LEITH, AND THE NEW TOWN. 369
strangle in its birth the rising haven. They purchased the superiority of it from James V. ;
and the Chapel of St James, which appears to have been a dependency of the Preceptory
of St Anthony at Leith,’ being suppressed at the Reformation, it sunk into the mere
fishing village it still remains. The houses are mostly of a homely and uninteresting
character, though on one near the west end of the village a large sculptured pediment is
decorated with a pair of globes, a quadrant, anchor, &c., surmounted by a war galley of
antique form, and with the inscription and date,-rn THE NEAM OF GOD, 1588.
Notwithstanding the modern title of the New Town of Edinburgh, it is not altogether
destitute of antique and curious associations deserving of notice in these Memorials of the
olden time. It has not yet so completely swallowed np‘the arkient features of the broad
landscape that stretched away of old beyond the sedgy banks of the North Loch, but that
some few mementoes of bygone times may still be gleaned amid its formal crescents and
squares. In preparing the site of the New Town and digging the foundations of the houses,
numerous very curious relics of the aborginal owners of the soil have been brought to light.
In the summer of 1822 an ancient grave was discovered by some workmen when digging the
foundation of a house on the west side of the Royal Circus. It position was due north and
south, which is generally regarded as a proof of high antiquity. It was lined all round with
flat stones, and the form of a skeleton was still discernable when opened, lying with the
head to the south ; but the whole crumbled to dust so soon as it was touched. During the
following year, 1823, several rude stone coffins were disclosed in digging the foundation .
of a house on the north side of Saxe-Coburg Place, near St Bernard‘s Chapel ; one of which
contained two urns of baked day, now preserved in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries.
This was, in all probability, a burial-place of the period when the Romans had
penetrated thus far northward; and the Britons, in imitation of their example, adopted the
practice of cremation, while they adhered to the ancient form of their sepulchres. A
minute account is printed in the Archsologia Scotica2 of the discovery, in 1822, of a number
of stone coffins near the ancient Roman station at Cramond. They were of rude construction,
and laid in regular rows, lying due east and west. A representation is also given
of a key found in one of the coffins, not greatly differing in shape from those now in use.
No mention, however, is made of urns, and it is probable that they belong to a more recent
period, after the introduction of Christianity among the ancient Britons. Other stone
coans were discovered about the same time immediately opposite to St Mary’s Church,
in levelling the ground for the New Road ; and similar evidences of the occupation of the
district by native tribes at a very remote period are frequently met with all round Edinburgh.
Several such were found in 1846, along the coast of Wardie, in excavating for the
foundations of one of the bridges of the Granton Railway. During some earlier operations
for the same railway, on the 2ith September 1844, a silver and copper coin of Philip 11.
of Spain, along with a quantity of human bones mingled with sand and shells, were discovered,
apparently at a former level of the beach ; and which were supposed at the time to
be a memento of some Spanish galleon of the Great Armada. Rude clay urns are also of
frequent occurrence ; several such, filled with decayed and half burned bones, and ashes,
“Rentale Portua Gracie alias ’ hchmlogia Saotica, vol. iii. pv,o 4c0a.t a lie New Havyne.”-MS. Ad. Lib. Analysia of’ C Ibhaidr,t uvlaorl.i eisi,i J p. .( 34. 8D, alyell, Esq.
3 A
370 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
were exhumed in digging for the foundation of the north pier of the Dean Bridge. They
we very slightly burned, and the ornamental devices, which have been traced on the soft
clay, bear a striking resemblance to those usually found on the fragments of ancient
pottery which have been discovered in the Tumuli of the North
American Continent. Annexed is a view of one of those discovered
at the Dean, and now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries.
Another interesting feature which belongs to the history of the
New Town, in common with many other cities, is the absorption of
hamlets and villages that have sprung up at an early period in the
neighbouring country and been gradually swallowed up within its
extending outskirts. First among such to fall before the progress
of the rising town, was the village of Moutrie’s Hill, which stood
on the site of the Register Office and James’ Square, the highest
ground in the New Town. This suburban hamlet is of great antiquity, and its etymology
has been the source of some very curious research. Lord Hailes remarks on the subject,
‘‘ Moutrees is supposed to be the corruption of two Gaelic words, signifying the covert
or receptacle of the wild boar.”’ It appears, however, from contemporary notices, to
have derived its name from being occupied by the mansion of the Noutrays, a family of
distinction in the time of James V. A daughter of Alexander Stewart, designed of the
Grenane, an ancestor of the Earls of Galloway, who fell at the Battle of Flodden, was
married in that reign to Moutray of Seafield.’ Upon the 26th April 1572, while the
whole country around Edinburgh was a desolate and bloody waste by reason of long
protracted civil war, a party of the Regent Mar’s soldiers, who had been disappointed in an
ambuscade they had laid for seizing Lord Claud Hamilton, one of the opposite leaders,
took five of their prisoners, Lieutenant White, Sergeant Smith, and three common soldiers,
and hanged them immediately on their return to Leith. The leaders of the Queen’s party,
in Edinburgh, retaliated by like barbarous executions, “ and causit hang the morne theirefter
twa of thair souldiouris vpoun ane trie behind Movtrays Hous, in sicht of thair
aduersaris, in lycht, quha hang ane day, and wer takin away in the nycht be the saidis
aduersaris.”’ Another annalist, who styles the locality ‘‘ The Multrayes in the hill besyid
the toun,” adds, “ The same nycht the suddartia of Leith come to the said hill and cuttit
doun the deid men, and als distroyit the growand tries thairabout, quhairon the suddartis
wer hangit. Thir warres wer callit amang the peopill the Douglass wearres.” ‘ Near to
the scene of these barbarous acts of retaliation, on the ground UON occupied by the buildings
at the junction of Waterloo Place with Shakespeare Square: formerly stood an ancient
stronghold called Dingwdl Castle. It is believed to have derived its name from John
Dingwall, who was Provost of the neighbouring Collegiate Foundation of Trinity College,
and one of the original Judges of the Court of Session on the spiritual side. The rains of
the castle appear in Gordon of Rothiemay’s map as a square keep with round towers at
its angles; and some fragments of it are believed to be still extant among the fouudations
of the buildings on its site. Near to this also there would appear to have been an
‘
Annals of Scotland, vol. i. p. 96. * Wood’s Peerage, voL i p. 618. Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 262. ’ Ibid, p. 294.
* Shakespeare Square, in the centre of which stood the old Theatre Rojal, was removed in 1860 for the erection of
the new Poet-Office.
