Page:Annals of Duddingston and Portobello.pdf/62

Rh (that I know of) but between the Tay and the Tyne within the whole island.”

The earliest reference we have to coals in Duddingston parish is in a charter of Kelso Abbey of 1466, where we find the right to dig coal pits granted along with the lands of Figgate to Cuthbert Knightson, Burgess of Edinburgh. There is no evidence of the existence of coal on this ground (being that on which Portobello is now built), or of any attempt being made to "dig for coal ;” but the fact of the right being conceded, indicates that coal was supposed to exist in the neighbourhood. Along the seaboard of the Firth of Forth a considerable trade had sprung up, in which the article had come to be a leading export. Thus, in 1526, James V. empowered the monks of Newbattle, the discoverers of coal in the vicinity, to construct a port within their own lands of Prestongrange. They accordingly erected a harbour named Newhaven, This was afterwards changed to Aitchison’s Haven, but it was at the end of last century entirely swept away, and not a vestige of it now remains. It was situated between Levenhall and the little harbour of Morrison’s Haven.

The extent to which the trade with other countries was growing seems to have so alarmed the Government, lest the supply should become exhausted, that by an Act passed in 1568 the transporting of coals "furth of the realm” was prohibited, but afterwards commuted so far by an Act of the Privy Council that "smiddy coal" was allowed to be exported. In process of time these Acts came to be disregarded, until in 1609 a proposal was made by the Scottish Privy Council that the foreign coal trade should be legalised. King James VI. would listen to nothing of the kind. In a long letter, dated Whitehall, 28th April 1609, he fully relates the reasons for his refusal, viz., his fear "that as it is notorious that the coills both in that and this kingdome do daylie decay, so that thair is no houp of any suddane new grouth ; and as by the use of these coills the wodis and growing tymmer throughout all the yland sall be spared and uncutt and undestroyit,” and seeing "that coills are at this instant almost unbuyable for dearth,” he considered it "a shameful thing that the pryvate gayne of some two or three individuals should be put in the ballance, not only with the weele of the whole kingdome, but even of this whole yle.”