Leith.] THE TOLBOOTH WYND. 1 0
marrow alley adjoining the latter, a house bearing
the date 1688 has the two legends, ?Feir the
Lord,? and ?The feir of the Lord is the beginning
of a1 wisdome.?
This part of the town-about the foot of St.
Andrew?s Street-is said to have borne anciently
the name of St. Leonard?s. There the Street
diverges into two alleys : one narrow and gloomy,
which bears the imposing title of Parliament Court ;
and the other called Sheephead Wynd, in which
there remains a very ancient edifice, the ground
floor of which is formed of arches constructed like
those of the old house described in the Kirkgate,
and bearing the date 1579, with the initials D. W.,
M. W. Though small and greatly dilapidated, it
is ornamented with string-courses and mouldings ;
and it was not without some traces of old importance
and grandeur amid its decay and degradation,
until it was entirely altered in 1859.
This house is said to have received the local
name of the Gun Stone, from the circumstance of
a stone cannon ball of considerable size having
been fired into it during some invasion by an
English ship of war. Local tradition avers that
for many years this bullet formed an ornament on
the summit of the square projecting staircase of
the house.
Near Cable?s Wynd, which adjoins this alley, and
between it and King Street, at a spot called
Meeting-house Green, are the relics of a building
formerly used as a place of worship, and although
it does not date farther back than the Revolution
.of 1688, it is oddly enough called ?John Knox?s
Church.?
The records of South Leith parish bear that in
1692, ?? the magistrates of Edinburgh, and members
of the Presbytery there, with a confused company
of the people, entered the church by breaking open
the locks of the doors and putting on new ones,
and so caused guard the church doors with halberts,
rang the bells, and possessed Mr. Wishart of
the church, against which all irregular proceedings
public protests were taken.?
Previous to this he would seem to have officiated
in a kind of chapel-of-ease established near Cable?s
Wynd, by permission of James VII. in 1687.
Soon after the forcible induction recorded, he
came to the church with a guard of halberdiers,
accompanied by the magistrates of Leith, and took
possession of the Session House, compelling the
? prelatick Session ? to hold their meeting in the
adjacent Kantore. More unseemly matters followed,
for in December of the year 1692, when a
meeting was held in South Leith Church to hear
any objections that might be niade against the legal
induction of the Rev. Mr. Wishart, an adherent of
Mr. Kay, ?? one of the prelatick incumbents,? protested
loudly against the whole proceedings.
Upon this, ?Mr. Livingstone, a brewer at the
Craigend (or Calton), rose up, and, in presence of
the Presbytery, did most violently fall upon the
commissioner, and buffeted him and nipped his
cheeks, and had many base expressions to him.?
Others now fell on the luckless commissioner,
who was ultimately thrust into the Tolbooth of
Leith by a magistrate, for daring to do that which
the Presbytery had suggested. Mr. Kay?s session
were next driven out of the Kantore, on the door
of which another lock was placed.
It has been supposed that the ousted episcopal
incumbent formed his adherents into a small congregation,
as he remained long iu Leith, and died
at his house in the Yardheads there so lately as
November, 1719, in the seventieth year of his age.
His successor, tile Rev. Robert Forbes, was minister
of an episcopal chapel in Leith, according to an
anonymous writer, ?? very shortly after Mr: Kay?s
death, and records a baptism as having been performed
? in my room in ye Yardheads.? ?
The history of the Meeting-house near Cable?s
Wynd is rather obscure, but it seems to have been
generally used as a place of worship. The last
occasion was during a visit of John Wesley, the
great founder of Methodism. He was announced
to preach in it; but so grcat a concourse of people
assembled, that the edifice was incapable of accommodating
them, so he addressed the multitude
on the Meeting-house Green. LI house near it,
says The Srofsinan in 1879, is pointed out as ?the
Manse.?
The Tolbooth TVynd is about five hundred an&
fifty feet in length, from where the old signal-tower
stood, at the foot of the Kirkgate, to the site of a
now removed building called Old Babylon, which
stood upon the Shore.
The second old thoroughfare of Leith was undoubtedly
the picturesque Tolbooth Wynd, as the
principal approach to the harbour, after it superseded
the more ancient Burgess Close.
It was down this street that, in the age when
Leith was noted for its dark superstitions and eccentric
inhabitants, the denizens therein, regularly
on stormy nights or those preceding a storm,
heard with horror, at midnight, the thundering
noise of ?the twelve o?clock coach,? a great oatafalque-
looking vehicle, driven by a tall, gaunt figure
without a head, drawn by black horses, also headless,
and supposed to be occupied by a mysterious
female.
Near the eastern end of the wynd there stood
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