James Leslie

From the Hyten family archive; subject is James Leslie (1578–after 1631), an 11× great-grandfather of the compiler in the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth in the Canongate of Edinburgh, his marriage to Elizabeth Airmour, his son James, and his death in Edinburgh after June 1631. Notable: Scottish origins in early-17th-century Midlothian during the reign of the Stuart kings.

James Leslie (1578–after June 1631) was born in the Canongate of Edinburgh, in the shire of Midlothian, Scotland. The Canongate of that age stood as a burgh in its own right, lying just beyond the eastern gate of Edinburgh's Old Town and running down the spine of the royal mile toward the Palace of Holyroodhouse. To be born there in 1578 was to enter a community closely tied to the Scottish court, the kirk, and the trades that served both — a setting shaped by the long minority and emerging personal rule of King James VI, who would in 1603 unite the crowns of Scotland and England.

The surname Leslie was an old and widely dispersed one in Scotland, borne by burgesses, lairds, and soldiers alike, and its bearers were scattered across Aberdeenshire, Fife, and the Lothians by the late sixteenth century. James's particular branch was rooted in Edinburgh itself, where he passed both the beginning and the end of his recorded life.

He was joined in marriage to Elizabeth Airmour, and of this union is recorded a son, James Leslie, born in 1603 — the year in which the Scottish king ascended the English throne and the political center of the realm began its long drift southward to London. Through this son the Leslie line carried forward into succeeding generations and, in time, into the broader pedigree gathered in the present register.

James Leslie died at Edinburgh sometime after June of 1631, having lived through a remarkable arc of Scottish history: the consolidation of Protestantism in the kirk, the union of the crowns, and the early reign of Charles I. He stood within the compiler's paternal-grandfather line and was an eleven-times great-grandfather of the compiler.