nearly to the muzzle with musket-balls was depressed
to sweep it, and did so with awful effect.
According to the historian of the ? Troubles,?
twenty men were blown to shreds. Weddal had both
thighs broken, and Somerville, with a few who were
untouched, grovelled close under the wall, where
Ruthven, who recognised him as an old Swedish
comrade, besought him to retire, adding, ? I derive
no pleasure in the death of gallant men.? Of the
whole escalade only thirty-three escaped alive, and
of these many were wounded, a result which
cooled the ardour of the besiegers; but after a
three months? blockade, finding his garrison few,
and all suffering from scurvy, and that provisions
and ammunition were alike expended, on the 18th
September, after
a blockade of
five months in
all, during which
1,000 men had
been slain, he
marched outwith
the honours of
war (when so ill
with scurvy that
he could scarcely
walk) at the head
.of seventy men,
with one drum
beating, one
standard flying,
matches lighted,
2nd two pieces
.of cannon, with
balls in their
muzzles and the
port-fires blazing at both ends. They all sailed for
England in a king?s ship. Ruthven fought nobly
for the king there, and died at a good old age in
1651, Earl of Forth and Brentford. Argyle, the
Dictator of Scotland, in the autumn of 1648 invited
Oliver Cromwell to Edinburgh, and entertained
him with unwonted magnificence in the
great hall of the Castle ; afterwards they held many
meetings in Lady Home?s house, in the Canongate,
where the resolution to take away the king?s
fife was discussed and approved of, for which the
said Dictator afterwards lost his head.
The next important event in the history of
5? The steep, the iron-belted rock,
Where trusted lie the monarchy?s last gems,
The sceptre, sword, and crown that graced the brows
Since Fergus, father of a hundred kings,?
I was in the days of Cromwell.
Scotland, after the coronation of Charles II., that I
On tidings reaching
the former was advancing north at the head of an
army, the Parliament ordered the Castle to be put
in a state of defence. There were put therein a
select body of troops under Colonel Walter
Dundas, 1,000 bolls of meal and malt, 1,000 tons
of coal, 67 brass and iron guns, including Mons
Meg and howitzers, 8,000 stand of arms, and a
vast store of warlike munition.
According to the superstition of the time the
earth and air all over Scotland teemed with strange
omens of the impending strife, and in a rare old
tract, of 16j0, we are told of the alarm created in
the fortress by the appearance of a ?horrible
apparition ? beating upon a drum.
On a dark night the sentinel, under the shadow
of the gloomy
half-moon, was
alarmed by the
beating of a
drum upon the
esplanade and
the tread of
marching feet, on
which he fired
his musket. Col.
Dundas hurried
forth, but
could see nothing
on the bleak
expanse, the site
of the now demolished
Spur.
The sentinel was
truncheoned,
and another put
in his Dlace. to
COVENANTERS? FLAG.
(Fmnz tAe Altts~rrm ofthe societu of Antiq~n&~ d.yco*la&.)
A I whom the same thing happened, and he, too, fired
his musket, affirming that he heard the tread
of soldiers marching to the tuck of drum. To
Dundas nothing was visible, nothing audible but
the moan of the autumn wind. He took a
musket and the post of sentinel. Anon he heard
the old Scots march, beaten by an invisible
drummer, who came close up to the gate; then
came other sounds-the tramp of many feet and
clank of accoutrements ; still nothing was visible,
till the whole impalpable array seemed to halt
close by Dundas, who was bewildered with consternation.
Again a drum was heard beating the
English, and then the French march, when the
alarm ended ; but the next drums that were beaten
there were those of Oliver Cromwell.
When the latter approached Edinburgh he
found the whole Scottish army skilfully entrenched
parallel with Leith Walk, its flanks protected by
ns and howitzers on the bastions of the latter
and the Calton Hill. The sharp encounter there,
and at St. Leonard?s Hill, in both of which he was
completely repulsed, are apart from the history of
the fortress, from the ramparts of which the young
king Charles 11. witnessed them; but the battle
of Dunbar subsequently placed all the south of
Scotland at the power of Cromwell, when he was
in desperation about returning for England, the
Scots having cut off his retreat. On the 7th
September, 1650, he entered Edinburgh, and placed
it under martial law, enforcing the most rigid regulations;
yet the people had nothing to complain
of, and justice was impartially administered. He
took up his residence at the Earl of Moray?s
house-that stately edifice on the south side of the
Canongate-and quartered his soldiers in Holyrood
and the city; but his guard, or outlying picket,
was in Dunbar?s Close-so named from the victors
of Dunbar ; and tradition records that a handsome
old house at the foot of Sellars Close was occasionally
occupied by him while pressing the siege of the
Castle, which was then full of those fugitive
preachers whose interference had caused the ruin
of Leslie?s army. With them he engaged in a
curious polemical discussion, and is said by Pinkerton
to have preached in St. Giles?s churchyard to
the people. To facilitate the blockade he demolished
the ancient Weigh House, which was
not replaced @ill after the Restoration.
He threw UP batteries at Heriot?s Hospital, which
was full of his wounded ; on the north bank of the
loch, and the stone bartisan of Davidson?s house
on the Castle Hill. He hanged in view of the
Castle, a poor old gardener who had supplied
Dundas with some information ; and during these
operations, Nicoll, the diarist, records that there were
many slain, ? both be schot of canoun and musket,
as weell Scottis as Inglische.? Though the garrison
received a good supply of provisions, by the bravery
of Captain Augustine, a German soldier of fortune
who served in the Scottish army, and who hewed a
passage into the fortress through Cromwell?s guards,
at the head of 120 horse, Dundas, when tampered
with, was cold in his defence. Cromwell pressed
the siege with vigour. He mustered colliers from
the adjacent country, and forced them, under fire,
to work at a mine on the south side, near the new
Castle road, where it can still?be seen in the
freestone rock. Dundas, a traitor from the first,
now lost all heart, and came to terms with
Cromwell, to whom he capitulated on the 12th of
December, 1650.*
1
* The articles of the treaty and the list of the captured guns arc given
at length in Balfour?s ??AM&?
Exactly as St. Giles?s clock struck twelve the
garrison marched ? out, with drums beating and
colours flying, after which the Castle was garrisoned
by ? English blasphemers ? (as the Scots called
them) under Colonel George Fenwick. Cromwell,
in reporting all this to the English Parliament,
says :-?; I think I need say little of the strength of
this place, which, if it had not come as it did, would
have cost much blood. . . . I must needs say,
not any skill or wisdom of ours, but the good will of
God hatli given you this place.?
By the second article of the treaty the records of
Scotland n-ere transmitted to Stirling, on the capture
of which they were sent in many hogsheads to
London, and lost at sea when being sent back,
Dundas was arraigned before the Parliament,
and his reputation was never freed from the stain
cast upon it by the capitulation; and Sir Janies
Balfour, his contemporary, plainly calls him a base,
cowardly, ?? traitorous villane ! ?
Cromwell defaced the royal arms at the Castle
gate and elsewhere ; yet his second in command,
Monk, was f2ted at a banquet by the magistrates,
when, on the 4th May, 1652, he was proclaimed
Protector of the Commonwealth.
At first brawls were frequent, and English
soldiers were cut off on every available occasion.
One day in the High Street, an officer came from
Cromwell?s house ?in great says Patrick
Gordon, and as he mounted his horse, mhly &d
aloud, ? With my own hands I killed the Scot to
whom this horse and these pistols belonged. Who
dare say I wronged him?? ccI dare, and thus
avenge him !? exclaimed one who stood near, and,
running the Englishman through the body, mounted
his horse, dashed through the nearest gate, and
escaped into the fields.
For ten years there was perfect peace in Edin.
burgh, and stage coaches began to run every three
weeks between it and the ?George Inn, without
Aldersgate, London,? for A4 10s. a seat. Iambert?s
officers preached in the High Kirk, and buffcoated
troopers taught and expounded in the Parliament
House; and so acceptable became the sway of
the Protector to civic rulers that they had just proposed
to erect acolossal stone monument in his
honour, when the Restoration came !
It was hailed with the wildest joy by all the
Scottish people. The cross of Edinburgh was
garlanded with flowers ; its fountains ran with wine ;
300 dozen of glasses were broken there, in
drinking to the health of His Sacred Majesty and
the perdition of Cromwell, who in effigy wa- 5 consigned
to the devil. Banquets were given, and
salutes fired from the Castle, where Mons Meg was
