the ceremony of a Justice of Peace marriage with Jean in the writing chambers of his friend Gavin Hamilton "; he does not, however, condescend upon an exact or approximate date, though he leaves the impression that the ceremony took place immediately on his arrival at Mauchline —an untenable position. We must therefore do our best

to supply the omission. On March 3rd of that year, Burns, to put it mildly, had not the slightest intention of re-marrying Jean, nor of abiding by the marriage of 1786 (See No. 20)-he had done with her and she with him (See No. 19). On 28th April he tells Smith that "Mrs Burns" is Jean's "private designation"; the ceremony alluded to by Lockhart is bound, therefore, to have taken place between these dates. As early as 7th April (No. 23) he writes as if the "sacrifices" had been already made; which shortens the period by three weeks; and it must be borne in mind that he returned to Edinburgh about the 10th of March,* and remained there till the 24th, when he finally left it. Scott Douglas, in his annotations on Lockhart, records his dissent from that biographer regarding the implied date of the alleged marriage in 1788, and he suggests no other in that year. On 7th March (No. 21a) he informs Brown that he had towed Jean into a convenient harbour, and "taken the command for a time in secret "; while on 4th May (No. 25) he tells his kinsman at Kirkoswald that he was "thinking of taking out a licence and forsaking the "smuggling trade." It is, however, in his letter to Smith (No. 24) that we get most enlightenment on the vague references to his marriage, and his having conferred some new title or other on Jean, recently and privately," which misled Lockhart. His quotation of the old Scotch adage was Burns's cryptic way of informing Smith that he was wearing "the robe " and bearing "the pock" of matrimony by cohabitation with Jean, while he was being tutored by Mr Findlay, officer at Tarbolton, on the duties of an exciseman.† His allusion to twelve

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* Part of the intervening time was spent at Dalswinton.
† Findlay's Excise order is dated 31st March.

brace of children ere he celebrated his twelfth wedding-day is a clear indication of what was in his mind at that time, and, indeed, all along. If the wedding-day he meant was in 1788, the twelfth anniversary of it would have made him the father of fourteen brace; but, calculating from the real wedding day in 1786, his facetious presagement is understandable. Again, if Smith was a witness to Lockhart's alleged re-marriage in 1788, why does Burns subsequently write to him (No. 24) as if he knew nothing about it? On 26th June (No. 31) he had written Smith twice without reply. Smith was resident in Linlithgow (No. 18), and, as travelling was dear and inconvenient in those days, it is not at all likely that he was summoned to Mauchline between 3rd March and 28th April to act as witness to a private marriage, more especially when dozens of the Poet's Mauchline acquaintances would have been only too glad of the honour. Smith left Mauchline towards the end of 1786, and never resided in it afterwards. He emigrated to the West Indies, and died in the island of St. Lucia at a comparatively early age. Burns had no reason for secrecy in 1788; on the contrary, when his better self became victorious, his resolution was to acknowledge Jean publicly. His first step was to approach Mr Auld, who expressed himself willing to extricate him from the difficulties he had brought upon himself by his hesitating attitude towards Jean if he proved the validity of the 1786marriage by the oath or declaration of the witnesses present. He accordingly wrote Smith (No. 31), and apparently received the necessary testimony. Had there been a re-marriage there would have been no call for any such procedure; the documentary proofs of its celebration could readily have been produced, and the grounds of the litigation" referred to by Mr Auld effectually removed. The documentary proofs of 1786 were destroyed, and the evidence could only be recovered by the procedure adopted. By the proof of the 1786 marriage, the air was cleared and Burns was delivered from a very awkward position. The birth of the second twins rendered his offence a trilapse,

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with which the Presbytery, not the Kirk-Session, had the sole power to deal; and he was also guilty of a double breach of Church order by contracting another irregular marriage. A second marriage would thus have made matters worse; but when the early marriage was proved, the indictment shrank to antenuptial misconduct and nuptial irregularity. Why the first of these was departed from by the Mauchline Session seems at first sight inexplicable. It is almost certain that the view taken by Mr Auld was that Burns and Jean had already (1786) been reproved on that score, and that the children subsequent to that date had been born in lawful wedlock. On all questions Gavin Hamilton was Burns's legal adviser, and he drew up all his legal documents. When Burns returned from Edinburgh in February, 1788, he reconciled Jean to her mother and rented a room for her accommodation. From the tenor of his letters in the months which followed, it is clear that he was cohabiting with her. It is unbelievable that Jean's mother was a consenting party to her daughter's living in open shame within a stone-throw of her father's house. She knew better. That Burns reconciled Jean to "her fate" (whatever that may mean)* and also to her mother by a dishonourable proposal of semi-veiled concubinage is just as unbelievable (See 21a). It must be kept in view that his conduct at this juncture was strongly influenced by the consciousness that he was still in the meshes of the Clarinda entanglement, from which it took him some time to cut himself clear. The spell was broken towards the end of March, 1788; thereafter the crooked was made straight and the rough places of the path of duty made plain. The obvious inference from the facts is, that Burns, probably acting on the advice of Gavin Hamilton, openly took up house with Jean in order to provide the element of coitus or cohabitation, which, in the eye of the law, was accounted the consummation of all irregular marriages. Be that as it may,

*See No. 19.

cohabitation proved a powerful plea with Mr Auld, and rendered the path of penance less onerous and irksome. In none of his letters does he state his case so succinctly and squarely as in that to Mrs Dunlop (No. 32)—the 1786 private marriage, leading up to the provision of a shelter for Jean in 1788, and the public declaration of said marriage which followed, by living together as man and wife.

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By their wilful destruction of the marriage lines, the Armours had placed themselves in an anomalous position with regard to the claims of their daughter on Burns; and their solution of the problem by thrusting Jean out of doors was consequently harsh in the extreme. There was nothing to have prevented Gavin Hamilton officiating at the ceremony, as local tradition hath it; but, whether or not, we are decidedly of opinion that the unlucky paper was drawn out by him in proper form, his precautions rendering its destruction a matter of little or no moment. The report that the Armours consulted Robert Aiken on the consequences of their action may or may not have been true; all the same, it may be taken as a sign that they were left in an atmosphere of disquieting doubt. What poor Jean's attitude was we learn from the Brulie or scroll minutes of the Mauchline Session record. On 2nd December, 1787, "Jean Armour was reported to the Session as being under scandal," and on the 9th the following entry was made: Jean Armour sent excuse that she cannot attend until next Sabbath." These items were not engrossed on the permanent record, and the case was thereafter allowed to drop, for no more is recorded regarding it either in the scroll or extended minutes. Jean, then, it seems, was summoned as a single woman without protest or objection on her part. We know what followed in the ensuing spring. On 30th July, 1788, Burns and Jean are entered on the roll of persons under scandal in the Brulie minutes, with a score drawn through their names-an intimation that the charge of scandal had been departed from. The explanation of this we have already given. Dr Edgar, who dismisses the idea of a

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second marriage as an improbability, in concluding his valuable and exhaustive researches, writes as follows:

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Pending further information, I am inclined to think that on some consideration or other Mr Auld had, prior to July, 1788, been led to believe that the twins of March 3rd had been born in legal wedlock; or that a plea to that effect, if advanced by either Burns or Jean, would present difficulty to the Session.”*

The information desired by Dr Edgar has now come to light in the newly-discovered letter (No. 31) which has just been added to the extensive collection of Mr Charles Cowie, Glasgow. The witness or witnesses of the 1786 marriage had laid their testimony before Mr Auld, who accepted it as satisfactory proof that Burns and Jean were married persons from that date onwards; though he, in ignorance of the fact, had reproved them in August, 1786, for the birth of twins born in lawful wedlock.† The reproof administered in 1788 on the single count of the irregular marriage, followed by the confirmation of the marriage in the Session minutes as requested, is of itself proof sufficient that there was no second marriage. If there had been, Mr Auld was bound by the law of the Church to censure them for antenuptial misconduct, and record the fact in the minute-book before any clearance certificate could have been granted. As we have already said, the case of Burns himself would have been passed on to the Presbytery, and a note to that effect recorded in the minutes. is still the law of the Church of Scotland.

This

It appears strange that the precise date of the marriage is not mentioned either in the Session minute or the Register of Marriages, which is now lodged in the Register House, Edinburgh. All that is said in the latter is, that they (Burns and Jean) "acknowledged they were irregularly

*If the twins were born on March 3rd, Burns makes no reference to them in letters 20 and 21a. The more probable date is either the 8th or 9th of March.

Mr Henley hazards the guess that Mr Auld had a strong objection to the marriage, followed by the statement that he was guilty of an illegal act in certifying Burns a bachelor.