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The number of deer-parks in Scotland and Ireland is small. The principal park in the former is that of the duke of Buccleuch at Dalkeith Palace, near Edinburgh. At Hamilton, belonging to the duke of that ilk, are wild cattle similar to those at Chillingham. A wonderfully picturesque Irish park is Rockingham, the Hon. L. King Harinan's, in the county Roscommon.
At one of their meetings, held at the sign of the Tappet Hen and the Tankard, there was a prime fight of five rounds between Tammy Bowsie, the snab, and auld Thrashem, the dominie, about their drawing cuts which was to get Dalkeith Palace, and which Newbottle Abbey! Oh, sic riff-raff!
In Scotland also witch-finding became a trade. They were known under the designation of "common prickers," and, like Hopkins, received a fee for each witch they discovered. At the trial of Janet Peaston, in 1646, the magistrates of Dalkeith "caused John Kincaid, of Tranent, the common pricker, to exercise his craft upon her.
Two members of the corps chanced to be absent from their homes, and in Edinburgh on private business. The lately married wife of one of these gentlemen, and the widowed mother of the other, sent the arms, uniforms, and chargers of the two troopers, that they might join their companions at Dalkeith.
Altogether Dalkeith was melancholy to-night, and I could not raise my spirits at all. February 8. I had a little work before dinner, but we are only seven pages into volume second. It is always a beginning, however; perhaps not a good one I cannot tell. I went out to call on Gala and Jack Rutherfurd of Edgerstoun; saw the former, not the latter. Gala is getting much better.
In the duel Percy was unhorsed, and Douglas captured his pennon and his gauntlet gloves, embroidered with the Percy lion in pearls. This trophy Douglas vowed he would carry off to Scotland with him, and set it in the topmost tower of his castle of Dalkeith, that it might be seen from afar. "By heaven! that you never shall," replied Percy; "you shall not carry it out of Northumberland."
Henceforth no General Assembly was to be held within its walls; the seat of the Presbytery was to be transferred to Musselburgh or Dalkeith; the manses of the city ministers were to be forfeit to the Crown; these ministers were not to be readmitted to their pulpits, nor any others chosen in their places without his Majesty's consent; and no magistrates, any more than ministers, were to be appointed without the royal approval.
I do not know; it is my dogged humour to yield little to external circumstances. Sent an excuse to the Royal Society, however. December 19. Went to Court. No, I lie; I had business there. Wrote a task; no more; could not. Went out to Dalkeith, and dined with the Duke.
While these heart-burnings were at the highest, there flourished in the city of London an ingenious but whimsical and self opinioned mechanic, much devoted to abstract studies, David Ramsay by name, who, whether recommended by his great skill in his profession, as the courtiers alleged, or, as was murmured among the neighbours, by his birthplace, in the good town of Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, held in James's household the post of maker of watches and horologes to his Majesty.
This appeared in a letter from Walter Scott to the Earl of Dalkeith, when he himself, Belzoni, Master Betty the Roscius, and old Joseph Lancaster, the schoolmaster, were the lions of the season, and were one night brought together by my indefatigable old friend, Lady Cork, who was "the Lady of Lyons" of that day. This excellent man had the last days of his life embittered by the money-lenders.
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