253 Leith.] ST. NINIAN?S CHURCH.
254 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith.
The first volume of the ?? Parochial Records ?
begins in January, 1605, a year before the Act,
and contains the usual memoranda of petty tyranny
peculiar to the times, such as the following, modernised
:-
? Compeared Margaret Siclair, being cited by
the Session of the Kirk, and being accused of
being at the Bume (for water?) the last Sabbath
before sermon, confessed, her offence, promised
amendment in all time coming, and was convict of
five pounds.? ?? 10th January, 1605 :-The which day the Session
of the Kirk ordained Janet Merling, and Margaret
Cook, her mother, to make their public repentance
next Sabbath forenoon publicly, for concealing
a bairn unbaptised in her house for the space of
twenty weeks, and calling the said bairn Janet.?
?January ~oth, 1605 :-Cornpeared Marion Anderson,
accused of craving curses and malisons on
the pastor and his family, without any offence being
done by him to her ; and the Session, understanding
that she had been banished before for being in a
lodge on the Links in time of the Plague, with one
Thomas Cooper, sclaiter, after ane maist slanderous
manner, the said Marion was ordained to go to the
place of her offence, confess her sin, and crave
mercy of God,? and never to be found within the
bounds of North Leith, ?under the pain of putting
her toties puoh?es in the jogis,? Le., jougs.
In 1609 Patrick Richardson had to crave mercy
of God for being found in his boat in time of
afternoon sermon ; and many other instances of the
same kind are quoted by Robertson in his ?Antiquities.?
In the same year, Janet Walker, accused
of having strangers (visitors) in her house on Sabbath
in time of sermon, had to confess her offence, and
on her knees crave mercy of God and the Kirk
Session, under penalty of a hundred pounds Scots !
George Wishart, so well known as author of the
elegant ?? Latin Memoirs of Montrose,? a copy of
which was suspended at the neck of that great
cavalier and soldier at his execution in 1650, was
appointed minister of North Leith in 1638, when
the signing of the Covenant, as a protection against
England and the king, became almost necessarily
the established test of faith and allegiance to Scotland.
Deposed for refusing to subscribe it,
Wishart was thrown into a dungeon of the old
Heart of Midlothian, in consequence of the discovery
of his secret correspondence with the king?s
party. He survived the storm of the Civil Wars,
and was made Bishop of Edinburgh on the reestablishment
of episcopacy.
He died in 1671, in his seventy-first year, and
was buried in Holyrood, where his tomb is still to
be seen, with an inscription so long that it amounts
to a species of biography.
John Knox, minister of North Leith, was, in 1684,
committed to the Bass Rock. While a probationer,
he was in the Scottish army, and chaplain to the
garrison in Tantallon when it was besieged by
Cromwell?s troops. He conveyed the Earl of
Angus and some ladies privately in a boat to
North Berwick, and returned secretly to the Castle,
and was taken prisoner when it capitulated. He
was a confidant of the exiled monarch, and supplied
him with money. A curious mendicant letter to
him from His Majesty is given in the ?Scots
Worthies.?
4 The last minister who officiated in the Church
of St. Ninian-now degraded to a granary or store
-was the venerable Dr. Johnston, the joint founder
of the Edinburgh Blind Asylum, who held the incumbency
for more than half a century. The old
edifice had become unsuited to modem requirements
; thus the foundation of a new parish church
for North Leith had been completed elsewhere in
1816, and on the zgthof August in that year he took
a very affecting leave of the old parish church in
which he had officiated so long.
?? He expressed sentiments of warm attachment
to a flock among which Providence had so long
permitted him to minister,? says the Scofs Magazine
(Vol. LXXVII.); ?and in alluding, with much
feeling, to his own advanced age, mentioned his
entire sensibility of the approach of that period
when the speaker and the hearer should no longer
dwell together, and hoped they should ultimately
rejoice in ? a house not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens.? ??
Before ten a.m. on the 1st September a great
crowd collected before the door of the new church,
which was speedily filled. All corporate bodies
having an interest in it, including the magistrates
of the Canongate, were present, and Dr. Johnston,
after reading the 6th chapter of z Chronicles,
delivered a sermon and solemn address, which
affected all who heard it.
The Rev. David Johnston, D.D., died on the
5th of July, 1824, aged ninety-one years.
Four years after, the Cowant had the following
announcement :-? The public are aware of the
many claims which the late Dr. Johnston of North
Leith had on the grateful remembrance of the
community. Few men have exerted themselves so
assiduously in forwarding the great objects of religion
and philanthropy, and it gives us much pleasure
to learn that a, well-merited tribute to his memory
has just been completed in the erection of a beautiful
bust in the church of North Leith. The follow
