24 TEE INDUSTBIES OF SHETLAND. [Nov., 



various donatories — to Lord Eobert Stuart, Abbot of Holyrood, and 

 natural brother of Mary Queen of Scots, to her favourite Botbwell, 

 and later on to the Earl of Merton, the favourite of Charles I. The 

 gift remained in his family a hundred years, when some of the 

 judicial privileges were resumed by the Crown, while others, includ- 

 ing proprietary rights, were sold by the then earl to Sir Lawrence 

 Dundas, the great great grandfather of the present Earl of Zetland, 

 for XGO,000. During the rule of the Stuarts the oppressions of the 

 islanders were of the most atrocious kind. European history offers 

 no other such example of excessive cruelty and wrong as that of the 

 Stuart rule in Shetland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

 The Eoyal, but illegitimate Abbot, commenced his rule by a personal 

 visit to his dominions, backed by a band of ' soldiers and broken 

 men,' with whose aid he robbed and oppressed the people. 



Lord Itobert was succeeded by his son Lord Patrick, builder of the 

 -Castle of Scalloway — a squaie tower typifying in ungraceful ugliness 

 — for not a sprig of trailing vegetation decorates the ruin — the un- 

 happy government of Shetland under the Stuarts. 



He was executed in 1613, not for treason against his species and 

 his Shetland feudatories, but for an ofience against the Crown. It 

 is a natural sequence to this story that the land should have fallen 

 into the hands of Scotchmen. 



It is needless entering upon this part of our subject in detail. 

 Suffice it to say that the terms of the transfer of Shetland to the 

 Scottish Crown were violated, and that feudal tenures were introduced 

 and the ancient rights of the Udallers set aside. Most unfortunately 

 for Shetland it lay too far off from Edinburgh, in the reigns of the 

 Stuarts, to secure such protection as their century afforded. All 

 sorts of charges, such as witchcraft and other crimes, were brought 

 against the unfortunate Udallers, for the purpose of dispossessing 

 them. Any excuse sufticed to deprive them of their land. 



The present condition of Shetland has arisen out of the circum- 

 stances I have now described. 



By far the most lucrative of the two industries of Shetland — fish- 

 curing and farming — was introduced by the Dutch, the people having 

 been too poor and ignorant to avail themselves of the riches of their 

 own productive seas. In establishing the trade of catching and 

 •cm-ing fish, the Dutch hired a sutficieut quantity of land, including a 

 convenient beach, set up their stores, or ' booths,' and engaged native 

 fishermen, advancing them whatever might be necessary for the 

 purpose of carrying on the business. It is evident that the system 

 known as ' Truck ' was a necessary part of the arrangements between 

 the Dutch and the people they employed, and although the Dutch 

 have withdrawn from Shetland, Truck still remains. 



