302 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith Wynd.
In 1650 it was used as a hospital for the wounded
soldiers of General Leslie?s army, after his repulse
of Cromwell?s attack on Edinburgh. The building
was decorated with the city arms, and many carved
devices on the pediments of its dormer windows,
while above the doorway was the legend-GoD .
BLIS . THIS. WARK . 1619.
In February, 1696, Fountainhall reports a
?? Reduction pursued by the town of Edinburgh
against Sir William Binny (ex-Provost) and other
partners of the linen manufactory, in Paul?s Work,
of the tack set them in 1683. Insisted, that
this house was founded by Thos. Spence, Bishop
of Aberdeen, in the reign of James II., for discipline
acd training of idle vagabonds, and dedicated
to St. Paul; and by an Act of Council in 1626,
was destinate and mortified for educating boys in a
woollen manufactory ; and this tack had inverted
the original design, contrary to the sixth Act of
Parl. I 633, discharging the sacrilegious inversion of
all pious donations.? Sir William Binny, Knight,
was Provost of the city in 1675-6. It bearsa prominent
place in Rothiemay?s map, and stood partly
within the Leith Wynd Port. In 1779 it was occupied
by a Mr. Macdowal, ?the present proprietor,?
says Arnot, ?who carries on in it an extensive
manufacture of broad cloths, hardly inferior to the
English.? The whole edifice was swept away by
the operations of the North British Railway; and
two very ancient keys found on its site were
presented in 1849 to the Museum of Antiquities.
It was?at the foot of this wynd that, in February,
1592, John Graham, a Lord of Session, was slain
in open day, by Sir James Sandilands of Calder,
and others, not one of whom was ever tried or
punished for the outrage.
By an Act of the seventh Parliament of James
V., passed in 1540, the magistrates were ordained
to warn all proprietors of houses on the west side
of Leith Wynd that were ruinous, to repair or rebuild
them within a year and a day, or to sell the
property to those who could do so; and if no one
would buy them, it was lawful for the said magistrates
to cast down the buildings, ?and with the
stuffe and stanes thereof, bigge ane honest substantious
wall, fra the Porte of the Nether-bowto
the Trinity College ; and it shall not be lawful in
tyme cumming, to any manner of person to persew
them, nor their successoures therefore. . . . . And
because the east side of the said wynd pertains to
the Abbot and Convente of Holyrude House, it is
ordained that the baillies of the Canongate garre
siklike be done upon the said east side,? &c.
The line ot this wall on the west side is distinctly
.
shown in Rothiemay?s map of 1647, and also in
Edgar?s plan of Edinburgh. In both the east side
presents a row of closely-built houses, extending
from the head of the Canongate to the site of the
Leith Wynd Port, at Paul?s Work.
In January, 1650, ?John Wilsone, tailyour, in
St. Marie Wynd, and John Sinclere, dag-maker
(i.e., pistol-maker) in Leith FTynd,? were punished
as false witnesses, in a plea between James Anderson,
merchant in Calder, and John Rob in Easter
Duddingston, for which they were sentenced by the
Lords in Council and Session to be set upon the
Tron, with a placard announcing their crime to the
people pinned on the breast of each, and to have
thair eares nailed to the Trone, be the space of
ane hour.?
On the Leith Wynd Port, as on others, the
quarters of criminals were displayed. In September,
1672, the Depute of Gilbert Earl of
Errol (High Constable of Scotland) sentenced
James Johnstone, violer, who had stabbed his wife,
to be hanged, ?? and to have his right hand, which
gave the stroak, cut off, and affixed upon Leithwind
Port, and ordained the magistrats of Edinburgh
to cause put the sentence to execution upon
the 9th of that month.?
In February, 1854, the wall of James the Fifth?s
time, on the west side of the wynd gave way, and
a vast portion of it, which was about twenty feet
high and four feet thick, fell with a dreadful crash,
smashing in the doors and windows on the oppm
site side, and blocking the whole of the steep
narrow thoroughfare, and burying in its dibris four
children, two of whom were killed on the instant.
and two frightfully mangled.
Its fall was supposed to have been occasioned
by a new wall, seven feet in height, raised upon
its outer verge, to form the outer platform in front
of a building known as St. Andrew?s Hall, and
afterwards the Training Institute of the Scottish
Episcopal Society.
As St. Mary?s Street, which lies in a line with
this wynd, is in a direct line also from the Pleasance,
to render the whole thoroughfare more completely
available, it was deemed necessary by the
Improvement Trustees to make alterations in Leith
Wynd, by forming Jeffrey Street, which takes a,
semccircular sweep, from the head of the Canongate
behind John Knox?s house and church,
onwards to the southern end of the North Bridge.
Thus the whole of the west side of Leith Wynd
and its south end have disappeared in these operations.
One large tenement of great antiquity, and
known as the cc Happy Land,? long the haunt of
the most lawless characters, has disappeared, and
