I THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SCOTLAND ^■Y^ \y^ THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY BY HENKY GEEY GEAHAM EDITION IN ONE VOLUME LONDON ADAM AND CHAKLES BLACK 1901 ^ « (3\ First Edition published I'zth October 1899. Reprinted 'mHIi alterations Febntary 1900. TO MY WIFE S4'>-a WO PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION The issue of a new edition of this work affords the opportunity for making some slight alterations, chiefly in the correction of a few almost inevitable slips of the pen, the eye, or the memory, — two or three of which have not escaped the notice of friendly critics and of critical friends. It is necessary to respect and to possess those qualities of a literary and historical conscience, which the choleric Sir Arthur Wardour dreaded and despised in his friend, the laird of Monkbarns, as " a pettifogging intimacy with dates, names, and trifling matters of fact, and a tiresome and frivolous accuracy of memory." Occasional repetitions of facts in the course of this book are due to the desire to make each chapter describing special phases of social life as complete in itself as possible. Some reviewers have observed and regretted the omission of an account of the intellectual development of the country during the period. This want we may yet supply in a separate volume, treating of the literature and men of letters of Scotland in the eighteenth century. HENKY GEEY GEAHAM. February 1900. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION In Scotland during the eighteenth century there were only two outstanding events which, after the Union, specially belong to its history — the Eebellion of '15 and the Eebellion of '45. Besides these rebellions, we find as State affairs of Scotland chiefly obscure intrigues of factions, Whig and Tory, Presby- terian and Jacobite ; measures managed by leaders of Scottish business, who were servile followers of English ministries ; manoeuvres of Scots nobles and placemen who travel southwards on horseback or in coach to win favour with great statesmen at Westminster or courtiers at St. James's — figures not very real to us to-day as they flit across the stage, " transient and embarrassed phantoms." To the end of the century — when Henry Dundas was " uncrowned King " of Scotland, pulling every political wire, and making local magnates and voters in town and country obsequiously move like puppets at his will — political life in North Britain was virtually non-existent. This book, however, does not treat of stirring and striking episodes such as the Eebellions, with their elements of high romance not unalloyed with dingy intrigue : for these a sketch would be too little, and here a liistory would be too much. Still less does it concern itself with the ways of politicians,' who often mistook state craftiness for statecraft, from the pettifogging schemers at the beginning of the century to the d dictatorship and despotic party domination at the close : these only eko f'45, dand 'esby- ottish itries; iwarda ;e3meii it very it and when tmllins tersin PREFACE ix nterested the country a little at that time, but they interest IS very little to-day. The following pages treat of the social jondition of the country — chielly in the Lowlands — and the nternal changes through which it passed during a hundred rears, with details which the historian dismisses with im- )atience as unconsidered trifles marring the dignity of his heme and disturbing the flow of his narrative. Yet, after all, it s in the inner life of a community that its real history is to be bund — in the homes, and habits, and labours of the peasantry; n the modes, and manners, and thoughts of society ; what the )eople believed and what they practised ; how they farmed and low they traded ; how the poor were relieved ; how their ihildren were taught, how their bodies were nourished, and low their souls were tended. On this last subject it may be bought that too much has been said — that the religious and cclesiastical state of Scotland has been dealt with on a scale 00 large and disproportionate. It must, however, be remem- )ered that such a part — too large and disproportionate — it also brmed in the existence and concerns of the people. No doubt nany of the religious ways and habits, the old-world theology, lave long ago vanished, leaving only memories, humorous, )athetic, or bitter, behind them ; curious convictions that mce were charged with dangerous force in sectarian polemics ire now cold and harmless, like exploded shells on an old ent. lij ijvill )attlefield. But it is impossible to understand the character :nd conduct of the Scottish people without knowing those ■>^i )ygone customs and beliefs which were once full of intense f Wh dtality. iSTowhere were Church spirit so keen. Church influence o far-reaching, and Church affairs so intimate, as in Scotland. Probably no period was so quietly eventful in shaping the ortunes and character of the country as the eighteenth century. )thers are more distinguished by striking incidents, others are , to the Qore full of the din and tumult and strife which arrest atten- ion and are treated as crises, although they may neither stir the 3t sketch mucli iticians, om the X SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V depths nor affect the course of a people's life ; but in that century there was a continuous revolution going on — a gradual transformation in manners, customs, opinions, among every class ; the rise and progress of agricultural, commercial, and intellectual energy, that turned waste and barren tracts to fertile fields— stagnant towns to centres of busy trade — a lethargic, slovenly populace to an active, enterprising race — an utterly impoverished country to a prosperous land. These facts constitute the real history of the Scots in the eighteenth century. The literature of the period, which developed so marvel- lously after the middle of the century, is only slightly indicated in this study of the time. It is a subject full of interest and importance ; but, though it came within the scope of this work, it could not be put within the bounds of its space. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE CouNTUY Society and Codntry Life, 1700-1750 . . 1 CHAPTER n Codntry Society and Country Life, 1750-1800 . . * 56 CHAPTER m Town Life — Edinburgh . . . . .81 CHAPTER IV Town Life — Glasgow ..... 127 CHAPTER V The Land and the People, 1700-1750 . . . 146 CHAPTER VI The Land and the People, 1750-1800 . . .201 CHAPTER VII The Poor of Scotland ..... 228 CONTENTS CHAPTER VIII PAGE Keligious and Ecclesiastical Life — Part I. . .267 CHAPTER IX Religious and Ecclesiastical Life — Part II. . . 348 CHAPTER X Theological Opinions and Teaching . . . 393 CHAPTER XI Education in Scotland — Schools and Schoolmasters . 417 CHAPTER XII Education in Scotland — The Universities — Their Life and Learning ...... 448 CHAPTER XIII Education — Medical Art and Medical Practice . .473 CHAPTER XlV Crimes and Punishments . . . . .484 CHAPTER XV Progress of Industry and Trade . . . .506 1 / f INDEX 539 ii] SOCIAL LIFE OF SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER I COUNTKY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 1700-1750 Scotland, although geographically separated from England by only an invisible march here and a narrow river there, was socially far separated by immemorial antagonism, by bitter historical traditions, by strength of inveterate prejudice, by diversity of laws, by opposition of Church creed and polity, by hostile interests in trade, by contrast in ways of living, tone of thought, and mode of speech. Feelings and usages had become part of life and character which were peculiarly Scottish, forming the undefinable quality of nationality ; and these had become intensified and confirmed by political jealousy, and maintained with patriotic animosity — all which had the effect of giving a striking individuality to the people. This contrast and this separation continued very long after the Union of 1707, which united the governments, but could not unite the two peoples. Intercourse between them was slight, always intermittent, and seldom pleasant even in the highest classes. Dislike of everything EngUsh was keen in the North ; a contempt of everything Scottish was bitter in the South. Communication with England was rare even 1 2 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY among people of quality ; for distances were great, roads were execrable, and the cost of travelling and lodging was appalling to people who, in all ranks, high and low, were miserably poor. All these barriers kept Scotland in a state of isolation. The country could modify little and learn little, even if inclined to change, by contact with another state of civilisation ; and so it happened that half of the eighteenth century elapsed with few peculiar habits and national customs having passed away. The few Englishmen who journeyed to North Britain, from spirit of adventurous curiosity or from stress of business, entered upon the expedition with the air of heroic courage with which a modern traveller sets forth to explore the wild region of a savage land. If the tourist entered Scotland by way of Berwick and the Lothians, he did not at first meet much to shock him by ugly contrast. If he entered by Dumfriesshire and the moors of Galloway, he was at once filled with dismay by the dismal change from his own country — the landscape a bleak and bare solitude, destitute of trees, abounding in heather and morass and barren hills ; soil where cultivation was found only in dirty patches of crops, on ground surrounded by heather and bog ; regions where the inhabitants spoke an uncouth dialect, were dressed in rags, lived in hovels, and fed on grain, with which he fed his horses ; and when night fell, and he reached a town of dirty thatched huts, and gained refuge in a miser- able abode that passed for an inn, only to get a bed he could not sleep in, and fare he could not eat, his disgust was inex- pressible. After he had departed, and finally reached his English home in safety, he wrote down his adventures as a modern explorer pens his experiences in Darkest Africa ; and then he uttered frankly to the world his vehement emotions. It is thus one English gentleman, escaping to his native soil, summed up his impressions of the North : " I passed to English ground, and hope I may never go to such a country again. I thank God I never saw such another, and must conclude with poet Cleveland — Had Cain been Scot, God had ne'er changed liis doom, Not made him wander, bnt confined him home." ^ 1 Journey through North of England and Scotland in 1704, p. 65, privately printed, Edin. 1818. COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 3 It was iu such a way that travellers up to the middle of the century — and, indeed, for a long while after — were accustomed to speak of North Britain. Meanwhile, to the stay-at-home EngUshman, Scotland remained a terra incognita. Eumour exaggerated all its terrors, and prejudice believed in them long after they had passed away.^ Not even in the wild scenery did the traveller see anything of beauty or sub- limity, but rather forms of ugliness and gloom which deepened his dislike of the land. In vain did Nature present its finest and grandest aspects to his gaze — the roaring torrent, the towering mountain height, the boundless moor rich in purple glory. Mr. Edward Burt, travelling in the service of Marshal Wade, was quite disposed to speak fair of the country and its people ; but a Highland landscape only awakened abhorrence in the cultivated Englishman, who preferred Rosamond's Pond to any loch, and Primrose HiU to every mountain. " The huge naked rocks, being just above the heath, produce the disagreeable appearance of a scabbed head." That is his ruthless comment. He concludes what he calls " the dis- agreeable subject " of the appearance of the mountains by saying, " There is not much variety in it, but gloomy spaces, different rocks, and heath high and low. To cast one's eye from an eminence towards a group of them, they appear still one above the other, fainter and fainter according to aerial perspective, and the whole of a dismal brown drawing upon a dirty purple, and most of all disagreeable when the heath is in bloom." " The love of nature in its wild aspects did not inspire the clever agent of Marshal Wade, who liked better to level the heights and make rough places smooth than to look on them. Not yet did such scenery attract travellers and kindle enthusiasm. They described the Dumfriesshire hills as " presenting a most hideous aspect " ; mountains as " black and frightful"; and Goldsmith, in 1753, had nothing to say of the characteristic features of Scottish scenery except that " hills and rocks intercept every prospect." ^ ^ Burt, i. 5. Much later in the century it ■svas true that " English ministers did not know much more of Scotland than thej^ did of Tartary." — Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsmen, i. 48. - Burt, i. 285. * "Drumlanrig is like a fine picture in a dirty grotto. It is environed with mountains which have the wildest and most hideous aspect of any in all the south 4 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Leaving the habits and modes of life of the peasantry to be described elsewhere, we turn to the manners of country society at a time when the number of modest estates was great, and smaller gentry abounded. Their tastes were frugal, and their notions, like their incomes, narrow. A gentleman might have a property wide in range of land, but producing rents miserably mean, derived from some small " mailings " or crofts more fertile in weeds than in grain, which formed little oases in vast expanses of unreclaimed moor, hill, and bog, and were let at a rental from Is. to 3s. an acre. A Scots landowner in the early part of the century was wealthy with a rent-roll of £500, rich with an income of from £300 to £200, well off with £100 or £80 ; and many gentlemen of good degree and long pedigree had to preserve their station with £50 to £20 a year.^ Nor was this rental paid in money. Half of it or two-thirds was paid in kind ^ — so many sheep, eggs, poultry so many bolls of barley, oats, or pease. When the term of Whitsunday or Martinmas came round, the half-starved horses of the tenants were to be seen, in unsteady cavalcade, stumbling slowly along the bridle-paths, one man guiding every two emaciated beasts, which laboured under their burdens of one boll each. The grain was deposited in the girnal or granary attached to the house, and there it remained till it was con- sumed by the household, or sold in the market to produce the money which was sorely needed for home expenditure ; though part of Scotland." — Tour in Great Britain, iv. 124. "From Kilsyth we mounted the hills, black and frightful as they are, to find the roads over the moors and mountains to Stirling." — Ibid. p. 152. Forster's Life of Goldsmith, i. 438. * "There are a gi-eat many [estates] in Scotland from £100 to £20, and some less, possessed by gentlemen of very good families. " " The laird retains half of his land in his hand, and lets the rest, of which 400 acres may produce £50 value." — Essay on Ways and Means of Enclosing, etc., p. 117 : Edin. 1729. ^ In Edinburgh Evening Courant of March 15, 1742, among advertisements of roups of land, is that land and barony of Kerco and Ballathie, in Perthshire, which gives fair sample of the forms of rental : " £1785 Scots in money, 33 bolls bear, 48 bolls meal, 7 bolls malt, 14 salmon fishes, a mill-swine, 32 poultry fowls, 12 capons, and 48 dargues " (days' work). Among the forfeited estates of 1715, ranging from Lords Winton, Southesk, and Panmure, with rental of over £3000 a year, to lairds with a rental from £80 to £50, from a half to two-thirds was paid in kind. Sir John Preston of Prestonhall had an income of £230, only £68 being in coin, the rest in grain, straw, and poultry. Sir David Threipland of Fingask had an income of £537, all but £147 being paid in grain, yarn, geese, hens, and chickens. — Murray's York Buildings Company, p. 121. COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 5 too often it was spoilt by long keeping in the hope of getting a better price, or half eaten by the rats. Mansion-houses, of course, varied greatly in style and dimensions, according to the rank and income of their owners — from the massive castellated buildings of nobles and chiefs, many dating from the sixteenth century, with their turrets and battlements, big courtyards, half-dried moats and iron gateways, down to the more homely dwelling of two storeys, devoid of dignity from the floor to the corbel-stepped gable roof. The great proportion of the homes of the gentry were of the latter class. Love of natural scenery was then an unborn emotion, and therefore they were usually erected in situations where they were sheltered from the blasts that swept across the unprotected land, in a hollow or by the side of a hill, which, looking south, got all the sunshine ; for, the owners being utterly heedless of any beauty of position, and quite indifferent to the picturesque, the backs of the houses might be turned deliberately to a lovely river, or the house built within a stone-throw of a fine prospect, which occupants could not see, quite content with gazing upon some bare and ugly moor.^ Though the land was generally barren of woods, with- out hedge or tree far as the eye could reach, round many country houses in the lowlands, especially in the Lothians, clumps of trees planted for shelter — ash, elm, sycamore — clustered so close to the walls that they blocked out light and air from the small narrow windows, with their tiny three-cornered panes of glass. Yet, though it had been an old practice in counties which were better cultivated to rear bands of trees for protection from the storm, most country houses were still entirely exposed, because the practice of planting round the houses set in after the Eevolution, and only became common after the Union, when the eyes of Scots gentlemen were opened to English ways." Beside the house was the inevitable dovecot — a tower of masonry, from which ^ Ramsay's Scotlaiul and Scotsmen, ii. 100. ^ It is a common mistake to date the practice of planting round mansions from the Union, for it was of much older period iu the Lothians and more culti- vated counties. Sheriffdom of Renfrewshire and Lamirkshire compiled in 1710, by W. Hamilton of W^ishaw, 1731 ; Crawford's Dcscri2Hion of Renfrewshire, 1720 ; Kirke's Account of Tour in Scotland in 1677. After the Revolution it became 6 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY came the devastating clouds of pigeons to fill themselves on the meagre crops of the tenant, and afterwards to fill the larder of the laird.^ In few places were there lawns or avenues to add amenity, and the fields were ploughed up to the front door or gate of the little court. The courtyard at the homes of smaller lairds was usually formed by the house having a projecting granary and byre on one side, a projecting stable and barn on the other, while in the open space stood the midden, in which the midden -fowls feasted and nursed their broods among nettles and docks growing all around. Behind or beside each house, in the ill -kept and neglected garden, grew a great variety of shrubs and flowers, partly for pleasure, but mainly for use. Many flowers were there, once familiar and loved, which have long been uprooted from our borders and our memories, whose very names are forgotten save the few enshrined in old songs.^ Beside the familiar hollyhock, pink, columbine, and primrose, were the virgin's-bower, campion, throat-wort, bear's-ears, wall-pellitory, and spider-wort — these for show, for scent and colour. Others were there as "sweet herbs," used for cooking or for physic — the pennyroyal, clary, rose- mary, sweet -basil, fennel, beside the sage, mint, and wild- marjoram. But no country garden was complete without its plentiful stock of " physick herbs," which were always used for simples, gargarisms, confections, and vomitories, in the primitive pharmacopoeia of the age. There were found the hyssop, camomile, and hore-hound, cat-mint, elacampine, " blessed thissell," " stinking arag," rue and celandine, which were in con- stant request in time of sickness.^ Among vegetables many of our commonest were not found, as they only came into use or cultivation later in the century. Turnips — or " neeps," as more common. "Noblemen have of late run into planting, parking, and garden- ing." — M.a.cky's Jo-urney through Scotland,l'i2'd, p. 272 ; Ramsay, ii. 100; Spalding Miscellany, ii. 97. ^ In Fifeshire at the end of the century there were 320 dovecots belonging to mansions, and these, containing 36,000 pairs of breeding pigeons, were estimated to consume 4000 or 5000 bolls of grain every year. Besides these there were the ruins of many disused other dovecots, which in the early part of the century had abounded. — Thomson's Agriculture of Fifeshire. 2 Keid's Scots Gardner, 1683, p. 109. ^ Moncrieff of Tip23ermalloch's Poor Jlfan's PAy^iam, 3rd edition, 1731. COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 7 they were always called — were only in a few gardens ; onions were in none, being all imported from Holland or Flanders ; and only at the residences of a few rich and enterprising gentlemen were potatoes grown. Eound the gardens, with their orchards, grew the nursery of trees, which were carefully nourished and sheltered under the delusion that they were too delicate to bear exposure in the open fields. Within the houses of the gentry, except those of high rank or fortune, arrangements were of the plainest and furniture was rude. The rooms were low-ceiled, the joists and beams often covered with deal boards, the walls with their dingy plaster often void of adornment — paper-hangings being as yet unknown, — though in large mansions the walls were covered with tapestry, arras, panels of wood, or gilt leather.^ The windows had no sash or pulley ; the rooms had no bell-pulls ; and though on the dining-table lay the hand-bell, it was seldom used, because a poker or a heel was quite sufficient to summon the domestics, with a knock audible through unlathed walls and undeafened floors. No carpets covered these floors, and, indeed, even after the middle of the century many houses of pretension remained without them, except in the public rooms." The bedrooms rarely had grates, the fuel of turf or peat being kindled on the wide open hearth ; and only some of the chambers were what were called " fire-rooms," for many were destitute of fireplaces. The beds were closed like a box in the wall, or in recesses with sliding doors, which imprisoned and stifled the sleeper ; others stood out in the room ^ with curtains of plaiding which the household had spun, as pro- tection from the cold and draughts which came from ill- jointed windows and doors with ill-fitting " snecks." As houses were incommodious and hospitality was exuberant, it was usual for two gentlemen or two ladies, however unknown ^ Ramsay, ii. 98, etc. '^ " I have been told that 60 or 70 years ago {i.e. 1756) no more than two carpets existed in the whole town of Jedburgh." — Somerville's Own Life, p. 337. A friend told Ramsay of Ochtertjrre that when a boy at Edinburgh he saw the first carpet at the house of Sir Thomas Nicholson, who had lived much abroad (Ramsay, ii. 98). At Cawdor House in 1716 only the "king's room" had a carpet {Thanes of Caicdor, 418). ^ In great houses the beds were not in the wall, but had these heavy hangings. 8 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY to each other they might be, to sleep together, lying over- whelmed with the burden of from six to ten pair of Scots blankets. Even in the drawing-room it was usual to have a closed bed, which was used by the guests.^ Excepting on state occasions the dining-room in average-sized country houses was unused, left dark, dull, and musty, unventilated by the sashless windows, while dingy ancestral portraits stared vacantly on the empty apartment from their black frames. It was in the bedroom the family lived chiefly. There they took their meals, there they saw their friends, there at night the family gathered round the hearth, with its high-polished brass grate, which stood detached from the back and sides of the fireplace ornamented with tiles. There the girls spun, and lads learned the rules of Despauter's Latiyi Grammar; and only after " family exercises " did the household disperse, and the heads of the family were left to rest and to sleep in the exhausted air. People rose early in these old days in both town and country, for the temptation was small to sit up late at night when there were few and very dull books to read, and few mortals who cared to read them, even if the room had not been sombre in the dim gleam of tallow candles. By five or six o'clock the laird was up, having taken his " morning " — a glass of ale or brandy, over which he reverently said a grace, which was brief when he was alone, and longer when he was in company — before he visited his " policy," and his stable and fields.^ When breakfast was served, at eight o'clock, he was ready for the substantial fare of " skink " or water gruel, supplemented by collops or mutton, aided with ale.^ The bread consisted of oatmeal cakes or barley bannocks : wheaten bread was scarce, and rarely used except as a dainty. At * Somerville, p. 333. "July 7, 1703, to James Gourlay for ye two snecks to ye bed in the drawing-room, 14s." — Account Book of Foulis of Eavelston, p. 329. In 1745, in Inverness, there was only one house which contained a room without a bed — that in which Prince Charles lodged. In 1716 the "inventar" of Cawdor Castle mentions the "raid-chamber or drawing-room" having an "arras hanging and a bed of brown cloath curtains " {Thanes of Cawdor, p. 418). ^ Ramsay's Scotlaml and Scotsmen, ii. 67. * Somerville, p. 330. Between 1680 and 1730 "no mention of wheaten bread in use except among the wealthy." — Hector's Judicial Records of Renfrew- sliire. COUNTR Y SOCIETY AND COUNTR Y LIFE g twelve or at one o'clock came dinner, at which the master of the house, hat on head, presided in his high-backed chair. Plain and monotonous was the fare at a meal which was ill- served and worse cooked, and all put on table at once, except with persons of great rank and wealth, who had two courses. Each person was served with a wooden or a pewter plate; and only when the dinner hours were later and two courses were introduced did china or earthenware plates appear to suit the more fashionable habits.^ The food consisted incessantly of broth, or kail, of beef or mutton, the broth being made of " groats," which were oats stripped of their husks at the mill, or of bear or barley which had been beaten at the- knocking -stone in the morning, and hence known as " knockit bear," for as yet barley mills were not introduced into Scotland.^ Only in summer or autumn could fresh meat be had ; for, as all the cattle were kept under cover during winter and spring, and fed on straw or mashed whins, the flesh of the half-starved emaciated brutes was utterly worthless as food.^ To obtain a supply for store at Martinmas, therefore, the " mart " was killed; each household had cows and sheep slaughtered and salted sufficient to last till next May ; and on this salted ^ Among household accounts in the Eoses of Kilravock in 1706 is one from the pe^vterer at Edinburgh for "broth trenchers, 2 dozen English trenchers, assets of English peuther " (p. 394). Somerville, p. 336. In the " Inventar" of Thunderton in 1708 there are only 6 broth plates, 12 flesh plates, 12 white and blue "leam" {i.e. loam or earthen) plates; the rest are "timber" or pewter (Dunbar's Social Life in Former Days in Morayshire, p. 205). Hist, of Carluke, p. 18. 2 Ramsay, ii. 70 ; Somerville, p. 332. LIrs. Calderwood of Polton, patriotic in her dishes, her sentiments, and her sense of smell, comments disparagingly on the fare in London in 1756 : "As for their victualls they make such a work about I cannot enter into the taste of them, or rather I think they have no taste to enter into. The meat is juicy enough, but has so little taste that if you shut your eyes you will not know by either taste or smell what you are eating. The lamb and veall are blanched in water. The smell of dinner will never intimate what it is on table. No such effluvia as beef or cabbadge was ever found in London " — the last sentence written evidently with a glow of national superiority, p. 33. The culinary art of Holland cannot make up to this ex- cellent lady for the absence of Scots dishes : "I thought I had not got a dinner since I left home for want of broath," p. 52 (Journey). ^ "For half the year in many towns of Scotland there is no beef or mutton to be seen in their shambles, and if any, it is like carrion meat, yet dearer than ever I saw in England." — Essays on Ways and Means of Enclosing, p. 131. lo SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY meat, with pitiless monotony, day by day and month after month, families patiently subsisted until the cattle, having returned to pasture, were restored to health, and they could get fresh beef again. Besides this stale diet there were the " kain " hens, which formed part of the laird's rent from his tenants — food which became not less intolerably tiresome to the palate. Some relief was found occasionally in muir- fowl and other game, which abounded in the moors in days when poachers were unknown.^ Vegetables were not served on table, potatoes and turnips being almost unattainable ; and the " neeps " or parsnips and greens were only used as in- gredients in the kail. Sweets there were none ; dessert was unknown. To accompany this simple but not attractive re- past, there was strong ale in ample supply, and sometimes sack or claret, which was good and cheap at a shilling the chopin when it came duty-free from France. To serve for the family, there was in many a household only one glass or tankard, which was handed on to the next person in succession as each finished his draught.^ At seven or eight o'clock came supper — a substantial meal of the dinner type, with ale and claret. But before that repast was the essential " four hours," the name being derived from the time of refreshment in every house from the highest to the lowest. Ladies took their ale and wine ; and if there were guests, as a delicacy a few slices of wheaten bread were cut and handed with cake to the company. Tea during the first quarter of the century was a rarity and a precious luxury, of which friends would send a pound from abroad as a costly gift.^ When green tea sold at 25s. and Bohea at 30s. a pound, it was beyond the reach of frugal fortunes. In time, ^ The consumption of "kain" poultry was a burden to the palate by its iteration. It being said that the best way to keep Lent would be to eat what was least agreeable, a stout Episcopalian said he would therefore keep Lent on kain hens (Ramsay, ii. 69). "^ In reference to this pi-aetice Mr. Adam Petrie gives admirable advice : ' ' Be sure to wipe your mouth before you drink, and when you drink hold in your breath till you have done. I have seen some colour the glass with their breath, which is certainly very loathsome to the company." — Rules of Good Deportment, 1720. ^ Somerville, p. 329. In accounts at Thunderton in 1709-10 loaf-sugar was Is. 6d. a pound ; green tea, £1 : 5s. ; a pound of coffee beans, 7s. 6d. (Dunbar's CO UNTR V SOCIE TY AND CO UNTR Y LIFE 1 1 however, it became more attainable througli the enterprise of smugglers, and the common people could buy it for three or four shillings from the shop, or from the cadger, who had in his creels supplies drawn from a mysterious source on which silence was prudently kept. The fashion of tea- drinking, becoming common about 1720, had to make its way against vehement opposition. The patriotic condemned tea as a foreign drink hurtful to national industry ; the old-fashioned protested against it as a new-fangled folly ; the robust scorned it as an effeminate practice ; magistrates, ministers, and energetic laymen put it in the same malignant category as smuggled spirits, anathema- tised its use by the poor, among whom (they warned them) it would assuredly produce " corruption of morals and de- bility of constitution." ^ It is not surprising that men like Lord President Forbes should denounce the " vile drug " with special energy. It was a contemptible beverage to him and his brother " Bumper John." They had been " the most plentiful drinkers in the north," and in Culloden House had had the custom of prizing off the top of each successive cask of claret, and placing it in the hall to be emptied in pailfuls.^ By 1729 Mackintosh of Borlum laments the sadly changed times. " When I came to my friend's house of a morning, I used to be asked if I had my morning draught yet ? I am now asked if I have had my tea ? And in lieu of the big Social Life, p. 195). In 1705 gi-een tea was advertised as sold at 16s. and Bohea at 30s. a pound by George Scott, goldsmith, Luckenbooths, who sold chocolate at 3s. 6d. (Chambers' Traditions, i. 13). ^ iledical men regarded tea ^\ith disfavour. Commended in lethargic diseases, headaches, gouts, and gravel, it was considered hurtful to weak constitutions if much used, "caxising tremblings and shakings of the head and hands, loss of appetite, vapours, and other nervous diseases." — Alston's Lectures on Materia Medica, 1770, ii. 234. Even in 1793 a minister moums that "the views of the capital are beginning to spread among the people, and the introduction of these baneful articles to the poor of tea and whisky will soon produce the corruption of morals and debility of constitution which are so severely felt in every parish, and will soon materially impair the real strength and population of Scotland." — Cunie, Stat. Acct. of Scotland. ^ Forbes of Culloden uttered his contempt of tea vigorously in Culloden Papers, p. 180 ; Some Considerations on the present State of Scotland, 1743 (by Duncan Forbes) ; Burton's Lives of Lovat and Forbes, p. 368 ; Omond's Lo^rd Advocates, i. 320. £40 of claret was drunk in one month, when the highest price was 16s. or 18s. a dozen. 12 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY quaigh with strong ale and toast, and after a dram of good, wholesome Scots spirits, there is now the tea-kettle put to the fire, the tea-table and silver and china equippage brought in, and marmalade and cream." In spite of all scorn, by 1750 the most stalwart and conservative had succumbed to its attractions, and tea (tempered with brandy) took the place of ale as a necessity at every breakfast-table.^ The spirit of these old days was eminently hospitable, and exuberantly hearty. Living in the country, where occupation was dull and amusements were few, and intercourse with the outer world was impeded by lack of roads, the gentry found the sight of friends extremely welcome. Neighbours were wont to come, " without sending word," on horse- back ; and in the effusiveness of hospitality there was shown a "pressing" of guests to stay to eat and to drink, which it was a meanness to omit and offence to resist.^ The bashful ate till full to repletion ; the amiable and obsequious fed in meek compliance ; the stalwart only dared to refuse, and the prudent saved themselves by keeping something always on their plate. There was in this friendly intercourse no display, and no change in food was made or was possible to make. Then, as always, were the inevitable dishes — broth, beef, and hens.^ All that was requisite was to have enough for all ; and neighbours considerately arrived in ample time to allow of an extra supply being cooked by one o'clock. They were taken round the " policy " to pass the hour, while the servant looked for the dog that turned the spit, which cunningly hid himself whenever he perceived by culinary preparations that his disagreeable services would be required ; ^ [Mackintosh of Borlum's] Essay on Ways aiid Means of Enclosing, etc., 1729, p. 232. ^ Mrs. Calderwood's Journey, p. 227 ; Somerville, p. 369 ; Ramsay, ii. 67. ^ Only in the highest and wealthiest classes were there two courses. At the table of the Duchess of Buccleugh and Monmouth in 1701 were present the family, Lords Rothes, Haddington, Elcho, and three gentlemen. Dinner, 1st course — 300 oysters, bacon, and pease pottage, haggis with calf s pluck, beef, coUops, mutton roasted, 3 joints, fricassee of 5 chickens, and roasted goose ; 2nd course — 5 wild fowl, 5 chickens, buttered crabs, tarts, 4 roasted hares (at officers' table, beef, 2 joints, 2 roasted rabbits). At supper — Joint of mutton, roasted rabbits. Breakfast— 2 joints in coUops, 4 quarters of roasted lamb, 2 roasted capons. — Arnot's Edinburgh, p. 200. COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 13 and soon the guests heard the familiar sound of screeching which they recognised too well as intimately connected with their approaching meal. Ale was the chief beverage in which they indulged at dinner and supper ; but there was claret too, which was served in pewter stoups. The glasses might be few, but the drink was plentiful, and when days of refinement came old topers mourned over these departed times when " there were fewer glasses and more bottles." By 1730 there had come changes which worthies deplored. So the laird of Borlum again laments that, though incomes had become no larger, customs had become more expensive. " Formerly I had been served with two or three substantial dishes of beef, mutton, and fowl, garnished with their own wholesome gravy. I am now served up little expensive ashets with English pickles, Indian mangoes, and anchovy sauces. ... In lieu of the good substantial large flagon or quart stoup from the barrel, there comes to the by-table a basket or armful of bottles ; and if the ale is never so strong, old, and pale, it is seldom good enough for the second service without a glass of claret. If the wine is not out or bad there must be at least bottles a piece of it ; if it is out or bad there must be a snaker of sack or brandy punch." At all which gross extravagance this "lover of his country," as he styles himself, has his patriotic soul vexed within him. II Eough and rude were the manners of the early part of the century, as well as the fare.^ No carving knife or fork was employed, the host dividing the meat with his own ; and ^ Rxdcs of Good Deportvunt, by Adam Petrie, Edinburgh, 1720. — "Do not sip your drink in taking 3 or 4 draughts of it. Do not lick your fingers nor dirty your napkins. If you are obliged to eat off one dish let your superiors begin. It is rude to take snuff at table when others are eating, for the particles of it being driven from the nose by the breath is most unpleasant. I have known some drive it the breadth of the whole table. Servants should not scratch or shrug their shoulders, nor apjiear with dirty hands, nor lean on their master's chair." Petrie, led by the success of his manual of etiquette, published his Rules of Good Deportment for Church Officers (1730), in which there is much good sense, and dedicated it to Sir Hew Dalrymple, Lord President, "as a testimony of my respect to your lordship for being so kind in speaking always (when occasion offered) favourably of my book of manners." 14 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY when the more refined implements came into use, Lord Auchinleck sneered at the new-fangled superfine fashion. Those at table took the succulent bones in their fingers and picked them carefully — a practice which gave occasion to the custom in certain households of handing water in a basin for each person to clean his hands after the meal.^ The guests were apt to convey their food to their mouths at the end of their knives — a Scots practice which provoked the wrath of Catherine, Duchess of Queensberry (Prior's "Kitty beautiful and young"), who was wont to shriek out m agony as she watched her country friends at Drumlanrig performing their accustomed operation ; and, beseeching them not to cut their throats, her imperious Grace would send a servant with a spoon and fork on a salver to their rescue and rebuke.^ In 1720 Mr. Adam Petrie, tutor, " stickit minister," and schoolmaster, published his charmingly naive Rules of Good Deportment for the Use of Youth, wherein he gave admirable advice on manners which he had himself picked up when acting as chaplain to a family of good degree. His manual strikes us as somewhat rudimentary in its principles ; but doubtless in his own day his counsels came to many as a flash of revelation. Solemnly he gives his important rules : " You must drink out your glass that others may not have your blown drink, and do it with as little noise as possible," for one glass had to pass round the company ; " do not gnaw your bones too clean " ; " it is indecent to fill the mouth too full ; such cramming is more suitable for a beast than a rational creature " ; " be sure to throw nothing on the floor ; it is uncivil and disobliging " ; " it is rude to suck your meat out of a spoon with an un- grateful noise " ; " to wipe the nose or sweat off the face with a table napkin is most rude." In this manner does this worthy and obsequious pedagogue — for it must be owned he is obsequious even to grovelling before " superiors " — at once ^ Petrie's Rules of Good Deportment. — "When water is presented after meat, you may, after your superiors have begun, dip the corner of your napkin in the water, and wipe your mouth with it, holding the other end of your napkin between j'ou and the companj', that you may do it as imjierceptibly as you can, and then rub your fingers, holding your hands down upon your knees. Superiors may do it more openly." In Scots speech a "napkin " was a handkerchief. - Chambers' Traditions of Edinburc/h, i. 295. COUNTR Y SOCIETY AND COUNTR Y LIFE 1 5 incite the youth of his time to good deportment, and suggest to us that the deportment of liis age stood in considerable need of amendment. In simple and unpretentious establishments the frugality of the dining-room was repeated in the kitchen. Even in houses of high position the women servants went without shoes or stockings, clad in short worsted petticoats or dresses of coarse plaidiug. Their wages were about 15s. to 20s. a year, supple- mented by a gown or a pair of shoes, which were chiefly worn on Sunday at kirk. In the mansions of people of rank the cook was paid between £2 and £3, and the housekeeper, like tlie cliaplain, had £5 a year. Only gentlemen of fortune had men servants, who had as wages about £2 a year and a suit of gaudy livery to wear out.^ The nobleman driving in his lumbering coach, brought over from Holland, had two of these men to stand behind armed with long poles, which might any moment be called into request when the vehicle capsized in some deep rut or over a huge stone ; the " running footman," with a staff, went on in front to see that the road was clear, and as the coach with six horses slowly proceeded his difficulty was not to keep pace with it, but to avoid so far outstripping it as to lose sight of it in the distance far behind.^ In more moderate style, the laird when he went a journey took with him one of his labouring men, who rode behind carrying the cloak bag ; and the ladies rode on pillions or on their own nags, a bag or a little portmanteau easily con- taining their simple wardrobe for a visit. The tedium of the country needed its diversion, and gentlemen of the richer class indulged in hawking with eager- ness, and at home had their games at bowls, for a bowling- green was the usual adjunct to every country-house. Not yet had the taste for planting spread among the lairds ; and the enclosing of land and rearing of hedges — the plants being imported from Holland — was only the hobby of the few enterprising " improvers." They loved, however, to raise ^ House servants at Cawdor in 1716 : — Chaplain, 100 merks ; butler, 60 ; cook, 60; "cotchman," 30; 2 footmen, 50; 2 gentlemen, 150; and chamber- maid, dairy and byre women, each 15; the gardener, 12 bolls; shejiherd, 5 bolls ; maltman, 10 bolls. — Thanes of Cawdor (Spalding Club). - Chambers' Threiplands of Fingask. i6 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY trees around their mansions, and to form them in clusters to shield them from the winds. This planting was, indeed, done sparingly and cautiously ; and, comparing their very humble efforts to rear saplings with the lavish ventures of a later generation, we find something touching in the simple records of old account books of the time, recording the tiny orders sent to the one nurseryman in Edinburgh and the minute sums expended ^ for " a pund of ackorns," " a pund of beitch masts," " 2 ounces of silver fir seed," " 4 ounces of pitch pine." One of the first signs of growing refinement was the new taste for flower gardens, which had been fostered by John Eeid, the quaker gardener, at the end of the previous century, while the keeper of the Botanical Gardens had encouraged " the knowledge of herbs amongst the nobility and gentry," and reared for sale " many curious annuals, fine flowers, and other plants, not ordinary in this country." Wealthier proprietors, whose eyes had been charmed by the fantastic and ingenious grounds at Dutch residences, when they had been in exile at the Hague before the Kevolution, began at their seats to make gardens with prim beds and curious labyrinthine mazes, alleys of yew and cedar, holly and laurel.^ They cut their shrubs into quaint shapes of peacocks, pagodas, and urns ; they made the tortured shrubs form tortuous paths; and dearly they loved to lead their friends, before dinner was ready, through the lanes, which took an hour to traverse and only covered two or three acres, deriving unmitigated satisfaction at watching their courteous neighbour's fiftieth-time well-simulated surprise at losing himseK in the maze and suddenly finding himself at the gate.^ These whim- ^ "1707.— To 2 pund ackorns to sett at Woodliall, 12s. (Scots)"; " To a pund of beitch masts, £1 10s. (Scots)." — Account Book of Foulis of Ravelston, p. 447. Dunbar's Social Life, p. 148. Amongst seeds ordered for Cawdor Castle in 1736, "1 lb. of ackorns, Flanders onions, and Dutch parsneeps." — Book of Thanes of Cawdor, p. 425. 2 Scots Gardner, by J. Reid, 1683. ^ Arniston Memoirs : Scott's Miscellaneous Works: Periodical Criticism (Land- scape Gardening), etc., v. 88. In the early style, everything, lawns, gardens, must be symmetrical and arranged in geometrical figures into parallels and triangles. The house must be the centre to which all walks, trees, and hedges converge : " as the sun is the centre of the world, as the heart is the centre of the man, as the nose is the centre of the face, and it is unseemly to see a man wanting a leg, ana COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 17 sical horticultural puzzles, the stiff prim parterres — marvels of " topiariau " art which had seemed ideals of art and of l)eauty,- lasted in fashion for many a day. By the latter part of the century, however, the grotesque old yews and hollies had become neglected ; they forgot what manner of beast and object they once had been, having become tangled and shape- less; and when after 1760 a newly-created admiration for nature had arisen, the old shrubs were uprooted, the borders, where amid the weeds the intricate geometrical forms could still be traced, were ruthlessly dug up, and old formal designs changed to the " admired disorder " of nature. With incomes small and tastes simple, gentry dressed in a plain, homely, and even coarse way. At home, or even to kirk and market, a gentleman went about in homespun clothing and home-made woollen shirt,^ which had been spun by his wife, family and servants, and woven by the village "wabster." When, in later days, their sons, who had seen a little of the world in Edinburgh, or had studied in Leyden or Paris, despised the rude garments of their elders, and began to wear Holland material for shirts, the old men were only induced to put the luxurious stuff on their shoulders and arms above the homely woollen, which they changed but seldom. Not less simple in their ways were the ladies, who spun the material of much of their clothing and made it into dresses at home. If they bought material, it was country- woven, and a lady of rank was quite satisfied to get a " Mussel- burgh stuff" gown by the carrier at the cost of 8s.^ Day by day in kitchen and room there was heard the flutter of tlie arm, etc., or Ms nose standing on one side of his face or not straight . . . just so with a man's house, gardens, courts, if regularity is not observ^ed." — Scots Gardner, 1683. Ca.Tly\e's AutohiograpJiy, p. 7. ^ Maxwell of Munches' Recollections of 1720 in Murray's Literary History of Galloway; Macky's Journey through Scotland, 1729, p. 271. "^ "Table and body linen seldom changed and but coarse, except for extra- ordinary occasions, moving necks and sleeves of better kind being then used only by the best." — Spalding Miscellany, i. p. 97. (Sir Alex. Grant of Monymusk's Recollections of about 1720) ; Caldwell Papers, i. 260. When Drumniond of Blair was congratulated on the accomplishments of his son, the old man replied that he knew nothing his son had learned on his travels but "to cast a sark every day and to eat his kail twice " — alluding to the customary method of all "supping" their broth from the same dish. — Ramsay, ii. 65. 2 x8 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY rock and reel, till these gave way about 1730 to the whir of the spinning-wheel, making the yarn of the wool and linen till the amount of plaiding and linen filled every press and box, sufficient to " plenish " the homes of a dozen brides, whose part it was to bring a full store of napery to their husbands' houses. Plain and demure of dress as the lairds and their families might be at home, gentlefolks had their bright and gay costume, which was seen in its full glory at baptisms, marriages, and (in the early days of the century) at burials. While the plain-living and quiet-fashioned were content to go to kirk in the black kelt coat of their ladies' making, others, though they went about in the morning in greasy night- caps, coats out at elbows, and dirty night or dressing- gowns,^ in public appeared in their coat and waistcoat trimmed with silver or gold, their silk stockings and jack-boots, with periwig or Eamilies wig, surmounted by the laced three- cornered hat. The ladies of fashion sallied forth in their hoops, which in Queen Anne's time were four or five yards in circumference, covered with dress of silk or petticoats of velvet or silk bound with gold or silver lace, pinners on their heads of brocade or costly lace of Flanders.^ But however desirous to be in fashion, every Scots lady had that essential part of national costume, the plaid, wrapped loosely about the head and body, made either of silk or of wool with a silken lining of bright green or scarlet, while the common people wore their gaudy-coloured plaids of coarse worsted. These plaids were the ordinary costume of the ladies, as characteristic and national as the mantillas of Spain, up to the middle of the century, when at last they gave way to silk and velvet cloaks.^ About 1725 and 1730 the homely ways were being broken in upon. The younger men, by contact with the Scottish capital, 1 Somerville, p. 329 ; Ramsay, ii. 84. - A flowing periwig was a costly article. Foulis of Ravelston pays in 1704 for "a new long perwig 7 guineas and a halfe " ; a dress- wig cost him only £14 : 6s. Scots, or a guinea ; a new hat £7 Scots ; a bob-wig, a guinea. — Account Jiooks, jip. 325, 362. In 1734 a bob-wig is £1 : 10s ; cue-wig, ribbons and rose, £1 : 10s. — Roses of Kilramck (Spalding Club), p. 410. ' Burt's Letters, i. 82 ; Macky's Journey through Scotland, p. 276. Allan Ramsay in his "Tartana" deprecates any cliange in the favourite national costume {Poems, ii. 87) ; Ramsay, ii. 88. COUNTR Y SOCIETY AND CO UNTR Y LIFE 1 9 or even by acquaintance with continental life, where they spent two or three years studying law or medicine at Utrecht, Leyden, or Paris, had acquired other tastes. When abroad they had patriotically vaunted the superiority of everything Scottish ; when they returned they surperciliously lauded everything foreign. " I find," says that most shrewd lady, Mrs Calder- wood of Polton, "I find it is the truest way of obtaining to the philosophical principle of despising everything in the world, first to send a young man abroad to despise the Continent, and to bring him back to despise his own island." ^ These young men of mode winced under the old rough habits of dress and society at home, and tried to assume a finer style, display- ing their new fashions, their red stockings and red-heeled shoes, much to the scandal of the older generation, who thought it was the road to ruin. To quote again our Laird of Borlum : " Where I saw the gentleman, lady and children dressed clean and neat in home-spun stuffs of her own sheep's growth and women's spinning, I see now the ladies dressed in French and Italian silks and brocades and the laird and his son in English broadcloth." " But, in extenuation of this extravagance, it must be considered that ladies' dresses did not in Scotland last so short a time as nowadays : fashions did not then change so rapidly that a style and shape admired in one season became the " fright " and atrocity of the next. The dress which a Scots lady wore when middle age had come upon her had probably been part of her wedding trousseau, and ever since had been put on with care, " put past " with caution, aired with anxiety, and worn with ceremony.^ Two suits or costumes formed the 1 Mrs. Calderwood's Journey, p. 118. - Essay on Enclosing, etc., p. 232. — " In every mouth we hear ' The country is mightily imi)roved since the Union.' And if you ask wlierein, you are told, 'If I don't see how much more handsomely the gentry live now than before the Union in dress, table and house furniture ? . . . This epidemick, this increase of spending — but to be modish and well-bred, I ought to have said this new improvement — has in these 20 years sti'angely over-run the nation in the very remotest corners " (p. 235). ^ Ramsay, ii. 90. In richer families the outfitting was on a scale then deemed handsome. When the daughter of the Laird of Kilravock was married the " marriadge " bill cost £66 sterling, including " floured silk stuff at 13s. 6d., grien galloons, whit persian taflety for gown or cot at 7s. 6d., laced shoes at 5s., green silk shaggrin for tryming at 6s., a mask at 2s. 4d., and patches at Is." — Hoses of Kilravock, p. 390. The tocher was 9000 merks. 20 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY wardrobe of a lady for long years, even in Edinburgh society. Young ladies, daughters of gentlemen of good position and means, were content with one silk gown, and occasional use of the mother's, which she had got when she was as young as they. Fortunately, in the early decades of the century, fashions did not alter with bewildering swiftness even in England : years passed by without any striking change in the modes of the day.^ Queen Anne cared little for style, and retained in her dull court the costumes of William and Mary. George I., leaving his uncomfortable consort in Hanover, im- ported his two favourites, who were too obscure and stupid to lead any society, and too ugly — the one too lean, the other too fat — to follow any fashion. And so habits and dresses then, and under George II., had transformations few and slow. Even if they had changed, it would after all have made little difference — it took long time for the ways of London to reach provincial seats of Scotland, and for country tailors to copy the newest modes of St. James's. What greater evidence of the simplicity and frugality of the period can there be than in the fact that millinery was almost an unknown occupation in Scotland, and that in Edinburgh in 1720 there was only one milliner for its fashionable circles.^ When ladies were not able to frame dresses for themselves, it was the occupation of tailors to make them, and these tradesmen resented and resisted the encroachments of mantua-makers on their business and what they deemed their legal privileges. In rural dis- tricts the tailor came with his apprentices on his rounds to every house, made up the stuff into suits for the young gentle- men and dresses for the ladies, being paid his 2d. or 3d. a day and food. Materials were not easy to be got, for the shopkeepers of country towns, in their little earth-floored, dark, thatched houses, had little room for varied wares, and little capital 1 Fail-holt's Histortj of Costume, 1860, pp. 287, 293. - Ramsay, i. 163. The tailors of Perth prosecuted mantua-makers as intruders on monopoly got from William the Lion of making men's and women's apparel. They lost their suit. Boswell, afterwards Lord Auchiiileck, was counsel for the milliners. The Elgin tailor's bill to the Laird of Thuuderton in 1719 shows that he made " stiched night-gowns," and for her ladyship "scarlet clocks and stitched stees." — Dunbar's Social Life, p. 195. COUNTR V SOCIETY AND COUNTR V LIFE 2 1 wherewith to set up a stock, and few customers to buy it. It was therefore usually by the carrier wlio conveyed goods on horseback from the distant city that the long-waited-for stuff was brought. For in those days even the carriers between Edinburgh and Glasgow had baskets or creels for their j)arcels on either side of the horse, while they sat between. Packmen came round with their wallets containing a strictly limited assortment of wares for cottage and mansion.^ Travelling weavers arrived every now and then to buy from ladies and cottage women the yarn they had made, and to sell to them in exchange tempting webs for the household. Thus the quaint homely life went on. Ill When boys were old enough they were sent to the parish school, or to the nearest grammar school, where the Latinity was better, though the class of scholars was the same. Thither at six or seven o'clock in the morning they trudged, carrying their dinner with them, and not returning till evening, for the school hours were portentously long. Often the sons of great houses boarded with the teacher of the burgh school ; lodging, food, and education cost but a few pounds.^ In fine fraternity boys of all ranks met in wholesome rivalry. The son of the nobleman and the son of the carpenter sat in the same room, and had the same instruction ; the tenant and the laird alike paid half a crown or three shillings a quarter for their boys' tuition at the burgh school, and the laced clothes of the lord's heir were soon as shabby and as little regarded as the ragged clothes of the blacksmith's son. Roughness, vulgarities of tone and manner, were doubtless the results of this pro- miscuous association, all speaking the same broad Scots tongue. But much was rubbed off when youths went to coUege and entered society. Otherwise, a boor the lad began, and a boor ^ Glasgow Past and Present, ii. 69. - Ramsay, ii. 57 ; Arniston Memoirs ; Sir John Clerk of Penicuik's Memoirs. William JIurray and his brother were boarded by their father, Lord Stormont, in 1717, with the Master of Perth Burgh School^the quarterly paj-ment and board for the two boys being £60 Scots (or about £5). — Campbell's Lives of Cliief Justices, 1874, iii. 166. 22 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V he ended.^ The friendly contact in boyhood, like the friendly intercourse of the laird with his people, and the lady with her servants over the spinning, wrought a kindliness and attach- ment to the family, which was a marked and pleasant feature in old stay-at-home Scottish society. The intimate acquaint- ance of even ladies of high rank and family with the ways, the talk, the customs, the sentiments of the people, shows itself most strikingly in the songs, so steeped in Scottish life and spirit, written by the high born — Lady Anne Lindsay, Mrs. Cockburn, Lady Nairne — in much later period. It was not without love of, and familiar association with, the common folk that any one could wTite " Auld Eobin Gray," the " Laird o' Cockpen," " Eobin Adair." Yet, with all this familiarity, there was not lacking respect for the family of the " big house." The gentle- man-was inseparable in the people's regard from his land, by the name of which the laird was called ; while his wife bore the title of " lady," not of " Mrs.," and was spoken of as her " leddyship " in full deference. To be " Mr. and Mrs. Shaw of Balgarran " was a commonplace thing ; but to be called " Bal- garran " and " My Lady Balgarran " was indeed a satisfaction. The education of girls was more rudimentary, far more practical than intellectual or artistic ; to sew, to knit, to spin, were the chief accomplishments for a lady's hands. To read, to write — both very badly — to play a little on the viol or virginal, and do some tambour work, were the highest feminine achievements. At home a chaplain probably taught the infantile lessons, and sometimes acted as tutor and examined in the Scriptures and Catechism. If a governess was required she could be got cheap ; that she was extremely ignorant was a mere matter of detail. For five pounds sterling and a frock an instructor of youth with all educational require- ments could be hired for the highest families ; and she was quite acceptable although she knew nothing of literature or languages, and could not even write or spell respectably in her own tongue. The Lady Thunderton in 1710, for example, accepts ^ "The school fees at Dunse when I attended school (1752) were for reading, Is. ; for reading and writing, Is. 6d. ; for Latin, 2s. 6d. per quarter. The same fees were, I believe, charged at Kelso and Hawick."— Somerville's Otm Life, p. 348. 1 CO UNTR Y SOCIE TY AND CO UNTR Y LIFE 23 the services of the lady who applied for her situation, iind thus stated her qualifications: " I can sow white and coloured seam, dress head suits, play on treble and gambo, viol, virginal and minicords, at threttie pund [Scots] and gown and coat ; or then fourtie puud and shoes and linen." Anxious for the post, this accomplished spinster oilers " to serve half a year on trial conform." ^ After acquiring some scraps of misinformation, which left them perfectly ignorant or delightfully erroneous, the daughters were sent to a country town which could boast of a mistress of refined education, where they were cheaply taught, lodged, and boarded ;'" or they were sent to Edinburgh, where, in some lofty flat in tlie Lawnmarket closes, the re- quisite branches of polite instruction were taught by a mistress, who, being a poor member of a family of ([uality, became " a mistress of manners," and took pupils not because she had any- thing she could teach, but because she had too little income to live on. There from stately lips the girl learned deport- ment, dancing, knitting, and music ; how to handle "gambo" and virginal, to go through a minuet, to carry her fan with grace, to put on her mask with propriety, to sip her tea without making a noise, to sit in her chair without touching the back. When young ladies returned home as " finished " they resumed their household work, relearned its duties and unlearned their lessons, and remained throughout their days uncontaminated by literature.^ All this Arcadian ignorance made them the ' Dunbar's Social Life, p. 14. - The fees foi- education and board in a young lady's scliool in a country town were modest, though, judging from the spelling and grammar of the receipts, the teaching was short of perfection. The following is a receipt for board and education of two young ladies at Dyke : " Received the scum of four pund Scots, and that for Alex. Dunbar of Belmachedie his two daughters (Meg and Ket), their current quarter coUedge fie, as witnes my hand at Dyke the 22nd Dec. 1709, Alex. Nicolson." "Two pound sterlin, and that for Alex. Dunbar of Belmuchitie his daughters Meg and Kett, their quarterlie board, and that by me, Janet Dunbar. In witnes wherof I have subscybed day and date as above WTitten, Janet Dunbar." — Dunbar's Social Life, p. 16. Here is the account " to laird of Kilraick for his daughter Margaret's board and education in Edinburgh in 1700. One quarter bord, £60 [Scots] ; drawing one quarter, 14s. lOd. ; one quarter singing, playing, and virginalls, £11 :12s. ; one quarter writing, £6 ;" charges also for " satine seame, wax fruitts. " — Hoses of Kilravock (Spalding Club), p. 388. ' In Thanes of Caivdor, p. 397, is given a lady's library of the more pious type: "Lady Cawdor, her books taken, 18th Sept. 1705 — Alain's Godly Fear, 24 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY more acceptable in society, for a lady so learned as to have read Addison, Steele, and Pope was regarded with trepidation by the men, whose acquaintance with letters was the Sabbath hearing of discourses from Durham, Eutherford, and Mavel of godly memory but ghastly prolixity. In the old homes in those days life wore a grave and sombre aspect. In Presbyterian famihes especially was this the case ; for the taint of a grim creed and the rigid spirit of the Church was still over the land. It was an age of austerity and probation.^ Severity was the characteristic of school discipline, which often amounted to brutalicy, and rigour was the note of all family training, in which the Solomonic maxim against sparing the rod and spoiling the child was orthodoxly followed. As the Church taught that God was constantly punishing His children on earth for their eternal good, parents copied Providence with painful exactitude, and children worked out their domestic salvation with fear and trembling. Authority and fear were the only means to win obedience, and parental love, deep as it must have been, was sternly concealed. This was the prevailing spirit of family life till late in the century. " My children from the youngest to the eldest loves me and fears me as sinners dread death. My look is law." ^ These words of the vigorously-minded Lady Strange express the hard, austere spirit prevailing in many a household and the dismal discipline of every nursery, Balm of Gilcad, Sighs from Hell; Guthrie's Christian's Great Interest ; Geddes' Saint's Recreation ; Brown's Sioan Song, etc., with Art of Complaisance, Book of Palmistry, Rules of Civility," etc. 1 The vivid memories of the hard, austere training of old days are found in Miss Mure of Caldwell's Reminiscences; Caldwell Papers. Similar were Lady Anne Barnard's impressions : "It was not the system to treat children with tenderness. Everything was done by authority and correction. I have been told by my grandmother that this was so in a still greater degree with the former generation, when no child was allowed to speak before or sit down in company of their parents. This I well remember, that a mother who influenced her children to do right through their affection was at Balcarras reckoned to be unprincipled and careless, and accused of a willingness to save herself trouble if she abolished the rod, and of forgetfulness of the laws of nature by allowing children to look on their parents as their friends and companions." — Lives of the Lindsays, ii. 304. To same effect, Somerville's Life, p. 348 ; Fergusson's Uenry Erskine, p. 62 ; Lady Minto's Life of Sir G. Elliot, first Lord Minto, i. 22. " Dennistoun's Life of Strange, i. 309. COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 25 the memory of which was burned into many minds that lived to see more genial times. In the household the head of the family was regarded with awe as at table he presided with his hat on, and as he sat in his exclusive seat at the chimney-corner. In his presence the young people spoke in fearful whispers, and stood respectfully before him ami answered his questions with humbleness. There was no companionship between them, no confidences, little expression of affection between children and parents. This distance of manner had its inevitable results — pleasures indulged in furtively, mirth which was boisterous beyond parental earshot, speech which was coarse, manners unrefined, and ways that were rustic. Most families of any station had their chaplains, who had miscellaneous duties and an equivocal position for a salary of £5 " with board and washing," the same wages as were given to the butler and housekeeper in great families.^ The duties were to conduct family worship, at meals to say graces, which were too long to be said fluently by lairds whose speech was more colloquial than devotional, also to teach the children the Catechism and examine scripturally the servants on the Sabbath. The chaplain was usually a young man studying for the Church, or an elderly probationer who had failed to get one. Besides his religious functions he acted as tutor to the children and made himself generally useful in the family. When at a noble- man's table he knew his part, which was to rise when the table-cloth was removed, and, making obeisance, respectfully to remove himself as well.^ On Sunday the rules and exercises were pious and fatiguing.^ The order of the day began at nine o'clock with " exercises " conducted by the chaplain, after which all regularly set forth at ten o'clock to church, returning at half-past twelve. Then followed prayers by the chaplain, 1 In 1702 Foiilis of Eavelston's chaplain lias £80 Scots. Many gentlemen still kept chaplains, or '•governors," in 1760. — Somerville, p. 363. In the list of "servants' fees" in 1709 is the chaplain at 100 nierks at Cawdor House.— Book of Thanes of Cawdor ; Account Book of Sir J. Foulis, p. 13. - Petrie's Rules of Good Deportment. 2 CaldiveJl Papers, i. 260. Such was the order of the day in the household of Lord Advocate Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees (died 1713).— Omond's Lord Advocates of Scotland, i. 279. 36 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V succeeded by a little cold meat or an egg — no cooking being allowed — and after the slender repast all returned at two to church.^ About four or five o'clock they all came back to the house, when each retired to private devotions and medita- tion, except the children and servants, who were convened by the chaplain and examined in religious knowledge. This lasted till six o'clock, when all sat down to a substantial hot supper, for which long abstinence had prepared them, and they remained at table till eight. Then there followed singing, reading, prayers, conducted by the head of the house. " This," says Miss Mure of Caldwell, " was the common order in all well-regulated houses up to 1730." In the days when the strain of piety was still strong, and the old fervour was still vivid in society, it was the practice to retire at certain hours for private meditation and prayer. Every country house had a special chamber or closet to which the head of the household withdrew ostensibly for pious communion, and even in the houses in Edinburgh flats, scanty as the accommodation was, there was a tiny closet or oratory, lighted dimly through a narrow window." This religious fashion died out with many another old devout habit about the middle of the century, and ^ In many cases, when the church was far from the laird's (or lord's) residence, he had a cold collation served in the room at the kirk adjoining his "loft." In this room he and his friends lunched or dined "between sermons," the food being carried by the serving-man or brought from the change-house in tlie village. — Carlyle's Antobiography, p. 212. "For bread, eall and brandie at ye kirk, 6 shillings (Scots), Oct. 1706." — Accmmt Book of Foulis of Jlavdston. In these rooms there were iireplaces, and they were warm, while the church was unheated and miserably cold. Such a private fire was the only possible cause of any Scottish church being burnt, as in case of Borthwick Church. An indignant Episcopalian describes the church at Fin tray — built in 1703 by Sii" W. Forbes of Craigievar — as ' ' having an aisle for the family wherein there is also a room for their use, and again within it a hearth, cupboard, etc., so that people may eat and drink, and even smoke in it if they will — a profaneness unheard of in antiquity and worthy of the age we live in, for since the Revolution the like liberty has been taken in several churclies in the south." — Vievj of the Diocese of Aberdeen (Spalding Club), p. 245. ■■^ Chambers' Ancient Architecture of Edinburgh. When the vivacious and outspoken Mrs. Calderwood of Polton was in Flanders in 1756 she observed pityingly the superstitious ways of the natives — "the maddest ideots about papistry that ever was," — and she attributes their habit of going to church during the week to ' ' mumell their prayers " to the fact that ' ' there is no closet in any room." — Journey, p. 178. COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 27 the closets were turned to purposes more secular and probably more sincere. In the homes of lairds of the Episcopalian persuasion a more genial atmosphere was found, less religious austerity, less Sabbatarian rigour. They took the pleasures of life less sadly, and the enjoyments of earth, dancing, concerts, even theatres, were in their eyes harmless and delightful.^ In their book- shelves — never very crowded — beside works of decorous history and classics were romances, plays, and poems, which no pious Presbyterian would allow to pollute his room. Whilst on Sunday the Presbyterian gentleman took a sparing refection of bread and an egg or cold beef, " between sermons," merely to allay the acute pangs of hunger, reserving his energies and carnal appetite for the supper, the other, after going to his " meeting-house," had a substantial meal at mid-day, having no scruples. Hence it was a common saying that " if you would live well on Sunday you must take an Episcopalian dinner and a Presbyterian supper."^ Yet many old Episcopalians, especially if they were Jacobites, observed religious fasts and ceremonies as strictly as any high-flying Presbyterian observed his days of humiliation. The Jacobites and non-jurors managed strangely to associate the right divine of the papistical Stuarts with the right divine of Protestant prelacy, and loved to assume great deference for ecclesiastical rules, days, and seasons, more to spite the Whigs than to please their consciences. Christmas was to them a time of reunion, of much family and neighbourly festivity, which lasted during the week which they called 'par excellence the " holidays," though these were con- temptuously nicknamed by the others the " daft days." During Lent the straitest of the sect tried their loyal best to fast, which they did by refraining at least from snuff. If they went into a chapel which had been licensed, and therefore recognised the reigning monarch, they would enter the tainted edifice only on condition that when His Hanoverian Majesty was being prayed for they might rise from their knees, on pretext of searching their coat-pockets for their snuff-box, over which ^ "The Episcopalian ladies are more cheerful in their demeanour than the Presbyterian." — Burt's Letters, i, 206. 2 Ibid. i. 204. 28 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY they fumbled till the petition for " long life " to his objection- able majesty was ended.-^ Meanwhile the old Presbyterians despised keeping " Yule " as a miserable superstition, approved highly of schoolmistresses who gave parties to their pupils on Good Friday, spoke of the goose as a " superstitious bird " ; " and parish ministers had been known to visit their people in the North, where prelatic follies might linger, on the forenoon of the 25th of December to see and to smell if any erroneous preparations were going on for a better dinner, and any savoury pots were on the fire for a Popish feast.^ These Jacobite families had their own customs, their own prejudices, their special loyalties, with which no "Whig stranger could intermingle. They loved to consort with their own kind, having a political and ecclesiastical creed and antipathy in common, where, as the glass went round, they could pledge the true king and curse the Hanoverian intruder. It was un- pleasant in "Whig society, when every one gave a health and every one must cheer a sentiment, to be obliged to save their consciences by secretly passing the bumper across the water- jug, to signify they drank to the king " over the water.'' Presbyterianism with its gloom, and its ministers with their severity and woeful piety, moved them with wrath or stirred them to mirth. Merriment went round the supper-table as some rollicking voice broke out with the lay of the " Cameronian's (or Presbyterian's) cat," * with its most doleful tragedy : — There was a Cameronian cat was hunting for his prey, And in the house she catched a mouse, upon the Sabbath day. The Whig, being offended at such an act profane, Laid by his book, his cat he took, and bound it with a chain. "Assure thyself that for this deed thou blood for blood slialt pay. For killing of the Lord's own mouse, upon the Sabbath day." And straight to execution poor baudrons he was drawn. And high hanged up upon a tree, — Mess John he sung a psalm. ^ Jacobite Lairds of Gask, p. 385 ; Burt's Letters, i. 205. - Ramsay, ii. 73 ; Somerville, p. 345. •'■ Dunbar's Social Life, p. 128 ; Chambers' Popular Rhymes, 3rd edit. p. 294. ■* Hogg's Jacobite Relics, 1819, p. 209. Scott, iu Fasti Eccles. Scot., identifies the hero of the song with a minister in the north of Scotland. CO UNTR Y SOCIE TY AND CO UNTR Y LIFE 29 Where was there such pleasant intercourse as in these Jacobite circles ? There was full-bodied heartiness in their hates and a cheerfulness in their kinships ; their aljsurd prejudices had a flavour of lovable quaintness. Their unshaken belief in the virtues and kingly graces of the Stuarts had a touching idolatry. There could not be seen a spot in the son, nor yet the grandson, of James ; and ladies, who sang charming Jacobite songs, to still more charming airs, wrote Jacobite letters, in which they raved wildly and spelt lament- ably. What fire fills the elderly bosom of Miss Christian Threipland ^ as she expresses her ardent enthusiasm ! — " Oh, had you beheld my Hero, you must confess him a Gift from heaven. I never saw such vivacity, such piercing Wit, worn with a fine Judgement and an active Genius. ... In short, madam, he is the Top of perfection and Heaven's darling." Woe to the heedless who unguardedly spoke of the Prince as Pretender ! " Frdcuulcr, indeed ! and be dawm'd to ye ! " ^ flared out Lady Strange, as she eyed with scorn a maligner, who began to wish he had never been born. Thus they swore by the Stuarts, as they swore at the Georges. IV Paid as the lairds were chiefly " in kind," there was little money at their disposal, and even after the grain rent had been sold in the market, it produced but little.^ It is not surprising, therefore, that the gentry were miserably poor. The nobles and lairds were constantly at their wits' end to get means to pay their way, and were obliged to live sparingly. It was a tradition * that in the days of Scots Parliament at the beginning of the century, when the session closed, the ^ R. Chambers' Thrciplands of Fingask, p. 43. - Dennistoun's Life of Sir Robert Strange, ii. 213. " Lord Sti-athmore about 1690 inherited one of the largest estates in Scotland, which was valued at 560 chalders victual and 100 nierks of rent. — Book of the Records of Glaviis, Introd. p. 64. * Burton's Hist, of Scot. 1689-1748, i. 421. The modesty of the incomes of the most eminent of professional society is evidenced by the fact that before the Union the Lord President had £500 a year, and the fifteen judges only £200, though five had £100 additional. After the Union the salaries were raised to £1000 and £500 respectively. 30 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Canongate jail was crowded with peers, whom their creditors could seize the moment the period of immunity had ceased. When in difficulties it was hard to raise money by any expedient. There were no banks except in Edinburgh, and from these little aid could be got. Although some shop- keepers ^ offered to lend money on good security, the chief means of raising funds was through the country " writers," who found money which was lent on wadset — the land mort- gaged becoming the possession of the lender if the debt was not paid by a certain date. Many a laird who had tried in vain to save money for " tochers " to his daughters was forced at their marriage to mortgage his property," and lived with the load of wadset upon his mind and land. Hardly a laird or lord was free of debt, or had an estate unburdened. He could not borrow a few pounds without getting two or three neighbours to become security as " cautioners." There was many an interview in the taverns of Edinburgh or county towns, when business was transacted over ale or wine with the lawyer, discussing anxiously the ways of finding means. There was little coin in circulation in the country ; and in the scarcity bonds and bills were negotiable as substitutes. Cases were not infrequent of these bonds being bought by persons who disliked the issuer or liked his land, and forced him to part with his acres to meet his liabilities.^ Too many of the landowners had those possessions which were tradition- ally ascribed to the Fifeshire lairds : " a pickle land, a mickle debt, a doocot and a lawsuit." * Coins in the first half of the ^ In 1730 James Blair, merchant at the head of the Saltmarket, Glasgow, announces that at his shop "all persons who have occasion to buy and sell bills of exchange, or want money to borrow, or have money to lend on interest, or have sort of goods to sell, or want to buy any kind of goods," etc. "may deliver their commands. " - Burt's Letters, i. 240. — "The portion or tocher of a laird's eldest daughter is looked upon as a handsome one if it amounts to 1000 merks, which is £55 : 11 : 1^, and 10,000 merks, or £555:11 : 1, is generally esteemed no bad tocher for a daughter of the lower rank of quality." ■' Book of Records of Glamis, Introduction. * An unpublished letter of Jean Carnegy, Lady Kinfauns, to her factor shows the inconveniences of a victual rent. "Sir . . . I doo indeed think the pryces of the victuall are so low that it may very well be called a Drugg ; but since it is universally soo, and there is noo hopes of its rysing it can't be helped, and considering the quantity I have to dispose of is but small, and that putting the COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTR Y LIFE 31 century were not sufficient for the currency needs of the country ; gold was never seen ; silver was exceedingly scarce, especially after all the Scots coinage had been called in subse- quent to the Union. Tn default of Scots or English money, foreign coins were in ready use, and money which came from Holland, Spain, and France was welcome, though it was tar from plentiful, because the imports much exceeded the exports. Leg -dollars, rix- dollars, guilders and ducatoons ^ were of service as home currency ; but these became still scarcer, owing to their being drawn to England for the wars. The gentle- man when he paid his physician paid him " five duccadoons," or a "jacobus," as substitute for a guinea. Although the Bank of Scotland, and after 1727 the Eoyal Bank, issued £1 notes, even that represented a sum which merchants and their customers found it highly inconvenient " to change, while the owner of a £10 note might ransack half a dozen county towns without finding a merchant with silver enough to cash it.^ For any one travelling this dearth of coins was a serious difficulty ; and as he could get no accommodation by banking accounts, he put his money in his saddle or carriage-bags, to last him till his return. A great nobleman like the Duke of Eoxburgh, when living in London as Secretary for Scotland in 1720, used to have £100 monthly sent to him from home by waggon ; * but modest members of Parliament were in sore straits when their frugal finances vanished in southern society like snow in sunshine. Xo wonder it was difficult to get the Scots members to attend to their duties at Westminster, and the piteous appeals to undergo the expense and trouble of travelling and staying in the south were sent in vain by the Secretary for Scotland. It was owing to this stress for money that gentlemen often paid their tradesmen, as they themselves meall in girnill must be both troublesome and expensive, and that it would be very inconvenient for the Tennents to oblige them to keep their oats in their hands, I referr it to yourself to dispose of it to the best advantage you can. 25th Ffebruary 1725." ^ Account Book of Foulis of llavclston. Tlie foreign monies in frequent use were leg-dollars = £2 : 16s. Scots, rix-dollars = £2 : 18s. Scots, guilders=:£l :2: Scots, ducatoons = £3 : 10s. Scots. - The £1 Note, by W. Graham ; Kerr's Hist, of Scottish Banking. •* Letters of Tioo Centuries, edited bj' Fraser Mackintosh, p. 213. ■• Somerville's Own Life, p. 353. 32 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V were paid by their tenants, "in kind," The weaver, the blacksmith, and the joiner were allowed as part wages so many firlots of oats or of barley ; and sometimes the pay of mechanics about the house was reckoned in so much grain a year.^ The lack of metal currency was a chronic distress in Scotland, and caused incessant inconvenience long after the increase of rents and the growth of trade had relieved every class from poverty. The great domestic problem in every age with parents is how to get their daughters " off " and how to get their sons " on." Especially perplexing was this question in the first haK of the century, when there were extremely few openings for the sons of gentlemen, little trade, a meagre commerce, and few industries ; when the army called forth little enthusiasm in the Scots to fight the battles of the English ; when the colonies had not yet opened their avenues to fortune. Many a gentleman sent his eldest son after being at college to a lawyer's office to pick up some knowledge of law and business useful for his future estate. Unfortunately, he often acquired just enough legal lore to make him litigious all his days, to be ever alert to raise actions against aggressive neighbours, and in his rubicund age to rejoice in having many a " guid-ganging plea." ^ Legal processes were incessant, for legal precedents were not plentiful enough to give clear guidance — thereby adding to the glorious uncertainty of the law, and to the certainty of fortunes for lawyers. Younger ^ Arniston Memoirs, p. 50. At Arniston, farm labourers, wright, smith, and even "bedall" figure in the factor's books for so many bolls of grain yearly. Even in 1780 the practice was not abandoned. At Cawdor House the gardener is paid 12 bolls, the shepherd 5 bolls, and the maltster 10 bolls of oats yearly as wages. — Book of Thanes of Cavxlor. '^ The law dealt out its decisions with imperturbable deliberation in those days. A process of spuilzie of 6 bolls of seed oats committed by Major Fraser continued before the Court of Session for twelve or thirteen years. — Major Fraser's Manuscri2)t, ii. 101. Another case — spuilzie of horses from Laird of Thunderton in 1716 — gained decree in favour of aggi'ieved party against Lord Lovat and his kinsman six years after ; but the process still went on for fifty years, long after the litigants were dead. Law-pleas became heirlooms. Arch. Dunbar began proceedings against Lovat in 1722, and died in 1733, leaving his debts and his process to his daughtei's. In 1749 it was conveyed to Arch. Dunbar of Newton, three years after the chief debtor, Lord Lovat, was beheaded. The amount of original decree was £88 ; by 1749 it had risen to £249. — Ibid. i. 83-84. COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 33 sons had a small range of employments to choose from in the absence of commerce and colonial enterprise. The professions were open ; but till near the middle of the century medicine was little taught in the country, and those who wished to learn this subject required to study it in the medical schools of Leyden, or Paris. The Church, of course, was a shut career to the Episcopalian by its polity, and an unattractive career to many a Presbyterian from its austerity and fanaticism. The law — especially the Bar — was the best profession for a gentle- man's son who wished to live by his brains and associate with his equals. But even that was for the few. It was therefore in trade that younger sons of good family often sought a livelihood.^ It was not considered below their dignity to become apprentices to shopkeepers, who under the vaguely comprehensive title of " merchant " might deal in anything from tallow-candles to brocade, from tobacco to Tay pearls. In small low-ceilinged rooms in a second or third fiat in the Edinburgh High Street the best merchants had their shops. Silversmiths, clothiers, woollen drapers, were frequently men of high birth and social position. The brother of a proud land proprietor did not disdain to sell in his cramped, ill-lighted wareroom so many yards of shalloons or " Kilmarnocks " ; for in those days a gentleman's son felt it as natural to fall into trade as for a rich tradesman to rise out of it. Country towns like Elgin or Inverness had their " merchants," alias shopkeepers, who were often connected with the best families in the country, who ^ Many curious illustrations of this union of trade with high lineage and good family can be given. Among the silk mercers in Edinburgh were "John Hope and Co." — Hope being younger son of Hope of Rankeillor, the partners, Stewart and Lindsay, sons of landed proprietors ; among the drapers was the firm of "Lindsay and Douglas" — the former younger son of Lindsay of Eaglescairney, the latter of Douglas of Garvaldfoot ; and the firm of "Douglas and Inglis " — the one being son of Douglas of Fingask, the other was younger son of Sir John Inglis of Cramond, and succeeded to the baronetcy. Another firm which dealt in cloth in a small warehouse in a flat was "Hamilton and Dalrymple," the latter being younger brother of Lord Hailes. The leading partner of Stewart, "Wallace and Stoddart, was Stewart of Dunearn. — Chambers' Edinburgh Merchants of Old Times. In 1678 the son of Sir Ludovic Gordon, tlie premier baronet of Scotland, finished his apprenticeship to R. Blackwood, merchant, burgess of Edinburgh, learning "his airt and trade of merchandizing." — Dunbar's Social Life, p. 140. Kerr of Boughtrigg, jeweller, and afterwards M.P. , married the daughter of Lord Charles Kerr. — Kay's Edinburgh Portraits, i. 104. 34 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY sold linen and wine, lent money, and, perhaps, finally bought an estate. The lady reduced in fortune who, in Inverness, followed the business of milliner and dressmaker, to pay off her father's debts, was not less respected and visited by my Lady Lovat because she made and charged for stays and stomachers.^ It was thought quite natural that, though Balgarran had been three hundred years in the family, the Lady Balgarran should advertise that " she and her daughters, having attained to great perfec- tion in making and twisting sewing threed which is cheap and white," sold it at "from fivepence to six shillings an ounce." ^ It was not rare for lads of good degree in those impecunious times even to become " hecklers " or flax-dressers, to serve apprenticeship to joiners and ship-carpenters.^ The fact that the sons of men of good family often followed the calling of village tradesmen is the clearest proof of the poverty in which gentry were often sunk. Hessian officers stationed in the Highlands after the Eebellion of '45 were astonished to find innkeepers able to converse with them in Latin, these doubtless being men of good birth who were obliged to follow any occupation — even in a wretched mountain hostelry — which would give them a livelihood. Even noblemen were occasionally reduced to the sorest straits of poverty, when their lands were burdened with debts and wadsets. ^ Letters of Two Centuries, p. 244. ^ Chambers' Domestic Annals, iii. 510. ^ Cases of the reduction of men of good birth to lowly occupations are far from uncommon. Wemyss, Governor of Edinburgh Castle, son of Wemyss of Wemyss Hall, began life as a "heckler" or flax-dresser. Sir Michael Malcolm, wlio married the daughter of Lord Bathurst, had been trained as a joiner in London. — Chambers' Traditions of Edinburgh, ii. pp. 33, 47. In 1710 Mr. Dunbar at Inverness wi'ites to his cousin Dunbar of Thunderton a letter of intro- duction for and by William Macleod, " a joiner to his employment, that lived in this place a year following his trade, has served his apprenticeship in Edinburgh, and thrie yeares a journeyman in London ; he is brother of Donald Macleod of Geanies, and coosin gemian of CatboUs [these being two of the principal families of the Macleod clan], and as I understand is in tearms of marriadge with our coosin Christian Dumbreck and goes yr lenth of purpose to ask your consent and countenance." — Dunbar's Social Life, p. 143. In 1732 Lord Strathnaver writes to the master builder at Sheerness recommending the son of a brother officer, Major Dunbar : "The young man has choysed the emplojTiient of a ship-carpenter, let me know on what terms you accept the young gentleman." — Tbid. 2nd series, p. 126. See Bisho}} Forbes' Diary and Church of Moray, p. 244 ; Burton's Life of David Hume, i. 197 ; Dennistoun's Life of Sir R. Strange, i. 70. CO UNTR V SOCIETY AND CO UNTR V LIFE 35 One other reason, however, may be given for the fact that sons of gentlemen of position hekl humble places in life. That was the scruple which staunch Jacobites entertained at enter- ing any occupation which required them to take the oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian king. This objection closed to these very conscientious persons the Bar (although it was regarded as sorely tainted with Jacobitism), and it closed against them also the army and every government post. In their necessity not a few became shopkeepers or tenants of small farms on the estates of elder brothers, or other branches of the family, where they lived humbly in a mean thatched farmhouse, and tilled a poor hundred acres, though they were members of the best families in the land.^ The Highland gentleman when reduced to poverty, or in difficulty of finding occupation, rarely bemeaned himself so far as to become a manufacturer or shopkeeper. He would take a farm, become a small tacksman or wadsetter of a chief, or keep an inn. A gentleman of Highland blood scorned to handle an ell-wand, but he would fill an ale-stoup ; and many a remote hostelry in the north was kept by a cadet of good family, who was versed in manners and scholarship, and served his customers with superb condescension.^ Yet one more occupation was deemed not unworthy of the dignity of Highland gentry ; for at Crieff Trysts, where the droves of black cattle were brought from far-off glen and strath to be bought by English graziers, there were to be seen, selling their oxen, gentlemen of long pedigree, " mightily civil-dressed in their slashed waistcoats, trousings and blue bonnets, with their poniards and broadswords, all speaking Irish." ^ When taunted by his brother. Lord Seafield, with carrying on such ^ Gleig's Life of Sir Walter Scott, p. vii. ; Tytler's Life of Lord Karnes, vol. i. - Bnrt's Lcfte7-s, i. 66. — "It is not uncommon to see a lord dismount from his horse, and taking one of these gentlemen in his anus make him as many compliments as if he were his brother peer, and the reason is that the ale-house keeper is of as good family as any in Scotland, and perhaps taken his degree of master of arts in a university." Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsmen, ii. 518, note; Stewart's Sketches of Highlands, 1822, ii. p. xxx. Major Fraser, who was henchman and friend of Lord Lovat, was reduced to keep an inn in Inverness. — Major Fraser s Manuscript, edit, by Fergusson, ii. 119. ^ Journey through Scotland, 1729, p. 194. 36 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY an ignoble trade, Patrick Ogilvie, in allusion to the share and profit his lordship had in the Union, replied, " My lord, it is better to sell nowt than nations." Bearing in mind the deep impecuniosity of this period, the homely habits and frugal ways of the gentlefolk, we cannot be surprised that the fine arts met with little encouragement. The architecture outside the houses was of the plainest, and they wished no better; while decoration within seemed a sad waste of money, and they had none to squander. On the room walls were hanging stiff wooden portraits of the heads of the family, with no particular expression, and with par- ticularly poor skill. That Art may grow it is necessary that there should be taste ; that an artist may live it is necessary that there be patrons ; but in order that there be patrons it is further necessary that there should be money. Unfortunately, Scotland lacked all these requisites — money, taste, and patrons. Since that one true Scots artist, George Jamesone of Aberdeen, died in 1644, there was hardly one existing north of the Tweed ; and the " Scottish Vandyke," trained in the studio of Eubens, had been content to execute brilliant portraits of his noble employers at the modest rate of " twenty-three shillings sterling, colour and claith included " ; or if he supplied the ■frame or " muller," at the charge of " thirty-four shillings sterling," which made the value of the artist's work only twice the cost of the carpenter's frame. What more vivid evidence of the artistic destitution of the country could be found than in the long gallery at Holyrood, with its rows of well- varnished effigies of crowned heads of Scotland, beginning with Fergus I., 350 B.C., all presenting a suspicious similarity of nasal feature as striking as the hereditary " Austrian lip " of the House of Hapsburg ? For such a national work no native artist could be found, and in 1684 the Duke of York engaged the Dutchman Jacob de Witt for the not extravagant sum of £250 to paint a hundred and fifty royal effigies within two years, which was duly accomplished with a skill proportionate to the price of the job. At the beginning of the eighteenth century one artist COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 37 was enough to satisfy the artistic cravings of the country, and even he was a foreigner. Induced by the promise of customers to venture from London, the Spaniard, Juan Bautista Medina, had come to the unknown north, bringing with him in a smack to Leith an ample supply of canvasses containing " bodies and postures," male and female, ready painted, to which the heads of his future clients were to be affixed. For twenty years this " Kneller of the north," Sir John Medina — for he had been knighted by the Duke of Queensberry before the Union of 1707 — was engaged, till his death in 1710, making likenesses of all who cared or could afford to have them painted: now busy in his ill -lighted room in an Edinburgh flat, immortalising the features of the nobility and gentry, and of the merchants, with their wives ; now travelling painfully along the deplorable bridle-paths to almost inaccessible country mansions, with his man behind him in charge of canvasses and colours and frames. The knight was ready — for he was a capable artist, as his works prove — to copy skilfully the visages of the living, or to limn imaginary likenesses of defunct ancestors to please the family vanity, and cover the walls of his customers, adding the required countenances to the already painted human trunks which he had in stock, at £10 a piece, or £3 for a copy. He was willing to accommodate his subjects with Eoman armour, or laced high ruffs and farthingales, or contemporary perukes and embroidered coats, to suit their taste and their period. There was no demand for any other sort of picture. Classic themes no laird would look at ; mythological subjects none could understand ; besides, propriety would be shocked with anything nude, and orthodoxy horrified at anything pagan. Portraits, and portraits alone, of the dead or living could attract a customer. Jacobites, too, across the water and at home, were anxious to have portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, and by their commissions kept some poor men busy. From the brush of John Medina, the shiftless son of the knight, in lucid intervals of sobriety, and from Alexander, the descendant of the illus- trious Jamesone, came, besides likenesses of nobles and gentle- men, many representations of Queen Mary,^ which descendants ^ Burton's Lift of Hume, i. 234. 38 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY of the purchasers came in time to treasure in the vain imagination that they were veritable original copies from life of the unfortunate monarch, whose head was executed as ruthlessly on canvas as she herself had been executed at Fotheringay. But all this work so poorly paid could not keep more than two or three men with average appetites, and whenever an artist discovered any talent in himself, he fled the impoverished country to cities where money was less scarce and people were more liberal. Only one was left after Sir John Medina died. William Aikman had been at his easel since I7l2, in his High Street close, a laird by rank, a good painter by craft, a clubbable man, and a man of fashion and pleasantry, as one sees in his portrait, with affable well-bred visage under his flowing Wycherley wig. To his door not a few customers came up the steep scale staircase, and his hand was engaged depicting features of lords and lairds and ladies, with their silks and satins, Flanders lace, periwigs and powder, whose portraits are to-day cherished ancestral heirlooms in many an old mansion. But ten years were enough to weary Aikman of a poor business and customers that grudged to be im- mortalised at £10 for a painted yard of canvas, " forbye a frame " ; and he quitted Edinburgh amid valedictory regrets, suppers, and poetical epistles from Allan Eamsay and others, and went to London to get society and fortune, to rival the great Sir Godfrey Kneller, till in 1731 he died, and was interred in Greyfriars' Churchyard — for Scotland was good enough to be buried in but not good enough to live in. Behind him in Edinburgh he had left two or three practitioners whose names are shadows to-day, most of whose works, after hanging on dining-room walls, retreated to bedrooms, from bedrooms to garrets, and finally, at " displenishing sales " of country seats, found themselves in retired and dusty nooks of old picture shops.^ Such was the condition of art in the first half of the century. Landscapes had no interest for an age which had ' Rose of Kilravock furnishes his portrait-gallery cheaply in 1727: "Cash paid to Mr. Watt for Lady Kilraick's picture, £l:10s." — Roses of Kilravock, p. 404. I COUNTR V SOCIETY AND COUNTR \ ' LIFE 39 no eye for the picturesque, planted no trees, and admired no scenery. For that branch of the business there was no demand whatever, unless for " house decoration," which was a fashion then affected by persons of quality. " Landskips with figures " were inserted at that period in the panels of doors, on wainscots and window-shutters, by house painters ; and near Allan liamsay's shop in the High Street in a flat lived " old Norrie," whose skill and trade were so considerable in ornamenting town residences of the richer classes with these panel designs that he has been called the first of the Scots landscape school of painting. While, owing to the par- simonious treatment of art, there were few native painters at work, gentlemen employed occasionally travelling foreigners, who came north, executed a few portraits, and then gladly returned to their more Renial climates.^ VI Nothing tended to preserve intact the traditional ways and the provincial and stay-at-home habits of the gentry so much as the difficulty of leaving home, and the wretched roads that hindered communication with towns, and therefore kept them from having intercourse with the world. The highways were tracks of mire in wet weather and marshes in winter, till the frost had made them sheets of ice, covered with drifted snow; when rain fell the flat ground became lakes with islands of stone, and the declivities became cataracts. Even towns were often connected only by pack-roads, on which horses stumbled perilously along, and carriages could not pass at all,^ over unenclosed land and moorland, where, after rain, it was difficult to trace any beaten track. When snow set in, each country house was blockaded ; there was nothing ^ Brydall's Hist, of Art in Scotland; Stirling-Maxwell's Annals of Artists in Spain, vol. iii. ; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, 1862, vol. ii. ; Wilson's Memorials of Edinburgh ; Cunningham's British Painters. ^ When early in the century Hugh, Eai'l of Loudoun, was conveyed as a child to Edinburgh, he was put in a pannier slung across the back of a horse, accom- panied by a servant riding on another horse. His journey occupied the most of a week. — Tytler and Watson's Songstresses of Scot. i. 286. 40 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY to look on but the bleak, white, treeless waste. Then it was that the isolated household appreciated the advantage of having within doors the great store of salted meat, the girnals full of grain to make their "groats" and " knockit bear," their brew-house to supply the ale. When communication was so hard, and roads were miserable, coaches were of little service, and were the luxury only of the few who were rich. In 1720 there were no chariots or chaises to be found north of the Tay ; and when the first chaise was seen in 1725 in Inverness drawn by its six horses, the excitement created was immense. As it rumbled along the Highlanders rushed from their huts, and unbonneted with abject reverence before the coachman, whom they took for the principal personage on the equipage.^ In spite of Marshal Wade's great work in making 260 miles of roads, in many districts it was still a dangerous expedition if the mist fell in the North — when the postilion went by tracks he could not see, in a region he did not know, in search of a wright or smith he could not find, to mend a vehicle shaken to pieces by ruts, and with axle-tree broken by boulders. Such a disastrous journey Simon, Lord Lovat, vividly de- scribes in 1740, having set forth with his two daughters from Inverness to Edinburgh. Before starting, two or three days had been spent in repairing his carriage, and for precaution he brought his wheelwright as far as Aviemore, when he was assured that the chariot was safe enough to carry to London. " But I was not eight miles from the place when on the plain road the axle-tree of the hind wheels broke in two, so that my two girls were forced to go on bare horses behind the footmen, and I was obliged to ride myself though I was very tender. I came with that equipage to Ruthven late at night, and my chariot was pulled there by force of men, where I got an English wheelwright and a smith, who wrought two days mending my chariot . . . and I was not gone four miles from Euthven when it broke again, so that I was in a miserable condition till I came to Dalnakeardach." Again it was mended, and he got to Castle Drummond, where he was storm-stayed 1 Spalding Miscellany, i. 100 ; Burt's Letters, i. 7. COUNTR V SOCIETY AND CO UNTR V LIFE 4 1 " by the most tempestuous weather of wind and rain 1 ever remember." Setting forth, " I was not tliree miles gone from Castle Drummond when the axle-tree of my fore wheels broke in two in the midst of the hill betwixt Drummond and the bridge of Erdoch, and we were forced to sit in the hill with a boisterous day till Chamberlain Drummond was so kind as to go down the strath and bring wrights, carts, and smiths to our assistance, who dragged us to the plain, where we were forced to stay five or six hours till there was a new axle-tree made, so that it was dark night before we came to Dumblain, which is but eight miles from Castle Drummond, all much fatigued." ^ At last they reach Edinburgh in safety, having taken eleven days for the journey. Such misadventures were apt to occur when chariots were rattled to bits on the execrable roads. Even when travelling on horseback the laird of Thunderton took five or six days to come from Morayshire to Edinburgh, about 150 miles ; ^ and travelling on horseback was the only way on which journeys could in many frequented districts be made. If, however, a lady was old or delicate she might be conveyed in a sedan-chair, three porters being employed, one to take the place of the porter who was first exhausted.^ Slowly and infrequently coaches passed along the most used thoroughfare. To perform the journey of six- teen miles between Edinburgh and Haddington * at the middle of the century occupied a whole winter's day for a coach with four horses. Not till 1749 did a stage-coach begin to run between Edinburgh and Glasgow.^ Twice a week it started, each passenger paying 9s. 6d. and allowed one stone of luggage, and it took twelve hours to accomplish the journey of forty- six miles ; nor was this speed exceeded till thirty years later. But even this was an enormous improvement in rapidity on previous days, when a coach and six horses spent a day and a half on the road. The state of the highways made the transit of carts well-nigh impossible in most parts of the year ; ^ Spalding Miscellany, i. 5. ^ Dunbar's Social Life, i. 35. * Chambers' Threiplands of Fingask, p. 36. * Robertson's Rural Recollections. * Scots Magazine, 1749, p. 253 ; Glasgow Past and Prcseivt, ii. 436. In 1749 a caravan was started to go between Edinburgh and Glasgow, going and return- ing twice a week, each person to pay 5s. fare. — Scots Magazine, 1749, p. 459. 42 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY and it was not till the middle of the century that carriers began to ply regularly from town to town with their wares and their parcels. Before then many tracts of the lowlands, with big villages and considerable populations, were almost without intercommunication, save by the cadgers, who sat on horse- back with creels on each side carrying goods and letters. Even about 1770 the carrier took a fortnight to go to and from Selkirk and Edinburgh, conveying a load six hundred- weight at a time, and this journey he could never accomplish in winter, and in the dry weather he drove along the channels of the Gala water, as being more traversable than the main road.^ As for travelling to far-off London, the obstacles were too great for poor persons, too perilous for nervous persons, to undertake the expedition. It was expensive, it was tedious, it was adventurous. To relieve the weariness of the long journey, Sir Eichard Steele when he came to Scotland brought his French master to teach him the language of Paris on the way; and that it was a costly as well as a weary process is proved by the fact that this luxurious knight and his brother commissioners (of inquiry on forfeited estates) in I7l7 were allowed £50 each for travelling expenses to Edinburgh — each clerk having the more modest allowance of £12.^ In fact, to travel that road, spending fourteen days on the way, in a " closs bodyed carriage and sex horses," cost two gentlemen in 1725 the sum of " thretty pounds Stirling." ^ Apprehensive of perils on the road, preparations for defence against English highwaymen were made. Mrs. Calderwood of Polton records how in 1756 she set off for the metropolis in her own ^ Robertson's Rural Recollections, p. 40. 2 Aitken's Life of Steele, ii. 151 ; Murray's The York Buildings Company, p. 36. ^ Here is a contract for travelling in 1725: "London, May 15. Received from Col. W. Grant and Patrick DufF, Esq., sex guinies of earnest for a good closs bodyed coach and sex horses to sett out for Edinburgh from London on Monday 17th May, to travel sex dayes to York to rest their two dayes and travel two dayes and a half to Newcastle, and three or four days from that to Edinburgh as the roads will allow, and to make for the said coach thretty pounds Stirling. The half to hand, and the other in Edinburgh, and the earnest to be forfeited if the gentlemen do not keep punctuality (signed Thos. Green). " — Scottish Antiquary, ii. 182. CO UNTR V SOCIE TY AND CO UNTR V LIFE 43 post-chaise, attended by her faithful man-servant on horse- back, who had pistols in his holsters, and a stout broadsword by his side. The lady had provided herself with a case of pistols to use if attacked on the lonely moorland roads.' Persons who needed to hire a chaise had the utmost difliculty in procuring a conveyance, even if they could afford it. Occasional chances occurred of getting from Edinburgh to London by return coaches drawn by six horses, which were duly advertised as ready to receive passengers.^ Even in 1758 there were no four-wheeled chaises to be got for hire till arriving at Durham, for these conveyances were still in their infancy, and the two - wheeled carriages called " the Italian," lacerating to the frame, had been given up as instru- ments of torture."^ Scots members of Parliament could not usually afford to drive to Westminster, for the cost would have hopelessly burdened their sorely wadsetted lands ; they therefore rode their own horses. Even John Duke of Argyll is said to have strapped the skirts of his coat round his waist and dashed on horseback through the worst storms of winter on his south- ward way. " Jupiter " Carlyle describes how he and other ministers convoyed as far as Wooler John Home, setting off with the play of Douglas in one of his borrowed leather saddle-bags, and a " clean shirt and night-cap " in the other, on a snowy morning of February 1755.* With the costliness of travelling to face, many Scotsmen who had no money to waste found it the best plan to buy cheaply a horse to ride and then to sell it — at a profit if they could — on reaching their destination. It was in this manner that William Murray (afterwards Lord Mansfield) started forth in 17 17, at the age of sixteen, on his eventful journey to London, on his little horse, with the paternal instructions of Lord ^ Mrs. Calderwood's Letters and Journals. - Chambers' Domestic Annals, iii. 408. 3 Carlyle's AutobiograiJhy, p. 331 ; Wright's Life of General Wolfe, p. 263. ' I must tell you that I was beat to pieces in the new post-chaises or machines that are purposely constructed to torture the unhappy creatures that are placed in them. I was forced at last to have recourse to post-horses." So in 1747 Major Wolfe describes his experiences of travelling between Scotland and England. * Carlyle's Autohiography ; Omond's Lord Advocates of Scotland, i. 327. 44 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Stormont to sell his pony on liis arrival to pay his expenses.^ Dr. Skene of Aberdeen in 1753 bought a mare for eight guineas, and after he had been eighteen days on the road (his expenses amounting to four guineas) he disposed of his animal for the price he had paid for it.^ When even these means were beyond the reach of the poor traveller's purse he might journey, as Tobias Smollett did in 1739, partly by waggon, partly on the pack-horses he overtook on the road, and the rest of the way on foot.^ Till Grantham was reached, 110 miles from London, one found no turnpike road, coach and horse going by a narrow causeway, with soft unmade earth on either side, and constantly forced to stop to allow the long strings of thirty or forty pack-horses that blocked the way to squeeze by, as they carried their merchandise to the towns.* But for those who could afford it, there was the one stage-coach which up to 1754 started from the Grassmarket once a month, making in twelve or sixteen days the passage to London, which was accompanied by such perils, real or imaginary, that timid passengers made their wills before setting forth;^ At that time, however, a private chaise sometimes would traverse the route at the rapid rate of only six days. In consequence of the small number of passengers on the roads in those days of bad travelling, the inns in Scotland were miserable in the extreme. In country towns they were mean hovels, with dirty rooms, dirty food, and dirty attendants.^ The Englishman, as he saw the servants without shoes or stockings, as he looked at the greasy tables without a cover, and saw the butter thick with cow - hairs, the coarse meal served without a knife and fork, so that he had to use his fingers or a clasp - knife, the one glass or tin can handed ^ Campbell's Lives of the Chief-Justices, 1874, iii. 170. - Smiles' Lives of the Engineers, iii. 25. ^ Smollett's Roderick Eaiulom, chap. viii. ■* JVeiv Stat. Acct. Scotlaml (Lanark), p. 206. ® Creech's Fugitive Pieces, p. 63. There appeared the foUomng advertisement in Edinburgh Courant, July 1, 1754 : "The Edinburgh stage-coach for the better accommodation of passengers will be altered to a neat genteel two-end glass machine hung on steel springs, exceeding light and easy to go in 10 days in summer and 12 in winter on every alternate Tuesday." — Grant's Old and New Edinburgh, ii. 15. ^ Burt's Letters, i. 13, 143 ; Gentle7nan's Magazine, 1766. CO UNTR V SOCIETY A ND CO UNTR Y LIFE 4 5 round the company from mouth to mouth, his gorge rose. The contrast with the English hostelries was terrible — there everything was charming for its cleanliness, comfort, cosiness, and cooking. It was the wearied traveller's haven of rest after long dusty stages, associated with ease and civility, good drink, good fare, good beds, and good company beside the genial parlour fire. But in Scotland the liostelries even in large towns afforded more entertainment for beast than for man. They were more tit for stabling than for lodging.^ Even when Captain Topham arrived in Edinburgh in 1774, and was recommended to one of the best inns in the city, he was driven out of it by the dirt and discomfort, by the rooms tilled with carters and drovers, the filthy bedrooms, the smells and sights, and he sought refuge in a lodging in a fourth or fifth flat, slightly less unpleasant, and a vast deal dearer. It would there- fore seem that the condition of these houses had little improved since the beginning of the century. With eloquent emotion Dr. Johnson was wont to speak of the delightful comforts of an English tavern ; it is not in similar strains he could speak of Scottish inns. When in 1773 the lexicographer came north, he was lodged, till Boswell took him to James's Court, in the " AVhite Horse " "^ in the Canongate, which was bad though the best in the town ; but with more luck he went to the " Saracen's Head " in Glasgow, built twenty years before, which was the first inn in the west that ever gave decent accommodation. The redeeming feature of these places was their cheapness — the tavern ordinary was only 4d.,and the claret — the only thing Englishmen could praise — was good and cheap, costing only Is. a quart in the early years of the century.^ ^ Jouniey to North of England and Scotlaiul in 1704, privately printed 1818 ; Macky's Journey through Scotland, 1729; Humphrey Clinker; Letters from Edinburgh, 1776. Hostelries in Edinburgh were meant rather for putting up horses than travellers, who were expected to seek lodgings elsewhere. In St. Mary's "Wyud an inn had stabling for 100 horses, and a shed for 20 carriages. - It degenerated into a carrier's inn, and ceased to be even fit for that — "A base hovel," Sir AV. Scott calls it. — Boswell's Johnson (Croker's edit.), 1848, p. 297. ' Foulis of Ravelston enters in his Accompt Books: "To dinner ^\-ith the President and oyr [other] lords of Session £1 : 7s. Scots " (p. 351). Tavern Bill of Dunbar of Thunderton in 1700: "Item for 20 dayes dyet to yourself and servant £07.08.00."— Dunbar's Social Life, p. 39. Carlyle pays 3s. 6d. for four days' board and lodging at an inn. — Carlyle's Autobiography, p. 98. 46 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Commuuication by letter in the first half of the century was as slow and uncertain as by person, and correspondence was rare between town and country people. The marvels of cacography in the old epistles amply testify that their writers wrote with difficulty and spelt by chance.-^ After the Union of 1707 the post was reformed in Scotland. The whole establishment cost only £1000 yearly; the general post- master stationed in Edinburgh having a salary of £200, and, employing an accountant and two clerks, he managed easily the entire postal business. Tor several years one letter-carrier was found sufficient to distribute all the letters in Edinburgh, though in later years the staff was increased to three. As the closes were labyrinthine, the flats high, the houses un- numbered, the addresses of the vaguest, it is evident that the correspondence for a population of 30,000 must have been extremely limited.^ The London mail-bag in the early part of the century was sometimes found to contain only one letter, and this even occurred once so late as 1746. Six days were spent by post-boys on the road to London,^ when they carried their small consignment in a portmanteau behind them, and it sometimes occurred that in crossing a river the post-boy, horse, and bags disappeared and were never seen again ; and in the confusion of an inn refreshment, it happened that the letters were returned.^ All letters were at first conveyed 1 Joyce's Hisl. of Post Office ; Lang's Hist, of Post Office in Scotland. ' ' I was informed 60 years ago {i.e. 1760) by officials wlio had been employed in the post- office that Provost Alexander, the only banker at the beginning of the century, had often received a solitary letter by the London mail." — Somerville's Own Life, p. 536. Chambers' Minor Antiquities of Edin. p. 204. ^ Specimens of addresses of letters in 1702: " ffor Mr. Arch. Dumbar of Thunderstown to be left at Captain Dumbar's writing chamber at the Iron Revell third storie below the cross north end of the closs at Edinburgh " ; " ffor Captain Phillip Anstruther of New Grange atte his lodgeing a litle above the fountain well south side of the street Edenbourgh." — Dunbar's Social Life, p. 34. In 1781 there were six letter-carriers in Edinburgh. — Lang's Hist. ^ Strange to say, the post established in 1635 took half the time performing the journey between London and Edinburgh, doing it in three days. — Arnot's Hist, of Edin. p. 537. In 1790 letters conveyed between these two cities in four days. — Ibid. p. 536. * In 1725 and in 1733, 1734, the post-boy was drowned or fell off his horse in the river ; in 1720, 1728, the mail-bag was returned with same letters. — Chambers' Annals, iii. 513. CO UNTR V SOCIETY AND CO UNTR Y LIFE 47 to towns by foot-runners — who never ran — carrying them as far as Thurso and Inverness. They set out twice a week to Glasgow, leaving on Tuesday and Thursday at twelve o'clock at night and arriving on the evening of the next day ; but by 1717 there was begun a horse-post, which left at eight at night and arrived at sLx; next morning — its appearance in Tron- gate being announced to the citizens by the firing of a gun. Some years later, to the more distant towns, post-boys went on horseback instead of on foot as of old. Thrice a week they set forth on their sorry nags to the largest towns, and twice a week to the smaller, while those letter-carriers who stUl went on foot went only once a week to their several places. Slowly the post-boys ambled on, stopping two nights on the road from Edinburgh to Aberdeen, pausing leisurely to refresh themselves and rest their horses ; for it was not till 1750 that bags were carried on from stage to stage by different postmen and by fresh relays of horses to the far-out offices. There were only thirty-four post-towns for some time in all Scotland,^ and the difficulty was for people to know how to get letters or to learn that there were letters to get. The postman dared not deliver them to any person on the way, but must carry them to the terminal post-office, where they might remain uncalled for in dust and obscurity till chance discovered their existence to their owners. Cadgers and carriers could bring them more easily and more safely, and often did so, though in \iolation of the law, which forbade under penalty any such infringement of the monopoly of the State. When this slow and unsure transmission of news prevailed it was inevitable that tidings of public events penetrated fitfully to remoter districts.^ Ministers supplicated for the king's long life weeks after his lamented Majesty had ^ For some years after 1707. The postmasters of Haddington and Cockburns- patli had a salary of £50, being on the main line to England, while those of Glasgow and Aberdeen had £25 each, those of Dundee, Montrose, and Inverness £15, and those of Ayr and Dumfries only £12. — Joyce's Hist, of Post Office. In 1781 there were 140 post-offices, and in 1791, 164. — Lang's Hist, of Post Office in Scotland. Revenue of Post-Office in Scotland in 1707 was £1194 ; in 1754, £8927 ; in 1776, £31,000.— Arnot's Hist. p. 541. ^ Before 1756 there was no post-office in the Hebrides, and not one in all the West Highlands beyond the Chain. — Walker's Econ. Hist, of Hebrides, ii. 336. Il 48 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY been buried; and in the long specific prayers "many a time," it was said by a long-sufferer, "I thanked God for giving us a glorious victory when we had been shamefully beaten, for inspiring courage in the troops when they had run away ; for success granted to our arms in battles that were never fought, for deliverance from plots that were never formed." Few would have the charming frankness of the Highland minister of Alness, who, finding that his information had been erroneous, said from the pulpit, " My brethren, it was a' lees I teirt ye last Sabbath." ^ Owing to the infrequency of travelling, there was at least one class of criminals from which Scotland was exempt, and that was of highwaymen. That fraternity, so large and prosperous beyond the border, was here unknown ; they would have grown weary of waiting for passengers to waylay, and died of poverty from finding so little to plunder from their persons. VII Amid the resources of civiKsation, one of the least trust- worthy, though the most self-confident, was that of medicine. The gross empiricism of its practitioners, the lack of scientific knowledge, the use of preposterous methods, the ignorance of all rational remedies, were as marked as in the middle ages.^ The sciences of physic and surgery were in their infancy, and tiU 1726 in Edinburgh and 1740 in Glasgow there was 1 Letters from a Blacksmith, etc., 1759 ; Memoirs of a Highland Lady (Miss Grant of Rothiemurchus), p. 192. ^ The fees were not exorbitant. Charges of Kenneth Mackenzie, " Chyi- Aporie" in Elgin, 1719-20, to the laird of Thunderton : "Cephaliek powder, 2s. Scots ; 2 oz. centaury, 4s. ; vomitory, 10s. ; ane pott of ane elecuary, 14s. ; gargarism, £l:16s." — Dunbar's Social Life, i. 21, Fees charged in 1721 by a practitioner of chyme and medicine against patients who refused to pay: "1, to J. W. , six pounds Scots as being for severall tymes letting blood of his wyffe and giving phisick to her, and my paines in going 3 severall tymes to his house being 4 miles distant frae myne. 2, W. N"., a guinie as being a moderate and reasonable satisfaction for my paines and expenses in making up plaisters and other medicaments to performing a cure upon his nose when the same was cut oflF by J. Bartholemew as alledged — deducting 2 shills. sterg. paid. 3, J. H., eleven pounds Scots as being for my paines in being severall tymes to his house using drugs and severall medicaments to him when he was under a consumption and wherof I cured him." — Hector's Jiidicial L^cords, p. 102. COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 49 no UuiveisiLy school or ({ualifiod jjiolessor. Tliose men only could get any insight into their profession who went abroad to study at Leyden under Boerliaave or in Paris. Others learned their art in the sickroom of the patient, or in the shops of chirurgeons. But as a rule the art of healing was in the hands of the chirurgeon - apothecaries, who had learned the little they knew when serving their appi-enticeship to un- educated country surgeons, who acted as general practitioners, and whose drugs they had made up in the closets where tliey wielded the pestle. It is true that their fees were small, and it once was usual for a doctor to get the gift of a hat or " propynes " of malt or meal for services ; yet there was ample need for all the skill and knowledge of the profession in those days, when sanitation was unknown, when the mansions of the greatest were without the most rudimentary and essential conveniences of cleanliness, when there were epidemics which passed with fatal virulence over the population, when ague arose yearly from the marshy soil, disabling its thousands, when small-pox ravaged the community, and fevers came through tilth. Ladies were troubled with the " vapours," and it must be owned that neither ladies nor gentlemen were free from the trouble of the itch.^ When sickness broke out the chirurgeon- apothecary was sent for, and came with his lancets, boluses, confections, and electuaries in his saddle-bags, and the big sand- glass in his capacious skirt pocket to count the patient's pulse." The inevitable panacea for almost every disease, according to the practice of the age, was, of course, " blood-letting " ; and in those days there was more bloodshed in peace than in time of war. Even in perfect health a gentleman thought that he could not preserve his constitution unless at certain seasons of the year he was " let blood." There is no more frequent charge in medical bills than for phlebotomising, and there is one- item which seems mysterious in old house- hold account-books — " to drink money to the surgeon's man to take away the pellets," the " pellets " being the little leaden 1 "To Miss Helen Crosbie, cure lor vapours and itch, £6 : 6s." ; "The Sheriil' of Moray for itch, £6 :9s. Scots," are items in a doctor's bills at the end of the preceding century. — Scot. Society of Antiquaries, iv. 181. Other items Jtre for "scrofulous chouks" (cheeks), "liviters," and "cockhecticks." - Chamliers' Traditions, i. 105. 4 50 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY compasses used for two or three days to prevent undue bleed- ing. Had a child the " kink-hoast " (whooping-cough) ? Then five leeches must be put behind the ear. Had he the head- ache ? Then ten or twelve leeches must be placed round the temple. Cures for the various diseases were not far to seek — spiders, frogs, worms, and " slaters," or wood-lice, were to be got in the shrubbery ; ^ physic herbs, such as Solomon's seal, agrimony, rosemary, and pennyroyal, were growing in the garden ; and from these were made at once confections, electuaries, and vomitories." For jaundice as an admirable cure were prescribed burnt earthworms in a decoction of wormwood, while consumption was counteracted by " colewort well boiled and often eaten," or " by snails boiled in cow's milk." A case of convulsions was treated with an application of sheep's lungs, or by young pigeons, whelps, or chickens " slit in the middle." If the doctor found his patient in an attack of palsy, he would anoint the part affected with a " preparation of camomile, white lilies, an hyperion of bour-tree and rue, earth- worms and goose grease." " The person suffering from pleurisy must take a ball of horse's dung, well dried, beat into powder, drink it, and he will be cured " — so said Dr. Clark, the most fashionable physician in Edinburgh, whose fee was a guinea in days when guineas were extremely scarce.^ The same eminent doctor — a skilful practitioner and a fine classical scholar to boot — gave a well-paid direction to Sir Kobert Gordon in 1739 to cure his son: "Give him twice a day the juice of twenty slatters squeezed through a muslin bag." These ■' slaters," alias millepeds, alias wood-lice, were in constant ^ Bufo, or toad, was used inwardly for drojjsy and ontwardly for carbuncles ; slaters, otherwise wobd-lice, or church bugs, were commended for colic, convulsions, and cancer, for palsy, headaches, and epilepsy ; earthworms — "to preserve them the longest and fattest ought to be slit up, well washed, and then dried "—used for spasms, jaundice, or gout ; vipers prescribed for dysentery, ague, and small- pox ; excreta of sheep, horse, sow, and dog made up in decoctions and drunk for various ailments. — Lectures on Materia Meclica, from MS. of Dr. Chas. Alston, Professor of Botany, Edinburgh, 2 vols. 1776. " In 1712 there is an account of "the laird of Kilriack [Kilravock] yr., debtor to A. Paterson, chyr-apothecaire at Inverness, for tussilago flower, maiden-hair, mousear, horse-tail, St. John's wort, pennyroyal, althea root, white lily root, fenugreek seed," as herbs for medicine. — TJte lioscs of Kilravock (Spalding Club), p. 399. ^ Social Life in Morayshire, 2nd series, p. 145. COUNTR Y SOCIETY AND COUNTR Y LIFE 5 1 request, the servant being sent out to the garden to upturn stones, under which the vermin nestled, and to gather them for bottling. That the quantity of them in demand was enormous we may see from a prescription by the great Dr. Pitcairn to heal the scurv-^y : " Take 2 lbs. of shavings of sarfa cut and sliced, boil in 3 gallons of wort, put barm in it, -^ lb. of crude antimony, with 4 ounces sharp-leaved docks, barrel it, then put in dried rosemary with the juice of 400 or 500 sclaters squeezed through linen into the barrel. When it is 20 day.s bottled drink it." Ague, the dreaded trouble in those marshy days, was combated by drugs which left the disease triumphant ; for these concoctions were " mousear beaten with salt and vinegar applied to the wrists," or "a little bit of ox -dung drunk with half a scruple of masterwort." When Dr. Archibald Pitcairn is consulted in 1704 on a case of small-pox, he writes, " for the use of the noble and honourable family of March," a prescription wherein he recommends — " after the pox appears and fever is gone steep a handful of sheep's purles in a large mutchkin of hysop water, then pour it off and sweeten it with syrup of red poppies, and then drink it." Other medicines in common use contained brains of hares and foxes, snails burnt in the shell, powder of human skull and Egyptian mummy, burnt hoofs of horses, calcined cockle-shells, pigeon's blood, ashes of little frogs — like to the diabolical contents of the witches' cauldron in Macbeth} If the country mansion contained, as it usually did, a copy of The Poor Man's Physician, by the famous John Moncriefl' of Tippermalloch,^ besides these remedies might be learned other cures, of which the surgeon was probably doubtful, ^ Wodrow informs his wife that bezoar — concretion formed in the stomacli of goats — is taken to cure small-pox. He bids her "let blood if your stitch continue and take a vomitic." — Cm'respondence, 1726. The Pharmacoposia of Royal College of Physicians, London, 172S, recommends such remedies as above; Materia Medica of 1744 for Edinburgh retains them. Pitcairn asserted that the doctors did not know how to treat small-pox, and laughed heartily at the two physicians who, he asserts, had killed by their treatment Sir R. Sibbald's daughters, while his own was as preposterous. — Chalmers' Life of Ruddiman, p. 31. ^ " The Poor Man's Physician ; or, the Receits of the famous John Moncrief of Tippermalloch, being a choice collection of simple and easy remedies for most dis- tempers, very useful to all persons, especially those of a poorer condition. Third edit, carefully corrected and amended, to which is added the method of curing the small-pox and scurvy by the eminent Dr. Arch. Pitcairn." Edinburgh, 1731. 52 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY but in which the people still retained their faith intact. Here was to be read as remedy for " falling sickness " in children : " Take a little black sucking puppy (but for a girl take a bitch whelp), choke it, open it, take out the gall, put it all to the child in the time of the fit with a little tile-tree flower water, and you shall see him cured as it were by a miracle presently." For the whitlow in the finger : " Stop the finger into a cat's ear and it will be whole in half an hour." In case of pestilential fever : " Have a cataplasm of snails beaten and put to the soles of the feet." For watery humour in the eyes : " Put pigeon's blood hot to the eyes, or a young caller pigeon slit iu the back." Among the concoctions, centauries, and vomitories are ingredients which it would be hateful, disgusting, to describe — not to speak of swallowing — which were recommended far on in the century by country practitioners, even after they were being discredited by the more enlightened men of the profession.^ It says much for the vigorous constitutions of the people that under such a barbarous state of the " healing art " the rate of mortality of our forefathers was so moderate. When any one was out of health or spirits a wiser and favourite recommendation was for the patient to go to Moffat Wells — the Buxton of Scotland — or to the " goat's milk." ^ In spite of difficulties from execrable roads, they travelled on horseback into the Highlands, where they drank the milk of goats as a sovereign cure for many an ailment. In those times many gentlemen went " to the goat's whey " annually, as now they go to Harrogate. VIII It was a dangerous thing to be ill, an expensive thing to die, and often a ruinous thing to be buried — the cost of a funeral sometimes being equal to a year's rental.^ Whenever ^ Thomson's Life of Cullen, ii. 564 sq. - "In June," Wodrow writes in 1726 to Lord Grange, "all the ministers about Glasgow were out of townr at the goat'smilk." — Analecta Scotica, ii. 196. Thomson's Life of Cullen ; Arniston Memoirs, p. 93. •'' At John Grierson of Lag's death among the expenses are mentioned " 2 bottels clarit when the sear cloath was put on ; 1 bottel of clarit when the COUNTR V SOCrETV AND COUNTR Y LIFE 53 the breath was out of the body the preparations were made : the winding-sheet of wool, the woollen stockings for the corpse's feet ; the lyke-wake or watching by the dead night and day by watchers who received their frequent refreshment ; the bod}' laid out on view for all who wished to see the " corp " in the room, with chairs and other furniture covered with white linen. When means allowed it the chirurgeon half-embalmed the body and provided a cerecloth to envelope the corpse.^ The invitations to the funeral having been sent out on folio gilt- edged sheets, friends came from far and near to pay their last respects to his memory, and their last attentions to his cellar. The feast was lavish and prolonged — the minister saying the blessing over the meat at vast length, which constituted the whole of his funeral service, and in which he " improved the occasion " with equal solemnity and prolixity. The glass went round with giddy ing rapidity. The sack, claret and ale from the stoups disappeared, and too often the mourners sat till they could not stand, and then with funereal hilarity or sodden solemnity the company followed the remains to the grave."' Drinking was the favourite vice of the century ; it brought no shame, and it seemed to impair no constitution, A man who had himself enjoyed immensely many a festivity at his bosom friends' funerals was anxious that his neighbours should enjoy equally unstinted satisfaction at his own death. " For God's sake, give them a hearty drink " were a dying laird's touching grave cloaths was put on," and at "the coffining where the ladys was 1 bottel clarit, 2 bottels white mne and 1 bottel canary." In fact, every stage of the ceremony was punctuated with drink. — Fergusson's Laird of Lag, p. 252. ^ The "cerecloth" put on the body after a modified embalming, used among richer classes. In 1720 " ane large cerecloth £66 : 13 : 4 Scots " (£5 : lis.) was the charge by the surgeon ; in 1790 it cost £10 : 10s. — Dnncan's Faculty of Physicians in Glasgow, p. 95. "Sear claith, oyl, frankincense, and other necessars " charged in 1716. — Thanes of Cawdor, p. 416. In 1699 " For 2 cearcloths for your ladies' corps £80; and oil and incense £4." — Eoses of Kilravock, p. 388. - In 1704 Lord Whitelaw, judge, was buried at the cost of £5189 Scots, or £423 sterg. , nearly equal to two years' salaiy in those days. — Ramsay's Scot, and Scotsmen, ii. 74; Fergusson's Zat?-c^o/'Zrt(7, pp. 251, 252. At the funeral entertain- ment of John Grierson of Lag there disappeared 8 dozen of wine, not to speak of potations of ale ; at Sir Robert Grierson's obsequies there are charged by the inn- keeper 10 doz. mne — leaving a copious drain in his own cellar to be accounted for. The " vivers " appear in a portentous bill of "rost geese" and turkeys, dish of neat's tongue, 2 doz. "mincht pies, rost pigg, tearts," capons, barrel of oysters, calfs head stewed with wine, etc. etc. 54 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY last words to his son.^ No wonder English officers witnessing these functions pronounced " a Scots funeral to be merrier than an English wedding." The obsequies of a Highland laird or chief was a still more sumptuous affair. All friends and kinsmen within a hundred miles attended, and all the retainers and vassals were present,^ The entertaining of guests con- tinued for several days. A toast-master was chosen from the company at the feast ; the healths were drunk vociferously, although the thanks returned were not always coherent ; liquor was emptied in hogsheads. At last the cortege, miles long, set out to the kirkyard, perhaps many miles away, with torches flaring, coronachs chanting, or pibrochs wailing. No wonder many tales were told of such an event happening often, as did really occur at the funeral of the mother of Forbes of CuUoden, of the party arriving at the grave only to discover that the corpse had been left behind.^ In the Lowlands, in quieter style the procession passed on, while the kirk bell, hanging on a tree, was jerked into fitful tolling by the beadle. The ladies (who in the beginning of the century were clad in their gayest and brightest dresses) walked to the kirkyard gate, while only the male mourners stood by the grave.^ If a gentleman had lost his wife, etiquette and supposed emotion alike required that the husband should remain disconsolate behind in the house, in dangerous proximity to the consolatory drink left by the departed guests.^ In Highlands and Lowlands it was a great occasion for the poor, the blue-gowns, and the vagrants. Usually a laird left in his will so much meal to be distributed to the poor at his burial, and every beggar or cripple within a radius of fifty miles, who had scented his prey from afar, assembled for the chance of food or drink.^ The presence of this ragged, greedy, ' Ramsay, ii. 75 ; Somerville, p. 372. 2 Burt's Letters, i. 219. * Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsmen, ii. 75 ; Burton's Lives of Lovat and Forbes, p. 302. * Caldwell Papers, i. 260. ^ In 1789 James Boswell writes after the death of his wife: "It is not customary in Scotland for a husband to attend his wife's funeral ; but I resolved, if I possibly could, to do the last honours myself." — Boswelliana, p. 151, edited by C. Rogers. ^ At the funeral of Alexander, Earl of Eglinton, in 1723, there assembled COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 55 clamorous crowd in the courtyard added a sordid element to the scene. When the death occurred in a family of high sUmding the doDi- of the cliurch in which the deceased gentleman was wont to worship was painted black, and decorated with white patches, resemblin- big commas or pears or tadpoles, which were meant to represent tears of the afflicted family for the loss of the departed.^ When the accounts were rendered the expenses were portentous — the bills for mourning, food, drink, and carriages amounting to formidable dimensions, — and were not easy to defray out of an income which was prol)ably two-thirds paid in sheep, oats, capons, eggs ; and certainly the heavily wadsedett estate could not bear one burden more. There was little to set by for tocherless daughters, or for sons who must seek a living in any occupation, however humble. The widow, be she wife of noble, baronet, or simple laird, was provided with u jointure which needed painful economy.- Many a dowager- countess in an Edinburgh flat kept her little state on £100 a year, and a laird's or baronet's wife managed to maintain a genial but frugal hospitality on an allowance of £50 or £40 ; nor was it thought unjust that a country gentleman, who had received with his wife a handsome tocher or dowry of 3000 merks, should leave her an annuity of 300 merks, £16, as a sufficient provision. Thus people lived, died, were buried, and bequeathed in the olden days. between 900 and 1000 beggars, many of them from Ireland, as £30 was left for distribution in alms. — Chambers' Annals, iii. 555. 1 Farish of Shotts, by Vv . Grossart, p. 207 :— " 1742, June 28. For colouring and tearing the church doors and lettering them, and colouring and tearing the wall opposite to your burial-place and lettering the same, 8s. Scots " (account to the laird of Murdoston). This custom of covering the house front door -with black drapery covered with tears in silver paper prevailed in France. Warrender's Marchmont ami the Homes of Polwarth, p. 13. " Painting the doors at Nairn for the funeral " is a charge in 1755 at the death of a laird of Kilravock. — Roses of Kilravock, p. 428. ^ The laird of Bemersyde leaves his widow a jointure of 1300 merks, and there was expended at his funeral £142, including £62 mourning articles from Kelso for his daughters, down to 16s. 8d. for a boll of meal to the poor and 2s. for the bell-man. — Russell's Uaigs of Bemersyde. Sir James Smollett of Bonhill in 1735 leaves his widow a jointure of £44 : 8 : 10. — Chambers' Life of Smollett, p. 217. Curious instances of these small provisions are given in Murray's Old Cardross, p. 86. CHAPTEE II COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 1750-1800 Until about 1760 the life of Scottish country society re- mained frugal, homely, and provincial. At that period, how- ever, there were distinct signs of a great change coming over tastes, manners, and habits. Wider interests began to stir in the country, more comfortable ways of living to be adopted by the people. The rise of fortunes, which we have elsewhere described, due to the sudden increase of rental from land and profits from trade, wrought a transformation in the style, tone, and domestic economy of Scotland. As old country houses became decayed or insufficient for the more exacting tastes of the age, new mansions were built which contrasted strangely with the homely homes of simpler days — homes which, if not broken down to form byres and dykes, were left to be occupied by the farmers, with ruder ways even than their lairdly predecessors. The low-ceilinged rooms, the dark and draughty passages, the narrow, sashless, small-paned windows, the walls six to eight feet thick, were absent from the new mansions, which, if they had little architectural beauty, had more light, more space, more comfort. By the disappear- ance of the old houses the country lost little in picturesque - ness, for very many had been hopelessly common-place, with little that was quaint save in the crow-stepped gables and rounded turrets. What was characteristic and striking in ancient Scotch building was to be found chief) v in the larger COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 57 mansions, stately and spacious, with their corbelled turrets, ornamented dormers, and pointed gables. Many ol" these, fortunately, remain to add to the architectural beauty of the country, and to show the taste and skill of master masons in the seventeiiiith century who designed and built many of them. Unhappily, for lovers of the picturesque, many old ([uaint peel-tower residences were removed to make way for houses of an " improved " class, which consisted oi' the mock classic, and accorded with the highest taste of the period.' There were c([ual changes going on within the walls. In the old rooms had been the rouijli, solid furniture, which had been made by the joiners in the country towns, or in the big woodyards of Edinburgh or Glasgow, where there was a supply of timber kept ready for every purpose, from axles to sideboards, from joists to tables, and household articles were made by the carpenters to suit each customer — and fine oak pieces they often were, which, after being discarded, another generation began to prize.^ By the middle of the century there were two upholsterers set up in business in the High Street, Edinburgh, who imported goods from England, and gratified the new demand for carpets and drawing-room furniture of finer finish. The walls of the rooms either had remained coloured plaster or had their nakedness covered in rich houses with arras, or leather, for paper was almost never seen, and never made in Scotland. In 1745 an adventurous tradesman began a business in " painted paper for hanging walls " in Edinburgh — the maker confining himself to two colours with designs of a rudimentary taste.^ The recess- beds with plaiding curtains vanished from drawing-room and bedroom ; the pewter plates and dishes went the way of their " timber " predecessors, and china and delf came in their stead, greatly to the encouragement of the struggling industry in Leith and Glasgow ; the pewter " stoups " in which claret had ' Alacgibbon and Ross's Castellated ai\d Domestic Architecture of Scotlaiid,, ii. 579 ; v. 555, 562-63. - Such was the timber-yard kept in Glasgow by the brother-in-law of John and William Hunter, the great anatomists, called "Amen" Buchanan, from having been precentor in the episcopal meeting-house. — Paget's Life of John Hunter, p. 35. ^ Xxnof^ History of Edinburgh, 1789, p. 600. 58 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY been served, when bottles cost 4d. each, gave place to green glass bottles, which the glass-blowers in Leith were then making. The hours of dinner rose from one o'clock of the early , part of the century to two, and even to three o'clock in fashion- able circles, and with the change of hour came grateful changes of service and diet. The food was not always now put down on table all at once, and two courses came to tempt the palate and appease the appetite.^ The improvement in agriculture enabled people to have fresh meat all the year round, so that it was no longer necessary to kill the " mart " and subsist on salted beef or mutton for half the year. Only quaint-fashioned gentry followed the olden ways. There was Lord Polkemmet, who, with his docile household, methodically ate the animal from nose to tail, going down one side and up the other, till, to the relief of the family, the salt carcass was finished — only, how- ever, making way for another. The memories of those old-world experiences lasted in the minds of persons who survived to more luxurious days. The ancient lady who still continued in the next century the venerable custom, and whose ox killed in November lasted her half the year, because she partook of it only with friends on Sunday, not long before her death urged her neighbour. Sir Thomas Lauder, to dine with her next Sabbath, as her earthly career was nearly run, saying, in vivid metaphor, " For eh, Sir Thamas, we're terrible near the tail end noo ! " " Yet even with a more varied mode of diet, though the everlasting broth (or " broath " — for so all society spelt and pronounced it) and the salt meat and " kain hens " were not inevitable at a repast, there were still severe plainness in the cooking and monotony in the fare ; while haggis, cockyleeky, singed sheep's head, friars' chicken, and cabbiclaw simultaneously allured the appetite.^ Even at a nobleman's ^ The fare in houses of men of position and wealth can be learned from the culinary records of Arniston House in 1748, when Lord President Dundas lived : ' ' Dec. 4, Sunday — Cockyleeky, boiled beef and greens, roast goose (2 bottles of claret, 2 white wine, 2 strong ale). Supper — Mutton stewed with tiu'nips, drawn' eggs (1 bottle claret, 1 white wine, 1 strong ale). Monday, dinner — Pea soup, boiled turkey, roast beef, apple pie. Supper — Mutton steak, drawn eggs, and gravy potatoes, my lord's broath. Tuesday, dinner — Sheep's-head broth, shoulder of mutton, roast goose, smothered rabbits." — Omond's Arnist&n Memoirs, p. 108. ' Cockburn's Memorials, p. 66. ^ Topham's Letters, p. 156. COUNTR V SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 59 table about 1760 ^ there might be no vegetables seen ; and the English traveller, about 1770, alleged that the turnips — still always called " neeps " — appeared as dessert.^ Things, how- ever, changed a little later, and it could no longer be maliciously asserted that the Scots had no fruit but turnips. Country sports and occupations had somewhat changed. Hawking was growing out of fashion ; ^ and gentlemen prided themselves less on the merits of their falcons. But shooting became more a pursuit ; for besides the abundant sport on the wide-spreading moors, if there were fewer wild duck in morass and bog, there were partridges in fields where the newly -grown turnips, potatoes, and corn gave cover, which a few years before they would have sought for in vain in the bare waste or marsh. Agriculture and forestry had become a new pastime and occupation in the country. Gentlemen were everywhere busy improving their residences, as much outside as inside ; and where ploughed fields and heathery wastes had come up to the courtyard or front door, were now avenues of lime, or oak, or elm. Planting and farming, in fact, had become the absorbing passion of lairds, young and old ; and a very expensive one they often found it. They planted in every hollow and on every hill, and eagerly watched their saplings grow to trees, to the dismay of the farmers, who regarded them as destructive to the soil and the crops. Lords of Session, when they came back from the law-courts to their country houses, were full of eagerness to return to their woods. Lord Kames and Lord Dunsinane, the moment they arrived at their homes, although it was dark, were out with lanterns in their hands to see how the trees had grown since last they saw them ; and Lord Auchinleck was up every morning by five o'clock and in the " policy " pruning his young wood. No longer did lairds buy, as their fathers had bought, acorns by the pound, and chestnut seed by the ounce, to rear in the shrubbery. They ^ Wesley writes in 1780 : "When I was in Scotland first [1762], even at a nobleman's table we had only flesh meat of one kind, and no vegetables of any kind; but now they are as plentiful here as in England." — Journal, vol. iv. p. 418. ■^ Humphrey Clinker ; Topham's Letters from Edinburgh, p. 229. ' About 1750 in the Caledonian Mercury advertisements are still frequent of the finding or the loss of hawks, "with bells and silver vervels." 6o SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY planted them in thousands and tens of thousands in the open ground. With increase of incomes, and through wider intercourse with society, there came more expenses — the taste for dressing better, entertaining more, and traveUing farther, which the im- proved roads now permitted. There is clear witness to the change in coaching ways in the fact ^ that formerly all the coaches or chaises were brought over expensively from Holland, France, or England ; that only in 1738 a coach-work was first set up in Edinburgh by a man trained in London, whence he brought north the tools which had hitherto been unknown in the city. Now, where their fathers had modestly gone on horse- back, with ladies on pillion behind, the richer lairds had their coach, with their horses of a finer breed than the ill-groomed, small, yet clumsy brutes which had sufficed in the past. Though households were conducted on less frugal order than before, when servants even in the wealthier establishments had salt meat three days a week, and broth or soup-maigre the rest, wages were moderate, even in a mansion of high degree." There was one pernicious custom — the giving of " vails " or presents, which really had the effect of keeping down the wages of men-servants. This obnoxious system was even more inveterate and burdensome in England, where it was impossible to dine at a rich man's board without having heavy social black- mail silently extorted. The impecunious author could not dine with his noble patron, nor the half-starved, full-familied curate dine with his bishop, without leaving behind him a guinea in the hands of menials much richer than himself ; and, in conse- quence, was forced to pawn his watch, if he had one, or do without dinner the rest of the week, to defray the expense of sitting at his lordship's table for an hour. The departing guest ^ Arnot's Hist, of Edinburgh, p. 599. — Before the end of the century Edin- burgh built coaches which were exported to principal towns on the Baltic and to St. Petersburg. ' ' In 1783 a thousand crane-backed carriages ordered for Paris. " — Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, iv. 35. '^ House servants at Gordonston in 1740 were paid : "Two gentlemen, £10 ; five maids, £5:6:4; two cooks, £5; two porters, £3; groom, £5 :5s." In 1758 the English housekeeper — who arrives riding pillion — had £7 "for wedges, including tea and sugar." — Dunbar's Social Life in Former Times, 2nd series, p. 156. CO UNTR Y SOCIE TY AND COUNTRY LIFE 6 1 had to run the gauntlet of a row of expectant men in livery, and two or three guineas was a common sum — ten guineas not an unknown sum — to leave with footmen after being entertained at a great man's house. This also was the practice in Scotland, although on a scale proportionate to its more limited means. There was an inces- sant social tax of " drink money," " card money," " guest money," which was becoming intolerable. The origin of the practice can in Scotland be traced to the old custom of giving ale or drink-money to every one who did a service, or performed any work. In old account-books of the early part of the century the entries are constant of so much ale being given, or money to buy it. If a man brought to the laird's house a pair of shoes, or an account for its payment, there was given " drink money," or " a gill of ale," or " pigtail tobacco " ; if the mason had built the churchyard dyke, or the wright had set up a pew, the Kirk-Session allowed him " drink money " ; if the workmen had repaired a causeway, or mended the town clock, the Town Council handed them " drink money." ^ As a matter of course, the servants in houses shared with servants outside the pleasant custom. It could be borne as long as it amounted only to a few pence ; but contact with English fashion had brought larger expectations to the menial's countenance, and heavier demands on the guest's purse. At last the gentlemen in Scotland rebelled against this system, and resolved that they would con- tinue it no longer, preferring rather to give higher wages to their servants than allow them to sponge on the forced liberality of their friends. Gentlemen in Aberdeenshire and Midlothian, and members of the Bar — most of whom were persons con- nected with the best families in the country — bound them- selves no longer to give or allow their servants to receive " guest money " in future. The resolution was carried out with such determination that the rapacious practice was at once put an end to, and higher wages were given to the men of livery.- ' "To the wright to driuk for making and setting up eaise for the knock on the stairs, 5s. Scots."; "J lib pigtail for workman." — Account Book of Sir J. Foulis, pp. 57, 371. In estimate for repairing Morton kirk, 1722, is included " item, to a morning drink each day, or 18d. per rood more, £6:1: 3." — Motion Presby. Records. - Amot's Hist, of Edinburgh, p. 375. The beginning of the movement towards 62 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Not so in England. Though, following the example of Scottish gentry, the Grand Jury of Northumberland, and also of Wilt- shire, pledged themselves to discourage all giving of vails, the private resolution of some economical country gentlemen could not change the custom of fashionable society.^ II As the century advanced, as the roads were improved, as communication between different parts of the country became easier, the intercourse of town and country people became more frequent, and old provincialism of life, speech, dress, and manners diminished. Gradually the means of communication by stage-coaches increased between the important towns, as by the rise of wealth and improvement of roads the number of travellers increased." The slow pace of olden times was quickened in the new period. When the famous failure of Fordyce in London was announced on that Black Monday in June 1772, bringing disaster to almost every private bank and to many thousands in Scotland, the calamitous news was brought down by a gentleman posting in the short space of forty-three hours, for he travelled night and day.^ By 1786 there had been made a remarkable improve- abolisliing vails Arnot attributes to incidents connected with the performances of Townley's farce of High Life helov: Stairs in 1759 ; when the footmen, who were allowed to frequent the gallery free, while their masters sat in the boxes, were filled with resentment at the ridicule cast on their ways, pretensions, and extortions. They presented a threatening letter to the manager, Mr. Love, who next night coolly read the menace from the stage. The footmen disturbed the play with their din and wild noise, till they were driven out of the house, and the privilege of gratis admission was withdrawn. A similar incident, if not the very one ascribed to Edinburgh, occurred in Drury Lane Theatre. 1 Lecky's Hist, of England, i. 572 ; Roberts' Social Hist, of Southern Counties, pp. 32, 34. As Sir Richard Steele passed with Bishop Hoadly from a duke's house through a formidable row of lackeys in waiting, conscious that he had no money to give, and more need to borrow, he told them instead that he should be delighted to see them any night at Drury Lane to see his play. 2 For the fly from Edinburgh to Aberdeen the fare was £2 : 2s. ^ Scots Magazine.^ June 1772. The partner in Forbes" Bank set forth after an embezzling clerk, and made the journey to London in forty hours, allowing two hours in Newcastle, and some time in York. — Memoirs of a Banking House, p. 57. CO UNTR Y SOCIE TV AND CO UNTR V LIFE 63 ment on the old arrangements and the old speed. Instead ol the coach that had gone once a month from Edinburgli to London, taking from twelve to sixteen days on the expedition, there were two coaches which started from the Grassmarket livery day, and arrived at the Capital in sixty hours.^ Even (Jlasgow at last came in touch witli London, Although its population had increased with rapid strides, alike in numbers and in prosperity, until 1788^ there was no direct transit to London for a population of 60,000. Any one who wished to travel southwards was obliged to ride the whole way, or to set sail from Borrowstounness by a trading vessel, which in foul weather was a month on the voyage from the town ; or to ride to Newcastle, where he found the ponderous Newcastle waggon, with six wheels and eight horses, which carried heavy goods, and such passengers as could find accommodation under the canvas with the straw-littered floor. Twenty-five miles a day it made on its lumbering course, and it took eighteen days to finish the journey, stopping two Sundays on the road. If these means were not expeditious enough, the more luxurious citizen took the stage-coach (day's journey) to Edinburgh, whence he travelled south. The citizen who had made a tour so remarkable, to a destination so remote, became an object of interest to his fellow-townsmen.^ By 1788 enter- prise was sufficiently awakened to venture on the establish- ment of a direct stage-coach to run from Glasgow to London ; and this, being one of the quick coaches lately instituted by Palmer, performed the journey of 405 miles in sixty-five hours, at the cost of £4 :16s. to each inside passenger."* Swifter arrangements had also brought the west country nearer to the ^ Creech mentions as a remarkable fact that in 1782 a person may set out on Sunday afternoon — " after divine service" he is careful to add— from Edinburgh, may stay a whole day in Loudon, and be again in Edinburgh on Saturday at six in the nxmrnxi^^. ^Fugitive Pieces, }). 68. "^ Glasgoiv Past and Present, ii. 144 ; Strang's Cluhs of Glasgow, p. 132. ' The stage-coach between Edinburgh and Glasgow in twelve houry, starting at eight o'clock in the morning — the fare 12s. for each passenger, and lOd. a stone for all luggage in excess of one stone. The coach from Edinburgh to Stirling cost 8s. — Scots Magazine, 1766, p. 273. In 1799 the speed was increased, till it only took si\ hours between Edinburgh and Glasgow.— Chambers' Dam. Annuls, iii. 612. * Strang's Cluhs of Glasgow, p. 132 ; Glasgow Past and Present, iii. 436. 64 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY east, and by the end of the century Glasgow folk could be carried by stage-coach to Edinburgh in six hours. With this greater speed of communication, and the more frequent intercourse of society and interchange of business, the wretched hovels which had long done duty for inns, and the miserable hosteh'ies which alone had offered accommodation to travellers, began to disappear. In Edinburgh, comfortable, cleanly houses, which bore the name, then strange in Scotland, of " hotels," were built ; ^ and many Englishmen who, bent on pleasure or on business, began to travel north of the border towards the end of the century, had experiences different from, and incalculably pleasanter than, those of their country- men who in less progressive times had ventured on Scottish soil and sojourned in malodorous Scottish inns. Not that the comparative improvement in food, attendance, rooms, and beds in North Britain could satisfy any one accustomed to those charming old hostelries in the south, where comfort reigned over all ; for still in some remote districts and far-off towns, even into the nineteenth century, the disorder and dirt of olden times showed few signs of disappearing, and the traveller resigned himself to the disagreeables of each tavern in his route, in vain hopes that the next might compensate for the miseries of the last. The post increased in speed and frequency as roads be- came more passable, and correspondents became more numerous. The letters had been carried to Glasgow by a post-boy on horseback ; but in 1797, it is triumphantly said, " they are now carried in a single horse-chaise by a person properly armed." Edinburgh by 1780 had no less than six letter-carriers to distribute among a population of 70,000 souls; and through- out the country, instead of having only thirty-four post-towns as at the beginning of the century, there were a hundred and sixty-four at its close. This intercommunication of town with town, and country with city, was affecting the whole social life.^ ^ Creech's Fugitive Pieces, p. 69 ; Smollett's Humphrcij Clinker. - In 1765 the postage of letters carried on stage (50 miles) was reduced in England from 3d. to Id., and in Scotland from 2d. to Id. — Arnot's Hist, of Edinburgh, p. 540. Letters carried from Edinburgli to London in 1790 in four days. — Ibid. ]>. 536. CO UNTR Y SOCIETY AND CO UNTR Y LIFE 65 III We have seen how in the early part of the century it was extremely ditlicult to find occupation for sons at home, or a career abroad, which could afford them a decent livelihood, far less gain them a fortune. The common jibe was that when a Scotsman left his native soil he never cared to return, and that though he might die for his country he would not live in it. Certainly at that period there was some semblance of truth in the taunt. There was no employment for a man of genius or ambition in a country so poor. A man of enter- prise went to London to try his fortune as naturally as a clever Breton goes to Paris. Brilliant poets and politicians, painters, doctors, and architects would have starved at home or died in obscurity, and they sought, therefore, their careers four hundred miles off. Had Dr. Cheyne, famed as physician and bon-vivant, remained in Scotland, the poor fees he would have got could never have allowed him to attain his huge bulk of thirty stone, nor could he with that Falstaffian frame of his have been able to pant up a turnpike stair, and squeeze through narrow entries to his patients in an Edinburgh fourth flat. So to England he went ; to be followed, by and by, by Dr. Armstrong to find patients for his physic and patrons for his verse, and still later by the Hunters to gain great reputations, and by the Fordyces to make pleasant fortunes and profitable practices, while Dr. Cullen wrought laboriously at home to earn small fees. Frugal town councils cared not to spend money in magnificent public buildings, still less in churches, to ornament a city, and gentlemen rarely reared mansions worthy of their estate ; wherefore architects capable of brilliant designs would have been confined to making plans which a respectable stone-mason could have drawn. Though distin- guished draughtsmen did occasionally do work — and good work — in their own country, it was abroad they studied their art and in England they practised it — James Gibb, who became architect of Eadcliffe Library at Oxford and St. Martin's Church in London ; Kobert Mylne, who designed Blackfriars Bridge ; and the brothers Adam, who had no scope 5 66 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V for their talents at home, any more than James Watt for his inventive genius. It was in England Scots artists — Aikman, Strange, Eamsay — sought their public and their patrons. Colin Maclaurin, the brilliant young natural philosopher, eagerly had given up his pittance of £60 a year as Professor of Mathematics to become travelling tutor to a young gentleman ; David Hume was glad to become governor to a hopelessly imbecile peer ; and, later still, Adam Smith quitted his chair in the University of Glasgow to earn a better living as travelling companion to a youthful duke. With the development of trade, however, bringing increase of wealth, there came more encouragement at home to men of talent and energy in professions and business and commerce ; while for the adventurous there were being opened avenues to fortunes far afield in India and the Indies, where they planted and bought estates, and returned to buy properties and settle down as rich lairds. By the end of the century Scots gentlemen not merely secured good posts for their sons, but their influence was able to get good posts for even their dependants, as cadets in the army and civil servants in the " Company " ; and many sons of crofters and mechanics were sent abroad, where they won reputations and fortunes and titles.^ Nor was there any department of business or any pro- fession in England where Scots were not found making careers with a pertinacious success, which brought on them and their country many a jeer from southern lips and lampoons from Grub Street. Sir Pertinax Macsycophant of Macklin's Man of the World^ who makes his way by cunning, cringing, and ^ " How many of these fine lads did my father and Charles Grant send out to India ! Some that throve, some that only passed, some that made a name we were all proud of, and not one that I heard of that disgraced the homely rearing of their hnmbly-positioned but gentle-born parents. . . . Sir Charles Forbes was the son of a small farmer in Aberdeenshire. Sir William Grant, the Master of the Rolls, was a mere peasant — his uncles floated my father's timber down the Spey. General William Grant was a footboy in my uncle Rothie's family. Sir Colquhoun Grant, though a wood-setter's child, was but poorly reared. Sir William Macgregor, whose history was most romantic of all, was such another. The list could be easily lengthened did my memory serve. "—i/(?7?ioi>s of a Highlaml Lady, p. 99 (Miss Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus). 2 The original title of the piece was the "True-born Scotsman," which was COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 67 wily persistence, by " booing and aye booing," and Sir Archy Macsarcasm with his cantankerous soul in Love a la Mode, contrasting with the generous Irishman of the play, were considered admirably accurate portraits of the typical Xorth Briton. In fact, it would have been regarded as incongruous to put on the stage or in a satire a Scotsman without mean- ness and pawkiness, or to mention Scotland without allusion to its filth and its poverty, as it would have been to represent a Jew without his red beard and his sibilant " cent per cent," or Teague without his blunders and his brogue. The un- popularity of Lord Bute, the royal favourite, was more owing to his being a Scotsman than to being an incompetent states- man. That a Scots regiment should be called out to put down a Wilkes riot in London stirred popular indignation more than proposing to employ Eed Indians to put down the white rebels in America. So extreme was this national anti- pathy that when Garrick produced Home's Fatal Discovery, he was obliged to conceal its source and make an Oxford student stand godfather to the play ; and the success of the piece instantly ceased when the Scotsman, greedy of praise, proclaimed his authorship.^ This antipathy was reciprocated heartily. Scotsmen winced under the sneers, and they were embittered by the spleen of those " factious barbarians," as David Hume called them. In patriotic effort to magnify their own qualities, they prepos- terously over-rated everything and everybody Scottish, till the unread and unreadable JEpigoniad of "Wilkie — that grotesque lout of genius — was declared by Hume and many compatriots worthy of a place beside Paradise Lost, and Home's Douglas was proclaimed as fine a play as Macbeth — which its author thoroughly believed. Time ended these international reprisals, and brought peace to this uncivil war. prohibited. Horace "Walpole said he had heard there was little merit in the play except the resemblance of Sir Pertinax to twenty thousand Scotsmen. — Letters, vol. viii. p. 44. ^ Mackenzie's Life and, JVritings of Home, p. 63. 68 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IV Amid the many important economical and social changes which came gradually over the country — growing wealth, wider knowledge of the world, greater appreciation of the gains of civilisation — we may expect to find a larger apprecia- tion of art. This expectation is but moderately fulfilled. While we have seen that artists had scanty encouragement from gentlemen who were too poor to pay for pictures and too uncivilised to care for them, in the latter half of the century they at least could earn a livelihood, and country houses began to show upon their walls paintings — not very many, not very precious — where thirty years before had been blank wastes of dingy -coloured plaster or discoloured oak. Several youths had been engaged in drawing in that poor little " school " in Edinburgh that called itself an " academy," under the patronage of St. Luke, where they aimed at greatness and often ended as house-painters, copying " bustoes " and poor reproductions under a querulous and ill-paid teacher. There they gained all their acquaintance with the achievements of art, supplemented by seeing in a country house fourth-rate pictures picked up by gentlemen on their foreign tours. Patrons helped impecunious promising youths to go to Rome — the studio of the world — where they first beheld the masterpieces of Italy, sorely to their humbling. In 1736 Allan Eamsay, settled in his Luckenbooth book- shop, wrote to his friend John Smibert — another of Scotland's deserting painters : " My son Allan has been pursuing his studies since he was a dozen years auld, has been with Mr. Haffridg in London for two years ; has been since at home painting like a Eaphael, sets off for the Seat of the Beast beyond the Alps. I am sweer to part with him." ^ So young Allan went off to Rome, where the Scots classic painter Gavin Hamilton — another deserter — received all his young country- men with welcome. In a few years Ramsay returned to Edin- burgh to paint admirable portraits full of veracity, expres- sion, and force, as well as to become a man of letters and of ^ The Gentle Shepherd, with Illustrations of the Scenery, 1814, i. 64. CO UNTR Y SOCIETY AND COUNTR Y LIFE 69 fashion. Judges, lords, and gentry he limned, and his portraits perpetuate the notable features of a generation before Eaeburn practised his skill. But what was there in Scotland to satisfy a man of ambition ? The demand for pictures was limited and the pay was poor. When a laird had his own portrait and his wife's taken, or a lord of session was depicted, complacent in his new robes, his desire to encourage art was satiated, for low ceilings and small rooms gave little accom- modation for frames, especially in Edinburgh flats. So Scot- land again lost in 1756 its only competent artist, and London absorbed the neat, keen-eyed, hot-tempered, genial Eamsay — a scholar, a linguist, a conversationalist, whom even Johnson praised in spite of his being a Scotsman, who gained success, becoming master painter to George III., whose frequent portraits he painted, and whose repast of boiled mutton and turnips he ate when his royal master had finished, while Queen Charlotte conversed in German with her favourite polyglot artist.^ When Scotland was in an utterly forlorn state as regards art, a project unhappily entered into the heads of worthy Andrew and Robert Foulis, most excellent printers, whose scholarly editions of classics in beautiful type and accurate texts were winning honour to them. This project was to found a great school of art in Glasgow — the seat of tobacco, tape, and the sugar trade. In their pilgrimages abroad to visit libraries and examine editions of classics, they collected some pictures which the good artless men thought rare bargains of great value ; they secured a room in the hospitable precincts of the college ; they hired two or three teachers, and opened their academy to develop art in 1753. Some scholars did come to learn designing, and made copies of pictures and " bustoes," which were sold to encourage native talent. Un- luckily, tobacco lords cared little for fine arts ; pictures did not go off; and students did not come in. Though the enthusiasm of the estimable founders was hard to damp, the crisis came at last to this misplaced venture. Among the closing scenes of the tragedy was the spectacle of a waggon lumbering along the road to London in 1775, accompanied by Eobert Foulis (his ^ Cunningham's British Painters, v. 34 ; Chambers' Eminent Scotsmen {sub voce). 70 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY brother, fortunately, was dead), and his faithful man beside him, escorting, as it had been a hearse, the freight of spurious masterpieces and unsold copies. After an Exhibition, which had scarcely a spectator, there followed the auction by the remorseless hammer, which knocked down for fabulously low prices cherished " Eaphaels " that Eaphael never saw. Then came the end. Eobert Foulis felt the hand of death upon him, and when Dr. WilHam Hunter, to cheer his forlorn friend, had offered to get the king to see the Exhibition, he answered, " It doesn't signify. I shall soon be in the presence of the King of kings " — which was true, for the poor man fell ill and died in Edinburgh as he was proceeding on his disconsolate journey home.-^ Still, one or two of the lads who had sat in the benches of the now dismantled academy were to win some little fame. There was James Tassie, the stone-mason, who learned modelHng, and afterwards made his name by his charming medallion portraits and beautiful imitations of gems and cameos in his secret " white enamel paste." There, too, David Allan, the queer, mean-looking, pock-pitted, threadbare lad, served seven years' apprenticeship, who after his return from Eome turned his hand to depicting rural life. His illustrations of Scots songs, which dehghted Burns, and his drawings for the Gentle Shejoherd, giving admirable representations of cottage interiors, of rural ways and humours and habits, displayed a genuine Hogarthian humour, with such sad absence of grace that, as Allan Cunningham says, his shepherdesses were more adapted to scare crows than to allure lovers.^ Eor this almost for- gotten artist can be claimed the merit of being the earliest of Scottish genre painters, the precursor of those delineators of domestic scenes and humours of whom Wilkie was the greatest. In the now deserted rooms for a time had also studied Alexander Eunciman, who after his return from Eome abandoned his beloved landscape -painting, because no one cared for it, and became as full of enthusiasm for the favourite 1 Notices of Literary Hist, of Glasgow (Maitland Club), p. 40. ^ Cunningham's British Painters, vi. 21 ; The Gentle Shepherd, with Illus- trations of the Scenery, an Appendix containing the Memoirs of David Allan, the Scots Hogarth, 2 vols. 1814. CO UNTR V SOCIE TY AND CO UNTR Y LIFE 7 1 classic historical scenes which then filled acres of canvas in the Eoyal Academy, but found place in few country houses in Scotland ; for what mortal could long endure the sight upon his walls of " Sigismunda weeping over the heart of Tancred," or " Job in distress," or that theme on which every historical painter of the day tried his skill, "Agrippina landing with the ashes of Germanicus " ? Into Runciman's studio men of letters and law — llobertson and Kames and Monboddo — loved to come to chat and watch at work the exuberant man brimming over with interest in everything. Ambitious of emulating the work of Michel Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, he set to work to paint for his friend Sir John Clerk of Penicuik scenes from Ossian, which since 1762 kindled admira- tion in enthusiastic bosoms for the mist and mystery of the north, the moaning ocean on the wind-swept Isles, the magni- loquent, shadowy, and melancholy heroes. The scaffold was raised, and there he lay, lying in painful postures — contracting a disease from which he ultimately died one day as he entered his house in 1785. Portrait-painters were usually sure of customers in Edinburgh; and amongst others David Martin, who has perpetuated for us the features of Jupiter Carlyle, Lord Kames, Hume, Benjamin Franklin, was painting and engraving for forty years. But in 1785 another artist arose to eclipse all rivals — Henry Raeburn, who left his goldsmith's shop to study design entirely by him- self ; for Martin would not show him how to mix colours, though he lent him pictures to copy. When only twenty-two he began to practise his art, and everything prospered with the " lad in George Street," as envious Martin spoke of him with a snarl, from the time he set up his easel and the young pretty widow called to have her portrait taken, with the result that in a month's time she made an admirable picture and began to be an admirable wife. To the studio in George Street, and after- wards in York Place, what a wonderful succession and variety of customers came to sit upon that high platform on which the painter placed them, and felt his dark keen eye fixed on them as he stepped back to contemplate his subject, resting his chin on his fingers, as he stands in his own portrait, before apply- ing his swift, unerring strokes to the canvas ! Everybody who 72 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY was anybody sat to him — nobles and gentlemen to add to a family gallery, rubicund judges, shrewd writers and advocates whose faces bespoke " an excellent practice," ministers and professors of note, men of letters and science, Highland chiefs " all plaided and plumed," young ladies who still were beauties and old ladies who had once been toasts, from whose " speak- ing likenesses " one almost expects to hear the good Scots tongue speak forth.^ Yet another artist has his distinct place in the social life of Scotland — the first of its landscape-painters. Alexander ISTasmyth had returned to his native Edinburgh from Eamsay's studio, where he had been one of the five assistants that filled in the details and backgrounds for the busy court portrait-painter. Of course he took to painting portraits, and to him we owe the precious sketch of his friend Eobert Burns in 1789. He had, however, cause to abandon that department. His political opinions were pronounced — the keen " rights of men " type of the day — and he lacked the gift of holding his tongue. Naturally, douce citizens and Tory lairds were wroth at listen- ing to wild utterances, which they could not resent without spoil- ing their reposeful expression. Nasmyth, therefore, prudently turned from depicting the features of customers whom he made irascible to painting the face of nature, which betrays no emotion. It was a well-timed change. Appreciation of beauty and wildness in scenery was springing up. No longer would anybody like painter Northcote pass over Mt. Cenis with night-cowl drawn tight over his eyes, not caring for one glimpse of Alpine glory. Gray, the poet, returned from his Highland tour in 1765 proclaiming that "the mountains were ecstatic and ought to be visited once a year. None but these monstrous children of God know how to join so much beauty with so much horror." ^ By 1780 Englishmen were touring through Scotland, and knew more of its lochs and mountains, which Johnson had called " protuberances," than Scotsmen themselves. Country gentlemen were busy improving their grounds and adding picturesqueness to their homes, and with this taste Nasmyth's landscapes harmonised. Noblemen and ^ Cunningham's British Painters, v. 204 ; Chambers' Eminent Scotsmen. ^ Gray's Works (Gosse's edition), vol. iii. p. 223. COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 73 lairds consulted him how to set out their " policies " to advantage, and no better counsellor could be got than he who had inherited from his father the taste of an architect, and transmitted to his son James, the notable engineer, his skill as mechanic. When the Duke of AthoU consulted him as to how he could get trees planted in inaccessible spots, he got tin canisters, filled them with seed, and fired them from a little cannun towards the required nooks, where the seeds sprang up and in time became stalwart trees.^ For the first time in many a town and country house were to be seen pictures of Scots woodland or mountain scenery, due to the hand of Nasmyth, who founded a school of land- scape-painting which had true scholars in his own son Patrick and Thomson of Duddingston.^ Still, notwithstanding these efforts to spread art and increase taste, when the next century began the pubhc were without interest in it ; and it is said there was no market for any pictures except portraits by Eaeburn.^ After this digression into the region of art we return to the common ways and manners of society, in which time was working many a change. Ladies, after the middle of the century, were altering greatly in habits, taste, and dress.^ By the more easy and frequent intercourse with towns, city modes were passing into every rural mansion. The national plaid was abandoned about 1750 and no longer graced their forms and piquantly hid their features ; and in chip hats, toupees, and sacques, they followed the style of Edinburgh, which had been copied from London. Education changed slowly, and they still left school ignorant of geography, history, and grammar, though they ^ Autobiography of James Nasmyth, edited by Smiles. - Baird's Life of Thomson of Lhiddingston ; Brydall's Hist. ' Cockbiirn's Memorials, p. 244. * In 1750 there were only six milliners in Edinburgh. — Ramsay's Scotland avd Scotsmen. Two sisters of Thomson, author of the Seasons, had become mantua makers. 74 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY spelt more respectably and spoke a little less broadly. They might know occasionally a little Italian — just enough to mis- understand it.^ They were deft with their fingers at sewing cambric and plying their tambouring. The old instruments of the mothers or grandmothers, viol and virginal, remained as lumber in the garrets, and they played on the harpsichord and spinet, to which they sang their plaintive Jacobite songs and made their audience weep in sentiment over Prince Charlie, who was busy drinking himself to death at Florence. But after the pianoforte was introduced into England in 1767, that instrument took the place of the dear old jingling wires of the spinet, from which the nimble reels and strathspeys had come with infinite spirit to stir feet to merry measure at the unceremonious gatherings in many a country house, when, after the dance was over, half a dozen damsels would sleep together in some small bedroom, and the men in dishevelment were content to pass the night in a barn or stable loft. At last spinet and harpsichord were sold at roups for a few shillings to tradesmen and farmers for their daughters to practise on, or to act as sideboards. Now to the piano were suns other songs — those which, united to delightful airs, came with a rush of feminine lyric genius from Lady Anne Lindsay, Miss Elliot, Mrs. Cockburn, and Mrs. Hunter — the two " sets " of " Flowers of the Forest," " Auld Eobin Gray," " My mother bids me bind my hair," which charmed the tea- parties when the century was old. From the society balls the minuet had gone with the primmer public manners of the past, and the reel and country dance had become popular to suit a freer age. Observers of manners and lovers of the past were noticing and deploring the rise of new and livelier ways. Of old there had been amid woman-kind a dignity and stateliness in deport- ment, begotten of the severe discipline of the nursery, the rigour of the home, and precision of those gentlewomen of high ^ At the end of the century Italian was often made one of the items of young ladies' accomplishments. About 1775 the young ladies of Gask were taught by a governess, who was hired at a salary of from 10 to 12 guineas a year to impart the practice of "ye needle, principles of religion and loyalty, a good carriage, and talking tolerable good English." — Tytler's Songstresses oj ScotlafuL ii. 115. COUNTR V SOCIETY AND CO UNTR Y LIFE 7 5 birth who taught iu high flats all feminine accomplishments. If they snulTed it was with formality ; if they spoke broad Scots it was without vulgarity ; if they said things — and they did say them — that sounded improper to a new generation, their behaviour was a model of propriety, for they had been reared sternly.^ By 1780, when these ladies had become frail and wrinkled and old, the austerity of home training, the aloofness of parent and children, so painfully characteristic of former days in Scotland," had passed off, to the regret of many old-fashioned folk. Dr. Gregory, an admirable physician, and without doubt an admirable father, spoke of these changes with sorrow : " Every one who can remember a few years back will be sensible of a very striking change in the attention and respect formerly paid by gentlemen to ladies. Their drawing- rooms are deserted, and after dinner the gentlemen are impatient till they retire. The behaviour of ladies in the last age was reserved and stately ; it would now be considered ridiculously stiff and formal. It certainly had the effect of making them respected." ^ Probably to many to-day the social ease, whose advent was so lamented, would seem after all stiff as starch and buckram. ' Ou the tastes and topics of ladies, about 1750, see letters concerning liorse- breeding by a lady of rank in Dunbar's Social Life of Morayshire. Speaking of ladies previous to 1730, Miss Mure says : " The ladies were indelicate and vulgar in their manners, and even after '45 they did not change much and were indelicate in married ones. " — Caldwell Papers, i. 262. She speaks of young ladies in the boisterous merriment of a marriage or christening getting " intoxicated" ; but perhaps there was a milder Scots meaning in the word, for we find James Boswell with subtle refinement explaining to his friend Temple, " I did not get drunk. I was, however, intoxicated." — Letters of Boswell, p. 209. - Lives of the Lindsays, ii. 304 ; Dennistoim's Life of Sir R. Strange; Lady Minto's Life of Sir Gilbert Elliot, i. 15 ; Fergusson's Henry Erskine, p. 62. Miss Violet MacShake in Miss Ferrier's Marriage expresses these old family rela- tionships in a forcible way, strikingly like that of Miss Mure of Caldwell {Caldwell Papers, i. 260) : " F my grandfather's time, as I have heard him tell, ilkamaister 0' a faamily had his ain sate in his ain hoose ; aye, an' sat wi' his hat on his heed afore the best 0' the land ; an' had his ain dish an' wus aye helpit first an' keepit up his authority as a man should do. Paurents were paurents then — bairns daurdna' set up their gabs afore them as they dae noo." — ii. 126 (1818). For strangely reserved terms between Joanna Baillie's parents and their family, see Tytler and Watson's Songstresses of Scotland, ii. p. 183. ' A Father's Legacy to his Daughter, 1774. 76 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V Whether the old days were better than the new may be a matter of doubt. Englishmen found Scots ladies charm- ingly frank and natural, and more intelligible than their elders, as they gave up broad Scots words and retained only the Scots cadence ; ^ but certainly the former school of gentle- women was far more picturesque and more quaint, more interesting to look at and more entertaining to listen to. They might be poor — they usually were ; they might as dowagers live, like Lady Lovat, in a small flat on £140 a year, and be able, like that high-born and high-residenced dame, to put only a penny or half-penny in the "brod" on Sabbath when they went to the fashionable Tron Kirk of Edinburgh ; they might go out in pattens and bargain in emphatic ver- nacular over a fishwife's creel at the " stair foot," and be lighted home with a lantern to the " close mouth " when the tea-party was over, to save sixpence for a sedan-chair ; but in city and jointure houses in country towns, with their tea and card parties, they wondrously maintained their dignity. They talked of things with blandness on which a reticent age keeps silence ; they had read Aphra Behn's plays and spoke freely of To7n Jones, which the young generation would shut with a slam of disapproval, or hide under the sofa cushion when a \dsitor came in ; ^ they punctuated their caustic sayings with a big pinch of snuff, ^ The Scots tongue was no longer heard in its purity and its breadth from the lips of the younger people in 1774. Speaking of this date, Dr. Johnson writes : " The conversation of the Scots grows every day less displeasing to the English ear. Their peculiarities wear fast away ; their dialect is likely to become in half a century provincial and rustic even to themselves. The great, the learned, the ambitious, and the vain all cultivate the English phrases and the English pronunciation. In splendid companies Scots is not much heard, except now aud then from an old lady." — Journey to the Western Islands, 1791. It is evident that those who met Dr. Samuel tried to speak their best and not their usual. ' ' Scots literati write English as a foreign language, though Edin- burgh society manifest an anxiety to rid themselves of Scots accent." — P. 22. Topham's Letters, 1776. 2 When old Miss Keith of Ravelston got at her request Mrs. Behn's works to read, she returned them ^vith the words: "Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn, and if you will take my advice you will put her in the iire ; for I find it impos- sible to get through the first novel. But is it not an odd thing that I, an old woman of eighty and upwai'ds, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which sixty years ago I have heard read aloud for the amusement of large eii-cles consisting of the first and most creditable society in London ?" — Life of Sir W. Scott, vi. 406. \ COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 77 and sometimes confirmed them with a rattUng oath.' iUit, lor all, they were as upright as they were downriglit ; their manners were stiff as their stomachers, and their morals as erect as their figures, which they kept bolt upright without touching the backs of the chairs— for so they had been disciplined under the tuition of the Honourable Mrs. Ogilvie, that sister-in-law of Lord Seafield whose boarding-school was the pink of feminine perfection. Changing times were affecting the men also ; the uncouth- ness and provincialism were disappearing from their manners, their attire, and their speech ; but some habits of the past were becoming, as in English society, worse instead of wiser. Drinking had always been a favourite occupation. At dinners, public and private, solemn and genial, at christenings, wed- dings, and funerals, they drank with equal vigour and perfect impartiality. When the chief beverage was ale the effects were not so disastrous or so lasting ; when dinners were at one o'clock or two, the drinking could not be prolonged, for the business of the afternoon hindered protracted sittings. But when dinner hours advanced to three or four o'clock, and they took claret, and still worse when all drank port, the parties continued at the board till late at night, in genial company, and he was reckoned a poor host indeed who allowed his friends to leave the dining-room sober. In these circles the wine was seldom placed on the table at dinner, but required each time to be called for, and then it was drunk with the formula of each gentleman asking another to drink with him. This was the invariable process gone through : there was the glance across the table to a friend, the pantomimic lifting of the glass, the inviting w^ords, " A glass of wine with you, sir ? " and congenially they drank each other's health. Such was the custom in good society, though not in the very highest life, ^ Of the vigour of speech with which genuine ladies of old times expressed themselves, many stories are told ; see above, p. 29. — Dennistoun's Life of Sir R. Strange, ii. 213. A dame of distinguished family of that period when driving home one night was awakened by the carriage being stopped by the coachman, who told her he had seen "a fa'in' star." "And what hae ye to do wi' the stars I wad like to ken?" said his mistress. "Drive on this moment and be damned to you " — adding in a lower tone, as was her wont, " as Sir John wad ha' said if he had been alive, honest man." — Stirling-Maxwell's Miscellaneous Essays, 1891, p. 160. 78 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TWhen the table was cleared of viands, and the glasses once more were set on the shining mahogany, each person proposed the health of every other person present severally, and thus if there were ten guests there were ninety healths drunk, with serious consequences to the health of all. There were also rounds of toasts, each gentleman naming an absent lady, each lady an absent gentleman. Next followed " sentiments," as another excuse for further imbibing. Each person was called on in turn to propose a wish called a " sentiment " — it might be some crisp sentence, a poetic phrase, a jovial proverb, or, as generally, a fatuous moral reflection. Each guest pro- posed such a fine utterance as " May the hand of charity wipe the tears of sorrow," " May the pleasures of the night bear the reflection of the morning," or, in homely vernacular, the senti- ment might be, " May waur ne'er be amang us," " May the wind of adversity ne'er blaw open our door," and then followed applause and a drink. Practised diners-out had their own invariable sentences, which were loyally reserved to them as a favourite song to a singer. As every one must take part in the round of sentiments — the youngest, the shyest, the least inventive — it was an agonising ordeal to many. After the ladies had left the room the conviviality, with jest and story and song, began with renewed vigour ; so that gentlemen did not join the ladies, not being producible in the drawing-room.^ That in these days and nights of hard potations country guests found their way home through pitch-dark rugged roads, shows that the horses were more rational than their riders. Fortun- ately, by the end of the century society became more sensible and less noisy. The deplorably idiotic custom of " sentiment- giving " was given up, to the intense relief of old and young, and incessant toasts were only lingering in the practice of stupid old-fashioned veterans in geniality. The hard drinking considerably sobered down in Scotland as in England, and the most arduous feats of a bibulous generation had become memories, leaving, however, their most vivid traces in features, as of Henry Dundas, " tinged with convivial purple." ^ Ramsay's Reminiscences, 186.3, pp. 67-72 ; Cockburn's Memorials of his Times, p. 35 ; Gentleman's Magazine, 1766 ; Fergusson's Henry Erskine and his Times, p. 213 ; Strang's Cluhs of Glasgow. CO UNTR Y SOCIETY AND CO UNTR Y LIFE 79 In spite of the lapse of time and disappearance of many old homely traits of living, to the end there were many quaint aspects of the past in Scots country life. The pedlars still came round with their packs, though no longer had the lady any yarn of her own s])inning to exchange for wehs of linen ; the survivors of the old gaberlunzies, clad in their blue gowns, called still with wallets over their shoulders to receive meat and meal at the door, and retail gossip and stories in the kitchen. There was a kindly attachment of domestics who served for small wages, and, achieving longevity, passed down as heirlooms in a family through two generations, living and dying as the familiar and garrulous tyrants of a household. Scottish — ineffaceably Scottish — remained many types of society, especially in the country houses and manses, in spite of the advent of modern innovations, and that frequent inter- course with the wider world which was fast polishing the race into conventional shape. In no other country, surely, did there exist such marked individuality of character. Each one might retain his or her peculiarity, his or her whim of mind, oddity of life, or fancy of dress, in country seat or city flat. This striking originality of nature was found alike in judge and laird and minister, and in their spouses. The country swarmed with " originals " in every rank, in town and village. One can see what special personality there was as we look at sketches, which seem to us caricatures, of Edin- burgh notables, etched by John Kay the barber so cleverly, which, any time after 1783, when stuck up in his little shop window in Parliament Square, attracted in the morning groups of citizens, who recognised with laughter some well-known local figure with each peculiarity emphasised, and pronounced every quaint likeness " capital " — except their own. One meets with these distinct characteristics in those ladies and gentlemen of the decline of the century who live in Lord Cockburn's charming pages. One notes them in the portraits and the stories of the bench of judges — a veritable menagerie of oddities, chokeful of whims, absurdities, and strange idiosyn- crasies, and of queer humour, conscious or unconscious, in dignitaries without dignity. Where else could attain to high position and exist in sedate and sensible company a Braxfield, So SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY a Polkemmet, an Eskgrove, and a Hermand ? The old race, with their old-world ways, which was at last leaving the earth, luckily survived long enough to be portrayed by the master touch of Sir Henry Eaeburn, from whose canvasses so many faces with distinctively Scots features and qualities — gentlemen in their high collars, ruffled shirts, and powdered hair or wigs, and dames in old picturesque attire of a bygone day — look down from the walls of many mansions upon a later and a conventional generation. It is difficult to say which was more fortunate — the sitters who had such a superb artist to paint them, or the artist who had such admirable figures to copy. CHAPTER III TOWN LIFE EDINBURGH I The height of Edinburgh's glory was before the Union of 1707, in the days when meetings of the Scots Parliament drew to the capital nobles and persons of quality from every county, when periodically the city was full of the richest, most notable, and best-bred people in the land, and the dingy High Street and Canongate were brightened by gentlemen in their brave attire, by ladies rustling in their hoops, brocade dresses, and brilliant coloured plaids, by big coaches gorgeous in their gilding, and lackeys splendid in their livery. For the capital of a miserably poor country, Edinburgh had then a wonderful display of wealth and fashion. After 1707 all this was sadly changed. " There is the end of an auld sang," said Lord Chancellor Seafield in jest, whether light or bitter, when the Treaty of Union was concluded ; but it was a " song " that lingered long in the hearts of those who knew it well, associated with a long eventful history, and leaving many regretful memories behind it. No more was the full concourse of men and ladies of high degree to make society brilliant with the chatter of right honourable voices, the glint of bright eyes from behind the masks, the jostling of innumerable sedan- chairs in the busy thoroughfare, where nobles and caddies, judges and beggars, forced their way with equal persistency. Instead of the throng of 145 nobles and 160 commoners, who often with their families and attendants filled the town with life and business, there went to Westminster the sixteen 6 82 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY representative peers and sixty members of Parliament, travelling reluctantly and tediously and expensively by the wretched roads, and lodging in London at ruinous charges — and all for what ? To find themselves obscure and unhonoured in the crowd of English society and the unfamiliar intrigues of English politics, where they were despised for their poverty, ridiculed for their speech, sneered at for their manners, and ignored in spite of their votes by the Ministers and Govern- ment.^ No wonder the Union was specially unpopular in Edin- burgh, for it deprived the city of national dignity, carried from citizens their fashions, and spoiled their trade. A gloom fell over the Scots capital : society was dull, business was duller still,^ the lodgings once filled with persons of quality were left empty — many decayed for want of tenants, some fell almost into ruin.^ Eor many a year there was little social life, scanty intellectual culture, and few traces of business enterprise. Gaiety and amusement were indulged in only under the censure of the Church and the depressing air of that gloomy piety which held undisputed and fuller sway when the influence of rank and fashion no longer existed to counteract it. ^ "It was one of the melancholyist sights to any that have any sense of an antient nobility to see them going throu for votes and making partys, and giving their votes to others who once had their own vote." — Wodrow's Analecta, i. 308. "In the beginning of this month [September 1711] I hear a generall dissatis- faction our nobility that was at last Parliament have at their treatment at London. They complean they are only made use of as tools among the English, and cast by when their party designs are over." — Ibid. i. -348. In great dudgeon in 1712 the Scots members met together and expressed "high resentment of the uncivil haughty treatment they met with from the English." — Lockhart Papers, i. 417. Principal Robertson remarked to Dr. Somerville, " ' Our members suffered immediately after the Union. The want of the English language and their uncouth manners were much against them. None of them were men of parts, and they never opened their lips but on Scottish business, and then said little." Lord Onslow (formerly Speaker) said to him, ' Dr. Robertson, they were odd- looking dull men. I remember them well.' "— Somerville's Oion Life and Times, p. 271. " Allan Ramsay's Poems, 1877, i. 169. This desolation is deplored in 1717 : — O Canongate, poor elritch hole ! What loss, what crosses dost thou thole, London and death gar thee look droll. And hlng thy head. " Elegy on Lucky, Wood." ^ Maitland's Hisf. of Edinburgh, 1756. TO WN LIFE—EDINB URGH 83 The town, ull onclosed within the city walls, chiefly con- sisted of one long street — Canongate and High Street — that stretched a mile long from Holyrood to Castle, with the low- lying parallel Cowgate. From this main thoroughfare branched off innumerable closes and wynds, in which lived a dense population, gentle and simple.^ There was something im- pressive in the houses towering to ten to twelve stories in height of that extended street, though its continuity was then broken midway by the Xetherbow Port — the Temple Bar of Edinburgh — with its huge iron gateway. There was picturesque- ness in the houses, whose wooden-faced gables were turned to the streets, the projecting upper story making piazzas below. But the few visitors from England were impressed far more by its dirt and dinginess than by its quaint beauty, by the streets which were filthy, the causeways rugged and broken, the big crurgling gutters in which ran the refuse of a crowded population, and among which the pigs poked their snouts in grunting satisfaction for garbage. By ten o'clock each night the filth collected in each household was poured from the high windows, and fell in malodorous plash upon the pavement, and not seldom on unwary passers-by. At the warning call of " Gardy loo " {Gardez I'eau) from servants preparing to out- pour the contents of stoups, pots, and cans, the passengers beneath would agonisingly cry out " Hand yer hand " ; but too often the shout was unheard or too late, and a drenched periwig and besmirched three-cornered hat were borne dripping and ill-scented home. At the dreaded hour when the domestic abominations were flung out, when the smells (known as the " flowers of Edinburgh ") filled the air, the citizens burnt their sheets of brown paper- to neutralise the odours of the out- side, which penetrated their rooms within. On the ground all night the dirt and ordure lay awaiting the few and leisurely scavengers, who came nominally at seven o'clock next morning with wheel-barrows to remove it. But ere that 1 Contemporary descriptions of Edinburgh in the first half of the century : — Journey through North of EnglaTuL and. Scotland in 1704, privately printed 1818 ; Macky's Joumeji through Scotland, 1729 ; Tour through Great Britain (begun by Defoe), iv. 88 ; Burt's Letters from the North, i. 18. ^ Dealers in brown paper are said to have made no little profit by selling that article for deodorising purposes. — Kay's Edinburgh Portraits, ii. 4. 84 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY morning hour the streets were becoming thronged, for people rose and business began early, and the shopkeepers, treading cautiously amid the filth and over the teeming gutters, had set forth to open their booths. Worst of all was the Sunday, when strict piety forbade all work, deeming that street -cleansing was neither an act of necessity nor one of mercy, and required the dirt to remain till Monday morning. While high overhead towered the houses in the air, many in the Lawnmarket had pillared piazzas on the ground floor, under which were the open booths where merchants showed their wares. Others spread them on the pavement in front of their shops, and in the middle of the street near St. Giles were open spaces, where on stalls the special crafts displayed their goods — woollen stuffs, linen, or pots — for the shops were too small and too obscure to accommodate or show off the modest stores their owners possessed. In the second or third flat of the Luckenbooths — a row of tall narrow houses standing in front of St. Giles and blocking the High Street — the best tradesmen had their shops, at a rental of which the very highest rate was £15,^ and not a few of these shopkeepers, not- withstanding their humble rooms and slender stock of goods, were members of high Scots county families. Others in good position had their business in cellars or little chambers on the basement, to which the customers descended by worn stone steps, and in which there was little space to turn and little light to see by. High up in front of the houses were the strange signs, painted in colours on black ground, each tradesman picturing thereon the article in which he chiefly dealt — the effigy of a quarter loaf showed that in that flat there traded a baker ; over the window above a periwig adver- tised the presence of a barber ; the likeness of a cheese or firkin of butter, of stays, or of a petticoat, pointed out to the people where were to be got the articles they sought." Few goods were kept in stock, and the customer for silk, cloth, or jewellery must give his order betimes, and patiently wait ■' Chambers' Traditions of Edinburgh, ii. 352 ; AVilson's Mcmoricds of Edin- burgh. ^ Topham's Letters from Edinburgh, p. 28. , TO VVN LIFE—EDINB URGH 85 till it came its slow course from London by waggon, or from Holland or Flanders by the boat to Leith three months afterwards. In the flats of the lofty houses in wynds or facing the High Street the populace dwelt, who reached their various lodgings by the steep and narrow " scale " staircases, which were really upright streets. On the same building lived families of all grades and classes, each in its flat in the same gtair — the sweep and caddie in the cellars, poor mechanics in the garrets, while in the intermediate stories might live a noble, a lord of session, a doctor, or city minister, a dowager countess, or writer ; higher up, over their heads, lived shop- keepers, dancing masters, or clerks. The rents of these mansions varied curiously in the same close, or same stair, from the cellars and garrets paying £12 Scots (18s.) to the best-class chambers paying £300 Scots (£20). But the common rent of a gentleman's dwelling in the first half of the century was £8 or £10 a year. Lord President Dundas used to say that even when his income was 20,000 merks (£1000), he lived in a house at £100 Scots (£8 : 6 : 8) and had only two roasts a week.^ But living was then plain, for incomes were small ; a minister in his city charge in the middle of the century and a professor in the University were thought well off with £100 or £130 a year, while a lord of session had a salary of £500. The dark, narrow stairs, with their stone steps worn and sloping with traflic, were filthy to tread on ; and on reaching the flat where lodged an advocate in extensive practice, eyes and nose encountered at the door the " dirty luggies " in which were deposited the contents which, as St. Giles' bells rang out ten o'clock, were to be precipitated from the windows.^ On the door, instead of a bell or knocker, was a " risp," which consisted of a notched or twisted rod of iron with a ring attached, which the visitor rasped up and down upon the ' Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsmen, ii. 28. 2 Tour throicgh Great Britain, iv. 88 ; Humphrey Clinker. The Towii Council, in August 1745, "considering that inasmuch as the several Acts on the throwing of foul water, filth, dirt, and other nastiness in the high streets, vennels, and closes had not been put into due execution, direct each family would now provide vessels in the houses for holding their excrements and foul water at least for 48 hours, under penalty of 4s. Scots." 86 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY notches till the door was opened by a maidservant, probably with neither shoes nor stockings.-^ The rooms within were entered from a narrow, ill-lighted lobby, and were low-ceilinged, deriving light from the spare windows whitjh long before sunset had faded into gloom. Some- times in the public rooms there were signs of dignity and art, in the elaborately stuccoed ceiling, the finely carved massive marble mantelpiece, the walls oak-panelled or covered with gilt leather, with landscape panels from the hand of " old Norrie," the decorator ; but usually the rooms were plain and poor, crammed with furniture for which there was no space. The accommodation in a mansion of high class would be six rooms, including the kitchen. Tar on in the century in the public rooms there were beds, concealed during day by curtains. Campbell of Succoth, an eminent lawyer, lived in his flat in James's Court, where his clerks worked in a little closet without a fire-place, and when the Duke of Argyll and other big clients dined with him, they were received in Mr. and Mrs. Campbell's bedroom.'^ Partly from economy, partly from lack of space, the staff of servants was extremely limited,^ for often one — and there was no accommodation for more than two — did the work of the household on a wage of ^ Chambers' Traditions, i. 236. Called a "craw," because it made a rasping noise like a crow. Here in these chambers ever dull and dark The lady gay received her gayer spark, Who, clad in silken coat, with cautious tread Trembled at opening casements overhead ; And when in safety at her porch he trod, He seized the risp and rasped the twisted rod. " Ancient Royalty," Sir Alex. Boswell's Poems. ^ Memoirs aivoL Correspondence of Susan Ferricr, p. 11. ^ Lord Alemoor (died 1776) lived in a second flat of Covenant Close, with five rooms and kitchen, yet kept a carriage. — Chambers' Traditions, i. 186. Bruce of Kennet, before he rose to the Bench, lived in a flat in Forester's Wynd, Lawnmarket, at a rent of £11, containing three rooms and a kitchen ; one room was " my lady's," another a consulting room or study, the third their bed- room, while their maid (who was their only servant except the nurse) slept under the kitchen dresser ; their serving man slept out of the house, and the nurse and children had beds in the study, which were removed during the day. In later days Lord Kennet removed (1764) to a house of great gentility of two flats in Horse Wynd. — Chambers' Minor Antiquities, Introd. xxx. John Coutts, Lord Provost, had in 1743 his residence, his banking business, and civic feasts in President's Close, High Street, consisting of five rooms. — Forbes' Memoirs of a Banking House, TO WN LIFE—EDINB URGH 87 20s. a year and a gown. In the house of a gentleman wlio luxuriously kept his carnage the servant slept under a dresser in the kitchen, while his man slept over the stable ; and in the Hat occupied by an eminent judge the maid slept as best she could in a drawer in the kitchen which was shut up during the day.^ Owing to the scantiness of space, the nurse and children would probably sleep in the study, if such existed, the beds being removed during the day, when the lord of session worked over his charges or the nobleman saw his friends, while the lady in her bedroom was entertaining her guests at tea.^ The air in these low rooms was not extremely fresh, especially when it came from those windows which opened into fetid closes or wynds, which were so narrow that the inhabitants could converse easily and exchange friendly cups of tea with their neighbours on the other side. The long precipitous stairs were crowded all day long with men, women, and children belonging to the various flats passing up and down — masons, judges, dancing masters, countesses, barbers, and advocates, all encountered each other in the narrow passage. Besides the residents there was the stream of porters carrying coals, the Musselburgh fishwives with their creels, the sweeps, the men and women conveying the daily supply of water for each flat, barbers' boys with retrimmed wigs, the various people bent on business or on pleasure, on errands and visits for the several landings, all jostling unceremoniously as they squeezed past one another. It was no easy task for brilliantly dressed ladies to crush their hoops, four or five yards in circumference, up the scale-stairs, or to keep them uncontaminated by the dirt abounding on the steps. So confined were some of the stairs that it was sometimes impossible, when death came, to get the coffin down ; and when a passage was too narrow for ' Nor was the cleanliness of those unsalubrious abodes above suspicion, and it was not uncommon for lodgings to be advertised as possessing the special virtue of being "free from bugs." It is with this recommendation that Lord Kilkerran announces his flat to be let at £20. — Chambers' Traditions, ii. 235. - "The fashion of the House in Edinbro' was so small at that time [1697] that there was turned up beds with curtains drawn round them in most of the best rooms of the house." — Warrender's Marchmont arul Hmcsc of Folwarth, p. 157. S8 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY that purpose, the power was possessed by legal servitude for the tenant of a house so situated to get entry through the •adjacent house, and bring the coffin down its more commodious stair.^ Curiously uncomfortable and mean as these abodes seem to a more civilised and luxurious age, they were ideal resi- dences to many in that frugal age.^ So familiar, so natural, was this kind of dwelling in their eyes that the tale was told — truly or not — of a Scottish gentleman who paid his first visit to London, and, taking his lodging in the uppermost ■story of a house, was surprised to find that the higher he went the cheaper it was. When a friend told him he had made a mistake, he replied that he " kenned very weel what gentility was, and when he had lived a' his life in a sixth story he wasna come to London to live on the grund." ^ The hours for rising were early in these old times, and the city was astir by five o'clock in the morning. Before the St. Giles' bells had sounded seven the shops were open, the shutters were flung back on their hinges, and over the half-door the tradesmen were leaning, chatting to their neighbours, and re- ceiving the last news ; while citizens walked down to the little post-office, situated up a stair, to get the letters just brought in by the post-runner from Glasgow or Aberdeen, instead of waiting till they were distributed through the town by the single letter-carrier of the city, or even the three carriers who were installed in I7l7. In the taverns the doctors were seeing their patients. Up till 1713 the celebrated physician. Dr. Archibald Pitcairn, was to be found in the dingy under- ^ This was done when Sir W. Scott's aunt, Mrs. Rutherfurd, died in Hynd- ford Close. 2 The accommodation contained in mansions of the highest order can be learned from an advertisement of 1753. "To be let, a very convenient lodging, pleasantly situated amidst gardens on the north side of the Cannongate, belong- ing to the Right Hon. Lord Panmure, and lately possessed by the Countess of Aberdeen, consisting of a large dining-room, a drawing-room, 3 very good bed- rooms with closets, and other conveniences on the same floor ; above is very good garrets with vents, and below a very convenient kitchen, cellars, etc., all enclosed within a handsome courtyard." — Chambers' Minor Antiquities, p. 252. This dwelling, so flatteringly described, or part of it, was afterwards occupied by Adam Smith, and was more impartially spoken of as a "melancholy, dingy abode." ' Topham's Letters, p. 11. TO WN UFE—EDINB URGH 89 ground cellar, called from its darkness tlie " grupinj,' office," near St. Giles'. Early every morning, by six o'clock. President Dalrymple had seen his agent, and gone over a dozen cases before his breakfast. Eight o'clock was the breakfast hour, with its substantial meal of mutton, collops, and fowl, with libations of ale, and sometimes sack, claret, or brandy — tea not being used at that meal till about 1730.^ The citizen shut his shop, or left his wife to tend it, when the St. Giles' bells rang at half-past eleven — a well-known sound which was known as the " gill-bells," because each went to his favourite tavern to take his " meridian," consisting of a gill of brandy, or a tin of ale. Little these citizens heeded the music-bells, wliich meanwhile overhead were playing the bright charming tunes lo which wiser folk were all listening." The dinner hour was at one o'clock till 1745, when it was being changed to two, though the humbler shopkeepers dined at twelve. The wonted fare in winter was broth, salt beef, boiled fowls ; for only the wealthy could afford to get fresh beef at high prices until the summer, when the arrival of any supply of beef for sale was announced in the streets by the bellman.^ By two o'clock all citizens wended their way down their respective stairs to their places of business, reopened the doors, and hung up the key on a nail on the lintel ■* — a practice which afforded the notorious burglar. Deacon Brodie, in 1780, oppor- tunities of taking impressions of the keys on putty. By the early afternoon the streets were crowded, for into the main thoroughfare the inhabitants of the city poured. Later in the century an Englishman describes the scene : " So great a crowd ^ Tliat tea was in vogue about 1720, and was soon established as a fashion, is shown by Allan Ramsay entitling liis collection of songs (the first volume of which appeared in 1724) the Tea Table Miscellany. - Burt's Letters (i. 191) speak of the music bells that played to great per- fection Italian, Scots, Irish, and English tunes, heard over all the city between eleven and twelve o'clock. •* In winter fresh meat was practically unattainable, although, as a writer in 1729 says, rich and fastidious gentlemen used to send to Berwick for beef or veal, at the enormous rate of 7d. a pound for the coarsest meat (the summer price being IJd. or 2d. a pound), as there was none to be got at home. — Essays on Enclosing, etc. , 1729, p. 132. There died in 1799 a caddie or market porter who remembered in his youth when the fact of beef being for sale in Eiiinburgh was publicly announced by a bellman. — Chambers' Popular llhynus of Scotland, p. 76. * Chambers' Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh, p. 166. 90 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY of people are nowhere else confined in so small a space, which makes their streets as much crowded every day as others are at a fair." ^ There were few coaches, fortunately, in the narrow steep streets ; but there were sedan-chairs swaying in all direc- tions, borne by Highland porters, spluttering Gaelic execra- tions on those who impeded their progress. There were ladies in gigantic hoops sweeping the sides of the causeway, their head and shoulders covered with their gay silken plaids, scarlet and green, their faces with complexions heightened by patches, and concealed by black velvet masks which were held close by a string, whose buttoned end was held by the teeth. In their hands they bore huge green paper fans to ward off the sun ; by their side hung the little bags which held the snuff they freely used ; their feet shod in red shoes, with heels three inches high, with which they tripped nimbly on the steep decline and over filthy places.^ There were stately old ladies, with their pattens on feet and canes in hand, walking with precision and dignity ; judges with their wigs on head and hats under their arm ; advocates in their gowns on way to the courts in Parha- menl House ; ministers in their blue or gray coats, bands, wigs, and three-cornered hats. At the Cross (near St. Giles') the merchants assembled to transact business, and to exchange news and snuff-boxes ; while physicians, lawyers, and men about town met them as at an open-air club, and joined citizens in the gossip of the city.^ In the town there was a fine camaraderie — the friendliness and familiarity of a place where every one knew everybody. From early morning, when they awoke on the doorsteps on which they had slept, till night, when they lighted the way in the dark streets with paper lanterns, the caddies were to be seen — impudent, ragged, alert, and swift — carrying messages and parcels to any part of the town for a penny — very poor, but marvellously honest, for whatever was stolen or lost when in custody of these caddies was refunded by their society.* They knew every place and ^ Gentleman's Magazine, May 1766, p. 211. ^ Somerville's Own Life, chap. ix. ; Chambers' Traditions. * Burt's Letters ; Forbes' Memoirs of a Banking HoiLse, p. 26. * Biirt's Letters, i. 21 ; Topham's Letters from Edinburgh, p. 81 ; Humphrey Clinker ; Glasgow Past and Present, ii. 150. TO WN LIFE—EDINB URGH 9 1 person ; they could toll who had arrived lust in town, where they lodged, and how long they were to stay ; they were invaluable as detectives, for the haunts of the lowest and the doings of the thieves were as familiar to them as the names of the guests at the Lord President's supper party the previous night, and the condition of insobriety of each gentleman when he stumbled home in the morning. Such were the street scenes in Edinburgh throughout half of the century — indeed, with curiously few changed phases till about 1780, when the tide of fashion was setting towards the new town. Generations came and went, fashions of dress changed, many old habits and manners passed away ; but the homely, frank, convivial outdoor life remained much the same,^ where every face was known, and few domestic secrets were hid. Ax four o'clock the ladies had their refection, for the " four hours " all over Scotland, and with all ranks, was a necessary refreshment of the day. In the largest houses the hostess re- ceived her visitors in the drawing-room ; but in smaller flats she was obliged, as in the country, to see them in her bed- room. Till about 1720 ladies had drunk their ale or claret ; but when tea came into vogue that beverage became a necessity, and wine was reserved for the gentlemen. On the mahogany tea-table were liliputian cups for the expensive beverage, with spoons all numbered, lest in the confusion, when every cup was returned before a fresh helping was served to any, the wrong cup should be given ; fine linen napkins were handed to each guest to preserve their gowns from speck and spot.^ By eight o'clock all visitors had gone, for the supper hour had come ; the maids had arrived with the pattens for the elderly ladies, and lanterns to lisrht their mistresses to their homes in the dark wynds and stairs. When citizens began their copious suppers, they ate and drank till late, and guests departed not ^ Mr. Adam Petrie gives his important advice on etiquette : " If a lady of quality advance to you and tender her cheek, you are only to pretend to salute her by putting your head to her hood ; when she advances make her a low bow, and when you retreat give her another. Note. — In France they salute ladies on the cheek ; but in Britain and Ireland they salute on the lips. But ladies give their inferiors their cheek only." — Rules of Good Deportment, Edin. 1720. ^ Boswell's Ancient Royalty. 92 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR Y too soberly, while the servant guided their meandering foot- steps and held a candle or lantern to light them to the " mouth " of the close.^ II The amusements of the town during the early part of the century were neither varied nor lively. For this dulness and social sombreness the Church and popular piety were responsible. All gaiety was looked on with grim censure. Kirk-Sessions uttered anathemas against- all worldly pleasure, exercised tyrannical sway over every day of the week and over every action of the people. Sabbath was the special day when every act and moment of existence were watched ; the doing of any work, the indulgence of the slightest recreation, was for- bidden ; the "vaguing " or loitering in the streets or on the Castle hill, the mere " gazing idlely " out of the windows, was a sub- ject of condemnation and occasion of threats of discipline by Kirk-Sessions, and of fine by magistrates.^ To secure the perfect observance of the Lord's Day, the bailies had " seizers " or com- purgators, appointed at the instance of the Church, who took hold of any one " during sermons " who dared to neglect divine service and forthwith reported him to the general Kirk-Session. In the evening the patrol watched the streets, which usually in those days were deserted like a city of the dead ; followed any belated passenger's echoing footsteps, peered down wynds, looked up stairs for any lurking transgressors of the law of Mount Sinai.^ The " kirk treasurer," appointed by the Session, whose very name was at once a subject of mockery and an object of terror, was ever on the alert for scandals and culprits that brought in fines and fees. The voice of the Church was -stern against the barbers who on Sabbath furtively carried the gentlemen's wigs all ready trimmed for worship, or went to shave them into tidiness. This demand for the services of ^ Account Books of FouUs of Jiavelston, p. 301, notes in 1703 that Sir John gives " to Marquess of Tweedall's servant that held out ye light in the closs-head when I went to see him," 14s. 6d. Scots as "drink money." ■■^ King's Pious Proclainations, etc., 1727, p. 17. ^ Arnot's History of Edinburgh, p. 203 ; Burt's Letters, i. 80 ; Allan Ramsay's Poems, i. 158. TO WN LIFE—EDINB URGH 93 barbers made that cral't one of the largest and most pro8})erouB in the coniniunity ; for gentlemen, instead of " barbourising " themselves, to use tlie expression of the day, were dependent on their servants or their wig-makers to shave their heads. Possibly there were some who acted like Sir John Foulis of Ravelston, who, quite innocent of any sense of humour, ordered his boy to buy a sheep's head and soap that he might thereon learn how to barberise the head of his master.^ Every pleasure of the week-day was watched and repro- bated as grimly as were all desecrations of the Sabbath — the theatre, dancing, the club. The last was a source of horror to the pious in the early part of the century, as being the scene of hideous orgies, and resort of those who ridiculed the Kirk and the Whigs without any principles on either Church or politics. The names that these re-unions bore — the " Sulpliur Club," the " Hell-Eire Club," the " Horn Club," the " Demireps " — had a dare-devil and dare-kirk sound ; the free talk of their members, their ribald verses, their blaspheming songs, as wildly rumoured abroad, became the scandal of the town, wliile the iniquities of the Hell-Eire Club were considered past mention — like the later goings-on at ]\Iedmenham Abbey — and as deserving divine judgment. " Lord pity us," moans Mr. Kobert Wodrow : " wickedness is come to a ten-ible heiglit." The words and jests and verses of Dr. Archibald Pitcairn, as malicious gossip related them, at these terrible saturnalia, flouting at religion and even at the ministers, were matters of sore grief.^ Theatre there was none for a long wliile in Edinburgh ; but occasionally travelling companies came from England, under the leadership of the famous comedian Tony Ashton, in 1715, and again in 1726, and in successive years — " filling up our cup ^ Account Book of Fonlis of Jlavehton (Scottish Hist. Society), ji. 301. "To Jeamie Gray, to buy a sheajj's head and soap to learn him to barberise me, 3s. 6d. (Scots)" ; " To a lad wlio barbarised me, 5s." — such are frequent items in this household book. ^ " At Ediubur<,di I hear Dr. Pitcairn and several others do meet regularly eveiy Lord's day and read the Scripture in order to lampoon and ridicule it " — thus writes Wodrow in 1711 [Aimlecla, i. 323). Certainly Pitcairn lampooned the fanatical clergy, wliile he was an admiring friend of Principal Carstairs. AVliat he thought of them may be seen in his coarse and scurrilous play The Assembly. 94 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V of sin," groaned the ministers. Horror was felt that some judges and nobles, who were ruling elders in the Church, had been present ; and that, notwithstanding the intimation of some clergy that they would refuse the communion to those who frequented this nursery of Satan, the attendance when the Mourning Bride was performed had been grievously great.^ " A vast deal of money in this time of scarcity is spent most wickedly," records Wodrow, " especially as there is such a choak for money." One has more sympathy with those who con- demned the less edifying plays of Congreve rather than this respectable and lugubrious tragedy from a witty and lively pen. Fortunately, even the broadest pieces of Wycherley were almost harmless, as they were listened to by feminine ears far too unsophisticated to catch the gross innuendo uttered in high London accents which they could not understand."^ In 1736 Allan Ramsay was anxious to add to his many occupations of ex-wigmaker, poet, and librarian, that of theatre- manager, and built a play-house in Carrubber's Close, which was opened only to be summarily shut under the influence of clergy and magistrates.^ In vain the versatile little citizen brought his complaint for loss of money before the Court of Session : he got only the subtle verdict that, " though he had been damaged, he had not been injured." The career of the drama in Edinburgh was precarious and chequered. Denounced by the ministers, discouraged by the magistrates, the theatre received no license. But, evasive of the law, plays were performed in the Taylors' Hall, and, to escape the legal penalty, ^ " I am informed, " writes Wodrow in 1731, ' ' that the English strollers are [sic] a prodigiouse siimn of money in the town of Edinbm-gh. It's incredible what num- ber of chairs \vith men are carryed to these places, and it is certain that for some weeks they made fifty pound sterling every night, and they will be coming home from them even of the Saturuday evenings at one of the morning. This is a most scandalouse way of disposing of our money when we are in such a choak for money ; and it's a dreadfull corruption of our youth and ane ilett (eyelet) to prodigality and vanity and the money spent in cloaths for attending." — Analecta, iv. 214. - A young lady from the country who had been to the theatre when the Old Bachelor s^ndi Love for Love were played, when told that "these were not proper plays for young women," replied, ^' They did nothing wrong that I saw, and as for what they saic^ it was high English and I couldn't understand it." — Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsinen, ii. 63. •* Wilson's Memorials, i. 198. TO WN LIFE—EDINB URGH 95 were advertised as being giveu " gratis " alter a concert.^ The entertaiinnent was announced as " a concert of musick with a play between the acts," and the prudest might go and enjoy Vanbrugh's Provoked Husband and Wycherley's unsavoury Coxintry Wife under guise of innocently listening to Corelli's sonatas. It was in 1756 that the town was delighted and the Church horrified by the performance of the tragedy of Douglas from the pen of Mr. John Home, minister of Athelstaneford, given in the presence of several brother ministers of the Gospel."' The Edinburgh Presbytery drew up its exhortation that " all within its bounds discourage the illegal and dangerous enter- tainments of the stage, and restrain those under their intiuence from frequenting such seminaries of vice and folly." Other Presbyteries censured or suspended ministers for their profane audacity in attending such improper places, and the delin- quents received their rebukes solemnly in public and laughed at them heartily in private. ^Meanwhile Home quietly resigned his living to escape deposition, and allowed the Church to fume at a play so immoral and irreligious, which, it was alleged, encouraged suicide, and contained impious expressions and mock prayers, and even " horrid swearing." ^ But in spite of all solemn reprobation society raved over its marvellous beauties, and at the tea-parties ladies recited the opening soliloquy to entranced companies — And you fair dames of merry England, As fast your tears did flow. In spite of all the excitement of the godly, the very fact that ministers and elders dared to countenance a stage play shoM-ed * Arnot's History of Edinhurgh, p. 364 ; Jackson's History of Scottish Stage, p. 31. Caledonian Mercury, December 13, 1750, advertises — "At the Concert Hall in i the Cannongate, to-nioiiow, \\ill be performed {gratis) the Tragical History of Richard III., containing tlie distresses and death of K. Henry VI. of Gloucester, the murder of the Princes in the Tower, the memorable battle of Bosworth field, with many more historical Passages ... to which will be added (gratis) a Pantomime entertainment in grotesque characters called Merlin or the British Enchantkr, etc." - Ca,T\yle's Autobiography ; Somerville's Oian Life and Times; Mackenzie's Life and Writings of John Ho^ne ; Scots Magazine, xix. p. IS. ' Arnot's History of Edinhurgh, p. 377. The oath that was reprobated was " by Him that died upon the accursed tree." 96 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V | that the old bigotry was beginning to lose its hold. The people thronged the play-house till the Church in despair ceased , to fulminate at the pit of a theatre as leading to the pit that J is bottomless, and at last, in 1764, a theatre was licensed and set up on a field which had been the scene of Whitfield's fervid religious meetings. Gentlemen had their other amusements on which, fortun- ately, the religious world laid no embargo. They had their golf, their archery, their horse-races on Leith sands — which the most scrupulous magistrates did not hesitate to encourage by presenting cups as prizes.^ There were also the less praise- worthy cock-pits resorted to by high and low, eagerly ; and, later in the century, might be seen Deacon Brodie, fresh from committing a burglary, and Henry Mackenzie, just come from inditing a tearful scene of his " Man of Feeling," watching their " mains." Strange to say, the clergy who were ready to denounce all carnal pleasure, even in the decorous form of a minuet, uttered no complaint against the coarse and demoralising sport of cock-fighting. Why this ecclesiastical reticence ? Obviously because every one had been accustomed to that sport at every parish school. Every minister in his boyish days had himself indulged in it, when on Fastern Eve or Shrove Tuesday he had proudly brought his own favourite cock under his arm to pit against those of his schoolmates, while the master looked on and annexed the corpses of the slaughtered fowls to replenish his scanty table. Other entertainments were regarded less leniently. When in 1725 the enterprising little Allan Eamsay opened a cir- culating library^ — the first ever formed in the kingdom — -^ in the first floor of a " land " in the Luckenbooths, the arrival I; and circulation of profane books from London was regarded \\ with opprobrium. Not content with the pious literature of their fathers, the citizens now revelled in ungodly plays, poems, and scurrilous pamphlets. Again Mr. Wodrow uttered, in his jeremiads, the feelings of his party, lamenting that " profaneness is come to a great height ; all the villanous, profane, and obscene books and plays printed at London by Curie and ^ Avnot's History of Edinhiirgh, p. 363. ^ Th'e second circulating library was founded in London in 1740. TO WN LIFE—EDINB URGH 97 others are got down by Allan llamsay and lent out for au easy price to young boys, servant girls of the better sort, and gentlemen, and vice and obscenity are dreadfully propagated." ' Instigated by that virtuous censor of morals, Lord Grange, the magistrates sent some of their number to inspect the pernicious shelves ; but, forewarned, the wily librarian kept out of sight the worst of his stock, and the civic detectives saw only an array of decorous works before them. Ill In the dearth of public pleasures, the worldly energies of society found expression in concerts and dancing assemblies. The private houses were far too small to allow of dancing- parties. There was not space enough for a country dance or minuet, no place wherein to pile up the superabundant furni- ture, no room for guests to sit, or refreshments to be eaten, or be-hooped ladies to move. Late in the century, when dresses were of more moderate dimensions, the amiable old lady, Mrs. Cockburn, singer of the " Flowers of the Forest," did for the nonce have a dance for young folk in her flat in Blair Close. There in her straitened quarters twenty-two guests assembled, " nine couples on the floor." " Our fiddlers," she writes to her friend, " sat where the cupboard is, and they danced in both rooms ; the table was stuffed into the window, and we had plenty of room. It made the bairns all vastly happy." " Few, however, had the ingenuity or good-nature of this old gentlewoman: so from 1710, when the first assembly was opened, it was at public balls that society met.^ The pulpits rang with denunciations of this seductive temptation to sin, lust, and worldliness ; " promiscuous dancing " was condemned as an incentive to sensuality, and these rooms were pictured as nurseries of ^ice. But, in spite of all, society danced, and dancing-masters drove as flourishing a business as the barbers. These dancing teachers gave their own balls, in bigger rooms of a wynd. Tickets cost 2s. 6d. ; dancing began at five ^ Wodrow's Analeda, iii. 515. - Tytler and Watson's Songstresses 0/ Scotland, i. p. 110. * "Wilson's Memorials, ii. 23. 98 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY o'clock and went on till ten or eleven. There was also the assembly in the West Bow, in a flat facing the grim and haunted lodging of the wizard Major Weir ; and in the narrow lane, from four o'clock,^ there was a crowd of sedan-chairs with their gaily attired occupants, the noisy mob pressing to witness the fine sight, the objurgations in safe Gaelic of competing chairmen, the clanking of the swords of gentlemen in bright silken coats. Up the winding turnpike stair to a flat ladies ascended, holding up their hoops to gain difficult entrance by the narrow passage. For these articles of raiment were enormous and capacious, as young Eobert Strange the Jacobite engraver found, when beneath the hoop of his betrothed, the vigorous-minded Isabella Lumsden, he sought concealment from his pursuers, while she sat quietly spinning in seeming innocence before the baffled searchers. In this poor incommodious room, and, after 1720, in the Assembly Close, off the High Street,^ the dancing revels took place, while the ministers uttered their solemn, ineffectual warning. Under the patronage of ladies of high degree, such as my Lady Panmure, or beautiful Susanna, Countess of Eglinton, the minuet and the country dance went on with stiffness and with state in the low-roofed, hot, ill-ventilated room to the meagre music of a few fiddlers. By eleven o'clock the company dispersed, the stream of fashion poured down the dark stair, and then, as the Countess of Eglinton, lovely herself, and her seven lovely daughters were borne off in their sedan-chairs', the gentlemen with drawn swords escorted them to their lodgings in Jack's Land. Years passed on ; new leaders of fashion came as the old departed. In the middle of the century, as the companies ^ Burt's ie<ut as each had his own obstinate opinion on eacii of these matters, the bickering might cause the lapse of weeks before all consented to work together, and if possible, to spite each other. So jealous were they of their neighbours, that each one made his rig as high as possible, so that none of the soil should be carried to his neighbour's gi'ouud ; and in consequence that which accumulated on the top was never stirred deeper than the shallow ploughshare could scrape ; while the seed lost on the sides in harvest was hardly worth gathering. The ridges — each alternate ridge having a diflerent tenant — were usually 20 feet wide, and often as wide as 40 feet, crooked like a prolonged S, and very high. Only the crown of the rig, which was full of stones, was ploughed, and half the width of the ridges and the ground between them were taken up with huge " baulks " or open spaces filled with briars, nettles, stones, and water.^ How could any waste land be reclaimed under such a system ? If one man dared to cultivate a neglected bit of ground, the others denounced him for infringing on their right of grazing on the outfields. How could he begin the growing origin of this custom (then decaying in England) in village communities (which were transformed into villan holdings in the Middle Ages) it was fancied that it arose for the ])iirpose of mutual defence from the enemy — an end secured by com- mon interest in the soil. — Interest of Scotland CoTisidered, 1733 ; St. Acci. Scot., Wick, p. 26 ; St. AccL, Ayton, i. 31. * Robertson'.s Survey of S. DUtrict of Perthshire, p. 18. - YuWcvton's, Survey of Ayrshire, p. 41 ; Ure's Dvmbartonshire, p. 15 ; Survey of lioss-shire, p. 209 ; Stat. Acct. Scot., Kilwinning, xi. 151.- "Even up to 1756 in Clydesdale, near Glasgow, the baulks between the rigs were mostly covered with heath, broom, whins, growing among stones." — Brown's Hist, of Glasgou; p. 170. 158 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 1 of any new crop ? The others, viewing every innovation with the contempt which comes from that feeling of superiority which ignorance and stupidity produce, would refuse to join him. Having no lease, he had no motive to improve land which next year might be in the hands of another man to whom it fell by lot. He could not store hay for the cattle, because the instant the harvest was over the whole land became open pasturage for the whole township.^ Yet, in spite of its absurdity, the people were so devoted to their " run-rig," or " stuck-run-way " plan, that if twenty fields were allotted to twenty farmers, they would rather have a twentieth share in twenty fields than have one field each to himself. The customs regarding times and seasons for conducting farming operations were of the most rigid order : traditions and usages had acquired a sanctity and force which few dared to gainsay. It was not permissible to begin ploughing until spring, as the undrained soil was too wet to allow of it earlier. No farmer would yoke a plough till Candlemas, and many would not begin till the 10 th of March — some not till the 20 th of March — having a profound reverence for days and seasons in agriculture, though an equally profound horror of them in religion.^ The consequence of this rule was that the gray oats were not usually sown till April, even up to the close of the century, and it was often May before the " bigg " or four rowed barley was put into the ground, and in many places the year had advanced as far ' as the end of May or beginning of June before the here was sown. In those days, when the soil and minds of the farmers were equally uncultivated, everything was ruled by ancient, ways.^ Greatly they believed in the traditions of the elders^ which pronounced that " it was not too late to sow when thei leaves of ash cover the pyot's (magpie's) nest " — which was the month of June.^ They protested that if it were sown earlier it would be smothered by the marigold, wild mustard, ^ Pennant's Tour, ii. 201 ; Robertson's Southern Districts of Perthshire, p. 118, p. 308. ^ Walker's Hebrides and Highlands, i. 200 ; Ure's Rutherglen, j). 180 ; Mar- shall's Agric. of Central Highlands, p. 46 ; Fullerton's Agric. Ayrshire, ^ Stat. Acct. Scotland, xiv. 10, Chirnside. * Marshall's Central Highlands, p. 40. THE LA XI) AND THE PEOPLE 159 and thistles, und everyone believed that the seed sown in February would be certainly killed i)y the IVost. Accordingly, none was put into the earth till the first of April,' and llie [result was that the j^'rain — and the worst grain was carefully userved for seed — did not mature till the autumn gales set in. It is not surprising that freciuently the ground proiluced only ibout two bolls on an acre, which did not repay the time and labour. Ill With a system so atrocious, with land uncleaned, uidimed, inmanured, undrained, it frequently happened that the yield iould not feed the inhabitants of the district, and men renting Tom forty to a hundred acres needed to buy meal for their amilies. In consequence of the bulk of their crops consisting )f only gray oats, when meal failed them — which always lappened when bad seasons came — the people were in lestitution and despair. In such straits the town-folk were educed to the sparest rations, and country people bled the half- itarved cattle to mix the blood with a little meal — a practice vhich in many quarters began in dire necessity and was con- inued as a matter of taste." The people lay at the mercy of the seasons ; for if their >ats were destroyed or barley blighted — their only two products — they had nothing else to live upon — for pease, though grown inly supplied a little meal : a week of rain, a night of storm, a )remature frost or snow, might reduce them to the point of tarvation. This helplessness fostered in them a sense of awe nd dependence on Providence, which gave a peculiar power to ' Russell's Haigs of Bemersyde, p. 484 ; lire's DumharUmshire, vii. ISO. ■■* Fullerton's Ac/ric. of Ayrshire, p. 8. "During these times when potatoes ere not generally raised in the country, there was for the most part a great arcity of food, bordering on famine ; for the stewartry of Kirkcudbright and junty of Dumfries there was not as much victual as was necessary for supplying lie inhabitants ; and the chief part of what was required for the purpose was rought from the sandbanks of Esk on tumbling carts on Wednesdays, and lien the waters rose by reason of spates, and there being no bridges, so the carts :)uld not come with the meal. I have seen the tradesmen's wives in the streets f Dumfries crying because there was none to get." — Letter of Alaxwell of lunches, referring to 1725-1735, in Murray's Lit. Hist. Oalloicay, p. 338. i6o SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ministers, whose voice in prayer could stay the fury of th^ elements and dispel the withering " haar " and mist over th marshy soil, and make the sun break forth. It was quite i common experience, when the snow was drifting over the wiL moors, and the people were in dismay with only a few days food for their cattle, that the minister wrestling in praye seemed to avert the impending ruin. In such a period. Mi Thomas Boston, in the bleak parish of Ettrick, records : " Thi Lord was with us in praying and preaching from Joel i. 18 ' Now do the beasts groan, etc' ^ The Lord graciously hear( our prayers. The morrow was no ill day ; but on the Frida;] the thaw came by a west wind." Unfortunately, piety did no uproot the inveterate sluggishness of farmer and labourer : i seemed rather to dignify dirt and to consecrate laziness. Thi people believed that disease was due to the hand of God, instea( of being due to the want of using their own hands.^ The; held that every season of dearth was owing to Providenc rather than to their own improvidence. They protested tha weeds were a consequence of Adam's fall, and that to remov docks, wild mustard, and nettles was to undo the diviu curse. They threshed the corn with the flail, and winnowe it by throwing it up in the air, rather than use the out landish fanners which Meikle had set up in 1710; becaus " it was making Devil's wind," contravened Scripture, whic said, " The wind bloweth where it listeth," and took tl: "power out o' the hands o' the Almichty." -The ancient mil for grinding oats, it was believed, had been piously placed 1 their forefathers where they could be worked according to God order, without artificially embanking the water or turning ■ from its natural course, which would be sinful : Providen' ordained the site, man had only to discover it. Pious feelii gave rise to one conviction finer than those prejudices — tl belief that it was wrong to gather and glean too exactly c the ears of corn in fields, because birds should be fed as wt as man, and some of the bounty of Providence should be k for the fowls of the air.^ ^ Memoirs. 2 Ure's Hist, of Ruthcrglen ; Ure's East Kilbride, 1793, p. 198. 2 Gregovs, Folk- Lore of North- East of Scot., p. 183. THE LAND AND T/fE PEOPLE i6r In otlicr ways icli^^iDU.s feelings and ('liri.stijui urtliimia-rH ministered to idleness, fostered prejuiliee, and depressed and hampered agriculture. When " sacramental seiiaons " ciuno round ami set in with their usual severity, the workiwoplc would sometimes attend lour or six eonuuunions in succession in surrounding parishes. This indeed was a right they claimed by com})act as well as a privilege. They trudged over moor and mountain, over bogs and streams, to any parish where communion was to be celebrated under a popular minister beloved on the " Occasions," as the communions were eall('(l, till a place with a normal population of 400 was seething with a crowd of 2000. They stayed in the parish in barns, or byres, or lay in open air from Thursday till Tuesday, attending the " preachings." Farmers were obliged to kill sheep for the ministers ; to supply oatmeal to feed the hungry communicants ; to get straw to furni.sh beds for the strangei-s, and food for their horses — no light task when there was scarcely grain enough for their own families or straw enough for their own cattle.^ Often the Kirk -Sessions met in prayer and perplexity as to how to supply this multitude, on whom they had pity, when they had so few " vivers " for themselves. A popular gospel preacher was a most expensive parochial luxur)', for he attracted crowds who consumed their victuals. These protracted holy days and holy fairs encouraged men and women to desert their fields and their Hirm duties at the most critical periods of the year ; leaving their crops to run ' Mr. Tliomas Boston in 1731 has 777 communicants at his sacrament in Ettrick : "There are nine score strangers at Jlidgehop ; four score of them W, Blaik entertained, having before baked for them half a boll of meal for bread, bouglit 4s. 3d. worth of bread, and killed 3 liimljs and made 30 beds." Another summer : "The people being stinted for victual to entertain their families I could not fin. 125 ; Bryce-Johnstone's Agric. of Dumfriesshire, pp. 88-106. i64 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY dried up in summer, and if the farmer, not being able to wait till the rain came to move the wheel, sent his grain to another mill which was working, he paid two multures — one to the mill which ground his corn, and another to the " thirlled " mill which could not grind it.^ If the poor man ventured to sell his oats unground he was prosecuted for depriving the miller of his due. If the air was too calm to drive the windmill, too frosty, or too wet, the grain was kept in the mill so long that it was destroyed by the vermin. What made these rules almost unbearable was the insolence and negligence of the millers, against whom popular dislike and suspicion were inveterate. Had th6y not side-sleeves to secrete furtive extracts of meal ? ^ Had they not small pokes hung to receive further snatches of grain from their reluctant customers ? Had they not unstamped measures of dubious accuracy to measure their dues ? So the people in their anger hinted. The miller could demand on solemn oath a statement of every pea and barley corn given to the horses or dropped to the hens. It might be supposed that a system so iniquitous could not long survive the rise of prosperity and progress of independ- ence in Scotland after the middle of the century ; yet in many places such restrictions continued till its close. An authority, writing in 1795,^ declares that " what with want of water at one time and want of wind at another, I have known instances of these persons being forced to travel to a distance of three miles to a mill three or four times over, to be employed a whole week for grinding half-a-dozen bolls of meal. In short, there is not in this island such a complete remain of feudal despotism as in the practice respecting mills in Aberdeen- shire. I have seen poor farmers by vexation and despair reduced to tears to supplicate from the miller what they ought to have demanded from him." ^ Besides all these obligations to the miller, the farmers were further bound to drive material for repairing the mill, to thatch it, to carry mill-stones for it, ^ Ure's Dumbartonshire, p. 102 ; Agric. of Moss-shire, p. 121. 2 Parish of Shotts, p. 221 ; Stat. Acct. Scot., Barrie, iv. 245. The "miller" is a familiar character in old Scots songs. •^ Robertson's Agric. of Aberdeenshire, p. 48. ■* Johnstone's Agric. of Dumfriesshire, Appendix 43 ; Webster's Agric. of Galloway, p. 37. THE LAND AND T/fF. PEOPLE 165 and to clean the mill-lead, half a mile loii^', wiiicii the miller'n own cattle had hroken down. Yet more burdens were laiil upon the i'armers' shoulders — irksome services which they had to render to the landlord. They had to till, to manure, to sow, and to reap his infield, to cart peat for his fires, to thatch part of his houses, to supply ' simmons " or straw and heather ropes for fiistening his roofs and stacks, and at the most critical moment of their own hai-vesting they might be called away with their men and oxen to render their allotted number of days' shearing or " lending in " for the laird. After all these exasperating demands upon his time and earnings the farmer rarely looked for profits from his husbandry — only enough to exist upon. All his produce went, according to the bitter saying, into three shares : " Ane to saw, ane to gnaw, and ane to pay the laird witha'." ' While the tenants were poor and oppressed — yet less by tyranny of superiors than by the tyranny of custom — the landowners themselves were deplorably poor and needy ; for being paid chiefly in kind, they had little silver 10 spend ; their incomes were small, owing to the miserable condition of farming ; and the smallness of their incomes in turn prevented their developing industry, adopting new methods, and improv- ing their properties, however they might desire it. The laird had no credit on which to raise funds ; '" he could not get a loan of even the smallest sum, unless he got several other lairds or men of substance to become security for him ; he could only obtain loans on " wadset " — a legal arrangement which put estates in pawn, binding the owner to sun-ender his property if he could not meet the lender's claims on a specified date. In the dearth of money it was not unusual for a gentleman to assign to another the debts which were due to him, so that bills and bonds in default of money became regular paper currency. On other occasions the grain stored in the girnals was given in payment of other goods, and the tradesmen were paid in so many firlots oats and barley, owing to dearth of coin.^ For the same reason in the Highlands ' Stat. Acct. Scot., Bendochy. - Fiillarton's ^j/rtc. of Ayrshire. 3 Book of Glamia, Scottisli Hist. Society, p. 64 ; Fanner's Ma ij. 1804. i66 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY there was only a trade by barter, and in districts in the Lowlands, it is said, masters paid their nailmakers m nails, and they in turn bartered them for bread or drink at the ale-house.^ The want of enterprise, the persistence in inveterate ways, i and the reluctance to improve the soil and reclaim waste land, , or to enclose, was excused and explained by some farmers in those days by the fact that, having no leases, they might be turned out of their land any year, or their rents might be raised the moment they had by their exertions and outlay im- proved the ground.^ In East Lothian, where the leases had been introduced about the beginning of the century amongst an enterprising class,^ and under an enterprising laird, there had been a marked improvement in the farming, greater activity, and more experiments with turnips and other produce. But the hesitation to alter old methods was less due to want of security of reaping the fruit of their labour, than to prejudice, indolence, and obstinacy in retaining old and easy customs. There was nothing which hindered agricultural progress more than the difficulty of communication and conveyance between farms and towns for markets and seaports. The produce was carried in sacks on horseback, or in later years on tumbrils, which were sledges on tumbling wheels of solid wood revolving with the wooden axle-trees.* These vehicles, in the north, were so small that in a narrow passage the carter could lift them, for they held little more than a wheel- barrow, though they suited the meagre, thistle-fed beasts that dragged them. They had wheels a foot and a half in diameter, made of three pieces of wood pinned together like the lid of a butter firkin, which quickly wore out, and became utterly' shapeless. Yet even these modes of conveyance were a triumph ^ Smith's Wealth of Nations, bk. i. chap. iv. ^ P. 124, Husbandry Anatomised, by Jas. Donaldson, 1697 — the first book on husbandry published in Scotland ; Essay on Ways and Means of Enclosing, 1129. ^ One of the first to introduce leases was Adam Cockburn of Ormiston, Lord Justice - Clerk in 1698, and his son John — called the "Father of Scottish Husbandry," continued and extended this arrangement with results strikingly successful. — Farmer s Mag. 1704; Hepburn's ^grn'c. of East Lothian. ^ Burt's Letters, i. 13 ; Tour thro Britain, iv. 13. THE LA\D AND TffE J'EOP/J-: 167 of mechanism wiieu tlit* century wius yuuiij^. Curls were u later institution/ and when in 1723 one carried a tiny load of coals from East Kilbride to Cambuslang, " crowds of people," it is recorded, " went out to see the wonderful macliine ; they looked witli surprise and returned with astonisliment." Yet in many parts of the Lowlands they did not come into common use until 17G0 ; whiU; in the northern (h'stricts sledj^es and creels, borne on the backs of women, were employed to the end of the century. However admirable the invention was seen to be, it was of no practical use as long as the roads were so bad that carts could not be driven in them.' In driest weather highways were unfit for carriages, and in wet weather were almost im- passable even by horses — tleep ruts of mire, covered with big stones, now winding up heights, now zig-zagging down steep hills, to avoid the swamps and bogs. It was this hazardous state of paths and highways which obliged judges to " ride on circuit " ; and this practice, which was begun as a physical necessity, was conservatively continued as a most dignified haliit; so^ that in 1744 Lord Dun resigned his judgeship because he was no longer able to ride. It was therefore needless to introduce carts till the tracks were fit for them, seeing that on their first employment the drivers required to carry spades to fill up the ruts and holes to allow them to advance a hundred yards. "When Lord Cathcart, so late as 1753, offered carts to his tenants in Ayrshire, the roads were so execrable that few accepted them as a gift. By statute, from 1719, able-bodied men in every district were enjoined to give six days' labour in improving the high- ways — hence called " Statute Labour roads " ; but this Act was quietly ignored, and in most places the utmost effort made was a few hours' grudging labour on what was called " Parish road day," * when the male inhabitants turned out for ' Ure's Rutherglen and East Kilbride, p. 187. - The carts used about 1780 were wholly made of birch without any irou costing 6s. 8d. in Nairnshire. A farmer in 1743 got two carts for 7s., " which will give a notion of the quality, seeing that in 1800 a cart cost £10."— " Husbandry of Forfarshire," Farmer's Mag., Feb. and May 1806. ^ Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsmen, i. 86. * Campbell's Balmerino and its Abbey, p. 240. i68 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY their perfunctory and ineffectual task. The famous efforts of General Wade, begun in 1726, only affected 260 miles of the main Highland routes ; where, however, the marvellous change enabled Burt in 1739^ to rejoice that he travelled roads " smooth as Constitution Hill," which a few years before were dangerous from stones and deep ruts in dry weather, and became hopeless bogs or brawling watercourses in rain." Yet the Highlanders angrily grumbled at the change ; complaining bitterly that the gravel wore away the unshod horses' hoofs, which hitherto had gone so lightly over the springy heather, while there was not a forge to make or mend a shoe within fifty miles. So long as the roads continued in this miserable state carts, it is evident, were of no avail, and everything was carried on the backs of horses. Farmers could only convey their oats and barley to market at the tardy rate of one boll a day on horseback.^ In the Lowlands it was a hard day's work for a horse to carry from a pit four miles off a load of two cwts. of coal in sacks. Even in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, about 1750, farmers conveyed on horseback their trusses of hay and straw to town, returning with their bags full of coal. Nothing wrought so remarkable a change in civilising the country, in developing its trade, and improving the social and industrial condition of the people, as the Turnpike Koad Act of 1751. Before many years passed by the public roads became smooth and easy ; produce was conveyed to markets at a tenth of the former cost and in a tenth of the former time ; and a complete revolution was made — as we shall after- wards see — in the whole economical condition of the land. ^ Letters from the North, ii. - We must remember that in many parts of England roads between large towns were in scarcely better state. See Arthur Young's Political Farmer. " Hepburn's Agric. p. 50: "Horses seldom carried more than about 6 firlots of wheat or of pease ; about a boll of barley, or 5 firlots of oats." Hepburn's Agric. of E. Lothian, p. 151, 1794 : "Even to this day a 'load' of meal means 2 bolls, a 'load' of coals 3 cwts., a 'load' of straw 14 stones or 2 cwts. — being the amount that could be carried in these old times." THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 169 Every improvement was slow and ol).stinately resisted by in impecunious ^'entry and a lethargic and timid tenantry. Few things liatl struck English travellers for generations with more surprise than the open, unenclosed, hedgeless land- scape, with immense expanses of bleak, wjiste land. There were, in fact, no enclosures except round the gardens of ,'entlemen's houses in the early part of the century ; farms and fields were left entirely exposed, over which man and bciist could wander at their will. It can easily be imagined liow dreary, dismal, and monotonous must have been the scenery, without wall, or hedge, or tree, and not a bush beyond whin to give variety to the view as far as the eye could reach. The early attempts of enterprising landlords about 1715 to enclose the land encountered determined opposition: :he people were indignant at their right of pasturing their attle on other men's ground being grossly infringed ; farmers .vere suspicious of their rents being raised ; labourers were xcited at the prospect of their occupation as herds being ndangered. Meanwhile alarmists declared that hedges would larbour birds which would utterly devour their grain, and hat " they would prevent the circulation of the air necessary o winnow the grain for the harvest." ^ Motives of all complexions, theories of all sorts, combined o raise opposition to the building of a dyke or the planting of hedge. The rebellion of 1715 had left the country people, especially in the south, unruly and unsettled, and an unquiet pirit quickly showed itself against landlords who resolved to enclose their lands and stock them with black cattle. Tenants vere turned out of their holdings, shepherds were deprived of heir occupation. In 1725 large bands of men and women ittacked the newly-reared enclosures in Galloway. Armed vith pitchforks and stakes, they set forth at night to spoil and )verturn the dykes, and whenever the leaders raised their cry, Ower wi' it," down went the walls into a heap of stones amidst 1 Stat.Acct. Scot., Rhynd, iv. 181, Kilspindie, iv. 282 ; }ilorer's Short Accotmt, k 9. 170 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY exulting shouts. Other bands went as " houghers " to maim and destroy the cattle of the larger tenants who favoured the loathed enclosures. To stay the riots, the military were called out and the clergy were called in. The General Assembly ordered warnings to be given from the pulpits against the levelling practices of these districts. Many were imprisoned, some were transported; but though order was restored, the prejudices of the people remained stubborn and violent, and the making of enclosures by hedge or dyke received a check for a generation. In 1740 there came a disastrous dearth in the land: the seasons, so inclement, had spoiled the crops ; the winter, so severe, destroyed the cattle m their thousands ; in many districts the people were starving, eager to feed on rubbish and weeds and snails, and many died of hunger. It had been as keen a frost in England as in all the north of Europe, in the memorable January when the Thames, being frozen over for many feet, a fair was held and shows performed to multi- tudes ; when in the Newcastle pits the men in deep mines needed fire to keep themselves warm ; and people perished of cold in the fields and streets, and wild beasts died in vast numbers. But, while in Scotland cattle died by thousands every winter, and in severe seasons one-half or a third of the flocks and herds were lost, in England, throughout the hardest winter, even such as 1740, the cattle lived unscathed. The remarkable difference between the two countries was not due to difference in climate, but to the fact that in the south there was ample food for the cattle, and in the north there was not. In England, by better cultivation, the land was more productive ; there was hay, there were artificial grasses, produc- ing three times the quantity of natural grasses ; and, since 1716, turnips had been introduced into fields, yielding pro- vender in abundance. In Scotland, on the other hand, there was little grass in summer, save some, rank and coarse, growing in hollows ; and as there was no hay to store in winter, there was only straw and mashed whins to feed them with.-^ So ^ " Here," wiites Lord Leven from Melville Castle, "we have no grass at all ; if we have no change of weather the people must starve. The poor creatures in the neighbourhood come here begging leave to pull nettles about THE LAND AND TIfE PEOPLE 171 ^arly as 1708 Lord Haddington had sown rye grass and clover, jut these met with little favour from farmers who even n the middle of the century desi)iHed them as " Knglish weeds," vhich no self-respecting beast would eat. It was not till the middle of the century that the more enterprising tenantry ultivated artificial grasses in rotation with grain ; at wiiicli spectacle the veterans pronounced " that it was a shame to see beasts' meat growing where man's meat should grow." ^ Although introduced into England from Holland for field cultivation in 1716," turnips were only sown by two or three energetic proprietors before l7o9, and lieing sown in little patches broadcast, and never hoed, they naturally failed. Great excitement was caused about Melrose in 1747 by the rumour that a new strange vegetable was to be sown.^ One morning Dr. John Eutherford came to his field with mysterious bags, and the inhabitants, gathering in crowds, watched the " doctor's man " casting seed in the wake of the plough, while another man behind dragged a whin brush behind to cover the seed with the earth. When it sprang up the curious people pulled up the odd weeds to examine them in spite of threats by tuck of drum, and of iron caltrops or iron traps. Wlien the bullocks were fed on the turnips they grew so big that people accustomed to stunted creatures would not eat such monsters.' So late as 1774 farmers in Dumbartonshire would not sow the dykes for themselves, and heather and moss for their beasts. We have daily shoals of 20 with death on their faces, and at the same time the country is so loose that the people are forced to watch tlieir homes and barns." — April, 1740. The Mdmllcs arid Earls 0/ Melville, by Fraser, i. 316. ^ Stat. Acct. Scot., X. 612. In 1750 a Lord of Session, walking one day with a friend through the field when his men were weeding the corn, ex- pressed gratitude to Providence for raising such a quantity of thistles, "as otherwise when we cannot allow our good corn land to be in pasture, how could we find summer food for our working horses ? " — Stewart's Sketches of Highlands, ii. 138. - About the middle of tlie century threshing of whins with Hails for horses' food used in the neighbourliood of Glasgow. — Brown's Hist. Glasgow, p. 180. ^ Lord Stair was said to be " ^lie first to have sown" turnips in the open fields, but then so many are "said to have been the first "at all these experi- ments ! Certainlj^ Cockburn of Crmiston planted potatoes in 1724, and sowed turnips in 1725, being the first *o raise turnips in drill. — Farmer's Magazine, 1804, "Life of J. Cockburn." * Ure's Agric. of Roxburghshire ; Johnstone's Agric. of Selkirkshire, p. 35. 172 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY them, although stimulated by bribes.-^ Treated as delicacies, Captain Topham was amused to see turnips in Edinburgh used as part of the dessert at the principal houses ; and the author of Humphrey Clinker allows that they were used as " whets " at dinner parties.^ The same reluctance was shown in adopting potatoes as a produce of the fields. They had been cultivated in a few private gardens ^ in the beginning of the century, but they were rarely raised in fields before 1735, or produced in the kailyards of the people. Hitherto they had been sold as delicacies in ounces and pounds ; though after the middle of the century they became the common food of the country. Even in 1740 two sackfuls on a market day supplied the demands of the five thousand inhabitants of Paisley. At first they were regarded with angry suspicion, under the belief that farmers were going to deprive their people of their proper nourishment, which could only be found in the native meal, and they would have none of them. Keenest and fiercest was the antipathy felt in the Highlands to these suspicious tubers, and when the Chief Clanronald, in 1743,^ brought a small quantity to South XJist, the crofters refused to plant them till their fine " High- land pride " — as stubborn prejudice is euphemistically termed — was mastered by imprisonment. When autumn came they brought the obnoxious roots to the chief's door, protesting that he might force them to plant them, but he could not force them to eat them. Hunger, however, was the most effective argument, and successive years of dearth were effectual in overcoming prejudice ; so that in twenty years, 1 Ure's Acjrie. of Dumhartonshirc, p. 51. " Letters from Edinhirgh, p. 229 ; Humphrey Clinker. ^ They are mentioned as vegetables for the garden, however, as well as turnips, in Scots Gardener, by John Reii, 1683. And as early as 1697 the first Scots writer on husbandry strongly rectainiended their cultivation in fields, showing how they should be planted, atid how they were eaten — probably abroad. "The commonest way they are \nade use of are boyled and broken, and stewed with butter and new milk. X^a, some make bread of them by mixing them with oats or barley meal afte>, they are broken and stewed -vvith milk, others parboyle them and bake them with apples after the manner of tarts. Several other wayes are they made u.ie of, as eating among broath and broken with kale." — Husiaiulry Anatomatisecl, p. 129. ■* Walker's Economical Hist, of Hebrides and Highlands, i. 188. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 17 J instead of depending on a scanty supply of oatmeal, High- landers subsisted about nine months of the year on the vegetables which they had so indignantly rejected.^ We may mark the years between 1740 and 1750 as the period when potatoes were coming into cultivation in Scotland." Meanwhile, as these changes were being made, the gray oats, the here, and pease held the field. Though in former times wheat seems to have been grown extensively in many parts of Scotland, very little of it was raised at this time, and it was too scarce and too dear for common consumption.^ Indeed, the very name of the grain became a metaphor for whatever was delectable and unattainable, as we notice when the Eev. Thomas Boston in his Memoirs speaks plaintively of the " wheat-bread days of youth." By rich and poor wheat-bread was not used, and was only presented in slices beside the sweet cake at the tea-tables of the gentry. For the manufacture of the grain into food every operation was primitive, involving a maximum of labour with a mini- mum of profit. After the harvest was reaped, the flail was the only means of separating grain from the straw ; then the corn was taken to be winnowed on hand-riddles in the open air or hill tops, known as " shilling hills " or laws, or in barns so constructed that the west wind might pass through. In 1710 James Meikle had introduced the use of fanners, which, in spite of pious objections to those human means of raising the wind, gradually made their way among the more enlightened and enterprising farmers.^ The only mode of grinding barley which prevailed till nearly the middle of the century was by bruisin<]f in a mortar or "knocking stones." A little water ^ Potatoes first introduced into Galloway from Ireland in 1725 by a tenant who earned the produce to Edinburgh on horseback, where he sold them in ounces and jjounds. — Hist, of Galloway. Half an acre planted on trial in Kilsyth in 1730.—Stat. Ace. Scot., xvii. 282. - Planted in Orkney in 1750. — Stat. Ace. Scot., xii. 354. ^ Ramsay's Scot, and Scots. In the year 1727, when a farmer cultivated 8 acres of wheat (in Aberdeenshire), it was considered so remarkable that the whole neighbourhood was excited. — Robertson's Rural Recollections, 247. "About 1768 only 2 sixpenny wheat loaves brought from Perth to two private families in the week." — Stat. Ace. Scot., Auchterarder, iv. 46. "Wheat chiefly produced in Lothians. ■* Hepburn's .<4^?-ic. of East Lothian ; Farmer s Magazine, 1804. 174 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY was put with the barley into the nether stone to make the grain part with the husk, and it was then beaten with a wooden niell till the " knoekit here " was fit for making broth. Not till 1742 did mills for grinding barley come into active operation to supplant these humble, rude, and wasteful methods. Yet these mills had been known in Scotland long before that time. In 1710 Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun was residing in Holland, and there he had been struck by the advantage of the barley mill for producing pearl or pot barley over the savage process at home. He thereupon summoned his wheelwright, James Meikle, a man of great sagacity and mechanic of great ingenuity, to come over to take plans of these machines. This he did — being assigned in the agreement the very modest daily sum of one shilling sterling for his entertainment and one shilling for wages ; with the equally modest promise and unflattering valuation of five pounds sterling to his wife and children in the event of his losing his life in the enterprise and journey.-^ He returned in safety and success, bringing with him the iron work made in Holland, together with the model of fanners, — a still more successful innovation, — -which he quickly introduced. The barley mill was set up, and worked along with Meikle by Henry Fletcher, the laird's younger brother, and tenant at Saltoun. But the moving spirit of this enterprise was Mrs. Henry Fletcher, who managed everything, had introduced the making of Holland cloth in the field adjoining the mill, and who superintended the mill itself Tradition told how " Lady Saltoun " would walk down to her office spinning as she went, and then sit throughout the day transacting busi- ness, receiving orders in a room whose door was secured by a chain to prevent strangers entering to examine the work and discover the secret of its mechanism. " Saltoun mill office " became a centre of business, and " Saltoun barley meal " was known over all the country, and painted over the shop door of every retailer. But the use of the mill for manufacturing pot barley was confined to East Lothian for about thirty years, and the primitive method elsewhere went on as before. A still more barbarous method of getting the husk from ^ Agreement between Jas. Meikle and Andrew Fletcher, in Farmer s Mag. , 1804 ; Hepburn's Agric. of East Lothian. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 175 the grain of oats had been in operation when the century was young in the Lowlands, and continued till its close in districts in the Higldands and Hebrides. That consisted of setting fire to several sheaves of corn from the field ; when the ashes were blown away the grain was left parched, and thereupon beaten into meal — an expeditious device, by which oats growing in the fields in the morning might appear as bannocks in the afternoon ; but it was a disastrously improvident method, which destroyed all the straw, so much needed for provender by the starving cattle.^ During this period very little attention was paid to cattle- breeding except in Galloway. There was too little pasture for farmers to keep sheep or cattle on their " mailings " or farms. There was no food for them during the long months in which they were housed or tethered, and the roads were too broken to send them for sale or consumption in distant towns. In spite of beef and mutton being sold at l^-d. or 2d. a lb., — and a Scots lb. was equal to 22|- ounces English, — the demand was slight, for they were rarely eaten in farmers' houses,^ where kail and meal and milk were the staple ingredients of the diet, and the gentry killed and salted what they needed at Martinmas. Country towns had no butcher's shop, and only by the tinkling of the bellman was it announced to the inhabit- ants that a calf or a sheep was to be killed. There was no alternative bat to live on this salted fare for half the year, as the cattle, housed all winter and fed sparingly on straw, were too emaciated, and their flesh too miserable, for any mortal to eat. Down from the far-off' glens were driven the black cattle, half-starved and lean, to the trysts — " tryst " being the Scots for an appointed place to meet — at Falkirk or Crieff, where ' Morer's SlioH Account, p. 15. - About the middle of the century in Ayr, a town of 5000 inliabitants, not more than 50 head of cattle were killed annually. — FuUartou's Survey. Sir David Kinloch, in spring 1732, sold 10 wcdders to Edinburgh butchers, and although mutton was at that time of year the only fresli meat brought to market, the butcher bargained for three different times to take away the sheep, lest the market be overstocked. At that time each family in the country killed and salted what mutton and beef they wanted. " Mr. Law of Elvinstone informs me he remembers when there was not a bullock slaughtered in the butcher-market of Haddington during the whole year except the period called ' Lardner time.' " — Hepburn's A(jric. of East Lothian, p. 55. 176 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY they were sold to English dealers at from 20 s. to £2 a head ; or, if they were emaciated, the Highlanders would give them for a few shillings. It was a hard struggle for Highland farmers to get provender for perhaps 200 head of cattle which were kept confined all winter and spring. They had only straw from about ten or twenty acres of oats wherewith to feed them, and it is not surprising that great numbers perished of disease and hunger, and those that survived sold at a price often as low as lOs.-^ The Gaelic drovers, who knew no English, were at the mercy of smart Yorkshire graziers ; especially as they could not, or dared not, take their unsold beasts to the far-off straths from which they had taken weeks to travel, and where the farmers and crofters were expecting oatmeal for their needy families. As a rule the best cattle left the country, and the worst remained at home. The Highland sheep were of a diminutive breed, stunted from lack of nourishment, with fleeces not much longer than goats' hair;^ so thin and short, that while now it takes six fleeces to make a stone of wool, then it required twenty-seven of this wool, which was often plucked from the poor creatures' backs. From the month of May the lambs were almost starved, separated from their mothers in order that the milk might be used in the household, and their little jaws gnawed by sticks fixed in their mouths to keep them from sucking, and thereby from pasturing. Firmly was it believed that neither cattle nor sheep could withstand the blasts and snow of winter, and that it was necesary to keep them under cover if the farmer wished them to thrive. It is said that a mere accident dispelled this delusion in the Xorth ; that a laird in Perthshire, who had been reduced by ill fortune to become an innkeeper, let his sheep run wild because he was too poor to feed them, and to the general amazement they were in perfect condition when the spring came.^ The practice of stocking the ground there- upon began, and, spreading widely, hill farming was revolu- tionised. By 1750 large tracts were being changed to sheep ^ Farmer's JIagazinc, 1804. - Smith's A'jric. Survey of Argyllshire, p. 240 ; Argyll's Scotlaiid as it Was, i. 204. " Ramsay's Scotland o.nd Scotsmen, ii. 551. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 177 walks, and land rose to six or soven times its former value.' Tlie sight of sheep browsing on a Lowland meadow did not give a pleasant pastoral beauty to the landscape. Tlieir fleeces, covered with tar, moss, and dirt, as they crawled under their woollen burdens, made them unsightly objects. Whether originating or not from a desire to add weight to the scanty wool, and impose on buyers, the farmers followed the custom — on pretext of health and warmth — of smearing their flocks with dense tarry coating, till the original weight was more than doubled ; the fleece was spoiled, and the expense of cleaning the wool made havoc of the profit. But, however foolish and wasteful any practice might be, the farmers persisted in it with their wonted reverence for aged custom.'-^ VI Let us turn from the land to the people who worked it. When all labour was dilatory and every movement was slow, the hours of labour were extremely protracted. Usually the work between March and October began at four o'clock in the morning, and lasted till seven or eight o'clock at night — in harvest continuing as late as ten — with one hour's interval for breakfast, and another hour for the repast known as the " twal' hour." This meal was scanty, for even " bonnet ^ So little was fresh meat used in those days, that in burgh towns in Forfar- shire "there was often no butcher, and when a man in the district had a calf or few sheep for sale, the bellman went round advertising the people to come and buy." — Farmer's Maijazine, 1806. It is said that the only butcher in Lanark was a weaver by trade, who before killing a slieep took good care that the minister, provost, and bailies took shares. The fact was announced by the bellman — Bell-ell-ell, Tliere's a fat sheep to kill, A leg for the provost, Another for the priest ; The bailies and the deacons They'll tak' the rest ; And if the fourth leg we cannot sell, The sheep it maun live and gang back to the hill. Chambers' Popular Rhymes, 1826. - Observations 011 Methods of (jroioing Woolin Scot. : Edin. 1756. A favourite song of farmers was, " Tarry woo' is ill to spin " — the only song which Sir W. Scott sang at agricultural feasts, to vociferous applause for well-meant but not successful vocal exertions. 12 178 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY lairds " and farmers had only a handful or two of boiled beans, which they carried in their pockets to appease their hunger in the fields.-^ During winter and slack months they had the peat to dig and carry on horseback from the moors, the cattle to feed, straw ropes to make for the harness, and halters of the clippings of colts' manes and horses' tails. In the evenings, by the dismal light of the ruffy in their hovels, the men had shoes of horse-hide to furnish with double or triple soles, while women span from the rock or distaff the flax which every farmer grew on some rigs,^ for the linen which soon tilled every press, and the woollen yarn from which was made the clothing of gray and black woollen plaiding and blankets. The sluggishness of labourers was one reason for the long hours of labour. Their laziness had passed into proverbs and bywords. Ray, the naturalist, in 1660, was struck by the habit of the ploughmen putting on their cloaks when they set a-ploughing instead of taking them off, and the same slothfulness struck Pennant, the traveller, more than % century later. Scottish clergy deplored and English visitors ridiculed the poverty-stricken aspect of the peasantry : their pinched faces, wrinkled features, tattered dress, and foul skin and fouler habits ^ — of course, we discount somewhat for foreigners' exaggeration. In 1763, when Lord Bute was high favourite at Court, and many countrymen were living on his patronage, Scotland and the Scots became specially odious to the English. The ways, habits, and condition of the Prime Minister's com- patriots formed incessant themes for laughter and satire, and for exasperating jibes from every pamphleteer and Grub Street 1 Strutters' Hist, of Scotland, ii. 625 ; Wight's Husbandry, 1777, ii. 27. In Berwickshire the rule was to "yoke " the horses at sunrise all year round. J. Brace's Agric. of Berwickshire, p. 104. When in later days the ploughmen worked from 6 to 6 o'clock, old folk called them the " easy hours." ^ Somerville's Own Life ; Struthers' Hist, of Scotland, ii. 224. ^ "The common people are such in outward appearance as you would not take them at first to be of the human species, and in their lives they differ little from the brutes, except in their love of spirituous liquors. . . . They would rather suffer poverty than work. . . . The nastiness of the lower people is really greater than can be reported ; their faces are coloured with smoke ; their mouths are wide, and their eyes are sunk as one pulls the face in the midst of smoke ; their hair is long and almost covers their faces." — Gentleman's Magazine, 1766, p. 211. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 179 poetaster, who, without a change of shirt for his own back, laughed at Scots' shiftless poverty. In all the extravagances in which lampooners indulged there was, however, a painful^ basis of fact for their coarse descriptions. After Dr. Johnson had defined in his Dictionary, " Oats, a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people," Lord Elibank triumphantly retorted, " But where will you find such men and such horses ? " We may admire the patriotism, but must regret the mendacity, of his lordship, for both countrymen and countrywomen of the poorer orders — " lean, shabby, and soiled," as the author of Humphrey Clinker laments to own — were not such as one could boast of in respect to physical excellence or personal appearance. The English traveller, in 176G, owns that in towns their rudeness is wearing off, and that they are almost civilised and indus- trious in trading towns ; but in the rural districts they had not progressed much from a condition of poverty which was in truth deplorable. The food of the farmers and workers was monotonously poor, for they had nothing to eat except the everlasting oatmeal and " knockit here," and kail greens from the yards — for other vegetables were almost unknown to them ; beef and mutton they never tasted, unless a cow or sheep was found dead of disease, old age, or hunger." Ale or beer brewed by every farmer at home from oats and heather — " so new that it was scarce cold when brought to table," says Morer — was their chief beverage, with fermented whey kept for a year in barrels in the early part of the century. Milk they could sparingly use, for the ill-thriven cows gave only about two Scots pints a day, and that was invariably sour by being kept in foul dishes.^ So contemptuous were the people of cleanliness that it was considered unlucky to wash the kirns ; they were so given up to superstition that sometimes a frog was put in the tubs to make the milk churn ; and they were so full of experimental wisdom that they maintained that ^ See Churchill's Prophecy of Fame for Southron notion of northern life ; Gilray's Caricatures ; The North Briton. ^ " In Stirlingshire even oatmeal was a luxury, here meal being chiefly used. In time of scarcity ' gray meal, ' a compound of meal and mill dust, was resorted to." — Ramsay's Scot, and Scots, ii. 202. 3 Burt, i. 143. i8o SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY the consistency of the butter depended on the number of hairs it contained. Farmers and workers were much about the same rank ; and, indeed, in the holdings or " maihngs," the most of the work was done by the tenant's family, with the aid of two or three men and women who lived with them. They all met at the same board ; sat together by the fireside at night, when the women spun the flax and men shod their brogues ; and partook of the same food out of the same dish, which was rarely cleaned.-^ Each man had his horn spoon, which he kept by his side or fastened in his bonnet, to " sup " the kail, porridge, or sowans ; while his fingers and teeth did duty for knife and fork on the rare occa- sions when they were called into requisition by the death of " crock ewe " — the meat being cut off by the farmer with his clasp knife.^ The houses inside and outside were filthy, though the dirt of their homes, of their food, and of their persons did not distress them, except in the familiar disease which too often came over their bodies. They loved this state ; it kept them warm ; it saved them trouble; and they enshrined their tastes in their sayings — "The mair dirt the less hurt," " The clartier the cosier." ^ The exposure to all weathers outside and to peat reek within, which filled the room with smoke and feathered the rafters with soot, made their skin hard, brown, and withered, and old-looking before their time. The dress of the people was of the rudest and roughest — the women having coarse home-made drugget, a matted mixture of wool, spun as it came in natural state from the sheep's back — usually no gown, but a short woollen petti- coat down to the knees, and their feet were destitute of shoes or stockings.^ When they went to kirk all dressed their best : ^ Stat. Ace. Scot., Craig, Fortingall, Tongland ; Pennant's Tour ; Scots. Mag. ii. 29 ; Hist, of Galloway, ii. chap. v. 2 In those days knives and forks formed no part of a house " plenishing." In 1754 not three farmers had half a dozen knives and forks. Stat. Acct. Scot., St. Vigeans, xii. 184 ; Carlyle's Autobiography, p. 64. ^ Another saying was, "Muck makes luck." "If the butter has no hair in it the cow will not thrive," was a convenient belief. — Burt's Letters, i. 143. * The custom of going barefooted had originated the apology or tradition that "it was founded upon an ancient law, that no males should wear shoes till they were 14 years of age, that they might be hardened for the wars." — Morer's Short Acct. p. 14. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE i8i the farmers' wives and daughters with " toys " or head-covering of coarse linen, and a tartan or red plaid covering head and shoulders. On Sundays only women wore their shoes ; and so unaccustomed were they to the use of them, they seemed to hobble as they walked ; so they usually carried- them in their hands till they came within sight of the church, when they put them painfully on.^ The dress of the men was equally rough in material and in fashion. Their garments in daily work were in rags ; their hose were pieces of plaiding sewed together ; their shirts were of coarse woollen, or of roughest ham little better than sacking, which got no washing save from the rain from heaven." It was usually the practice to change these latter gai*ments at the terms of Martinmas and "VVTiitsunday, or at most thrice a year. It was only on Sunday and holidays, or during frost and snow, that even men wore their shoes, preferring to go barefoot. Their dress on holidays and Sabbath, and burials and courting, was home-spun suit of friezed cloth : homely enough, but yet when decked with ribbons and bows in their garters and bonnet, the ploughmen could appear in smart attire.^ The dress of the farmer was very little different from that of his men. Only the laird and the minister in the parish possessed a hat, while he wore only a bonnet ; though in distinction from his servants, who had blue bonnets, his was usually black. Everything was poor, rough, and frugal.^ With the bleak and barren landscape and the meagre and shabby living of the people their dwellings were in painful harmony. In 17 02 Morer, the English chaplain, described 1 Gent. Mag., 1766, p. 211. The lassies, skelpin' barefit, thrang In silks and scarlets glitter. Bums' Holy Fair. - Hist, of Gallowaij, ii. chap. v. ; Stat. Ace. Scot., Bathgate, i. 365 ; Struthers' Hist, of Scot. ii. 625. ^ In the old ballads and songs this is shown, as also Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd. * We may take the following as a fair description of the diet of farmers and their servants in the middle of the century ; and of the servants, till the end of the century. Breakfast— oatmeal porridge with milk or ale, or broth made of cabbage left overnight, and oat bannock. Dinner — sowans, with milk and oat- cake or kail. Supper at 7 during winter, or 9 in summer — kail (cabbage), with oat-cakes. — F. Douglas's Description of East Coast of Scotland, p. 170. 1 82 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY the houses of the vulgar as " low and feeble, their walls made of a few stones jumbled together without mortar to cement 'em, so ordered that it does not cost much more time to erect such a cottage than to pull it down," ^ without chimneys, and only holes in the turf-covered roofs for smoke to pass. This description will apply to the homes of the people through a great part of the eighteenth century. The hovels of one room were built of stones and turf, without mortar, the holes in the wall stuffed with straw, or heather, or moss, to keep out the blasts ; the fire, usually in the middle of the house floor, in despair of finding an exit by the smoke-clotted roof, filled the room with malodorous clouds.^ The cattle at night were tethered at one end of the room, while the family lay at the other on heather on the floor. The light came from an open- ing at either gable, which, whenever the wind blew in, was stuffed with brackens or an old bonnet to keep out the sleet and blast. The roofs were so low in northern districts that the inmates could not stand upright, but sat on the stones or three-legged stools that served for chairs, and the huts were entered by doors ^ so low and narrow that to gain an entrance one required almost to creep. Their thatching was of ferns and heather, for the straw was all needed for the cattle. Yet, foul, dark, and fetid as they were, the people liked these hovels for their warmth. The houses of the tenantry were very httle better in most cases than those of their ploughmen and herds, from whom the farmer differed little in dress, manners, or rank.'^ Even in Ayrshire, till long after the middle of the century, they were little removed from hovels with clay floors, open hearths, some- times in the middle of the room, with walls seven feet high, ^ Morer's Short Acd. p. 19. ^ Stat. Acd. Scot., Tongland ; Hist, of Gallotvay, ii. ch. v ; Ure's Dumbarton- shire, p. 34 ; Stat. Acct. Scot., Symington, v. 397. ^ Heron's Journey throiigh West. Counties. * FuUarton's Survey of Ayrshire. It was such a dwelling as Burns in the " Vision" describes — There lonely by the ingle cheek I sat and ey'd the spewing reek That filled wi' hoast-provokin' smeek The auld clay biggin', An' heard the restless rattons squeak Abune the riggin'. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 183 yet three feet thick, built of stones and mud. Only the better class of farmers had two rooms, the house getting scanty light by two tiny windows, the upper part only glazed with two panes of bottle glass. It had been the practice in former times — but dying out in the early part of the century — for the outgoing tenant to remove from the fiirmhouse all the beams and rafters which he himself had put in ; and conse- quently his successor came not to a home, but to a ruin consisting of four broken walls, and had to virtually rebuild the house, which he in turn dismantled when it became his turn to leave. In these dismal, ill-lighted abodes when night set in the fitful flare of the peat fire was all the light they had, for the " nifties," or split roots of fir found in the peat moss, were only lit for set purposes, such as family-worship.^ A remarkable proof of the stagnation of trade and the total absence of all enterprise and industrial progress is to be found in the fact that the rent of land, the price of grain and of articles of food and clothing, the wages of men, remained almost stationary during the hundred years between 1640 and 1740. The earnings of farm servants varied considerably ; but if we may take Stirlingshire as affording a fair average in 1730, the best ploughman living with the farmer had 35s. a year, with a few " gains " or " bounties " — consisting of a pair of shoes, coarse linen or harn for a shirt, and one or two yards of plaiding ; female servants had 13s. 4d. in money, with an apron and a pair of shoes. In 1760, money and bounties taken together, the earnings of men in the house amounted to £3, those of the women to 20s.; while married ploughmen had wages worth from £7 to £8 — only £3 or £4, however, were paid in money, the rest being in kind. Yet small as were their earnings, with tastes simple and habits frugal, there was little discontent and discomfort in their lot, for these times contrasted pleasantly with their younger and poorer days." 1 Courl Book of Barony of Uric, 1604-1747 ; Scot. Hist. Society. — Court of Barony, 1705, ordains "that no tenant or cottar removing from their respective farms shall pull down any of their house walls more than free their timber." — P. 47. ^ Ramsay's Scot, and Scots, ii. 211. Ploughmen in 1735 had £8 Scots == 13s. 4d., and bounties of clothing = lls. 6d. In 1740 he had 32s. Female 1 84 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY If the condition of the Lowlands was deplorable, the state of the North was grievously worse. Crofters hired their little patch of ground from the tacksman, or lease-holder, of the laird or chief, which gave him space only where he could sow a boll of oats, often in places where it was impossible for a plough to go owing to the rocks, moss, and heather, and where the soil could only be dug by the triangular spade of the people — and for this privilege vexatious services were exacted of them. On the proceeds of this, with the aid of a cow or two, a household subsisted.-^ To occupy the families that swarmed in Highland glens and islands there was not sufiicient work or food, and even by the sea those who were fishers were too lazy to pursue their occupation, except when driven to it by necessity, and there was no trade or market in remote regions by which they could barter their fish for clothes or more palatable food. They loitered through their summers and idled out the winters in congenial inactivity, scorching their feet at the peat fires round which their toes in circle converged as they lay on the floor. Even farther south, in Perthshire and Stirlingshire, tacks- men would subdivide a piece of ground, only enough to give work for one man and four horses or oxen, into patches of poor soil for sixteen families to occupy at about 12s. a year rent.^ In such conditions there was a stagnation of all energy, servants in 1735 had 3s. 4d. wages, with 6s. or 7s. in bounties. A few years kxter they had 15s. in money. — Stat. Acct. Scot., Caputh, iv. 495. "There are now (1793) living in the parish two old men who in their younger days were servants, one at 20s. and the other at 30s. a year. Now it is from £4 to £6, with enter- tainment, better than the tenant could afford." — Stat. Ace, Birse, ix. 114. ^ A writer later in the century gives a description of the state of matters which is equally applicable to this period : ' ' Neglected by Government, forsaken or oppressed by the gentry, cut off during most of the year by impassable mountains and impracticable navigation from the seats of commerce, industry, and plenty, living at considerable distances from human aid, without the necessaries of life, and depending most generally for the bare means of subsistence on the precarious appearance of a vessel freighted with meal or potatoes, to which they in eagerness resort though at a distance of fifty miles. Upon the whole, the Highlands, some few estates excepted, are the seats of oppression, poverty, famine, and wild despair."— Knox's British Empire, i. 128. ^ MS. of Graham of Gartmore, 1747, in Burt's Letters, Append, ii. 343. In Buchanan parish, Stirlingshire, and elsewhere, " 150 families may live on ground paying £80 a year." THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 185 a hopelessness of all betterment of life, a docile resignation to, if not contentment with, a poor and squalid lot. In these homes there came disease in the forms that ill odours, ill ventilation, and dire engender — especially that cutaneous trouble which was associated with the Scots to their discredit. Infectious diseases were propagated readily, owing to the common fatalism of the pious-mooded people, who held that everything is ordained of God, and that if a thing did happen it was " bound to be." ^ So in sick huts the neighbours assembled on Sundays in their interest and curiosity, till the hovel was full of sympathy and foul air. The patient was stifled by heat, and the friends bore away the seeds of disease. Small-pox ravaged at times, and was spread by the people, who filled the small rooms in pious belief that no one could hasten or hinder a death. Amongst this people, inured to hard life, rheumatism was a constant complaint, arising from the moist air and incessant exposure, with wet soil outside and wet clothing kept on inside the homes. The one ailment to which they were most liable, and in which dirt had no share, was ague.- This was due to the undrained land, which retained wet like a sponge, and was full of swamps, and bogs, and morasses in which "green gi-ew the rushes." Terribly pre- valent and harassing this malady proved to the rural classes, for every year a vast proportion of the people were prostrated by it, so that it was often extremely difficult to get the necessary work of the fields performed in many districts. In localities like the Carse of Gowrie, which in those days abounded in morasses and deep pools, amongst whose rushes the lapwings had their haunt, the whole population was every year stricken more or less with the trouble, until the days came when drainage dried the soil and ague and lapwings disappeared. ^ Stat. Acct., Kilfinan, xiv. 235 ; Kirkcaldy, xviii. 7 ; Dumbarton, iv. 72. The last writer, evidently a "moderate," attributes spread of disease, especially small-pox, to crowded houses and "an over-anxiety for constant prayer over the diseased." Only 6000 persons were inoculated in 1765. "^ Stat. Acct. Scot., Ayton, xi. 81; Cramond, i. 325; Kirkden, ii. 508; Donaldson's Agric. of Carse of Gowrie, p. 11. 1 86 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VII In such squalid conditions of living there was Little to elevate the tone of rural society, and if amongst the peasantry tastes were coarse, amusements rough, and manners rude, there is little cause for wonder or for blame in people existing in such sordid surroundings and in such hovels in such wretched contiguity. Enjoyments they had — at their Tastern's E'en, their Hallowmas, their Fairs, and their Sacraments — those Holy Fairs associated with scarcely less excitement. In the south country they had their gatherings in the evening,^ when, with music, singing, and dancing, they also enacted the story of some old song, little dramas, not too refined, in which they showed what rustic skill and rude humour they could. On moonlight nights they held their favourite meetings in barn or cottage, called " Eockings," ^ when young women brought their rocks and reels, or distaffs and spindles — where young men assembled, and to the accompaniment of the spinning of the wool and flax the song and merriment went round, till the company dispersed, and girls went home escorted by their swains, who carried gallantly their rocks over corn-rigs and moor. When " rocks " were no more used, and spinning-wheels had taken their place, still by the familiar name of " rockings " were these merry social meetings called.^ All great domestic events were accompanied by roystering and drinking — at a christening there was much, at a funeral there was more, at a wedding there was most. Boisterous mirth and play attended every stage of bridal preparations — the foot- washing of the bride, the humours of the feast, the dances at the wedding, and what not. The gayest were the " Penny Bridals," for which each neighbour contributed in olden times ^ Allan Cunningham's Songs of Scotland, i. ; Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale Song, p. 122 — such as "Waste and Thrift," or the song called "The Rock and wee pickle Tow," played at kirns, "Wooing the Maiden," at close of wedding feasts, and " Auld Glenae." ^ Rock and reel were going out about 1730 in the Lowlands, and had dis- appeared by 1740. — Henderson's Annals of Dunfermline. ^ At Fastern's e'en we had a rockin', To ca' the crack an' weave our stockin'. Burns' Epistle to Lapraik. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 187 one penny Scots, but now gave meal, or fowls, or ale to plenish the feast of every impecunious couple. The Church lifted up its voice and laid down its laws ^ against these weddings, which they abhorred as occasions of drunkenness, profanity, and sensuality — especially in " promiscuous dancing of men with women." However the Kirk might threaten and punish, the people danced defiantly ; for to dance " promisky," " as they called it, was their one great delight, and lairds and farmers sent money and food and drink to supply the festival. That these scenes were often wild and indecorous was certainly the case ; and so far the clergy had reason to condemn them. But, unfortunately, the Church placed its embargo on all pleasures alike ; put in the category of moral offences the harmless exuberances of youth and the gross offences of manhood and womanhood, with no sense of proportion — in fact, with no sense whatever. In consequence, the peasantry, despising foolish ecclesiastical rebukes on their harmless pleasures, got to respect quite as little the wisest restraints on their sins.^ People's songs reflect the people's mind and picture th people's life ; many of these folk-songs have long ago dis- appeared : some because they were poor, many because they were utterly gross — so different from the fine old ballads — and only the airs, harmless and pretty, lived on. Of the songs that do survive in their original form it may be said there is a charm of simplicity and plaintive sweetness in some, a rich shrewd humour, a lilting audacity in others ; but too many are of the earth, earthy : there is the mean bargaining over tochers, and sordid offers of gear as stages of the uncouth ^ General Assembly, 1645, 1701, 1706, 1719 ; Presbytery records, ■passim. - Hall's Travels in Scotland, i. 203. ^ One of the favourite little rustic plays was " Aiild Glenae," " Poor auld Glenae, what ails the Kirk at thee?" where the inquisitorial severity of the Kirk was ridiculed with gross allusions and broadest humour, the company enacting the familiar scenes in Kirk and Session — the solemn admonitions from the pulpit, the mock simplicity of the transgressor at the pillar — all this to the merriment of old and young, child and mother. — Cromek's Remains, 122; A. Cunningham's Songs of Scot., i. 148. See Herd's Collection of Songs for more accurate and less bowdlerised versions of favourite lyrics. i88 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY wooing ; there is coarse plainness of speech, and sly innuendoes which are worse. In 1724 Allan Eamsay, when he began to issue his Tea Table, Miscellany, altered popular songs — spoiling some, improving others to make them fit for decent society — not too successfully. It was left for Eobert Burns to rescue many fine tunes from oblivion, as they lingered on the ears of a few peasants who remembered only snatches of the songs to which they had been set ; and to meet the requirements of his decorous editors he changed wanton words to others of purer strain, and wrote new verses to suit those old melodies which, bereft of the ancient songs to which they had been wedded, were waiting for a new song to sing.^ Thereafter the grosser versions went out of use and favour, and the fresh versions won a place in the affections of a more modest generation. The literature of the people in the early part of the century was very restricted. In a shelf in the cottage might lie a Bible, a Confession of Faith, a weU-thumbed, peat-smoked volume of Eutherford's Letters, which were read on the Sabbath day to the interest of the old and the yawns of the young. The travelling packman every now and then came, and amidst the miscellaneous contents of his wallet were chapbooks : The Prophecies of Peclen, Life of Sir William Wallace, the Ravishing dying Words of Christina Ker, who died at the age 0/ 10, and songs and ballads, some as broad as they were long. In some districts the sight of Patrick Walker on his white pony about 1720 was a delight to sedate and serious-minded people, who listened to the pious covenanting pedlar as he denounced the growing ungodliness of the age. But this was dull to younger folk, who loved songs and stories which would have made the grim Covenanter sadder still. It was not till about 1750 that a popular and vernacular literature was concocted, more congenial to the tastes and habits of the rural population than History of Bohin Hood. This was the work of a pedlar very different from the long ^ Many a well-known song has gone through the purifying ordeal at the hands of Ramsay and his friends, or of Burns: "Duncan Gray," "Coming thro' the rye," "Get up and bar the door," " Jly love she's but a lassie yet," "0 mither dear I gin to fear," etc. etc. ; Cunningham's Songs of Scot., 4 vols. 1819; Chambers' Scottish Songs; Johnson's Musical Museum; Stenhouse's Illustrations of Lyric Poetry atid Music of Scot. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 189 deceased Walker, composer and hawker of pious cha])])0()ks of their fathers. Dugal (rrahani was a familiar personage! in Glasgow streets up to 1780 as bellman of the city — a strange, grotesque, dwarfish figure, with humpltack, pigeon-breast, and punch-like nose, limping up the Trongate, resplendent in a long scarlet cloak, blue breeches, and cocked hat.^ Ere he had been installed in this important office of " skellat bellman " he had travelled as " tlying stationer," or " travelling merchant," through the countryside, and sold chapbooks which he had himself written and printed about 1754. These quickly became the favourite reading of the peasantry : John Cliecqy the Chapvian, Lothian Tom, Leper the Tailor, Jochy and Maggie's Courtship, and others, were sold in every village and farm, and were the delight of every ploughman. As the little deformed man came ambling on his pony, crowds collected to buy his wares, to laugh at his broad jokes and stories, given with Eabelaisian unction by the leering cripple. The chapbooks are full of coarse, dramatic vigour, of gross humour in a dialogue of vulgarest Scots. Animal they are ; oi'ten unclean in the utter plainness of speech with which they depict the common incidents of rustic life. Yet they are valuable from their portraiture with rare fidelity of the tone, speech, talk, habits, morals, and immorals of the people. In the style with which this Boccaccio of the byre told his comic stories, the finer side of peasant character is not to be found — the love scenes have no romance, the religious references have no reverence, the idyllic beauty and simplicity of country life are not there. But in them is painted with cynical truth how peasants spoke, how they drank, how they courted, how they wedded, and how they forgot to wed ; their rude mirth, their gross pleasures ; how little they respected the menaces of the Kirk-Session, how disrespectfully they spoke of " Mess John " the minister behind his back ; how lightly they regarded uncleanness in thought, speech, and behaviour. It is true that Dugal Graham was as unable to appreciate and to describe the purer and higher aspects of Scots life as he ^ Collected Writings of Dugal Graham, Skellat Bellma^i of Glasgow, edit, by George Macgregor, 2 vols. 1883 ; Strang's Cluhs of Glasgoiu ; Eraser's Humorous Chapbooks of Scotland. I90 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY was to rise to the dignity of history when he composed his doggerel story of the Eebellion, and he wrote in the loosest vein to please the looser sort. But that the prevalent tone of the peasantry was low, in spite of the deep piety of great masses of the people, who had a fine strain of religious sentiment in their nature, and stanch, hardy righteousness in their lives, is abundantly proved by the alacrity with which such stories were read, and by the innumerable editions in rudest type and shape in which they were issued, regardlessly of all copyright, to delight groups at cottage firesides and stackyards. Session records of the past present the same side of society. They prove that the Church had driven the vices under, but had failed to drive them out. These old chapbooks long retained their popularity with the poorer sorts. Songs and ballads in rough broadsides, humorous, pathetic, amorous, and pious ; heroic stories with the crudest of woodcuts, tracts and discourses in deplorable type, which the packman carried in his wallet, formed the favourite reading for people of all tastes and temperaments. It is said that 200,000 copies of these chapbooks were issued yearly by petty booksellers about 1770.^ One of the all-pervading influences over the minds of the peasantry were superstitions. These grew up side by side with the most austere belief of orthodox religion, like flowers and weeds springing in an ill-kept garden. Each was held with equal tenacity in the same mind, unconscious of any incongruity. Trust in charms, omens, incantations, were rife amongst them all. Every incident of daily life — a baptism, a death, the illness of a cow, the churning of milk, the setting forth on a journey — each was associated witli some mysterious sign which foretold it, or some strange rite which infallibly caused or hindered it. Those notions and those practices were guarded from the eye of the Kirk, and were kept as furtively as the teraphim by ancient Jews, who worshipped them in private and adored Jehovah in public. Most deeply rooted were superstitions among the peasantry in remote ^ Fraser's Humorous Chapbooks of Scotland, p. 114. Later in the century the coarsest of these had wide circulation in the North of England, especially in the industrial centres. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 191 districts separated by moor, and hill, and loch, from contact with towns — regions where schoolmasters were scarce and kirks were powerless. They were wide-spread in scattered tracts of Galloway, and abounded with wild luxuriancy in the Highlands, where Celtic imagination ran riot and peopled the air and earth with spirits, and life with omens. But in fact there was no place where they were not prevalent in the early half of the century, and few places where they did not linger when the century had closed. Side by side with belief in the doctrine of the Confession of Faith was the respect for notions whose sources were pagan, or popish, or satanic. There was belief in the virtues of lakes and wells, which were due to heathen deity, or saint, or devil — equal aversions of the Church. To the Doo loch, in Covenanting Nithsdale,^ the people had gone, in spite of Presbytery, to sprinkle their cripples and palsied in the water, leaving votive offerings of rags and bits of bread as their popish ancestors had done, in gratitude to the unknown patron who wrought the cure. But chiefly in the northern districts were the pilgrimages to lakes and wells of saints, and to their ruined chapels, to exorcise the epilepsy from their sick.^ At Killin, in St. Fillan's well ; to Loch Maree, where they invoked the " God Mairie," Treval's loch in Orkney, and St. Eres in Sutherland, and many another shrine and lake, the inhabitants repaired up to the present century, and decked the trees and bushes on the brink with grateful rags of tartan, ribbons, and oat cakes.^ Old pagan beliefs lay side by side in peasant minds with those of Calvin. Beyond the Tay they had their Beltane fires — when on the first of May (Old Style) they lit the fire of turf, danced round the flames, and spilt a libation of caudle on the gi'ound ; they took their oat cake, having on it quaint knobs, which they flung in turn over their shoulder, saying, " This to thee, protect my cattle," " This to thee, fox, spare my sheep," " This to thee, eagle ; this to thee, hooded crow, save my ^ Penpont Presbytery Record, 1695. ^ At the end of the century this was still constantly done. Pennant's Tour, i. 159 ; Edmonston's Shetland, ii. 74. * Stat. Acct., Wick, x. 15 ; Logierait, Killin ; Brand's Orkney, p. 42 ; Mitchell's Fast in the Present, 143. 192 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY lambs." ^ Next day, probably, these idolaters were sitting in their pews in orthodoxy most demure. Superstition attended every action from birth to death. When the child was born, whether in Galloway or the Hebrides, there was felt a risk of its being taken off during sleep by fairies,^ who might leave a changeling in its stead. Friends, therefore, watched all night ; and making a circle round the bed, they took the " Book " in their hands, and waving the sacred leaves bade all foes begone to the Eed Sea. Not till the christening was over was peril past from fairy or from witch, and all visitors, lest they should chance to have the evil eye, were presented with a piece of bread to propitiate any hostile purpose. In most districts when friends met they were careful to salute with a kiss to prevent " fore-speaking " ; and nothing they dreaded more than that their children, or goods, or cattle should be praised unless to the praise was added the phrase, " God bless the bairn," " Luck fare the beast." ^ If a cow should fall ill, it would be remembered that their neighbour who called yesterday had praised the animal, but had not added, " I wish her good luck," and ill intent was at once suspected. The possession of the evil eye did not always imply malice : it might happen that a poor man had the fatal gift which cursed his own fortunes — his cattle died, his cow failed of milk, his stacks heated in the yards.* It was all because he had the " uncanny eye," and he would avert his gaze as the milk was carried from the byre lest he should turn it sour, would close his eyes as he passed the lambs, and hardly look a neighbour in the face. This reputation of an uncanny eye, however, was a source of profit to others. Old hags who owned it — when witchcraft brought no penalty — got presents of clothing and food, and their peat was "cast" most obligingly to win their favour or dispel their spleen. 1 Pennant's Tour, i. 111. ; Stat. Acct., Logierait, v. 82 ; Stewart's Sl-etches of Highlands. ^ Still believed in among the Hebrides, vol. iv. 251, Proceedings Scot. Society of Antiquaries ; Cromek's Remains, p. 293 ; Grant's Superstitions of Highlanders, i. 168. ^ Gregor's Folk-Lore ; Stat. Acct., Forgleu, xiv. 511; Gargimnock, xviii. 123 ; Mrs. Grant's Sio}jerstitions of the Highlanders. ■* Cromek's Remains, p. 289. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 193 Long after witchcraft iis a crime was abolished from the statute book it was maintained as a belief; but the supposed witch was no longer burned — she was obsequiously caressed ; to gain security from her malice and to gain help from her arts, she was constantly getting a dish of groats, a supply of peat or thatch for her hovel whenever she wanted. Some- times, however, the caresses to secure her favour turned to rage when they felt her curse, and seizing the old creature they " scored " her, drawing blood above the eyebrows with a cut in the form of a cross.^ " Scoring the witch " proved a perfect safeguard from her malignant spells. Firmly was it credited when Hallowmas came that the " Hallowmas rades " began, when the local hags gathered for midnight revelry, and in Dumfriesshire '' met in silent, ruined precincts of Caerlaverock Castle or Sweetheart Abbey. By their peat fires at night old peasants told how the old kimmers had set forth on their eldrich journey — on nights when the wind laid flat their crops and unroofed their huts — sitting on a shank-bone, shod with bones of a murdered man, with bridle made of the skin of an unchristened babe. In Nithsdale only bold men doubted that on Locherbrig hill, near Dumfries, they held assembly, as the " Witches Gathering " song records : ^ — When the howlet has three times hoo'etl, When the gray cat has three times mewed, When the tod has yowled three times i' the wood, At the red moon cowering ahint the cloud, When the stars hae cruppen deep in the rift Lest cantrips had pyked them out of the lift ; Up horses a', but [without] mair adowe, Ride, ride for Locher brig knowe. Even up to the next century, boys, as they passed the hut of some old woman whom people eyed askance, put the thumb upon the palm of the hand and closed their fingers over it — a relic of the sign of the cross to avert the evil eye. It was long ere the belief in fairies passed from a conviction to mere " fairy tales." People implicitly believed in these folk with golden locks and green mantles, with quivers of arrows ' Somerville's Oxon Life, p. 366 ; Pennant's Tour. ^ Cromek's Remains, p. 289. ^ Cromek's Remains of Nithsdalc and Galloway Song, p. 286. 13 194 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY made of bones of a man buried where three lairds' lands meet, tipped with white field flints or elf-stones dipped in dew of hemlock, that slew the cattle as they passed. Folk thought they heard the hubbub of the fairy voices on the first night of summer, while the breeze was rising and sighing through the firs. There were haunts of fairies and brownies which they feared to tread beside ancient thorn-trees. But at last that ground was ploughed as agriculture spread ; and Good-man's Crofts became farmers' acres, and corn grew on knolls where elves had held their trysts : then fairies vanished from the land.^ Beliefs pass on to half-beliefs and thence to myths ; and it is difficult to know when a faith has passed into a fancy. The pious rites of one age become the pastimes of another, and an old superstitious practice in time becomes a childish game. Even Hallowmas gradually lost, save for children, its devout superstition, till no longer folk believed the ancient rhyme that at Halloween " all the witches were to be seen." But other superstitions remained deep-rooted — belief in charms and omens innumerable. No farmer would omit to place the branch of rowan or elder tree, of ash or ivy, on the byre door to ward the cattle from blight or witchcraft ; or forget to place on the stable door — usually on the 2nd of May — the elf cups, the fancied weapons of fairies, but prosaically stones perforated by friction at a waterfall.^ Most of all was death with its mystery accompanied by luxuriant superstitions. The moment the spirit left the body the nearest of kin received the breath;^ the windows and door were opened as if to let the soul get free ; on the breast of the dead the plate of salt was placed lest the body swell and burst the bands with which it was swathed. The lyke wake followed, when friends watched the body to keep e^il spirits away, and caroused to keep their own spirits up. In the Highlands,'* to show their ^ As the adage said — Where the scythe cuts and the sock rives Hae done wi' fairies and bee-bykes. Cromek's Remains, etc. p. 293. Flint arrow-heads believed to be fairy arrows in the North at end of century. — Stat. Acct., "Wick, 10-15. - Pennant's Tour, i. 158 ; Hist, of Gallovjay, ii. 234. ^ Pennant's Tour, i. 111-113 ; Hogg's Life of Wightman, p. 110. ■* Grant's Superstition of Highlanders, i. 180: Pennant's Tovr, i. Ill; Stat. Acct. Scut., Logierait, v. 82-85. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 195 pious fortitude, the parents or nearest of kin performed a lugubrious dance, with streaming eyes, while younger members joined in livelier measure. From birth to death, with rites unknown to the Kirk, with beliefs unknown to science, the life of the people was crowded. VIII Nothing was more characteristic of Scotland than the bleak, dreary, treeless aspect of the scenery. We are apt to treat tlie jeers of old English travellers on this point as merely cockney libels, and to consider the sarcasms of Dr. Samuel Johnson as only ponderous pleasantries as exaggerated as when he asserted that a " tree in Scotland is as rare as a horse in Venice." Unfortunately, the jibes contained a large amount of truth. The ancient woods had disappeared ; wasted by raids, burnt as fuel, destroyed as encumbrances of the ground, or sold by impecunious owners. We become almost sceptical of their ever having existed at all when we read the accounts of travellers, like the caustic Sir Anthony Weldon, who in 1617 attended his Majesty, James VI., to his northern dominions, and protested that " Judas had scarce got a tree to hang himself," ^ if he had betrayed his Lord in Scotland ; and Sir William Brereton, who in 1636 says " that he had diligently observed, but cannot see any timber in riding 100 miles." Forests there were truly of great extent; but these were in the Highlands," far out of reach in inaccessible straths; and for the common purposes of work, for house-fitting, for ship-building, for implements, fir and oak were imported from Norway. Only around the houses of country gentlemen, or kirks, in the more cultivated Lowlands, were groves or clumps of wood — usually sycamore or ash- — to be seen at the beginning of the century ; and most of these of recent origin.^ Throughout Ayrshire the country was one huge ^ Early Travels in Scotland, edited by Hume. In 1440 .ffineas Sylvius (Pope Pius II.) described the country as "destitute of trees." — P. 26. 2 Accompt Current, by J. S[preull], 1705. ^ Kirke, travelling in 1677, is able to speak of the " pleasant woods and poli- cies" he passes, of "groves" or clumps of treeS about the many pretty houses of the gentry he rode by on his way to Edinburgh, though ' ' not a tree in any part of the country elsewhere." — Acct. of Tour in Scotland, by Thomas Kirke, 196 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY naked waste ; not a tree was to be seen in the open land, and none to be found anywhere except by the banks of the Doon, the Girvan, and the Stinchar, whereon little knots of stunted oaks and beeches took shelter. Those which were planted by the Countess of Eglinton and Lord Loudoun between 1730 and 1740 were only isolated patches when Dr. Johnson made his memorable visit to Auchinleck. In East Lothian there were few trees except round some gentlemen's seats older than the Eevolution. It was in 1706^ that Lord Haddington, stimulated by the taste and energy of his wife, gave up his beloved field sports and devoted himself to improving his estates, and began planting at Tyninghame on the deep sand near the seaside, in spite of confident assurances that nothing could grow on such a barren soil and in such a situation exposed to the ceaseless salt winds. There a fine wood sprang up, and on the moorland rose the lovely Binning woods, while fields formerly wind-swept and desolate became fertile by protection from belts of trees. Through Eoxburgh- shire there was bleakness and barrenness of nature, equalling that of Berwickshire and other southern counties, until round Floors Castle some trees were planted and jealously guarded about 1716. Of the once richly wooded Tweeddale it was said in 1715 that only round the mansions and churchyards were there rows of plane and ash to be seen, and these were still young. ^ Even the landlords who were possessed of forests had no aesthetic affection for them, and were ready to sell to the highest bidder the finest timber on their land. Down went splendid fir woods ^ in Argyllshire to an Irish company at the beginning of the century at one plack a piece, and to utilise the rest of the deciduous trees the speculators set up their forges near Inveraray. Woods there were of great extent in the West Highlands, much of which were cut down for sale in p. 15; Modern Acct. of Scotlatid, by an English gentleman (Thomas Kirke); Early Travels in Scotland, p. 253 ; Hamilton's Description of RenfrewsJiire ; Monymusk Papers, Spalding Miscellanies, ii. 53. ^ Treatise on Forest Trees, 1764 [by Charles Lord Haddington], jip. 1-11. - Jeffrey's Eoxburghshire, iii. 19 : Bailies of regality in 1717 issue proclama- tion, warning oft'enders who " plucked the haws from the thorns that defend the young plantations." Dr. Alexander Pennicuick's IVorls, 1818, p. 57. ^ Smith's Survey of Argyllshire, p. 138. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE i of miserable, ragged creatures are seen going from door to door, almost numerous enough to plunder the whole town." — Present State of Orkney Islands, by J. Fea, surgeon, 1775. ^ Stat. Acct. Scot., Kilmallie, Kihnonivaig ; Walker's Econ. Hist, of Hebrides and Highlands, i. 84 ; Smith's Agric. of Argyllshire, 1798, p. 240. * Buchanan's Travels in West Hebrides, p. 56. Petition of subtenants of a northern county against the tyranny of tacksmen, which begins, "Though your petitioners are not a very respectable, they have just claim to be a useful class of men."— r/ie Bee, ii. 300, 1791. 15 226 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY fifth year there was a dearth, or even a famine, among them, and the people were dependent for supplies upon their land- lords, or driven to beggary.^ Speaking of Sutherland in 1772, Pennant writes:^ "This tract seems the abode of sloth, the people are torpid with idleness and most wretched. Their hovels are most miserable ; made of poles, wattled and covered with sods. Till the famine pinches they will not bestir themselves. Dispirited and driven to despair by bad management, crowds are now passing to the eastern coast on report of a ship being there laden with meal. Numbers of them are now emigrating. . They wander in a state of despera- tion ; too poor to pay, they sell themselves for their passage, preferring a temporary bondage in a strange land to staying in their native land." It is estimated that during the years between 1760 and 1783 no fewer than 30,000 of the High- landers emigrated in despair ; ^ for year after year they were in utter destitution, and when a famine occurred — as in 1782 when the weather spoilt their scanty grain and the storm prevented their fishing — hundreds were starved to death and cattle died in crowds.^ Though the tide of emigration was partially stopped during the American war, except to Canada, when peace was restored the crowds swarmed to the ships to cross the Atlantic ; for their distress drove them to seek a home in a more hospitable land. Dr. Johnson, as he travelled through the Highlands, was impressed and depressed by its silence and solitude, which was not surprising in a Londoner familiar with the stir and tumult of Life in the city that he loved; but he was equally impressed by the indigence and growing depopulation which met his eye.^ It was inactivity which caused much of this indigence, and in its turn indigence ^ J. Knox, British Empire, i. 9 ; 1783. Strange to say there is no purely Gaelic word for the operation of begging. ^ Pennant's Tour, ii. 315. ^ If they could not pay their passage they sold themselves to the captains of the vessels, who at the port resold them to the plantations. This deportation was stopped in 1776, when the war with America broke out, and all intercourse with Great Britain was broken up ; and they were forced to remain and starve at home. — J. Knox's View of British Empire, especially of Scotland, 3rd ed. 1785, pp. 129, 130. * Ibid. 129 ; Fergusson's Henry Erskine, p. 229. ^ Journey to Western Islands. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 227 forced this depopulation. While in districts like the Cheviots and the hills of Galloway, only a few shepherds and their dogs found occupation, in wild mountainous tracts of the north a host of starvelings tried to exist with no work to employ their time or their hands.^ Destitution had been the curse for ages, though now intensified by the increase of the inhabitants in these barren districts ; and emigration from the picturesque but sterile straths and sea-shores began and continued chiefly because the natives were starved from want of means, or from want of energy to make a livelihood. In course of time those who went across the Atlantic to colonies in the western continent, where they found a more genial settlement and a more fertile land, sent home news of their prosperity, and kindled an eagerness in their less fortunate kinsmen and clansmen to join them and share in their good fortune beyond the seas.^ By these means their countrymen were incited to accept the message like to that of Ulysses : " Come, my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world." * Earl of Selkirk, Present State of the Highlands ivith a View of the Causes and probable Consequences of Emigration, 1805, p. 30. - Smith's Agric. of Argyllshire, p. 333 ; Knox's British Empire, i. 128. ' ' The Highlanders who had served in the American war, being by royal proclama- tion entitled to settlements in that extensive country, were desirous that their kindred and friends should partake of their good fortune. Some transmitted their sentiments by letter ; others, returning to pay a farewell visit to their native land, exhorted their countrymen to exchange their barren heaths for the boundless plains of America." CHAPTEE VII THE POOK OF SCOTLAND In 1698 Mr. Andrew Fletcher was seated in his mansion at Saltoun, in his richly-stored library, inditing a Second Discourse on the Affairs of Scotland. A short, thin, sallow-faced, pock- pitted man, with jfiery eyes and stern looks, frowning under his brown wig — such was the outward appearance of the honest patriot and stubborn republican, who disagreed with most people and things, was always most decidedly of his own opinion, who hated all monarchies, disliked kings, be they Jacobite or Orange, and despised parties, whether Whig or Tory. But he certainly loved his own country of Scotland, deplored its poverty, and wrote in his vigorous way suggestions for its redemption. He was writing during the seven lean years of terrible dearth, and he saw wretchedness everywhere around him and people famishing at his very door. "There are," he wrote,^ " at this day two hundred thousand people begging from door to door. And though the number of them be perhaps double to what it was formerly, by reason of this present great distress, yet in all times there have been about one hundred thousand of these vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land, or even those of God and nature." For this vagabondism he grimly prescribed the remedy of forced labour, or serfdom, of which he had an example near him in the salteries at Prestonpans, where the salters were bondsmen for life ; and for which he 1 Political Works, 1749, p. 100. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 229 bund a sanction in statutes of his country, authorising the jeizing of vagrants as " perpetual servants." But before accept- ing his striking figures as strictly accurate, one would like to learn how he knew that there were a hundred thousand of these ereditary nomadic crews — savage, wild, and dangerous; for they [had their haunts in remote parts of the country, in caves by sea-shore and in mountain tracts, and, as he says, " no magistrate ould ever be informed which way one of a hundred of these stretches died ; " no census had been taken, no enumeration was possible. He further states that of these two hundred thousand DBggars swarming in the land half had sprung up " by reason Df the present great distress." One again asks. On what iata had he formed this calculation ? As at the time he wrote there were still three more grievous years of dearth and itarvation to run, at this rate of increase the beggars must lave accumulated in 1701 to an hundred thousand more, which would result in the startling numbers of three hundred thousand mendicants in a population of little over a million — or every fourth person a beggar or vagabond, to be supported by the other three — child, man, or woman.^ As a rule ronnd Qumbers seldom square with facts. Without adopting Fletcher's numbers as correct, we may at least accept his vivid picture of the time in which he lived as accurate — one of wide -spread misery, of abject need or famine. The worst fact connected with the social condition of the country was the amount of hereditary vagabondism, the existence of a large, widely-scattered, predatory class, who, in the earlier part of the century, as in centuries bygone, infested the outlying districts of the Lowlands and Highlands. Out of these glens and valleys, from caves and coverts, by rocky shores, from Caithness to the Solway, they came to prowl, to beg, to menace, to extort, and to plunder from the rural people. At every festival and fair — at wedding, and funeral, and com- munion Monday, when alms were given from the kirk door — these "randie beggars," with their wild looks, their filth, and their masterfidness, proved the pest of the community and the terror ^ In his First Discourse he estimates the population of Scotland at cue million and a half — numhers which were not attained for a century later. The population really was about 1,100,000 when he wrote. 230 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY of the quiet, parochial beggars waiting for the doles that the tinkers seized. Through two hundred years the Scots Parliament had been uttering proclamations, and fulminations, and penalties against the hordes of " sturdy beggars, Egyptians, sorners, cairds, tinkers, gypsies, thiggers," as they are called in copious and indiscriminate vocabulary, whom Fletcher describes as " living without regard to laws of man, or God, or nature, like wild beasts." But all in vain. The statutes were severe enough, and when a rare opportunity happened in policeless, jailless districts they were carried out with vigour. Vagabonds were burnt in the ear with an iron and banished the district — the magistrates being quite satisfied they had performed their duty if they rid their locality of a nuisance and sent it on to their neighbour — under pain of being hanged if they returned. The more inveterate Egyptians and sorners (a " sorner " being one who extorts food or help by terror or threats of force) were banished " furth of Scotland," and if they were caught in act of theft they were regarded as reputed or "notorious thieves," and forthwith hanged. In these ways the ranks were dispersed rather than reduced. In the Lowlands the hordes of sorners were dreaded in lonely farms and moorland cottages, where they pilfered the fowls and sometimes kidnapped the children, and robbed in the highway. It was into their hands that the eminent grammarian, Thomas Euddiman,^ fell when trudging as a lad to Aberdeen University, and the poor student was despoiled of the little savings for his " up-keep " in the college and the hard-wrought-for clothes on his back. It was they who kidnapped Adam Smith ^ when he was a child, and nearly deprived the country of a brilliant citizen and the world of its most original political economist. In the North and Highlands these bands tried more venturous games, appearing at markets and fairs in bodies of twelve men, who, armed with dirks andi muskets, watched the people as they made their purchases or their bargains, and plundered them on the lonely paths home- wards.^ To these gangs had belonged James Macpherson, leader of a band in the towns of Morayshire and Banff, who, with ^ Chalmers' Life of Riiddiman, p. 6. ^ Rae's Life of Adam Smith, p. 5. 3 Forbes' Institutes, p. 79 ; Hume's Commentaries, 1798, i. 470. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 231 comrades, was hanged in 1700, according to dulMous tradition and song, playing on his fiddle on his way to the gallows the tune he had composed in prison.^ As the century advanced and the law reached the High- lands, as quieter and better ordered times set in, the rude, wild 1 races dwindled down to the shabby groups of tinkers who still linger in the country, inheritors through centuries of ancestral, vagrant qualities, descendants of the most ancient families of Scotland — of the vagabond tribes. There was a characteristic touch of Scots kindliness and sympathy with poverty in the law of the time, exempting from the category of thief, with its consequent penalty, a man who, being in utmost necessity and with no other means to supply it, took meat from another. No man could be charged with theft for as much meat as he could carry on his back.^ Poverty in any form appealed to the heart both of the Scots Parlia- ment and the Scottish people. "When the century began special causes had temporarily increased the ranks of mendicancy throughout Scotland to an alarming extent. The seven years had passed of calamitous seasons — when the crops did not ripen, the harvests were not gathered, and the people were reduced to terrible extremities to get food. People perished in hundreds, — " thousands dying at this day " is Fletcher's strong expression — and cattle all over the country were destroyed by cold, and hunger, and disease ; farms were deserted by farmers who were ruined ; large portions of the agricultural classes were forced into mendicancy, and the land was swarming with beggars — farmers, labourers, artisans, now reduced to live on charity, who once had been able and willing to bestow it. Poverty " by visita- tion of providence " — such as agricultural distress in the seven ' hungry years " and the dearth of 1709 — made mendicancy respectable among the pious ; and too often the vagrant life, ^ When no one of the crowd would accept from him the fiddle when he had finished, he broke it over his knee. Burns' ode gives him an immortality he does not deserve — Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, Sae dantonly gaed he, He played a spring, and danced it round Below the gallows' tree. - Forbes' Institutes of Scots Law, 1737, p. 148. 232 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY begun from misfortune in those days of destitution, was continued by acquired taste and confirmed habit. For a long time after, folk pretending to have suffered from the " ill years " throve on popular sympathy, and at last became the pest of tenants, the despair of justices, and the burden of Kirk-Sessions. For at least twenty years of the century the amount of comparatively respectable and necessitous vagrancy remained abnormal ; but in course of time the terrible condition of the poor, deplored by Fletcher, became a thing of the past, diminishing as the prosperity of the country increased. As we trace the history of the Scots poor throughout the century, we shall find that with frugal habits and simple ways the able-bodied could live on means which the poorest English would have despised, and that the needs of the aged and infirm were sufficiently supplied by the voluntary charity of the people ; while the pride and independence of the peasantry made them look after their own kith and kin as long as they were able to prevent the indignity of their descending to pauperism. Owing to these reasons, the relief of the poor was never an anxiety to the people nor a felt burden on the country. Very much otherwise was it in England. Although that part of the kingdom was as prosperous as the northern part was depressed, at the beginning of the century the number of paupers was enormous. Out of a population of 5,500,000 every fifth man and woman was dependent more or less on compulsory parochial support,^ on which one million pounds annually were expended. English poor laws had done everything to foster habitual poverty ; the system of giving aid to able- bodied persons had virtually put a premium on wastefulness, idleness, recklessness, and fraud, and had fatally undermined self-respect and independence in the poor — where more than half of those in receipt of parish rates were capable of earning their own living.^ The statute of 1662 — which, with one or two ineffectual modifications, was to remain in force for nearly two hundred years — prohibited every one leaving his native parish unless he was able to occupy a £10 tenancy. The ^ Pashley's Poor and Poor Laws, p. 237. 2 Eden's State of the Poor, i. 216 ; Sir G. Nicholl's Poor and Poor Laws of England, i, 370. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 233 consequence was that the poor, however industrious, were con- fined to their own over-populated and sta^^'nant district, and though able to get occupation and good wages a few miles off, were consigned to perpetual poverty in some tradeless village. Meanwhile, in order to prevent any increase of burdens on the land from paupers, landlords destroyed cottages and dismantled hamlets on their estates that they " might not become nests of beggars' brats.^ The result was that the poor were driven from their homes when ill-fortune overtook them ; labourers were forced to herd together in villages and towns, in squalid, filthy, overcrowded dens, ruinous to health, to energy, to decency, and morals." When the eighteenth century began, the alarming increase in the rates (which had doubled in twenty years) was a source of grave fears ; and perplexed speeches from the throne, impossible schemes of bewildered statesmen, and crude plans of self-confident pamphleteers, testify at once to the extent of growing evils and the hopeless- ness of any remedy being found for them. "WTien we turn to Scotland we find that to meet the problem of poverty there was no anxiety, far less despair. And yet wages were half what were earned in England ; ^ the soil was barren ; wretched agriculture was wasting the laud and starving the people ; trade was almost non-existent ; there was chronic scarcity of money amongst the higher classes, and constant scarcity, and often dearth of food or " vivers," among the peasantry. II The manner in which the poor in Scotland were supported and relieved was simple and primitive, and brings out vividly many quaint and homely traits of old Scots life. It was necessary, in order to save too many incursions on parochial kindliness, that some restriction should be put on those who were entitled to appeal to the charity of the people in any ^ Arthur Young's Farmer s Letter to the People of England, 1768, p. 288. » Eden's State of Poor, i. 361. * The labourers there had from Is. to 8d. a day. — Smith's Wealth of Naiions, bk. i. chap. 7. 234 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V locality, and to exclude vagrants and those who were unknown m character, and might be unworthy of help. The method had been prescribed by a law dating as far back as James VI. A license was given to a certain number of beggars yearly to ply throughout each parish. They required to wear for their identification little stamps of lead, bearing the name of the parish, supplied by the Elrk-Session, and worn on their gowns. These " blue gowns," as they were called, or " gaber- lunzies " — from the wallet they carried — were not allowed to beg beyond their own parish, lest they poach on others' pre- serves. If the parish or town was large they were divided into different bands,^ so that they in turn might traverse each division in one day, and the whole parish in the course of a fortnight.^ In this way there was one continuous stream of mendicancy passing through the neighbourhood; knocking at the door, not only'of the laird, but also of the farmer and labourer, presenting their " meal-pokes," which beggars never took away empty, for none refused to put into the wallet a handful of oat or barley meal. Not only elderly and infirm persons were licensed, but sometimes children even were granted badges giving them the privilege and right of begging.^ The restriction was made that only persons who had resided three years in the bounds were to have this qualification ; and all others, as well as beggars from other districts, were without fail brought before the Kirk- Session and duly " advised " ^ (that is commanded) to betake themselves to their own place— the constable, in the rare case of there being such an official, being rewarded with 2 s. 6d. Scots (or 2|-d. sterling) for every one whom he lodged in jail. This system, objectionable as it was, at least had the advan- tage of hghtening the meagre church collections of much of the burden which they would otherwise have borne, and of leaving all the more to be dispensed to the old, the sick, and the " bedrids " of the parish. Besides the professional blue-gowns or gaberlunzies, and the ^ Warden's Angus or Forfarshire, iii. 402. ^ In 1845, badges were given to paupers entitling them to beg in Brechin. Poor Law Commissioners report in 1842 : "In most of the burghs and smaller towns the paupers are allowed to beg on one or more days of the week." — Nicholl's Hist. Scot. Poor Laws, p. 142. ^ Campbell's Balmerino, p. 240. ■* Edgar, ii. 10. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 235 casual poor who sought aid, there were heggars who, being maimed or deformed, were famiharly kuown as " objects " ; and in these poor, ill-fed days the number of imbeciles, diseased and deformed, was very great. These seem to have lived fairly well on the sympathies of the people, and the mode in which they made their progress through tlie country is characteristic of a combined kindliness and caution. They were conveyed in barrows, or " hurdles," ^ and it was the custom for the villagers or farmer at whose door the " object " — often an impostor — was set down, to supply the needed food and lodging, and next morning to carry the hurdle with its occupant to the next house, and there deposit it. In this luxurious manner the decrepit beggar lived and travelled in ease. The conveyance was certain of being obtained, for the farmer was only too anxious to rid himself of the nuisance, and to place it with as little delay as possible at his neigh- bour's door. One cause which increased and recruited the ranks of un- privileged vagrants was the practice of each town banishing its " bad characters," convicted of any crime or suspected of ill living, " beyond the liberties of the city." By these self- preserving measures town authorities drove to other districts the refuse of their own population, who began forthwith to prowl over the country, getting what supplies they could in spite of all efforts of effete constables to suppress them, and of all penalties to punish them. To counteract this evil, strenuous measures were taken by parish Kirk-Sessions that no unnecessary burden should fall upon their scanty funds ; and indefatigable vigilance was exerted that no one of ill -repute who had migi-ated from ^ Kirk-Session records contain such entries as these : 1724. — "To a distressed person carryed in a cart from place to place, 14s." "To a cripple carryed in barrow, 3s." "To making wheel for a barrow, 14s. Scots." — Cramond's Chiirch of Eathven. Up to the end of the century in towns old vagabonds, either cripple or pretending to be so, got charity and conveyance in this way, expecting help and removal from the persons at whose door they were laid. "My father," says a writer, giving his reminiscences, "gave orders to the servants to let them and their barrows lie at the doors till relieved by their own means." Servants had great pleasure in laying the cripples at the door of any one whom they wished specially to annoy. — Glasgotv Past and Present ii. 94 ; Agnew's Hereditary Sheriffs, p. 588. 236 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY other quarters should become dependent upon them for relief. Old Acts of the General Assembly had supported this anxious aim; and since 1694 there had been in force the regulation that " care be taken in receiving servants that they have testimonials of their honesty and Christian behaviour, and that the same be required of all others who flit or remove from one parish to another." In this v\^ay fugitives from the secular law or from Church discipline were frustrated in their efforts to escape to the quiet obscurity and security of the country, and were forced to drift into towns, where they might be less noticed, although even there the populations were so small, and the elders in their several districts so vigilant, that a strange face was soon detected in the streets. If a fugitive, in his simplicity, sought a refuge from the eye of elders, creditors, or magistrates by retiring to a rural district where he was unknown, he quickly discovered that the very fact of his being " unknown " was the most notorious fact about him; and there was a certainty, whenever the rumour of his presence arose, that the elders and minister would meet upon his case, and an entry would appear in the records as follows : " This day delated A. B., a stranger come into the parish without a testimonial ; orders that he be summoned to next Session that he may give account of himself." ^ The professional beggars, licensed or not licensed, were ever on the alert for any distribution of alms — they swarmed at marriages, and they swarmed at funerals. At these latter occasions, after the guests had partaken of the ale, and short- bread, and oat-cakes before the " lifting," ^ the poor partook of the food which was provided for them ; and such items mentioned in the old household accounts as "12 dozen bread for the poor " on the occasion of a burial, show that their share in post-mortem charity was very considerable. It may be easily imagined how eagerly the vagrants and poor 1 "Old Church Life, " Scots. Mag. 1686. In 1698, Kirk-Session of Tillicoultry "being informed that a man had come to the parish without a certificate, instruct their officer to cause him to procure written evidence of his respect- ability, under pain of his being proceeded against before the civil magistrate in order to his being removed." — Rogers, iii. 400. 2 Grossart's Parish of Shotts, p. 206. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 237 listened in olden days when the bellman passed through the village, proclaiming, after a premonitory tinkle of his " dead- bell " : " All brothers and sisters, I let you to wot that there is a brother departed out of this present world according to the will of Almighty God," and announcing the name and address of the corpse, invited everyone to be present at the interment.' A " communion season " in a parish attracted crowds from all quarters, for it was well known that on the Monday after the sacrament the elders would distribute to the poor the collections from the huge gatherings of worshippers made during the preceding days of preaching. There accordingly assembled a motley and unruly ragged lot, who sat on grave- stones, or stood amongst the long grass and nettles of the kirkyard till the service was over, to share in the division of bodies or turners. Sometimes the noisy mob was so riotous and violent that the Sessions had to refuse doles to any but their own people ; although on these pious occasions the parochial purse was less close and more generous than usual to the needy." Exacting and importunate as the beggars certainly were, the alms expected by them were not exorbitant, as judged by the monetary standard of our day. At the beginning of the cen- tury, when, previous to the Union, turners or bodies were current Scots money, the mendicant would only ask a modest bodle ^ (equal to the sixth part of a penny). So customary was this tribute, that in the streets of Edinburgh might often have been witnessed a richly dressed and periwigged and be-sworded gentleman going through a careful, curious, and elaborate pecuniary transaction with some squalid, dirty creature. This operation consisted in the gentleman, who may not have had in his waistcoat pocket the smallest possible current coin,^ giving 1 Morer's Short Acct. 1702. - After communion : " 1700, March 28. — Given in turners ( = bodles) at the kirk door, 3s." — Cramond's Cullen, p. 139. 1710. — "To randie beggars, 7s. in dyotts." ' Burt's Letters, i. 1-15. "The beggar managed to be better off than the working man, and went well shod, while the industrious trudged barefoot." * Scots money was one-twelfth part of the same denomination in sterling money : Dyot, or Scots penny = -f\jth of a penny ; bodle, or two pennies = Jth ; plack, groat, or farthing = ^th ; bawbee = id.; shilling=ld. ; merk, or 13s. 4d. = ls. Id.; pound = Is. 8d. A bodle was a coin named after Bothwell, a coiner, 238 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY a beggar a bawbee, and waiting patiently while there was extracted from the malodorous rags the change of one plack or two bodies, which brought the donation to the recognised conventional sum. The regular means of meeting the necessities of the poor were the collections at church from Sunday to Sunday. It might be supposed that a people so church-going as the Scots in the hrst half of the eighteenth century — with their frequent ordinances and prolonged communion seasons — would produce large contributions to the poor-boxes. But the amounts gathered were extremely small, and the individual offerings were strik- ingly diminutive. This was due, however, not to the mean- ness and niggardliness of the people, but to their own great poverty. A parish with a sermon-seeking population of a thousand — without a dissenter in its bounds — considered that it deserved well of its country and of Providence if its Sabbath collections came to Is. 6d. to 2s. a week, and a communion " occasion," attended on four days by worshippers from all quarters up to the number of 1500 or 2000, might result in collections of the value of only about 12 s. sterling. On ordinary Sundays in smaller parishes the offerings, which were to sup- port all the paupers and relieve all cases of distress, might not be more than 6d. or Is. each week. It is evident, therefore, that it was a matter of grave concern that as many worship- pers as possible should assemble from Sunday to Sunday, and probably it was not only one thoughtful Session, like that in Bute, which fined 6d. Scots everyone who went to another parish church, because " the poor wants their charity at the kirk."i But miserable as were the church collections in quantity, they were still worse in quality ; for a large proportion of the coins deposited in the " basins " at the kirkyard gate, or in as there were "Aitchisons" named after a coiner of that name. — Ruddiman's Introduction to Diplomata. Scots coins bore names of French origin : bawbee, from bas billon, or base bullion; "turner," from Tournois ; "plack," from plaque ; groat, from gros. — Robertson's Scottish Coinage. The mode of reckon- ing in Scots money was gradually abandoned after 1760. In Auchinleck, Ayr- shire, in 1753 (Paterson's Ayrshire and JFigtonshire, i. 184). In Balmerino, 1775 (Campbell's Balmerino, p. 243). ^ Kingarth ; Hewison's £tUe in Olden Time, ii. 275. i THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 239 the ladles in the kirk, consisted of bad copper money, obsolete (ir foreign coins, which were only worth their weight in metal. At the time of the Union the Scots silver money had been called in to be reminted to standard English coins ; but the copper money was left, and lay vexatiously in the hands of the people as it went out of legal currency — becoming thinner, smaller, as it wore out.^ The consequence was that they palmed off in church what would not pass in the market. As the native money was scarce, the trade with Holland brought into the hands of traders and merchants a good deal of Dutch money ; and from the Dutch busses or boats, which were busy fishing off the Scots coast, their mean copper coins were brought by the foreign sailors making their purchases on shore. These got a furtive circulation in the community, although they were wortliless in business. Most insignificant of all was the doit — only equal to a Scots penny, or the twelfth part of an English penny. Accordingly, in the parish poor-box, during the course of a year, met a strange fraternity of coins of all ages, peoples, and tongues — most of them shapeless, illegible, diminutive — from doits to turners, from placks to bawbees, from 'Irish harps" to " English clipped money " ; while lying among their poor neighbours might be found a Spanish rix dollar, or Flemish guilder. Kirk-Session records of these days teem with bitter lamentations over the poverty-stricken sin.' The money accumulating through the year was received in a capacious box, which in some parishes was placed at the church door instead of a plate. There were two slits — one narrow, for silver ; the other wider, for copper. There were two differ- ent locks with separate keys in possession of two elders, so that one could not open it without the presence and help of the other " box master," as he was called. Once or twice a ^ Kirk-Session of Wliitekirk, Aug. 18, 1730. The minister and elders did receive from the kirk treasurer the poor's-box, and the poor's money therein was counted, and there was in the box of good current money at the present rates ane 100 and 10 pounds of Whit money. In turners there was of current coins 5 lbs. 10s. lOd. ; in Scots half merks, 12 lbs. ; in doyts and ill copper, 2 lbs. 13s. 2d. — Ritchie's Churches of St. Baldrcd. - The Church, however, was not the only sufferer from base coin. Stirling Town Council in 1722 " discharges persons from giving Dutch doitts or letter bodies which are not current coin to the prejudice of commerce, under the highest penalty." — Bunjh Records, p. 174. 240 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY year the elders met for the opening of the chest. This was a grave occasion. It was an anxious moment — the lifting of the lid over the heterogeneous assortment of parochial charity. Not unnaturally, after the lid was raised some bitterness was excited. Many Kirk-Session records reveal that emotion. Thus, in Carluke,^ 1739, it is recorded : " Sold the sum of £33 : 5 sh, in bad halfpennies, and for £13 : 15 sh., inde loss to the poor, £19:13:00." Next year it is stated: "Sold 8 lbs. of bad copper for 3 pounds 13 sh. Scots, inde loss to the Session £4:2:00." Year by year through all parts of Scotland similar complaints ^ were uttered ; while fishing villages and trading towns cost the Sessions most vexation, owing to the base assortment of barterless foreign money — or, as they were termed " furren curreners " — which came into the hands of the people and quickly afterwards passed into the hands of the elders. The Session knew that every doit was a mockery to the poor, and every bodle or " lettered turner " was a scandal to charity.^ A statistically minded parochial historian, in noting the fact that during the ten years' incumbency of a session clerk at Cambuslang there was no less than £84:2:8 Scots of these worthless pieces of metal laid in the plates or ladles, makes the unpleasant estimate that, if each contribution was one penny Scots in the form of a doit, there must have been 20,190 acts of meanness and hypocrisy perpetrated ; and allow- ing that a third of the population of 1300 went to kirk, it is concluded that each Sunday every eleventh worshipper deliber- ately deceived the elders and cheated the poor — an interesting but discomforting calculation.'* These unworthy offerings (which were least worthy when given at communions, as the sick and distressed and indigent were helped from these collections at ^ Notes of Parish of Carluke, p. 11. 2 In MaucMine, in 1740, the "Session found in the box of good money £66:17:6 Scots, and of bad copper £33:19:7." — Edgar's Church Life. Waddell's Old Church Chronicle, p. 169 : Besides "furren curreners" the Session complains of " lettered bodies " and " English clypt money." ^ Mauchline Session in 1691 registers in July 27, the communion day : " Received in doits this day 3s. sterling," which means that on the sacramental occasion 1725 worshippers attending the preachings contributed in foreign money equal to the twelfth part of one English penny each. — Edgar's Church Life. * Notes on Parish of Carluke, p. 12. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 241 the church door on the sacramental Monday) were condemned by ecclesiastical courts ; but rebukes and threats of ministers were disregarded. In vain did Kirk-Sessions " desire their minister to exhort the people not to mock God by casting into the oflering dyots and other money that is not current." ^ In vain did the Synod of Aberdeen in 1755 appoint its moderator " to talk with the officers of custom to do what they could to prevent the importation of base coin." ' Yet all these charges sink into insignificance before the accusation, that country people in Aberdeenshire were in the practice of putting into the plate bad halfpence and of taking out good ones.* The church collections were invaluable receptacles for useless coin; and it is significant that after the poor-box at Old Machar had been broken into and the contents stolen, the burglar boy was at once detected by the simple fact that in playing cards with his comrades he had nothing to stake save bodies, doyts, and bad halfpennies. These could have come from no shop, for merchants were too cautious to take them ; the conclusion was inevitable that they came from the poor-box, where alone people had the conscience and courage to put them. As in some churches there were two bad coins for every five good ones, the serious problem yearly arose in every parish, how to dispose of them ? Owing to the glut in the market, the elders who were appointed to sell their ill money " went to the various smiths to see what they can get." ^ But it was difficult to get satisfactory terms. It is true that occasionally the price of " base copper " rose considerably, and the guileless elders rejoiced greatly at selling the nefarious wares so highly. Shrewd suspicions, however, were quickly awakened that the sudden appreciation of copper was due to the popular demand for more cheap coins to put once more in the " basins " on Sabbath. In this way the base copper, the " furren cur- reners," clipped English money, and what not, which had been sold so satisfactorily by the Session one week, were retailed to ^ In 1704, Annals 0/ Raicicl; by R. Wilson. ^ So also Synod of Moray ; Cramond's Presbytery of Fordyce. ' Black Calendar 0/ Aberdeen, p. 24. * 1734. — " Part of the money being impassible, the elders think fit to lay it up till such time as it may pass." — Parish of Marxjton or Old Montrose, by Fraser, p. 230. 16 242 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY church-going customers, who replaced them frugally next week in the plates and ladles. When all efforts to sell these eleemosynary frauds in villages and towns near had lamentably failed, the ministers proceeding to the General Assembly sometimes had a quantity put into their saddle bags or wallets in order to sell them to the shops of Edinburgh.-^ And should it happen that a parishioner was going over to Holland in a bark, who had no objections to take a bundle of Dutch dyots back to their native country, a store was made up and added to his baggage, with directions to buy with the money goods which might be serviceable for the poor.^ Careful Sessions at other times utilised their worth- less coins to buy a dead-bell to announce funerals, or jougs to hold delinquents ; but there is a finer irony in the expedient which sent the base copper " to be melted down to make cups for collecting the poor - money at the sacrament." ^ Yet another vexation met the Kirk-Sessions in some districts of Scotland, and that was the appearance in the box of Irish coins and trade tokens, which were also valueless. It was at the period when turners had become rarer and dyots fewer that the plates were infested with these objectionable pieces of coin which the session clerks note contemptuously as " harps " and " Hibernias." ^ As old Scots money wore out in time, and from its curious rarity found its way rather into numismatic collections of the rich than into the church collections for the poor, " base money " could not be so easily procured for use on the Lord's Day and communions, and by this inconvenient scarcity the parishioners were reduced to honesty. It was fortunate that agricultural prosperity had so far raised the scale of wages in the country, and trade had so far increased earnings in towns, that the people were able to afford their halfpenny where formerly they had been too poor to give a plack. There were, fortunately, other sources from which Kirk- 1 1739.— "Sold of bad copper £35 : 10 for £5 :13 :00." "9 lbs. of base copper for 4 shillings." — Church of Fordyce, p. 59. ^ Record Book of Glamis : Introd. , Scot. Hist. Society. ^ Church of Cruden, p. 146. ^ 1739. — " Sold 9 lbs. 4 oz. of Hibernias and harps." — Church of Fordyce, p. 81. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 243 Sessions derived funds wherewith to relieve distress and support the needy and aged — sources certainly of the most incou'jruous and niiscellaneous sorts. One of these consisted of what are variously termed " pledges," " pawns," or " consigned money." These were sums of money left with Sessions by persons intending to get married. If the marriage promise was broken the person to blame forfeited his or her pledge for the behoof of the poor ; but if the marriage came off the pledge was returned to the depositors. Accordingly, we find such entries in old records as this in 1725:^ "John Wright will not stand to his matrimonial promise ; his pledge is forfeited, being a crown, to the poor. The woman, willing to abide by her promise, has the crown she has laid down returned." But it not infrequently occurred in those indigent days that the persons were so penniless that they had no money what- ever to deposit ; in that case they required to leave in custody some article which was (at least to them) of value. For example, in 1725 : "John Shepheard's pledge, consisting of a sword, is confiscated on non- performance of his intended marriage. It is estimate at 36 s. Scots, and to be sold to any who will buy it." At other times there were left as securities for good behaviour such pieces of property as a " white plaid," a chair, a ring, a workman's tool, a few spoons, and little articles of rustic jewellery. Persons were also forced by the stern Sessions, the rigid censors of morals, to come under other engagements connected with their wedding, and to leave pledges for their fulfilment. They were made to promise that they should have no festivities or penny bridals, with their "promiscuous dancing," which were then sources of scandal and objects of condemnation. It was a common order that " whosoever shall have pypers at their wedding shall forfeit pawns, and that they shall not meet in a change-house after their wedding under the same pain." " By the frequent forfeiture of these pledges — the pleasure of the bridal far out- weighing the pain of losing the pawn — no small addition was made to the revenue of each parish. In other ways private vices proved public benefits. The ' Craraond's Church of Cruden, p. 145. 2 Edgar, ii. 37 ; Church of Cruden, p. 139. 244 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY fines imposed on members of the congregation for any fault o^ misdemeanour — above all for immorality — greatly supplemented the parochial funds.^ These penalties varied according to th| frequency or the heinousness of the sin, and also according" to the social standing of the offenders, whose scandal should be further expiated by appearing on the stool of repentance and being rebuked from the pulpit. To escape this latter shame and ordeal the higher classes commuted their penance into a sum of money to the Session, and the laird was often absolved in private while the servant was condemned in public. As the century advanced, and decency and common sense opposed the open form of penance, the practice of exacting money fines became more usual, and the funds of parishes were so much enlarged that a third or a half of its supplies was derived from punishment of transgressors of morality. In early days there were no fixed seats in parish churches, and each worshipper required to bring his stool, or " creepie," each Sunday with him, or to leave it in the kirk, if he did not wish to stand during the prolonged service. There grew up, therefore, the practice of letting out seats for hire or selling " stances " whereon to place them, and the proceeds were devoted to the support of the poor.^ In the early part of the century it was only by express permission of the elders and minister that a seat, or " desk," could be affixed, and even when any one erected a seat at his own expense a fixed sum or an annual rent was exacted.^ If any one left the parish he was entitled to take away the seat that he had " set up " for himself In other cases the Sessions put in seats and ^ Penalties in Banffshire : £4 for first offence, £8 the second ; adultery, from £20 to £40 Scots (in 1813 they were from 20s. to 30s. sterling). Penalties in Fordyce between 1701-1714 = £999 Scots. No fines in Presbytery of Fordyce after 1839. — Cramond's Illegitimacy in Banffshire. ^ 1708. — "The Session appoints that every pew shall pay to Session half a crown for the use of the poor, and the same be payd before the seats be set up in the kirk." — Davidson's Inverurie, p. 144. Lintrathen, Blairgowrie, Stat. Acct. Scot. ; Parish of Cruden, p. 142. 3 " 1721. — Put into the box for Mr. Stephen, the Session having granted liberty to put up a pew in church, £1, 10s." — Kirriemuir, Jervise's Angus and Mearns, i. 201. In the previous century the Session is enjoined to build a "desk" for the minister of Monynmsk, but the minister was himself required to pay rent for it. — Davidson's Inverurie, p. 348. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 245 forms out of the funds of the church, having come to tliis resolution : " Whereas there is now a great deal of confusion and disorder in the body of the kirk by chairs and seats, and the people be not well accommodate " — in such a case it was but fair that they should extract rent ibr behoof of the poor, whose collections they had used to seat the church. There were other sources from which came accessions to parish revenues in intermittent streams, some of which dried up owing to changes of fashion in society. In the early part of the century the practice of having private Imptism and private marriage had originated amongst the Episcopalians — a practice which, indeed, was forced upon them, seeing that the sect was (up till 1712) virtually prohibited from having chapels of their own. Tu a short time the ministers of the Church found to their intense annoyance that it was becoming fashion- able among the richer members of their own congregations, and finding that it was both impossible and impolitic to resist the mode too resolutely they exacted fines.^ These moneys went, of course, to increase the parochial funds. Funerals also brought in their supplies to relieve local poverty. There were the " bell pennies " — equal to 1 2 pennies Scots — for tolling or tinkling the " dead-bell " before the coffin at funerals ; there was allowance for the use of " dead-shifts " for the poor, and the letting out of mortcloths to cover the body if there was no " kist," and to cover the coffin if there was one, at the rate of one merk. This last was a monopoly of the Session, and if any adventurous tradesman dared to offer a mortcloth at a cheaper rate he was at once pounced upon," and if the offenders ^ Drymen, Aug. 1696. — Kirk-Session ordains that " quhoever sends for the minister to marry or baptise out of the church shall pay for each marriage 20 shillings (Scots), and for each baptism 10 shillings totics quotics." — G. Smith's Strathendrick, p. 84. There was good reason in the case of substitution of private for public marriage to exact penalties to help the poor, because on occasion of weddings iu kirk it was not unusual to have collections for parish funds. In Dunblane : 1693, marriage collections, £2 5 1694, ,, „ 4 12 9 14 Scottish Antiquary, v. 180. - Greenshield's Lesmahagow, p. 139 ; Elgin Records, p. 186. 246 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY refused to submit to the Church the heritors were directed to refuse a grave to be dug except by those who would employ i the parish cloth, which had long ago changed its original Genoa black for brown and rusty dinginess. All these rivulets to the current of charity were substan-l tially increased in some fortunate places by a more secure and! permanent source ; namely, by bequests or " mortifications "j left by the dying for the benefit of the needy of theirj native parish. These sums to modern eyes appear strangelyl meagre, although in those frugal days they were regarded asj even munificent. In commemoration of the gift, and to en-J courage the others, a black board with white or gilt letters] recorded on the church walls how " A. B., residenter, left mortification of £100 Scots for the poor of this parish"; and! to the gaze of successive generations of grateful worshippersl (who afterwards mistook invariably the humble £100 Scots! (£8) for the substantial £100 sterling) this benefaction was! fatiguingly presented ; and, unfortunately, the keeping of this] memorial in thorough repair in time probably cost the parish! more than the original donation was worth. One more parochial source of emolument deserves to bej mentioned, as it affords a glimpse into a curious phase of olc Scottish rural life. The Kirk -Session was not merely the] almoner of the people — it was also their pawnbroker and theirj money-lender. In days before the middle of the century, when! agriculture was at its lowest stage, farmers — contending with bad soil, bad crops, and bad seasons — were in sore straits for means to tide over ill times. As county banks were not yet estab- lished, and there was no security to offer them if they had been, tenants had recourse in their troubles to the funds lying in the Kirk-Session's hands, and from these they were lent small sums to help them out of their difficulties at moderate interest, giving bonds which were probably as good — but no better — than their word.^ When the poor-box underwent its annual review there therefore appeared a motley assemblage of contents ; besides good and bad copper there were bills and acceptances of all kinds. In one parish in 1727 the elders, after ransacking the box, record that " there were in the poor- ^ Grossart's Parish of Shotts ; Parton, Stat. Acct. Scot. ii. 187. II THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 247 box two bills and three l)ond3 amounting to £84 Scots, and in money, black and white, £71." Next year, "there is a bond of 200 merks, bills for 115 merks, a bill for 39 pounds, another for 15 pounds. In ready money 142 pounds, also a box of doyts and bad money 47 pounds, which exchanged for 24 pounds." Not always were these money-lending transactions successful or safe, and the misplaced confidence of friendly elders in their poorer neighbours, and perhaps relatives, occasionally sadly impaired the finances of the parish. In their anxiety to get funds there was no expedient to which they hesitated to resort in some parishes — whether to keep milch cows for loan, or to let out the communion tables to form stalls for huxters at a fair.^ Ill In the first half of the century paupers were allowed Is. 6d. to 2s. a month — an allowance which rose to 3s. in the latter part of the century ; and usually this aid they were permitted to supplement by begging from door to door. In parishes having a population of about 2000 the whole annual funds at the disposal of the Session would amount to £12 or £13 sterling.- Smaller parishes, again, where weekly collec- tions did not exceed 6d. or Is., were able, with the help of fees for the use of a mortcloth, " so ragged that nobody will use it," to support their pensioners even at the end of the century. The casual doles which fell from the hands of the Session went to meet the most extraordinary variety of claims from the parishioners of olden days, as specified in the venerable records with quaint phrasing and unhumorous minuteness : " To a woman who has had nine children at three births is given 6d." ; ^ " to a Paisley bodie called Finlay, 4d." ; to a man " to help to pay his coffin, £2, 8s." There came for aid ^ Parish of Carluke, p. 266. "July 1718. — It is appointed that none of the communion tables be lent out at fairs." — Paterson's Hist. 0/ Ayrshire, ii. 128. - Hawick in 1727 had £14 of yearly funds. — Annals of Hawick; Edgar, ii. 59. Stat. Acct., Alloa, viii., Parton ; Campbell's Bahnerino, p. 240. ' Cramond's Church of Rathven ; Edgar, ii, 169. 248 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY parishioners who were sickly, and required help to travel to the favourite cures of the time, to drink the goat's milk in the Highlands, or to drink the waters at Moffat wells. Thereupon was handed to a parishioner " troubled with a tympany, to help to pay his charges to going to Moffat wells for cure, £3 Scots." ^ Every burden falls upon the Session. If the school needs repair it is applied to, and there is "given for thacking the | school, £1, 4s." If there is found dead a vagrant, or some ' poor traveller, on the roadside, it has to disburse (1703) : "To pay for coffin to a poor little one who was a stranger, 6s. 8d. Scots"; "for a chest to a poor stranger, £1."^ Such small sums as these — only 6^d. for the vagrant child's coffin, only Is. 8d. for the stranger's "chest" — show the spareness of the funeral expenses ; and even the larger sums of 2s. and 3s. 6d. \ for chests for poor parishioners testify to the painful frugality | which the poverty of the times required. But in many places even this expense was not displayed, and in the early part of . the century for the poorer people a " parish chest " was often \ used, in which bodies were borne to the grave, and buried only i in their winding-sheet or " dead-shift." ^ When the chest was half way down the bolts were withdrawn to let the bottom fall open, and the corpse fell with a thud to the ground in the shallow grave. Yet in spite of this rigid economy we find allowances given for funereal purposes which seem hardly becoming the stern and austere spirit of the ecclesiastical | authorities of that era, however thoroughly they may have been in accordance with the customs of the people. We read how, conceding to these customs of the day, a Kirk-Session j has given to a pauper's burial "for ale, 31s., and for tobacco ' and pipes to the said burial, 15 s. 6d. Scots." 1 Guthrie-Smith's Strathendrick, p. 70 ; Parish of Shotts, p. 46. ^ 1722. — Kirriemuir. — Jervise's Memorials of Angus and Mearns, i. 330. ^ ' 1701. — "The Session of Rothesay desiderates yet the want of ane engyne * to convey the coffin conventlie to the grave with the corps. Therefore thej' appointed John M'Neill, thesaurer, to agree with the smith to make and join to the said chest a loose iron cleek fit for receiving a man's hand at everie end, and appoints the same chest when finished to be recommended to the kirk officer ; and he is strictly appointed to take particular care that tlie said chest when used be no way damnified." — Hewison's Bute, ii. 288. In 1780 paupers thus buried in Hawick. — Wilson's Hawick, p. 168 ; Campbell's Balmerino, p. 234. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 249 It would be unjust to these bygone days and long- departed generations to suppose that their whole intercjst was devoted to preserving their charity for their own folk, and all their energy was devoted to turning other claimants away. That this was not the fact is abundantly shown by the old records of the period, which prove that though their means were small their hearts were very kindly. The very items inserted in the minutes, with their queer phraseology and quaint penmansliip, bring up before us a vivid picture of the time and its simple ways. Curious claims were made at kirk doors upon these ministers and elders, as they, after prayer, stood waiting to attend to the various cases in turn. It may be a shipwrecked sailor wandering to his home in rags, and the case being duly considered and relieved, the clerk writes down : 1734 — " To a dispersed seaman, a groat." I'oor High- land students were not seldom trying to get their way on foot to the universities, carrying, perhaps, their bag of oatmeal and satchel of books slung over their shoulders ; and these met ready attention " ; ^ and the clerk pens his items : " To a blind student that hath the Irish (Gaelic) language, 3d." ; " to three poor students going to the college, a merk." In the crowd seeking help, when on sacramental Mondays the doles were dis- tributed, might be found swarthy-faced, strangely clad foreign seamen, who tried to make their wants understood by the elders unacquainted with any tongue save their own, and the clerk with a bold guess enters the dole to " four Portuguese or Spanish shipwrecked sailors, 8s." Other foreigners pass through the country, and in hapless plight came before the Session. Now it is a " poor merchant," a " persecuted Polonian," or " a converted Mahometan," " a professor of tongues fled from France."^ Among the jostling, noisy claimants would be many who were crippled, imbecile, and deformed and diseased — e^ddence of days of poverty and dirt in filthy, squalid homes — numerous as the lazzaroni who swarm in the streets and at the church porches of Spanish and Italian cities to-day ; and disbursements to such unsightly beggars are faithfully written down : " To a great object, a ' Church of Rathvcn, p. 47. "^ Lower Deeside, p. 105 ; Phillip's Parish of Long/organ, p. 188. 250 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR Y groat," to " extraneous strangers " and " distressed supplicant." One of the most striking cases of charity were persons who professed themselves escaped slaves from the Turks. For more than two hundred years the pest of the Mediterranean had been the corsairs of Barbary. These pirates swooped down on every defenceless brig that they could descry, plundered the ships, and carried the crews and passengers into slavery. They were the terror of the seas, and the one object of dread to those who sailed by the coasts of Africa. Scottish ships not a few set sail every year laden with their goods — hides, tallow, serges — for export, intending to return by Spain with cargoes of oranges and wine after a two years' coasting trade in the southern ports. It was during these perilous two years that many found their fate, and were sold as slaves to merchants, or chained to the oars in the galleys. The people at home were pitiful to these poor prisoners — partly because of the cruelty they suffered, partly and chiefly because of their being Christians subjected to Mahometan tyranny. Collections were made often in churches to ransom these Christian slaves, and many who escaped returned in abject poverty to their own shores. Not seldom these poor men in rags appeared at the kirk door as they journeyed, after long years of captivity, on the way home seeking help, and would point with their fingers to their speechless mouths to show that they had had their tongues cut out by inhuman masters.^ These never failed to enlist lively interest, and the entries are exceedingly common of aid given : " To a poor seaman all mangled by the Turks " ; " to four men barbarously ill-treated by the Moors " ; " to a seaman with his tongue cut out by the Moors of Barbary."^ It might happen occasionally that the, Sessions had their suspicions whether the professed escaped slaves were genuine or not, but they were obviously unwilling to give them the disadvantage of a doubt — and therefore help was given and due entry made: " Given to two poor men said ^ 1734. — Cramond's Church of Rathven. ^ "1723. — Given to distressed seaman who had his tongue cut out by th( Turks, 2s. lOdi." —Kirk-Session of Rathven. "1726. — To dumb man who hac his tongue cut out by the Algerians, 3s." — Kirk- Session of Fordyce. 3 Kirk -Session of Fordyce, 1734; Oathlaw, 1738; Fordyce, IHZ.—Scoti Antiquary, p. 183; 1897. if THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 251 to have been in Turkish slavery, 3(1." ^ Doubtless they were often imposed upon by " sailors " wrecked in ships that had never sailed the sea ; by " Christian captives " who had been slaves on shores they had never seen. Another form of distress peculiar to the early years of tiie century, which has a pathetic interest, is chronicled in the Session records of the period with painful frequency. That was the abject poverty into which some families of Episcopal ministers were thrown when they were cast out of their manses, at the time that Presbyterianism was re-established. It is impossible to follow the careers of those who were cast adrift to seek a scanty livelihood, which would keep soul and body together in those days when trades were few and money was scarce. The humiliating straits of some are revealed by entries like the following: "1721, Sep. 2. — Given to ane Episcopalian minister, £1, 16s. Scots"; " Given to another, 18s. Scots " ; " Given to Episcopalian minister's wife and children, 6s. Scots." " Such significant accounts give a glimpse of a sad phase of old Scottish life — the poor " outed " Episcopal minister without congregation or stipend, or even means to procure sufficient food and clothing, forced to crave help from Presbyterian elders, who dourly gave a dole to the " curate " as to one tainted with the curse of Prelacy, and sometimes refused it on the ground that he " did not attend ordinances." Among the many claimants in the beginning of the century are found men of good rank and birth reduced by the poverty and reverses of fortune in those days when a very narrow margin of means lay between the incomes of impecunious lairds and farmers and absolute penury. The doles were not infrequently the sum of a groat or merk to persons denominated in the records " strange gentlemen," " poor gentlemen," " distressed gentlemen," while " a gentleman recommended by a nobleman " receives only 6d. Scots.^ It was in those days that many small farmers and tradesmen who had fallen into need were enrolled in the list of " gentle beggars," and if their names 1 Ch. of Cullcn. 2 Notices of Carluke, p. 78 ; Stat. Acd., Inverarity. 3 G. Smith's Strathhlane ; Stat. Acd., Inverarity, Killearn : " 1703.— To Robert Lennox, a poor gentlemen 8s., Scots." — Strathendrick, p. 66. 252 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY seldom appear in the Kirk-Session books it is because they were privileged to beg alms at any house. Besides these distributions of money to persons who came before them, congregations also made special collections for purposes which we might imagine of remote interest and vague meaning to a people whose knowledge of the foreign world was scanty indeed. There are collections for "the distressed Protestant city of Eeddan in Poland " (concerning which town and population the congregation must have cared little and known nothing) ; ^ " for the distressed paroche (Presbyterian) of New York in America " ; " for the poor German Church in London." These purposes awakened little interest compared with collections " for living slaves in Barbary " ; for " Simpson and his trew slaves in Algiers."^ It is pleasant to think of rural folk thus being awakened out of their dull life in the bleak moorlands on " Sabbath " mornings, and their sympathies aroused for distress and danger far beyond their doors, away to lands unfamiliar beyond the seas, full of mystery and romance to their Christian imagina- tions. There are other demands on the charity which have not the merit of possessing any emotional element or any picturesque associations — contributions requested of the people which appear utterly unwarranted ; for repairing bridges over distant rivers, steeples of churches and town halls which they would never see, piers and harbours they would never use. It is difficult to understand why in 1704 the not too wealthy labourers of Drumoak in Deeside should have a collection called from them to mend the harbour of Kinghorn in Fifeshire^ (the contributions in this case amount only to 14s. Scots), or why on another occasion they should be mulcted to put to rights the steeple of the burgh of Tain, which only extracts from them lis. Scots. Equally puzzling is it to see why needy farmers in Strathblane church, in Stirlingshire, should contribute for the pier in St. Andrews ; and the congregation of Inveresk, in ^ In 1731. Guthrie-Smith's Strathblane, p. 216. ^ Campbell's Bahnerino, p. 234 ; Ch. of Crvden, p. 216. Collection at Killearn, 1695: "To relieve some slaves that are in Barbary, £1 Scots." — G. S., Strathendrick, p. 66. ^ Lower Deeside, by Henderson, p. 105. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 253 Midlothian/ should be made to subscribe to a harl)Our in Girvan. Still more dillicult is it to comprehend why this should be enjoined on all churches by order of the General Assembly." These public calls were very frequent, and pressed hard on poor people in sore straits for food for their families ; and they reveal the prevailing poverty of the times — towns being too small and destitute of trade to carry out local repairs at their own charges, and landowners having too little means or enterprise of their own to repair a county bridge. But they were burdens that did not move the Christian conscience to liberality, and made the folk murmur.^ Instead of being scornful at the petty sums gathered and dealt out in charity, we may rather admire tlie generosity of the people, when we consider the narrow circumstances and wretched condition of their life. The tenants of farms, paying for their little "patties" of miserable land some £8 or £12 yearly rent, had little to spare ; still less had the ploughman, who up to the middle of the century had only fourpence a week in money if he were unmarried, and if he were married had to feed, clothe, and educate a family on earnings equal only to £7 or £8 a year, of which all but £1 or £2 was paid in oat or barley meal. Even the blacksmith, carpenter, the weaver, had little money in their store, and in despair were forced to give doits or bad copper in the " brods " to keep up their respectability, for they earned only 6d. a day, and even that sum was often mainly paid by their employers in " kind." Yet the people were hospitable to their (if possible) poorer neighbours — ready to give the beggars and passers by a share ' G. Smith's Strathblane, p. 216; Invcrcsk, by Lang. " Killearn, 1695. — Gathered for building a harbour at Kinkell, £l,10s. ; 1700 — To help Lanark Bridge, 10s." — Strathcndrick, p. 66. - " 1697, Aug. 15. — Killearn, according to Act of Commission of Assembly, authorised by Lords of Privy Councill, enjoyning a generall collection and vol- untarie contribution throughout the kingdom for building a church at Konigs- berge in Prussia, this to be done either at the church door or by elders through their several districts." — G. Smith's Slrathemlrick, p. 66. ^ "The straits of this country is so great," wrote Wodrow, " thro' the want of victual that our collections are very far from maintaining our poor, and tlie people are in a great pet with collections for bridges, tolbooths, etc., that when a collection is intimate they are sure to give less than their ordinary." — Analecta Scotica, ii. 254 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY of their dinner of broth, a handful of oatmeal in their bags, or shelter by the peat fire at night. In the north-eastern counties the iron handles which held the fir-stick candles were long known as the " poor man," ^ because the beggar for his food and roof assisted the good wife by holding for her the candle at night when she was busy at her household work in the dingy but kindly cottage. Meagre as the doles of charity seem to us, they were really munificent in proportion to the style of living of the working classes and to the earnings of the period ; and they therefore were received without a grudge by the claimants. Only is there complaint and muttering when a Kirk-Session, with no resources left except base brass, is obliged to give as alms coins which were " impassible." ^ Even past the middle of the century, when money was less scarce and wages were higher, Kirk-Sessions had to study strictest economy, and issued their aid in the smallest coins of the realm. In frugal Morayshire ministers were unwilling to face the extravagance of giving the large sum of one halfpenny to each claimant, and found a con- venient compromise between the old Scots money and the new Enghsh ^ in the form of farthings which made the parish funds go much farther. But these coins were rare in Scotland, and the Synod got at various times large quantities from the mint of London for distribution amongst the various Sessions within its bounds, in their economical doles, until they could get no more supplies. This action on the part of ministers was, after all, not the most politic ; for it is certain that the farthings doled out to the poor quickly found their way back to the plates on Sundays as naturally as rivers find their course to the sea. ^ Rampini's Morayshire. 2 " Poor woman complains that brass money in last distribution was doitts of little or no use to her." — Maryton, by Fraser, p. 230. ^ " 1753. — It was moved that as the good effect of bringing the last quantity of farthings from the mint of London was sensibly felt throughout the whole country, and has in a particular manner been beneficial to the poor, that, there- fore, some person should be again employed to bring down to the amount of £500 for use of the Kirk-Sessions within the Synod." In 1763, " The Synod, consider- ing the poor have suffered from the scarcity of farthings, recommend members to get £100 of the same down." In 1766, when a further application had been made, a letter from London announces : "No farthings are to be got, and none are to be coined for some years." — Presbytery of Fordyce, by Cramond. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 255 IV After the middle of the century the progress of agriculture, the development of trade, the rise of manufactures of all kinds — linen work especially — were working a social revolution in the country. The old stagnation of industrial life disappeared, the letiuirgy which had been painfully characteristic of the whole community vanished throughout the Lowlands ; the state of abject })overty, which had come from lack of food, lack of work, lack of wages, passed away, as new methods of farming made the land fertile — as new occupations employed every hand, and demand for labour brought higher earnings to every class of the poor. If it happened that the price of living rose so high that the meagre doles were no longer sufficient to keep soul and body together, it also happened that there were far fewer poor who needed help in rural districts, and the swarming beggars who had no excuse for idleness were obliged to disappear or join the ranks of labour. It was in the large towns that poverty began to be felt, with the waifs, the weak, the old, the loafers, who amidst the energy of work all around, were to form a pauper class in the towns as they increased in population. It might naturally be supposed that as this development in trade and industry proceeded, the funds at the disposal of the churches would increase in proportion, and that larger contributions would meet amply the needs of a growing population. There were many circumstances which prevented the realising of such a natural expectation. One of these was the origin and increase of dissent in the land. Presbyterian dissent had arisen in 1737, but the effect of that on the resources for the poor was not much felt till some time after the middle of the century, when the numbers of the Seceders had become very considerable throughout the country.^ By that time the loss of these sturdy Christians to the Kirk seriously affected the amount of church collections, and what made it the more aggravating to the Kirk-Session was the fact that these dissenters themselves, when they became old, ^ MoncreifiTs Life of Dr. Erskine, p. 468 ; Stat. Acct., Old Kilpatrick. 256 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY infirm, or sick, had no hesitation whatever in demanding relief from those funds to which they and their co-religionists had never contributed, and which their absence from the kirk had done much to reduce. Besides that, fines in commutation of discipline, fees for certificates of marriage and baptism, were now intercepted by the Sessions of dissenting bodies, such as Original Seceders, Episcopalians, and Belief Kirk. This matter was a source of incessant parochial irritation, and added intensity to sectarian bitterness. Yet another cause which lessened the contents of the poor-box was the increase of absenteeism on the part of proprietors. Of old they had lived in their country houses, and in spite of the straitness of their rents their care of the people had been kindly, and their intercourse with them had been intimate. Gradually more and more landowners resorted, with the growing incomes which " good times " brought, to Edinburgh, or London for months, and the poor-box got emptier. Many had adopted the Episcopal form of dissent, deserted the parish church in towns, and left the burgesses to look after the poor. As the country grew older a change also came over the religious habits of many classes in society — the old-fashioned austerity relaxed, and so likewise did the church-going ways — men of fashion and quality were conspicuous for their absence in kirk, where their fathers had been as conspicuous by their presence,^ and the weekly collections for the poor in consequence grew less. In many a parish where one or two large proprietors owned the land, and these were either absent from the estate or absent from the church, they might not contribute a shilling to the poor on their own ground while drawing the rents from the whole parish. By all such circumstances more and more the burdens were left to be borne by the less well-to-do — the churchmen had to keep the dissenters ; the tenants had to re- lieve the servants of the landlord, and according to the common saying in Scotland, it was the poor who maintained the poor.'' •^ " One cause of decrease in funds for poor is that men of rank and fortune are very irregular and even criminally neglective in their attendance on divine service on the Sabbath." — Stat. Acct., Kilwinning, ii. 167 ; Chambers' Pict. of Scotland. ^ "To my certain knowledge the heritors in certain parishes do little more than defray the tenth part of contributions to the poor." — Farmer's Mag. Nov. 1804. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 257 By the middle of the century important chanjres in agri- culture began seriously to afiect the condition of the rural classes — changes which increased poverty and entailed distress for a while, till society settled down to a new order of things. Small tenants were being turned out to give place to larger farms, crofts were being absorbed in big iioldiiigs, patches of land which had given liveUhood of a poor sort to hundreds were broken up in the Nortli and turned into sheep-runs ; many families were in this way cast adrift ; small tenants were often reduced to be ploughmen or shepherds ; and ploughmen were sometimes forced to seek employment in towns at the new factories springing up, for which they had little skill. In the towns was arising in crowded lanes a class of poor, far less careful, thrifty, and self-respecting than their rural neighbours, which began to form a permanent pauper element. It is true that this disadvantage of larger towns was not felt for a generation or two, because the increase of industry and trade was so great that it absorbed those who were cast out of old agricultural work ; and besides that, in the country the development of husbandry with more numerous operations and vigorous methods of cultivation, and the larger amount of ground reclaimed from waste, and moor, and bog, gave more occupation and better wages.^ Many cir- cumstances were making the voluntary and church aid to relieve poverty more and more insufficient, and the necessity to meet the wants of an increasing population caused at last larger towns to avail themselves of a law — old as 1579 — which authorised public assessments to be made for the support of the poor. Yet in spite of all its population of 40,000 it was not till 1770 that Glasgow resorted to this tax ; it was not till 1783 that Paisley, with its flourishing trade, employing 24,000 workers, and Greenock with its population of 18,000, and its commerce with the Indies, made any public assessment for its paupers ; while in Edinburgh this was not done till the end of the century." ^ Towards the end of the century great numbers of Highlanders found their way to Glasgow and Greenock, driven from stress of poverty at home to increase poverty elsewhere. — Lettice's Tour through Scotlaiul, Lond. 1794. ^ Burn's Dissertations, p. 96. Reports of General Assembly in 1818 state that prior to 1700 assessments took place in only 3 parishes ; between 1700 and 17 258 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY j| There were arguments combined of policy, and sentiment and piety brought forward with great vehemence against the imposition of rates. It was opposed on the score that the system would lessen the self-respect of the people ; that it would obliterate all sense of shame in those who would accept from a public rate relief they disdained to accept from the " poor-box." It was condemned, on the one hand, as extinguish- ing kindliness in the rich, and on the other as extinguishing gratitude and self - dependence in the poor. There was an exceeding bitter cry from ministers throughout the country at the end of the century against any change in the old patriarchal system,^ which they regarded as sacred — a burden of divine appointment, and in clear conformity with Scripture. As a rule, the people had a feeling of humiliation at being paupers ; there was even a shame in having one of their relatives on the " poor-box," as it was called, and to avoid such a fate themselves was a constant motive for frugality and saving.^ Yet all the while it is clear that gradually the vaunted feeling of pride was dying away, and : that to be a pauper, or to " be on the poor-box," had lost in some districts much of its odium.^ After all, it is impossible to feed, clothe, and support the destitute on sentiment, and the inevitable needs of life must be met by means more regular and sustaining than a fitful spirit of independence in the peasantry. It is more likely that vanity, and not honest pride, was the most successful deterrent to any one allowing his name to appear on the poor- roll. The great ambition of the very poorest was to have what 1800 in 93 parishes ; and up to 1817 in 142. In Report of 1739 the numbers assessed were 142. — NichoU's Scottish Poor and Poor Lavjs, p. 102. ^ Ka,m.es' Sketches of Man, vol. i. ; Stat. Acct., Coldstream, iv. 418 ; Portmoak, vi. 168 ; Selkirk, ii. 443 ; Dalserf, ii. 380. ^ Burns' Dissertation, vi. : " So great commonly is the horror and aversioE entertained, that the most humiliating and insufferable term of reproach that car be cast upon any one is that their parents or near relatives were supported bj the Session as it is called." "So great is this sentiment, that in order that this odium may never fall upon their offspring they study to live with the utmosi frugality that they may be able to save something for old age as to bury then: decently. To have wherewithal to purchase a coffin and a winding-sheet, i nothing more, is the height of their ambition." — Farmer s Mag. p. 24, 1804 Stat. Acct., Old Kilpatrick ; Newte's Tour, p. 337, 1790. 2 Stat. Acct., Killearn, xvi. 621 ; Irvine, vii. 178. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 259 was called a " decent funeral " — that is, a funeral to which all the male inhaliitants of the parish were invited, and at which the usual eutertuinments must be given.' The expense for cottin, ale or whisky, cake, and tobacco, amounted at least to £2, and this sum all persons in the meanest circumstances were anxious to lay up for the event of their death, and would not expend otherwise except in direst necessity. The convivial obsecjuies, however, could not happen in the case of any who were on the poor-roll, eitlier of the church or of the parish, because before a person became a pauper he was required to give up all his " goods and plenishing " to the Session. He had, therefore, only to look for a pauper's burial, an ill-made " kist " — costing 4s. — without the dignity of a threadbare mortcloth to cover it, and only an attenuated line of thirsty, hungry, unsatisfied mourners to follow it. Eather than disappoint a poor soul of a festive funeral, sympathetic Kirk-Sessions often supplied some money for ale, and tobacco, and pipes, or even gave the relatives £2, if the effects given up by the deceased had come near to that sum — acting with a liberality and kindliness unknown to unsentimental and j remorseless poor-laws." To be buried respectably, and be clad I decently as a corpse, was a firm, self-respecting resolution. When a woman married she spun her winding-sheet. It was kept with reverence, every year taken out and aired, and put carefully in a drawer till it was required for the burial. Up to the close of the century the public assessments were very rare, although it was in towns becoming obvious that the existing arrangements were insufficient, and that pauperism was no longer a problem with which the Church alone could cope.^ Ministers, in their various Statistical Accounts of their respective parishes in 1792-4, are forced in despair to long for improved methods of relief in spite of their fond, ^ Stat. Acct., Kincardine, vi. 487 ; Gargunnock, 18. 2 Burns (Robert), D.D., Dissert, on Law and Practice xoith regard to the Poor, 1819, p. 297. In 1830 the burial of a pauper in town cost about 12s. — coffin 6s., bottle of whisky Is. 6d. to drink at the "lifting," with a loaf of bread and cheese, and 3s. or 4s. for grave. — Chambers' Book of Scotland, p. 240. ' Ayton's Surrey of Ayrshire, 1811. Annual payment to single pauper in 1830 had risen to £2:11:8, or about la. a week. In cities Is. 6d. and 2s. was the common weekly allowance. — Chambers' Book of Scotland, p. 239. 26o SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY pathetic love of the old patriarchal ways, and they depict a miserable state in remoter districts.^ In Sutherland, we read, Cromdale has a population of 3000, and has only from £10 to £15 a year to support forty paupers — "many being reduced householders who would rather starve than beg." Dornoch with its population of 2540 has from eighty to a hundred on the poor-list, " whose only means of support is part of the collection, amounting to £7, supplemented by fines from delinquents, so that the poor live by begging from parish to parish." In Wick there is a poor-roll of 150, and yet there is little else to maintain them except the collections which, "after deducting bad coppers, amount to from £10 to £12, affording 2s. a year to each pauper." ^ Yet in northern counties what else could be expected ? The inhabitants had not work enough to keep half of their numbers in employment, and they lived in misery, rags, and hovels, in chronic anticipa- tion of a dearth amounting to famine every four or five years. Those in work could not give much to church collections on Sundays, or help to their neighbours who begged on week days. The mystery was how they subsisted or existed at all. Coming farther south, we may take as an illustration of social poverty at the end of the eighteenth century the parish of Abernethy, in Perthshire ; ^ it has 1760 inhabit- ants, and it has £6 a year as parochial funds to feed, clothe, and shelter its paupers — " not enough," as the minister says, " to buy shoes for their feet, so that they live chiefly by begging from the farmers from door to door." It is true that many parishes — indeed the majority — were able to support the poor somehow on the small parochial funds at their dis- posal, especially as family pride made people support their relatives rather than that they should incur the stigma of being on the poor-roll. But in others — especially in towns ^ "The Highland poor have of late become so numerous in the Lowlands that some towns positively refuse them admittance. 'We are eat up,' say they, 'with beggars.' " — Knox, British Empire, i. 126. 2 Stat. Acct., Cromdale ; Dornoch ; Wick. Rogart had a population of 2000, and only £14 of poor - money ; Kildonan a pop. of 1400, poor - money only £8; Assynt, pop. 2400, poor -money £11. — Stewart's Sketches of Highlands, i. 165. ^ Stat. Acct., Abernethy, vol. xiii. ; Lochmaben. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 261 — the strain on voluntary charity was far greater than it could bear.^ At the same time the growth of trade, the increase ol industrial activity, had greatly diminished poverty ; the half- starved Highlanders got work in cotton mills and factories, and beggars ceased to swarm in the land. Owing to the remarkable revolution which had come over the country — the rapid rise in trade, in commerce, in agriculture — the wages of the people had increased, and even doubled. The earnings of the ploughman in 1750 had been equal only to £7 or £8 a year, but in 1790 they were equal to £14 or £16, and with that they lived in fair content and comfort. In trades, the mason, the weaver, the carpenter who could in 1750 only earn his 6d. a day, in 1790 made his Is. or Is. 2d.~ If they paid more for their food they were better housed, they were better clad, they had comforts to which in their youth they had been strangers, and enjoyed things now which indeed were still luxuries, although to their children they became necessities. Yet the increased cost of living, the price of clothing, house rent, and education, used up much of their larger earnings, and did not leave a very wide margin for saving, nor yet for spending. V There was one altered aspect of social life and feeling which many observers noted with regret towards the close of the century — that was the diminishing of homely, kindly relations between the richer and the poorer classes. In olden days there was a real attachment and friendship between the different ranks, especially in the rural districts. All indeed ^ Gibson's Hist, of Glasgow. Speaking of Glasgow in 1800, a writer says, "The pauper class is too insignificant to be separated from the operative class." — Glasgow Past and Present, ii. 94. In Edinburgh, with a population in 1773 of 80,000, there were only 1800 paupers, which includes all the boys at educational charitable institutions [such as Heriot's Hospital], while Bristol with a less population has no fewer than 10,000. — Arnot's Hist, of Edinburgh, p. 559. 2 Compare the condition of the labouring classes in France, who had lOd. a day before the Revolution, and Is. 3d. after, and the English peasant who had Is. 5d. and the skilled artisan who had from 2s. to 2s. 6d.— Young's Travels in France, p. 410. 17 a 262 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V were alike poor, their ways were alike simple ; spinning was the occupation, and frugality was the necessity both of laird's wife and of farmer's wife. The landlords and their families were intimate with, and interested in, the concerns and fortunes of the humbler classes near their doors, who had lived in the same quarters for generations, in days when there was no trade to attract them away, and no " improvements " to turn them out. The children, rich and poor, the sons of laird, minister, farmer, ploughman, sat on the same forms at the parish school, sharing its teaching and its not quite impartial discipline. After the middle of the century and onwards to its close, however, there was a transformation for the worse in these relations, and there appeared a widening gulf between each rank. As agricultural progress advanced, the farmer, who had formerly been on about the same social level as his workpeople, who were often his own kin and — if they lived under his roof — sat at the same board, became a " man of substance," and with a larger farm, larger rent, and larger income, adopted more ambitious tastes and habits, having less in common, and more distant relationship, with his servants. The lairds, too, with the better times and bigger rent-rolls, forsook the simpler ways and style of the past, and forgot those old days when their fathers went clad in clothing which their own wives had spun ; they lived less in the country or among their own people, while in their natural desire to improve their property and their rents they added farm to farm, whereby small tenants were deprived of their holdings and labourers of their work, and then new men came into the new reclaimed acres. It is easy to see how all these changes materially affected social relationships, and how separation in interest and sympathy was further increased between rich and poor. A similar process — loosening attachment and widening the distance between higher and lower ranks — went on in towns, notably in Edinburgh. When families of all ranks ^ — from the highest to the lowest — lived close to one another, in the High Street and Canongate, in the same tenement or " land " of nine or ten flats, there existed a special neighbour- ^ W. Chamber.s' Book of Scotland, 1830, points this out, p. 226. » THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 263 liness among them all. In the several " landings," descend- ing in dignity as they ascended in height, dwelt on the same stair peers, lords of session, clergy, doctors, shopkeepers, dancing-masters, artisans, while in the cellar lodged the water- caddy, the sweep, and the chuirman. The distress of the poor neighljour on the stair became the concern of all, and poverty in the " close " was relieved in common friendliness. The very bc'^gars were old friends, and exchanged jokes with his lordship going to the I'arlianient House. But about 1775 the fashionable and wealthy began to migrate to the suburbs and stately houses in the New Town ; they withdrew from the ill - flavoured wynds in the High Street, where high and low had for ages dwelt companionably together. The poor remained behind in the old quarters, and the rich when they left did not retain their homely interest in them. Now, there- fore, when poverty came, public assessments were made to relieve it ; when beggars increased the law was enforced to suppress them. There is abundant evidence that as the century proceeded there sprang up an independence in manner in the quickly increasing artisan classes, and a lessening of that deference and respect for rank which had curiously subsisted in spite of ancient homely intimacy and familiarity of rural intercourse. This change has been traced in part to the rise and spread of the Secession from the Church, which generated a spirit of antagonism in the poorer classes of the " dour " type to those who held by the old Church.^ To them the title of " humble " ranks would be a mis- nomer. The very cause of the schism — a fierce opposi- tion to the patronage exercised by the heritors and State, and a scorning of the Establishment as corrupt, as back- sliding, as faithless — filled those who seceded with a stalwart opinionativeness, a grim consciousness of their superior godli- ness and purity, and there was no sacrifice of time too great to make, no journey too long to take, which enabled them to listen to the words of a faithful preacher of the Covenant. This religious pride — if we do not care to call it conceit — no doubt had its fine side of conscientiousness, and its interesting ^ Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsmen, ii. 58. 264 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR Y picturesqueness. But it certainly did foster a brusqueness of manner and independence of spirit which passed from church polity to politics, and infected at large the whole community. Now it happened that instead of laird and people all being of one religious body, all meeting together in the same kirk, and having intercourse in the kirkyard, the Seceder, without a touch of his bonnet, passed the laird on the road, and stalked on with satisfaction of superiority of conviction to the meeting- house of the " body " he belonged to. This helped to intro- duce discordance of interest which, blended with other causes, served to widen the cleavage of ranks. Meanwhile changes of life and opinion were occurring in the Highlands, all tending to the same direction, producing similar effects. After the '45 all despotic authority and juris- diction were taken out of the hands of Highland chiefs, and they therefore no longer counted, as in olden days, their power and property by men rather than by acres ; and they no longer cared to see their people increase in the glens, for these could no more add to their strength or enhance their importance.^ Of old every reeking chimney in the gien had indicated where dwelt a family of trusty adherents in the fray ; but now it was only a hovel which swarmed with beings who were a burden on the land. Formerly, too, these owners had spent their rental paid " in kind " in huge hospitality at home, in which the poor and the beggar joined ; now they often spent their fortunes in the fashionable world, in which only people of quality shared. The needy, in short, were no longer merely " poor neighbours," but nuisances ; and beggars were no longer homely features on the estate, but pests to be suppressed by law. To counteract the effect of these social changes in the relations between rich and poor as affecting the support of the needy and the paupers, there came the growth and spread of industry, which gave work to the community, the increase of wealth among the middle ranks, and of wages among the 1 " It is a certain fact the chieftains in the Highlands are now for the most part, instead of being almost adored, in general despised. And why ? Many because their lands are let out in large sheep-walks to tenants that are nearly as independent as themselves, and the tenants turned out of their small possessions have no more favours in expectation." — Hall's Travels, ii. 507. THE POOR OF SCOTLAND 265 working classes. The times had changed, the thoughts, the ways, the interests and habits of the century had undergone a great transformation ; but the development of intellectual and physical energy, the improvement in social conditions, which made life less sordid and rude, more than compensated for the quaintness of the old fashions which were lost, and for the picturesqueness of rural life and simplicity of spirit which had passed away for ever. CHAPTEE VIII RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE Part I The end of 1688 saw the beginning of ecclesiastical revolution in Scotland ; and the landing of William of Orange in December was the signal for Presbyterian insurrection.^ In the bleak month, when there was bitter frost and deep snow, the country people in the south and west counties gathered in mobs, armed with stakes, pitchforks, and clubs, and attacked the manses where for twenty-six years the Episcopal ministers had lived. During the darkness of the night the voices of assailants demanding entrance rose above the din of smashing windows and battered doors. In many cases the " curates " were dragged from their homes amidst abuse, driven to the kirkyard with cries of " Strip the curate ! " the black gown (hated badge of " black Prelacy ") was torn from their shoulders ; their furniture and their humble store of books were flung into fires kindled in the streets. They were forced to give up the church keys and the " poor-box " ; and their families were turned out of doors, exposed to the keen winter blast, often without a kindly neighbour to shelter them for the night. ^ Case of present afflicted Clergy truly represented, London, 1690 ; Account of the Persecution in the Church of Scotland in several Letters, ltj90 ; Apology for the Clergy of Scotland [by A. Monro, D.D.], 1691. 18 268 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY As if in grim irony to cast contempt upon Prelatie festivals, many of the most truculent rabbUngs were arranged for Christmas eve. In Ayrshire and Galloway — the chief seats of the Covenanters — gangs of men were formed and dispersed over several parishes so that they might begin their raids simultaneously, which they did without ruth or mercy. No doubt many stories told of these scenes were grossly exaggerated in the telling, and Episcopal ministers were not likely to minimise their grievances, their sufferings, or their merits, and sometimes magnified the rudeness of a few men, women, and children into tumultuous assaults of infuriated crowds.-^ But the treatment to which many were subjected — leaving them " in a state of desolation, not knowing where to lay their heads or have bread for their ^ It is instructive, though perplexing, to compare the contradictory versions of these rabbling scenes. The Episcopal story relates of Mr. Gabriel Russell, minister of Govan, that "some of his parishioners, to several of whom he had done kindness, beat his wife, daughter, and himself (so inhumanly that it had almost cost him his life), carried off the poor-box and other utensils from the cliurch, and threatened him with worse treatment if he would preach any more." — Account of Recent Persecution. Here is the Presbyterian version as "attested by the subscription of nine persons who were present" [names follow] : — "There being great confusion like to be in the country, they feared the church goods might be carried away, they went peaceably and demanded them, offering sufBcient security that they would be safely kept and restored to them who should be concerned. This Mr. Russell and his wife (who were both drunk, as they often used to be) not only refused, but gave the men very opprobrious and provoking language ; they essaying to lift the box in which the poor-money was kept, Mr. Russell setting his foot upon it, and his wife sitting down upon it, they with tenderness lifted her up and carried away the box. Mrs. Russell roared, and beat them with hands and feet, but they utterly deny that any of them did either beat him or his wife. Yea, ere they parted from his house, they asked if anything more was wanting, and they could be charged with nothing." — Second Vindication, Edin. 1691. Here is again conflicting evidence: — "Mr. Brown, minister of Kells, in Galloway, residing at Newtown, whom, in a storm of frost and snow, they carried to the market-place about 4 o'clock in the morning, tyed him to a cart with his face to the weather, when he had died if a poor woman had not cast clothes on him " : thus the Account of Recent Persecution. " The truth of this story is that Mr. Brown, being beastly drunk at night, after a little sleep went to his house at a distance from that town, and returning in the morning, betimes was taken by the guard for a spy . . . and on these grounds the parson not being firm they bound him." [This story is duly attested.] " It is hard to justify this usage of a man. But it is harder to lay the indiscretion of souldiers to the Presbyterians " : thus the Second Vindication, p. 33. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 269 families"' — was rough and brutal at the hands of the embittered peasantry. More than two hundred ministers were " outed " vvitli more or less violence, while others, foreseeing the coming storm, and preparing for its blasts, in terror withdrew from their manses, — only, however, to be afterwards " deprived," with almost a cynical stroke of humour, " for deserting their charges." What the people left undone l*arliament and the General Assembly tried to complete. Proclamation was made that all ministers of the Gospel should publicly pray for King William and Queen Mary, under pain of forfeiture of their livings in the event of their refusal. This edict was ordered to be read from every pulpit on Whitsunday 1689. For not complying with this command many were expelled from their livings in spite of every excuse they gave. In vain they pleaded that tliey could not pray for WilKam and Mary as king and queen, because they were not yet crowned ; in vain others protested that the fateful proclamation did not reach their houses till days after the day appointed for its being read, or that they were away from home when it arrived." Of the Presbyterian clergy who had been ejected from their parishes in 1662 when Episcopacy was established, there were about sixty surviving. These old men were now restored to their old charges, and in the first General Assembly which met in 1690 they were the leaders and the oracles, although there were associated with them seventy-six ministers who had been "indulged" to preach in 1687, and forty-three elders.^ To these men were given by Parliament powers which they were not fit to wield with fairness and tenderness. They were authorised " to try and purge out all inefficient and scandalous and erroneous ministers by due course of ecclesias- tical process and censure." " A\Tiat is this," protested the ^ Case of Afflicted Clergy, p. 88 [by George Garden, D.D., Episcopal minister afterwards deposed for Bourignianism]. It is a phraseological peculiarity of these tracts that the one side speaks of its "afflicted clergy," the other of its "suffering ministers." - Case of Afflicted Clergy : Account of Recent Persecution. * Second Vindication of Church of Scotland : being an Answer to Five Pam- phlets. [By Gilbert Rule, D.D.] Edin. 1691. 270 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V Duke of Hamilton/ " but instead of fourteen bishops, to give unlimited power to fifty or sixty Presbyterian ones, from whom the Episcopal clergy can expect little justice or mercy ? " His Grace's fears were amply justified, for this Presbyterian inquisition gave scope for every form of petty persecution and parochial malice. Every scandal however groundless, every rumour however vague, every offence however trivial, as well as every atrocious charge however preposterous, was brought forward and greedily listened to by the credulous Commission of elders and ministers who sat in judgment on the Episcopal incumbent, against whom the tongue of aggrieved parishioners was at last let loose. To have neglected family worship, to have allowed " unclean " persons to take communion, to have permitted persons to bring in kail on the Lord's Day, to have spoken of the Solemn League and Covenant as a " bond of rebellion," to have allowed Quakers to worship undisturbed, to have recommended superstitious and erroneous books such as the Whole Duty of Man, to have played cards, to have been gross drunkards and shameful swearers — all these were among the multifarious accusations for the curates to meet, which it was useless to deny and hopeless to confute. It was alike a crime in the people's eyes to have opposed the Confession of Faith and to have whistled on the Sabbath, to have played bowls on a week day and prayed for King James on the Sunday. The gravest charges were based on feeblest evidence ; and the stereotyped accusations of drunkenness, immorality, cursing, and sacrilege, rouse suspicions that the offences of the curate were far less certain than his offensiveness to the people.^ At the same time, it is abundantly clear that there were many cases of scandalous living, of moral unfitness and spiritual incapacity, and that many posed as martyrs who deserved the short shrift they got.^ By this process of " purging " 1 Historical Relation of late General Assembly, 1690 ; Presbyterian Inqidsi- Hon [by A. Monro, D.D.], p. 30. ^ In Drymen the charges are — "promiscuous invitations to tie Lord's table, violence to Presbyterian sufferers ; neglecting of family worship, pro- faning the Lord's day." — Guthrie-Smith's Stratheridriek, p. 57. In Luss the charges are — " drunkenness, swearing, Sabbath-breaking, connivance at sacrilege {i.e., admitting unworthy persons to communion), negligence." — Ibid. p. 108. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 271 a further "outing" of about three hundred incumbents was effected. It was at last found necessary to check the untempered and the ill-tempered zeal of the purgers, and in 1694 the Parliament imposed upon the Church a policy of toleration, and compelled the General iVssembly to maintain in their livings and admit to a share in the government all Episcopalian min- isters who would take the oath of allegiance, subscribe to the Confession of Faith, and conform to Presbyterian rule. This Act with sulky submission was received by the Assembly, reluctant to receive into their ranks men tainted with Prelacy and alien to the Covenant, and out of harmony with their body and their spirit. It might be imagined that after all this rabbling, inquisition, and purging, there would be few curates left to admit into the Presbyterian community or to continue in their parishes. But that was not the case. Of the 900 clergy only 600 were ousted from their posts, and there were about 300 Episcopal incumbents who were left undisplaced, wherever they had won the affection of the people or the favour of the gentry — for there were large dis- tricts in the East and Midland where the covenanting spirit had never been strong, and in the North, where it had never been even known. Many incumbents who never qualified by taking oath to Government or conforming to Presbytery were left undisturbed in their manses and churches, partly from inability to dislodge them, partly from lack of men to substitute for them. Twenty years after Presbytery was re-established as the Church of Scotland no fewer than 165 Episcopal ministers were said to occupy the parish kirks." In adjacent parishes lived in quietness, if not in amity. Episcopal and Presbyterian ^ Here is the Presbyterian version of a case where the Episcopalians repre- sented the " outed " minister as a " martyr " : Mr. Ramsay, minister of Stran- raer, was put out of his place by the Synod of "Wigton on these grounds : frequent drunkenness on the Sabbath day, proved by the oaths of Bailie Vans and Andrew M 'Kerne. Beating his wife on the Sabbath before he went to preach, sworn of Andrew M'Kerrie and Robert Gordon. The said Robert Gordon's wife deponed that she saw Mrs. Ramsay's nose bleeding. Frequent swearing, proved by the oaths of Provost Rae, Bailie Vans, and Robert Gordon. — Second Vindication, p. 136. ^ Defoe's fits<. of Church of Scotland, 1717. 272 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ministers ; even in the same church the colleagues might be of opposite persuasions, as in Dunfermline and Haddington, where up to 1724 the Episcopal minister had his forenoon service with the Lord's prayer, doxology, and apostles' creed, and the Presbyterian colleague in the afternoon held his service with these obnoxious prelatic superfluities omitted. North of the Tay, where the covenanting spirit and Whiggism had never spread, the people clung to their old ministers and their old regime, and a large proportion of these ministers neither conformed nor took oath of allegiance, remain- ing defiant and triumphant, living in the manses and living on the stipends.^ In vain the General Assembly sent reluctant relays of Lowland ministers to inhospitable regions of Aberdeen- shire, Caithness, and Banff, by perilous roads, on sorry nags, to seek a night's shelter in hovels that acted as hostelries.^ When they appeared on Sunday to preach, the people would not listen to those " twenty merk men," as they were nick- named from their pay, and to a congregation of tombstones in the kirkyard they had to speak, while the people were worshipping with the curate inside the kirk. The Presbyterian minister appointed to the charge was often met by crowds of infuriated country folk, who beat him with sticks and forced him to make a precipitous retreat. The experiences of the un- happy presentee to Dingwall in 1704 ^ form a fair sample of the sufferings of many brethren. On Sunday morning the reverend gentleman looked out of the window of a deserted manse and saw a mob on evil purpose bent ; the ringleaders came with " battons, stones, and clods," surrounded the house, and fastened his chamber door with nails. On his opening the window to remonstrate with his assailants he was greeted with a shower of stones. At last, having made his escape, ^ In 1690 there was only one Presbyterian minister in the Synod of Aberdeen and Banff, containing 100 parishes. In 1694 there were eight, in 1697 there were fifteen. Lord's supper not administered in Aberdeen till 1704 by Presby- terian clergy. — Spalding Miscellanies, ii. 72. ^ The ministers of Paisley Presbytery appointed for this hated task, in 1697, were then engrossed with the trial of the Renfrewshire witches, and protested they cannot get North because of the sad condition of the country owing to diabolical manifestations — preferring to contend with the devil in Paisley rather than with the schismatics in Forfar. — Lees' Paisley Abbey, p. 193. * Hist, of Church in Hoss, by Rev. J. Craven, p. 7. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 273 and having begun service in the church, he was interrupted l)y the Episcopal rabble — the father of the deceased curate at tlie head — and finally, nearly "choked and throttled," he was carried off" amid the uproar of the mob, who cried, " King "Willie is dead and our King is alive ! " Hundreds from other parishes joined the rioters, whom the Privy Council proclaimed rebels and their goods forfeit ; but not till 1716 did a Presby- terian preach in peace in Dingwall.^ In parish after parish in the North the successor of the dead or deprived Episcopal incumbent was refused access to his cliurch, assaulted, and forced to flee for his life." Amid such circumstances it is not surprising that, though the vacant posts were many, the candidates were few. In the Synod of Moray out of forty-nine parishes only one curate conformed, the rest it was impossible to dislodge ; or if dislodged, all the people went to some hill or hut, where the " meeting-house keeper " held service, baptized, and married in security and triumph, and many persons seeking to escape discipline for offences found easy admittance into the Episcopalian fold. Another great difficulty arose in filling charges in the High- lands, from there being such a scarcity of ministers or students who could speak Gaelic, and, as there were often none to be 1 Craven's Hist, of Church in Boss, p. 68. The presentee to Kilmuir reports to tlie General Assembly, how on his ordination Sunday he was surprised by an ambush of parishioners with blackened faces, armed with batons ; that he had his hat knocked off and torn to pieces, his head badly cut ; that he was dragged by the cravat till nearly choked, his "suit of fine cloth torn to shreds, his under coat, black coat, and vest, with his linens, stolen from his pocket," and after "terrible effusion of blood and casting cold water on his wounds, he was carried to the top of a hill," and " thought his last hour had come." Meanwhile the Episcopal preacher of the district looked on, and often preached to the mob, who were decked in fragments of the presentee's garments. — Scott's Fasti Eccles. V. 283. Minister of Lochcarron, in 1726, obliged to carry firearms to protect himself from his parishioners. — Ibid. v. 98. - The minutes of the Dunblane Presbytery give a vivid idea of the difficul- ties of the times — of parishes "planted" with Presbyterian ministers to which there came Episcopal "intruders " and "vagrant Episcopal ministers," who set up "meeting-houses" in spite of " letters of horning" ; of parishes, such as Aberfoyle, where a curate installed himself and remained in possession till his death in 1732 ; and Balquhidder, where the minister sent by the Presbytery finds that a curate had entered the pulpit at six on the Sabbath morning : sup- ported by Lord TuUibardine, this preacher retained manse, church, and living till 1712. 274 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY found, the Episcopal Gaelic minister kept hold of the parish and the people.^ In the Lowlands another state of matters existed. There the ministers " outed " were so many that there was a dearth of Presbyterian clergy to take their places. In Whig counties there was a clean sweep of the old incumbents, and large dis- tricts in Galloway were left without a pastor, and the people depended on the " praying associations " of the godly who had fostered fanaticism and phariseeism in the covenanting days. These very districts were longest of being " planted " with ministers, for the soil was barren, the land consisted of wild moors or hills, and the people were contentious; so that men who had a choice of many livings naturally preferred the Lothians, where the parishes were richer and the people were docile. In some large Presbyteries, after the rabbling, only one or two ministers remained by conforming to the new establishment, and over a distance of forty miles for years the Sabbath passed without a service, and the church bells were never rung.^ No wonder when ministers were appointed at last, they found the manses uninhabitable and the kirks in ruins. When Presbytery was re-established in the land, to fill 900 charges there were sixty aged survivors of those who had been turned out of their parishes in 1662, who were fondly termed the " antediluvians," from their having lived before the " flood " of Prelacy ; there were about eighty indulged ministers who had been allowed since 1687 to preach ; and about forty men who came from Ireland and found Scottish livings.^ Fortunately, to add to this ragged regiment there was a considerable number of Episcopal ministers with easy prin- ciples who conformed to the new rule,* and there were also ^ Great difficulty in filling empty kirks arose from scarcity of young men who knew tlie Irish (Gaelic). From the impossibility of getting a Gaelic minister Callander was vacant for twenty years. In 1696 the Dunblane Presbytery writes to the Edinburgh Professor of Divinity for preachers, and is told that there is none who knows Highland language. Next year it is told the Argyll Synod has no Gaelic probationers to spare. — Preshy. Records. '^ Agnew's Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway, p. 407. ^ In 1707 — Presbyterian ministers, 719 ; Episcopalian ministers in parishes, 116 ; intruding Episcopalians in vacant parishes, 79. — Lawson's Hist, of Epis. Church. ^ In the Presbyteries of Haddington and Dunbar, containing thirty parishes, RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 275 Presbyterians who had in the days of persecution got a furtive education, and were licensed or ordained by fugitive ministers in Scotland or dissenting divines in England, and elsewhere ; while men who had been forced from their college studies to find a livelihood in trades in the " killing days " were now licensed, after giving evidence of learning, chiefly consisting of being mighty in the Scriptures.^ What was the character of the expelled clergy it is not easy to determine. If we listen to Presbyterian pamphleteers we learn that as a body they were incapable, negligent, ignorant, and scandalous in life. If we listen to Episcopalian pam- phleteers we learn that " there was no more unblamable com- pany of men upon the earth," nor, in education, were there " five of them in the whole nation who could not undergo the severest examination." ^ If that was the case, it may be wondered what had become of the uncouth, illiterate young men who in 1662 had been collected from farms and trades to fill the pulpits when they became Episcopalian, whom Bishop Burnet con- temptuously describes ^ as " the refuse of the northern parts " — men whose promotion to livings, before they had completed their studies, caused the Aberdeenshire laird to exclaim only five "curates" conformed; in Presbytery of Duns, five conformed. In Presbytery of Auchterarder, only one conforming minister left. — Lawson's Hist., p. 134 ; Skinner's Eccles. History, ii. 558. ^ It was in the south-west counties that Episcopalian curates had least hold. In Kilmarnock, with a population of 2500, the incumbent had a congregation of twelve. There is something very pathetic in the spectacle of !Mr. Andrew Symson holding out at Kirkinner with a flock of three, dwindling down to one. At last, bereft of the solitary adherent — the laird of Baldoon, who died after a fall from his horse — the deserted incumbent breaks into elegiac grief, in measure as broken as his heart : — " He, he alone was my parishioners, Yea, and my constant hearers, O ! that I Had power to eternize his memorie," — Symson's Descrip. of Galloway, 1823, p. vii. Symson became a printer. '^ Presbyterian Inquisition, 1690. ^ " They were the worst preachers that I ever heard. Many of them were ignorant to a reproach. They were a disgrace to their order, and were indeed the dregs and refuse of the northern parts. Those of them who rose above con- tempt and scandal were of such violent temper that they were as much hated as the others were despised." — Burnet's History of his Times, i. 158. It is true that this contemjituous description refers to those called in from all quarters to fill the places from which Presbyterian ministers were ousted in 1662. But as these illiterates were young, many of these were in country parishes in 1688. 276 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY indignantly, " If the bishops go on at this rate we will not have a lad to herd our cows." On the whole we may conclude that though many of them were estimable, and not a few of the younger generation were capable and educated men, the origin of the others was not such as to allow of learning or culture. These luckless men, thrust from their charges, were obliged to seek employment as they could : some to become chaplains or " governors " in lairds' and noblemen's households, treated with not too much respect, and paid mean wages ; some obliged to take to a craft or a shop ; the most fortunate to find livings in England ; the least fortunate, in their dire extremity,^ forced at times to beg alms from the poor-box, and glad to get a little money or clothing from the gentry.^ The few who went about ministering to Episcopal cougregations in country districts in huts or barns, and were styled contemptuously "meeting-house keepers," "intruding ministers," or " vagrant preachers," had a precarious existence on their scanty income from their poor flocks. The Presbyterian ministers who came to reign in their stead had more marked characteristics — amongst which modera- tion cannot be numbered. The old men, during their field- life and wanderings amongst bog mosses and moorland glens, had increased, not in learning but in fanaticism. The younger men — save the few who had studied in Holland — had had no opportunity for study, and usually felt that to know the Lord's Word was worth all the pagan learning of the world. Though some were men of good sense and good scholarship, and several of good birth, the great majority were rude in mind and manners, grimly religious and bigoted in spirit. The fire of persecution has often refined the character, purging the dross, and leaving the nature purer, nobler than before. But a per- secution such as the Presbyterians had of late years undergone, ^ In 1707 there was presented a petition from "the ministers of the Epis- copal perswasion" to the Corporation of Baxters in Edinburgh begging alms ; " for they and their families are at present in great wants and necessities that crave the boweles of compassion of all good Christians." The Baxterian "boweles" of compassion being touched, they give £24 Scots — i.e., £2. — P. 29, Dunlop's Anent Old Edinhurgh. " Kirk-Session records in early part of century contain many entries of relief given to Episcopal ministers. — Beveridge's Culross, ii. 26 ; Parish of Shotts, Stat. Acct. Scot. Inverarity ; Accompt Books of Foulis of Ravelston. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 277 which was not fiery, but merely vexatious and irritating, does not develop the higher qualities or polish the soul to finer graces. It had neither the physical trial which makes heroes, nor the spiritual endurance which forms saints. To be too long in opposition engenders what Bishop Burnet charges them with — " a tangled scrupulosity," a habit of magnifying little points of difference into questions of vital importance. When such men, with the self - conscious glow of martyrdom, emerge from obscurity to publicity, and exchange weary contumely and defeat for truculent victory, they are unable to wield their power with moderation, for they mistake fanaticism for earnestness, and in pious hostility to opponents "confound their antipathies with their duties." Such was the prevailing temper of the ministers at the beginning and during the first quarter of the eighteenth cen- tury ; although they were earnest and honest men, and prob- ably deserving the character given to them in 1707 by Pro- fessor Wodrow,^ himself one of the most benign and moderate of ministers : " There never was such a set of pious, painful, and diligent ministers in Scotland as at the Liberty [that is, the Revolution] and since." II In the incessant war of pamphlets which was maintained for a generation by tracts — " replies," " rejoinders," " letters," " plain dealings," " vindications," " apologies," " exposures," from either side — there is a spirit of intense virulence. " Foul calumnies," " gross imposters," " base lyar," " false witness," are the sort of epithets which besprinkle every page. So charged with venom, so abounding in evident misrepresentation, are the accusations of Presbyterian and Episcopalian alike, that it is well-nigh impossible to clear the way to truth amidst the jungle of re- proaches, recriminations, charges, and countercharges. May we with Lord Macaulay term the pamphleteers " habitual liars " ? Behind the shield of anonymity they hurled their invectives. Deprived Episcopalians complained that the others spoke of them as " incumbents," " black gowns," " intruders," " meeting- house keepers," and theii' places for worship as " schismatical ^ Life of Professor Jas. Wodrow, p. 173. 278 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V meeting-houses." The Presbyterians on their side complained that they were styled " preachers," that in the North they were spoken of as " Cameronians," and the very children were taught to call after them " Cammie ! " " Cammie ! " ^ as they passed along the road. Episcopalians said that the new ministers in their sermons proclaimed that " the gospel had not been preached for twenty -six years," and that they debarred from the communion those who attended Prelatic ordinances. On the other hand, some Presbyterians replied that this charge was a lie; and others said, though the charge was true it was amply justifiable.^ They are weary, though curious, reading, those old tractates, breathing out cruelty, in their rough paper and miserable type, yellow with age and peat smoke ; irreconcilable in feeling, yet united in cynical indifference by the binder's stitcher ; entitled " Collec- tion of Pamphlets," and bound together in peaceful incongruity, not by the bonds of Christian charity, but by the boards of calf-skin.^ After all, the difference between the Presbyterian and the Episcopalian services was curiously slight. "While the Presby- terians made the precentor or reader sing a psalm before the minister appeared, the Episcopalians had made him read chapters from Scripture for the edification of the assembling people. This point was a subject of bitter controversy, the Prelatists taunting their opponents with neglecting entirely to read Scripture in church, except the passage on which the lecture was given, as if, like Papists, they distrusted the Scriptures to the people ; and the ministers supporting their practice by triumphantly quoting Nehemiah viii., where Ezra ^ Plain Dealing with Presbyterians, 1702. ^ Vindication of Church of Scotland, 1702. '^ The animosity to curates was virulently expressed by Fraser of Brea in Lawfuhiess and Duty of Separation from Corrupt Ministers, 1744, published, forty years after it was written, by the Seceders to justify their separation from the corrupt Establishment : " ! to see what contempt they subject the ordin- ances of Christ unto, and how men scunner and egg at their meat being con- veyed to them through such vessels. I know the curates' preaching hath had more influence on the damnation of poor souls than to converting of them. They are the most scandalous haters of godliness, persecutors, mockers, covetous, drunkards or tiplers, sensual and ignorant." — P. 50. Such words prove rather the temper of the " antediluvians" than the character of the "curates." RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 279 reads the law, but also explains it.^ The Episcopalian said the Lord's prayer ; the other omitted it as smacking of a Liturgy, and encouraging the belief in magical power of special words. The Episcopalian curate concluded chapter and sermon with a doxology, either said or sung, which the other discountenanced afi offensive. At baptism the Episcopalian made the father repeat the Apostles' creed, while the others made him express lielief in the Confession of Faith.^ There were even fewer differences in worship between the - Itwo hostile persuasions. The prayers of both were extempore — the liturgy being only used by a few curates. At com- munion the people of both persuasions sat on the forms at the long table,^ the elements being handed round from person to person. " Tickets," or tokens,^ were given out to communicants, and the tables were " fenced," debarring the unworthy. The Episcopalians kept no great Church festivals, except occasionally Christmas, although the Lord's Supper was in the North often arranged to be celebrated at Easter or Pentecost.^ Nor in ecclesiastical polity could greater differ- ence be observed. The Episcopalians, as well as their rivals, had their Presbyteries, their Synods (in which a bishop was moderator), their Kirk-Sessions, with the espionage of elders, the inquisitions into scandal, indiscrimination of punishment alike for a petty breach of the Sabbath and a flagrant violation ^ The apologists for the ministers give the lie direct to charge of reading no Scripture except as a text. — Toleration's Fence Removed, 1703 ; [Anderson's] Curate Calder IVTiipt, by T. T., 1712. - Morer's Short Account, p. 60 ; Cramond's Presbytery of Fordyce, p. 52. ' "Sitting always the posture at communion in Scotland by the testimony of the Episcopalians themselves since the dawn of the Reformation, except when attempts were made to introduce kneeling by the Synod of Perth." — P. 48, Answer to Dialogue between Curate and Countryjnan examined, 1712. * G. Smith's Strathendrick, p. 10 ; Northern Notes and Queries, vii. 178. ' Cramond's Church and Churchyard of Ordiquill, p. 17 ; Church of Boyndie, pp. 17-19. — Stat. Act. Scot, ii., Langside, Aberdeenshire. "I plainly say that the commemoration of the Nativity, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of the Lord and Descent of the Holy Spirit, as well as administration of the Lord's Supper to a dying Christian, was as little known in the time of Episcopacy as in time of Presbytery, save that on Christmas Day in particular places, and under the prelate's nose, a sermon was preached, and then feasting and drinking to excess in many places was much in vogue." — Toleration's Fence Renwved, Edin. 1703. " Knight of the Kirk " (1723) in Mestou's Poems describes and ridicules Presbyterian customs. 28o SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V of the moral law. To attribute to Presbyterian rule and zeal all the Sabbath rigor, the austerity and narrowness of Scottish religion, is to misread Scots Church history and to leave un- read every Kirk-Session record.^ English travellers after the Eevolution, when the two communions were in deadly hostility, could not comprehend why " two parties should so much dis- agree among themselves, when they appear to the world like brothers." ^ When we find the peasantry in the North so persistent in their loyalty to the incumbents it could not arise from any attachment to a particular form of service or govern- ment, for they were practically the same, but from dislike of the covenanting ways of the Lowlands and personal liking for their pastors. Therefore when the incumbents died out; the Episcopacy of the people died with them in many quarters, ■ where it was not bound up with Jacobitism. Ill During the first half of the century the ministers of country ' parishes lived in small, low-roofed or heather-thatched manses with brew-house on one side and stable and byre at the other, facing a dunghill which stood amongst rubbish and nettles.^, The windows, about two or three feet high and eighteen inches broad, were usually only half glazed — the lower part made of wooden panels, for glass then was precious — and there peered ^ See piteous petitions of culprits in 1665, who had "sitten a whole yeir in publict in sackcloth." — Session BooJce of BoncJcle, printed for Berwickshire Nat. Club. ■^ Morer's Short Account of Scotland, p. 61, 1702. 2 Edgar's Old Church Life, i. 40 ; Parish Life in North, by Sage, Wick, I 1889. The thatched manse of Balmaghie in 1727, when occupied by the turbulent Macmillan, had five rooms and a kitchen. On ground-floor were kitchen and two chief rooms (one being tlie minister's study). Above were two bedrooms and a closet between, approached by a narrow wooden stair.— ■ Reid's Cameronian Apostle, p. 49. On Nov. 3, 1710, when a visitation of Keir manse was made, the masons and wriglits, after being put on solemn oath, gave estimate for a manse, 36 feet in length within the walls and 14 feet wide and 15 feet high in the side walls, to make two square rooms in the low story, to make other two square rooms in the second story, with suitable garrets, a cellar below the stair for the lower story, and a closet above it in the second story, with flooring, wooden partitions for rooms, doors, etc., and ofiices, to cost 1400 merks with the old materials. — Pcnpont Presby. Records. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 281 in a meagre light through walls from four to five feet thick. Inside, the front door, which a tall man must stoop to enter, led to a dark passage or lobby with earthen or wooden floor, a "laigh chamber or hall " on one side, a dark, earth-floored kitchen at the other, and one small bedroom. Up the creaky, narrow staircase were two bedrooms (called " fire-rooms " from possess- ing the luxury of a hearth), and a closet or study — the doors leading into each other, as there was no space for a passage. If the family was too large for this small accommodation the space between the ceiling and the rafters which supported the straw or heather thatch — containing a dense population of rats — was fitted up into a hearthless garret for the children to sleep in. The little low-ceiled room set apart as the minister's " closet," to which he retired for prayer or for study, contained his meagre Ubrary — folios and quartos of Tun^etini Opera, and many a work of Dutch Divinity, in Latin which was clumsy and ponderous as the barges on Dutch canals, with Weenis' Christian SynagogiLe, and the invaluable Poole's Anno- tations. The manse walls presented a rough plastered surface inside the rooms, and between the chambers were partitions of deal boards. In this cramped abode everyone was crowded, ! and the air of rooms was dense from want of ventilation from windows that did not open ; though there were draughts in the dwelling from doors that did not fit, and comfortless passages through which the cold winds blew. The noise of children from the rooms, with their wooden divisions, and the bustle of household work — spinning, brewing, washing, baking, grinding the " knockit bear " — often drove distracted the poor minister in the throes of composing two sermons and a lecture every week in the retirement of his little " book-room." ^ The stipends were not so insufficient at the beginning of the century as they became with dearer living in after years. In fact, in point of income it was said a clergyman in a parish ^ An enthusiast for " enclosing " fields insidiously pleads thus with ministers to adopt the practice. "The clergy should be the quickest to begin enclosing, for sure when the weather is fair their little manses are not so fit for their studies as these delightful enclosures. Under a hedge they don't hear, nor are disturbed nor diverted by children crying, the mistress and servants speaking aloud about their domestick aff"airs, from which noise no room is remote enough." — Essay on Ways and Means of Enclosing, Falloiving, etc., 1729. 282 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY stood second, and richer than many of the lairds.^ The average income was £40, sometimes as low as £20 or £25, which was paid in kind, of so many bolls of oats, pease, barley, — wheat was not grown, — and all this was stored in the girnal or granary attached to the manse, and sold as occasion required for the needs of the household. This stipend was sent by the heritors on horseback,^ each horse conveying on its back the load of one boll, so that to transmit on the ill-made roads eight bolls of meal required a line of eight horses and four men to lead them. The clothing of the family consisted of stuff or plaiding, spun by the wife and her maids, woven by the village weaver, and made up into garments by the travelling tailor, who came periodically with his apprentices, and worked for 2d. a day and his broth or porridge. Shoes for himself or his wife cost 3s. a pair ; and as his sons went barefooted to school the expense of the shoemaker was not large. The minister himself had no professional dress, and like the lairds wore coloured — usually gray — garments of coarse homespun stuff ; ^ and even in the pulpit he had coloured cloak and waist- coat and lay neck-cloth. In still later times, even in 1750, though attired in black on Sunday, on the other days he went in suit of blue cloth, which was the common dress for clergy* 1 Statement of Professor Hutcheson about 1740 : p. 46, Smith's Survey of Argyllshire, 1794. " Reminiscences of Rev. J. Russell of Yarrow, p. 154. ^ Account of Life of Dr. Edmund Calamy, ii. 177: — "The ministers, even in the most solemn auditories, preached with neck -cloths and coloured cloaks, which a little surprised me. It was their usual way, unless they were professors of Divinity and persons remarkable for age or gravity." In 1697 the minister of Prestonpans administers communion clad in plaid "night gown." — Memoirs of Elis. West. When Lord George Sackville entered Kintail after the battle of Culloden the minister, who appeared to protect his parishioners whose cattle were being driven off, was so unlike a clergyman that Lord George, suspecting imposition, took out his pistol and ordered the minister to show him his library to prove his clerical office, and the poor man hurried home and reappeared before his lordship with a volume of Poole's Aniiotations under his arm to convince him. — S. A. Scot., Kintail, vi. 245. Some Highland ministers even wore and preached in a kilt. " The writer's father remembered the late Rev. J. M'Dowell of Forres preaching to the people in his native glen — Glenmoriston — in a kilt surmounted by a black coat. The late Mr. Malcolm Nicholson usually officiated in a kilt." — Life mid Labours of Dugald Bxiclianan, by Rev. A. Sinclair, p 66 ; View of Diocese of Aberdeen, Spalding Miscellanies, p. 74. •* Somerville's Life and Times, p. 371. _ i RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 283 For his few uiid eventful visits to town to atteiul the (General Assembly he (l(jiined his best wig, his three-cornered hat, his blue coat and long waistcoat and red cravat, saddled his ill- kempt nag, and went off amidst the waving of hands of his family and the prayers of his wife on his i)erilous journey over tracks of mire, ruts, and stones. When his nag stumbled down the rough causeway of Edinburgh he put up at a hostelry in tiie Cowgate or Grassmarket, where there was large accommodation for horses and wretched entertainment for men.^ But though the inn was bad and its rooms were dirty, it was moderate in price and its fare nmch better than at the manse — the " ordinary " being 4d. He met his friends and country brethren in the street, whom he, as custom was, saluted with a kiss on the cheek, and several delightful days he spent in listening to sermons " full of sap " in St. Giles, and to hot debates in the Assembly. At last he prepares to return home, purchases a volume of Durham on Revelation, a copy of Scrmon^i by that eminent Servant of tJie Lord, Mr. Andreio Gray, for an elder, a new pamphlet against Prelacy by " Dominie " Anderson, or anent Professor Simson, from George Mossman's shop in Parliament Close ; and then, with wig retrimmed, perhaps by Allan Eamsay at " Sign of the Mercury," with a cargo of writing- paper for his sermons and his notes, and articles of wifely apparel flapping behind him in his saddle-bags, he and his horse set forth home, where he eventually arrived in safety, and conducted " family exercises," in which he fervently thanked the Lord for providential deliverance from manifold perils. Such might be his experiences between 1705 to 1725. The duties of the parish minister were very arduous and unremitting in wide, uncultivated parishes with isolated huts and farms in the waste moorlands and uplands. He had to visit each family certain times a year, to catechise all its members, from the father to the youngest " examinable person " of twelve, and every servant of the householder, on their religious ^ Wodrow writes home in May 1710 on his visit to the General Assembly : " Let Johnny, if he bring the black horse, bring a wallet with him and light at W. Ker's, in the head of the Grassmarket on the side next to the Castle, and call for me at Mr. Stewart the regent's, first at Bristoe Port, or in the Parliamentary Close, the first door as he goes down the Mealmarket steps, at Mrs. Watson's, at the Assembly House." — Correspondence. 19 284 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR Y knowledge, to " offer a solemn address to the persons before him, and to conclude with an affectionate prayer for their temporal and eternal welfare." ^ The roads being vile in the most frequented districts, there were not even bridle-paths over most of the parishes, but mere tracks over the waste, when the minister required to make his visitations on his pony, at constant risk of being capsized in the ruts and the bogs, or of being drowned as he passed the fords of brawling streams and rivers that were rarely traversed by a bridge. Mr. Thomas Boston describes how he went through his dreary Ettrick hill-country with his " man." " The night being dark I could not discern the horse that rode before me. I caused put on his shoulder a white linen cloth for that end, but to no purpose." " So, through the constant mists that then rose from the marshy ground, by day and night the minister went his course. Distances being great and communication difficult, he was forced to stay in the clay-built, dirty, peat-smoked farm hut, and knowing well there should be no such luxuries as knife and fork in a house where mutton was only seen on table when a sheep died of old age or disease, he carried his jocteleg {Jacques de Liege) in his pocket, to be used at a board where fingers and teeth were unceremoniously applied, and where the food was often enough to disgust the most stalwart stomach.^ The meetings of Kirk -Session took up a preposterous amount of his time. Every rumour of misdemeanour, every ^ Such are the ministerial duties eveu so late as 1810. — ]\Ioncreift''s Life of Dr. John Erskine, p. 70. - Memoirs. 3 Somerville's Life ami Times, p. 356 ; Carlyle's Autobiography, p. 64. This practice led to disastrous consequences on one occasion. Mr. Hogg, minister of Auldearn, was visitor at a house occupied by a "scoffing factor." The servant having neglected to furnish Mr. Hogg ■with a knife, he produced one from his pocket, observing that it was a necessary companion for a traveller, and he thereupon proceeded, according to his wont, to imj^rove the occasion : "If we are so careful about accommodations in our way here, what care should we take in our spiritual journey," and so on with a tedious expostulating, at which the factor laughed and jeered, and the minister warned him. " 0, you may despise the grace of God, but I tell you, in the name of the Lord, that the time is coming, and that shortly, when ye shall seek an offer of grace and shall not find it," on which the factor mocked again. .Just as Mr. Hogg was slipping into bed a servant knocked at the door and cried, " For the Lord's sake come down to the factor's room." Mr. Hogg came down presently and found "the wretch" was dead. — Wodrow's Analccta, i. 266. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 285 suspicion ol' scandal, was reported to and by the vvatchliil, sell- important elders. Parties were summoned by the ofticer before the Session, and were solemnly warned to be " ingenious " when interrogated if the report was true ; witnesses for and against were called, and, being " purged of all malice," gave their evidence with nauseous minuteness.^ For months a case may be in hand — the stealing of some corn, the utterance of an oath, the committing of adultery, tlie carrying a pail of water on a Fast day — and then, if in peri)lexity as to the truth, after waiting in vain till the " Lord send light," the battled Session remitted the matter to the Presbytery, where it anew ran its course with painful prolixity. Presbytery meetings were full of importance and interest to the ministers, and not seldom lasted two or three days. Members were appointed in rotation to give a discourse upon a special part of the Scripture. Accordingly the proceedings began with the minister giving an " exercise and addition," or " opening and adding an ordinar " — that is, the " ordinary "' portion of Scripture selected for discourses. The excuses were read from absentees that day, or heard from those absent on the previous meeting — such as " the ford was impassable," that " the roads were blocked with snow," that he was " tender," or bed-rid, and could not come, or that he had gone to the North to " drink the goat's milk." To mingle edification with business, and to burnish their theological armour, the ministers in some places read in turn " a common-place " or " common head " in Latin treating of some weighty doctrine — the Trinity, Free Grace, or Election — and this the brethren " handled " with what skill and Latin they could muster.- Then there came the weary appeals of cases of scandal for consideration : the contumacy of lairds that will not face the Session, fugitives ^ The Kirk-Session of Foulis-Easter met twelve days to consider the case of a woman reported to have said, " Deil tak' ye," for which slie is censured. — Hist, of Foulis-Easter. - "Witli such subjects as tho following the Kircudbright Presbytery in 1702 improved their wits and their Latinity : De concursu Dei cicm avusis secundis particulari, simuUanco et praevio ; De unitate ct identitate foederis gratiae quoad suhstantiam in u.troquc Testa mcnto. The very minute of Presbytery deposing the famous Mr. ^Macmillan of Balmaghie, in 1703, closes with reminder that at next meeting Mr. Cameron is to have his "common head," De virihcs liberi arbitrii. — Reid's Caineroniuu Apostle, p. 86. 286 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY from discipline whom the sheriff must be got to apprehend, ruinous churches to visit and inspect with masons and wrights, who are put on their oath to give " righteous estimate," school- masters to examine, heritors to force to build a school, fasts to appoint against spiritual darkness, and prayers to offer for ministerial light. Thus in those tedious, useless, pedantic, solemn assemblies time was freely spent. After the meetings were closed with prayer the members had a repast in the inn of broth, mutton, and boiled hens on the wooden plates. There being only one glass, which passed along from guest to guest, each emptied it of its ale at a draught ; there being neither knife nor fork, the prudent and fastidious carried their shagreen cases containing these utensils, which were found in neither farmhouse nor hostelry. IV The churches in the first half century — and in many cases till the close of the eighteenth century — were disgraces to art and scandals to rehgion. They were dark, very narrow build- ings, with a few little windows having small panes of glass, which were considered so precious that they were preserved by wire outside. The floors were earthen, and in some older kirks of the North the bodies of many generations had been buried beneath them, to the detriment of health, decency, and comfort ; for sometimes the bones of the dead so strewed the floor that they were kicked by the worshippers, whose noses were afflicted by the " corrupt unripe corps " disturbed to make room for new tenants.^ The roofs were thatched with heather, fern, or turf, for straw was too scarce and valuable as food for cattle to use for thatch. Before the expense of repairing kirk and manse was imposed in 1690 on heritors — and in some places long after — many were left ruinous, and Kirk-Sessions enjoined parishioners to assist in mending and building by bringing deal boards, divots, and heather, and by carting stone and lime.^ Left to the tender mercies of the Presbyterian ^ Old church life in Highlands. — Scots 3fagazine, 1886. •^ In 1680 the Session of Inveri;rie ordained "ilk in the parish to brin^ a load of heather for reparation of the kirk against Wednesday the last day of the month." — Davidson's Hist, of Inverurie. Parishioners of Ettrick in 1697 re- RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 287 lairds, the edifices in Episcopal times had fallen into woeful state, and when Presbytery was re-established very many were found in sad decay. Some fine old pre -reformation churches had survived, having been reared with more artistic and less parsimonious piety ; but whenever the original roofs of lead or stone fell tYertoviS English Church in Eighteenth Century, ii. 471. - The Charges in Works of Archbishop Leighton. ^ In beginning of the century all kept on their hats during sermon, and it is even said "the vulgar sort in time of prayer give but half-cap. " — Full and Final Answers to a Trifling Paper, 1703. In 1740 a gentleman writes condemning ' ' a custom which I see is pretty general among the lower sort of cocking ou their hats when the sermon began." — 1740, Scots. Mag. 331. In many districts for a long time gowns were very unpopular in Galloway, though the Synod of Dumfries, " considering it is a thing very suitable and decent, so it hath been the practice of ministers formerly to wear a black gown in the pulpit, for ordinary to make use of bands, recommend it to their brethren to keep up that laudable custom and to study grave deportment." — Hogg's Life of Br. Wightman. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 291 the change house, wliile others remained in cliurch, and for their edification two boys from the frraniniar school — if it was in a town — were appointed to stand up, and ask, and answer questions from the Shorter or Larger Catechism " in a distinct voice." On " mercat " days — usually Wednesday or Thursday — there was also sermon and service, to which in the more fervid period people resorted in numbers. The psalmody was led by the schoolmaster, who was always appointed to his office on condition of " setting up the psalms in kirk," and of teaching " common tunes " to the children in school ; and he filled the post of precentor, with a meagre repertoire of tunes in the minor key, although he had no ear, and long after he lost his voice. Fortunately only two psalms were sung at each service ; for to add to vocal dreariness each successive line of the psalm was read or drawled out before it was sung to the dislocation of all music. This fashion came originally from England, where it had been adopted owing to the inability of the people to read.' Yet it became so distinctive a feature in Scots worship — even in family devotion — that its disuse, more than a century after its importation from the south, caused secessions of stanch Presbyterians from the Church, and the formation of dissenting congregations, where they might con- tinue the endeared practice of a " run-line " and be without the intrusive aid of uninspired pitchfork. V The clergy of the Eevolution, distinguished by unction and pious fervour, had boundless belief in prayer, and great admiration for those who had the " gift " of praying, which was shown by its fluency, its lengthiness, its holy ardour. Those ministers were most revered who were " great wrestlers," ^ The Englisli members of tlie Westminster Assembly in 1643 recommended this practice to all churches, and at their desire it was introduced into Scotland. Bishop Newton in England recommended it. In Langton and Kirkcaldy many of the people joined the Seceders in disgust at the schoolmaster giving up read- ing the lines. — Htat. Accl. xiv. 580. The "run-line" was even the 2>ractice in family worship. In 1746 the General Assembly issued recommendation, that "private families in their religious exercises in singing the praises of God go on without interruption of reading line." — Ads 0/ Assembly, 1746. 292 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY as they were termed, who could continue long m their heaven- ward addresses, and weep as they did so. Mr. Robert Wodrow relates with awe how Mr. How — " a most mighty, importunate wrestler in prayer" — at a meeting after others had gone through devotional exercises, took his turn, and continued so fervently that the " sweet haled down." Thereupon Mrs. How, the watchful spouse, accustomed to his manner, " stepped to him gently, took off his wigg, and with her napkin dried the sweet and put on his wigg again. This she was obliged to do twice, if not thrice, and Mr. How seemed not to know what was done to him." ^ To weep, and then smile raptly as the long supplications in the vocative case and imperative mood were uplifted in the sanctified sing-song — or "drant," as it was termed — was the mark of the gifted. This peculiar cant or whine was specially the characteristic of the " antediluvians " and of those who admired and copied them. It had been doubtless effective in its place ; thrilling and impressive as it rose and fell in holy cadence on the ears of throngs gathered on the heather or braesides, and borne on the breeze over the moorland or the glen. By a sudden rise and fall of the voice the minister could play on the emotions of the hearers as a musician on his fiddle, and, weeping himself, could make others weep." But it was grotesque in the pulpit with its unpicturesque surroundings. To " mandate " or prepare a prayer beforehand was a sinful act, for the words must be uttered according to the motion of the Spirit. If a minister, deficient in this faith and modest of his powers, who had thought over the words before speaking them, yet forgot them or fumbled over them — this was a clear mark of divine displeasure at his trusting to his unsanctified power. As the times were rude, the clergymen rustic, and taste and ^ Wodrow's Analecta, iii. 303. Mr. Kid of Carluke "was a most godly minister, much given to prayer, and a serious, affectionate preacher ; so zealous in prayer that he sometimes forgot himself, and prayed the whole time he should have preached." — Hist, of Gar hike, p. 76. ^ Even as late as 1755 the cultivated clergy protested against the sing-song tones in preaching and praying of the evangelical ministers — "soliciting the Almighty charity with childish, lamentable sounds, as the mendicants do ordinarily solicit alms." — Methods of Promoting Edification in Puhlick Instruc- tion, by -las. Fordyce, D.D. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 293 manners were coarse, utterances which are grotesque, pre- posterous to us, were natural and seemed proper expressions to them and tlieir people — if they moved the ungodly to merri- ment, they moved the pious to awe.' We may well suspect the veracity of the scurrilous pamphlet, Scota Presbyterian Eloquence Displai/ed — in which " Curate " Calder ridicules and illustrates the vulgarity, folly, and fanaticism of the ministers, just as we suspect the tu-quoque of Redpath's rejoinder on Episcopal ways and manners ; '^ but though ministers protested it was a vile calumny, there is ground to believe it was not so gross a caricature after all. Other contemporaries, moved by no party spirit, complained of the grotesque metaphors, the vulgar familiarities, the tedious battologies of the prayers ; and stories of pulpit utterances were the amusement of society and the delight of the profane.^ The labours for and of the pulpit were severe and incessant, heavily straining to mind and to body, to compose three such sermons and a lecture as were required by the people, whose intellectual grasp cannot have been mean. These were very long ; they were not written, and they dared not be read, for that would be offensive to the people, and could call forth ^ "Wodrow's Aiuileda, Hi. Discourses concerning the Soul 0/ Mmi . . . likevxise the Author's Opinions of the Oath of Abjuration, and of the Hilhncn, etc., Edin. 1714. " It is no wonder that there is such a thronging for a kirk, especially by sons of the vulgar, and here I blame the gentry who doth not make it their study to breed their children for the ministry, and not let the sons of the lowest of the people have the power and government of the whole Church, which makes it despicable in the eyes of strangers." "Our upstart dominies, so soon as they attain to ordination, instead of being seriously concerned how to dis- charge the great trust they are engaged to, you will see an elevation of spirit in their countenance the very morrow thereafter, and altho' before that they would have been glad of a gentleman bringing them into conversation, behold immediately after they think themselves as good as the laird ; and the meaner the extract is, the vainer is the person raised." — P. 36. - Scots Presbyterian Eloquence Disjilayed [by R. Calder], Edin. 1697 ; Episcopal Eloquence Displayed [by G. Anderson] ; Scots Presbyterian Eloquence Answered [by G. Redpath]. ■* Apologists for the Church called the stories "calumnies," and said that many attributed to Presbyterians what had been uttered by Episcopalians. Burt says, "I have heard so many, and of so many [oddities in the pulpit] that I really think there is nothing set in Scots Presbyterian Eloquence but what at least is probable." — Letters from Xorth, i. 175 ; Presbyteriun Inquisition [by A. Munro, D. D.], 1691; Ramsay's Scot, and Scotsmen, ii. ; Pitcairn's The Assembly. Of TMe 294 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY little blessiug from the Lord. The themes of the teaching ij were invariably the same ; namely, the Fourfold state of ' man : 1st, What man was in a state of innocence ; 2nd, What he was after the fall ; 3rd, What he is under the gospel of grace ; 4th, What shall be his eternal state. It was on i this quartet of doctrine that the minister prelected through- out his whole ministry without variation or cessation. These dogmas he discovered with flagrant ingenuity in every verse from the Song of Solomon, Leviticus, or Habbakuk. Limited as he was in subjects, he was further restricted to texts, for he was expected week after week to discourse from the same ,' passage of Scripture in one of these sermons which was called : his " ordinary." This was a custom universal in Scotland, for it was enjoined by the Church and beloved of the people. Kirk- Sessions' records chronicle the texts which the preacher used, and how often he used it. Thus it is recorded that at CuUen, in the North, the minister discoursed for seventeen Sabbaths on Ephesians vi. 12 ; that in Sorn in the South the minister took as ordinary. Psalm ix. 1, 2, which occupied him and his people one year and six months.^ When a minister has at last exhausted his text and his congregation, he announces that " next Lord's day he will change his ordinar." " This custom demanded no little ingenuity, to avoid dreary repeti- tions ; and through months the preacher had to rack his brains to turn barren metaphors in Canticles to some fruit- ful evangelical sense, to insert meanings the Hebrew poet never dreamt of, to draw conclusions that did not follow, and to commit to his jaded memory the long hydra-headed discourses which he might not read.^ No wonder Mr. Thomas Boston has his " damps " over his discourses, and " wrestles at the throne " for help in his text. When that excellent, but not exhilarating, divine became minister of Simprin in 1699, in his sermons " he entered upon" man's ^ Cramond's Church of Cullen, p. 141 ; Edgar's Old Church Life, i. 92. - Parish of Maryton, by Fraser, p. 214. Even under episcopac}' in 1671 the "curate" of Bonckle, in Berwickshire, hammers away for twenty-eight Sundays on Acts x. 34-42. — Session Book of Bonckle, p. 32. ^ In 1720 the General Assembly declared that the reading of sermons was displeasing to God's people, and caused no small obstruction to spiritual consola- tion. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIEE 295 natural state of total depravity — which theme lasted a year ; then he preached on Christ as the remedy for man's misery for anotlier year ; succeeding discourses on the application of the remedy occupied him thirteen months; and by 1704 he had tinislied his iamous course of sermons on the " fourfold State," which lasted in all about five years.' At another time this indefatigable pastor in the little rural kirk Ijcgan at his "Wednesday service, wliich was at midday, wlien the ploughmen stopped for their repast, an " ordinar " on a verse of the Song of Solomon, whicli continued from 1704 for two years — a hundred sermons on one text — which, he complacently remarks, " afforded us many a sweet hour together." Depending so entirely on liis mood, his vocabulary, and his memory for the prolonged discourses, perplexed to know what more for the thousandth time to say, a poor minister was often in sore straits. In his narrow " book-room " he would fall on his knees in sheer despair and crave for " light," and when he finds a suitable text or an idea he feels certain that " it is given to him," though when he can make nothing of it he is sure that " Satan is withholdiuj^ him." Where a modern preacher would say " he could not see his way," the minister of those times said " he was in much darkness." If he was not fluent, and had difficulty " in running his glass," he felt " much straitened, and the Lord had withdrawn His hand." At times Mr. Thomas Boston, conscious that his " frame was gone " and his ideas are slow, sits in his pulpit between sermons crying bitterly.- Happy was the good man that day when after being anxious as to his " through bearing," and after •' driving " heavily with his com- munion address, he could record : " This day I had a sweet ^ Boston's Memoirs. A Shetland minister at the beginning of the nineteenth century preached for a year and six months on "the 12 wells of water, and 3 score and 10 palm trees of Elim (Exodus xv. 27), devoting a Sunday to each well and each tree." — Shetland Minister of Eighteenth Century (Key. J. Mill), by Rev. J. Willcock, p. 52. - "The Lord gave me great composure of mind, and suggested many things tome in speaking which I had not so much as thought before." — Diary 0/ lialph Erskine, 1717, p. 21. "At Edrom I was much helped in the first prayer, but in the other parts of the forenoon exercise I had not such clear uptaking of things nor the weight in my spirit that I should have had. This made me cry betwixt sermons." — Boston's Memoirs. 296 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY while in confidence in the Lord, grasping the Promise over the belly of felt foolishness." ^ The most popular and deeply gospel preachers in the early days of the century had a wondrous influence over the people, pleading with sinners " to close with Christ," and shedding tears copiously. Nothing more eulogistic could be said of any divine than that he was " a most affectionate weeping preacher." Carried away by the rapture of his mood (or, to speak in his own language, " much countenanced of the Lord "), he would go on till he was exhausted in breath, and then he would order the people to sing, or he would burst into prayer, and there- after resume with increased vigour. The antediluvians and the gospel ministers were famous for a peculiar professional whine or " sough " — with notes so flat that Burt relates how a music master set them to a tune on his fiddle ; " and curiously enough, some years before Simon Lord Lovat, after listen- ing, not too reverently, to the see-saw whine of Mr. Ealph Erskine in his soul-awakening discourses, had set that eminent divine's horrific notes also to music, putting to his profanely mocking chords words beginning — " Ye drunkards of Dun- fermline," which were more plain than proper, for the delecta- tion of the ungodly. Lugubrious as was the old theology, and monotonous and ^ Mr. Francis Aird, minister of Dalserf, was singularly countenanced at communion. Mr. Stirling tells me he was a most fervent, affectionate, weejnng preacher. — Analecta, iii. 172. " Mr. J. Bowes was the most jiopular preacher I ever heard, and he would run on in a strain of exhortation for more than an hour, sometimes with denunciations of threats and invitations to Christ. . . . He had a peculiar tone and smile that seemed to some not suitable. He had many apologies and exhortations for success, and invited the people to pray for him." — Ihid. i. 21. "I was in exercises for an hour together," says Boston, "in the tent and at the table, only I rested in the midst of my sermon one while, the congregation singing, and then I prayed a few words. I never did this before, but I bless the Lord who gave me the counsel." — Menioirs, p. 406. An epitaph in Carluke churchyard commemorates the virtues of a departed minister : — A faithful holy minister here lies hid, One of a thousand, Mr. Peter Kid, Firm as a stone, but of a heart contrite, A \yrestling, praying, weeping Israelite. Hist, of Carlulx, p. 6S. - Letters from the Xorth ; Ramsay's Scotland mid Scotsmen, ii. "Ministers in heavy, dismal tones draw out words to immoderate length with distortion of faces." — Letter from a Blacksmith, etc., 1759. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 297 destitute of ull literary grace the preaching, many of the published sermons of those days have a vigour and uncouth ilocpience of their own, a pathos in appeal, a curious ingenuity of argument, a vivid phrasing, which go far to account for their rei)Utation and intluence. With only two or three dogmas to enforce all their days, it may be conceived what labour it was to extract new light from irrelevant texts in Canticles and Amos. Every text was twisted to a gospel significance and turned into an evangelical metaphor. No thimblerigger at a country fair more nimbly put under the thimble peas which he professed to have found there, than at " holy fairs " did ministers insert into Jewish words Calvinistic doctrines which they professed to discern therein. Earnest, pious as they are in their discourses when they address their hearers as " sirs," they are excruciating reading from a literary point of view. Phrases occur among what they term their " observes " which are a compost of Scots, Latin, and English. When the preacher desires to state that God knows what has happened, ■ he says, " God jalousies that it is notour " ; when there is much to be done, " there is a great steick of wark " ; to omit is " to evite " ; a miracle is " a remarkable " ; to die peacefully is " to expire without the shruggs of death " ; to condemn is " to vilepend " : to overcome self-will is " to come over the belly of felt wants " ; to be religiously concerned is to have " a sensible uplifting " ; to be bankrupt is to be " a dyvour " ; to be pro- tected is to be " under scrogg " ; to stir up strife is " to increase the gum " ; to be perplexed or nonplussed is to be in a " nonentity " ; to be angry is " to be in a chagarine." Scripture narrative is also turned into pulpit phrases. Eeminiscent of Abraham and Isaac, to make a sacrifice is " to put the knife to the throat of our desires." Allusive to Moses, earnestness is an " uplifting of the hands " ; and, of course, to pray is in- variably " to wrestle," like Jacob with the mysterious angel. All this spoken in that broad Scots in which everybody spoke — gentle and simple alike — till far on in the century.^ ^ Writings of Spalding, James Webster, Erskines, Wodrow, Blackwell, Boston, etc., passim. SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V VI One of the earliest acts of the re-established Church pro- hibited the private administration of baptism — a law the more irritating to Episcopalians, owing to their not being for some time allowed any public place of worship, and the less con- sistent of Presbyterians, seeing that they for twenty-six years had themselves baptized secretly in hut, or glen, or moorland. It was after 1690 enjoined that the child should be christened only during public worship, and it was said some would rather a child should die than the law be broken.^ It is true that Mr. Thomas Boston, a strict adherent to the rule, was able to make the comfortable reflection that " during the whole course of my ministry of eighteen years, never a child died without baptism through my sticking to that principle — glory to a good God for it ! " "^ But Providence did not always suspend the laws of nature to suit Acts of Assembly, or for ministers other than the author of The Fourfold State. To conform to law and at the same time conform to humanity, ministers often announced that public worship would be held at the remote cottage or farm town where the parents of an infant lived, and then going through a whole service at the cottage or in a barn they performed the rite of baptism, which was followed by an entertainment which did not tend to sobriety.^ The eagerness of the parents to have their children christened gave unlimited power to the ministers ; but this parental anxiety proceeded less from piety than from superstition. ^ Stra7ii/e Neivs from Scotland : London, 1712. - Memoirs. ^ As early as 1696 ministers in some quarters gave way, and Kirk-Session of Drymen ordained that whoever sends for the minister to marry or baptize out of the church shall pay, for each marriage 20 shillings (Scots), and for each bap- tism 10 shillings. — ^mUh's Strathendrick, p. 84. "1703. — To ye kirk-treasurer for William's daughter's private baptism, £3, 14s." — P. 303 ; Account Books of Foulis of Ravclston. The Penpont Presbytery, 1736, deplores "the too great gatherings at some baptisms, too great preparations made for them, and too mucli drunk at them, and in some places there is a scandalous way at drinking in coming with the child to and from the place of administration, whereas at such a time not only parents should endeavour a religious frame of soul, but also any friends and neighbours that are invited upon such occasions to be witnesses to the dedication should be devout." — Penpo7it Preshy. Records. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 299 Till it was l)apLized the baby was a thing without a name, and without u name it would possibly not be saved ; for how could it in the resurrection be identified ? It might I I be carried ott" by i'airies and a changeling substituted for it ; and till it was christened it was sul^ject also to malign power of the evil eye — to avert which each visitor was presented with the propitiatory gift of a piece of bread.^ It was the richer and more inthiential classes who held out against the ecclesiastical rule, and the ministers trembled at the prospect of gentry getting Episcopal dissenters to christen their infants. In 1718 Mr. Robert Wodrow wrote home to his wife in horror : " There is a scandalous compliance with a custom which has come down to us from the South of baptizing the infants of most people in their houses, and winked at lest the gentry become Episcopalians." ^ Soon ministers were obliged to yield to those whom they feared to disoblige ; but they made them pay fines, which were put in the poor-box. Other innovations began to excite indignation. The law of the Church was stringent in requiring every marriage to be solemnized in church, and the penalties were severe for viola- tion of it. This was a regulation of old date ; but shortly after the beginning of the century many Presbyterians of position began to insist on weddings being in their own houses ; while the Episcopalians, deprived of places of public worship, had nowhere else to have them. Truly the old damp and dirty kirks were not ideal places for a marriage, nor was it easy or pleasant for bridal parties to travel to them over roads which were almost impassable in dry weather, and stretches of mud and water in wet. In vain did the Church fulminate against such gross irregularities as private weddings ; the gentry cheerfully paid, their fines of 20s. Scots and upwards, which went to replenish the poor-box. But while the rich were married at home, the poor up to the middle of the century were married at kirk, to which the company went to the music of a fiddle. In ignorance of old ways, it is usually ^ Gregor's Folk-Lore of North-East of Scot. "I wat well, it's a very un- canny thing to keep about a house a body wanting a name." — Dugal Graham's Chapbook Jockey and Maggy ; Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song. * Correspondence, April 1718. 20 300 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V supposed that private weddings are a peculiar institution of the Presbyterian Church, though really it originated in Scotland with the Episcopalian dissenters. Indeed, it was the poor^ who continued longest the custom of being married in church, and it was the rich and fashionable who first abandoned it. Though religion entered intimately into almost every event of human life in those days, there was one occasion when it was strikingly absent — namely, at funerals. The old savour of Popery hung suspiciously around death and burial, and the prevailing dread, therefore, w^as lest any religious act should countenance the superstitions of the past. Funerals and burials were in consequence treated as civil acts, and no religious service was permitted in Scotland either in Epis- copal or in Presbyterian days. The hour that a death occurred in a village or town the bellman was informed, and however untimely late at dark night or early in gray morning, he passed along the street tinkling the dead -bell to call attention to his intimation. The bellman summoned all to the funeral," and for anyone to absent himself was regarded as a discourtesy to the dead and an insult to the living, and a gross neglect of a Christian duty. The concourse was huge, and increased by those who came from far and near to every funeral to partake of the meat and drink which was freely distributed.^ Meeting at the door of the cottage, the company went in by relays to partake of the several courses of cakes, or bread, ale, snuff, and tobacco. Then, setting forth to burial, the beadle went in front, tinkling the bell, while the proces- sion followed the coffin.^ The body duly buried, friends ^ Somerville's Life and Times, 346. ^ Ray's Second Itinerary, 1664; Kirk's Modern Account of Scotland, 1679; Tour in Great Britain (begun by Defoe), iv. 247 ; Burt's Letters, i. 217 ; Gor- don's Chronicles of Keith, p. 359. Custom retained in some places up to close of century — Stat. Acct. Scot., Borrowstounness, xviii. 439. Dead-bell used at funerals in Hawick in 1780. — Wilson's Haivick, p. 164. ^ In cases of poverty the Kirk-Session supplied means of entertainment : For ale to David Ritchie's burial, 31s. ; for pipes and tobacco to said burial, 15s. 6d. — P. 234, Campbell's Hist, of Balmerino. "In the Highlands the late wake attended by bagpipes and the relations of the man and wife, sons and ' daughters begin a melancholy ball."— Pennant's Tour, iii. 3. ■* The Presbytery of Penpont in 1736, among many abounding evils against which they warn the people, protest: "Yet further how unaccountable and scandalous are the large gatherings and unbecoming behaviour at burials and RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 30 r returned to the house and partook oi" a second and more leisurely repast called the " dredgy " (a corrupt form Ijoth of the old Popish word and function of the " dirge "), when ihe drinking was long and deep ; and afterwards they sought their way in a very unsober state to their respective abodes. The house of mourning and the house of feasting were then identical, and funerals were attended with scenes both riotous and scandalous. The minister had no professional part at a burial, and his presence was not essential, though usual,^ The only recognition of religion was in the long and copious blessings " oflered " and thanks " returned " as the viands were handed round the company. These graces, containing particular refer- ence to the inscrutable dispensations of Providence, were said by any sedate person, by an elder, or by the minister if he happened to be present. Gradually, as the century advanced, the presence of the minister became a matter of course, the prayers at the refreshments became more elaborate ; and when these funeral repasts disappeared, the devotional exercises, which had been originally graces over the food, remained, and became the service over the dead before the body was removed from the house. In connection with funerals a grim and curious form began to creep into use at the end of the seventeenth century or be- ginning of the eighteenth, known as the " chesting." When the body was being put into the chest or coffin the night before burial, prayers were offered up by the minister or elder in lake-wacks, also in some places how many are grossly unmannerly in coming to burials without invitation. How extravagant are many in tlieir preparations for such occasions, and in giving much drink, and driving it too frequently before and after the corpse is enterred, and keeping the company too long together : how many scandalouslie drink untill they be drunk on such occasions ; this practice cannot but be hurtfull, therefore ought to be discouraged and reformed, and people that are not ashamed to be so vilely unmannerly as to thrust themselves into such meetings without being called ought to be aflfronted.'" — Penpont Presbytery Records. * Book of Discipline and Directory for Public Worship forbade any religious ceremony, reading, or singing connected with a burial ; and attendance at a funeral was not regarded as a ministerial duty. "Burials are made without a minister [this refers also to Episcopal days in 1687]. He is seldom seen at their most solemn funeral any more than the husband at the wife's funeral." — Morer's Acct. of Scotlaml, 1702 ; Tour through Great Britain, iv. 247. The presence of the minister after 1700 was usual. 302 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY presence of the family and neighbours. The origin of this un- pleasant institution was the passing of Acts of Parliament for the encouragement of trade in Scotland. In 1694 an Act designed by the Scots Parliament to foster linen manufactures ordained that everybody should be shrouded in a sheet of plain linen without lace or point. In 1705 this Act was repealed — as the linen industry no longer required such support — and another Act was passed, ordering that every corpse should be swathed in plain Scots woollen cloth, as that trade then needed encouragement.^ To secure faithful obedience to these laws, Parliament (in 1695) enjoined that the nearest elder or deacon, with a neighbour or two, " should be present at the putting in of the dead corps in the coffin, that they may see the same done." ' From this rule arose the lugubrious custom of " kisting," so long a favourite in many districts, when the devotional exer- cises were held by minister or elders as the body was trans- ferred to the coffin. Even at the end of the century in many districts women to the number of forty would assemble in the hot room where the body lay, gossiping, drinking tea or whisky, while the more sedate ineffectually tried to lead the conversation upon solemn subjects.^ 3 VII But all the functions of the ministers, all parts of the religious life of Scotland, sink into insignificance compared! with those connected with the Lord's Supper, known by names significant of their transcendent importance — the " Occasion," or the " Great Work," or the " Sacred Solemnity." * It was ^ In some southern counties of Scotland the custom of ^Tapping bodies ir woollen shrouds still continues. — P. 115, Hogg's Life of Wightman. ^ The Act was so often broken by the richer classes, who preferred more ornat winding sheets, that a regular item in undertaker's bill was : " To paying the penalty (40 merks) under Act for burying in Scots wollen." He only charged half the fine to his customer, taking credit for the other half as being "tht; informer " against himself. The similar law in England was equally objection- able and hurtful to vanity : Odious ! in woollen ! 'twould a saint provoke, Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke. — Pope. ^ New Stat. Acct. Scot., Armadale, vi. 306. The practice still kept up ii south and west country districts. 4 Old Church Chronicle (of Whitekirk), by Waddell, p. 161. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 303 lield in a summer month — usually June or -luly — iind was celebrated not more than once a year, often at intervals of two or three years. Sometimes eight or nine parishes ' joined together, the parishioners going in succession to each church, so that from June to August, in a district every second Sunday, people attended a great provincial communion, while their own kirk was shut up. After the approaching celebration was announced several weeks were spent by the clergyman visiting and catechising the persons in his bounds, parents and children, masters and servants. The elders were busy hearing reports and investigating rumours of scandal. More whole- somely they were directed in their several appointed districts to make up quarrels amongst neighbours and reconcile enemies before appearing at the Lord's table."' In the Kirk-Session there was the meeting held for private dealing with one another. Each elder in succession left the room, and in his absence the others were asked if they knew anything against their brother, and, if there was no objection, he was called in and " encouraged to continue his work in the Lord." ^ The news spreading far and wide that in a certain parish the " occasion " was to be celebrated, people from surrounding quarters prepared to be present — it being a regular compact of servants with their masters that they should be allowed to attend so many fairs or communions each year. The influx of strangers was enormous.'* A population of 500 might be swelled to 2000 by people who wended their way on foot or horse along the bridle-paths which served as roads, or over hills and moors, w^hich had not even a track, to an-ive in time for the " preachings " on Thursday, Saturday, and Monday, as well as on the communion Sunday. If the ' Stat. Acct. Scot., Glasgow, vii. 14 ; Diary 0/ George Brown. ^ Scottish Notes and Queries, February 1897 ; Bain's Arbroath, p. 97. ^ Morton Kirk-Session Records, 1700-1740. •• Wodrow records, August 22, 1726, that in Eastwood, lying so near Glasgow, there are great numbers of communicants and crowds of hearers. "Sometimes we have 11,000 or 12,000" — nearly equal to the then population of Glasgow — " and ordinarily 1000 communicants." — Correspondence. In 1788, 1400 communicated in Mauchline, where Holy Fairs were in full swing ; only 400 communicants belonged to the parish. — Edgar's Old Church Life. Ebenezer Erskine at Portmoak, with tiny population, had always 1000 communicants at sacrament. 304 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY minister had fame as a gospel preacher, and was therefore " much followed," as the phrase was, communicants would travel forty miles to be present. Shelter and food were not easily got, for provisions were scarce and houses were few.^ I In the fields, in the fine moonlit nights, — and they chose full i moon for the occasion, — in sheds, barns, and woods, or on the floor of the kirk, many sought rest. It naturally became a matter of grave concern how to feed the host of hungry people who had flocked in. The parishioners themselves were always poor ; in the best of seasons corn was scarce with them, and there was little straw left to make beds. In bad weather Kirk-Sessions in despair met for prayer and deliberation how | to entertain so many folk, and where to procure oatmeal and barley meal for the hungry multitude. So great was the strain upon the slender resources of the farmers and labourers, that ministers were often compelled to defer the communion year after year, because they could not afford to feed so many for several days together, and because the Session had not funds enough wherewith to buy sufficient wine for the Lord's table for such a concourse." . What frequently added to the interest of these " occasions " j ^ In Sutherland there were enormous convocations at the communion. ' ' Some coming iifty miles to the ordinances, yet they are much straitened what to do, by the vulgar notion that it is not lawful to take money for the entertainment of strangers from neighbouring places, and yet the charges are so great that the ministers, for the people's sake, only have communion once in two years." — Aiudeeta, iv. 4 ; Scots Magazine, 1747, p. 126 ; Stat. Acct. Scot., Carmunnock, xviii. 177 ; Guthrie Smith's Stratheiidrick, p. 85. In 1712, at Creich, " the bulk of people attended in such numbers that the introduction of strangers became so bm-densome to the parishioners that the minister was induced to have com- munion only every two years." — Fasti Eccles. Scot., v. 334. In 1702 the Session at Currie provides "3 gallon and a half of wine (which costs £36 :11s. Scots), 4 dusson of bread, and 700 tokens." — Session Records. ■^ Minister of Dunrossness in 1756 relates : " I found the people generally rude and ignorant. This made one defer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper for six years, though I had other disarrangements for want of a manse, communion cups, tables, and utensils necessary." — Mill's Diary, p. 12. In 1716 the elders of Callander state that the " parish has been so long vacant, whereby ignorance and immorality abounded, that they did not know when they would be in any case for having the Lord's Supper administered among them." — Dunblane Presbytery Records. In Rosemarkie the communion was not celebrated up to 1724; in Saddle till 1742 — "the Presbytery never did find it could be celebrated with any prospect of edification." — Craven's Church in Ross, p. 118. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 305 was the long interval which in some districts passed between ! he celebrations. In certain places, especially in the early part tf the century, many years elapsed between the communions; lud the reasons given for this omission at the presbyterial Visitations afford curious illustrations of the times. Some- I imes it is " because the members of the church are not in such a state of knowledge and grace that they could partake ]irofitably " ; or that the minister "desires to be deliberate," for Ihe people are not yet in case for the solemn ordinances." At other times it is explained that the burden of the Session in supplying wine is too heavy, and the people are too poor to tiitertain the strangers. Sometimes cloths, tokens, vessels, had lUsappeared, and the Kirk-Session complains and explains that •• there are no utensils for the Supper, the cups and flagon having been carried off by the discarded curate." But even in Episcopal days there was often in some parishes no celebra- tion of communion for long years, and no patten or cup to be found in the kirk. The awe, the fear, the spiritual strivings with which pious people regarded their presence at communion were strangely keen. Sometimes they came with fear and trembling, " not sure that they were Christ's," at other times in much joy, " having found an interest in Him." They retired to their barns or closets, seeking " light at the throne." One of the most singular features of those days was the custom prevailing amongst persons of severe cast of mind of making self-dedications,^ which they wrote down and renewed year ^ Fraser's Memoirs, p. 212 ; TurnbuU's Diary, Scottish Hist. Society, p. 393 ; Life 0/ Professor IVodroiv. The following is one of those "espousals" : — " Lord, I am come to Thee as I can, through the help of Thy grace. I make an express covenant with Thee for all that God of His infinite mercy liath done for my recovery from the lost esteat I was in by nature. Forasmuch as Tiiou hast brought me in this world of Christian parents, so also by them I am instructed in the principles of my holy religion, which taught me there is no recovery but by fleeing to the blood of Christ. So I am come this day to give myself; so, Lord, I give my fower children to Thee. I bege, for Christ's seak, that they may be sanctified by Thy grace and made instruments to serve Thee in this present evill world ; and I pray Thee that Thou would give me grace to performc this engagement and all my former engagements, which bear dait March 1699. April 3, 1701, Aug. 11, 1710, which if my evill heart deceive me not I give my consent to them, and this with my heart and souU. — Anne Stewart." This covenant is renewed and re-signed year after year, on the eve of "going to the 3o6 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V by year. The usual time for making these "covenants" or " trysts " was on the eve of a communion. Each time they are about " to approach the tabell of the Lord " they subscribe anew their " espousals with Christ," in which they dispose to His service their lives, their children, their earthly goods. As they wrote those bonds in their little chambers, there being no mortals present to be witnesses of them, some of these devout Christians solemnly declare how they appeal to angels above and objects of nature below to testify to their vows, as Joshua called on the rocks of Shechem.^ Leaning on his closet bed, Mr. Thomas Boston takes the several quarters of the wooden bed to witness that he " has gone under a covenant of blood." One worthy man ^ relates how " I went my lone into a wood and I covenanted away myself, my bairns, and theirs to all generations, and took the place I was sitting in, and the trees, and the heavens, and angells, and God Himself that knew my heart, witnesses that we should be for Him and not for another, without any reserve in body, goods, and soul. On the back of this I had such joy and peace in believing as I cannot express, and the morn sat at the tabell sweetly, and came home next day rejoicing." Few, we suppose, acted like that uncompromising lover of all solemn covenants, whether private or national, Adam Gib, who signed his tryst after dipping his pen in the blood from his veins. But without any such sanguinary signatures the forms of such personal espousals were impressive enough. The eminent Mr, "Wilson, companion of the Erskines in the Secession of 1733, a man " frequent in wrestling with God," concluded his " tryst " when he was a student with the words : " Subscribed with my own hand this day of Nov. 1708, the dreadful God being witness." tabell of the Lord," until 1741, when the pen seems to have dropped from the old lady's hand.— Caldwell Papers, i. 258. Mill of Dunrossness in 1770 enters into a "covenant of engagements." — Diary, Scot. Hist. Society, p. 33. 1 Boston's Memoirs. Elisabeth West, the saintly domestic, takes the trees to witness. — Memoirs. 2 Wodrow's Analecta, i. 79. Glasgow, Sept. 20, 1701. — "I was at night at prayer, and I wan to a verie good frame, so that I indentred myself in a covenant with God and toke heaven and earth to witness, angells, son, moon and stars, the workhows and all that was there, to witnes that I took Christ for my king, priest, and prophet, and for my head and husband. . . . Subscribed by my hand. James Brown." — P. 354, George Brown's Diary. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 307 Some of these pious wills and testaments still exist in family archives, curious memorials of a phase of religious devotion long vanished, pathetic documents worn with frequent renewal and oft perusal. The ink is now yellow and dim ; the rough paper is brown with age ; the vows are expressed in quaint phrase and quainter penmanship, strange specimens of exquisite feeHng and atrocious spelling. One can see in the antique manuscripts how, as years went by, the signatures grow more shaky from infirmity and old age, and the strokes of the pen become veritable paralytic strokes ; yet abating no whit of ancient devotion through the long period of maybe forty years. When the concourses were great the preacliings were held in the field or churchyard, where the preachers in succession took their place in the wooden erection like a sentry-box, called the " tent." Meetings in the open air had a keen fascination for the people, especially in the western counties, for they were redolent of memories of the old days of persecu- tion, when they had sat on the moors or grassy slopes in glens listening to the inspired and inspiring words of covenanting ministers. There were two services and sermons on Thursday, two, or even three, on Saturday ; and the long communion services of Sunday, with the " action sermon " preceding the Supper, were concluded by another sermon at night, to be succeeded by the Monday services. When the ministers engaged to preach on these occasions were popular and " gospel " men the crowds sitting around them were large and enraptured, and, moved by the strenuous voice from the tent, they burst into tears and sighs and groans. Curiosity and love of excite- ment were the feelings pervading hundreds in those gatherings. The appearance in the " tent " of a minister dry and " legal " was the signal for the bulk of the people to withdraw, and when he appeared to address a table there were hardly any could be coaxed by the elders to sit down to communicate.^ These preachers were vulgarly known as " yuill " (ale) ministers, because during their services the people resorted to the ale barrels. On the other hand, the field was crowded in dense masses round the box when someone who was a fervid, an " affectionate," preacher stood up to address them — men, like ' Wodrow's Analecta, iii. 341 ; iv. 271, 274. 3o8 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Mr. Ealph Erskine, who were known as " kail-pot preachers," because their thrilling appeals kept their audiences in rapt attention till night, all forgetful of the Sabbath kail simmering in the pot at home. The communion services on Sunday in those days began usually at nine o'clock in the morning and continued till night, when a sermon wound up the laborious day. With 2000 communicants there would be thirty tables, each to be addressed by ministers in turn before the elements were handed round.^ The elements varied in different districts. In Aberdeenshire the bread was cut into " dices ; " elsewhere it was usually in slices, cut from loaves. In Galloway it was shortbread ; in the east counties it was unleavened bread. The wine was sack or claret in the early part of the century, for port was little known and rarely used, though in some places ale was served.^ The services were not seldom deeply impressive and picturesque when held in the open air, especially when the tables were laid on trestles on the grass. There were the farmers and ploughmen in their clean but coarse homespun hodden gray and blue bonnets, the women in their white toys and the woollen plaids of scarlet or green drawn over their heads, in side groups the old lairds in their homespun cloth and sober dress, the young lairds in their laced three-cornered hats, gay-coloured gilt-braided coats and jack-boots, and beside them ladies in their bright scarlet silken plaids, which, as a traveller in 1726 said, made a Scots church like a "parterre of flowers."^ The minister clad in his bob-wig, blue or gray coat and cravat, spoke in that sing-song which rose in curious cadence in the air. Even the long drawn-out psalm tunes, although broken by each line being read out and sung in turn, rose plaintive and sweet from a throng of voices ; and the prayers, with their earnest, weep- ing pleading, came forth in a stillness broken only by sudden sighs and ejaculations, or the sharp cry of the curlew in the heather, and the song of the lark overhead. ^ As at Dull. — Stat. Acct. Scotland, ii. 361. " The Scotch Episcopal chaplain to Lord Ogilvie administers eucharist on Culloden field with oat cake and whisky from lack of usual elements. — P. 182, Bishop Forbes' Jounud and Church of 3foray, by Craven. ^ [Macky's] Journey through Scotland. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 309 Before the people took their places at the comui union tables, whether arnui|j;ed in the open air or up the middle of the church, the minister "fenced," the tables, debarring from them all unclean and unworthy persons. In his fencing address the minister enumerated with elaborate detail the various sins which rendered persons unfit to take part in the " sealing ordinances," lest they should eat and drink damnation to themselves. In the early part of the century, when zeal outrun discretion, he ordered away all warlocks and witches, all Sabbath breakers and profane swearers, all that put on gauds and vain attire, all that spoke lies or evil of others, all users of minced oaths.^ Sometimes in the long catalogue of vices the most loathsome sins unfit to name were plainly mentioned as unfitting persons for the feast.^ In the days when contro- versy was hot as to whether or not the abjuration oath should be taken, the naiTOw, fanatical clergy debarred from the Supper those who took it, and made their political aversions un- christian sins.^ The denunciations uttered against those who dared to take the communion unworthily were fierce and terrible. " sirs ! " cried out one Mr. Spalding,* a minister " much followed " in those days, — " sirs ! will ye seal this damnation to yourselves and, as it were, make it sure ye shall be damned, and so drive the last nail in your damnation ? Rather put a knife to your throat than approach. What, man ! will ye kill and be * It is said that a Dumfriesshire minister declared, "I debar from these tables all who use any kind of minced oaths such as 'losh,' 'gosh,' 'teth,' or ' lovenenty.' " — Hogg's Life of Wightman. - MS. sermons delivered at communion at Stenton iu 1702. ^ Morer's Diary, Spalding Miscellanies, i. 295. ■* Sxjntaxis Sacra : a Collection of Sermons jireached at several CoTnvninions, by Rev. J. Spalding, minister at Dundee : Edinburgh, 1702 (specially recommended by the General Assembly). To partake of the Supper unworthily is to break the command "Thou shalt not murder." " It is a body-murtliering sin ; for this cause many are sick and weak among you, and many sleep. It is a church - murthering sin ; for it threatens to give us a bill of divorcement. It is a soul- murthering sin ; many drink and eat their own damnation. It is a relation- raurthering sin ; for your wives and your children bear marks of your unworthy communicating. dreadful ! many are the worse of communion, and their salvation more difficult and seven times worse a child of the devil than before. 0, how so ? I tell you that Satan goes out of you as out of the madmen for eight or ten days before the communion, and that he returns with seven worse devils than before." 3IO SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY guilty of His body and blood ? The worst morsel that ever ye tasted is to eat and drink eternal vengeance." Yea : it was proclaimed to be committing " murder." The would-be communicant was placed in a grave dilemma ; for though ministers told him he was running fearful risks if he partook, insomuch that " many were the worse of communion, and made seven times more a child of the devil than before," yet they also told him that it was as guilty to withdraw. " Dare ye bide away," exclaims the formidable Spalding, " and take His anger upon ye, and give that affront to do what in you lies to spite His Supper and frustrate the grace of God ? " ^ In such addresses we hear little of the grace and worth of a pure, simple, moral life, and the meetness of charity for the com- munion ; but we hear ad nauseam of " the necessity of closing with the bargain with Christ," and of " getting a grip of Him " ; there is pettifogging advice about taking Him as " surety " and " cautioner " ; while in the Doric sough of the age the preacher, with a scornful sniff, exclaims, " dull duties ! poor profes- sions ! filthy raggs of my righteousness ! " The services, in spite of their prolixity, their uncouthness, worked marvellously on the feelings of the people. The devout partook of the feast with intensest happiness, or with- drew from it to the wood or orchard and poured out their emotions in moans and tears.^ During the appeals of gifted preachers many were moved to sigh, to loud weeping, and frequent ejaculations, which passed effectively through the throng, and both disturbed and gratified the preacher. In fact, the religious fervour of those days shows an emotional denion- strativeness and spiritual abandonment which are utterly alien to the Scots characteristics of modern days, which are reserve, reticence, and hard self-control. The power of these addresses from ministers, uttering their appeals to fear, and indeed to terror of judgment, had power over the most divergent natures. There were men who could be sensitive to spiritual emotion, yet full of sensuality ; men who were at once pious without good- ^ In Bute at one time those remiss in going to communion M-ere first admonislied and then fined ; while those wilfully abstaining from it had to pay 46s. Scots and to stand in the pillory for a Sunday. — Hewison's Bute, i. 275. ^ W odvow's Life of Professor Wodrow ; Analeda, passim. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 311 ness and vicious without conscious hypocrisy. Speaking of that sanctified scoundrel Lord Grange and his associates, wlio " passed their time in alternate scenes of exercises of religion and debauchery, spending the days in ])rayer and i)ious medi- tation, and their nights in lewdness and revelling," Dr. Alex- ander Carlyle ' expresses his belief that they were alike sincere in both moods. " There is no doubt of their profligacy, and 1 have frequently seen them drowned in tears during the whole of a sacramental day, when, so far as my observation could reach, they could have no rational object in acting a part." It was in this way people were affected who mistook their nerves for their conscience.^ It was a terrible calamity on the " great occasion " when the weather was bad, and the wind and pelting rain came on : for there was little shelter from the elements for the pilgrim multitudes ; there were no woods to take refuge in, the narrow kirk could not cover them : and there must have originated rheumatism, ague, consumption, as well as untold amount of bodily discomfort from " gospel solemnities." The weather was, therefore, a subject of fervent prayer at family worship in every manse, and it was devoutly believed that Providence specially interposed to ward off the rain and storm on this occasion. Here, however, is one case in which Providence did not interfere, as described by Mr. Thomas Boston : ^ " On Saturday there was some thunder before we went out, between 2 and 3, when I began my sermon it returned and went to a great pitch. Upon the back of the second and third clap, I said to the people, ' The God of glory thundereth. He will give His people strength and bless them with peace ' ; so I went on undis- turbed, the fire now and then flashing in my eyes. The people sat decently and gravely without any disturbance more than the drawing of their cloaks about them as in the case of rain. In the time of prayer after sermon the thunder went to a pro- digious height, that I could not miss the imagination of being struck down in a moment, but through grace was kept undis- turbed in my work." The picture of the minister of Ettrick ^ Autobiography, i>. 15. 2 Analecta, iii. -341, iv. 272, 274. ^ Boston's Memoirs, 1776, p. 500. 312 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY — himself safe from rain in his wooden tent — placidly giving two sermons, besides prayers, a psalm, and tokens, while, utterly unprotected, the congregation were flashed on by lightning, deafened by thunder, and threatened with a deluge of rain, is highly impressive. Solemn and striking as those great sacramental meetings were, — scenes of devotion which were repeated for many years, and influenced many serious souls, — there were spots in their feasts which became darker as the century went on and piety went off. Imposing the communions often were when celebrated in the open air on a fine calm summer Sunday ; but the Occasions were not without their ugly features. An eye-witness of them about the middle of the eighteenth century — who under the guise of a blacksmith wrote a caustic pamphlet — gives a vivid, though unfavourable, picture of those pious occasions : ^ "At first you find a great number of men and women lying together on the grass ; here they are sleeping and snoring ; some with their faces towards heaven, others with their faces downwards and covered with their bonnets ; there you will find a knot oi young fellows and girls making assignations to go home to- gether in the evening or to meet at some ale-house ; in another place you see a pious circle sitting on an ale barrel, many of which stand on carts for the refreshment of the saints. . . . When you get a little nearer the speaker, so as to be within reach of the sound, if not of the sense of his words — for that can only reach a small circle, even when the preacher is favoured with a calm, and when there is a wind stirring hardly a sentence can be heard distinctly at a considerable distance — in the second circle you will find some weeping and others laughing ; some pressing nearer the tent or tub in which the parson is sweating, bawling, jumping, and beating the desk. Others fainting with the stifling heat or wrestling to extricate themselves from the crowd ; one seems very devout and serious, the next moment is scolding or cursing his neighbour for squeezing or treading on him ; in one instant after his counte- ^ Letter from a Blacksmith to the Ministers and Elders of the Church of Scot- land, in which the Manner of Puhlick Worship in that Church is considered, its Inconveniences and Defects pointed out, and Methods of removing them honestly proposed. London, 1759. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 313 nance is composing to serious gloom, ;ind he is groaning, sighing, and weeping for his sins; in a word, there is such an absurd mixture of the serious and the comic, that were we convened for any otlier purpose than tliat of worshipping the God and governor of nature the scene would exceed any power of face." But in those days manners were rude, vulgarity did not jar on any unsensitive minds, and what a more refined age would have felt indelicate, coarse, and religiously repulsive was then considered a natural means of expressing devotion and worship. These rude festivals, with their vast concourses, their copious preachings, continued beyond the century in several districts. There were many causes which, however, lessened their attractions. Dissent came and broke up the people into rival communities ; differences of theological views arose, and those who were evangelical or " high flying," and those who were " legal " preachers or " moderates," would have no deal- ings with each other. The moderates discouraged all en- thusiasm as being fanatical, and the communion services held under their cold charge drew no multitudes from their homes.^ Further, the progress oi agriculture interfered with the beloved open-air gatherings, for as the land became en- closed by hedges, as waste soil became tilled and covered with crops, there were fewer pleasant patches of comfortable ground beside the kirkyard, where thousands could roam or sit at a season when grain was getting ripe for harvest. It may be sordid to hint at the vast money and time wasted by the people on these gospel solemnities — the loss of earnings to peasants who were poor, the interruption to agriculture when it needed most tending — involving the cost to an impoverished country, it was reckoned, doubtless too largely, of £230,000 every year." In fact, these pious saturnalia had outlived their purpose. The ancient hereditary piety and spiritual sentiment faded, ' "Ministers vie with each other in popularity, and try who can convene the largest mob ; some elders are so fond of those religious farces that they threaten to abandon their churches if the practice of preaching out of doors should be discontinued"; "other clergy want courage to oppose the popular frenzy." — Letter of Blacksmith, etc. ^ Ibid, see ante, i. 161. 314 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY and left the coarse qualities of the peasantry without con- trol. Scenes of drinking and roystering and rustic love- making disgraced these " gospel solemnities." ^ The Holy Fairs — of which Burns's verses are no exaggeration — passed away not too soon ; and when the open-air services with their vulgar accompaniment were abandoned, the quiet Fast days and devout sacraments in the country churches expressed a simpler, sedater, and more wholesome frame of piety. VIII The Sunday acquired in Scotland a sanctity which far ex- ceeded that of the Sabbath of the Jews in their most Phari- saical days — equalling in austerity the Puritanism of New England, and surpassing the Puritanism of England, from which much of the Scottish superstitious veneration for the day was unhappily derived. It is a mistake, however, to believe that a " Scottish Sabbath " is a distinctive peculiarity of Presbyterianism, for it was upheld as rigorously, and breaches of it were punished as vigorously, in the reign of Epis- copacy. The day was fenced about by solemn preparations. Sedateness and gravity were required specially on the Saturday night, by which time the fire was " set " for the morrow, the provisions prepared, the goodman's face was snipped with scissors, or shaved of a week's growth of hair. In the country towns and villages at six o'clock on Sabbath morning the church bell rang to waken the people for their solemn duties.^' After family worship in early morning the household pro- ceeded to church, and, as services began at 9 or 10 o'clock, ^ "What must the consequences be when a whole countryside is thrown loose, and young lads and girls go home together by night in the gayest season of the year. "When I was an apprentice I was a great frequenter of those occasions, and know them so well that I would not choose a wife that had fre- quented them, or trust a daughter too much amongst these rambling saints." — Ibid. p. 16 ; Stat. Acct. Scot., Glasford, vii. 14 ; Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsmen, ii. 27 ; Russell of Yarrow's Reminiscences. 2 I arrived at Kirkcudbright on Saturday night at a good inn, but rooms where I lay had not been cleaned for a hundred years. Next day the landlord told me that they never dress a dinner on Sunday, and so that I must either take up with bread and butter or a fresh egg, or fast till after the evening service, when they never fail to have a hot supper — Journeij thro' Scotland, p. 4 ; Tour in Gt. Britain, iv. 224. I 1 RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 315 country folk required to start early, as there lay before them long miles of walking over bog and moor.' lietween the services — each of which lasted two or two and a half hours — those who were near home returned for a spare refresh- ment, for which nothing was cooked that day ; others went to the ale-house, which was open on Sabbath to worshippers ; while others remained in the kirkyard or in the kirk, listening to the two boys from the lUirgh School who, for their edification, repeated questions and answers from the Catechism. Only in the evening was there a hot meal in any home, and that supper was a welcome, longed-for boon to all, wliether it consisted of kail-broth or brose in the cottages, or richer fare in mansions. To attend church was no question of choice : it was a matter of compulsion. During services elders went out to " perlus- trate " the streets, to enter change-houses, to look into windows and doors of private dwellings, and to bring deserters to kirk, or report them to the Kirk-Session. When evening came, again the vigilant patrol of elders set forth to force to their homes all who were found " vaguing," strolling, or loitering in the fields or roads. "When a minister had one of his brethren preaching for him he would take the opportunity of accom- panying his elders and hunt with them. For example, in 1720 the minister of Forfar" has much to show when he opens his bag. In one house he had found two persons drinking ale ; in another he had found a man sitting with his coat otf ; in yet another he detected a parishioner eating his dinner. This last offender, when detected by eight awful eyes peering at him through the window, proved contumacious when summoned by the Session, and even defied the provost and magistrates when ordered to " give satisfaction " for taking his surreptitious meal. Town Councils were ever ^ "They all pray in their families before they go to church and between sermons. After sermons every one returns to his own house and reads a book of devotion till supper (which is generally very good on Sundays) till they go to bed." — Journey through Scotland, 27. An English traveller describes the ways at Crawford in 1704 : " The service begins at 9 in the morning and con- tinues till noon. Then the minister goes to the minch-house (ale-house), and as many as think fit refresh themselves ; and the rest stay in the churchyard for half an hour, and the service is again begun and continues till 4 or 5." — North of England and Scotland in 1704, Edin. 1818 (privately printed). ' Macpherson's Strathmore, p. 250. 21 3i6 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ready to assist elders and deacons in their operations against Sabbath desecrators, and sometimes themselves appointed " seizers " or " compurgators " to bring in delinquents who pro- faned the day by strolling or idling.^ They might be ridiculed behind their backs for their fanatic zeal. It might be with glee told how a " seizer " in Edinburgh carried off to the City Guard the cage containing a blackbird, inadvertently left out by a cobbler on the Saturday night, which had struck up on the Sabbath its accustomed tune of "The King shall enjoy his ain again," thereby guilty of both impiety and treason. But they were dreaded all the same — these protectors of the Sabbath. There was not a place where one was free from their inquisitorial intrusion.^ They might enter any house, and even pry into the rooms. In towns where the patrol of elders or deacons, beadle and officers, paced in solemnity the deserted causeway, eagerly eyeing every door and window, craning their necks up every close and lane, the people slunk into the obscurity of shadows and kept hushed silence. So still, so empty were the streets on a Sunday night that no lamps were lighted,^ for no passengers passed by, or if they did they had no right to walk. Civil and ecclesiastical authorities went hand in hand in disciplinary measures. Acts of Parliament, resolutions of Town Councils, and decisions of Sheriffs supported the Church. Municipal laws in Edinburgh forbade barbers to shave the heads of gentlemen,'^ or carry their periwigs to them, on 1 Eist. of Edinburgh, by H. Arnot, p. 192 ; Neiv Stat. Acct. Scot., Glasgow ; Allan Ramsay's Poems. The kirk treasurer who looked after the Session money was believed to levy blackmail on the people, making his spies or his "man" threaten to report persons that they might bribe him to be silent, so that ' ' people lie at the mercy of villains who would forswear themselves for six- pence." — Burt's Letters from the North, i. 193. - The people of Falkirk were warned that " the elders will visit families on Sunday as they think fit, and in caice they are refused access, the civil magis- trate's concurrence will be given to make patent doors." The people supported the Session, and, peering through the "dale walls" or wooden partitions between the neighbour's houses, "delaitit" what misdoings they saw — Falkirk Records, ii. pp. 28, 68. ^ Gibson's iKs<. of Glasgow, p. 115. ^ The Town Council of Edinburgh in 1715 ordained " visitors or privy cen- surers for taking notice of those who vague or stroll in the streets on Sabbath days as formerly appointed." The Town Council discharged all j)ersons from. RELIGIOUS Ai\D ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 317 Sabbath, under penalty ; also the loitering in the streets under fine of half a rix dollar /o^/c.s quoties ; and even the idle gazing out of windows on the Lord's Day entailed a line. Each district had its besetting sin : in rural districts the feeding of cattle, or threshing of corn ; in fishing villages the gathering of dulse on the siiore, the spreading of nets, or setting out to sea before 12 o'clock on the Sunday night. On the sea -coast it was the running of goods or carrying bladders of whisky, or lending carts for smuggled goods on the Fast Day. In such places the honest efforts of office-bearers were not without danger, for sometimes they were assailed by infuriated men and women who were baulked of their prey.^ To carry a pail of water to the house, to fodder horses or clean their stalls, to cut kail in the yard, to grind snuff — all such offences were punished without hesitation. Xor was the minister himself free from risk of giving scandal, and he needed to walk circumspectly lest the Presbytery should suspend him for having a slioulder of mutton roasted, or for decking his peruke on the Lord's Day.^ carrying from house to house any kind of cloath, periwig, or shoes, or other apparel at any time of the Lord's Day under half a rix dollar to be paid by the niaster, and discharges all barbers and others to trim or shave any person in his shop, own liouse, or elsewhere ; and discharges any person to stand idly in the streets, or walk in fields under penalty aforesaid " — The King's Pious Proclama- 'ions, 1727, p. 27. Kirk-Session of Edinburgh, 1709, "taking into considera- :ion that the Lord's Day is profaned by people standing in the streets, vaguing in the fields and gardens, as also by idly gazing out at windows, and children ind apprentices playing in the streets, warn parents, and threaten to referr to the nvill magistrates for punishment, also order each Session to take its turn in ivatching the streets on Sabbath, as has been the laudable custom of this city, ind to visit each suspected house in each parish by elders and deacons with jeadle and officers, and after sermon, when the day is long, to pass through the itreets and reprove such as transgress, and inform on such as do not refrain." -Ibid. p. 79. ^ Ingenious expedients were adopted to evade the ecclesiastical powers, but generally unsuccessfully. "Blood letting" was the panacea for all bodily ills n past days ; but elders discovered that persons pretending to be ill were .ddicted to resorting to an expert in the lancet, nominally to "let blood," eally to drink ale and escape ordinances. "J. 'NV. compeared before the Session, nd confessed he did let blood to persons pretending necessity." — Falkirk lecords, ii. 71. - Burt's Letters, i. 171. The minister of New Machar was libelled before lis Presbytery in 1735 for powdering his wig on the Sabbath. — P. 9, Fraser' s Vhomas Rcid. 3i8 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Conduct indoors was not less under restraint than be- haviour outside. It was commanded that children and servants should be assembled in the evening to be catechised on the doctrines of the Confession of Faith, to be examined as to what had been said in the lecture and sermons of the day, , made to repeat answers from the Catechism, to sing psalms and listen to private expounding of Scripture, and such persons as could read were required to devote themselves to perusinp devout books.^ It is as guide to properly disposed persons that the all- popular Mr. Willison, minister of the gospel at Dundee,- recommended such works for Sabbath reading as Doolittle's Call to Delaying Sinners, Baxter's Call to the Unconverted Allein's Alarm, Pearse's Preparation for i)ea^7i, Guthrie's Tridi of a Saving Interest in Christ, Beard's Theatre of God's Judg- ments.^ These and others of a similar depressing type an recommended as the " most soul-searching and heart-warmins pieces to be found in any human writing." According to thii. eminent teacher, who expresses the views of his class, "al' worldly thoughts as well as works are to be dismissed " ; t( hear people talking in the kirkyard about the corns anc markets was most sad, for " the devil is sowing his tares ir the churchyard " ; even asking, listening to, or telling news oi that holy day is sinful. Mr. John Willison is vexed tha people will not recognise that such restraint from carna things and such employment in spiritual exercises makr the Sabbath a delight. "God," he urges, "hath appointe( graciously a variety of exercises on the Sabbath day, tha when we are weary of one, another may be our recreatior ^ Question : What is required particularly of masters on the Lord's Day Answer : They are to catechise and instruct their children and their servant; read, pray, sing psalms with them ; cause them repeat what they merit i publick exercises, entertain them with edifying discourses, and oblige them t a due obligation of the Sabbath both in publick and private duties required o that day. — Short Practical Catechism, by W. Craufurd, p. 152. 2 Treatise on the Sanctification of the Lord's Day, by Rev. John Willisoi 1746. 2 One story in the "soul-searching" Theatre of God's Judginents, tells of nobleman who used to go hunting on the Lord's Day during time of sermon, an as a "judgment his wife gave birth to a child who had a head like a dog an howled like a hound." The author had been Oliver Cromwell's tutor and paste RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 319 Are you weary of hearing ? then recreate yourself with prayer. If of that, recreate yourself with sin^'ing God's praises. If of that, recreate yourself witli meditating. If you weary of that, recreate yourself with Christian conference, repeating sermons, instructing your families. ... If you weary of public duties, then go to private ; if of these, go to secret duties." Amidst this vortex of holy pleasures, strange to say, some people were not happy. Yet " is there not," asks the divine triumphantly, " a delightful variety of pleasant and si)iritual employment without needing the help of any sensual diversion to put off" the time of this blessed day ? " and he ends with the conclusive question : " How think you to spend a whole eternity in spiritual exercises when you weary so much of one day ? " But further than all this, there is not an action during that day — not a moment, from the instant the Christian awakes in the morning as the birds begin to chirp — when his soul may not find occasion for fruitful meditation. As you put on your clothes think of the soul's nakedness, and need of the robes of imputed righteousness, and reflect that it is God's wool and flax you wear. As you comb your head think of your sins, which are more than the hairs thereon. A^Tien you sit at supper, think of the joy of supping with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In short, there is not a minute when the believer may not meditate, pray, and break into holy ejacula- tion till the day ends. Then, as you see yourself stripped of clothing, think " Xaked came I into the world, and naked shall I return," and let your lying down in bed and covering your- self with blankets put you in mind of your lying in the cold grave and being covered with earth. "With such cheerful occupations and genial reflections the Christian may pass to peaceful slumbers and holy dreams — or nightmares. Such were the counsels given by a typical evangelical minister in a book which had a chosen place in thousands of households,^ beside his precious manual The Afflicted Man's Companion. * Such are the holy performances of eminent Christians of the period. See Diary of George Brovm, merchant, 1745-1753, privately printed. "Sabbath Day, Nov. 3. — Rose a little after 7 in the morning ; fair, wind east, then prayed and then joined in family worship, and then read the 2nd chap, of Job. When I arose I found my heart very much out of order for the duties of the Sabbath. ... I went to God by prayer, and under great confusion made ?2o SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY This was the ideal ; but what was the sad reality ? Some years before the Presbytery of Edinburgh were sadly com- pelled to denounce " the great number who took an unaccount- able liberty in despising and profaning the Lord's Day idly and wickedly, by standing in companies in streets misspending the time in idle discourse, and in useless communications! wholly alien to the true design of the day ; " as well as those " who immediately before public worship and then after it is t over take recreations in walking in the fields, links, meadows, i and other places, and by entering taverns, ale-houses, andi milk-houses, drink, tiple, or otherwise spend any part thereof,! or by giving or receiving social visits, or by idly gazing out I of windows beholding vanities abroad — an indication not only ] of levity, but a profane neglect of the fittest time to salvation | work." ^ The Presbytery therefore charged " all who are guilty I of the aforementioned instances, as they would not bring down I the wrath of God upon themselves and the land, that they seriously reform," and warned those guilty of their liability to the censures of the Church. They " obtest all whomsoever in the bowels of Christ as they would find mercy through Him that they keep the Sabbath holy." Such was the teaching of the Church, and such were the practices of the regardless.^ School children were under a supervision as rigorous on Sunday as on any week day. In the morning the boys at known my conduct to Him. . . . Went to North West Church and heard Mr. M'Laurin lecture and preach. In the interval of publick worship I reflected on what I had been hearing, and wrote down some heads of the sermon. Went to church in the afternoon ; heard sermon on same text as forenoon ; returned and thought over the sermon till 5 o'clock at night ; then joined in family worship ; then supped and retired, and thought again over the sermon, and wrote down heads of it. Then I called on the Lord by prayer, and rose and Avent and joined in family worship again. Then I retired again, and read the 2nd chap, of Romans over several times. I concluded the Sabbath with humble confession of sin, thankfulness to God for actions of the Sabbath. . . . Then I committed my soul and all my concerns to God, and went to bed at 12 o'clock at night."— Pp. 8, 10. ^ Arnot's Hist, of Edinburgh. ^ In 1699 Katrine M'MuUar charged with grinding snuff on Sabbath. She flatly denied it ; there being no witnesses to prove it, she was dismissed for this ; but in respect she was a stranger from Lorn, she was desired to produce a testimonial. She told she had none ; therefore she was enjoyned to get one ere Candlemas, otherwise to leave the parish. — Hewison's Old Bute, ii. 274. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 321 grammar schools met there for prayer and praise ; and were then marsluilk'd to kirk, where they sat in "loft" or gallery under the eye and sometimes the pole of the master. After the second service they were marched back to school ; examined closely on the minister's discourses ; and after further prayer they were allowed to return home, where more troubles and instructions awaited them. For even throughout the remainder of the day the master was required to watch lest his pupils should go out of doors or stroll in woods or lanes. In this way the Lord's Day came to its slow and longed-for conclusion. IX Ecclesiastical authority over the morals of the commimity was wielded in the early part of the century with almost undisputed sway. The lynx eyes of elders and deacons, appointed both to watch and to pray, were alert in every corner. Every rumour, every suspicion of ill - doing was reported to the Kirk - Session, and evidence of the most inquisitive kind was taken ; ^ and if the inquiry was too delicate even for elders, matrons were appointed to examine and give their testimony. Immorality was rife in spite of the terror of the Church, and culprits had to pay their fines graduated according to the heinousness and frequency of the offence, the lowest being £4 Scots, and when too poor to pay, to leave a plaid or spoons as pledge. Offenders stood " at the pillory " — a raised platform or a stool in front of the pulpit, clad in a cloak of sackcloth, which they might be obliged to buy or make for themselves — and there to be admonished by the minister until he was satisfied of their penitence. For gravest scandal persons were required to appear for ten, fifteen, and, in some cases, for even twenty-six Sundays in succession, when they went through the terrible ordeal of facing the congregation, and receiving rebukes from the minister for half ^ It is curious to observe that any person who begged was disqualified as a witness. In Jany. 5, 1715, in a case one witness is objected to because she is a known beggar ; that she begs for her father, has asked charity from Kirkbride Session for burying her daughter, and at several other times, and therefore "was not worth the Kings unlaw." The Presbytery dismissed her, "she not being a habile witness." — Minutes of Penpont Presbytery. 322 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY a year. The worst offences were dealt with more severely- still ; the guilty parties being required by the Presbytery to appear in the various churches in their bounds in turn, and to make what was called the " circular satisfaction." ^ In bygone times — even under Episcopacy — they had been condemned for heinous offences through half a year to stand in sackcloth at the kirk door, as the congregation were assembling, and thereafter during service to take their station on the stool.^ The old penalty of standing bare-legged in a tub of water was disused in the eighteenth century, though not the punish- ment of standing at the church door. Occasionally it happened that as many as eight or ten offenders were standing on the pillory at once, each undergoing his or her period of making " satisfaction " ; and even on the communion day this scandalous ordeal against scandal was undergone. So seldom was " fautor's loft " or defaulter's pillory vacant, that some Kirk-Session records specially chronicle : " No case of discipline to day." Highly significant is the reason given in the old Session books of Ettrick, for voting money to buy a " new sacco" (gown) for penitents: "Yarrow having borrowed the gown, and used it to raggs." ^ It was a source of immense interest and pleasure for the congregation to watch the appearance and behaviour of their neighbours in disgrace. Smiles, smirks, and whispers passed from one to another, as well-known faces appeared in the place of ignominy. Young Jacobite lairds ^ Old Church Chronicle by Waddell, p. 151 ; Killearn Kirk-Session, in 1694, "finds the old use and wont of parish amount (i.e., in Episcopal days) to be paid by persons guilty of fornication, for the first time to pay 10 merks, viz. the man 4 poundis, and the woman 4 poundis, this amount therefore the sameyne to be paid by delinquents in all tyme coming." — Smith's Strathendrick, p, 60. ■ In Banflfshire £4 Scots for first offence, £8 for second, and £20 or £40 for adultery. From 1701-1714 the fines produce to poor-box, £999 Scots.— Cramond's Illegitimacy in Banffshire. Mill of Dunrossness exacts twenty-sis days on pillory as penance in 1777. ^ In Colinton in 1680, Session Records. In Episcopal days: usually "for adultery they make the profession of repentance for half a year every Lord's day, and for six Lord's dales they stand in sackcloth at the church door half an hour before morning prayer." — Present State of Scot., by A. M., 1682, p. 186. ' 1697, Craig's Hist, of Selkirkshire. In Banff, about 1754, four offenders were usually standing together each Sunday on pillory. — ii. 77, Annals of Banff, New Spalding Society. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 323 came to the kirk to enjoy the entertainment, which rendered the service less dreary and the Sabbath a deliglit. On these occasions the comparatively innocent sullered most and the shameless suflered little. Frequent cases occurred where, rather than face the trial, delinquents Hcd the country,^ some committed suicide, and many girls in their tt-rror destroyed their otispring in the hope of concealing their fault.' Child murder, in fact, became a crime of tenible frequency. Scots Parliament had passed laws of great rigour to suppress so prevalent a form of murder — laws which the General Assembly at times ordered the ministers to read from their pulpits throughout the country in solenni warning. Yet the criminal records contain verj' many executions of poor creatures — several being hanged on occasions in batches at one time — and the cause of their crime was too frequently the dread of facing the disgrace and terrible ordeals of the Church.^ This is the charge against these cruel ecclesiastical ordeals confirmed by evidence in every part of the country. If an offence could not be proved, and the supposed father denied paternity, he was forced to take the oath of purgation before the congregation — in some places made to place his hand on the head of the child — protesting " before the great God, and Jesus Christ, and the angels, ' In 1693 a cobbler, ordered "to buy ane sack gown" to stand in at the kirk door to appear before the congregation, went "raving mad." — Leaves from the Book of the West Kirk, Edinburgh, by G. Lorimer. - " Four women, condemned to death for child murder on one day, declared that the dread of the pillory was the cause of their crime. " — Arnot's Hist, of Edin. 193 ; Maitland's Hist, of Edinburgh, 1758, p. 282 ; Arnot's Criminal Trials, p. 350. Between 1700-6, twenty-one convictions in Edin. ' Act against concealment of pregnancy, 1690. So late as 1751, General Assembly ordered this Act to be read from pulpits owing to prevalence of child murder. — Morren's Annals of Assembly, ii. 219 ; Scottish Jonrnal, i. 299, 313 ; Reid's Camerouian Apostle, p. 100; Black Kalendar of Aberdeen ; Gromek's Remains of Nitlisdale and Galloway Song ; Stewart's Sketches of Highlands, 1822, it xxxiv. It was the fear that they should "with Kirk -censure grapple," Whilk gart some aft their leeful lane Bring to the warld the luckless wean And sneg its infant thrapple. Allan Ramsay's Poems, i. 260, 1777. "The idea that this appearance for scandal causes child murder, and that the Scottish women are the greatest infanticides in the world, has induced the greatest part of the clergy to lay this part of Church discipline aside." — Travels of Rev. James Hall, ii. 351 ; Arnot's Criminal Trials, p. 311. 324 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY wishing that all the curses of the law and the woes of the gospel should fall upon him, that he may never thrive in this world, and that his conscience may henceforth never give him rest, and torment him as it did Cain, and that he may never hope for mercy, but die in desperation, and in the great day be cast into hell if the oath he hath sworn be not true from the heart." ^ Though some, greatly daring, took this protesta- tion with a lie on their lips, the dread of it wrung confession from many whom nothing else could terrify into truth. If, on the other hand, the Session doubted the testimony of the woman regarding the paternity of her unborn child, the Session called in the services of women, who should go to her house, and when she was in the pangs of childbirth question her as under the fear of death, so that she may speak the truth before God.^ Contumacy and refusal to obey the orders of Presbytery to stand rebuke incurred the dread sentence of greater ex- communication, — this involved the mysterious " being delivered over to Satan," banishment from the church, and denial of its sacraments. This rendered the delinquent an outcast from society, marked him with the brand of infamy, and was so potent a judgment that the most obdurate often gave in at last, and consented to give whatever " satisfaction " was demanded. The Church had far-reaching powers, for if a suspected person refused to compear before the Presbytery it called in the authority of the sheriff; and even if a delin- quent refused to take the rebuke except from his seat, ecclesi- astical authorities threatened that they would apply to the magistrates to compel him to stand " at the pillar." ^ ^ Paterson's History of Ayrshire, i. 194. In 1743 a "man called to the pulpit foot, and interrogated, took God to witness that he was innocent. The minister read the oath, and bade him put his hand on the child's head ; where- upon the woman in the most hideous and lamentable manner cryed out in the face of the congregation not to take the oath as he was guilty." — Cramond's Parish of Ordiquill. ^ When doubtful as to the woman's statement to the paternity of an unborn child, the Session, by order of Presbytery of Penpont in 1701, direct that " she be strictly questioned in her pangs by the women who shall be present." These are afterwards summoned by Session, and midwife swears that the woman "took solemn imprecations on herself that she had no other to lay the child to but whom she laid it to a\xea,6.j." —Mortoji Kirk- Session Records, Feb. 1701. 3 Jan. 23, \lOi.—Ibid. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 325 Sins the most heinous, and offences the most trivial, were treated with equal gravity. In all cases the most deliberate proceedings were taken ; meeting after meeting was convened for the most unimportant transactions ; parties were called, wit- nesses summoned, put upon oath, purged of malice, and warned to give their testimony with " ingenuity." To have carried a pair of shoes on a Fast ] )ay, to have whistled, or walked on the roads, and pulled a turnip in the garden, incurred heavy cen- sure, a fine, or appearance in the pillory. Even to have carried a can of water to a sick person was treated as a profanation of the Sabbath, and the use of hasty words in which " devil " or " God " was wantonly uttered, was matter of grave inquiry and sessional discipline. Until the man who had carried a load of meal on a horse on the Fast Day, or had been guilty of rash swearing or scolding, had given satisfaction therefor, he was not allowed " to hold up " his child for whom he desired baptism, and was ordered to get a sponsor to do so instead.^ A great part of the time and anxiety was devoted to examining charges of flyting, " horrid swearing," cursing, brawling, and fighting in the first half of the century — yielding abundant evidence of the rudeness of manners and coarseness of life amongst the country people.^ The women seem to have been the most flagrant delinquents in uttering what were called " terrible imprecations." Harmless and highly appropriate enough were many of the abusive terms they applied; but the reason why swearing and cursing were regarded so seriously was the superstitious belief shared in by elders, and not rejected by the minister, that the imprecation of a scold, like the menace of a witch, might be carried out by agency of the devil. When a fisher's wife picturesquely prayed that her neighbour " might have a cold armful of her ^ Morton Kirk-Scssion Records. ^ In Episcopal days Archbishop Leighton speaks of this as the " most crying sin." In 1667, in his charge, he orders his clergy to suppress profaneness, particularly the most common and crying sins, as drinking, cursing, swearing, bitter speaking, and rotten filthy speaking as usual amongst the common sort in their homes and field labour together, particularly in harvest." — Works, 343. In 1705, Town Council of Dumbarton hold weekly meetings for punish- ment of cursing, swearing, Sabbath breaking, scolding, excessive drink, night walking, scandalising the neighbour's good name, unseemly bearing, etc. — Irving's Dumbartonshire, 1820, p. 504 ; G. Smith's Strathcndrick, p. 85. 326 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY husband," this was punished, not because it was malicious, but because it was murderous. If the man was drowned the death was attributed to the termagant's curse. Sessions fine the utterer of such heinous epithets as a " witch-faced carlin," or a " brazen-faced quean " ; and after devoting twelve serious meet- ings of examination on a case where a woman had said, " Devil take you," sentence her to the pillory. While the " terrible expression," which a woman uttered — " Deil tak the skin off you and make a winnock [window] in hell with it " — is punished with greater excommunication ; so that the minister himself curiously delivered the woman " over to Satan," because she had consigned her neighbour to the same custody. This shows that cursing was a monopoly claimed by the Church.^ The Sessions had to deal with cases of brawling, even in the precincts of the kirk — worshippers disputing and fighting with each other with stools, and for the possession of them, before fixed seats were made ; and also for throwing " clods " on the people.^ These scenes are frequent in the early part of the century, and reveal still further the strikingly rude and rough manners of the common people. Drunkenness is an offence which appears curiously seldom in the older records, and came before the Sessions chiefly as conjoined with swearing and fighting. Doubtless the ale, which was the sole drink of the peasantry, was not so potent as the whisky that came into vogue after 1750; though change-houses for the sale of " two- penny " abounded even in the smallest village. But probably ^ Anton's Kilsyth, 117-9. Kirk-Session of Rathven, in 1747, deals "with a woman who curses a man with her face to the sun, wishing his death." — P. 67, Cramond's Church of Rathven ; Wodrow's Analecta, i. 153. 2 For instance, in 1723 it is reported in Keith, "that A. G. and J. R. had been guilty of unseemly behaviour in laughing and throwing clods and stones in time of worship, and of cutting and giving one another apples in church ; for which they appear four times before the Session meetings, and pay 40s. Scots." — Gordon's Chronicles of Keith, p. 100. In 1727 at Fordyce, women for grappling together during divine service, ordered appear without their plaids and gowns over their heads after service before the pulpit, to be rebuked, and be fined 4 merks. — Cramond's Church of Fordyce, p. 57. In 1701, Session of Dunblane, considering that herds and boys do make disturbance during divine service in the lofts, appoint the thesaurer to cause make a lash with a long handle, having several rungs. — Scot. Antiquary, v. 82. In 1721 Court of Regality passes "Act against dropping stones and divots from common loft upon people below." — Cramond's Presbytery of Fordyce. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 327 a stronf^er reason for not treating drunkenness willi grave severity was the fact that drinking was the common, the venial sin of the time. Every gentleman would have been constantly at the pillory had it been i)unished, and that would have been very awkward for the elders (not themselves quite innocent), who, if farmers, were more afraid of offending the gentry than the gentry were of the Session. No more common source of hurt to good morals existed in those days than the favourite gatherings at " penny weddings." The rural classes in those gloomy days had few social pleasures, and what they had were forbidden ones. They were extremely poor ; they had no means wherewith to furnish forth the entertainment at a bridal ; and it was the custom of the country for friends and neighbours to subscribe money — originally one penny each — to provide food, drink, and fiddler. Scandals undoubtedly attended these gatherings ; drinking, rioting, and immorality were the constant accom- paniments and consequences. The General Assembly passed stringent Acts against " promiscuous dancing " ; Kirk-Sessions attacked those meetings and all who took part in them — musicians and dancers alike. To be found in possession of a fiddle involved a summons to the Church court ; while to have played at gatherings where there had been promiscuous dancing entailed a penalty of £20 Scots for each offence, and all persons participating in them were sometimes refused " sealing ordinances " or communion. One of the most effective measures to prevent these heinous assemblies was that which Kirk- Sessions adopted, of making each person before being proclaimed for marriage deposit a pledge, or " pawn " — some piece of money or article of clothing, or spoons, — which should be forfeited if a penny wedding took place. A southern Session thus expresses in 1 7 1 5 its emotions : " Considering that the great abuse that is committing at wedding dinners, and in particular by promiscuous dancing betwixt young men and young women, which is most abominable, not to be practised in a land of light, and condemned in former time of Presbytery as not only unnecessary but sensuall, being only an inlet of lust and provocation to uncleanness through the corruptions of men and women in this loose and degenerate age, wherein 328 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY the devil seems to be raging by a spirit of uncleanness and profanity, making such practices an occasion to the flesh, and thereby drawing men and women to dishonour God, ruine their own souls, and cast reproach upon the holy ways of religion," the Session " ordain, that whoever shall suffer promiscuous dancing at their bridals, either free or penny weddings, shall forfeit three dollars, and the persons so dancing shall be rebuked before the congregation." ^ There is no evidence, however, that these austere ministers or elders ever fined lairds or guests at the mansions for ladies and gentlemen dancing together at their weddings and their balls. Many other matters came under the cognisance of the ever busy ecclesiastical authorities. Most conspicuous of these were charges of " trafficking with Satan." Superstition was spread amongst all classes; there was not an event of their lives, from birth to death, which was free from it; omens were seen in a myriad coincidences, charms were used to ward off every form of evil. Some superstitions were rehcs of paganism, others were relics of Popish days, while many were due to those instinctive fears and associations with mysterious events of nature common to humanity everywhere. Curious beliefs of all sorts meet us in the old Church re- cords, which embalm so many forms of olden life. One man takes his child to a smith to " be threatened with a hammer " to charm away sickness ; a woman is called in to a sick-bed, where she pronounces the words : " If God hath taken away the health, let Him restore it ; and if the devil hath taken it, let him restore it," on which the person re- covered.^ A man is charged with putting above his door hot stones to remove his child's illness,^ " whereby through the judgment of God the house and plenishing were burnt to ashes, the hot stones taking fire in the thack." Charmers and sorcerers in many a remote parish drove a thriving, though perilous, business. ^ Kirk-Session of Morton. ^ Irongray Session Records, 1692. In Balfron, 1700, April. — " This day J. B. appeared in face of the congregation, confessed his sin in consulting Donald Ferguson, the charmer, for the relieff of his children, whereby he cast olf much of the fear of God and yielded to Satan." — Smith's Strathendrick, p. 61. 3 Aberdour in 1702, Scottish Notes and Queries, Feb. 1894. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 329 Witchcraft, above all, was looked upon with horror and profound Indief in the first quarter of the century. Every whisper of tlie " trallicking with Satan " was heard with awlid eagerness, and evidence was brought to the Kirk-Session of every suspicious circumstance. In one case a witness asserts that, passing an old lone woman's house, she looked in at the door, and saw a wheel spinning without any visible power touching it ; another tells that she had given this woman some chaff, " with which she was not satisfied, and a day after the witness's cow gave no milk to her child, who decayed and vanished to a shadow, and her cow took distemper " ; a third testifies that she heanl a terrible noise which the woman alleged was only a clocking hen ; and yet a fourth relates that she saw " a caudle going through the door and nolxxly holding it." ^ It was this old woman's good fortune to be allowed to claim the Act of banishment, and she disappeared with her life. Another Session proves the charge against a witch on the evidence of two persons ; one of whom stated that his wife, having a dispute with her four days before, took a dreadful stitch through her as if she was stricken with a whinzie or knife, and continued in great pain till she died ; the other stated that having refused the suspected witch alms, all the milk got a loathsome smell, and she herself fell sick, " and was like a daft body for eight days after." ^ On such testimony the accused was condemned, but the poor wretch claiming Act of banishment — that merciful alternative of Scots law — was sent off under pain of death if she returned. To be ugly and old, to be withered and morose, to live aloof from others, to be unsocial and ill-tempered and ill-tongued, were sufficient qualities to raise suspicions of trafficking with Satan ; angry words were turned to malisons, and sullen looks were proofs of the evil eye. Every trouble was laid to her fault : if hens laid no eggs, if cows gave less milk, if children became sickly, she might be consigned to jail for years, longing for death, and only escape burning by banishment.^ ^lany clergy- men were as credulous as their elders, who were chosen from ' In Kirkcudbright, 1701, Hisl. of Galloicay, ii. - In Twynbolm, 1703, ibid., ii. ' Hist, of Galloway, ii. 343. 330 • SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V representative classes of the people, chiefly lairds and farmers. Brought before the serious conclave of the Session, its earnest prayers, its solemn oaths, its awful warnings, a woman con- fronted there by witnesses and threatened with the terror of her sin, was often driven to own an impossible crime — inter- course with the devil, strange midnight dances, marvellous transformations into forms of cats and dogs. She would give minute descriptions of the devil's personal appearance, not always consistent, but drawn from her simple fancy of what was marvellous and grand attire. She involved neighbours in her diabolic plight, according as she saw the tribunal's suspicions tended. Half- demented, wholly panic- stricken, everything asked would be owned by her, and that she should afterwards unsay her words and withdraw her con- fession only added to her guilt. Elsewhere we speak of the trials for witchcraft ending in death, which were instigated by the people and encouraged by the Church. Undoubtedly these beliefs in witchcraft and examinations into scandal regarding it lasted longer among the courts of the Church than the courts of Law, and after civil authorities refused to consider them, the ecclesiastical authorities — fortunately, however, deprived of aU real power — were still deeply engaged in their futile investiga- tions.^ But they could not hang, or burn, or imprison the poor hags ; they could only punish them by excommunication ^ The Presbytery of Mid Calder in 1720, being "informed that a most re- spectable family in West Calder was infested with witchcraft, and that a woman had confessed her guilt. ... A committee appointed for prayer and consulta- tion recommends each of the brethren to put up solemn petitions to God in behalf of the said family, and that each of the brethren attend the said family as they shall be called." — Hist, of Mid Calder, p. 234. The son of Lord Torphiclien was considered bewitched because the boy fell into trances from which horse-whipping could not rouse him ; his renal secretion was black as ink, he saw strange flashes of light, could tell what happened twenty miles away, and was liable to be carried away through the air if not held back by those who kept watch. One day he got to the door "and was lifted in the air, but catched by the heels and coat tails and brought back." A "miserable brutishly ignorant woman " was accused of diabolic incantations, and she being put into prison owned her guilt ; another woman confessed that she had given the devil the body of her dead child to make a roast of, and other tremendous and impossible crimes. The time was not too late for superstition and credulity and a public fast, but, fortunately, it was too late for trials and execution for witchcraft in Midlothian. — Sinclair's Satan's Invisible World Discovered, App., 1871. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 331 or rebuke for uttering " imprecations," and for charming' and swearing. In 173G the Act against witchcraft was repealed, and the clergy and educated classes generally had given up their old belief in tlie crime; though the Seceding ministers denounced the repeal of this ancient Act as a godless deed, as a repudiation of the command of Scripture not to allow a witch to live. Long the belief lasted amongst the peasantry, and the Kirk- Sessions afterwards liad to deal with those who superstitiously sought to avert witchcraft just as they had formerly done with those who maliciously practised it. People were summoned for beiiig guilty of scratching or " scoring above the breath," under the belief that if a witch was cut on the forehead with the sign of the cross the power of Satan would be broken.^ In those days there was oversight exercised in every part of existence and every day of man's life. Every night, at nine o'clock or ten o'clock, elders went through the streets to see if any one loitered on the way ; they entered the taverns and dismissed the occupants home, a practice which originated a well-known phrase, " elders' hours." Yet in spite of all precautious there were frequent clamant complaints by Synods and Town Councils at the deplorable condition of society — " at the abounding vice, immorality, particularly horrid swearing, breach of the Lord's Day, drunkenness, uncleanness, mocking at religion and religious exercises." Whether these tirades were due to the over-scrupulosity of the pious or really to the wickedness of the people, it is difficult to decide. An unpleasant feature in these olden days of discipline is the inequality of sentences. There was a leniency to the rich which was not shown to the poor. The ploughman might be made to stand fifteen Sundays exposed to the merriment of the congregation and the solemnity of the minister, while the laird, though he might condescend to * Somerville's Own Life, p. 366 ; Scottish Journal, i. 364. In 1706 the Presbytery of Penpont is engaged at their meetings from January to JIarch with the case of Mr. Peter Rae of Kirkbride, slandered by a woman who alleged that he called her a " witch," and when sick said to her, " They say you have my health, so give it again if you have it," and also called her to come near hand him, and when she came he presently bled her on the forrit (forehead). It was proved that Mr. Rae did call her a witch, and did in his illness endeavour to draw blood from her brow, for which he was rebuked. — Records of Penpont Presbytery. 22 332 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY appear privately before the Session, refused flatly to stand in the pillory, and was let off with a fine of meal or money for the poor, which he paid with a laugh, and then took his place in his loft to watch his less lucky fellow-delinquents on the stool. This inequality was not always due to the clergyman — who might be impartial enough — but to the elders who, if not fellow -lairds, were tenants on his ground or dependent on his favour, and feared to incur his displeasure. " What in the captain is a choleric word, in the soldier is flat blas- phemy." ^ In all these severe and inquisitorial proceedings it is often overlooked that the fanaticism was more in the elders than in the minister, who presided at the meetings, and carried out the verdict of the laymen. When the crimes and vices of the laity were treated with rigour, those of the ministers were not dealt with lightly. For any indiscretion they stood the sentence of their Presby- tery, and they had also to make their repentance before their people. When a minister was deposed for drunkenness he was obliged to appear in his own church, where for six successive Sundays he was rebuked by six several old co-presbyters ; and a minister deposed for immorality was made to stand six Sabbaths before the congregation clad in sackcloth ; or in the various parish churches within the bounds.^ No charge, how- ever trivial, could be ignored. A Presbytery in Dumfriesshire spent months of 1715 in investigating the charge against the minister of Kirkbride who had a printing machine in his manse, the charge being that he had printed copies of the profane song called " Maggie Lauder." ^ ^ "I perceived the poor only suffered by these Church censures, for a piece of money will save a man here from the stool of repentance as much as in England." — Journey through Scotland, 1726, p. 230. Appearance in place ol penance sometimes commuted to money or meal. For five bolls of meal a gentleman culprit allowed to sit in his own seat to receive rebuke. — Edgar's Old Church Life, i. 542; Burt, i. 185: — -"Young rakes get off with com- position in money." That the people saw this unfairness is seen in their chap- books and folk songs : e.g., in "Oh, mither dear, I gin to fear." Now Tarn maun face the minister, And she maun mount the pillar, And that's the way that they maun gae For poor folk hae nae siller. ■■^ Scott's Fasti, ii. 657 ; Cramond's Cullen, p. 139. ^ Penpont Preshytery Records, 1715. It was proved that the copies of the 1 RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 333 Ever and again, when need arose, there were held I'res- byterial visitations of churches ; in some districts they took place every year, for the design was to promote peace and order in the ])arishes, and to secure diligence in fellowship in all various parts of the congregation and faithfulness in the minister. After the " visitants " from the Presbytery arrived service was held in the kirk, when the minister preached his " ordinary," so that his brethren might judge of his " painfulness and his doctrine." When he had left the building, heritors, elders, heads of families in their several turns, were called in and questioned as to the behaviour of each other, and especially of theii' pastor. Such questions as these might be put : " Is he constant in his calling, or is Saturday his only book-day ? Does he restrain penny bridals ? Does he censure keepers of superstitious days ? Has he a gospel walk ? Does he preach sound doctrine and study to be powerful and spiritual in his ministrations ? Such interrogations were put to the various parties, searching enough, though not so inquisi- tive as those which were common in still earlier days, when the queries were : " Is he a dancer, carder, or dicer ? Is he a frequenter of ale-houses ? Is he a swearer of small or minced oaths ? Useth he to say, ' Before God it is so,' or in his common conference ' I protest,' or ' I protest before God ' ? or says he, ' Lord, what is that ? ' — all of which are more than yea and nay." ^ Though these questions were no longer asked, testimony as to such offences might be freely given. For every flaw could be pointed out, every grievance uttered when the parish song were taken off " the irons " by a parishioner and the minister's son while Mr. Peter Rae, the accused, was from home. Rae was a man of ingenuity, as well as of literary pretensions, and some local histories by him remain still in manuscript. A watchmaker's son, he made a clock of wondrous mechanism and versatility — still standing in the Drumlanrig staircase. Tradition says it was turned out of Kirkbride manse for plajdng the tune of "Maggie Lauder" on a Sabbath. The song, the age of which is debated, was then evidently novel. 1 Stewart of Pardovan's Collections. In 1717 there is a visitation of parish. "The minister having preached his ordinary. Matt, xxviii. 5, to consider doctrine. The minister removed, elders and heads of families called. In- terrogated if the minister had a gospel walk, if he kept much at home and gave attendance to reading and prayer, if he preached sound doctrine and studied to be powerful in his ministrations, if he did visit families as need is. " — Cramond's Church of Ordiquill, p. 18. Similar queries were put in 167", during a visitation in Episcopal days. 1 334 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY minister had retired to his manse — leaving, like Sir Peter, Teazle, his character behind him. When he returned after the ordeal of question was over, he might possibly hear that the parishioners had expressed their satisfaction with his ministra- tions, or more probably he would learn that he has been accused of being " lifeless, wanting in reverence, and languid! in delivery," that he has used " wanton and ill-advised; expressions," that he has been heard on the Sabbath "tc hiss to his dog to pursue the sheep, and been even observed t( set up one or two fallen sheaves in the field with his hand 03 foot." Some might complain he does not visit them in sick ness, or that he too often changes his ordinary.^ Then came th(! minister's turn to be examined as to the conduct of hi;! critics — heritors, elders, parishioners, and beadle. If he ha(' nothing to object they were all called in and " encouraged t< proceed in the work of the Lord." These inquisitions did vastly more harm than good." The; were dangerous weapons to put in the hands of every mal content who had a grudge to gratify or a fanatical grievanc to express, with the risk of making a clergyman's life burden to him and his congregation a terror. As the centur went on these old visitations were gradually dropped, as the; were found to be mere sources of trouble and disconteni interesting only to busybodies in the Church courts and grum biers in the pews. X Eeligious observances attended the simplest acts of soci; life — not probably with much meaning, but as tradition! customs from more fervent ages, English travellers at the early part of the century wei much amused at the frankly pious practices of the people. ]N ^ Fergusson's Laird of Lag, p. 250 ; Record of Committee of Synod : Galloway in 1697. In 1707, amongst other objections to their minister t" parishioners state that " he doth often change his text, and doth not raise mai' heads, and doth not prosecute such as he names, but scraffs them." — Edgar's CMirch Life, i. 99. ^ The Presbytery of Ayr in 1750 renewed the"discredited practice. — Edga Old Church Life, RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 335 refreshment, however slight, could be piirtakeii without a foniml blessing being asked' Drinking a glass of ale was preluded by a grace ; the jnogress of a dram to the lips was siuspended by the utterance of a prayer — sometimes of no mean dimensions. This custom, common alike to Episcopalians and to Presbyterians, was witnessed with curiosity by Mr. Thomas Kirke as he visited /Vrchbishop I'aterson and Principal Stirling of Glasgow, when the host called for ale and wine, and pulling off his hat " made a gi-ace, and so fell to." " If," records this Yorkshire .squire, astonished at such superfluity of piety, — " if you crack a nut with them, there is a grace for that ; drink a cup of coffee, ale, or wine, and what else, he presently furnishes a grace for the nonce." When friends met at a change-house each bowed to the other coraplimentarily to ask the blessing, and a prayer, long drawn out with accents suitable, sanctified the drink as they drained the glass. The man who wished to sell a broken- winded horse plausibly imposed upon his customer by the length and fervour with which he said grace over the gill of ale which was to moisten the transaction. Friends at an alehouse often winced as the prolix blessing was pronounced over the glass which they thirsted to drink, and sometimes when the friend who had " engaged in prayer " opened his eyes he found the glass had been emptied during his devotional exercise. Mr. Adam Petrie, in his delightfully simple Bides of Good Deportment, complains of the irregular and irreligious trafficking of coffee, tea, and chocolate.- " I call it irreligious, because I observe in cofi'ee-houses not one of a hundred asks a blessing to it, as if it needed no Ijlessing, nor yet thanks. "We should not so much as take a drink of water or eat fruit without blessing ' Kirke's Tour, p. 46 ; Kirke's Modem Account in Brown's Early Travellers in Scotland, p. 257 ; Sir James Turner's Memoirs, p. 143 ; Burt's Letters from North, i. 177 ; Agnew'.s Hereditary Sheriff, p. 592 ; Strang's Clubs of Glasgow, p. 205. "^ Rules of Good Deportment, by Adam Petrie, Edin. 1720. Going to the house of a man whose behaviour was under suspicion, the minister of Dunrossness in 1778 writes : " After baptism lie brought a dram . . . olFering to take it without a blessing, I checked him. ... I am afraid that soon forgetting what had been told him he gave lose to daft mirth, and going out, was struck dead." — Mill's Diary, p. 84. Bishop Forbes in 1762 is bade by the Lady Sinclair of Dunreth to say grace over his dram, all present standing as he did so. — Bishop Forbes's Journal, p. 207. Carlyle's Autobiography, p. 24. 336 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY God, from whom we have his good creatures." This was the theory, and generally the practice, of the sedate and godly oi' these days, and indeed it was the common custom, as far as liquor was concerned, of society in Scotland. When so much religion was expended over the drinks of thei day, and uttered in prolonged graces at meals till the meat grew cold and the company got hot, it was not omitted in the family. It was enjoined by the Church that there should bt " family exercises " every day. Before the communion the minister made careful inquiries whether such were held in ever} household, and he that was not faithful in having them waf debarred from the Lord's Table.^ Eumours came at times tc; the ears of the General Assembly that even elders — such af^ Duncan Forbes of Culloden — had lapsed from this duty, anc, they made their enactment that those who neglected it shoulc be disquahfied from being members of Assembly. More anc more a practice which had been universal in Scotland becami less and less regarded ; until it was retained only by old sedate, customed people, gentry and peasantry, and most carefullV observed in the once Covenanting districts where the farmer: still wore the broad black bonnets of the ancient fashion.^ Tha it was only on Saturday night that the big ha' Bible should bt, produced was a declension from olden piety, and the " Cottar' Saturday Night " scene, which is so much to modern minds ai idyllic picture of piety, would have been regarded by th antediluvians and advanced Christians of an earlier generatio] as but a meagre worship and mark of falling from grace. In the early decades of the century the intense religiou fervour and faith which characterised the covenanting day retained all its influence and hold over great masses of th people of all classes, and the belief in the potency of praye and in the constant interference of Providence with every ac ^ Wodrow's Correspondence, i. 17 ; Acts of Assembly, 1712. 2 "My late friend, the facetious Sir Hew Dalrymple, used to say that 1 had watched its decay, and following the fate of the large black bonnets, it ha fallen off as that had diminished in size, and changed colour from black to simp blue. . . . Certain it is that the practice is most general amongst those farms about Bathgate and Carnwath Muir who preserve the use of its primitive coloi and magnitude."- — " Comparative View of Farmers 50 years ago and at presen by a Heritor" [George Hepburn], Farmer s Magazine, Nov. 1804. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 337 of existence, however minute, was unbounded.' Naturally this phase of faith was most shown by the ministers and devout. WTienever they are in doubt about any action — whether to go a journey, or where to choose a te.xt — they pray. They retreat to the orchard, to a bam, to their book-room, and pour forth, with touching confidence, their little cares. - Mr. Kobert Wodrnw tells often of saintly people who spent their days in " wrestling " incessantly, and how his excellent father prayed ten times a day, and spent two hours every day in his exercises — a usual time to devote. Far surpassing this, however, was the practice of Mr. Hew Fulton — " one of the greatest wrestlers I have ever known," remarks the admiring minister of Eastwood, — " it had been his ordinary to spend eight or nine hours every day in immediate prayer." It was expected that any religiously disposed gentleman would retire at certain periods of the day for private meditation, and this was the wont of that sensual saint Lord Grange. Every country house had its small room, or closet, used as an oratory,^ and in liigh fiats of Edinburgh there was one tiny closet built off the dining-room, to which the head of the household withdrew for his devotions. Even the flat occupied in Riddel's Close by David Hume had one of these tiny pray- ing apartments ; which in his case was a sad superfluity. Scottish piety, however, was not satisfied with these more deliberate or " stated " prayers ; a favourite outlet for devotions consisted in pious " ejaculations." * These abrupt, spontaneous, ■ Mr. Thomas Gillespie, founder of Relief Church in 1761, "spent much of liis time in tears, watching the progress of religion in his soul, and engaged in constant warfare with Satan and his corrupt desires," a man who "cried mightily to God." — P. 199, Thomson's Hist. Sketch of Secession Church. ' Wodrow's Analecta, iii. 311 ; Diary of George Broicn, passim. ' Chambers' Ancient Architecture of Edinburgh, p. 22. * Among preparations for communion are mentioned " frequent retirements to God" and "many ejaculations." — Advice of Communicants for necessary Preparations and Profitable Improvement of the Great and Comfortable Ordinances of the Lord's Supper, etc. , by Robert Craighead, minister of Londonderry, Glasgow, 1714 ; Memoirs of Fraser of Brea, p. 212. " Be much in ejaculatory prayer in the jmlpit for yourselves and your hearers." — Life of Rev. J. Broicn of Haddington, p. 116. " What is the use of ejaculatory prayer? Answer. — To disengage our hearts from the world and fit us for daily communion with God, etc." — Short Practical Catechism, by W. Crawford. "Some people have more devotion this way in their shops than others in their closets, and while walking in the fields 338 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY spasmodic prayers were short sentences or exclamations to i God, which fell from the lips of people when walking, engaged in business, or ordinary conversation. It was considered that these holy interjections were extremely helpful to Christians ; even more efficacious than regular " exercises," for they rose to heaven so suddenly that Satan had no time to spoil or divert the Christian's thought. Earnest men, and hypocritical men also, as they went along the road, burst into these holy expletives ; the pious merchant muttered them as he served out thread and candles to his customers ; and plough- men, as they with devout meditation stumbled with their oxen 'along the furrows. Ministers in the pulpit loved to " dart up a petition to heaven." Where a worldling in perplexity would have issued a hasty execration, the good man uttered an ejaculation. These startling and irrelevant sets-off to conversation and interjections in business seem to have given much satisfaction to the performers, but fortunately they gradually died out in favour of a more reticent form of worship, although they continued to be recommended by divines as most comforting and most helpful. In the intensity of devotional fervour, when the ministers of the old gospel school had their times of perplexity, or some emergency was to be met, they sometimes engaged in fasting. In the morning they rose early, and they and their household would meet in supplication for " light at the throne " and for ; pious exhortation. This operation occupied the whole fore- noon, and not till one or two o'clock in the afternoon, when dinner came, did they break their fast since the previous night.^ It is by such a fast and devout exercise that Mr. Thomas Boston than when praying on their knees."- — P. 142, Willison's Sanctification of Lord's Day. Mr. Alex. MoncriefF's "visits to the throne of grace were frequent. Besides his stated seasons for retirement he was observed to be often engaged in ejaculatory prayer." — P. 831, M'Kerrow's Hist, of Secession Church. 1 " On Monday some time was spent in [Mr. Main's] family in prayer with fasting. The family being gathered together he began his work, showing the cause of it, which was, 1st, the afflicting hand of God on his family ; 2nd, to prepare for the congregational fast at Carluke ; 3rd, to pray to God on behalf of his parish. Then I prayed ; after which he, having spoken a little, prayed , again also. These prayers continued long, but we had ended about half an hour after twelve. After which, retiring to our several apartments, we dined at two, having had no breakfast." — Boston's Memoirs, 1776, 104. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 339 (having admirecl this method when practised in another manse) sought to move the Ahnighty to dispel the stone from wliich he was sulVeriug, to help him in his study of Hebrew accentua- tion, and to " take away the hand of God from his children who had the chincough." That there were unbroken, unbreakable laws, a succession of physical cause and effect, inevitable, changeless, passing on their silent course unbending to mortal prayers, unyielding to human needs — this, of course, was a conception of the material world unknown to those days, incredible to those men. Natural laws were merely regarded as conventional arrangements of Providence which could be lightly clianged, stopped, or revereed. In those times, therefore, the voice of a minister, the prayer of a saintly pastor, was of no little importance ; his petitions for sunshine or for rain were desired, and the result watched with anxiety ; and if, in ignorance of husbandry or the needs of his farmers, he prayed for the wrong weather — such as " refreshing showers " in hay-time — it might bring no little disaster. There was nothing that occurred, no incident however trivial, no circumstance however natural, which was not believed specially directed to help, punish, or discipline each mortal's life. There was a tine egotism in this personal interpretation of nature, as if Providence moved all creation to the dim far-off events of each individual's private affairs. For example, when the minister of Ettrick's daughter was born with a hare-lip, " which rendered her incapable of sucking," this affliction was sent to punish her father's backslidings. When his wife fell nearly demented, it was in order to humble his pride in his study of Hebrew accents ; and when snow came in spring it was to prevent his going to a Presbytery meeting, for it never suggests itself to his devout mind that it is rather undue favouritism even to the author of the Fourfold State of Man, to send a snowstorm which ruined the young shoots of corn and destroyed sheep in half a dozen counties of a half-famished land. "When a minister is troubled with gravel, is in agony with toothache, loses his cow or his daughter, is visited with bad dreams from obvious indigestion, each calamity is " sent." "When a Fast is made to humiliate for parochial sins and remove a judgment in the form of unseasonable snow, from which the " flocks are 340 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY perishing from lack of food," it is noted that " the Lord heard the prayers," " the soft wind came and thawed the snow wreaths " on the bleak hills of Ettrick.^ Sometimes events assume a more miraculous aspect.^ In 1702, Mr. Wodrow learns that while the celebrated Mr. David "Williamson was preaching in St. Giles a rat came and sat upon the pulpit Bible ; whereupon the preacher stopped his discourse, " went home, and continues sick " — the omen being interpreted as a sign from Heaven that he should surely die. Yet later comforting reports arrive that the doomed and nervous divine still survives. The same gentleman when preaching at Aberdeen was mocked by a profane man singing in the streets the personal song " Dainty Davie " {egged on thereto by Jacobite Episcopalians), and also by his laughing in the kirk. The minister exclaimed, " Alas ! for the poor man is rejecting the last offer he is ever to have of Christ." " The wretch dyed before night in great agony." Mr. John Semple, a famed preacher, had a peculiar way of putting out his tongue and licking his lips. Mr. Wodrow is informed that a fellow aped him in this action,^ and thereupon his " tongue became stiff, so that he could not draw it back again, and died in a few days." To mock or taunt a pious minister brought upon the offender retribution as swift and condign as fell on the Jericho children who called Elisha " bald head ! " The servant who laughed at Kiltearn manse during family devotions was warned of the judgment to come upon her, and died that very night.^ When the great fire broke out in Edinburgh in October l700, one Sabbath morning, destroying Parliament Close and adjoining wynds, clergy, magistrates, and populace all recognised in it that, as well as in the " terrible and tremendous blowing up of gun- powder in Leith, a fearful rebuke of God for the common neglect of the Lord's Day and great growth of immorality within the city, and the Town Council came to solemn resolu- tion to be more watchful over their hearts and ways than formerly, and reprove sin with more zeal." When calamities befell the country it was not easy to discriminate for which or for whose particular sins the wrath ^ Boston's Memoirs, ^ Analecta, i. 12. 2 Ibid. i. 150. •* Memoir of Hog of Kiltearn, p. 147. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 341 was shown.' When therefore a Fast and day of humiliation was appointed to avert the hand of Providence, there was always announced a list of various alternative sins for which penitence was due.'^ When the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr appoints a day of fasting, it is " besides for ordinary causes " on " account of Satan's prevailing " ; " because of witchcraft having occurred in their bounds " (at Paisley) ; " in order that the Lord would direct the judges who were to sit and try the wretched creatures, the matter being so very mysterious and intricate " ; and " to convince the culprits " (who were not yet tried) " of their horrid guilt." When the " ill years " came with frost and haar, snow and rain destroying crops and starving the people, the General Assembly ordered a Fast, comprehensively " to appease the anger of God for the sins of Sabbath breaking, profanity, drunkenness, uncleanness, and infidelity." Wlien Synods or Presbyteries enjoined these provincial days of humiliation because of " abominations and gross crying sins," proving that " Satan was let loose among us," which has caused " desolating strokes," — scarcity of bread, threat of war, or a terrible fire, — sermons with appropriate texts, chosen from Hosea or Amos, were given to " rip up consciences," and vehement prayers are offered to restrain " Satan's rage." Sometimes they can discover that the finger of Providence was at work, at others it was clear that the hand of Satan was engaged. Sometimes, however, it was very difficult to decide whether a calamity was ilue to the devil who is vexing a man, or due to Heaven who is punishing him. It was un- questioned that Satan made people believe in spells, charms, ^ King's Pious Proclamation for Encouragement of Piety, as also Collection of Acts of Assembly, Toum Councils, etc. Edin. 1727 ; Willison's True Sanciifca- tion of the Lord's Day. More egotistically, however, Hume of Crossrig was clear that "Satan blew the fire" in indignation at himself and his friends forming praying societies for the reformation of manners and morals of Edin- burgh. — P. 22, Diary of Hmnc of Crossriy. ^ " 17 April 1717. — Enjoined as a day of solemn fasting by reason of many gross and crying abominations that do abound in the land, and the severe stroaks which are at present hanging over heads on account of our sins, which may provoke tlie Lord to threaten us with intended invasion of the foreign enemy, and with scarcitie of bread, considering the coldness and sharpness of the present season." — P. 55, Cramond's Presbytery of Fordycc ; Guthrie Smith's Slrathendrick, p. 61 ; Lees' Paisley Abbey, p. 331. 342 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY and holy wells ; it is Satan who afflicted the epileptic, " making him utter horrid cries " ; ^ it is Satan who rages in parishes as the communion drew near, " causing drunkenness and immorality to abound " ; " when a storm comes on as God's people are journeying homewards from the " occasion," the minister and elders discern " the bruised serpent hath begun a broadside." The Christian as he sat at the Lord's table was assailed with horrid thoughts by the adversary, who suggests to him that Christ's body and blood are corporeally present, and even caused him " to feel a singular smell in the bread and wine of flesh and blood, which mightily troubled him." ^ In short, there is no calamity too great for the enemy to cause, and no spite too petty for him to vent. As the Hungarian proverb says : " When the devil is hungry he eats flies." In the view of a credulous age the Prince of Darkness was assigned an immense sway in creation. It was, in fact, a duel between the powers of good and evil who each wields the elements for his opposing purposes. It is the Adversary who sends to a man fearful doubts ; it is the Creator who sends him light ; it is Satan who afflicts the minister of Brea " with a boil under his oxter " ; it is the Lord who after prayer " miraculously " removes it. Diseases which baffled the chirurgeons to diagnose, and mysterious noises sounding through a house, were attributed to Satanic agency, which could alone be baulked by prayer and solemn adjuration of evil spirits to begone. It was while engaged in exorcising the devil in a mansion in his parish that the minister of Southdean, father of Thomson, the poet of the Seasons, fell down dead — another evidence of Satan's work. In all this there is a profound conviction that unseen tremendous agents are in- fluencing each man's life from birth to death ; that poor mortals are pawns on the chessboard of earth, moved by invisible op- ponents who are each trying to checkmate the other.'* There is ^ Boston's Memoirs. ^ Spalding's Syntaxis Sacra. ^ Wodrow's Analecta. * Life of Rev. James Fraser of Brea. Satan employed for his purposes many agents. Mr. M'Gill, minister of Kinross in 1718, was infested with evil spirits, the meat appeared on table stuck full of pins, sheets on the green were found snipped in pieces, "lime (earthenware) vessels" fell from the press to fragments, stones wambled down the chimney, the servant vomited pins, RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 343 with peopl*! ii vivid realisation of the unseen, an awe with which every untoward event is regarded ; in baae men there is a terror of judgment, in good men there is a fine consecrating of common life. Not a journey was undertaken or a i)lan formed without guidance being sought, and when the minister publishes a book, he takes a copy of his cherished work and " lays it before the Lord." The presence of Christ seems so near, the unseen world is so vivid, that once a.ssured of .salvation there was no fear to die, no reluctance to quit life, each Christian man passes to heaven as unconcernedly as he would go to the next room, where everything was familiar to the eyes. Yet it is a curious feature of the times that the most devout have strange alternations of mood — now they are in abject despair, now they are in joy at " finding Christ " ; to-day they are in the depths of anxiety about their salvation — doubting their " surety with Him " ; to-morrow they will be in the third heaven " at being His." They interpreted every mood of their mind, every state of their body as divinely purposed. If a minister cannot work out his sermon, and has " damps " — these " damps " are marks of " divine displeasure." If he is in good spirits and preaches with vigour, " the Lord has countenanced him." The wife of Mr. Thomas Boston suffered in her later years from melancholy — which is not surprising in the uncheerful household of faith at Ettrick — and the picture of the poor woman is truly pathetic, — " struggling to hold fast to Christ like a bird on the side of the wall, gripping with its claws." ^ With all these emotions — changing from spiritual misery to ecstasy (the result chiefly of the stern doctrine of election, rendering people sure or doubtful of their salvation according to their varying mood and spirits), there was usually an in- spired conviction in ministers of the rightness of their teaching. How could they doubt \ for whenever in perplexity they opened the Bible was flung in the fire, the bread was uneatable. " Is it not very sad," remarks ilr. Wodrow, "that such a godly family that employ their time but by praying, reading, and serious meditation, should be so molested, while others who in a manner avowedly serve the wicked one are never troubled." — Analeda, ii. 330. * Boston's Me»ioirs ; Doddridge's i//eo/Co^. Gardiner, \1\7. See Elisabeth West's Memoirs — a curious spiritual autobiography of beginning of 18th century. 344 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY the Scriptures, and alighted upon a passage that cleared their minds, they were sure that Providence guided their fingers to the page, their eyes to the lines, and their minds to its meaning. How could preachers not be confident, seeing that it was the Lord that gave them a "good through-bearing," gave their feelings an " out-gate," and their lips right words to speak ? The phrase " thus saith the Lord " would have be- come the lips of Boston or Erskine quite as well as those of Habbakuk and Amos. The full austerity and intensity of religious teaching amidst the serious minded of that age can best be realised by looking at the home-teaching and training in many households of the first half of the century. Children gifted with the mis- fortune of having " godly parents " had a terrible ordeal to pass through ; for piety was forced into their poor little lives, and all that was bright and genial was forced out. Singing, catechising, reading Scriptures, and praying were the burden of their unmirthful existences. When a promising child dies, it is parental satisfaction to record the graces of the premature angel. " He was a pleasant child, and desirable," chronicles the father proudly ; " grave and wise beyond his years, a reprover of sin among his comrades, frequent in his private devotions as he was capable." ^ Such is the fond picture of a son whom it " pleased the all wise God to remove from life in the seventh year of his life." Mr. Thomas Boston, with like complacency, relates the spiritual attainments of his son : " I spoke to my son Thomas about the state of his soul and prayed with him. Being risen from prayer and asking him what was the matter, he said he knew not how to get an interest in Christ. He went into the western room thereafter, and being asked why, said he went to seek an interest in Christ, and tell Him he would be His." On questioning him, his father was pleased to find him " sensible of the stirring of corruption in the heart," and that when Satan tempted him he would cry out " Go away ! " and sought to overcome his wicked thoughts by reading his Catechism and his Bible. All this at the infant age of seven : of course the child died in a few years.^ Such narratives 1 TurnbuU's Diary, 1696, Scot. Hist. Society, p. 423. '■^ Memoirs, p. 358. "Dec. 8, 1704. — This day Jeau Beggart, a very extra- RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 345 abound in tin; relij^icnis records of the period : infant prodigies of piety wlio, in iniitutiou of their seniors, sign " eovenants " and espousals to Christ at the age of nine ; who are " ripe Christians " at the precocious age of five ; who " bend before the throne " when they should be bending over their marbles ; children with strong faith and weak lungs, who hear strange things in dreams, forecast future events ; who with " ravishing speech " edify their hearers, and reveal " uncommon notions of the meaning of Scripture." Such a morbid existence was led in very many serious households in Scotland. There life assumed a sombre aspect, and the pleasures of the world were taken sadly ; boyish frolics were eyed askance,* and sometimes with keen reprehension ; dancing was a carnal excitement, cards a dangerous pastime, dicing was an impious game (for lots were appointed by God for holy purposes as recorded in Holy Writ), the theatre was the devil's playground, and dancing assemblies were the recruiting quarters for Satan's ranks. Books could not be too carefully chosen, for poetry was fanciful, and tales were frivolous and untrue : and such papers as the Tatlcr and Spectator were not fit for well-disposed minds. Even tolerant evangelicals did not ordinary Christian, tells me she has a daughter scarce 10 years old that she supposes is under decay. There are so many promising things about her. She dares not doubt of her salvation. It is several years (!) since she used to complain of distress for want of Christ. Not long since, one night they were looking to some light they saw in the north ; and when she saw it she fell aweeping, and when asked why, said she feared judgments were coming out to the generation. In one of her weak fitts her mother asked her if she feared to dye ? She answered ' Noe.' Asked if she was not feared to lye her loan in the grave ? she said she would have feared if Christ had not lyen there." — Analecta, i. 55. " Mrs. Yuill tells me she has a son called John, a stirring child. He fell under sickness and turned very serious, and regretted his frowardness, and made a covenant with God, and signed it, and after that came a full assurance of salvation." — Analecta, ii. 366, also i. 86, 115. One of the chapbooks most I>opular among the serious was the Dying arid Ravishing Words of Christian Kcr, who died at the age of ten.^ 1 Clackmannan, Jany. 1713. — Two lads disguised themselves, to be play at " guisards " at New Year festivities ; they blackened their faces — one dressed as a woman, the other put straw ropes round his legs, and for the innocent iniquity they were summoned before the Session. "Both acknowledged their sin, and promised by God's grace never to fall into the like again. The Session thought fit to dismiss them, the minister having held forth to them on the sinfulness and abomination of their deed." — Northern Notes and Qiierics, ii. 2. 346 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY venture to offend pious conventionalities, and the children of ministers learned not dancing.^ One is almost startled at learn- ing that Kalph Erskine loved and dared to play on the fiddle. It may seem unfair to cite the life and character of the once famed minister of Ettrick as illustrative of the religious ways of the age he lived in — a man of morbid nature and of a melancholy temperament which increased with constant ill health. It is true that this spiritual Pepys, in the strange narrative of his life, written for the edification of his children, is singularly frank in religious and bodily revelations. The minister of the quiet, remote Ettrick, with the bleak moorland before him, and the quiet green hills rising behind the manse, shutting him in from the busy world beyond, lived an anxious, troubled life till he died in 1732. With equal gravity and minuteness he tells how he found assurance and how he lost his teeth ; ^ describes the state of his soul and of his constitution ; his sins and his boils ; his gravel, his scurvy, his colic, and his fasts, his prayers and his Presbytery journeys ; his travail over Hebrew accents, his fears from Satan, and his perplexity when the dead-bell fell in the silence of the night, and rolled tingling downstairs with significance that made him quake ; and all his troubles from cantankerous elders and a censorious flock. Yet notwithstanding much that seems extravagant to us and melancholy in Mr. Boston, he was a man of ability and of great influence in his day ; he was a powerful preacher of the grim school, the representative of a prominent type of thought and feeling ; he moved the hearts and expressed the faith of a large proportion of the people throughout the century, who thumbed his Crook in the Lot and his Fourfold State with endless edification. Peasants and farmers read them by their peat fires, and shepherds on the solitary silent hills ; his smaller works were the favourite chapbooks of pedlars, and the twelve portly tomes that contained his theological expositions were found in many a manse library and on the book shelves of every Seceding minister long after the century was closed. ^ Ramsay's Scot, and Scots, ii. ; Caldwell Papers, ii. 262 ; Carlyle's A^Uo- biography, p. 47. ^ 1730. — "Thursday I spent in prayer and fasting . . . and whereas I had before put my teeth in a box for preservation, I put another into it that same day." — Mevioirs, p. 459, p. 509. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 347 A not less typical minister of those days was Mr. Koljert Wodrow — the historian of the Church. Not an old man, for he died in 1734 at the age of fifty-five, in his manse of the peaceful parish of Eastwood, when Glas<^'-a.Tt's Sketches of Highlands, 39: "This crime has become less frequent since the strictness of Chun: discipline has softened." At Inverness Court of Justiciary, from 1747-17 nine women hanged for child murder, since 1763 only one woman condemned ^ Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsmen, ii. 554 ; Robert Burns and Ayrsh Moderates, a Correspondence, 1883 (privately printed). For a fair estima' Moncreiff's Life of Er shine, p. 61 ; Cunningham's Church History. ^ Principal Shairp's Burns {English Men of Letters), y>. 47. ' RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 365 to have tliuir IViciids at tlieir genial .'•:uj)ji(Ts on Sundays, or alter raniily wonsliip at lioine to pass through th(^ dimly light<'d streets to briglit gatherings of gentlemen in the Ihits.' Lord Cockburn gives his tine memories of tliat most Kvangelical of divines anil most well-bred of gentlemen'" — Sir Harry Moncreiff — who at 9 o'clock of the Lord's day had his " family exercises," and entertained his friemls thereafter to roast(!d hens, a goblet of wine, and wholesome talk. It is true that stricter persons mourned over such degenerate city -ways. And it was noted with sadness that the streets were not silent and deserted on the Sunday as of old, tliat the people walked in the Helds and Castlehill, that barbers^ trimmed and carried home on the Lord's Day the gentlemen's wigs ; that the churches were not full as once they were, and it became as fashionable for gentry to stay away from worship as it had formerly been for them to attend it."* Tudifference to religious forms, with more hixity of talk, i'aith, and morals, was lamented as the prevailing mark of these latter days.^ A reaction set in, however, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A wave of evangelicalism passed over Scotland, submerging the stagnant " moderatism," and left as ^ Cockburn's Memorials of his Time, p. 42. ^ Creech's Fugitive Pieces ; Mackenzie's Life and Writings of John Home. ' Plaintive appeals against the custom of employing barbers to dress wigs on Sabbath were issued, warning i'ellow - barbers against conduct "which encourages others to walk abroad and recreate themselves to the ruin of their souls." "Blush," writes a pious barber, "and disdain as candidates for im- mortality to countenance that practice which must draw down the vengeance of Heaven upon you." — Letter to the Barbers and Hairdressers labouring at their ordinary Employment on the Lord's Day, by Jas. Robertson, 1794 ; Friendly Advice to Barbers dressing 0)i the Lord's Day, by several of the same business, Edin. 1788. •• On neglect of worship by gentry and people of fashion, see Creech's Fugitive I'ieces ; Slat. Acct. Scotland, xi. 165. A minister bitterly says : "In this part of the country it is only fashionable for the low classes of the people to attend the church ; the higher orders are above the vulgar prejudice of believ- ing it is necessary to worship the God of their fathers," x. 605. Several ministers complain that the funds for the poor are sorely diminished by neglect of gentry to attend ordinances. ' Topham says with some wildness of statement, " Deism is the ruling principle in Scottish society." — Letters from Edinburgh, p. 2;i8 ; see Cockburn's Memorials, p. 44. The likelihood is that "Scottish society" speculated on religion too little rather than too much. 366 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY its deposit a revival of religious zeal and earnestness in the land .with a sterner theological tone, which — partly for good, partly for evil — renewed the traditional religious character of Scotland. Ill It is not uncommon to speak of the Scots as a priest- ridden people," as entirely under the domination of their ministers, who terrorised them by discipline in this world and by threats of the next. It is in this light that Buckle especially has represented the Scottish populace.^ The reverse is far nearer the truth, and the ministers may rather be called a " people-ridden clergy." For this the evidence is not far to seek. The peasantry were not a class to be domineered over by Church or by State ; with their pugnacious piety they were too independent for that. Theirs was a dour temper, fostered by opposition to the powers that were in Covenanting days. At that period the ministers were few and fugitive ; ordinances were in the hands of the Societies, who, when grave matters were to be discussed, had no hesitation in putting the minister outside the door while they arranged affairs within. These Societies existed in every parish in the Whiggish counties, and were formed of men who met for prayer or conference. At these meetings a " question was put " for debate on theology or Scripture. Clad in their big blue bonnets and rough woollen plaiding, they would stiffly dispute each point for hours at their secret gatherings in barns or farms. These religious unions remained in full force long after the Eevolution, composed chiefly of the Cameronians who kept by the Solemn League and Covenant, who disowned the uncovenanted sovereign, would take no oath of allegiance, and would pay no cess. They were thoroughly organised in a network of associations throughout the country. Each " Society " contained ten or twelve members, who met once a week ; a combination of these societies formed an "Association," which met once a month ; and these again were united in what were called " Correspondences," each of which was known by its ^ Buckle's ^is^. of Civilisation, vol. ii. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 367 locality, such as the " Correspondence of Kithsdale," of Annaiidale, or of Fifeshire. These conclaves met every year, when grievances were ventilated, knotty points unravelled, and religious rigour and self-confidence were maintained. These men and societies proved thorns in the side of westland and south - country ministers, whose ministrations tliey attended only if they pleased them. But it was not necessary to be a " Society man " to be a critic. Every word the clergyman said was noted, everything he did was scrutinised. Did he give only one sermon on a sacrament Monday ? Did he keep a Fast which the State ordained, and thus show Erastianism ? Did he take the oath of abjuration ? — then " there was a casting at the ministers." ^ This oath, imposed on both Episcopalian and Presbyterian ministers in 1712, was a matter of abomination, for while it abjured the dynasty of Stewart, it swore support of Protestant heirs to the throne who must be members of the Church of England. Elders resigned their posts with a minister who had taken it ; the people often would not have communion if they thought he would take it. " How can we take sacra- ment," said they, " when he may take it by Lammas ? " We see poor Mr. Boston, when he resolved not to swear, and knowing there was a penalty imposed on clergymen that refused of £500, disponing all his tenements at Duns on his son, and all his goods and gear on his serving man and precentor. Next we see him at the last day for swearing with his resolution fast oozing out. " I spent much time in prayer and fasting," he relates, " but I found my courage for suffering not such as at the former taking of the oath." However, the fear of the people proved greater than the dread of the law or loss of fortune.^ The churches of the " clear " ^ Boston's Memoirs. Mr. Pollock, the minister of Tynron in 171."), desires to get free from his charge because, in regard to the divided circumstances of the parish, he could never have a communion there, that the elders and he have for a long time differed anent the lawfulness of keeping fasts and thanksgivings appointed by the Church and State upon solid grounds, as also about the oath of abjuration, and that he hath no elders or deacons since he took the said oath, that he has not above thirty, forty, or fifty hearers for ordinary, notwith- standing the largeness of his parish. — Penpont Prcshy. Records. * Memoirs. Two-thirds of the Presbyterian ministers took the oath, but very few Episcopal ministers ; no one, however, after all their mental agony and 368 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V ministers (those who were " clear " being in favour of it) were deserted by the people, who would not receive the elements from one who dared to " take the crown off Christ's head and put it on the Queen's." It is with no little bitterness that Boston speaks of the natives of Ettrick as turbulent spirits, " great swearers, but praying persons," "naturally smart and of un- common assurance, self-conceited, and censorious to a pitch, using an indecent freedom with Church and State." In their discomfort the much vexed and nagged ministers sometimes speak strongly of their parishioners, especially of the " society " class, as " ignorant and of a pharisaic set, highly conceited of themselves, and despising others," and in his wrath a greatly provoked minister classes them with " worldly worms and profane wretches — enemies of the Church." -^ After patronage was reinstituted in 1712 there were frequent outbreaks of stubborn resistance. Incessant riots and tumults took place when clergy were inducted whom the people had not chosen, and many churches remained vacant for years while the heritors placidly and patiently pocketed the stipends. Presbyteries were sometimes too much in sympathy with the people, and more often too much afraid of them, to ordain unwelcome presentees ; and the General Assembly at last was forced to appoint what were called " riding committees," to travel to parishes where local ministers would not, or dared not instal. Another matter brought forth the independence of the " priest-ridden " people. In 1736 the famous Porteous Kiot occurred in Edinburgh with its subsequent civil and ecclesiastical strife. Captain Porteous of the Town Guard had fired on the mob who were trying to rescue George Wilson, a smuggler, therefore a popular hero, and some people were killed. After having been sentenced to death Porteous was reprieved, but the infuriated mob, dragging him from his refuge in the Tolbooth jail, hanged the poor wretch in the Grassmarket on a dyer's pole which projected from a shop. Thereupon the Govern- ment ordered a proclamation to be made in every pulpit before perplexity had to pay the threatened forfeit. — Burton's Hist, of Scot. 1689- 1748, vol. ii. pp. 44-55. The oath was modified in 1719. 1 Hog of Carnock's Life, p. 99 ; Wodrow's Correspondence, Sept. 4, 1709. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 369 sermon 011 the tirst day of each month for u whole year, in which the perpetrators of the crime were comnuuuleil to give themselves up, and all who sheltered them threatened with heavy penalty. This preposterous order was greeted as blaspliemous desecration of the Sabbath, every minister who read it was accused of celebrating the death of a murderer before the death of the Saviour. People would not take comnmnion with any man who " put Ciesar above Christ," and many left the churches never to return.^ It was a perplexing time for the luckless clergy, for many had themselves as nnich scruple at reading the proclamation as their con- gregjxtion had against hearing it ; many disobeyed, but others complied, fearing to offend the law but dreading more the face of the people. Eminently discreet was that minister who before reading it told the congregation to withdraw from the kirk, for though he was bound to read it, they were not bound to listen to it, on which they left in a body. In all these scenes the submission of the clergy to the people was more conspicuous than the docility of the laity to the Church. In estimating the harshness and tyranny of the Church it is invariably forgotten, but should be remembered that it was really a tyranny of the laity more than of the clergy, for a Kirk -Session contained about six elders, representatives of the people, to one minister who must carry out the decisions. Brought up in stern theology of Calvin, accustomed to preaching which was purely doctrinal, to hear sermons which taught that salvation was won by trusting to the atonement and in making a bargain with Christ, the people in many districts despised and detested all " legal preachers," who taught morality and dared to suggest that to do the duties of life formed an element of Christianity.- They loved men who pandered to their taste, who denounced all teaching of morality as causing men to trust in their " filthy rags of self righteousness." They loved a teacher rustic like themselves, familiar in his style, rude and uncultivated in manners and mind, and they * Eleven Seceding congregations were chiefly formed of these malcontents. * "I observe," says Colonel Blackadder, "when a young man sets up as a high-flyer, and to win applause and a name for strictness among country people, the best way to attain his end is to run down locality and morality." — Life of Blackadder, p. 491. 370 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY chose such when they had power, or created turmoil in the parish when such they could not get.^ The same spirit of independence and tyranny of the people showed itself in the Highlands. There certain individuals often utterly illiterate gained prominent positions from their piety and their austerity of life and doctrine, and were looked upon as peculiarly holy and specially guided by divine grace. Their words were listened to with superstitious reverence, their oracular utterances became memorable, their unctuous Gaelic prayers seemed of miraculous efficacy, and they were credited with power of foreseeing the future, as by spiritual second sight. Such persons were known as " the Men," in contradistinction to the mere ministers. If the clergymen were not gospel and orthodox in their eyes, they quitted the kirks with disgust, and held meetings for prayer and discourse with the people who docilely followed them, and listened, as to the voice of inspiration, to these morose spiritual despots.^ At the kirk these sanctimonious " ]\Ien " took their station near the " lattron " or precentor's desk, their huge cloaks down to their heels, napkins bound round their heads, and their long hair hanging down on their shoulders, to show how they despised the fashion of combing. "While the service went on they kept up a muttering nasal whisper — either of comment or spiritual communing — for their position and reputation required them to preserve a peculiarly devout and critical air before the congregation.^ Greatest were they at the Fellowship Meeting on the Friday before the communion. ^ "Lord President Dundas told tlie General Assembly how a number of candidates preached for a parish in Clydesdale without success. At last a young man took their fancy. 'Sir,' said the patron, 'there are two nails in the puljjit, on one of which the late worthy minister used to hang his hat. If you put your hat on the right one it will please, none of the others have hit upon it.' He did so, and got the place. Another candidate preached with a bad cold ; he had forgot his handkerchief, and was obliged to wipe his nose with his hand. This was a popular action, and the people fixed upon ' a homely lad that blew his nose with his loof.' "^Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsmen, ii. 354. ^ Auld's Men and Ministers of the North. " Men of prayer and admitted at the throne into singular intimacy of fellowship, evidenced by their obtaining special direction in the perplexities of others, and in receiving intimations of the Lord's mind as to the present and future events of providence.'' — Kennedy's Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire, pp. 78, 112. ■^ Sage's Memorabilia Do7nestica ; Anld's Men of Noiih. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 371 The miiusler presiiled, and after devotional exereises one of the men was asked " to propose a question " — just as in the old Galloway " Societies." Thereupon some stood up and gave out the question for discussion — such as election or justification — and then the debate went on. Though some of the most eminent and feared " Men of the North " could neither write nor read either English or Gaelic, their acquaintance with Scripture was marvellous and formidable. Even the minister found his own sermons freely criticised in his presence by men whose inspiration was drawn from a higher source than human books. The minister, if he were Evangelical, meekly listened and humbly learned ; the minister, if he were a Moderate, listened with chagrin, but bore the self-confident sanctified talk which he in his soul despised. At last in self-defence the clergy in Sutherland made the Fast Day on the Friday instead of Thursday, to put an end to the cavilling meetings at which the Fast Day preachers were unceremoniously overhauled ; but the people rose and com- plained that their " time of preparation for the solemnity was shortened," and the Assembly thought it prudent to let them have their own way. These " Men of the North " were all- powerful through successive generations up to our own day, but they passed in 1843 from the Church of Scotland to the Free Church.^ From Cameronian Societies in the beginning of the century to Fellowship meetings at the end of it, the temper of the people was obviously not that of a " priest-ridden " race. IV Any review of the religious life of the country would be incomplete if it left unnoticed tlie dissenting element, wliich was one of the most characteristic features in Scottish social life. The Church of Scotland had undisputed sway in the land ^ Morren's Annals of General Assembhj. The minister of Llanbryde, evidently a " Moderate," bitterly states that in his parish " the only pleasure of the people consists in numbers from ten to twelve meeting to converse on the abstrusest points of Calvinism, praying, and lamenting the degeneracy of the age." — Stat. Ace. Scot. ix. 177. "The Men," Quarterly Review, vol. Ixxxiii. 372 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY for many years after the Revolution. Except the small, un- obtrusive sect of Episcopalians and the discontented Cameronians under the leadership of Macmillan, the minister of Balmaghie, there was practically no dissent. The authority of the Church was undisputed ; the position of the parish ministers was with- out a rival. In 1737, however, there was formed the first grave Secession from the Kirk. The General Assembly in 1732 had passed an Act, among many others, dealing with the never - ending, ever - renewing troubles connected with patronage ; and according to this Act, the right of election was to pass into the hands of the heritors and elders of a parish, in the event of patrons not presenting a minister to a vacant charge within six months. This law, because it utterly ignored the interests and wishes of the parishioners, caused the utmost disaffection among the people and their leaders in the Church. The Eev. Ebenezer Erskine denounced in the Assembly this " respect for persons with gold ring and gay clothing beyond the man with vile raiment and poor attire." For acting contumaciously against ecclesiastical authority Erskine and three other ministers were deposed ; and in 1733 these four stalwart friends of the people met in a little thatched cottage near Kinross, and after a day spent in prayer and fasting, they formed themselves into the " Associate Presbytery." The Church, startled at the effect of its hasty and harsh deposition of faithful but stubborn ministers, tried to undo their action and recall them to their fold, but they shook the Erastian dust from their feet, and in 1737, with the powerful accession of Ebenezer Erskine's brother Ealph, the Associate Synod was formed, and began its career as a powerful sect. Now began a new phase of Scottish religious life, and the " Seceders " became a distinct type of men in Scotland, adding a bitterness to religious spirit and an animation to the social life. Adherents followed the Secession leaders with keen ardour. When little meeting-houses and manses were to be built they carted stones to rear the walls, carried on horse- back the loads of heather or turf to thatch the roofs, and fuel, or " elding," of wood or peat, for the fires. To be present at the communions, where the few faithful ministers served, devotees would travel thirty or forty miles, and gather from thirty RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 373 parishes around to hear the Word. In Fifeshire they a8seiiihle. 326. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 379 divisions, which has its humorous us well as its pathetic aspects, we come to another rupture in that communion, which divided it into new bodies with separate individual life and functions with the ease of a polype. This new dispute was to split the IJurgher Seceders into " Old Lights " and " New Lights." The Burgher, or Associate Synod, while still re- taining the Solemn League and Covenant as a standard, declared that they wouhl not require its meml>ers and ministers to approve of civil compulsion in religious matters, or to hold that the magistrate should interfere to punish error. When this resolution was carried the minority, stanch for the perpetual obligation of the Covenant, quitted in disgust the apostate Synod for issuing a Declaratory Act so false to its creed. They assumed the name of Original Burghers, but were popularly known as the " Old Lights," in opposition to those who pretended to have " new light " on the Solemn League and Covenant. In this way the " Auld Lichts " originated — a body which was one of the most stubborn and self-convinced of little religious communities still lingering on obscurely in perfect convictioiu Amid all this strange, perplexing maze of dissent, multiply- ing into manifold sections — Presbyteries, Synods, General and Associate, Old Lights and Xew Lights — there are brought out curious phases of Scottish life and character. All these scenes, all these quarrels and controversies over points which are now pointless, and questions not worth answering, enable us to understand the temper of the old Covenanters in their stubborn resist i^'^e to Prelacy and the State.^ "! et another sect emerged from the disquiet of the times and the grievances of the people in being deprived of their election of a minister. This became known as the " Relief Kirk." It had its origin in the deposition of Thomas Gillespie, the minister of Carnock, for disobeying the orders of the Assembly to ordain a presentee unpopular with the parishioners. It was a harsh, high-handed measure, dealt by the Moderates in 1746 at a good man, while others as con- > Registrar of Stirling Kirk-Session at the end of 1743, records : — "If any names are wanting in this year, it is to the disorderlyness of the Associates who will not pay their dues." Seceding ministers forbade their followers using the parochial register or recognising the Church. — Rogers' Social Life, i. 138. 25 ^ Struthers' Hist, of the Relief Church, p. 93. 2 Gillespie at the end of his life expressed his wish that the Relief body shoul return to the Establishment. ^ In 1765 there were 120 meeting-houses attended by 100,000 persons. 380 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY tumacious as himself were left unpunished. As he arrived at his manse gate the day after his fate was decided, he told his wife, who went to meet him at the gate, that he was no longer minister of Carnock. " Well, Thomas," said the brave woman, " if we must beg I'll carry the meal poke." ^ On Sundays, behind his manse, great crowds attended his ministrations, and all alone he worked, visited, preached, holding communions in the fields, exhorting seven tables one after another, preach- ing on Fast Days, till his voice was worn, for he had none to help or countenance him. At last in 1761, with Mr. Thomas Boston of Jedburgh, son of the author of the Fourfold State, and Collier, an English dissenting minister, he founded a! Presbytery, " for the relief of Christians oppressed in their : Christian privileges." Thus was the Belief Church added to. dissent, yet not directly hostile to the Establishment, without- the bigotry and fanaticism of the more pronounced Seceders.^ Dissent, much as it is to be regretted as disastrous to peace, unity, and charity, was not without its advantages to the Established Church. For it carried off the ill-humours oi the religious body into congenial sects, and gave every one who was opinionative, fanatical, and stubborn, a communiori where he could find rest for himself and give no trouble tc others. If persons with such moods and temperaments had continued in the Church they would have perpetually disturbec its quiet, and seriously hampered its progress and develop- ment.^ The fathers of the Secession, the Erskines, Moncreiff, wh( was Laird of Culfargie, and others, were men of gentle birth although, according to the way of their time, they were plain mannered, rustic in style, and broad in speech. But those wh( came after them — like those who succeeded Wesley am Whitfield in England — were of common origin, of the weaver cotter, and small farmer class, sons of what biographer vaguely call "poor but pious parents." Nor was their educa; tion such as to give them polish and culture. Mr. Wilsm I RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 381 was appointed the " professor of divinity " by the Associate Seceders, his little thatched house was his college, and the students paid their fees of five shillings, or ten shillings if they were able to pay it. In Abernethy Mr. Moncrcifl" also taught a few of these humble lads, who lodged cheaply in the cottages around, and after the session was over worked at their trades or in the fields at home. When licensed to preach the probationers travelled from place to place, long distances, to fill vacant pulpits for a Sunday, usually trudging on foot, sometimes on a meagre pony, carrying their leathern saddle- bags containing their papers, sermons, and scanty wardrolje. When a poor man decided to train his son for the ministry he would say to him, " I'll carry you on till I put you on the saddle-bags."^ Arrived at his destination, he would lodge from Friday to ^londay with some member of the little congregation, get liis fee, and start on the road again. The " placed minister " had hard toil : three sermons on Sabbath, another on Wednesday, communions which with sermons, addresses, " evening direction to participants," continued from ten in the morning till late in the night, visiting, catechising, and humouring the most exacting of folk. The manners of these pastors were rustic, their ways uncouth, their Scots the broadest with the much revered " drant " or drawl of gospel-preachers of old, with quaint, familiar speech to God and man. But grace in manner was considered by many worthy Seceding ministers and elders a hindrance and an offence in those who had the grace of God.^ In course of time there were in the ranks of the Seceders men of considerable learning, of no little ability ; possessed of the saving grace of humour to temper their old-fashioned dogmas. The Burghere and Anti- burghers, the Eeformed ' Macfarlane's Life 0/ Lawson, p. 52. - In 1761 tlie Anti-burglier Synod cautioned students against "an aiTected pedantry in style and pronunciation and politeness of expression in delivering the truth of the gospel, as by a using the enticing words of men's wisdom inconsistent with that gravity that the weight of the gosi>el requires, and as from proceed- ing from an affectation to accommodate the gospel in point of style, which, if not prevented, may at length issue in attempts to accommodate it also in point of matter to the corrupted style of a carnal generation. " In 1784 the Burghers' Synod expressed concern at a "growing fondness for false refinement and abstract reasoning in handling the truths of the gospel." 382 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Presbyterians (who had been Cameronians) fostered division and dogmatism in the people ; but without them, and without the little body of Glassites, founded by the simple-hearted minister of Tealing in 1730, — with its abstinence from things strangled, the kiss of greeting, the love feasts of homely broth which gained for it the vulgar title of " the kail-kirk " — Scot- land would have lost some of its quaintest aspects of social life. In the religious life of Scotland of the eighteenth century Episcopacy plays an inconspicuous part, though in its social life it formed a picturesque element. Its influence was confined to , the small number of its adherents in the Lowlands and the! far-off members north of the Forth. It was a quiet and unemotional communion, which stirred no great interests, formed no active movement ; and as the sect was so closely allied with the Jacobite party, and under the bann of severe laws, it felt that it was safest when it was least heard of, and most prosperous when it was obscure. When Presbytery was re-established, the Episcopal ministers who would not conform to the new rigime, or were not allowed to continue in their places in defiance of it, were reduced to sore straits to earn a livelihood. Many, as we have seen were forced to seek employment in trades ; others became chaplains in Jacobite families, where for £5 a year, " with board and washing," they tutorised the children, said grace at meat read the prayers, and went the household errands. Not a few were reduced to destitution and unable to work or to fine: work, were forced to seek charity from the parish poor-box tc save their families from starvation.^ In the north and easterr: counties many were able to retain their livings, partly because the Church had no Gaelic preachers to put in their place partly because the people were too much in their favour t( allow them to be ousted from their posts; but others stil; hovered round their old parishes, holding furtive services ii private houses and barns to their scattered flocks, while thi ^ "1722, Sept, 30 : Given by the minister's order to an Episcopal ministe £l:10s. Scots." "Aug. 18, 1732: To an old distressed Episcopal ministe 10 Scots." — Kirk-Session of Morham, Ne%v Stat. Acct. of Scot. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 383 l^esbyteries issued their " letters of horning " against these " intruders " and " meeting-house keepers." In several towns these preachers had some small lodgings in which they converted a room into a chapel.' In 1716 there seems to have been in Edinburgh no fewer than twenty-two of these P^piscopal ministers somehow atUiched to ten unqualilied " meeting-places," which were located in high Hats in dingy wynds, to which of a Sunday the loyal adherents ascended, picking their steps on the dirty turnpike stairs. Simple was the equipment of these chapels: two bedrooms were united by the wooden partition being removed ; a desk, a few chairs or forms, on which postures were miscellaneous. The stipends were small, only £10 or £12 a year; the collections were mean, and the seat rents of a shilling or so annually barely paid the house rent." Few of these men had taken the oath of allegiance, and they were, therefore, liable to punishment as " unqualified " preachers ; and even when obliged to pray for the sovereign and for the royal family, they made their petitions so equivocal that the authorities could not decide whether Hanoverian or Stewart was being interceded for, and Providence and the preacher only knew. The Bishops vanished into obscurity and fell into poverty, the people watching with derision the passing of the " fourteen blackbirds," as they nick- named the good prelates. Troubles which aitiicted the ministers were not escaped by the luckless schoolmasters who were at the mercy of the new Presbyterian rulers ; they must now subscribe the Confession of Faith or be dismissed. In vain one would plead that " he had no time by reason of severall divertisements to consider it fully ; " or that " he had considered a great part of it, but not so fully as he would wish to do." They were remorselessly expelled, though there were few to take tlieir places,^ and driven to beggary. The Episcopalian service had usually been, as in olden times, ' Chambers' Domestic Annals, iii. 366. Twenty-one of them were fined £20 sterling each — one-half to informer, other half to poor — for officiating without qualifying by taking the oaths. If too poor to pay they sought refuge in the Abbey Sanctuary for debtors. — Arnot's Criminal Tibials, p. 343. - Ruddiman, the grammarian, pays for two years' seat rent forty shillings Scots, or 3s. 4d. sterling. — Chalmers' Life of linddiinan, p. 37. * At Insch in 1709 ; at Inverurie in 1710. — Davidson's Inverurie, p. 424. 384 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY extempore effusions, though some ministers had ventured timidly to read the English prayers ; but in 1709 the whole soul of Edin- burgh people, ministers and magistrates, was agitated by the news that Mr. James Greenshields, an Episcopal though " qualified " minister, read the English Service-book in the dwelling-house, of which the rent was £6, in a close, which he had made into meeting-house by removing partitions between the rooms.^ The landlord proceeded legally against him for spoiling his house by breaking his walls ; the magistrates proceeded against him for using Prelatic books and breaking the law. It is true that no statute existed forbidding the Prayer-book, yet the Court of Session curiously supported the magistrates' con- tention, that " There needs no law condemning the English service, for the introduction of the Presbyterian worship explodes it as inconsistent," and Greenshields was lodged in the Tolbooth jail, where he remained for a year, till the House of Lords ordered his release, and in 1711 reversed the Scots' decision against him. But nothing could allay the popular and Presbyterial indignation against the Liturgy — even a private chaplain might be threatened if he did not desist from reading it in a drawing-room or hall of a mansion. The Earl Marischal's chaplain was prosecuted by the magistrates and threatened by the Lord Advocate ; Lord Carnwath was menaced that his house would be burnt over his head if he did not prevent his chaplain reading the iniquitous book, so the preacher discreetly departed.- In Glasgow the conduct of one Mr. Adam Cockburn was a subject of great tribulation.^ This preacher — " an immoral and profane wretch," says Mr. Wodrow, " and very silly " — set up his worship in an obscure wynd ; and the populace of that austere city watched him in angry blue-bonnetted ^ Burton's Hist, of Scotland (1688-1748), vol. i. ; Burton's Criminal Trials, ii. 295 ; Defoe's Hist, of Union, 1712 (Defoe, though keen dissenter, favours the prosecution of Greenshields, the Episcopal dissenter, for his insistence on religious liberty) ; Lockhart Papers, i. 349. ^ Chambers' Domestic Annals, iii. 366. ^ Wodrow's Correspondence, i. 562. The introduction of English Service- books, whether by " profane wretches " or honest men, was equally a source of soul-searching with worthy Wodrow. "The Lord pity us!" the good man exclaims, when recording places where the woeful book was used. — Analecto. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 385 crowds, as he in his ^own audaciously read the English ser- vice in the churchyard over an English soldier's gi-ave ; they watched him coming down the narrow close in the Gorbals, where he had in his canonicals baptized a liaby with English forms ; and the boys all trooped around him and followed his retreating footsteps, shouting that favourite derisive nickname of the curates, " Amen ! " " Amen ! " When even the children cried out it was impossible for the people to keep silence at this modified idolatry, and to prove their pious zeal they one August evening in 1714 pulled down the humble chapel, tore the offending gown to tatters ; and the terrified minister and his wife tied for their lives. Thus exit " Amen " Cockburn, his " minced oaths," and his impudent flaunting of I'relacy. Public Episcopal worship ceased for years to come in the orthodox royalty of Glasgow, and the coaches of my Lord Mar and Jacobite country gentlemen ceased to rumble along the roads of a Sabbath morning to worship God erroneously, and to scandalise the citizens as they went by the Trongate to the true kirk.^ It is evident that even the peasantry who were well affected to Episcopacy preferred it with the olden simplicity when it was the Kirk established, and, loving nothing that was English, they cared not dearly for the English Service-books. In the North many of their ministers continued forms as simple as any Presbyterian Church. At Auchterarder in 1711, where a funeral service was read with canonical gown, the Episco- palians of the crowd were as keen as the Presbyterians in the riot of the kirkyard, and they chased the " liturgyman " from the grave.^ Surplices were not worn by the ministers ; and plain * The event called forth a popular song of triumph, entitled, " Downfall of Cockburn's Meeting-House," set to a favourite air : — We have not yet forgot, Sir, How Cockburn's kirk was broke, Sir, The pulpit gown was pulled down And turned into nought, Sir. Tlie chess-boards they w^ere broke, Sir, Out o'er the window cast, Sir, With a convoy of holo hoi. Unto the streets were sent, Sir. etc. A'eio Book of Old Baliads, edit, by Maidment. ^ .Wodrow's Analeda, ii. 30. The Liturgy, "so far from being desired by the people of Scotland, that even those who frequent their meetings that are of 386 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY black gowns were used even by the bishops.-^ But gradually, as the Scots Episcopal body was thrown more and more into dependence on the English Church, services, postures, festivals conformed to English forms, and after the Union, in two years 1900 copies of the Prayer-book were sent from Oxford. For a few years things went quietly within the unobtru- sive Episcopal society. The law requiring the taking of the oath of allegiance was not harshly enforced, and whether Queen Anne or the Chevalier was prayed for in the insignifi- cant meeting-rooms was a matter of indifference both to the world and to monarchs. When, however, in the Eebellion of 1715 the Episcopal party allied themselves so closely with the Pretender's cause, and their laymen and preachers had shown themselves keen Jacobites, they were taken more seriously.^ With heavy hand the law fell on them, forbidding any minister who had not taken the oath of allegiance to perform service to a number of people exceeding eight, including his own family. Worse still became matters after the Piebellion of '45, in which all non-jurors were on the side of Prince Charles, and the great majority of Episcopalians were non-jurors. Jacobitism and Episcopacy in Scotland became closely identified, and in many places were almost synonymous, so that their meetings were regarded as nurseries of treason. To suppress them measures were carried on in right earnest, and executed by the soldiers of the Duke of Cumberland with brutality. In 1746 the law was made more stringent. The congrega- tion to which a non-qualified clergyman might preach was then limited to only four persons, and heavy penalties were laid on hearers who did not in five days inform upon an ofiend- Episcopal religious principles dislike it, and are with difficulty brought to hear it. Nay, in most parts they will not comply with it, but abandon those who read it, and throng after those Episcopal ministers that disuse it." — P. 37, Defoe's Hist, of Union, 1712. 1 Not till 1735 was the Prayer-book used in Aberdeen by all chapels, where Episcopacy had many followers. Even when it was adopted many alterations and excisions were made. — Journals of Bishop Forhes, etc., p. 172. - Burt's Letters, i. 284. Capt. Burt when he was present noticed that when the King was prayed for by name in the Litany " the people rose up as one in contempt of it, and women set themselves about some trivial action, as taking snuff, etc., to show their dislike." — Hid. i. 205; Jacobite, Lairds of Gash, p. 368. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 387 ing minister, while the minister himself who broke the law was made subject to six months' imprisonment for the first offence, and to banishment for life on the second. Soldiers scoured the north country, burning and wrecking these poor Episcopal chapels of thatched bams or huts. If the meeting- house stood apart from others, it was burned to the ground ; if it was attached to other cottages it was pulled down ; and the fugitive minister was forced to flee, sheltering in some friendly house or skulking in the woods, while his little cottage was left to the tender mercies of the plundering party.^ In the guise of a miller Mr. John Skinner escaped from his home — ^.just in time, for that very night it was surrounded, his poor possessions were plundered, and his thatched chapel was sacked. Still harsher were made the laws. The four persons to whom the non-juring minister was allowed to preach had been exclusive of his own family. Now, in 1748, this considerate proviso was withdrawn. Strange and pathetic expedients were used to obey the letter of the law, and yet to defeat its purpose. In Inverness the congregation assembled in a loft with a hole in the floor, through which the voice of the pastor rose from the ground floor, in which the tiny legal-sized flock was gathered. In other places people worshipped in a barn, the minister standing in the kiln ; or the room was divided by a thin partition through which the service could be heard by the worshippers on the other side.^ Eev. John Skinner adopted the expedient of reading the service at the window of his thatched chapel, the "gentles" being admitted within if ' Skinner's Hiit. of Church, ii. 663 ; Walker's Life of Skinner. - Pratt's Buchan, p. 125. John Peters convicted in an inferior Court in spite of the contrivance of drawing a screen across the room which concealed the congregation from view ; but through this they heard his discourse and made their responses. — Hume's Commentaries on Laic of Scotland, 1797, i. 573. In some cases in several districts the people were congregated at tlie mansions of gentlemen — noblemen — the service being performed in a large room on the ground floor, containing the clergyman, his family, and four persons. The window frames were removed so that those outside could hear ; or where two rooms were divided by folding doors, the doors were removed, and the legal flock was in one apartment and the rest listened in the other ; the passages and staircases were crowded with auditors, and the minister raised his voice to be heard by as many as possible. — Lawson's Scottish Epis. Ch., p. 302. 388 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY the day was wet or stormy, while the humbler sort sat or stood outside in the cold or rain, or sometimes ankle-deep in snow. The trial of certain offenders against the statute of 1748 by the Sheriff of Kincardine brings out a vivid view of these unfortunate hunted worshippers.^ Corporal Shaw had been sent to watch a house which he knew to be used by non-jurors for worship, and he deponed that when he went to the house there were crowded "in one room about forty persons young and old ; and in the same room was a closet in which he saw Mr. Young standing in an Episcopal habit with a book in his hand in which he was reading, and he heard him in the reading several times make mention of Paul the apostle. There were two women with Mr. Young in the closet, the door whereof was open to the room." Another witness stated that " between the doors of two rooms there was a plate and bag in which persons put offerings intended for the use of Mr. Young." By such little contrivances the poor parsons tried to retain their worship and evade the law. If, however, the eye of justice or the ears of informers were too vigilant for such harmless devices, they met in a barn or shed ; they had their baptisms and administered communion in the silence of a wood or the solitude of a glen." So long as the law was enforced in its harsh rigour, and a clergyman like Mr. Skinner was carried to jail for transgress- ing, these ministers had an irksome life of duty — for the services or festivals and Sundays were intolerably fatiguing.^ The repressive law of 1746 had forced them to administer communion to only four persons besides the family residing in any house, but by going through the several houses of their people in turn, they might have a fresh congregation of about ten or twelve persons. The Act of 1748, however, was much more restrictive — for it included the members of the household in the four permitted as a congregation, and it restricted the preacher to one house or chapel for his services, so that he was obliged to have service after service to new quartets the whole day long. ^ Stephen's Hitl. of Church of Scotland, iv. 336. ^ Hid., iv. 346 ; Lawson's Hist, of Scottish Episcopal Church, p. 302. ^ Walker's Life of J. Skinner, p. 46. I RELIGIOUS AXD ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 389 What labour this enUiilfd may be seen in the operations of the Episcopal minister of Peterhead. Before 1748 he could conduct sixteen different services in sixteen different houses — a sufliciently arduous task; but after 1748 he was forced to have new relays of his tlock from morning till night, because twice sixteen were not enough to administer communion to his people. This martyrdom undergone by the stalwart uon-jurors intensified their prejudices, and made them all the more bitter at their comfortable brethren who basely complied and took the oaths to Government.^ In the course of a few years these prosecutions and perse- cutions died away. As the fear of insurrection no longer frightened rarliament into intolerance; as the '45 became a mere romantic memory, and Jacobitism a harmless, romantic sentiment, the execution of the harsh laws was relaxed. With the death of Prince Charles in 1788 died all occasion for non-juring, and in 1792 old penal statutes against the Scotch Episcopalian ministers were repealed." The life of these oppressed clergy was one which appealed to no worldly or ambitious motives. They had not many adherents, and these were widely scattered, save in a few towns. Many of their members were of high degree ; many were rich ; but few were generous to their pastors. A wretched cottage, with walls of turf and clay, covered with heather, containing two, or at most three, little Ul-lighted rooms, from whose rude * The iniquitous trial and condemnation of the Rev. James Connacher, who in Highland wilds had preached and administered sacraments to large numbers and celebrated marriages, although he had not taken oaths to Government, took place in 1755. He was condemned to perpetual banishment, never to return under pain of death — sentenced under an old Act of Charles II. " forbidding celebration of marriage without being legally authorised by the Established Church of Scotland (at that period Episco[>alian) or by any other legal author- ity," and also for celebrating it in clandestine manner. Yet other dissenting ministers could freely marry, and persons could be married civilly by mere consent without any service at all. — See Arnot's Criminal Trials in. Scotland, p. 3-39, etc. ^ The Act repealing previous statutes required every Episcopal clergyman in Scotland to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles ; previous to this they had no creed or articles to which they subscribed, and only professed their faith in the Scriptures, declaring that nothing which is to be found therein or may not be proved thereby is to be taught as necessary to salvation. — Lawson's Hist., p. 340 ; Lee's Memorials of Bible Society. 390 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V rafters hung the family wardrobe, utensils, and provisions, furnished with a scanty " plenishing," the fire-place without a grate, and the peat kindled on the hearth — such was the usual dwelling of an Episcopal minister in rural parts of Aberdeen- shire or Forfarshire. A salary of £10 to £13 allowed him only wherewith to buy oatmeal, a little meat, some rough clothing for himself and his children. He might try to add to his paltry pittance by farming a few acres of land, in which, from lack of experience and skill, he lost his time, his heart, and his money. Such was the home at Linshart of the clever, genial, cultivated John Skinner, the writer of " Tullochgorum;" only a hut with a " but and a ben " — two poor rooms, in which there were fixtures of a box-bed and a dresser,^ In such circumstances of poverty, persecution, and religious outlawry it is not surprising that recruits to the ministry were not many. A precarious, dependent, and threadbare existence offered few inducements for the richer classes to seek ordination from the bishops, who, themselves miserably poor, had difficulty in living in their diocese or in travelling to con- firm their dispersed flocks.^ A bishop was at times glad, in dearth of candidates, to secure youths from crofts or crafts to educate and train in his own house, for those posts where the clergyman lived as meagrely as a cotter.^ More quietly, more comfortably lived the law-abiding clergy who took the oaths of allegiance. They were poorly paid ; they officiated in chapels of mean adornment ; but they were free from trouble save when the mob got excited at the heinous sound of the organ or " kist of whistles " booming from the ' Skinner's Life, by Walker, p. 46. - Great division in the unfortunate communion on questions whether the Church should be governed by a college of bishops, or by bishops in their special diocese — the difficulty of the latter plan was want of money. "Alas ! " writes Bishop FuUarton in 1720, "there is none of us able to maintain ourselvesin those districts, and the people will give little or nothing to subsist them ; nay, the very Presbytery that officiate among them are in great straits." — Lawson's msL, p. 231. ^ Bishop Macfarlane of Moray, " only able to get young men trained for the ministry by receiving them in his house as boarders. It enabled the bishop to select docile and promising young men from among the poor but worthy farmers and shopkeepers of the neighbourhood, who were always ready to dedi- cate one son at least to the ministry." — P. 129, Craven's ^^2S. Church in Moray. RELIGIOUS AXD ECCLESIASTICAL LIFE 391 building which no Tresbyterian foot would enter.' They might hear as they walked along the roads the rude boys calling the vulgar rhyme after them : " Pisky, Pisky, Amen, Down on your kuues ami up a;:;ain " ; but they passed on to their " whistling kirk," and the trouble passed from them. Tlieir doctrine was sensible if their teaching was dull ; their character was genial, and they were free from the foolish political and sacerdotal fanaticism that for long spoiled the teaching and made ridiculous tlie preten- sions of their non-juring brethren.' The bishops form an interesting though dim feature in the social and religious life of these days. Little seen, little heard of in the Lowlands, where Presbytery was supreme, in the northern parts they are seen flitting in primitive apostolic fashion and penury from district to district, visiting the diminutive congregations in Eoss or Moray, in the wilds of Sutherland or the bleak Orkneys. The worthy bishop, with his deacon, journeys on ponyback, wrapped in his check plaid and attired in quite unepiscopal habiliments, or travels on foot carrying a meagre wardrobe on his shoulders. Hard-working, hard-fiiring men, strong in the divine right of Prelacy, these simple-souled prelates in homespun maintained with a quaint dignity the honour of their oflfice and the poverty of their lot. Their arrival, full of gossip and adventures, in Jacobite man- sions far remote from city and society, was a pleasant break in the dire monotony of many a retired household, cut oft' by vile roads and wide straths from neighbours and by lack of post from news. Bishop Forbes, in 1767,^ travels by boat amidst the pelting sleet across northern rivers, stumbles along the bridle-path of moorland wastes on his pony ; now he breakfasts poorly in a roadside inn ; now in a manse where 1 "An organ was set up in one of the qualified meeting-houses in Edinburgh about the beginning of December (1747), and draws several persons thither out of curiosity." — Scots Ma rj., ix. 60S. 2 "The non-juring ministers have made a kind of linsey-woolsey piece of stuff of their doctrine by interweaving the people's civil rights with religion, and teaching tlicm that it is as unchristian not to believe their notions of govern- ment as to disbelieve the gospel." — Burt's Letters from the North, i. 206. ■* Journals of Bishop Forbes and Church in Eoss, by Craven, p. 128. 392 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Whig minister and non-juring prelate over whisky and oat- cakes discuss sharply which of the two is schismatic, and which Church is the " Schism." Arriving at the country-houses, where he was welcomed by chief or laird, there is, after repast and rest, service in the hall or dining-room, the confirmation of young members of the family ; or, mayhap, the rebaptizing of converts from the " Schism," as the Church of Scotland was called.^ When a bishop made his appearance some elderly gentleman might be persuaded of the error of his ways, that he had not properly received in infancy the chrism, because he had been " sprinkled in the Schism," and demurely would go through the operation of rebaptism at divinely appointed hands." The Church of Scotland suffered much contumely in these times from the dissenters at all hands — non-jurors denounced it as schismatic, and the Seceders renounced it as corrupt. Jacobite lairds were not theologians, they had absorbed more claret than divinity, and they cared not very much for, and they understood still less about, all the questions of orders and divine rights of Prelacy, urged by these estimable but not imposing personages ; but they were satisfied so long as it was opposed to Whiggism, and associated somehow or other with the divine right of the Stewarts. The questions which agitated the souls of their spiritual guides about the " Usages " ^ troubled them little, and soon passed away from mortal memory. Non-juring died out with the laws that provoked it, and the Episcopalian body entered on a quiet, untroubled course, losing its picturesque aspect, its quaintness, its foibles, but ministering unobtrusively to those to whom its adopted English services were congenial and its traditions were venerable. ^ It was a usual thing for rebaptism of a Presbyterian to be required. John Skinner, who was the son of a Presbyterian schoolmaster, was rebaptized before taking orders. — Walker's Life of Skinner. Even so early as 1704, Kobert Calder — author of Scots Presiyterian Eloquence Displayed — said that the Pres- byterial baptism was efficacious just as was a midwife's. - "I baptized," says Bishoi^ Forbes, "Mr. Allan Currie of Lishnach, a person of riper years, who in his infancy had been sprinkled in the Schism." — Journals of BisJiop Forbes and Church in Ross. ^ The "Usages," once subject of grave but forgotten discussion and division, were — 1. Mixing water with wine ; 2. Commemorating faithful departed in communion office ; 3. Consecrating elements by express invocation ; 4. Using oblatory prayer before administering. CHAPTEE X THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS AND TEACHING Although it has been indicated elsewhere what were the characteristics of Scottish preaching, and what the dogmas taught during the early part of the century, it is impossible to form a true conception of the religion which was taught by the clergy and beloved of the people till we study the devotional and theological writings of tlie time. These writings consist of sermons, single or collected, by popular divines ; pamphlets, tracts, catechisms for communicants, treatises on ecclesiastical controversies. Almost all that literature has passed into oblivion, save a few that are still cheaply reprinted for a class of readers one never meets. The venerable works are found in corners of old booksellers' shops without a purchaser, or rest in the highest and dustiest shelves of antiquarian libraries without a reader. They are not in stately folios or ponderous quartos, for ministers had neither time nor money for such bibliographical luxuries. They are insignificant pamplilets bound together in incongruous " collections," the printing is uncouth, the pages are brown and dingy, and seem to smell still of the reek of peat fires before which earnest readers perused them, and whose fumes have discoloured them. Though small in bulk, their titles are por- tentous ; and most copious are the ponderous prefixces in which reverend authors re-stated their important arguments, and refuted by anticipation every opponent in this their first and last work before they relapsed into obscurity of private life. 394 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V " Communion Addresses," sermons by Moderators of Synod, "Letters," " Eeplies," " Testimonies" — these constitute the staple of literature in an unliterary age. In them we find dogmas long since dead ; pious vituperation on antagonists long buried in dust and forgetfulness ; breathless insistence on questions which time has answered with a yawn. The type swarms with italics ; the style is deplorable in syntax and language ; the exegesis is absurd, quaint from its humorous lack of humour. To hear these voices of old Presbyters, so remote from us in feeling, interest, and speech, is like listening to husky ghosts speaking from the far-away past. In respect of doctrine these religious productions present few variations. The themes alter, the style varies, the dogmas are ever the same. The Fall, Original Sin, the total depravity of human nature, redemption of the elect, the woes of hell and joys of heaven, form the topics of the arguments and the subjects of their appeals. There is no hesitation in the utter- ance of opinions — for nothing is too reverent for their scrutiny ; nothing is too mysterious for their confidence ; and they explain and decide every question from the secret designs of Deity before the beginning of time to the fate of man to all eternity. Being all bound alike by the same Confession of Faith, which was interpreted in its most rigid sense, there could be allowed no diversity of opinion in the Church, and the hint that there should be any natural virtue or light in any soul was met by a " libel " for heresy. Once was there an alarm of dangerous error being taught and held in the Church. The writings of the French mystic, Antoinette Bourignon,^ had a fascination for some people, ^ Book entitled Apology for Antoinc Bourignon condemned as containing a mass of dangerous, impious, blasphemous, and damnable errors. — Acts of Assemhly, x. 1701. Presbyteries are recommended earnestly to use all effectual means to prevent the spreading of these and other errors, xii. 1709. Ministers ordained to preach most particularly against the said errors, and professors of divinity recommended to make full collection of the errors of Antonia Bourignan and of such other errors as reflect upon the nature, person, and offices of Jesus Christ, and to write a confutation of the same. — Ibid. ix. 1710. Madam Bourignon's writings were condemned — 1. As denying the perniission of sin and the infliction of damnation and vengeance for it. 2. Attributing to Christ a twofold human nature, — the one derived from Adam, the other from the THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS AND TEACHING 39s especially about Aberdeen ; and for preaching her heresies \)r. G. Garden,^ jin Episcopal minister allowed to ofHciate in St. Nicholas Church, and a man of some note in the North, was deposed by the Presbytery, and his book, entitled Ajyology for Antoiiie Bourifjium, was condemned as " a mass of dangerous and blasplK-mous heresies." In 1709, and again in 1710, the General Assembly recommended the Presbyteries earnestly to take all means to suppress such " soul poisoning " errors. In the alarm which these deadly opinions excited, an Act was passed that all ministers at their ordination should specially state that they abjured " Pourigniauism." This quite illegal oath was enforced till a few years ago — long after the heresy and the heretic were forgotten, and each clergyman solemnly renounced those errors, thougli he had not the faintest idea wliut they were, and was ignorant, while he was abjuring some whimsical notions, he was also rejecting some doctrines of rare beauty, finer than his own creed. At the beginning of the eighteenth century they were regarded as perilously demoralising, and it was noted as a clear proof of their malig- nant tendency that the tutor who murdered in 1714 Pailie Gordon's sons at Edinburgh had been a schoolmaster turned out of office for holding " the damnable errors " of Antoinette Bourignon. This, however, was but a passing local epidemic of error, prevalent amongst Aberdonian Episcopalians, which dis- appeared never to vex the country again ; and the reign of orthodoxy resumed its sway without a rebel to suppress. We may take as a fair exponent of old Scottish theology Professor Blackwell of Aberdeen, who in various works which are long forgotten presents to the world an orthodox scheme of the Universe. Dr. Blackwell had been minister of Paisley when in 1697" the famous witchcraft case broke out at Virgin Mary. 3. Denying election, and loading that act of sovereignty and grace with blasphemous aspersions, particularly cruelty and respect of persons. The asserting of the sinful nature of Christ's human nature ; asserting a state of perfection in this life. — See Apology for M. A. Bourignon icith Life of Antoine Bourignon [by G. Garden], 1699 ; Light of the World, by Antonia Bourignon [translated by Garden], London, 1696. ^ Garden was a naturalist also of considerable ability. Another naturalist of greater fame, Swammerdam, about 1680 gave up his favourite study and em- braced the unworldly life of Bourignon. — Bower's Hist. Edin. University, ii. 283. ■- Lees' Hist, of Paisley Abbey. 26 396 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Bargarran. None had been so able and energetic as he iu investigating the manifestations of Satan, and in wringing confession from the unfortunate victims of delusion ; therefore his " transportation " to Aberdeen was regarded as a sad loss at such a time of perplexity. In his theological works he, shows himself as inquisitive and energetic in investigating' still higher matters. In giving an account ^ of the origin ol the Universe he writes down the " motions " and " resolutions " of the Council of Trinity like a clerk writing the minutes ol a meeting of Presbytery. He tells how the Deity did from all eternity enjoy perfect blessedness in the " contemplation of His own perfection.' But the Divine Mind " presently " found that He could get " ar additional revenue of glory by creating rational creatures whc should sing eternal hallelujahs." " A motion was made " t( this effect in the Council of Three-in-One ; and " the aforesaic great motion was agreed to (Job. xxxv. 7, Eev. iv. 11)," — S( states Dr. Blackwell, who attributes to the deliberations of th( Trinity the procedure of the Presbytery of Aberdeen. H( next describes how the " great decreed moment " arrivec for " eternity to give place to a parenthesis of time ; " hov matter was created out of nothing ; he shows how angels wer( created in the third heaven, " of which the firmament i: the coarser side of the pavement " ; " these angels are th( rational creatures" who are created chiefly to sing "eternal hallelujahs " to delight the Trinity, and, in order that thei ' movements through space may not be impeded, their garment are made loose. The earth was then formed with the vegetable and the beasts thereon ; but in time the Trinity discovere( a great blank in the architecture of the world — which, it i: curious, had not been foreseen. To adjust this difficulty, Council of Three-in-One assembled, and man was created ^ Blackwell's Schema Sacrum, 1712, p. 4. In similar business mann( another divine describes the eternal counsel of the glorious Trinity " when Go proposeth and promiseth to the Son that upon condition He would undertal the work of the elect redemption, and i)ay their debt that He would redeem thei ' all." "This great transaction being thus agreed and concluded between Go the Father and His eternal Son, He is instated in His office of Mediator, etc."- Short Catechism concerning Three S^iecial Divine Covenants and Gospel Sermon by Alex. Hamilton, minister of gospel, Edin. 1714. I THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS AND TEACHING 397 firstly, to declare God's perfections ; to be a " covenanting^ party to transact witli the Trinity " ; to bring wild beasts to subjection " by the statcliness of his person, the niaji'Sty of his countenance, and the carefulness of his voice " ; and, lastly, to prevent angels supposing all things were created for themselves, to " produce double return of ilcclarative glory to God." Accord- ing to this scheme and all of those old schemes, everything was made and designed to give glory, and honour, and praise to the Deity, while in the other world angels and men have their employment through eternity, singing praises and hallelujahs. Such everlasting p;eans, it might be imagined, would be un- pleasant and wearying us to the satrap of Irux, in Voltaire's story, whom the King of Babylon cured of his insatiable love of praise by causing courtiers at every meal to laud every word he spoke, while his merits were sung from morning till night, witii full chorus and orchestra, and a cantata was per- formed in his honour with its incessant refrain — Que son nitrite est extreme ! Que des griices ! que de grandeur ! Ah combien nionseigneur Doit etre content de lui-menie ! The satrap, bored to death, loathed ever after the faintest sound of praise. In spite of all divine care, " Wonderful dispensation ! the principal heads of creation," angels and men — " the one created on the first day of the week, and the other on the sixth — and both sinning and falling (for anything that is notour to us) before the second Sabbath cometh to pass." " monstrous ingratitude ! " exclaims the divine ; " allowing the glorious Creator but one Sabbath to rejoyce over all His works as very good ! " ^ The Fall of man was the subject of endless ingenuity to justify the ways of God to men ; and it was the unfailing topic of every sermon from every pulpit. It was proved by preachers how " extremely kind " it was to make the fate of all future generations depend on Adam's conduct. " What could be more kind," it was urged, " than for the Creator to accept the obedience of one man in the room of * Schevia Sacrum, p. 167. 398 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY millions, and instead of exacting perfect obedience from each individual ? What could be more fair than to make a covenant with a being formed perfect, and therefore the most likely to keep the bargain, than to require it of each and all, who would be more liable to break it ? Surely if all man- kind had been present in the garden of Eden, they would unanimously have agreed to such a proposal, and have chosen Adam as their representative." It is thus that Professor Blackwell makes the difficulty vanish. Other proofs of the justice of the covenant come from other writers and preachers. No argument was more frequently used in sermons to show that the divine contract with Adam should righteously bind all his descendants, than that all his posterity were at the time present in the first father's loins, and consequently both present at the bargain and parties to it. If it were suggested that Eve, at any rate, could not be held as responsible for any engagement which Adam had made, the triumphant answer was given that the woman was not yet extracted from the man's side, and as she was a part of him " before her distinct formation " she was " a party to the great transaction." Thus was the arrangement proved to be kind, reasonable, and most just to all parties concerned. As to the extent of the ruin wrought by Adam's disobedience, in every preacher there is but one undoubted opinion. It amounted to total corruption of the whole nature of every man, woman, and child. Though this was part of the common creed of the Church, it is expressed with characteristic vigour and remorseless plainness of speech by the ministers. It was shown that no good thought or desire could possibly enter the heart of man, " for God could not leave His glorious image to hing so near the ugly and abominable effigies of the devil." V All acts of religion of the unregenerate man are " mere sham and dead forms of holiness " ; and if the natural man " should begin to relent, to drope a tear for sin and repent, he does nothing but sin ; for man, aye, even the new-born babe, is ti lump of wrath, a child of hell." " Oh, sad reckoning ! " ex- claims the preacher," " as many thoughts, words, actions, so ^ Schema, Sacrum, p. 217. 2 Boston's Fourfold State of Man, 1744, p. 99. I THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS AND TEACHING 399 many sins. Thou canst not help thyself. What canst thou do who art wholly corrupt ? Nothing hut sin." Every enjoyment that came from Providence could only go to harden the sinner, " could but feed to the slaughter of the mis- improver." ' It was considered the solemn duty of ministers to show their people that " unregenerate morality can never please God, and in tliis state of wrath and curse is loathed by Him.'" That such a creed should be taught in all its nakedness could not fail to have disastrous effects on the morals whicli the preachers contemned — leading some to melancholy despair, others to reckless vice, and in the " elect " to indifference as to conduct and duty. Not merely was man's soul defaced and totally depraved according to this creed ; his physical frame was also utterly marred. " The glorious beauty and comeliness of man in a state of innocence " was transformed to a " body hideous, monstrous, and vile, without its covering of cloathing." The beasts also partook of the universal blight, and became ferocious, noxious, and carnivorous ; while vegetables shared the curse, and weeds, brambles, thistles, nettles, sprang up and laid barren the ground.^ This was a doctrine which was often in the lips and minds of lazy Scots farmers, who left their crofts to grow luxuriant in weeds, pleading that they should not interfere with the divine curse on the soil for Adam's sin. The descriptions of the consequences of this total depravity in the other world called forth the vigour and picturesqueness of all preachers. That everlasting and infinite torture was deserved by all descendants of Adam, as " guilty lumps of hell," * is a fact they incessantly urge and prove. It is true that some divines winced at making dead infants share the terrible ^ Blackwell's Methodus Evangelica : Modest Essaij vpon the true Scriptural and rational fVay of preaching the Gospell, London, 1712, p. 157. ' Fair and Impartial Testimonif, p. 88. William Law, minister of Crimond about the beginning of the century, was deposed for saying in a Synod sermon that virtue was more natural to the human mind than vice. — Stat, Act. Scot. xi. 417. ^ Blackwell's Methodus Evangelica. * Meditations on the Love of Christ in Redeeming Elect Sinners, by that worthy, learned, and eminently religious Mr. Hugh Clark; sometime before his Death, which took place on I5th Feb. 1724. Glasgow, 1777. 400 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY " all righteous doom " ; for on this point their hearts were softer than their creed ^ and less consistent than their Con- fession. They waver ; but while they bade parents " comfortably remember that there is a Judge who showed great bowels of compassion towards little children," they state that such a doom was just. " Who," asked Professor Blackwell " can refuse that the cockatrice deserveth to be destroyed in the egg ? " " It is because of their original corruption," explained Mr. Boston, " as heirs of hell that they undergo the punishment of God. They were drowned in the deluge [when, as Mr. Webster says, ' the world died of dropsie '], consumed in Sodom by fire and brimstone, they have been slain with sword, dashed against stones, and still are undergoing ordinary deaths." Why is this, seeing they have committed no actual sin ? It is " just as men do with toads and serpents, which they kill at first sight before they have done any hurt because of their venomous nature ; so is it in this case." Such is one of the " observes " of Boston — a most affec- tionate parent, but most remorseless divine — in his Fourfold State of Man, which when preached as sermons brought some faithful hearers forty miles to listen in the little kirk of Ettriek, and when published was the gospel of the peasantry for genera- tions. Yet in its pages the word "wrath" occurs so often that in the edition before us the printer, in his despair at every W in all his types having been used up — italics, capitals, and romans — has been obliged to employ two Vs : thus, " Wrath." So far from speaking of the future destiny of man and of the world unseen, with its awful mysteries, with bated breath and whispered humbleness, the ministers positively revelled in descriptions of the woes eternal. They exhaust the wild luxuriance of their imagination in depicting its horrors and preaching the terrors of the Lord to awaken the souls. " Everything in God is perfect of its kind," ^ urges Boston, ^ " I do not say," writes Col. Blackadder, "that all children of believing parents will be saved. But this is too deep for me. We must not meddle with the sovereignty of God." — Life, p. 136 ; Boston's Fourfold State, p. 112 ; Gib's Sacred Contemplations, pp. 94, 183 ; Blackwell's Schema Sacrum, p. 163. 2 Fourfold State, p. 126. Discoursing at a communion on the text "Every- one shall be salted with fire," a preacher soothingly explains "that every THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS AND TEACHING 401 " and therefore no wrath can be so perfectly fierce as His ; the wonted force of the raj,'e of lions, leopards, and she -bears deprived of their whelps, is not sr.Hicieiit to give a scanty view of the power of the wrath of God." The devout fancy of the preachers, which was most lively on sacramental occasions, conjures up tremendous visions of the nether world, almost Dantesque in their weirdness and wildness. The topography of this eternal tragedy is somewhat uncertain, but it is con- sidered generally that the scene is to be found under the earth, for on this point, as Mr. James Durham had noted,' the instance of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram seemed clear — "a horrible place filled with darkness and torments declaring God's justice, as befits the devil's dwelling-place — full of fire of far more vehemency than ours is, being kindled by God's wrath within and without." Let us listen to Kalph P>skine as he prejy part of the body shall reappear was the fact that the whole body was en^'iif^'ed in the everlastiiifr covenant by niaii with God. " If, therefore," said the author of Jhtviii's Testimony opened in Forty Sermons} " worms destroy the body, and the birds fly away with a bit of my body that is lel't above the ground, the covenant being nuide with that bit, it's the Father's pleasure that I should lose nothing, that I should not lose the nail of my toe, for the covenant remains with my dust." No doctrine was more prominent in those dayn tlian that of Election, that God had chosen some out of the myriads of ' the lost to be saved for His own pleasure, and to redound to His own glory. Tliis dogma in itself is no peculiarity of the Scottish Kirk, being a doctrine common to all Calvinistic Churches. There were, however, ways in which this dogma was presented to the people characteristic of the ministers and peculiar to their type. Even the elect could only escape their righteous doom of endless torments by a sacrifice being made to God, by suflerings equalling in intensity those which the saved would otherwise have endured. This transcendent or infinite vicarious agony could only be borne by One who was at once God and man ; for the very least sin being committed against an infinite God is therefore infinite in its guilt, and deserves punishment infinite in its extent.^ Accordingly, the Son bore infinite pain from the " vindictive anger of God, pure wrath, nothing but wrath, the Father loved to see Him die." As a divine ^ forcibly put the case, " The Father gathered all the hells that all the elect would have suffered from all eternity, put them in vials wide as heaven and full of wrath, prest down and running over, put them in the Mediator's hand, while God squeezed out the gall and wormwood, and would not let Him stop till every drop was drunk off." "While the larger party of the Church held that Christ endured only the torment equal to that which would have been borne by the elect, others, including the " Marrow- men," Boston, and the Erskines, held that Jesus died for all (although only the elect could be saved), and therefore must > P. 234. ^ Gib's Sacred Contemplations, p. 276. ' " All the divines conclude that He suffered the pains of hell." — Webster's Sacramental Scrmoiis, p. 145. 4o8 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY have borne the agony and woe and wrath equal to that which humanity past, present, and to come deserve to bear. In the preaching of that age, while many were moved to faith by the terror of God, many were also touched by the ineffable grace of Christ ; " affectionate preachers " turned their hearers to love and gratitude to One who bore so much for sinners, and appeals, tender, winsome, and often beautiful, came to make people, with tears in their eyes and affection in their hearts, move to a higher life. But the Father was ever inexorably just, to be feared : Christ alone was infinitely merciful, to be loved. In this grim theology the atonement is robbed of all its finer moral and religious meaning ; there is nothing to touch the spiritual nature, nothing to awaken reverence. It is treated as a legal transaction, in which God, Christ, and men are the several " parties " to a bond. The whole Calvinistic process by which Adam, as the representative of the human race, involved it in ruin, sin, corruption, and curse, and Christ, as representative of the elect, in their stead suffered and appeased God's wrath, is detailed in dry technical terms and in legal phrases of the Court of Session. Christ in the preachers' sermons is called the " Tryst " ; He became " surety " for the elect, having " stroke hands with God " to take man's person and place ; ^ He takes their " law place." More precisely had Mr. Alexander Wedderburn informed his hearers how Christ " drew up the bonds " of the covenant : ^ " The father knew that He had to deal with fools that could not see, or had no skill of their own writ-drawing, and the Son had liberty to draw up the articles of the covenant," and became " cautioner at once for man and the Father." " It was well observed by one," remarked this Mr. Wedder- burn, " that God had to do with a party that had three defects when he made the covenant. First, that they were dyvours [bankrupts], and therefore behoved to have a cautioner [guarantee] ; secondly, that they were witless, and had no skill to draw up their own writs, and therefore left it to the 1 Marroiv of Divinity, chap. ii. — "From everlasting Christ stroke hands with God to put upon Him man's person." - David's Testimony, etc., pp. 9, 10. This divine, though belonging to au earlier time, was a favourite with the pious at this period. THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS AND TEACHING 409 Son to draw ; thirdly, that tliey were unbelievers ami eouM not take Him at His word. . . . Therel'ore lie wrote the covenant in the blood of His Son." ^ Nuthin;^ could be more rude than such a tone ; nothing more repulsive than such coarse jugi^ding with words. It shows the stamp of men who reduced the redemption to a mercantile transaction and vulgar bargain, who likened the Deity to a sharp, suspicious, legal practitioner, and associated the ineffable sacrifice on the Cross with the proceedings of a sheriff's court.^ In tlie hands of the.se ministers all the mystery, all the awe, all the beauty of religion totally vanish, and in our ears there rings a jangle of Edinburgh lawyer's phrases in broad Scots — "cautioner," "dyvours," "sureties," " writs," " articles," " bonds," and " law-rights." While the presence of God was most vividly realised in those fervid times, still more intensely vivid was the conscious- ness of a very present devil. It is he who sends evil spirits and demons to infest men's minds and to possess their bodies.^ It is he who thwarts God's plans, sends sinful thoughts to saintly minds and doubts to the believer, who plagues with disease and ravages with storm ; who seizes epileptics and makes witches do his wicked will. With such a conception of the constant agency of Satan, it is not surprising that people called in his emissaries, the witches and warlocks, to curse an enemy or to fulfil their wish ; by charms and incantations to with- ' Having sutFered hell's torments, Christ "can save those who are lying in blood, choked by their own gore, lying in the devil's amis, and give His love to vile worms, polluted vipers, and enslaved wretches." — Webster's Sacramental Seriiio)is, J). 107. - " There were two contracting parties in the covenant of grace : the first and second persons in the Trinity ; the third person, the Holy Ghost, was a concurring party in making of tiiis covenant, a peculiar office was assigned to Him, and most willingly adopted by Him. He was to be employed in the revelation of it and the application of it to the souls of men." — A. Gib's Sacred Contemplation; Short Catechism concerning the Three Special Divine Commandments and Two Gospel Sermons, by A. Hamilton, minister at Alith, Edin., 1714. "God the Father proposeth to God the Son to undertake man's redemption. This great transaction being agreed to and concluded betwixt God the Father and God the Son, etc."— P. 30. ' " Great numbers of wicked spirits which are allowed to traverse the earth and do incessantly plot the ruin of man." — Sermons by Hcv. James Craig, edited by John Wilson, D.D., Professor of Divinity. Edinburgh, 1733. 4IO SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY draw mildew from their crops, or fever from their cliild. With perfect conviction of the power of the enemy to harass and torment, ministers pronounced the greater excommunication on flagrant offenders, " delivering them over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh," till in penitence they returned to God. Witches and charmers were therefore often employed to invoke Satan to work cures that God seemed to refuse, just as the Jews of old turned to the lords of other nations when their own Jehovah failed them. But it was the teaching of ministers who ascribed such an enormous power to the prince of darkness that led people to call him to their aid in an emergency. To gain assurance of salvation, and to gain confidence that they were of the number of the elect, the preachers told \ believers to accept Christ as their " surety," and to believe that He " had paid their debt to God." ^ People were there- fore urged affectionately, weepingly, to get confidence that " Christ was theirs," " to get a grip of Him," " to close with His offer." Such emotional teaching is the prominent feature of the sermons of the first half of the century, while to preach the duties of common life, as making man pleasing to God, was charged as a crime against the " moral " or " legal " preachers of the day ; for, as Ealph Erskine said crisply in his much loved Gospel Sonnets, " the legal path is the cleanest road to hell." To assert that a person could be saved by duties , was a doctrine which was " horrid blasphemy and the result of damnable ignorance." It was conceded that " morality was a desirable thing in its proper place ; but soul ruining when allowed to possess the place of Christ's imputed righteousness," for " teaching men to depend on their own merits could only lead to eternal perdition.^ ^ R. Erskine's Faith and Practice, p. 60 ; Mystery of Faith, by Andrew Gray, p. 92, Glasgow, 1721 ; R. Erskine's Gospel Sonnets. ^ The Tryst: a Sermon "preached, at Synod of Merse and Teviotdale, October 1721, by Gabriel Wilson, minister at Maxton, p. 39, Glasgow, 1736 ; Fair and Impartial Testimony in name of a number of Ministers, Elders, and Christian People of Church of Scotland, against Backslidings, etc., Edinburgh, 1744. The sturdy seceder, Adam Gib, continuing this teaching to another generation, protests that " the immediate preaching of moral duties is quite vain. Gospel hearers should be called to the perfonnance of duties only in the way ot betaking themselves to Christ by faith. It is calling them to what is absolutely impracticable and leading to eternal perdition." — Sacred Contemplations, p. 354. THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS AND TEACHING 411 Such was the doctrine loved and welcomed \>y the Scots peasantry above all ; every preacher who would cuiTy favour with them run down molality and cried uj) faith ; and people enjoyed the prospect of heinj; carried duty-free to iieaven. The ministers who were most active in the Cambuslanj,' and Kilsyth revivals (h-jjlored the apjiearance in the pulpit of those "who have hetaken themselves to the pressing of diilies, and have dro})t Christ and all hut the UMine of the gospel." Yea, " licentiousness of life and all maniu'r of abomination had grown with it," lamented Mr. Macculloch,' who was then glorying in the great " Wark " iit Cambuslang. A very different view, however, of the essentials of Christian doctrine was taken i)y intelligent, impartial laymen, whose complaint was that ministers denounced only two sins — Sabbath-breaking and uncleanness. Edward Burt, busy in the Highlands engineering (leneral Wade's plans, saw much and observed much of Scots ways, and in 1736 he protested" " that ministers should speak more civilly of morality ; for to tell people that they may go to hell with all their morality at their back tends to diminish the fear of sin." Kirk-Session records, and frequent fasts by General Assemblies and Presl)y- teries, because of " abounding sins " and " Satan's raging and prevailing," fully confirm this shrewd surmise. Really it is diHicult to make out what the gospel teachers would have a man do to secure salvation, seeing that logically and theologically the non-elect can do nothing, and the elect need do nothing. "We find only familiar but vague phrases in every sermon, repeated by every pious person, from the saintly child of eight to the " advanced Christian " of eighty — " to close with Christ," " to get a grip of Him," " to have an interest in Him," " to embrace Him," " to be espoused to Him." P>ut all this was a matter of spiritual emotion. ' Glasgoio Weekly Gospel History, No. 30 ; 1742. - Letters from the Xorth, i. 173. "The more sedate ot" the party became disgusted by the teiidencj* of great jjrofessors to mistake sanctimoniousness for sanctity, and men wlio tliough of immoral life are satisfied with the views of free grace and call frightful views sin as partaking of a 'legal sjiirit," and plead the example of Davids fall and j>enitence in extenuation of their own." — Col. Blackaddcr's Life, p. 52. Sec Diary of Senator of Collcyc of Justice [Lord Grangi] for revelations of alternate piety and lewdness. 27 412 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY One day the Christian is full of certainty of having an " inter est in Christ " ; the next day his mood or spirits have changec with his health, and he is perhaps in doleful doubt. Believer^ in those days were always feeling their spiritual pulse, or, as ; pious merchant expressed it, " searching if there are anj spiritual gray hairs upon them." Now carnal thoughts com(| from Satan, now holy emotions come from the Spirit, and thej are alternately in joy or in " damps," assured or doubting o their salvation. It is just to those ministers to say that with praiseworth} inconsistency they often did insist with their hearers that t( enter heaven they must show holiness of life. They appealec with fervour and deep feeling in their "affectionate" pleadiuC' to move the people to love and gratitude to the Lord, whc' had rescued them from woes unutterable — and often wit! most powerful effect. As a rule, however, attention in tli( pews flagged when duties were hinted at in the pulpit. In 1720 the Church and people of Scotland were deeph excited by the publication and prosecution of a work callei the Marroiv of Divinity. It was written by E. Fisher, anci had been published so long before in England as 1646, wher it was printed with the approval of the censor of the press fo:: the Westminister divines. Mr. Thomas Boston ^ had found ; copy of the book in a cottage, and was charmed with it a; full of gospel truth, and equally charmed were some of hi brethren. A circumstance occurred which urged them to re issue it. In 1717 the Presbytery of Auchterarder had refusec to license a student until he stated : " I believe that it is no orthodox to say that we must forsake our sins in order to conn to Christ." This proceeding was condemned by the Genera Assembly as unwarranted, and this doctrine they condemnet: as unsound, much to the dismay of the godly, whose favouriti doctrine it was. In support of what was called the " Auchter arder Creed " it was resolved to republish the Marrow of Divinity edited and annotated by Mr. Boston and his friend Mr. Hoc But here the Calvinistic doctrine was taught too nakedly, tO' plainly in form and conclusions, to please the moderate Evan gelical school, far less the " lesralists " ; and in 1720 tli ^ Boston's Memoirs. THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS AND TEACH h\\. 413 "leneriil Asacmliy turhadf the hook to be used, uikI c-oiuiemnetl ihe doctrine u.s imsouud and diingerous.' Immense wa.s the iensation caused hy this decision, for the Marrow of Divinity —whose tencliinj,', " Munnw-men " asserted, the Assembly had nisunderstood expressed tlie sentiments of the most venerable, oved, and "followed" ministers. Indignation was felt that it vas the very niinisttTs esteemed tlie most saintly and orthodox n the Church who were pronounced erroneous and danf,'erous. The question split both clergy and people into parties, who xchaiifjed the tauntint,' nicknames of " anti-nomians " and neo-nomians." The controversy over this long -forgotten nanual shows that a reaction had set in against a form of caching relaxing in its moral effects, among even the evan- gelical party ; wliilc there had always been a class of cultured lergy to whom the style of doctrine was repugnant." Ill In tracing the distinctive teaching of popular ministers we night stop at the middle of the century ; for the old vulu^ar train became less and less common, and far less prominence /as given to harsh dogmas so long favourites with people and eachers. But the creed remained the same. With the ' The Assembly comlenined the book because it taught — 1, that assurance f faith is necessary to salvation ; 2, the doctrine of universal atonement ; 3, lat holiness was not necessary to salvation ; 4, that punishment and hope of ward are not motives of a believer ; 5, that the believer is not under the law i a rule of life. The "Marrow-men" complained that these errors were not lught in the book ; but the language was certainly dangerous to morals, how- •er excellent the intention, when the author wrote, "No, assure yourself lat your God in Clirist will never un-son you, nor yet as touching your eternal ilvation will He love you even a whit the less though you commit never so any and great sins ; for this is certain, that as no good in you did move Him ) justify you and give you eternal life, so no evil in you can move Him to take away being once given." — Chap. iii.. Marrow 0/ Divinity. * One may be led to respect the "Marrow-men" for saying that the fears hell and hope of heaven is a slavish and false motive of obedience for the liever. But their reason for saying this was that the elect " believer " had no jed of these motives, as he could not fail to enter heaven ; but at the same time ley held it their duty to frighten sinners by the terrors of hell to avoid the rath to come — which surely was useless if they were not elect. — Marrow 0/ ^ivrnity, chap. iii. 11. 414 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY exception of Professor Simson of Glasgow, there was no hereti — if indeed he were a heretic ; and however the high-jflyei might denounce the acquittal of Professor Campbell of Si Andrews and Principal Leechman of Glasgow as condonin heresy, they were really men trying to support the orthodo cause.^ As for a later generation men of wide culture — liki Blair, Carlyle Eobertson, and Eeid — left theology utterly alon( In truth, the standards of the Church — so minute, so con: prehensive, so rigid — gave little scope for private judgment c public speech, and when a man was licensed to preach he w& practically deprived of his license to think. In consequenc of this the Scottish Church, in spite of its ability, cultuTn and energy, which sought outlet in secular channels — hr contributed nothing of mark or abiding value to theology, ( the development of religious thought, and has done less f( criticism, research, and speculation than any other Protestai Church.^ In 1773 Dr. Johnson, seated at Lord Auchinleck board, challenged his lordship to point out any theological boo ; of merit by a Presbyterian divine. The old judge, Whig an Presbyterian, in his perplexity, replied, " Pray, sir, have yc read Mr. Durham's excellent Commentary on Galatians (Mr. Durham had been dead over a hundred years). "N sir," said Dr. Johnson, and the topic dropped; for the gue;, had never heard of it, and his host only thought he had set the title, in a catalogue, of this book which never existed. As the century advanced a new and finer religious feelii' sprung up among the better type of Evangelical clergy, ai ^ Campbell's supposed heresies on which the Assembly acquitted him wi — 1, man's inability to find out the being of God by his natural powers; that the law of nature was sufficient to guide natural minds to happiness ; that self-love was the sole principle and motive of all virtuous and religio actions ; 4, that disciples during Christ's life only expected and hoped for temporal kingdom, and that between His death and resurrection they conchid Him to be a cheat and imposter, and before His resurrection had no notion His divinity. — Report of Committee of Purity of Doctrine at Edinburgh, Mar 1736, with Professor Campbell's remarks upon it, Edinburgh, 1736 ; Accoh of Life of Leechman, hy Rev. J. Wodrow, prefixed to Sermons hy Willu Leechman, D.D., 2 vols. 1789. " The Dissertations and Ecclesiastical Lectures of Professor George Campb of Aberdeen were not then published, to redeem the Cliurch of Scotland fn theological sterility. I THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS AND TEACHING 415 though the dogmas were in reality as hard and grim an ever, they were either kept in the hHckgrmind or jin-scnted in a softer light. Closer contact of the new generation of minis- ters with society, growing taste for literature and philosophy, wrought a great and wholesome change. Not, however, Ijefore a reaction had set in among the educated laity against the fanatical spirit and teaching. The crudest opinions of the old school had been willingly left as a legacy to the Seceders, and the harsh tones of a bygone generation changed to milder strains. The successors to the " antediluvians " in the pulpit were able to act in accordance with Macbeth's order : " To deliver their message like a man o' this world." The style, homespun as their clothing, the vulgar colloc^uial phraseologj' * of the older race, was seldom heard : the gruesome pictures of hell were in the Lowlands rarely presented to terrify hearera to piety, and doctrines which formerly set forth the Deity as despotic, arbitrary, and vengeful — even though they might be logically true to their creed — were placed in an aspect more in harmony with humanity and not less true to divinity. Be- tween the ghastly oratory which often fell from the fervid Ralph Erskine and the mild Evangelical strain of the benign Dr. John Erskine there was a great gulf fixed. Among the revolutionising influences in Scottish religion, it is a favourite theme with many to include the poems of Robert Burns.' The poet, with his rich sense of humour, would be surprised at future generations regarding him in the part of a • Explaining the method of n-demption, whicli he likens to an esi>ousal be- tween man and Christ, Elx-nezer Erskine thus spoke : "They contract : all parties ire pleased with the match. The Father of the bridtgroom is pleased, for the tirst notion of the bargain is made by Him. He first jiroposed the match in the Council of Grace. '0 my Son, wilt Thou match with yon company of .\dam's family, and buy them otf from the hand of justice, and betroth them unto Thee for ever?' " — Sermon on Wise Virgins. In following manner, Mr. James Webster relate Kirkton, if not wilfully unveracious, had a singularly delusive memory of that most objurgative age. His idyllic descriptioE of the educational condition of the time is equally a fond and too partial imagination. In 1633 Parliament passed an Act — notoriously in- effective — to remedy the deplorable ignorance of the people to which the Commissioners' Eeport on the State of Parishes iu; 1627 had borne striking evidence, testifying that most of the reported parishes ^ were without a school, a schoolmaster, oi any means of maintaining one. According to these returns of eight parishes in Berwickshire, with about 2500 com- municants, not one has a school — though the Commissioners ^ "At the tyme of the King's return every paroch hade a minister, ever} village hade a school, every family almost hade a Bible ; yea, in most of tlu country all the children of age could read the Scriptures. ... I have lived many years in a paroche [Melrose] where I never heard ane oath, and ye miglit have ridde many a mile before ye heard any. Also you could not for a gi'eat part of the country had lodged in a family where the Lord was not worshippeii by reading, singing, and i)ublick prayer." — P. 64, Kirkton's History, edited In C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe. 2 Report of Parishes in 1627, Maitland Club: Bunckle, 500 communicants Coldstream, 800 ; Langton, 456 ; Longformacus, 80 ; Mordington, 100 ; St. Bathans, 140 ; Swinton, 350 ; Channell Kirk. ED UCA TION— SCHOOLS A ND SCNOOLMA S TERS 4 1 9 ui-ge that "u sclioolo is great neetle," "moat iiecessar by a multitude of poor common people ;" and of Mordin^ton it Haid " none can wryt or reid except the minister." In Mid-I»thian. out of the purislies reiwrtod on, seven, containing' 2^00 com- municants al)ove sixteen years of age, were destitute of means of education.' These cases bring out more accurately than the 80-calh'd " History " of the partisan Kirkttm the real state of affairs in the South in the middle of the seventeenth century ; while equal contemporary evidence exists to prove that farther North far greater i^aiorance or educational destitution prevailed. It was in vain that Tarliament in 16.'53, and again in 1643, enacted that the heritors should " stent " (that is, assess) themselves to maintain a school in every parish, giving power, in the event of the Act being neglected, to Presbyteries to nominate " twelve honest men " to carry out the law. It was all very well to appoint " twelve honest men " to look after the heritors ; but who was to look after the " twelve honest men " ? Whether they were lairds, lords, or farmers, they belonged to the very class that strenuously objected to be "stented," and the tenants left the law alone in deference to the landlords, and the landlords left it alone in deference to themselves. Parish after parish during the latter half of the seventeenth century, accordingly, marks down with the uniform lamenta- tion in its records that it is without a schoolmaster, " there being no maintenance." We are driven, then, to believe of the Covenanting period — the heyday of religious life in Scotland — that, however much information the peasantry may have derived from the preaching and catechetical training of the ministers," — Presbyterian or Episcopalian, — a large pro- portion of those who were most dogmatic on dogmas, and assertive on every thorny point of ecclesiastical controversy, ^ In Mid-Lotliian, in 1627, without a school were Cockpen with 400 com innnicants ; Cranston, with 450 : Currie, 800 ; Fala, 160 ; Heriot, 140 ; Kirktou, ■JOO ("school being dissolvit for want of maintenance "), Newton, 160. In East Lothian even tho.se which had a school had no fixed maintenance ; some "suin>orted by the labourers of the ground." — Rqyort of Parishes. - Dalmellington Kirk -Session records contain Solemn League and Covenant to which are attaclietl 222 signatures ; but of these 179 are subscril)ed by l>ro.xy, because it is stated they "could not wryt themsolfes." — Paterson'.- Jl'iijtonshire and Ayrshire, i. 429. 420 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY were totally unable ^ to read or to write. In many localities large numbers had been obliged to sign the Solemn League with their mark ; in others the congregations were directed to lift up their hands in token of acceptance of the Covenant, and even in all districts we may not uncharitably conclude that those who were able to write were good enough to inscribe the names of their family, dependants, servants, and less literate neighbours who were not able to sign for themselves — a practice in subscribing public petitions and memorials which is not confined to those earlier days of our history. Certainly in those years of civil war, social confusion, and religious strife, when Presbyterian ministers, who could best have furthered the educational interests of the people, were either fugitives from the law or " suspects " before it, it can hardly be credited that knowledge was more widely diffused amongst the population than when the eighteenth century began after twelve years of comparative social peace and political rest. In 1696 Parliament anew enacted that a schoolmaster should be appointed for every parish, " a commodious house " should be provided for a school, and that assessments be made, half from the tenants and half from the heritors, for his salary. Never was there a wiser law, and never was a law more studiously disregarded. The course of the eighteenth century is full of energetic, but usually futile efforts on the part of Presbyteries to enforce it, by stirring up heritors in the country and magistrates in the towns — even by such vigorous measures as " letters of horning " — to a comprehension of the most rudimentary legal obligations and the elementary duties of their position. Even in counties which had very considerable populations, which were even notable for their enterprise and trade, there were large ranges which were without any schoolmaster settled among them.^ In the early part of the century a traveller must ^ Professor James Wodrow told his son Robert, the historian of the Church, that "many of the elder people, even the generality by far in the country in those days [of the persecution] could not read." — Life of Prof. Wodroiv, by R. Wodrow, p. 172. 2 Presbyteries like Penpont,in 1715, at Tynron, wlio insisted on the law being earned out requiring schools in every parish, did this not for the sake of secular EDUCATION— SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 421 have jouraeyed through niiiny i)uriHhc's in Ayrshire, where in a former generation every class, from the luird to the plough- man, from the provost to tho weaver's apprentice, had heen zealous in support of the knottiest dogmas of the Confession, anil found himself amidst an illiterate people who had never been to school, and whose children had no school to go to. Even up to 1735 in the Presbytery of Ayr ^ — which is not even coextensive with the county — there were twelve i)arishe3 in which was provided ueitlier school nor legal mwms of maintain- ing one. The traveller ptissing through the liorder country might have asked in vain to see the school at Hawick, and learnetl that there was none nearer tliau Jedburgh or Selkirk. In Fife he would have found the majority of the rustics not more literate — for in a typical parish, even from 1715 to 1748, two men in three could sign their names, but only one woman in twelve.' In Galloway it was the same ; and it is stated that " few or none of the common people were able to read " in 1720.^ Allowing for a little exaggeration in these reports, ignorance is not a surprising feature to Hnd in districts so ill-furnished with means of education.^ education, but of relij^oii — " taking into serious cousideration that instructing youtli in the grounds aud principles of the true reformed religion is a most pious Christian work, and that in ortler to advance the same in this parouch it is necessary a school be settled." ' Edgar, Church Li/r, ii. 75. In 1752 there were still large villages in the same case. In 1710, Wilson's Hist, of Haicick, p. 124. - Campbell's Babncrino ami its Abbey, p. 236. =• Stat. Acct. Tongland, ix. 328 ; Bist. of Galloway, ii. 344. * When in 1696 reports were sent into the Commission of Parliament the following returns were made, which tiirow light mion the state of education : — from Presbytery of Irvine : Irvine — salary, 200 merks witli school-house and yard ; Kilmaurs — no salary, or house, or school ; Dreghorn — no salary, or house, or school ; Dunlop — {xwr man teaches to read and write, no .salary, no school ; Largs — salary 100 merks, no school; Kilbirnie — man teaches to read and write, and presents, salarj- 40 merks ; Kilbride — no schoolmaster, salary £40, no house, no school ; Ardrossan — no schoolmaster, only salary 3 bolls of meal, given by my Lord Montgomery at pleasure ; Beith — no schoolmaster, salary, 140 merks, no school, no liouse ; Fenwick — poor honest man teaches to read and writf, and presents, .salary, 6 bolls of meal. Presbytery of Middle- bie reports that seven parishes (Middlebie, Waucliop, Hoddam, Dornoc-k, Kiljiatrick-Fleniing) have no legal salary for a teacher, that no schoolmaster in the Presbytery teaclies Latin, and few can even read or write well ; that no teacher has beyond £40 Scots as salary, aud that the disoixlers prevalent are due to want of education. Presbytery of Lochmaben rei>orts, there are few settled 422 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY In the Highlands the state of matters was of course incalculably worse ; in fact, there may be said to have been no education at all, as all feeble efforts were vain on the part of Parliament to civilise either by churches or by schools those districts in which the Eeformation never penetrated — a " dark and remote country inhabited by wild Scots," as writers described it. Schools were to be found in which reading, writing, and the elements of religion were taught ; but, unfortunately, this was all done in an unknown tongue, instructing the children who did not understand English by teachers who did not know Gaelic. In spite of most laudable efforts through the seven- teenth century, except in Argyllshire, schools were unknown, and churches to a great extent were unoccupied till after the Eevolution. Only after 1688 were effective measures taken to spread education in these remote districts, and these were due to the Church alone — under the " Society for Propagation of Christian Knowledge," whose concern was not about the intellectual and secular interests of the people, but to instruct the children in the principles of the Christian — especially of the Calvinistic — faith; for religion formed the main part of the school instruction, the chief object of reading being to know the Bible and the Catechisms, By 1732, through the exertions of the Church — under 109 parish schools ^ had been founded ; yet even in 1758 there were no fewer than 175 Highland parishes still without a school or schoolmaster. Much need there was for these efforts, for the ignorance, the superstition, the savagery of the Highlands were the despair of the Lowlands.^ What religion clung to them in many places was but fragments of the half -forgotten, wholly perverted Popery of olden days. They were full of schoolmasters from want of salaries. Paisley reports : Paisley — salary, 250 merks ; Kilmalcolm, Killala, Innerkip, Erskine, Kilbarchan, have no salary : Eastwood and Lochwinnoch have a master, though no salary ; Neilston has a salary of £60 Scots, and Renfrew Grammar School has £5 sterling of salary. — Munimenta Univ. Glas. ii. 549. ^ Moral Statistics of Highlands, Inverness. * Visits to holy wells for cure of diseases, with votive offerings of rags and bread to the water spirit. Beltane fires, incantations, charms, and libations of milk to appease some unseen power, fairies, kelpies, etc. EDUCATION— SCHOOLS AM) SCHOOLM ASTERS 423 strange, pa^an customs which they retJiined from the |)a«t, with no notion of their origin or their meaning — ami, in truth, many of these they retriined, long after education was common amongst tliem, beyond the eighteenth century. In many districts where there had l)een little or no public worshij> and instruction, the ignorance of Highlander «tf the; rudiments of Protestant faith and observances seemed hopeless to the clergy called to minister to them. There was the small fair in the kirkyard ' on Sunday, in cases where worship had been regularly held, the roup of cattle, the siile of ale and snutl" — all which tilled ministei-s with despair ; while the savage feuds, the pagan customs, and wild superstitions and neglect of ordinances were enormities hard to be borne, harder still to overcome. Much need there was for the " Society for Propa- gating Christian Knowledge," founding schools with religious instruction in such dark, benighted regions. Yet, writing in 1775, the Rev. Lachlan Shaw could say, "I remember when from Speymouth, througli Strathspey, Ikdenoch, and Lochiel to Lome there was but one school ; and it was much to find in a parish three persons that could read or write." " But later still the efforts to spread education liad made so little way amongst a destitute, listless people, scattered along remote straths and separated by moor, and morass, and mountain from the nearest school, that in 1821, it is said, half of the population of 400,000 people were unable to read. Though the Lowlands in many extensive districts at the beginning of the eighteenth century were destitute of parish schools, and the inhabitants to a vast extent were unable to read or to write, it would be a mistake to think that they ' In Sage's Meviorabilia Domfstica. — " The east and west sides of the parish continued their oj>en competition after divine service, and a public market was lield in tlie churchyanl. Some jieople remembered the sale of oxen, yokes, snuff, etc. on the Sunday. Tlie last jiarcel brought into the cliurchyard on Sundays was tossed out of the bag by Mr. Gillies the minister, ' who paid the value.' " — Gordon's Chronicles of Keith, p. 354 ; Stat. Acct., Fordyce, iii. 64 ; Lives of the Haldanes, p. 8. - History of Moray, p. ir»7. — The Synoil of Argyll published the Psalms in Gaelic after the Revolution, and also the Confession of Faith. In 1690 the General Assembly printed 1000 copies of the Stures in the Irish version which had api>eared in \6^h. The New Testament in Gaelic appeared in 1769 but no version of the Old Testament till 1S02. — Moral Slatistiea of Highlands. 424 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY were in consequence utterly ignorant. In many cases where there was no parochial teacher appointed, there was a barn or hut where some old man, or some poor cripple, incapable of any active occupation, formed a class of children, who came to him to learn a little reading and writing ; they gave him at the rate of one shilling a quarter, which was usually paid in meal. At other times and places a student, anxious to eke out a living till college classes began, or a man who had aimed at a pulpit and missed it, undertook to teach some families, and was allowed to gather them in the kirk or a granary.^ Meanwhile parents, although not able to sign their names, acquired from the Church a strange amount of theological and Biblical information — whether accurate or not is another story. They might not be able to read a psalm, but the precentor on Sundays read it out line by line, as it was being sung, and they were enabled to join in the long drawn-out nasal tunes in the minor key to the familiar words. During the Episcopal days the schoolmaster, as precentor or reader, had been accustomed to read copious passages from the Scriptures from the " latron " before the third bell rang and service began ; and in Presbyterian times, when this custom ended, the minister read his chapter and lectured thereon, preached by the hour, and catechised the people at the Wednesday services, and in their homes on the Catechism and doctrines. By these means information was worked into their minds ; although, unfortunately, it was all theological and tended to foster dogmatism of the narrowest type. II In parishes where a schoolmaster was settled, the difficulty was for children through successive generations, who had trudged over moor and morass, and by the almost impassable tracts through waste lands, to find a school. It is true that Acts of Parliament had ordered that " the heritors of every parish should provide a commodious house for a school " ; but to what Parliament proposed the heritors were not disposed, and it was too often impossible to force them to obey the law. 1 As at Ettrick when Boston went there. EDUCATION— SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 425 The most extraordinary and most inconvenient expedients, then- fore, were adopted to ufVord acconiniodiilion for scholars.' In many phice-s the kirk was used as .sehoolrooni ; in others the church steeple, a family vault, a granary, a byre or stable, or Jiny dilapid.iled hovel, was »itilise«l. Sometimes a Session allowed a few siiillini,'s out of " penalties " to hire a room or a burn ; but usually the i)oor man had to pay the rent out of his own miserable earnint,'s. Even though a school of some sort hiid been provided in former genenilions, in the eighteenth century it was frequently allowed to go to utter ruin. When the thatch roof was rotten ami swarming with rats, and the rain poured through on the children, liie Kirk-Session ordered each scholar -' to bring straw to thatch the broken-down building, but it often hapi)ened tiiat the straw was so scarce they could not supply sullicient materials to cover it. Usually schools were small dirty rooms, the windows often without glass to let in the light, or deal boards to shut out the cold and wind and sleet : — rooms dense with smoke of the peat lighted to warm the children who had travelled miles over the moors barefoot to assemble at seven o'clock in the mornings. In many cases there were no desks to write at and no benches to sit upon,^ and the scholars lay on Hoors, filthy with their muddied coating of rushes or straw which it was the task of the children to supply. In 1725 the Town Council of St ' lu 1772 the Session of Strathblane record " their distressful observatiou of the injuries the school sustained with the two preceding schoolmasters who were tossed from barn to barn, and subsequently were obliged to pay house rent out of their own famillys, out of the i)oor pittance of a 4 pound sterling salary. The Session also regret that the same in one manner or another has been the grievance of this parish ever .since the year 1714." Till 17;il school held in kirk, and after that for a while in the stiible at the Kirkgate inn. — r.uthrie-Smith's Strathblane, pp. 240-42. - 1717. — The school roof so bad the scholars could not stay becau.se of the rain, the Kirk-Ses.sion order every scholar to bring some straw to thack the school ; but the straw was so scarce that the parents could not supply it to their children ; therefore only half of the school could be covered. — Ciamonds Ch. of Graiuje, p. 14. 2 Jlr. Thomas Kirk, when he travelled from Yorkshire to Scotland in 1677, saw many things that startled him, and amongst these was the state of school at Burntisland, where there was no stool or form, and only a seat for the master, while the cliildren siit on the earthen tloor in a litter on the heather and grass with which the ground was str.wn "like pigs in a stye." — MwUrn Account 0/ Scotland. 426 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Andrews were informed that " the boys cannot sit for learning to wreatt; so that they are necessitat to wreatt upon the floor lying upon their bellies." In 1711 the Kirk- Session of Kilmarnock (everything public-spirited was done or urged by the Sessions) pleaded with the heritors to repair the school walls and roof which were ready to fall ; but the heritors protesting that they could not afford to repair it, a laborious house to house collection was made to raise £2 or £3 from the bonnet-makers and serge weavers to carry out the work of restoration — an effort which proved quite fruitless.^ Such illustrations, which might be extended with painful ease, serve to show that the condition of matters in rural districts was not much better in burghs, where there might be expected to have been both ampler resources and greater liberality. What added to the wretched discomfort of the teachers was the want of any dwelling-house — -a misery from which they constantly suffered. JSTo house had been provided by statute although there was often assigned an annual allowance for a lodging known as " chamber-maill," ^ equal to about ten shillings (£7 Scots), and the schoolmaster lived in a poor dark hovel consisting usually of one, or at most two rooms, " but and ben," which served as both school and dwelling. When the teacher was married, which was probable, and had a large family, which was almost certain, the cares and trials of domestic life added terribly to those of scholastic work, in one little, dirty, overcrowded, unventilated, ill-lighted apart- ment, where blended the bawling of the master, the shrill voices of the scholars, the crying of infants, the bustle ot washing and cooking of the wife ; and all this made the school- house a very Babel. To separate private from public life was a problem which many in despair left unsolved, save by the simple expedient adopted in the case of the literary and erratic and not too sober teacher of Eathven, George Halket (to whom has been ascribed the song of " Logic o' Buchau " ^). ^ Grant's Burgh Schools. - 1672: Town Council of Lanark resolve to pay the sclioolmaster for hi? chamber-maill sex punds yeirlie. — Biiryh Ilecurds, 194. Hawick Town Council in 1712 allow £7 (10s.) for chamber-mail. ^ P. Buchan's Gleuiiiiujs of Old Ballads ; Walker's Bards nf Boa-Accord. p. 199. EDUCATIOX-SCNOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 427 When he nmnieil in 1718 the heritors reversed the dihipidated box-bed wliich was part of the school furniture, so that itu back might form a jwirtition in the middle of the hut to divide it into 8choenny or fractions of a penny ; * the poor man being put off on the score of bad harvests or by the threat of removing the children because of his importunity. ' Sled. Aed., Calder, viii. 480 ; Kirkmaiden, ii. 159. ^ Stat. Acct., Glenholni, Perthshire, iv. 433. ' Stat. Acci., Forglen, xiv. 539, * Scots Ala^jazine, 1765, vol. xxvii. y. 172. 28 428 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY In some cases the teacher was obliged to remain content with 40 merks, in spite of the earnest efforts of Kirk- Sessions to keep bailies and heritors to their bargain by ecclesiastical and civil threats. Cases occur where the master had only the endowment of six bolls or eight bolls of meal, the unfortunate man being expected to subsist on wages only sufficient to supply his family with one bowl of porridge a day.-^ In these days literature was in a painfully literal sense " cultivated on a little oatmeal." One can sympathise with the desperate master of Mary ton, who leaves his charge in 1727 because of his not being paid his due, avowing that " he will cast himself on the hands of an All Sufficient Being who is able to support him in all difficulties." " While in all places the means were utterly inadequate to give encouragement to education, in some places possessing a considerable population there were no means at all, the heritors and burgesses stoutly refusing to burden themselves.^ It is curious to observe how in towns which in this century have attained to eminence as centres of wealth, as well as in towns which in olden days were important and prosperous, though now they have sunk into obscurity, the utmost difficulty was found in imposing the burdens on the heritors and councillors. Nominally the maximum of £10 was assigned to the master of the burgh school, but the people not seldom refused to be " stented " for the salary. Eather than levy rates, funds were sought from strange sources — in some places, as was the case in Banff, from fees for the use of town bells and mortcloth, or from the fines on criminals, as ^ Kirk-Session of Maryton for "one year deferred payment to the school- master because the money in hand being brass," i.e. bad copper. — Parish oj Old Montrose or Maryton, by Fraser, p. 230. In 1721 the salary of Straiten was 80 merks ; at Dalmellington £40 Scots (£3) ; at St. Quivox it is 8 bolls of victual derived from a mortification. In 1746 the minister of Monkton reports that the salary was only 40 merks, "so that he could not find a proper man for that sum." — Edgar's Church Life, ii. 94. ^ Fraser's Maryton, p. 56. ^ In Salt-Preston or Prestonpans in 1725 heritors refuse to give anything because the school has an endowment producing "the quite sufficient sum of 70 merks a year," for which the teacher, by ordnance of the founder in 1604, is required to teach Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. It is not surprising to learu that the school "sinks into contempt." — Analeda Scotica, ii. 374. EDUCATION-SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASTERS 429 occurred in Kirkcuilbright, where in 1696 the schoohnu-ster is paid £7 Scots " as part of the liurvest salary from fines imposed for blood and battery." If lliiro wtus no eoninmn property belonj^inj^ to the town, if there was no spt'cial assessment made and no funds in hand, the town treasurer might l>e directed " to borrow it if ]>o.ssible." If money could not be readily got the heritors perhaps declared the school vacant ; or requested the schoolmaster " to give down his salary," and on his declining voluntarily to solve the dilliculty by this self-denying onlinante, ordered him " to renounce his office at Candlemas." ' The salaries were never free from risk of being tampered with by parsimonious town councils, for if the master did not give perfect satisfaction they might quietly mulct him of a large portion of his poor allow- ance ; or, acting as a cautious corporation to its scholastic servant, might give nothing, " but promise a present if he deserve it." ■ Occasionally, though rarely, it must be owned, the bailies of a burgh burst into unexpected liberality, and did their utmost, in strict accordance with economy, to encourage faithful service. This occurs in Paisley, when the Town Council (in 1705) give to the headmaster of the grammar school,^ " struggling with a paucity of scholars," the sum of half-a- guinea " to buy some necessaries with, as reward for his gri at pains in exercising his function." Two years after they munificently present the master, as a further mark of their high approval, with " half-a-guinea to buy a new hat, towards his further encouragement in attending to the school" To mitigate surprise at this form of generosity, we must remember that a " hat " in those days was an article of attire which was the sign of personal dignity.* In country ])arishe.s the laird ' Burntisland, 1700 ; Linlithgow. ^ As at Greenock and Kirkcudbright in 1765. — Grant's Bunjh Schools, 485. In 1709 the salary of the headmaster of the High School, Edinburgh, was £16:13:4; in 1598 it had been £1 : 13 : 4.— Chalmers' Life of Ruddiman, p. 19. ' Brown's Grammar Scliool of Paisley, p. 121. * Lanark, 1716. — " Baillies and counsell, considering how decent and becoming it would be, that at tlieir convention each counsellor wear a hatt for the credit of the place and of themselves as representatives of the burgh, injoin use of the same." — Burgh Records, p. 285. 430 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY and the minister were the only owners of a three-cornered hat, and even the bailies themselves, except in garb of ofl&ce, wore, like all the rest of their fellow-townsmen in trade, the blue or black bonnet in daily life. It was, therefore, a high compliment ; and further it deserves notice, as being prob- ably the only recorded case of voluntary encouragement of education belonging to those penurious days. Besides the legal salary, which they did not always secure, the schoolmaster had his fees which (at no time very large) were extremely small in the early part of the century, being Is. a quarter from twenty-five or thirty children, for reading, writing, and " counting," and 2s. if Latin and other higher branches were taught. To eke out his meagre Hving, he anxiously accepted any perquisite which custom allowed him under tbe indefinite and comprehensive category of " casualties." Some of these were derived from sources which prove that he was too sensitive to the cruelty of his own position to be sensi- tive to the cruelty to the lower animals. Up to the close of the century the popular pastime of cock-fighting and cock-throwing by the boys at Fastern's E'en brought no small gain to the teacher. Every boy who could afford it brought a fighting cock to school, and on payment of twelve pennies Scots to the master, the cocks were pitted against each other in the schoolroom, in presence of the gentry of the neighbourhood. Then the cocks slain in mortal combat became the teacher's property ; while those cocks which would not fight, called *' fugies," were fixed to a stake in the yard and killed one after another at cock-throwing, at one bodle for each shot. The schoolmaster got the bodies (in later years the half-pence), and sumptuously feasted his family on the corjDses for days together, as a pleasing relief to the monotonous diet of oat- meal — having regaled the scholars in modest hospitality with liquor (ale, and it occasionally happened whisky, later in the century) in recompense. This custom produced no inconsider- able addition to the teacher's livelihood ; in some districts indeed, it is said, the dues exacted from the pupils amounted to a sum equal to a whole quarter's fees.^ ^ The Town Council of Dumfries made the following regulations in 1725 : "The under teacher keep the door and exact not more than twelve pennies Scots I EDUCATION— SCHOOLS Ai\D SCHOOLMASTERS 431 Other perquisites there were which came j,Tatefully to half-starved pedagogues. There were, for instance, " gifts," such as candles at Candlemas ; one penny from each scholar on the first Mondays of May, June, and July, which were liolidays called " bent silver plays," the money being nominally to buy the " bent " or rushes which grew in the marshy, undniined land to cover the earthen Hoor of the schoolroom, but really devoted to buying clothes for the master's ragged luniily ; there was, also, a peat brought by each scholar in the morning for the tire, in winter time, if the school was luxurious enough to have a hearth at all.^ In burgh schools there were perquisites of a slightly more imposing nature, and it was an eventful day of the year when ■here were presented, the "gifts," "oblations," or "free-will tlerings," as they were euphemistically styled, as the com- pulsory tributes to the Pope were called " benevolences." >n that occasion at Candlemas (2nd of February) the master -at at his desk, the stem air of authority gone, the instruments of punishment concealed, with a subdued expectancy on his oountenance. The oblations by the scholars varied from 6d. to 2s. 6d. as the country and century advanced in prosperity. WTien the humblest sum was presented it was received in lead silence ; when it advanced to 2s, 6d., equal to a [uarter's fee, the master exclaimed " Vivat 1 " when it was wice that sum the voice ascended in crescendo " Floreat bis ! ' I higher tribute was greeted with " Floreat ter ! " and when he son of a local magnate produced half a guinea the exclama- ion rose to " Gloriat ! " and he or she was hailed and crowned IS " Victor," " Kin;j," or " Queen." ^ The ordeal was as un- ■om each scholar for the benefit of bringing a cock to fight in the school- •om ; and that none be suffered to enter that day except gentlemen and ■ersons of note from whom nothing is to be demanded ; and what money is iven is by the scholars, the under- teacher is to receive and apply to his own >e for his pains and trouble ; and that no scholar except who pleases shall arnish a cock ; but that all scholars whether they have a cock or not can enter he school. Those that have none paying 2s. Scots as forfeit." — M'Dowalls him/ru^, p. 597. 1 M'Dowalls- DumfrUs, p. 597 ; Guthrie-Smith's Strathblane. These days m\ been originally holidays when the boys went to collect " bent," but as bovs rought mischief with their hooks, it was changed to Id. plus holiday. * Gibson's Hist, of Glasg., p. 194 ; Glasgow Past and Prcstnl, iii, 408. The 432 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY dignified for the master as it was injurious to the scholars — the crest-fallen, bitter humiliation of the poor lads, the contemptuous purse pride of the rich pupils. This customary blackmail was exacted in all town public schools, but in 1786 the Glasgow Town Council resolved that while the offerings should be continued, the exclamations " Vivat," " Gloriat," " Floreat," and the custom of cheering the victor, should be discontinued. To return to poorer times, poorer districts, and poorer men ; it is evident that no man could live, far less with a family, only on the miserable earnings derived from salary and fees. To make a livelihood, the teacher of the parish schools acted in other capacities, and drew money for other humble offices. He was registrar of baptisms and marriages at a groat each ; he proclaimed banns, officiated as precentor at about 12s. a year, and acted as clerk to the Kirk-Session. Yet all these multifarious offices, combined with his salary, fees, and " gifts " as teacher, produced no more income than £10 a year on an average. Many had much less; even the master of a parish, who professed to teach the extensive curriculum of French, Latin, Greek, mathematics, and naviga- tion.^ Few, fortunately, descended to the state of the luckless dominie of Heriot, who was schoolmaster, precentor, clerk, beadle, and grave-digger, with a combined income of only £8 sterling, at the end of the century.^ Yet once upon a time a schoolmaster ^ in Bute had been glad to resign his office on being promoted to the more lucrative office of beadle. As if to make every arrangement fatal to any prospect oi comfort to the teacher, he had not even security of tenure in his position. The office was held on the most precarious footings sometimes on good behaviour, sometimes by the month, some- times by the term, sometimes at the will of the heritors. The result of all these harassing conditions and insufficient pay v/as that in many cases schools remained for years vacant humour of the scene was heightened when any boys paid their offerings ii coppers in order to enjoy the sight of the master counting his present befon inserting the amount in his book. ^ Stat. Acct., Monymusk. ^ Stat. Acct., xvi. 54. ^ Kingarth in 1682. — Hewison's Hist, of Bute, ii. 285. EDUCATION—SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 433 qualified men could not be got to accept such posts,' and the only ptTHons who wouhl tttk(i some of the worse endowed schools weiv sluiU'nts pn'puring for tlie ministry, wlio taught for a few months ; broken-down scholars, cripples who could not enter into business, men disiippointed of a profession, driven to live somehow." If a teacher vcnlured to eke out a living by keeping a little shop he was at once threatened with dismissal. A minister writing towards the end of the century bitterly says: "A parish school is now a temporary employment for some necessitous person of ability, or a perpetual employment for some languid, insignificant mortal hardly deserving the shelter of a charity workhouse."^ In spite of all these adverse circumstances^-especially the poverty of the teachers, which lowered them in the social grade and kept out of the profession men who were able and cultured, and too ambitious to content themselves with an artisan's income with more than an artisan's labour — it is astonishing to observe the effect of the parish schools of Scotland in promoting know- ledge and intelligence amongst the people. They gave access to instruction to the lowest and the poorest as well as highest, for the laird's and the ploughman's son, the sons of the carpenter and the lord of session, met together ; they opened to them profes- sions and posts in which so many rose to distinction ; they effected an unequalled diffusion of education to every class in the country, and the teaching of the schools formed an easy stepping-stone for all to the highest training of the Universities. The burgh schools, which were higher in endowment and position, had the services of not a few men of admirable skill and learn- ing, and even obscure country schools not seldom contained men who afterwards in the country took a conspicuous place as leaders, ministers, scholars, and men of letters.* The great ' Such statements as the following are far from uncommon in the Statistical A'-count, Kilearnan : "Salary is £8:6:8, ami remains vacant because no qualified person will accept it." — xvii. 357. • The man aj>pointed at one time to the post of schoolmaster in Westruther was chosen because ho was a goo. 225. ^ Steven's High School of Edinburgh. ' These were the hours in Dumfries, Aberdeen, Ayr (1761), BantT, and, i ji to 1803, in Elgin, where in 1649 !>i.x o'clock in the morning had been ordained. 436 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V When we bear in mind the dreary, almost impassable tracks and long distances to be traversed in those days, and that the children were provided with no better fare than a few boiled greens in winter, which they carried tied in a cloth,^ we can realise the amount of fatigue and suffering, both bodily and mental, which were undergone by our ancestors in the pursuit of knowledge. It cannot be said that these severe strains upon the strength and spirit of the children and teachers were relieved by the full relaxation of holidays ; for in the beginning of the century, at any rate, there seems to have been no general half holiday on the Saturday,"^ and they had only to look forward to play days at Candlemas and Whitsunday, or for the advent of some distinguished visitor to the school in whose honour the scholars were let free. In summer the vacation came ; but it was usually restricted in towns to ten days or a fortnight, and it seems to have been quite exceptional for burgh schools to be closed for a month. Montrose, for example, in 1705 allowed only the first week of June. Forfar Town Council, so late as 1762, gave only a harvest " vacance " of fourteen days. Not many were moved with such kindliness for the young as ex- presses itself in ungrammatical tenderness in the arrangement of Perth magistrates to give holidays at any time between 15th May and 15th June, "because it is hurtful for scholars at the end of August, which is the period of grien fruit and piese, which doe occasion diseases and is destructive to their health." ^ Other occasional holidays were few and far between.^ 1 Struthers' Hist. ii. 625. ^ In 1710 the professors of Edinburgh University recommend the Town Council that the scholars of the High School be allowed "every fortnight to refresh and play themselves a whole afternoon, in place of all the ordinary occasions of dismissing scholars, such as entering of new scholars, paying of quarter payment, and at the desire of the victor at Candlemas or of ladies and gentlemen walking in the yard." — Bower's University of Edinburgh, ii. 109. ^ Grant's Burgh Schools, pp. 190-93. In Dunbar in 1696 it is ordained so that "the children's labour be sweetened to them, that every Tuesday and Thursday, the dayes being fine, they shall be suffered to play at the place appoynted for that end from halfe three till four afternoon, after Avhich tyme they are to return till six ; these dayes being unfitt for recreation may be delayed until the first faire season, with every Saturday afternoone, together with the accustomed festival days — observing the ancient rites of their oblations (to testificat their thankfulness to their masters) ; att and after which tymes the schollars, with EDUCATION— SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 437 Rules, liowever, which suited town schools were inapplicable to the country, where boys and ^irls were in great rcciuest for f;irni-work, as fields were unenclosed and catth; refjuircd to be lierded from grain, and the harvest required help from all hands. The customary signal to the nuuster for breaking up classes in summer was tlie presentation of an ear of ript* oats on his desk ; and that indication none could resist. Once free from school children were kept at work at the farms so long that the poor master sudered grievous loss, as the fees were jrnid precisely for the period that the pupils attended llie school* The modes of scholastic life in rural quarters differed in many respects from those in towns and large villages, and the duties of the master in the latter cases were considerably augmented by the religious superintendence exercised by him over his pupils on the Sundays. On that day he really acted as a pedagogic providence. Every Sunday morning" the boys were compelled to repair to school for prayer and e.xamination in Scriptures ; tliey were thence marshalled off to kirk,^ the headmaster in front, the "doctor," or assistant, bringing up the rear. At close of afternoon service they were escorted back to school, to give an account of what they had heard. In some places they even came to school four times on Sunday — before and after each service, in accordance with the order : " After prayers the several classes shall be examined at the second ringing of the bell on questions of the Catechism with Scripture proofs and an exposition of a chapter of the Latin New Testament " ; and after going to church again the boys remeet and give an account, " as far their memories and maturities will admit," of the notes that have been made a kyndly homeliness, mediat for the play by the mouth of the victor, as also at the entry of new schollars (if earnestly intreated) they may have it for all night." — Miller's Hist, of Dunbar, p. 212, 1 Stat. Acct., Waniphray, xxi. 234, "^ Aberdeen Kuryh liecords, p. 328. ' Church of Cullen, p. 85. Up till 1793 in Aberdeen the master undertook on every Lord's Day and Fast Day to convene scholars and "cause them to read with propriety and decorum passages from Scripture and other devout authors, and to repeat the lectures and te.tts given by the preacher, with such references as the preacher may draw therefrom, as far their memories and maturities will admit." — Grant, Burgh Schools. 438 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY during the discourses. To this rapid scribbHng of sermon " heads " in kirk during boyhood has been attributed, bj a sufferer from the custom, a share in the production of the bad writing of Scotsmen in past times.-^ Such was the excruciating practice in all the burgh and larger schools in Scotland through a great part of the century, gradually to lose its punctuality and its rigour as the time went on, till, as dissent grew stronger and pious austerity generally grew weaker, the attendance diminished to vanishing point and the old fashion passed away.^ To preserve a careful surveillance over his charges seated in the gallery assigned to them, the master took his position at the " desk " near the door, to watch lest any scholars should attempt to disappear during the service, and it was not uncommon for him to be armed with a long pole for the purpose of tapping the heads of inattentive or somnolent pupils. One of the oldest scholastic customs in Scotland was that of selecting two scholars to stand up in the kirk before the pulpit between the second and third bell every Lord's day,^ one to ask, the other to answer, the Catechism "in a loud voice, for the edification of common and ignorant persons and servants on the grounds of their salvation, that they may learn the same, perquair, and be brought to the knowledge thereof." In the beginning of the seventeenth century ^ in some churches it had been the practice for " twa bairns " to repeat, between the prayers and the blessings, Mr. Craig's " Caritches openlie in the kirk for the instruction of the commons." But long after Mr. John Craig and his Caritches had passed into popular oblivion, and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms had taken their place, every Sunday two boys were, in large villages and towns, told off to repeat them in the audience of such of the congrega- tion as remained in the kirk ^ between the forenoon and after- ^ Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, Memoirs, p. 27, Scot. Hist. Society. ^ In 1796 the Council of Aberdeen complains that though a master regularly attends at church every Sunday morning, and says prayers and attends boys to church, of late years very few attended. 3 Aberdeen in 1694 and in 1700.— Burgh Records, pp. 328-330. * In Leith in 1616.— Steven's High School, p. 69. ® Kirk-Session of Tyuingham, 17 May, 1703, gives rules for the management of the school : " 1st, The school must be convenit at seven in the morning and EDUCATION-SCHOOLS AM) SCHOOLMASTERS 439 iiuou diets of woi-ship. Tiio deiimiuls on tlu* iiiaster'H vigilance were not concluded by IiIh nmrslialling liis Hock twice on the Sabbath, and his pmyiii)^ and cateehisinj^ them on Scripture and the preacher's discourses, whicli he was apt to forget liimself. He was further bound to watclj over them throu^di the live- long day ; to lake care that they did not behave th(!m8elves unseendy, that they " refraineil ' from profane oaths and un- godly strife," and to see that they kept indoors during the rest of the Lord's day. As the century advanced, as the old tradi- tions of puritanic ])ast died out, as commerce, trade, and fashion broke down the prejudices of the laity, while intelligent " Moderatism " was teaching worldly wisdom to the clergy, these ancient rigorous practices fell more and more into abeyance. Town councils became less exacting of the standing pious rules ; parents became less desirous for them ; and the lot of both schoolmastei-s and scholars on the Sundays became less grievous to be borne, much to the aflliction of the godly. Side by side with this stern regard for the u])bringing of youth in the nurture of the Lord and the admonition of the teacher, it is remarkable to observe the encouragement given to play-acting in schools which were under the all-seeing eye of the Church. For a long period there had existed in Grammar Schools the practice of performing Latin plays. This was designed for the furtherance of learning, not to pander to any sinful love of playing ; and, indeed, the pieces selected were admirably fitted to extinguish utterly all fondness for the stage in juvenile breasts throughout their natural life. The author of a Latin grammar which had great vogue, Alexander Home, dismissed at five in the afterDoon. 2nd, The master must pray with his scliolars morning and evening, when he convenes thu school and dismisses. 3rd, He must cause his scholars get the Catechisms exactly and distinctly by heart, and hear them repeat the same on Saturday forenoon. 4th, He must gather his -scholars on the Sabbath morning before the sermon and pray with them, and then take them to church with him, wlicn after he hath a jisalm the Catechism must be repeated by two of them — one asking and the otlier answering. 5th, Ho must enjoin such as can write to write the sermon, and on Monday morning cause his scholars to give an account of what they mind thereof, and subjoin some pious exhortations and advices to them." — P. 128, Ritchie's Churdtes of St. Baldred ; Aberdeen Burgh Jifcords, p. 340. In Dumfries in 1724. — M'Dowall, p. 597. Repetition of Catechism by boys in kirk re-enjoined by Presbytery of Ayr in 1747.— Edgar, ii. 122. > Peebles, 1711.— Grant, p. 434. 440 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY schoolmaster of Dunbar, had composed, when James VI. was king, a piece called " Bellum Grammaticale " — a serio-comic piece of portentous dulness, in which the various parts of speech are personified, and appear to argue forth their respec- tive claims to precedence over the rest. During the early decades of the eighteenth century this pedagogic moral play was a favourite performance on festive school occasions, when the public functionaries, eminent citizens, and ministers came to witness it with subdued excitement. To display their apprecia- tion of these Latin dramatic entertainments, town councils^ voted so much (or rather, so little) yearly to defray the cost — not that they launched into large expense in so doing, the sum of £6 Scots, or 9s. being the usual amount of their aid.^ Tired of this weary composition, the " young gentlemen " of the Grammar School of Dalkeith, in 1734, enacted something more enlivening — producing before a large assemblage the tragedy of " Julius Caesar " and the comedy of " ^sop " — acting, as it is recorded, " with a judgment and address inimitable beyond their years." ^ The same year at Kirkcaldy Burgh School a piece composed by the master was presented on more scholastic and less dramatic principle, and the very subject enables us to judge how little in its deadly pedantry it pandered to the passion for excitement in youth. Thus runs the title : " The Eoyal Council of Advice ; or, the Eegulai Education of Boys the foundation of all other material improve- ments." When in Perth Grammar School the pupils performec the decorous play of " Cato," nothing but approval could bt expressed; but when next year (1735) the moral drama o " George Barnwell" was acted, not merely once, but twice, i had a succ^s de scandale ; although it had been produced to foste: the morals of youth by showing the pernicious effects of vice At that very time Lillo's play, having reclaimed young mei ^ In 1705 the Council of Paisley " by a plurality of votes allow £20 Scot towards defraying the expense of their acts of 'Bellum Grammaticale'; ani also for their encouragement promise to erect a theatre at their own expense. "- Brown's Paisley Grammar School, p. 120. - In 1677 the bailies of Lanark were contented with giving "sax pound, Scots to help to get materials to the scholars for Bellum Grammaticum."- Burgh Records, p. 194. ^ Chambers' Domestic Annals, iii. 584. ' EDUCATION— SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 441 from vicious courses, was considered so highly improving' thut in London theatres it was usually performed the night hefore Christmas und on fj\st<'r Monday. The " fair city " of Perth, however, was sorely exercised : on Siihliath it is chronicled, " A very leanied moral sennon suitable to the occasion was preached against converting' the sehool into a play-house, wherelty youth was diverted from their studies and employed in the liuUooneries of the stage." A committee was forthwith appointed to " deal with " the reckles.s master, and an overture wtis prepared to the (teneral As.seml)ly to 8U])presH stage plays in schools and dancing balls in the place.' Ecclesiastical if not j)opular opinion proved too stroni,' for all dramatic license, and the wave of fervour and pietism which was passing over the country, which reached its highest pitch in the revivals of Cambuslang and Kilsyth, and was keen in Perthshire, at this time soon extinguished a good old custom never more to be revived. Much more in consonance with the spirit of the age than any ftivouring of the drama in youthful breasts was the treatment dealt out to the luckless teacher of Greenock. Mr. John Wilson had acquired some reputation as a poet ; he had composed a poem, entitled " The Clyde " (published after his death under the editorship of John Leydeu), as well as a tragedy on " Earl Douglas." This skill in practising literature was considered so deleterious to the art of teaching it, that it was treated as a crime instead of a qualification by the prosaic council, and his appointment as schoolmaster was thereupon saddled with the hard condition that " he should abandon that profane and unprofitable art of poem-making." - Thereupon John Wilson made a holocaust of his trciisured manuscripts, to pacify the bailies and secure a livelihood for his family. IV One feature of the educational system of Scotland was the remarkable jealousy of any interference with the monopoly of parish schools as the sole legal dispenser of knowledge. This • Sir James Stewart relates how he played at North Berwick Burgh School in "Henry VIII." '\\\\TH .—CoUrusi Colledi<>iis, i. 286. " Greenshield's Ltsmahagoic, Appendi.x, p. 38. 442 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY opposition to private schools did not exist so long as burgh; were not taxed to support any other; but from the hour < " stent " was imposed to uphold a grammar school, the whol( economical interest was aroused to hinder any private individual; setting up classes which would draw away the profit from th( public seminary. Even in country parishes, if a schoolmaste:| complained that a side school had been opened in the neigh bourhood, elders were at once deputed " to warn the teache to desist from the practice " ; and any poor man in search of ; living, or any old woman trying to combine the teaching of thi alphabet with that of sewing and darning stockings to children two or three miles from the parish school, was forbidden tij "proceed."^ Burghs were not less jealous and exclusive, am on intimation of any furtive attempt to open a private class th magistrates ordered that " the edict pass by tuck of drum, for bidding it under a fine of from £5 to £40 Scots and imprisori ment, a yearly toties quoties." On every occasion when the monc poly of the parochial school seemed unduly encroached upoi the summons was issued " that no child above 6 or 7 be taugh even music in any room, except parish and burgh schools. The most accomplished master of singing dare not ply his artisti craft in a town where any tuneless, earless, timeless domini held office, "under fulzie of 100 merks for each quarter's cor travention." " It was not until towards the end of the centur that a less exclusive policy began to prevail, and even sma grants were then given to private schools. This was, in fac an economical politic course, seeing that with the growth ( population more schools were becoming needful, and ever adventure school conveniently saved the expense of erecting public one at the community's charge. ^ Balmerinoand Us Ahhey, p. 239. Buchanan Kirk-Session in 1714, "co sidering how much the publick school is decayed, especially by reason of Jef Kilpatrick keeping a private school near the place, recommend the minister go to the said Jean and discharge her teaching a school, and therewith cerl' iication that if she do not desist, they, with the schoolmaster, will apply to tl; judge ordinar." In 1715, reported that order had been given to the officer signify to Jean Kilpatrick that she behoved to quit her school, except the | who were learning to sew and work stockings, with certitication if she d; not, a more strick punishment would be for her." — P. 112, G. Smith's ^S'^ror' endrick. - Council of Montrose, p. 379 ; Grant's Burgh Schools. ' EDUCATION— SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 443 Burj^h scliools, which hnd in foninT j^fnerutioiiH rai.Mrd high the reputation for luitinity of ScotUmd, still cuntiniu-«l their function of ^'ivin^ an etlucation in Ijitin. After children had been at an Knglish or " vul^jiir " school for two y«;ar.s, they at the ago of nine passed into the gi-annnar school, where they were |)lun<,'ed at once into classics, and during their four years' attendance ^'ained an amount of classical know- ledge to whicii ordinary university students to-day certainly do not attain ; a proficiency was then regarded so suflicient that there were no professors of Humanity appointed or *' considered necessary " in the universities at the Iteginning of the century. At the age of twelve or thirteen (sometimes even at eleven years old), many passed into the colleges where the lectures were delivered in Latin.* In the precincts of the grammar schools the boys were not allowed to speak a word except in Latin, either in their cla-sses or in their private talk — a practice which gave them a familiarity with the tongue which served them well when they entered the nniversities. where the same rules were insisted upon.' In order to insure obedience to these regulations, certain scholars were chosen to act as spies or detectives, under the euphemistic and tautological title of " private clandestine aiptors," who were required to inform upon all their comrades ' Gibson's History of Glasgow, 1787, p. 193. — " A time of life at which they certainly are unfit to obtain an accurate knowledge of the Latin tongue," re- marks a writer, .sjieaking from his own exjierience. Nine was a common age for children to enter tlie Grammar School of Aberdeen in 1712 (Burgh Rrcorda) : " none to enter earlier, unless they be of great capacity and cngyiie." — P. 342. ' Tlie following enables us to sec what were the curriculum and the books in use in old grammar .schools up to the middle of the century. The schoolmaster of Glasgow, before the Commission of Parliament in 1690, states his system of education : According to tlie standard formula observed these 100 years and upwards he teacheth for the 1st year : Rudiraenta Etymologiae, Wedderburni Vocabula, Dicta Sapientum e Graecis, Erasmo Rotterdamo interprete, Catonis Disticha, Lilii Monita Paedagoga, Sulpitius de Civilitate Morum ; and on Satur- days Rudimenta Pietatis, with a review of Shorter Catechism with Scriptural proofs. 2nd year : first jiart of Desjiauters Grammar with Corderius and Erasmi Majora Colloquia ; and on Saturday Confessio Fidei Latine. 3rd year : Second i>art of Desi>auter with Terentius, Ovid's Epistles, Tristia, Jonae Philo- logi Dialogi, Erasmus de Civilitate Morum ; and on Saturdays Dialogi Sacri. 4th year : Review of second part of Grammar with the third, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Erasmi ^linora Collo<]uia ; and on Satunlays Buchanan's Psalms. &th year : The fourth \Mii of the Grammar, Virgil, Quiutus Curtius, Horatius, Sallustius ; 29 444 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY who might speak Scots — the culprit being suh paena ferulae for the first offence, and to be publicly whipped for the second.^ In some places the duties of these spies — who rejoiced in the title of " dccurios " — had the responsible functions of takinw account if the scholars had prayed or read their due portion of Scripture ; if their hands were " washen " and their heads combed, and if they had said their questions of the Shorter Catechism ; to report if they spoke English, used oaths, oi played dice,^ In these old schools there were many rival Latin grammars — for ambitious schoolmasters, each possessed with the notion that he had invented a system superior to all others struggled for a monopoly of its use ; most ancient and most venerated was Despauter's, which had been used since 1530 in Scotland, till, in I7l7, Euddiman's Rudiments appeared, and became a national text-book. That worthy scholar's biographei pronounced a panegyrical prophecy that " this work wil transmit our grammarian's name with celebrity to every ag€ so long as the Eoman language shall be taught in Scotland.' Not quite ; but it did attain in use a respectable longevity o 150 years.^ V By the middle of the century the hardships of the schoo] masters were becoming too grievous to be borne withou strenous efforts being made to remedy their wrongs and relieve themselves from their almost abject poverty and degradatioi In 1748 they framed a memorial, to be presented to th General Assembly and to Parliament, stating their " Eeason for augmenting the salaries and other incomes of the schooJ masters of Scotland." This document is really pathetic i spite of its opulent and grandiloquent style, and its fioric on Saturday Buchanan's Psalms and Tragoidiae. Last year : Rhaetorica Vossi Lucan, Commentaria Caesaris, Buchanani Historia Scotorum, "with a litt insight into Greek." — Munimcnta Univ. Glas. ii. p. 537. For curriculum i 1716 of Aberdeen Grammar School, see Burgh Records, p. 340. ^ M'Dowall's Dumfries, p. 597. ^ Aberdeen Burgh Records, p. 330. ^ Chalmers' Life of Ruddirnan, p. 63. EDUCATION— SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 445 flowing; periods, which touch one's sense of humour to tl»e quick. We niiiy smile at the ambitious rhetoric which announces to plain Meml)er3 of Tarliament that " children may be justly com- pared to ru^^^ed, useless blocks of marble ; it is instruction which must hew them into shape and polish them into bwxuty." "With some impatience the blunt Commissioners of Supply must have read the elo»|uent ])latitudes : "that knowled<,'e, virtue, tiie noble subjects of eduaition, lay the foundation of a glorious and happy life ; they adorn human nature much and beautify the soul," and so on. " In tine," it concludes,^ " ujwn education almost entirely it depends whether a man shall be good, wise, and happy, or wicked, ignorant, and unhappy." Thereupon tiie schoolmasters, with more truth than consistency, proceed to prove that in spite of all their own education they are themselves extremely uidiappy. They appealed to the General Assembly for its support ; but the clergy were at that very time striving with equal non- success to get their own stipends augmented. They applied to " the landed interest " of the country ; they petitioned Par- liament. The movement died away in despair ; the teachers were too poor to prosecute their cause, too uninfluential to gain attention to their wrongs. The " agitation " only agitated themselves. Yet their petition to Parliament was urgent enough, piteous enough, to touch the most obdurate heart that ever paid and grudged a rate. " It is certain," stated the petition, " that our present encouragement will not procure even the necessities of life to any person, though he should live at the lowest rate, being only at an average of about £11 sterling, or about 7d. a day, which is less than the lowest mechanic can earn." This small pittance is to be collected from 100 different hands, which makes a sad deduction, as there will always be bad payers among the number." ^ Growth of dissent had meanwhile seriously curtailed their humble earnings from other sources. Episcopalian chapels and ' Scots Mag. 1749 ; Morren's Annals of Gen. Ass. ii. 376-382. ' Stat. Acct. Scot., Lintrathen. — "Schoolmaster's salary is 6 or 4 bolls of meal, to be collected from the tenants ; while the hut he occupies is hardly tit for the meanest beggar," 1793. ' They urged that uo private schools be allowed within three miles of parochial school. 446 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Seceder meeting-houses kept private registers for baptisms an marriages, which involved the loss of that groat for every entr which had been a welcome addition to the impoverishe teacher in his capacity of Session-Clerk. Meanwhile the cof of living had enormously extended, and had almost increase threefold in fifty years ; while owing to the progress an improvement in cultivation the profits of the farmers ha quadrupled, and the wages of every working man — ploughma and artisan — had increased in the same proportion. It was not till 1782 that the oppressed schoolmaste renewed their attempts to obtain some mitigation of their lo It was then that they drew up a memorial pleading tbi' " ninety years have produced such a change and so great improvement in agriculture, navigation, commerce, arts, ar riches of the country, that £15 sterling per annum at the ei of the last century may be considered a better income thf £45 at the present time. Suppose, then, that in Scotlai there are 900 parochial schoolmasters, which is near the trutl 8 of them will be found struggling with indigence, inferi in point of income to 8 day labourers in the best cultivatf parts of the island, and receiving one-half of the emolumen of the menial servants of country gentlemen." In fact, thf case was even worse than they represented it, for while t average income of schoolmasters was £13 a year, that of t artisan and ploughman was from £14 to £16.^ At that time every rank and profession was recruit from lads who had got their Latin and their training the parish schools ; while the teachers, to whom they large owed all their success, lived in hovels, and their famil:. were clad in rags. In spite of all their powerful claims, t : schoolmasters were obliged to wait till this century befci they got a partial remedy for their distress. At last, . 1802, the long sought, long needed relief came, though b}- most modest instalment. The Schoolmasters' Act was passi. After a quite superfluous preamble, stating that " the pari i schoolmasters of Scotland are a most useful body of men a I their labours have been of essential importance to the pub; welfare," it ordains that henceforth their incomes are not ) 1 Stat. Account of Scotland, 1792-4, xxi. 336-341. EDUCATION— SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 447 l»e under 300 nierks (£16:13:4), nor nhove 400 niorks (£22:4:6); that they are to be provided by tljo lieritors with a house, which need not contain more than two rooms, indndinif the kitchen, and with ground for a garden of n«)t less than a (juarter of a Scots acre, or two l)oll3 of oatmeal as its equivalent.' So ends not too brilliantly a disnud |)eriod of scholastic poverty ; so begins on not too prodigal a scale of liberality the new em of educational history. ' " HojM! [Lord Atlvocate] told mo that lie had coiisidirable difliculty in getting even the two rooni.t, and tliat a groat majority of the lairds and Scotch nicnibvrs wore indignant at being obliged to 'erect [>alace.s for dominies.' " — Cock burn's Memorials, p. 186. CHAPTEE XII EDUCATION IN SCOTLAND THE UNIVERSITIES THEIR LIFE AND LEARNING The social and ecclesiastical disquiet which had for genera tions prevailed in Scotland had fatally affected the academic? life of the country. The reign of Episcopacy had kept out of post of schoolmasters and professors the largest and most vigorou class of the people. Recruited as the chairs of universitie had been chiefly from the undistinguished Episcopal ministei up to the Eevolution, and after that, from equally unculture Presbyterian ministers who had got a haphazard education f home or in Holland, to which they had taken flight, the seal of learning were long empty of learning, and the centres ( the highest national education could boast of little philosoph and of less science. When, after the re-establishment • Presbytery, the professors then occupying posts in collegi were required to take the oath of allegiance to William an Mary, and to subscribe the Confession of Faith, many refuse' and were thereupon ousted from their chairs. The difticult now arose of finding successors to the Principals and Eegen who were deprived of their ofl&ces, and to the old teachers : they died off.^ The new order of clergy from whom professo were drawn, in their fugitive and impoverished lives, had had i ^ In St. Andrews all but three were deprived ; in Edinburgh five were fore to quit ; in Glasgow all but three complied with the oath ; and, strange to sa in Aberdeen, a city which had Jacobite and Episcopal leanings, all the professc except one and both principals cautiously conformed. — Grub's Eccles. Hist, Scotland, iii. 319-22. EDUCATION— THE UNIVERSITIES 449 opportunity to prosecute quiet iiml laborious study ; they IukI no luouey to buy bookH, 110 leisure to read theia, uiul in truth, from the fervour of their piety, had little zest for culture in paj^'un letters and the profane bai)l>liii;,' of earthly philos(jphy. In despair Principal Carstare8 even formed a scheme for im- porting Dutchmen from their famous universities to teach in Scots collej,'es.' It was only grailually, when the younj^ men Hocked after the Kevolution to univereities, chiefly with a view to entering the Church, that there arose a class of men to draw from for teachera ; but from 16'JO to about 17-5 there was a dreary stagnation of all intellectual life and destitution of scholarship in Scotland."' The course of instruction was conducted by regents, — teachers each of whom ctirried his class through a three or four years' curriculum, till it readied the stage of laureation. During that period each regent taught his students, in successive years, Greek, ethics, pneumatics, logic, mathematics,'* and physics, a strange medley of subjects which could not fairly or competently be taught by any one man. It is true that under this system, called the " ambulatory " or " rotatory," each master had the estimable advantage of being thoroughly acquainted with all the pupils under his eye ; but it is equally true tliat he had the unfortunate disadvantage of being thoroughly acquainted with none of the subjects under his charge. It is not surprising, therefore, that wherever this preposterous arrangement existed, there was hardly one man who made himself distinguished in any branch of philosophy, or made any real contribution to learning or to science.* Absurd as was this method of each regent ' Calamy's Own Liff, \. 172. ^ Jicport of UnixxniUj Comrnissioti, p. 221. ' Though mathematics had, since 1692, a special professor, it formed no part of the course for degrees or for the Church. — Grant's Edin. Univ. ii. 298. * An exception to the prevailing absence of scientific attainment occurs in the distinguished cases of James Gregory and liis nephew David Gregory. James (Gregory, who had mounted the reflecting telescope at the age of twenty- two, was transferred from St. Andrews to the professorship of mathematics in Edinburgh in 1674, dying the no.xt year after being struck witli blindness in showing his students the satellites of Jupiter through a telescope. In 1684 David Gregory succeeded to the post at the age of twenty-two with a salary of 450 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY lecturing on a multiplicity of incongruous subjects, instead of each subject being treated by one man who had made it his special study, it was not abandoned without reluctance. Although through the influence of the ever-sagacious Principal Carstares, who was anxious to form Scots colleges on Dutch models, the system was given up in Edinburgh in 1708, it continued till 1727 in Glasgow, in St. Andrews till 1747, and in Aberdeen, though it was abolished at Marischal College in 1757, it was retained in King's College till the end of the century.^ The appointments to the chairs at the universities in the early part of the eighteenth century were made in the olden manner after public competition. In 1690 it was ordained by Scots Parliament that whenever a post fell vacant a " program " was to be affixed " to the avenues of the city and other colleges in the kingdom, inviting qualified persons to test themselves on a certain day to appear in public dispute on any problematical subjects which were proposed." Then in the hall, before principal and regents, the various candidates, who had been assigned their subjects by lot, debated on successive days in Latin on some chosen subject, testing at once their fluency and their skill." Thereafter they were examined in Greek and philosophy ; in a manner, however, which could not search the erudition of any scholar very pro- foundly ; and the successful competitor was appointed regent, and expected to teach a variety of branches of knowledge which needed the versatility of an Admirable Crichton. Such were the ways in the early part of the century. In the curriculum of the universities at that period there was one remarkable omission, and that was Latin. That language was not taught amid the miscellaneous matters £1000 Scots, and has the credit of having been the iirst to give public lectures on the Newtonian philosophy — thirty-five years before that system was adopted in public instruction at Cambridge. He became professor of Astronomy at Oxford in 1692. The Gregorys, however, had not been "ambulatory" regents. ^ Y^%^xie,Ay?, Annals of Aberdeen, ii. 291. 2 At Edinburgh, in 1700, the subjects of debate were Be motu, Be hnitoruv percepHone, etc. — ^Bower, ii. 6. In Glasgow subjects for competition dispute: were Quodnam sit criterion veritatis and Quod sit cansa variorum colorum t>- corporihus naturalibus. — Munimenta Universitatis Glasgucnsis, ii. 413. EIWCA TION- THE UMVERSITIES 4; j on which regents prelected. It wiis left virtuiiily to the schools, the masters «>f which were considered j)erfectly qualifieil to trtiin their pupils in that learned tongue and granuniir. Indeed, there was displayetl n paiidul jealousy by the huruh schools lest coUegis should encroach on this their 8[)ecial function ; a jealousy which universities were careful to respect. When, therefore, a student entered the university he used only to pass a slight entrance e.\aniinali(tn in Latin, and was then enrolled as a student in philosophy. This division of labour l)etween the hi^^her and lower seminaries did not, however, always proceed from punctilious courtesy ; it partly arose from the chronic state of poverty under which colleges lay, which forced professors to subsist on mean pittances. In a sanguine moment (Jlasgow had in 1G8.'-? agreed to allow a professor of Humanity a salary of £20, and thereupon a teacher was appointed for a term of five years. Unfortunately, the Faculty soon discovered that they had no funds wherewith to carry out the bargain — " the whole rents and revenues being super-expendit " — and, crestfallen, they record that they must suspend the class until they had means of maintaining it.^ Not till 1704, twenty-one years later, did that prosperous period arrive, and then " Mr. A. Eoss, a student, having offered himself," was inducted to the professorship of Humanity with a stipend of £300 Scots (£20 sterling) "after he had given a tryall of his skill in the Latin tongue," as evidenced by his producing in three days a translation into English of Tiberius' letter in the third book of the Annals of Tacitiis, and a translation into Latin of Lord Loudon's speech to the king as contained in Eushworth's Collection.- Here again, as far as possible, the most punctilious care is taken not to hurt the interests of parish teachers, for the new regent is forbidden to teach the grannuar " lest it should prejudice " the burgh schools. Even long after a special professorship of Latin was in 1708' erected in P^dinburgh, it was usual for students to prosecute their studies and take their degree without ever ' Munim. Univ. Olasg., ii. 347, 387. ' Rid., ii. 396. ^ Previous to this a professor had taught Latin, but he was merely a tutor preparing entrants for the Bajan or first philosophy class, and no student was obliged to attend his class. — Grant's Edinburgh University, i. 216. 452 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY entering a Latin class. The lad merely passed an easy examination in the language, and then entered in the first or Bajan year of his course, never to study it at all.^ It is true that the text-books were often in Latin, that the philosophical lectures were based on classic and mediseval writers, that the lectures were delivered in the learned tongue ; all which served to tax a boy's scholarship if he had any, or left him more ignorant than before if he had none. Almost as badly did it fare with Greek in the first haK of the century. Not taught from any special chair, it was long merely one of the multifarious subjects taught by a regent whose course included pneumatics and logic, natural philosophy and astronomy. In the beginning of the century it did become evident to the more intelligent men interested in scholarship that dead languages might as well be buried as be taught on such a perfunctory system, and at Glasgow a separate chair for teaching Greek was formed in 1704^ — in this case without the ordeal of a public dispute and public com- petition, the candidate " having given a tryall of his skill in an analysis of Homer's Iliacl, Book viii, from line 171 to 181," which token of his scholarship amply satisfied and convinced his not-too-exacting judges.^ In 1708, when the regenting system was abolished in Edinburgh, one professor, of course, took separate charge of Greek, while in recognition of scholarship, another was appointed to teach Latin — with what imperfect results we shall see. Never distinguished for its attainment in Greek scholar- ship, though once famous for its Latinity, Scotland had sunk to perhaps its lowest ebb in the early part of the eighteenth century, and this depression was increased by the spirit of monopoly which makes trade jealous of trade, that had even entered the more cultured scholastic craft. We have seen how schoolmasters opposed the teaching of Latin in colleges lest it should diminish their own pupils and fees. With equal exactitude, and for the same commercial reasons, professors ^ In 1756 the Latin class was thinly attended, more than half of the students began their course with Greek, and many with the logic class.— Somerville's Ovm Life and Times, p. 12 ; Carlyle's Autobiography, 43. ^ Munim., ii. 396. EDUCATION— THE UNIVERSITIES 453 ill their turn opjmksjkI schoolnuustiT.s ^,'ivini,' li-.s.Hon.s in (Jrrok.' Old umictineiits had given force to this jealous regfinl of universities for their own interests, forbidding; burgh or •^'ninnuar sehools or jirivatt^ persons teaching' (Ireek or logie within their walls. It is true some ignored thes(j laws and absurd prohibitions, and occasionally a master imparted to his pupils, sons of lairds and farmers, far more (Ireek at school than ever they got at college ; though the High School of Glasgow only professed to give "a little insight into Greek." Hut professors were forced to spend months witli their pupils whose ignorance their own rules had enforced, going over the alphabet and veriest rudiments, or in reading with them some Ijitin author, till they knew enough (.Jreek t«) try to translate the simplest author.- The oidy lads who really did come up to college with a little smattering of knowledge, after a trilling examination in the language, were allowed to escape altogether tiie class of the professor of Greek, or the year during which the regent taught that tongue, and under the title of " super- venientes " passed at once over tlie Bajan or lowest class into the " Semi," or philoso- phical. In this way they were able to save a year's study, and a year's fees, and to evade Greek for a lifetime. In 1691 Thomas Boston ^ came up as a lad from his poor cottage at Duns to Edinburgh, and there he was tried by the regent in the Greek New Testament, and then entered the " Semi " cliiss, or second year, to hear no more of Greek literature except its Aristotelian logic. Even past the middle of the ' In 1772 Principal Robertson and the senators of Eilinlmrgli University protested to the Town Council against Dr. Adam, Rector of the High School, opening a class for teaching the elements of the Greek language, urging that the school should continue to bo a Latin school. The Town Council declined to interfere. — Bower's Uist. of Edin. L'niv. ii. ; Grants Edinbunjh University, i. 208, 266. Logic and Greek were made a monopoly of the colleges in 1645, and in 1672 Lords of Privy Council prohibit all persons not publicly authorised to gather together any number of scholars and to teach them philosophy or Greek language, " because the practice, besides being contrary to the laws, tends to the prejudice of universities by rendering some of the professors therein altogether useless." ' Bower's Eiiin. Univ. ii. 2.i2. In 1760 Professor Hill, at St. Andrews, spends much time in teaching the Greek letters and jMirt.s of speech. — Cook s Life of Principal Hill, p. 62 ; Ramwiy's Scotland and Scotstnen. ' Boston's JJenwirs, p. 16 ; Carlyle's Autobiography, p. 43. 454 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V century any student who knew sufficient to satisfy his lenient examiners passed over the classic tongues and began at once the study of philosophy.^ What made this practice all the more absurd was the fact that the great bulk of the students were mere boys. They were usually from thirteen to fifteen years of age — some only eleven — and were thrust into philosophy when they hardly knew the meaning of the word, and took their degree of M.A. at sixteen before they had begun .to think.^ To make the difficulty of learning as great as possible, and as if to make the whole system as useless as possible, the instruction was imparted in Latin. Many a poor boy who had in a village school just scraped enough of knowledge to make him ambitious, and whose father had scraped enough of meal or money to keep him in food, came to the college and heard everything said in what was an unknown tongue ; in it the professor prayed, lectured, examined ; in that language boys barely acquainted with their own tongue were expected to repeat ponderously inept Aristotelian definitions, and to remember professorial prolixities on Grotius and Puffendorf. Their minds were strained by disquisitions they could not follow, crammed with terminology no dictionary could explain, and full of technical phrases no classic author had ever used. The practice of lecturing in Latin was retained, in spite of its manifest uselessness, till far into the century in many classes ; and as a rule the duller and more pedantic the professor was, the more antiquated his text-books and doctrines were, the more tenaciously he kept to this time-honoured custom ; and he still slowly dictated in Latin his dreary sentences for pupils to copy down during his " colleges," as the lectures were called.^ The first professor in Scotland to ^ Scots Magazine, 1826 ; Bower's Edin. University, ii. 72. ^ Colin Maclaurin, the famous mathematician, entered college at eleven years old, graduated at fifteen, and became professor at nineteen. David Hume and Principal Robertson were only twelve, and Principal Hill was only eleven on entering college. ^ So in Caledonian Mercury, Oct. 1736, the advertisement appears, " Dr. John Pringle, professor of Ethicks and Pneumaticks, begins his college on Puffendorf de officio hominis et civis with the usual supplement from Lord Bacon of the Doctrina Civilis, etc., on Thursday, the 4th of Nov. 1736." EDUCATION— THE UNIVERSITIES 455 break away from the oUl practice wjis the ever indepeiuleiit Professor llutcheson of Glasj^ow, in 1727, who fouml thi; llow of his periods fettered by cral)l)e(l Ijitiiiity and tedious dictated sentences. Others ^'radually and timidly followed his example, but very slowly, not entirely because the old way was a pleasure to the teacher or a benefit to the student, but lest his abandoning the classic ton^'ue for his broad Scots mi<,'ht maliciously be ascribed to his incapacity to speak it.' This, in fact, was ill-naturedly hinted regarding the learned Dr. C'ullen, wlu'n in his medical school he bej.,'an to lecture in Eni^lish — the tirst physician to do so ; although he retaineti the Latin in teaching botany. Even in the middle of the century Kdini)uri,'Ii professors of jthilosophy, law, and divinity ])orsisted in their lumbering Liitin to somnolent students, till finally they acquired enough good sense and moral courage to dis- course in the vernacular in all chairs, except the conservative divinity." II The students were drawn from every class — from noble- men and farmers, from ministers, lairds, schoolmasters, and mechanics, and from the hard-working tenants of Ulster, whose sons formed a large contingent of the number — the " stupid Irish league," as Professor Keid long after termed the band which in 1760 formed a third of the Glasgow students.^ The great majority of the lads were extremely poor, and lived in mean garrets in the wynds ; ■* some were so badly off that * Thomson's Lift of Ciillcn, i. 28. ^ Relics of the old custom of Latin speaking in the class are found in the adsum with which the students still answer the calling of the roll, and the Latin form of Christian names in matriculation books. " I attended the class for Church history in St. Andrews during three years [about 1776], and never heard the professor in his public character si)eak one word of English all that time. One of the other professors of divinity also lectures in Latin ; the third professor discourses in Knglish." — Hall's Travels, p. 604 ; 1803. * Reid's Works (Hamilton's edition), p. 40. In 1760 Professor Reid writes from Glasgow, " Near a third of our students are Irish. Thirty came over lately in one vessel. We have a gootl many English and some foreigners ; many of the Irish as well as Scotch are poor, and come up late to save money." Half of the students who took degrees in Glasgow are entered "Scoto-Hibernicus." * Such entries as the following from Kirk-Session records are not rare in the 456 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY old Kirk-Session records mention little doles of a few pence given to lads to help them on their way as they travelled to college. When they went to their classes in October they often took with them a supply of oat and barley meal, which with occasional supplies from home, lasted by careful stinting till the Session was over in May. In consideration of the common neediness of students, there was an ancient privilege — at any rate in Glasgow — that meal intended for their use should be exempt from the town customs exacted from all provisions sold in the market by the official who was called the " ladleman," from the tax having been one ladleful taken out of every sack. When the kindly rule had been broken, to the detriment of the poor students, the University of Glasgow deputed Dr. Adam Smith to demand ^ continuance of the ancient privilege from the Town Council, who agreed to refund the exactions of the ladler. So dependent was a large pro- portion, unless they got a bursary, on the small earnings of their fathers, who stinted themselves and their family to maintain a son at college, that after an exceptionally bad harvest Professor Adam Ferguson found his philosophy class diminished by one-half.^ How frugally they lived we can see from Mr. Thomas Boston's description of his student days in Edinburgh during three years : " Thus a holy, wise providence," says this pious divine, " ordered my education at the college that the charges thereof amounted in all to but £128 : 15 : 8 Scots (£11:18:8 sterling), of which I had twenty merks as aforesaid to pay afterwards [for laureation]. Out of this sum was paid the regent's fees yearly and the college dues, and also my maintenance was furnished out of it. By means thereof I had a competent understanding of the logics, meta- physics, ethics, and general physics — always taking pains of early part of the century : "To the blind student that hath the Irish [Gaelic] tongue " ; "to the scholar at St. College" — each of whom are awarded a few pence. — Campbell's Balmerino and its Abbey, p. 234. ^ Rae's Life of Adam Smith, p. 67. ^ Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsmen. In their poverty the one great difficulty must have been for students to buy books for their classes and for study, for they got no help from the college library — at any rate in Edinburgh, where no book was lent out. Up till 1730 they were chained and padlocked to their shelves, and even when loosened from chains they were not set free for students. — Bower, ii. 39 ; Boston's 3Iemoirs, p. 15. EDUCATION— THE UNIVERSITIES 457 what Wiis bt'tbri! mo und pleasiiif^ the re^'iait." It is triu; that the author of Th- Fourfold SUtte of Man had half-sUirved him- self, ami put liimself into ill-hcahh aiid inootliiiess which aflected his most ilt'])resHiiij^ thtMilo;^}'. Many another lad starved his hody to feed his mind, with pertinaeious industry, clad in threadl)are hodden gray, too poor to buy candles, and studying' hy the fire-li^ht, in the unfurnislied ^'arret.* I'.ut in the first lialfof the century even rich students could live cheaply, l)oardin>4 for £10 a year"' in I'klinburgh ; and as bursaries were to l)e got, and the fee to the one regent they attended was only one guinea, or los. a year, education for any learned profession was brought within the reach of the poorest lads who had brains or energy. The practice of living in chandjcrs in the colleges was much encouraged by the universities, as conducing to the moral and religious nurture of youth. Several chambers had been erected in the main quadrangle of the Edinburgh University for the accommodation of students ; and in the beginning of the century several of these were still occupied ; in Glasgow many lived in college precincts ; and St. Andrews and King's College, Aberdeen, long continued to be the residence of a large number. To suit the finances of different classes, there were the first table and the second — at the former the wealthier lads paid £2 : 15s., or £2 per quarter for their food — of which oatmeal, broth, and ale formed a large proportion — and at this common table the principal and regents sat. ' Preface to G. M. Berkeley's Poems, 1797. "^ Exi>€nses of a student at St. Salvador's College, St. Andrews, in 1684 : — " If he be a primner the expense as followeth : Imp. for his own tabell and his servant's quarterlie . £60 (Scots.) //. for his bed if he be alone ...... £3 It. for dressing his chamber, and making his bed . £.? It. once in the year to porter £1:1 It. once in the year to him that cleanzeth coUedge . £1:4 It. once in the year to the college cook if he tabell at college £1:4 It. to his regent 5 or 6 dolours. If he be a seconder : Imp. for his own tabell and servant's quarterlie . . £51 : G : 4 It. to his regent 3 or 4 dolours. It. to his bed £3 To dressing his chamber, fwrter, cooke, cleaner, 12s. each." Scottish Antiquary, xi. p. 19. 458 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY They were also put into occupation of a chamber furnished with bedstead and grate at a charge from 20s. to 7s. for the session.-^ Even in 1774 Dr. Johnson was told at St. Andrews that a young man could get board and education for seven months for £15 if he lived in the best style, or for £10 if he desired more economy.^ Yet even that smaller scale we can see' was far beyond the resources of a large mass of poor students who could subsist most frugally on oatmeal, and, in later years. on herrings, with potatoes, when these came into use. Once established in their college chambers, the students came under the vigilant care and custody of the regents,^ each of whom took his week's turn of superintendence, with the title of Hebdomadar, visiting each room at five in the morning and at nine in the evening to see if they were behaving them- selves properly, neither over-sleeping in the morning, nor dicing or playing cards at night. At 6 A.M. all were summoned by the bell, and appeared in the common hall to answer to their names, and after prayers and religious instruction they proceeded to their several class-rooms. The pietistic character of the period pervaded the colleges as well as the Church, and forced religion on scholars till it begot hypocrisy, cant, or weariness. What else could be the result of an ordinance establishing intolerable inquisition like this: "Students are obliged to be diligent in praying to God, reading in their chambers morning and evening, and to ensure obedience cubi- cular censors are appointed to keep watch, and the regents are enjoined to notice how they perform the private duties of prayer and reading as well as in their questions." ■* It is not surprising that rules and espionage like this did ^ In St. Andrews, up to the union of colleges, tlie greater part of the students lodged in chambers inside the college walls ; all gates were shut at 10 o'clock P.M., and none could get out or come in till 6 in the morning. Professors took weekly their post as hebdomadar, and presided at the table and visited each chamber at 6 A.M. and 8 or 9 p.m. These perlustrations were given up soon after the union of colleges. Originally the students dined at 12 with supper at 6, afterwards at 1 or 2, and supper at 7 or 8 o'clock. Tlie common table was kept up till 1820. — Hall's Travels, i. 114 ; Lyon's St. Andretvs, ii. 184. ^ Johnson's Journey to Western Islands, 1791, p. 12. * Munime7ita Univ. Glasg., ii. 489. * In 1693, ihid. ii. 369. EDUCATJON~TUE UNIVERSITIES 459 not render residence in college precincts extremely attructive. There is no wonder that there arose murniurs from academic Faculties that " so many studeuls do lye out at college " ; ' and no wonder, that in spite of all efforts to foster the old system, the chambers adjoining the Edinburgh College sur- rounded by its ruinous wall were almost deserted of their intended occupants by 1733,' and put to other purjwses. Some were used as class-rooms ; others were occupied at a rent of £1 by a miscellaneous population — clerks, coal-sellers, printers, and booksellers. Professor Keid, who l)olieved greatly in this living in college precincts, and greatly rejoiced when after its decay it was revive»l in King's College, in 1755 wrote enthusiastically to hLs friend the laird of Newton : " We need but look out of our windows to see them rise and when they go to bed. They are seen nine or ten times the day statedly by one or other of the masters, at publick prayers, school hours, meals, and in their rooms, besides occasional visits which we can make with little trouble to ourselves. They are shut within college walls at nine at night." ^ Unfortunately, all these rules, so comforting to anxious parents, were most un- comfortable to their sons, who preferred private and independent lodgings free from the incessant surveillance of the college ; and only about forty or fifty students dined at common table "• when the system was revived ; a number which lessened, till the old-new system died out of inanition in Aberdeen ; though it was retained in St. Andrews with more success. The restraints which ordinary students in the early part of the century had to endure were quite sufficient without the " prelustrations " of regents morning and night to their rooms. Throughout the session — lasting from the 1st of October to the end of May — the classes began in Edinburgh at seven o'clock, ' Afunirmnta Cniv. Olasg. ii. 519. - In Edinburgh few resided in college at the beginning of the century jmrtly from lack ofacconiniodation, chiefly from lack of inclination. — Calamy's Oini Life. ' Dunbar's Social Life in Jlarmjshire, p. 6. " The board is at the first table 50 merks i)er quarter, and at the second 40. The rent is from 7s. to 203. in the session, no furniture but bedstead, table, grate — feather-bed, bed-cloaths, chairs, tongs, Insd-hangings must be bought or hired. Students provide their own candles, fire, washing, pay 2 guineas to the master ; to professors of Greek and Humanity for publick teaching, 5s. each." — P. 8. * Kennedy's Annals, ii. 391. 80 46o SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY and in other universities at six. The students assembled in the dark lecture rooms, dimly lighted by the smoky tallow candles, and ill-heated by the newly kindled fires in bitter winter mornings. Before a class began its work the students took their turn to open the class with a prayer — a performance that proved so little conducive to edification that the Glasgow Faculty in i 1702^ timidly suggested that when convenient this practice might be discontinued. In the college yards the lads were carefully watched in their conversation ; " for all who profane God's name or vent horrid oaths or nasty words " were to " pay for the first offence 6d. Scots (Id. sterling), and thereafter to be severely chastened." ^ They were, further, obliged to speak Latin in their private inter- course in college grounds, and when in l706 rumours arose that, contrary to orders, " the students do all speak Enghsh," the Senate of Glasgow at once enjoined that "each regent shall appoynt a clandestine censor to observe that all without exception be summoned who are found guilty " — the fine for this crime being Id. for the first offence, and 2d. for the second, and this sum, small as it now seems, would be hard on poor students to find.^ So far from Sunday bringingj any rest and relaxation to the youths, it brought more burdens' grievous to be borne. On the Sabbath morning all assembled in their respective class-rooms, and after religious exercises clad in their scarlet gowns, they followed the principal anc professors to kirk both morning and afternoon. At four o'clock the college bell was rung, and they again appeared in theij several class-rooms, where they were examined regarding th( discourses they had heard and the portion of theology whicl had been prescribed for study ; they were next questioned or the Catechism, and listened to an exposition of the Confessior of Faith."* Thereafter they were allowed to return, weary anc ^ Munimenta Glas. ii. 375. 2 Rules drawn up by Principal Carstares in 1704. — Bower, ii. 49 ; Dalziel' Edin. University, ii. 275. ^ Munim. Glas. ii. 390 ; Kennedy's Annals of Aberdeen, ii. 92. * Munimenta, ii. 378-529 ; Kennedy's Aberdeen, ii. 391. In Edinburgh th Sabbath surveillance was not so complete as in the western city ; but student in 1704 were summoned to their class-rooms "after sermon " to be examined i sacred subjects. — Dalziel's Edin. University. EDUCATION— THE UNIVERSITIES 461 worn out, to their respective Iml^'ingH, their homes, or their college chambers, whence, except to hear a lecture in the college kirk from a professor, they dared not emerge ; for to "vague" in the street or garden entailed a rebuke and incurred a fine. Even in churcli they sat under vigilant inspection of the regent's eye, and what tliey put into the plate or ladle was shur])ly noted, and reported by the watchful elders. It is with great grief that the professors record in the University records of ITO.'i that the contributions from the students are small ; and the regents are therefore directed that each Saturday the collection shall be taken in the class- room, under their very eyes, and thereafter handed to the Glasgow Kirk-Session. Sadly enough, a later minute records that such precautions had brought unexpected and irresistible temptation to the student to whom the collecting had been entrusted, and that " he had reciuisitioned it " — by which euphemistic phrase a vulgar theft attains an almost academic dignity.' In process of time these strait-laced rules gave way under the strain. The stern providence over undergraduates was relaxed in less pious and more tolerant days ; although far on in the centurj' the scholars were required to attend the College Church in Glasgow, and their ways, their speech, and their morals were carefully watched, guarded, and chastened.'^ But the whole method in whicli piety was forced by pedagogic insistence recalls the manner of the formidable Dr. Keate, of Eton, who, meeting a pupil, asked menacingly what book he * Jlunimenta Glas. ii. 379. ' When many old ways had been abandoned, professors still continued to examine the lads in the evening on the sermons they had heard and "to speak with them on religious subjects." This was the practice of Hutcheson, professor of moral philosophy, and Professor Dunlop of the Greek chair. — Riimsay's Scot. and Scots, i. 277. In an unpublished letter to Adam Smith, Professor Joseph Black in 1764 writes : "Need I tell you of the Reformation that has lieen made in our devotions since you loft us ; how some of the Irish students remonstrated to the Faculty that there was not room for them in the College church, etc., and proposed that the College should have a private chappel of their own ; how this proposal was long considered, and at last agreed to, and put in practice ; how the college loft has been set by roup at the extravagant rate of 6 or 7 to 9 shillings for every sitter ; how the College has already met two Sundays in the back hall, and have sung their psalms most melodiously with the help of a pitch-fork, which occasions much deliberation among the godly." 462 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY carried under his arm. The trembling lad said that it was only a Bible, and was dismissed with the persuasive words of his master, " Eead your Bible, boy, or I shall flog you," III Having paid his fees, which amounted to three or four dollars, to the one regent whose class he had to attend, a lad began his work — " dollars " being a coin in those days of scarcity in native currency which could be more easily found. Of the three or four years of the curriculum for degree of arts, the first class in which Greek was taught by the regent was called the Bajan — an academic term from the epithet hejanus used at Paris University, from hecjaune (that is, " yellow beak ")} to designate those who entered their career in callow youth. (In graphic, if vulgar translation of the term these first year's students were popularly called " yellow-nebs.") ^ In the second class, or "semi," — to which, as we have seen, students might at once pass by skipping Greek and Latin, — they entered on logic and metaphysics, and in the thu-d year, or magistrand class, they were taught ethics and natural philosophy by the regent, who carried them on to laureation. The regent, ill paid and anxious to add to his meagre gains, took care to get as many students as possible to take their degree, for each graduate brought a welcome guinea as fee to replenish his empty coffers. When regenting, however, was abolished, and each professor no longer carried on his flock of pupils year by year to the end, he had no pecuniary interest in laureation, and the number of graduates sank in some colleges to zero, and scholars chose or attended what classes they or their fathers pleased.^ ^ It was otherwise but less successfully derived from las gens, as being th( lowest regent's class. — P. 14. Chamberlayne's Present State of Great Bntain, 1754. Principal Lee as unsuccessfully and confidently derives the word frou pagani, or rustics, uncultured and uncivilised by arts. ^ Equivalent to the German Gelhschnahel. ^ The Town Council offered to relieve poor students of their graduation fee; — an offer which was resented. In 1704 there were 65 graduates, in 1705, 104 in 1745 the numbers had gone down to 3, and after that they vanish. — Catalogiu of Edinburgh Graduates. On later rules required by universities for graduation and by the Church for ministers. — See Grant's Edin. University, i. 278-282. EDUCATION— THE UNIVERSITIES 463 We hfiv(> scon with what cliscouru}»oment classic learning had to contend — I^tin, which none required to study, Cireek, which the better educated lads passed over as supertluous, and which only ij^norant boys entered to learn their alplwilx't. The only classes which were then imperative for entering,' any learned profession, or to take a degree, were logic (with niet4i])hysica) and natural ])hilosophy. Up to about 1740 the teachiuf^ in the former was usually of the mediaval type — scholasticism which made Aristotle and peripatetic philosophy almost the sole study/ It was ariil, it was, dull, it was useless; dealing in scholastic subtleties and formal definitions, which being delivered in Latin were the less intelligible to the group of lads tliat sat on their benches, with their note-books, ])ens, and ink bottles, trying to catch from the professor's discourses a glimmer of intellectual light. With the instruction of philosophy was conjoined " pneumatics," "" a term wliich meant such questions of high reason as, " the being and perfections of the true God, the nature of angels and the soul of man, and the duties of natural religion," — themes which after being treated of by the professor of moral philosophy were, in the middle of the century, abandoned to the teachers of divinity. In olden days natural philosophy implied teaching the Physics of Aristotle and the Spheres of Joannes de Sacrobosco, con- joined strangely with ethics, founded on obsolete scholastic but orthodox authorities ; ^ but now Newton reigned supreme. By the year 1730 came some signs of a revival of philosophy and science ; there was a shaking of the dry bones of meditevalism. In Glasgow, since 1727, Professor Francis Hutcheson had thrust aside the old, worn-out methods, text- ■ Stat. Acct. Sent., Aberdeen, Marischal College. •^ This subject of pneumatics Dr. Pringle (afterwards Sir John) was enjoined to teach on his appointment in 1736 to the chair of moral philosophy in Eilinburgh — with a salary of about £70 — but without fees, as it was not required by students for degrees or the Church. — Grant's Edin. Univers. ii. 336. ^ Orthodoxy was necessary for every class text-book. In 1696, commissioners state that they know no proper philosophical text-book to use. The Philosophia vctits et nova is the "fairest," but "it is done by popish writers, and smells rank of their religion." " Le Clerc is meerely scepticall and Socinian," and "Henry Moor's Ethicks cannot be admitteers iluring half a year.' He next probably joined a class of puj»ils who were instructed in the mysteries of Roman and feudal law by an advocatf; who had convened his little audience iu an ill-lighted little room in his dwelling-house up four " pair " of stairs, where he prelected on the Dutch text-books he had learnetl in Holland.* Young gentlemen, if they did not care to receive instruction in this manner, could attach themselves to an advocate in good practice, who employed them in his hou.se in arranging processes, — which a solicitor now does in the form of a brief, — and allowed them the privilege of attending consultations with his agent in a gloomy little apartment of a tavern situated in an uusalubrious close. There advocate and writer sat at a table over a chopin of claret or sherry for consideration of a case, while the pupils listened to "the legal discussion of their seniors and almost certainly shared their di-iuk. In this haphazard way the aspirant for the bar attained his insight into Scots law. By 1710 a ^Ir. Craig was allowed a room at the College, and he began lecturing as professor of civil law to a few young men, without any salary, and twelve years later another professor was given a room wherein he prelected on Scots law, discoursing like his colleague in Latin on the inevit- able text-books of Van Eck, of Van Muyden, of Voet, who were the authorities for generations of legal teachers to cite, while the Pandects formed their perpetual subject for exposition.^ But ambitious natures could not be satisfied with this shabby equipment in legal lore, and as the Edinburgh experts servilely repeated what they had learned at Groningen or Utrecht when they were young, it was thither that students resorted to study for themselves at the fountainhead. The benches in these sombre, venerable buildings contained youths of many nationalities, besides the stolid sons of Holland ; and ^ ' Chalmers' Life of Ruddimun, p. 39. ^ Tytler's Life of Lord Karnes, i. 14. ' Grant's Story of Edinburgh University, i. 288 ; ii. 364. 466 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY as Dutch law and Scots were both based on Eoman law, Scotsmen specially turned to their profound masters of juris- prudence. After two or three years listening to lectures on the Pandects and on law, Eoman and feudal, they came home, and after an examination and a learned thesis, carefully revised, if not entirely written, by that erudite scholar-of-aU-work. Thomas Euddiman, for a small fee, they passed for the Bar.^ Well furnished with venerable names of jurisconsults, when judges, after the manner of the time, interjected, during their pleading, remarks of sophistical irrelevancy, and cited opinions from Bartolus and Accursius — ^jurists enclosed in their Italian graves four hundred years — the foreign-bred advocate could cap their lordships' remarks with references to the great Cujacius, or to the quite modern authority of Zoesius, dead only a century before. In this way able lawyers were trained. As for the triflers at the Bar, they had gone abroad only pretending to study, and returned with vivid memories of Dutch faces — chiefly feminine — and of delightful suppers in Leyden or Groniugen on red herring and salad ; ^ but with the dimmest of dim recollec- tions of what the professors had said or what their Latin discourses had meant. By 1722 there were two professors descanting on law in Edinburgh College ; but as they were only echoes of Dutchmen, young men of family — and advocates then were mostly sons of good birth — still continued to seek sound learning abroad. This fashion, however, had di%d out when in 1763 James Boswell set out for Utrecht, escorted to Harwich by his illustrious friend and mentor Dr. Johnson. To study law under the eminent Professor Trotz was only "Bozzy's" pretext; to see the world and let the world see him was his real intention. Good masters of law and practice were teaching in Edinburgh University then, and there was no need to sail to Holland. Progress was made in instruction for other professions — we reserve that for medicine for separate notice — but divinity long continued with unbroken sameness and exasperating dulness. It is true there sat some men liberal and able in theological chairs ^ Tytler's Life of Karnes, i. 14. - Carlyle's Autobiography, p. 167. EDUCATION— THE UNIVERSITIES 467 — like Siiusoii ami the fur worthier rriiicipal I^eechman in Glasj^ovv, anroiicli of ohscurantism, lethargy, and didncss. No l«»nger did medical students reijuire to go to Holland for their know- ledge of physic, under Gaubius or Albinus, or to Paris for the practice of anatomy ; no longer did tlic Htudcnts of law need to learn rudiments of IJonian law at (ironingcn and Utrecht; and students of divinity ceased to go to learn Calvinism at I^\vd('n ; these they could ac([uire at home — though the I)utch authorities in all these branches were almost as powerful as before, Scottish universities began to attract scholars from England and the colonies, and j)rofessors lived more richly by boarding the sons of noblemen who came to attend their classes than they did by teaching them. At the beginning of the century Edinburgh had eight professors and 300 students; at the close of the century it had twenty-one professors and over 1200 students.^ Edinburgh College became too small for its rapidly increas- ing flocks of pupils — there was no room for them, even in the old student chambers, which were utilised now as class-rooms, dark, low, cramped apartments, in which successive classes met hour after hour to breathe polluted air. The College buildings, which had been formed without order or plan — originally an old dwelling-house with some students' chambers — had lonu 1754. In 1764 the salary of Dr. Joseph Black as professor of medicine in Glasgow was £50, and his fees were £20 to £30 ; but as he held also the post of teaching chemistry with a salary of £20 and fees, his income from both chairs amounteil to £140 to £160. — Kiid's Jf'orks (Hamilton's edit.), p. 45. Writing to a friend in 1764, Professor Rcid says " that as professor of moral philosophy my salary is the same as in Aberdeen (that is, £40 or £50). I have touched £70 in fees, and may possibly make out the hundred this session." (He had from fifty to sixty students.) — Ibid. p. 47. On his appointment to the chair of medicine in Edinburgh in 1756, Dr. Cullen had no salary, and was dependent upon the fees of students, who only numbered seventeen the first year, tliough they ultimately increased to 148. — Thomson's Life 0/ Cullen, i. 197. ' In St. Andrews there were from 1738-1748 an average of 56 Art students ; in 1792 there were 100 Arts students and 48 Divinity. — Stat. Acd. Scot., xiii. p. 209 ; Hall's Travels, i. 115. In Aberdeen there were at the end of the cen- tury 100 Divinity students. — Kenneily's Annals of Aberdeen, ii. 100. In Glus- gow, from 350 to 400 in 1760, and in 1792, 800 studentjj.— Reid's Works, edit, by Hamilton, pp. 42-46. In Edinburgh in 1800, 805 Arts students, 660 Medical, and 131 Divinity.— Kers Life of IV. Smellie, ii. 206. 472 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY been an academic disgrace and an architectural eyesore. Ii 1768 a movement was made to provide by subscriptions i worthy edifice for a University instead of shabby, poverty stricken buildings, which Principal Eobertson contemptuousb characterised : ^ " A stranger when conducted to view the Univer sity of Edinburgh might on seeing such courts and building' i naturally imagine them to be alms-houses for the reception o the poor, but would never imagine he was entering withii the precincts of a noted and flourishing seat of learning. Ai area, which if entire might have formed a spacious quadrangle is broken up into paltry divisions, and encompassed partly bj walls which threaten destruction to passengers, but partly witl a range of low houses, several of which are now become ruin ous and not habitable." Yet years went by and matters grev worse ; the redeeming feature — " the spacious garden for thi professors in common to walk and divert themselves in tb( evening " — was removed in 1785 to make room for the Soutl Bridge Street. At last, however, the foundation stone of th( new college was laid in 1789, and gradually an edifice designed by Adam, was reared, worthy of the reputation of i great university. ^ Scots Magazine, 1768, p. 114. CIIAl'TKi: XIII EDUCATION : MEDICAL ART AND MEDKAL PRACTICE I Amongst the many movements that started into being during the eighteenth century none was more striking, none more important, than that in furtherance of medical and surgical art. Before this jwriod the healing art liad been in a most primitive state — its knowledge the most meagre, its practice the most crude, its methods the most empirical. There had for long time existed the Incorporation of Surgeons and Barbers in Edinburgh, and the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons, including barbers, in Glasgow, which gave degrees of little worth, after very rudimentary examinations, for which the candidates received no preparation, save as serving as apprentices to surgeons. The association with the barbers was formed in olden days when there was little difference in science between the two crafts ; when barbers not merely shaved but operated, not merely cut hair but cut veins, and practised all the arts of surgery.' Long before the eighteenth century opened the alliance had become irksome, the surgeons treating their inferior brethren with contumely ; and probably there was ' In the rules of the College ef Surgeons and Barbers in Edinburgh in 1505, it is required that all must " knaw anatoniie, nature, and complexion of everie member of the humanis bodie, and in lykwyse knaw all the vaynis of the samyu, that he mak Flewbothomia in dew tyme, and alseu that he knaw in quhilk member the Signes hes domination for the t^'me . . . a^d that we may have ains the Zeir ane condenipnit man after he has died to make anatomia of . . . and that na harbour maister or servand exerce the craft of surgeerie with- out ho knaw perfytlio the things above written." — Maitland's Hist, of Edin., 1756, p. 294. 474 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY more spite than piety in their threatening with expulsion from the corporation those barbers who persistently profaned the Sabbath by " barbourising " — " a most scandalous and hiely provoking sin," said the righteous Faculty of Glasgow in 1676 — " contrair to the Word of God and to all laws humane and divyne," they pungently added.^ In 1727 the uncomfort-| able bond between the uncongenial crafts was severed, and the only tradition left of the old surgical pretensions and functions of the barbers was in the pole jutting forth over theii shop door, with its stripes of red and blue to symbolise the arterial and venous blood, and the brass basin to represent the utensil in which when shed by the blood-letters it was to be, received. Surgeons under the combined names and exercising the com- bined functions of " Chirurgeon- apothecaries " acted as general practitioners in Scotland — professing to heal wounds and tc cure diseases, making and selling drugs, and operating witt instruments, few, ill-made, and clumsy, made by blacksmiths so different from the fine instruments then used by Frencl surgeons. The manner in which they learned their business was by becoming apprentices to chirurgeons," from whom, like Eoderick Eandom, they learned " to bleed and give a clyster to spread a plaster, and prepare a potion." The appren- ticeship lasted for three years, and the indenture was oi the strictest terms — in 1739 the youth binding himself "te serve his master by day and by night, holy-day and week- day ; ^ to reveal no secret of master or patient ; to commit nc filthy crimes or sins ; to go to no professor of medicine chyma, anatomy, surgerie, or materia medica during the firsi two years " ; to pay £50 sterling as apprentice fee, in return foi which the chirurgeon obliges himself " to instruct him in the said airtes of surgery and pharmacy, and shall conceal nothing of the same, and entertains him sufficiently in bed and board. ^ Duncan's Faculty of Physicians atid Surgeons of Glasgoiv, p. 72. A similai protest in indignant terms was uttered by the Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1635. — Gairdner's Hist. Sketch of Royal College of Surgeons. 2 Dimean, p. 5 ; Thomson's Life of Cullcn, ii. 513. The j^ractice wa; retained in England long after it was abolished in Scotland. ^ Hector's Judicial Becords of Henfreu'shire, i. 102. ^ When Roderick Random applies to become apprentice to Crab at Glasgow. ED UCA TION-MEDICA L A R T AND PRACTICE 47 5 After this peri(xl wius over the apprentice, who may have spent three years with the most incompetent practitioner in a countryside, a])penre(l Inifore tlie Faculty or Incorporation, was questioned on the tlieoretical and practical part of his profrssion, dissected a prescribed part of a body, made up a prescription, proiluced a thesis, and received his dan;,'erous licence to practise as " Chyr. apothecary." To piuss into his profession he proliahly had received no public instruction in anatomy or physic, as the records of the old medical school clearly show.^ Not till 1694 was there any gr.mt given by the Ediiiburt^h Town Council of bodies for the purpose of dissection. In the surgical theatre the subject was the corpse of a foundling, suicide, or murderer, divided into ten parts and distributed to ten members of the Incorporation, who dissected either for private benefit or the public edification of any apprentices in the town who might turn up. This was, of course, utterly unsatisfactory, and in 1704 a Mr. Elliot was appointed "public dissector in anatomy " for the benefit of the lieges, and " as an encourage- ment to young men to stay at home, instead of travelling to foreign universities, which was attended by expenses and perils to youth," and a salary of £15 was allotted "for his encouragement." Surgical knowledge and skill were little furthered, however, either by him or by those who succeeded him as nominal professors of city and college, for these very professing to know a little iihamiacy and to have learnt something of surgery, "Oho ! you did ?" said Crab. "Gentlemen, here is a complete artist ! Studied surgery ! What ? in books I suppose. I shall have you disputing with me one of these days on i»oints of my profession ! You can already account for muscular motion, I warrant, and e.xplain the mystery of brain and motion — ha ! You are too learned for me, damn me. Can you bleed and give a clyster, spread plaster and pre{>are a jwtion ?" — Roderick Handom, chap vii. ' Sketch o/ Hist, of CollfQt of Surijeons, Edin., by Gairdner, 1860, p. 16. In 1694 Dr. Monteath was permitted by the Town Council to have "the bodies of foundlings that dye at the breast, and those that dye in the house of correc- tion," and afterwards the IncorjKjration of Surgeons were allowed for dissection " bodies of foundlings who dye betwi.xt the tyme that they are weaned and their being put to schools and trades, all the dead bodies of such as are stytlit at the birth, which are ex{>osed and have none to owne them, likewise the bodies of such as are put to death by sentence of the magistrates and have none to owne them, and suicides." When Dr. Pitcairn had previously asked jiermission to ojten the bodies of the poor who died at Pauls Wark (Poorhouse), promising to bury them after at his own expense, the Town Council refused his request." — Bowers Edin. Univirsittj, ii. 155. 31 476 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR V occasional demonstrations few apprentices attended, and cer- tainly no one was obliged to witness.-^ Perhaps the neglect of all medical instruction was ever more gross in Glasgow, for there was not even a pretence o giving public teaching. ISTot till 1740,^ when Dr. Hamiltor was put into the chair of anatomy at the University, wa; there public instruction given in the all-important surgica art in the West of Scotland, all acquaintance with it havinc been derived from country chirurgeons, who were usualh as ignorant of any rational method of surgery as they wen of pharmacy and therapeutics.^ The most important step towards reforming surgery anc founding a medical school was taken by the appointment, ir 1724, of Dr. Alexander Monro, at the age of twenty-two to be professor of anatomy in Edinburgh, operating in tht Surgeons' Hall, and in the University in 1726, Under hij brilliant teaching, and fired by his enthusiasm, his class, al first numbering fifty-seven, rose to high numbers, and froir England and Ireland were soon attracted young men who hac thitherto thronged to Holland. Other professors and teachen of physic, botany, materia medica, were appointed at the same time, and the medical school at last was formed which waf to achieve a European reputation for the University, and tc change a craft into an art, and empiricism into the fail imitation of a science.'* ^ The supply of bodies for dissection being so small, there arose at times out cries at the violation of graves in Edinburgh and Glasgow, which increasec suspicion at the doings of the surgical school. — Grant's Edin. Univ., i. 204 Duncan's Faculty. 2 In 1714 a professor of medicine and in 1720 a professor of anatomy wen nominally appointed, but they neither taught nor lectured. — Duncan's Faculty of Surgeons and Physicians, pp. 125-8 ; Thomson's Life of Cullen, i. 3. ^ Quack doctors were in request for surgical operations as well as for drugs and in the estimation of the Kirk - Session might be regarded as more skilfu than a qualified surgeon. In Kirk-Session records of Shotts there is noted— "1730, to Mr. Green, the mountebag, for couching John Roger's wife's eyes £9: 6 Scots." — Grossart's Parish of Shotts, p. 60. ■* William Hunter, the future great anatomist, lived at Hamilton as assistan to Dr. Cullen, the future eminent physician, from 1737 to 1740, with the arrange ment that one of them should study dm-ing winter at some medical school while the other carried on the business in the country for the profit of both.- P. 205, Lives of British Physicians, 1830. EDUCATION— ^f EPICAL ART AND PRACTICE 477 II The position of physicians wiia even worse than tliat of the 8urj,'eon8 ; they at least could act as general practitioners, as doctors and ajHithecaries, hut physicians were entirely restricted to physic, and if they ventured to perform a surgical operation they were obliged to pay fees and qualify as surgeons before the Incorporation.' Thfre was really no place in Scotland where one could study medicine till 1727 in Edinburgh, and 1750 in Glasgow, and though the candidate for a dej^'ree was required to study "at one famous university where medicine is taught," there was none to be found in Scotland. If a man wished to get his degree at a Scots univei-sity, by a fiction it was conferred, sometimes after an exannnation before two or three obscure physicians in a city, and sometimes without any examination at all." It was abroad that men of any means or ambition went to study — to Gottingen, Utrecht, Kheims, or Paris, where the most distinguished teachers in Europe were lecturing ; above all, to Leyden, to attend the classes of the great and idolised Boerhaave, whence they returned home to take a higher position than ill-educated chirurgeon apothecaries. The want of any means of improving the medical art of physic had long been felt, and it was an outcome of the laudable desire for reform that in 1670' the doctors, chief among them Sir Robert Sibbald and Dr. A. Balfour, had secured a humble parcel of ground near Holyrood, " some forty feet every way," over which they set a gardener skilled in herbs, who afterwards bore the ambitious title of Professor of Botany, which he never taught. To this modest garden gentlemen travelling abroad sent parcels of seeds and roots ; students * Duncan, p. 94. " Gairdner's Hist, of College of Physicians, Edin. 1864, p. 16. The first M.D. of E candidates of previous study. St. Andrews and Aberdeen made a regular traffic in degrees, giving them for fees to persons who were never examined, or on certificate of two obscure physicians. In 1754 Dr. William Hunter wrote to Dr. Cullen lamenting "how contemptuously the College of Physicians here (in London) have treated Scotch degrees indiscriminately," for which St. Andrews and Aberdeen were chiefly responsible. There were in London men who made a trade of buying them, "who pass by the name of brokers of Scotch degrees." — Thomson's Cullen, 1. 661, Ridicule was excited when St. Andrews sold a degree to one Green, a stage doctor or mountebank, and even Edinburgh added to the scandal by admitting to the degree of M.D. one Samuel Leeds, an illiterate creature brought up as a brush-maker. — Thomson's Life of Cullen, i. 465-483. EDUCATION— MEDICAL ART AM) I'h'ACTICE 483 prescriptions more wholesome and helpful, hucIi ns the orders to patients to drink the goats' whey in the Highland borders, or to try the virtues of the waters of the " Spaw " at Duns (rising to reputation in the middle of the century) ' ; and, aijove all, to drink at the famous wells at Mollat. Every year on the roads to the Highlands were to be met elderly gentlemen on horseback, followed by their men-servnnts, riding with cloak and baggage, who were going to some wretched Highland inn to drink modest draughts of goats' milk as antidote to too copious draughts of claret. In spring there met round the little wells at ^lolliit a throng, in their gayest and brightest, from society in town and country, sipping the unpleasant waters, and discussing their pleasant gossip. At the bowling green were to be seen sauntering valetudinarian city clergy, men of letters, and country gentlemen, ladies of rank and fashion ; while the diseased, decrepit, of the poorest rank, who had toilsomely travelled from far-ofl" districts to taste the magic waters, loitered in their rags in the village street. The many truly eminent teachers who filled the medical and surgical chairs of Scottish universities in successive genera- tions — Cullen, Black, Whytt, the Monros, and the Gregorys — effected an immense change in the methods of teaching and practising, and won for themselves and for their schools a European fame. The medical classes of Edinburgh at the end of the century were attended by as many hundreds as they had been by tens fifty years before, and the University attained a reputation equal to that once held by the celebrated old schools of Holland." ' Virtues of Dunse Sjmxv, by F. Home, M.D., 1751. ' In Edinburgh in 1750 there were about 60 medical students ; in 1766 there were 160; in 1800 the numbers had gone up to 660. — Thomson's Cullen, i. 859 ; Kerr's Life of Smellie, ii. 206. CHAPTEE XIV CEIMES AND PUNISHMENTS To get an adequate notion of the social life of a country it i necessary to know not merely the demeanour of the people but also their misdemeanours ; what were the crimes by whic! they broke the law, as well as the orderly lives by which the; kept it. The criminal code, therefore, throws light upon th^ social and moral condition of a community, on their habits am modes of life. Yet laws in a statute book are not invariabb exact criterions of the character of an age, for laws whicl arose in less advanced times and were infused with thai; harsher spirit may continue unrepealed, owing to that stauncl conservatism which clings to all things legal, wdiich will rathe: ingeniously evade ancient acts than take the trouble to amenc them, long after the offences which they were meant to repress have lost their offensiveness or have disappeared from the land One marked feature in old Scots laws is their ecclesiastica and pseudo-religious purpose ; as if the effort since the Eeforma- tion period had been to make Scotland a clumsy theocracy It is this quality which dictated the grim law against blasphem\ which made the luckless lad Thomas Aikenhead its victim — fortunately its last — for " cursing the Saviour," in 1696, in full accordance with the resolution of the Church " against the atheistical principles of such as go under the name of Deists," — a phraseology which, though somewhat incoherent, expresses a bigotry in which there was, unhappily, only too much coherence. It was the same spirit which dictated the enactments CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS 48$ making the persons liable to death who stole " vessels or utensils " from a kirk, which coTxIemned to confiscation of nil his " movfthlt'S " * any one who assaulted a minister of the gospel, which nmde liable to death all children over sixteen yeai-s of age, " not distracted in their wits," guilty of cursing tlieir jvarenlfl.^ and piously and rigorously s^ifeguardeil tlie Sabbath by its penalties against " all users of hard labour, all who sold drink, or fislied salmon, or hired ser^'ants," and all other desecrntore of the Lonl's day. The morality of the people, also, was preserved by the tines, carefully proportioned to the rank of the ofl'ender, from the nobleman who was mukteil £28 Scots, to the servant on whom was imposed 28s. for cursing and swearing,' while drunkenness and uncleanncss also had penalties, nicely graduated iVom lord to peasant,* which, if tliey had been exacted with a stringency equal to the letter of the law, would have filled to overflowing the poor-box, to which one-half was due, in an age of much drunkenness, much cursing, and lax morals. These fines, however, were less and less enforced by justices as the centurj' went on ; although ever and again the sheriff was reminded by the Kirk-Sessions of the statute subjecting him to a penalty of £100 Scots if he did not set the law in operation at their command. It was against the crime of witchcraft that the statutes ' In 1719 Ensign Bean, an Englishman, assaulted with his cane and fist the minister of Kirkden after a discussion on the relative merits of the Episco]«l and Presliyterian communions. He was condemned, according to Act James II., tn escheat of movahles. — Hume, i. 320. ^ In 1738 when a man was tried for cursing his mother, the expression " God damn you for an old liar" was found relevant, but the person was acquitted. — Hume's ComnuntarUs, 1813, i. 318. ' In accordance with this Act a miller was punished who used the imprecation to the laird of Hunter, "God's curse light upon the said family, God damn all generations of them," with other "such like unchristian and unwarrantable ex- pressions." — Hectors Judicial Records of lUnfrcwshire, p. 219. ^ In 1712 the lords of session tried an apjioal by one John Purdie, guilty of immorality, on whom had been imjwsed the j>enalty of £100 Scots in case of "a gentleman." Justices had convicted him at the rank and rate of a gentleman, being son of a heritor. On his api>eal their lonlships sustained his objection, and restricted the fine to £16 Scots, " because he had not the air or face of a gentleman." — Supplement to Mttrrison's Diet. 0/ Decisions, v. 57. In 1715 twenty- one persons were prosecuted before the Slieriff of Paisley for uncleanness, at rate of £10 for first offence and £20 for the second. — Hector's Judicial liecords, p. 80. 486 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY were most stout, and time after time occasions occurred when they were enforced in their fullest rigour. For years there might be only local rumours, which rose and died away; then suddenly popular fears and imagination were profoundly stirred, wild reports were sent to the Privy Council, prosecutions began, , and victims were made to prevailing clamour and credulity.^ When the eighteenth century began the inquisitions had abated; but so long as Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees — called "Gutters" — lived as Lord Advocate, the law was not allowed to rest or to rust under the pious vigilance of that eminent lawyer, who had won his laurels by his faithful prosecution of the witches who tormented the Laird of Bargarran's daughter, when five women were burned for their diabolical machinations in 1697. Few years passed by without witch hunts which ended in direful tragedies. They generally became epidemic in a district, and a witch season set in with great severity. Such an epidemic attacked Eifeshire in 1704. Lilias Addie, at Torry- burn, confessed before the minister and elders that she had had dealings with Satan, and attended midnight revels when the evil one presided, which iniquity she expiated by being burned within the sea-mark. In the same year Pittenweem was put into vast agitation by a lad, afilicted with fits, accusing an unfortunate woman of having cursed him with her sorcery. Thereupon she was seized, thrust into the " thieves' hole," tortured by pricking to extort a confession, until, being kept five days and nights without sleep, the poor, half-demented wretch owned her guilt. While minister and magistrates were arranging through dreary five months for her case being brought before the Privy Council, fortunately some sane members of that Council planned that she might escape from her miserable dungeon, and she eluded the fury of Pittenweem. Not so successful was another old woman who had been driven by terrorism to own she had vexed a man by devilish agency in the same sorely witch-afflicted town. She escaped from the jail only to fall into the clutches of the minister of a neighbouring parish, who conscientiously sent her back to Pittenweem, where she was seized by the mob, 1 Hist, of Renfrewshire Witches, 1809. Last witch sentenced by Lord of Justiciary was in 1709 — to branding and banisbnient. CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS 487 bound, beaten, and dnif,'pcd by the heels thiou^li the street to the l>each, and then, tied by a rope stretching from a veHscl in the harbour to the shore, she was swung to and fro while she was pelted with stones. At last, let down with a crash to the ground, she was beaten mercilessly till, with unintended mercy, the rabble covered her with a door and crushed her to death. This dreadful murder was in January 170o, neither magistrates nor minister during these shameful doings of three hours inter- posing to stay the fury of the people. Though the I'rivy Council made in(iuir)' into the outrage, the ringleaders only withdrew for a while and then returned, all being condoned by Imilies, minister, and elders, who regretted their vehemence but respected their zeal.* Other cases occurred where the law was carried out, as yciirs went by, in all legal formality with a rigour which even Pittenweem saints could not surpass. It was in 1727 that the last capital sentence was carried out against witclicraft. Two women in Sutherland were condemned to death by the sheriff — a mother haWng been found clearly guilty of riding upon her daughter, who had been transformed into a pony and shod by the devil. The daughter escaped judgment, though it was noticed, as confirmation of the charge, that she ever after was " lame in both hands and feet " ; but her mother was burned in a pitch barrel at Dornoch — tradition telling how, in the cold day, the poor creature warmed her feet at the fire which was to kindle her barrel-coffin.^ By that time, however, a more reasonable spirit was passing over the educated classes, and more and more were these outrageous charges discredited ; medical ex- perience was beginning at last to relegate to the nerves, to hysteria, or catalepsy, what had hitherto been assigned to Satan ; legal authorities were sifting vague gossip with a rationalism which left no residuum of diabolical elements behind ; country gentlemen, coming more in contact with the world, were shaking off their rural superstitions, and only to the rustic and fanatical were left the old terrors and Biblical belief in the out-woni crime of witchcraft. ' Dunbar's Social Lift; Chambers' Domestic Annals, iii. 298. 2 Burt's Letters from the North, i. 230 ; KirkjMitrick Sharpe's Introduction to Law's Memorials. 488 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Folly and credulity, however, take an unconscionable time in dying, and even in 1733 Mr. Forbes, professor of law in Glasgow College, was unable to divest himself of a decaying conviction. Carefully he lays down in his Institutes of Law} as he had done to his students, the evidence in which cases should be properly investigated, whether respecting "black witches," who by the power of hell work harm, or " white witches," who by the same assistance work cures. He poiats out the grave importance of testimony that a person had been attacked by illness after a woman had invoked a curse, or had been relieved by the woman who had taken his hand and moved her lips ; that she had entered a room when doors and windows were barred, and had laid her hands on the breast at which a child was suckled who died in half an hour. Proof by law, he showed, was allowed that a woman was currently reported to be a witch, that she could not shed tears, could not repeat the Lord's prayer, and had devil's marks upon her body. On the other hand, the fact that a person was bewitched was proved by his being exceedingly tormented in saying of prayers and graces, by his telling events, past, present, and to come, in his fits, which he knew not at other times. Still stronger proof was afforded by the physician finding the patient's trouble could not proceed from bodily distemper, and that his remedies intensified instead of lessening the disease — a kind of evidence in those days of deplorable medical in- capacity which would have proved that more than two-thirds of the community were hopelessly bewitched. But, in fact, whatever infallible symptoms might be cited by this sapient professor, the confirmation was everywhere if there was super- stition, and it was nowhere if there was common sense. It was a terrible blow to the credulous and pious when the old Act against witchcraft was abolished in 1736, and, instead of death being passed on all " traffickers with Satan," there was a prosaic, rational statute left, making liable to a year's imprisonment and three months in the pillory all vulgar practisers of occult arts " who pretended to tell fortunes and discover stolen goods." " 1 Institutes of Scots Law, by Mr. William Forbes, advocate, professor of law, p. 372. ^ Hume's Comvientaries on Criminal Law, 1798, i. 488. CKJMES AND PUNISHMENTS 489 W'liile the State was punishing criiiiiniils in ucconliince with the desires of tlie Church, the Church itself wiis ft».slcrin;4 some criminals for the State — these were the child-murderers.' Elsewhere has l)een shown how this crinie increased, throui^h the terror in women of unilcr;,'oing the hated ordeal of di.scipliiu' heforo the gaze of the congregation for immorality.' It was as rife in Episcopal days as in Treshyterian, for the same incpiisitorial system and rigorous discipline e.xi.sted under hoth ecclesiastical reigns. The nundjer of executions of wretched women who had killed their offspring in hopes of escaping this ignominy shows to what an extent infanticide was common, sometimes three or four being hanged at the sanie time. Juries had dilliculty in determining whether an infant's death was due to natural causes or to wilful purpose, and shrank from tiie task of deciding a matter on which hung the issue of life or death. In 169U ^ an Act had, therefore, been passed which removed all ground for hesitancy in juries, making the woman liable to death who concealed the birth of her child, should it be either dead or missing. Such a law seems, however, rather to have increased the number of executions than to have lessened the number of delinquents. Not till late in the ' Hume's CommtvXaries, i. 217 ; Erskine's Principles of Law of Scot. 1754, p. 478 ; Arnot's Criminal Trials, p. 311. ■'' See ante, p. 57. Lord Fountainhall, in noticing the execution of Margaret Tait for child murder in 1681, remarks, "They say she declared one of the many temptations which induced her to murder her child was to shun the ignominy of the churcJi pillory, which the Duke of York, hearing and informing himself of our custom, and tliat it was owned in no other place of the Cliristian world, and it rathermadescandals than lessened them, and that itwas not used for drunkenness, Sabbath breaking, lying, or other enormities, the Duke was displeased, and said it would be more etlicacious restraint if the civil magistrate were to puni.sh them either with a pecuniary mulct or corjHjral punishment." In that year on January 24 seven women were executed for child murder in Edinburgh at one time. On March 7, March 11, April 13, there was an execution for the same offence. In 1705 " four women from Aberdeen " hanged. In 1714, on June 18, June 24, July 3, executions took place. — "Records from the old Tolbooth,' Scottish Journal, i. pp. 265, 299, 313. — Fountainhall's Decisions, i. 137. ' Hume's Commentaries, i. 217. On this law the story of the Heart of Midlothian rests: "If any woman shall conceal her being with child during the whole space, and shall not call or make use of help and assistance in the birth, the child being found dead or missing, the woman shall be holden and repute the murderer of her own child, though there be no appearance of bruise or wound upon the body of the child." 490 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY century, when under a more moderate clergy, the severity o Church discipline was relaxed, did the cases of child murde; diminish. It may be that the abolition of congregationa censure did not cause fewer hapless children coming undesir ably into this world, but it at least prevented so many bein^ untimely despatched to the next. j II In the early part of the century the turbulent elemen was to be found in the swarms of " randy beggars, thiggers Egyptian sorners," who haunted outlying districts of th(' country, and incessantly infested villages, and visited th( homes of the people to the terror of their lives and with th( plunder of their goods. In former times there were off-hanc measures taken for dealing with these vagabonds, statute, still existing which allowed any master of a pit, salt-pans, o mine, to seize them and force them to work as life-long serf: in their service. When Fletcher of Saltoun prescribed slaver^ as a drastic remedy for beggary, he was propounding no nove or whimsical scheme, but simply urging that existing law: should be enforced on the 200,000 sturdy prowling beggars, wb were pests and dangerous to the community.^ The stalwar republican, however, went further than advocating compulsory slavery ; he also urged compulsion on masters to take slaves At the beginning of the century instances occurred of men who were scoundrels or escaped hanging for thefts, being con signed as perpetual servants in the silver mines and pits o Scotland,^ where they were bound as slaves, wearing iron collar riveted round their necks, on which was inscribed their name their crime, and their owner.^ Vagabonds who were not con ^ Hume's Commentaries, i. 561 ; Macritchie's Gypsies in Scotland; Forbes Institutes, p. 79. 2 Acts of Scots Pari. 1607, 1611, 16Q5.— Edinburgh Rev., Jany. I89S ("Modern Slavery in Scotland "). ^ Wilson's Prehistoric Annals of Scot. ii. 519. In 1701 four persons ecu victed at Perth escaped death by accepting perpetual servitude. One of these used as a worker in the silver mines in a glen of Ochils, had round his neck collar with the inscription : "Alexander Stuart found guilty of theft at Pert the 5th Dec. 1701, and gifted by the justiciars as perpetual servant to Sir .' C/ collur wa.s rln-dgtil u]i in tlic Fortli, wliere the niiiii liad {)rol)ably drowned liinisolf. * The law was a.s severe against Popi-sh |iriest.s as against thiggers, gj'psics, md sorners. In 1751, in Abenleen, Rev. Patrick Geddes, on a cliarge of being " by habit and re]»ite a priest, Jesuit, and tralhcking Papist," was found guilty md banished " furth of Scotland, with testiJicate that if he ever returned, he being still a Papist, shall .sulfer punishment <>f death." - In 1750 a man was convicted of robbery and murder, and sentenced to have his right hand struck olf before being hanged. The la^t criminal hanged in chains was a messenger at Elgin sentenced for robbing tlie \wsi in 1773. 32 492 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY followed, carrying papers and books and cloaks for their lord- ships in their bags. While the judges were trying the criminals in their courts on charges of " spuilzie " and " hamesucken," arson and murder, in country towns justices of peace had their arduous labours to preserve order, to punish offenders foi " pickery " with penalties full of quaint barbarity of olden times. Imprisonment was seldom awarded, and only for short periods, partly from frugal dislike to expense, and partly because the jails or " thieves' holes " were only little hovels, with no jaUer to guard them, and uncertain arrangements to feed their lodgers. Other punishments, however, abounded. There were for less offences the jougs or iron collars, attached to the kirk walls (though they were becoming less used), in which the culprits' necks were fastened for " ye terror to ye others," though they provided more amusement than warning to the community.' More excitement filled " ye others " when they heard that a criminal was to stand Ijareheaded at the top of the outside stair of the Tolbooth, bound with a chain, and having a label on the breast, stating, " Here I stand for theft and reset ol theft," or when two miserable beings were stationed with their placards announcing in local spelling, " Thir are adulterers." Great public satisfaction was felt wlien a well-known offender sat upon a cuck-stool, with neck and hand in the pillory, having his ears nailed to the same, or, with still further re- finement of cruelty, stood with his ear nailed till he summoned resolution to tear away his " lug with the gristle." On such occasions the crowd was great and deeply interested. Children played truant from school, the weavers left their looms, the women threw their spindles dowrr, and ran to watch some creature having her " nose -pinched," — a process performed with an iron frame with clips which held secure the cartilage of the victim's nose." A pleasant rural thrill was felt when ^ Hector's Judicial Records, p. 204. '^ Such entries are frequent in burgh records. "A. B., a notour thief, was to be pilloried, his lug nailed, and his nose pinched." — Parish of Carluke, p. 46 ; Rogers' Social Life, iii. 36 ; Wilson's Memorials of Edin. ii. 226. The city records are realistic at times. "March 1722. — For tow for binding Catherinf M'CuUoch to the tron, 2s. Scots. For a penknife for cutting off her car, 3s. Scots." The sum of 3d. shows this must have been hired for the occasion.— Stirling Burgh llecords. CRIAfES AND PUNISHMENTS 493 >^et another ju'imlly wii.s inflicted, and they huw the cominoti ^angiimn take his knife iind cut oM' the bleeding ear. Thr Uick of a drum nuule everyone run to hia doorstep ttJ ga/e on :he locksman leaerson apprehended for stealing shoes in the shoe mercat, banished le bnrgh of Lanark, " ordered never to be seen again in the burgh, on |>ain of iiing whipped, burned, and again banished." — Burgh Records of Lanark. \ 1744 " husband and wife guilty of acts of theft are Iwnished furth of the )wn under jtenalty of one year's imjirisonment if they return, ami to be ■ourgcd every month during said year and banislud under j)enalty." — Annals Hawick, p. 146. Even so late as 1775 the magistrates of the Gorbals at lasgow sentenced prisoners to "be carried from prison by tuck of drum with ->ad bare, and to be banished the village and barony of Gorbals during the whole their natural lives, and if they return to be imprisoned, whipped, and inished," — a sentence ^awr rire to those wlio know that unfascinating district 1 day. — Olasguw Past and Present, i. 346. 494 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY a hen or an ell of linen, or for breaking a sapling, was force( to beg, if not to steal, and yet his doing so insured his at one- being delated by the elders to the justices, by them to b anew scourged, and either sent to jail or again banished. 1 in despair he returned to his old haunts and family he migh be incontinently seized, branded, imprisoned, till an impossibl £100 Scots was paid, and yet rebanished again. This miser able dilemma of being driven from pillar to post existed up til near the middle of the century, when the Kirk and its elder' became less rigorous, and the people less docile, and towns wit! growing populations afforded easier shelter and concealment fo fugitives, while sentences themselves became more mild in milder age, and prisons more able to hold offenders. Ill While the execution of laws in highest crimes lay wit the judges of session, there were other courts over man districts, and especially north of the Forth, which exercise jurisdiction as full as the Court of Session. There were ov( a hundred Courts of Eegality, in which the great owners ( land throughout Scotland presided as hereditary barons ( sheriffs, having power to sentence all criminals in the domain. The baron or his bailie presided over fifteen assesso: as jury, and he could wield the right of punishment of p and gallows — to hang or imprison. This tremendous powt he held, bound by no legal process, restrained by no fea guided by no precedents. However wrongly he might abu: his right, it could not be withdrawn, for it came by charte was inherited by birth, and yet could be sold at his wi, Especially high-handed and rigorous were these barons > chiefs of the Northern and Highland counties, where the voi- of public opinion was never heard, and from which tl grievances of victims were never borne. Whatever verdi the baron desired was obsequiously given by the servi tenants or humble tacksmen who formed the jury. If he w a friend the prisoner escaped scot free, however clear his guil if he was a foe, he was pretty certain to be condemned, ho) ever clear his innocence. CKL\fES AND PiWISIIAfENTS 495 The records i»f the courtH of the.se irre.s|K)nHil)le hon'tlitury sheritls in some aiMCs are extant, Htutin^ eoneiHely tlje imnjc ol the criminal, the otFonce. and the verdict, whether " cK^uit " or " tonvikt ; " ' to tlie hitter l>eiug criHply a|»jK;ndud tl>e sentence, which is too often " han^t " or " drownit." At other tiniea the sentence wua ta be scourged, to have his ear nailed to a post, or cut off, iintl banished the country. Hy such sumnmry processes Grant of Grant sentenced three persons found guilty of horse-sU'aling to Ix; wirried from the court to tin- pit or dungeon of (,'astle (Jrant, there to renmin till Tuesday next, and thence to be carried to the giillowstree at Hallintore, anil to be hanged between three and four in the afternoon till they be dead. If a loch wjis near, as Loch Spynie was to Gordonston, the victim of hereditary juri.sdiction was ex- peilitiously drowned. There, for example, an unfortunate woman was put to death for stciiling out of a chest thirty rex dollars and two webs of linen, and as she was drowning she was heard (very naturally) "evacuating curses on her oppressors.""*' Each gentleman who had the cherished privilege and power had a dempster or hangman who carried out the sentences, which were executed on gallows usually erected on a moor or where two roads met ; and in the local names of fields of " CiallowHat " and " Hangingshaw " there are still reminiscences of the old hanging days of these Courts of Kegality. Memorias of these oppressive and arbitrary measures were vivid at the end of the century, when storiqs were still told of the iniquitous doings of the old regime : how one hereditary sheriff acted as both juilge and jury, and sentenced at his will; how another hanged a man and afterwards called his faithful jury to convict him ; how yet another hanged two brothers on one tree near Abernethy, and burned their bodies on the roadside : and how a chief hanged two notorious thieves, parboiled their heads, and set them on spikes. Tradition lingered of a case ' 1692, a laaicc of ane hour without niotione, and to he allowed t<> break the gris.s miiled without drawing of the nail." — From Book of Rrgalty of Grant, cited in Rogers' Social Life of Scot. iii. 44 ; Burt's Lftlers, ii. '2-'>0 ; Omond's Lives of Lord Advocates, vol. i. * Dunbar's Social Life, 2nd series, \>. lA'.i. 496 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY where the baron bailie was so odious that the people rose i: vengeance and drowned him in the Spey.^ The pit and dungeon in the castles or mansion house were usually noisome holes. Such was the pit at Gordonstoi in Morayshire, victims of which appealed to the lords o session in 1740," a vault cold, wet, and pitch-dark, securet' by an iron grating, without door or window, so wet that th( miserable inmates had to stand on stones to raise themselve: above the inflowing water that covered the floor. In sucl a pit untried prisoners were detained for months, and thert those convicted even of trifling offences were confined a: the risk or cost of life. Although these hereditary baron; had no right to transport their convicts, they often mad( a nefarious and profitable trade of sending them to tht Plantations. They offered the prisoners that alternative tc death, and many gladly consented to be exported, whereupoE the lord of regality in the North sold his victims to those men whose business it was to secure, by means fair or foul, recruits to sell for work in the estates of America or West Indies, where they became serfs of planters, with little hope of ever recovering their freedom.^ It was in 1748 that all hereditary jurisdictions were abolished. After the Eebellion of '45 it was felt necessary to break down feudal power and state, especially in the High- lands ; to bring under equal law and central authority all officers of justice, and to shear the chieftains of those privileges which had made them dangers to order and menaces to government. Barons and chiefs who had ruled like kings in their districts, and tyrants over their vassals, by the withdrawal of those ancient rights were suddenly reduced to mere subjects — no more superior to law than the meanest of their crofters. Not merely did this aboHtion involve the loss of prestige, of power, of influence on which ' Statistical Acct. of Scotland, Ahernethy and Kincardine, xiii. 151. The Town Council of Perth in 1707 applies to tlie Earl of Perth for the loan of his hangman as being very expert in the business. — Stewart's Sketches of Highlands. In 1709 occur the last two cases of capital punishment by Regality Court iu Galloway. — Rereditanj Sheriffs, by Agnew, p. 494. - Dunbar's Social Life in Former Days, 2nd series, p. 144. ' Burton's Hist, of Scot. (1688-1748), vol. ii. ; Burt's Letters, i. 45. CR/.\fES AND PUM.sjiMj.MS 497 tliey had so loiij^ juided tliuiusclvt'S : it also implitnl il»e losn ol' gains liaidly less coveted.' Baron iMiilies oft«M unrichcti themselves by the fruits of office, which were called " duties : " a day's la))our from «'very tenant ; the j^'ootls of all |m'i^'>' sentenced to ersonal glory antl ini|H»rtan(e, and the flispoa.seH.sed lords claimed e.xorl)iUint comiH'nsjiiion for the less they had sustained. They, not too modestly, estimated the equivalent at £602,127, but were obliged to l>e satisfied with £ir)2,000.* Whatever might have l)een the loss to the.se gentlemen, it was clearly a gain to the country, which under the legal sheriffs who reigned in their stead had a chance of equity and due pro- cedure, of fairer trials, more rejisonable verdicts, and less arbitrary sentences. Yet no institutions or men, however bad, ever pass away without mourners when they die — even on the grave of Nero .some unknown hand laid flowers — and sentimental lovers of ancient customs and patriarchal ways joined in the lamentation with retainers who had benefited by the partiality of their lairds and lords. Some loyal tenant.^ protested that they " aye liked gentlemen's law," preferring the possible lenity of their laird to the certain justice of the sheriff. No longer could an Eiirl of Galloway, as in good old days, hold his court and sentence in a trice criminals caught " red-hand." " Yerl John," exclaimed one vigorous admirer. " was the man ! He'd hang them up just o' his ain word : nane o' your law ! " * ' Stat. Acd. Scot. xiii. 151 : Agnew'.s Herolitary Sheriffs <•/ Onlloiray, \\ r>29. - The Duko of Hnniilton claimed £38,000 aud got £3000 ; Lord Gallowiy claimed £«3000 and got £321 ; Lord Selkirk claimed £33,000, but got nothing. --Agnew'.s Uerrditarif Sheriffs, j>. 429. ^ Johnson's Jounuy to the li'estem Islatuls, 1775, p. 205. * Agnew's Ufreditary Sheriffs, \i. 608. On the banks of the S|K'y, when H poor man was found guilty by hi.s master, the proprietor of Ballindalloch, and put into the pit till the gallows was prej»ared. In- drew a short .sword .ind decl.^red he would kill the tintt man that put a hand on him, his wife remon- strated and prevailed on him with the argument: "Come up quietly and hv hanged, and do not anger the laird." — Hall's Travels in Scvtland, ii. 404. SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IV In 1758 the country was made aware of strange criminal practices in the North, which had been carried on for years with extraordinary impunity. Peter Williamson, having re- turned from an adventurous career among the Cherokee Indians, published his life and adventures : narrating how he had been kidnapped in Aberdeen when eleven years old, had been carried off with many others to America, where he was sold for £16 to a planter, and after curious vicissitudes was captured by Indians, from whom he escaped after marvellous experiences. The revelations in this book opened the eyes of the world — too late — to a nefarious traffic which had lasted for several years, in which men in high pubUe position had daringly shared. Strange things happened in remote quarters in those days, of which the Lowlands knew nothing. In 1732 Lady Grange had been kidnapped from Edinburgh by Highlanders in the pay of her husband, who wanted to get rid of a woman half-mad and a drunkard, with a wild tongue which might reveal secrets to endanger the neck of this professing Whig, who was an intriguing Jacobite ; of this pretended saint who was a worthless libertine. Away in the wilds of the Highlands she was kept, while Lord Grange, asserting she was dead, celebrated her funeral; far away in the lonely island of St. Kilda and other dreary retreats, she lingered till her forlorn days were ended. The Highlands kept their secrets well, and when the world heard the tale it only shrugged its shoulders. In the North, too, as we have seen, lords of regality illegally made profits by selling prisoners to agents, who shipped them to work in the plantations. Now Peter Williamson's story disclosed that not only in wild distant straths, but also in the civilised districts of Aberdeenshire, a criminal traffic had been practised in face of the law. Between 1740 and 1746 a regular trade existed of supplying hands to the American settlements, where they were sold. Eascally companies were formed to carry on the business, and year after year ships left the ports with bands CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS 499 of luckli'SH youtli.s, who had lK'(!n iiiV('i<,'l«'(l or coerced into transportalion — few ever returning to tell the story of theii capture or their fate. Many were stolen ; Home were dehided hy gross falselmodn ; othei-H in the diiy.s of destitution in the North were even sold by their parents for a shilling to these kidnappt»rs.' They came to cajole and to ensnare the simple ; pipers accoiupanied them to make the village; rustics merry in the change-house ; and ])oor creatures were " enlisted " when they were tlnmk. So liojd were some of those kidnappers that their press-gang passi-d along the village streets and country roads and seized boys whom they met. In the silence of the night lads were taken from their bods in remote cottages, and parents were afraid to let their children out of doors when darkness set in. Some of the.se .scenalty, in.^tead of ca]>it.il punishment."- Humo's Comnuntariea. 502 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY cattle from a hostile clan or made a foray on an alie, Lowlander with placid conscience is true, as the exploits c Kob Eoy testify ; but ^ it is said that cases of theft froD dwelling-houses seldom occurred, highway robberies were un known, the people lived with their property safe without bolt or bars, and in the houses of the chiefs and lairds in time o peace no security was needed, and in many a mansion not ; door was locked. So describes Stewart of Garth the High lands of the eighteenth century, though he notes a mora deterioration in his countrymen in the tone and manner assumed by the close of the century. It seems strange, notwithstanding this immunity fron capital offences, that a locksman or common hangman was : town's necessary official ; but the chief occupation of thi functionary was as jailer of the petty prisoners, and flogge of the culprits, when scourging was a common penalty fo stealing a hen off a midden head, or a shirt from a hedgt Up to a late part of the century this official was entitle( as wages to a handful or lock from every sack of grain - tha came to the market, from which he got his name of " locksman, and when he entered on his office in later years he had ; timber or iron ladle presented to him wherewith to measui liis lock or handful from each sack. These worthies wer persons of civic importance and noted figures from thei punitive powers and their distinctive dress. In Edinburgh th hangman was conspicuous in the streets, dressed in his gra; bonnet and black velvet coat trimmed with silver lace.^ I) the Tolbooth Kirk on Sundays he was to be seen in his sea apart from all other worshippers, and when the communioi was celebrated he, like a social leper, received the sacrament a a special table when all the other communicants had retired. Prisons in old times were everywhere scandals t' humanity and disgraces to civilisation, and wretched thougl they were in Scotland they certainly were in no worse stat ' Stewart's Sketches of the Highlands, 1822, i. 36-39. 2 In Dumfries market in 1781 a grain merchant resisted the biirg executioner in his attempt to open his sacks. Although the merchant was in prisoned, the privilege in 1796 was withdrawn as the result of continue complaint. — M'Dowall's Dumfries, p. 694 ; Book of Bon Accord, p. 159. * Chambers' Traditions of Edin. ii. 184. Cfi/Mh.s Ayi> f'i .\7.N//,I/AA/.V 503 thiiii in Kn^liiiul. In Kn^^land ihey wery lu'sls of inruiuy, which brought forth vice and iiurMCtl it, uml l)t'cain»' wntrc.s of moral pollution — pest-houses which bred diseases of the most deadly and loalhsoinf kind — jdaces when* the least Kuilty suffered inailculaldy nior»; for their slight on'ences than the most hardeneil felons for their foulest crimes. Compared with this the staU" of Scottish jails was alni<»st resjHrctahle. The prisoners were few, the terms of imprisonment Wfie short, and if the jails were often miserable hovels liny were never crowded. The worst fate wtus l>orne by bankrupts, debtors, or " ily voun*. ' who were Irwited with a severity curiously out of hannony with a penal ce put on bread and water for a month ami then scourged. At the beginning of the century in towns were to be seen men clad in strange piebald attii-e — bonnet and hose, half yellow, half brown. These were dishonest debtors who were released on surrendering their goods, but compelled to wear this garb all their days.' In prison everything was done to intensify their discomfort. Even when ill they were . \6\. On day of release these debtors " with the foresaid habit shall sitt on the dyvour's stone for the space of ane hour," "at th»* nu-rcat cross." - " Debtors in prison ought not to be indulged by the magistrates or jailers with the benefit of air ; for the creditors have an interest that their debtors l>e kept under close confinement, that by squalor carceris they may be brought to jmy tlieir debts. " — Erskine's Pi-\ncipl(vithin the Tolbooth be discharged from holding any feasts, treats, or banquets 'within the prison, and that no persons above the number of one shall be allowed to dine or sup with any such prisoner." — Paterson's Hist, of AyrsJiire, i. 191. ■* Book of Bon Accord [by Joseph Robertson], p. 214 ; Kennedy's Annals of Aberdeen, i. 405 ; Burt's Letters from the North, i. 45. ■• Arnot's Hist, of Edin. p. .360 ; Skene's Sketches, 1829, p. 78. CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS 505 where cliiklreu were confined in air so pestilential that no visitor could for a minute abide it, or venture in, with straw which served as beds, worn to little chips from long use, by a constant succession of uncleanly occupants. The richer prisoners, meanwhile, had their carousals with their friends, while warders joined the festivity and shared the liquor for which they had caused their hosts to pay so dear. Sucli was the state of matters when John Howard visited this and other Scottish prisons — then he found poor convicts in Edinburgh,^ in " a horrid cage," chained to an iron bar- probably the massive cage of wood in which unruly prisoners were confined. The strange fact is that in the prisons he found far more debtors than criminals, who in the stench, darkness, and dirt were detained at the charge and cost of their creditors. In 1779, in the Edinburgh Tolbooth there were thirteen debtors and nine felons ; in Glasgow, in 1782, Howard found eighteen debtors and only five felons — which shows that the rising commerce of the west had led some too venturous citizens beyond their own and other people's means, but had done little as yet to foster crime. As the century wore on many of the more quaint peculiarities of Scottish rules and penalties disappeared, — the cutting and carving of ears, the public flogging of women, the banishment " furth " of city or county (which would have then been a great boon to a felon), the shaving of heads, fines for Sabbath - breaking, for cursing and imprecations, — all these vanished from the civic code ; and by the end of the centur} laws which still remained on statute had become dead letters : many homely methods and odd barbarities of local law in town and country passed away, after remaining unaltered and operative for long generations." ^ Howard's StoAc of Prisons, Appeudix, 1784, pp. 96, 150. Aberdeen prison was "almost a loathsome dungeon," containing 15 debtors, 8 delinquents, and a lunatic. — Kennedy, i. 405. Even in 1812, Xeild {State of Frisons) found old hovels, filthy and every way offensive, serving as jails in county towns. - The last case of flogging iu the streets in Glasgow was in 1793. — Glasfjuu- Past and Present, i. 339. CHAPTEE XV PEOGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE It was on a bright warm day in July 1698 that the shores and pier of Leith were thronged with dense crowds of people, whose cheers rose loud and jubilant as a tiny fleet of three vessels, with a crew of 1200 picked men, hoisted sail to cross the Atlantic. This was the first of the expeditions that went forth to Darien as to an El Dorado. The scheme had been formed in the fertile brain of William Paterson to found a colony on the Isthmus of Darien which should be a Scots centre of a world-wide trade, extend- ing away from both shores of the continent, commanding the Pacific on one side and the Atlantic on the other, con- necting the commerce of Europe with that of China. It was a magnificent project conceived in no exclusive spirit, though it was designed to lift Scotland out of her impoverished state, to develop her industry, to get customers for her goods and careers for her sons. In the patriotic enthusiasm with which the scheme was hailed, £400,000 were subscribed — equal to two-thirds of all the coin circulating in the country ; vessels had been chartered from Holland, and manufactures from the various towns had been sent in for exportation to these new golden fields of commerce. Perth sent its leather-work and gloves, and Kilmarnock its blue bonnets ; Aberdeen furnished stockings, and Dunkeld plaids and tartans ; Musselburgh con- tributed its serges, and Dunfermline its huckabacks ; Culross provided its gridirons, for " Culross girdles " were used in every PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE ^ ^* 507^^^^-'^^^ castle aud cottage ; Edinburgh supplied linun, tobacco pipes, bobwigs, aud periwigs. Never was there such an incongi-uous assortment of wares to carry beyond the seas ; seldom one with a display of native products from a civilised country so pathetically humble. Two years passed by, and other vessels, their crews filled with high hopes and their holds filled with absurd cargoes, crossed the ocean. But in the summer of 1700 tidings con- firming ugly rumours came of the failure of this proud venture. The people were dumfounded, for everything to their simple minds seemed to have been done, not merely to deserve, but also to command, success. Goods of all sorts, from swords to Penicuick " gray paper," from plaiding to salt herring, had been stored. Ministers, too, of the most orthodox complexion — reclaimed Cameronians — had been exported to preserve order and instil piety into a ribbald lot ; and these worthies modelled the colony on the ideal plan of a Presbyterian parish — elders, with their discipline, sessions and the stools of repentance, Wednesday services, humiliation days, sacramental fasts, when the three ministers in succession preached for liours on a stretch, and worship was conducted in rooms where the humid heat was stifling ; ardent pleasures had been re- buked as gross sins and colonial troubles treated as judgments of heaven.^ In spite of all these helpful agencies, ruin came, for Paterson had reckoned without his host of foes — swamps and jungles, fevers and hunger, cargoes without customers, and settlers without settlements ; disorders of the emigrants and dissensions of their leaders ; attacks from Spaniards whose territory had been invaded ; jealousy of English, whose mono- poly of trade was imperilled ; opposition from the Crown that treated them as pirates and hampered them at every turn. Few returned from this ill-managed, ill-fated expedition, and little was left, except unnumbered graves in the swamps of Darien and fierce anger in the breasts of Scotsmen, who raged at the English as the authors of all their woe.^ ^ Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great Britain, 1790, iii. 136 ; Hist, of Darien, by Francis Borland (one of the ministers), 1776, pp. 39, 89. - Dalrymple's J/emoirs ; Darien Papers {'Qa.iina.tyaQ Clxxh) ; Burton's Zf?s<. 0/ Scotland (1688-1748), vol. i. 33 5o8 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Thus began and thus ended Scotland's first and last attempt to form an independent trade and commerce for itself. Poor, miserably poor, as it had been before, it was far poorer now. Although only £225,000 of the subscriptions had been paid up from the pockets of sanguine nobles and lairds, pro- fessors, doctors, ministers, and merchants, a sum which before the end of the century many a rich trader could have paid out of his own fortune, it was felt as a calamity which brought poverty to the whole nation, while it dashed all its hopes of prosperity to the ground. At the beginning of the century the country was in dire poverty — a famishing people, a stagnant trade, rude manufactures, and profitless industries.-^ Glasgow was a small city of 12,500 inhabitants, which had a slender trade in exporting salt fish and coarse woollen stuff and tarred rope, and a crude industry in making rough plaiding. Paisley ^ was a long row of thatched dwellings, whose 2600 inhabitants depended on spinning yarn on rock and reel, which was woven at hand looms by eighty-seven weavers, who sold their stuff at the cross in the markets to English pedlars. Greenock, with a population of 1500, was a collection of rude cottages, with a business consisting in fishing for salmon and herrings in the Clyde. Ayrshire had no manufactures except of blue and black bonnets at Stewarton, and a coarse woollen stuff called " Kilmarnocks," ^ made in the mean dirty village of " houses little better than huts, built so low that their eaves hang dangling to touch the earth," in which 2000 people dwelt.^ A little boat, valued at £40 Scots, formed the mer- cantile navy of Ayr, and the entrance once or twice a year of a little vessel with iron or timber from Norway constituted its whole foreign traffic,^ Northwards there was Dundee, which then was a poor little town with a trade in coarse plaiding exported undressed to Germany and Sweden for clothing to ^ In Scotland, poor and scant of gold, the word siller was used for money. - New Stat. Acct. of Scot., Paisley ; Crawford's Shire of Renfrew, 1710. ^ Even so late as 1760. — Fullerton's Survey of Ayrshire, 1797. ■* Northern Memoirs, writ in the year 1658 by Richard Franck, Philan- thropus, 1821, p. 101. ^ Records of Convention of Royal Burghs, 1677-1711, pp. 563-667, gives reports on their trade from several towns in 1692, revealing great poverty. PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE 509 soldiers ; and even in the middle of the century, when it had a population of 6000, there was no shop rented over £2 or £3, and it had " not above four houses at the Cross completely built of stone, all the rest being partly wood." ' Aberdeen, busy making stockings and fingrams from tarred- wool, bore little likeness to the stateliness of modern days in the shabby streets of wood-faced houses and long lanes of mean, low, turf-covered dwellings." Worse still was the capital of the Highlands, for Inverness consisted chiefly of mere hovels, thatched with turf with bottomless baskets serving as chimneys, there being only a few houses of stone and lime, thatched without, and dark and mean within. Even in 1730 it had only a street or two of houses with unsashed windows, the lower part of wood and the upper part glazed, the rest of the dwellings being still rows of hovels. The few shops were dark rooms with earthen floors, containing hogsheads of brandy (smuggled), firkins of butter (well mingled with cow hairs), and tartan plaids, presided over by a merchant, who might be proud of his ancestry and high connections, but not too proud to sell serges by the ell and pigtail tobacco by the ounce. At the five annual fairs — the only mediums for barter — there were pathetic evidences of penury, the " principal dealers bringing a roll of linen or a piece of coarse plaiding under their arms," others two cheeses of two or three pounds each, a kid which sold at 8d., or butter in a sort of bladder which was put in the dirt of the streets, three or four goats' skins, a piece of wood for wheel axle-trees. The money was spent on a horn or a wood spoon, a knife, a plate, or an onion which was sometimes eaten on the spot raw.^ Such is Edward Burt's description of local trade from 1726 to 1736, causing him to exclaim, " Good God ! you could not conceive such misery in this island." A few towns there were then with comparatively flourish- ing industries which redeemed the country from utter stagna- tion, such as Aberdeen, Stirling, and Musselburgh, with their woollen fabrics, Dunfermline with its fine linen, and its boast ' Stat. Acct. of Scot. viii. 232. - Kennedy's Annals of Aberdeen, i. 276. ' Burt's Letters from the North, 1815, i. 59-78. 5IO SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY in 1702 that one of its weavers had made a seamless shirt of linen. But there was not enough employment for its people — young men in great numbers left the country seeking work abroad in the colonies, rather than starve at home. The most prosperous industry in the country had been fishing for the cod and herring that swarmed on the shores, which were dried or salted for export ; or in catching the salmon abound- ing in the rivers, sold at Id. a lb., and furnishing food in mansions for the servants, until their palates were weary, and they refused to taste them more than thrice a week. All this was in the days before social changes had sorely depopulated the rivers by agriculture draining the land, by linen factories steeping poisonous flax in the water, by the growth of towns which polluted the once clear streams, by reckless killing in breeding time, a seemingly inexhaustible source of food and trade, which in consequence became a rarity and a luxury.^ With industries so few and arts so primitive, the trade of the country in the early part of the century was on the most insignificant scale. Only ninety -three vessels, with a combined tonnage of 6000, and the largest of only 180 tons^ — which were made in Holland or the Baltic, owing to scarcity or in- accessibility of timber at home — were engaged in the foreign trade. And their cargoes, whether sent to Holland, Spain, or France, were monotonous consignments of miserable " gray oats," barley from their poor stores, dried cod, red herrings, stockings, tarred rope and serges, and " wicked candles." A few merchants, greatly daring, sent their little vessels to the coasts of Barbary, in which perilous regions corsairs pounced upon the slow-sailing barks, and captured crews which were more valuable for sale than their cargoes of linen, lead, and woollen stockings — for which last article the demand could ^ " The Firth [of Forth] relieves the country with her great plenty of salmon, where the burgomasters, as in many other parts of Scotland, are compelled to reinforce an old statute (?) that commands all masters and others not to force any servants or apprentices to feed upon salmon more than once thrice a week." — P. 133, Northern Memoirs, written in 1658 by Richard Franck, Philanthropus, 1821 ; Present State of Scotland, 1754 ; Burt's Letters, i. 112. ^ Defoe's Hist, of Union, 1712 ; Cochrane Patrick's MecUivval Scotland, p. 150. PROGRESS OF IND USTRY A ND TRA DE 511 not have been clamorous.^ Still more adventurous were those who sent off to the Guinea coast wares of Scots or English produce of " linen and woollen cloth, knives, scissors, looking- glasses and other toyes, strong waters, tobacco, beads, peuther (pewter) dishes, Glasgow plaids and blew bonnets " — which "may do for their kings and queens," naively suggests ]\Ir. John Spreull, merchant and dealer in red herrings in Glasgow, where he was known as " Bass John " from his imprisonment on the Bass Rock. After all, these present a poor bill of fare for the world's consumption, and a poor off-set for those imports which the Scots required, and to pay for which sorely drained their scanty stock of money. Meanwhile to England they were sending slate, linen cloth, coal, salt and dried fish, Galloway horses, and droves of emaciated black cattle, which were sold to English graziers for any price from 10 s. to £1. Scarcity of money was a chronic complaint throughout the century, but never so bad as then, and Defoe says there were hardly any gold coins to be seen. It is said that in the cellars and warehouses were goods in plenty, but no money wherewith to pay the duties. The amount of coin circulating in Scotland was revealed when, after the Union all Scots, English milled, and foreign silver coin was called in. Money of standard English was to be issued in their stead. The sum sent in to the Bank of Scotland amounted only to £411,117 ; and we may reckon that the whole coin in the land was probably under £600,000 sterling — if we estimate the silver withheld, the scanty amount of gold existing, and the large amount of miserable worn copper coins in circulation, as equal to £150,000. So that the entire money of a million of a population was a sum equalled by the fortune of many a private merchant in the next century.^ ^ Accompt Current betwixt Scotland and England, balanced by J[obu] S[preull], Edin. 1705. ^ Ruddiman's Introduction to Andersons Diplomata. As there was the utmost difficulty of getting silver, and gold was almost never seen, — having gone out of the country to pay for goods imported, — Ruddiman's estimate that there was as much money left in circulation as was sent in is far less probable than that of Chambers, which we adopt — namely, £30,000 in gold, £60,000 in copper, and £60,000 in silver not sent in for reminting. — Domestic Annals, iii. 332. 512 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY II The Union of 1707 came about, and while the English despised the alliance, which a southern Commissioner super- ciliously likened to wedding a beggar with a louse for her portion, the Scots denounced it as destructive of Scottish independence, Scottish trade, Scottish pride — in short, of every glory and appanage that was Scottish. From the South came custom officers, whose very accent and presence were hateful ; they watched every transaction with a keen suspicion, so different from the manner of the easy times in which the revenues of £160,000^ had been collected when a Scotsman farmed them ; and the nation bitterly complained that their money was used to feed the families of needy English cormorants.^ Heavy salt duties were levied, and the deep-sea fisheries were crushed. No industry had been of old so prosperous as the industries in the Moray Firth and the coasts of Fife, where fleets of vessels had been busy on the sea, and villagers astir curing and drying their fish on the shore ; but now, with hard duties and irritating exactions, the trade well- nigh became extinct on the east shores. Many a once flourishing fishing town fell into stagnation, while in the offing were Dutch busses with their broad-beamed hulls catching the cod before the fishermen's eyes. From lack of work, these places became haunts of smuggling, in which every man and woman felt it honourable to join, and to despoil the English of their tribute. So late as 1750, while Dutchmen had 150 vessels fishing off the coast, — working what they called their " gold mines," — the Scots had only two vessels on the eastern shores, manned by thirty-three men and boys.^ One great privilege Scotland gained by the Union was the removing of the prohibition against trading with the English colonies. Hitherto no Scots trading vessels dared set sail ^ Revenues and public income of Scotland in 1705 were £160,000, those of England were £5,691,003, Customs of Scotland amounted to £30,000, and Excise, £33,500 ; while the Customs of England were £1,452,000, and Excise, £677,765.— Pp. 388-390, 'Qvmcq's Report, 1799. ^ Lockhart Papers, p. 224. ^ Wood's East Neuk of Fife, p. 330 ; Macpherson's Annals, iii. p. 347. PROGRESS OF liVDUSTRV AAD TRADE 513 tor these shores, the preserves of England, nor any vessel to carry cargoes from any English port unless two-thirds of the crew were English-born. Now this embargo was lifted off, and within a generation the trade with Virginia and the Indies was to l)ring fortune to Glasgow, and a rich commerce was to rise which Scots Commissioners little foresaw, when in the initial negotiations for the Union they had modestly claimed only that four of their vessels in the year might set forth to trade with the colonies, as crumbs from their rich neigh- hour's table.^ In the early years of the century woollen stuffs were the chief produce of the people. Spinning was the occupation of all the women, rich and poor, in bedroom and kitchen of the mansion, as well as the hovel of the peasant. From the wool got from the thin, short tar-clotted fleeces of the sheep was made the yarn which the weavers wrought into plaidings, blankets, and hodden gray (that is, coarse undyed cloth from wool in its natural colour). There were also considerable villages and towns where the weavers wrought goods which got a special fame for their district — "Glasgow plaidings," "Aberdeen fingrams," " Kilmarnocks," " Musselburgh stuffs " from which at 4^d. a yard ladies' dresses were made, — and Edinburgh had weavers in many a wynd making fine shalloons." But this was a branch of industry in which Scotland could not compete with England, which made finer fabrics than the rude Scots stuffs. Accordingly, gentlemen had to dress in their rough home woollen stuffs, for their narrow incomes could ill afford to buy the English broadcloth, which cost from 6s. to 7s. a yard.^ In vain every effort was made to encourage the industry. The law even forbade the exportation of wool, and enacted from 1705 that all bodies should henceforth be buried wrapped in woollen cloth ; but English goods now crossed the border and swamped the native products. The beneficial results of the Union were slow of being felt, and for some twenty years the people saw less of the ' Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, iii. pp. 347, 596 ; Bruce's Report on Events and Circumstances which produced the Union, from State Papers, 1799, p. 396. - Interest of Scotland Considered, 1737 [by Patrick Lindsay]. ^ Account Books of Sir J. Foulis of Ravelston (Scot. Hist. Society). 514 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY advantages than of the hardships it entailed — heavier taxes, more duties, vexatious restrictions, and dangerous competition with the trade of England, and a lost trade with France. The lack of employment for men was a constant cause of lamentation, agriculture remained dormant, handicrafts were rude and few, trade and commerce were still meagre. Writers up to 1737 complain that great numbers of young men were forced to seek employment ^ in the Plantations ; that many, availing themselves of an easily learned and overstocked calling, became tailors, and left the country seeking work ; others, again, became gardeners,^ in which business they showed peculiar skill, and left Scotland, where gardens were few and poor, for England, where they abounded. One outlet for their energies, however, they markedly ignored — that was the Army. The prejudice against it among the rural poor was inveterate during the century. Not yet had patriotic glamour been thrown over Scots regiments by brilliant achievements ; the people cared nothing for wars abroad, and were as in- different about the victories under Marlborough as they were later to defeats under Cumberland. If a son enlisted it was felt as a family disgrace, and to get him out was the struggle of family honour.^ The surplus farming class had nowhere to seek work at home when there were few trades to learn and few factories to enter. The beggars, meanwhile, swarmed in the streets of every town, and made prowling visits to every village, and neither sought for work nor could find it if they had. ^ Reasons for Improving the Fisheries and Linen Manufacture of Scotland, 1727 ; Interest of Scotland Considered, 1733, p. 128. 2 " I think the gardens [of the Scottish nobility and gentry] are not comparable to those of England, a circumstance all the more remarkable, as I was told by the ingenious Mr. Philip Miller of Chelsea that almost all the gardeners of South Britain were natives of Scotland." — Smollett's Humphrey Clinker. 3 Dugal Graham's Collected Works, i. 160. In 1790 the minister of Holy- wood naively writes regarding the morals of his parishioners: — "It may be observed that during the time of the present incumbent, which is nineteen years, only one person has been banished for theft and one enlisted as a soldier. The last, having been got out of the Army, has ever since lived in the parish an industrious labouring man. " — Stat. Acct., Scotland, i. 25. PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE III We may by 1730, however, see the stirring of a new life in the country, the gradual awakening of the community from its long lethargy, for by that time the linen industry was felt to be a source of prosperity owing to its trade with England. On every farm, minister's glebe, and near every laird's house, a parcel of ground was devoted to growing tlax, and making yarn became an increasing occupation in every household and village. While ladies and their maids spun for the home, the poor spun for the market. In county towns the master weaver had his six-loomed shop adjoining his cottage, and while he plied his own loom his journeymen wrought at the others, for which they paid a weekly rent. He called at houses of gentry, farms, and peasants, to buy their yarn, which he and his men wove into checks or sheeting. The Webster bartered his stuff, when bleached and finished, at the doors of his customers for more home-made yarn, carrying on his own or his pony's back loads of tempting webs to exchange by stiff bargains, or with pawky cajolery, for the thread. The village weavers, who Kved by what was called " customer wark " (that is, making up cloth for their customers from their home-made wool or linen yarn), were notable personalities and characteristic figures in old Scots rural and burghal life, up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, when, poor and superannuated, they with a sigh disappeared on the advent of the machinery and factories of a new age. Linen manufacture began to be carried on in several towns, and Glasgow from 1725 was busy making lawn and cambric. Meanwhile Paisley made a boimd into industrial activity, owing to the enterprise and ingenuity of ladies of the house of Bargarran. Christian Shaw, daughter of the laird of Bargarran, had in 1697 created vast excitement and soul- searching among the ministers and people of Eenfrewshire by professing to be under diabolical machinations ; a prosecution for witchcraft ensued, resulting in the burning of five unhappy women whom the girl had charged with bewitching her, and another victim escaping this fate by strangling himself in the 5i6 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY jail. Years passed by, and this hysterical girl became the astute wife of the minister of Kilmaurs. Shrewd, practical, and having remarkable dexterity in spinning fine yarn, she began to manufacture thread. At first every part of the pro- cess was done by her own hands. She bleached her materials on a slate at the windows of Bargarran House. Encouraged by success, her sisters and mother helped in the operations, friends took the thread and sold it to customers, and Lady Blantyre carried a quantity of it to Bath, and there disposed of it to lace manufacturers.^ It was about 1725 that a person connected with the family happened to be in Holland, and there discovered the secret of making fine thread, as well as the art of sorting it, of packing it for sale, of constructing and managing twisting and turning machines. This informa- tion being got by Christian Shaw (Mrs. Millar), she quickly turned it to good account. Young women in the neighbour- hood by her instructions learned to spin fine yarn, turning machines were erected, and the business rapidly progressed. In the newspapers of 1725 appeared one announcement more interesting than the usual "intelligence" in their barren columns : " The Lady Bargarran and her daughters having attained to a great perfection in making, whitening, and twisting of sewing Threed, which is cheap and white, and known by experience to be much stronger than the Dutch, to prevent people being imposed upon by other threed which may be sold under the name of Bargarran Threed, the papers in which the Lady Bargarran and her daughters at Balgarran, and Mrs. Millar, her elder daughter at Johnstone, do put up their threed shall for direction have thereupon the above coat of arms [here was printed the family arms]. Those who want the said Threed, which is sold from fivepence to six shillings per ounce," may write to the Lady Bargarran, to Mrs. Millar, or to certain merchants in Parliament Close, Edinburgh, or the Trongate, Glasgow.^ In the course of a year or two the secret of the processes leaked out, and quickly other factories were founded. A new and profitable industry had been started ; the town, increasing in population, became full of enterprise ^ Stat. Acd. of Scotland, viii. 232 ; ix. 75 ; Brown's Hist, of Paisley. ^ Chambers's Domestic Annals, iii. 510. PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY A XD TRADE 517 and activity ; and as the folk listened to the new bell in the steeple, according to popular saying, it seemed to ring out, "Spin flax and tow, spin flax and tow." Yet even in 1735 these tradesmen had modest fortunes and simple ways. Setting forth every year on horseback with swatches of their goods in packs or in their wallets, trudging along on the roads to the north of England, they sold their wares and procured orders from customers at fairs and markets.^ The enterprise of another lady in the east country had by this time introduced another improvement destined to affect greatly the national industry. The wife of Henry Fletcher, brother of the famous Andrew of Saltoun, was deeply interested in the making of linen, for she was anxious to widen her own narrow fortunes. It is told that, travelling in Holland with two local mechanics disguised as men-servants, she got access on some pretext to a Dutch factory, watched the looms as they plied, discovered the processes ; and on her return home the mechanics copied the macliinery and set up the apparatus at her farm near Saltoun.^ In a short while Mrs. Fletcher made the first Holland linen ever produced in the kingdom, and soon the industry grew apace. Hitherto this fine fabric could only be imported at 6s. an ell, over which the thrifty gentry groaned, for the younger generation, despising the coarse home stuff costing 2 s. which was worn by their fathers and mothers, were insisting on wearing costly Hollands. This enterprise of Mrs. Fletcher came as a timely boon to an im- pecunious age, for it brought the price down to the level of frugal incomes. After all, it cannot be said that the people were extremely inventive ; but they made up for the want of originality by readiness to adopt the inventions of other people. It was in Holland they sought and gained their improvements in art and machinery, and, with little expenditure of wit or money, picked the brains of other nations. There ileikle had got his fanners and his mills for pot barley ; there Mrs. Millar learned how ^ By 1740 there were 600,000 yards woven annually to the value of £40,000, an amount doubled forty years later. — Hector's Judicial Records of Renfrew- shire. - Agriculture of East Lothian, by G. Heyiburn ; Eraser's Hist, of the Carnegi^es, Earls of Southesk, ii. 278. 5i8 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY to make fine thread, and Mrs. Fletcher to weave Hollands ; and there in 1735 Harvey of Glasgow had wormed out the secret of incle or tape manufacturing, smuggling home two looms and a workman from Haarlem, which proved a source of fortune to himself and prosperity to Glasgow. By 1727 the Board of Trustees were, in tardy fulfilment of terms of Union, distributing funds for promoting various industries, and gave grants to schools for teaching spinning, and premiums for every acre of bleachfields constructed ; French weavers were brought from St. Quentin to Edinburgh, and settled on a piece of ground for bleaching, where the wives and daughters spun the thread and the men taught cambric weaving,^ on the place called from them Little Picardy, now surviving as Picardy Place. Nobles and merchants, headed by the Duke of Argyle, formed a company for trading in all branches of linen culture, with a capital of £100,000; they imported flax, lint, seed, and potash, sold it to manufacturers and farmers, and bought the yarn produced at a fair price. They formed bleachfields, the stuff having hitherto chiefly been sent to Holland for whitening, and they advanced money to traders. In a few years this company, so patriotically founded, gave up directly fostering the linen factories, and restricted itself to lending money, being chartered in 1747 by that name which still indicates its origin — the British Linen Company Bank.^ Linen was now a national industry. " I remember," says Miss Mure of Caldwell, "in the year 1730 or 1731 of a ball, when it was agreed that the company should be dressed in nothing but what was manufactured in the country ; my sisters were as well dressed as any, and their gowns were stripped linen at 2 s. 6d. a yard, their head-dresses and ruffles were of Paisley muslins ^ at 4s. 6d., with fourpenny edging from Hamilton, all the best that could be had." Linen spinning ^ Arnot's Kist. of Edinhurgh, 592 ; Chambers's Walks in Edinburgh, p. 217 ; Bremner's Industries of Scotland. ^ Kerr's Eist. of Scot. Banking. ^ Caldwell Papers, ii. 163. "Muslin" was a name often given to fine linen fabric long before muslin from cotton was made in Scotland. ' ' We also do make already a very good muslin of our own produce." — Letters to an M.P. occasioned by Poverty of the Nation, Edin., 1700. PROGRESS OF IND US TRY A ND TRA DE 519 and weaving was now carried out in twenty-five counties more or less, and suddenly there sprang up new life in every district ; the old rock and reel were being discarded by 1735 for the spinning-wheels in the Lowlands, though in the High- lands the women long retained stoutly their rock or distafi", and it required the utmost tact to induce Cromarty women about 1750 to give up their implements.^ The whirr of the little wheel and the big wheel, and the " rick-tack " of looms were then heard in little villages where busy handicrafts have long ceased, and in clachans where only a few ruined walls remain to-day to tell of homes once full of thrifty life. In all quarters from the Orkneys to Galloway this industry was carried on. Forfarshire, dull and inert before, where weavers did only " customers' work," became full of activity, and spindles and looms were everywhere busy; Montrose, Arbroath, and Dundee were making and largely exporting hemp and linen fabrics. No longer were the patches of flax sown in fields by farmer and laird enough for all demand, and in great quantities they were brought from the Baltic to supply materials for increasing manufactures." From 1740 onwards the signs of growing prosperity can be marked in the history of country towns. Xew trades sprang up, new occupations were formed. Goods which had formerly been imported from England or the Continent then began to be made in Edinburgh and many a country town. Coaches had all been brought from abroad, and fine furniture from England ; but upholsterers and coach-builders opened their yards ^ as the gentry increased in income from the larger ^ "The smaller spinning- wlieel fitted for flax created opposition with the Highland woman, and coming into use about IZiG, they spoke of it as the bad era when little wheels and red soldiers (wearing no tartan) were introduced into the country." — Mrs. Grant's Superstitions of the Highlands, i. 125. Forsyth, merchant in Cromarty, made it a condition with all he employed that at least one wheel should be introduced into every family ; he hired spinners to teach it, and in ten years the distaff and spindle disappeared. Still used in some parts of Highlands. — Hugh Miller's Scotch Merchant of Eighteenth Century. - The whole quantity of linen made in 1710 is estimated at 1,500,000 yards. In 1728 the stamped linen (for exportation) was 2,183,978 yards at value of £103,312 ; in 1775 it had risen to 12,139,683 yards, valued at £561,527.— Warden's Linen Trade, p. 432. ' Arnot's Ei'it. of Edin. 599. 520 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY rents of their lands. Establishments for production of delf and China-ware were founded in Leith and Glasgow as pewter plates followed their timber predecessors into disuse. Slate quarries ^ were opened and gave occupation to great numbers, as new mansions were built, as the thatch was removed with its vast populations of rats from church and manse, from farmhouse and village street. Granite had not been wrought and little used in Caithness or Aberdeenshire ; but after fires destroyed wood-faced houses with roofs of heather and straw in 1741 in Aberdeen, granite was used to build better houses in the city.^ Other trades sprang up as old customs passed away. As home brewing died out it gave place to public breweries ; ^ as pewter stoups made way for green bottles, and pewter and silver mugs for glasses, glass-blowing rose to an active industry ; as the homely oatmeal and barley no longer satisfied a more fastidious period, and wheat w^as cultivated and wheat bread became common, bakers were to be found in every country village ; and when, with improved agriculture, it ceased to be necessary to kill the mart in November, and live on salt meat half the year, " fleshers " settled in the smallest town, where before the middle of the century neither baxter nor butcher could have had a customer. Carpets, hitherto seen only in a few large houses, came into general use in more prosperous days, and carpet weaving was begun in Hawick in 1760, and in Kilmarnock took the place of making blue bonnets. IV Among the many causes of growing prosperity must not be omitted the help given by the banking companies to com- mercial enterprise. Long before the establishment of the Bank of Scotland in 1695 banking had been carried on by shop- 1 Bremnei's Industries of Scotland. ^ Kennedy's Annals of Aberdeen, i. 294. 3 Glasgoiv Past and Present, ii. 174. Even in 1763 there seems to have been in Inverness only one baker, and not a good one, for the treasurer of the Town Council enters in his book : "By cash paid Simon Fraser for going to Edinburgh to improve, £60 (Scots)." In 1740 the magistrates advertised for a saddler to settle amongst them. — Carruthers' Highlaiid Note-Book, p. 44. I I PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE 521 keepers and merchants, who combined the occupation of buying and selling cloth, shipping wine and tallow, with that of lend- ing money to customers and negotiating bills. Most of them were settled in Edinburgh, though country shopkeepers also engaged in the business. In Hats off the various wynds of High Street they had their warerooms, which were parts also of their dwelling-houses, where they sold goods and lent money at five per cent.^ In 1695 the Bank of Scotland was founded, and its issue of paper money, first for £5 and afterwards for £1 (or rather £12 Scots), proved an immeasurable boon to a community which was at its wit's end to find sufficient coins to change for ten shillings. It enjoyed a pleasant monopoly till, in 1727, the Eoyal Bank began a career of eager rivalry. The " Auld Bank " favoured by the Whigs, and the " New Bank " patronised by the Tories, were full of hostility ; they collected each other's notes, presenting bundles of them at each other's counter, demanding that they should be paid on sight, in hopes of producing a stoppage of each other's business. Learning, however, by experience the power of its enemy, the "Auld Bank " adopted a plan which had no little effect upon mer- cantile interests. In 1730 it issued its notes "payable on demand, or with five per cent interest six months after being presented for payment at the option of the Bank." By this expedient, which its rival in later years itself adopted, it effectively secured itself from awkward surprises and sudden runs on its empty coffers." Several shopkeeper -merchants still continued their old occupation of lending money and negotiating bills. Most eminent of them was the firm of John Coutts and Company, original of the great banking firm in London, and that of Sir "William Forbes in Edinburgh. It was located in a second flat of five rooms in President's Close, which served at once as banking-office, wareroom for wine and cloth, and dwelling- house for successive generations of the Coutts family.^ Other ^ Forbes' Mernoirs of a Banking House. ^ Kerr's Hist, of Scot. Banking ; W. Graham's £1 Note. 3 Forbes' Memoirs, pp. 9, 14. Cochran, partner of Coutts* Bank and brother- in-law of Coutts, was a man of good family and high social position, a draper in a flat in the Luckenbooths. Mansfield and Cuming, founders of eminent bank- 522 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY merchants, drapers, clothiers, corn traders, living in dingy- shops up narrow, dirty, turnpike stairs, also engaged in lending money and receiving deposits. At the Cross in the High Street, between two and three in the afternoons, when citizens congregated, these gentlemen met their customers, discussed the commissions in serges, silks, and claret, and on adjourning to the taverns, which served as business places, instead of their little, overcrowded rooms, they arranged terms of a loan over a pint of claret or a gill of brandy. It was, however, the paper issue of the two rival banks that rendered most obvious service. Coin was rare, and notes now became a medium of business, thereby making trade on a large scale possible when gold was never seen and silver difficult to be got ; and people in time wondered how they had lived when they had no paper money to use,^ — for the specie left the country to pay for the imports, which far ex- ceeded the goods exported. We have noted how, from about the year 1740, the industrial and commercial prosperity of the country was beginning to develop rapidly, and natural lethargy passed to wide-spread activity ; but prosperity was hampered by want of coin and currency.^ Even after 1750 gold was practically unattainable, silver was hard to get, and the supply of copper money was uncomfortably scanty. Tradesmen had difficulty in getting coins wherewith to pay their wages, and shop- keepers to get change of 10 s. for their customers. In northern counties lairds in their dearth of money paid their tradesmen ing firms, began trade, the one as a draper the other as a clothier, in shops up in flats which they turned to counting-houses when they gave up selling stuff's for dealing with bills of exchange. ^ An entry in Wodrow's Analecta, iii. 461, referring to 1727, previous to the opening of the Royal Bank, shows how dependent the community was on paper currency: "The Neu Bank is not to be opened for some time, and some say are not to give out money for twelve moneths. The Old Bank are very cautious, and lends out no money nou, which has raised a terrible scarcity of money and is a great hindrance to bussines. Thus from reall want of money and the clash- ing interests of our two banks there never was such a complaint as nou for scarsity of money." 2 Forbes of CuUoden complains of the scarcity of coin, which he ascribes to the "exportation of bullion for tea, coffee, and foreign spirits." "Paper money is the only coin one sees, and even it is far from being in tolerable plenty." — CuUoden Papers, i. 188. PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE 523 in kiud, and settled yearly accounts with a few bolls of barley, or a few stones of llax and wool.^ To meet this emergency small banking companies issued notes, for 58. and 28. 6d., which went rapidly into circulation. Tradesmen and shopkeepers followed their example, and with reckless prodigality issued paper for sums varying from 5s. sterling to Is. Scots. Even coffee-houses issued paper money, payable at option, six months after presentation, for food and drink. Most elaborate notes came from the mason-barrowmen of Edinburgh, promising to pay the bearer Is. Scots (Id. sterling) on demand, or six months after being presented, with due legal interest.^ In Perth, in 1764, no fewer than six banking establishments had their issues of " optional " notes for 2s. 6d. — and these, too, respectable solid businesses, which were finally merged into the Union Bank of Scotland. Little weaving towns, hardly superior to villages, such as Auchtermuchty, had companies issuing notes for tiny sums to be given as equivalents for goods and wages, and agents attended the country fairs and disposed of their bits of paper, which were accepted with guile- less confidence.^ All this resulted in making coin scarcer still. Meetings were held by gentlemen in 1760, when they lamented the deficiency of bullion, declaring that to change a five shilling piece was a matter of grave difficulty ; but they did not decide whether metal disappeared because of over-issue of paper, or whether the issue of paper money was due to under- supply of metal.'* In 1765 Parliament prohibited the issue of notes with an optional clause, or any notes for sums of ^ H. Miller's Scotch 3Ierchant of Eighteenth Century, 1839. - Kerr's Hist, of Scot. Banking ; Graham's £1 Note, p. 61. In Glasgow there were even notes, issued with all the formality and form of a great bank, for 3d. sterling, to be paid by " 9 ballads, 6 days after demand ' ; and other notes for one penny, with proportionate quantity of songs, which were used, adopted "by ballad singers and beggars in the streets." — Scots Antiquary, ii. 72. ' In Yorkshire also there were paper currencies for sums so low as sixpence, the payment of which sometimes depended on the condition that the holder of the note brought the change for a guinea to the person that issued it. — Smith's Wealth of Nations, bk. ii. chap. ii. * Hume's Essays, i. 319, Edin. 1793. To use of paper currency David Hume attributes the disappearance of jjrecious metal from Scotland, estimating in 1752 the specie in the country as at a half of what existed at the time of the Union (which he places, erroneously, as high as a million). "About a third," says Smith's Wealth of Nations. 34 524 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY less value than £1, and thereafter sheaves of paper that had fallen, thick as the leaves of Vallombrosa, on the country passed into oblivion, Not till banks or branches were established in various country towns was the full benefit of banks felt by the people. Till that happened the farmer kept his money in his house till term time came, to pay his rent, and a weaver would give his savings to some shopkeeper who gave him interest, but very bad security. Yet any attempt to set up a company in any other town caused the great banks to unite to crush it, and the rivals in Edinburgh combined in fraternal zeal to destroy every other intruder on their business in a provincial town. By efforts which had been successful in Aberdeen, they sought to destroy the Glasgow Arms Bank, which merchants had formed. Here, however, they signally failed,^ and, as it is the only humorous incident of this Scottish finance, it may be recorded here. An utterly respectable, deeply religious, but rather dull gentleman, Mr. Trotter — who had been a partner in Coutts,— was sent in 1756 to act as the agent for the Edinburgh banks on this inglorious project. He collected industriously large quantities of the notes of the " Glasgow Arms " Bank, and then he presented them with a sardonic air of triumph, and demanded that they should at once be cashed. By the end of thirty-four days he had only got £2893, and yet the bank did not stop payment.^ Day by day the melancholy and irritated figure appeared with his bag and offered his paper, which was received in a manner which his own narrative best tells, with characteristic lack of apprecia- tion of the humour of the situation : — " When these notes were presented at the office for payment, a bag of sixpences was with great deliberation produced and laid on the table. The teller then proceeded with ridiculous slowness to open up the bag to count the money. He would first tell over j a pound sterling in single sixpences ranked upon the table, and affecting to be uncertain about the reckoning, he would gather the small money and count it over again from one hand to another, sometimes letting fall a sixpence for a pretence to ^ Kerr's Hist, of Scot. Banking. ^ Forbes' Memoirs of Banking House, PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE 525 begin anew and count it over again. On anotlier occasion he would take time by ridicidous discourses upon the odd design and shape of particular sixpences ; sound another on the table to try if it was sufficient coin ; and sometimes lie would quit his occupation on pretence of some sudden errand or call out of the room. Very often they employed one Coghill, by his ordinary occupation a porter, to act as teller, and he lost time and blundered with great alacrity, being instructed to do the same." In vain Mr. Trotter appeared with a notary and witnesses to confound the officials : the usual dilatory proceed- ings were repeated. The moment five o'clock struck, they were extruded, and he protests some claimants were threatened, called " scoundrels," and even beaten. After tedious delay the agent retreated, weary and defeated, and although the bank had to pay compensation to the baffled man, from that time private banks were left unmolested, while they learned the wholesome lesson to have more specie in their tills to meet demands. By this time in Edinburgh the old clothiers and merchants who had started banking gave up selling wares, and formed rich and prosperous companies ; in country towns, about 1760 branches were set up for the great encouragement of agriculture ; landlords got money to improve their land ; farmers got places to deposit their savings ; shopkeepers got paper money when coin was rare. One unlucky venture was made by gentlemen to increase their incomes, when expensive living was the fashion of the day. A hundred and forty nobles, gentry, lawyers, and merchants formed a banking company in Ayr, known as Douglas, Heron, and Co., which began business with a limited capital of £95,000, and unlimited confidence in itself. Money or notes were freely given to all who appeared with bills in their hands. No struggling tradesman was rebuffed, no em- barrassed tenant was refused credit, and customers were amazed at the bankers' affability and amused at their own success.^ Everything seemed prosperous with the Ayr Company, its proprietors being under the pleasing delusion of Mr. Micawber that every promissory note given was a payment made. One day in 1772, however, a horseman came from London, with the news that Mr. Alexander Fordyce had dis- ^ Mevwirs of Banking House ; Kerr's Hist, of Scot. Banking. 526 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY appeared, and by the speculations and frauds of this most plausible gentleman — who had married Lady Margaret Lindsay, sister of the author of " Auld Eobin Gray " — his firm of Ruffy, Neale, and Company was bankrupt. Transactions with Scot- land having been great, all except two private banks in Edinburgh failed — and hundreds of gentlemen and merchants were involved in ruin. The Ayr Bank, with vast liabilities, also fell insolvent. The effects of the calamity of that 12th of June — known as " Black Monday " — were disastrous to men of all ranks ; landowners involved in the Ayr Bank were impoverished — their old ancestral acres passed to new men ; shareholders were paying up calls during the remainder of their lives ; and some families did not get their accounts closed for sixty years after that fatal Monday.^ While textile arts and useful industries were advancing with the times, some other employments which were also affected by social habits were undergoing changes. Till 1750 the popular beverage was ale, or " twopenny," from its costing twopence a Scotch pint — equal to two English quarts. It had been made in every farm, manse, and mansion, drunk in the dining-room and in the change-house. In 1725 Parliament, however, enforced an impost, which had been thitherto evaded, of 6d. on every bushel of malt. At this tyrannical interference with their favourite drink the people arose in wild indignation. The Jacobites adroitly raised the cry, " No Union, no malt tax, no salt tax ! " There were fierce riots in Glasgow, which cost the city dear for sacking the mansion of their member of Parliament, Campbell of Shawfield, who had voted for the tax. Edinburgh brewers refused to brew so long as the hateful impost lasted, thus promising to deprive all citizens of their drink and bakers of the yeast to make' the daily bread, and only sulkily complied when the Court of Session threatened them with imprisonment.^ Although the tax was made only 3d. a bushel of malt, the ^ Memoirs of Banking Rouse, p. 42. * kxnot'fi Hist, of Edinburgh ; Omond's Lives of Lord Advocates, i. 335. PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE 527 rapid decrease in producing ale and home-brewing is attributed to this impost ; and certainly from that year the brewing of " twopenny " steadily declined, effectively to make way for the more potent drink of whisky, which was then almost unknown. As the demand for ale decreased, what drink was taking its place in a much-imbibing age ? It was chieHy smuggled spirits. From Holland, and Trance, and Spain luggers brought their contraband cargoes of wine, tea, cambric, and brandy. No crime was so respectable as " fair trading " ; none was so widely spread. Along the quiet bays of the Solway, into caves under the rocky cliffs of Forfarshire, to remote lochs of Eoss-shire, and even to the open shores of Fife, boats came with fine impunity and perfect confidence. Bakers, shoemakers and farmers, schoolmasters and fishermen, and lairds, were interested in a traffic in which they all had shares and reaped rich profits. Gentlemen holding high position in the country and offices of justices of the peace joined the smugglers in their ventures of running in the cargoes, while excisemen were hopelessly baffled.^ The signal of a white sheet or shirt out to dry on thatched roofs or corn-stacks was the reassuring sign by day, and bonfires on cliffs were timely warnings at night. So soon as news arrived of a lugger in the offing, all in silent confederacy — men, women, and children — prepared to help in the unloading. The kirk was poorly attended on the Fast day if confidential tidings arrived." In records of Kirk-Sessions occur frequent penalties on offenders who on a Fast day, ere twelve o'clock had struck, yoked their horses to convey the goods run in ; but the discipline was not so much because they had broken the law, as because they had broken the Fast. The General Assembly might issue stern comminations on the demoralising traffic, which were read from the pulpits : not merely by magistrates 1 The fury excited in the famous Porteous Mob of 1738 originated in sympathy with Wilson the smuggler, who was hanged for plundering the custom- house at Pittenweem in retaliation on the excisemen. For the interest and share taken by county magnates and magistrates in contraband trade, see Dunbar's Social Life in Morayshire. - Pratt's Buchan, p. 27 ; Wood's East Neuk of Fife, p. 320, ct seq. : Stat. Acct. of Scot. ; Agnew's Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway. 528 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY was it winked at, bvit sometimes by ministers too. "V^Tien the communion was at hand, and the minister had his elders and brethren to entertain, a mysterious anker of brandy might arrive at the manse, of which the clerical party drank gratefully, asking no questions — for conscience' sake. It even happened that in the far North smuggled goods were deposited occasionally in a kirk for safety, but with whose cognisance is not certain.^ It is significant of the public feeling that the eminently respectable firm of Coutts and Co. of Edinburgh, bankers and traders, had one member of the house a partner in a firm at Eotterdam,^ whose chief business consisted in furnishing goods for the smugglers who ran their cargoes on the north and east coasts of Scotland ; and it was only after big profits had been made that Coutts was withdrawn from a line of business which ruffled the growing conscience of a most prosperous and honourable company. In the south counties were corporations of these smugglers who, as cover, took farms, and farmed them admirably, to the great benefit of agriculture. In Dundonald parish church was the gallery known as the " smugglers' loft," where these traders sat on Sunday, with their wives gay in silks, highly respected by all the worshippers.^ In all transactions the " free trader " was a hero ; to " jink the ganger " was an honourable exploit. If custom officers tried to search they found the country people in hundreds ready to oppose them, and before they could carry off a captured cargo a detachment of soldiers was required to support them.* Smuggling was carried on more largely in Scotland than in England, for the Scots fair-traders were satisfied with far smaller profits, and it was executed with more security, as the ^ " It is a shame that the clergy in the Shetland and Orkney Isles should so often wink at their churches being made depositories of smuggled goods, chiefly foreign spirits." — Hall's Travels in Scot. 1807, ii. 517. ^ Forbes' Memoirs of a Banking House. ^ Rogers' Social Life in Scotland. Illicit distillers were as much respected as smugglers, and equally unconscious of any heinousness. "I alloc nae sweerin' in the still, everything's dune decently and in order. I canna see ony harm in't," replied an estimable transgressor of the law in answer to his minister's remonstrances. — Story's Life of Story of Roseneath, p. 49. * Considerations on Present State of Scotland, 1743 [by Forbes of Culloden]. PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE 529 people helped and encouraged them in resisting customs that were imposed by the English. A vast deal of harm was done by this illicit trade to tlie inhabitants of the sea-coast — it encouraged a spirit of gambling in their life, it demoralised their tone, it discouraged all active, steady pursuit among those who might have lived by honest fishing in the sea or working on the land.^ But still the trade went on. In vain the Church "" denounced it ; and also in vain town councils and country gentlemen in several districts of ill repute bound themselves in meetings assembled to discourage with all their strength the equally hurtful " prevalence of smuggling and tea drinking," for not a thii'd of the tea imported had ever passed a custom-house.^ It w^as not till 1806 that enact- ments against smuggling foreign spirits and the lowering of the duty began to crush a demoralising trade, which had in many places spoiled the industrial life of small towns, like those on the Solway, which were reduced to hopeless inactivity. During this time whisky was becoming a well-known and common drink, and distilling became a prosperous business. Little used in the Lowlands till 1750, it had long been much in vogue in the Highlands, where it was made in stills in the glens and drunk by persons of all classes.* Best known of all was the " Ferintosh " of Forbes of Culloden, which paid no duty, was sold cheap, and was so much drunk that " Ferintosh " became a synonym for whisky.^ In 1708 there were 50,800 gallons known to have been produced, but fifty 1 On the Sohvay at the close of the century there was no trade, no industry, in the decaying towns and villages. " How in the name of wonder do you get subsistence?" asked the traveller in 1780. "We smuggle a little," was the reply. — Knox's British Empire, ii. 538. ^ General Assembly issued solemn exhortations against running goods in 1719, 1736, and 1744. — Morren's Annals of Assembly ; Culloden Papers, i. 90. ^ Ante, i. 11 ; Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, iv. 49. * Burt's Letters, i. 158. Consumption of ale diminished as whisky came into fashion : 1708, 51,000 gallons of whisky distilled ; in 1787, 300,000 gallons crossed the Border alone without paying excise. In 1708, 288,000 barrels of twopenny brewed ; in 1784, 9700 barrels brewed. — Cramond's Drinks of Scotland. ^ "Whisky in 1700 was lOd. a quart, in 1790 it was Is. 8d. and bad. — Cramond's Drinks of Scotland. In 1695, Scots Parliament, in requital for damages suffered by Forbes of CuUoden's estates from king's enemies, granted privilege of distilling grain on Ferintosh land free of duty. Privilege with- drawn in 1784 with compensation of £21,580. — Chambers' Life and Works of 530 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY years later the amount had increased to 433,800 gallons, which paid duty — what was the quantity that the exciseman never saw it is impossible to guess, for there were stills in every far- off strath where the ganger dared not venture and the king's writ did not run. In many a wild district whisky was made with impunity — lairds, bailies, justices of the peace being the best patrons of spirits, far pleasanter and milder than honest liquor. Illicit stills increased apace, — in Glenlivet alone there were no fewer than 200 at work, — the kegs and bladders passing freely on the backs of ponies to remote lochs where the vessel was waiting for its freight. Year by year the use of whisky grew — in Edinburgh alone, in 1778, 400 unlicensed stills were busy, while only eight distilleries were licensed, and there were no fewer than 2000 houses, licensed and unlicensed, for retailing spirits to a town of 75,000 inhabitants. Drink of every kind evidently was secure of copious customers, for the number of ale-houses was enormous — in country villages in the proportion of one to every seventy of the population.^ VI Let us turn now to another type of industrial society — to workers in the collieries and mines, with whom existed peculiar modes of life and labour. The production of coal was carried on in few parts of the country up to 1750, for the demand was limited owing to the use of peat in most Burns, i. 202. It was the deprivation of whisky free of duty which called forth Burns's lament — Thee Ferintosh ! oh, sadly lost, Scotland laments frae coast to coast ! Now colic grips and barkin' boast May kill us a', For loyal Forbes's chartered boast Is taen awa' ! Scotch Drink. ^ Arnot's Hist, of Edin. p. 335. As only 159 houses were licensed to retail foreign spirits, Arnot concludes that no fewer than 1852 houses provided liquor — chiefly whisky — for the lower classes. With a population of 3000 at end of century, St. Andrews had 42 ale-houses.— »S'co