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IN Chapter
III. was given some account of Leith’s commerce and the countries with
which she traded down to the end of Scotland’s golden age, which closed
with the tragic death of Alexander III. in 1286. In the troubled years of
Scotland’s strenuous fight to maintain her national independence against
England during the reigns of the first three Edwards, the English, who
during that period were in alliance with Flanders against France, did
their best to persuade their Flemish allies to have no commercial dealings
with the Scots. They did not succeed at this time, however, for the
Flemings declared that Flanders was a free country, and open to all
nations for the purposes of trade.
Yet Flanders, as the great
cloth factory of Europe, could not afford to be on bad terms with England.
It was from that country she obtained her chief supply of wool, for
England was the only country in Europe at that time peaceful enough for
the secure feeding of sheep. Bruges up to this time had been the chief
centre, or staple as it was called, of Scotland’s trade with Flanders
and the continental port with which Leith had most commercial intercourse.
The "intolerable disrespect" shown to Leith and other Scots
traders at Bruges owing to the friendly affiance between Flanders and
England led to the staple being removed to Middelburg, in Holland, a
country not as yet under the control of the dukes of Burgundy, the rulers
of Flanders at this time.
The trade of Leith not only
suffered from the hostility of England and her allies during times of
international strife on the Continent, but was greatly injured, as we have
already seen, by the insecurity and lawlessness that arose from strife at
home, whether with the "auld enemy" or from the endless feuds of
the nobles. Yet, in spite of being thus hampered and obstructed, the trade
of the Port steadily grew. In the last year of Bruce’s reign the customs
duties paid on Leith’s export trade amounted to only £439, while forty
years later, in 1369, they had risen to twice that sum. By 1424, when
James I. returned to Scotland after his long imprisonment in England, the
customs revenue from the Port of Leith had again more than doubled itself,
showing that, even in those lawless years of James’s enforced absence in
England, Leith’s shipping trade was steadily growing. When we consider
the insecurity of those times, and the many obstacles and risks by which
oversea commerce was beset and injured, our wonder is that it grew at all.
The unprovoked attacks by
the Flemings, of course, led to reprisals, and in the lawless game of
piracy Leith sailormen of those turbulent times could stand their own.
These reprisals soon led the Duke of Burgundy to see that the benefits of
occasional captures of Scottish ships were as nothing compared with the
advantages of settled trade. The result was a commercial treaty between
Scotland and the Netherlands in 1425, for by this date the dukes of
Burgundy had added Holland to their other dominions. This treaty attempted
to secure to those from Edinburgh and Leith trading with Flemish and Dutch
ports, in addition to other privileges, a valuable right for which they
had long clamoured, and without which no commerce could flourish.
By the charter now given, a
copy of which is to be found both in the Register House, Edinburgh, and at
Bruges, it was mutually agreed that Scots merchants and traders would no
longer be arrested nor their goods confiscated, as had been so frequently
done in the past, for the debts or the misdeeds of other Scots merchants,
who did not always pay their just and lawful debts incurred abroad. There
still exists a black list of overseas debts left unpaid, whatever may have
been the reason, on which a number of well-known Edinburgh merchants, and
even the king, James II., stand high.
The Baltic seaports, and
especially the great Hanseatic port of Lübeck, looked with no friendly
eye on ships from the west trading in Baltic waters, and resorted to open
acts of violence to injure their trade. The Stuart kings made bitter
complaints to the emperor of the attacks and cruelties Scots merchants and
seamen had to suffer at the hands of the bold Lübeckers. It might be that
these old Edinburgh merchants trading through their port of Leith had
sustained losses through unjustified attacks on their ships by those of
the Hansards, and took the method of not paying their just debts in order
to recoup themselves for the losses they had sustained through unprovoked
attacks on their ships by those of the Hanseatic League.
If the Hansards complained
of our local traders for the non-payment of their debts, still more did
they resent the treatment they received from them at sea. Leith sailormen
were in no way behind the bold Lübeekers in attacking and seizing the
ships and cargoes of others on the high seas when a favourable opportunity
arose. Indeed, such acts of piracy were as congenial an occupation to
Leith sailormen as a raid into England was to the Scottish Borderers, and
were ordinary and everyday incidents of navigation in those unruly times.
While there were no means
to compel kings like James II. to pay their debts to foreign traders if
they refused to do so, it was otherwise with ordinary merchants. As the
Hansards once more threatened to arrest! the goods of all Scots merchants
in Prussian ports in order to repay themselves for the loss our traders
had caused them, it was plain that the penalty of any Edinburgh merchant’s
dishonesty was liable to fall on all merchants from our district. For that
reason the Edinburgh Merchant Guild would take the matter in hand, and we
may feel sure that this powerful body would not be slow to deal severely
with any of their members whose business action was likely to lead both to
the confiscation of their goods and to the interruption of trade for an
indefinite period. They would see to it either that the debts were paid or
that the defaulting member was expelled from the guild. Such a punishment
would mean the end of his career as a trader, for no one in our district
outside the Edinburgh Merchant Guild could under any circumstances
whatever engage in foreign commerce.
The Edinburgh Merchant
Guild might have a check on the doings of their own members, but they had
little, if any, on the skippers and mariners of Leith, who, remembering
that their town was "unfree," had little regard for anything the
Edinburgh merchant burgesses might do or say in the matter. The Leith
skippers gained rather than lost by such enterprises, and their disturbing
effect on a trade they were not allowed to share mattered nothing to them.
The Strait of Dover and the
English Channel were known to the sailormen of Western Europe at this time
as the Narrow Seas, and were always so named. They were a great highway of
traffic not only for England but also for the ships of Genoa, Venice, and
Spain, sailing to and from Bruges, Lübeck, and other ports of the
Hansards. Hostile English ships were always to be met there, and they were
the haunts of the pirates of all nations, among whom were, of course, some
from Leith. But however rich a cruising ground they might prove for Leith
pirates, the Narrow Seas were no safe place for Leith vessels to venture
in the pursuit of trade. The voyage to France by this route, therefore,
involved too many risks for traders from Leith to follow generally. That
was why it was necessary for Scots traders to have a port such as Bruges
in a country like Flanders, more accessible than France then was, to be a
general depot or staple for their foreign trade.
We have seen that this
trade was so much interrupted by the wars between England, the Empire, and
France, that the staple was removed to Middelburg in Holland. The staple
town according to law, though not always according to practice, was
supposed to have the monopoly of Scotland’s trade with the Low
Countries. In 1541 the Scottish staple was removed to the neighbouring
town of Veere, and there it remained until Holland joined Napoleon at the
close of the eighteenth century. Holland at this time, however, was less
advanced industrially than Flanders; but as Middelburg was equally
convenient for the markets of Bruges, now declining, and those of Antwerp,
now rising, as the great centres of European trade, Leith’s commerce in
no way suffered, but rather gained, by the change. As time went on the
Dutch granted Scotland the great privilege of having a Scots merchant
resident at Middelburg, whose duty it was to protect and promote the
interests of Scots traders frequenting the port, where they were given the
further privilege of having a quay and warehouses for their own use.
Such an officer to-day
would be called a consul. Then he had the imposing title of "Lord
Conservator of the Scottish privileges in the Low Countries." The
most noted of these conservators was Andrew Halyburton, who occupied the
office from 1493 to 1503. Halyburton further acted as agent, and bought
and sold goods for Scots merchants on commission. His ledger, in which he
kept the accounts of his clients, is now in the Register House, and, as
his trading correspondents were mostly Edinburgh merchants and leading
Churchmen like our old friend the good Abbot Ballantyne, this timeworn
ledger gives us an interesting and detailed summary of Leith’s trade
with the Netherlands at the close of the fifteenth century.
Indeed, of no period of
Leith’s overseas commerce, until that of our own day, do we know so
much. In Chapter III. we saw this commerce being carried on for the most
part in Flemish ships. But in Halyburton’s time the cargoes set down in
his ledger are imported in Leith ships, commanded and manned by Leith
skippers and mariners. While the nobles were impoverishing themselves and
their lands by their eternal feuds and strife, there was arising in Leith
a prosperous middle class of wealthy shipowners, not merchants, because
Leith was an unfree town, but bold and daring navigators, whose skill and
enterprise not only enriched themselves, but brought wealth and prosperity
to the Port. We have seen the middle class, in this case a merchant class,
slowly but surely rising in Edinburgh from the days of Robert the Bruce,
in men like William Fairley and Walter Curry, and now, in the reigns of
James III. and James IV., in Sir Alexander Lauder and Touris of Inverleith.
To these two classes, the merchants of Edinburgh and the skippers and
shipowners of Leith, the early progress and prosperity of the two towns
are mostly due.
We see this trading class
in Leith, in men like Gilbert Edmonston and Peter Falconer, not only
acquiring wealth, but also spending it to the great benefit and adornment
of the good town. The growing prosperity of the trading classes tempted
the younger sons of noblemen and gentlemen to enter their ranks, and thus
in Leith we find members of the great and powerful Logan family becoming
master mariners and joining the Bartons in their persistent spoliation of
the Portuguese. And just as in Bruce’s time we had Edinburgh merchants
associated with noted events in their country’s history, in which their
swords were more fitting instruments than their pens, so here in
Halyburton’s ledger are names around which time and story have cast the
magic spell of romance, the names of some of those stout and gallant
burghers
"Who on Flodden’s
trampled sod,
For their king and for their
country,
Rendered up their
souls to God."
Had Andrew Halyburton
foreseen, as he looked out on the ship canal at Middelburg and penned his
accounts, that of all the Scots ledgers of those long-past centuries his
alone was destined to survive for our perusal, he might have done more to
satisfy our curiosity. As it is, he often puts us Leithers out of all
patience, for he persistently mentions Leith ships without naming their
skippers, and as often speaks of skippers without naming tbeir ships, as when he sends
home to "My Lord of Holyruidhous" —that is, Abbot Ballantyne—four
puncheons of wine of Orleans in the Julyan, and on another occasion
sends the good abbot two puncheons of claret by Gilbert Edneston. This
shipman, the owner and skipper of the Julyan, was none other than
Gilbert Edmonston, the founder of the chantry of St. Barbara in St. Mary’s
Kirk at this very time, perhaps out of gratitude for being brought to his
desired haven after a more than usually perilous voyage. For storms raged
then as now, as in the great gale of Mary’s time, when the windows of
St. Giles’ were blown in, and the pier and bulwark of Leith washed away.
And on such wild and stormy nights in those times no friendly gleam
flashed from the May and Inchkeith to guide mariners on their course up
the Firth. For this reason it was that in all seafaring countries
sailormen and their ships remained in harbour during the winter months. It
was the centurion’s disregard of this rule that led to St. Paul’s
shipwreck on the voyage to Rome.
But although this custom
had been made a law of the land by the Scots Parliament it was not
observed during the reign of James IV., for in Andrew Halyburton’s
ledger we find Leith mariners fearlessly voyaging to and fro across the
stormy waters of the North Sea all through the winter months, as Gilbert
Edmonston did through the ten years of this old conservator’s accounts.
And it may be, as time and again he steered for the harbour mouth on his
return voyage, the man on the lookout, in sounding his trumpet warning of
their approach to outcoming vessels, as ships now sound their siren, would
add a note only used aboard the good ship Julyan as a signal to
their womenfolk that they had reached port once more in safety. Gilbert
Edmonston was dead before 1510, but whether he found his last anchorage
beneath the heaving waters of the North Sea or under the shadow of the
altar of St. Barbara in the Lady Kirk we cannot now tell. All we do know
is that the families of the Edmonstons and the Bartons were bound by the
closest ties of friendship, and that when Gilbert Edmonston passed away
his widow, Elizabeth Crauford, became the wife of that noted Leith
navigator, Robert Barton of Barnton.
The great highway of
Scotland’s commerce all through those long centuries was the North Sea.
On its shores were, therefore, her chief ports, Leith, Aberdeen, and
Dundee. Of these Leith was, as she still is, by far the most important,
and indeed was the chief port of the country until surpassed by Glasgow in
the early nineteenth century. The days of Leith’s greatest fame were
those of the reign of James IV. It was Robert the Bruce who first foresaw
the importance of a navy to a small country like Scotland with her large
seaboard; but James IV. was the first of his successors who had the wisdom
and enterprise to build it. In doing so, James was only following the
example of the other rulers of Western Europe, who were all showing the
greatest interest in matters pertaining to the sea. Columbus had just
discovered America, and Vasco da Gama the sea route to India, and, if
Scotland was to have any place at all among the nations of Europe, she
must become a power at sea. This James determined to make her, and, in
carrying out this policy, he was so wisely and ably supported by the
skippers and mariners of Leith that our town became noted both at home and
abroad for the number and size of its ships, and still more for the skill
and daring of its mariners, who successfully fought their way at sea
against all who sought to oppose them.
At this time Scotland had
no ships of war properly so called. The king’s ships, which had already
won renown by their victories at sea, were only used for purposes of war
as necessity arose. They were merely armed merchantmen, and in times of
peace were engaged in the work of trade and commerce. For the king, like
some of the great Churchmen and some nobles like Lord Seton, had ships of
his own, which he, too, let out for trading ventures at so much per
voyage. This had been for long a custom of English monarchs also, and
Henry VII., James’s contemporary on the throne of England, constantly
hired out the royal ships to merchants, who were thus saved the expense of
their upkeep and maintenance. The larger the ships the more popular they
were, as they not only held more cargo, but were less likely to fall a
prey to the pirates who were rampant on all the overseas trading routes.
Besides the Flower and
the Yellow (Jarvel), which had won so much renown under their
famous captain, Sir Andrew Wood, there were several other ships belonging
to the king, which were mostly engaged in trade between Leith and the
Netherlands, and especially to Middelburg, at this time the staple town
for Scots trade and one of the chief commercial ports of Holland. One of
the great advantages in those times of a staple town to which the trade of
the country was largely restricted was that the ships could sail in
convoys and thus minimize the risks from pirates, against whose incursions
into the Firth there was built the fort whose remains we still see on
Inchgarvie.
Noted as Leith was at this
time for her seamen, her shipwrights were few and unskilled, for until the
reign of James IV. the art of shipbuilding had been little practised in
Scotland. Most of her ships had been built in the Netherlands and in
France, and, as her relations with England could never be called friendly
even in times of peace, it was to France she now went for shipwrights to
begin the work of naval construction in Leith, and to train its workmen in
their craft. And so towards the close of the year 1502 John Lorans,
"the French wricht that cam first for the schip bigging"
(building), arrived in Leith. He was followed by others, mostly from
Normandy and Brittany. Among these was Jacques Terreil, who afterwards
became master wright and chief naval constructor of the Great Michael. A
greater difficulty than labour, however, was obtaining oak "tymir"
for the work, and we see Barton, Terrell, and others sent all over the
country, and even to France, "to cheis tymir for the schip."
This ship was the Margaret, named after the young Queen Margaret
Tudor, whose marriage with James the Leithers had celebrated with such joy
as a bond of perpetual peace with the "auld enemy." A special
dockyard had been prepared for the Margaret. In January 1505 she
was launched with much sounding of trumpets and playing of minstrels, as
became so unique an event, whose success was chiefly due to the wisdom and
skill of Jacques Terrell.
There were further
rejoicings and flourish of trumpets when the masts were erected, when
coins for luck were placed under the heel of each, as we now put them in
the foundation stones of buildings. All her other equipment of tackle,
sails, and ropes had to be imported from Flanders, for the great roperies
of Leith, whose business connection is now world-wide, did not arise for
more than two hundred years after the days of James IV. Leith, however, at
this time, from having no great depth of water, was found not quite
suitable for a shipbuilding port. It was only after nearly a hundred casks
had been lashed to the Margaret’s hull that she could be floated
out of her dockyard, and the king and Jacques Terrell were thus led to
seek a new haven, where there was a greater depth of water, about a mile
farther west.
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