edinburgh-1951/-03_037

Transcription

HISTORICAL MONUMENTS (SCOTLAND) COMMISSION
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Whatever may have been the relation of the places before, Edinburgh by a confirming charter in 1329 was granted the Port of Leith, and continued, through a frequently troubled connection, to enjoy controlling powers over that community for just over five hundred years.1 In the end Leith was included within the city boundaries. Near by King James IV in 1506 established a dock and shipbuilding yard at the "New Haven," whereupon five years later Edinburgh, in fear of rival to their port of Leith, purchased the site from the King with all its privileges. Canongate, the ancient burgh of regality, stood literally at the door of the city, but in 1636

[illustration]
Fig. 6. - Boundaries of the City of Edinburgh as established in 1933.

Edinburgh, as part of a financial "deal,"2 acquired the superiority, and rather more than two hundred years later its incorporation in the city followed. Broughton also was a regality appertaining to Holyrood3 and this, too, with its burgh was conveyed to Edinburgh by the financial arrangement of 1636. The name survives in streets of that quarter. To the south of the city was a settlement on lands that formed part of the extensive barony of Inverleith, but these were assigned to the city by a new proprietor in 1648, whereupon the King erected the community into the burgh of barony of Portsburgh.4 Wester Restalrig, of which Calton Hill was part, was sold to the city in 1724.5 The laying-out of the "New Town" beyond the North Loch, an undertaking which began in 1767, was a revolutionary action in the city's development. On all these and other constituent parts in the existing complex further information is provided is subsequent pages.

2. HISTORY

A. THE BURGH OF EDINBURGH

(i) To the fifteenth century-merchants and craftsmen. Lack of material makes it impossible to provide a detailed, consecutive account of the historical occupation of this site. The position held no attraction for the Roman military engineer. The Angles, whose departure in the 10th century has already been mentioned, like the Dark Age chieftains who preceded and the Scots who followed them, seem only to have occupied a stronghold on the Rock. John of Fordun, writing towards the end of the 14th century, records that Margaret, Queen and Saint, died in 1093 in the "Maidens Castle" (in castro puellarum),6 which we may take to be the primitive type of fortress on the Rock, since the mediaeval castle proper was not yet being built in Scotland. This does not make it an habitual royal residence, which rather was at Dunfermline.7

Of the existence of a burgh or town near the castle in the following century we learn only from incidental references in charters of David I-no remains of the town-houses of this early period, or indeed of any period before the third quarter of the sixteenth century, have survived to be included in the Inventory. Though Edinburgh is a royal burgh, no charter of foundation exists in its case any more than in those of the other royal burghs known to have been created by that King. Canongate and St. Andrews of that time were baronial erections for which there had to be a specific delegation of royal authority. For a royal burgh recognition was so far good enough, as indeed was possible also in England. In one of the earliest royal erections by charter, however, that of Dumbarton by King William in 1222, that burgh and its burgesses are granted all the liberties and customs enjoyed by the King's burgesses in Edinburgh. "Liberties" in this connection are franchises, that is privileges, and the "customs" (consuetudines) are the practice or law of a burgh, such as "watch and ward" (vigilia) and enclosure of one's property (claustura), from which King David
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1 See separate section on Leigh, p. 1v.
2 See p. living. 1634-1651, No. 2021. See here p. lix.
3 Reg. Mag. Sig., 1306-1424, No. 847.
4 Reg. Mag. Sig.,
5 O.E.C., xviii, p. 50.
6 Chronica, v, cap. xxi.
7 Ibid., cap. xv



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Transcriber's notes

The insert is an illustration of Edinburgh with a scale and N/S compass