234 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Grassmarket.
Some English writers have denied that Henry
was ever in Edinburgh at any time; and that
the Queen alone came, while he remained at
Kikcudbright. But Sir Walter Scott, in a note to
Mannion,? records, that he had seen in possession
of Lord Napier, ? a grant by Henry of forty merks
to his lordship?s ancestor, John Napier (of Merchiston),
subscribed by the King himself at
Edinburgh, the 28th August, in the thirty-ninth
year of his reign, which exactly corresponds with
the year of God, 1461.?
Abercrombie, in his Martial Achievements,?
after detailing some negociations between the
Scottish ministry of James 111. (then a minor) and
Henry VI., says, that after they were complete,
?? the indefatigable Queen of England left the King,
her husband, at his lodgings in the Greyfriars of
Edinburgh, where his own inclinations to devotion
and solitude made him choose to reside, and went
with her son into France, not doubting but that by
the mediation of the King of Sicily, her father, she
should be able to purchase both men and money
in that kingdom.?
That a church would naturally form a most
nedessary appendage to such a foundation as this
monastery can scarcely be doubted, and Wilson
says that he is inclined to infer the existence of
one, and of a churchyard, long before Queen
Mary?s grant of the gardens to the city, and of this
three proofs can be given at least.
A portion of the treaty of peace between James
111. and Edward IV. included a proposal of the
latter that his youngest daughter, the Princess
Cecilia, then in her fourth year, should be betrothed
to the Crown Prince of Scotland, then an
infant of two years old, and that her dowry 01
zo,ooo merks should be paid by annual instalments
commencing from the date of the contract.
Os this basis a peace was concluded, the ceremony
of its ratification being performed, along with the be
trothal, 44in the church of the Grey Friars, at
Edinburgh, where the Earl of Lindsay and Lord
Scrope appeared as the representatives of theiI
respective sovereigns.?
The ? Diurnal of Occurrents records that on the
7th July, 1571, the armed craftsmen made their
musters ?4in the Gray Friere Kirk Yaird,? and,
though the date of the modem church, to which we
shall refer, is 1613, Birrel, in his diary, under date
26th April, 1598, refers to works in progress by
In 1559, when the storm of the Reformation
broke forth, the Earl of Argyle entered Edinburgh
with his followers, and ? the work of purification ?I
began with a vengeance. The Trinity College
the Societie at the Gray Friar Kirke.?
Church, St Giles?s, St. Mary-in-the-Field, the monasteries
of the Black and Grey Friars, were pillaged
of everything they contained Of the two iatter
establishments the bare walls alone were left standing.
In 1560 the stones of these two edifices were
ordered to be used for the bigging of dykes j? and
other works connected with the Good Town j and
in 1562 we are told that a good crop of corn
was sown in the Grey Friars? Yard by ?Rowye
Gairdner, fleschour,? so that it could not have
been a place for interment at that time.
The Greyfriars? Port was a gate which led to
an unenclosed common, skirting the north side of
the Burgh Muir, and which was only included in
the precincts of the city by the last extension of
the walls in 1618, when the land, ten acres in
extent, was purchased by the city from Towers of
Inverleith.
In 1530 a woman named Katharine Heriot,
accused of theft and bringing contagious sickness
from Leith into the city, was ordered to be drowned
in the, Quarry Holes at the Greyfriars? Port. In
the same year, Janet Gowane, accused of haiffand
the pestilens apone hir,? was branded on both
cheeks at the same place, and expelled the city.
This gate was afterwards called the Society and
also the Bristo Port.
Among the edifices removed in the Grassmarket
was a very quaint one, immediately westward of
Heriot?s Bridge, which exhibited a very perfect
specimen of a remarkably antique style of window,
with folding shutters and transom of oak entire
below, and glass in the upper part set in ornamental
patterns of lead.
Near this is the New Corn Exchange, designed
by David Cousin, and erected in 1849 at the
cost of Azo,ooo, measuring 160feet long by 120
broad ; it is in the Italian style, with a handsome
front of three storeys, and a campanile or belfry
at the north end. It is fitted up with desks and
stalls for the purpose of mercantile transactions,
and has been, from its great size and space
internally, the scene of many public festivals, the
chief of which were perhaps the great Crimean
banquet, given there on the 31st of October, 1856,
to the soldiers of the 34th Foot, 5th Dragoon
Guards, and Royal Artillery j and that other given
after the close of the Indian Mutiny to the soldiers
of the Rossshire Buffs, which elicited a very
striking display of high national enthusiasm.
On the north side of the Market Place there yet
stands the old White Hart Inn, an edifice of considerable
antiquity. It was a place of entertainment
as far back perhaps as the days when the Highland
drovers cage to market armed with sword and
GNsmarket.1 THE GAELIC CHAPEL. 235
target, andnogentlemantookthe road without pistols
in his holsters, and was the chief place for carriers
putting up in the days when all the country traffic
was conducted by their carts or waggons. In 1788
fortysix carriers arrived weekly in the Grassmarket,
and this number increased to ninety-six in 1810.
In those days the Lanark coach started fiom
George Cuddie?s stables there, every Friday and
Tuesday at 7 am. ; the Linlithgow and Falkirk
flies at 4 every afternoon, ?( Sundays excepted ; ?
and the Peebles coach from ? Francis M?Kay?s,
vintner, White Hart Inn,? thrice weekly, at g in
the morning.
Some bloodshed occurred in the Castle Wynd
in 1577. When Morton?s administration became
so odious as Regent that it was resolved to deprive
him of his power, his natural son, George Douglas
of Parkhead, held the Castle of which he was
governor, and the magistrates resolved to cut off
all supplies from him. At 5 o?clock on the 17th
March their guards discovered two carriages of
provisions for the Castle, which were seized at
the foot of the Wynd. This being seen by Parkhead?s
garrison, a sally was made, and a combat
ensued, in which three citizens were killed and six
wounded, but only one soldier was slain, while sixteen
others pushed the carriages up the steep slope.
The townsmen, greatly incensed by the injury,?
says Moyse, ?? that same night cast trenches beside
Peter Edgafs house for enclosing of the Castle.?
Latterly the closes on the north side of the
Market terminated on the rough uncultured slope
of the Castle Hill; but in the time of Gordon of
Rothiemay a belt of pretty gardens had been there
from the west fiank of the city wall to the Castle
Wynd, where a massive fragment of the wall of
1450 remained till the formation of Johnstone
Terrace. On the west side of the Castle Wynd
is an old house, having a door only three feet
three inches wide, inscribed:
BLESSIT. BE. GOD. FOR. AL. HIS. GIFTIS.
16. 163 7. 10.
The double date probably indicated arenewal of
the edifice.
The first Gaelic chapel in Edinburgh stood in
the steep sloping alley named the Castle Wynd.
Such an edifice had long been required in the
Edinburgh of those days, when such a vast number
of Highlanders resorted thither as chairmen, porters,
water-carriers, city guardsmen, soldiers of the
Castle Company, servants and day-labourers, and
when Irish immigration was completely unknown.
These people in their ignorance of Lowland Scottish
were long deprived of the benefit of religious
instruction, which was a source of regret to themselves
and of evil to society.
Hence proposals were made by Mr. Williarn
Dicksos, a dyer of the city, for building a chapel
wherein the poor Highlanders might receive religious
instruction in their own language; the contributions
of the benevolent flowed rapidly in; the
edifice was begun in 1767 and opened in 1769,
upon .a piece of ground bought by the philanthropic
William Dickson, who disposed of it to the Society
for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. The
church cost A700, of which LIOO was given by
the Writers to the Signet.
It was soon after enlarged to hold about 1,100
hearers. The minister was elected by the subscribers.
His salary was then only LIOO per
annum, ?and he was, of course, in communion with
the Church- of Scotland, when such things as the
repentance stool and public censure did not
become thing of the past until 1780. ?Since the
chapel was erected,? says Kincaid, ?the Highlanders
have been punctual in their attendance on
divine worship, and have discovered the greatest
sincerity in their devotions. Chiefly owing to the
bad crops for some years past in the Highlands,
the last peace, and the great improvements Carrying
on in this city, the number of Highlanders has of late
increased so much that the chapel in its present
situation cannot contain them. Last Martinmas,
above 300 applied for seats who could not be
accommodated, and who cannot be edified in the
English language.?
The first pastor here was the Rev. Joseph
Robertson MacGregor, a native of Perthshire, who
was a licentiate of the Church of England before
he joined that of Scotland., ?The last levies of
the Highland regiments,? says Kincaid, ?? were
much indebted to this house, for about a third of
its number have, this last and preceding wars,
risqued (xi.) their lives for their king and country ;
and no other church in Britain, without the aid or
countenance of Government, contains so many
disbanded soldiers.?
Mr. MacGregor was known by his mother?s
name of Robertson, assumed in consequence of
the proscription of his clan and name ; but, on the
repeal of the infamous statute against it, in 1787,
on the day it expired he attired himself in a fill
suit of the MacGregor tartan, and walked conspicuously
about the city.
The Celtic congregation continued to meet 51
the Castle Wynd till 1815, when its number had
so much increased that a new church was built for
them in another quarter of the city.
The Plainstanes Close, with Jatnieson?s, Beattie?s,
s
*
