Leith] SHIPPING OF COVENANTERS FOK BARBADOES. I80
of Edinburgh,? by order of the Privy Council and
magistrates, were ordered to make up lists of all
the dwellers in these districts, while nightly lists of
all lodgers were to be furnished by the bailies to
the captain of the City Guard.
was a profane, cruel wretch, and used them barbarously,
stowing them up between decks, where
they could not get up their heads except to sit or
lean, and robbing them of many things their friends
sent for their relief. They never were in such
~ ~
OLD HOUSE IN WATER?S CLOSE, 1879. (Aftw U Sketch hy /. RomiZh Allnr.)
The November of the same year saw those poor
victims of a dire system of misrule, the Covenanters,
who had been for months penned up like wild
animals in the Greyfnars? Churchyard, Edinburgh,
marched through Leith. To the number of 257,
who had refused the bond, they were on the 15th
shipped on board an English vessel for transportation
to Barbadoes, there to be sold as slaves !
The captain, says the Rev. Mr. Blackadder,
strait and peril, particularly through drought, as
they were allowed little or no drink, and pent up
together till many of them fainted and were almost
suffocated.? This was in Leith Roads, and in
sight of the green hills of Fife and Lothian, on
which they were looking their last.
Their ship was cast away among the Orkneys ;
the hatches were battened down ; zoo perished
with her, while the captain and seamen made their
ing goods. He accused Edinburgh of an unreasonable
jealousy of its seaport, and invited the inhabitants
of that city ?to descend from their proud
hill into the more fruitful plains (of Leith?) to be
filled with the fa.tness and fulness thereof.?
at the same time the Trained Bands of Leith mustered
in arms to attend the great military funeral of
the Marquis of Montrose.
In 1667 the Englishfleet ofsir Jeremiah Smythe,
a brave admiral who afterwards defeated the Dutch,
to find-if Mr. Tucker?s report be a true one-that
all the shipping in ? the principal port of Scotland?
consisted only of some twelve or fourteen vessels,
?? two or three whereof are of only two or three
hundred tons apiece, the rest small vessels for
carrying salt.?
At the Restoration orders were given to destroy
the citadel ; but these were not put in force, and
Scottish flag. The guns of the Castle, Leith, and
Burntisland, responded. The admiral was in search
of the Dutch fleet under Van Ghendt, which had
been in the Firth a few days before, menacing Edinburgh
and Leith.
In March, 1679, the constables of South and
North Leith, in common with those of the city and
Canongate, ? and who11 suburbs of the good town
