HISTORICAL INCIDENTS AFTER THE RESTORA TION. I01
was permitted to retain arms in his possession without a warrant from the Privy Council ;
and religious persecution was carried to such a length, that the people were driven to
open rebellion. ‘(The King’s Majesty resolved
to settle the Church government in Scotland,” but the settlement thereof proved a
much more impracticable affair than he anticipated. One of the first steps towards the
accomplishment of this, was the consecration of Bishops, which took place on the 7th
of May 1662, in the Abbey Church of Holyrood. On the following day, the Parliament
assembled, and the Bishops were restored to their ancient privileges as members of
that body. They all assembled in the house of the Archbishop of St Andrews, at the
Nether Bow, from whence they walked in procession, in their Episcopal robes, attended
by the magistrates and nobles, and were received at the Parliament House with every
show of honour.’
The annals of Edinburgh, for some years after this, are chiefly occupied with the
barbarous executions of the Presbyterian Nonconformists ; in 1663, Lord Warriston,
an eminent lawyer and statesman, who had taken refuge in France, was delivered up by
Louis XIV. to Charles 11. He was sent to Edinburgh for trial, and, though tottering on
the brink of the grave, was condemned and executed for his adherence to the Covenant ;
the only mitigation of the usual sentence was, permission to inter his mutilated corpse in
the Grepfriars’ Churchyard. Others of humbler rank were speedily subjected to the
same mockefy of justice, torture being freely applied when other evidence failed, so that
the Grassmarket, which was then the scene of public executions, has acquired an interest
of a peculiar character, from the many heroic victims of intolerance who there laid down
their lives in defence of liberty of conscience.
The’Bishops, as the recognised heads of the ecclesiastical system, in whose name these
tyrannical acts were perpetrated, became thereby the objects of the most violent popular
hate. In 1668, Archbishop Sharp was shot at, as he sat in his coach at the head of Blackfriars’
Wynd. The Bishop of Orkney was stepping in at the moment, and received five
balls in different parts of his body, while the Archbishop, for whom they were intended,
escaped unhurt. The most rigid search was immediately instituted for the assassin. The
gates of the city were closed, and none allowed to pass without leave from a magistrate ;
yet he contrived, by a clever disguise, to elude their vigilance, and effect his escape, Six
years afterwards, the Primate recognised in one Mitchell, a fanatic preacher who eyed
him narrowly, the featura .of the person who fled from his coach after discharging the shot
which wounded the Bishop of Orkney. He was immediately seized, and a loaded pistol
found on him, but, notwithstanding these presumptive proofs of guilt, no other evidence
could be brought against him, and his trial exhibits little regard to any principle of
morality or justice. He was put to the torture, without eliciting any confession from
him ; and at length, in 1676, two years after his apprehension, he was brought from the
Bass, and executed at the Grassmarket, in order to strike terror into the minds of the
Covenanters.*
The year 1678 is memorable in the annals of the good town, as having closed the career
of one of its most noted characters, the celebrated wizard, Najor Weir. The spot on
The consequence of all this is well known.
.
Bicol’s Diary, p. 366. ’ Arnot, p, 148. Wodrew’a Hkt., TOL i. pp. 875, 613.
I02 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
which he was burned, on the sloping bank at Greenside,’ has been rescued, only within
the last year, from all profane associations, by the erection of the new Lady Glenorchy’s
Chapel thereon. The fall of this great master of the black art would seem to have been
peculiarly fatal to its votaries ; as many as ten witches were burnt in the city during the
6ame year.
In the following pear, while the Palace of Holpood was undergoing repair for the
residence of the Duke of York, afterwards James VII., the unhappy prisoners taken at
the battle of Bothwell Bridge were brought to Edinburgh, and the greater number of
them confined for five months, during the most inclement season of the year, in the inner
Greyfriars’ Churchyard, that long narrow slip of ground, enclosed with an iron gate, which
extends between the grounds of Heriot’s Hospital and the old Poor’s House. They were
exposed there during the whole of that period, without any shelter from the weather;
yet the whole of them remained faithful to their principles, although they could at once
have procured their liberty by acknowledging the rising at Bothwell to have been
rebellion.
In 1680, the Duke of York arrived in Edinburgh, as Commissioner from the King to
the Scottish Parliament, along with his Duchess, Nary DEste, daughter of the Duke of
Modena, celebrated by Dryden and other wits of the time for her beauty. The Lady
Anne, his daughter, afterwards Queen Anne, also accompanied him on this occasion, and
greatly contributed, by her easy and affable manners, towards the popularity which he
was so desirous to acquire. The previous vicegerents had rendered themselves peculiarly
obnoxiouti to all classes, and thereby prepared the people the more readily to appreciate the
urbanity of the Duke. “ He behaved himself,” says Bishop Burnet, ‘‘ upon his first going
to Scotland, in so obliging a manner, that the nobility and gentry, who had been so long
trodden on by the Duke of Lauderdale, found a very sensible change; so that he gained
much on them all. It was visibly his interest to make that kingdom sure to him, and to
give them such an essay of his government as might dissipate all hard thoughts of him,
with which the world was possessed.’’ To the success with which he pursued this course
of policy may be, to some extent, attributed the strong attachment which the Scottish
nobility afterwards displayed to the House of Stuart, which led to the rebellions in 171 5
and 1745.
A grand entertainment was
provided for him in the Parliament House, which was fitted up at great expense for the
occasion. The Duchess, the Lady Anne, and the principal nobles at the Scottish Court,
were present on the occasion, and the expense of the banquet was npwards of d214,OOO
Scottish money.
During the Duke’s residence at Edinburgh, a splendid court was kept at Holyrood
Palace. The rigid decorum of Scottish manners- gradually gave way before the affability
of such noble entertainers ; and the novel luxuries of the English Court formed an additional
attraction to the Scottish grandees. Tea was introduced for the first time into Scotland
on this occasion, and given by the Duchess, as a great treat to the Scottish ladies who
The city spared no expense to welcome the Duke of York.
Chambers’s Minor Antiquities, p. 85.
Burnet’s Hist., Edin. Ed., vol. ii. p. 322.
On the authority of ‘‘a gentleman who had the spot pointed out to him
by his father sixty years ago ” (1833).
