When, as is related in the foregoing chapter, I had nourished my
knowledge of the council into maturity, I began to cast about for
the means of exercising the same towards a satisfactory issue. But
in this I found a great difficulty, arising from the policy and
conduct of Mr Andrew M'Lucre, who had a sort of infeftment, as may
be said, of the office of dean of guild, having for many years been
allowed to intromit and manage the same; by which, as was insinuated
by his adversaries, no little grist came to his mill. For it had
happened from a very ancient date, as far back, I have heard, as the
time of Queen Anne, when the union of the kingdoms was brought to a
bearing, that the dean of guild among us, for some reason or
another, had the upper hand in the setting and granting of tacks of
the town lands, in the doing of which it was jealoused that the
predecessors of Mr M'Lucre, no to say an ill word of him, honest
man, got their loofs creeshed with something that might be called
agrassum, or rather, a gratis gift. It therefore seemed to me that
there was a necessity for some reformation in the office, and I
foresaw that the same would never be accomplished, unless I could
get Mr M'Lucre wised out of it, and myself appointed his successor.
But in this lay the obstacle; for every thing anent the office was,
as it were, in his custody, and it was well known that he had an
interest in keeping by that which, in vulgar parlance, is called
nine points of the law. However, both for the public good and a
convenience to myself, I was resolved to get a finger in the dean of
guild's fat pie, especially as I foresaw that, in the course of
three or four years, some of the best tacks would run out, and it
would be a great thing to the magistrate that might have the
disposal of the new ones. Therefore, without seeming to have any
foresight concerning the lands that were coming on to be out of