Died at the Wemyss in Fife, Eleanour Fleming, Countess of Wemyss, without children. She had been married to her husband only two years, but in that time had made him, if report spoke true, ‘a hundred thousand merk worse’ than before. ‘She caused her husband give a free discharge to her brother, the Lord Fleming, of her whole tocher, being about twenty thousand merks Scots, before any of it was paid to him. She caused her husband and her brother to give Mr Patrick Gillespie a bond of four thousand merks.... She caused also a door to be strucken through the wall of her chamber, for to go to the wine-cellar; for she had, as is said by many, a great desire after strong drink.’--_Lam._ Verily, a trying sort of lady for a quiet nobleman like Lord Wemyss, who nevertheless ventured on a third wife before the year was out--the mother of Anne Duchess of Monmouth. * * * * * [Sidenote: JUNE 17.] ‘It pleased God to lay the town of Glasgow desolate by a violent and sudden fire.... The far best part of the fore streets and most considerable buildings were burnt, together with above fourscore lanes and closes, which were the dwellings of above a thousand families, and almost all the shops and warehouses of the merchants, many whereof are near by ruined. Besides, a great many more of widows, orphans, and distressed honest families, having lost what they had, are now put to starving and begging. The like of this fire has not been formerly heard of in this nation.’--_Nic._ ‘It was said 1060 houses burnt.’--_C. P. H._ Five days after this fire, the Town Council appointed ‘the provost, with John Bell, to ride to Ayr, to the English officers there, wha has been here and seen the town’s lamentable condition--such as Colonel Overton and others--and to obtein from them letters of recommendation to such officers or judges who sits in Edinburgh, to the effect that the same may be recommendit by them to the parliament of England, that all help and supply may be gotten thereby that may be, for the supply of such as has their lands and guids burnt.’[160] It must have been with a sore heart that the newly subjugated city of the west condescended to beg from the parliament of the sectaries. The case, however, was one of extreme misery, for the resources of Scotland, and of the west as much as anywhere, had been exhausted by the war, so that without foreign help it must have been impossible to repair the calamity. Little more than four years after this period, Robert Baillie speaks of Glasgow as much revived. ‘Our people,’ he says, ‘has much more trade in comparison than any other: their buildings increase strangely both for number and fairness.’ He adds, that in his time the city had been more than doubled. * * * * * [Sidenote: JULY.] [Sidenote: 1652.]