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,
