George Nicol, the son of a tailor in Edinburgh, and who had been secretary or clerk to Sir Archibald Acheson, under an unlucky zeal for the public good, resolved to expose some malpractices of the Scottish rulers which had fallen under his attention, or which he believed to exist. Being in London, he presented to the king some information against the Chancellor, the Earls of Morton and Stratherne, the Lord Traquair, the Lord Advocate, &c., for mismanagement of the treasury. These officers were summoned to London to meet the charges brought against them, when it soon appeared that Nicol had advanced what he could not prove. [Sidenote: MAR. 5.] He was returned to Scotland under the power of the men whom he had accused, and was adjudged by the Privy Council guilty of _leasing-making_, and to stand at the entry of the session-house for an hour, and two hours at the Cross, with a paper on his head bearing, ‘_Here stands Mr George Nicol, who is tried, found, and declared to be a false calumnious liar_,’ and thereafter to receive six stripes on his naked back by the hand of the hangman, and then to be led back to the Tolbooth with his shoulders still exposed.[46] This prototype of Scottish political reformers met ‘with much compassion from the promiscuous beholders, who generally believed he suffered wrongfully.’ He was afterwards deported to Flanders. * * * * * Colin Campbell, Laird of Glenurchy, who had succeeded his father Duncan in 1631, seems to have outrivalled him in his taste for elegant things. In the quaint memoir of his family written about this time, it is stated: ‘The said Sir Colin bestowit and gave to ane German painter, whom he entertainit in his house aucht month, and that for painting of thretty brods of the kings of Scotland, and of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and twa of their majesties’ queens of guid memory, and of the said Sir Colin his awn and his predecessors’ portraits, whilk portraits are set up in the hall and chalmer of dais of the house of Balloch, the soum of ane thousand pounds.’[47] He also patronised the portrait-painter, George Jameson, now in the zenith of his fame, and settled in Edinburgh. From a letter written by this distinguished person to Sir Colin, June 23, 1635, it appears that he charged for his portraits twenty merks each, he furnishing ‘claith and colours.’ The laird had given an order for pictures of a considerable number of his friends, and Jameson promised, if he began in July, to have sixteen ready in September.[48] [Sidenote: 1633.]