- - -
who had come to pity, there were more than a
hundred whose hearts were filled with a tiger-like
ferocity, which the clergy had inspired to a dangerous
degree, and for the most ungenerous purpose.?
The women of the kail-market and the ?? saints
of the Bowhead? were all there, their tongues
trembling with abuse, and their hands full of stones
or mud to launch at the head of the fallen Cavalier,
who passed through the Water Gate at four in
the afternoon, greeted by a storm of yells. Seated
on a lofty hurdle, he was bound with cords so
tightly that he was unable to raise his hands to
save his face; preceded by the magistrates in
their robes, he was bareheaded, his hat having
been tom from him. Though in the prime of manhood
and perfection of manly beauty, we are told
that he ? looked pale, worn, and hollow-eyed, for
many of the wounds he had received at Invercarron
were yet green and smarting. A single
horse drew the hurdle, and thereon sat the executioner
of the city, clad in his ghastly and sable
livery, and wearing his bonnet as a mark of disrespect.??
He was escorted by the city guard, under
the notorious Major Weir-Weir the wizard, whose
terrible fate has been recorded elsewhere.
In front marched a number of Cavalier prisoners,
bareheaded and bound with cords. Many
of the people now shed tears on witnessing this
spectacle ; but, says Khcaid, they were publicly
rebuked by the clergy, ? who declaimed against
this movement of rebel nature, and reproached
them with their profane tenderness ; ? while the
?Wigton Papers ? state that how even the widows
and the mothers of those who had fallen in his
wars wept for Montrose, who looked around him
With the profoundest serenity as he proceeded
up the Canongate, even when he came to Moray
House-
?Then, as the Graham looked upward, he met the ugly
was one living mass of human beings ; but for one I where, by an unparalleled baseness, Argyle, with
the chief men of his cabal, who never durst look
Montrose in the face while he had his sword in
his hand, appeared in the balcony in order to feed
merrily their sight with a spectacle which struck
horror into all good men. But Montrose astonished
them with his looks, and his resolution confounded
them.?
Then with broad vulgarity the marchioness spat
full in his face ! Argyle shrank back at this, and
an English Cavalier who stood among the crowd
below reviled him sharply, while Lorne and his
bride continued to toy and smile in the face of
the people. (? Wigton Papers.?)
So protracted was this melancholy spectacle that
seven o?clock had struck before the hurdle reached
the gate of the Tolbooth, where Montrose, when
unbound, gave the executioner a gold coin, saying
-?? This-is your reward, my man, for driving the
cart.?
On the following day, Sunday, the ministers in
their pulpits, according to Wishart, rebuked the
people for not having stoned him. One declared
that ?he was a faggot of hell, and that he already
saw him burning,? while he was constantly
taunted by Major Weir as ?a dog, .atheist, and
murderer.?
The story of Montrose?s execution on the z1st
of May, when he was hanged at the Cross on a
gibbet thirty feet high, with the record of his
battles suspended from his neck, how he died
with glorious magnanimity and was barbarously
quartered, belongs to the general annals of the
nation ; but the City Treasurer?s account contains
some curious items connected with that great legal
tragedy :-
1650. Ffebruar. To making a scaffold at ye Cross
for burning ye Earl of Montrose?s papers . 2 8 0
May 13. For making a seat on a cart to carry him
from ve Water Gate to ve Tolbooth . IZ 16 o
?
into the street was Argyle, with a gay bridal party
in their brave dresses. His son, Lord Lorne, had
just been wedded to the Earl of Moray?s daughter,
deeperand covering it again . . I 16 0
Pd. for sharping the axe for striking
away the head, legs, and arms from
the body. . . . . . o 12 0
,,
canongate.] ROXBURGH HOUSE. 15
~~ House, there stood in those days the mansion of
the Earls of Roxburgh, surrounded by a beautiful
As a set-off against these items, we have the following,
in 1660-1, when Argyle?s fate came :-
To Alexander Davidson for a new axe to ye
Maiden, and is to maintain it all ye days of his
life . . . . . * . . . . p 12 o
To 4 Drummers when ArgyZe and Swzjtton were
brought from Leith . . . . . 14 8 o
To 17 extra Drummers, a days, when Montrose
was buried and Argyle executed . . , 21 12 o
The marquis was interred amid great pomp in
the Church of St. Giles at the Restoration; but
when a search was made for his remains in the
Chepman aisle, in April, 1879, no trace of them
whatever could be found there.
Amid the gloom and?horror of scenes such as
these executions, and the general events of the wars
of the Covenant, all traces of gaiety, and especially
of theatrical entertainments, disappeared in Edinburgh,
as forbidden displays; but in January,. 1659,
the citizens were regaled with the sight of a travelling
dromedary, the first that had ever been in
Scotland. Nicoll describes it as ?ane heigh great
beast, callit ane dummodary, quhilk being keepit
clos in the Canongate, none had a sight of it, without
three pence the person. . . . . It was
very big, and of great height, cloven futted like
unto a kow, and on the bak ane saitt, as it were
a sadill to sit on. Thair was brocht in with it ane
lytill baboun, faced lyke unto an aip.?
In 1686 the public attendance at mass by some
of the officers of state excited a tumult in the city,
and many persons of rank were insulted on returning
therefrom by the rioters. One of these, a
journeyman baker, was, by order of the Privy
Council, whipped through the Canongate, and
ultimately the Foot Guards had to fire on the mob
that assembled.
In that year an Act of Parliament empowered
the magistrates to impose a tax of A500 sterling
yearly, for three years, to cleanse the town and
Canongate, and free both from beggars ; and in 1687
the whole members of the College of Justice voluntarily
offered to bear their full share of this tax,
and appointed two of their body to be present when
it was levied.
In 1692 we find an instance in the Canongate
of one of the many troubles which in those days
arose from corporation privileges, by which the
poor and industrious tradesman was made the
victim of monopoly.
In the open ground which now surrounds Milton
I which performs the whole journey in thirteen days,
I without any stoppage (if God permit), having eighty
Fepairs in this house, when Thomas Kinloch, Dea-
:on of the Wrights in the Canongate, came with
Jthers, and violently carried off all the tools of
Somerville and his workmen, on the plea that they
were not freemen of the burgh; and when the
tools were demanded formally, two days after,
they were withheld.
Robert, Earl of Roxburgh (who afterwards died
m his travels abroad), was then a minor, but his
curators resented the proceedings of Kinloch, and
sued him for riot and *oppression. Apparently, if
the Roxburgh mansion had been subject to the
jurisdiction of the Canongate, the Privy Council
would have given no redress ; but when the earl?s
ancestor, in 1636, had given up the superiority
of the Canongate, as he reserved his house to be
holden of the Crown, it was found that the local
corporation had no right to interfere with his
workmen, and Somerville?s tools were restored to
him by order of the Council.
Earl Robert was succeeded in this house by his
brother John, fifth Earl and first Duke of Roxburgh,
K.G., who sold his Union vote for LSOO,
became Secretary of State for Scotland in 1716,
and died in 1741.
Long ere that time the effect of the Union had
done its worst upon the old court burgh. Maitland,
writing in 1753, says :-?This place has suffered
more by the inion of the kingdoms than all the
other parts of Scotland : for having, before that
period, been the residence of the chief of the
Scottish nobility, it was thqn in a flourishing condition
; but being deserted by them, many of their
houses are fallen down, and others in a ruinous
condition ; it is in a piteous case ! ?
Five years after the Union we find a London
coach announced as starting from the Capongate,
the advertisement for which, with regard to expedition,
comfort, and economy, presents a curious contrast
to the announcements of to-day, and is worth
giving at length, as we find it in the NkwcastZe
Cau~unt of October, I 7 I 2.
? Edinburgh, Berwick, Newcastle, Durham, and
London Stage-coach begins on Monday, 13th
October, 1712. All that desire to pass from
Edinbro? to London, or from London to Edinbro?,
or any place on that road, let them repair to Mr.
John Baillie?s, at the Coach and Horses at the head
of the Canongate, every Saturday, or the Black
Swan in Holborn, every other Monday, at both of
which places they may be received in a stagexoach
