to domestic affairs. But in the _Observes_ there are every year notes and
reflections on the events passing in every part of Europe, and especially
France. There is some interest in the following passage, almost the last
sentence in the _Historical Observes_, 'In regard the Duke of Brandenburgh
and States of Holland have not roume in ther countries for all the fugitive
Protestants, they are treating with Pen and other ouners of thesse
countries of Pensylvania, Carolina, etc., to send over colonies ther; so
that the purity of the Gospell decaying heir will in all probability passe
over to America.' The foreign schools of law where he had studied naturally
affected his treatment of legal questions. Until the publication of the
great work of Stair, the common civil law of Scotland was in a
comparatively fluid state, though there were some legal treatises of
authority, such as Craig's _Feudal Law_. Mackenzie's _Criminalls_ was
published in 1676, and is often referred to by Lauder. Many of his
contemporaries at the bar had studied like himself in the foreign schools
of the Roman Civil Law, and in his reports of cases the original sources
are quoted with enviable familiarity and appositeness.


TORTURE, ASTROLOGY, AND WITCHCRAFT

In questions of social ethics, such as torture, and of popular belief, such
as astrology and witchcraft, Lauder was not much in advance of his age. He
frequently mentions the infliction of torture without any comment. When
Spence and Carstairs were tortured with the thummikins, he describes them
as 'ane ingine but lately used with us,' and possibly he had some
misgiving. The subjects of astrology and witchcraft had an attraction for
his inquiring and speculative mind.[26] He believed in the influence of the
heavenly bodies, and more firmly in witchcraft, for which many unhappy
women were every year cruelly put to death. These trials at times evidently