Patrician Homes

In the interval, the Cowgate has experienced many changes. In the course of time it became the residence of nobles and prelates, or, as Alesse says, the "patricians and Senators" of the Scottish Capital.

Here, in 1559, was established the Scottish Mint, or "Cunzie House," at the foot of South Gray's Close; near by, at the corner of Blackfriars' Wynd, was the house of Archbishop Beaton of Glasgow, and, it is said, of Cardinal Beaton of St. Andrews; and on the opposite side of the Cowgate, near the High School Yards, frequented by Sir Walter Scott, was the palace of the Bishops of Dunkeld, in which Gavin Douglas may have written part of his translation of the Aeneid.

To the west, the Horse Wynd and the College Wynd led from it to the site of our "Tounis College," and to the church of St.Mary's-in-the-Fields, in the precincts of which was enacted the Darnley tragedy.

In the College Wynd, Scott was born; in the Horse Wynd, Burns read his poems to Jane, Duchess of Gordon.

In a "land" situated where the Cowgate opens into the Grassmarket, the father and mother of Lord Brougham - one of three Lord Chancellors whose early life is associated with the purlieus of this now humble thoroughfare - first took up house in Edinburgh, and Henry Mackenzie, the "Man of Feeling," was born in the tributary Candlemaker Row.

The Cowgate was for centuries an artery of traffic, as well as a resort of fashion. At the Cowgatehead, it debouches, as has been seen, into the famous and ancient Grassmarket, once the scene of pageants and executions, where travellers from the west, like Wordsworth, put up on coming within city bounds, but now also gone into comparative retirement, since the Corn and Cattle Markets have been removed to Slateford.

The "gait of the cows must have run close under the Castle Rock, on the line of the present King's stables Road - a name reminiscent of the jousts held here in the days of chivalry; but the main stream of trade and of state entries, like that of Mary Queen of Scots, passed through the West Port, from the little burgh of Wester Portsburgh, immediately without the Town Wall.

The cowgate has a very eventful history. In the Grassmarket and in the Cowgate when Captain Jock Porteous was hanged from a dyer's pole, not far from the Cowgatehead, and when Reuben Butler, escaping from the crowd, slipped out through the Cowgate Port, into the open spaces around Holyrood.

At this east end, also, were many arrivals and meetings, for "Rag Fair" in St. Mary's Wynd, and for hostelries such as the "Black Bull" or the "White Horse," where Johnson was set down on his way to the Hebrides.

Apart from a few armorial and other relics, all that is left to represent the former state and consequence of the Cowgate are the Magdalen Chapel, whose spire rises out of the depths to a level little above that of George IV. Bridge, and the Tailors' Hall, long converted to the "base uses " of a brewery.

The former, founded at the beginning of the sixteenth century by "Janet Rynd, spous of umquhil Micel Makquhen, burgess," has heard the preaching of John Craig, and the debates of General Assemblies. From a Hammerman's Hall it has become a Medical Mission, and it preserves almost "the last piece of ancient stained glass in Scotland."

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