rule was therefore relaxed in favour of Scottish ships. One of the standing troubles of this Scotch trade lay in the piratical habits of Algiers. Every now and then a piteous tale came home to Edinburgh of some little vessel, belonging to Dundee, or Leith, or Borrowstounness, caught by these rovers, and the crew all lying chained in dungeons, on the coast of Africa, fed with only bread and water. And then there would be a kindly collection of half-pence at the kirk-doors for the unfortunates, who generally were relieved by these means, though sometimes not till they had endured for a year or two their miserable captivity. When troubles began to arise in consequence of the efforts of the kings James and Charles to introduce episcopalian arrangements and ceremonies, there were several eminent merchants of Edinburgh who stood conspicuously forward against these innovations. We hear much at that time of William Rig or Ridge, of Athernie in Fife, and of John Mean, both merchants in Edinburgh, very pious men, who, with John Hamilton, an apothecary, were banished to distant towns because they would not agree to accept the communion kneeling. Rig was both rich and liberal, insomuch that he is stated to have been in the custom of distributing annually upwards of eight thousand merks (equal to £444 sterling) for pious and charitable purposes. John Mean, whose wife is believed to have been the person who threw the stool at the bishop’s head in St Giles’s, at the reading of the famous _Service-book_, was at one time post-master of Edinburgh, that important institution having been set up in 1635: the revenue, in his time, was about four hundred a year. Another, and still more remarkable Edinburgh merchant, noted as a friend of the Presbyterian cause, was William Dick, ancestor of our neighbour Sir William Cunningham Dick of Prestonfield. Coming of Orkney people, one of his first adventures was the farming of the crown-rents of that district at three thousand pounds sterling. He established an active trade with the Baltic and the Mediterranean, and made a profitable business of negotiating bills of exchange with Holland. He had ships on every sea, and could ride on his own lands from North Berwick to near Linlithgow. His wealth, centering in a warehouse in the Luckenbooths, on the site of that now occupied by John Clapperton & Co., is estimated to have finally reached the astonishing sum of two hundred thousand pounds sterling; though I must own to some incredulity on the subject. That it was, however, very great, fully appears from the effects of it which appear in history. Sir William, having been induced to accept the provostship of the city in the year 1638, was easily led by his own religious prepossessions to become a sort of voluntary exchequer for the friends of the national covenant, then mustering a resistance to the Service-book and the bishops. King Charles could not have been faced at Dunse Law but for William Dick’s cornucopia of dollars.