those found contravening the act were to be liable to a penalty of half a merk for each of the animals found upon their neighbours’ grounds, “over and above the damage done to the grass or the planting.”¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VII., page 595.

Agricultural implements were rough and clumsy. The plough was made of timber, save the clathing, the coulter, and sock; while the ploughing itself was of the most wretched description. The entire economy of the farm was in a backward state: the manure was carried to the fields on horseback and by manual labour, while the grain was conveyed to the mills and to the markets on horseback, carts being as yet very little used. Three or four returns was considered to be a good crop, and the difficulty of finding food for cattle throughout winter was often extreme. Animals intended for human food were slaughtered before Martinmas, and salted, to supply the family with meat during the winter. The trade in beef was then on a limited scale in Scotland; probably there is more beef sold in one week at the present time than was sold in a year at the end of the seventeenth century.

The state of the tenants and labourers of the land was not a comfortable and happy one. Farmers themselves were poor, and part of their rents was still paid in produce and in services to landlords. Farm-steadings were merely clusters of hovels, without proper accommodation even for cattle, far less for human beings.

A strong desire for exclusive privileges in trade and industry still prevailed. Early in the seventeenth century, attempts were made to introduce into Scotland an improved mode of tanning leather. Twelve tanners from England, under royal patronage, came to instruct the barkers and tanners of Scotland in the perfect mode of making leather. They were invested with special privileges, and were located in several parts of ♦the country, the object being to retain at home the money which had been usually spent on foreign leather. But a tax was put on the improved leather, at the rate of four shillings Scots per hide, for the first twenty-one years. This caused discontent among the shoemakers who everywhere exerted themselves to thwart the King’s purpose. They raised the prices of their boots and shoes, twenty shillings on the pair of boots, and six shillings on the shoes, which stirred up the people against the tax, and a clamour arose that the nation was oppressed, the poorer classes especially. In 1622, a complaint was lodged with the Privy Council, that many of the tanners throughout the kingdom still continued the old mode of letting their leather remain only a short time in the pits, and then brought it to market in a raw state, quite regardless of the obvious advantages of the new way of tanning. The Council therefore ordered that a number of the old tanners should be proclaimed rebels. The grievances of the leather-workers came before the Estates in 1625, and again in 1633, when the tanners and barkers of the kingdom petitioned Parliament, “to be freed and relieved of the burden and imposition imposed upon them for tanning and barking of hides; and that this impost should be discharged, because it does great damage to the whole country.” Subsequently the matter was often before the Estates;¹ but down to the present time, the tanners of Scotland have not succeeded in producing leather of equal quality to the best English and French. The Scotch croops, or sole leather, is much inferior to the English, and the Scotch calf and upper leather is also inferior both to French and English.

♦ duplicate word “the” removed

¹ Register of the Privy Council; _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume V., pages 48, 185, 264. About this time gilded and ornamented leather was fashionable for covering the walls of rooms in the better class of houses though, of course, it was imported. But in 1681, Alexander Brand, a merchant in Edinburgh, stated that he had brought workmen and materials into Scotland, and proposed to erect a work to produce this kind of leather as cheap as it could be imported. The Privy Council granted him an exclusive right of manufacturing it for nineteen years.

In the preceding volumes I referred to the making of cloth, which branch of industry was still in a comparatively rude stage, and various attempts were begun in the seventeenth century to introduce improvements. In 1601, Commissioners, deputed by the burghs, engaged seven Flemishmen to settle in Scotland and assist in setting the work in operation; six of them being intended for making serge stuff, and one for broadcloth. On arriving in Edinburgh, they had expected to be immediately employed; but a debate arose as to whether they should be dispersed among the chief towns, and thus diffuse their instructions more widely among the Scots. While this was pending, the foreigners complained to the Privy Council that they were neither entertained nor sent to work, and that it was proposed to separate them, which would greatly retard the perfecting of the work. The Council ordered that they should all be allowed to remain in Edinburgh, and work according to the conditions on which they had agreed with the commissioners; and that till they began their work, they should be properly supplied with food and drink. But six weeks later, the burghs had done nothing; and the Council then informed them that, unless they made a beginning by the month of November, the royal privilege would be withdrawn. Eight years later a company of these foreigners, under the special protection of the King, was established in the Canongate, Edinburgh, and made cloth of various kinds. The business was managed by John Sutherland and Joan Van Headen, and it was stated that they were diffusing much light and knowledge of their calling amongst the Scots. In spite, however, of the King’s letters, which invested these industrious men with special privileges, and exemptions from local burdens, the magistrates of the Canongate began to molest them, with the object of forcing them to become burgesses and freemen in the regular form; on their appeal to the Privy Council, their exemption was affirmed.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume V., page 49.

The bulk of the clothing then used in Scotland was home made, the people supplying themselves with clothes from their own wool and flax; each family spinning for itself the yarn, and sending it to the village weaver to be woven. In some parts of Scotland the children were regularly taught to spin by a mistress. The magistrates of Peebles resolved in 1633――“to convene all the persons and parents of those bairns given up in a roll, to be bound for a year to the small wheel in the house to be erected to learn the young ones to spin.” And, “the whole council have referred the taking of a house for the mistress and bairns of the little wheel to be erected for learning the young ones to spin, to the provost and the two bailies.”¹ It was not till towards the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries that successful efforts were made to manufacture this class of goods for general sale; although in the reign of Charles I. there were cloth manufactories on a small scale at Newmills in Haddingtonshire, at Bonnington near Edinburgh, and at Ayr; while in Aberdeen there was a manufactory of plaiden goods and ginghams. In 1641, parliament passed an act to encourage and facilitate the erection of manufactories. This act promised the following immunities to all who had or should erect such works:――“All Spanish and foreign fine wool for making fine cloth shall be custom free, all dye stuffs, oil, and other materials necessary for such works, shall be free of all custom and impost; all parcels of cloth made by any who have erected, or shall erect such works, shall be custom free for the space of fifteen years from the date of their erection. The managers of such works shall be free of any taxation to be imposed on the kingdom for any occasion bygone or to come; and it shall not be lawful for anyone to engage, reset, or entertain, any of the servants of these works without the consent of the masters thereof.” By another Act passed in 1645, the masters and all the workers of manufactories were freed from military service and the quartering of troops upon them; and it was again declared that such works were to be free of all taxation.²

¹ Burgh Records of Peebles, pages 372, 373.

² Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume V., page 497; Volume VI., page 174.

In 1661, Parliament passed two Acts concerning manufactories, one recommending the establishment of companies and societies for making linen and cloth stuffs, and the other for erecting manufactories; while it also ratified former Acts of Parliament and of Council which had similar ends in view. These proposed companies were authorised to incorporate themselves, and to elect a certain number of their members to act as a committee or council of managers, to frame rules and regulations for the management of the manufactory, and conducting the business of the company. For their encouragement, materials imported for use in their manufactures, and whatever goods they produced and exported, were to be free of custom and impost for nineteen years; the stock invested in their works was exempted from public and local taxes; and they themselves were to be free from quartering of soldiers. Every encouragement was given to skilled workmen from other countries to come and settle in Scotland, and instruct the Scots in their respective kinds of work. The point touching foreigners was thus stated:――“If any stranger shall come or be brought into this kingdom by natives to set up work and teach his art in making cloth stuffs, stockings, or any other kind of manufacture, he shall enjoy the benefit of the law and all other privileges that a native does enjoy; with power to erect manufactories either in burgh or landward as they shall think fit: and there to dwell and exercise their trade without any stop or trouble.” The managers and heads of the company were enjoined to appoint an expert man to visit and examine the work, and to put a mark or seal upon it, distinguishing what was sufficient and what not. The Privy Council, or others whom the King might appoint, were empowered to do whatever was found to be hereafter necessary for promoting the manufactures.¹

¹ Ibid., Volume VII., pages 255, 261.

At the same time other Acts were passed with the aim of promoting home manufactures. The export of all kinds of hides, of woollen yarn, of raw and unwaxed cloth, excepting plaiding, all linen yarn, broken copper, brass or pewter, was prohibited under the penalty of confiscation of the goods. An Act was also passed in 1661, authorising and recommending the establishment of fishing companies for promoting the fishings. This Act contained many proposals and elaborate provisions for prosecuting the herring fishing and white fishing in the various seas, channels, firths, and lochs, “in his Majesty’s ancient kingdom of Scotland.” An Act for encouraging shipping and navigation was passed; and also an Act appointing a council of trade, which was empowered to do whatever was necessary for regulating, improving, and advancing of trade, navigation, and manufactures; and this was to endure until discharged by the King.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VII., pages 257, 259‒261, 273, 283.

In 1681, Parliament passed another Act for encouraging trade and manufactures, which embodied proposals that the Privy Council had issued by proclamation six months before, and ratified all former Acts for the encouragement of manufactures. The most remarkable part of the Act was the long list of articles and goods which were emphatically forbidden to be imported. All gold or silver thread, lace, fringes, or buttons of gold, and all gold or silver worn on clothes, or counterfeits of them, and all embroideries of silk for wearing clothes; all foreign linen, cambric, damask, ticking, and calico; all foreign silk or woollen stockings, silk lace, and gimp thread; all foreign shoes, boots, or slippers, gloves and clothes, and many other things, were forbidden to be imported under the penalties of being “burned and destroyed, and the importers or resetters fined in the value thereof.”¹ By such measures it was thought that more money would be retained at home, and thus enrich the nation. But it was soon discovered that the prohibited foreign goods quickly rose in price; and then the magistrates of Edinburgh were called before the Privy Council, and ordered to assemble the merchants of the city, and forbid them to take such exorbitant prices from the people for the prohibited goods, on the ground that there was no more to be imported into the kingdom. In fact, the prohibitive part of the Act was too extreme, and had to be relaxed.²

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VIII., page 348.

² Register of the Privy Council; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VIII., page 479.

About this time a company, including some of the Edinburgh merchants, was formed for starting a new work at Newmills. It was to be placed under the direction of James Stanfield, an Englishman, and a foreman and six sheermen were to be brought from England. The work was opened with two looms, which were soon increased to eight, and then to twenty-five; and in 1683 the work was still going on. They began by making white cloth, and next turned a number of their workers to coarse mixed cloth, and so on gradually to fine, “till now we are upon superfine cloths, and have brought the spinners and the best of the workers that length that we hope by May next to have superfine cloths as good as generally are made in England.” In the same place there was a manufactory of silk stockings in operation.¹ There was a small woollen manufactory in Leith; and in 1683, on a petition from the owners, the Privy Council extended to it the privileges of the Act for encouraging manufactures. It was reported that the partners of this undertaking were well skilled in their business, and that it――“can dye and mix wool and cloth; and can take in wool from the merchants and others, and does dye and mix it and deliver it in broadcloth; and has already made good broadcloth to many of the merchants of Edinburgh.”²

¹ Pamphlet on Woollen Manufactories, 1683.

² Register of the Privy Council.

Hitherto the dress of the royal army had been of a plain description, but it was now deemed necessary for the soldiers to have coloured coats, that they might be easily distinguished from other skulking and vagrant persons, who had before imitated the livery of the King’s troops. In 1684, the Newmills manufacturing company offered to furnish from their own works a suitable cloth of any dye that should be desired, as cheaply and promptly as could be done in England; and they offered to show samples and to give security for the fulfilment of the undertaking. But the Privy Council decided to use English cloth. In the beginning of the year 1685, the captain of the town-guard of Edinburgh was empowered to import three hundred yards of scarlet cloth, with trappings and other necessaries, for the clothing of his corps; and some of the other commanders of troops got similar licenses. At this the Newmills company were greatly offended, and petitioned that the importation of English cloth for the army should be stopped, as it could be supplied as good and as cheap from the home factory, and begged that a committee should be appointed to ascertain if this was the case. The petition was received, but nothing resulted from it. The company, however, had resolved to protect their privileges, and directly attacked five of the merchants of Edinburgh, who had been dealing in English cloth contrary to the law. Their complaint contained a minute enumeration of the goods and the quality of the cloth which each of the merchants had sold; and the offenders were many times called before the Privy Council, and failing to appear, they were held to be guilty, and therefore decreed to deliver up the prohibited goods to be burned according to law; while they had to recompense the King’s cash-keeper for the goods, “at the rate of twelve shillings sterling for each yard of cloth, and five shillings for each dozen of the prohibited stockings.”¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council; Chambers’ _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, Volume II., pages 419‒421. “It was not, after all, to be in this age that good woollen cloth was to be produced in our northern clime.” A writer, in 1697, says: “We have tried to make several things, and particularly hats and broadcloth, and yet we cannot make our ware so good as what we can have from abroad. Those who would propagate any new manufacture must lay their account to labour under several disadvantages at first.”――Husbandry Anatomised, Edinburgh, 1697.

From an early period linen cloth was made in Scotland, though for long the trade was on a very limited scale. Parliament enacted, in 1641, that linen at tenpence per yard or upwards should be a yard in breadth, and should be presented in the markets in folds, not in rolls. In 1661, the Act already noticed for establishing companies enumerated linen among the fabrics proposed to be encouraged, and enacted that all yarn must be sold by weight.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume V.; Volume VII., page 257.

But the commercial relations of England and Scotland were of the most unsatisfactory character. In all the trade and commercial legislation of the period it was the leading aim to prevent the importation of everything, which it was thought could be produced or made at home, as it was believed that this course was the only one which would enable the nation to become busy and rich. So in 1663, the Scotch Parliament imposed a scale of duties on all English goods which amounted to prohibition, with the natural result that the English also adopted prohibitory measures. The consequences were ruinous. A petition was presented to the Privy Council in 1684, complaining of the severe treatment which Scotsmen had received when selling their linen goods in England. It was stated that before there had been a free trade for Scotch linen in the South, but that latterly the men selling it in England had been apprehended, and whipped as criminals, and many of them obliged to give security that they would discontinue their traffic. It was affirmed that about twelve thousand persons were then employed at this branch of industry in Scotland; and therefore it was important, not merely to the workers, but also to the landlords and to the government, as every twelve hundred packs exported to England paid a custom of three pounds sterling. The Council recommended the Secretary of State to intercede with the King, that the Scotch merchants and others might have liberty to sell linen in England, without alluding to the fact that there was a Scotch Act which treated English woollen goods in the same exclusive spirit.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VII., pages 465, 466.

Another way of promoting the manufacture of, and trade in linen, was tried in Scotland, when Parliament in 1686 enacted that the bodies of all persons should be buried in plain linen only, spun and made within the kingdom, under a penalty of three hundred pounds Scots, if a nobleman. To render the Act effective, the relatives of deceased persons were enjoined, under severe penalties, to declare upon oath to their parish minister, within eight days of the funeral, that the law had been obeyed. Poor tenants and cottars in the country were exempted from the operation of the Act. This Act was repeated in 1693 and in 1695.

In the Act of 1693, it was enacted that all linen should be sold by weight. “And further, their Majesties, considering how much the uniform working and measuring of linen cloth may raise the value thereof with natives and foreigners, and render the trade more easy and acceptable to merchants: therefore, have enacted that all linen cloth made for export or for sale in the public markets of the kingdom, should be made exact to these two standards, namely, either of the breadth of three-quarters and two inches unbleached, or a large ell and 2 inches in breadth when bleached; and that no three-quarter cloth should contain above a thousand double threads of warp, and that all cloth above a thousand double threads of warp should be an ell and two inches broad unbleached, and a large ell bleached: that all linen cloth to be sold in the manner aforesaid should be made up in pieces and half-pieces as follows: All three-quarter broad in pieces containing eighteen ells, and half-pieces nine ells; and all ell-broad cloth in pieces containing twenty-four ells, and half-pieces twelve ells. That all such linen cloth should be equally and evenly wrought according to the due thickness and closeness of sufficient marketable cloth; and that all weavers should leave at the end of each piece three finger breadths of warp yarn unwefted to remain for thrumbs to each piece and half-piece, and that when they cut any web out of the loom they knit every fifty double threads together, for the more exact numbering of the warp threads of every web ... that the owner of all such linen cloth, before exposing it for sale, should be obliged to bring it to a royal borough where linen is usually sold, and there to receive the public seal and stamp of the borough upon both ends of each piece, which shall be a sufficient proof of the just length, breadth, and the quality of the working, and the proper thickness and closeness.”

Another Act was passed in 1693, prohibiting the export of lint, and permitting it to be imported free of duty. At the same time Parliament passed Acts granting the privilege of manufactories to Paul’s works at Edinburgh, and to the works at Leith, giving them power to incorporate themselves with all the rights usually accorded to manufactories. Yet another Act was passed in 1693, erecting the woollen manufactory of Newmills into a free incorporation; and another in favour of the manufacture of baizes, and for the encouragement of trade, in which it was stated that James Foulis, John Holland, William Graham, and other five merchants, had resolved to erect a manufactory for making the cloth, commonly called “Colchester Baizes,” and all other kinds of baizes. This, it was supposed, would consume the native wool which could not be otherwise profitably used. The company were granted all the privileges usually given to such undertakings; but if they failed to put the work in operation within two years, then the Act in their favour became null and void.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VIII., page 598; Volume IX., pages 311‒319, 461. Touching coffins, the Act of 1686 contained this provision, “that no wooden coffin shall exceed one hundred merks Scots as the highest rate for persons of the greatest quality, and so proportionally for persons of meaner quality, under the pain of two hundred merks Scots for each contravention.”

In May, 1694, an agreement was concluded between Nicolas Dupin, acting for a linen company in England, and the royal burghs and others in Scotland, for forming a company to carry on the manufacture of linen in the latter kingdom. It was arranged that the undertaking should be founded upon a capital of thirty thousand pounds, in five pound shares, which were to be equally divided between Englishmen and Scotsmen. The shares were to be paid in four instalments within four years. The work was referred to as established in 1696, and two years later the bleaching was executed at Corstorphine.¹

¹ Wodrow Pamphlets.

Prior to the seventeenth ♦century, all the soap used in Scotland was imported, chiefly from Flanders. It has been estimated that the whole annual consumption of this essentially necessary article only amounted to about 400,800 pounds, little more than a fraction of the quantity which is consumed at present. In 1619, the King granted a patent to Nathaniel Uddart, to endure for twenty-two years, for the manufacture of soap in Scotland. This man erected a soap-work at Leith, and furnished it with everything requisite for the business. But two years later he petitioned the Privy Council that the importation of foreign soap should be prohibited, and said that he was able to supply all that was necessary for the use of the people, and thus save money from being sent out of the kingdom. The Council made inquiries as to the quality of the soap which he produced, and having satisfied themselves that he could produce the necessary quantity, granted the prohibition which he desired. At the same time they fixed the maximum price of the native soap, which was to be £24 per barrel for green soap, and £32 for white, and each barrel to contain sixteen stones. But the production of soap had only been two years under protection when loud complaints arose amongst the people. It was said that the quality of the home-made soap was inferior, and the merchants bitterly complained that their traffic with the Low Countries was interrupted; while the merchants of Dumfries and other places grumbled because they were forced to carry soap all the way from Leith, when they could have it brought by ships to their doors. These parties presented their grievances to the Lords of Council, who again made inquiries, and concluded that Uddart’s privilege was hurtful to the nation, and that the people had not been so well supplied with the soap made by him as they had been formerly with foreign soap. The Council accordingly, in July 1623, declared that the prohibition should cease in a year or sooner, if he continued to produce an inferior or a dearer article.¹

♦ “centruy” replaced with “century”

¹ Register of the Privy Council.

Uddart seems to have retained his patent till the twenty-one years were nearly run; and in 1634, a new one, to commence on the close of the old, was granted by the King to his servant, Patrick Mauld of Panmure. The King’s letter is characteristic, and proceeded on this ground:――“that it is necessary for the good of his Majesty’s ancient kingdom that the people should be furnished with good soap, at a reasonable price within itself, and that soap-making is not a trade that can be communicated to all his subjects, and that the public would suffer if the same was left indifferently to all: while it is equally true, that such being the case, the choice of the person belongs to his Majesty as a part of his sovereign prerogative.” As Mauld had undertaken the work with the responsibility of continuing it, the King granted to him and his representatives, for twenty-one years, the sole licence within the kingdom of making soap for washing clothes, of all colours and qualities which they may think fit. If more soap was produced than was required for the people, the surplus might be exported; and Mauld might employ foreigners at his works, but they were forbidden to make soap for any other person. In connection with his patent, he got a licence to fish and trade in the seas of Greenland, and in the Isles, that he might provide his works with oils and other materials. The King also granted to him the sole right of making potash of all kinds: and for these privileges he was to pay an annual sum of twenty pounds sterling.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council.

In 1661, Parliament passed an Act for encouraging soap-works, which stated that such works had already been of advantage to the nation, and might be made of greater advantage: that the eastern and Greenland fishing would be greatly assisted by the importing of potash and other materials, and money brought into the kingdom by the exported soap made within the same. It was therefore enacted that oil, potash, and other materials imported for making soap, should be free of all custom; and that any soap produced in the kingdom might be exported duty free for nineteen years from the date of the erection of the works where it was produced.¹ Before the end of the century there were several soap-works in operation.

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VII., page 203.

Another product of skill and industry associated with refinement, glass-making, was attempted. In 1610, a patent was granted for the erection of a glass-work in Scotland, which was begun in Wemyss, in Fife, under the direction of Sir John Hay, who, it is also reported, had originated an ironwork. But in 1619, he informed the Privy Council that his works had not proved remunerative; and it was then requested that the King should allow the glass made by Hay to be sold unrestrictedly in England, while the export of coal into that country should be prohibited; and if this were done he had some hope of prospering. However, it appears the work was continued, as the Privy Council, in 1621, appointed a commission to examine and try the quality of the glass, to see that measures were adopted for the full supply of the country with glass, and thus save the importation of foreign glass. They soon reported that the Wemyss glass work was in a satisfactory condition. The cradles contained fifteen wisps, and each wisp had three tables, three quarters of a yard and a little more in depth. The glass was reported to be fully as good as Danskine glass, though they would have been better pleased if it had been a little thicker and tougher. Touching the quality of the drinking glasses produced, the commissioners were more doubtful, and recommended patterns of English glass for comparing and trying the quality of the Scotch ones in future. Upon this report the Council granted the desired monopoly against foreign glass-makers, but under conditions limiting the price of broad glass to twenty pounds per cradle.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council; Chambers’ _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, Volume I., pages 506, 507.

Before the end of the century several glass-works were established. There was one in Leith which made bottles and apothecary glasses; and in the year 1689, it was stated that this work produced a greater quantity of wares in four months than had been sold in the country for a whole year, and at as low prices as any similar articles from London and Newcastle. So the Privy Council granted it the privileges of a manufactory, and prohibited the importation of foreign bottles, provided that the Leith company should not charge more than two shillings and sixpence per dozen bottles. In the beginning of the year 1690, the owners of the Leith glass works complained that the work at Newcastle, and the English, had sent large quantities of glass and bottles into Scotland, “which was likely to over-stock the whole country.” On their petition, the Privy Council empowered the Leith glass company to employ officers to seize all such English bottles and bring them in for his Majesty’s use. The laird of Prestongrange proposed to build a glass-work on his own estate, at a place called Newhaven, “for making all kinds of glass, as bottles, vials, drinking glasses, window and mirror glasses.” He had arranged with foreigners for carrying on the work, and everything looked encouraging; and in 1697, the Privy Council granted to his proposed work the privileges accorded by Act of Parliament to manufactories. About the end of the century, a proposal was made by James Montgomery, a merchant in Glasgow, to erect a glass-work there, and the Council granted him the usual privileges.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council.

Connected with the department for preparing the glass intended for mirrors, there was a refugee Frenchman, called Leblane, who had married a Scotch woman, and became a burgess of guild in Edinburgh. His special branch of work was to polish the glass used for making mirrors, an art never before practiced in Scotland. He carried on his business in a workshop in the Canongate; and the mirrors which he was commissioned to make often required mouldings and head-pieces of wood, and sometimes tables, drawers, and stands, corresponding to the glass, for completing a set. Leblane offered to employ the wrights of the Canongate to execute the woodwork which he required, but they told him that they could not do it; he was therefore forced to employ some of the wrights of Edinburgh. This, however, caused the Canongate wrights to complain that their rights were encroached upon, and his work was likely to be much impeded; but he petitioned the Privy Council, and got permission to provide the upholstery work connected with his mirrors on the simple principle of his making a first offer of it to the wrights of the Canongate.

It seems that until about the beginning of the eighteenth century there was no regular work for making earthenware in Scotland. The articles of this description in use among the people were imported. In 1703, William Montgomery, of Mackbiehill, and George Sim, a merchant of Edinburgh, made arrangements for erecting a pothouse, for making porcelain and earthenware; and had engaged foreign operatives to secure the successful execution of the work. For the encouragement of the enterprise Parliament granted to them an exclusive right of production for fifteen years.¹ It was stated in the Act that the projectors of the work “were to bring home workmen upon their own charges, until those of this nation be instructed and capable in the said trade, provided they be allowed such privileges and encouragement for such a number of years as the hazard of a project new in itself, and liable and subject to many miscarriages and accidents in the beginning, and the uncertainty whether when the same is erected, the clay of the country will prove so good and sufficient as to warrant us to proceed therein.”

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume XI.

Paper is associated with the diffusion of knowledge and the progress of civilisation in many ways; and the first attempts to manufacture it in Scotland are full of interest. The trade of collecting rags in connection with the sale of earthenware, and the production of paper, became an important branch of industry; in fact, the value of rags as material for the manufacture of paper could not be easily estimated. Recently the difficulty of obtaining sufficient raw material for making the enormous quantities, and the different kinds and qualities of paper, have been greatly increased, and have taxed the ingenuity of able and energetic men.

In 1590, there was a proposal made to erect a paper manufactory in Scotland. The Privy Council granted the projected work an exclusive right of making paper for nineteen years. But it does not appear that this design, which was originated by a German and others associated with him, proved successful; and we find no more attempts to produce paper at home till 1675, when a paper work was erected at Darly Mills, on the Water of Leith. French workmen were employed to instruct the Scots; and in 1679, the owners of the work reported that they were able to produce “gray and blue paper much finer than ever was done before in this kingdom.” At this time, Alexander Deas, a merchant, and one of the proprietors, presented a petition to the Council stating that the work not only supplied good paper, but also promised a general benefit to the community from the utilisation of rags, which before were not turned to use, and in gathering of which many poor people could make a living; while in the work itself, many Scotsmen and boys were employed, and many more might be instructed in the art of making paper. But in order that the rags might be fully available, it was necessary to suppress the custom of using fine rags for wicks to candles; and it was therefore agreed that cotton wicks should be substituted, which, though dearer, gave a much better light. The Privy Council acceded to their request, and prohibited the candlemakers from using clouts and rags for the wicks of candles.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council. Chambers gives it as his opinion, that this paper mill was not continued, and that paper-making was not successfully established in Scotland till the middle of the eighteenth ♦century. _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, Volume II., page 395.

♦ “ceetury” replaced with “century”

Mr. Dupin, who was connected with paper works in England and in Ireland, proposed to establish one in Scotland in 1693. In that year, he and his partners applied to the Privy Council for permission to erect and carry on a paper work; and stated that he had attained “to the art of making all kinds of paper moulds as good, or better than any made beyond seas, and at a far cheaper rate, inasmuch that one man can make and finish more moulds in one week than any workman of other nations finish in two months’ time. Moreover, whereas large timber is scarce in this kingdom, I and my men have arts to make the greatest mortar and vessel for making up of paper without timber; and we have also provided several ingenious outlandish workmen to work and to teach their art in this kingdom.” The Council granted them liberty to erect paper mills in Scotland, “without hindering any other persons who were already set up.” They also received permission to put the national arms upon the paper produced at their mills. In 1695, Parliament sanctioned this enterprise as a joint-stock company, and ordered that a charter of incorporation should be granted to them for their security and encouragement, under the name of “The Scots White Paper Manufactory,” “for the making of all kinds of writing and printing white paper, throughout this kingdom,” with all the privileges usually accorded by Acts of Parliament for encouraging manufactories. In 1697, the work was going on and producing “good white paper, and only needing a little more encouragement to be an advantage to the whole kingdom.” Upon the petition of the papermakers, the Privy Council again commanded that the candlemakers should not use rags for making wicks.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council; _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume IX., page 429. Touching the paper company, the Act of Parliament stated:――“It being found that the water and air in several parts of the kingdom are very fit, and may contribute much to the success of such work ... and that the several attempts that have hitherto been made for rendering such work effective may have failed because such an undertaking could not be otherwise managed than by a society and incorporation, and required a general joint-stock to set up and carry on the same.”

The beginning of a smaller and less necessary branch of industry has to be noticed, though subsequently it was developed into a great trade in the chief city of the west of Scotland, and brought fortunes and wealth to many individuals. Tobacco was first brought into Britain in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The antipathy of James VI. to tobacco is well known, and he forbade its importation into Scotland; but his decree was much evaded, and it soon became an article of common merchandise in the country. A duty of one shilling and eightpence sterling was then imposed on it, but this only led to smuggling to evade the tax; and in 1622, the Council passed an Act prohibiting the importation of tobacco, under the penalty of confiscation. The same year, however, the Council passed an Act explaining that the King did not mean to deprive his subjects of the orderly sale and moderate use of tobacco, but only to prevent the abuse and excessive use of it; and a proclamation was emitted, intimating that the prohibition to import it only applied to those who did not hold a licence. In 1634, another attempt was made to put the sale of tobacco under a wholesome restriction. Two men were appointed to sell licences to retailers of tobacco, and to account to the royal revenue for the proceeds as might be arranged between the parties, but this arrangement could hardly be carried out. In 1671, Sir John Nicolson of Nicolson was allowed by the government to impose a tax upon tobacco; but in 1673, it was stated in an Act of Parliament, that the tax was injuring the trade of tobacco, and therefore Sir John’s privilege was terminated, and tobacco was to be henceforth free of any duty, except the ordinary custom and excise. In accord with the prevailing commercial ideas of the time, in 1661, a tax was imposed on all tobacco pipes imported into the kingdom. The Act on the tobacco pipes contained the following:――“It being represented to his Majesty that tobacco pipes can be made and sold at home at a far easier rate than they can when brought from abroad: therefore, to keep money at home, and give tradesmen work, and for the encouragement and good of all who are skilful in making of tobacco pipes, his Majesty does impose upon the gross of all tobacco pipes imported, eight shillings Scots ... and does prohibit any merchant, importer, or maker of pipes, to charge more than eighteen shillings Scots for the gross of any pipes, whether they be made within or without the country.”¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VII., page 65; Volume VIII., page 212.

In 1674, Andrew M‘Kairter presented a petition to the Privy Council, stating that when the insurrection of 1666 broke out, being then a youth at school, he joined the insurgents; and after the suppression of the rising, “out of a childish fear he did run away to Newcastle;” and having there, in London, and in Holland, served a long apprenticeship in spinning tobacco, and having now returned to his native land, he had set up this trade at Leith. He now desired to make his peace with the government, by signing the bond required by the law; and the Council granted his request, and he became one of the earliest tobacco spinners in Leith.

The state of the coinage often engaged the attention of parliament and the Privy Council in the seventeenth century, and for this period the records of it are pretty complete. But no radical change occurred in the coinage till the introduction of banking at the end of the century, and only points of general interest demand notice.

In November, 1604, the government ordered gold to be coined of the fineness of twenty-two carats, and the silver of eleven deniers. Five kinds of gold coins were to be struck――the unit or twelve pounds Scots piece, the double crown or six pounds Scots piece, the Britain crown or three pounds Scots piece, the thistle crown, forty-eight shillings Scots, and the half-crown, thirty shillings Scots. Out of every 20 pounds of gold coined, one pound at least was to be issued in the smaller gold pieces, and the types of the coins are minutely described in the records. The silver coinage was to be issued in seven pieces――the crown or three pounds Scots, half-crown, shilling, sixpence, twopence, penny, and half-penny pieces. This series of coins, which were minted between the beginning of the year 1605 and 1610, were exactly the same both in England and in Scotland, except the mint-mark and the difference in workmanship; and they were authorised to pass current throughout Great Britain.¹

¹ R. W. Cochran Patrick, Records of the Coinage of Scotland, Volume I., pages 164, 165, Introduction; Lindsay’s _View of the Coinage of Scotland_, Supplement, page 60. In July, 1604, Alexander Reid, a cutler in Edinburgh, was tried for false coining. It seems that he was employed in the mint, and had got hold of some false blanks, which he stamped with the true dies of the merk piece; and for this crime he was hanged. Birrel’s Diary; Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, Volume II., page 399.

By a proclamation in November, 1611, all the gold coins were raised about one-tenth in value, and all the former acts against exporting coin were renewed. The Privy Council ordered that a table of the prices for gold of every standard should be prepared and placed in some public part of the coining-house. Foreign money was only to be received as bullion; and in December the same year, the Council prohibited the circulation of foreign coin, and ordered it to be brought to the mint, where it would be paid for at the settled rates.

The want of small money was still felt in Scotland, and in 1614, a new coinage of copper was authorised. Four hundred stone weight of copper was directed to be coined into twopenny and penny pieces. The same year the Council renewed all the former acts for bringing in bullion, and especially an act of the reign of James IV. In 1619, the circulation of all foreign coins was again prohibited, and they were ordered to be brought to the mint, and paid for as bullion at the rate of £39 3 shilling 5 pence for every ounce of twenty-two carat gold, and £2 18 shilling 10½ pence for every ounce of fine silver. It was again declared illegal to export any coin.

In 1623, a new coinage of copper was ordered. Five hundred stone weight of copper was to be minted in twopenny and penny pieces. The acts against exporting money were re-enacted in 1625, and at the same time, commissioners were appointed to consider the best means of raising the value of the money. They held several meetings, but in June, 1627, it was resolved not to raise the course of the money, or restrain the course of foreign dollars, till a more fitting opportunity. In April, 1629, another copper coinage was authorised, similar to that of 1623. From this time to 1636, various proposals and changes concerning the coinage were presented and discussed among the public bodies of the kingdom, relating chiefly to the currency of foreign coins, but they were not of sufficient importance to justify entering into details. A new copper coinage was issued in 1632, consisting of one thousand five hundred stone weight of copper, in pieces the same as the preceding ones; and in 1634, another of the same quantity of copper.¹

¹ Records of the Coinage of Scotland, Cochran Patrick, Volume I., Introduction, pages 166‒169, 235‒237, 241; Volume II., pages 3, 11, 13, 18, 21, 23, 32‒37, 75, 80‒102, 108, 116.

The use of a mill was introduced in minting the silver coinage in 1637; the former method of coining by the hammer had continued for a long time in Scotland. In January, 1637, the Council gave permission to Briot, the master coiner, to make a trial of his mill and press till the Whitsunday following, and this was extended from time to time, till the use of the hammer in coining was tacitly and finally relinquished.

“The method of coining by the mill and press was more efficient and quicker than by the hammer.¹ The metal having been prepared in much the same way as formerly, the flang was placed between the puncheons, the bar of the press turned, and the impression given at once.... The irons were prepared by the graver of the Mint, who engraved the portrait of the sovereign in relief, and from this the dies for striking the money were struck. The dies from which the reverses and the legends were struck were also furnished by the chief graver.”²

¹ “In the Scottish Mint, as everywhere else, money was first struck with the hammer. The method of proceeding was as follows:――The gold and silver having been brought to the required standard, was put into heated crucibles of earth, shaped like inverted cones, and placed in a furnace. These furnaces were of two kinds, differing in their construction ――the one generally used for gold, and the other for silver. Whenever the metal was melted throughout, it was run into moulds and cast into bars. These bars were again re-heated, and afterwards lengthened by beating on an anvil. They were then cut into pieces about the thickness of the coins required, and adjusted to the proper weight by cutting with shears. The pieces were then taken up together with pincers, and while held tightly on an anvil, beaten with a hammer all round, to blunt and soften down the marks left by the shears on the edges. The pieces thus prepared were known as the flangs, and were now ready for bleaching. This was done by again beating them, shaking them in a copper sieve, and afterwards throwing them into boiling water mixed with common salt and the ashes of the burnt lees of wine, in which they were boiled till quite bright, and then again thrown on the copper sieve and dried with rubbers.

“After this the flangs were distributed to the moneiers to have the impression put on them. Each moneier had two irons or puncheons, one of which was called the ‘pile,’ and the other the ‘trussel.’ The pile was from seven to eight inches long, and was firmly fixed in a block of wood. On the pile was engraved one side of the coin, and on the trussel the other. The flang being placed on the pile, the trussel was applied to the upper side of it by means of a twister wand, or by the hand, and the moneier then struck the end of the puncheon with a hammer until the impression was produced on the flang.

“The legend was put on by means of small puncheons bearing the necessary letters. The coining irons and the ‘letters of graving’ were always destroyed or defaced when the type of the coinage was changed, and when in use were placed in the custody of the warden, one of the responsible officials of the Mint.”――Records of the Coinage of Scotland, Cochran Patrick, Introduction, pages 48‒50.

² Records of the Coinage of Scotland, Cochran Patrick, Introduction, page 52. In 1649, there is a minute inventory of the machinery, the tools, and the furnishings, then in the Scottish Mint. Out of many things enumerated we may notice that there were “a great iron mill, a justing mill with four wheels, and a complete hand mill, three complete spring presses, and two furnaces with their iron work.”

“A further improvement was made in the fabrication of the money by the introduction on the coinage of ‘James VII.,’ of marking the edges either with lettering or milling, This was done by a machine which was originally the invention of M. Casting of the Mint of Paris.... A thin piece of steel was firmly screwed upon a flat plate of copper fixed in a stout wooden frame. This steel bore on one edge half of the legend or marking. Another piece of steel, having on its edge the remainder of the legend or marking, fixed on the copper plate, so that the flang, being placed between them, was touched on each side by the marked edges of the steel bands. This second steel was moved by a mechanical arrangement of a wheel and handle, and the revolving flang received at once the milling or inscription.”――Records of the Coinage of Scotland, Cochran Patrick, Volume I., Introduction, page 55.

There were many complaints as to the scarcity of money, and at length it seems that inconvenient evils had arisen from the large quantity of small copper coins in circulation. The state of the copper money engaged the attention of parliament in 1639 and 1641, and its importation was prohibited under the penalty of death. In 1642, the Council specified the foreign coins which should be current, and fixed the rex dollar of 15 drops at fifty-four shillings. But in 1645, parliament raised the value of the money, and fixed the rex dollar at fifty-eight shillings.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume V., pages 260, 261, 283, 284, 450; Volume VI., page 197. In the end of the year 1652, a committee of the English Parliament met with deputies from Scotland to confer touching the coinage, but nothing of much importance was done. The Scotch deputies complained of the great scarcity of money in the country, and it was proposed to issue £5000 worth of bodies for Scotland, but the English Council thought nothing was required.――Records of the Coinage of Scotland, Cochran Patrick, Volume II., pages 133‒135.

In December, 1660, Charles Maitland, of Halton, was appointed general of the Mint; and on the 12th of June, 1661, parliament adopted a revised and exhaustive scale for collecting bullion. An alphabet or table stating the exact quantities of bullion to be imposed on all kinds of goods, and payable to the Mint, by all merchants and parties who exported these goods, was ordered by parliament to be printed and published, and to be in force from the date of its publication. This mode of collecting bullion had for long been in operation in Scotland, but it had never before been so completely systematised and extended. As this alphabet of charges is highly interesting from a commercial point of view, as well as in relation to the Mint, I shall go over a few of the articles under each letter, noting the quantity of goods of different kinds. For each barrel of whisky containing ten gallons, there were enacted two ounces of silver; every two bolls of apples, two ounces; each tun of drinking beer, four ounces; every four chalders of coal, two ounces; each gross of drinking-glasses, one ounce; every five thousand red herring, two ounces; every three hundred hart horns, two ounces; every two thousand oxen horns, two ounces; every five thousand sheep horns, two ounces; every twenty planks, two ounces; every four bolls and a half of malt, two ounces; each gross of night-caps, one ounce; each dozen of masts of all kinds, two ounce; every three oxen, two ounces; every twenty thousand oysters, one ounce; every forty reams of paper, two ounces; every hundred yards of plaiding, two ounces; every three barrels of salmon, two ounces; every twenty sheep, two ounces; and every six stones of wool, two ounces. Under the head of skins, there is a pretty large number of kinds mentioned. Altogether the alphabet of bullion occupies three double-column pages of a large volume of the Scots Acts.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VII., pages 250‒254.

A copper coinage was authorised by parliament on the 12th of June, 1661, consisting of three thousand stones of copper. It was directed to be coined into pieces called turners, each weighing one drop and a half, allowing four grains more or less for remedy. Two thousand stones were to be coined within three years, and the remainder when the Privy Council thought fit. After the issue of this coinage, the Council was enjoined not only to prohibit the importation of foreign copper coin, but also its circulation. A stock of twenty thousand merks Scots was to be provided for the Mint; and any gold or silver found in Scotland was to be taken to the coining-house, and paid for at the rate of one ounce of coined gold of 22 carat for the ounce of bullion of 24 carat; and similarly, the ounce of silver of 12 denier was to be paid by an ounce of minted silver coin. A coinage of silver was also authorised, consisting of a four merk piece, two merk piece, one merk piece, a half merk piece, and a piece of the value of forty pennies――all Scots money. The Privy Council was empowered to fix the type and legends of these coins.¹ There were other coinages of this reign, but none of them call for special remark.

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume VII., pages 233, 254‒255.

During this period, however, the Mint, like every other branch of the government in Scotland, had fallen into a deplorable state. From various papers still preserved, it appears that the standard of the money had been depreciated, that more copper had been coined than was warranted, that some of the officials of the Mint had appropriated to themselves money to which they had no right, and that the salaries of some of the officers had been drawn though their posts had been vacant for years. In 1862, a commission investigated the matter, and disclosed the above state of affairs. The heads of the Mint, Lord Halton, Sir John Falconer, Alexander Maitland, and Archibald Falconer, were removed from their posts and from all places of public trust, and the Lord-Advocate ordered to prosecute them.¹

¹ Records of the Coinage of Scotland, Cochran Patrick, Volume II., pages 182, 199, 171‒172.

Parliament passed a long act concerning the coinage in 1686. To encourage the importation of bullion, it was enacted that in future anyone bringing to the Mint bullion of the standard fineness should receive for it from the officers of the Mint the same weight in current coin of the realm, without any charge for coining. For doing this, and for defraying the expenses of the Mint, certain taxes were to be imposed upon various imported goods and articles. A clerk was to be appointed, who should keep a record on parchment books of the quantities of bullion given in by the merchants, “which record shall be open for the inspection of anyone who requires the same, under the penalty of deprivation;” he had also to keep an accurate record of the amount of money coined, “that it may be known what quantities of silver have passed his Majesty’s irons from time to time.” The act fixed the salaries of the officials and officers of the Mint, and a sum of £1100 was allowed for maintaining the fabric of the establishment, and providing new tools and incidental charges.

The kinds of current silver coins were stated to be the sixty, forty, twenty, ten, and five shillings Scots pieces; and the weight of each was minutely stated. It was expressly required by the act that the sixty and forty shilling pieces should be lettered round the edges, and the edges of the other three pieces grained. The Privy Council were empowered to cognise and consider the gold coins, and to regulate and determine the fineness and the weight, and the type of the coins, when the King should think fit to grant a warrant for a gold coinage; no copper was to be coined without the King’s express warrant, and when it was issued it was to be in sixpenny and twopenny pieces.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, VIII., pages 603‒608.

In 1690, the government of Scotland received a warrant from the King authorising the coining of the current pieces of silver, and ordering that the provisions of the act of 1686 should be put into operation. The same year, parliament sanctioned a copper coinage, not exceeding three thousand stones, and to be spread over six years. In 1693, a change in the rate of money was proposed, and accepted by the King, and a general rise of about ten per cent, was proclaimed on the money then current. But the next year, the Scots silver pieces of sixty, forty, twenty, ten, and five shillings, were reduced to the values which were current in 1686. On the 10th of December, 1695, sixty stones of silver were ordered to be coined and issued in forty shilling pieces, and one hundred and twenty stones in twenty, ten, and five shilling pieces.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IX.; _Records of the Coinage of Scotland_, Cochran Patrick, Volume II., page 253.

On the 6th of October, 1696, parliament passed an act authorising a copper coinage, not exceeding three thousand stones in the space of six years, of which two parts were to be coined in twopenny pieces, and a third in sixpenny pieces. At the same time an act was passed against false coiners. At the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, counterfeit coining had become a common crime. In 1704, a batch of false coiners was discovered, and the authorities proceeded vigorously to prosecute them.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume X., page 12, Appendix, pages 53, 55, 79.

By a proclamation emitted in May, 1697, the importation of foreign copper coin or base money was prohibited, under a penalty of ten pounds; but in December another proclamation legalised the currency of the French three-sous piece at three shillings Scots, and the French crown at fifty-eight shillings Scots, and raised the forty-pence piece to three shillings and sixpence Scots.

At the Union it was agreed that the coin should be of the same standard and value throughout the United Kingdom. Accordingly, in 1707, arrangements were made for changing the Scotch coinage into English; and all the English, Scotch, and the foreign money was called in and reminted, and reissued as the coinage of Great Britain. In April, 1708, the Scottish coins were finally called in, and preparations made for carrying out the recoinage exactly on the methods of the English Mint.¹ Thus one of the beneficial results of the Union was soon obtained; since, commercially, the great advantage and the convenience of having one coinage, and only one standard of money for the whole Island, is too obvious to need illustration.

¹ Register of the Privy Council; _Records of the Coinage of Scotland_, Cochran Patrick, Volume II., pages 271‒272. Mr. Cochran Patrick’s Records of the Coinage of Scotland, often referred to in the preceding pages, was published in 1876, and is a very valuable work. The introduction to the records and the documents relating to the coinage, and to the mints of Scotland, is all that could be desired; while the method of arranging the records for easy consulting and reference is admirable. Altogether the work is a monument of research and industry.

The establishment of a bank in Scotland was a sign of the growing commercial spirit of the nation, which was manifesting itself in various directions. In Scotland, as in England, till towards the close of the seventeenth century, exchanges and other monetary transactions had been wholly in the hands of a few leading merchants; as in the back-room of a clothier in the High Street of Edinburgh, or the counting-room in the Saltmarket of Glasgow.¹ The scheme of the first Scotch bank, as drawn in an act of parliament in 1695, was limited and prudential in a high degree, and founded upon the joint-stock principle. It was to begin with a subscribed capital of £1,200, 000 Scots, or £100,000 sterling, in shares of one thousand pounds Scots, of which no one was to have more than twenty; two-thirds of the capital was to be subscribed by persons residing in Scotland, and one-third by individuals in England or elsewhere. The company was to be placed under the direction of a governor, a deputy-governor, and twenty-four directors, who were to have the sole management of the bank. At the beginning it was thought best that twelve of the directors should be Englishmen, as it was assumed that they were better acquainted with the business of banking than the Scots. The names of the original proprietors of the bank are preserved in the act of parliament which sanctioned its establishment; and among them were Mr. Holland, and six London merchants, and six Edinburgh merchants. Mr. Holland came down to Edinburgh and resided there for some time, superintending the proceedings of the bank; and he found that the Scots were rather ignorant about banking matters. But the bank prospered, and in a few months after it was opened, it had attained a wonderful degree of credit. Shortly after the bank was fairly put in operation, by the common consent of the company, the whole of the directors were elected by the Scotch shareholders, the English ones being left to act as trustees, and to manage what business the bank might have in London. At length, when there were no longer thirteen proprietors of the bank in England, this arrangement also was relinquished.²

¹ The dates at which banks were established in the countries of Europe are as follows:――In Venice, 1157; in Geneva, 1345; in Barcelona, 1401; in Genoa, 1407; in Amsterdam, 1407; in Hamburg, 1619; in Rotterdam, 1635; in Stockholm, 1688; in England, 1694; in Copenhagen, 1736; in Berlin, 1764; in St. Petersburg, 1786.

² Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IX., pages 494‒497; Account of the Bank of Scotland, 1728.

At first the chief business of the bank consisted in lending money on heritable bonds and other securities. The giving of bills of exchange was next tried, with the object of extending the advantages of the bank as much as possible; and with the same aim, to carry the circulation of their notes throughout the country, branch-offices were opened in Glasgow, Montrose, Dundee, and Aberdeen, for receiving money and paying money in the form of inland exchange, by notes and bills prepared for the purpose. But after a trial of this branch business, the directors came to the conclusion “that the exchange trade was not proper for a banking company; a bank, they thought, should be chiefly designed as a common repository of the nation’s cash, a ready fund for affording credit and loans, and for making receipts and payments of money easy, by the company’s notes. To deal in exchange interfered with the trade and the business of private merchants, and the Bank of Scotland had found it very troublesome, unsafe, and improper.” After a short trial, it was also found that the bank could not continue the four branch-offices, except at a loss far exceeding any advantage which could be derived from them; and after spending a considerable sum on these branches, the directors felt obliged to relinquish them, and recall their money to Edinburgh. For many years the business of the bank was entirely limited to lending money.¹

¹ Account of the Bank of Scotland, page 6.

Touching the paper currency then introduced, the Bank of Scotland issued from the first, five, ten, twenty, fifty, and hundred pound notes. It was not till the year 1699 that the bank began to issue one pound notes, which have ever since been a special and an important feature of Scottish banking, and of the circulating medium of the country. These twenty shilling notes soon got into circulation in Edinburgh, and in some other parts of the kingdom, but some time elapsed before they obtained a ready and general currency in the markets of the country, for among the common people of that day nothing answered so well as silver money: gold was then little used among them.¹ The one pound notes, however, it is well known, became and have long continued great favourites among the Scots; indeed, they have as much confidence in the paper notes of the old banks as they have in gold or in silver money.

¹ Ibid.

Having presented the foregoing details of the rise of the industrial arts, and noted the difficulties in the way of their progress, and indicated that there was a growing spirit in the nation towards trade and commercial enterprise, it seems requisite to adduce further evidence of the strength and generality of this spirit, which was vigorously struggling to find new means of outlet. Thus the consecutive and rapid progress of industry, trade, and commerce which subsequently ensued in Scotland will be better appreciated and easier understood, when it has been shown to flow from a natural succession of causes. Let us, therefore, briefly notice some of the numerous projects and trade adventures which were originated or proposed in the closing years of the seventeenth century, and the opening years of the eighteenth.

A sugar work was erected in Glasgow in 1667, and a second in 1683――the only ones in the kingdom. In 1696, parliament passed an act authorising Hugh and James Montgomery, merchants in Glasgow, and others whom they might assume, to form a company and erect a sugar work at Glasgow. They were granted all the privileges accorded to manufactories for a period of nineteen years, under the name of “The New Sugar Manufactory at Glasgow.” William Corse, a merchant in Glasgow, in 1700, proposed to establish a similar work, and petitioned Parliament for the same privileges as the other sugar works. In 1701, Matthew and Daniel Campbell, merchants in Glasgow, proposed to erect another sugar work; and in connection with it, a work for distilling brandy and other kinds of spirits from malt produced within the kingdom. They undertook to produce as good liquor “as any that is imported from France;” and, besides, a distillery, they said, could not fail “to be exceedingly profitable both for the consumption of malt, a native product, and for the convenience of the country, and especially for foreign trade on the coasts of Guinea and America, seeing that no trade can be managed to these places or to the East Indies without great quantities of such liquors.”¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume X., page 66, pages 52, 67, Appendix; Register of the Privy Council.

In 1695, parliament passed many acts for the encouragement and authorisation of trade enterprises. Patrick Houston and his partners were granted the privileges of a manufactory for a rope-work in Glasgow. This company was founded upon a stock of forty thousand pounds Scots, and they proposed to introduce foreign workmen to instruct the natives. A company, chiefly composed of Glasgow merchants, with Dunlop, the Principal of the University, was formed in 1699, for carrying on the woollen manufacture there. They proposed to produce all kinds of woollen goods, damasks, half-silks, tartans, crapes, russets, and other stuffs for apparel either for summer or winter. The following year, William Marshall, William Gray, and two other merchants of Glasgow, proposed to erect a work for making pins and needles, boxes, shears, scythes, knives, and other kinds of hardware; and the Privy Council granted them the privileges of a manufactory. The same year, James and William Walkinshaw, and other merchants in Glasgow, proposed to erect a manufactory for cordage, canvas, and other requisites for shipping, and petitioned Parliament for the usual privileges.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IX.; Volume X., pages 146, 154, 231; Register of the Privy Council.

In 1695, the Estates passed an Act in favour of William Scot and his partners, for erecting a sawmill at Leith. It was stated that such a mill established at so convenient a port would be a great advantage to the nation, because there oak trees and all kinds of wood might be landed from abroad, for building ships and other great works in the kingdom, which before could not be done for want of skill in sawing wood. Another act authorised the erection of windmills for sawing all kinds of wood. Alexander Fearn, an engraver in Edinburgh, was granted the privileges of a manufactory for the practice of his art. It was stated that he had employed himself from his infancy in learning his art, “until by the blessing of God on his faithful endeavours, he has attained to such perfection in this art, once much admired and encouraged, that he can undertake to serve the people in that point of the art called sinking of seals in gold, silver, or steel, either cutting coats of arms, ciphering names, or other devices such as parties may order him to perform for them; and particularly that point of the art which is yet more singular――cutting or sinking the exact effigies of any person who pleases to sit three hours; and thus the people may be served with this kind of work as good, and as cheap, and much easier than when they were obliged to employ foreigners; and all the money that used to be spent on that account may be kept in the country.” In 1693, parliament passed an act in favour of William Scot, cabinetmaker, who proposed to build a manufactory for making coaches, chariots, harness, and other things belonging to that business, and also for grinding glasses of all kinds. He promised to bring home and employ foreign workmen, until the Scots themselves were instructed and capable of working at this trade. On these terms the usual privileges of a manufactory were granted to him. In 1695, parliament confirmed two former acts of the Privy Council, in favour of James Turner, a cabinetmaker and mirror-glass maker. The wrights of Edinburgh thought that Turner was encroaching upon their trade, and seized his tools and materials, and otherwise annoyed him; and Parliament therefore commanded that James Turner “should have the full and free liberty to exercise his calling and his art and trade within the burgh of Edinburgh in all time coming;” and forbade the deacons of crafts or their officers, or anyone else, to interfere with him and his work.¹ At the same time parliament passed an act in favour of John Holmes, Thomas Fershman, and William Park, combmakers in Leith. They, having formed a joint-stock company, were empowered to make all kinds of combs, and accorded the privileges of a manufactory. It was stated in the act that they had been practising this trade for several years, and successfully teaching apprentices; and that they were even then able to supply the whole kingdom with combs, at a cheaper rate than they could be imported.

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IX., pages 490‒491, 321, 523.

James Lyell, of Garden, in 1695, obtained the privileges of a manufactory to make oil from lint seed and rape seed; and also for an establishment for preparing hare and rabbit skins and making hats. The same year, liberty was granted to erect a manufactory for making gun-powder and alum, and it was stated that there was no powder-mill in the kingdom, and that there had never been a work for making alum in Scotland. In 1698, a company was formed for casting shot, which obtained the usual privileges of a manufactory for nineteen years.

In 1697, James Ormiston and William Elliot, merchants, proposed to erect a work for winding, throwing, twisting, and dyeing all kinds of raw silk. They thought that the undertaking would prove to be beneficial to the nation, as this branch being the groundwork for all other silk manufactures would diminish the foreign import, and make the balance of trade much more favourable: “and also in time be the means of opening a trade directly from Scotland to Turkey, which is one of the most profitable and enriching known, and further tends to advance other manufactories which are dependent on it, such as buttons, silk stockings, and the like.” The Privy Council granted the usual privileges. In 1698, a number of men in Aberdeen petitioned the Privy Council for permission to erect a woollen manufactory, which was also granted. A cloth manufactory was in full operation at Gordon’s Mills, in the vicinity of Aberdeen, in 1703, and it was recorded that it was producing broadcloths, druggets, and goods of other kinds, such as half-silks, serges, damasks, and plush made of wool, “which looks nearly as fine as that made of hair.”¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume IX., pages 419‒420; Volume X., pages 22‒23, Appendix.

In these years also it is very remarkable that almost every seaport of any consequence in Scotland applied to parliament for permission to impose a tax for the purpose of building new harbours or improving the ones which they already possessed. At the same time the weekly, quarterly, half-yearly, and yearly markets, greatly increased all over the kingdom. Thus it is pretty evident that the energy which projected the colony of Caledonia-Darien was only a symptom of the awakening spirit of the nation, which was seeking vent in trading pursuits and in new commercial enterprises.

At the same period various notices of inventions for draining mines and other purposes occur in the records. In 1684, James Young, a writer in Edinburgh, represented to the Privy Council that after much labour and expense he had completed an engine for writing “whereby five copies can be had at once,” and he requested an exclusive right of making it, and the Council granted this for nine years. The next year he came before the Council as the inventor of a new lock, which was minutely described in the record, and an exclusive privilege of making it was also granted for fifteen years. In 1696, Young again appeared before the Council and stated that he had invented and perfected “an engine for weaving, never before practised in any nation, whereby several kinds of cloths may be manufactured without manual operation or weaving looms.” He affirmed that he had actually made cloth with his engine, and he believed that it would prove highly useful, especially for the “trade to Africa and the Indies; and therefore he petitioned the Council for the privileges of a manufactory, and for a patent,” and the Council granted to him an exclusive use of his engine for thirteen years.¹

¹ Register of the Privy Council.

Nicolas Dupin, already mentioned as a paper manufacturer, came before the Privy Council in 1695, asking a patent for a new invention for draining water out of coal pits. He stated, “that in twenty fathoms deep we can raise in two minutes’ time a ton of water, provided the pit or shaft will admit of two such casks to pass one another.... The machine was calculated to be useful for all kinds of corn mills, where water was scarce or frozen, for we can grind by one man’s hand as much as any watermill does. It was adapted for draining lakes or for bringing water to any place where it was wanted, and for clearing of harbour mouths from great rocks or sand.” He had also a smaller engine, with economised power for lighter work, “as mincing of tallow for candles, a very exact way of cutting tobacco, for cutting tanners’ bark, and similar sorts of work, without the assistance of either wind or water.” It was stated that several gentlemen were ready to contract with the inventor for the draining of some flooded coal-pits. The Council granted him a patent for eleven years.¹

¹ Ibid. Occasionally a foolish proposal occurs in the records. For instance, Robert Logan, a cabinetmaker, asserted that he could make kettles and caldrons of wood which could “abide the strongest fire, while boiling any liquor put into them, as well as any vessel made of brass, copper, or any other metal,” with the advantage of being more durable, and only a third of the price. The Council granted him the exclusive right of making such articles for nineteen years.

Scotland as yet had not many great ships¹ or much commerce, but it was manifest that the mind of the nation was turning more and more to secular and commercial pursuits than it had formerly been; and all that was wanted for the rapid development of industry and commercial enterprise was a field for the energy of the people. But, while Scotland was forced to continue in an antagonistic attitude to England this could not be obtained; and the difficulty was how to change the relations of the two kingdoms, and to place both upon a footing of equality and commercial freedom. The Union at length solved the difficulty; and, as already stated, it has proved an immense advantage to the progress of civilisation in Scotland, while it has contributed to the power and to the glory of the British Empire.

¹ See under page 303.

In concluding this exposition of the social state of the nation, let me briefly recapitulate some of the leading points. Commencing with the administration of justice and the powers of the executive, I proceeded to show the state of crime, the condition of the poor, and the means employed for their relief, and touched on the laws for suppressing and reforming the vagrant and idle classes. The ideas and the beliefs prevailing among the people, and the causes of their persistence, were indicated; and the social morality of the nation, the relations of the people and the clergy, the observance of Sunday and religious services, drinking habits, the relations of the different sexes, sumptuary regulations, and the sanitary condition of the kingdom, were explained at some length. Having noticed the state of the roads, and the introduction of postal communication, the shipping of the kingdom, and indicated the state of agriculture, I then traced the rise and slow progress of industry and manufactories, noting some of the obstacles which impeded their development in Scotland; the coinage, and the introduction of banking; and especially remarked that more energy began to be thrown into trading and commercial matters towards the end of the century. When all the distracting influences springing out of civil and religious war, and other adverse circumstances which the nation had to face, are taken into account, it is surprising that the people entered so soon upon the remarkable career of industry and rapid commercial progress which have characterised the succeeding centuries; and which, along with the rise and the diffusion of science, of invention, of literature, of philosophy, and art, constitute an era of true glory in the history of Scotland. Here, therefore, I may repeat, that there is hardly anything, hardly any difficulties, which will not yield “to the persistent energy of man.”¹ The intellectual and moral impetus of the Reformation continued till new influences came, and then one by one the links of tradition and the shackles of authority became weaker and weaker; a philosophy of surpassing vigour and boldness arose, far-reaching in its results, shaking the foundations of the received principles of belief and the current theories of knowledge to their core, thus inaugurating a new point of departure for the human mind. To elucidate the historical antecedents of this philosophy will be the special aim of the concluding chapter of this volume; and ultimately the whole movement of European thought will open before us with amazing clearness.

¹ Mackintosh’s History of Civilisation in Scotland, Volume I., page 17.

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