Edinburgh: The Autobiography E-Book

Alan Taylor

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 626

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

From one of the earliest mentions of its name in the sixth century to the Covid lockdowns of the twenty-first, this is a magnificent portrait of one of the world's great cities in its many iterations, from 'Edinburgh, the sink of abomination' to the Athens of the North and everything – including the home of the Enlightenment, the Festival City, the Aids Capital of Europe and a Mecca for tourists seeking tartan tat – in between. As the nation's capital it has been critical to its progress and a witness to epochal events, such the tumultuous reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, the Reformation, the Forty-Five rebellion, the Disruption of the Church of Scotland and the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament. All of these and more feature. But this is not simply a book about the great and good, the famous and infamous. There is testimony aplenty from ordinary folk who may not have made their mark on history but who have contributed to Edinburgh's ever-expanding tapestry. There are stories of body snatching and murder, drunkenness and drug-taking, sex and shopping, as well rants against inclement weather and the city council.

Leseprobe

For Rosemary

First published in 2024 by

Birlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Introductory material copyright © Alan Taylor 2024

A full list of copyright permission appears on p. 323

ISBN 978 1 78024 882 7

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset in Sabon LT by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed and bound by Clast Ltd, Elcograf, S.p.A.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Prologue

600–1699   A Queen Returns

1700–1750   End of ane Old Song

1751–1799   Enlightening Times

1800–1825   School for Scandal

1826–1850   Dissolution and Disruption

1851–1899   The City in Winter

1900–1925   War Doctors

1926–1950   Prime Women

1951–1975   The Morningside Question

1976–2000   Jumping for Scotland

2001–Door Wars

Bibliography

Sources and Permissions

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First a lament. For anyone interested in the history of Edinburgh, the principal port of call was always the Edinburgh Room, part of the City Libraries’ mother ship on George IV Bridge, with its peerless collection and unfailingly knowledgeable and helpful staff. It is deeply to be regretted that it is no more, now subsumed into the Scottish section. This is in no way to criticise the librarians (not responsible for this decision) who have always made and make visits to my old stomping ground invariably pleasurable and profitable.

I am likewise grateful to their counterparts across the street in the National Library of Scotland, wherein can be found Scots’ collected memory. The NLS is surely the nation’s best kept secret and, among the powers-that-be, one of its least understood institutions. I am astonished when I encounter supposedly intelligent and well-educated people who have not only never visited it but have never heard of it. How, one wonders, have they risen to their present eminence? For those of us who do use it regularly it remains one of the bulwarks of civilization.

Birlinn and its sister imprint, Polygon, have been two constants of my adult life as, variously, librarian, journalist, editor and writer. At a time when publishing is increasingly beleaguered, and Scottish publishing in particular struggles to make an impact beyond these shores, Birlinn continues to produce books that are essential to our understanding of our own history. For this, I salute its founder, Hugh Andrew, and his staff who, in their below-ground-level HQ in Newington, toil in troglodytic circumstances to maintain high standards. I must, however, make particular mention of Jan Rutherford, the doyenne of publicists, and Andrew Simmons, my editor, whose ears surely ache from the number of times I have bent them. I am likewise indebted to Helen Bleck, who copy-edited Edinburgh: The Autobiography, thereby saving me on numerous occasions from embarrassing howlers.

A book such as this is the sum of many parts. I am well aware that it stands on the shoulders of countless predecessors across the centuries who attempted to capture our capital city within the space of a few hundred pages. It may be a thankless task, but it is one that generation after generation cannot resist embracing. Between covers the place comes alive, allowing today’s Edinburghers to put themselves in the shoes of their forebears. Special thanks goes to those contemporary writers, many of whom I count as friends, who waived permission fees or implored their agents and publishers not to be too demanding. One of those writers was Iain Finlayson who, as I was dotting i’s and crossing t’s, alerted me to an essay by Kathleen Jamie on Surgeons’ Hall, which I would have regretted omitting.

No one, however, made more suggestions and interventions than my wife, Rosemary Goring. Her book, Scotland: The Autobiography, is the model on which this book is built. My debt to her knows no bounds.

Alan Taylor

Bowden

August 2024

INTRODUCTION

Shortly after 9 o’clock one winter’s evening in the 1980s I left the library where I worked on George IV Bridge and made my way down the Mound. It was snowing heavily and the pavements were already thickly carpeted. Occasionally a bus slushed past; of other traffi c there was no sign. Nor was there more than a handful of pedestrians. Edinburgh, it appeared, had been evacuated as if in anticipation of a marauding horde. On my left the Castle Rock glowered in the darkness; to the right Princes Street Gardens were locked and access forbidden. In front of me the New Town was a Georgian Tombstone, bereft of light and emptied of people. This is how Edinburgh – ‘mine own romantic town’, as Sir Walter Scott hymned it – lives in my fondest memory. It felt for one fleeting moment that it was all mine, that I was the proprietor of all I surveyed. It was magnificent, awe-inspiring, spooky and, most unusually, noiseless.

‘A mad god’s dream’ is how Hugh MacDiarmid described it, and who would argue with that. Edinburgh is the kind of place that seems to demand such a response. Like so many multi-storied cities, it exists as much on the page as it does in reality, each of its iterations demanding to be reduced to a catchword or cliché. Thus it can be simultaneously the Athens of the North and the Aids capital of Europe.

When I first knew it, when its numberless breweries made it smell like a bar the morning after a lock-in, and smoke from trains shrouded Waverley Bridge and every bus was fogged like a fumatorium and every building was blackened with soot, it rejoiced in the sobriquet Auld Reekie. It reeked, moreover, not only of smoke but also of double standards, of public propriety and private licentiousness. Here, where females of an elevated station were reputed to wear fur coats and no knickers, thrived Burke and Hare and Jekyll and Hyde – respectable by day, nefarious by night – in fiction and fact. Edinburgh’s outward austerity, like that of one of its twin cities, Florence, revelled in contradiction and clandestineness, confounding casual visitors. The shades of fun-loving Mary, Queen of Scots and fun-loathing John Knox – two sides of the same coin – were not figures plucked from history but emblematic of the populace as a whole.

The advent in the 18th century of the New Town served to confirm Edinburgh’s duality. The Old Town, as atomised in James Boswell’s journal, was the definition of a den of iniquity, in which drink-sodden, sex-mad Boswell was a self-flagellating, guiltridden participant. Here, in tenements seething with unwashed humanity living on the edge, was Scotia’s Sodom and Gomorrah, where crime was rife and human beings behaved like beasts. In contrast, the New Town, as it emerges in Scott’s journal, was the inspired and ambitious solution to what had become an intolerable and embarrassing situation. Its development offered those with the means to escape the ghetto and its festering closes and vertiginous lands the opportunity to enjoy cleaner air, spacious apartments and neighbours whose lineage one knew. It was apartheid disguised as inspired urban planning.

The snow had grown heavier. At the bottom of the Mound I crossed ghostly Princes Street into Hanover Street and turned right into Rose Street. I was on my way to meet Norman MacCaig in the Abbotsford Bar, one of the so-called Poets’ Pubs. We had arranged to meet, as we always did, by letter. ‘OK, OK,’ was his typically laconic reply to my suggestion that a rendezvous was overdue. Norman was then in his seventies. Born in 1910, he was a child of the ‘classical’ New Town and attended the Royal High School, after which he worked as a primary school teacher, writing poems in evenings and at weekends. Had there then been a Scottish poet laureate, he would have been a perfect fit. Tall, slim, with a Roman nose and an outcrop of silver hair that clung to his skull like the last drop of snow on a mountainside, he seemed to embody Edinburgh and its past. When he spoke, he tested vowels to breaking point. His poems were mostly short and, he famously said, took him one fag to write. Longer poems took two fags. For him, smoking was less of a habit than part of who he was, which was Auld Reekie personified.

Norman had a reputation for being peppery, which made more reticent folk wary of him. It is true that dimwits who entered his orbit were soon to be found hurtling through outer space in search of a less stressful planet on which to sip their pints. Norman’s Edinburgh – that of the first half of the twentieth century – was a city where people were supposed to know their place and where niceties were punctiliously and painfully observed. Few cities are as class-conscious (and class-ridden) and socially stratified as Edinburgh. Here postcodes matter, as in bygone days did the area codes of telephone numbers: 447 – denoting you lived in Morningside – was the one social climbers coveted. Indeed, people were known to move to a house a few streets away simply to be included among the 447s. Snobbery, it must be acknowledged, is one of Edinburghers’ besetting sins.

Nowhere does this manifest itself more than in the question of education. For centuries more Edinburgh children have attended private, fee-paying schools than elsewhere in the country. Newcomers at any gathering will be asked, not too subtly, to disclose which school they attended, which information will immediately determine their place on the social ladder. Depending on how you reply doors will open or stay forever bolted. This is where the real power in Edinburgh resides. Impossible to trace, it nevertheless determines how the city operates. It may be public perception that decisions are made at Holyrood or in the City Chambers, but the reality is often more opaque. In many respects the Edinburgh bourgeoisie has more influence than any political party. This is as true today as it was when the New Town came into being.

Then, as now, it was a clerical city. Modern Edinburghers may have swapped pens for iPads and other gizmos but their avowed aim in life is not to be seen with dirt under their fingernails. Here be lawyers and teachers, doctors and divines, journalists and those involved in the world of books, and those who do something ill-defined in finance, all of whom occupy islands entire of themselves. Rarely do you encounter anyone who makes anything. Since the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament at the turn of the century, there has been an influx of politicians and their hangers-on. Lobbying and public relations are just two of the growth industries inspired by devolution. But flourishing and proliferating as they undoubtedly are, they pale in comparison to the burgeoning tourism ‘industry’.

Edinburgh has always attracted visitors, but in the past decade or so their number has multiplied. Standing at a bus stop recently, I remarked on this phenomenon to a local of a certain age. ‘We managed to keep it to ourselves for a while,’ she said, ‘but now, I’m afraid, the secret’s out.’ Affordable air travel, the rise of Airbnb, growing economies in the Far and Middle East and the happy association with Harry Potter have put Edinburgh at the top of many travellers’ bucket lists. It would be churlish to complain, but echt Edinburghers cannot help themselves. Like so many other tourist hotspots, whole districts are given over to rented accommodation and hotels to suit every budget. Meanwhile discombobulated residents, such as a friend of mine who has the misfortune to live in the Grassmarket, are told by their lieges that if they don’t like it then they should move. It is things like this that can turn law-abiding citizens into axewielding psychopaths.

The Edinburgh described in MacCaig’s poems seems at this remove to evoke a city of several centuries ago rather than of the latter half of the 20th century. When I knew it first, in the 1960s, it felt immutable. Change was a verb not in its lexicography. Having gone, two centuries earlier, through the cathartic upheaval of the New Town, Edinburgh, it appeared, was content to stick rather than twist. The Second World War had had minimal effect on its built environment, leading perhaps to a sense of complacence. Change, however, did now rear its often rather ugly head. At the forefront of this were the municipality and the university, wherein resided philistines, iconoclasts and – what may even be worse – modernisers. Wrecking balls were taken to venerable and much-loved buildings to be replaced by modernist carbuncles. A scheme was announced to make the city more welcoming to cars than people. At its core was a ring road and ‘feeder’ roads which, as the investigative journalist George Rosie recalled, ‘would have transformed the centre and inner suburbs of Edinburgh’. What in hindsight is most shocking about this calamitous idea is that, for a while, it gained traction among many people in high places whom one might have thought would know better. If only. That Edinburgh emerged bloodied but unscathed from this bruising episode was testimony not to its deluded, aesthetically bereft panjandrums but its ever-vigilant citizens.

Invariably, Norman arrived at the Abbotsford ahead of me. In one hand was a whisky, in the other a fag. It was a quiet night; even regulars had gone home early because of the weather. Whatever we talked about, poetry was not high on the agenda. Memory, as he often said, was the well on which he drew for many of his poems. He had an abiding interest in history, but of names and events there was little mention. To him, Edinburgh was a place like Athens, with a long history of which we human beings occupy a tiny portion. ‘City of everywhere’, he glossed it in ‘Drop-out in Edinburgh’: ‘Your buildings/ are broken memories, your streets/ lost hopes – but you shrug off time, you set your face/ against all that is not you.’ This Edinburgh is imperious, sui generis, confident in its own skin, unimpressed by outside intervention. It has an air of permanence, of dogged resistance to change. Its haughty response to the ‘Glasgow’s Miles Better’ slogan was ‘Edinburgh’s Slightly Superior’.

How old is Edinburgh? It is believed that the Castle Rock has been continuously inhabited for around 7,000 years. In those far-off days hunter-gatherers were to be found in the vicinity of the Water of Leith, the city’s excuse for a river. What they did, other than exist, is a matter of speculation, for they certainly left little evidence of their tenancy. As one age gave way to another, these early inhabitants came and went without offering historians and archaeologists much to go on. By the early decades of the twelfth century, however, Edinburgh was designated a royal burgh and signs of the modern city began to manifest themselves. It is assumed that around then work began on what we know today as St Giles’ Cathedral and Holyrood Abbey. Thereafter the Royal Mile began to acquire the shape of a herringbone. By 1500, it had around 12,000 souls. Thereafter it grew steadily. But the expansion of the city was hampered by the unavailability of land for development, hence the need to build ever taller houses, much to the wonder of visitors.

By 1760, Scotland’s capital was, in the estimation of Robert Chambers in Traditions of Edinburgh (1825), ‘a picturesque, odorous, inconvenient, old-fashioned town, of about seventy thousand inhabitants. It had no court, no factories, no commerce; but there was a nest of lawyers in it, attending upon the Court of Session; and a considerable number of the Scotch gentry – one of whom then passed as rich with a thousand a year – gave it the benefit of their presence during the winter. Thus the town had lived for some ages, during which political discontent and division had kept the country poor.’

Something had to be done. In the decades immediately after the 1707 Act of Union, binding Scotland to England, some improvements had been made, but they paled in ambition compared to the transformative and radical Proposals outlined in 1752 and which would take at least 80 years to realise. Cometh the hour, cometh a man called George Drummond, who, more than any other person, made it his goal to re-create Edinburgh. Born in Perthshire in 1687, he arrived in the city as a teenager and would eventually have too few fingers for all the pies in which he needed to put them. He was an anti-Jacobite Unionist, an agent of the Government, a slick mover and shaker who was a six-times Lord Provost. A.J. Youngson, in The Making of Classical Edinburgh (1966), described him thus: ‘Able, genial, resourceful, deferential, persuasive and astute, Drummond had an exceptionally good head for finance and an unusual capacity for getting his own way without hurting other people’s feelings. But what distinguished him above his contemporaries was the grandeur of his purpose and the selflessness of his aim.’

Thanks to Drummond and other like-minded individuals, Edinburgh was transformed from a fetid, provincial, parochial backwater into what Michael Fry, in Edinburgh: A History of the City (2009), called ‘the first of the modern cities’. Coincidentally, this happened at the same time as arose a generation of geniuses the like of which had not been seen since the Florentine Renaissance. The roots of the Enlightenment, as it came to be known, are to be found in the Scottish education system, which allowed its students to emerge intellectually stimulated and eager to challenge received wisdom. It was a fiercely competitive environment, nowhere more so than in Edinburgh, which has always been adept at taking the kudos for original thinking and that which ought rightly to have been credited to other cities, especially Aberdeen and Glasgow. Be that as it may, Edinburgh has become synonymous with the idea of Enlightenment. As Arthur Herman noted in The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots’ Invention of the Modern World (2003): ‘Only London and Paris could compete with Edinburgh as an intellectual centre. But unlike those two world capitals, Edinburgh’s cultural life was not dominated by state institutions or aristocratic salons and patrons. It depended instead on a circle of toughminded, self-directed intellectuals and men of letters, or “literati”, as they called themselves. By the standards of 1760, it was remarkably democratic.’

Here, living in close proximity, could be found the likes of Adam Smith, David Hume, Lord Kames, Sir Walter Scott, James Hutton, William Robertson, William Fergusson, Allan Ramsay, Henry Raeburn and many more. ‘Edinburgh,’ added Herman, ‘was like a giant think tank or artists’ colony, except that unlike most modern think tanks, this one was not cut off from everyday life. It was in the thick of it.’

The age of Enlightenment lasted well into the 19th century and gave Edinburgh a reputation for learning that went round the globe. By the 20th century, however, it seemed to have allowed its lustre to dull, as recognised by Norman’s elder brother-in-arms, Hugh MacDiarmid. At the forefront of what is known as the Scottish Renaissance, he railed against Edinburgh’s – and Scotland’s – descent into intellectual mediocrity and its betrayal of its Enlightenment predecessors, making it his mission in life to drag his countrymen out of the morass of ignorance: ‘But Edinburgh – Edinburgh – is too stupid yet/ To learn how not to stand in her own light.’

Nowhere is the Edinburgh of the 1920s and 1930s better portrayed than in Muriel Spark’s novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). In one scene the eponymous teacher takes her favoured girls – ‘the crème de la crème’ – on an expedition into the unknown, i.e. the Old Town. None of her young charges had ever properly seen it before ‘because none of their parents was so historically minded to be moved to conduct their young into the reeking network of slums which the Old Town constituted in those years’. This would have been around 1928. Eight years later, Spark, aged 18, felt that she had exhausted Edinburgh. ‘It is a place where I could not hope to be understood.’ Charismatic Miss Brodie – ‘an Edinburgh Festival all on her own’ – may have been a one-off, but she was also an archetype.

The Festival, like the Enlightenment, offered Edinburgh the opportunity to reinvent itself. Its first director was an outsider. Rudolf Bing, an Austrian Jew, had escaped Nazi Germany. Culture, he believed, was the balm the world needed after a war which had tested humanity to its limits. Among his supporters were the Lord Provost, the editor of The Scotsman, a senior representative of the British Council and Lady Rosebery, who offered her husband’s winnings from a horse race as seed money. No one, not even the Festival’s most ardent backers, could have foreseen the phenomenal impact it would have. Though it has often been argued that Edinburghers have at best an ambivalent attitude to what is routinely said to be ‘the greatest show on earth’, the truth is that without their enduring support it would not have survived and thrived for what has so far been 77 years. Despite the annual protestations from arts administrators and impresarios bemoaning lack of funding and the attempts of cashrich usurpers across the globe to seize its crown, Edinburgh remains the Festival City.

Edinburgh: The Autobiography, like its sister title, Glasgow: The Autobiography, attempts to tell the city’s story through the words of those who were there. Inevitably, it is incomplete and subjective, but I hope that what emerges in the following pages is both familiar and surprising, entertaining and enlightening. I have included material from a multiplicity of sources, including memoirs, journals, travelogues, offi cial documents, newspapers, magazines, court records and poetry. My principal desire is that each entry must read well and add something vital to the tapestry of a place that never fails to bewitch. Many of the authors were born and bred in Edinburgh, but just as many, if not more, were not. There are, as its citizens will attest, many Edinburghs, which make a mockery of stereotypes. Some may find it lovely to look at but hard to love. Others, such as myself, love it in all its guises. In my mind’s eye, I am still in the Abbotsford, and snow is still silently falling. It is near closing time, but last orders have yet to be called. Perhaps they never will be. Who knows, Norman and I may be here for a while yet, enjoying – if I may take the liberty of misquoting him – a long conclusion after a short walk.

PROLOGUE

James Grant

How Edinburgh got its name is far from clear. What is clear, as James Grant (1822–87) shows, is that theories abound. Grant, author of the perpetually fascinating and informative three-volume Cassell’s Old and New Edinburgh, was a critic of the 1707 Act of Union and an ardent and early supporter of nationalism.

The origin of the name ‘Edinburgh’ has proved the subject of much discussion. The prenomen is a very common one in Scotland, and is always descriptive of the same kind of site – a slope. Near Lochearnhead is the shoulder of a hill called Edin-achip, ‘the slope of the repulse’, having reference to some encounter with the Romans; and Edin-ample is said to mean ‘the slope of the retreat’. There are upwards of twenty places having the same descriptive prefix; and besides the instances just noticed, the following examples may also be cited:– Edincollie, a ‘slope in the wood’, in Morayshire; Edinmore and Edinbeg, in Bute; Edindonach, in Argyllshire; and Edinglassie, in Aberdeenshire. Nearly every historian of Edinburgh has had a theory on the subject. [Hugo] Arnot suggests that the name is derived from Dunedin, ‘the face on the hill’, but this would rather signify the fort of Edin; and that name it bears in the register of the Priory of St Andrews, in 1107. Others are fond of asserting that the name was given to the town or castle by Edwin, a Saxon prince of the seventh century, who ‘repaired it’; consequently it must have had some name before his time, and the present form may be a species of corruption of it, like that of Dryburgh, from Darrach-bruach, ‘the bank of the grove of oaks’.

Another theory, one greatly favoured by Sir Walter Scott, is that it was the Dinas Eiddyn (the slaughter of whose people in the sixth century is lamented by Anuerin, a bard of the Ottadeni); a place, however, which [antiquarian George] Chalmers supposes to be elsewhere. The subject is a curious one, and well worth consideration, but, interesting as it is, it need not detain us long here.

In the Myryvian, or Cambrian Archaeology, a work replete with ancient lore, mention is made of Caer-Eiddyn, or the fort of Edin, wherein dwelt a famous chief, Mynydoc, leader of the Celtic Britons in the fatal battle with the Saxons, under Ida, the flame-bearer, at Catraeth, in Lothian, where the flower of the Ottadeni fell, in 510; and this is believed to be the burgh subsequently said to be named after Edwin.

In the list of those who went to the battle of Catraeth there is a record of 300 warriors arrayed in fine armour, three loricated (i.e. plated for defence), with their commanders, wearing torques of gold, ‘three adventurous knights’, with 300 of equal quality, rushing forth from the summits of the mighty Caer-Eiddyn, to join their brother chiefs of the Ottadeni and Gadeni.

In the ‘British Triads’ both Caer-Eiddyn (which some have supposed to be Carriden), and also Dinas Eiddyn, the city of Eiddyn, are repeatedly named. But whether this is the city of Edinburgh it is exceedingly difficult to say; for, after all, the alleged Saxon denominative from Edwin is merely conjectural, and unauthenticated by remote facts.

From Sharon Turner’s Vindication of Ancient British Poems, we learn that Aneurin, whose work contains 920 lines, was taken prisoner at the battle of Catraeth, and was afterwards treacherously slain by one named Eiddyn; another account says he died an exile among the Silures in 570, and that the battle was lost because the Ottadeni ‘had drunk of their mead too profusely’.

600–1699

A QUEEN RETURNS

EDINBURGH CASTLE, c. 6TH CENTURY

James Grant

Like all cities, Edinburgh is inchoate, though its citizens, conservative by nature, are rarely inclined to embrace change. What is permanent, however, is the Castle and the great lump of basalt rock on which it stands. Exactly who built it and how still intrigues historians. We do know, though, that in the 11th century it became a royal residence. St Margaret, wife of Malcolm III, aka Malcolm Canmore, died there not long after her husband’s death at the Battle of Alnwick (1093). Over the centuries the site was developed, and new buildings, monuments and apartments were added, including David’s Tower (begun in 1367), the Great Hall ( c.1500–11) and the Scottish United Services Museum (opened in 1927). More recently, its Esplanade has been the venue for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo and rock concerts.

After the departure of the Romans the inhabitants of Northern Britain bore the designation of Picti, or Picts; and historians are now agreed that these were not a new race, but only the ancient Caledonians under a new name.

The most remote date assigned for the origin of the Castle of Edinburgh is that astounding announcement made in Stow’s Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles, in which he tells us that ‘Ebranke, the sonne of Mempricius, was made ruler of Britayne; he had, as testifieth Policronica, Ganfride, and others, twenty-one wiyves, of whom he receyved twenty sonnes and thirty daughters, which he sent into Italye, there to be maryed to the blood of the Trojans. In Albanye (now called Scotland) he edified the Castell of Alclude, which is Dumbreyton; he made the Castell of Maydens, now called Edinburgh; he also made the Castell of Banburgh, in the twenty-third year of his reign.’ All these events occurred, according to Stow, in the year 989 before Christ; and the information is quite as veracious as much else that has been written concerning the remote history of Scotland.

From sources that can scarcely be doubted, a fortress of some kind upon the rock would seem to have been occupied by the Picts, from whom it was captured in 452 by the Saxons of Northumbria under Octa and Ebusa; and from that time down to the reign of Malcolm II. Its history exhibits but a constant struggle for its possession between them and the Picts, each being victorious in turn; and Edwin, one of these Northumbrian invaders, is said to have rebuilt it in 626. Territories seemed so easily overrun in those times, that the latter, with the Scots, in the year 638, under the reign of Valentinian I, penetrated as far as London, but were repulsed by Theodosius, father of the Emperor of the same name. This is the Edwin whose pagan high-priest Coifi was converted to Christianity by Paulinus, in 627, and who, according to Bede, destroyed the heathen temples and altars. A curious and very old tradition still exists in Midlothian, that the stones used in the construction of the castle were taken from a quarry near Craigmillar, the Craig-moilard of antiquity.

Camden says, ‘The Britons called it Castel Mynedh Agnedh – the maidens’ or virgins’ castle – because certain young maidens of the royal blood were kept there in old times.’ The source of this oft-repeated story has probably been the assertion of Conchubhranus, that an Irish saint, or recluse, named Monena, late in the fifth century, founded seven churches in Scotland, on the heights of Dun Edin, Dumbarton, and elsewhere. This may have been the St Monena of Sliabh-Cuillin, who died in 518. The site of her edifice is supposed to be that now occupied by the present chapel of St Margaret – the most ancient piece of masonry in the Scottish capital; and it is a curious circumstance, with special reference to the fable of the Pictish princesses, that close by it), when some excavations were made, a number of human bones, apparently all of females, were found, together with the remains of several coffins.

EDINBURGH NAMED, c. 600

Anuerin

The poet Anuerin lived in the second half of the 6th century. His poem, ‘Y Gododdin’, commemorates a British defeat in 598 by the Celts at Catterick in Yorkshire, of which Anuerin claimed to have been the sole survivor. In it, he calls Edinburgh ‘Eidyn’ (the fort on the hill-slope).

A lord of Gododdin will be praised in song:

A lordly patron will be lamented.

Before Eidyn, fierce flame, he will not return.

He set his picked men in the vanguard:

He set up a stronghold at the front.

In full force he attacked the fierce foe.

Since he feasted, he bore great hardship.

Of Mynyddog’s war-brand none escaped

Save one, blade-brandishing, dreadful.

THE CITY CONFIRMED, 1329

Robert the Bruce

Ten days before his death, Robert the Bruce (1274–1329) refounded Edinburgh by granting it a new charter in which the burgh was ‘given, granted and to feuferm let’ to its burgesses. ‘Feuferm’ ensured that the burgh would pay the Crown an annual fixed sum in lieu of rents, customs and other dues which until then had been collected by royal officials. Also included in the charter was a port at the mouth of the Water of Leith.

Robert, by the grace of God King of Scots, to all good men of his land, greeting. Know that we have given, granted, and to feuferm let, and by this our charter confirmed, to the Burgesses of our Burgh of Edinburgh, our foresaid Burgh of Edinburgh, together with the Port of Leith, mills, and others their pertinents [minor properties], to have and to hold to the said Burgesses and their successors, of us and our heirs, freely, quietly, fully, and honourably by all their right meiths and marches [boundaries], with all the commodities, liberties, and easements which justly pertained to the said Burgh in the time of King Alexander, our Burgesses and their successors to us and our heirs, yearly, fifty-two merks sterling, at the terms of Whitsunday and Martinmas in Winter, by equal portions. In witness whereof we have commanded our seal to be affixed to our present charter. Witnesses, Walter of Twynham our chancellor, Thomas Ranulph, Earl of Moray, Lord of Annandale and Man, our nephew; James Lord of Douglas; Gilbert of Hay our constable; Robert de Keth our marischall of Scotland, and Adam More, knights. At Cardros the twenty-eighth day of May, in the twenty-fourth year of our reign.

THE THISTLE AND THE ROSE, 1503

John Young

The marriage of James IV to Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII and sister of Henry VIII, signalled a warming of relations between Scotland and England. This union was eventually to lead to the Scots succession to the throne of the Tudors in 1603. John Young (c.1465–1516), Somerset herald, accompanied Margaret to Edinburgh.

The town of Edinbourgh was in many places hanged with tappissery, the houses and windows were full of lords, ladies, gentlewomen, and gentlemen, and in the streets war so great multitude, of people without number, that it was a fair thing to see. The which people war very glad of the coming of the said queen: and in the churches of the said town bells rang for mirth.

The same day the king supped in his chamber, accompanied of many of the part of the said queen within her own. And after that, the king went to see her, and he danced some bass dances. This done, the king took his leave, and bade her good night joyously.

The 8th day of the said month every man appointed himself richly, for the honour of the noble marriage. Between 8 and 9 of the clock everychon was ready, nobly apparelled; and the ladies above said came richly arrayed, sum in gowns of cloth of gold, the others of crimson velvet and black. Others of satin and of tinsel, of damask and of camlet of many colours, hoods, chains and collars upon their necks, accompanied of their gentlewomen arrayed honestly their guise, for to hold company to the said queen.

A little after, the queen was by said lords and company brought from her chamber to the church crowned with a very riche crown of gold garnished with pierrery [jewellery] and pearls. She was led on the right hand by the archbishop of York, and on the left hand by the earl of Surrey. Her train was born by the countess of Surrey, a gentleman usher helping her.

Thus the said queen was conveyed to the said church, and placed near to the font. Then the king was brought by a very fair company, consisting of his said brother and of the lords above said, his steward, chamberlain, the constable, and the marischall, with all their staffs of their offices, and other nobles, knights, squires, and gentlemen, richly and honestly arrayed and with good chains.

Then the king was coming near to the queen, made reverence and she to him very humbly. The king was in a gown of white damask, figured with gold and lined with sarsenet [silk fabric]. He had on a jacket with sleeves of crimson satin. The queen was arrayed in a rich robe, like himself, bordered of crimson velvet, and lined of the self. She had a very riche collar of gold, of pierrery and pearls, round her neck, and the crown upon her head; her hair dangling.

Then the marriage was performed by the said Archbishop of Glasgow; and the archbishop of York, in presence of all.

At dinner the queen was served before the king, with all the honour that might be done, the officers of arms, and the sergeants of arms, proceeding before the meal. At the first course, she was served of a wild boar’s head gilt, within a fair platter, then with a fair piece of brain, and in the third place with a gambon, which were followed by diverse other dishes, to the number of 12, of many sorts, in fair and rich vessel.

RETURN OF THE QUEEN, AUGUST 1561

John Knox

The Protestant reformer, John Knox (c. 1513–72), was born in the environs of Haddington, East Lothian. A leading figure in the Reformation, he was vociferously opposed to the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. During the six years of her reign, from 1561 to 1567, his attitude towards her was one of intransigent antagonism. The celebration of Mass at Holyrood, on her return from France, where she had been brought up, was the first act to anger Knox. A sermon delivered by him in St Giles’ High Kirk – now known as St Giles’ Cathedral – prompted the first of his famous interviews with the young queen. Written in the third person, the following is Knox’s account of the encounter. It first appeared in his History of the Reformation in Scotland, published in five volumes between 1559 and 1566. The four Maries, who had been the queen’s companions since childhood, were Mary Fleming, Mary Seton, Mary Beaton and Mary Livingstone.

The nineteenth day of August, the year of God 1561, betwixt seven and eight hours before noon, arrived at Leith Marie, Queen of Scotland, then widow, with two galleys furth of France. In her company, besides her gentlewomen, called the Maries, were her three uncles, Claude de Lorraine, the Duke d’Aumale, Francis de Lorraine, the Grand Prior, and René de Lorraine, Marquis d’Elboeuf. There accompanied her also the Seigneur de Damville, son of the Constable of France, with other gentlemen of inferior condition, besides servants and officers.

The very face of heaven, the time of her arrival, did manifestly speak what comfort was brought into this country with her, to wit, dolour, darkness, and all impiety. In the memory of man, that day of the year, was never seen a more dolorous face of heaven. Besides the surfeit wet, and corruption of the air, the mist was so thick and so dark, that scarce might any man espy another the length of two pair of butts. The sun was not seen to shine two days before, nor two days after. That forewarning gave God unto us; but, alas, the most part were blind!

At the sound of the cannons which the galleys shot, the multitude being advertised, happy were he and she that first might have the presence of the Queen! The Protestants were not the slowest, and therein they were not to be blamed. Because the Palace of Holyroodhouse was not thoroughly put in order – for her coming was more sudden than many looked for – she remained in Leith till towards evening, and then repaired thither. In the way, betwixt Leith and the Abbey, met her the rebels of the Crafts, to wit, those that had violated the authority of the Magistrates, and had besieged the Provost. But, because she was sufficiently instructed that all they did was done in despite of the Religion, they were easily pardoned. Fires of joy were set forth all night, and a company of the most honest, with instruments of music, and with musicians, gave their salutations at her chamber window. The melody, as she alleged, liked her well; and she willed the same to be continued some nights after.

With great diligence the Lords repaired unto her from all quarters. And so was nothing understood but mirth and quietness till the next Sunday, which was the 24th of August. Then preparation began to be made for that idol, the Mass, to be said in the Chapel of Holyroodhouse, which pierced the hearts of all. The godly began to bolden; and men began openly to speak. ‘Shall that idol be suffered again to take place within this realm? It shall not.’ The Lord Lyndsay – then but Master – with the gentlemen of Fife and others, plainly cried in the Close, ‘The idolater Priest shall die the death, according to God’s law.’ One that carried in the candle was evil affrayed; but the Lord James Stewart, the man whom all godly did most reverence, took upon him to keep the Chapel Door. His best excuse was, that he would stop all Scotsmen to enter in to the Mass. But it is sufficiently known that the door was kept that none should have entress to trouble the Priest, who after the Mass, was committed to the protection of Lord John Stewart, Prior of Coldingham, and Lord Robert Stewart, Abbot of Holyroodhouse, the Queen’s natural brothers, who then were both Protestants, and had communicate at the Table of the Lord. Betwixt these two was the Priest convoyed to his chamber.

The godly departed with great grief of heart, and at afternoon repaired to the Abbey in great companies, and gave plain signification that they could not abide that the land which God by His power had purged from idolatry, should in their eyes be polluted again. Which understood, there began complaint after complaint. The old dontibours [loose characters], and others that long had served in the Court, and had no remission of sins, but by virtue of the Mass, cried, ‘They would to France without delay; they could not live without the Mass.’

The next Sunday [31 August], John Knox inveighing against idolatry, showed what terrible plagues God had taken on realms and nations for the same, and added: ‘One Mass is more fearful to me than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in any part of the Realm of purpose to suppress the whole Religion. In our God there is strength to resist and confound multitudes if we unfeignedly depend upon Him, whereof heretofore we have had experience. But when we join hands with idolatry, both God’s amicable presence and comfortable defence leaveth us, and what shall then become of us? Alas, I fear that experience shall teach us, to the grief of many.’

At these words the guiders of the Court mocked, and plainly spoke – ‘Such fear was no point of their faith. It was beside his text, and was a very untimely admonition.’ But we heard this same John Knox, in the audience of the same men, recite the same words again in the midst of the troubles. In the audience of many, he asked God’s mercy that he was not more vehement and upright in the suppression of that idol in the beginning.

~

Whether it was by counsel of others, or of Queen Mary’s own desire, we know not, but the Queen spake with John Knox at Holyrood and had long reasoning with him, none being present except Lord James Stewart, while two gentlewomen stood in the other end of the house.

The Queen accused John Knox that he had raised a part of her subjects against her mother and against herself; that he had written a book against her just authority, – she meant the treatise against the Regiment of Women – which she should cause the most learned in Europe to write against; that he was the cause of great sedition and great slaughter in England; and that it was said to her, that all which he did was by necromancy.

To which the said John answered: – ‘Madam, may it please Your Majesty patiently to hear my simple answers? First, if to teach the Truth of God in sincerity, if to rebuke idolatry and to will a people to worship God according to His Word, be to raise subjects against their Princes, then I cannot be excused; for it hath pleased God of His Mercy to make me one among many to disclose unto this Realm the vanity of Papistical Religion, and the deceit, pride, and tyranny of that Roman Antichrist. But, Madam, if the true knowledge of God and His right worshipping be the chief causes, that must move men from their heart to obey their just Princes, as it is most certain they are, wherein can I be reprehended? I am surely persuaded that Your Grace has had, and presently has, as unfeigned obedience of such as profess Jesus Christ within this Realm, as ever your father or other progenitors had of those that were called Bishops.

‘And touching that Book which seemeth so highly to offend Your Majesty, it is most certain that I wrote it, and I am content that all the learned of the world judge of it. I hear that an Englishman [John Aylmer, later Bishop of London] hath written against it, but I have not read him. If he hath sufficiently improved my reasons, and established his contrary propositions with as evident testimonies as I have done mine, I shall not be obstinate, but shall confess my error and ignorance. But to this hour I have thought, and yet think, myself alone to be more able to sustain the things affirmed in my work, than any ten in Europe shall be able to confute it.’

Queen Mary: ‘Ye think then that I have no just authority?’

John Knox: ‘Please Your Majesty, learned men of all ages have had their judgments free. They have most commonly disagreed from the common judgment of the world. I have communicated my judgment. If the Realm finds no inconvenience from the government of a woman, that which they approve shall I not further disallow than within my own breast, but shall be as well content to live under Your Grace as Paul was to live under Nero. My hope is, that so long as ye defile not your hands with the blood of the Saints of God, neither I nor that book shall either hurt you or your authority. In very deed, Madam, that book was written most especially against that wicked Jezebel of England [Queen Mary Tudor].’

Queen Mary: ‘But yet ye speak of women in general?’

John Knox: ‘Most true, Madam. Yet it appeareth to me that wisdom could persuade Your Grace, never to raise trouble for that, which to this day hath not troubled Your Majesty, neither in person nor yet in authority . . . Now, Madam, if I had intended to have troubled your estate, because ye are a woman, I might have chosen a time more convenient for that purpose, than I can do now, when your own presence is within the Realm.’

Queen Mary: ‘But yet ye have taught the people to receive another religion than their Princes can allow. How can that doctrine be of God, seeing that God commandeth subjects to obey their Princes?’

John Knox: ‘Madam, as right religion took neither original strength nor authority from worldly princes, but from the Eternal God alone, so are not subjects bound to frame their religion according to the appetites of their princes. Princes are oft the most ignorant of all others in God’s true religion, as we may read in the Histories, as well before the death of Christ Jesus as after. And so, Madam, ye may perceive that subjects are not bound to the religion of their princes, although they are commanded to give them obedience.’

Queen Mary: ‘Think ye that subjects, having the power, may resist their princes?’

John Knox: ‘If their princes exceed their bounds, Madam, no doubt they may be resisted, even by power. For there is neither greater honour, nor greater obedience, to be given to kings or princes, than God hath commanded to be given unto father and mother. But the father may be stricken with a frenzy, in which he would slay his children. If the children arise, join themselves together, apprehend the father, take the sword from him, bind his hands, and keep him in prison till his frenzy be overpast – think ye, Madam, that the children do any wrong? It is even so, Madam, with princes that would murder the children of God that are subject unto them.’

At these words, the Queen stood as it were amazed, more than the quarter of an hour. Her countenance altered, so that Lord James began to entreat her and to demand, ‘What hath offended you, Madam?’

At length she said to John Knox: ‘Well then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you, and not me. They shall do what they list, and not what I command; and so must I be subject to them, and not they to me.’

John Knox:‘God forbid that ever I take upon me to command any to obey me, or yet to set subjects at liberty to do what pleaseth them! My travail is that both princes and subjects obey God. Think not, Madam, that wrong is done you, when ye are willed to be subject to God.

Queen Mary: ‘Yea, but ye are not the Kirk that will nourish. I will defend the Kirk of Rome, for it is, I think, the true Kirk of God.’

John Knox: ‘Your will, Madam is no reason; neither doth your thought make that Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ. Wonder not, Madam, that I call Rome a harlot; for that Church is altogether polluted with all kind of spiritual fornication, as well in doctrine as in manners. Yea, Madam, I offer myself to prove, the Church of the Jews which crucified Christ Jesus was not so far degenerate from the ordinances which God gave by Moses and Aaron unto His people, when they manifestly denied the Son of God, as the Church of Rome is declined, and more than five hundred years hath declined, from the purity of that religion which the Apostles taught and planted.’

~

Of this long conference, whereof we only touch a part, were diverse opinions. The Papists grudged, and feared that which they needed not. The godly, thinking at least that the Queen would have heard the preaching, rejoiced; but they were all utterly deceived, for she continued in her Massing, and despised and quietly mocked all exhortation.

John Knox, his own judgment being by some of his familiars demanded, What he thought of the Queen? ‘If there be not in her,’ said he, ‘a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate heart against God and His truth, my judgment faileth me.’

RIZZIO’S MURDER, 9 MARCH 1566

Lord William Ruthven

The following is a contemporary account of the events leading up to, and the night of, the murder of David Rizzio, Queen Mary’s secretary, at Holyrood Palace. Lord Patrick Ruthven (c. 1520–66) was one of the prime leaders of this infamous deed, but in his son’s account the blame is thrown squarely on Lord Darnley, Mary’s second husband. Later, William Ruthven (c. 1541–84) was the queen’s custodian during her captivity at Loch Leven.

Upon Saturday the 9th day of March, as is conform to the King’s ordinance and device, the Earl Morton, Lords Ruthven and Lindsey, having their men and friends in readiness, abiding for the King’s advertisement; the King having supped, and the sooner for that cause, and the Queen’s Majesty being in her cabinet within her inner chamber at the supper, the King sent to the said Earl and Lords, and their complices; and desired them to make haste and come into the Palace, for he should have the door of the privy passage open, and should be speaking with the Queen before their coming, conform to his device rehearsed before. Then the Earl of Morton, Lord Ruthven and Lord Lindsey, with their complices, passed up to the Queen’s outer chamber, and the Lord Ruthven [William’s father, Patrick] passed in through the King’s chamber, and up through the privy way to the Queen’s chamber, as the King had learned him, and through the chamber to the cabinet, where he found the Queen’s Majesty sitting at her supper, at the middest of a little table, the Lady Argile sitting at one end, and Davie at the head of the table with his cap on his head, the King speaking with the Queen’s Majesty, and his hand about her waist. The Lord Ruthven at his coming in said to the Queen’s Majesty, ‘It would please your Majesty to let yonder man Davie come forth of your presence, for he hath been over-long here.’ Her Majesty answered, ‘What offence hath he made?’ The said Lord replied again that he had made great offence to her Majesty’s honour, the King her husband, the nobility and commonweal of the realm. ‘And how?’ saith she. ‘It will please your Majesty,’ said he, Carnegie, wa&Carnegie, wass#8216;he hath offended your Majesty’s honour, which I dare not be so bold to speak of: As to the King your husband’s honour, he hath hindered him of the crown matrimonial, which your grace promised him, besides many other things which are not necessary to be expressed. And as to the nobility, he hath caused your Majesty to banish a great part, and most chief thereof, and fore-fault them at this present Parliament, that he might be made a lord. And as to your commonweal, he hath been a common destroyer thereof, in so far as he suffered not your Majesty to grant or give anything but that which passed through his hands, by taking of bribes and goods for the same: and caused your Majesty to put out the Lord Ross from his whole lands, because he would not give over the lordship of Melvin to the said Davie; besides many other inconveniences that he solicited your Majesty to do.’ Then the Lord Ruthven said to the King, ‘Sir, take the Queen’s Majesty your sovereign and wife to you’, who stood all amazed, and wyst not what to do. Then her Majesty rose on her feet and stood before Davie he holding her Majesty by the plates of the gown, leaning back over in the window, his whiniard [dirk] drawn in his hand. Arthur Erskine and the Abbot of Holyrood-house, the Laird of Creech, master of the household with the French apothecary, and one of the Grooms of the Chamber, began to lay hands upon the Lord Ruthven, none of the King’s party being present. Then the said Lord pulled out his whiniard, and freed himself while more came in, and said to them, ‘Lay not hands on me, for I will not be handled;’ and at the incoming of others into the cabinet, the Lord Ruthven put up his whiniard. And with the rushing-in of men the board fell to the wallwards, with meat and candles being thereon; and the Lady of Argile took up one of the candles in her hand: and in the same instant Lord Ruthven took the Queen in his arms, and put her into the King’s arms, beseeching her Majesty not to be afraid; for there was no man there that would do her Majesty’s body more harm than their own hearts; and assured her Majesty, all that was done was the King’s own deed and action. Then the remanent gentlemen being in the cabinet, took Davie out of the window; and after that they had him out in the Queen’s chamber, the Lord Ruthven followed, and bad take him down the privy way to the King’s chamber; and the said Lord returned to the cabinet again, believing that Davie had been had down to the King’s chamber, but the press of the people hurled him forth to the utter chamber, where there was a great number standing, who were so vehemently moved against the said Davie, that they would not abide any longer, but slew him at the Queen’s far door in the utter chamber. Immediately the Earl of Morton passed forth of the Queen’s Majesty’s utter chamber to the inner court for keeping of the same and the gates, and deputed certain barons to keep Davie’s chamber till he knew the Queen’s Majesty’s pleasure and the King’s. Shortly after their Majesties sent the Lord Lindsey and Arthur Erskine to the said Earl of Morton, to pass to David’s chamber to fetch a black coffer with writings and ciphers, which the said Earl of Morton delivered to them, and gave the chamber in keeping to John Semple, son to the Lord Semple, with the whole goods there; gold, silver, and apparel being therein. In this meantime the Queen’s Majesty and the King came forth of the cabinet to the Queen’s chamber, where her Majesty began to reason with the King, saying, ‘My Lord, why have you caused to do this wicked deed to me, considering I took you from a base estate, and made you my husband? What offence have I made you, that ye should have done me such shame?’ The King answered and said, ‘I have good reason for me; for since yon fellow Davie fell in credit and familiarity with your Majesty ye regarded me not, neither treated me nor entertained me after your wonted fashion: for every day before dinner, and after dinner, ye would come to my chamber and pass time with me, and this long time ye have not done so; and when I come to your Majesty’s chamber ye bear me little company, except Davie had been the third marrow [partner]; and after supper your Majesty hath a use to set at the cards with the said Davie, till one or two of the clock after midnight; and this is the entertainment I have had of you this long time.’ Her Majesty’s answer was, it was not gentlewomen’s duty to come to their husband’s chamber, but rather the husband to come to the wife’s chamber, if he had anything to do with her. The King answered, ‘how came ye to my chamber at the beginning, and ever, till within these few months that Davie fell in with familiarity with you? Or am I failed in any sort? Or what disdain have you at me? Or what offence have I made you that you should not use me at all times alike? Seeing that I am willing to do all things that becometh a good husband to do to his wife, for since you have chose me to be your husband, suppose I be of the baser degree, yet I am your head, and ye promised obedience at the day of our marriage, and that I should be equal with you, and participant in all things. I suppose you have used me otherwise by the persuasions of Davie.’ Her Majesty answered, and said, ‘that all the shame that was done to her, that my Lord, ye have the weight thereof; for the which I shall never be your wife, nor lie with you; nor shall never like well, till I gar you have as sore a heart as I have presently.’ Then the said Lord Ruthven made answer, and besought her Majesty to be of good comfort, and to treat herself and the King her husband, and to use the counsel of the nobility, and he was assured her government should be as well guided as ever it was in any King’s days. The said Lord being so feebled with his sickness, and wearied with his travel, that he desired her Majesty’s pardon to sit down upon a coffer, and called for a drink for God’s sake; so a French man brought him a cup of wine and after that he had drunken, the Queen’s Majesty began to rail against the said Lord: ‘Is this your sickness, Lord Ruthven?’ The said Lord answered, ‘God forbid that your Majesty had such a sickness; for I had rather give all the moveable goods that I have.’ Then said her Majesty, if she died, or her bairn or common-weal perished, she should leave the revenge thereof to her friends to revenge the same upon the Lord Ruthven and his posterity; for she had the King of Spain her great friend, the Emperor likewise, and the King of