History of Leith, Edinburgh

House of Guise: French ducal family, primarily responsible for the French Wars of Religion.Founded as a branch of the House of Lorraine by Claude de Lorraine, first Duke of Guise, 1496-1563, whom King François I made a Duke. Claude’s daughter, Mary of Guise (1515-1560), married King James V of Scotland and was mother of Mary Queen of Scots. (more…)

Although those who had signed Charles I’s death warrant were punished (nine regicides were put to death, and Cromwell’s body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey and buried in a common pit), Charles pursued a policy of political tolerance and power-sharing. In April 1660, fresh elections had been held and a Convention met with the House of Lords. Parliament invited Charles to return, and he arrived at Dover on 25 May. (more…)

Charles I was born in 1600, the second son of James I and Anne of Denmark. After several unsuccessful attempts at arranging a marriage, Charles married the 15 year-old daughter of France’s King Henry IV, Henrietta Maria. Three years of coldness and indifference ensued, but the pair finally became devoted to each other, producing four sons (Charles [who died as a teenager], Charles [who became Charles II], James and Henry) and five daughters (Mary, Elizabeth, Anne, Catherine and Henrietta Anne). Charles I was executed for treason in 1649. (more…)

1831-1860

Opening

This was Edinburgh’s first railway. It ran from Edinburgh St Leonard’s station in Edinburgh to Dalkeith. St Leonard’s station was beneath the slopes of Arthur’s Seat in Holyrood Park. (more…)

The Scottish Crown has a long and complex history. From a number of local rulers governing separate territories and peoples, a single king emerged by the beginning of the twelfth century to govern most of what is today’s Scotland. The thirteenth century was a time of instability for the Scottish Crown in the face of internal fighting and the Wars of Independence with England. (more…)

The best way to discover the practical fruits of a system of religion is to examine a people or a country in which for generations that system has held undisputed sway. In making such a test of Roman Catholicism we turn to some country like Spain, Italy, Colombia, or Mexico. (more…)

The Knights Templars were the earliest founders of the military orders, and are the type on which the others are modelled. They are marked in history (1) by their humble beginning, (2) by their marvellous growth, and (3) by their tragic end.

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This is a woodcut from the pamphlet Newes from Scotland, about the North Berwick witch-hunts of 1590-1. The author was probably James Carmichael, minister of Haddington, who helped to interrogate the North Berwick witches and who advised King James on the writing of his book Daemonologie. The pamphlet was published in London in 1591, and contains virtually the only contemporary illustrations of Scottish witchcraft.

The woodcut illustrates various scenes relating to the pamphlet.

Centre and left: a group of female witches listen to the Devil preaching a sermon in North Berwick church at Hallowe’en 1590, with John Fian, schoolmaster of Haddington, acting as their clerk.
Top left: a ship is sunk by witchcraft. The witches were accused of raising the storms that troubled the voyage of James’s bride, Anne of Denmark, to Scotland, though in fact none of her ships were sunk. The pamphlet describes the sinking of a ferryboat in the Forth, and elsewhere in the trials some of the witches were accused of having sunk a ship, the Grace of God, at North Berwick.
Top right: witches stirring a cauldron—a stock image rather than a scene directly from the pamphlet.
Right and bottom right: a pedlar who discovers witches in Tranent is magically transported to a merchant’s wine-cellar in Bordeaux. This story is told in the preface to the pamphlet only to be described as ‘most false’, but this did not discourage the illustrator.
The best edition of the pamphlet Newes from Scotland is in Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts (eds.), Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland: James’s Demonology and the North Berwick Witches (2000). For other works see Further Reading on Scottish Witchcraft.

For more information go to the link on the rhs

Raphael Hollinshead was one of the erliest writers in the Siege of leith being included in his Chronicles of Englnd, Scotland and Ireland and first published in London in 1570 in two volumes and then in 1587 in three volumes.

The introduction to an early re publication of Hollinsheads work on the “History of Scot;land”

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If you know the date of Baptism, Marriage or Death of your ancestor and which church they attended then a good source of information is the local Parish Magazine. On the page above is the mention of a death in battle from the First World War and the death of Lord Kitchener when HMS Hampshire was sunk. This page dates from July 1916 and comes from St Thomas Leith