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
Leith Wynd.] TRINITY COLLEGE. 303
near its site stands one of the fine and spacious
school houses erected for the School Board.
At the foot of Leith Wynd, on the west side,
there was founded on the 5th of March, 1462, by
royal charter, the collegiate church of the Holy
Trinity, by Mary, Queen of Scotland, daughter of
Arnold Duke of Gueldres, grand-daughter of John
Duke of Burgundy, and widow of James II., slain
about two years before by the bursting of a cannon
at Roxburgh. Her great firniness on that disastrous
occasion, and during the few remaining
years of her own life, proves her to have been a
princess of no ordinary
strength of
mind. She took
an active part in
goyerning the stormy
kingdom of her son,
and died in 1463.
Her early death may
account for the nave
never being built,
though it was not
unusual for devout
persons in that age
of church buliding,
to erect as much
as they could finish,
and leave to the
devotion of posterity
the completion of
the rest. Pitscottie
tells us that she OLD COLLEGIATE SEALS,
his office shall be adjudged vacant, and the same
shall, by the Provost and Chapter, with consent of
the Ordinary, be conferred upon another. If any
of the said prebendaries shall keep a $ye-maker,
and shall not dismiss her, after being therein admonished
thereto by the Provost, his prebend shall
be adjudged vacant, and conferred on another, by
consent of the Ordinary as aforesaid.
? The Provost of the said college, whenever the
office of provostry shall become vacant, shall by
us and our successors, Kings of Scotland, be presented
to the Ordinary; and the vicars belonging
to the out-churches
aforesaid shall be
presented by the
Provost and Chapter
of the said college
to the Ordinary,
fromwhomtheyshall
receive canonical institution;
and no
prebendary shall be
instituted unless he
can read and sing
plainly, count and
discount, and that
the boys may be
found docile in the
premises. And we
further appoint and
ordain, that whenever
any of the said
?RINITY COLLEGE CHURCH. prebendwies shall
?was buried in the
Trinitie College, quhilk she built hirself.? Her
grave was violated at the Reformation.
The church was dedicated ?to the Holy Trinity,
to the ever blessed and glorious Virgin Mary, to
3t. Ninian the Confessor, and to all the saints and
elect people of God.? The foundation was for a
provost, eight prebendaries, and two clerks, and
with much minuteness several ecclesiastical benefices
and portions of land were assigned for the
support of the several offices ; and in the charter
there are some provisions of a peculiar character,
in Scotland at least, and curiously illustrative of
the age and its manners :-
?Aud we appoint that none of the said preben-
,daries or clerks absent themselves from their offices
without the leave of the Provost, to whom it shall
not be lawful to allow any of them above the space
of fifteen days at a time, unless it be on extraordiaary
occasions, and then not without consent of
the chapter ; and whosoever of the said prebendaries
or clerks shall act contrary to this ordinance,
iead mass,? he shall,
after the same, in his sacerdotal habits, repair to
the tomb of the foundress with hyssop, and there
read the prayer Dep-ofmdis, together with that of
the faithful, and exhortation to excite the people to
devotion.?? .
Thechoir of this church from the apse to the
west enclosure of the rood tower was go feet long,
and 70 feet from transept to transept window ; the
north aisle was 12 feet broad, and the south g feet.
It is a tradition in masonry that the north aisles of
all Catholic churches were wider than the south,
to commemorate the alleged circumstance of the
Saviour?s head, on the cross, falling on his right
shoulder. In digging the foundation of the Scott
monument, an old quarry 40 feet deep was discovered,
and from it the stones from which the
church was built were taken. With the exception
of Holyrood, it was the finest example of decorated
English Gothic architecture in the city, with many
of the peculiarities of the age to which it belonged.
Various armorial bearings adorned different parts
