Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/162

 have reason to know that it was successful, as we find him in a few years possessed of a considerable capital, the time being considered, which he employed to advantage in various money-lending transactions. It must not be forgot that the penal laws of the Catholic period pronounced all direct taking of interest upon money, to be usurious and illegal. These denunciations did not decrease the desire of the wealthy to derive some profit from their capital, or diminish the necessity of the embarrassed land-holder who wished to borrow money. The mutual interest of the parties suggested various evasions of the law, of which the most common was, that the capitalist advanced to his debtor the sum wanted, as the price of a corresponding annuity, payable out of the lands and tenements of the debtor, which annuity was rendered redeemable upon the said debtor repaying the sum advanced. The moneyed man of those days, therefore, imitated the conduct imputed to the Jewish patriarch by Shylock. They did not take

but they retained payment of an annuity as long as the debtor retained the use of their capital, which came to much the same thing. A species of transaction was contrived, as affording a convenient mode of securing the lender's money. Our researches have discovered that George Bannatyne had sufficient funds to enter into various transactions of this kind, in the capacity of lender; and, as we have no reason to suppose that he profited unfairly by the necessities of the other party, he cannot be blamed for having recourse to the ordinary expedients, to avoid the penalty of an absurd law, and accomplish a fair transaction, dictated by mutual expediency."

Bannatyne, about the same time that he became a burgess of Edinburgh, appears to have married his spouse, Isobel Mawchan [apparently identical with the modern name Maughan], who was the relict of Bailie William Nisbett, and must have been about forty years of age at the time of her second nuptials, supposing 1586 to be the date of that event, which is only probable from the succeeding year having produced her first child by Bannatyne. This child was a daughter, by name Janet, or Jonet; she was born on the 3rd of May, 1587. A son, James, born on the 6th of September, 1589, and who died young, completes the sum of Bannatyne's family. The father of Bannatyne died in the year 1583, and was succeeded in his estate of Newtyle, by his eldest living son, Thomas, who became one of the Lords of Session by that designation, an appointment which forms an additional voucher for the general respectability of the family. George Bannatyne was, on the 27th of August, 1603, deprived of his affectionate helpmate, Isobel Mawchan, at the age of fifty-seven, [sic] She had lived, according to her husband's "Memoriall," "a godly, honourable, and virtuous life; was a wise, honest, and true matron, and departed in the Lord, in a peaceful and godly manner."

George Bannatyne himself deceased previous to the year 1608, leaving only one child, Janet, who had, in 1603, been married to George Foulis of Woodhall and Ravelstone, second son of James Foulis of Colingtoun. His valuable collection of Scottish poetry was preserved in his daughter's family till 1712, when his great-grandson, William Foulis of Woodhall, bestowed it upon the Honourable William Carmichael of Skirling, advocate, brother to the Earl of Hyndford, a gentleman who appears to have had an eminent taste for such monuments of antiquity. While in the possession of Mr Carmichael, it was borrowed by Allan Ramsay, who selected from its pages the materials of his popular collection, styled, "The Evergreen." Lord Hailes, in 1770, published a second and more correct selection from the Bannatyne Manuscript; and the venerable tome was,