CHAPTER VIT.
THE CANONGA TE AND ABBE Y SANCTUAR Y.
HE ancient Burgh of Canongate may claim as its
founder the sainted David I., by whom the
Abbey of Holyrood was planted in the Forest of
Drumselch early in the twelfth century, as a shrine
for the miraculous cross which the royal hunter so
unexpectedly obtained within its sylvan glades. It
sprung up wholly independent of the neighbouring
capital, gathering as naturally around the conse-’
crated walls of the monastery, whose dependents
and vassals were its earliest builders, as did its warlike
neighbour shelter itself under the overhanging
battlements of the more ancient fortress. Bornething
of a native-born character seems to have
possessed these rivals, and exhibited itself in very
legible phazes in their after history; each of them
retaining distinctive marks of their very dserent
parentage.’
In the year 1450, when James 11. granted to the
lieges his charter, empowering them “ to fosse, bulwark,
wall, toure, turate, and otherwise to strengthen ”
his Burgh of Edinburgh, because of their “dreid
of the evil and skeith of oure enemies of England,”
these ramparts extended no further eastward than
the Nether Bow. Open fields, in all probability,
then lay outside the gate, dividing from it the township
of the neighbouring Abbey; and although at a
later period a suburb would appear to have been
built beyond the walls, so that the jurisdiction of the town was claimed within the
Burgh of Canongate so far as St John’s Cross, no attempt was made to secure or to
The Magistrates of the Canongate claimed a feudal lordship over the property of the burgh, aa the succeasora
of its spiritual superiurs, most of the title-deeds running thus :-‘‘ To be holden of the Magistrates of the Canongate, 88
come in place of the Nonaatery of Holycross.”
Vraw~~~-C!anongaTteol booth.
