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Monans, and Pittenweem, and the two Anstruthers, and Cellardyke, and Crail, where Primate Sharpe was once a humble and innocent country minister: on to the heel of the land, to Fife Ness, overlooked by a sea-wood of matted elders and the quaint old mansion of Balcomie, itself overlooking but the breach or the quiescence of the deep the Carr Rock beacon rising close in front, and as night draws in, the star of the Inchcape reef springing up on the one hand, and the star of the May Island on the other, and farther off yet a third and a greater on the craggy foreland of St.
There were not, to be sure, many Scots whom she, or any one, could trust. Some were honestly Protestant: some held pensions from England: others would sacrifice national interests to their personal revenges and clan feuds. The Rev. the Lord James Stewart, Mary's bastard brother, Prior of St. Andrews and of Pittenweem, was still very young.
The deponent then went east to Anstruther in search of the rest of the robbers, and having surrounded the house of James Wilson there, he found three men in a room there, viz., Andrew Wilson and George Robertson, panels, and one John Friar, and having shown them to the above Thomas Durkie, he declared that they were two of the persons who had robbed the collector; upon which the deponent having applied to Bailies Robert Brown and Philip Millar, both in Anstruther-Easter, he got the accused committed to prison; and further depones that as the panels were being carried prisoners to Edinburgh, and while they were halting at Kirkcaldy, the deponent asked George Robertson, panel, what was become of the collector's purse of gold, George answered that Andrew Wilson, the other panel, told him that William Hall got the purse; upon which the deponent inquired at Hall about it, and added that unless he confessed and discovered where the purse was, he could not expect that the promises made would be kept to him; when after some entreaty Hall told deponent that he had dropped it upon being seized in a wet furr near a dung-hill, and accordingly the deponent went back to Pittenweem, and upon application to Bailie Andrew Fowler, of Pittenweem, and in his presence the purse was found near to a dung-hill between Anstruther-Wester and Pittenweem, in the spot described by Hall, with fifty-two guineas and a-half in it, which purse and gold was given to the deponent, and the purse exhibited in court being shown to him, he thinks it is the very same purse.
But Robertson, representing the noise they heard as a dispute or fray betwixt the Collector and the people of the house, the worthy citizens of Pittenweem felt themselves no way called on to interfere in behalf of the obnoxious revenue officer; so, satisfying themselves with this very superficial account of the matter, like the Levite in the parable, they passed on the opposite side of the way.
And in order to keep them still amused with his false suggestion of danger by entering the house, having gone along with them into the house of John Hyslop in Pittenweem, he detained them there for some time, until he judged that his associates might have made their escape with their spoil; and soon afterwards William Hall was seized in the street of Anstruther-Easter, between twelve and one next morning, being Saturday the 10th January, having several of the goods and a purse of gold so robbed in his possession, which he dropped and endeavoured to conceal.
Thus he was for me a mirror of things perished; it was only in his memory that I could see the huge shock of flames of the May beacon stream to leeward, and the watchers, as they fed the fire, lay hold unscorched of the windward bars of the furnace; it was only thus that I could see my grandfather driving swiftly in a gig along the seaboard road from Pittenweem to Crail, and for all his business hurry, drawing up to speak good-humouredly with those he met.
They were members of Parliament for Peebles, Stirling, Pittenweem, Kilrenny, and Inverurie. We find them burgesses of Edinburgh; indwellers in Biggar, Perth, and Dalkeith. Thomas was the forester of Newbattle Park, Gavin was a baker, John a maltman, Francis a chirurgeon, and "Schir William" a priest.
Where the heart is prepared for evil, opportunity is seldom long wanting. This Wilson learned that the Collector of the Customs at Kirkcaldy had come to Pittenweem, in the course of his official round of duty, with a considerable sum of public money in his custody.
Likewise in gold and deboshed gothic, the legend 'Sir and Lady Fuggilal Potipharpar, At Home. To meet Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Gosling-Green, M.P. Five p.m. C.T. ... Now what the devil, Roy Pittenweem, is C.T.? Is it 'Curious Time' or 'Cut for Trumps' or a new decoration for gutter plutocrats? It might mean 'Calcutta Time, mightn't it, as the egregious Phossy and his gang would have it?
Andrews, held by the good Lord James, was one of the richest. He appears to have retained all the wealth, for, as Bishop Keith says, "the grand gulf that swallowed up the whole extent of the thirds were pensions given gratis by the Queen to those about the Court . . . of which last the Earl of Moray was always sure to obtain the thirds of his priories of St. Andrews and Pittenweem."
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