... so successful in blinding his
fellow-citizens that he continued a highly reputable
member of the Town Council ...
Vol. 1 p. 113 (Rel. 1.34)
... but, thanks to the
west wind, Leith was saved.
“ We continued working to windward of the
Firth,” says ...
Vol. 6 p. 197 (Rel. 1.24)
... new Commissioners, under whose care the
entire property continued to prosper, while trade
continued to increase ...
Vol. 6 p. 284 (Rel. 1.22)
... 26th July, 1808, by William Oliphant,
and continued until September, 1811, appeared,
and was ...
Vol. 6 p. 236 (Rel. 1.13)
... Loch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I4
CHAPTER 111.
CASTLE OF EDINBURGH ( continued ).
The Legend of the White ...
Vol. 2 p. 385 (Rel. 1.09)
... of England in 1603, though,
as we shall show, it long continued to be a
fashionable quarter of the metropolis ...
Vol. 3 p. 3 (Rel. 1.06)
... the city as one
of its representatives along with Lord Macaulay,
and continued to sit till 1852, and ten years ...
Vol. 2 p. 368 (Rel. 1.02)
... ever distinctly agreed upon, and each University
continued to pursue the method to which it had
been used ...
Vol. 5 p. 19 (Rel. 0.93)
... of the
Napiers of the Wrychtis-housis had been continued
from early times.”
By the Chamberlain ...
Vol. 5 p. 32 (Rel. 0.92)
... AND NEW EDINBURGH.
CHAPTER XXIII. ,
THE HIGH STREET ( continued ).
PAGR ' The Black Turnpike-Bitter ...
Vol. 2 p. 388 (Rel. 0.91)
![High Street.] THE QUACK DOCTOR’S ACROBATS. 201
an audience. Then he began to vend his drugs
at eightpence per packet. Nicoll admits that they
were both good and real, and describes the antics
of the assistants.
Upon a great rope, fixed from side to side of
the street, a man descended upon his breast with
~ ~ ~~~~
danced seven-score times, without intermission,
lifting himself and vaulting s k quarter high above
his own head and lighting directly upon the tow
(rope) as punctually as if he had been dancing on
the plain stones.”
Four years after a different scene was witnessed
THE NETHER BOW PORT, FROM THE CANONGATE. ( F m an Etcking6y Jams SKrrrc of RdGhw.)
his arms “stretched out like the wings of a fowl,
to the admiration of many.” Nicoll adds that the
country chirurgeons and apothecaries, finding his
drugs both cheap and good, came to Edinburgh
from all parts of the realm, and bought them for
the purpose of retailing them at a profit. The
antics and rope-dancing were continued for many
days with an agility and nimbleness “admirable
to the beholders; one of the dancers having
28
in the High Street, when, in 1666, after the battle
of the Pentland Hills-a victory celebrated by
the discharge of nearly as many guns from the
Castle as there were prisoners-the captives were
marched to the Tolbooth. They. were eighty
in number; and these poor Covenanters were
conveyed manacled in triumph by the victor,
with trumpets sounding, kettle-drums beating, and
banners displayed. And Crookshank records in](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p021.gif "Volume 2 Page 201")
... them at a profit. The
antics and rope-dancing were continued for many
days with an agility and nimbleness ...
Vol. 2 p. 201 (Rel. 0.9)
... performed
their usual devotions in the church of the Abbey
till the Reformation,” after which it continued ...
Vol. 3 p. 1 (Rel. 0.88)
... Hume--" Cprsica" Boswell-Dr. Johnso-Dr. Blki-" Gladstone's Land "-A Fire in ...
Vol. 2 p. 386 (Rel. 0.84)
... history
of Edinburgh and its castle, as from that
time it continued to be almost permanently the
Bertha, her ...
Vol. 1 p. 16 (Rel. 0.84)
![Leith.] REPULSE OF THE ENGLISH AND SCOTS. I77
Cornelle, Shelly, Littleton, Southworthe, and nine
other officers, with 2,240 men.
To keep the. field (i.~., the Reserve), Captain
Somerset, and eight other captains, with 2,400
men.
“Item ; it is ordered that the Vyce Admyralle
of the Queen’s Majesty’s schippes shall, when a
token is given, send Vc. (500) men out of the
Navye into the haven of Leythe, to give an assaulte
on the side of the towne, at the same instant when
the assaulte shal be gevene on the breche.”
Captain Vaughan was ordered to assault the
town near Mount Pelham, and the Scots on the
westward and seaward.
The assault was not made until the 7th of May,
when it was delivered at seven in the morning on
dead they could find, and suspended the corpses
along the sloping faces of the ramparts, where they
remained for several days. The failure of the
attempted storm did not very materially affect the
blockade. On the contrary, the besiegers still continued
to harass the town by incessant cannonading
from the mounds already formed and others they
erected One of the former, Mount Falcon, must
have been particularly destructive, as its guns swept
the most crowded part of Leith called the Shore,
along which none could pass but at the greatest
hazard of death. Moreover, the English were
barbarously and uselessly cruel. Before burning
Leith mills they murdered in cold blood every
individual found therein.
The close siege had now lasted about two months,
PROSPECT OF LEITH, 1693. (Reduced Facainrilc aftw Grernvillr Coil us.)
four quarters, but, for some reason not given, the
fleet failed to act, and by some change in the plans
Sir James Crofts was ordered, with what was deemed
a sufficient force, to assail the town on the north
side, at the place latterly called the Sand Port,
where at low water an entrance was deemed easy.
For some reason best known to himself Sir James
thought proper to remain aloof during the whole
uproar of the assault, the ladders provided for
which proved too short by half a pike’s length;
thus he was loudly accused of treachery-a charge
which was deemed sufficiently proved when it was
discovered that a few days before he had been seen
in conversation with the Queen Regent, who addressed
him from the walls of Edinburgh Castle.
The whole affair turned out a complete failure,
English and Scots were alike repulse2 r%Ah slaughter,
“and singular as it may appear,” says a writer,
“ the success of the garrison was not a little aided
by the exertionsof certain ladies, whom the French,
with their usual gallantry to the fair sex, entertained
in their quarters.” To these fair ones Knox
applies some pretty rough epithets.
The French now made a sally, stripped all the
110
without any prospect of a termination, though
Elizabeth continued to send more men and more
ships ; but the garrison were reduced to such dire
extremities that for food they were compelled to
shoot and eat all the horses of the. officers and
gens Zurmes. Yet they endured their privations
with true French sung froid, vowing never to surrender
while a horse was left, <‘their officers exhibiting
that politeness in the science of gastronomy
which is recorded of the Margchal Strozzi, whose
maifre de cuisine maintained his master‘s table with
twelve covers every day, although he had nothing
better to set upon it now and then except the
quarter of a carrion horse, dressed with the grass
and weeds that grew upon the ramparts.”
The discovery, a few years ago, of an ancient
well filled to its brim with cart-loads of horses’
heads, near the head of the Links, was a singular
but expressive monument of the resolution with
which the town was defended
The unfortunate Queen Regent did not live to
see the end of these affairs. She was sinking
fast. She had contemplated retiring to France,
and had a commission executed at Blois by Francis](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v5p188.gif "Volume 5 Page 177")
... the
blockade. On the contrary, the besiegers still continued
to harass the town by incessant ...
Vol. 5 p. 177 (Rel. 0.83)
... his charge as an episcopal
minister at the Revolution, continued to make a
living here by writing and printing ...
Vol. 4 p. 256 (Rel. 0.79)
![The West Bow.]
A BITTER personal quarrel had existed for some
years between James Johnstone of Westerhall and
Hugh (from his bulk generally known as Braid
Hugh) Somerville of the Writes, and they had
often fought with their swords and parted on equal
temis. Somerville, in the year 1596, chancing to
be in Edinburgh on private business, was one day
loitering about the head of the Bow, when, by
chance, Westerhall was seen ascending the steep
and winding street, and at that moment some
officious person said, “ There is Braid Hugh
Somerville of the Writes.”
THE OLD ASSEMBLIES. 3’5
Westerhall, conceiving that his enemy was lingering
there either in defiance, or to await him, drew
his sword, and crying, “Turn, villain!” gave
Somerville a gash behind the head, the most severe.
wound he had ever inflicted, and which, according
to the “ Memoirs of the Somervilles,” was “ much
regrated eftirwards by himselt”
Writes, streaming with blood, instantly drew his
sword, and ere Westerhall could repeat the stroke,
put him sharply on his defence, and being the
taller and stronger man of the two, together with
the advantage given by the slope, he pressed him
could retire for refreshments, or to rosin their bows.
Here then did the fair dames of Queen Anne’s
time, in their formal stomachers, long gloves, ruffles
and lappets, meet in the merry country dance, or
the stately minuef de la (our, the beaux of the time,
with their squarecut velvet coats and long-flapped
waistcoats, with sword, ruffles, and toupee in tresses,
when the news was all about the battle of Almanza,
the storming of Barcelona, or the sinking of the
Spanish galleons by Benbow in the West Indies,
or it might be-in whispers-of the unfurling of the
standard on the Braes of Mar.
The regular assembly, according to Arnot, was
. first held in the year 17 10, and it continued entirely
hnder private management till 1746, but though
the Scots as a nation are passionately fond of
dancing, the strait-laced part of the community
bitterly inveighed against this infant institution.
In the Library of the Faculty of Advocates there
is a curious little pamphlet, entitled, a “Letter
from a Gentleman iti the Country to his Friend in
the City, with an Answer thereto concerning the
New Assembly,” which affords a remarkable glimpse
of the bigotry of the time :-
“I am informed that there is lately a society
erected in your town, which I think is called an
Assembly. The speculations concerning this meeting
have of late exhausted the most part of the
public conversation in this countryside :. some are
pleased to say that ’tis only designed to cultivate
polite conversation, and genteel behaviouramong the
better sort of folks, and to give young people an
opportunity of accomplishing themselves in both ;
while others are of opinion that it will have quite a
different effect, and tends to vitiate and deprave the:
minds and inclinations of the younger sort.”
The author, who might have been Davie Deans
himself, and who writes in 1723, adds that he had
been much stirred on this matter by the approaching
solemnity of the Lord’s Supper, and that he had
been “informed that the design of this (weekly)
meeting was to afford some ladies an opportunity
to alter the station that they had long fretfully continued
in, and to set off others as they should
prove ripe for the market.”
The old Presbyterian abhorrence of ‘‘ promiscuous
dancing” was only held in check by the
less strait-laced spirit of the Jacobite gentry; but
so great was the opposition to the Edinburgh
Assembly, as Jackson tells us in his “History of
the Stage,” that a furious rabble once attacked
the rooms, and perforated the closed doors with
red-hot spits.
Arnot says that the lady-directress sat at the
head of the room, wearing the badge of heroffice,
a gold medal with a motto and device,
emblematic of charity and parental tenderness.
After several years of cessation, under the effect.
of local mal-influence, when the Assembly was
re-constituted in 1746, among the regulations hung
up in the hall, were tko worth quoting :-
“No lady to be admitted in a nz$f-gowr
(negl&i?), and no gentleman in boots.”
‘‘ No misses in skirts and jackets, robe-coats, nor.
staybodied-gowns, to be allowed to dance in country
dances, but in a set by themselves.”](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p135.gif "Volume 2 Page 315")
... to Arnot, was
. first held in the year 17 10, and it continued entirely
hnder private management till 1746, ...
Vol. 2 p. 315 (Rel. 0.78)
... of Flodden. Throughout
the minority of James V. Edinburgh continued tO
her to obey the Estates, and took an ...
Vol. 1 p. 40 (Rel. 0.74)
... ‘Memoirs,’ lived many years after in
Edinburgh, and continued to the last to adore the
memory of her ...
Vol. 3 p. 25 (Rel. 0.73)
![North Bridge.] LADY GLENORCHY. 361
they dispensed with the ‘moderation of the call,’
a form about which they stickle zealously, if by it
they could get a minister presented by the legal
patron to be rejected; while they did not insist
upon the stipend being properly secured ; while
they agreed to permit Lady Glenorchy to dispose
without control, upon those pious offerings which
should have been applied towards the support of
the chanty workhouse; while they, in fact, eluded
that right of patronage over all churches in this city,
the chapel to all the privileges it had enjoyed
by the countenance and protection of the
Presbytery.
In 1776 Lady Glenorchy invited Dr. Thomas
Snell Jones, a Wesleyan Methodist, to accept the
charge of her chapel, and after being ordained to
the office of pastor by the Scottish Presbytery of
London he became settled as incumbent on the
25th of July, 1779, and from that date continued
to labour as such, until about three years before his
holding communion with the Established ministers,
which is vested in the magistrates of Edinburgh ;
and while they had no powver to depose from the
benefice in this chapel the minister installed by
them in case of his errors in life or doctrine !”
To avoid unpleasantness, Mr. Balfour, like Mr.
Grove, declined the charge.
It was now that the matter came before the
Synod, which not only gave judgment in the
matter, but forbade all ministers or probationers
within their bounds to preach in this unlucky
chapel, or to employ the minister of it in any
capacity. From this sentence the Presbytery of
Edinburgh appealed to the next General Assembly
of the Church, which reversed it, and restored
46
death, which occurred on the 3rd of March, 1837,
a period of nearly fiRyeight years.
He preached the funeral sermon on the demise
of Lady Glenorchy on the 17th July, 1786, in
her forty-fourth year. She was buried, by her
own desire, in avault in the centre of the chapel
By a settlement made some time before her death,
she endowed the latter with a school which wac
built near it. Therein, a hundred poor children
were taught to read and write. It was managed
by trustees, with instructions which secure its perpetuity.
Lady Glenorchy’s Free Church schooI is
now at Greenside.
In I 792 Dr. Jones had as a colleague, Dr. Greville
Ewing, afterwards editor of 2’’ Missionary](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p181.gif "Volume 2 Page 361")
... incumbent on the
25th of July, 1779, and from that date continued
to labour as such, until about three years ...
Vol. 2 p. 361 (Rel. 0.72)
![Parliament House.] TREATY OF UNION. 163
to regain the throne; for the proposed union
with England had inflamed to a perilous degree
the passions and the patriotism of the nation.
In August the equivalent money sent to Scotland
as a blind to the people for their full participation
in the taxes and old national debt of England, was
pompously brought to Edinburgh m twelve great
waggons, and conveyed to the Castle, escorted by
a regiment of Scottish cavalry, as Defoe tells us,
amid the railing, the reproaches, and the deep
curses of the people, who then thought of nothing
but war, and viewed the so-called equivalent as
the price of their Scottish fame, liberty, and
honour.
In their anathemas, we are told that they spared
not the very horses which drew the waggons, and on
the return of the latter from the fortress their fury
could no longer be restrained, and, unopposed by
the sympathising troops, they dashed the vehicles
to pieces, and assailed the drivers with volleys of
stones, by which many of them were severely
injured.
“It was soon discovered, after all,” says Dr.
Chambers, “ that only LIOO,OOO of the money was
specie, the rest being iu Exchequer bills, which the
Bank of England had ignorantly supposed to be
welcome in all parts of Her Majesty’s dominions.
This gave rise to new clamours. It was said the
English had tricked them by sending paper instead
of money. Bills, payable 400 miles of, and which
if lost or burned would be irrecoverable, were a
pretty price for the obligation Scotland had come
under to pay English taxes.’’
In the following year, during the sitting of the
Union Parliament, a terrible tumult arose in the
west, led by two men named Montgomery and
Finlay. The latter had been a sergeant in the
Royal Scots, and this enthusiastic veteran burned
the articles of Union at the Cross of Glasgow, and
with the little sum he had received on his discharge,
enlisted men to march to Edinburgh, avowing his
intention of dispersing the Union Parliament,
sacking the House, and storming the Castle. I n
the latter the troops were on the alert, and the
guns and beacons were in readiness. The mob
readily enough took the veteran’s money, but
melted away on the march ; thus, he was captured
and brought in a prisoner to the Castle, escorted by
250 dragoons, and the Parliament continued its
sitting without much interruption.
The Articles of Union were framed by thirty
commissioners acting for England and thirty acting
for Scotland ; and though the troops of both COUTI’
tries were then fighting side by side on the Continent,
such were their mutual relations on each side
of the Tweed, that, as Macaulay says, they could
not possibly have continued for one year more ‘‘ on
the terms on which they had been during the
preceding century, and that there must have been
between them either absolute union or deadly
enmity; and their enmity would bring frightful
calamities, not on themselves alone, but on all the
civilised world Their union would be the best
security for the prosperity of both, for the internal
tranquillity of the island, for the just balance of
power among European states, and for the immunities
of all Protestant countries.”
As the Union debates went on, in vain did the
eloquent Belhaven, on his knees and in tears,
beseech the House to save Scotland from extinction
and degradation; in vain did the nervous
Fletcher, the astute and wary Lockhart, plead for
the fame of their forefathers, and denounce the
measure which was to close the legislative hall
for ever. “ Many a patriotic heart,” says Wilson,
“ throbbed amid the dense crowd that daily assembled
in the Parliament Close, to watch the decision
of the Scottish Estates oa the detestable scheme
of a union with England. Again and again its fatetrembled
in the balance, but happily for Scotland,
English bribes outweighed the mistaken qeal ot
Scottish patriotism and Jacobitism, united against
the measure.”
On the 25th of March, 1707, the treaty or
union was ratified by the Estates, and on the zznd
of April the ancient Parliament of Scotland adjourned,
to assemble no more. On that occasion
the Chancellor Seafield made use of a brutal jest,
for which, says Sir Walter Scott, his countrymen
should have destroyed him on the spot.
It is, of course, a matter of common history,
that the legislative union between Scotland and
England was carried by the grossest bribery and
corruption; but the sum actually paid to members
who sat in that last Parliament are not perhaps
so well known, and may be curious to the
reader.
During some financial investigations which were
in progress in 1711 Lockhart discovered and
made public that the sum of Lzo,540 17s. 7d. had
been secretly distributed by Lord Godolphin, the
Treasurer of England, among the baser members ot
the Scottish Parliament, for the purpose of inducing
them to vote for the extinction of thek country,
and in his Memoirs of Scotland from the Accession
of Queen Anne,” he gives us the following list of
the receivers, with the actual sum which was paid
to each, and this list was confirmed on oath hy
David Earl of Glasgow, the Treasurer Deputy of
Scotland .
I
.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v1p175.gif "Volume 1 Page 163")
... Castle, escorted by
250 dragoons, and the Parliament continued its
sitting without much interruption.
The ...
Vol. 1 p. 163 (Rel. 0.72)
![c
152 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH, [Leith Walk,
In I 748 the thoroughfare is described as “a very
handsome gravel walk, twenty feet broad, which is
kept in good repair at the public expense, and no
horses suffered to come upon it.” In 1763 two
stage coaches, with three horses, a driver, and
postilion each, ran between Edinburgh and Leith
every hour, consuming an hour on the way, from
8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ; and at that time there were no
other stage coaches in Scotland, except one which
set out at long intervals for London.
Before that nothing had been done, though in
1774 the Week0 Magazine announced that “a new
road for carriages is to be made betwixt Edinburgh
and Leith. It is to be continued from the end of
the New Bridge by the side of Clelland’s Gardens
and Leith Walk. [Clelland‘s Feu was where Leith
Terrace is now.] We hear that the expense of it
is to be defrayed by subscription.”
In I779 Arnot states that “so great is the concourse
of people passing between Edinburgh and
HIGH STREET, PORTOBELLO.
In 1769, when Provost Drummond built the
North Bridge, he gave out that it was to improve
the access to Leith, and on this pretence, to conciliate
opposition to his scheme, upon the plate in
the foundation-stone of the bridge it is solely described
as the opening of a new road to Leith;
and after it was opened the Walk became freely
used for carriages, but without any regard being
paid to its condition, or any system established
for keeping it in repair ; thus, consequently, it fell
into a state of disorder “from which it was not
rescued till after the commencement of the present
century, when a splendid causeway was formed at
a great expense by the city of Edinburgh, and a
toll erected for its payment.”
Leith, and so much are the stage coaches employed,
that they pass and re-pass between these towns
156 times daily. Each of these carriages holds
four persons.” The fare in some was 2hd.; in
others, gd.
In December, 1799, the Herald announces that
the magistrates had ordered forty oil lamps for
Leith Walk, ‘‘ which necessary k~iprovement,” adds
the editor, will, we understand, soon tzke place.”
Among some reminiscences, which appeared
about thirty years ago, we. have a description of
Anderson’s Leith stage, ‘ I which took an hour and
a half to go from the Tron Church to the shore. A
great lumbering affair on four wheels, the two fore
1 painted yellow, the two hind red, having formerly](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v5p163.gif "Volume 5 Page 152")
... is to be made betwixt Edinburgh
and Leith. It is to be continued from the end of
the New Bridge by the side of ...
Vol. 5 p. 152 (Rel. 0.72)
... to one of the large houses described
in Adam Square.
Continued success attended the school from
its opening; ...
Vol. 2 p. 380 (Rel. 0.72)
... he bore in
close upon him hand to hand. Thus they continued
in close and mortal combat for about ...
Vol. 2 p. 316 (Rel. 0.71)
![“ CLARINDA.” 327 Bristo Strht.]
pointed out by Sir Walter himself to the late Dr.
Robert Chambers. In 1792 Mr. Luckmore was
appointed one of the four English masters of the
High School on the city’s establishment, and continued
to hold that office till his death, in 181 I. Sir
Walter Scott, on leaving his school in Hamilton’s
Entry, was placed under the domestic tutelage of
Mr. James French, who prepared him to join Mr.
Luke Fraser‘s second class at the High School,
in October, 1779.
Another interesting locality in Bristo Street, at its
junction with the Potterrow, was long known as the
General’s Entry, No. 58, thoughhow it exists but
in name. This was a desolate-looking court of
ancient buildings. The south and east sides of the
quadrangle were formed by somewhat ornate edifices.
The crowstepped gable at the south-east
angle bore an antique sun-dial, with the quaint
legendand
beyond this was a row of circular-headed
dormer windows, in the richly decorated style of
James VI, One of these bore a shield, charged
with a monkey and three mullets-in-chief, surrounded
by elaborate scroll-work of the same reign
and bearing the initials J.D.
Unvarying tradition has assigned this mansion to
General Monk as a residence while commanding
in Scotland, but there is not much probability to
support it. The house was furnished with numerous
out-shots and projections, dark, broad, and
bulky stacks of chimneys, reared in unusual places,
all blackened by age and encrusted by the smoke
of centuries. It is said to have been built by Six
James Dalrymple, afterwards first Viscount Stair,
one of the Breda Cammissioners, and who continued
his practice at the bar with great reputation afte1
the battles of Dunbar and Worcester.
That he was a particular favourite with General
Monk, and even with Cromwell, to whom the
former recommended him as the fittest person foi
the bench in 1657, is well known; and under such
circumstances, it may be supposed ‘that Monk
would be his frequent visitor when he came from
his quarters at Dalkeith to the capital. Tradition
has assigned the house as the permanent residence
in those days of the Commander of the Forces in
Scotland. But there is sufficient proof that it was
the town abode of the Stair family, till, like the
rest of the Scottish nobility, they abandoned Edinburgh,
after the Treaty of Union. “ I t is not
unlikely,” says Wilson, ‘‘ that the present name oj
the old court is derived from the more recen!
residence there of John, second Earl of Stair, wha
served during the protracted campaigns of the
“ WE SHALL DIE ALL ; ”
Duke of Marlborough, and was promoted to the
rank of lieutenant-general after. the bloody victory
of Malplaquet. He shared in the fall of the great
duke, and retired from Court until the accession of
George I., during which interval it is probable that
the family mansion in the Potterrow formed the
frequent abode of the disgraced favourite.”
But Generalk Entry is perhaps now most
intimately associated with one of Burns’s heroines,
Mrs. McLehose, the romantic Clarinda of the notorious
correspondence, in which the poet figured
as Sylvander. He was introduced to her in the
house of a Miss Nimmo, on the first floor of an
old tenement on the north side of Alison Square.
A little parlour, a bed-room, and kitchen, accord.
ding to Chambers, constituted the accommodation
of Mrs. Agnes McLehose, “now the residence of
two, if not three, families in the extreme of humble
life.“
In December, 1787, Burns met at a tea-party
this lady, then a married woman of great beauty,
about his own age, and who, with her two children,
had been deserted by a worthless husband. She
had wit, could use her pen, had read “ Werther”
and his sorrows, was sociable and fl.irty, and possessed
a voluptuous lovelines% if we may judge by
the silhouette of her in Scott Douglas’s edition of
thepoet’s works. She and Burns took afancy to each
other on the instant. She invited him to tea, but he
offered a visit instead. An accident confined him
for about a month to his room, and this led to the
famous Clarinda and Sylvander correspondence.
At about the fifth or sixth exchange of their letters
she wrote: “ I t is really curious, so much fun
passing hetween two persons who saw each other
only once.”
During the few months of his fascination for this
fair one in General’s Entry, Bums showed more of
his real self, perhaps, than can be traced in other
parts of his published correspondence. In his first
letter to her after his marriage, he says, in reply to
her sentimental reproaches, ‘‘ When you call over
the scenes that have passed between us, you will
survey the conduct of an honest man struggling
successfully with temptations the most powerful
that ever beset humanity, and preserving untainted
honour in situations where the severest virtue
would have forgiven a fall.” But had Clarinda
been less accessible, she might habze discovered
eventually that much of the poet’s warmth *as
fanciful and melodramatic. From their correspondence
it would appear that she was in expectation
of Bums visiting her again in Alison
Square in 1788.
She was the cousin-german of Lord Craig, who,](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v4p147.gif "Volume 4 Page 327")
... of the
High School on the city’s establishment, and continued
to hold that office till his death, in 181 I. ...
Vol. 4 p. 327 (Rel. 0.69)
... very
high notiom of lengthened devotions, in which he
continued many hours a day ; he would often pray
in his ...
Vol. 5 p. 101 (Rel. 0.69)
... Garden, which had been his
own, eastward of the bridge, continued to be used
as such till the time when the ...
Vol. 2 p. 363 (Rel. 0.69)
![North Bridge.] THE OLD THEATRE ROYAL. 343
able performer in fashionable comedy, and had
been long a favourite at the Canongate Theatre.
Bland was also well connected ; he had been a
Templar, an ofiicer in the army at Fontenoy, and
in the repulse of the British cavalry by the Highlanders
on Cliftonmoor in 1745. For twenty-three
years he continued to be a prime favourite on
these old boards ; he was the uncle of Mrs. Jordan ;
and Edmund Glover, so long a favourite also in
Edinburgh and Glasgow, was nearly related to him.
In 1774 Foote came from Dublin to perform here
again. “We hear,” says Ruddiman’s Magazine,
“that he is to perform seven nights, for which he
is to receive A250. The Nabob, Th Bankmyt,
The Maidof Bath, and Pie9 in Pattms, all of which
have been written by our modern Aristophanes, are
the four pieces that will be exhibited.”
In these new hands the theatre became prosperous,
and the grim little enclosure named Shakespeare
Square-sprang up near it; but the west side
was simply the rough rubble wall of the bridge,
terminating in later years, till 1!60, by a kind of
kiosk named “The Box,” in which papers and
periodicals weie sold. It was simply a place of
lodging-houses, a humble inn or two, like the Red
Lion tavern and oyster shop,
At intervals between 1773 and 1815 Mr. Moss
was a prime favourite at the Royal. One of his
cherished characters was Lovegold in The Miser;
but that in which he never failed to “bring down
the house ” was Caleb, in He wouZd 6e a Soldier,
especially when in the military costume of the
early part of George 111,’s reign, he sang his song,
“ I’m the Dandy 0.”
Donaldson, I in his Recollections,” speaks of
acting for ihe, benefit of poor Moss in 1851, at
Stirling, when he-who had delighted the audience
of the then capital in the Mmchant of Venice-was
an aged cripple, penniless and poor. ‘‘ MOSS,” he
adds, ‘‘ caught the inspiration from the renowned
Macklin, whose yew, by Pope’s acknowledgment,
was unrivalled, even in the days of David Gamck,
and he bequeathed to his protdgge‘ Moss that conception
which descended to the most original and
extraordinary Shylock of any period-Edmund
Kean.”
’ During the management of West Digges most
of the then London stars, save Gamck, appeared in
the old Royal. Among them were Mr. Bellamy,
Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Barfy, Mr. and Mrs. Yates, and,
occasionally, Foote.
Of Mrs. Yates Kaygives an etching in the character
of the Duchess of Braganza, a play by an
obscure author named Henry Crisp. The period
to which his print refers was 1785, when-though
she was well advanced in years, having been borm
in 1729 (in London, but of Scottish parents)-
she was paid at the rate of a hundred guineas per
night by Mr. Jackson. From Mr. Digges she
and her husband received seven hundred guineas
at the end of one season. “The gentlemen of
the bar and some even of the bench had been
zealous patrons of the drama since the Canongate
days, even to the taking a personal concern
in its affairs. They continued to do this for
many years after this time. Dining being then
an act performed at four o’clock, the aristocracy
were free to give their attendance at half-past six,
and did so in great numbers whenever there wasany
tolerable attraction. So fashionable, indeed,
had the theatre become, that a man of birth and
fashion named Mr. Nicholson Stewart came forward
one night, in the character of Richard III.,
to raise funds for the building of a bridge over the
Carron, at a ford where many lives had been lost.
On this occasion the admission to all parts of the
house was five shillings, and it was crowded by
what the journals of the day tell us was a poZite
audience. The gentleman’s action was allowed to
be just, but his voice too weak.””
In 1781 the theatre passed into the hands of
Mr. John Jackson, author of a rather dull (c History
of the Scottish Stage, with a Narrative of Recent
Theatrical Transactions.” It was published at
Edinburgh in 1793. Like his predecessors in the
management he was a man of good education, and
well connected, and had chosen the stage as the
profession he loved best. In the second year of
his rule Siddons appeared in the full power of her
talent and beauty as Portia, at Drury Lane ; and
Jackson, anxious to secure her for Edinburgh,
hastened to London, and succeeded in inducing
her to make an engagement, then somewhat of an
undertaking when the mode of travel in those days
is considered; and on the zznd of May, 1784, she
made her appearance at the Theatre Royal, when,
as the Edinburgh Week0 Magazine records, ((the
manager took the precaution, after the first night,
to have ar. officer’s guard of soldiers at the principal
door. But several scuffles having ensued, through
the eagerness of the people to get places, and the
soldiers having been rash enough to use their
bayonets, it was thought advisable to withdraw the
guard on the third night, lest any accident had
happened from the pressure of the crowd, who
began to assemble round the doors at eleven in the
forenoon.”
Her part was Belvidera, Jaffier being performed
“Sketch of the Theatre Rod,“ 1859.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p163.gif "Volume 2 Page 343")
... Cliftonmoor in 1745. For twenty-three
years he continued to be a prime favourite on
these old boards ; ...
Vol. 2 p. 343 (Rel. 0.69)
... with the purpose to remove and
’ oppress such as continued attached to the hierarchy
or the House of ...
Vol. 5 p. 13 (Rel. 0.68)
![The West Bow.] MAJOR WEIR’S HOUSE. 3 13
an extraordinary quantity of yarn, in the time that
it would have taken four women to do so.
At the place of execution in the Grassmarket a
frenzy seized her, and the wretched old creature
began to rend her garments, in order, as she
shrieked, that she might die ‘‘ with all the shame
she could ! ”
Undeterred by her fate, ten other old women
were in the same year burned in Edinburgh for
alleged dabbling in witchcraft.
flaming torches, as if a multitude of people were
there, all laughing merrily. “This sight, at so
dead a time of night, no people being in the windows
belonging to the close, made her and her
servant haste home, declaring all that they saw to
the rest of the family.”
“For upwards of a century after Major Weir‘s
death he continued to be the bugbear of the Bow,
and his house remained uninhabited. His apparition,”
says Chambers, ‘‘ was frequently seen at
MAJOR WEIR’S LAND.
(Fmm a Measrrrrd Drawing by Thomas HamiZton, #idZiskcd in 183a)
The reverend Professor who compiled “ Satan’s
Invisible World,” relates that a few nights before
the major made his astounding confession, the
wife of a neighbour, when descending from the
Castle Hill towards the Bow-head, saw three
women in different windows, shouting, laughing,
and clapping their hands. She passed on, and
when abreast of Major Weir’s door, she saw a
woman of twice mortal stature arise from the street.
Filled with great fear, she desired her maid, who
bore a lantern, to hasten on, but the tall spectre
still kept ahead of them, uttering shouts of “unmeasurable
laughter,” till they came to the narrow
alley called the Stinking Close, into which the
spectre turned, and which was seen to be full of
40
night, flitting like a black and silent shadow about
the street. His house, though known to be deserted
by everything human, was sometimes observed at
midnight to be full of lights, and heard to emit
strange sounds, as of dancing, howling, and, what
is strangest of all, spinning. Some people occasionally
saw the major issue from the low close at
midnight, mounted on a black horse without a
head, and gallop off in a whirlwind of flame. Nay,
sometimes the whole inhabitants of the Bow would
be roused from their sleep at an early hour in the
morning by the sound of a coach and six, first
rattling up the Lawnmarket, and then thundering
down the Bow, stopping at the head of the terrible
close for a few minutes, and then rattling and](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p133.gif "Volume 2 Page 313")
... upwards of a century after Major Weir‘s
death he continued to be the bugbear of the Bow,
and his house ...
Vol. 2 p. 313 (Rel. 0.68)
... vii
. CHAPTER XXXI.
PAGE ALLEYS OF THE HIGH STREET ( continued ).
Blackfriars Wynd-The Grant of Alexander ...
Vol. 2 p. 389 (Rel. 0.68)
... account,
consist together of about seventy acres, and continued
down to 1762 a mere waste, and were ...
Vol. 5 p. 144 (Rel. 0.68)
... of Herdmanston. The second son,
also called William, continued the line of the Earls
of Caithness ; while the ...
Vol. 6 p. 349 (Rel. 0.67)
... Clement Little-Lady Little 01 Lihrton . 322
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE EXVIRONS OF EDINBURGH ( continued ...
Vol. 6 p. 398 (Rel. 0.67)
... Clement Little-Lady Little 01 Lihrton . 322
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE EXVIRONS OF EDINBURGH ( continued ...
Vol. 6 p. 399 (Rel. 0.67)
... Clement Little-Lady Little 01 Lihrton . 322
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE EXVIRONS OF EDINBURGH ( continued ...
Vol. 6 p. 397 (Rel. 0.67)
... was permanently
detrimental to the old one, as it continued
to furnish amusements too closely akin to
the ...
Vol. 3 p. 178 (Rel. 0.67)
... high enthusiasm which happily has never died,
but has continued till the auxiliary army then,
self-summoned ...
Vol. 2 p. 286 (Rel. 0.67)
... father‘s house in George Square,” says
Scott, “ continued to be my most established place
of ...
Vol. 4 p. 340 (Rel. 0.67)
... the
the corps was disbanded at the Peace of Amiens,
he continued to command till its final dissolution
in 1814 ...
Vol. 4 p. 202 (Rel. 0.66)
![Grassmarket.] EXECUTIONS IN THE GUSSMARKET. 231
Market, from the corner of Marlin’s Wynd (where
Blair Street is now) to the east end of the Grassmarket,
where it continued to be held until within
the last few years.
It was not until about a century later that this
great market place began to acquire an interest of
a gloomy and peculiar character, as the scene of
the public execution of many victims of religious
intolerance, who died heroically here, and also as
the spot where niany criminals met their doom.
Prior to the adoption of this place for public
executions, the Castle Hill and Market Cross had
been the spots chosen j and a sword, as in France
and elsewhere on the Continent, was used, before
the introduction of the Maiden, for beheading.
, Thus we find that in 1564, the magistrates, because
the old beheading sword had become worn out, reteived
from William Macartnay “ his tua-handit
sword, to be usit for ane heidmg sword,” and
gave him the sum of five pounds therefor.
Among some of the most noted eFecutions in the
Grassmarket were those of the fanatic Mitchel in
1676, for attempting to shoot Archbishop Sharp in
1668; of Sergeant John Nisbett, of Hardhill, in
1685, who had received seventeen wounds at the
battle of Pentland, and fought at Drumclog, according
to the Wodrow Biographies ; of Isabel Alison
and Marion Harvey-the latter only twenty years of
age-two young women, for merely having heard
Donald Cargill preach. The human shambles in
this place of wailing witnessed executions of this
kind almost daily till the 17th of February, 1688,
when James Renwick, the celebrated field preacher,
and the last martyr of the Covenant, was found
guilty, on his own confession, of disowning an uncovenanted
king, and executed in the twenty-sixth
yearof his age. Most of the hundred and odd
pious persons who suffered for the same cause in
Edinburgh breathed their last prayers on this spot.
Hence arose the Duke of Rothes’ remark, when a
covenanting prisoner proved obdurate, “ Then let
him glorify God in the Grassmarket”-the death
of that class of victinis always being accompanied
by much psalm-singing on the scaffold. In the time
of Charles II., Alexander Cockburn, the city hangman,
having murdered a King’s Bluegown, died here
the death he had so often meted out to others.
In 1724 the same place was the scene of the
partial execution of a woman, long remembered in
Edinburgh, as ‘‘ Half-hangit Maggie Dickson.” She
was a native of Inveresk, and was tried under
the Act of 1690 for concealment of pregnancy, in
the case of a dead child ; and the defence that she
was a married woman, though living apart from her
husband, who was working in the keels at New-
’
castle, proved of no avail, and a broadside of the
day details her execution with homble minuteness ;
how the hangman did his usual office of dragging
down her legs, and how the ’body, after hanging
the allotted time, was put into a coffin, thecooms
of which were nailed firmly to the gibbet-foot.
After a scuffle with some surgeon-apprentices
who wished to possess themselves of the body, her
friends conveyed it away by the Society Port, but
the jolting of the cart in which the coffin lay had
stirred vitality and set the blood in motion. Thus
she was found to be alive when passing Peffermiln,
and was completely restored at Musselburgh, where
flocks of people came daily to see her. She had
several children after this event, and lived long as
the keeper of an ale-house and as a crier of salt in
the streets of Edinburgh. (“ Dom Ann.” III., StaL
Acct., Vol XVI).
In the account of the Porteous Mob eo1 I.,
pp. I 28-13 I), we have referred to the executions of
Wilson and of Porteous, in 1736, in this placethe
street “crowded with rioters, crimson with
torchlight, spectators filling every window of the
tall houses-the Castle standing high above the
tumult amidst the blue midnight and the stars.”
It Continued to be the scene of such events till
1784; and in a central situation at the east end
of the market there remained until 1823 a qoassive
block of sandstone, having in its c h t r ~ a quadrangular
hole, which served as the socket of the
gallows-tree ; but instead of the stone there is now
only a St. Andrew’s Cross in the causeway to
indicate the exact spot.
The last person who suffered in the Grassmarket
was James Andrews, hanged there on the 4th of
February, 1784, for a robbery committed in Hope
Park ; and the first person executed at the west end
of the old city gaol, was Alexander Stewart, a youth
pf only fifteen, who had committed many depredations,
and at last had been convicted of breaking
into the house of Captain Hugh Dalrymple, of Fordell
in the Potterrow, and NeidpathCastle, the seat of
the Duke of Queensberry, from which he carried off
many articles of value. It was expressly mentioned
by the judge in his sentence, that he was to be
hanged in the Grassmarket, “or any other place
the magistrates might appoint,” thus indicating that
a change was in contemplation ; and accordingly,
the west end of the old Tolbooth was fitted up for
his execution, which took place on the 20th of
April, 1785.
In 1733 the Grassmarket was the scene of some
remarkable feats, performed by a couple of Italian
mountebanks, a father and his son, A rope being
fixed between the half-moon battery of the Castle,](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v4p051.gif "Volume 4 Page 231")
... is now) to the east end of the Grassmarket,
where it continued to be held until within
the last few ...
Vol. 4 p. 231 (Rel. 0.65)
![Fanester’s Wynd.] THE “MIRROR” CLUB. rzr
i “The Diurnal of Occurrents” records, that in
1566, John Sinclair, Bishop of Brechin, Dean of
Restalrig, and Lord President of the College of
Justice, died in Forrester‘s Wynd, in the house of
James Mossman, probably the same man who was a
goldsmith in Edinburgh at that time, and whose
father, also Jarnes Mossrnan, enclosed with the
present four arches the crown of Scotland, by
order of James V., when Henry VIII. closed
the crown of England. In consequence of the
houses being set on fire by the *Castle guns under
Kirkaldy, in 1572, it was ordered that all the
thatched houses between Beith’s J7ynd and St.
Giles’s should be unroofed, and that all stacks of
heather should be carried away from the streets
Fleshmarket Close ; but oftener, perhaps, in Lucky
Dunbar’s, a house situated in an alley that led
between Liberton’s Wynd and that of Forrester’s
Wynd. This Club commenced its publication of
the Mirror in January, 1729, and terminated it in
May, 1780. It was a folio sheet, published weekly
at three-halfpence. The *Lounger, to which Lord
Craig contributed largely, was commenced, by the
staff of the Mirror, on the 6th ot February, 1785,
and continued weekly till the 6th of January, 1787.
paid to their morals, behaviour, and every branch
of education.”
In this quarter Turk’s Close, Carthrae’s, Forrester’s,
and Beith’s Wynds, all stood on the slope
between Liberton’s Wynd and St. Giles’s Church ;
but every stone of these had been swept away many
years before the great breach made by the new
bridge was projected. Forrester‘s Wynd occurs so
often in local annals that it must have been a place
of some consideration.
JOHN DOWIE’S TAVERN. (Fs~m fk Engraving in How’$ YearBwk.’)
Among the members of this literary Club were Mr.
Alexander Abercrombie, afterwards Lord Abercrombie
; Lord Bannatyne ; Mr. George Home,
Clerk of Session ; Gordon of Newhall ; and a Mr.
George Ogilvie ; among their correspondents were
Lord Hailes, Mr. Baron Hurne, Dr. Beattie, and
many other eminent literary men of the time ; but
of the IOI papers of the Lounger, fifty-seven are
the production of Henry Mackenzie, including his
general review of Burns’s poems, already referred to.
In Liberton’s Wynd, we find from the Ediduygh
Advertiser of 1783, that the Misses Preston,
daughters of the late minister of Narkinch, had a
boarding school for young ladies, whose parents
“may depend that the greatest attention will be
18](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v1p133.gif "Volume 1 Page 121")
... of the Mirror, on the 6th ot February, 1785,
and continued weekly till the 6th of January, 1787.
paid to ...
Vol. 1 p. 121 (Rel. 0.65)
... teacher in the Trustees’ Academy, where
he continued to exercise considerable influence on
the ...
Vol. 5 p. 84 (Rel. 0.64)
... in a
coarse style of Early Gothic.
Constitution Street is continued north to the
intersection of Tower ...
Vol. 6 p. 244 (Rel. 0.63)
... chiefly in
the direction of James’s Court, and continued it till
dusk, when, “led by Major Robertson, ...
Vol. 2 p. 331 (Rel. 0.62)
... HousbHannah
Robertson-The White Horse Hostel-% Water Gate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
CHAPTER ...
Vol. 4 p. 385 (Rel. 0.61)
![Canongate] SIR ARCRIBALD ACHESON. 27
polished ashlar, with sculptured dormer windows,
dine stringcourses, and other architectural details of
:the period. The heavily moulded doorway, which
measures only three feet by six, is surmounted by
&he date 1633, and a huge monogram including the
initials of himself and his wife Dame Margaret
Hamilton. Over all is a cock on a trumpet and
scroll, with the motto Yzgilantibzls. He had been a
puisne judge in Ireland, and was first knighted by
Charles I., for suggesting the measure of issuing
out a commission under the great seal for the sltr-
If Hawthornden and of Sir William Alexander
Earl of Stirling.
A succession of narrow and obscure alleys
ollows till we come to the Horse Wynd, on the
LINTEL ABOVE THE DOOR OF SIR A. ACHESON’S HOWL
east side of which lay the royal stables at the time
of Darnley’s murder. In this street, on the site of a
school-house’ &c., built by the Duchess of Gordon
for the inhabitants of the Sanctuary, stood an old
tenement, in one of the rooms on the first floor of
which the first rehearsal of Home’s ‘‘ Douglas ”
took place, and in which the reverend author was
assisted by several eminent lay and clerical friends,
among whom were Robertson and Hume the
historians, Dr. Carlyle of Inveresk and the
author taking the leading male parts in the cast,
while the ladies were represented by the Rev. Dr.
Blab and Professor Fergusson. A dinner followed
in the Erskine Club at the Abbey, when they were
joined by the Lords Elibank, Kames, Milton, and
Monboddo. To the south of this house was the
town mansion of Francis Scott Lord Napier, who
inherited that barony at the demise of his grandmother,
Lady Napier, in 1706,and assumed the name
of Napier, and died at a great old age in 1773.
At its southern end the wynd was closed by an
arched gate in the long wall, which ran from the
Cowgate Port to the south side of the Abbey Close.
CHAPTER V.
THE CANONGATE (continued).
‘Separate or Detached Edifices therein-Sir Walter Scott in the CanongattThe Parish C%urch-How it came to be built-Its Official Position
--Its Burying Ground-The Grave of Ferguuon-Monument to Soldiers interred there-Ecceotric Henry Prentice-The Tolhth-
Testimony as to its Age-Its later uses-Magdalene Asylum-Linen Hall-Moray House-Its Historical Associations-The Winton House
-Whiteford House-The Dark Story of Queensbemy House.
THE advancing exigencies of the age and the of the court suburb, but there still remain some
necessity for increased space and modern sanitary ’ to which belong many historical and literary
improvements have made strange havoc among the I associations of an interesting nature. Scott was
ald alleys and mansions of the great central street ~ never weary of lingering among them, and recalling](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v3p039.gif "Volume 3 Page 27")
... the south side of the Abbey Close.
CHAPTER V.
THE CANONGATE ( continued ).
‘Separate or Detached Edifices ...
Vol. 3 p. 27 (Rel. 0.59)
... there . . . . . . . . . 62
CHAPTER VII.
VALLEY OF THE WATER OF LEITH ( continued ).
The Dean Bridge-Landslips at ...
Vol. 6 p. 394 (Rel. 0.54)
... A bell, which cost 1,490
merks Scots, was hung in it in 1673, and continued
weekly to summon the parishioners to ...
Vol. 1 p. 188 (Rel. 0.53)
![192 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. lThe High S e e a
and Sweden, tells us, at the storming of Boitzenburg,
there was “ a Scottish gentleman under the
enemy, who, coming to scale the walls, said aloud,
‘Have with you, gentlemen ! Thinke not now
you are on the streel of Edhlburgh bravading.’ One
of his own countrymen thrusting him through the
body with a pike, he ended there.”
In the general consternation which succeeded
* the defeat of the army at Flodden a plague raged
within the city with great violence, and carried off
great numbers. Hence the Town Council, to prevent
its progress,
ordered all shops
and booths to be
closed for the space
of fifteen days, and
neither doors nor
windows to be
opened within that
time, but on some
unavoidable occasion,
and nothing
to be dealt in but
necessaries for the
immediate support
of life. All vagrants
were forbidden
to walk in the
streets without hiving
each a light;
and several houses
that had been occupied
by infected
persons were demolished.
*
In 1532 the
High Street was
first paved or causewayed,
and many of
the old tenements
“These, however,” says Arnot, “are not to be
considered as arguing any comparative insignificancy
in the city of Edinburgh. They proceeded
from the rudeness of the times. The writers of
those days spoke of Edinburgh in terms that show
the respectable opinion they entertained of it. ‘ In
this city,’ says a writer of the sixteenth century-
Braun Agrippinensis--‘ there are two spacious
streets, of which the principal one, leading from
the Palace to the Castle, is paved with square
stones. The city itself is not built of bricks,
ANDREW CROSBY. (Fmm the Portrait in tkePadiament Haii.)
[The orkinal ofCuunseZZnr PLydelZ in “ Guy Mamneiing.“]
renovated. The former was done under the superintendence
of a Frenchman named Marlin, whose
name was bestowed on an alley to the south. The
Town Council ordered lights to be hung out by
night by the citizens to light the streets, and Edinburgh
became a principal place of resort from all
parts of the kingdom.
Till the reign of James V., the meal-market, and
also the flesh-market, were kept in booths in the
open High Street, which was also encumbered by
stacks of peat, heather, and other fuel, before every
door; while, till the middle of the end of the seventeenth
century, according to Gordon’s map, a fleshmarket
was kept in the Canongate, immediately
below the Nether Bow.
but of square freestones,
and so
stately is its app
ear an c e, that
single houses inay
be compared to
palaces. From the
abbey to the castle
there is a continued
street, which on
both sides contains
a range of excellent
houses. and the
better sort are built
of hewn stone.’
There are,” adds
Amot, ‘‘ specimens
oT the buildings of
the fifteenth century
still (1779) remaining,
particularly
a house on
the south side of
the High Street,
immediately above
Peeble’s Wynd,
having a handsome
front of hewn stone,
and niches in the
walls for the images of saints, which may justify
our author‘s description. The house was built
about 1430 (temp. James I.) No private building
in the city of modern date can compare
with it.”
The year 1554 saw the streets better lighted,
and some attempts made to clean them.
The continual wars with England compelled the
citizens to crowd their dwellings as near the Castle
as possible ; thus, instead of the city increasing in
limits, it rose skyward, as we have already mentioned
; storey was piled on storey till the streets
resembled closely packed towers or steeples, each
house, or “land,” sheltering from twenty to thirty
families within its walls. This was particularly thc](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v1p204.gif "Volume 1 Page 192")
... to
palaces. From the
abbey to the castle
there is a continued
street, which on
both sides contains
a range ...
Vol. 1 p. 192 (Rel. 0.53)
... to
Edinburgh by Jam- 1V.-The Port of 153c-The Town Burned by the English . . . . , . . . . . - . 164
CHAPTER ...
Vol. 6 p. 395 (Rel. 0.52)
... . . - . . . . . , . . . . . . 60
CHAPTER X.
HOLYROOD PALACE ( continued ). .
Queen Mary‘a Apartments-Her ...
Vol. 4 p. 386 (Rel. 0.51)
... reviled him sharply, while Lorne and his
bride continued to toy and smile in the face of
the people. ...
Vol. 3 p. 14 (Rel. 0.49)
... Stair's Close and BZackfk'ws Wynd!
There once our nobles, and here judges dwelt ."
CHAPTER ...
Vol. 2 p. 258 (Rel. 0.49)
![Cockburn Street.] MACLAREN
tiny sheet at first. “To the daily and bi-weekly
editions, a weekly publication, composed of selections
from the others, was added in 1860, representing
also the venerable CaZedoninn Mercury. A
few years ago the bi-weekly paper was merged into
the daily edition, whicA most of the subscribers
had come to prefer. In all its various forms
the Scofsman has enjoyed a most gratifying run of
prosperity.”
By 1820 the paper having become firmly established,
Mr. Maclaren resumed the editorship,
and very few persons now can have an idea of the
magni6de of- the task he
had to undertake. “Corruption
and arrogance,” says
the memoir already quoted,
“ were the characteristics of
the party in power-in
power in a sense of which
in these days we know
nothing. The people of
Scotland were absolutely
without voice either in vote
or speech. Parliamentary
elections, municipal government,
the management of
public bodies-everything
was in the hands of a few
hundred persons. In Edinburgh,
for instance, the
member of Parliament was
elected and the government
of the city camed on by
thirty - two persons, and
almost all these thirty-two
took their directions from
4ND RUSSEL 285
of the proudest proofs of his mechanical sagacity is
his having clearly foreseen and boldly proclaimed the
certain success of locomotion by railways, while as
yet the whole subject was in embryo or deemed a
wild delusion. A series of his articles on this
matter appeared in the Scofsman for December,
1824 and were translated into nearly every
European language; and Smiles, in his life of
Stephenson, emphatically acknowledges Maclaren’s
keen foresight in the subject. His great conversational
and social qualities lie apart from the
history of his journal, which he continued to edit
till compelled by ill-health
UEXANDER RUSSEL.
(Fmm a Phfograjh by 7. Moffat, Edidurgk.)
the Government of the day, or its proconsul.
Public meetings were almost unknown, and a free
press may be said to have never had an existence.
Lord Cockburn, in his ‘ Life of Jeffrey,’ says :-‘ I
doubt if there was a public meeting held in Edinburgh
between the year 1795 and the year 1820,’
and adds, in 1852, that ‘ excepting some vulgar,
stupid, and rash’ newspapers which lasted only
a few days, there was ‘no respectable opposition
paper, till the appearance of the Scofsman, which
for thirty-five years has done so much for the
popular cause, not merely by talent, spirit, and
consistency, but by independent moderation.”’
Its tone from the first had been that of a decided
Whig, and in church matters that of a ‘‘ voluntary.”
Apart from his ceaseless editorial labours, Mr.
Maclaren enriched the literature of his country by
many literary and scientific works, the enumeration
of which is somewhat unnecessary here ; but one
td resign in 1847. He
died in 1866, sfter having
lived in comparative retirement
at his suburban
villa in the Grange Loan, in
his eighty-fourth year, having
been born in 1782, at
Ormiston, in West Lothian.
In the management of
the paper he was ably succeeded
by Alexander Russel,
a native of Edinburgh,
who, after editing one or
two provincial journals,
became connected with the
Scotsmen in 1845, as assistant
editor. . He was a Whig
of the old Fox school, and
contributed many brilliant
articles to the Edinburgh
and Quurferb Reviews, the
“Encyclopzedia Britannica,”
and also B/ackwood’s Magazine.
As editor of the Scotsman he soon attracted
the attention of Mr. Cobden and other
leaders of the Anti-corn-law agitation, and his
pen was actively employed in furtherance of the
objects of the League ; and among the first subjects
to which he turned his attention in the S2ofsman
was the painful question of Highland destitution in
1847. A notable local conflict in which the paper
took a special interest was that of ~ 8 5 6 , on the
final retirement of Macaulay from the representation
of Edinburgh, and the return of Adam Black,
the eminent publisher ; and among many matters
to which this great Scottish journal lent all its
weight and advocacy in subsequent years, was the
great centenary of Robert Bums.
To the change in the Stamp Act we have already
referred-a change which, by the introduction of
daily papers, entailed an enormous increase of
work upon the editors ; but we are told that “ Mr.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p105.gif "Volume 2 Page 285")
... lie apart from the
history of his journal, which he continued to edit
till compelled by ill-health
UEXANDER ...
Vol. 2 p. 285 (Rel. 0.47)
... Patent-the playhouse Riot--"The Scottish Roscius"-A Ghost-Expiry of the Patent . . . ...
Vol. 2 p. 390 (Rel. 0.47)
... by the engagement
in the charter quoted; and the Prestons
continued annually to exercise their right of ...
Vol. 1 p. 140 (Rel. 0.45)
... of Condie, Advocate
to Queen Mary in 1561, and who continued
as such till 1571. He had three daughters. ...
Vol. 6 p. 343 (Rel. 0.45)
... the well-known WilIiam Murray,
as stage-manager, and it continued still to possess
an excellent company. The ...
Vol. 2 p. 348 (Rel. 0.44)
... upon the harbour of Leith. These works
were continued until October, 1555, and great
stones are ...
Vol. 5 p. 170 (Rel. 0.44)
![The Tolhwth] THE SIGNET ANI) ADVOCATES’ LIBRARIES. 123
THE genius of Scott has shed a strange halo around
the memory of the grim and massive Tolbooth
prison, so much so that the creations of his imagination,
such as Jeanie and Effie Deans, take the
place of real persons of flesh’ and blood, and suchtraders.
They have been described as being “a
dramdrinking, news-mongering, facetious set of
citizens, who met every morn about seven o’clock,
and after proceeding to the post-office to ascertain
the news (when the mail arrived), generally adjourned
to a public-house and refreshed themselves
with a libation of brandy.” Unfounded articles of
intelligence that were spread abroad in those days
were usually named “ Lawnmarket Gazettes,” in
allusion to their roguish or waggish originators.
At all periods the Lawnmarket was a residence
for nien of note, and the frequent residence of
English and other foreign ambassadors; and so
long as Edinburgh continued to be the seat of the
Parliament, its vicinity to the House made it a
favourite and convenient resort for the members
of the Estates.
On the ground between Robert Gourlay’s house
and Beith’s Wynd we now find some of those portions
of the new city which have been engrafted on
the old. In Melbourne Place, at the north end of
George IV. Bridge, are situated many important
offices, such as, amongst others, those of the Royal
Medical Society, and the Chamber of Commerce
and Manufactures, built in an undefined style of
architecture, new to Edinburgh. Opposite, with
its back to the bridge, where a part of the line of
Liberton’s Wynd exists, is built the County Hall,
presenting fronts to the Lawnmarket and to St.
Giles’s. The last of these possesses no common
beauty, as it has a very lofty portico of finely-flutcd
columns, overshadowing a flight of steps leading to
the main entrance, which is modelled after the
choragic monument of Thrasyllus, while the ground
plan and style of ornament is an imitation of the
Temple of Erechtheius at Athens. It was erected
in 1817, and contains several spacious and lofty
court-rooms, with apartments for the Sheriff and
other functionaries employed in the business of the
county. The hall contains a fine statue of Lord
Chief Baron Dundas, by Chantrey.
is the power of genius, that with the name of the
Heart of Midlothian we couple the fierce fury of
the Porteous mob. “Antique in form, gloomy and
haggard in aspect, its black stanchioned windows,
opening through its dingy walls like the apertures
~
Adjoining it and stretching eastward is the library
of the Writers to the Signet. It is of Grecian architecture,
and possesses two long pillared halls of
beautiful proportions, the upper having Corinthian
columns, and a dome wherein are painted the
Muses. It is 132 feet long by about 40 broad,
and was used by George IV. as a drawing-room,
on the day of the royal banquet in the Parliament ,
House. Formed by funds drawn solely from contributions
by Writers to H.M. Signet, it is under
a body of curators. The library contains more
than 60,000 volumes, and is remarkably rich in
British and Irish history.
Southward of it and lying psxallel with it, nearer
the Cowgate, is the Advocates’ Library, two long
halls, with oriel windows on the north side. This
library, one of the five in the United Kingdom entitled
to a copy of every work printed in it, was
founded by Sir George Mackenzie, Dean of Faculty
in 168z, and contains some zoo,ooo volumes,
forming the most valuable cpllection of the kind
in Scotland. The volumes of Scottish poetry alone
exceed 400. Among some thousand MSS. are those
of Wodrow, Sir James Balfour, Sir Robert Sibbald,
and others. In one of the lower compartments
may be seen Greenshield’s statue of Sir Walter
Scott, and the original volume of Waverley; two
volumes of original letters written by Mary Queen
of Scots and Charles I.; the Confession of Faith
signed by James VI. and the Scottish nobles in
1589-90; a valuable cabinet from the old Scottish
mint in the Cowgate; the pennon borne by
Sir William Keith at Flodden; and many other
objects of the deepest interest. The office of
librarian has been held by many distinguished
men of letters; among them were Thomas Ruddiman,
in 1702; David Hume, his successor, in,
1752 ; Adani Ferguson ; and David Irving, LL.D.
A somewhat minor edifice in the vicinity forms
the library of the Solicitors before the Supreme
Court](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v1p135.gif "Volume 1 Page 123")
... and other foreign ambassadors; and so
long as Edinburgh continued to be the seat of the
Parliament, its vicinity ...
Vol. 1 p. 123 (Rel. 0.43)
... abode in the Lawnmarket.
CHAPTER XI.
, THE LAWNMARKET ( continued ).
Lady Stair‘s Close-Gay or ...
Vol. 1 p. 102 (Rel. 0.43)
... he was returned for the city of
Edinburgh, which he continued to represent till
1852. He was a Lord of the ...
Vol. 6 p. 322 (Rel. 0.43)
![Waniston.] LORD WARRISTON. 99
family, the Laird of Dunipace ; but, owing to some
alleged ill-treatment, she grew estranged from him,
and eventually her heart became filled with a
deadly hatred.
An old and attached nurse began to whisper of
a means of revenge and relief from her married
thraldom, and thus she was induced to tamper
with a young man named Robert Weir, a servant
or vassal of her father at Dunipace, to become her
instrument.
At an early hour in the morning of the 2nd of
July, Weir came to the place of Warriston, and
being admitted by the lady to the chamber of her
husband, beat him to death with his clenched fists.
He then fled, while the lady and her nurse remained
at home. Both were immediately seized,
subjected to a summary trial of some kind before
the magistrates, and sentenced to death ; the lady
to have “ her heade struck frae her bodie ” at the
Canongate Cross.
In the brief interval between sentence and execution,
this unfortunate young girl, who was only
twenty-one, was brought, by the impressive discourse
of a good and amiable clergyman, from a
state of callous indifference to a keen sense of
her crime, and also of religious resignation. Her
case was reported in a small pamphlet of the day,
entitled, “Memorial of the Conversion of Jean
Livingston (Lady Waniston), with an account of
her carriage at her execution ”-a dark chapter of
Edinburgh social history, reprinted by Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe. “She stated, that on Weir
assaulting her husband, she went to the hall, and
waited till the deed was done. She thought she
still heard the pitiful cries uttered by her husband
while struggling with his murderer.” She tried to
. weep, but not a tear could she shed, and could
only regard her approaching death as a just expiation
of her crime.
Deeply mortified by the latter and its consequences,
her relations used every effort to secure
as much privacy as was possible for the execution;
hence it was arranged that while her nurse
was being burned on the Castle Hill at four o’clock
in the morning, thus attracting the attention of
all who might be out of bed at that time, Lady
Waniston should be taken to the Girth Cross, at
the east end of the town, and there executed by
the Maiden.
“The whole way as she went to the place,”
says the pamphlet referred to, “ she behaved herself
so cheerfully as if she was going to her
wedding, and not to her death. When she came
to the scaffold, and was carried up upon it, she
looked up to the Maiden with two longsome looks,
for she had never seen it before.
of her, to which all that saw her will bear record,
that her only countenance moved [sic, meaning
that its expression alone was touching], although
she had not spoken a word; for there appeared
such majesty in her countenance and visage, and
such a heavenly courage in gesture, that many
said, ‘That woman is gifted with a higher spirit
than any man or woman’s! ’”
She read an address to the spectators at the four
corners of the scaffold, and continued to utter
expressions of devotion till the swift descent of
the axe decapitated her. Balfour, in his “Annals,”
gives the year 1599 as the date of this tragedy.
Four years after Weir was taken, and on the
26th January, 1606, was broken on the wheel, a
punishment scarcely ever before inflicted in Scotland.
In the year 1619 Thomas Kincaid of Wamston
was returned heir to his father Patrick Kincaid of
Warriston, in a tenement in Edinburgh. This was
probably the property that was advertised in the
Couranf of 1761, as about to be sold, “that
great stone tenement of land lying at the head of
the old Bank Close, commonly called Warriston’s
Land, south side of the Lawn Market, consisting
of three bedchambers, a dining-room, kitchen, and
garret.” There is no mention of a drawing-room,
such apartments being scarcely known in the Edinburgh
of those days.
In 1663 another proprietor of Warriston came
to a tragic end, and to him we have already referred
in our account of Waniston’s Close.
This was Sir Archibald Johnston, who was known
as Lord Warriston in his legal capacity. He wag
an advocate of 1633. In 1641 he was a Lord of
Session. He was made Lord Clerk Register by
Cromwell, who also created him a peer,under the title
of Lord Wamston, and as such he sat for a time
in the Upper House in Parliament. After the
Restoration he was forfeited, and fled, but was
brought to Edinburgh and executed at the Marke
Cross, as we have recorded in Chapter XXV. ct.
Volume I.
Wodrow, in his “History of the Church of
Scotland,” states that Wamston’s memoirs, in his
handwriting, in the form of a diary, are still extant ;
if so, they have never seen the light. His character,
admirably drawn in terse language by his nephew,
Bishop Burnet, is thus given in the U History of his
Own Times,” Vol. 1.:-
“ Waniston was my own uncle. He was a man of
great application ; could seldom sleep above three
hours in the twenty-four. He studied the law
carefully, and had a great quickness of thought,
This I may say ,
.
*](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v5p110.gif "Volume 5 Page 99")
... the spectators at the four
corners of the scaffold, and continued to utter
expressions of devotion till the ...
Vol. 5 p. 99 (Rel. 0.42)
... college,
as he soon married and went to Scotland, where
he continued all his life attached to the ...
Vol. 4 p. 198 (Rel. 0.42)
... the perfsrmance highly relished.
The plays are regularly continued every Monday,
Wednesday, and ...
Vol. 2 p. 342 (Rel. 0.42)
... of March”
.
CHAPTER XX.
LEITH-HISTORICAL SURVEY ( continued ).
Si William Mown’s Suggestinns-Leith ...
Vol. 5 p. 184 (Rel. 0.42)
... [The Inch.
CHAPTER XL.
THE ENVIRONS OF EDINBURGH ( continued ).
The Inch Honse-The Winrams-Ednonstone and ...
Vol. 6 p. 338 (Rel. 0.42)
... and Brethren, begun from
the earliest times, and continued by the care of
numerous monks,’ may-when ...
Vol. 3 p. 50 (Rel. 0.42)
![Leith.] DEATH OF JAMES 111. 201
1488-he embarked in one of Sir Andrew’s ships
then anchored in the Roads of Leith, and landed
from it in Fifeshire. As the Admiral had been lying
there for some time, intending to sail to Flanders,
the Barons, now in arms against the Crown, spread
a report that James had fled, surprised the castle
of Dunbar, furnished themselves with arms and
ammunition out of the royal arsenal, “ and,” says
Abercrombie, “ overran the three Lothians and
the Merse, rifling and plundering all honest men.”
In April, 1488, the king re-crossed the Forth in
the admiral’s ship, and, marching past Stirling,
pitched his standard near Blackness, where his
army mustered thirty thousand, and some say
forty thousand, strong, but was disbanded after an
indecisive skirmish. Fresh intrigues ensued that
belong to general history; two other armies, in
all amounting to nearly seventy thousand men,
took the field James 111. had no alternative but
to take flight in the ships of Wood, then cruising
in the Forth, or to resort to the sword on the 11th
June, 1488.
His army took up a position near the Bum of
Sauchie, while ‘‘ Sir Andrew Wood, attending to
the fortune of war, sailed up the silver winding of
the beautiful river with the FZmw and YelZow
CaraveZ, and continued during the whole of that
cloudless day to cruise between dusky Alloa and
the rich Carse of Stirling, then clothed im all the
glory of summer.” On the right bank of the river
he kept several boats ready to receive the king if
defeat-as it eventually did-fell upon him, and
he often landed, with his brothers John and Robert
and a body of men, to yield any assistance in his
power.
While attempting to reach the ships James was
barbarously slain, and was lying dead in a mill
that still stands by the wayside, when rumour went
that he had reached the YeZZow Caravd Thus
Wood received a message in the name of the Duke
of Rothesay (afterwards James IV.), as to the truth
of this story; but Sir Andrew declared that the
king was not with him, and refilsed to go on shore,
when invited, without hostages for his own safety.
The Lords Fleming and Seaton came on board
in this capacity, and landing at Leith the admiral
was conducted to the presence of the Prince, who
was then a captive and tool in the hands of the
rebels, and only in his sixteenth year. Wood was
arrayed in handsome armour, and so dignified was
he in aspect, and so much did he resemble the
king his master, that the Prince, who had seen little
of the latter, shed tears, and said, timidly-
‘‘ Sir, are you my father? ”
. Then this true old Scottish mariner, heedless of
123
the titled crowd which regarded him with bitter
hostility, and touched to the heart by the question,
also burst into tears, and said-
“ I am not your father, but his faithful servant,
and the enemy of all who have occasioned his
downfall ! ”
“ Where is the king, and who are those you took
on board after the battle?” demanded several of
the rebel lords.
‘‘ As for the king, I know nothing of him. Finding
our efforts to fight for or to save him vain, my
brother and I returned to our ships.” He added,
says Buchanan, “that if the king were alive he
would obey none but him; ,and that if slain, he
would revenge him ! ”
He then went off to the ships, but just in time
to save the hostages, whom his impatient brothers
were about to hang at the yard-arm. The lords
now wanted the mariners of Leith to arm their
ships, and attack Wood; but, to a man, they
declined.
In the early part of 1489 Henry of England, to
make profit out of the still disturbed state of Scotland,
sent five of his largest ships to waste and burn
the sea-coast villages of Fife and the Lothians ; and
the young James IV., in wrath at these proceedings,
requested Sir Andrew Wood to appear before the
Privy Council and take measures to curb the outrages
of the English.
He at once undertook to attack them ; but James,
as they outnumbered him by three, advised him to
equip more vessels.
‘‘ No: he replied,” ‘‘ I shall only take my own
two-the FZower and the Jl‘ellow Carard.”
Accordingly, .with the first fair wind on a day in
February, he dropped down the Firth, and found
the plunder-laden English vessels hovering off
Dunbar, and which Tytler surmises to have been
pirates, as they came in time of truce. Wood at
once engaged them, and after an obstinate conflict,
of which no details are preserved, he brought them
all prizes into Leith. He presented their captains
to the young king, who now further rewarded him on
the 11th March, 1490, with the lands of Balbegnoth,
the superiority of Inchkeith, the lands of
Dron and Newbyrn ; and by a charter under the
Great Seal, 18th May, 1491, he granted to Sir
Andrew Wood “ license to build a castfe at Largo
with gates of iron as a reward for the great services
done and losses sustained by the said Andrew, and
for those services which there was no doubt he
would yet render.” This castle, fragments of which
yet remain, he appears to have built, with some
adjacent houses, by the hands of English pirates
whom he had captured at sea; and the coat](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p020.gif "Volume 6 Page 201")
... beautiful river with the FZmw and YelZow
CaraveZ, and continued during the whole of that
cloudless day to ...
Vol. 6 p. 201 (Rel. 0.42)
... for the
assay-master’s initials, and is still continued . In
1784 a ‘duty-mark’ was added, the form ...
Vol. 2 p. 377 (Rel. 0.42)
... presentations in Scotland
-a delicate duty, in which he continued to give
satisfaction to all. In 1744 Dr. ...
Vol. 4 p. 378 (Rel. 0.42)
... have
been a man of more than ordinary courage, for he
continued to reside in this terrible house till ...
Vol. 2 p. 228 (Rel. 0.42)
... apprenticeship in his house at Barcelona,
where he continued till spring, 1776, when he
returned to London, ...
Vol. 3 p. 142 (Rel. 0.41)
... Bishop of
Caithness and Orkney in 1762, but still continued
to reside in Leith, making occasional visits ...
Vol. 6 p. 231 (Rel. 0.41)
... conspicuously
about the city.
The Celtic congregation continued to meet 51
the Castle Wynd till 1815, when its ...
Vol. 4 p. 235 (Rel. 0.41)
![Princes Street.] EDINBURGH IN 1783. 119
vincial towns were combined in the case of Edinburgh
She was the titular capital of Scotland, and
as such, was looked up to with pride and veneration
by the nation at large. She was then the
residence of many of the old Scottish nobility, and
the exclusion of the British from the Continent,
during a long, protracted war, made her, either for
business, society, or education, the favourite resort
of strangers. She was the headquarters of the
legal profession at a time when both the Scottish
bench and bar were rendered illustrious by a numbet
of men celebrated far their learning, eloquence, and
wit. She was the head-quarters of the Scottish
Church, whose pulpits and General Assembly were
adorned by divines of great eminence and piety.
Lastly, she was the chief seat of scholarship, and
the chosen home of literature and science north of
the Tweed.”
With the Edinburgh of those days ,and of the
present we have now deal
CHAPTER XVII.
PRINCES STREET.
A Glance at Society-Change of BIanners, &-The Irish Giants-Poole’s Coffee-house-Shop of Constable 8 Co.-Weir’s Muscum, 1794-
The Grand Duke Nichoh-North British Insurance Life Association4ld Tax Office and New Club-Craig of Ricarton-“?he
White Rose of Scotland”‘-St. John’s Chapel-Its Tower and Vaults, &.-The Scott Monument and its MUseum-The Statues of Professor
Wilson, Allan Ramsay, Adam Black, Sir James Sirnpson, and Dr. Livingstone-The General Improvements in Princes Street.
IN 1774 a proposal to erect buildings on the south
side of Princes Street-a lamentable error in taste
it would have proved-led to an interdict by the
Court of Session, which ended in a reference to
the House of Lords, on which occasion Imd
Mansfield made a long and able speech, and the
result was, that the amenity of Princes Street was
maintained, and it became in time the magnificent
terrace we now find it.
Of the city in 1783 some glimpses are given us
in the ‘‘ Letters of Theophrastus,” appended to the
second edition of “Arnot.” In that year the
revenue of the Post Office was only ~ 4 0 , 0 0 0 .
There were four coaches to Leith, running every
half hour, and there were 1,268 four-wheeled carriages
and 338 two-wheeled paying duty. The
oystercellars had become numerous, and were
places of fashionable resort. A maid-servant’s
wages were about f;4 yearly. In 1763 they wore
plain cloaks or plaids; but in 1783 “silk, caps,
ribbons, ruffles, false. hair, and flounced. petticoats.”
In 1783 a number of bathing-machines had been
adopted at Leith. People of the middle class and
above it dined about four o’clock, after which no
business was done, and gentlemen were at no pains
to conceal their impatience till the ladies retired.
Attendance at church . was, much neglected, and
people did not think it “genteel” to take their
domestics with them. “In 1783 the daughters
even of tradesmen consume the moriings at the
toilet (to which rouge is now an appendage) or in
strolling from the perfumer‘s to the milliner’s.
They would blush to be seeri at market. The
cares of the family devolve upon a housekeeper,
’
and Miss employs those heavy hours when she
is disengaged from public or private amusements
in improving her mind from the precious stores of
a circulating library.” In that year a regular cockpit
was built for cock-fighting, where all distinctions
of rank and character were levelled. The weekly
concert of music began at seven o’clock, and
mistresses of boarding-schools, &c., would not allow
their pupils to go about unattended ; whereas,
twenty years before “young ladies might have
walked the streets in perfect security at all hours.”
In I 783 six criminals lay under sentence of death
in Edinburgh in one week, whereas it1 1763 three
was an average for the whole kingdom in a year.
A great number of the servant-maids still continued
“ their abhorrence of wearing shoes and stockings
in the morning.” The Register House was unfinished,
‘‘ or occupied by pigeons only,” and the
Records “ were kept in a dur.geon called the high
Parliament House.”
The High Street alone was protected by the
guard. The New Town to the north, and all the
streets and new squares to the south, were totally
unwatched ; and the soldiers of the guard still preserved
“the purity of their native Gaelic, so that
few of the citizens understand, or are understood
by them ;” while the king‘s birthday and the last
night of the year were ‘‘ devoted to drunkenness,
outrage, and riot, instead of loyalty, peace, and
harmony,” as of old.
One of the earliest improvements in the extended
royalty was lighting it with oil lamps; but in
the Adnerh’ser for 1789 we are told that “while all
strangers admire the beauty and regularity of the](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v3p131.gif "Volume 3 Page 119")
... whole kingdom in a year.
A great number of the servant-maids still continued
“ their abhorrence of wearing ...
Vol. 3 p. 119 (Rel. 0.41)
... and prosperous
reign of Alexander 111. the fortress continued to
be the chief place of the royal residence, ...
Vol. 1 p. 23 (Rel. 0.41)
... NEW EDINBURGH. [Holyrood.
CHAPTER X,
HOLYKOOD PALACE ( continued ).
.Queen Mary’s Apartments-Her Amval in ...
Vol. 3 p. 66 (Rel. 0.41)
![Gmrge Street.] THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. I47
of the college, which had entire control over ‘the
drugs of apothecaries and chemists. It further
protected Fellows from sitting on juries.
Under this charter the college continued to
discharge its functions for many years, although
it eventually abandoned in practice the exclusive
rights conferred on it, and ceased to exercise any
inspection over the shops of apothecaries as the
changes of social position and necessity caused
many of the provisions to fall into abeyance.
Having become sensible of the advantages that
would accrue to it from a new charter, to the end
that it might be free from the obligation of admitting
to its license all Scottish University graduates
without examination, to get rid of the clause prohibiting,
its connection with a medical school,
and further, that it might have the power of expelling
unworthy members, a new charter was prepared
in 1843, but, after a great many delays
and readjustments, was not obtained until the 16th
of August, 1861.
The first president of the institution was Dr.
Archibald Stevenson, who was elected on the 8th
of December, 1681, and held the chair till 1684;
his successor was Sir Robert Sibbald (of the house
of Balgonie), an eminent physician, naturalist, and
antiquary, who graduated in medicine at Leyden
in 1661 ; but from the time of his election there is
a hiatus in the records till the 30th of November,
1693, when we again find in the chair Dr.
Archibald Stevenson, with the then considerable
honour of knighthood.
It was when Sir Thomas Burnet, author oi
U Thesaurus Mediam Pructice,” London, I 673,
was president, in 1696-8, that we find it recorded
that certain ruinous buildings bordering on the
Cowgate were converted by the college ‘‘ into a
pavilion-shaped cold bath, which was open to the
inhabitants generally, at a charge for each ablution
of twelve shillings Scots, and one penny to the
servant; but those who subscribed one guinea
annually might resort to. it as often as they
pleased.”
Under the presidency of Dr. John Drumrnond,
in 1722, a new hall was erected in the gardens at
Fountain Close ; but proving insufficient, the college
was compelled to relinquish certain plans for
an edifice, offered by Adam the architect, and to
find a temporary asylum in the Royal Infirmary.
In 1770 the premises at Fountain Close were sold
for A800 ; more money was raised by mortgage
and other means, and the hall we have described
was erected in George Street, only to be relinquished
in time, after about seventy years’ occupancy.
“The same poverty,” says the “Historical Sketch,”
’
which had prevented the college from availing
itself of the plans of Adam, and which had caused
it to desire to part with its new hall in George
Street, even before its occupation, still pressed
heavily upon it. Having at that time no funded
capital, it was entirely dependent on the entrancefees
paid by Fellows, a fluctuating and inadequate
source of income. Besides, beautiful as the
George Street hall was in its outward proportions,
its internal arrangements were not so convenient as
might have been desired, and it is therefore not to
be wondered at that when the college found their
site was coveted by a wealthy banking corporation
their poverty and not their will consented ; and in
1843 the George Street hall was sold to the Commercial
Bank for Azo,ooo-a sum which it was
hoped would suffice to build a more comfortable
if less imposing, hall, and leave a surplus to secure
a certain, though possibly a small, annual income.
Although the transaction was obviously an advantageous
one for the college, it was not without
some difficulty that many of the Fellows made up
their minds to part with a building of which they
were justly proud.”
The beautiful hall was accordingly demolished
to the foundation stone, in which were found the
silver medals and other relics now in possession of
the college, which rented for its use No. 121,
George Street till the completion of its new hall,
whither we shall shortly follow k.
On its site was built, in 1847, the Commercial
Bank, an imposing structure of mingled Greek and
Roman character, designed by David Rhind, an
architect of high reputation. The magnificent
portico is hexastyle. There are ninety-five feet in
length of fapde, the columns are thirty-five feet in
height, with an entablature of nine feet ; the pediment
is fifteen feet six inches in height, and holds
in its tympanum a beautiful group of emblematic
sculpture from the chisel of A. Handyside Ritchie,
which figures on the notes of the bank. It has
a spacious and elegant telling-room, surrounded
by tall Corinthian pillars, with a vaulted roof,
measuring ninety feet by fifty. The Commercial
Bank of Scotland and the National Bank of Scotland
have been incorporated by royal charter ; but
as there is no Qubt about their being unlimited,
they are considered, with the Scottish joint stock
banks, of recent creation.
The deed of partnership of the Commercial
Bank is dated gist October, 1810, but subsequent
alterations have taken place, none of which, however,
in any way affect the principle named and
confirmed in the charter. The capital of the bank
was declared at ~3,000,000 j but only, a thud of](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v3p159.gif "Volume 3 Page 147")
... from sitting on juries.
Under this charter the college continued to
discharge its functions for many years, ...
Vol. 3 p. 147 (Rel. 0.41)
![The Old High School.] RECTORS AND TEACHERS, 291
, in use to teach in those mornings and forenoons.
And considering that the ordinary Latin rudiments
in use to be taught children at their beginning to
the Latin tongue is difficult and hard for beginners,
and that Wedderburn’s Rudiments are more plain
and easy, the Council ordain the said masters in
time coming, to teach and begin their scholars with
Wedderburn’s Rudiments in place of the Latin
Rudiments in use as taught formerly. Ro. CHIESLIE,
Provost.’’
David Wedderburn, whose work is thus referred
to, was born about 1570, and was the accomplished
author of many learned works, and died, it is supposed,
about 1644, soon after the publication of
his ‘‘ Centuria Tertia.”
In 1699 A40 Scots was voted by the magistrates
to procure books as a reward for the best scholars,
and when the century closed the institution was in
a most creditable condition, and they-as patrons
-declared that ‘‘ not a few persons that are now
eminent for piety and learning, both in Church and
State, had been educated there.”
In the year I 7 I 6 there was an outbreak among
the scholars for some reason now unknown ; but
they seem to have conducted themselves in an outrageous
manner, demolishing every pane of glass
in the school, and also of Lady Yester’s church,
levelling to the earth even the solid stone wall
which enclosed the school-yard. About this time
the janitor of the institution was David Malloch, a
man distinguished in after life as author of the
beautiful ballad of “ William and Margaret,” a poet
and miscellaneous writer, and under-secretary to the
Prince of Wales in 1733; to please the English
ear, he changed his name to Mallet, and became
an avowed infidel, and a venal author of the worst
description. Dr. Steven refers to his receipt as
being extant, dated 2nd February, 1718, “for
sixteen shillings and eight pence sterling, being his
full salary for the preceding half-year. That was
the exact period he held the office.”
In 1736 we again hear of the BZeis-siher, cca
profitable relic of popery, which it seemed difficult
to relinquish.” Heartburnings had arisen because
it had become doubtful in what way the Candlemas
offerings should be apportioned between the rector
and masters; thus, on the 28th January in that
year, the Council resolved that the rector himself,
and no other, shall collect, not only his own quarterly
fees, but also the fee of one shilling from
each scholar in the other classes. The Council
also transferred the right from the master of the
third, to the mzster of the first elementary class,
to demand a shilling quarterly from each pupil in
the rector’s class; and declared that the rector
and four masters should favourably receive from
the scholars themselves whatever benevolence or
Candlemas offerings might be presented.”
Thomas Ruddiman, the eminent grammarian and
scholar, who was born at Boyndie in 1674 and
who in 1724 began to vary his great literary
undertakings by printing the ancient Cdedonian
Mercqv, about I 737 established-together with
the rector, the masters, and thirty-one other persons-
a species of provident association for their
own benefit and that of their widows and children,
and adopting as the title of the society, “The
Company of the Professors and Teachers of the
liberal arts and sciences, or any branch or part
thereof, in the City of Edinburgh and dependencies
thereof.”
The co-partners were all taxed equally; but
owing to inequalities in the yearly contributions, a
dissolution nearly took place after an existence of
fifty years; but the association rallied, and stcl
exists in a flourishing condition.
One of the most popular masters in the early
part of the eighteenth century was Mr. James
Barclay, who was appointed in June, 1742, and
whose experience as a teacher, attainments, and
character, caused him to be remembered by his
scholars long after his removal to Dalkeith, where
he died in 1765.
When Henry Mackenzie, author of the ‘‘ Man of
Feeling,” was verging on his eightieth year, he
contributed to Dr. Steven’s CL History,” his reminiscences
of the school in his own early years,
between 1752 and 1757, which we are tempted to
quote at length :-
“Rector Lees, a very respectable, grave, and
gentlemanlike man, father or uncle, I am not sure
which, of Lees, the Secretary for Ireland. He
maintained great dignity, treating the other masters
somewhat de had a bar; severe, and rather too
intolerant of dulness, but kind to more promising
talents. It will not be thought vanity, I trust-for
I speak with the sincerity and correctness of a
third person-when I say that I was rather a
favourite with him, and used for several years after
he resigned his office to drink tea with him at his
house in a large land or building at the country
end of the suburb called Pleasance, built by one
Hunter, a tailor, whence it got the name of
‘ Hunter‘s Folly,’ or the Castle 0’ Clouts.’
cc MAsrERs continued-Ersf, or youngest class,
when I was put to school, Farquhar, a native of
Banffshire, cousin-german of Farquhar, author of
admired-and indeed t h q may be called admirable-
sermons, and of Mr. Farquhar, the Vicar of
Hayes, a sort of Parson Adams,’ a favourite ot](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v4p111.gif "Volume 4 Page 291")
... Folly,’ or the Castle 0’ Clouts.’
cc MAsrERs continued -Ersf, or youngest class,
when I was put to ...
Vol. 4 p. 291 (Rel. 0.41)
... after the creation of the New
Town, people of position continued to linger in the
Old Town and in the ...
Vol. 2 p. 282 (Rel. 0.41)
... personal exertions,
raised about A700 for this object, and continued to
do so for eight years subsequently. ...
Vol. 3 p. 98 (Rel. 0.41)
... came, Messrs. McVicar and Pitcairn,
his coadjutor, continued faithfully and successfully
to discharge the ...
Vol. 3 p. 134 (Rel. 0.41)
... Halkhead, to whom and his heirs
the estate passed, and continued to be the property
of his descendants, the ...
Vol. 6 p. 362 (Rel. 0.41)
![Newhaven.] REV. DR. FAIRBAIRN. 303
In 1820 there were landed at the old stone
pier of Newhaven, John Baud and fourteen other
prisoners, ‘f Radicals ” who had been taken after
the skirmish at Bonny Bridge, by the 10th Hussars
and the Stirlingshire yeomanry. They had been
brought by water from the castle of Stirling, and
were conveyed to gaol from Newhaven in six carriages,
escorted by a macer of justiciary, and the
detachment of a Veteran Battalion.
In the following year, and while railways were
still in the womb of the future, the Scots Magazine
announces, that a gentleman who had left
Belfast on a Thursday, “reached Glasgow the
same evening, and embarked on board the Tounit
(steamer) at Newhaven on Friday, and arrived at
Aberdeen that night. Had such an event been
predicted fifty years ago, it would have been as
easy to make people believe that this journey would
have been accomplished by means of a balloon.”
About five hundred yards westward oi the stone
pier, a chain pier was constructed in the year 1821,
by Captain (afterwards Sir Samuel) Brown, of the
Royal Navy, at the cost of A4,ooo. It is five
hundred feet long, four feet wide, has a depth
at low water of from five to six feet, and served
for the use of the steam packets to Stirling,
Queensferry, and other places above and below
Leith; yet, being unable to offer accommodation for
the bulky steam vessels that frequent the harbour
of the latter or that of Granton, it is now chiefly
used by bathers, and is the head-quarters of the
Forth swimming club.
It was opened on the 14th of October, ISzr,
and was afterwards tested by a weight of twentyone
tons placed upon the different points of
suspension. In 1840 it became the property of
the Alloa Steam Packet Company.
In 1838 Newhaven was erected into a quoad
sma parish, by the aathority of the Presbytery .of
Edinburgh, when a handsome church was erected
for the use of the community, from a design by
John Henderson of Edinburgh.
Near it, in Main Street, is the Free Church,
designed in good Gothic style by James A. Hamilton
of Edinburgh, an elegant feature in the locality,
but chiefly remarkable for the ministry of the late
Rev. Dr. Fairbairn, who died in January, 1879-
a man who came of a notable race, as the wellknown
engineers of the same name were his
cousins, as was also Principal Fairbairn of Glasgow.
He was ordained minister at Newhaven in 1838.
The great majority of his congregation were fishermen
and their families, who were always keenly
sensible of the mode in which he prayed for those
who were exposed to the dangers of the deep.
During his long pastorate these prayers were.a
striking feature in his ministrations, and Charles
Reade, while residing in the neighbourhood, frequently
attended Newhaven Free Church, and has,
in his novel of “ Christie Johnstone,” given a lifelike
portrait of his demeanour when administering
consolation, after a case of drowning.
Perhaps the most useful of thii amiable old
pastor’s philanthropic schemes was that of the
reconstruction of the Newhaven fishing fleet. He
perceived early that the boats in use were wholly
unsuited for modem requirements, and some years
before his death he propounded a plan for replacing
them by others having decks, bunks, and
other compartments. As soon as a crew came forward
with a portion of the money required, Dr. Fairbairn
had no difficulty in getting the remainder
advanced. Thirty-three large new boats, each
costing about Lzso, with as much more for fishing
gear, were the result of his kindly labours. They
have all been prosperous, and hundreds of the
inhabitants of Newhaven, when they stood around
his grave, remembered what they owed to the
large-hearted and prudent benevolence of this old
ministei.
In 1864 a local committee was appointed for
the purpose of erecting a breakwater on the west
side of the present pier, so as to form a harbour
for the fishing craft. Plans and specifications
were prepared by Messrs. Stevenson, engineers,
Edinburgh, and the work was estimated at the
probable cost of L;~,OOO ; and while soliciting aid
from the Board of Fisheries, the Board of Trade,
and the ,magistrates of Edinburgh, the fishermen
honourably and promptly volunteered to convey ’
all the stonework necessary in their boats or otherwise
from the quarry at‘ Qleensferry.
The fishermen of Newhaven rarely intermany
With the women of other fisher communities ; and
a woman of any other class, unacquainted with the
cobbling of nets, baiting and preparation of lines,
the occasional use of a tiller or oar, would be useless
as a fisherman’s wife; hence their continued
intermarriages cause no small confusion in the
nomenclature of this remarkable set of people.
The peculiar melodious and beautiful cry of the
Newhaven oyster-woman-the last of the quaint
old Edinburgh street cries-is well known ; and so
also is their costume ; yet, as in time it may become
a thing of the past, we may give a brief description
of it here. “A cap of linen or cotton,’J says a
writer in Chambers’s EdinQurgh Journal, ‘‘ surmounted
by a stout napkin tied below the chin,
composes the investiture of the hood ; the showy
structures wherewith other females are adorned
,
.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p122.gif "Volume 6 Page 303")
... would be useless
as a fisherman’s wife; hence their continued
intermarriages cause no small confusion in ...
Vol. 6 p. 303 (Rel. 0.41)
... had merely
provided for his own safety in these days of continued
turmoil, when no man could leave his ...
Vol. 1 p. 39 (Rel. 0.41)
... the retinue of
Magdalene, first queen of James V., in 1537.
It continued in possession of the Hopes till ...
Vol. 1 p. 94 (Rel. 0.41)
... XXXII.
ALLEYS OF THE HIGH STREET ‘( continued ).
Toddrick’s Wynd-Banquet to the Danish ...
Vol. 2 p. 266 (Rel. 0.41)
... [High Street.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE HIGH STREET-( continued ).
“The Salamander Land ”-The Old ...
Vol. 2 p. 242 (Rel. 0.41)
... their livings; but though expelled
from these, they. continued to officiate
privately to those who were ...
Vol. 4 p. 246 (Rel. 0.41)
![THE ROYAL INFIRMARY. 299 h6rmary Street]
students to witness surgical operations. The Infirmary
has separate wards for male and female
patients, and a ward which is used as a Lock
hospital ; but even in ordinary periods the building
had become utterly incompetent for the service
of Edinburgh, and during the prevalence of an epidemic
afforded but a mere fraction of the required
accommodation, and hence the erection of its magnificent
successor, to which we shall refer elsewhere.
The Earl of Hopetoun, in 1742, and for the last
twenty-five years of his life, generously contributed
A400 per annum to the institution when it was
young and struggling. In 1750 Dr. Archibald Kerr
of Jamaica bequeathed to it an estate worth
E218 11s. 5d. yearly; and five years afterwards
the Treasury made it a gift of jG8,ooo j yet it has
never met with the support from Government. that
it ought to have done, and which similar institutions
in London receive.
But the institution owed most of its brilliant
success to Lord Provost Drummond. Among his
associates in this good work he had the honoured
members of the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons
in Edinburgh, ever first in all works of goodness and
charity; and the first Dr. Munro, Professor of
Anatomy, was singularly sanguine of the complete
success of the undertaking.
That portion of the house which was founded by
the Earl of Cromarty was opened for the reception
of patients in December, 1741. The theatre described
was made to serve the purposes also of a
chapel, and twelve cells on the ground floor, for cases
of delirium fremens, being found unnecessary, were
converted into kitchens and larders, &c. The
grounds around the house, consisting of two acres,
and long bounded on- the south by the city wall,
were laid out into grass walks for the convalescents,
and ultimately the house was amply supplied with
water from the city reservoir.
In the years 1743-4 the sick soldiers of the
regiments quartered in the Castle were accommodated
in the Infirmary; and in the stormy
period of the '45 it was of necessity converted into
a great military hospital for the sick and wounded
troops of both armies engaged at Prestonpans and
elsewhere ; and in I 748 the surgeon-apothecaries,
who since 1729 had given all manner of medical
aid gratis, were feed for the first time. Wounded
from our armies in Flanders have been sent there
for treatment.
In 1748, after paying for the site, building,
furniture, &c., the stock of the institution amounted
to &5,00o; and sick patients not wishing to be resident
were invited to apply for advice on Mondays
and Fridays, and were in cases of necessity
admitted as supernumeraries at the rate of 6d. per
day. About this time there was handed over an
Invalid Grant made by Government to the city,
on consideration of sixty beds being retained for
the use of all soldiers who paid 4d. per diem for
accommodation, This sum, &3, 2 70, was fully made
over to the managers, who, for some time afteqfound
themselves called upon to entertain so many military
patients, that a guard had to be mounted on
the house to enforce order; and liberty was obtained
to deposit all dead patients in Lady Yester's
churchyard, on the opposite side of the street.
Hitherto the physicians had, with exemplary
fidelity, attended the patients in rotation j but in
January, 1751, the managers on being empowered
by the general court of contributors, selected Dr.
David Clerk and Dr, Colin Drummond, physicians
in ordinary, paying them the small honorarium of
;E30 annually.
The University made offer to continue its
services, together with those of the ordinary physicians,
which offer was gladly accepted; and
though the practice fell into disuse, they were long
continued in monthly rotation. To the option of
the two ordinary physicians was left the visiting
of the patients conjointly, or by each taking his
own department. "It was their duty to sign the
tickets of admission and dismission. In case of any
unforeseen occurrences or dangerous distemper, the
matron or clerks were permitted to use this authe
rity ; the physicians en their amval, however, were
expected to append their signatures to the tickets.
The good and economy of the house from the first,
induced the managers to appoint two of their
number to visit the institution once every month,
who were enjoined to inquire how far the patients
were contented with their treatment, and to note
what they found inconsistent with the ordinary
regulations : their remarks to be entered in a book
of reports, to come under review at the first meeting
of managers." (" Journal of Antiq.," VoL 11.)
In 1754 some abuses prevailed in the mode of
dispensing medicines to the out-door patients,
detrimental to the finances ; an order was given for
a more judicious and sparing distribution. In the
following pear application was made to the Town
Council, as well as to the Presbytery of the Church,
to raise money at their several churches to provide
a ward for sick servants-which had been found
one of the most useful in the house. From its
first institution the ministers of the city had, in
monthly rotation, conducted the religious services ;
but in the middle of 1756 the managers appointed
aregular chaplain, whose duty it was to preach
every Monday in the theatre for surgical operations.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v4p119.gif "Volume 4 Page 299")
... was gladly accepted; and
though the practice fell into disuse, they were long
continued in monthly rotation. ...
Vol. 4 p. 299 (Rel. 0.41)
... of sale catalogues of curious and rare
books, which he continued for a few years to
issue at intervals, and ...
Vol. 2 p. 210 (Rel. 0.41)
... Wynd to the
, east end of the Grass-market, where it continued to
’ be held till the present century. This ...
Vol. 2 p. 374 (Rel. 0.4)
![Craigcrook.] HISTORY OF CRAIGCROOK. 107
summer residence of Lord Jeffrey-deeply secluded
amid coppice.
The lands of Craigcrook appear to have belonged
in the fourteenth century to the noble family of
Graham. By a deed bearing date 9th April, 1362,
Patrick Graham, Lord of Kinpunt, and David
Graham, Lord of Dundaff, make them over to
John de Alyncrum, burgess of Edinburgh. He
in turn settled them on a chaplain officiating at
“Our Lady’s altar,” in the church of St. Giles,
and his successors to be nominated by the magistrates
of Edinburgh.
John de Alyncrum states his donation of those
lands of Craigcrook, was “ to be for the salvation
of the souls of the late king and queen (Robert
and Elizabeth), of the present King David, and of
all their predecessors and successors ; for the salvation
of the souls of all the burghers of Edinburgh,
their predecessors and successors ; of his own father
and mother, brothers, sisters, etc. ; then of himself
and of his wife; and, finally, of all faithful souls
deceased.”
The rental of Craigcrook in the year 1368 was
only A6 6s. 8d. Scots per annum; and in 1376 it
was let at that rate in feu farm, to Patrick and
John Lepars.
At an early period it became the property of
the Adamsons. William Adamson was bailie of
Edinburgh in 1513, and one of the guardians of
the city after the battle of Flodden, and Williim
Adamson of Craigcrook, burgess of Edinburgh
(and probably son of the preceding), was killed at
the battle of Pinkie, in 1547 ; and by him or his
immediate successors, most probably the present
castle was built-an edifice wbich Wood, in his
learned ‘‘ History of Cramond Parish,” regards
as one of the most ancient in the parish.
In consequence of the approaching Reformation,
the proceeds of the lands were no longer required
for pious purposes, and the latter were made over by
Sir Simon Prestonof Craigmillar, when Provost, to Sir
Edward Marj oribanks, styled Prebend of Craigcrook.
They were next held for a year, by George Kirkaldy,
brother of Sir James Kirkaldy of Grange in
Fifeshire, Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, who
engaged to pay for them A27 6s. 8d. Scots.
In June, 1542, they reverted again to Sir Edward
Majoribanks, who assigned them in perpetual feufarm
to William Adamson before-named. This
wealthy burgess had acquired much property in
the vicinity, including Craigleith, Cammo, Groat
Hall, Clermiston, Southfield, and part of Cramond
Regis. After Pinkie he was succeeded by his son
William, and Craigcrook continued to pass through
several generations of his heirs, till it came into
~~
the hands of Robert Adamson, who, in 1656, sold
to different persons the whole of his property.
Craigcrook was purchased by John Muir, merchant
in Edinburgh, whose son sold it to Sir John
Hall, Lord Provost of the city in 1689-92. He was
created a baronet in 1687, and was ancestor of the
Halls of Dunglass, on the acquisition of which, in
East Lothian, he sold Craigcrook to Walter Pringle,
advocate, from whose son it was purchased by John
Strachan, clerk to the signet.
When the latter died in 1719, he left the whole
of his property, with North Clermiston and the
rest of his fortune, both in land and movables
(save some small sums to his relations) ‘‘ mortified
for charitable purposes,”
The regulations were that the rents should be
given to poor old men and women and orphans ;
that the trustees should be “two advocates, two
Writers to the Signet, and the Presbytery of Edinburgh,
at the sight of the Lords of Session, and any
two of these members,” for whose trouble one
hundred merks yearly is allowed.
There are also allowed to the advocates, poor
fifty merks Scots, and to those of the writers to the
signet one hundred merks ; also twenty pounds
annually for a Bible to one of the members of the
Presbytery, beginning with the moderator and
going through the rest in rotation.
This deed is dated the 24th September, 1712.
The persons constituted trustees by it held a meeting
and passed resolutions respecting several
points which had not been regulated in the will. A
clerk and factor, each with a yearly allowance of
twenty pounds, were appointed to receive the
money, pay it out, and keep the books.
They resolved that no old person should be
admitted under the age of sixty-five, nor any orphan
above the age of twelve; and that no annuity
should exceed five pounds.
Among the names in a charter by William
Forbes, Provost of the Collegiate Church of St.
Giles, granting to that church a part of the ground
lying contiguous to his manse for a burial-place,
dated at Edinburgh, 14th January, 1477-8, there
appears that of Ricardus Robed, jrebena‘anks de
Cragmk mansepropie (“ Burgh Charters.”)
Over the outer gate of the courtyard a shield
bore what was supposed to have been the arms of
the Adamsons, and the date 1626 ; but Craigcrook
has evidently been erected a century before that
period. At that time its occupant was Walter
Adamson, who succeeded his father Willian~
Adamson in 1621, and whose sister, Catharine,
married Robert Melville of Raith, according to
the Douglas Peerage.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v5p118.gif "Volume 5 Page 107")
... he was succeeded by his son
William, and Craigcrook continued to pass through
several generations of his ...
Vol. 5 p. 107 (Rel. 0.4)
... . . . . . 157
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE ( continued ).
The Faculty of Advocates-The Wr:ters to the ...
Vol. 2 p. 387 (Rel. 0.4)
![Parlient Close.] JOHN OSW.4LD. I79
his peculiar hze& or place of resort by day or
night, where merchants, traders, and men of every
station, met for consultation, or good-fellowship,
and to hear the items of news that came by the
mail or stage from distant parts; and Wilson,
writing in 1847, says, “ Currie’s Tavern, in Craig’s
Close, ‘once the scene of meeting of various clubs,
and a favourite resort of merchants, still retains
.a reputation among certain antiquarian bibbers for
an old-fashioned luxury, known by the name
of jaj-in, a strange compound of small-beer and
whiskey, curried, as the phrase is, with a little
aatmeal.”
Gossiping Wodrow tells us in his ‘I Analecta,”
that, on the 10th of June, 1712, “The birthday of
the Pretender, I hear there has been great outrages
.at Edinburgh by his friends. His health was drunk
early in the morning in the Parliament Close j and
at night, when the magistrates were going through
the streets to keep th: peace, several were
taken up in disguise, and the King‘s health (ie.,
James VIII.) was drunk out of several windows,
and the glasses thrown over the windows when
the magistrates passed by, and many windows
were illuminated. At Leith there was a standard
:set upon the pier, with a thistle and Nemo me
imjune Zaessit, and J ‘R. VI11 ; and beneath,
Noe Abjuration. This stood a great part of the
-day.” Had the old historian lived till the close
.of the century or the beginning of the present,
he might have seen, as Chambers tells us, “Singing
Jamie Balfour ”-a noted convivialist, of whom
a portrait used to hang in the Leith Golf-housewith
other topers in the Parliament Close, all bareheaded,
on their knees, and hand-in-hand, around
.the statute of Charles II., chorusing vigorously,
“T. King s h d enjoy his own again.” Jamie
Balfour was well known to Sir Walter Scott.
About the year 1760 John’s coffee-house was
kept by a man named Oswald, whose son John,
born there, and better known under his assumed
name of Sylvester Otway, was one of the most
extraordinary characters of that century as a poet
.and politician. He served an apprenticeship to a
jeweller in the Close, till a relation left him a
legacy, with which he purchased a commission in
the Black Watch, and in 1780 he was the third
lieutenant in seniority in the 2nd battalion when
serving in India. Already master of Latin and
Greek, he then taught himself Arabic, and, quitting
the army in 1783, became a violent Radical, and
published in London a pamphlet on the British
Constitution, setting forth his views (crude as they
were) and principles. His amatory poems received
she dpprobation of Bums; and, after publishing
various farces, effusions, and fiery political papers,
he joined the French Revolutionists in 1792, when
his pamphlets obtained for him admission into
the Jacobite Club, and his experiences in the
qznd procured him command of a regiment composed
of the masses of Paris, with which he
marched against the royalists in La Vendie, on
which occasion his men mutinied, and shot him,
together with his two sons-whom, in the spirit of
quality, he had made drummers-and an English
Zentleman, who had the misfortune to be serving
in the same battalion.
John third Earl, of Bute, a statesman and a
patron of literature, who procured a pension for
Dr. Johnson, and who became so unpopular as
a minister through the attacks of Wilkes, was
born in the Parliament Close on the 25th of May,
1713.
Near to John’s coffee-house, and on the south
side ,of the Parliament Close, was the banking-house
of Sir William Forbes, Bart., who was born at Edinburgh
in 1739. He was favourably known as the
author of the “Life of Beattie,” and other works,
and as being one of the most benevolent and highspirited
of citizens. The bank was in reality established
by the father of Thomas Coutts, the eminent
London banker, and young Forbes, in October,
1753, was introduced to the former as an apprentice
for a term of seven years. He became a copartner
in 1761, and on the death of one of the
Messrs. Coutts, and retirement of another on
account of ill-health, while two others were settled
in London, a new company was formed, comprising
Sir William Forbes, Sir James Hunter Blair,
and Sir Robert Hemes, who, at first, carried on
business in the name of the old firm.
In 1773, however, Sir Robert formed a separate
establishment in London, when the name was
changed to Forbes, Hunter, and Co., of which
firm Sir William continued to be the head till his
death, in 1806.
Kin&id tells us that, when their first bankinghouse
was building, great quantities of human
bones-relics of St. Giles’s Churchyard-were dug
up, which were again buried at the south-east
corner, between the wall of the edifice and the
Parliament Stairs that led to the Cowgate; and
that, “ not many years ago, numbers were also dug
up in the Parliament Close, which were carefully
put in casks, and buried in the Greyfriars’ Churchyard”
In accordance with a longcherished desire of
restoring his family-which had been attainted for
loyalty to the house of StuartLSir William Forbes
embraced a favourable opportunity for purchasing](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v1p191.gif "Volume 1 Page 179")
... to Forbes, Hunter, and Co., of which
firm Sir William continued to be the head till his
death, in ...
Vol. 1 p. 179 (Rel. 0.4)
![Leith] MACKINTOSH OF BORLUM. 191
the further strengthened by the fact that the Speedy
Return, a Scottish ship, had been absent unusually
long, and the rumours regarding her fate were
very much akin to the confessions of the crew of
the Worcester.
A report of these circumstances having reached
the Privy Council, the arrest was ordered of Captain
Green and thirteen of his crew on charges of
piracy and murder. The evidence produced against
them would scarcely be held sufficient by a jury of
the present day to warrant a conviction; but the
Scots, in their justly inflamed and insulted spirit,
viewed the matter otherwise, and a sentence of
death was passed. This judgment rendered many
uneasy, as it might be an insuperable bar to the
union, and even lead to open strife, as the relations
in which the two countries stood to each other were
always precarious ; and even Macaulay admits “that
the two kingdoms could not possibly have continued
another year on the terms on which they had been
during the preceding century.” The Privy Council
were thus reluctant to put the sentence into execution,
and respited the fourteen Englishmen ; but
there arose from the people a cry for vengeance
which it was impossible to resist. On the day appointed
for the execution, the 11th of April, the
populace gathered h vast numbers at the. Cross
and in the Parliament Square ; they menaced the
Lords‘of the Council, from which the Lord Chancellor
chanced to pass in his coach. Some one
cried aloud that “ the prisoners had been reprieved.”
On this the fury of the people became boundless ;
they stopped at the Tron church the coach of the
Chancellor-the pitiful Far1 of Seafield-and
dragged him out of it, and had he not been rescued
and conveyed into Mylne Square by some friends,
would have slain him ; so, continues Arnot, it became
absolutely necessary to appease the enraged
multitude by the blood of the criminals. This was
but the fruit of the affairs of Darien and Glencoe.
Now the people for miles around were pouring
into the city, and it was known that beyond doubt
the luckless Englishmen would be tom from the
Tolbooth and put to a sudden death.
Thus the Council was compelled to yield, and
did so only in time, as thousands who had gathered
at Leith to see the execution were now adding to
those who filled the streets of the city, and at
eleven in the forenoon word came forth that three
would be hanged-namely, Captain Green, the first
mate Madder, and Simpson, the gunner.
According to Analecfu Scofica they were brought
forth into the seething masses, amid shouts and
execrations, under an escort of the Town Guard,
and marched on foot through the Canongate to the
Water Port of Leith, where a battalion of the Foot
Guards and a body of the Horse Guards were
drawn up. “ There was the greatest confluence of
people there that I ever saw in my life,” says
Wodrow; “for they cared not how far they were
off so be it they saw.”
The three were hanged upon a gibbet erected
within high-water mark, and the rest of the crew,
after being detained in prison till autumn, were set
at liberty; and it is said that there were afterwards
good reasons to believe that Captain Drummond,
whom they were accused of slaying on the high seas,
was alive in India after the fate of Green and his
two brother officers had been sealed. (Burton’s
‘’ Crim. Trials.”)
On the site of the present Custom House was
built the Fury (a line-of-battle ship, according tb
Lawson‘s “Gazetteer”) and the first of that rate
built in Scotland after the Union.
In I 7 I 2 the first census of Edinburgh and Leith
was taken, and both towns contained only about
48,000 souls.
The insurrection of 1715, under the Earl of
Mar, made Leith the arena of some exciting scenes.
The Earl declined to leave the vicinity of Perth
with his army, and could not co-operate with the
petty insurrection under Forster in the north of
England, as a fleet under Sir John Jennings, Admiral
of the White, including the RqaC Anm, Pew4
Phnix, Dover Custk, and other frigates, held the
Firth of Forth, and the King‘s troops under Argyle
were gathering in the southern Lowlands. But, as
it was essential that a detachment from Mar‘s army
should join General Forster, it was arranged that
2,500 Highlanders, under old Brigadier Mackintosh
of Borlum-one of the most gallant and resolute
spirits of the age-should attempt to elude the fleet
and reach the Lothians.
The brigadier took possession of all the boats
belonging to the numerous fisher villages on the
Fife coast, and as the gathering of such a fleet as
these, with the bustle of mooring and provisioning
them, was sure to reveal the object in view, a
clever trick was adopted to put all scouts on a false
scent.
All the boats not required by the brigadier he
sent to the neighbourhood of Burntisland, as if he
only waited to cross the Firth there, on which the
fleet left its anchorage and rather wantonly began
to cannonade the fort and craft in the harbour.
While the ships were thus fully occupied, Mackintosh,
dividing his troops in two columns, crossed the
water from Elie, Pittenweem, and Crail, twenty miles
eastward, on the nights of the 12th and 13thOctober,
without the loss of a single boat, and lwded](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v5p202.gif "Volume 5 Page 191")
... admits “that
the two kingdoms could not possibly have continued
another year on the terms on which they had ...
Vol. 5 p. 191 (Rel. 0.4)
... of 1,200 men,
After the execution of Charles I. he continued
with the regal party in Scotland, assisted at ...
Vol. 2 p. 278 (Rel. 0.4)
![Leith.] THE BARTONS. 203
is the second of the name, who died in 1513,
John the senior was certainly dead in 1508.
Charles, Duke of Burgundy, was so incensed by
the capture of the Juliuna in Flemish waters that
he demanded the surrender of Pret and Velasquez
to himself, with due compensation to Barton, but
failed in both cases. Joam 111. was then King of
Portugal.
Robert Barton would seem also at one time to
have faHen into the hands of the Portuguese ; and
there is extant a letter sent by James IV. to the
Emperor Maximilian, requesting his influenCe to
have him released from prison, and therein the
king refers to the quarrel of 1476, and merely
states that old John Barton was thrown into a prison
also.
In 1506, at a tournament held by James IV. in
Stirling, we read of a blackamoor girl, captured
from the Portuguese by Captain Barton, seated in
a triumphal chariot, being adjudged the prize of
the victor knight ; but the Bartons sent other gifts
to the king, in the shape of casks full of pickled
Portuguese heads.
In 1498, when Perkin Warbecli and his wife, the
Lady Katharine Gordon, left Scotland for Flanders,
they were on board a ship which, Tytler says, was
commanded by and afterwards the property of the
celebrated Robert Barton. Amongst her stores,
noted in the “.Treasurefs Accounts,” are ‘‘ ten tuns
and four pipes of wine, 8 bolls of aitmele, 18 marts
of beef, 23 muttons, and a hogshead of herring.”
Andrew Barton, the brother of the captain (and,
like him, a merchant in Leith), is mentioned as
having furnished biscuit, cider, and beer, for the
voyage.
In 1508 this family continued their feud with the
Portuguese. In that year Letters of Marque were
granted to them by James IV., and they run thus,
according to the “Burgh Records of Edinburgh ” :-
“]~callus Dei Gratia Rex Scatorurn, deZectis semit
o d u s nosiris. John Barton and Robert Barton,
sons of our late beloved servant John Barton, shipmaster,
and other shipmasters our lieges and subjects,
in company of the said John Barton for the
time (greeting) :
“ Some pirates of the nation of Portugal attacked
a ship of our late illustrious ancestor (James HI.),
which, under God, the late John commanded, and
with a fleet of many ships compelled it to surrender,
robbed it of its merchandise, of very great
value, and stripped it of its armament On account
of which, our most serene father transmitted his complaint
to the King of Portugal.” Justice not having
been done, the document runs, Jarnes 111. decreed
Letters of Reprisal against the Portuguese. “ We,
moreover, following the footsteps of our dearly
beloved ancestor . . . . . concede and grant by
these presents to you, John and Robert aforesaid,
and our other subjects who shall be in your company
for the time, our Letters of Marque or Reprisai,
that you may receive and bring back to us
from any men whomsoever of the nation of Portugal,
on account of the justice aforesaid being.
desired, to the extent of 3,000 crowns of money
of France . . . . Givenunder our Privy Seal, &c.”
Under these letters the brothers put to sea in
the quaint argosies of those days, which had low
waists with towering poops and forecastles, and
captured many Portuguese ships, and doubtless
indemnified themselves remarkably well ; while
their elder brother, Andrew, an especial favourite
of James IV., who bestowed upon him the then
coveted honour of knighthood, “ for upholding
the Scottish flag upon the seas,” was despatched
to punish some Dutch or Flemish pirates who had
captured certain Scottish ships and destroyed theircrews
with great barbarity. These he captured,
with their vessel, and sent all their heads to LeitL
in a hogshead.
As is well known, he was killed fighting bravely
in the Downs on the 2nd August, 1511, after a
severe conflict with the ships of Sir Thomas and Sir.
Edward Howard, afterwards Lord High Admiral of
England, when he had only two vessels with him,
the Lion of 36 great guns, and a sloop name$ the.
Jenny. The Howards had three ships of war and
an armed collier. The Lion was afterwards added
to the English navy, as she was found to be only
second in size and armament to the famous Great
Harry. His grandson Charles married Susan
Stedman of Edinburgh, and from them are said tobe
descended nearly all of that name in Fife, Kinross,
and Holland.
For his services as Admiral on the West Coast,
John Barton received the lands of Dalfibble ; and
in April, 1513, he returned from a diplomatic mission
to France, accompanied by the Unicorn Pursuivant;
and so important was its nature that he
took horse, and rode all night to meet the king,
who was then on the eve of departing for Flodden.
On the 26th of July in the Same year he joined
the squadron, consisting of the Great Michael, the
James, Marguret, the S/$ of Lynne (an English
prize), a thirty-oared galley, and fourteen other
armed ships, commanded by Gordon of Letterfourie
(and having on board the Earl of Arran and
3,000 soldiers), which sailed from Leith as a present
to Anne, Queen of France-a piece of ill-timed
generosity on the part of the princely Jarnes IV.,
who accompanied the armament as far as the Isle](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p022.gif "Volume 6 Page 203")
... cider, and beer, for the
voyage.
In 1508 this family continued their feud with the
Portuguese. In that year ...
Vol. 6 p. 203 (Rel. 0.4)
![High Street.] DR. CULLEN. 271 -
it jure tan‘io hyfotheca till he was paid the price
of it.”
The same house was, in the succeeding century,
occupied by Dr. William Cullen, the eminent
physician; while Lord Hailes lived in the more
ancient lodging in the south portion of the Mint,
prior to his removal to the modern house which
he built for himself in New Street, Canongate.
William Cullen was born in Lanarkshire, in
1710, and after passing in medicine at Glasgow,
made several voyages as surgeon of a merchantman
between London and the Antilles; but tiring of
thesea, he took a country practice at Hamilton,
and his luckily curing the duke of that name of an
illness, secured him a patronage for the future, and
after various changes, in 1756, on the death of Dr.
Plummer, he took the vacant chair of chemistry
in the University of Edinburgh. On the death
of Dr. Piston he succeeded him as lecturer in
materia medica, and three years afterwards resigned
the chair of chemistry to his own pupil,
Dr. Black, on being appointed professor of the
theory of medicine.
As a lecturer Dr. Cullen exercisedagreat influence
over the state of opinion relative to the science
of medicine, and successfully combated the specious
doctrines of Boerhaave depending on the
humoral pathology ; his own system was founded
on the enlarged view of the principles of Frederick
Hoffnian. The mere enumeration of his works on
medicine would fill a page, but most of them were
translated into nearly every European language.
. He continued his practice as a physician as well as
his medical lectures till a few months before his
death, when the infirmities of age induced him to
resign his professorship, and one of many addresses
he received on that occasion was the following :-
“ On the 8th of January, 1790, the Lord Provost,
magistrates, and Council of Edinburgh, voted a
piece of plate of fifty guineas of value to Dr. Cullen,
as a testimony of their respect for his distinguished
merits and abilities and his eminent services to the
university during the period of thirty-four years,
in which he has held an academical chair. On the
plate was engraved an inscription expressive of the
high sense the magistrates, as patrons of the university,
had of the merit of the Professor, and of
their esteem and regard.”
Most honourable to him also were the resolutions
passed on the 27th of January by the entire
Senatus Academicus ; but he did not survive those
honours long, as he died at his house in the Mint,
on the 5th of February, 1790, in his eightieth year.
By his wife-a Miss Johnston, who died there in
1786-he had a numerous family. One of his
sons, Robert, entered at the Scottish Bar in 1764,
and distinguishing himself highly as a lawyer, was
raised to the bench in 1796, as Lord Cullen. He
cultivated elegant literature, and contributed several
papers of acknowledged talent to the Mirror and
Lounger; but it was chiefly in the art of conversation
that he shone. When a young man, and
resident with his father in the Mint Close, he was
famous for his power of mimicry. He was very
intimate with Dr. Robertson, the historian, then
Principal of the university.
“TO show that Robertson was not likely to be
imitated it may be mentioned from the report of a
gentleman who has often heard him making public
orations, that when the students observed him pause
for a word, and would themselves mentally supply
it they invariably found that the word which he did
use was different from that which they had hit upon.
Cullen, however, could imitate him to the life, either
in the more formal speeches, or in his ordinary discourse.
He would often, in entering a house which
the Principal was in the habit of visiting, assume
his voice in the lobby and stair, and when arrived
at the drawing-room door, astonish the family by
turning out to be-Bob Cullen.”
On the west side of the Mint were at one time
the residences of Lord Belhaven, the Countess of
Stair, Douglas of Cavers, and other distinguished
tenants, including Andrew Pnngle, raised to the
bench, as Lord Haining, in I 7 29. The main entrance
to these lodgings, like that on the south, was by a
stately flight of steps and a great doorway, furnished
with an enormous knocker, and a beautiful example
of its ancient predecessor, the nsp, or Scottish
tirling-pin.
The Edinhqh Courant of August 12,1708, has
the following strange announcement :-
‘I George Williamson, translator (i.e. cobbler) in
Edinburgh, commonly known by the name of Bowed
Geordie, who swims on face, back, or any posture,
forwards or backwards, and performs all the antics
that any swimmer can do, is willing to attend any
gentlemen and to teach them to swim, or perform
his antics for their divertisement : is to be found at
Luckie Reid’s, at the foot of Gray’s Close, on the
south side of the street, Edinburgh.”
Elphinstone’s Court, in the close adjoining the
Mint, was so namedfrom Sir James Elphinstone, who
built it in 1679, and from whom the loftytenement
therein passed to Sir Francis Scott of Thirlstane.
The latter sold it to Patrick Wedderburn, who
assumed the title of Lord Chesterhall on his elevation
to the bench in 1755. His son, Alexander
Wedderburc, afterwards Lord Loughborough, first
Earl of Rosslyn, and Lord High Chancellor of](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p091.gif "Volume 2 Page 271")
... into nearly every European language.
. He continued his practice as a physician as well as
his ...
Vol. 2 p. 271 (Rel. 0.4)
![High Street.] MARY KINGS CLOSE 227
net tells us that he was a man of such unflagging
zeal that he barely allowed himself three hours’ sleep
out of the twenty-four. On the renewal of the
Covenant, in 1638, he and the celebrated Alexander
Henderson were appointed to revise and
adapt that national document to the circumstances
of the times; and at the memorable assembly
which met at Glasgow Johnston was unanimously
elected clerk, and was constituted Procurator for
the Church. ’ He took a prominent share in resisting
the unjust interference of Charles I: in Scottish
affairs, and in 1638, on the royal edict being proclaimed
from the Cross of Edinburgh, which set at
defiance the popular opposition to Episcopacy, he
boldly appeared on the scaffold erected near it,
and read aloud the famous protest drawn up in
the name of the Tables, while the mob compelled
the six royal heralds to remain while this counterdefiance
in the name of Scotland was being read
In 1641, when Charles visited Edinburgh for the
second time, Johnston was knighted and made a
Lord of Session, and after sitting in the Parliament
of Scotland in 1644, he attended, as one of the
Commissioners, the assembly of divines at Westminster.
In the following year he was Lord Advocate;
and in 1649 he performed one of his last
official duties, proclaiming Charles 11. King of
Scotland, on the 5th of February, 1650.
After the battle of Dunbar he was weak enough
to accept ofice under the Protectorate, as Clerk
Registrar; and after the death of Cromwell he
acted as one of the Committee of Public Safety,
when the feeble and timid Richard Cromwell withdrew
from public life ; and this last portion of his
career, together with the mode in which he had
prosecuted and persecuted the fallen Cavaliers, and
refused to concur in the treaty of Breda, sealed
his doom when the Restoration came. He was
forfeited in exile and condemned to death on the
15th of May, 1651.
An emissary of the Scottish ministry discovered
his retreat at Rouen, and, with the aid of the
French authorities, he was sent to the Tower, and
from thence to Edinburgh, where, with every mark
of indignity, he was publicly executed on the same
spot where, five-and-twenty years before, he had
defied the proclamation of Charles I. This was
on the n2nd of July, 1663, and he died with the
utmost constancy and Christian fortitude. And
now the busy establishment of one of the most
enterprising of Scottish publishing firms occupies
the site of the old mansion, in which he must many
a time have entertained such men as Alexander
Henderson, the Marquises Argyle, Rothes, and Callander,
the gallant Sir Alexander Leslie, the somewhat
double-dealing Monk, perhaps Cromwell too.
CHAPTER XXVI.
HIGH STREET (continued).
Mary King’s Close-Who was Mary ?-Scourged by the Plague of 1645-Its Mystery-Drummond‘s Epigram-Prof. Sinclair‘s ‘I Satan’s Invisible
World Discovered“--Mr. and Mrs. Coltheart’s Ghostly Visitors-The Clox finally abandoned to Goblins-Craig’s Close-Andro Hart,
Bookseller and Printer-Andro’s Spear-A Menagerie in Craig’s CIosc-The Isle of Man Arms--The Cape Club-Its Mysteries and O f f i c a ~
--Installation of a Knight-ProvinciaI Cape Clubs-The Poker Club-How it Originated-Members-Office-bearers-Old Stamp Office
Court-Fortune’s Tavern-The beautiful Countess of EgIinton-Her Patronage of Lettters-Her Family-Interview with Dr. Johnson-
Murderous Riot in the Close-Removal of the Stamp Office.
MARY KING’S Close was long a place of terror to
the superstitious, as one of the last retreats of the
desolating plague of 1645. “Who Mary King
was is now unknown, but though the alley is roofless
and ruined,” says one, writing of it in 1845,
“with weeds, wall-flowers, grass, and even little
trees, flourishing luxuriantly among the falling
walls, her name may still be seen painted on the
street corner.”
For some generations after the plague-in which
most of itsinhabitants perished-its houses remained
closed, and gradually it became a place of mystery
and horror, the abode of a thousand spectres and
nameless terrors, for superstition peopled it with
inhabitants, whom all feared and none cared to
succeed. “Those who had been foolhardy enough
to peep through the windows after nightfall saw
the spectres of the long-departed denizens engaged
in their wonted occupations ; headless forms danced
through the moonlit apartments ; on one occasion
a godly minister and two pious elders were scared
out of their senses by the terrible vision of a raw
head and blood-dripping arm, which protruded
from the wall in this terrible street, and flourished
a sword above their heads ; and many other terrors,
which are duly chronicled in ‘Satan’s Invisible
World;’” yet it was down this place that the wild
young Master of Gray dragged the fair Mistress
Carnegie, whom, sword in hand, he had abducted
from her father’s house at the head of twelve men-at](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p047.gif "Volume 2 Page 227")
... Monk, perhaps Cromwell too.
CHAPTER XXVI.
HIGH STREET ( continued ).
Mary King’s Close-Who was Mary ?-Scourged ...
Vol. 2 p. 227 (Rel. 0.4)
... Wednesday, though showers
of sleet and hail fell, the fire continued to rage with
fury in Conn’s Close, to ...
Vol. 1 p. 190 (Rel. 0.4)
![Rase Street.] HUG0 ARNOT. ‘59
announced that Bailie Creech, of literary celebrity,
was about to lead Miss Burns of Rose Street ‘‘ to
the hymeneal altar.” In hiswrath, Creech threatened
an action against the editor, whose contradiction
made matters worse :-“ In a former number we
noticed the intended marriage between Bailie
Creech of Edinburgh and the beautiful Miss Bums
of the same place. We have now the authority of
that gentleman to say that the proposed marriage
is not to take place, matters having been otherwise
arranged, to the mutual satisfaction of both parties
and their respective friends.” After a few years of
unenviable notoriety, says the editor of *‘ Kay,”
Miss Burns fell into a decline, and died in 1792 at
Roslin, where a stone in the churchyard records
her name and the date of her demise.
In the same year of this squabble we find a
ball advertised in connection with the now unfashionable
locality of Rose Street, thus :-“ Mr.
Sealey (teacher of dancing) begs to acquaint his
friends and the public that his ball is iixed for the
20th of March next, and that in order to accommodate
his scholars in the New Town, he proposes
opening a school in Rose Street, Young’s Land,
opposite to the Physicians’ Hall, the 24th of that
month, where he intends to teach on Tuesdays
and Fridays from nine in the morning, and the
remainder of the week at his school in Foulis’s
Close, as formerly.” In 1796 we find among
its residents Sir Samuel Egerton Leigh, Knight, of
South Carolina, whose lady “ was safely delivered
of a son on Wednesday morning (16th March) at
her lodgings in Rose Street.”
Sir Samuel was the second son of Sir Egerton
high, His Majesty’s AttorneyGenerd for South
Carolina, and he died at Edinburgh in the ensuing
January. He had a sister, married to the youngest
brother of Sir Thomas Burnet of Leya
This son, born at Edinburgh in 1796, succeeded
in ISIS to the baronetcy, on the death of his uncle,
Sir Egerton, who married Theodosia (relict of
Captain John Donellan), daughter of Sir Edward,
and sister of Sir Theodosius Edward Boughton,
for the murder of whom by poison the captain was
executed at Warwick in 1781,
It was in Dr. John Brown’s Chapel in Rose
Street, that Robert Pollok, the well-known author
of “The Course of Time,” who was a licentiate of
the United Secession Church, preached his only
sermon, and soon after ordination he was attacked
by that pulmonary disease of which he died in
1827.
In 1810 No. 82 was “Mrs. Bruce’s fashionable
boarding-school,” and many persons of the greatest
respectability occupied the common stairs, particularly
to the westward ; and in Thistle Street were
many residents of very good position.
Thus No. z was the house, in 1784, of Sir
John Gordon, Bart. ; and Sir Alexander Don, Bart.,
of Newton Don, lived in No. 4, when Lady Don
Dowager resided in No. 53, George Street (he had
been one of the d h u s in France who were seized
when passing through it during the short peace of
1802), and a Mrs. Colonel Ross occupied No. 17,
Under the name of Hill Street this thoroughfare
is continued westward, between Fredenck Street
and Castle Street, all the houses being “selfcontained.”
The Right Hon. Charles Hope of
Granton, Lord Justice Clerk, had his chambers in
No. 6 (now writers’ offices) in ~808 ; Buchanan of
Auchintorlie lived in No. I I, and Clark of Comrie
in No. 9, now also legal offices. In one of the houses
here resided, and was married in 1822, as mentioned
in Bkrckwoad’s Magazine for that year, Charles
Edward Stuart, styled latterly Count d’Albany
(whose son, the Carlist colonel, married a daughter
of the Earl of Errol), and who, with his brother, John
Sobieski Stuarf attracted much attention in the city
and Scotland generally, between that period and
1847, and of whom various accounts have been
given. They gave themselves out as the grandsons
of Charles Edward Stuart, but were said to be
the sons of a Captain Thomas Allan, R.N., and
grandsons of Admiral John Carter Allan, who died
in 1800.
Seven broad and handsome streets, running south
and north, intersect the great parallelogram of the
New Town. It was at the corner of one of those
streets-but which we are not told-that Robert
Burns first saw, in 1787, Mrs. Graham, so celebrated
for her wonderful beauty, and whose husband
commanded in the Castle of Stirling.
From the summit of the ridge, where each of
these streets cross George Street, are commanded
superb views : on one side the old town, and on
the other the northern New Town, and away to the
hills of Fife and Kinross.
According to “ Peter Williamson’s Directory,”
Hugo Arnot, the historian, had taken up his abode
in the Meuse Lane of South St. Andrew Street
in 1784. His own name was Pollock, but he
changed it to Arnot on succeeding to the estate of
Balcormo, in Fifeshire. In his fifteenth year hC
became afflicted with asthma, and through life was
reduced to the attenuation of a skeleton. Admitted
an advocate in 1772, he ever took a deep interest
in all local matters, and published various essays
thereon, and his exertions in promoting the
improvements then in progress in Edinburgh were
which is now the New Town dispensary. c](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v3p171.gif "Volume 3 Page 159")
... 17,
Under the name of Hill Street this thoroughfare
is continued westward, between Fredenck Street
and Castle ...
Vol. 3 p. 159 (Rel. 0.4)
![Lasswade.] CLERK OF ELDIN. 359
nishing supplies for local consumption and to
other quarters, Lasswade sends about 30,000 tons
of coal to Edinburgh every year.
Auchindinny is a small village situated on the
right bank of the Esk at the boundary with Penicuick,
and is about five-and-a-half miles distant
from Lasswade. It is inhabited by lace and paper
makers.
Scott, in his ballad “ The Gray Brother,” groups
all the localities we have noted with wonderful
effect :-
‘ I Sweet are the paths, oh passing sweet I
By Esk’s fair streams that run,
Impervious to the sun.
O’er airy steep, through copsewood deep,
“ There the rapt poet’s step may rove,
And yield the muse the day ;
There Beauty, led by timid Love,
May shuq the tell-tale ray.
“ From that fair dome, where suit is paid
By blast of bugle free,
To Auchindinny’s hazel shade,
And haunted Woodhouselee.
Who knows not Melville’s beechy grove,
Dalkeith, which all the virtues love,
And Roslin’s rocky glen,
And classic Hawthornden I
“Yet never path from day to day,
The pilgrim’s footsteps range,
To Burndale’s ruined grange.”
Save but’ the solitary way,
South of Lasswade Bridge, on the road to Polton
-an estate which, in the early part of the eighteenth
century, gave the title of Lord Polton to a senator
of the College of Justice, Sir William Calderwood,
called to the bench in I 71 I in succession to Lord
Anstruther-is a house into which a number 01
antique stones were built some years ago. One
of these, a lintel, bears the following date and
legend :-
‘ 1557. A. A. NOSCE TEIPSVM.
Lasswade has always been a favourite summe1
resort of the citizens of Edinburgh. Sir Walter
Scott spent some of the happiest summers of his
life here, and amid the woodland scenery is supposed
to have found materials for his description
of Gandercleugh, in the Tales of my Land.
lord.”
His house was a delightful retreat, embowered
among wood, and close to the Esk. There he
continued all his favourite studies, and commenced
that work which Erst established his name i-2 litera.
ture, “ The Minstrelsy of the Scottish %order,’
which he published at Edinburgh in 1802, and
_ _ _
dedicated to his friend and chief, Henry Duke of
Buccleuch.
In prosecuting the collection of this work, Sir
Walter made various excursions-“ raids ” he used
to call them-from Lasswade into the most remote
recesses of the Border glens, assisted by one or
two other enthusiasts in ballad lore, pre-eminent
among whom was the friend, whose ‘untimely fate
he lamented so long, and whose memory he embalmed
in verse-Dr. John Leyden.
De Quincey, the “ English opium-eater,” spent
the last seventeen years of his life in a humble
cottage near Midfield House, on the road from
Lasswade to Hawthornden, and there he prepared
the collected edition. of his works. He died in
Edinburgh on the 8th December, 1859.
On high ground above the village stands Eldin
House (overlooking Eldindean), the residence of
John Clerk, inventor of what was termed in its day,
before the introduction of ironclads and steam rams,
the modern British system of naval tactics. He
was the sixth son of Sir George Clerk of Penicuick,
oneof the Barons of Exchequer in Scotland, and
inherited the estate of Eldin in early life from his
father. Although the longest sail he ever enjoyed
was no farther than to the Isle of Arran, in the Firth
of Clyde, he had from his boyhood a passion for
nautical affairs, and devoted much of his time to
the theory and practice ot naval tactics.
After. communicating to some of his friends the
new suggested system of breaking an enemy’s line
of battle, he visited London in 1780, and conferred
with several eminent men connected with the navy,
among others, Mr. Richard Atkinson, the friend of
the future Lord Kodney, and Sir Charles Douglas,
Rodney’s ‘‘ Captain of the Fleet ” in the mernorable
action of 12th April, 1782, when the latter
was victorious over the Comte de Grasse between
Dominica and Les Saintes, in the West Indies.
Since that time his principle was said to have
been adopted by all our admirals ; and Howe, St.
Vincent, Duncan, and even Nelson, owe to the
Laird of Eldin’s manmuvre their most signal
victories.
In 1782 he had fifty copies of his “Essay on
Naval Tactics ” printed, for distribution among his
private friends. It was reprinted in 1790, and
second, third, and fourth parts were added in the
seven subsequent years, and eventually, in 1804,
the whole work was re-published anew, with a
preface explaining the origin of his discoveries.
“ Although Lord Rodney, as appears by a fragmentary
life of Clerk written by Professor Playfair,
in the ‘ Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,’
never concealed in conversation his obliga](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p178.gif "Volume 6 Page 359")
... embowered
among wood, and close to the Esk. There he
continued all his favourite studies, and commenced
that ...
Vol. 6 p. 359 (Rel. 0.4)
... of his intellect, and the freshness of
his fancy continued uninterrupted to the end of his
labours; his ...
Vol. 3 p. 188 (Rel. 0.4)
... niustered for its protection, and this state
of affairs continued for fully three years, during
which ...
Vol. 1 p. 47 (Rel. 0.4)
![238 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith.
-to hir lovite suitore, Johne Chisholme, his airis and
. assignais, all and hailk hir lands callit the King’s
Werk in Leith, within the boundis specifit in the
infeftment maid to him thairupon, quhilkis than
-war alluterlie decayit, and sensyne are reparit and
re-edifit, he the said Johne Chisholnie, to the policy
.and great decoration of this realme, in that office,
place, and sight of all strangeris and utheris re-
- sortand to the Schore of Leith.”
In 1575 it had been converted into a hospital
- for the plague-stricken ; but when granted to Bernard
Lindsay in 1613, he was empowered to keep
four taverns in the buildings, together with the
tennis-court, for the then favourite pastime of
‘catchpel. It continued to be used for that purpose
till the year 1649, when it was taken pos-
2 session of by the magistrates of Edinburgh, and
. converted into a weigh-house.
“ In what part of the building Bemard Lindsay
commenced tavern-keeping we are unable to say,”
observes Campbell, in his “ History of Leith,” “ but
.are more than half disposed to believe it was that
old house which projects into Bernard Street, and
is situated nearly opposife the British Linen Com-
,pany’s Bank.” ‘‘ The house alluded to,” adds
Robertson on this, “has a carved stone in front,
representing a rainbow rising from the clouds, with
a date 165-, the last figure being obliterated, and
-can hatre no reference to Bernard Lindsay.”
The tennis-court of the latter would seem to have
been frequently patronised by the great Marquis of
Montrose in his youth, as in his ‘‘ Household Accounts,”
under date 1627, are the following entries
.(Mait. Club Edit.) :-
‘‘ Item to the poor, my Lord taking coch . . qs.
Item, carrying the graith to Leth . . . . 8s.
Item, to some poor there . . . . . . 3s
Item, to my Lord Nepar’s cochman . .
Item, for balls in the Tinnes Court of Leth..
. . 6s. Sd.
16s.”
The first memorial of Bernard Lindsay is in
the Parish Records ” of South Leith, and is dated
17th July, 1589 :-“ The quhilk days comperit
up Bemard Lindsay and Barbara Logan, and gave
their names to be proclamit and mareit, within
this date and Michaelmas.-JoHN LOGANE, Cautioper.”
Another record, 2nnd September, I 633, bears
that the Session “ allowis burial to Barbara Logane,
-.elict of Bernard Lindsaye, besyde her husbande in
the kirk-yeard, in contentation yairof, 100 merks to
be given to the poor.”
From Bernard Lindsay, the name of the present
Bernard Street is derived. Bernard’s Nook has
long been known. ‘‘ In the ‘ Council Records’ of
Edinburgh, 1647,” says Robertson, “is the following
entry :-‘ To the purchase of the Kingis Werk,
in Leith, 4,500 lib. Scot.’ A previous entry, 1627,
refers to dealing with the sons of Bernard Lindsay,
‘for their house in Leith to be a custom-house. . . .’
We have no record that any buildings existed beyond
the bounds of the walls or the present
Bernard Street at this time, the earliest dates on
the seaward part of the Shore being 1674-1681.”
The old Weigh-house, or Tron of Leith, stood
within Bernard’s Nook, on the west side of the
street ; but local, though unsupported, tradition
asserts that the original signal-tower and lighthouse
of Leith stood in the Broad Wynd.
Wilson thus refers to the relic of the Wark
already mentioned :-‘‘ A large stone panel, which
bore the date 1650-the year immediately succeeding
the appropriation of the King‘s Wark to
civic purposes-appeared in the north gable of the
old weigh-house, which till recently occupied its
site, with the curious device of a rainbow carved
in bold relief springing at either end from a bank
of clouds.”
“ So,” says Arnot, ‘‘ this fabric, which was reared
for the sports and recreations of a Court, was
speedily to be the scene of the ignoble labours of
carmen and porters, engaged in the drudgery of
weighing hemp and of iron.”
Eastward of the King’s Wark, between Bernard‘s
Street and chapel, lies the locality once so curiously
designated Little London, and which, according to
Kincaid, measured ninety feet from east to west,
by seventy-five broad over the walls. “ How it
acquired the name of Little London is now
unknown,” says Camphell, in his “ History ” ;
“but it was so-called in the year 1674, We do
not see, however,” he absurdly remarks, “that it
could have obtained this appellation from any
other circumstauce than its having had some
real or supposed resemblance to the [English]
metropolis.”
As the views preserved of Little London show it
to have consisted of only four houses or so, and
these of two storeys high, connected by a dead
wall with one doorway, facing Bemard Street in
1800, Campbell’s theory is untenable. It is much
more probable that it derived its name from being
the quarters or cantonments of those 1,500 English
soldiers who, under Sir Williani Drury, Marshal of
Berwick, came from England in April, 1573, to
assist the Regent Morton’s Scottish Companies in
the reduction of Edinburgh Castle. These men
departed from Leith on the 16th of the following
June, and it has been supposed that a few of them
may have been induced to remain, and the locality
thus won the name of Little London, in the same](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p057.gif "Volume 6 Page 238")
... for the then favourite pastime of
‘catchpel. It continued to be used for that purpose
till the year ...
Vol. 6 p. 238 (Rel. 0.4)
... preceded all funerals
with a hand-bell-a practice continued in the
eighteenth century.
-In consequence of ...
Vol. 3 p. 132 (Rel. 0.4)
![Leith Walk.] ANDREW MACDONALD. J 59
in whose favour, so long as she exercised her profession,
she continued to hold the first place in
spite of their temporary enthusiasm for the great
London stars, who visited them at stated seasons.
‘ Our Mrs. Siddons’ I frequently heard her called
in Edinburgh, not at all with the idea of comparing
her with the celebrated mother-in-law j but rather
as expressing the kindly personal goodwill with
which she was regarded by her own townsfolk who
were proud and fond of her.”
She was not a great actress, according to this
writer, for she lacked versatility, or power of assumption
in any part that was opposed to her nature
or out of her power, and she was destitute
of physical strength and weight for Shaksperian
heroines generally; yet Rosalind, Viola, Imogen,
and Label, had no sweeter exponents ; and in all
pieces that turned on the tender, soft, and faithful
Mary Stuart,“she gave an unrivalled impersonation.”
On leaving Edinburgh, after 1830, she carried
with her the good wishes of the entire people, “ for
they had recognised in her not merely the accomplished
actress, but the good mother, the refined
lady, and the irreproachable member of society.”
Northward of Windsor Street, in what was once
a narrow, pleasant, and secluded path between
thick hedgerows, called the Lovers’ Loan, was
built, in 1876, at a short distance from the railway
station, the Leith Walk public school, at a cost of
L9,ooo; it is in the Decorated Collegiate style,
calculated to accommodate about 840 scholars, and
is a good specimen of the Edinburgh Board schools.
In the Lovers’ Loan Greenside House was long
the property and the summer residence of James
Marshal, W.S., whose town residence was in Milne
Square, so limited were the ideas of locomotion
and exaggerated those of distance in the last century.
He was born in 1731, says Kay’s Editor,
and though an acute man of business, was one of
the most profound swearers of his day, so much so
that few could compete with him.” He died in the
then sequestered house of Greenside in 1807.
In the year 1802 the ground here was occupied
by Barker’s “ famous panorama,” from Leicester
Square, London, wherein were exhibited views of
Dover, the Downs, and the coast of France, with
the embarkation of troops, horse and foot, from ten
till dusk, at one shilling a head, opposite the
Botanical Garden.
Lower down, where we now find Albert, Falshaw,
and Buchanan Streets, the ground for more
than twenty years was a garden nursery, long the
feu of Messrs. Eagle and Henderson, some of whose
advertisements as seedsfnen go back to nearly the
middle of the last century.
At the foot of the Walk there was born, in 1755,
Andrew Macdonald, an ingenious but unfortunate
dramatic and miscellaneous writer, whose father,
George Donald, was a market-gardener there. He
received the rudiments of his education in the
Leith High School, and early indicated such literary
talents, that his friends had sanguine hopes
of his future eminence, and with a view to his
becoming a minister of the Scottish Episcopal
communion he studied at the University of Edinburgh,
where he remained till the year 1775, when
he was put into deacon’s orders by Bishop Forbes
of Leith. On this account, at the suggestion of the
latter, he prefixed the syllable Mac to his name.
As there was no living for him vacant, he left his
father’s cottage in Leith Walk to become a tutor
in the family of Oliphant of Gask, after which he
became pastor of an Episcopal congregation in
Glasgow, and in 1772 published “Velina, a Poetical
Fragment,” which is said to have contained
much genuine poetry, and was in the Spenserian
stanza.
His next essay was ‘‘ The Independent,” which
won him neither profit nor reputation ; but having
written “Vimonda, a Tragedy,” with a prologue
by Henry Mackenzie, he came to Edinburgh, where
it was put upon the boards, and where he vainly
hoped to make’ a living by his pen. It was received
with great applause, but won him no advantage,
as his literary friends now deserted him.
Before leaving Glasgow he had taken a step which
they deemed alike imprudent and degrading.
“This was his marrying the maid-servant of the
house in which he lodged. His reception, therefore,
on his return to Edinburgh from these friends
and those of his acquaintances who participated in
their feelings, had in it much to annoy and distress
him, although no charge could be brought against
the humble partner of his fortunes but the meanness
of her condition.” Thus his literary prospects,
so far as regarded Edinburgh, ended in total disappointment
; so, accompanied by his wife, he betook
him to the greater centre of London.
There the fame of “Vimonda” had preceded
him, and Colman brought it out with splendour to
crowded houses in the years 1787 and 1788; and
now poor Macdonald’s mind became radiant with
hope of affluence and fame, and he had a pretty
little residence at Brompton, then a sequestered
place.
He next engaged with much ardour upon an
opera, but made his subsistence chiefly by writing
satirical papers and poems for the newspapers,
under the signature of “Mathew Bramble.” At
last this resource failed him, and he found himself
*](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v5p170.gif "Volume 5 Page 159")
... favour, so long as she exercised her profession,
she continued to hold the first place in
spite of their ...
Vol. 5 p. 159 (Rel. 0.4)
... singular to say, a cloth merchant’s “booth ”
it continued long to be. ‘
In 1642 the Customs were let ...
Vol. 2 p. 222 (Rel. 0.4)
... place of a mother. His respect for her was
unbounded, and continued to the close; often
have we seen him, when ...
Vol. 4 p. 206 (Rel. 0.4)
... His company, during the
season of balls and festivities, continued to be
courted by all who desired to be ...
Vol. 1 p. 106 (Rel. 0.4)
![Wton Hill.] THE BURGH OF CALTON. 103 r
beneath the Caltoun Hill, the .place where those
imaginary criminals, witches, and sorcerers in less
enlightened times were burned ; and where at
festive seasons the gay and gallant held their tilts
and tournaments.”
On the north-westem shoulder of the hill stands
the modern Established Church of Greenside, at
the end of the Royal Terrace, a conspicuous and
attractive feature among the few architectural
decorations of that district. Its tower rises IOO feet
above the porch, is twenty feet square, and contains
a bell of 10 cwt.
The main street of the old barony of the Calton
was named, from the ancient chapel which stood
there, St. Ninian’s Row, and a place so called
still exists; and the date and name ST. NINIAN’S
Row, 1752, yet remains on the ancient well. 01
old, the street named the High Calton, was known
as the Craig End.
In those days’a body existed known as the
High Constables of the Calton, but the new
Municipality Act having extinguished the ancient
boundaries of the city, the constabulary, in 1857,
adopted the following resolution, which is written
on vellum, to the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland :-
“ The district of Calton, or Caldton, formed at
one time part of the estate.of the Elphinstone
family, one of whom-% James, third son of the
third Lord Elphinstone-was created Lord &Imerino
in 1603-4 In 1631 the then Lord
Balmerino granted a charter to the trades of
Calton, constituting them a society or corporation ;
and in 1669 a royal charter was obtained from
Charles II., erecting the district into a burgh of
barony. A court was held by a bailie appointed
by the lord of the manor, and there was founded in
. connectiontherewith, the Societyof Highconstables
of Calton, who have been elected by, and have
continued to act under, the orders of succeeding
Baron Bailies. Although no mention is made 01
our various constabulary bodies in the ‘ Municipality
Extension Act, 1856,’ the venerable office
of Baron Bailie has thereby become extinct, and
the .ancient burghs of Canongate, Calton, Eastern
and Western Portsburgh, are now annexed to the
city. UnGer these circumstances the constabulary
of Calton held an extraordinary meeting on the
17th of March, 1857, at which, infer alia, the
following inotion was carried with acclamation, viz.
‘ That the burgh having ceased to exist, the con
stabulary, in order that some of the relics and
other insignia belonging to this body should be
preserved for the inspection of future generations,
unanimously resolve to present as a free gift to the
Royal Society of Antiquaries of Scotland the.
following, viz :-Constabulary baton, I 747, moderator‘
s official baton, marble bowl, moderator’?
state staff, silver-mounted horn with fourteefi
medals, members’ small baton; report on the
origin and standing of the High Constables OF
Calton, 1855, and the laws of the society, 1847.’”
These relics of the defunct little burgh are
consequently now preserved at the museum in the
Royal Institution.
A kind of round tower, or the basement thereof,
is shown above the south-west angle of the CaltoE
cliffs in Gordon’s view in 1647 ; but of any such
edifice no record remains ; and in the hollow where
Nottingham Place lies now, a group of five isolated
houses, called “ Mud Island,” appears in the maps.
of 1787 and 1798. In 1796, and at many other
times, the magistrates ordained that “ All-hallowfair
be held on the lands of Calton Hill,” as an
open and uncnclosed place, certainly a perilous one,
for tipsy drovers and obstinate cattle. An agriculturist
named Smith farmed the hill and lands
adjacent, now covered by great masses of building,
for several years, till about the close of the 18th
century; and his son, Dr. John Smith, who was
born in 1798, died only in February, 1879, afterbeing
fifty years physician tQ the old charity workhouse
in Forrest Road, .
In 1798, when the Rev. Rowland Hill (thefamous
son of Sir Rowland Hill, of Shropshire).
visited Edinburgh for the first time, he preached
in some of the churches every other day, but the
crowds became so immense, that at last he was
induced to hold forth from a platform erected on
the Calton Hili, where his audience was reckoned.
at not less than 10,000, and the interest excited by
his eloquence is said to have been beyond all
precedent. On his return from the West, he
preached on the hill again to several audiences,.
and on the last of these occasions, when a collection,
was made for the charity workhouse, fully zo,oom
were present. Long years after, when speaking to a.
friend of the multitude whom he had addressed,
there, he said, pleasantly, “ Well do I remember
the spot ; but I understand that it has now been
converted into a den of thieves,” referring to the
gaol now built on the ground where his platform
stood.
The first great cba,nge in the aspect of the hill
was effected by the formation of the Regent Road,
which was cut through the old burying-ground, the
soil of which avenue was decently carted away,
covered with white palls, and full of remnants of
humanity, to the new Calton burying-ground on]
the southern slope ; and the second was the open](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v3p115.gif "Volume 3 Page 103")
... Calton, who have been elected by, and have
continued to act under, the orders of ...
Vol. 3 p. 103 (Rel. 0.4)
... and then bring to, and re-fit aloft. The Edinburgh
continued her course, but with ports triced
up, guns ...
Vol. 6 p. 279 (Rel. 0.39)
... expression of latent humour.
Heriot’s foundation has continued to flourish
and enjoy a well-deserved fame. ...
Vol. 4 p. 370 (Rel. 0.39)
![Canongate.] THE TENNIS COURT. ’ 39
Scotland, and who for some years had been Commissioner
to the General Assembly. In this house
he died, 28th July, 1767, as recorded in the Scots
Magazine, and was succeeded by his son, Major-
General the Earl of Ancrum, Colonel of the 11th
Light Dragoons (now Hussars). His second son,
Lord Robert, had been killed at Culloden.
His marchioness, Margaret, the daughter of Sir
Thomas Nicholson, Bart., of Kempnay, who survived
him twenty years, resided in Lothian Hut
till her death. It was afterwards occupied by the
dowager of the ‘ fourth Marquis, Lady Caroline
D’Arcy, who was only daughter of Robert Earl
of Holderness, and great-grand-daughter of Charles
Louis, the Elector Palatine, a lady whose character
is remembered traditionally to have been both
grand and amiable. Latterly the Hut was the
residence of Professor Dugald Stewart, who, about
the end of the last century, entertained there many
English pupils of high rank. Among them, perhaps
the most eminent was Henry Temple, afterwards
Lord Palmerston, whose education, commenced
at Harrow, was continued at the University
of Edinburgh. When he re-visited the latter city in
1865, during his stay he was made aware that an
aged woman, named Peggie Forbes, who had been
a servant with Dugald Stewart at Lothian Hut,
was still alive, and residing at No. I, Rankeillor
Street. There the great statesman visited her, and
expressed the pleasure he felt at renewing the
acquaintance of the old domestic.
Lothian Hut, the scene of Dugald Stewart’s
most important literary labours, was pulled down
ih 1825, to make room for a brewery ; but a house
of the same period, at the south-west corner of the
Horse Wynd, bears still the name of Lothian
Vale.
A little to the eastward of the present White
Horse hostel, and immediately adjoining the Water
Gate, stood the Hospital of St. Thomas, founded
in 154r by George Crichton, Bishop of Dunkeld,
“dedicated to God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and
all the saints.” It consisted of an almshouse and
chapel, the bedesmen of which were “to celebrate
the founder’s anniversary obit. by solemnly singing
in the choir of Holyrood church yearly, on the
day of his death, ‘the Placebo and Dinie for the
repose of his soul ” and the soul of the King of
Scotland. “ Special care,” says Amot, “ was taken
in allotting money for providing candles to be
lighted during the anniversary ma.ss of requiem,
and the number and size of the tapers were fixed
with a precision which shows the importance in
which these circumstances were held by the founder.
The number of masses, paternosters, aye-marias,
and credos, to be said by the chaplain and bedesmen
is distinctly ascertained.”
The patronage of the institution was vested by
the founder in himself and a certain series of representatives
named by him.
In 1617, with the consent of David Crichton of
Lugton, the patron, who had retained possession
of the endowments, the magistrates of the Canongate
purchased the chapel and almshouse from the
chaplains and bedesmen, and converted the institution
into a hospital for the poor of the burgh.
Over the entrance they placed the Canongate arms,
supported by a pair of ‘cripples, an old man and
woman, with the inscription-
HELP HERE THE POORE, AS ZE WALD GOD DID ZOV.
JUNE 19, 1617.
The magistrates of the Canongate sold the patronage
of the institution in 1634 to the Kirk Session,
by whom its revenues “ were entirely embezzled f
by 1747 the buildings were turned into coachhouses,
and in 1787 were pulled down, and replaced
by modem houses of hideous aspect.
On the opposite side of the Water Gate was the
Royal Tennis Court, the buildings of which are
very distinctly shown in Gordon’s map of 1647.
Maitland says it was anciently called the Catchpel,
from Cache, a game now called Fives, a favourite
amusement in Scotland as early as the reign of
James IV. The house, a long, narrow building,
with a court, after being a weavers’ workhouse,
was burned down in 1771, and rebuilt in the
tasteless fashion of that period ; but the locality is
full of interest, as being connected not only with
the game of tennis, as played there by the Duke
of Albany, Law the great financial schemer, and
others, but the early and obscure history of the
stage in Scotland.
In 1554 there was a ‘‘litill farsche and play
maid be William Lauder,” and acted before the
Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, for which he was
rewarded by two silver cups. Where it was acted
is not stated. Neither are we told where was perlormed
another play, “ made by Robert Simple ”
at Edinburgh, before the grim Lord Regent and
others of the nobility in 1567, and for which the
mthor was paid ;E66 13s. 4d.
The next record of .a post-Reformation theatre is
in the time of James VI. when several companies
came from London for the amusement of the court,
including one of which Shakspere was a member,
though his appearance cannot be substantiated.
In 1599 the company of English comedians was
interdicted by the clergy and Kirk Session,
though their performances, says Spottiswoode in](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v3p051.gif "Volume 3 Page 39")
... Palmerston, whose education, commenced
at Harrow, was continued at the University
of Edinburgh. When he ...
Vol. 3 p. 39 (Rel. 0.39)
![Newhaven. ] HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS. 299
Newhaven was deemed a place of much more
importance in those days,than it has been in subsequent
times.
Thus, in 1554, the works then occupied the
attention of the Provost and Council repeatedly.
In February that year A500 was given for timber
to repair the harbour, to be taken with a portion
of the tax laid on the town for building forts upon
the Borders ; and in 1555 we read of timber again
for Newhaven, brought there by Robert Quintin,
but which was sold by the advice of Sir William
Macdowall, master of the works. (“Burgh Records?’)
In the Burgh Account, under date 1554-5, we
find some references to the locality, thus t
“Item, the vj day of July, 1555, for cords to
bind and hang the four Inglismen at Leyth and
Newhaven, iijs.
“ Item, geven to Gorge Tod, Adam Purves, and
ane servand, to mak ane gibbet at Newhaven, in
haist and evil wedder (weather), 4s.
“ Item, for garroun and plansheour naillis, xxd.
“ Item, for drink to them at Newhaven, vj4
“Item, to twa workmen to beir the wrychtis
lomis to the Newhevin and up again, and to beir
the work and set up the gibbet, xxd.”
In the same year extensive works seem to have
been in operation, as, by the Burgh Accounts,
they appear to have extended from August to
November, under Robert Quintin, master of the
works. The entries for masons’ wages, timber
work, wrights’ wages, “ on Saiterday at evin to thair
supperis,” are given in regular order. John Arduthy
in Leith seems to have contracted for the “ standarts
to the foir face of the Newhevin;” and for
the crane there, eighteen fathoms of “Danskin tow”
(rope), were purchased fram Peter Turnett’s wife,
at tenpence the fathom.
John Ahannay and Geoge Bennet did the smithwork
at the crane, bulwarks, and worklooms. The
works at Newhaven, commenced in August, 1555,
under John Preston, as City Treasurer, were continued
till the middle of December eventually, under
Sir John Wilson, “master of work at the Newhevin,”
when they were suspended during winter and resumed
in the spring of 1556 ; and “ drink silver,”
to all the various trades engaged, figures amply
among the items. (“ Burgh Accounts.”)
In 1573 the Links of Newhaven were let by the
city, at an annual rent of thirty merks per annum
as grazing ground, thus showing that they must
then have been about the extent of those at Leith.
In 1595 they only produced six merks, and from
this rapid fall Maitland supposes that the sea had
made extensive encroachments on the ground ; and
as they are now nearly swept away, save a space
500 yards by 250, at the foot of the Whale Brae,
we may presume that his conjecture was a correct
one.
Kincaid states that at one period Newhaven had
Links both to the east and west of it. Even
the road that must have bordered the east Links
was swept away, and for years a perilous hole,
known as the ‘‘ Man-trap,” remained in the placea
hole in which, till recently, many a limb was
fractured and many a life lost.
In one of the oldest houses in Newhaven, nearly
opposite the burial-ground, there is a large sculp
tured pediment of remarkable appearance. It is
surmounted by a thistle, with the motto Nemo me
impune Zacessit, on ,a scroll, and the date 1588, a
three-masted ship, with the Scottish ensign at each
truck, pierced for sixteen guns, and below the
motto, in Roman letters,
IN THE NUM OF GOD.
Below this again is a deeply-cut square panel,
decorated with a pair of globes, a quadrant, cross,
staff, and anchor; and beneath these part of the
motto “ Yirtzte sydera ’ may, upon very close examination,
still be deciphered; but the history of
the stone, or of the house to which it belonged, is
unknown.
Some hollows near the p?ace were known as the
Fairy Holes, and they are mentioned in the indictment
of Eufame McCulzane for witchcraft, who is
stated to have attended a convention of witches
there in 1591, and also at others called the “Brume
Hoillis,” where she and many other witches, with
the devil in company, put to sea in riddles.
In 1630 and 1631 we find from “Dune’s Decisions,”
James Drummond, tacksman to the Lord
Holyroodhouse, of the Tiend Fishes of Newhaven,
(‘ pursuing spulzie ,’ against the fishers there.
The year 1630 was the first year of the tack, and
the fishermen alleged that they had been in use to
pay a particular duty, that was condescended an,
“ of all years preceding this year now acclaimed.”
The Lords found there was no necessity to grant
an inhibition, and reserved to themselves the modification
of the duty or quantity to be paid.
Newhaven gave the title of Viscount to an
English family who never had any connection with
the place, when in 1681 Charles 11. raised to the
peerage of Scotland Charles Cheyne, of Cogenho,
in Middlesex (dcscended from an ancient family in
Buckinghamshire), with the titles of ‘‘ Lord Cheyne
and Viscount Newhaven, near Leith, in the county
of Midlothian,” by patent dated at Windsor. His
son, the second Viscount Newhaven, who was
appointed Lord Lieutenant of Bucks by Queen](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p118.gif "Volume 6 Page 299")
... 1555,
under John Preston, as City Treasurer, were continued
till the middle of December eventually, ...
Vol. 6 p. 299 (Rel. 0.39)
... that of Fife. For
more than twenty years after that time he continued
to exercise the duties of his office, ...
Vol. 5 p. 90 (Rel. 0.39)
... the other proclamation
was then read, whereby King James VII.
continued all oAices till he had more time to ...
Vol. 1 p. 58 (Rel. 0.39)
... the other proclamation
was then read, whereby King James VII.
continued all oAices till he had more time to ...
Vol. 1 p. 59 (Rel. 0.39)
![Leith.] FIGHT IN THE HARBOUR. ‘33
of war, which had been at anchor for six weeks
in the Roads, and apparently with all her guns
shotted,
About noon on the 10th December, 1613, an
Englishman, who was in a “mad humour,” says
Calderwood, when the captain and most of the
officers were on shore, laid trains of powder throughout
the vessel, notwithstanding that his own son
was on board, and blew her up. Balfour states
that she was a 48-gun ship, commanded by a
Captain Wood, that sixty men were lost in her,
and sixty-three who escaped were sent to London.
Calderwood reduces the number who perished to
twenty-four, and adds that the fire made all her
ordnance go off, so that none dared go near her to
render assistance.
In 1618 Leith was visited by Taylor, the Water
Poet, and was there welcomed by Master Bernard
Lindsay, one of the grooms of his Majesty’s bedchamber;
and his notice of the commerce of the
port presents a curious contrast to the Leith of the
present day :-cc I was credibly informed that within
the compass of one year there was shipped away
from that only port of Leith fourscore thousand
boles of wheat, oats, and barley, into Spain, France,
and other foreign parts, and every bole contains a
measure of four English bushels; so that from
Leith only hath been transported 320,000 bushels
of corn, besides some hath been shipped away
from St. Andrews, Dundee, Aberdeen, &c., and
other portable towns, which makes me wonder that
a kingdom so populous as it is, should nevertheless
sell so much bread corn beyond the seas, and yet
have more than sufficient for themselves.”
In parochial and other records of those days
many instances are noted of the capture of Scottish
mariners by the pirates of Algiers, and of collections
being made in the several parishes for their
redemption from slavery. In the Register of the
Privy Council, under date January, r636, we find
that a ship called the Jdn, of Leith, commanded
by John Brown, when sailing from London to
La Rochelle, on the coast of France, fell in with
three Turkish men-of-war, which, after giving him
chase from sunrise to sunset, captured the vessel,
took possession of the cargo and crew, and then
scuttled her.
Poor Brown and his mariners were all taken to
Salee, and there sold in the public market as
slaves. Each bore iron chains to the weight of
eighty pounds, and all were daily employed in
grinding at a mill, while receiving nothing to eat
but a little dusty bread. In the night they were
confined in holes twenty feet deep aniong rats and
mice, and because they were too poor-being only
mariners-to redeem themselves, they trusted to the
benevolence of his Majesty‘s subjects. By order
of the Council, a contribution was levied in the
Lothians and elsewhere, but with what result we
are not told.
In 1622 the usual excitements of the times were
varied by a sea-fight in the heart of Leith harbour.
On the 6th of June, in that year, the constable of
Edinburgh Castle received orders from the Lords
of Council to have his cannon and cannoniers in
instant readiness, as certain foreign ships were engaged
in close battle within gunshot of Leith
A frigate belonging to Philip IV. of Spain, cbmmanded
by Don Pedro de Vanvornz, had been
lying for some time at anchor within the harbour
there, taking on board provisions and stores, her
soldiers and crew coming on shore freely whenever
they chose; but it happened that one night two
vessels of war, belonging to their bitter enemies,
the Dutch, commanded by Mynheer de Hautain,
the Admiral of Zealand, came into the same anchorage,
and-as the Earl of Melrose reported to
James VI.-cast anchor close by Don Pedro.
The moment daylight broke the startled Spaniards
ran up their ensign, cleared away for action, and a
desperate fight ensued, nearly muzzle to muzzle.
For two hours without intermission, the tiers of
brass cannon from the decks of the three ships
poured forth a destructive fire, and the Spaniards,
repulsed by sword and partisan, made more than
one attempt to carry their lofty bulwarks by
boarding. The smoke of their culverins, matchlocks,
and pistolettes enveloped their rigging and
all the harbour of Leith, through the streets and
along the pier of which bullets of all sorts and
sizes went skipping and whizzing, to the terror and
confusion of the inhabitants.
As this state of things was intolerable, the burgesses
of the city and seaport rushed to arms and
armour, at the disposal of the Lords of Council,
who despatched a herald with the water bailie to
command both parties to forbear hostilities in Scottish
waters ; but neither the herald‘s tabard nor the
bailie’s authority prevailed, and the fight continued
with unabated fury till midday. The Spanish
captain finding himself sorely pressed by his two
antagonists, obtained permission to warp his ship
farther within the harbour ; but still the unrelenting
Dutchmen poured their broadsides upon his
shattered hull.
The Privy Council now ordered the Admiral
Depute to muster the mariners of Leith, and assail
the Admiral of Zealand in aid of the Dunkerpuer;
but the depute reported that they were altogether
vnable, and he saw no way to enforce obedience](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v5p194.gif "Volume 5 Page 183")
... nor the
bailie’s authority prevailed, and the fight continued
with unabated fury till midday. The ...
Vol. 5 p. 183 (Rel. 0.39)
![202 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith.
.armorial he adopted was argent, a tree or, with two
ships under sail.
It was still time of truce when Henry, mortified
by the defeat of his five ships, exhorted his most
.able seamen “ to purge away this stain cast on the
English name,” and offered the then noble pension
of &I,OOO per annum to any man who could
accomplish Wood’s death or capture ; and the task
was taken in hand by Sir Stephen Bull (originally
a merchant of London), who, with three of Henry’s
largest ships manned by picked crews, and having
on board companies of crossbowmen, pikemen, and
many volunteers of valour and good birth, sailed
from the Thames in July, 1490, and entering the
Firth of Forth, came to anchor under the lee of
the Isle of May, there to await the return of Wood
from Sluys, and for whose approach he kept boats
scouting to seaward.
On the morning of the 18th of August the two
ships of Wood hove in sight, and were greeted with
exultant cheers by the crews of Bull, who set
some inlets of wine abroach, and gave the orders
to unmoor and clear away for battle.
Wood recognised the foe, and donninghis armour,
gave orders to clear away too ; and his brief ha-
Iangue, modernised, is thus given by Lindesay of
Pitscottie and others :-
“ My lads, these are the foes who would convey
us in bonds to the foot of an English king, but by
your courage and the help of God they shall fail !
Repair every man to his station-charge home,
gunners-cross-bowmen to the tops-two-handed
swords to the fore-rooms-lime-pots and fire-balls in
the tops ! Be stout, men, and true for the honour
of Scotland and your own sakes. Hurrah!”
Shouts followed, and stoups of wine went round.
His second in command was Sir David Falconer,
who was afterwards slain at Tantallon. The result
of the battle that ensued is well known. It was
continued for two days and a night, during which
the ships were all grappled together, and drifted
into the Firth of Tay, where the English were all
taken, and carried as prizes into the harbour of
Dundee. Wood presented Sir Stephen Bull and
his surviving officers to Jarnes IV., who dismissed
them unransomed, with their ships, “ because they
fought not for gain, but glory,” and Henry dissemkled
his rage by returning thanks.
For this victory Wood obtained the sea town as
well as the nether town of Largo, and soon afteI
his skilful eye recommended the Bay of Gourock ta
James as a capable harbour. In 1503 he led a
fleet against the insurgent chiefs of the Isles. Hi$
many brilliant services lie apart from the immediate
history of Leith. Suffice it to say that he was pre.
I
sent at the battle of Linlithgow in 1526, and
wrapped the dead body of Lennox in his own
scarlet mantle. Age was coming on him after this,
and he retired to his castle of Largo, where he
seems to have lived somewhat like old Commodore
Trunnion, for there is still shown the track of a
canal formed by his order, on which he was rowed
to mass daily in Largo church in a barge by his
old crew, who were all located around him, He is
supposed to have died abodt 1540, and was buried
in Largo church. One of his sons was a senator
of the College of Justice in 1562 ; and Sir Andrew
Wood, third of the House of Largo, was Comptroller
of Scotland in 1585.
Like himself, the Bartons, the shipmates and
friends of Sir -4ndrew, all attained high honour
and fame, though their origin was more distinguished
than his, and they were long remembered
among the fighting captains of Leith.
John Barton, a merchant of Leith in the time of
James III., had three sons : Sir Andrew, the hero
of the famous nautical ballad, who was slain in the
Downs in 151 I, but whose descendants still exist ;
Sir Robert of Overbarnton in 1508, Comptroller
of the Household to James V. in 1520; John, an
eminent naval commander under James 111. and
James IV., who died in t 5 13,and was buried at Kirkcudbright.
The Comptroller’s son Robert married
the heiress of Sir John Mowbray of Barnbougle, who
died in 151 y ; and his descendants became extinct
in the person of Sir Robert of Overbarnton, Barnbougle,
and Inverkeithing. Our authorities for these
and a few other memoranda concerning this old
Leith family are a “Memoir of the Familyof Barton,
&c.,” by J. Stedman, Esq., of Bath (which is scarce,
only twelve copies having been printed), Tytler,
Pinkerton, and others.
For three generations the Bartons of Leith seem
to have had a kind of family war with the Portuguese,
and their quarrel began in the year 1476,
when John Barton, senior, on putting to sea froin
Sluys, in Flanders, in a king’s ship, the ]iZiai’nnn,
laden with a valuable cargo, was unexpectedly
attacked by two armed Portuguese caravels, commanded
respectively by Juan Velasquez and Juan
Pret. The JiZiana was taken ; many of her crew
were slain or captured, the rest were thrust into a
boat and cut adrift. Among the latter was old John
Barton, who proceeded to Lisbon to seek indemnity,
but in vain; and he is said by one account to
have been assassinated by Pret or Velasquez to put
an end to the affair. By another he is stated to have
been alive in 1507, and in command of a ship
called the Liun, which was seized at Campvere, in
Zealand-unless it can be that the John referred to](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p021.gif "Volume 6 Page 202")
... The result
of the battle that ensued is well known. It was
continued for two days and a night, during which
the ...
Vol. 6 p. 202 (Rel. 0.39)
![Holyrocd.] HOWIESON OF BRAEHEAD. 63
space of one year, with great triumph and mem
ness.” He diligently continued the works begur
by his gallant father, and erected the north-wes
towers, which have survived more than one con
flagration, and on the most northern of which coulc
be traced, till about 1820, his name, IACOBVS RE)
SCOTORVM, in large gilt Roman letters.
In 1528 blood was again shed in Holyrooc
during a great review of Douglases and Hamilton:
held there prior to a march against the Englis€
’borders. A groom of the Earl of Lennox perceiv
ing among those present Sir James Hamilton o
Finnart, who slew that noble at Linlithgow, intent or
vengeance, tracked him into the palace “by a dad
staircase which led to a narrow gallery,” and then
attacked him, sword in hand. Sir James en
deavoured to defend himself by the aid of hi:
. velvet mantle, but fell, pierced by six wounds, nonc
of which, however, were mortal. The gates wen
closed, and while a general mClCe was on the poin
of ensuing between the Douglases and Hamil
tons, the would-be assassin was discovered With hi:
bloody weapon, put to the torture, and then hi:
right hand was cut 04 on which “he observed
with a sarcastic smile, that it was punished les:
than it deserved for having failed to revenge tht
murder of his beloved master.’’
James V. was still in the palace in 1530, as we find
in the treasurer‘s accounts for that year : ‘‘ Item, tc
the Egiptianis that dansit before the king in Holy
rud House, 40s.” He was a monarch whose pure
benevolence of intention often rendered his roman.
tic freaks venial, if not respectable, since from his
anxiety to learn the wants and wishes of his humbler
subjects he was wont, like Il Boadocan4 or Haroun
Alrdschid, to traverse the vicinity of his palaces
in the plainest of disguises ; and two comic songs,
composed by himself, entitled “We’ll gang nae
mair a-roving,” and “The Gaberlunzie Man,” are
said to have been founded on his adventures while
masked as a beggar; and one of these, which
nearly cost him his life at Cramond, some five
miles frum Holyrood, is given in Scott’s ‘‘ Tales of
a Grandfather.”
While visiting a pretty peasant girl in Cramond
village he was beset by four or five persons, against
whom he made a stand with his sword upon the
high and narrow bridge that spans the Almond,
in a wooded hollow. Here, when well-nigh beaten,
and covered with blood, he was succoured and
rescued by a peasant armed with a flail, who conducted
him into a barn, where he bathed his wounds;
and in the course of conversation James discovered
that the summit of his deliverer’s earthly wishes
was to be proprietor of the little farm of Braehead,
on which he was then a labourer. Aware that it was
Crown property, James said, ‘‘ Come to Holyrood,
and inquire for the gudeman of Ballengeich,” referring
to a part of Stirling Castle which he was
wont to adopt as a cognomen.
The peasant came as appointed, and was met
by the king in his disguise, who conducted him
through the palace, and asked him if he wished
to see the king. John Howison-for such was his
name-expressed the joy it would give him, provided
he gave no offence. But how shall I know
him?” he added.
“ Easily,” replied James, “All others will be
bareheaded, the king alone will wear his bonnet.”
Scared by his surroundings and the uncovered
crowd in the great hall, John Howison looked
around him, and then said, naively, “The king
must be either you or me, for all but us are bareheaded.”
James and his courtiers laughed ; but
he bestowed upon Howison the lands of Braehead,
‘‘ on condition that he and his successors should
be ready to present an ewer and basin for the king
to wash his hands when His Majesty should come
to Holyrood or pass the bridge of Cramond.
Accordingly, in the year 1822, when George IV.
came to Scotland, a descendant of John Howison,
whose hmily still possess the estate, appeared at a
solemn festival, and offered His Majesty water from
a silver ewer, that he might perform the service by
which he held his land.”
Such pranks as these were ended by the king‘s marriage
in I 53 7 to the Princess Magdalene, the beautiful
daughter of Francis I., with unwonted splendour in
the cathedral of Notre Dame, in presence of the
Parliament of Paris, of Francis, the Queens of
France and Navarre, the Dauphin, Duke of Orleans,
md all the leading peers of Scotland and o(
France. On the 27th of May the royal pair
landed at Leith, amid every display of welcome,
md remained a few days at Holyrood, tin the
mthusiastic citizens prepared to receive them in
state with a procession of magnificence.
Magdalene, over whose rare beauty consump-
:ion seemed to spread a veil more tender and
rlluring, was affectionate and loving in nature. On
anding, in the excess of her love for James,
;he knelt down, and, kissing the soil, prayed God
:o bless the land of her adoption-scotland, and
ts people.
The “ Burgh Records ” bear witness how anxious
he Provost and citizens were to do honour to the
)ride of ‘‘ the good King James. All beggars were
varned off the streets : ‘lane honest man of ilk
:lose or two,” were to see this order enforced ; the
vbbish near John Makgill’s house and “the litster](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v3p075.gif "Volume 3 Page 63")
... year, with great triumph and mem
ness.” He diligently continued the works begur
by his gallant father, and ...
Vol. 3 p. 63 (Rel. 0.39)
... it subsisted in vigour and celebrity till 1784,
and continued its weekly meetings with great replarity,
long ...
Vol. 2 p. 230 (Rel. 0.39)
![west Port.] BURKE AND HARE. 227
by a distinguished anatomist for the body of a poor
old pensioner, named Donald, who died in their
hands, a short time before his pension became due.
Hare, who expected to be reimbursed for A4 owing
to him by Donald, was exasperated by the loss,’and
filling the coffin with bark from the adjacent
tannery, it was buried, while the corpse in a sack
was carried alternately by Burke and Hare, through
College Street, to Surgeon Square, and sold for
seven pounds ten shillings, to Dr. Knox and his
assistants.
The money so easily won seemed to exert a
magnetic influence over the terrible quaternion in
Tanner‘s Close. The women foresaw that other
lodgers mz@ die, and hoped to flaunt in finery
before the poor denizens of the Portsburgh ; and
the steady and studied career of assassination began,
and was continued, by Burke’s own confession,
from Christmas, 1827, to the end of October, 1828.
-( Week&JoumaZ, Jan. 6th, 1829.)
The modus ojei-avzdi was very simple: the unknown
and obscure wayfarer was lured into the
“ lodging-house,” weary and hungry, perhaps, then
generally well dosed with coarse raw whisky, preparatory
to strangulation, glass after glass being
readily and cordially filled in contemplation .of
the value of the future corpse, as in the case of
one unfortunate creature named Mary Haldane.
Then, ‘‘ all is ready-the drooping head-the
closing eye-the languid helpless body. The women
get the hint. They knew the unseemliness of
being spectators-nay, they were delicate ! A
repetition of a former scene, only with even less
resistance. Hare holds again the lips, and Burke
presses his twelve stone weight on the chest.
Scarcely a sigh; but on a trial if dead a long
gurgling indraught More is not required-and
all is still in that dark room, with the window
looking out on the dead wall.” By twelve the
same night the body of Mary Haldane was in the
hands of “the skilled anatomist,” who made no
inquiries; and as thb supply from Log‘s lodgings
increased, the value for each subject seemed to
increase also, as the partners began to get from
6 1 2 to A14 for each-nearly double what they
had received for the body of the poor Highland
pensioner.
The attempt to rehearse in detail all the crimes
of which these people were guilty, would only weary
and revolt the reader. Suffice it to say, that the
discovery of the dead body of a woman, quite nude,
and with her face covered with blood, among some
straw in an occupied house of Burke and another
Irishman named Broggan, caused the arrest of the
four suspects. Hare turned King‘s evidence, and
on the 24th December, 1828, amid such excitement
as Edinburgh had not witnessed for ages, William
Burke and Helen McDougal were arraigned at the
bar of the Justiciary Court, charged with a succession
of murders ! Among these were the murder
of a very handsome girl named Mary Paterson in
the house of Burke’s brother, Constantine Burke, a
scavenger residing in Gibb’s Close, Canongate ;
that of a well-knowp idiot, named James Wilson
(“Daft Jamie”), at the house in Tanner’s Close; of
Mary McGonegal, or Docherty, at the same place.
These were selected for proof as sufficient in the
indictment j but the real lit was never known or
exhausted. Among the cases was supposed to
be that of a little Italian boy named Ludovico,
who went about the city with white mice. Two
little white mice were seen for long after haunting
the dark recesses of Tanner‘s Close, and in Hare’s
house a cage with the mice’s tuming-wheel was
actually found. Of this murder Burke was supposed
to be guiltless, and that it had been a piece of
private business done by Hare on his own account.
The libel contained a list of a great number of
articles of dress, &c., worn or used by the various
victims, and among other things were Daft Jamie’s
brass snuff-box and spoon, objects which excited
much interest, as Jamie was a favourite with the
citizens, and his body must have been recognised
by Dr. Knox the instant he saw it on the dissecting
table. The presiding judge of the court was the Lard
Justice-clerk Boyle; the others were the Lords
Pitmilly, Meadowbank, and M‘Kenzie ; the prosecutor
was Sir Wdiam Rae, Lord Advocate. The
counsel for Burke was the Dean of Faculty ; that
for M‘Dougal the celebrated Henry Cockburn.
The witnesses were fifty-five in number-the two
principal being Hare and the woman Log, received
as evidence in the characters of soni’ mininis.
When all had been examined, and the cases were
brought fatally home to Burke, while his paramour
escaped with a verdict of “not proven,” a loud
whisper ran through the court of (‘ Where are the
doctors ?” as it was known the names of Knox and
others were placed on the back of the indictment
as witnesses ; yet they could scarcely have appeared
but at the risk of their lives, so high was the tide
of popular indignation against them.
Burke was sentenced to death in the usual form,
the Lord Justice-clerk expressing regret that his
body could not be gibbeted in chains, but was to
be publicly’dissected, adding, “and I trust that if
it is ever customary to preserve skeletons yours will
be preserved, in order that posterity may keep in
remembrance your atrocious crimes.” So the
body of Burke was sent appropriately where he](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v4p047.gif "Volume 4 Page 227")
... and studied career of assassination began,
and was continued , by Burke’s own confession,
from Christmas, ...
Vol. 4 p. 227 (Rel. 0.39)
... and who by his poetic effusions upon
local subjects continued to eke out a precarious
subsistence, ...
Vol. 4 p. 250 (Rel. 0.39)
... and NeZsun. The
dancing commenced at ten dclock, and was continued
till two in the morning.”
In this year ...
Vol. 4 p. 318 (Rel. 0.38)
... amid high words struck him dead
with his dagger, and continued to lounge quietly
near the body. He was made ...
Vol. 1 p. 50 (Rel. 0.38)
... fatal battle
had interrupted, and which James IV. had continued
till his death. The accounts of the ...
Vol. 3 p. 62 (Rel. 0.38)
... in
defiance of whose edict on the subject in 1786 he
continued to use his own rules till they ceased ...
Vol. 4 p. 293 (Rel. 0.38)
... the play field, now bigging in the
Greensid.”
This place continued to be used as the scene of
feats of arms ...
Vol. 3 p. 102 (Rel. 0.38)
... in Restalrig churchyard.
Mrs. Broughain’s maiden aunt continued to
reside in this house at the Cowgate-head ...
Vol. 4 p. 242 (Rel. 0.38)