EDINBURGH PAPERS
BY
ROBERT CHAMBERS, F.R.S.E.,
F.S.A.Sc., F.G.S., F.L.S., &c.
AUTHOR OF ‘TRADITIONS OF EDINBURGH.’
EDINBURGH MERCHANTS
AND
MERCHANDISE IN OLD TIMES
[Illustration]
WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS,
LONDON AND EDINBURGH.
1859.
EDINBURGH
MERCHANTS AND MERCHANDISE
IN OLD TIMES.
TO THE
MERCHANT COMPANY OF EDINBURGH,
THIS LECTURE, DELIVERED AT THEIR REQUEST,
FEBRUARY 14, 1859,
IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.
EDINBURGH MERCHANTS AND MERCHANDISE IN OLD TIMES.
I do not propose, on this occasion, to carry your minds back to a very
remote period, for, truth to tell, Scotland was not distinguished for
commerce at an early date. You will not be surprised if I briefly
remark that we hear nothing of trade in Leith harbour till the reign
of Bruce, and have reason to believe that it hardly had an existence
for a century later. Dr Nicolas West, an emissary of Henry VIII.,
visited Scotland in 1513, just before the battle of Flodden, and he
tells us that he then found at Leith only nine or ten small topmen,
or ships with rigging, which, from his remarks, we may infer to have
all been under sixty tons burden. There was then but a meagre traffic
carried on with the Low Countries, France, and Spain—wool, skins, and
salmon carried out; and wine, silks, cloth, and miscellaneous articles
imported: matters altogether so insignificant, that there are but a few
scattered references to them in the acts of the national parliament.
One may have some idea of the pettiness of any external trade carried
on by Edinburgh in the early part of the sixteenth century, from what
we know of the condition of Leith at that time. It was but a village,
without quay or pier, and with no approach to the harbour except by
an alley—the still existing Burgess Close, which in some parts is not
above four feet wide. We must imagine any merchandise then brought to
Leith as carried in vessels of the size of small yachts, and borne off
to the Edinburgh warehouses slung on horseback, through the narrow
defiles of the Burgess Close.
It chances that we possess, in our General Register House, a very
distinct memorial of the traffic carried on between Scotland and the
Netherlands at the close of the fifteenth century. It consists in the
ledger of Andrew Halyburton, a Scottish merchant conducting commission
business for his countrymen at Middleburg, and conservator of the
Scotch privileges there. It extends from the year 1493 to 1505. Andrew
acted as agent for a number of eminent persons, churchmen as well as
laymen, besides merchants, receiving and selling for a commission
the raw products of the country, chiefly those just named—wool,
hides, and salmon—and sending home in return nearly every kind of
manufactured article which we could suppose to have then been in
use. It appears that even salt was then imported. Wheel-barrows were
sent from Flanders to assist in building King’s College, Aberdeen.
There were cloths of silk, linen, and woollen; fruits, spiceries, and
drugs; plate and jewellery; four kinds of wine—claret, Gascony claret,
Rhenish, and Malvoisie. Paper is often named; and there is mention of
pestles and mortars, basins of brass, chamber-mats, beds of arras,
feather-beds, down-pillows, vermilion, red and white lead, and pins.
John of Pennycuik imports the image of Thomas-à-Becket, bought from
a painter at Antwerp. More than one tombstone is shipped to a Scotch
order from Middleburg. Once there is a ‘kist of buikis’ for a physician
at Aberdeen. The account between Halyburton and the Abbot of Holyrood
may be cited as an example of its class in this curious tome. For ‘my
lord,’ as Halyburton calls him, he sells the wool of the sheep which
ranged the Abbey’s pastures in Tweeddale, and the skins and hides of
the sheep and cattle which were slaughtered for the table at Holyrood.
He buys in return claret and other wines, apples, olives, oranges,
figs, raisins, almonds, rice, loaf-sugar, ginger, mace, pepper,
saffron, and large quantities of apothecaries’ wares. Amongst other
customers, we find Walter Chapman, the first printer in Scotland,
and John Smollett, the ancestor of the great novelist of the last
century. Halyburton appears to have often visited Edinburgh, settling
old accounts, and arranging new ventures. Each account has the name of
‘JHESUS’ piously superscribed; and where the customer was a trader,
the merchant’s _mark_, which was cut upon his boxes or inscribed upon
his bales, is copied into the ledger. The volume is surprisingly like
a ledger of the present day, even in the particular of binding; but it
gives, on the whole, the idea of a poor and narrow range of traffic—the
traffic of a rude country, producing only raw articles, and few of
them, and dependent for all above the simplest which it consumed, upon
foreign states.[1]
About the time referred to in this volume, the central line of street
between the West Bow and Nether Bow was the chief place of merchandise
in Edinburgh, the Cowgate and Canongate being more specially the
residence of the nobility, gentry, and great ecclesiastics. There
were two chief classes of goods dealt in, each mainly confined to a
particular section of the street. What was called _Inland Merchandise_,
or _Inland’sh Goods_—namely, yarn, stockings, coarse cloth, and other
such articles made at home—were, by a charter of 1477, ordained to be
sold in the upper part of the street, then without a special name,
but which is subsequently referred to as the _Land-market_—apparently
an abbreviation of _Inland Market_, from the description of goods
sold in it. Down to recent times, such goods continued to be chiefly
sold there, by people occupying _laigh shops_, and on a certain day
exposing their wares by ancient privilege on the open street. The
remainder of the High Street was chiefly devoted to a superior class
of traders, calling themselves _Merchants_, dealers in imported wares
of various kinds, and each occupying a booth or shop, besides whatever
other warehouses in more retired situations. Wholesale and retail
dealers alike passed under this name, as is still, indeed, the case to
a considerable extent in Scotland, where it has always been remarked
that there was a peculiar liberality or courtesy in the distribution of
names and titles. We frequently hear in the journalists and chroniclers
of the old time, of the _Merchants Buithes_, or shops. The only other
kind of shops in those days was the kind called _krames_, generally
very small, made out of mere angles of property, or insinuated between
the buttresses of St Giles’s Kirk, and chiefly devoted to the sale of
toys and other petty articles. We often hear of _krames_, of _kramers_
(that is, krame-keepers), and _kramery_ (that is, small wares sold
in krames) in the familiar histories of that age, and in old titles.
Dunbar, the early Scottish poet, describes these shops very aptly as
‘Hampered in ane honey-kaim,’
close to St Giles’s Church. Fixing our attention, meanwhile, on the
class of traders called merchants, we find that their booths were in
general small places, situated behind the open arcade which then ran
along the greater part of the High Street on both sides. The whole
front of one of these booths, consisting of folding boards, was opened
by day—one board being drawn up, another let down, one or more folded
back sideways, so as to display the interior to the passer-by. On a
bench or counter within the front-wall, goods were laid out to attract
attention; in some instances, there were also stands set out for the
display of wares under the shelter of the arcade in front. As the
merchant sat in his open booth, there were sights presented to him
different from what he would now see: amongst others, rival nobles
meeting on the causey, with their respective bands of armed followers,
and fighting out their quarrels with sword and buckler, and the more
deadly hagbut, to quell which our traders were enjoined by civic
statute of 1529, to keep each in his booth ‘ane axe, or twa, or three,
after as they have servants,’ and to be ready to use them. If we are
to believe Dunbar, he saw ‘the gait’ filthy, and full of clamorous
beggars, milk, shell-fish, and puddings sold at the Cross and the Tron,
and vile crafts everywhere more prominent than his own respectable
merchandise. In the town of Berne, in Switzerland, you can see
precisely the same structural arrangements still existing along both
sides of the principal street, which further reminds one of ancient
Edinburgh by its name of _Kramgasse_.
At length, in the progress of improvement, there were some shops
formed in a certain part of the High Street, having those open arcaded
spaces in front closed up, leaving only a window and a door; and
these places of business, by way of distinction, acquired the name of
_luckenbooths_—that is, closed booths, a term, as you are all aware,
which still gives a name to the portion of street referred to. Berne
is now in exactly the same circumstances in this respect as Edinburgh
was two hundred years ago, for there also we find a few shops of more
ambitious character than their neighbours, with the fronts built up. It
is very interesting thus to trace in continental towns of the present
day a reflex of things long ago prevalent in our own city. I was
amused, at Nuremberg, to find the Frauenkirke barnacled all round with
little shops or _krames_, as I remember St Giles’s to have been, each
petty shop, moreover, having its miniature house above, in one or more
stories, affording a stifling accommodation to the traders, as was the
case with several of the krame-shops of the old Parliament Close.
In Germany and Scandinavia, we still find traders who, while conducting
a considerable wholesale business, and even a little banking, have
also retail shops, generally placed towards the public street, and
conducted by subalterns. I found such men in Iceland attending the
parties given in the governor’s house, and evidently enjoying the
local consideration due to their wealth and education. In Edinburgh,
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were traffickers
of this kind, some planted in the great thoroughfares, and some
in more retired situations. They were, in some instances, men with
pretensions to pedigree—men who took a prominent part in public
affairs, entertained princes and sovereigns, founded families, and
so forth. Thus, a Hamilton of the house of Innerwick, was what was
called a _merchant_ in the West Bow; he acquired lands—he fell as a
gallant gentleman in Pinkie field; his eldest son was the ancestor of
the Earls of Haddington; his second son, a secular priest, was rector
of the University of Paris, and one of the council of the League who
offered the French crown to the king of Spain in 1591. Contemporary
with him, occupying a shop in the middle row of buildings alongside
of St Giles’s Church, was a similar merchant, named Edward Hope; his
father is believed to have been a Frenchman who came to Scotland in the
train of the Princess Magdalen, daughter of Francis I., when she was
wedded to James V. in 1537. While externally but a shopkeeper in the
Luckenbooths, there can be no doubt that Edward Hope carried on foreign
trade upon a considerable scale, and was a man of large means; of which
last fact, his extensive mansion in Tod’s Close, Castlehill, stood a
few years ago as good evidence. This worthy merchant was commissioner
for Edinburgh in the parliament which settled the Reformation, and he
afterwards, for Protestantism’s sake, bore the brunt of the Lady Mary’s
gentle wrath. Through his elder son he was the ancestor of all the
Hopes who have since stood so conspicuous in rank, in wealth, and in
public service in Scotland; while from his younger son are descended
the famous mercantile family of the Hopes of Amsterdam. In the latter
part of the sixteenth century—that is, in the reigns of Mary and James
VI.—notwithstanding the constant civil broils, and the false maxims by
which commerce was to appearance protected or favoured, but in reality
depressed—there appear to have been some considerable merchants in
Edinburgh, and merchants really entitled to the name, being conductors
of foreign traffic and dealers in wholesale. They generally had their
establishments in some comparatively retired situation, in a close or
_wynd_, near the centre of the city. In Riddell’s Close, Lawnmarket,
there still exist the mansion and business premises of one of these
considerable merchants, namely, Bailie John Macmoran. We are told by
the church historian, Calderwood, that he was the greatest merchant
of his day in Edinburgh, but disliked by the clergy, because of his
carrying victual to Spain, thus endangering the souls of the Scottish
mariners by contact with popery. His house is a good and not inelegant
building forming a court, the entrance to which still exhibits the
hooks for the massive gates by which it could be closed up at night
and in times of danger. A stone projection over a window indicates
an arrangement for pulleying up goods into an upper chamber. A large
room or hall in which the queen’s brother, the Duke of Holstein, was
entertained ‘with great solemnity and merriness’ in 1597, shews the
wealthy state in which this merchant lived. John, who had been a
servitor or dependent of the Regent Morton, whose treasures he assisted
to conceal, was cut off in the middle of his prosperous career, by a
pistol bullet fired at him by a High School boy, while he was exerting
his authority as a magistrate in suppressing a barring-out.
Near to Macmoran’s house, in what was latterly called the Old
Bank Close, there stood till our own time the not less handsome
establishment of a merchant named Robert Gourlay, bearing the date
1569. This was a large and, in some respects, elegant building, such
as could not be constructed in our day for less than two thousand five
hundred pounds. It had a ground-floor directly accessible from the
close, and which we may presume to have been a store for unbroken bales
and packages; then a first floor, which was probably the warehouse for
wholesale and retail traffic—this had a stair-entrance for itself;
next there was a second floor, accessible by its own stair likewise,
and from which there was an inner stair enclosed in a hanging turret,
giving access to two upper floors; these last three floors constituting
the accommodation of the merchant’s family. We find that Gourlay, who
had originally been a dependent of the Duke of Chastelherault, carried
on a large business in the exporting of corn, doubtless importing in
return the many various articles which he distributed from his first
floor. It is to be feared that he and some of his contemporaries
occasionally were indebted for large profits to favour purchased from
the bad and ignorant governments of their day. At least, we find that
Robert, in 1574, bought a licence from the Regent Morton, enabling
him to export grain, while, owing to a dearth, this power was denied
to all others. The kirk, which he served as an elder, challenged him
for this inhumane traffic, and he for some time stood out under the
Regent’s protection, but was at last obliged to succumb, and make
public confession of his offence, standing in the _marriage-place_
in St Giles’s, clad in a gown made on purpose, and which he had to
bestow thereafter on the poor. Robert lived to accommodate his friend
the Regent, in his house, for two or three days, when the latter was
awaiting the stroke of the Maiden under a hired guard; and a few years
later, when King James deemed Holyrood an unsafe residence, by reason
that the Earl of Bothwell was scouring about in quest of him, he had
up-putting for several days in the house of the rich merchant, Robert
Gourlay.
I may enumerate a few other considerable merchants of this period,
all of whom had good houses in the city, where they dwelt as well
as carried on business. In what was latterly called Brodie’s Close,
between Macmoran’s and Gourlay’s houses, lived William Little of
Over-Libberton, at one time provost, and the ancestor of the family now
represented by Mr Little Gilmour of the Inch. It connects merchandise
in an interesting manner with professional and literary things, that
Clement, the brother of William, was the commissary of Edinburgh, and
one of the greatest benefactors to the infant university. Provost
Little’s house, dated 1570, was taken down so lately as 1836, having
continued all the time an entailed property of the family. The
_North British Advertiser_ printing-office now stands on its site.
Nicol Udwart, an active and wealthy merchant, had a stately house
surrounding a square court in Niddry’s Wynd; and there King James was
living in February 1591, when the Bonny Earl of Moray was slaughtered
at Dunnibrissle. A neighbour of Udwart, styled Alexander Clark of
Balbirnie, also a wealthy merchant, and at one time provost of the
city, gave accommodation at the same time to the Chancellor Maitland.
On another occasion, a little earlier, we hear of King James living
with William Fowler, who was also a merchant in Edinburgh. The king, it
is stated, went out to hunt, promising to return to dinner in Fowler’s
house at _one o’clock_. Fowler lived in the Anchor Close, and his
house, in which, as we see, he had entertained royalty, was taken down
only three months ago by the Railway Access Company. It stood, indeed,
in a narrow alley; but it had the advantage of a free aspect over the
country to the north of the city. In the index to the state-papers
connected with Scotland, lately published by Mr Thorpe, William Fowler
figures as a partisan of the English protestant interest, continually
engaged in giving information to Sir Francis Walsingham.
The trades of Edinburgh in those days were generally conducted by men
of small account; but there was one art carried on upon a scale which
raised its practitioners to the grade of merchants. This was the craft
of the goldsmiths. The habits of the upper classes, partaking so much
of an ill-supported ostentation, made this comparatively a great trade.
We have all heard much of George Heriot, who was made goldsmith to the
queen in 1597, and who, afterwards transplanting himself to London,
there completed the fortune which became the means of founding his
celebrated hospital. But there was a contemporary Edinburgh goldsmith
of even greater importance, in the person of Thomas Foulis, who seems
to have been to King James what the Bank of England was to William
Pitt two hundred years later. It was a loan from Thomas which enabled
the king to march against the rebellious Catholic lords at Aberdeen
in 1593. He stood creditor to the king, in the ensuing year, for the
sum of £14,598 Scots, and for this James lodged with him two gold
drinking-cups, amounting in all to the weight of fifteen pounds five
ounces. In May 1601, the royal debt to Thomas amounted to the enormous
sum of £180,000 Scots, and a parliamentary arrangement had to be made
for its payment. One of the benefits which Thomas Foulis derived from
being the king’s creditor to so large an amount, was a grant of the
lead-mines of Lanarkshire, which he worked with good result, and handed
ultimately to his granddaughter, who married James Hope, the ancestor
of the noble family of Hopetoun. Thus, it will be observed, what
constituted, and yet in part constitutes, the fortune of the Earls of
Hopetoun, came originally from one of our Parliament Close goldsmiths.
The relation of the last resident king of Scots to his mercantile
subjects in Edinburgh was generally a good-humoured one; but there was
one occasion when serious strife stood between them, though for a short
time only. Under some misapprehension about his intentions regarding
the clergy, a mob beset his majesty for an hour or two in the place of
judgment in the Tolbooth. He was, or affected to be, very wroth with
the people of Edinburgh, and returning on Hogmanay day, a fortnight
after the riot, he ordered that the ports and streets should be kept
for his protection by certain Border chiefs on whom he could depend.
A rumour arose that _Kinmont Willie_ and other border thieves were
come to _spulyie_ the town, and immediately there was such a scene as
no Edinburgh merchant then living could ever forget. The principal
men took the goods out of their booths, and transported them to the
strongest house in the town—possibly Macmoran’s—posting themselves and
servants there also, all fully armed, in apprehension of an immediate
attack. In like manner, groups of the craftsmen and commoner sort of
people gathered into strong houses, with their best goods, and with
arms in their hands to defend their property to the last extremity.
An Edinburgh citizen, John Birrel, chronicles this affair, with the
remark—‘Judge, gentle reader, gif this be play.’ After all, the guard
of borderers did our merchants and craftsmen no harm; but when one
reads of such an alarm, it becomes easy to understand how Macmoran
and Gourlay had such strong houses for conducting their business, and
how all the closes in the High Street should have had gates at top and
bottom, as still appears in many cases by the remaining hooks for the
hinges.
When we pass on to the early part of the seventeenth century, we still
find merchants of considerable importance in Edinburgh. They usually
are either the descendants or the progenitors of good families. As
an example of the former, we may take James Murray, of whose living
locality in our city I can say nothing, but who, at his death in old
age in 1649, was laid in the Greyfriars’ Churchyard. James was a
younger son of Patrick Murray of Philiphaugh, and to each of his three
sons, by Bethia Maule of the Panmure family, he left an estate. Perhaps
I could in no way better describe him than by the quaint words of his
epitaph in the Greyfriars:
Stay, passenger, and shed a tear,
For good James Murray lieth here;
He was of Philiphaugh descended,
And for his merchandise commended;
He was a man of a good life,
Married Bethia Maule to ’s wife;
He may thank God that e’er he gat her;
She bore him three sons and a daughter;
The first he was a man of might,
For which the king made him a knight;
The second was both wise and wily,
For which the town made him a bailie;
The third, a factor of renown,
Both in Campvere and in this town.
His daughter was both grave and wise,
And married was to James Elies.
Another of this class was John Trotter, son of Thomas Trotter of
Catchelraw. He acquired by merchandise in Edinburgh the means of
purchasing the estate of Mortonhall, and thus laid the foundation of
a family which still exists in great note and opulence. A third was
John Sinclair, a cadet of the old house of Longformacus. Being bred a
merchant, as Douglas’s _Baronage_ explicitly declares, he realised so
much wealth by his business as to be able, in 1624, to purchase the
estate of Stevenston in Haddingtonshire, to which he afterwards added
other lands, forming in whole a large estate. The king conferred on him
a Nova Scotia baronetcy, which is still enjoyed by his descendants.
We have a fourth instance in George Blair, a second son of Patrick
Blair of Pittendreich. The wealth which this gentleman acquired by
merchandise in Edinburgh, was the means of purchasing the estate of
Lethendy in Perthshire, to which his son added that of Glasclune.
Another may still be added, in James Riddell, of the ancient family
of Riddell of that Ilk. This gentleman, after pursuing a business
career for some time in Poland, where many Scotch youths then found
occupation, returned to Edinburgh about the year 1603, set up business
there, married a lady of means styled Bessie Allan, and died a wealthy
man. His son, who became a merchant in Leith, purchased the estate of
Kinglass, which he left to a line of descendants. I cannot but view
with interest the good sense of our gentry of two and three hundred
years ago, in setting their younger sons to a career of useful and
honourable industry, instead of allowing them idly to loiter at home,
or go into the little better than idleness of a foreign military
service. It was evidently considered no discredit in those days for a
gentleman’s son to become a merchant in Edinburgh.
In the age which we now have under our notice, the proceedings of
mercantile men were impeded and thwarted, to a degree of which we can
scarcely form an idea, by false political economy. For a merchant
to reserve grain during a scarcity—thus, in the view of Adam Smith,
serving a good public end by equalising consumption over the distressed
period—was then an impious crime condemned by whole legions of laws.
To export almost any article that could be consumed at home was
generally discountenanced, as tending to raise prices upon the home
consumer. Importing foreign articles was looked upon at the best as a
lamentable necessity, because it caused money to be sent out of the
country. We have, for instance, in 1615, a fulmination from the Privy
Council against a ‘most unlawful and pernicious tred of exporting eggs
furth of the kingdom,’ and in 1625, a not less furious denunciation
of the ‘mischeant and wicked tred’ of exporting tallow. In 1634, a
man wanting some Norway timber to build houses at Seaton, required to
use influence with the government to be allowed to send some of his
own East Lothian wheat for it to Bergen. An unenlightened selfishness
put a dead-lock upon nearly everything that an enlightened view of
the interests of all would have counselled to be done. In these
circumstances, to succeed in foreign trade must have required no small
amount of skill and policy, as well as means, because in addition to
all the natural difficulties, there were bad laws to be evaded or
overcome, or privileges and exemptions to be purchased from corrupt
statesmen. There were also in those days sumptuary laws for preventing
the people from injuring themselves by too expensive habits. They are
understood to have not been very effectual for their avowed purpose;
but they now serve a good end in revealing to us the nature of the
business of the mercer in the times to which they refer. We find, for
example, in 1581, when the country was but a few years emerged from
a calamitous civil war, that even people of what was called ‘mean
estate’ were addicted to ‘the wearing of costly cleithing, of silks
of all sorts, laine, cambric, fringes, and passments of gold, silver,
and silk, and woollen claith, made and brocht from foreign countries.’
Hence, it was stated, the prices of these articles had grown to such a
height ‘as is not longer able to be sustained without the great skaith
and inconvenience of the commonweal’—that is to say, gentles were of
opinion that they would get such articles much cheaper, if there were
no other customers for them. The general inclination for foreign finery
was held all the more indefensible, seeing that ‘God has granted to
this realm sufficient commodities for claithing of the inhabitants
thereof within the self, gif the people were vertuously employed in
working of the same at hame.’ Another such act in 1621 ordained that no
persons but those of the nobility, and others possessing six thousand
merks of free yearly rent, should wear ‘any clothing of gold or silver
cloth, or any gold or silver lace upon their apparel;’ neither should
they use ‘velvet, sattin, or other stuffs of silk.’ Even those who
were privileged by wealth to wear these articles, were forbidden to
have embroidery, lace, or passments upon their clothes, ‘except only a
plain welting lace of silk upon the seams or borders.’ They were also
to observe that ‘the said apparel of silk be no ways cut out upon other
stuffs of silk, except upon a single taffeta.’ By the same act, it was
enjoined that no person of whatsoever degree, except those privileged
as above, should have ‘pearling or ribboning upon their ruffs, sarks,
napkins, and socks;’ and any pearling or ribboning so worn was to be
‘of those made within the kingdom of Scotland,’ under a high penalty.
So, also, castor-hats, feathers for the head, and gold chains with
pearls or stones, were forbidden for all except the privileged classes;
and servants were restricted to home-made fustian, canvas, and other
stuffs, and husbandmen to the common gray, blue, and _self-black_ cloth
of the country. By _self-black_ I presume is meant cloth made of the
wool of black sheep in its natural state. These plain and homely kinds
of cloth were woven by the village websters out of yarn which the
housewives and their maidens had spun by the winter fireside when there
was no more pressing work to do. Such cloths, so made, continued in
use amongst simple rustic people down to the close of the last century,
and partially even a little later. I believe they have now entirely
disappeared.
Notwithstanding all impediments from bad and simply officious
legislation, we can see that the first third of the seventeenth century
was a time of mercantile prosperity and progress in Scotland generally,
and in Edinburgh in particular. The country was at peace; the laws
were tolerably well executed; and as yet the religious troubles of the
century had not begun. There was a general disposition, encouraged by
the king, to see the useful arts cultivated in our country; and several
were actually now established for the first time. For example, it
was now that leather was first made of good quality in Scotland, the
improved art being introduced by workmen from England. The manufacture
of glass was set up in 1610 at Wemyss in Fife, by the ancestor of the
Earls of Kinnoul, and met with tolerable success. Paper and a superior
kind of cloth were attempted, but unsuccessfully. A great grudge being
entertained regarding the large sums annually sent to Flanders for
soap, there was much interest excited by an effort made at Leith,
in 1619, to manufacture that useful article. The enterpriser was Mr
Nathaniel Udwart, son of the Nicol Udwart who had entertained King
James in his house in Niddry’s Wynd. As an encouragement, he asked a
privilege excluding the foreign article for a number of years, and
the Privy Council took much pains to ascertain if this could be done
without prejudice to the public. Pages after pages of their records
are filled with deliberations on the subject, marginally marked with
the words, ‘Anent the Sape,’ or ‘Mr Nathaniel his sape;’ and finally,
he obtained the desired privilege under certain conditions. In this
matter, however, flesh and blood could not endure the false political
economy. Mr Nathaniel’s soap was pronounced to be of unsatisfactory
quality; and it was shewn to be better for the people in such distant
provinces as Dumfries, to import their soap from Flanders, than to
transport it from Leith by land-carriage. The native soap-factory
appears, therefore, to have had a considerable struggle at first.
Afterwards, it was more successfully carried on, along with the making
of potasses, by Patrick Maule, the ancestor of the Lords Panmure; for
here is another of our wealthy noble families who were beholden to
trade for some part of their fortunes. We really must not be too hard
upon our ancestors for the false commercial maxims by which they made
their own interests so much of a difficulty to themselves, for we ought
to remember how recently we have shaken off some of these very maxims,
and how greatly foreign nations yet suffer from them. I daresay you
will all hear, with something like a smile, that the proceedings of
King James in 1598, regarding the poultrymen of Edinburgh, who tried to
evade an edict for maximum prices, by selling their poultry in secret
to people who would give better prices, were precisely imitated by the
present Emperor of France in 1856, with respect to the butchers of
Paris.
And in what, it will be asked, did the external commerce of Scotland
at this time consist? First, then, was the exporting of wool, woollen
and linen yarn, hides, tallow, butter, oil, and barrelled flesh,
salmon, and herrings, also plaiden stuff and stockings, to the Low
Countries. This was a trade exclusively confined by strict regulation
to the port of Campvere, where, for many years past, there had been
established a corporation of Scottish merchants, under a chief called
the _Conservator_. It was a body entirely independent of the local
authorities, as well of their High Mightinesses of the Netherlands;
for the Conservator, with a council of six, or at least four, was
entitled to adjudge in every case connected with Scottish merchants
or merchandise. The Scottish merchants had a street and a quay to
themselves, and a minister of their own choice, to whom the native
mayor paid a salary of nine hundred guilders per annum. Second, there
was a considerable trade with Poland, the goods being introduced by
Scottish merchants residing at Dantzig, while the country itself was
said to swarm with pedlers of our nation, by whom, I presume, the
merchandise was diffused. Our townsman, Mr W. F. Skene, tells me that
he lately found at Dantzig abundant records of the Scotch merchandise
formerly carried on there. The imports were wool and coarse cloths;
the exports, corn, tar, and wine—whence the latter was brought to
Dantzig does not appear, but it might be from some countries far to
the south, for through the Vistula there were communications between
this Hanseatic town and districts far removed in that direction. Next,
we must advert to a constant import of wine from France, probably for
the most part in exchange for salmon and herrings. Finally, Scotland
kept a considerable quantity of shipping in the employment of France,
Spain, and even Italy and Barbary. The zealous clergy, in 1592, made
an effort to stop this and every other kind of intercourse of their
countrymen with Spain, from an apprehension, already adverted to,
that they might thus be drawn back to Romanism; but here feelings of
mercantile interest were too much for even clerical zeal, and the
attempt failed miserably. The trade with France was threatened in a
more serious manner in 1615, when, in consequence of an edict against
the importation of goods into England in other than English vessels,
the French king ordered that no goods should be imported from Britain
into France in other than French vessels. A Scotch bark then lading
at a French port was actually stopped, and ordered to go away empty.
It was a most serious affair for Scotland; but the national ingenuity
prevailed. France was reminded of the ancient alliance of King Alpin
of Scotland with Charlemagne—a fable, but as good as a truth, since it
was universally believed—also of the more palpable fact that Scotland,
as apart from England, had issued no edict against French vessels. The
rule was therefore relaxed in favour of Scottish ships. One of the
standing troubles of this Scotch trade lay in the piratical habits of
Algiers. Every now and then a piteous tale came home to Edinburgh of
some little vessel, belonging to Dundee, or Leith, or Borrowstounness,
caught by these rovers, and the crew all lying chained in dungeons,
on the coast of Africa, fed with only bread and water. And then there
would be a kindly collection of half-pence at the kirk-doors for the
unfortunates, who generally were relieved by these means, though
sometimes not till they had endured for a year or two their miserable
captivity.
When troubles began to arise in consequence of the efforts of the
kings James and Charles to introduce episcopalian arrangements and
ceremonies, there were several eminent merchants of Edinburgh who stood
conspicuously forward against these innovations. We hear much at that
time of William Rig or Ridge, of Athernie in Fife, and of John Mean,
both merchants in Edinburgh, very pious men, who, with John Hamilton,
an apothecary, were banished to distant towns because they would not
agree to accept the communion kneeling. Rig was both rich and liberal,
insomuch that he is stated to have been in the custom of distributing
annually upwards of eight thousand merks (equal to £444 sterling)
for pious and charitable purposes. John Mean, whose wife is believed
to have been the person who threw the stool at the bishop’s head in
St Giles’s, at the reading of the famous _Service-book_, was at one
time post-master of Edinburgh, that important institution having been
set up in 1635: the revenue, in his time, was about four hundred a
year. Another, and still more remarkable Edinburgh merchant, noted
as a friend of the Presbyterian cause, was William Dick, ancestor of
our neighbour Sir William Cunningham Dick of Prestonfield. Coming of
Orkney people, one of his first adventures was the farming of the
crown-rents of that district at three thousand pounds sterling. He
established an active trade with the Baltic and the Mediterranean,
and made a profitable business of negotiating bills of exchange with
Holland. He had ships on every sea, and could ride on his own lands
from North Berwick to near Linlithgow. His wealth, centering in a
warehouse in the Luckenbooths, on the site of that now occupied by John
Clapperton & Co., is estimated to have finally reached the astonishing
sum of two hundred thousand pounds sterling; though I must own to some
incredulity on the subject. That it was, however, very great, fully
appears from the effects of it which appear in history. Sir William,
having been induced to accept the provostship of the city in the year
1638, was easily led by his own religious prepossessions to become a
sort of voluntary exchequer for the friends of the national covenant,
then mustering a resistance to the Service-book and the bishops.
King Charles could not have been faced at Dunse Law but for William
Dick’s cornucopia of dollars. From the same fund came the expenses for
the king’s visit to Edinburgh in 1641. When the Scottish parliament
in the same year mustered ten thousand men to go to Ireland and
suppress the rebel Catholics, the little army could not have marched
without the meal which Sir William Dick furnished. His national loans
afterwards extended to transactions in which the credit of the English
parliament was concerned; and here ruin overtook him. The time came
when such loans were not recognised, or at least met with but slight
reverence; and this Scottish Crœsus—a national creditor to the extent
of sixty-four thousand pounds—actually spent his last days in a jail at
Westminster, under something like a want of the common necessaries of
life.
While it appears that so many noted merchants stood up for the popular
cause, that of royalty was espoused by at least one eminent trader,
namely, Sir William Gray of Pittendrum, a cadet of the noble house
of Gray, and direct ancestor of the present lord. Sir William, whose
house, with his arms and initials, and the date 1622, may still be seen
in Lady Stair’s Close, Lawnmarket, is said to have conducted foreign
trade upon a large scale, considering the times, and he became, for his
age, extremely rich. For corresponding with the Marquis of Montrose, a
fine of a hundred thousand merks was imposed upon him, and he actually
paid thirty-five thousand, being nearly two thousand pounds sterling.
When one of his sons married the Mistress of Gray, Sir William gave
him the handsome endowment of 232,000 merks. Sir William Dick and Sir
William Gray are perhaps the first commercial men of our city who
reached the character of merchant-princes.
A little later than these men was James Stuart, a historical personage
of even greater celebrity, and the more worthy of note on the present
occasion, in as far as he made a movement to the formation of a
Merchants’ Company in Edinburgh so early as 1658. Born of the family
of the Stuarts of Allanton in Lanarkshire, he was brought up in a
merchant’s shop in Edinburgh, and in due time became a flourishing
merchant himself. His importance in this capacity, his active talents
and address, made him a conspicuous actor on the popular side in
the affairs of Scotland during the years of the civil war. Family
tradition represents him as the person who brought to the Covenanters
in Edinburgh that doubtful promise of sympathy and assistance from
the English patriots, which is adverted to in all the histories of
the period. It is stated that he was in London on business, when Lord
Saville, hearing of him as a leading citizen of Edinburgh, and a man of
talent and spirit, already noted amongst those who were contemplating a
resistance to the king, sent for him, and after some conversation, bade
him be of good cheer, for his countrymen would not be left to fight the
battle single-handed. Whatever truth there is in this, James Stuart
afterwards became a most distinguished public person. He was provost of
Edinburgh in the trying time when it was invested, and at length taken
possession of, by the troops of Cromwell. He survived the Restoration,
and was a sufferer under Charles II.’s rule, but nevertheless left
considerable realised wealth to his descendants, the Stuarts baronets
of Coltness. His son was lord advocate under King William and Queen
Anne; and the grandson of that personage wrote the first systematic
work on political economy which appeared in this country.
The unsuccessful efforts made by Scotland first to extend presbytery
into England under the Solemn League and Covenant, and next to save
the old monarchy from the English sectaries and republicans, left it
exhausted and bleeding under the heel of Cromwell. We should vainly,
amidst our present peace and comfort, attempt to form an idea of the
utter bankruptcy of our country during the eight or nine years when it
was kept down by eight thousand English soldiers, whom it was obliged
to pay by a monthly cess for their oppression. Glasgow had then but
twelve vessels, mostly under a hundred tons each; the customs of Leith,
which have in our times touched six hundred thousand pounds, were then
only £2335. We wade through year after year of the domestic annals
of the country at this time, and hear of not one prosperous merchant,
not one attempt at an enlarged system of industry, no new invention
or project, nor even of the continuation of any of those manufactures
which had been introduced during the two preceding reigns. Religious
and political controversy, working itself out in violence fatal to all
real progress, had blighted the whole pith and capacity of the country.
After the Restoration, things were for a long time not much better,
for still unfortunately the bitterness of religious conflict was kept
up. A Royal Fishery Company, with a capital of £25,000 sterling, was
started, as a rival to the Dutch; but it did not prosper greatly. It
had various privileges; and we rather hear of these proving a detriment
to private enterprise, than of any distinct good done by the company
itself. Amongst the most notable uses for shipping in the reign of
the restored Stuart, were some of a melancholy character—privateering
against the Dutch during the two shameful wars carried on against
Holland, and the transporting of poor people to Barbadoes, and of
discontented west-country Presbyterians to the American colonies. The
former kind of work is said to have enriched two merchants named Baird,
whose descendants have since figured among the Scottish gentry. But all
such work was of small advantage to the country at large, as everything
is, indeed, except that which gives real labour and its products. Here
and there was a speculator like Sir Robert Mylne of Barnton, who made
a little fortune by farming the entire national revenue at ninety
thousand pounds, and ultimately lost it again, as he well might in
that age without any necessary connection of the event with the fact
of his having handed the Covenant to the hangman when it was publicly
burnt after the Restoration. In this age, too, there was at least one
able and successful merchant in our city, namely, Sir James Dick of
Prestonfield, a grandson of the Rothschild of the Covenant. In him
the fortunes of the family were in some measure restored. As provost
of Edinburgh, he acquired the friendship of the Duke of York, when
he lived at Holyrood, and used to be consulted by him about means of
promoting the prosperity of the country. George Watson, the founder
of our hospital, was originally head-clerk or accountant to Dick, at
a salary of £16, 13s. 4d. Rather unexpectedly, I am informed that
a branch of Sir James’s business has continued to be kept up, and
after some changes of situation, now appears under the firm of Craig
Brothers, in the South Bridge. There was, however, in this reign,
little more than a blind groping towards mercantile enterprise. The
contemplation of English prosperity had created a spirit of emulation.
Men of enlarged minds were sadly sensible of the national poverty.
There was a general sense of uneasiness under the knowledge that
perhaps as much as _twenty thousand a year_ went out of this poor
country into fat and comfortable England, to buy superfine cloth and
other fineries for the upper classes. England, too, it was observed,
had those colonies on the other side of the Atlantic, not one of whom
could buy a hat, or a coat, or a sheet of glass, from anybody but an
Englishman, while Scotland had no such outlets for manufactures, even
if the manufactures existed. There was, it appears, in Scotland, the
shrewd head and the willing hand; but how to start, how to get capital,
skill, and experience—how, in short, to realise the ambitious views she
was beginning to cherish!
Restricted as merchandise was in the reign of King William, we then
find a general acknowledgment of the importance of the mercantile
class in Edinburgh, in the practice of receiving the Lord Provost of
the city as a member of the Privy Council, which was substantially
the government of the country. These provosts, too, were generally
knighted. Amongst them we find Sir John Hall, ancestor of the baronets
of Dunglass, and of the late ingenious writer, Captain Basil Hall. Sir
William Binning and Sir Thomas Kennedy, who had been provosts in the
late Stuart reigns, continued in that of King William to be engaged
in large undertakings, such as government contracts and farmings
of customs. So, also, was an eminent member of our Company, Bailie
Alexander Brand, who finally acquired the honour of knighthood. We
find Brand, for instance, along with Binning and Kennedy, engaging to
import five thousand stand of arms for the state, at one pound sterling
each, and getting into trouble from making public in a law-court that
he contemplated a _donative_ of two hundred and fifty guineas, with
other articles, to some of the principal state-officers with whom the
bargain had been made. A certain Sir Robert Dickson, who, with Binning
and Kennedy, farmed the customs and foreign excise for five years from
1693, at twenty thousand three hundred pounds a year, got into a worse
scrape still with the state-officers; for, in squaring accounts, he
found upwards of two thousand pounds unexpectedly on the debit side,
for wines given as gratuities to those nobles, and, seeking the king’s
protection from this oppression, he found himself liable to a charge,
under an old statute, against murmuring at judges, and was glad to
buy himself off by craving pardon on his knees. The gratuities, in
the latter case, were declared to be according to use and wont; if
so, it seems hard that Brand should have been harassed for announcing
a compliance with the custom in the other case; but, of course,
_quietness_ is everything in these matters.