Volume 1
Domestic annals of Scotland : from the reformation to the revolution / by Robert Chambers.
- Robert Chambers
- Date:
- 1858-1861
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Domestic annals of Scotland : from the reformation to the revolution / by Robert Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.
565/574 page 549
![broke out ^in sundry houses in Edinburgh, to the gi’eat terror of 1021. the whole town. It began in Paul IIay‘ a merchant’s house, a month before, and was not known tUl now; therefore the more dangerous, because hard to discern the clean from the unclean. Upon the last day of November, the president and other lords of Council and Session, meeting together, resolve to rise, and continue the session till the 8th of Januar.’—Cal. One consequence of the occurrence of the pest at this time was, that the king’s design of enforcing a communion at Christmas, where all the people should kneel, was frustrated. Another result generally satisfactory was a relaxation of the severity against the Edinburgh citizens who were banished and imprisoned for opposing the new ceremonies. William Rig was allowed to leave his prison of Blackness, and remain for fifteen days with his -wife at his house of Morton, where she ivas ‘very heavily visite with infirmity and sickness.’ klean, having ‘a numerous family and his wife grit with child, and nane to have ane care for order-taking with them, how they saU be providit for and governit in this [time of] danger,’ was in like manner permitted to repair to Edinburgh, to see after them, and there remain tiU the 15th of January. So also John Hamilton was relieved from the Tolbooth to attend on his wife, who chanced to be in the same delicate condition as Mrs Mean. After all, ‘the pest raged not; few houses were infected with it; so that it appeared the chief end wherefore the Lord had sent it, was to disappoint the king by scattering the people.’—Cal, Amidst the alarms regarding the pest, people heard of a deo. strange case of personal quarrel and vindictiveness. One William Hamilton, a soldier, son of the deceased William Hamilton, ‘ called of luehmachan,’ was lately come from the Low Countries, avowing ‘ a settled pm’pose and resolution to appeal Captain Harie Bruce to the single combat, or otherwise to watch the opportunity to bereave him of his life.’ The Privy Council was obliged to take means for preventing a hostile collision.—P. C. R. The Privy Council readily apprehended that the prosecution of ‘ this damnable .and cruel intention ’ would both breed danger to the parties and produce great trouble and controversy among their friends, to the disturbanee of his majesty’s peaee, if timous remeed be not provided. They therefore summoned the parties before dec. a. them to give assurance of their good behaUour. 1 ‘Wha had brought money with the infection from Danskein.’—CTron. Perth.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24886658_0001_0565.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
