Dedicated to Researching Rosslyn Chapel, The Knights Templar and Scottish Freemasonry

LEITH, comprising the parishes of North and South Leith, which are separated In by the Water of Leith, the sea-port of Edinburgh, though it was made a separate Parliamentary Burgh in 1833, is practically a part I of the City of Edinburgh; indeed, it was a part of Edinburgh once before. The name is said to have been derived from the first proprietors, the Leiths, who owned Restalrig in the reign of King Alexander III. South Leith was anciently known by the name of Restalrig or Lestalric, and when the first mention is made of it, it belonged to a family called De Lestalric. The name Leith was anciently Leyt, Let, or Inverlet, the latter appearing in King David I.’s charter to Holyrood, which, after giving the water, fishings and meadows; to the Abbey goes on to say “and that Inverlet which is nearest the harbour, and with the half of the fishing, and with a whole tithe of all of the fishing that belongs to the church of St. Cuthbert.”

The Seal of the Burgh is as follows: A shield bearing a galley on the sea. At each end of the galley is a mast with furled sail and flag flying. In the centre is the Virgin seated, bearing the Holy Child in her arms, and a cloud rests above their heads. Above, on a scroll, are the words “Stgillum oppidi de Leith,” and beneath, on a scroll, the motto “Persevere.”

One can easily understand why the Virgin, who is the patron saint of the town and port, and the ship appear on this Seal, but the cloud resting above has given rise to much conjecture. The ancient parish church of South Leith is dedicated to St. Mary, but when it was founded is unknown, as all ecclesiastical records were destroyed at the Reformation. It is conjectured that it was erected about the close of the fourteenth century, as the earliest notice of it appears in 1490, when mention is made of an annual contribution by Peter Falconer in Leith to the chaplain of St. Peter’s Altar “situat in the Virgin Mary Kirk in Leith.” The Virgin had also a church partly dedicated to her in North Leith, as we find that near the close of the I, fifteenth century the then Abbott of Holyrood, Robert Ballantyne by name, built the first bridge over the Water of Leith, at the northern end of which he erected a chapel, which he dedicated to the honour of God, the Virgin Mary and St. Ninian. King James III. founded at Restalrig one of those colleges 0 secular clergy of which there were many in Scotland, and it was dedicated to the Holy Trinity and the Virgin. In 1560 this establishment was ordered by the Assembly to be “raysit and utterly casten doun,” as savouring of idolatry. This was partly done, and the inhabitants of Restalrig thereafter attended the parish church of St. Mary in South Leith. This Collegiate Church of Restalrig had a Seal which is described in Laing’s Descriptive Catalogue of Scottish Seals thus: Restalrig, Chapter of the Collegiate Church of (blank) Within a gothic niche a full-length figure of the Virgin and infant Jesus.”The late Marquis of Bute in his” Arms of the Royal and Parliamentary Burghs of Scotland,” gives expression to his belief that the Arms of the Burgh of Leith are derived from that Seal, and that the cloud resting over the Virgin and Child is the remains of, or is intended to represent, the Gothic canopy of the niche in which they appear on that Seal. The galley in which they are seated is, of course, meant to indicate that Leith is a sea-port.