![408 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
were not only carried of forcibly about eight days ago, but that the house in which they were
assembled last night was assaulted by a mob-the windows broke by stones and other implements
from withouLand the whole members of this meeting put in great bodily fear and hazard
during the night. They observed, with much regret, the same system pursued this morning,
and which was to their knowledge excited and encouraged by Sir John Henderson of Fordel,
Bart., a declared candidate for the district on this occasion, and by Colonel James Francis
Erskine, and William Wemyss of Cuttlehill, Esq. ; and in particular, the town was crowded,
and the peace of it disturbed by the colliers belonging to the said Sir John Henderson, and
others his dependants and adherents ; and that for the purpose of exciting alarm and convocating
said mob, the church bells were rung, without authority from the Chief Magistrate, as is usual
in such cases, about nine of the clock this morning. The members now present did therefore,
betwixt nine and ten of the clock this forenoon, repair from the house of John Wilson, vintner
in this place, where they were hoping thereby to get into the Council-Room without assault or
injury from the mob, excited as aforesaid ; but in which expectation they were disappointed,
for several of them were assaulted and jostled by said mob, who were so disorderly that the
Provost was under the necessity of reading the Riot Act at the Council-House door. The twelve
members now present, having thus got into the Council-Room, were waiting with patience for
the hour assigned for proceeding to the election of their dclegate, when the aforesaid William
Wemyss, Esq., haviug entered the Council-House, followed by Alexander Law, messenger in
Edinburgh, arid several others, who having rushed into the Council-Room, said Law drew a
pistol, and said he would shoot any person who would stop him; and thereupon he and his
party, without his allowing the perusal of any wamnt he might have had, seized Provost
Moodie-Robert Hutton, Dean of Guild-John Hutton, the Old ProvostJVilliam Anderson,
the Old Treasurer-and Deacons Charles Anderson and Robert Young, and, dragging them
from the Council-table, they were forced into post-chaises, which have been in the employment
of Sir John Henderson during his canvass, and were immediately carried from Dunfermline in
these chaises, and were accompanied by several parties of Sir John Henderson’s colliers on foot,
armed with bludgeons, and others of his dependants on horseback, and were brought by a circuitous
course to, and lodged in the black-hole in Inverkeithing jail, commonly used for felons;
and they were not liberated therefrom until they had found caution, in the Books of Adjournal
at Edinburgh, to stand trial for pretended crimes, of which none of them were guilty. And
they are satisfied that this unwarfantable proceeding, so very inconsistent with the liberty of the
subject, and the freedom of election, was carried on by the aforesaid Sir John Hendemon and
his aforesaid adherents, in order to deprive them of their right of electing a delegate, of which
there cannot be a clearer demonstration than the pretended election carried on, as stated in the
foregoing minutes [the substance of which we have given], by a minority of the Council, after
the members of this meeting were carried off as aforesaid, and without a legal quorum of the
Council, as these minutea prove.
“ That on their return to this burgh about eight o’clock in the evening, the Provost immediately
issued his order for the Council being summoned to this diet, in order to proceed and
make a regular election of their delegate at the earliest hour which it was possible for them to
do,from the extraordinary occurrences of the day, which have been shortly detailed ; but Bailie
James Hunt, who is in the interest of Sir John Henderson, having possessed himself of the key
of the Council-House, this meeting were obliged to gain their admission here at this time by
breaking open the door, under a warrant of the Sheriff-substitute ; and John Dunsyre, townofficer,
having been called in, he, together with Thomas Inglis, police-officer, and Robert
Taggart, town-drummer, verified the citations to the haill members of Council in the usual
manner.
‘<Thereafter the minute of Council of the thirtieth day of May last, fixing this day for the
election of their delegate, was openly read in Council ; but upon inquiry at the clerk for the precept
of the Sheriff, founded on in said minute, he informed that he had delivered it up along
with a commissiou to the foresaid William Wemyss of Cuttlehill, Esq., as delegate, in consequence
of the minutes of the meeting of the minority of the Council, improperly held on the
former part of this day, of which this meeting greatly disapprove.
“After taking the oaths of allegiance, etc. (according to the usual form, which we omit), the
Council being then duly constituted, and all the members legally qualified, and the roll being
called for the choice of their delegate or commissioner, They Did, and hereby Do, unanimously](images/thumbs/kays_thumb_pages/kays_v2__Page_552.gif "Kay's Originals Vol. 2 Page 544")
... BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
were not only carried of forcibly about eight days ago, but that the house in which ...
Book 9 p. 544
(Score 0.21)
... BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
in the island sick or ailing ; and the oldest of them, a man of seventy-two, waa pretty ...
Book 9 p. 444
(Score 0.2)
... BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
and agreeable manners, Mr. Butter was greatly esteemed by his workmen, among
whom, in ...
Book 9 p. 46
(Score 0.2)
... I COURSE OF STUDIES. 19
~ ~ ~~ - ~~
Save Glasgow, all the Colleges complied with I translate, in the ...
Book 5 p. 19
(Score 0.2)
... BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
Mr. James Haldane preached his first sermon in May 1797, in the village of
Gilmerton, ...
Book 9 p. 53
(Score 0.2)
... CANONGA TE AND ABBEY SANCTUAR Y. 305
the street, which tradition points out as the residence of Bishop ...
Book 10 p. 333
(Score 0.2)
![THE CANONGA TE AND ABBEY SANCTUAR Y. 285
Young, a celebrated physician of the period, with others of wealth and influence, among
whom may be mentioned Miss Jean Ramsay, a daughter of the poet, who lived there till
a very advanced age, in the second house below the chapel.
A lofty stone tenement on the south side of the main street, to the east of Gillon’s
Close, was erected by Charles, fourth Earl of Traquair, and formed the residence of his
twin daughters, Lady Barbara and Lady Margaret Stewart. They both died there at a
very advanced age-Lady Margaret in 1791, and her sister in 1794. They must have been
born very early in the eighteenth century, as Dr Archibald Pitcairn, who died in 1713,
made them the subject of some elegant Latin verses. They were till lately remembered as
two kindly, but very precise old ladies, the amusement and main business of whose lives
consisted in dressing and nursing a family of little dolls-a recreation by no means
unusual among the venerable spinsters of former days. The date over the main doorway
of the building is 1700. A little farther to the eastward, and almost directly opposite the
head of New Street, is the Playhouse Close, within the narrow alley of which the stage
was established in 1747, on such a footing as was then deemed not only satisfactory but
highly creditable to the northern capital, where the drama had skulked about from place
to place ever since its denouncement by the early reformers, finding even the patrosage of
royalty, and the favour of the vice-regal Court of Holyrood, hardly sufficient to protect it
from ignominious expulsion.
The history of the Scottish drama is ohe of very fitful add stinted encouragement, and
of correspondingly meagre results. The first approach to regular dramatic composition,
after the period when religious mysteries and moralities were enacted under the sanction
of the Church,’ was Sir David Lindsay’s ‘‘ Pksant Satyre of the Three Estaitis ; ” and
this so effectually aided the work of the Reformers, under whose care the stage was
immediately placed, that it may be styled the first and last effort of dramatic genius in
Scotland, almost to our own day. It was “ playit besyde Edinburgh in 1544, in presence
of the Quene Regent,” as is mentioned by Henry Charteris, the bookseller, who sat
patiently for nine hours on the bank at Greenside to witness the play. It so far surpasses
any effort of contemporary English dramatists, that it renders the barrenness of the Scottish
muse in this department afterwards the more apparent. Birrell notes on the 17th
January 1568 :-“ A play made by Robert Semple, and played before the Regent [Murray]
and divers uthers of the nobilitie.” This has been afinied, though seemingly on very
imperfect evidence, to have been Philotus, a comedy printed at Edinburgh by Robert
Charteris in 1603, the author of which is not named. It exhibits, both in plan and
execution, a much nearer approach to the modern drama than Sir David Lindsay’s Satire,
and is altogether a work of great merit. In the same year there issued from the Edinburgh
press, Darius, a tragedy written by ‘‘ that most excellent spirit and earliest gem of
l A few extracts from the Treasurers’ accounts will afford a hint of the dawn of theatrical amusements at the Scottish
court in the reign of James IF., January 1, 1503 :-“Item, ye samyn nycht to ye gyearis that playit to ye King,
41. 4s. Feb. 18.-To ye
QUENEO F YE CANONGAIT14,s .” Thin character repeatedly occurs in the accounts, and seems to have been B favourite
masker. “1504, Jan. 1.-Tu Hog the tale-tellar, 14s. Jan. 3.-Yat samyn day to Thos. Boauell and Pate Sinclair to
by yaim daunsing gere, 28s. Yat samyne nycht to ye
GYSARISO F YE TOUNE OB EDINBUBG8E f,r . cr. [French crowns.] Junel0.-Payit to Jamea Dog that halaid doune for
girse one Corpus Christi day, at the play to the Kingis and Quenis chamerig 3s. 4d.” bcc.
Feb. &-To ye mene that brocht in ye Morice Dance, and to ye menstralis in Strevelin, 42s.
Pat day to Yaister Johne to by beltis for ye Yorise Danae, 28s.](images/thumbs/memorials/memorials_v1_Page_327.gif "Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time Page 309")
... CANONGA TE AND ABBEY SANCTUAR Y. 285
Young, a celebrated physician of the period, with others of wealth and ...
Book 10 p. 309
(Score 0.2)
... SKETCHES, 333
The length of the island appears to be about three miles from the westernmost point to ...
Book 9 p. 443
(Score 0.2)
... WEST BOW AND SUBURBS. 343
when the Lords of the Congregation I‘ past to Halyrudhous, and tuik and ...
Book 10 p. 375
(Score 0.2)
![Canongate.] MORAY HOUSE. 31
fined here under a guard of Cromwell?s soldiers,
effected their escape by rending their blankets
and sheets into strips. In January, 1675, the
captain of the Edinburgh Tolbooth complained
to the Lords of Council that his brother official
in the Canongate used to set debtors at liberty
at his own free will, or by consent of the creditor
by whom they were imprisoned without pemiission
accorded.
After the erection of the Calton gaol this edifice
was used for the incarceration of debtors alone;
and the number therein in October, 1834, was only
seventeen, so little had it come to be wanted for
that purpose.
Within a court adjoining the Tolbooth was the
old Magdalene Asylum, instituted in 1797 for the
reception of about sixty females j but the foundation-
stone of a new one was laid in October, 1805,
by the Provost, Sir
William Fettes, Bart, in
presence of the clergy
and a great concourse
of citizens. ?In the
stone was deposited a
sealed bottle, containing
various papers relating
to the nse, progress, and
by an arrangement with her younger sister, Anne
Home, then Countess of Lauderdale, by whom the
mansion was built. ?It is old and it is magnificent,
but its age and magnificence are both different
from those of the lofty piled-up houses of
the Scottish aristocracy of the Stuart dynasty.?
Devoid of the narrow, suspicious apertures,
barred and loopholed, which connect old Scottish
houses with the external air, the entrances and
proportions of this house are noble, spacious,
and pleasing, though the exterior ha$ little ornament
save the balcony, on enormous trusses, projecting
into the street, with ornate entablatures
over their great windows and the stone spires of
its gateway. There are two fine rooms within,
both of them dome-roofed and covered with designs
in bas-relief,
The initials of its builder, M. H., surmounted
by a coronet, are sculp
THE STOCKS, FROM THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH.
(Now in the Scottisk A ~ ~ ~ w w % z R Mfucum.)
present state of the
asylum.? This institution was afterwards transferred
to Dalry.
A little below St. -John Street, within a court,
stood the old British Linen Hall, opened in 1766
by the Board of Manufactures for the Sale and
Custody of Scottish Linens-an institution to be
treated of at greater length when we come to its
new home on the Earthen Mound. Among the
curious booth-holders therein was (( old John
Guthrie, latterly of the firm of Guthrie and Tait,
Nicholson Street,?? who figures in ? Kay?s Portraits,?
and whose bookstall in the hall-after he ceased
being a travelling chapman-was the resort of all
the curious book collectors of the time, till he
removed to the Nether Bow.
A little below the Canongate Church there
was still standing a house, occupied in 1761 by
Sir James Livingstone of Glentenan, which possessed
stables, hay-lofts, and a spacious flowergarden.
By far the most important private edifice still
remaining in this region of ancient grandeur and
modern squalor is that which is usually styled
Moray House, being a portion of the entailed property
of that noble family, in whose possession it
remained exactly zoo years, having become the
property of Margaret Countess of Moray in 1645
tured on the south &-
dow, and over another
on the north are the
lions of Home and
Dudley impaled in a
lozenge, for she was the
daughter of Lord Dudley
Viscount Lyle, and
then the widow of Alexander
first Earl of Home, who accompanied
James VI. into England. She erected the house
some years before the coronation of Charles I.
at Edinburgh in 1633; and she contributed
largely to the enemies of his crown, as appears
by a repayment to her by the English Parliament
of ~ 7 0 , 0 0 0 advanced by her in aid? of the
Covenanters; and hence, no doubt, it was, that
when Cromwell gained his victory over the
Duke of Hamilton in the north of England, we
are told, when the (then) Marquis of Argyle conducted
Cromwell and Lambert, with their army,
to Edinburgh, they kept their quarters at the
Lady Home?s house in the Canongate, according
to Guthrie, and there, adds Sir James Turner,
they came to the terrible conclusion ?( that fhere
was a necessitie fa fake away fhe King?s Zzyee;?? so
that if these old walls had a tongue they might
reveal dark conferences connected with the most
dreadful events of that sorrowful time. In conclave
with Cromwell and Argyle were the.Earls of
Loudon and Lothian, the Lords Arbuthnot, Elcho,
and Burleigh, with Blair, Dixon, Guthrie, and other
Puritans. Here, two years subsequently, occurred,
on the balcony, the cruel and ungenerous episode
connected with the fallen Montrose, amid the
joyous banquetings and revelry on the occasicn of](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v3p043.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. III Page 31")
... MORAY HOUSE. 31
fined here under a guard of Cromwell?s soldiers,
effected their escape by rending ...
Book 3 p. 31
(Score 0.2)
... 463
Douglas, Daunie, 239
Cause, 163
Douglas, Heron, & Co.’s Bank, 284
Dow Craig, Calton Hill, ...
Book 10 p. 502
(Score 0.2)
... BANK OF SCOTLAND. 93 The Mound. J
whereof are to be applied for ever for the support of
decayed and ...
Book 3 p. 93
(Score 0.2)
![High Sir=er.] ABUUCTlON OF LADY GRANGE. 2.19
in, and to see him and my children when going
out ; and I made his relations and my own speak
to him, and was always in hopes that God would
show him his sin of putting away his wife contrary
to the laws of God and man; and this was nc
secret, for the President of the Session, and sonit
of the Lords, the Solicitor-General, and some oi
the advocates and ministers of Edinburgh, know
all this to be truth, When I lost all hopes, then I
resolved to go to London.?
Lord Grange?s account is somewhat different.
She tormented him and the children by reproachful
cries from her windows; and he states, that ?in his
house, at the bottom Qf Niddry?s Wynd, where
there 5 a court, through which one enters the
house, one time among others, when it was full of
chairs, chairmen, and footmen, who attended the
company that were with himself, or his sister Lady
Jane Paterson (wife of Sir Hugh Paterson of Bannockburn),
then keeping house together, she came
into this court, and among that mob shamelessly
cried up to the windows injurious reproaches, and
would not go away, though h e a t e d , till hearing
the late Lord Lovat?s voice? she would seem
then to have retired. He also asserts that one
day she assailed him in church ; on another, she
compelled him to take refuge in a tavern, and
threatened even to assault him on the Bench.
Tradition asserts that Lord Grange was dissipated,
restless, intriguing, and was concerned in
some Jacobite plots subsequently to the battle of
Sheriffmuir ; that in revenge his wife threatened to
inform the Government; and there is proof, from
one of his own letters, that she had actually taken
her seat in one of the occasional stages which then
ran between Edinburgh and London, and he bribed
her to give her seat to another traveller, after which
he would seem to have resolved upon ?sequestrating
her,? as he phrased it ; and in a long Ietter written
by herself, and dated January 26th, 1741, she gives
an ample detail of how this was effected.
The plot was concerted between Lord Grange
and some west Highland chiefs, among whom was
the unscrupulous old Lord Lovat. A party of
Highlanders, wearing the livery of the latter, made
their way into her lodgings in Niddry?s Wynd on
the evening of the zznd January, 1730, seized her
with violence, knocking out some of her teeth, and,
tying a cloth over her head, bore her forth, as if she
had been a corpse.
?I heard voices about me,? .she relates ; ? but
being blindfolded I could not discover who they
were. They had a [sedan] chair at the stair-foot,
which they put me in ; and there was a man in the
chair who took me on his knee, and I made all the
32
struggle I could; but he held me fast in his arms,
and hindered me to put my hands to my mouth,
which I attempted to do, being tied down. The
chair carried me off very fast, and took me without
the ports; and when they had opened the chair
and taken the cloth OK my head to let me get air,
I perceived, it being clear moonlight, that I was a
little way from the Multer?s Hill,* and the man on
whose knee I sat was Alexander Foster, of Carsebonny,
who had there six or seven horses and men
with him, who said all these were his servants,
though I knew some of them to be my Lord
Lovat?s servants, who rode along. One of them
was called Alexander Frazer, and the other James
Frazer, and his groom, whose name I know not.?
From that night Niddry?s Wynd knew her no
more. She had two sons grown to manhood at
the time she was so mysteriously spirited away;
her daughter was married to John Earl of Kintore;
yet none of her relations ever made the slightest
stir in the matter, though the Aberdeenshire seat
of the Earl was once suggested as a place of residence
for her.
Leaving the vicinity of Edinburgh by the Lang
Gate, a ride of twenty miles brought her, with her
captors, to Muiravonside, where she was secured,
under guard, in the house of John hfacleod, advocate;
but a man being posted near her bed, she
could neither enter it nor take repose. Next night
she was secured farther 0% in an old solitary tower,
at Wester Polmaise, where for fourteen weeks she
was kept in a room, the windows of which were
boarded over, access to the garden even being
denied her.
On the 12th of August a Highlander named
Alexander Grant suddenly appeared, and announced
that she must prepare for the road again ;
and by her captors, who gave out that she was
insane, she was conveyed by rough and secluded
ways, where she could neither ride nor walk, but
had to be borne in their arms, sleeping at night in
bothy, till she found herself on the shore of Loch
Hourn, an arm of the sea, in the land of Glengarry.
Then ?bitterly did she weep and implore compassion,
but the Highlanders understood not her
language, and though they had done so, a departure
kom the orders which had been given them was
lot to be expected from men of their character,?
tnd she was hurried on board of a ship.
There she learned that she was now in the cus-
:ody of Alexander Macdonald, tacksman of Heiskar,
t small island three leagues westward of North
Uist, belonging to Sir Alexander Macdonald of
__I.-
* Where now the Register House stands,](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p069.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. II Page 249")
... Sir=er.] ABUUCTlON OF LADY GRANGE. 2.19
in, and to see him and my children when going
out ; and I made his ...
Book 2 p. 249
(Score 0.2)
![High Street.] PHILIP STANFIELD. 281
(presumed) Custom House of ice^ running out of it,
with something under his coat. There can be no
doubt that this was the murderer, and the description
given coincided exactly with the appearance
of Mackoull, Although the boy heard of the murder
before he lkft Leith, he never thought of communicating
what he had seen to the authorities ; he was
shortly after captured and carried to a French prison,
where he remained for many years. Mackoull resided
in Edinburgh from September, 1805, till the
end of 1806, lodging very near the scene of the
murder, and was a frequent visitor at the coffee-
It was raised from the grave, after it had lain
there two days, and the surgeons having made an
incision near the neck, became convinced that
death had been caused by strangulation, so all
supposition of suicide was abandoned. This examination
took place in a church. After the cut
had been sewn up, the body was washed, wrapped
in fresh linen, and James Row, merchant in Edini
burgh, and Philip Stanfield, the disinherited son,
lifted it for deposition in the coffin, when 10 ! on
the side sustained by Philip an effusion of blood
took place, and so ample as to defile both his hands.
printers and publishers.
The World?s End Close was the curious and
appropriate name bestowed upon the last gloomy,
and mysterious-looking alley on the south side of
the High Street, adjacent to the Netherbow Port,
when it lost its oXer name of Sir John Stanfield?s
Close.
At the foot of it an ancient tenement, has a shield
of arms on its lintel, .with the common Edinburgh
legend-?Praisze. the. Lord. for.all.His.giftis,M.S. ;I?
but save this, and a rich Gothic niche, built into a
modern ?land ? of uninteresting aspect, nothing remains
of Stanfield?s Close save the memory of the
dark tragedy connected with the name of the knight.
Sir Jaines Stanfield was one of those English manufacturers
who, by permission of the Scottish Government,
had settled at Newmills, in East Lothian.
He was a respectable man, but the profligacy of
Philip, his eldest son, so greatly afflicted him that
he became melancholy, and he disinherited his heir
by a will. On a day in the November of 1687 he
was found drowned, it wafi alleged, in a pool of
water near his country house at Newmills. Doubts
were started as to whether he had committed
suicide, in consequence of domestic troubles, or had
been murdered. The circumstances of his being
hastily interred, and that Lady Stanfield had a suit
of graveclothes all ready for him before his death,
?seemed to point to the latter; and two surgeons
? Tiditions and Antiquities of Leith.?
36
November, 1806, Mackoull was seized with convulsions,
and threw himself back on his bed and
began to rave.
Tweeddale House, after being quitted by the
British Linen Company for their new office in St.
after handled by the murtherar, it will ;ushe out of
blood, as if the blood were crying to heaven for
revenge of the murtherar.?
Accordingly, on the 7th of February, 1688,
Philip was brought to trial at Edinburgh, and after
the household servants had been put to torture
without eliciting anything on the strength of the
mysterious bleeding, according to Fountainhall, save
that he was known to have cursed his father, drunk
to the king?s confusion, and linked the royal name
with those of the Pope, the devil, and Lord Chancellor,
he was sentenced to death. He protested
his innocence to the last, and urged in vain that
his father was a melancholy man, subject to fits;
that once he set out for England, but because his
horse stopped at a certain place, he thought he saw
the finger of God, and returned home ; and that he
once tried to throw himself over a window at the
Nether Bow, probably at his house in the World?s
End Close.
Philip Stanfield was hanged at the Market Cross
on the 24th of February. In consequence of a slip
of the rope, he came down on his knees, and it was
necessary to use more horrible means of strangulation
His tongue was cut out for cursing his
father ; his right hand was struck off for parricide ;
his head was spiked on the East Port of.Haddington,
and his mutilated body was hung in chains
between L.eith and the city. After a few days the
body was stolen fiom the gibbet, and found lying
in a ditch among water. It was chained up again,
time groaning in great anguish, and refusing to
touch the corpse again, while all looked on with
dismay. The incident was at once accepted by
the then Scottish mind in the light of a revelation
of Philip?s guilt as his father?s murderer. ?In a
Andrew Square, became, and is still, the establish- 3 I ment of Messrs. Oliver and Boyd, t!ie well-known
secret niurther,? says King James in his ? Damonology?-?
if the dead carkasse be at any time there](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p101.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. II Page 281")
... Street.] PHILIP STANFIELD. 281
(presumed) Custom House of ice^ running out of it,
with something under his ...
Book 2 p. 281
(Score 0.2)
... INDEX.
299, 307, 342 ; Lord Provost, 11.
282 283 293' hisfuneral I 155
Kindid, b a d , of Coates ...
Book 6 p. 381
(Score 0.2)
![University.] THE PROFESSORS AND THE TOWN COUNCIL. 15 -
endof the year named, a body was, for the first
time, regularly dissected in the city, after the celebrated
Dr. Archibald Pitcairn-who left a distinguished
position as a professor of medicine in the
University of Leyden, to marry a lady of Edinburgh
-had been induced to settle there, and seek a
practice. . . ,
The Doctor, on the 14th of October, wrote to his
friend 1)r. Gray, of London, stating that he was
making efforts to obtain from the magistrates subjects
for dissectiod, such as the bodies of those who
died in the ,House of Correction at Paul?s Work,
and had none to bury them. ?We offer,? he says,
I? to wait on these poor for nothing, and bury them
after dissection at our own charges, which now the
town does; yet there is great opposition by the
chief surgeons, who neither eat hay nor suffer the
oxen to eat it. I do propose, if this be granted, to
make better improvements in anatomy than have
been made at Leyden these thirty years; for I
think most or all anatomists have neglected or
not known what was most useful for a physician.?
The person who moved ostensibly in this matter
was Alexander Monteith, who entered the Colleg?
of Surgeons in December, 1691. He was a prominent
Jacobite, and owner of Todshaugh, now
called Foxhall, in West Lothian. He was an eminent
surgeon, and a friend of Pitcairn?s. The Town
Council on the 24th of October, in compliance with
his urgent request, granted to him the bodies of
those who died in the House of Correction and
of all foundlings who died at the breast.
They gave him, at the same time, a room for dissection,
with permission to inter the mutilated remains
in the College Kirk Cemetery, stipulating
that he should inter all intestines within forty-eight
hours, the rest of the body within ten days, and that
his prelections should only be in the winter season.
Though the College of Surgeons did not generally
oppose this new movement, they greatly disliked
his exclusive permission from the Council,
and proposed to give demonstrations in anatomy
as well, asking for the unclaimed bodies of those
who died in the streets, and also of foundlings.
Their petition was granted, on the understanding
that they should have a regular anatomical theatre
ready before the Michaelmas of 1697 ; but it was
not until 1705 that the Anatomical Chair was
founded in the university.
In 1703 a struggle for emancipation from the
Town Council was made by the professors. It had
-wen usual f9r the former body to appoint a day for
graduation, or laureation, as it was named in those
days. This was for the first or senior class; and to
preside at this learned ceremony a certain portion
of the somewhat unlearned civic patrons were
regularly deputed, with their robes, insignia, and
halberdiers, to at ten d.
The professors, as may be supposed, were becoming
very impatient of this yearly interference
with their internal arrangements, and perhaps imagined,
not unnaturally, that literature, science,
and philosophy, could derive but little lustre .? from
the presence of men who, generally speaking, would
have ears which heard not, and understandings
which could not perceive.?
Thus they bethought them of a plan whereby they
hoped to get rid of such officious visitors in all
time coming.
Accordingly, when all the professors met in the
Old College Hall, on the 20th of January, 1703,
they, as an independent faculty, adopted the following
resolution :-
? The Faculty of Philosophy within the city of
Edinburgh, taking to their consideration the reasons
offered by Mr. Scott . why his magistrand class
should be privately graduated, and being satisfied
with the same, do unanimously, according to fheir
undoubfed yighf, confained in the charfer of erection,
and their constant and uninterrupted custom in
such cases, appoint the said class to be laureated
privately upon the last Thursday of April next,
being the twenty-seventh day of the said month.
Signed by order, and in presence of the Faculty, by
Robert Anderson, CZerk.?
This was deemed by the Provost and bailies as
the very tocsin of rebellion, and roused at once
their wrath. A visitation accordingly followed, by
the Lord Provost, Sir Hugh Cunningham, Knight,
and the bailies, with the inevitable halberdiers, in
the library of the college on the 15th of the following
month ; there he informed the Senatus that
among many other contumacious things,. he had become
cognisant <? of an unwarrantable act of the
masters of that college, viz., the Professors of
Philosophy, Humanity, Mathematics, and Church
Iiistory, wherein they assert themselves a FiicuZty,
empowered by the charter of erection to appoint,
&C.?
It is difficult to know how this quarrel might
have ended, had not the Lord Advocate, as
mediator between the parties, effected a compromise,
which, however, implied a surrender of
the asserted point at issue by the four professors ;
at the same time, so resolute were the magistrates
and Council in their intention of upholding and
defending their privileges as patrms of the
university, that Bailie Blackwood, in the name of
the rest, declared that the Council of the city
?would not be satisfied with the masters simply](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v5p026.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. V Page 15")
... THE PROFESSORS AND THE TOWN COUNCIL. 15 -
endof the year named, a body was, for the first
time, ...
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... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Libertou.
extended from east to west over all the country.
This inequality in the ...
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... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith.
C H A P T E R X X X I I I .
LEITH-TIIE DOCKS.
New Docks proposed-Apathy of ...
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![Leith Walk.] THE REV. JOHN KELLOE. I55
of sand, much of it was carted away, and, with the
ashes of the malefactors of centuries, converted into
mortar, and used in the erection of the New Town.
So far from being a knoll, the place is now a hollow.
It is related that, every day while the carts were
taking away the sand, the proprietor of the knoll
stood regularly at the place receiving the money in
return, and ?every little sum he got was converted
into liquor, and applied to the comfort of his inner
man. A public-house was at length erected oe the
spot for his particular behoof; and, assuredly, as
long as the Gallow Lee lasted this house did not
want custom, Perhaps, familiar as the reader may
be with stories of sots who have drunk away their
last coin, he never before heard of this thing being
done in so literal a manner.?
It immediately adjoined the place known as
Shrub Hill. Ordinary malefactors were hanged at
the Cross in the Grassmarket, or on the shore of
Leith ; but the Gallow Lee was latterly the special
place for the execution of witches, and for hanging
in chains the bodies of those who had committed
great crimes. Sometimes only a hand or other limb
was gibbeted here, while the rest of the body was
buried elsewhere. Among the most noted executions
and gibbetings here, we may add the following
to those which have been referred to incidentally
elsewhere in our pages :-
Crawford of Drumsoy records that two criminals
were burned to death here in 1570; and then he
relates an execution at the same place in the autumn
of the year, which made some excitement even in
the Scotland of those days.
Mr. John Kelloe, minister of Spott, near DunSar,
being seized by a sudden remorse of conscience,
came to Edinburgh, and judicially made confession
of a crime which otherwise would never have been
proved against him. He had been married to a
poor but very handsome and attractive girl, ? very
witty and fond, a very little woman, but well
shap?d,? before he got the benefice of Spott, after
which he began to propose to himself a second
marriage with the wealthy daughter of a laird,
whose name Crawford omits, provided he could by
any means rid himself of his first wife, to whom
now he began to behave harshly and petulantly.
To prepare the way for the execution of his design,
and to conceal it when done, he suddenly began to
dissemble in his treatment of her ; his manner was
full of tenderness, kindness, and delicacy.
?She who now thought herself the happiest of
her sex,? continues Crawford in his ? Memoirs,?
written in I 705, ? effusively strove to make him so
too, and hastened her own ruin ; for, upon a Sunday
morning, as she was saying her prayers upon
her knees, he came softly behind her, put a rope
(which he had kept all night in his pocket) about
her neck, and after he had strangled her tied her up
to an iron hook which a day or two before he had
purposely nailed to the ceiling of the room. This
done, he bolted his gate, crept out of his parlour
window, stept demurely to church, and charmed
his hearers with a most excellent sermon.?
The murderer next imited two or three of his
parishioners to sup with him, telling them casually,
as it were, that ?? his wife was not well, and of late
somewhat inclined to melancholy ; that she had not?
come to kirk that day, but would be glad to see
them at her house.? On knocking at the gate, the
Rev. Mr. Kelloe affected to be much astonished
that there was no response. Ultimately he and his
guests were obliged to make a forcible entrance, and
the murdered wife was found hanging from the
hook to which her corpse had been attached. The
reverend incumbent of Spott now feigned grief
and counterfeited sorrow so much to the life that
his neighbours almost forgot to mourn for the dead
so much were they afraid of losing the living.
However, these forged tears, by the mercy of
God to this great offender, suddenly became real
ones.?
Tortured by conscience, after six weeks of misery
he made a confession of his crime to the schoolmaster
of Dunbar, according to Crawford-to
Andrew Simpson, minister there, according to the
? Historie of King James the Sext ?-and after
being convicted, on his own confession, at Edinburgh,
he was conveyed to the Gallow Lee, on the
4th of October, and strangled. His corpse was
then consumed by fire and the ashes scattered on
the air. ?? Never did any man appear more penitent
or less fearful of death. He was attended from
the prison to the stake by three of the clergy, and
by the way he rather instructed them than received
any assistance from them.?
A century or so later and we have some appalling
accounts of the cremation of so-called witches
at the terrible Gallow Lee.
In 1678 five were (mercifully) strangled first and
burnt to ashes there, by sentence of the Lords;
and other four, their companions, were burned
at Painston Muk, in their own parish. The accusations
against them were intimacy with the devil,
dancing with him, renouncing their baptism, and
being kissed by him, though his lip3 were icy cold,
and his breath like damp air ; taking a communion
at his hands, when ?? the bread was like wafers, the
drink sometimes blood and other times like black
moss water,?? and much more to the same purpose,
all of which is gravely recorded by Lord Fountain](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v5p166.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. V Page 155")
... Walk.] THE REV. JOHN KELLOE. I55
of sand, much of it was carted away, and, with the
ashes of the ...
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... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Canongate
4? History of Music j ? Dr. Gregory ; David Xllan ;
Lord Cromarty; and many ...
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... OLD AYD NEW EDINBURGH. [The Lawnmarket.
Duke of York and Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke made
some noise in London ...
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... TO THE PORTRAITS, ETC. 489
NO. Page
the Green” .............................. ccxli 214
ing unlawful ...
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... AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Canonmills. 86
modation than external display, and yet is not
unsuited to the ...
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