Volume 1

Domestic annals of Scotland : from the reformation to the revolution / by Robert Chambers.

Robert Chambers

Date:: 1858-1861

Credit: Domestic annals of Scotland : from the reformation to the revolution / by Robert Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

566/574 page 550

$Deeming, as was formerly remai’ked, anything that illustrates tlie progress of the arts as worthy of notice in this record, though perhaps trifling in itself, we may advert to Mr Alexander Hamilton, brother to the seci’etary Earl of JMelrosc, as having now obtained a patent of twenty-one years for a new cart invented by him, ' wherein greater weight and hui'dens may with far less force be drawn, and conveniently carried, than hath been done with ony other kmd of cart hitherto known or heretofore used.’' 'Sandy Hamilton,’ or 'Dear Sandy,’ as he was called, was a man of note on account of his skill in some of the useful arts, particularly in those connected with the munitions of wai\ He practised these arts for some time in Germany, uhence he was recalled to England, where the king granted him pensions and allowances to the amount of i£800 sterling per annum. When the Civil War broke out, he joined his countrymen, and helped to fit out the Covenanting army of 1640 with a species of short but cflective gun, which was carried slung between two horses, and the serviceahleness of which was proved at the battle of Newburn-ford, when the Scots crossed the Tyne in the face of the enemy and became masters of Neivcastle. In this year we have the latest known notice of a woman of extraordinary attainments Avho had lived for many years in Edinburgh, practising an art in ■which she was long after pro- nounced to have never been excelled. Caligraphy, or the art of beautiful writing, was in greater vogue in the seventeenth century than in our more utilitai-ian days. Under what cu’cumstances Esther Inglis, a Frenchwoman residing in the Scottish capital, came to give her days to so laborious an art, we do not learn. Neither are we aware how it was that Esther came to live in the Scottish capital. There, however, we find her, so early as 1599, writing one of the little manuscript volumes Avhich have given her celebrity. This book, preserved in the Bodleian Library, is entitled Les Proverbes de Salomon, escrites en diverses sortes de Lettres, par Esther Anglois, Franqoise. A Lislesbourg en Ecosse. 1599. 'This delicate performance,’ says Ballard,® 'gains the admiration of all who see it; every chapter is wrote in a diflerent hand; as is the dedication, and some other things at the beginning of the book, which makes near forty several sorts of hands. The ‘ Extract from Privy Council Record, Edin. Mag., Oct. 1817. ’ Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, p. 2G8. >$

Domestic annals of Scotland : from the reformation to the revolution / by Robert Chambers.

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