Notwithstanding the extreme poverty now universally complained of, whenever a man of any figure or importance died, there was enormous expense incurred in burying him. On the death, at this time, of Lachlan Mackintosh of Mackintosh—that is, the chief of the clan Mackintosh—there were funeral [Sidenote: 1704.] entertainments at his mansion in Inverness-shire for a whole month. Cooks and confectioners were brought from Edinburgh, at great expense, to provide viands for the guests, and liquors were set aflowing in the greatest profusion. On the day of the interment, the friends and dependants of the deceased made a procession, reaching all the way from Dalcross Castle to the kirk of Petty, a distance of four miles! ‘It has been said that the expense incurred on this occasion proved the source of pecuniary embarrassments to the Mackintosh family to a recent period.’[368] In the same month died Sir William Hamilton, who had for several years held the office of a judge under the designation of Lord Whitelaw, and who, for the last two months of his life, was Lord Justice-clerk, and consequently, in the arrangements of that period, an officer of state. It had pleased his lordship to assign the great bulk of his fortune, being £7000 sterling, to his widow, the remainder going to his heir, Hamilton of Bangour, of which family he was a younger son. Lord Whitelaw was buried in the most pompous style, chiefly under direction of the widow, but, to all appearance, with the concurrence of the heir, who took some concern in the arrangements, or at least was held as sanctioning the whole affair by his presence as chief mourner. The entire expenses were £5189 Scots, equal to £432, 8_s._ 4_d._ sterling, being more than two years’ salary of a judge of the Court of Session at that time. The lady paid the tradesmen’s bills out of her ‘donative,’ which was thought a singularly large one; but, by and by, marrying again, she raised an action against Bangour, craving allowance for Lord Whitelaw’s funeral charges ‘out of her intromission with the executry’—that is, out of the proceeds of the estate, apart from her jointure. The heir represented that the charges were inordinate, while his inheritance was small; but this view of the matter does not appear to have been conclusive, for the Lords, by a plurality, decided that the funeral expenses of a deceased person ‘must be allowed to the utmost of what his character and quality will admit, without regard to what small part of his fortune may come to his heir.’[369] They did, indeed, afterwards modify this decision, allowing only just and necessary expenses; but, what is to our present purpose, they do not appear to have been startled at the idea of spending as much as two years of a man’s income in laying him under the soil. [Sidenote: 1704.]