Le:th.] LANDING OF QUEEN MARY. 179
Thus the whole line of fortifications facing the
city were levelled, but those on the east remained
long entire; and considerable traces of them were
only removed about the beginning of the eighteenth
century.
On the 20th of August, 1560, Queen Mary
landed at the town to take possession of the throne
of her ancestors. The time was about eight in the
morning, and Leith must have presented a different
aspect than in the preceding year, when the cannon
of the besiegers thundered against its walls. No
vestige now remains of the pier which received her,
though it must have been constructed subsequent
to the destruction of the older one by the savage
Earl of Hertford-the pier at which Magdalene of
France, the queen of twenty summer days, had
landed so joyously in the May of 1537.
The keys of St. Anthony?s Port were delivered to
Mary, who was accompanied by her three uncles-
Claude of Lorraine, Duc d?Aumale, who was killed
at the siege of Rochelle thirteen years after; Francis,
Grand Prior of Malta, general of the galleys of
France, who died of fatigue after the battle of
Dreux; and Rend, Marquisd?Elbeuff, who succeeded
Francis as general of the galleys. She was attended
also by her ?? four Maries,? whose names, as given by
Bishop Leslie, were Fleming, Beaton, Livingstone,
and Seaton, who had been all along with her in
France. Buchanan in 1565 mentions five Maries,
and the treasurer?s account at the same date mentions
si;., including two whose names were Simparten
and Wardlaw.
The cheers of the people mingled with the boom
of cannon, and, says Buchansn, ?the dangers she
had undergone, the excellence of her mien, the
delicacy of her beauty, the vigour of her blooming
years, and the elegance of her wit, all joined in her
recommendation.?
As the genial Ettrick Shepherd wrote :-
?? After a youth by woes o?ercast,
After a thousand sorrows past,
The lovely Mary once again
Set foot upon her native plain ;
Kneeled on the pier with modest grace,
And turned to heaven her beauteous face . . . I .
There rode the lords of France and Spain,
Of England, Flanders, and Lorraine ;
While semed thousands round them stood,
From shore of Leith to Holyrood.?
But Knox?s thunder was growling in the distance,
as he records that ?? the very face of heaven did
manifestlie speak what comfort was brought to this
country with hir-to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness,
and all impiety; for in the memory of man never
was seyn a more dolorous face of the heaven than
was at her arryvall . . . . . the myst was so thick
that skairse mycht onie man espy another ; .and the
sun was not seyn to shyne two days befoir nor two
days after !IJ
Four years after this the poor young queen,
among other shifts to raise money in her difficulties,
mortgaged the superiority of Leith to the city
of Edinburgh, redeemable for 1,000 merks ; and in
1566 she requested the Town Council by a letter
to delay the assumption of that superiority ; but
she could only obtain a short indulgence to prevent
the consequence of her hasty act falling on the
devoted seaport.
In 1567, taking advantage of the general confusion
of the queen?s affairs, on the 4th of July the
Provost, bailies, deacons, and the whole craftsmen
of the city, armed and equipped in warlike array,
with pikes, swords, and arquebuses, marched to
Leith, and went through some evolutions, meant to
represent or constitute the capture and conquest of
the town, and formally trampled its independence
in the dust. From the Links the magistrates
finally marched to the Tolbooth, in the wynd
which still bears its name, and on the stair thereof
held a court, creating bailies, sergeants, clerks, and
deemsters, in virtue of the infeftment made to
them by the queen ; and the superiority thus established
was maintained, too often with despotic
rigour, till Leith attained its independence after the
passing of the Reform Bill in 1832.
During the contention between Morton and the
queen?s party, when the former was compelled with
his followers to take shelter in Leith, where thq
Regent Mar had established his headquarters on
the 12th of January, 1571, a convention, usually
but erroneously called a General Assembly of the
Kirk, was convened there, and sat till the 1st of
February, and in it David Lindsay, minister of
Leith, took a prominent part. The opening sermon
on this occasion was lately reprinted by Principal
Lee. It is now extremely scarce, and is entitled
? Ane sermon preichit befoir the Regent and
nobilitie, in the Kirk of Leith, 1571, by David
Fergussone, minister of the Evangell at Dunfermlyne.
The sermon approvit by John Knox, with
my dead hand but glaid heart, praising God that of
His mercy He lenis such light to His Kirk in this
desolation.?
M?Crie says that the last public service of Knox
was the examination and approval of this sermon.
During the minority of James VI. Leith figured
in many transactions which belong strictly to the
general history of the realm ; thus from November,
1571, till the August of the following year, it was
the seat of the Court of Justiciary, and again in
thus :-
180 OLD AKD NEW EDINBURGH, [Leith.
1596-7. In 1578 an Act of Parliament was passed
to prevent ? the taking away of great quantities of
victual and flesh from Leith, under the pretence of
victualling ships.?. In the same year a reconciliation
having been effected between the Earl of
Morton and the nobles opposed to him, the Earls
of Argyle, Montrose, Athole, and Buchan, Lord
Boyd, and many other persons of distinction, dined
with him jovially at an hostelry in Leith, kept by
William Cant.
There was considerable alarm excited in Edinburgh,
Leith, and along the east coast generally, by
a plague which, as Moyes records, was brought
from Dantzig by John Downy?s ship, the WiZZiam of
~ 5 t h . By command of the Privy Council, the ship
was ordered, with her ailing
and dead, to anchor off
Inchcolm, to which place
all afflicted by the plague
were to confine themselves.
The crew consisted of
forty men, of whom the
majority died. Proclamation
had been made at the
market-cross of every east
coast town against permitting
this fated crew to
land. By petitions before
the Council it appeared that
William Downie, skipper
in Leith, left a widow and
eleven children; Scott, a
mariner, seven. The survivors
were afterwards re-
Trades of Leith were declared independent of
those of Edinburgh by a decree of the Court of
Session.
In October, 1589, James VI. embarked at Leith
for Norway, impatient to meet his bride, Anne of
Denmark, to whom he had been married by proxy.
She had embarked in August, but her fleet had
been detained by westerly gales, and there seemed
little prospect of her reaching Scotland before the
following spring. Though in that age a voyage to
the Baltic was a serious matter in the fall of the
year, James, undaunted, put to sea, and met his
queen in Norway, where the marriage ceremony was
performed again by the Rev. David Lindsay, of
Leith, in the cathedral of St. Halvard at Christiania,
and not at Upsala.
THE ARMS
moved to Inchkeith and the Castle of Inchgarvie,
and the ship, which by leaks seemed likely to sink
at her anchors, was emptied of her goods, which
were stored in the VOW~S,? or vaults, of St. Colm.
In 1584 Leith was appointed the principal
market for herrings and other fish in the Firth of
Forth.
Five years subsequent to this we find that the
despotic magistrates of Edinburgh summoned nearly
one half of their Leith vassals to hear themselves
prohibited from the exercise of their various trades
and from choosing their deacons in all time coming.
They had previously thrust two unfortunate shoemakers
into prison, one forprefending that he was
elected deacon of the Leith Incorporation of the
craft, and the other for acting as his officer; and
we are told that, notwithstanding the remon-
*strances of the operatives, no attention was paid to
their statements, and ? they were proceeded against
as a parcel of insolent and contumacious rascals ;?
and it was not until 1734 that the Incorporated
OF LEIlH.
- ,
as some assert. After remaining
for some months
in Denmark, the royal pair
on the 6th of May, landed
at the pier of Leith (where
the King?s Work had been
prepared for their reception),
amid the booming
of cannon, and the discharge
of a mighty Latin
oration from Mr. James
Elphinstone.
It is remarkable that
James, whose squadron
came to anchor in the roads
on the 1st of May, did
not land at once, as he
had been sorely beset by
the incantations of witches during his voyage ;
and it is alleged that the latter had declared ? he
would never have come safely from the sea had not
his faith prevailed over their cantrips.? They were
more successful, however, with a large boat coming
from Burntisland to Leith, containing a number of
gifts for the young queen, and which they contrived
to sink amid a storm, raised by the remarkable
agency of a chrisfened cat, when all on board
perished.
In 1595 James wrote a letter at Holyrood, addressed
to ? the Bailyies of Lethe,? at the instance
of William Henryson, Constable Depute of Scotland,
interdicting them from holding courts to
consider actions of slaughter, mulctation, drawing
blood, or turbulence. (Spald. Club Miscell.) In
the following year, by a letter of gift under the
Privy Seal, .he empowered the Corporation of Edinburgh
to levy a certain tax during a certain period
towards supporting and repairing the bulwark pier
and port of Leith ; and in a charter of Niladamus,
