There was a gentleman hanging about Edinburgh, under the [Sidenote: 1699.] name of Captain Donaldson; originally in trade there; afterwards an officer in the Earl of Angus’s regiment, for which he had levied a company at his own charge. He had been wounded in seven places at the battle of Killiecrankie, and was confined for several weeks by the Highlanders in Blair Castle. Finally turned adrift at the peace of Ryswick, with no half-pay, he found himself in want of both subsistence and occupation, when he bethought him of favouring his fellow-citizens with periodical news.[248] Having issued two or three trial-sheets, which were ‘approven of by very many,’ he now obtained from the Privy Council an exclusive right to publish ‘ane gazett of this place, containing ane abridgment of foraine newes, together with the occurrences at home;’ and the _Edinburgh Gazette_ (the second of the name) accordingly began to make its appearance at the date marginally noted. Wisely calculating that news were as yet but a poor field in our northern region, Donaldson supplemented the business of his office with a typographical device on which more certain dependence could be placed. He informed the Privy Council that he had fallen upon a wholly new plan for producing funeral-letters—namely, to have the principal and necessary parts done by characters ‘in fine writ,’ raised on ingots of brass, leaving blanks for names, dates, and places of interment. Stationery in this form would be convenient to the public, especially in cases of haste, ‘besides the decencie and ornament of a border of skeletons, mortheads, and other emblems of mortality,’ which he had ‘so contrived that it may be added or subtracted at pleasure.’ The Lords, entering into Donaldson’s views on this subject, granted him a monopoly of his invention for nineteen years. Very few months had the _Gazette_ lived when it brought its author into trouble. On the 8th of June he was suddenly clapped in prison by the Privy Council, ‘for printing several things in his _Gazette_ which are not truths, and for which he has no warrant.’ Five days after, he came before them with a humble petition, in which he set forth, that he had begun the _Gazette_ under a sense of its probable usefulness, ‘notwithstanding he was dissuaded by [Sidenote: 1699.] most of his friends from attempting to undertake it, as a thing that could not defray the charges of printing, intelligence, &c.’ Trusting that their Lordships must now ‘see how useful it is,’ he begged them to overlook what was amiss in a late number, and ‘give him instructions how to act for the future.’ They liberated him, and at the same time made arrangements for having the _Gazette_ duly revised by a committee of their own body before printing.[249] Donaldson will reappear before us under date February 19, 1705. [Sidenote: MAR. 16.]