In the final hours of 14 October 1691, a periwigmaker named Peter Chrystie meandered along to Dundee’s mercat cross from a nearby inn to ‘drink the health’ of the recently ousted King James VII, whose birthday it was. Climbing onto the cross, Chrystie then encouraged passers-by to join his celebration. A scuffle broke out as Chrystie ‘fell foull’ of his audience, who clearly felt far more loyalty to the new post-revolution regime established under King William and Queen Mary. Amidst the ensuing fracas that led to his arrest, Chrystie was badly beaten and some of his own drinking companions from earlier that evening even attempted to strangle him with his own cravat.
As historical incidents go, Chrystie’s drunken antics seem far from momentous. Indeed, despite the grave tone of the treason accusations he initially faced, Chrystie eventually walked free unpunished. After an uncomfortable eight weeks of imprisonment, he petitioned his way to freedom by pleading ignorance of his actions. The ‘trueth’, Chrystie rued in his address to the privy council, was that he ‘knew not perfectly what passed’ because he was so ‘overtaken by drink’. It was ruled that Chrystie had already been ‘sufficiently punished for his being in drink’, spending so long in prison unable to see or support his family, and councillors allowed him to ‘purge’ himself of any further ‘disaffection’ to the government by swearing an oath of allegiance to William and Mary. At this point, Chrystie disappears from historical records and the incident appears resolved; the 17th-century equivalent of a slap on the wrist.
However, when considered among wider patterns of resistance, we can see how Chrystie sought to
