Livingstone Mausoleum, Greenhill

This mausoleum lies just a yard or two away from a route I have taken countless times, but until today I had never seen it. I was walking back home from Bruntsfield and was in no hurry, and was of course on the lookout for blips.

I had a bit of trouble deciphering the inscription, but my friend Google came to the rescue, so here it is in full:

This Saint whos Corps lyes buried heir
Let all posteritie admeir
When judgments did this land surround
He with God was walking found
For which from midst of fers he's cround
Heir to be interrd. Both he
And friends by Providence agrie
No age shal los his memorie
His age 53. Died 1645

John Livingstone was 'an apothecary in Edinburgh' who fell victim to the pestilence which began in 1644 and swept across Scotland for the next four years. According to the historian Christopher Smout, it was probably typhus, spread by lice and "carried to all parts of the country by the marching and counter-marching armies of the Covenant and Montrose and by the refugees fleeing from them". He gives the mortality for Leith as 2421, which was just over half the population.

I'm glad I didn't live then!