SECRETARY JOHNSTON 161 service. In 171 1 a Custom House official wrote to his superior in Edinburgh, " that in Ruthwell the people are such friends to the traffic, no one can be found to lodge a Government officer for the night." April 17, 1717, was appointed as a day of solemn fasting to avert the intended invasion of an enemy, and the threatened scarcity of bread- generally made of rye or oatmeal—owing to the severity of the weather. In 1720 we find a complaint at the meeting of the Presbytery that the Kirk was losing its power over the people, swearing—so far as the expressions in a theatre was opened "faith" and "devil" were sometimes heard ; and 1729 in Edinburgh. A minister wa3 suspended for attending it. The Scots were notably a charitable people, and, though the population of Scotland was but a million and a quarter, they supported a vagrant population 1 of 200,000 early in the eighteenth century, besides licensed bedesmen. In better times there were periodical offertories in the Churches for the benefit of seamen enslaved by the Turkish and Barbary Corsairs in the Mediterranean, in the galleys others who had their tongues cut out or been otherwise crippled ; were still in need of ransom. But the epidemics carried about by the vagrants, the dearness of provisions, added to the abolition of the Scottish Parliament, sent many landowners, particularly on the Borders, to live in England. The in and it new Marquis of Annandale began to spend most of his time London ; was on the " parlour door of his lodgings in the Abbey " of Westminster that Robert Allane, Sheriff's messenger of Annan, knocked the six knocks and affixed the document showing that he had been put to the horn, because, as Provost of Annan, he had taken no steps to arrest Galabank for debt—the application having been made by Mr Patrick Inglis, the deposed Episcopalian minister of Annan. Edward Johnstone, then in London, settled this debt on likely no measures would have behalf of his father ; but if he had not, most been taken against the Provost. Annandale probably owed his promotion in the Peerage, and Westerhall his Baronetcy, to the fact of their wives being cousins to the Secretary for Scotland, James Johnston, the son of Warrieston, who was of great service to William III. and his successor. The new patent, conferring the Annandale title on heirs male whatsoever in default of direct heirs male, showed that it was intended as in days of old to reward the whole clan for its patriotism and former unpaid services, not only one branch of it. Of Warrieston's sons who survived him, the elder, Alexander, was educated 1 Fletcher of Salton describes the condition of the country after the Civil War with the 200,000 people left to beg, "some sorners," the dread of isolated cottages, who took food by force, robbed children of their clothes and the money they carried to pay the fees on their way to school, and even kidnapped children to be sold to merchant captains for slaves in the American plantations. Grahame, in his Social State of Scotland, says that this con- tinued much later; and that the widow of a Highland laird, who notoriously increased his income in this way, was presented to George IV. when he visited Edinburgh in 1821. "Outed" Episcopalian ministers and their families swelled the applicants for relief. The kidnapping is corroborated by an advertisement in the New York Gazette, May 1, 1774 :— "Servants just arrived from Scotland to be sold on board the Covunerce, Capt. Fergusson master, now lying at the Ferry Stairs, among which are a number of weavers, taylors, blacksmiths, nailors, shoemakers, butchers, hatters, and spinsters, fourteen to thirty-five years of age. For terms apply to Henry White or said Master." — 1 62 ANNANDALE'S BROTHER JOHN for a lawyer, but was employed in the Secret Service of the Prince of Orange. The last heard of him is the extract— from Brodie's diary, quoted in Morison's Johnston of Warrieston, Nov. 17, 1671 " I heard that Alexander, Warrieston's son, had brok, and through cheating, lying, wrong ways. My brother and others had suffered much by him." He had a son, Jasper of Warrieston, who left only a daughter. The younger son, James, born Sept. 9, 1655, was educated in Holland, and, having passed particularly well in civil law at Utrecht, his cousin, Bishop Burnet, gave him a helping hand. Like Burnet, Secretary Johnston was a good friend to his relations, and many of them came to London in the hope of obtaining a Government office through his influence. He is described as a tall, strong, fair-haired typical Scotsman, with much endurance at a time when the dress and mode of life in England was conducive to effeminacy. He could undertake the rough travelling a Continental journey then necessitated, and be back again in England, fit for business, after a secret conference with the Prince of Orange, before he was even missed. William III. was the great hope of the Covenanters. As the son of a Stewart Princess, with double Stewart descent through his grandmother, it was not a long step to accept him J and his Queen, James's daughter, in the place of James, who was never popular in Scotland. But the Secretary was considered as a friend to Scottish democracy, and insisted on an inquiry into the massacre of Glencoe. His freedom of speech is supposed to have irritated William III., who perhaps could not afford to displease Englishmen by employing Scots. Anyway, he was dismissed from office in 1696, though he continued to advise the Government. He was opposed to a separate Parliament in Scotland, and brought Annandale over to his view, for he was again in office, for a year as Lord Clerk Register of Scotland (1704-05), under Queen Anne, but obliged to resign, and this time permanently, on account of the protection he had given to Jacobites, among them Nathaniel and Henry Johnston of Pomfret, and Annandale's brother, John, whose career only became important when it was necessary to prove that he died s.p. before the House of Lords. This John (Annandale's brother) was born at Newbie in 1668, and went to school at Glasgow till he was about twelve. Then his maternal uncle, the Earl of Dumbarton, sent him to Haddington school, and gave him a commission in his own regiment as soon as he was sixteen. The pay he received was supposed to be enough for his expenses at a college in Paris, where he went to complete his education, though he shows in a letter to his brother, dated 1687, that it was not. Annandale had just got a commission in the Guards from James VII., but was never backward in helping his brother when he could afford it. John returned as a captain to England, where he was received by the Royal Chaplain, his cousin, Henry Johnston of Pomfret, into the Roman Church. The next year the Revolution began, and he joined heart and soul on the side of the King, while his brother, after some vacillation, took the oaths to William. Lord Dumbarton fled with the exiled King to St. Germains, and 1 The Lockhart Memoirs state that Secretary Johnston told Lockhart he could make people's hair stand on end with revelations about the Court and Government of William III. THE FIRST MARQUIS OF ANNANDALE 163 Captain Johnstone was arrested on a charge of high treason and committed to Newgate in 1689, just after John Johnstone, the younger of Westerhall, who managed Annandale's estate, had acted as his cautioner for a loan of £100, borrowed from his tailor in London, which was repaid. Westerhall also lent him 900 marks. Annandale himself is said to have been heavily bailed to keep him out of prison. After six months in Newgate, Captain Johnstone returned to Scotland, and a letter, dated Moffat, from Westerhall to Annandale, Nov. 19, 1690, says that his brother is staying with the Duke of Hamilton and has been strongly advised to go abroad ; but it is absolutely necessary that he should have £20 for the journey. Captain Johnstone adds a letter to the same effect—that he has taken Westerhall's advice and does not want to be a burden to his family, that with £20 he would go at once to Holland, and that he has left papers with Sir John Carmichael which may be of use to the family, for whom he should be always ready to do any service in his power. Possibly the Secretary found the money, but the recipient used it to go to St. Germains, not to Holland, and remained abroad long after the term allowed for "native subjects" to make their submission. His name appears among those rebels then in France, who were liable to prosecution, in 1695, but it was removed soon afterwards through the Secretary's influence. In 1698 King James issued a warrant concerning him and his friend, Captain Livingston, who had both wished to enter the service of Venice. The King speaks of their fidelity to his cause, and that they had always comported themselves like men of honour, and he called Johnstone "a person of the first quality in our Kingdom of Scotland." In 1701 Sir George Maxwell lent him .£100 to save him from being imprisoned for debt in Paris. There is some proof that he served in Prussia for a time (the Secretary had taken the Garter to the Elector of Brandenburg), but he eventually returned to Scotland, obtained a pardon under the Great Seal, and came to live at Stapleton as a Presbyterian.