Edinburgh City

The city of Edinburgh owed its importance to three factors: the strength of its castle, sited on an imposing volcanic plug; the richness of the surrounding farmland; and the proximity of a deep-water port at nearby Leith, on the Firth of Forth. The medieval city had grown as a suburb of the castle, gradually extending down the ‘old town ridge’ from the castle gates, along the High Street to the Canongate, with the royal palace of Holyrood lying just outside the city’s boundary. In the early seventeenth century the city retained this elongated plan, although further development had occurred to the south of the High Street, including the parallel street of Cowgate, and the area around the Grassmarket and Greyfriars’ Kirk. The city walls of 1622 enclosed this area to the south: the northern boundary was still protected by the ‘Nor’ Loch’, drained in the eighteenth century. Early Views and Maps of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1919), frontispiece map, and pp. 299, 304, 313, 320-1, 325. With a population of perhaps 30,000 in the late 1630s, Edinburgh was small in comparison with London, but it was by far the largest urban settlement in Scotland, dwarfing its nearest rivals, Glasgow and Aberdeen, which could boast no more than half the number of inhabitants. H.M. Dingwall, Late Seventeenth Century Edinburgh: a Demographic Study (Aldershot, 1994), 275; I. Whyte, ‘Urbanisation in Early-Modern Scotland’, Scot. Econ. and Soc. Hist. ix. 24. It also had the greatest population density of any British town, the slopes of the town ridge and the wet ground to north and south encouraging the building of tenements, some of which were six or seven storeys high. The city’s government was equally claustrophobic, with power residing in a small number of burgess families which made up the city’s council, and took turns to serve as lord provost. Many of these families were engaged in mercantile trade through the port of Leith, but the role of Edinburgh as the Scottish capital meant that the city’s governing classes also had a hand in the national civil service, the law courts, and the hierarchy of the Presbyterian church. The overall effect was to give the city council a disproportionate influence over Scotland as a whole, and this was recognised in the leading place given to the city in the convention of royal burghs.

As the capital city, Edinburgh was inevitably at the centre of politics in the 1630s and 1640s. The first outbreak of unrest against the Stuarts had been riots in and around the High Kirk of St Giles in 1637, and the National Covenant was signed in the churchyard at Greyfriars in 1638. Edinburgh regiments joined the Scottish armies which invaded England in 1639-40 and 1644, and the city’s adherence to the covenanter cause brought fears of reprisals when royalist commander James Graham, marquess of Montrose swept into the lowlands following his victory at Kilsyth in August 1645. The city was not united in hostility to the Stuarts, however. When Montrose neared the capital, the Edinburgh authorities released royalist prisoners from its gaols – leading to bitter recriminations after the covenanter victory at Philiphaugh later in the year – and in 1647-8 the city publicly supported James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton and the royalist Engagement. The defeat of the Engagers at Preston in August 1648 brought a formal disclaimer by the majority in the city council, and the removal of the town clerk, William Thomsone*, who was seen as the royalist ringleader. Such actions did not prevent the city from embracing Charles Stuart in 1650, however, and as a result having to fortify itself against Oliver Cromwell’s* army. Cromwell’s startling victory, snatched from defeat as he retreated from the capital to Dunbar, left Edinburgh at the mercy of the English soldiers, who proceeded to plunder the city’s college and high school, its churches and houses, creating such confusion that the city council did not meet for over a year, from September 1650 to December 1651. Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, pp. xii-xxvi.

Cromwellian rule had a heavy price. Aside from the material damage caused by troops in the days after the capture of the city in September 1650, for the ensuing decade Edinburgh faced heavy taxation, a large military garrison, and a restriction of its tenurial rights – all of which compounded existing problems, and retarded the repayment of debts owed by the city from the wars of the 1640s. The only way to mitigate these problems was by collaborating with the English governors: a policy pursued with diligence – even enthusiasm – by some of the burgesses, even though it alienated many of the inhabitants, including the ministers, who denounced those who accepted office under Cromwell as traitors to the Covenant. Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, pp. xxviii-xxx, xxxv-xxxviii. The first council elections allowed by the new regime, held in March 1652, caused ‘great debate and contention’, with the city’s ministers denouncing those who stood as ‘abjured apostates’, and the council itself threatening its detractors with dismissal. J. Nicoll, Diary of Public Transactions (Edinburgh, 1836), 88. The new council was, ironically, heavily influenced by the rehabilitated town clerk, William Thomsone, and (from 1655) by his ally, Andrew Ramsay*, both of whom had been penalised for royalism in the later 1640s.

Throughout the 1650s, Edinburgh council’s policy was to cooperate with the Cromwellians in the hope of regaining some of the city’s political influence and financial security. The council was helped in this by the softening of official policy, especially under George Monck* and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), who made important concessions to the city, including measures to relieve the pressure of quartering on the more prominent burgesses on various occasions, to give relief after a fire in the city in 1654, and, in 1656, to allow its magistrates to act as its justices of the peace. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlv, unfol.: 20 July 1653; xlvi, unfol.: 8 Dec. 1654; L.M. Smith, ‘Scotland and Cromwell’ (DPhil thesis, Oxford Univ. 1979), 174-6. More controversially, in the latter year the government also agreed to confirm (for a price) the city’s rights of ‘superiority’ over Leith, which had been in doubt since the English invasion. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 2 Apr. 1656; Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, pp. xxxii-xxxiv. In return, the city dampened criticism of the Cromwellian government, and tried to demonstrate its loyalty in ever more elaborate civic displays. When the protectorate was proclaimed in May 1654, the burgesses attended the event, organised fireworks, and laid on a feast; at the second proclamation in July 1657, the mercat cross, ‘hanged with tapestry’, formed the focus of celebrations, and the city councillors processed in their robes, with the arms of the city displayed, and their official halberdiers ‘in their red coats guarded with black velvet’, with trumpets and banners paid for by the council; and when Richard Cromwell was proclaimed protector in 1658, similar pageantry was performed, ‘with all tokens of joy’. Nicoll, Diary, 124, 216-7; TSP vi. 405; Edinburgh City Archives, SL1/1/19, f. 227; Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 116. The observation of these proclamations was perhaps unavoidable, but there was no such obligation on the city council to fund other events, such as the feast held for Broghill and Monck in August 1656, or to provide the significant sums spent in entertaining army officers and legal dignitaries shown in the bailies’ accounts for 1658-9. Nicoll, Diary, 183; Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 30-1; Edinburgh City Archives, Moses’ bundle 186, no. 10/13. The ready acceptance of government-ordered fast and thanksgiving days – anathema to the Presbyterian ministers – confirms that the Edinburgh council was going further than most other Scots in its compliance with Cromwellian rule. Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 349; Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 39, 49-50.

The same desire to collaborate with the government dominated the parliamentary elections held in Edinburgh in 1654, 1656 and 1659. Edinburgh was the only Scottish burgh to return two MPs to Westminster, and the city retained its pre-1651 franchise, which restricted the vote to the council officers and members, and the representatives (or ‘deacons’) of the crafts – an electorate which, in 1654, numbered 24. CSP Dom. 1654, p. 198; Edinburgh City Archives, SL1/1/18, f. 108. Before the 1654 election, the qualifications of these voters were passed by a committee of the council on 21 July, and when the election itself was held on 2 August, two Englishmen were chosen: the sequestrations commissioner, Samuel Disbrowe, and the scoutmaster-general, George Downing. Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 341, 343. The choice of English representatives indicates not only Edinburgh’s willingness to cooperate with the ruling regime, but also their recognition that members of the Scottish administration were more likely to have influence in England. Disbrowe and Downing were clearly expected to act on behalf of Edinburgh in Parliament: a committee to draw up their instructions was appointed on 15 August, and they were awarded £400 expenses three days later. Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 343.

The elections for the second protectorate Parliament in 1656 saw the Edinburgh council overreach itself. In their anxiety to secure the most influential MPs, the council members approached Broghill, lobbying him ‘with so much earnestness’ that he felt he ‘could not refuse them’ despite being in talks with another constituency. TSP v. 295. His fellow MP was the city’s provost, Andrew Ramsay. The election was held, hurriedly, on 8 August 1656 – 12 days before the other Scottish elections took place – raising questions as to the propriety of such a premature contest. Edinburgh City Archives, SL1/1/19, f. 142. Indecent haste to secure Broghill as MP also led to another irregularity: the exclusion of the crafts’ representatives from the vote, so that (as the council members explained) they might ‘take hold of the opportunity’ to employ ‘an eminent person of authority and place to represent this burgh’. Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 31. Worse still, the vote on 8 August was plainly illegal under the rules of the Westminster Parliament. The writ had in fact been sent to the sheriff of Edinburgh Shire (or Midlothian), but his jurisdiction was rejected, the city council claiming ‘sufficient right, clad with a continual possession … to the sheriffship of this town’. This raised ‘some doubt of the legality and formality of the said election’, partly because ‘no sealed writ was directed to the council’ but also ‘in respect the lord provost, being sheriff, could not formally be a commissioner [MP]’, provoking fears that the election might be ‘casten [rejected] and made nill’ once Parliament convened. Edinburgh City Archives, SL1/1/19, f. 142. As a result, the council re-staged the election on 20 August, with the sheriff of Edinburgh Shire permitted to preside, and the more embarrassing parts of the affair were erased from the minute books. Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 33; Edinburgh City Archives, SL1/1/19, f. 142; C219/45, unfol. As in 1654, the city’s MPs were sent to Westminster with specific instructions, and with allowances which totalled £1,000 sterling. In a new departure, a standing committee was formed to maintain close correspondence with Ramsay from January 1657. Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-6, 47; Edinburgh City Archives, SL1/1/19, ff. 142, 149, 170v, 185v.

After the excitements of 1656, the elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, which took place on 31 December 1658, were more measured. The council members assembled, and were read the writ, which, in the light of the previous electoral debacle, had been directed to the provost rather than the sheriff of Edinburgh shire. Once all the voters (including, this time, the deacons of crafts) had assembled, they ‘unanimously elected and made choice’ of two Englishmen: a Scottish councillor, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham I and the auditor-general, John Thompson, and the provost ‘as high sheriff’ joined the electors in signing the indenture. The care with which the procedure was recorded in the minute books no doubt reflects the council’s desire to avoid controversy. Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 129. Little is known of relations between the city and its MPs in the short-lived 1659 Parliament, but the return of two more Englishmen – making five out of six over the three protectorate Parliaments, again seems to indicate that Edinburgh was intent on working with the grain of the Cromwellian government.

The ‘unanimity’ of the 1659 elections masked growing tensions within the Edinburgh council, however. This was caused not by ideological or religious division, but by personal animosity between the town clerk, William Thomsone and his former ally, Andrew Ramsay. When Ramsay tried to remove Thomsone as town clerk in favour of his own relative, Thomsone retaliated by spoiling Ramsay’s chances of re-election as provost in 1658. The election instead of a radical Protester, Sir James Stewart, did not reflect the allegiances of the majority of the city councillors. In May 1660, when the Restoration was imminent, the council authorised Thomsone to attend Charles II in the Netherlands, with expressions of loyalty; in July, Stewart was removed from office, and imprisoned; and the council of the 1660s was again dominated by Thomsone and Ramsay, this time as clients not of Cromwellian governors, but of the royal power-broker in Scotland, John Maitland, 1st duke of Lauderdale. The popular celebrations in Edinburgh have been seen as a measure of Scottish ‘relief’ at the return of the Stuarts; but in content at least, they were more like a reprise of the ‘solemnities’ arranged by the city council for the proclamations in 1654, 1657 and 1658. Dow, Cromwellian Scot. 264-5. The only significant differences were the provision of wine, flowing from the fountains at the mercat cross (with the somewhat naïve injunction that the people ‘give no offence to God or his people by lascivious excessive drinking’), and the burning of an effigy ‘of that notable tyrant and traitor Oliver’. Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 198, 203; Wariston Diary, iii. 183. The city fathers conveniently forgot that the same mercat cross had witnessed ‘shoutings, with the sound of trumpets’ at the protector’s proclamation less than three years before. Nicoll, Diary, 292; TSP vi. 405.