St Fructuosus, 259. St Agnes, virgin -martyr, 304 or 305. St Epiphanius, 497. St Vimin, or Vivian (?), 615.
Born. – Thomas Lord Erskine, 1750; Admiral William Smyth, 1788.
Died. – Dr Robert Macnish, miscellaneous writer, 1837; Henry Hallam, historian, 1859.
It is well known that Lord Erskine had experienced what he considered as a ghostly visitation. The circumstances, as related by himself, are given in Lady Morgan's Book of the Boudoir.
'When I was a very young man. I had been for some time absent from Scotland. On the morning of my arrival in Edinburgh, as I was descending the steps of a close, or coming out from a bookseller's shop, I met our old family butler. He looked greatly changed, pale, wan, and shadowy as a ghost. "Eh! old boy," I said, "what brings you here?" He replied, "To meet your honour, and solicit your interference with my lord, to recover a sum due to me, which the steward at the last settlement did not pay." Struck by his looks and manner, I bade him follow me to the bookseller's, into whose shop I stepped back; but when I turned round to speak to him, he had vanished.
1 Lord Erskine was born in 1750, and entered the navy as a midshipman at the age of fourteen: at eighteen he transferred his services to the army, and at twenty-seven settled in the study of that profession in which he acquired such celebrity. He died in 1823.
PRINCE CHARLES' MEN HAD PROVISIONED AT GLASGOW, CHRISTMAS 1745.
2625. Letter from Colonel Hay to Provost Cochrane as to H.R.H.'s demands on Glasgow. Bannockburn, 21st Jan., 1746.
– Memorial Catalogue, Gallery 1.
ALLAN RAMSAY'S SUCCESSOR & HRH'S PRINTER TO SCOTLAND DIES.
Ramsay gave up his shop and library in 1752, transferring then to his successor, who opened an establishment below with an entrance direct from the street. This was Mr. James MacEwan, from whom the business passed into the hands of Mr. Alexander Kincaid, an eminent publisher in his time, who took a great lead in civic affairs, and died in office as Lord Provost of Edinburgh on the 21st of January, 1777.
– Old and New Edinburgh, pp.148-157.
Next Post Popular Ballads, pp.114-119.