240 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Cowgate.
on any pretext, under pain of forfeiture of all he
possessed and final banishment-measures rendered
necessary by the recent defeat at Pinkey.
In 1555 the magistrates assigned the care of the
Cowgate Port-the gate which closed the street on
a line with the Pleasance-to Luke Moresoun for
In 1558 the causeway of the Cowgate was
~ ordered to be raised and re-laid level at the expense
of the heritors, from the (Black) Friars Wynd to
Marlin?s Wynd.
The gorge through which the Cowgate runs must
once have been much deeper than it is now become,
OLD HOUSES IN THE COWGATE, NEAR THE SOUTH BRIDGE, 1850. (FWN a drnwiwg t.r Willinnr chr~=i-s..)
thirty shillings yearly, with orders ?to steik and
oppin the samyn,? from Michaelmas to Candlemas,
between 6 am. and 5 p.m., and from Candlemas
to Michaelmas between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. ; and in
the same year they paid fourteen shillings to Mungo
Hunter, smith, for a new great hanging lock and
key for the gate, because ?the auld loke was first
brokin and mendit that it could nocht be eftir
mendit?
by the accumulation of soil and successive causeways.
As a proof of this, in 1836 the blade of a
large knife or dagger was found eleven feet below
the present surface, while a drain was being dug ;
and in the October of the same year an ancient
iron hammer was found six feet below the surface,
lying close to a thick stone wall, which had once
crossed the Cowgate diagonally towards the west
side of the Candlemaker Row.
