"When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
When the devil grew well, the devil a monk was he."
In that very ancient and very filthy quarter of the town of Leith, called the Coal Hill, there flourished, in days of yore, a certain hostelrie kept by one David Wemyss. This house, which was distinguished by the figure of a ship, carved in high relief in stone over the lintel of the door, was one of good repute, and much resorted to by the seafaring people who frequented the port.
But it was not alone the good cheer and reasonable charges, for both of which "The Ship" was remarkable, that brought so many customers to David Wemyss: for this patronage he was as much indebted to his own civil and obliging manner, as to the considerations just mentioned, although, doubtless, these had their due weight with all considerate and reflecting men.
With all David's civility of manner, however, there was thought to be a spice of the rogue in him; just the smallest thing possible; but it was a sort of good-humoured roguery. In the small trickery he practised, there was as much to laugh at as to deprecate; for, being a facetious sort of personage himself, everything he did—good, bad, and indifferent—had a touch, less or more, of this quality about it; so that he could hardly be said to have been liked a bit the less for his left-handed propensities; the more especially that these were never exhibited in his dealings with his guests or customers, to whom he always acted the part of an obliging and conscientious landlord. He knew this to be for his interest, and therefore did he abide by it.
At the period at which our story opens, namely, the year 1559, the Reformation, if it had not yet driven papacy entirely out of the land, had, at least, compelled it to retire into holes and corners, and to avoid, as much as possible, the public eye. One of the last retreats of the denounced religion in its adversity, was the preceptory of St. Anthony, in Leith. For the protection, or rather endurance, which it found here, it was indebted to the circumstance of the town's being, in an especial manner, under the patronage of Mary of Guise or Lorraine, the mother of the unfortunate Scottish queen of that name.
Conceiving Leith to be, as it was, a convenient point from which to correspond with France, and well situated for the reception of such supplies as might be sent her from that country, to enable her to make head against her discontented nobles, Mary made the town, as it were, her own; and to identify herself still more closely with it, made it also, for some time, her place of residence.
To this circumstance, then, was it owing, that after they had almost wholly disappeared everywhere else, a few monks might still be seen moving stealthily and crest-fallen through the streets of Leith. These belonged to the preceptory of St. Anthony, which stood at the upper or western end of the long, tortuous street, called the Kirkgate.
But even from this, one of its last places of refuge, was prelacy now about to be driven. The town, at the particular period to which our tale refers, was besieged by the lords of the congregation, aided by an army of three thousand English, under Lord Gray of Wilton, who had been despatched for this purpose by Elizabeth, to whom the Reformers had appealed in their necessities.
The reader, then, will understand that he is in a beleaguered town: that he is in Leith during the famous siege of that ancient seaport; when it was invested on all sides by the enemies of prelacy, and against whom it was defended, chiefly by a body of French troops, under a general of the name of D'Oysel, who had been sent from France to aid the Queen Regent in maintaining her authority in the kingdom.
Having despatched these preliminaries, we proceed with our story.