THE FIRST THOROUGHFARE. Leith1
THE KIRKGATE.
CHAPTER XXIII.
LEITH - THE KIRKGATE.
The Kirkgate-Eastside-Tavern Tragedy, 1691-Robed Watson-The Preceptmy of St. Anthony-Its Seal-King James's Hospital--%
Mary's Church-Destruction of the Choir-First Protestant Miniister--Cromwell's Troops-The Rev. John Logan, Miniiter.
ONE of the oldest and principal streets of Leith is
the Kirkgate, a somewhat stately thoroughfare as
compared with those off it, measuring eleven hundred
feet in length from the foot of the Walk to
the Water Reservoir (called of old The Pipes) at
the head of Water Lane, by an average breadth of
fifty feet. " Time and modern taste," says Wilson,
" have slowly, but very effectually, modified its antique
features. No timber-fronted gable now
thrusts its picturesque fapde with careless grace
beyond the line of more staid and formal-looking
ashlar fronts. Even the crowstepped gables of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are becoming
the exception ; it is only by the irregularity which
still pertains to it, aided by the few really picturesque
tenements which remain unaltered, that it
now attracts the notice of the curious visitor as the
genuine remains of the ancient High Street of the
burgh. Some of these relics of former times are
well worthy the notice of the antiquary, while
214 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith.
memorials of still earlier fabrics here and there
meet the eye, and carry back the imagination to
those stirring scenes in the history of this locality,
\+hen the Queen Regent, with her courtiers and
allies, made it their stronghold and chosen place of
abode ; or when, amid a more peaceful array, the
fair Scottish Queen Mary, or the sumptuous Anne
of Denmark, rode gaily through the street on their
way to Holyrood.?
It is a street that carries back the mind to the
days of Wood and the Bartons, when the port of
Leith was in constant communication with Bordeaux
and the Garonne, and when the Scots of those
days were greater claret drinkers than the English ;
and when commerce here was as we find it detailed
in the ledger of Andrew Haliburton, the
merchant of Middelburg and Conservator of Scot-
? tish Privileges there, between 1493 and 1505-a
ledger that gives great insight to the imports at
Leith and elsewhere in Scotland.
Haliburton acted as agent for churchmen as well
as laymen, receiving and selling on commission the
raw products of the Netherlands, and sending home
nearly every kind of manufactured article then in
use. He appears often to have visited Edinburgh,
settling old accounts and arranging new ventures ;
and with that piety which in those days formed so
much a part of the inner life of the Scottish people?
the word JHESUS is inscribed on every account.
Haliburton appears to have imported cloths, silk,
linen, and woollen stuffs; wheelbarrows to build
King?s College, Aberdeen ; fruit, dyugs, and plate ;
Gascony, Rhenish, and Malvoisie mines ; pestles,
mortars, brass basins, ?and feather beds ; an image
of St. Thomas ZL Becket, from Antwerp, for John of
Pennycuik ; tombstones from Middelburg ; mace,
pepper, saffron, and materials for Walter Chapman,
the early Scottish printer, if not the first in Scotland.
We reproduce (p. 212) Wilson?s view of one of
the oldest houses in the Kirkgate, which was only
taken down in 1S45. The doorway was moulded;
on the frieze was boldly cut in old English letters
Pherrarr flaria, and above was a finely-moulded
Gothic niche, protected by a sloping water-table. A
stone gurgoyle projected from the upper storey.
Local tradition asserted that the edifice was a chapel
built by Mary of Lorraine ; but of this there is no
evidence. In the niche, no doubt, stood an image,
which would be destroyed at the Reformation.
Above the niche there was a small square aperture,
in which it was customary, as is the case now in
Continental towns, to place a light after nightfall,
in order that passers-by might see the shrine and
,make obeisance td it.
Another very old house on the same side of the
Kirkgate, the west, displays a handsome triple
arcade of three round arches on squat pillars, with
square moulded capitals, a great square chimney
rising through the centre of the roof, and a staircase
terminating a?crowstepped gable to the street.
A tavern in the Kirkgate, kept by a man named
John Brown, and which, to judge from the social
position of its visitors, must have been a respectable
house of entertainment, was the scene of a tragedy
on the 8th of March, 1691.
Sinclair of Mey, and a friend named James
Sinclair, writer in Edinburgh, were at their lodgings
in this tavern, when at a late hour the Master of
Tarbet (afterwards Earl of Cromarty) and Ensign
Andrew Mowat came to join them. ? There was
no harm? meant by any one that night in the hostelry
of John Brown, but before midnight the floor was
reddened with slaughter.?
The Master of Tarbet, son of a statesman of no
mean note, was nearly related to Sinclair of Mey.
He and the ensign are described in the subsequent
proceedings as being both excited by the liquor
they had taken, but not beyond self-control. A .
pretty girl, named Jean Thompson, on bringing
them a fresh supply, was laughingly invited by the
Master to sit beside him, but escaped to her own
room, and bolted herself in. Running in pursuit
of her, he went blunderingly into a room occupied
by a French gentleman, named George Poiret, who
was asleep. An altercation took place between
them, on which Ensign Mowat went to see what
was the matter. The Frenchman had drawn his
sword, but the two friends wrenched it out of his
hand. A servant of the house, named Christian
Erskine, now came on the scene of brawling, together
with a gentleman who could not be afterwards
identified.
At her urgent entreaty, Mowat took away the
Master and the stranger, who carried with him
Poiret?s sword. Here the fracas would have ended,
had not the Master deemed it his duty to return
and apologise. Exasperated to find a new disturbance,
as he deemed it, at his room door, the
Frenchman knocked on the ceiling with tongs to
summon to his assistance his two brothers, Isaac
Poiret and Elias, surnamed the Sieur de la Roche,
who at once came down, armed with their swords
and pistols, and spoke with George, who was
defenceless and excited, at his door; and in a
moment there came about a hostile collision between
them and the Master and Mowat in the
hall.
Jean Thompson roused Brown, the landlord, but
he came too late. The Master and Mowat were
