From 1548 to 1560, the Port of Leith was occupied by a French garrison in support of Queen Regent, Mary of Guise. They fortified that town in this time and made themselves generally unpopular with the locals. Such was the mutual bad feeling that in 1555 Mary of Guise’ Parliament made it an offence to speak ill of Frenchmen. I am not sure if it has been repealed yet…

One of the reasons for the French being so unpopular was their constant requisitioning of ships in a town that relied on the sea for its prosperity. In 1550, the French governor employed two pynours (porters) to remove all the rudders of the ships of Leith and to impound them in a locked storehouse to prevent ships slipping away whenever the French wanted to commandeer them. Twelve days later, all Scottish vessels from Kinghorn to Crail, were ordered by the French to leave for Leith within 3 hours or be forfeited and their masters put to death.

An English general, Randolph, noted in 1560 that “in no other country were ever seen so many particular quarrels, which daily cause many to keep off who mortally hate the French“. Randolph could not understand how the Scots resented the French occupiers so much but would not fight for the English against them. He had money to finance 2-3,000 Scots troops to eject the French but could not get them “for love nor money“. The English ended up assaulting Leith under an incompetent commander, with untrained recruits and ladders that were too short to scale the walls. The attack was repulsed by the stretched, starving but competent and well entrenched French garrison. Further bloodshed was spared when Mary of Guise died shortly thereafter and a short peace was agreed, allowing the French to leave.

Leith would again be occupied less than 100 years later after the calamitous defeat at the hands of Oliver Cromwell of the Scottish Covenanter government at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650. Relations between occupier and occupied this time were less strained; although English rule was firm, there appeared to be more mutual tolerance on both sides, probably both were just exhausted from nearly 12 years of bloody warfare and Leith had been shattered by a plague in 1645 that killed nearly half its population.

Cromwell entered Edinburgh on Saturday 7th December, just days after victory at Dunbar. Although the remnants of the Scottish army fought on, it had abandoned the city to wage a protracted war of retreat. The occupation was initially marked by restraint on the part of the occupiers and under Cromwell’s direct orders on 27th December three of his men were publicly flogged through the town by the “Provest marschellis men” for the offence of plundering houses without orders to do so. Another was tied to a horse with a pint jug tied around his neck, his hands bound and muskets tied to his feet, and ridden around the town for 2 hours for the offence of drunkenness. In May 1652, an English officer had his ear nailed to the public gallows and thereafter cut off for toasting the King’s health.

Leith, which had no civilian administration of its own beyond that of Edinburgh was ruled directly by the occupiers, who held courts headed by English officers “without partiality or favour“. In November 1651 they hung one of their own troopers at the Market Cross “a gallant, stout fellow” for robbing a butcher. A soldier found drunk and swearing in Leith was bound, hit repeatedly in the mouth and tied to a pillar with “a paper bound to his breast” specifying his crimes. Relations in Leith with the English seemed to be downright cordial at times, perhaps because they were pleased to be relieved of the constant interference from Edinburgh. Things became too cordial however as in October 1651 English soldiers had to be forbidden from marrying Leith women without the written permission of their Major. In February 1652 this prohibition was extended to the keeping of female servants

In Edinburgh, although the town had been easily taken, the Castle garrison had held out and was being besieged by Cromwell’s New Model Army. Anyone found treating with the garrison was dealt with severely. A gardener at the West Kirk (St. Cuthbert’s parish church) was accused of giving intelligence to the Castle. He was taken to the city guardhouse and hung from his thumbs with lit slow matches (the sort used in matchlock firearms) between his fingers until they were “burnt to the bone”.

In March 1651 Cromwell’s soldiers in Edinburgh mutinied due to the lack of provisions and pay; what had been sent to them had been turned back in the ships carrying it by unfavourable weather. They put their own commanders in jail and “ran through the markets of Edinburgh, plundering and robbing the people of the town, so that few would go out on the streets“.

In December, Lambert ordered citizens in both Edinburgh and Leith to hang out lanterns and place candles in their windows or doors from 6PM to 9PM on account of the disorder being committed by the soldiers. This was observed, but cost the inhabitants dearly as candles were expensive. Anybody found not complying was to be fined 4 shillings sterling, with the master or mistress of the house being thrown in the city guardhouse until it was paid. He also set about the perhaps impossible task of the cleaning up of Auld Reekie. Orders were given on the 24th December that the streets, closes and wynds in Edinburgh were be cleansed within 13 days and “no filth or water should be thrown forth from their windows upon pain of paying immediately 4 shillings sterling“. The proceeds of such fines were to be split equally between the informant and the poor of the town. Clearly it did not have a long lasting effect as 3 years later, the city was ordered to procure carts and horses for the carrying away of the filth.

On December 25th the English authorities in Leith ordered that Christmas should be banned. The point being made here was probably moot however given it was not something that would have been openly observed or celebrated in Presbyterian Scotland. Indeed the Kirk had banned the celebration in 1640, however by 1651 it commanded nothing like its former authority in Leith, having been evicted from its Church and relieved of its civic duties by the occupiers.

On February 7th 1652, under orders of the Commissioners of the English Parliament who were at that time resident in Dalkeith, the symbols of the Stuart Kings’ arms, crowns and royal unicorns of the city were taken down wherever they were to be found. They were stripped from the King’s pew at St. Giles’ Kirk, from the Mercat cross, the Netherbow Port, Parliament House, Edinburgh Castle and the palace of Holyroodhouse. They were then taken to the gallows and publicly hung.

In May 1654 General Monck, who had been Cromwell’s military commander in Scotland until 1652, came to Edinburgh to proclaim the union of England and Scotland as the Commonwealth. He was received by the Lord Provost and Bailies of the Town Council in their finery.; perhaps they were mindful of the rape and pillage of Dundee committed by Monck’s men back in 1651 and set out to impress the General lest they incur his wrath. They conveyed him to a “sumptuous dinner and feast, prepared by the Town of Edinburgh for him and his special officers. This feast was six days in preparing, and the bailies of Edinburgh did stand and serve the whole time of that dinner“. They also laid on a “great preparation” of fireworks which were set off from the Mercat Cross between 9PM and midnight, “to the admiration of many people“.

Cromwell also left it to Monck to resolve the interminable squabbles between the City of Edinburgh and Port of Leith. Leith wanted freedom to trade without interference from its neighbour, Edinburgh wanted to assert its historic rights to her port. An English merchant in Leith at the time said that the town had been “under the greatest slavery that I ever knew” and should subject to under Edinburgh no more than “Westminster to London.” As part of his overall strategy to pacify and control Scotland, Monck proposed enclosing Leith in fortifications as a garrison town – probably reconstructing the 1560 walls and bastions. The prospect of this terrified Edinburgh, as it would make it substantially easier for Leith to act independently. Edinburgh shrewdly counter-offered that it would pay £5,000 instead for a standalone Citadel outside of Leith – or it may be that the it was Monck being shrewd and he had played Edinburgh off against Leith to get them to finance his scheme. In the end the £5,000 citadel apparently cost many times that to build. The city would later buy it back for a further £5,000 from Charles II, so ended up paying for it twice. Although it was well engineered it was soon abandoned as a defensive fortification; the seaward walls and bastions had been impossible to protect from erosion by the sea and had collapsed within 30 years.

By May 1660, the Commonwealth was over (assisted in no small part by Monck) and the Houses of Parliament had proclaimed Charles II to be King. Orders were sent to the Governor of Edinburgh castle to fire 3 volleys from the guns, one for each of the Three Kingdoms. The chief gunner at the Castle gave the orders to his men but one refused saying that “The devil [would] blow him in the air that loosed a cannon for that purpose” and “if he loosed any cannon that day sum man should repent it“. The complainant was transferred to a gun overlooking the West Kirk. The first volley was duly fired and when this man went to reload his weapon, he recharged it with powder only for it to spontaneously discharge while he was doing so, there being a smouldering ember in the barrel. He was blown clean over the castle walls and off the Castle Rock itself, falling over 250 feet to his death. He was buried near where he landed in the West Kirk.

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