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The Scottish Cavalier: An Historical Romance, Volume 1 (of 3)

Name: The Scottish Cavalier: An Historical Romance, Volume 1 (of 3)
Author: James Grant

by James Grant

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Language: en585 downloads on Project Gutenberg

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Scotland -- History -- 1649-1660 -- Fiction

In: Historical Novels·Romance·Novels

Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #66120.

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From the historical and descriptive nature of the following tale, the Author intended that certain passages should be illustrated with notes, containing the local traditions and authorities from which it has been derived; but on second thoughts he has preferred confining these explanations to the preface.

History will have rendered familiar to the reader the names of many who bear a prominent part in the career of Walter Fenton; but there are other characters of minor importance, who, though less known to fame than Dundee and Dunbarton, were beings who really lived and breathed, and acted a part in the great drama of those days. Among these, we may particularise Douglas, of Finland, and Annie Laurie.

This lady was one of the four daughters of Sir Robert Laurie, the first Baronet of Maxwelton, and it was to her that Finland inscribed those well-known verses, and that little air which now bear her name, and are so wonderfully plaintive and chaste for the time; but it is painful to record that, notwithstanding all the ardour and devotion of her lover, the fair Annie was wedded as described in the romance. Her father, Sir Robert, was created a baronet in 1685.

The Old Halberdier and Hugh Blair (mentioned so frequently) are also real characters. The former distinguished himself at the battle of Sedgemoor, and by a Royal Order, dated 26th February, 1686, received "forty pounds for his good service in firing the great guns against the rebells" who were opposed to Sir James Halkett's Royal Scots. The tavern of Hugh Blair was long celebrated in Edinburgh. His name will be found in Blackadder's Memoirs, and frequently among the Decisions of Lord Fountainhall, in disputes concerning various runlets of Frontiniac, &c.

Lord Mersington was exactly the personage he is described in the following pages--an unprincipled sot. From Cruickshank's History it appears that his lady was banished the liberties of Edinburgh in 1674, for being engaged in the female assembly which insulted Archbishop Sharpe.

Of Thomas Butler, an unfortunate Irish gentleman connected with the ducal house of Ormond, who bears a prominent part in Volume III., an account will be found in the London Papers of 1720, in which year he was executed at Tyburn as a highwayman.

The song mentioned so frequently, and the burden of which is Lillibulero bullen a la! was a favorite whig ditty, and the chorus was formed by the pass-words used during the Irish massacre of 1641.

The principal locality of the story is the Wrightshouse or Castle of Bruntisfield, which stood near the Burghmuir of Edinburgh, and was unwisely removed in 1800, to make way for that hideous erection--the hospital of Gillespie. As described in the romance, it was a magnificent chateau in the old Scoto-French style of architecture, and was completely encrusted with legends, devices, armorial bearings, and quaint bassi relievi.

It was of great antiquity, and over the central door were the arms of Britain, with the initials J. VI. M. B. F. E. H. R.

Amid a singular profusion of sculptured figures representing Hope, Faith, Charity, &c., was a bas-relief of Adam and Eve in Eden, bearing the following legend:--

Quhen Adam delvd and Eve span Quhar war a' the gentiles than?

Between them was a female representing Taste, and inscribed Gustus. "On the eastern front of the castle was sculptured a head of Julius Cæsar, and under it Caius Jul. Cæsar, primus Rom. Imp. On the eastern wing were figures of Temperentia, Prudentia, and Justitia, which it is remarkable were among the first stones thrown down." (Scots Mag., 1800.) On the west wing was a Roman head of Octavius II., and five representations of the Virtues, beautifully sculptured. Sicut oliva fructifera 1376, In Domino Confido, 1400, Patriæ et Posteris, and many other valuable carvings, which are now preserved at Woodhouselee, adorned the walls and windows.

The east wing was said to have been built by Robert III.; Arnot informs us, that the centre was erected by James IV. for one of his mistresses, and about the close of the last century, Hamilton of Barganie made many additions to it. How the edifice obtained the name of Wright's or_ Wryte's-house_ is now unknown, as no proprietor of it who bore that name can now be traced; but the Napiers appear to have possessed the barony from an early period, and their names frequently occur in local records.

Alexander Napier de Wrichtyshouse appears as one of an inquest in 1488. His coat-armorial was a bend charged with a crescent, between two mullets. He married Margaret Napier of Merchiston, whose father was slain at the battle of Flodden. In 1581, among the commissioners appointed by James VI., "anent the cuinze," we find William Napier of the Wrightshouse, (Acta Parliamentorum) and in 1590, Barbara Napier, his sister, was convicted of sorcery, for which on the llth of May she was sentenced to be burnt at a "stake sett on the Castellhill, with barrels, coales, heather, and powder;" but when the torch was about to be applied, pregnancy was alleged, and the execution delayed. (Calderwood's Historic.)

In 1632, William of the Wrightshouse was a commissioner at Holyrood, anent the valuation of Tiends ; and two years after we find him retoured heir to his father William in certain lands in Berwickshire; but in 1626, "_terrarum de Brounisfield, infra parochiam de Sanct. Cuthbert_" belonged to Sir William Fairlie of Braid. In 1649 he obtained a crown charter of his lands (MS. Mag. Sigilli), and in 1680, the last notice of this old family will be found in the Inquisitionum Retornatarum, where it ends in a female.

Thus about the close of the 17th century, the Napiers had passed away, and their barony was possessed by the Laird of Pennicuick. All that now remains of them is their burial place on the north side of St. Giles' Cathedral, where may still be seen their mouldering coat-armorial, with this inscription:--

S. E. D. Fam. de Naperarum interibus, Hic situm est.

EDINBURGH, March, 1850.

There is nae Covenant noo, Lassie, There is nae covenant, noo; The solemn league and covenant, Are a' broken through. OLD SONG.

One evening in the month of March, 1688, a party of thirty soldiers mustered rapidly and silently under the arches of the White Horse Hostel, an old and well-known inn on the north side of the Canongate of Edinburgh. The night was dark and cold, and a high wind swept in gusts down the narrow way between the picturesque houses of that venerable street and the steep side of the bare and rocky Calton-hill.

Gathering in cautious silence, the soldiers scarcely permitted the butts of their heavy matchlocks to touch the pavement: in a loud whisper the officer gave the order to march, and they moved off with the same air of quietness and rapidity which characterized their muster, and showed that a very secret or important duty was about to be executed.

In those days the ranks were drawn up three deep, and such was the mode until a later period; so, by simply facing a body of men to the right or left, they found themselves three abreast without confusion or delay.

"Fenton," said the officer to a young man who carried a pike beside him, "keep rearward. You are wont to have the eye of a hawk; and if any impertinent citizen appears to watch us, lay thy truncheon across his pate."

This injunction was unnecessary; for those belated citizens who saw them, hurried past, glad to escape unquestioned. In those days, when every corporal of horse or foot, was vested with more judicial powers than the Lord Justice General, the night march of a band of soldiers was studiously to be avoided. Aware that some "deed of persecution" was about to be acted, the occasional wayfarers hurried on, or turned altogether aside, when forewarned that soldiers appeared, by the measured tread of feet, by the gleam of a gun-barrel, or cone of a helmet glinting in the rays of light that shot from half-closed windows into the palpable darkness.

These soldiers belonged to the regiment of George Earl of Dunbarton, the oldest in the Scottish army, and a body of such antiquity, that they were jocularly known in France as Pontius Pilate's Guards. With red coats, they wore morions of black unpolished iron; breast-plates of the same metal, crossed by buff belts which sustained their swords, fixing-daggers and collars of bandoleers, as the twelve little wooden cases, each containing a charge of powder, were named. Their breeches and stockings were of bright scarlet, and each had a long musket sloped on his shoulder, with its lighted match gleaming like a glowworm in the dark. The officer was distinguished by a plume that waved from a tube on his gilded helmet, which, like his gorget, was of polished steel, while to denote his rank he carried a half-pike, in addition to his rapier and dagger, and wore a black corslet richly engraved and studded with nails of gold, conform to the Royal Order of 1686. He was a handsome fellow, tall, and well set up, with a heavy dark mustache, and a face like each of his soldiers, well bronzed by the sun of France and Tangiers.

In that age, the closes and wynds of the Scottish capital were like those of ancient Paris or modern Lisbon, narrow, smoky, and crowded, unpaved, unlighted, and encumbered with heaps of rubbish and mud, which obstructed the gutters and lay in fœtid piles, until heavy rains swept all the debris of the city down from its lofty ridge into the Loch on the north, or the ancient communis ma, on the south. At night the careful citizen carried a lantern--the bold one his sword; for men generally walked abroad well armed, and none ever rode without a pair of long iron pistols at his saddle-bow.

The late king had made every kind of dissipation fashionable; and after night-fall the gallants of the city swaggered about the Craimes or the Abbey-Close, muffled in their cloaks like conspirators; and despite the axes of the city guard, and the halberds of the provost, excesses were committed hourly; and seldom a night passed without the clash of rapiers and the shouts of cavalier brawlers being heard ringing in the dark thoroughfares of the city. Thieves were hanged, coiners were quartered, covenanters beheaded, and witches burned, until executions failed to excite either interest or horror; but with the plumed and buff-booted Ruffler of the day, who brawled and fought from a sheer love of mischief and wine, what plebeian baillie or pumpkin-headed city-guard would have dared to find fault? Of this more anon.

Stumbling through the dark streets, the party of soldiers marched past the Pleasance Porte, above the arch of which grinned a white row of five bare skulls, which had been bleaching there since 1681. Every barrier of Edinburgh was garnished with these terrible trophies of maladministration.

Leaving behind them the ancient suburb, they diverged upon the road near the old ruined convent of St. Mary of Placentia, which, from the hill of St. Leonard, reared up its ivied walls in shattered outline. Beyond, and towering up abruptly from the lonely glen below, frowned the tremendous front of Salisbury craigs. The rising moon showed its broad and shining disc, red and fiery above their black rocks, and fitfully between the hurrying clouds, its rays streamed down the Hauze, a deep and ghastly defile, formed by some mighty convulsion of nature, when these vast craigs had been rent from that ridgy mountain, where King Arthur sat of old, and watched his distant gallies on the waters of the Roman Bodoria.

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