36 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Merchistom
captain named ScougaL
After a hard struggle, during which several were
killed and wounded, they stormed the outworks,
and set them on fire to smoke the defenders out of
the donjon keep ; but a body of the king's men
veyed to Leith, and hanged, while he had a narrow
escape, his horse being killed under him by a shot
from Holyrood Palace, Another conflict of a
more serious nature occurred before Merchiston
on the last day of the same month.
attack by firing forty guns from the Castle of Edinburgh.
The men of Scougal (who were mortally wounded)
fled over the Links and adjacent fields in all
directions, hotly pursued by the Laird of Blairquhan.
On the 10th of the subsequent June the
queen's troops, under George, Earl of Huntly, with
a small train of artillery, made another attack upon
Merchiston, while their cavalry scoured all the
fields between it and Blackford-fields now covered
with long lines of stately and beautiful villas-bringing
in forty head of cattle and sheep. By the time
the guns had played on Merchiston from two till
four o'clock p.m., two decided breaches were made
in the walls. The garrison was about to capitulate,
when the assemblage of a number of people, whom
the noise of the cannonade had attracted, was
mistaken for king's troops ; those of Huntly be,came
party of twenty-four men-at-arms rode forth to
forage. The well-stocked fields in the neighbourhood
of the fortalice were the constant scene of
enterprise, and on this occasion the foragers
collected many oxen, besides other spoil, which
they were driving triumphantly into town. They
were pursued, however, by Patrick Home of the
Heugh, who commanded the Regent's Light
Horsemen. The foraging party, whom hunger
had rendered desperate, contrived to keep their
pursuers, amounting to eighty spears, at bay till
they neared Merchiston, when the king's garrison
issued forth, and re-captured the cattle, the collectors
of which '' alighted from their horses, which they
suffered to go loose, and faught CreauZZ'iee," till succoured
from the town, when the fight turned in
their favour. In this conflict, Home of the Heugh,
Sir Patrick Home of Polwarth, four more gentle
