been thrown down to facilitate the act. J?ames
Hay had been provided with a key that opened the
long-unused gate of the gloomy-domed mausoleum
of Sir George Mackenzie, a place still full of terror
to boys, as it is supposed to be haunted by the
blood-red spirit of the persecutor, and there he
.secreted himself, while the following advertisement
appeared in the Edinburgh Advertiser of the 24th
.November, 1783 :-
?? ESCAPED FROM THE TOLBOOTH OF EDINBURGH,
?James Hay, indicted for highway roblery, ag.ed about IS
years, by trade a glazier, 5 feet 10 inches high, slender
made, pale complexion, long visage, brown hair cut short,
pitted a little in the face with the small-pox, speaks slow
with a Ruur in his tone, and has a mole on one of his cheeks.
?The magistrates offer a reward of Tuen& Guimus to any
person who will apprehend and secure the said James Hay,
to be paid by the City Chamberlain, on the said James Hay
being re-committed to the Tolbwth of this city.?
But James Hay had been a ?? Herioter,? brought
up in the famous hospital which adjoins the ancient
.and gloomy burying-ground ; thus, he contrived to
make known his circumstances to some of his boy-
. ish friends, and besought them to assist him in his
.distress, as it was impossible for his father to do
. so. A very clannish spirit animated ?the Auld
Herioters? of those days, and not to succour one
,of the community, however undeserving he might
be of aid, would have been deemed by them as a
-crime of the foulest nature ; thus, Hay?s sshoolfellows
supplied his wants from their own meals,
-conveying him food in his eerie lurking-place, by
.scaling the old smoke-blackened and ivied walls, at
the risk of severe punishment, and of seeing sights
<6 uncanny,? for six weeks, till the hue and cry
abated, when he ventured to leave~the tomb in the
night, and escaped abroad or to England, beyond
reach of the law.
? The principal entrance to the Tolbooth,? to
quote one familiar with the old edifice, ? was at the . bottom of the turret next the church. The gateway
was of good carved stonework, and occupied
by a door of ponderous massiveness and strength,
having, besides the lock, a flap padlock, which,
however, was generally kept unlocked during the
day. In front of the door there always paraded a
private of the Town Guard, with his rusty-red
clothes and Lochaber axe or musket. The door
.adjacent to the principal gateway was in the final
days of the Tolbooth ? Michael Kettins? shoe-shop;??
but had formerly been a thiefs hole. After further
.describing the tortuous access, the writer continues :
A? You then entered the ha& which being free to all
prisoners save those in the east end, was usual?ly
dlled with a crowd of shabby-looking but very
nerry loungers, A small rail here served as an
rdditional security, no prisoner being permitted to
:ome within its pale. Here, also, a sentinel of the
rown Guard was always walking with a bayonet or
i ramrod in his hand. The hall being also the chapel
3f the gaol, contained an old pulpit of singula$
fashion-such a pulpit as one could have imagined
Knox to have preached from, and which indeed
he is traditionally said to have actually done. At
the right hand side of the pulpit was a door, leading
up the large turnpike (stair) to the apartments
occupied by the criminals, one of which was of
plate-iron. The door was always shut, except
when food was taken up to the prisoners. On the
west end of the hall hung a board, whereon was
inscribed the following emphatic lines :-
? A prison is a house of care,
A place where none can thrive ;
A touchstone true to try a friend,
A grave for men alive.
Sometimes a place of right,
Sometimes a place of wrong, 5 .
Sometimes a place for jades and thieves,
And honest men among.?
The floor immediately above the hall was occupied
by one room for felons, having a bar along part
of the floor, to which condemned criminals were
chained, and a square box of plate-iron in the centre
was called ?the cage? which was said to have been
constructed for the purpose of confining some extraordinary
culprit who had broken half the jails in the
kingdom. Above this room was another of the same
size appropriated to felons.? At the western end
was the platform where public executions took place.
Doomed to destruction, this gloomy and massive
edifice, of many stirring memories, was swept away
in 1817, and the materials of it were used for the
construction of the great sewers and drains in the
vicinity of Fettes Row, emphatically styled ? the
grave of the old Tolbooth.? The arched doorway,
door, and massive lock, Sir Walter Scott engrafted
on a part of his mansion at Abbotsford; and in
1829 he found that ??a tom-tit was pleased to
build her nest within the lock of the Tolbootha
strong temptation,? he adds, in the edition of his
works issued in the following year, ? to have committed
a sonnet.?
The City Guard-house formed long a ? pendicle?
-to use a Scottish term-of the old Tolbooth.
Scott has described this edifice as ?a long, low,
ugly building, which, to a fanciful imagination,
might have suggested the idea of a long black
snail crawling up the middle of the High Street,
and deforming its beautiful esplanade.? It stood
in front of the Black Turnpike, and during the
THE OLD TOWN GUARD. I35 The Tolbooth.]
impartial rule of the Cromwellian period, formed
the scene of many an act of stern discipline, when
drunkards were compelled to ride the wooden
horse, with muskets tied to their feet, and ? a drinking
cup,? as Nicoll names it, on their head. ?? The
chronicles of this place of petty durance, could
they now be recovered, would furnish many an
amusing scrap of antiquated scandal, interspersed
at rare intervals with the graver deeds of such
disciplinarians as the Protector, or the famous sack
of the Porteous mob. There such fair offenders as
the witty 2nd eccentric Miss Mackenzie, daughter
of Lord Royston, found at times a night?s lodging,
when she and her maid sallied out aspreux chma-
Ciers in search of adventures. Occasionally even
grave jidge or learned lawyer, surprised out of
his official decorum by the temptation of a jovial
club, was astonished, oh awaking, tu find himself
within its impartial walls, among such strange bedfellows
as the chances of the night had offered
to its vigilant guardians.?? A slated building of
one storey in height, it consisted of four apartments.
In the western end was the captain?s room;
there was also a ? Burghers? room,? for special prisoners
; in the centre was a common hall ; and at
the east end was an apartment devoted to the
use of the Tron-men, or city sweeps. Under
the captain?s room was the black-hole, in which
coals and refractory prisoners were kept. In I 785
this unsightly edifice was razed to the ground,
an3 the soldiers of the Guard, after occupying the
new Assembly Rooms, had their head-quarters
finally assigned them on the ground floor of the
old Tolbooth.
It is impossible to quit our memorials of the
latter without a special reference to the famous
old City Guard, with which it was inseparably
connected.
In the alarm caused by the defeat at Flodden,
all male inhabitants of the? city were required to
be in arms and readiness, while twenty-four men
were selected as a permanent or standing watch,
and in them originated the City Guard, which,
however, was not completely constituted until
1648, when the Town Council appointed a body
of sixty men to be raised, whereof the captain
was, says Amot, ?to have the monthly pay of
LII 2s. 3d. sterling, two lieutenants of E2 each,
two sergeants of AI 5s., three corporals of AI,
and the private men 15s. each per month.?
No regular fund being provided to defray this
expense, after a time the old method of ?watching
and warding,? every fourth citizen to be on duty in
arms each night, was resumed; but those, he adds,
on whom this service was incumbent, became so re-
,
-
laxed in discipline, that the Privy Council informed
the magistrates that if they did not provide an
efficient guard to preserve order in the city, the
regular troops of the Scottish army would be
quartered in it
Upon this threat forty armed men were raised as.
a guard in 1679, and in consequence of an event
which occurred in 1682, this number was increased
to 108 men. The event referred to was a riot,
caused by an attempt to carry off a number of
lads who had been placed in the Tolbooth for
trivial offences, to serve the Prince of Orange as.
soldiers. As they were being marched to Leith,
under escort, a crowd led by women attacked the
latter. By order of Major Keith, commanding, the
soldiers fired upon the people ; seven men and two
women were shot, and twenty-two fell wounded.
One of the women being with child, it was cut from
her and baptised in the street. The excitement of
this affair caused the augmentation of the guard, for
whose maintenance a regular tax was levied, while
Patrick Grahame, a younger son of Inchbraikiethe
same officer whom Macaulay so persistently
confounds with Claverhouse-was appointed captain,
with the concurrence of the Duke of York
and Albany. Their pay was 6d. daily, the drummers?
IS., and the sergeants? IS. 6d. In 1685
Patnck Grahame, ? captain of His Majesty?s
company of Foot, within the town of Edinburgh
(the City Guard), was empowered to import 300
ells of English cloth of a scarlet colour, with
wrappings and other necessaries, for the clothing
of the corps, this being in regard that the manufactories
are not able to furnish His Majesty?s
(Scottish) forces with cloth and other necessaries.?
After the time of the Revolution the number of
the corps was very fluctuating, and for a period,
after 1750, it consisted usually of only seventy-five
men, a force most unequal to the duty to be done.
?The Lord Provost is commander of this useful
corps,? wrote Amot, in 1779. ? The men are properly
disciplined, and fire remarkably well. Within
these two years some disorderly soldiers in one of
the marching regiments, having conceived an umbrage
at tha Town Guard, attacked them. They
were double in number to the party of the Town
Guard, who, in the scuffle, severely wounded some
of their assailants, and made the whole prisoners.?
By day they were armed with muskets and bayonets ;
at night with Lochaber axes. They were mostly
Highlanders, all old soldiers, many of whom had
served in the Scots brigades in Holland. In the
city they took precedence of all troops of the line.
At a monthly inspection of the corps in 1789 the
Lord Provost found a soldier in the ranks who had
