A third statute, reciting that much coal is now carried forth of the realm, often as mere ballast for ships, causing ‘a maist exorbitant dearth and scantiness of fuel,’ forbade further exportations of the article, under strong penalties. In those early days, coal was only dug in places where it cropped out or could be got with little trouble. As yet, no special mechanical arrangements for excavating it had come into use. The comparatively small quantity of the mineral used in Edinburgh--for there peat was the reigning fuel--was brought from Tranent, nine miles off, in _creels_ on horses’ backs. The above enactment probably referred to some partial and temporary failure of the small supply then required. It never occurred to our simple ancestors, that to export a native produce, such as coal, and get money in return, was tending to enrich the country, and in all circumstances deserved encouragement instead of prohibition. * * * * * [Sidenote: JULY 2.] Henry Sinclair, Bishop of Ross and President of the Court of Session--‘a cunning and lettered man as there was,’ remarkable for his ‘singular intelligence in theology and likewise in the laws,’ according to the _Diurnal of Occurrents_--‘ane perfect hypocrite and conjured enemy to Christ Jesus,’ according to John Knox--left Scotland for Paris, ‘to get remede of ane confirmed stane.’ This would imply that there was not then in our island a person qualified to perform the operation of lithotomy. The reverend father was lithotomised by Laurentius, a celebrated surgeon; but, fevering after the operation, he died in January 1564-5: in the words of Knox, ‘God strake him according to his deservings.’ [Sidenote: 1563. SEP. 13.] At the same time there were not wanting amongst us pretenders to the surgical art. In this very month, Robert Henderson attracted the favourable notice of the town-council of Edinburgh by performing sundry wonderful cures--namely, healing a man whose hands had been cut off, a man and woman who had been run through the body with swords by the French, and a woman understood to have been suffocated, and who had lain two days in her grave. The council ordered Robert twenty merks as a reward.[23] Two gentlemen became sureties in Edinburgh for Marion Carruthers, co-heiress of Mousewald, in Dumfriesshire, ‘that she shall not marry ane chief traitor nor other broken man of the country,’ under pain of £1000 (_Pit_)--a large sum to stake upon a young lady’s will. * * * * *