St Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata, and martyr, 379 or 380. St Aaron, Abbot in Brittany, 6th century. St Leufredus, or Leufroi, abbot, 738. St Ralph, Archbishop of Bourges, confessor, 866. St Aloysius, or Lewis Gonzaga, confessor, 1591.
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Died. – Thales, Grecian philosopher, B.C. 546, Olympia; John Armstrong, poet, 1797, London; Gilbert, first Earl of Minto, statesman, 1814.
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On this Day in Other Sources.
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This year died Gregory [Gervase] Avenel, and was interred at Melrose, near to his father, in the chancel of the church, 21st of June, 1219.
– Historical Works, pp.38-57.
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In 1576, a more formal protest is made, and the magistrates are entreated “for the luf ye beir to God and the commoun weill of our toune” not to alienate any more of the common lands, so necessary as pasture “for the sustening of our babies.” This touching protest was successful for the time, and under date 21st June, 1576, there is a minute of council which bears that after mature deliberation it was statute and ordained, “in respect that their commoune muris, yet left wndelt and set furthe, will scarslie serue the tounschip for halding of thair guddis and firnesing fewall necessour,” no part of the common muir shall in time coming be set or given in feu to any person, “bot to ly still in communitie to the weill of the haill tounschip.”
– Old Glasgow, pp.175-181.
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June. 21 [1593]. – George Smollett, burgess of Dumbarton (an ancestor of the novelist), was denounced rebel for not answering certain charges made against him by the burghs of Glasgow and Renfrew. It was alleged that Smollett, having purchased a letter of the king, used it as a sanction to deeds of violent oppression against the Highland people resorting with merchandise to those towns. ‘He not only masterfully reives the goods and bestial, claithing, and other parts of the Highlands, to the said burghs, by sea and land, but takes, apprehends, and imprisons their persons, and sometimes pursues themselves by way of deid.’ It was added that the people of the Highlands were, in consequence, inspired with a deadly hatred of the burghs of Glasgow and Renfrew, and were already committing such reprisals as threatened civil war. – P. C. R.
– Domestic Annals, pp.124-176.
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The Assembly of 16th November, 1602, absolved [George Sempill] from all charges made against him and gave him a testimonial of good behaviour, “but in respect he was never planted fully at the said kirk, and of the great mislyking that is betwixt him and sundrie of the parochiners, they think it not good that he be plantit, and ordains him to demit in favour of Mr. John Cunninghame.”1
– Scots Lore, pp.253-259.
1 Cunninghame was ordained at Houston in 1599, translated to Killallan in 1602, and translated to Dalry on June 21st, 1604.
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The king now gave a patent to Mr Nathaniel Uddart for the manufacture of soap within the country, and Mr Nathaniel accordingly raised a goodly work at Leith, furnishing it with all matters pertaining to the business. Before he had been at work two years (June 21, 1621), he petitioned the privy Council that foreign soap should be prohibited, professing to be able himself to furnish all that was required for the use of the country-people, and thus save money from being sent out of the country – a piece of false political economy much in favour, as we have seen, in those days. The Privy Council, after taking some pains to ascertain the character of ‘Mr Nathaniel his soap,’ and becoming convinced that he could furnish the quantity needful, granted the prohibition requested, but not without fixing down the native manufacturer at a maximum price. This was decreed to be £24 per barrel for ‘green soap,’ and £32 per barrel for ‘white soap,’ each barrel to contain sixteen stone.
– Domestic Annals, pp.177-227.
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June 21 [1659]. – This day, Heriot’s Hospital, which had been founded in 1628, being now complete, was solemnly dedicated by the ceremony of a preaching in the presence of the magistrates of Edinburgh, the preacher, Mr Robert Douglas, receiving five double pieces for his pains. There were placed in it ‘thirty-five boys, of honest parents, but decayit in means, all of them weel arrayit in purpour clothes and cassocks.’ ‘This hospital,’ says Nicoll, ‘was not ane ordinary hospital, but a hospital very famous, with halls, chalmers, kitchens, brew-houses, yards, orchards, a chapel, and all other necessaries.’
– Domestic Annals, pp.278-301.
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June 21 [1712]. – The Edinburgh Courant intimated, in an advertisement, that ‘Robert Campbell, commonly known by the name of Rob Roy Macgregor, being lately intrusted by several noblemen and gentlemen with considerable sums for buying cows for them in the Highlands, has treacherously gone off with the money, to the value of £1000 sterling, which he carries along with him.’ This is the first public reference to a person who has become the theme of popular legend in Scotland to an extent little short of Robin Hood in England, and finally had had the fortune to be embalmed in a prose fiction by one of the greatest masters in modern literature.
– Domestic Annals, pp.379-389.
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Congratulations, rejoicings, dancing to the marshal notes of the pipes, would meet them at the entrance to every Glen and Strath in Sutherlandshire, accompanied, surrounded, and greeted as they proceeded, by the most grateful, devotedly attached, happy, and bravest peasantry, that ever existed; yes, but alas! where there is nothing now but desolation and the cries of famine and want to meet the noble pair, the ruins of once comfortable dwellings, will be seen the land marks of the furrows and ridges which yielded food to thousands, the footprints of the arch enemy of human happiness, and ravager before, after, and on each side, solitude, stillness, and quiet of the grave, disturbed only at intervals by the yells of a shepherd, or fox-hunter, and the bark of a collie dog. Surely we must admit the Marquises and Dukes of the house of Sutherland have been duped, and victimized to a most extraordinary and incredible extent, and we have Mr. Loch’s own words for it in his speech in the House of Commons, June 21st, 1845,
“I can state, as from facts, that from 1811 to 1833, not one sixpence of rent has been received from that county; but on the contrary, there has been sent there for the benefit and improvement of the people, a sum exceeding sixty thousand pounds, sterling.”
Now think you of this immense wealth which has been expended, I am not certain, but I think the rental of the county would exceed £60,000 a year, you have then from 1811 to 1833, twenty-two years, leaving them at the above figures, and the sum total will amount to £1,320,000 expended upon the self styled Sutherland improvements, add to this £60,000 sent down to preserve the lives of the victims of those improvements from death by famine, and the sum total will turn out in the shape of £1,380,000; it surely cost the heads of the house of Sutherland an immense sum of money to convert the county into the state I have described it, in a former part of this work, (and I challenge contradiction), I say the expelling of the people from their Glens and Straths, and huddling them in motely groups on the sea-shores, and barren moors, and to keep them alive there, and to make them willing to be banished from the nation, when they thought proper, or when they could get a haul of the public money, to pay their passage to America or Australia, cost them a great deal. This fabulous incredible munificence of their Graces to the people, I will leave the explanation of what it was, how it was distributed, and the manner in which payment and refunding of the whole of it was exacted off the people, to my former description of it in this work; yet I am willing to admit that a very small portion, if any, of the refunding of the amount sent down, ever reach[ed] the Duke’s of the Marquis’s coffers, which is easily understood by not granting receipts for it.
– Gloomy Memories, pp.71-110.
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Dr. James Paterson died at the Bridge of Allan, the 21st June 1881, aged 72 years. He had been laid aside from active duties of his large practice for the previous nine months, the phase which his illness assumed being that of an obscure cerebral affection. To the last, his intellect was perfectly unimpaired, though he suffered from a particular variety of hemiplegia. The son of a medic, Dr. Paterson entered the medical profession in the year 1834. He began a practice in the east end of the city in a completely humble way. He there very soon acquired a large connection becoming well known as a successful obstetrician. In the year 1841 he became a Fellow of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, under the old regulations, and in the same year accepted the position of lecturer on midwifery at Anderson’s College, then called the Andersonian University.
– Glasgow’s Eastern Necropolis. (Guest Article)