Oh thou’rt a Book in Truth with love to many Done by and for the free’st spoke Scot of any.
THE EXACT VERNAL EQUINOX
ANNO CHRISTUS 1645:
IN THE TOWER OF CROMARTIE.
This diurnal to be maintained for my eyes and pleasure alone, I herein downsetting such honest self-estimates as throngers of kirks, courts and markets would castigate as vainglorious; and herein recording those embryonical conceits which quaquaversally disposed intellects too often neglect, abort and aberuncate for clamouring projects more fully formed; and herein deploying a style less orgulous, magnifical, and quodlibetically tolutilo-quent than is proper to my public emittings.
2 It is six years since my just action to reclaim the armaments raped from here by the Lairds of Dal-getty and Tolly led to the first death (a ball thro’ the occiput of my groom Frazer, an inept parasite but loyal) in that rascally rebellion which reptile parliaments of both nations attempt to dignify with the adjectival appellation great, as if grandeur were magnitude of multitude distinct from all noble and worthy intent.
3 It is five years since (for holding Aberdeen nearly a fortnight against the leagued forces of the Covenant) the Seventh Regally Annoynted High Steward of Scotland and Second to Overlord the intire Brittanic Island, did Knight me in the gallery of Whitehall three days before the publication of my Epigrams: Divine and Moral.
4 It is three years since my father, on deathbed in the chamber adjoyning, led my five brothers to swear, under pain of his everlasting curse and execration, to assist, concur with and serve me to the utmost of their power, industry and means, and to spare neither charge nor travel to release me from the undeserved bondage of the domineering Creditor, and extricate our crazed estate from the impestrements in which it hath been involved by his too good, too credulous, too hopeful nature; three years also since I voyaged beyond Byzantium, letting rents embank at home for the leniencing and clementizing of the Creditor.
5 It is one week since, homing it through London, I saw off the press my Trissotetras, wherein I lay the ground of an intirely new Science.
6 This day, having entered upon the family mansion, I discover that by false inept bailiffs and chamberlains, deputies and doers, my rents and receipts have been so embezzled, malingened, pauchled and mischarged that little or no moneys have accrued to me, while the creditors have sold their claims on the estate to usurers yet more fanged, pangastrical and Presbyterian than themselves. It is a well founded prevision of Jehovus that I am, since Neper of Marchiston, the foremost Apostle in Brittain of that Holy Minerva who inspired Moses, Aristotle, Julius Caesar and the mighty Rabelais, for were I not the wisest, therefor luckiest man I know, I would be the most miserably depressed and straightened. So I here cast an accompt of the great goods of my condition, balancing the bads against them to see which predominate.
PRO ME
Ancestry: Toward the stock, stem, vine, clew, cable and navelstring of my pedigree Saturn’s scythe hath been so blunted that I can iluct its labyrintheon through innumerable changes of monarchy and estate among the Regal Houses of Scotland, Ireland, Portugal, Gallicia, Murcia, Andaluzia, Granada, Carthage, Egypt, Amazonia, Greece and Israel, back to Adam surnamed the Protoplast, who was quintessence of that red earth created in time, of nothing, by the word of TRIUN JEHOVUS the ETERNAL FATHER, SON AND GHOSTLIE MINERVA. AMEN.
CONTRA ME
Ancestry: Though verboradically demonstrable, the middle part of my geneology lacks inscriptory provenance, and will be doubted by pedant sciolasts and fidimplicatary gownsmen who can neither admit the eductions of informed inspiration, nor comprehend the congruency of the syllabic with the Sibylene.
PRO ME
Rank: I am Knight of Bray and Udol, Baron of Fichterie and Clohorby, Laird Baron Cromartie and Heritable High Sheriff thereof, having Admiralty of the seas betwixt Catness and Innernasse, and therefore Jehovus Depute (under the Steward Crown) in that part of Brittain autochthonously colonized by oriental polistactical patricians and their followers, which is why so many towns, castles, churches, fountains, rivers, nasses, bays, harbours, and the like, have from my family name received their denomination, and why the shire of Cromartie alone, of all the places of the Isle of Brittain, hath the names of its towns, villages, hamlets, dwellings, promontaries, hillocks, temples, dens, groves, fountains, rivers, pools, lakes, stone heaps, akers and so forth, of pure and perfect Greek.
CONTRA ME
Rank: Nothing.
PRO ME
Frame: In portliness of garb, comeliness of face, sweetness of countenance, majesty of very chevelure, with goodliness of frame, proportion of limbs and symmetry betwixt all the parts and joints of my body, I am heroical in the mould of, not Hercules, Ganimed.
CONTRA ME
Frame: Nothing.
PRO ME
Nature: Jovial, yet Saturnine, my venereal fervour (for the better ingendering of brain-babes) chastened by Diana, inharmonied by Apollo, promoted with Martial vigour, ripened through Minerval cogency and quickened by Mercurial urgency, though this last only in learning and combat, since I lack all lust to transmute baseness into coyn of any metal.
CONTRA ME
Nature: Nothing.
PRO ME
Home: This noble mansion-fort, the stance whereof is statelie, the tower of notable good fabrick and contrivance.
CONTRA ME
Home: The windows lack glass.
PRO ME
Library: Not three books therein but are of my own purchase, and all of them together (in the order wherein I will rank them) compiled like a compleat nosegay of flowers, which in my travels I gathered out of the gardens of sixteen several different kingdoms.
CONTRA ME
Library: Still unpacked.
PRO ME
Estate: Lands in the shires of Cromartie and Aberdeen yeelding a thousand pounds Sterling of rent, with many especial royalties, privileges and immunities, preserved from the days of Nomoster in the 389th epoch before Christ, untill the perfect age and majority of my father, who received it without any burthen of debt, or provision of brother or sister or other kindred alliance to affect it, whereunto was then added, by his father-in-law Lord Elphingstone, the then High Treasurer of Scotland, my mother, Lady Christian, with whom he received no inconsiderable fortune. Also the patronage of the parriches of Kirkmichel, Cromartie and Cullicuden.
CONTRA ME
Estate: Twelve or thirteen thousand pounds Sterling of debt, five brethren all men and two marriageable sisters to support, and less to defray all this by six hundred pounds Sterling a year, in a time of frantic anticivilian warres and garboyles, than my father inherited for nothing, in a peaceful age, to maintain himself alone. Meantime the Church Commission maintain in my kirks three cutpurse Mammoniferous ministers of their own make who, loathing my loyaltie to the Episcopal liturge, demand for their tythes a fifth of the rent of the land, and combinate in synods and concils with creditors and neighbours to put upon me alone the charge of garrisoning troops in this district, thereby intending to inchaos the structure of ancient greatness into the very rubbish of a neophitic parity.
PRO ME
Tenandrie: All are descended (as they themselves avouch) from pregenitors who accompanied my ancestors Alypos, Belistos, Nomostor, Astioremon and Lutork in their borignarie acquest of the land, receiving from these such good yeoman leases for the digging and manuring of it that they very suddenly took deep root therein, and bequeathed to their children the hereditary obedience owed to their masters. Each hamlet by that means having its own Clan, as we call it, or name of kindred, none will from that portion of land bouge, any inter-flitting between coterminal parrishes being as mutually displeasing to them as an extrusive exile to the Barbadoes or to Malagask. I have farmers who dwell in the selfsame house inhabited by their ancestors from dad to brat, sire to suckling, above nine hundred years together and though none can read, they nevertheless exchange discourse with any concerning the heathenish deities of the Grecolatin Pantheon
, whose temples, delubres and fanes, of a circularie, oval, triangulary or square figure, my own forefathers erected in groves and high places before the time of Christ, the stones whereof may still be ascribed to Jove, juno, Palas, Apollo &cetera by the eye of the intelligible Mythologist.
CONTRA ME
Tenandrie: These much plundered and rouped of goods, gear and rents by the soldiery without hope of redress; while their Kir-komanatickal presbyterian pastors vilipend, pester and flite them for tenaciously clinging to their frets of old, which often send them at set times to fountains, oak-trees, little round hillocks and stone-heaps where, with preconceived words and motions, they worship in accordance with the poetical liturgies of Hesiod, Theocritus and Ovid; And my ministers demand that I magisterially prohibit and persecute these practices as things of charm, fascination, inchantment or infernal assistance! There is a silly old wife who, for doing some pretty feats wherein she has been instructed by her mother, according to a prescript set down in some verses of Homer, whom neither had the skill to use, is accused of witchcraft by one who, being a professor of the Greek, whipt a boy for not getting these verses by heart: as if it were a duty for him to study what is felonie for others to enact. Being resolved to conduct myself by the light of reason, I openly acquit many of both sexes whom flagitory zealots accuse of incubation, succubation and peragration with fairies and am forthwith reputed an obstinate assertor of erroneous doctrine. Even as a raw youth I would not without examination trust to aged men in matters contrary to commonsense and experience, for I caused brought to my father’s house one of either sex that were supposed rivals in diabolical venerie, the male with the succub, the female with the incub. The young man was two-and-twenty years old, very bashfull, yet prone to lasciviousness, and a handsome youth; she was some five-and-twentie, nothing so pleasant as he, and had it not been for a little modesty that restrained her, a very sink of lust. All this I perceived at first view, and after I had spoken kindly with them in generals, I entreated them with all gentilnesse possible, to tell me freely whether it was so or not, as it was reported of them; and their answer was (for they were not suspicious of any harm from me) that it was true enough; whereat I straight conceived that they had a crack in their imagination. The better to try an experiment thereon, I commanded to be given unto each of them an insomniatorie and exoniretick potion, for stirring up a libidinous fancie; I also directed one of my footboys to attend the woman with all possible respect and outward shew of affection; the like I required of one of my mother’s chambermaids to be done in behalf of the young man. Which injunctions of mine were by these two servants with such dexterity prosecuted, that the day after each of their night’s repose with these two hypochondriacks, when I called for them, and, after I had fairly insinuated myself into their mind by a smooth discourse, asked whether that night they had in their bodies felt any carnal application of the fowl spirit, or if they did, in what likeness they received him? To this both made reply that of all the nights they had ever enjoyed, it was that night respectively wherein the spirit was most intirely communicative in feats of dalliance, and that he acted in the guise of the boy and chambermaid whom I had appointed to await on them as they went to bed. This confirmed me in my former opinion, which certainly increased when I heard a short time after, that the imagination of two had become a regular fornication of four; by which (though I caused to punish them all) the fantasists were totally cured, who afterwards becoming yoke mates in wedlock to the two servants of our house, were in all times coming sound enough in fancie, and never more disquieted by diabolical apprehensions.
PRO ME
Nation: Betwixt pole and tropicks there has been no great engagement wherein Scotsmen have not (by valiantly slaughtering each other on behalf of all the greatest Christian states in Europe) made their nation as renowned for its martialists as have its promovers of learning for their literatory endeavour. I here set down the greatest names on all sides since the jubilee of 1600, instellarating thus * such as creep in from an earlier age, since it is not my custom to maintain a rank by excluding an excellence.
CONTRA ME
Nation: I will not enlist opposite the flaming sparks of their country’s fame those coclimatory wasps of the Covenanting crue whose swarms eclipse it. I will discourse but generally, or by ensample, of those viper colonels who do not stick to gnaw the womb of the Mother who bears them, and of those ligger-headed Mammoniferous ministers, those pristinary lobcock hypocritick Presbyters (press-biters rather) who abuse learning in the name of God, as if distinct truths could oppose THE TRUTH.
PRO SCOTIA
ARMS
FOR THE KING OF SWEDLAND GUST AVUS CAESER-OMASTIX AGAINST DANE, POLE, MUSCOVITE AND HOLY EMPEROR.
General James Spence (created Earl of Orcholm), Sir Alexander Leslie (governor of the cities of the Baltick coast), Marquis James Hamilton (General over 6,000 English in the Swedish Sevice) with these Scottish colonels:
Sir George Cunningham
Sir John Ruven
Sir John Hamilton
Sir John Meldrum
Sir Arthur Forbas
Sir Frederick Hamilton
Sir Francis Ruven
Sir William Ballantine with (to be rapid) these colonels: Armstrong, Balfour, another Balfour, Bucliugh, Crichton, Cock-burn, Culen, Edmistoun, Gun, Hamiltoun, Henderson, Johnston, another Johnston, Kinninmond, another Kinninmond, Leckie, Leslie, Liddel, Livistoun, Sandilands, Scot, Seaton, another Seaton, Sinclair, Spence, Stuart.
FOR THE KING OF POLE AGAINST SWEDE, MUS-COVITER AND TURK
Colonel Lermon
Colonel Wilson
Colonel Hunter
Colonel Robert
Colonel Scot
Colonel Gordon
Colonel Wood
Colonel Spang
Colonel Gun
Colonel Robertson
Colonel Rower
FOR THE GRAND DUKE OF MUSCOVY AGAINST THE SWEDE, TURK AND TARTAR
Sir Alexander Leslie generalissimo of all forces of the whole empire of Russia with
Colonel Crawford
Colonel Gordon
Colonel Keith
Colonel Mathuson
Colonel Kinninmond
Colonel Game (agnamed the Sclavonian, who for the height and grossenes of his person, being greater in compass than any within six kingdoms of him, was elected King of Bucharia, and only refused the sovereign crown, sword and sceptre belonging to the supreme majesty of that nation, because he had no stomach to be circumsized).
FOR THE HOLY ROMAN EMPEROUR OF GERMANY AGAINST THE SWEDES, DUTCH AND VENETIAN
Colonel Henderson
Colonel Johnston
Colonel Lithco
Colonel Wedderburne
Colonel Bruce
Colonel Gordon (now high Chamberlain to the Emperour’s Court)
Colonel Leslie (who is made hereditary marquess and colonel-general of the whole infantry of the imperial forces.)
FOR THE DUTCH WILLIAM OF ORANGE AGAINST SPAIN AND FRANCE
These colonels:
Robert Munro of Fowls
Obstol Munro
Assen Munro
Hector Munro (who wrote a book in folio called Munroe’s expedition)
George Leslie
Robert Leslie
John Leslie (agnamed the omnipotent)
Alexander Leslie
Alexander Hamilton (agnamed dear Sandy)
William Cunningham
Alexander Cunningham Finess Forbas
Alexander Forbas (agnamed the Bauld)
Alexander Forbas (another)
Borg (who took a Spanish General in the field upon the head of his army)
Edmund (who took the valiant Count de Buccoy twice prisoner in the field)
Urchart (who is a valiant soldier, expert commander and learned scholar) and
Dowglas the ingenious engineer general, and many more who became colonels and general persons under Gustavus Adolphus.
FOR THAT TETRARARCH OF THE WORL
D ON WHOSE SUBJECTS THE SUN NEVER SETS, THE GREAT DON PHILIP OF SPAIN, AGAINST THE DUTCH AND THE FRENCH
the thrice renowned
Earl of Bodwel
Colonel Sempill
Colonel Boyd
Colonel Lodowick Lindsay Earl Crauford, also a Scottish Colonel whose name is upon my tonge’s end and yet I cannot hit at it; he was not a souldier bred yet for many years he bore charge in Flanders under Spinola. In his youthood he was so strong and stiff a Presbyterian, that he was the onely man Scotland made choice of, to be the archprop and main pillar of that government; but waining in his love of the Presbytery as he waxed in knowledge of the world, from a strict Puritan he became the most obstinate rigid Papist that ever there was on this earth. It is strange that I cannot remember his title; he was a lord I know, nay more, he was an earle, aye that he was, and one of the first of them. Ho now! Peascods on it, Crauford Lodi Lindsay puts me in mind of him; it was the old Earle of Argile, this present Marquis of Argile’s father; that was he. That was the man.
FOR THE THIRTEENTH LEWIS OF FRANCE AGAINST THE DUTCH AND SPANISH
Lord Colvil
Lord James Douglas
Sir William Hepburn
Hepburn of Wachton
(Had these survived the days wherein they successively dyed the bed of honour, they had all of them been made Marischals of France)
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