your mit to the obligations of faith, you must divest yourself of natural reason and common sense, and captivate the dictates of your own conscience to the impositions of an authority which hath not any pretence to oblige or advise you. If you will not, with freedom, communicate the doubts which occur to you, to those near you, of whose learning and piety you have had much experience, let me conjure you to impart them to me, and to expect my answer, before you suffer them to prevail over you. God bless you and yours. A MODERN ACCOUNT OF SCOTLAND: Being an exact Description of the Country, and a true Character of the People and their Manners, Written from thence by an English Gentleman. Printed in the Year 1670. Quarto, containing twenty Pages. IF all our European travellers direct their course to Italy, upon the account of its antiquity, why should Scotland be neglected, whose wrinkled surface derives its original from the chaos? The first inhabitants were some stragglers of the fallen angels, who rested themselves on the confines, till their captain Lucifer provided places for them in his own country. This is the conjecture of learned criticks, who trace things to their originals; and this opinion was grounded on the devil's brats yet resident amongst them (whose foresight, in the events of good and evil, exceeds the oracles at Delphos) the supposed issue of those pristine inhabitants. Names of countries were not then in fashion; those came not in till Adam's days; and history, being then in her infancy, makes no mention of the changes of that renowned country. In that interval betwixt him and Moses, when their Chronicle commences, she was then baptised (and most think with the sign of the Cross) by the venerable name of Scotland, from Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Hence came the rise and name of these present inhabitants, as their Chronicle informs us, and is not to be doubted of, from divers considerable circumstances; the plagues of Egypt being entailed upon them, that of lice (being a judgment unrepealed) is an ample testimony, these loving animals accompanied them from Egypt, and remain with them to this day, never forsaking them (but as rats leave a house) till they tumble into. their graves. The plague of biles and blains is hereditary to them, as a distinguishing mark from the rest of the world, which (like devil's cloven hoof) warns all men to beware of them. The at of hail and snow is naturalised and made free denison here, mes with them from the sun's first ingress into Aries, ed the thirtieth degree of Aquary. supports all the rest, came to prevail, who hath no more pretence of authority and power in England, than the Bishop of Paris or Toledo can as reasonably lay claim to; and is so far from being matter of catholick religion, that the Pope hath so much, and no more, to do in France or Spain, or any other catholick domi. nion, than the crown, and laws, and constitutions of several kingdoms gave him leave, which makes him so little, if at all, considered in France, and so much in Spain. And, therefore, the English catholicks, which attribute so much to him, make themselves very unwarrantably of another religion than the catholick church professeth; and, without doubt, they who desert the church of England, of which they are members, and become thereby disobedient to the ecclesiastical and civil laws of their country, and therein renounce their subjection to the state, as well as to the church, which are grievous sins, had need have a better excuse, than the meeting with some doubts which they could not answer; and less than a manifest evidence, that their salvation is desperate in that communion, cannot serve their turn. And they, who imagine they have such an evidence, ought rather to suspect, that their understanding hath forsaken them, and that they are become mad, than that the church, which is replenished with all learning and piety requisite, can betray them to perdition. I beseech you to consider (which I hope will over-rule those ordinary doubts and objections which may be infused into you) that, if you change your religion, you renounce all obedience and affection to your father, who loves you so tenderly, that such an odious mutation would break his heart. You condemn your father and your mother (whose incomparable virtue, and piety, and devotion, hath placed her in hea ven) for having impiously educated you; and you declare the church and state, to both which you owe reverence and subjection, to be, in your judgment, anti-christian. You bring irreparable dishonour, scandal, and prejudice, to the duke your husband, to whom you ought to pay all imaginable duty, and who, I presume, is much more precious to you than your own life, and all possible ruin to your children, of whose company and conversation you must look to be deprived; for God forbid, that, after such an apostasy, you should have any power in the education of your children. You have many enemies, whom you herein would abundantly gratify, and some friends, whom you will thereby, at least as far as in you lies, perfectly destroy, and afflict many others, who have deserved well of you. I know you are not inclined to any part of this mischief, and therefore offer these considerations, as all those particulars would be the consequence of such a conclusion. It is to me the saddest circumstance of my banishment, that I may not be admitted, in such a season as this, to confer with you; when, I am confident, I could satisfy you in all your doubts, and make it appear to you, that there are many absurdities in the Roman religion, inconsist ent with your judgment and understanding, and many impieties, inconsistent with your conscience; so that, before you can sub mit to the obligations of faith, you must divest yourself of your natural reason and common sense, and captivate the dictates of your own conscience to the impositions of an authority which hath not any pretence to oblige or advise you. If you will not, with freedom, communicate the doubts which occur to you, to those near you, of whose learning and piety you have had much experi ence, let me conjure you to impart them to me, and to expect my answer, before you suffer them to prevail over you. God bless you and yours. A MODERN ACCOUNT OF SCOTLAND: Being an exact Description of the Country, and a true Character of the People IF and their Manners. Written from thence by an English Gentleman. Printed in the Year 1670. Quarto, containing twenty Pages. F all our European travellers direct their course to Italy, upon the account of its antiquity, why should Scotland be neglected, whose wrinkled surface derives its original from the chaos? The first inhabitants were some stragglers of the fallen angels, who rested themselves on the confines, till their captain Lucifer provided places for them in his own country. This is the conjecture of learned criticks, who trace things to their originals; and this opinion was grounded on the devil's brats yet resident amongst them (whose foresight, in the events of good and evil, exceeds the oracles at Delphos) the supposed issue of those pristine inhabitants. Names of countries were not then in fashion; those came not in till Adam's days; and history, being then in her infancy, makes no mention of the changes of that renowned country. In that interval betwixt him and Moses, when their Chronicle commences, she was then baptised (and most think with the sign of the Cross) by the venerable name of Scotland, from Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Hence came the rise and name of these present inhabitants, as their Chronicle informs us, and is not to be doubted of, from divers considerable circumstances; the plagues of Egypt being entailed upon them, that of lice (being a judgment unrepealed) is an ample testimony, these loving animals accompanied them from Egypt, and remain with them to this day, never forsaking them (but as rats leave a house) till they tumble into. their graves. The plague of biles and blains is hereditary to them, as a distinguishing mark from the rest of the world, which (like the devil's cloven hoof) warns all men to beware of them. The judgment of hail and snow is naturalised and made free denison here, and continues with them from the sun's first ingress into Aries, till he has passed the thirtieth degree of Aquary. table. Prodigious stomachs, that, like the Gulon, can feed on their own excrements, and strain their meat through their stomachs, to have the pleasure of devouring it again! Their drink is ale made of beer-malt, and tunned up in a small vessel, called a cogue. After it has stood a few hours, they drink it out of the cogue, yest and all. The better sort brew it in larger quantities, and drink it in wooden queighs, but it is sorry stuff, yet excellent for preparing birdlime. But wine is the great drink with the gentry, which they pour in like fishes, as if it were their natural element. The glasses, they drink out of, are considerably large, and they always fill them to the brim, and away with it. Some of them have arrived at the perfection to tope brandy at the same rate. Sure these are a bowl above Bacchus, and of right ought to have a nobler throne than a hogshead. Musick they have, but not the harmony of the spheres, but loud terrene noises, like the bellowing of beasts. The loud bagpipe is their chief delight; stringed instruments are too soft to penetrate the organs of their ears that are only pleased with sounds of substance. The highways in Scotland are tolerably good, which is the greatest comfort a traveller meets with amongst them. They have not inns, but change-houses (as they call them) poor small cottages, where you must be content to take what you find, perhaps eggs with chucks in them, and some lang-cale; at the better sort of them, a dish of chopped chickens, which they esteem a dainty dish, and will take it unkindly if you do not eat very heartily of it, though, for the most part, you may make a meal with the sight of the fare, and be satisfied with the steam only, like the inhabitants of the world in the moon. Your horses must be sent to a stabler's (for the change-houses have no lodging for them) where they may feed voluptuously on straw only, for grass is not to be had; and hay is so much a stranger to them, that they are scarce familiar with the name of it. The Scotch gentry commonly travel from one friend's house to another, so seldom make use of a change-house. Their way is to hire a horse and a man for two-pence a mile. They ride on the horse thirty or forty miles a day; and the man, who is his guide, foots it beside him, and carries his luggage to boot. The best sort keep only a horse or two for themselves and their best friend, all the rest of the train foot it beside them. The commonalty are so used to worship and adore their lairds, that, when they see a stranger in any tolerable equipage, they honour him with the title of laird, at least, An't please you, my laird such a one, or an't please you, my laird Dr.' at every bare word, forsooth. 6 The nobility shew themselves very great before strangers. They are conducted into the house by many of their servants, where the lord, with his troop of shadows, receives them with the grand paw, then enter into some discourse of their country, till you are presented with a great queigh of syrup of beer; after that a glass of white-wine, then a rummer of claret, and sometimes after that ▲ glass of sherry-sack, and then begin the round with ale, again, and ply you briskly, for it is their way of shewing you are welcome, by making you drunk. If you have longer time to stay, you stick close to claret, till Bacchus wins the field, and leaves the conquered victims groveling on the place where they received their overthrow. At your departure you must drink a Dongha Doras, in English, a stirrup-cup, and have the satisfaction to have my lord's bagpipe (with his loud pipes, with his lordship's coat of armour on a flag) strut about you, and enchant you with a 'Loth to depart.' Their money is commonly dollars, or mark-pieces, coined at Edinburgh; but their way of reckoning is surprising to a stranger. To receive a bill of an hundred pounds in one of their changehouses, when one would not suppose they had any of the value of an hundred pence. They call a penny a shilling, and every twenty shillings, viz. twenty pence, a pound; so the proportion of their pound to ours is twelve to one. Strangers are sure to be grosly imposed upon in all their change-houses, and there is no redress for it. If an Englishman should complain to their magistrates, they would all take a part against him, and make sure to squeese him. The conclusion of the abridgment of the Scotch Chronicle, is the rare and wonderful things of that country; as in Orkney, their ewes bring forth two lambs a piece; that in the northermost of Shetland Islands, about the summer solstice, there is no night; that in the park of Cumbernaule are white kine and oxen; that at Slanes there is a petrifying water in a cove; that at Aberdeen is a vitrioline well, that they say is excellent to dissolve the stone, and expel sand from the reins and bladder, and good for the cholick, being drunk in July, &c. These prodigious wonders in one country are admirable, but these are not half of them. Lougness never freezes; in Lough Lommond are fishes without fins: And, 2dly, The waters thereof rage in great waves without wind, in calm weather: And, 3dly, and lastly, Therein is a floating island. InKyle is a deaf rock, twelve feet every way, yet a gun, discharged on one side of it, shall not be heard to the other. In another place is a rocking-stone of a reasonable bigness, that, if a man push it with his finger, it will move very lightly, but, if he address his whole force, it availeth nothing; with many more marvels of like nature, which I would rather believe than go thither to disprove. To conclude, the whole bulk and selvedge of this country is all wonder too great for me to unriddle; there I shall leave it as I found it, with its agreeable inhabitants in A land where one may pray, with curst intent, |