? klth] KING JAMES V1.5 HOSPITAL 217
Barker, whose office ceased to exist after the Burgh
Reform Bill of 1833.
The seal of the preceptory is preserved in the
Antiquarian Museum. It bears the figure of St.
Anthonyina hermit?s garb, with a book in one
hand, a staff in the other, and by his side is a sow
with a bell at its neck. Over his head is a capital
T, which the brethren had sewn in blue cloth on
their black tunics. Around is the legend,
S. Cornmum PreceptoriC Sancfi Anthunii, Propc L&cht.
there when the ground was opened to lay down
gas-pipes; and in the title deeds of a property
here, ? the churchyard of St. Anthony ? is mentioned
as one of the boundaries.
The grotesque association of St. Anthony with a
sow is because the latter was supposed to represent
gluttony, which the saint is said to have overcome ;
and the further to conquer Satan, a consecrated
bell is suspended from his alleged ally the pig.
On the east side of the Kirkgate stood King
ST. MARY?S (SOUTH LEITH) CHURCH, 1820. (After .Ytme+.)
Sir David Lindesay of the Mount refers in his
vigorous way to
?The gruntil of St. Anthony?s sow,
There was an aisle, with an altar therein, dedicated
to him in the parish church of St. Giles; and among
the jewels of James 111. is enumerated ?Sanct
Antonis cors,? with a diamond, a ruby, and a great
pearl,
Save the fragments of some old vaults, not a
vestige of the preceptory now remains, though its
name is still preserved in St. Anthony?s Street,
which opens westward off the Kirkgate, and is sup
posed to pass through what was its cemetery, as
large quantities of human bones were exhumed
Quhilk bore his holy bell.?
124
James?s Hospital, built in 1614 by the sixth monarch
of that name, and the site of which now forms
part of the present burying-ground. At the southeast
angle of the old churchyard, says Wilson, there
is an ?? elegant Gothic pediment surmounting the
boundary wall and adorned with the Scottish regalia,
sculptured in high relief with the initials
J. R. 6., while a large panel below bears the
royal arms and initials of Charles 11. very boldly
executed. These insignia of royalty are intended
to mark the spot on which KiEg James?s Hospital
stood-a benevolent foundation which owed no
more to the royal patron whose name it bore than
the confirmation by his charter in 1614 of a portion
of those revenues which had been long before
218 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith.
bestowed by the piety of private donors on the
hospital of St. Anthony, and the imposition of a
duty on all wine brought into the port for the
augmentation of its reduced funds.?
Here certain poor women were maintained, being
presented thereta by the United Corporation 01
Leith. 1 About the middle of the seventeenth century
the edifice had become dilapidated or unequal
to the requirements of the poor; thus another was
erected on or near the same site. .If was a building
of very unpretending aspect, and, according to
Gncaid, measured only fifty-six feet by thirty, The
privilege of admission was confined to the Maltmen,
Trades, and Traflickers or Merchant Company
of Leith. Small pensions were given from
the hospital funds occasionally to persons who
were not resident therein. ?The revenues are now
merged in the general income of the parish of South
Leith.
On the same side of the street stands the ancient
church of South Leith, dedicated to St. Mary.
The ancient seat and name of this parish was
Restalrig. In 1 z 14 Thomas of that place made a
grant of some tenements, which he describes as
situated ? southward of the High Street,? supposed
to be in the line of the present Leith Walk, ?between
Edinburgh and Leith,? if this is not a reference
to the Kirkgate itself; and perhaps he-had a
church on the manor from which he took his
name.
A chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary, patroness
of the town and port, and situated in South Leith,
preceded by more than a century the origin of the
present edifice, and was enriched by many donations
and annuities for the support within it of
altars and chaplainries dedicated to St Peter, St.
Barbara, St. Bartholomew, and others, The destruction
of ecclesiastical records at the Reformation
involves the date of the foundation of the
present church in utter obscurity. It can only be
surmised that it was erected towards the close of
the fourteenth century ; but notwithstanding its
large size-what remains now being merely a small
portion of the original edifice-the name of its
founder is utterly unknown. The earliest notice of
it occurs in 1490, when a contribution of an annual
rent is made by Peter Falconer in Leith to the
chaplain of St. Peter?s altar, (?situat in the Virgin
Mary Kirk in Leith.? The latest of similar grants
was made on the 8th July, 1499.
The choir and transepts are said to have been
destroyed by the English, according to Maitland
and Chalmers, in 1544. ? No other evidence exists
however, in support of this,? according to Wilson,
<? than the general inference deducible from the
burning of Leith, immediately before their embarkation-
a procedure which, unless accompanied by
more violent modes of .destruction, must have left
the Gmainder of the church in the same condition
as. the nave, which still exists.? He therefore
concludes that the choir and transepts had been
destroyed by the Scottish and English cannon
during the great siege, in which the tower of St.
Anthony perished
Robertson, an acute local antiquarg, held the
same theory. That the church was partially destroyed
after the battle of Pinkie is obvious from
the following letter, written by Sir Thomas Fisher
to the Lord Protector of England :-?? I Ith October,
1548. Having had libertie to walke abroad in the
town of Edinburghe with his taker, and sometymes
betwix that and Leghe, he telleth me that Leghe is
entrenched about, and that besydes a bulwarke
made by the haven syde near the sea, on the ground
where the chapel stood (St. Nicholas), which I
suppose your Grace remembereth, there is another
greater bulwarke made on the mane ground at the
great church standing at the upper end of the
town towards Edinburghe.? (Mait. Club.)
In a history published in the Won?rour MisceZZany
we are told that in 1560 the English ?lykewise
shott downe some pairt of the east end of the
Kirk of Leith,? thus destroying the choir and transepts.
On Easter Sunday, when the people were at mass,
a great ball passed through the eastern window, just
before the elevation of the host.
That Hertford?s two invasions were unnecessarily
savage-truly Turkish in their atrocities, as dictated,
in the first instance, by order of Henry VIII.
-k perfectly well known ; but it is less so that he
materially aided the work of the Reformers.
In 1674 a stone tower, surmounted in the Scoto-
Dutch taste by a conical spire of wood and metal,
was erected at the west end; and in 1681 a clock
was added thereto.
The English advanced, and took possession of
Leith immediately after the battIe of Pinkie, and
remained there for some days, after failing in their
unsuccessful attempt on Edinburgh. During that
time the Earl of Huntly and many other Scottish
prisoners of every rank and degree were confined
in St Mary?s Church, while treating for their ransom,
?The cruelty,? says Tytler, ?? of the slaughter at
Pinkie, and the subsequent severities at Leith,
excited universal indignation ; and the idea that a
Free country was to be compelled into a pacific
matrimonial alliance, amid the groans of its dying
citizens and the flames of its seaports, was revolting
snd absurd.? ?
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