9th of August

St Romanus, martyr. St Nathy, or David, priest in Ireland. St Fedlimid, or Felimy, bishop of Kilmore, confessor, 6th century.

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Born. – Thomas Telford, eminent engineer, 1757, Westerkirk, Dumfriesshire.

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On this Day in Other Sources.

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The French King incites the Scots by his letters, to invade England; the Governor calls a convention of the estates at Edinburgh, the 9th of August, this year [1522], and immediately thereafter raises an army and marches towards Carlisle, and entreats the nobility to invade England; they answer him, that they only came to defend their own borders from the English, not to invade theirs. After much debate, they concluded to pitch their tents there, and see if the English would invade them. 

– Historical Works, pp.238-275.

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Aug. [9, 1608.] – There was a Presbyterian prejudice against burying in churches, and the blame of kirk-burial had not only been a subject for the pamphleteer, but the legislature. Nevertheless, John Schaw of Sornbeg in Ayrshire, on the death of his wife, resolved to inhume her corpse in his parish kirk of Galston, in spite of all the minister and session could say or do to the contrary. Accompanied by his brother and his ‘bailie,’ and attended by a numerous party, ‘all bodin in feir of weir,’ he came to the church, broke up the door with fore-hammers, and dug a grave, in which he deposited his spouse. He was afterwards glad to make public repentance for this fact, and pay twenty pounds to the box-master of the kirk, besides which the Privy Council ordained him to appear again as a penitent, and solemnly promise never again to attempt to bury any corpse within the church.’ – P. C. R. 

– Domestic Annals, pp.177-227.

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The fate of the Earl of Sutherland, and of his countess, whose beauty excited the admiration of all at the coronation of George III., was a very cloudy one. In frolicking with their first-born, a daughter, the earl let the infant drop, and it sustained injuries from which it never recovered, and the event had so serious an effect on his mind, that he resorted to Bath, where he died of a malignant fever. For twenty-one days the countess, then about to have a babe again, attended him unremittingly, till she too caught the distemper, and pre-deceased him by a few days, in her twenty-sixth year. Her death was sedulously concealed from him, yet the day before he expired, when delerium passed away, he said, “I am going to join my dear wife,” as if his mind had already begun to penetrate the veil that hangs between this world and the next. 

In one grave in Holyrood, near the north-east corner of the ruined chapel, the remains of this ill-fated couple were laid, on the 9th of August, 1766. 

– Old and New Edinburgh, pp.235-241.

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The election of magistrates and council at Michaelmas 1817 was set aside by the court-of-session in December 1818, and the burgh consequently disfranchised. In virtue of a warrant by the Privy council, dated the 9^th of August, 1822, a new election of the magistrates and council took place by the persons who composed the magistracy and town-council for the year ending Michaelmas 1817, and that in terms of the usual constitution, sett, and custom of the burgh, which was thus restored. The mode of election was:- The provost, bailies, dean-of-guild, and treasurer, continued councillors for the year after they went out of office, and could not be any of the five merchant councillors turned off. The town-council chose five new merchant councillors, and removed five of the old; so that 13 merchant councillors continued without election. The six incorporated trades chose each one deacon, and those deacons elected a convener, who was, ex officio, a councillor; out of the remaining deacons the town-council elected 2 trades councillors, in all 21. The five old merchant councillors having been removed, the council, out of their own number, chose the magistrates.

– Gazetteer of Scotland, Inverness, pp.24-35.

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After the passing of the act 3 and 4 William IV., cap. 77, on the 9th August, 1831, an invitation was given by the magistrates and town-council to the burgesses to elect annually eight persons, each rated at £12 rent and upwards in the police books for their dwelling-houses, from among whom the council should choose by ballot four new councillors, and no opposition being made by the superior, the invitation was acted on, and passed into a law. The governing body are a provost, four bailies, a treasurer, and eleven councillors.

– Gazetteer of Scotland, Kilmarnock, pp.123-127.