~~
In 1543, when the traitorous Scottish nobles of
what was named the English faction, leagued with
Henry VIII. to achieve a marriage between his son
Edward, a child five years of age, and the infant
Queen of Scotland, the Earl of Lennox, who was
at the head of the movement, attempted an insurrection,
and, marching with all his adherents to
Leith, offered battle between that town and Edinburgh
to the Regent and Cardinal Beaton, who were
at the head of the Scottish loyalists. Aware that
PILRIG FREE CHURCH AND LEITH WALK, LOOKING NORTH.
After taking soundings at Granton Craigs, the
infantry were landed there by pinnaces, though the
water was so deep ? that a galley or two laid their
snowttis (i.e. bows) to the craigs,? at ten in the
morning of Sunday, the 4th of May. Between 12
and I o?clock they marched into Leith, ?and fnnd
the tables covered, the dinnaris prepared, such
abundance of wyne and victuallis besydes the other
substances, that the lyck ritches were not to be
found either in Scotland nor in England.? (Knox.)
the forces of Lennox were superior in number to
their own, they amused him with a pretended
treaty till his troops began to weary, and dispersed
to their homes; and Henry of England, enraged
at the opposition to his avarice and ambition, resolved
to invade Scotland in 1544.
In May the Earl of Hertford, with an army
variously estimated at from ten to twenty thousand,
on board of two hundred vessels, commanded by
Dudley, Lord Lisle, suddenly entered the Firth of
Forth, while 4,000 mounted men-at-arms came to
Leith by land.
So suddenly was this expedition undertaken, that
the Regent Arran and the Cardinal were totally unprepared
to resist, and retired westward from the city.
Leith was pillaged, the surrounding countqravaged
with savage and merciless ferocity. Craigmillar
was captured, with many articles of vahie
deposited there by the citizens, and Sir Simon
Preston, after being taken prisoner, was-as a
degradation-compelled to march on foot to London.
How Hertford was baffled in his attempts
on Edinburgh Castle and compelled to retreat we
have narrated in its place. He fell back on Leith,
where he destroyed the pier, which was of wood,
pillaged and left the town in flames. After which
he embarked all his troops, and sailed, taking with
him the &Znrnander and Unicorn, two large Scottish
ships of war, and all the small craft lying in the
harbour.
170 OLD AND NEW EDINEURGH. [Leith.
The ballast of the war ships ((was cannon-shot of
iron of which we found in the town to the nombre
of iii score thousand? according to the English
account, which is remarkable, as the latter used
stone bullets then, which were also used in the
Armada more than forty years afterwards. The work
from which we quote bears that it was ? Imprynted
at London, in Pawls Churchyarde, by Reynolde
Wolfe, at the signe of ye Brazen Serpent, anno
1554.? During this expedition Edward Clinton,
Earl of Lincoln, whose armour is now preserved
in the Tower of London, was knighted at Leith by
the Earl of Hertford,
Scotland?s day of vengeance came speedily after,
when the English army were defeated with great
slaughter at Ancrum, on the 17th of February,
1545.
After the battle of Pinkie Leith was pillaged and
burnt again, with greater severity than before, and
thirty-five vessels were carried from the harbour.
In 1551 an Englishman was detected in Leith
selling velvets in small pieces to indwellers there,
thereby breaking the acts and infringing the freedom
of the citizens of Edinburgh, for which he was
arrested and fined. Indeed, the Burgh Records of
this time teem with the prosecution of persons
breaking the burgh laws by dealings with the ? unfreemen?
of the seaport ; and so persistently did
the magistrates of Edinburgh act as despots in their
attempts to depress, annoy, and restrain the inhabitants,
that, in the opinion of a local historian,
there was only ?one measure wanting to coniplete
the destruction of the unhappy Leiihers, and
that was an act of the Town Council to cut their
throats !?
In 1554 the Easter Beaconof Leith is referred to
in the Burgh Accounts, and also payments made
about the same time to Alexander, a quarrier at
Granton, for stones and for Gilmerton lime, for
repairs upon the harbour of Leith. These works
were continued until October, 1555, and great
stones are mentioned as having been brought from
the Burghmuir.
The Queen Regent, Mary of Lorraine, granted
the inhabitants of Leith a contract to erect the town
into a Burgh of Barony, to continue valid till she
could erect it into a Royal Burgh ; and as a preparatory
measure she purchased overtly and for
their use, with money which they themselves furnished,
the superiority of the town from Logan of
Restalrig ; but as she ,failed amid the turmoil of the
time to fulfil her engagements, the people of Leith
alleged that she had been bribed by those of Edinburgh
with zo,ooo merks to break them.
CHAPTER XVIII.
LEITH-HISTORICAL SURVEY (rantinaed).
The Great Siege--Arrival of the French-The Fortifications-Re-capture of Inchkeith-The Town Invested-Arrival of the English Fleet and
Army-SkirmishesOpning of the Batteries-Failure of the Great Assault-Queen Regent?s Death--Treaty of Peace-Relics of the Siege.
FROM 1548 to 1560 Leith, by becoming the fortified
seat of the Court and headquarters of the Queen
Regent?s army and of her French auxi!iaries, figured
prominently as the centre of those stirring events
that occurred during the bitter civil war which
ensued between Mary of Lorraine and the Lords
of the Congregation. Its port received the shipping
and munitions of war which were designed for
her service ; its fortifications ? enclosed alternately
a garrison and an army, whose accoutrements? had
no opportunity of becoming rusted, and its gates
poured forth detachments and sallying parties who
fought many a fierce skirmish with portions of the
Protestant forces on the plain between Leith and
Edinburgh.?
The bloody defeat at Pinkie, the ravage of the
capital and adjacent country, instead of reconciling
the Scots to a matrimonial alliance with England,
caused them to make an offer of their young Queen
to the Dauphin of France, an offer which his father
at once accepted, and he resolved to leave no
means untried to enforce the authority of the
dowager of James V., who was appointed Regent
during the minority of her daughter. The flame
of the Reformation, long stifled in Scotland, had
now burst forth and spread over all the country;
and the Catholic party would have been only a
minority but for the influence of the Queen Regent
and the presence of her French auxiliaries, who
amved in Leith Roads in June, 1548, in twentytwo
galleys and sixty other ships, according to
Calderwood?s History.
Sir Nicholas de Villegaignon, knight of Rhodes,
was admiral of the fleet, which, as soon as it left
Brest, displayed, in place of French colours, the
Red Lion of Scotland, as France and.England were
