Scotland > 1882-1915 - Slater's Royal National Commercial Directory of Scotland > 1903, Part 2 - Slater's Royal National Commercial Directory of Scotland ... (Royal National Directory of Scotland.) With ... map, etc

11
EDINBURGH.
[slater's
the magistrates having thought proper to deprive the crafts-
men of the privilege of voting at the election of provosts
and bailies, the deacons drew their swords in the council
chamber ; in 1544 Henry VIII. of England, in revenge for
the opposition made by the Catholic regency of Arran and
Beatoun to the marriage of his son Edward with the young
Queen Mary, sent an army and fleet to ravage Scotland,
under the command of the Earl of Hertford, who, landing
at Leith, set fire to Edinburgh and burnt the abbey and
palace at Holyrood. The attempt to capture the castle was
unsuccessful ; but the departing foe destroyed the pier of
Leith, seized the ships in the harbour, and "neither pyle,
village, town, nor house, in their way homewards was left
unburnt." In consequence of this outrage, a French garrison
was introduced four years afterwards, under D'Esse, who
fortified Leith.
About the year 1556, the reformer, John Knox, became
conspicuous, and subsequently the Keformation made rapid
progress in Scotland, but not without strife and bloodshed,
as the Protestant mobs destroyed many of the religious
houses. On the anniversary of Saint Giles, the patron saint
of Edinburgh, the priests and monks were attacked and the
efhgy of the saint, which they were carrying in procession,
was destroyed : it is fortunate that the rage of the reformers
in Edinburgh was confined to the decorations and furniture
of the churches, so that two of the chief ecclesiastical
ediiices still remain, while the convents and monasteries
were converted into dwelling houses. But for the arrival of
an English force to the assistance of the Protestants, the
issue of the contest would have been doubtful. The first
assembly of the reformed kirk met in Edinburgh on the
iSth January, 1560, a parliament having been held the
same year, which passed a law establishing the Presbyterian
form of government for the Church of Scotland. On the gth
of August, 1561, Mary Queen of Scots landed at Leith
from France, and was well received, but her predilection
for the Romish ritual soon abated her popularity. Darnley
was proclaimed king at the market cross on the 30th of
July, 1565, having the previous day (Sunday), within the
chapel of Holyrood, become the husband of Queen Mary.
On the gth of the following March, David Rizzio, the Italian
favourite of the queen, was murdered in the palace by
Darnley and his confederates. On the 19th of June, 1566,
the queen gave birth to a son, afterwards James the Sixth
of Scotland, and the First of England. On the 10th of
February, 1567, while Darnley sojourned in a secluded
house, called the Kirk-o'-Field, near tlie site of the present
University, it was blown up by gunpowder, and he lost his
life. Many circumstances coincided to involve the Earl of
Bothwell in suspicion of planning the murder and the queen
of guilty privity : be this as it may, Bothwell, having divorced
himself from his wife, became the husband of the queen on
15 May, 1567, three months after its perpetration. This
marriage took place in the palace of Holyrood, and was the
occasion of fresh disturbances in Edinburgh. So formidable
was the insurrection, that the queen and Bothwell, on tlie
6tli of June, fled first to Borthwick Castle, and thence to
Dunbar, which abandonment of the capital was followed by
the entry of 3,000 insurgents. On the 15th June, 1567, the
queen was brought back to Edinburgh, and the next day
was sent a prisoner to Lochleven Castle. A regency was
then formed in the name of the infant son of Mary, James
VI., and the Earl of Moray was proclaimed regent ; but the
assassination of this popular favourite, 20 June, 1570, at
Linlithgow, threw the capital into confusion. The struggle
between the contending parties was renewed with alternate
ascendency : the Earl of Lennox became the new regent,
and Kirkcaldy, of Grange, the provost of the town and
governor of the castle, declared for the queen, whose party
held a parliament in the Tolbooth, while that of the regent
held theirs in the Canongate. Kirkcaldy seized all the arms
he could find and planted a battery on the steeple of St.
Giles, and being supplied by France with money and ammu-
nition, he and his associates became formidable antagonists
to the regency. The Earl of Morton and the regent, on the
other side, having united, fortified Leith, and for two years
the two parties waged a fluctuating warfare, until Queen
EUzabeth of England, at the entreaty of Morton, sent a
small army from Berwick, which soon reduced the castle,
and the captive Kirkcaldy, with his brother, were hanged
at the Cross, 3 August, 1573, although they had surrendered
under promise of merciful treatment. The young king
having decided to assume the government himself, entered
the city with great pomp, and convened a parliament in
the Tolbooth, and tranquiUity was in some degree restored.
The Earl of Morton, the late regent, being accused as an
accessory to the murder of Darnley, was convicted and
executed by a machine called the "maiden," similar to the
guillotine, and alleged to be an invention of his own. The
University of Edinburgh, founded with money bequeathed
by a Bishop of Ross in 1558, was finished, and received a
royal charter from James VI. April, 1582, and around it
arose many subordinate colleges and schools. The poor,
also, were not forgotten ; funds for the maintenance of the
poor were granted from the revenues of the suppressed
religious houses and their lands. The city council pre-
sented James with 5,000 merks, about ^^280 sterling, to
provide an entertainment, and early in 1590 they were
required to send a ship to Denmark, at the cost of ;^5oo, to
brmg home the king and his bride, who was crowned at
Holyrood 17 May, 1590 ; they also presented the bride with
a valuable jewel, pledged to them by the king as security
for a considerable sum advanced him. Still these muni-
ficent donations did not exempt the citizens from
"intolerable impositions and grievous exactions." In 1591
the Earl of Bothwell made a daring but unsuccessful
attempt to seize the person of the king : Bothwell escaped,
but eight of his followers were executed. A fresh cause of
tumult soon arose ; the young Earl of Moray, the heir of
the regent. Was assassinated by the Earl of Huntly ; and, as
the king Was suspected of connivance, the citizens indig-
nantly arose and openly insulted both the king and his
ministers. James thought it prudent to retreat to Glasgow.
Not long afterwards the monarch was presented by these
same citizens with ten tuns of wine, and a hundred of their
number were in attendance at the baptism of Prince Henry :
a guard of fifty citizens was also appointed to protect his
person from Bothwell. In December, 1596, James, by an
attempt to restrain the freedom of the preachers, excited
an insurrection that occasioned his prerogative to be insulted
and his person to be endangered. He, in consequence,
retired from the city and ordered all the public courts to be
removed. In 1596 James was again in collision with his
subjects in consequence of some English players being
introduced into the city. At this period an important
alteration w^ made in the computation of time. The year
had hitherto commenced on the 25th of March, but by a
Convention of Estates, which met on the loth of December,
1599, it was ordered that in future New Year's Day should
be on the ist of January.
In 1600, the Duke of Rohan, having visited Edinburgh,
states that the city was about one thousand paces in length
and from four to five hundred in breadth ; and adds that
there was nothing remarkable in it but the great street (now
High street), which was very long and broad, and extended
from one end of the town to the other ; the houses, he says,
were not sumptuous, being almost all built of wood.
On the 24th of March, 1603, by the death of Queen
Elizabeth, James became king of England, to which country
he immediately departed, after taking formal farewell of the
citizens of Edinburgh at the church of St. Giles. In this
year the king ordered the magistrates of Edinburgh to wear
gowns and have a sword of state carried before them ; but
instead of sending the amount of his debt to them, 59,000
merks, he obliged them to be content with 20,000, in full
of all demands ; notwithstanding which, when the king paid
Ids long-promised visit to his Scottish capital, in 1618, he
was received with pomp and addressed with adulation.
They entertained him with a banquet, and presented him
with a silver basin with 10,000 merks (about ;^56o sterling)
in it, in double gold angels. A parliament was immediately
convened, and among other acts which it passed was one for
the restitution of archbishops, bishops and chapters. About
this time the town council purchased the mills of Bennington
from Robert and John Logan, with the lands and teinds
belonging to them, for 1,230 merks Scots (^68 6s. 8d.
sterling). In 1621 an Act was passed for the covering of
houses with lead, slates or tiles, instead of thatch, and water
was introduced the same year by pipes ; three new bells were
imported from Holland — two for St. Giles's church and one
for the Netherbow port. March 27th, 1625, James died ;
and on the 31st Charles I. was proclaimed king in his stead ;
and 15th June, 1633, he was crowned king of Scotland in
the Abbey of Holyrood.
The erection of Edinburgh into a bishopric, and an order
for the introduction of a liturgy into the churches, caused
great tumult in the city, 23rd July, 1637, and in a general
assembly at Glasgow, in 1638, resolutions were passed con-
demning the liturgy and deposing the bishops. In August,
1641, Charles visited Edinburgh. The " great rebellion,"
as it is termed, broke out shortly after, during which the
"solemn league and covenant " between the two nations for
the extirpation of prelacy was signed in the High church,
Edinburgh, in July, 1643, and 1,200 men were sent in con-
sequence to assist the English Parliamentary forces against
Charles ; but in 1645, the Covenanters being routed by
JSIontrose, at Kilsyth, Edinburgh was threatened with
destruction by the marquess unless the prisoners of the king's
party were instantly released, and the city at this moment
being desolated by the plague, his demands were complied
with. On the 18th May, 1650, the Marquess of Montrose
was brought a prisoner into Edinburgh, and three days after
was hanged at the Cross.