Leith.] EXECUTION OF PIRATES. ?67
C H A P T E R XXX.
LEITH-THE SANDS.
The Sands of Leith-Piates Executed there-The Kaif ofLyane--Captain Potts of the Dreaa31uu~M-A Duel in 1?67-Horse-lacing-?The
Bell?-Leith Races in 1661-?Going Down with the Purse?-Races in 1763 and 1771, etc.
THE Sands of Leith, like other districts we have
described, have a notabilia peculiarly their own,
as the grim scene of executions for piracy, and of
the horse-races, which were long celebrated there
amid a jollity unknown now at the other locality to
which they have been transferred-the Links of
Musselburgh.
All pirates, and those who committed crimes or
misdemeanours upon the high seas, were, down to
1822, hanged within the flood-mark; but there does
not seem to have been any permanent erection, or
even a fixed locality, for this purpose, and thus any
part of the then great expanse of open sand must
have been deemed suitable for the last offices of
the law, and even the Pier and Shore were sometimes
used.
On the 6th of May, 1551, John Davidson was
convicted by an assize of piratically attacking a ship
of Bordeaux, and sentenced to be hanged in irons
on the Sands; and this, Pitcairn observes, is the
earliest notice in Scotland of the body of a criminal
being exposed in chains, to be consumed piecemeal
by the elements.
In 1555, Hilbert Stalfurde and the crew of the
Kait of Lynne, an English ship, were tried for piracy
and oppression, ?( in reiving and spoiling furth of a
hulk of the toun of Stateyne (Stettin), then lying in
the harbour of Leith,? a cable of ninety fathoms,
three or four pistolettes,and other property,for which
theywere all hanged as pirates within the flood-mark.
Pitcairn gives this case in full, and it may not be
uninteresting to note what constituted piracy in the
sixteenth century.
In the ?( Talbot Papers,? published by the Maitland
Club, there is a letter, dated 4th July, 1555,
from Lord Conyers to the Earl of Shrewsbury,
After stating that some ships had been captured,
very much to the annoyance of the Queen-Regent
Mary of Lorraine, she sent a Scottish ship of war to
search for the said ship of Lynne; and, as the
former passed herself on the seas as a merchantman,
the crew of the Kait ?schott a piece of ordnance,
and the Scottis shippe schott off but a slinge, as
though she had been a merchant, and vailed her
bonnet,? or dipped her ensign
The crew of the Kait then hailed, and asked
what she was laden with, and the reply was, ? With
victualles; and then they desired them to borde, and
let them have a ton of bacon for their money.?
The Scots answered that they should do so, on
which there swarmed on board the Kaif a hundred
or eighty men, ?well appoyntit in armoure and
stoutlie set,? on the English ship, which they
brought, with all her crew, into the haven of Leith ;
?and by that I can learn,? adds Lord Conyers,
?there is at least iij. or iiij. of the cheefest of the
Englismenne like to suffer death. Other news I have
none to certifie yr Lordschippe, and so I committ
the same unto the tuicion and governmente of
Almichtie God.?-Berwick, 4th July, 1555.
The seamen of those days were not very particular
when on the high seas, for in 1505 we find
the King?s Admiral, Sir Andrew Wood, obtaining a
remission under the Great Seal for (<ye ri>f an
anchor and cabyell? taken from John of Bonkle
on the sea, as he required these probably for the
king?s service ; and some fifty years later an admiral
of England piratically seized the ship coming from
France with the horses of Queen Mary on board.
In 1610 nine pirates were sentenced by the
mouth of James Lockhart of Lee, chancellor, to be
hanged upon ?the sandis of Leyth, within the
floddis-mark;? and in the same year Pitcairn records
the trial of thirty more pirates for the affair
at Long Island, in Ireland, already related.
In 16 I 2 two more were hanged in the same place
for piracy.
Executions here of seamen were of constant occurrence
in the olden times, but after that of Wilson
Potts, captain of the Dreadnoughf privateer of Newcastle,
on the 13th of February, 1782, none took
place till the execution of Heaman and Gautiez, at
the foct of Constitution Street, in 1822.
Potts was convicted before the Admiralty Court
of having plundered the White Swaiz, of Copenhagen,
of four bags of dollars. He was recommended
to mercy by a majority of the jury, because
it was in proof that he had committed the crime
while in a state of intoxication, and had, on coming
to his senses, taken the first opportunity of restoring
the money to its owners; but the recommendation
was made in vain.
In 1667 the Sands were the scene of that
desperate duel with swords between William Douglas
younger, of M'hittingham, and Sir John Home, of
Eccles, attended by the Master of Ramsay and
Douglas of Spott, who all engaged together. Sir
James was slain, a d William Douglas had his
head stricken from his body at the Cross three
days after.
For many generations the chief place for horseracing
in Scotland was the long stretch of bare
sand at Leith,
LEITH LINKS.
informer for the double thereof, half to him and
half to the poor '' (Glendoick).
In 1620 there were horse-races at Paisley, the
details of which are given in the MaitZand MisceZZany,
in which the temporary prize of the bell
figures prominently; and after the Restoration there
were horse-races every Saturday at Leith, which
are regularly detailed in the little print called the
Mermrills Caledoniu. In the March of 1661 it
states :-" Our accustomed recreations on the
Sands of Leith was (sic) much injured because of
As a popular amusement horse-racing was practised
at an early period in Scotland. In 1552
there was a race annually at Haddhgton, the prize
being a bell, and hence the phrase to "bear away
the bell ; * and during the reign of James VI. races
were held at Peebles and Dumfries-at the latter
place in 1575, between Scots and'English, when
the Regent Morton held his court there; but as
such meetings led to conflicts with deadly weapons,
they were interdicted by the Privy Council in 1608 ;
and by an Act of James VI., passed in his twentythiid
Parliament, any sum won upon a horse-race
above a hundred marks was to be given to the
poot. Magistrates were empowered to pursue '' for
the said surplus gain, or else declared liable to the
a furious storm of wind, accompanied with a thick
snow ; yet we had some noble gamesters that were
so constant in their sport as would not forbear a
designed horse-match. It was a providence the
wind was from the sea, otherwise they had run a
hazard either of drowning or splitting upon Inchkeith.
This tempest was nothing inferior to that
which was lately in Caithness, when a bark of fifty
tons was blown five furlongs into the land, and
would have gone farther if it had not been arrested
by the steepness of a large promontory."
The old races at Leith seem to have been
conducted with all the spirit of the modem Jockey
Club, and a great impetus was given to them by
the occasional presence of the Duke of Albany,
