THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 HISTORIC SCENES 
 
 IX 
 
 FORFARSHIRE. 
 
 WILLIAM MARSHALL, D.D, 
 
 COUPAR- ANGUS, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "MEN OF MARK IN BRITISH CHURCH HISTORY," 
 " THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS PERSECUTING," &C. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 WILLIAM OLIPHANT & CO. 
 
 1875.
 
 PRINTED BY CHARLES ALEXANDER, AT THE OFFICE OF THE 
 'DUNDEE CODBIER AND ARGUS" AND "WEEKLY KEWS.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 This volume is a reprint, with corrections and additions, of a 
 series of papers which originally appeared in the Weekly News 
 of Dundee. 
 
 We began the papers by suggesting some considerations meant 
 to commend what we were to write about to public attention. 
 These considerations we have not reprinted : we felt that it was 
 superfluous to do so. The acceptance which the papers met with 
 as they appeared from week to week ; the desire expressed to 
 have them in a permanent form ; and the very large number 
 of Subscribers for this volume, to whom we offer cordial thanks, 
 shew that the siibject is an interesting one to a wide circle of 
 readers. 
 
 Our title describes our subject. It is not the antiquities of 
 Forfarshire, or its architecture, or its topography, or its land- 
 scapes, or its agriculture, or its trade and commerce. With 
 these our subject, in so far as it has been treated, has hitherto been 
 mixed up, generally in large and expensive works ; but it is 
 quite distinct from them. It is the Historic Scenes of the 
 shire ; to which nothing was relevant which did not contribute, 
 more or less, to the making of such Scenes. 
 
 We have written for the information and entertainment of 
 the general reader. All questions on which he could not be 
 
 872612
 
 iv Preface. 
 
 expected to accompany us with intelligence and interest we 
 have studiously shunned. 
 
 Our acknowledgments are due to preceding writers on For- 
 farshire, or on parts of it ; primarily to the Author of the Land 
 of the Lindsays and Memorials of Angus and Mearns, whose 
 researches have added so largely to what the public had pre- 
 viously known of the shire. History is not to be invented, 
 but learned ; and if the sources from which we have learned 
 much of the history embodied in the following pages, and the 
 authorities on which we have relied for its authenticity, are 
 less frequently named than they might have been, we do here 
 all the more frankly acknowledge our obligations to them. 
 
 We are sensible of the very imperfect manner in which we 
 have accomplished our task. We have spared no pains to be 
 as accurate as possible ; but we cannot hope that we have 
 escaped mistake and misstatement, in a work dealing with 
 matters so multitudinous and multifarious, and over many of 
 which so much obscurity hangs. 
 
 CotrPAR ANGUS, December, 1875.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FORFARSHIRE. 
 
 Extent of Population Districts. 1. 
 
 THE MARITIME DISTRICT. 
 
 DUNDEE. 
 
 Antiquity of Castle Limits of Old Dundee Name of the town, and 
 lore about Burned by Edward I. of England Retaken by Wallace 
 Taken again by the English Recovered by Wallace Scrimgeour 
 made Hereditary Constable of National Council held in Robert II. 
 in Contribution by, to ransom of David II., and new charter got 
 " Briggant" execution in Visited by James V. and his Queen 
 Burned by Edward VI. of England Zeal of, for the Reformation 
 Wishart's Labours in The Wedderburns Their Gude and Godly 
 Ballates Paul Methven Mary and Darnleyin Amerced by Mary 
 One good deed by her Earl of Gowrie captured in Visited by James 
 VI. in 1595 and 1617 An Asylum to Andrew Melville Four 
 meetings of General Assembly in Stormed by Montrose Sacked by 
 Monk Hilltown burned by Claverhouse Authorities of, Con- 
 formists They and population opposed to one another in 1715 The 
 Pretender Proclaimed at Exhibition of him at the Cross Dundee in 
 1745 Queen Victoria landing at, and departing from, in 1844 
 Opening of Baxter Park Inauguration of Kinloch Monument 
 Place of Public Execution Birth-house of Admiral Duncan Birth- 
 house of Admiral Middleton Strathmartin's Lodgings Whitehall 
 The Earl's Lodgings (Crawford's) Witch Knowe Residences of 
 Argyll, the Wedderburns, etc. The Luckenbooths St Margaret's 
 Close Wallace Craigie Cowgate Port Blackness Belmont House 
 Heathfield House Ancient Ecclesiastical edifices. 1 45. 
 
 LIFF AND BENVIE. 
 
 Roman Station and Camp in Early Church at Invergowrie 
 Wishart's memorable night at Hurley Hawkin Battle of Liff 
 Union of Scotts and Picts Stuart zeal of minister of Benvie. 46 50. 
 
 MAINS AND STRATHMARTIN. 
 
 Claverhouse The " Bloody Clavers" Lord Macaulay's pencillings of 
 him and his associates for fortnight Nine Maidens' Well Clatto 
 Moor Broughty Castle Notice of some Strathmartin ministers. 
 51-57.
 
 vi Contents. 
 
 MURROES. 
 
 Castle of Easter Powrie Anciently belonged to the Earls of Angus 
 Tragic Story of Gilchrist, third Earl Castle of BaUumbie Story of 
 the heroine, Catherine Douglas. 57 59. 
 
 MONIFIETH. 
 
 Grange Seat of the Durhams Centre of Reforming influence 
 Marvellous preservation of Lieutenant Durham Meetings at Grange 
 of Alexander Durham, sixth baron, Erskine of Dun, and Knox 
 Erskine's narrow escape at, from the Papists Montrose a night at, on 
 his way to the gibbet, and almost made his escape John Durham of 
 Pitkerro Linlathen House, seat of the late Thomas Erskine, Esq. 
 The parish a model of coercion in religion Fierceness of the '15 
 Rebellion in. 5962. 
 
 BARRY. 
 
 Battle of Barry Great victory of the Scots over the Norsemen 
 Monuments of the battle. 62 64. 
 
 MONIKIE. 
 
 The Live and Let Live Testimonial to Lord Paumure Vestiges of war 
 in the parish William Bait, minister of, deposed for Jacobitism in 
 1715 Alexander Balfour, copious literary writer, a native of. 64 66. 
 
 PANBRIDE. 
 
 Panmure Castle, and House Battle of Panmure Panbride the birth- 
 parish of Hector Boece. 66 67. 
 
 ARBIRLOT. 
 
 Black Den Crown lost in Kelly Castle and Barony Once the pro- 
 perty of Walter, Lord High Steward of Scotland Old Christian 
 Monument at Manse Arbirlot the parish in which the late Dr 
 Guthrie began his ministry. 67 68. 
 
 ARBROATH. 
 
 The Abbey Founded by William the Lion Dedicated to Thomas a 
 Becket Kings who sojourned in William the Lion buried in 
 His grave identified Twice visited by Edward I. of England Often 
 by King Robert Bruce Parliament held in, in 1320 Suffered much 
 from the English during the Wars of the Independence Battle of 
 Arbroath Death of the Earl of Crawford and of the Laird of Inver- 
 quharity James V. entertained in the Abbey Overthrow of, at the 
 Reformation First and Second Reformed ministers of Arbroath 
 Captain Fall's attack on Hospitaln'eld, the Monkbarns of the Anti- 
 quary The Right Honourable Fox Maule, Lord Pan mure, banquetted 
 in Arbroath Bell Rock Bell Rock Lighthouse. 6879. 
 
 ST. VIGEANS. 
 
 Sculptured Stones at Reading of one of them Peter Young, tutor to 
 James VI., buried in Church of Ludicrous superstition in the parish 
 Anecdotes of John Aitken, minister of St Vigeans. 79 81.
 
 Contents. vii 
 
 INVERKEILLOR. 
 
 Redcastle, a Royal hunting-seat The De Berkeleys of The Inglerams 
 The Stewarts of Innermeath Monstrous attack on, by Gray of 
 Duninald Lunan Bay, a landing-place of the Northmen Vestiges of, 
 in the neighbourhood Auchmithie fishermen's awe of the Earls 
 of Northesk, when Barons of Redcastle Eathie House A favourite 
 residence of Cardinal Beaton Still haunted by his ghost The seat of 
 the Earls of Southesk Notices of several of these Boysack, the 
 Carnegies of, and their Jacobitism Jacobite ministers of Inverkeillor. 
 8187. 
 
 LUNAN. 
 
 Vestiges of the Northmen in The Knaps Memorials of war in 
 Walter Mill long parish priest of Turned Protestant His martyr- 
 dom. 8789. 
 
 CRAIG. 
 
 Birth-parish of Andrew Melville His education, and scholarly emi- 
 nence Made Principal of the University of Glasgow Transferred to 
 St Andrews His special mission that of a Church Reformer The head 
 of the Second Reformation What his struggle with King James cost 
 him His noble character Illustrations of The birth-parish also 
 of Dr Alexander Leighton Horrible persecution suffered by 
 Two Scots who rose to a high place in India, natives of the parish 
 The King's Cadgers' Road. 8995. 
 
 KINNELL. 
 
 Traces of the Romans in Indications of war in the locality Barony of 
 Kinnell given by The Bruce to the chief of the Clan Fraser for his 
 exploits on the field of Bannockburn Other Angus and Mearns' 
 estates given for the same reason to the Lovats Pare of Montreath- 
 mont Moor, one of the Royal forests, in Kinnell Royalty often 
 hunted in it James VI. did so for a week in 1617. 95 97. 
 
 MARYTON. 
 
 Old Montrose, the seat of the Grahams Took from it their several titles 
 of nobility Notice of the family The great Marquis His heart got 
 by Lady Napier after his execution, and embalmed Taken to India, 
 and worshipped there Lost at Boulogne Marquis's noble qualities 
 After his death, Old Montrose passed to the Earl of Middleton His 
 infamous character and administration His fall, poverty, and death 
 Bonnington and Usan, and the Tullochs and Woods of Censure of 
 Lammie, minister of Maryton, for his activity to get the Earl of 
 Southesk returned as a member of the General Assembly of 1648 
 Irvine, minister of the parish in 1715, forced to flee from it by the 
 Jacobite Rebels. 97100. 
 
 FARNELL. 
 
 Lands of, originally belonged to the See of Brechin, and Castle the 
 Bishop's Palace Worldly wisdom of Alexander Campbell, Bishop of 
 Brechin at the Reformation Kinnaird possessed by the Carnegies
 
 viii Contents. 
 
 from 1409 Kinnaird Castle the seat of the Earls of Southesk Fre- 
 quently honoured with the presence of Royalty Burned by Earl 
 Beardie after the Battle of Brechin Notice of the Carnegies of 
 Kinnaird Stuart zeal of David, first Earl of Southesk Fined by 
 Cromwell Father-in-law of the Great Marquis of Montrose, who, 
 when on his way to Edinburgh to his doom, was conveyed by 
 Kionaird Castle Second Earl a reputed magician His extraordinary 
 disappearance from Earth Fifth Earl a leading Jacobite in 1715 
 Proclaimed the Chevalier at Montrose Fought for him at Sheriff- 
 muir Entertained him at his Castle Was forfeited, and died an 
 exile in France Estates bought back by Sir James Carnegie of Pitarrow 
 Titles restored to Sir James's great grandson in 1855 Farnell 
 Cistle Laudable use made of, by the Ladies Carnegie. 100 104. 
 
 MONTROSE. 
 
 Sacked by the Danes in 980 Castle of, occasional residence of William 
 the Lion Edward I. of England in Montrose in 1296 Recovered by 
 Wallace, and Castle demolished Wallace landed at, from France, 
 and met by Sir John Ramsay of Auchterhouse and other friends 
 Accidentally burned in 1244 David II. twice in the town The port 
 from which Sir James Douglas sailed for Palestine with the heart of 
 King Robert Bruce His fate in the expedition Feud between 
 Montrose and Dun Priest of the town murdered by John Erskine of 
 Dun Erskine on the Continent for years, and returned a warm friend 
 of learning and Church reform Set up his famous school in Montrose 
 George Wishart a scholar in and then teacher of Perse- 
 cuted by Bishop Hepburn for teaching the Greek New Testament 
 The Melvilles, Andrew and James, also scholars in school 
 High educational position maintained by Montrose Reconciliation 
 of Montrose and Dun Reformation early embraced by the inhabitants 
 of Montrose Attempt of the English to land their fleet at, frustrated 
 by Erskine of Dun General Assembly at Montrose Passage at arms 
 between King James and Andrew Melville Conflict in Montrose 
 between the Covenanters and the Cavaliers Severe Visitation of the 
 plague The port from which the Pretender sailed for 
 France House in which he spent his last night in Scotland 
 Sympathy of Montrose with Prince Charles Edward in 1745 Contest 
 between the Loyalists and the Rebels for the possession of the town 
 The Rebellion crushed out by the Duke of Cumberland His 
 severity The Bridges on the Esks Joseph Hume a native of 
 Montrose Monument to. 104 115. 
 
 THE SIDLAW DISTKICT. 
 GUTHRIE. 
 
 Carbuddo Roman camp of Haerfaulds Guthrie Castle, the seat of the 
 Guthries Antiquity and mark of the family Squire Guthrie sent to 
 France to bring Wallace back again Sir David Guthrie of Gnthrie'a 
 high offices Fatality of Flodden to the family James Guthrie, 
 the martyr in 1661, a son of the Laird of Guthrie Notice of. 
 116118.
 
 Contents, ix 
 
 DUNNICHEN. 
 
 Battle of Nechtan's Fort Memorials of Dunnichen House, seat of the 
 late George Dempster, Esquire His high character His soubriquet 
 in Parliament His services to all the interests of the country His 
 own account of his management of his estate Scientific and lettered 
 society of Duunichen House The idea of Jamieson's Dictionary of the 
 Scottish Language first suggested there. 118 122. 
 
 KIRKDEN. 
 
 Anciently a thanedom Obelisk opposite House of Pitmuies, Tumulus 
 near, and urns found in Numerous sepulchral remains in neigh- 
 bourhood Thought to be monuments of the Battle of Barry The 
 Laws of Id vies and Gardyne, and feudal uses of Gardyne Castle, the 
 seat of the Gardynes Their fierce and bloody feuds with neighbours. 
 122123. 
 
 CARMYLLIE. 
 
 Abounds in relics of the slain in war Presumed to be further monu- 
 ments of the Battle of Barry. 123. 
 
 INVERARITY. 
 
 Old historic families who possessed the lands of the parish Kincaldrum 
 House, the seat of the late Edward Baxter, Now the property of 
 his son, the Right Honourable William Baxter, M.P. for the Montrose 
 Burghs, and late Financial Secretary to the Treasury. 123124. 
 
 TEALING. 
 
 Figures only ecclesiastically John Glas, founder of the Glassites, 
 ordained minister of, in 1719 Heresies into which he fell Suspended 
 by his Presbytery Deposed by his Synod, and sentence confirmed by 
 the Commission of Assembly His subsequent labours Walter Tait, 
 sometime minister of, another sectary. 124 126. 
 
 GLAMMIS. 
 
 Roman Station at Hayston Glen of Ogilvy Legend of St Donevald and 
 his Nine Maidens Rescue of William the Lion in the Glen from 
 bandits by Earl Gilchrist and his sons Retreat of Claverhouse to the 
 Glen in 1689 Glen of Denoon Old Pictish fort on the top of basaltic 
 hill in. 126130. 
 
 NEWTYLE. 
 
 Pictish Fort on Kilpurnie Hill Observatory on Castles of Hatton and 
 Balcraig Garrison of Covenanters in Hatton Castle Bishop of 
 Aberdeen resident in, after the Revolution Strength and zeal of the 
 Prelatic party in the parish Bannatyne Castle Early poetry of 
 Scotland collected in, by George Bannatyne Hill of Keillor- 
 Sepulchral remains, and Monumental Stone. 130 133. 
 
 AUCHTERHOUSE. 
 
 Trace of the war between the Scots and the Picts Auchterhouse visited 
 by Wallace Wallace Tower First Stewart proprietor of, a half-
 
 x Contents. 
 
 brother of James II., Chamberlain of Scotland, and created Earl of 
 Buchan Seventh Earl fined by Cromwell for his support of Charles 
 I., and taken cognisance of by the Kirk Session Tragic story of 
 " Fair Matilda" Extracts from Kirk Session Records from 1645 to 
 1665. 133136. 
 
 LUNDIE. 
 
 Lundie Castle Seat of the Duncan family Trophy at, of Admiral 
 Duncan's Victory, off Camperdown Placed at the entrance gate to 
 Camperdown House, and inspected with great interest by Her Majesty, 
 as she passed in 1844 Church of Foulis Its offensive " paintrie." 
 137138. 
 
 KETTINS. 
 
 Castle of Dores and Pitcur Persons of distinction given by Pitcur 
 Castle to the county and country The two Hallyburtons, Provosts of 
 Dundee The " bauld Pitcur" who fell at Killiecrankie Inter- 
 marriage of the Huutly and Pitcur families, and issue of. 138 140. 
 
 THE STRATHMORE DISTRICT. 
 
 KETTINS. 
 
 Roman camp at Campmuir Weem near Lintrose House Euphemia 
 Murray of Lintrose Sculptured stone at Kettins village Notice of 
 some ministers of Kettins from 1606 to 1716 Rebelliousness of the 
 parish in 1746, and forced settlement of Robert Trail. 141144. 
 
 COUPAR ANGUS. 
 
 Roman camp at Abbey built on centre of camp Founded in 1164 by 
 Malcolm IV. Cistertian monks planted in Visited by Alexander 
 II., Wallace, The Bruce, Robert II., and Queen Mary Burying-place 
 of the Hays, great benefactors of the Abbey, of the Muschets of 
 Cargill, and of the Durwards Outrage on the Abbey by Lindsay and 
 his associates Furnished the Advocates Library, Edinburgh, with 
 its copy of the Scoti-Chronicon Demolition of, at the Reformation 
 Abbot's residence at Campsie Worldly wisdom of last Abbot Abbey 
 erected into a temporal lordship in favour of James Elphinstone, Lord 
 Coupar Hereditary Bailie of the Regality of the Abbey Town 
 burned by Colkitto in 1645, and the minister, Robert Lindsay, with 
 many others killed George Hay, minister at the Revolution, deprived 
 for his Jacobitism. 144 149. 
 
 NEWTYLE. 
 
 Graham's Knowe and King's Well George Patullo and Thomas Black, 
 ministers, staunch Covenanters, and their sufferings for the cause 
 Black's successor, Alexander Mackenzie, a strong Prelatist, deprived 
 for non-jurancy Persecution of John Clephane, minister in 1715 
 Forced to flee the country. 150151.
 
 Contents. 
 
 XI 
 
 EASSIE AND NEVAY. 
 
 Sculptured stone at Old Manse Circular mound on which Castle 
 Nairne stands Probably a military station of Edward I. oE England 
 Sylvester Lammie, minister at the Revolution, deprived for non- 
 jurancy. 151 152. 
 
 RUTHVEN. 
 
 Weem in Tradition of battle in Barony long the property of the 
 Crawford family Castle at Queich Gibbet on Candle Hill State of 
 the parish in 1715. 153154. 
 
 AIRLIE. 
 
 Castle of Baikie, and Fentons of The Castle a Royal residence 
 "Ambry," carved coping-stone, &c., at the Kirk of Airlie Roman 
 camp near Cardean Airlie Castle Antagonism, political and ecclesi- 
 astical, of Argyle and Airlie, and old feud between them Castle had 
 repelled an attack of Montrose Surrendered to Argyle, who 
 plundered and burned it Lyric on the "Burnin" of John Robertson, 
 minister of Airlie at the Restoration, a stanch Presbyterian, and 
 deprived. 154158. 
 
 GLAMMIS. 
 
 Anciently a thanedom The Castle, a Royal residence Malcolm II. 
 murdered at Glauimis Extant monuments of the murder Buried 
 at Glammis His traditional gravestone Sir John Lyon, founder of 
 tha noble family of Strathmore, married the Princess Jane, daughter 
 of Robert II. , who brought him the thanedom of Glammis as her 
 dowry Sir John killed in a duel Glammis forfeited on the execution 
 of Lady Jane Douglas a Royal residence again James V. frequently 
 lived at Story of Lady Jane Douglas Attachment of Strathmore 
 family to the Stuarts Fifth Earl gave his life for them at Sheriffmuir 
 The Pretender in Glammis Castle in January, 1716 Accounts of 
 his appearance and manners Flax spinning mill on Glammis Bnrn. 
 158163. 
 
 KINNETTLES. 
 
 Battle for Popery in Flax spinning mill at Douglastown The Lindsays 
 of Kinnettles James Lawmonth, minister of, deprived in 1649 
 Alexander Taylor, last Episcopal minister of, author of The Tempest 
 William Paterson, and John Ingles Harvey, of Kinnettles 
 Eminence to which they rose. 1 64 166. 
 
 FORFAR. 
 
 Roman camp near Battle of Restennet Old Royal Castle Its probable 
 site Malcolm Canmore and his Queen Margaret often resided in 
 Their character and influence New Royal Castle Resided in by 
 William the Lion, Alexander II., and Alexander III. Gilbert de 
 Umfraville Governor of the Castle in 1291 His answer to demand of 
 surrender by Edward I. Edward in Forfar in 1296 Lodged in the 
 Castle Castle captured by Wallace, recovered by the English, re- 
 taken by King Robert Bruce, and demolished Never rebuilt, but 
 Bruce had House in town Memorials of the residence of our Kings
 
 xii Contents. 
 
 at Forfar Priory of Restennet Its site Carious privilege of canons 
 of Royal Visits to Illustrious dead buried at Public Records, &c., 
 lodged in for safe custody Staple trade of Forfar in 16th century 
 Ludicrous joke played off on Sutors of Forfar by Drummond of 
 Hawthornden Height of the an ti- witch mania in Forfar Forfar 
 strongly Prelatic Attempt to have the Covenant sworn at, in 1 639, 
 frustrated Royalist Committees sitting at daily in 1644 Its Com- 
 missioner in Parliament a noted Royalist Treatment of a Suspected 
 Commonwealth spy in Summary vengeance for Proceedings on the 
 Restoration Detachment of military stationed in Forfar after the 
 Revolution Earl of Strathmore killed on the street of Fate of a 
 Forfar Sutor in 1745 Outbreaking of a Highland feud in neigh- 
 bourhood King James's boast of Forfar Judicial decision as to 
 stirrup cup Earl of Strathmore's plan for draining Loch New 
 Cemetery Dr Jamieson, a minister in Forfar for seventeen years. 
 166180. 
 
 KIRRIEMUIR. 
 
 Courthill Witch-pool Mute antiquities District infested by Caterans 
 Castle of Inverqutarity Possessors of the barony District 
 largely represented in Battle of Harlaw Notice of some of the 
 Ogilvys of Inverquharity Shielhill, scene of the Water Kelpie 
 by Jamieson Ballad quoted Ballinscho, historic families owning 
 it Logic, seat of the Kinlochs of Kilrie Notice of David Kinloch 
 Ballandarg, seat of the Grahames of Morphie Illustrious ances- 
 tors of Kinnordy, seat of the late Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. George 
 Ogilvie from Benvie intruded on the parish in 1713 Scene at his 
 induction. 180190. 
 
 RESCOBIE. 
 
 Ancient importance of Old fort on Turin Hill Another on Pitscandly 
 Hill Vestiges of the great Battle of Restennet King Donald Bain 
 died hereWas attacked and vanquished by Edgar Atheling, who 
 put out his eyes and committed him to prison Was confined and died 
 in the Castle of Rescobie Its Site. 190192. 
 
 ABERLEMNO. 
 
 Sepulchral Remains Sculptured Stones Memorials of Battle of 
 Aberlemno Melgund Castle Cardinal Beaton's His character 
 Melgund now Earl of Minto's Mysterious disappearance of the 
 Murrays from Aldbar Castle Historic families who have possessed 
 it Notice of Patrick Chalmers, Esq. of Sculptured stone found in 
 ruins of chapel Balgavies Castle Sir Walter Lindsay Jacobitism 
 of Aberlemno John Ochterlony, Prelatic minister of. 192 199. 
 
 OATHLAW. 
 
 Old fort on Finhaven Hill Roman camp at Battledykes Finhaven 
 once a Royal residence Long the principal residence of the Lindsays 
 Crawford family Castle of First Earl of Crawford His feats of 
 arms Tiger Earl and Earl Beardie His rebellion against James 
 II., submission on Renet Green, and entertainment of the King in his 
 Castle Illustrations of his Tiger character Fifth Earl, a great
 
 Contents. xiii 
 
 favourite of James III. and James IV., and created Duke of Montrose 
 "Wicked Master" of Crawford Marriage in Finhaven Castle 
 between his son and Margaret, daughter of Cardinal Beaton and 
 Marion Ogilvy Eighth Earl Unhappy marriage between him and 
 Lilias Drummond of Stobhall A Popish zealot, and traitor to his 
 country Prodigal Earl His career and end Debasement of his 
 only child, Lady Jean Earl Ludovick Sacrificed his all for the 
 Stuart cause Princely state of the Earls of Crawford in their palmy 
 days Aifdrew Allan, minister of the parish, deposed in 1649 
 Intrusion of John Grub, Prelatist Rough usage of John Anderson, 
 minister, in 1715. 199211. 
 
 TANNADICE. 
 
 Anciently a thanedom Laws of Tumuli on Queich Castle A seat 
 of the Earls of JBuchan Castle near Auchlouchrie. 211 212. 
 
 CARESTON. 
 
 Roman station of ^Esica Original name of the parish Story of Carald, 
 the Danish leader Careston Castle Historic families of whom it has 
 been a seat Nether Careston the first place in the district where 
 fanners were used Lawn before the Castle the resting-place of 
 Montrose, in his retreat from Baillie and Urrey Eminent persons 
 produced by Careston. 212 216. 
 
 BRECHIN. 
 
 Antiquity of the city Roman Camp of War Dykes Brechin a seat of 
 the Druids Next, of the Culdees Cathedral founded by David I. 
 His policy to supplant the Culdees Maisondieu Brechin Castle 
 Visited by Edward I. of England in 1296 Received there from John 
 Baliol the surrender of the Crown and Kingdom Again visited by 
 Edward the same year Recovered by Wallace in 1297 Sir Thomas 
 Maule's famous defence of The Bruce in Brechin in 1310 Lordship 
 of Brechin did not come to the Aiaules till 1642 Some old Lords of 
 Sabbath Markets in Bishops of mark in the See James IV. in 
 Brechin in 1503 Bishop of, protested against the Act allowing the 
 lieges to read the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue The Reformation 
 in Brechin Disposal of revenues of Popish Church in Suffering of, 
 in hostilities between the parties of King James and his mother 
 Mary Hospital instituted by James Severe visitation of the plague 
 in 1047-8 The Covenanters' head-quarters in Angus in 1644 
 Burned by Montrose Notice of Arbuthnots of Findowrie Extracts 
 from Kirk Session Records, Earl of Panmure a zealous adherent of 
 Charles I. Heavily fined by Cromwell Fatal quarrel on Hauche of 
 Insche Contention between Sir Patrick Maule and the Bishop as to 
 their powers in the civil affairs of the burgh Dependence of Brechin 
 on its markets Anti-witch mania in Burned in 1672 The rulers 
 in, hailed the Restoration The Revolution unwelcome to them 
 Troops quartered in, in 1695 Continued strength of the Jacobite and 
 Prelatic spirit in Usage of Willison and Provost Doig Brechin in 1715 
 Earl of Panmure proclaimed the Pretender at the Cross Enlarged 
 his estates to increase his power of helping him Fought for him at 
 Sheriffmuir Entertained him two days in his Castle in January 1716 
 Was forfeited, and fled to Continent, where he died Estates bought
 
 xiv Contents. 
 
 back by nephew Presbyterian retaliation in 1726 Brechin in 1745 
 Many from, at Culloden Edgars of Keithock, and their Jacobite zeal 
 Laying of foundation stone of building for Public School and Mechanics 
 Institute in 1838 Eminent men whom Brechin has produced. 216 
 236. 
 
 DUN. 
 
 John Erskine of, Superintendent Other distinguished members of the 
 family Dun came into their possession in 1357 Their high ancestry 
 Knox at Dun for a month in 1555 Frequent meetings of the 
 Reformers at Dun House sacked by the Marquis of Montrose. 236 
 -238. 
 
 LOGIE-PERT. 
 
 Tumuli in the Laws of Logie and Leighton Skeletons found in them 
 James Melville educated in Loe;ie His first religious impressions 
 there North Water Bridge Night passed on it by the Covenanters 
 on their way to Dunnottar Castle Barbarous treatment of, in the 
 Castle Sympathy of Logie with Charles and Prelacy in 1645 
 Longevity in Craigo Cottage by North Water Bridge, the birthplace 
 of James Mill, father of the late John Stuart Mill Notices of both 
 father and son. 238243. 
 
 STRICKATHRO. 
 
 Roman station Tina Kenneth III. murdered in this parish by assassins 
 hired by Finella Her fate Tradition of a very ancient battle in 
 Strickathro Was the scene of the battle between David 1. and the 
 Earl of Moray Also of the battle of Brechin High-handed proceed- 
 ings of the Jacobites in. in 1715 The Right Honourable George Rose, 
 a native of this parish. 243 246. 
 
 THE GRAMPIAN DISTRICT. 
 EDZELL. 
 
 Edzell Castle Seat of the Lindsays Came to them by the marriage of 
 Sir Alexander Lindsay and Catherine Stirling Notice of some of his 
 successors Castle visited by Queen Mary in 1562 Magnificence of, 
 and princely state maintained by its owners Burial vault of family 
 A sort of resurrection in Lindsays of Edzell stout Reformers and 
 Covenanters Changed sides on both religion and politics Violence of 
 their zeal for Prelacy and arbitrary power Devotion to the Stuarts 
 their ruin Last Laird's "flittin," from Edzell Died anjhostler in 
 Kirkwall His sisters and their fate Military stationed in Edzell 
 Castle in 1746 Rev. George Low a native of the parish. 247 254. 
 
 LOCHLEE. 
 
 St Drostan the apostle of Christianity to Meeting of Bruce and Comyn 
 in Glenesk Invermark Castle Church of Glenesk burned by 
 Montrose in 1645 Battle between Presbytery and Prelacy very keen 
 and tough in the district Hidings in Glenesk Tragic and comic 
 occurrences in A Visitor from another world Brown, President of 
 the Linnean Society, a native of Glenesk Alexander Ross, poet, 
 schoolmaster of. 254259.
 
 Contents. xv 
 
 LETHNOT AND NAVAR. 
 
 Cairns in Dennyferne Castle Lords of Navar Arch-fiend held his own 
 with Conflicts of Episcopal minister with him Adder's Stone in 
 the Calleter Virtues of such stones Graves of suicides on Wirran 
 Hill Cobb's Heugh and Black's Pot Battle of Saughs Episcopalian 
 Chapel in Lethnot burned in 1746 Peter Grant and his daughter 
 Annie Jonathan Duncan a native of Navar. 259 266. 
 
 MENMUIR. 
 
 The Caterthun Their design Local tradition explaining how such 
 great works were raised Sepulchral remains and sculptured stones 
 Menmuir originally a thanedom, and had a Royal residence Appor- 
 tionment of it Ballhall Moss Sir John Lyon of Glammis slain in, by 
 Sir James Lindsay Beattie's Cairn Covenant received with surpris- 
 ing favour in Menmuir Kirk Session Records, shewing the state of, 
 during the Civil War Witch prosecutions Fairy superstition 
 Menmuir in 1715 and 1745 Carnegie of Balnamoon Stories of. 266 
 275. 
 
 FERN. 
 
 Historic families who have possessed it Vayne Castle Traditions con- 
 cerning Deil's Howes Balquharn and Brandyden, Brownie and 
 Ghaist of Its vengeance on the Lord of Fern Its great serviceable- 
 ness in the locality Deuchar Laird of, who fell at Harlaw Story of 
 his sword James Melville, brother of Andrew, sometime minister of 
 James Cramond's wavering Notice of James and Henry Tytler 
 natives of. 275283. 
 
 CORTACHY AND CLOVA. 
 
 Cortachy Castle Seat of the noble family of Airlie Notice of leading 
 members of Their house of the dead Clova Historic owners of 
 Castle of Witch prosecution in the parishes Charles II. fled to 
 
 Clova in the Start Account of Farce of his Coronation at Scone 
 
 Notice of Lindsay and Brown, ministers of Cortachy. 283 290. 
 
 KINGOLDRUM. 
 
 Stones in foundation of old church of Stone Coffins in fields of Parish 
 
 anciently a demesne of the Crown Forest in Castle of Balfour 
 
 Notice of several ministers of- Thomas Scott. Chief-Justice of Unoer 
 Canada, a native of. 290294. 
 
 LINTRATHEN. 
 
 Castle of Further account of Alan Durward Notice of Lawrence 
 Brown, minister of the parish. 292294. 
 
 GLENISLA. 
 
 Anciently a royal demesne Forther and Newton Castles and Craig 
 Honse destroyed by Argyll Antiquities on Ballaty farm Corrvvan- 
 noch Well. 294 297. 
 
 CONCLUSION". 
 
 Weems and Druidical remains in the Shire Common views of 
 Burton's opinion on. 297 304.

 
 HISTORIC SCENES * - 
 
 FORFARSHIRE. 
 
 FORFARSHIRE ranks among the larger shires of Scotland. It 
 contains 832 square miles, or 532,480 English acres, exclusive 
 of portions of the parishes of Lundie, Coupar, and Alyth, the 
 greater part of which is in Perthshire ; and its population at the 
 last census (1871) was 240,049. 
 
 The Shire has been divided into four well- denned Districts, 
 the Maritime, the Sidlaw, the Strathmore, and the Grampian. 
 This division is natural, and it will be convenient for us to 
 follow it, taking the Districts in the order in which we have 
 named them. 
 
 THE MARITIME DISTRICT OF FORFARSHIRE. 
 
 This District extends from the Firth of Tay and the German 
 Ocean to the foot of the Sidlaws ; and our Historic Scenes in it 
 we shall begin at Dundee, the chief centre of the population of 
 the county, and the chief seat of its manufactures and commerce, 
 
 DUNDEE. 
 
 The town can boast a great antiquity. It was made a Royal 
 Burgh about 1195 ; but it was a place of considerable import- 
 ance centuries before that date. In the beginning of the twelfth 
 century, Edgar, the son of Malcolm Canmore, was carried into 
 it from the Carse of Gowrie, where he fell sick, to die in the 
 tenth year of his reign. It had a palace in the eleventh 
 century ; and Malcolm Canmore and his excellent queen, Mar- 
 garet, occasionally resided in it. In 834 it was the head 
 
 A
 
 2 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 quarters of Alpin, in the war which he was then waging with 
 the Picts, and which ended in the amalgamation of the Scots and 
 Picts into one nation. It has been said that, in the same cen- 
 tury, King Donald, with his Queen and Court, visited Dundee, 
 and remained in it a considerable time, and that in it he was 
 baptised into the faith of Christ. Some have even asserted that 
 it was in existence at the period of the Roman invasion, and as 
 there is no proof of the contrary, they were entitled to hold and 
 express this opinion, had they only offered it as a conjecture in- 
 stead of a positive assertion. 
 
 One of the first edifices of Dundee was the Castle. It was 
 built on a high rock, which then occupied the site where Castle 
 Street now runs. Under the shadow of this fortress houses 
 naturally rose, security to life and property being the great want 
 of those rude and troublous times, and house was added to house, 
 till the hamlet became a village, and the village swelled into a 
 town. Thus, doubtless, did houses multiply, but it was in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of the Castle, as long as there was 
 room for them there. Accordingly, it is known that the 
 boundaries of Dundee long were Todsburn on the west, the Tay 
 on the south, Wallaceburn on the east, and a line nearly 
 parallel with what is now called the Murraygate on the north. 
 Within these narrow limits was old Dundee confined ; and it 
 consisted of two principal streets, the Seagate and the Cowgate. 
 For many ages St Mary's Church, now the Steeple Church, was 
 designated The Kirk-in-the-Field. It goes by this name in 
 some charters even as late as the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 Some interest attaches to the origin and the meaning of the 
 name of the town, and to the lore, literary and legendary, which 
 has been brought to bear on them. According to Buchanan, 
 Dundee is Dun-Taw that is, the hill or fort on the Tay ; Dun 
 being the Celtic for either a hill or a fort, forts being usually 
 built on hills, and Taw being the Celtic for the Roman Tavus 
 and our Tay. Happily, this analysis of the name is not so 
 certainly the true one as to oblige us to acquiesce in it ; for it is 
 prosaic and tame, compared with Boece's earlier analysis, and 
 the air of romance which he had thrown around it. According 
 to him, the original name of the town was Alectum, or Ail-lee. 
 The word was Gaelic, signifying pleasant or beautiful ; so that 
 <; Bonnie " is no mere modern compliment to Dundee, its ancient 
 name implying the idea which the epithet expresses. The
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 3 
 
 modern name is commemorative of an event, which was itself 
 enough to make the town an Historic Scene. The occasion of 
 the change of the name from Ail-lee to Dundee, was as follows : 
 David, Earl of Huntingdon, heir presumptive to the Scottish 
 crown, accompanied Richard I. of England in the third crusade 
 to recover the Holy Land from the Infidels. Shipwrecked on 
 the coast of Egypt, and taken prisoner by the Saracens, he was 
 sold by them for a slave. His rank being concealed, he was 
 bought for a small sum by a Venetian, who brought him to 
 Constantinople. Recognised there by some English merchants, 
 he was ransomed and sent home. On his voyage homeward he 
 was overtaken by a dreadful tempest. During the raging of the 
 tempest he prayed, supplicated the intercession of the Holy 
 Virgin, and vowed that, if he was delivered from the devouring 
 deep, he would build a church to her honour. His frail craft 
 outrode the fury of the winds and waves. As he approached 
 the estuary of the Tay, and the sky became clear and serene, 
 one of the first objects which he descried was the Law behind 
 Dundee. The sight of it assuring him that his prayers had been 
 heard, he sailed for it, and by and by landed safely at some 
 point of the shore which the spacious Harbour now covers. In 
 memory of his deliverance he devoutly called the place Dei 
 Donum, that is, The Gift of God, which the inhabitants, who 
 were not in those days greater Latinists than their neighbours, 
 soon corrupted into Dondei, and this Dondei they afterwards 
 turned, for euphony's sake, into Dundee. Ascribing his escape 
 to the intercession of the Virgin, the Earl, faithful to his vow, 
 built and endowed St Mary's Church, which forthwith took the 
 place of the Church of St Clement, who had hitherto been the 
 tutelar saint of the town. In testimony of the same pious 
 gratitude he also founded a monastery for Tyrone monks at 
 Lindores, in Fife. 
 
 Earl David could well afford to exercise such princely muni- 
 ficence. Any amount of largess which piety or superstition 
 might prompt could hardly be felt to be a burden on his vast 
 estates. Hearing of his safe arrival in Dundee, after so many 
 adventures and perils, the King, his loving brother, hastened to 
 meet and welcome him, and caused his return to be celebrated 
 over the kingdom with every demonstration of joy. He, at the 
 same time, erected Dundee into a royal burgh, and conferred it 
 on the Earl, who henceforth styled it " my burgh of Dundee." 
 With the burgh he made a gi'ant to him of the extensive crown- 
 
 A2
 
 4 Historic Scenes in ForfarsTiire. 
 
 demesne lands which adjoined it, including Upper and Lower 
 Dudhope, the Clepingtons, the Craigies, Claypotts, and Guthries- 
 town, Baldovie, Drumgeith, and Pitkerrow. These grants were 
 in addition, not only to the Earldom of Huntingdon, but to the 
 Earldoms of Garioch and Lennox, the Lordship of Strathbogie, 
 and the lands of Innerbervie, Lindores, Longforgan, and Inch- 
 martin, which the affectionate and generous William had pre- 
 viously bestowed on him. Moreover, for the erection of the 
 Church of the Blessed Virgin there is said to be extant a copy 
 of a Papal bull, authorising the Earl of Huntingdon to collect 
 money from the well-disposed throughout all Christendom, and 
 requiring the faithful to assist the Prince in his laudable and 
 pious design. 
 
 Soon after these events, in 1209, Alan, the Lord of Galloway 
 and Constable of Scotland, married Margaret, the eldest 
 daughter of Earl David. The marriage was celebrated in 
 Dundee, from which we may infer that it was then the Earl's 
 residence ; and it had great issues in the country's history. This 
 Princess Margaret was the grandmother of John Baliol, after- 
 wards King of Scotland. 
 
 It has been the fate of Dundee to suffer several sackings and 
 burnings. It was twice taken by Edward I. of England, when 
 he invaded Scotland with the guilty ambition of annexing it, 
 as he had annexed the Principality of Wales, to the English 
 crown. On the death of Alexander III., and of his grand- 
 daughter and heiress, the Maiden of Norway, there appeared no 
 fewer than twelve competitors for the vacant throne. The chief 
 of these were Baliol and Bruce, of whose rival claims Edward 
 was most unhappily admitted to be the umpire. Both 
 claimants, as also the barons and clergy, meanly and basely 
 agreed to his being umpire, on the pretence set up by him that 
 he was Lord Paramount of Scotland. At the same time the 
 Regent of the kingdom surrendered it into his hands, and the 
 commanders of its fortresses placed them at his disposal. 
 Gilbert de Umfraville, Earl of Angus, and Governor of the 
 Castle of Dundee, presented an honourable contrast to his com- 
 peers. He had received his charge, he said, from the nation, 
 and would not yield it to Edward till both he and the two 
 competitors for the Scottish crown gave him a writ of indem- 
 nity for so doing. 
 
 Edward, having given the crown to Baliol, steadily pursued 
 his policy of annexing Scotland to England. By studied in-
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 5 
 
 suit and wrong he goaded Baliol and Ms people into what he 
 termed rebellion, that he might have a pretext for subjugating 
 the country by force of arms. He entered it at Berwick at the 
 head of an army of 31,000 infantry and 4,500 cavalry, and 
 marched through it as far north as Aberdeen and Elgin, his 
 track being marked by all the desolation to which fire and sword 
 could reduce' it. Dundee did not escape the ruthless destroyer. 
 As he approached it its terror-struck inhabitants hid much of 
 their treasure in the Church of the Blessed Virgin, which the 
 Earl of Huntingdon had reared to her ; and many of themselves 
 took refuge in it, hoping that it would prove a sanctuary to them. 
 The hope was vain. Having taken the town and pillaged it, 
 Edward set fire to the church, and the horrors of the scene are 
 to be imagined rather than described. The roaring of the flames, 
 the crashing of roofs, and the shrieks of the burning vied with 
 one another which should utter the loudest dirge-wail, as one 
 red ruin was engulfing the sacred pile and its refugees and 
 treasures. 
 
 This was in 129G. Next year the heroic Wallace rescued 
 Dundee out of the hands of the savage conqueror. When 
 about sixteen years of age Wallace had been sent to the 
 town for education, the fame of its Grammar School being then 
 the attraction, and it was here that he gave the first sign of his 
 being the destined deliverer of his country. The son of Selby, 
 the English Governor of the town, insulted and assaulted 
 Wallace, and, in an instant, the insolent and violent Southron 
 lay at the hero's feet bleeding and dying. This was in 
 1295. Immediately fleeing Dundee, meditating schemes for his 
 country's independence and freedom, and revealing himself to 
 his countrymen as opportunity offered, by performing prodigies 
 of prowess and strength, Wallace was able, in two years, to 
 return to the captive town with a force sufficient to recover it. 
 He had hai'dly sat down before it when tidings reached him 
 that the English were advancing on Stirling. He hastened to 
 encounter them; and. by tact and valour, which made up for 
 his great inferiority in numbers, he gave them a most disastrous 
 defeat. Many thousands of them were cut in pieces, and many 
 thousands more were drowned in the Forth, which they at- 
 tempted to cross. Retracing his steps to Dundee he renewed 
 the siege ; and the English garrison, appalled by assailants so 
 resistless, surrendered the Castle on condition of their lives 
 being spared.
 
 6 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Wallace now made an inroad for foraging purposes into the 
 territory of the enemy ; and in his absence, Morton, an English 
 captain, retook Dundee, and again garrisoned its Castle. On 
 his return from England, Wallace again invested it, conducting 
 the siege with all his characteristic ardour and energy. In the 
 meantime Edward again invaded Scotland at the head of 
 another large and powerful army. To oppose him, Wallace 
 withdrew so many of his forces from Dundee, leaving the residue 
 with his compatriot Scrimgeour, who pressed the siege till the 
 English garrison surrendered at discretion. Morton was 
 hanged ; and Scrimgeour was directed to demolish the Castle, 
 that it might no more be turned into a stronghold of the enemy, 
 as had of late repeatedly happened. If Scrimgeour fulfilled 
 this direction, the Castle must have been rebuilt by Edward 
 when he recaptured Dundee ; for it is upon record that in 1312 
 or 1313, Sir Edward Bruce took town and Castle from the 
 English. 
 
 The only thing further which we read of Wallace doing for 
 Dundee was, his constituting Hereditary Constable of the 
 town the above Scrimgeour, who was the ancestor of the 
 favourites whom the Charleses ennobled from three to four cen- 
 turies afterwards, the one under the title of Viscount Dundee, 
 the other under the title of the Earl of Dundee. Wallace did 
 this in 1 298, in the character of the Guardian of Scotland, 
 which office he resigned the same year. The war between 
 Scotland and England continued for five years after this date, 
 during which Edward invaded Scotland no fewer than three 
 times, but it was only in one of these that he came again into 
 close personal connection with Dundee. That was in the invasion 
 of 1303, in which, entering Scotland by the western marches, 
 fields laid waste, and towns and villages set on fire, mai'ked his 
 progress to Edinburgh, whence he pursued his destructive 
 course by Linlithgow and Clackmannan to Perth, and thence by 
 Dundee, Brechin, Aberdeen, and Banff, to Kinloss, in Moray- 
 shire. After remaining for some time at Lochendorb, a strong 
 fortress on an islet in a lake in the wilds of Morayshire, and 
 receiving there the homage and fealty of the northern chiefs, 
 he returned south by Dundee, and slept in it on the night of 
 the 20th of October. 
 
 Robert I. was crowned at Scone in 1306 ; and in the third 
 year of his reign a National Council assembled in Dundee to 
 strengthen his government. The "bishops, abbots, priors, and
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 7 
 
 the rest of the clergy," issued their manifesto "to all good 
 Christians to whose knowledge these presents shall come," 
 declaring Robert, the grandson of Bruce, to whom Edward had 
 wrongfully preferred Baliol, the legitimate occupant of the 
 throne, " in whom the right of his father and grandfather to 
 the kingdom of Scotland, by the judgment of the people, doth 
 yet remain and continue entire." They had, accordingly, 
 " made our fealty to the said Lord Robert, our illustrious 
 King, and we hereby acknowledge and profess that the like is 
 due hereafter, by our successors, to him and his heirs." This 
 patriotic Council was held in the Church of the Minorites in 
 Dundee. 
 
 In 1314 King Robert resided some time in Dundee, dispens- 
 ing his royal favour " as dew upon the grass." All the charters 
 and records of the town had been destroyed by the English. 
 The burgesses thei'efore applied to him, that the rights and 
 privileges granted to the town by his predecessors, prior to the 
 English invasion, might be continued and ratified. Robert 
 issued a commission to " recognise the liberties" of the town ; 
 and he confirmed and perpetuated them, in terms of the petition 
 of the burgesses. 
 
 In 1346 David II., the son and successor of Robert, fell into 
 the hands of the English on the fatal field of Neville's Cross, 
 and was held in captivity by them for eleven years. Dundee 
 was zealous for his ransom, and liberal in contributing to 
 it ; in gratitude for which he granted it a new charter, confirm- 
 ing to its citizens all their old privileges, and conferring new- 
 ones. Certainly, its " liberties" were then extensive enough. 
 Kirriemuir, Alyth, Coupar-Angus, and Kettins, came within 
 the range of them, and were forbidden to hold markets, and 
 persons attending markets in them were made liable to severe 
 penalties. 
 
 Richard II. of England reduced Dundee to ashes in 1385. 
 The truce between England and Scotland which John of Gaunt, 
 Duke of Lancaster, had succeeded in establishing for three years, 
 was no sooner at an end, than the war between them was re- 
 newed with increased fury. Richard entered Scotland at the 
 head of an army of 60,000 men. The Scots, encouraged and 
 strengthened by a large body of French auxiliaries, under John 
 de Vienne, Admiral of France, retaliated by incursions into 
 England, ravaging Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, 
 and collecting a rich booty. Richard directed his course to
 
 8 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Edinburgh, destroying all the towns and villages that lay in his 
 way, gave the capital to the flames, and, proceeding northward, 
 subjected Perth, Dundee, and other places in the low countries 
 to the same fate. 
 
 The annals of Dundee for the fifteenth centuiy are peculiarly 
 barren of events suitable to our purpose. We mention only 
 one, an execution in the town alike astounding and memorable. 
 For the honour of Angus, we fervently hope that the " brig- 
 gant," whose infamy the story relates, was not a native of the 
 county or the country, but a foreigner ; and that, if any faith 
 is to be put in his daughter's confession, we have not had 
 another cannibal family since Christian times began in our 
 fatherland. We give the story in the old quaint words of 
 Pitscottie. "There was," says he, "ane briggant ta'en with 
 his hale familie, quho hauntit ane place in Angus. This mis- 
 chievous man had an execrable faschion to tak' all young men, 
 or children aither, he could steal away quietlie, or tak' away 
 without knowledge, and ate them, and the younger they war', 
 esteemed them the more tender and delicious. For the whilk 
 cause and dampnable abuse, he, with his wayff and bairnis, 
 were all burnt, except ane young wench of ane year old, wha 
 was saifled and brought to Dundie, quhair she was broucht up 
 and fostered, and quhan shoe cam to ane vomanis yeires, she 
 was condemned and burnt quick for that cryme. It is said 
 that when shoe was coming to the place of execution thair 
 gathered ane hudge multitud' of people, and 'speciallie of vomen, 
 cursing her that shoe was so unhappie to committ sa damnable 
 deides. To whom she turned about with an ireful countenance, 
 saying, ' Quhairfoir chyd yea me, so as if I had committed an 
 unworthy act 1 Give me credence and trow me, if yea had 
 experience of eating men and vomenis flesh yae wold think it 
 so delitious that yea would nevir forbear it agane.' So, bot any 
 signe of repentance, this unhappie traitour died in the sight of 
 the people." 
 
 The sixteenth century introduced an era which crowded 
 Scenes that had been Historic before, and added to them new 
 ones without number. 
 
 In 1540 James V. honoured Dundee with a royal visit. He 
 and his Queen, Mary of Guise, attended by the Archbishop of 
 Glasgow and the Bishop of Caithness, and a large and imposing 
 retinue of the nobility and gentry, made a progress through the 
 kingdom. They tarried at Dundee for six days, during which
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 9 
 
 they were most sumptuously and magnificently entertained by 
 the town, The festivity and rejoicing were enhanced by a 
 marriage which took place at the same time, with the King's 
 consent. The Earl of Erroll was united in wedlock to the 
 eldest sister of the Earl of Lennox. The Archbishop of 
 Glasgow performed the ceremony, or as we should rather say, 
 celebrated the sacrament ; and the royal party graced it with 
 their presence. 
 
 Dundee was again given to the flames by Edward VI. of 
 England as late as 1547. The \inion of the two kingdoms, 
 through a marriage between the reigning families in them, was 
 a project which Edward's father had very fondly cherished. 
 The object aimed at was in the highest degree desirable. It 
 promised, as experience has amply proved, most variously and 
 effectually to advance the best interests of both kingdoms. 
 Protector Somerset was bent on accomplishing it by the 
 marriage of Edward to Mary, the young Queen of the Scots. 
 But there were great difficulties in the way. The Queen- 
 Mother's violent attachment to France and to Romanism was 
 an obstacle which itself threatened to be insuperable, though 
 there had not been any other. Then, the mode of courtship 
 was unpromising. Many Scottish friends of the marriage 
 alliance with England were alienated from it by the attempt to 
 force it with the sword. They sympathised with the Earl of 
 Huntly, who, as Hume says, remarked pleasantly "that he 
 disliked not the match, but hated the manner of wooing." 
 
 To enfoi'ce the proposed marriage, Somerset appeared in 
 Scotland with an army of eighteen thousand men and a fleet of 
 sixty sail, the one-half of these ships of war, and the other half 
 laden with provisions and ammunition. He encountered the 
 Scots in the neighbourhood of Pinkie ; and, at a loss of less 
 than two hundred men, won an easy and complete victory over 
 them, leaving above ten thousand of them dead on the bloody 
 field, and taking about fifteen hundred of them prisoners. 
 
 After the Battle of Pinkie, Somerset's fleet ravaged the coasts 
 of Fife and Angus. A detachment of his army was also sent 
 north to secure Dundee and. its neighbourhood. Measures for 
 the protection of the town were forthwith taken. By an order 
 of the Lords of Secret Council, troops were levied and equipped, 
 and put under the command of Provost HallybxTrton and the 
 Laird of Dun. But all, these defensive preparations came to 
 nought. Seventeen hundred English lancers, foot and horse,
 
 10 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 entered Dundee without even any show of opposition. They 
 occupied it for eight days ; during which they set to work to 
 fortify it. Shortly before this, France had taken steps to help 
 her ally. M. d'Esse had landed at Leith with six thousand 
 French and German auxiliaries. He sent forwai-d to Dundee 
 Count Rhinegrave with two companies of Germans, and M. 
 Des Estanges with one company of French soldiers, and followed 
 himself with the rest of his forces. As he approached, the 
 English demolished the fortifications which they had been erect- 
 ing for a week, pillaged the town, set fire to it, and evacuated it. 
 
 Dundee, it may be noted, was not fortified before this date. 
 The English began its fortifications in the short space for which 
 they now occupied it, and the French afterwards completed 
 them. 
 
 The great event of the sixteenth century was the Reforma- 
 tion from Popery ; and Dundee has the honour of having been 
 the first burgh in Scotland that openly declared for the Reforma- 
 tion, and the first that organised a Reformed Church ; for 
 which reason, as well as for its continued and ardent zeal for 
 the Reformed cause, it was sometimes called the Second Geneva. 
 We read in the Diurnal of Occurrents, under date 1543 : "In 
 this time there was ane great heresy in Dundee ; there they 
 destroyed the kirks." Ralph Sadler, the English ambassador, 
 put it thus in reporting to his master : " The work began at 
 Dundee, by destroying the houses both of the Black and Grey 
 Briars." Two things concurred to raise Dundee to this sort of 
 primacy. The one was the early labours in it of the martyr 
 Wishart, and the other was the very effective manner in which 
 those labours were followed up by some of the first converts of 
 Protestantism in it. 
 
 George Wishart, brother of the Laird of Pitarrow, in the 
 Mearns, devoted himself to the work of an evangelist, and was 
 an admirable preacher of the Gospel, to the knowledge of which 
 he had been brought. His natural talents were good ; his 
 scholarship was high, having been perfected both at Cambridge 
 University and on the Continent ; his character was noble, zeal 
 for God and love to man alike exalting it, and courage and firm- 
 ness, meekness and gentleness, finely blending in it ; his 
 eloquence was most winning and persuasive ; all which combined 
 to give him rare power of rousing and swaying his fellow-men. 
 His very appearance is said to have been in no ordinary degree 
 prepossessing and commanding. One of his pupils at Cambridge
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 11 
 
 describes him as "a man of tall stature, black-haired, long- 
 bearded, comely of personage, well-spoken after his country of 
 Scotland," and with all the culture and politeness of one who 
 was " well-travelled." 
 
 Wishart had for some time kept a school in Montrose, and 
 taught his scholars to read the New Testament in the original 
 language. It was to escape the persecution this offence exposed 
 him to that he had left his native country. Returning to it in 
 1543, he began his ministry in Dundee, chiefly with lectures on 
 St Paul's Epistle to the Romans, full of the theme with which 
 Luther had wrought the mighty religious revolution in 
 Germany. Crowds of all ranks and classes attended his 
 ministry, and by means of it many were brought to know and 
 confess the true doctrine of Christ, and to abjure the errors and 
 corruptions of Popery. The clergy took the alarm ; and one 
 day, as Wishart closed his discourse, Robert Mill or Myle, one 
 of the chief men of Dundee, and a tool of Cardinal Beaton, 
 openly forbade him to trouble the people any more with his 
 doctrines, and commanded him to leave the town. Wishart is 
 said to have answered, and his words proved prophetic " God 
 is my witness that I never minded your trouble, but your com- 
 fort ; yea, your trouble is more grievous to me than it is to 
 yourselves ; but, sure I am, to reject the Word of God, and to 
 drive away his messenger, is not the way to save you from 
 trouble, but to bring you into it. When I am gone, God will 
 send you messengers who will not be afraid either of burning or 
 banishment. T have, at the hazard of my life, remained 
 amongst you, preaching the word of salvation ; and now, since 
 you yourselves reject me, I must leave my innocence to be 
 declared by God. If it be long well with you, I am not led by 
 the Spirit of truth ; and if unexpected trouble befall you, 
 remember this is the CAUSE, and turn to God by repentance, for 
 he is merciful." 
 
 Wishart betook himself to the west country, where he 
 preached with great acceptance and success ; but by and bv 
 tidings reached him that the plague had broken out in Dundee. 
 Though rejected by it, or rather, though driven from it by its 
 rulers, he, with a heart yearning over its miserable inhabitants, 
 hastened back to it, to speak unto the people the words of that 
 life which is plague-proof, and to minister to the temporal relief 
 of the afflicted and the dying. He did both, with xin wearied 
 assiduity and compassion ; reckless of the danger to which he
 
 12 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 exposed himself by labours so exhausting, and by visits to scenes 
 so pest-tainted ; not counting his life dear, if he could do good 
 to the souls and the bodies of others. On one occasion he made 
 public intimation that he would preach at the East Gate of the 
 Cowgate. The place was fitly chosen. Without the gate were 
 the booths which had been erected for the reception of the 
 plague-smitten, at the spot which has since borne the appropriate 
 name of the Sickmen's Yards. The gate being shut made a sort 
 of sepai'ation between the healthy and the infected. Wishai't 
 took his stand on the top of it, chose for his text, " He sent His 
 Word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destruc- 
 tions ;" and preached a sermon on it such as he only could have 
 preached, and that in circumstances so singularly solemn and 
 impressive. And yet this God -like work he did at the imminent 
 risk of finishing it with his life. Rome was by this time pant- 
 ing for his blood ; and an infamous priest stood close by the 
 gate, with his dagger concealed under his mantle, ready to pierce 
 him as he descended. Something in the appearance of the in- 
 tended assassin exciting Wishart's suspicions, he seized his hand 
 and wrenched the dagger from it. The villain, taken almost in 
 the act of murder, confessed his intent, and the enraged 
 multitude would have executed summary vengeance on him, hud 
 not Wishart shielded him from their fury. 
 
 Cardinal Beaton ere long made Wishart his victim. He 
 burnt him. at the stake in St Andrews, on the 28th March, 
 1546 ; feasting his eyes on the tragic spectacle from that very 
 window of his Castle out of which, two months afterwards, his 
 own bleeding body was hung by a sheet over the wall. 
 
 The other thing which contributed to give Dundee its Pro- 
 testant eminence was the very effective following up of 
 Wishart's laboiirs by some of the early converts to Protestant- 
 ism in it. Prominent among these were the three brothers 
 Wedderburn, James, John, and Robert, sons of James Wedder- 
 burn, merchant burgess of Dundee. They were educated at 
 St Andrews, where they drank of St Leonard's Well ; and all 
 the three were endowed more or less with the gifts of poetry 
 and song, and with great power of satire. James wrote a 
 Tragedy intituled The Beheading of John the Baptist, and a 
 Comedy intituled The History of Dionysius the Tyrant; in 
 both of which he held up the corruptions of Romanism and 
 the vices of the clergy to public ridicule and reprobation. 
 These productions of James have not been preserved to us ; but
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 13 
 
 we may form some idea of them from the Gude and Godly 
 Ballates, to which his brothers John and Eobert were such 
 large contributors, that they passed under the name of the 
 Dundee Psalms. Divers of these James Melville learned by 
 heart, when at school in Montrose ; and Row, in his History 
 of the Kirk of Scotland, mentions certain books " whereby 
 many in Scotland got some knowledge of God's trueth," among 
 which are " Wedderburn's Psalms and Godly Ballads, changing 
 many of the old Popish songs to godly purposes." We shall 
 give four specimens, which will show the various poetic mea- 
 sures in which the authors wrote, as well as the style of their 
 attack on the old religion. 
 
 The first is on the dominion which Romish Idolatry and 
 Hypocrisy had long exercised over men, leading them astray 
 from Christ, " the licht of day," into destruction : 
 
 " Turnand till Goddis infinite, 
 
 Puttand thair hope and their delyte 
 
 Inwarks inventit with the slicht 
 
 Of Sathan, contrair to thy licht. 
 " Sum makis Goddis of stok and staine, 
 
 Sum makis Goddis of Sanctis baine, 
 
 Qubilk war thay levand heir, wald say, 
 
 Idolaters, do way, do way." 
 
 The second specimen is on Rome's merchandise of souls : 
 
 " That cruell beist [the Pope], he never ceist, 
 
 Be his usurpit power, 
 Under dispens to get our penneis, 
 
 Our saulis to devoir. 
 " Quha culd devise sic merchandise 
 
 As he had thair to sell, 
 Onless it was proud Lucifer, 
 The great maister of Hell ? 
 " He had to sell the Tantonie bell^ 
 
 And pardonis thairin was, 
 Eemissioun of sinnis in auld scheip skinnis, 
 
 Our saulis to bring from grace. 
 " "With bullis of leid, quhyte wax and reid, 
 
 And uther quhylis with grene, 
 Closit in ane box, this usit the fox, 
 Sic peltrie was never sene." 
 
 The third specimen is an address to the priestly order, calling 
 on them to amend their lives, and to cease practising the super- 
 stitions into which they had debased the religion of Christ : 
 
 " Priestis, mend your life, 
 And leif zour foule sensualitie, 
 And vylde stinkand chastitie, 
 
 And ilk ane wed ane wyfe.
 
 14 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 " Priestis, pray nae mair 
 To Sanct Anthone to save thy sow, 
 Nor to Sanct Bride to keip thy cow ; 
 
 That grevis God right sair. 
 
 " Priestis, worship God, 
 And put away your imagerie, 
 Zour pardonis and fraternitie, 
 
 To hell the way and rod. 
 
 "Piiestis, sell nae mes, 
 Bot minister that sacrament, 
 As Christ, in the New Testament, 
 
 Commandit you expres. 
 
 " Priestis, put away 
 Zour paintit fyre of purgatory, 
 The ground of your idoiatiie ; 
 
 It is near Domisday." 
 
 The last specimen is on substantially the same theme as the 
 third: 
 
 " Thay sell you als the Sacramentis sevin, 
 They micht have maid as weill alevin, 
 Feu or mony, od or evin, 
 
 Your purses for to pyke, 
 tVald they let bot twa usit be, 
 Of Baptisme, and of my Bodie, 
 As thay war institute be me, 
 
 Men wald them better lyke." 
 
 As is well known, satire was a weapon which the Reformers 
 generally, following the cue of the old prophet on Mount 
 Carmel, freely used, and with which they gave Popery many a 
 deadly wound. The writings of Dunbar and Lindsay, for 
 example, were more widely circulated in their day, and are now 
 better known, than those of the Wedderburns ; and their power 
 lay much in the exquisite satire of them. The days of priestly 
 craft and extortion were numbered when Lindsay had taught 
 the people to sing of " Friar Gled and Corbie Monk, and the 
 Raven rudely ruggin' and ryvin'," and the Pauper's tale of how 
 he had been reduced to beggary by the clerical cormorants 
 
 " The vicar took the best cow by the head, 
 Incontinent, when my father was dead. 
 And when the vicar heard tell how my mother 
 Was dead, fra hand, he took to him anuther : 
 Then Meg, my wife, did mourn baith even and morrow, 
 Till at last she deit for very sorrow : 
 And when the vicar heard tell my wife was dead, 
 The third cow he cleiket by the head. 
 Their upmost clayes, that were raplash gray, 
 The vicar gart his clerk bear them away. 
 When all was gane I micht make na debate, 
 But with my bairns part for till beg my meat."
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 15 
 
 The Pardoner's occupation was gone when the people were 
 taught to laugh at him, as he thus commended his wares : 
 
 " My patent pardons ye may see, 
 Cam fra the Cam of Tartary, 
 Weill sealed with oyster shells. 
 Though ye haue na contrition, 
 Ye shall haue full remission, 
 
 With help of bukes and bells. 
 
 Here is ane relic, lang and braid, 
 
 Of Fyn Mac Coul, the right chaft blaid, 
 
 With teeth and altogether : 
 Of Collin's cow here is ane horn, 
 For eatin of Mac Connal's corn, 
 
 Was slain into Balquidder. 
 Here is ane cord, baith gret and lang, 
 Whilk hanget Johnnie Armstrong, 
 
 Of gude hemp saft and sound ; 
 Good holy people I stand for'd, 
 Whaeuer beis hanget with this cord, 
 
 Needs never to be drowned. 
 The culum of Sanct Bryde's cow, 
 The gruntel of Sanct Anton's sow, 
 
 Whilk bure his holy bell : 
 Whaeuer he be hears this bell clink, 
 Give me ane ducat for till drink, 
 
 He shall never gang to hell. 
 * * * # * 
 
 Come win the pardon, now let see, 
 For meal, for malt, or for money, 
 For cock, hen, goose, or gryse." 
 
 After the martyrdom of "Wishart, the Reformed cause con- 
 tinued to make progress in Dundee, Paul Methven being 
 eminently instrumental in advancing it. Originally a baker, 
 he had been suddenly transformed into a preacher and parson, 
 without the tedious, costly, and (as regards efficiency) often 
 worthless process of a University education. His character 
 and deportment were not always as unexceptionable and ex- 
 emplary as was to be desired. Latterly he fell under gross 
 scandal, for which he suffered " exemplary punishment," as Dr 
 M'Crie phrases it, in the severe discipline to which the General 
 Assembly subjected him. But his natural eloquence was most 
 impressive ; and so mighty was he in the Scriptures, that the 
 most learned of his Popish opponents were not able to resist 
 the wisdom and power with which he spake. In February, 
 1558, he was summoned before the Queen Regent and the 
 Bishops for preaching publicly in Dundee ; but this summons 
 her Grace discharged. In November following, he was sum- 
 moned a second time, and, disobeying, he was banished, and 
 such as should countenance him were denounced; yet his
 
 16 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 townsmen, one after another, took his part, and protected him. 
 In May, 1559, he was summoned a third time, to stand trial 
 before the Lord Justice at Stirling ; and, failing to appear, he 
 was denounced rebel, and put to the horn as fugitive, &c., for 
 not appearing to underly the law, usurping the authority of the 
 ministry of the Church, and taking upon himself the service 
 thereof, not being lawfully admitted thereto at the feast of 
 Pasche (26th March) last, and for the space of three days 
 immediately preceding said feast, and continually thereafter, 
 administering the sacraments of the altar to several of the 
 lieges within the burghs of Dundee and Montrose, in a manner 
 different from the divine and laudable use of the faithful 
 Catholic Church ; and also for convocation and gathering of the 
 lieges within the said burghs, at the time foresaid, he not being 
 admitted or approved by the Ordinaries of these places, and 
 without their license haranguing and preaching to the said 
 lieges, and persuading and seducing them to his erroneous and 
 seditious doctrines and heresies; thereby usurping the King 
 and Queen's axithority, and stirring up the lieges to commit 
 S3dition and tumults, contrary to the proclamations." 
 
 These things shew the power which Methven's labours were 
 exerting ; and the hatred, anger, and alarm with which he was 
 regarded. He would doxibtless havebeenhonoured with the crown 
 of martyrdom, had not worthy Provost Hally burton shielded 
 him ; for which Dundee was punished with a fine of 2000. The 
 struggle at length issued in 1560, in the abolition of Popeiy by 
 Act of Parliament, and the ratification of the Protestant Confes- 
 sion of Faith, drawn up by the Six Johns : John Winram, John 
 Spottiswood, John Willock, John Douglas, John How, and John 
 Knox. 
 
 In 1565 Mary's ill-starred marriage to Darnley took place, 
 and soon after she and her husband spent two days in Dundee. 
 They were received and treated with every outward token of 
 loyalty. Mary made the visit memorable by the Queen's Dona- 
 tion, as it was called ; that is, the gift to the Magistrates and 
 Council, for behoof of the community, of all the ecclesiastical 
 property in and around the town, which remained at that date 
 in the possession of the Crown, to be applied to the mainten- 
 ance of the ministry, and the relief of decayed burgesses and 
 the poor in burgh hospitals. 
 
 The above marriage was celebrated on the 22d July, and by 
 the 15th August the opposition to it had developed into a
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 17 
 
 formidable insurrection, headed by Moray, Hamilton, Argyll, 
 and others of the nobility. Mary's military preparations to 
 quell the insurrection reduced her to great pecuniary straits. 
 She pledged jewels for two thousand merks, and she borrowed 
 sums from the merchants of Edinburgh, and ten thousand 
 merks from the Corporation, giving it in security the mortgage 
 of the superiority of Leith. To recruit her exhausted treasury, 
 she likewise amerced certain individual offenders, and certain 
 towns, of which Dundee was one. It owed this distinction not 
 only to its wealth, but also to its zeal in the cause of the TCefor- 
 mation. Moray had personal friends in it, said to be in his 
 pay, and the Magistrates were alleged to have favoured him and 
 his fellow-conspirators, and to have allowed men to be levied in 
 the town for their service. Mary, therefore, imposed on it a 
 fine of two thousand merks, and proclaimed Provost Hallybur- 
 ton a rebel for his stern opposition to the Popish and arbitrary 
 policy which she had begun to pursue. 
 
 There is another deed which Mary did in connection with her 
 visit to Dundee which deserves to be held in remembrance. The 
 common burying-place in the town had heretofore been the 
 churchyard of St Clement's, which occupied the site where the 
 Town House now stands. It was in the heart of the town, and 
 over-crowded. Mary was not an adept in what we now call 
 sanitary science ; but she had sense enough to see that such a 
 burying place must be dangerous to health and life. She ac- 
 cordingly directed that it should be shut, and that instead of it 
 the cemetery of the Minorites, with the contiguous grounds 
 which had belonged to them, should be opened to the public for 
 interment. Then and thus the Howff began to receive its dead, 
 and continued to do so till a comparatively recent period, when 
 sanitary considerations required that it too should be shut. 
 
 It was in Dundee that the Earl of Gowrie was captured, 
 shortly before his execution. He had borne a chief part in the 
 Raid of Ruthven, meant to take James VI., then a boy of six- 
 teen, out of the hands of his two favourites, Lennox and Arran. 
 The Scottish nobility could not bear the arrogance and insolence 
 of these two upstarts, and their influence with the King ; and 
 their rapacity, and profligacy, and Popery made them utterly 
 odious to the mass of the people. Hence the plot to rescue the 
 King from them, and to put him in hands from which he 
 should have other and better counsels. On his way to Edin- 
 burgh from Athole, where he had been enjoying the chase, of 
 
 B
 
 18 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 which he was passionately fond, he was invited tostopatRuthven 
 Castle, the seat of the Earl of Gowrie. He accepted the 
 invitation, found himself a captive next morning, and when he 
 burst into tears on making the discovery, the consolation admi- 
 nistered to him by Glammis was, " Better bairns weep than 
 bearded men." But bearded men had to weep in their turn. 
 On recovering his liberty, after upwards of ten months, the King 
 affected twice to forgive his captors ; but, under the influence of 
 evil counsels, he repented of his clemency. Their raid was pro- 
 nounced treason by the Estates, and sentence of banishment 
 was passed upon them. Gowrie asked and obtained from the 
 King permission to choose the place of his exile, and he chose 
 France. Coming to Dundee to embark for it, he was in no 
 hurry to do so ; and, as he lingered, he yielded to the tempta- 
 tion of implicating himself in a new plot, which was to take 
 Stirling Castle by surprise, and to deliver the King from the 
 execrated Arran, who still ruled him. The plot was discovered 
 and cost Gowrie his life. Colonel William Stewart, with a body 
 of a hundred soldiers, surrounded the house in Dundee in which 
 the Earl lodged, and in spite of his brave defence of himself for, 
 it is said, twelve hours, took him prisoner, and conveyed him 
 to Edinburgh ; and, after a most informal trial, he was found 
 guilty of treason, and was publicly beheaded at Stirling. 
 
 Dundee was a temporary asylum from the fury of his perse- 
 cutors to Andrew Melville, the celebrated champion of Presby- 
 tery. With great ability and learning, and with inflexible 
 firmness he resisted the imposition upon Scotland of the yoke 
 of Episcopacy. Having been summoned before the Privy 
 Council to answer for a sermon at St Andrews, in which it was 
 alleged that, declaiming on the grievances of the nation, he had 
 used seditious and treasonable words, he refused to obey the 
 sxunmons, pleading that for his teaching he was answerable in 
 the first instance only to his Presbytery. The King's indigna- 
 tion was intensified by this plea, and he resolved to punish him 
 with the utmost rigour. Adamson, Archbishop of St Andrews, 
 received from Arran a warrant to apprehend him. Apprised 
 of his danger, Melville made Dundee his refuge, whither some 
 of his relatives accompanied him. He remained in it as long 
 as he safely could, and then made his escape from it in a way 
 worthy of being mentioned. Early on a morning about the 
 middle of June, 1584, he left the Harbour in a small boat, 
 under the management of a sailor-cousin, and after much fatigue
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 19 
 
 and some peril they reached Berwick in safety in the course of 
 next day. 
 
 In 1595, James VI. visited Dundee on his way northward 
 to subjugate the country, which the Popish Earls had kept in a 
 state of chronic ferment and rebellion. Parliament had 
 declared those Earls guilty of high treason, and their estates 
 and honours forfeited. To execute this sentence the Earl of 
 Argyll was appointed Lieutenant of the Noi-th, and was sent 
 with a band of troops to invade the lands o'f the traitors and to 
 seize their Castles. The King himself came to Dundee, in- 
 tending to remain there till he should learn the success of the 
 Earl's expedition. The first news from him was disastrous. 
 Huntly and Erroll met Argyll at Glenlivat, and with an army 
 much inferior in number, gave him a severe defeat. The King 
 left in haste to support and avenge his Lieutenant ; but, by a 
 new charter, he ratified all the immunities of Dundee, and, in 
 gratitude for several loans which it had advanced to him 
 specially for its liberal contribution to the expense of His 
 Majesty's matrimonial expedition to Denmark he conferred 
 on it new and important privileges, making it equal to the most 
 favoured corporation in his dominions. 
 
 We may add here, though it will somewhat anticipate time, 
 that, at the impulse of what he termed his " salmon-like affec- 
 tion and earnest desire to see his native and ancient kingdom," 
 James yet once more returned to Scotland, and visited Dundee, 
 honouring Dudhope Castle by sojourning in it. This was in the 
 next century; and in 1617, on the 28th May, the town re- 
 joiced in the light of his Koyal presence, the 'Town Clerk, 
 Mr Alexander Wedderburn, having " welcomed him in a 
 panegyrical speech, and by two Latin poems." Both speech and 
 poems have perished, so that they are beyond the reach of either 
 the praise or the blame of our modern criticism, whose verdict 
 would likely have been that they were fulsome enough. The 
 great object of James in revisiting Scotland at that time was to 
 establish Prelacy in it, in which he made good progress, so far 
 as mere power could make it, but at an expense which culmin- 
 ated finally in the ruin of the Stuart dynasty. 
 
 In the last twenty years of the sixteenth century the General 
 Assembly of the Church of Scotland met in Dundee no fewer 
 than four times. It was more accessible than the metropolis to 
 the northern legions, and it was therefore hoped that the 
 members in attendance might be the more manageable, so as to 
 
 B2
 
 20 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 yield to the ecclesiastical measures which the Court was bent on 
 carrying. The first of these four Assemblies was held in 1580, 
 and is memoruble for having " found and declared the office of 
 a bishop, as then used and commonly understood, to be destitute 
 of warrant from the Word of God, and a human invention, 
 tending to the great injury of the Church. They, therefore, with 
 one voice abolished the office in the Kirk, and charged all who 
 held it to demit at once, aud to desist, under pain of excom- 
 munication, from all ministerial duties until they were admitted 
 anew by the General Assembly." The other Assemblies were 
 more subservient. The second of the four was held in 1593, 
 and made a show of resistance to the known tendencies of the 
 Court, by demanding of the King the rigorous execution of the 
 laws of God and the realm in the punishment of all Papists. 
 The third was held in 1597, and was pliant enough to agree 
 that the Popish Earls of Angus, Huntly, and Erroll, having pro- 
 fessed penitence, and made submission to the Kirk, should be 
 admitted to absolution. The fourth was held in 1598, and made 
 such advances to Prelacy as to enact that it was lawful and ex- 
 pedient that the clergy should sit and vote in Parliament, and 
 in other meetings of the Estates of the Kingdom ; and that fifty- 
 one of them, or thereby, should do so that being the number 
 of bishops, abbots, and priors who were wont to come to Parlia- 
 ment in the good old Popish times. 
 
 Charles I. pursued the project of making Scotland Prelatic as 
 zealously as his father had done, and more recklessly. Hence 
 the renewal of the National Covenant, with a bond suited to 
 the times. Hence the framing and swearing of the Solemn 
 League and Covenant ; and hence the Civil War, which eventually 
 cost Charles his throne and his life. In that war Dundee 
 suffered for its steady adherence to the cause of the Covenants, 
 or, in the vocabulary of the Royalists, for its sedition and rebel- 
 lion. On the 4th April, 1645, the Great Montrose stonnedand 
 pillaged it. In the course of the preceding year he had won 
 many of his brilliant, but (for Charles) fruitless victories over 
 the Covenanters. He had attacked and defeated them at Tipper- 
 muir, at the Bridge of Dee, and at Inverlochy. He had invaded 
 and ravaged Argyll's country ; had laid waste with fire and 
 sword the Lowlands of Aberdeenshire and Moray ; had plundered 
 Elgin and Banff; and had burnt Stonehaven, Cowie, &c. After 
 performing these feats, defection from his standard, and the 
 measures taken by the Estates to oppose him, obliged him to
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 21 
 
 retire from the open country to the mountains ; but, before doing 
 so, he made Dundee feel his power and wrath. Leaving 
 Dunkeld at midnight, with a detachment of 900 men, he 
 marched to Dundee, reached it about ten o'clock in the morning, 
 and summoned it to surrender. Refusing to obey, it was carried 
 by storm, fired in several places, and given up to the rapine of 
 his barbarous Highland and Irish troops. As the sack was 
 proceeding, Montrose's scouts surprised him with the tidings 
 that Baillie and TJrrey, the Parliamentary Generals, with a 
 force of nearly 4000 men, were within a mile of him. He in- 
 stantly called his soldiers from the work of plunder, which they 
 were loth to cease ; put them in order ; began his retreat about 
 sunset ; covei*ed it by a series of most skilful manoeuvres ; 
 slipped between the two bodies, into which, in order to make 
 sure of him, Baillie and Urrey had divided their army ; and, 
 after three days and two nights, secured himself in the fastnesses 
 of the mountains. 
 
 It is pleasing to record that, five years after this, Dundee 
 repaid the Marquis with a humanity and a compassion which 
 contrast most honourably with the indignities which others did 
 him, and with his own harshness and cruelty in his brief day 
 of power. Having been captured and delivered up by M'Leod 
 of Assynt, he was conveyed by Dundee to Edinburgh, to be 
 condemned, hanged, and quartered. The citizens of Dundee 
 beheld him with respectful, tender pity, and supplied him with 
 clothes and other necessaries ; and how great his wants now 
 were, how miserable his plight was, two sentences from the 
 broad page of the country's history will show. The troop of 
 soldiers escorting him to the south " treated him in the most 
 ungenerous manner, heaped reproaches and outrages upon him, 
 meanly refused to allow him any change of dress, and led him 
 from place to place in the same peasant's habit in which he had 
 disguised himself." In the words of an eye-witness, " ' he sat 
 upon a little shelty horse, without a saddle, but a quilt of rags 
 and straw, and pieces of ropes for stirrups, his feet fastened 
 under the horse's belly with a tether, and a bit halter for a 
 bridle, a ragged, old, dark, reddish plaid, and a Moutrer cap 
 upon his head, a musketeer on each side, and his fellow- 
 prisoners on foot after him.' " 
 
 General Monk sacked Dundee in 1651. This was the greatest 
 disaster which it suffered for its fidelity to Monarchy and Pres- 
 bytery. Charles II. having sworn the Covenants, and been
 
 22 Historic Scenes in Forfar shire. 
 
 crowned at Scone, resided for weeks in Dundee. His presence, 
 fine figure, and fascinating rnannei-s raised the loyalty of the 
 town to the highest pitch. It advanced large sums of money 
 to him, raised at its own expense some troops of cavalry for his 
 service, and provided him with six pieces of artillery and a 
 handsome equipage for the camp, till he should recover the 
 palace. These things drew down upon the town Cromwell's 
 vengeance. Having gone to receive his " crowning mercy " at 
 Worcester, he employed Monk to subdue Scotland to the 
 English Commonwealth. When he had taken Stirling Castle, 
 Monk turned to Dundee. He appeared before the town and 
 invested it on the 26th August ; but before assaulting it, he 
 sent out some troops to scour the adjacent country, and to take 
 into custody every enemy of consequence whom they found. 
 The Committee of Estates was then sitting at Alyth, consisting 
 of several noblemen, gentlemen, and ministers ; among whom 
 were the Earl of Leven, the Earl of Crawford, the Earl 
 Marischal, Lord Ogilvy, Sir Adam Hepburn of Humbie, Sir 
 James Foulis of Colinton, and the Reverend Robert Douglas 
 and James Sharp. Five hundred of Monk's cavalry, under 
 Colonel Aldrich, came upon them by surprise ; made them 
 prisoners ; and earned them to Broughty Castle, whence they 
 were shipped for England. 
 
 Having accomplished this feat, Monk opened fire on Dundee. 
 Its governor, Sir Robert Lumsden of Innergelly, was brave ; 
 its fortifications were for that age strong ; and its garrison, 
 amounting to ten or eleven thousand men, was double the 
 number of the besiegers. Monk made his final assault on it 
 at nine o'clock on the morning of the 1st September ; having 
 learned that the inhabitants and the soldiers were in the habit 
 of breakfasting in the alehouses, and indulging in rather deep 
 morning potations. The assault was successful ; the walls fell ; 
 the Republican soldiers rushedinfuriously among the inhabitants; 
 the garrison was put to the sword ; the houses were pillaged and 
 fired; and men, women, and children were given up to in- 
 discriminate slaughter. More than twelve hundred of them 
 perished. Governor Lumsdeu, with a portion of the citizens 
 and of the garrison, fled to the Steeple, and held it for three 
 days ; but they were starved into surrender, and butchered in 
 the churchyard. Two battalions of Lord Dufius's, and another 
 corps, were in like manner butchered in the market place. The 
 gallant Lumsden, after obtaining quarter, was basely put to
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 23 
 
 death in cold blood, and Ms head exposed on an angle of the 
 Steeple, where it remained a long time till the stone fell to 
 which it had been fixed. The clergy of the town, though they 
 had advised its surrender, were treated with the utmost in- 
 solence and rudeness, and sent prisoners into England. The 
 massacre continued for three days. It ceased only when Monk's 
 savage soldiers were arrested and paralysed by the heart-rend- 
 ing spectacle in Thorter Row, of an infant sucking the cold 
 breast of its murdered mother. The loss of property was 
 enormous, as well as of life. Dundee was at that time one of 
 the richest towns in the kingdom. The money, besides the 
 plate and the most valuable furniture of other parts of the 
 country, including those of many of the nobility and gentry, 
 had been gathered into it as a place of safety. Each of Monk's 
 soldiers is said to have received 60 as his share of the plunder, 
 and much more would of course be destroyed than the 
 plunderers were able to carry away. Balfour estimates the 
 spoil at above two millions and a half Scots ; and Gumble, 
 Monk's chaplain and biographer, pronounces it " the best 
 plunder that was gotten in the wars throughout all the three 
 nations." 
 
 The refugees from other parts swelled the number of Monk's 
 prisoners. " Many persons of the highest rank, who had re- 
 paired to the town as a place of security and strength, were 
 taken. Among these were the Earls of Buchan, Tweeddale, 
 and Buccleuch, Viscount Newburgh, Lords Balcarras, Elibank, 
 and Ramsay, and the Master of Burleigh. There were fifteen 
 gentlemen bearing titles of Knighthood, eleven gentlemen of 
 landed property, nine members of the Faculty of Advocates, 
 twenty-four writers, merchants, and citizens of Edinburgh, be- 
 sides several ministers from the south of the Forth, all of whom 
 had sought shelter in Dundee." 
 
 On the eve of the Revolution, the Hilltown of Dundee was 
 given to the flames by the infamous Claverhouse. For his 
 services to destroy the liberty and religion of Scotland, James 
 VII. had rewarded him by granting him the estate of Dudhope, 
 and the Constabulary of Dundee, and by also creating him 
 Viscount Dundee. His arrogant and illegal claims as Con- 
 stable, and his imperious attempts to enforce them, soon brought 
 him into conflict with the authorities of the town, and the con- 
 tention between him and them one day waxed so violent that 
 he fled bareheaded from the Town Hall in terror for his life,
 
 24 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Gathering his dependents in the Glen of Ogilvy, he returned, 
 without delay, to wreck his vengeance on the devoted town. 
 Mrs Maxwell of Tealing espied him as he and his vassals 
 descended the southern slope of the Sidlaws, and, suspecting 
 his design, managed to give Dundee warning of his approach. 
 By the time of his arrival it was so well prepared to meet him 
 that he did not dare to attack it, and, in the rage of disappoint- 
 ment, he set fire to the Hilltown, and retired, leaving it one 
 blazing mass. 
 
 The terror which he thus inspired is said to have brought 
 the authorities of the town to his measures regarding the 
 establishment of Episcopacy in it ; for, soon after, the Privy 
 Council thanked them for dispersing a conventicle, and im- 
 prisoning the preacher. In those days none were allowed to 
 live in the town but such as attended the ministrations of the 
 Episcopalians. Even family worship in any other form was 
 forbidden, and the performers and abettors thereof thrown into 
 prison. 
 
 It is in connection with the Rebellion of 1715 that Dundee 
 next appears as an Historic Scene in our national annals. The 
 majority of the Magistrates of the Second Geneva were then on 
 the side of the Pretender, the Chevalier de St George, the eldest 
 son of James VII. ; while the inhabitants generally were loyal 
 to the House of Hanover. The anniversary of the birth of 
 George I. fell on the 28th of May, and on the day before the 
 Magistrates prohibited the celebration of it. The citizens trode 
 the prohibition under foot, assembled in a body, and proceeding 
 to Dudhope Castle, presented themselves before it in arms, and 
 drank His Majesty's health, and other loyal toasts, with enthu- 
 siasm, accompanying these with a volley. The anniversary of 
 the Restoration of Charles II. fell on the next day, and the 
 Magistrates, to commend their own Toryism, and to brand the 
 Whiggery of the population, kept it with all due honour. 
 
 The Earl of Mar unfurled the Pretender's standard at 
 Braemar, on the 6th September, 1715 ; and, soon after, Graham 
 of Duntrune, styling himself Viscount Dundee, proclaimed him 
 at Dundee. The Battle of Sheriffmuir, fought on the 13th 
 November, really sounded the knell of the Chevalier's 
 adventure ; but landing at Peterhead, on the 22d December, he 
 proceeded southwards, and on the 6th of January, 1716, he 
 made his public entry into Dundee on horseback, with the Earl 
 of Mar on his right, Earl Marischal on his left, and about three
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 25 
 
 hundred gentlemen in his train. For about an hour he showed 
 himself on the High Street, and multitudes flocked to look on 
 him. His Mends, consisting of the Jacobite Magistrates and 
 gentry, the non-juring clergy, and a remnant of the people who 
 still believed in the divine right of Kings to rule wrong, wel- 
 comed him with bursts of acclamation, and were admitted to 
 the honour of kissing his hand. After spending two nights in 
 Dundee, he left for Scone, where he appointed the mockery of 
 his coronation to be performed on the 23d instant ; but, in a 
 few days, he again passed through Dundee a fugitive from the 
 Earl of Argyll, on his way to Montrose, where he embarked for 
 France, and bade Scotland a final adieu. Argyll reached Dun- 
 dee a day or two after the Pretender had passed through it in 
 his flight, and, finding it deserted by its Jacobite Magistrates, 
 who had imitated their Chief in consulting their safety by flight, 
 he nominated half-a-dozen of persons, whom he authorised and 
 required to take care of the town and its affairs till proper 
 Magistrates should be appointed by lawful authority. 
 
 Dundee figured again in 1745, when Charles Edward, eldest 
 son of the Pretender, made a last and desperate effort to recover 
 the throne on which his ancestors had so long sat. Having been 
 furnished by France with a small supply of money and arms, 
 he landed in July on the coast of Lochaber, attended by The 
 Seven Men of Moidart, as they were called the Marquis of 
 Tullibardine, Sir Thomas Sheridan, Sir John M'Donald, Kelly 
 (an Episcopalian clergyman), ^Eneas M'Donald, Francis Strick- 
 land, and Buchanan. Having raised the standard in Glen- 
 finnan, he marched southward at the head of fifteen hundred 
 Highlanders, and on the 4th September, made his public entry 
 into Perth, where he caused his father, then resident in Rome, 
 to be proclaimed King. From Perth he despatched Clanranald 
 and Keppoch to Dundee, who levied contributions from it, and 
 seized two vessels which were in the Harbour, laden with arms 
 and ammunition, and forwarded them to Perth for the use of 
 the insurgents. At the same time a party of Prince Charles's 
 adherents, numbering about six hundred, and commanded by 
 Sir James Kinloch, took possession of Dundee, and held it for 
 nearly five months, turning its Churches, as Monk had done in 
 his day, into stables for their horses. Sir James published the 
 Pretender's manifesto, setting forth Scotland's grievances, and 
 promising pardon to all who, though they had deserted his 
 House, should now return to their allegiance, and containing
 
 26 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 also bis commission to his son Charles, constituting him sole 
 Regent of the Kingdom. He likewise made one David Fother- 
 ingham Governor of the town, and exacted from it heavy con- 
 tributions of the sinews of war. 
 
 In 1715 the Magistrates and Council had been, as we have 
 said, on the side of the Pretender, but in 1745 they were 
 against him. On the 14th January, 1746, they got quit of the 
 rebels who had so long occupied the town, and on the 2d April 
 they voted a most dutiful address to King George, exuberant 
 with professions of loyalty, and with praises of their own loyal 
 deeds ; and even extolling the " Butcher " Duke of Cumber- 
 land, George's second son, who had the command of the Royal 
 army, and whom they had a month before honom-ed with the 
 freedom of the town in a golden box. The address was signed 
 by Provost Alexander Duncan of Lundie. 
 
 On the 16th April the Rebellion was quenched, and the 
 hopes of the House of Stuart finally extinguished upon 
 " Colloden's fatal heath." 
 
 " Dmmmossie muir, Drutnmossie muir, 
 
 A waef u' day it was to me ; 
 For there I lost my father dear, 
 My father dear and brethren three. 
 
 " Their winding sheet the bluidy clay, 
 
 Their graves are growing green to see, 
 And by them lies the dearest lad 
 That ever blest a woman's e'e. 
 
 " Now wae to thee, thou cruel Duke, 
 
 A bluidy man I trow thou be, 
 For monie a heart thou hast made sair, 
 That ne'er did wrang to thine or thee." 
 
 Well might Dundee have joined in such a lament. It must 
 have supplied its own share of the blood which drenched the 
 field, judging by the number of persons of note connected with 
 Dundee who escaped from Culloden with their lives for a prey. 
 Of these, about three weeks after the battle, there reached 
 Dundee Graham of Duntrune, calling himself Viscount 
 Dundee ; David, Lord Ogilvy, eldest son and heir of the Earl of 
 Airlie ; Fotheringham, the late Governor of the town ; Fletcher 
 of Ballinshoe ; Sandilands of Bourdeaux ; Henry Patullo ; 
 Graham and Blair, merchants in Dundee ; and Blair, writer in 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 Of recent events of which Dundee has been the scene, we
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 27 
 
 shall mention only three, different the one from, the other, but 
 each sure to fill a niche in the country's history. 
 
 The first one of these is the landing at Dundee in September, 
 1844, of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and the 
 Princess Royal. On the fifth of that month Sir James Graham, 
 Her Majesty's Home Secretary, wrote Provost Lawson that 
 Her Majesty might be expected to arrive at the port from 
 Woolwich on the night of Tuesday the 10th, or on the morning 
 of Wednesday the llth. On the 7th, the Private Secretary of 
 Lord Haddington, First Lord of the Admiralty, wrote Mr 
 M'Ewan, Secretary of the Trinity House, accepting the proffered 
 services of that House to pilot the Royal squadron in these 
 waters, for which purpose the Dundee, Perth, and London 
 Shipping Company had placed at the disposal of the Master and 
 Brethren of Trinity their splendid steamship Perth. 
 
 All public bodies, and indeed the entire community, set to 
 work immediately to prepare for giving the Royal party a 
 worthy welcome. Everything possible in so short a time was 
 done to provide that their reception should be such as might 
 please and honour them, and assure the Sovereign that she lived 
 and reigned in the hearts of all classes of the population. 
 
 At four o'clock on the afternoon of Tuesday, the Perth, with 
 a large party on board, began to descend the river. On passing 
 the buoy Her Majesty's steamer the Volcano already appeared 
 in the offing, and the Perth communicated with it. Sailing 
 southwards it next descried the war steamer Stromboli, with 
 which also it communicated, giving it a pilot, and learning from 
 it that Her Majesty was still several hours distant. Returning 
 to the mouth of the river, after hours spent in high enjoyment 
 as well as expectation, it again proceeded southward and met 
 the Royal squadron. ' " We are hailed," says one who was on 
 board, " by the foremost vessel, as she sweeps past us, and 
 ordered to send a pilot on board the Victoria and Albert. A 
 burst of cheering from the deck, and Captain Spink's order from 
 the paddlebox to lower away the boat succeeds. We near the 
 Royal yacht with the red stern lights, and our boat returns with 
 orders for the Perth to go ahead and lead the way. In doing 
 so we pass close alongside, and, we fear, disturb the Royal 
 slumber with another irrepressible cheer. Running ahead we 
 soon after receive salutes from Carnoustie, and approach the 
 bonfires blazing on the North and South Ferries. Broughty 
 replies to us with guns and fireworks. Dundee awakes ! hark
 
 28 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 to the cannon and the merry peal of bells ! At four o'clock 
 the Victoria and Albert anchored below the Beacon Rock, and 
 when the party from the Perth landed, the joyous population 
 of Dundee was crowding in masses through every street towards 
 the docks." 
 
 By seven o'clock on Wednesday morning there were on the 
 Quay, to receive the Royal visitors, the Magistrates and 
 Council ; the Earl of Airlie, Lord Lieutenant of the County, and 
 suite ; the Sheriff of the Shire ; the M.P. for the Burgh ; the 
 Town Clerks, and Harbour Trustees, and deputations from St 
 Andrews, Arbroath, Brechin, Forfar, and Montrose. The land- 
 ing took place at half-past eight o'clock. Numerous addresses 
 having been presented and most graciously received, the Queen, 
 the Prince Consort, and the Royal Princess walked slowly along 
 the pier to the foot of the Mid Quay, where their carriages were 
 waiting them, and having taken their seats, the procession 
 moved on. Its course was by Castle Street, the High Street, 
 the Nethergate, South Tay Street, North Tay Street, Bridewell, 
 and Dudhope Power-Loom Works, and thence by the road in 
 front of the Barracks. A little beyond Dudhope Church, the 
 carriages of the Magistrates, which had been in front of the 
 procession, drew aside, to allow the Royal carriages to pass on, 
 and Her Majesty and the Prince having graciously bowed adieu, 
 the Royal cortege drove on at a rapid pace towards Lochee. 
 
 The scene, both at the landing and along the whole route of 
 the procession, baffles description. The vessels in the Harbour 
 and in the River were decked in their gayest ; public buildings 
 and private houses, offices and shops, vied with one another in 
 the profusion, elegance, and splendour of their decorations ; 
 immense crowds filled every available inch of space where a 
 peep of the Royal party and the gorgeous pageant could be got ; 
 and the constant and deafening cheers, the waving of kandker- 
 chiefs and flags, the pealing of bells, and the roaring of cannon, 
 must have produced on Royalty the deepest impression that the 
 heart of Dundee and of the whole surrounding region was glow- 
 ing with loyalty and love. 
 
 The whole day was kept in a style royally festal. On the 
 return of the Magistrates and Council to the High Street, they 
 left their carnages and entered the Council Chambers, to con- 
 gratulate the Provost on the success of the arrangements for the 
 morning, and to give thanks for the efficient support which he 
 had received. In the Town Hall at noon, like congratulations
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 29 
 
 and thanks were repeated at a meeting of the Provost, Magis- 
 trates, Councillors, Harbour Trustees, Guildry, and other 
 Public Bodies, the M.P. for the town, the Sheriff of the County, 
 and a number of the principal citizens. The Lord Lieutenant 
 gave a dinner in the Royal Hotel to the Vice-Lieutenant and 
 other gentlemen of the Lieutenacy to the number of about forty. 
 The Provost, the Magistrates and Council, the Harbour 
 Trustees, the deputations from the other burghs, and a numerous 
 party, dined in the British Hotel. The entertainments were 
 sumptuous, the spirit of the guests was wound up to the 
 rapture pitch, the toasts were appropriate, and the speeches 
 were instinct with an eloquence which only such an occasion 
 could have inspired. 
 
 On the 1st October Her Majesty returned from Blair- Athole 
 by the same route by which she had gone to it, Lord Aberdeen, 
 in notifying her intention to the Provost, expressing a hope 
 that " the excellence of the arrangements made for her landing 
 would be equally conspicuous in her embarkation." Without a 
 sentence of detail, which would be useless repetition, we shall 
 only say that his Lordship's hope was abundantly fulfilled, and 
 that the greetings of another immense gathering of Her 
 Majesty's people at her departure were not a whit behind those 
 which had three weeks before hailed her on her arrival. 
 
 The place of the landing and the departure was the Mid Quay, 
 which in honour of the Royal visit was henceforth named the 
 Queen's Quay. At the upper end of it Mr Leslie, Harbour 
 Engineer, had improvised for the landing a Triumphal Arch, 
 which was exceedingly admired. A strong desire having been 
 generally expressed that this arch should be perpetuated in one 
 formed on its model, but constructed of more durable materials, 
 to be a standing memorial of Her Majesty's visit, and of the 
 attachment of her people to her person, and family, and throne, 
 the Harbour Trustees forthwith took up the suggestion. Lord 
 Panmure, with his usual readiness and liberality, headed the 
 subscription with 750, and the idea was at length realised in 
 the completion of the massive and beautiful Arch which adorns 
 the Queen's Quay. The style of its architecture is Norman ; it 
 is eighty-four feet in height, and eighty-two in breadth ; a spiral 
 stair in the east tower leads to the top ; there is an electric 
 clock between the towers ; and the initials of the Queen and her 
 Consort embellish the structure. 
 
 The second recent event which we were to mention is the
 
 30 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 opening of the Baxter Park on the 9th September, 1863. This 
 splendid Park, extending to thirty -five acres, was presented to 
 the inhabitants of Dundee by Sir David Baxter and his sisters, 
 Miss Eleanor and Miss Mary Ann Baxter. David Baxter 
 was long at the head of the firm of Baxter Brothers, of world- 
 wide fame in connection with the linen trade of Scotland. The 
 works of the firm in Dundee are one of the great sights of the 
 town, and have been visited by hosts of admirers. They have 
 abundantly rewarded the skill, energy, and enterprise of their 
 owners ; while their owners' sense of stewardship, under signal 
 success in trade, has been beautifully manifested in most liberal 
 contributions to the Treasury for Good-doing. The head of the 
 firm was so much a business man, and the business of it was so 
 immense, that he shied municipal engagements ; but, as a late 
 writer has justly said, " In all movements for the amelioration 
 of distress and suffering whether of a local, national, or foreign 
 nature the name of David Baxter was to be found in a pro- 
 minent place. Whether it was the Indian Famine Relief Fund, 
 the Crimean Fund, the Cotton Famine Relief Fund, or move- 
 ments of a more local nature, the open hand and well-filled purse 
 of Mr Baxter were always ready to come to the rescue, and set 
 the example to his wealthy fellow-citizens." 
 
 The reason which he himself assigned for his beneficence 
 taking the form of a Park for the people was " that the growth 
 of Dundee was rapidly encroaching on the pleasure grounds on 
 which the townspeople had been accustomed to recreate them- 
 selves ; and he and his sisters desired to give to the town a 
 pleasure ground of which it could not be deprived, and where 
 the labouring population of Dundee might be permitted to 
 breathe freely." The grounds for the Park were bought for 
 15,000 ; the laying of them out, which was done most judi- 
 ciously and tastefully after Mr Baxter had visited the chief 
 public Parks in England, and had obtained the counsel and aid 
 of Sir Joseph Paxton, must have cost as much more ; and when 
 to these sums is added the sum mortified to keep the Park in 
 order, the aggregate cost of the gift to the donors would not be 
 less than 50,000. 
 
 The Park was opened on the day named above, and, alto- 
 gether, it was such a holiday as Dundee had never seen before. 
 In the morning, in the Corn Exchange, the freedom of the town 
 was presented to the venerable Earl Russell, and also the 
 freedom of the Guildry Incorporation. He, accompanied by
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 31 
 
 his Countess and their son, Lord Amberly, had come that morn- 
 ing from Meikleour House, where he was then i-esiding, and he 
 was met at the Parliamentary boundary by the Magistrates, and 
 at Bank Street by the Earls of Dalhousie and Camperdown, and 
 by the whole Town Council, and conducted to the Corn Ex- 
 change, where the honours mentioned above were conferred on 
 him. 
 
 The procession from the centre of the town to the Park was 
 a most imposing pageant. It comprised some 8000 persons, the 
 streets through which it passed were lined with five or six times 
 that number, and were richly decorated with flags, flowers, 
 and arches. It stretched nearly two miles ; it began to enter 
 the Park about a quarter past three o'clock, and it was about 
 a quai-ter to five o'clock before the last of it was within the gate. 
 The proceedings commenced with the Aberdeenshire 
 Volunteers playing the Old Hundred, and the 70,000 who 
 surrounded the platform took up the air with sublime effect. 
 The doxology, " Praise God, from whom all blessings flow," 
 &c., having been sung, and prayer offered up by the Rev. 
 Robert Lang, A.M., Sir David Baxter presented the munificent 
 gift to the people of Dundee, by handing the title-deeds and the 
 keys of the Park to the Earl of Dalhousie, as representing the 
 Trustees. The Earl accepted the gift, and gave Sir David and 
 his sisters thanks for their princely generosity. The inhabitants 
 had, in testimony of their gratitude, subscribed for a marble 
 statue to Sir David. The statue had been executed by Mr 
 John Steell, R.S.A., Edinburgh, and placed within the pavilion 
 in the park, with the following inscription on it : " This statue 
 of Sir DAVID BAXTER of Kilmaron was erected by 16,731 sub- 
 scribers, in grateful acknowledgment of the gift of this Park to 
 the people of Dundee by him and his sisters, Miss ELEANOR and 
 Miss MARY ANN BAXTER ; and in affectionate remembrance of 
 their late father, William Baxter, Esq. of Balgavies, they desire 
 that his name be associated with the gift. A.D., 1863." The 
 statue was now presented to Sir David by Mr John Leng in 
 name of the subscribers, and Sir David accepted it, and re- 
 sponded to Mr Leng's address. Three cheers were given for the 
 Queen on the motion of Sir David. Three cheers and one 
 cheer more for Sir David and the Misses Baxter, with long life, 
 health, and happiness 1o them, were given on the motion of the 
 Earl of Dalhousie, the bands playing Dainty Davie. Three 
 cheers and one cheer more were given for the Earl of Dalhousie,
 
 32 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 on the motion of Sir David, the bands playing Brechin Castle. 
 Three cheers, with long life to them, were given for Earl and 
 Countess Russell, on the motion of the Earl of Camperdown, 
 the bands playing The Old English Gentleman, and the Earl 
 responded. We cannot afford to give specimens of the speaking. 
 Suffice it to say that it was brief, appropriate, and most hearty, 
 and that it was enthusiastically cheered by the multitiide in at- 
 tendance. Fireworks and illuminations closed the day, of which 
 it is not enough to say that it will be long remembered in 
 Dundee as long as the Baxter Park exists the memory of the 
 opening day will not altogether perish. 
 
 The day was, as we have stated, the 9th of September, 1863. 
 On the 1st January of that year, while the Park was yet being 
 laid out,. Her Majesty the Queen, on the recommendation of 
 Lord Palmerston, had conferred his baronetcy on Mr Baxter, 
 making him Sir David Baxter of Kilmaron. The honour was 
 bestowed on him in consideration of his commercial eminence, 
 his public and private worth, and his princely beneficence, and 
 it was enhanced by his being associated in it with Francis 
 Crossley of Halifax and William Brown of Liverpool ; men like 
 himself, whom commercial enterprise had made millionaires, 
 and who had also devoted large portions of their fortune to the 
 good of their fellowmen. 
 
 The third recent event in Dundee which will live in history, 
 and which we were to notice, is the inauguration of the monu- 
 ment to the late Mr Kinloch of Kinloch, one of the greatest 
 patriots of whom Scotland can boast. He was born in Dundee 
 in 1775, went to France in 1793, and, ere he had passed out of 
 his teens, had become a pronounced friend of the people, and a 
 zealous supporter of their rights. Born before his time, he had 
 to pay the penalty usually exacted, in one form or other, from 
 his class. Opposed to the Corn Laws, and to all taxes on the 
 food of the people, he was obnoxious to the entire landocracy : 
 the most Whiggish of whom in those days would, like Lord 
 Melbourne long afterwards, have thought the Statesman mad 
 who should have proposed the abolition of those laws and taxes. 
 An apostle of free trade against all sorts of monopoly ; a friend 
 of peace and economy, of universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and 
 annual Parliaments ; and, for the accomplishment of all these 
 ends, a strenuous advocate of a thorough reform in Parliament, 
 he took a foremost place among the faithful few who, in those 
 evil times, stood in the breach, played the men for their country,
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 33 
 
 and saved it. Mr Kinloch's politics, acceptable in themselves 
 to the mass of the community, were commended and enforced 
 by the badness of the times, and the privations and sufferings 
 of the working classes. Meetings to ventilate and advance 
 Radical principles began to be held ; the Government, headed 
 by Castlereagh and Sidmouth, took the alarm, and prompt and 
 energetic measures were resolved on to suppress the incipient 
 conspiracy, sedition, treason ! for by all these bad names did 
 they brand every manifestation, however constitutional, of 
 popular discontent with things as they were. 
 
 On the 16th August, 1819, a great meeting in Manchester, 
 to petition for the reform of the representation of the people in 
 Parliament, was broken in on and dispersed by two regiments 
 of yeomanry, two of infantry, and a brigade of artillery. A 
 number of persons was killed, and several hundreds were 
 seriously injured. The Manchester Massacre, as it was well 
 termed, roused public indignation to the highest pitch, and the 
 Political Union in Dundee resolved on a public meeting to pro- 
 test against it. At this meeting, which was attended by about 
 10,000 persons, Mr Kinloch consented to preside the Provost, 
 the Member for the county, and several others having refused 
 to do so. We have before us a copy of the speech which he 
 delivered from the chair on that occasion, and a wonderfully 
 temperate speech it was. He himself said of it " I was cited 
 to appear before a set of prejudiced judges, and a packed jury, 
 for the atrocious crime of having said- that we needed reform ; 
 that cutting of throats was murder ; and that Castlereagh was 
 a knave, and old Sidmouth a fool." But he meant in his 
 facet iousness, that this was the construction which " prejudiced 
 jiidges and a packed jury " would have put on his speech, rather 
 than the speech itself. It was marvellously calm and moderate ; 
 sparing of invective, and even of satire ; perhaps the sentence in 
 it most flavoured with the latter being that in which he asked, 
 in case the people had been really represented in the House of 
 Commons "Would the wealth of the country have been 
 squandered, as it has been, in support of chuckle-headed Legiti- 
 macy, and for the restoration of that devil Ferdinand, the Pope, 
 the Jesuits, and the Inquisition V 
 
 Mr Kinloch was advised, instead of standing trial for this 
 
 speech, to flee his country, and he was declared an outlaw. He 
 
 preferred France for his asylum, and remained in it for three 
 
 years, when his daughter Miss Cecilia Kinloch of Carnoustie, 
 
 c
 
 34 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 was presented to George IV. at Ms visit to Edinburgh, and 
 begged that the sentence of outlawry on her father might be re- 
 called. It was recalled, and Mr Kinloch was allowed to return 
 to his home and his friends. He returned only the more 
 wedded to his political principles from what he had suffered for 
 them ; and tongue, and pen, and purse, and influence were 
 devoted to their furtherance, till they triumphed in their 
 adoption by the Legislature. During that period his connection 
 and intercourse with Dundee were intimate and frequent. He 
 had before that time laid Dundee under deep and lasting 
 obligation, having at his own expense, and in spite of all the 
 opposition which its self-elected Town Council could offer him, 
 obtained an Act for the improvement of its Harbour, on which 
 the prosperity of Dundee so much depends ; the Guildry pre- 
 senting him with a piece of plate of the value of 100 guineas, 
 " in testimony of their respect for his character as an excellent 
 and accomplished country gentleman, and of their gratitude for 
 his zealous services to the community, in the matter of the 
 Harbour Bill." The great body of its inhabitants were in 
 sympathy with his Radicalism, and there was nothing which he 
 was not ready and forward to do to deepen the combat for 
 Reform, and to hasten the victory which was by and bye to 
 crown it. With all thorough Reformers he was an immense 
 favourite, and when Dundee got a member of Parliament to 
 itself, it wreathed the laurel around Mr Kinloch's brow by 
 electing him its first representative in the first Reformed Par- 
 liament. 
 
 His Parliamentary career, alas ! was very brief. He took 
 his seat in St Stephen's on the first day of the session, the 29th 
 January, 1833, and he was numbered with the dead on the 
 28th of March ensuing, in the fifty-eighth year of his age. 
 Profound, tender, and widespread, was the grief caused by his 
 demise. Immediately it was resolved to honour him with a 
 monument ; but, from various causes, the resolution was not 
 accomplished till the beginning of last year. The monument 
 preferred was a statue of the patriot, and it was inaugurated 
 on the 3d February, 1872, and now adorns the north-west 
 corner of the Albert Institute Square, the finest imaginable site 
 for it. The inauguration was a complete success. Lord 
 Kinnaird presided at the ceremony, and made an appropriate 
 and admirable speech. Provost Yeaman, the Honourable 
 Charles Carnegie, Sir John Ogilvy, Mr Peterkin, &c., were also
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 35 
 
 very felicitous in their addresses, and the enthusiasm of the 
 crowd in attendance, numbering from 25,000 to 30,000, was 
 boundless. The statue was pronounced an excellent likeness, 
 and both in Albert Square, and at the refection which followed in 
 the Thistle Hall, John Steell, Esq., the sculptor, was duly 
 honoured, not only for executing his task so successfully, but 
 for undertaking it from love to Dundee, his native town, and 
 as the first statue erected in it. The inscription on the 
 pedestal is most striking : 
 
 GEORGE KINLOCH, 
 
 of Kiuloch. 
 
 Outlawed for 
 
 The Advocacy of Popular Rights, 
 
 22d December, 1819. 
 
 Proclaimed First Member for Dundee, 
 
 In the First Reformed Parliament, 
 
 22d December, 1832 
 
 Born in Dundee, 1775. 
 
 Died in London, 1833. 
 
 Erected by Public Subscription, 
 
 To Commemorate a Signal Triumph 
 
 of Political Justice, 
 
 3d February, 1872. 
 
 How time in its progress does often signally rectify the 
 greatest irregularities and wrongs ! To Mr Kinloch's memory 
 the 3d February, 1872, brought rich compensation for all the 
 labours and sacrifices which his patriotism cost him. And Her 
 Majesty has since added mightily to the compensation by be- 
 stowing on the patriot's son and successor the honour of a 
 baronetcy. Most worthy was Sir George Kinloch of the 
 honour ; but we believe that he spoke truly, as well as with 
 beautiful and touching filialism, when he said at Alyth that his 
 baronetcy was more a tribute to his father's memory than to 
 himself. And Lord Kinnaird, now a British Peer and Lord- 
 Lieutenant of Perthshire, presented another illustration of the 
 same thing we mean of the father's wrongs being righted in 
 the happier experience of the son. So he spoke of himself at 
 the refection in the Thistle Hall, and that most naturally and 
 fitly on such an occasion ; pointing a moral of the greatest im- 
 portance to all, more especially to those whose lot it is to suffer 
 for well-doing to their country or their kind. "I confess," said 
 he, " when that statue was unveiled, some painful, though 
 pleasing recollections, were recalled to my mind of two very 
 near and dear relations a father and an uncle who were 
 c2
 
 36 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 personal friends of Mr Kinloch, but who, like hitrt and others, 
 able and willing to serve their country, were precluded from so 
 doing because, in the case of the House of Commons, unless you 
 had the favour of either a Whig or Tory nobleman, the pro- 
 prietors of close burghs, an Independent Liberal had very little 
 chance of being returned to the House of Commons. With 
 regard to my father, he could only look to being returned to the 
 House of Lords by an election of the Scotch Peers. Now that 
 elective body remains as the only monument in this country of 
 that close, narrow, nay, corrupt system of self-election. He sat 
 for a time in the House of Commons, when he succeeded to the 
 Peerage, and then, owing to his political opinions, he was for 
 life excluded from taking part in public matters. A man who 
 had great talents, and whose whole object was the promotion of 
 those measures which he believed, and which Mr Kinloch 
 believed, were to benefit mankind, he was obliged to seek re- 
 creation and the study of Art abroad ; but then the name had 
 gone before him, and from town to town he was hunted, never 
 being allowed to live in one place above a few months, and 
 when his son went to that country he was not allowed to receive 
 a letter unless it had been previously read and stamped by the 
 police." 
 
 Dundee, viewed as a whole, has thus been the scene of many 
 memorable events. But there are in it particular localities 
 which, viewed by themselves, have some good claim to rank as 
 Historic Scenes, and, before leaving the town for the country, 
 at a few of these we shall now glance. 
 
 The Seagate, plebeian as it has become, was at one time the 
 Belgravia of Dundee. People who plumed themselves on being 
 the " society " of the town lived in it ; and many of the Lairds 
 of the surrounding country, as the Guthries, the Afflecks, the 
 Brigtons, and the Burnsides had their town residences in it. 
 Nearly opposite the foot of Peter Street were the Cross and the 
 Town House, in front of which criminals suffered the last penalty 
 of the law. It was here that the cannibal Angus " brigant," 
 already mentioned, was burned, and it was here too, as late as 
 1699, that Grizzel Jaffray bore the same doom for witchcraft. 
 
 As Grizzel was suffering at the stake, and the town in a state 
 of the highest excitement by her execution, a vessel appeared 
 in the river whose captain was a near relative of the murdered 
 woman. Shocked by the tragedy that was being acted, and 
 disgusted with hia native town for acting it, he forthwith set
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 37 
 
 sail for India, accompanied by Ms only son. They there 
 amassed a large fortune, which was eventually brought home, 
 the estate of Murie in the Carse of Gowrie purchased with it, 
 and the well-known family of the Yeamans of Murie founded. 
 In 1849 the effects in Murie House were exposed to sale, 
 among which were a curious Indian chest, in which it was be- 
 lieved that the Captain's son brought his treasure from India 
 to Forfarshire, and a portrait, believed to be that of the 
 Captain himself, which sold for 130 guineas. 
 
 That old house at the head of the Seagate, and on the south 
 side of it, a much frequented Inn in the days of our fathers, 
 with the sign of the Blue Bell, taken clown so lately as 1868, 
 was the town residence of Sir George Murray of Grandtully. 
 In it was born, in 1731, Admiral Duncan, first Lord Viscount 
 Duncan, ennobled for his naval exploits, especially for his 
 glorious victory, off Camperdown, in 1797, over the Dutch fleet 
 under Yice-Admiral de Winter. His father, Alexander 
 Duncan of Lundie, was then Provost of Dundee, and it may be 
 presumed that he had either bought or rented the house from 
 the Grandtully family. 
 
 Alison, in his History of Europe, has said of the Admiral, 
 " Duncan's character, both in professional daring and domestic 
 suavity, closely resembled that of Collingwood. He had the 
 same rapid eye and intrepid decision in action, the same bold- 
 ness in danger, the same vigour in command, the same gentle- 
 ness in disposition. Tall, majestic in figure, with an athletic 
 form and noble countenance, he recalled the image of those 
 heroes in whom the imagination of the poets has loved to 
 embody the combination of vigour and courage with strength 
 and beauty. The rapidity of his decision, the justice of his 
 glance, was equal to that of Nelson himself." The Sovereign 
 having conferred on him the well-merited patent of nobility, 
 both Houses of Parliament having unanimously thanked the 
 fleet, and the City of London having presented his Lordship 
 with the freedom of the city, and a sword of 200 guineas value, 
 Angus and Dundee followed with all the honours which they 
 could bestow. On his first visit to his native town, his recep- 
 tion and his procession along the High Street in full uniform, 
 and carrying his London sword, were like the revival of a 
 Roman triumph. His portrait was subscribed for and placed 
 in the Town Hall, with the following inscription : 
 
 " The Right Honourable Viscount DUNCAN, Commander of
 
 38 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 the British Fleet in the North Seas, in the glorious engagement 
 with the Dutch, near Camperdown, on the llth of October, 
 1797, when the enemy were completely defeated, with the loss 
 of nine ships of the line, among which were those of the 
 Admiral and Vice-Admiral. 
 
 The whole English fleet consisted of ships . 24 
 
 The whole Dutch fleet consisted of ships . 26 
 
 The number of guns in the English fleet . 1198 
 
 The number of guns in the Dutch fleet . . 1259 
 
 This portrait of the gallant Admiral was placed here at the 
 
 request of a general meeting of the noblemen and gentlemen of 
 
 Angus, who were justly proud that their county had given 
 
 birth to so distinguished an officer. And, as a further testimony 
 
 of their satisfaction, they at the same time resolved that a piece 
 
 of plate of 200 guineas value should be presented' to him by the 
 
 county, in memory of that great and important victory." 
 
 Recent times have added some fresh memorials of that 
 victory, and of the hero who won it. In 1859, on the occasion 
 of converting the East Tidal Harbour into a floating dock, in 
 order " to commemorate the brilliant achievements of the late 
 Right Honourable Lord Viscount Duncan of Camperdown and 
 Lundie," the Dundee Harbour Board " agreed that the name 
 Tidal Harbour of Victoria Dock be discontinued, and the name 
 Camperdown Dock be substituted." In 1865 a fine portrait of 
 the Admiral, from the original painting in the Trinity House, 
 Leith, was purchased by subscription, presented to the Town 
 Council, and hung up in the Council Chamber. 
 
 That large antiquated edifice in Greenmarket Sqxiare, at the 
 foot of Crichton Street, with its ground floor sunk below the 
 level of the street, and with recesses arched at the top, is the 
 old Customhouse of Dundee, and was the birth-place of Admiral 
 Charles Middleton, first Lord Barham. His father, a Collector 
 of His Majesty's customs, lived in that house, and Charles was 
 born in it in 1730. The author of the Yellow Frigate repre- 
 sents the edifice as having been, prior to its being used as the 
 Customhouse, the town residence of the Drummonds of Stob- 
 hall ; but what authority he had for doing so we are not aware. 
 That hoary, lofty tenement behind the Town House, on the 
 west side of the point where St Clement's Lane joins the Vault, 
 was the town residence of the ancient Barons of Strathmartine, 
 and was therefore called Strathmartine's Lodgings. The size 
 and style oF^fce mansion, if they were in keeping with the state
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 39 
 
 of its owners, indicated the high place which those Barons nmst 
 have held amongst their peers. 
 
 "West of this, in the Nethergate, is Whitehall Close, in which 
 stood the Whitehall of Dundee. Till a comparatively recent 
 period, the remains of it were to be seen in a strong vaulted 
 building in a dingy, dirty court of this close. Sculptured stones 
 and inscriptions which belonged to it are found in several of the 
 buildings in or near its site, and a portion of the west wall has 
 yet escaped demolition. Over the entrance of the close is a 
 sculpture of the royal arms of Charles I., with " God Save the 
 King, C. K, 1660," in decayed letters. On the lintel of a door 
 is " Tendit acerrima virtus ;" and over the broken lintel of a 
 
 chimney is ' Obay ye King James VI. in de ," dated 1589, 
 
 and ornamented with the crown and the royal lion of Scotland. 
 This Whitehall was often graced with the presence of Royalty. 
 It was the residence of Mary and Darnley when they visited 
 Dundee in 1565 ; of James VI. in some of his visits to the 
 town ; and of Charles II., immediately before leaving Scotland 
 on his disastrous expedition to Worcester. There were likewise 
 held in it frequent Conventions of the Estates, and of the 
 burghs of Scotland, and several meetings of the General 
 Assembly of the Kirk. 
 
 A little to the west of Whitehall was the town residence of 
 the Earls of Crawford, called by way of distinction, The Earl's 
 Lodgings. This spacious mansion is said to have been built in 
 the thirteenth century, and to have extended, with its offices 
 and grounds, from the Nethergate to the Tay. It had attached 
 to it a chapel or oratory, dedicated to St Michael, and which 
 was used for the daily devotions of the family. Many of the 
 Earls of Crawford were born in this town residence, among 
 whom, it is believed, were Earl Beardie and his son, the original 
 Duke of Montrose j and many of them were also buried out of 
 it in the Howff, in a tomb which is said to have thrown into 
 the shade the best houses of the dead around it, as much as their 
 palatial Lodgings threw into the shade the best of the aiisto- 
 cratic mansions of "the living in Dundee. The last vestiges of 
 it disappeared with the formation of Union Street, and the 
 changes in the neighbourhood connected therewith. Here, and 
 in their Castle of Finhaven, the powerful Earls of Crawford 
 lived for ages in feudal splendour, excelled nowhere in Scotland ; 
 and here, in the fifteenth century, was celebrated, with bound- 
 less pomp and magnificence, the marriage of Archibald, sixth
 
 40 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Eai-1 of Angus and Lord of Liddesdale, to Lady Maud, daughter 
 of the Earl of Crawford. This Earl Archibald was commonly 
 called Bell-the-Cat. He headed a conspiracy to seize the King, 
 James III., and to murder his favourites. While he and his 
 fellow- conspirators were hesitating as to the best method of ac- 
 complishing their design, Lord Gray reminded them of the fable 
 of the mice. Met in solemn conclave, the mice resolved that 
 their enemy, the cat, should have a bell suspended round her 
 neck to warn them of her approach. But the difficulty was to 
 n'nd one among them ready to undertake the hazardous office of 
 suspending the bell. Earl Archibald, after a pause, boldly cried 
 out, "I shall bell the cat," and hence the soubriquet Bell-the- 
 Cat, by which he was ever after familiarly designated. 
 
 Outside the West Port, at the head of the Overgate, is the 
 Witch Knowe, and the name explains itself. Dundee had its 
 own share of the anti-witch mania, and Grizzel Jaffray was but 
 one of its many victims. So numerous were they that they 
 were usually disposed of in batches or companies. Regent 
 Moray, for example, in one of his expeditions to the north to 
 reduce the Clans to obedience, had a witch-buming at St 
 Andrews ; and on his way south, says Birrell in his Diary, " he 
 caused burn ane other company of witches in Dundee." As 
 late as 1670, the ministers of Dundee, with consent of the 
 Council, did send for a "prover" or "pricker" that is one 
 who could discover a witch by the witch mark no very satis- 
 factory mode of detection, if we may believe Sir George 
 Mackenzie, then Lord Advocate of Scotland, who thus dilates 
 on it : " The Devil's mark useth to be a great article with us, 
 but it is not per se (by itself) found relevant, except it be con- 
 fest be them (the accused) that they got the mark with their 
 own consent ; quo casu (in which case), it is equivalent to a 
 paction. This mark is given them, as is alleged, by a nip in 
 any part of the body, and it is blue. Delrio (a learned Jesuit, 
 now forgotten), calls it stigma or character, and alleges that it 
 is sometimes like the impression of a hare's foot, the foot of a 
 rat, or spider. Some think that it is impossible there can be 
 any mark which is insensible, and will not bleed, for all things 
 that live must have blood, and so this place behoved to live 
 without aliment, for blood is the aliment of the body ; but it is 
 very easy to conceive that the Devil may make a place in- 
 sensible at a time, or apply things to squeeze out the blood. 
 
 " This mark is discovered among us by a pricker, whose trade
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 41 
 
 it is, and who learns it as other trades [by, it is presumed, 
 serving an apprenticeship to it], but this is a lion-id cheat, for 
 they allege that if the place bled not, or if the person be in- 
 sensible, he or she is infallibly a witch. But, as Delrio con- 
 fesses, it is very hard to know such a mark a nevo, clavo, vel 
 impetigine naturali (from a natural callousness or discoloura- 
 tion), and there are many pieces of flesh which are insensible, 
 even in living bodies ; and a villain who used this trade with 
 us, being in the year 1666 apprehended for other villainies, did 
 confess all this trade to be a mere cheat." 
 
 The Overgate was originally called Argylegate, and it has 
 still its Argyle Close. It was so named doubtless because the 
 family of Argyle had a residence in it. Tradition, accordingly, 
 yet points to a house in it, opposite what was the Windmill 
 Brae, as having been the abode of that noble family. In this 
 street were the lodgings also of some of the Wedderburns, the 
 Forresters of Millhill, the Stirlings of East Brankie, and the 
 Scrimgeours of Fordell. 
 
 At the west end of the High Street, where the Overgate joins 
 it, were the Luckenbooths ; and that old building, with the 
 turret on the north-east corner of it, was the residence of 
 General Monk in 1651, after he had taken the town by storm. 
 It was also the birthplace of the celebrated Anne Scott, 
 daughter of the Earl and Countess of Buccleuch, and afterwards 
 the unfortunate Duchess of Monmouth. Shortly before her 
 birth her parents had taken refuge in Dundee from the venge- 
 ance of Cromwell. It was her lot to be married to the Duke 
 of Monmouth, a natural son of Charles II. He conspired 
 against his father and against his uncle, the Duke of York, and 
 when the latter came to the throne, Monmouth, tempted by the 
 great discontent that prevailed, appeared in arms against him ; 
 and coming to a decisive battle without force enough to oppose 
 the Royal army, he was defeated and captured, tried for treason, 
 condemned, and beheaded in 1685, at the age of thirty-six. It 
 was in the Luckenbooths, moreover, that the Pretender lodged 
 during his stay in Dundee in 1715. 
 
 In St Margaret's Close, on the south side of the Nethergate, 
 there were in ancient times both a Palace and a Mint. The 
 Close took its name, it is believed, from the sainted Queen of 
 Malcolm Canmore. May he not have built the Palace ? 
 Whether he did or not, Malcolm and his Queen occasionally 
 resided in it, as did many of their successors, perhaps till the
 
 42 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 erection of Whitehall. It was then inhabited successively by 
 the Earls of Angus, the Scrimgeours of Dudhope, and by 
 Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee. Robert III. was 
 the first that coined money in the Mint ; and of the coining 
 there the Mint Close is to this day the memorial name. When 
 the Mint House was taken down, portions of the wood of it 
 were so sound as to admit of being made into snuffboxes ; and, 
 bearing the following rather catching inscription, there was 
 great demand for them : 
 
 When good King Robert ruled this land, 
 
 I was a stately tree ; 
 He cut me down, then covered I 
 
 The Mint of strong Dundee. 
 
 It will be granted on all hands that the magic pen of Sir 
 Walter Scott has made the Monksbarns of The Antiquary an 
 Historic Scene of no ordinary interest. Wallace Craigie, com- 
 prehending the eastern suburb of Dundee, Constable Street, 
 Princes Street, the Crescent, &c., is supposed by some to be that 
 Monksbarns, and George Constable of Wallace Craigie, who died 
 in 1803, at an advanced age, is supposed to be the veritable 
 Jonathan Oldbuck of Monksbarns. The honour certainly lies 
 between it and one other place on the coast, to which we shall 
 by and by come. Monksbarns was in the neighbourhood of 
 Fairport, a natural and happy enough name for Bonnie Dundee. 
 Mr Oldbuck had " an excellent temper, with a slight degree of 
 subacid humour, learning, wit, and drollery, the more poignant 
 that they were a little marked by the peculiarities of an old 
 bachelor ; a soundness of thought rendered more forcible by an 
 occasional quaintness of expression ;" and in these qualities he 
 is said to be an exact likeness of Mr Constable. They differed 
 in their " womankind " and in several other things, but the 
 differences were all within the license of the novelist more 
 especially of a novelist who tells us that he wishes so to disguise 
 his " benevolent and excellent old friend," that he might not 
 be recognised, but who confesses that he was unsuccessful in the 
 attempt. 
 
 The only surviving remnant of the ancient fortifications of 
 the town is the archway at the east end of the Cowgate. It 
 was originally one of the gates of the town, and the common 
 belief is that it was from the top of this gate that Wishart 
 preached in 1544, in the time of the plague. But it was years 
 after that date ere the town wall was built. The only artificial
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 43 
 
 defence which it then had was a gate at the end of each street, 
 uniting the houses on both sides of the street. It must have 
 been from such a gate that Wisharfc preached, probably from 
 that which was on the end of what is now called the Sugarhouse 
 Wynd. 
 
 Blackness has both a painful and a pleasing prominence 
 among like localities in and around Dundee. The estate was 
 long the property of the Wedderburns, who suffered severely 
 for their fidelity to the Stuart race. Sir John, the fifth baronet, 
 fought for them at Culloden, was taken prisoner, carried to 
 London, and executed on Kennington Common on 28th 
 November, 1746. He was one of five who then and there ex- 
 piated their treason with their life, and on the same Common 
 on the 22d of August another three of the Scottish officers had 
 been hanged and disembowelled. But ere long the ruined 
 fortunes of the Wedderburns of Blackness were repaired. The 
 honours and lands were restored to the son of Sir John, the 
 seventh baronet ; and his son George was long member of Par- 
 liament for the Dundee district of burghs, and Postmaster- 
 General of Scotland. 
 
 The political fever spread by the First French Revolution 
 added two to the particular localities which we are disposed to 
 class among the Historic Scenes in Dundee. One of these is 
 Belmont House, in the Perth Road. There grows the Tree of 
 Liberty, planted in imitation of the French, and in celebration 
 of the reign of liberty which the French Revolution had in- 
 augurated. This Tree a crowd of the fevered populace of 
 Dundee, on a Wednesday night, pulled up in the park in front 
 of Belmont House, carried it shoulder-high to the Cross of the 
 town, planted it there its branches decorated with ribbons, 
 oranges, halfpenny rolls, and biscuits proclaimed it The Tree 
 of Liberty, kindled a huge bonfire at the Cross, and danced and 
 shouted in frantic exultation, as if the millennium of an 
 emancipated world had begun. The Provost, Alexander 
 Riddoch, who was justly suspected to have little sympathy with 
 the jubilant mob, was present watching their proceedings, and 
 him they compelled to walk, hat in hand, three times around 
 the Tree, and to exclaim at the top of his voice " Liberty and 
 Equality for ever !" As the fuel of the bonfire began to fail, 
 a cry was raised, " Get Gordon's coach !" Gordon, a hotel- 
 keeper on the north side of the High Street, was looking from 
 a window upstairs at the comedy that was being acted below,
 
 44 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 and, to save his coach, he most archly cried, " Halloa, nay brave 
 lads, here is the key of my coal-cellar, enter it, and you will find 
 nearly two tons of coals ; take them, and make a splendid fire !" 
 The mob was delighted, and the welkin rang with " Gordon for 
 ever ! Gordon for ever !" On the Thursday the Provost, having 
 at command a sufficient foi-ce of the military, determined to re- 
 move the Tree. This, however, he prudently deferred doing 
 till the Sunday, when there would be less risk of popular ex- 
 citement and tumult. When Sunday came it was torn up and 
 thrown into the Thief's Hole, but too much interest now 
 centred in it to allow it to come to any such inglorious end. It 
 was taken back to the park of Belmont House, and planted on 
 the west side of the gate, where it has grown to a goodly size, 
 and is becoming venerable in years, and still retains the name 
 of the Tree of Liberty. 
 
 The other scene which we owe to those days of frenzy is 
 Heathfield House, in the Hawkhill. It was then inhabited by 
 Bailie Webster, who had a son who was not endowed with the 
 wisdom of Provost Riddoch. He would not do homage to The 
 Tree of Liberty planted at the Cross ; not only so, but, as he 
 mingled with the multitude, he ventured some audible remarks 
 which were understood as profanely contemptuous of trees of 
 liberty in general. The moment they wei'e heai'd, the demoli- 
 tion of the Bailie's house was resolved on, and a crowd rushed 
 to it to execute the resolution. " We'll no get in at the gate," 
 cried a young man ; and, with quick invention, he shouldered 
 a large tar-barrel, carried it to the gate, set fire to it, and in a 
 little while the gate was consumed. Heathfield House was now 
 in the power of the assailants, who, however, instead of razing 
 it to the foundations, contented themselves with breaking every 
 window of it, and smashing such articles within as their stones 
 could reach. 
 
 There were in Dundee many other places, chiefly ecclesi- 
 astical, which were for ages Historic Scenes, but which have 
 ceased to be so to us, the history associated with them having 
 been entirely lost. They are thus briefly enumerated in Fui- 
 lartoris Gazetteer of Scotland, in the article on the town : Of 
 " the ancient ecclesiastical edifices of Dundee which have dis- 
 appeared, the oldest, St Paul's, was situated between Murray- 
 gate and Seagate. St Clement's occupied the site of the present 
 Town Hall. A mile and a half west of the town a burying 
 ground, still in use, marks the site of the church of Logie, a
 
 The Maritime District Dundee. 45 
 
 mensal or table-furnishing church of the Bishop of Brechin. 
 On a rocky rising ground north of the High Street stood the 
 chapel of St Salvador, probably an appendage of the Royal 
 palace situated in the adjoining close of St Margaret or Mint 
 Close. Outside of the Uowgate Port, between the Den Bridge 
 and the east end of the Seagate, stood the chapel of St Roque : 
 commemorated in the name of a lane, which runs from King 
 Street to the Seagate, and is called St Roque's Lane, cr vulgarly 
 Semirookie. On a rock, a little eastward from Carolina Point, 
 stood the chapel of Kilcraig, meaning, in the language of the 
 Culdees, the church upon the rock, but afterwards called by the 
 Roman Catholics the Church of the Holy Rood. This chapel 
 is commemorated in the name of Roodyard, still applied to the 
 locality. At the foot of Hilltown stood the chapel of Our Lady, 
 commemorated in the name of the adjoining Lady Well. On a 
 rock at the western part of the Harbour, originally called 
 Nicholas Rock, and afterwards Chapelcraig, stood the chapel of 
 St Nicholas. On the east side of Couttie's Wynd still stands a 
 vestige of the basement part of the wall of the chapel of St 
 Mary. A large cluster of houses called Pleasance, near the 
 western approach to the Barracks, probably indicates the site of 
 a forgotten chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Placentia. There 
 appear to have been four or five other chapels ; and there were 
 also in the churches, particularly in the cathedral one which 
 still survives, various well-endowed altars to particular saints, 
 and served by separate officials. There were likewise five con- 
 vents a Franciscan Friary on the Howff ; a Dominican Friary 
 to the west of the Franciscan, and separated from it by the 
 Friars' Vennel, afterwards called the Burial Wynd, and now 
 called Barrack Street ; a monastery of Red or Trinity Friars, 
 on or near the site of the Hospital, probably the Hospital itself, 
 at the foot of South Tay Street ; a convent of the Nuns of St 
 Clair, still in existence at the head of the Methodist Close, 
 Overgate, and containing now a large hall which is occasionally 
 used by the Incorporation of Hammermen, by the preacher, by 
 the scientific lecturer, by the itinerant salesman, and even by 
 the histrionic actor ; and a cloister of Magdalenes at the west 
 end of the town, commemorated in the name of the large field 
 or promenade called Magdalen Yard."
 
 46 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 UFF AND BENVIE. 
 
 "We step from Dundee to our western limit. Invergowrie, which 
 was originally a parish by itself, but was long ago xinited to Liif, 
 is in the south-west extremity of the Maritime District of the 
 shire. It has a place in our annals as early as the days of the 
 Roman invasion under Agricola. There is good reason to 
 suppose that it was their next station to Orea. in Richard of 
 Circencester's Ninth Iter, and which he marks as " ad Tauum :" 
 that is, at or on the Tay. Leaving Orea, which was two miles 
 north of Perth, the invading army marched by Kinfauns, 
 Kilspindie, Rossie, &c., and encamped at Cater Milley, half a 
 mile north of Invergowrie, and about two miles west of Dundee. 
 Cater Milley is the Doric of Quatuor Millia, Four Thousand ; 
 the station being so named, it may be believed, from the cir- 
 cumstance of Four Thousand being somehow connected with 
 it. What that circumstance was can only be conjectured. The 
 supposition of General Roy is as likely as any other, and it is 
 that, on returning from the territories of the Horestians, the 
 Roman commander put four thousand of his soldiers on board 
 of his fleet at Invergowrie. Traces of the camp at Cater Milley 
 were visible about the beginning of this century, but they have 
 since been quite obliterated. According to Maitland's measure- 
 ment of them, the camp must have been six hundred feet 
 square, and fortified with a deep ditch and a high rampart. 
 
 Invergowrie is consecrated ground, which no lover of sacred 
 antiquities can tread on without peculiar emotions. It was, 
 according to some, the first site of a Christian Church on the 
 north of the Tay. Mill, in his history of the Popes, alleges 
 that there was a church at Invergowrie as early as A.D. 431 ; 
 and whatever may be thought of this, there seems no reason to 
 doubt the tradition that a church was erected here by Boniface, 
 a legate or missionary from Rome, who landed in the bay in 
 the seventh century, travelled through Forfarshire in fulfilment 
 of his mission, and founded churches in several places in it. 
 That ivy-clad ruin at the mouth of the Burn of Invergowrie 
 may be the remains of the church which succeeded that of 
 Boniface. The two large stones in front of the ruin are called 
 the " Goors of Gowiie," and the " Ewes of Gowrie," and they
 
 The Maritime District Liff and Benvie. 47 
 
 are named in a prophecy ascribed to Thomas the Rhymer, and 
 which runs thus : 
 
 " "When the Goors of Cowrie come to land, 
 The day of judgment is at haiid." 
 
 The making of the line of the Dundee and Perth Railway has 
 rather rudely discredited the prophecy. That line runs some 
 distance outside of the " Goors," and has brought them to land ', 
 and the prediction of the Rhymer has not yet come to pass. 
 
 Nine centuries after Boniface landed at it, Invergowrie had . 
 another and a very different visitor. George Wishart spent a 
 memorable night in it. He was on his way from Montrose to 
 Edinbiirgh, his enemies panting for his life, and the crown of 
 martyrdom being just about to be set on his head. He " lodged 
 (we quote from Stevenson's History of the Church and State of 
 Scotland) the first night with James Watson, an honest man, 
 at Invergowrie, two miles from Dundee, where being laid in 
 bed, he was observed to rise a little after midnight, and go forth 
 into a garden, that he might, without being observed, give vent 
 to his sighs and groans. There he prostrated himself upon the 
 ground, weeping and making supplication, for near an hour, and 
 then returned to his rest. William Spalding and John Watson, 
 who lay in the same chamber, and had followed him out to see 
 whither he went, began, as if ignorant of what had passed, to 
 ask him where he had been. But he made no answer. In the 
 morning, inquiring of new, why he rose in the night, and what 
 was the cause of such mourning for they told him all that they 
 had seen him do he, with a dejected countenance, answered, 
 ' I wish you had been in your beds, which had been more for 
 your ease, for I was scarce well occupied.' But they, praying 
 him to satisfy their minds further, and to communicate some 
 comfort to them, he said, ' I will tell you that I assuredly know 
 my travel is nigh at an end. Therefore, pray to God for me, 
 that I shrink not when the battle waxeth most hot.' Hearing 
 these words, they burst forth into tears, and said to him it was 
 a small comfort. Whereunto he replied, ' God will send you 
 comfort after me. This realm shall be illuminated with the 
 light of Christ's Gospel, as clearly as ever was any realm since 
 the days of the apostles. The house of God shall be built in it ; 
 yea, it shall not lack, whatsoever the enemies shall devise to 
 the contrary, the very cope-stone. Neither shall this be long in 
 doing ; for there shall not many suffer after me. The glory of 
 God shall appear ; and truth shall once triumph in spite of the
 
 48 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 devil. But, alas ! if the people become unthankful, the plagues 
 and punishments which shall follow will be fearful and 
 terrible.' " 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Invergowrie is a scene where Alex- 
 ander I. made a narrow escape with his life. At his baptism, 
 his godfather, the Lord of Gowrie, had, according to the custom 
 of those times, gifted him with the lands of Liff and Inver- 
 gowrie. On these was a Castle or Palace (for it is called both), 
 known by the strange name of Hurley Hawkin, immediately 
 on the west side of the Churchyard of Lin , the spot being still 
 marked by a small circular mound formed of the ruins of the 
 edifice. Alexander was residing in it in fancied security, when 
 a band of rebels from the Mearns and Morayshire entered into 
 a conspiracy to seize his person and take his life. The night 
 for the execution of the plot had come, and the rebels were at 
 the doors of the Castle, endeavouring to force them, when they 
 were discovered, and the King saved. Assisted by his 
 Chamberlain, Can-on, a son of that Carron whom Alexander's 
 father, Malcolm Canmore, had surnamed Scrimgeom-, " that is 
 to say, an hardie fighter " (Holinshed), and made the Royal 
 standard-bearer of Scotland, and whose descendant Wallace 
 afterwards made Constable of Dundee, the King was got in 
 safety to Invergowrie, where he embarked in a boat and passed 
 to the south, to raise a force with which to return and punish 
 the traitors. In gratitude for this signal deliverance, Alex- 
 ander founded the Abbey of Scone in 1114, dedicated it to the 
 Holy Trinity and St Michael, and endowed it with the lands of 
 Liff and Invergowrie, and with their respective churches. 
 
 Our next Scene is a battlefield. The normal state of things 
 between the Picts and the Scots had for three centuries been 
 consuming war. At length in the ninth century a decisive 
 engagement was fought between them, which was soon followed 
 by a happy union of the two Crowns and the two Kingdoms. 
 It was fought on the ground extending from the back of the 
 Law of Dundee to about the north-east boundary of the paiish 
 of Liff the Picts being led by Brude, and the Scots by Alpin. 
 The battle commenced with great fury, and continued long 
 doubtful. Alpin, looking on from the Law perhaps from the 
 vitrified Pictish Fort on it, the remains of which may still be 
 traced observed one of the wings of his army beginning to give 
 way. To support it he sallied out with the garrison and his 
 attendants, and gave the enemy a fresh charge ; but this
 
 The Maritime District Liff 'and Benvie. 49 
 
 adventure proved fatal to him. The Scots sustained a complete 
 defeat ; and the Picts are said to have owed their victory, in no 
 small degree, to a stratagem of Brude, which Bruce successfully 
 imitated at Bannockburn. Brude mounted upon the baggage 
 horses all his attendants, and even the women in the camp, and 
 put them in array on the neighbouring rising ground, as if they 
 had been a fresh reinforcement of regular troops to attack the 
 foe. The Scots, terror-struck, instantly gave up the conflict, and 
 took to flight. Alpin, taken prisoner with the chief of his 
 nobility, was beheaded ; his head was fastened on a pole and 
 carried in triumph to Abernethy, then the capital of the Picts ; 
 and his body was buried in the field where he fell. The head, 
 it is said, after being exposed for some time on the wall of 
 Abernethy, was recovered by a band of valiant Scots. 
 
 We have to this day remarkable monuments of this great 
 battle. Pitalpin signifies the grave of Alpin, and this is the 
 name of the lands where Alpin was slain. The name points 
 moi*e especially to the spot where the body of the vanquished 
 monarch was interred. The spot, tradition says and there is 
 absolutely nothing to gainsay it is that thickly planted grove 
 close to the road from Dundee to CoupaixAngus, about a mile 
 from Lochee, and rather more than a mile north-east of 
 Camperdown House. It is a tumulus, with a stone on the top 
 of it, called from time immemorial King's Cross ; which stone is 
 said to have supported the standard of the Picts on the day of 
 battle, and it certainly may have done so, the hole in it being 
 sufficiently large to hold a goodly royal flagstaff. Notable it is, 
 too, that in this tumulus, at a comparatively recent date, was 
 found a skeleton, about eighteen inches below the surface, the 
 head not joined to the rest of the remains, but placed contiguous 
 to them. Then, a little to the westward, was another tumulus, 
 removed in 1787, which contained eight or ten graves lined 
 with flagstones, the heads of those graves being due west, and 
 the bones in them so decayed that they mouldered on being 
 touched. They were very probably the graves of Picts of dis- 
 tinction who fell in the battle of Pitalpin. Moreover, in 1732, 
 there was found in the same locality, a fine snake-bracelet, which 
 is now in the National Museum of the Antiquarian Society of 
 Scotland. 
 
 We have given what has hitherto been the more commonly 
 received version of the Battle of Liff. But according to some 
 chronicles, the Alpin of the ninth century fell and was buried
 
 50 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 in Ayrshire. His grave-stone, called Lacht Alpin, in the parish 
 of Dalmellington, was known and recognised three hundred and 
 fifty years after his death ; and in the foundation charter of 
 Ayi*, William the Lion made it one of the boundaries of the 
 trade of the town. Suspecting that he and the Alpin of Liff 
 have been confounded, some have made the latter to have lived 
 a century earlier ; have dated the Battle of Liff, A.D. 730 ; 
 and have altered the chief actors in it and other details of it ; 
 affecting an accuracy to which it is easy to pretend, but which 
 really is not attainable. When old Chroniclers differ about 
 events that preceded the dawn of history, nothing comes of set- 
 ting up the authority of one against that of anothei". On such 
 events none of them has any historical authority whatever. All 
 of them merely chronicled traditions, most of them several 
 hundred years old when they wrote ; and our rule, which we 
 venture humbly to recommend, is to follow the chronicle which 
 reads best. There is pleasure in doing that; while there is 
 neither pleasure nor profit in rapping against one another the 
 heads of Chroniclers who had not a particle of history in them, 
 and who were not a whit more capable of judging between 
 diverse and conflicting traditions than we are. 
 
 We have said that the union of the crowns and kingdoms of 
 the Picts and Scots soon followed ; and it did so in this wise 
 The grandfather of Kenneth M'Alpin, i.e., of Kenneth, the son 
 of Alpin, had mairied Urgusia, a Pictish princess, sister of Con- 
 stantine and Hungus, who were successively Kings of the Picts. 
 On the death of Hungus, Kenneth M'Alpin claimed the Pictish 
 throne in right of his grandmother, Urgusia, " The feeble state 
 of the (Pictish) nation, and the incapacity of the true heir, com- 
 bined to favour his ambitious designs ; and, after a struggle of 
 three years, he succeeded in uniting the two crowns in his own 
 
 person And the two nations, being of congenial 
 
 habits, springing from a common origin, and speaking cognate 
 tongues, readily coalesced." 
 
 Ben vie was a separate parish till it was united to Liff in 
 1753. At the Revolution, its minister, Mr George Thomson, 
 made himself conspicuous by his Stuart zeal. At a meeting of 
 Presbytery he had fidelity and courage enough to pray publicly 
 for King James. This could not be borne. The populace set 
 upon him, and pulled off his gown ; the magistrates imprisoned 
 him ; and, soon after, he was fain to resign, and retired to 
 Edinburgh, where he died in 1692.
 
 The Maritime District Strathmartin. 51 
 
 MAINS AND STRATHMARTIN. 
 
 The next parish to the east is Mains and Strathmartin, in 
 writing of which in the New Statistical Account of Scotland, 
 its minister, the late worthy Dr Cannan, says, with most amus- 
 ing batedness of breath, " It may not be improper to mention 
 that Claverhouse, the residence of Lord Dundee, is in the 
 parish, and that an edifice, in the form of a ruin, has lately been 
 erected on the site of his mansion by his lineal male descendant, 
 Mr Webster, formerly Graham of Balmuir." The property and 
 residence of such an historic personage is, without controversy, 
 an Histoiic Scene ; and we therefore not only may but mitst 
 mention it in passing. And it may be added that it was long 
 before an Historic Scene, if, as is generally supposed, the Mains 
 was the residence of the old Earls of Angus, and Claverhouse 
 the site of their Castle ; and that the glory of their great and 
 long line is enough to roll away the reproach of a dozen of Lords 
 of Dundee. 
 
 John Graham, the " Bloody Clavers," eldest son of Sir 
 William Graham of Claverhouse, was born in 1643 ; was 
 educated at the University of St Andrews ; served his military 
 apprenticeship in France and Holland ; returned to Scotland in 
 1678, the eighteenth year of the persecution which was meant 
 to exterminate the Covenanters ; and was soon appointed by the 
 Duke of York captain of a troop of horse. The servant exactly 
 fitted the master ; his rule of action being to do whatever he 
 was commanded, utterly indifferent how inhumane, immoral, or 
 impious it might be. " In any service I have been in," said he, 
 " I never inquired farther in the laws than the orders of my 
 superior officers." Indelible infamy attaches to his memory. 
 Occasional attempts are made from time to time to wipe it 
 away ; but each of them only seems to darken and deepen it. 
 Lord Macaulay's pencil lings of him and his associates, and his 
 glimpse of a single fortnight of their work, are an effectual 
 antidote against the devil-worship, to which, under the guise 
 of hero-worship, our Napiers and our Aytouns would entice us. 
 The noble and eloquent historian brings them on the stage after 
 the death of Charles II. and the accession of James VII. ; and 
 the worth of our quotation from him must be our apology for 
 the length of it. 
 
 D2
 
 52 Historic Scenes in Forfarsliire. 
 
 "The fiery persecution, which had raged when he (James) 
 rilled Scotland as vice-gerent, waxed hotter than ever from the 
 day on which he became sovereign. Those shires in which the 
 Covenanters were most numerous were given up to the license 
 of the army. With the army was mingled a militia, composed 
 of the most violent and profligate of those who called them- 
 selves Episcopalians. Pre-eminent among the bands which 
 oppressed and wasted these unhappy districts were the dragoons 
 commanded by John Graham of Claverhouse. The story ran 
 that these wicked men used in their revels to play at the 
 torments of hell, and to call each other by the names of devils 
 and damned souls. The chief of this Tophet, a soldier of dis- 
 tinguished courage and professional skill, but rapacious and 
 profane, of violent temper and of obdurate heart, has left a namo 
 which, wherever the Scottish race is settled on the face of the 
 globe, is mentioned with a peculiar energy of hatred. To re- 
 capitulate all the crimes by which this man, and men like him, 
 goaded the peasantry of the Western Lowlands into madness, 
 would be an endless task. A few instances must suffice ; and 
 all those instances shall be taken from the history of a single 
 fortnight, that very fortnight in which the Scottish Parliament, 
 at the urgent request of James, enacted a new law of unpre- 
 cedented severity against Dissenters. 
 
 " John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his 
 singular piety, commonly called the Christian carrier. Many 
 years later, when Scotland enjoyed rest, prosperity, and religious 
 freedom, an old man who remembered the evil days described 
 him as one versed in divine things, blameless in life, and so 
 peaceable that the tyrants could find no offence in him except 
 that he absented himself from the public worship of the Episco- 
 palians. On the first of May he was cutting turf, when he was 
 seized by Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examined, convicted 
 o nonconformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that, even 
 among the soldiers, it was not easy to find an executioner. For 
 the wife of the poor man was present : she led one little child 
 by the hand : it was easy to see that she was about to give birth 
 to another ; and even those wild and hardhearted men, who 
 nicknamed one another Beelzebub and Apollyon, shrank from 
 the great wickedness of butchering her husband before her face. 
 The prisoner, meanwhile, raised above himself by tne near pro- 
 spect of eternity, prayed loud and fervently as one inspired, till 
 Claverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It was reported by
 
 The Maritime District Strathmartin. 53 
 
 credible witnesses that the widow cried out in her agony, 
 ' Well, sir, well ; the day of reckoning will come ;' and that the 
 murderer replied, ' To man I can answer for what I have done ; 
 and as for God, I will take Him into mine own hand.' Yet it 
 was rumoured that even on his seared conscience and adaman- 
 tine heart the dying ejaculations of his victim made an im- 
 pression which was never effaced. 
 
 " On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John 
 Bryce, were tried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal consisting 
 of fifteen soldiers. The indictment is still extant. The 
 prisoners were charged, not with any act of rebellion, but with 
 holding the same pernicious doctrines which had impelled others 
 to rebel, and with wanting only opportunity to act upon those 
 doctrines. The proceeding was summary. In a few hours the 
 two culprits were convicted, hanged, and flung together in a 
 hole under the gallows. 
 
 "The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than one 
 great crime. Some rigid Calvinists had from the doctrine of re- 
 probation drawn the consequence that to pray for any person 
 who had been predestined to perdition was an act of mutiny 
 against the eternal decrees of the Supreme Being. Three poor 
 labouring men, deeply imbued with this unamiable divinity, 
 were stopped by an officer in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. 
 They were asked whether they would pray for King James the 
 Seventh. They refused to do so except under the condition 
 that he was one of the elect. A file of musketeers was drawn 
 out. The prisoners knelt down : they were blindfolded ; and, 
 within an hour after they had been arrested, their blood was 
 lapped up by the dogs. 
 
 " While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible 
 was perpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed Covenan- 
 ters, overcome by sickness, had found shelter in the house of a 
 respectable widow, and had died there. The corpse was dis- 
 covered by the Laird of Westerhall, a petty tyrant who had, in 
 the days of the Covenant, professed inordinate zeal for the 
 Presbyterian Church, who had, since the Restoration purchased 
 the favour of the government by apostacy, and who felt towards 
 the party which he had deserted the implacable hatred of an 
 apostate. This man pulled down the house of the poor woman, 
 carried away her furniture, and, leaving her and her younger 
 children to wander in the fields, dragged her son Andrew, who 
 was still a lad, before Claverhouse, who happened to be march-
 
 54 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 ing through that part of the country. Claverhouse was just 
 then strangely lenient. Some thought that he had not been 
 quite himself since the death of the Christian earner, ten days 
 before. But Westerhall was eager to signalise his loyalty, and 
 extorted a sullen consent. The guns were loaded, and the youth 
 was told to pull his bonnet over his face. He refused, and 
 stood confronting his murderers with the Bible in his hand. 
 ' I can look you in the face,' he said ; ' I have done nothing of 
 which I need be ashamed. But how will you look in that day 
 when you shall be judged by what is written in this book.' He 
 fell dead, and was buried in the moor. 
 
 " On the same day two women, Margaret Maclachlau and 
 Margaret Wilson, the former an aged widow, the latter a 
 maiden of eighteen, suffered death for their religion in Wigton- 
 shire. They were offered their lives if they would consent to 
 abjure the cause of the insurgent Covenanters, and to attend 
 the Episcopal worship. They refused ; and were sentenced to 
 be drowned. They were earned to a spot which the Solway 
 overflows twice a day, and were fastened to stakes fixed in the 
 sand, between high and low water mark. The elder sufferer 
 was placed near to the advancing flood, in the hope that her last 
 agonies might terrify the younger into submission. The sight 
 was dreadful. But the courage of the survivor was sustained 
 by an enthusiasm as lofty as any that is recorded in mar- 
 tyrology. She saw the sea draw nearer and nearer, but gave 
 no signs of alarm. She prayed and sang verses of psalms till 
 the waves choked her voice. After she had tasted the bitter- 
 ness of death, she was, by a cruel mercy, unbound and restored 
 to life. When she came to herself, pitying friends and neigh- 
 bours implored her to yield. ' Dear Margaret, only say, God 
 save the King !' The poor girl, true to her stern theology, 
 gasped out, ' May God save him, if it be God's will !' Her 
 friends crowded round the presiding officer. ' She has said it ; 
 indeed, sir, she has said it.' ' Will she take the abjui'ation V 
 he demanded. ' Never !' she exclaimed, ' I am Christ's : let me 
 go !' And the waters closed over her for the last time." 
 
 On the south bank of the Dighty, opposite the churchyard, 
 is the Nine Maidens' Well ; a name of which tradition has 
 handed down an explanation too interesting to be passed over. 
 The legend is to the following effect : A farmer in Pitempton, 
 blessed with nine lovely daughters, one day sent one of them to 
 that well to fetch him a draught of water. She not returning,
 
 The Maritime District Strathmartm. 55 
 
 another was sent to learn the cause of the delay, and to hasten 
 the gratification of the farmer with the coveted draught. 
 Neither of them returning, daughter after daughter was sent, 
 till the whole nine had been dispatched on the same errand. 
 The astounded father at length followed them, and was horrified 
 with the spectacle which met his eye. His nine daughters lay 
 dead at the well, and two large snakes were throwing their slimy 
 folds around them. The reptiles, on seeing him, hissed loudly, 
 and would have made him their prey also if he had not saved 
 himself by flight. The whole neighbourhood at once assembled 
 in a state of the utmost excitement, and a young man, the suitor 
 of one of the sisters, boldly attacked the snakes, and wounded 
 both. They left their victims, and, wriggling their way towards 
 the hills, hotly pursued by the yoxith and Ms companions, were 
 destroyed at Balluderon, near the base of the Sidlaws. 
 
 At Balluderon is a stone covered on one side with figures of 
 men on horseback, and of dogs and serpents. Two serpents 
 were sculptured on another stone at the gate of the school- 
 master's garden at Strathmartin. In the gable of an old house 
 which, till 1824, stood close to the north side of the churchyard, 
 was a stone bearing the figure of a man, who had a head some- 
 what resembling that of a hog, and carried on his shoulder a 
 warlike weapon. All these are supposed to be monuments of 
 the tragic fate of the Pitempton farmer's nine daughters at the 
 well, and are regarded as giving credibility to the legend. The 
 fame of the Glen of Ogilvy, it is true, is likewise associated 
 with nine maidens, as we shall find when we come to it ; but 
 why should not the fame of Strathmartin be so as well ? 
 Auchendoir, in Aberdeenshire, too, has a well at which nine 
 maidens were killed by a bear ; but what right that gives 
 incredulity to shake its head at the story now in hand we are at 
 a loss to see. If two serpents killed nine maidens at Strath- 
 martin Well, why should not a bear kill nine maidens at 
 Auchindoir Well 1 
 
 The western part of the parish of Strathniai-tin, called Clatto 
 Moor, is of considerable note in history. It is said that Agricola 
 with a portion of his host encamped on it, perhaps after the 
 battle of Mons Grampius, when, as Tacitus narrates, he " led 
 his forces into the territories of the Horestii," understood to 
 have been Angus. Wallace and his band of patriots and heroes 
 also once encamped on it, as they approached Dundee for one of 
 those sieges which they laid to it for its deliverance. And, ac-
 
 56 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 cording to some, it was from his camp on Clatto Moor that 
 General Monk, in 1651, dispatched a detachment to Alyth to 
 disperse the Estates met there, and where they took so many of 
 the nobility and gentry of the country prisoners. 
 
 Broughty Gastle becomes conspicuous in the war between the 
 Scots and English from 1547 to 1550. It had been built by 
 Lord Gray soon after 1490, when the Earl of Angus resigned 
 in his favour the estate on which it is situated. A sculptured 
 stone bearing the date 1496, at the north-west angle of the 
 tower, below the battlement, determines its age. Protector 
 Somerset, having routed the Scots at Pinkie, followed up his 
 victory by a week's havoc of the coast on both sides of the Firth 
 of Forth. His fleet on its way homeward visited the Angus 
 coast, took the Castle of Broughty, which they fortified anew 
 and garrisoned, and then set to plundering the surrounding 
 country. The Earl of Arran, Regent of the Kingdom, in vain 
 attempted to dislodge and expel them. The siege which he laid 
 to the Castle he was soon obliged to raise. The Earl of 
 Argyle, with a considerable force of Highlanders, renewed the 
 siege, but was also unsuccessful. These failures wei - e the result 
 of treachery as well as weakness. Many of the Scottish nobles 
 espoused the English interest. "Argyle, a supporter of the 
 Reformation, and one of the ablest and most powerful of the 
 Scottish nobles, had collected an army of Highlandmen for the 
 purpose of capturing the Castle of Broughty and expelling the 
 enemy from the neighbouring district ; but he, too, was gained 
 over to the English interest, partly by skilfully playing off 
 against him his great rival Huntly, and partly by a bribe of 
 one thousand crowns. Even Huntly, the pillar of the Romish 
 party (who, it will be recollected, was taken prisoner at the 
 battle of Pinkie), promised that, if allowed to return home, he 
 would join the English faction, and promote the views of King 
 Edward." 
 
 All this emboldened the English to strengthen their ,position, 
 by building a fortress on the adjoining hill of Balgillo, flattering 
 themselves that their entrance into the heart of the country 
 would thus be sure and easy. In the meantime their ships, 
 lying in the estuary between Broughty and Dundee, held the 
 coast on both sides at their mercy, and most cruelly ravaged it. 
 When the position of affairs was thus very critical, and looked 
 all but desperate, help at length came from France. Six 
 thousand French and German auxiliaries were dispatched to
 
 The Maritime District Murroes. 57 
 
 Scotland, under the command of Marshal D'Esse, and when his 
 efforts at deliverance threatened to be futile, he was superseded 
 by Monsieur Paul De Thermes, with a reinforcement of a thou- 
 sand foot and three thousand horse. The Regent was thus en- 
 abled to press the enemy so vigorously and efficiently that, on 
 the 20th February, 1550, they surrendered Broughty and 
 Balgillo, and the garrisons of both were put to the sword. At 
 the same time both fortresses were dismantled. 
 
 On the 1st July, 1606, forty-two ministers of the Kirk pre- 
 sented a petition to Parliament against the introduction of 
 Episcopacy. Mr William Rait, then minister of Strathmartin, 
 was one of the petitioners. His successor, Mr Henry Fithie, 
 was more pliant. Having in a Synod Sermon, shied naming 
 the " Malignants," the General Assembly in 1643 made him 
 crave pardon on his knees, and promise amendment ; and we 
 are not surprised to find that one with such a tendency to time- 
 serving, was, with seventeen of his brethren in the Synod, 
 deposed in 1649 by the Assembly's Committee for Visitation. 
 Mr William Thomson, one of his successors, was of a different 
 stamp. The General Assembly of 1740 having resolved to 
 depose the eight Seceding ministers, he was one of the fifteen 
 members who dissented from the resolution. 
 
 MURROES. 
 
 Murroes has two Scenes well entitled to be reckoned Historic. 
 The one is the Castle of Easter Powrie, now called Wedder- 
 burn. It is supposed that, as far back as the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, it belonged to the Earls of Angus. In 1207, Gilchrist, the 
 third Earl, granted the church of Murroes and others to the 
 Abbey of Arbroath perhaps as a penance for the murder of 
 his Countess, who was a sister of King William the Lion. As 
 a farther punishment of him, William also bestowed upon the 
 Abbey a considerable part of the Earl's possessions. His crime 
 was very heinous, and the only thing that could be said in ex- 
 tenuation of it is, that it was rashly committed in a fit of 
 jealousy. There is a touch of the romantic in the sequel of this 
 very tragic affair. Summoned to stand trial, and failing to 
 appear, Gilchrist was outlawed, his castles demolished, and his
 
 58 Historic Scenes in Forfarskire. 
 
 lands confiscated. He lived for some time an exile in England, 
 which he was forced to leave by an international law passed 
 between it and Scotland, that neither of them should harbour 
 an enemy of the other. He returned to Scotland, where, for 
 the purpose of concealment, he had to shift about from place to 
 place, suffering great want and misery. Returning from an ex- 
 pedition into Moray against Donald Bain, King William, says 
 Buchanan, when " at a little distance from Perth, met three 
 countrymen, who, except in rags and wretchedness, did not 
 appeal' to resemble rustics, and seemed desirous to avoid en- 
 countering the multitude. On being brought before the King, 
 after eyeing them earnestly for some time, he demanded to 
 know who they were. Gilchrist, who was the oldest among 
 them, having thrown himself at the feet of His Majesty, after 
 lamenting bitterly his unhappy fortune, told him who he was. 
 The remembrance of the splendour in which his earlier days 
 had passed so affected all who were present that no one could 
 abstain from tears ; and the King, commanding him to rise from 
 the ground, restored him to his former honour and dignity, and 
 received him into his friendship as before." 
 
 The other Historic Scene in this parish is the Castle of 
 Ballumbie. It is associated with the name of a lady whom 
 Scotchmen will mention with honour to the latest generation. 
 James I., confessedly one of the best, if not the very best, of 
 the Stuart Kings, was assassinated on the night of the 20th 
 February, 1437, in the Convent of the Dominicans or Black 
 Friars at Perth, in which he was then residing, having spent 
 the previous Christmas in it with great splendour. The chief 
 conspirators were the Earl of Athole, his kinsman, Sir Robert 
 Graham, and his grandson, Sir Robert Stewart. The third was 
 Chamberlain to the King, and greatly facilitated the design of 
 the traitors. James was standing before the fire, in his night- 
 gown and slippers, talking gaily with the Queen and her at- 
 tendants, when the convent was burst open. The ruffians made 
 their way at once to the royal bedchamber. The first impulse 
 of the parties within the apartment was to barricade the door 
 of it, when, lo ! it was discovered that an accomplice within had 
 removed the bolts and destroyed the locks. A young lady 
 one of those in waiting on the Queen made a bar of her arm, 
 and thrust it into the staple from which the bolt had been 
 taken away. The arm was soon and easily broken, the room 
 entered, and those who were in it trampled on and wounded by
 
 The Maritime District Monifieih. 59 
 
 the ferocious, blood-thirsty ruffians. But her heroic deed gained 
 for the King a few moments of time, during which, tearing up 
 with the tongs a board of the floor of the bedchamber, he slipt 
 into a small secret vault that was below, and replaced the 
 board ; and there, had he been less impatient of his confinement, 
 his life might have been saved. The monastery was searched 
 in vain for him, when one of the murderers, hearing him calling 
 to be pulled up, shouted to his companions, and, descending into 
 the vault, they dispatched the King with many wounds. Ac- 
 cording to an account of his death written at the time, there 
 were no fewer than sixteen wounds in his breast alone. 
 
 The devoted heroine who sacrificed her arm for her Sovereign 
 and who risked her life to save his, had that been possible, was 
 Catherine Douglas, a daughter of Sir William Douglas, Knight, 
 and the wife of Sir Richard Lovel of Ballumbie. 
 
 MONIFIETH. 
 
 The chief Scene in Monifieth is Grange. In the times of the 
 First Reformation it was the seat and centre of an influence 
 which must have been highly advantageous to the Protestant 
 interest. It was the property and residence of the Durhams, 
 a family of mark as far back as the reign of Robert Bruce, Sir 
 William Durham of Grange being then a person of rank and 
 distinction, and which still survives in ths Durhams of Largo, 
 Fifeshire. The late Sir Philip Charles Durham, Admiral, 
 K.C.B., and the late General James Durham, revived the 
 ancient lustre of the race. 
 
 Sir Philip, in his youth, was marvellously delivered from a 
 watery grave. Having risen from a midshipman to the rank of 
 a lieutenant, he was serving on board the Royal George when 
 that noble vessel sank at Spithead. He was hoisting on board 
 a supply of provisions, when, observing the ominous motion of 
 the vessel, he jumped on the weather quarter of the deck, and 
 sang out, " The Ship is sinking." The words were scarcely out 
 of his mouth when the ship capsized, upon which he sprang 
 through one of the portholes, followed by a marine, and he, 
 clinging to him, they sank together. With wonderful presence 
 of mind he threw off his jacket and waistcoat, which the marine
 
 60 Historic Scenes in Forfarskire. 
 
 was grasping, rose to the surface, and was picked up by a boat. 
 The marine was drowned, and when his body was recovered, 
 some days afterwards, he was still grasping the waistcoat, in 
 the pocket of which was Durham's pencil-case. The Lieutenant 
 was one of seventy saved on that occasion out of twelve 
 hundred who perished. It is a gun from the wreck of the 
 Royal George that stands on the terrace in front of Largo 
 House. 
 
 Alexander, the sixth baron of Grange, was a zealous Reformer, 
 a relative and very intimate friend of Erskine of Dun, the 
 famous Superintendent of Angus ; and often did these two, 
 both at Dun and at Grange, take counsel for the furtherance of 
 the good cause, not seldom having the benefit of the presence, 
 and wisdom, and ardour of John Knox himself, who was a 
 frequent visitor of Ei'skine. 
 
 It was at Grange that Erskiue very narrowly escaped being 
 captured by the Popish party, who bore him a deadly grudge. 
 "We have not happened to meet with the details of this plot 
 against him, or even with the precise date of it. It may have 
 been as early as 1 555, in which year Knox arrived in Scotland, 
 persuaded the Protestants to desist from hearing mass, and 
 spent a month at Dun, preaching daily, and the principal 
 persons in the neighbourhood attending his sermons. This was 
 enough to make the Papists mark Erskine for their victim. Or 
 it may have been as late as 1559, in which year Knox, in less 
 than two months, made a tour of the greater part of Scotland, 
 visiting Kelso, Jedburgh, Dumfries, Ayr, Stirling, Perth, 
 Brechin, Montrose, and Dundee, and returning again to St 
 Andrews. The effect was increased alarm and rage in the 
 Queen Regent and the adherents of the old religion ; they set a 
 price on the head of Knox, and had no scruple against waylay- 
 ing and assassinating any of his friends and coadjutors. 
 
 It was at Grange, too, that Montrose so nearly gave the slip 
 to the party who were conveying him a prisoner to Edinburgh. 
 He passed a night at Grange on his way southward, and the 
 lady of the house did her best to deliver him by stratagem. She 
 first plied his guards with drink till they were intoxicated and 
 fell fast asleep. She then dressed the Marquis in her own 
 clothes. In this disguise he passed all the guards unobserved, 
 or at least unsuspected, and was on the point of escaping, when 
 a soldier, not altogether iinable to mark what was passing, gave 
 the alarm, and the great prize was again secured.
 
 The Maritime District Monifiefh. 61 
 
 Pitkerrow House was the mansion of John Durham, the 
 second son of the above Alexander of Grange ; and of John was 
 descended James, who followed a somewhat singular course. 
 At the commencement of the Civil War James was a staunch 
 loyalist, and a captain in the King's army. When forty-five 
 years of age he joined the Covenanters, abjured the profession 
 of arms, and betook himself to the study of theology, rising to 
 eminence in it, and leaving behind him several valuable theo- 
 logical works. He was first one of the ministers of Edinburgh, 
 then one of the King's chaplains, and lastly one of the ministers 
 of the Inner High Church of Glasgow, in which he preached 
 before Cromwell in 1651. He was colleague to the celebrated 
 Zachary Boyd, and on Boyd's deatli Durham married his widow, 
 Margaret Mure, a daughter of Mure of Glanderston. 
 
 To not a few in coming generations Lintrathen House will 
 bean Historic Scene. It will be thought and spoken of as the seat 
 of the late Thomas Erskine, Esq., advocate ; and his merits as 
 an author, notwithstanding some peculiar opinions entertained 
 by him, his high Christian character, and his great philanthropy, 
 will not suffer his name to be soon forgotten. 
 
 The Scottish Reformers abolished Popish tyranny, under 
 which the land had long groaned, but they unhappily established 
 a system of coercion in religion, which was little better than 
 the yoke of Home ; and if we were asked to point to a parish 
 which was a model of the working of that system, we should 
 point, we think, to Monifieth. We have not examined the 
 twelve large volumes of its Register which are extant. We 
 judge merely from the specimens culled from these by the Rev. 
 (now the Rev. Dr) Samuel Miller, and given in his Statistical 
 Account of the parish. Every parishioner was forced to attend 
 the kirk on the Sabbath day. The penalty on absentees was 
 " twa shillings " each. Every parishioner was obliged to com- 
 municate at the Lord's table. The penalty on neglecters 
 appears, from the case of " Robert Leis," who " wes ordeanit to 
 mak his repentens, and pay fourty shillings of penaltie." Then, 
 as now, marriage was honourable in all, with this qualification 
 then, however, that the parties to it should be able to repeat 
 the Creed, as also the Ten Commandments, before the first dis- 
 pensation of the Lord's Supper after marriage. " 1564, Anclro 
 Fyndlay and El spit Hardy e ratefeit ye cotract of mariag, and 
 the said Andro proisit to liaif the believe before ye solenizatio 
 of his mariag, under the pane of v merk, and ye coandimeirts
 
 62 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 before ye ministratio of the Lord's Supper, under ye pane of 
 uther v merk." Sobriety was forced in like manner. The 
 principle of total abstinence had not then (1646) been dis- 
 covered, but the limits of moderation were fixed, and every 
 ti-ansgression of them made penal. " It is actit, that whosaevir 
 heirefter sail be fund to drink in aill-houses, bying or selling, 
 to remaine longer nor a pint aill or chapin aill the hand (i.e., 
 per man) sail pay twa dolors." And this was a mitigation of 
 previous severity, for as early as 1563 a culprit convicted of 
 " ye presumful abus and vyc of drukinnes " was sentenced by 
 the Session to be " brankit, stockit, dukit, and banisit ye haile 
 paris." Even to female infirmities they were not more lenient, 
 applying the birch to them with equal sharpness. " 1643, 
 Robt. Scott, ye bedell, ressavit v sh. to buy ane pynt of tar, to 
 put iipon the weomen that holds the playds about thair head in 
 the church ;" a bit of discipline apparently upon sleepers who 
 tried to hide their shame by covering their heads with their 
 plaids. " 1640, Helen Scott ordeanit and actit for her offence 
 of sclander to keip ye preiching dayly ; to sitt dayly in ane 
 visible pairt, qr ye minr. may sie her ; and if she obeyis not ye 
 sarnyn xmder ye pane that she sail stand in ye jowgs, and 
 yrafter to be banisit out of ye paroch, if ever she beis found to 
 sclannder any of her neighbours heirafter, or to flytt with 
 thame." 
 
 The Rebellion of 1715 raged fiercely in this quarter. The 
 rebels violently drew Mr John Ballantyne, then minister of the 
 parish, from his charge ; but he was soon restored to it. 
 
 BARRY. 
 
 The great Scene in Barry is a battle field. As early as 86 G 
 the Norsemen began their piratical incursions, from which 
 Scotland suffered so much for nearly a century and a half. Po 
 often did they return, and so successfully dM they pursue their 
 conquests, that there remained latterly to the Scots nothing of 
 the country to the north of the Forth and the Clyde save the 
 districts of Fife, Strathearn, Gowrie, and Lennox, with the two 
 northern districts of Athole and Argyle. Malcolm II. having
 
 The Maritime District Barry. 63 
 
 defeated those marauders with great slaughter at Mortlach, 
 Sueno, King of Denmark, to avenge the overthrow and recover 
 the loss at Mortlach, fitted out a great fleet, and put it under 
 the command of Camus, one of the ablest of his officers. Camus 
 by and by anchored in Lunan Bay, and landed his troops in the 
 neighbourhood of Redhead, the promontory on the south side 
 of the Bay, and the north-east end of the Sidlaw Hills, which 
 begin with Kinnoull Hill at Perth. After a circuitous route, 
 marked by all the desolation which fire and sword could effect, 
 Camus at length pitched his camp at Carnoustie, and waited 
 for Malcolm, who was known to be approaching from Dundee. 
 Both armies were large, well equipped, and eager for battle, 
 and much it was felt depended on the issue either the con- 
 tinued hold which the northern sea-wolves had got of Scotland, 
 or the rescue of it from their grasp. The Scots won a decisive 
 and glorious victory, but the engagement was very sanguinary. 
 Camus himself was slain, and an immense number of his fol- 
 lowers. The local rhymes on it run in such strains as these : 
 
 " Lochty, Loohty, is red, red, red, 
 
 For it has run three days wi' bluid." 
 " There lies the King of Denmark's son, 
 
 Wi' twenty thousand o' his horse and men." 
 " There lies the King of Denmark sleepin', 
 
 Naebody can pass by this without weepin'." 
 
 Soon after this the Danes evacuated Scotland at Burghead. 
 They had been the terror and the scourge of every other country 
 of Europe. They had succeeded in setting one of their leaders 
 on the throne of England ; and surely it reflects high honour on 
 our fathers that they baffled them in all their attempts to settle 
 permanently in the mainland of Scotland, and finally expelled 
 them from it. 
 
 " The monuments of this victory," says Buchanan, " still 
 remain. An obelisk and a village in the neighbourhood still 
 preserve the name of Camus." The village, Camustown, in the 
 parish of Monikie, and the obelisk or large upright stone, called 
 Camus Cross, both manifestly point to the Danish general. The 
 latter is alleged to be on the very, spot where, two miles from 
 the field of carnage, whence he was fleeing, Camus was over- 
 taken and killed by, it is said, a remote ancestor of the Earls 
 Marischal, who cut off a part of his skull. And certainly it is 
 most remarkable that, about 1620, the then Lord Panmure 
 opened the tumulus at Camus Cross, in the presence of a 
 number of gentlemen, when a skeleton of gigantic dimensions,
 
 64 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 in good preservation, was discovered, nothing being imperfect 
 but the skull, a part of which was wanting ! Buchanan farther 
 says, " To this day, when the wind raises the sand at Balbride, 
 many bones are uncovered, of larger dimensions than can well 
 agree with the stature of men of these times." " Balbride," 
 i.e, Panbride ; the battle was fought on the border line between 
 the parishes of Barry and Panbride, and is, therefore, called 
 sometimes the Battle of Barry, and sometimes the Battle of 
 Panbride. We must not omit to note that Carnoustie is like- 
 wise a monumental name. It is The Cairn of the Host, the host 
 meant being the fallen host of Camus. They found their tomb 
 here ; and over them, especially over their officers and other 
 pei-sons of distinction among them, cairns were accumulated ac- 
 cording to the custom of those times. It may be added that in 
 several contiguous parishes cairns and mounds were scattered, 
 being in all probability the graves of Danes who were buried 
 where they where cut down in their flight from Barry's bloody 
 field. 
 
 We may observe that in those days there where giants some 
 among the native population, and more among their hostile in- 
 vaders so that references to gigantic skeletons, gigantic tombs, 
 &c., are not to be sneei-ed at as fabulous. The fact is so well 
 authenticated that it requires a great deal more credulity to 
 disbelieve than to believe it. 
 
 MONIKIE. 
 
 Camus Cross already took us into the parish of Monikie. A 
 little to the west of the Cross is the Live and Let Live Testi- 
 monial, erected in 1839 to the late Baron Panmure by his 
 numerous tenantry. It is an elegant and imposing structure, 
 rising to the height of 105 feet, commanding a view of portions 
 of not fewer than seven counties, and being a most conspicuous 
 landmark over a great expanse of ocean and of firth on the East 
 of Scotland. Its name is most felicitously descriptive. Never 
 did a landowner act more consistently and thoroughly on the 
 Live and Let Live principle ; and, accordingly, the inscription 
 on the monument bears that it was raised " to perpetuate the 
 memory of a nobleman who, through a long life, has made the
 
 The Maritime District Monikie. 65 
 
 interests and comforts of his tenantry his sole and unwearied 
 object." 
 
 The parish is bisected by a hilly ridge running from east to 
 west ; and in the ridge is " a deep and winding ravine, traversed 
 by one of the streamlets, and called Denfiend, or the Fiends 
 Den." There must have been good and, doubtless, curious 
 reasons for the name given to the Den ; but as there is no 
 record of them, none at least that has come our way, we must 
 leave it to the imagination of our readers to supply them. 
 " Near a place called the Cur hills, in the southern district, 
 are a number of cairns, called the Frier-cairns, the monuments 
 of some ancient battle, and the depositories of stone coffins, 
 urns, and human bones. From any light which history reflects 
 on these, we can hardly be wrong in regarding them as the 
 monuments, either of the Battle of Barry, or of that of Pan- 
 mure, to which we shall presently come. 
 
 At the Revolution, Mr William Rait, minister of the parish, 
 took the oaths to William and Mary, reluctantly, as we may 
 well believe ; for he joined the Pretender in 1715, and was next 
 year deposed for his disloyalty. 
 
 Alexander Balfour, a copious and esteemed miscellaneous 
 writer, was a native of this parish, having been born in it in 
 1767. In the avocations of business, in which he was engaged 
 till 1819, he abundantly made up, by self-culture, for the 
 scantiness of his school education, and was a frequent contributor 
 to the periodical press. In the year we have named general 
 paralysis of body obliged him to relinquish business. He lived 
 through another decade, spending his days in a wheel-chair, from 
 which he could not rise without assistance, and devoted himself 
 entirely to literature. The productions of his pen were Camp- 
 bell, or the Scottish Probationer ; Biographical Preface to the 
 Poetical Works of Richard Gall ; many Contributions in Tales, 
 Sketches, and Poems to Constable's Edinburgh Magazine ; Char- 
 acters omitted in Crabbe's Parish Register ; Contemplation, and 
 other Poems ; The Founding of Glenthorn, or the Smuggler's 
 Cave, a novel in 3 vols., which first appeared in the Minerva Press ; 
 papers in the Caledonian Magazine, and Literary Olio, published 
 at Dundee ; and Highland Mary, in 4 vols. Joseph Hume, 
 M.P., having presented a number of his works to the Premier, 
 Mr Canning, a donation of 100 was granted him from the Trea- 
 sury. He died in 1829 ; and a posthumous volume of his Remains 
 was published, under the title of Weeds and Wildflowers. 
 E
 
 66 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 PANBRIDE. 
 
 About two miles north-east of the Testimonial, and in the 
 paiish of Panbride, is Panmure House a most magnificent 
 mansion, finely situated, in the neighbourhood of the vaxilts, 
 and foundations of the old Castle which was so long the 
 residence of the Lords of Panmure, wanting, however, the " vast 
 plantations " by which the old Castle was surrounded, and 
 which gave the seat so much of its magnificence and beauty. It 
 was in the neighbourhood of the Castle that the Battle of Pan- 
 mure was fought in 1337. In that year David II. being yet a 
 minor, Edward III. of England again invaded Scotland, and his 
 army had reached as far north as this district. Sir Andrew 
 Murray, then Regent of Scotland attended by the Earls of Fife 
 and March, was encamping with the Scottish army in the forest 
 of Platane. Being advised that the army of Edward lay at 
 Panmure, Sir Andrew marched to it with his forces, attacked 
 the invaders, and routed them. In that battle the English lost 
 four thousand men, and, among others, Heniy, Lord Montford, 
 a nobleman of high military authority as well as rank among 
 them. 
 
 Panbride, moreover, is the parish of Hector Boece, not one 
 of the least of its honours. The barony of Panbride was for 
 generations the property of the family to which he belonged ; 
 and to this day there are places in the vicinity bearing names 
 which are said to be memorials of him. Hunter's Path, a farm 
 on the north side of the moor of Arbirlot, being interpreted, is 
 Hector's Path ; and Heckenbois Path, an old road in the same 
 moor, being interpreted, is Hector Boece's Path. 
 
 Boece was born about 1465, and holds a high place among 
 the pioneers of Scottish literature. He received the rudiments 
 of his education in Dundee ; studied at the Universities of 
 Aberdeen and Paris ; was for a time Professor of Philosophy in 
 the College of Montacute ; and, in 1500, was appointed 
 Principal of the College of Aberdeen, which had just been 
 founded by Bishop Elphinstone. His great work was his 
 History of Scotland, in which, says Bishop Lloyd, he put 
 Fordun's " tales " in his Scoti-chronicon " into the form of a 
 history, and pieced them out with a very good invention, that 
 part in which he chiefly excelled." Maitland is less witty and
 
 The Maritime District Arbirlot. 67 
 
 severe, and probably less unjust to him. He remarks " In 
 forming a final estimate of the literary character of Boece, we 
 must bear in mind that when scholar-craft, in this country at 
 least, was rare, he was a scholar, and contributed, by reviving 
 ancient learning, to dispel the gloom of the middle ages ; and 
 that, while the history of his country existed only in the rude 
 page of the chroniclers who preceded him, or in the fading 
 records of oral tradition, he embodied it in a narrative so in- 
 teresting, and language so beautiful, as to be worthy of a more 
 refined age." 
 
 ARBIRLOT. 
 
 Only Arbirlot lies between us and Arbroath, and will not 
 long detain us. If a place where a literal crown has been 
 literally lost is an Historic Scene, the parish of Arbirlot has 
 such a scene. The Elliot Water runs through the parish from 
 north to south, and on the side of it, a short way above the 
 village of Arbirlot, in a hollow called the Black Den, tradition 
 bears that in passing through that hollow one of the kings of 
 Pictland lost his crown, and the sceptic who doubts its testi- 
 mony may be confronted with one of those " chiels that winna 
 ding." It is a fact that, about the beginning of last century, a 
 labourer found a golden crown in that very Den. Part of it he 
 sold at home for 20 Scots, and the remainder he sent to Lon- 
 don to ascertain its value ; but, as has often happened with 
 such lucky peasants, he never received any return. 
 
 The Castle of Kelly was situated on the right bank of the 
 Elliot, not far from the parish church, and it too is an Historic 
 Scene. It is enough to make it such that, before the Auchter- 
 lonys possessed them, the Barony and Castle were the property 
 of Walter, the Lord High Steward of Scotland, and The Bruce's 
 son-in-law, whose blood still runs in the veins of the occupant 
 of the throne of the United Kingdom. 
 
 At the Manse of Arbirlot is preserved a very interesting 
 example of an early Christian monument. Jervise, in his 
 Memorials of Angus, gives a drawing of it, and remarks : 
 " This stone, which is here represented, was discovered in the 
 foundations of the old parish kirk of Arbirlot, some twenty-five 
 
 E2
 
 68 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 years ago. It is about 5 feet high, by about 2| feet broad, 
 bears the representation of a cross (probably of the pattee sort) 
 near the top and bottom of the stone, of two open books, and a 
 small circle. One of the volumes has a clasp, and probably the 
 line which connects the upper book with the cross below, is 
 intended to represent a rope or chain, thereby shewing that the 
 custom of thus preserving the sacred writings and works of the 
 Fathers had been in use at the time this stone was erected, but 
 that period is, of course, unknown. 
 
 " Probably this is the monument of some old ecclesiastic of 
 Arbirlot, or Abereloth, as the name was anciently written, the 
 first recorded of whom is William of Eglisham, who flourished 
 in the time of Robert the Bruce." 
 
 Coming to more recent times, perhaps the event which the 
 ecclesiastical world at least, both in Scotland and far beyond it, 
 will most readily associate with the name of Arbirlot is, 
 that it is the parish in which the late Rev. Dr Thomas Guthrie 
 commenced his ministry. 
 
 ARBROATH. 
 
 Arbroath owes much of its place in history to its Abbey, the 
 venerable and picturesque remains of which are to this day 
 much admired by visitors. The Abbey was founded about 
 1178 by William the Lion, and dedicated to the memory of 
 Thomas Becket, Chancellor of England, and Archbishop of 
 Canterbury. The monks installed in it were brought from 
 Kelso, and were of the Tyronesian order, which followed the 
 rule of St Benedict, and they rose to the height of their wealth, 
 and power, and fame in Scotland when they obtained possession 
 of the Abbeys of Lindores and Arbroath. 
 
 Seven years before William founded the Abbey of Arbroath, 
 Becket had fallen a martyr for maintaining the rights and im- 
 munities of the Church against the encroachments of the laity. 
 In the dispute between the crown and the tiara, he sided with 
 the Pope. Henry II., mortally offended at him, thus 
 bemoaned himself: "What an unhappy prince ami, who have 
 not about me one man of spirit enough to rid me of a single 
 insolent prelate, the perpetual trouble of my life !" His
 
 Tlie Maritime District Arbroath. 69 
 
 attendants quite readily understood the hint thus given them. 
 Four ruffians of the Court immediately formed a design against 
 the Archbishop's life ; and, when he was at vespers in the 
 Cathedral of Canterbury, they executed it on the 29th Dec., 
 1170. Two years after his martyrdom Becket was canonised, 
 and a year after that, as a penance in testimony of regret for 
 his murder, when Henry came within sight of the church in 
 which the Saint was buried, he was fairi to alight from his 
 horse and to walk barefooted in pilgrim's habit to his tomb ; 
 where, after he had prostrated himself and prayed for a con- 
 siderable time, he submitted to be scourged by the monks, and 
 passed all that day and night without any refreshment, kneel- 
 ing upon the bare stones. 
 
 William the Lion and Thomas a Becket had been early and 
 very ardent friends. The King, too, was superstitious enough 
 to sympathise with the homage which had begun to be paid to 
 the Saint's memory, and which in some parts by and by 
 " effaced the adoration of the Deity, nay, even that of the 
 Virgin." He, therefore, dedicated to him the Abbey of 
 Arbroath, the first establishment of the kind in that part of his 
 dominions. As its chartulary shows, "William and his Court 
 often met in it, as did his successors, Alexander II. and Alex- 
 ander III., granting chai-ters which are dated from it, and 
 transacting other business of the nation. It at length supplied 
 William with a grave. He died at Stirling in 1214, in the 
 seventy-fourth year of his age, and was buried before the high 
 altar of the monastery which he had reared, and had likewise 
 richly endowed. His obsequies were celebrated with great and 
 solemn pomp, and with much sincere lamentation. All the 
 prelates and nobles of the kingdom attended his corpse from 
 Stirling to Arbroath ; spent there fourteen days in mourning 
 for him, and in devotional exercises appropriate to the occasion ; 
 and ordained, ere they parted, that for a year to come no feasts 
 should be made, and no plays performed in any part of the 
 kingdom. 
 
 It is pleasing to add that the tomb of the Royal founder has 
 probably been identified. In 1815 the Barons of Exchequer 
 took measures to arrest the dilapidation of the venerable pile, 
 which had been going on for two centuries and a half of neglect, 
 and in the chancel, immediately before the high altar, the clear- 
 ing away of the rubbish laid bare an effigy covering a stone 
 coffin, in which were the bones of a person of goodly stature ;
 
 70 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 and there does seem good reason for regaining these as the 
 effigy, the coffin, and the bones of William the Lion. 
 
 Edward I. of England thrice visited Arbroath, and rested in 
 its Abbey. First, on the 7th July, 1296, when four Knights, 
 and Abbot Henry, and the whole Convent, did him homage. 
 This was in Edward's first invasion of Scotland, when his pro- 
 gress through it was something like triumphal, and when en 
 route to Montrose, he travelled from Forfar to Arbroath, and 
 from Arbroath to Farnell. Next, on the 5th or 6th of August 
 in the same year, when he received at Arbroath the homage of 
 Baron Mark of Clapham, passing westward by it to Dundee. 
 Yet again, he was at Arbroath on the 1st August, 1303, on his 
 way northwards to Lochindorb, of which we have already 
 written, his heart more intently set than ever on the complete 
 subjugation of Scotland, and which, indeed, he for a time 
 seemed to accomplish. 
 
 King Robert Bruce also often visited Arbroath, and conferred 
 on it many tokens of his favour. We know from writs still 
 extant that the Abbey was his residence in February, 1318 ; in 
 May, 1319 ; in April, 1320 ; in March, 1323 ; and in Sept., 
 1328. His abode was the Abbot's House, which has survived 
 the wreck of ages, and which the fact of its being the residence 
 of The Bruce has surely invested with associations of transcen- 
 dent interest. 
 
 It was in the Abbey of Arbroath, and in 1320, that Robert 
 Bruce held that Parliament which so nobly declared Scotland's 
 independence, and embodied the declaration in a remonstrance 
 to the Pope, the reading of which is said to have made him 
 tremble. The remonstrance was written by Bernard of Linton, 
 then Chancellor of Scotland and Abbot of Arbroath, he who 
 sung the Battle of Bannockburn in an heroic poem, of which 
 only a fragment has come down to us. Edward II., having for 
 some time had no success in his war against Scotland, enlisted 
 the Church on his side. He made the Archbishops of Canter- 
 bury and York to assert anew their claims of spiritual 
 supremacy over Scotland. He sought the aid of the Pope 
 himself, and, for England's gold, the servile and venal John 
 XXII. made himself the ready tool of England's ambition. He 
 commanded a two years' truce between England and Scotland, 
 studiously withholding, however, from Bruce the title of King ; 
 who therefore disregarded the truce when it was proclaimed, 
 alleging that the Robert Bruce addressed might be some person
 
 The Maritime District Arbroatli. 71 
 
 among his Barons, and that he could receive no communication 
 that was not addressed to him under the title of King The 
 ghostly father renewed the thunders of his excommunication 
 against Bruce and his adherents, and, incensed at the contempt 
 poured on his former censures, ordered the Prelates of York and 
 London to repeat the ceremony of reading the excommunication 
 on every Sabbath and festival-day throughout the year. All 
 this roused the indignation of Scotland to the highest pitch, and 
 the Parliament of 1320 gave voice to it in a manifesto worthy 
 of the surviving heroes of Bannockburn, and whose terms and 
 tones yet awaken responsive echoes in the bosoms of all their 
 descendants worthy of such a parentage. It denounced Edward 
 I. of England, and father of the present Monarch, who, 
 " covering his hostile designs under the specious disguise of 
 friendship and alliance, made an invasion of our country at the 
 moment when it was without a King, and attacked au honest 
 and unsuspicious people, then but little experienced in war. The 
 insults which this Prince has heaped upon us, the slaughters 
 and devastations which he has committed, his imprisonment of 
 prelates, his ruining of monasteries, his spoliations and murder 
 of priests, and the other enormities of which he has been guilty, 
 can be rightly described, or even conceived, by none but an 
 eye-witness." It extolled " our most serene Prince, King and 
 Lord ROBERT, who, for the delivering of his people and his own 
 rightful inheritance from the hand of the enemy, did, like 
 another Joshua or Maccabeus, most cheerfully undergo all 
 manner of toil, fatigue, hardship, and hazard." It declared : 
 " Him, Divine Providence, and the right of succession according 
 to those laws and customs which we will maintain to the death, 
 have made our Prince and King, To him are we bound, both 
 by his own merit, and by the law of the land, and to him, as 
 the saviour of our people, and the guardian of our liberty, are 
 we unanimously determined to adhere. But if he should 
 desist from what he has begun, and should shew an inclination 
 to subject us or our kingdom to the King of England, or to his 
 people, then we declare, that we will use our utmost effort to 
 expel him from the throne, as our enemy, and the subverter of 
 his own and of our right, and we will choose another king to 
 rule over us, who will be able to defend us ; for as long as a 
 hundred Scotsmen are left alive, we will never be subject to the 
 dominion of England. It is not for gloxy, riches, or honour 
 that we fight, but for that liberty which no man will consent
 
 72 Historic Scenes in ForfarsJiire. 
 
 to lose but -with his life." It besought his Holiness " to 
 admonish the King of England that he should be content with 
 what he possesses," and let Scotland alone ; and it warned his 
 Holiness, if he should favour the designs of England " for our 
 destruction," to "be well assured that the Almighty will impute 
 to you that loss of life, that destruction of souls, and all those 
 various calamities which our inextinguishable hatred against 
 the English, and their warfare against us, must necessarily 
 produce." 
 
 During the wars of the Independence the Abbey of Arbroath 
 now and again suffered seriously from the English. For 
 example, in the days of Abbot John, the immediate predecessor 
 of Bernard of Linton, they must have conquered it ; as we may 
 infer from their taking the Abbot a prisoner of war, and carry- 
 ing him into England. Then, as another example, the Bishop 
 of St Andrews made a grant to the Abbey in 1350, stating 
 " that the church of the monastery of Arbroath, placed on the 
 brink of the sea, had suffered almost irreparable injuries from 
 the frequent assaults of the English shipping," and that his 
 grant was therefore given for repairs which these assaults had 
 made necessary. WeD might the Southrons hate Arbroath as 
 the scene of the ever-memorable Parliament of 1320 ; and they 
 had many other like reasons for hating it. Thus, towards the 
 end of the previous century, its Abbot Henry did a deed which 
 provoked their deepest ire, and could never be forgiven. When 
 the hearts of all others, barons and prelates, failed them, Henry 
 had the courage to tender to Edward Baliol's written renuncia- 
 tion of Edward's authority over Scotland, as pretended lord- 
 paramount thereof. 
 
 The Battle of Arbroath dates in the fifteenth century. It 
 was fought in January, 1446, between the Lindsays and the 
 Ogilvys. The occasion of it was the Abbey Chapter's choosing 
 Ogilvy of Inverquharity, nephew of John Ogilvy of Airlie, as 
 chief Justiciar in their regality, in place of the Master of 
 Crawford, afterwards known as the Tiger Earl, and Earl 
 Beardie. His extravagance, as the Chapter thought, rendered 
 a change indispensable. This Crawford took as a high 
 indignity ; and he resolved to resent it, and to retain the 
 Justiciarship. Ogilvy, on the other hand, was equally resolute 
 in maintaining his right to the office, both from the choice of 
 the Chapter and from his relation to Airlie, who, it was said, 
 had a hereditary claim to it. Armg alone could settle the
 
 The Maritime District Arbroath. 73 
 
 strife ; and Tytler's account of the battle is very vivid, and 
 about as brief as any glimpse of it which we could give. 
 
 " There can be little doubt," says Tytler, " that the Ogilvys 
 must have sunk under this threatened attack, but that accident 
 gave them a powerful ally in Sir Alexander Seton of Gordon, 
 afterwards Earl of Huntly, who, as he returned from Court, 
 happened to lodge for the night at the Castle of Ogilvy, at the 
 moment when this baron was mustering his forces against the 
 meditated assault of Crawford. Seton, although in no way 
 personally interested in the quarrel, found himself, it is said, 
 compelled to assist the Ogilvys by a rude but ancient custom, 
 which bound the guest to take common part with his host in all 
 dangers which might occur so long as the food eaten under his 
 roof remained in his stomach. With the small ti-ain of attend- 
 ants and friends who accompanied him, he rejoined the forces 
 of Inverquharity, and, proceeding to the town of Arbroath, 
 found the opposite party drawn up in great strength on the out- 
 side of the gates. The families thus opposed in mortal defiance 
 to each other could number among their adherents many of the 
 bravest and most opulent gentlemen in the country, and the two 
 armies exhibited an imposing appearance of armed knights, 
 barbed horses, and embroidered banners. As the combatants, 
 however, approached each other, the Earl of Crawford, who had 
 received information of the intended combat, being anxious to 
 avert it, suddenly appeared on the field, and, galloping up be- 
 tween the two lines, was mortally wounded by a soldier, who 
 was enraged at his interference, and ignorant of his rank. The 
 event naturally increased the bitterness of hostility, and the 
 Crawfords, who were assisted by a large party of the vassals of 
 Douglas, infuriated at the loss of their chief, attacked the 
 Ogilvys with a desperation which soon broke their ranks, and 
 reduced them to irreclaimable disorder. Such, however, was 
 the gallantry of their resistance, that they were almost entirely 
 cut to pieces ; and five hundred men, including many noble 
 barons in Forfar and Angus, were left dead upon the field. 
 Seton himself had nearly paid with his life the penalty of his 
 adherence to the rude usages of the times ; and John Forbes of 
 Pitsligo, one of his followers, was slain ; nor was the loss which 
 the Ogilvys sustained in the field their worst misfortune ; for 
 Lindsay, with his characteristic ferocity, and protected by the 
 authority of Douglas, let loose his army on their estates ; and 
 the flames of their castles, the slaughter of their vassals, the
 
 74 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 plunder of their property, and the captivity of their wives and 
 children, taught the remotest adherents of the Justiciar of 
 Arbroath how terrible was the vengeance which they had pro- 
 voked." 
 
 A week after the battle, the Earl of Crawford died in his 
 castle, at Finhaven ; but could not be buried until a sentence of 
 excommunication under which he lay was removed. Exactly 
 on that day twelvemonth on which he received his death wound, 
 he had ravaged the lands of Bishop Kennedy of St Andrews. 
 The Bishop had therefore excommunicated him ; and " no man 
 durst earth him," till the Bishop sent the Prior of St Andrews 
 to take off the sentence of excommunication, and pronounce 
 forgiveness over his corpse. The Laird of Inverquharity was 
 taken prisoner, and carried to the castle of his adversary, where 
 he also died of his wounds ; or, as another version of the tragedy 
 has it, was smothered with a down pillow by his sister the 
 Countess of Crawford, in revenge for the loss of her husband. 
 
 The battle began " on the outside of the gates," as Tytler ex- 
 presses it. Tradition says that it was on the outside of the 
 gates to the north of the Abbey ; and it is confirmed by the 
 tumuli in that locality, marking the graves of the slain. Having 
 well nigh exhausted itself at the gates, a lull ensued ; but it 
 would appear that detachments of both armies, perhaps fleeing 
 from the first scene of the carnage, met somewhat to the north- 
 ward, at the Leys, in the parish of Inverkeillor, and these 
 resumed the conflict with great violence. So the local rhyme 
 bears : 
 
 " At the Loan o' the Leys the play began, 
 An' the Lindsays o'er the Ogilvys ran." 
 
 In 1528 James V., attended by a large retinue, was twice 
 entertained in the Abbey of Arbroath. James was then only 
 sixteen years of age ; but he was a youth of much precocity, 
 which he had already begun to manifest. It was in this year 
 that he was delivered from the thrall of the Douglases, in 
 whose hands he had been a mere puppet ; and it was to his own 
 shrewdness and energy that he owed his deliverance. For their 
 own base ends those who held him in captivity had sadly both 
 neglected and spoiled his education ; but the discipline of 
 adversity had been highly beneficial to him, and his character 
 had acquired a firmness, maturity, and vigour much above his 
 years. 
 
 It is rather strange that we have no reliable information
 
 The Maritime District Arbroath. 75 
 
 regarding the overthrow of the Abbey in the sixteenth century. 
 The solitary tradition is that, in 1560, Ochterlony of Kelly 
 burned it in consequence of a quarrel which he had with the 
 Abbot. The Abbot then was Lord John Hamilton ; and 
 looking at his rank and power, the tradition which we have 
 mentioned is not very credible. And if we reject it, we are left 
 to presume that, like other edifices of the kind, the Abbey fell 
 a victim of the zeal of the Reforming populace, who would not 
 be restrained by their leaders to destroying only the implements 
 and monuments of Popish idolatry, but did violence, more or 
 less, to the buildings which had been polluted with it. 
 
 It may be mentioned that the first Reformed minister of St 
 Vigeans, which included Arbroath till 1580, was Ninian 
 Clement, and that the second was James Melville, brother of 
 the celebrated Andrew Melville. Melville's name is in the roll 
 of the first General Assembly of the Reformed Kirk, held in 
 December, 1560. His first charge seems to have been 
 Tannadice, but he was removed to St Vigeans in 1573, and it 
 was during his incumbency that Arbroath was erected into a 
 separate parish. James Melville does not figure so conspicu- 
 ously in history as his brother Andrew, or his nephew James, 
 but he was a man of great worth and influence. His name is 
 often found for nearly forty years among the men to whom was 
 committed the management of the most important and difficult 
 business of the Kirk ; and, as has been said of him, he was 
 "the chief ecclesiastical personage about Arbroath for many 
 years after the fall of the Abbey." The latest notice of him is 
 in the following extract, made by Dr M'Crie from the Com- 
 missary Records of St Andrews, of date the 27th April, 1591, 
 according to which Thomas Ramsay in Kirkton (East Kirkton 
 of St Vigeans), bound himself " to pay to the right worchipful 
 Mr James Melvill, minister of Aberbrothock, four bolls beir, 
 with two peck to the boll, and twa bolls aitmaill, with the 
 cheritie, guid and sufficient stuff the maill to be for the said 
 Mr James awin aeting, all guid and fine as ony gentill man sail 
 eat in the countrie adjacent about him ; or, failzeing deliverie, 
 to pay for every boil 4 lib. money." 
 
 In 1778 the French Government recognised the independence 
 of the United States. This made war with France inevitable ; 
 and in 1781 one of its officers made a foolish and impotent 
 attempt to storm Arbroalh. Captain Fall, of the privateer 
 Dreadnought, of Dunkirk, having anchored off the town, fired
 
 76 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 several shots into it ; after which he sent a flag of truce on 
 shore, with a letter threatening to reduce the town to ashes if 
 the Mayor and chiefs were not sent directly to make some 
 agreement with him. To gain time, the Magistrates answered 
 that he had not mentioned any terms of ransom, and begging 
 his forbearance till he should hear from them again. He 
 replied that his terms were 30,000 sterling at least, and six of 
 the principal citizens for " ostage ;" and that if they were not 
 " speedy " he would shoot their town away directly, and set fire 
 to it. The Magistrates having in the meantime made some 
 preparations for defence, set him at defiance, bidding him do 
 his worst, on which he opened a heavy fire on the town, and 
 renewed it next morning ; which, however, did no further 
 damage than knock down some chimney tops, and burn the 
 fingers of those who were fool enough to handle his heated balls. 
 
 We said in one of our papers on Dundee that there is only one 
 other place which can compete with Wallace Craigie for the 
 honour of being the Monkbarns of The Antiquary. That place 
 is Hospitalfield, so called from the Hospital on it, and which 
 stood nearly two miles north-west of the Abbey. Its claim is 
 generally preferred to that of Wallace Craigie, the cliffs and 
 coves and country to the north-east of Arbroath agreeing so 
 strikingly with the scenes of The Antiquaiy that it is difficult 
 to resist the conclusion that they must have furnished these 
 scenes. The truth would seem to be that George Constable, 
 Esq. of Wallace Craigie, was the original of Jonathan Oldbuck, 
 but that the novelist transferred him from Wallace Craigie by 
 Dundee to Hospitalfield by Arbroath, that he might be in 
 proximity to Fail-port, St Ruth, Musselcraig, Ballyburghness, 
 Halket-head, Knockwinnock, Trotcosey, and all those places 
 which form the enchanted ground of what is, perhaps, the best 
 of all Sir Walter Scott's matchless novels. 
 
 Of recent events in Arbroath, to which the future historian 
 will be sure to give a place in his pages, we shall advert to only 
 one. It relates to a family which may truly say of the past 
 history of Forfarshire, cujus magna pars fui (of which I have 
 been a great part). It relates to a member of that family who 
 has been second to none of his predecessors in those virtues 
 which command public esteem, and who has excelled them all 
 as a politician and a statesman. When long oppressed 
 Liberalism lifted its head, about the beginning of the third 
 decade of this century, the Hon. Fox Maule forthwith did feats
 
 The Maritime District Arbroatli. 77 
 
 for it worthy the son and successor of William, Lord Pamnure, 
 the Father of Reform in Scotland. When a member of the 
 House of Commons he was made a Privy Councillor, Under- 
 secretary of the Home Department, Secretary-at-War, and 
 President of the Board of Control. On succeeding to the 
 estates, and being raised to the House of Peers in 1852, he was 
 made a Knight of the Order of the Thistle, a Knight of the 
 Grand Cross of the Bath, and Keeper of the Privy Seal of 
 Scotland ; and as Minister of War from February, 1855, to 
 February, 1858, he rendered to the country invaluable 
 services, during both the Russian campaign and the revolts in 
 India. In appreciation of those services, and in testimony of 
 the county's esteem of its Lord-Lieutenant, he was banqueted 
 in the Hall of the Market Place, Arbroath, on the 30th Dec., 
 1856. Sir John Ogilvy, M.P., was in the chair ; about 1000 
 gentlemen were present ; the speaking was excellent ; and, as 
 usual with Fox Maule, Lord Panmure, and Earl Dalhousie, his 
 own eloquence took all hearts by storm. 
 
 Out in the German Ocean, about twelve miles south-east of 
 Arbroath, is a rock, formerly called the Scape, and the Inch- 
 cape, and now the Bell Rock. It is a reef of which some 427 
 feet by 230 are bare at low water, and rise about 4 feet above 
 the sea ; but at high water the whole reef is covered to the 
 depth of 12 feet. In the latter case, the spot was most perilous 
 to seamen, in those days when there was nothing to mark it. 
 The legend is, that in those days an Abbot of Arbroatli 
 attached a bell to the rock, which the agitation of the waves 
 when they rose above it made to ring, and give warning of the 
 hidden danger below ; that a Dutch pirate called Sir Ralph the 
 Rover, cut the bell adrift ; and that, in signal retribution of 
 his wanton wickedness, his own craft struck on the rock, and 
 he and his pirate band perished on it. Southey's ballad of the 
 Inchcape Bell is founded on this legend. It is a thing of beauty 
 which all, more especially coast-people, should be able to say or 
 sing ; and lest there should be a single reader of this volume 
 without a copy of it, we shall here transcribe it : 
 
 " No stir on the air no swell on the sea, 
 The ship was still as she might be ; 
 The sails from Heaven received no motion ; 
 The keel was steady in the ocean : 
 With neither sign nor sound of shock, 
 The waves flowed o'er the Inch Cape rock ; 
 So little they rose, so little they fell, 
 They did not move the Inch-Cape belL
 
 78 Historic Scenes in Forjarsliire. 
 
 The pious Abbot of Aberbrothock 
 Had placed that bell on the Inch-Cape rock : 
 On the waves of the storm it floated and swung, 
 And louder and louder its warning rung. 
 When the rock was hid by the tempest swell, 
 The mariners heard the warning bell, 
 And then they knew the perilous rock, 
 And blessed the Abbot of Aberbrothock. 
 
 " Tbe sun in heaven shone bright and gay, 
 All things looked joyful on that day ; 
 The sea birds screamed as they skimmed around, 
 And there was pleasure in the sound ; 
 The float cf the Inch-Cape bell was seen, 
 A darker spot on the ocean green. 
 Sir Ralph the Kover walked the deck, 
 And he fixed his eye on the darker speck, 
 He felt the cheering power of spring, 
 It made him whistle it made him sing ; 
 His heart was mirthful to excess, 
 But the Rover's mirth was wickedness ; 
 His eye was on the bell and float, 
 Quoth he, ' My men, put down the boat, 
 And row me to the Inch-Cape rock, 
 I'll plague the priest of Aberbrothock !' 
 The boat was lowered, the boatmen row, 
 And to the Inch-Cape rock they go. 
 Sir Ralph leaned over from the boat, 
 And cut the bell from off the float, 
 Down sunk the bell with a gurgling sound ; 
 The bubbles rose and burst around. 
 Quoth he, " "Who next comes to the rock 
 Won't bless the priest of Aberbrothock !' 
 
 " Sir Ralph the Rover sailed away ; 
 He scoured the sea for many a day ; 
 And now grown rich with plundered store, 
 He steers bis way for Scotland's shore. 
 So thick a haze o'erspread the sky, 
 They could not see the sun on high ; 
 The wind hath blown a gale all day ; 
 At evening it hath died away. 
 On deck the Rover takes his stand, 
 So dark it is they see no land. 
 
 " Quoth he, ' It will be brighter soon, 
 For there's the dawn of the rising moon. 
 ' Can'st hear,' said one, 'the breakers roar? 
 For yonder, methinks, should be the shore. 
 Now where we are I cannot tell, 
 I wish we heard the Inch-Cape bell !' 
 They heard no sound the swell is strong, 
 Though the wind hath fallen they drift along, 
 Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock, 
 ' Oh, heavens ! it is the Inch-Cape rock 1' 
 
 " Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair, 
 And cursed himself in his despair.
 
 The Maritime District St Vigeans. 79 
 
 The waves rushed in on every side ; 
 The ship sinks fast beneath the tide, 
 Down, down they sink in watery graves, 
 The masts are hid beneath the waves ! 
 Sir Ralph, while waters rush around. 
 Hears still an awful, dismal sound : 
 For even in his dying fear 
 That dreadful sound assails his ear, 
 As if below, with the Inch-Cape bell, 
 The devil rang his funeral knell." 
 
 The Lighthouse Board for Scotland commenced a lighthouse 
 on the Bell Rock in 1807, and finished it in 1810, at a cost of 
 Q 1,331 9s 2d. Mr Robert Stevenson was engineer of the 
 structure, which is in the form of a circular tower, 115 feet 
 high, diminishing from a diameter of 42 feet at the base to 13 
 feet at the point where the lantern rests. It has suitable 
 apartments for keepers, and every way serves most efficiently 
 the purpose of its erection. It exhibits two lights, one very 
 bright, and the other tinged with a red shade. They constantly 
 revolve, so as to show alternately every two minutes, and in 
 hazy weather two large bells are constantly tolled, the sound 
 of which is heard at a considerable distance. 
 
 The Bell Rock Lighthouse is occasionally visited by pleasure 
 parties. These have every attention shown them by the 
 keepers, who take their names in an album, and also any 
 impromptus they may be disposed to inscribe in it. Sir Walter 
 Scott honoured this Pharos of the Forfarshire coast with a 
 visit, and in his fine impromptu he makes the Pharos speak 
 thus : 
 
 " Far on the bosom of the deep, 
 O'er those wild shelves my watch I keep ; 
 A ruddy gem of changeful light, 
 Bound on the dusky brow of night ; 
 The seaman bids my lustre hail, 
 And scorns to strike his tim'rous sail" 
 
 ST VIGEANS. 
 
 It is not to be doubted that on the sculptured stones at St 
 Vigeans there are historic records, pointing to Historic Scenes ; 
 but they must be mute to us till we are able to decipher them ; 
 and as the Rev. William Duke, A.M., minister of the parish,
 
 80 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 said in a paper read by him at a meeting of the Antiquarian 
 Society of Scotland, " The sculptured stones of Scotland form a 
 class of remarkable monuments that have long alike excited the 
 curiosity and baffled the ingenuity of the learned and specula- 
 tive." But one of the stones at St Vigeans has, it is fondly 
 thought, been read, and the reading has deepened the interest 
 that attaches to them all, and whetted the edge of antiquarian 
 curiosity. The inscription on it, Mr Duke says, is " the only 
 specimen of a Pictish inscription that has ceme down to us. It 
 speaks of the stone as erected to Droston, son of Voret, of the 
 race of Fergus, and a Pictish King Droston was killed at the 
 Battle of Blathmig or Blethmont, a mile or two off, in the year 
 729 ; the inscription is on the edge of the stone." We may 
 believe that Blathmig or Blethmont was Kinblythmont, and 
 that the battle fatal to Droston was one of that civil war in 
 Pickland of which we read in the general history of the country 
 as beginning in 724, raging for several years with great fury, 
 and terminating in the complete triumph of Hungus, the ablest 
 and most powerful of all the Pictish kings. 
 
 If the birth-place of historic personages is an Historic Scene, 
 their burial-place is the same, and in a vault of St Vigeans rests 
 the dust of Peter Young, tutor of King James VI. under 
 George Buchanan. If Young had less wit, he had more 
 worldly wisdom than his superior. He could act the courtier, 
 and did so ; and, while Buchanan lived and died in poverty, 
 he rose to rank, honour, and wealth. James made him a Privy 
 Councillor and King's Almoner, conferred on him the estates of 
 Seaton and Dickmontlaw, and knighted him Sir Peter Young 
 of Seaton. He died in 1628, and was buried in a vault at the 
 back of the church of St Vigeans, the new aisle of which has a 
 tablet to his memory, with a Latin inscription, panegyrising 
 his learning, prudence, and elegance of manners, which endeared 
 him to his king and country, and to the kings and princes 
 abroad to whom he had been sent as an ambassador. Sir 
 Peter's father was John Young, a burgess of Dundee, and his 
 mother Margaret Scrimgeour, of a branch of the Dudhope 
 family, and from him sprung the Youngs of Seaton, Ochterlony, 
 and Aldbar. 
 
 In the beginning of the eighteenth century St Vigeans had 
 not rid itself entirely of the absurd and ludicrous superstitions 
 of bygone ages. We read in the Old Historical Account of the 
 parish, "From the year 1699 to 1736 the Sacrament of the
 
 Tlie Maritime District Inverkeillor. 81 
 
 Lord's Supper had never been dispensed in this church. A 
 tradition had long prevailed that the water-kelpy (what Mr 
 Home, in his tragedy of Douglas, calls the angry spirit of the 
 water) carried the stones for building the church ; that the 
 foundations of it were supported upon large bars of iron ; and 
 that under the fabric there was a lake of great depth. As the 
 administration of the Sacrament had been so long delayed, the 
 people had brought themselves to believe that the first time 
 that ordinance should be dispensed the church would sink, and 
 the whole people would be carried down and drowned in the 
 lake. The belief of this had taken such hold of the people's 
 minds, that on the day the Sacrament was to be administered 
 some hundreds of the parishioners sat on an eminence about a 
 hundred yards from the church, expecting every moment to see 
 the dreadful catastrophe. 
 
 In 1816 died John Aitken, minister of St Yigeans, and father 
 of the Kirk of Scotland, in the ninety-first year of his age, and 
 the sixty-second of his ministry. Two rather good stories are 
 told of him. The one is, that visiting pastorally at Auchmithie 
 one of the examinable persons, who had not been very ready in 
 answering the questions put to him, asked the minister, and 
 fairly blotted him, " Weel, sir, how mony hooks will it tak to 
 bait a fifteen score haddock line V The other story is that, 
 when an old man and afflicted with deafness, he consulted an 
 Edinburgh physician on his infirmity. Having got advice, he 
 offered a fee, which the physician would not accept, saying that 
 he had long made it a rule to take no fee from country clergy- 
 men, on the ground that they could ill afford it. " But," said 
 Mr Aitken, " I can, I have no family." " Why," said the 
 Doctor, " did you not tell me that at first ? Then you will be 
 a bachelor ? Destroy the prescription I gave ; go home, and 
 get married as fast as you can ; and be assured that ere long 
 you will hear in the deafest side of your head." 
 
 INVERKEILLOR 
 
 Of Historic Scenes in Inverkeillor parish Redcastle is the 
 chief. Chalmers in his Caledonia says it was built by Walter 
 de Berkeley, therefore called the Lord of Eedcastle, in the 
 reign of William the Lion. But tradition says that it was
 
 82 Historic Scenes in ForfarsMre. 
 
 built by William himself for a royal hunting seat. May it not 
 have been built by the King, and the Castle and barony after- 
 wards granted by him to Walter de Berkeley, who was his 
 Chamberlain ? If we take this view, we may concur with those 
 who fancy that they discern the connection of the locality with 
 Royalty in many of the names belonging to it. Kinblethmont, 
 that is, as they interpret, the King's blythe mount ; Hawkhill, 
 where he kept his hawks ; Courthill, where he kept his courts ; 
 Cothill, where he kept his cattle ; Tom-au-moid, his prison or 
 warding place ; Ironshill, where the chains for criminals were 
 forged ; and Gallowshill, where they finished their course. 
 There was also qiiite adjacent and convenient the means of dis- 
 posing of that class of criminals for which the gallows was 
 thought too good. In Lunan Water were two pools, called to 
 this day the Witch Pools ; the one a little south of the Gallows 
 Hill, and the other a little west of Redcastle. The name they 
 bear explains the use that was made of them ; and the day 
 alone will declare how many poor wretches proved their 
 innocence by sinking to the bottom of these Pools as a stone. 
 
 Redcastle occupied an eminence on the coast immediately on 
 the west side of Lunan Bay, where its ruins are still to be seen. 
 By a female marriage the Castle and barony passed from the 
 Berkeley family to Ingleram of Baliol, ancestor of King John 
 Baliol. After being in other hands, they were acquired, in 
 1367, by Sir Robert Stewart of Innermeath, of whom were the 
 Lords Innermeath ; and in this family they continued, and the 
 Castle was occupied by it till about the close of the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 In 1579 a most monstrous attack was made on Redcastle. It 
 was then occupied by the widowed and aged Lady Innermeath, 
 with a son and daughter, the latter the wife of Lindsay of 
 Vayne. The old lady was Elizabeth, daughter of John Beton 
 of Creich, who, before her marriage, had born to James V. 
 the daughter who became Jean, Countess of Argyll, who was 
 with Queen Mary when Rizzio was murdered in her presence, 
 and whom the General Assembly took under discipline for 
 representing Queen Elizabeth at the Papistical baptism of her 
 infant son. With a band of his followers, and without any pro- 
 vocation of which a whisper has come down to us, Andrew 
 Gray, son of Patrick, Lord .Gray, and owner of the neighbour- 
 ing estate of Duninald, set on Redcastle to destroy it and all 
 who were in it. While the savage was sacking and burning
 
 The Maritime District Inverkcillor. 83 
 
 the rest of the building, the tower happily sheltered the inmates 
 from him the flames, however, nearly suffocating them, and 
 causing Lady Vane to miscarry. 
 
 King James issued his mandates to Gray to desist from his 
 violence ; but he trampled on them. The King then ordered 
 the Provost and Bailies of Dundee to join Erskine of Dun in 
 an attempt to arrest him, and protect his intended victims. 
 This succeeded for a time in staying him, but only for a time. 
 In the absence of the Innermeaths, Gray at length renewed the 
 attack ; made himself master of the Castle, tower and all ; kept 
 possession of it for some weeks ; destroyed it as far as lie was 
 able ; and returned home with the plunder. Indicted for this 
 atrocious outrage, he declined to stand trial, and had his lands 
 and goods confiscated, and himself declared an outlaw ; but he 
 must have somehow got his sentence cancelled, for a few years 
 after he was one of the assize who tried Archibald Douglas, 
 accused of complicity in the murder of Darnley. 
 
 As was to be expected from their repeatedly landing in the 
 Bay of Lunan, there are distinct vestiges of the Northmen 
 having been in the parish. On the west of the Bay is an 
 artificial mound called Corbie's Knowe. The ensign of the 
 Danes was a raven, or, in Scotch, a corbie ; and it seems very 
 natural to suppose that Corbie's Knowe was the spot where the 
 Danes erected their standard, probably once and again, when 
 they set foot on Scottish soil to execute their piratical designs. 
 In this locality, too, there are traces of Danish camps, both on 
 the lands of the Earl of Northesk, and on those of Mr Craigie ; 
 and near to those on the latter is a farm house called Denmark ; 
 and there appeal's little reason to doubt whence a house so 
 situated got its name. 
 
 The barony of Redcastle was acquired in 1621 by Sir John 
 Carnegie, afterwards first Earl of Northesk, from William, 
 second Earl of Tullibardine. It continued in the possession of 
 the North esk family for upwards of a century ; and David, the 
 fourth Earl, parted with it very reluctantly, his sister, the 
 Duchess of Montrose, writing to his Countess, " I'm conserned 
 that my brother is disapoynted of that small part of the barenry 
 of Bidcastle that hi intended to cipe." Lord Panmure 
 purchased it ; and the Panmure family still retains it. 
 
 The rule of the Earls of Northesk, as the barons of Red- 
 castle, would seem to have been, if mild, yet firm, inspiring 
 their vassals with a salutary awe of them. In the bottom of
 
 84 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 their Castle was an excavation, twenty-five feet deep, which 
 they used for a prison ; and it is said that the fishermen of 
 Auchmithie had such a horror of this dungeon, that they 
 besought their feudal lords to throw them over the Red Head, 
 rather than cast them into it. 
 
 In 1549, the lands of Ethie became the property of Sir 
 Robert Carnegie, the father of the first Earl of Northesk. Six- 
 teen years after, they were erected into a barony ; and in 1707, 
 they, with other lands, were erected into the Earldom of 
 Northesk and Lordship and Barony of Rosehill. Ethie House 
 is finely situated near Red Head ; and is supposed to be the 
 Knockwinnock of The Antiquary. It was not built by 
 Cardinal Beaton, but it was one of his favourite residences ; 
 and, notwithstanding of some additions made to it since his 
 day, it is yet in much the same state in which it was when he 
 occupied it. 
 
 So attached to Ethie House was the Cardinal, that he did 
 not leave it on his murder. His ghost lingered about it, and, 
 indeed, it still does so. " It is still reported," as an indisput- 
 able fact, that " at a certain hour of the night, a sound is heard 
 resembling the tramp of a foot, which is believed to be the 
 Cardinal's, and it is popularly called his leg walking very 
 deliberately up and down the original stone stair, which still 
 connects the ground flat with the second storey of the House." 
 Mr Eraser, from whose History of the Camegies we quote, 
 adds : " The haunted room, which is in one of the attics, has 
 long been unoccupied. It is always kept locked, and few have 
 been privileged to enter it. By the kindness of Lord Northesk, 
 the writer was allowed to explore the mysterious apartment. 
 He found a veritable trace of the Cardinal in the form of a 
 large oak cabinet, the only article of furniture in the room. It 
 is a fixture, the back of it being the right-hand side of the stair- 
 case. The front of the cabinet is beautifully carved." 
 
 Ethie House is the seat of the Earls of Northesk, several of 
 whom figure somewhat conspicuously in our annals. 
 
 The first of them was Sir John Carnegie of Ethie, Knight, son 
 of Sir David Carnegie of Colluthie and Kinnaird, and sheriff of 
 Forfarshire. He was a person of much ability and energy ; a 
 favourite of both James VI. and Charles I. ; and a zealous sup- 
 porter of Charles's measures, both civil and ecclesiastical. 
 Having been so in the famous Glasgow Assembly of 1638, of 
 which he was a commissioner, he deemed it prudent next year
 
 The Maritime District Inverkeillor. 85 
 
 to flee the country ; and took shipping for France, but was 
 driven by a tempest to Dunbar ; where he was apprehended 
 and imprisoned, but was soon liberated. That same year, 
 Charles ennobled him by the title of Lord Lour ; and, in 1647, 
 he made him Earl of Ethie, which title was afterwards changed 
 into Earl of Northesk. In 1654, he was fined 6000 sterling 
 by Cromwell's Ordinance of Pardon and Grace. 
 
 His son David succeeded him as second Earl in 1667. He 
 married Jean Maule, daughter of Patrick Maule (afterwards 
 Earl) of Panmure ; and his favourite residence was Errol House, 
 which, with the barony, his father had purchased. He died 
 there, and his body was conveyed to the family burying-place, 
 in the church of Inverkeillor ; lying a night by the way in the 
 church of Dundee, where it was received with all honour. 
 
 His son, also David, was the third Earl. He married Lady 
 Elizabeth Lindsay, youngest daughter of John, fourteenth Earl 
 of Crawford. Their third daughter, Lady Christian, became the 
 wife of James, fourth Marquis of Montrose, created Duke of 
 Montrose in 1707. It was she who assisted the Countess of 
 Nithsdale in effecting the escape of her husband, as he lay in 
 the Tower of London under condemnation for his part in the 
 Rebellion of 1715 ; and the account of which forms one of the 
 most thrilling chapters of female affection and heroism. 
 
 David, fourth Earl of Northesk, was Sheriff of Forfarshire, 
 and succeeded his father in 1688. He strongly supported the 
 Union in 1707. Affecting to be neutral in the Rebellion of 
 1715, he yet to some extent supplied the insurgents with arms 
 and ammunition. The consequence was that he suffered from 
 both belligerents. Mar ordered his house to be searched, and 
 the wine in it to be transported to Perth. The searchers found 
 in it twenty-one dozen of other wines, and nine bottles of claret. 
 His tenants as well as himself suffered from both sides ; Argyle's 
 army pillaging them to the tune of 1918 2s 9d, and Mar's to 
 the tune of 660 3s lid. 
 
 His son George, fifth Earl, died unmarried, and his brother 
 George succeeded him as sixth Earl in 1741. Being a younger 
 brother, he had entered the Royal Navy in his youth ; and he 
 made a most memorable narrow escape from being buried alive. 
 In 1738, " when his ship was lying off the island of Minorca, 
 he was seized with a severe illness, and having been conveyed to 
 the house of Sir John St Clair in that island, he there sank so 
 low that he was supposed to be dead. He was laid in his
 
 86 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 coffin, a funeral party was told off, and all the other pi'epara- 
 tioiis wove nmde for his funeral. In these distressing circum- 
 stances his friend, Sir Robert Boyd, afterwards Governor of 
 Gibraltar, happening to apply a glass to his rnoutb, discovered 
 that he still breathed, and thus were the arrangements for his 
 interment happily suspended." He rose to such distinction in 
 the Navy, that he was ultimately appointed Admiral of the 
 Blue. He married Lady Anne Leslie, eldest daughter of Alex- 
 ander, Earl of Leven and Melville ; and their eldest daughter, 
 Lady Elizabeth, marrying the Honourable James Hope, second 
 son of the Earl of Hopeton, ultimately became Countess of 
 Hopeton. 
 
 His son William, seventh Earl, adopted his father's profes- 
 sion, in which he did much honourable service. He succeeded 
 to the Earldom in 1793 ; and was succeeded by the eighth Earl 
 in 1831. 
 
 Boy sack, after being possessed by the Earl of Argyle, and by 
 Lord Spynie, was acquired by the first Earl of Northesk, and 
 was erected into a barony for his second son, Sir John Carnegie, 
 Knight. The Knight's son bought the lands of Kinblethmont 
 from Sir John Wood of Bonnyton in 1678; and his grand- 
 daughter, Margaret, was married to Sir John Wedderburn of 
 Blackness, Baronet, who suffered for his Jacobitism on Ken- 
 nington Common in 1746. The Carnegies of Boysack 
 were as keen Jacobites as the Wedderburns of Blackness. 
 After acquiring Kinblethmont, they lived at it, preferring it as 
 a residence to Boysack. James, the fourth laird of Boysack, 
 and the last male Carnegie of that family, was private secretary 
 to Prince Charlie in 1745 ; and "the flaxen wig, the tartan 
 coat of antique cut, and the walking-staff used by the Prince 
 while wandering in the Highlands after the battle of Culloden, 
 are still to be seen at Kinblethmont. These articles Mr 
 Carnegie received from the Prince after his escape to France, 
 and they have ever since been carefully preserved as heirlooms 
 in the Boysack family." 
 
 Inverkeillor was largely blessed with loyalist ministers, in 
 those days when the Prelatic party modestly appropriated this 
 epithet. Mr Arthur Fithie uniformly supported all the Court 
 measures for metamorphosing the Kirk. On the introduction 
 of Episcopacy in 1606, when the Bishop rode in state to Parlia- 
 ment, he walked at the stirrup of the Metropolitan, with his 
 cap at his knee. He was made constant moderator of his
 
 The Maritime District Lunan. 87 
 
 Presbytery. In 1 703, Mr James Rait, the minister of Inver- 
 keillor, was outed for non-jurancy. He intruded at Lunan in 
 1713, and again when residing in Montrose ; and, in 1717, he 
 was deposed for his intrusions, his accession to the late Rebellion, 
 and his contumacy. 
 
 LUK4BT. 
 
 In the parish of Lunan are vestiges of the Northmen, similar 
 to those in Inverkeillor. Among these we are disposed to class 
 the knaps in it, that is, the hillocks raised on eminences, such as 
 were in former times so common in Scotland for beacons or 
 signal-posts, and on which fires were lighted to give warning of 
 the approach of an enemy or of any like imminent danger. 
 " Almost every farm," says the Statistical Account of Lunan, 
 " had its knap. It was a very ancient practice throughout the 
 whole of Scotland (and in many places is still kept up), for the 
 relations of the dead, the day after the funeral, to carry the chaff 
 and bed straw on which the person had died to some hillock or 
 knap in the neighbourhod of the house, and there burn them. 
 It is probable that those knaps had been used for that purpose, 
 which would account for every farm town having its knap." 
 But is it not at least as probable a conjecture, that these knaps 
 were for beacons ; and that they were so frequent in Lilian, 
 because sad experience had taught its inhabitants how liable 
 they were to be surprised by ruthless invaders from the North, 
 who found so convenient a landing-place in their weU sheltered 
 Bay! 
 
 Cathie Loch, in this parish, bears, as we take it, a memorial 
 name. Cathie, or Cath rather, is a Gaelic word, and signifies a 
 battle. We infer, therefore, that nigh to this loch a battle was 
 fought of sufficient importance to give the loch its name. 
 Accordingly, in the neighbourhood of it are two artificial conical 
 mounts, and a ridge connected with them, which may be traced 
 to the distance of an hundred and twenty yards, and which is 
 succeeded by a range of little tumuli, running in the same line, 
 and extending about eight hundred yards. These are further 
 and conclusive marks of a place where war had done its deadly 
 work. At what date this happened we are not able to say, but
 
 88 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 it is likely enough that the battle thus indicated was fought 
 between the natives and some invading host of Northmen who 
 had just disembarked at Lunan Bay. 
 
 Walter Mill, the martyr, was for long the parish priest of 
 Lunan. Having renounced the errors of Popery and embraced 
 the principles of the Reformation, he was, in April, 1568, 
 apprehended at Dysart by two priests in the service of Arch- 
 bishop Hamilton, brought to St Andrews and imprisoned in the 
 Castle. All private means to shake his constancy having been 
 tried in vain, an assembly of Bishops, Abbots, and Doctors of 
 theology met to try him in the Metropolitan Church of St 
 Andrews. Partly from his age (he was eighty-two years old), 
 and partly from the treatment to which he had been subjected, 
 it was feared that he would not be able to climb up into the 
 pulpit, where he was required to take his place, or to make him- 
 self heard. But he mounted with wonderful agility and 
 strength, and made the church ring with his voice. Sir Andrew 
 Oliphant, a priest, and a tool of the Archbishop, interrogated 
 him concerning the marriage of priests, the number of sacra- 
 ments, the mass, die. He answered most readily, pertinently, 
 and forcibly ; and ended by saying, " You shall know that I 
 will not recant the truth, for I am corn, and not chaff. I will 
 not be blown away with the wind, nor burst with the flail, but 
 will abide both." 
 
 Mill was condemned to be delivered to the temporal judge, 
 and burnt as a heretic. But so great was the sympathy with 
 him, that Provost Patrick Learmonth refused to do the part of 
 temporal judge ; and not a rope would any individual supply to 
 bind the victim to the stake. The Archbishop had to improvise 
 a temporal judge in one of his own domestics ; and his own 
 pavilion had to furnish the rope required. As the fatal hour 
 approached, Mill's firmness and courage increased. When the 
 pile was ready, he ascended it with a cheerful countenance ; 
 declared and vindicated the cause for which he suffered ; praised 
 God, who had called him to seal the truth with his life ; and 
 exhorted the people, as they would escape eternal death, to place 
 their entire dependence on Christ, the one and only sacrifice, 
 and to relinquish the fatal errors of the Romish priests and 
 bishops. He also said, " I shall be the last that shall suffer 
 death in this land for this cause," and his words proved 
 prophetic. His death was emphatically the death of Popery in 
 Scotland.
 
 The Maritime District Craig. 89 
 
 " The martyrdom of Mill was not only a wicked and cruel 
 act on the part of the Romanists, but it was egregious and 
 suicidal folly. It excited the deepest indignation throughout 
 the kingdom. The cruelty of the priesthood was everywhere 
 execrated, and the constancy of the venerable martyr was the 
 theme of universal admiration. Many were shaken in their 
 attachment to the Romish Church ; and those who had already 
 joined the Congregation were confirmed in the course which 
 they had taken. In St Andrews, the people erected a great 
 heap of stones upon the spot where Mill had been burned, that 
 the memory of his sufferings might be preserved ; and although 
 the priests repeatedly caused them to be removed, and threatened 
 curses to them that should lay down any more, still there were 
 hands ready to deposit new stones in the place. In all parts of 
 the country images were taken out of the churches and 
 destroyed ; and in Edinburgh in particular, the image of St 
 Giles, the tutelary saint of the town, was first thrown into the 
 North Loch, and then burned to ashes." 
 
 CRAIG. 
 
 Craig was the birth parish of the celebrated Andrew Melville. 
 He was born at Baldovie (Jervise says at Dysart), a small 
 estate in the parish, of which his father was proprietor, on the 
 1st of August, 1545. He was the youngest of nine sons, of 
 whom James, minister first of Feme and then of Arbroath, was 
 one, and who, when Andrew was only two years old, lost their 
 father at the disastrous battle of Pinkie. Their mother also 
 died in the course of the same year. One of the nine brothers 
 was Richard, who became minister of the neighbouring parish 
 of Maryton ; and he and his wife did the parents' part to 
 Andrew, rearing him with the most affectionate care. He was 
 a student of the University of St Andrews, which he left with 
 the reputation of being "The best philosopher, poet, and Grecian 
 of any young master in the land." After this he studied in the 
 Universities of Paris and Poitiers ; went thence to Geneva, 
 where he was appointed to the Humanity Chair, and entered on 
 terms of intimacy with Calvin, Beza, Scaliger, and other such 
 illustrious men. He retained his Professorship in Geneva for
 
 90 Historic Scenes in Forfarsliire. 
 
 five yean, and then returned to Scotland; Beza addressing a 
 letter to the General Assembly of the Kii-k, in which he stated 
 that, as the greatest token of affection which the Church of 
 Geneva could shew to the Church of Scotland, they had suffered 
 themselves to be deprived of Andrew Melville, in order that 
 his native country might be enriched by his gifts. 
 
 On his return, Melville was by and by installed in the office 
 of Principal of the University of Glasgow ; which he raised 
 from a very ruinous condition to be the first seminary in the 
 kingdom. Having filled this office for six yeans, he was trans- 
 ferred to St Andrews, to be Principal of St Mary's College 
 there, and Primarius Professor of Divinity ; with the view of 
 his carrying out, by his talents, and energy, and influence, a 
 scheme of University reform, which the Assembly had devised, 
 and Parliament had assented to. 
 
 But Andrew Melville's special mission was that of a Church 
 Reformer ; and in the list of Scottish Church Reformers, he 
 confessedly stands next to Knox himself. If Knox was the 
 head of the First Reformation, Melville was the head of the 
 Second. The First was Reformation from Popery ; the Second 
 was Reformation from Prelacy, which James VI. was so intent 
 to impose upon Scotland. Of the struggle between the King 
 and the Principal we can give no details, or even outline. We 
 can only say that the Principal prevailed, partially and 
 temporarily in his life-time and that of James ; and completely 
 and permanently in the Revolutions, ecclesiastical and civil, of 
 1638 and 1688. But the struggle cost him much; much 
 sacrifice and suffering as well as labour. It cost him his office. 
 It cost him his liberty and his country. In 1584, Blackness 
 would have been his prison, if his nephew James, learning his 
 danger, had not apprised him of it, and persuaded him to flee 
 into England ; where he was confined in the Tower of London 
 for four years; and in 1622 he died, aged seventy-seven years, 
 an exile in Sedan, where he spent the last eleven years of his 
 life, Professor of Biblical Literature in the Protestant Uni- 
 versity there. 
 
 Melville's character was a truly noble one. Immovable 
 firmness, dauntless fortitude, and unswerving fidelity to his 
 convictions of truth and duty, were its most prominent fea- 
 tures ; and of these we feel strongly tempted to give a few illus- 
 trations. They have been often given ; but they may be new 
 to some of our readers, and none can be too familiar with them.
 
 The Maritime District Craig. 91 
 
 When Regent Morton, baffled to bribe Melville to acquiesce 
 in the continuance of bishops in the Kirk, took to threatening, 
 and exclaimed, " There will never be quietness in this country 
 till half a-dozen of you be hanged or banished !" " Tush, sir," 
 replied Melville, " utter these threats to your purple-robed 
 minions. It is the same to me whether I rot under ground or 
 in the air. The earth is the Lord's. My country is wherever 
 goodness is. I have been ready to give my life, when it would 
 not have been half so well expended, at the pleasure of my God. 
 I have lived out of your country ten years, as well as in it. 
 Let God be glorified, it will not be in your power to hang or 
 exile His truth." 
 
 When Moderator of the extraordinary meeting of the General 
 Assembly, held in 1858, to oppose the King's Erastianising and 
 Prelatising measures, Melville declared in his opening address 
 that " the bloody gully of absolute power was whetted for their 
 destruction ; and that the object of their tyrannical oppressors 
 was to pull the crown from Christ's head, and to wrench the 
 sceptre out of his hands." The Assembly adopted a com- 
 plaint and remonstrance to the King, and appointed a deputa- 
 tion to present it, with the Moderator at its head. Admitted 
 into the Royal presence, they read the papei', and laid it 
 on the table ; when Arrau, snatching it up, and furiously 
 asking, " Who dare subscribe those treasonable articles 1" 
 Melville stepped forward and said, " We dare, and will 
 subscribe them, and we will surrender our lives in the cause !" 
 and, seizing a pen, he put his name to the document, and all 
 the rest of the deputies followed his example. 
 
 When James charged the Commissioners of the Kirk with 
 sedition for holding an Assembly without his express warrant, 
 Andrew Melville answered for them, " Sir, as divers times 
 before I have told you, so now again I must tell you, there are 
 two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland; there is Christ 
 Jesus, the King of the Church, whose subject King James VI. 
 is, and of whose Kingdom he is not a king, nor a lord, nor a 
 head but a member. They whom Christ has called, and 
 commanded to watch over his Church, and govern his spiritual 
 Kingdom, have sufficient authority from him to do this both 
 jointly and severally ; the which no Christian King or Prince 
 should control and discharge, but fortify and assist ; otherwise 
 they are not faithful subjects of Christ and members of his 
 Church. We will yield to you your place, and give you all due
 
 92 Historic Scenes in Forfarsliire. 
 
 obedience ; but, again I say, you are not the head of the Church ; 
 you cannot give us that eternal life which even in this world 
 we seek for, and you cannot deprive us of it." 
 
 Yet again : Melville was among the Scotch ministers whom 
 James summoned to London in 1606, and whom he subjected 
 to the discipline of hearing sermons from the English bishops 
 touching the points in dispute between Prelatists and Presby- 
 terians. On a St Michael's day, they were obliged to attend 
 the Royal chapel, which, to please the Duke of Lorraine, who 
 was present, was fitted up very much as if it had been a Popish 
 chapel. On his returning to his lodgings, Melville embodied 
 his feelings in a Latin epigram, which has been translated 
 thus : 
 
 "Why stand there on the Eoyal altar high, 
 Two closed books, blind lights, two basins dry ? 
 Doth England hold God's mind, and worship close, 
 Blind of her sight, and buried in her dross ? 
 Doth she, with chapel put in Romish dress, 
 The purple whore religiously express ?" 
 
 A copy of this epigram having fallen into the hands of his 
 enemies, Melville was arraigned for it before the English 
 Council ; and Bancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, having 
 expatiated on the heinousness of his offence, Melville answered 
 thus for himself : " My Lords, Andrew Melville was never a 
 traitor ; but there was one Richard Bancroft (let him be sought 
 for), who, during the life of the late Queen, wrote a treatise 
 against his Majesty's title to the crown of England, and here is 
 the book." Bancroft was confounded, and sat mute, while the 
 Scottish presbyter proceeded to accuse him of Sabbath profana- 
 tion, and of silencing and imprisoning faithful ministers for not 
 conforming to the vain and superstitious ceremonies of an anti- 
 Christian hierarchy. Gradually advancing nearer the Arch- 
 bishop, shaking his lawn sleeves, and calling them Romish rags, 
 he continued to address him thus : " If you are the author of 
 the book called ' England Scottizing for Geneva Discipline,' then 
 I regard you as the capital enemy of all the Reformed Churches 
 in Europe, and as such I will profess myself an enemy to you 
 and your proceedings, to the effusion of the last drop of my 
 blood ; and it grieves me much that s\ich a man should have his 
 Majesty's ear, and sit so high in this Honourable Council." 
 
 Craig was also the birth-parish of Dr Alexander Leighton, 
 the father of the excellent Robert Leighton, first bishop of 
 Dunblane, and afterwards Archbishop of Glasgow. He was of
 
 The Maritime District Craig. 93 
 
 the Leightons of Usan, and we have every reason to presume 
 that he was born there. He studied at St Andrews, whence 
 he went to Leyden, and took the degree of M.D. ; after which 
 he took up his residence in London, and commenced the practice 
 of physic. He loathed the lordly pretensions and the Roman- 
 ising practices of the Bishops of that day, and ventured to write 
 against them. He went to Holland for the publication of his 
 book, which he intituled, An Appeal to the Parliament; or 
 Sion's Plea against the Prelacie ; and summe whereoff is 
 delivered in a decade of positions, in the handling whereoff the 
 Lord Bishops and their appurtenances are manifestly proved, 
 both by divine and humane lawes, to be intruders upon the 
 priviledges of Christ, of the King, and of the Common-weal ; 
 and therefore, upon good evidence given, she hartelie desireth 
 a judgement and execution. On his return to London two 
 copies of his Plea were presented to Parliament ; and the 
 melancholy sequel has been thus summarised : He (the aiithor) 
 was soon afterwards arrested by two pursuivants of the High 
 Commission, and was conducted to the house of Dr Laud, who 
 was then Bishop of London, and who may with sufficient pro- 
 priety be described as the Inquisitor-General of England. On 
 the Bishop's warrant he was committed to a dark, cold, and 
 loathsome dungeon in Newgate, to a place not fit for the recep- 
 tion of a Christian's dog, and there he was kept, without meat 
 or drink, from Tuesday night to Thursday at noon. It was only 
 after a dismal interval of fifteen weeks that the inquisitors 
 would permit even his wife to visit him. Four days after his 
 commitment she had been treated with the most barbarous in- 
 humanity and indecency by a pursuivant and other ruffians, 
 who were sent to ransack his house, under the pretext of 
 searching for Jesuit books. They presented a pistol to the 
 breast of a boy five years of age, threatening to shoot him if he 
 did not inform them where the books were to be found ; and so 
 affrighted the poor child that he never recovered it all his days. 
 They not only carried off books and manuscripts, but robbed the 
 house of arms, clothes, and furniture. His wife had sufficient 
 courage to remind them that a day of reckoning might yet 
 come ; and come it did, in a signal manner, to the chief authors 
 and abettors of such flagitious proceedings. Some of Laud's 
 emissaries infested him in Newgate ; and, by means of flattering 
 and deceitful promises, one of them prevailed on him to confess 
 that he was the writer of the book in question. During a
 
 94 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 subsequent visit, he offered to procure him pardon and favour, 
 on condition of his disclosing the names of those who had 
 encouraged him to write ; but although neai'ly five hundred 
 individuals had, by their subscriptions, testified their approba- 
 tion of Sion's Plea, he had too much magnanimity to betray 
 any one of his friends and adherents. After this refusal, he 
 was brought before the Court of Star-Chamber 1 , and required to 
 answer a long information, setting forth his many and grievous 
 offences. He admitted that he was the author of the book, but 
 denied all criminality of intention. No counsel dared, to plead 
 his cause, and he returned to prison in order to await his doom. 
 It was the opinion of four physicians that poison had been 
 administered to him in Newgate. He had been seized with a 
 violent distemper, which was accompanied with loathsome 
 symptoms, and his strength was so completely exhausted that 
 he could not be produced before this atrocious Court. In his 
 absence the following sentence was unanimously pronounced 
 on the 4th of June, 1630 : That Dr Leighton should pay a 
 fine of 10,000 ; that the High Commission should degrade him 
 from his ministry ; that he should be brought to the pillory at 
 Westminster during the sitting of the Court, and should there 
 be whipped ; that after whipping he should be set upon the 
 pillory for a convenient time, should have one of his ears cut 
 off, one side of his nose slit, and his face branded with the 
 letters S.S., denoting a sower of sedition ; that he should then 
 be carried back to prison, and, after an interval of a few days, 
 should again be pilloried at Cheapside, should then likewise be 
 whipped, have his other ear cut off, and the other side of his 
 nose slit ; and should then be detained in close custody in the 
 Fleet Prison, for the remainder of his life. When this sentence 
 was pronounced, it has been stated that Laud pulled off his cap, 
 and gave thanks to the God of mercy ; nor does such an act 
 appear to be in any respect inconsistent with the general 
 character of the ferocious and unrelenting bigot to whom it is 
 imputed. This is the same individual whom the High Church- 
 men of our own times describe as an excellent prelate. 
 Between the passing and the execution of the sentence, 
 Leighton made his escape from prison ; and two of his country- 
 men, named Anderson and Elphinstone, were each fined ,500 
 for aiding and abetting him iu his flight. He was, however, 
 retaken in Bedfordshire ; and, before the expiration of a fort- 
 night, having again been committed to the Fleet, he endured
 
 TJie Maritime District Kinnell. 95 
 
 the first part of his punishment on the 26th of November ; it 
 was inflicted with the most unrelenting severity ; the second 
 pai't followed after a short interval ; and his bodily frame having 
 thus been miserably shattered he lingered in prison for the 
 tedious space of nearly ten years. In 1640 he presented a 
 petition to the Long Parliament, reciting the direful persecu- 
 tion to which he had been subjected, and he now obtained such 
 redress as could be afforded to him ; but, as Benson has too 
 truly remarked, ' no sufficient reparation in this world could 
 possibly be made to a man so deeply injured.' " 
 
 Craig, moreover, was the birth-parish of other two persons of 
 some note, and whose names are not unfamiliar to those who 
 are conversant with the history of our Eastern Empire. David 
 Scott, Esq. of Duninald, was born there, and for a long time 
 held a high place in the direction of the affairs of the East 
 Indian Company. And his nephew, David Scott, son of 
 Archibald Scott, Esq. of Usan, equally distinguished himself in 
 the East. These Scotts, it may be added, were a very old 
 family, and till lately had a considerable position in the 
 county. " It appears," says Jervise, " that Scotts have been 
 located in and near Montrose since the time of Robert the 
 Bruce. The first Scott of Logy, a merchant and burgess of that 
 town, was ancestor of the Scotts, at one time lairds of Usan 
 and Duninald, one of whom, towards the close of last century, 
 was M.P. for the county of Forfar, and afterwards for the burgh." 
 
 There is yet one Historic Scene more in Craig which must 
 not be passed over. It is the Road which began at the fishing 
 port of Usan, and ran north-west through the parish, and by 
 which fresh fish was daily conveyed to the King and Court 
 when they were at Forfar. " The breadth of the Road was 
 the length of the mill-wand, or rod by which a mill-stone was 
 trundled from the quarry to the mill ;" and to this day it goes 
 by the name of the Kings Cadger's Road. 
 
 KINNELL. 
 
 Kinnell, though at some distance from the coast, is reckoned 
 to belong to the Maritime district of the shire ; and if places 
 having traces of the Romans ai - e Historic Scenes, Kinnell is 
 such a scene. In 1829, on the farm of Mainsbank in this
 
 96 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 parish, was found by the side of a ditch, out of which it had 
 doubtless been cast, an Aureus ; a gold coin of the Emperor 
 Antoninus Pius. It had on the one side the head of the 
 Emperor, with the inscription, "Antoninus Aug. Pius P.P. 
 Imp ii. ;" and on the other side a victory, with the inscription, 
 " Tr. Pot. xix. Cos iiii. ; that is, being translated, " Antoninus 
 Augustus Pius, Father of his Country ; twice saluted with the 
 title of Emperor by the army and the Senate ; nineteen times 
 invested with the Tribunitian power ; and four times with the 
 Consulship." Antoninus succeeded to the imperial throne in 
 A.D. 138; appointed to the command in Britain Lollius 
 Urbicus, who drove back the Caledonians into their fastnesses 
 beyond the Grampians ; and re-built the wall between the 
 Firth and the Clyde, which the incursions of the barbarians 
 had destroyed. He also followed the route through Angus by 
 which Agricola had marched in the preceding century, and by 
 which, in the beginning of the next century, the Emperor 
 Severus penetrated so far north that his soldiers were struck 
 with the length of the days and the shortness of the nights 
 compared with those in Italy. It would seem that the extreme 
 point to which he pushed was the promontory separating the 
 Cromarty and the Moray Firths. There is no difficulty, then, 
 in accounting for an Aureus of Antoninus Pius being found in 
 Kinnell. 
 
 In sepulchral remains, and in names of places, there are 
 manifest indications of this locality having been devastated by 
 war. In a barrow on the top of "Wuddy-law, the highest 
 ground in the parish, have been found " earthen vessels con- 
 taining a black fetish mould, urns, and half-burnt bones." 
 Urns and bones were also found on Westfield of Hattonmill, at 
 the removal of a cairn there ; and at Glasterlaw and other 
 places. On the north-west of the parish are many cairns in a 
 space of about two acres of ground ; not far from which is the 
 Battle Drum Wood on the north ; and the Battle Burn on the 
 south, which is said to have flowed with blood as far as the 
 Fithy ; while, a little to the east are the Battle Cairn and the 
 Battle Well. These are unmistakable memorials of great 
 carnage ; and when the reader asks, What carnage 1 we can only 
 repeat the answer which has been often given tradition makes 
 them the memorials of a dreadful battle between the Picts and 
 the Romans, of which no other history than these memorials 
 themselves has come down to us.
 
 The Maritime District Maryton. 97 
 
 The barony of Kinnell may be regarded as an Historic Scene, 
 on account of a circumstance which associated it with Bannock- 
 burn. King Kobert Bruce gave the barony, which then com- 
 prehended the most of the parish, to his Chamberlain and 
 brother-in-law, Sir Alexander Eraser of Oliver Castle and 
 Nidpath, the chief of the clan Fraser, in reward of his exploits, 
 on the field on which the King and his patriot heroes won so 
 glorious a victory. Other large and valuable estates, both in 
 Angus and Mearns, were gifted about the same time by The 
 Bruce to the Lovats, and which long connected them with both 
 counties. In 1851, Thomas Fraser, a cadet of Lovat, built the 
 Castle of Braikie, over the entrance to which his initials T. F. 
 are yet to be seen. 
 
 Some four or five hundred acres of the Moor of Montreath- 
 mont, one of the great Royal forests of Scotland, lay in the 
 barony of Kinnell. It was, therefore, frequently honoured 
 with the visits of Royalty, in pursuit of the pleasures of the 
 chase. In 1617 James VI. paid it one of those visits. We 
 have already seen that he passed the night of the 21st May 
 that year in Dudhope Castle, Dundee, the residence of 
 Sir John Scrimgeour, Hereditary Constable of the town. 
 But he left early next morning for Kinnaird Castle, the seat of 
 his favourite, Lord Carnegie ; and it would seem that he 
 enjoyed himself for eight days in hunting, of which he was very 
 fond, in his Royal forest in that district. He did not at least 
 return to Dundee till after the lapse of eight days. 
 
 MARYTON. 
 
 Of Historic Scenes in Maryton, Old Montrose is the chief. 
 It was the property and the principal residence of the noble 
 family of the Grahams of Montrose. It was from the town of 
 Montrose that Lindsay, the original Duke of Montrose, took 
 his title ; but it was from their old seat of Old Montrose, 
 Maryton, that the Grahams took their several titles of Lord. 
 Earl, Marquis, and Duke. They were an old family ; the first 
 of them who settled in Angus being David of Graham, who 
 waa the grandfather of the patriot, Sir John Graham, who fell 
 at the battle of Falkirk, fighting with Wallace for the indepen- 
 dence of his country ; but it was in the Great Marquis of the 
 
 G
 
 98 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 seventeenth century that, as some would say, the glory of the 
 family culminated. He was born at Old Montrose in 1612; 
 and the part which he acted in the Civil War of his day is well 
 known. After swearing the Covenant, and being for a time a 
 zealous supporter of the Presbyterians, he deserted them, and 
 went over to the side of Charles. This was in 1642 ; and we 
 have already touched on some of his brilliant, though fruitless, 
 military exploits, till the tide turned against him at Philip- 
 haugh ; and he was captured in 1650 by M'Leod of Assynt, 
 and conveyed in the most miserable plight a prisoner to Edin- 
 burgh, where he suffered a cruel and ignominious death ; his 
 sentence being that he be hanged three hours on a gibbet thirty 
 feet high, his head fixed to an iron spike on the Tolbooth of 
 Edinburgh, his body quartered, his limbs placed over the gates 
 of the four principal towns of Scotland Perth, Stirling, Aber- 
 deen, and Glasgow ; and his corpse (unless he should be released 
 from the excommunication of the Kirk) interred in the Borough- 
 moor under the gallows. 
 
 After his execution, some adventurous spirits, employed by 
 Lady Napier, managed to get possession of his heart. It was 
 embalmed skilfully, and at great cost, and put in a rich case of 
 gold, which was taken to India by a Napier, the mother of Sir 
 Alexander Johnston. There the precious relic got the reputa- 
 tion of being a talisman, and was stolen, and worshipped in an 
 Indian shrine ! Sir Alexander contrived to get hold of it, and 
 to take it out of the list of Indian deities ; but his father and 
 mother again lost it at Boulogne, after which it was never re- 
 covered. 
 
 The Marquis had some noble qualities ; and they shone, as 
 we think, more in his death than in his life. Who does not 
 feel the happy contrast between his calm dignity and resolute 
 endurance, and the spirit and conduct of those who rioted in the 
 indignities and cruelties which they inflicted on him 1 Who 
 can read, without feelings of even more that admiration, those 
 lines which he wrote with the point of a diamond on his prison 
 window the evening before his execution 1 
 
 " Let them bestow on every airth a limb, 
 Then open all my veins that I may swim 
 To Thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake 
 Then place my parboil'd head upon a stake ; 
 Scatter my a>hes strew them in the air 
 Lord ! since thou knowest where all those atoms are, 
 I'm hopeful thou'lt recover once my dust, 
 And confident thou'lt raise me with the just."
 
 The Maritime District Maryton. 99 
 
 After the death of the great Marquis, Old Montrose passed 
 into the hands of the Earl of Middleton, a great favourite of 
 both the Charleses, and an infamous minion, without a single 
 redeeming quality. It was he that, in 1661, proposed and 
 carried the reversal of all the Acts of Parliaments and Conven- 
 tions held since 1638 ; a deed, as Bishop Burnet says, " only fit 
 to be concluded after a drunken bout ;" and very likely it is 
 that it was concluded then ; for, as the Bishop's father says, 
 " It was a maddening time, when the men of affairs were 
 perpetually drunk." Middleton was Royal Commissioner to 
 that Parliament ; and it is recorded that he often took his seat 
 on the throne in such a state of intoxication that no business 
 could be done, and the House had to be adjourned. It was he, 
 more than any other person, that compassed the judicial 
 murder of the Marquis of Argyle that same year. It was he 
 that, with the view of possessing himself of the estates of the 
 Marquis, had his eldest son, Lord Lorn, tried on the wicked 
 law of leasing-making, and sentence of death pronounced on 
 him ; but the King spared his life. It was he that, with certain 
 members of the Privy Council, made a tour through the west 
 of Scotland, forming a very horrible chapter of our nation's 
 history the scenes of debauchery and profaneness which were 
 acted during their progress being, in the last degree, revolting 
 and disgusting. It was he, moreover, that insisted that all 
 ministers, who had been admitted since 1649, when patronage 
 was abolished, and who had not obtained a presentation from 
 the patron, and induction from the Bishop of the Diocese, 
 should be deprived of their livings, and expelled from their 
 parishes. 
 
 Having by these measures filled the cup of his iniquity, 
 Middleton was, in 1662, deprived of all his offices, and reduced 
 to poverty, alleviated only by his being sent to be Governor of 
 Tangier in Africa ; an exile in which he soon died. 
 
 Bonnyton or Bonnington is now a part of Old Montrose ; 
 but it was once a separate property, and was the seat of the 
 family of Wood. "The foundation of the Castle they in- 
 habited," says the last Statistical Account of the parish, " is still 
 to be seen ; and of a moat or broad deep ditch by which it was 
 suiTounded and fortified, the vestige still remains." 
 
 The lands of Bonnington adjoin those of Usan, a famous 
 fishing station in olden times ; and as we have already noted, 
 when the Court resided at Forfar, fresh fish was daily conveyed 
 
 G2
 
 100 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 from Usan to it, by a road which led through Montreathmont 
 Moor, the track of which is still known as the Cadger's Road. 
 The old Forfarshire family of Tulloch, which, before 1493, had 
 merged by marriage into that of Wood, is said to have held the 
 lands of Bonnington under the tenure of daily supplying fresh 
 fish to the Royal table. 
 
 In 1649, the Commission of the General Assembly suspended 
 Mr John Lammie, minister of Maryton, for the active part 
 which he had taken the previous year to get David, Earl of 
 Southesk, chosen a member of the Assembly. His Lordship 
 had made himself a " black sheep" by joining in the " Engage- 
 ment." Mr Lammie must have borne his censure meekly, and 
 walked very wisely ; for his suspension was removed in 1650. 
 The Jacobites gave " measure for measure," when their brief 
 day came in 1715. They spoiled the goods of Mr Charles 
 Irvine, then minister of the parish, and forced him to take 
 shelter in Edinburgh till the Rebellion was quashed. 
 
 FARNELL. 
 
 At the date of the earliest notice of them upon record, the 
 lands of Farnell belonged to the See of Brechin, and the Castle 
 was the Bishop's palace. At the Reformation the Bishop of 
 Brechin was Alexander Campbell, brother of the Laird of 
 Ardkinglass, then Comptroller of Scotland. Sharing the 
 worldly wisdom of his contemporary and relative, Donald 
 Campbell, Abbot of Coupar, he managed, in view of the evil 
 day which he saw to be coming, to get the power of disposing 
 of the benefices within his diocese ; and his Grange of Farnell 
 he alienated to his patron and chief, Archibald, fifth Earl of 
 Argyll. Colin, sixth Earl, sold the lands of Farnell to James 
 Lord Ogilvy of Airlie. After half a century they were again 
 sold to David Master of Carnegie ; and, he dying without issue 
 in 1633, bis father, David Lord Carnegie, succeeded to them, 
 and they have since formed a part of the Southesk estates. 
 
 The Carnegies possessed Kinnaird from 1409, when, partly 
 by purchase, and partly by marriage, it came into the hands of 
 their common ancestor, Duthac de Carnegie, who fell at Harlaw,
 
 The Maritime District Farnell. 101 
 
 in 1411. Kinnaird Castle, the seat of the Earls of South esk, 
 is the Historic Scene in the parish. It must occupy the site of 
 the old one, if it be true that one of its towers was part of the 
 ancient Castle. In itself, and in its surroundings, the present 
 Castle is one of the most superb seats of our Scottish nobility ; 
 and its predecessor would seem to have been the same in its 
 day. Ochterlony, writing two hundred years ago, describes it 
 as being " without competition the fynest place, taking alto- 
 gether, in the shyre ; a great house, excellent gardens, parks 
 with fallow deer, orchards, hay meadows, wherein are extraordi- 
 nare quantities of hay, veiy much planting, ane excellent breed 
 of horse, cattle, and sheep, extraordinare good land." How 
 would he describe it were he to see it now, after the immense 
 improvements it has undergone, and the very possibility of 
 several of which he did not so much as conceive ! 
 
 Kinnaird has been frequently honoured with the presence oi 
 Royalty. Edward I. of England rested at it on the 7th July, 
 1296, when he was on his way from Arbr.oath to Montrose. 
 In 1602 and 1617 James VI. was the guest of Lord Carnegie 
 in his Castle of Kinnaird during which visits he enjoyed the 
 chase in his neighbouring Royal forest. Both the Charleses 
 likewise visited the Castle, its owner ranking among the most 
 devoted and powerful of their adherents. 
 
 In 1452 the Castle of Kinnaird was given to the flames. 
 "Walter of Carnegie, the son of Duthac, fought on the side of 
 his sovereign against Earl Beardie in the Battle of Brechin, 
 and the Earl took vengeance on him by burning his Castle, and 
 " all his writs and evidents were consumed" in the conflagration. 
 In 1513 the house of Kinnaird supplied Flodden with one of its 
 victims. John, the son and successor of Walter, fell on that 
 field, with many of his kinsmen. In 1547 it gave a member 
 to the Bench. Sir Robert, the fourth from Duthac, made law 
 his study. He was the author of a book of some authority in 
 its day on Scots law, cited as Liber Carnegii, and in the year 
 named he was made a Lord of Session. His eldest son, Sir 
 John must have been esteemed a man of wisdom, and must 
 have been in the confidence of Queen Maiy, for, as her 
 difficulties thickened and closed upon her, she is said to have 
 written him a letter craving his advice. Dying without issue, 
 he was succeeded by his brother, Sir David, on whom James 
 conferred some high offices, and made him a peer in 1616 ; and 
 whom Charles I. in 1633 raised to an Earldom, by the title of
 
 102 Histwic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 the Earl of Southesk. He was a steady and zealous supporter 
 of both sovereigns in their policy. 
 
 The Earl paid the penalty for the side which he took in the 
 Civil War. He was fined for it the sum of 3000, under 
 Cromwell's Act of Grace and Pardon. In other ways, too, did 
 he suffer for it. Very heavily must the fate of the great 
 Marquis of Montrose have fallen upon him and his house. The 
 Marchioness was Margaret, one of the Earl's daughters ; and 
 when the Marquis was on his way to Edinburgh to suffer 
 execution he was conveyed to Kinnaird Castle to take a last 
 farewell of his relatives there. The meeting and the parting 
 must have been unspeakably heartrending. The scene is to be 
 imagined, not described. 
 
 The second Earl, commonly called the Black Earl, exiled 
 himself during the Commonwealth to attend on Charles II. in 
 Holland. It was by the mode of his death, or rather, of his 
 disappearance from this mortal scene, more than by any deed 
 of his life, that he contributed to make his Castle an Historic 
 Scene. Having been educated at Padua, in Italy, he had 
 passed for being a magician, and, like all his class, was in com- 
 pact with the Evil One. As the price of the supernatural 
 powers received from him, he had given himself to the Arch- 
 fiend ; and when he had no more work for him on earth, he 
 took him to himself in both soul and body ! In the " Devil's 
 Den," close by the family burial vault, was the " Starney- 
 Bucket Well ;" and driving one very dark stormy night, the 
 Earl, with his coach and four, was lost in that Well ! It be- 
 came to them the passage to the Infernal Regions ! It was to 
 them the open mouth of the pit which swallowed them up ! 
 It would appear, however, that till of late their confinement 
 was not very close. Of this, the great grandfathers and great 
 grandmothers of the present generation had ocular demonstra- 
 tion. They often saw the Earl revisiting his old haunts, and 
 disporting himself in driving a coach along the lawns, with the 
 horses beautifully plumed and decorated with innumerable blue 
 lights ! (Burning brimstone emits a blue flame.) So tradition 
 says ; and let no reader meet it with an incredulous laugh. So 
 history says ; for what is a great deal of history but tradition 
 committed Lo writing ? and is not the story of the Black Earl's 
 exit printed in the Land of the Lindsays, very much in the 
 terms in which we have now given it ? 
 
 The third Earl, Robert, was the husband of Lady
 
 The Maritime District Farnell. 103 
 
 Hamilton ; and those who are curious to see how that Countess 
 figures in history, are referred to the Count de Grammont's 
 Memoirs of the Court of Charles II. 
 
 It was the destiny of James, the fifth Earl, to see 1715, and 
 he played a highly important part in that epoch. He attended 
 Mar's "hunting match" at Braemar, on the 26th August, 
 where he swore fealty to the exiled heir of the Stuarts, and 
 fidelity to his fellow-rebels singing with them by anticipa- 
 tion : 
 
 " The auld Stuart's back again, 
 The au'd Stuart's back again, 
 Let howlet "Whigs do what they can, 
 The auld Stuart's back again." 
 
 He was one of the chiefs of clans who, on the 6th September, 
 assembled with their retainers at Aboyne and raised the 
 standard of the Chevalier ; which was no sooner set up than, 
 sad omen ! the fierce wind blew down the golden knob from the 
 u>p of it. 
 
 " Then second-sighted Sandy sud, 
 
 "We'll do no gude at a', Willie ; 
 While pipers played frae richt to left, 
 Fy, funch Whigs awa', Willie." 
 
 A few days after, the Earl proclaimed the Chevalier at 
 Montrose as James III. of England, and James VIII. of Scot- 
 land, Ireland, and their dependencies. The " brave, generous 
 Southesk" fought for him at Sheriffmuir on the 13th of 
 November following. Next month, when the Adventurer 
 arrived in Scotland, none welcomed him more warmly. He 
 invited him to his Castle of Kinnaird, where he had the honour 
 of entertaining him for days, and where those who will may yet 
 be permitted to feast their eyes on the remains of the curtains 
 of the bed in which he slept. 
 
 The Earl was of course forfeited for joining in the Rebellion, 
 fled to France, and died there in 1729, his only son predeceas- 
 ing him. The representation of the family then went to the 
 Pitarrow branch of it. In 1764, Sir James Carnegie of 
 Pitarrow bought back the estates ; and, in 1855, the House of 
 Lords allowed his great grandson's claim to the dignity and title 
 of Earl of Southesk, Baron Leuchars, in the Peerage of 
 Scotland. 
 
 The Castle of Farnell is on the north bank of the Den of 
 Farnell, in a beautiful lawn, and is surrounded by some fine old 
 trees. It is, for its age, in a state of wonderfully good repair ;
 
 104 Historic Scenes in Forjarshire. 
 
 and the use to which the noble family of Southesk have devoted 
 it reflects upon them the highest honour. They have turned 
 it into an asylum for aged and indigent females, to whose 
 s\ibsistence and comfort the ladies of the family in particular 
 have the blessedness of seeing. 
 
 MONTROSE. 
 
 As was to be expected from its antiquity, size, and situation, 
 Montrose has been the scene of many historical events. It is 
 said that, as early as 980, it was attacked by the Danes, who 
 destroyed both the town and the Castle, and massacred the 
 inhabitants. The Castle occupied a strong position upon, or 
 close by, the Forthill, about a mile above the point where the 
 Southesk falls into the sea. The invaders, says Buchanan, 
 " set sail for the mouth of the River Esk, where they landed 
 their forces, seized and plundered the nearest town on the coast, 
 and murdered the citizens without distinction of age or sex. 
 They spread similar devastation throughout all Angus, as far as 
 the Firth of Tay." This, it may be stated, was the invasion in 
 which the Danes proceeded to Luncarty, where Kenneth III. 
 gave them so signal an overthrow. 
 
 William the Lion made the Castle of Montrose an occasional 
 residence, dated charters from it, for the space of twenty years, 
 from 1178 to 1198, and appointed a person of the name of 
 Crane to be its gatekeeper. 
 
 On the 7th July, 1296, Edward I. of England came to Mon- 
 trose by Arbroath and Farnell, and continued in it till the 12th 
 of the month ; receiving the homage of many barons and clergy 
 from all parts of the country, including several from the neigh- 
 bourhood. Next year Wallace rescued the town out of the 
 hands of the English, and demolished the Castle, which it would 
 seem was never rebuilt. After the fatal battle of Falkirk in 
 1298, Edward continued the war for five years to accomplish 
 his nefarious purpose of destroying the independence and free- 
 dom of Scotland. And he very nearly succeeded. In 1303, 
 Wallace landed at Montrose, having been solicited to return 
 from France to oppose Edward ; and he was met and hailed by
 
 The Maritime District Montrose. 105 
 
 many friends ; among others, by Sir John Ramsay of Auchter- 
 house, with whom, as Blind Harry has it 
 
 " With thre hundreth to Oclil yrhouss he past." 
 
 But Wallace's career was then drawing to a close. A large 
 price having been set on his head, Sir John Monteith basely 
 betrayed him to the English ; and, on the 23d August, 1305, he 
 was dragged at the tails of horses through the streets of London 
 to Smithfield, where he was put to death with all imaginable 
 ignominy and barbarity. He was then decapitated and 
 quartered ; his head fixed on London Bridge, and his limbs 
 exposed at Newcastle, Berwick, Perth, and Aberdeen. 
 
 In 1244 Montrose was accidentally consumed by fire, and the 
 consumption would appear to have been complete ; so much so 
 that Camden, understood to be alluding to that great calamity, 
 says, " The town is built out of the ruins of another of the same 
 name." The name he gives it is Celurca ; following Boece, 
 who makes this to have been the original name of the town. 
 
 Montrose had its Convent, built and dedicated in 1230 to the 
 Virgin Mary ; of which, however, so little is known, that the 
 very site of it is now a matter of conjecture. Its founder was 
 Alan Durward, or Alan the Durward, i.e., the Hostiaiius, or 
 doorkeeper of the King's residence ; and this Alan was the son, 
 and the last male descendant of Thomas Lundin of Lundie, 
 who had held the same office. The family of the Lundins or 
 Lundies settled in Fife and Angus in the reign of David I., 
 and is now represented by the Earl of Camperdown and Baron 
 Duncan of Lundie. The Monks of the Montrose Convent were 
 Dominicans ; and, as late as 1576, the famous Patrick Panter, 
 of the Newman walls family, and Abbot of Cambuskenneth, got 
 the authority of Parliament to remove the establishment to the 
 more immediate vicinity of the town (it is likely that it had 
 been on that part of the links, bearing the name of St Maiy, a 
 little east of Victoria Bridge) ; and for the better maintenance 
 of it in its new situation, he granted it many and rich endow- 
 ments. But the Monks were so dissatisfied with the locality to 
 which they had been brought, on account of the disturbance 
 caused them by the noise and traffic of the public thoroughfare, 
 that, in 1524, they petitioned Parliament to allow them to 
 return to their old quarters, where they managed, let us hope, 
 to spend comfortably the few remaining years of monkery in 
 Scotland. 
 
 David II. was twice at Montrose in 1369, first in October
 
 10G Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 and next in December ; where he confirmed the charters which 
 David I. had granted to it, and conferred on it several new 
 privileges. He was by that time a widower, his Queen having 
 died in February that year, when on her way to Rome, in 
 prosecution of her appeal to the Pope against the sentence of 
 divorce which her husband had procured against her from the 
 Scottish Bishops ; and, in February next year, David himself 
 followed her unlamented ; nay, though the son aud the im- 
 mediate successor of The Bruce, his death was " regarded by his 
 subjects as a national deliverance." 
 
 It was from the port of Montrose that Sir James Douglas, 
 with a numerous retinue of knights and squires, set sail for 
 Palestine in the spring of 1330, to fulfil the last charge laid on 
 him by his deceased master, King Robert Bruce. That charge 
 was to carry the King's heart to Jerusalem, and to deposit it 
 in the Holy Sepulchre, which he had vowed that he would be 
 a crusader to recover from the Saracens. Calling Sir James to 
 the side of his death-bed, he said unto him, in the presence of 
 the rest of the courtiers, " Sir James, my dear friend, none 
 knows better than you how great labouring and suffering I 
 have undergone in my day, for the maintenance of the rights of 
 this kingdom ; and when I was hardest beset I made a vow, 
 which it now grieves me deeply that I have not accomplished. 
 I vowed to God that if I should live to see an end of my wars, 
 and be enabled to govern this realm in peace and security, I 
 would then set out in person, and carry on war against the 
 enemies of my Lord and Saviour, to the best of my power. 
 Nor has my heart ceased to bend to this point ; but our Lord 
 has not consented thereto ; for I have had my hands full in my 
 days, and now, at the last, I am seized with this grievous sick- 
 ness, so that, as you see, I have nothing to do but to die. And 
 since my body cannot go thither and accomplish that which my 
 heart hath so much desired, I have resolved to send my heart 
 there in place of my body, to fulfil my vow ; and now, since in 
 all my realm I know not any knight more hardy than yourself, 
 or more thoroughly furnished with all knightly qualities for the 
 accomplishment of the vow, in place of myself, therefore I 
 entreat thee, my dear and tried friend, that for the love you 
 bear to me, you will undertake this voyage, and acquit my soul 
 of its debt to my Saviour ; for I hold this opinion of your truth 
 and nobleness, that whatever you undertake, I am persuaded 
 you will successfully accomplish ; and thus I shall die in peace,
 
 The Maritime District Montrose. 107 
 
 provided that you do all that I shall tell you. I will, then, 
 that as soon, as I am dead, you take the heart out of my body, 
 and cause it to be embalmed, and take as much of my treasure 
 as seems to you sufficient for the expenses of your journey, both 
 for you and your companions ; and that you cany my heart 
 along with you, and deposit it in the Holy Sepulchre of our 
 Lord, since this poor body cannot go thithei\ And it is my 
 command that you do use that Royal state and maintenance in 
 your journey, both for yourself and your companions, that into 
 whatever lands or cities you may come, all may know that you 
 have in charge to bear beyond seas the heart of King Robert 
 Bruce of Scotland." 
 
 Sir James thanked " the most noble and gentle King " for 
 the honour done him ; and promised, by the faith which he 
 owed to God and to the order of Knighthood, that to the best 
 of his power he would obey his command ; and not long after 
 this the King expired. Faithful to his charge and his promise, 
 Sir James proceeded for Jerusalem, taking Spain on his way ; 
 and having landed at Seville, and learned that Alphonso, the 
 young King of Leon and Castile, was waging war with Osman, 
 the Moorish King of Granada, what Douglas deemed a Holy 
 War, he joined him, and was slain in a battle fought near 
 Thebes. His few surviving friends brought his body and the 
 precious casket he bore back to Scotland ; and the heart of The 
 Bruce was buried by the Earl of Moray in Melrose Abbey. 
 
 " We bore the good Lord James away, 
 
 And the priceless heart he bore, 
 And heavily we steered our ship 
 
 Towards the Scottish shore. 
 
 " No welcome greeted our return, 
 
 Nor clang of martial tread, 
 But all were dumb and hushed as death 
 
 Before the mighty dead. 
 
 " "We laid our Chief in Douglas Kirk, 
 
 The heart in fair Melrose ; 
 And woful men were we that day 
 
 God grant their souls repose !" 
 
 In 1493 Montrose appealed to the King (James TV.) against 
 the oppressions of Erskine of Dun ; and the result of the appli- 
 cation was a royal warrant " till our Scherof of Forfare and his 
 Deputies " to quit the Laird with a " Summons of Spulzie, 
 Burgh of Montrose v. Erskine of Dun." For upwards of a 
 century there had been no love lost between Montrose and
 
 108 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Dun ; and the feud between them had various and frequent 
 outbreakings. At length John Erskine, the future Superin- 
 tendend of Angus, in the haughty, domineering spirit which he 
 had inherited from his ancestors, killed Sir Thomas Froster, a 
 priest of the town, in the bell-tower of the Parish Church. This 
 occasioned his going for years to the Continent, whence he 
 returned in 1534 an ardent friend of the revival of letters and 
 of Church reform in his native land. He brought with him a 
 Frenchman, Monsieur Massiliers, an excellent Greek scholar, 
 whom he set up and maintained at his own expense in 
 Montrose as a teacher of Greek. This was the first school of 
 the Greek language in Scotland ; a language till then almost 
 unknown in the country. George Wishart was one of 
 Massiliers' pupils, and, on his master's death, succeeded him in 
 the office of teacher ; in which he continued till, for presuming 
 to instnict his scholars in the Greek Testament, Hepburn, Bishop 
 of Brechin, alarmed for the interests of the Church, summoned 
 him before him on a charge of heresy ; when Wishart not only 
 withdrew from Montrose, but left Scotland. 
 
 This school Andrew Melville, the great champion of Presby- 
 tery, attended in his boyhood, coming to it from the adjacent 
 parish of Craig ; and such proficiency did he make in it that, 
 when he went to the University of St Andrews in his fourteenth 
 year, he surprised the Professors with his knowledge of Greek, 
 a tongue with which they had little or no acquaintance. This 
 school James Melville also (Andrew's nephew) attended, coming 
 to it from the same parish ; and he bear's testimony in his Diary 
 to the excellence of the education which it gave, and to the 
 spiritual benefit which he received from the connection with 
 Montrose into which it brought him. The first Reformed 
 minister of the town was Thomas Anderson, " a man of mean 
 gifts," says James Melville, " but of singular good life ;" and 
 under the ministry of this good man be became a communicant 
 of the Church at the early age of thirteen. Anderson's reader 
 was John Beattie, to whose memoiy Melville pays this very 
 high tribute, " a godly honest man, wha read the Scripture 
 distinctlie, and with a religious and devout feilling, whereof I 
 fand myselff movit to gift' guid care, and learn the stories of 
 Scripture, also to tak plesure in the Psalmes, quhilk he haid 
 almost all by hart, in prose." Anderson was succeeded im- 
 mediately or soon by John Dune, whose son-in-law Jamea 
 Melville became.
 
 The Maritime District Montrose. 109 
 
 It may be added here that Montrose has always held a com- 
 paratively high educational position. Its schools were famous 
 even as early as the days of The Bruce ; and he granted twenty 
 shillings out of the public revenue for their support. Since the 
 revival of learning in Scotland, its Grammar School has turned 
 out many first-classs scholars ; four of whom, Joseph Hume, Sir 
 William Burnet, M.D., and Sir James and Sir Alexander 
 Burnes, were Fellows of the Royal Society of London. This 
 supposes first-class masters ; among whom was David Lindsay, 
 son of the Laird of Edzell, afterwards Bishop Lindsay, first of 
 Brechin, and then of Edinburgh. It was he who, when Janet 
 Geddes hurled her stool at the Dean's head, as he began to read 
 the services in St Giles's Cathedral, exclaiming, " Villain ! dost 
 thou say mass at my lug V mounted the pulpit, and tried to 
 restore order, but was met with sticks, and stones, and every 
 missile at hand ; and on the public street was assaulted by the 
 populace, and owed his safety, probably his life, to the Earl of 
 Roxburgh and his attendants. 
 
 The great and happy change which took place on Erskine's 
 personal character ; his place and work as one of the chiefs of 
 the Protestant Reformers in Scotland; the favour which he 
 shewed to Montrose in the school which he established in it, 
 and otherwise ; all these led to a complete reconciliation between 
 Montrose and Dun. The inhabitants of Montrose were among 
 the first in the country to embrace the Reformation ; which may 
 be traced to the influence exerted on them from Dun, and to 
 the copies of the Holy Scriptures, which their merchants, who 
 had much intercourse with the Continent, brought home with 
 them in spite of legal prohibitions, and got more or less into 
 circulation. Yet, in ardour and resoluteness, their Protestant 
 zeal hardly equalled that of some of their neighbours that of 
 Dundee, for example. It was comparatively moderate ; and, 
 when tested, proved more pliant. 
 
 In 1548, in the war in which England courted Scotland for 
 the heart and hand of Mary to Edward, the English attempted 
 to land their fleet in the mouth of the South Esk at Montrose. 
 Erskine of Dun frustrated the attempt. Setting himself at the 
 head of the inhabitants, and of his retainers, he divided them 
 into three bands, which he disposed with mxich militaiy tact to 
 wait the enemy. As they were endeavouring to land, Erskine, 
 with the dart-men and other light troops which he himself led, 
 attacked them with great spirit and vigour, and drove them to
 
 110 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 where his other two bands were concealed, ready to give the 
 English courtiers a warm reception. " There," says Buchanan, 
 " forming a junction with the other parties, who were drawn up 
 in order of battle, they all attacked the enemy, who, notwith- 
 standing, did not give way till the others on the neighbour- 
 ing hill showed themselves with their banners. Then, 
 at last, they ran with such haste to the sea, and to the ships, 
 that of about eight hundred who landed scarcely a third part 
 escaped." 
 
 The General Assembly of the Kirk met in Montrose in 1600. 
 James's policy in convening it so far north was to get Prelacy 
 established by the votes of servile northern legions, whom he 
 expected to be in attendance. Great preparations had accord- 
 ingly been made for a meeting which was to sound the knell of 
 Presbytery in the land, and to secure, by the help of Diocesan 
 Episcopacy, the triumph of absolute monarchy and arbitrary 
 power. But James was rather signally foiled for the present. 
 Andrew Melville, whom he had prohibited to attend Assemblies, 
 compeared in this one as a representative of the Presbytery of 
 St Andrews. James passionately demanded why he persisted 
 in attending Assemblies, after he had discharged him from 
 doing so ; to which Melville made another of his ever-memor- 
 able replies : He said that he had a commission from the 
 Church, which it was his duty to fulfil ; and, putting his hand 
 to his throat, he addressed the King thus : " Sir, take this 
 head, and cut it off, if you will ; you shall have it sooner than 
 I shall betray the cause of Christ." Imperiously forbidden to 
 appear in the Assembly, Andrew Melville remained in the 
 town ; and by his presence and counsels greatly encouraged and 
 aided the brethren. The Assembly did indeed consent that 
 fifty-one ministers should be chosen to represent the Church in 
 Parliament ; but it jealously limited and shackled their powers. 
 They were not to be called Bishops, but Commissioners ; they 
 must have the Church's express warrant for proposing anything 
 in her name in Parliament ; they must not be silent when 
 measures prejudicial to her were introduced ; at each Assembly 
 they must render an account of the manner in which they had 
 fulfilled the trust committed to them ; they must be each the 
 pastor of a particular congregation ; in the administration of 
 the government of the Church they must claim no higher 
 power than their brethren, and be equally subject with them to 
 the authority of the Courts of the Church ; they must sit as
 
 The Maritime District Montrose. Ill 
 
 commissioners in General Assemblies only when appointed to 
 do so by their respective Presbyteries ; and on deposition from 
 the pastoral office by the Church, they must, ipso facto, lose 
 their seats in Parliament. 
 
 In the civil war of the seventeenth century, Montrose was 
 the scene of some sharp passages between the combatants. A 
 Committee of the Covenanters met in it in 1639 ; and a body 
 of cavaliers tried in vain to seize some pieces of ordnance which 
 had been placed for the defence of the town. Next year a ship 
 from Holland landed in its harbour with ammunition and arms 
 from the Covenanters. About two o'clock on a morning of 
 April, 1644, young Irvine of Drum appeared in the town, at 
 the head of some three hundred horse and foot, with trumpets 
 sounding, and swords drawn ; his immediate object being to 
 possess himself of " twa brassin cartowis," or small cannon, that 
 were in it. The citizens, having been apprised of Irvine's 
 design, stood in arms, and roused the neighbourhood by 
 kindling fires on the Steeple, and ringing the bells. " But," 
 says Spalding in Ms "Trubles," "all was for nocht; the 
 Royalists " dang the toune's people frae the calsey to thair 
 houssis, and out of the foirstaires thay schot desperatlie, bot 
 thay war forssit to yield by many feirfull schotes schot aganes 
 thame ; quhair unhappellie Alexander Pearsone, ane of thair 
 balleis, wes slayne." The victorious invaders then occupied 
 the town for a short time ; but were imposed on by the 
 treachery of a resident in it named Burnet, though himself a 
 Royalist. To the ship which he had promised to place at their 
 service in the harbour, he contrived to get the Provost and 
 many of the inhabitants conveyed, as also the coveted " twa 
 brassin cartowis ;" and when Drum and his friends approached 
 to go on board, the ship opened fire on them, killing two of 
 them, and wounding others. The infuriated soldiers left the 
 town, after sacking it ; taking with them two of the principal 
 citizens, and, under their belts, "a pype of Spanish wyne," 
 which they drank " hartfullie." 
 
 The plague visited Montrose in 1648, and, from May that 
 year to February, 1649, filled it with sorrow, lamentation, and 
 woe. Crowds fled from the infected town into the country ; and 
 a large proportion of those who remained in it died. A 
 tumulus, still pointed out on the Links, immediately north-east 
 of the town, is said to be the place where its numerous victims 
 were interred. Brechin, though it did not escape the same
 
 112 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 visitation, collected and gave in charity to the distressed people 
 of Montrose, " the tyme of the infecting seekness," 42 14s 2d ; 
 and its own parochial records bear, " Because of ane fearfull 
 prevailing pestilence entered into the city, enlarging and 
 spreading itself, dailie destroying and cutting down many, which 
 occasioned ane scattering and outgoing of all the members of 
 Session to landward, for their refuge and saiftie, therefore there 
 was no Session or collection in this our Church of Montrose 
 betwixt the last of May, 1648. and the first of Februarii, 
 1G49." 
 
 Montrose figures somewhat prominently in the Rebellions of 
 the next century. At the Cross of Montrose, in 1715, the Earl 
 of Southesk proclaimed the Chevalier St George, under the title 
 of James VIII. of Scotland. He landed from Dunkirk at 
 Peterhead on the 22d December, 1715 ; and on the 2d January, 
 1716, he passed by Montrose on his way to the Palace of Scone, 
 where he appointed his coronation to take place on the 23d of 
 that month ; and so suddenly did his adventure collapse that, 
 on the 3d February, James VIII., as crownless as ever, reached 
 Montrose a fugitive from the Earl of Argyle, and blasted by 
 the ridicule of the Hanoverian Hue and Cry after him : 
 " Whereas, one James Stewart, alias Oglethorpe, alias 
 Chevalier, alias Pretender, alias King, alias no King : neither 
 Csesar nor Nullus : neither a man nor a mouse : neither a man's 
 man, nor a woman's man, nor a statesman, nor a little man, 
 nor a great man : neither Englishman nor Frenchman, but a 
 mongrelian between both ; neither wise nor otherwise : neither 
 soldier, nor sailor, nor cardinal : without father or mother, 
 without friend or foe ; without foresight or aftersight, without 
 brains or bravery, without house or home, made in the figure 
 of a man, but just alive, and that's all ; hath clandestinely lately 
 eloped from his friends through a back door, and has not been 
 seen or heard of since ; and, whereas, the said alias pretended 
 to come here, to watch and fight, to bring men and money with 
 him, to train an army and march at the head of them, to fight 
 battles and besiege towns, but in reality did none of these, but 
 skulked, and whined, and speeched, and cried, and stole to his 
 head-quarters by night, went away before morning, and having 
 smelled gunpowder, and dreamed of an. enemy, burnt the 
 country, and ran away by the light of it." 
 
 The night of the 3d February James spent in a house at the 
 south end of the High Street of Montrose, the site of which, Mr
 
 The Maritime District Montrose. 113 
 
 Jervise says, is now occupied by the house of George Smart, 
 Esq., corn merchant. In that house he wrote to the Duke of 
 Argyle the letter intimating that he had consigned to certain 
 magistrates a sum of money, to repair so far the loss which his 
 unfortunate adventure had caused the country. At eight 
 o'clock next night, having ordered his horse to the front door 
 of the house, with all his guards mounted in the usual manner, 
 he went by a back door to the lodgings of the Earl of Mar ; 
 and he and the Earl, with two attendants, walked by a private 
 lane to the shore, where a boat was in waiting, which took them 
 on board the Maria Theresa of St Maloes, with some of the 
 chief persons of the Pretender's suite ; and, setting sail, they 
 landed seven days after near Gravelines. 
 
 In 1745, Prince Charles Edward repeated the attempt of his 
 father to recover the kingdom. Montrose sympathised with 
 him, as did also the county, which was then strongly Jacobite 
 and Prelatic. There was keen contention between the loyalists 
 and the rebels, as to which of them should have Montrose for 
 their head-quarters. The loyalists had it first ; but it would 
 seem that the rebels drove them from it. To regain their 
 position, the loyalists anchored in the river, opposite to Ferry- 
 den, the Hazard, a war ship mounting sixteen guns and some 
 swivels, and having a crew of eighty men. The rebels set them- 
 selves to take this vessel, and they succeeded ; assisted by a 
 transport from France, which appeared on the coast with a 
 party of Lord John Drummond's Regiment, some Irish piquets, 
 and six pieces of artillery. They named their prize Prince 
 Edward ; and to them it was a great prize, not only for the 
 value of itself and its contents, but because it enabled them to 
 land troops with safety for days to come. The revenge of the 
 loyalists lay in Admiral Bing's chasing a French gun-ship on 
 the coast, and sinking her long boat full of men, whose carcases 
 were afterwards washed ashore. 
 
 It was the Duke of Cumberland who crushed out the rebellion 
 in Montrose, as elsewhere. When he visited the town in 1746, 
 he found the spirit of Jacobitism virulent and ascendant in it. 
 The boys made bonfires on the 10th of June, the Pretender's 
 birthday ; and " Jacobite gentlewomen got on white gowns and 
 white roses, and made a procession through the streets." As 
 it was ladies that offered the affront, the military officers in the 
 town had gallantly overlooked it; but Cumberland was a man 
 of another mould. The commanding officer he ordered to be
 
 114 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 broken on account of his leniency ; and he threatened " because 
 the inhabitants are nourishing up their children to rebellion, 
 to cause them to be whipped at the Cross, to frighten them 
 from their bonfires." 
 
 The erection and opening of the bridges on the North and 
 South Esks, were events of more than local interest ; and we 
 merely mention that the former was finished in 1775, and the 
 latter in 1830. The latter stretches over two channels, into 
 which the island of Inchbrayock divides the South Esk. The 
 wider of the two, and the more northerly, is spanned by a 
 suspension bridge, at a cost of about 23,000. It is a beautiful 
 structure, and serves its purpose satisfactorily ; but, in 1838, 
 the rush of a crowd, witnessing a boat race, at the east end of 
 the bridge broke one of the upper chains of it, which fell on the 
 lower, and several individuals, caught between the chains, were 
 killed. 
 
 We have said that Joseph Hume was educated at Montrose, 
 and ranked among the first-class scholars it produced. But we 
 must not quit Montrose without saying more of a man, whose 
 connection with the town was itself enough to make it an 
 Historic Scene. Joseph Hume was born in Montrose in 1778, 
 and was sprung of parents in humble life. After being educated 
 in the Grammar School of his native town, he served an 
 apprenticeship to a surgeon in it, and in 1793 began his 
 medical curriculum at the University of Edinburgh. Having 
 graduated, he sailed for India, and was there attached as 
 surgeon to a regiment. He at once set himself to acquire the 
 native languages of India ; and his knowledge of these and his 
 capacity for business by and by obtained for him the lucrative 
 appointment of Interpreter and Commissary-General. He 
 returned home in the prime of life with a well-earned fortune ; 
 and resolved to devote himself to the service of his country in 
 the field of politics. He was a thorough Liberal ; a genuine 
 Radical, indeed ; ready to strike at the root of every abuse, 
 and to exterminate it from the soil of Britain. A Tory, bolting 
 out at the door of the House of Commons, on a night when the 
 Reform Bill was in debate, was asked by a friend in the lobby, 
 " What is doing within V and was answered, " Joseph Hume is 
 just driving the last nail into the coffin of the Duke of Welling- 
 ton ;" a happy account of his vocation, which was hammering 
 at every abuse, more especially at every form of wasteful ex- 
 penditure, till he had driven the hist nail into its coffin !
 
 The Maritime District Montrose. 115 
 
 It was in 1812 that Joseph Hume first took his seat in 
 Parliament, as member for Weymouth and Melcomb Regis ; 
 but he did so by mistake and had to resign soon. His patron 
 was a Tory ; and the moment his protege had the audacity to 
 speak of Reform, he must vacate his seat. After six years he 
 again entered the House ; and, as has been said of him, " began, 
 unaided and alone, that career of Reform in which he persevered 
 to his death. Free Trade, Financial reform, -Parliamentary 
 reform, and Indian reform, were the elements in which he lived. 
 At first despised and ridiculed, afterwards dreaded as ihejiwtuin 
 et tenacem propositi virum, he ended by gaining the respect of 
 friends and foes, and the confidence of the whole nation. It 
 was not by the force of a commanding intellect or the fascina- 
 tion of a brilliant oratory that he achieved this end. The 
 breadth of his action, his singleness of aim, his perfect inde- 
 pendence of all party or personal consideration, and an almost 
 heroic earnestness and self-denial in carrying out his views, 
 were the secret of his influence. Himself as incorruptible as 
 Aristides, he made it a special duty to hunt out and expose 
 political corruption under whatever guise it lurked, and the 
 whole army of place-hunters and jobbers found in him their 
 most indefatigable and inexorable foe. There were many abler, 
 but there was no more useful member in the House during the 
 greater portion of his Parliamentary career. His death, which 
 took place February 20th, 1855, was regarded by his country- 
 men as a national loss." 
 
 Montrose honoured itself in honouring Joseph Hume's 
 memory, by that fine statue of him, executed by Mr Calder 
 Marshall, A.R. A., which adorns the High Street of his native 
 town, and which, with the burghs associated with it, he so long 
 and worthily represented in Parliament. The statue was 
 inaugurated on the 24th September, 1859. 
 
 H2
 
 116 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 THE SIDLAW DISTRICT. 
 
 Having finished the Maritime District of the shire, we take 
 next the Sidlaw one, beginning at the north end of it, and pursu- 
 ing our course southward. 
 
 GUTHRIE. 
 
 The first Scene that meets us in this District is Carbuddo, 
 or, as it is often spelled, Kirkbuddo. Here the Romans had a 
 camp called Haerfaulcls ; said to be the most entire of all the 
 Roman temporary camps which have been discovered. It was 
 2280 feet long by 1080 feet broad ; "somewhat less," says the 
 author of the Topography of the Basin of the Tay, " than the 
 small camp at Ardoch, and would hold about 10,000 men upon 
 the Polybian system. The area is nearly the same with that 
 at Campmuir, near Lintrose ; hence, as formerly mentioned, 
 General Roy conjectures that the number of men sent by 
 Agricola, on board his fleet amounted to between three and 
 four thousand ; and he is likely to be right, as his calculations 
 are founded upon correct measurements. We agree with him 
 in thinking it probable that Agricola, on his return from 
 Horestia, divided his army into two bodies, one of which 
 marched by Strathmore, halting at Campmuir ; while the 
 other division marched by Haerfaulds, Cater Milley, and the 
 Braes of the Carse ; and when the army again united at Grassy 
 Walls, he might, pei-haps, found Orea at the confluence of the 
 Amon and the Tay." 
 
 Carbuddo is in the southern portion of the parish of Guthrie : 
 in the northern portion of it is Guthrie Castle, not only a 
 charming object in the landscape, but deservedly ranking among 
 Historic Scenes, for the historic personages produced by it, or 
 connected with it. Squire Guthrie, an ancestor of the Guthries 
 of that Ilk, and who comes into notice in the era of Sir William 
 Wallace, was in high estimation among his contemporaries. 
 After the fatal battle of Falkirk, Wallace resigned the 
 guardianship of Scotland, and retired to France, where he con- 
 tinued for years. Edward's successes, as he persisted in his 
 attempt to subdue the country, made the self-seeking, factious 
 Scottish barons fain to wish Wallace back again ; and Squire
 
 The Sidlaw District Gutlirie. 117 
 
 Guthrie was the person whom they deputed to go to France, to 
 invite and urge him to return. They could not have paid a 
 higher compliment to the Squire's wisdom, and weight, and 
 patriotism. 
 
 The offices of Lord Register, Lord High Treasurer, and Lord 
 Chief-Justice were among the greatest offices of the State ; and 
 all these Sir David Guthrie of Guthrie filled in his day. He 
 flourished in the 15th century, and may be regarded as the 
 most illustrious member, politically, of the Guthrie family, 
 which is believed to be the oldest in the county of Angus. His 
 son and successor, Alexander, was one of the nobles who 
 laid down their lives on 
 
 " Flodden's fatal field, 
 "Where shivered was fair Scotland's spear, 
 And broken was her shield !" 
 
 Alexander's eldest son was another of the victims of " red 
 Flodden," as were also three brothers-in-law. 
 
 But Guthrie Castle furnished a yet nobler victim for its 
 country's altar. On the 1st of June, 1661, the Reverend 
 James Guthrie, minister of Stirling, followed the Marquis of 
 Argyle on the scaffold. He had been one of the leaders of the 
 Remonstrants, " the sti'aitest sect," the most scrupulously faith- 
 ful, and, therefore, unmanageable, of the Presbyterian party. 
 He had also, eleven years befora, been selected to pronounce 
 the sentence of excommunication on the infamous Middleton, 
 now the Royal Commissioner to the Scottish Parliament. His 
 accusation was that he had framed or promoted the Western 
 Remonstrance ; that he was the author of the pamphlet, 
 intituled The Causes of the Lord's Wrath ; and that he de- 
 clined the authority of the King in ecclesiastical matters. The 
 old and infirm but heroic man made an unanswerable defence ; 
 but it was of no avail with his judges. He was condemned, 
 not to be beheaded like the Marquis of Argyle, but to be 
 hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh as a traitor ; his head to be 
 placed on the Netherbow, his estate to be confiscated, and his 
 children to be declared incapable of any ofEce, dignity, posses- 
 sion, lands, or goods within the kingdom. He heard the 
 sentence, merely saying, " My Lord, never let this sentence 
 affect you more than it does me, and let never my blood be 
 required of the King's family." In walking from the Tolbooth 
 to the place of execution, he requested that the cords which 
 pinioned his arms might be slackened to allov/ him the use of
 
 118 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 his staff in supporting his tottering frame. On the scaffold " he 
 spoke an hour," says Bumet, who was present, " with the com- 
 posedness of one who was delivering a sermon rather than his 
 last words." Just before he was turned off, raising his napkin 
 from his face, he cried, " The Covenant, the Covenant shall yet 
 be Scotland's reviving !" " His last words, which he uttered 
 with a cheerful countenance and elevated voice, were those of 
 the prophet Habakkuk, ' Art thou not from everlasting, O 
 Lord, my God, my Holy One 1 I shall not die, but live.' " 
 
 This faithful witness, thus honoured with the crown of 
 martyrdom, was a son of the Laird of Guthrie ; was educated 
 in Prelatic principles ; and a Prelatic partisan says, " that if 
 he had continued fixed to his first principles, he had been a 
 star of the first magnitude in Scotland." 
 
 DUNNICHEN. 
 
 In Dunnichen we come to the field of one of the great battles 
 of ancient times. There, as early as 685, Egfrid, King of the 
 Angles of Northumbria, and Bridei, King of the Picts, tried 
 the fortune of war. The conflict goes by the name of Cath- 
 Duin-Nechtan, or, the battle of Nechtan's Fort. Nechtan, a 
 King of the Picts, occupied a fort on the adjoining hill, the 
 traces of which are still to be seen. The hill was therefore 
 called Dunnichen, i.e., Nechtan's hill. For the same reason a 
 swamp or loch in the neighbourhood was called Nechtan's 
 Mere ; and hence, also, the name of the whole parish. Egfrid 
 was the aggressor ; and he paid the penalty of his aggression 
 with his life, and with the rout of his army. The memorials of 
 this battle would seem to be abundant. The late Reverend 
 James Headrick says, in his Statistical Account of the parish, 
 " It is probable that some battle had been fought here ; for, a 
 good many years ago, on the East Mains of Dunnichen, there 
 was turned up with the plough a large flat stone, on which is 
 cut a rude outline of an armed warrior's head and shoulders ; 
 and not many years ago, the plough also uncovered some graves 
 on another part of the same farm. These graves consisted of 
 flat stones on all sides. They were filled with human bones, 
 and urns of red clay, with rude ornaments upon them the urns
 
 The Sidlaio District Dunnichen. 119 
 
 being filled with whitish gray ashes. By exposure to the air, 
 the bones and the urns mouldered into dust. 
 
 "In a round gravel knoll near the Den of Letham, a con- 
 siderable number of similar graves were found. The graves 
 were situated in a thick bed of fine sand, which intersected the 
 knoll ; and were constructed every way similar to the former. 
 They contained human bones, which seemed to have been 
 crammed together without much regard to arrangement. The 
 urns with their ashes were every way similar to the former. 
 The neck-bones of some were adorned with strings of beads. 
 These were of a beautiful glossy black colour, neatly perforated 
 longitudinally, and strung together by the fibres of animals. 
 They were of an oval figure ; large and small ones were 
 arranged alternately ; the large ones flat on the two opposite 
 surfaces, the small ones round. They seemed to consist of 
 ebony, or of some fine grained species of wood, which had been 
 charred and then finely polished. On keeping them some time, 
 they split into plates, and the woody fibres separated. The 
 bones, also, and the urns, mouldered into dust. In some of 
 these graves rusty daggers were found, which fell in pieces by 
 handling. It appears that the bodies had been fii'st burnt, as 
 the ashes contained numerous particles of charcoal of wood." 
 
 All these were obviously the hoarded spoils of war ; and is 
 it not quite likely that they were the memorials of the Battle 
 of Dunnichen, fought in the seventh century between the Picts 
 and the Northumbrians ? 
 
 But the scene of chief interest in this quarter is Dunnichen 
 House, the seat of the late George Dempster, Esquire ; clarum 
 et venerabile nomen in the annals both of the county and of 
 the country. He was member of Parliament for the Forfar 
 and Fife district of burghs (these consisting of Forfar, Perth, 
 Dundee, Cupar, and St Andrews) from 1762 to 1790. In 
 the few but choice words of the Edinburgh Review, he was " a 
 man of ability, education, and public spirit, seconded and made 
 more than ordinarily acceptable by a genial and happy tempera- 
 ment, and a grace of manner which commended every scheme 
 and enforced every suggestion ;" and there was no scheme 
 calculated to promote the public good which he did not set him- 
 self to devise and advance. He was the zealous and steady 
 friend of agriculture, manufactures and commerce, letters, and, 
 in short, every thing that was beneficial to his native country 
 and to mankind. " Honest George" was the honourable
 
 120 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 soubriquet under which he went in Parliament, for his sturdy 
 independence, his incorruptible integrity, and his implacable 
 hostility to everything that savoured of jobbery or peculation. 
 He honoured his political principles by his hearty fealty to 
 them; and his opinions on agricultural and commercial ques- 
 tions he commended by exemplifying their operation, as far as 
 he had the opportunity of doing so. He exerted his influence 
 in Parliament to relieve and expand the linen trade ; and he did 
 much, too, to foster the cotton manufacture. He gave efficient 
 help to the establishment of the Dundee Banking Company ; 
 whose bank was the first in Scotland out of Edinburgh and 
 Glasgow. He did more than any other man to obtain the Act 
 for the encouragement of the fisheries, and to institute the 
 British Fishing Company ; and it was he who discovered the 
 method of sending salmon sound and fresh to the London 
 market. The Convention of Royal Burghs marked its sense of 
 his services to the country by presenting him with a piece of 
 silver plate ; and Dundee acknowledged the benefits it had 
 derived from him by having his portrait painted by Grains- 
 borough, and hung up in the Council Chamber, whose walls it 
 graces to this day. While too many of his compeers were 
 worshipping the wisdom of their ancestors, and clinging to 
 feudal usages which were pernicious to the interests of all 
 classes concerned in them ; while the rage was to clear the 
 Highlands of the human species to make room for deer and 
 grouse, and to turn the working classes of the Lowlands into 
 single men, to suit the Bothy system, and to save the pockets 
 of the landocracy a dreaded poor-rate, Mr Dempster could 
 write then to the Editor of the Scots Magazine, and the senti- 
 ments of his letter have not yet been too well learned by our 
 squirearchy and nobility : 
 
 " For these last forty years of my life I have acted in the 
 management of my little rural concerns on the principles you 
 so strenuously inculcate. I found my few tenants without 
 leases, subject to the blacksmith of the barony ; thirled to its 
 milk ; wedded to the wretched system of outfield and in ; bound 
 to kain and to perform personal services ; clothed in hodden, 
 and lodged in hovels. You have enriched the magazine with 
 the result of your farming excursions. Pray direct one of them 
 to the county I write from. Peep in upon Dunnichen ; and if 
 you find one of the evils I have enumerated existing if you 
 can trace a question at my instance in a court of law with any
 
 The Sidlaw District Dunnichen. 121 
 
 tenant as to how lie labours his farm or find one of them not 
 secured by a lease of nineteen years, at least, and his life the 
 barony shall be yours. . . . ... 
 
 " The Highland Society's being silent on the siibject of the 
 emigration of the Highlanders who are gone, going, and pre- 
 paring to go in whole clans, can only be accounted for by those 
 who are now more intimately acquainted with the state of the 
 Highlands than I can pretend to be. One would think the 
 society were disciples of Pinkerton, who says : ' The best thing 
 we could do would be to get rid entirely of the Celtic tribe, and 
 people their country with inhabitants from the Low Country.' 
 How little does he know the valour, the frugality, the industry 
 of those inestimable people, or their attachment to their friends 
 and country ! I would not give a little Highland child for ten 
 of the highest mountains in all Lochaber. With proper en- 
 couragement to its present inhabitants, the next century might 
 see the Highlands of Scotland cultivated to its summits, like 
 Wales or Switzerland its valleys teeming with soldiers for our 
 army, and its bays, lakes, and firths with seamen for our 
 navy. 
 
 "I was pleased with your recommending married farm 
 servants. I don't value mine a rush till they marry the lass 
 they like. On my farm of 120 acres (Scotch), I can shew such 
 a crop of thriving human stock, as delights me. From five to 
 seven years of age, they gather my potatoes at Id, 2d, or 3d, 
 per day ; and the sight of such a busy, joyous field of in- 
 dustrious, happy creatures revives my old age. Our dairy 
 fattens them like pigs ; our cupboard is their apothecary's shop ; 
 and the old casten clothes of the family, by the industry of their 
 mothers, look like birthday suits on them. Some of them 
 attend the groom to water his horses ; some the carpenter's 
 shop ; and all go to the parish school in the winter time when 
 they can crawl the length." 
 
 We only add, that the society Mr Dempster gathered around 
 him was elite, alike for science and culture ; and that the world 
 owes not a little to its gatherings in Dunnichen House. It owes 
 to these, for example, the Scottish Dictionary by the late 
 Reverend Dr Jamieson, minister of the Secession Church, first 
 in Forfar, and afterwards in Edinburgh. It was in Dunnichen 
 House that the idea of the Dictionary was first suggested to the 
 Doctor, by Grim Thorkelin, Professor of Antiquities at Copen- 
 hagen. The learned Professor had taken note of hundreds of
 
 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 purely Gothic words, which he had observed to be quite current 
 in Angusshire and Sutherlandshire ; and of a conversation on 
 this with Dr Jamieson, the Scottish Dictionary was the result. 
 
 KIRKDEK 
 
 The original name of this parish was Idvies. The Kirk then 
 stood on the lands of Gask, in a field called to this day the 
 Kirk-shed. Towards the close of the last century, it was re- 
 moved to its present site in Finney Den ; and the name of the 
 parish was changed to Kirkden. 
 
 Idvies had anciently the importance of a thanedom. In 
 1219, the thane of it was Gyles ; who was, in that year, one of 
 the perambulators of the marches between the lands of Kin- 
 blethmont and those of Arbroath. 
 
 In Kirkden, on the plain between the Finney and the Lunan, 
 opposite the house of Pitmuies, and close by the turnpike road, 
 is an obelisk niched into a large stone. It still stands five feet 
 high, though, if it has escaped shortening by violence it has long 
 borne the wear of time, which has nearly effaced the horses and 
 other figures sculptured upon it. About the end of last century 
 a tumulus near the obelisk was opened, and several urns con- 
 taining the ashes of the dead were found in it. In the adjoin- 
 ing plain were dug up nearly a score of stone cofiins, each con- 
 taining a human skeleton entire, and also on the farm of Brac- 
 tullo were dug up some stone coffins, containing human bones, 
 and strings of beads made, apparently, of wood, that had been 
 charred. It is not to be doubted that these monuments are 
 historic ; and the conjectxire is that the obelisk was erected by 
 Malcolm II., more than eight hundred years ago, to commemo- 
 rate his victory over the Danes in the battle of Barry, and that 
 the ashes, bones, and skeletons discovered are the remains of 
 warriors who fell in fleeing, or in pursuing those who fled, from 
 that ensanguined field. 
 
 There are in the parish two of those mounds called Laws, 
 and which were in feudal times the scenes of judicial trial and 
 of capital punishment. The one of them is on the barony of 
 Idvies, and the other is on that of Gardyne. Gai'dyne Castle,
 
 The Sidlaw District Carmyllie Inverarity. 123 
 
 as old as 1658, but which, has received large modern additions, 
 is romantically situated on the brink of a precipice overlooking 
 a richly- wooded ravine through which a " limpid and purling 
 tributary of the Finney" flows. If the Castle is to have a 
 place among our Scenes, it must be for the feuds of the Gar- 
 dynes of that Ilk with the Guthries of Guthrie. These were 
 so frequent, and fierce, and bloody that the King was obliged 
 to interpose, commanding that their quarrels should be sub- 
 mitted to the decision of certain councillors, barons, and minis- 
 ters whom he named. " In 1578," says Mr Jervise, " It would 
 seem that Patrick Garden of that Ilk had fallen by the hand 
 of William. Guthrie. Ten years afterwards, doubtless out of 
 revenge for the death of their chief, the Gardynes attacked and 
 killed the head of the family of Guthrie ; and, according to the 
 charge preferred against them, the deed was committed ' beside 
 the Place of TnnerpefFer, upoune sett purpois, provisione, auld 
 feid, and foirthocht fellony.' Before two years elapsed the 
 Guthries made another onset on the Gardynes, which resulted 
 in the slaughter of the chief of the latter family, and his name- 
 sake of Tulloes." 
 
 CARMYLLIE. 
 
 There is nothing in Carmyllie to detain us. We need only 
 say that it abounds in relics of the slain in war, which we 
 have seen to be so common in contiguous places, and which had 
 all received the same sort of sepulture. The presumption is 
 therefore reasonable, that they met their death at the same time, 
 and in the same terrible conflict ; that, as the Statistical 
 Account of the parish has it, they are the cairns, and tumuli, 
 and coflins, urns, ashes, and " bones of the Danes who had fallen 
 in their flight from the battle of Barry, where they were de- 
 feated by the Scots under Malcolm II. The ancient stone cross 
 which marks the grave of Camus, their General, is at no great 
 distance." 
 
 INVERARITY. 
 
 It is only the historic persons connected with them that raise 
 any places in this parish to the rank of Historic Scenes. From
 
 124 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 1395, the Earls of Crawford had Kirkton, Hillton, and other 
 lands in this district. The lands of Lour and Inverarity have 
 been in the possession of a number of families of historic note. 
 At an early period, they were the property of Henry of Neuith, 
 Knight, who had to resign them to the King for failing to ren- 
 der unto him the services due for them. In 1265, Alexander 
 III. gave them to Hugh de Abernethy. When his extensive 
 estates fell to heiresses, they passed by marriage to the Lindsay, 
 Stewart, and Leslie families. Lesly's wife was heiress of the 
 Lour portion ; and Norman de Lesly got charters of it in 1390. 
 In 1464, George Lesly, first Earl of Rothes, granted a charter 
 of the barony of Lour, the lands of Muirton, and half of the 
 lands of Can-ate, with the superiority of the barony (Lour had 
 before that been erected into a barony), in favour of David 
 Guthrie of Kincaldrum, Treasurer to the King. After passing 
 through some other hands, the Earl of Northesk acquired the 
 barony in 1643 ; and in 1694 David, fourth Earl of Northesk, 
 sold the dominical lands and Mains of Lour to David Fother- 
 ingham of Powrie. They now form part of the Powrie estate ; 
 and the fine mansion of Fotheringham occupies the site on 
 which the old Kirkton stood. 
 
 To come to recent times : at Kincaldrum House, on the 26th 
 July, 1870, died the well-known and highly esteemed Edward 
 Baxter, one of the merchant princes of Dundee, and one of the 
 honourable traffickers of the earth. Kincaldrum is now the pro- 
 perty of his son, the Eight Honourable William Edward Baxter, 
 M.P. for the Montrose District of Burghs, and late Financial 
 Secretary to the Treasury. This alone is enough to make Kin- 
 caldrum an Historic Scene ; but Mr Baxter is a comparatively 
 young and rising statesman ; and, should he follow his father's 
 example, making Kincaldrum his country residence, it may yet 
 take rank with such places as Hawarden and Hughenden, which 
 will be as much the names of Historic Scenes in the mouths of 
 posterity as Broadlands and Drayton Manor are in ours. 
 
 TEALING. 
 
 It is only ecclesiastically that Tealing makes any figure in 
 history. It originated one of our Scotch ecclesiastical sects. 
 The Reverend John Glas, the founder of the Glassites, was
 
 The Sidlaiv District Tealing. 125 
 
 minister of the parish, having been ordained there in 1719. 
 Soon after his ordination he began to vent opinions, then 
 strange in Scotland, such as that the Kingdom of Christ is not 
 of this world, but spiritual and heavenly, entirely distinct 
 from earthly kingdoms, and independent of their support. All 
 State Churches he therefore regarded as unscriptural in their 
 constitution, and opposed to religious liberty ; and copious 
 illustrations of his views he drew from the tenor and the 
 history of the National Covenant and the Solemn League and 
 Covenant, the binding obligation of which was then a favourite 
 topic with the Kirk clergy. Such heresies could not be 
 connived at. In 1727, Mr Glas was brought to the bar of his 
 Presbytery, where he made an honest and explicit statement 
 of his sentiments ; declaring his disapproval of those passages of 
 the Westminster Confession which treat of the power of the 
 civil magistrate in matters of faith and worship, and of liberty 
 of conscience ; and also denying the divine authority of the 
 Presbyterian form of Church government. His Presbytery 
 suspended him in April, 1728, and when he continued, not- 
 withstanding, to exercise his ministerial functions, his Synod 
 deposed him in October of the same year ; which sentence was 
 confirmed by the Commission of the General Assembly in 
 March, 1730. After his deposition, he ministered at Tealing, 
 in Dundee, Edinburgh, and Perth, and again in Dundee, where 
 he spent the residue of his life. He was the writer of the well- 
 known Letters on Hervey's Theron and Aspasio. 
 
 Mr Glas's followers, who never became numerous in Scotland, 
 were named Glassites ; but in England and America they were 
 more commonly called Sandemanians, fromMrRobertSandeman, 
 a native of Perth, Mr Glas's son-in-law, and one of his most 
 efficient converts, who, by his labours and writings on behalf 
 of the cause, ultimately became better known than Mr Glas 
 himself. 
 
 Mr Glas died at Dundee in 1733, in the 79th year of his age, 
 and the 55th of his ministry. He had by his wife, Kathaiine 
 Black, fifteen children, all of whom he survived. His son, 
 Captain George Glas, was the author of The History and Con- 
 quest of the Canary Islands, translated from the Spanish, with 
 a Description of the Islands ; and also of A Description of 
 Tenerifie, with the Manners and Customs of the Portuguese 
 who are settled there. 
 
 Another apostatising clergyman having connection with
 
 126 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Tealing was the Rev. Walter Tait. He was ordained minister 
 of Lundie and Fowlis in 1875. After labouring there for four 
 years he was translated thence to Trinity College Church, 
 Edinburgh. He was afterwards charged with heresy, and, 
 being convicted, was deposed by the General Assembly. He, 
 as well as Mr Glas, became the founder of a sect, which, how- 
 ever, was not called by his name. It now bears a title much 
 more imposing than Taitites would have been. It is the Apos- 
 tolic Catholic Church, and would in these days be called 
 Irvingite rather than Taitite, if it did not disclaim all such 
 names as implying the following of earthly leaders. It is 
 governed by twelve Apostles, and, as has been said, " while it 
 professes to abide by the written Word, it yields itself up to 
 the guidance of prophetic utterances given forth by frail and 
 fallible men." 
 
 These cases showed strong dissenting, schismatic proclivities 
 in a small and rather sequestered parish, where they would 
 not very readily have been suspected ; but the unity of the 
 Church in the parish did not suffer any very serious or perma- 
 nent injury from them. In 1845 the minister of the parish 
 had the satisfaction of announcing to the world that there " are 
 only one Glassite and one Independent in the parish." 
 
 GLAMMIS. 
 
 Hayston, in the Sidlaw section of Glammis, is understood to 
 present one trace of the Romans having been in the district. 
 The trace is a small circular moat, surrounded by a clay dyke. 
 It cannot have been meant for protection, but is supposed to 
 have been a station of the Romans for observation ; and it was 
 well chosen for the purpose. The prospect which it commands 
 is very extensive. 
 
 The Glen of Ogilvy, in the same division, is of much note, 
 Legendary if not Historical. It was once full of the odour of 
 sanctity. St Donevald dwelt in it about the beginning of the 
 eighth century. He had nine daughters who for their rarely 
 pious worth were canonised as the Nine Maidens. They lived 
 in the Glen " as in an hermitage," and led a mest laborious, 
 but abstemious, mortified life. They cultivated the ground
 
 The Sidlaw District Glammis. 127 
 
 with the labour of their own hands ; they ate but once a day, 
 and their meal was barley bread and water. After their 
 father's death Garnard, King of the Picts, assigned them a 
 lodging and oratory, and some land at Abernethy. Their re- 
 putation was such that King Eugen VII. of Scotland visited 
 them at the Pictish capital, and made them large presents. 
 They died there, and, Deborah-like, were buried at the foot of 
 a great oak ; and so honoured were St Donevald's nine " virgin- 
 dochtors" after their death, as well as in their life, that their 
 shrine at the Abernethy Allon-bacuth was much frequented by 
 devout pilgrims down to the Reformation from Popery. 
 
 Three centuries after their day the Glen of Ogilvy again became 
 famous in connection with William the Lion. We have already 
 told the tragic story of the murder of William's sister, the wife 
 of Earl Gilchrist, and Countess of Angus. As it stands related 
 to Glen Ogilvy the story has some additions, if not variations. 
 King William was one day hunting in the Glen, which was then 
 a forest. In pursuing the chase he got separated from his party, 
 and was attacked by a band of banditti. Earl Gilchrist had 
 three sons, who were partakers with their father in the murder 
 of their mother, and against them, as indeed against all the 
 Gilchrists, the King had declared vengeance, and seized their 
 lands. They betook themselves for safety to the forests and 
 mountains, and dens of the land, and hid in them for several 
 years. They happened to be skulking in the Glen of Ogilvy on 
 the memorable day when the free-booters attacked the King. 
 They were close by, and saw his danger, though themselves were 
 unobserved ; and, rushing forward, they rescued His Majesty 
 out of hands from which there was otherwise no chance of his 
 escaping. On learning who his deliverers were William 
 pardoned them, restored them to their confiscated possessions, 
 and added to these the Glen of Ogilvy, giving it to Gilbert, the 
 brother of Earl Gilchrist ; and in honour of the place where they 
 saved their Sovereign's life, they took the name of Ogilvy, which 
 they have borne ever since, and which has long been so coiumon 
 in Angus. 
 
 The Glen of Ogilvy was the retreat of Claverhouse at a very 
 critical juncture in 1689. A convention of the Scottish Estates 
 assembled in Edinburgh on the 14th of March, and was about to 
 resolve that James had forfeited his right to the crown, and to 
 vote the vacant throne to William and Mary, when, to arrest pro- 
 ceedings if possible, Claverhouse suddenly appeared, alleging that
 
 128 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 the Covenanters had formed a plot to assassinate him and Sir 
 George Mackenzie, the late King's advocate, and demanding 
 that all strangers should be removed from the town. This was 
 at once refused, as it would have placed the Convention at the 
 mercy of the Duke of Gordon, who held the Castle for James ; 
 on which Claverhouse left the Assembly with indignation, and 
 rode out of the city at the head of fifty troopers to raise an 
 army to thwart the Revolution. 
 
 " To the Lords of Convention, 'twas Clavers who spoke, 
 Ere the King's Crown go down, there are crowns to be broke, 
 So each cavalier who loves honour and me. 
 Let him follow the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. 
 
 " Come, fill up my cup, come, fill up my can, 
 Come, saddle my horses, and call up my men ; 
 Come, open the West Port, and let me gae free, 
 And it's room for the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee. 
 
 "Dundee he is mounted, he rides up the street ; 
 The bells are rung backward, the drums they are bea*;, 
 But the Provost, douce man, said, Just e'en let him be ; 
 The town is weel quit of that deil of Dundee. 
 "Come, fill up, &0. 
 
 "As he rode down the sanctified bends of the Bow, 
 Each carline was flyting and shaking her pow ; 
 Bat some young plants of grace, they looked couthie and alee, 
 Thinking Luck to thy bonnet, thou Bonnie Dundee ! 
 " Come, fill up, &c. 
 
 " With sour-featured saints the Grassmarket was panged, 
 As if half of the west had set tryst to be hanged ; 
 There was spite in each face, there was fear in each e'e, 
 As they watched for the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. 
 " Come, fill up, &o. 
 
 " The cowls of Eilmarnock had spits and had spears, 
 And lang-haftid gullies to kill cavaliers ; 
 But they shrunk to close-heads, and the causeway left free, 
 At a toss of the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. 
 " Come, fill up, &c. 
 
 "He spurred to the foot of the high Castle rock, 
 And to the gay Gordon he gallantly spoke ; 
 Lit Mons Meg and her marrows three volleys let See, 
 For the love of the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee. 
 "Come, fill up, &o. 
 
 " The Gordon has asked of him whither he goes 
 Wheresoever shall guide me the soul of Montrose ; 
 Your Grace in short tpice shall have tidings of me, 
 Or that low lies the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. 
 " Come, fill up, &o.
 
 The Sidlaw District Glammis. 129 
 
 "There are hills beyond Pentland, and streams beyond Forth ; 
 If there's lords in the Southland, there's chiefs in the North ; 
 There are wild dunniowassals three thousand times three, 
 Will cry Hoich ! for the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. 
 " Oome, fill up, &c. 
 
 " Away to the hills, to the woods, to the rocks, 
 Ere I own a usurper, I'll couch with the fox : 
 And tremble, false Whigs, though triumphant ye be, 
 You have not seen the last of my bonnets and me. 
 " Come, fill up, &c. 
 
 " He waved his proud arm, and the trumpets were blown, 
 The kettle drums clashed, and the horsemen rode on, 
 Till on Ravelston crag, and on Clermiston lee, 
 Died away the wild war-note of Bonnie Dundee. 
 
 " Come, fill up my cup, come, fill up my can, 
 Come, saddle my horses, and call up my men ; 
 Fling all your gates open, and let me gae free, 
 For 'tis up with the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee." 
 
 After this flight from Edinburgh, Clavers took up his abode 
 in his country seat of Dudhope, professing to live in quiet, and 
 to offer no opposition to the new Government ; but he was in 
 fact busily engaged in a treasonable correspondence with James 
 and the Highland chiefs, and was only biding his time to take 
 the field. The Earl of Leven was therefore despatched with two 
 hundred men to arrest him ; but, receiving timely notice of his 
 danger, he retired from Dudhope to a small remote house in the 
 Glen of Ogilvy ; and there he skulked till the approach of a 
 body of dragoons compelled him to abandon his retreat, and 
 take refuge in the Duke of Gordon's country, where he arranged 
 with his Highland supporters for the intended rising. 
 
 The Glen of Denoon is in the same section of the parish ; 
 and that isolated basaltic hill, rising from the bottom of the 
 Glen to a very considerable height, strikes every wayfarer. 
 The one side of it is quite precipitous ; and the other is so 
 steep, that any attempt to scale it must have been easily re- 
 pelled. On the summit of the hill are the remains of an old 
 fort, which had been surrounded by a wall some 27 feet high 
 and 20 feet broad, and enclosing upwards of an acre of ground. 
 The fort must have been a very strong one. The common 
 opinion is that it was built by the Picts ; which receives 
 countenance from the circumstance of an ancient toft, close by 
 the side of the hill, going to this day by the name of Pict's 
 Mill ; and that it was meant and used for an asylum in times 
 of danger. The ruins on the hill top, in the retirement of the 
 i
 
 130 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Glen, may be little heeded by many now-a-days ; but the retreat 
 of the natives to it, probably for ages, when either foreign 
 invasion or domestic insurrection threatened their safety, gives 
 it a marked place among the Historic Scenes of the shire. 
 
 NEWTYLE. 
 
 On the top of the Hill of Kilpurnie, or Kinpurnie, in the 
 parish of Newtyle, there had been a fort, similar to that on 
 Denoon. It, too, is believed to have been Pictish ; and it is a 
 pretty general opinion among archeologists that both were 
 erected prior to the Roman invasion, and, therefore, upwards of 
 eighteen hundred years ago. Antiquarians are proverbially 
 credulous, and fond of the marvellous ; but this opinion rests on 
 something like proof. Those forts were built without cement, 
 as all Pictish erections were. It was the Romans who intro- 
 duced into Britain the art of building with cement. They were 
 likewise vitrified, according to Pictish custom, By the action 
 of fire applied to them, the uncemented walls were fused more 
 or less, and the stones composing them were formed into one 
 solid mass. The Kilpurnie fort is supposed to have been, not 
 for a place of refuge like that on Denoon, but for observation, 
 according to some, and for beacon fires, according to others. It 
 appears to us that it may have served, and may have been in- 
 tended to serve, both these purposes. 
 
 The roofless walls now surmounting Kilpurnie, and seen at a 
 great distance both on sea and land, are the walls of an 
 observatory, built last century by the Honourable James 
 Mackenzie, Lord Privy Seal, then proprietor of the Belmont 
 estates, to which the Hill of Kilpurnie belongs. He was a 
 scientific, cultured man, and peculiarly fond of astronomy ; and 
 many an hour by night did he spend in that observatory, often 
 with the celebrated Professor Playfair, watching the heavenly 
 bodies, and discussing the laws which regulate their motions. 
 
 " This theatre 1 what eye c<m take it in ? 
 By what divine enchantment was it raised, 
 For minds of the first magnitude to launch 
 In endless speculation, and adore ? 
 One Sun by day, by night ten thousand shine, 
 And light us deep into the Deity."
 
 The Sidlaw District Newtyle. 131 
 
 Hatfcon Hill adjoins the Hill of Kilpurnie on the south-west, 
 and on the north-west base of it is Hatton Castle, built by 
 Lawrence, Lord Oliphant, in 1575, now and for long a ruin ; 
 and at a short distance southward of it was the Castle of 
 Balcraig, the traces of which have almost wholly disappeared. 
 Of events associated with the latter, we know nothing ; but the 
 former comes into view in the Civil War in the seventeenth 
 century. In 1645, Lord Lindsay occupied the Castle of Hatton 
 with a garrison of the Covenanters ; at which time, probably, 
 was formed the small camp near Auchtertyre, the vestiges of 
 which may still be seen by the Crew Well. Montrose, who had 
 lately won the victory of Auldearn, and was freed from the 
 presence of Baillie's army, which pressing straits had forced to 
 retire into Inverness, having good information of the state of 
 matters in the south, resolved to strike a blow at Lindsay. 
 Leaving the wilds of Badenoch, and crossing the Grampians, 
 forced marches brought him within seven miles of Lindsay, 
 before his Lordship was apprised of his approach. Just then, 
 however, the Gordons deserted him : according to Highland 
 custom, the greater part of his troops stole away homeward with 
 the plunder they had amassed, and which was worth more in 
 their view than King and Covenant put together ; and the 
 Marquis was thus obliged to relinquish his design against 
 Lindsay and his raw levies, and, contenting himself with burn- 
 ing Newton of Blairgowrie, to retrace his steps northward with 
 all speed. 
 
 Half-a-century afterwards, Hatton Castle again comes into 
 notice. The Bishop of Aberdeen then resided in it, and 
 zealously exerted himself to uphold the cause of Prelacy, after 
 the nation had abjured it. A note in the Session Records, of 
 date 8th May, 1698, ten years after the Revolution, gives us a 
 glimpse of the state of matters in the parish. " Which day, the 
 prisbitry violently entered the church by breaking up the doors 
 thereof; so that from the 8th day of May foresaid, the 
 parishoners did conveen to the Haltoun, where they are to have 
 sermon maintained by the Bishop Aberdeen, and others in his 
 name during his abode in the parioch." This note shows that 
 Prelacy had still a strong hold of the parish ; and further notices 
 bear that the Bishop continued publicly to officiate in it down 
 to at least 1710 ; that the Presbyterian minister did not, till 
 1719, and after judicial procedure, get possession of the parish 
 books, utensils, &c, ; and that in 1715, the Prelatic and Jacobite 
 i2
 
 132 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 rebels wei*e so powerful and so zealous, that they shut the 
 church against the Presbyterian minister, violated by their rude 
 soldiery the sanctity of his house, and forced him to " abscond " 
 for a season. 
 
 On the other side of the Glack of Newtyle, which was the 
 chief haunt of the Angus cannibal " brigant," is Newtyle Hill, 
 and at the northern base of it is Bannatyne (also written 
 Ballantyne) Castle, the manor-house in days of yoi'e of the 
 estate of Kirkton of Newtyle. If not erected, it was enlarged 
 by Lord Bannatyne, one of the Senators of the College of 
 Justice. His brother George, with most laudable taste and 
 industry, set himself to collect the early poetry of Scotland, 
 much of which would otherwise have perished. He accom- 
 plished this undertaking in this mansion of his brother, to which 
 he came from Edinburgh in 1568 to escape the plague which 
 then raged there. Mr Myles, in his Eambles in Forfarshire, says, 
 " When the plague was raging in Scotland in the 16th century, 
 Mr Bannatyne shut himself up in Bannatyne House, and 
 occupied his time in making a collection of our ancient poetry, 
 which has handed down his name to our own day, and will per- 
 petuate it to the latest posterity. The MS. extends over 800 
 closely written folio pages ; and, having been written in three 
 months, is an extraordinary monument of perseverance and 
 patience. It is a collection of all the fine and lofty strains of the 
 mighty ' Makkaris ' of ancient times, which would in all pro- 
 bability have perished had not the pious care of George Banna- 
 tyne rescued them from oblivion. In the north side of the build- 
 ing there is a capacious circular turret, which is believed to have 
 been Mr Bannatyne's study. Few turrets of time-worn towers 
 have been so honoured. Hundreds of them have been polluted 
 with blood, and made famoxis by crime ; while the turret of 
 Bannatyne House is only tarnished by unexampled literary and 
 poetical devotion." 
 
 A doubt has of late been raised as to the authenticity of this 
 bit of history as regards the " turret" said to have been Mr 
 Bannatyne's " study ;" but who would allow a mere doubt to 
 strip that " turret" of associations so delightful, and which some 
 half-dozen of generations have connected with it ? 
 
 The next hill of the range is the Hill of Keillor, on the 
 northern declivity of which is the hamlet called Chapel of 
 Keillor, where, doubtless, had once been a chapel with a bury- 
 ing place, which accounts for the sepulchral remains which
 
 The Sidlaio District Auchterhouse. 133 
 
 have been found there ; and not far from the above hamlet is 
 an old and striking monument, making the spot on which it 
 stands historical, though no syllable of the history has come 
 down to us. It is, one writer says, " one of those remarkable 
 sculptured monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Scotland, 
 embellished, in this instance, with the rude outline of the boar." 
 Another writer says, " at Baldowrie there is an erect Danish 
 monument six feet high. It contains some figures, but they 
 are almost entirely defaced." 
 
 AUCHTERHOUSE. 
 
 In Auchterhouse parish the vestiges of war in very remote 
 times are not few or indistinct. In his Statistical Account of 
 it, the late Reverend George Winehouse writes : " On a farm 
 in the south-east district of the parish several traces of a battle 
 have been recently discovered. In one place the spade and 
 mattock were opposed by a strong plate of vitrified stones. The 
 stones were of the same kind with those on the surface of the 
 contiguous cornfield. The plate was of a circular figure, of four 
 yards diameter, and on it lay a bed two inches thick of nearly 
 decomposed bones, covered by a surface of the ashes of burned 
 wood ; and, in other places, stone coffins, containing human 
 bones, have been disinterred in the prosecution of agricultural 
 improvements. May we not suppose that these human bones 
 and ashes of human bones are part of the sad remains of the 
 last sanguinary struggle between the Scottish and Pictish 
 nations for the ascendancy in Scotland, which commenced at 
 Restenet, and closed at Pitalpin ?" The question in the close 
 of the extract may, we think, be reasonably answered in the 
 affirmative. We at least do not know anything else recorded 
 in history which would so well explain the sepulchral remains 
 disinterred here by modern agricultural improvements. 
 
 The House of Auchterhouse is the only manor-house in the 
 palish, and " the best specimen now in this part of the country 
 of an old baronial residence." From the Historic events of 
 which it has been the scene we select the following : 
 
 In 1303 Sir William Wallace visited it. When he landed
 
 134 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 that year at Montrose, as has been already narrated, Sir John 
 Ramsay of Auchterhouse was waiting to receive him. He was 
 a particular friend of Wallace, and one of the noble band who 
 devoted their all to support him in his efforts to vindicate the 
 independence and freedom of the country. On that occasion 
 Sir John took Wallace as his guest to Auchterhouse, and with 
 him three hundred of his followers. 
 
 " Good Sir John Ramsay, and the Euthvens true, 
 Barclay and Bisset, with men not a few, 
 Do "Wallace meetall canty, keen, and crouse, 
 And with three hundred march to Ochterhouse." 
 
 Near the house are the ruins of a square tower, its walls 
 twelve feet high and nine thick ; " part of a strong building 
 which, when entire, had occupied a much larger space than the 
 present house." It is called Wallace Tower, for what reason 
 there is no room to doubt. It may be the tower of the mansion 
 which received Wallace and his attendants in 1303 ; or, if it 
 was not then in existence, it was, when built, called by the 
 name of Wallace Tower, to perpetuate the memory of a visit 
 of which eveiy generation of the " Ochterhouse" family would 
 be naturally and justly proud. 
 
 . In the latter half of the fourteenth century Auchterhouse 
 passed from the Ramsays to the Ogilvys by the marriage of 
 Isabella, the only child of Malcolm Ramsay, to Sir Walter 
 Ogilvy of Powrie. About 1466 it passed from the Ogilvys to 
 the Stewarts by the marriage of Margaret, the only child of Sir 
 Alexander Ogilvy, to James Stewart, half-brother of King 
 James II. He was afterwards created Earl of Buchan, was 
 once and again Chamberlain of Scotland, and died about 1499- 
 1500. The seventh Earl of Buchan was a keen supporter of 
 Charles I., for which Cromwell fined him 1000 Scots. And 
 this was not the only penalty which he had to pay for his 
 loyalty to the Stuart race. The Session of Auchterhouse took 
 cognisance of him. On Sabbath, April 4th, 1650, he had to 
 stand upon his " dask" (pew) in the church, and to profess his 
 sorrow for having taken part in the war in behalf of the King, 
 after which, to bind him to better behaviour, " he did hold up 
 his hand and swear to the Covenant, and subscribed it." 
 
 "Fair Matilda" was the daughter of one of the Earls of 
 Buchan, for whose heart and hand the Graeme and the 
 Rose contended, as sung in the ballad entitled Sir James 
 the Rose ; and story says that a large hawthorn tree near the
 
 The Sidlaw District Auchterhouse. 135 
 
 House marked the spot where, in the tragedy that ensued, the 
 combatants fell, and Matilda with them. Other places have 
 claimed to be the scene of the tragedy, but the claim of Auchter- 
 house appears to us to be as good as that of any of them. The 
 ballad should be familiar to the dwellers in Auchterhouse age 
 after age, and the Sidlaws should respond to its tender, 
 plaintive strains. We give a few of the last stanzas of it. The 
 bravest four of Graeme's men had sunk beneath Sir James the 
 Rose's sword, when 
 
 " Behind him basely came the Grasme, 
 
 And pierced him in the side ; 
 Out spouting came the purple tide, 
 
 And all his tartans dyed. 
 
 " But yet his sword quat not the grip, 
 
 Nor dropt he to the ground, 
 Till through the enemy's heart his steel 
 
 Had forced a mortal wound. 
 
 " Graeme, like a tree with wind o'erthrown, 
 
 Fell breathless on the clay ; 
 And down beside him sank the Kosc, 
 
 And faint and dying lay. 
 
 " The sad Matilda saw him fall ; 
 
 4 Oh, spare his life !' she cried ; 
 ' Lord Buchan's daughter begs his life ; 
 
 Let her not be denied !' 
 
 " Her well-known voice the hero heard ; 
 
 He raised his death-closed eyes, 
 And fixed them on the weeping maid, 
 
 And weakly thus replies : 
 
 " ' In vain Matilda begs the life, 
 
 By death's arrest denied : 
 My race is run adieu, my lore' 
 
 Then closed his eyes and died. 
 
 "The sword, yet warm, from his left side 
 
 With frantic hand she drew ; 
 ' I come, Sir James the Kose,' she cried ; 
 
 ' I come to follow you !' 
 
 " She leaned the hilt against the ground, 
 
 And bared her snowy breast ; 
 Then fell upon her lover's face, 
 
 And sunk to endless rest." 
 
 The Civil "War of the seventeenth century brought the battle 
 unpleasantly close to the gate of Auchterhouse. Sunday, June 
 1st, 1645, " There was but anes preaching, because of the 
 enemie being so neir the towne." So the Kirk Session Records 
 bear, and these Records are full of other events possessing 
 some interest, even if their claim to make Historic Scenes
 
 136 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 should be disputed. The following extracts from them have 
 already been printed, but we suspect that only a small fraction 
 of our readers has seen them. On July 5th, 1646, a Fast was 
 intimated from the pulpit for the 9th July, " because of the 
 desolate stat and cure of several congregations which have been 
 starved by dry-breasted ministers this long time by -gone, and 
 now are wandering like sheep but shepherds, and witnesseth no 
 sense of scant ; and because of the frequent scandal of witches 
 and charmers in this part of the land." On Sunday, 
 September 27th, the minister read out of the pulpit " the names 
 of those who were excommunicate bee Mr Robert Blair, in the 
 Kirk of Edinburgh, to wit, the Earl of Airly, Sir Alexander 
 
 M'Donald, the Lord of , and some others." On January 
 
 7th, 1649, "the minister and twaofthe elders went through 
 the church after sermon, desiring the people to subscribe the 
 Covenant." On January 6th, 1650, "the minister desired the 
 Session to make search every ane in their own quarter gave 
 they knew of any witches or charmers in the paroch, and delate 
 them to the next Session." On Sunday, July 18th, 1652, 
 " Janet Fife made her public repentance before the pulpit, foi 
 learning M. Robertson to charm her child ; and whereas M. 
 Robertson should have done the like, it pleased the Lord be- 
 fore that time to call upon her by death." November , 1665, 
 " Mr William Skeinner, minister and Moderator of the 
 Presbyterie of Dundee, having preached, intimat to the con- 
 gregation, Mr James Cample his suspension from serving the call- 
 ing of the ministrie, till the Synod assemblie of Dundee, for ane 
 fornication committed betwixt him and dam Marjorie Ramsay, 
 Countess of Buchanne ; for the qlk, by the said Presbyterie's 
 order, he beganne his repentance on the pillare, and sat both 
 sermons, and is exhorted to repentance." December 24th, " Mr 
 James Campble, for ane fornication foresaid, being thryce in 
 the pillare, upon evident signs of his repentance, was absolvit." 
 December 21st, " that day the Countess of Buchanne, for ane 
 fornication committed with Mi- James Cample, her chaplain, 
 beganne her repentance." "We may add, for the satisfaction of 
 all concerned, that next year Mr Campbell was presented to the 
 parish of Lundie, and that he and the Countess forthwith joined 
 in the holy bonds of matrimony. 
 
 Before 1653, Auchterhouse had become the property of the 
 Earls of Strathmore ; and Patrick Lyon of Auchterhouse, who 
 fell at Sheriffinuir in 1715, was a scion of the Strathmore family.
 
 The Sidlaw District Limdie. 137 
 
 LUNDIE. 
 
 The pretensions of Lundie to a place among our Historic 
 Scenes it derives almost exclusively from Admiral Duncan. 
 We have already noticed him in connection with the house of 
 his birth in Dundee. Lundie Castle was the seat of the family 
 to which he belonged, and which he raised to the rank of 
 nobility ; and his dust rests in the family burying-place in 
 Lundie Churchyard. The Castle was situated toward the west 
 side of the park in which stands the magnificent mansion, Cam- 
 perdown House, finished in 1828. It had been, for many 
 generations before, the residence of the Duncan family ; and 
 to the wall of one of its offices was fixed a huge lion rampant, 
 having between the two forepaws an escutcheon, with two 
 ship's anchors across cut on the one side of it and the letters 
 A. A. on the other ; the figure which had adorned the prow of 
 the flag-ship of Admiral de Winter, who surrendered to 
 Admii'al Duncan in the battle, off Camperdown. The ruins of 
 the Castle have disappeared ; but they bore witness to the 
 spaciousness and strength of the old edifice. It had two 
 towers, the one square and the other round, and each about 30 
 feet high. The building between the towers had been de- 
 molished to the vaults, forming five or six good sized arches, of 
 which the tenant of the farm in 1823 made cart sheds, potato 
 cellars, &c. It was time to remove them when they were put 
 to such base uses. 
 
 The lion rampant, the trophy of the splendid victory of 
 Camperdown, the Admiral's posterity have preserved with 
 pious care ; and in 1844, when the Queen visited Dundee, it 
 was displayed at the entrance gate to Camperdown House 
 from the Dundee and Coupar- Angus turnpike road, by which 
 the Royal party travelled northwards. The cortege halted 
 opposite the gate, and Her Majesty looked on the trophy with 
 great interest ; all the greater, it may be believed, on account 
 of the intimacy which had subsisted between Admiral Duncan 
 and some members of the Royal family. Her uncle, William 
 IV., was a warm, admiring personal friend of the hero ; and at 
 his coronation in 1831, he created his eldest son Earl of Cam- 
 perdown. 
 
 The church of Foulis, united parochially to Lundie, is a very
 
 138 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 old fabric. It was built by Sir Andrew Gray of Foulis, 1437- 
 60 ; and it has been much admired as a model specimen of the 
 ecclesiastical architecture of the fifteenth century. Through the 
 influence of the Gray family, some of the Popish imagery with 
 which the painter's pencil had embellished it, had not been 
 defaced as late as 1610 ; and was an eyesore to the Protestantism 
 of the land. In that year, the Synod of the bounds required 
 the minister, Mr Andrew Morton, who had been translated from 
 Foulis to Lundie, to see " that the paintrie quhilk is upon the 
 pulpitt and ruid loft, being monumentes of idolatrie, sail be 
 obliterate bi laying it over with green colour." And, in April, 
 1643, "because the monumentes of idolatrie, painted in the 
 Kirk of Foulis, are nocht as yet removed," he and others were 
 commissioned by the Synod to pass to the said kirk, and abolish 
 altogether the aforesaid monumentes." In his letter to the 
 Synod in the following October, Mr Morton tried to satisfy the 
 brethren " that my Lord Gray will demolish such of the 
 paintrie as is offensive." 
 
 KETTINS. 
 
 Our district terminates on the south-west with Kettins 
 parish ; in the Sidlaw section of which are the Castles of Dores 
 and Pitcur. Upwards of a hundred years ago, while quarriers 
 were working at the rock on which the former stood, an ex- 
 cavation of about a yard square was discovered, in which was 
 a number of partially consumed bones. Large quantities of 
 ashes have likewise been found at various places of the hill 
 which the castle surmounted, as well as at the site of it. But 
 the history of Dores is a blank to us ; we can only repeat con- 
 cerning it that, according to tradition, it was one of the strong- 
 holds of Macbeth, and that he occasionally resided in it. Of 
 Pitcur Castle more is known. It is rather a striking ruin, at 
 the northern base of the Sidlaws, and was long the residence of 
 the ancient and honourable family, the Hally burtons of Pitcur. 
 It must be somewhere about three hundred years old ; and was 
 suffered to go into decay when the family removed to Hally- 
 burton House, on another part of the barony, and in which the 
 proprietor still resides.
 
 The Sidlaio District Kettlns. 139 
 
 Pitcur Castle has given the shire and the country persons of 
 no little historic distinction. One of these was James Hally- 
 burton, Provost of Dundee at the beginning of the Reformation 
 from Popery. He was a leal-hearted and zealous Protestant ; 
 and, as we have seen, Paul Methven owed to him his liberty 
 and his life, when the Queen-flegent had devoted him to 
 destruction. He was one of the chiefs of the Protestant party, 
 which was deeply indebted to his wisdom in counsel, his 
 promptitude and energy in action, and his worth and force of 
 character. In 1559 he saved Protestantism with life itself. 
 The Earl of Arran having acceded to the Reformers, he and 
 Lord James Stuart, afterwards Regent Moray, resolved to 
 revive the drooping spirits of their adherents by vigorously 
 pressing the siege of Leith, which was then in the enemy's 
 hand. They placed artillery on a height near Holyrood, and 
 put it under the command of James Hallyburton, reckoned the 
 best military officer the Congregation possessed. The Queen- 
 Regent had information of their proceedings and designs ; and 
 on the 1st day of October, when all the leaders of the party 
 had gone to attend sermon, she ordered a chosen body of her 
 French guard to make a sortie from Leith, and to seize the 
 artillery. They did so with complete success. The Scots were 
 defeated with serious loss; and James Hallyburton and his 
 followers were among the slain. They were overtaken as they 
 fled, and killed in a marsh which then lay between Restalrig 
 and Holyrood Park. 
 
 His son and successor in the Provostship, whose surname was 
 also James, proved himself worthy of his pedigree. He was the 
 Tutor of Pitcur, Sir George Hallyburton, and uncle to him ; 
 and was Provost of Dundee for the long period of thirty-three 
 years ; in the course of which he was the Assembly's Commis- 
 sioner for the district of Angus ; one of the Commissioners sent 
 by the Estates of Scotland to France to negotiate the marriage 
 of Queen Mary to the Dauphin ; one of the Committee of the 
 Lords of the Articles, who sanctioned Mary's demission of the 
 Crown, the coronation of her infant son, and the appointment 
 of a Regent ; and Royal Commissioner to the General Assembly 
 of the Kirk : all high functions, which it was a high honour to 
 him to have committed to him, and which he honoured by the 
 manner in which he performed them. 
 
 The Lairds of Pitcur continued to be men of affairs, though 
 their activity and influence were not always so wisely and
 
 140 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 laudably directed and applied. In 1689 the Laird was an 
 ardent and staunch Jacobite. He furnished his contingent to 
 the insurgents under Viscount Dundee, and shared his fate ; 
 being one of the nine hundred whom the rebels lost on the field 
 of Killiecrankie. 
 
 11 The bauld Pitcur fell in a far, 
 
 And Claverso gat a clankie, O ; 
 Or I had fed au A thole gled, 
 
 On the braes o' Killicrankie, O." 
 
 In the sixteenth century Popery and Protestantism ' had no 
 more zealous champions, respectively, than the families of 
 Huntly and Pitcur. But what wonderful changes time brings 
 about ! The Gordons of Huntly and the Hallyburtons of Pitcur 
 intermarried ; their blood commingled ; and whether from this 
 cause, or from other influences, or from both, the stock has im- 
 mensely improved. The House of Commons had not a more 
 constitutional member ; one more free of the leaven of faction, 
 whether political or ecclesiastical, and a more enlightened and 
 stedfast friend of civil and religious freedom than the late Lord 
 Douglas Gordon Hally burton, long M.P. for Forfarshire ; and 
 the remark is equally time of the Right Honourable Lord John 
 Frederick Gordon Hallyburton, who succeeded Lord Douglas in 
 his estate, and also, for a time, in his seat in Parliament ; and 
 who is now the living representative of the old barons of Pitcur.
 
 The Strathmore District Kettins. 141 
 
 THE STRATHMORE DISTRICT. 
 
 KETTINS. 
 
 The next District of the shire is the Strathmore one. 
 Beginning at the south-west boundary of it, the first of the 
 Historic Scenes to which we come is a Roman camp at Camp- 
 muir, on the estate of Lintrose, and in the parish of Kettins. 
 The history which it has preserved to us is simply that the 
 Romans trod the soil at this spot, and tarried at it long enough 
 to induce them to throw up a camp. The traces of the camp 
 are still visible, and at no distant date were sufficiently distinct 
 to decide the figure and the size of it. It was oblong ; its mean 
 length being 1900 feet, and its mean breadth 1200 ; and it 
 was capable of containing, on the Polybian system, 10,000 men, 
 or a legion with its auxiliaries. The supposition is that 
 Agricola occupied this camp with one division of his army, in 
 returning to winter quarters from the country of the Horestii ; 
 and General Roy, one of the best of our antiquarian authorities, 
 comparing the respective sizes of this camp and that at Ardoch, 
 concluded that this one lends countenance to his opinion, that, 
 at Invergowrie, Agricola had put on board of his fleet from 
 three to four thousand of his troops. 
 
 On the same estate, and on the highest part of a field east of 
 Lintrose House, was discovered a few years ago an artificial 
 cave, which had evidently been made for a place of refuge. It 
 was about 50 feet long, 5 feet high, and 7 or 8 feet wide at the 
 inner end, narrowing, however, to 3 feet at the mouth. The 
 floor of it was paved, and the walls rudely built with large rough 
 stones, yet with lime ; and the upper courses projecting inwards 
 till they nearly met, and admitted of being covered with flags 
 and earth above. There had been two fireplaces in it, in which 
 were found various pieces of charcoal, and in the bottom of the 
 cave there was a quantity of human bones. 
 
 This cave has been called a weem, and taken for one of those 
 underground abodes which the ancient inhabitants of the 
 country had either for hiding-places or for winter quarters. 
 But we doubt whether the Lintrose cave is nearly so old as the 
 weems of the land, of which we shall have something to say ere
 
 142 Historic Scenes in Forfar shire. 
 
 we close these papers. The weems were constructed before our 
 fathers acquired from the Romans the art of building with lime. 
 This subterranean retreat being built with lime, we are strongly 
 inclined to the view of a writer who says : " There seems little 
 doubt that this cave had been one of the hiding-places of the 
 Covenanters in the days of ' bloody Claverhouse ;' and it would 
 appear that it had become the (final) resting-place of some of 
 those persecuted men." The Covenanters of the district had 
 too much need in those days to hide in holes, as may be inferred 
 from the heat of the Cavalier zeal of the Laird of Pitcur, and 
 as will appear from further light which we have yet to shed on 
 the state of the neighbourhood in those perilous times. 
 
 So we had written, when gentlemen who had examined the 
 cave in question assured us that the writer on whose statement 
 of facts we had relied was mistaken in affirming that the walls 
 had been built with lime. This has altered our opinion, and 
 we now see no reason to doubt that the Lintrose Cave is one of 
 the weems of the Strath. 
 
 Lintrose, we must mention, possessed all the beauty and 
 loveliness which Burns sang in " Blithe was she." The song 
 was written at Ochtertyre ; but the heroine of it was not an 
 Ochtertyre Murray, but Euphemia Murray of Lintrose, justly 
 called the " Flower of Strathmore," and who became the wife 
 of Lord Methven, one of our Scottish judges. 
 
 Chorus. 
 " Blithe, blithe and merry was she, 
 
 Blithe was she but and ben ; 
 Blithe by the banks of Ern, 
 
 And blithe in Glenturit glen. 
 
 ft 
 " By Auchtertyre grows the aik, 
 
 OQ Yarrow banks the birken shaw ; 
 Bat Phemie was a bonnier lass 
 
 Than braes of Yarrow ever saw. 
 
 n. 
 " Her looks were like a flow'r in May, 
 
 Her smile was like a simmer morn ; 
 She tripped by the banks of Ern, 
 
 As light's a bird upon a thorn. 
 
 " Her bonnie face it was as meek 
 
 As ony lamb upon a lea ; 
 The evening sun was ne'er sac sweet, 
 
 As was the blink o' Phemie's e'e.
 
 The Strathmore District Kettins. 143 
 
 IV. 
 " The Highland hills I've wandered wide, 
 
 And o'er the Lowlands I hae been ; 
 But Fhemie was the blithest lass 
 
 That ever trode the dewy green. 
 
 " Blithe, blithe and merry was she, 
 
 Blithe was she but and ben ; 
 Blithe by the banks of Ern, 
 
 And blithe in Glenturit's glen." 
 
 There is a sculptured stone in Kettins which had long served 
 for afoot-bridge across the Burn of the village, till, in 1860, 
 the late Lord Douglas Gordon Hally burton raised it to a 
 worthier position. The sculpture on it may be historical. It 
 is likely enough that it is so, but it is mute to us, the charactei-s 
 in which its records are written being quite illegible. 
 
 Colin Campbell, A.M., minister of Kettins in 1606, was one 
 of the forty-two brethren who subscribed the petition to 
 Parliament, 1st July that year, against the introduction of 
 Episcopacy. The orthodoxy of his successor in 1638, James 
 Auchinleck, A.M., fell under suspicion. He was formally tried, 
 indeed, for holding " the doctrine cf universal grace." The 
 process issued in his acquittal ; but he did not abide the ordeal 
 of the perilous times that succeeded. He was deposed by the 
 Assembly's Committee for Visitation in 1649. His successor 
 was David Patone, A.M., who had his own troubles in the days 
 of the Commonwealth. So disturbed was the neighbourhood 
 in 1654, that there was no Session on the 21st May, " because 
 of the Englishes coming alongs, who made the people to re- 
 turn quickly to their houses." His son, James Patone, A.M., 
 was admitted his father's colleague in 1680; but he seems to 
 have been shaky in his office, at least after the Revolution. 
 He ceased to preach in 1716 ; for the sympathy, we presume, 
 which he hadmanifested with "the bauldPitcur" of Killiecrankie 
 fame, and especially with the insurrection of the preceding 
 year. His own cousin, George Duncan, one of the lieutenants 
 of the county, took him prisoner, and advised him to relinquish 
 his charge. 
 
 Thirty years afterwards, Kettins betrayed a rebelliousness, 
 that could hardly have been apprehended of a parish which has, 
 in recent times, been so exemplary for ready, quiet, and meek 
 submission to the powers that be. It had the pluck to veto 
 the settlement of Robert Traill as its pastor ; and its mode of 
 vetoing it was rustically rough. The parishioners, headed by
 
 144 Historic Scenes in ForfarsJiire. 
 
 two men in arms, one of them wearing a white cockade in his 
 bonnet, prevented the Presbytery from meeting at Kettins for 
 his ordination, on the day appointed therefor. They also got 
 hold of Mr Traill himself, taking him in his lodgings ; kept him 
 a prisoner for nearly three hours ; and threatened him with 
 death, unless he subscribed a declaration to trouble them no 
 more till the judicatories of the Church should again take the 
 settlement under consideration. The collision between the 
 ecclesiastical and the physical powers ended iu the triumph of the 
 former, which, studying the things that make for peace, per- 
 formed the ordination at Meigle ; but Kettins was relieved of 
 its intruded incumbent by his translation to Banff in 1753. 
 
 COTJPAR-ANGUS. 
 
 About a mile north by west of Kettins is another Roman 
 camp, said to have been formed by Agricola in his Seventh 
 expedition. Maitland, who wrote in the second quarter of last 
 century, describes this camp as a square of 12,000 feet, capable 
 of holding, on the Polybian system, some 11,000 men, and, on 
 the Heginian, some 29,000 ; and he says that it was fortified by 
 two strong ramparts and large ditches, which are still to be seen 
 on the eastern and southern sides. "From the double 
 ramparts," says the author of the Topography of the Basin of 
 the Tay, " this does not seem to have been one of the temporary 
 encampments of Agricola. We incline to think it a camp of 
 Lollius Urbicus, and afterwards one of the castra stativa on 
 which a town was founded by the natives on the departure of 
 the Romans." 
 
 The town alluded to is Coupar- Angus, built on ground which 
 the Roman legions had occupied for centuries. The small 
 portion of the town south of the Burn is in Forfarshire, and the 
 Romans having made the ground classic, the monks afterwards 
 made it sacred. There, on the centre of the Roman camp, stood 
 the Abbey ; a scene rich, doubtless, in events of even national 
 importance, however sparely history may have handed them 
 down to us. 
 
 The Abbey was founded in 1164 by King Malcolm IV., 
 called also Malcolm the Maiden, the surname being given him,
 
 The StratTimore District Coupar.-Angus. 145 
 
 as is supposed, because of his youthful and effeminate appear- 
 ance. He placed in it Cistertian monks, the order which like- 
 wise went by the name of White Monks, their dress having 
 been all white with the exception of the cowl and scapular. 
 Like other monasteries that of Coupar was frequently honoured 
 with the presence of Royalty. Alexander II. resided in it in 
 November, 1246 ; in a charter from it of that date, he granted 
 a hundred shillings to the Abbey of Arbroath. Sir William 
 Wallace visited it in 1297, in that route in which he took from 
 the English almost all the places of strength to the north of the 
 Forth. He had just captured Perth, overwhelming the 
 Southrons, who had possession of it, two thousand of whom 
 were laid dead on the streets, and spoiling the city of all the 
 riches and stores they had left in it ; and as he approached 
 Coupar on his way northward the Abbot, an Englishman who 
 had been installed in the office, fled, and those of the monks 
 who had made themselves conspicuous by their servility to the 
 victorious invader followed his example. Robert the Bruce 
 sojourned in the Abbey in 1317, as is shown by charters which 
 he dated from it in December of that year ; and, as appears 
 from like evidence, King Robert II. was in it on two different 
 occasions during the winter of 1375. Moreover, Mary and her 
 suite rested a few nights in it in 1562, in her progress to the 
 north to quell the conspiracy of the Earl of Huntly ; and in it 
 she is said to have written an outspoken, scolding letter to the 
 Magistrates and Council of Edinburgh regarding the Provost- 
 ship of the city. 
 
 The Abbey of Coupar was the burying-place of some families 
 of more or less historic note. The chief of these were the 
 Hays of Errol, who, next to Royalty, stood at the head of the 
 benefactors of the Abbey. William of Hay endowed it with 
 the lands of Linderpoles or Ederpoles out of the manor of 
 Errol, in the Carse of Gowrie, soon after receiving that estate 
 from William the Lion, which is supposed to have been about 
 1170. David of Hay, son and successor of William, gave the 
 Abbey a net's fishing on the Tay between Lornie and the 
 Hermitage ; the latter being the place where a certain hermit, 
 named Gillemichel, had lived; and we shall not err very 
 seriously if we suppose that place to have been Inch-Michael, 
 in the parish of Errol. These grants were made to the Abbey 
 for the welfare of the soul of King William, and of the souls of 
 William of Hay and his wife Ethue, and also of the souls of 
 K
 
 146 Historic Scenes in Forjarshire. 
 
 the donor and his wife Eve. Gilbert of Hay, son and successor 
 of David, granted the monks of Coupar a road through his 
 estates for themselves and their cattle ; and confirmed to them 
 the pastures and fishings of Edei-poles, with the water, standing 
 and running, of these lands, and the mill. Nicholas of Hay, 
 son and successor of Gilbert, gave them a bovate of land in the 
 Carse ; and in their benefactions the senior members of the 
 family were imitated by the junior. Having before us these 
 records of their warm and generous favour to the Abbey of 
 Coupar, we are not surprised to find that it was the place of 
 sepulture of the Hays ; and that when the seventh Earl of 
 Errol was buried in it in 1585, his dust was laid to that of no 
 fewer than thirteen of his predecessors. 
 
 William of Muschet granted the monks of Coupar the common 
 pasture of his lordship of Cargill ; and from a stone found in 
 the kirkyaixl having carved on it a sword, and the name 
 Willhelmus de Montefixo, it would appear that the Muschets 
 also buried in the Abbey. 
 
 Thomas of Lundie, the King's Durward, or Hostiarius, bound 
 himself and his heirs to give the Abbey a merk of silver yearly 
 out of his lands of Balmerino, in Fife ; and he likewise was 
 buried at the door of the Abbey in 1231 ; and Alan, his son 
 and last male descendant, was laid beside him in 1275. 
 
 The Abbey had many other benefactors, whom we must not 
 wait to notice. Writers about it, in the scantiness of other 
 matter, having better pretensions to the dignity of being 
 historic, have industriously retailed the story of the outrage 
 upon the Abbey by Alexander Lindsay, the profligate son and 
 heir of David, Earl of Crawford, and we may give a place to it. 
 Lindsay had a number of associates as reckless and lawless as 
 himself. Among these were John and George Dempster, of 
 Auchterless, Lindsay of Baikie, Blair of Shangy, and six 
 other accomplices. This band, in their wantonness and wicked- 
 ness, " hurt the privilege and freedom of hali kirk." They did 
 so by " taking and holding of twa monkis of the said Abbey, 
 and spulzeing of their horses parking at their place, and chasing 
 of their servandis." The case was taken into Court, and the 
 libel found proven. Lindsay was warded in Blackness, the 
 Dempsters in the castles of Dumbarton and Berwick, and the 
 rest of the criminals were charged to appear before the Sheriff 
 of Forfar, that they, too, might be committed to durance vile. 
 
 It is a somewhat interesting circumstance that the Advocates'
 
 The Strathmore District Coupar-Angus. 147 
 
 Library, Edinburgh, owes its copy of the Scoti-Chronicon 
 to the Abbey of Coupar. Fordun, the venerable father of 
 Scottish history, wrote that work (at least the first Five Books of 
 it, and twenty-three Chapters of the Sixth) in the latter years 
 of the fourteenth century, and it soon multiplied into many 
 several Chronicles. Every monastery of the kingdom by and 
 by had a copy of it, to which it gave its own surname. The 
 Black Book of Scone, the Black Book of Paisley, and the Book 
 of Pluscardine, were copies of it. Some portions of the Scoti- 
 Chronicon were inserted in the collection of Dr Gale, from a 
 defective copy which he supposed to belong to Dr Boece. In 
 1719 Richard Hay, a canon of St Augustine, proposed printing 
 the Chronicle, with Bower's Additions and Continuation, 
 " conform to an authentic manuscript belonging of late to one 
 of our decayed monasteries." The manuscript, " a large folio, 
 written in old, but in glorious characters," belonged to the 
 monastery of Coupar-Angus ; it afterwards came into the posses- 
 sion of Hay, and is now deposited in the Advocates' Library. 
 
 Regarding the destruction of the Abbey at the Reformation, 
 no details have been handed down to us. We do not so much 
 as know who the " rascal multitude" (to use Knox's designation) 
 were who made it a desolation. Perhaps they were a portion 
 of the multitude who, having tried their " 'prentice hand" at 
 the work of demolition in Perth in 1559, carried it on in other 
 parts till all the great religious houses in Strathmore polluted 
 by Romish idolatry and superstition, were made a " heap ;" 
 executing to the letter the Mosaic law, which the Reformers of 
 that day considered to be as binding upon them as it had been 
 on the Jews under the theocracy " Ye shall utterly destroy 
 all the places wherein" they " served their gods. . . . And 
 ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and 
 burn their groves with fire ; and ye shall hew down the graven 
 images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that 
 place." 
 
 A meagre list of the Abbots of Coupar has been compiled ; 
 but we need not occupy room with it, there being nothing 
 known of any of them, the last excep.ted, that is worth relating. 
 They had a residence at Campsie, in the parish of Cargill. 
 Their House there, with the lands, fishing, forestry and teinds, 
 they ultimately leased ; and a lease, happily extant, sheds 
 interesting light on some of the habits of the Abbots, and on 
 the recreations and luxuries in which they indulged. The 
 
 K2
 
 148 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 tenant to whom the lease in question was given, was Alexander 
 Macbroke, Advocate ; and besides a yearly money rent of 20 
 Scots, he was bound to make payments in kind to his superior, 
 the Abbot and convent, of " four dozen poultrie, with all ary- 
 age, and carriage," &c. : on twenty-four hours warning, he had 
 to " find ane sufficient rower to the fishing of Neither Campsey, 
 with an carriage man to bring hame the fishe frae the samyn ; 
 with sufficient wax to St Hunnands lyght and chapel : And 
 also, that the said place should at all times be patent and ready 
 to him and his successors, brethren, and familie, as often as 
 should happen him, or any of them to come therto, fumisht 
 with four feddir beddis, and four other beddis, convenient for 
 servandes and with all the sundry necessaris pertaining to said 
 awcht beddis; and also upholding said place of Campsey in 
 sclates and biggin ; and attour, finding burd claithis, towalis, 
 pottes, pannys, plates, dishes, and other necessaries convenient 
 for his hall, kitchen, panntre, bakehouse, brewhouse, and cellar 
 as effeirs to his honesty and familie alenarlie ; with elden of 
 sawn wood and browme." 
 
 The last Abbot of Coupar was Donald Campbell, fourth son 
 of Archibald, second Earl of Argyll. He had some discern- 
 ment of the signs of the times. Though a celibate, he had five 
 sons ; and, shrewdly divining that the " day" of monasteries in 
 Scotland, and, indeed, of the whole Popish system, was at hand, 
 he prepared for the evil times that were coming on ecclesiastics 
 by providing for his sons. There were five snug estates in the 
 parish, all belonging to the Abbey Keithock, Balgersho, 
 Denhead, Arthurstone, and Cronan and one of these the 
 Abbot gave to each of his five sons. Other property of the 
 Abbey he in like manner distributed liberally to other relations 
 and friends ; and it was only the residuum of its lands and 
 baronies that James VI., in 1607, erected into a temporal lord- 
 ship, which he conferred, with the title of Lord Coupar, upon 
 James Elphinstone, second son of the first Lord Balmerino. 
 Lord Coupar having died without issue, the title merged into 
 that of Balmerino, and was extinguished with it. 
 
 The office of Hereditary Bailie of the Regality of the Abbey 
 had been previously bestowed on the Ogilvys of Airlie, and 
 continued with them; and, in 1747, when hereditary jurisdic- 
 tions were abolished, the Earl of Airlie got 800 in compen- 
 sation for the loss of the office. 
 
 In the time of the Civil War, Coupar- Angus suffered some-
 
 The Strathmore District Neiutyle. 149 
 
 what seriously. Coll Macdonald, commonly called Colkitto, 
 was dispatched to it by the Marquis of Montrose to plunder it, 
 which he did with characteristic cruelty. In the melee pro- 
 duced by the spoiling of the town, Robert Lindsay, A.M., the 
 minister of the parish, was killed with many others. A troop, 
 too, under Lord Balcarres, which attempted to check the 
 devastation of the marauders, was routed. This attack on 
 Coupar was made on or about the 20th April, 1645 ; and the 
 policy of it is said to have been to divert the attention of the 
 Parliamentary General Bailie, and to favour Montrose's escape 
 into the Highlands, which he effected in that famous retreat of 
 which we have already written. 
 
 In a supplication which Margaret Rhynd, the widow of Mr 
 Lindsay, presented to Parliament in August following, she 
 stated that " he was murdered by a number of merciless rebels 
 for his zeal and forwardness in the cause of God, while she and 
 her children were spoyled of all their means, and reduced to 
 extreme necessitie." Her supplication was remitted to a Com- 
 mittee, that " they may doe and determine thairintill as they 
 should think expedient." In June next year (1646), the General 
 Assembly passed an Act in Mrs Lindsay's favour, recommend- 
 ing her case to public charity, which was readily responded 
 to by many congregations in various parts of the Church. 
 
 George Hay was translated from Balmerino to Coupar in 
 1682. There was no Session in May, 1689, " the town being 
 in confusion with Englishmen." Mr Hay strongly sympathised 
 with the Jacobites, and, in 1698, was deprived for not taking 
 the oaths to William and Mary, not praying for them, etc. 
 
 NEWTYLE. 
 
 Meigle, with its Historic Scenes, is in Perthshire ; and in the 
 Strathmore portion of Newtyle we point for a moment only to 
 Graham's Knowe and King's Well, in the north-west of the 
 parish. The former name we take to mark a place, somehow 
 especially associated with Graham, the Marquis of Montrose ; 
 perhaps troops of his, when in this quarter, encamped on that 
 very Knowe. The latter name, we doubt not, marks a well by 
 which Macbeth passed, and out of which he probably drank 
 when, his Castle of Dunsinnane having been taken by Macduif
 
 150 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 and Siwai'd, he fled northward, closely pursued by the con- 
 querors. May it not have been when he had refreshed himself 
 at this well that he resolved to make that ineffectual stand 
 against his pursuers, of which Belmont, i.e., the Mount of Com- 
 bat, and the tumulus Belliduff are to this day the monuments 1 
 
 When in the Sidlaw section of Newtyle, and at Hatton 
 Castle, we touched on the strength of the Jacobite and Prelatic 
 party in the locality. We may here give a further glimpse of 
 it, and of the state into which it brought the parish. 
 
 In the Covenanting era Newtyle had been favoured with 
 ministers who were true to the interests of the Presbyterian 
 Kirk, and to all that these involved. George Patullo, A.M., a 
 hearty and stedfast Covenanter, was appointed to attend the 
 regiment of the General of Artillery, and to be one of the 
 visitors of the University of Aberdeen, in which the opposition 
 to the Covenants was so strong. Returning, in 1651, from 
 Alyth, where he had been visiting a friend, he was seized by 
 the detachment of Cromwell's troops, which had just surprised 
 the Committee of Estates met at Alyth, and made so many of 
 them prisoners. They carried him to their ships, which were in 
 the Tay at Dundee, and he lay " five weeks in his clothes on 
 the deck of the ships, and in Tinmouth Castle ;" after which he 
 was taken to London, and, with John Rattray, minister of 
 Alyth, was kept in close confinement in the Tower for the space 
 of twenty weeks. 
 
 Thomas Black, A.M., was likeminded with his predecessor, Mr 
 Patullo ; but, in his day, fidelity to the principles which they 
 both held was still more costly. In 1684, he was obliged to 
 relinquish his charge. He did not keep the anniversary of the 
 Restoration, and he did not compear before the Privy Council 
 to answer for his disobedience, when cited to do so. These 
 were unpardonable sins, for which his license was declared void, 
 and himself was denounced. 
 
 His successor, Alexander Mackenzie, was a man of another 
 stamp. A devotee of Prelacy and arbitrary power, the 
 Restoration was to him a jubilee. But the Revolution ended 
 it ; and then his troubles came in their turn. He did not read 
 the proclamation issued by the Estates when James had fled the 
 country ; he did not pray for William and Mary ; and he did 
 not observe the fast. Tried for these things in 1689, he was 
 Bomehow acquitted ; but, in 1695, he was at length deprived for 
 non-jurancy. He continued in the parish, however, and
 
 The Strathmore District Eassie and Nevay. 151 
 
 officiated in the "meeting-house," as the now established 
 Presbyterians orthodoxly called it ; and when the Rebellion of 
 1715 broke out, he and his friends took possession of the church 
 and pulpit, and kept it till next year. 
 
 His successor, John Clephane, A.M., had hardly the shadow 
 of a congregation, and little or nothing to do in baptising, 
 marrying, catechising, or in pastorally visiting in the parish. 
 No Session could be formed, and the administration of the 
 Lord's Supper was found to be impracticable. Such was the 
 influence of the outed minister, and of the Bishop of Aberdeen, 
 sojourning in Hatton Castle, and of their active and zealous 
 coadjutors, the Jacobite Lairds. As Mr Clephane was proceed- 
 ing to the pulpit on a Sabbath morning in October, 1715, he 
 was stopped in the churchyard, and kept out of the church by 
 armed men attended by a crowd of roughs, instigated and 
 guided by " a certain gentleman in the neighbourhood." Mr 
 Clephane returned to the Manse, and preached in it ; but was 
 obliged that night to withdraw from the parish, and in a few 
 days he removed out of the country. The " gentleman " 
 referred to having been informed by his spies that he publicly 
 prayed for King George by name, sent him a threatening letter. 
 Shortly after, he visited the Manse in person with a band of 
 armed retainers, and violently carried off a considerable part of 
 the property that was in it. He repeated his visits, frightening 
 Mrs Clephane and the household, spoiling more goods, breaking 
 open lock-fast doors, and stabbing the very beds with naked 
 swords, in search for the minister's person. 
 
 In process of time, after the collapse of the Pretender's cause, 
 the zeal of those malignants cooled, and the tempest of their 
 fury subsided ; and Mr Clephane returned to his parish, and 
 died in 1730, with the reputation of a good minister of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 EASSIE AND NEVAY. 
 
 The fortune of that elaborately sculptured stone by the Old 
 Manse of Eassie closely resembles that of its compeer at 
 Kettins. After suffering long neglect and abuse, it has got its 
 head lifted in these days when old world remains are laudably 
 exciting so much curiosity and interest. From the bottom of
 
 152 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 the small stream which runs by the Old Manse and Church, it 
 has been raised to the side of the churchyard dyke, and stands 
 among the generation of the upright. Though very likely 
 inscribed with history, this stone is silent to us, for the reason 
 which we have had already repeatedly to assign, we cannot 
 read its records. We can only say with the writer of the 
 Statistical Account of Easaie and Nevay, " Whether this pillar 
 tells a national or domestic tale whether it marks a grave or 
 commemorates a battle whether it represents a usage of the 
 country or a rite of religion, are points on which different 
 opinions will still continue to be formed ;" and all opinions on 
 these points must be so absolutely conjectural and uncertain 
 that they are hardly worth discussing. 
 
 That large circular mound on which the farm-house of Castle 
 Nairne is built, about a mile north of the Old Manse, is a pro- 
 minent object in the landscape, and there seems no good reason 
 to doubt that it marks an Historic Scene. A deep and broad 
 moat surrounded the mound, and traces of a drawbridge over 
 the moat are yet visible. The mound has not, as far as we 
 know, been excavated and searched, but, not long ago, a very 
 old sceptre-head was found on it, and on the neighbouring farm 
 of Ingliston are pretty distinct outlines of an encampment. 
 These things favour the opinion that the mound in question 
 was cast up for a military station ; and two things make it 
 highly probable that it was a station of the invader, the First 
 Edward of England. First, several coins of Edward have been 
 found on the mound ; and, second, it was quite in the line of 
 Edward's course in his expedition in 1296. He must have 
 marched by the now Castle Nairne in his way northward, after 
 resting at Inverqueich, as we know that he did on the 2d July 
 that year. 
 
 Silvester Lammie, A.M., was minister of Eassie at the 
 Revolution, and was too Jacobite to conform to the new order 
 of things. He was deprived for non-jurancy in 1695. He 
 withdrew from the Church with the congregation, and preached 
 in the Manse ; from which it would seem that he was not 
 ejected for a series of years.
 
 The Strathmore District Butkven. 153 
 
 RUTHVEK 
 
 In a brae south, of the Kirk of Ruthven there was a weem, 
 such as we noticed at Lintrose, and such as, but for an over- 
 sight, we should have noticed at Auchterhouse also. Weems 
 were underground dwellings of the aborigines of the country. 
 Their rudest habitations were shallow excavations in the ground, 
 of a circular or oblong form, seven or eight feet in diameter, and 
 covered with boughs of trees and sods of turf. The first improve- 
 ment on these was excavations somewhat deeper and larger, 
 which were divided by large flat stones, without any cement, 
 into two or three apartments, about five feet wide, and covered 
 with the same sort of stones. The next improvement was the 
 weems, or natural caves, made commodious by art, and with 
 varieties in shape and size. " A single aperture, in most cases, 
 served for door and chimney, and for the admission of light and 
 air, though occasionally a small aperture has been found at the 
 further end, apparently to give vent to the fire. The roof, 
 when artificial, was formed, like those of the Cyclopean structures 
 of Greece, and of Mexico and Yucatan, of huge stones, over- 
 lapping each other in succession, until the remaining vacant 
 space would be completed by a single block extending from side 
 to side. Ashes, querns, deers' horns, and bones, have frequently 
 been discovered in these weems, and occasionally a few rude 
 implements, the relics of the primitive arts of the inhabitants. 
 In one of them, in the parish of Auchterhouse, Forfarshire, a 
 brass ring was found, but without any inscription ; and in 
 another, in Shapinshay, Orkney, a gold ring was discovered, of 
 very remarkable construction." The weem in the brae of 
 Euthven was, we presume, of this third class. 
 
 Tradition says that, in the northern part of the parish of 
 Ruthven, a battle was fought in 1296 between the forces of 
 Edward I. and those of Robert Bruce. The alleged monuments 
 of this battle are few and dubious ; and as it is not mentioned 
 or alluded to by Barbour, in The Bruce, or in the Diary of 
 Edward's Journey into Scotland that year, we may be excused 
 though we do not give credit in this instance to tradition. 
 
 The lands of Ruthven came into the possession of the 
 Crawford family as early as 1329, and they continued in it 
 till 1510. They then passed by purchase to another noble
 
 154 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 house, the house, namely, of the Crichtons of Dumfries, of 
 which the Admirable Crichton was a cadet, and they continued 
 in this family till its extinction in 1742. The Castle of the 
 barony was at Queich, near the Kirk of Ruthven, on the delta 
 formed by the River Isla and the Burn of Alyth ; a site which 
 has been pronounced to be " perhaps the most romantic and 
 picturesque of the many old Lindsay Castles in the district." 
 On a knoll, called Candle Hill, the gibbet used by the barons 
 of Ruthven in feudal times was erected ; and many a victim, 
 doubtless, the Earls of Crawford doomed to it during their long 
 possession of the barony. 
 
 In the rebellion of 1715 the parish of Ruthven was the scene 
 of much excitement, division, and tribulation. Forfarshire was 
 then the stronghold of Jacobitism ; and the great earthquake 
 which it produced that year shook the shire from its centre 
 to its circumference. The Session Records of this western 
 extremity of it bear: "Ruthven, 1745, August 20. This 
 day, the minister intimated from the pulpit that, by reason of 
 the present troubles and confusions, and the distractions and 
 divisions among the people, he was obliged to defer the celebra- 
 tion of the Sacrament of the Supper for this year." From a 
 notice next year it would seem that the ecclesiastical powers of 
 the parish had been loyal to the Hanoverian interest, or, at 
 least, that a year's education in the school of adversity had 
 made them so. "July 20, 1746. Thomas Crichton, at the 
 Mill of Ruthven, was rebuked before the congregation for his 
 great sin and scandal, as having been engaged in the late wicked 
 and unnatural rebellion." 
 
 AIRLIE. 
 
 The Moss or Loch of Baikie, in the parish of Airlie, was thus 
 sung by the love sick swain : 
 
 "Bonnie shines the sun on the high towers o' Airly, 
 Bonnie swim the swans in the Loch o' the Baikie ; 
 High is the hill, an' the moon shining clearly, 
 Bat the cald Isla tins atween me an 1 my dearie." 
 
 On the rising ground, at the west end of this Loch was the 
 Castle of Baikie an Historic Scene, though every vestige
 
 The Strathmore District Airlie. 155 
 
 even of its ruins is now gone. From the earliest times the 
 Barony of Baikie was possessed by the Fentons, an historic 
 family, of which sprang the Earls of Kellie, whose titles are now 
 conjoined with those of Mar. The first of them that appears was 
 Sheriff of Forfar in 1261, and centuries afterwards they became 
 allied by marriage to the noble houses of both Crawford and 
 Strathmore. About 1458, David Lindsay, a younger son of 
 the Earl of Crawford, married Margaret Fenton of Baikie. 
 Their only son was bailiff to the Earls of Crawford ; and it was 
 he and his associates that committed the sacrilege on the monks 
 and property of the Abbey of Coupar, which has been already 
 mentioned. An ancestor of the Earl of Strathmore married 
 the daughter and sole heiress of the last Viscount Fenton, by 
 which marriage the lands of Baikie came to the Strathmore 
 family. 
 
 But Baikie has a still higher claim to rank among the 
 Historic Scenes of the Great Strath. There is every reason to 
 presume that it was at one time the occasional residence of the 
 King and his Court. After the execution of Jane Douglas, 
 Countess of Strathmore, in 1537, James proscribed the Lyons, 
 and confiscated their estates ; and in the accounts of the Lord 
 High Treasurer of that time is an entry of 40, paid for the 
 repair of Glammis and Baikie. Glammis, we know, was 
 repaired to make it fit for the King's sojourn in it ; and it is 
 reasonable to suppose that it was for the same purpose that 
 Baikie was repaired. 
 
 The " ambry " at the Kirk of Airlie is a curious and interest- 
 ing memorial of the Fentons of Baikie. It bears their arms 
 and initials, and has engraved on it the five passion wounds of 
 the Saviour. These are " also carved upon the coping stone of 
 an old burying aisle, with the addition of the scourge, the 
 pillar to which Christ was bound, the spear, and the pincers ; 
 with carvings of the fleur-de-lis, surmounted by a coronet." 
 There is a like memorial of the Lyons of Glammis an effigy, 
 now built into the west gable of the Parish Church, supposed to 
 represent John the Baptist, and to have originally belonged to 
 the chapel at Baikie. It is known that the Baptist was a very 
 favourite Saint of the Strathmore family. 
 
 The traces of the Romans are abundant in the parish. 
 " Near Cardean," says the Statistical Account of it, " there are 
 the remains of a Roman camp, which, though partially 
 obliterated by agricultural operations, can still be distinctly
 
 156 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 traced. The natural position is very strong. It is protected 
 on the north side by the Isla, which comes nearly close to it, 
 and on the south by the Dean, which there flows through a deep 
 gorge ; and the flat ground contiguous to both seems to have 
 been swamps. Some remains of the great Roman road, which 
 ran east from this encampment along the hollow of Strathmore, 
 are also still visible. There are about 500 yards of it, in good 
 preservation, in the eastern part of this parish, commencing in 
 a plantation on the farm of Reidie, and stretching along some 
 moor ground on the lands of Auchindory. About a mile to the 
 westward, in the old fir wood of Landerick, on the Glammis 
 property, there is a small earthern tumulus, surrounded by a 
 circular floss. It appears to have been used as a station of 
 observation, as tumuli of the same kind are to be met with in 
 other parts of the country, near the remains of Roman military 
 works." 
 
 But the great Scene in this quarter is the old Castle of 
 Airlie, superbly situated on the promontory formed by the con- 
 fluence of the Melgum and the Isla. The modern Castle is 
 erected on its ruins, and as much of these remains as is sufficient 
 to show the massiveness and the strength of the ancient 
 residence of the noble family of the Ogilvys. It repelled an 
 attack which Montrose made upon it while he was yet a 
 champion of the Covenant ; but, in 1640, on the approach of 
 Argyll, at the head of 5000 of his men, and with a small train 
 of artillery, Lord Ogilvy, the Earl's eldest son, who, in the 
 absence of his father in England, had charge of the Castle, 
 regarding resistance as utterly hopeless, at once abandoned it. 
 
 The Earl of Airlie was peculiarly obnoxious to the Covenan- 
 ters. The Royal cause had not a more devoted adherent, or 
 one who, from his rank and following, and talents, and energy, 
 was more likely to do it efficient service. Charles very highly 
 appreciated him, and had entrusted him with the care of his 
 interests throughout the central parts of Scotland. The Earl of 
 Argyll, on the other hand, was the leader of the Covenanters 
 both in the Council and in the field ; and in the year we have 
 named he was commissioned by the Estates to reduce to sub- 
 mission the disaffected clans and chieftains in the north. After 
 executing his commission in Badenoch and Mar, he struck into 
 Athole, crossing the Grampians and coming down Strathtay ; 
 and then he turned eastward into the territories of Airlie. Be- 
 sides their antagonism on public measures, besides being at
 
 The Strathmore District Airlie. 157 
 
 opposite sides of the compass political and ecclesiastical they 
 had a long-standing family feud. When and how it began we 
 do not know, but we know of its breaking out more than half-a- 
 century before the date of which we now write. In 1591 the 
 Campbells had invaded the Ogilvys in Glenisla, ravaged their 
 estates, massacred their people, and forced their chief and his 
 lady to flee for their lives. And in the war between the 
 Covenanters and the Royalists the private feud between the 
 Campbells and the Ogilvys added greatly to the bitterness and 
 ferocity with which they prosecuted it. 
 
 Lord Ogilvy having fled from it on the approach of the 
 enemy, Airlie Castle became an easy prey to Argyll, who first 
 plundered it, and then burned it to the ground ; and the Earl 
 himself is said to have "taken the hammer into his own hand 
 and knocked down the hewed work of the doqrs and windows 
 till he did sweat for heat." The memory of the event has 
 been preserved in the Burnin' o' the Bonnie Hoose o' Airlie. 
 The writer has made free with historic facts, mixing up the 
 burning of Airlie Castle with that of Forter, and the Countess 
 of Airlie with Lady Ogilvy ; yet the song is one of the finest of 
 our Scottish lyrics, and, as has been said, " blazes with both the 
 poesy and the politics of the period." 
 
 " It fell on a day, a bonnie summer day, 
 
 When the leaves were green and yellow 
 That there fell out a great dispute 
 
 Between Argyll and Airly. 
 
 " Argyll has ta'en a hunder o' bis men, 
 
 A hunder men and mairly, 
 And he's away by the back o' Dunkeld 
 
 To plunder the bonnie house o' Airly. 
 
 " The lady looked o'er the hie castle wa', 
 
 And oh ! but she sighed sairly 
 When she saw Argyll and a' his men 
 
 Come to plunder the bonnie house o' Airly. 
 
 "Come down, come down, said the proud Argyll, 
 
 Come down to me, Lady Airly, 
 Or I swear by the sword I haud in my hand 
 
 I winna leave a stan'in' i-tarte in Airly. 
 
 " I'll no come down, ye proud Argyll, 
 
 Until that ye speak me fairly, 
 Though ye swear by the sword ye haud in your hand 
 
 That ye winna leave a stan'in' stane in Airly. 
 
 " Had my ain lord been at his hame, 
 
 As he's awa' wi Charlie, 
 There's no a Campbell in a' Argyle 
 
 Dare hae trod in the bonnie green o' Airly.
 
 158 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 " Bat since wo can hand oot nae mair, 
 
 My hand I offer fairly ; 
 Oh, lead me down to yonder glen 
 
 That I mayna see the burnin' o' Airly. 
 
 " He has ta'en her by the trembling hand, 
 
 But he's no ta'en her fairly, 
 For he's led her up to a high hill tap, 
 
 Where she saw the burnin' o' Airly. 
 
 " Clouds o' smoke and flames sae hie 
 
 Soon left the walls but barely ; 
 And she laid her down on that hill to die 
 
 When she saw the burnin' o' Airly.". 
 
 John Robertson, A.M., was minister of Airlie at the Restora- 
 tion. He must have been a staunch Presbyterian, and must 
 have been known to be so ; for he was deprived, by Acts of 
 both Parliament and Privy Council, in 1662. 
 
 GLAMMIS. 
 
 The Historic Scene in the Strathmore portion of Glammis is 
 the Castle, " a venerable and princely pile, the noblest archi- 
 tectural ornament of the county ;" the property and chief seat 
 of the Earl of Strathmore. Glammis was anciently a thanedom 
 that is, a royal demesne under charge of a steward, called a 
 thane, and who ultimately became an hereditary tenant of the 
 king. In 1363 King David II. gave the reversion of the 
 thanedom of Glammis, and also of Tannadice, to David Logic, 
 the father, it may be presumed, of Margaret Logic, David's 
 second Queen. 
 
 The Castle of Glammis first appears in our national annals in 
 connection with the death of Malcolm II., in 1033. The 
 Chronicle of Melrose, and the Chronicon Elegiacum, followed 
 by Pinkerton and others, say that Malcolm " died quietly in 
 Glammis." But the tradition commonly received for ages has 
 been that he suffered a violent death ; and we confess ourselves 
 loth to surrender the traditioij. It somewhat varies ; one 
 version of it bearing that Malcolm was killed in the neighbour- 
 hood by some adherents of Kenneth V. ; and another bearing 
 that a few conspirators, having corrupted his domestics, were 
 admitted by night into the Castle and put him to death. It
 
 The Sirathmore District Glammis. 159 
 
 varies also, in the reasons which it gives for his murder ; one 
 being the offence of his nobility at the resumption of grants 
 which he had made them ; and another being a very serious 
 crime imputed to his Majesty, of which Wynton says in his 
 Kronykil 
 
 " he had rewyist a fayre May 
 
 Of the land thare lyandby." 
 
 It is uniform, however, as to the fate of the murderers. Flee- 
 ing eastward, the snow lying thick on the ground, they got 
 bewildered, and entering on the Loch of Forfar, they perished 
 in it, through the breaking of the ice under them. " The 
 lake," says Buchanan, " then freezing over them concealed their 
 bodies for a time, till upon the thaw they were discovered, and 
 being dragged out, were hung up on gibbets by the wayside, as 
 an example to the living, and a mark of infamy upon the dead." 
 
 Extant memorials of Malcolm's death seem to us to favour 
 the commonly received tradition as to the manner of it. " To the 
 eastward of the village" (of Glammis), says the late Dr Lyon, 
 in his Statistical Account of the parish, " within a wood near 
 Thornton, there is a large cairn of stones surrounding an 
 ancient obelisk, bearing similar characters to the one near the 
 church, and which is called King Malcolm's gravestone. Now, 
 although he was buried at lona, it appeared probable that 
 these stones mark the spot where the battle (the skirmish with 
 Kenneth's adherents) had taken place, and where the King fell. 
 
 " Within a few yards of the manse is to be seen an obelisk, or 
 large stone of rude design, erected, as is generally supposed, in 
 memory of the murder of Malcolm II., King of Scotland. The 
 perpetrators of that horrid deed fled with precipitation east- 
 wai-d during night, and when the fields were covered with snow. 
 By mistake they directed their flight across the Loch of Forfar, 
 where they peiished. On one side of the monument there are 
 the figures of two men who, by their attitude, seem to be 
 forming the bloody conspiracy. A lion and a centaur on the 
 upper part represent, as is supposed, the shocking barbarity of 
 the crime. On the reverse of the monument several sorts of 
 fishes are engraven, as a symbolical representation of the loch 
 in which the assassins were drowned. 
 
 " At the distance of about a mile north-east from the castle, 
 near a place called Cossins, there stands an obelisk not less 
 curious than the one already mentioned. It is vulgarly called 
 St Orland's Stone. No probable conjecture has been formed
 
 160 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 as to the object of it. On one side is a cross rudely flowered 
 and chequered ; on the other side four men on horseback appear 
 to bo making the utmost despatch. One of the horses is 
 trampling under foot a wild boar ; and on the lower part of the 
 stone there is the figure of an animal resembling a dragon. It 
 has been conjectured by some that these symbols represent 
 officers of justice in pursuit of Malcolm's murderers." 
 
 Such are the monuments, and such is the reading of their 
 symbols in which we are disposed to rest till a more feasible be 
 offered. We qualify only one thing in the extract now made. 
 Malcolm, it is said, "was buried at lona." Knox, in his 
 Topography of the Basin of the Tay, has assigned what seem 
 to us strong reasons for disbelieving this, and has given much 
 verisimilitude to the local tradition that Malcolm's ashes rest in 
 the churchyard of Glammis. "This island (lona)," says he, 
 " did not then belong to Scotland. It was either possessed or 
 perpetually pillaged by the Danes. Malcolm had given the 
 Viking many a signal overthrow, and it is likely the pagans 
 would have thrown his carcase into the sea if it had been 
 carried thither. The burying of our Kings in Hyona (lona) 
 appears to be a fable invented by the monks of St Andrews in 
 the 12th century. There is to be seen in the churchyard of 
 Glammis a rude mass, without an inscription, 16 feet high and 
 5 feet broad, which, according to tradition, is King Malcolm's 
 gravestone, and there is every probability that he was buried 
 under it." We agree with all this as far as concerns Malcolm ; 
 but we are not prepared to admit that " the burying of our 
 Kings in Hyona appears to be a fable." 
 
 It was in 1372 that Glammis came into the possession of 
 the Lyons, who still hold it. Sir John Lyon, Knight, married 
 the Princess Jane, the second daughter of Robert II. ; and, as 
 her dowry, the King gave her husband a charter of his lands of 
 the thanedom of Glammis, to be held in free barony. He was 
 the founder of the present noble family of Strathmore. It was 
 this Sir John that fell in a duel with Sir James Lindsay of 
 Crawford, at the moss of Balhall, near Brechin ; the occasion of 
 the deadly quarrel being, it is supposed, envy at the royal 
 favours which were heaped upon Sir John. On the execution 
 of Lady Jane Douglas, Countess of Strathmore, in 1537, 
 Glammis was forfeited to the Crown ; and the Castle again be- 
 came for a season a royal residence. James V. lived frequently 
 at it, as also at Baikie, during the proscription of the Lyons.
 
 The Strathmore District Glammis. 161 
 
 The story of Lady Jane Douglas is one of the most affecting 
 in our annals. She was the sister of Archibald, sixth Earl of 
 Angus, and was married first to John, sixth Lord Glammis, 
 who died in 1527 ; and soon after his death she was married a 
 second time to a gentleman named Campbell, of Skipnish. The 
 crime of which she was accused is sometimes called witchcraft, 
 and sometimes conspiring the King's death by poison. But, as 
 Tytler has explained, in those times " poisoning and witchcraft 
 were very commonly associated. The dealers in poisons were 
 reckoned witches ; and the potency of their drugs was thought 
 to be increased by the charms and incantations with which they 
 were concocted. Hence probably, the mala fama against 
 Lady Glammis as a witch or sorceress." The real charge 
 against her was conspiring the King's death by poison and 
 assisting the Earl of Angus and his brother, George Douglas, 
 who were traitors and rebels. On her trial she was convicted, 
 and condemned to be burned at the stake on the Castle Hill of 
 Edinburgh. She heard her sentence with unruffled composure, 
 and endured it with immovable firmness and fortitude ; the 
 crowd looking on equally commiserating and admiring her. 
 She was popularly believed to be innocent, being regarded as 
 the victim of implacable hate which the King had conceived 
 against all connected with the house of Douglas. She was, 
 withal, reckoned " the most renowned beauty of Britain at that; 
 time," as it is expressed in the " Life of James V.," and was 
 pointed to as the model of every virtue. Recent researches, 
 however, and the documents which they have brought to light, 
 have greatly changed opinion concerning her Ladyship, so much 
 so, that a living historian has written, "There can be no 
 question that Lady Glammis was guilty of treason in assisting 
 her brothers in their attempts to ' invade' the King's person, 
 and re-establish their authority in Scotland, and the whole 
 circumstances of the case lead to the conclusion that she was 
 guilty of the other crime laid to her charge the compassing 
 the death of the King." 
 
 Three other parties were apprehended as supposed accomplices 
 with her Ladyship. The first was her husband, Campbell, 
 who, the day after her execution, trying to make his escape 
 from the Castle of Edinburgh, was let down over the walls by a 
 cord which, being too short, he fell on the rocks, and was dashed 
 in pieces. The second was the son she had born to Lord 
 Glammis, her first husband, now a boy sixteen years of age, 
 L
 
 162 Historic Scenes in Forfarsliire. 
 
 who lay in piison for five years, till the death of King James, 
 when his titles and estates were restored to him as the seventh 
 Lord Glammis. The third was an old priest, whom the King, 
 when told of the tragic end of Campbell on the Castle rocks, set 
 at liberty. 
 
 The Strathmore family was ardently attached to the Stuart 
 dynasty. John the fifth Earl, fell fighting for it at Sheriffmuir, 
 in 1715. The Pretender spent the night of the 4th January, 
 1715, in the Castle of Glammis, when on his way to Scone, 
 where he expected to be crowned ; and it is said that eighty 
 beds were that night made iip for his retinne. The Earl of 
 Mar and about thirty gentlemen had met him a few days before 
 at Fetteresso, the chief seat of the Earl Marischal, and by the 
 time he reached Glammis, the friends gathering around him 
 had multiplied. Mar wrote from the Castle that he was a 
 perfect Absolom for beauty and manners. " The King, without 
 any compliment to him, and to do him nothing b\it justice, 
 setting aside his being a prince, is really the finest gentleman I 
 ever knew. He has a very good presence, and resembles 
 Charles the Second a great deal. His presence, however, is 
 not the best of him ; he has fine parts, and dispatches all his 
 business himself with the greatest exactness. I never saw any 
 body write so finely. He is affable to a great degree," &c. 
 The letter from which we quote was printed and circulated 
 over Scotland, in order to produce a favourable impression of 
 the Chevalier on the public mind ; which it failed to do. Even 
 his friends did not all see him with Mar's eyes. " A Rebel," in 
 a pamphlet of the time, wrote thus of him, the writer being no 
 less a personage than the Master of Sinclair : " I must not 
 conceal, that when we saw the man whom they called our 
 King, we found ourselves not at all animated by his presence, 
 and if he was disappointed in us, we were twofold more so in 
 him. We saw nothing in him that looked like spirit. He 
 never appeared with cheerfulness and vigour to animate TIS. 
 Our men began to despise ; some asked if he could speak. His 
 countenance looked extremely heavy. He cared not to come 
 abroad among us soldiers, or to see us handle our arms or do 
 our exercise. Some said, the circumstances he found us in 
 dejected him ; I am sure the figure he made dejected us ; and 
 had he sent us but 5000 men of good troops, and never himself 
 come amongst us, we had done other things than we have done 
 now." A quarter of a century afterwards, Gray, the poet,
 
 The Strathmore District Glammis. 163 
 
 wrote thus of him from Florence : " He is a thin, ill-made 
 man, extremely tall and awkward, of a most unpromising 
 countenance, a good deal resembling King James the Second, 
 and has extremely the air and look of an idiot, particularly 
 when he laughs or prays ; the first he does not do often, the 
 latter continually." 
 
 We must not leave Glammis without pointing to another 
 scene, though of a different class from the Castle. It is the mill 
 for spinning flax on the Glammis Burn. " It was built," the 
 Statistical Account says, "in 1806. It contains 16 frames. 
 The water-wheel is of 16 horse-power. And in 1820 a steam- 
 engine of 10 horse-power was added, to assist when the water 
 becomes scarce in summer. There is also a plash-mill on the 
 same stream for cleaning the yarn. 66 people of both sexes 
 are employed on the premises. The females have frnm 3s 6d to 
 7s 6d, and the males from 12s to 1 per week of wages. The 
 yarn spun at the mill is manufactured in different parts of the 
 parish, and produces about 4000 pieces of brown linen annually, 
 principally for the Dundee market. There are also manu- 
 factured annually by private individuals in the parish about 
 7500 pieces of brown linen, besides those wove by the pro- 
 prietors of the mill. The cloth is chiefly Osnaburgs and 
 sheetings." 
 
 For two reasons that mill is well entitled to a place among 
 our Historic Scenes. First If not the first erection, it was 
 among the first in which machinery driven by mechanical power 
 was substituted for the labour of human hands in the linen 
 trade, the staple trade of the county, and which has attained 
 such prodigious magnitude and importance ; and second That 
 experiment, pregnant with such momentous issues, was made 
 by the firm of William Baxter & Son (Edward), and the 
 Glammis spinning-mill was the initiation of the enterprise to 
 which the Baxter family owe their name and fortune. As it 
 has been expressed, " It proved to be the foundation of the great 
 house of Messrs Baxter Brothers & Co. The younger brothers 
 of Mr Edward David (afterwards Sir David), John, and 
 William, were the leading partners in that firm." 
 
 L2
 
 164 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 KINNETTLES. 
 
 In Kinnettles a battle was fought for Popery, perhaps more 
 keen and tough than in any other part of the shire. The 
 Bishop of Dunkeld owned Foffarty, an estate of some two 
 hundred Scotch acres, now in the parish of Kinnettles, but then 
 marching with its southern boundary. His tenant, Alexander 
 Pyott, alarmed at the progress of the Reformation, went to 
 Dunkeld, and took counsel with the Bishop how it might be 
 stayed, assuring him that he was ready to strain every nerve in 
 this holy work. So highly did the Bishop appreciate the zeal 
 of this true son of the Church that he wrote out a disposition 
 of his lands in his favour, with which Pyott immediately 
 repaired to Rome, and got the deed of conveyance confirmed by 
 a Popish bull. He and his successors evinced their gratitude 
 by stoutly upholding the Popish cause, and were assisted by the 
 adherents of the old religion in the neighbourhood. A chapel 
 was built in Foffarty, and a priest appointed to conduct the 
 Romish service, who had a manse, offices, garden, glebe, and 
 salary. That chapel was burnt in 1745 by a party of Royal 
 dragoons, and long stood roofless and ruinous. The last Popish 
 proprietor of Foffarty yielding to the pressure of poverty, sold 
 his lands to the Earl of Strathmore as late as 1758. 
 
 At Douglastown a small village on the Arity, at the western 
 verge of the parish is a flax spinning-mill, erected in 1792, 
 driven partly by water and partly by steam, and which, like the 
 Baxters' mill on the Glammis Burn, contributed its own share 
 in pioneering the trade which has reached such enormous 
 dimensions in the county. 
 
 But any historic note belonging to it Kinnettles owes more 
 to the eminent men connected with it than to anything else. 
 
 About 1511, the estate of Kinnettles came into possession of 
 the Lindsays. The first Lindsay of Kinnettles was Robert, a 
 cadet of the house of Evelick, and descended from a younger 
 brother of the third Earl of Crawford ; and the last male 
 descendant of the family was his Grace Dr Thomas Lindsay, 
 Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, who died in 
 1713. 
 
 James Lawmonth, A.M., was minister of the parish in 1649. 
 In that year, the Assembly's Committee for Visitation deprived
 
 The Strathmore District Kinnettles. 165 
 
 eighteen ministers in the Synod of Angus. Lawmonth was one 
 of them ; and, though a graduate, he was deprived " for in- 
 sufficiency for the ministry." 
 
 The parson of Kinnettles in 1681 was Alexander Taylor, the 
 last Episcopal minister of the parish. Summoned to Edinburgh 
 to swear the oaths required by the Test Act, he was overtaken, 
 in crossing from Burntisland to Leith, by a great storm, to 
 which the world was indebted for his poem entitled The Tem- 
 pest. It is said to " contain some curious passages," of which 
 the beating of the waves on the small craft in which he sailed 
 has been often quoted as a specimen : 
 
 " Each kept his time and place, 
 As if they meant to drown us with a grace 
 The first came tumbling on our boat's side, 
 And knock't us twice her breadth and more beside ; 
 But, vext that it had wrought's no more disgrace, 
 It spits on us spits in its followers' face." 
 
 William Patterson, son of a gardener of Mr Douglas of 
 Brigton, was born and brought up in this parish ; and the high 
 distinction, literary, scientific, military, and civil, to which he 
 rose, is witnessed by the inscription on the cenotaph to him in 
 Kinnettles churchyard " Sacred to the memory of Colonel 
 William Patterson, Fellow of the Royal Society, Member of the 
 Asiatic and Linncean Societies, Lieutenant-Colonel of the 102d 
 Regiment, and for many years Lieutenant-Governor of New 
 South Wales. He served thirty years in the army twenty- 
 five of which were passed in the East Indies and in New Soiith 
 Wales ; and in fulfilling his duty to his country, he twice cix m - 
 cumnavigated the globe. His taste for Natural History induced 
 him in the earlier part of his life to travel from the Cape of 
 Good Hope into the interior of Africa, into which country he 
 penetrated farther than any European had ever done befoi'e him. 
 His unwearied assiduity in the pursuit of science, supported in 
 an unusual degree by talent and zeal, enabled him to collect, 
 and bring to England, specimens of plants and other curiosities 
 till then unknown. He discharged with honour and fidelity 
 the trust reposed in him as an officer ; and his services were 
 particularly valuable in New South Wales as Lieutenant- 
 Governor of that settlement. Nor did he then neglect his 
 favourite pursuit, but continued to enrich both public and 
 private museums by employing his leisure hours in useful re- 
 searches. His life was not less amiable than useful ; and his 
 happy disposition endeared him to his dependents, to society,
 
 166 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 and to his friends. After a long period of ill-health, he 
 attempted to return to his native country, but it pleased God 
 to take him during his voyage. He was bom in this parish on 
 the 10th of August, 1755, and died on the 21st of June, 1810." 
 Another somewhat illustrious son of this parish is John 
 Ingles Harvey, Esquire of Kinnettles. He was educated in his 
 father's house till he attained the age of sixteen, when he was 
 sent to one of the English Universities, where he excelled, 
 especially in his Law Studies, carrying off several high prizes. 
 Having thus made his mark, he was by and by appointed to a 
 high office in the East Indias, and was afterwards promoted to 
 the Bench as a civil judge in our Indian empire. 
 
 FORFAK. 
 
 The town of Forfar is the county town ; and is a royal burgh 
 of unknown antiquity. The most ancient of the Historic 
 Scenes connected with it is the Roman camp, discovered not 
 long ago on an eminence little more than half a mile to the 
 north-east of the town. The traces of it are so distinct, that 
 those conversant with Roman military antiquities have been 
 able to determine its form and dimensions, the number of its 
 gates, the strength of its traverses, the position of the 
 pretorium, and of the principal gate, with a square fort close 
 by it, and that the west side was its front ; from which it has 
 been inferred that the army which raised the camp was march- 
 ing westward. " It is probable," says Knox, " that Agricola, 
 on returning with that division of his forces which, we suppose, 
 lay some time at Keithick, occupied with his whole army this 
 camp at Forfar. As the intrenchments would contain more 
 than 26,000 men, the Roman commander may have enlarged 
 the dimensions for the sake of more accommodation ; there 
 being there no chance of his ramparts being assaulted by an 
 enemy. Or this camp might have been re-occupied by Urbicus, 
 or by Sevems, either of whom might enlarge the intrenchments, 
 but it is clear that they had been formed upon the Polybian 
 system." 
 
 The next Historic Scene,' following the order of time, is in 
 the Restennet quarter of the parish. It is the field of the 
 Battle of Restennet, fought in the ninth century between the
 
 The Strathmore District For far. 167 
 
 Scots under Alpin, and the Picts under Feredeth. Buchanan 
 says of it, " The hostile armies having encountered each other at 
 Restenet, a small village in Angus, a sanguinary conflict ensued, 
 which continued till the night closed upon an uncertain victory. 
 The death of Federethus appeared to give the Scots the honour 
 of the day ; for he, when he saw the spirits of his men begin- 
 ning to droop in battle, rushed with a band of noble youths into 
 the wildest of the Scots, where, being cut off from the main 
 army, he fell, together with the flower of his nobility." In this 
 quarter are the remains of what some very competent judges 
 have taken to be a Pictish camp; but the coins, urns, and 
 pieces of armour which have been found here, are perhaps as 
 much the memorials of the battle as of the camp. 
 
 Forfar basked for centuries in the sunshine of Royalty, 
 beginning to do so as early as the reign of Malcolm Canmere 
 (1057-1093). On the conquest of England by the Normans, 
 Edgar Atheling, the heir of the Saxon line, with his mother 
 Agatha, and his sisters Margaret and Christian, sought and 
 found refuge in the court of Malcolm. This led to Malcolm's 
 marriage to the " beautiful, accomplished, and pious" Margaret ; 
 and they resided much in their Royal Castle or Palace at 
 Forfar. Where it stood is not certain ; but it seems not im- 
 probable that it is the foundation of it that is yet seen on Queen 
 Margaret's Inch ; the artificial island near the northern shore 
 of the Loch of Forfar. In consequence of the great reduction 
 of the Loch by draining, the Inch now adjoins the lands and is 
 a peninsula ; but in those days it was separate from it, and was 
 reached by a draw-bridge. 
 
 If that ruin marks the site of the Royal Castle in which 
 Malcolm and Margaret spent so much of their time, it is an 
 Historic Scene of singular interest. In it, it may be presumed, 
 Malcolm, when he had defeated and slain M'Beth, held the 
 assembly of his Maormors, or Great Barons, in which were 
 passed several of those measures on which some have rested his 
 claims to be reckoned a great legislator. In it, also, it may be 
 further presumed, he held other conventions, civil and ecclesias- 
 tical, to deliberate and decide on questions of vital moment to the 
 country. In it, moreover, were performed many of those good 
 and holy deeds for which his consort was canonised. 
 
 Malcolm Canmore was a monarch of high patriotism, bravery, 
 and energy, and his reign forms an important era in the 
 history of Scotland. The good to himself and his people, with
 
 168 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 which the ascendancy of his admirable Queen over him was 
 pregnant, could hardly be exaggerated. It restrained and 
 tamed his own natural ferocity, and guided and tempered his 
 administration with wisdom, and justice, and clemency ; while 
 her Majesty's example, strengthened by that of the other exiles 
 whom Norman conquest and oppression drove from England, 
 had a most beneficent influence in improving the manners of 
 our ignorant and barbarous countrymen. Malcolm had no 
 education he did not so much as know the letters of the 
 alphabet but he could worship at Margaret's feet with bound- 
 less respect and affection ; and he did so, and confided to her 
 the chief care of the kingdom. As her biographer, Turgot, says, 
 " Malcolm respected the religion of his spouse, was fearful of 
 offending her, and listened to her admonitions. Whatever she 
 loved or disliked, so did he. Although he could not read he 
 frequently turned over prayer-books, and kissed her favourite 
 volumes. He had them adorned in gold and precious stones, 
 and presented them to her in token of his devotion. She 
 instructed him to pass the night in fervent prayer, with groans 
 and tears. I must acknowledge that I often admired the works 
 of the Divine mercy, when I saw a King so religious and such 
 signs of deep compunction in a layman." 
 
 Reformations that took place among clergy and laity in her 
 day Margaret bore a chief part in effecting ; " employing her 
 learning and eloquence not only in the instruction of her 
 husband but in controversy with the clergy. At this period 
 the Scottish clergy had ceased to celebrate the Communion of 
 the Lord's Supper, on the plea that they were sinners, and 
 dreaded to communicate unworthily. They made no distinction 
 between Sabbath and week days ; and they permitted the 
 marriage of a man with his step-mother, or the widow of his 
 brother a practice originating probably in avarice, as it relieved 
 the heir of a jointure. All these abuses the Queen corrected 
 in a firm yet temperate manner. ' She displayed to the clergy,' 
 says Lord Hailes, ' the vanity of their supei-stitious or indolent 
 excuse for their neglect to celebrate the Communion, and she 
 restored the religious observance of Sunday, an institution no 
 less admirable in a political than in a religious light.' She held 
 a solemn conference with the clergy regarding the proper season 
 for celebrating Lent ; and ' three days,' says Turgot, ' did she 
 employ the sword of the spirit in combating their errors. She 
 seemed another St Helena, out of the scriptures convincing the
 
 The StratTimore District Forfar. 169 
 
 Jews.' " "We may add, that in these conferences Malcolm stood 
 interpreter between the Queen and the Scottish clergy, who did 
 not understand English. Gaelic was then the vernacular of the 
 country. 
 
 It was in the reign of William the Lion (1165-1214) that the 
 Old Royal Castle at Forfar was superseded by the New one ; 
 for, though Boece was long sneered at as a fabler for writing 
 that " Forfar was strengthened with two roiall Castles, as the 
 ruins doo yet declare," charter evidence of the accuracy of this 
 assertion has been discovered. The New Castle stood on the 
 Castlehill, that conical mound to the north-east of the town, 
 now surmounted by a tower, erected in recent times. It was 
 that Castle which was the occasional residence of William the 
 Lion, whom we read of as holding a Court and an Assembly at 
 Forfar. His son, Alexander II., resided in it more frequently 
 than his father had done, holding Parliaments at Forfar in 1225 
 and 1227, and giving charters dated from it till towards the end 
 of his reign in 1249. He likewise established on Queen 
 Margaret's Inch, on the site of the Old Royal Castle, a religious 
 house, and, besides endowing it with money and other 
 privileges, he gave two monks, appointed to officiate in it, 
 pasture for six cows and a horse on his lands of Tyrbeg. To 
 his son, Alexander III., Forfar was even a more favourite 
 residence than it had been to his father and his grandfather. 
 This is apparent from notices which we have on record of his 
 Forfar gardeners and their wages ; of the rents of the demesne 
 in his minority, and the cheese, butter, hens, and malt received 
 from it ; of the meal, grain, and money expended on his hunting 
 dogs, hawks, horses, and grooms ; of the carriage cost of sixteen 
 pipes of wine from Dundee to the Castle of Forfar, and of the 
 number and value of the sheep brought to it at Easter from 
 Barry, and from the Grange of Glenisla. 
 
 In 1291, Gilbert de TJmfraville had the command of the 
 Castle of Forfar ; and when King Edward of England demanded 
 the surrender of it, he answered as he did when the same 
 demand was made as to the Castle of Dundee, of which also he 
 was the Governor, and which has already been related by us. 
 He refused, declaring that he had the Castle in charge from the 
 Scottish nation, and that he would not surrender it to Edward 
 without a letter of indemnity signed by him, and by the 
 claimants of the Scottish Crown, and the guardians of the 
 Scottish realm.
 
 170 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 In 1296, Edward and his suite visited Forfar, and lodged in 
 the Castle from the 3d to the 6th of July two Churchmen and 
 four barons there doing the invader homage. In the following 
 year, while Brian Fitzadam held the Castle for Edward, 
 Wallace either captured it, or it was deserted at his approach. 
 But the English must have soon recovered it : it was in their 
 possession in 1308 ; and, soon after, King Robert Bruce, assisted 
 by Philip, the forester of Platane or Plater, took it by escalade, 
 put all the English in it to the sword, levelled it and its 
 fortifications to the ground, and it was never rebuilt. When 
 Royalty afterwards visited the neighbourhood, it sojourned 
 either in the Castle of Glammis or in the Priory of Restennet. 
 The armour and other antique things, which have from time to 
 time been found near the CastlehUl and in the Loch, popular 
 tradition has connected with the fugitive murderers of Malcolm 
 II. ; but it is at least as likely that they, may have belonged to 
 the soldiers slain by Bruce at the capture of the Castle. 
 
 After he had demolished the Castle, Bruce had a house at 
 Forfar, and we may infer that he was not a stranger in it from 
 the fact that, only two years before his death, he gave his 
 falconer in the shire of Forfar, Geoffrey of Foullertoune, and 
 Agnes, his wife, the lands of Foullertoune in Forfarshire, with 
 entertainment in the King's House at Forfar, when the King 
 was there, for the falconer himself, a servant, a boy, and two 
 horses. 
 
 The names of many localities in the neighbourhood are to this 
 day memorials of the residence of our Kings at Forfar in those 
 olden times. Such are the King's Moor, the King's Burn, the 
 King's Seat, the Queen's Manor, the Queen's Well, the Palace 
 Dykes, and the Court Road. The tenures by which certain 
 farms in the neighbourhood were held are also memorials of the 
 same thing. Tyrbeg, alias Turfbeg, and Balnashanner, were 
 held on the condition of furnishing the Palace with three 
 hundred cartloads of peats from these lands when the Court was 
 at Forfar ; and Heatherstack was held on the condition of 
 furnishing heather fit for fuel to the Royal kitchen. 
 
 The Priory of Restennet or Rostinoth, situated on what was 
 an island, but is now a peninsula, in the Loch of the same name, 
 near the north-east boundary of the parish, was originally the 
 sacred place of the district. It occupied the site of what had 
 been the mother church, and that at Forfar was but a chapel, 
 which long continued dependent on the Priory, and subject to
 
 The Strathmore District For far. 171 
 
 it. According to the finding of an inquest appointed by King 
 Robert Bruce to ascertain the old rights and privileges of the 
 establishment, its writs having perished in war and otherwise, 
 the canons of Eestennet, who were of the Augustine order, had, 
 with other ample revenues, the curious privilege of " uplifting 
 on each coming of the King to Forfar, for each day he abides 
 there, two loaves of the lord's bread, four loaves of the second 
 bread, and six loaves, called hug moms ; two flagons of the better 
 ale, two flagons of the second ale, and two pairs of messes of 
 each of the three courses from the kitchen." 
 
 The Forfar Glebe was at Restennet, more than a mile from 
 the town, till as late as 1643. It was then exchanged for the 
 Bread Croft, lying within the territory of the burgh, and which 
 was to be in all time coming "holden in frie burgage and 
 heretage ... by the said Thomas Pierson, and his suc- 
 cessors, ministers (of Forfar), serueing the kirk and cuire yrof." 
 
 For more reasons than one, the Priory of Restennet is an 
 Historic Scene. It stood on the site of one of the three 
 churches, which Boniface is said to have founded in Angus in 
 the seventh century, in fulfilment of his mission from Rome ; 
 the other two being at Invergowrie and Tealing. Again, the 
 Priory was visited in its day by Royalty, and by those who 
 guided its counsels on matters involving the highest interests of 
 the country. It was honoured, we know, with the presence of 
 The Bruce, and of his son David II., and probably with that 
 of more than one of their successors, after the demolition of the 
 Royal Castle at Forfar. At the Priory, besides, most desolate 
 as it now is, repose the ashes of not a few of the illustrious 
 dead. Among these, of persons of local note, are the Hunters 
 of Burnside, and the Dempsters of Dunnichen. Among these 
 it is all but certain is Feredeth, King of the Picts, who fell in 
 the battle fought in this neighbourhood with Alpin, King of the 
 Scots, as already stated by us ; the victor, as Boece says, 
 " commanding his body to be laid in Christian buriall not farre 
 from Foi-faire," which can hardly mean any other than 
 Restennet. And among these is certainly John, a son of The 
 Bruce; for, in June, 1344, David II. confirmed the grants 
 which his predecessors had made to the Priory, and, from regard 
 to it as the burial-place of his brother-german John, he made a 
 new grant to it of twenty merks sterling from the great customs 
 of Dundee. The Priory, moreover, is said to have been for a 
 time the place to which public records, &c., were committed for
 
 172 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 safe custody. It was far removed from border raids and con- 
 flicts, and was accessible from all parts of the kingdom ; and it 
 was, therefore, made the depository of registers, charters, and 
 other valuable documents. 
 
 As far back as the sixteenth century, the staple trade of 
 Forfar was shoemaking, the shoes made being that peculiar 
 kind called brogues and ruUiotis, the difference between these 
 being that, while both were made of horse leather, the hair was 
 taken off for the brogues and kept on for the rullions. John- 
 stone, in his poetical panegyric on Forfar, published in 1642, 
 gives prominence to the chief handicraft of the place. He says, 
 as he has been translated : 
 
 " The ruins of a Palace thee decore, 
 A fruitful! Lake, and fruitf ull Land much more, 
 Thy Precincts (it's confest) much straightened be, 
 Yet Ancient Scotland did give Power to thee : 
 Angus and other places of the Land, 
 Yeeld to thy Jurisdiction and Command. 
 Noblis unto the People Laws do give, 
 By Handy-Crafts the Vulgar sort do live. 
 They pull off Bullocks-hydes and make them meet 
 "When tanned, to cover handsome Virgins' feet : 
 From thee are Sandals to light Umbi ians sent, 
 And soils with latches to Rope-Climbers lent : 
 And Bullions wherewith the Bowrs do go 
 To keep their feet unhurt with Yse and Snow." 
 
 If Johnstone may be believed, Forfar may well boast of the 
 antiquity of its shoe manufacture : 
 
 " The ancient Greeks their Boots from this Town brought, 
 And also hence their Ladies' slippers sought. 
 This the Tragedians did with Buskings fit, 
 And the Comedian-shooes invented it. 
 Let not Rome henceforth of its Puissance boast, 
 Nor Spait tns vaunt much of their warlick host : 
 They laid their Yoak on necks of other Lands, 
 Forfar doth tie their feet and leggs with bands." 
 
 From this manufacture came the designation, the Sutors of 
 Forfar, and it helped to give point to the satire of Drummond 
 of Hawthornden on the town. Visiting it in 1645, it refused 
 to receive him, probably from fear of the plague, which was 
 then prevailing in many parts of the country. He betook him- 
 self to Kirriemuir, where he got a hearty welcome, and where 
 he played off a most ludicrous joke on the Magistrates of Forfar. 
 Learning the quarrel then raging between Forfar and Kirrie- 
 muir about the Moor Moss, Drummond addressed a letter to 
 the Provost of Forfar. That worthy somehow assumed that
 
 The Strathmore District Forfar. 173 
 
 the letter was from the Parliament, then sitting at St Andrews, 
 and convened the Council, with the parson, to see the document 
 opened, and to hear it read, when its contents turned out to be 
 as follows : 
 
 " The Khriemarians and the Forfarians met at Muir Moss, 
 The Kiiriemarians beat the Forfarians back to the Cross j 
 Sutors ye are, an' Sutors ye'll be 
 Fye upon Forfar, Kirriemuir bears the gree !" 
 
 As a Scene which anti-witch zeal frightened and maddened, 
 Forfar is second to none in Scotland. For a series of years its 
 records are full of apprehensions, trials, and executions of these 
 poor wretches. From 1650 to 1662 nine miserable creatures 
 suffered at the stake in the Playfield. It seems, indeed, to 
 have been in those days the chief business of the criminal 
 authorities, and of all they could persuade or command to assist 
 them in it. In spite of the severity against witchcraft for the 
 ten preceding years, it would appear that in 1661 it was more 
 rampant than ever, and new measures were taken for its 
 suppression. The town was divided into eight districts, and a 
 councillor assigned to each, for the purpose of " setting and 
 changing the gairds for the witches." If any of them were, in 
 spite of such vigilance, like to escape detection, that surely 
 afforded a strong presumption of their guilt. There must, in 
 that case, have been more than human art at work in conceal- 
 in^ them ! It was likewise decreed that "persones jmprisoned 
 for withcraft shall have no watch with them jn ther prisones, 
 nor fyre nor candle, but that sex men nightly and daily attend 
 and watch them jn the vper tolbooth, and that the quarter- 
 master shall order the watchmen to wisit them at every three 
 houres end night and day." Even looking out of the windows 
 of their prison was forbidden these hapless creatures ; and for 
 this sin two of them were ordered to be " put jn the stockes" 
 or to have their window nailed up. 
 
 " Johne Kinked, pricker of the witches in Trenent," was 
 brought to Forfar to help the authorities to discover and 
 extirpate the hellish crew ; and so well did he do his work, and 
 so honourable was it deemed, that he was made a freeman of 
 the burgh, just ten days after the same honour had been con- 
 ferred on Keith, sheriff-depute of the county, and of the noble 
 family of Keith-Marischal ! A vote of thanks was passed to 
 one, Alexander Heigh, for his " care and diligence" in " bring- 
 ing over Johne Kinked for trying of the prisoners suspect of
 
 174 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 witchcraft." Heigh was a dealer in " aquavitie" ; and a very 
 ungrateful fellow he must have been, since the evidence led 
 went to show that from him " the devill" got much of the 
 liquor with which he treated the jades when he met them in 
 the Kirkyard, in order to put fire into their veins, and mettle 
 into their heels. 
 
 The witches, Mr Jervise says, were " executed and buried 
 near the public washing green. The site of the gallows (1 stake), 
 where human bones have been found in great quantities, is now 
 occupied by a saw-mill and other works of industry, all adding 
 their mite to the growing importance of the town. The branks 
 or bridle a well-known instrument of punishment for scolds, 
 and those suspected of witchcraft is still preserved, among 
 other curiosities, in the county hall at Forfar. It is made of 
 various pieces of iron, united by hinges, and surrounds the head 
 of the delinquent, while a large dai-t-shaped piece is placed in 
 the mouth to prevent the accused from speaking." 
 
 When the enemy thus threatened by witchcraft the utter 
 ruin of the town, the Government did not leave the For- 
 farians to struggle alone with him. The Privy Council 
 appointed a special Commission, consisting of their Lovitis, 
 Cairncross, of Balnashanner, Hunter of Restennet, Hunter of 
 Burnside, Guthrie of Halkertown, Keith of Cadam, Sheiiff- 
 depute, Guthrie of Carsbank, Scott, Provost, and the Bailies of 
 Forfar, with full powers to meet when and where they should 
 find expedient, and to hold courts for the trial of persons accused 
 of witchcraft ; and the deed of commission named Helen Co thai], 
 Helen Guthrie, Elspeth Alexander, Isabel Smith, and Isabel 
 Tyrie, prisoners in Forfar, as having " confest themselves 
 guiltie of the abominable sin of witchcraft." 
 
 The work of this Commission is in the burgh records, from 
 which Miller, in his History of Dundee, has given some extracts, 
 which we shall reprint. " The Commissioners," says Mr 
 Miller, " appear to have met at Forfar from time to time, and 
 brought before them the hapless individuals obnoxious to the 
 charge of witchcraft. Among some curious examinations is 
 the following : 
 
 " Helen Guthrie confessed, first, that about the time when 
 St Johnstown's bridge was carried away, (the Bridge of Tay at 
 Perth, carried away in October, 1621), she murdered her 
 mother's daughter, the said daughter being her half-sister, and 
 about six or seven years of age ; and that for the said murder
 
 The Strathmore District Forfar. 175 
 
 her mother did always give her her malisone, yea, and upon her 
 deathbed continued to give her malisone, notwitstanding the said 
 Helen's earnest requests and beseechings to the contrarie. 
 
 " Then about three years, the last oate seed tyme, she was at 
 a meeting in the Kirkyard of Forfar, and that yr (there) were 
 prnt (present) there the devill himself in the shape of a black 
 iron heived man, and a number of other persons, besides Helen 
 herself and that they all danced together, and that the ground 
 under them was all fyre flaughter that Andi'ew Watsone had 
 his usual staff in his hand although he was a blind man yet 
 he danced as nimblie as any of the company, and made as great 
 merriement by singing his old songs, and that the said Isobel 
 Guthrie did sing her song called Pinkletum tinkletum. 
 
 " Helen goes to confess at another meeting. ' It was at 
 midnight when they danced together a whyle, and then went 
 to Maiy Kind's house, and sat down together about the table, 
 the devil being present at the head of it. And that some of 
 them went to Jon Beinny's house, he being a brewer, and 
 brought ale from hence ; and ithers went to Alex. Heigh 's 
 house, and brought aquavitae from hence, and thus made them- 
 selves merrie ; aud that the devil made miwh of them all, and 
 especially of Marion Rind. And at the said meeting they 
 agreed to undoe the foresaid John Beinny in his means,' &c. 
 
 " She also confessed ' That at the first of these meetings 
 Andrew Watson, Marion Rind, Elspat Alexander, Isobel 
 Schyrie, and herself went up to the Kirk-wall, about the 
 fartheast dore, and raised a young bairne unbaptized, and took 
 several pieces thereoff, at the fut, the hands, part of the head, 
 and a part of the buttocks, and that they made a pye thereof, 
 that they might eat of it, that by this means they might never 
 (as they thought) make a confession of their witchcraft.' " 
 
 In the course of the struggle between Prelacy and Presbytery, 
 Forfar became keenly Prelatic. The whole county indeed 
 proved a stronghold of Prelacy, and of devotion to the Stuarts. 
 If the Kirk in Angus did not lead the way, it followed most 
 servilely in the wake of the Lords and Lairds, who conformed 
 so generally to the Court Religion, concurring with James VI. 
 in his " No bishop, no king," and with Charles II., that 
 Presbyterianism is not fit to be the religion of a gentleman. 
 The Synod of Angus was the only Synod in the whole Kirk, 
 which, in 1607, tamely submitted to James's imposition of a 
 constant moderator, a violation of the fundamental principle of
 
 176 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Presbyterian parity, and the first step to full-blown Diocesan 
 Episcopacy. 
 
 In 1639, a movement was made to have the Covenant 
 subscribed at Forfar, and money and men raised for behoof of 
 the Covenanting cause ; but the attempt altogether failed. The 
 Earl of Southesk resolutely opposed it, in the face of his own 
 son-in-law, the future great Marquis of Montrose, who was 
 then a champion of the Covenant, preaching and fighting for 
 the faith which he afterwards destroyed. 
 
 In 1644, Committees of the adherents of Charles sat daily at 
 Forfar, to support him against the nation which had risen in its 
 might to maintain its religion and its liberties ; and General 
 Baillie was a most unwelcome visitor, when next year he en- 
 camped a night at Forfar, in his vain attempt to prevent 
 Montrose's escape into the Highlands. 
 
 In 1647, one of the Forfar " sutors," Alexander Strang by 
 name, Provost of the burgh, and its Commissioner in Parlia- 
 ment, immortalised himself among his party by his speech and 
 his vote against what some still persist in calling " the sale of 
 Charles I. to his English enemies." Sir Henry Spottiswood 
 thus celebrates this Abdiel in his cavalier lay : 
 
 "Neither did all that Pailiaruent agree 
 To this abhorrent act of treacherie, 
 Witness that still to be renowned sutor, 
 Forfar's Commissioner and the State's tutor 
 In loyaltie ; who being asked his vote, 
 Did with a tongue most resolutely denote 
 In loyal heart, in pithie words, tho' few 
 'I disagree, as honest men should doo.'" 
 
 The war between King and Parliament having issued in the 
 execution of Charles I. and the establishment of the Common- 
 wealth, a Captain Buchan appeared in Forfar in 1651, who was 
 suspected of being a spy of the English .Republicans. The 
 Magistrates apprehended him, and threw him into prison, for 
 which the town suffered speedily and severely. Monk had just 
 captured Dundee, when tidings reached him that Buchan was 
 in custody. Immediately, before the Magistrates of Forfar had 
 time to try the prisoner, Monk despatched Colonel Ocky to the 
 presumptuous, daring burgh, with a considerable detachment of 
 horse and foot, who not only set the Captain at liberty, but took 
 summary vengeance on the town, pillaging it, and, breaking 
 open the charter room, " took forth all their rights and records, 
 and cancelled and destroyed the same." Hence the want of
 
 The Strathmore District Forfar. 177 
 
 ancient burgh writs, the oldest extant only bearing the date of 
 1660. 
 
 The Restoration having taken place, the Prelatic loyalists of 
 Forfar set up their heads, and did their best to make the shadow 
 go backward at least twenty-two years on the dial of Britain. 
 The National Covenant, as it was sworn in 1638 and after- 
 wards, and the Solemn League and Covenant, they pronounced 
 " unlawfull oathes." Not only so, but such abjects were they 
 as to proceed to set their seal on principles the most slavish ; 
 according to which, though civil government should become 
 systematic, iron tyranny, there is no earthly remedy ; his poor 
 subjects sinning against high Heaven if they resist the monarch 
 born to rule them, when he is rioting in destroying their goods 
 and liberties and lives ! " Wee Pro west, Bailies, and 
 Counsellors of the burgh of Forfar, under subscryand and evrj 
 ane of ws doe sincerly affirme and declaire that we judge it 
 wnlawfull to subjects, upon pretence of reformatione or other 
 pretence whatsoever, to enter into Leagues and Covenants, or 
 to take vp armer aganest the King or theie commissioned by 
 him," &c. One wonders if the Provost, Bailies, and Councillors, 
 of Forfar did really themselves believe in the God-blaspheming 
 and man-degrading doctrine. 
 
 The minister of Forfar at the Restoration was Alexander 
 Robertson, A.M. He must have been a resolute Presbyterian ; 
 for he was deprived in 1662, by Acts of both Parliament and 
 Privy Council. 
 
 The Revolution having been accomplished in 1688, a detach- 
 ment of the forces of William and Mary was next year stationed 
 at Forfar. The immediate neighbourhood was Jacobite enough, 
 not to be above the need of them for its peace and security but 
 the special object of the detachment was to watch the move- 
 ments of the rebels, who, after the battle of Killiecrankie, 
 warmed for a time about the base of the Grampians, and were 
 continually passing to and fro between Dunkeld and Brechin, 
 " blundering and plundering," if we may use a phrase lately 
 invented by a high authority, and so good that it ought not to 
 be forgotten, though nowhere was the spirit breathed in the 
 Jacobite song, Wee, wee German Lairdie, more rampant : 
 
 " Wha the deil hae we gotten for a king, 
 
 But a wee, wee German lairdie ? 
 And when we gaed to bring him hame ; 
 He was delving in his yairdie ; 
 M
 
 178 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Shonghing kail, and laying leeks, 
 Bat the hose and bat the breeks ; 
 And up his beggar dads he cleeks, 
 This wee, wee German lairdie. 
 
 " And he's clapt down in oar gudeman's chair, 
 
 The wee, wee German lairdie ; 
 And he's brought fouth o' foreign trash, 
 
 And dibbled it in his yairdie. 
 He's pu'd the rose o' English loons, 
 And broken the harp o' Irish clowns ; 
 But our thistle taps will jag his thumbs 
 This wee, wee German lairdie." 
 
 Forfar does not figure prominently in the Rebellion of 1715. 
 The fate of the Earl of Strathmore on the street of Forfar, on 
 the 9th May, 1728, was one of the tragic, though remote issues 
 of the Rebellion of that year. Down to it, Carnegie of Fin- 
 haven had been a warm supporter of the Stuarts ; but having 
 deserted to the side of the Hanoverians, he incurred the mortal 
 hatred of the Jacobites. On the day we have named the Earl 
 of Strathmore, his kinsman, Lyon ofBrigton, and Carnegie, 
 met in Forfar at the funeral of a daughter of Carnegie of Lour. 
 After dinner, they indulged in drinking till they were all 
 intoxicated, when Brigton taunted Carnegie as a turn-coat, and, 
 on coming to the street, pushed him into the gutter. On getting 
 on his legs, Carnegie ran up to his companions, drew his 
 sword, and made a thrust at Brigton. The Earl of Strathmore, 
 who had rushed in between the parties, to prevent bloodshed, 
 and to reconcile them, received the wound meant for Brigton, 
 and died of it on the Saturday following. 
 
 Rebellious as Forfar was in 1745, the lairds of Pitrichie and 
 Echt were confined in it. Though the inmates of a jail, their 
 fate was enviable compared with that which Councillor Binny, 
 " another sutor" of Forfar, suffered. On his way home from 
 Dundee, on a Friday, he was seized at Petterden, on the King's 
 highway ; blindfolded and fettered ; mounted on a horse, with a 
 ruffian behind him, who grasped him about the body ; tran- 
 sported for the space of two hours, as he reckoned ; carried up 
 several stairs of an unknown dwelling, and kept there in a 
 most miserable state for thirty hours or thereby, " during 
 which tyme they used their most endeavours with him, by 
 horrid imprecations, menaces, and threatenings, to leave the 
 present Magistrates their party, to which he had always firmly 
 stood by, and come over to the oyr side of the question." Some 
 may be interested to know that the Councillor, still blind-
 
 The Strathmore District Forfar. 179 
 
 folded, was carried back by his " invaders ; " and " about twelve 
 at night, as he apprehends, being the Saturday, was left by 
 them in the muir of Kincaldrum, unloused in a moment both 
 at armes and face, and certified, with great oaths, to conceal 
 the treatment he met with, and abide by the promises or oaths 
 he had come under (no doubt, he came lengths with respect to 
 their demands), oyerways it would fare worse with him. This 
 part, where they left him, is within a mile, or thereby, where 
 they first attackt him." 
 
 A Highland feud had one of its bloody putbreakings in the 
 neighbourhood of Forfar in 1763. The clans at feud were the 
 Farquharsons of Glenshee and Glenisla, and the M'Omies of 
 the same Glens j the latter the ancestors of the M'Omies of 
 Easter Skene and Tillyfour, Aberdeenshire. The quarrel was 
 about some right of property, which it would be a waste of 
 time and words to wait to explain. An action was raised 
 before the Sheriff of the county, which brought the parties 
 down to the town, and, unfortunately meeting near the Moor 
 of Forfar, they fell on one another, and four lives were sacri- 
 ficed in the fray. 
 
 Forfar is the place which James VI. named as furnishing 
 the model of Scotch hospitality, of which he made his boast to 
 the English. On his way to London to succeed Elizabeth on 
 the throne, he was entertained with great splendour in one of 
 the English towns. The Mayor, in honour of the occasion, 
 kept open house for several days ; and some of the courtiers 
 ventured to hint that James must have seen few examples of 
 such munificence among the narrow dignitaries of Scotland. 
 " Fient a bit o' that are they," cried the King ; " the Provost o' 
 my burgh o' Forfar, whilk is by nae means the largest town in 
 Scotland, keeps open house a' the year round, and aye the mae 
 that comes the welcomer." The Provost of Forfar at that time 
 kept an ale house ; so that James's words were literally true. 
 
 It was in Forfar that the famous case occurred, which led to 
 the judicial decision that no charge can be made for the stirrup 
 dram. A brewster's wife having one day " brewed a peck o' 
 maut," and set it to the door to cool, a neighbour's cow passing 
 by drank the browst. The alewife took the case into court, 
 when it was decided that, as by immemorial custom, nothing 
 was ever charged for a standing drink or stirrup cup, the 
 defendant ought to be assoilzied ; the cow having swallowed 
 the browst standing, and at the door, 
 
 M2
 
 180 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 It was Forfar that suggested to the Earl of Strathmore his 
 witty invention for Loch draining a difficult, tedious and 
 expensive business, by the usual mode of effecting it, as the 
 people in the Howe of Strathmore, and in all such Howes, 
 know well by experience. At a public meeting held about the 
 draining of the Loch, the Earl said he believed the cheapest 
 method of draining it would be, to throw a few hogsheads 
 of good mountain dew into the water, and set the drucken 
 writers of Forfar to drink it up. 
 
 It is to the honour of Forfar that its new Cemetery is 
 adorned with a tasteful monument to the memory of the late 
 illustrious statesman, Sir Robert Peel, the first tribute of the 
 kind paid to him in Scotland. 
 
 John Jamieson, A.M., D.D., F.RS. and F.A.S.E., was 
 minister of the Secession congregation in Forfar, from August, 
 1780, to May, 1797. We do not know whether Forfar is 
 proud of his connexion with it ; but it may well be so. To say 
 nothing of his many contributions to theological literature, all 
 of high excellence, such other works as his Scottish Dictionary, 
 his Historical Account of the Culdees, his edition of Slezer's 
 Theatrum Scotiae, &c, &c., will transmit his name with rare 
 honour to the latest generation. 
 
 KIRRIEMTJIIl. 
 
 Krrriemuir is a burgh of barony. Modern, as compared with 
 such towns as Forfar and Dundee, it is yet a place of consider- 
 able antiquity and importance, though little is known of its 
 earlier annals. A writer, giving an account of it in one of our 
 best Gazetteers, remarks--" Though the town is ancient, few 
 authentic, and no interesting events in its early history are 
 known." 
 
 A little to the west of the town is a large artificial mound 
 called the Court-hill, and no one needs to be told the reason of 
 the name. On that hill, in other days, sat the Baron Bailie, 
 administering justice in the burgh and the surrounding district. 
 Close by the hill is the Witch-pool, a name which reminds us 
 in what a great part of the Bailie's business lay for the space of 
 nearly half-a-century. Our readers must understand that the
 
 The Strathmore District Kirriemuir. 181 
 
 Witch-pool was not for drowning the witches. Witches were 
 not drowned in those days ; they were burned. Real witches, 
 indeed, would not drown The pool was designed, not for 
 punishment, but for trial. It furnished an ordeal to which 
 those who were accused of witchcraft were subjected. It served 
 the same purpose as John Kinked's " pricking" or " broding," 
 and it was much handier and cheaper. If the accused floated 
 when they were cast into the pool, they were guilty ; they were 
 witches, and were forthwith burned. If they sank they were, 
 of course, drowned, but they were innocent of the crime 'of 
 witchcraft laid to their charge, and they were proved to be 
 innocent at the small cost of the loss of their lives. 
 
 Such was the received faith on the subject ; such was the law 
 of the case ; and so King James VI. expounded in his once 
 famous treatise on demonology and sorcery. Discussing the 
 probability of the innocent being accused of witchcraft and 
 punished for it, he wrote : " There are two good helps that 
 may be used for their trial : the one is the finding of their mark, 
 and trying the insensibleness thereof, the other is their fleeting 
 (floating) on the water ; for, as in a secret murder, if the dead 
 carcase be at any time thereafter handled by the murderer, it 
 will gush out blood, as if the blood were crying to Heaven for 
 the revenge of the murderer. So it appears that God hath 
 appointed (for a supernatural sign of the monstrous impiety of 
 witches) that the water shall refuse to receive them in her 
 bosom that have shaken off them the sacred water of baptism, 
 and wilfully refused the benefit thereof." 
 
 The parish has its antiquities rocking stones, standing- 
 stones, tumuli, &c. ; but for the reasons frequently assigned in 
 these papers with reference to such objects in other quarters, 
 they do not furnish us with Historic Scenes : at least, we are 
 not able to read their records. The history, which was doubt- 
 less long associated with them, has passed into oblivion. Even 
 tradition has not kept hold of any lingering remnants of it. 
 
 The Ogilvys of this and the neighbouring parishes figure in 
 the history of the district, in the earliest glimpses which we 
 have of it. Kirriemuir, being on the border of civilisation, was 
 much infested with the Caterans from the north. They came 
 down in bands to levy blackmail from the farmers on this side 
 of the Grampians ; a contribution which they demanded as the 
 price of their protection vouchsafed, and even of their forbear- 
 ance; and where the demand was refused, they robbed and
 
 182 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 plundered. The rich vale of Strathmore presented a violent 
 temptation to those ferocious and hungry marauders ; and it is 
 said in the Statistical Account of the parish " Many a tale is 
 told of their incursions. We are informed that, even so early 
 as 1392, thi-ee chiefs of the name of Donnachy, instigated or 
 commanded by Duncan Stewart, a natural son of the turbulent 
 Earl of Buchan, came down to ravage this district, and that a 
 bloody battle took place in the Stormonth, in which Sir John 
 Ogilvy, of this parish, was slain, with many of his followers." 
 
 Of family seats in the parish, raised by the deeds and the 
 fortunes of their owners to the rank of the historic, Inver- 
 quharity is the chief. The Castle is at the point where the 
 Carity falls into the South Esk, and is a fair specimen, in good 
 preservation, of an old baronial residence. The age of the 
 Castle is uncertain, but not so that of its curious, massive gate 
 of grated iron. King James's license to the proprietor to 
 " put ane iron yet therein, to fortifie his house and to strenth 
 it," was given at Stirling on the 25th September, 1573, and it 
 straitly commanded " that na man take on hande to make him 
 impediment, stoppinge, na distroublance in the makinge, 
 raisinge, hynginge, and upsetting of the said yhet in hia said 
 house, vder all payne and charge at aftir may folow." 
 
 In 1329 Inverquharity was given, by charter, by Margaret 
 Countess of Angus, to Sir Alexander Lindsay of Crawford, and 
 it continued in the possession of the Crawfords till 1405, when 
 it was resigned in favour of Sir Walter Ogilvy, Carcary, Lord 
 High Treasurer of Scotland. La 1420 he conveyed it to his 
 brother, Sir John, the founder of the Inverquharity branch of 
 the Ogilvys. His brother Walter, of Lintrathen, was the 
 founder of the Airlie branch ; and whether he or Sir John was 
 senior, and therefore the rightful chieftain of the clan, seems to 
 have been always a moot question among the parties concerned. 
 The barony passed by purchase, in the end of the last century, 
 to the family of Lyell of Kinnordy. 
 
 In the Battle of Harlaw, in 141 1, this district was numerously 
 represented. That battle was fought to repel Celtic barbarism, 
 personated in Donald, Lord of the Isles, who, in support of his 
 claim to the Earldom of Ross, collected an army of ten thousand 
 Highlanders, ravaged the counties of Moray and Aberdeen, and 
 threatened to make a desert of the Lowlands, as far at least as 
 the Tay, obliterating all that Saxon influence had done to 
 humanise our ancestors since Malcolm Canmore's sainted
 
 TJie jStrathmore District Kirriemuir. 183 
 
 Margaret had begun that most needful and blessed work. The. 
 Earl of Mar met Donald at the village of Harlaw, on the water 
 of Ury, about ten miles from Aberdeen, with an army greatly 
 inferior in numbers, but much superior in arms and discipline. 
 Mar was joined by Lord Ogilvy, Sheriff of Angus, at the head 
 of his own warlike clan. The engagement was fierce and 
 sanguinary. About nine hundred Highlanders fell, and almost 
 the whole of Mar's army; and among the slain were Lord 
 Ogilvy and his eldest son, and of his brave clan from Kirrie- 
 muir we know not how many. And, besides them, of families 
 of note in Angus and Mearns, there fell on that bloody field 
 Leslie of Balquhain, with six of his sons ; Sir Jas. Scrimgeour, 
 Constable of Dundee ; Sir Thomas Murray ; Sir Robert Maule 
 of Panmure; Sir Alexander Irvine of Drum ; Sir William 
 Abernethy of Salton ; Sir Alex. Straiten of Lauriston ; James 
 Lovel ; Alexander Stirling ; and Sir Robert Davidson, Provost 
 of Aberdeen. Well might Scotland's muse lament over the 
 disastrous day in the touching strains of the ballad, The 
 Battle of Harlaw, of which we must content ourselves with 
 giving only the three concluding verses : 
 
 " On Munonday at morning, 
 
 The battle it began ; 
 On Saturday at gloamin', 
 Ye'd scarce tell wha had wan. 
 
 " And sic a weary burying, 
 The like you never saw, 
 As there was the Sunday after that, 
 On the muirs down by Harlaw. 
 
 "And if Hielan lasses speer at ye 
 
 For them that gaed awa', 
 Ye may tell them plain, and plain enough, 
 They're sleeping at Harlaw !" 
 
 It was Sir Alexander Ogilvy, third baron of Inverquharity, 
 that was made Justiciar of the Abbey of Arbroath, and that 
 fought the battle of Arbroath with the Earl of Crawford, was 
 wounded and taken prisoner to Finhaven Castle, and died 
 there, as has been already related by us ; and of the five 
 hundred Ogilvys who perished in that battle, Kirriemuir doubt- 
 less furnished not a few. 
 
 Alexander, son of Sir John Ogilvy of Inverquharity, was a 
 youth of great spirit, valour, and daring, and, like all his race, 
 was an ardent supporter of Charles I. in the Civil War. .He 
 joined Montrose, and fought with him at Philiphaugh, on the 
 13th September, 1645, when the. fortune of war turned so
 
 184 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 fatally against the Marquis. His army was completely routed, 
 and he himself was obliged to flee to the mountains, where he 
 soon disbanded the troops still following him, and left Scot- 
 land. Young Ogilvy was taken prisoner at Philiphaugh ; and 
 was one of those cavaliers who were executed at Glasgow in 
 the October following Sir William Rollock on the 28th, 
 and Sir Philip Msbet and Ogilvy on the 29th. Bishop Wishart 
 says of him, in his Memoirs of Montrose " He was eldest son 
 to Sir John Ogilvy of Inverquharity, a very ancient family, 
 and not among the least famous in the Scots history. He was 
 yet but a youth, scarce eighteen years of age, but had already 
 displayed a genius for courage and magnanimity far beyond his 
 years. Nor is it easy to conjecture what they could possibly 
 lay to his charge, other than that new and unheard of kind of 
 treason a becoming loyalty and obedience to the best of 
 Kings. But it seems it was necessary to sacrifice this intrepid 
 young man to gratify the cruelty of Argyll, who was the 
 inveterate and implacable enemy of the name and family of 
 Ogilvy." 
 
 Captain Ogilvy, son of Sir David Ogilvy of Inverquharity, 
 fought at the battle of the Boyne in 1690, on the side of the 
 dethroned James VII., against William III., when the latter 
 was victorious, and James was obliged to flee to the Continent. 
 Captain Ogilvy afterwards enlisted in foreign service, and at 
 length fell in an engagement on the Rhine. He is said to 
 have been the author of the Jacobite song, It was a' for our 
 rightful King ; and if so, he must have been as near of kin to 
 the Muse as to Mars. 
 
 The present representative of the Inverquharity branch of the 
 Ogilvys is the well known and highly esteemed Sir John 
 Ogilvy, Bart., Baldovan House, lately M.P. for Dundee. 
 
 Shielhill is contiguous to Inverquharity, and in days of yore 
 its proprietorship for many centuries, its Castle romantically 
 situated on the north side of the Esk, and on the top of a rock 
 overhanging the river and its chapel, dedicated to St Colm, 
 gave it some conspicuousness in the Land of the Lindsays. But 
 its bridge, built in 1769-1770, is its Historic Scene ; and what 
 has made it historic is that at it the late Dr Jamieson, author 
 of the Scottish Dictionary, has laid the scene of his ballad, The 
 Water Kelpie, beautifully written, and instinct with the lore 
 of which Dr Jamieson was such a master, as about water 
 kelpies, so about all kindred tribes of being. " The principal
 
 The Strathmore District Kirriemuir. 185 
 
 design of the author of this piece," Sir Walter Scott says, 
 " was to give a specimen of Scottish writing more nearly 
 approaching to the classical compositions of our ancient bards 
 than that which has been generally followed for seventy or 
 eighty years past. As the poem is descriptive of the supersti- 
 tions of the vulgar in the county of Angus, the scene is laid on. 
 the banks of the South Esk, near the Castle of Inverquharity, 
 about five miles north from Forfar." The scenery is described 
 as it appeared to the poet's eye, when 
 
 " And Prosen proud, with ribbet loud, 
 
 Comes ravin' frae his glen ; 
 As gin he micht auld Esk affricht, 
 
 And drive him back agen. 
 " Ae summer e'en, upon ihe green, 
 
 I laid me down to gaze ; 
 The place right nigh, quhar Carity 
 
 His humble tribute pays : 
 "An ancient tour appear't to lour 
 Athort the neigtibourin' plain, 
 Quhais chieftain bauld, in times of auld, 
 
 The kintrie call't his ain. 
 " Its honours cow't, it's now forhow't, 
 
 And left the howlat's prey ; 
 Its skuggin' wude, aboou the nude, 
 With gloom owerspreads the day." 
 
 Then comes a vision of " a gaist," in a form so dreadful that 
 it makes one's hair stand on end to read the account of it. It 
 almost overwhelms the poet himself : 
 
 " With dreddour I, quhan he drew nigh, 
 
 Had maistly swarfit outricht ; 
 Less fleyit at lenth I gathered strength, 
 
 And speirit quhat was this wicht. 
 " Syne thrice he shook his fearsoum bouk, 
 
 And thrice he snockerit loud ; 
 From ilka e'e the fire-flauchts flee, 
 
 And flash alang the nude. 
 " Quhan words he found, their elritch sound, 
 
 Was like the norlan blast, 
 Frae yon deep glack, at Catla's back, 
 That skeegs the dark-brown waste." 
 
 The " sound" struck bird, trout, par, salmon, and otter with 
 terror and hoi'ror. The answer to the poet's speirin is long for 
 insertion ; but as the ballad is, we fear, much forgotten, and as 
 it is so rich in Kelpie lore, we shall give the answer entire. 
 
 " Vile droich," he said, " art nocht afraid 
 
 Thy mortal life to tyne ? 
 How dar'st thou seek with me to speik, 
 Sae far aboou thy line ?
 
 186 Historic Scenes in ForfarsMre. 
 
 "Yet sen thou hast thai limits past, 
 
 That sinder spirits frac men, 
 Thy life ill spare, and aw declare, 
 That worms like thee may ken. 
 " In kiutras nar, and distant far, 
 
 Is my renoun propall't ; 
 As is the leid, my name ye'll reid, 
 But here I'm Kelpie call't. 
 
 " The stripes and burns, throw aw their turns, 
 
 As weel's the waters wide. 
 My laws obey, their spring-heads frae, 
 
 Down till the salt sea tide. 
 " Like some wild staig, I aft stravaig, 
 
 And scamper on the wave j 
 Quha with a bit my mow can fit. 
 
 May gar me be his slave. 
 " To him I'll wirk, baith morn and mirk, 
 
 Quhile he has wark to do ; 
 Gin tent he tak' I do nae shak' 
 
 His bridle frae my mow. 
 " Quhan Murphy's laird his biggin' rear'd, 
 
 I carryit aw the stanes ; 
 And mony a chiell has hard me squeal, 
 
 For sair-briazod back and banes. 
 " Within nude mark, I aft do wark 
 
 Gudewillit, quhan I please ; 
 In quarries deep, quhile uthers sleep, 
 
 Great blocks I win with ease. 
 " Yon bonnie brig quhan folk waid big, 
 
 To gar my stream look braw ; 
 A sair-toil'd wicht was I be nicht, 
 
 I did mair than them aw. 
 " And weel thai kent quhat help I lent, 
 
 For thai yon image fram't, 
 Ahon the pend whilk I defend ; 
 
 And it thai Kdple nam't.* 
 " Quhan lads and lasses wauk the clais, 
 
 Narby yon whinny hicht, 
 The sound of me their daffin lays ; 
 
 Thai dar na mudge for f richt. 
 " Now in the midst of them I scream, 
 
 Quhan toozlin' on the haugh ; 
 Than quhidder by them down the stream, 
 
 Loud nickerin' in a lauch 
 " Sicklikes my fun, of wark quhan run : 
 
 But I do meikle mair ; 
 In pool or ford can nane be smur'd 
 
 Gin Kelpie be nae their. 
 " Fow lang, I wat, I ken the spat, 
 Quhair ane sail meet his deid : 
 
 * " A head like that of a gorgon, appears above the arch of the bridge. This 
 was hewn in honour of Kelpie." Jamieson.
 
 The Strathmore District Kirriemuir. 187 
 
 Nor wit nor pow'r put aff the hour, 
 
 For his wanweird decreed. 
 " for oulks befoir, alangis the shoir, 
 
 Or dancin' down the stream, 
 My lichts are seen to blaze at een, 
 
 With wull wanerthly gleam. 
 " The hind cums in, gif haim be win, 
 
 And cries, as he war wod 
 Sum ane sail soon be carryit down 
 
 By that wanchancy flude. 
 " The taiken leil thai ken fow weel. 
 
 On water sides quha won ; 
 And aw but thai, quha's weird I spae, 
 
 Fast f rae the danger run. 
 "But fremmit fouk I thus provoke 
 
 To meit the fate thai flee ; 
 To walderit wichts thai're waef ow lichts. 
 
 But lichts of joy to me. 
 " With ruefow cries, that rend the skies, 
 
 Their fate I seem to mourn, 
 Like crocodile, on banks of Nile, 
 
 For I still do the turn. 
 " Douce, cautious men aft fey are seen, 
 
 Thai rin as thai war heyrt, 
 Despise all rede, and court their dede : 
 
 By me are thai inspir't. 
 " Yestreen the water was in spate, 
 
 The stanners aw were cur'd ; 
 A man, nae stranger to the gate, 
 
 Kaid up to tak' the ford. 
 "Thehaill town sware it widna ride, 
 
 And Kelpie had been heard ; 
 But nae a gliffin wad he bide, 
 His shroud I had prepar'd. 
 11 The human schaip I sometimes aip ; 
 
 As Prosenhaugh raid haim 
 Ae starnless nicht he got a fricht, 
 
 Maist crack'd his bustuous frame. 
 " I, in a glint, lap on ahint, 
 
 And in my arms him fang't ; 
 To his dore-cheek I keipt the cleik, 
 
 The carle was sair bematg't. 
 "JMy name itsell wirks like a spell, 
 And quiet the house can keep ; 
 Quhan greits the wean, the nurse in vain, 
 
 Thoch tyke-tyrit, tries to sleip. 
 " But gin scho say, ' Lie still, ye skrae, 
 
 There's Water-Kelpie's chap,' 
 It's fleyit to wink, and in a blink, 
 
 It sleips as sound's a tap. 
 " He said, and thrice he rais't his voice, 
 
 And geif a horrid gowl ; 
 Thrice with his tail, as with a flail, 
 He struck the flying pool.
 
 188 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 " A thunderclap seem't ilka wimp, 
 
 Resour.din* throw the wude ; 
 The fire thrice flash't, syne in he plash't, 
 And sunk beneath the nude." 
 
 Since somewhere about the middle of the sixteenth century, 
 the ownership of Balinscho or Benshie has been in persons 
 connected with no fewer than three historic families. The first 
 proprietor of it upon record in that century was Scrimgeour, a 
 Bailie of Dundee, and one of the Dudhope family ; supposed to 
 have been either the father or the brother of Henry Scrimgeour, 
 the famous scholar and author, and Professor of Philosophy at 
 Geneva. He died in 1572 ; and his sister Margaret was the 
 wife of John Young, and the mother of Sir Peter Young of 
 Easter Seaton, one of the tutors of James VI. The next 
 proprietor was of the Airlie stock. About 1595 Ogilvy of 
 Inverquharity having slain Lindsay of Blairiefedden, Sir John 
 Lindsay of Woodwray and Woodhead, a son of the tenth Earl 
 of Crawford, killed Ogilvy of Balinscho, and took forcible 
 possession of his lands. The third proprietor was Fletcher, a 
 younger brother of Fletcher of Salton and Inverpeffer, who 
 married a daughter of Sir Thomas Ogilvy, second son of Lord 
 Airlie, whose life was part of the price with which Montrose 
 purchased his great victory at Inverlochy. A successor of his 
 added Lindertis to his patrimonial inheritance, and rose to the 
 rank of a Major in the Indian army. The last Fletcher of 
 Balinscho, a brother of the Major, was usually called in the 
 district " the daft laird," and his daftness issued in the sale of 
 his estates at his death, which then passed out of the Fletcher 
 family. 
 
 Logie is the residence of the Kinlochs of Kilrie, a very old 
 family, with a baronetcy, which was forfeited in 1746, for the 
 part which their chief acted in the Rebellion of the previous 
 year. The family is said to have " produced many individuals 
 eminent for their literature, their patriotism, and their loyalty." 
 One of these, David, a physician, travelling in foreign parts, 
 was seized and confined in the Inquisition in Spain, and 
 obtained his liberty by an extraordinary cure which he per- 
 formed on the Inquisitor-General, whose case had baffled all 
 the native medical skill of the country. On returning to 
 Scotland, he purchased lands with the wealth which he had 
 acquired, was made physician to James VI., and proved him- 
 self a man of great genius and learning, both by his pro-
 
 The Strathmore District Kirriemuir. 189 
 
 fessional writings and by some elegant poems in the Latin 
 language, -which were admitted into the collection of the Poetse 
 Scotigeni. 
 
 Ballindarg is the seat of the Grahams of M orphie, the only 
 landed Graham family now in Angus, the male lines of the 
 Grahams of Fintry, Duntrune, and Claverhouse having been 
 for some time extinct. The ancestral honours of the Grahams 
 of Morphie have been variously estimated, but it must be ad- 
 mitted on all hands that it is no common lustre that has 
 descended to them from John the Graham of Dundaff, the com- 
 patriot of Wallace ; from James Graham, the great Marquis of 
 Montrose ; and from John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount 
 Dundee. The second and third of these we have had frequent 
 occasion in these papers to say something about, and of the first 
 we may state that a closer bosom-friend of his chief, a braver 
 knight, and a more zealous champion of his country's inde- 
 pendence did not enlist under Wallace's banner. He, fell in 
 the fatal battle of Falkirk, and was buried in the churchyard 
 of that town. The inscription on his tomb is 
 
 " Mente manuque potens et Valae fidus Achates, 
 Conditur hie Gramus, bello interfectus, ab Anglis. 
 xxii. Julii, anno 1298." 
 
 " Heir lyes Sir John the Graham, baith wight and wise 
 Ane of the chiefs who rescewit Scotland thrice ; 
 Ane better knight not to the world was lent, 
 Nor was gude Grame, of truth and hardiment." 
 
 His Grace the Duke v of Montrose, the chief of the Grahams, 
 and proprietor of Dundaff, where the ruins of Sir John 
 Graham's Castle are still to be seen, is in possession of an old 
 sword, on which the following lines are inscribed : 
 
 " Sir John ye Grame, very vicht and wyse, 
 One of ye chiefes relievit Scotland thryse, 
 Faught vith ys sword and ner thout schame, 
 Commandit nane to beir it bot his name." 
 
 To coming generations Kinnordy will be an Historic Scene, 
 as the property and residence of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., a man 
 of rare general enlightenment and culture, and perhaps the most 
 eminent geologist that Scotland has yet produced. 
 
 George Ogilvy, A.M., was translated from Benvie, and ad- 
 mitted to Kirriemuir on the 13th July, 1713. He was intruded 
 on the parish, and the intrusion was violently opposed. At 
 the Steps of Wester Tarbines, the members of the Presbytery 
 were attacked by a numerous mob of men, women, and children,
 
 190 Historic Scenes in ForfarsTiire. 
 
 who fired " blunt shot," and threw stones and clods at them. 
 They were pursued for about a mile before they were free of dis- 
 turbance; and then, at Cabbie-Latch in the Moor of Logie, 
 upon the border of the parish, they performed the unwelcome 
 admission. Next year, Mr Ogilvy commenced a process for 
 stipend, which James, Earl of Panmure, defended ; but the 
 Lords decided in favour of the minister. He remained at 
 Benvie, and did not take up his residence at Kirriemuir for two 
 years and five months after his settlement. He died in 1771, 
 aged about 90, and in the 61st year of his ministry. 
 
 RESCOBIE. 
 
 Rescobie and Aberlemno were inadvertently omitted in the 
 Sidlaw District, to which, though placed here, the reader is 
 requested to understand that they belong. 
 
 Rescobie was anciently a place of much more consequence 
 than it is now. It was a burgh of barony ; the town of 
 Rescobie so privileged being, we presume, the Kirkton, which 
 has totally disappeared. We also read once and again of the 
 Royalty of Rescobie. The Retours of Edzell describe the farm 
 of Durayhill and several other parts of the parish as Church 
 lands belonging to St Andrews, and situated in the Regality of 
 Rescobie. The Charter of Middle Drums speaks of the parish 
 of Kinnaird as being in like manner in the Diocese of St 
 Andrews, and Regality of Rescobie. 
 
 On the top of Turin Hill is Kemp or Camp Castle, as it is 
 called ; a mass of ruins covering the site of some great building, 
 or, as it has been described, " of various extensive contiguous 
 buildings, with a circular citadel of about forty yards in 
 diameter." The walls of the citadel measured at one place 
 thirteen feet in thickness, and in another place fourteen. The 
 area of the circle enclosed was no less than six hundred and 
 eighty-five square yards. Concerning these ruins it has been 
 remarked that "even tradition does not tell a lie." The 
 meaning of the compliment is, that it tells nothing about them ; 
 but in all probability they are the ruins of one of those old
 
 The StratJimore District Rescobie. 191 
 
 forts, which our remote ancestors built, either against foreign 
 enemies, or against the violence of neighbouring tribes, when 
 deadly feuds broke out among them ; or they might be meant 
 to serve both ends. 
 
 There was another of those forts on the Hill of Pitscandly, 
 of which there remained at the date of the last Statistical 
 Account of the parish only "one or two of the foundation 
 stones, and these almost wholly covered over with grass." 
 
 The vestiges of the great battle in this neighbourhood between 
 the Picts and the Scots, in which Feredeth was slain, are pretty 
 distinct. Pitscandly signifies the grave of the multitude ; and 
 it is likely enough that the name had its origin in the locality 
 having furnished a grave to the multitude slain in the battle of 
 Restennet. Then at the Blackgate of Pitscandly are two 
 pillar-stones, the one larger and the other smaller, which are 
 undoubtedly historic ; and we know no reading of them which 
 so much commends itself to us, as that of the late Rev. William 
 Rogers, who says, " It is not impossible that the large stone, 
 which is more than ten feet high and more than six feet broad, 
 marks the place where Federeth, King of the Picts, fell, or was 
 buried ; and that the other stone is in memory of some other 
 inferior but also distinguished chief." Many of high rank fell 
 at the same time with the king. Buchanan says that "he 
 perished with the flower of the nobility." 
 
 But the event which has more than any other made 
 Rescobie an Historic Scene, is the death there of one of our 
 own Scottish Kings. That was Donald Bain, brother of 
 Malcolm Canmore. On the death of their father, Duncan, 
 Donald had fled to the Hebrides ; and it does not appear that 
 he ever visited his brother Malcolm during his long reign ot 
 thirty-six years. But on hearing of his brother's death, he 
 hastened to Scotland with a powerful armament, which Magnus 
 Barefoot, King of Norway, had assisted him to collect. 
 Malcolm had six sons, the oldest of whom, Edward, fell with 
 his father at the siege of Alnwick. The five who survived him 
 were under age at his death ; and agreeably to the Celtic law 
 of succession, their uncle Donald was preferred to the throne. 
 Another thing favoured him ; and that was the offence which 
 many had taken at Malcolm's reforms, and at the favour shown 
 to the Saxons who had come from England to Scotland as a 
 place of refuge to them. 
 
 On possessing himself of the throne, Donald's first edict was
 
 192 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 a sentence of banishment from the kingdom against all 
 foreigners. The effect of this would have been to arrest the 
 civilisation of the country, and to throw it back into the con- 
 dition of the Hebrides, in which Donald had spent so many 
 years of his life. With the permission of William Rufus, the 
 English monarch, Duncan, an illegitimate son of Malcolm 
 Canmore, gathered in England a large force of English and 
 Normans, with which he came to Scotland, expelled Donald, 
 and seized the throne. After a reign of four months, this 
 Duncan was assassinated by the Maormor of the Mearns, and 
 Donald Bain was restored to the throne. But only three years 
 had elapsed when Edgar, one of the sons of Malcolm Canmore, 
 was solicited to become a candidate for the crown, and was 
 promised the support of the country. His uncle, Edgar 
 Atheling, advised him to comply, and assisted him to raise a 
 powerful army in England, with which he attacked Donald and 
 vanquished him, put out his eyes, and committed him to prison, 
 where he languished till his death, on which he was first buried 
 at Dunkeld, and afterwards carried to lona. The prison in 
 which he was confined was the Castle of Rescobie. 
 
 Where the Castle was situated is not certain ; but we are 
 inclined to the opinion that it may have been in the Loch of 
 Rescobie. In those days, castles were built for security in 
 lochs, as well as upon the tops of hills ; and on the south side 
 of the Loch of Rescobie, within a few yards of its margin, 
 there was, since this century began, a " large mass of stones 
 piled up," which may have been the ruins of the Castle in which 
 Donald Bain was imprisoned and died. 
 
 ABERLEMNO. 
 
 Aberlemno abounds in sepulchral remains. Besides cairns 
 heaped over the dead, stone coffins are common ; evidently 
 constructed in much haste, as if by persons afraid of being 
 attacked before they had finished the rites of sepulture. These 
 have been frequently met in the centre of the parish, but they 
 are not confined to it. At no distant date, on the estate of 
 Pitkennedy, was found one, containing a clay urn ; and near it 
 were scattered a number of beads, of jet or cannel coal, of which
 
 The Strathmore District Aberlemno. 193 
 
 more than a hundred were gathered, forming, it has been said, 
 "a necklace, probably the most complete hitherto found in 
 Scotland." A little west of the Castle of Melgund are three 
 tumuli, large enough to cover a hecatomb of the slain. In 
 removing the stones of a tumulus at Carsgownie a stone coffin 
 was found, with an urn in the centre of it, and around the 
 circumference of the tumulus were similar coffins, but of ruder 
 formation ; the former seeming to be the coffin of a fallen chief, 
 and the latter the coffins of his followers who had fallen with 
 him. 
 
 These remains are clearly enough the wrecks of war ; and, as 
 the Statistical Account of the parish expresses it" It is 
 evident that the neighbourhood of the church has either been 
 the scene of a succession of sanguinary conflicts, or else some 
 great and protracted struggle has rolled hither and thither its 
 tide of death over the adjoining fields." 
 
 The celebrated sculptured stones of Aberlemno we take to be 
 monuments of the same dire visitation. " A few hundred yards 
 to the north of the church" we quote again from the Statistical 
 Account "there is a monumental stone, about eight feet in 
 height, ornamented on one side with a cross, richly carved, and 
 with two female figures in the garb and attitude of mourning. 
 The other side is sculptured in relievo, with men, some on 
 horseback and others on foot, intermingled with dogs. Near to 
 this one are two smaller stones, which also have been orna- 
 mented ; but the hand of time has greatly defaced them." 
 
 " One of the most perfect of these . . . is in the church- 
 yard. On one side of this stone there is a curious cross in bold 
 relievo, and entirely covered with flowered ornaments. On the 
 reverse, towards the upper part of the stone, is another orna- 
 ment, having no obvious meaning, but intended for ornament 
 only. Beneath it there are some figures of men on horseback, 
 armed cap-a-pie, with helmets. Two of these seem to be flying, 
 but a third appears as if he were stopped in his flight by three 
 men on foot, the first of which bears in his hand a weapon of a 
 round form ; the second has the same sort of weapon in his left 
 hand, and in his right hand a spear which he is pointing at the 
 man on horseback. The third figure is nearly obliterated. Be- 
 low these there are two other equestrian figures, one of which 
 holds a baton in his right hand, while the other appears to be in 
 the attitude of encountering him." 
 
 We do not see that there is much difficulty or uncertainty in
 
 194 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 the reading of these stones. The figures of armed warriors, 
 &c., on the one side of them were appropriate symbols of the 
 conflict and the havoc of the war which had filled the district 
 with mourning. About the cross on the other side there can 
 be no dubiety. That consecrated symbol not only pointed to 
 the work of Calvary, but told also of the faith which, even in 
 that rude age, those who erected and adorned these stones had 
 in that mighty and blessed Saviour " who hath abolished death, 
 and hath brought life and immortality to light through the 
 gospel." 
 
 What was the war which had desolated Aberlemno, and of 
 which these sepulchral remains and sculptured stones are the 
 memorials ? It was the war with the invading Danes in the 
 beginning of the llth century. The Annals of Ulster do 
 indeed make mention of a great battle at Aberlemno in 697, in 
 which " Conquar MacEcha M'Maldwin and Aod, the tall King 
 of Daleriaid," were slain. But it is not to be doubted that the 
 remains and the stones with which we are now dealing, are 
 chiefly, if not exclusively, the memorials of the battle at 
 Aberlemno between Malcolm II. and the Northmen in 1012. 
 One version of the story is, that it was fought with a detach- 
 ment of the Danes, who were flying from Barry after their 
 defeat there. Another version is, that the Danish host divided 
 into three j that one division landed in the South Esk at 
 Montrose, another at Lunan Bay, and the third at Barry, and 
 that when the last was overthrown, one of the remaining divi- 
 sions took to their ships and escaped ; but that the other, 
 endeavouring to reach the mountains with the view of passing to 
 Moray, was overtaken and cut off near Brechin, which is under- 
 stood to have been at Aberlemno. Which of these versions is 
 to be preferred we do not wait to consider. Either sufficiently 
 and equally explains the monuments in question. Both agree 
 in making Aberlemno one of the great battlefields of the shire, 
 and therefore one of our Historic Scenes. 
 
 Several particular localities in this parish are Historic Scenes. 
 Melgund Castle is one of these. The barony of Melgund was 
 acquired in 1542 by Cardinal Beaton. The Beatons, or, as the 
 Fife branch prefer to spell it, the Bethunes, were an old family 
 of note, as old as the days of William the Lion. It was the 
 Cardinal who built the Castle of Melgund, and he resided much 
 in it with Marion Ogilvy, his mistress, and the mother of his 
 children, openly living with her as if they had been husband
 
 The Strathmore District Aberkmno. 195 
 
 and wife. He was a furious persecutor of the Reformers, and, 
 as such, was justly odious to them ; but he made himself odious 
 to others beside. Sir David Lindsay doubtless expressed the 
 feeling of a great majority of the nation toward him when he 
 wrote after his assassination : 
 
 " As for the Cardinal, I grant, 
 He was the man we weel could want, 
 
 And we'll forget him soon ? 
 
 And yet I think the sooth to say, 
 
 Although the loon is weel away ; 
 
 The deed was foully done." 
 
 The Cardinal was the "Wolsey of Scotland ; a man of 
 inordinate ambition and avarice ; a thorough adept in the arts 
 of priestly and courtly intrigue ; and, filling as he did the 
 highest offices in Church and State, he unscrupulously made 
 them subservient to the aggrandisement of his family and party, 
 and to the maintenance of all that corruption and tyranny, 
 ecclesiastical and civil, which had already brought the country 
 to the brink of ruin. The pen of impartial historians has 
 drawn his character thus " He was able, but unprincipled." 
 " He was stained by great vices." " He united with great 
 talents equally great vices, and left several children, the fruit of 
 open concubinage." The memorials of his infamy may yet be 
 read on the ruins of his Castle. Over one window of a room 
 of it are the Ogilvy arms, and over another window of the same 
 room are the Beaton arms ; while on the corbel of the stair 
 leading to this room are the Ogilvy arms, with the initials 
 M. O. (Marion Ogilvy.) 
 
 From the Beatons, Melgund passed through the hands of 
 several proprietors, till, by the marriage of the heiress of it to 
 Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, it was carried into the noble family of 
 Minto, and gives the title of Lord Melgund to the Earl of 
 Minto's eldest son. Murray was the name of one of those 
 proprietors. The founder of the family is said to have been a 
 merchant in Dundee ; and there is a wonderful tradition con- 
 cerning his posterity. It bears that, soon after the beginning of 
 the last century, the merchant's son or grandson, with his whole 
 family disappeared one winter night, when the tables were 
 spread for supper, and the lamps blazing ; and that they were 
 never more seen ! That they should leave Melgund, is not 
 unintelligible ; they had gambled away their estate. But the 
 mystery, and it is unsolved to this day, is, How did they disap- 
 pear ] How did they dispose of themselves, so that they were 
 
 N2
 
 196 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 seen no more ? One explanation is, that they fled to France. 
 Another is, that they threw themselves with their silver plate 
 (for it disappeared with them) into a deep pool of the small 
 stream flowing by the side of their Castle. If we must choose 
 between these explanations, we incline to prefer the former. It 
 does humbly appear to us, that there is no pool in the Burn 
 referred to so deep, but some adventurous Aberlemnoite would 
 have seen, long ere now, whether there was silver plate at the 
 bottom of it ; and he could hardly have seen that, without see- 
 ing, at the same time, whether the Murrays were there too, 
 keeping the plate company. 
 
 Aldbar Castle is another of our Scenes. Since 1296, when 
 Lawrence de Cramond swore fealty to Edward I. of England, 
 the barony has been in the possession chiefly of historic 
 families ; in that of the Cramonds till 1577, and afterwards in 
 those of the Lyons, the Sinclairs, and the Youngs. It is worthy 
 of notice that Thomas Ruddiman, the eminent grammarian, 
 taught for a short time in the Castle after finishing his 
 University course at Aberdeen in 1694. Mr Robert Young of 
 Aldbar. the great-grandson of Sir Peter Young, preceptor of 
 James VI., engaged Ruddiman to be the tutor to his son David. 
 It would appear that his situation in the Laird's establishment 
 was not very enviable ; for within a year he accepted the humble 
 office of schoolmaster in the parish of Laurencekirk. 
 
 In 1753, Aldbar was purchased by William Chalmers of 
 Hazelhead, the representative of an old Aberdeenshire family, 
 and his son and successor, Patrick, was Sheriff of Forfarshire 
 from 1769 to 1807. But that which, above all other things, 
 makes Aldbar an Historic Scene is that it was the seat of the 
 late Patrick Chalmers, Esq. From 1835 to 1842 he represented 
 the Angus Burghs in Parliament ; and was, altogether, one of 
 our most distinguished Commoners. He rendered invaluable 
 service to the burghs and county by the influential support 
 which he gave to every measure conducive to their interests. 
 He was a model proprietor, believing and practising the maxim, 
 that if property has its rights, it has also its duties. He did 
 much to enhance the value and the amenity of his Castle and 
 lands, and he did it with a philanthropist's delight in the 
 employment which he thus gave to the artizan and labourer. 
 A warm friend of education, he erected and endowed on his own 
 estate one of the best schools in the shire. He gave premiums 
 for superiority in cottage tidiness and gardening ; and, in short,
 
 The Strathmore District Aberlemno. 197 
 
 spared no effort or expense in endeavouring to elevate the people 
 by improving their habits and tastes. 
 
 In the republic of letters, and more especially in the depart- 
 ment of Scottish history and antiquities, Mr Chalmers occupied 
 a high place, as is testified by the honours which literary 
 societies at home and abroad conferred on him, by his able 
 assistance in the editing of some of the publications of the 
 Bannatyne and Spalding Clubs, and, above all, by his mag- 
 nificent volume on the Ancient Sculptured Stones of Angus. 
 The style, so admirable in its antiqueness, in which he raised 
 from its ruins the old chapel in the beautiful and romantic Den 
 of Aldbar, conveying to it from the parish churchyard the 
 remains of his predecessors, and to which his own were added 
 on his death in 1854, will tell posterity, as long as the fabric 
 endures, of his general culture, and of his accurate knowledge 
 and exquisite taste as an antiquarian. 
 
 In the ruins of that chapel Mr Chalmers found a curious and 
 interesting stone, which he transferred to the vestibule of his 
 Castle, and of which Pinkerton thus wrote : " It is well 
 known that there exist in various parts of Scotland, but chiefly 
 on the east side from the River Tay, singular erect stones, 
 generally with crosses on one side, and upon the other 
 sculptures, not ill executed for a barbarous age. Three are 
 found at Aberlemno. That at the Chapel of Aldbar is singular, 
 as, instead of horsemen and spears, there are two persons sitting, 
 probably religious, and beneath them, a man seemingly tearing 
 out a lion's tongue perhaps Samson and opposite to him a 
 curious figure of an antique harp, and under these a man on 
 horseback, a lamb, and other animals." The author of the 
 Statistical Account of the parish judiciously remarks : " It is 
 most probable that this was either an altar piece, or that it was 
 intended in some way to ornament the sacred edifice whence 
 it was taken. The subject is evidently a Scriptural one, 
 although from the introduction of the harp, it is most probable 
 that it was David, and not Samson, whom the sculptor designed 
 to represent as achieving a victory over some beast of prey." 
 
 There is yet another of our Scenes in this parish. It is 
 Balgavies Castle, the property and residence of Sir Walter 
 Lindsay, third son of David of Edzell, the ninth Earl of Craw- 
 ford. Sir Walter took the side of James VI., in his youth, was 
 the King's apologist for his foolish and hurtful fondness for the 
 Earls of Lennox and Arran, and was appointed one of the
 
 198 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 gentlemen of the royal bedchamber. Exit he by and by changed 
 sides. Becoming a pervert to Popery, a pervert's zeal inflamed 
 him. He kept in his Castle an English Jesuit, and with his 
 help confirmed the Popish Earls Huntly, Erroll, and Angus, and 
 instigated them to those courses which made them such a plague 
 to the King and the nation. They were in constant and con- 
 fidential correspondence with the Court of Spain, to which, and 
 to the Catholic League, they were ready to sacrifice the religion 
 and the liberties of the land ; and there is much ground for 
 believing that it was in Balgavies Castle that this traitorous 
 plot was hatched, and from it that this traitorous correspondence 
 proceeded. 
 
 In 1593 James made an expedition to the north, avowedly 
 to crush this pestilent faction ; and, half-hearted as he was in the 
 prosecution of this design, his vengeance happened to fall some- 
 what heavily on Sir Walter Lindsay of Balgavies. He over- 
 threw his Castle, all but razing it to the foundation, and it was 
 never rebuilt ; the only vestige of it in our times being " the 
 ruins of two of the vaults which still top a hillock in the corner 
 of a field." 
 
 We may add, that in 1606 Sir Walter died a violent death. 
 He fell by the hand of his kinsman, the Master of Crawford, 
 son of the eleventh Earl. Throwing off all restraint, neither 
 fearing God nor regarding man, he " overpassed the deeds of the 
 wicked." He took to freebooting, and, at the head of a band 
 of villains like himself, was the terror and scourge of the 
 country, destroying property and life and not sparing his own 
 nearest relatives. 
 
 Aberlemno was not behind its neighbours in its Jacobitism. 
 John Ochterlony, A.M., who had been minister of the parish, 
 and was chamberlain on the estate of Melgund, and proprietor 
 of Flemington, signalised himself by his Jacobite zeal. In 
 1701, he was accused of withdrawing the people from those sent 
 to preach by the Presbytery, overawing them by threatenings, 
 and preaching to them in a meeting-house. He replaced him- 
 self in the church in 1703, and was deprived by a Justice Court. 
 He intruded again in 1716 ; and was prosecuted before the 
 Lords of Justiciary for " intruding into parish churches, lesson- 
 making, and praying for the Pretender :" but the Solicitor- 
 General deserted the diet in respect of His Majesty's Act of 
 Grace. He still kept hold of the poor's box, mort-clothes, &c, 
 which the Kirk-Session was obliged to demand of him in 1722.
 
 The Straihmore District Oatlilaw. 199 
 
 He had a place of worship at Flemington for several years. In 
 1726 he removed to Dundee ; and was that same year con- 
 stituted Bishop of the non-jurant church of Edinburgh. The 
 district of Brechin was assigned him in 1731, and he died at 
 Dundee in 1742, aged seventy-five. 
 
 OATHLAW. 
 
 Oathlaw, anciently called Finhaven, is rich in Historic 
 Scenes. 
 
 On the summit of Finhaven Hill are the ruins of what must 
 have been, for its situation, an immense building. Its site 
 shows its figure to have been a parallelogram ; its main length 
 being from 360 to 380 feet, and its main breadth from 90 to 
 120 feet, with outworks beyond of formidable dimensions. Its 
 wall is calculated to have been, in its highest part, at least 
 ten feet above ground, and six or eight feet below, and to have 
 had more than proportionate thickness. It encloses a huge 
 heap of stones, presenting all the looseness and rudeness which 
 iisually mark the work of " Desolation's blast." The chief well 
 was on the western side, and was so large that it was at one 
 time supposed to be the mouth of an extinct volcano. The 
 stone of which the wall was built was mostly that of the Hill, 
 which is conglomerate ; but there are in it many traces of 
 freestone, and of other species not common in the district, 
 whencesoever they may have been brought. The structure was 
 vitrified. By the action of fire applied to it after it was built, 
 the stones had been liquified, and ran together, till, when cool, 
 they formed a body more compact and hard than our modern 
 cement is capable of effecting. 
 
 It seems to us that there is no room for hesitation about the 
 purpose which this structure was meant to serve. We take it 
 to have been one of the forts, erected by our grey fathers 
 before the days of the Roman invasion for security against foes 
 whether foreign or domestic, and it was evidently one of the 
 great " strengths" of the kingdom. In its construction it 
 appears to have been admirably fitted for this purpose, and it 
 was admirably situated for it, too ; on the top of a hill 573 feet 
 above the level of the South Esk at the Castle of Finhaven,
 
 200 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 and where, at the opening from the north of the Great Strath, 
 it commanded the principal passes into it, through the valleys 
 of the Isla, the Prosen, and the Esk. The idea that such an 
 erection was intended merely for a beacon post, is, as it has 
 been termed, " preposterous." Even the old legend, professing 
 to account for the vast ruin, is not more unworthy of credit. 
 That legend is to this effect : That the ruin in question is the 
 ruin of the first Castle which it was attempted to build at 
 Finhaven. The attempt was not allowed to proceed far ; not 
 farther than the laying of the foundation. Any thing more 
 which the builders raised during the day was always knocked 
 down by some demon-power in the course of the next night. 
 Watchers were set to protect the work, and to frighten away 
 the mischievous spirit ; but the result was, that the watchers 
 themselves were frightened out of any wits which they had. 
 Yet the enemy, though called a fiend in the legend, was not so 
 veiy fiendish as was thought. At midnight it spoke thus to 
 the watchers, amidst the din of the tumbling wall built the 
 previous day : 
 
 " Found even-down into the bog, 
 Where 'twill neither shake nor shog." 
 
 They took the hint, left the hill, and set to work in the vale, 
 and their " stickit" work on the hill top remained to exercise 
 the fancy of the J onathan Oldbucks of future times. 
 
 At Battledykes, in this parish, are the remains of a great 
 Roman Camp. Three sides of it, and part of a fourth, are 
 said to be almost entire ; five gates are distinctly seen ; and so 
 is the praetorium. Maitland accurately surveyed it in his day ; 
 and, according to his measurement, the mean length of the 
 camp was about 2970 feet, and its mean breadth 1850, embrac- 
 ing an area of eighty acres. It was nearly three times larger 
 than the famous camp at Ardoch, with which it communicated 
 by the Roman Road which passed from Ardoch northward 
 through Perthshire and Angusshire. Were it asked why the 
 Romans had a camp of such magnitude and strength here, 
 perhaps the explanation would lie in the numbers and valour 
 of the native population in this quarter. Able to build on the 
 Hill of Finhaven such a fort as we have been looking at, and 
 resolved to defend it and themselves to the uttermost, the 
 invader would naturally try to show himself as strong for attack 
 as they were for defence. As it has been put, " The extent 
 and magnitude of the camp at Battledykes, connected, too, with
 
 The Strathmore District OatJilaw. 201 
 
 the other camps in the neighbourhood, clearly shew that there 
 must have been a strong and numerous body of the tribes at 
 that time in this quarter. Most likely some powerful chief 
 occupied the fort on the Hill of Finhaven. We can scarcely 
 conceive of anything more perfect than the method thus 
 employed for keeping all such in awe and subordination, when 
 we consider that the dwellers in the fort must have seen the 
 Roman legions continually passing and repassing at the foot of 
 the hill from camp to camp. And how strongly and how constantly 
 must they have been reminded of the presence of their masters, 
 when we consider that the Roman camp was full in view of the 
 fort, and that they must have heard every day the sound of the 
 trumpet at the setting and the relieving of the watches V 
 
 It is commonly believed that this camp was occupied by 
 Agricola in A.D. 81 ; and General Roy says of it, "It appears 
 to me to be one of the most entire of the kind hitherto dis- 
 covered ; at the same time that the similarity of its figure and 
 dimensions prove indisputably that it held the same army 
 formerly encamped at Ardoch and Grassy- walls." 
 
 Though Battledykes was occupied by soldiery, and from this 
 circumstance derived its name, there is no record or tradition 
 of any great battle having been fought here. It is therefore 
 likely that the sepulchral remains found in the neighbourhood 
 are to be accounted for by the deaths from natural causes at 
 any place where multitudes of men rest for a season ; and 
 perhaps also by skirmishes which the Romans may have had 
 here with the natives. 
 
 On the farm of Battledykes, and within the limits of the 
 Roman Camp, are the King's Palace, the King's Seat, and the 
 King's Bourne ; significant names, and which seem obviously 
 to point to a period when Finhaven was a Royal demesne and 
 residence. Though we had no information when that was, we 
 might well suppose that, with the Royal Forest of Plater or 
 Plantane extending from Finhaven to the Hill of Kirriemuir, 
 Royalty might have a seat, if it should be only a hunting seat, 
 conveniently situated for pursuing in that forest the pleasures 
 of the chase. But we have information of The Bruce giving 
 the barony of Finhaven to one of his sons, which supposes it to 
 have been then Crown lands. That was his illegitimate son, 
 Robert Bruce, whom his father knighted, and who fell at the 
 battle of Dupplin in 1332, fighting for his brother David II., 
 against Edward, the eldest son of John Baliol.
 
 202 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Finhaven, long the principal residence of the great Lindsay- 
 Crawford family, has associated with it many events of high 
 interest and importance. The first Castle occupied the site 
 where the ruins of the last are still to be seen, at the confluence 
 of the Lemno and South Esk. The latest report on its con- 
 dition which has come our way bears, that " the north wall of 
 it was still entire, a substantial and beautiful piece of masonry, 
 standing as perpendicular as when it was erected " which we 
 mention the more carefully, because it is such good news to all 
 who believe in the prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer : 
 
 " When Finhaven Castle rins to sand, 
 The warld's end is near at hand !" 
 
 It was in 1375 that Finhaven and the Forestership of Plater 
 fell to the Lindsays. King Robert II. then granted them by 
 charter to Sir Alexander Lindsay of Glenesk. It is supposed 
 that his son, Sir David created the first Earl of Crawford in 
 1398, may have built the first Castle of Finhaven ; and it was 
 the birthplace and chief country seat of most of his successors 
 of the Glenesk line. He married the Princess Elizabeth, 
 daughter of Robert II., and, besides ennobling him, the King 
 gifted him with the barony of Strathnairn in Inverness-shire. 
 
 This Sir David was famous for his feats in arms, and 
 specimens of his exploits have been handed down to us. When 
 Duncan Stewart, illegitimate son of the Wolf of Badenoch, 
 came south with a band of cateranes to pillage and kill, Sir 
 David Lindsay of Glenesk, with Sir Walter Ogilvy, Sheriff of 
 Angus, Sir Patrick Gray, and a number of their followers met 
 him, Fordun says at Glenbrierichan, Wynton says at Glasklune, 
 which is twelve miles farther south. In the conflict which 
 ensued the Highlanders were victorious ; Sheriff Ogilvy, his 
 brother, and many of the gentry of Angus were slain, and Sir 
 David Lindsay and Sir Patrick Gray were severely wounded. 
 Sir David with his own hand had made many of the enemy bite 
 the dust ; but having pierced one of them with his lance and 
 pinned him to the ground, " the savage mountaineer, though in 
 the agonies of death, writhed his body up against the weapon, 
 and collecting all his force, with a last dying effort fetched a 
 sweeping blow with his broadsword, which cut through the 
 knight's stirrup leather and steel boot 
 
 ' Three ply or four above the foot, 1 
 to the very bone."
 
 The Strathmore District Oathlaw. 
 
 It was Sir David who humbled effectually the pride of Lord 
 "Wells, a celebrated English warrior, in the tournament at 
 London Bridge. Having been sent as ambassador into Scotland 
 by Richard II., and having at a Scottish banquet heard Sir 
 David extolling the prowess of his countrymen, Wells exclaimed 
 " Let words have no place ; if you know not the chivalry 
 and valiant deeds of Englishmen, assail ye ine, day and place 
 where ye list, and ye shall soon have experience." "Then," 
 said Sir David, " I will assail ye." Having given the 
 challenger his choice of the time and place of combat, they met, 
 according to his choice, on St George's Day, and at London 
 Bridge, in the presence of King Richard, his Queen, the good 
 Anne of Bohemia, the flower of the rank and chivalry of 
 England, and a vast concourse of the common people. At the 
 trumpet signal the knights rushed at each other " on their 
 mighty horses right eagerly," and in the third course " Lord 
 Wells was doung out of his saddle with sic violence that he fell 
 to the ground. 
 
 'Flatlings down upon the green,' 
 
 with great displeasure of Englishmen." A desperate combat 
 on foot succeeded, issuing in a complete and ignominious 
 discomfiture of Lord Wells ; to whom, as he lay at his feet, 
 Lindsay showed all knightly courtesy and kindness, thereby 
 enhancing the glory of his victory. 
 
 The victor died in Finhaven Castle in 1407, at the early age 
 of 41, and was buried beside his royal spouse in the family 
 vault within the Church of the Greyfriars, Dundee. 
 
 The circumstances in which Earl David and Sir Alexander 
 Ogilvy of Inverqxiharity breathed their last in this Castle have 
 already been related by us. They were carried into it, wounded, 
 from the field of the battle of Arbroath, and they both expired 
 in it, the Earl, it is said, "after a week of lingering torture." 
 
 David's son and successor was the Tiger Earl and Earl 
 Beardie, so called from the ferocity of his temper and the 
 exuberance of his beard. On Renet Green, about a mile to the 
 west of the Castle, he made his siibmission to James II. He 
 had joined in the rebellion against James, which had its out- 
 break in the battle of Brechin (of which more anon), and he 
 had persisted in defying his sovereign, and in avenging con- 
 fiscation and outlawry by all the depredation and destruction 
 which he was able to commit, till he found himself deserted by
 
 204 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 his fellow-rebels. When matters were in this state the King 
 personally took a journey north against him, vowing that he 
 would make the highest stone of the Castle of Finhaven the 
 lowest. On Renet Green Beardie cast himself on the royal 
 clemency. He appeared before Jam^s in poor apparel, bare- 
 headed and barefooted, the picture of self humiliation and 
 contrition ; and he addressed hhu in a speech so pathetic, that, 
 when he ended, as Pitscottie says, the noblemen and gentlemen 
 of Angus, who were present in great numbers, " held up their 
 hands to the King maist dolorously, crying ' mercy'! while (till) 
 their sobbing and sighing cuttit their words, that almaist their 
 prayers could not be understood ; through the whilk their raise 
 sic ruth and pity amang the company that nane amaist could 
 contain themselves with tears." 
 
 James pardoned Beardie, and restored him to his titles and 
 estates ; and, not forgetting his vow to demolish his proud 
 Castle, he honoured the letter of it thus 
 
 " Bounding nimbly to the highest tower, 
 Where Beardie wont to pass his leisure hour, 
 Down to the lawn a crazy stone he threw, 
 And, smiling, cried ' Behold my promise true !' " 
 
 This stone was deservedly made a memorial stone, and was 
 long fixed to the foot of the Keep by an iron chain. 
 
 Reconciliation being thus effected and solemnised, Beardie 
 entertained the King and his attendants for three days in the 
 Castle of Finhaven with the utmost magnificence ; and, six 
 months afterward, " he tuik the hot fever and died, in the year 
 of God ane thousand four hundred fifty-four years, and was 
 buried with great triumph in the Grey Friars of Dundee, in 
 his forbear's sepulchre." 
 
 Of his tiger character this Earl gave too many illustrations 
 besides those given in connection with his rebellion against his 
 sovereign. Other feudal lords had their gallows hills he had 
 a strong iron hook projecting from near the top of the south- 
 east wall of his Castle, still remaining at the date of our latest 
 report, from which he might conveniently suspend any offending 
 vassal. And it required no great offence to doom one to dangle 
 from that hook. A hapless minstrel, wandering one day into 
 the grounds of the Castle, was overheard crooning some verses 
 which prophesied evil concerning its owner. Brought into his 
 presence, and made to repeat the verse, his doom was instantly 
 pronounced by the Tiger.
 
 The Strathmore District Oathlaw. 205 
 
 " The ladie craved pity, but nane wad he gi'e 
 
 The poor aged minstrel must die ; 
 
 And Crawford's ain hand placed the grey head and lyre, 
 On the spikes of the turret sae high." 
 
 On another occasion, a gallows was found in the Spanish 
 Chestnut Tree, commonly called Earl Beardie's Tree, which grew 
 in the court-yard of the Castle ; said to have been the largest 
 and the most beautiful and valuable tree ever seen in Scotland, 
 as also the most aged, having sprung from a seed dropped by a 
 Roman soldier in the days of the Roman invasion of the 
 country. Mr Jervise writes : " On a messenger or gillie being 
 sent from Careston to the Castle of Finhaven, he cut a walking 
 stick from it (The Chestnut Tree), and the Earl was so enraged 
 at the sacrilege that he had the offender hanged on a branch of 
 it. The ghost of this luckless person still wanders betwixt 
 Finhaven and Careston, and is the constant attendant of 
 benighted travellers, by some of whom he is minutely described 
 as a lad of about sixteen yeai*s of age without bonnet or shoes, 
 and is known as Jock Barefoot. His freaks are curious, and 
 withal inoffensive, and on reaching a certain Burn on the road 
 he vanishes from view in a blaze of fire ! As if to confirm the 
 story of Beardie still living in the secret chamber of Glamis 
 where he is doomed to play cards until the day of judgment 
 it is an old prophetic saying that 
 
 ' Earl Beardie ne'er will dee. 
 Nor puir Jock Barefoot be set free, 
 As lang's there grows a chestnut tree !' " 
 
 In the days of David, son of Earl Beardie, and the fifth Earl 
 of Crawford, Finhaven Castle rose in dignity. From being the 
 seat of an Earl, it became the seat of a Duke. In 1448 the 
 Earl was created Duke of Montrose, the first dukedom ever 
 conferred on a Scottish subject not of royal family. The title 
 was taken from the burgh of Montrose, which, with its castle, 
 customs, and fisheries, and the lordship of Kinclaven, in 
 Perthshire, were erected into a Regality, to be called the Duchy 
 of Montrose, and to be held on the tenure of the Duke rendering 
 therefor a red rose yearly at the feast of St John the Baptist. 
 
 Earl David was from the first a great favourite of James 
 III., and deservedly so. He was fervently loyal to him when 
 individuals and factions were striving to grasp and wield the 
 authority of the throne, and some of them were even base 
 enough to be ready to sell the independence of their country. 
 The King, therefore, bestowed on him many royal favours ; as
 
 206 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 the keepership of the Castle of Berwick, the life rent of the 
 Lordship of Brechin and Navar, and the Sheriffship of Angus, 
 with the stronghold of Broughty at the month of the Tay. 
 And when malcontent traitorous barons conspired with one an- 
 other, and entered into intrigues with England, to dethrone 
 James, and to set the crown on the head of his son, the Earl 
 remained steadfastly and zealously faithful to his sovereign. 
 When the conspiracy broke out in open rebellion, of the army 
 with which James advanced against the insurgents, whom he 
 found stationed at Blackness, near Linlithgow, Crawford fur- 
 nished six thousand horsemen, and his influence with his 
 kinsman, Lord Lindsay of the Byres, obtained from him two 
 thousand more ; and his sense of deep obligation to him James 
 showed by raising him to the highest place in the scale of 
 nobility. 
 
 The Duke was a great favourite with James IV., as well as 
 with his father ; closed his illustrious and honoured career at 
 his Castle of Finhaven in 1495 ; and was succeeded by his 
 second son, John, who, having killed his elder brother, shrunk 
 from assuming the ducal title, and whose death by and by on 
 the fatal field of Flodden foreclosed proceedings against him, 
 for his fratricide, and all questions springing out of it. 
 
 The Castle of Finhaven was for twelve weeks the prison of 
 his successor. His own son, whom history justly brands as the 
 " Wicked Master " of Crawford, confined him in it for that 
 space of time, and then for fifteen days in Brechin, to which he 
 carried him ; during which he broke open and robbed his coffers, 
 and seized his rents. He was the terror and scourge of his 
 generation, but more especially of his neighbours and relations. 
 So flagitious and enormous was his wickedness, that, in 1531, 
 " he and his posterity were solemnly excluded from the succes- 
 sion to the estates and honours of the House of Crawford, and 
 were blotted out as if they had never existed ;" and after lead- 
 ing the life of a desperado till 1542, "he was sticked by a 
 souter of Dundee for taking a stoup of drink from him." 
 
 He was succeeded by Sir David Lindsay of Edzell, who, with 
 a noble generosity, had the titles and estates of Crawford 
 restored to the son of the Wicked Master. That son married 
 Margaret, daughter of Cardinal Beaton by Marion Ogilvy, 
 daughter of Lord Airlie ; for the Cardinal, maugre his vow of 
 celibacy, did homage to the primordial law, " Be fruitful and. 
 multiply, and replenish the earth." Only a month before his
 
 The Strathmore District Oathlaw. 207 
 
 assassination in his Castle at St Andrews, this marriage was 
 celebrated in Finhaven Castle with unexampled pomp and 
 festivity, the Cardinal himself being present, and the bride 
 bringing her husband a dower thereto unexampled in Scotland, 
 amounting to four thousand marks. After a course in which 
 he did not belie the proverb, " Like father, like son," this Earl 
 died in 1574. 
 
 His son and successor, who was another Earl David, made 
 even a richer marriage than his father had made. He wedded 
 for his first wife Lilias Drummond, daughter of Lord 
 Drummond, of Stobhall, and her dower is said to have been 
 ten thousand marks. 
 
 The marriage turned out a wretched one, in consequence of 
 a merry jest of Lady Crawford as to the paternity of her child. 
 Her Lord took the jest in earnest, and sent her home to her 
 family in disgrace. She rode back to his Castle to entreat his 
 forgiveness and " comfort /' but he refused to listen to her. He 
 then repented, and rode over to Stobhall, the Castle of the 
 Drummonds, to seek for forgiveness himself; but she proved 
 obdurate in her turn, and both died of grief that same night, 
 and were buried in one tomb " a story," says Lord Lindsay in 
 his Lives of the Lindsays, " probably correct in all save its 
 concluding catastrophe." The Earl survived Lilias, and was 
 afterwards married to Lady Griseld Stuart, daughter of the Earl 
 of Athole. 
 
 This melancholy story is the theme of the ballad of Earl 
 Crawford, which deserves to be better known than it is. We 
 shall transcribe the third and fourth parts of it : 
 
 iii. 
 " Earl Crawford lay o'er castle wa', 
 
 And he beheld baith dale and down, 
 And he beheld her, Lady Crawford, 
 As she came riding to the town. 
 
 " He called ane of his liverymen. 
 
 To come to him right speedilie, 
 4 Gae shut my yetts, gae steek my doors, 
 Keep Lady Crawford out frae me.' 
 
 " When she came to Earl Crawford's yett, 
 
 She tirled gently at the pin 
 Oh, sleep ye, wake ye, Earl Crawford, 
 Ye'll open, let Lady Crawford in ? 
 
 " Come down, come down, oh, Earl Crawford, 
 
 And speak soire comfort unto me, 
 And if ye winna come yoursel' 
 You'll send your gentleman to me."
 
 208 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 " * Indeed I winna come mysel', 
 
 Nor send my gentleman to thee, 
 For I tauld you, when we did part, 
 Nae mair my spouse ye'd ever be.' 
 
 " She laid her mouth then to the yetts, 
 
 And aye the tears drap't frae her e'e, 
 Says ' Fare ye weel, Earl Crawford's yetts ! 
 You again I'll nae mair see. ' 
 
 IV. 
 
 11 Earl Crawford call'd on his stable-groom, 
 
 To come to him right speedilie, 
 And sae did he his serving-man, 
 That did attend his fair bodie 
 
 " ' Ye will gae saddle for me my steed, 
 And see and saddle him speedilie, 
 And I'll gang to the Lady Crawford, 
 And see if she will pity me.' 
 
 " Lady Crawford lay o'er castle wa', 
 
 And she beheld baith dale and down, 
 And she beheld him, Earl Crawford, 
 As he came riding to the town. 
 
 " Then she has call'd ane c f her maids 
 
 To come to her right speedilie, 
 ' Gae shut my yetts, gae steek my doors, 
 Keep Earl Crawford out frae me.' 
 
 " When he came to Lady Crawford's yetts, 
 
 He tirled gently at the pin, 
 ' Sleep ye, wake ye, Lady Crawford ? 
 Ye '11 rise and let Earl Crawford in. 
 
 " ' Come down, come down, oh Lady Crawford ! 
 
 Come down, come down, and speak wi' me ! 
 11 And gin ye winna come yoursel', 
 
 Ye'll send your waiting-maid to me ?' 
 
 " ' Indeed I winna come mysel', 
 
 Nor send my waiting-maid to thee, 
 Sae take your ain words hame again, 
 At Crawfoid Castle ye tauld me.' 
 
 " Oh, mother, dear ! gae make my bed, 
 And ye will make it saft and soun', 
 And turn my face unto the west, 
 That I nae mair may see the sun.' 
 
 " Her mother she did make her bed, 
 
 And she did make it saft and soun', 
 True were the words fair Lillie spake, 
 Her lovely eyes ne'er saw the sun. 
 
 " The Earl Crawford mounted his steed, 
 Wi' sorrows great he did ride hame ; 
 But ere the morning sun appear'd, 
 This fine lord was dead and gane.
 
 The Strathmore District Oatlilaw. 209 
 
 " Then on ae night this couple died, 
 
 And baith were buried in ae tomb ; 
 Let this a warning be to all, 
 Their pride may not bring them low down. 
 
 Faithless to the wife of his youth, it is not surprising that he 
 was also faithless to his country. A Popish zealot, he was a 
 leading member of the faction who, in 1585, plotted the 
 invasion of the kingdom by the King of Spain and the Duke of 
 Guise, and promised to assist them in making themselves 
 masters of it. Tried for this conspiracy, with the Earls of 
 Huntly, Erroll, and Bothwell, they were all found guilty and 
 committed to prison ; but the amnesty granted at the King's 
 marriage to Anne of Denmark set them at liberty, after which 
 Crawford soon died. 
 
 His successor's sobriquet was the Prodigal Earl ; and it 
 befitted him. He was prodigal alike of property and of life, 
 plundering and killing as suited his need or his humour. He 
 murdered his uncle of Balgavies, persecuted Sir David of Edzell, 
 sought the life of his own son, and tried to complete the ruin of 
 his family by breaking down and throwing away the estates 
 belonging to it. He was at length apprehended, and imprisoned 
 in the Castle of Edinburgh, where he died miserably ; leaving 
 behind him a melancholy memorial of his prodigality in his 
 only child, Lady Jean, of whom the Right Honourable author 
 of the Lives of the Lindsays gives this brief biography : " An 
 orphan destitute and uncared for, and fated to still deeper 
 debasement, having run away with a common 'jockey with the 
 horn' or public herald, and lived latterly by mendicancy ' a 
 sturdy beggar/ though mindful still of the sphere from which 
 she had fallen,, and ' bitterly ashamed.' Shortly after the 
 Restoration Charles II. granted her a pension of 100 a-year, ' in 
 consideration of her eminent birth and necessitous condition,' 
 and this probably secured her comfort during the evening of her 
 days." 
 
 Of the remaining Earls of Crawford, of the old Lindsay 
 family, we mention only Ludovick, who, for the Stuart cause, 
 sacrificed his fortune, his country, and we may say his life. He 
 was the bosom friend of Montrose ; and these two, it can hardly 
 be doubted, concocted what is known in history by the name of 
 the Incident. It went " a-gley," as the best laid schemes often 
 do ; but had it fulfilled the purpose of its concocters, the 
 Marquis of Hamilton, Lord Lanark, and the Marquis of Argyll 
 would have been entrapped, and either put to death, or hurried 
 o
 
 210 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 on board a ship of war in Leith Roads and detained there 
 until they could be tried for treason ; Edinburgh would have 
 been taken, and the Castle and the Marquis of Montrose, at 
 that time a prisoner in it, would have been set free ; Crawford 
 and Montrose would have reigned without a rival ; and, in 
 short, the country would have been blessed with the realisa- 
 tion of all the devout aspirations of the Cavaliers. 
 
 Everything in and about Finhaven Castle, in the palmy days 
 of the great Earls of Crawford, shewed the princely state which 
 they kept up. Like the monarch himself, they had their Privy 
 Council ; and the Councillors were of the oldest and most 
 honourable families of Angus. They had their constables, their 
 armour-bearers, their chamberlains, c., the two first being 
 hereditary. In beauty, richness, and costliness, the furniture 
 of their castle was unrivalled, and lacked nothing that could 
 minister to comfort and luxury. The society visiting was the 
 most select and exalted in the land ; and for security, the trustiest 
 vassals were located in the immediate neighbourhood, as at 
 Barnyards and Markhouse. If ever earthly greatness and 
 glory promised to be enduring it was here ; but they have long 
 since perished utterly. Of the gorgeous fabric, all that remains 
 is the ruin familiar to the eye of the wayfarer ; and of its proud 
 occupants, all that remains is a " heap of dust." 
 
 " They rose to power, to wealth, to fame ; 
 They gained a proud, a deathless name 
 First in the field first in the State 
 But ah ! the giddy tide of fate 
 Keflowed, and swept them from their throne, 
 And thus they 'came Misfortune's own i" 
 
 Much too long have we been tempted to tarry at Finhaven 
 Castle ; and we bid adieu to it with merely noting that, in 
 1635, Finhaven passed out of the hand of the Lindsays, first to 
 the Earl of Kinnoull, and next to the Earl of Northesk, who, in 
 1672, disponed it to his second son, the Honourable James 
 Carnegie, who sat in Parliament at the time of the Union be- 
 tween Scotland and England, and strenuously opposed it ; and 
 whose youngest son succeeded him, and was the Carnegie of 
 Finhaven who killed the Earl of Strathmore on the street of 
 Forfar, as has been already related by us. 
 
 Andrew Allan, A.M., minister of the parish of Oathlaw, 
 was deposed by the Commission of the General Assembly of 
 the Kirk in 1649 ; " they having heard him preach at two 
 several tymes, and found him altogether confused, ignorant of
 
 The Strathmore District Tannadice. 211 
 
 the purpose of his text," &c. In 1651, Parliament allowed his 
 children 50 from vacant stipends. 
 
 John Grub, a Prelatist, intruded into the parish, and was 
 declared an intruder by the Presbytery, in 1696. He was 
 ejected, and declared fugitive, -by the Privy Council in 1701. 
 He intruded into Kirkden in 1715, and into Carmyllie in 1716 ; 
 and for these intrusions, accession to the late Rebellion, 
 and contumacy, he was deposed in 1717. "When tried for these 
 crimes the same year, before the Lords of Justiciary, the diet 
 was deserted, in respect of His Majesty's Act of Grace. He 
 and Francis Rait had an illegal meeting-house in Brechin, which 
 was shut by order of the Lords of Justiciary in 1726. Public 
 worship in the Episcopalian form was as unlawful then, as 
 public worship in the Presbyterian form had been for the 
 twenty-eight years that preceded the Revolution ; and each 
 party has the infamy of executing the law on its rival. 
 
 Not seldom did zealots make law for themselves, as well as 
 execute it. This happened in Oathlaw, in the beginning of the 
 Rebellion of 1715. Persuading themselves that the day of the 
 Presbyterians had passed, and that the devout wishes of the 
 Jacobite Lairds and their worshippers were now to be fulfilled, 
 two women dragged the minister, John Anderson, A.M., out of 
 the pulpit. As often happens to well-doers in this evil world, the 
 two viragos suffered for their good deed. They were " ordained 
 to stand, each in a white sheet, on the pulpit stair, in the very 
 place where they attacked the minister, and be rebuked in the 
 face of the congregation." 
 
 TANNADICE. 
 
 Tannadice was a thanedom at the date of the first notice we 
 have of it. In 1363, David II. gave it and the thanedom of 
 Glammis to John de Logy, probably the father of his second 
 Queen, Margaret Logy. David's nephew, Robert II.. afterwards 
 gave both thanedoms to Sir John Lyon, as dower with his wife, 
 the Princess Jane, the King's daughter. 
 
 There is hardly a place in the Strathmore portion of Tanna- 
 dice that could well be called an Historic Scene. The history 
 which was doubtless associated with the three Laws of the parish 
 o2
 
 212 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 has perished. The Laws themselves have been levelled in the pro- 
 gress of agricultural improvement, and are contributing their 
 quota to the food markets of the countiy. They resemble other 
 Laws which still remain in the shire. They were conical 
 structures, containing sepulchral remains, of which the writer of 
 the Statistical Account of the parish has said all that can be 
 said, but it does not amount to so much as a fragment of history : 
 " In these tumuli coarse earthen pots or urns were found, pro- 
 tected and surrounded by six flat square stones, and containing 
 a quantity of black ashes, probably the remains of the illustrious 
 dead ; while the remains of the less eminent seemed to have 
 been deposited in and covered by the same number of stones, 
 called coffins, but without any urns or ashes, or accumulations 
 of earth. Perhaps the bodies of the former were burned, while 
 those of the latter were not so honoured." 
 
 On the north side of the South Esk, and near the present 
 Bridge of Sheathill, stood Queich Castle in days of yore. No 
 vestige of the Castle is now to be seen ; but the site of it, on 
 which a plain cottage stands, is "a precipitous rock, looking 
 sheer down through deep and yawning chasms, upon a rush and 
 turbulence of water, and almost isolated and rendered nearly 
 inaccessible, and altogether romantic, by the river." Queich 
 Castle was the property, and one of the residences, of a Historic 
 family, the Earls of Buchan, the first of whom was a half- 
 brother of James II., and, about 1466, married Margaret, the 
 only child of Sir Alexander Pvamsay of Auchterhouse. By this 
 marriage he succeeded to the estates of the Auchterhouse 
 Ramsays ; and these continued in the possession of the Earls of 
 Buchan for very nearly two hundred years, when they passed, 
 by purchase, in 1653, to the Earl of Panmure. But no memor- 
 able event, connected with the Buchans' possessions in Tanna- 
 dice, or with their sojournings in Queich Castle, has come under 
 our notice. 
 
 There was another Castle in Tannadice on the side of the 
 Esk, which has also quite disappeared, and of which we know 
 nothing more than that it was near Auchlouchrie, on the 
 eminence still bearing the name of the Castlehill, " overhanging 
 a deep gorge of the river, and having round its base a semi- 
 circular fosse twelve feet deep and thirty wide."
 
 The Strathmore District Careston. 213 
 
 CARESTOK 
 
 Careston, though the smallest parish in the shire, has its 
 Historic Scenes. 
 
 The Noran and the South Esk join in this parish ; and in 
 the peninsula formed by their junction, some antiquarians, 
 whose judgment is worthy of being deferred to, place ^Esica, 
 one of the stations of the Roman army in its progress north- 
 ward in A.D. 81. This opinion, it is thought, derives counten- 
 ance, as from other considerations, so from the names borne to 
 this day by a farm and a house in the neighbourhood. In the 
 Statistical Account of Careston we read " Perhaps the farm of 
 Gateside took its name from the Roman station ^Esica, as 
 forming a gate or port to and from the river ; and there is yet 
 in the vicinity a house named Ward-end, which might possibly 
 refer to some lesser fort connected with the fcrmer one." 
 
 Careston was originally Carald-stane ; and one explanation of 
 the name is curiously interesting. It is said to have been taken 
 from Carald, a Danish leader in the army of Camus. The story 
 is that, in fleeing from the battle of Aberlemno, he was over- 
 taken and killed near the farmhouse of Nether-Careston ; and 
 that to perpetuate the memory of this achievement over a chief 
 of the invaders, his victors raised a barrow over the spot where 
 he was buried, and erected an obelisk on it, which they named 
 Carald-stane, or Carald's-stone, afterwards contracted into Care- 
 ston. The obelisk is supposed to have been raised contempor- 
 aneously with the obelisks or Sculptured Stones of Aberlemno, 
 which were at one time five in number. Says the author of the 
 Topography of the Basin of the Tay " There were formerly 
 five of these obelisks (at Aberlemno), and in the vicinity are 
 several tumuli and cairns. Some ef these have been opened, 
 wherein were found rude stone coffins, containing black earth 
 and mouldering bones. Stat. Acco., vol. 4, p. 50. Thei-e was 
 formerly a sixth obelisk on the north side of the South Esk, in 
 the parish of Careston, anciently called Carald-stane, and this 
 obelisk was supposed to mark the spot where Carald, a Danish 
 chief, fell; and in the neighbourhood are two remarkable 
 barrows." 
 
 The main part of the Castle of Careston is more than two 
 hundred years old j and through neglect, more than from the
 
 214 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 wearing influence of the " tooth of time," it has suffered much 
 dilapidation both within and without. But it was once one of 
 the most splendid baronial residences in Angus. Ochterlony 
 thus describes it : " A great and most delicat house, well 
 built, braw lights, and of a most excellent contrivance, without 
 debait the best gentleman's house in the shyre ; extraordinare 
 much planting, delicate yards and gardens with stone walls, ane 
 excellent avenue with ane range of ash-trees on every syde, ane 
 excellent arbour, for length and breadth, none in the countrey 
 lyke it. The house built by Sir Harry Lindsay of Kinfaines, 
 after (wards) Earl of Crawfourd." There is still a rare style 
 about the fabric, even in those parts of it where decay is most 
 marked ; and it is to be hoped, that when the present proprietor 
 by and by enters on the possession of it, he will be able so to 
 repair it, and so to decorate it with the remains of its fine old 
 sculpture, that his Castle will be second to none in the county. 
 
 The families who have successively possessed Careston have 
 been most of them, historic families. The first of them on 
 record were the Dempsters. They took their name from their 
 office, which we shall afterwards explain ; that, viz., of Demp- 
 sters or Doomsters to the Parliaments of Scotland. In 1379, 
 King Robert II. confirmed to Andrew Dempster of Careston, 
 the office of heritable Dempster to the Parliaments. It was 
 two of those Dempsters who, associating with the profligate 
 sons of the Duke of Montrose, were accomplices with them in 
 the sacrilege committed on the monks and horses of Coupar 
 Abbey. The barony next fell to the Lindsays ; after that to 
 the Carnegies ; after that, to Stewart of Grandtully and 
 Murthly ; and after that, to the Skenes an old Scottish family, 
 of which we read in the time of the War of Independence ; the 
 heads of which fell at Harlaw, Flodden, and Pinkie ; and 
 which figured also in the Civil War of the seventeenth century ; 
 James Skene having been a zealous Eoyajist, for which he had 
 to go into exile ; and his second son having joined the 
 Covenanters, was taken prisoner at Rutherglen, and executed 
 in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, on the 1st December, 1680. 
 
 George Skene bought Careston from Stewart in 1720. 
 Captain Skene, one of his successors, a zealous Reformer, like 
 the late Lord Panmure, attended with his Lordship a public 
 banquet in Paris, at which, soon after Napoleon was made First 
 Consul, they had the audacity to drink to his overthrow. 
 Napoleon arrested them, and the fines which he imposed on
 
 The Strathmore District Gareston. 215 
 
 them, and the bribes which they had to pay for their escape, 
 wei-e so heavy as to embarrass both of them for the residue of 
 their lives. Of another of the Skenes some tempting stories are 
 told. He was a great musician, and it was commonly believed 
 that he could make the bag-pipes play in the Castle while he 
 himself was at a distance, strolling in the fields. The commonly 
 received explanation of the prodigies ascribed to him was tha,t 
 he had, when travelling on the Continent, acquired, like the 
 Black Earl of Southesk, the art of magic. He was a great 
 Bacchanalian, as well as musician, and riding home one night 
 rather top-heavy, and falling over his horse's ears into a Burn 
 which he was crossing, he cried to his man, Harry Walker, " Is 
 that a man fa'in i' the water, Harry ? I thocht I heard a 
 plash !" 
 
 The farm of Nether Careston, which we have mentioned, 
 almost deserves to be reckoned a Historic Scene, as being the 
 first place in the district where the agricultural implement 
 called fanners was used. Mitchell, the tenant of the farm, and 
 a very advanced agriculturalist in his day, ventured on the in- 
 novation, and it required no little courage to do so. The alarm 
 and horror of the district knew no bounds. The wind pro- 
 duced by the fanners was Devil's Wind ! and for fear of a blast 
 of it, nobody, for a time, would assist Mitchell and his family 
 in working the fanners, and hardly anybody would let a particle 
 of the meal made of grain so winnowed enter his house. 
 
 It was in front of Careston Castle that Montrose and his men 
 first rested, on the 5th April, 1645, in accomplishing their 
 famous retreat into the Highlands. They had left Dunkeld at 
 midnight for Dundee, which they reached about ten o'clock in 
 the morning. They had stoi'med the town. They had marched 
 from Dundee to Arbroath, skirmishing a good part of the way 
 with a detachment of Covenanters, who hung on their rear. 
 They had cut across the country, passing between the two 
 Parliamentary Generals, Baillie and Urrey ; and they landed 
 before Careston in the grey of the morning, their fatigue un- 
 relieved by a moment's repose since they left Dunkeld. No 
 wonder that they immediately sunk down on the lawn in pro- 
 found sleep ! And no wonder that Montrose, on hearing of 
 Baillie's approach, had to prick many of them with their swords 
 in order to awaken them ! Thus aroused, they resumed their 
 reti-eat, and were soon able, from the fastnesses of Glenesk, to 
 bid their pursuers defiance.
 
 216 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 To these things we must add that the eminent persons whom 
 Careston has produced have made it historic. The Rev. John 
 Gillies, minister of the parish from 1716 to 1753, left two sons, 
 John and Robert. John became the Rev. Dr John Gillies, 
 author of the Life of George Whitfield, and of Historical 
 Collections of the Success of the Gospel, and for forty-four years 
 minister of the South Parish, Glasgow. Robert, a merchant in 
 Brechin, and ultimately proprietor of Little Keithock, had three 
 sons, John, Thomas, and Adam. John was the author of the 
 History of Ancient Greece, and many other works ; and, on the 
 death of Dr Robertson, was appointed Historiographer Royal 
 for Scotland. John, a surgeon, went to India, where he made 
 a large fortune, and was the father of Robert Pearce Gillies, 
 who has told the stoiy of his life in the Memoirs of a Literary 
 Veteran. Adam was the late well known and greatly esteemed 
 Lord Gillies, raised to the bench in 1811, and on which he sat 
 till within a few weeks of his death in 1842. At the bar he 
 made his mark by his noble defence of some " political martyrs " 
 in the early part of this century. He was the first of our 
 judges who studiously disused the Scotch vernacular, and even 
 affected ignorance of it ; and hence a ludicrous anecdote which 
 is told of him. He was one day trying a case on circuit, in 
 which some natives of Brechin were witnesses. One of them, 
 an old man, whom Lord Gillies had known from his infancy, in 
 giving his evidence called a Jiat a het. " What do you mean by 
 a het, sir?" said his Lordship, snappishly. "Ithocht," 
 answered the witness, " that yer honour had been lang eneuch 
 aboot Brechin to ken what a het was !" 
 
 BRECHIN. 
 
 The age of the City of Brechin is unknown. The Pictish 
 Chronicle, which has the earliest notice of it upon record, says 
 that, in 990, it was " a great city." How long it had existed 
 before that date, and when it had attained its greatness, are 
 matters of conjecture, which Boece does not much assist in 
 characteiising Brechin as being in the time of Malcolm II. 
 (1001 10S1) " an old town of the Piets."
 
 The Strathmore District Brechin. 
 
 Long before that date the Romans were in its neighbourhood. 
 At Keithock, three miles north of Brechin, they had a camp, 
 called War Dykes, now Black Dykes. It is calciilated to have 
 been nearly of the same size as the small camp at Ardoch, 
 capable of containing, on the Polybian system, about 12,000 
 men. With this division of his forces Agricola is thought to 
 have left his main army at Battle Dykes, and to have proceeded 
 to Keithock ; and it is further thought likely that the camp he 
 made at Keithock was reoccupied by Lollius Urbicus. It was 
 on the line of the great Roman Road, which proceeding north- 
 ward in Perthshire by Ardoch and Grassy Walls, passed 
 through the southern part of Angusshire to Rae-dykes in the 
 Mearns. 
 
 In the earliest era of its annals of which we have any glimpse 
 Brechin was a seat of the Druids. Tradition has spoken of it 
 as " the chief seat of Druidism benorth the Forth, and the Pictish 
 capital." However this may have been, there is no room to 
 doubt that, in Pre-Christian as in Christian times, Brechin owed 
 much of its importance to its being a sacred city. It had been so 
 with all like places in Scotland ; with Abernethy, with Loch- 
 leven, and with lona itself. Chalmers says, in his Caledonia, 
 " that the principal seat of Druidism in Scotland seems to have 
 been in the recesses of Perthshire, near the range of the 
 Grampian hills ;" but it was not confined within the limits of 
 Perthshire, and it is certain that it extended noi-thward into 
 Angus in the line of the same " range." We shall come to 
 marked remains of it in the " recesses" of the district to which 
 Brechin belongs. We have them, indeed, in the parish itself ; 
 for we agree with Huddleston, in his edition of Toland's History 
 of the Druids, that the three farms close upon Brechin, called 
 Pittendreich, are identified with Pit-an-donach, which is, being 
 interpreted, the burial-place of the Druids. We also agree with 
 Mr Black, in his History of Brechin, that the site of public 
 worship in the time of the Druids may have been the same as 
 the Established site of it is now. " Without much stretch of 
 the imagination," says he, " we can conceive that the site of the 
 present Presbyterian Church of Brechin was the place of worship 
 successively of Druids, Culdees, Romanists, Episcopalians, and 
 Presbyterians. Nor is there any thing in the situation of the 
 church of Brechin opposed to the idea that it was originally a 
 Druidical temple. The church stands on a sandstone rock, the 
 sides of which are precipitous on the south and east ; and while
 
 218 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 the western side slopes more gently, the northern side appears 
 to have been a deep ravine ; for every excavation made on that 
 side proves that the earth, to a very great depth, is forced or 
 artificial. Such an isolated rock presented a fit site for the 
 worship of the Druids ; and the dells around may then have 
 been clad, as some of them still are clothed, with umbrageous trees, 
 the castle and town of Brechin being, in the time of the Druids, 
 both alike unknown. Whether such a succession of religious 
 orders did or did not occur on the little mount which for ages 
 has been the burying-place of the inhabitants of Brechin, it is 
 impossible positively to say ; but there is nothing in the supposi- 
 tion inconsistent with what has occurred amongst other nations 
 which have undergone changes in their religious dynasties the 
 newly established order having generally selected the places of 
 worship of the expelled party for the site of the new churches 
 or altars." 
 
 In the next era, Brechin was a chief seat of the Culdees ; and 
 they supplanted the gross superstitions and the bloody rites of 
 the Druids. The Culdees came to Britain from Ireland in the 
 sixth century with St Columba. Landing in lona, they planted 
 there their religious establishment; which was essentially an 
 institute for training missionaries to go forth and evangelise 
 the country. A greater, a more difficult, and a more praise- 
 worthy enterprise was never attempted ; and the success of it 
 was marvellous. The parent institute in lona multiplied 
 betimes into three hundred Mission Colleges on the main-land 
 and in the islands ; and to the labours of the men whom those 
 Colleges educated and sent forth, Scotland owed for a number 
 of centuries almost all its Christian enlightenment and civilisa- 
 tion. 
 
 The Culdees found their way to Brechin, and made it one of 
 their centres of evangelisation, setting up in it one of their 
 Colleges. In 990, Kenneth III. "gave the great City of 
 Brechin to the Lord." The general idea must be that he gave 
 it to the Lord by giving it to His Church, by making it some- 
 how specially tributary to the interests of the Church; and the 
 Church in Brechin, as elsewhere in Scotland, was then Culdee. 
 When Malcolm II. (10031033), having defeated the Danes at 
 Aberlemno, is said to have erected, in honour of the victory, 
 a monastery at Brechin, the monastery could be no other than 
 a convent for the Culdees. When David I. (1 124 1 153) gave 
 a charter for holding markets on Sabbath in Brechin, he gave
 
 The Strathmore District Brechin. 219 
 
 it to the " bishops and the Culdees :" so his grandson, William 
 the Lion (1165 1214), expressly said in confirming the 
 charter. 
 
 The Church of Rome hated the Culdees. They did not 
 partake with it in many of its abominations, but witnessed 
 against them. They held fast by the Word of God as the only 
 infallible standard and rule in matters of religion. They 
 rejected transubstantiation, the worship of saints and images, 
 purgatory and prayers for the dead, the infallibility of the Pope, 
 the doctrine of the merit of good works, and other Romish 
 tenets. The consequence was, that as Romanism grew strong, 
 it persecuted Culdeeism, setting itself to extirpate it ; and it so 
 succeeded that by the end of the thirteenth century, or the 
 beginning of the fourteenth, the Culdees had dropped out of 
 view. By 1248 they had entirely disappeared in Brechin. 
 
 But there are yet unmistakeable traces of them about the 
 city. The gardens on the west side of the present Parish 
 Church, and belonging to the Kirk Session, are called the 
 College Yards, and who can doubt that they were in days of 
 yore the Yards of the Culdee College hard by 1 The well in 
 these gardens, yielding remarkably pure and sweet water, is 
 called the College Well, and who can doubt that it was the 
 well of the Culdee College 1 There is a wynd called the College 
 Wynd, and who can doubt the origin and the historic import 
 of such a name ? 
 
 Above all, the famous round tower is a standing memorial of 
 the presence and power of the Culdees in Brechin. About it 
 and the Abernethy Tower, the only other of the class in Scot- 
 land, there has been endless speculation. The opinions, too, 
 about their age, their builders, and their uses, have been so 
 many and diverse, that we cannot afford space to state them in 
 a way that would be intelligible. There are many such towers 
 in Ireland, and nowhere else in the world. From this we 
 might naturally presume that the idea of the Round Towers 
 came from Ireland. The sculpture on the Brechin Tower (there 
 is none on the Abernethy one) is Christian symbols. The 
 crucifixion is the subject carved over the door-way. From this 
 we might naturally presume that the idea of the Round Towers 
 was brought from Ireland by the Culdees ; the missionaries by 
 whom Scotland was originally Christianised. And these pre- 
 sumptions are sustained by the most learned investigations. 
 They are in harmony with the conclusions to which Mr Petrie
 
 220 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 came in his prize essay, published by the Royal Academy of 
 Dublin. ; and they would seem to be now generally acquiesced 
 in. His conclusions are, " 1, That the Towers (in Irelaiid and 
 Scotland) are of Christian and ecclesiastical origin, and were 
 erected at various periods, between the fifth and thirteenth 
 centuries. 2, That they were designed to answer, at least, a 
 two-fold use, namely to serve as belfries and as keeps or places 
 of strength, in which the sacred utensils, books, relics, and other 
 valuables were deposited, and into which the ecclesiastics to 
 whom they belonged could retire for security in cases of sudden 
 predatory attack. 3, That they were probably also used, when 
 occasion required, as beacons or watch-towers." 
 
 The Eound Towers of Brechin and Abernethy remain ; but 
 all vestiges of the ecclesiastical buildings connected with them 
 are gone. It was not so, however, so late as about the middle 
 of the last century. Maitland, the historian, a native of the 
 town (born about 1690, died in 1757), testifies that the ruins of 
 the Culdee College or Church at Brechin were visible in his day. 
 And of the ruins of the Culdee College or Church at Abernethy. 
 Captain Grose, the " chiel amang you takin' notes" in Burns' 
 time, actually took the engravings ; and these are yet to be seen 
 in his Antiquities of Scotland. 
 
 Brechin was burned by the Danes in 1012. Either their 
 whole army, landing at Redhead, and taking a circuitous route 
 by Brechin to Barry, gave it to the flames, or one of the three 
 divisions, into which they are said to have formed, directing 
 its course northward by Brechin, set fire to it. The latter 
 version of the history is perhaps the more likely one ; and if so, 
 the division which burned Brechin must have been that which 
 was pursued and cut off at Aberlemno. 
 
 It was about 1150 that the Cathedral of Brechin was 
 founded by David I. About the same time the town is sup- 
 posed to have been created a royal burgh ; and, according to 
 Keith, the first known Bishop of the See flourished about 
 1155-6. King David was a zealous Papist, and therefore a 
 zealous ante-Culdeeite. The addition of a Prelate with a 
 diocese to the orders previously existing in the Culdee Church, 
 was significant of his policy, which aimed at suppressing 
 Culdeeism, and completely conforming the Scottish Church to 
 the Roman model. 
 
 With the Cathedral were connected several chaplainries, pro- 
 minent among which was that of the Maisondieu, or, as it was
 
 The Strathmore District Brechin. 221 
 
 also called, the Hospital of the Virgin Mary. The chapel of 
 Maisondieu was founded and endowed about 1256 by William 
 of Brechin, grandson of David, Earl of Huntingdon, brother of 
 William the Lion, whom the King, among many other tokens 
 of his loving favour, made Lord of Brechin. The chapel was a 
 small but elegant house, pretty well endowed ; and in process 
 of time, when the lordship of Brechin came to the Panmure 
 family, the endowment was made to serve the interests of educa- 
 tion as well as religion. The minister of the chapel was taken 
 bound to " teach the youth of the city of Brechin in grammar, 
 and exercise the place and charge of a master of the grammar 
 school within the samyne." This was the origin of the Grammar 
 School of Brechin, the rector of which, under an arrangement 
 made in 1833, now draws a salary of 50 a year, in lieu of the 
 old Maisondieu endowment. The site of this chapel was in 
 what bears the memorial name of the Maisondieu Lane or 
 Vennel. Part of the walls of it is still standing ; and in the 
 last stage of its existence as a house it had, alas ! been put to a 
 vile use. It was turned into a stable ! which a fire happily put 
 a period to, " the wood work and one or two horses being 
 burned to ashes." 
 
 Brechin Castle, the favourite residence of the Earl of 
 Dalhousie, is beautifully and romantically situated on the south 
 of the city, and on the top of a cliff" about eighty feet high, 
 overshadowing the South Esk. It occupies the site of the Old 
 Castle, of which we read as early as the days of Henry of 
 Brechin, the son of David, Earl of Huntingdon. In the time 
 of Edward I. of England, the Castle belonged to David of 
 Brechin, who, though brother-in-law to The Bruce, long adhered 
 to the English interest, and fought against the patriots of his 
 native country 
 
 On the 10th July, 1296, Edward visited Brechin Castle, for 
 a purpose the most humiliating to Scotland. It was to receive 
 from John Baliol the formal surrender of his crown and 
 kingdom. His vassalage to Edward proving too galling to be 
 tolerable, Baliol solemnly renounced his allegiance to him, send- 
 ing to his Court Henry, Abbot of Arbroath, with the instru- 
 ment of renunciation. This gave Edward the pretext wanted 
 for putting an end to the separate and independent existence 
 of Scotland as a kingdom, and annexing it to his English 
 dominions. He entered Scotland by Berwick with an army to 
 which it could offer no effective resistance ; and when he had
 
 222 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 proceeded as far as Perth, Baliol felt himself reduced to the 
 necessity of sending him a message offering submission, and 
 imploring peace. Edward directed him to repair to Brechin 
 Castle, where he would learn from the Bishop of Durham the 
 terms on which alone mercy could be extended to him. He 
 must not only abdicate his throne in favour of Edward, but he 
 must do so in a manner the most degrading. " Divested of his 
 royal robes, and crown, and sceptre, he was compelled to stand 
 as a criminal, with a white rod in his hand ;" to " confess that, 
 misled by evil and false counsel, as he averred, and through his 
 own simplicity, he had grievously offended his liege lord ;" to 
 " recapitulate his various transgressions;" to " acknowledge the 
 justice of the English invasion and conquest ;" and to " resign 
 his kingdom, its people, and their homage, into the hands of his 
 liege lord, Edward." And all this humiliation only saved his 
 life; for he was forthwith sent a prisoner to the Tower of 
 London, and thus ended his brief, inglorious, and wretched 
 reign. 
 
 In returning from the north, into which he had gone as far 
 as Aberdeen and Elgin, Edward again visited Brechin Castle, 
 and spent in it the night between the 4th and 5th of August, 
 1296. Proceeding thence to Scone, he concluded what he 
 fondly regarded as the conquest of Scotland, by removing from 
 Scone to Westminster, along with the crown and sceptre, the 
 famous stone on which the long line of Scottish Kings had been 
 crowned and anointed the Stone of Destiny concerning which 
 had been uttered the well-known oracle, which Edward thought 
 he was falsifying, but which many regarded as restored to credit 
 and accomplished by the accession of James VI. to the English 
 crown. 
 
 " Unless the fates are faithless grown, 
 
 And prophets' voice be vain, 
 "Where'er is found this f acred stone 
 
 Ihe Scottish race shall reign." 
 
 In 1297, Wallace recovered the Castle of Brechin from the 
 English garrison which Edward had left in it, and it seems to 
 have continued in the possession of the Scots till 1303, in which 
 year Sir Thomas Maule, brother of Sir William Maule of 
 Panmure, made his famous defence of it. Edward had that 
 year gone as far north as Moray, and in returning south, his 
 progress was so triumphant, that the only fortress which did 
 not at once open its gates to him was the Castle of Brechin. 
 He laid siege to it with a force, compared with which the
 
 The Strathmore District Brechin. 223 
 
 garrison within was a mere handful. Its brave commander 
 held out for twenty days against all the strategy and power of 
 the assailants appearing on the ramparts, and contemptuously 
 wiping off with a handkerchief or towel the dust and rubbish 
 raised by the embryo artillery of the English. But a shot at 
 length struck him down mortally wounded. The shot was 
 from an engine called the War Wolf : the power propelling it 
 was powder, then beginning to be used in war ; and the deadly 
 missile was a rounded stone, the Wolf being capable of dis- 
 charging stones of two or three hundredweight. Tradition says 
 that the engine was planted on the east side of the deep ravine 
 which then ran between the city and the Castle, and that Sir 
 Thomas Maule was on the bastion, now as then on the south- 
 east corner of the Castle, when the shot struck him. It is also 
 noteworthy that, on the ground occupied by the besiegers, there 
 have been found stone coffins ; a skull with a nail in it, the 
 owner of which may have been killed by a shot from the Castle ; 
 and a rounded free stone, which may have been one of the 
 stones which the English had prepared for using in the siege. 
 As Sir Thomas lay dying on the ground, his men asked him 
 if they might now surrender, and were answered by upbraidings 
 for their cowardice. His death, however, ended the defence ; 
 for the garrison capitulated next day. 
 
 In 1310, The Bruce must have honoured Brechin with a 
 visit. By a charter dated at Brechin on the 4th of December 
 that year, he conferred certain privileges on the church of 
 Brechin. 
 
 Though a Maule of Panmure happened to be military com- 
 mander of Brechin Castle at Edward's invasion, it was not till 
 long afterwards (1642) that the lordship of Brechin became the 
 property of the Maules. In the interval it was in many 
 different hands. For a while after the War of the Indepen- 
 dence it continued in the possession of Lords of the Huntingdon 
 line ; and two of these suffered the death of traitors. In 1320, 
 Sir David of Brechin suffered as an accomplice of Sir William 
 of Soulis and others in their conspiracy against the life of King 
 Robert Bruce. His death was much lamented, but there can 
 be no reasonable doubt of his guilt ; and it was aggravated by 
 his being a tool and pensioner of England, by his relation to the 
 King, who was his uncle, and by the pardon which had been 
 previously extended to him. On his forfeiture and execution, 
 his sister Margaret, wife of Sir David of Barclay, had the lord-
 
 224 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 ship of Brechin. Sir David of Barclay's heiress was Margaret ; 
 and Walter Stuart, Earl of Athole, and second son of Robert 
 II., married her, and assumed the estates and titles of Brechin. 
 In 1437 he also suffered the death of a traitor. He was the 
 chief actor in the murder of James I. in the Monastery of the 
 Blackfriars, Perth ; and he, " after three days' lingering 
 torture," was beheaded at Edinburgh in 1437, his hoary head 
 fixed on a spear, and encircled with a crown of iron, and his 
 titles and extensive estates forfeited. 
 
 In 1359 David II. confirmed to the Cathedral Church of 
 Brechin all the privileges which his ancestors had granted it, 
 and particularly that of holding markets on the Sabbath. This 
 he did "for the fear and reverence of God, by whom kings 
 reign, and princes decree justice ;" a rather remarkable reason 
 surely, for granting to the Cathedral Church the privilege of 
 turning God's day into a market day ! It must have been, of 
 course, for the same pious reason that the Church accepted the 
 privilege, and used it for upwards of a hundred years ! and that 
 Bishop Carnock " ascertained," in the course of those years, 
 " by an inquisition that the inhabitants of Brechin had a right 
 of market on Sundays." The See of Brechin, it may be stated, 
 had other Bishops of mark besides Carnock, under whom 
 religion could hardly fail to flourish. Leuchars and Shorewood 
 were two of these ; and in the reigns of David II. and James 
 III. they were the Chancellors of the kingdom. So were 
 Sinclair and Campbell, the former of whom was first a Lord of 
 Session, and afterwards President of the Court, and married 
 Queen Mary to Darnley ; and the latter was the Bishop who 
 himself became Protestant at the Reformation, and turned it to 
 such good account in the interests of the Campbells. 
 
 In 1503, James IV. paid Brechin a visit. In the books of 
 the Lord High Treasurer, there is an entry bearing that there 
 were paid, " the xv. day of October, in Brechin, to the four 
 Italien menstrels, and the more tanbroner to ther hors met, x 
 Ib. v s." There is a like entry of payment at Scone on the llth 
 of October ; and immediately after the Brechin entry is one for 
 Dunnottar, " Item, that samyn nicht in Dunnottar to the cheld 
 playit on the monocords be the Kings command, xviij s." It 
 would appear from these records, that James was on a journey 
 northward, probably to quell a Highland rebellion which broke 
 out immediately after his marriage to Margaret Tudor, daughter 
 of Henry VII., the real foundation of the union of the crowns
 
 The Stratlimore District Brechin. 225 
 
 and the kingdoms; and that his loving subjects were doing 
 their utmost to gratify his well known passion for music. 
 
 James V. died in 1542 ; and next year, in the first Parlia- 
 ment after his death, a most memorable Act was passed. It 
 ordained that " it shall be lawful to all our sovereign lady's 
 (Queen Mary's) lieges, to have the Holy Writ, viz., the New 
 Testament and the Old, in the vulgar tongue ; and that they 
 shall incur no crime for the having and reading of the same." 
 This was a presage of the Reformation. It showed how the 
 leaven was working ; and Rome smelled the danger. The 
 Archbishop of Glasgow, Chancellor of the kingdom, entered a 
 protest on the records of the House against this Act, " for him- 
 self, and in name and behalf of all the Prelates of this realm 
 present in Parliament ;" and it shewed the orthodoxy and zeal 
 of the Bishop of Brechin, that he was one of the adherents to 
 this protest.- But the Regent, notwithstanding, ratified the 
 Act, and the Bible was soon in many hands. 
 
 The revolution implied in the Reformation was quietly 
 effected in Brechin. We do not know that the zeal of the 
 inhabitants for the Reformation was either very general or very 
 ardent ; but neither did zeal against it take any very definite 
 and formidable shape and action ; and upon the whole, the 
 Cathedral city rather seemed to sail with the tide. The imple- 
 ments and monuments of Popish idolatry suffered, we presume, 
 the same fate in Brechin as in Dundee and other such places ; 
 and the Cathedral itself was not spared. Campbell, the last of 
 its Popish Bishops, and the creature of the Earl of Argyll, 
 made good use of the power vested in him to dispose of the 
 revenues of the See ; and the inferior ecclesiastics, as far as 
 they could, closely imitated him. The temporalities which 
 they did not swallow up, being secularised and annexed to the 
 crown, were given to hungry and greedy favourites. The Dun 
 family was not forgotten. For 6 13s 4d Scots, to be paid 
 yearly to the poor of Brechin, James Erskine, vicar of Falkirk, 
 had for his life all the annual rents which had been bestowed 
 on officials ' : for celebrating of messis, singing and saying of 
 dirigie, and doing of utheris ryteis ceremonies, and papisticall 
 services, whilk now be the Word of God, and laws of his 
 Hienes realm, are damnit and altuterlie abolischit." And John 
 Erskine, the Superintendent, for hia "lang, ernest, and faith- 
 ful travellis in the suppression of superstition, papistrie, and 
 idolatrie, and avancement and propagation of the evangell of 
 p
 
 226 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Jesus Christ, the tyme of the Reformation of the religion, and 
 in ydnt and faithful persuerance in the samin," has a grant for 
 life of various sums from the Abbeys of Arbroath and Coupar, 
 from Jedburgh and Restennet, from the Bishopric of Brechin, 
 and other places ; and the grant is renewed for life to his grand- 
 son and namesake, John Erskine of Logie. As may readily be 
 supposed, the gleanings left by those spoilers furnished but a 
 very moderate competence to the plain Presbyterian Pastorate 
 that succeeded the Papistical. 
 
 After the assassination of Regent Moray in 1570, and the 
 execution of Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews, for his share 
 in the murder of Darnley, as also in that of the Good Regent, 
 hostilities broke out between the party of King James and the 
 party of his mother Mary, in which Brechin suffered seriously. 
 Both town and Castle were captured by the Earl of Huntly " in 
 the Queines name and behalff ;" they were recovered by Regent 
 Lennox, and they were retaken by Huntly's brother, Sir Adam 
 Gordon of Auchindown, in what goes by the name of the Bourd 
 of Brechin. To defend it, the Earl of Brechin, acting for 
 Regent Morton, assembled at Brechin all the military force in 
 Angus. Auchindown, leaving the siege of Glenbervie, came un- 
 expectedly by night, with a few of the best of his troops, and 
 wrenched town and Castle from their defenders' hands. Learn- 
 ing next morning the smallness of the force with which Auchin- 
 down had done this exploit, the King's party collected their 
 scattered troops and offered him battle ; but he valiantly met and 
 completely routed them. 
 
 In 1572, James VI. instituted a Hospital in Brechin for the 
 destitute of both sexes, and of all ages, appropriating to the 
 support of it the annual rents paid to prebendaries and chaplains 
 before the Reformation. Whether occasioned or not by the 
 royal beneficence, the Hospital had no sooner come into opera- 
 tion than there was a prodigious development of beggary in the 
 town. Beggary, in fact, forthwith became one of the great 
 institutions of the place. The evil became so costly and so 
 scandalous, that the Magistrates were forced to make a list of 
 the really poor, to put badges on them that they might be 
 known, and to prohibit others from begging. This originated 
 the class of " privileged beggars" in Brechin, who, till as late as 
 1845, marched through the streets in a body every Thursday, 
 making clamorous demands on the self-sustaining, which it wan 
 not easy to satisfy.
 
 The Strathmore District Brechin. 227 
 
 The plague visited the country in 1647-8. and was very severe 
 in Brechin. A stone built in the wall of the kirkyard testifies 
 that in the former of these years, and in the space of four 
 months, six hundred persons died of it. The infected were 
 separated from others, and put into huts erected on the common 
 moor ; and these were in many instances pulled down over their 
 corpses, which was all the sepulture they got. The knolls 
 thus raised might be traced till recently, when they were effaced 
 by the laying out of the garden of Murlingden ; whose original 
 and proper name is said to have been Mourningden, a memorial 
 name of the fell scene which the plague made it. Those of its 
 victims, whose dust was carried to the churchyard, were buried 
 in a plot by itself, which received no new tenant till as lately as 
 1809: not for fear of the dead being infected, but for fear of 
 the plague, which was thought to be buried in the graves of its 
 victims, escaping if these were touched, " in the form of a bluish 
 mist or vapour," and overspreading the country ! 
 
 In 1644, the Covenanters made Brechin their headquarters 
 in Angus ; and the Marquis of Argyll was there joined by the 
 Earl Marischal, Lords Gordon, Forbes, Fraser, Crightoii, and 
 other noblemen. Next year, Baillie and Urrey assembled their 
 troops at Brechin, to prevent, if possible, the descent of the 
 Marquis of Montrose upon the low country. From Brechin 
 Urrey and six hundred horsemen went to Fettercairn, to recon- 
 noitre the enemy ; where they fell into an ambuscade, and were 
 defeated at Halkerton, a little beyond the North Water Bridge. 
 Montrose quite outwitted the Parliamentary Generals ; passed 
 by them in spite of all their vigilance ; stormed Dundee ; and 
 sent his baggage and part of his troops on to Brechin. Those 
 troops set fire to it, and a considerable number of the houses of 
 it was burned down. Spalding says, " The townspeople of 
 Brechin hid their goods in the Castle thereof and kirk steeples, 
 and fled themselves, which flight enraged the soldiers ; they 
 herried their goods, plundered the Castle and haill town, and 
 burned about sixty houses." 
 
 It was in this burning that the lodging in Brechin of 
 Arbuthnot, the Laird of Findowrie, was consumed. The Laird's 
 losses by the Royalists at that time, in both town and country, 
 those of his tenants being included, were next year estimated by 
 a Special Commission appointed for the purpose, and were 
 returned as amounting to 11,043 9s 4d. The son and grand- 
 son of this Laird were staunch supporters of the Covenant, and
 
 228 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 were therefore fined by Middleton in the sum of 2400. 
 After being burned by Montrose's troops, Findowrie's Lodging 
 was restored, and it has the honour of being now probably the 
 oldest house in Brechin. " Of ancient Brechin," says Mr 
 Jervise, " apart from what has been already noticed, very little 
 remains. A large three-storey house, on the north side of the 
 Nether Wynd, is perhaps the oldest dwelling in the town. 
 Tradition says it was at one time the town residence of the 
 EarJs of Crawford, and a spring well in an adjoining garden is 
 called eardie's Well. At a later date, during the memorable 
 Wars of the Covenant, it was the ' ludging' of the Laird of 
 Findowrie, a great friend to the Covenant, and representative 
 elder of the Presbytery of Brechin to the General Assembly. 
 In consequence, the Marquis of Montrose burned and plundered 
 this house, and the stables which adjoined, in 1646, at the same 
 time that he set fire to the town." 
 
 The Kirk Session Records shed their own light on the sort of 
 scene Brechin presented at the time of which we write. March 
 23d and 31st, and July 29th, 1645, " No preaching, neither 
 collection, by reason of the enemies being in the town." 
 November 16th, 1645, " No Session, in consequence of the 
 absence of the ministers, and of the enemy, Ludovick Lindsay, 
 approaching near to the town." November , 1646, "Taken 
 out of the box to buy a mortcloth, 80, the first mortcloth was 
 plundered by the common enemy and taken away." June 28th, 
 1647, "No Session, neither collection, by reason the sermon 
 was at the Castle of Brechin for fear of the enemie." 
 
 Brechin presented too similar a scene in 1650 and 1651, when 
 Montrose again raised the standard of rebellion in the interests 
 of Charles II. The Estates directed Leslie, the commander-in- 
 chief of the Covenanting army, to gather at Brechin all the 
 horse and foot which, since the close of the last campaign, had 
 been scattered over the country for its protection. As Mr 
 Black says, " During the wars of Montrose, therefore, it would 
 appear that Brechin was esteemed the key of the Covenanting 
 army, and its situation immediately on the line between the 
 Highlands and the Lowlands, and commanding the only bridge 
 then in existence over the South Esk, seerns to have rendered 
 it of importance in such a civil warfare. The burgh was much 
 annoyed by this distinction, which rendered it an object to both 
 parties. For several weeks in the end of August, and during 
 the months of September and October, 1651, there were 'no
 
 The Strathmore District Brechin. 229 
 
 sermon, collection, nor Session, by reason both the ministers 
 were absent, the English forces lying in garison round about 
 this town, and a garison in the Castle of Brechin :' so the Kirk 
 records bear ; and they further inform us,- that on 2d July, 
 1651, there was 'no Session, neither sermon this Wednesday, 
 by reason all within this burgh was called to go to Aberbrothock 
 to assist them against the pursuing enemy by sea ;' although in 
 what manner the landsmen of Brechin were so to assist is not 
 explained. Again in November, we are told there was ' no 
 sermon this Wednesday, by reason twelff hundreth English 
 were in the town ; Tuesday, all night ; and on Wednesday till 
 the time of Divine service was past.' " 
 
 It may be noted that in the Civil War, the Earl of Panmure 
 was a faithful and zealous adherent of Charles I., in whose 
 favour his son, Henry, Lord Brechin, raised and commanded a 
 troop of horse ; for which father and son were fined by Cromwell 
 in the large sum of 12,500. 
 
 In 1616, a place in the neighbourhood of Brechin was the 
 scene of a very sad event. A quarrel having taken place 
 between Robert Symmer, son of the Laird of Balzordie, and 
 David Graham, son of James Graham of Leuchland, they met 
 on the " Hauche of Insche, neir to the Meiklemylne of Brechin, 
 and Symmer struck Graham through the body with ane rapper- 
 sword ; quhair of sex or seven days thereafter he decessit ;" for 
 which Symmer was condemned " to be tane to the mercat croce 
 of Edinburgh, and thair his head to be stricken from his body, 
 and all his moveable guidis to be escheit." 
 
 Sir Patrick Maule of Panmure having bought the Brechin 
 estates with the hereditary offices of Justiciary and Constabu- 
 lary attached to them, he and the Bishop soon differed about 
 their respective powers and provinces in regard to the civil 
 affairs of the burgh. The contention waxed so hot and violent 
 that the election of Bailies was accompanied with " ryot and 
 bluide." The King at length interposed in 1635 with a Com- 
 mission of Inquiry, issuing in a recommendation to the parties ; 
 which had so little effect that by and by a special Act of Parlia- 
 ment was passed annulling the power of the Bishop in the 
 municipal government of the town ; to which power, however, 
 the dignitaries who filled the See clung, despite the authority of 
 Parliament itself, till the abolition of Episcopacy. 
 
 In olden days as well as now, Brechin depended much upon 
 its markets. They were, according to Ochterlony, writing more
 
 230 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 than two centuries ago, the chief source of its wealth. " That," 
 says he, " which most enriches the place is their frequent faires 
 and mercats, which occasion a great concourse of people from 
 all places of the countrey, having a great fair of cattle, horse, 
 and sheep, the whole week after Whytsunday, and the Thurs- 
 day thei'eafter a great mercat in the toune ; they having a 
 weekly mercat every Tuesday throughout the yeare, where there 
 is a great resort of Highland men, with timber, peats, and 
 heather, and abundance of muirfoull, and extraordinarie good 
 wool in its seasone." 
 
 In the seventeenth century, Brechin had its own share of the 
 anti-witch mania, as the records of both the Session and the 
 Presbytery bear. The trials of which they give glimpses are 
 marked by all the ignorance and superstition of their age. One 
 poor creature had a dog which kept company with her, to which 
 she was over-kind ; a neighbour unfortunately refused her a bit 
 of butter one day, and that neighbour could make no butter 
 that season. Another neighbour's browst of ale she spoiled. 
 Such was the evidence brought against the accused, and it is a 
 fair enoiigh sample of the evidence on which many were con- 
 signed to the flames. The Witch Den, on the south of the 
 town, was the place of execution ; and there have been found in 
 it ashes and bones, the remains of the executed, and a piece of 
 iron chain, which may have been the very chain by which they 
 were bound to the stake ! Among the antique curiosities of the 
 town, too, are the witch's branks, which Mr Black thus 
 describes : " An iron frame made to embrace the head, with a 
 piece shaped like an arrow contrived to enter the mouth and 
 prevent the criminal from speaking, and the whole fastening 
 behind with a padlock, which might have been easily attached 
 to a stake or a building.". 
 
 Brechin was burned in 1672. Nothing more seems to be 
 known concerning this calamity than may be gathered from an 
 entry in the records of the Presbytery, and from several entries 
 in the records of the Council from 1672 to 1676; from which, 
 putting them all together, it appears that the fire was accidental ; 
 that the damage done was serious ; that neighbours were kind 
 in giving charitable assistance ; but that great difficulties were 
 experienced in satisfactorily distributing their contributions. 
 
 The rulers of the people in Brechin and the surrounding 
 country were sufficiently monarchical and Prelatic to hail the 
 "auld Stuart back again" in 1660. Eight years after, the
 
 The Strathmore District Brechin. 231 
 
 Magistrates of the city, devoutly desirous that the " blessings 
 of the Restoration " (so some even yet write) might be securely 
 enjoyed while the world lasted, sent Mr David Donaldson as 
 Commissioner to the Parliament, which was summoned "in 
 order to the levying of forces for defence of the kingdom from 
 foreign invasion, and for suppression of field conventicles /" and 
 in subsequent years of the blessed era of the Restoration, they 
 steadily pursued the same policy. The Councillors and Deacons 
 of Trades readily took the impious test imposed in 1681, in 
 which they swore to maintain the slavish doctrine of passive 
 obedience, and the supremacy of Charles " in all causes, as well 
 ecclesiastical as civil " as also, that they renounce the 
 Covenants. As has been said of them, they did not hold the 
 creed of that English political martyr, Richard Rurnbold, who, 
 on the scaffold, for rising in arms against James II., declared 
 that " he did not believe the generality of mankind came into 
 the world bridled and saddled, and the rest booted and spurred 
 to ride upon the multitude." 
 
 To all the tyrant brood and their minions the Revolution was 
 very unwelcome. The Council of Brechin, presided over by tho 
 Lord Bishop, forthwith put the town under arms. This was to 
 defend it from the Papists ! an invasion of whom was dreaded 
 from France and Ireland, and an insurrection of them within 
 the kingdom. Some have been wicked enough to say that the 
 object of the arming was to be in a posture of readiness to help, 
 on the first opportunity that might offer, to send back William 
 of Orange to where he came from. If so, they had to content 
 themselves in the meantime with showing their Stuart 
 sympathies in more harmless ways ; as by their favour to the 
 rebel Highlanders " roving the country," and by their spite at 
 the English forces on their way north and south. The Govern- 
 ment jealousy, both of the Castle and the town, was shown by 
 the quartering of troops in the place concerning which, as late 
 as 1695, the Brechin Commissioner to the Convention of 
 Burghs was instructed " to make moyan to get off the thrie 
 companiss of foot sojers presently quartered at this place." 
 
 In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the same Jacobite 
 and Prelatic spirit possessed Brechin and its neighbourhood, 
 more especially the Magistrates and the gentry. The famous 
 Willison, afterwards translated to Dundee, was ordained first 
 minister of Brechin in 1703 ; but the parish could not furnish 
 him with a Session ; the place of that Court had to be taken for
 
 232 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 a time, and the work of it done by a Committee of the 
 Presbytery, which was called the jjreteiided Session of Mr John 
 Willison ; and so very inveterate was the prejudice against him 
 that, on his removal to Dundee in 1718, there was not a carrier 
 in Brechin that would convey his furniture thither. On the 
 other hand, the last Prelatic incumbent got so much countenance 
 and encouragement that he stuck to his charge, and persisted in 
 performing the afternoon's diet of preaching ; and, indeed, was 
 not got rid of till 1709. In that year Doig, a Hanoverian and 
 Presbyterian, managed to get the Provostship, but so obnoxious 
 was he, from both his political and ecclesiastical principles, that 
 in 1712 a party of the shoemakers of the town, led by their 
 Deacon, raised a riot, and did " beat, blood and wound in the 
 head and other parts of the body the said John Doig." 
 
 When the Rebellion broke out in 1715, Doig was disposted 
 and cast into prison ; and the powers of chief magistrate were 
 wielded by Bailie Spence, not as Provost by name, but as the 
 Earl of Panmure's bailie, justiciar, and constable. The Pres- 
 byterian ministers were forced to flee for safety, and their places 
 were taken by Episcopalians, who retained them till the return 
 to power of Doig and this party, next year. So disturbed was 
 the state of the town, that no meeting of Session was held from 
 August, 1715, to February, 1716 ; nor was the Lord's Supper 
 dispensed in the town from 1714 to 1720. 
 
 The Earl of Panmure joined Mar in the revolt of which he 
 raised the standard jn 1715 ; and, at the Cross of Brechin, he 
 proclaimed the Pretender King of Great Britain, as James 
 VIII. of Scotland and III. of England ; and many, not only in 
 Brechin, but throughout the county, were tempted by his 
 example to make the same hazardous, and as the event proved, 
 fatal venture. That he might be the better able to help the 
 cause of the Stuarts, the Earl at the same time purchased Edzell, 
 Glenesk, and Lethnot from the last of the Lindsays of Edzell ; 
 and, at the head of their numerous retainers, he and his brother 
 Harry Maule of Kelly greatly distinguished themselves on the 
 field of Sheriffmuir. The Earl, badly wounded, fell into the hands 
 of the enemy, and owed his rescue to his brother's bravery : 
 
 " Brave Mar and Panmure 
 Were firm, I am sure ; 
 
 The latter was kid nap t awa', man, 
 With brisk men about, 
 Brave Harry retook 
 Hie btother, and laugh'd at them a', man."
 
 The Strathmore District Brechin. 233 
 
 For two days Brechin had the personal presence of the 
 Pretender. Landing at Peterhead on the 22d of December, 
 1715, he came to Brechin on Monday the 2d of January, 1716, 
 and was entertained in the Castle till Wednesday the 4th ; 
 whence he proceeded to Perth. 
 
 For his share in the Eebellion the Earl was forfeited and 
 fled for his life to the Continent. He was twice offered the 
 estates, if he would return to Britain, and swear allegiance to 
 the House of Hanover ; declining to do which, he died at Paris 
 in 1723. His nephew William, son of Harry of Kelly, bought 
 back the estates in 1764 for 49,157 18s 4d sterling, and 
 settled them with some other lands of his on the issue of his 
 sister, Lady Jane Maule, wife of George, Lord Ramsay, eldest 
 son of the sixth Earl of Dalhousie ; and the late William, Lord 
 Panmure, succeeded to them as the second son of the eighth 
 Earl of Dalhousie, and the grandson of Lady Jane Maule. 
 
 When the Presbyterians got again into the saddle, they made 
 their adversaries feel the sharpness and the length of their spurs. 
 Episcopalian clerg} r men visited the burgh to preach, baptise, and 
 marry. This could not be tolerated. "In 1726," says Mr 
 Black, " the ministers of Brechin laid before the Presbytery ' a 
 presentation against Masters John Grub and Francis Rait, who 
 keep an illegal meeting-house in the town and parish of Brechin, 
 and baptise and marry, to the great disturbance of the said town' ;" 
 a presentation which was subsequently enforced before the Lords 
 of Justiciary, to the effect of shutting up this meeting-house. 
 
 In the Rebellion of 1745, Brechin did not figure so conspicu- 
 ously as in that of 1715. There was no Baron in the Castle to 
 head and guide it ; and that made a difference. But most of 
 the nobility and gentry, both in the neighbourhood and 
 throughout the county, joined the standard of Bonnie Prince 
 Charlie. In the early part of 1746, Lord George Murray with 
 part of the Prince's army, and the Duke of Cumberland with 
 the Government troops, passed through Brechin on their way 
 northward towards the field in which was to be decided for ever 
 the contest between the rival dynasties. It is said that Murray's 
 men were a rough and ragged enough squad, and did not scruple 
 to help themselves to whatever they needed, or took a fancy 
 for ; that the Duke's were both better appointed and disciplined ; 
 but that he himself would not taste, and would not allow his 
 officers or men to taste, anything which the hospitality of 
 Brechin offered them. It is thought that the cutting of his
 
 234 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 horse's girths, a day or two before, at Glammis, had its own in- 
 fluence in making him so very cautious and suspicious. 
 
 When writing of Glammis, we might have mentioned this 
 prank of certain zealots for Prince Charlie. Cumberland's army, 
 resting there in February, 1746, as he was on his way north to 
 Culloden, to impede his progress as much as possible, a number 
 of Charlie's friends found their way from Forfar to Glammis, 
 and, under the covert of night, cut the girths of the Duke's 
 cavalry. 
 
 It is said that many natives of Brechin were at the Battle of 
 Culloden, only a few of whom returned to give an account of it. 
 Among these was Peter Logic, the cripple tailor of Tigerton, 
 who, when examined by the authorities about his connection 
 with the rebellion, confessed that he was present at the battles 
 of Preston, Falkirk, and Culloden ; and when asked what 
 station he held in the rebel army, answered with a significant 
 glance at his club foot, " I had the honour to be His Royal 
 Highness's dancing master !" 
 
 We noticed Keithock as having been, nearly seventeen 
 hundred years before this date, the scene of a Roman Camp ; 
 and we may return to it for a few moments in these latter days. 
 Soon after 1617 it was bought from the Lindsays by a younger 
 son of Edgar of Wadderlie ; but when it passed out of the 
 possession of the Lindsays, it did not drop from the list of the 
 Historic Scenes of the county. The Jacobite zeal of the Edgars 
 rather made it more conspicuous among these than ever it had 
 been before. For the part acted by them in 1715, John Edgar 
 died a prisoner in Stirling Castle ; and his brother James, 
 escaping to Italy, became private secretary to the Chevalier, and 
 died at Rome in 1762. As must be allowed, even by those 
 most strongly opposed to his political and ecclesiastical 
 principles, the Secretary was "steel to the backbone." The 
 story told of his incorruptible fidelity to his exiled master puts 
 undying honour on his memory. Sir Robert Walpole, having 
 learned that he was very hospitable and generous, but very 
 poor, wrote him, offering him a handsome sum if he would 
 reveal the Chevalier's designs, who was said to be meditating 
 yet another attempt to recover his ancestral throne. Edgar put 
 the letter into the fire. It was followed by several other like 
 letters, which were disposed of in the same way. Sir Robert, 
 imagining that he had not y et come up to the Secretary's price, 
 at length wrote him that ie had put 10,000 in his name in
 
 The Strathmore District JBrechin. 235 
 
 the Bank of Venice. The Secretary, after consulting with the 
 Chevalier, answered, thanking Sir Robert for the 10,000, 
 which, he said, he had lost no time in drawing from the bank, 
 and laying at the feet of his Royal Master, who had the best 
 title to gold that came, as this had done, from England ! 
 
 The Secretary's nephew, John, was the last Edgar proprietor 
 of Keithock. He supported the Stuart cause in 1745 as warmly 
 as his uncles had done in 1715. He had therefore, to exile 
 himself in France, till the passing of the Act of Indemnity in 
 1756. He then returned home ; and reconciled himself to 
 showing his loyalty by drinking day by day "To the King o'er 
 the water," in place of trying another Sheriffmuir or another 
 Culloden. 
 
 The embers of disaffection, political and ecclesiastical, con- 
 tinued to smoulder in and about Brechin till towards the close 
 of the century, but the outbreak of the French Revolution 
 appears to have extinguished them. In 1794, "the Council of 
 Brechin, having taken into their consideration the present 
 critical state of the country, are unanimously of opinion that it 
 is necessary to declare their affection to their sovereign and 
 their firm attachment to the present happy constitution, and 
 that they will use their utmost exertion to suppress all seditious 
 principles, tumults, and disorders that may arise, tending to 
 subvert the same ; and they do hereby express their detestation 
 and abhorrence of all levelling and equalising principles," &c. 
 
 Coming to this century, the event in Brechin most worthy of 
 commemoration seems to be the laying, in 1838, of the founda- 
 tion of the admirable building for the Public School, and for a 
 lecture room and library to the Mechanics' Institution, and of 
 which Lord Panmure made a gift to the town. The foundation 
 stone of the erection was laid on the 28th June, 1838, the coro- 
 nation day of Queen Victoria. The day was throughout a gala 
 day in Brechin ; the procession and the masonic ceremony were 
 most imposing ; and the festivities, fireworks, and ball in the Town 
 Hall which followed, fitly testified the overflowing gratitude 
 and joy with which " the noble munificence of the Right 
 Honourable William Baron Panmure of Brechin and Navar," 
 had filled all hearts. 
 
 We must not tarry longer at Brechin ; and we take leave of 
 it by mentioning the eminent men whom it has produced. 
 The list is long and imposing. Bishop Gavin Douglas, born in 
 1471, was a native of Brechin : so was Alexander Scott, who
 
 236 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 published several pieces of poetry about 1562 : so was Thomas 
 Dempster, bora in 1580, professor successively in the colleges 
 of Nimes, Pisa, and Boulogne, and author of the Ecclesiastical 
 History of Scotland, and many miscellaneous works : so was 
 the Rev. Wm. Guthrie of Fen wick, born in 1620, and author 
 of The Christian's Great Interest : so was the Rev. John 
 Glendye, Dean of Cashel, and Prebend of St Michael's, Dublin, 
 the founder in 1690, of the Glendye bursary in the College of 
 St Andrews: so was William Maitland, born about 1690, 
 author of the Histories of London and Edinburgh : so was 
 William Guthrie, born in 1708, author of the Geographical 
 Grammar, and various other works : so was David Watson, 
 born in 1710, author of the History of the Heathen Gods, <fec. : 
 so were the sons of Robert Gillies, merchant in Brechin, and 
 whom we noticed as the grandsons of the Rev. John Gillies, 
 minister of Careston : so was Alexander Laing, born in 1787, 
 author of Pawkie Adam Glen, Wayside Flowers, &c. : so was 
 the Rev. John S. Memes, LL.D., born in 1795, minister of 
 Hamilton, author of the Life of Canova, and a general writer 
 on literary subjects : so was the Rev. James Martin of Edin- 
 burgh, born in 1803. a writer on theological subjects : so was 
 the Rev. John Pringle Nichol, LL.D., born in 1804, Professor 
 of Astronomy in the College of Glasgow, and author of many 
 works on astronomy : and so were the late Rev. James Welsh 
 of New Deer, and the Rev. Thomas Guthrie, D.D., of Edin- 
 burgh. 
 
 DUN. 
 
 To John Erskine of Dun, the Superintendent of Angus and 
 Mearns, we have had occasion repeatedly to refer. In council 
 and in arms, as well as in his office of Superintendent, he 
 rendered inestimable service to the Reformed cause : and in 
 our annals his name will ever hold a first place among the 
 " Scots Worthies" of his age. But he was not the only man of 
 distinction in the Dun family. It gave two judges to the 
 College of Justice. The one was Sir Thomas Erskine, Lord
 
 The Strathmore District Dun. 237 
 
 Brechin, proprietor of the Lordship of Brechin and Navar, 
 Secretary to James V., and uncle and tutor to John Erskine of 
 Dun, the future Superintendent. He was made a Lord of 
 Session in 1533, the year after the institution of that Court. 
 The other was David Erskine, appointed a Lord of Session in 
 1710. He resigned office, after a term of service extending 
 to forty-three years ; and in the retirement of Dun he wrote 
 a volume of Advices, moral and political, which he published 
 in 1754, the year before his death. 
 
 Dun came into the possession of the Erskines about the 
 middle of the fourteenth century. In 1357 Sir Robert Erskine 
 of that Ilk in Renfrewshire gave the barony of Dun to his 
 second son John ; and from that day to this John's posterity 
 have inherited it. Their ancestry was one to be proud of. Of 
 John's grandfather, Sir Alexander Erskine of Erskine, Knight, 
 the Earls of Mar were descended. And his father, Sir Robert, 
 is celebrated in history for his attachment and fidelity to King 
 Robert II., who was the only child of Marjory Bruce and 
 Walter, the High Steward of Scotland. According to Wyntoun, 
 it was to John Erskine's father that the Stuarts owed the 
 throne. 
 
 " Robert Stewart was made King 
 Specially through the helping 
 Of guide Schir Robert Krsking." 
 
 "We have likewise had occasion to mention that, on the in- 
 vitation of Erskine, John Knox was for a month at Dun in 
 1555, constantly preaching the Gospel, and the gentry of Angus 
 and Mearns flocking to hear him; and that he afterwards 
 returned to it, and not only preached but administered the 
 Lord's Supper, in the simplicity and purity of the Reformed 
 mode. And we have now to state farther that in Dun House, 
 Erskine, Knox, Melville, Durham of Grange, and others often 
 met to take counsel about the state and interest of the Protest- 
 ant cause, and to unite in supplicating heavenly guidance and 
 blessing in the great enterprise in which they were embarked. 
 
 The only other thing which we have noticed, as contributing 
 to make Dun House an Historic Scene, is the sacking of it by 
 the Marquis of Montrose in the time of the Civil War. 
 Erskine was obnoxious to the Marquis in proportion to his 
 influence and zeal as a leader of the Covenanters. And he was 
 very much the stay of his own party in the whole surrounding 
 district. Having been pillaged by the Royalists under Irvine
 
 238 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 of Drum, as narrated by us in a former paper, the people of ' 
 Montrose, feai'ing another visit from them, had the most port- 
 able and valuable of their goods removed to Dun House for 
 security. Hearing of the store deposited there, Montrose could 
 not resist the temptation of attacking it, which he did soon 
 afterwards, in passing from Athole through Angus, gutting the 
 house, and plundering it. Among the spoil which he found 
 were several fire arms, and " four field brassin peices." These 
 the Covenanters had taken from the Marquis of Huntly in the 
 brush at the Bridge of Dee in 1630, at the outbreak of the war. 
 
 LOGIE-PERT. 
 
 The oldest Historic Scenes in Logic-Pert are marked by a 
 number of tumuli. Three of these are on the Laws of Logie, 
 about a mile to the west of the House of Craigo ; and there is 
 a fourth on Leighton Law, on the border of the parish of Mon- 
 trose. " Two of these tumuli," we read in the Statistical 
 Account of the parish, " have been opened, and in one of them 
 was found a stone coffin, containing a human skeleton almost 
 entire the bones of an extraordinary size, of a deep yellow 
 colour, and very brittle. In the other tumulus opened there 
 were found, about a foot from the surface, four human skeletons 
 of gigantic proportions, and near to these, a beautiful black ring 
 like ebony, of a fine polish, and in perfect preservation. The 
 ring was twelve inches in cii'cumference, and four in diameter, 
 flat in the inside, rounded without, and capable of fitting a large 
 wrist. In the same tuimilus was found an urn full of ashes." 
 
 What sepulchral remains are these 1 ? And how came they to 
 find their sepulchre on the Laws of Logic-Pert 1 They may be 
 the remains of Picts, slain in their wars with one another, or 
 with their invaders ; and, if so, they disprove the vulgar idea 
 that the Picts were a race of small size, three or four feet in 
 height ; " unco wee bodies, but tirrible sti'ang." Or they may 
 be the remains of Northmen, who met their death in trying to 
 make their escape from the fields of some of the bloody battles 
 with the natives, which they are known to have fought at 110 
 great distance from the Laws, where, according to this hypo- 
 thesis, their dust has been disinterred.
 
 The Strathmore District Logie-Pert. 239 
 
 Logie, one of the united parishes now called Logie-Pert, has 
 the distinction of having been the scene of James Melville's 
 early education, and also of those first religious impressions 
 which decided his future, and gave it its complexion. In 1555 
 William Gray, a relative of the Melvilles, was minister of Logie ; 
 and to it James, at the age of seven, and his brother David 
 were sent to be educated. James, as he tells in his Diary, had 
 then learned but little of the " Great Buik ;" but Gray was a 
 "guid, lerned, kynd man;" and "he hade a sistar, a godly and 
 honest matron, rewlar of his hous, wha often rememberit me of 
 my mother, and was a verie loving mother to us, indeed." 
 Gray and his sister were a father and mother to James 
 spiritually ; so that the time he spent with them was, as he 
 says, " a happy and golden tyme," when he " found the Spirit 
 of sanctification beginning to work sum motiones in his heart." 
 
 The North Water Bridge, spanning the North Esk on the 
 confines of this parish, is a scene to which a very melancholy 
 interest attaches. Built at his own expense by Erskine of Dun, 
 the famous Reformer and Superintendent, little did he think of 
 the use that was to be made of it in the next age, in the per- 
 secution of his ecclesiastical followers. Argyll's invasion in 
 1685 ended in his capture and execution ; but to a Government 
 whose tyranny, civil and religious, was fast becoming intoler- 
 able, it created great alarm, during which the Privy Council 
 ordered all the Covenanters who were in confinement to be sent 
 to Dunnottar Castle in Kincardineshire, for their more safe 
 custody. Like a flock of sheep for the slaughter, they were 
 driven to their prison on foot, their hands tied behind their 
 backs, and all manner of indignity and cruelty heaped upon 
 them. At night they were crammed together in unwholesome 
 apartments of jails, where they happened to be within the reach 
 of these ; and where such accommodation could not be had, they 
 spent their nights, however inclement they might be, in the 
 open air. One night they passed between the parapets of the 
 North Water Bridge, which was guarded at both ends to pre- 
 vent their escape ; and the night is said to have been " tem- 
 pestuous with wind and rain." 
 
 The woful journey was at length accomplished. Those 
 noble forefathers, who counted not their lives dear, that they 
 might preserve the religion and liberty of the country, reached 
 their destination, to the number of one hundred and sixty-seven 
 persons ; and the barbarous treatment to which they were
 
 240 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 subjected is one of the most revolting chapters of Scotland's 
 darkest annals. They were thrust into a dark vault under 
 ground, full of mire, and with only one small window opening 
 to the sea. They were allowed nothing which they did not 
 purchase ; even their water had to be paid for. In a few days, 
 about forty of them were immured in a still smaller vault, 
 which light entered only by a chink ; and, for a breath of fresh 
 air, they had to stretch themselves on the damp floor, and catch 
 it at a decayed part of the wall, close to the ground. Many of 
 them died, of course. Those who did not were at length, on 
 the intercession of the wife of the Governor, removed to some- 
 what better apartments. Twenty-five of them contrived to 
 escape from their prison ; but they were betrayed and retaken 
 by the neighbouring peasantry, whom ignorance, and prejudice, 
 and servility to Jacobite lairds, had turned into monsters. 
 " They suffered the most cruel tortures at the hands of the 
 soldiery, and were bound down to the floor of their dungeon 
 with fiery matches burning for several hours between their 
 fingers. Several of them expired under this diabolical treat- 
 ment, and the fingers of others were reduced to ashes. In 
 consequence of a strong representation which was made to the 
 Council regarding these atrocities, orders were given that 
 provisions and other necessaries should be allowed to the 
 prisoners on moderate terms, and that they should not be 
 crowded together so closely in their dungeon. It was supposed 
 that by this time their patience and fortitude would be ex- 
 hausted by the dreadful sufferings they had undergone ; and 
 the Earls of Erroll and Kintore were appointed to ascertain 
 whether they would take the test, and promise to attend in 
 future their parish churches. But they all stood faithfully to 
 their principles. About the end of July they were brought to 
 Leith, and those who adhered to their resolution, and persisted 
 in refusing the test, were transported to the plantations." 
 
 When Scotland was struggling so nobly with Charles I. for 
 Presbytery and the Covenants, it had not to thank Logie-Pert 
 for its help. The parish happened to be vacant in 1645 ; and 
 Mr Allan, minister of Finhaven, appointed by the Presbytery 
 to supply the pulpit on the 18th May, had to report : " The 
 last Lord's day, I went to Logic to preach, and quhen I cam 
 thither, I found the doores locked, entrie refused, and none 
 resorting to the church." 
 
 If antediluvian longevity is ever to be recovered, as some
 
 The Strathmore District Logic-Pert. 241 
 
 think it is to be, Craigo in this parish bids fair to be the first 
 place where it shall be reached. Mr Eraser writes thus of the 
 Carnegies of Craigo : 
 
 " The following notice of ladies of the Craigo branch, who 
 were remarkable for their longevity, has been recently com- 
 municated to me : 
 
 " Mrs Margaret Carnegie of Craigo, aged eighty-seven years 
 complete ; born in Montrose, and passed her life, a few years 
 excepted, in it and its vicinity ; never had a fever : her eyesight 
 entire to the last. 
 
 " Her sister, Miss Carnegie, was also born in Montrose, and 
 lived for the most part in it, till her death, aged eighty-one 
 years complete. Yery healthful all along, and did not lie in 
 bed one day till her death, memory and judgment entire to the 
 last. Their grandfather, David Gardyne, Esq. of Gairden, had 
 twenty daughters and four sons, all by one lady, Elspet 
 Arbuthnot of Arbuthnot. They lived sixty years in the 
 married state : died at eighty-six years. Both lived temper- 
 ately. Both had their memory and judgment vigorous to the 
 last. They had six daughters married to gentlemen of fortune, 
 in the counties of Angus and Mearns, and lived to between 
 eighty-six and ninety years. They were brought up in a cold 
 house, the Castle of Gairden, and had no fires in their rooms 
 till married. 
 
 " Miss Carnegie's aunt, Lady Nicolson, lived till ninety-two 
 years complete ; vigorous as to body and mind till her death ; 
 and on her death-bed signed a deed of entail sixty times with 
 her own hand. Her sister, Lady Arbeikie, lived eighty-eight 
 years complete, and was cheerful with her friends the night 
 before her death, knowing herself dying. Both the sisters, and 
 the whole of the family, were remarkable for temperance." 
 
 There is yet another spot that must be included among the 
 Historic Scenes of Logie-Pert. Near to the south end of the 
 North Water Bridge, there stood, till lately, the cottage of a 
 crofter, and in that humble beild was born, on the 6th April, 
 1773, James Mill, the historian of British India. His father 
 was shoemaker as well as crofter. Having been educated first 
 in the school of his native parish, and then in the Grammar 
 School of Montrose, in both of which James distinguished him- 
 self by his diligence and aptness to learn, Sir John Stuart, 
 Bart, of Fettercairn, sent him to the University of Edinburgh 
 to study for the Church. He took license as a probationer, but 
 Q
 
 242 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 had no particular liking for the ministry. After employing 
 himself for some time as a private tutor, he removed to London 
 in 1800, and there supported himself and his increasing family 
 by his pen, chiefly by contributions to the periodical press. 
 In 1817 was published his principal work, the History of British 
 India, in 5 vols., 8vo., pronounced by Lord Macaulay "the 
 greatest historical work which has appeared in our language 
 since that of Gibbon," and which speedily revolutionised our 
 Indian administration. In 1819, he received a valuable 
 appointment in the India House. He was entrusted with the 
 chief conduct of the Correspondence Department ; in other words, 
 he was Chief Minister for India Affairs to the East India 
 Company. 
 
 Amid all the duties of his high office, Mr Mill's pen con- 
 tinued to be prolific ; and its productions enriched our literature, 
 and had no small influence in forming public opinion on the 
 subjects of which they treated. In 1828, he reprinted essays 
 which he had contributed to the Supplement of the Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica. Among these was an essay on Government, 
 embodying and strongly advocating the principles of the 
 Benthamite or Utilitarian School. In the Edinburgh Review, 
 Macaulay reviewed this essay in a very acrimonious and con- 
 temptuous tone. The Westminster Review answered, and 
 defended Mill. The controversy continued for the greater part 
 of 1829 ; was conducted with all the ability and spirit that were 
 to be expected in such combatants ; and ended decidedly to 
 Mill's advantage, Macaulay still dissenting from his opinions, 
 but acknowledging that to his " talents and virtues he formerly 
 did not do justice." 
 
 Mill died at Kensington in 1836, and was buried in 
 Kensington Church, leaving a son whom he had named John 
 Stuart, in grateful acknowledgment of the encouragement and 
 assistance which he himself had received in his youth from Sir 
 John Stuart ; and over that son, who more than sustained the 
 high reputation of his father, the illustrious John Stuart Mill, 
 politician, economist, logician, philosopher, &c., the grave 
 recently closed. He died greatly lamented ; the mourning for 
 him mingled in many with bitter regret, that scepticism, either 
 philosophical or theological, should have received any counten- 
 ance from talents so transcendent. But, happily, the very 
 extravagance of his scepticism is an antidote to it. It needs no 
 other refutation than the exquisite ridicule which Lord Neaves
 
 The Strathmore District Strickathro. 243 
 
 has poured on it in verses which he has reprinted from 
 Blackwood, and which, if our readers can manage to get hold 
 of them, they will find a rare treat. 
 
 STRICKATHRO. 
 
 Strickathro is the only remaining parish in the Strathmore 
 district of the shire. Here, by the King's Ford in the South 
 Esk, the Roman station Tina is supposed to have been situated. 
 Satisfactory vestiges of it have been sought for in vain ; but 
 may not the explanation of this be that the river has obliterated 
 them by changing its channel so much, as it is allowed that it 
 has done, since the days of the Roman invasion 1 Here, too, 
 according to some, among whom is Tytler, Kenneth III. was 
 murdered in 994. The story, at least one version of it, is that 
 Kenneth had put to death the son of Finella, for treason com- 
 mitted by him in an insurrection in the Mearns. Finella was 
 the wife of the chief of the Mearns, and a daughter of the 
 Maormor or Earl of Angus. In revenge for the death of her 
 son, she hired a band of ruffians to assassinate the King ; and 
 they accomplished their purpose at a hunting match in Stric- 
 kathro, into which they lured him. Justice pursued the 
 murderess. She took refuge in the now beautiful and romantic 
 Den-Finella, which has derived its name from her ; and when 
 overtaken there, according to one class of chroniclers, she was 
 apprehended and executed ; and, according to another class, she 
 committed suicide by leaping from the rocks into the deep gully, 
 into which the Burn running through the Den tumbles from a 
 height of 150 feet, at the point where the turnpike road now 
 crosses it. 
 
 " She leapt from the rocks into a wild boiling pool, 
 "Where her body was torn and tossed." 
 
 The Danes who survived the battle of Aberlemno in 1012 are 
 said to have passed through Strickathro in their flight north- 
 ward, and to have crossed the South Esk at King's Ford. Tra- 
 dition likewise speaks of a battle fought at Strickathro at a very 
 distant period, between three kings, Pictish, Scottish, and 
 British or Danish, in which all the three fell. 
 
 A battle between David I. and the Earl of Moray, was 
 fought in this parish, and is known in history by the name of 
 Q 2
 
 244 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 the battle of Strickathro. The Earl fell on that bloody field ; 
 and it is interesting to think that his grave may have been dis- 
 covered. A hillock near the church, called Re or Rye Hillock, 
 was some years ago opened, when a carefully-constructed stone 
 coffin, containing human bones, was found about two feet below 
 the surface. There was in it likewise " the figure of a fish, 
 made of gold, from four to five inches in length." " This in- 
 teresting relic," Mr Jervise remarks, " which was carried off by 
 the workmen and lost, had perhaps been part of the ai-morial 
 ensigns of the person interred ; and, as the Earl of Moray was 
 killed here, this may have been the place of his burial." 
 
 It has been often said that it was at Strickathro that John 
 Baliol, in 1296, resigned his authority and people into the hands 
 of Edward I. of England. The historic facts seem to have been 
 exactly ascertained, and they are these : The scroll of Baliol's 
 resignation was prepared at Kincardine, on the 2d July ; his 
 penance was performed in the churchyard of Strickathro on the 
 7th ; and his final surrender of the crown was made on the 10th, 
 at the Castle of Brechin, in the presence of Edward himself. 
 
 It was in this parish that the battle, known in history as 
 the battle of Brechin, was fought. It was an incident of the 
 persistent attempt of the Douglases to grasp the government of 
 the kingdom, by getting the young King, James II., into their 
 hands, and making him their puppet. To assist them in the 
 design which their guilty ambition meditated, they had entered 
 into a " bond" with the Earls of Crawford and Ross, binding 
 the parties to it to make common cause against all opponents. 
 The King sending for the Earl of Douglas to Stirling Castle, 
 remonstrated with him on this alliance, and at last commanded 
 him to break the "bond." The Earl haughtily and insolently 
 answered that he would not. "Then this shall," said the King ; 
 and drawing his dagger, stabbed him twice to the heart. Sir 
 Patrick Grey, who was at hand, rushed into the apartment and 
 felled Douglas with a pole-axe, and his body was cast out of the 
 window into the court below. 
 
 Open war followed between the party of the King and the 
 party of the Douglases. Huntly, James's Lieutenant-General, 
 hastened south with all the forces he could muster, to prevent, 
 if possible, the junction of the forces of Crawford and Douglas ; 
 and the King hastened north at the head of a great army. The 
 Earl of Crawford (who was Earl Beardie and the Tiger Earl) 
 was equally prompt and resolute. At the head of all the
 
 The Strathmore District Strickathro. 245 
 
 friends and vassals lie could raise, he set out to intercept Huntly. 
 They met at Hair Cairn, about three and a half miles north- 
 east of Brechin, and fought an obstinate battle, in which 
 Huntly was victorious, chiefly through the desertion of Collace 
 of Balnamoon, who " was captain of the axmen, in whose hands 
 the hail hope of victory stood that day." The disappointment 
 and rage of Crawford knew no bounds ; and hence the dreadful 
 vengeance which he took on those who helped to vanquish him, 
 and primarily on Balnamoon, who paid dear for his treason 
 against the chief and his party. 
 
 The battlefield is well known. On the north side of it there 
 still lies a large oblong stone, called indiscriminately Huntly's 
 Stone and Earl Beardie's Stone, because on it one or other of 
 these chiefs is said to have planted his standard, and the whole 
 height goes by the name of Huntly Hill. 
 
 Whether these battles fully account for the "sepulchral 
 remains found in great quantities throughout the lower part of 
 the parish," our readers must judge for themselves. If it is 
 thought that they do not, the supposition is quite legitimate 
 that Strickathro may have been the scene of other bloody con- 
 flicts, of which neither tradition nor history has handed down 
 to us any notice. 
 
 The Session Records bear with what a high hand the 
 Jacobites carried matters in Strickathro in 1715. " November 
 2d, Mr John Davie, factor to the Earl of Southesque, intruded 
 on the minister's charge by taking the keys of the church, 
 ordering the Kirk officer to ring the bells at the ordinary time 
 of day, the people being warned the day before to wait on, and 
 join in, the worship of a pretended fast or humiliation day for 
 success to the Pretender's arms, and that under the pain of 
 taking each man, master and servant, to the camp at Perth ; 
 which warning so prevailed that it brought the whole parish 
 together at the time appointed to the church, when and where 
 Mr Davie himself came at the head of near eighty men under 
 arms, with beating drums and flying colours, and preached a 
 little in the church, and after that kind of worship was over, he 
 mustered up his men again at the kirk gate, and on their front 
 went to Kinnaird." What a pity we have not had preserved 
 to us a specimen at least of this great apostle's preaching ! We 
 are no strangers to a factor's " snash," but a factor's sermon one 
 can hardly imagine ! " Truly," Mr Black remarks, " Mr Davie 
 had been a factor, and not a mere rent collector. The same
 
 246 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Minutes mention that during the intrusion, which continued to 
 February, 1716, the minister preached in the manse, and the 
 collections made being inconsiderable, he applied them to ' the 
 relief of some poor indigent people in the parish of Brechin ' 
 true Hanoverians, no doubt. Order being restored, the 
 minister, in April, 1716, laid before the Session an appoint- 
 ment on him by the Presbytery of Brechin to inquire at them 
 the reasons why they joined Mr Davie, and the minister, find- 
 ing their reasons no way satisfactory, he solemnly rebuked them, 
 and also for their pecuniary intromissions with the collections, 
 of which they were unable to give any account, further than it 
 was spent on the poor. The minister, Mr Glassford, seems to 
 have been in a minority in his own parish." 
 
 But we happen to have discovered what must somewhat 
 modify our invective against the factor, as well as Mr Black's. 
 It appears that Davie was a licentiate of the Prelatic church. 
 We learn this from two facts ; from his intruding into Stric- 
 kathro both in 1701 and in 1715, and from his being deposed 
 in 1716. 
 
 The Right Honourable George Rose, Clerk of Parliament, 
 President of the Board of Trade, author of Observations' on 
 the Works of Fox, &c., was a native of the parish of 
 Strickathro. He was born at Woodside of Dunlappy, where his 
 father, a minister of the Scotch Episcopal Church, resided. He 
 was educated in Brechin, and in an uncle's academy at 
 Hampstead, near London, and owed his promotion to the Earl 
 of Sandwich, whose notice he attracted.
 
 Tlie Grampian District Edzell. 247 
 
 THE GRAMPIAN DISTRICT. 
 EDZELL. 
 
 The chief Historic Scene in Edzell is Edzell Castle, at the 
 base of the Grampian Range, on the left bank of the West 
 Water, " the most magnificent and extensive remnant of ancient 
 baronial grandeur which the county of Forfar possesses." It 
 was one of the great seats of the great Lindsay family, which 
 was Norman, and came over to England with William the Con- 
 queror. The first of the family in Scotland was Walter de 
 Lindsay, whose grandson was the first Lindsay of Lindsay- 
 Crawford in Clydesdale. The tenth in descent from him was 
 Sir Alexander Lindsay, who married Catherine Stirling, one of 
 the two daughters left by the last Stirling of Edzell, and thus 
 succeeded to Edzell, Glenesk, and Lethnot. He was succeeded 
 by his son, Sir David, who on the death of his uncle, Sir James 
 de Lindsay of Crawford, in 1397, became chief of the family, 
 and heir of its great possessions. He married the Princess 
 Elizabeth, daughter of Robert II., who gave him the barony of 
 Strathnairn, in Inverness-shire, and created him Earl of Craw- 
 ford. 
 
 Of his many successors in Edzell, the two following were per- 
 haps the most illustrious Sir David, who ultimately became 
 the ninth Earl of Crawford ; and his son, also Sir David, brother 
 of John, Lord Menmuir, and of Margaret and Elizabeth, 
 married the one to the Earl of Athole, and the other to Patrick, 
 third Lord Drummond. It was in his day that the glory of his 
 line reached its meridian. He finished what his father had 
 begun, the Lindsay additions to the Castle of Edzell. The tower 
 or large square keep had been built by the Stirlings. He 
 made the garden liker some Oriental enchanted spot than any- 
 thing which Scotland could then match ; and in literature, 
 science, and culture, he was so far in advance of his age that, 
 as Lord Lindsay has said, " the sword, the pen, and the prun- 
 ing-hook were equally familiar to him ; he even anticipated the 
 geologist's hammer, and had at least a taste for architecture 
 and design." He was, withal, a mineralogist, and made 
 experiments in mining on his estates, very notable for their
 
 248 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 day, and wonderful in their success. So highly did James VI. 
 appreciate him, that he made him a Privy Councillor, and, on 
 the resignation of his brother, Lord Menmuir, appointed him to 
 fill the vacancy as a Lord of Session. 
 
 In 1562, Queen Mary honoured Edzell Castle with a visit. 
 Her Majesty was returning from her expedition to the north to 
 suppress the rebellion of Huntly, and was accompanied by 
 Lords Moray, Maitland, and Lindsay. She held a Council in 
 the Castle, spent in it the night of the 25th August, and the 
 room in which she slept was ever afterwards called the Queen's 
 Chamber. 
 
 The decline of the house of Edzell dates from the day of this 
 Sir David. It was owing mainly to the folly and wickedness 
 of his successors, of which his own son showed a melancholy 
 example. As a single instance, for the slaughter of his uncle, 
 Lord Spynie, in a night scuffle on the High Street of Edinburgh, 
 he had first to hide from justice : and he had eventually to 
 give Spynie's family ten thousand merks, and the lands of 
 Garlobank in the parish of Kirriemuir; an enormous mulct, 
 which greatly aggravated " the revinit and rent estait of his 
 house." 
 
 The ruins of the Castle of Edzell bear witness to its size, and 
 strength, and splendour. Its appurtenances, too, showed the 
 completeness of the baronial establishment, and the princely 
 state which the owners of it maintained. The " pit and 
 gallows" were in the neighbourhood of the Castle, and the sites 
 of them have been identified. It was female culprits that more 
 usually expiated their offences by being drowned in the pit ; 
 and it was male culprits that more usually expiated theirs by 
 being hung on the gallows. The Barons of Edzell had their 
 hereditary doomsters, whose duty was to repeat the sentence or 
 doom which the Barons awarded in their Court. The family 
 which held this office was named Duray. The emoluments of 
 the office were Durayhill from the Laird, a small but fertile 
 estate on the banks of the North Esk, and from each principal 
 tenant two pecks of oatmeal, and from each sub-tenant a 
 " bapyful" of meal. The doomsters had perquisites beside ; 
 which, however, do not seem to have been worth much. They 
 had, according to tradition, " the farcical privileges of fishing in 
 the almost waterless Burn of "Whishop, and of hunting on the 
 hill of Wirran with a hawk blind of an eye, and a hound 
 crippled of a leg ! Besides, as they had four pennies Scots for
 
 The Grampian District Edzell. 249 
 
 ringing the bell of St Lawrence on high occasions such as the 
 births and funerals of the lords and ladies of Edzell they may 
 be supposed, in addition to the office of dempster, to have 
 enjoyed that of master beadle." 
 
 The kitchen of the Castle was fitly called the Kitchen of 
 Angus. So capacious was it, and so well furnished with cook- 
 ing appliances, that oxen were roasted whole in it ! The daily 
 provision prepared was on such a scale, and the style of living 
 so magnificent, that, when the family had dined, the poor of the 
 parish daily appeared in the courtyard, and, seated on the 
 benches that were in the outer entrance passage, were liberally 
 supplied with beef and beer by the hands of the lady of the 
 Castle, or by those of her fair daughters. 
 
 The burial vault of the family was on the south side of the 
 old church. Besides containing the dead of the family, like 
 other such structures, it was once, according to accepted local 
 tradition, the scene of a sort of resurrection. In a remote age, 
 a lady of the family fell into a trance, and being supposed to be 
 dead, she was laid to the generations of her fathers, richly 
 bedecked with jewels. The sexton, knowing no good reason 
 why the jewels should rust and consume in the domains of 
 death, went by night to the vault to save them from such a 
 fate. Having appropriated all of them except the massive gold 
 rings on the swollen fingers of the lady, he drew his knife and 
 applied it to the fingers. On the first incision, " Alas !" said 
 the lady faintly, her body at the same time slightly moving. 
 The knife instantly dropped from the sexton's hand, and, over- 
 whelmed with amazement and terror, he sank senseless on the 
 floor. The lady, extricating herself from her shroud, took the 
 sexton's glimmering taper in her own hand, and, raising him 
 up with the other, led him out of the vault. Consciousness 
 restored, he craved mercy with an earnestness with which he 
 had never before supplicated it ; but, though assured not only 
 of forgiveness, but of a great reward from the lady's husband, 
 if he would accompany her to the Castle, he begged to be 
 excused for letting her return alone, and he and his treasures 
 were never more seen or heard of in Edzell. 
 
 At the Reformation from Popeiy the Lindsays of Edzell were 
 stout Reformers. Sir David, and his brother, Lord Menmuir 
 (of whom sprang the noble Balcarras branch) were decided and 
 devoted Protestants. Their descendants steadfastly adhered to 
 the same interest. The Laird, his lady, brother, factor, and
 
 250 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 other friends, the minister of the parish, and the Session Clerk, 
 with one hundred and seventy parishioners, signed the Solemn 
 League and Covenant in the Covenanting era. In support of 
 the Covenanting cause, John of Edzell raised a regiment at his 
 own charge, which was called by his name. He suffered 
 accordingly. For his Roundhead zeal Middleton fined him 
 3000 ; and when Montrose escaped into the district from the 
 pillage of Dundee, he harried Glenesk so thoroughly, as to give 
 the house of Edzell a blow from which it never recovered. It 
 so reduced the Laird that, though worth 10,000 a year in 
 1630, he was now obliged to petition Parliament that he might 
 be exempted from contributing to the new levies raised ; " the 
 rebel army," he said, " having been for a long time encamped 
 and quartered upon the lands of Edzell and Glenesk, to the 
 utter destruction of my lands and tenants, the whole corn being 
 burnt in the barnyards, and the whole store of cattle and goods 
 killed or driven away, whereby the haill lands of Glenesk, 
 worth of yearly revenue nine thousand merks, have ever since 
 been lying waste be reason the tenants have not been able to 
 labour the same, insomuch that the particular amount of. my 
 losses which was clearly instructit to the Committee of Coiamon 
 Burdens, did amount to the sum of fourscore thousand merks or 
 thereby ; besides great charges and expenses which I have 
 hitherto been forced to sustain for maintaining these several 
 garrisons for a long time to defend my tenants, whereof many, 
 in their own defence, were most cruelly and barbarously killed, 
 as likewise, ever since, a constant guard of forty men for defend- 
 ing my lands and tenants from the daily incursions of enemies 
 and robbers." 
 
 As the sun of the Lindsays of Edzell was tending to its 
 setting, they changed sides in both religion and politics. 
 " Why or wherefore," says the writer of the Statistical Account 
 of the parish, "it is vain to inquire; but in 1661, I find re- 
 joicings for Charles II. 's accession ; for King James' victory 
 over Monmouth and Argyll ; for the birth of King James II. 's 
 son, and every disrespect to King William's fasts and thanks- 
 givings ; and hostility to the re-establishment of Presbytery, 
 insomuch that, in 1714, there was a very serious riot and 
 deforcement, to the bodily hurt and danger of Mr Robert Gray, 
 Presbyterian minister of Edzell, which affair the Laird was glad 
 to settle by the advice of the Lords of Justiciary." The Pres- 
 bytery having for safety from Jacobite violence, ordained Mr
 
 Tlie Grampian District Edzell. 251 
 
 Gray at Brechin, the Laird of Edzell for some time shut the 
 door of the church against him ; and, in the face of the interdict 
 of the Lords of 3 usticiary, he kept the Episcopalian minister 
 preaching in the great hall of the Castle, and publicly praying 
 for a Popish Pretender as the King of these realms : usurping, 
 withal, the management of the whole parochial business belong- 
 ing to the Kirk-Session. The violence against Mr Gray and 
 the party adhering to him came to a crisis on the 3d of October. 
 He had been ordained on the 26th of August (1714). They 
 were assaulted at the church " by a band of men and women 
 under the Laird's directions, who beat and maltreated them in 
 every conceivable way, by cutting their clothes, and stabbing 
 and beating them with ' durks, and stones, and rungs,' and 
 forcing them to wade to and fro in the adjoining river, until 
 some of them were nearly killed." Mr Gray appealed to Csesar 
 for protection, and left the scene for a season. He returned to 
 it in the following January, when he was permitted to go on 
 with his labours in peace ; and the Prelatic robbers " delivered 
 over to him the ' communion vessels and vestments,' which 
 they had all along retained and made use of." 
 
 The Jacobites played a high game ; and it was proportionately 
 costly. It cost the Lindsays of Edzell their patrimony. They 
 parted with it for the sake of James VIII. of Scotland and III. 
 of England. To enable him to raise a company to support 
 James, the last Laird of them sold Edzell, Glenesk, and Lethnot 
 to the Earl of Panmure. The Earl bought them to enable him 
 the more efficiently to help James ; and the game cost him, not 
 only this purchase, but his entire princely inheritance. 
 
 The last Laird's " flittin' " from Edzell is most pathetically 
 told by Lord Lindsay in his Lives of the Lindsays, all the 
 more pathetically that it is told in the language of local tradi- 
 tion. " The Laird, like his father, had been a wild and waste- 
 ful man, and had been long awa' ; he was deeply engaged with the 
 unsuccessful party of the Stuarts, and the rumour of their 
 defeat was still occupying the minds of all the country side. 
 One afternoon the poor Baron, with a sad and sorrowful 
 countenance and heavy heart, and followed by only one of a' 
 his company, both on horseback, came to the Castle, almost un- 
 noticed by any. Everything was silent he gaed into his great 
 big house, a solitary man there was no wife and child to gie 
 him welcome, for he had never been married. The Castle was 
 almost deserted ; a few old servants had been the only inhabi-
 
 252 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 tants for many months. Neither the Laird nor his faithful 
 follower took any rest that night. Lindsay, the broken- 
 hearted ruined man, sat all night in the large hall, sadly occupied 
 destroying papers sometimes, reading papers sometimes, 
 sometimes writing, sometimes sitting mournfully silent unable 
 to fix his thoughts on the present or to contemplate the future. 
 In the course of the following day he left the Castle in the same 
 manner in which he had come ; he saw none of his people or 
 tenants ; his one attendant only accompanying him ; they rode 
 away, taking with them as much as was valuable or useful as 
 they could conveniently carry. And, turning round to take a 
 last look of the old towers, he drew a last long sigh, and wept. 
 He was never seen here again." 
 
 The chapter of his after-life is alike brief and sad. The first 
 few years of it were spent in Fifeshii'e, on the small property of 
 Newgate, after which he removed to Kirkwall, in the Orkney 
 Islands, where he died in the capacity of an hostler at an inn 
 about the middle of last century ; or as stated by Earl James in 
 his Memoirs, in 1744, aged about eighty years a landless out- 
 cast, yet unquestionably dejure " Lord de Lyndesay." 
 
 He had two sisters, Margaret and Janet. Janet, who had 
 been followed in her walks about Edzell by a pretty white 
 lamb, fell the victim of a vile seducer, and died in England in 
 infamy. Margaret, with a dowry of seven thousand merks, 
 became the wife of Watson of Aitherny, in Fife, and her visit 
 to Edzell in ruins Lord Lindsay has also told most touchingly. 
 " Year after year passed away, and the Castle fell to ruin the 
 banner rotted on the keep the roofs fell in the pleasance 
 became a wilderness the summer-house fell to decay the 
 woods grew wild and tangled the dogs died about the place, 
 and the name of the old proprietors was seldom mentioned, 
 when a lady arrived one day at Edzell, as it is still related, in 
 her own coach, and drove to the Castle. She was tall and 
 beautiful, and dressed in deep mourning. ' When she came 
 near the ancient burying-place,' says the same faint voice of the 
 past (tradition), ' she alighted and went into the chapel, for it 
 was then open the doors had been driven down, the stone 
 figures and carved work was all broken, and bones lay scattered 
 about. The poor lady went in and sat down among it a', and 
 wept sore at the ruin of the house and the fate of her family, 
 for no one doubted of her being one of them, though no one 
 knew who she was or where she came from. After a while she
 
 The Grampian District Edzell. 253 
 
 came out, and was driven in the coach up to the Castle ; she 
 went through as much of it as she could, for stairs had fallen 
 down, and roofs had fallen in, and in one room in particular 
 she staid a long while, weeping sadly. She said the place was 
 dear to her, though she had now no right to it, and she carried 
 some of the earth away with her.' It was Margaret of Edzell, 
 the Lady of Aitherny, as ascertained by an independent 
 tradition, derived from a venerable lady of the House of 
 Aitherny, who lived to a great age, and always spoke of her 
 with bitterness as the proud bird out of the eagle's nest who 
 had ruined her family. ' She came once to my father's house,' 
 said she to my informant, ' with two of her children. She was 
 on her way to Edzell Castle. It was years since it had passed 
 away from her family. My father did all that he could to 
 persuade her from so waefu' a journey, but go she would ; and 
 one morning she set off alone, leaving her children with us to 
 await her return. She was a sair changed woman when she 
 came back her haughty manner was gone, and her proud look 
 turned into sadness. She had found everything changed at 
 Edzell since she left it, a gay lady, the bride of Aitherny. For 
 the noise and merriment of those days, she found silence and 
 sadness for the many going to and fro, solitude and moulder- 
 ing walls for the plentiful board of her father, his house only, 
 roofless and deserted. When she looked out from the windows, 
 it was the same gay and smiling landscape, but all within was 
 ruin and desolation. She found her way to what had been in 
 former days her own room, and there, overcome with the weight 
 of sorrow, she sat down and wept for a long time she felt her- 
 self the last of all her race, for her only brother was gone, no 
 one could tell where. She came back to Gardrum the next 
 day, and she just lived to see the ruin of Aitherny, which her 
 extravagance and folly had brought on, for the laird was a 
 good-natured man and could deny her nothing. They both 
 died, leaving their family in penury.' And such was the end 
 of the ' proud house of Edzell.' " 
 
 Edzell endured a third military visit in 1746. About three 
 hundred Argyll Highlanders were stationed in the Castle, to 
 purge the district of Jacobites, special attention being directed 
 to a freebooter named Ferrier, who, with some three hundred 
 daring desperate fellows like himself, took up his abode at the 
 mouth of Glenesk, and ravaged the country between it and 
 Brechin. Without receiving all that some writers have said of
 
 254 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 the character and deeds of these Highlanders, we may be sure 
 that the district was glad when it was ablo to dispense with the 
 presence of such purgers and protectors. 
 
 The Reverend George Low, the eminent naturalist, was a 
 native of Edzell, his father filling the humble office of beadle of 
 the parish. George studied both at Aberdeen and St Andrews ; 
 was ordained minister of Birsay and Harray in 1774 ; and died 
 there in 1795. He was the author of Fauna Orcadensis, and 
 Flora Orcadensis, and the translator of Torfaeus' History of 
 Orkney. He accompanied Pennant in his famous Shetland 
 tour, and, from his knowledge of botany, was of great service to 
 him. He likewise left a History of Orkney in MS., from 
 which, more especially from the Appendix treating of the 
 Natural History of the Islands, Dr Barry is said to have drawn 
 largely, without making the slightest acknowledgment of 
 obligation to the author ! 
 
 LOCHLEE. 
 
 The properties of Edzell and Glenesk, or, as the latter is also 
 called, Lochlee, were always united. The Stirlings and the 
 Lindsays, of whom we do not require to say anything more, 
 were owners of both. 
 
 As far back as the eighth century, St Drostan was the apostle 
 of Christianity to Glenesk. According to Butler, the Saint had 
 Royal Scotch blood in his veins, and was Bishop of Donegal, in 
 Ireland. Visiting Glenesk, and moved with pity for its be- 
 nighted inhabitants, he took up his residence in it, and devoted 
 the remainder of his life to its evangelisation. He died in 809 ; 
 and his body was carried in mournful procession across the hills, 
 and buried in the church of Aberdour, in Aberdeenshire, of 
 which church he had been patron. His memory is preserved 
 in such local names as Droustie, Droustie Kirk, Droustie Inn, 
 Droustie's Well, and Droustie's Meadow. 
 
 It is said that The Bruce and his mortal enemy, John Comyn, 
 Earl of Buchan, aided by the King's nephew, Sir David de 
 Brechin, and Sir John Mowbray, met in Glenesk in 1307. 
 After the capture of the Castle of Inverness and other strong- 
 holds in the north, Bruce was marching southward ; and, as
 
 The Grampian District Lochlee. 255 
 
 Buchanan has it, when he " had penetrated into the interior of 
 the Kingdom, John Cumin, Earl of Buchan, informed of his 
 movements came up with him, at the wood through which the 
 River Esk flows into the plains of M earns, and with an army 
 of English and Scots, which he had suddenly raised, having 
 called out all who were able to bear arms, he followed him to a 
 place named Glenesk. Bruce perceiving that the narrow passes 
 were favourable for his little force, prepared for battle, and 
 waited the enemy. Cumin drew out his army in an extended 
 line, thinking that his opponents would be panic-struck at the 
 appearance of such a multitude ; but when he saw that they 
 maintained their position, conscious of the inferiority of his 
 soldiers, he durst not seek an engagement in a situation which 
 was rather unfavourable." Legend has improved this bit 
 of dull history, if history it is. It says that Bruce and Comyn, 
 at their meeting in Glenesk, did fight a bloody battle ; that the 
 cairns on Rowan Hill are the graves of the slain in it ; that a 
 large whinstone, with a cross rudely cut on it, is the stone on 
 which Bruce set up his standard ; and that another stone among 
 the birks of Ardoch, with a few oblique lines on it, is the stone 
 on which he sharpened his sword after the battle ! 
 
 It was in Glenesk that Sir David Lindsay began, about 
 1593, the mining operations to which we alluded in connection 
 with Edzell, and which were carried on with more or less 
 regularity and energy during the next century. 
 
 Invermark Castle was the baronial residence in Glenesk. 
 The last Castle, the ruins of which are so interesting an object 
 in the romantic and charming scenery about the mouth of the 
 Mark, was built by the Lindsays ; and Sir David Lindsay, the 
 ninth Earl of Crawford, died in it. The Tower may have been 
 specially designed for keeping watch and guard against the 
 incursions of the Caterans from the north ; from which in spite 
 of all precautions, the district suffered so much that, as late as 
 1659, when the Laird bestowed a grant for the reader or school- 
 master, he expressly bound himself and his successors to pay 
 the whole stipend, in the event of " a general vastatione of the 
 paroche by the Highlanders or otherwise," and that for " the 
 year or yeares as the vastatione shall endure." As a single 
 instance of such visitation, Mr Jervise says, " In one of these 
 inroads the Cateran is said to have carried off in triumph about 
 the half of the cattle and sheep in the glen ; and, in attempting 
 to regain them, no fewer than five of the Glenesk men fell in
 
 256 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 the struggle, while about a dozen men were taken prisoners 
 and carried to the distant home of the riever, and only restored 
 to their friends on the payment of a heavy ransom." 
 
 When Montrose visited Edzell in 1645, he extended his 
 attention to Glenesk ; and, among other favours, he burned the 
 church of it to the ground. The battle between Prelacy and 
 Presbytery was very keenly and toughly fought in this 
 sequestered pastoral district. Glenesk was disjoined from 
 Lethnot and erected into a separate parish in 1723. The great 
 body of the people were then either Episcopalians or Roman 
 Catholics, chiefly the former, and their antipathy to the 
 Revolution Church was such that rather than conform to it they 
 were prepared to go back to Rome. The Presbyterian zeal of 
 Mr Scott, one of the parochial incumbents, steeled them in this 
 antipathy. In the language of his Session Minutes, the 
 Reverend David Rose, father of the Right Honourable Sir 
 George Rose, was " the illegal meeting-house keeper." The 
 " marriage pledges " of Episcopalians he demanded, but never 
 returned, except to those who joined his church ; and the banns 
 of marriage between a couple he would not allow to be pro- 
 claimed, because the woman was a Papist. It is not surprising 
 that his parishioners regarded him as a spy of the Hanoverian 
 Government, and credited him with obtaining from it the order 
 prohibiting the " wearing of that part of the Highland dress 
 called the plaid, filibeg, or little kilt." They also believed that 
 to him they were indebted for the visit in 1746 of the Argyle 
 Highlanders, who had great faith in the virtue of fire for purg- 
 ing the land, and who accordingly burned down the Episcopalian 
 meeting-house in Glenesk. When riding past its ruins Mr 
 Scott was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot ; and 
 the Episcopalians did not fail to point to his fate as a signal 
 instance of retributive justice. The Presbyterians were not the 
 only religious party in those days, who thought themselves 
 " made of the counsel " of the King of Heaven, and able to 
 make the mysteries of his providence plain ! 
 
 Glenesk was the hiding-place of young Edzell, the profligate 
 son of Lord Edzell, when he had to fly from justice ; and the 
 " Eagil's Loup" is the scene where he one day escaped by a 
 desperate leap over a frightful rocky chasm of the Mark, while 
 some of his pursuers, attempting to follow, fell into the chasm, 
 and were dashed to pieces. The glen was also the refuge of 
 rebel Jacobites in 1745. " Bonnymune's Cave," a large cave
 
 The Grampian District LocTilee. 257 
 
 with a narrow mouth, near the foot of Cramond Hill, was the 
 lurking place of the rebel Laird of Balnamoon ; and there he 
 skulked in safety, despite of the rewards offered and efforts 
 made for the discovery of him. He was, of course, much in- 
 debted to the affection and fidelity of those who lived in the 
 neighbourhood of the cave. One cold wet day he was sitting 
 by the kitchen fire of the farmer of Glenmark, disguised in the 
 ordinary garb of a hind. Soldiers in search of him entered the 
 house ; when the farmer gruffly ordered him to go and clean 
 the byres, and make room at the fireside for the strangers ! 
 Balnamoon did not need to have the order repeated. He at 
 once made himself scarce, and was safe in the retreat of his cave 
 as soon as his feet could carry him to it. 
 
 Glenesk has been the scene of some tragic occurrences. Such 
 was the drowning of the two brothers Whyte in the Mark, at 
 Gripdyke, in Glenmark, in 1820. The one having leaped 
 across the narrow passage, fell back into the torrent, and in a 
 moment was engulfed in the abyss below ; and the other at 
 affection's impulse, madly threw himself in to save his brother, 
 and shared his fate. Such was the death of Miss Catherine 
 Douglas, of Brigton, in the snowstorm of January, 1827. She 
 had been with the Rev. Mr Jolly, Episcopal minister of Glen- 
 esk, at Mill of Auchun. As they returned home, the snow 
 falling heavily, and the wind drifting it, they got quite 
 bewildered, and lost their way. Nobly did the lady bear up, 
 till she was forced to succumb to utter exhaustion. Mr Jolly 
 clasped her in his arms, and felt her pulse growing weaker 
 and weaker, till it ceased to beat ; and when found by 
 the people who went out in search of them, he seemed just 
 about to follow his companion, who lay beside him a stiffened 
 corpse ! 
 
 Glenesk has been the scene of some comic occurrences as well, 
 one of them richly illustrative of the odd habits and the high 
 benevolence of William, Lord Panmure. Wandering in the 
 glen incognito, and disguised as a beggar, he sought and got 
 " quarters" for the night in a small cottage, of which an old 
 woman was the only inmate. Grumbling in the course of the 
 evening at the smallness of the fire, the woman pleaded the 
 scantiness of her fuel. Affecting to be angry, the beggar said 
 that he would soon get fuel ; and laying hold of her spinning- 
 wheel, tearing it in pieces, and heaping it on the ingle, he 
 made a blazing fire, filling the cottage with a light and a heat, 
 R
 
 258 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 to which it had been quite a stranger. The poor woman's 
 heart was breaking with grief, and sinking into despair, and 
 her tongue was indulging in bitter upbraiding, when his Lord- 
 ship consoled her with a benefaction which did unspeakably 
 more than compensate her for her burnt spinning-wheel. 
 
 Glenesk was the scene of another event, which, if we are to 
 characterise it rightly, we must call preternatural. It was a 
 visit from the other world, which proved the occasion of much 
 good to this one. Before Gannochy Bridge spanned the North 
 Esk, the tenant of the adjoining farm of Wood of Edzell was a 
 Mr Black, a rich old fellow, with no family, but with a large 
 ingredient of the hold-fast in him. In 1731, several lives were 
 lost in attempts to ford the river at and near to Gannochy. 
 The spirit of one of the drowned called on Mr Black on no 
 fewer than three successive nights, and charged him to build 
 the Bridge, and prevent further loss of life. If he tried to 
 resist, it was altogether in vain ; he could get no rest or peace 
 till he set about obeying the messenger from the dead ; and in 
 1732, at his own sole expense, the first Bridge of Gannochy, 
 which is still the half of the present one, was erected. 
 Would that the Messrs Black of our day were favoured with the 
 calls and commands of such potent and patriotic nightly 
 visitants ! 
 
 Brown, the learned President of the Linnean Society, was 
 the son of one of the Episcopalian ministers of Glenesk. 
 
 Alexander Ross, long schoolmaster of Glenesk, was the author 
 of The Fortunate Shepherdess, as also The rock and the wee 
 pickle tow, To the biggin' we will go, Woo'd and married an' a', 
 and many other popular songs. Dr James Beattie, author of 
 The Minstrel, has set his mark on him as a true son of poesy. 
 
 " Bat ilka Mearns and Angus bairn 
 My tales and sangs by heart shall learn ; 
 And chields shall come frae yont the Cairn - 
 
 o'-Mount, right vousty, 
 If Boss will be so kind as share in 
 
 Their pint at Drousty." 
 
 Dr Jamieson, in his Scottish Dictionary, has paid Ross the 
 highest tribute as one of our Scottish classics, by drawing so 
 largely on his works in illustration of our vernacular. The 
 epitaph on his tombstone in the new churchyard (it ought 
 surely to have been in the old one where his body lies) is the 
 simple and sober truth concerning him :
 
 The Grampian District Lethnot and Navar. 259 
 
 ERECTED 
 TO THE MEMOBT 
 
 OP 
 
 ALEXANDER BOSS, A.M., 
 
 SCHOOLMASTER OF LOCHOEE, 
 
 AUTHOR OP " LUNDY AND NORT ; OR, 
 
 THE FORTUNATE SHEPHERDESS," 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS IN SCOTTISH DIALECT. 
 
 BORN, APRIL, 1699. 
 
 DIED, MAT, 1784. 
 
 HOW FINELY NATURE AYE HE PAINTIT, 
 O' SENSE IN RHYME HE NE'ER WAS STINTIT, 
 AN' TO THE HEART HE ALWAYS SENT IT 
 Wl' MIGHT AND MAIN : 
 AN' NO AE LINE HE E'ER INVENTIT 
 NEED ANE OFFEN* I 
 
 The author of " Attic Fragments," speaking of Lochlee, the 
 Loch from which the parish takes its name, says " Close by its 
 eastern margin are the ruins of the little church and schoolhouse 
 of Lochlee, the latter interesting to the lovers of Scottish litera- 
 ture by having been the residence of Ross, the author of 
 ' Helenora, or the Fortunate Shepherdess,' a poem, -which, 
 though it be now as much a sealed book to the fashionables of 
 Scotland as the writings of Gower, or even Alfred himself, are 
 to those of England, yet contains some of the most romantic 
 descriptions that ever were written, and preserves traces of 
 customs and traditions not to be found elsewhere." In so far 
 as this complaint is true, the more shame, say we, to the 
 fashionables of Scotland, and emphatically the more shame to 
 Glenesk, and to the whole county of Angus ! 
 
 LETHNOT AND NAYAR. 
 
 Lethnot and Navar are not without their Historic Scenes. 
 The cairns scattered in them are said to mark the resting-places 
 of those who fell fighting for their country against the English 
 in the War of the Independence. Tradition bears that even in 
 these remote pai'ts the combatants met and had their skirmishes, 
 in which not a very little precious patriotic blood was shed. 
 Buchanan narrates, as we have seen, that Bruce and Comvn, 
 Earl of Buchan, looked one another in the face in Glenesk 
 and, though Comyn shrunk from the risk of a great battle, we 
 
 B 2
 
 260 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 can be at no loss to account for the cairns in the neighbouring 
 parish, if we accept what Buchanan adds : " He (Comyn) first 
 sent a herald to Bruce to treat for a suspension of arms, pre- 
 liminary to a treaty of peace, which having obtained, he made 
 no more mention of peace, but endeavoured to increase his 
 forces by every means in his power ; and, distrusting the Scots 
 who were in his army, many of whom favoured Bruce, he 
 asked for aid from the English. In the meantime, Bruce, that 
 he might teach the English to respect him, and also raise the 
 spirits of his friends, stuck always close to the forces of the 
 enemy, harassing them, now in one place and now in another, 
 and seizing upon their weaker garrisons, never remaining long 
 in one spot, or affording his opponents any opportunity for 
 retaliation." 
 
 Tradition farther bears that this parish had its Castle, called 
 Dennyferne, which was one of the residences of the Lind- 
 says. At the supposed site of it are the foundations of a 
 square building of considerable size ; and there are unmistakable 
 traces of dwellings surrounding it, the cottages, it may be, of 
 the retainers of the Lord of the manor, as also of ancient tillage, 
 in the ridge form of the surface of the soil in the immediate 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 Lethnot came to the Lindsays with Glenesk, by the marriage 
 of Sir Alexander Lindsay with Miss Catherine Stirling. Navar 
 was always conjoined with Brechin in one lordship ; and many 
 of the Lords thereof ranked among the highest historic person- 
 ages of their day. The first of them was David, Earl of 
 Huntingdon, brother of William the Lion. Among his 
 successors may be named his grandson, Sir William de Brechin 
 one of the great barons in the time of Alexander III., and one 
 of the guardians of the kingdom in his minority ; his great- 
 grandson, Sir David, who married a sister of The Bruce, and, 
 after the battle of Inverury, espoused his cause, and continued 
 faithful to it ; and his great-great-grandson, also Sir David, 
 who suffered for his complicity in the conspiracy of Lord Soulis. 
 We may also name Sir David Barclay, who married Margaret 
 de Brechin, Bruce's niece ; Walter, the second son of Robert 
 II., by Euphemia Ross, who married the only daughter of Sir 
 David Brechin, and was executed for the share he had in the 
 death of his nephew, James I. ; David, Earl of Crawford, and 
 afterwards Duke of Montrose ; James, Duke of Ross, the second 
 son of James III., and afterwards Archbishop of St Andrews ;
 
 The Grampian District Lethnot and Navar. 261 
 
 Sir Thomas Erskine, Lord Brechin ; the Earl of Mar ; and the 
 Earls of Panmure, who acquired Brechin and Navar by 
 purchase, in 1634. Such Lords of it, bulking so much in the 
 annals of their country, are enough to invest Navar with great 
 historic interest. 
 
 With the proudest and most potent of these Lords of Brechin 
 and Navar the arch-fiend held his own ; as we have seen that 
 he did with the Lords of Glenesk. So fond was he of the glen 
 of the West Water, that he was loth to brook any lordship 
 over it but his own. The farmer of Wirran had long nursed 
 his wrath against a neighbour who had somehow offended him. 
 Learning the road by which that neighbour would one night 
 return home at a late hour, he resolved to waylay him, and to 
 have his revenge on him. The farmer's wife, dreading that 
 mischief was in the wind, employed all her art of persuasion 
 and entreaty to induce him to stay at home. At last she 
 asked who was to be her companion in his absence, and was 
 answered by her infuriated husband, " THE DEVIL IF HE LIKES !" 
 And he did like. From the middle of the earthen floor of the 
 room in which the poor woman sat the Devil rose and presented 
 himself before her ! With admirable presence of mind she 
 managed to slip her son, a mere boy, out at a back window for 
 the minister. He, with some neighbours, soon neared the house, 
 when feeling the smell of " brimstane sineik," he returned to 
 the manse for his gown and bands, and Bible. Boldly entering 
 with this armour, he attacked the enemy, setting on him 
 with his sword ; when, in the midst of a volume of smoke, and 
 uttering a hideous yell, he shrunk aghast, and passed from view 
 in much the same mysterious way as he had appeared ; and an 
 indentation in the ground floor of the farmhouse was long 
 pointed out as having been caused by the descent of Satan ! 
 Is it not written in the book of the Chronicles, &c. ? 
 
 The victorious minister was the Episcopal minister of 
 Lethnot, a Stuart devotee, who prayed for '' the heads and 
 patriots of the Bjebel Army, and that God might cover their 
 heads in the day of battell ;" as also, " for his noble patron the 
 Earl of Panmure, that the Lord might preserve him now that 
 he was exposed to danger ;" gave thanks for " King James the 
 Eighth's safe landing into these his native bounds;" and entreated 
 " that the army appearing against Mar's army might be 
 defeated," &c. As may readily be supposed, for these and for 
 all his other like good deeds, Satan seems to have had a special
 
 262 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 pique at him. He even ventured to enter the manse, and to 
 torment him there. If he sat down in his study on an evening 
 to read or to write, his book or paper was forthwith covered 
 with darkness, and so faintly did the candle burn that he could 
 hardly see from one end of the room to the other ! What a 
 pity that he did not know the secret by which a good old Pres- 
 byterian minister got rid of all such infernal annoyance ! As 
 he himself used to tell it, '' One day when I sat down to my 
 desk, the fiend took his stand just behind me, so that I could 
 not get on with a word of my sermon. At length it occurred 
 to me to write the first promise on a small slip of paper, and, 
 without looking over my shoulder, to throw it to my tormentor, 
 saying, ' Tak that, Satan ; it's low watter wi' you noo !' when 
 he instantly departed, and has never troubled me in my study 
 since." 
 
 The minister of Lethnot was not so deft a soldier; and, 
 eventually, it faired very wofully with him. On a dark 
 winter night, in the time of a great snowstorm, and during a 
 gust of wind which threatened to overthrow the manse, Beelze- 
 bub entered the study by the chimney, in the shape of a large 
 black cat ! " How he found his way none could divine, for the 
 minister didn't see him enter, and saw nothing of him save his 
 long haiiy fangs, which suddenly extinguished the candle ! 
 Running in pursuit, however, he saw him clear the steep and 
 narrow stair which led to the lower flat of the house, and falling 
 from head to foot of it himself, Mr Thomson (such was the 
 minister's name) was so greatly injured from bruises and fright 
 that he never recovered !" 
 
 Calleter, one of the tributaries of the West Water, had till 
 lately a talismanic stone, locally famous, and well deserving to 
 be nationally famous. It is said to have been of a greyish 
 colour, pure as marble, with a hole in the centre of it as large 
 as to admit a man's arm. It stood erect in the channel of the 
 stream, and was called the Adders' Stone, because in fine sunny 
 days white adders disported themselves by chasing one another 
 through and through the hole. The talismanic virtue of adders' 
 stones lay in this, they were infallible antidotes against the ill 
 which the Old Serpent and his agents inflicted ; working, we 
 may suppose, on the principle of the Homoeopathic Medical 
 School, " similia similibus ciirantur." Man or beast, smitten 
 by demons, warlocks, or witches, was at once cured by being 
 brought into contact with the adders' stone !
 
 The Grampian District Lethnot and Navar. 263 
 
 Let nobody marvel at this. White adders had still more 
 wonderful virtue. The broth of them endowed with the second 
 sight ! It was thus, and by a lucky accident, that Brochdarg, 
 the Prophet of the North, got the power of foretelling the 
 future, and detecting the tools of the Evil One, who " cast ill " 
 on their neighbours. Cooking one day, somewhere on the Con- 
 tinent, his master's dinner, for which a white adder was being 
 boiled, and scalding his fingers with the broth, he thrust them 
 into his mouth to ease his pain, when lo ! the future was in an 
 instant laid open to his view. " Fearing the ire of his master 
 (who had strictly charged him not to let a drop of the ' broo ' 
 touch his tongue), he fled from his service, and domiciling him- 
 self among his native mountains in Aberdeenshire, was con- 
 sulted by all the bewitched and love-sick swains and maidens 
 far and near, and died an old wealthy carle about eighty years 
 ago !" 
 
 Let nobody, we say again, marvel at this ; we mean scepti- 
 cally marvel at it. As late as the first quarter of the present 
 century the Lethnotites actually had such a person among 
 them ; his supernatural gift being from the white adders' 
 " broo." A farmer in Lethnot, whose cattle were fast dying, 
 sent for him, and by certain incantations, performed with a 
 basin full of spring water, and a ball of polished steel, he soon 
 presented to the eyes of the amazed farmer the image of the 
 face of the beldame who was emptying his stalls ! She was one 
 of his own cottars. " This witch is still remembered by some 
 old residenters, and one respectable person assures us that she 
 was as thorough a witch as ever slept, for [let the reader mark 
 the conclusiveness of the evidence] he himself, for calling her a 
 ' witch ' one day while driving one of his father's carts, had a 
 cart full of lime upset three several times within the short space 
 of a mile, and in sight of the weird's residence !" Is it not 
 written in the book, &c. 1 
 
 There is a Scene on the ridge of Wirran Hill. Those small 
 elevations on it, so like graves in their appearance, are what 
 they seem to be. They mark the graves of those in the district 
 who, in remote times, did violence to their own life. At no 
 distant date self-murderers, if buried within the precincts of 
 churchyards, were usually not allowed to be taken in to them 
 by the gates. They had to be carried over the walls, and 
 earthed in some plot by themselves. But it would seem that 
 the separation of suicides from others in their burial was at one
 
 264 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 time still more complete in Lethnot and Navar : their cemetery 
 was the top of "Wirran Hill. 
 
 Cobb's Heugh and Black's Pot are another Scene in this 
 locality. Black, tenant of the Mill of Lethnot, having quarrelled 
 with the laird, the latter, resolved to be rid of him for ever, 
 employed a person named Cobb to waylay and despatch him. In 
 the desperate encounter between them Black proved the victor, 
 and threw his intended murderer over a cliff into a deep pool of 
 the West Water, in which his body was got days after ; and 
 the cliff has ever since been called Cobb's Heugh, and the pool 
 Black's Pot. 
 
 The largest tributary of the West Water is the Water of 
 Saughs, and towards the end of the seventeenth century its 
 banks were the scene of a fierce and bloody conflict, which goes 
 by the name of the Raid or the Battle of Saughs. A gang of the 
 Cateran came down on a Sunday night upon Fern, seized a 
 rich booty of horses and cattle, and before Monday morning 
 were over the mountains with their prey. Under the banner 
 of a valiant youth, M'Intosh of Ledenhendrie, eighteen resolute, 
 heroic young men of Fern pursued the rievers, and overtook 
 them by the Water of Saughs, camping around a blazing fire, 
 and cooking a young Fern cow for breakfast. To settle the 
 case between them, single combat between the leaders of these 
 parties was agreed on. A shot from the Cateran, killing one 
 of the Fern men, upset this agreement, and not the chiefs only, 
 but all under them, forthwith closed in deadly combat. Seeing 
 M'Intosh hard pressed by his antagonist, James Winter, steal- 
 ing behind the bandit chief, hamstrung him ; and, though he 
 fought on his stumps, M'Intosh soon pierced him to the heart. 
 Seeing their chief fallen, and several of their party biting the 
 dust, the Cateran fled ; but the tradition is that not one of 
 them escaped. " Donald Young's Shank" marks the spot where 
 Donald in his flight fell, and died of his wounds. Since this 
 century began, a flood, breaking the banks of the Saughs, un- 
 covered the bones of some of the sleeping freebooters and ex- 
 posed them to view. 
 
 The Fern men, minus only one of their number, returned 
 home in triumph with the property which they had recovered, 
 and received the applause which they had so well merited. 
 Ledenhendrie was specially honoured. The Earl of Southesk 
 built a fort for his habitation, and made him Captain of the 
 parish, disposting Ogilvie, tenant of Trusto, who had long held
 
 The Grampian District Lethnot and Navar. 265 
 
 that office. Trusto, therefore, hated him with a mortal hatred, 
 and set a party one night to lie in wait for his life. Happily 
 for him the night was very dark, which favoured his escape. 
 He and his faithful dog got into a crevice of a rock in the Den 
 of Trusto, so near the intended assassins that their conversa- 
 tion was overheard ; and there they remained till they could 
 safely leave it in the morning. The crevice has ever since borne 
 the name of Ledenhendrie's Chair. 
 
 Of the battle of Saughs there is a memorial in the lines on the 
 gravestone of the above James Winter, in the churchyard of 
 Glenisla 
 
 " Here lyes James Vinter, who died in Peathaugh, 
 Who fought most valiantly at ye Water of Saughs, 
 Along with Ledenhendry, who did command ye day 
 They vanquis the enemy and made them runn away." 
 
 In 1746 the Argyle Highlanders did to the Episcopalian 
 Chapel of Lethnot what they had done to that of Glenesk. 
 They burned it to the ground. The locality was strongly 
 Episcopalian, so much so that the Presbyterians did not get a 
 Session organised till 1749, sixty years after the Revolution 
 and the abolition of Prelacy in Scotland. But the wofully dis- 
 astrous result of the Rebellion in '45, though it did not reconcile 
 the Jacobites to the new order of things, was beginning to force 
 on them the conviction that submission to Hanover and Presby- 
 tery had become a dire necessity. A few years before, they 
 would not have suffered such an inscription as that which was 
 put, in 1747, on the tombstone of the Reverend John Row, 
 minister of the united parishes of Navar and Lethnot. It runs 
 thus : " He died upon the 24th day of December, 1745, while 
 the nation was distracted with civil wars, but had the pleasure 
 to see his people adhering to their religion and liberties, while 
 many others had joined those who wanted to overturn both ; 
 and soon after affairs had taken such a turn as he had foretold, 
 both in public and private, the disturbers of our peace being 
 dispersed by the glorious Duke of Cumberland." 
 
 This was a strange tongue in such a quarter ; and, whatever 
 others might do, there was one who would not frame his mouth 
 to speak the language of Ashdod. That was Peter Grant, or 
 Dubrach, as he was more commonly called, from a place he 
 once tenanted. He was taken a prisoner at Culloden, fighting 
 for Charlie, and carried to Carlisle, whence he escaped by scaling 
 the wall. He continued faithful to the last, willing to " fecht
 
 266 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 Culloden ower agen." In his 106th year he was brought under 
 the notice of George II., as " his Majesty's oldest enemy," and 
 he heaped coals of fire on his head by giving him a pension of a 
 guinea a week. He died in his 110th year, leaving behind 
 him his spinster daughter Annie, a pensioner on the charity of 
 Navar, to whom, however, the King graciously continued her 
 father's pension ; and Lord Panmure built her a nice cottage 
 near the Bridge of Lethnot, on removing to which she spoke 
 of only one regret which she felt. Now calling herself Lady 
 Anne, " There's naebody," said she, " but the minister's folk 
 near me that's worth mindin', an' although it be sair against 
 my wull I doubt I'll hae to mak' them a kind o' cronies !" 
 
 Navar was the birth parish of Jonathan Duncan, who rose 
 to great eminence in our Indian Empire. He was Governor, 
 first of Benares, and after that of the Presidency of Bombay. 
 He died in 1811, in his 58th year, and was buried with great 
 pomp, at the public expense, in the Cathedral of Bombay, where 
 a magnificent monument was erected to him. All this was 
 high honour, and so too was the tribute which Sir James 
 M'Intosh, who was Judge at Bombay at the time of Duncan's 
 death, paid to his memory. " Among the many blessings 
 which flowed from his administration at Benares," said Sir 
 James, "the reform which he effected in the barbarous and 
 cruel practice of female infanticide among the chieftains of the 
 eastern part of the Company's possessions in that province, as 
 it is peculiarly illustrative of the humanity of his disposition, 
 is the more worthy of particular commemoration, since he ever 
 contemplated the success that attended his laudable efforts in 
 the accomplishment of so beneficent an object as one of the 
 happiest incidents of his life ; and with equal ardour and 
 solicitude has he been engaged in prevailing on the chieftains 
 of Kattywur and of Cutch to renounce that inhuman custom, 
 the existence of which, in these provinces, had recently become 
 known to the Government." 
 
 MENMUIR. 
 
 The oldest Historic Scene in Menmuir is the Caterthun. 
 There are two of these on the summit of two detached conical
 
 The Strathmore District Menmuir. 267 
 
 hills, about the line where the Grampians begin to swell into 
 mountains. They are about a mile distant from one another, 
 and are called respectively the White and the Brown or Black 
 Caterthun. Eings of white stone encircle the former, and rings 
 of dark turf encircle the latter ; and hence their names. The 
 White Caterthun was at an elevation of about three hundred 
 feet. Its area was elliptic in form, measuring more than five 
 hundred feet in length and two hundred in breadth. The wall 
 enclosing this area was composed of large loose stones, and was 
 at least twenty-five feet thick at the top, and about an hundred 
 feet at the bottom. Outside this wall was a broad deep ditch, 
 with an earthen breast- work on its outer side ; and beyond this 
 there was a double entrenchment of wall and ditch running 
 around the slope of the hill. The Brown or Black Caterthun 
 was similar, only its elevation was less, its dimensions smaller, 
 and its walls composed entirely of earth. 
 
 What was the design of these great works 1 There is now all 
 but universal acquiescence in the opinion that they were forts, 
 hill forts (as Coder-dun, or Gaither-dun, signifies) erected by 
 our remote ancestors for retreat and security in times of danger. 
 When they were erected, and who the race was that first 
 manned them, we know not. These, says Burton, "seem 
 questions idle to be asked, since the chances of any answer being 
 ever made to them appear so utterly hopeless." The labour of 
 amassing such a prodigious quantity of stones as were built 
 into the White Caterthun, and of carrying them to such a 
 height, " surpasses description," as Burton says ; and it would 
 surpass belief if we had not, in the ruins of the fortress, ocular 
 demonstration of what the labour accomplished. 
 
 The local tradition, which prevailed till recent times, ex- 
 plained the mystery, and solved all difficulties. The Caterthun 
 were erected for the abode of the Fairies ; and the architects, 
 masons, &c., were the Witches. Nay, a single brawny witch, 
 in the course of a single morning, carried in her apron all the 
 stones used, from the channel of the West Water to the top of 
 the hill ; and how many more she would have carried, and how 
 much huger the structure would have been, if her apron-string 
 had not broken, no mortal knows ! But the string broke with 
 the weight of the largest of the stones ; and it was allowed to 
 lie where it fell, and is to be seen at this day on the north side 
 slope of the hill. As a help to faith in the marvel, Jervise 
 adds, " This tradition, it may be remarked, however outre, is
 
 268 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 curious from its analogy to that concerning the Castles of Mul- 
 grave and Pickering in. Yorkshire, the extensive causeways of 
 which are said to have been paved by genii named Wada and 
 his wife Bell, the latter, like the Amazonian builder of Cater- 
 thun, having carried the stones from a great distance in her 
 apron !" 
 
 Next to the Caterthun in point of antiquity are the sepulchral 
 remains and the sculptured stones of Menmuir. The remains 
 are abundant. Many stone cists, inclosing urns, have been dug 
 up in the Moss of Findowrie. About a mile north of the 
 church is a cluster of burrows. On the line from the Caterthun 
 to Keithock are frequent tumuli and cairns ; and there frag- 
 ments of arms also have been found. As the couplet has it 
 
 " Tween the Blawart Lap, and the Killievair Stanes, 
 There lie mony bluidy banes." 
 
 All these things tell of war ; of which it can hardly be doubted 
 that the sculptured stones, found in the foundation of the old 
 dyke of the churchyard, are likewise the memorial. According 
 to the common tradition of the district, they tell of battle upon 
 battle between the Picts and the Danes ; but it is very likely 
 that they specially point to a great battle fought in 1130 
 between David I. and Angus, Earl of Moray. Angus claimed 
 the Scottish throne in right of Gruach, the granddaughter of 
 Kenneth IV., and the mother of Lulach, the grandfather of 
 Angus. The men of Moray supported Angus in his claim ; 
 and coming southward at their head, he met the King in this 
 neighbourhood, and was completely overthrown. 
 
 At the beginning of the historic period Menmuir was a thane- 
 dom. It had a Royal residence, supposed to have been situated 
 on the rising ground to the south-west of the Kirk, though 
 every vestige of it has long since disappeared. Alexander III. 
 (1249-1286) had a gardener in Menmuir ; and in the Chamber- 
 lain Rolls there is an entry of the payment of one merk to him 
 by one of the Montealtos, who was then Sheriff of the county. 
 The great attraction of Menmuir, leading Royalty to make it 
 one of its seats, was probably its contiguousness to the great 
 Forest of Kilgery, in which game was abundant and the sport 
 excellent. 
 
 It would seem to have been in the time of The Bruce that 
 the Thanedom of Menmuir began to be apportioned to 
 favourites of the crown. For certain tenements in Berwick-on- 
 Tweed Bruce gave Peter de Spalding a royal charter of the
 
 The Strathmore District Menmuir. 269 
 
 lands of Balzordie and Pitmudie, in Menmuir, with the keeper- 
 ship of the Forest of Kilgery, and a right to half the foggage. 
 This excambion was Spalding's reward for betraying Berwick to 
 the Scots. Under his guidance they scaled the walls undis- 
 covered, and were soon masters of the town. The citizens were 
 panic-struck with the suddenness of the attack, and could offer 
 no effective resistance. Not a few were slain or made prisoners ; 
 and many more escaped by flight, or by taking refuge in the 
 Castle. Spalding did not long enjoy in Angus the purchase of 
 his treachery. He fell by the hand of an assassin ; and while 
 there is no trace of him in Menmuir, Spalding's Stables and 
 Spalding's Loan in Fern are thought to be memorials of him. 
 
 Other portions of the thanedom David II. afterwards granted 
 to several parties ; conspicuous among whom was John de 
 Cullas, the first Collace of Balnamoon. From 1360 to 1632 
 that estate was held by his race, which expired, or at least fell 
 out of view with Patrick Collace, " beddell" of the parish ; but 
 the Collace race helped not a little to give Menmuir the place 
 which it has in history. John de Collace of Balnamoon cost the 
 rebels the loss of the battle of Brechin, for which the Earl of 
 Crawford (Earl Beardie and the Tiger Earl) took terrible vengeance 
 on him, harrying and desolating his lands ; resting with his men, 
 after the havoc committed, at the spot where, in honour of the 
 noble savage, the village raised bears the name of Tigerton. 
 Thomas de Collace rendered such loyal, valuable service to 
 James III. at Blackness, that he was rewarded with half the 
 foggage, and with the vert and venison of the Forest of Kilgery. 
 John de Collace led by his encroachments to the inquest for 
 fixing the boundary between his lands and those of the Bishop 
 of Brechin ; and was so lawless as to remove the landmarks 
 which the Assize set between them. Robert de Collace so 
 fanned the long standing feud between Balnamoon and Brechin 
 that it broke out in deeds of mutual violence, very hurtful and 
 discreditable to both parties James Hollo of Duncrub married 
 a daughter of this Robert, who thus became an ancestor of 
 the noble family of Rollo. 
 
 Sir Alexander Carnegie, brother of the first Earls of Southesk 
 and Northesk, purchased Balnamoon in 1632; and as will 
 sufficiently appear in the sequel, his race also contributed its 
 quota to give Menmuir the niche which it has in history. 
 
 Balhall adds to the Historic Scenes of the parish. It came 
 into the possession of the Lindsays in 1555. David Lindsay, of
 
 270 Historic Scenes in ForfarsJiire. 
 
 Edzell, the ninth Earl of Crawford, purchased it in that year ; 
 and his son John had, we may believe, a special eye to it, when 
 he assumed the title of Lord Menmuir, on being made a senator 
 of the College of Justice. 
 
 It was in Balhall Moss, in 1382, that Sir James Lindsay, 
 then chief of the Lindsays of Crawford, and High J usticiary of 
 Scotland, slew Sir John Lyon, of Glammis. He seems to have 
 envied Sir John for his favour with the King ; for he had 
 risen to some of the highest offices of the State, and to be the 
 King's son-in-law and " who can stand before envy V It may 
 be, too, that he blamed Sir John for prejudicing the King's mind 
 against him, and leading him to refuse certain applications 
 which he had made to him. However this may have been, 
 meeting in the Moss of Balhall, which was then very extensive, 
 they settled their quarrel with the sword, at the cost of Lyon's 
 life. He was honoured with being buried at Scone in the 
 sepulchres of the Kings. Lindsay fled the country ; but, 
 though stained with blood, he retained his office of Justiciary, 
 and, on performing a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas a 
 Becket at Canterbury, he was called home and pardoned. 
 
 The Northern border of Balhall was the Scene of another 
 tragedy. The Laird of it and a neighbour had differed about 
 the march between their lands. Witnesses were called in to 
 settle the strife. One of them swore against Balhall, deponing 
 " that the land on which he stood" (the disputed ground) was 
 Balhall's neighbour's. Enraged at his falsehood, the Laird drew 
 his dagger, and despatched him. The perjury of the scoundrel 
 was proved, by its being found on examination that he had 
 filled his shoes with earth from the neighbour's land, to which 
 he suited the words of his deposition. His name was Beattie ; 
 and a cairn called Seattle's Cairn, and a ridge called the Mis- 
 sworn Rig, are to this day memorials of his guilt and punish- 
 ment. 
 
 We may add here that there was till lately another cairn in 
 Menmuir, the memorial of a much more recent tragedy. Little 
 more than a hundred years ago, Donald M 'Arthur, the Tigerton 
 shoemaker, visiting Brechin to make purchases for his marriage, 
 and quarrelling with certain parties in the town, was waylaid 
 by them on his return home, and in the darkness of the night. 
 Concealing themselves in the wood of Findowrie, when Donald 
 reached it they pounced upon him and savagely abused him ; 
 and, a well-known highwayman coming up, they hired him with
 
 The Strathmore District Menmuir. 271 
 
 a paltry sum to complete Donald's murder. A cairn was raised 
 to mark the spot where the murdered body was found, and as 
 few passed by without adding a stone to it, Donald's cairn had 
 attained an immense size when the presiding genius of agricul- 
 tural improvement gave orders for its removal. " The bride 
 died of grief soon after the murder of her lover, and the 
 peasantry were often alarmed by mingled cries of distress from 
 the weird of the unfortunate shoemaker, while the favoured 
 form of his betrothed hovered nightly around the cairn so long 
 as any stones remained !" Is it not so written in the book of 
 the Chronicles from which we have already quoted ? 
 
 The Covenant was at first received with rather surprising 
 favour in Menmuir. How it was so in a district which by and 
 by showed so much favour to a " Popish Pretender " is not very 
 obvious. The people, no doubt, followed in regard to both the 
 lead of their betters ; but why that lead should have been what 
 it was is the puzzle. The Session Records of Menmuir bear 
 that, in May, 1638, "the Confession of Faith and Covenant 
 with our God was openlie read, subscryvit, and sworne unto be 
 the haille congregation." Sir Alexander Carnegie was chosen 
 to represent the Session in the famous General Assembly that 
 met in Glasgow in the November of that year. It happened 
 that Sir Alexander was not able to attend, and his place was 
 supplied by one of his own class, Somyrs, proprietor of 
 Balzordie, and other lands in the parish. 
 
 There are many entries in the records, showing the extremely 
 disturbed state of the parish during the Civil War. " March 
 23, 1644. No Conventioune, becaus of ye troubles." 
 " February 13th to August 17th, 1645. No conventione, 
 becaus ye enemie was still in ye fields, so that the minister 
 durst not be seen in ye parish." The battle of Kilsyth was 
 fought on the 15th of August, and splendidly won by Montrose, 
 from four to five thousand of the Covenanters perishing on the 
 field or in the flight. " August 17th. Upon ye intelligence of 
 the approach of ye enemie, the people fled out of ye kirk in the 
 midst of the sermon." On September 15th, Montrose was 
 totally and ruinously defeated at Philiphaugh ; the Royalists 
 were preparing for finally breaking up and dispersing, and the 
 Earl of Crawford with his adherents appeared in Angus, filling 
 it with consternation. " November 17th. No preaching, 
 because ane partie of the enemies here, coming through the 
 shyre under Ludowick Lindsay, were in the parish." " Decem-
 
 272 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 ber 17th, 1648. The Covenant was read in the presence of the 
 congregation, and subscribed by the minister and all whilk could 
 subscribe." " May 20th, 1650. A thanksgiving was held for 
 the victorie in the north ;" i.e., the victory at Invercarron, won 
 by Strachan over Montrose, in his last desperate effort to 
 retrieve the affairs of Charles II. The Marquis fled from the 
 field wounded, and was captured by M'Leod of Assynt, and 
 delivered up to his enemies. "August llth, 1650. The 
 minister was appointed by the Presbytery to attend the Lord 
 of Edzell's regiment for a month," his Lordship of Edzell being 
 then, like his relative of Balcarres, a staunch friend of the 
 Covenant. Toward the close of the year two fasts were kept ; 
 the one " for the sins of the King's familie," and the other " for 
 taking the rebels." 
 
 Menmuir was as orthodox as its neighbours on the subject of 
 witchcraft ; and it was not its fault if the infernal crew were 
 not exterminated. December 2d, 1649, the Parochial records 
 have this entry : " No lecture this week, because the minister 
 was attending the Committee appointed by the Provincial 
 Assembly for the trial of witches and charmers in their bounds ;" 
 and the same entry again occurs under date December 22. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this laudable diligence against them, the 
 witches, instead of diminishing, seemed rather to multiply, so 
 long as the burning of them continued. And the fairies were 
 no less rife. Even as late as fourscore years ago they were 
 strongly suspected of having performed one of their pranks at 
 Tigerton, viz., stealing a fine, healthy infant from fond parents, 
 and substituting for him a sickly, ricketty one ! The wise 
 women of Tigerton knew how the suspicion might be tested. 
 Place the infant over a blaze of whins ; if of fairy stock, he 
 will fly away to Fairieland ; if a human being, he will abide - 
 the fire, and suffer only a scaum ! The mother, leaving home 
 for a day, left the infant in charge of a neighbour. The oppor- 
 tunity of bringing his species to the touchstone of experiment 
 was too good to be lost. A select company assembled in the 
 ben end of the house. " A bundle of whins was lighted, and, 
 stript to the skin, the poor child was placed upon the tongs, 
 and held over the flame by two of the learned conclave. He 
 screamed and yelled, as older people would do in like cii'cum- 
 stances ; but, as he never attempted to fly out at the chimney, he 
 was declared by the devilish hags, in council assembled, to be 
 merely a human creature after all I /"
 
 The Grampian District Menmuir. 273 
 
 We have not observed anything particularly connecting 
 Menmuir with the Rebellion of 1715. Of course, it did not 
 escape the excitement, and the agony of hope and fear with 
 which that event filled a shire so Jacobite as Angus. The 
 Session Minute of September 4, 1715, runs thus: "This 
 session, taking to their serious consideration the troublesome- 
 ness of the times, and the distracted state of this land, and con- 
 sidering also that they have- in their hands the most part of the 
 poors stock in specie, and being very solicitous and concerned 
 that it should be safe in this critical juncture, therefore 
 earnestly recommend to, and appoint the minister to secure and 
 hide the poors money the best way he can," &c. ; which the 
 minister did, with the assistance of his brother, Mr "Willison of 
 Brechin, the hiding place being, as Mr Black supposes, the 
 bottom of the Round Tower of the city. 
 
 Menmuir was more deeply implicated in the Rebellion of 
 1745. Carnegie of Balnamoon was then Deputy-Lieutenant of 
 Angus in the Stuart interest ; collected the cess of the county 
 for James VIII. ; and was from first to last a leading spirit in 
 the insurrection in his behalf. At the head of all the vassals 
 he could muster, he fought for him at Preston, Falkirk, and 
 Culloden. Apprehended by the Government, imprisoned in 
 the Tower of London, and brought to trial, he escaped the 
 doom which many fellow-rebels suffered, in consequence of a 
 misnomer in his indictment ; but had for a while to skulk for 
 his life. We have found him a refugee in the mountains of 
 Glenesk. 
 
 This Carnegie was a man of happy temperament and great 
 humour ; which would help to lighten his tribulations till better 
 times returned. There are some first-rate stories of him, which, 
 though stereotyped, we must not omit ; and they cannot be 
 better told than they have been by the late Dean Ramsay in his 
 Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character. 
 
 " A facetious and acute friend," says the Dean, " who rather 
 leans to the Sydney Smith view of Scottish wit, declares that 
 all our humorous stories are aboiit lairds, and about lairds who 
 are drunk. Of such stories there are certainly not a few, one 
 of the best belonging to my part of the country ; and to many 
 persons I should perhaps apologise for introducing it at all. The 
 story has been told of various parties and localities, but there is 
 no doubt that the genuine laird was a laird of Balnamoon (pro- 
 nounced in the country Bonnymoon), and that the locality was 
 s
 
 274 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 a wild tract of land not far from his place, called Munrimmon 
 Moor. Balnamoon had been dining out in the neighbourhood, 
 where, by mistake, they had put down to him after dinner 
 cherry brandy ir stead of port wine, his usual beverage. The 
 rich flavour and strength so pleased him that, having tasted it, 
 he would have nothing else. On rising from table, therefore, 
 the laird would be more affected by his drink than if he had 
 taken his ordinary allowance of port. His servant Harry, or 
 Hairy, was to drive him home in a gig, or whisky, as it was 
 called, the usual open carriage of the time. On crossing the 
 moor, however, whether from greater exposure to the blast, or 
 from the laird's unsteadiness of head, his hat and wig came off, 
 and fell upon the ground. Harry got out to pick them up and 
 restore them to his master. The laird was satisfied with the 
 hat, but demurred at the wig. ' It's no my wig, Hairy, lad ; it's 
 no my wig' ; and refused to have anything to do with it. 
 Hairy lost his patience, and, anxious to get home, remonstrated 
 with his master : ' Ye'd better tak' it, sir, for there's nae waile 
 o' wigs on Munrimmon Moor.' " 
 
 Mr Fraser, after giving this Reminiscence from the Dean, 
 adds in a foot-note : " In the neighbouring county of Mearns 
 another version of the wig story is current, in which another 
 person than the Laird of Balnamoon is made the dramatis 
 
 persona. The elders of the parish F , near the close of last 
 
 century, were in the habit of adjourning after the close of the 
 meetings of Session to a certain well-known hostelry in the 
 village to enjoy a bicker or two of home-brewed ale, a drink 
 much liked in those days. On one occasion two of them, from 
 the north side of the parish, after a good boose at the ale, were 
 crossing the Round Hill near the Heathery Briggs, when the 
 hat and wig of one of them named "Wyllie, but more commonly 
 known by the name of Auld Cantla, from the name of his farm, 
 Cantla Hills, fell off. It being dark, his brother elder made a 
 search for them in vain. On the ground many newly-cut turfs 
 were lying about, and being so far gone as to mistake cne of 
 these turfs for a wig, he clapped one of them, with the heathery 
 side downwards, upon the bald head of the elder, who strongly 
 remonstrated against such a covering being applied to his head, 
 but who was naively told by his companion that ' there was no 
 wyle o' wigs in the Common o' Cowie.' " 
 
 To the story of Balnamoon's wig the Dean subjoins : "I 
 ought to mention also an amusing sequel to the story, viz., in
 
 The Grampian District Menmuir. 275 
 
 what happened after the affair of the wig had been settled, and 
 the laird had consented to return home. When the whisky 
 drove up to the door, Hairy, sitting in front, told the servant 
 who came ' to tak' up the laird.' No laird was to be seen ; and 
 it appeared that he had fallen out on the moor without Hairy 
 observing it. Of course they went back, and, picking him up, 
 brought him safe home. A neighbouring laird having called a 
 few days after, and having referred to the accident, Balnamoon 
 quietly added, ' Indeed I maun hae a lume (a vessel) that'll 
 /tau'd in.' " 
 
 " The laird of Balnamoon," continues the Dean," was a truly 
 eccentric character. He joined with his drinking propensities 
 a great zeal for the Episcopal Church, the service of which he 
 read to his own family with much solemnity and earnestness of 
 manner. Two gentlemen, one of them a stranger to the country, 
 having called pretty early one Sunday morning, Balnamoon in- 
 vited them to dinner, and as they accepted the invitation, they 
 remained and joined in the forenoon devotional exercises, con- 
 ducted by Balnamoon himself. The stranger was much im- 
 pressed with the laird's performance of the service and during a 
 walk which they took before dinner, mentioned to his friend 
 how highly he esteemed the religious deportment of their host. 
 The gentleman said nothing, but smiled to himself at the scene 
 which he anticipated was to follow. After dinner Balnamoon 
 set himself, according to the custom of old hospitable Scottish 
 hosts, to make his guests as drunk as possible. The result was 
 that the party spent the evening in a riotous debauch, and were 
 carried to bed by the servants at a late hour. Next day, when 
 they had taken leave, and left the house, the gentleman who 
 had introduced his friend asked him what he thought of their 
 entertainer. ' Why really,' he replied, with evident astonish- 
 ment, ' sic a speat o' praying, and sic a speat o' drinking, I 
 never knew in the whole course of my life.' " 
 
 The Dean's concluding anecdote of Balnamoon is very like 
 what we have already given, as told by one of the Skenes of 
 Careston. " Amongst many humorous colloquies between Bal- 
 namoon and his servant, the following must have been very 
 racy and very original. The laird, accompanied by John, after 
 a dinner party, was riding on his way home, through a ford, 
 when he fell off into the water. ' Whae's that faun V he 
 inquired. ' Deed,' quoth John, ' I witna, an it be no your 
 honour.' " 
 
 S2
 
 276 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 FEEN. 
 
 The barony of Fern was possessed successively by three great 
 historic families. The first was the Montealtos, or Mowats, 
 to whom William 'the Lion gifted the barony ; an old and 
 powerful family, which took its surname from Montealt in the 
 county of Flint, North Wales, and settled in Scotland as early 
 as the reign of David I. (1124-1153), and soon spread its 
 branches into the shires of Aberdeen, Perth, Lanark, and Ayr, 
 as well as Angus. One of the branch, William de Montealto, 
 gave an annual of a stone of wax and four shillings to the 
 monks of Coupar, from his lordship of Fern. Ar.other of them, 
 Michael de Montealto, was a Justiciary of Scotland in 1242, 
 and his son Bernard was one of the ill-fated party who went to 
 Norway, in 1281, to be present at the marriage of Margaret, 
 daughter of Alexander III., to King Eric, and were drowned 
 in returning the theme of the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens. 
 We give the first two and the last three stanzas of it : 
 
 " The King sits in Dunfermline town 
 
 Drinking the blude-red wine ; 
 ' O, where will I get a skeely skipper 
 To sail this new ship o' mine ?' 
 
 " O up and spake an elder knight, 
 Sat at the King's right knee, 
 ' Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor 
 
 That ever sail'd the sea,' 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 " O lang, lang, may the ladyes sit, 
 Wi' their fans into their band, 
 Before they see Sir Patrick Spens 
 Come sailing to the strand. 
 
 " And lang, lang, may the maidens sit. 
 
 With their goud kaims in their hair, 
 A' waiting for their am dear loves 
 For them they'll see nae mair ! 
 
 " Half owre, half owre to Aberdour, 
 
 Tis fifty fathoms deep, 
 And there lies guid Sir Patrick Spens, 
 Wi' the Scots lords at his feet !" 
 
 William de Montealto was one of the barons who met at 
 Arbroath in 1320, and remonstrated so nobly with Pope John 
 XXII. in behalf of the independence of the country. Others
 
 The Grampian District Fern. 277 
 
 of the family left their names on their times, down to about the 
 middle of the fifteenth century ; and it is presumed also in 
 Mowat's Seat, or Mowat's Cairn, on the hill of Bruff Shank. 
 The Lindsays succeeded the Montealtos in the barony, and were 
 succeeded in their turn by the Carnegies ; families both of which 
 fill a large space in the history of the county and the country ; 
 though nothing concerning them is on record specially contri- 
 buting to make Fern an Historic Scene. 
 
 The Manor-house of Fern was Vayne Castle, the ruins of 
 which occupy one of the finest sites on the north side of the 
 Noran of which that river can boast. Ochterlony describes it 
 as in his day " a very good house, called the Waird, well 
 planted, good yards, the house repaired by him (the Earl of 
 Southesk), and well finished within : it hath ane excellent fine 
 large great park called the Waird." Before this, it had been 
 much altered and improved by Robert, third Earl of Southesk. 
 " Many of Earl Robert's repairs," says Jervise, " which had 
 been made with a stone superior to that employed in the 
 original building are yet visible about the place, and the doors 
 and windows were ornamented with Horatian and other 
 maxims. Three of these are still in existence, having been 
 removed from the Castle and built into various parts of the 
 walls of the adjoining farm-steading. One is more elegant than 
 the rest ; and bears an EarJ's coronet, and other sculpture, in 
 high relief, and the monogram initials of Earl Robert (R.E.S.). 
 Like most of our old uninhabited Castles, that of the 
 Vane fell a victim to the Gothicism of despoiling utilitarians, a 
 part of it having been blown down with gunpowder by a tenant 
 farmer, and the stones used for building dykes and similar 
 purposes." 
 
 Popular tradition ascribes the erection of the Castle to 
 Cardinal Beaton, saying that it was built to accommodate one 
 of his mistresses, styled Lady Vayne ; and that one of the 
 children she bore him, a son, fell into a deep hole in a dark 
 cavern of the channel of the Noran, close by the Castle, and 
 was drowned ; which hole is, therefore, to this day called 
 Tammy's Hole or Cradle. It is certain that the Castle was not 
 built by Beaton, but by one of the Lindsays ; it may be that 
 the whole story is fabulous, and is a specimen of the infamy 
 with which hate and horror ot him in Angus overloaded the 
 memory of that ecclesiastical dignitary. A hope was at one 
 time expressed that historical research, bringing us into better
 
 278 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 acquaintance with the Cardinal, would abate the infamy which 
 clings to his name, and discover redeeming points in his private 
 character. That hope has not been fulfilled by anything that 
 any of our antiquarian clubs has brought to light. On the 
 contrary, after all their investigations, and after all his own, 
 Froude, one of our latest historians, thus writes : " In England 
 the lives of the higher Catholic clergy had been outwardly 
 decorous ; in Scotland the bishops and archbishops set an 
 example of the most enormous profligacy. Cardinal Beaton 
 passed the night which preceded his murder with his mistress. 
 Archbishop Hamilton succeeded to Beaton's vices with his 
 power ; he lived in notorious adultery, and at successive sessions 
 of the Scottish Parliament obtained letters of legitimation for 
 his children. The mass was no longer a mode of Christianity 
 which serious persons could defend, but a Paphian idolatry, 
 identified with the coarsest forms of licentiousness. To plain 
 eyes unprejudiced by theology it resembled too nearly the 
 abominations of the Amorites, or the accursed rites of 
 Thammuz." 
 
 Have noted seats of Satan upon earth good claims to ranks 
 among Historic Scenes'? If so, Vayne Castle and the locality 
 in which it is situated are entitled to a prominent place among 
 them. It is said that there is, somewhere below the cellar, a 
 deep dungeon, into which the last family who inhabited the 
 Castle, before taking their final departure from it, cast all their 
 coined money and their plate. Often has curiosity, to say 
 nothing of covetousness, searched for that dungeon ; but in vain. 
 One, indeed, once had the good luck to discover it, as he fondly 
 thought, but his seeming success only tantalised him. Though 
 the mouth of the depository of the treasure was seen, it could 
 not be entered. " When about to .descend in search of the 
 valuables, he was forcibly thrust from the mouth of the yawn- 
 ing gulph by an uncouth monster in the shape of a horned ox, 
 who departed in a blaze of fire through a big hole in the wall 
 (still pointed out !), and before the terrified treasure seeker could 
 recover himself, the chasm which he had wrought so hard to 
 discover, was again shut from his view !" 
 
 Across the Noran, almost directly opposite Vayne Castle, is 
 the Deil's Howes, a small hollow in the middle of a moor ; and 
 here large pieces, a hundred and fifty or a hundred and sixty 
 stones in weight, have been thrown out, and cast about on the 
 surrounding surface. There was no visible cause for lumps of
 
 The Grampian District Fern. 279 
 
 the earth being thus removed out of their place. The cause 
 must therefore have been invisible ; and what was it ? What 
 enlightened and unsophisticated mind does not at once discern 
 the presence and agency of the ruler of that Invisible World, 
 from off which the Rev. George Simpson lifted the veil in his 
 book entitled Satan's Invisible World Discovered? Unbeliev- 
 ing pretenders to science have, indeed, traced the earth-throwing 
 to what they call " spontaneous combustion " in the under- 
 ground of the Howe ; and to overthrow the faith of the people 
 in the traditions of the fathers, they have given out that the 
 sub-soil is a " composite of argillaceous earth and iron," but 
 having " no sulphur." Pshaw ! Let nobody be wheedled out 
 of his belief by a lot of big, high-sounding, jawbreaking words ! 
 And let nobody be simple enough to take on trust the alleged 
 facts of such savans ! " No sulphur" in the Deil's Howe ? Let 
 not this be accepted on their authority ! 
 
 A small way down the Noran, and close by the side of it, is 
 a big sandstone, with an impression on it somewhat resembling 
 the mark made by the hoof of a large horse, one of the caulkers 
 of the heel being rather deeply indented. This is Kelpie's 
 Footmark. Pretenders to science again have talked and even 
 written of the impression, as having been produced by a pebble 
 that had been embedded in the stone falling out of it. But the 
 people of the district have known better. Kelpie produced the 
 impression with his foot ; bounding among the rocks and 
 amusing himself, now by overturning them in the swollen 
 river, and then by sitting down on one of them, and wickedly 
 crying for help in the feigned voice of a dying man. The good 
 folk of Waterstone were up to his tricks. When a case of real 
 drowning occurred, to decoy them from it Kelpie called out 
 
 " A' the men of Waterstone ! come here ! come here !'* 
 but the men of Waterstone gave no heed to him, and hastened 
 to the point of real danger, to rescue a poor fellow-creature from 
 the raging torrent ! 
 
 Balquharn (the mansion of a small estate in the parish) had 
 its Brownie, and Brandyden (the deep hollow between the 
 Kirk and Noranside), had its Ghaist ; and these would seem to 
 have been one and the same. As the Ghaist, it took vengeance 
 on the Lord of Fern, perhaps one of the Montealtos, for his 
 baronial cruelty. One of his vassals he had most unjustly 
 doomed to die the death of a traitor; had cast him into a 
 dungeon where he happily breathed his last before the day of
 
 280 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 execution came ; and had buried him in a secluded spot between 
 the Castle and Balquharn. Ever after, the vassal's ghost 
 haunted the baron. No servant would stay with him. The 
 doors and windows of his fortalice, which was down in the 
 bottom of Brandyden, flew open of their own accord. His 
 dwelling resounded at all hours with unearthly, hideous yells. 
 Thus made a terror to himself, and to all about him, he sank 
 into utter misery, and died soon and suddenly. 
 
 The Ghaist now turned Brownie, and made itself useful in all 
 those good oflices which Brownies were wont to perform. 
 
 "The muckle Ghaist, the fearfu' Ghaist, 
 
 The Ghaist o' Ferne-den ; 
 He would ha'e wrought as muckle wark 
 As four-an'-twenty men ! 
 
 " Gin there was ony strae to thrash, 
 
 Or ony byres to clean, 
 He never thought it muckle fash 
 O' workin' late at e'en ! 
 
 "Although the nicht was ne'er so dark, 
 
 He scuddit through the glen, 
 An' ran an errand in a crack 
 The Ghaist o' Ferne-den !" 
 
 At births he was peculiarly serviceable. The goodwife of 
 Farmerton needed " Mammy" on a dark tempestuous night, 
 when of a score of men about the town there was not one that 
 would venture through the haunted Den to fetch her. Brownie, 
 standing " ahint the door," heard all that passed, and realising 
 the emergency 
 
 " Aff to the stable then he goes, 
 An' saddles the auld mare, 
 An' through the splash an' slash he ran, 
 As fast as ony hare ! 
 
 "He chappit at the Mammy's door 
 
 Says he ' Make haste an' rise ; 
 Put on your claise an' come wi' me, 
 
 An' tak ye nae surprise ?' 
 'Where am I gaun?' quo' the wife, 
 
 1 Nae far. but through the glen 
 Ye're wanted to a farmer's wife, 
 
 No far frac Feme-den !' 
 
 " He's ta'en the Mammy by the hand 
 
 An' set her on the pad. 
 Got on afore her an' set aff 
 
 As though they baith were mad ! 
 They climbed the braes, they lap the burns, 
 
 An' through the glush did plash ; 
 They never minded stock nor stane, 
 
 Nor ony kind o' trash 1
 
 The Grampian District Fern. 281 
 
 " As they were near their journey's end, 
 
 An' scuddin' through the glen, 
 ' Oh,' says the Mammy to the Ghaist, 
 
 ' Are we come near the den? 
 For, Oh ! I'm f ear'd we meet the Ghaist ?' 
 
 ' Tush, weesht, ye fool,' quo he ; 
 ' For waur than ye ha'e i' your arms 
 
 This nicht ye winna see?' 
 
 " When they cam' to the farmer's door 
 
 He set the Mammy down 
 ' I've left the house but ae half -hour, 
 
 I am a clever loon ! 
 But step ye in an' mind the wife 
 
 An' see that a' gae richt, 
 An' I will tak' ye hame again 
 
 At twal o'clock at nicht ?' 
 
 " ' What mak's yer feet sae braid ?' quo' she, 
 
 ' What mak's yer e'en sae sair ?' 
 Said he ' I've wandered mouy a road 
 
 Without a horse or mare ! 
 But gin they speir wha brought ye here, 
 
 ' Cause they were scarce o' men ; 
 Just tell them that ye rode ahint 
 
 The Ghaist o' Feme Den.' " 
 
 According to one version of the sequel, " Mammy's" questions 
 about his " feet and e'en" deprived the district of Brownie's 
 services for the future. According to another, it suffered this 
 loss from the child born that night at Farmerton. When he 
 grew up to manhood, meeting Brownie or the Ghaist one dark 
 night, he adjured him, in the name of goodness, to tell him what 
 he wandered for. He answered, but instantly vanished, and 
 was never more seen. 
 
 Are any of our readers so sceptical as to stand in doubt of 
 any of these things ] We answer by simply asking Are they 
 not all written in the book of the Chronicles of the Land of the 
 Lindsays ? 
 
 Deuchar is another Historic Scene in the parish, if it were 
 only for the length of time it was in possession of the Deuchars 
 of that Ilk. The last Laird of the name conveyed the estate to 
 trustees in 1815 ; and it is said to have been gifted eight 
 hundred years before to the first of the Deuchars, for killing a 
 wild boar at the Pass of the Noran, where Coortford Bridge now 
 spans it. Tradition bears that one of his descendants success- 
 fully defended that pass against the Danes ; and we know that 
 another of them fell at Harlaw in 1411. One of his servants 
 found him next morning among the slain, with his sword 
 grasped in his hand, and the hand so much swollen that they
 
 282 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 could not be separated. The servant, therefore, cut off the 
 hand at the wrist, and earned both it and the sword home with 
 him. 
 
 The story of the future fate of the sword is interesting. It 
 continued in the Deuchar family, a precious relic, till 1745, 
 when the neighbouring Laird of Easter Ogil, about to join 
 Prince Charlie, swore that he would have either the sword, or 
 the best horse in Deuchar's stable. The sword was hid for 
 security in a corn stack ; but to the surprise of the Deuchars, 
 when they arose one morning they saw the Laird of Ogil and 
 his servant in the corn-yard, the stack thrown down, and the 
 sword in their possession ! It was then of great size ; and as 
 the Laird paraded Brechin with it, it trailed on the ground ; 
 which induced him to shorten it, as also to convert it into a 
 two-edged implement it had been only one-edged before. By 
 some stratagem, the Deuchars again got hold of the sword ; and 
 the last Laird of them, before emigrating to Australia, left it 
 with his relative, Mr Deuchar, seal engraver, Edinburgh, to be 
 lodged in the principal armoury of the metropolis. 
 
 James Melville, fifth brother of the celebrated Andrew 
 Melville, was for some time after the Reformation minister of 
 Fern, Memnuir, and Kinnell, whence he was translated to 
 Arbroath. 
 
 James Cramond, A.M., minister of the parish in the next 
 century, was a man of a different stamp from Andrew Melville. 
 He went into England as chaplain to a regiment, in the service 
 of the Engagers, who, alarmed at the success and attitude of 
 Cromwell and the army, relaxed so far as to accept the help of 
 penitent malignants and royalists, to preserve the monarchy to 
 the country and the throne to the Stuarts. For entering into 
 this service Cramond was suspended ; but, on making ample 
 professions of his repentance, he was restored in 1651. 
 
 Fern produced two eminent men in the brothers Mr James 
 Tytler and Dr Henry William Tytler, sons of the minister of 
 the parish. Though bred to the medical profession, James 
 followed literature, and was the editor of the first edition of the 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the writer of many articles in it. 
 He was also the author of The Bonnie Bruikit Lassie, Loch 
 Errochside, I ha'e laid a Herrin' in Saut, I canna come ilka day 
 to woo, and some other well known and popular songs. He was 
 the first person in Scotland who attempted flying in a balloon, 
 an attempt which was unsuccessful, and fixed on him the
 
 TJie Grampian District Cortachy and Clova. 283 
 
 soubriquet of Balloon Tytler. With great abilities, and 
 immense acquirements, his habits were unsteady, and his 
 political sentiments perilously liberal for his time ; and the 
 result of both these was his emigrating to America, where he 
 conducted a newspaper in Salem, New England, and died there 
 in 1805. 
 
 His brother, Dr Henry William, was a man of peculiar 
 idiosyncracy, but of high scholarship. He began life as a 
 physician in Brechin ; after practising there for some time, and 
 marrying a sister of Dr Gillies, the historian, he went to India ; 
 and, on his return, published some poems, among which was a 
 Voyage from the Cape of Good Hope. He translated the works 
 of Callimachus from Greek into English verse, publishing them 
 in 1793. He also published in 1798 Paedotrophia ; or the 
 Art of Nursing Children, translated from the Latin of Scevola 
 de St Marthe, with Medical and Historical Notes. Moreover, 
 he translated the poetical works of Silius Italicus ; of which 
 translation, however, only a few specimens were published in 
 the Scots Magazine. He died in Edinburgh in 1803. 
 
 CORTACHY AND CLOYA. 
 
 The principal Historic Scene in Cortachy and Clova is 
 Cortachy Castle, beautifully and romantically situated on the 
 south side of the South Esk, towards the southern extremity of 
 the parish, a splendid mansion, part of it of unknown antiquity, 
 but a good part of it so recent as 1820-21, and executed with 
 consummate architectural taste. It is an Historic Scene, more 
 from the historic family of which it is the seat, than from any 
 particular events which have happened at it. It is, and has 
 long been, the favourite residence of the noble family of Airlie. 
 
 In our notice of the Glen of Ogilvy, in the Sid law district of 
 the shire, we touched on the descent of this family from 
 Gilibrede, or Gilbert, third son of the second Earl of Angus, 
 who fought at the battle of the Standard in 1138, and obtained 
 from William the Lion the lands of Powrie, Kyneithin, and 
 Ogilvy. We also gave the legend of the exploit in the Glen of 
 Ogilvy, by which the family, when proscribed, recovered the 
 royal favour, and had their estates restored to them. From
 
 284 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 that early date they possessed the barony of Ogilvy, and took 
 their names from it. The said Gilibrede was the common 
 ancestor of the Ogilvy s of Airlie, of the Earls of Findlater and 
 Seafield, of the Barons Banff, and of various other families of 
 Ogilvy, seated in different parts of Scotland. 
 
 Sir Patrick de Ogilvy, the fifth in descent from Gilibrede, 
 was a leal-hearted friend of The Bruce, who rewarded him for 
 his warm and steadfast adherence, by bestowing on him the 
 lands of Kettins. It was in 1369-70 that Cortachy was ac- 
 quired by the family. Of the sixth generation, Sir Walter de 
 Ogilvy was Sheriff of Angus, and, as has been stated by us, 
 fell at Gasklune in 1394. His son was the "gracious gude 
 Lord Ogilvy," celebrated in the old ballad of the battle of Hal-- 
 law, in which both he and his son George were slain. 
 
 " Of the best amang them was 
 
 The gracious gude Lord Ogilvy, 
 The Sheriff-Principal of Angus, 
 Renownit for truth and equity 
 For faith and magnanimity 
 He had tew fellows in the field, 
 Yet fell by fatal destiny, 
 For he nae ways wad grant to yield." 
 
 Of the seventh generation, Sir Walter de Ogilvy was High 
 Treasurer of Scotland, and Treasurer of the Household of 
 James I. In 1431, he was a Commissioner for renewing the 
 truce with England ; three years after he attended the Princess 
 Margaret into France, on her marriage to the Dauphin ; and by 
 an order from the King, he erected the tower or fortalice of 
 Eroly or Airlie into a Royal Castle. Of the eighth generation, 
 Sir John de Ogilvy obtained from the Crown the barony and 
 Castle of Eroly, now Airlie, about the middle of the fifteenth 
 century. 
 
 The family was ennobled by James IV. in the person of Sir 
 James Ogilvy, ambassador from Scotland to Denmark. He 
 was created Lord Ogilvy of Airlie in 1491. James, the sixth 
 Lord, was a faithful servant of Queen Mary, for which he 
 suffered a long imprisonment ; and was ambassador from her 
 son James to Christian IV. of Denmark. It was he who was 
 dangerously wounded on the High Street of Edinburgh in 1562, 
 in an encounter with Sir John Gordon, third son of the Earl of 
 Huntly j the result of a bitter family feud between the Gordons 
 and the Ogilvys. 
 
 James, the seventh Lord, was very ardently attached to
 
 The Grampian District Gortachy and Clova. 285 
 
 Charles I., who created him Earl of Airlie, Baron Ogilvy of 
 Alyth and Lintrathen, in 1639. To the royal cause he rendered 
 the most important services. In 1644 he, with his three sons, 
 one of whom, as has been noted by us, fell at Inverlochy, joined 
 his cousin-german the Marquis of Montrose, attended him in all 
 his campaigns, contributed greatly to gain the battle of Kilsyth, 
 and continued true to the last to the King and his lieutenant. 
 He was, of course, very obnoxious to the Covenanters. The 
 General Assembly excommunicated him ; and he was excepted 
 from the articles of Westminster. 
 
 This must have been the Lord Airlie of whose course in re- 
 gard to marriage tradition has handed down an interesting 
 anecdote. He resolved to ask the heart and hand of Lady 
 Magdalene Carnegie, the youngest daughter of David the first 
 Earl of Southesk. He mounted his horse one day to ride over 
 to Kinnaird Castle, for the purpose of proposing to her. The 
 horse would not take the ford by which he meant to cross the 
 river. Construing the refusal of the animal into a bad 
 omen, he turned back, and forthwith abandoned his matrimonial 
 project. The Lady Magdalene, who had for some time been 
 reading his heart, and expecting him to propose, on learning 
 his change of purpose was grievously disappointed and dis- 
 tressed ; but her father consoled her, and advised her " Not to 
 mind, for that he would soon find her a better husband than 
 Airlie." She was soon united in marriage to James Graham, 
 the great Marquis of Montrose. 
 
 James, the second Earl of Airlie, and the son of the first, was 
 as zealous a Royalist as his father. He was taken prisoner at 
 Philiphaugh, tried, and condemned to die ; but, as we told in 
 writing of St Andrews, he escaped from the Castle there in his 
 sister's clothes, during the night before the day fixed for his ex- 
 ecution ; and was, like his father, excepted from the articles of 
 Westminster. He was made a Privy Councillor after the 
 Restoration, and commanded a body of cavalry ; and, at the 
 Revolution, he joined Viscount Dundee in favour of King James 
 against the Prince of Orange. His sou, Earl David, succeeded 
 him. David's eldest son, James, Lord Ogilvy, joined the Pre- 
 tender in 1715, and was attainted; and the peerage, dormant 
 from his father's death to his own, then devolved on his only 
 brother John. John's eldest son David, Lord Ogilvy, joined 
 Prince Charlie in 1745 with a regiment of six hundred men ; 
 and, being forfeited, fled to France, entered the French service,
 
 286 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 rose to the rank of lieutenant-general, and was colonel of a regi- 
 ment and a Knight of St Louis in 1778. George III. restored 
 him to his country and his estates. The peerage was dormant from 
 the death of his lather till the death of the Master of Airlie, 
 Lord Ogilvy's only son, in 1812. The Honourable Walter 
 Ogilvy of Clova, then of Airlie, assumed the peerage, and the 
 present Earl is his grandson. 
 
 The house of the dead of this noble family vies, in the ele- 
 gance of its architecture, with the Castle of the living. It was 
 erected at the same time as the present parish church (1828-29), 
 and adjoins it. The family burying-place had previously been 
 inside the old church, the site of which the new church occu- 
 pies. The new cemetery is outside the church, and though of 
 comparatively recent erection, is not tenantless. Several Earls 
 and Countesses, and several of their progeny, already repose in 
 it, and are commemorated in fine tablets of marble, with 
 appropriate inscriptions, placed on the walls around their graves. 
 
 Cortachy Castle may have once had a " flying visit" of 
 Royalty, as we shall by and by explain. 
 
 Clova as well as Cortachy has had historic owners, who have 
 shed lustre on it, and secured it a place in our annals. In 1324 
 The Bruce gave charters of Clova to his nephew Donald, the 
 twelfth Eai-1 of Mar, and it continued in the Mar family till 
 1398, when Countess Isabella (wife of the Wolf of Badenoch) 
 resigned it in favour of Sir David Lindsay of Glenesk, the first 
 Earl of Crawford. In 1445, at the battle of Arbroath, Thomas 
 Ogilvy, a younger brother of the Laird of Inverquharity, joined 
 the Lindsays against his own clan ; for which Earl Beardie 
 rewarded him with Clova ; and hence a very rancorous and 
 long-standing feud between Clova and Inverquharity. The said 
 Thomas Ogilvy's descendants possessed Clova till after the 
 ennobling of the house of Airlie, when it was given to Sir 
 David, the third son of the first Earl. 
 
 The Statistical Account of the united parishes says : 
 "About two hundred yards to the north of the church of 
 Clova there was a mansion house, where the proprietor of Clova 
 occasionally resided. It has been completely removed. The 
 boundary of the garden, which was connected with it, is marked 
 by a row of fine old trees by which the ground is surrounded." 
 That place was Millton of Clova, and the mansion house at it 
 was erected by the Sir David Ogilvy just named, son of the first 
 Earl of Airlie. Though the foundations of it have been razed,
 
 The Grampian District Cortachy o,nd Clova. 287 
 
 its hewn and carved work has been utilised in the building of the 
 cottages which adjoin its site; and " D. O." and " J. G., 1684," 
 on a stone built into one of these, are the initials of David 
 Ogilvy and his wife Jean Guthrie, and the date perhaps that 
 of their marriage, or perhaps that of the building of their house. 
 
 About half a mile to the west of the church are the ruins of 
 the Castle of Clova. " Inside the wall which is standing" (we 
 quote again from the Statistical Account), " there are some 
 steps of a stair. The wall is upwards of 25 feet in height, and 
 more than four feet thick, and the cement of lime with which it 
 has been built is as hard as the stones which it keeps together. 
 No proper account of its history is known." One account 
 ascribes the building of the Castle to the Lindsays, and the 
 destruction of it to the neighbouring barons, who, grievously 
 offended somehow by its occupant, marched against it one night, 
 and gave it to the flames, he escaping to the adjacent mountain, 
 and hiding under a large piece of rock called to this day the 
 Laird's Stane, and afterwards in the Hole of Weems, a well 
 known cave in a hill near Braedownie. Another account 
 ascribes the destruction of the Castle to the troops of Cromwell 
 and of Montrose, which, not confining themselves to Glenesk 
 and Lethnot and Navar, spread also into Cortachy and Clova, 
 leaving everywhere marked and sad traces of their presence. 
 But in Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, under date of 1591, it is 
 written that " under silence of night, five hundred brokin men 
 and sornaris houndit out be the Eiil of Ergyle and his frendis, 
 entered Glen Clova in September, invadit the inhabitants, and 
 murthourit and slew three or foure innocent men and women, 
 and reft and took away ane grit pray of guidis." Mr 
 Jervise supposes, with a good deal of probability, that it may 
 have been then that the Castle of Clova was pillaged and 
 burned. 
 
 Cortachy and Clova were not behind their neighbours in 
 witch prosecution. On the 8th June, 1692, there was no 
 sermon at Cortachy, the minister being at Clova at the " execu- 
 tione of Margaret Adamson, who was burnt there for being ane 
 witch." 
 
 Clova was the Scene of the event which is known in history 
 by the name of The Start. Charles I. had been beheaded, and 
 the Commonwealth established in England ; but the attachment 
 of the Scots to their hereditary monarchy was unquenchable. 
 Notwithstanding all they had suffered under the arbitrary,
 
 288 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 tyrannical rule of the first Charles, they had proclaimed his 
 eldest son, Prince Charles, as Charles II., King of Scotland. 
 Commissioners had been sent to the Continent, to which he had 
 retreated, to negotiate with him the conditions on which he was 
 to be admitted to the throne ; which were, that he should swear 
 the Covenants, and confirm, and conform to, the Presbyterian 
 government and worship. These conditions were in the highest 
 degree unpalatable to Charles, but he consented to them, 
 Montrose's last attempt for him having failed, and ended in his 
 own capture and execution, and the battle of Dunbar having 
 been lost. Charles was not afflicted with conscientious 
 scruples ; for he was not, like his father, " a sincere bigot." 
 Accepting the crown on the terms on which it was offered him, 
 he landed at the mouth of the Spey in June, 1650, and joined 
 the Committee of Estates at Perth, who, with the leaders among 
 the clergy, were resolved to proceed without delay to his 
 coronation. He never had any sympathy with the principles of 
 the party in whose hands he now was ; and contact with them 
 did not abate his antipathy to them. " Argyll and his friends 
 received the young King with all the outward marks of pro- 
 found respect. But they took care to give him his will in no 
 one particular. They excluded from attendance on his person 
 all his English adherents, suspicious of their attachment to 
 Prelacy and malignant opinions. The ministers beset him with 
 exhortations and sermons of immoderate length, introduced on 
 all occasions, and exhausting the patience of a young prince, 
 whose strong sense of the ridiculous, and impatience of serious 
 subjects, led him to receive with heartfelt contempt and disgust 
 the homely eloquence of the long-winded orators. The 
 preachers also gave him offence by choosing frequently for their 
 themes the sins of his father, the idolatry of his mother, who 
 was a Catholic, and what they frankly termed his own ill- 
 disguised disposition to malignity. They numbered up the 
 judgments which, they affirmed, these sins had brought on his 
 father's house, and they prayed that they might not be followed 
 by similar punishments on Charles himself." 
 
 All this was intolerable to Charles, and he made his escape 
 from it one morning on the pretence of going a-hawking. 
 Leaving Perth at an early hour on horseback, accompanied by a 
 few attendants, he fled first to Dudhope, by Dundee, where 
 Viscount Dudhope and Earl Buchan were waiting him, ready 
 to join him, then to Auchterhouse, and then to Cortachy Castle.
 
 The Grampian District Cortachy and Clova. 289 
 
 It was thought that he could not safely remain at the Castle 
 for the night. Partaking of some refreshments, much needed 
 after such a long and fatiguing ride, he was conducted up the 
 Glen to a mean, poor cottage belonging to the Laird of Clova, 
 which was to be his lurking-place for the night. His friends 
 at Perth, soon learning his flight, sent after him a party of 
 horsemen under Montgomery ; and he had not long lain down 
 to rest when they found him, as Balfour says in his Annals, 
 " lying in a filthy room, on an old bolster, above a matt of 
 sedges and rushes, over-wearied and very fearful." This 
 happened on the 4th October, 1650. Charles was the more 
 easily persuaded to return with Montgomery, because he found 
 his friends in Angus had counted without their host on the 
 support he would receive if he would only desert the Presby- 
 terian camp. According to them, on the very day of his deser- 
 tion, a strong body of Athole Highlanders would rush down 
 and seize the Committee of Estates ; Lord Dudhope would 
 secure Dundee ; Lord Ogilvy would take arms in Angus ; and 
 Middleton and Huntly would raise the North ; all which 
 flattering promises dwindled down in the fulfilment to some 
 sixty or seventy Highlanders escorting him to the wretched 
 cottage at Clova, where he had been but a few hours when his 
 pursuers overtook him. As Aikman has it, Montgomery and 
 his party " conducted him to more suitable apartments in 
 Huntly Castle, and next day (Sunday) brought him respectfully 
 to Perth, where he heard ' ane comfortable sermon in his ouen 
 chamber of presence, the afternoon's sermon in the toune being 
 endit before he entered.' " 
 
 The start was altogether a most ominous affair ; and yet the 
 Covenanters proceeded with their project. Charles's coronation 
 was accomplished at Scone on the 1st January, 1651, when 
 kneeling, and lifting up his right hand to heaven, he swore 
 " I, Charles King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, do 
 assure, and declare by solemn oath, in the presence of Almighty 
 God, the searcher of hearts, my allowance and approbation of 
 the National Covenant, and of the Solemn League and Covenant 
 above written j and faithfully oblige myself to prosecute the 
 ends thereof in my station and calling, and that I, for myself 
 and successors, shall consent and agree to all Acts of Parliament 
 enjoining the same, and establishing Presbyteria7 government, 
 as approved by the General Assemblies of this Kirk, and Parlia- 
 ment of this Kingdom ; and that I shall give my Royal Assent
 
 290 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 to Acts and Ordinances of Parliament, passed or to be passed, 
 enjoining the same in my other dominions ; and that I shall 
 observe these in my own practice and family, and shall never 
 make opposition to any of these, or endeavour any change 
 thereof." 
 
 Charles's future supplies the commentary on the farce thus 
 acted, and on what Bailie wrote concerning it : " This day we 
 have crowned our noble King with all the solemnities. . . . 
 So peaceably and magnificently, as if no enemy had been 
 among us. This is of God ; for it was Cromwell's purpose, 
 which I thought easily he might have performed, to have 
 marred by arms that action, at least the solemnity of it." 
 
 Alexander Lindsay, A.M., minister of Cortachy, was too 
 keen a Jacobite to retain his charge. He was deprived by 
 the Privy Council, in 1689, for not reading the proclamation of 
 the Estates, not praying for William and Mary, and not observ- 
 ing the thanksgiving for their establishment on the throne. 
 Several other things were libelled against him, evincing his 
 disloyalty, and the correspondence he kept with the rebels. 
 
 William Brown, one of his successors, son of Lawrence Brown, 
 minister of Lintrathen, was too ardent a Hanoverian for spend- 
 ing his days in such a Jacobite atmosphere. He demitted his 
 charge in 1748, on account of "the odium of the disaffected, 
 the prejudices of the people, and his life being attacked by a 
 ruffian." He became chaplain to a regiment in the British 
 army in Flanders ; was afterwards minister of the English 
 congregation of Utrecht ; and latterly Professor of Divinity 
 and Ecclesiastical History in the University of St Andrews. 
 
 KINGOLDRUM. 
 
 The church of Kingoldrum must have been in olden days an 
 Historic Scene. When the present church was erected, in 1840, 
 on the site of its predecessor, several stones were dug out of the 
 foundation with very curious devices cut on them. Two of 
 them were carved with fine crosses, and had on them accom- 
 panying hieroglyphics. Taking these to be, what they veiy 
 likely are, memorial stones, we cannot read their inscriptions ;
 
 The Grampian District Kingoldrum. 291 
 
 but it is interesting to be able to remark that, these inscriptions 
 containing a mixture of both the heathen and the Christian 
 elements, their date may be approached, if not fixed. As has 
 been said of them " These stones, it is probable, had their 
 origin about the time of the introduction of Christianity in our 
 country, and would seem to be a connecting link between Pagan 
 mythology and Christian worship. Several rude relics which 
 may have been esteemed precious in the time of Romish 
 supremacy were likewise found." 
 
 The stone coffins occasionally found in the fields of the parish 
 may likewise mark Historic Scenes ; but the tales which they 
 once told have sunk into oblivion. The Catlaw, 3264 feet 
 above the level of the sea, is surmounted by a great cairn of 
 stones, and that these once formed some sort of building is not 
 to be doubted. The marks of fire on the stones precludes any 
 doubt on the point. The building may have served for a 
 fortress, or for a watchtower, or for both purposes. 
 
 In Kingoldrum was one of the great ancient forests of the 
 country. The parish must have been a Royal demesne in the 
 days of William the Lion, for he gave it to the Abbey of 
 Arbroath, and this grant was confirmed by Alexander III., and 
 afterwards by King Robert Bruce. There is still extant a 
 proclamation prohibiting any one from cutting wood or hunting 
 in the forest of Kingoldrum. The Statistical Account of it 
 adds : " Three perambulations made at different periods by 
 the abbots and monks distinctly mark out the boundaries of 
 the parish. It is not a little remarkable, that the names then 
 given to the several farms and hamlets 600 years ago are the 
 same as at the present time. What portion of the parish was 
 covered with the royal forest it would now be difficult to say, 
 as no traces of it can be discovered. Flint arrow-heads have 
 been picked tip in the fields to the eastward of the church. 
 Perhaps these may have been used in the pursuit of the chase." 
 
 The Castle of Balfour, the ruins of which have suffered much 
 spoliation within the last utilitarian half century, tradition 
 has long made one of Cardinal Beaton's castles and residences 
 in Angus. There is no evidence that the Castle was built by 
 him, or that the lands of Balfour were ever possessed by him. 
 On the contrary, it is certain that these lands were the property 
 of the Ogilvys of Airlie, nearly fifty years before Beaton's 
 elevation to the cardinalship ; and it is probable that the 
 Castle was built by Walter Ogilvy, the contemporary of Beaton, 
 
 T2
 
 292 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 and the brother of Marion Ogilvy, the Cardinal's paramour. It 
 may be that the Cardinal and she often visited the Castle and 
 sojourned in it for considerable periods ; and that in this the 
 tradition of its being one of Beaton's Castles had its origin. 
 
 John Ogilvie, A.M., minister of Kingoldrum, was one of the 
 forty-two who signed a protestation to Parliament, on July 1st, 
 1606, against the introduction of Prelacy into Scotland. His 
 successor, William Ogilvy, A.M., was a very different man. 
 He got a warrant from the Restoration Parliament in 1661 for 
 iije merks ; from which it may be presumed, with much pro 
 bability, that he not only favoured the Royalists in their 
 principles and policy, but that he was one of the eighteen 
 ministers in Angus who were deposed by the ascendant Presby- 
 terians in 1649. John Heugh, grandfather of the late Hugh 
 Heugh, D.D., of the United Presbyterian Church, Glasgow, 
 was ordained minister of this parish in 1714, and died in 1731. 
 Thomas Whitehead, A.M., was introduced into it, in 1733, by 
 order of the General Assembly, and it is on record that the 
 ministers of Bendochy, Airlie, Meigle, Lintrathen, Alyth, 
 Blairgowrie, Glenisla, and Ruthven, left the Court, refusing to 
 take part in the ordination, or even to witness it ; while the 
 ministers of Coupar-Angus, Newtyle, and Eassie, obeyed the 
 Assembly's behest. 
 
 The only person of much eminence, whom we have seen 
 noticed as a native of Kingoldrum, is Thomas Scott, son of 
 Alexander Scott. A.M., minister of the parish, and who was 
 translated from it to Meigle in 1757. Thomas studied for the 
 Church, for the ministry of which he was on probationary 
 trials in 1769. "We have got no glimpse of his intervening 
 life ; but he emigrated to America, and there rose to be a 
 judge of such high repute that he was made Chief-Justice of 
 Upper Canada. 
 
 LINTRATHEN. 
 
 The only Historic Scene known to us in Lintrathen is the 
 Castle of Sir Alan Durward, the proprietor of the greater part, 
 if not the whole, of the parish. It was situated on the south- 
 west acclivity of the Hill of Formal, near the Isla ; and at the
 
 The Grampian District Lintrathen 293 
 
 date of the last report of it which came our way, though the 
 Castle was entirely demolished, part of the moat which had 
 surrounded it was visible ; and on the west side of the Loch of 
 Lintrathen vestiges of Sir Alan's deer-park might still be traced. 
 
 Of Sir Alan we have already given some account. None of 
 his contemporaries figures more conspicuously than lie does in 
 the annals of his age. 
 
 After the forfeiture of David de Hastings, Earl of Athol, Sir 
 Alan succeeded him as doorkeeper or doorward to King 
 Alexander II. ; and hence his name Durward. On the death 
 of Hastings he was created Earl of Athol, and was soon after 
 made High Justiciary of Scotland. He married Marjory, an 
 illegitimate daughter of Alexander II. ; and, at the impulse of 
 an ambition to raise his family to the throne, he applied to the 
 Pope to legitimate the marriage, and to make his wife heir 
 apparent to Alexander III., who was then childless. Nicolas 
 de Soulis was a descendant of Marjory ; and it was on this 
 ground that he became a competitor for the Crown on Alex- 
 ander's death. Sir Alan was at York in 1251, at the 
 solemnization of the marriage of King Alexander to the Princess 
 Margaret of England, daughter of Henry III. ; and when there, 
 he was accused of high treason for his designs on the Crown. 
 Two years after, Henry III., who had been waging an unfortu- 
 nate war in France, returned to Guienne, in compliance with a 
 request of the Gascon nobility, that he would protect them 
 against the king of Castile ; and Durward accompanied him in 
 that expedition, served in his army, and highly commended 
 himself by his military talents and address. 
 
 Returning home he was one of the most powerful of the faction 
 which espoused the English interest, in the attempts which the 
 English Monarchs made on the independence of Scotland. He 
 may be said, indeed, to have been at the head of that faction, 
 as the Comyns were at the head of the patriotic party. In 
 1255, the Comyn party had, to serve their own ends, shut up 
 Alexander and his Queen in Edinburgh Castle, of which the 
 Queen bitterly complained to the English Court ; representing 
 that she was not permitted to make excursions through the 
 kingdom and to choose her own attendants, that she was 
 secluded from the society of the King, though they had both 
 completed their fourteenth year, and that the place of their con- 
 finement was " solitary, without verdure, and unwholesome." 
 On pretence of relieving their Majesties but really to get the
 
 294 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 government into their own hands, the Durward party invaded 
 Edinburgh, surprised the Castle, and set the King and Queen 
 at liberty. After this, Sir Alan was twice one of the regents 
 of the kingdom ; and, in 1264, he and the Earls of Buchan and 
 Mar did a military exploit. Proceeding to the western coast 
 with a great army, they won the battle of Largs. They met 
 there the fleet with which Haco, King of Norway, had in the 
 previous year invaded Scotland, and committed much ravage in 
 several of the Western Isles, and gave it a most signal and dis- 
 astrous defeat. 
 
 As was before stated by us, Sir Alan was the last male 
 descendant of his race. He left three daughters among whom 
 his estates were divided. His daughter Isabel had Lintrathen. 
 Sir Walter Ogilvy, son of Sir Walter of Auchterhouse, Sheriff 
 of Forfarshire, married her ; and thus Lintrathen passed into 
 the possession of the Ogilvys. 
 
 Laurence Brown, A.M., minister of Lintrathen, was one of 
 the fifteen who dissented from the resolution of the General 
 Assembly, in May, 1749, to depose the eight Seceding 
 ministers. 
 
 GLENISLA. 
 
 We close our survey of the county with Glenisla, at which 
 we reach the southern or south-western boundary of the 
 Grampian District. It must have been anciently a royal 
 demesne, when the Grange of Glenisla furnished the Royal 
 Castle of Forfar with forty sheep at Easter ; and when Alex- 
 ander II. gifted the monks of Coupar with ten pounds of silver 
 yearly from the lands of Glenisla, directing that out of this sum 
 five merks should go to light the Abbey, and ten merks to 
 support two monks, who were to reside and perform divine 
 worship on the island in the Loch of Forfar, and were, farther, 
 to have the common pasture of the King's lands of Tyrbeg for 
 six cows and a horse. 
 
 Though rich in scenes of a topographic character, Glenisla has 
 few Historic Scenes. One of the few is Forther Castle, situated 
 at the head of the principal part of the Glen. There are two
 
 The Grampian District Glenisla. !295 
 
 Forthers, named respectively Meikle and Little ; and both of 
 them one of the Durwards gave to the Abbey of Coupar soon 
 after its erection ; from which it appears that, by that time, the 
 Crown had conferred its lands in Kingoldrum on its " Door- 
 ward, doorkeeper, or porter " family ; and that this family had 
 already large possessions in adjoining parishes. Sir Alan Dur- 
 ward erected a chapel in Glenisla, which he bestowed on the 
 Priory of Inchmahome. 
 
 Foither Castle was biirnt down in 1640 by the Earl of 
 Argyle ; and its ruins show that it must have had considerable 
 size and strength. It was from it, and not, as the author of the 
 Burnin' o' the Bonnie House o' Airlie represents, from Airlie 
 Castle, that Argyle drove Lady Ogilvy. 
 
 Newton Castle, another of the strongholds of the Airlie 
 family in this quarter, was sacked and demolished at the same 
 time, and hardly a vestige of it can now be traced. On the 
 neighbouring farm of Bellaty antiquities have been found, 
 which, there is every reason to believe, were from the Castle, 
 probably scattered about when Desolation drove its ploughshare 
 over it. We read in the Statistical Account of the parish : 
 " In the course of the last year a silver coin or medal, of Anselm 
 Casimir, Elector Archbishop of Mentz, was turned up by the 
 plough in one of the fields of Bellaty, in this parish. It is of 
 the size and nearly the weight of a crown piece, and is in an 
 excellent state of preservation. On the one side is a half-figure 
 of a venerable-looking old man, with the inscription, ' ANSELMUS : 
 CASIMIRUS : D : G : ARCHIEP + .' On the reverse is an escut- 
 cheon, complete in all its details, and surmounted by a mitre and 
 cross, with the legend : ' S : ROM : IMP : PER : Giv : ARCH : 
 CA : P : E : MOG.' The date of this curious relic may be pretty 
 accurately conjectured, when it is stated that Anselm Casimir was 
 Arch-Chancellor of the German Empire, and Archbishop of Mentz 
 (Moguntium), in the year 1631, when that city was surrendered 
 to Gustavus Adolphus (Schiller's ' Thirty Year's War/ Moir's 
 Trans., vol. ii., pp. 32 36.) A silver coin, apparently of the 
 reign of James I. of Scotland, and one of Queen Elizabeth, 
 bearing the date of 1594, have also been found on the same 
 farm. It may be remarked, as tending in some measure to 
 account for these discoveries, that Bellaty is in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of the remains of Newton Castle." 
 
 In the same expedition, the Marquis of Argyle laid Craig 
 House also in ruins. It was the seat of Sir John Ogilvy, a
 
 296 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 cousin of the Earl of Airlie. Argyle sent Sergeant Campbell, 
 one of his own clan, to destroy it. On reaching it, the Sergeant 
 found in the House only a sick gentlewoman and two or three 
 servants. His heart revolted from executing his commission, 
 and he returned reporting what he had seen, and that the 
 House was a place of no strength, and was not worth demolish- 
 ing. The Marquis, in a toweling passion, told him, that his 
 duty was simply to obey orders, and sent him back to make 
 the mansion a heap. We may add that, five years after, the 
 Ogilvys had their revenge for all this wreck and ruin, when 
 their Chief, Montrose, overthrew Castle Campbell, invaded 
 Argyleshire, and traversed it for the space of a month, commit- 
 ting all the devastation which fire and sword could effect. 
 
 In Glenisla and in the surrounding country there are 
 numerous scenes of a somewhat different order, of which we 
 shall, in conclusion, content ourselves with a single specimen, 
 as some fastidious critics might dispute their claim to rank as 
 Historic Scenes. The specimen we fix on is Corryvannoch 
 Well, near the foot of Mount Blair. At that well, in days gone 
 by, at an early hour of the morning of the first Sabbath of May, 
 might be seen assembled crowds of fathers and mothers, with 
 rickety, sickly children. The waters of the well were believed 
 to be, on that particular morning, infallibly medicinal to such 
 youngsters. Scorbutic and scrofulous taint they expelled from 
 the system ; rectified all irregularities and disorders in the 
 alimentary region ; succoured weakness with strength ; and 
 covered wan and pallid faces with the bloom of health and 
 beauty. The earlier in the morning the application, the more 
 efficacious it proved ; daybreak was considered the most favoured 
 nick of time. Trinkets, sometimes of considerable value, were 
 left in the spring as thank-offerings for such a Bethesda, and for 
 the benefit derived from it. When and how the Corryvannoch 
 Well lost its healing virtue, if it has lost it, we have not been 
 able to learn, but the resort to it has ceased. The first Sabbath 
 of May dawns as it was wont to do ; but the Spa has not a 
 solitary visitor, if it is not a passing shepherd, or some 
 anomalous person whom curiosity, excited by its old reputation, 
 draws to it. If it has lost its healing virtue, we have said but 
 has it lost it ? May not the difference between the former days 
 and these be this in those, people had confidence in the sani- 
 tary power of Corryvannoch Well ; in these, they have lost it ?
 
 Conclusion. 297 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 We finish at Glenisla our notices of Historic Scenes in 
 Forfarshire. It would have been easy for us to make these 
 notices much more extended than they are ; but, for various 
 reasons, it has been our aim throughout to condense them as 
 much as we could. The Scenes, too, might have been multi- 
 plied ; more especially, out of two subjects which we have 
 hardly touched on. These are the Weems and the (so-called) 
 Druidical remains that meet us in every district of the shire, 
 and in many parishes of it. We advert to them now, because 
 all that we have to say of them will be better said at once, 
 than it could have been by being repeated at every specimen of 
 them we came to in the ground over which we have been 
 travelling. 
 
 We have already given a general idea of the Weems. They 
 were underground houses or artificial caves, generally found in 
 dry knolls in the vales, and in the sides of hills or other rising 
 grounds, where water would not accumulate in them. They 
 vary greatly in size, but had been all formed on much the same 
 model ; their height from four to six, seven, or eight feet ; their 
 inner end broad, but narrowing towards the entrance ; and the 
 entrance itself curving round so that any missile thrown into it 
 could go but a few feet into the interior. 
 
 Were these Weems the ordinary habitations of our grey 
 fathers in pre-historic times'? Or were they their winter 
 quarters 1 Or were they refuges in which they hid in times of 
 danger ? These are the questions which meet us here, and they 
 are choice themes for antiquarian curiosity and credulity. 
 
 Caves both natural and artificial have been, and still are, the 
 ordinary abodes of some of our race. They have got from these 
 their distinctive name. They are called Troglodytes ; that is 
 dwellers in caves. Such were the early inhabitants of Syria. 
 Such were the Idumeans in J erome's time. Such at this day 
 are the people of Anab, a town on the east of the Jordan, who, 
 as Buckingham testifies in his Travels among the Arab Tribes, 
 all live in grottoes and caves ; and such are many others whom 
 we do not wait to point out. Whether it was so with our 
 remote ancestors, whether they were Troglodytes, caves being 
 their ordinary habitations, cannot, perhaps, be decided with
 
 298 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 absolute certainty. In the absence of anything like evidence 
 that they were so, we shall only say that we are somewhat 
 strongly inclined to the contrary opinion. 
 
 Were these subterraneous houses, then, the winter quarters 
 of our fathers 1 Or were they asylums into which they fled in 
 times of danger ? These two hypotheses need not be pitted 
 against one another ; they are not incompatible. The houses 
 in question may have served both the purposes specified. They 
 may have been the winter quarters of our fathers, who, naked, 
 painted savages, must have greatly needed shelter from the 
 intense severity of the climate in their times. Jerome says that 
 the Idumeans dwelt in caves " on account of the great heat ;" 
 and our ancestors might in like manner dwell in caves in winter 
 on account of the great cold. Tacitus relates how the Germans 
 did so, and the contemporary Caledonians may have done the 
 same. And having caves for other purposes, they were only 
 following the example of the world in all ages and nations, if 
 they used them as places of refuge in war, and in other seasons 
 of danger. 
 
 The latest writer on the cave-houses is Mr Burton, in his 
 History of Scotland ; and he is second to no authority, his- 
 torical or scientific, in respect of erudition, of patience and 
 thoroughness of research, and of candour and caution in judg- 
 ing. Readers, we are sure, more especially those who have not 
 access to his History, will be glad to know his views on the 
 subject. We shall therefore transcribe them. 
 
 " Another class of structures very abundant in Scotland are 
 called Eard or Earth-houses, Picts' houses, and Weems. Their 
 origin and use are shrouded in as deep a mystery as the round 
 towers we have been discussing ; and the perplexities of their 
 mysteriousness are made almost the more emphatic by the 
 darkness of the recesses into which the inquirer who tries to 
 solve their mysteries must descend. They exist in many places 
 in Scotland, but chiefly they concentrate themselves near 
 Glenkindy and Kildrummy, on the upper reaches of the River 
 Don in. Aberdeenshire. There they may be found so thickly 
 strewn as to form subterranean villages, or even towns. The 
 fields are, to use a common expression, honeycombed with them. 
 They give no artificial signs above ground. The peasant will 
 sometimes know where they are by an unploughed patch in the 
 field, in which a few stones crop above ground, with furze grow- 
 ing between them ; in other instances the earth above is
 
 Conclusion. 299 
 
 sufficient to let the plough pass over the edifice, and a small 
 hole between two projecting stones marks its entrance. 
 Through this hole a corpulent man will find difficulty in squeez- 
 ing himself. It brings him to a sloping tunnel, which he 
 descends some six or eight feet. He is then in a subterranean 
 gallery, in which he may be able to stand upright ; the ordinary 
 height varies from five to eight feet. It is some thirty feet 
 long, and may probably have lateral galleries to the right and 
 the left. There are few places in which the sensation of the 
 dungeon or burial in life is stronger than in those artificial 
 caverns, and that on account of the colossal and massive 
 character of the roof. There is no cement, and no mark of tool- 
 ing on the stones. If the gallery be eight feet broad at the 
 floor, which is not an uncommon breadth, the walls, built of 
 rough stones, will be found so to slope inwards by overlapping 
 as to bring the sides within six feet of each other. Across 
 this breadth are laid gigantic blocks of granite. 
 
 " When we ask What were the uses of such buildings ? we 
 are again launched on the great ocean of guess-work. There is 
 a laboriousness in their structure not naturally associated by us 
 with the makeshift arrangements that content the savage in the 
 construction of his dwelling ; yet that they have been human 
 dwellings is the accepted opinion regarding them. If we adopt 
 what is said by Ptolemy and other ancient geographers, and in 
 some measure sanctioned by modern travellers, about a troglo- 
 dytic or cavern-living population in Arabia, we may suppose 
 that we have here the actual dwellings occupied by a race of 
 like habits at the opposite extremity of the globe. 
 
 " Any incidental testimony to their uses yielded up by these 
 dark caverns has been extremely meagre. In general they have 
 been found empty. In some of them there has been noticed a 
 little rubbish, from which it may be inferred that at some time 
 human beings had cooked and eaten food in them; as, for 
 instance, cinders, bones of animals, and shells. A few articles, 
 ornamental or useful, made of bones, flint, and bronze, have 
 been found in them. In several the quern or handmill has 
 been discovered ; and this being indeed the only characteristic 
 movable of which they have given up several specimens, it has 
 sometimes been inferred that the buildings were ancient 
 granaries. But, taken as a whole, the contents of these cata- 
 combs are not sufficiently extensive or characteristic to speak to 
 the object for which they were made. Any incidents occurring
 
 300 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 in the unknown number of centuries through which they might 
 have existed might have supplied their trifling contents. A set 
 of schoolboys seeking a holiday's amusement in their mysterious 
 recesses a set of gipsies using them for casual shelter or con- 
 cealment on their tramp might be sufficient to leave such 
 vestiges of human use as these structures afford. We can only 
 tell what they pretty clearly have not been intended for. 
 They have not been the sepulchres of the dead, nor have they 
 been places of Christian worship ; for both these uses have, as 
 we shall presently see, their own special marks, and these are 
 not found in the earthhouses. It is one of their specialties, too, 
 that none of the stone sculptures so abundant in Scotland is 
 found about them. 
 
 " It has not escaped the notice of those who have examined 
 these works and endeavoured to account for them, that Tacitus 
 tells us how the Germans lived underground in winter. To 
 hold that the subterranean structures in Scotland are alone a 
 sufficient existing testimony to the accuracy of a statement re- 
 garding the Germans, would be a too strong conclusion ; but, 
 on the other hand, it in no way impugns the accuracy of the 
 statement of Tacitus that there are no remains in Germany 
 itself of the underground habitations mentioned by him. The 
 habitation in which the barbarian burrows in the earth to keep 
 from the cold is likely enough, if we may judge from what 
 travellers see, a mere temporary makeshift, that, when it ceases 
 to be inhabited, will disappear almost as soon as the residence 
 of the mole. On the other hand, the feature that gives 
 emphasis to the earth-houses of the north is their enormous 
 substantiality. Uncouth, gloomy, and utterly unadorned as 
 they are, a wondrous amount of labour, and considerable skill 
 in mechanical power have been devoted to them by their makers, 
 who have rendered them stable as the everlasting hills, and the 
 monuments of a seriousness and tenaciousness of purpose which 
 must have possessed some adequate inducement in the minds of 
 the workmen." 
 
 The lore about the Druidical remains which abound in the 
 shire is as scanty and uncertain as that about the earth-houses. 
 The Logans or rocking-stones, were they anything in Druidism, 
 and if so, what ? The circles of stones, were they Druid temples, 
 places of worship ? or were they places of sepulture, or what ? 
 The groves of oak, were they consecrated spots where the rites 
 of Druidism were performed ? These, and such as these, are the
 
 Conclusion. 301 
 
 questions that occur here. The answers to them we shall not 
 examine, or even recount. On the first of them we mention an 
 opinion, which may not be known by some, and must be in- 
 teresting to all. It is, that the rocking-stones, so firmly set on 
 their pedestals that the force of many men could not remove 
 them, and yet so delicately poised that almost a breath of wind 
 can shake them, were used in the interests of superstition, and 
 specially, as Mr Jervise says, " for the purposes of ordeal." He 
 quotes Toland, remarking " that the priests made the people 
 believe that they only could move the rocking stones, and that 
 by a miracle, by which they condemned or acquitted the accused, 
 and often brought criminals to confess what in no other way 
 could be extorted from them. Mason, in his excellent tragedy 
 of ' Caractacus,' where many of the rites of Druidism are 
 beautifully detailed, remarks, in reference to the supposed power 
 of the rocking-stone : 
 
 ' It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch 
 Of him whose breast is pure ; but to a traitor, 
 Though e'en a giant's prowess moved his arm, 
 It stands as fixed as Snowdon.' " 
 
 The circles of stone are thought to have been Druid temples ; 
 and the relics of the dead found about them are accounted for 
 by the strong tendency in human nature, attested by all history, 
 to make places of worship places of sepulture. The groves of 
 oak, too, were consecrated scenes, where the sacred rites of 
 Druidism were celebrated. There is much reason, indeed, to 
 believe that the circles of stones were surrounded by oaks ; and 
 we are assured that " there are various instances in which, 
 within little more than a century, oaks were still standing 
 around the circles of upright stones which constituted the 
 temples of the Druids." 
 
 Druidism was the most ancient known form of paganism in 
 Britain, and it continued till Christianity supplanted it. The 
 Druids were the priests or ministers of it, a distinct caste like 
 the Brahmins of India ; teaching the mysteries of the established 
 heathenism, performing its rites, which included human 
 sacrifices, and inculcating its obligations. They were judges 
 also in secular affairs, so that all persons and all causes came 
 under their jurisdiction, and their power hardly knew any 
 limits. Whosoever disobeyed them was declared impious and 
 accursed, and was made a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth. 
 They were venerated as the sages of the land, the men of
 
 302 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 learning and wisdom ; and they did know something of physics, 
 astronomy, and other sciences. They were much addicted to 
 magic and divination ; and by practising the arts belonging to 
 these impostures, they kept up their authority and reputation 
 among the people. They esteemed the oak the emblem, or 
 rather the residence, of the Deity ; and they looked on the 
 mialetoe with boundless reverence, as the holiest object in 
 nature, and as, nolflbnly a remedy for epilepsy (as some even 
 yet dream), but as " All Heal" so they named it as a 
 panacea for all the maladies which flesh is heir to. 
 
 Such is a glimpse of the received faith concerning the Druids, 
 and the existing monuments of them. But, having quoted 
 Burton with so much deference on the Weems, it is right that 
 we should say how he regards this faith with marked scepticism 
 and even contempt. And if he has not written anything which 
 actually overthrows it, he has certainly written enough to lead 
 to renewed examination of the foundation on which it rests. 
 He says, for example : " It has been an established custom to 
 characterise these monuments (circles, altars, Logans, &c.) as 
 ' Druidical,' and to speak of them as temples, altars, and what 
 not, used in their ceremonials by the Druidical priests. We 
 shall presently see how far it is likely that there ever were 
 Druids in Scotland. But though we shall believe that the 
 country swarmed with them, it would require separate evidence, 
 of which there is not the smallest vestige, to prove that they 
 had anything to do with these stone monuments. The early 
 references to the existence of Druids in Northern Europe, and 
 the present knowledge of the existence of these rough stone 
 monuments, are two sets of phenomena which have no connect- 
 ing link the one with the other. Between them there is a 
 gulf fixed, which has not been spanned, because the historical 
 conditions out of which learning and sagacity could unite them 
 have not been found to exist. It is possible to think that 
 these grey monuments of long-buried generations draw more 
 solemn associations from the dead mystery in which they are 
 thus buried, than from the tawdry stage decorations of Druid- 
 ism the white robes, the misletoe, and the golden sickle." 
 
 Such is Mr Burton's opinion ; and the pith at least of his 
 reasons for thus strongly dissenting from the common belief, we 
 shall indicate in two extracts. The purport of the first is, that 
 the common belief about the Druidism of our pagan fathers is 
 not sustained by the history of pagan times.
 
 Conclusion. 303 
 
 " Let us try," says he, "how far we can trace these Druids 
 through the events of history. We are told that throughout all 
 the great Gaulish tribes there was a potent hierarchy holding 
 supreme spiritual authority over the people and their secular 
 rulers. They had the entire control over the education of 
 youth, being alike the repositories of the venerable traditions 
 of the past, and the recipients of all recent knowledge. They 
 were the supreme judges in all disputes, *and ratified their 
 decisions by excommunication. Their rank and influence were 
 made manifest to the eyes of the people by imposing ceremonies 
 and awful sacrifices, of which human lives were an element. 
 They were still further strengthened by their annual assemblies 
 in the heart of Europe, whence each carried to his district a 
 delegation from the central power of the vast corporation. We 
 are told that all this was venerable in Caesar's time, and that it 
 lasted throughout the Gaulish nations, until one by one these 
 were received into the bosom of the Christian Church. 
 
 " What we naturally expect is to meet with the influence of 
 this power, and with the conduct of the persons who wielded it, 
 in history. The history of Europe from Csesar's time to the 
 reign of Constantino is sufficiently full of events, but we find 
 no Druids concerned in them. Occasionally in rhetoric prose, 
 or- in poetry, they are brought up to give picturesqueness to the 
 scene ; as when Tacitus describes the shrieking women and the 
 band of Druids invoking the gods in Mona ; and Lucan, when 
 enumerating the evils that befell unhappy Gaul when Csesar 
 crosses the Rubicon on his way back, makes the Druids resume 
 their mysterious orgies. But we never meet with any distinct 
 political result of their collective influence, nor are we ever 
 brought in contact with an individual Druid as a historical 
 personage. No doubt, in modern books, persons of celebrity in 
 the ancient world are said to have been Druids, but this is 
 because their authors have concluded that they must have 
 belonged to that order, not because they are so called by any 
 contemporary writer. A Druid is indeed a being rarely 
 individualised in the literature of the latter Empire, and it has 
 rather tended to confute the received notions of the hierarchy, 
 that some perhaps the greater number of those individually 
 mentioned are female Druids." 
 
 Mr Burton's second reason amounts to this : that the 
 Druidism of our pagan fathers is not sustained by the history of 
 their conversion to Christianity. He says :
 
 304 Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. 
 
 11 The contest of conversion lasted from the days of Con- 
 stantine the Great to long after the days of Charlemagne. The 
 larger features of the contest are told by the ecclesiastical 
 historians ; the individual triumphs of the missionaries are to be 
 found in the ample volumes of the Lives of the Saints. If, 
 then, there had been in existence a heathen hierarchy holding 
 spiritual rule over the greater part of Europe, to find nothing 
 about it in the annals of the Early Church would be as 
 anomalous as to read a history of the Reformation which says 
 nothing of the Popedom, the Romish hierarchy, and the Council 
 of Trent. Yet on Druidism, its hierarchy and creed, these 
 annals of the early Church are dumb. It has yet to be dis- 
 covered that they speak of heathendom as represented by any 
 general hierarchy or system. The forces of the enemy appear 
 ever to be scattered and isolated. A local idol, the temple in 
 which it is preserved, and a heathen priest or Magus taking 
 charge of the temple, such are usually the natiire of the 
 impediment with which the early saint has to deal when he 
 penetrates the territories of the unconverted." 
 
 THE END. 
 
 ERRATA. 
 Page. Line. 
 
 24. 2. for wreck read wreak. 
 
 41. 86. For 1715 read 1718. 
 
 62. 26. .For drew read drove 
 
 80. 16. Far Pickland read Pictland. 
 
 91. 14. For 1858 read 1582. 
 126. 2. For 1875 read 1795. 
 
 126. 8. After" translated" insert" to Tealing. and." 
 162. 9. For 1715 read 1716. 
 177. 33. For warmed read swarmed. 
 212. 3. For resemble real resembled.
 
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