186 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith .
choice of the inhabitants whether they will make
their dwelling where they do or remove to Leith,
where they shall enjoy the same liberties they did
in Edinburgh. His Majesty may do it out of these
respects : Leith is a maritime town, and with some
great labour and charge in conveying their merchandise
to Edinburgh, which no man but will
find conveniency in ; Leith is a sea town, whithe1
ships resort and mariners make their dwelling, and
the Trinity House being settled there lies more
convenient for transportation and importation, it
being the port town of Edinburgh, and in time of
war may cut off all provisions betwixt the sea and
Edinburgh, and bring Edinburgh to the mercy
of it?
Sir William took a seaman?s view in this sugges
tion ; but we may imagine the dire wrath it would
have occasioned in the municipality of Edinburgh.
At the prospect of an invasion from England,
the restoration of the fortifications of Leith went
on with great spirit. ?The work was begun and
carried on with infinite alacrity,? says Amot, ? not
only mercenaries, but an incredible number of
volunteers, gentry, nobility-nay, even ladies themselves,
surmounting the delicacy of their sex and
the reserve so becoming them-put their hands to
the work, happy if at any expense they could promote
so pious a cause.?
At least a thousand men were employed on
these works j the bastions, says Principal Baillie,
were strong and perfect, and armed with ? double
cannon.?
And necessary indeed seemed their national
enthusiasm, when eady in May, 1639, the servile
Marquis of Hamilton arrived in Leith Roads with
5,000 troops on board a fleet of twenty sail, with
orders to attack Edinburgh and its seaport, ?to
infest the country by sea,? says Lediard, ?to hinder
its trade, and make a descent upon the land? He
threatened bombardment ; but the stout hearts of
the Covenanters never failed them, and the work
of fortification went on, while their noble armyfor
a noble one it was then-anticipated the king
by marching into England at the sword?s point, and
compelling him to make a hasty treaty and hurry
to Edinburgh in a conciliatory mood, where, as
Guthry says, ?he resigned every branch of his
prerogative, and scarcely retained more than the
empty title of sovereignty.?
In October, 1643, the Covenant was enthusiastically
subscribed by the inhabitants of Leith, the
pastor and people standing solemnly with uplifted
hands. This took place at Leith, as the parish
register shows, on the - 26th, and at Restalrig on
Sunday the 29th.
In that month, the Earl of Leven, at the head
of 20,000 men, again entered England, but to form
a junction with Cromwell against the king; and
while the strife went on the plague broke out in
Edinburgh and Leith in 1645.
In the latter town about 2,320 persons, constituting
perhaps one-half of the entire population, were
swept away within eight months by this scourge of
those ante-sanitation times. As the small churchyards
were utterly deficient in accommodation for
the dead, many of them were buried in the Links
and on the north side of the road leading to
Hermitage Hill. Till very recent times masses of
halfdecayed bones, wrapped in the blankets in
which the victims perished, have been dug up in
the fields and gardens abolit Leith.
This scourge broke out on the 19th of May in
King James?s hospital in the Kirkgate. In Restalrig
there died 160 ; in the Craigend, rss-the total
number of victims in the whole parish was generally
estimated at 2,736, but the accounts vary.
In 1832 great quantities of their remains were laid
bare near Wellington Place-among them a cranium
which bore traces of a gunshot wound. (?Antiquities
of Leith.?)
So fearful were the double ravages of the plague
and an accompanying famine, that Parliament, believing
the number of the dead to exceed that of
the living, empowered the magistrates to seize for
the use of survivors all grain that could be found
in warehouses or cellars, and to make payment,
therefor at their convenience, and to find means of
making it by appeals to the humanity of their landward
countrymen.
Nicoll in his Diary records, under date 25th
July, 1650-the day after Cromwell was repulsed
in his attack upon Leslie?s trenches-that the whole
Scottish army, to the number of 40,000 men, was
convenedor mustered on the Links of Leith, to
undergo a process called ?purging,? Le., the dismissal
from its ranks of all officers and men who
were obnoxious in any way to the clergy. The
result of this insane measure, when almost within
range of Cromwell?s cannon, was that ?above the
half of thame ? were disbanded and sent to their
homes. Then after Charles 11. had been fe?ksted
in the Parliament House, on the 1st of August he
came to Leith, and took up his residence in Lord
Balmerino?s house near the Kirkgate.
Nicoll also records that a soldier of Leslie,
being discovered in correspondence with the enemy,
on being made prisoner strangled himself in the
Tolbooth of Edinburgh; after that his body was
gibbeted between the city and Leith, ?quhair h?
yet hangs to the terror of otheris,?
