[Sidenote: 1669. JUNE 4.] One Mungo Murray was tried before the Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, on a charge of having, on the 8th day of May preceding, committed an assault on Thomas Sydserf. The affair is only worthy of noting because it brings out the fact that there was at this time a theatre in the Canongate. Thomas Sydserf is the same person whom we have seen engaged in editing the _Mercurius Caledonius_. He had since turned his mind to dramatic literature, and written a play called _Tarugo’s Wiles_, which was acted with applause at the Duke of York’s Theatre in 1668, and on which the Earl of Dorset had written complimentary verses--representing Phœbus as saying to Scotland, with reference to such Scotsmen as Sydserf: [Sidenote: 1669.] ‘On thee I will bestow my longest days, And crown thy sons with everlasting bays. My beams that reach thee shall employ their powers To ripen souls of men, not fruits and flowers, Let warmer climes my fading favours boast, Poets and stars shine brightest in the frost.’ Sydserf was now conducting a theatre in the Canongate, depending in all probability upon the yet unfaded spirit of cavalierism evoked at the Restoration, for a slender support which it was not in the nature of Scotland to give at ordinary times to such an establishment. It appeared that Mungo Murray broke into Sydserf’s theatre in time of rehearsal, and attacked him with his drawn sword, but was overpowered before he could inflict any hurt. He was found guilty, and sentenced to ask Sydserf’s pardon, and abstain from molesting him in future under pain of banishment from the city.[218] * * * * * [Sidenote: JUNE 16.]