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The MacAulay crest seems almost a benign icon by comparison with many of other the clan crests, like the Clan-Chattan or Mackintosh: "Touch not the cat but a glove", and it also appears to relate little to the motto ‘Dulce Periculum’ (danger is sweet), for how dangerous or threatening is a boot or shoe likely to be?
Although many have speculated how the device must in some manner relate to the fact that Sir Aulay MacAulay was in 1608 appointed a commissioner for fixing the price of boots and shoes, surely if this was the source for the device and applelation, one might find the same device employed among the crests of the other commissioners who were appointed for that purpose the same year or some other year: for example, Napier of Merchistoun, Dundas of that Ilk, Stewart of Minto, or any one of the remaining forty commissioners spread among nineteen burghs beside Dumbarton. So why not Sempill of Fulwood? Was he not also appointed for the same purpose and shared the duties with Sir Aulay?
So if the couped boot does not symbolize ‘he who fixes the price of boots and shoes’, then what else might the boot symbolize?
It is said that there was a popular rhyme celebrating Sir Aulay that went like "Aulay M’Aulay, Knight o’ Cairndhu, Provost o’ Dunbarton and Bailie o’ the Rhu." In 1591, some ten years before Aulay M’Aulay of Ardincaple was dubbed a knight of the Realm, he served at various times as juror on assise in major court cases, and once as Bailie of the Regality Court of the Lennox, Sir Aulay served as a judge on criminal cases. But also during his lifetime there were quite a large number of celebrated cases for sorcery and witchcraft, including one very notorious case in 1591 involving a certain Doctor Johnne Feane alias Cunningham who was master of the school at Saltpans in Lothian. Among the methods employed to extract the truth from witches and warlocks included the use of the "boote" or "bootkin" for extreme cases of high treason or witchcraft such as this instance.
Robert Pitcairn in his Criminal Trials of Scotland (1833) described the devise as a "horrid instrument extended from the ankles to the knee, and at each stroke of a large hammer, (which force the wedges closer,) the question was repeated. In many instances, the bones and flesh of the leg were crushed and lacerated in a shocking manner before confession was made. It is noted that when Fian endured the tortures inflicted upon him, he did so with almost incredible firmness." After "his nailes upon his fingers were riven and pulled off with an instrument called in Scottish a 'Turkas,' which in England is called a 'payre of pincers,' then "under everie nayle there was thrust in two needles," yet he would not confess; he was then "put to the most severe and cruell paine in the worlde, called the bootes; whilk, after he had received three strokes, being inquired if hee would consesse his damnable actes and wicked life, his toong would not serve him to speake."
Here Pitcairn adds, "the rest of the witches willed to search his toong, under which was founde two pinnes, thrust up into the heade; whereupon the witches did say, Now is the charmed stinted; and shewed, that those charmed pinnes were the cause he could not consesse any thing: Then was he immediately released of the bootes, brought before the King, his consession was taken, and his own hand willingly set thereunto, confessing to all his wicked deeds, of his oaths to the Devill, &c." However, on other questions that he would not speak to, he was "convaied againe to the torment of the bootes, wherein he continued a long time, and did abide so many blows in them, that his legges were crushed and beaten together as small as might bee;... [till] the bones and flesh so brused, that the bloud and marrow sprouted forth in greit abundance, whereby, they were made unserviceable for ever." Doctor Feane was soon after arrainged, condemned to die, was strangled and his body burnt upon the Castle-hill of Edenbrough, on a Saterdaie, in the ende of Januarie, 1591.
Although it is Captain Archibald MacAulay, who at the head of a troop of dragoons is said to have earned the imfamous epithet, "the Bloody" MacAulay, when he harried Covenanters and their Conventicles within the Lennox, arresting and punishing many including some of his own in-laws, it seems a far more likely chance that the old "boot" displayed in the crest of Sir Aulay’s armorials was perhaps an appellation symbolic of the "boote" as used in the manner decribed above within his high court of Regality of the Lennox. Sir Aulay is first noted by name as serving on an assize at Edinburgh in the year 1588, and in an earlier case in 1577 though more likely represented by his father Walter M’Cawlay of Ardincapil, Walter was amerciated for being absent from another such case in 1564.
As Pitcairn remarks, the "Bailie or Judge of every Regality, &c., having the privilege of criminal jurisdiction, was entitled, on finding surety for the due administration of justice, to appear at the bar of another Regality and even at the bar of the Supreme Court and claim the person of the panel, if resident within his bounds. This was often the occasion of much injustice and oppression; for, though liable to be called to account for their conduct, the privacy of their proceedings, their distance from the seat of government, and the frequently disturbed state of the country, often prevented the circumstances from reaching the ears of the officers of the crown, excepting in very flagrant instances." It was not until 1713 that the family’s rights to the Heritable Bailiary of the Regality Court of the Lennox was set aside and stripped from them.
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