7. John Williamson of Moffat, originally the tenant of a sheep farm, became a convert to the theories of Pythagoras and a believer in the transmigration of souls. As a vegetarian he forbade the buyers of his sheep and lambs to slaughter them and his landlord therefore deprived him of the property but gave him a small annuity. He read widely in some of the more esoteric branches of philosophy, became an amateur mineralogist, and wandered about in search of useful metals. His discovery of a mineral spring, the Hartfield Spa, added somewhat to his income. Though he advocated polygamy, he never married. John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, who knew him described his eccentricities at some length, commenting: “It was plain that John had a mist in his brain; but it was fortunate that it neither spoilt his morals nor diminished his goodwill to man.” Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, Alexander Allardyce, ed. (Edinburgh and London, 1888), II, 327–35.

8. Only the lower half of a single sheet has survived.