l hope of recovery, unlesse he be separat from
such pernitious company, humbly therefore, desyring that the Councell
might determine upon the soume of money to be payed be Raeburn, for the
education of his children, to the petitioner, who will be countable
therefor; and that, in order to his conversion, the place of his
imprisonment may be changed. The Lords of his Maj. Privy Councell having
at length heard and considered the foresaid petition, doe modifie the
soume of two thousand pounds Scots, to be payed yearly at the terms of
Whitsunday be the said Walter Scott of Raeburn, furth of his estate to
the petitioner, for the entertainment and education of the said children,
beginning the first termes payment therof at Whitsunday last for the half
year preceding, and so furth yearly, at the said terme of Whitsunday in
tym comeing till furder orders; and ordaines the said Walter Scott of
Raeburn to be transported from the tolbooth of Edinburgh to the prison of
Jedburgh, where his friends and others may have occasion to convert him.
And to the effect he may be secured from the practice of other Quakers,
the said Lords doe hereby discharge the magistrates of Jedburgh to suffer
any persons suspect of these principles to have access to him; and in
case any contraveen, that they secure ther persons till they be therfore
puneist; and ordaines letters to be direct heirupon in form, as effeirs."
Both the sons, thus harshly separated from their father, proved good
scholars. The eldest, William, who carried on the line of Raeburn, was,
like his father, a deep Orientalist; the younger, Walter, became a good
classical scholar, a great friend and correspondent of the celebrated Dr.
Pitcairn, and a Jacobite so distinguished for zeal, that he made a vow
never to shave his beard till the restoration of the exiled family. This
last Walter Scott was the author's great-grandfather.
There is yet another link betwixt the author and the simple-minded and
excellent Society of Friends, through a proselyte of much more importance
than Walter Scott of Raeburn. The celebrated John Swinton, of Swinton,
nineteenth baron in descent of that ancient and once powerful family,
was, with Sir William Lockhart of Lee, the person whom Cromwell chiefly
trusted in the management of the Scottish affairs during his usurpation.
After the Restoration, Swinton was devoted as a victim to the new order
of things, and was brought down in the same vessel which conveyed
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