Chapter 31 – Alleys of the High Street (continued)., pp.258-266.

Blackfriars Wynd – The Grant of Alexander II. – Bothwell slays Sir William Stewart – Escape of Archbishop Sharpe – Cameronian Meeting-house – The House of the Regent Morton – Catholic Chapels of the Eighteenth Century – Bishop Hay – “No Popery” Riots – Baron Smith’s Chapel – Scottish Episcopalians – House of the Prince of Orkney – Magnificence of Earl William Sinclair – Cardinal Beaton’s House – The Cardinal’s Armorial Bearings – Historical Associations of his House – Its Ultimate Occupants – The United Industrial School.

 

A BROAD pend (Anglicé archway), leading through the successor to the tenement in which Lady Lovat dwelt, gave access to the Blackfriars Wynd, which, without doubt, was one of the largest, most important, and ancient of the thoroughfares diverging from the High Street, and which of old was named the Preaching Friar’s Vennel, as it led towards the Dominican monastery, or Black Friary, founded by Alexander II., in 1230, on the high ground beyond the Cowgate, near where the Old Infirmary stands. The king gave the friars – among whom he resided for some time – with many other endowments, a grant of the whole ground now occupied by the old wynd and modern street, to erect houses, and for five centuries these edifices formed the dwelling-places of some of the most aristocratic families in Scotland, and of many ecclesiastics of the highest rank.

Many a fierce struggle between armed men has taken place here, among them the most important being that of “Cleanse the Causeway,” when the victorious Douglases under the fiery Angus, swept the Hamiltons before them, and rushed in mas mêlée to assail the palace of the Archbishop of Glasgow at the Wynd foot, from whence he fled for shelter to the Dominican church, on the opposite slope. And here, in July, 1588, occurred the bloody brawl between the Earl of Bothwell and Sir William Stewart of Monkton.

Between these two a quarrel had taken place in the king’s chamber; the lie was given, and a somewhat ribald altercation followed, but nothing occurred for nearly three weeks after, till Sir William Stewart, when coming down the High Street with a party of his friends, met Bothwell, accompanied by the Master of Gray and others, going up.

A collision between two such parties was inevitable, and, in the spirit of the times, unavoidable. Sword and dagger were instantly resorted to, and in the general fight Sir William Stewart slew a friend of Bothwell’s, but in doing so lost his sword, and, being defenceless, was compelled to fly into Blackfriars Wynd. Thither the vengeful Bothwell pursued him; and as he stood unarmed against a wall, “strake him in at the back and out at the belly, and killed him.”

For this Bothwell found it necessary to keep out of the way only for a few days; and such events so commonly occurred, that it is not curious to find the General Assembly, exactly a week after this combat, proceeding quietly with the usual work of choosing a Moderator, providing for ministers, and denouncing Popery, exactly as they do in the reign of Queen Victoria.

The next most remarkable event was in 1668, when, on Saturday the 9th of July, James Sharpe, Archbishop of St. Andrews, whose residence was then in the Wynd, so narrowly escaped assassination.

His apostacy from the Covenant, and unrelenting persecution of his former compatriots, its adherents, had roused the bitterness of the people against him. He was seated in his coach, at the head of the Wynd, waiting for Andrew Honeyman, Bishop of Orkney, when Mitchell, a fanatical assassin and preacher, and bosom friend of the infamous Major Weir, with whom he was then boarding in the house of Mrs. Grisel Whiteford in the Cowgate, fired a pistol at the primate, but, missing him, dangerously wounded the Bishop of Orkney. He was immediately seized, and, with little regard to morality or justice, put to the torture, without eliciting any confession; and after two years seclusion on the Bass Rock, he was brought to Edinburgh in 1676, and executed in the Grassmarket, to strike terror into the Covenanters; but history has shown that their hearts never knew what terror was.

Sir William Honeyman, Bart., Lord Armadale in 1797, was the fourth in descent from the bishop who was wounded on this occasion by a poisoned bullet, as it is affirmed.

While much of the west side of Blackfriars Wynd was left standing, the east, in the city improvements, was completely swept away. On the latter side, near the head of the wynd, was a house with a decorated lintel, inscribed – IN . THE . LORD . IS . MY . HOPE . 1564. The ground floor of it consisted of one great apartment, the roof or ceiling of which was upheld by a massive stone column. This hall formed the meeting-place of those who adhered to the Covenanted Kirk, after the Revolution of 1688, and was long known as “The Auld Cameronian Meeting-house,” and in the upper storey thereof tradition alleges that Nicol Muschat, the murderer, lived, when a student attending the university.

On the west side of the Wynd was the ancient residence of the Earls of Morton, with a handsome ogee door-head and elaborate mouldings, shafted jambs, and in the tympanum of the lintel a coroneted shield supported by unicorns, though the arms of the family have always had two savages, or wild men, hence the edifice is supposed to be of a date anterior to the days of the Regent. Yet it is distinctly described, in a disposition by Archibald Douglas younger of Whittinghame, as “that tenement which was sometime the Earl of Morton’s,” from which, according to Wilson, it may be inferred to have been the residence of his direct ancestor, John second Earl of Morton, who sat in the Parliament of James IV, in 1504, and whose grandson, William Douglas of Whittinghame, was created a senator of the College of Justice in 1575.

Tradition has unvaryingly alleged this house to have been that of the Regent Morton, in those days when the king’s men and queen’s men were fighting all over the city, and Kirkaldy of Grange was bent upon driving him out of it; and here no doubt it was that he had his body-guard, which was commanded by Alexander Montgomery the poet, whom Melvil in his diary mentions as “Captain Montgomery, a good honest man, and the Regent’s domestic;” and the house is often referred to, during the civil wars of that period, before he attained the Regency.

While Lennox was in office, Morton projected the assassination of the Laird of Drumquhasel, whom the former confined to his residence in Leith as a protection. This Morton deemed an affront to himself, and prepared to leave Leith and the king’s standard together. “Alarmed by the probable loss of the most influential earl of the house of Douglas, the weak Regent, affecting to be ignorant of his wrathful intentions, sent a servant to acquaint him that ‘he meant to dine with him that day,’ ‘I am sorry I cannot have the high honour of his lordship’s company,’ replied the haughty earl; ‘my business is pressing, and obliges me to leave Leith without even bidding him adieu.’ Lennox was equally irritated and alarmed on hearing of this flat refusal, and, starting from his chair exclaimed, ‘Then, by the holy name of God, he shall eat his dinner with me?’ and repairing instantly to the house of Morton, brought about a reconciliation, by making two very humbling concessions:- First, by dismissing Drumquhasel, who was banished from court, which he was not to approach within ten miles under a heavy penalty; second, the life of Captain James Cullayne, that Morton might have more peaceable possession of his wife. Mistress Cullayne, a woman of great beauty, filled with pity by the danger impending over her husband (then a prisoner), and touched with remorse for her former inconstancy, had come to Leith to beg his life as a boon at the hands of Lennox and her seducer. But the latter, inflamed anew by her charms and tears, was inflexible; the Regent was his tool, and the prayers and tears of the wretched wife were poured forth at their feet in vain. The poor captain, who had seen many a hot battle in the fields of the Dane and Swede, and in the wars of his native country, was ignominiously hanged on a gibbet, as a peace-offering to Morton’s wickedness.”

In the contemporary life of Queen Mary, printed for the Bannatyne Club in 1834, we have the following strange anecdote of Morton. We are told that he “had credite at the court, being left there by the traitoures to give intelligence of all maters past there, and how to betray his mistres; for they could not chuse a more fitte man than him to do such an act, who, from his very youth had been renouned for his treacherie, and of whom his oune father had no good opinion in his very infance; for, at a certain time, his coming foorth with him in a garden where his father was, with some one that had come to visit him, busy in talk, the nurse setting down the childe on the green grass, and not much mindinge him, the boy seeth a toade, which he snatched up and had eaten it all till a little of the legges, which when shee saw, shee cried out, thinking he should have been poisoned, and shee taking the legges of the toade that he had left as yet oneaten, he cried out so loud and shrill, that his father and the other gentleman heard the outcries, who went to see what should be the cause, and when the messinger returned and told the mater as it happened, in all haste he come to where his son was, and, save the legges, which he greedilie ate up also; which the father seeing, said, ‘The deville chew thee, or burste thee! there will never come good of thee!’ As he prognosticated so it happened, for he was beheaded at Edinburgh, attainted and found guiltie of heigh treason for the murder of the king his maister.”

William Douglas of Whittinghame, grandson of Archibald who made a disposition of the house in Blackfriars Wynd, was a contemporary of Morton’s, and was closely associated with him in the murder of Darnley. His name appears as one of the judges, in the act “touching the proceedings of the Gordons and Forbesses,” and he resigned his seat as senator in 1590.

Lower down, on the east side of the wynd, was a most picturesque building, part of which was long used as a Catholic chapel. It was dated 1619, and had carved above its door the motto of the city, together with the words, In te Domine speravi [I put my trust in You, Lord] – Pax intrantibus [Peace newcomers] – Salvus exeuntibus [Leaving safely] – Blissit be God in all his giftis.

On the fifth floor of this tenement was a large room, which during the greater part of the eighteenth century was used as a place of worship by the Scottish Catholics, and, until its demolition lately, there still remained painted on the door the name of the old bishop – Mr. Hay – for, in those days he dared designate himself nothing more. He was celebrated in theological literature as the opponent of Bishop William Abernethy Drummond of the Scottish Episcopal Church, one of the few clergymen who paid respects to Charles Edward when he kept his court at Holyrood. By his energy Dr. Hay constructed a chapel in Chalmer’s Close, which was destroyed in 1779, when an attempt to repeal the penal statutes against Catholics roused a “No Popery” cry in Edinburgh. On the 2nd of February a mob, including 500 sailors from Leith, burned this chapel and plundered another, while the bishop was living in the Blackfriars Wynd, and the house of every Catholic in Edinburgh was sacked and destroyed.

Principal Robertson, who was supposed to be friendly to Catholics, and defended them in the ensuing General Assembly, had his house attacked, his library nearly destroyed, and was obliged to take shelter among the troops in the castle. Dr. Hay, who now lies interred in an obscure churchyard, without a stone to mark his grave, was the last of the bishops in Blackfriars Wynd. The upper portion of the tenement he occupied was destroyed by fire in 1791. It was seven storeys in height, as appears by an account of the conflagration in the Scots Magazine for that year, which adds, “many poor families have lost their all. An old respectable citizen, above 80, was carried out during the fire. Happily, no lives were lost.”

Nearly opposite to it was another large tenement, the upper storey of which was also long used as a Catholic chapel, and as such was dedicated to St. Andrew the Apostle of Scotland, until it was quitted, in 1813, for a more complete and ornate church, St. Mary’s in Broughton Street. After it was abandoned, “the interior of the chapel retained much of its original state till its demolition. The framework of the simple altar-piece still remained, though the rude painting of the patron saint of Scotland which originally filled it had disappeared, Humble as must have been the appearance of this chapel – even when furnished with every adjunct of Catholic ceremonial for Christmas or Easter festivals, aided by the imposing habits of the officiating priests that gathered round its little altar – yet men of high rank and ancient lineage were wont to assemble among the worshippers.”

With others, here came constantly to mass and other services, Charles Philip Count d’Artois, brother of the ill-fated Louis XVI., and his son the Duc d’Angoulême, while, in the earlier years of their exile, they resided at Holyrood, by permission of the British Government, though the people of Scotland liked to view it as in virtue of the ancient Alliance; and a most humble place of worship it must have seemed to the count, who is described as having been “the most gay, gaudy, fluttering, accomplished, luxurious, and expensive prince in Europe.” A doorway inscribed in antique characters of the 16th century, Miserere mei Deus [God have mercy on me], gave access to this chapel. It bore a shield in the centre with three mullets in chief, a plain cross, and two swords saltire-ways – the coat armorial of some long-forgotten race.

Another old building adjoined, above the door of which was the pious legend ranged in two lines, The feeir of the Lord is the begynning of al visdome, but as to the generations of men that dwelt there not even a tradition remains.

Lower down, at the south-west corner of the Wynd, there formerly stood the English Episcopal Chapel, founded, in 1722, by the Lord Chief Baron Smith of the Exchequer Court, for a clergyman qualified to take the oaths to Government. To endow it he vested a sum in the public funds for the purpose of yielding £40 per annum to the incumbent, and left the management in seven trustees nominated by himself. The Baron’s chapel existed for exactly a century; it was demolished in 1822, after serving as a place of worship for all loyal and devout Episcopal High Churchmen at a time when Episcopacy and Jacobitism were nearly synonymous terms in Scotland. It was the most fashionable church in the city, and there it was that Dr. Johnson sat in 1773, when on his visit to Boswell. When this edifice was founded, according to Arnot, it was intended that its congregation should unite with others of the Episcopal persuasion in the new chapel; but the incumbent, differing from his hearers about the mode of his settlement there, chose to withdraw himself again to that in which he was already established.

After the accession of George III., “certain officious people” lodged information against some of the Episcopal clergymen; “but,” says Arnot, “the officers of state, imitating the liberality and clemency of their gracious master, discountenanced such idle and invidious endeavours at oppression.”

In the Blackfriars Wynd – though in what part thereof is not precisely known now, unless on the site of Baron Smith’s chapel – the semi-royal House of Sinclair had a town mansion. They were Princes and Earls of Orkney, Lords of Roslin, Dukes of Oldenburg, and had a list of titles that has been noted for its almost Spanish tediousness.

In his magnificence, Earl William – who built Roslin Chapel, was High Chancellor in 1455, and ambassador to England in the same year – far surpassed what had often sufficed for the kings of Scotland. His princess, Margaret Douglas, daughter of Archibald Duke of Touraine, according to Father Hay, in his “Genealogie of the Sainte Claires of Rosslyn,” was waited upon by “seventy-five gentlewomen, whereof fifty-three were daughters of noblemen, all cloathed in velvets and silks, with their chains of gold and other pertinents; together with two hundred riding gentlemen, who accompanied her in all her journeys. She had carried before her, when she went to Edinburgh, if it were darke, eighty lighted torches. Her lodging was at the foot of Blackfryer Wynd; so that in a word, none matched her in all the country, save the Queen’s Majesty.” Father Hay tells us, too, that Earl William “kept a great court, and was royally served at his own table in vessels of gold and silver: Lord Dirleton being his master of the household, Lord Borthwick his cup-bearer, and Lord Fleming his carver, in whose absence they had deputies, viz., Stewart, Laird of Drumlanrig; Tweedie, Laird of Drummelzier; and Sandilands, Laird of Calder. He had his halls and other apartments richly adorned with embroidered hangings.”

At the south-west end of the Wynd, and abutting on the Cowgate, where its high octagon turret, on six rows of corbels springing from a stone shaft, was for ages a prominent feature, stood the archiepiscopal palace, deemed in its time one of the most palatial edifices of old Edinburgh.

It formed two sides of a quadrangle, with a porte cochère that gave access to a court behind, and was built by James Bethune, who was Archbishop of Glasgow (1508-1524), Lord Chancellor of Scotland in 1512, and one of the Lords Regent, under the Duke of Albany, during the stormy minority of James V. Pitscottie distinctly refers to it as the archbishop’s house, “quhilk he biggit in the Freiris Wynd,” and Keith records that over the door of it were the arms of the family of Bethune, to be seen in his time. But they had disappeared long before the demolition of the house, the ancient risp of which was sold among the collection of the late C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in 1851. Another from the same house is in the museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. The stone bearing the coat of arms was also in his possession, and it is thus referred to by Nisbet in his Heraldry:- “With us (the Scots) angels have been frequently made use of as supporters. Cardinal Beaton had his, supported by two angels, in Dalmatic habits, or, as some say, priestly ones, which are yet to be seen on his lodgings in Blackfriars Wynd.” The cardinal’s arms, as borne on his archiepiscopal seal, are Bethune and Balfour quarterly, with a cross-crosslet-headed pastoral staff, and the tasselled hat over all.

Upon all the buildings erected by the archbishop “his armorial bearings were conspicuously displayed,” says Wilson, “and a large stone tablet remained, till a few years since, over the archway of Blackfriars Wynd, leading into the inner court, supported by two angels in Dalmatic habits, and surmounted by a crest, sufficiently defaced to enable antiquaries to discover in it either a mitre or a cardinal’s hat, according as their theory of the original ownership inclined towards the archbishop or his more celebrated nephew the cardinal.”

Occupying the space between Blackfriars Wynd and Toddrick’s Wynd, the archiepiscopal palace afforded a striking example of the revolutions effected by time and change of manners on the ancient abodes of the opulent and the noble. As it appeared before its demolition no doubt could be entertained that some portions of it had been rebuilt, to suit the requirements of its last humble denizens, but much remained to form connecting-links in the long chain of ages. The whole of the entrance floor had been strongly groined with stone, built on solid pillars, calculated to afford protection during the brawls and conflicts of the times.

Within the arched passage that led from the Wynd a broad flight of steps led to the first floor of the palace, a mode of construction common in those days, when the architect had to consider security, and how the residents might resist an attack till terms were obtained, or succour came. In early times the whole of the space occupied by the Mint in the Cowgate and other buildings to the north thereof had been the garden grounds of the archiepiscopal residence.

Here it was, as we have related, that the Earl of Arran and his armed adherents held their stormy conclave on the 30th of April, 1520, concerting the capture and death of Angus, whose war array held the High Street and barricaded the close-heads; and here it was that Gawain Douglas, the Bishop of Dunkeld, and translator of Virgil, whose two brothers fell at Flodden, called on the archbishop, and strove to keep the peace in vain, for the prelate was already in his armour, and the dreadful conflict of “Cleanse the Causeway” ensued, giving victory to the Douglases, and compelling the fugitive archbishop, during 1525, the time they were in power, to seek safety in the disguise of a shepherd, and, literally, crook in hand, to tend flocks of sheep on Bograin-knowe, not far from his diocesan city of Glasgow.

James V. took up his abode in the archiepiscopal palace in 1528, preparatory to the meeting of Parliament, and the archbishop, who had been one of the most active promoters of his liberation from the Douglas faction, became his host and entertainer. Here, in after years, resided his nephew, David Beaton, the formidable cardinal, who, in 1547, was murdered so barbarously in the castle of St. Andrew, and here also was literally the cradle of the now famous High School of Edinburgh, as it was occupied as the “Grammar Skule” in 1555, while that edifice, which stood eastward of the Kirk-of-field, was in course of erection.

We next hear of the little palace in the reign of Mary. On the 8th of February, 1562, her brother, the Lord James Stewart, “newly created Earl of Mar (afterwards Moray) “was married upon Agnes Keith, daughter to William Earl Marischal,” says the Diurnal of Occurrents, “in the kirk of Sanct Geil, in Edinburgh, with solemnity as the like has not been seen before; the hale nobility of this realm being there present, and convoyit them down to Holyrood House, where the banquet was made, the queen’s grace thereat.” After music and dancing, casting of fire-balls, tilting with fire-spears, and much jollity, next evening the queen, with all her court, came up in state from Holyrood “to the cardinal’s lodging in the Blackfriar Wynd, which was preparit and hung maist honourably.” Then the queen and her courtiers had a joyous supper, after which all the young craftsmen of the city came in their armour, and conveyed her back to Holyrood. Up Blackfriars Wynd, past the house of the late cardinal, Queen Mary proceeded on the fatal night of the 9th of February, 1567, about the same time nearly that Bothwell and his accomplices passed down the next alley, on their way to the Kirk-of-field. She had dined that day at Holyrood, and about eight in the evening went to sup with the Bishop of Argyle. At nine she rose from the table, and accompanied by the Earls of Argyle, Cassilis, and Huntly, escorted by her archer-guard and torch-bearers, went to visit Darnley in the lonely Kirk-of-field, intending to remain there for the night, but returned home. As she was proceeding, three of Bothwell’s retainers, Dalgleish, Powrie, and Wilson, in their depositions, stated that after conveying the powder-bags to the convent gate, at the foot of the Blackfriars Wynd, they saw “the Quenes grace gangand before them with licht torches,” on which Powrie, as if conscience-stricken, exclaimed to Wilson, “Jesu! Pate! What na gate is this we are ganging? I trow it be not gude.”

About 1780-9 the cardinal’s house was the residence of Bishop Abernethy Drummond, whom we have noticed as the theological opponent of Bishop Hay, and hither he must have brought his wife, the heiress of Hawthornden. This divine occupied a high place in the society of his time, and was particularly active in obtaining the repeal of the penal statutes against his church in Scotland. Latterly the house was divided, like all its neighbours, into a multitude of small lodgings, where squalid poor folks – chiefly Irish – pined on parochial allowance, and slept on beds of straw mingled with rags – “the terrible exponent of our peculiar phasis of civilisation.”

But very different was the aspect of society at the time when the Edinburgh Gazette of 19th April, 1703, put forth the following advertisement:-

“There is a boarding-school to be set up in Blackfriars Wynd, in Robinson’s Land, upon the west side of the Wynd, near the middle thereof, in the first door of the stair leading to the said land, against the latter end of May, or first of June next, when young ladies and gentlemen may have all sorts of breeding that is to be had in any part of Britain, and great care taken of their conversation.”

Nearly all that we have described here has been swept away by the trustees of the Edinburgh Improvement Act, and the ancient Wynd is now designated Blackfriars Street. By that Act, passed in 1867, a tax was imposed, not exceeding fourpence in the pound, for a period of twenty years, and the trustees were authorised to borrow, on the security of that assessment, a total sum of £350,000. At the 1st of August, 1877, the total expenditure was £442,621 18s. 6d.; receipts, £265,599 18s. 3d.; the unrecovered outlay, £177,022 0s. 3d.; and the amount to the credit of the sinking fund account, £6,752 14s. 10d.

Blackfriars Wynd was among the places “improved;” the east side was swept away and replaced by buildings in the old Scottish style, one of which is the Edinburgh Industrial School, instituted in July, 1847; but, by a somewhat shortsighted policy perhaps, the west was left untouched, and the footway there was found to be so far below the level of the street as to necessitate its being fenced off from the carriage-way by an open railing, thus imparting an incomplete aspect to the thoroughfare. Between these old houses on the west an extensive area was thrown open between Cant’s and Dickson’s Closes, thus greatly enhancing the value of the sites, but at the sacrifice of much that belonged to the past and the picturesque.

The United Industrial School in Blackfriars Street exhibits in a manner perhaps unexampled, the successful application and development of that great problem, a comprehensive unsectarian system of national education. To those to whom its name may be scarcely known it must appear that there is surely something striking in the character of a ragged school among whose founders were such men as the Earls of Minto and Elgin, Lords Dunfermline, Murray, and Jeffrey, Sir William G. Craig, Adam Black, and William Chambers.

In 1847 Dr. Guthrie first drew attention to the condition of the juvenile beggars of Edinburgh, and his noble proposal to establish a ragged school to be supported by “Christians of all denominations and parties,” was eagerly taken up. The lines upon which the suggestion was practically carried out were subsequently considerably enlarged, and the United Industrial School was the ultimate result of the modification of the original plan.

According to a paper which was read before the Social Science Association, on occasion of its meeting at Edinburgh in 1863, the United Industrial School had been found to work most satisfactorily. The plan on which the school “was instituted in 1847, and on which it has now (1863) for nearly a quarter of a century been conscientiously and successfully conducted, is that of combined instruction in things secular, separate in things religious. The school is attended by both Protestant and Catholic children, boys and girls.”

Statistics of such institutions may vary a little from year to year; but the printed report issued on June 29, 1876, the day of inspection, may be considered to represent a fairly typical statement of the average condition of the school. According to this report, the number of inmates stood thus:- “Boys, 122; girls, 34. Of these 100 boys and 20 girls were under detention, 13 boys and 14 girls on the voluntary list, and 9 day scholars; of these 70 were Protestant and 86 Roman Catholics.” The cases of absconding are few, and the punishments small. The industrial training is regarded with the full consideration it deserves. These are brushmaking, carpentry, turning, tailoring, shoemaking, and wood-cutting, for the boys; school washing, cooking, household work, and knitting, for the girls. The nett cost per head, including profit and loss on the industrial departments, was, in 1876, £12 5s. 2d., the total cost being £1,990 18s. 2d.

The directors of the United Industrial School may fairly claim to have practically solved the greatest difficulty of the educational question; and their institution was one of the earliest of its class to give effect to the discovery that the training of “ragged school” pupils in such merely mechanical and elementary work as teasing hair, picking oakum, net-making, and so forth, was little better than a waste of time, when compared with that initiation in skilled handicrafts of the simple order, which would qualify the children on leaving school to assume something like an independent position in life. In the annual report for 1860 appears the following:- “The total number of children who have received the benefit of our school is 950, and Mr. Fergusson had by patient and laborious investigation, during six months past, ascertained the present earnings of upwards of two-thirds of that number. These earnings represent the scarcely credible sum of £11,596. From the report of the following year we learn that the superintendent, by a most strict investigation, found the sum of annual earning that year was nearly £1,000 higher – the nett sum being £12,472.”

This elaborate record has not been kept up; but there is no reason to doubt that had it been so, the succeeding years would have shown the same result.