I 86 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
The ancient prison of Edinburgh had its EAST and WEST ENDS, known to the last by
these same distinctive appellations, that mark the patrician and plebeian districts of the
British metropolis. The line of division is apparent in our engraved view, showing the
western and larger portion of the building constructed of coarse rubble work, while
the earlier edifice, at the east end, was built of polished stone. This distinction was
still more apparent on the north side, which, though much more ornamental, could
only be viewed in detail, owing to the narrowness of the street, and has not, as far
as we are aware, been represented in any engraving.’ It had, on the first floor, a large
and deeply splayed square window, decorated on either side with richly carved Gothic
niches, surmounted with ornamental canopies of varied designs. A smaller window
on the floor above was flanked with similar decorations, the whole of which were, in all
probability, originally filled with statues. Maitland mentions, and attempts to refute, a
tradition that this had been the mansion of the Provost of St Giles’s Church, but there
seems little reason to doubt that it had been originally erected as some such appendage
to t,he church. The style of ornament was entirely that of a collegiate building attached
to an ecclesiastical edifice ; and its situation and architectural adornments suggest the
idea of its having been the residence of the Provost or Dean, while the prebends and
other members of the college were accommodated in the buildings on the south side
of the church, removed in the year 1632 to make way for the Parliament House. If this
idea is correct, the edifice was, in all probability, built shortly after the year 1466, when
a charter was granted by King James III., erecting St Giles’s into a collegiate church ;
and it may further have included a chapter-house for the college, whose convenient
dimensions would lead to its adoption as a place of meeting for the Scottish Parliaments.
The date thus assigned to the most ancient portion of the “ Heart; of Midlothian,”
receives considerable confirmation from the style of the building ; but
Parliaments had assembled in Edinburgh long before that period ; three, at least, were
held there during the reign of James I., and when his assassination at Perth, iu 1437, led
to the abandonment of the Fair City as the chief residence of the Court, and thh ’capital of
the kingdom, the first general council of the new reign took place in the Castle of Edinburgh.
We have already described the remains of the Old‘ Parliament Hall still existing
there; and this, it is probable, was the scene of all such assemblies as were held at
Edinburgh in earlier reigns.
The next Parliament of James 11. was summoned to meet at Stirling, the following
year, in the month of March; but another was held that same year in the month of
November, “ in pretorio burgi de Edinburgh.” The same Latin term for the Tolbooth is
repeated in the minutes of another Assembly of the Estates held there in 1449 ; and, in
1451, the old Scottish name appears for the first time in “ the parleament of ane richt hie
and excellent prince, and our soverane lorde, James the Secunde, be the grace of Gode,
King of Scotts, haldyn at Edinburgh the begunyn in the Tolbuth of the samyn.”2 A
much older, and probably larger, erection must therefore have existed on the site of the
We have drawn the view at the head of the Chapter from a slight aketch taken shortly before ita demolition, by
Mr D. Somerville ; with the assistance of a most ingenious model of St Giles’s Church and the aurroonding buildings,
made by the Rev. John She, about the year 1805, to which we were also partly indebted for the south view of the aame
building.
Acts of Scottish Parliaments, folio, vol. ii.
L UCKENBOOTHS AND PARLIAMENT CLOSE. 187
western portion of the Tolbooth, the ruinous state of which at length led to the royal
command for its demolition in 1561,-not a century after the date we are disposed to
assign to the oldest portion of the building that remained till 1817,-and which, though
decayed and time-worn, was so far from being ruinous even then, that it proved a work of
great labour to demolish its solid masonry.
In a charter granted to the town by James 111. in 1477, the market for corn and grain
is ordered to be held (‘ fra, the Tolbuth up to Libertones Wynde,”l and we learn from the
Diurnal of Occurrents, that the tour of the Auld Tolbuyth wes tane doun in 1571.”9
The first allusion indicates the same site for the Tolbooth at that early period, as it
occupied to the last, and seems to codkm the idea suggested as to the earlier fabric. The
name TolJooth literally signifies tax-house,8 and the existence of a building in Edinburgh,
erected for this purpose, might be referred, with every probability, to even an earlier
period than the reign of David I., who bestowed considerable grants on his monastery
of the Holy Cross, derivable from the revenues of the town.‘ From the anxiety of the
magistrates to retain the rents of 1 heir ‘‘ laigh buthis ” in this ancient building, another
site was chosen in 1561 for the New Tolbooth, a little to the south of the old one ; and
some ten years later, as appears from the old diarist, the tower was at length demolished,
and also probably the whole of the most ancient edifice. One of the carved stones from
the modern portion of the building,-apparently the centre crow-step that crowned the
gable,-was preserved, among other relics of similar character, in the nursery of Messrs
Eagle and Henderson, Leith Walk. It bore on it the city arms, sculptured in high relief,
and surmounted by an ornamental device with the date 1641. The style of the new
building, though plain and of rude workmanship, entirely corresponded with this date,
being that which prevailed towards the close of Charles L’s reign. The unsettled state
of the country at that period, and the heavy exactions to which Edinburgh had been
exposed, both by the King and the covenanting leaders, abundantly account for the
plain character of the latter building. The only ornaments on the north side consisted
of two dormer windows, rising above the roof, with plain string-courses marking the
several stories.
The ornamental north gable of the most ancient portion of the building, appears to
have been the place of exposure for the heads and dismembered limbs of the numerous
victims of the sanguinary laws of Scotland in early times. In the year 1581, the head of
the Earl of Morton “was sett upon a prick, on the highest stone of the gavel1 of the
Tolbuith, toward the publict street,” and the same point,-after doing the like ignominious
service to many of inferior note,-received, in 1650, the head of the gallant Marquis of
Montrose, which remained exposed there throughout the whole period of the Commonwealth,
and was taken down at length, shortly after the Restoration, with every demonstra-
Yaitlaud, p. 8. * Diurnal of Occurrenta, p. 252. ’ ‘* Mr Cfeorge Ramsay, minister at Laswaid, teaching in Edinburgh [1593], charged the Lords of the Colledge of
Justice with selling of jutice. He said they sold in the Tolbuith, and tooke payment at home, in their chambers : that
the place of their judgement was justlie called Tool-buith, becaue there they tooke toll of the subjecta.”-Calderwood’s
Hist. vol. v. p. 290.
It is perhaps worthy of notice in regard to thia subject, that the site of the Weigh-house, which, like the Tolbooth,
eucroached on the main street, “ was granted to the Edinburghers by King David II., in the 23d year of his reign, anno
For this he was summoned before the judges, but was dismissed, after Borne contention.
1352.”-Yaitland, p. 181.
