Domestic annals of Scotland : $b from the revolution to the rebellion of 1745Chambers, Robert
History
Domestic annals of Scotland : $b from the revolution to the rebellion of 1745
Chambers, Robert
Scotland -- History -- 1689-1745
On the 19th April, Mr Livingstone was allowed to visit Kilsyth under a
guard of dragoons, in order to arrange some affairs. But this leniency
was of short duration. We soon after find him again in strict
confinement in Edinburgh Castle; nor was it till September 1693, that,
on an earnest petition setting forth his declining health, he was
allowed to be confined to ‘a chamber in the house of Mistress Lyell, in
the Parliament Close,’ he giving large bail for his peaceable behaviour.
This, again, came to a speedy end, for, being soon after ordered to
re-enter his strait confinement in the Castle, he petitioned to be
allowed the Canongate Jail instead, and was permitted, as something a
shade less wretched than the Castle, to become a prisoner in the
Edinburgh Tolbooth. On the 4th of January 1693, he was again allowed the
room in the Parliament Close, but on the 8th of February this was
exchanged for Stirling Castle. In the course of the first five years of
British liberty, Mr Livingstone must have acquired a tolerably extensive
acquaintance with the various forms and modes of imprisonment, so far as
these existed in the northern section of the island.
Captain John Crighton, once a dragoon in the service of King James, and
whose memoirs were afterwards written from his own information by Swift,
was kept in jail for twenty-one months after June 1689; then for ten
months in a house under a sentinel; since that time in a house, with
permission to get a daily walk; ‘which long imprisonment and restraint
has been very grievous and expensive to the petitioner (Crighton),’ and
‘has redacted him and his small family to a great deal of misery and
want, being a stranger in this kingdom.’ His restraint was likewise
relaxed on his giving caution to the extent of a hundred pounds to
remain a true prisoner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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