Letter from David Hay Fleming to William Alexander Craigie
James Dodson
Letter from David Hay Fleming, 4 Chamberlain Road, Edinburgh, 15 March 1907.
“My dear Craigie,
For non-hearers, I have searched through nearly all the Cameronian books and pamphlets in my possession but unsuccessfully. There are still two or three to go through, and in them there may be an example or two.
When your note of 7th Feby. arrived, I at once remembered one passage in which the word occurred; but did not send it as it was later than Macaulay. As, however, you now say that you have taken an example from Hill Burton, I now copy this one.
“In his postscript to the ‘Pleadings’ Calderwood evidently claims John Howie as a non-hearer” (The Martyr Graves of Scotland by the Rev. J.H. Thomson, 1875, p. 148). I have this tract, and looked through the postscript, but the word non-hearer is not in it. Of John Calderwood, Thomson had previously said on the same page of his Martyr Graves:—“He became a non-hearer.”
Have you got the word non-magistrate? In one of the Cameronian pamphlets it occurs as a verb. Here is the passage:—“We can indeed refuse obedience to wicked magistrate, when sinful: but can never non-magistrate them (when interrogat as our martyres were before their Councel) until lawfully cast off” (Rectus Dedivandum, 1709, p. 23).
You probably have the following, which occurs in a contemporary document quoted by Knox, but in case you have not, here it is:—“Now thay spair not planelie to brek doun and convert the guid and stark money, cunzeit in our Loveraneis[?] less age, into this thair corruptit skrinff and baggage of Hard-heidis and Non-Suntis” (Laing’s Knox. i. 403).
Here is another from Knox:—“Maister Johnne Leslie, called Nolumus and Volumus” (Laing’s Knox. ii. 180). Knox (ii. 141) had previously explained why Leslie was so nicknames.
I hope to see you in St. Andrews; but whether I am able to get there or not on the graduation-day, we expect to see you and Mrs Craigie here as you go home.
With kind regards
Yours very truly
D. Hay Fleming”