Extracts from the Session-Book of Hutton Parish. 217 



derate. The collections were taken and accounts kept in 

 Scots money. The contributions for objects of public charity- 

 were mostly made by the direction of the presbytery, and 

 not from private suggestion, and so little were the people 

 consulted that sometimes they were unacquainted with the 

 names of those whom they were expected to aid. A 

 good deal of the interest of the book turns upon the outlay 

 of the week's collections. These were the special perquisite 

 of the parochial poor, but in the evil circumstances of the 

 period, from which Hutton was happily almost exempt, the 

 domestic calls were the least pressing. The wounded and 

 wayworn soldier, the captive in foreign lands, the half-starved 

 prisoner at home, the broken-down gentleman, the gentle- 

 woman who has lost her all, the distressed minister, the 

 worn-out schoolmaster, the poor scholar, the ship-broken 

 captain, the burnt-out farmer or householder, the robbed 

 merchant, the blind, the cripple, the sick ; all those melan- 

 choly outcasts of fortune passing week after week before us 

 in these simple annotations, show how disastrously the civil 

 dissensions had affected every class, and it is consolatory to 

 reflect that appeals were not made ineffectually on their 

 behalf. Most creditable also were the parochial contributions 

 for objects of national utility, and the pecuniary assistance 

 rendered to places suffering from burning, which was a 

 frequent incident while houses were thatched and the fronts 

 and chimneys were framed of wooden materials. There 

 was a considerable circulating poverty, and Hutton appears 

 to have been " known to all the vagrant train." If we had 

 the means of examining other parish books, they would 

 probably reveal elsewhere an equally praiseworthy liberality 

 in alleviating distress, of which the instance before us is a 

 favourable example. 



I. PASSING EVENTS. 



1649, June 17. " The qlk day also given to Jeane Grieve in the 

 paroche of Ladiekirk who had her Kill brunt and yrfor recom- 

 ended to severall sessions be the minister of the said parish — 

 1 punde." 



,, Aug. 5. " This said day also delivered be Mr. Patrick 

 Home to the session ane dischairge of five pounde ten shilling 

 that he had disbursed at the direction of the presbiterie to 

 James Murray his executores and the Heland boyes." 



1650, Feb. 24. " There was no session becaus the minister did 

 preach at Hiltouno that day, it being a day of humiliation 

 before Mr. Daniel Douglas his admission to that Kirk accord- 

 ing to the presbiteries direction." 



