28 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Burghmuir.
great forest of Drumsheugh, wherein the white.
bull, the Caledonian boar, the elk and red deer
roamed, and where broken and lawless men had
their haunt in later times.
Yet some clearances of timber must have been
made there before 1482, when James Iii. mustered
on it, in July, 50,000 men under the royal standad
for an invasion of England, which brought about
the rebellious raid of Lauder. On the 6th
October, 1508, his son James IV., by a charter
Among those who then got lands here were Sir
Alexander Lauder of Blyth, Provost of the City,
and George Towers of the line of Inverleith, whose
name was long connected with the annals of the
city.
It was on this ground-the Campus Martius of
the Scottish hosts-that James IV. mustered, in the
summer of 1513, an army of IOO,OOO men, the
most formidable that ever marched against England;
and a fragment of the hare-stane, or bore-
THE LIBRARY AAI.I., EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY.
under the Great Seal, leased the Burghmuir to
the council and community of Edinburgh (City
Charters, I 143-1540) empowering them to farm and
cIear it of wood, which led to the erection within
the city of those quaint timber-fronted houses,
many of which still remain in the closes and wynds,
and even in the High Street. In 1510 we find,
from the Burgh Records, that the persons to whom
certain acres were let there, were bound to build
thereon ?dwelling-houses, malt-barns, and cow-bills,
and to have servants for the making of malt betwixt
(30th April) and Michaelmas, I 5 I 2 ; and failing to
do so, to pay to the common works of the
town; and also to pay 6 5 for every acre of the
three acres set to them.?
stane, in which the royal standard was planted,
on this and many similar occasions, is still preserved,
and may be seen built into a wall, at
Banner Place, near Morningside Church. As
Drummond records, the place was then ? spacious
and made delightful by the shade of many stately
and aged oaks.?
?? There were assembled,? says Pitscottie, ? all his
earls, lords, barons, and burgesses ; and all manner
of men between sixty and sixteen, spiritual and
temporal, burgh and land, islesmen and others, to
the number of a hundred thousand, not reckoning
carriagemen and artillerymen, who had charge of
fifty shot-cannons.? When some houses were
built in the adjacent School Lane in 1825, hundreds
