THE PRECEPTORY OF ST. ANTHONY. 215 Leith]
not making any deliberate assault ; but a pistol
shot was heard, and in a few minutes the Sieur de
la Roche lay dead, with a sword thrust in his body,
while Isaac had a finger nearly hewn OK
The guard now came on the scene, and Mowat
was found under an outer stair, with a bent sword
in his hand, bloody from point to hilt, his hand
wounded, and the sleeves of his coat stained with
blood. On seeing the dead body, he viewed it
without emotion, and merely remarked that he
wondered who had slain him.
The Master, Mowat, and James Sinclair the writer,
were all tried for the murder of Elias Poiret before
the Court of Justiciary, but the jury brought in a
verdict of not proven. The whole affair might
have been easily explained, but for heat of temper,
intemperance, and the ready resort to arms so usual
in those days. The three Frenchmen concerned in
it were Protestant refugees who were serving as
privates in the Scottish Life Guards. The Mastet
of Tarbet became Earl of Cromarty in 1714 and
survived the death of Poiret forty years. Two of
his sons, who were officers in the Scots-Dutch
Brigade, perished at sea, and his eldest, the third
and last Earl of Cromarty, was nearly brought to
Tower Hill in 1746 for his loyalty to the House of
Stuart.
No. 141 Kirkgate was long the place of business
of Mr. Alexander Watson, who is chiefly remarkable
as being the nephew and close correspondent
of a very remarkable man, who frequently resided
with him-Robert Watson, who was made Principal
of the Scots College at Paris by the Emperor
Napoleon I., an office which he held for six years.
It was to his nephew at Leith, after his escape to
Rome (having been tried at the Old Bailey as
President of a Corresponding Society), he confided
his discovery of a large mass of correspondence
known as ? The Stuart Papers,? which he
purchased (as stated in the Courunt for 1819.)
In one of his letters, dated London, 6th April,
1818, he states that they consist ofhalf a million of
pieces, and are valued at ~300,000. ?? The Pope,
however, took military possession of them, under
the protest that they were of too much importance
to belong to a private individual. I protested
against the arbitrary proceedings of his Holiness.
The Prince Regent sent two ships of war to Civita
Vecchia to bring them to London, and they are
now in Carlton House.?
To his nephew in the Kirkgate he subsequently
wrote that a Royal Commissiolr under the Great
Seal (including Sir James Mackintosh) was a p
pointed to examine these valuable papers ; and in
1824 he wrote that amongst other things of some
value which have fallen into my possession, are the
carriage and tent-bed of Bonaparte, taken at the
battle of Waterloo. Further events will decide
to what purposes I may apply it (the carriage),
though it is probable I shall keep it for my own
use.?
This singular person committed suicide in 1838,
by strangling himself in a London tavern, in the
ninety-second year of his age--?a case of suicide,?
it was said, ?unparalleled in the annals of sorrow.?
On the east side of the Kirkgate, to take the
edifices in succession there, there was founded by
Robert Logan of Restalrig, in 1435, a preceptory
for the canons of St. Anthony, the only establkhment
of the kind in Scotland.
Arnot, in his history, unthinkingly mentions ?? the
monastery of Knights Templars of St. Anthony?
at Leith. These canons, says Chalmers, ? seem to
have been an order of religious knights, not
Templars. The only document in which they are
called Templars is a charter of James VI. in 1614,
giving away their establishment and revenues; and
this mistake of an ignorant clerk is wildly repeated
by Arnot.?
Their church, burying-ground, and gardens were
in St. Anthony?s Wynd, an alley off the Kirkgate ;
and the first community was brought from St
Anthony of Vienne, the seat of the order in France
They were formed in honour of St. Anthony, the
patriarch of monks, who was born at Coma, a
village of Heraclea on the borders of Arcadia, in
A.D.?z~I, and whose sister was placed in the first
convent that is recorded in history. A hermit by
habit, he dwelt long in the ruins of an old castle
that overlooked the Nile; and after his death (said
to have been in 356) his body was deposited in the
church of La Motte St. Didier, at Vienne, when,
according to old traditions, those labouring under
the pest known as St. ,4nthony?s Fire-a species of
erysipelas-were miraculously cured by praying at
his shrine.
Gaston, a noble of Vienne, and his son Gironde,
filled with awe, we are told, by these wonderful
cures, devoted their lives and estates to found a
hospital for those who laboured under this disease,
and seven others joined them in their attendance
on the sick; and on these Hospitaller Brethren
Boniface VIII. bestowed the Benedictine Priory
of Vienne, giving them the rules of St. Austin, and
declaring the Abbot General of this new orderthe
Canons Regular of St, Anthony. The superiors
of the subordinate preceptones were called commanders,
says Alban Butler, ? and their houses are
called commandenes, as when they were Hospitallers?
.
