2 OLD AND NEW? EDINBURGH. [Canongate.
refain its distinct dignity as a burgh of regality.
In its arms it bears the white hart?s head, with
the cross;crosslet of the miraculous legend betweeg
the horns, and the significant motto, (( SIC ITUR AU
As the main avenue from the palace to the city,
so a later writer tells us, it has borne upon its
pavement the burden of all that was beautiful and
gallant, and all that has become historically interesting
in Scotland for the last seven hundred years?;
and though many of its houses have been modernised,
it still preserves its aspect of great quaintness and
vast antiquity.
It sprang up independent of the capital, adhering
naturally to the monastery, whose vassals and dependents
were its earliest builders, and retaining
to the last legible marks of a different parentage
from the city. Its magistrates claimed a feudal
lordship over the property of the regality as the
successors of its spiritual superiors ; hence many of
the title-deeds therein ran thus :-? To be holden
of the Magistrates of the Canongate, as come in
place of the Monastery of the Holy Cross.?
The Canongate seems to have been a favourite
with the muse of the olden time, and is repeatedly
alluded to in familiar lyrics and in the more
polished episodes of the courtly poets of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. A Jacobite
song has it :-
ASTR A. ??
(? As I cam doun the Canongate,
As I cam doun the Canongate,
? Merry may the keel rowe.
The Canongate, the Canongate,
I heard a lassie sing,
That my true love is in,? ? &c.
The (? Satire on Court Ladies ? tells us,
(? The lasses 0? the Canongate,
Oh they are wondrous nice ;
They winna gie a single kiss
But for a dm& price.?
And an old song concerning a now-forgotten belle
says :--.
6? A? doun alang the Canongate
Were beaux 0? ilk degree ;
At bonny Mally Lee.
We?re a? gaun agee,
Courtin? Mally Lee ! ?
And mony ane turned round to look
And we?re a? gaun east and west,
We?re a? gaiin east and west,
?
The earliest of the register-books preserved in
the archives of this little burgh commences in 1561
-about a hundred years before Cromwell?s invasion;
but the volume, which comes down to
1588, had been long in private hands, acd was only
restored at a recent date, though much of it is
printed in the ?? Maitland Miscellany ? for 1840.
Unlike Edinburgh, the Canongate had no walls
for defence-its gates and enclosures being for
civic purposes only. If it relied on the sanctity OF
its monastic superiors as a protection, it did so in
vain, when,,in 1380, Richard 11. of England gave
it to the flames, and the Earl of Hertford in 1544;
and in the civil wars during the time of Charles I.,
the jourhal of Antipities tells us that (( the Canongate
suffered severely from the barbarity of the
English-so much so that scarcely a house was
left standing.?
In 1450, when the first wall of the city was
built, its eastern extremity was the Nether Bow
Port. Open fields, in all probability, lay outside
the latter, and though the increasing suburb was.
then building, the city claimed jurisdiction within
it as far as the Cross of St. John, and the houses
crept gradually westward up the slope, till they
formed the present unbroken street from the
Nether Bow to the palace porch; but it seems
strange that even in the disastrous year 1513, when
the Cowgate was enclosed by a wall, no attempt
was made to secure the Canongate; though it had
gates which were shut at night, and it had boundary
walls, but not of a defensive character.
Of old, three crosses stood in the main street:
that of St. John, near the head of the present St.
John Street, at which Charles I. knighted the
Provost on his entering the city in 1633; the
ancient Market Cross, which formerly stood opposite
the present Tolbooth, and is represented in
Gordon?s Map as mounted on a stone gallery, like
that of the City Cross, and the shaft of which, a very
elegant design, still exists, attached to the southeast
corner of the just.named edifice. Its chief
use in later times was a pillory, and the iron
staple yet remains to which culprits were attached
by the iron collar named the jougs. The third,
or Girth Cross, stood at the foot of the Canongate,
IOO feet westward from the Abbey-strand. (? It
consisted,? says Kincaid, ?( of three steps as ?a
base and a pillar upon the top, and was called the
Girth Cross from its being the western limit of the
Sanctuary ; but in paving the street it was removed,,
and its place is now known by a circle of stones.
upon the west side of the well within the Water
Gate.?
In the earlier age$ of its history the canons tc,
whom the burgh belonged had liberty to buy and
sell in open market. It has been supposed by
several writers that a village of some kind had existed
on the site prior to the erection of the Abbey,
as the king says in more than one version of the
Canongate.1 GOVERNMENT OF THE BURGH. 3
{oundation charter of the latter, I likewise grant
go the said canons the town of Herbergare, lying
betwixt the said church, and my town (of Edinmunity
had been swept away by the Reformatioa ;
and by the king?s grant a commendator succeeded
the last abbot, enjoying the privileges of the latter,
According to the record books of the Canongate,
it was governed in 1561 by four old bailies, three
deacons, two treasurers, and four councillors,
?chosen and elected;? and, as enacted in 1567,
the council met every eighth day, on fuirsdaye.
The Tolbooth was then, as till a late period, the
council-room, court-house, and place of punishunent
By 1561 the monastic superiority over the combut
the real glory of the Canongate may be said
to have departed with the court when James VI.
succeeded to the throne of England in 1603, though,
as we shall show, it long continued to be a
fashionable quarter of the metropolis even after
the time of the Union.
In pursuing the general history of the suburbs,
we find that in 1609, under favour of James VI.,
when a number of foreigners were introduced into
