Travellers' Tales of Scotland

The following is from Travellers' Tales of Scotland by R. H. Coats:

IV - Sir William Brereton

(1635)

SOTLAND was just entering upon its memorable struggle with Charles I, when a certain English knight, Sir William Brereton by name, rode through the lowland part of the country, accompanied by his servant, Will Baylye. Sir William was a landed gentleman from Cheshire, who had already represented his native county in Parliament, and was later to rise to the rank of General in the Parliamentary army. He was a man of strong Puritan leanings and "most considerable for a known aversion to the government of the Church," as Clarendon tells us. It is probable, therefore, that his journey northward in 1635 may have been prompted chiefly by an interest in the ecclesiastical situation in Scotland. Two years previously, Charles had been crowned King in Edinburgh, and he was now fully embarked on his mistaken policy of enforcing Episcopacy and flouting the nation's preference for Presbyterianism. Brereton could see plainly that a storm was brewing. The nobility of Scotland were incensed by the efforts being made by the dignitaries of the Church to restore abbots and recover abbey lands, so that a third of the whole country might thereby come into possession of the party of the king, and his influence in Parliament be strengthened by forty-eight more votes. But while some of the Scottish clergy inclined to this way of thinking, Brereton found that "many also were mighty opposite and averse thereunto." At Ayr, the good people of the town complained bitterly of their minister because "he did so violently press the ceremonies, especially in kneeling at the communion, whereupon, upon Easter day last, so soon as he went to the communion table, the people all left the church and departed, and not one of them stayed, only the parson alone." Formerly, in Scotland, the sacrament had been administered by means of long narrow tables, at which the receivers sat, as in the Dutch and French churches. "But now," writes Brereton, "the ceremonies of the Church of England are much pressed, and conformity is much pressed, and the gesture of kneeling is also much pressed." It was just this "much pressing" which so galled, aggravated, and alarmed Scotland, and led two years later to a counter-pressure of some vehemence, for which the signal was the hurling of a wooden stool at the priest's head in St. Giles, when that pioneer attempted to introduce Laud's Liturgy.

As he rode from place to place, pondering those deep religious questions, Brereton had time to cast a glance on the country through which he passed, and he formed but a poor impression of it. Between Berwick and Dunbar was "the largest vastest moor he had ever seen," neither horse, sheep, beast, tree, nor fire being visible anywhere. Between Carrick and Galloway, too, on his return homewards, he traversed "exceeding much moorish barren land," and led his fainting horse up many a weary hill. At Wigtown he was shown what was reputed to be the fairest meadow in all Scotland, but it had no other effect upon him than to make him think yearningly of his own Broad Meadow at home, "an acre of which is worth two of this." Salmon, indeed, were plentiful in Scotland, and coal abounded, but the soul of the Englishman was grieved within him as he covered mile after mile of Scottish territory bare of all timber, and saw the poor exhausted fields amid which he rode but scantily manured with lime and seaweed.

Closely connected with this poverty was the passion for emigration which existed among the people. Brereton was informed that, within the two years previous to his visit, above ten thousand persons had gone to Ireland from the district between Inverness and Aberdeen alone. As many as three hundred had been shipped at a single tide. Few seemed to know exactly why they left the country. Some thought their going was "a just judgment of God to spew them out of the land for their unthankfulness." Others blamed landlords and the rise in rents. Brereton's own opinion was that a culpable ignorance and neglect of agriculture was at the bottom of it, "so as that of the prophet David is made good in this their punishment: 'a fruitful land makes He barren, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.'" Whatever might be the reason, of one thing the stout old Puritan was convinced, "digitus Dei was to be discerned in it." But if Brereton was hardly satisfied with the country districts, he formed on the whole a good opinion of the towns of Scotland. The High Street of Edinburgh, with its graceful ascent and well-laid cobble stones, was "the most stately and graceful street he had ever seen in his life." "The channels are very conveniently contrived on both sides the streets, so as there is none in the middle; but it is the broadest, largest, and fairest pavement, and that entire, to go, ride, or drive upon." The glory and beauty of this thoroughfare, however, were somewhat marred by the absence of fair glass windows to the houses, and the strange custom which prevailed of covering the stonework with wooden boards, perforated with round holes to permit of a man's head being projected from them. Were these but removed, and the houses built uniformly of the same height, this would indeed be "the most complete street in Christendom." At Glasgow, Brereton admired the gaily coloured cloaks of the university students, the Cathedral of St. Mungo, "which is the fairest and stateliest in Scotland," and the Tolbooth with its "closet lined with iron; walls, top, bottom, floor, and door, iron; wherein are kept the evidences and records of the city." No wonder the greatest precautions were resorted to, in case of fire, for Glasgow in those days, we learn, could boast the magnificent revenue of 1000 per annum! So great was the natural advantage of being situated on the Clyde. "This river," wrote Brereton, "is now navigable within six miles of the city; it ebbs and flows above the bridge, though now the water is so shallow, as you may ride under the horse belly."

What the English traveller could ill stomach, however, was the unsavouriness and filth of Scottish towns. His gorge rose within him to see so many open sinks and dirty dish clouts and pewter plates not scoured but simply dipped in sluttish greasy water. "The houses, halls, and kitchens have such a noisome taste, a savour, and that so strong as it doth offend you so soon as you come within their wall... Yea, I never came to my own lodging in Edenborough, or went out, but I was constrained to hold my nose, or to use wormwood, or some such scented plant." Especially objectionable was the custom of tub-washing which he saw practised. "Their linen is as sluttishly and slothfully washed by women's feet, who, after their linen is put into a great, broad, low tub of water, then (their clothes being tucked up above their knees) they step into the tub and tread it, and trample it with their feet (never vouchsafing a hand to nett [clean] or wash it withal) until it be sufficiently cleansed in their apprehensions, and then it looks as nastily as ours doth when it is put unto and designed to the washing, as also it doth so strongly taste and smell of lant and other noisome savours, as that when I came to bed I was constrained to hold my nose and mouth together." Brereton was ready to acknowledge that one benefit at least was to be derived from this process. If it did not greatly improve the condition of the linen, it certainly had a marked effect upon the women's feet, to the neatness and handsomeness of which he bears ungrudging testimony.

In the matter of fashions, the women of the time wore garments which distinguished them as widows, wives, or maids, the last named going bare-headed, and the more elderly dames in good positon decking themselves forth in "satin straight-bodied gowns, short little cloaks with great capes, and a broad boun-grace [projecting bonnet] coming over their brows, and going out with a corner behind their heads." The Highlanders whom he saw in Edinburgh are thus described: "Those who have doublets have a kind of loose flap garment hanging loose about their breech, their knees bare; they inure themselves to cold, hardship, and will not diswont themselves; proper, personable, well-complectioned men, and able men; the very gentlemen in their blue caps and plaids."

Brereton was generally well pleased with the character of the people. In most places he found, to his surprise, that he could rely on "great entertainment and good lodging, a respective host and honest reckoning." Innkeepers did not at the beginning charge to excess, as the English did, but they kept more closely to the spoken word and would not budge from their original demand. The heart of the Puritan was gladdened at the discovery that "the greatest parts of the Scots are very honest and zealously religious. I observed few given to drink or swearing; but if any oath, the most ordinary oath was 'Upon my soul.'" The cause of so much virtue was not far to seek. Those were the days when ecclesiastical censures and deprivations were rigorously enforced, and the Calvinistic Church was making full use of its brief reign of terror. At the Greyfriars Church, in Edinburgh, Brereton saw three women sitting on the stool of repentance, undergoing penance for the sin of fornication, and exposed alike to the full gaze of the congregation and to the pointed rebukes and admonitions of the presiding minister. Adulterers had to make satisfaction to the Church by standing on the same stool, clad in a sheet of hair, every Lord's day for a period of twelve months. Even to stay away from church was an offence likely to be visited with awful threatenings and judgments. "There are some officers made choice of to take notice of and apprehend all those that loiter in the streets upon the Lord's day, during service and sermon-time, these are punished by being committed to the Toll-bowth; and if any are found in any house tippling, or gaming, in church-time, they are committed to prison. Those also called to account that are met walking fromwards the church, and are detained in durance until they be brought before the bailiffs of the town, who punisheth them severely."

With so thoroughgoing an enforcement and application of his own most cherished principles, Brereton was no doubt delighted. There were times, however, when he himself found his strictness of loyalty to Puritanism rather severely tested, as once when the courtesies of hospitality were pressed upon him by the daughter of an archbishop! Fortunately or unfortunately, the girl was so winsome, and the quality of the entertainment so super-excellent, as to bear away all thought of religious scruples. "Here I visited the Archbishop of Glasgow's palace... and going into the hall, which is a poor and mean place, the archbishop's daughter, an handsome and well-bred proper gentlewoman, entertained me with much civil respect, and would not suffer me to depart until I had drunk Scotch ale, which was the best I had tasted in Scotland, and drunk only a draught of ale in this kingdom." Strangely enough, this was not to be the only occasion on which the worthy Puritan knight might have been found making himself at home in an archbishop's palace. At the conclusion of the war, he was rewarded for his services by the grant of some Church lands, and came into possession of the archiepiscopal residence at Croydon, where, if a scurrilous old pamphlet of 1663 is to be credited, he proved "a notable man at a thanksgiving dinner, having terribly long teeth and a prodigious stomach, to turn the archbishop's chapel at Croydon into a kitchen, also to swallow up that palace and lands at a morsel."

V - George Fox (1657)