The Canongate had no walls for defence
Unlike Edinburgh, the Canongate had no walls for defence—its gates and enclosures being for civic purposes only. If it relied on the sanctity of its monastic superiors as a protection, it did so in
vain, when, in 1380, Richard II. of England gave it to the flames, and the Earl of Hertford in 1544;. and in the civil wars during the time of Charles I.. the Journal of Antiquities tells us that “the Canongate suffered severely from the barbarity of the English—so much so that scarcely a house was left standing.”
source-Old and New Edinburgh
