Series 1 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society (First volume)

412
TURNBULL’S DIARY
1702 Haddington, lying between the high way to Whitkirke on the
west and the west loch on the east1 etc., and woh grass the
heritors are to make fencible, and the minrs to keep it up.
Fryday, March 6th, did the generall assembly of this
nationall church meet att Edenr; the Earle of marchmont,
psent chancellor,2 sat as comissionar repsenting the kings
person, and mr. david Williamson, minr in west kirk,3 was
chosen moderator, they dissolved again wedensday 11th on
the news of K. Williams being sicke unto death; of this as¬
sembly I was no member, they named a numerous comission
to exped the affairs they could not overtake; of this couiission
I was on.4
March §th.—I went to Edenr, where on Thursday 12th we
gott the sad news of the death of our great and excellent
monarch king William, he dyed march 8th, being Sunday,
about eight in the morning, he had gott a fall oft' his horse
at a hunting at Hampton court, Feb. 21, which threw him
into ane ague of which he died.
Princess ann, King James’s youngest daughter, succeed to
1 On a recent visit which I paid to Tyninghame, I was told that this very
same field is at present tenanted by a man of the name of Ewart, the representa¬
tive of a family who have been in the parish for centuries.
2 The celebrated Sir Patrick Home of Polwarth, whose romantic succouring
by his daughter, afterwards Lady Grizel Baillie, when he lay concealed in
the family burial vault beneath Polwarth Church during the persecution,
has been so often narrated. He succeeded his father as eighth Baron of Pol¬
warth in 1648; imprisoned for his opposition to the government from 1675 to
1679 ; fled to Holland on his liberation to escape further persecution ; returned
to Scotland at the Revolution ; became Lord Chancellor in 1696, and was created
Earl of Marchmont in 1697. He died in his eighty-fourth year, on 1st August
1724.—Burke’s Peerage ; Foster’s Members of Parliament—Scotland.
3 David Williamson, M.A., son of a glover in St. Andrews ; graduated there
in 1655 ; ordained to the second charge of St. Cuthbert’s or West Church, Edin¬
burgh, in 1661 ; ejected for nonconformity in 1662; denounced as a rebel in
1674 for holding conventicles; returned in 1687 to a meeting-house which was
erected for him, and died 6th August 1706, aged about seventy-two. He was
married no fewer than seven times !—Scott’s Fasti.
4 ‘ The Assembly manifested equal propriety and judgment in the appoint¬
ment of this commission. All the old and experienced ministers of the period
antecedent to the persecution who were still alive were first nominated, and to
them were added a sufficient number of such others as were most distinguished
by experience and ability, ready to meet the possible exigencies of a crisis so
dangerous.’—Hetherington’s Hist, of the Church of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 227.