ale, wine, clothing, places at theatres, etc., the cost of travelling by
coach, posting, fare in sailing packet to London and so on.

[Sidenote: H.O. 137.]

[Sidenote: Genealogical Roll.]

There are many illustrations throughout Lauder's manuscripts of the poverty
of Scotland, relatively not only to the present time but to England. The
official salary of a judge before the Union was £200, and it only reached
that figure during his lifetime. Some time after the Union it was raised to
£500. On the appointment of the Earl of Middleton as joint Secretary of
State for England with Sunderland, in place of Godolphin, Lauder notes,
'This was the Dutchesse of Portsmouth's doing, and some thought Midleton
not wise in changing (tho it be worth £5000 sterling a year, and 3 or 4
years will enrich on), for envy follows greatnesse as naturally as the
shadow does the body, and the English would sooner bear a Mahometan for
ther Secretar than a Scot, only he has now a good English ally, by marrieng
Brudnell Earle of Cardigan's sister.' Thus the salary of a Secretary of
State in England was the same in 1684 as it is now, whereas the salary of a
Scottish judge was only one eighteenth part of its present amount: Lauder
in his will gives a detailed account of his own investments. Sir Thomas
Dick Lauder computes that he left about £11,000 besides the estate of
Fountainhall, which he inherited. He was, however, the son of a wealthy
man. At his marriage before he had any means of his own, 90,000 merks were
settled by his father, who had several other children, on the children of
the marriage (£5000 sterling, representing a sum many times as large in the
present day).

MONEY