Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848
During the same reign, outbreaks in the Highlands assumed a somewhat similar character to those of the Border rievers; but the Celts conducted their operations on a much larger scale, and we intend to devote to them a separate paper.
The disturbances connected with the Reformation are essentially a part of the history of the kingdom, and in that shape too well known to have a place here: but a considerable time before these great convulsions, some smaller offences occasionally connected themselves with the priesthood, and their relation to the rest of the community. Even in the days when the church of Rome was so far Catholic as to be almost co-extensive with Christianity, Scotland was not without occasional ebullitions, in which the savage nature burst the spiritual bonds that, in its ordinary moments, held it in subjection. Boece relates an affair of this sort, and its consequences, with a rapidity almost unmatched, when we consider the quantity and the serious character of the business transacted. It was in the reign of Alexander III. that, according to his translator, "The men of Caithness burnt Adam, their bishop, after that he had cursed them for non-payment of their teinds. King Alexander hearing sic terrible cruelty done to this noble prelate, ceased not till four hundred of the principal doers thereof were hanged." "King Alexander," continues the chronicler, "for this punition was gretumly beloved by the Pope." No wonder! Nearly contemporary with the crusade of James V. against the Border rievers, was the murder of James Inglis, abbot of Culross, by Blacater baron of Tullyallan, and William Lothian, a priest, both of whom were found guilty and beheaded, while others were acquitted. The trial seems to have excited much interest, for Bishop Leslie tells us that the ceremony of the degradation of the priest, previously to his being handed over to the civil power, took place upon "ane public scaffold in the toun of Edinburgh," "the King, the Queen, and a great multitude of people being present." A year or two afterwards we find the somewhat singular circumstance of a whole list of priests charged with an act of violence; – "John Roull, prior of Pittenweem; Patrick and Bartholomew Forman, and six other canons; Mr Alexander Ramsay, rector of Muckart; Sir John Ramsay, and three other chaplains, and John Blackadder, parish clerk of Sawling." They were re-pledged to be tried by their own ecclesiastical court. It appears that, in the course of a dispute regarding the right to the produce of the land of Pittenweem, an officer of the court was appointed to reap the crop. When he repaired to the spot, the sub-prior and an assemblage of followers threatened him with violence. He found himself placed in a very curious position, and made an equally curious request. When a messenger is deforced, those who have used violence are liable to damages. The messenger on this occasion, being a shrewd and calculating man, surveyed the forces of his opponents before making a "return of deforcement." To his mortification he perceived that, to use an expression of modern origin, "they were not worth powder and shot." There were none among them "but religious men and priests, hinds' wives and bairns, which were not responsal to our sovereign lord gif he had taken deforce." He made a request that they should "send for Andrew Wood in Pittenweem, John Brown of Anstruther, the laird of Balcasky, or some other responsal persons, to stop him, so that he might indorse his deforcement and depart, which they plainly refused." The request was about as reasonable as if a gentleman, knocked down by a ragged ruffian, were to ask him to get some capitalist, able to pay respectable damages, to come and aid in the operation. The prior, meanwhile, came to the assistance of his subordinates, and put himself at the head of a truly formidable array: three hundred men, who "with hagbuts, culverings, cross-bows, hand-bows, spears, halberts, axes, and swords, came in arrayed battle, with convocation and ringing of their common bell," and, falling on the messenger's party, "shot divers pieces of artillery at them." The ecclesiastical people were removed to their own court, so that we lose trace of the proceedings against them. Some of the laymen were charged with the slaughter of the messenger's followers, and others outlawed for failing to appear.
The same Spartan brevity that characterises the early portions of the criminal records, sometimes reduces the history of bloody family feuds, the particulars of which might fill volumes of romance, to the most tantalising dimensions. They are rather inventoried or enumerated by head-mark, than even recorded, and generally present no more satisfactory detail than the following: —
"1554, Oct. 26. – Robert Henry, alias Deill amang us, convicted of art and part of the cruel slaughter of Thomas Bissate, young laird of Querrel. Beheaded."
"1532, July 3. – Rolland Lindesay, Alan Lokhart of Lee, and William Mosman, convicted of art and part of the cruel slaughter of Ralph Weir. Beheaded."
That one of the parties might be a magistrate administering the law, was no impediment to the prosecution of a feud, but rather served to give solemnity and importance to the perpetration of some act of vengeance: thus —
"1527, October 8. – George Ramsay of Clatty, John Betoune of Balfour, James Betoune Of Melgum, John Grahame of Claverhouse, and others, found caution to underly the law at the first Justice Aire of Fife, for convocation of the lieges, to the number of 80 persons, and in warlike manner invading John Lord Lindesay, Sheriff of Fife, in the execution of his office, in a fenced court within the Tolbooth of Cowper, the doors being shut, and the assize inclosed; and for breaking up the said doors."
The meagreness of these entries whets one's appetite for some detail of the stirring and tragical events of which they form the bare indexes. With the exception of the great Highland feuds, which burned on so large a scale as to be in a manner historical, the earliest detailed account of a crime arising in family animosity is connected with the feud between the Drummonds and the Blairs in the year 1554. The crime which brought the feud within the notice of the law, was the murder of George Drummond of Leadcrieff and William his son. The perpetrators, besides a long list of Blairs, include several other names still known in the Braes of Perthshire – such as Chalmers, Butter, Smyth, and Robertson. They were charged with assembling to the number of eighty, "with jacks, coats of mail, steel bonnets, lance-staffs, long culverings with lighted lints, and other weapons invasive." The day on which this tumultuous assembly proceeded to their work of vengeance was a Sunday, and the place chosen for the perpetration was the church of Blair. Being apparently afraid of the number of friends and retainers by whom their victims happened to be surrounded during the performance of divine worship, it is stated that they were obliged to postpone their purpose, and that "they passed to the Laird of Gormok's place, and their dyned with him: " a pretty large dinner-party, certainly. Leaving spies to watch the enemy's motions, they were soon afterwards summoned to their task, and their victims became an easy prey. The occupation of Drummond and his son – when we remember that it was a Sabbath afternoon – might, perhaps, be scarcely considered so characteristic of Scottish habits as their assassination. They were "alane, at their pastime-play, at the row-bowles, in the high market-gate, beside the kirk of Blair, in sober manner, trusting na trouble nor harm to have been done to them, but to have lived under God's peace."
The retribution on the offenders is certainly not the least curious part of the affair. That eighty armed men should seize, and put to death, two individuals, either in or out of a church, appears to have been a matter with which the law and the public were under no obligation to interfere, if the parties immediately interested could come to terms. Accordingly, we find on the record some fragments of a negotiation between the head of the Drummonds and the murderers. Some of them, among other more substantial offers, agree "to gang, or cause to gang," the four head pilgrimages of Scotland; to do penance for the souls of the dead for any reasonable number of years; and, thirdly, "to do honour to the kin and friends" by kneeling and offering the handle of a naked sword held by the point. These offers are treated with some disdain, as too "general and simple" to require an answer. A further offer of a thousand merks is treated with more attention; but the kin declare that it is far too small a fine "for the committing of so high, cruell, and abominable slaughters and mutilations of set purpose." To heighten the picture, the deed of the murderers is set in contrast with the peaceable and inoffensive conduct of the deceased, whose great merit was his "never offending them, neither by drawing of blood, taking kirks, tacks, steadings, or rooms, over any of their heads, or their friends'." Thus the murder would have been considered less unjustifiable, if the victim had ever been concerned in ejecting his assailants from their holdings, or offering to take them "over their head: " a doctrine of the sixteenth century in Scotland, which events of the nineteenth, in other parts of the empire, have made only too intelligible. The negotiation was not quite successful, for some of the parties were beheaded. One of them, Chalmers of Drumlochie, along with an offer to let his son marry Drummond's daughter, and his cousin marry his sister, "without any tocher," – an arrangement which he seems to have thought might be equivalent to "lands, goods, or money," of none of which was he possessed, – proclaimed himself "ready to do any other thing quhilk is possible to him, as please my lord and friends to lay to his charge, except his life and heritage." He bound himself to Lord Drummond as a personal vassal and follower, by a "band of man-rent: " an instrument well-known in old Scottish jurisprudence, and perpetually cropping out in connexion with any historical events – such as the murder of Rizzio, – in which many persons united themselves together for the perpetration of a great crime. It was a curious feature of national character, – the form of law running down through every thing, even to the very document framed for setting law at defiance. Chalmers' bond was merely one of general partisanship and following, and he bound himself to the Drummonds, and their heirs, to "take their true and one-fold part, in all and sundry their actions and causes, and ride and gang with them therein upon their expenses, when they require me or my heirs thereto, against all and sundry persons, our sovereign lady and the authority of this realm alanerly excepted. And hereto I bind and oblige me and my heirs to the said noble and mighty lord and his heirs in the straitest form and sicker stile of band of manrent that can be devised, no remeid nor exception of law to be proponed nor alleged in the contrair." It might be no small consolation to the chief who had lost a vassal to get a slave in his stead; but the public peace would not be much benefited by this method of settlement.
Some of the precautions against turbulent offences are not less curious than this method of dealing with them when they were committed. An heiress might be compelled to find security, or enter into recognisances that she shall not give her hand and fortune to an outlaw or scapegrace. Thus, on the 13th of September 1563, Mariene Carruthers, being "ane of the twa heretrixes of Moweswald," produced two landed proprietors who became bound that she "shall not mary ane chief traiter nor other broken man of the country, nor join herself with any sic person, under the pain of ane thousand pounds."
Whatever it may have been in England, there was little divinity hedging a Scottish king of the sixteenth century. Perhaps, as a rich peer and a poor peer are very different things in popular estimation, though equal in the Lord Chamberlain's list of precedence, so it may have been with kings. The Scottish king was poor, ill-housed, parsimoniously served, meagerly guarded. His pulse might beat with the blood of a hundred monarchs; but the far-stretching palaces, the long gorgeous trains of attendants, the wealth at command, were wanting, and divine right was but a theory, that could neither give parasites rich offices, nor dazzle the eyes of worshippers. Thus it happens that, side by side with the most magnificent theoretical assumptions of regal prerogative, stand the most ludicrous instances of the crown's weakness and smallness. On the 11th July 1526, Robert Bruce of Airth and others are respited for having committed a highway robbery on his Majesty's artillery – "for art and part of the stouthrief of certain manganels and artillery coming from the castle of Stirling to the king's Majesty, at his burgh of Edinburgh, for the defence of his person; and for art and part of the stouthrief of the king's letters from his officers, and laying violent hands on them." We have not far to wander for like instances, making the monarch a simple human being, against whom one commits, not the majestic crime of high treason, but the vulgar offences of theft and robbery. Thus, in the very next entry, we find "Walter Drummond acquitted by an assize of art and part of the theft and concealment of the king's crown from his crown-room, with the precious stones therein contained, forth of the palace and monastery of Holyrood."
Every petty laird dined and slept within the walls of his thick square tower; isolated by moat or precipice, by long dark passages and iron grated door. In an age when individuals thus protected themselves, it naturally astonishes one to observe how accessible the royal person generally appears to have been – how slightly protected from contact with the people, how easily approached by the assassin. One man was able to remove all the impediments which stood in the way of the Highland band who slew James I. at Perth. The murder of Rizzio, with all its circumstances of cool premeditation, and calm, steady, bitter insult, need not be recalled to the reader, among the other incidents, which show how thin a partition separated the sovereign from rude violence. The various forms in which that turbulent and most pertinacious of rebels, Francis Earl of Bothwell, assailed King James, are fraught with a ludicrous versatility in the art of haunting and tormenting a king. The official act of forfeiture characterised it as "invading, assieging, and persuing of his Majesty's most noble person, by fire and sword, breaking up his chalmer doors with fore hammers, and cruelly slaying his Highness' servants coming to his Majesty's rescue." "Ane treason and cruelty," continues the indignant document, "not heard nor seen committed by subjects so highly obliged to their native king and prince." The contemporary chronicler, Birrel, characterised the outrage as "a stoure," which the rebel created by striking "with ane hammer at his Majesty's chamber door." In his more renowned and successful attempt, the pathway to the person of royalty was so completely cleared for him by a courageous female, the Duchess of Athole, whose house was next door to the palace, that the weapons of the guard were removed; the queen's bed-room, to which the beleaguered monarch might have fled, was locked; and the prime conspirator and his assistant were comfortably lodged behind the arras of the ante-room to the king's sleeping apartment. What might not a boy Jones have accomplished in those days? Should we, however, pursue this subject further, we would be trespassing on that ground of established history which it is our desire on the present occasion to avoid.
SIR SIDNEY SMITH
A glance at the history of European fleets would give, perhaps, the highest conception of human powers in the whole progress of mankind. Philosophy, literature, and legislation, of course, have attained illustrious distinctions. But the naval service combines every thing: personal intrepidity, the strongest demand upon personal resources, the quickest decision, the most vigorous exertion of manual and mechanical skill, the sternest hardihood, and the most practical and continual application of science.
The unrivalled triumph of human invention is the instrument by which all those powerful qualities are brought into play: a ship of the line, with all its stores, its crew, and its guns on board, is the wonder of the world. What must be the dexterity of the arrangement by which a thousand men can be victualled, at the rate of three meals a-day, for four months; a thousand men housed, bedded, clothed, and accoutred; a battery of a hundred and twenty guns – the complement of an army of fifty thousand men, and two or three times the weight of field-guns – fought; this mighty vessel navigated through every weather, and the profoundest practical science applied to her management, through night and day, for years together? No combination of human force and intellectual power can contest the palm with one of those floating castles, of all fortresses the most magnificent, the most effective, and the most astonishing.
The history of the British navy, in its present form, begins with that vigorous and sagacious prince, Henry VII., who was the first builder of ships, calculated not merely for the defence of the coast, but as an establishment of national warfare. The strong common-sense of his rough, but clear-headed son, Henry VIII., saw the necessity for introducing order into the navy; and he became the legislator of the new establishment. He first constructed an admiralty, a Trinity-board for the furtherance of scientific navigation; appointed Woolwich, Deptford, and Portsmouth as dockyards, and declared the naval service a profession.
Elizabeth, who had all the sagacity of Henry VII., and all the determination of his successor, paid especial attention to the navy; and the national interest was the more strongly turned to its efficacy by the preparations of Spain, which was then the paramount power of Europe. When the Armada approached the English shores, she met it with a navy of one hundred and seventy-six ships, manned with fourteen thousand men. And in that spirit of wise generosity, which always marked her sense of public service, she doubled the pay of the sailor, making it ten shillings a-month. The defeat of the Armada gave a still stronger impulse to the popular feeling for the sea; signals were formed into a kind of system, and all the adventurous spirits of her chivalric court sought fame in naval enterprise.
From that period a powerful fleet became an essential of British supremacy; and the well-known struggle of parties, in the time of the unfortunate Charles, began in the refusal of a tax to build a fleet. In the early part of his reign, Charles had built the largest ship of his time, "The Sovereign of the Seas," carrying one hundred guns.
The civil war ruined every thing, and the navy was the first to suffer. Cromwell found it dilapidated, but his energy was employed to restore it. Blake, by his victories, immortalised himself, and raised the name of the British fleet to the highest point of renown; and Cromwell, at his death, left it amounting to one hundred and fifty-four sail, of which one-third were of the line. The Protector was the first who proposed naval estimates, and procured a regular sum for the annual support of the fleet.
The Dutch war, in the reign of Charles, compelled further attention to the navy; and when William ascended the throne, he found one hundred and fifty-four vessels, carrying nearly six thousand guns; but the French still exceeded us by one thousand guns.
In the reigns of George I. and II. the fleet continued to increase in size, strength, and discipline. Much of this was owing to the Spanish and French wars. In the war of 1744 we had taken thirty-five sail of the French line! But the incessant treachery of French politics was soon to be still more strikingly exhibited, and more severely punished.
The revolt of the American colonies stimulated the French government to join the rebels. The hope of doing evil to England has always been enough to excite the hostility of foreigners. France was in alliance with us; but what was good faith to the temptation of inflicting an injury on England? An act of intolerable treachery was committed; France, unprovoked, suddenly sent a fleet and army to the aid of America, and the French war began, to the utter astonishment of Europe.
But there is sometimes a palpable retribution even here. In that war, which was wholly naval on the part of France, her fleets were constantly beaten; and the defeat of De Grasse, in the West Indies, finished the naval contest by the most brilliant victory of the period. Another vengeance was reserved for England in Europe. The siege of Gibraltar, if not undertaken directly at the suggestion of France, at least a favourite project of hers, and attended by French officers and princes, became one of the most gallant and glorious defences on record; the besiegers were defeated with frightful loss, and the war closed in a European acknowledgment of English superiority.
But the retribution had not yet wrought its whole work. Rebellion broke out in France. The French troops returning from America had brought back with them republican views and vices. The treaty-breaking court was destroyed at the first explosion; the treaty-breaking ministers were either slain, or forced to take refuge in England: the treaty-breaking king was sent to the scaffold; and the treaty-breaking nation was shattered by civil and foreign war; until, after a quarter of a century of fruitless blood, of temporary successes, and of permanent defeats, the empire was torn in pieces; France was conquered, Paris was twice seized by the Allies, and Napoleon died a prisoner in English hands.
The naval combats of the American war had a remarkable result. They formed a preparation for the still more desperate combats of the French naval war. They trained the English officers to effective discipline; they accustomed the English sailors to victory, and the French to defeat; and the consequence was, a succession of English triumphs and French defeats in the war of 1793, to which history affords no parallel.
The French republican declaration of war was issued on the memorable first of February 1793. Orders were instantly sent to the ports for the fleet to put to sea. Such was its high state of preparation, that almost immediately fifty-four sail of the line, and a hundred and forty-six smaller vessels, were ready for sea. The republican activity of France had already determined on contending for naval empire; and a fleet of eighty-two sail of the line were under orders, besides nearly as many more on the stocks. But all was unavailing. The defeats suffered in the ten years previous to the peace of Amiens in 1803, stripped France of no less than thirty-two ships of the line captured, and eleven destroyed; and her allies, Holland, Spain, and Denmark, of twenty-six of the line, with five hundred and nineteen smaller ships of war taken or destroyed, besides eight hundred and seven French privateers also taken or destroyed. The French had become builders for the English. Of their ships of the line fifty were added to the English navy.
On the recommencement of the war in 1804, the British fleet numbered nearly double that of the enemy; but the French ships were generally larger and finer vessels. It is difficult to understand from what circumstance the French, and even the Americans, seem always to have the superiority in ship-building. Our mechanical skill seems always to desert us in the dockyard.
During the war, our naval armament continued to increase from year to year, until, in 1810, it had reached the prodigious number of five hundred pennants, of which one hundred were of the line, with one hundred and forty-five thousand seamen and marines!
Since the peace, a good deal of attention has been paid to the construction of ships of war. But it appears to have been more successful in the economical arrangement of the interior than in the figure, which is the essential point for sailing. The names of Seppings, Symonds, Hayes, Inman, and others, have attained some distinction; but we have not yet obtained any certain model of a good sailing ship. Some vessels have succeeded tolerably, and others have been total failures, though built on the same stocks and by the same surveyor. Yet the strength, the stowage, and the safety, have been improved. It is rather extraordinary that government has never offered a handsome reward for the invention of the best sailing model; as was done so long since, and with such effect, in the instance of the time-keepers. Five thousand pounds for a certain approach to the object, and five thousand more for complete success, would set all the private builders on the pursuit; and it can scarcely be doubted that they would ultimately succeed. Even now, the private yacht-builders produce some of the fastest sailing vessels in the world; the merchant ship-builders send out fine ships, of the frigate size, and the private steam-ship builders are unrivalled; while we have continual complaints of the deficiencies of the vessels built in the royal dockyards.
Some of those complaints may be fictitious, and some ignorant; but the constant changes in their structure, and their perpetual repairs, imply inferiority in our naval schools of architecture. The chief attention of the royal dockyards, within these few years, has been turned to the building of large steam-ships, armed with guns of the heaviest calibre. But the attempt is evidently in a wrong direction. The effort to make fighting ships of steamers, ruins them in both capacities. It destroys their great quality, speed; and it exposes them with an inadequate power to the line-of-battle ship. They are incomparable as tugs to a fleet, as conveying troops, as outlying vessels, as every thing but men-of-war. A shot would break up their whole machinery, and leave them at the mercy of the first frigate that brought its broadside to bear upon them in their helpless condition. In all the trials of the fleet during the last two years, the heavy armed steamers were invariably left behind in a gale, while one of the light steamers ran before every frigate.
We have now two fleets on service, one in the Tagus, and another at Malta; but both are weak in point of numbers, though in a high state of equipment. A few rasee guardships are scattered round the coast. Some large steamers remain at Portsmouth and Plymouth ready for service; but, from all accounts, there is nothing of that active and vigorous preparation which ought to be the essential object of the country, while France is menacing us from day to day, while she has an immense naval conscription, is building powerful ships, is talking of invasion, and hates us with all the hatred of Frenchmen. In such emergencies, to think of sparing expense is almost a public crime; and no public execration could be too deep, as no public punishment could be too severe, if neglect of preparation should ever leave us at the mercy of the most mischievous of mankind. But no time is to be thrown away.
Whether we shall be prepared to meet and punish aggression, ought no longer to be left dependent on the will of individuals. The nation must bestir itself. It must have meetings, and subscriptions, and musters. We must be ready to give up a part of our superfluities to save the rest. Whether France intends to attack us, without provocation, and through a mere rage of aggression, we know not; but the language of her journals is malignant, and it is the part of wise and brave men to be prepared.
We shall now give an outline of the gallant career of one of those remarkable men, who, uniting courage and conduct, achieved an imperishable name in our naval annals.
William Sidney Smith was born on the 21st of June 1764. He began his naval career before he was twelve years old. All his family, for four generations, had been naval or military. His great-grandfather was Captain Cornelius Smith. His grandfather was Captain Edward Smith, who commanded a frigate, in which he was severely wounded in an attack on one of the Spanish settlements in the West Indies, where he died shortly after. His father was the Captain Smith of the Guards, whose name became so conspicuous on the trial of Lord George Germaine, to whom he was aide-de-camp at the battle of Minden, and who after that trial retired from the army in disgust. Sir Sidney's uncle was a general, and his two brothers were Lieut. – Colonel Douglas Smith, governor of Prince Edward's Island, and John Spencer Smith, who held a commission in the Guards, but afterwards exchanged the service for diplomacy, in which his name became distinguished as an envoy to several Continental courts during the war of the Revolution. Sir Sidney's mother was the daughter of a Mr Wilkinson, an opulent London merchant, who, however, seems to have disinherited his daughter from discontent at her match, and left the chief part, if not the entire, of his property to her sister, who was married to Lord Camelford. Sir Sidney was for a few years at Tunbridge School, from which, however, he was withdrawn at an age so early that nothing but strong natural talent could have enabled him to exhibit in after-life the fluency, and even the occasional eloquence, which distinguished his pen. His first rating on the books of the Admiralty was in the Tortoise, in June 1777. In the beginning of the next year he was appointed to the Unicorn, and began his career by a gallant action, in which his ship captured an American frigate. He was then but fourteen. In 1779 he joined the Sandwich, the flag-ship of Rodney, in which he was present at the victory obtained over the Spaniards in the next year.