[PleaMnce. 382 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH.
thoroughfare named Chambers Street, to which the
school was transferred in the winter of 1873-4,
The new edifice cost ~ 3 , 0 0 0 , but the accommodation
is more suitable and ample than that of the
old. Though for many years the directors adhered
to their original plan of confining the subjects of instruction
to Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, and
Mathematics, in later years, at the request of a
number of students, the range of education was
greatly enlarged. Hence, classes for English Language
and Literature were instituted in 1837 ; for
History and Economic Science in 1877 ; for Physiology
in 1863 ; for French in 1843 ; German in
1866 ; Latin in 1874 ; Botany in 1870 ; Pitman?s
Short-hand in 1873 ; Greek in 1875 j Geology in
1872 ; Biology, Free-hand Drawing, and the Theory
of Music, in 1877. In April, 1879, the institution
was handed over to the Heriot Trust, as a People?s.
College, at a meeting presided over by the Hon..
Lord Shand, a patron of the school.
CHAPTER XLIX.
THE PLEASANCE AND ST. LEONARDS.
The Convent of St. Mary-Friends? Buria! Place-Old Chirurgeons? Hall-Surgeon Square-? Hamilton?s Folly ?-The Gibbet-Chapel an&
Hospital of St. Leonard-Davie Deans? Cottage-? The Innocent Railway ?-First Public Dispensary.
AT a period subsequent to the panic after Flodden
there was built across the junction of St. Mary?s
Wynd with the Pleasance, parallel with the south
back of the Canongate, an arched barrier named
St. Mary?s Port. South of this, sixty yards from the
south-east angle of the city wall and near the foot
of the present Roxburgh Street, stood the convent
of St. Mary) which must have been a branch of the
Franciscan House of ? S. Maria di Campagni,? so
much patronised by Pope Urban II., in the Parmese
city of Placentia-as the latter name was given to
the foundation in Edinburgh, long since corrupted
into Pleasance, though the place was of old called
Dearenough. It is unknown by whom or when it
was founded, and nothing of it now remains save
a fine piece of alabaster carving, representing our
Saviour brought before the Jewish high-priest,
which was discovered among its ruins, and presented
to the Antiquarian Museum in 1781.
The name of Pleasance is borne by the narrow,
quaint, and straggling street southward till it joins
the other ancient suburb of St. Leonard, of which
it seems to have formed a portion, as proved by a
charter of Charles I. confirming the magistrates in
the superiority of ? the town of St. Leonard.? In it
are many houses, or the basements thereof, that
date from the early part of the sixteenth century.
St. John?s Hill and this now absorbed village
occupy the long ridge that overlooks the valley
at the base of the Craigs, and the whole of which
seems to have been the ecclesiastical property in
earlier ages of several foundations, all of which
were subject to the Abbots of Holyrood.
On the east side of the street is still a great
quadrangular edifice, called Bell?s Brewery (long
famous for its ale), which is shown as such in
Edgar?s Map in 1765, and was nearly consumed by
fire in 1794 ; and near it is still the Friends? meeting-
house and burial-ground, in which are interred
the Millars of Craigantinie, the Hereditary Master
Gardeners to the king. This sect, whose members
underwent much persecution in the early part 06
the eighteenth century, and were often arrested
by the town guard for preaching in the streets, and
thrust into the Tolbooth, had their first place of
worship in Peebles Wynd, where it was built in
1730. ? Though it was roofed,? says the Cmranf
for September, ? there is as yet no window in it;
but some merrily observe these people have light
within.?
On the west side of the Pleasance, and immediately
within the south-east angle of the city wall
referred to, stood the old Chirurgeons? Hall, in the
High School yards. The surgeons and barbers
were formed into a corporation by the town-council
on the 1st of July, 1505 j under the seal of cause,
or charter, certain rules were prescribed for the
good order of this fraternity. On the 13th of
October in the following year James V. ratified
this charter; and Queen Mary, says Arnot, ?in!
consideration of the great attendance required of
surgeons upon their patients, granted them an ex.
emption from serving upon juries, and from watch
ing and warding within the city of Edinburgh,
privileges which were afterwards confirmed by
Parliament.?
On the 25th of February, 1657, the surgeons and:
apothecaries were, at their request, united into
one community. This was ratified by Parliament,
and from that time the corporation ceasd
Pleasance. ST. LEONARD?S CHAPEL. 383
entirely to act as barbers. In consequence, the
council, on the 26th July, 1682, recommended the
new corporation to supply the city with a sufficient
number of persons qualified ?to shave and cut
hair,? and who should continue to be upon it ; but
in 1722 it ceased to have all connection with the
barbers, save that the latter were obliged to enter
all their apprentices in a register kept by the
surgeons. By a charter of George III., dated 14th
March, 1778, the corporation was erected into ?The
Royal College of Surgeons of the City of Edinburgh,?
a document which established a scheme of
provision for the widows and children of members.
In the old edifice overlooking the Pleasance the
College held all its
Castle of Clouts,? in the spirit of that talent which ,
the Scots have of conferring absurd sobriquets.
By the wayside to Duddingstone, south of the
Pleasance, a rising piece of ground or slight eniinence
is called Mount Hooly, a corruption of
Mount Holy, which marks the site of the chapel
of St. Leonard and of a hospital dedicated to the
same saint. As is the case with most of the
ecclesiastical edifices in Edinburgh, nothing is
known as to when or by whom either the chapel or
hospital was built, and not a vestige remains of
either now.
The chapel, ere it became a ruin, rva?s the scene
of a remarkably traitorous tryst, held by the
_.
~ - -- -- - meetings till the erec- ~ ~ ~ --/ -
tion of the new hall,
to be referred to in its
place; but the name of
the first establishment
still survives in the adjacent
Surgeon Square.
In it was a theatre for
dissection, a museum,
in which a mummy
was long the chief
curiosity, and the hall
was hung with portraits
Qf surgeons who had
grown to eminence
after it was built.
W i 11 i am S m e 11 i e,
F.R.S. and F.A.S., an
eminent printer, and
DAVIE DEANS? COTTAGE.
known as the (FTOIIZ a Vzpette by &oars, #ubZrs/red I- the Fzrsf Edition of Robert
author of the ?Philo- Chambers?s ? Tradrho~rso~Ed~irbsrgh,? 1825 )
sophy of Natural His-
Douglas faction on the
2nd of February, 1528,
having nothing less in
view than the assassination
of their sovereign,
James V., ?the
Commons King,? who
was the idol of his
people. They were to
enter the palace of
Holyrood by a window
near the head of the
king?s bed in the night,
and under the guidance
of Sir James
Hamilton, one the monarch
loved and trusted
much; but the dastardly
plot was discovered
in time, and
by the energetic measures
taken to crush the
devisers of it, peace
of the quaint old houses of the Pleasance in 1740.
A quaint three-storeyed edifice, having a large
archway, peaked gables, and dormer windows,
bearing the date of 1709, stood on the south
side of the Pleasance, and was long known as
? Hamilton?s Folly,? from the name of the proprietor,
who was deemed unwise in those days to hiild
a house so far from the city, and on the way that led
to the gibbet on which the bodies of criminals were
hung. But the latter would seem to have been in -
use till a much later period, as in the Cournnt for
December, 1761, there are advertised for sale four
tenements, ?lying at the head of the Pleasance, on
the east side of the road leading to the gibbet.?
Here still stands a goodly house of three storeys,
which was built about 1724 bya wealthy tailor, and
which in consequence has been denominated ?(the
for a period.
At St. Leonard?s Loan, which bounded the
property of the abbots of Holyrood on the south,
separating it on the side from the western flank of
the vast Burghmuir, there stood in ancient times a
memorial known as Umphraville?s Cross, erected
in memory of some man of -rank who perished
there in a conflict of which not a memory remains.
The cross itself had doubtless been demolished
as a relic of idolatry at the Reformation ; but in
1810, its base, a mass of dark whinstone, with a
square hole in its centre, wherein the shaft had
been fixed, was still remaining on the ancient site,
till it was broken up for road metal!
In his ? Diary,? Birrel records that on the 2nd
April, 1600, ? being the Sabbathday, Robert
Achmuty, barber, slew James Wauchope at the com
