2nd of March

St Simplicius, Pope, buried 483. Martyrs under the Lombards, 6th century. St Joavan, or Joevin, bishop in Armorica, 6th century. St Marnan, of Scotland, 620. St Charles the Good, Earl of Flanders, martyr, 1124.

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Born. – D. Junius Juvenal, Latin poet, A.D. circ. 40, Aquinum; William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice, 1705, Perth. 

Died. – Pope Pelagius I., 560; Lothaire III., of France, 986, poisoned, Compiègne; Cardinal Bouillon, 1715, Rome; Francesco Bianchini, mathematician, 1729, Rome; Solomon Gessner, painter and poet, 1788, Zurich; Francis II., Emperor of Austria, 1835; W. H. M. Olbers, astronomer, 1840; Giambattista Rubini, singer, 1854.

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On this Day in Other Sources.

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On the last day of February, 1539, Thomas Forret, Vicar of Dollar, John Keillor and John Beveridge, two black-friars, Duncan Simpson a priest, and a gentleman named Robert Forrester, were all burned together on the Castle Hill on a charge of heresy; and it is melancholy to know that a king so good and so humane as James V. was a spectator of this inhuman persecution for religion, and that he came all the way from Linlithgow Palace to witness it, whither he returned on the 2nd of March. It is probable that he viewed it from the Castle walls. 

– Old and New Edinburgh, pp.79-87.

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This pestilence, lasting till February, is said to have carried off 2500 persons in Edinburgh, which could not be much less than a tenth of the population. From the double cause of the pest and the absence of the Regent in England, there were ‘nae diets of Justiciary halden frae the hinderend of August to the second day of March [1568.]’ Such of the inhabitants of the Canongate as were affected had to go out and live in huts on the Hill (by which is probably meant Salisbury Crags), and there stay till they were ‘clengit.’ A collection of money was made among the other inhabitants for their support. 

– Domestic Annals, pp.35-44.

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Not till the beginning of the present century was there any regular police force in Glasgow. At an early period a watch, such as it was, had been instituted, but it does not appear to have been very efficient. The first notice on the subject in the burgh records occurs towards the middle of the seventeenth century, when the council “ordains ane watche to be keepit neightlie heireftir” from six o’clock at night till five in the morning.¹

– Old Glasgow, pp.289-299. 

¹  2d March, 1644.