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Edited with Introduction and Notes by James Colville.
I found this book to be very interesting and especially so if you are wondering how Scots tended their gardens in the early part of the 18th century. I've actually had this book for some time but due to its considerable footnotes have always hesitated to tackle it. Quite by chance I came across it on the Internet archive and so have decided to make it available.
I have ocr'd in the Introduction and the first 3 letters but have also made a link so you can download the entire book if you wish. Here is a wee bit from the Introduction...
Of the many branches of the old Border family of Cockburn, that of Ormistoun finds in the author of these letters its last noted representative. The barony, which had come into the family in the fourteenth century through a marriage connection with a Lindsay of the Byres, another and more famous barony in the neighbourhood, was sold by John Cockburn in 1747 to the then Earl of Hopetoun, and now belongs to the Marquis of Linlithgow. This sale must have been a pathetic blow to many hopes—for Ormistoun was as much to John Cockburn as any Abbotsford to the hand and heart that had striven and lived for it. Retiring in 1744 from a post he had long held as a Lord of the Admiralty, and busied with the building of what is now Ormistoun Hall, girt with the garden and the trees he had so lovingly tended, he had to give up the battle within sight of victory. His closing years were spent under the roof of his only son, George, of the Navy Office, and there he died in 1758, the year of the birth of Nelson, at the age of seventy-nine. He inherited his ruling passion from his father, Adam Cockburn, Lord Justice-Clerk under Queen Anne, and on the commission that reported severely on the Glencoe Massacre. In the 'Fifteen he earned much ill-will for severity in dealing as a judge with the rebels who were tried before him. John sat in Parliament from 1707 to 1741. Had he been half as much interested in Walpole's long administration and the ways of his fellow Scots members amid their novel surroundings as these letters show he was in manure, and onions, and turnips, and trees, and the canna-be-fashedness of his tenants, he might have filled now a notable page in British history.
You can get to this book at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/cockburn.htm
Alastair
I found this book to be very interesting and especially so if you are wondering how Scots tended their gardens in the early part of the 18th century. I've actually had this book for some time but due to its considerable footnotes have always hesitated to tackle it. Quite by chance I came across it on the Internet archive and so have decided to make it available.
I have ocr'd in the Introduction and the first 3 letters but have also made a link so you can download the entire book if you wish. Here is a wee bit from the Introduction...
Of the many branches of the old Border family of Cockburn, that of Ormistoun finds in the author of these letters its last noted representative. The barony, which had come into the family in the fourteenth century through a marriage connection with a Lindsay of the Byres, another and more famous barony in the neighbourhood, was sold by John Cockburn in 1747 to the then Earl of Hopetoun, and now belongs to the Marquis of Linlithgow. This sale must have been a pathetic blow to many hopes—for Ormistoun was as much to John Cockburn as any Abbotsford to the hand and heart that had striven and lived for it. Retiring in 1744 from a post he had long held as a Lord of the Admiralty, and busied with the building of what is now Ormistoun Hall, girt with the garden and the trees he had so lovingly tended, he had to give up the battle within sight of victory. His closing years were spent under the roof of his only son, George, of the Navy Office, and there he died in 1758, the year of the birth of Nelson, at the age of seventy-nine. He inherited his ruling passion from his father, Adam Cockburn, Lord Justice-Clerk under Queen Anne, and on the commission that reported severely on the Glencoe Massacre. In the 'Fifteen he earned much ill-will for severity in dealing as a judge with the rebels who were tried before him. John sat in Parliament from 1707 to 1741. Had he been half as much interested in Walpole's long administration and the ways of his fellow Scots members amid their novel surroundings as these letters show he was in manure, and onions, and turnips, and trees, and the canna-be-fashedness of his tenants, he might have filled now a notable page in British history.
You can get to this book at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/cockburn.htm
Alastair