222 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
to that portion extending from the Nether Bow to Creech’s Land, until the demolition of
the middle row, when the Luckenbooths, and even a portion of the Lawnmarket, were
assumed as part of it, and designated by the same name.
Here was the battlefield of ScGtland for centuries, whereon private and party feuds, the
jealousies of the nobles and burghers, and not a few of the contests between the Crown and
the people, were settled at the point of the sword. In the year 1515 it was the scene of
the bloody fray known by the name of “ Uleanse the Causey,” which did not terminate
until t,he narrow field of contest waa strewn with the dead bodies of the combatants, and
the Earl of Arran and Cardinal Beaton narrowly escaped with their lives.’ Other and
scarcely less bloody affrays occurred during the reign of James V. on the same spot,
while in that of his hapless daughter it was for years the chief scene of civil strife, where
rival factions fought for mastery. In 1571 the King’s Parliament, summoned by the
Regent Lennox, assembled at the head of the Canongate, above St John’s Cross, which
bounded cc the freedome af Edinburgh,” while the Queen’s Parliament sat in the Tolbooth,
countenanced in their assumption of the Royal name by the presence of the ancient
Scottish Regalia, the honours of the kingdom; and the battle for Scotland‘s crown
and liberties fiercely raged in the narrow space that intervened between these rival
assemblies.
But the private feuds of the Scottish nobles and chiefs were the most frequent subjects
of conflict on the High Street of the capital, and during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries many a bold baron and hardy retainer perished there, adding fresh fuel to the
deadly animosity of rival clans, but otherwise exciting no more notice at the time than
an ordinary street squabble would now do. It was in one of these tulxies, alluded to in
the ‘‘ Lay of the Last Minstrel,” that Sir Walter Scott of Buccleugh was slain, in the year
1551,’
When the streets of High Dunedin,
Saw lances gleam and falchions redden,
And heard the slogan’s deadly yell.
Neither the accession of James VI., nor the attainment of his majority, exercised much
influence in checking those encounters on the streets of the capital. Many enormities were
committed,” says Calderwood, “ as if there had beene no King in Israell.” The following
may suffice as a sample :-“ Upon the seventh of Januar 1591, the King comming doun
the street of Edinburgh from the Tolbuith, the Duke of Lennox, accompanied with the
Lord Hume, following a little space behind, pulled out their swords, and invaded the
Laird of Logie. The King fled into a closse-head, and incontinent retired to a Skinner’s
booth, where it is said he shook for feare.”’ The sole consequence of this lawless act of
violence was the exclusion of the chief actors from court for a short time; and only six
days thereafter the Earl of Bothwell deliberately took by force out of the Tolbooth the
chief witness in a case then pending before the court, at the very time that the King was
Ante, p. 37.
“In thia zeir all we8 at guid rest, exceptand the Laird of LCesfurde and Fernyhirst with thair complices
dew Schir Walter Scott, laird of Balclewche, in Edinburgh, quha waa ane valzeand guid knycht.”-Diurnal of Occurrent~
J551, p. 51.
a Vide Calderwood, vol. v. p. 116, for a more particular account .of royal mishaps in the close-head on thii occaeion.
