nd
brake it in pieces, and thereafter past to the tolbooth which was
then steekit: and when they could not apprehend the keys thereof
they brought hammers and dang up the said tolbooth door perforce,
the provost, baillies, and others looking thereupon; and when the
said door was broken up ane part of them passed in the same, and not
only brought the said condemned cordwainer forth of the said
tolbooth, but also all the remaining persons being thereintill: and
this done they passed up the Hie gate, to have past forth at the
Nether Bow."

The shutting up of the provost and bailie in the "writing booth"--one of
the wooden structures, no doubt, which hung about St. Giles's, as round
so many other cathedrals, where a crowd of little industries were
collected about the skirts of the great church, the universal centre of
life--has something grimly comic in it, worthy of an Edinburgh mob.
Guthrie's booth must have been at the west end, facing the Tolbooth, and
the impotence of the authorities, thus compelled to look on while the
apprentices and young men in their leather aprons, armed with the long
spears which were kept ready in all the shops for immediate use, broke
down the prison doors with their hammers and let the prisoners go
free--must have added a delightful zest to the triumph of the rebels,
who had so lately pleaded humbly before them for the victim's life, but
in vain. The provost was Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, a name little
suitable for such a dilemma. When the rude mob, with their shouts and
cries, had turned their backs, the imprisoned authorities were able to
break out and take shelter in the empty Tolbooth; but when the crowd
surged up again, finding the gates closed at the Nether Bow, into the
High Street, a scuffle arose, a new "Clear the Causeway," though the
defenders of order kept within the walls of the Tolbooth, and thence
shot at the rioters, who returned their fire with hagbuts and
stones--from three in the afternoon till eight o'clock in the evening,
"and never ane man of the town stirred to defend their provost and
baillies." Finally the Constable of the Castle was sent for, who made
peace, the craftsmen only laying down their arms on condition not only
of absolute immunity from punishment for the day's doings, but with an
undertaking that all previous actions against them should be stopped,
and their masters made to receive them again without grudge or
puni