years earlier, on another misty morning in September, the rude Highlanders had chased Cope's English Dragoons in shameful and headlong flight. Evening had overtaken the travellers by this time, so that they could not have seen "the one solitary thorn bush round which lay the greatest number of slain," or the grey tower of the church of Preston Pans, whence the afternoon before the battle, young Alexander Carlyle had looked down upon the two armies.[1] They passed Pinkie, where the Protector Somerset's soldiers had made such a savage massacre of the routed Scotch; and Carberry Hill, where Mary took her last farewell of Bothwell as she gave herself up to the Scottish lords. They passed, too, the serfs of Tranent and Preston Pans, "the colliers and salters who were in a state of slavery and bondage, bound to the collieries or salt-works for life."[2]
Entering Edinburgh by the road which goes near Holyrood House, and driving along the Canongate, they alighted at the entrance to White Horse Close, at the end of which stood the White Horse Inn. The sign, the crest of the house of Hanover, had probably been adopted on the accession of George I., and was a proof of loyalty to the reigning family. In London in the year 1761 there were forty-nine alleys, lanes and yards which were so called.[3] It was, however, said that the name had been given as a memorial of a white horse which, by winning a race on Leith Sands, had saved its master, the inn-keeper, from ruin.[4] According to the Scotch custom the inn was generally known not by its sign, but by the name of its landlord.[5] Thus Boswell calls this house Boyd's Inn. In the Edinburgh Directory for 1773–4 we find under the letter B, at the head of the Stablers, "Boyd, James, canongate head." In the present time, when an inn, however small, assumes the dignified title of Hotel, we may admire the modesty of these Edinburgh innkeepers, not one of whom pretended to be anything more than a stabler. In fact they scarcely deserved any higher name; their houses were on a level
- ↑ Dr. Alexander Carlyle's Autobiography, p. 137. The tree still remains the solitary memorial of the fight.
- ↑ It was not till 1799 that by 39 Geo. III. c. 56, they were declared free. Cockburn's Memorials, p. 78, and Boswell's Johnson, iii. 202, n. 1.
- ↑ Dodsley's London and its Environs, vi. 316. In March, 1747, one Mr. Williams, master of the White Horse Inn, Piccadilly, was kicked out of a feast of the Independent Electors of Westminster, because he was discovered to be taking notes of some Jacobite toasts. Gentleman's Magazine for 1747, p. 151.
- ↑ Chamber's Traditions of Edinburgh, p. 190.
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine for 1771, p. 544.
