"Then it was hoped that I and the children (who she used
to curse bitterly when they went dutifully to wait on her)
would be in quiet; but she often attacked my house, and from
the streets, and among the footmen and chairmen of visitors,
cried and raged against me and mine, and watched for me in the
streets, and chased me from place to place in the most indecent
and shameless manner, and threatened to attack me on the bench,
which, dreading she would do every time I went to it, made my
duty there very heavy on me, lest that honourable Court of
Session should be disturbed and affronted on my occasion. And
not content with these, and odd and very bad contrivances about
the poor children, she waited on a Sunday's afternoon that my
sister, Lady Jane Paterson, with my second daughter, came out
of the Tron Church, and on the street, among all the people,
fell upon her with violent scolding and curses, and followed
her so down Merlin's Wynd, till Lady Jane and the child near
the bottom of it got shelter from her and being exposed to the
multitude in a friend's house. You also know, and may well
remember, that before you and the rest advised the separation,
and till she went from my house, she would not keep herself in
that part of it (the best apartment) which was assigned her,
but abused all in the family, and when none were adverting,
broke into the room of ane old gentlewoman, recommended to me
for housekeeper, and carried off and destroyed her accompts,
&c., and committed outrages, so that at length I was forced to
have a watch in my house, and especially in the night time, as
if it had been in the frontier of an enemy's country, or to be
spoiled by robbers."[23]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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