372 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
‘approach to our cc Modern Athens” from the neighbouring coast. When, some two or
three centuries hence, the New Town shall have ripened into fruit for some twenty-second
century Improvements Commission, their first scheme will probably lead to the restoration
of Gabriel’s Road, and its counterpart from Charlotte Square to Pitt Street, marking the
saltier of Scotland’s patron saint on the antiquated parallelograms of James Craig I
The village of Silvermills, the remains of which lie concealed behind St Stephen’s
Church and the modern streets that surround it, may not improbably owe its origin to
some of the alchemical projects of James IT. or V., both of whom were greatly addicted
to the royal sport of hunting for the precious metals, with which the soil of Scotland was
then believed to abound. Sir Archibald Napier, the father of the philosopher, was
appointed Master of the Mint and superintendent of the mines and minerals within the
kingdom; and we are assured, on the authority of an ancient manuscript in the Cotton
Library, that The Laird of Merchiston got gold in Pentland Hills.”‘ The village of
Silvermills consists almost entirely of a colony of tanners, but one or two of its houses
present the crow-stepped gables of the aeventeenth century; and though now enclosed
within the extended town, we. can remember many a Saturday’s ramble through green
fields that ended at this rural Aamlet.
Another and more important village, which has experienced the same fate as that of
Silvermills, is the ancient baronial burgh of Broughton. Its name occurs in the charter
of foundation of Holyrood Abbey, granted by David I. in 1128, and implies, according to
Marnitlandt,h e Castle town. If it ever possessed B fortalice or keep, from whence its name
was derived, all vestiges of it had disappeared centuries before its fields were invaded by
the extending capital. The Tolbooth, however, wherein the baron’s courts were held, and
offenders secured to abide his judgment,
or to endure its penalties,
stood within these few years near
the centre of the old village, bearing
over its north door the date 1582.
Its broad flight of steps was appropriately
flanked with a venerable
pair of stocks; a symbol of justice
of rare occurrence in Scotland,
where the joug3 were the usual and
more national mode of pillory. The
annexed vignette will srdice to
convey some idea of this antique
structure, which stood nearly in the
centre of the New Town, on the ground now occupied by the east end of Barony Street,
from whence it was only removed with all its paraphernalia of obsolete minners and
laws in the year 1829. The curious rambler may still stumble on one or two of the
humble tenements of the old village, lying concealed among the back lanes of the modern
town. A few years since, its rows of tiled and thatched cottages, with their rude fore-
Niaoellane Scotioa, Napier of Herohiaton, p, 228.
VIOXETTE--The Tolbooth, Broughton.
