Edinburgh Papers. Edinburgh Merchants and Merchandise in Old Times

BY ROBERT CHAMBERS, F.R.S.E., F.S.A.Sc., F.G.S., F.L.S., &c.
AUTHOR OF ‘TRADITIONS OF EDINBURGH.’
EDINBURGH MERCHANTS AND MERCHANDISE IN OLD TIMES
WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, LONDON AND EDINBURGH. 1859.
EDINBURGH MERCHANTS AND MERCHANDISE IN OLD TIMES.
TO THE MERCHANT COMPANY OF EDINBURGH, THIS LECTURE, DELIVERED AT THEIR REQUEST, FEBRUARY 14, 1859, IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.

I do not propose, on this occasion, to carry your minds back to a very remote period, for, truth to tell, Scotland was not distinguished for commerce at an early date. You will not be surprised if I briefly remark that we hear nothing of trade in Leith harbour till the reign of Bruce, and have reason to believe that it hardly had an existence for a century later. Dr Nicolas West, an emissary of Henry VIII., visited Scotland in 1513, just before the battle of Flodden, and he tells us that he then found at Leith only nine or ten small topmen, or ships with rigging, which, from his remarks, we may infer to have all been under sixty tons burden. There was then but a meagre traffic carried on with the Low Countries, France, and Spain—wool, skins, and salmon carried out; and wine, silks, cloth, and miscellaneous articles imported: matters altogether so insignificant, that there are but a few scattered references to them in the acts of the national parliament. One may have some idea of the pettiness of any external trade carried on by Edinburgh in the early part of the sixteenth century, from what we know of the condition of Leith at that time. It was but a village, without quay or pier, and with no approach to the harbour except by an alley—the still existing Burgess Close, which in some parts is not above four feet wide. We must imagine any merchandise then brought to Leith as carried in vessels of the size of small yachts, and borne off to the Edinburgh warehouses slung on horseback, through the narrow defiles of the Burgess Close.
About the time referred to in this volume, the central line of street between the West Bow and Nether Bow was the chief place of merchandise in Edinburgh, the Cowgate and Canongate being more specially the residence of the nobility, gentry, and great ecclesiastics. There were two chief classes of goods dealt in, each mainly confined to a particular section of the street. What was called Inland Merchandise , or Inland’sh Goods —namely, yarn, stockings, coarse cloth, and other such articles made at home—were, by a charter of 1477, ordained to be sold in the upper part of the street, then without a special name, but which is subsequently referred to as the Land-market —apparently an abbreviation of Inland Market , from the description of goods sold in it. Down to recent times, such goods continued to be chiefly sold there, by people occupying laigh shops , and on a certain day exposing their wares by ancient privilege on the open street. The remainder of the High Street was chiefly devoted to a superior class of traders, calling themselves Merchants , dealers in imported wares of various kinds, and each occupying a booth or shop, besides whatever other warehouses in more retired situations. Wholesale and retail dealers alike passed under this name, as is still, indeed, the case to a considerable extent in Scotland, where it has always been remarked that there was a peculiar liberality or courtesy in the distribution of names and titles. We frequently hear in the journalists and chroniclers of the old time, of the Merchants Buithes , or shops. The only other kind of shops in those days was the kind called krames , generally very small, made out of mere angles of property, or insinuated between the buttresses of St Giles’s Kirk, and chiefly devoted to the sale of toys and other petty articles. We often hear of krames , of kramers (that is, krame-keepers), and kramery (that is, small wares sold in krames) in the familiar histories of that age, and in old titles. Dunbar, the early Scottish poet, describes these shops very aptly as