City leaves its mark on Robinson Crusoe author FROM OUR PICTURE ARCHIVE
GENERAL George Wade has come down through history to us as a great builder of roads and bridges, and the only man other than the king to be named in the original version of the UK national anthem.
You may remember the verse that doesn’t get sung nowadays: Lord grant that Marshal Wade May by thy mighty aid Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
And like a torrent rush, Rebellious Scots to crush. God save the King!
Wade had been sent by King George I to take command of the newly “British” Army in Scotland in 1724, and he quickly realised that the infrastructure in the Highlands was dreadful.
He soon began his work of road and bridge building but had to break off in the summer of 1725 to deal with the breakdown of law and order in Glasgow.
As we saw last week, the Shawfield Riot in protest at the imposition of malt tax in June, 1725, ended with the deaths of nine Glaswegians and the wounding of at least 16 others by a detachment of regular soldiers led by a Captain Bushell.
The mob had destroyed Shawfield Mansion, home of the detested local MP Daniel Campbell.
Now Campbell was very well connected, his brother John being Lord Provost of Edinburgh and the capital’s MP.
They told Wade what was going on in Glasgow and the General gathered a small army including artillery and marched towards the city.
Wade found the city already back in peaceful order, but the Lord Advocate, Duncan Forbes of Culloden, wanted to set an example and arranged the arrest of Provost Charles Miller and several bailies and magistrates, as well as a dozen of the mob.
The City Fathers spent the
night in the Tolbooth before being hauled off to Edinburgh for trial.
The charges against Miller and the magistrates were dropped, however, and despite calls for the death sentence, only two of the rioters were found guilty and sent into exile.
The Provost and Glasgow magistrates were hailed as heroes on their return to the city, not least because they brought a criminal case in the High Court against Captain Bushell for acting without the proper authority in the Shawfield shooting. He was found guilty but was given a royal pardon and sent to command dragoons elsewhere in the Army.
Campbell was paid nearly
£ 9000 in compensation by the Hanoverian Government, with the money raised by a special tax of tuppence on every pint of ale sold in Glasgow. No wonder the MP was never a popular gent.
The remaining years before the Jacobite Rising of 1745- 46 were peaceable in the city and thanks to the English spy, travel writer and Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe we have an excellent description of what was going on in Glasgow at the time.
Though very much a Unionist, he had admitted that much of Scotland was not doing well under the Union, with the notable exception of Glasgow. In his Tour of the Whole Island of Great Britain published in 1727, Defoe was lyrical about the city on the Clyde.
He wrote: “Glasgow is, indeed, a very fine city; the four principal streets are the fairest for breadth, and the finest built that I have ever seen in one city together. The houses are all of stone, and generally equal and uniform in height, as well as in front; the lower storey generally stands on vast square dorick columns, not round pillars, and arches between give passage into the shops, adding to the strength as well as beauty of the building; in a word, ‘ tis the cleanest and beautifullest, and best built city in Britain, London excepted…
Glasgow is, indeed, a very fine city
“Where the streets meet, the crossing makes a spacious marketplace by the nature of the thing, because the streets are so large of themselves.
“As you come down the hill, from the north gate to the said cross, the Tolbooth, with the Stadhouse, or Guild- Hall, make the north east angle, or, in English, the right- hand corner of the street, the building very noble and very strong, ascending by large stone steps, with an iron balustrade. Here the town- council sit, and the magistrates try causes, such as come within their cognisance, and do all their public business.
“On the left- hand of the same street is the university.
“The building is the best of any in Scotland of the kind; it was founded by Bishop Turnbull, in 1454, but has been much enlarged since, and the fabric almost all new built.
“It is a very spacious building, contains two large squares, or courts, and the lodgings for the scholars, and for the professors, are very handsome; the whole building is of freestone, very high and very august.
“The Cathedral is an ancient building, and has a square tower in the middle of the cross, with a very handsome spire upon it, the highest that I saw in Scotland, and, indeed, the only one that is to be called high.”
His description of trade and industry in Glasgow, particularly in sugar and tobacco, is hugely interesting for scholars of the period: “Glasgow is a city of business; here is the face of trade, as well foreign as home trade; and, I may say, ‘ tis the only city in Scotland, at this time, that apparently increases and improves in both. The Union has answered its end to them more than to any other part of Scotland, for their trade is new formed by it; and, as the Union opened the door to the Scots in our American colonies, the Glasgow merchants presently fell in with the opportunity; and tho’, when the Union was making, the rabble of Glasgow made the most formidable attempt to prevent it, yet, now they know better, for they have the greatest addition to their trade by it imaginable; and I am assured that they send near fifty sail of ships every year to Virginia, New England, and other English colonies in America, and are every year increasing.”
Other industries began to flourish and trade increased dramatically, so the last thing Glasgow’s merchants needed was violent upheaval. Over in Italy, Prince Charles Edward Stuart was planning just that.