History of the Johnstones, 1191-1909, with ... - Electric Scotland

SECRETARY JOHNSTON 161
service. In 171 1 a Custom House official wrote to his superior in Edinburgh,
that in Ruthwell the people are such friends to the traffic, " no one can be found
to lodge a Government officer for the night."
April 17, 1717, was appointed as a day of solemn fasting to avert the
intended invasion of an enemy, and the threatened scarcity of bread-
generally made of rye or oatmeal—owing to the severity of the weather.
In 1720 we find a complaint at the meeting of the Presbytery that the Kirk
was losing its power over the people, swearing—so far as the expressions
in 1729 a theatre was opened
"faith" and "devil" were sometimes heard ; and
in Edinburgh. A minister wa3 suspended for attending it.
The Scots were notably a charitable people, and, though the population of
Scotland was but a million and a quarter, they supported a vagrant population
of 200,000 early in the eighteenth century, besides licensed bedesmen. 1 In
better times there were periodical offertories in the Churches for the benefit of
seamen enslaved by the Turkish and Barbary Corsairs in the Mediterranean,
who had their tongues cut out or been otherwise crippled in the galleys ;
others
were still in need of ransom. But the epidemics carried about by the vagrants,
the dearness of provisions, added to the abolition of the Scottish Parliament,
sent many landowners, particularly on the Borders, to live in England. The
new Marquis of Annandale began to spend most of his time in London ; and it
was on the " parlour door of his lodgings in the Abbey " of Westminster that
Robert Allane, Sheriff's messenger of Annan, knocked the six knocks and
affixed the document showing that he had been put to the horn, because, as
Provost of Annan, he had taken no steps to arrest Galabank for debt—the
application having been made by Mr Patrick Inglis, the deposed Episcopalian
minister of Annan. Edward Johnstone, then in London, settled this debt on
behalf of his father ; but if he had not, most likely no measures would have
been taken against the Provost. Annandale probably owed his promotion in
the Peerage, and Westerhall his Baronetcy, to the fact of their wives being
cousins to the Secretary for Scotland, James Johnston, the son of Warrieston,
who was of great service to William III. and his successor. The new patent,
conferring the Annandale title on heirs male whatsoever in default of direct
heirs male, showed that it was intended as in days of old to reward the whole
clan for its patriotism and former unpaid services, not only one branch of it.
Of Warrieston's sons who survived him, the elder, Alexander, was educated
1 Fletcher of Salton describes the condition of the country after the Civil War
with the 200,000 people left to beg, "some sorners," the dread of isolated cottages, who
took food by force, robbed children of their clothes and the money they carried to pay the fees
on their way to school, and even kidnapped children to be sold to merchant captains for slaves
in the American plantations. Grahame, in his Social State of Scotland, says that this continued
much later; and that the widow of a Highland laird, who notoriously increased his
income in this way, was presented to George IV. when he visited Edinburgh in 1821.
"Outed" Episcopalian ministers and their families swelled the applicants for relief. The
kidnapping is corroborated by an advertisement in the New York Gazette, May 1, 1774 :—
"Servants just arrived from Scotland to be sold on board the Covunerce, Capt. Fergusson
master, now lying at the Ferry Stairs, among which are a number of weavers, taylors,
blacksmiths, nailors, shoemakers, butchers, hatters, and spinsters, fourteen to thirty-five
years of age. For terms apply to Henry White or said Master."