CHAPTER VIII.
ST LEONARDS, ST MARY’S WYND, AND THE COWGATE.
HE date of erection of the first houses in the ancient thoroughfare of the Cowgate
may be referred, without hesitation, to the reign of James III., when the example
of the King, who, as Drummond relates, “was much given to buildings, and trimming
up of chnppels, halls, and gardens,” was likely to encourage his courtiers in rearing
elegant and costly mansions ; and when, at the same time, the frequent assembling of
the Parliament and the presence of the Court at Edinburgh, were calculated to drive them
beyond the recently-built walls of the capital. Evidence, indeed, derived from some early
charters, seems to prove the existence of buildings beyond the range of the first wall,
prior to its erection, but these were at most one or two isolated and rural dwellings, and
cannot be considered as having formed any part of the street.
The whole southern slope of the Old Town, on which the steep closes extending
between the High Street and the Cowgate have since been reared, must then have formed
a rough and unencumbered bank, surmounted by the massive wall and towers erected by
virtue of the charter of James 11. in 1450, and skirted at its base by the open roadway
that led from the Abbey of Holyrood to the more ancient Church of St Cuthbert, below
the Castle rock. It requires, indeed, a stretch of the imagination to conceive this crowded
steep, which has rung for centuries with the busy sounds of life and industry, a rugged
slope, unoccupied save by brushwood and flowering shrubs ; yet the change effected on it
in the fifteenth century was only such another extension as many living can remember to
have witnessed on a greater scale over the downs and cultivated fields now occupied by
VIGNETTE-Ancient Doorway, foot of Horse Wynd, Cowgate.
