CHAPTER X.
LEITH, AND THE NEW TOWN.
HE history and antiquities of the ancient
burgh of Leith are much too intimately
connected with the Scottish capital to admit of
their being overlooked among its venerable memorials.
The earliest notice of Leith occurs in
the original charter of Holyrood Abbey, where
it is mentioned among the gifts bestowed by
Saint David on his royal foundation, under the
name of Inverleith. Little, however, is known
of its history until the year 1329, when the
citizens of Edinburgh obtained from Eing
Robert I. a grait of the Harbour and Mills of
Leith, for the payment of fifty-two merks ye'arly.
From that period almost to our day it has
remained as a vassal of Edinburgh, not incorporated,
like the Canongate, by amicable relations and the beneficent fruits of a paternal
sway, but watched with a spirit of mean jealousy that seemed ever to dread the step-child
becoming a formidable rival. It bore a share in all the disasters that befell its jealous
neighbour, without partaking of its more prosperous fortunes, until the Burgh Reform
Bill of 1833 at length freed it from this slavish vassalage, that proved in its operations
alike injurious to the Capital and its Port. The position it occupied, and the share it had
in the successive struggles that exercised so marked an influence on the history of Edinburgh,
have already been sufficiently detailed in the introductory sketch. It suffered
nearly as much from the invading armies of Henry VIII. as Edinburgh; while in the
bloody feuds between the Congregation and the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, and the no
less bitter strife of the Douglas wars, it was dragged unwillingly into their quarrels, and
compelled to bear the brunt of its more powerful neighbour's wrath.
In the reign of Alexander 111. it belonged to the Leiths, a family who owned extensive
possessions in Midlothian, including the lands of Restalrig, and took their patrimonial
surname from the town. About the commencement of the fourteenth century
these possessions passed by marriage to the Logans, the remains of whose ancient strong-
VIGNETTs-Arms, vinegar Close, Leith.
