History of Leith, Edinburgh

Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide.The movement traces its roots to John Wesley’s evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism.His younger brother Charles was instrumental in writing much of the hymnody of the Methodist Church.George Whitefield, another significant leader in the movement, was known for his unorthodox ministry of itinerant open-air preaching.The Methodist Church is known for its missionary work,and its establishment of hospitals, universities, orphanages, soup kitchens, and schools to follow Jesus’ command to spread the Good News and serve all people. for more click here

George Whitefield (December 16, 1714 (O.S.) – September 30, 1770), also known as George Whitfield, was an English Anglican priest who helped spread the Great Awakening in Britain, and especially in the British North American colonies. He was one of the founders of Methodism and of the evangelical movement generally.[1] He became perhaps the best-known preacher in Britain and America in the 18th century, and because he traveled through all of the American colonies and drew great crowds and media coverage, he was one of the most widely recognized public figures in colonial America. He is also known as the Great Awakener. for more click here

The ground occupied by the future theatre and Shakespeare Square is shown as an open park or irregular parallelogram closely bordered by trees, measuring about 350 feet each way, and lying between the back of the old Orphan Hospital and the village of Multrie’s Hill, where now the Register House stands.
It was in this park, known then as that of the Trinity Hospital, that the celebrated Whitefield used yearly to harangue a congregation of all creeds and classes in the open air, when visiting Edinburgh in the course of his evangelical tours. On his coming thither for the first time after the Act had passed for the extension of the royalty, great was his horror, surprise, and indignation, to find the green slope which he had deemed to be rendered almost sacred by his prelections, enclosed by fences and sheds, amid which a theatre was in the course of erection.
The ground was being ” appropriated to the service of Satan. The frantic astonishment of the Nixie who finds her shrine and fountain desolated in her absence, was nothing to that of Whitefield. He went raging about the spot, and contemplated the rising walls of the playhouse with a sort of grim despair. He is said to have considered the circumstance as a positive mark of the increasing wickedness of society, and to have termed it a plucking up of God’s standard, and a planting of the devil’s in its place.”
The edifice which he then saw in course of erection was destined, for ninety years, to be inseparably connected with the more recent rise of the drama in Scotland generally, in Edinburgh in
particular, and to be closely identified with all the artistic and scenic glories of the stage.

Source-Old and New Edinburgh

The Order of Preachers (Latin: Ordo Praedicatorum), after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III (1216–27) on 22 December 1216 in France. Membership in the Order includes friars,[1] nuns, congregations of active sisters, and lay persons affiliated with the order (formerly known as tertiaries, now Lay or Secular Dominicans). for more click here

A BROAD pend (Anglid archway\ leading through the successor to the tenement in which Lady Lovat dwelt, gave access to the Blackfriars Wynd, which, without doubt, was one of the largest, most important, and most ancient of the thoroughfares diverging from the High Street, and which of old was named the Preaching Friars’ Vennel, as it led to the Dominican monastery, or Black Friary, founded by Alexander II., in 1230, on the high ground beyond the Cowgate, near where the Old Infirmary stands. The king gave the friars—among whom he resided for some time—with many other
endowments, a grant of the whole ground now occupied by the old wynd and modern street, to erect houses, and for five centuries these edifices formed the dwelling-places of some of the most
aristocratic families in Scotland, and of many ecclesiastics of the highest rank. Many a fierce struggle between armed men has taken place here, among them the most important being that of ” Cleanse the Causeway,” when the victorious Douglases under the fiery Angus, swept the Hamiltons before them, and rushed in mad melee to assail the palace of the Archbishop of Glasgow at the Wynd foot, from whence he fled for shelter to the Dominican church, on the opposite slope. And here, in July, 1588, occurred the bloody brawl between the Earl of Bothwell and. Sir William Stewart of Monkton.
Between these two a quarrel had taken place in the king’s chamber ; the lie was given, and a somewhat ribald altercation followed, but nothing occurred for nearly three weeks after, till Sir William Stewart, when coming down the High Street with a party of his friends, met Bothwell, accompanied by the Master of Gray and others, going up.
A collision between two such .parties was but natural, and, in the spirit of the times, unavoidable. Sword and dagger were instantly resorted to, and in the general fight Sir William Stewart slew a friend of Bothwell’s, but in doing so lost his sword, and, being defenceless, was compelled to fly into Blackfriars Wynd. Thither the vengeful Bothwell pursued him, and, as he stood unarmed against a wall, “strake him in at the back and out at the belly, and killed him.”
For this Bothwell found it necessary to keep out of the way only for a few days; and such events so commonly occurred, that it is not curious to find the General Assembly, exactly a week after this combat, proceeding quietly with the usual work of choosing a Moderator, providing for ministers

source-Old and New Ministers

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 older 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.;”
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 James 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 thathe became melancholy, and he disinherited his heir by a will. On a day in the November of 1687 he was found drowned, it was 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 beinghastily interred, and that Lady Stanfield had a suit of grave-clothes all ready for him before his death, seemed to point to the latter; and two surgeons were sent from Edinburgh to examine the body and report upon it.
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 Edinburgh,
and Philip Stanfield, the disinherited son, lifted it for deposition in the coffin, when lo! on the side sustained by Philip an effusion of blood took place, and so Snple as to defile both his hands. ” Lord, have mercy on me !” he exclaimed, and let the body fall. He then rushed horror-stricken into the precentor’s desk, where he lay for some 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 secret murther,” says King James in his ‘ Deemonology’—” if the dead carkasse be at any time thereafter handled by the murtherar, it will gushe 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. Inconsequence 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 Leith and the city. After a few days the body was stolen from the gibbet, and found lying in a ditch among water. It was chained up again, but was a Second time stolen; and in the strangulation on the scaffold, and the being found in a ditch among water, the superstitious saw retributive justice for the murder of which he was assumed to be guilty. ” It will be acknowledged,”
says the author of the ” Domestic Annals,” ” that in the circumstances related there is not a particle of valid evidence against the young man.
The surgeons’ opinion as to the fact of strangulation is not entitled to much regard; but, granting its solidity, it does not prove the guilt of the accused.
The horror of the young man on seeing his father’s blood might be referred to painful recollections of that profligate conduct which he knew had distressed his parent, and brought his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave—especially when we reflect that Stanfield would himself be impressed with the superstitious feelings of the age, and might accept the haemorrhage as an accusation by heaven
on account of the concern his conduct had in shortening the life of his father. The whole case seems to be a lively illustration of the effect of superstitious feelings in blinding justice.”

source-Old and New Edinburgh

Marquess of Queensberry is a title in the peerage of Scotland. The title has been held since its creation in 1682 by a member of the Douglas family. The Marquesses also held the title of Duke of Queensberry from 1684 to 1810, when it was inherited by the Duke of Buccleuch. for more click here

Lord Polwarth, of Polwarth in the County of Berwick, is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created in 1690 for Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, 2nd Baronet, Lord Chancellor of Scotland from 1696 to 1702 (the baronetcy had been created in the Baronetage of Nova Scotia in 1637 for his father and namesake Patrick Hume). In 1697 he was further created Lord Polwarth, of Polwarth, Redbraes and Greenlaw, Viscount of Blasonberrie and Earl of Marchmont, also in the Peerage of Scotland. Upon the death of his grandson, the third Earl, the creations of 1697 became dormant (unclaimed). for more click here

On the 25th of March, 1707, the treaty of union was ratified by the Estates, and on the 22nd of April the ancient Parliament of Scotland adjourned, to assemble no more. On that occasion the Chancellor Seafield made use of a brutal jest,for which, says Sir Walter Scott, his countrymen should have destroyed him on the spot.
It is, of course, a matter of common history, that the legislative union between Scotland and England was carried by the grossest bribery and corruption; but the sums actually paid to members.-
who sat in that last Parliament are not perhaps so well known, and may be curious to the reader.
During some financial investigations which were in progress in 1711 Lockhart discovered and made public that the sum of,£20,540 173. yd. had been secretly distributed by Lord Godolphin, the Treasurer of England, among the baser members of the Scottish Parliament, for the purpose of inducing them to vote for the extinction of their country, and in his ” Memoirs of Scotland from the Accession of Queen Anne,” he gives us the following list of the receivers,and this list was confirmed on oath by David Earl of Glasgow, the Treasurer Deputy of Scotland.

To the Earl of Marchmont
Earl of Cromarty .
Lord Prestonhall .
Lord Ormiston, Lord Justice Clerk
Duke of Montrose .
Duke of Athole
Earl of Balcarris
Earl of Dunmore .
Lord Anstruther
Stewart of Castle Stewart
Earl of Eglinton
Lord Fraser .
Lord Cessnock (Afterwards Polworth)
Mr. John Campbell
Earl of Forfar
Sir Kenneth Mackenzie .
Earl of Glencairn .
Earl of Kintore
Earl of Findlater .
John Muir, Provost of Ayr
Lord Forbes . . . ^
Earl of Seafield (afterwaras Findlater)
. . . .
Marquis of Tweeddale .
Duke of Roxburghe
Lord Elibank
Lord Banff . . . .
Major Cunninghame of Eckatt
Bearer of the Treaty of Union
Sir William Sharp.
Coultrain, Provost of Wigton .
Mr. Alexander Wedderburn .
High Commissioner (Queensberry)

Source-Old and New Edinburgh

The title of Lord Holyroodhouse was a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created on 20 December 1607 for John Bothwell. for more click here