ST LEONARD’S, ST MARY’S WYND, AND CO WGATE. 321
character, and with a shield in the centre, the armorial bearings of which have been
replaced by a brewer’s barrel, the device of its modern owner and occupant. We have
found, on examining ancient charters and title-deeds referring to property in the Cowgate,
much greater difliculty in assigning the exact tenements referred to, from the absence of
such marked and easily recognisable features as serve for a guide in the Bigh Street and
Canongate. All such evidence, however, tends to prove that the chief occupants of this
ancient thoroughfare were eminent for rank and station, and their dwellings appear to
have been chiefly in the front street, showing that, with patrician exclusiveness, traders
were forbid to open their booths within its dignified precincts. Another feature, no less
noticeable, is the extensive possessions which the Church held within its bounds. An
ancient land, for example, which occupied the site of one now standing at the foot of
Blair Street, on the west side, is described in the titles of the adjoining property as pertaining
to the Altar of St Katharine, in the Kirk-of-Field. In 1494, Walter Bertram,
Provost of Edinburgh, bestowed an annual rent from his tenement in the Cowgate “to a
chaplain of St Lawrence’s Altar, in St Giles’ Church.” In 1528, Wm. Chapman “ mortified
to a chaplain in St Giles’ Kirk, at Jesus’ Altar, in a chapel built by himself,” a
tenement and piece of ground in the same street, reserving to ye patrons yrof 26s. 8d.
for repairing the chapel with skletts and glass.” Both Walter Chepman and Thomas
Cameron have already-been named aa similar donors. We shall only notice one more
from the same source :-“A mortification made be Janet Remedy, Lady Bothwell, who
was before spouse to Archibald Earl of Angus, mortefeing to a chaplain in the Marie
Kirk in the Field, beside Edinburgh, her fore land of umqle Hew Berries tenement, and
chamber adjacent y’to, lying in the Cowgait, on the south side of the street, betwixt Ja.
Earl of Buchan’s land on the east, and Thos. Tod’s on ye west.”l We have dready
referred to U the Erle of Maris, now present Regent, lugeing in the Kowgait,’Pin 1572,”
and other eminent laymen will presently appear among the residenters in this patrician
quarter of the town.
The destruction of an ancient tenement in the Cowgate, in the month of June 1787,
when clearing the ground for the building of the South Bridge, brought to light some
curious memorials of an earlier age. The workmen employed in its demolition discovered
a cavity containing a quantity of money for the reception of which it appeared to have
been constructed. The treasure was found, on examination, to consist of a number of
small coins of Edward L commonly called Longshanks, who, in the year 1295, defeated
the Scots at Dunbar, and soon after compelled the Castle of Edinburgh to surrender to his
.
A perfect inventar of Pious Donations. MS. Advocated KO., Diurnal of Occurrenta, p, 299.
2s
