10th of October

St Francis Borgia, confessor, 1572.

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Born. – Pierre Nicole, logician, of Port Royal, 1625, Chartres; John, Duke of Argyll, statesman and commander, 1680; Benjamin West, painter, 1738, Springfield, Pennsylvania; Rev. Theobald Mathew, Irish apostle of temperance, 1790, Thomastown, Tipperary. 

Died. – Dr William Wilkie, author of the Epigoniad, 1772, St Andrews; Henry Brooke, novelist, 1783, Dublin; Jeremiah James Oberlin, philologer, and archæological writer, 1806, Strasburg; Varnhagen Von Ense, eminent German writer, 1858, Berlin.

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On this Day in Other Sources.

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[Archibald (the Grim), third earl of] Douglas died.., and was buried in the church erected by him at Bothwell.¹

– Scots Lore, pp.307-316.

¹  Fraser’s Book of Douglas, vol. i. p. 498. It has passed into a commonplace that Bothwell Church was founded on the 10th October, 1398 (Book of Douglas, vol. i. p. 350). It may have been dedicated on that day. The sculptured stone which lies on the floor of this church has been strangely overlooked. It is the grave-slab of Moray, the builder of Bothwell Castle, and the founder evidently of an earlier church than that erected by Douglas.

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[Queen Mary and Darnley] now pushed through the mountain-pass into Nithsdale, and arrived, on the 10th [October, 1565], at Castlehill, near Durrisdeer, where a privy council was held, for regulating the command of the army: The van was placed under the feeble direction of Lennox; the centre was placed, under the King, accompanied by Morton, Bothwell, Ruthven, and other nobles; with whom rode the Queen, with pistols before her; and the rear was to be led, by Huntly, Athol, and other lords. But, an army, thus composed of such discordant troops, and thus led, by weakness, and treachery, was incapable of any effort. 

– Life of Mary, pp.98-126.

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‘… there was ane proclamation [October 10, 1567], to meet the Regent in Peebles, upon the 8 of November next, for the repressing of the thieves in Annandale and Eskdale; but my Lord Regent thinking they wald get advertisement, he prevented the day, and came over the water secretly, and lodged in Dalkeith;.. 

– Domestic Annals, pp.35-44.

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There were no reporters in those days, and not only were all the deliberations of the council in secret, but the members were strictly forbidden to reveal anything which occurred or was said there. At an election of magistrates in 1584, the minute, after narrating the nominations, proceeds thus:- “Attour everie ane of the persounes foirsaidis, suorne vpoun this present counsell, is content and consentis that thay and everie ane of thame quha happinnes to oppin and reueill ony mater, purpois, or caus votit, proponit, and concludit, within the Counselhows, or yit the votis of the Counsell, to ony persounes nocht being counsallouris, that thay and everie ane of thame, immediatly efter tryall and knawledge had thairof, salbe depryuit in likemaner, and neuir to bee vpoun counsell thaireftir as vnwordie thairof.”¹

– Old Glasgow, pp.215-237.

¹  10th Oct. 1584.

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ALEXANDER CAMPBELL THE LAIRD OF CALDER

HIS PURSMAISTERIS COMPT.

x October 1591 in Stirling.

Item your collatioun in Kathereen Paleis hous, Ellangerrik and uthir barronis with yow, ane point of Spenis wyne, ane point Frence wyne

xvj s. viij d.  

– Sketches, Appendix VIII.

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Oct. 10 [1627]. – As the Privy Council was sitting in its chamber in Holyrood Palace, a singular outrage took place. One John Young, poultryman, attacked Mr Richard Bannatyne, bailie-depute of the regality of Broughton, at the council-room door, and struck him in the back with a whinger, to the peril of his life. The Council, in great indignation, immediately sent off Young to be tried on the morrow at the Tolbooth, with orders, ‘if he ben convict, that his majesty’s justice and his depute cause doom to be pronounced against him, ordaining him to be drawn upon ane cart backward frae the Tolbooth to the place of execution at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh, and there hangit to the deid and quartered, and his head to be set upon the Nether Bow, and his hand to be set upon the Water Yett.’ – P. C. R. 

– Domestic Annals, pp.228-256.

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“The King’s Advocate being in Angus, sent over a deputation to me to pursue; but God so ordered it that I was freed, and Sir William Purves eased me of the office. In fortification of what they said before the Duke and Council, they led the clerks and macers as witnesses, who deponed that they uttered those or the like words: ‘They declined the king, denied him to be their lawful sovereign, and called him a tyrant and covenant-breaker.’ And Forman had a knife with this posie graven on it – This is to cut the throats of tyrants; and said ‘if the king be a tyrant, why not also cut his throat, and if they were righteous judges, they would have the same on their swords, like Buchanan’s motto borrowed from the great Emperor Trajan, Pro me, sin mereor, in me.’ Garnock having at a Committee of Council railed at General Dalyell, calling him (with reference to his service in Russia) a Muscovia beast who used to roast men, the general in a passion struck him with the pommel of his shable on the face till the blood sprung. Garnock gave in a protestation signed with his own hand, calling them ‘all bloody murderers and papists, and charging all the Parliamenters to reverse the wicked laws they had made, and that Popish test they had been taking, and to put away that sinful man (the duke) or else the judgments of God were ready to break upon the land. Lapsley was wiser than the other five, for he owned the king, so far as he owned the ‘Covenant which he swore at his coronation at Scone.’” Lapsley was sent in fetters to the Thieves’ Hole, but the other five were found guilty by jury of being present at a field conventicle, “and condemned to be hanged at the Gallowlee, betwixt Edinburgh and Leith, on the 10th of October [1681]; their heads to be struck off and set upon pricks upon the Pleasance Port; Forman’s hand, who had the said knife, to be cut off (while) alive; all of which was accordingly done; and they died obstinately without acknowledging any fault or retracting their errors, reviling and condemning their judges and all that differed from them. Their bodies were stolen up by some of their party from under the gibbet, and re-buried in the west kirkyard.” 

– Old and New Edinburgh, pp.157-166.

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Oct. 10 [1689]. – It was now acknowledged of the glass-work at Leith that it was carried on successfully in making green bottles and ‘chemistry and apothecary glasses.’ It produced its wares ‘in greater quantity in four months than was ever vended in the kingdom in a year, and at as low rates as any corresponding articles from London or Newcastle.’ The Privy Council therefore gave it the privileges of a manufactory, and forbade introduction of foreign bottles, only providing that the Leith work should not charge more than half-a-crown a dozen. 

– Domestic Annals, pp.342-354.

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22. THOMAS THOMSON.

Born about 1672; died, 1720. 

Merchant in Glasgow. Treasurer of the City, 1707. Dean of Guild, 1717, 1718. “Mortified to this House 2,000 merks Scotts, the interest whereof to be given the poor yearly the eighth day of December; who died the 10th October, 1720, in the 49th year of his age.” (See No. 1999.) 

– Memorial Catalogue, Gallery 1.

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Oct. 10 [1742]. – Public attention was strongly roused by an accident of an uncommon kind which happened in the lowlands of Ross-shire. The church of Fearn parish was an old Gothic structure covered with a heavy roof of flagstone. This day, being Sunday, while the parishioners were assembled at worship, the roof and part of the side-wall gave way, under the pressure of a load of prematurely fallen snow; and the bulk of the people present were buried under the ruins. The fortunate arrangement of the seats of the gentry in the side recesses saved most of that class from injury; and the minister, Mr Donald Ross, was protected by the sounding-board of his pulpit. There chanced to be present Mr James Robertson, the minister of Lochbroom, a man of uncommon personal strength and great dexterity and courage. He, planting his shoulder under a falling lintel, sustained it till a number of the people escaped. Forty poor people were dug out dead, and in such a state of mutilation that it was found necessary to huddle them all into one grave. 

– Domestic Annals, pp.398-408.

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JOHN MACCODRUM was noted in his day for his knowledge of the Fenian poems. Sir James MacDonald of Sleat, in a letter to Dr. Blair of Edinburgh, dated Isle of Skye, 10th October 1763, says of him, “I have heard him repeat, for hours together, poems which seemed to me to be the same with MacPherson’s translations.” 

– Popular Tales, vol.4, pp.180-197.

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The name of each individual donor would seem to have been originally affixed to all the Wall stones handed over to the Old College; for in a minute of the Arts Faculty dated October 10th, 1774, there is a record of the gift of several by Sir Laurence Dundas through Professor Anderson, who “is appointed to deposit the above antiquities in the same press with those formerly received from the proprietors of the canal between the Forth and Clyde, with an inscription bearing the donor’s name and the place where they were found.” From this we may infer that the valuable scraps of information on the Monumenta Plates have been derived from this source and may be regarded as authentic. 

– Scots Lore, pp.316-326.

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This struck me as particularly pretty Celtic cross. The inscription reads:

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ALSO HIS WIFE CATHERINE 

CROALL MATHERS BORN 

27 JANUARY 1836 DIED 10 

OCTOBER 1898 

– Glasgow Cathedral & City Necropolis.