History of Leith, Edinburgh

Admitted as an advocate in 1605, he made his reputation by defence of John Forbes (1568?-1634), and other ministers at Linlithgow in 1606. He prepared the deed revoking James VI’s grants of church property in 1625. He was appointed Lord Advocate in 1626, and held the office until 1641. He was created a Baronet of Nova Scotia in 1628. for more click here

Under Charles I of England, the Puritans became a political force as well as a religious tendency in the country. Opponents of the royal prerogative became allies of Puritan reformers, who saw the Church of England moving in a direction opposite to what they wanted, and objected to increased Roman Catholic influence both at Court and (as they saw it) within the Church. for more click here

Yersinia pestis (formerly Pasteurella pestis) is a Gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium belonging to the family Enterobacteriaceae. It is a facultative anaerobe that can infect humans and other animals. for more click here

Bubonic plague is the best known manifestation of the Plague, a zoonotic disease, circulating mainly among small animals and their fleas, and caused by the Gram-negative bacterium Yersinia pestis (formerly known as Pasteurella pestis). It belongs to the family Enterobacteriaceae. for more click here

JUST as a wave of pestilence seemed to follow in the wake of the Great War with Germany, so in those evil days of civil war in England between Cavaliers and Roundheads, and of the fierce and savage campaign of Montrose in Scotland, Leith and Edinburgh were desolated with the last and most terrible outbreak of the plague they were ever to know. Sir Thomas Hope, the great Puritan lawyer of Charles I.’s time, as he sat in his stately old mansion, now displaced by the Edinburgh Public Library, records in his diary under May 12, 1645, ” A dauchter of Sir William Gray’s dcpartit of the plaig, which put us all in greit fear.” The dread scourge broke out in Leith about the same time, for, dated 3rd April, is the following ominous entry in the South Leith Church Records : “To furnish provisions for ye woman at ye Yarde heads who is steekit up (that is, shut up in her house) for feare of ye plague.”
These cases were but the heralds of a fast approaching scourge. Soon death and desolation reigned in every street, and to add to the horror of the situation the pestilence was accompanied by famine, for the harvest of the previous year had been a failure. In old-time Scotland plague, or the pest as it was usual to call it then, frequently followed

source-The Story of Leith

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(c) John Arthur

(c) John Arthur

(c) John Arthur