I94 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
especially to the removal of the numerous middens,
the repair of the roads and streets, and also the
expected hospitality of the city, as we find that
soon after the inhabitants were assessed to support
the queen and her retinue till Holyrood Palace was
prepared to receive her. They were also compelled
+o defray their proportion of the expense of his
return.
Five years before this, in 1584, to prevent the
incessant broils and riots that took place in High
Street and elsewhere at night, it was enacted thai
by ten o?clock forty strokes should be given on the
great bell, after which any person found abroad wa:
to be imprisoned during the magistrate?s pleasure,
and fined forty shillings Scots ; while for the bettei
regulation of the nightly watch the city was divided
into thirty quarters, over each of which the magis.
trates appointed two commanders, one a merchant,
the other a craftsman, as also an officer to summon
the citizens occasionally to take into consideration
the affairs connected with these several divisions.
(Council Register.)
And now to glance briefly at the tdziex, or combats,
for so were they named of old, of which the
High Street has been the scene.
Apart from the famous brawl named ?Cleanse
the Causeway,? already described, and that in which
the Laird of Stainhouse fell with the French in
1560, a considerable amount of blood has been
shed in this old thoroughfare.
After the battle of Melrose, in 1526, there ensued
a deadly feud between the border clans of
Scott and Ken; which culminated in the slaughter
of Sir Walter Scott of Branxholm and Buccleuch,
by the Kerrs, in October, 1551, in the High Street.
?? Bards long shall tell
How Lord Walter fell !
When startled burghers fled afar,
The furies of the Border war,
When the streets of High Dunedin
Saw lances gleam and falchions redden,
And heard the slogan?s deadly yell-
Then the chief of Branxholm fell !?
Nor was the feud between these two families
stanched till forty-five years later, when the chiefs
of both paraded the High Street with their followers
amicably, but it was expected their first
meeting would decide their quarrel.
On the 24th of November, 1567, about two in
the afternoon, the Laird of Airth and Sir John
Wemyss of that ilk, ?met upon the Hie Gait of
Edinburgh,? according to Birrel, ?and they and
their followers fought a bloody skirmish, when
many were hurt on both sides by shot of pistol.?
On this the Privy Council issued, but in vain,
an edict against the wearing of culverins, dags,
pistolets, or other ?? firewerks.?
The latter seem to have been adopted or in use
earlier in Scotland than in the sister kingdom. At
the raid of the Redswire, the English archers were
routed by the volleys of the Scottish hackbuttiers ;
and here we find, as the author of ?Domestic
Annals? notes, ?that sword and buckler were at
this time (1567) the ordinary gear of gallant men
in England-a comparatively harmless furnishing ;
but we see that small fire-arms were used in Scotland.?
On the 7th December, three years after this, the
Hoppringles and Elliots chanced to encounter in
the same place-hostile parties knew each other
well then by their badges, livery, and banners-and
a terrible slaughter would have ensued had not the
armed citizens, according to the ? Diurnal of Occurrents,?
redLi-i. e., separated-them by main
force.
A feud, which for many years disturbed the
upper valley of the Tweed, resulted in a tulzie in
the streets which is not without gome picturesque
details. It was occasioned by the slaughter
of Veitch of Dawick?s son, in June, 1590, by or
through James Tweedie of Drummelzier, to revenge
which, rames Veitch younger of Synton, and
Andrew Veitch, brother of the Laird of Tourhope,
slew John Tweedie, tutor of Drummelzier and burgess
of Edinburgh, as he walked in the public
streets. Too much blood had been shed now for
the matter to end there.
The Veitches were arrested, but the Laird of
Dawick came to the rescue with 10,000 inerks bail,
and their fiberation was ordered by the king ; but
they were barely free before they effected the
slaughter of James Geddes of Glenhegden, head
or chief of his family, with whom they, too,
were at feud; and the recital of this crime, as
given in the ?Privy Council Record,? affords a
curious insight into the modus opernndi of a daylight
brawl in the streets at that time. We modernise
it thus :-
James Geddes, being in Edinburgh for the space
of some eight days, openly and publicly met, almost
daily in the High Street, the Laird of Drummelzier.
The latter fearing an attack, albeit that
Geddes was always alone, planted spies and retainers
about the house in which he lived and
other places to which he was in the habit of repairing.
It chanced that on the 29th of December,
1592, James Geddes being in the Cowgate, getting
his horse.shod at the booth of David Lindsay, and
being altogether careless of his safety, Drummelzier
was informed of his whereabouts, and dividing all
High Street.] TULZIES IN THE HIGH STREET. 195 - -
his own friends and servants into two armed parties,
set forth on slaughter intent.
He directed his brothers John and Robert
Tweedie, Porteous of Hawkshaw, Crichton of
Quarter, and others, to Conn?s Close, which was
directly opposite to the smith?s booth; while he,
accompanied by John and Adam Tweedie, sons of
the Gudeman of Dura, passed to the Kirk (of Field)
Wynd, a little to the westward of the booth, to cut
off the victim if he hewed a way to escape ; but as
he was seen standing at the booth door with his
back to them, they shot him down with their
pistols in cold blood, and left him lying dead on
the spot.
For this the Tweedies were imprisoned in the
Castle; but they contrived to compromise the
matter with the king, making many fair promises ;
yet when he was resident at St. James?s, in 1611,
he heard that the feud and the fighting in Upper
Tweeddale were as bitter as ever.
On the 19th of January, 1594, a sharp tulzie, or
combat, ensued in the High Street between the
Earl of Montrose, Sir James Sandilands, and others.
10 explain the cause of this we must refer to
Calderwood, who tells us that on the 13th of
February, in the preceding year, John Graham of
Halyards, a Lord of Session (a kinsman of Montrose),
was passing down Leith Wynd, attended by
three or four score of armed men for his protection,
when Sir Janies Sandilands, accompanied by his
friend Ludovic Duke of Lennox, with an armed
I company, met him. As they had recently been
in dispute before the Court about Some temple
lands, Graham thought he was about to be attacked,
and prepared to make resistance. The
duke told him to proceed on his journey, and that
no one would molest him; but the advice was
barely given when some stray shots were fired by
the party of the judge, who was at once attacked,
and fell wounded. He was borne bleeding into
an adjacent house, whither a French boy, page to
Sir Alexander Stewart, a friend of Sandilands, followed,
and plunged a dagger into him, thus ending
a lawsuit according to the taste of the age.
Hence it was that when, in the following year,
John Earl of Montrose-a noble then about fifty
years old, who had been chancellor of the jury that
condemned the Regent Morton, and moreover was
Lord High Chancellor of the kingdom-met Sir
James Sandilands in the High Street, he deemed
it his duty to avenge the death of the Laird of
Halyards. On the first amval of the earl in Edinburgh
Sir James had been strongly recommended
by his friends to quit it, as his enemies were too
strong for him ; but instead of doing so he desired
the aid and assistance of all his kinsmen and
friends, who joined him forthwith, and the two
parties meeting on the 19th of January, near the
Salt Tron, a general attack with swords and hack
buts begun. One account states that John, Master
of Montrose (and father of the great Marquis), first
began the fray; another that it was begun by Sir
James Sandilands, who was cut down and severely
wounded by more than one musket-shot, and
would have been slain outright but for the valour
of a friend named Captain Lockhart. The Lord
Chancellor was in great peril, for the combat was
waged furiously about him, and, according to the
? Historie of King James the Sext,? he was driven
back fighting ?to the College of Justice ( i e . , the
Tolbooth). The magistrates of the town with
fencible weapons separatit the parties for that time ;
and the greatest skaith Sir James gat on his party,
for he himself was left for dead, and a cousingerman
of his, callit Crawford of Kerse, was slain,
and many hurt.? On the side of the earl only one
was killed, but many were wounded.
On the 17th of June, 1605, there was fought in
the High Street a combat between the Lairds of
Edzell and Pittarrow, with many followers on both
sides. It lasted, says Balfour in his AnnaZes, from
nine at night till two next morning, with loss and
many injuries. The Privy Council committed the
leaders to prison.
The next tulzie of which we read arose from the
following circumstance :-
Captain James Stewart (at one time Earl of
Arran) having been slain in 1596 by Sir James
Douglas of Parkhead, a natural son of the Regent
Morton, who cut off his .head at a place called
Catslack, and carried it on a spear, ?leaving his
body to be devoured by dogs and swine;? this
act was not allowed to pass unrevenged by the
house of Ochiltree, to which the captain-who had
been commander of the Royal Guard-belonged.
But as at that time a man of rank in Scotland
could not be treated as a malefactor for slaughter
committed in pursuance of a feud, the offence was
expiated by an assythement. The king strove
vainly to effect a reconciliation ; but for years the
Imds Ochiltree and Douglas (the latter of whom
was created Lord Torthorwald in 1590 by James
VI.) were at open variance.
It chanced that on the 14th of July, 1608, that
Lord Torthonvald was walking in the High Street
a little below the Cross, between six and seven in
the morning, alone and unattended, when he suddenly
met William Stewart, a nephew of the man
he had slain. Unable to restrain the sudden rage
that filled him, Stewart drew his sword, and ere
