has a much wider application to the men and manners of the period of Scottish history between the birth and death of Robert Burns. THE SUMMING UP. Before proceeding to examine the evidence, it is necessary to set down clearly the issues involved. are: These (a) Did an irregular marriage take place in 1786 before competent witnesses ? (b) Did Burns consider himself a married man between 1786 and 1788 ? (c) Did a second irregular marriage take place in 1788 before competent witnesses? All authorities are agreed that a marriage of some kind or other took place in 1786; the points in dispute. are its nature and effects. It would be a straining of the language employed in No. 1 to say that the disagreeable news referred to was Burns's hasty marriage to Jean; this much, however, is made certain, his troubles in connection with the Armours began previous to 17th February, 1786. Unfortunately, the exact dates of letters 2, 3, and 5 are unknown; but it is generally agreed that they were all written in the month of April, 1786. Lockhart assigns first place to No. 3, and writes as if the irregular marriage took place at a subsequent date, though in the letter itself Burns swears, with an imprecation, that he will never own her conjugally "-an expression, by the way, suggestive of more than the bare idea of marrying her in the future. The proposals mentioned in No. 2 were the prospectus of the Kilmarnock edition, the manuscript of which was dispatched on 3rd April, the printed sheets being dated 14th April following. In this letter we have the story of the mutilation of the proofs of the marriage, which must therefore have taken place between the middle of February and the second week of April of the same 66 66 year, as we shall see further on in more detail. That the Armours were very much alive to the importance of "the unlucky paper goes without saying, and Burns's estimate of it can be gauged by the perturbed frame of mind into which he was thrown when he heard of its destruction. By destroying the document or documents, the Armours vainly hoped to annul the marriage; and Burns's resentment of their boorish treatment of him rendered him quite as eager to move in the same direction. Neither he nor his friends were at all likely to insist on the binding nature of the marriage ;* they therefore deliberately preserved a discreet silence, which took the point off whatever gossip may have gained currency. In no other way can the strange procedure of the Kirk-Session which followed be explained. In No. 8 Burns informs Richmond that Mr Auld was willing to give him a clearance certificate as a single man if he complied with the rules of the Church; and he further says that it was for that very reason he had resolved to submit himself to censure. He writes in the same strain to Brice (No. 9), adding that Mr Auld had promised him a certificate as a bachelor, the inference being that an interview had taken place between them. None knew the laws of the Church better than Mr Auld, and he was the veriest martinet in insisting on their observance. As a party to an irregular marriage Burns had incurred double censure for ante-nuptial fornication and breach of Church order. Appearing as a single man, his case was simplified; after public reproof, the certificate in every case was granted as a matter of course. Did Mr Auld lend himself to this passive deception on the part of Burns? Dr Edgar, who had convenient access to all the Mauchline records, does not hesitate to say that he was too upright a man to do anything of the sort; he must have believed that Burns was not married." We are shut up to this conclusion, unless we are prepared to believe that Mr Auld was a man utterly unworthy to hold the * Gilbert testifies that Burns concurred latterly in the destruction of the "lines." 66 position of parish minister of Mauchline. When the real state of matters was revealed to him in 1788, he made amends for his error by confining the charge to the irregular marriage, thereby providing irrefutable proof that all Jean Armour's children were born in lawful wedlock. What Burns himself thought of his relations with Jean Armour we shall see shortly. He went to Edinburgh with the bachelor certificate in his pocket; he was received there as a single man, which doubtless would have the effect of unsettling his mind on the validity of his marriage; he discovered his power of impressing women on a much higher social and intellectual level than the belles of Mauchline; and latterly he came under the fascination of Mrs M'Lehose, when the wish became father to the thought, and he wrote two of the most regrettable letters (19 and 20) that ever proceeded from his pen. The remembrance of his treatment by the Armours rankled ; new ambitions were awakened; the change in his outlook on life, plainly observable in 1787, reached its climax in the early months of 1788 but he came right in the end, as Burns always did. Confronted with the heart-rending circumstances under which Jean had been banished from her father's house, the mists of his self-deception were dissipated, and the native qualities of his mind, after a brief struggle between honour and wounded pride, resumed their wonted sway. There was but one honourable course open to him, and he manfully chose it, though his self-laudatory phrases, repeated again and again in his letters of that date, detract from the virtue of his action, for these cannot be taken as reasons for a sacrifice" which was no sacrifice at all but a bounden duty. If Jean had been thrust out of her father's house in 1786, Burns would have acted then as he did in 1788. He confessed his irregular marriage to Mr Auld, and wrote his friend Smith (No. 31), who was one of the witnesses, to forward his testimony by post, but of this more anon. Notwithstanding the casuistry he had laid as flattering unction to his soul, he knew all along he was a married man, which brings us to the second issue. 66 Whatever doubts he entertained of his obligations to Jean after he obtained the bachelor certificate, he had none before that incident took place. Arnot (No. 5) is sufficient proof of this. His letter to John serio-comic production, which he thought so much of that he inscribed it in the collection he made for Robert Riddel, 66 he says he had lost a wife by the destruction of "the unlucky paper," and was looking for another, which may be taken as a hint of his love interlude with Highland Mary, with whom he parted a few weeks afterwards never to meet again.* This letter acquires double force from its revisal by Burns five years afterwards, taken along with the explanatory note there attached, stating that he and Jean "had made up some sort of wedlock." A year afterwards, when he was at the height of his fame, he unwittingly revealed to Smith (No. 17) the doubting complexion of his thoughts with regard to marriage. In the confidential letter to Ainslie (No. 20), which that faithless friend of his handed to Allan Cunningham to be made use of as he thought proper, the doubts which had haunted him ever since the granting of the questionable certificate found expression in a way, to say the least of it, that was not creditable to him. If he thought the burning of “the lines" and possession of the Kirk-Session certificate had made him a free man, why this solemn swearing of Jean to forego her claims upon him? On 28th April, 1788, he first styles Jean " Mrs Burns" to his friend Smith (No. 24), and he repeats the term to others in Nos. 27, 30, 31, 32, and 34, from that date to 27th July of the same year. To Margaret Chalmers and Clarinda he was more reticent, as might have been expected. The former has put upon record that Burns was a suitor for her hand, and it would have been rather awkward to inform her that he was a married man when he made his advances to her.† Clarinda *Mrs Begg tells us he had made her acquaintance before this date. All the available evidence points to the conclusion that she was a rival of Jean's in the early stage of their courtship. †This also explains his reticence regarding Highland Mary. 66 made the discovery too late. He had evidently told her of his relations with Jean, but nothing of a compromising nature about the marriage; it is, however, very suggestive of his inner thoughts at the time, that he told her in March, 1789, he never had "the least glimmering of hope" that she could be his, though he considered he was not under the smallest moral tie* to Mrs Burns." It is an instructive commentary on the manners of that age that a woman of the social standing and education of Mrs M'Lehose could look upon grave moral lapses as mere peccadilloes to be pardoned without much questioning or compunction when the victims happened to be, in her judgment, in an inferior social position. She knew of Jean's first twins, and wished the birth of the second "happily over." The "paitrick" incident in Rankine's epistle must also have been familiar to her; yet she lived in the hope of being free to marry him, and dubbed him "villain" when he publicly acknowledged Jean to be his wife. The second twins are said to have been born on 3rd March, 1788; one of them was buried on 10th March, and the other on the 22nd immediately following.† In his letter to Mrs Dunlop (No. 32) he mentions only "some previous steps to marriage" in 1786. Though she had asked in a previous letter for full particulars of his marriage, he says not a word of any private or irregular ceremony on any subsequent date, for the very good reason that nothing of the kind had taken place, Writing to Peter Hill (No. 33), it is worth noting that he styles Jean not so much a new as a young wife, Hill no doubt being in possession of the facts of Burns's relations with her. 66 Burns In Lockhart's life of the Poet, he affirms that rode to Mossgiel (18th February, 1788) and went through Burns's family register gives 3rd March as the date of birth, seemingly a mistake. In the Mauchline Burial Register (now in the Register House, Edinburgh), the dates are those given. we are informed, "died unbaptised." Both, |