Plymouth Incorporated

'The Bellerophon had hardly anchored, when orders came from the admiral, Lord Keith, which were soon after seconded by others from the Admiralty, enjoining that no one, of whatever rank or station, should be permitted to come on board the Bellerophon, excepting the officers and men belonging to the ship. On the 26th, the vessel received orders to move round to Plymouth Sound.'

Plymouth has long been an important coastal city for England, with passenger and commercial trade passing through its port.  It was the point of departure for the Pilgrims coming to America.  Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to go to America too.  But he was captured during his escape from France.  Instead of America, the ship carrying the defeated Napoleon Bonaparte aimed for the Plymouth Sound.  Later, Napoleon was shipped to St. Helena.

On November 12, 1439, Plymouth became the first town incorporated by the English Parliament.  The text above is from Walter Scott's "Life of Napoleon".

Blueskin

Newgate's Garland

I.


Ye gallants of Newgate, whose fingers are nice
In diving in pockets, or cogging of dice;
Ye sharpers so rich, who can buy off the noose,
Ye honester poor rogues, who die in your shoes,


Attend and draw near,
Good news ye shall hear,
How Jonathan's throat was cut from ear to ear,
How Blueskin's sharp penknife hath set you at ease,
And every man round me may rob, if he please.

II.


When to the Old Bailey this Blueskin was led,
He held up his hand: his indictment was read;
Loud rattled his chains ; near him Jonathan stood;
For full forty pounds was the price of his blood.
Then hopeless of life,
He drew his penknife,
And made a sad widow of Jonathan's wife.
But forty pounds paid her, her grief shall appease;
And every man round me may rob, if he please....
 
There is more to this ballad, which is taken from "The Works of Jonathan Swift: Miscellanies in prose", by Jonathan Swift, with a life of the author by Sir Walter Scott.  The ballad is not Scott's, but John Gay's.
 
Blueskin, or Joseph Blake, was a highwayman whose life caught up with himin October of 1724.  He was hanged on November 11, 1725 at Tyburn.

Friedrich Schiller

German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller was born November 10, 1759.  Fourteen years later, and shortly after Walter Scott was born, the Duke of Swabia, for whom Schiller's father served, agreed to send the elder Schiller's sons to the ducal academy.  Thus, this talented future poet received a first-rate education.  Through his writings and thought, and later through his friendship and dialogue with Goethe, the two German poets forged what became known as the Weimar Classicism.  German thought and literature became extremely popular in Scotland, and influenced Walter Scott and his crowd.

“I do not know anything of a play of mine, my dear friend, unless it be a sort of half-mad German tragedy which I wrote many years ago when my taste was very green and when, like the rest of the world, I was taken in with the bombast of Schiller.”


- Sir Walter Scott to Lady Abercorn  from Sir Walter Scott, "Familiar Letters".
 
Walter Scott was "young and green" in 1788, when according to biographer John Gibson Lockhart, he and his cronies took a strong interest in German literature.  As Lockhart relates, 'The German class, of which we have an account in one of the Prefaces of 1830, was formed before the Christmas of 1792, and it included almost all these loungers of the Mountain. In the essay now referred to Scott traces the interest excited in Scotland on the subject of German literature to a paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on the 21st of April, 1788, by the author of The Man of Feeling. "The literary persons of Edinburgh," he says, "were then first made aware of the existence of works of genius in a language cognate with the English, and possessed of the same manly force of expression; they learned at the same time that the taste which dictated the German compositions was of a kind as nearly allied to the English as their language: those who were from their youth accustomed to admire Shakespeare and Milton, became acquainted for the first time with a race of poets, who had the same lofty ambition to spurn the flaming boundaries of the universe, and investigate the realms of Chaos and Old Night; and of dramatists, who, disclaiming the pedantry of the unities, sought, at the expense of occasional improbabilities and extravagance, to present life on the stage in its scenes of wildest contrast, and in all its boundless variety of character.... Their fictitious narratives, their ballad poetry, and other branches of their literature, which are particularly apt to bear the stamp of the extravagant and the supernatural, began also to occupy the attention of the British literati. In Edinburgh, where the remarkable coincidence between the German language and the Lowland Scottish encouraged young men to approach this newly discovered spring of literature, a class was formed of six or seven intimate friends, who proposed to make themselves acquainted (p. 185) with the German language. They were in the habit of being much together, and the time they spent in this new study was felt as a period of great amusement. One source of this diversion was the laziness of one of their number, the present author, who, averse to the necessary toil of grammar, and the rules, was in the practice of fighting his way to the knowledge of the German by his acquaintance with the Scottish and Anglo-Saxon dialects, and of course frequently committed blunders which were not lost on his more accurate and more studious companions." The teacher, Dr. Willich, a medical man, is then described as striving with little success to make his pupils sympathize in his own passion for the "sickly monotony" and "affected ecstasies" of Gessner's Death of Abel; and the young students, having at length acquired enough of the language for their respective purposes, as selecting for their private pursuits, some the philosophical treatises of Kant, others the dramas of Schiller and Goethe. The chief, if not the only Kantist of the party, was, I believe, John Macfarlan of Kirkton; among those who turned zealously to the popular belles-lettres of Germany were, with Scott, his most intimate friends of the period, William Clerk, William Erskine, and Thomas Thomson....'
 
 

Eighteenth Brumaire

On November 9, 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory, in a coup d'etat. The date was 18th Brumaire, in the second month of the eighth year on the French Republican calendar.  Sir Walter Scott introduced some information on the events of that day, which had previously been unpublished, in an appendix in his "Life of Napoleon Buonaparte". 


'HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE.

The following facts, which have never been made public, but with which we have been favoured from an authentic channel, throw particular light on the troubled period during which Napoleon assumed the supreme power—the risks which he ran of being anticipated in his aim, or of altogether missing it.
 In the end of July, 1799, when all those discontents were fermenting, which afterwards led to the Revolution of the 18th Brumaire, General Augereau, with one of the most celebrated veterans of the Republican army, attended by a deputation of six persons, amongst whom were Salicetti and other members of Convention, came on a mission to General Bernadotte, their minister at war, at an early hour in the morning.

Their object was to call the minister's attention to a general report, which announced that there was to be a speedy alteration of the constitution and existing order of things. They accused Barras, Sieyes, and Fouche, as being the authors of these intrigues. It was generally believed, they said, that one of the directors (Barras) was for restoring the Bourbons ; another (Sieyes is probably meant) was for electing the Duke of Brunswick. The deputation made Bernadotte acquainted with their purpose of fulminating a decree of arrest against the two official persons. Having first enquired what proofs they could produce in support of their allegations, and being informed that they had no positive proof to offer, the minister informed them that he would not participate in the proposed act of illegal violence. " I require your word of honour," he said, " that you will desist from this project. It is the only mode to ensure my silence on the subject." One of the deputation, whom the minister had reason to regard as a man of the most exemplary loyalty, and with whom he had had connexions in military service, replied to him, " Our intention was to have placed you in possession of great power, being well persuaded that you would not abuse it. Since you do not see the matter as we do, the affair is at an end. We give up our scheme- Let the affair be buried in complete oblivion." In less than two months afterwards, Buonaparte's arrival gave a new turn to the state of affairs.



He landed, as is well known, at Frejus, after having abandoned his army, and broke the quarantine laws. When this intelligence reached Bernadotte, he intimated to the Directory, that there was not an instant to lose in having him brought before a council of war. General Debel was instructed to make this communication to a member of the Directory, who was one of his friends. Colonel St Martin, of the artillery^ spoke to •this director to the same purpose. His answer was, "We are 'not strong enough.". On its being said that Bernadotte was of 'opinion that Buonaparte should be proceeded against according to the principles of military discipline, and that the opportunity which occurred should be laid hold of, the director replied, "Let us wait."


Buonaparte arrived at Paris. All the generals went to visit him. A public dinner to him was proposed, and a list for that purpose handed about. When it was presented to Bernadotte by two members of the Council of Five Hundred, he said to them, " I would advise you to put off this dinner till he account satisfactorily for having abandoned his army."...'

Duns Scotus

'The debating club formed among these young friends at this era of their studies was called The Literary Society; and is not to be confounded with the more celebrated Speculative Society, which Scott did not join for two years later. At The Literary he spoke frequently, and very amusingly and sensibly, but was not at all numbered among the most brilliant members. He had a world of knowledge to produce; but he had not acquired the art of arranging it to the best advantage in a continued address; nor, indeed, did he ever, I think, except under the influence of strong personal feeling, even when years and fame had given him full confidence in himself, exhibit upon any occasion the powers of oral eloquence. His antiquarian information, however, supplied many an interesting feature in these evenings of discussion. He had already dabbled in Anglo-Saxon and the Norse Sagas: in his Essay on Imitations of Popular Poetry, he alludes to these studies as having facilitated his acquisition of German:—But he was deep especially in Fordun and Wyntoun, and all the Scotch chronicles; and his friends rewarded him by the honorable title of Duns Scotus.'

From John Gibson Lockhart's "Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott".  The "Subtle Doctor", John Duns the Scot, died on November 8, 1308.  Like Fordun and Wyntoun, Duns was a man of the cloth, though of the Catholic faith.  He was ordained a Franciscan in 1291, and had a significant influence on Middle Age thought.  The term "Scotism" applies to the school of philosophical and theological thought that Scotus developed.  For more, see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/duns-scotus/

According to Lockhart, the Duns Scotus nickname stuck with Walter Scott for many years.

Tyburn

" Your Grace talks mysteries—Buckingham blushes—and the rogue himself is dumb."


" That honest gentleman, please your Majesty," replied the Duke of Ormoud, " whose modesty makes him mute, though it cannot make him blush, is the notorious Colonel Blood, as he calls himself, whose attempt to possess himself of your Majesty's royal crown, took place at no very distant date, in this very Tower of London."
" That exploit is not easily forgotten," said the King; " but that the fellow lives, shows your Grace's clemency as well as mine."
" I cannot deny that I was in his hands, sire," said Ormond, " and had certainly been murdered by him, had he chosen to take my life on the spot, instead of destining me—I thank him for the honour—to be hanged at Tyburn.
 
The last to have the honor of being hanged at Tyburn was one John Austen, hanged on November 7, 1783 (per The Book of Days); for robbery with violence.  Tyburn suffered its own sort of death, when executions were transferred from Tyburn to Newgate.  Thus ended nearly eight centuries of continuous functio.  The first execution was William Fitz Osbern, in 1196.  Text above is from "Perveril of the Peak".

Lord Auchinleck v. Samuel Johnson

"Boswell's Life of Johnson", compiled by George Birkbeck Norman Hill, includes a Walter Scott note discussing Boswell's father Lord Auchinleck.  The occasion for this note was a famous argument that the Anglican Tory Johnson and the Presbyterian Whig Lord Auchinleck engaged in during Johnson's visit to Auchinleck House, at the end of his Western Isles tour with James Boswell. 

The event which occurred at Auckhinleck House (wikipedia image below) on November 6, 1773 follows, along with Scott's note:

'Saturday, 6th November


I cannot be certain, whether it was on this day, or a former, that Dr Johnson and my father came in collision. If I recollect right, the contest began while my father was shewing him his collection of medals; and Oliver Cromwell's coin unfortunately introduced Charles the First, and Toryism. They became exceedingly warm, and violent, and I was very much distressed by being present at such an altercation between the two men, both of whom I reverenced; yet I durst not interfere. It would certainly be very unbecoming in me to exhibit my honoured father, and my respected friend, as intellectual gladiators, for the entertainment of the publick; and therefore I suppress what would, I dare say, make an interesting scene in this dramatick sketch this account of the transit of Johnson over the Caledonian hemisphere.


Yet I think I may, without impropriety, mention one circumstance, as an instance of my father's address. Dr Johnson challenged him, as he did us all at Talisker, to point out any theological works of merit written by Presbyterian ministers in Scotland. My father, whose studies did not lie much in that way, owned to me afterwards, that he was somewhat at a loss how to answer, but that luckily he recollected having read in catalogues the title of Durham On the Galatians; upon which he boldly said, 'Pray, sir, have you read Mr Durham's excellent commentary on the Galatians?' 'No, sir,' said Dr Johnson. By this lucky thought my father kept him at bay, and for some time enjoyed his triumph; but his antagonist soon made a retort, which I  forbear to mention.

In the course of their altercation, Whiggism and Presbyterianism, Toryism and Episcopacy, were terribly buffeted. My worthy hereditary friend, Sir John Pringle, never having been mentioned, happily escaped without a bruise.'

And the note:


' Old Lord Auchinleck was an think he has pinned himself to now, able lawyer, a good scholar, after the manner of Scotland, and highly valued his own advantages as a man of good estate and ancient family ; and, moreover, he was a strict presbyterian and Whig of the old Scottish cast. This did not prevent his being a terribly proud aristocrat; and great was the contempt he entertained and expressed for his son James, for the nature of his friendships and the character of the personages of whom he was engoue" one after another.  ' There's nae hope for Jamie, mon,' he said to a friend. ' Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What do you think, mon ? He's done wi' Paoli he's off wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican ; and whose tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, mon ?'  Here the old judge summoned up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. ' A dominie, mon—an auld dominie : he keeped a schule, and cau'd it an acaadamy.' Probably if this had been reported to Johnson, he would have felt it more galling,  for he never much liked to think of that period of his life]; it would have aggravated his dis like of Lord Auchinleck's Whiggery and presbyterianism. These the old lord carried to such a height, that once, when a countryman came in to state some justice business, and being required to make his oath, declined to do so before his lordship, because he was not a covenanted magistrate. 'Is that a' your objection, mon ?' said the judge ; ' come your ways in here, and we'll baith of us tak the solemn league and covenant together.' The oath was accordingly agreed and sworn to by both, and I dare say it was the last time it ever received such homage. It may be surmised how far Lord Auchinleck, such as he is here described, was likely to suit a high Tory and episcopalian like Johnson. As they approached Auchinleck, Boswell conjured Johnson by all the ties of regard, and in requital of the services he had rendered him upon his tour, that he would spare two subjects in tenderness to his father's prejudices ; the first related to Sir John Pringle, president of the Royal Society, about whom there was then some dispute current: the second concerned the general question of Whig and Tory. Sir John Pringle, as Boswell says, escaped, but the controversy between Tory and Covenanter raged with great fury, and ended in Johnson's pressing upon the old judge the question, what good Cromwell, of whom he had said something derogatory, had ever done to his country; when, after being much tortured, Lord Auchinleck at last spoke out,
'God, Doctor! he gart kings ken that they had a lith in their neck'— he taught kings they had a joint in their necks. Jamie then set to mediating between his father and the philosopher, and availing himself of the judge's sense of hospitality, which was punctilious, reduced the debate to more order. Walter Scott.