Renfrewshire

“ He then studied law at Edinburgh and Leyden, and travelled during 1741 in France and Holland. Returning to Scotland in November 1742, he was elected member of parliament for Renfrewshire, a seat which he held without opposition during three parliaments till 1761, when he was appointed a baron of the Scots exchequer. ”

“ Ellerslie, also written Elderslee, is about three miles to the south-west of Paisley, Renfrewshire. The old house, called by Crawfurd, “the castle,” is still habitable. Near it is a tree, which, according to the account I received on the spot, was planted by Wallace himself: but this, like most other traditions, assumes a very different aspect, according to Semple’s narration. ”

“ Paisley and Greenock return each one member, and Renfrew and Port-Glasgow belong to the Kilmarnock district group of parliamentary burghs. Renfrewshire forms a sheriffdom with Bute, and there is a resident sheriff-substitute at Paisley and one at Greenock. The county is under school-board jurisdiction. For secondary and specialized education there are an academy at Greenock and a grammar school and technical school at Paisley, while some of the schools in the county earn grants for higher education. ”

“ It must always remain a matter of argument whether it would have been better to branch out at an earlier date and do for the societies in Renfrewshire that which in later years it has done for 55Clydebank and the North of Ireland. The question of branches is still one on which there is considerable controversy, and, at any rate, it is certain that the committee, and latterly the delegates, played for safety, and chose to conserve the strength of the Federation at a time when all its strength was needed rather than weaken it by widening the scope of the society’s energies. ”

“ The independence of Scotland now appeared to be completely destroyed, the great nobles were reduced to a state of submission, if not of servility, and the power of the King of England was firmly rooted throughout the country. But a change was at hand, and the slumbering fires of patriotism were soon to be kindled into a blaze. The man who was destined to rouse his countrymen from their apathy, and work out the freedom of his native land, was at this time engaged in roaming the hills of Renfrewshire at the head of a petty band of marauders. ”

“ In 1788 he became sheriff-depute of Renfrewshire. He was one of the eight advocates who took an active part in procuring the rejection of Henry Erskine (1746-1817) [q. v.] as dean of the faculty in January 1796 (Omond, Lord Advocates, ii. 168) . tie succeeded Alexander Abercromby [q. v.] as an ordinary lord of session, and took his seat on the bench as Lord Meadowbank on 11 March 1796. ”

“ The Lord Advocate soon after reported to the Privy Council a letter he had received from the sheriff of Renfrewshire, stating that ‘the persons imprisoned in that country as witches are in a starving condition, and that those who informed against them are passing from them, and the sheriff says he will send them in prisoners to Edinburgh Tolbooth, unless they be quickly tried.’ His lordship was recommended to ask the sheriff to support the witches till November next, when they would probably be tried, and the charges would be disbursed by the treasury. ”

“ PAISLEY, a municipal and police burgh of Renfrewshire, Scotland, on the White Cart, 3 m. from its junction with the Clyde, 7 m. W. by S. of Glasgow by the Glasgow & South-Western and Caledonian railways. Pop. (1891) , 66,425; (1901) 70,363. In 1791 the river, which bisects the town, was made navigable for vessels of 50 tons and further deepened a century later. It is crossed by several bridges—including the Abercorn, St James’s and the Abbey Bridges—and two railway viaducts. The old town, on the west bank of the stream, contains most of the principal warehouses and mills ”

“ Up spake the son on the nourice’s knee,
‘Gin I live to be a man, revenged I’ll be.’
42.
Ther’s dool i’ the kitchin, and mirth i’ the ha’,
The Baronne o’ Braikley is dead and awa’.
129
THE GIPSY LADDIE
The Text is from Motherwell’s MS., a copy from tradition in Renfrewshire in 1825. The ballad exists both in English and Scottish, and though the English ballad is probably derived from the Scottish, it was the first in print. It is also called Johnnie Faa. Motherwell, in printing an elaborated version of the following text (Minstrelsy, 1827, p. 360) , called it Gypsie Davy. ”

“ This early part of the twentieth century is provincial in time, which is really as stupid as being provincial geographically: the nineteen-twenties are too local, so to speak, to recognize that many of the very greatest figures have been bearded; and it takes a heroic spark in so young a man as Renfrew Mears to imitate them in the teeth of our modern populace. ”

“ How amazing to think she was no longer Claire Duvigne, but Claire Renfrew. Her cheated audiences sighed in London in which a week ago she was acting. And while they sighed, she slept in this wild valley of Morocco, or lay awake and heard the jackals whining among the dwarf palms. And she was his. She belonged to him. He had the right to hold her—this thin, pale wonder of night and of fame—in his arms, and to kiss the lips from which came at will the coo of a dove or the snarl of a tigress. Although Renfrew could not sleep, he fell into a dream. ”

“ Lord Derby further promulgated an announcement to similar effect, “inviting all his allies, friends, and acquaintance, all his tenantry in Lancashire, and Cheshire, and other places, as well as all his Majesty’s faithful and loyal subjects,” to repair to the Isle of Man, as a refuge and a rallying-place. No menaces or dangers, added the Earl in the proclamation, could trouble him, nor dangers deter him. A 165letter written by Lady Derby, the year of the King’s death, bitterly complains of the duplicity of Parliament dealings in respect of the disposal of their property. ”

“ The Revolution Renwick, who glorified God in the Grassmarket on the 17th of February 1688, was the last Covenanter who suffered on a scaffold. He and his followers, by maintaining an unflinching protest against the reign of James, had helped to hasten his downfall. When the Convention of Estates met in Edinburgh, the Cameronians gladly volunteered to defend it; and showed their loyalty by raising in a single day, without tuck of drum, eleven hundred and forty men as a regiment for King William’s service. ”

“ We young people are going to build up a new world, Mamma: we don't think your generation did very well with the old one, and we decline to accept it. We've taken it from your hands and we're going to remodel it to suit ourselves. Renfrew Mears hasn't any part in the work, and when I talk about it, he hasn't the faintest idea of what I mean.”
Illustration: He stood close by, addressing himself heatedly to delighted auditors. “I think they ought to be put a stop to!” he declared. “What have you been doing to the poor thing, Muriel?” ”

“ Renfrew and the New Generation
By Booth Tarkington
Illustrated by Arthur William Brown
MURIEL ELIOT had taken upon her young and comely shoulders the principal burdens of our ancient world. That it is to say, the world still wabbled along, unconscious of the relief, and Muriel's mother warned her to be more careful of her health. “You'll lose your fine color,” Mrs. Eliot said, “if you sit all the time in the house, reading and writing. You'll bleach out into one of those pale women with spectacles, and you don't want to be like that, do you? ”

“ CONTENTS.
3 PREFACE. A vast majority of the noblest intellects of the race have ever held to the idea that,—
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how we will.” By its influence they have been both consoled and strengthened under the pressures and in the exigencies of life. This principle, to a singular degree, assumes both form and development in the story of James Renfew, the Redemptioner.
He comes to us as an orphan and the inmate of a workhouse, flung upon the world, like a dry leaf on the crest of a breaker ”

“ Behind them is the ancient burgh of Renfrew—once a fishing port and the rival of Glasgow—which, as part of the earliest heritage of the High Stewards, gives the title of Baron of Renfrew to the Heir Apparent. Further back is the romantic valley of the White Cart, that flows under Gleniffer Braes and through the busy town of Paisley—birthplace of poets, burial-place of kings, and metropolis of thread manufactures—to meet the Black Cart at Inchinnan, and enter the Clyde at the “Water Neb.” ”

“ Happened an affair of private war and violence, supposed to be the last that took place in the county of Renfrew. John Maxwell of Dargavel had ever since the Reformation possessed a seat and desk in the kirk of Erskine, along with a right to bury in the subjacent ground. William Hamilton of Orbieston, proprietor of the estate of Erskine, disputed the title of Dargavel to these properties or privileges, and it came to a high quarrel between the two gentlemen. ”

“ In no other county in the whole of England is the evidence more clear or detailed than in Derbyshire as to the ill-advised proceedings in the opening part of the reign of Charles I., which eventually brought about the misfortunes of the great Civil War. ”

“ The Earl of Derby, the representative of one 17of the most illustrious families of the English nobility, was lord paramount of the counties of Cheshire and Lancashire, and hereditary sovereign of the Isle of Man.
His eldest son, who took the title of Lord Strange, was only twenty years of age at the time of his marriage. Handsome, high-minded, brave, intellectual, he was worthy of the wife who shared so faithfully in the fortunes of his troubled existence. A marriage less of choice than of convenience, it was to prove a union that could put to shame many a love match ”

“ On the conclusion of the siege of Lathom House, the Countess of Derby went with her children to the Isle of Man. This appears to have been done by the advice of Prince Rupert, who well knew, not only the animosity of the Parliamentarians against the Earl, and therefore against his family, but also the jealousy entertained against him by the King’s party. ”

“ Fitz Alan.—This is the well-known ancestor of the House of Stuart, Walter, a cadet of a great Norman family in Shropshire, who is said to have obtained lands in Scotland in Malcolm Canmore’s time. Renfrew was one of his seats, and Inverwick, in Haddington, another. Renfrew Castle is entirely destroyed, but the description of the site, on a small hill, ditched round, called Castle Hill, strongly suggests a motte. The keep of Inverwick stands on a natural motte of rock. ”

“ Sometimes the narrators can explain difficulties. Sometimes other natives of the place can help you. But after every resource of this kind has been exhausted, a certain number of doubtful words and phrases remain, with regard to which—well, one can only do one's best.
The districts from which the tales were obtained are three in number, each represented by two narrators. Renvyle, the most southern of the three, is situated in Connemara. It is a narrow peninsula, forming the extreme north-western point of the county of Galway, jutting out opposite Mayo. ”

“ In 1640 Lord Strange was appointed to share with his father in the office of Lord Chamberlain of Chester. Two years later the old Earl died; and his son succeeding him, “Madame Strange,” as her French and Dutch relatives called her, became Countess of Derby.
In the course of time, since the murder of the 63Duke of Buckingham, the affairs of the country had gone from bad to worse, and year by year the breach between Royalists and Parliamentarians widened. Outwardly the kingdom not only seemed to prosper, but was in a manner flourishing. ”

“ Renvyle House, at whose oaken, iron-studded door Sibbie was now joyfully coming to a standstill, has been the home of the Blakes for several centuries; now, in its old age, it is the home of any tourist who chooses to go there. The bad times and the agitation hit Renvyle very hard; so hard that when the fight with the Land League was over, Mrs. Blake was not able to sit down and tranquilly enjoy her victory. She had, on the contrary, to rise up and give all her energies to repairing the ruin that such a victory meant. Her plan was a daring one for a boycotted woman to undertake ”

“ The reason for this was that only those counties that were citra Trent received summonses to take part in the French expedition; the forces of Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and other northern counties were kept at home for fear of aggression from Scotland. There were, however, a sprinkling of Derbyshire men in the ranks of the English at Crecy, including Sir John Curzon, Nicholas de Longford, and Anker de Frecheville.
The wide-spread revolt of the peasantry was the great feature of the reign of Richard II. ”

“ During the reigns of William the Conqueror and his two sons, Rufus and Henry, genuine historical particulars relative to the county are almost entirely absent. When persistent civil war raged for so long a time over the greater part of England during Stephen’s reign, Derbyshire was but little disturbed, for the leading men of the county adhered loyally to the King and held its several fortresses on his behalf. In the great Battle of the Standard, fought against the Scots at Northallerton in 1138, Derbyshire played the leading part in winning the victory ”

“ Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn, The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. Round about them orchards sweep, Apple- and peach-tree fruited deep, Fair as a garden of the Lord To the eyes of the famished rebel horde, On that pleasant morn of the early fall When Lee marched over the mountain wall, — Over the mountains winding down, Horse and foot, into Frederick town. ”