Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/338

398 Lochaber axes, and halberts; magazines to supply the troops were also provided; and to call them together when occasion should require, beacons were provided, and placed in every shire. Arms to the amount of thirty thousand stand were provided from Holland, in addition to those of home manufacture, and a foundry for cannon was established in the Potter Row, at that time one of the suburbs, now a street of Edinburgh. Leith, the port of the capital, was, however, still defenceless; but, aware that the duke of Hamilton proposed to land there with hostile intentions, it was immediately resolved to put the place in a posture of defence. The plan of a new fort, the old defences of the town being in ruins, was laid down by Sir Alexander Hamilton, who acted as engineer to Leslie; and several thousands came spontaneously forward to assist in its erection. Noblemen, gentlemen, and citizens; men, women, and children; even ladies of quality, claimed the privilege of assisting in forwarding the good work, and in less than a week it was finished, and the security of Edinburgh was considered complete. Along the coast of Fife, too, every town was surrounded with batteries mounted with cannon, carried on shore from the ships; and with the exception of Inchkeith and Inchcolm, which were somehow neglected, there was not a resting place in the Firth for an enemy, till he should win it at the point of the pike.

In the mean time, the duke of Hamilton lying in Yarmouth roads, was commanded to sail for the Forth, and by all or any means to "create an awful diversion." His first sail was no sooner discovered as a speck in the distant horizon, than the beacons were in a blaze from the one extremity of the country to the other, and ere he approached the shores of Leith they were lined by upwards of twenty thousand intrepid defenders, among whom was his own mother, mounted on horseback at the head of her vassals, with a pair of pistols in the bolsters before her, with which she declared she would shoot her son with her own hand the moment he set a hostile foot on shore. Hamilton now found that he could do nothing. The troops on board his fleet did not exceed five thousand men, all raw young peasants, miserably sea-sick, and many of them labouring under the small pox. Instead of attempting hostile operations, he landed his men upon the islands of Inchkeith and Inchcolm, which served him for hospitals, and contented himself with sending into the town council some more of Charles's proclamations, which were promised to be laid before the States, who were expected to meet in a few days. This, as the measure of their obedience, Hamilton was for the time obliged to accept. Of this circumstance, with the strength which they mustered, he failed not to acquaint his master, advising him at the same time to negotiate. We are not detailing the history of the war, but the part performed in it by an individual, or we should have stated that Argyle had been sent to the west, where he had seized upon the castle of Brodick in Arran, where the earl of Antrim was to have first headed his Irish bands, in consequence of which they were for a time unable to come forward. The castle of Dumbarton had also been seized by a master-stroke of policy, as that of Edinburgh now was by the same in war. In the afternoon of the twenty-third of March, Leslie himself, with a few companies which he had been, according to his usual custom, training in the outer court-yard of Holyrood house, some of which he secretly disposed in closes at the head of the Castle Hill, approached to the exterior gate of the castle, where he called a parley with the captain or governor, demanding to be admitted. This being refused, he seemed to retire from the gate, when a petard which he had hung against it, burst and laid it open. The inner gate was instantly assailed with axes, and scaling ladders were applied to the wall, by which the covenanters gained immediate admission; while the garrison, panic-struck with the sudden explosion and the vigour of the attack, stir-