In Cromarty, then, on the 10th of October 1802, Hugh Miller was born--in a long, low-built six-roomed house of his great-grandfather, one of the last of the old buccaneers of the Spanish Main, who had thriftily invested his pieces of eight in house-property in his native place. His mother was the great-granddaughter of Donald Roy of Nigg, of whom, as a kind of Northern Peden or Cargill, traditions long lingered. In his early days, Donald had been a great club and football player in the Sunday games that had been fostered in the semi-Celtic parish by King James's _Book of Sports_, and which, it may be remembered, had been popular in the days of Dugald Buchanan of Rannoch at a time when the observance of the seventh day and of the King's writ never ran beyond the Pass of Killiecrankie. At the Revolution, however, Donald had become the subject of religious convictions; and when, on the death of Balfour of Nigg in 1756, an unpopular presentee, Mr. Patrick Grant, was forced upon the parish, resistance was offered. Four years before this, Gillespie of Carnock had been deposed on the motion of John Home, author of _Douglas_, seconded by Robertson of Gladsmuir, the subsequent historian of _Charles V._, for his refusal to participate in the settlement of Richardson to Inverkeithing; and when some of the presbytery, in fear of similar proceedings, had met for the induction, they found an empty church and an old man protesting that 'if they settled a man to the walls of that kirk, the blood of the parish of Nigg would be required at their hands.' For long the entire parish clung to the Church of Scotland, but never could they be induced to enter the building again, and so they perforce allied themselves to the Burgher Secession. Thus early was the non-intrusion principle made familiar to Miller, and thus early were made manifest the miserable effects of the high-handed policy which, begun in the long reign of Robertson, was destined a century later to have such disastrous results.