The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-09-26

| Scotland. From Edinburgh the king set
| out on the expedition against knglan5
| which eliminated in the tragedy of the
| Bridge of Lander and the execution be-
lore his eyes of his low-born favorites
| by the angry barons, headed by Archi-
bald Bell-the-Cat. The loyalty of the
burghers at the time when the king
was delivered from the control of the
barons was rewarded by the grant of a
special charter securing them the right
OF municipal self-government and con-
ferring on them the customs of the port
OF Le1th, in sign of which the famous
blue blanket of Edinburgh was given
as standard to the guilds of the town,
in whose possession it still remains.
Under James " Edinburgh rose to a
height of splendor and prosperity I'M
known before in Scotland. James was
true king of the renaissance-joyous,
splendor-loving, a. patron of art and
literature, proud of his personal
prowess, the champion of all the tradi-
tons of chiyalry and the founder of the
Scottish Order of the Thistle He built
the tower of Holyrood palace for the
reception of his bride, Margaret Tudor.
and decorated its windows with the en-
twined flowers of England and Scot
land. In the magnificent court of
James assembled all the country could
boast of high descent or genius. The
mobiles left their lonely castles to share
the pleasures of the capital and prove
their manhood in the tournaments
whose fame spread over Europe. Poe
try broke out into a Towering time
which far surpassed the contemporary
nedy, Gavin Douglas and Dunbar were
among the singers at the court. and in
the brilliant Satires of the last and
greatest of these we find the most vivid
pictures, not only of life at the court,
but also of the state of the city itself
For Edinburgh as the now fully estab-
lished capital of Scotland more than
shared in the general prosperity of the
kingdom. Her growing commerce was
protected by the great warships which
the king had a very passion for build
ing. Her markets were crowded with
buyers and sellers-too crowded and
too dirty for the taste of the court
poet. Dunbar cries shame upon the
merchants, who, in their greed of Sin
gular profit, forgot the common well
fare and allowed the streets to be
packed with a noisy crowd of fishwives,
milk sellers, beggars and common min
strels." Indeed Dunbar's witty and
spirited Address to the Merchants of
Edinburgh" is of the highest value as
giving, except for brief mention in
Frossart, the earliest description of
medieval Edinburgh, with its stink
ing stile,' its High Cross, its tron, or
public weighing machine, and it's court
and sessions. This latter was the first
attempt on the part of the Scotch kings
to substitute a fixed and central court
at the capital for the irregular and ar
bitrary justice of the great lords. The
first printing press in Scotland was set
up during this reign under the manage
ment of an Edinburgh merchant, and it
is interesting to note that certain poems
of Dunbar were among the first works
to appear from his press
By the kings permission the magis-
tracy felled the woods that surrounded
the borough moor. So much timber was
obtained therefrom that a special effort
had to be made to sell it, by allowing
purchasers of q certain quantity to ex-
tend their house fronts seven feet into
the already crowded streets The city
was, in fact, already outgrowing the
walls erected half a century before, and
her suburbs spread over the pleasant
fields to the south of the castle and the
older town. To the gay Dunbar, Edin-
burgh, with its court, was a paradise of
delight, and a most amusing though
rather profane poem of his directed to
the king, then doing penance at Stir
ling, calls on all the saints celestial to
bring him out of his pains