John Adair, mathematician, had been proceeding for some years, under government patronage and pay, in his task of constructing maps of the counties of Scotland, ‘expressing therein the seats or houses of the nobility and gentry, the most considerable rivers, waters, lochs, bays, firths, roads, woods, mountains, royal burghs, and other considerable towns of each shire’—a work ‘honourable, useful, and necessary for navigation.’ He was now hindered in his task, as he himself expressed the matter, ‘by the envy, malice, and oppression of Sir Robert Sibbald, Doctor of Medicine, who, upon pretence of a private paction and contract, extorted through the power he pretended, took the petitioner [Adair] bound not to survey any shire or pairt thereof without Sir Robert his special advice and consent, and that he should not give copies of these maps to any other person without Sir Robert his special permission, under a severe penalty.’ The Lords of the Privy Council, on Adair’s petition, were at no loss to see how unjust the Jacobite Sir Robert’s proceedings [Sidenote: 1691.] were towards the nation, which, by parliamentary grant, was paying Adair for his work. They therefore ordered the hydrographer to go on with his work, notwithstanding Sibbald’s opposition, ordering the latter to deliver up the contract on which it rested. Sir Robert Sibbald afterwards reclaimed against the award of the Privy Council, setting forth a great array of rights connected with the case; but he spoke from the wrong side of the hedge, and his claim was refused.[52] [Sidenote: JAN. 21.] Captain Burnet of Barns was now recruiting in Edinburgh for a regiment in Holland. As the service was so much to be approved of, it was the less important to be scrupulous about the means of promoting it. A fatherless boy of fourteen, named George Miller, was taken up to Burnet’s chamber, and there induced to accept a piece of money of the value of fourteen shillings Scots, which made him a soldier in the captain’s regiment. He seems to have immediately expressed unwillingness to be a soldier; but the captain caused him instantly to be dragged to the Canongate Tolbooth, and there kept in confinement. Some friend put in a petition for him to the Privy Council, setting forth that he had been trepanned, and ‘had no inclination to be a soldier, but to follow his learning, and thereafter other virtuous employments for his subsistence.’ It was even hinted that the boy’s father, Robert Miller, apothecary in Edinburgh, had been ‘a great sufferer in the late times.’ All was in vain; two persons having given evidence that the boy had ‘taken on willingly’ with Captain Burnet, the Council ordained him to be delivered to that gentleman, ‘that he may go alongst with him to Holland in the said service.’