224 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith.
sterling, for a yeir?s rent of a vault under the said
Trinitie House, imployed to lay in stores for the
m y , determining the 8th of March last. . . .
Given at Edinburgh the last day of Apryl, 1657.
Sic subm-ibifur, GEORGE MONK, F. SCROPE,
Quathetham? i.e. Wetham. ((( Trinity House Records.?)
In 1800 the master and assistants of the Trinity
House recommended, as the best means of rendering
safer the navigation on the east coast of Scotland,
of the old one, in a Grecian style of architecture,
in 1817, at the modest expense of Az,soo.
In the large hall for the meeting of the masters
are a portrait of Mary of Lorraine, by Mytens, and a
model of the ship in which she came to Scotland.
Among other portraits, there is one of Admiral
Lord Duncan; and among other pictures of interest,
the late David Scott?s huge painting of ?? Vasco de
Gama passing the Cape of Good Hope.?
A building mysteriously named the Kantore
THE TRINITY HOUSE.
the establishment of a lighthouse, or floating light,
on the Inchcape, or Bell Rock, off the mouth of
the Tay; and, adds the Edinburgh ChronicZe for
that year, ?they have also recommended all the
towns and burghs of the east coast to consider
what sort of light would be best, in what manner
it should be erected, and what duties should be
levied on the shipping, and what shipping) for its
erection and support ; ? and there, six years afterwards,
was begun that famous feat of engineering,
the Bell Rock Lighthouse, on the reef which
had proved so fatal to many a mariner in past
times, and which forms the subject of one of
Southey?s fine ballads.
- The present Trinity House was built on the site
(probabIy a corruption of the Flemish word kanfoor,
a place of business) stood of old in the Kirkgate,
in the immediate vicinity of St., Mary?s
Church, and was intimately associated with the
ecclesiastical history of Leith. It was latterly a
species of prison-house. When an appearance of
religion was necessary to all men in Scotland, the
Kantore was used as a place of temporary durance
for those who incurred in any way the censure of
the Kirk Session. ?Offences of the most trivial
nature were most severely punished,? says a writer,
(? and a system of espionage was maintained, from
which there was hardly any possibility of escape.
Either Leith must, in former times, have exceeded
in wickedness the other parts of Scotland, or the
