Domestic Annals of Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution, Volume 2 (of 2)Chambers, Robert
History
Domestic Annals of Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution, Volume 2 (of 2)
Chambers, Robert
Scotland -- History -- 16th century; Scotland -- History -- 17th century
A young woman named Elizabeth Low had an excrescence upon her forehead,
eleven inches long, and usually regarded as a horn. It was this day cut
out by Arthur Temple of Ravelrig, and deposited in the museum of the
Edinburgh University, with a silver plate attesting its history. Law
notes that the girl was alive in 1682, and had another horn growing out
of the same place.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE 1.]
Heriot’s Hospital having been for some years established, with sixty
boys as inmates, it was customary to hold the 1st of June as a
holiday in honour of the founder, one part of the formalities being a
procession of the magistrates to the Hospital at nine in the morning
‘to hear sermon.’ David Pringle, ‘nearest of kin to the founder,’ acted
as surgeon and barber to the boys, these two heterogeneous crafts being
somehow combined by our ancestors. To prepare the boys for appearance
this morning before the civic dignitaries, it was necessary that they
should be polled; accordingly, about seven in the morning, Mr Pringle,
his other servants being absent about his business, sent a boy to the
Hospital, desiring him to take with him any person he could readily get
to further the work. The boy unluckily omitted to look for a barber
free of the city corporation of barber-chirurgeons, and took with
him one William Wood, who was only free of the suburban district of
Portsburgh.
[Sidenote: 1671.]
This coming to the ears of Archibald Temple, deacon of the said city
corporation, a court was speedily held, and David Pringle summoned
before it, to answer for the irregularity committed by his boy. The
medical officer of Heriot’s Hospital ingenuously confessed the error;
but represented his boy as having simply taken the readiest assistant
he could get, ‘without the least intention to give the calling
offence:’ he added his solemn promise that no such impropriety should
ever again occur. The court was disposed to pass over the matter
as trivial; but the deacon, having reason to believe that Pringle
designedly employed Wood, pressed for punishment, and solemnly vowed
he would see it inflicted. He very soon caused Wood to be put up in
the Tolbooth. Pringle hereupon appealed to the Town Council for the
liberation of Wood, and so further incensed the corporation against
himself. By using influence with the magistrates, they obtained a
warrant for the apprehension of Pringle, by which he was ‘necessitat
for some time to keep his house, and durst not come abroad, they
having officers both at the head and foot of the close to watch and
catch him.’ Notwithstanding a petition from him to the Town Council,
representing the case, Temple and some of his colleagues persevered
till they got Pringle put up in jail, there to be during the Council’s
pleasure, and till he should give satisfaction to ‘the calling.’ They
also, during his confinement, passed an ordinance depriving him of all
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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