OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Newhaven. ST.JAMES?S CHAPEL. 297
a manufactory of ropes and cables as having existed
in Newhaven a short time before that period.
In 1508, for the accommodation of his shipwrights
and others, the king built the chapel. It
was founded on the 8th of April; it was ?conveyed
? into the hands of James by the chaplain
thereof, Sir James Cowie, ?Sir? being then the
substitute for dontinus, when designating a priest.
Indeed, James IV. seems to have been the entire
originator of Newhaven.
In 1510, the city of Edinburgh, fearing that this
new seaport might prove prejudicial to theirs at
Leith, purchased the whole place from the king,
whose charter, dated at Stirling, 9th March of that
year, describes it as ?? the new haven lately made
alley which lies between the main street and Pier
Pla.ce.
In 1506 James IV. erected here a building-yard
and dock for ships (the depth of water favouring the
plan), besides a rope-walk and houses for the accommodation
of artisans. Some portions of the Royal
Roperie were visible here till the middle of the
eighteenth century ; and in a work in MS. preserved
in the Advocates? Library (a Latin description of
Lothian), written about 1640, mention is made of
the inner front of the houses of the South Row,
which are built on the south side of the street of the
said port. . . . We also will and ordain that
they uphold the bulwarks and other defences necessary
for receiving and protecting the ships and
vessels riding thereto, for thegood and benefit of us,
our kingdom and lieges.? (Burgh Charters, No.
Ixiv.)
From this we learn that in 1510 Newhaven had
a pier and at least one street, known then, as now,
by the name of South Row. Among the witnesses
to this charter are Mathew, Earl of Lennox, Archibald,
Earl of Argyle, George, Abbot of Holyrood,
and many others.
At this now small and rather obscure harbour
by the said king, on the sea. coast, with the lands
thereunto belonging, lying between the chapel of
St. Nicholas (at Leith) and Wierdy Brae.?
This charter gave the community of Edinburgh
free and common passage from Leith to Newhaven,
?? with liberty and space for building and extending
the pier and bulwark of the said port, and unloading
their merchandise and goods in ships, and of
unloading the same upon the land, and to fix ropes
on the shore ; from the sea-shore of the said port to
REMAINS OF ST. JAMES?S CHAPEL, NEWHAVEN.
298 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [?Newhaven.
there was built and launched, in I 5 I I, the famous
war-ship of James IV., the Great Mkhael, said to
have been the largest vessel that, in those days, had
ever floated on the sea Jacques Tarette was the
builder or naval architect, and certainly he left
nothing undone to gratify the desire of James to
possess the greatest and most magnificent ship in
the world. ?The fame of this ship spread oveI
Europe,? says Buchanan, ?and emulous of the
King of Scotland, Francis I, and Henry VIII.
endeavoured to outvie each other in building two
enormous arks, which were so unwieldy that they
floated on the water useless and immovable, like
jslands? This extraordinary vessel is said to hay
been sometimes confounded in history with anotheI
huge argosy, built in the preceding reign by Kennedy,
Bishop of St Andrews, and known as the
BzYzop?s Bup. But the latter was purely a
merchant vessel, and was wrecked and pillaged
on the coast of England about 1474, whereas the
Greaf Michad was in all respects a formidable ship
of war, and she may with some truth be claimed as
the first 6? armour-clad,? as amidships her sides were
padded with solid oak ten feet thick. She cost
E30,ooo, an enormous sum in those days; but
James ZV. was lavish in his ship-building, and
among his many brilliant and romantic schenies
actually planned a voyage to the Mediterranean,
with a Scottish fleet., to visit Jerusalem.
Lindesay of Pitscottie says that this enormous
vessel required for her construction so much timber
that, save Falkland, she consumed all the oak
wood in Fife and all that came out? of Norway.
She was 240 feet long by 36 feet wide, inside
measurement, and 10 feet thick in the walls. She
was armed with many heavy guns, and ?three
great bassils, two behind in her dock (stem) and
one before,? and no less than 300 ?? shot of small
artillery,? th@ is to say, ? I moyennes, falcons, quarter
falcons, slings, pestilent serpentines, and double
dags, with hacbuts, culverins, cross-bows and handbows.?
She had 300 mariners, 120 cannoniers, and
1,000 soldiers, with their captains and quartermasters.
At Tullibardiae her dimensions were
long to be seen, planted in hawthorn, by Jacques
Tarette, ?? the wright that helped to make her,? adds
Pitscottie. ?As for other properties of her, Sk
Andrew Wood is my author, who was quartermaster
of her, and Robert Barton, who was master
skipper. The ship lay still in the Roads of Leith,
the King every day taking pleasure to pass her, and
to dine and sup in her with his lords, letting them
see the order of his ship.?
The ambassador of Henry VIII. also gives a
description of the MicAael, but merely says she had
? I sixteen pieces of great ordnance on each side,?
besides many more of smaNer calibre. Shortly
before the formal declaration of war against England,
the Governor of Berwick, in writing to Henry VIII.
concerning the designs of his brother-in-law, stated
that the King of Scotland intended to lead the
fleet against England himself, leaving his generals
to lead the army ; and had he done so, the tale of
Flodden field had perhaps been a different and
less sorrowful one.
In 1510 Sir Andrew Wood had been created ?? Admiral of the Seas,? by James IV. ; thus, when
appointed to the Great MichaeZ in the following
year it must have been in the capacity of commander
and not ?quartermaster,? as the garrulous
Pitscottie has it Buchanan asserts that the great
ship was suffered to rot in the harbour of Brest; it
may have done so eventually; but it is now a s
certained that in April, I 5 14, she was sold to Louis
XII. by the Duke of Albany, in the name of the
Scottish Government, for the sum of forty thousand
lines. Two other Scottish war-ships, the JamCS
and Murgaret, were sold at the same time
The chapel at Newhaven appears to have been a
dependencyof thepreceptory of St. Anthonyat Leith.
In 1614, with its grounds, it was conveyed in the
same charter with the latter, to the Kirk Session
of South Leith, by James VI., and they are described,
?all that place and piece of ground
whereon the Chapel of St. James, anciently called
the Virgin Mary of Newhaven stood, lying within
the town of Newhaven and our sheriffwick of
Edinburgh.??
They now form a portion of the North Leith
parish, as stated. When the chapel became a ruin
is unknown. The area is now included in the
Fishermen?s burying-ground, which contains no
tombstones save one to an inhabitant of Edinburgh,
and has been long unused.
Early in September, 1550, there came to anchor
off Newhaven sixty stately galleys and other ships,
under the command of Strozzi, Prior of Capua, and
there the queen mother embarked to visit her
daughter Mary in France. On this occasion she
was accompanied by a brilliant train, including the
Earls of Huntly, Cassillis, Sutherland, and Marischal;
the Prior of St. Andrews (the Regent Moray
of the future), the Lords Home, Fleming, and
Maxwell, the Bishops of Caithness and Galloway J
three of her French commanders from Leith, Paul
de Thermes, Biron, La Chapelle, the French Ambassador,
General D?Osell, and many ladies, with
whom, after being forced to take refuge from storms
in more than one English port, she landed at
Dieppe on the 19th of the same month.
