James Hamilton, keeper of the Canongate Tolbooth (July 16, 1696), represented to the Privy Council that it had been customary for him and his predecessors to receive two shillings Scots per night for each recruit kept in the house, with a penny sterling to the servants (being 3_d._ sterling in all), and their lordships, in consideration of his ‘great trouble in keeping such unruly prisoners in order’—he ‘being liable to the payment of ten dollars for every man that shall make his escape’—had authorised him to take ‘obleisements’ from the officers for the payment of these dues, till lately when the authority was withdrawn. This had led to loss on the part of the petitioner, who had now spent all his own means, and further run into debt, so that, ‘through continual hazard of captions,’ he was threatened with becoming a prisoner in his own jail. He entreated payment of some arrears for General Mackay’s recruits, as well as these recent arrears, and likewise for the proper allowance for ‘the coiners and clippers,’ latterly an abundant class of prisoners, on account of the tempting condition of the coin of the realm for simulation. The Lords [Sidenote: 1693.] recommended Hamilton to the treasury for payment of the monies due to him.[100] [Sidenote: FEB. 2.] Though Scotland had long enjoyed the services of four universities, the teaching of any of the natural sciences was not merely unknown in the country, but probably undreamed of, till the reign of Charles II. The first faint gleam of scientific teaching presents itself about 1676, when, under the fostering care of Dr (afterwards Sir) Robert Sibbald, a botanic garden was established near the Trinity College Church, as a means of helping the medical men of Edinburgh to a better knowledge of the pharmacopœia. It was put under the care of James Sutherland, who had been a common gardener, but whose natural talents had raised him to a fitness for this remarkable position. In his little garden in the valley on the north side of the city, he taught the science of herbs to students of medicine for small fees, receiving no other encouragement besides a salary from the city of twenty pounds, which did not suffice to pay rent and servants’ wages, not to speak of the cost of new plants. At the time of the siege of Edinburgh Castle in the spring of 1689, it had been thought necessary, for strategic reasons, to drain the North Loch, and, as the water ran through the Botanic Garden, it came to pass that the place was for some days under an inundation, and when left dry, proved to be covered with mud and rubbish, so that the delicate and costly plants which Sutherland had collected were nearly all destroyed. It had cost him and his assistants the work of a whole season to get the ground cleared, and he had incurred large charges in replacing the plants.