Leith! THE REV. JOHN LOGAN.
The first Protestant minister of Leith, at the
settlement of the Reformation in 1560, was David
Lindsay, who was Moderator of the Assembly in
1557and 1582, andwho, in the year 1573,attended
Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange on the scaffold.
He accompanied James VI. to Norway, married
him to Anne of Denmark, and baptised their sons :
the Prince Henry, who died young, and the Duke
of Albany, afterwards Charles I. So early as 1597
his inclination to episcopacy alienated him from
his Presbyterian brethren; and in 1600, as a reward
for aiding the king in defence of his royal prerogative,
he was made Bishop of Ross.
He was one of the only two clergymen in all
Scotland who, at the royal command, prayed for
the friendless and defenceless Mary. He died at
Leith in 1613, in his eighty-thud year, and, says
Spottiswood, was buried there ?by his own directions,
as desiring to rest with the people on whom
he had taken great pains during his life.? He was
the lineal descendant of Sir Walter Lindsay of
Edzell, who fell at Flodden.
Walter, first Earl of Buccleuch, commander of
a Scottish regiment under the States of Holland,
having died in London in the winter of 1634, his
body was embalmed, and sent home by sea in a
Kirkcaldy ship, which, after being sorely tempesttossed
and driven to the coast of Norway, reached
Leith in the June of the following year, when the
earl?s remains were placed jn St Mary?s church,
where they lay for twenty days, till the Clan Scott
mustered, and a grand funeral was accorded them
at Hawick, the heraldic magnificence of which
had rarely been seen in Scotland, while the
mourning trumpets wailed along the banks of the
Teviot. A black velvet pall, powdered with silver
tears, covered the coffin, whereon lay ?the defunct?s
helmet and coronet, overlaid with cypress, to show
that he had been a soldier.?
It was not until 1609 that St. Maryk was constituted
by Act of Parliament a parish chuch, and
invested with all the revenues and pertinents of
Xestalrig,
When the troops of Cromwell occupied Leith,
as the parish registers record, Major Pearson, the
town major of the garrison, by order of Timothy
-Wi&es, the English governor-depute, went to James
Stevenson, the kirk treasurer,and demanded the keys
of St. Mary?s, informing him that no Scots minister
was to preach till further orders ; so eventually the
people had to hear. sermons on the Links, with
difficulty getting the gates open, from seven in the
morning till two in the afternoon on Sunday.
In 1656 they sent a petition to Cromwell in
England, praying him ?to restore the church; as
there is no place to meet in but the open fields.?
To this petition no answer seems to have been
returned; but during this period there are, says
Robertson, in his ?Antiquities of Leith,? iqdications
that Oliver?s own chaplains, and even his officers,
conducted services in St. Mary?s church. ?It has
often been asserted,? he adds, ?that at this time
St. Mary?s was converted into a stable to accommodate
the steeds of the troopers of Cromwell j it
has been added, a company of his Ironsides, with
their right hands (i.e., their horses), abased the
temple.? No authority exists for this, save vague
tradition, to which the reader may attach what importance
he may deem fit.?
Previous to the Revolution of 1688 a separation
of the congregation is recorded in the church at
Leith, those who adhered to prelacy occupying the
latter, while the pure Presbyterians formed a separate
party at the Meeting-House Green, ne& the
Sheriff (Shirra) Brae. The latter, belonging to North
as well as South Leith, were permitted to meet
there for prayer and sermon, by special permission
of King James in 1687, Mr. William Wishart being
chosen minister of that congregation.
The Rev. John Logan, the author of various
poetical works, but known as the inglorious and
but lately-detected pirate of some manuscripts of
Michael Bruce, the Scottish Kirk White, was
appointed minister of this church in 2773. He
was certainly a highly-gifted man ; and though his
name is, perhaps, forgotten in South Britain, he
will be remembered in Scotland as long as her
Church uses those beautiful Scripture paraphrases,
the most solemn of which is the hymn, The hour
of my departure ?s come.?
, He was the son of a small farmer near Fala, and
was born in 1748. He delivered a course of
lectures in Edinburgh with much success, and
had a tragedy called ? Runnyrnede ? acted in the
theatre there, when, fortunately for him, the times
were somewhat changed from those when the
production of Home?s ?? Douglas ? excited such a
grotesque ferment ~ in the Scottish Church. He
became latterly addicted to intemperance, the
result of great mental depression, and, proceeding
to London, lived by literary labour bf various
kinds, but did not long survive his transference
to the metropolis, as he died in a lodging in Great
Marlborough Street on the 28th December, 1288.
In the burying-ground attached to St. Mary?s,
John Home, the author of ?Douglas? and other
literary works, a native of Leith, was interred in
September, 1808.
In 1848, during the ri9.m~ of George Aldiston
Machen, fourth Provost of Leith, the old church
was restored, but in somewhat doubtful taste, by
Thomas Hamilton, architect, and a new square
tower, terminating in a richly cusped open Gothic
balustrade, was erected at its north-western corner,
while the angles of the building were ornamented
ST. MARK?S (SOUTH LEITH) CHURCH, 1882.
by buttresses finished with crocketed finials,
scarcely in accordance with the severe simplicity
of the old time-worn and war-worn church of St.
Mary, the beautiful eastern window of which was
preserved in form.
FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY feet north-westward of
St. Mary?s church, and on the same side of the
Kirkgate, opens the ancient alley named Coatfield
Lane, which, after a turn to the south in Charlotte
Lane, led originally to the Links. Dr. Robertson
gives a quotation from the I? Parish Records ? of
South Leith, under date 25th May, 1592, as
showing the origin ? of Coatfield Lane : ?the
quhilk day, the Provost, Johnne Amottis, shepherd,
was acted that for every sheep he beit in ye Kirkyeard
suld pay ix merks, and everie nyt yat carried
(kept) thame betwix the Coatfield and ye. Kirk
style he should pay v. merk.?
But the name is older than the date given, as
Patrick Logan of Coatfield was Bailie of Leith
10th September, 1470, and Robert Logan of the
same place was Provost of the city in 1520-I, as
the ?Burgh Records show ; and when ruin began
to overtake the wily and powerful Baron of Restalrig,
his lands of Mount Lothian and Nether Gogar
were purchased from him by Andrew Logan of
Coatfield in 1596, as stated in the old ?? Douglas
Peerage.?
At the corner of Coatfield Lane, in the Kirkgate,
there stands a great mansion, having a handsome
front to ?the east, exhibiting some curious exampIes
