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

CARLILE OF ANTIGUA 169
Sabbath Day," and nearly four years were wasted in it. Then with a caution
as to the inadvisability of so doing in future, he was declared a fit and proper
person to hold the living, and the Marquis's nomination was confirmed.
Galabank's sisters died, like their parents, in middle age. He seemed to
anticipate the same fate for himself, and complained of his eyes, set his wife
and daughters to write his letters, and relied on his eldest son for advice as
to the management of his younger children and estate. His daughter, Eliza-
beth, had an offer from " a very pretty laird," as she called him in a letter to
her brother. The laird promised to spend every winter in Carlisle when they
were married. But Edward interposed. She was already consumptive, and
he did not approve of the suitor. Perhaps the disappointment hastened her
end, for she only lived another year, and is buried at Annan, with an inscription
to the effect that she was a pleasure to her friends, and died, regretted, in the
twenty-second year of her age (1756). Her spirit and wit is often alluded to
in family letters, and how she rose and spoke her mind when she thought her
brother James was maligned. She appealed to James, as her favourite brother,
to help her in her engagement, but his advice had already been asked, and was
against it.
Galabank did not care to talk about his family. He was much tried in
his youth by the legal processes in which he was involved, and in his old age
thought he might have done better by following a profession, when he saw the
success which many Dumfriesshire men achieved elsewhere. He sent five of
his sons to College. The writer already quoted says that students could board
in Edinburgh for £10 a year, and that, in 1755, the board at the best students'
lodgings was 50 marks per quarter, and at the second 40 ; the rent from 7s.
to 20s. in the session, no furniture but bedsteads and grate. All the rest had
to be bought or hired by the student, who paid for his own candles, fire, and
washing. He also paid £2, 2s. to the master and 5s. each for lectures to the
professors ; but prices had risen when Galabank's youngest son went to
Edinburgh.
His second son, William, matriculated early at Edinburgh, like his senior,
and studied medicine. Since 1705, when the first M.D., Dr Munro, graduated
in Edinburgh, about three annually in all Scotland took this degree from 1727
to 1760, and most of them went abroad. The Russian Government, through
its Ambassador, for several generations periodically applied to the Principal of
the Edinburgh University to select a physician for the Russian Court ; but the
famous schools of Paris and Italy supplied most of the medical men required
by other foreign capitals. William had no need to accept any of these posts,
though they were often handsomely remunerated, as a relative, Thomas Carlile, 1
had settled in Antigua under the British flag, and offered an opening to his
young countryman. Several other members of Dumfriesshire families were at
1 Thomas Carlile, besides his estate, left ,£30,000 to his widow. His son died unmarried,
but his daughter, Alice, married Ralph Payne of St. Kitt's, Chief Judge and one of the Council
of the island. Their son, Ralph, born in 1739, was created Lord Lavington in 1795. His
half-brother, John, was the well-known Admiral, whose portrait is in the Waterloo Chamber,
Windsor Castle.