... ASSEMBLY
presiding officials, male and female, with the names
they adopted, such as Elisha the ...
Book 5 p. 123
(Score 0.52)
... Seat.1 ST. ANTHONY?S CHAPEL. 319
farmers, who are maintained in it for six years;
?whom failing, the ...
Book 4 p. 319
(Score 0.52)
... 463
Douglas, Daunie, 239
Cause, 163
Douglas, Heron, & Co.’s Bank, 284
Dow Craig, Calton Hill, ...
Book 10 p. 502
(Score 0.52)
... 26 ? OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [PrinerSSma.
The tower, as originally designed, terminated in
an open lantern, but ...
Book 3 p. 126
(Score 0.52)
![Leith] ST. NINIAN?S CHAPEL 251
the eighty-seventh year of his age, and was able
to transact business until a very short time before
his death. He was succeeded in the baronetcy
by his eldest son, Sir Thomas Gladstone, of Fasque
and Balfour, M.P. for Queenborough and other
places successively in England.
Gladstone Place, near the Links, has been
so named in honour of this family.
From the top of the Sheriff Brae and Mill Lane,
Great Junction Street, a broad and spacious
thoroughfare, extends eastward for the distance of
two thousand feet to the foot of Leith Walk.
Here, on the south side, are the United Presbyterian
church, the neat Methodist chapel, and a
large and handsome edifice erected in 1839 as a
school, and liberally endowed by Dr. Bell, founder
of the Madras system of education, at a cost of
f;IO,OOO.
C H A P T E R X X V I I I ,
NORTH LEITH.
The Chapel and Church of St. NiniaPParish Created-Its Records-Rev. George Wishart-Rev. John Knox-Rev. Dr. Johnston-The Burial-
Ground-New North Leith ChurchlFree Church-Old Grammar SchoolXobourg Street-St. Nicholas Church-The Citadel-Its
Remains-Houses within k--Beach and Sands of North Leith-New Custom How-Shipping Inwards and Outwards.
ON crossing the river we find ourselves in North
Leith, which is thus described by Kincaid in
?787 :-
? With regard to North Leith, very little alteration
has taken place here for a century past. It consists
of one street running north-east from the bridge,
six hundred feet long, and about forty in breadth
where broadest. On each side are many narrow
lanesand closes, those on the south side leading
down to the carpenters? yards by the side of the
river, and those on the north to the gardens belonging
to the inhabitants. From the bridge a
road leads to the citadel, in length 520 feet ; then
IOO feet west, and we enter the remains of the old
fortification, on the top of which a dwelling-house
is now erected. The buiIdings in this place are in
general very mean in their appearance, and inhabited
by peopIe who let rooms during the summer
season to persons who bathe in the salt water.?
One of the leading features of North Leith, when
viewed from any point of view, is the quaint spire
of its.old church, on the west bank of the river,
near the end of the upper drawbridge, abandoned
now to secular purposes, separated from its ancient
burying-ground (which still remains, With its many
tombstones, half sunk amid the long rank grass
of ages), and lifting its withered and storm-worn
outline, as if in deprecation of the squalor by which
it is surrounded, and the neglect and contumely
heaped on its venerable history.
North Leith, which contains the first, or original
docks, and anciently comprehended the citadel
and the chief seat of traffic, was long a congeries
of low, quaint-looking old houses, huddled
into groups or irregular lines, and straddling their
way amid nuisances in back and front, very much
the style of a Spanish or Portuguese town of the
present day; but since 1818 it has undergone great
and renovating changes, and, besides being disenambered
of the citadel and masses of crumbling
houses, it has some streets that may vie with the
second or third thoroughfares of Edinburgh.
As stated in our general history of Leith, Robert
Ballantyne, Abbot of Holyrood, towards the close
of the fifteenth century, built a handsome bridge
of three stone arches over the Water of Leith, to
connect the southern with the northern quarter of
the rising seaport, and so011 after its completion he
erected and endowed near its northern end a chapel,
dedicated to the honour of God, the Virgin Mary,
and St. Ninian, the apostle of Galloway, Having
considerable possessions in Leith, ?he abbot a p
pointed two. chaplains to officiate in this chapel,
who were ta receive all the profits accruing from a
house which he had built at the southern end of
this bridge, with A4 yearly out of other tenements
he possessed in South Leith.
In addition to the offerings made in the chapel,
the tolls or duties accruing from this new bridge
were to be employed in its repair and that of the
chapel, but all surplus the charitable abbot ordained
was to be given to the poor; and this charter of
foundation was confirmed by James IV., of gallant
memory, on the 1st of January, 1493. (Maitland.)
This chapel was built with the full consent of
the Chapter of Holyrood, and with the approbation
of William, Archbishop of St Andrews ; and-as a.
dependency of the church of the Holy Crossthe
land whereon it stood is termed the Rudest&
in a charter of Queen Mary, dated 1569.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p070.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. VI Page 251")
... ST. NINIAN?S CHAPEL 251
the eighty-seventh year of his age, and was able
to transact business until a very ...
Book 6 p. 251
(Score 0.52)
![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 "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. I Page 163")
... House.] TREATY OF UNION. 163
to regain the throne; for the proposed union
with England had inflamed to ...
Book 1 p. 163
(Score 0.51)
... ROMAN AND OTUER ANTIQUITIES. 331
locality; But the ?? Old Statistical Account ? has
the following version ...
Book 6 p. 331
(Score 0.51)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Cunie.
? for provisions, and the enemy in confident expectation
of starving them ...
Book 6 p. 334
(Score 0.51)
![Holyrood.] ROYAT, MARRIAGES. 55
with the Dukes of Savoy and Burgundy. She
landed at Leith amid a vast concourse of all
classes of the people, and, escorted by a bodyguard
of 300 men-at-arms, all cap-d+e, with
the citizens also in their armour, under Patrick
Cockburn of Nevtbigging, Provost of Edinburgh
and Governor of the Castle, was escorted to the
monastery of the Greyfriars, where she was warmly
welcomed by her future husband, then in his
twentietb year, and was visited by the queenmother
on the following day.
The week which intervened between her arrival
and?her marriage was spent in a series of magnificent
entertainments, during which, from her great
beauty and charms of manner, she won the devoted
affection of the loyal nobles and people.
A contemporary chronicler has given a minute
account of one of the many chivalrous tournaments
that took place, in which three Burgundian nobles,
two of them brothers named Lalain, and the thud
HervC Meriadet, challenged any three Scottish
knights to joust with lance, battle-axe, sword, and
dagger, a defiance at once accepted by Sir James
Douglas, James Douglas of Lochleven, and Sir
John Ross of Halkhead, Constable of Renfrew.
Lances were shivered and sword and axe resorted
to with nearly equal fortune, till the king threw
down his truncheon and ended the combat.
The royal marriage, which took place in the
church at Holyrood amid universal joy, concluded
these stirring scenes. At the bridal feast the first
dish was in the form of a boar?s head, painted and
stuck full df tufts of coarse flax, served up on an
enormous platter, with thirty-two banners, bearing
the arms of the king and principal nobles ; and the
flax was set aflame, amid the acclamations of the
numerous assembly that filled the banquet-hall.
Ten years after Holyrood beheld a sorrowful
scene, when, in 1460, James, who had been slain
by the bursting of a cannon at the siege of Roxburgh
on the 3rd August, in his thirtieth year, was
laid in the royal vault, ?with the teares of his
people and his hail1 army,? says Balfour.
In 1467 there came from Rome, dated zznd
February, the bull of Pope Paul II., granting, on
the petition of the provost, bailies, and community
of the city, a con~mission to the Bishop of Galloway,
?et dilectojZio Abbafi Monasterii Sancta Cmcis mini
viuros de Rdynburgh,? to erect the Church of St.
Giles into a collegiate institution.
Two years afterwards Holyrood was again the
scene of nuptial festivities, when the Parliamen!
met, and Margaret of Norway, Denmark, and
Sweden, escorted by the Earl of Arran and a
gallant train of Scottish aad Danish nobles, landed
at Leith in July, 1469. She was in her sixteenth
year, and had as her dowry the isles of Orkney
and Shetland, over which her ancestors had hitherto
claimed feudal superiority. James III., her
husband, had barely completed his eighteenth
year when they were married in the abbey church,
where she was crowned queenconsort. ?? The marriage
and coronation gave occasion to prolonged
festivities in the metropolis and plentiful congratulations
throughout the kingdom. Nor was the
flattering welcome undeserved by the queen ; in the
bloom of youth and beauty, amiable and virtuous,
educated in all the feminine accomplishments of
the age, and so richly endowed, she brought as
valuable an accession of lustre to the court as of
territory to the kingdom.?
In 1477 there arrived ?heir in grate pompe,?
says Balfour, ?Husman, the legate of Pope
Xystus the Fourth,? to enforce the sentence of
deprivation and imprisonment pronounced by Hjs
Holiness upon Patrick Graham, Archbishop of St.
Andrews, an eminent and unfortunate dignitary of
the Church of Scotland. He was the first who
bore that rank, and on making a journey to Rome,
returned as legate, and thus gained the displeasure
of the king and of the clergy, who dreaded his
power. He was shut up in the monastery of Inchcolm,
and finally in the castle of Lochleven. Meanwhile,
in the following year, William Schivez, a
great courtier and favourite of the king, was
solemnly consecrated in Holyrood Church by the
papal legate, from whose hands he received a pall,
the ensign of archiepiscopal dignity, and with great
solemnity was proclaimed ?? Primate and Legate of
the realm of Scotland.? His luckless rival died
of a broken heart, and was buried in St. Serf?s
Isle, where his remains were recently discovered,
buried in a peculiar posture, with the knees drawn
up and the hands down by the side.
In 1531, when Robert Cairncross was abbot,
there occurred an event, known as ? the miracle of
John Scott,? which made some noise in its time.
This man, a citizen of Edinburgh, having taken
shelter from his creditors in the sanctuary of Holyrood,
subsisted there, it is alleged, for forty days
without food of any kind.
Impressed by this circumstance, of which some
exaggerated account had perhaps been given to
him, James V. ordered his apparel to be changed
and strictly searched. He ordered also that he
should be conveyed from Holyrood to a vaulted
room in David?s Tower in the castle, where he was
barred from access by all and closely guarded.
Daily a small allowance of bread and water were
placed before him, but he abstained from both for](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v3p067.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. III Page 55")
... ROYAT, MARRIAGES. 55
with the Dukes of Savoy and Burgundy. She
landed at Leith amid a vast concourse ...
Book 3 p. 55
(Score 0.51)
![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 "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. V Page 99")
... LORD WARRISTON. 99
family, the Laird of Dunipace ; but, owing to some
alleged ill-treatment, she grew ...
Book 5 p. 99
(Score 0.51)
![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 "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. VI Page 201")
... DEATH OF JAMES 111. 201
1488-he embarked in one of Sir Andrew?s ships
then anchored in the Roads of ...
Book 6 p. 201
(Score 0.5)
... OLD AKD NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street,
Europe or America as a handy yet comprehensive
book of ready reference, ...
Book 2 p. 226
(Score 0.5)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Water of Leith.
After this, no one attempted to break into his
grounds.
No. 29, ...
Book 5 p. 74
(Score 0.5)
... character of the place inust have been
destroyed. ?? Queen Mary granted the gardens of
-the Greyfriars? ...
Book 1 p. 158
(Score 0.49)
![2 1 9 Fountainbridge.] INDIA-RUBBER COMPANY.
flesher would venture to kill any beast till all the
different parts were bespoke, butcher meat being
then a very unsaleable article.?
At the southern extremity of Fountainbridge
stood, till within the last few years, an antique villa,
a little way back from the road, named Bainfield,
for years the residence of an old and well-known
citizen, Bain Whyt, a W.S. of I 789, who was senior
lieutenant and afterwards adjutant of the First
Edinburgh Volunteers formed in 1794, and who
is still remembered in Edinburgh as the founder
of the Wagering Club in 1775. Yearly, on the
night of the 30th January, the members of this
club meet and solemnly drink to the memory
of ?? Old Bain Whyt,? in whose honour songs are
occasionally sung, the character of which may be
gathered from the following two verses of one sung
at the ninetieth anniversary :-
?? Come all ye jolly wagerers, and listen unto me,
And I will sing a little song, composed in memorie
Of the fine old Scottish gentleman, who in 1775,
Did plant the tree that still we see, right hearty and
alive.
Chorus-Right hearty and alive,
In this its ninetieth year !
With mirth and hearty cheer !
?Ihen drink to-night, to old Bain Whyt,
6? When haughty Gaul did fiercely crow and threaten swcird
Bain Whyt among the foremost rose to guard our native
A soldier good, full armed he stood, for home and
The pattern of a Ioyal man, a British volunteer !
in hand,
land ;
country dear,
Chorus-A British volunteer,
And an adjutant was he !
To him with three times three ! ?
Then fill the cup, and quaff it up,
The wagers, for small sums, a bottle of wine, a
dinner, perhaps, are made on the probable course
of current public events. They are then noted and
sealed up, to be opened and read from the chair
that night twelvemonth-the club holding no meetings
in the interim ; and the actual results are often
so far wide of all human speculation as to excite
both amusement and interest.
North of Bainfield, in what is still called Gilmore
Park, are two of the largest and finest manufactories
of India-rubber in the world, and the operations
conducted therein illustrate most ably the
nature and capabilities of caoutchouc. They stand
near each other on the western bank of the Union
Canal, and belong respectively to the North British
Rubber Company, and the Scottish Vulcanite
Company.
In 1855 an enterprising American brought to
Edinburgh the necessary capital and machinery
for an India-rubber manufactory, and acquired
possession of a great quadrangular block of fine
buildings, known as the Castle Silk Mills, which
had long been vacant, the projectors having failed
in their expectations. This edifice consists of two
large blocks of five floors each, with a number of
adjacent buildings.
Here the India-rubber arrives in different forms,
according to the fashion of the countries that produce
it, some shaped like quaint bottles, and some
in balls, of five inches diameter, and it is carefully
examined with a view to the detection of foreign
substances before it is subjected to the processes of
manufacture. After being softened in hot water,
the balls are crushed into thin pieces between
cylinders, the rubber being sent through and
through again and again, until it is thoroughly
crushed and assumes the form of a web. If further
reduction is necessary, it is sent through a third
set of rollers, and to rid it completely of foreign
matter, leaves or bark, &c., washing and cleansing
machines are employed. So adhesive is its nature,
that cleansing would prove abortive in a dry state,
and consequently jets of water flow constantly on
the rubber and cylinders when the machines referred
to are in operation. After being thus
cleansed, the webs are hung in the warm atmosphere
of the drying-room for several weeks.
From thence they are taken to ?? the mill,? which
occupies two entire floors of the main building.
The grinding machines; to the operation af which
the rubber is subjected, consist of two cylinders,
one of which is moderately heated by steam, and
the webs formed by the washing-machines are kept
revolving round and round the cylinders, until the
material becomes quite plastic. At this stage, sulphur,
or other chemical substances, are incorporated
with it, to determinate its ultimate character, and it
is then made up into seven or eight pound rolls,
while all further treatment depends upon the purpose
to which it is to be applied.
Great is the variety of goods produced here.
One of the upper floors is occupied by shoemakers
alone. There boots and shoes of all sizes are
made, but more especially the goloshes for wearing
over them; another floor is occupied by the makers
of coats, leggings, cushions, bags, and so forth. The ?
light-coloured coats foi India are the finest articles
made here.
The North British Rubber Company have paid
much attention to that department which includes
the manufacture of mbes, springs, washers, drivingbelts,
tires for wheels, &c They made the latter
for the wheels of the road steamer invented by
Rfr. R W. Thomson, of Edinburgh-huge rings of](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v4p039.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. IV Page 219")
... 1 9 Fountainbridge.] INDIA-RUBBER COMPANY.
flesher would venture to kill any beast till all the
different parts ...
Book 4 p. 219
(Score 0.49)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
style, with many ornate gables, dormer windows,
%ut was a second time ...
Book 2 p. 282
(Score 0.49)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith
helmet, now preserved in the Antiquarian Museum
-and the entrance gate or ...
Book 6 p. 258
(Score 0.49)
![High Street.3 CHANGES IN THE HIGH STREET. 203
Mortality,? I 7041 gives us the long inscription on the
tomb of the Colonel?s wife, in the Greyfriars, beginning
:-? Nic $osita Rdiquire Lectissrna rnatronq
Jeanne ]ohnsone, conizcgl?s Archibaldi Row, Re@
Scloppetarz>rum, hpmzis,? &c. She died in
1702.
On the 8th of March Anne was proclaimed
Queen of Scotland, at the Cross, with all the usual
solemnities.
In January, 1703, George Young, merchant in
the High Street, was appointed by the Provost, Si1
Hugh Cunningham, and the Council, to act a
a constable, and along with several other citizen:
of respectable position, ? oversee the manners and
order of the burgh, and the inhabitants thereof,
and on the evening of the 24th, being Sunday, he
went through some parts of the city to see ?that
the Lord?s day, and the laws made for the observance
thereof, were not violated.? ? In the house
of Marjory Thom, a vintner, this new official found,
about 10 P.M., several companies in several rooms,
and expostulated with her on the subject, aftei
which, according to his own account, he quietly
withdrew.
As he proceeded up the close to the High Street,
he and his comrades were followed by Mr. Archi.
bald Campbell, son of the Lord Niel Campbell,
who warned him that if he reported Marjory?s
house to the magistrates, he would repent it. This
affair ended in a kind of riot next day, in Young?:
shop, opposite the Town Guard House, and Campbell
would probably have slain Young, had not the
latter contrived to get hold of his sword and keep
it till the Guard came, and the matter was brought
before the Privy Council, when such was the
influence of family and position, that the luckless
Mr. Young was fined 400 merks, to be paid to
Campbell, and to be imprisoned till the money
was forthcoming.
On the 14th of February, 1705, appeared tlie
first number of the Bdinbwgh Courant, a simple
folio broadsheet, published by James Watson, in
Craig?s Close. Its place was afterwards taken by
MacEwen?s Rdifzburgh Evening Courant, in I 7 18,
a permanent success to this day. It was a Whig
print, and caused the starting of the now defunct
Caledonkn Mercury, in the Jacobite interest,
a little quarto of two leaves.
According to the Courant of April gth, 1724 the
denizens of the High Street, aud other greater
thoroughfares, were startled by ?a bank ? of drums,
beating up for recruits for the King of Prussia?s
-
gigantic regim?ent of Grenadiers. Two guineas as
bounty were offered, and many tall fellows were
enlisted. The same regiment was recruited for
in Edinburgh in 1728.
By the year 1730 great changes had been
effected by the magistrates in enforcing cleanliness
in the streets, and repressing the habit (accompanied
by the temble cry of Gardezl?eau) of throwing slops
and rubbish from the windows. Sir James Dick of
Prestonfield, the wise provost of 1679, transported
away by personal energy a vast stratum of the
refuse of ages, through which people had to make
literal lanes to their shops and house-doors and
therewith enriched his lands by the margin of
Duddingston Loch (Act of Parl. James VII., I.,
cap. IZ), till their fertility is proverbial to the
present day. But still there was no regular system
of cleaning, and though Sir Alexander Brand, a
well-known magistrate and manufacturer of Spanish
leather gilt hangings, made some vigorous proposals
on the subject, they were not adopted, till in
1730 the magistrates endeavoured by the strong arm
of the law to repress the obnoxious habit of
throwing household litter from the windows, a
habit amusingly described by Smollett forty years
after in his ?? Humphrey Clinker.?
On the 6th of September, 1751, the fall of
a great stone tenement on the north of the High
Street, near the Cross, six storeys in height, with
attics, sinking at once from top to bottom, and
occasioning some loss of life, caused a general
alarm in the city concerning the probable state of
many of the more ancient and crumbring houses.
A general survey was made, and many were
condemned, and orderec! to be taken down.
But from 1707 Edinburgh stood singularly still
till 1763, when the citizens seemed to wake
fiom their apathetic lethargy. After that period
the erection of adjuncts to the old city (tcr
be referred to in their own localities) led to the
general desertion of it by all people of position and
wealth. Among the last who lingered there, and
retained his mansion in the High Street, was
James Fergusson of Pitfour, M.P., whose body was
borne thence in October, 1820, for interment in the
Greyfriars Churchyard.
In the March of 1820 the High Street was
iighted with gas for the first time. ? This has been
done,? says a print of the day, ?by the introduction
of a single cockspur light into each of the
old globes, in which the old oil lamps were formerly
suspended.?](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p023.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. II Page 203")
... Street.3 CHANGES IN THE HIGH STREET. 203
Mortality,? I 7041 gives us the long inscription on the
tomb of the ...
Book 2 p. 203
(Score 0.49)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Picardy Place.
It would appear that so early as 1730 the
Governors of Heriot?s ...
Book 3 p. 186
(Score 0.49)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE HIGH STREET-(continued).
?The Salamander Land ?-The ...
Book 2 p. 242
(Score 0.49)
... and howitzers on the bastions of the latter
and the Calton Hill. The sharp encounter there,
and at St. ...
Book 1 p. 55
(Score 0.48)
... OLD AND NEW' EDINBURGH.
'Plague in Leith, The 111. 180,186
Plainstane's close ~ i . ...
Book 6 p. 386
(Score 0.48)
![THE CASTLE -4ND GLEN. 34 7 Roslin.]
further repaired, as an ornate entrance seems tc
show, with its lintel, inscribed ? S.W.S., 1622.??
The same initials appear on the half-circular pedi.
ment of a dormer window. Above this door, which
is beautifully moulded and enriched, is a deep and
ornate squqre niche, the use for which it is difficult
to conceive.
From its windows it commands a view of the
richly-wooded glen, between the rocky banks and
dark shadows of which the Esk flows onward with
a ceaseless murmur among scattered boulders,
where grow an infinite variety of ferns. The
eastern bank rises almost perpendicularly from the
river?s bed, and everywhere there is presented a
diversity of outline that always delights an artistic
eye.
The entrance to the castle was originally by a
gate of vast strength, and the whole structure must
have been spacious and massive, and on its northern
face bears something of the aspect of old Moorish
fortresses in Spain. A descent of a great number of
stone stairs conducts through the existing structure
to the bottom, leading into a spacious kitchen,
from which a door opens into the once famous
gardens. The modern house of 1563 is ill-lighted
and confined, and possesses more the gloom of
a dungeon-like prison than the comforts of a residence.
Grose gives us a view of the whole as they
appeared in 1788--? haggard and utterly dilapidated-
the mere wreck of a great pile riding on a
l ~ t l e sea of forest-a rueful apology for the once
grand fabric whose name of ? Roslin Castle ? is so
intimately associated with melody and song.?
It is unknown when or by whom the original
castle was founded. It has been referred to the
year 1100, when William de St. Clair, son of
Waldern, Count of St. Clair, who came to England
with William the Conqueror, obtained from
Malcolm 111. the barony of Roslin, and was
named ?the seemly St. Clair,? in allusion to his
grace of deportment ; but singular to say, notwithstanding
its importance, the castle is not mentioned
distinctly in history till the reign of James II.,
when Sir William Hamilton was confined in it in
1455 for being in rebellion with Douglas, and again
when it was partly burned in 1447.
Father Richard Augustine Hay, Prior of St.
Piermont, in France, who wrote much about the
Roslin family, records thus :--
?About this time, 1447, Edmund Sinclair of
Dryden, coming with four greyhounds and some
rackets to hunt with the prince (meaning William
Sinclair, Earl of Orkney), met a great company of
rats, and among them an old blind lyard, with a
straw in his mouth, led by the rest, whereat he
greatly marvelled, not thinking what was to follow;
but within four days after-viz., the feast of St.
Leonard, the princess, who took great delight in
little dogs, caused one of the gentlewomen to go
under a bed with a lighted candle to bring forth one
of them that had young whelps, which she was
doing, and not being very attentive, set on fire the
bed, whereat the fire rose and burnt the bed, and
then rose to the ceiling of the great chamber in
which the princess was, whereat she and all that
were in the dungeon (keep?) were compelled to fly.
? The prince?s chaplain seeing this, and remembering
his master?s writings, passed to the head of
the dungeon, where they were, and threw out four
great trunks. The news of this fire coming to the
prince?s ears through the lamentable cries of the
ladies and gentlemen, and the sight thereof coming
to his view in the place where he stood-namely,
upon the College (Chapel?) Hill-he was in sorrow
for nothing but the loss of his charters and other
writings; but when the chaplain, who had saved
himself by coming down the bell-rope tied to a
beam, declared how they were saved, he became
cheerful, and went to re-comfort his princess and
the ladies, desiring them to put away all sorrow,
and rewarded his chaplain very richly.? The
i? princess ? was the Elizabeth Countess of Roslin,
referred to in page 3 of Vol. I.
In 1544 the castle was fired by the English
under Hertford, and demolished. The house of
1563, erected amid its ruins nineteen years after,
was pillaged and battered by the troops of Cromwellin
1650.
+4t the revolution in 1688, it was pillaged again
by a lawless mob from the city, and from thenceforward
it passes out of history.
Of the powerful family to whom it belonged we
can only give a sketch.
The descendants of the Norman William de St.
Clair, called ihdifferently by that name and Sinclair,
received from successive kings of Scotland
accessions, which made them lords of Cousland,
Pentland, Cardoine, and other lands, and they lived
in their castle, surrounded by all the splendour of a
rude age, and personal importancegiven by the
acquisition of possessions by methods that would
be little understood in modern times.
There were three successive William Sinclairs
barons of Roslin (one of whom made a great
figure in the reign of William the Lion, and gave
a yearly gift to Newbattle,pro saZufe mime we)
before the accession of Henry, who, by one account,
is said to have mamed a daughter of the
Earl of Mar, and by auother a daughter of the Earl](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p166.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. VI Page 347")
... CASTLE -4ND GLEN. 34 7 Roslin.]
further repaired, as an ornate entrance seems tc
show, with its lintel, ...
Book 6 p. 347
(Score 0.48)
![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 "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. I Page 179")
... Close.] JOHN OSW.4LD. I79
his peculiar hze& or place of resort by day or
night, where merchants, ...
Book 1 p. 179
(Score 0.48)
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