The Project Gutenberg eBook of Traditions of Edinburgh, by Robert Chambers

Traditions of Edinburgh

By Robert Chambers, ll.d.

ILLUSTRATED BY

JAMES RIDDEL, R.S.W.

LONDON: 38 Soho Square, W.
W. & R. CHAMBERS, LIMITED
EDINBURGH: 339 High Street
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA
1912

THE CHANGES OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
[1745-1845.]

Fortified Gate, Nether Bow Port, from Canongate.

Edinburgh was, at the beginning of George III.’s reign, a picturesque, odorous, inconvenient, old-fashioned town, of about seventy thousand inhabitants. It had no court, no factories, no commerce; but there was a nest of lawyers in it, attending upon the Court of Session; and a considerable number of the Scotch gentry—one of whom then passed as rich with a thousand a year—gave it the benefit of their presence during the winter. Thus the town had lived for some ages, during which political discontent and division had kept the country poor. A stranger approaching the city, seeing it piled ‘close and massy, deep and high’—a series of towers, rising from a palace on the plain to a castle in the air—would have thought it a truly romantic place; and the impression would not have subsided much on a near inspection, when he would have found himself admitted by a fortified gate through an ancient wall, still kept in repair. Even on entering the one old street of which the city chiefly consisted, he would have seen much to admire—houses{2} of substantial architecture and lofty proportions, mingled with more lowly, but also more arresting wooden fabrics; a huge and irregular, but venerable Gothic church, surmounted by an aërial crown of masonry; finally, an esplanade towards the Castle, from which he could have looked abroad upon half a score of counties, upon firth and fell, yea, even to the blue Grampians. Everywhere he would have seen symptoms of denseness of population; the open street a universal market; a pell-mell of people everywhere. The eye would have been, upon the whole, gratified, whatever might be the effect of the clangor strepitusque upon the ear, or whatever might have been the private meditations of the nose. It would have only been on coming to close quarters, or to quarters at all, that our stranger would have begun to think of serious drawbacks from the first impression. For an inn, he would have had the White Horse, in a close in the Canongate; or the White Hart, a house which now appears like a carrier’s inn, in the Grassmarket. Or, had he betaken himself to a private lodging, which he would have probably done under the conduct of a ragged varlet, speaking more of his native Gaelic than English, he would have had to ascend four or five stories of a common stair, into the narrow chambers of some Mrs Balgray or Luckie Fergusson, where a closet-bed in the sitting-room would have been displayed as the most comfortable place in the world; and he would have had, for amusement, a choice between an extensive view of house-tops from the window and the study of a series of prints of the four seasons, a sampler, and a portrait of the Marquis of Granby, upon the wall.

House-tops.

WHITE HART INN, GRASSMARKET.

Page 2.

{3}

On being introduced into society, our stranger might have discovered cause for content with his lodging on finding how poorly off were the first people with respect to domestic accommodations. I can imagine him going to tea at Mr Bruce of Kennet’s, in Forrester’s Wynd—a country gentleman and a lawyer (not long after raised to the bench), yet happy to live with his wife and children in a house of fifteen pounds of rent, in a region of profound darkness and mystery, now no more. Had he got into familiar terms with the worthy lady of the mansion, he might have ascertained that they had just three rooms and a kitchen; one room, ‘my lady’s’—that is, the kind of parlour he was sitting in; another, a consulting-room for the gentleman; the third, a bedroom. The children, with their maid, had beds laid down for them at night in their father’s room; the housemaid slept under the kitchen dresser; and the one man-servant was turned at night out of the house. Had our friend chanced to get amongst tradespeople, he might have found Mr Kerr, the eminent goldsmith in the Parliament Square, stowing his ménage into a couple of small rooms above his booth-like shop, plastered against the wall of St Giles’s Church; the nursery and kitchen, however, being placed in a cellar under the level of the street, where the children are said to have rotted off like sheep.

But indeed everything was on a homely and narrow scale. The College—where Munro, Cullen, and Black were already making themselves great names—was to be approached through a mean alley, the College Wynd. The churches were chiefly clustered under one roof; the jail was a narrow building, half-filling up the breadth of the street; the public offices, for the most part, obscure places in lanes and dark entries. The men of learning and wit, united with a proportion of men of rank, met as the Poker Club in a tavern, the best of its day, but only a dark house in a close, to which our stranger could scarcely have made his way without a guide. In a similar situation across the way, he would have found, at the proper season, the Assembly; that is, a congregation of ladies met for dancing, and whom the gentlemen usually joined rather late, and rather merry. The only theatre was also a poor and obscure place in some indescribable part of the Canongate.

The town was, nevertheless, a funny, familiar, compact, and not unlikable place. Gentle and semple living within the compass of a single close, or even a single stair, knew and took an interest in{4} each other.[1] Acquaintances might not only be formed, Pyramus-and-Thisbe fashion, through party-walls, but from window to window across alleys, narrow enough in many cases to allow of hand coming to hand, and even lip to lip. There was little elegance, but a vast amount of cheap sociality. Provokingly comical clubs, founded each upon one joke, were abundant. The ladies had tea-drinkings at the primitive hour of six, from which they cruised home under the care of a lantern-bearing, patten-shod lass; or perhaps, if a bad night, in Saunders Macalpine’s sedan-chair. Every forenoon, for several hours, the only clear space which the town presented—that around the Cross—was crowded with loungers of all ranks, whom it had been an amusement to the poet Gay to survey from the neighbouring windows of Allan Ramsay’s shop. The jostle and huddlement was extreme everywhere. Gentlemen and ladies paraded along in the stately attire of the period; tradesmen chatted in groups, often bareheaded, at their shop-doors; caddies whisked about, bearing messages, or attending to the affairs of strangers; children filled the kennel with their noisy sports. Add to all this, corduroyed men from Gilmerton, bawling coals or yellow sand, and spending as much breath in a minute as could have served poor asthmatic Hugo Arnot for a month; fishwomen crying their caller haddies from Newhaven; whimsicals and idiots going along, each with his or her crowd of listeners or tormentors; sootymen with their bags; town-guardsmen with their antique Lochaber axes; water-carriers with their dripping barrels; barbers with their hair-dressing materials; and so forth—and our stranger would have been disposed to acknowledge that, though a coarse and confused, it was a perfectly unique scene, and one which, once contemplated, was not easily to be forgotten.

A change at length began. Our northern country had settled to sober courses in the reign of George II., and the usual results of industry were soon apparent. Edinburgh by-and-by felt much like a lady who, after long being content with a small and inconvenient house, is taught, by the money in her husband’s pockets, that such a place is no longer to be put up with. There was a{5} wish to expatiate over some of the neighbouring grounds, so as to get more space and freer air; only it was difficult to do, considering the physical circumstances of the town, and the character of the existing outlets. Space, space!—air, air! was, however, a strong and a general cry, and the old romantic city did at length burst from its bounds, though not in a very regular way, or for a time to much good purpose.

NEWHAVEN FISHWIFE.

Page 4.

A project for a new street on the site of Halkerston’s Wynd, leading by a bridge to the grounds of Mutrie’s Hill, where a suburb might be erected, was formed before the end of the seventeenth century.[2] It was a subject of speculation to John, Earl of Mar, during his years of exile, as were many other schemes of national improvement which have since been realised—for example, the Forth and Clyde Canal. The grounds to the north lay so invitingly open that the early formation of such a project is not wonderful. Want of spirit and of means alone could delay its execution. After the Rebellion of 1745, when a general spirit of improvement began to be shown in Scotland, the scheme was taken up by a public-spirited provost, Mr George Drummond, but it had to struggle for years with local difficulties. Meanwhile, a sagacious builder, by name James Brown, resolved to take advantage of the growing taste; he purchased a field near the town for £1200, and feued it out for a square. The speculation is said to have ended in something like giving him his own money as an annual return. This place (George Square) became the residence of several of the judges and gentry. I was amused a few years ago hearing an old gentleman in the country begin a story thus: ‘When I was in Edinburgh, in the year ’67, I went to George Square, to call for Mrs Scott of Sinton,’ &c. To this day some relics of gentry cling to its grass-green causeways, charmed, perhaps, by its propinquity to the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links. Another place sprang into being, a smaller quadrangle of neat houses, called Brown’s Square.[3] So much was thought of it at first that a correspondent of the Edinburgh Advertiser, in 1764, seriously counsels his fellow-citizens to erect in it an equestrian statue of the then popular young king, George III.! This place, too, had some distinguished inhabitants; till 1846, one of the houses continued to be nominally the town mansion of a venerable judge, Lord Glenlee. We pass willingly from these traits of grandeur to dwell on the fact of its having{6} been the residence of Miss Jeanie Elliot of Minto, the authoress of the original song, The Flowers of the Forest; and even to bethink ourselves that here Scott placed the ideal abode of Saunders Fairford and the adventure of Green Mantle. Sir Walter has informed us, from his own recollections, that the inhabitants of these southern districts formed for a long time a distinct class of themselves, having even places of polite amusement for their own recreation, independent of the rest of Edinburgh. He tells us that the society was of the first description, including, for one thing, most of the gentlemen who wrote in the Mirror and the Lounger. There was one venerable inhabitant who did not die till half the New Town was finished, yet he had never once seen it!

The exertions of Drummond at length procured an act (1767) for extending the royalty of the city over the northern fields; and a bridge was then erected to connect these with the elder city. The scheme was at first far from popular. The exposure to the north and east winds was felt as a grievous disadvantage, especially while houses were few. So unpleasant even was the North Bridge considered that a lover told a New-Town mistress—to be sure only in an epigram—that when he visited her, he felt as performing an adventure not much short of that of Leander. The aristocratic style of the place alarmed a number of pockets, and legal men trembled lest their clients and other employers should forget them if they removed so far from the centre of things as Princes Street and St Andrew Square. Still, the move was unavoidable, and behoved to be made.

It is curious to cast the eye over the beautiful city which now extends over this district, the residence of as refined a mass of people as could be found in any similar space of ground upon earth, and reflect on what the place was a hundred years ago. The bulk of it was a farm, usually called Wood’s Farm, from its tenant (the father of a clever surgeon, well known in Edinburgh in the last age under the familiar appellation of Lang Sandy Wood). Henry Mackenzie, author of the Man of Feeling, who died in 1831, remembered shooting snipes, hares, and partridges about that very spot to which he alludes at the beginning of the paper on Nancy Collins in the Mirror (July 1779): ‘As I walked one evening, about a fortnight ago, through St Andrew Square, I observed a girl meanly dressed,’ &c. Nearly along the line now occupied by Princes Street was a rough enclosed road, called the Lang Gait or Lang Dykes, the way along which Claverhouse{7} went with his troopers in 1689, when he retired in disgust from the Convention, with the resolution of raising a rebellion in the Highlands. On the site of the present Register House was a hamlet or small group of houses called Mutrie’s Hill; and where the Royal Bank now stands was a cottage wherein ambulative citizens regaled themselves with fruit and curds and cream. Broughton, which latterly has been surprised and swamped by the spreading city, was then a village, considered as so far afield that people went to live in it for the summer months, under the pleasing idea that they had got into the country. It is related that Whitefield used to preach to vast multitudes on the spot which by-and-by became appropriated for the Theatre Royal. Coming back one year, and finding a playhouse on the site of his tub, he was extremely incensed. Could it be, as Burns suggests,

‘There was rivalry just in the job!’

James Craig, a nephew of the poet Thomson, was entrusted with the duty of planning the new city. In the engraved plan, he appropriately quotes from his uncle:

‘August, around, what PUBLIC WORKS I see!

Lo, stately streets! lo, squares that court the breeze!

See long canals and deepened rivers join

Each part with each, and with the circling main,

The whole entwined isle.’

The names of the streets and squares were taken from the royal family and the tutelary saints of the island. The honest citizens had originally intended to put their own local saint in the foreground; but when the plan was shown to the king for his approval, he cried: ‘Hey, hey—what, what—St Giles Street!—never do, never do!’ And so, to escape from an unpleasant association of ideas, this street was called Princes Street, in honour of the king’s two sons, afterwards George IV. and the Duke of York. So difficult was it at the very first to induce men to build that a premium of twenty pounds was offered by the magistrates to him who should raise the first house; it was awarded to Mr John Young, on account of a mansion erected by him in Rose Court, George Street. An exemption from burghal taxes was granted to the first house in the line of Princes Street, built by Mr John Neale, haberdasher (afterwards occupied by Archibald Constable, and then as the Crown Hotel), in consequence of a bargain made by Mr Graham, plumber, who sold{8} this and the adjoining ground to the town.[4] Mr Shadrach Moyes, when having a house built for himself in Princes Street, in 1769, took the builder bound to rear another farther along besides his, to shield him from the west wind! Other quaint particulars are remembered; as, for instance: Mr Wight, an eminent lawyer, who had planted himself in St Andrew Square, finding he was in danger of having his view of St Giles’s clock shut up by the advancing line of Princes Street, built the intervening house himself, that he might have it in his power to keep the roof low for the sake of the view in question; important to him, he said, as enabling him to regulate his movements in the morning, when it was necessary that he should be punctual in his attendance at the Parliament House.

ROUPING-WIFE.

Page 9.

The foundation was at length laid of that revolution which has ended in making Edinburgh a kind of double city—first, an ancient and picturesque hill-built one, occupied chiefly by the humbler classes; and second, an elegant modern one, of much regularity of aspect, and possessed almost as exclusively by the more refined portion of society. The New Town, keeping pace with the growing prosperity of the country, had, in 1790, been extended to Castle Street; in 1800 the necessity for a second plan of the same extent still farther to the north had been felt, and this was after acted upon. Forty years saw the Old Town thoroughly changed as respects population. One after another, its nobles and gentry, its men of the robe, its ‘writers,’ and even its substantial burghers, had during that time deserted their mansions in the High Street and Canongate, till few were left. Even those modern districts connected with it, as St John Street, New Street, George Square, &c., were beginning to be forsaken for the sake of more elegantly circumstanced habitations beyond the North Loch. Into the remote social consequences of this change it is not my purpose to enter, beyond the bare remark that it was only too accordant with that tendency of our present form of civilisation to separate the high from the low, the intelligent from the ignorant—that dissociation, in short, which would in itself run nigh to be a condemnation of all progress, if we were not allowed to suppose that better forms of civilisation are realisable. Enough that I mention the tangible consequences of the revolution—a flooding in of the humbler trading classes where gentles once had been; the houses of these classes, again, filled{9} with the vile and miserable. Now were to be seen hundreds of instances of such changes as Provost Creech indicates in 1783: ‘The Lord Justice-Clerk Tinwald’s house possessed by a French teacher—Lord President Craigie’s house by a rouping-wife or salewoman of old furniture—and Lord Drummore’s house left by a chairman for want of accommodation.’ ‘The house of the Duke of Douglas at the Union, now possessed by a wheelwright!’ To one who, like myself, was young in the early part of the present century, it was scarcely possible, as he permeated the streets and closes of ancient Edinburgh, to realise the idea of a time when the great were housed therein. But many a gentleman in middle life, then living perhaps in Queen Street or Charlotte Square, could recollect the close or the common stair where he had been born and spent his earliest years, now altogether given up to a different portion of society. And when the younger perambulator inquired more narrowly, he could discover traces of this former population. Here and there a carved coat-armorial, with supporters, perhaps even a coronet, arrested attention amidst the obscurities of some wynd or court. Did he ascend a stair and enter a floor, now subdivided perhaps into four or five distinct dwellings, he might readily perceive, in the massive wainscot of the lobby, a proof that the refinements of life had once been there. Still more would this idea be impressed upon him when, passing into one of the best rooms of the old house, he would find not only a continuation of such wainscoting, but perhaps a tolerable landscape by Norie on a panel above the fireplace, or a ceiling decorated by De la Cour, a French artist, who flourished in Edinburgh about 1740. Even yet he would discover a very few relics of gentry maintaining their ground in the Old Town, as if faintly to show what it had once been. These were generally old people, who did not think it worth while to make any change{10} till the great one. There is a melancholy pleasure in recalling what I myself found about 1820, when my researches for this work were commenced. In that year I was in the house of Governor Fergusson, an ancient gentleman of the Pitfour family, in a floor, one stair up, in the Luckenbooths. About the same time I attended the book-sale of Dr Arrot, a physician of good figure, newly deceased, in the Mint Close. For several years later, any one ascending a now miserable-looking stair in Blackfriars Wynd would have seen a door-plate inscribed with the name Miss Oliphant, a member of the Gask family. Nay, so late as 1832, I had the pleasure of breakfasting with Sir William Macleod Bannatyne in Whiteford House, Canongate (afterwards a type-foundry), on which occasion the venerable old gentleman talked as familiarly of the levees of the sous-ministre for Lord Bute in the old villa at the Abbey Hill as I could have talked of the affairs of the Canning administration; and even recalled, as a fresh picture of his memory, his father drawing on his boots to go to make interest in London in behalf of some of the men in trouble for the Forty-five, particularly his own brother-in-law, the Clanranald of that day. Such were the connections recently existing between the past system of things and the present. Now, alas! the sun of Old-Town glory has set for ever. Nothing is left but the decaying and rapidly diminishing masses of ancient masonry, and a handful of traditionary recollections, which be it my humble but not unworthy task to transmit to future generations.[5]

Carved Armorial, with Supporters.

THE CASTLE-HILL.

Page 11.

{11}

THE CASTLE-HILL.

Hugo Arnot—Allan Ramsay—House of the Gordon Family—Sir David Baird—Dr Webster—House of Mary de Guise.

The saunter which I contemplate through the streets and stories, the lanes and legends, of Old Edinburgh may properly commence at the Castle-hill, as it is a marked extremity of the city as well as its highest ground.

The Castle-hill is partly an esplanade, serving as a parade-ground for the garrison of the Castle, and partly a street, the upper portion of that vertebral line which, under the various names of Lawnmarket, High Street, and Canongate, extends to Holyrood Palace. The open ground—a scene of warfare during the sieges of the fortress, often a place of execution in rude times—the place, too, where, by a curious legal fiction, the Nova Scotia baronets were enfeoffed in their ideal estates on the other side of the Atlantic—was all that Edinburgh possessed as a readily accessible promenade before the extension of the city. We find the severe acts for a strict observance of the Sabbath, which appeared from time to time in the latter part of the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century, denouncing the King’s Park, the Pier of Leith, and the Castle-hill as the places chiefly resorted to for the profane sport of walking on ‘the Lord’s Day.’ Denounce as they might, human nature could never, I believe, be altogether kept off the Castle-hill; even the most respectable people walked there in multitudes during the intervals between morning and evening service. We have an allusion to the promenade character of the Castle-hill in Ramsay’s city pastoral, as it may be called, of The Young Laird and Edinburgh Katy—

‘Wat ye wha I met yestreen,

Coming down the street, my jo?

My mistress in her tartan screen,

Fu’ bonny, braw, and sweet, my jo.

“My dear,” quoth I, “thanks to the night,

That never wished a lover ill,

Since ye’re out o’ your mother’s sight,

Let’s tak’ a walk up to the hill.”’

{12}

A memory of these Sunday promenadings here calls me to introduce what I have to say regarding a man of whom there used to be a strong popular remembrance in Edinburgh.

HUGO ARNOT.

The cleverly executed History of Edinburgh, published by Arnot in 1779, and which to this day has not been superseded, gives some respectability to a name which tradition would have otherwise handed down to us as only that of an eccentric gentleman, of remarkably scarecrow figure, and the subject of a few bon-mots.

He was the son of a Leith shipmaster, named Pollock, and took the name of Arnot from a small inheritance in Fife. Many who have read his laborious work will be little prepared to hear that it was written when the author was between twenty and thirty; and that, antiquated as his meagre figure looks in Kay’s Portraits, he was at his death, in 1786, only thirty-seven. His body had been, in reality, made prematurely old by a confirmed asthma, accompanied by a cough, which he himself said would carry him off like a rocket some day, when a friend remarked, with reference to his known latitudinarianism: ‘Possibly, Hugo, in the contrary direction.’

Hugo Arnot, looking so like his meat.

Most of the jokes about poor Hugo’s person have been frequently printed—as Harry Erskine meeting him on the street when he was gnawing at a spelding or dried haddock, and congratulating him on looking so like his meat; and his offending the piety of an old woman who was cheapening a Bible in Creech’s shop, by some thoughtless remark, when she first burst out with: ‘Oh, you monster!’ and then turning round and seeing him, added: ‘And he’s an anatomy too!’ An epigram by Erskine is less known:

‘The Scriptures assure us that much is forgiven

To flesh and to blood by the mercy of Heaven;

But I’ve searched the whole Bible, and texts can find none

That extend the assurance to skin and to bone.’

Arnot was afflicted by a constitutional irritability to an extent{13} which can hardly be conceived. A printer’s boy, handing papers to him over his shoulder, happened to touch his ear with one of them, when he started up in a rage, and demanded of the trembling youth what he meant by insulting him in that manner! Probably from some quarrel arising out of this nervous weakness—for such it really was—the Edinburgh booksellers, to a man, refused to have anything to do with the prospectuses of his Criminal Trials, and Arnot had to advertise that they were to be seen in the coffee-houses, instead of the booksellers’ shops.

About the time when he entered at the bar (1772), he had a fancy for a young lady named Hay (afterwards Mrs Macdougall), sister of a gentleman who succeeded as Marquis of Tweeddale, and then a reigning toast. One Sunday, when he contemplated making up to his divinity on the Castle-hill, after forenoon service, he entertained two young friends at breakfast in his lodgings at the head of the Canongate. By-and-by the affairs of the toilet came to be considered. It was then found that Hugo’s washerwoman had played false, leaving him in a total destitution of clean linen, or at least of clean linen that was also whole. A dreadful storm took place, but at length, on its calming a little, love found out a way, by taking the hand-ruffles of one cast garment, in connection with the front of another, and adding both to the body of a third. In this eclectic form of shirt the meagre young philosopher marched forth with his friends, and was rewarded for his perseverance by being allowed a very pleasant chat with the young lady on ‘the hill.’ His friends standing by had their own enjoyment in reflecting what the beauteous Miss Hay would think if she knew the struggles which her admirer had had that morning in preparing to make his appearance before her.

Arnot latterly dwelt in a small house at the end of the Meuse Lane in St Andrew Street, with an old and very particular lady for a neighbour in the upper-floor. Disturbed by the enthusiastic way in which he sometimes rang his bell, the lady ventured to send a remonstrance, which, however, produced no effect. This led to a bad state of matters between them. At length a very pressing and petulant message being handed in one day, insisting that he should endeavour to call his servants in a different manner, what was the lady’s astonishment next morning to hear a pistol discharged in Arnot’s house! He was simply complying with the letter of his neighbour’s request, by firing, instead of ringing, as a signal for shaving-water.

{14}

ALLAN RAMSAY.

On the north side of the esplanade—enjoying a splendid view of the Firth of Forth, Fife and Stirling shires—is the neat little villa of Allan Ramsay, surrounded by its miniature pleasure-grounds. The sober, industrious life of this exception to the race of poets having resulted in a small competency, he built this odd-shaped house in his latter days, designing to enjoy in it the Horatian quiet which he had so often eulogised in his verse. The story goes that, showing it soon after to the clever Patrick, Lord Elibank, with much fussy interest in all its externals and accommodations, he remarked that the wags were already at work on the subject—they likened it to a goose-pie [6] (owing to the roundness of the shape). ‘Indeed, Allan,’ said his lordship, ‘now I see you in it, I think the wags are not far wrong.’

Allan Ramsay’s Villa.

The splendid reputation of Burns has eclipsed that of Ramsay so effectually that this pleasing poet, and, upon the whole, amiable and worthy man, is now little regarded. Yet Ramsay can never be deprived of the credit of having written the best pastoral poem in the range of British literature—if even that be not too narrow a word—and many of his songs are of great merit.

Ramsay was secretly a Jacobite, openly a dissenter from the severe manners and feelings of his day, although a very decent and regular attender of the Old Church in St Giles’s. He delighted in music and theatricals, and, as we shall see, encouraged the Assembly. It was also no doubt his own taste{15} which led him, in 1725, to set up a circulating library, whence he diffused plays and other works of fiction among the people of Edinburgh. It appears, from the private notes of the historian Wodrow, that, in 1728, the magistrates, moved by some meddling spirits, took alarm at the effect of this kind of reading on the minds of youth, and made an attempt to put it down, but without effect. One cannot but be amused to find amongst these self-constituted guardians of morality Lord Grange, who kept his wife in unauthorised restraint for several years, and whose own life was a scandal to his professions. Ramsay, as is well known, also attempted to establish a theatre in Edinburgh, but failed. The following advertisement on this subject appears in the Caledonian Mercury, September 1736: ‘The New Theatre in Carrubber’s Close being in great forwardness, will be opened the 1st of November. These are to advertise the gentlemen and ladies who incline to purchase annual tickets, to enter their names before the 20th of October next, on which day they shall receive their tickets from Allan Ramsay, on paying 30s.—no more than forty to be subscribed for; after which none will be disposed of under two guineas.’

The late Mrs Murray of Henderland knew Ramsay for the last ten years of his life, her sister having married his son, the celebrated painter. She spoke of him to me in 1825, with kindly enthusiasm, as one of the most amiable men she had ever known. His constant cheerfulness and lively conversational powers had made him a favourite amongst persons of rank, whose guest he frequently was. Being very fond of children, he encouraged his daughters in bringing troops of young ladies about the house, in whose sports he would mix with a patience and vivacity wonderful in an old man. He used to give these young friends a kind of ball once a year. From pure kindness for the young, he would help to make dolls for them, and cradles wherein to place these little effigies, with his own hands.[7] But here a fashion of the age must be held in view; for, however odd it may appear, it is undoubtedly true that to make and dispose of dolls, such as children now alone are interested in, was a practice in vogue amongst grown-up ladies who had little to do about a hundred years ago.

{16}

Ramsay died in 1757. An elderly female told a friend of mine that she remembered, when a girl, living as an apprentice with a milliner in the Grassmarket, being sent to Ramsay Garden to assist in making dead-clothes for the poet. She could recall, however, no particulars of the scene but the roses blooming in at the window of the death-chamber.

The poet’s house passed to his son, of the same name, eminent as a painter—portrait-painter to King George III. and his queen—and a man of high mental culture; consequently much a favourite in the circles of Johnson and Boswell. The younger Allan enlarged the house, and built three additional houses to the eastward, bearing the title of Ramsay Garden. At his death, in 1784, the property went to his son, General John Ramsay, who, dying in 1845, left this mansion and a large fortune to Mr Murray of Henderland. So ended the line of the poet. His daughter Christian, an amiable, kind-hearted woman, said to possess a gift of verse, lived for many years in New Street. At seventy-four she had the misfortune to be thrown down by a hackney-coach, and had her leg broken; yet she recovered, and lived to the age of eighty-eight. Leading a solitary life, she took a great fancy for cats. Besides supporting many in her own house, curiously disposed in bandboxes, with doors to go in and out at, she caused food to be laid out for others on her stair and around her house. Not a word of obloquy would she listen to against the species, alleging, when any wickedness of a cat was spoken of, that the animal must have acted under provocation, for by nature, she asserted, cats are harmless. Often did her maid go with morning messages to her friends, inquiring, with her compliments, after their pet cats. Good Miss Ramsay was also a friend to horses, and indeed to all creatures. When she observed a carter ill-treating his horse, she would march up to him, tax him with cruelty, and, by the very earnestness of her remonstrances, arrest the barbarian’s hand. So also, when she saw one labouring on the street, with the appearance of defective diet, she would send rolls to its master, entreating him to feed the animal. These{17} peculiarities, although a little eccentric, are not unpleasing; and I cannot be sorry to record them of the daughter of one whose heart and head were an honour to his country.

Happy.

Contented.

Repose.

Convivial.

[1868.—It seems to have been unknown to the biographers of Allan Ramsay the painter that he made a romantic marriage. In his early days, while teaching the art of drawing in the family of Sir Alexander Lindsay of Evelick, one of the young ladies fell in love with him, captivated probably by the tongue which afterwards gave him the intimacy of princes, and was undoubtedly a great source of his success in life. The father of the enamoured girl was an old proud baronet; her mother, a sister of the Chief-Justice, Earl of Mansfield. A marriage with consent of parents was consequently impossible. The young people, nevertheless, contrived to get themselves united in wedlock.

Allan Ramsay’s Monument, Princes Street Gardens.

The speedily developed talent of Ramsay, the illustrious patronage they secured to him, and the very considerable wealth which he acquired must have in time made him an acceptable relation to those proud people. A time came when their descendants held the connection even as an honour. The wealth of the painter ultimately, on the death of his son in 1845, became the property of Mr Murray of Henderland, a grandson of Sir Alexander Lindsay and nephew of Mrs Allan Ramsay;{18} thence it not long after passed to Mr Murray’s brother, Sir John Archibald Murray, better known by his judicial name of Lord Murray. This gentleman admired the poet, and resolved to raise a statue to him beside his goose-pie house on the Castlehill; but the situation proved unsuitable, and since his own lamented death, in 1858, the marble full-length of worthy Allan, from the studio of John Steell, has found a noble place in the Princes Street Gardens, resting on a pedestal, containing on its principal side a medallion portrait of Lord Murray, on the reverse one of General Ramsay, on the west side one of the General’s lady, and on the east similar representations of the General’s two daughters, Lady Campbell and Mrs Malcolm. Thus we find—owing to the esteem which genius ever commands—the poet of the Gentle Shepherd in the immortality of marble, surrounded by the figures of relatives and descendants who so acknowledged their aristocratic rank to be inferior to his, derived from mind alone.]

Doorway of Duke of Gordon’s House. Now built into School in Boswell’s Court.

HOUSE OF THE GORDON FAMILY.

Tradition points out, as the residence of the Gordon family, a house, or rather range of buildings, situated between Blair’s and Brown’s Closes, being almost the first mass of building in the Castle-hill Street on the right-hand side. The southern portion is a structure of lofty and massive form, battlemented at top, and looking out upon a garden which formerly stretched down to the old town-wall near the Grassmarket, but is now crossed by the access from the King’s Bridge.[8] From the style of building, I should be disposed to assign it a date a little subsequent to the Restoration. There are, however, no authentic{19} memorials respecting the alleged connection of the Gordon family with this house,[9] unless we are to consider as of that character a coronet resembling that of a marquis, flanked by two deer-hounds, the well-known supporters of this noble family, which figures over a finely moulded door in Blair’s Close.[10] The coronet will readily be supposed to point to the time when the Marquis of Huntly was the principal honour of the family—that is, previous to 1684, when the title of Duke of Gordon was conferred.[11]

DUKE OF GORDON’S HOUSE.

Page 18.

In more recent times, this substantial mansion was the abode of{20} Mr Baird of Newbyth; and here it was that the late gallant Sir David Baird, the hero of Seringapatam, was born and brought up. Returning in advanced life from long foreign service, this distinguished soldier came to see the home of his youth on the Castle-hill. The respectable individual whom I found occupying the house in 1824 received his visitor with due respect, and after showing him through the house, conducted him out to the garden. Here the boys of the existing tenant were found actively engaged in throwing cabbage-stalks at the tops of the chimneys of the houses of the Grassmarket, situated a little below the level of the garden. On making one plump down the vent, the youngsters set up a great shout of triumph. Sir David fell a-laughing at sight of this example of practical waggery, and entreated the father of the lads ‘not to be too angry; he and his brother, when living here at the same age, had indulged in precisely the same amiable amusement, the chimneys then, as now, being so provokingly open to such attacks that there was no resisting the temptation.’

The whole matter might have been put into an axiomatic form—Given a garden with cabbage-stalks, and a set of chimneys situated at an angle of forty-five degrees below the spot, any boys turned loose into the said garden will be sure to endeavour to bring the cabbage-stalks and the chimneys into acquaintance.

DR WEBSTER.

An isolated house which formerly stood in Webster’s Close,[12] a little way down the Castle-hill, was the residence of the Rev. Dr Webster, a man eminent in his day on many accounts—a leading evangelical clergyman in Edinburgh, a statist and calculator of extraordinary talent, and a distinguished figure in festive scenes. The first population returns of Scotland were obtained by him in 1755; and he was the author of that fund for the widows of the clergy of the Established Church which has proved so great a blessing to many, and still exists in a flourishing state.[13] He was{21} also deep in the consultations of the magistrates regarding the New Town.

It is not easy to reconcile the two leading characteristics of this divine—his being the pastor of a flock of noted sternness, called, from the church in which they assembled, the Tolbooth Whigs; and his at the same time entering heartily and freely into the convivialities of the more mirthful portion of society. Perhaps he illustrated the maxim that one man may steal horses with impunity, &c.; for it is related that, going home early one morning with strong symptoms of over-indulgence upon him, and being asked by a friend who met him ‘what the Tolbooth Whigs would say if they were to see him at this moment,’ he instantly replied: ‘They would not believe their own eyes.’ Sometimes he did fall on such occasions under plebeian observation, but the usual remark was: ‘Ah, there’s Dr Webster, honest man, going hame, nae doubt, frae some puir afflicted soul he has been visiting. Never does he tire o’ well-doing!’ And so forth.

The history of Dr Webster’s marriage is romantic. When a young and unknown man, he was employed by a friend to act as go-between, or, as it is termed in Scotland, black-fit, or black-foot, in a correspondence which he was carrying on with a young lady of great beauty and accomplishment. Webster had not acted long in that character, till the young lady, who had never entertained any affection for his constituent, fell deeply in love with himself. Her birth and expectations were better than his; and however much he might have been disposed to address her on his own behalf, he never could have thought of such a thing so long as there was such a difference between their circumstances. The lady saw his difficulty, and resolved to overcome it, and that in the frankest manner. At one of these interviews, when he was exerting all his eloquence in favour of his friend, she plainly told him that he would probably come better speed if he were to speak for himself. He took the hint, and, in a word, was soon after married to her. He wrote upon the occasion an amorous lyric, which exhibits in warm colours the gratitude of a humble lover for the favour of a mistress of superior station, and which is perhaps as excellent altogether in its way as the finest compositions{22} of the kind produced in either ancient or modern times. There is one particularly impassioned verse, in which, after describing a process of the imagination by which, in gazing upon her, he comes to think her a creature of more than mortal nature, he says that at length, unable to contain, he clasps her to his bosom, and—

‘Kissing her lips, she turns woman again!’

HOUSE OF MARY DE GUISE.

The restrictions imposed upon a city requiring defence appear as one of the forms of misery leading to strange associations. We become, in a special degree, sensible of this truth when we see the house of a royal personage sunk amidst the impurities of a narrow close in the Old Town of Edinburgh. Such was literally the case of an aged pile of buildings on the north side of the Castle-hill, behind the front line of the street, and accessible by Blyth’s, Nairn’s, and Tod’s Closes, which was declared by tradition to have been the residence of Mary de Guise, the widow of James V., and from 1554 to 1560 regent of this realm.

Ancient Pile of Buildings, North Side of Castle-Hill.

Descending the first of these alleys about thirty yards, we came to a dusky, half-ruinous building on the left-hand side, presenting one or two lofty windows and a doorway, surrounded by handsome mouldings; the whole bearing that appearance which says: ‘There is here something that has been of consequence, all haggard and disgraced though it now be.’ Glancing to the opposite side of the close, where stood another portion of the same building, the impression was confirmed by further appearances of a goodly style of architecture. These{23} were, in reality, the principal portions of the palace of the Regent Mary; the former being popularly described as her house, the latter as her oratory or chapel. The close terminated under a portion of the building; and when the visitor made his way so far, he found an exterior presented northwards, with many windows, whence of old a view must have been commanded, first of the gardens descending to the North Loch, and second, of the Firth of Forth and Fife. One could easily understand that, when the gardens existed, the north side of the house might have had many pleasant apartments, and been, upon the whole, tolerable as a place of residence, albeit the access by a narrow alley could never have been agreeable. Latterly the site of the upper part of the garden was occupied by a brushmaker’s workshops and yard, while the lower was covered by the Earthen Mound. In the wall on the east side there was included, as a mere portion of the masonry, a stray stone, which had once been an architrave or lintel; it contained, besides an armorial device flanked by the initials A. A., the legend Nosce Teipsum, and the date 1557.

Reverting to the door of the queen’s house, which was simply the access of a common stair, we there found an ornamented architrave, bearing the legend,

LAUS ET HONOR DEO,

terminated by two pieces of complicated lettering, one much obliterated, the other a monogram of the name of the Virgin Mary, formed of the letters M. R.[14] Finally, at the extremities of this stone, were two Roman letters of larger size—I. R.—doubtless the initials of James Rex, for James V., the style of cutting being precisely the same as in the initials seen on the palace built by that king in Stirling Castle; an indirect proof, it may be remarked, of this having been the residence of the Regent Mary.

Passing up a spiral flight of steps, we came to a darksome lobby, leading to a series of mean apartments, occupied by persons of the{24} humblest grade. Immediately within the door was a small recess in the wall, composed of Gothic stonework, and supposed by the people to have been designed for containing holy-water, though this may well be matter of doubt. Overhead, in the ceiling, was a round entablature, presenting a faded coronet over the defaced outline of a shield. A similar object adorned the ceiling of the lobby in the second floor, but in better preservation, as the shield bore three fleurs de lis, with the coronet above, and the letters H. R. below. There was a third of these entablatures, containing the arms of the city of Edinburgh, in the centre of the top of the staircase. The only other curious object in this part of the mansion was the door of one of the wretched apartments—a specimen of carving, bearing all the appearance of having been contemporary with the building, and containing, besides other devices, bust portraits of a gentleman and lady. This is now in the possession of the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland.

A portion of the same building, accessible by a stair nearer the head of the close, contained a hall-like apartment, with other apartments, all remarkable for their unusually lofty ceilings. In the large room were the remains of a spacious decorated chimney, to which, in the recollection of persons still living, there had been attached a chain, serving to confine the tongs to their proper domain. This was the memorial of an old custom, of which it is not easy to see the utility, unless some light be held as thrown upon it by a Scottish proverb, used when a child takes a thing and says he found it: ‘You found it, I suppose, where the Highlandman found the tongs.’ In the centre of almost all the ceilings of this part of the mansion I found, in 1824, circular entablatures, with coats of arms and other devices, in stucco, evidently of good workmanship, but obscured by successive coats of whitening.

The place pointed out by tradition as the queen-regent’s oratory was in the first-floor of the building opposite—a spacious and lofty hall, with large windows designed to make up for the obscurity of the close. Here, besides a finely carved piscina, was a pretty large recess, of Gothic structure, in the back-wall, evidently designed for keeping things of importance. Many years ago, out of the wall behind this recess, there had been taken a small iron box, such as might have been employed to keep jewellery, but empty. I was the means of its being gifted to Sir Walter Scott, who had previously told me that{25} ‘a passion for such little boxes was one of those that most did beset him;’ and it is now in the collection at Abbotsford.

The other portions of the mansion, accessible from different alleys, were generally similar to these, but somewhat finer. One chamber was recognised as the Deid-room; that is, the room where individuals of the queen’s establishment were kept between their death and burial.

It was interesting to wander through the dusky mazes of this ancient building, and reflect that they had been occupied three centuries ago by a sovereign princess, and one of the most illustrious lineage. Here was the substantial monument of a connection between France and Scotland, a totally past state of things. She whose ancestors owned Lorraine as a sovereignty, who had spent her youth in the proud halls of the Guises in Picardy, and been the spouse of a Longueville, was here content to live—in a close in Edinburgh! In these obscurities, too, was a government conducted, which had to struggle with Knox, Glencairn, James Stewart, Morton, and many other powerful men, backed by a popular sentiment which never fails to triumph. It was the misfortune of Mary to be placed in a position to resist the Reformation. Her own character deserved that she should have stood in a more agreeable relation to what Scotland now venerates, for she was mild and just, and sincerely anxious for the good of her adopted country. It is also proper to remember on the present occasion that ‘in her court she maintained a decent gravity, nor would she tolerate any licentious practices therein. Her maids of honour were always busied in commendable exercises, she herself being an example to them in virtue, piety, and modesty.’[15] When all is considered, and we further know that the building was strong enough to have lasted many more ages, one cannot but regret that the palace of Mary de Guise, reduced as it was to vileness, should not now be in existence. The site having been purchased by individuals connected with the Free Church, the buildings were removed in 1846 to make room for the erection of an academical institution or college for the use of that body.[16]

{26}

THE WEST BOW.

The Bowhead—Weigh-house—Anderson’s Pills—Oratories—Colonel Gardiner—‘Bowhead Saints’—‘The Seizers’—Story of a Jacobite Canary—Major Weir—Tulzies—The Tinklarian Doctor—Old Assembly Room—Paul Romieu—‘He that Tholes Overcomes’—Provost Stewart—Donaldsons the Booksellers—Bowfoot—The Templars’ Lands—The Gallows Stone.

[The West Bow has long since disappeared as a street; see note on p. 54.]

In a central part of Old Edinburgh—the very Little Britain of our city—is a curious, angular, whimsical-looking street, of great steepness and narrowness, called the West Bow. Serving as a connection between the Grassmarket and Lawnmarket, between the Low and the High Town, it is of considerable fame in our city annals as a passage for the entry of sovereigns, and the scene of the quaint ceremonials used on those occasions. In more modern times, it has been chiefly notable in the recollections of country-people as a nest of the peculiarly noisy tradesmen, the white-iron smiths, which causes Robert Fergusson to mark, as one of the features of Edinburgh deserted for a holiday:

‘The tinkler billies [17] o’ the Bow

Are now less eident [18] clinkin.’

Another remarkable circumstance connected with the street in the popular mind is its having been the residence of the famed wizard, Major Weir. All of these particulars serve to make it a noteworthy sort of place, and the impression is much favoured by its actual appearance. A perfect Z in figure, composed of tall antique houses, with numerous dovecot-like gables projecting over the footway, full of old inscriptions and sculpturings, presenting at every few steps some darksome lateral profundity, into which the imagination wanders without hindrance or exhaustion, it seems eminently a place of old grandmothers’ tales, and sure at all times to maintain a ghost or two in its community. When I descend into particulars, it will be seen what grounds there truly are for such a surmise.

To begin with

THE BOWHEAD.

Page 27.

{27}

THE BOWHEAD.

This is a comparatively open space, though partially straightened again by the insertion in it of a clumsy, detached old building called the Weigh-house, where enormous masses of butter and cheese are continually getting disposed of. Prince Charles had his guard at the Weigh-house when blockading the Castle; using, however, for this purpose, not the house itself, but a floor of the adjacent tall tenement in the Lawnmarket, which appears to have been selected on a very intelligible principle, in as far as it was the deserted mansion of one of the city clergy, the same Rev. George Logan who carried on a controversy with Thomas Ruddiman, in which he took unfavourable views of the title of the Stuart family to the throne, not only then, but at any time. It was, no doubt, as an additional answer to a bad pamphlet that the Highlanders took up their quarters at Mr Logan’s.

ANDERSON’S PILLS.

In this tall land, dated 1690, there is a house on the second-floor where that venerable drug, Dr Anderson’s pills, is sold, and has been so for above a century. As is well known, the country-people in Scotland have to this day [1824] a peculiar reverence for these pills, which are, I believe, really a good form of aloetic medicine. They took their origin from a physician of the time of Charles I., who gave them his name. From his daughter, Lillias Anderson, the patent came to a person designed Thomas Weir, who left it to his daughter. The widow of this last person’s nephew, Mrs Irving, is now the patentee; a lady of advanced age, who facetiously points to the very brief series of proprietors intervening between Dr Anderson and herself, as no inexpressive indication of the virtue of the medicine. [Mrs Irving died in 1837, at the age of ninety-nine.] Portraits of Anderson and his daughter are preserved in this house: the physician in a Vandyke dress, with a book in his hand; the lady, a precise-looking dame, with a pill in her hand about the size of a walnut, saying a good deal for the stomachs of our ancestors. The people also show a glove which belonged to the learned physician.

[1868.—In 1829 Mrs Irving lived in a neat, self-contained mansion in Chessels’s Court, in the Canongate, along with her son, General Irving, and some members of his family. The old lady,{28} then ninety-one, was good enough to invite me to dinner, when I likewise found two younger sisters of hers, respectively eighty-nine and ninety. She sat firm and collected at the head of the table, and carved a leg of mutton with perfect propriety. She then told me, at her son’s request, that in the year 1745, when Prince Charles’s army was in possession of the town, she, a child of four years, walked with her nurse to Holyrood Palace, and seeing a Highland gentleman standing in the doorway, she went up to him to examine his peculiar attire. She even took the liberty of lifting up his kilt a little way; whereupon her nurse, fearing some danger, started forward for her protection. But the gentleman only patted her head, and said something kind to her. I felt it as very curious to sit as guest with a person who had mingled in the Forty-five. But my excitement was brought to a higher pitch when, on ascending to the drawing-room, I found the general’s daughter, a pretty young woman recently married, sitting there, dressed in a suit of clothes belonging to one of the nonagenarian aunts—a very fine one of flowered satin, with elegant cap and lappets, and silk shoes three inches deep in the heel—the same having been worn by the venerable owner just seventy years before at a Hunters’ Ball at Holyrood Palace. The contrast between the former and the present wearer—the old lady shrunk and taciturn, and her young representative full of life and resplendent in joyous beauty—had an effect upon me which it would be impossible to describe. To this day, I look upon the Chessels’s Court dinner as one of the most extraordinary events in my life.]

Chessels’s Court, Canongate.

{29}

ORATORIES—COLONEL GARDINER.

This house presents a feature which forms a curious memorial of the manners of a past age. In common with all the houses built from about 1690 to 1740—a substantial class, still abundant in the High Street—there is at the end of each row of windows corresponding to a separate mansion, a narrow slit-like window, such as might suffice for a closet. In reality, each of these narrow apertures gives light to a small cell—much too small to require such a window—usually entering from the dining-room or some other principal apartment. The use of these cells was to serve as a retreat for the master of the house, wherein he might perform his devotions. The father of a family was in those days a sacred kind of person, not to be approached by wife or children too familiarly, and expected to be a priest in his own household. Besides his family devotions, he retired to a closet for perhaps an hour each day to utter his own prayers;[19] and so regular was the custom that it gave rise, as we see, to this peculiarity in house-building. Nothing could enable us more clearly to appreciate that strong outward demonstration of religious feeling which pervaded the nation for half a century after the agonies of ‘the Persecution.’ I cannot help here mentioning the interest with which I have visited Bankton House,[20] in East Lothian, where, as is well known, Colonel Gardiner spent several years of his life. The oratory of the pious soldier is pointed out by tradition, and it forms even a more expressive memorial of the time than the closets in the Edinburgh houses. Connected with a small front room, which might have been a library or study, is a little recess, such as dust-pans and brooms are kept in, consisting of the angular space formed by a stair which passes overhead to the upper floor. This place is wholly without light, yet it is said to have been the place sacred to poor Gardiner’s private devotions. What leaves hardly any doubt on the matter is that there has been a wooden bolt within, capable only of being shot from the inside, and therefore unquestionably used by a person desiring to shut himself{30} in. Here, therefore, in this darksome, stifling little cell, had this extraordinary man spent hours in those devotional exercises by which he was so much distinguished from his class.[21]

BOWHEAD SAINTS—SEIZERS—A JACOBITE BLACKBIRD.

In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the inhabitants of the West Bow enjoyed a peculiar fame for their piety and zeal in the Covenanting cause. The wits of the opposite faction are full of allusions to them as ‘the Bowhead Saints,’ ‘the godly plants of the Bowhead,’ and so forth. [This is the basis of an allusion by a later Cavalier wit, when describing the exit of Lord Dundee from Edinburgh, on the occasion of the settlement of the crown upon William and Mary:

‘As he rode down the sanctified bends of the Bow,

Ilka carline was flyting, and shaking her pow;

But some young plants of grace, that looked couthie and slie,

Said: “Luck to thy bonnet, thou bonnie Dundee!”’

It is to be feared that Sir Walter has here shown a relenting towards the ‘young plants,’ for which they would not have thanked him.] All the writings of the wits of their own time speak of the system to which they were opposed as one of unmitigated sternness. It was in those days a custom to patrol the streets during the time of divine service, and take into captivity all persons found walking abroad; and indeed make seizure of whatever could be regarded as guilty of Sabbath-breaking. It is said that, led by a sneaking sense, the patrol one day lighted upon a joint of meat in the course of being roasted, and made prize of it, leaving the graceless owner to chew the spit. On another occasion, about the year 1735, a capture of a different kind was made. ‘The people about that time,’ says Arnot, ‘were in use to teach their birds to chant the songs of their party. It happened that the blackbird of an honest Jacobitical barber, which from his cage on the outside of the window gave offence to the zealous Whigs by his songs, was neglected, on a Saturday evening, to be brought within the house. Next morning he tuned his pipe to the usual air, The king shall enjoy his own again. One of the seizers, in his holy zeal, was enraged at this manifestation of impiety and treason in one of the feathered tribe. He went up to the house, seized the bird and the cage, and with much solemnity lodged them in the{31} City-Guard.’[22] Pennycook, a burgess bard of the time, represents the officer as addressing the bird:

‘Had ye been taught by me, a Bowhead saint,

You’d sung the Solemn League and Covenant,

Bessy of Lanark, or the Last Good-night;

But you’re a bird prelatic—that’s not right....

Oh could my baton reach the laverocks too,

They’re chirping Jamie, Jamie, just like you:

I hate vain birds that lead malignant lives,

But love the chanters to the Bowhead wives.’

MAJOR WEIR.[23]

Major Weir’s House.

It must have been a sad scandal to this peculiar community when Major Weir, one of their number, was found to have been so wretched an example of human infirmity. The house occupied by this man still exists, though in an altered shape, in a little court accessible by a narrow passage near the first angle of the street. His history is obscurely reported; but it appears that he was of a good family in Lanarkshire, and had been one of the ten thousand men sent by the Scottish Covenanting Estates in 1641 to assist in suppressing the Irish Papists. He became distinguished for a life of peculiar sanctity, even in an age when that was the prevailing tone of the public mind. According to a contemporary account:{32} ‘His garb was still a cloak, and somewhat dark, and he never went without his staff. He was a tall black man, and ordinarily looked down to the ground; a grim countenance, and a big nose. At length he became so notoriously regarded among the Presbyterian strict sect, that if four met together, be sure Major Weir was one. At private meetings he prayed to admiration, which made many of that stamp court his converse. He never married, but lived in a private lodging with his sister, Grizel Weir. Many resorted to his house, to join him and hear him pray; but it was observed that he could not officiate in any holy duty without the black staff, or rod, in his hand, and leaning upon it, which made those who heard him pray admire his flood in prayer, his ready extemporary expression, his heavenly gesture; so that he was thought more angel than man, and was termed by some of the holy sisters ordinarily Angelical Thomas.’ Plebeian imaginations have since fructified regarding the staff, and crones will still seriously tell how it could run a message to a shop for any article which its proprietor wanted; how it could answer the door when any one called upon its master; and that it used to be often seen running before him, in the capacity of a link-boy, as he walked down the Lawnmarket.

After a life characterised externally by all the graces of devotion, but polluted in secret by crimes of the most revolting nature, and which little needed the addition of wizardry to excite the horror of living men, Major Weir fell into a severe sickness, which affected his mind so much that he made open and voluntary confession of all his wickedness. The tale was at first so incredible that the provost, Sir Andrew Ramsay,[24] refused for some time to take him into custody. At length himself, his sister (partner of one of his crimes), and his staff were secured by the magistrates, together with certain sums of money, which were found wrapped up in rags in different parts of the house. One of these pieces of rag being thrown into the fire by a bailie, who had taken the whole in charge, flew up the chimney, and made an explosion like a cannon. While the wretched man lay in prison, he made no scruple to disclose the particulars of his guilt, but refused to address himself to the Almighty for pardon. To every request that he would pray, he answered in screams: ‘Torment me no more—I am tormented enough already!’ Even the offer of a Presbyterian clergyman, instead of an established Episcopal minister of the city, had no effect upon him. He was tried April 9, 1670, and being found guilty, was sentenced to be strangled and burnt between{33} Edinburgh and Leith. His sister, who was tried at the same time, was sentenced to be hanged in the Grassmarket. The execution of the profligate major took place, April 14, at the place indicated by the judge. When the rope was about his neck, to prepare him for the fire, he was bid to say: ‘Lord, be merciful to me!’ but he answered as before: ‘Let me alone—I will not—I have lived as a beast, and I must die as a beast!’ After he had dropped lifeless in the flames, his stick was also cast into the fire; and, ‘whatever incantation was in it,’ says the contemporary writer already quoted,[25] ‘the persons present own that it gave rare turnings, and was long a-burning, as also himself.’

The conclusion to which the humanity of the present age would come regarding Weir—that he was mad—is favoured by some circumstances; for instance, his answering one who asked if he had ever seen the devil, that ‘the only feeling he ever had of him was in the dark.’ What chiefly countenances the idea is the unequivocal lunacy of the sister. This miserable woman confessed to witchcraft, and related, in a serious manner, many things which could not be true. Many years before, a fiery coach, she said, had come to her brother’s door in broad day, and a stranger invited them to enter, and they proceeded to Dalkeith. On the way, another person came and whispered in her brother’s ear something which affected him; it proved to be supernatural intelligence of the defeat of the Scotch army at Worcester, which took place that day. Her brother’s power, she said, lay in his staff. She also had a gift for spinning above other women, but the yarn broke to pieces in the loom. Her mother, she declared, had been also a witch. ‘The secretest thing that I, or any of the family could do, when once a mark appeared upon her brow, she could tell it them, though done at a great distance.’ This mark could also appear on her own forehead when she pleased. At the request of the company present, ‘she put back her head-dress, and seeming to frown, there was an exact horse-shoe shaped for nails in her wrinkles, terrible enough, I assure you, to the stoutest beholder.’[26] At the place of execution she acted in a furious manner, and with difficulty could be prevented from throwing off her clothes, in order to die, as she said, ‘with all the shame she could.’

The treatise just quoted makes it plain that the case of Weir{34} and his sister had immediately become a fruitful theme for the imaginations of the vulgar. We there receive the following story: ‘Some few days before he discovered himself, a gentlewoman coming from the Castle-hill, where her husband’s niece was lying-in of a child, about midnight perceived about the Bowhead three women in windows shouting, laughing, and clapping their hands. The gentlewoman went forward, till, at Major Weir’s door, there arose, as from the street, a woman about the length of two ordinary females, and stepped forward. The gentlewoman, not as yet excessively feared, bid her maid step on, if by the lantern they could see what she was; but haste what they could, this long-legged spectre was still before them, moving her body with a vehement cachinnation and great unmeasurable laughter. At this rate the two strove for place, till the giantess came to a narrow lane in the Bow, commonly called the Stinking Close, into which she turning, and the gentlewoman looking after her, perceived the close full of flaming torches (she could give them no other name), and as if it had been a great number of people stentoriously laughing, and gaping with tahees of laughter. This sight, at so dead a time of night, no people being in the windows belonging to the close, made her and her servant haste home, declaring all that they saw to the rest of the family.’

For upwards of a century after Major Weir’s death, he continued to be the bugbear of the Bow, and his house remained uninhabited. His apparition was frequently seen at night, flitting, like a black and silent shadow, about the street. His house, though known to be deserted by everything human, was sometimes observed at midnight to be full of lights, and heard to emit strange sounds, as of dancing, howling, and, what is strangest of all, spinning. Some people occasionally saw the major issue from the low close at midnight, mounted on a black horse without a head, and gallop off in a whirlwind of flame. Nay, sometimes the whole of the inhabitants of the Bow would be roused from their sleep at an early hour in the morning by the sound as of a coach and six, first rattling up the Lawnmarket, and then thundering down the Bow, stopping at the head of the terrible close for a few minutes, and then rattling and thundering back again—being neither more nor less than Satan come in one of his best equipages to take home the major and his sister, after they had spent a night’s leave of absence in their terrestrial dwelling.

{35}

About fifty years ago, when the shades of superstition began universally to give way in Scotland, Major Weir’s house came to be regarded with less terror by the neighbours, and an attempt was made by the proprietor to find a person who should be bold enough to inhabit it. Such a person was procured in William Patullo, a poor man of dissipated habits, who, having been at one time a soldier and a traveller, had come to disregard in a great measure the superstitions of his native country, and was now glad to possess a house upon the low terms offered by the landlord, at whatever risk. Upon its being known that Major Weir’s house was about to be reinhabited, a great deal of curiosity was felt by people of all ranks as to the result of the experiment; for there was scarcely a native of the city who had not felt, since his boyhood, an intense interest in all that concerned that awful fabric, and yet remembered the numerous terrible stories which he had heard respecting it. Even before entering upon his hazardous undertaking, William Patullo was looked upon with a flattering sort of interest, similar to that which we feel respecting a regiment on the march to active conflict. It was the hope of many that he would be the means of retrieving a valuable possession from the dominion of darkness. But Satan soon let them know that he does not tamely relinquish any of the outposts of his kingdom.

On the very first night after Patullo and his spouse had taken up their abode in the house, as the worthy couple were lying awake in their bed, not unconscious of a certain degree of fear—a dim, uncertain light proceeding from the gathered embers of their fire, and all being silent around them—they suddenly saw a form like that of a calf, which came forward to the bed, and, setting its forefeet upon the stock, looked steadfastly at the unfortunate pair. When it had contemplated them thus for a few minutes, to their great relief it at length took itself away, and, slowly retiring, gradually vanished from their sight. As might be expected, they deserted the house next morning; and for another half-century no other attempt was made to embank this part of the world of light from the aggressions of the world of darkness.

It may here be mentioned that, at no very remote time, there were several houses in the Old Town which had the credit of being haunted. It is said there is one at this day in the Lawnmarket (a flat), which has been shut up from time immemorial. The story goes that one night, as preparations were making for{36} a supper-party, something occurred which obliged the family, as well as all the assembled guests, to retire with precipitation, and lock up the house. From that night it has never once been opened, nor was any of the furniture withdrawn: the very goose which was undergoing the process of being roasted at the time of the occurrence is still at the fire! No one knows to whom the house belongs; no one ever inquires after it; no one living ever saw the inside of it; it is a condemned house! There is something peculiarly dreadful about a house under these circumstances. What sights of horror might present themselves if it were entered! Satan is the ultimus hæres of all such unclaimed property!

Besides the many old houses that are haunted, there are several endowed with the simple credit of having been the scenes of murders and suicides. Some contain rooms which had particular names commemorative of such events, and these names, handed down as they had been from one generation to another, usually suggested the remembrance of some dignified Scottish families, probably the former tenants of the houses. There is a common-stair in the Lawnmarket which was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a gentleman who had been mysteriously killed, about a century ago, in open daylight, as he was ascending to his own house: the affair was called to mind by old people on the similar occasion of the murder of Begbie. A deserted house in Mary King’s Close (behind the Royal Exchange) is believed by some to have met with that fate for a very fearful reason. The inhabitants of a remote period were, it is said, compelled to abandon it by the supernatural appearances which took place in it on the very first night after they had made it their residence. At midnight, as the goodman was sitting with his wife by the fire reading his Bible, and intending immediately to go to bed, a strange dimness which suddenly fell upon his light caused him to raise his eyes from the book. He looked at the candle, and saw it burning blue. Terror took possession of his frame. Turning away his eyes, there was, directly before him, and apparently not two yards off, the head as of a dead person, looking him straight in the face. There was nothing but a head, though that seemed to occupy the precise situation in regard to the floor which it might have done had it been supported by a body of the ordinary stature. The man and his wife fainted with terror. On awaking, darkness pervaded the room. Presently the door opened, and in came a hand holding a candle. This{37} came and stood—that is, the body supposed to be attached to the hand stood—beside the table, whilst the terrified pair saw two or three couples of feet skip along the floor, as if dancing. The scene lasted a short time, but vanished quite away upon the man gathering strength to invoke the protection of Heaven. The house was of course abandoned, and remained ever afterwards shut up. Such were grandams’ tales at no remote period in our northern capital:

‘Where Learning, with his eagle eyes,

Seeks Science in her coy abode.’

TULZIES.

At the Bowhead there happened, in the year 1596, a combat between James Johnston of Westerhall and a gentleman of the house of Somerville, which is thus related in that curious book, the Memorie of the Somervilles.

‘The other actione wherein Westerhall was concerned happened three years thereftir in Edinburgh, and was only personal on the same account, betwext Westerhall and Bread (Broad) Hugh Somervill of the Writes. This gentleman had often formerly foughten with Westerhall upon equal termes, and being now in Edinburgh about his privat affaires, standing at the head of the West Bow, Westerhall by accident comeing up the same, some officious and unhappy fellow says to Westerhall: “There is Bread Hugh Somervill of the Writes.” Whereupon Westerhall, fancying he stood there either to waitt him, or out of contempt, he immediately marches up with his sword drawen, and with the opening of his mouth, crying: “Turne, villane;” he cuttes Writes in the hint head a deep and sore wound, the foullest stroak that ever Westerhall was knoune to give, acknowledged soe, and much regrated eftirwards by himself. Writes finding himself strucken and wounded, seeing Westerhall (who had not offered to double his stroak), drawes, and within a short tyme puttes Westerhall to the defensive part; for being the taller man, and one of the strongest of his time, with the advantage of the hill, he presses him sore. Westerhall reteires by little, traverseing the breadth of the Bow, to gain the advantage of the ascent, to supply the defect of nature, being of low stature, which Writes observeing, keepes closse to him, and beares him in front, that he might not quyte what good-fortune and nature had given him. Thus they continued neer a quarter of ane hour, clearing the{38} callsay,[27] so that in all the strait Bow there was not one to be seen without their shop doores, neither durst any man attempt to red them, every stroak of their swords threatening present death both to themselves and others that should come neer them. Haveing now come from the head of the Bow neer to the foot thereof, Westerhall being in a pair of black buites, which for ordinary he wore closse drawen up, was quyte tyred. Therefore he stepes back within a shop doore, and stood upon his defence. The very last stroak that Writes gave went neer to have brocken his broad sword in peaces, haveing hitt the lintell of the door, the marke whereof remained there a long tyme. Thereftir, the toune being by this tyme all in ane uproar, the halbertiers comeing to seaze upon them, they wer separated and privatly convoyed to ther chambers. Ther wounds but slight, except that which Writes had upon his head proved very dangerous; for ther was many bones taken out of it; however, at lenth, he was perfectly cured, and the parties themselves, eftir Hugh Lord Somerville’s death, reconcealled, and all injuries forgotten.’

In times of civil war, personal rencontres of this kind, and even skirmishes between bands of armed men—usually called tulzies—were of no unfrequent occurrence upon the streets of Edinburgh. They abounded during the troublous time of the minority of James VI. On the 24th of November 1567, the Laird of Airth and the Laird of Wemyss met upon the High Street, and, together with their followers, fought a bloody battle, ‘many,’ as Birrel the chronicler reports, ‘being hurte on both sides by shote of pistoll.’ Three days afterwards there was a strict proclamation, forbidding ‘the wearing of guns or pistolls, or aney sick-like fyerwork ingyne, under ye paine of death, the king’s guards and shouldours only excepted.’ This circumstance seems to be referred to in The Abbot, where the Regent Murray, in allusion to Lord Seyton’s rencontre with the Leslies, in which Roland Græme had borne a distinguished part, says: ‘These broils and feuds would shame the capital of the Great Turk, let alone that of a Christian and reformed state. But if I live, this gear shall be amended; and men shall say,’ &c.

On the 30th of July 1588, according to the same authority, Sir William Stewart was slain in Blackfriars Wynd by the Earl{39} of Bothwell [the fifth earl], who was the most famed disturber of the public peace in those times. The quarrel had arisen on a former occasion, on account of some despiteful language used by Sir William, when the fiery earl vowed the destruction of his enemy in words too shocking to be repeated; ‘sua therafter rancountering Sir William in ye Blackfriar Wynd by chance, told him he vold now ...; and vith yat drew his sword; Sir William standing to hes defence, and having hes back at ye vall, ye earle mad a thrust at him vith his raper, and strake him in at the back and out at the belley, and killed him.’

Ten years thereafter, one Robert Cathcart, who had been with the Earl of Bothwell on this occasion, though it does not appear that he took an active hand in the murder, was slain in revenge by William Stewart, son of the deceased, while standing inoffensively at the head of Peebles Wynd, near the Tron.

In June 1605, one William Thomson, a dagger-maker in the West Bow, which was even then remarkable for iron-working handicraftsmen, was slain by John Waterstone, a neighbour of his own, who was next day beheaded on the Castle-hill for his crime.

In 1640, the Lawnmarket was the scene of a personal combat between Major Somerville, commander of the forces then in the Castle, devoted to the Covenanting interest (a relation of Braid Hugh in the preceding extract), and one Captain Crawfuird, which is related in the following picturesque and interesting manner by the same writer: ‘But it would appear this gentleman conceived his affront being publict, noe satisfactione acted in a private way could save his honour; therefore to repair the same, he resolves to challange and fight Somervill upon the High Street of Edenburgh, and at such a tyme when ther should be most spectators. In order to this designe, he takes the occasione, as this gentleman was betwext ten and eleven hours in the foirnoon hastily comeing from the Castle (haveing been then sent for to the Committie of Estates and General Leslie anent some important busines), to assault him in this manner; Somervill being past the Weigh-house, Captaine Crawfuird observeing him, presentlie steps into a high chope upon the south side of the Landmercat, and there layes by his cloak, haveing a long broad sword and a large Highland durke by his side; he comes up to Somervill, and without farder ceremonie sayes: “If you be a pretty man, draw your sword;” and with that word pulles{40} out his oune sword with the dagger. Somervill at first was somewhat stertled at the impudence and boldnesse of the man that durst soe openly and avowedly assault him, being in publict charge, and even then on his duty. But his honour and present preservatione gave him noe tyme to consult the conveniency or inconveniency he was now under, either as to his present charge or disadvantage of weapons, haveing only a great kaine staff [28] in his hand, which for ordinary he walked still with, and that same sword which Generall Rivane had lately gifted him, being a half-rapper sword backed, hinging in a shoulder-belt far back, as the fashion was then, he was forced to guaird two or three strokes with his kaine before he got out his sword, which being now drawne, he soon puts his adversary to the defencive part, by bearing up soe close to him, and putting home his thrusts, that the captaine, for all his courage and advantage of weapons, was forced to give back, having now much adoe to parie the redoubled thrusts that Somervill let in at him, being now agoeing.

‘The combat (for soe in effect it was, albeit accidental) begane about the midle of the Landmercat. Somervill drives doune the captaine, still fighting, neer to the goldsmiths’ chops, where, fearing to be nailled to the boords (these chops being then all of timber), he resolved by ane notable blow to revenge all his former affronts; makeing thairfor a fent, as if he had designed at Somervill’s right side, haveing parried his thrust with his dagger, he suddenly turnes his hand, and by a back-blow with his broadsword he thought to have hamshekelled [29] him in one, if not both of his legges, which Somervill only prevented by nimbly leaping backward at the tyme, interposeing the great kaine that was in his left hand, which was quyte cut through with the violence of the blow. And now Providence soe ordered it, that the captaine missing his mark, overstrake himself soe far, that in tyme he could not recover his sword to a fit posture of defence, untill Somervill, haveing beaten up the dagger that was in the captaine’s left hand with the remaineing part of his oune stick, he instantly closes with him, and with the pummil of his sword he instantly strikes him doune to the ground, where at first, because of his baseness, he was mynded to have nailled him to the ground, but that his heart relented, haveing him in his mercy. And att that same instant ther happened several of his oune soulders to come in, who wer soe incensed, that they{41} wer ready to have cut the poor captaine all in pieces, if he had not rescued him out of theire hands, and saw him safely convoyed to prisone, where he was layd in the irones, and continued in prisone in a most miserable and wretched condition somewhat more than a year.’[30]

THE TINKLARIAN DOCTOR.

In the early part of the last century, the Bowhead was distinguished as the residence of an odd, half-crazy varlet of a tinsmith named William Mitchell, who occasionally held forth as a preacher, and every now and then astounded the quiet people of Edinburgh with some pamphlet full of satirical personalities. He seems to have been altogether a strange mixture of fanaticism, humour, and low cunning. In one of his publications—a single broadside, dated 1713—he has a squib upon the magistrates, in the form of a leit, or list, of a new set, whom he proposes to introduce in their stead. At the end he sets forward a claim on his own behalf, no less than that of representing the city in parliament. In another of his prose pieces he gives a curious account of a journey which he made into France, where, he affirms, ‘the king’s court is six times bigger than the king of Britain’s; his guards have all feathers in their hats, and their horse-tails are to their heels; and their king [Louis XV.] is one of the best-favoured boys that you can look upon—blithe-like, with black hair; and all his people are better natured in general than the Scots or English, except the priests. Their women seem to be modest, for they have no fardingales. The greatest wonder I saw in France, was to see the braw people fall down on their knees on the clarty ground when the priest comes by, carrying the cross, to give a sick person the sacrament.’

The Tinklarian Doctor, for such was his popular appellation, appears to have been fully acquainted with an ingenious expedient, long afterwards held in view by publishers of juvenile toy-books. As in certain sage little histories of Tommy and Harry, King Pepin, &c., we are sure to find that ‘the good boy who loved his lessons’ always bought his books from ‘kind, good, old Mr J. Newberry, at the corner of St Paul’s Churchyard, where the greatest assortment of nice books for good boys and girls is always to be had’—so in the works of Mr Mitchell we find some sly encomium upon the Tinklarian Doctor constantly peeping forth; and in the pamphlet from which the above extract is made, he is{42} not forgetful to impress his professional excellence as a whitesmith. ‘I have,’ he says, ‘a good pennyworth of pewter spoons, fine, like silver—none such made in Edinburgh—and silken pocks for wigs, and French white pearl-beads; all to be sold for little or nothing.’ Vide ‘A part of the works of that Eminent Divine and Historian, Dr William Mitchell, Professor of Tinklarianism in the University of the Bowhead; being a Syze of Divinity, Humanity, History, Philosophy, Law, and Physick; Composed at Various Occasions for his own Satisfaction and the World’s Illumination.’ In his works—all of which were adorned with a cut of the Mitchell arms—he does not scruple to make the personages whom he introduces speak of himself as a much wiser man than the Archbishop of Canterbury, all the clergymen of his native country, and even the magistrates of Edinburgh! One of his last productions was a pamphlet on the murder of Captain Porteous, which he concludes by saying, in the true spirit of a Cameronian martyr: ‘If the king and clergy gar hang me for writing this, I’m content, because it is long since any man was hanged for religion.’ The learned Tinklarian was destined, however, to die in his bed—an event which came to pass in the year 1740.

The profession of which the Tinklarian Doctor subscribed himself a member has long been predominant in the West Bow. We see from a preceding extract that it reckoned dagger-makers among its worthy denizens in the reign of James VI. But this trade has long been happily extinct everywhere in Scotland; though their less formidable brethren the whitesmiths, coppersmiths, and pewterers have continued down to our own day to keep almost unrivalled possession of the Bow. Till within these few years, there was scarcely a shop in this street occupied by other tradesmen; and it might be supposed that the noise of so many hammermen, pent up in a narrow thoroughfare, would be extremely annoying to the neighbourhood. Yet however disagreeable their clattering might seem to strangers, it is generally admitted that the people who lived in the West Bow became habituated to the noise, and felt no inconvenience whatever from its ceaseless operation upon their ears. Nay, they rather experienced inconvenience from its cessation, and only felt annoyed when any period of rest arrived and stopped it. Sunday morning, instead of favouring repose, made them restless; and when they removed to another part of the town, beyond the reach of the sound, sleep was unattainable in the morning for some weeks, till they got accustomed to the quiescence of their new neighbourhood.{43} An old gentleman once told me that, having occasion in his youth to lodge for a short time in the West Bow, he found the incessant clanking extremely disagreeable, and at last entered into a paction with some of the workmen in his immediate neighbourhood, who promised to let him have another hour of quiet sleep in the mornings for the consideration of some such matter as half-a-crown to drink on Saturday night. The next day happening (out of his knowledge) to be some species of Saint Monday, his annoyers did not work at all; but such was the force of a habit acquired even in a week or little more, that our friend awoke precisely at the moment when the hammers used to commence; and he was glad to get his bargain cancelled as soon as possible, for fear of another morning’s want of disturbance.

OLD ASSEMBLY-ROOM.

At the first angle of the Bow, on the west side of the street, is a tall picturesque-looking house, which tradition points to as having been the first place where the fashionables of Edinburgh held their dancing assemblies. Over the door is a well-cut sculpture of the arms of the Somerville family, together with the initials P. J. and J. W., and the date 1602. These are memorials of the original owner of the mansion, a certain Peter Somerville, a wealthy citizen, at one time filling a dignified situation in the magistracy, and father of Bartholomew Somerville, who was a noted benefactor to the then infant university of Edinburgh. The architrave also bears a legend (the title of the eleventh psalm):

IN DOMINO CONFIDO.

Ascending by the narrow spiral stair, we come to the second floor, now occupied by a dealer in wool, but presenting such appearances as leave no doubt that it once consisted of a single lofty wainscoted room, with a carved oak ceiling. Here, then, did the fair ladies whom Allan Ramsay and William Hamilton celebrate meet for the recreation of dancing with their toupeed and deep-skirted beaux. There in that little side-room, formed by an outshot from the building, did the merry sons of Euterpe retire to rosin their bows during the intervals of the performance. Alas! dark are the walls which once glowed with festive light; burdened is that floor, not with twinkling feet, but with the most sluggish of inanimate substances. And as for the fiddlers-room—enough:

{44}

‘A merry place it was in days of yore,

But something ails it now—the place is cursed.’[31]

Old Assembly-Room.

Dancing, although said to be a favourite amusement and exercise of the Scottish people, has always been discountenanced, more or less, in the superior circles of society, or only indulged after a very abstemious and rigid fashion, until a comparatively late age. Everything that could be called public or promiscuous amusement was held in abhorrence by the Presbyterians, and only struggled through a desultory and degraded existence by the favour of the Jacobites, who have always been a less strait-laced part of the community. Thus there was nothing like a conventional system of dancing in Edinburgh till the year 1710, when at length a private association was commenced under the name of ‘the Assembly;’ and probably its first quarters were in this humble domicile. The persecution which it experienced from rigid thinkers and the uninstructed populace of that age would appear to have been very great. On one occasion, we are told, the company were assaulted by an infuriated rabble, and the door of their hall perforated with red-hot spits.[32] Allan Ramsay, who was the friend of all amusements, which he conceived to tend only to cheer this sublunary scene of care, thus alludes to the Assembly:

{45}

‘Sic as against the Assembly speak,

The rudest sauls betray,

When matrons noble, wise, and meek,

Conduct the healthfu’ play;

Where they appear nae vice daur keek,

But to what’s guid gies way,

Like night, sune as the morning creek

Has ushered in the day.

Dear E’nburgh, shaw thy gratitude,

And o’ sic friends mak sure,

Wha strive to mak our minds less rude,

And help our wants to cure;

Acting a generous part and guid,

In bounty to the poor:

Sic virtues, if right understood,

Should every heart allure.’

We can easily see from this, and other symptoms, that the Assembly had to make many sacrifices to the spirit which sought to abolish it. In reality, the dancing was conducted under such severe rules as to render the whole affair more like a night at La Trappe than anything else. So lately as 1753, when the Assembly had fallen under the control of a set of directors, and was much more of a public affair than formerly, we find Goldsmith giving the following graphic account of its meetings in a letter to a friend in his own country. The author of the Deserted Village was now studying the medical profession, it must be recollected, at the university of Edinburgh:

‘Let me say something of their balls, which are very frequent here. When a stranger enters the dancing-hall, he sees one end of the room taken up with the ladies, who sit dismally in a group by themselves; on the other end stand their pensive partners that are to be; but no more intercourse between the sexes than between two countries at war. The ladies, indeed, may ogle, and the gentlemen sigh, but an embargo is laid upon any closer commerce. At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady-directress, intendant, or what you will, pitches on a gentleman and a lady to walk a minuet, which they perform with a formality approaching to despondence. After five or six couple have thus walked the gauntlet, all stand up to country-dances, each gentleman furnished with a partner from the aforesaid lady-directress. So they dance much, and say nothing, and thus concludes our Assembly. I told a Scotch gentleman that such a profound silence resembled the ancient procession of the Roman matrons in honour of Ceres; and{46} the Scotch gentleman told me (and, faith, I believe he was right) that I was a very great pedant for my pains.’

In the same letter, however, Goldsmith allows the beauty of the women and the good-breeding of the men.

It may add to the curiosity of the whole affair, that when the Assembly was reconstituted in February 1746, after several years of cessation, the first of a set of regulations hung up in the hall [33] was: ‘No lady to be admitted in a night-gown, and no gentleman in boots.’ The eighth rule was: ‘No misses in skirts and jackets, robe-coats, nor stay-bodied gowns, to be allowed to dance in country-dances, but in a sett by themselves.’

In all probability it was in this very dingy house that Goldsmith beheld the scene he has so well described. At least it appears that the improved Assembly Room in Bell’s Wynd (which has latterly served as a part of the accommodations of the Commercial Bank) was not built till 1766.[34] Arnot, in his History of Edinburgh, describes the Assembly Room in Bell’s Wynd as very inconvenient, which was the occasion of the present one being built in George Street in 1784.

PAUL ROMIEU.

At this angle of the Bow the original city-wall crossed the line of the street, and there was, accordingly, a gate at this spot,[35] of which the only existing memorial is one of the hooks for the suspension of the hinges, fixed in the front wall of a house, at the height of about five feet from the ground. It is from the arch forming this gateway that the street takes its name, bow being an old word for an arch. The house immediately without this ancient port, on the east side of the street, was occupied, about the beginning of the last century, and perhaps at an earlier period, by Paul Romieu, an eminent watchmaker, supposed to have been one of the French refugees driven over to this country in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This{47} is the more likely, as he seems, from the workmanship of his watches, to have been a contemporary of Tompion, the famous London horologist of the reign of Charles II. In the front of the house, upon the third story, there is still to be seen the remains of a curious piece of mechanism—namely, a gilt ball representing the moon, which was made to revolve by means of a clock.[36]

‘HE THAT THOLES OVERCOMES.’

Pursuing our way down the steep and devious street, we pass an antique wooden-faced house, bearing the odd name of the Mahogany Land, and just before turning the second corner, pause before a stone one of equally antiquated structure,[37] having a wooden-screened outer stair. Over the door at the head of this stair is a legend in very old lettering—certainly not later than 1530—and hardly to be deciphered. With difficulty we make it out to be:

HE YT THOLIS OVERCVMMIS.

He that tholes (that is, bears) overcomes; equivalent to what Virgil says:

‘Quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est.’

Æneid, v.

We may safely speculate on this inscription being antecedent in date to the Reformation, as after that period merely moral apothegms were held in little regard, and none but biblical inscriptions were actually put upon the fronts of houses.

Mahogany Land, West Bow.

On the other side of the street is a small shop (marked No. 69), now occupied by a dealer in small miscellaneous wares,[38] and which was, a hundred years ago, open for a nearly similar kind of business, under the charge of a Mrs Jeffrey. When, on the night of the 7th September 1736, the rioters hurried their victim Porteous down the West Bow, with the design of executing him in the Grassmarket, they called at this shop to provide themselves{48} with a rope. The woman asked if it was to hang Porteous, and when they answered in the affirmative, she told them they were welcome to all she had of that article. They coolly took off what they required, and laid a guinea on the counter as payment; ostentatious to mark that they ‘did all in honour.’

PROVOST STEWART’S HOUSE—DONALDSONS THE BOOKSELLERS.

The upper floors of the house which looks down into the Grassmarket formed the mansion of Mr Archibald Stewart, Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1745. This is an abode of singular structure and arrangements, having its principal access by a close out of another street, and only a postern one into the Bow, and being full of curious little wainscoted rooms, concealed closets, and secret stairs. In one apartment there is a cabinet, or what appears a cabinet, about three feet high: this, when cross-examined, turns out to be the mask of a trap-stair. Only a smuggler, one would think, or a gentleman conducting treasonable negotiations, could have bethought him of building such a house. Whether Provost Stewart, who was a thorough Jacobite, was the designer of these contrivances, I cannot tell; but fireside gossip used to have a strange story as to his putting his trap-stair to use on one important occasion. It was said that, during the occupation of Edinburgh by the Highland army in ’45, his lordship was honoured one evening with a secret visit from the Prince and some of his principal officers. The situation was critical, for close by was the line between the Highland guards and the beleaguered environs of the Castle. Intelligence of the Prince’s movements being obtained by the governor of the fortress, a party was sent to seize him in the provost’s house. They made their approach by the usual access from the Castle-hill Street; but an alarm preceded them, and before they obtained admission, the provost’s visitors had vanished through the mysterious cabinet, and made their exit by the back-door. What real foundation there may have been for this somewhat wild-looking story I do not pretend to say.

The house was at a subsequent time the residence of Alexander Donaldson the bookseller, whose practice of reprinting modern English books in Edinburgh, and his consequent litigation with the London booksellers, attracted much attention sixty years since. Printing and publishing were in a low state in Edinburgh before{49} the time of Donaldson. In the frank language of Hugo Arnot: ‘The printing of newspapers and of school-books, of the fanatick effusions of Presbyterian clergymen, and the law papers of the Court of Session, joined to the patent Bible printing, gave a scanty employment to four printing-offices.’ About the middle of the century, the English law of copyright not extending to Scotland, some of the booksellers began to reprint the productions of the English authors of the day; for example, the Rambler was regularly reproduced in this manner in Edinburgh, with no change but the addition of English translations of the Latin mottoes, which were supplied by Mr James Elphinstone. From this and minor causes, it came to pass that, in 1779, there were twenty-seven printing-offices in Edinburgh. The most active man in this trade was Alexander Donaldson, who likewise reprinted in Edinburgh, and sold in London, English books of which the author’s fourteen years’ copyright had expired, and which were then only protected by a usage of the London trade, rendering it dishonourable as between man and man, among themselves, to reprint a book which had hitherto been the assigned property of one of their number. Disregarding the rule of his fraternity, Donaldson set up a shop in the Strand for the sale of his cheap Edinburgh editions of the books of expired copyright. They met an immense sale, and proved of obvious service to the public, especially to those of limited means; though, as Johnson remarked, this made Donaldson ‘no better than Robin Hood, who robbed the rich in order to give to the poor.’ In reality, the London booksellers had no right beyond one of class sentiment, and this was fully found when they wrestled with Mr Donaldson at law. Waiving all question on this point, Donaldson may be considered as a sort of morning-star of that reformation which has resulted in the universal cheapening of literary publications. Major Topham, in 1775, speaks of a complete set of the English classics which he was bringing out, ‘in a very handsome binding,’ at the rate of one and sixpence a volume!

[Donaldson, in 1763, started a twice-a-week newspaper under the name of the Edinburgh Advertiser, which was for a long course of years the prominent journal on the Conservative side, and eminently lucrative, chiefly through its multitude of advertisements. All his speculations being of a prosperous nature, he acquired considerable wealth, which he left to his son, the late Mr James Donaldson, by whom the newspaper was conducted for many years. James added largely to his wealth by successful{50} speculations in the funds, where he held so large a sum that the rise of a per cent. made him a thousand pounds richer than he had been the day before. Prompted by the example of Heriot and Watson, and partly, perhaps, by that modification of egotism which makes us love to be kept in the remembrance of future generations, James Donaldson, at his death in 1830, devoted the mass of his fortune—about £240,000—for the foundation of a hospital for the maintenance and education of poor children of both sexes; and a structure for the purpose was erected, on a magnificent plan furnished by Mr Playfair, at an expense, it is said, of about £120,000.

The old house in the West Bow—which was possessed by both of these remarkable men in succession, and the scene of their entertainments to the literary men of the last age, with some of whom Alexander Donaldson lived on terms of intimacy—stood unoccupied for several years before 1824, when it was burnt down. New buildings now occupy its site.]

TEMPLARS’ LANDS.

We have now arrived at the Bow-foot, about which there is nothing remarkable to be told, except that here, and along one side of the Grassmarket, are several houses marked by a cross on some conspicuous part—either an actual iron cross, or one represented in sculpture. This seems a strange circumstance in a country where it was even held doubtful, twenty years ago, whether one could be placed as an ornament on the top of a church tower. The explanation is that these houses were built upon lands originally the property of the Knights Templars, and the cross has ever since been kept up upon them, not from any veneration for that ancient society, neither upon any kind of religious ground; the sole object has been to fix in remembrance certain legal titles and privileges which have been transmitted into secular hands from that source, and which are to this day productive of solid benefits. A hundred years ago, the houses thus marked were held as part of the barony of Drem in Haddingtonshire, the baron of which used to hold courts in them occasionally; and here were harboured many persons not free of the city corporations, to the great annoyance of the adherents of local monopoly. At length, the abolition of heritable jurisdictions in 1747 extinguished this little barony, but not certain other legal rights connected with the Templar Lands, which, however,{51} it might be more troublesome to explain than advantageous to know.

GRASSMARKET
from west end of Cowgate.

Page 50.

THE GALLOWS STONE.

In a central situation at the east end of the Grassmarket, there remained till very lately a massive block of sandstone, having a quadrangular hole in the middle, being the stone which served as a socket for the gallows, when this was the common place of execution. Instead of the stone, there is now only a St Andrew’s cross, indicated by an arrangement of the paving-stones.

This became the regular scene of executions after the Restoration, and so continued till the year 1784. Hence arises the sense of the Duke of Rothes’s remark when a Covenanting prisoner proved obdurate: ‘Then e’en let him glorify God in the Grassmarket!’—the deaths of that class of victims being always signalised by psalm-singing on the scaffold. Most of the hundred persons who suffered for that cause in Edinburgh during the reigns of Charles II. and James II. breathed their last pious aspirations at this spot; but several of the most notable, including the Marquis and Earl of Argyll, were executed at the Cross.

As a matter of course, this was the scene of the Porteous riot in 1736, and of the subsequent murder of Porteous by the mob. The rioters, wishing to despatch him as near to the place of his alleged crime as possible, selected for the purpose a dyer’s pole which stood on the south side of the street, exactly opposite to the gallows stone.

Some of the Edinburgh executioners have been so far notable men as to be the subject of traditionary fame. In the reign of Charles II., Alexander Cockburn, the hangman of Edinburgh, and who must have officiated at the exits of many of the ‘martyrs’ in the Grassmarket, was found guilty of the murder of a bluegown, or privileged beggar, and accordingly suffered that fate which he had so often meted out to other men. One Mackenzie, the hangman of Stirling, whom Cockburn had traduced and endeavoured to thrust out of office, was the triumphant executioner of the sentence.

Another Edinburgh hangman of this period was a reduced gentleman, the last of a respectable family who had possessed an estate in the neighbourhood of Melrose. He had been a profligate in early life, squandered the whole of his patrimony, and at length, for the sake of subsistence, was compelled to accept{52} this wretched office, which in those days must have been unusually obnoxious to popular odium, on account of the frequent executions of innocent and religious men. Notwithstanding his extreme degradation, this unhappy reprobate could not altogether forget his original station and his former tastes and habits. He would occasionally resume the garb of a gentleman, and mingle in the parties of citizens who played at golf in the evenings on Bruntsfield Links. Being at length recognised, he was chased from the ground with shouts of execration and loathing, which affected him so much that he retired to the solitude of the King’s Park, and was next day found dead at the bottom of a precipice, over which he was supposed to have thrown himself in despair. This rock was afterwards called the Hangman’s Craig.

In the year 1700, when the Scottish people were in a state of great excitement on account of the interference of the English government against their expedition to Darien, some persons were apprehended for a riot in the city of Edinburgh, and sentenced to be whipped and put upon the pillory. As these persons had acted under the influence of the general feeling, they excited the sympathy of the people in an extraordinary degree, and even the hangman was found to have scruples about the propriety of punishing them. Upon the pillory they were presented with flowers and wine; and when arrayed for flagellation, the executioner made a mere mockery of his duty, never once permitting his whip to touch their backs. The magistrates were very indignant at the conduct of their servant, and sentenced him to be scourged in his turn. However, when the Haddington executioner was brought to officiate upon his metropolitan brother, he was so much frightened by the threatening aspect of the mob that he thought it prudent to make his escape through a neighbouring alley. The laugh was thus turned against the magistrates, who, it was said, would require to get a third executioner to punish the Haddington man. They prudently dropped the whole matter.

At a somewhat later period, the Edinburgh official was a man named John Dalgleish. He it was who acted at the execution of Wilson the smuggler in 1736, and who is alluded to so frequently in the tale of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. Dalgleish, I have heard, was esteemed, before his taking up this office, as a person in creditable circumstances. He is memorable for one pithy saying. Some one asking him how he contrived in whipping a criminal to adjust the weight of his arm, on which, it is obvious, much must depend: ‘Oh,’ said he,{53} ‘I lay on the lash according to my conscience.’ Either Jock, or some later official, was remarked to be a regular hearer at the Tolbooth Church. As no other person would sit in the same seat, he always had a pew to himself. He regularly communicated; but here the exclusiveness of his fellow-creatures also marked itself, and the clergyman was obliged to serve a separate table for the hangman, after the rest of the congregation had retired from the church.

The last Edinburgh executioner of whom any particular notice has been taken by the public was John High, commonly called Jock Heich, who acceded to the office in the year 1784, and died so lately as 1817. High had been originally induced to undertake this degrading duty in order to escape the punishment due to a petty offence—that of stealing poultry. I remember him living in his official mansion in a lane adjoining to the Cowgate—a small wretched-looking house, assigned by the magistrates for the residence of this race of officers, and which has only been removed within the last few years, to make way for the extension of the buildings of the Parliament Square. He had then a second wife, whom he used to beat unmercifully. Since Jock’s days, no executioner has been so conspicuous as to be known by name. The fame of the occupation seems somehow to have departed.

I have now finished my account of the West Bow; a most antiquated place, yet not without its virtues even as to matters of the present day. Humble as the street appears, many of its shopkeepers and other inhabitants are of a very respectable character. Bankruptcies are said to be very rare in the Bow. Most of the traders are of old standing, and well-to-do in the world; few but what are the proprietors of their own shops and dwellings, which, in such a community, indicates something like wealth. The smarter and more dashing men of Princes Street and the Bridges may smile at their homely externals and darksome little places of business, or may not even pay them the compliment of thinking of them at all; yet, while they boast not of their ‘warerooms,’ or their troops of ‘young men,’ or their plate-glass windows, they at least feel no apprehension from the approach of rent-day, and rarely experience tremulations on the subject of bills. Perhaps, if strict investigation were made, the ‘bodies’ of the Bow could show more comfortable balances at the New Year than at least a half of the sublime men who pay an income by way of rental in George Street. Not one of them but is respectfully known by a good sum on the creditor side at{54} Sir William Forbes’s; not one but can stand at his shop-door, with his hands in his pockets and his hat on, not unwilling, it may be, to receive custom, yet not liable to be greatly distressed if the customer go by. Such, perhaps, were shopkeepers in the golden age![39]

{70}

THE OLD BANK CLOSE.

The Regent Morton—The Old Bank—Sir Thomas Hope—Chiesly of Dairy—Rich Merchants of the Sixteenth Century—Sir William Dick—The Birth of Lord Brougham.

OLD BANK CLOSE.

Amongst the buildings removed to make way for George IV. Bridge were those of a short blind alley in the Lawnmarket, called the Old Bank Close. Composed wholly of solid goodly structures, this close had an air of dignity that might have almost reconciled a modern gentleman to live in it. One of these, crossing and closing the bottom, had been the Bank of Scotland—the Auld Bank, as it used to be half-affectionately called in Edinburgh—previously to the erection of the present handsome edifice in Bank Street. From this establishment the close had taken its name; but it had previously been called Hope’s Close, from its being the residence of a son of the celebrated Sir Thomas Hope, King’s Advocate in the reign of Charles I.

House of Robert Gourlay.

The house of oldest date in the close was one on the west side, of substantial and even handsome appearance, long and lofty, and presenting some peculiarities of structure nearly unique in our city. There was first a door for the ground-floor, about which there was nothing remarkable. Then there was a door leading by the stair to the first floor, and bearing this legend and date upon the architrave:

IN THE IS AL MY TRAIST: 1569.

{71}

Close beside this door was another, leading by a longer, but distinct though adjacent stair to the second floor, and presenting on the architrave the initials R. G. From this floor there was an internal stair contained in a projecting turret, which connected it with the higher floor. Thus, it will be observed, there were three houses in this building, each having a distinct access; a nicety of arrangement which, together with the excellence of the masonry, was calculated to create a more respectful impression regarding the domestic ideas of our ancestors in Queen Mary’s time than most persons are prepared for. Finally, in the triangular space surmounting an attic window were the initials of a married couple, D. G., M. S.

Our surprise is naturally somewhat increased when we learn that the builder and first possessor of this house does not appear to have been a man of rank, or one likely to own unusual wealth. His name was Robert Gourlay, and his profession a humble one connected with the law—namely, that of a messenger-at-arms. In the second book of Charters in the Canongate council-house, Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, and commendator of Holyrood, gave the office of messenger or officer-at-arms to the Abbey to Robert Gourlay, messenger, ‘our lovit familiar servitor,’ with a salary of forty pounds, and other perquisites. This was the Robert Gourlay who built the noble tenement in the Old Bank Close; and through his official functions it came into connection with an interesting historical event. In May 1581, when the ex-Regent Morton was brought to Edinburgh to suffer death, he was—as we learn from the memoirs of Moyses, a contemporary—‘lodged in Robert Gourlay’s house, and there keeped by the waged men.’ Gourlay had been able to accommodate in his house those whom it was his professional duty to take in charge as prisoners. Here, then, must have taken place those remarkable conferences between Morton and certain clergymen, in which, with the prospect of death before him, he protested his innocence of Darnley’s death, while confessing to a foreknowledge of it. Morton must have resided in the house from May 29, when he arrived in Edinburgh, till June 2, when he fell under the stroke of the ‘Maiden.’ In the ensuing year, as we learn from the authority just quoted, De la Motte, the French ambassador, was lodged in ‘Gourlay’s House.’

David Gourlay—probably the individual whose initials appeared on the attic—described as son of John Gourlay, customer, and doubtless grandson of the first man Robert—disposed of the{72} house in 1637 to Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall in liferent, and to his second son, Sir Thomas Hope of Kerse.[52] We may suppose ‘the Advocate’ to have thus provided a mansion for one of his children. A grandson in 1696 disposed of the upper floor to Hugh Blair, merchant in Edinburgh—the grandfather, I presume, of the celebrated Dr Hugh Blair.

This portion of the house was occupied early in the last century by Lord Aberuchil, one of King William’s judges, remarkable for the large fortune he accumulated. About 1780 his descendant, Sir James Campbell of Aberuchil, resided in it while educating his family. It was afterwards occupied by Robert Stewart, writer, extensively known in Perthshire by the name of Rob Uncle, on account of the immense number of his nephews and nieces, amongst the former of whom was the late worthy General Stewart of Garth, author of the work on the Highland regiments.

The building used by the bank was also a substantial one. Over the architrave was the legend:

SPES ALTERÆ VITÆ,

with a device emblematising the resurrection—namely, a couple of cross-bones with wheat-stalks springing from them, and the date 1588. Latterly it was occupied as the University Printing-office, and when I visited it in 1824 it contained an old wooden press, which was believed to be the identical one which Prince Charles carried with him from Glasgow to Bannockburn to print his gazettes, but then used as a proof-press, like a good hunter reduced to the sand-cart. This house was removed in 1834, having been previously sold by the Commissioners of Improvements for £150. The purchaser got a larger sum for a leaden roof unexpectedly found upon it. When the house was demolished, it was discovered that every window-shutter had a communication by wires with an intricate piece of machinery in the garret, designed to operate upon a bell hung at a corner on the outside, so that not a window could have been forced without giving an alarm.

In the Cowgate, little more than fifty yards from the site of this building, there is a bulky old mansion, believed to have been the residence of the celebrated King’s Advocate Hope, himself, the ancestor of all the considerable men of this name now in Scotland. One can easily see, amidst all the disgrace{73} into which it has fallen, something remarkable in this house, with two entrances from the street, and two porte-cochères leading to other accesses in the rear. Over one door is the legend:

TECUM HABITA: 1616;[53]

over the other a half-obliterated line, known to have been

AT HOSPES HUMO.

Courtyard, Hope House.

One often finds significant voices proceeding from the builders of these old houses, generally to express humility. Sir Thomas here quotes a well-known passage in Persius, as if to tell the beholder to confine himself to a criticism of his own house; and then, with more certain humility, uses a passage of the Psalms (cxix. 19): ‘I am a stranger upon earth,’ the latter being an anagram of his own name, thus spelt: Thomas Houpe. It is impossible without a passing sensation of melancholy to behold this house, and to think how truly the obscurity of its history, and the wretchedness into which it has fallen, realise the philosophy of the anagram. Verily, the great statesman who once lived here in dignity and the respect of men was but as a stranger who tarried in the place for a night, and was gone.

The Diary of Sir Thomas Hope, printed for the Bannatyne Club (1843), is a curious record of the public duties of a great law-officer in the age to which it refers, as well as of the mixture{74} of worldly and spiritual things in which the venerable dignitary was engaged. He is indefatigable in his religious duties and his endeavours to advance the interests of his family; at the same time full of kindly feeling about his sons’ wives and their little family matters, never failing, for one thing, to tell how much the midwife got for her attendance on these ladies. There are many passages respecting his prayers, and the ‘answers’ he obtained to them, especially during the agonies of the opening civil war. He prays, for instance, that the Lord would pity his people, and then hears the words: ‘I will preserve and saiff my people’—‘but quhither be me or some other, I dar not say.’ On another occasion, at the time when the Covenanting army was mustering for Dunse Law to oppose King Charles, Sir Thomas tells that, praying: ‘Lord, pitie thy pure [i.e. poor] kirk, for their is no help in man!’ he heard a voice saying: ‘I will pitie it;’ ‘for quhilk I blissit the Lord;’ immediately after which he goes on: ‘Lent to John my long carabin of rowet wark all indentit;’ &c.[54]

The Countess of Mar, daughter of Esme, Duke of Lennox, died of a deadly brash in Sir Thomas’s house in the Cowgate, May 11, 1644.

It is worthy of notice that the Hopes are one of several Scottish families, possessing high rank and great wealth, which trace their descent to merchants in Edinburgh. ‘The Hopes are of French extraction, from Picardy. It is said they were originally Houblon, and had their name from the plant [hop], and not from esperance [the virtue in the mind]. The first that came over was a domestic of Magdalene of France, queen of James V.; and of him are descended all the eminent families of Hopes. This John Hope set up as a merchant of Edinburgh, and his son, by Bessie or Elizabeth Cumming, is marked as a member of our first Protestant General Assembly, anno 1560.’[55]

{75}

CHIESLY OF DALRY.

The head of the Old Bank Close was the scene of the assassination of President Lockhart by Chiesly of Dalry,[56] March 1689. The murderer had no provocation besides a simple judicial act of the president, assigning an aliment or income of £93 out of his estate to his wife and children, from whom it may be presumed he had been separated. He evidently was a man abandoned to the most violent passions—perhaps not quite sane. In London, half a year before the deed, he told Mr Stuart, an advocate, that he was resolved to go to Scotland before Candlemas and kill the president; when, on Stuart remarking that the very imagination of such a thing was a sin before God, he replied: ‘Let God and me alone; we have many things to reckon betwixt us, and we will reckon this too.’ The judge was informed of the menaces of Chiesly, but despised them.

On a Sunday afternoon, the last day of March—the town being then under the excitement of the siege of the Castle by the friends of the new government—Lockhart was walking home from church to his house in this alley, when Chiesly came behind, just as he entered the close, and shot him in the back with a pistol. A Dr Hay, coming to visit the president’s lady, saw his lordship stagger and fall. The ball had gone through the body, and out at the right breast. He was taken into his house, laid down upon two chairs, and almost immediately was a dead man. Some gentlemen passing seized the murderer, who readily owned he had done the deed, which he said was ‘to learn the president to do justice.’ When immediately after informed that his victim had expired, he said ‘he was not used to do things by halves.’ He boasted of the deed as if it had been some grand exploit.

After torture had been inflicted, to discover if he had any accomplices, the wretched man was tried by the magistrates of Edinburgh, and sentenced to be carried on a hurdle to the Cross,[57] and there hanged, with the fatal pistol hung from his neck, after which his body was to be suspended in chains at the Gallow Lee, and his right hand affixed to the West Port. The body was stolen from the gallows, as was supposed, by his friends,{76} and it was never known what had become of it till more than a century after, when, in removing the hearthstone of a cottage in Dalry Park, near Edinburgh, a human skeleton was found, with the remains of a pistol near the situation of the neck. No doubt was entertained that these were the remains of Chiesly, huddled into this place for concealment, probably in the course of the night in which they had been abstracted from the gallows.

RICH MERCHANTS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY—SIR WILLIAM DICK.

Several houses in the neighbourhood of the Old Bank Close served to give a respectful notion of the wealth and domestic state of certain merchants of an early age. Immediately to the westward, in Brodie’s Close, was the mansion of William Little of Liberton, bearing date 1570. This was an eminent merchant, and the founder of a family now represented by Mr Little Gilmour of the Inch, in whose possession this mansion continued under entail, till purchased and taken down by the Commissioners of Improvements in 1836. About 1780 it was the residence of the notorious Deacon Brodie, of whom something may be said elsewhere. Sir William Gray of Pittendrum, mentioned a few pages back as the original owner of the old house in Lady Stair’s Close, was another affluent trafficker of that age.

In Riddel’s Close, Lawnmarket, there is an enclosed court, evidently intended to be capable of defence. It is the place where John Macmoran, a rich merchant of the time of James VI., lived and carried on his business. In those days even schoolboys trusted to violence for attaining their ends. The youths of the High School,[58] being malcontent about their holidays, barred themselves up in the school with some provisions, and threatened not to surrender till the magistrates should comply with their demands. John Macmoran, who held the office of one of the bailies, came with a posse to deal with the boys, but, finding them obdurate, ordered the door to be prised open with a joist. One within then{77} fired a pistol at the bailie, who fell shot through the brain, to the horror of all beholders, including the schoolboys themselves, who with difficulty escaped the vengeance of the crowd assembled on the spot.

It was ascertained that the immediate author of the bailie’s death was William Sinclair, son of the chancellor of Caithness. There was a great clamour to have justice done upon him; but this was a point not easily attained, where a person of gentle blood was concerned, in the reign of James VI. The boy lived to be Sir William Sinclair of Mey, and, as such, was the ancestor of those who have, since 1789, borne the title of Earls of Caithness.

Bailie Macmoran’s House, Riddel’s Court.

A visit to the fine old mansion of Bailie Macmoran may be recommended. Its masonry is not without elegance. The lower floor of the building is now used as ‘The Mechanics’ Library.’[59] Macmoran’s house is in the floor above, reached by a stone stair, near the corner of the court. This dwelling offers a fine specimen of the better class of houses at the end of the sixteenth century. The marble jambs of the fireplaces and the carved stucco ceilings are quite entire. The larger room (occupied as a warehouse for articles of saddlery) is that in which took place two memorable royal banquets in 1598—the first on the 24th of April to James VI. with his{78} queen, Anne of Denmark, and her brother the Duke of Holstein; and the second on the 2nd of May, more specially to the Duke of Holstein, but at which their Majesties were present. These banquets, held, as Birrel says, with ‘grate solemnitie and mirrines,’ were at the expense of the city. It need hardly be said that James VI. was fond of this species of entertainment, and the house of Macmoran was probably selected for the purpose not only because he was treasurer to the corporation and a man of some mark, but because his dwelling offered suitable accommodation. The general aspect of the enclosed court which affords access to Macmoran’s house has undergone little or no alteration since these memorable banquets; and in visiting the place, with its quietude and seclusion, one almost feels as if stepping back into the sixteenth century. Considering the destruction all around from city improvements, it is fortunate that this remarkable specimen of an old mansion should have been left so singularly entire. One of the higher windows continues to exemplify an economical arrangement which prevailed about the time of the Restoration—namely, to have the lower half composed of wooden shutters.[60]

The grandest of all these old Edinburgh merchants was William Dick, ancestor of the Dicks, baronets of Prestonfield. In his youth, and during the lifetime of his father, he had been able to lend £6000 to King James, to defray the expense of his journey to Scotland. The affairs in which he was engaged would even now be considered important. For example, he farmed the customs on wine at £6222, and the crown rents of Orkney at £3000. Afterwards he farmed the excise. His fleets extended from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The immense wealth he acquired enabled him to purchase large estates. He himself reckoned his property as at one time equal to two hundred thousand pounds sterling.

Strange to say, this great merchant came to poverty, and died in a prison. The reader of the Waverley novels may remember David Deans telling how his father ‘saw them toom the sacks of dollars out o’ Provost Dick’s window intill the carts that carried them to the army at Dunse Law’—‘if ye winna believe his testimony, there is the window itsell still standing in the Luckenbooths—I{79} think it’s a claith-merchant’s buith the day.’ This refers to large advances which Dick made to the Covenanters to enable them to carry on the war against the king. The house alluded to is actually now a claith-merchant’s booth, having long been in the possession of Messrs John Clapperton & Company. Two years after Dunse Law, Dick gave the Covenanters 100,000 merks in one sum. Subsequently, being after all of royalist tendencies, he made still larger advances in favour of the Scottish government during the time when Charles II. was connected with it; and thus provoking the wrath of the English Commonwealth, his ruin was completed by the fines to which he was subjected by that party when triumphant, amounting in all to £65,000.

Poor Sir William Dick—for he had been made a baronet by Charles I.—went to London to endeavour to recover some part of his lost means. When he represented the indigence to which he had been reduced, he was told that he was always able to procure pie-crust when other men could not get bread. There was, in fact, a prevalent idea that he possessed some supernatural means—such as the philosopher’s stone—of acquiring money. (Pie-crust came to be called Sir William Dick’s Necessity.) The contrary was shown when the unfortunate man died soon after in a prison in Westminster. There is a picture in Prestonfield House, near Edinburgh, the seat of his descendant, representing him in this last retreat in a mean dress, surrounded by his numerous hapless family. A rare pamphlet, descriptive of his case, presents engravings of three such pictures; one exhibiting him on horseback, attended by guards as Lord Provost of Edinburgh, superintending the unloading of one of his rich ships at Leith; another as a prisoner in the hands of the bailiffs; the third as dead in prison. A more memorable example of the instability of fortune does not occur in our history. It seems completely to realise the picture in Job (chap. xxvii.): ‘The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he openeth his eyes, and he is not. Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night. The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a storm, hurleth him out of his place. For God shall cast upon him, and not spare: he would fain flee out of his hand. Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place.’

The fortunes of the family were restored by Sir William’s grandson, Sir James, a remarkably shrewd man, who was likewise a merchant in Edinburgh. There is a traditionary story that{80} this gentleman, observing the utility of manure, and that the streets of Edinburgh were loaded with it, to the detriment of the comfort of the inhabitants, offered to relieve the town of this nuisance on condition that he should be allowed, for a certain term of years, to carry it away gratis. Consent was given, and the Prestonfield estate became, in consequence, like a garden. The Duke of York had a great affection for Sir James Dick, and used to walk through the Park to visit him at his house very frequently. Hence, according to the report of the family, the way his Royal Highness took came to be called The Duke’s Walk; afterwards a famous resort for the fighting of duels. Sir James became Catholic, and, while provost in 1681, had his house burned over his head by the collegianers; but it was rebuilt at the public expense. His grandson, Sir Alexander Dick, is referred to in kindly terms in Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides as a venerable man of studious habits and a friend of men of letters. The reader will probably learn with some surprise that though Sir William’s descendants never recovered any of the money lent by him to the State, a lady of his family, living in 1844, was in the enjoyment of a pension with express reference to that ancient claim.

THE BIRTH OF LORD BROUGHAM.

[1868.—It has been remarked elsewhere that, for a great number of years after the general desertion of the Old Town by persons of condition, there were many denizens of the New who had occasion to look back to the Canongate and Cowgate as the place of their birth. The nativity of one person who achieved extraordinary greatness and distinction, and whose death was an occurrence of yesterday, Henry, Lord Brougham, undoubtedly was connected with the lowly place last mentioned.

The Edinburgh tradition on the subject was that Henry Brougham, younger, of Brougham Hall, in the county of Cumberland, in consequence of a disappointment in love, came to Edinburgh for the diversion of his mind. Principal Robertson, to whom he bore a letter of introduction, recommended the young man to the care of his sister—Mrs Syme, widow of the minister of Alloa—who occupied what was then considered as a good and spacious house at the head of the Cowgate—strictly the third floor of the house now marked No. 8—a house desirable from its having an extraordinary space in front. Here, it would appear, Mr Brougham{81} speedily consoled himself for his former disappointment by falling in love with Eleonora, the daughter of Mrs Syme; and a marriage, probably a hurried one, soon united the young pair. They set up for themselves (Whitsunday 1778) in an upper floor of a house in the then newly built St Andrew Square, where, in the ensuing September, their eldest son, charged with so illustrious a destiny, first saw the light.[61]

Mr Brougham conclusively settled in Edinburgh; he subsequently occupied a handsome house in George Street. He was never supposed to be a man of more than ordinary faculties; but any deficiency in this respect was amply made up for by his wife, who is represented by all who remember her as a person of uncommon mental gifts. The contrast of the pair drew the attention of society, and was the subject of a gently satiric sketch in Henry Mackenzie’s Lounger, No. 45, published on the 10th December 1785, which, however, would vainly be looked for in the reprinted copies, as it was immediately suppressed.]

{82}

THE OLD TOLBOOTH.

The genius of Scott has shed a peculiar interest upon this ancient structure, whose cant name of the Heart of Mid-Lothian has given a title to one of his happiest novels. It stood in a singular situation, occupying half the width of the High Street, elbow to elbow, as it were, with St Giles’s Church. Antique in form, gloomy and haggard in aspect, its black stanchioned windows opening through its dingy walls like the apertures of a hearse, it was calculated to impress all beholders with a due and deep sense of what was meant in Scottish law by the squalor{83} carceris. At the west end was a projecting ground-floor, formed of shops, but presenting a platform on which executions took place. The building itself was composed of two parts, one more solid and antique than the other, and much resembling, with its turret staircase, one of those tall, narrow fortalices which are so numerous in the Border counties. Indeed, the probability is that this had been a kind of peel or house of defence, required for public purposes by the citizens of Edinburgh when liable to predatory invasions. Doubtless the house or some part of it was of great antiquity, for it was an old and ruinous building in the reign of Mary, and only narrowly saved at that time from destruction. Most likely it was the very pretorium burgi de Edinburgi in which a parliament assembled in 1438 to deliberate on the measures rendered necessary by the assassination of the poet-king, James I. In those simple days great and humble things came close together: the house which contained parliaments upstairs, presented shops in the lower story, and thus drew in a little revenue to the magistrates. Here met the Court of Session in its earliest years. Here Mary assembled her parliaments; and here—on the Tolbooth door—did citizens affix libels by night, charging the Earl of Bothwell with the murder of Darnley. Long, long since all greatness had been taken away from the old building, and it was condemned to be a jail alone, though still with shops underneath. At length, in 1817, the fabric was wholly swept away, in consequence of the erection of a better jail on the Calton Hill. The gateway, with the door and padlock, was transferred to Abbotsford, and, with strange taste on the part of the proprietor, built into a conspicuous part of that mansion.

EDINBURGH
from the Calton Hill.

Page 83.

The principal entrance to the Tolbooth, and the only one used in later days, was at the bottom of the turret next the church. The gateway was of tolerably good carved stone-work, and occupied by a door of ponderous massiness and strength, having, besides the lock, a flap-padlock, which, however, was generally kept unlocked during the day. In front of the door there always paraded, or rather loitered, a private of the town-guard, with his rusty red clothes and Lochaber axe or musket. The door adjacent to the principal gateway was, in the final days of the Tolbooth, ‘Michael Ketten’s Shoe-shop,’ but had formerly been a thief’s hole. The next door to that, stepping westward, was the residence of the turnkey; a dismal, unlighted den, where the gray old man was always to be found, when not engaged in unlocking or closing the door. The next door westward was a lock-up house, which{84} in later times was never used. On the north side, towards the street, there had once been shops, which were let by the magistrates; but these were converted, about the year 1787, into a guard-house for the city-guard, on their ancient capitol in the High Street being destroyed for the levelling of the streets. The ground-floor, thus occupied for purposes in general remote from the character of the building, was divided lengthwise by a strong partition wall; and communication between the rooms above and these apartments below was effectually interdicted by the strong arches upon which the superstructure was reared.

On passing the outer door—where the rioters of 1736 thundered with their sledge-hammers, and finally burnt down all that interposed between them and their prey—the keeper instantly involved the entrant in darkness by reclosing the gloomy portal. A flight of about twenty steps then led to an inner door, which, being duly knocked at, was opened by a bottle-nosed personage, denominated Peter, who, like his sainted namesake, always carried two or three large keys. You then entered the Hall, which, being free to all the prisoners except those of the East End, was usually filled with a crowd of shabby-looking but very merry loungers. A small rail here served as an additional security, no prisoner being permitted to come within its pale. Here also a sentinel of the city-guard was always walking, having a bayonet or ramrod in his hand. The Hall, being also the chapel of the jail, contained an old pulpit of singular fashion—such a pulpit as one could imagine John Knox to have preached from; which, indeed, he was traditionally said to have actually done. At the right-hand side of the pulpit was a door leading up the large turnpike to the apartments occupied by the criminals, one of which was of plate-iron. The door was always shut, except when food was taken up to the prisoners. On the west end of the hall hung a board, on which were inscribed the following emphatic lines:

‘A prison is a house of care,

A place where none can thrive,

A touchstone true to try a friend,

A grave for men alive—

Sometimes a place of right,

Sometimes a place of wrong,

Sometimes a place for jades and thieves,

And honest men among.’[62]

{85}

A part of the hall on the north side was partitioned off into two small rooms, one of which was the captain’s pantry, the other his counting-room. In the latter hung an old musket or two, a pair of obsolete bandoleers, and a sheath of a bayonet, intended, as one might suppose, for his defence against a mutiny of the prisoners. Including the space thus occupied, the hall was altogether twenty-seven feet long by about twenty broad. The height of the room was twelve feet. Close to the door, and within the rail, was a large window, thickly stanchioned; and at the other end of the hall, within the captain’s two rooms, was a double window of a somewhat extraordinary character. Tradition, supported by the appearance of the place, pointed out this as having formerly been a door by which royalty entered the hall in the days when it was the Parliament House. It is said that a kind of bridge was thrown between this aperture and a house on the other side of the street, and that the sovereign, having prepared himself in that house to enter the hall in his state robes, proceeded at the proper time along the arch—an arrangement by no means improbable in those days of straitened accommodation.

The window on the south side of the hall overlooked the outer gateway. It was therefore employed by the inner turnkey as a channel of communication with his exterior brother when any visitor was going out. He used to cry over this window, in the tone of a military order upon parade: ‘Turn your hand,’ whereupon the gray-haired man on the pavement below opened the door and permitted the visitor, who by this time had descended the stair, to walk out.

The floor immediately above the hall was occupied by one room for felons, having a bar along part of the floor, to which condemned criminals were chained, and a square box of plate-iron in the centre, called THE CAGE, which was said to have been constructed for the purpose of confining some extraordinary culprit who had broken half the jails in the kingdom. Above this room was another of the same size, also appropriated to felons.

The larger and western part of the edifice, of coarser and apparently more modern construction, contained four floors, all of which were appropriated to the use of debtors, except a part of the lowest one, where a middle-aged woman kept a tavern for the sale of malt liquors. A turnpike stair gave access to the different{86} floors. As it was narrow, steep, and dark, the visitor was assisted in his ascent by a greasy rope, which, some one was sure to inform him afterwards, had been employed in hanging a criminal. In one of the apartments on the second floor was a door leading out to the platform whereon criminals were executed, and in another, on the floor above, was an ill-plastered part of the wall covering the aperture through which the gallows was projected. The fourth flat was a kind of barrack, for the use of the poorest debtors.

There was something about the Old Tolbooth which would have enabled a blindfolded person led into it to say that it was a jail. It was not merely odorous from the ordinary causes of imperfect drainage, but it had poverty’s own smell—the odour of human misery. And yet it did not seem at first a downcast scene. The promenaders in the hall were sometimes rather merry, cutting jokes perhaps upon Peter’s nose, or chatting with friends on the benches regarding the news of the day. Then Mrs Laing drove a good trade in her little tavern; and if any messenger were sent out for a bottle of whisky—why, Peter never searched pockets. New men were hailed with:

‘Welcome, welcome, brother debtor,

To this poor but merry place;

Here nor bailiff, dun, nor fetter,

Dare to show his gloomy face.’

They would be abashed at first, and the first visit of wife or daughter, coming shawled and veiled, and with timorous glances, into the room where the loved object was trying to become at ease with his companions, was always a touching affair. But it was surprising how soon, in general, all became familiar, easy, and even to appearance happy. Each had his story to tell, and sympathy was certain and liberal. The whole management was of a good-natured kind, as far as a regard to regulations would allow. It did not seem at all an impossible thing that a debtor should accommodate some even more desolate friend with a share of his lodging for the night, or for many nights, as is said to have been done in some noted instances, to which we shall presently come.

It was natural for a jail of such old standing to have passed through a great number of odd adventures, and have many strange tales connected with it. One of the most remarkable traits of its character was a sad liability to the failure of its ordinary powers of retention when men of figure were in question. The old house had something like that faculty attributed by Falstaff to the lion{87} and himself—of knowing men who ought not to be too roughly handled. The consequence was that almost every criminal of rank confined in it made his escape. Lord Burleigh, an insane peer, who, about the time of the Union, assassinated a schoolmaster who had married a girl to whom he had paid improper addresses, escaped, while under sentence of death, by changing clothes with his sister. Several of the rebel gentlemen confined there in 1716 were equally fortunate; a fact on which there was lately thrown a flood of light, when I found, in a manuscript list of subscriptions for the relief of the other rebel gentlemen at Carlisle, the name of the Guidman of the Tolbooth—so the chief-keeper was called—down for a good sum. I am uncertain to which of all these personages the following anecdote, related to me by Sir Walter Scott, refers.

It was contrived that the prisoner should be conveyed out of the Tolbooth in a trunk, and carried by a porter to Leith, where some sailors were to be ready with a boat to take him aboard a vessel about to leave Scotland. The plot succeeded so far as the escape from jail was concerned, but was knocked on the head by an unlucky and most ridiculous accident. It so happened that the porter, in arranging the trunk upon his back, placed the end which corresponded with the feet of the prisoner uppermost. The head of the unfortunate man was therefore pressed against the lower end of the box, and had to sustain the weight of the whole body. The posture was the most uneasy imaginable. Yet life was preferable to ease. He permitted himself to be taken away. The porter trudged along with the trunk, quite unconscious of its contents, and soon reached the High Street. On gaining the Netherbow he met an acquaintance, who asked him where he was going with that large burden. To Leith, was the answer. The other inquired if the job was good enough to afford a potation before proceeding farther upon so long a journey. This being replied to in the affirmative, and the carrier of the box feeling in his throat the philosophy of his friend’s inquiry, it was agreed that they should adjourn to a neighbouring tavern. Meanwhile, the third party, whose inclinations had not been consulted in this arrangement, was wishing that it were at once well over with him in the Grassmarket. But his agonies were not destined to be of long duration. The porter in depositing him upon the causeway happened to make the end of the trunk come down with such precipitation that, unable to bear it any longer, the prisoner screamed out, and immediately after fainted. The consternation{88} of the porter on hearing a noise from his burden was of course excessive; but he soon recovered presence of mind enough to conceive the occasion. He proceeded to unloose and to burst open the trunk, when the hapless nobleman was discovered in a state of insensibility. As a crowd collected immediately, and the city-guard were not long in coming forward, there was of course no further chance of escape. The prisoner did not recover from his swoon till he had been safely deposited in his old quarters; but, if I recollect rightly, he eventually escaped in another way.

In two very extraordinary instances an escape from justice has, strange as it may appear, been effected by means of the Old Tolbooth. At the discovery of the Rye-House Plot, in the reign of Charles II., the notorious Robert Fergusson, usually styled ‘The Plotter,’ was searched for in Edinburgh, with a view to his being subjected, if possible, to the extreme vengeance of the law. It being known almost certainly that he was in town, the authorities shut the gates, and calculated securely upon having him safe within their toils. The Plotter, however, by an expedient worthy of his ingenious character, escaped by taking refuge in the Old Tolbooth. A friend of his happened to be confined there at the time, and was able to afford protection and concealment to Fergusson, who, at his leisure, came abroad, and betook himself to a place of safer shelter on the Continent. The same device was practised in 1746 by a gentleman who had been concerned in the Rebellion, and for whom a hot search had been carried on in the Highlands.

The case of Katherine Nairne, in 1766, excited in no small degree the attention of the Scottish public. This lady was allied, both by blood and marriage, to some respectable families. Her crime was the double one of poisoning her husband and having an intrigue with his brother, who was her associate in the murder. On her arrival at Leith in an open boat, her whole bearing betrayed so much levity, or was so different from what had been expected, that the mob raised a cry of indignation, and were on the point of pelting her, when she was with some difficulty rescued from their hands by the public authorities. In this case the Old Tolbooth found itself, as usual, incapable of retaining a culprit of condition. Sentence had been delayed by the judges on account of the lady’s pregnancy. The midwife employed at her accouchement (who continued to practise in Edinburgh so lately as the year 1805) had the address to achieve a jail-delivery also. For three or four days previous to that concerted for the escape, she pretended to be{89} afflicted with a prodigious toothache, went out and in with her head enveloped in shawls and flannels, and groaned as if she had been about to give up the ghost. At length, when the Peter of that day had become so habituated to her appearance as not very much to heed her exits and her entrances, Katherine Nairne one evening came down in her stead, with her head wrapped all round with the shawls, uttering the usual groans, and holding down her face upon her hands, as with agony, in the precise way customary with the midwife. The inner doorkeeper, not quite unconscious, it is supposed, of the trick, gave her a hearty thump upon the back as she passed out, calling her at the same time a howling old Jezebel, and wishing she would never come back to trouble him any more. There are two reports of the proceedings of Katherine Nairne after leaving the prison. One bears that she immediately left the town in a coach, to which she was handed by a friend stationed on purpose. The coachman, it is said, had orders from her relations, in the event of a pursuit, to drive into the sea, that she might drown herself—a fate which was considered preferable to the ignominy of a public execution. The other story runs that she went up the Lawnmarket to the Castle-hill, where lived Mr ——, a respectable advocate, from whom, as he was her cousin, she expected to receive protection. Being ignorant of the town, she mistook the proper house, and applied at that of the crown agent,[63] who was assuredly the last man in the world that could have done her any service. As good luck would have it, she was not recognised by the servant, who civilly directed her to her cousin’s house, where, it is said, she remained concealed many weeks.[64] Her future life, it has been reported, was virtuous and fortunate. She was married to a French gentleman, became the mother of a large family, and died at a good old age. Meanwhile, Patrick Ogilvie, her associate in the dark crime which threw a shade over her younger years, suffered in the Grassmarket. He had been a lieutenant in the —— regiment, and was so much beloved by his fellow-soldiers, who happened to be stationed at that time in Edinburgh Castle, that the public authorities judged it necessary{90} to shut them up in a fortress till the execution was over lest they might have attempted a rescue.

The Old Tolbooth was the scene of the suicide of Mungo Campbell while under sentence of death (1770) for shooting the Earl of Eglintoune. In the district where this memorable event took place, it is somewhat remarkable that the fate of the murderer was more generally lamented than that of the murdered person. Campbell, though what was called ‘a graceless man,’ was rather popular in his profession of exciseman, on account of his rough, honourable spirit, and his lenity in the matter of smuggling. Lord Eglintoune, on the contrary, was not liked, on account of his improving mania, which had proved a serious grievance to the old-fashioned farmers of Kyle and Cunningham. There was one article, called rye-grass, which he brought in amongst them, and forced them to cultivate; and black prelacy itself had hardly, a century before, been a greater evil. Then, merely to stir them up a little, he would cause them to exchange farms with each other; thus giving their ancient plenishings, what was doubtless much wanted, an airing, but also creating a strong sense that Lord Eglintoune was ‘far ower fashious.’ His lordship had excited some scandal by his private habits, which helped in no small degree to render unpopular one who was in reality an amiable and upright gentleman. He was likewise somewhat tenacious about matters respecting game—the besetting weakness of British gentlemen in all ages. On the other hand, Campbell, though an austere and unsocial man, acted according to popular ideas both in respect of the game and excise laws. The people felt that he was on their side; they esteemed him for his integrity in the common affairs of life, and even in some degree for his birth and connections, which were far from mean. It was also universally believed, though erroneously, that he had only discharged his gun by accident, on falling backward, while retreating before his lordship, who had determined to take it from him. In reality, Mungo, after his fall, rose on his elbow and wilfully shot the poor earl, who had given him additional provocation by bursting into a laugh at his awkward fall. The Old Tolbooth was supposed by many, at the time, to have had her usual failing in Mungo’s case. The interest of the Argyll family was said to have been employed in his favour; and the body which was found suspended over the door, instead of being his, was thought to be that of a dead soldier from the Castle substituted in his place. His relations, however, who were very respectable people in Ayrshire, all acknowledged that he died by{91} his own hand; and this was the general idea of the mob of Edinburgh, who, getting the body into their hands, dragged it down the street to the King’s Park, and, inspired by different sentiments from those of the Ayrshire people, were not satisfied till they got it up to the top of Salisbury Crags, from which they precipitated it down the Cat Nick.

Deacon Brodie’s Keys and Dark-Lantern.

One of the most remarkable criminals ever confined in the Old Tolbooth was the noted William Brodie. This was a man of respectable connections, and who had moved in good society all his life, unsuspected of any criminal pursuits. It is said that a habit of frequenting cock-pits was the first symptom he exhibited of a decline from rectitude. His ingenuity as a mechanic gave him a fatal facility in the burglarious pursuits to which he afterwards addicted himself. It was then customary for the shopkeepers of Edinburgh to hang their keys upon a nail at the back of their doors, or at least to take no pains in concealing them during the day. Brodie used to take impressions of them in putty or clay, a piece of which he would carry in the palm of his hand. He kept a blacksmith in his pay, who forged exact copies of the keys he wanted, and with these it was his custom to open the shops of his fellow-tradesmen during the night. He thus found opportunities of securely stealing whatever he wished to possess. He carried on his malpractices for many years, and never was suspected till, having committed a daring robbery upon the Excise Office in Chessels’s Court, Canongate, some circumstances transpired which induced him to disappear from Edinburgh. Suspicion then becoming strong, he was pursued to Holland, and taken at Amsterdam, standing upright in a press or cupboard. At his trial, Henry Erskine, his counsel, spoke very eloquently in his behalf, representing, in particular, to the jury how strange and improbable a circumstance it was that a man whom they had themselves known from infancy as a person of good repute should have been guilty of such practices as those with which he was charged. He was, however, found guilty, and sentenced to death, along with his accomplice Smith. At the trial he had appeared in a full-dress suit of black clothes, the greater part of which was of silk, and his deportment throughout the affair was composed and gentlemanlike. He continued during the period which intervened between his sentence{92} and execution to dress well and keep up his spirits. A gentleman of his acquaintance, calling upon him in the condemned room, was surprised to find him singing the song from the Beggars’ Opera, ‘’Tis woman seduces all mankind.’ Having contrived to cut out the figure of a draughtboard on the stone floor of his dungeon, he amused himself by playing with any one who would join him, and, in default of such, with his right hand against his left. This diagram remained in the room where it was so strangely out of place till the destruction of the jail. His dress and deportment at the gallows (October 1, 1788) displayed a mind at ease, and gave some countenance to the popular notion that he had made certain mechanical arrangements for saving his life. Brodie was the first who proved the excellence of an improvement he had formerly made on the apparatus of the gibbet. This was the substitution of what is called the drop for the ancient practice of the double ladder. He inspected the thing with a professional air, and seemed to view the result of his ingenuity with a smile of satisfaction. When placed on that insecure pedestal, and while the rope was adjusted round his neck by the executioner, his courage did not forsake him. On the contrary, even there he exhibited a sort of levity; he shuffled about, looked gaily around, and finally went out of the world with his hand stuck carelessly into the open front of his vest.

Brodie’s Close.

As its infirmities increased with old age, the Tolbooth showed itself incapable of retaining prisoners of even ordinary rank. Within the recollection of people living not long ago, a youth named Hay, the son of a stabler in the Grassmarket, and who was under sentence of death for burglary, effected his escape in a way highly characteristic of the Heart of Mid-Lothian, and of the simple and unprecise system upon which all public affairs were managed before the present age.

{93}

A few days before that appointed for the execution, the father went up to the condemned room, apparently to condole with his unhappy son. The irons had been previously got quit of by files. At nightfall, when most visitors had left the jail, old Hay invited the inner turnkey, or man who kept the hall-door, to come into the room and partake of some liquor which he had brought with him. The man took a few glasses, and became mellow just about the time when the bottle was exhausted and when the time of locking up the jail (ten o’clock at that period) was approaching. Hay expressed unwillingness to part at the moment when they were just beginning to enjoy their liquor; a sentiment in which the turnkey heartily sympathised. Hay took a crown from his pocket, and proposed that his friend should go out and purchase a bottle of good rum at a neighbouring shop. The man consented, and staggering away downstairs, neglected to lock the inner door behind him. Young Hay followed close, as had been concerted, and after the man had gone out, and the outer turnkey had closed the outer door, stood in the stair just within that dread portal, ready to spring into the street. Old Hay then put his head to the great window of the hall, and cried: ‘Turn your hand!’—the usual drawling cry which brought the outer turnkey to open the door. The turnkey came mechanically at the cry, and unclosed the outer door, when the young criminal sprang out, and ran as fast as he could down Beth’s Wynd, a lane opposite the jail. According to the plan which had been previously concerted, he repaired to a particular part of the wall of the Greyfriars Churchyard, near the lower gate, where it was possible for an agile person to climb up and spring over; and so well had every stage of the business been planned that a large stone had been thrown down at this place to facilitate the leap.

The youth had been provided with a key which could open Sir George Mackenzie’s mausoleum—a place of peculiar horror, as it was supposed to be haunted by the spirit of the bloody persecutor; but what will not be submitted to for dear life? Having been brought up in Heriot’s Hospital, in the immediate neighbourhood of the churchyard, Hay had many boyish acquaintances still residing in that establishment. Some of these he contrived to inform of his situation, enjoining them to be secret, and beseeching them to assist him in his distress. The Herioters of those days had a very clannish spirit—insomuch that to have neglected the interests or safety of any individual of the community,{94} however unworthy he might be of their friendship, would have been looked upon by them as a sin of the deepest dye. Hay’s confidants, therefore, considered themselves bound to assist him by all means in their power. They kept his secret faithfully, spared from their own meals as much food as supported him, and ran the risk of severe punishment, as well as of seeing eldritch sights, by visiting him every night in his dismal abode. About six weeks after his escape from jail, when the hue and cry had in a great measure subsided, he ventured to leave the tomb, and it was afterwards known that he escaped abroad.

Sir George Mackenzie’s Mausoleum.

So ends our gossip respecting a building which has witnessed and contained the meetings of the Scottish parliament in the romantic days of the Jameses—which held the first fixed court of law established in the country—which was looked to by the citizens in a rude age as a fortified place for defence against external danger to their lives and goods—which has immured in its gloomy walls persons of all kinds liable to law, from the gallant Montrose and the faithful Guthrie and Argyll down to the humblest malefactor in the modern style of crime—and which, finally, has been embalmed in the imperishable pages of the greatest writer of fiction our country has produced.

{95}

SOME MEMORIES OF THE LUCKENBOOTHS.

Lord Coalstoun and his Wig—Commendator Bothwell’s House—Lady Anne Bothwell—Mahogany Lands and Fore-stairs—The Krames—Creech’s Shop.

A portion of the High Street facing St Giles’s Church was called the Luckenbooths, and the appellation was shared with a middle row of buildings which once burdened the street at that spot. The name is supposed to have been conferred on the shops in that situation as being close shops, to distinguish them from the open booths which then lined our great street on both sides; lucken signifying closed. This would seem to imply a certain superiority in the ancient merchants of the Luckenbooths; and it is somewhat remarkable that amidst all the changes of the Old Town there is still in this limited locality an unusual proportion of mercers and clothiers of old standing and reputed substantiality.

Tolbooth and Luckenbooths—looking East.

Previous to 1811, there remained unchanged in this place two tall massive houses, about two centuries old, one of which contained the town mansion of Sir John Byres of Coates, a gentleman of figure in Edinburgh in the reign of James VI., and whose faded tombstone may yet be deciphered in the west wall of the Greyfriars Churchyard. The Byreses of the Coates died out towards the end of the last century, and their estate has since become a site for streets, as our city spread westwards.{96} The name alone survives in connection with an alley beneath their town mansion—Byres’s Close.

LORD COALSTOUN AND HIS WIG.

The fourth floor, constituting the Byres mansion, after being occupied by such persons as Lord Coupar, Lord Lindores, and Sir James Johnston of Westerhall, fell into the possession of Mr Brown of Coalstoun, a judge under the designation of Lord Coalstoun, and the father of the late Countess of Dalhousie. His lordship lived here in 1757, but then removed to a more spacious mansion on the Castle-hill.

A strange accident one morning befell Lord Coalstoun while residing in this house. It was at that time the custom for advocates, and no less for judges, to dress themselves in gown, wig, and cravat at their own houses, and to walk in a sort of state, thus rigged out, with their cocked hats in their hands, to the Parliament House.[65] They usually breakfasted early, and when dressed would occasionally lean over their parlour windows, for a few minutes before St Giles’s bell sounded the starting peal of a quarter to nine, enjoying the morning air, such as it was, and perhaps discussing the news of the day, or the convivialities of the preceding evening, with a neighbouring advocate on the opposite side of the alley. It so happened that one morning, while Lord Coalstoun was preparing to enjoy his matutinal treat, two girls, who lived in the second floor above, were amusing themselves with a kitten, which, in thoughtless sport, they had swung over the window by a cord tied round its middle, and hoisted for some time up and down, till the creature was getting rather desperate with its exertions. In this crisis his lordship popped his head out of the window directly below that from which the kitten swung, little suspecting, good easy man, what a danger impended, like the sword of Damocles, over his head, hung, too, by a single—not hair, ’tis true, but scarcely more responsible material—garter, when down came the exasperated animal at full career directly upon his senatorial wig. No sooner did the girls perceive what sort of a landing-place their kitten had found than, in terror and surprise, they began to draw it up; but this{97} measure was now too late, for along with the animal up also came the judge’s wig, fixed full in its determined talons. His lordship’s surprise on finding his wig lifted off his head was much increased when, on looking up, he perceived it dangling its way upwards, without any means visible to him by which its motions might be accounted for. The astonishment, the dread, the almost awe of the senator below—the half mirth, half terror of the girls above—together with the fierce and relentless energy of retention on the part of Puss between—altogether formed a scene to which language could not easily do justice. It was a joke soon explained and pardoned; but assuredly the perpetrators of it did afterwards get many lengthened injunctions from their parents never again to fish over the window, with such a bait, for honest men’s wigs.

COMMENDATOR BOTHWELL’S HOUSE.

The eastern of the tenements, which has only been renovated by a new front, formerly was the lodging of Adam Bothwell, Commendator of Holyrood, who is remarkable for having performed the Protestant marriage ceremony for Mary and the Earl of Bothwell. This ecclesiastic, who belonged to an old Edinburgh family of note, and was the uncle of the inventor of logarithms,[66] is celebrated in his epitaph in Holyrood Chapel as a judge, and the son and father of judges. His son was raised to the peerage in 1607, under the title of Lord Holyroodhouse, the lands of that abbacy, with some others, being erected into a temporal lordship in his favour. The title, however, sunk in the second generation. The circumstance which now gives most interest to the family is one which they themselves would probably have regarded as its greatest disgrace. Among the old Scottish songs is one which breaks upon the ear with the wail of wronged womanhood, mingled with the breathings of its indestructible affections:

‘Baloo, my boy, lie still and sleep,

It grieves me sair to see thee weep.

If thou’lt be silent, I’ll be glad;

Thy mourning makes my heart full sad....

Baloo, my boy, weep not for me,

Whose greatest grief’s for wranging thee,

Nor pity her deserved smart,

Who can blame none but her fond heart.

{98}

Baloo, my boy, thy father’s fled,

When he the thriftless son hath played;

Of vows and oaths forgetful, he

Preferred the wars to thee and me:

But now perhaps thy curse and mine

Makes him eat acorns with the swine.

Nay, curse not him; perhaps now he,

Stung with remorse, is blessing thee;

Perhaps at death, for who can tell

But the great Judge of heaven and hell

By some proud foe has struck the blow,

And laid the dear deceiver low,’ &c.

Great doubt has long rested on the history of this piteous ditty; but it is now ascertained to have been a contemporary effusion on the sad love-tale of Anne Bothwell, a sister of the first Lord Holyroodhouse. The only error in the setting down of the song was in calling it Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament, as the heroine had no pretension to a term implying noble rank. Her lover was a youth of uncommon elegance of person, the Honourable Alexander Erskine, brother of the Earl of Mar, of the first Earl of Buchan, and of Lord Cardross. A portrait of him, which belonged to his mother (the countess mentioned a few pages back), and which is now in the possession of James Erskine, Esq. of Cambo, Lady Mar’s descendant, represents him as strikingly handsome, with much vivacity of countenance, dark-blue eyes, a peaked beard, and moustaches. The lovers were cousins. The song is an evidence of the public interest excited by the affair: a fragment of it found its way into an English play of the day, Broom’s comedy of The Northern Lass (1632). This is somewhat different from any of the stanzas in the common versions of the ballad:

‘Peace, wayward bairn. Oh cease thy moan!

Thy far more wayward daddy’s gone,

And never will recallèd be,

By cries of either thee or me;

For should we cry,

Until we die,

We could not scant his cruelty.

Baloo, baloo, &c.

He needs might in himself foresee

What thou successively mightst be;

And could he then (though me forego)

His infant leave, ere he did know

How like the dad

Would prove the lad,

In time to make fond maidens glad.

Baloo, baloo,’ &c.

{99}

The fate of the deceiver proved a remarkable echo of some of the verses of the ballad. Having carried his military experience and the influence of his rank into the party of the Covenanters, he was stationed (1640) with his brother-in-law, the Earl of Haddington, at Dunglass Castle, on the way to Berwick, actively engaged in bringing up levies for the army, then newly advanced across the Tweed; when, by the revenge of an offended page, who applied a hot poker to the powder magazine, the place was blown up. Erskine, with his brother-in-law and many other persons, perished. A branch of the Mar family retained, till no remote time, the awe-mingled feeling which had been produced by this event, which they had been led to regard as a punishment inflicted for the wrongs of Anne Bothwell.

Byres’s Close, Back of Commendator Bothwell’s House.

At the back of the Commendator’s house there is a projection,[67] on the top of which is a bartisan or flat roof, faced with three lettered stones. There is a tradition that Oliver Cromwell lived in this house,[68] and used to come out and sit here to view his navy on the Forth, of which, together with the whole coast, it{100} commands a view. As this commander is said to have had his guard-house in the neighbouring alley called Dunbar’s Close, there is some reason to give credit to the story, though it is in no shape authenticated by historical record. The same house was, for certain, the residence of Sir William Dick, the hapless son of Crœsus spoken of in a preceding article.

These houses preserved, until their recent renovation, all the characteristics of that ancient mode of architecture which has procured for the edifices constructed upon it the dignified appellative of Mahogany Lands. Below were the booths or piazzas, once prevalent throughout the whole town, in which the merchants of the laigh shops, or cellars, were permitted to exhibit their goods to the passengers. The merchant himself took his seat at the head of the stair to attend to the wants of passing customers. By the ancient laws of the burgh, it was required that each should be provided with ‘lang wappinis, sick as a spear or a Jeddart staff,’ with which he was to sally forth and assist the magistrates in time of need; for example, when a tulzie took place between the retainers of rival noblemen meeting in the street.

Picture of two pigs at bottom of staircase.

This house could also boast of that distinguished feature in all ancient wooden structures, a fore-stair, an antiquated convenience, or inconvenience, now almost extinct, consisting of a flight of steps, ascending from the pavement to the first floor of the mansion, and protruding a considerable way into the street. Nuisances as they still are, they were once infinitely worse. What will my readers think when they are informed that under these projections our ancestors kept their swine? Yes; outside stairs was formerly but a term of outward respect for what were as frequently denominated swine’s cruives; and the rude inhabitants of these narrow mansions were permitted, through the day, to stroll about the ‘High Gait,’ seeking what they might devour among the heaps of filth which then encumbered the street,[69] as barn-door fowls are at the present{101} day suffered to go abroad in country towns; and, like them (or like the town-geese of Musselburgh, which to this day are privileged to feed upon the race-ground), the sullen porkers were regularly called home in the evening by their respective proprietors.

These circumstances will be held as sufficient evidence, notwithstanding all the enactments for the ‘policy of bigginis’ and ‘decoring the tounes,’ that the stranger’s constant reproach of the Scots for want of cleanliness was not unmerited. Yet, to show that our countrymen did not lack a taste for decent appearances, let it be recollected that on every occasion of a public procession, entry of a sovereign, or other ceremonial, these fore-stairs were hung with carpets, tapestry, or arras, and were the principal places for the display of rank and fashion; while the windows, like the galleries of a theatre compared with the boxes, were chiefly occupied by spectators of a lower degree.[70] The strictest proclamations were always issued, before any such occasion, ordaining the ‘middinis’ and the ‘swine’ to be removed, and the stairs to be decorated in the manner mentioned.

Beneath the stair of the house now under review there abode in later times an old man named Bryce, in whose life and circumstances there was something characteristic of a pent-up city like{102} Edinburgh, where every foot of space was valuable. A stock of small hardwares and trinkets was piled up around him, leaving scarcely sufficient room for the accommodation of his own person, which completely filled the vacant space, as a hermit-crab fills its shell. There was not room for the admission of a customer; but he had a half-door, over which he sold any article that was demanded; and there he sat from morning till night, with his face turned to this door, looking up the eternal Lawnmarket. The place was so confined that he could not stand upright in it; nor could he stretch out his legs. Even while he sat, there was an uneasy obliquity of the stair, which compelled him to shrink a little aside; and by accustoming himself to this posture for a long series of years, he had insensibly acquired a twist in his shoulders, nearly approaching to a humpback, and his head swung a little to one side. This was l’air boutiquier in a most distressing sense.

In the description of this old tenement given in the title-deeds, it is called ‘All and haill that Lodging or Timber Land lying in the burgh of Edinburgh, on the north side of the High Street thereof, forgainst the place of the Tolbooth, commonly called the Poor Folks’ Purses.’ The latter place was a part of the northern wall of the prison, deriving its name from a curious circumstance. It was formerly the custom for the privileged beggars, called Blue-gowns, to assemble in the palace yard, where a small donation from the king, consisting of as many pennies as he was years old, was conferred on each of them; after which they moved in procession up the High Street, till they came to this spot, where the magistrates gave each a leathern purse and a small sum of money; the ceremony concluding by their proceeding to the High Church to hear a sermon from one of the king’s chaplains.[71]

THE KRAMES.

The central row of buildings—the Luckenbooths proper—was not wholly taken away till 1817. The narrow passage left between it and the church will ever be memorable to all who knew Edinburgh in those days, on account of the strange scene{103} of traffic which it presented—each recess, angle, and coign of vantage in the wall of the church being occupied by little shops, of the nature of Bryce’s, devoted to the sale of gloves, toys, lollipops, &c. These were the Krames, so famous at Edinburgh firesides. Singular places of business they assuredly were; often not presenting more space than a good church-pew, yet supporting by their commerce respectable citizenly families, from which would occasionally come men of some consequence in society. At the same spot the constable (Earl of Errol) was wont to sit upon a chair at the ridings of the parliament, when ceremonially receiving the members as they alighted.

I am told that one such place, not more than seven feet by three, had been occupied by a glover named Kennedy, who with his gentle dame stood there retailing their wares for a time sufficient to witness the rise and fall of dynasties, never enjoying all that time the comfort of a fire, even in the coldest weather! This was a specimen of the life led by these patient creatures; many of whom, upon the demolition of their lath and plaster tenements, retired from business with little competencies. Their rents were from £3 to £6 per annum; and it appears that, huddled as the town then was around them, they had no inconsiderable custom. At the end of the row, under the angle of the church, was a brief stair, called The Lady’s Steps, thought to be a corruption of Our Lady’s Steps, with reference to a statue of the Virgin, the niche for which was seen in the east wall of the church till the renovation of the building in 1830. Sir George Mackenzie, however, in his Observations on the Statutes, states that the Lady’s Steps were so called from the infamous Lady March (wife of the Earl of Arran, James VI.’s profligate chancellor), from whom also the nine o’clock evening-bell, being ordered by her to an hour later, came to be called The Lady’s Bell. When men made bargains at the Cross, it was customary for them to go up to the Lady’s Steps, and there consummate the negotiation by wetting thumbs or paying arles.

CREECH’S SHOP.

The building at the east end of the Luckenbooths proper had a front facing down the High Street, and commanding not only a view of the busy scene there presented, but a prospect of Aberlady Bay, Gosford House, and other objects in Haddingtonshire. The shop in the east front was that of Mr Creech, a{104} bookseller of facete memory, who had published many books by the principal literary men of his day, to all of whom he was known as a friend and equal. From this place had issued works by Kames, Smith, Hume, Mackenzie, and finally the poems of Burns. It might have been called the Lounger’s Observatory, for seldom was the doorway free of some group of idlers, engaged in surveying and commenting on the crowd in front; Creech himself, with his black silk breeches and powdered head, being ever a conspicuous member of the corps. The flat above had been the shop of Allan Ramsay, and the place where, in 1725, he set up the first example of a circulating library known in Scotland.

ST GILES, WEST WINDOW.

Page 105.

{119}

THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE.

Old Arrangements of the House—Justice in Bygone Times—Court of Session Garland—Parliament House Worthies.

The Parliament House, a spacious hall with an oaken arched roof, finished in 1639 for the meetings of the Estates or native parliament, and used for that purpose till the Union, has since then, as is well known, served exclusively as a material portion of the suite of buildings required for the supreme civil judicatory—the Court of Session. This hall, usually styled the Outer House, is now a nearly empty space, but it was in a very different state within the recollection of aged practitioners. So lately as 1779, it retained the divisions, furnishings, and other features which it had borne in the days when we had a national legislature—excepting only that the portraits of sovereigns which then adorned the walls had been removed by the Earl of Mar, to whom Queen Anne had given them as a present when the Union was accomplished.

The divisions and furniture, it may be remarked, were understood to be precisely those which had been used for the Court of Session from an early time; but it appears that such changes were made when the parliament was to sit as left the room one free vacant space. The southern portion, separated from the rest by a screen, accommodated the Court of Session. The northern portion, comprising a sub-section used for the Sheriff-court, was chiefly a kind of lobby of irregular form, surrounded by little booths, which were occupied as taverns, booksellers’ shops, and toy-shops, all of very flimsy materials.[90] These krames, or boxes, seem to have been established at an early period, the idea being no doubt taken from the former condition of Westminster Hall. John Spottiswoode of Spottiswoode, who, in 1718, published the Forms of Process before the Court of Session, mentions that there were ‘two keepers of the session-house, who had small salaries to do all the menial offices in the house, and that no small part of their annual perquisites came from the kramers in the outer hall.’

{120}

JUSTICE IN BYGONE TIMES.

The memories which have been preserved of the administration of justice by the Court of Session in its earlier days are not such as to increase our love for past times.[91] This court is described by Buchanan as extremely arbitrary, and by a nearly contemporary historian (Johnston) as infamous for its dishonesty. An advocate or barrister is spoken of by the latter writer as taking money from his clients, and dividing it among the judges for their votes. At this time we find the chancellor (Lord Fyvie) superintending the lawsuits of a friend, and writing to him the way and manner in which he proposed they should be conducted. But the strongest evidence of the corruption of ‘the lords’ is afforded by an act of 1579, prohibiting them ‘be thame selffis or be their wiffis or servandes, to tak in ony time cuming, buddis, bribes, gudes, or geir, fra quhatever persone or persons presentlie havand, or that heirefter sall happyne to have, any actionis or caussis pursewit befoir thame, aither fra the persewer or defender,’ under pain of confiscation. Had not bribery been common amongst the judges, such an act as this could never have been passed.

In the curious history of the family of Somerville there is a very remarkable anecdote illustrative of the course of justice at that period. Lord Somerville and his kinsman, Somerville of Cambusnethan, had long carried on a litigation. The former was at length advised to use certain means for the advancement of his cause with the Regent Morton, it being then customary for the sovereign to preside in the court. Accordingly, having one evening caused his agents to prepare all the required papers, he went next morning to the palace, and being admitted to the regent, informed him of the cause, and entreated him to order it to be called that forenoon. He then took out his purse, as if to give a few pieces to the pages or servants, and slipping it down upon the table, hurriedly left the presence-chamber. The earl cried several times after him: ‘My lord, you have left your purse;’ but he had no wish to stop. At length, when he was at the outer porch, a servant overtook him with a request that he would go back to breakfast with the regent. He did so, was kindly treated, and soon after was taken by Morton in his coach to the court-room in the city. ‘Cambusnethan, by accident, as the coach{121} passed, was standing at Niddry’s Wynd head, and having inquired who was in it with the regent, he was answered: “None but Lord Somerville and Lord Boyd;” upon which he struck his breast, and said: “This day my cause is lost!” and indeed it proved so.’ By twelve o’clock that day, Lord Somerville had gained a cause which had been hanging in suspense for years.

In those days both civil and criminal procedure was conducted in much the same spirit as a suit at war. When a great noble was to be tried for some monstrous murder or treason, he appeared at the bar with as many of his retainers, and as many of his friends and their retainers, as he could muster, and justice only had its course if the government chanced to be the strongest, which often was not the case. It was considered dishonourable not to countenance a friend in troubles of this kind, however black might be his moral guilt. The trial of Bothwell for the assassination of Darnley is a noted example of a criminal outbraving his judges and jury. Relationship, friendly connection, solicitation of friends, and direct bribes were admitted and recognised influences to which the civil judge was expected to give way. If a difficulty were found in inducing a judge to vote against his conscience, he might at least perhaps be induced by some of those considerations to absent himself, so as to allow the case to go in the desired way. The story of the abduction of Gibson of Durie by Christie’s Will, and his immurement in a Border tower for some weeks, that his voice might be absent in the decision of a case—as given in the Border Minstrelsy by Scott—is only incorrect in some particulars. (As the real case is reported in Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, it appears that, in September 1601, Gibson was carried off from the neighbourhood of St Andrews by George Meldrum, younger of Dumbreck, and hastily transported to the castle of Harbottle in Northumberland, and kept there for eight days.) But, after all, Scotland was not singular among European nations in these respects. In Molière’s Misanthrope, produced in 1666, we find the good-natured Philinte coolly remonstrating with Alceste on his unreasonable resolution to let his lawsuit depend only on right and equity.

‘Qui voulez-vous donc, qui pour vous sollicite?’ says Philinte. ‘Aucun juge par vous ne sera visité?’

‘Je ne remuerai point,’ returns the misanthrope.

Philinte. Votre partie est forte, et peut par sa cabale entrainer....

Alceste. Il n’importe....

Philinte. Quel homme!... On se riroit de vous, Alceste, si on{122} vous entendoit parler de la façon. (People would laugh at you if they heard you talk in this manner.)

It is a general tradition in Scotland that the English judges whom Cromwell sent down to administer the law in Scotland, for the first time made the people acquainted with impartiality of judgment. It is added that, after the Restoration, when native lords were again put upon the bench, some one, in presence of the President Gilmour, lauding the late English judges for the equity of their proceedings, his lordship angrily remarked: ‘De’il thank them; a wheen kinless loons!’ That is, no thanks to them; a set of fellows without relations in the country, and who, consequently, had no one to please by their decisions.

After the Restoration there was no longer direct bribing, but other abuses still flourished. The judges were tampered with by private solicitation. Decisions went in favour of the man of most personal or family influence. The following anecdote of the reign of Charles II. rests on excellent authority: ‘A Scotch gentleman having entreated the Earl of Rochester to speak to the Duke of Lauderdale upon the account of a business that seemed to be supported by a clear and undoubted right, his lordship very obligingly promised to do his utmost endeavours to engage the duke to stand his friend in a concern so just and reasonable as his was; and accordingly, having conferred with his grace about the matter, the duke made him this very odd return, that though he questioned not the right of the gentleman he recommended to him, yet he could not promise him a helping hand, and far less success in business, if he knew not first the man, whom perhaps his lordship had some reason to conceal; “because,” said he to the earl, “if your lordship were as well acquainted with the customs of Scotland as I am, you had undoubtedly known this among others—Show me the man, and I’ll show you the law;” giving him to understand that the law in Scotland could protect no man if either his purse were empty or his adversaries great men, or supported by great ones.’[92]

One peculiar means of favouring a particular party was then in the power of the presiding judge: he could call a cause when he pleased. Thus he would watch till one or more judges who took the opposite view to his own were out of the way—either in attendance on other duties or from illness—and then calling the cause, would decide it according to his predilection. Even{123} the first President Dalrymple, afterwards Viscount Stair, one of the most eminent men whom the Scottish law-courts have ever produced, condescended to favour a party in this way. An act enjoining the calling of causes according to their place in a regular roll was passed in the reign of Charles II.; but the practice was not enforced till the days of President Forbes, sixty years later. We have a remarkable illustration of the partiality of the bench in a circumstance which took place about the time of the Revolution. During the pleadings in a case between Mr Pitilloch, an advocate, and Mr Aytoun of Inchdairnie, the former applied the term briber to Lord Harcarse, a judge seated at the moment on the bench, and who was father-in-law to the opposite party. The man was imprisoned for contempt; but this is not the point. Not long after, in this same cause, Lord Harcarse went down to the bar in his gown, and pleaded for his son-in-law Aytoun!

About that period a curious indirect means of influencing the judges began to be notorious. Each lord had a dependant or favourite, generally some young relative, practising in the court, through whom it was understood that he could be prepossessed with a favourable view of any cause. This functionary was called a Peat or Pate, from a circumstance thus related in Wilkes’s North Briton: ‘One of the former judges of the Court of Session, of the first character, knowledge, and application to business, had a son at the bar whose name was Patrick; and when the suitors came about, soliciting his favour, his question was: “Have you consulted Pat?” If the answer was affirmative, the usual reply of his lordship was: “I’ll inquire of Pat about it; I’ll take care of your cause; go home and mind your business.” The judge in that case was even as good as his word, for while his brother-judges were robing, he would tell them what pains his son had taken, and what trouble he had put himself to, by his directions, in order to find out the real circumstances of the dispute; and as no one on the bench would be so unmannerly as to question the veracity of the son or the judgment of the father, the decree always went according to the information of Pat. At the present era, in case a judge has no son at the bar, his nearest relation (and he is sure to have one there) officiates in that station. But, as it frequently happens, if there are Pats employed on each side, the judges differ, and the greatest interest—that is, the longest purse—is sure to carry it.’

I bring the subject to a conclusion by a quotation from the{124} Court of Session Garland: ‘Even so far down as 1737 traces of the ancient evil may be found. Thus, in some very curious letters which passed between William Foulis, Esq. of Woodhall, and his agent, Thomas Gibson of Durie, there is evidence that private influence could even then be resorted to. The agent writes to his client, in reference to a pending lawsuit (23rd November 1735): “I have spoken to Strachan and several of the lords, who are all surprised Sir F[rancis Kinloch] should stand that plea. By Lord St Clair’s advice, Mrs Kinloch is to wait on Lady Cairnie to-morrow, to cause her ask the favour of Lady St Clair to solicit Lady Betty Elphingston and Lady Dun. My lord promises to back his lady, and to ply both their lords, also Leven and his cousin Murkle.[93] He is your good friend, and wishes success; he is jealous Mrs Mackie will side with her cousin Beatie. St Clair says Leven [94] has only once gone wrong upon his hand since he was a Lord of Session. Mrs Kinloch has been with Miss Pringle, Newhall. Young Dr Pringle is a good agent there, and discourses Lord Newhall [95] strongly on the law of nature,” &c.

‘Again, upon the 23rd of January 1737, he writes: “I can assure you that when Lord Primrose left this town, he stayed all that day with Lord J[ustice] C[lerk],[96] and went to Andrew Broomfield at night, and went off post next morning; and what made him despair of getting anything done was, that it has been so long delayed, after promising so frankly, when he knew the one could cause the other trot to him like a penny-dog when he pleased. But there’s another hindrance: I suspect much Penty [97] has not been in town as yet, and I fancy it’s by him the other must be managed. The Ld. J[ustice] C[lerk] is frank enough, but the other two are —— clippies. I met with Bavelaw and Mr William on Tuesday last. I could not persuade the last to go to a wine-house, so away we went to an aquavity-house, where I told Mr Wm. what had passed, as I had done before that to Bavelaw. They seemed to agree nothing could be done just now, but to know{125} why Lord Drummore [98] dissuaded bringing in the plea last winter. I have desired Lord Haining to speak, but only expect his answer against Tuesday or Wednesday.”

‘It is not our intention to pursue these remarks further, although we believe that judicial corruption continued long after the Union. We might adduce Lord President Forbes as a witness on this point, who, one of the most upright lawyers himself, did not take any pains to conceal his contempt for many of his brethren. A favourite toast of his is said to have been: “Here’s to such of the judges as don’t deserve the gallows.” Latterly, the complaint against the judges was not so much for corrupt dealing, with the view of enriching themselves or their “pet” lawyer, but for weak prejudices and feelings, which but ill accorded with the high office they filled.

‘These abuses, the recapitulation of which may amuse and instruct, are now only matter of history—the spots that once sullied the garments of justice are effaced, and the old compend, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the law,” is out of date.’

COURT OF SESSION GARLAND.

A curious characteristic view of the Scottish bench about the year 1771 is presented in a doggerel ballad, supposed to have been a joint composition of James Boswell and John Maclaurin,[99] advocates, and professedly the history of a process regarding a bill containing a clause of penalty in case of failure. This Court of Session Garland, as it is called, is here subjoined, with such notes on persons and things as the reader may be supposed to require or care for.

PART FIRST.

The bill charged on was payable at sight,

And decree was craved by Alexander Wight;[100]

But because it bore a penalty in case of failzie,

It therefore was null, contended Willie Baillie.[101]

The Ordinary, not choosing to judge it at random,

Did with the minutes make avisandum;

And as the pleadings were vague and windy,

His lordship ordered memorials hinc inde.

{126}

We, setting a stout heart to a stay brae,

Took into the cause Mr David Rae.[102]

Lord Auchinleck,[103] however, repelled our defence,

And, over and above, decerned for expense.

However, of our cause not being ashamed,

Unto the whole lords we straightway reclaimed;

And our Petition was appointed to be seen,

Because it was drawn by Robbie Macqueen.[104]

The Answer by Lockhart [105] himself it was wrote,

And in it no argument nor fact was forgot.

He is the lawyer that from no cause will flinch,

And on this occasion divided the bench.

Alemore [106] the judgment as illegal blames;

‘’Tis equity, you bitch,’ replies my Lord Kames.[107]

‘This cause,’ cries Hailes,[108] ‘to judge I can’t pretend,

For justice, I perceive, wants an e at the end.’

Lord Coalstoun [109] expressed his doubts and his fears;

And Strichen [110] threw in his weel-weels and oh dears.

‘This cause much resembles the case of Mac-Harg,

And should go the same way,’ says Lordie Barjarg.[111]

‘Let me tell you, my lords, this cause is no joke!’

{127}

Says, with a horse-laugh, my Lord Elliock.[112]

‘To have read all the papers I pretend not to brag!’

Says my Lord Gardenstone [113] with a snuff and a wag.

Up rose the President,[114] and an angry man was he—

‘To alter the judgment I can never agree!’

The east wing cried ‘Yes,’ and the west wing cried ‘Not;’

And it was carried ‘Adhere’[115] by my lord’s casting vote.

The cause being somewhat knotty and perplext,

Their lordships did not know how they’d determine next;

And as the session was to rise so soon,

They superseded extract till the 12th of June.[116]

PART SECOND.

Having lost it so nigh, we prepare for the summer,

And on the 12th of June presented a reclaimer;

But dreading a refuse, we gave Dundas [117] a fee,

And though it run nigh, it was carried ‘To See.’[118]

In order to bring aid from usage bygone,

The Answers were drawn by quondam Mess John.[119]

He united with such art our law with the civil,

That the counsel on both sides wished him to the devil.

The cause being called, my Lord Justice-clerk,[120]

With all due respect, began a loud bark:

{128}

He appealed to his conscience, his heart, and from thence

Concluded—‘To Alter,’ but to give no expense.

Lord Stonefield,[121] unwilling his judgment to pother,

Or to be anticipate, agreed with his brother:

But Monboddo [122] was clear the bill to enforce

Because, he observed, it was the price of a horse.

Says Pitfour,[123] with a wink, and his hat all a-jee,

‘I remember a case in the year twenty-three—

The Magistrates of Banff contra Robert Carr;

I remember weel—I was then at the bar.

Likewise, my lords, in the case of Peter Caw,

Superflua non nocent was found to be law.’

Lord Kennet [124] also quoted the case of one Lithgow,

Where a penalty in a bill was held pro non scripto.

The Lord President brought his chair to the plumb,

Laid hold of the bench, and brought forward his bum;

‘In these Answers, my lords, some freedoms are used,

Which I could point out, provided I choosed.

I was for the interlocutor, my lords, I admit,

But am open to conviction as long’s I here do sit.

To oppose your precedents, I quote a few cases;’

And Tait [125] à priori, hurried up the causes.

He proved it as clear as the sun in the sky,

That their maxims of law could not here apply;

That the writing in question was neither bill nor band,

But something unknown in the law of the land.

The question—‘Adhere,’ or ‘Alter,’ being put,

It was carried—‘To Alter,’ by a casting vote;

Baillie then moved—‘In the bill there’s a raze;’

But by this time their lordships had called a new cause.

A few additions to the notes, in a more liberal space, will complete what I have to set down regarding the lawyers of the last age.

THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE.

Page 128.

{129}

LOCKHART OF COVINGTON.[126]

Lockhart used to be spoken of by all old men about the Court of Session as a paragon. He had been at the bar from 1722, and had attained the highest eminence long before going upon the bench, which he did at an unusually late period of life; yet so different were those times from the present that, according to the report of Sir William Macleod Bannatyne to myself in 1833, Lockhart realised only about a thousand a year by his exertions, then thought a magnificent income. The first man at the Scottish bar in our day is believed to gain at least six times this sum annually. Lockhart had an isolated house behind the Parliament Close, which was afterwards used as the Post-office.[127] It was removed some years ago to make way for the extension of the buildings connected with the court; leaving only its coach-house surviving, now occupied as a broker’s shop in the Cowgate.

Mr Lockhart and Mr Fergusson (afterwards Lord Pitfour) were rival barristers—agreeing, however, in their politics, which were of a Jacobite complexion. While the trials of the poor forty-five men were going on at Carlisle, these Scottish lawyers heard with indignation of the unscrupulous measures adopted to procure convictions. They immediately set off for Carlisle, arranging with each other that Lockhart should examine evidence, while Fergusson pleaded and addressed the jury; and offering their services, they were gladly accepted as counsel by the unfortunates whose trials were yet to take place. Each exerted his abilities, in his respective duties, with the greatest solicitude, but with very little effect. The jurors of Carlisle had been so frightened by the Highland army that they thought everything in the shape or hue of tartan a damning proof of guilt; and, in truth, there seemed to be no discrimination whatever exerted in inquiring into the merits of any{130} particular criminal; and it might have been just as fair, and much more convenient, to try them by wholesale or in companies. At length one of our barristers fell upon an ingenious expedient, which had a better effect than all the eloquence he had expended. He directed his man-servant to dress himself in some tartan habiliments, to skulk about for a short time in the neighbourhood of the town, and then permit himself to be taken. The man did so, and was soon brought into court, and accused of the crime of high treason, and would have been condemned to death had not his master stood up, claimed him as his servant, and proved beyond dispute that the supposed criminal had been in immediate attendance upon his person during the whole time of the Rebellion. This staggered the jury, and, with the aid of a little amplification from the mouth of the young advocate, served to make them more cautious afterwards in the delivery of their important fiat.

To show the estimation in which Lockhart of Covington was held as an advocate, the late Lord Newton, when at the bar, wore his gown till it was in tatters, and at last had a new one made, with a fragment of the neck of the original sewed into it, whereby he could still make it his boast that he wore ‘Covington’s gown.’

LORD KAMES.

This able judge and philosopher in advance of his time—for such he was—is described by his biographer, Lord Woodhouselee, as indulging in a certain humorous playfulness, which, to those who knew him intimately, detracted nothing from the feeling of respect due to his eminent talents and virtues. To strangers, his lordship admits, it might convey ‘the idea of lightness.’ The simple fact here shadowed forth is that Lord Kames had a roughly playful manner, and used phrases of an ultra-eccentric character. Among these was a word only legitimately applicable to the female of the canine species. The writer of the Garland introduces this characteristic phrase. When his lordship found his end approaching very near, he took a public farewell of his brethren. I was informed by an ear-and-eye witness, who is certain that he could not be mistaken, that, after addressing them in a solemn speech and shaking their hands all round, in going out at the door of the court-room he turned about, and casting them a last look, cried in his usual familiar tone: ‘Fare ye a’ weel, ye bitches!’ He died eight days after.

It was remarked that a person called Sinkum the Cawdy, who{131} had a short and a long leg and was excessively addicted to swearing, used to lie in wait for Lord Kames almost every morning, and walk alongside of him up the street to the Parliament House. The mystery of Sterne’s little, flattering Frenchman, who begged so successfully from the ladies, was scarcely more wonderful than this intimacy, which arose entirely from Lord Kames’s love of the gossip which Sinkum made it his business to cater for him.

These are not follies of the wise. They are only the tribute which great genius pays to simple nature. The serenity which marked the close of the existence of Kames was most creditable to him, though it appeared, perhaps, in somewhat whimsical forms to his immediate friends. For three or four days before his death, he was in a state of great debility. Some one coming in, and finding him, notwithstanding his weakness, engaged in dictating to an amanuensis, expressed surprise. ‘How, man,’ said the declining philosopher, ‘would you ha’e me stay wi’ my tongue in my cheek till death comes to fetch me?’

LORD HAILES.

When Lord Hailes died, it was a long time before any will could be found. The heir-male was about to take possession of his estates, to the exclusion of his eldest daughter. Some months after his lordship’s death, when it was thought that all further search was vain, Miss Dalrymple prepared to retire from New Hailes, and also from the mansion-house in New Street, having lost all hope of a will being discovered in her favour. Some of her domestics, however, were sent to lock up the house in New Street, and in closing the window-shutters, Lord Hailes’s will dropped out upon the floor from behind a panel, and was found to secure her in the possession of his estates, which she enjoyed for upwards of forty years.

The literary habits of Lord Hailes were hardly those which would have been expected from his extreme nicety of phrase. The late Miss Dalrymple once did me the honour to show me the place where he wrote the most of his works—not the fine room which contained, and still contains, his books—no secluded boudoir, or den, where he could shut out the world, but the parlour fireside, where sat his wife and children.

[1868.—Now that the grave has for thirty years closed over Miss Dalrymple, it may be allowable to tell that she was of dwarfish and deformed figure, while amiable and judicious above the average of{132} her sex. Taking into view her beautiful place of residence and her large wealth, she remarked to a friend one day: ‘I can say, for the honour of man, that I never got an offer in my life.’]

LORD GARDENSTONE.

This judge had a predilection for pigs. One, in its juvenile years, took a particular fancy for his lordship, and followed him wherever he went, like a dog, reposing in the same bed. When it attained the mature years and size of swinehood, this of course was inconvenient. However, his lordship, unwilling to part with his friend, continued to let it sleep at least in the same room, and, when he undressed, laid his clothes upon the floor as a bed to it. He said that he liked it, for it kept his clothes warm till the morning. In his mode of living he was full of strange, eccentric fancies, which he seemed to adopt chiefly with a view to his health, which was always that of a valetudinarian.[128]

LORD PRESIDENT DUNDAS.

This distinguished judge was, in his latter years, extremely subject to gout, and used to fall backwards and forwards in his chair—whence the ungracious expression in the Garland. He used to characterise his six clerks thus: ‘Two of them cannot read, two of them cannot write, and the other two can neither read nor write!’ The eccentric Sir James Colquhoun was one of those who could not read. In former times it was the practice of the Lord President to have a sand-glass before him on the bench, with which he used to measure out the utmost time that could be allowed to a judge for the delivery of his opinion. Lord President Dundas would never allow a single moment after the expiration of the sand, and he has often been seen to shake his old-fashioned chronometer ominously in the faces of his brethren when their ‘ideas upon the subject’ began, in the words of the Garland, to get vague and windy.

LORD MONBODDO.

Lord Monboddo’s motion for the enforcement of the bill, on account of its representing the value of a horse, is partly an allusion to his Gulliverlike admiration of that animal, but more particularly{133} to his having once embroiled himself in an action respecting a horse which belonged to himself. His lordship had committed the animal, when sick, to the charge of a farrier, with directions for the administration of a certain medicine. The farrier gave the medicine, but went beyond his commission, in as far as he mixed it in a liberal menstruum of treacle in order to make it palatable. The horse dying next morning, Lord Monboddo raised a prosecution for its value, and actually pleaded his own cause at the bar. He lost the case, however; and is said to have been so enraged in consequence at his brethren that he never afterwards sat with them upon the bench, but underneath amongst the clerks. The report of this action is exceedingly amusing, on account of the great quantity of Roman law quoted by the judges, and the strange circumstances under which the case appeared before them.

Lord Monboddo, with all his oddities, and though generally hated or despised by his brethren, was by far the most learned and not the least upright judge of his time. His attainments in classical learning and in the study of the ancient philosophers were singular in his time in Scotland, and might have qualified him to shine anywhere. He was the earliest patron of one of the best scholars of his age, the late Professor John Hunter of St Andrews, who was for many years his secretary, and who chiefly wrote the first and best volume of his lordship’s Treatise on the Origin of Languages.

The manners of Lord Monboddo were not more odd than his personal appearance. He looked rather like an old stuffed monkey dressed in a judge’s robes than anything else. His face, however, ‘sicklied o’er’ with the pale cast of thought, bore traces of high intellect. So convinced is he said to have been of the truth of his fantastic theory of human tails, that whenever a child happened to be born in his house, he would watch at the chamber-door in order to see it in its first state, having a notion that the midwives pinched off the infant tails.

There is a tradition that Lord Monboddo attended and witnessed the catastrophe of Captain Porteous in 1736. He had just that day returned from completing his law education at Leyden, and taken lodgings near the foot of the West Bow, where at that time many of the greatest lawyers resided. When the rioters came down the Bow with their hapless victim, Mr Burnet was roused from bed by the noise, came down in his night-gown with a candle in his hand, and stood in a sort of stupor, looking on, till the tragedy was concluded.

{134}

PARLIAMENT HOUSE WORTHIES.

Scott has sketched in Peter Peebles the type of a class of crazy and half-crazy litigants who at all times haunt the Parliament House. Usually they are rustic men possessing small properties, such as a house and garden, which they are constantly talking of as their ‘subject.’ Sometimes a faded shawl and bonnet is associated with the case—objects to be dreaded by every good-natured member of the bar. But most frequently it is simple countrymen who become pests of this kind. That is to say, simple men of difficult and captious tempers, cursed with an overstrong sense of right or an overstrong sense of wrong, under which they would, by many degrees, prefer utter ruin to making the slightest concession to a neighbour. Ruined these men often are; and yet it seems ruin well bought, since they have all along had the pleasure of seeing themselves and their little affairs the subject of consideration amongst men so much above themselves in rank.

Peebles was, as we are assured by the novelist himself, a real person, who frequented the Edinburgh courts of justice about the year 1792, and ‘whose voluminous course of litigation served as a sort of essay piece to most young men who were called to the bar.’[129] Many persons recollect him as a tall, thin, slouching man, of homely outworn attire, understood to be a native of Linlithgow. Having got into law about a small house, he became deranged by the cause going against him, and then peace was no more for him on earth. He used to tell his friends that he had at present thirteen causes in hand, but was only going to ‘move in’ seven of them this session. When anxious for a consultation on any of his affairs, he would set out from his native burgh at the time when other people were going to bed, and reaching Edinburgh at four in the morning, would go about the town ringing the bells of the principal advocates, in the vain hope of getting one to rise and listen to him, to the infinite annoyance of many a poor serving-girl, and no less of the Town-guard, into whose hands he generally fell.

Another specimen of the class was Campbell of Laguine, who had perhaps been longer at law than any man of modern times. He was a store-farmer in Caithness, and had immense tracts of land under lease. When he sold his wool, he put the price in his pocket (no petty sum), and came down to waste it in the{135} Court of Session. His custom—an amusing example of method in madness—was to pay every meal which he made at the inns on the road double, that he might have a gratis meal on his return, knowing he would not bring a cross away in his pocket from the courts of justice. Laguine’s figure was very extraordinary. His legs were like two circumflexes, both curving outward in the same direction; so that, relative to his body, they took the direction of the blade of a reaping-hook, supposing the trunk of his person to be the handle. These extraordinary legs were always attired in Highland trews, as his body was generally in a gray or tartan jacket, with a bonnet on his head; and duly appeared he at the door of the Parliament House, bearing a tin case, fully as big as himself, containing a plan of his farms. He paid his lawyers highly, but took up a great deal of their time. One gentleman, afterwards high in official situation, observed him coming up to ring his bell, and not wishing that he himself should throw away his time or Laguine his fee, directed that he should be denied. Laguine, however, made his way to the lady of the learned counsel, and sitting down in the drawing-room, went at great length into the merits of his cause, and exhibited his plans; and when he had expatiated for a couple of hours, he departed, but not without leaving a handsome fee, observing that he had as much satisfaction as if he had seen the learned counsel himself. He once told a legal friend of the writer that his laird and he were nearly agreed now—there was only about ten miles of country contested betwixt them! When finally this great cause was adjusted, his agent said: ‘Well, Laguine, what will ye do now?’ rashly judging that one who had, in a manner, lived upon law for a series of years would be at a loss how to dispose of himself now. ‘No difficulty there,’ answered Laguine; ‘I’ll dispute your account, and go to law with you!’ Possessed as he was by a demon of litigation, Campbell is said to have been, apart from his disputes, a shrewd and sensible, and, moreover, an honourable and worthy man. He was one of the first who introduced sheep-farming into Ross-shire and Caithness, where he had farms as large as some whole Lowland or English counties; and but for litigation, he had the opportunity of making much money.

A person usually called, from his trade, the Heckler was another Parliament House worthy. He used to work the whole night at his trade; then put on a black suit, curled his hair behind and powdered it, so as to resemble a clergyman, and{136} came forth to attend to the great business of the day at the Parliament House. He imagined that he was deputed by Divine Providence as a sort of controller of the Court of Session; but as if that had not been sufficient, he thought the charge of the General Assembly was also committed to him; and he used to complain that that venerable body was ‘much worse to keep in good order’ than the lawyers. He was a little, smart, well-brushed, neat-looking man, and used to talk to himself, smile, and nod with much vivacity. Part of his lunacy was to believe himself a clergyman; and it was chiefly the Teind Court which he haunted, his object there being to obtain an augmentation of his stipend. The appearance and conversation of the man were so plausible that he once succeeded in imposing himself upon Dr Blair as a preacher, and obtained permission to hold forth in the High Church on the ensuing Sunday. He was fortunately recognised when about to mount the pulpit. Some idle boys about the Parliament House, where he was a constant attendant, persuaded him that, as he held two such dignified offices as his imagination shaped out, there must be some salary attached to them, payable, like others upon the Establishment, in the Exchequer. This very nearly brought about a serious catastrophe; for the poor madman, finding his applications slighted at the Exchequer, came there one day with a pistol heavily loaded to shoot Mr Baird, a very worthy man, an officer of that court. This occasioned the Heckler being confined in durance vile for a long time; though, I think, he was at length emancipated.

Other insane fishers in the troubled waters of the law were the following:

Macduff of Ballenloan, who had two cases before the court at once. His success in the one depended upon his showing that he had capacity to manage his own affairs; and in the other, upon his proving himself incapable of doing so. He used to complain, with some apparent reason, that he lost them both!

Andrew Nicol, who was at law thirty years about a midden-stead—Anglicé, the situation of a dunghill. This person was a native of Kinross, a sensible-looking countryman, with a large, flat, blue bonnet, in which guise Kay has a very good portrait of him, displaying, with chuckling pride, a plan of his precious midden-stead. He used to frequent the Register House as well as the courts of law, and was encouraged in his foolish pursuits by the roguish clerks of that establishment, by whom he was{137} denominated Muck Andrew, in allusion to the object of his litigation. This wretched being, after losing property and credit and his own senses in following a valueless phantom, died at last (1817) in Cupar jail, where he was placed by one of his legal creditors.

{138}

CONVIVIALIA.

‘Auld Reekie! wale o’ ilka toon

That Scotland kens beneath the moon;

Where coothy chields at e’enin’ meet,

Their bizzin’ craigs and mous to weet,

And blithely gar auld care gae by,

Wi’ blinkin’ and wi’ bleerin’ eye.’

Robert Fergusson.

Tavern dissipation, now so rare amongst the respectable classes of the community, formerly prevailed in Edinburgh to an incredible extent, and engrossed the leisure hours of all professional men, scarcely excepting even the most stern and dignified. No rank, class, or profession, indeed, formed an exception to this rule. Nothing was so common in the morning as to meet men of high rank and official dignity reeling home from a close in the High Street, where they had spent the night in drinking. Nor was it unusual to find two or three of His Majesty’s most honourable Lords of Council and Session mounting the bench in the forenoon in a crapulous state. A gentleman one night stepping into Johnnie Dowie’s, opened a side-door, and looking into the room, saw a sort of agger or heap of snoring lads upon the floor, illumined by the gleams of an expiring candle. ‘Wha may thae be, Mr Dowie?’ inquired the visitor. ‘Oh,’ quoth John in his usual quiet way, ‘just twa-three o’ Sir Willie’s drucken clerks!’—meaning the young gentlemen employed in Sir William Forbes’s banking-house, whom of all earthly mortals one would have expected to be observers of the decencies.

Johnnie Dowie.

To this testimony may be added that of all published works descriptive of Edinburgh during the last century. Even in the preceding century, if we are to believe Taylor the Water-poet, there was no superabundance of sobriety in the town. ‘The worst thing,’ says that sly humorist in his Journey (1623),{139} ‘was, that wine and ale were so scarce, and the people such misers of it, that every night, before I went to bed, if any man had asked me a civil question, all the wit in my head could not have made him a sober answer.’

The diurnal of a Scottish judge [130] of the beginning of the last century, which I have perused, presents a striking picture of the habits of men of business in that age. Hardly a night passes without some expense being incurred at taverns, not always of very good fame, where his lordship’s associates on the bench were his boon-companions in the debauch. One is at a loss to understand how men who drugged their understandings so habitually could possess any share of vital faculty for the consideration or transaction of business, or how they contrived to make a decent appearance in the hours of duty. But, however difficult to be accounted for, there seems no room to doubt that deep drinking was compatible in many instances with good business talents, and even application. Many living men connected with the Court of Session can yet look back to a juvenile period of their lives when some of the ablest advocates and most esteemed judges were noted for their convivial habits. For example, a famous counsel named Hay, who became a judge under the designation of Lord Newton, was equally remarkable as a bacchanal and as a lawyer.[131] He considered himself as only the better fitted for business that he had previously imbibed six bottles of claret; and one of his clerks afterwards declared that the best paper he ever knew his lordship dictate was done after a debauch where that amount of liquor had fallen to his share. It was of him that the famous story is told of a client calling for him one day at four o’clock, and being surprised to find him at dinner; when, on the client saying to the servant that he had understood five to be Mr Hay’s dinner-hour—‘Oh, but, sir,’ said the man, ‘it is his yesterday’s dinner!’ M. Simond, who, in 1811, published a Tour in Scotland, mentions his surprise, on stepping one morning into the Parliament House, to find in the dignified capacity of a judge, and displaying all the gravity suitable to the character, the very gentleman with whom he had spent most of the preceding night in a fierce debauch. This judge was Lord Newton.

Contemporary with this learned lord was another of marvellous powers of drollery, of whom it is told, as a fact too notorious at the time to be concealed, that he was one Sunday morning, not long before church-time, found asleep among the paraphernalia{140} of the sweeps, in a shed appropriated to the keeping of these articles at the end of the Town Guard-house in the High Street. His lordship, in staggering homeward alone from a tavern during the night, had tumbled into this place, where consciousness did not revisit him till next day. Of another group of clever but over-convivial lawyers of that age, it is related that, having set to wine and cards on a Saturday evening, they were so cheated out of all sense of time that the night passed before they thought of separating. Unless they are greatly belied, the people passing along Picardy Place next forenoon, on their way to church, were perplexed by seeing a door open, and three gentlemen issue forth, in all the disorder to be expected after a night of drunken vigils, while a fourth, in his dressing-gown, held the door in one hand and a lighted candle in the other, by way of showing them out![132]

The High Jinks of Counsellor Pleydell, in Guy Mannering, must have prepared many for these curious traits of a bypast age; and Scott has further illustrated the subject by telling, in his notes to that novel, an anecdote, which he appears to have had upon excellent authority, respecting the elder President Dundas of Arniston, father of Lord Melville. ‘It had been thought very desirable, while that distinguished lawyer was king’s counsel, that his assistance should be obtained in drawing up an appeal case, which, as occasion for such writings then rarely occurred, was held to be a matter of great nicety. The solicitor employed for the appellant, attended by my informant, acting as his clerk, went to the Lord Advocate’s chambers in the Fishmarket Close, as I think. It was Saturday at noon, the court was just dismissed, the Lord Advocate had changed his dress and booted himself, and his servant and horses were at the foot of the close to carry him to Arniston. It was scarcely possible to get him to listen to a word respecting business. The wily agent, however, on pretence of asking one or two questions, which would not detain him half-an-hour, drew his lordship, who was no less an eminent bon-vivant than a lawyer of unequalled talent, to take a whet at a celebrated tavern, when the learned counsel became gradually involved in a spirited discussion of the law points of the case. At length it occurred to him that he might as well ride to Arniston in the cool of the evening. The horses were directed to be put into the stable, but not to be unsaddled. Dinner was ordered, the law was laid aside for a time, and the bottle circulated{141} very freely. At nine o’clock at night, after he had been honouring Bacchus for so many hours, the Lord Advocate ordered his horses to be unsaddled—paper, pen, and ink were brought—he began to dictate the appeal case, and continued at his task till four o’clock the next morning. By next day’s post the solicitor sent the case to London—a chef-d’œuvre of its kind; and in which, my informant assured me, it was not necessary, on revisal, to correct five words.’

It was not always that business and pleasure were so successfully united. It is related that an eminent lawyer, who was confined to his room by indisposition, having occasion for the attendance of his clerk at a late hour, in order to draw up a paper required on an emergency next morning, sent for and found him at his usual tavern. The man, though remarkable for the preservation of his faculties under severe application to the bottle, was on this night further gone than usual. He was able, however, to proceed to his master’s bedroom, and there take his seat at the desk with the appearance of a sufficiently collected mind, so that the learned counsel, imagining nothing more wrong than usual, began to dictate from his couch. This went on for two or three hours, till, the business being finished, the barrister drew his curtain—to behold Jamie lost in a profound sleep upon the table, with the paper still in virgin whiteness before him!

One of the most notable jolly fellows of the last age was James Balfour, an accountant, usually called Singing Jamie Balfour, on account of his fascinating qualities as a vocalist. There used to be a portrait of him in the Leith Golf-house, representing him in the act of commencing the favourite song of When I ha’e a saxpence under my thoom, with the suitable attitude and a merriness of countenance justifying the traditionary account of the man. Of Jacobite leanings, he is said to have sung The wee German lairdie, Awa, Whigs, awa, and The sow’s tail to Geordie with a degree of zest which there was no resisting.

Report speaks of this person as an amiable, upright, and able man; so clever in business matters that he could do as much in one hour as another man in three; always eager to quench and arrest litigation rather than to promote it; and consequently so much esteemed professionally that he could get business whenever he chose to undertake it, which, however, he only did when he felt himself in need of money. Nature had given him a robust constitution, which enabled him to see out three sets of{142} boon-companions, but, after all, gave way before he reached sixty. His custom, when anxious to repair the effects of intemperance, was to wash his head and hands in cold water; this, it is said, made him quite cool and collected almost immediately. Pleasure being so predominant an object in his life, it was thought surprising that at his death he was found in possession of some little money.

The powers of Balfour as a singer of the Scotch songs of all kinds, tender and humorous, are declared to have been marvellous; and he had a happy gift of suiting them to occasions. Being a great peacemaker, he would often accomplish his purpose by introducing some ditty pat to the purpose, and thus dissolving all rancour in a hearty laugh. Like too many of our countrymen, he had a contempt for foreign music. One evening, in a company where an Italian vocalist of eminence was present, he professed to give a song in the manner of that country. Forth came a ridiculous cantata to the tune of Aiken Drum, beginning: ‘There was a wife in Peebles,’ which the wag executed with all the proper graces, shakes, and appoggiaturas, making his friends almost expire with suppressed laughter at the contrast between the style of singing and the ideas conveyed in the song. At the conclusion, their mirth was doubled by the foreigner saying very simply: ‘De music be very fine, but I no understand de words.’ A lady, who lived in the Parliament Close, told a friend of mine that she was wakened from her sleep one summer morning by a noise as of singing, when, going to the window to learn what was the matter, guess her surprise at seeing Jamie Balfour and some of his boon-companions (evidently fresh from their wonted orgies), singing The king shall enjoy his own again, on their knees, around King Charles’s statue! One of Balfour’s favourite haunts was a humble kind of tavern called Jenny Ha’s, opposite to Queensberry House, where, it is said, Gay had boosed during his short stay in Edinburgh, and to which it was customary for gentlemen to adjourn from dinner-parties, in order to indulge in claret from the butt, free from the usual domestic restraints. Jamie’s potations here were principally of what was called cappie ale—that is, ale in little wooden bowls—with wee thochts of brandy in it. But, indeed, no one could be less exclusive than he as to liquors. When he heard a bottle drawn in any house he happened to be in, and observed the cork to give an unusually smart report, he would call out: ‘Lassie, gi’e me a glass o’ that;’ as knowing that, whatever it was, it must be good of its kind.

{143}

Sir Walter Scott says, in one of his droll little missives to his printer Ballantyne: ‘When the press does not follow me, I get on slowly and ill, and put myself in mind of Jamie Balfour, who could run, when he could not stand still.’ He here alludes to a matter of fact, which the following anecdote will illustrate: Jamie, in going home late from a debauch, happened to tumble into the pit formed for the foundation of a house in James’s Square. A gentleman passing heard his complaint, and going up to the spot, was entreated by our hero to help him out. ‘What would be the use of helping you out,’ said the passer-by, ‘when you could not stand though you were out?’ ‘Very true, perhaps; yet if you help me up, I’ll run you to the Tron Kirk for a bottle of claret.’ Pleased with his humour, the gentleman placed him upon his feet, when instantly he set off for the Tron Church at a pace distancing all ordinary competition; and accordingly he won the race, though, at the conclusion, he had to sit down on the steps of the church, being quite unable to stand. After taking a minute or two to recover his breath—‘Well, another race to Fortune’s for another bottle of claret!’ Off he went to the tavern in question, in the Stamp-office Close, and this bet he gained also. The claret, probably with continuations, was discussed in Fortune’s; and the end of the story is, Balfour sent his new friend home in a chair, utterly done up, at an early hour in the morning.

Stamp-office Close.

It is hardly surprising that habits carried to such an extravagance amongst gentlemen should have in some small degree affected the fairer and purer part of creation also. It is an old story in Edinburgh that three ladies had one night a merry-meeting in a tavern near the Cross, where they sat till a very late hour. Ascending at length to the street, they scarcely{144} remembered where they were; but as it was good moonlight, they found little difficulty in walking along till they came to the Tron Church. Here, however, an obstacle occurred. The moon, shining high in the south, threw the shadow of the steeple directly across the street from the one side to the other; and the ladies, being no more clear-sighted than they were clear-headed, mistook this for a broad and rapid river, which they would require to cross before making further way. In this delusion, they sat down upon the brink of the imaginary stream, deliberately took off their shoes and stockings, kilted their lower garments, and proceeded to wade through to the opposite side; after which, resuming their shoes and stockings, they went on their way rejoicing, as before! Another anecdote (from an aged nobleman) exhibits the bacchanalian powers of our ancestresses in a different light. During the rising of 1715, the officers of the crown in Edinburgh, having procured some important intelligence respecting the motions and intentions of the Jacobites, resolved upon despatching the same to London by a faithful courier. Of this the party whose interests would have been so materially affected got notice; and that evening, as the messenger (a man of rank) was going down the High Street, with the intention of mounting his horse in the Canongate and immediately setting off, he met two tall, handsome ladies, in full dress, and wearing black velvet masks, who accosted him with a very easy demeanour and a winning sweetness of voice. Without hesitating as to the quality of these damsels, he instantly proposed to treat them with a pint of claret at a neighbouring tavern; but they said that, instead of accepting his kindness, they were quite willing to treat him to his heart’s content. They then adjourned to the tavern, and sitting down, the whole three drank plenteously, merrily, and long, so that the courier seemed at last to forget entirely the mission upon which he was sent, and the danger of the papers which he had about his person. After a pertinacious debauch of several hours, the luckless messenger was at length fairly drunk under the table; and it is needless to add that the fair nymphs then proceeded to strip him of his papers, decamped, and were no more heard of; though it is but justice to the Scottish ladies of that period to say that the robbers were generally believed at the time to be young men disguised in women’s clothes.[133]

{145}

The custom which prevailed among ladies, as well as gentlemen, of resorting to what were called oyster-cellars, is in itself a striking indication of the state of manners during the last century. In winter, when the evening had set in, a party of the most fashionable people in town, collected by appointment, would adjourn in carriages to one of those abysses of darkness and comfort, called in Edinburgh laigh shops, where they proceeded to regale themselves with raw oysters and porter, arranged in huge dishes upon a coarse table, in a dingy room, lighted by tallow candles. The rudeness of the feast, and the vulgarity of the circumstances under which it took place, seem to have given a zest to its enjoyment, with which more refined banquets could not have been accompanied. One of the chief features of an oyster-cellar entertainment was that full scope was given to the conversational powers of the company. Both ladies and gentlemen indulged, without restraint, in sallies the merriest and the wittiest; and a thousand remarks and jokes, which elsewhere would have been suppressed as improper, were here sanctified by the oddity of the scene, and appreciated by the most dignified and refined. After the table was cleared of the oysters and porter, it was customary to introduce brandy or rum-punch—according to the pleasure of the ladies—after which dancing took place; and when the female part of the assemblage thought proper to retire, the gentlemen again sat down, or adjourned to another tavern to crown the pleasures of the evening with unlimited debauch. It is not (1824) more than thirty years since the late Lord Melville, the Duchess of Gordon, and some other persons of distinction, who happened to meet in town after many years of absence, made up an oyster-cellar party, by way of a frolic, and devoted one winter evening to the revival of this almost forgotten entertainment of their youth.[134]

{146}

It seems difficult to reconcile all these things with the staid and somewhat square-toed character which our country has obtained amongst her neighbours. The fact seems to be that a kind of Laodicean principle is observable in Scotland, and we oscillate between a rigour of manners on the one hand, and a laxity on the other, which alternately acquire an apparent paramouncy. In the early part of the last century, rigour was in the ascendant; but not to the prevention of a respectable minority of the free-and-easy, who kept alive the flame of conviviality with no small degree of success. In the latter half of the century—a dissolute era all over civilised Europe—the minority became the majority, and the characteristic sobriety of the nation’s manners was only traceable in certain portions of society. Now we are in a sober, perhaps tending to a rigorous stage once more. In Edinburgh, seventy years ago (1847), intemperance was the rule to such an degree that exception could hardly be said to exist. Men appeared little in the drawing-room in those days; when they did, not infrequently their company had better have been dispensed with. When a gentleman gave an entertainment, it was thought necessary that he should press the bottle as far as it could be made to go. A particularly good fellow would lock his outer door to prevent any guest of dyspeptic tendencies or sober inclinations from escaping. Some were so considerate as to provide shake-down beds for a general bivouac in a neighbouring apartment. When gentlemen were obliged to appear at assemblies where decency was enforced, they of course wore their best attire. This it was customary to change for something less liable to receive damage, ere going, as they usually did, to conclude the evening by a scene of conviviality. Drinking entered into everything. As Sir Alexander Boswell has observed:

‘O’er draughts of wine the beau would moan his love,

O’er draughts of wine the cit his bargain drove,

O’er draughts of wine the writer penned the will,

And legal wisdom counselled o’er a gill.’

Then was the time when men, despising and neglecting the company{147} of women, always so civilising in its influence, would yet half-kill themselves with bumpers in order, as the phrase went, to save them. Drinking to save the ladies is said to have originated with a catch-club, which issued tickets for gratuitous concerts. Many tickets with the names of ladies being prepared, one was taken up and the name announced. Any member present was at liberty to toast the health of this lady in a bumper, and this ensured her ticket being reserved for her use. If no one came forward to honour her name in this manner, the lady was said to be damned, and her ticket was thrown under the table. Whether from this origin or not, the practice is said to have ultimately had the following form. One gentleman would give out the name of some lady as the most beautiful object in creation, and, by way of attesting what he said, drink one bumper. Another champion would then enter the field, and offer to prove that a certain other lady, whom he named, was a great deal more beautiful than she just mentioned—supporting his assertion by drinking two bumpers. Then the other would rise up, declare this to be false, and in proof of his original statement, as well as by way of turning the scale upon his opponent, drink four bumpers. Not deterred or repressed by this, the second man would reiterate, and conclude by drinking as much as the challenger, who would again start up and drink eight bumpers; and so on, in geometrical progression, till one or other of the heroes fell under the table; when of course the fair Delia of the survivor was declared the queen supreme of beauty by all present. I have seen a sonnet addressed on the morning after such a scene of contention to the lady concerned by the unsuccessful hero, whose brains appear to have been woefully muddled by the claret he had drunk in her behalf.

It was not merely in the evenings that taverns were then resorted to. There was a petty treat, called a ‘meridian,’ which no man of that day thought himself able to dispense with; and this was generally indulged in at a tavern. ‘A cauld cock and a feather’ was the metaphorical mode of calling for a glass of brandy and a bunch of raisins, which was the favourite regale of many. Others took a glass of whisky, some few a lunch. Scott very amusingly describes, from his own observation, the manner in which the affair of the meridian was gone about by the writers and clerks belonging to the Parliament House. ‘If their proceedings were watched, they might be seen to turn fidgety about the hour of noon, and exchange looks with each other from their separate desks, till at length some one of formal and dignified{148} presence assumed the honour of leading the band; when away they went, threading the crowd like a string of wild-fowl, crossed the square or close, and following each other into the [John’s] coffee-house, drank the meridian, which was placed ready at the bar. This they did day by day; and though they did not speak to each other, they seemed to attach a certain degree of sociability to performing the ceremony in company.’

It was in the evening, of course, that the tavern debaucheries assumed their proper character of unpalliated fierceness and destructive duration. In the words of Robert Fergusson:

‘Now night, that’s cunzied chief for fun,

Is with her usual rites begun.

* * * *

Some to porter, some to punch,

Retire; while noisy ten-hours’ drum

Gars a’ the trades gang danderin’ hame.

Now, mony a club, jocose and free,

Gi’e a’ to merriment and glee;

Wi’ sang and glass they fley the power

O’ care, that wad harass the hour.

* * * *

Chief, O Cape! we crave thy aid,

To get our cares and poortith laid.

Sincerity and genius true,

O’ knights have ever been the due.

Mirth, music, porter deepest-dyed,

Are never here to worth denied.’

All the shops in the town were then shut at eight o’clock; and from that hour till ten—when the drum of the Town-guard announced at once a sort of license for the deluging of the streets with nuisances,[135] and a warning of the inhabitants home to their beds—unrestrained scope was given to the delights of the table. No tradesman thought of going home to his family till after he had spent an hour or two at his club. This was universal and unfailing. So lately as 1824, I knew something of an old-fashioned tradesman who nightly shut his shop at eight o’clock, and then adjourned with two old friends, who called upon him at that hour, to a quiet old public-house on the opposite side of the way, where they each drank precisely one bottle of Edinburgh ale, ate precisely one halfpenny roll, and got upon their legs precisely at the first stroke of ten o’clock.

{149}

The Cape Club alluded to by Fergusson aspired to a refined and classical character, comprising amongst its numerous members many men of talents, as well as of private worth. Fergusson himself was a member; as were Mr Thomas Sommers, his friend and biographer; Mr Woods, a player of eminence on the humble boards of Edinburgh, and an intimate companion of the poet; and Mr Runciman the painter. The name of the club had its foundation in one of those weak jokes such as ‘gentle dullness ever loves.’ A person who lived in the Calton was in the custom of spending an hour or two every evening with one or two city friends, and being sometimes detained till after the regular period when the Netherbow Port was shut, it occasionally happened that he had either to remain in the city all night, or was under the necessity of bribing the porter who attended the gate. This difficult pass—partly on account of the rectangular corner which he turned immediately on getting out of the Port, as he went homewards down Leith Wynd—the Calton burgher facetiously called doubling the Cape; and as it was customary with his friends every evening when they assembled to inquire ‘how he turned the Cape last night,’ and indeed to make that circumstance and that phrase, night after night, the subject of their conversation and amusement, ‘the Cape’ in time became so assimilated with their very existence that they adopted it as a title; and it was retained as such by the organised club into which shortly after they thought proper to form themselves. The Cape Club owned a regular institution from 1763. It will scarcely be credited in the present day that a jest of the above nature could keep an assemblage of rational citizens, and, we may add, professed wits, merry after a thousand repetitions. Yet it really is true that the patron-jests of many a numerous and enlightened association were no better than this, and the greater part of them worse. As instance the following:

There was the Antemanum Club, of which the members used to boast of the state of their hands, before-hand, in playing at ‘Brag.’ The members were all men of respectability, some of them gentlemen of fortune. They met every Saturday and dined. It was at first a purely convivial club; but latterly, the Whig party gaining a sort of preponderance, it degenerated into a political association.

The Pious Club was composed of decent, orderly citizens, who met every night, Sundays not excepted, in a pie-house, and whose joke was the équivoque of these expressions—similar in sound, but different in signification. The agreeable uncertainty as to whether{150} their name arose from their piety, or the circumstance of their eating pies, kept the club hearty for many years. At their Sunday meetings the conversation usually took a serious turn—perhaps upon the sermons which they had respectively heard during the day: this they considered as rendering their title of Pious not altogether undeserved. Moreover, they were all, as the saying was, ten o’clock men, and of good character. Fifteen persons were considered as constituting a full night. The whole allowable debauch was a gill of toddy to each person, which was drunk, like wine, out of a common decanter. One of the members of the Pious Club was a Mr Lind, a man of at least twenty-five stone weight, immoderately fond of good eating and drinking. It was generally believed of him that were all the oxen he had devoured ranged in a line, they would reach from the Watergate to the Castle-hill, and that the wine he had drunk would swim a seventy-four. His most favourite viand was a very strange one—salmon skins. When dining anywhere, with salmon on the table, he made no scruple of raking all the skins off the plates of the rest of the guests. He had only one toast, from which he never varied: ‘Merry days to honest fellows.’ A Mr Drummond was esteemed poet-laureate to this club. He was a facetious, clever man. Of his poetical talents, take a specimen in the following lines on Lind:

‘In going to dinner, he ne’er lost his way,

Though often, when done, he was carted away.’

He made the following impromptu on an associate of small figure and equally small understanding, who had been successful in the world:

‘O thou of genius slow,

Weak by nature;

A rich fellow,

But a poor creature.’

The Watergate.

The Spendthrift Club took its name from the extravagance of the members in spending no less a sum than fourpence halfpenny{151} each night! It consisted of respectable citizens of the middle class, and continued in 1824 to exist in a modified state. Its meetings, originally nightly, were then reduced to four a week. The men used to play at whist for a halfpenny—one, two, three—no rubbers; but latterly they had, with their characteristic extravagance, doubled the stake! Supper originally cost no less than twopence; and half a bottle of strong ale, with a dram, stood every member twopence halfpenny; to all which sumptuous profusion might be added still another halfpenny, which was given to the maid-servant—in all, fivepence! Latterly the dram had been disused; but such had been the general increase, either in the cost or the quantity of the indulgences, that the usual nightly expense was ultimately from a shilling to one and fourpence. The winnings at whist were always thrown into the reckoning. A large two-quart bottle or tappit-hen was introduced by the landlady, with a small measure, out of which the company helped themselves; and the members made up their own bill with chalk upon the table. In 1824, in the recollection of the senior members, some of whom were of fifty years’ standing, the house was kept by the widow of a Lieutenant Hamilton of the army, who recollected having attended the theatre in the Tennis Court at Holyroodhouse, when the play was the Spanish Friar, and when many of the members of the Union Parliament were present in the house.

Tappit-hen.

The Boar Club was an association of a different sort, consisting chiefly of wild, fashionable young men; and the place of meeting was not in any of the snug profundities of the Old Town, but in a modern tavern in Shakspeare Square, kept by one Daniel Hogg. The joke of this club consisted in the supposition that all the members were boars, that their room was a sty, that their talk was grunting, and in the double-entendre of the small piece of stone-ware which served as a repository of all the fines being a pig. Upon this they lived twenty years. I have, at some expense of eyesight and with no small exertion of patience, perused the soiled and blotted records of the club, which in 1824 were preserved by an old vintner, whose house was their last place of meeting; and the result has been the following memorabilia. The Boar Club commenced its meetings in 1787, and the original members were J. G. C. Schetky, a German musician; David Shaw; Archibald Crawfuird; Patrick Robertson; Robert Aldridge,{152} a famed pantomimist and dancing-master; James Neilson; and Luke Cross. Some of these were remarkable men, in particular Mr Schetky. He had come to Edinburgh about the beginning of the reign of George III. He used to tell that on alighting at Ramsay’s inn, opposite the Cowgate Port, his first impression of the city was so unfavourable that he was on the point of leaving it again without further acquaintance, and was only prevented from doing so by the solicitations of his fellow-traveller, who was not so much alarmed at the dingy and squalid appearance of this part of Auld Reekie.[136] He was first employed at St Cecilia’s Hall, where the concerts were attended by all the ‘rank, beauty, and fashion’ of which Edinburgh could then boast, and where, besides the professional performers, many amateurs of great musical skill and enthusiasm, such as Mr Tytler of Woodhouselee,[137] were pleased to exhibit themselves for the entertainment of their friends, who alone were admitted by tickets. Mr Schetky composed the march of a body of volunteers called the Edinburgh Defensive Band,{153} which was raised out of the citizens of Edinburgh at the time of the American war, and was commanded by the eminent advocate Crosbie. One of the verses to which the march was set may be given as an admirable specimen of militia poetry:

‘Colonel Crosbie takes the field;

To France and Spain he will not yield;

But still maintains his high command

At the head of the noble Defensive Band.’[138]

‘AULD REEKIE’
from Largo.

Page 152.

Mr Schetky was primarily concerned in the founding of the Boar Club. He was in the habit of meeting every night with Mr Aldridge and one or two other professional men, or gentlemen who affected the society of such persons, in Hogg’s tavern; and it was the host’s name that suggested the idea of calling their society the ‘Boar Club.’ Their laws were first written down in proper form in 1790. They were to meet every evening at seven o’clock; each boar, on his entry, to contribute a halfpenny to the pig. Mr Aldridge was to be perpetual Grand-boar, with Mr Schetky for his deputy; and there were other officers, entitled Secretary, Treasurer, and Procurator-fiscal. A fine of one halfpenny was imposed upon every person who called one of his brother-boars by his proper out-of-club name—the term ‘sir’ being only allowed. The entry-moneys, fines, and other pecuniary acquisitions were hoarded for a grand annual dinner. The laws were revised in 1799, when some new officials were constituted, such as Poet-laureate, Champion, Archbishop, and Chief-grunter. The fines were then rendered exceedingly severe, and in their exaction no one met with any mercy, as it was the interest of all the rest that the pig should bring forth as plenteous a farrow as possible at the grand dinner-day. This practice at length occasioning a violent insurrection in the sty, the whole fraternity was broken up, and never again returned to ‘wallow in the mire.’

The Hell-fire Club, a terrible and infamous association of wild young men about the beginning of the last century, met in various profound places throughout Edinburgh, where they practised orgies not more fit for seeing the light than the Eleusinian{154} Mysteries. I have conversed with old people who had seen the last worn-out members of the Hell-fire Club, which in the country is to this day believed to have been an association in compact with the Prince of Darkness.

Many years afterwards, a set of persons associated for the purpose of purchasing goods condemned by the Court of Exchequer. For what reason I cannot tell, they called themselves the Hell-fire Club, and their president was named the Devil. My old friend, Henry Mackenzie, whose profession was that of an attorney before the Court of Exchequer, wrote me a note on this subject, in which he says very naïvely: ‘In my youngest days, I knew the Devil.’

The Sweating Club flourished about the middle of the last century. They resembled the Mohocks mentioned in the Spectator. After intoxicating themselves, it was their custom to sally forth at midnight, and attack whomsoever they met upon the streets. Any luckless wight who happened to fall into their hands was chased, jostled, pinched, and pulled about, till he not only perspired, but was ready to drop down and die with exhaustion. Even so late as the early years of this century, it was unsafe to walk the streets of Edinburgh at night on account of the numerous drunken parties of young men who then reeled about, bent on mischief, at all hours, and from whom the Town-guard were unable to protect the sober citizen.

A club called the Industrious Company may serve to show how far the system of drinking was carried by our fathers. It was a sort of joint-stock company, formed by a numerous set of porter-drinkers, who thought fit to club towards the formation of a stock of that liquor, which they might partly profit by retailing, and partly by the opportunity thus afforded them of drinking their own particular tipple at the wholesale price. Their cellars were in the Royal Bank Close, where they met every night at eight o’clock. Each member paid at his entry £5, and took his turn monthly of the duty of superintending the general business of the company. But the curse of joint-stock companies—negligence on the part of the managers—ultimately occasioned the ruin of the Industrious Company.

About 1790, a club of first-rate citizens used to meet each Saturday afternoon for a country dinner, in a tavern which still exists in the village of Canonmills, a place now involved within the limits of the New Town. To quote a brief memoir on the subject, handed to me many years ago by a veteran friend, who was a good deal of the laudator temporis acti:{155} ‘The club was pointedly attended; it was too good a thing to miss being present at. They kept their own claret, and managed all matters as to living perfectly well.’ Originally the fraternity were contented with a very humble room; but in time they got an addition built to the house for their accommodation, comprehending one good-sized room with two windows, in one of which is a pane containing an olive-dove; in the other, one containing a wheat-sheaf, both engraved with a diamond. ‘This,’ continues Mr Johnston, ‘was the doing of William Ramsay [banker], then residing at Warriston—the tongue of the trump to the club. Here he took great delight to drink claret on the Saturdays, though he had such a paradise near at hand to retire to; but then there were Jamie Torry, Jamie Dickson, Gilbert Laurie, and other good old council friends with whom to crack [that is, chat]; and the said cracks were of more value in this dark, unseemly place than the enjoyments of home. I never pass these two engraved panes of glass but I venerate them, and wonder that, in the course of fifty years, they have not been destroyed, either from drunkenness within or from misrule without.’[139]

Edinburgh boasted of many other associations of the like nature, which it were perhaps best merely to enumerate in a tabular form, with the appropriate joke opposite each, as

The Dirty Club	No gentleman to appear in clean linen.
The Black Wigs	Members wore black wigs.
The Odd Fellows	Members wrote their names upside down.
The Bonnet Lairds	Members wore blue bonnets.
The Doctors of Faculty Club	{	Members regarded as Physicians, and so styled; wearing, moreover, gowns and wigs.

And so forth. There were the Caledonian Club and the Union Club, of whose foundation history speaketh not. There was the Wig Club, the president of which wore a wig of extraordinary materials, which had belonged to the Moray family for three generations, and each new entrant of which drank to the fraternity in a quart of claret without pulling bit. The Wigs usually drank twopenny ale, on which it was possible to get satisfactorily drunk for a groat; and with this they ate souters’ clods,[140] a coarse,{156} lumpish kind of loaf.[141] There was also the Brownonian System Club, which, oddly enough, bore no reference to the license which that system had given for a phlogistic regimen—for it was a douce citizenly fraternity, venerating ten o’clock as a sacred principle—but in honour of the founder of that system, who had been a constituent member.

The Lawnmarket Club was composed chiefly of the woollen-traders of that street, a set of whom met every morning about seven o’clock, and walked down to the Post-office, where they made themselves acquainted with the news of the morning. After a plentiful discussion of the news, they adjourned to a public-house and got a dram of brandy. As a sort of ironical and self-inflicted satire upon the strength of their potations, they sometimes called themselves the Whey Club. They were always the first persons in the town to have a thorough knowledge of the foreign news; and on Wednesday mornings, when there was no post from London, it was their wont to meet as usual, and, in the absence of real news, amuse themselves by the invention of what was imaginary; and this they made it their business to circulate among their uninitiated acquaintances in the course of the forenoon. Any such unfounded articles of intelligence, on being suspected or discovered, were usually called Lawnmarket Gazettes, in allusion to their roguish originators.

In the year 1705, when the Duke of Argyll was commissioner in the Scottish parliament, a singular kind of fashionable club, or coterie of ladies and gentlemen, was instituted, chiefly by the exertions of the Earl of Selkirk, who was the distinguished beau of that age. This was called the Horn Order, a name which, as usual, had its origin in the whim of a moment. A horn-spoon having been used at some merry-meeting, it occurred to the club, which was then in embryo, that this homely implement would be a good badge for the projected society; and this being proposed, it was instantly agreed by all the party that the ‘Order of the Horn’ would be a good caricature of the more ancient and better-sanctioned{157} honorary dignities. The phrase was adopted; and the members of the Horn Order met and caroused for many a day under this strange designation, which, however, the common people believed to mean more than met the ear. Indeed, if all accounts of it be true, it must have been a species of masquerade, in which the sexes were mixed and all ranks confounded.[142]

{158}

TAVERNS OF OLD TIMES.

When the worship of Bacchus held such sway in our city, his peculiar temples—the taverns—must, one would suppose, have been places of some importance. And so they were, comparatively speaking; and yet, absolutely, an Edinburgh tavern of the last century was no very fine or inviting place. Usually these receptacles were situated in obscure places—in courts or closes, away from the public thoroughfares; and often they presented such narrow and stifling accommodations as might have been expected to repel rather than attract visitors. The truth was, however, that a coarse and darksome snugness was courted by the worshippers. Large, well-lighted rooms, with a look-out to a street, would not have suited them. But allow them to dive through some Erebean alley, into a cavern-like house, and there settle themselves in a cell unvisited of Phœbus, with some dingy flamen of either sex to act as minister, and their views as to circumstances and properties were fulfilled.

The city traditions do not go far back into the eighteenth century with respect to taverns; but we obtain some notion of the principal houses in Queen Anne’s time from the Latin lyrics of Dr Pitcairn, which Ruddiman published, in order to prove that the Italian muse had not become extinct in our land since the days of Buchanan. In an address To Strangers, the wit tells those who would acquire some notion of our national manners to avoid the triple church of St Giles’s:

‘Tres ubi Cyclopes fanda nefanda boant’—

where three horrible monsters bellow forth sacred and profane discourse—and seek the requisite knowledge in the sanctuaries of the rosy god, whose worship is conducted by night and by day. ‘At one time,’ says he, ‘you may be delighted with the bowls of Steil of the Cross Keys; then other heroes, at the Ship, will show you the huge cups which belonged to mighty bibbers of yore. Or you may seek out the sweet-spoken Katy at Buchanan’s, or Tennant’s commodious house, where scalloped oysters will be brought in with your wine. But Hay calls us, than whom no woman of milder disposition or better-stored cellar can be named in the whole town. Now it will gratify you to make your way into the Avernian{159} grottoes and caves never seen of the sun; but remember to make friends with the dog which guards the threshold. Straightway Mistress Anne will bring the native liquor. Seek the innermost rooms and the snug seats: these know the sun, at least, when Anne enters. What souls joying in the Lethæan flood you may there see! what frolics, God willing, you may partake of! Mindless of all that goes on in the outer world, joys not to be told to mortal do they there imbibe. But perhaps you may wish by-and-by to get back into the world—which is indeed no easy matter. I recommend you, when about to descend, to take with you a trusty Achates [a caddy]: say to Anne, “Be sure you give him no drink.” By such means it was that Castor and Pollux were able to issue forth from Pluto’s domain into the heavenly spaces. Here you may be both merry and wise; but beware how you toast kings and their French retreats,’ &c. The sites of these merry places of yore are not handed down to us; but respecting another, which Pitcairn shadows forth under the mysterious appellation of Greppa, it chances that we possess some knowledge. It was a suite of dark underground apartments in the Parliament Close, opening by a descending stair opposite the oriel of St Giles’s, in a mass of building called the Pillars. By the wits who frequented it, it was called the Greping-office, because one could only make way through its dark passages by groping. It is curious to see how Pitcairn works this homely Scottish idea into his Sapphics, talking, for example, by way of a good case of bane and antidote, of

‘Fraudes Egidii, venena Greppæ.’

A venerable person has given me an anecdote of this singular mixture of learning, wit, and professional skill in connection with the Greping-office. Here, it seems, according to a custom which lasted even in London till a later day, the clever physician used to receive visits from his patients. On one occasion a woman from the country called to consult him respecting the health of her daughter, when he gave a shrewd hygienic advice in a pithy metaphor not be mentioned to ears polite. When, in consequence of following the prescription, the young woman had recovered her health, the mother came back to the Greping-office to thank Dr Pitcairn and give him a small present. Seeing him in precisely the same place and circumstances, and surrounded by the same companions as on the former occasion, she lingered with an expression of surprise. On interrogation, she said she had only{160} one thing to speer at him (ask after), and she hoped he would not be angry.

‘Oh no, my good woman.’

‘Well, sir, have you been sitting here ever since I saw you last?’

According to the same authority, small claret was then sold at twentypence the Scottish pint, equivalent to tenpence a bottle. Pitcairn once or twice sent his servant for a regale of this liquor on the Sunday forenoon, and suffered the disappointment of having it intercepted by the seizers, whose duty it was to make capture of all persons found abroad in time of service, and appropriate whatever they were engaged in carrying that smelled of the common enjoyments of life. To secure his claret for the future from this interference, the wit caused the wine on one occasion to be drugged in such a manner as to produce consequences more ludicrous than dangerous to those drinking it. The triumph he thus attained over a power which there was no reaching by any appeal to common-sense or justice must have been deeply relished in the Greping-office.

Pitcairn was professedly an Episcopalian, but he allowed himself a latitude in wit which his contemporaries found some difficulty in reconciling with any form of religion. Among the popular charges against him was that he did not believe in the existence of such a place as hell; a point of heterodoxy likely to be sadly disrelished in Scotland. Being at a book-sale, where a copy of Philostratus sold at a good price and a copy of the Bible was not bidden for, Pitcairn said to some one who remarked the circumstance: ‘Not at all wonderful; for is it not written, “Verbum Dei manet in eternum”?’ For this, one of the Cyclopes, a famous Mr Webster, called him publicly an atheist. The story goes on to state that Pitcairn prosecuted Webster for defamation in consequence, but failed in the action from the following circumstance: The defender, much puzzled what to do in the case, consulted a shrewd-witted friend of his, a Mr Pettigrew, minister of Govan, near Glasgow. Pettigrew came to Edinburgh to endeavour to get him out of the scrape. ‘Strange,’ he said, ‘since he has caught so much at your mouth, if we can catch nothing at his.’ Having laid his plan, he came bustling up to the physician at the Cross, and tapping him on the shoulder, said: ‘Are you Dr Pitcairn the atheist?’

The doctor, in his haste, overlooking the latter part of the query, answered:{161} ‘Yes.’

‘Very good,’ said Pettigrew; ‘I take you all to witness that he has confessed it himself.’

Pitcairn, seeing how he had been outwitted, said bitterly to the minister of Govan, whom he well knew: ‘Oh, Pettigrew, that skull of yours is as deep as hell.’

‘Oh, man,’ replied Pettigrew, ‘I’m glad to find you have come to believe there is a hell.’ The prosecutor’s counsel, who stood by at the time, recommended a compromise, which accordingly took place.

A son of Pitcairn was minister of Dysart; a very good kind of man, who was sometimes consulted in a medical way by his parishioners. He seems to have had a little of the paternal humour, if we may judge from the following circumstance: A lady came to ask what her maid-servant should do for sore or tender eyes. The minister, seeing that no active treatment could be recommended, said: ‘She must do naething wi’ them, but just rub them wi’ her elbucks [elbows].’

Allan Ramsay mentions, of Edinburgh taverns in his day,

‘Cumin’s, Don’s, and Steil’s,’

as places where one may be as well served as at The Devil in London.

‘’Tis strange, though true, he who would shun all evil,

Cannot do better than go to the Devil.’

John Maclaurin.

One is disposed to pause a moment on Steil’s name, as it is honourably connected with the history of music in Scotland. Being a zealous lover of the divine science and a good singer of the native melodies, he had rendered his house a favourite resort of all who possessed a similar taste, and here actually was formed (1728) the first regular society of amateur musicians known in our country. It numbered seventy persons, and met once a week, the usual entertainments consisting in playing on the harpsichord and violin the concertos and sonatas of Handel, then newly published. Apparently, however, this fraternity did not long continue to use Steil’s house, if I am right in supposing his retirement from business as announced in an advertisement of February 1729, regarding ‘a sale by auction, of the haill pictures, prints, music-books, and musical instruments, belonging to Mr John Steill’ (Caledonian Mercury).

Coming down to a later time—1760-1770—we find the tavern in highest vogue to have been Fortune’s, in the house which the{162} Earl of Eglintoune had once occupied in the Stamp-office Close. The gay men of rank, the scholarly and philosophical, the common citizens, all flocked hither; and the royal commissioner for the General Assembly held his levees here, and hence proceeded to church with his cortège, then additionally splendid from having ladies walking in it in their court-dresses as well as gentlemen.[143] Perhaps the most remarkable set of men who met here was the Poker Club,[144] consisting of Hume, Robertson, Blair, Fergusson, and many others of that brilliant galaxy, but whose potations were comparatively of a moderate kind.

The Star and Garter, in Writers’ Court, kept by one Clerihugh (the Clerihugh’s alluded to in Guy Mannering), was another tavern of good consideration, the favourite haunt of the magistrates and Town-council, who in those days mixed much more of private enjoyments with public duties than would now be considered fitting.[145] Here the Rev. Dr Webster used to meet them at dinner, in order to give them the benefit of his extensive knowledge and great powers of calculation when they were scheming out the New Town.

A favourite house for many of the last years of the bygone century was Douglas’s, in the Anchor Close, near the Cross, a good specimen of those profound retreats which have been spoken of as valued in the inverse ratio of the amount of daylight which visited them. You went a few yards down the dark, narrow alley, passing on the left hand the entry to a scale stair, decorated with ‘THE LORD IS ONLY MY SVPORT;’ then passed another door, bearing the still more antique legend: ‘O LORD, IN THE IS AL MY TRAIST;’ immediately beyond, under an architrave calling out ‘BE MERCIFVL TO ME,’ you entered the hospitable mansion of Dawney Douglas, the scene of the daily and nightly orgies of the Pleydells and Fairfords, the Hays, Erskines, and Crosbies, of the time of our fathers. Alas! how fallen off is now that temple{163} of Momus and the Bacchanals! You find it divided into a multitude of small lodgings, where, instead of the merry party, vociferous with toasts and catches, you are most likely to be struck by the spectacle of some poor lone female, pining under a parochial allowance, or a poverty-struck family group, one-half of whom are disposed on sick-beds of straw mingled with rags—the terrible exponents of our peculiar phasis of civilisation.

The frequenter of Douglas’s, after ascending a few steps, found himself in a pretty large kitchen—a dark, fiery Pandemonium, through which numerous ineffable ministers of flame were continually flying about, while beside the door sat the landlady, a large, fat woman, in a towering head-dress and large-flowered silk gown, who bowed to every one passing. Most likely on emerging from this igneous region, the party would fall into the hands of Dawney himself, and so be conducted to an apartment. A perfect contrast was he to his wife: a thin, weak, submissive man, who spoke in a whisper, never but in the way of answer, and then, if possible, only in monosyllables. He had a habit of using the word ‘quietly’ very frequently, without much regard to its being appropriate to the sense; and it is told that he one day made the remark that ‘the Castle had been firing to-day—quietly;’ which, it may well be believed, was not soon forgotten by his customers. Another trait of Dawney was that some one lent him a volume of Clarendon’s history to read, and daily frequenting the room where it lay, used regularly, for some time, to put back the reader’s mark to the same place; whereupon, being by-and-by asked how he liked the book, Dawney answered: ‘Oh, very weel; but dinna ye think it’s gay mickle the same thing o’er again?’ The house was noted for suppers of tripe, rizzared haddocks, mince collops, and hashes, which never cost more than sixpence a head. On charges of this moderate kind the honest couple grew extremely rich before they died.

The principal room in this house was a handsome one of good size, having a separate access by the second of the entries which have been described, and only used for large companies, or for guests of the first importance. It was called the Crown Room, or the Crown—so did the guests find it distinguished on the tops of their bills—and this name it was said to have acquired in consequence of its having once been used by Queen Mary as a council-room, on which occasions the emblem of sovereignty was disposed in a niche in the wall, still existing. How the queen should have had any occasion to hold councils in this place tradition does not{164} undertake to explain; but assuredly, when we consider the nature of all public accommodations in that time, we cannot say there is any decided improbability in the matter. The house appears of sufficient age for the hypothesis. Perhaps we catch a hint on the general possibility from a very ancient house farther down the close, of whose original purpose or owners we know nothing, but which is adumbrated by this legend:

ANGVSTA AD VSVM AVGVSTA[M]

W F B G

The Crown Room, however, is elegant enough to have graced even the presence of Queen Mary, so that she only had not had to reach it by the Anchor Close. It is handsomely panelled, with a decorated fireplace, and two tall windows towards the alley. At present this supposed seat of royal councils, and certain seat of the social enjoyments of many men of noted talents, forms a back-shop to Mr Ford, grocer, High Street, and, all dingy and out of countenance, serves only to store hams, firkins of butter, packages of groceries, and bundles of dried cod.[146]

The gentle Dawney had an old Gaelic song called Crochallan, which he occasionally sang to his customers. This led to the establishment of a club at his house, which, with a reference to the militia regiments then raising, was called the Crochallan Corps, or Crochallan Fencibles, and to which belonged, amongst other men of original character and talent, the well-known William Smellie, author of the Philosophy of Natural History. Each member bore a military title, and some were endowed with ideal offices of a ludicrous character: for example, a lately surviving associate had been depute-hangman to the corps. Individuals committing a fault were subjected to a mock trial, in which such members as were barristers could display their forensic talents to the infinite amusement of the brethren. Much mirth and not a little horse-play prevailed. Smellie, while engaged professionally in printing the Edinburgh edition of the poems of Burns, introduced that genius to the Crochallans, when a scene of rough banter took place between him and certain privileged old hands, and the bard declared at the conclusion that he had ‘never been so abominably thrashed in his life.’ There was one predominant wit, Willie Dunbar by name, of whom the poet has left a characteristic picture:

{165}

‘As I came by Crochallan,

I cannily keekit ben—

Rattling roaring Willie

Was sitting at yon board en’—

Sitting at yon board en’,

Amang gude companie;

Rattling roaring Willie,

Ye’re welcome hame to me!’

He has also described Smellie as coming to Crochallan with his old cocked hat, gray surtout, and beard rising in its might:

‘Yet though his caustic wit was biting, rude,

His heart was warm, benevolent, and good.’

The printing-office of this strange genius being at the bottom of the close, the transition from the correction of proofs to the roaring scenes at Crochallan must have been sufficiently easy for Burns.

UPPER BAXTER’S CLOSE.
Where Burns first resided in Edinburgh.

Page 164.

I am indebted to a privately printed memoir on the Anchor Close for the following anecdote of Crochallan: ‘A comical gentleman, one of the members of the corps [old Williamson of Cardrona, in Peeblesshire], got rather tipsy one evening after a severe field-day. When he came to the head of the Anchor Close, it occurred to him that it was necessary that he should take possession of the Castle. He accordingly set off for this purpose. When he got to the outer gate, he demanded immediate possession of the garrison, to which he said he was entitled. The sentinel, for a considerable time, laughed at him; he, however, became so extremely clamorous that the man found it necessary to apprise the commanding officer, who immediately came down to inquire into the meaning of such impertinent conduct. He at once recognised his friend Cardrona, whom he had left at the festive board of the Crochallan Corps only a few hours before. Accordingly, humouring him in the conceit, he said: ‘Certainly you have every right to the command of this garrison; if you please, I will conduct you to your proper apartment.’ He accordingly conveyed him to a bedroom in his house. Cardrona took formal possession of the place, and immediately afterwards went to bed. His feelings were indescribable when he looked out of his bedroom window next morning, and found himself surrounded with soldiers and great guns. Some time afterwards this story came to the ears of the Crochallans; and Cardrona said he never afterwards had the life{166} of a dog, so much did they tease and harass him about his strange adventure.’

There is a story connected with the air and song of Crochallan which will tell strangely after these anecdotes. The title is properly Cro Chalien—that is, ‘Colin’s Cattle.’ According to Highland tradition, Colin’s wife, dying at an early age, came back, some months after she had been buried, and was seen occasionally in the evenings milking her cow as formerly, and singing this plaintive air. It is curious thus to find Highland superstition associated with a snug tavern in the Anchor Close and the convivialities of such men as Burns and Smellie.

Dowie’s Tavern.

John Dowie’s, in Liberton’s Wynd, a still more perfect specimen of those taverns which Pitcairn eulogises—

‘Antraque Cocyto penè propinqua’—

enjoyed the highest celebrity during the latter years of the past and early years of the present century. A great portion of this house was literally without light, consisting of a series of windowless chambers, decreasing in size till the last was a mere box, of irregular oblong figure, jocularly, but not inappropriately, designated the Coffin. Besides these, there were but two rooms possessing light, and as that came from a deep, narrow alley, it was light little more than in name. Hither, nevertheless, did many of the Parliament House men come daily for their meridian. Here nightly assembled companies of cits, as well as of men of wit and of fashion, to spend hours in what may, by comparison, be described{167} as gentle conviviality. The place is said to have been a howff of Fergusson and Burns in succession. Christopher North somewhere alludes to meetings of his own with Tom Campbell in that couthy mansion. David Herd, the editor of the Scottish songs, Mr Cumming of the Lyon Office, and George Paton the antiquary were regular customers, each seldom allowing a night to pass without a symposium at Johnie Dowie’s. Now, these men are all gone; their very habits are becoming matters of history; while, as for their evening haunt, the place which knew it once knows it no more, the new access to the Lawnmarket, by George IV. Bridge, passing over the area where it stood.

Johnie Dowie’s was chiefly celebrated for ale—Younger’s Edinburgh ale—a potent fluid which almost glued the lips of the drinker together, and of which few, therefore, could despatch more than a bottle. John, a sleek, quiet-looking man, in a last-century style of attire, always brought in the liquor himself, decanted it carefully, drank a glass to the health of the company, and then retired. His neat, careful management of the bottle must have entirely met the views of old William Coke, the Leith bookseller, of whom it is told that if he saw a greenhorn of a waiter acting in a different manner, he would rush indignantly up to him, take the ale out of his hands, caress it tenderly, as if to soothe and put it to rights again, and then proceed to the business of decanting it himself, saying: ‘You rascal, is that the way you attend to your business? Sirrah, you ought to handle a bottle of ale as you would do a new-born babe!’

Dowie’s was also famed for its petits soupers, as one of its customers has recorded:

‘’Deed, gif ye please,

Ye may get a bit toasted cheese,

A crumb o’ tripe, ham, dish o’ peas,

The season fitting;

An egg, or, cauler frae the seas,

A fleuk or whiting.’

When the reckoning came to be paid, John’s duty usually consisted simply in counting the empty bottles which stood on a little shelf where he had placed them above the heads of his customers, and multiplying these by the price of the liquor—usually threepence. Studious of decency, he was rigorous as to{168} hours, and, when pressed for additional supplies of liquor at a particular time, would say: ‘No, no, gentlemen; it’s past twelve o’clock, and time to go home.’

Of John’s conscientiousness as to money matters there is some illustration in the following otherwise trivial anecdote: David Herd, being one night prevented by slight indisposition from joining in the malt potations of his friends, called for first one and then another glass of spirits, which he dissolved, more Scotico, in warm water and sugar. When the reckoning came to be paid, the antiquary was surprised to find the second glass charged a fraction higher than the first—as if John had been resolved to impose a tax upon excess. On inquiring the reason, however, honest John explained it thus: ‘Whe, sir, ye see, the first glass was out o’ the auld barrel, and the second was out o’ the new; and as the whisky in the new barrel cost me mair than the other, whe, sir, I’ve just charged a wee mair for ’t.’ An ordinary host would have doubtless equalised the price by raising that of the first glass to a level with the second. It is gratifying, but, after this anecdote, not surprising, that John eventually retired with a fortune said to have amounted to six thousand pounds. He had a son in the army, who attained the rank of major, and was a respectable officer.

We get an idea of a class of taverns, humbler in their appointments, but equally comfortable perhaps in their entertainments, from the description which has been preserved of Mrs Flockhart’s—otherwise Lucky Fykie’s—in the Potterrow. This was a remarkably small, as well as obscure mansion, bearing externally the appearance of a huckstry shop. The lady was a neat, little, thin, elderly woman, usually habited in a plain striped blue gown, and apron of the same stuff, with a black ribbon round her head and lappets tied under her chin. She was far from being poor in circumstances, as her husband, the umquhile John Flucker, or Flockhart, had left her some ready money, together with his whole stock-in-trade, consisting of a multifarious variety of articles—as ropes, tea, sugar, whip-shafts, porter, ale, beer, yellow sand, calm-stane, herrings, nails, cotton-wicks, stationery, thread, needles, tapes, potatoes, lollipops, onions, matches, &c., constituting her a very respectable merchant, as the phrase was understood in Scotland. On Sundays, too, Mrs Flockhart’s little visage might have been seen in a front-gallery seat in Mr Pattieson’s chapel in the Potterrow. Her abode, situated opposite to Chalmers’s Entry in that suburban{169} thoroughfare, was a square of about fifteen feet each way, divided agreeably to the following diagram:

Each forenoon was this place, or at least all in front of the screen, put into the neatest order; at the same time three bottles, severally containing brandy, rum, and whisky, were placed on a bunker-seat in the window of the ‘hotel,’ flanked by a few glasses and a salver of gingerbread biscuits. About noon any one watching the place from an opposite window would have observed an elderly gentleman entering the humble shop, where he saluted the lady with a ‘Hoo d’ye do, mem?’ and then passed into the side space to indulge himself with a glass from one or other of the bottles. After him came another, who went through the same ceremonial; after him another again; and so on. Strange to say, these were men of importance in society—some of them lawyers in good employment, some bankers, and so forth, and all of them inhabitants of good houses in George Square. It was in passing to or from forenoon business in town that they thus regaled themselves. On special occasions Lucky could furnish forth a soss—that is, stew—which the votary might partake of upon a clean napkin in the closet, a place which only admitted of one chair being placed in it. Such were amongst the habits of the fathers of some of our present (1824) most distinguished citizens!

This may be the proper place for introducing the few notices which I have collected respecting Edinburgh inns of a past date.

{170}

The oldest house known to have been used in the character of an inn is one situated in what is called Davidson’s or the White Horse Close, at the bottom of the Canongate. A sort of porte-cochère gives access to a court having mean buildings on either hand, but facing us a goodly structure of antique fashion, having two outside stairs curiously arranged, and the whole reminding us much of certain houses still numerous in the Netherlands. A date, deficient in the decimal figure (16-3), gives us assurance of the seventeenth century, and, judging from the style of the building, I would say the house belongs to an early portion of that age. The whole of the ground-floor, accessible from the street called North Back of Canongate, has been used as stables, thus reminding us of the absence of nicety in a former age, when human beings were content to sit with only a wooden floor between themselves and their horses.

This house, supposed to have been styled The White Horse Inn or White Horse Stables (for the latter was the more common word), would be conveniently situated for persons travelling to or arriving from London, as it is close to the ancient exit of the town in that direction. The adjacent Water-gate took its name from a horse-pond, which probably was an appendage of this mansion. The manner of procedure for a gentleman going to London in the days of the White Horse was to come booted to this house with saddle-bags, and here engage and mount a suitable roadster, which was to serve all the way. In 1639, when Charles I. had made his first pacification with the Covenanters, and had come temporarily to Berwick, he sent messages to the chief lords of that party, desiring some conversation with them. They were unsuspectingly mounting their horses at this inn, in order to ride to Berwick, when a mob, taught by the clergy to suspect that the king wished only to wile over the nobles to his side, came and forcibly prevented them from commencing their designed journey. Montrose alone broke through this restraint; and assuredly the result in his instance was such as to give some countenance to the suspicion, as thenceforward he was a royalist in his heart.

WHITE HORSE INN.

Page 170.

The White Horse has ceased to be an inn from a time which no ‘oldest inhabitant’ of my era could pretend to have any recollection of. The only remaining fact of interest connected with it is one concerning Dr Alexander Rose, the last Bishop of Edinburgh, and the last survivor of the established Episcopacy of Scotland. Bishop Keith, who had been one of his{171} presbyters, and describes him as a sweet-natured man, of a venerable aspect, states that he died March 20, 1720, ‘in his own sister’s house in the Canongate, in which street he also lived.’ Tradition points to the floor immediately above the porte-cochère by which the stable-yard is entered from the street as the humble mansion in which the bishop breathed his last. I know at least one person who never goes past the place without an emotion of respect, remembering the self-abandoning devotion of the Scottish prelates to their engagements at the Revolution:[147]

‘Amongst the faithless, faithful only found.’

To the elegant accommodations of the best New Town establishments of the present day, the inns of the last century present a contrast which it is difficult by the greatest stretch of imagination to realise. For the west road, there was the White Hart in the Grassmarket; for the east, the White Horse Inn in Boyd’s Close, Canongate; for the south, and partly also the east, Peter Ramsay’s, at the bottom of St Mary’s Wynd. Arnot, writing in 1779, describes them as ‘mean buildings; their apartments dirty and dismal; and if the waiters happen to be out of the way, a stranger will perhaps be shocked with the novelty of being shown into a room by a dirty, sunburnt wench, without shoes or stockings.’ The fact is, however, these houses were mainly used as places for keeping horses. Guests, unless of a very temporary character, were usually relegated to lodging-houses, of which there were several on a considerable scale—as Mrs Thomson’s at the Cross, who advertises, in 1754, that persons not bringing ‘their silver plate, tea china, table china, and tea linen, can be served in them all;’ also in wines and spirits; likewise that persons boarding with her ‘may expect everything in a very genteel manner.’ But hear the unflattering Arnot on these houses.{172} ‘He [the stranger] is probably conducted to the third or fourth floor, up dark and dirty stairs, and there shown into apartments meanly fitted up and poorly furnished.... In Edinburgh, letting of lodgings is a business by itself, and thereby the prices are very extravagant; and every article of furniture, far from wearing the appearance of having been purchased for a happy owner, seems to be scraped together with a penurious hand, to pass muster before a stranger who will never wish to return!’

Ramsay’s was almost solely a place of stables. General Paoli,[148] on visiting Edinburgh in 1771, came to this house, but was immediately taken home by his friend Boswell to James’s Court, where he lived during his stay in our city; his companion, the Polish ambassador, being accommodated with a bed by Dr John Gregory, in a neighbouring floor. An old gentleman of my acquaintance used to talk of having seen the Duke of Hamilton one day lounging in front of Ramsay’s inn, occasionally chatting with any gay or noble friend who passed. To one knowing the Edinburgh of the present day, nothing could seem more extravagant than the idea of such company at such places. I nevertheless find Ramsay, in 1776, advertising that, exclusive of some part of his premises recently offered for sale, he is ‘possessed of a good house of entertainment, good stables for above one hundred horses, and sheds for above twenty carriages.’ He retired from business about 1790 with £10,000.[149]

The modern White Horse was a place of larger and somewhat better accommodations, though still far from an equality with even the second-rate houses of the present day. Here also the rooms were directly over the stables.

It was almost a matter of course that Dr Johnson, on arriving in Edinburgh, August 17, 1773, should have come to the White Horse, which was then kept by a person of the name of Boyd. His note to Boswell informing him of this fact was as follows:

‘Saturday night.

‘Mr Johnson sends his compliments to Mr Boswell, being just arrived at Boyd’s.’

When Boswell came, he found his illustrious friend in a violent passion at the waiter for having sweetened his lemonade without the ceremony of a pair of sugar-tongs. Mr William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell, accompanied Johnson on this occasion; and he informs us, in a note to Croker’s edition of Boswell, that when he heard the mistress of the house styled, in Scotch fashion, Lucky, which he did not then understand, he thought she should rather have been styled Unlucky, for the doctor seemed as if he would destroy the house.[150]

{173}

James Boyd, the keeper of this inn, was addicted to horse-racing, and his victories on the turf, or rather on Leith sands, are frequently chronicled in the journals of that day. It is said that he was at one time on the brink of ruin, when he was saved by a lucky run with a white horse, which, in gratitude, he kept idle all the rest of its days, besides setting up its portrait as his sign. He eventually retired from this ‘dirty and dismal’ inn with a fortune of several thousand pounds; and, as a curious note upon the impression which its slovenliness conveyed to Dr Johnson, it may be stated as a fact, well authenticated, that at the time of his giving up the house he possessed napery to the value of five hundred pounds!

A large room in the White Horse was the frequent scene of the marriages of runaway English couples, at a time when these irregularities were permitted in Edinburgh. On one of the windows were scratched the words:

‘JEREMIAH and SARAH BENTHAM, 1768.’

Could this be the distinguished jurist and codificator, on a journey to Scotland in company with a female relation?[151]

{209}

MARLIN’S AND NIDDRY’S WYNDS.

Tradition of Marlin the Pavier—House of Provost Edward—Story of Lady Grange.

Where South Bridge Street now stands, there formerly existed two wynds, or alleys, of the better class, named Marlin’s and Niddry’s Wynds. Many persons of importance lived in these obscurities. Marlin’s Wynd, which extended from behind the Tron Church, and contained several bookshops and stalls, the favourite lounge of the lovers of old literature, was connected with a curious tradition, which existed at the time when Maitland wrote his History of Edinburgh (1753). It was said that the High Street was first paved or causewayed by one Marlin, a Frenchman, who, thinking that specimen of his ingenuity the best monument he could have, desired to be buried under it, and was accordingly interred at the head of this wynd, which derived its name from him. The tradition is so far countenanced by there having formerly been a space in the pavement at this spot, marked by six flat stones, in the shape of a grave. According, however, to more authentic information, the High Street was first paved in 1532 [176] by John and Bartoulme Foliot, who appear to have had nothing in common with this legendary Marlin, except country. The grave of at least Bartoulme Foliot is distinctly marked by a flat monument in the Chapel-Royal at Holyrood House. It is possible, nevertheless, that Marlin may have been the more immediate executor or superintendent of the work.

Niddry’s Wynd abounded in curious antique houses, many of which had been the residences of remarkable persons. The most interesting bit was a paved court, about half-way down, on the west side, called Lockhart’s Court, from its having latterly been the residence of the family of Lockhart of Carnwath.[177] This was,{210} in reality, a quadrangular palace, the whole being of elegant old architecture in one design, and accessible by a deep arched gateway. It was built by Nicol Edward, or Udward, who was provost of Edinburgh in 1591; a wealthy citizen, and styled in his writts, ‘of old descent in the burgh.’ On a mantelpiece within the house his arms were carved, along with an anagram upon his name:

VA D’UN VOL À CHRIST—

Go with one flight to Christ; which, the reader will find, can only be made out by Latinising his name into Nicholaus Eduartus. We learn from Moyses’s Memoirs that, in January 1591, this house was the temporary residence of James VI. and his queen, then recently arrived from Denmark; and that, on the 7th of February, the Earl of Huntly passed hence, out of the immediate royal presence, when he went to murder the Bonny Earl of Moray at Donibrissle; which caused a suspicion that His Majesty was concerned in that horrid outburst of feudal hate. Lockhart’s Court was latterly divided into several distinct habitations, one of which, on the north side of the quadrangle, was occupied by the family of Bruce of Kinnaird, the celebrated traveller. In the part on the south side, occupied by the Carnwath family, there was a mantelpiece in the drawing-room of magnificent workmanship, and reaching to the ceiling. The whole mansion, even in its reduced state, bore an appearance of security and strength which spoke of other times; and there was, moreover, a profound dungeon underground, which was only accessible by a secret trap-door, opening through the floor of a small closet, the most remote of a suite of rooms extending along the south and west sides of the court. Perhaps, at a time when to be rich was neither so{211} common nor so safe as now, Provost Edward might conceal his hoards in this massy more.

Alexander Black of Balbirney, who was provost of Edinburgh from 1579 to 1583, had a house at the head of the wynd. King James lodged in this house on the 18th of August 1584, and walked from it in state next day to hold a parliament in the Tolbooth. Here also lodged the Chancellor Thirlstain, in January 1591, while the king and queen were the guests of Nicol Edward.[178] It must be understood that these visits of royalty were less considered in the light of an honour than of a tax. The king in those times went to live at the board of a wealthy subject when his own table happened to be scantily furnished; which was too often the case with poor King James.

On the east side of the wynd, nearly opposite to Lockhart’s Court, was a good house,[179] which, early in the last century, was possessed by James Erskine of Grange, best known by his judicial title of Lord Grange, and the brother of John, Earl of Mar. This gentleman has acquired an unhappy notoriety in consequence of his treatment of his wife. He was externally a professor of ultra-evangelical views of religion, and a patron of the clergy on that side, yet in his private life is understood to have been far from exemplary. The story of Lady Grange, as Mrs Erskine was called, had a character of romance about it which has prevented it from being forgotten. It also reflects a curious light upon the state of manners in Scotland in the early part of the eighteenth century. The lady was a daughter of that Chiesly of Dalry whom we have already seen led by an insane violence of temper to commit one of the most atrocious of murders.

STORY OF LADY GRANGE.[180]

Lord and Lady Grange had been married upwards of twenty years, and had had several children, when, in 1730, a separation{212} was determined on between them. It is usually difficult in such cases to say in what degree the parties are respectively blamable; how far there have been positive faults on one side, and want of forbearance on the other, and so forth. If we were to believe the lady in this instance, there had been love and peace for twenty years, when at length Lord Grange took a sudden dislike to his wife, and would no longer live with her. He, on the other hand, speaks of having suffered long from her ‘unsubduable rage and madness,’ and of having failed in all his efforts to bring her to a reasonable conduct. There is too much reason to believe that the latter statement is in the main true; although, were it more so, it would still leave Lord Grange unjustifiable in the measures which he took with respect to his wife. It is traditionally stated that in their unhappy quarrels the lady did not scruple to remind her husband whose daughter she was—thus hinting at what she was capable of doing if she thought herself deeply aggrieved. However all this might be, in the year 1730 a separation was agreed to (with great reluctance on the part of the lady), his lordship consenting to give her a hundred a year for her maintenance so long as she should continue to live apart from him.

After spending some months in the country, Lady Grange returned to Edinburgh, and took a lodging near her husband’s house, for the purpose, as she tells us, of endeavouring to induce him to take her back, and that she might occasionally see her children. According to Lord Grange, she began to torment him by following him and the children on the street ‘in a scandalous and shameful manner,’ and coming to his house, and calling reproaches to him through the windows,[181] especially when there was company with him. He thus writes: ‘In his house, at the bottom of Niddry’s Wynd, where there is a court through which one enters the house, one time among others, when it was full of chairs, chairmen, and footmen, who attended the company that were with himself, or his sister Lady Jane Paterson, then keeping house together, she came into this court, and among that mob shamelessly{213} cried up to the windows injurious reproaches, and would not go away, though entreated, till, hearing the late Lord Lovat’s voice, who was visiting Mr E——, and seeing two of his servants among the other footmen, “Oh,” said she, “is your master here?” and instantly ran off.’ He speaks of her having attacked him one day in church; at another time she forced him to take refuge with his son in a tavern for two hours. She even threatened to assault him on the bench, ‘which he every day expected; for she professed that she had no shame.’

The traditionary account of Lady Grange represents her fate as having been at last decided by her threatening to expose her husband to the government for certain treasonable practices. It would now appear that this was partially true. In his statement, Lord Grange tells us that he had some time before gone to London to arrange the private affairs of the Countess of Mar, then become unable to conduct them herself, and he had sent an account of his procedure to his wife, including some reflections on a certain great minister (doubtless Walpole), who had thwarted him much, and been of serious detriment to the interests of his family in this matter. This document she retained, and she now threatened to take it to London and use it for her husband’s disadvantage, being supported in the design by several persons with whom she associated. While denying that he had been concerned in anything treasonable, Lord Grange says, ‘he had already too great a load of that great minister’s wrath on his back to stand still and see more of it fall upon him by the treachery and madness of such a wife and such worthy confederates.’ The lady had taken a seat in a stage-coach for London.[182] Lord Grange caused a friend to go and make interest to get her money returned, and the seat let to another person; in which odd proceeding he was successful. Thus was the journey stayed for the meantime; but the lady declared her resolution to go as soon as possible. ‘What,’ says Lord Grange, ‘could a man do with such a wife? There was great reason to think she would daily go on to do mischief to her family, and to affront and bring a blot on her children, especially her daughters. There were things that could not be redressed in a court of justice, and we had not then a madhouse to lock such unhappy people up in.’

{214}

The result of his lordship’s deliberations was a plan for what he calls ‘sequestrating’ his wife. It appears to have been concerted between himself and a number of Highland chiefs, including, above all, the notorious Lord Lovat.[183] We now turn to the lady’s narrative, which proceeds to tell that, on the evening of the 22nd of January 1732, a party of Highlandmen, wearing the livery of Lord Lovat, made their way into her lodgings, and forcibly seized her, throwing her down and gagging her, then tying a cloth over her head, and carrying her off as if she had been a corpse. At the bottom of the stair was a chair containing a man, who took the hapless lady upon his knees, and held her fast in his arms till they had got to a place in the outskirts of the town. Then they took her from the chair, removed the cloth from her head, and mounted her upon a horse behind a man, to whom she was tied; after which the party rode off ‘by the lee light of the moon,’ to quote the language of the old ballads, whose incidents the present resembles in character.

The treatment of the lady by the way was, if we can believe her own account, by no means gentle. The leader, although a gentleman (Mr Forster of Corsebonny), disregarded her entreaties to be allowed to stop on account of cramp in her side, and only answered by ordering a servant to renew the bandages over her mouth. She observed that they rode along the Long Way (where Princes Street now stands), past the Castle, and so to the Linlithgow road. After a ride of nearly twenty miles, they stopped at Muiravonside, the house of Mr John Macleod, advocate, where servants appeared waiting to receive the lady—and thus showed that the master of the house had been engaged to aid in her abduction. She was taken upstairs to a comfortable bedroom; but a man being posted in the room as a guard, she could not go to bed nor take any repose. Thus she spent the ensuing day, and when it was night, she was taken out and remounted in the same fashion as before; and the party then rode along through the Torwood, and so to the place called Wester Polmaise, belonging to a gentleman of the{215} name of Stewart, whose steward or factor was one of the cavalcade. Here was an old tower, having one little room on each floor, as is usually the case in such buildings; and into one of these rooms, the window of which was boarded over, the lady was conducted. She continued here for thirteen or fourteen weeks, supplied with a sufficiency of the comforts of life, but never allowed to go into the open air; till at length her health gave way, and the factor began to fear being concerned in her death. By his intercession with Mr Forster, she was then permitted to go into the court, under a guard; but such was the rigour of her keepers that the garden was still denied to her.

THE CASTLE
from Princes Street.

Page 214.

Thus time passed drearily on until the month of August, during all which time the prisoner had no communication with the external world. At length, by an arrangement made between Lord Lovat and Mr Forster, at the house of the latter, near Stirling, Lady Grange was one night forcibly brought out, and mounted again as formerly, and carried off amidst a guard of horsemen. She recognised several of Lovat’s people in this troop, and found Forster once more in command. They passed by Stirling Bridge, and thence onward to the Highlands; but she no longer knew the way they were going. Before daylight they stopped at a house, where she was lodged during the day, and at night the march was resumed. Thus they journeyed for several days into the Highlands, never allowing the unfortunate lady to speak, and taking the most rigid care to prevent any one from becoming aware of her situation. During this time she never had off her clothes: one day she slept in a barn, another in an open enclosure. Regard to delicacy in such a case was impossible. After a fortnight spent at a house on Lord Lovat’s ground (probably in Stratherrick, Inverness-shire), the journey was renewed in the same style as before; only Mr Forster had retired from the party, and the lady found herself entirely in the hands of Frasers.

They now crossed a loch into Glengarry’s land, where they lodged several nights in cow-houses or in the open air, making progress all the time to the westward, where the country becomes extremely wild. At Lochourn, an arm of the sea on the west coast, the unfortunate lady was transferred to a small vessel which was in waiting for her. Bitterly did she weep, and pitifully implore compassion; but the Highlanders understood not her language; and though they had done so, a departure from the orders which had been given them was not to be expected from men of their character. In the vessel, she found that she was in{216} the custody of one Alexander Macdonald, a tenant of one of the Western Islands named Heskir, belonging to Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat; and here we have a curious indication of the spirit in which the Highlanders conducted such transactions. ‘I told him,’ says the lady, ‘that I was stolen at Edinburgh, and brought there by force, and that it was contrary to the laws what they were doing. He answered that he would not keep me, or any other, against their will, except Sir Alexander Macdonald were in the affair.’ While they lay in Lochourn, waiting for a wind, the brother and son of Macdonald of Scothouse came to see but not to relieve her. Other persons visited the sloop, and among these one William Tolmy, a tenant of the chief of Macleod, and who had once been a merchant at Inverness. This was the first person she had seen who expressed any sympathy with her. He undertook to bear information of her retreat to her friend and ‘man of business,’ Mr Hope of Rankeillor, in Edinburgh; but it does not appear that he fulfilled his promise.

Lady Grange remained in Macdonald’s charge at Heskir nearly two years—during the first year without once seeing bread, and with no supply of clothing; obliged, in fact, to live in the same miserable way as the rest of the family; afterwards some little indulgence was shown to her. This island was of desolate aspect, and had no inhabitant besides Macdonald and his wife. The wretchedness of such a situation for a lady who had been all her life accustomed to the refined society of a capital may of course be imagined. Macdonald would never allow her to write to any one; but he went to his landlord, Sir Alexander, to plead for the indulgences she required. On one of these occasions, Sir Alexander expressed his regret at having been concerned in such an affair, and wished he were quit of it. The wonder is how Erskine should have induced all these men to interest themselves in the ‘sequestration’ of his wife. One thing is here remarkable: they were all of them friends of the Stuart family, as was Macleod of Macleod, into whose hands the lady subsequently fell. It therefore becomes probable that Erskine had at least convinced them that her seclusion from the world was necessary in some way for the preservation of political secrets important to them.

In June 1734 a sloop came to Heskir to take away the lady; it was commanded by a Macleod, and in it she was conveyed to the remotest spot of ground connected with the British Islands—namely, the isle of St Kilda, the property of the chief of Macleod, and remarkable for the simple character of the poor peasantry{217} who occupy it. There cannot, of course, be a doubt that those who had an interest in the seclusion of Lady Grange regarded this as a more eligible place than Heskir, in as far as it was more out of the way, and promised better for her complete and permanent confinement. In some respects it was an advantageous change for the lady: the place was not uninhabited, as Heskir very nearly was; and her domestic accommodation was better. In St Kilda, she was placed in a house or cottage of two small apartments, tolerably well furnished, with a girl to wait upon her, and provided with a sufficiency of good food and clothing. Of educated persons the island contained not one, except for a short time a Highland Presbyterian clergyman, named Roderick Maclennan. There was hardly even a person capable of speaking or understanding the English language within reach. No books, no intelligence from the world in which she had once lived. Only once a year did a steward come to collect the rent paid in kind by the poor people; and by him was the lady regularly furnished with a store of such articles, foreign to the place, as she needed—usually a stone of sugar, a pound of tea, six pecks of wheat, and an anker of spirits.[184] Thus she had no lack of the common necessaries of life; she only wanted society and freedom. In this way she spent seven dreary years in St Kilda. How she contrived to pass her time is not known. We learn, however, some particulars of her history during this period from the testimony of those who had a charge over her. If this is to be believed, she made incessant efforts, though without effect, to bribe the islanders to assist in liberating her. Once a stray vessel sent a boat ashore for water; she no sooner heard of it than she despatched the minister’s wife to apprise the sailors of her situation, and entreat them to rescue her; but Mrs Maclennan did not reach the spot till after they had departed. She was kind to the peasantry, giving them from her own stores, and sometimes had the women to come and dance before her; but her temper and habits were not such as to gain their esteem. Often she drank too much; and whenever any one near her committed the slightest mistake, she would fly into a furious passion, and even resort to violence. Once she was detected in an attempt, during the night, to obtain a pistol from above the steward’s bed, in the room next to her own. On his awaking and seeing her, she ran off to her own bed. One is disposed, of course, to make all possible allowances for a person in her wretched circumstances; yet there can be little{218} doubt, from the evidence before us, that it was a natural and habitual violence of temper which displayed itself during her residence in St Kilda.

Meanwhile it was known in Edinburgh that Lady Grange had been forcibly carried away and placed in seclusion by orders of her husband; but her whereabouts was a mystery to all besides a few who were concerned to keep it secret. During the years which had elapsed since her abduction, Mr Erskine had given up his seat on the bench, and entered into political life as a friend of the Prince of Wales and opponent of Sir Robert Walpole. The world had wondered at the events of his domestic life, and several persons denounced the singular means he had adopted for obtaining domestic peace. But, in the main, he stood as well with society as he had ever done. At length, in the winter of 1740-41, a communication from Lady Grange for the first time reached her friends. It was brought by the minister Maclennan and his wife, who had left the island in discontent, after quarrelling with Macleod’s steward. The idea of a lady by birth and education being immured for a series of years in an outlandish place where only the most illiterate peasantry resided, and this by the command of a husband who could only complain of her irritable temper, struck forcibly upon public feeling, and particularly upon the mind of Lady Grange’s legal agent, Mr Hope of Rankeillor, who had all along felt a keen interest in her fate. Of Mr Hope it may be remarked that he was also a zealous Jacobite; yet, though all the persons engaged in the lady’s abduction were of that party, he hesitated not to take active measures on the contrary side. He immediately applied to the Lord Justice-clerk (supreme criminal judge) for a warrant to search for and liberate Lady Grange. This application was opposed by the friends of Mr Erskine, and eventually it was defeated; yet he was not on that account deterred from hiring a vessel, and sending it with armed men to secure the freedom of the lady—a step which, as it was illegal and dangerous, obviously implied no small risk on his own part. This ship proceeded no farther than the harbour called the Horse-shoe, in Lorn (opposite to the modern town of Oban), where the master quarrelled with and set on shore Mrs Maclennan, his guide. Apparently the voyage was not prosecuted in consequence of intelligence being received that the lady had been removed to another place, where she was kept in more humane circumstances. If so, its object might be considered as in part at least, though indirectly, accomplished.

{219}

I have seen a warrant, signed in the holograph of Normand Macleod—the same insular chief who, a few years after, lost public respect in consequence of his desertion of the Jacobite cause, and showing an active hostility to Prince Charles when in hiding. The document is dated at Dunvegan, February 17, 1741, and proceeds upon a rumour which has reached the writer that a certain gentlewoman, called Lady Grange, was carried to his isle of St Kilda in 1734, and has ever since been confined there under cruel circumstances. Regarding this as a scandal which he is bound to inquire into (as if it could have hitherto been a secret to him), he orders his baron-bailie of Harris, Donald Macleod of Bernera (this was a gallant fellow who went out in the ’Forty-five), to proceed to that island and make the necessary investigations. I have also seen the original precognition taken by honest Donald six days thereafter, when the various persons who had been about Lady Grange gave evidence respecting her. The general bearing of this testimony, besides establishing the fact of her confinement as a prisoner, is to the effect that she was treated well in all other respects, having a house forty feet long, with an inner room and a chimney to it, a curtained bed, arm-chair, table, and other articles; ample store of good provisions, including spirits; and plenty of good clothes; but that she was addicted to liquor, and liable to dreadful outbreaks of anger. Evidence was at the same time taken regarding the character of the Maclennans, upon whose reports Mr Hope had proceeded. It was Mr Erskine’s interest to establish that they were worthless persons, and to this effect strong testimony was given by several of the islanders, though it would be difficult to say with what degree of verity. The whole purpose of these precognitions was to meet the clamours raised by Mr Hope as to the barbarities to which Lady Grange had been subjected. They had the effect of stopping for a time the legal proceedings threatened by that gentleman; but he afterwards raised an action in the Court of Session for payment of the arrears of aliment or allowance due to the lady, amounting to £1150, and obtained decreet or judgment in the year 1743 against the defender in absence, though he did not choose to put it in force.

The unfortunate cause of all these proceedings ceased to be a trouble to any one in May 1745. Erskine, writing from Westminster, June 1, in answer to an intimation of her death, says: ‘I most heartily thank you, my dear friend, for the timely notice{220} you gave me of the death of that person. It would be a ridiculous untruth to pretend grief for it; but as it brings to my mind a train of various things for many years back, it gives me concern. Her retaining wit and facetiousness to the last surprises me. These qualities none found in her, no more than common-sense or good-nature, before she went to these parts; and of the reverse of all which, if she had not been irrecoverably possest, in an extraordinary and insufferable degree, after many years’ fruitless endeavours to reclaim her, she had never seen these parts. I long for the particulars of her death, which, you are pleased to tell me, I am to have by next post.’

Mr Hope’s wife and daughters being left as heirs of Lady Grange, an action was raised in their name for the £1150 formerly awarded, and for three years additional of her annuity; and for this compound sum decreet was obtained, which was followed by steps for forcing payment. The Hopes were aware, however, of the dubious character of this claim, seeing that Mr Erskine, from whatever causes, had substituted an actual subsistence since 1732. They accordingly intimated that they aimed at no personal benefit from Lady Grange’s bequest; and the affair terminated in Mr Erskine reimbursing Mr Hope for all the expenses he had incurred on behalf of the lady, including that for the sloop which he had hired to proceed to St Kilda for her rescue.

It is humbly thought that this story casts a curious and faithful light upon the age of our grandfathers, showing things in a kind of transition from the sanguinary violence of an earlier age to the humanity of the present times. Erskine, not to speak of his office of a judge in Scotland, moved in English society of the highest character. He must have been the friend of Lyttelton, Pope, Thomson, and other ornaments of Frederick’s court; and as the brother-in-law of the Countess of Mar, who was sister of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he would figure in the brilliant circle which surrounded that star of the age of the second George. Yet he does not appear to have ever felt a moment’s compunction at leaving the mother of his children to pine and fret herself to death in a half-savage wilderness—

‘Placed far amidst the melancholy main;’

for in a paper which expresses his feelings on the subject pretty freely, he justifies the ‘sequestration’ as a step required by prudence and decency; and in showing that the gross necessaries{221} of life were afforded to his wife, seems to have considered that his whole duty towards her was discharged. Such an insensibility could not be peculiar to one man: it indicates the temper of a class and of an age. While congratulating ourselves on the improved humanity of our own times, we may glance with satisfaction to the means which it places in our power for the proper treatment of patients like Mrs Erskine. Such a woman would now be regarded as the unfortunate victim of disease, and instead of being forcibly carried off under cloud of night by a band of Highlanders, and committed to confinement on the outskirts of the world, she would, with proper precautions, be remitted to an asylum, where, by gentle and rational management, it might be hoped that she would be restored to mental health, or, at the worst, enabled to spend the remainder of her days in the utmost comfort which her state admitted of.

[1868.—About the middle of Cant’s Close,[185] on the west side, there exists a remarkable edifice, different from all others in the neighbourhood. It is two stories in height, the second story being reached by an outside stone stair within a small courtyard, which had originally been shut in by a gate. The stone pillars of the gateway are decorated with balls at the top, as was the fashion of entrances to the grounds of a country mansion. The building is picturesque in character, in the style of the sixteenth century in Scotland. As it resembles a neat, old-fashioned country-house, one wonders to find it jammed up amidst tall edifices in this confined alley. Ascending the stair, we find that the interior consists of three or four apartments,{222} with handsome panelled walls and elaborately carved stucco ceilings. The principal room has a double window on the west to Dickson’s Close.[186]

Old Mansion, Cant’s Close.

Daniel Wilson, in his Memorials of Edinburgh, speaks of this building in reference to Dickson’s Close. He says: ‘A little lower down the close on the same side, an old and curious stone tenement bears on its lower crow-step the Haliburton arms, impaled with another coat, on one shield. It is a singularly antique and time-worn edifice, evidently of considerable antiquity. A curious double window projects on a corbelled base into the close, while the whole stone-work is so much decayed as greatly to add to its picturesque character. In the earliest deed which exists, bearing date 1582, its first proprietor, Master James Halyburton—a title then of some meaning—is spoken of in indefinite terms as umq^le, or deceased; so that it is a building probably of the early part of the sixteenth century.’ It is known that the adjoining properties on the north once pertained to the collegiate church of Crichton; while those on the east, in Strichen’s Close, comprehended the town residence of the Abbot of Melrose, 1526.

The adjoining woodcut [p. 221] will give some idea of this strange old mansion in Cant’s Close, with its gateway and flight of steps. In looking over the titles, we find that the tenement was conveyed in 1735 from Robert Geddes of Scotstoun, Peeblesshire, to George Wight, a burgess of Edinburgh, since which period it has gradually deteriorated; every apartment, from the ground to the garret, is now a dwelling for a separate family; and the whole surroundings are most wretched. The edifice formed one of the properties removed under the Improvement Act of 1867.]

{228}

BLACKFRIARS WYND.

Palace of Archbishop Bethune—Boarding-schools of the Last Century—The Last of the Lorimers—Lady Lovat.

Those who now look into Blackfriars Wynd—passing through it is out of the question—will be surprised to learn that, all dismal and wretched as it is in all respects, it was once a place of some respectability and even dignity. On several of its tall old lands may be seen inscriptions implying piety on the part of the founder—one, for example:

PAX INTRANTIBUS,
SALUS EXEUNTIBUS;

another:

MISERERE MEI, DEUS;

this last containing in its upper floor all that the adherents of Rome had forty years ago as a place of worship in Edinburgh—the chapel to which, therefore, as a matter of course, the late Charles X. resorted with his suite, when residing as Comte d’Artois in Holyrood House. The alley gets its name from having been the access to the Blackfriars’ Monastery on the opposite slope, and being built on their land.

PALACE OF ARCHBISHOP BETHUNE [OR BEATON].

At the foot of the wynd, on the east side, is a large mansion of antique appearance, forming two sides of a quadrangle, with a porte-cochère giving access to a court behind, and a picturesque overhanging turret at the exterior angle.[193] This house was built by James Bethune, Archbishop of Glasgow (1508-1524), chancellor of the kingdom, and one of the Lords Regent under the Duke of Albany during the minority of James V. Lyndsay, in his Chronicles, speaks of it as ‘his owen ludging quhilk he biggit in the Freiris Wynd.’ Keith, at a later period, says: ‘Over the entry of which the arms of the family of Bethune are to be seen to this day.’ Common report represents it as the house of Cardinal Bethune, who was the nephew of the Archbishop of{229} Glasgow; and it is not improbable that the one prelate bequeathed it to the other, and that it thus became what Maitland calls it, ‘the archiepiscopal palace belonging to the see of St Andrews.’

BLACKFRIARS’ WYND.

Page 228.

Cardinal Bethune’s House.

The ground-floor of this extensive building is arched over with strong stone-work, after the fashion of those houses of defence of the same period which are still scattered over the country. Some years ago, when one of the arches was removed to make way for a common ceiling, a thick layer of sand, firmly beaten down, was found between the surface of the vault and the floor above. Ground-floors thus formed were applied in former times to inferior domestic uses, and to the storing of articles of value. The chief apartments for living in were on the floor above—that is, the so-called first floor. And such is the case in all the best houses of an old fashion in the city of St Andrews at this day.

I shall afterwards have something to say of an event of the year 1517, with which Archbishop Bethune’s house was connected. It appears to have been occupied by James V. in 1528, while he was deliberating on the propriety of calling a parliament.[194]

The Bethune palace is now, like its confrères, abandoned to the humblest class of tenants. Eighty years ago, however, it must still have been a tolerably good house, as it was then the residence of Bishop Abernethy Drummond, of the Scottish Episcopal communion, the husband of the heiress of Hawthornden. This worthy{230} divine occupied some space in the public eye in his day, and was particularly active in obtaining the repeal of the penal statutes against his church. Some wag, figuring the surprise in high places at a stir arising from a quarter so obscure, penned this epigram:

‘Lord Sydney, to the privy-council summoned,

By testy majesty was questioned quick:

“Eh, eh! who, who’s this Abernethy Drummond,

And where, in Heaven’s name, is his bishopric?”’

BOARDING-SCHOOLS OF THE LAST CENTURY.

When the reader hears such things of the Freir Wynd, he must not be surprised overmuch on perusing the following advertisement from the Edinburgh Gazette of April 19, 1703: ‘There is a Boarding-school to be set up in Blackfriars Wynd, in Robinson’s Land, upon the west side of the wynd, near the middle thereof, in the first door of the stair leading to the said land, against the latter end of May, or first of June next, where young Ladies and Gentlewomen may have all sorts of breeding that is to be had in any part of Britain, and great care taken of their conversation.’

I know not whether this was the same seminary which, towards the middle of the century, was kept by a distinguished lady named Mrs Euphame or Effie Sinclair, who was descended from the ancient family of Longformacus, in Berwickshire, being the granddaughter of Sir Robert Sinclair, first baronet of Longformacus, upon whom that dignity was conferred by King Charles II., in consideration of his services and losses during the civil war. Mrs Effie was allied to many of the best families in Scotland, who made it a duty to place their children under her charge; and her school was thus one of the most respectable in Edinburgh. By her were educated the beautiful Miss Duff, afterwards Countess of Dumfries and Stair, and, by a second marriage, lady of the Honourable Alexander Gordon (Lord Rockville); the late amiable and excellently well informed Mrs Keith, sister of Sir Robert Keith, commonly called, from his diplomatic services, Ambassador Keith;[195]{231} the two Misses Hume of Linthill; and Miss Rutherford, the mother of Sir Walter Scott. All these ladies were Scottish cousins to Mrs Effie. To judge by the proficiency of her scholars, although much of what is called accomplishment might be then left untaught, she must have been possessed of uncommon talents for education; for all the ladies before mentioned had well-cultivated minds, were fond of reading, wrote and spelled admirably, were well acquainted with history and with belles-lettres, without neglecting the more homely duties of the needle and the account-book; and, while two of them were women of extraordinary talents, all of them were perfectly well-bred in society.

It may be added that many of these young ladies were sent to reside with and be finished off by the Honourable Mrs Ogilvie, lady of the Honourable Patrick Ogilvie of Longmay and Inchmartin, who was supposed to be the best-bred woman of her time in Scotland (ob. 1753). Her system was very rigorous, according to the spirit of the times. The young ladies were taught to sit quite upright; and the mother of my informant (Sir Walter Scott), even when advanced to nearly her eightieth year, never permitted her back to touch the chair in sitting. There is a remarkably good and characteristic anecdote told of the husband of this rigorous preceptress, a younger brother of the Earl of Findlater, whose exertions, while Lord High-chancellor of Scotland, in favour of the Union were so conspicuous. The younger brother, it appears, had condescended to trade a little in cattle, which was not considered derogatory to the dignity of a Scottish gentleman at that time, and was by no means an uncommon practice among them. However, the earl was offended at the measure, and upbraided his brother for it. ‘Haud your tongue, man!’ said the cattle-dealer;{232} ‘better sell nowte than sell nations,’ pronouncing the last word with peculiar and emphatic breadth.

I am tempted, by the curious and valuable document appended, to suspect that the female accomplishments of the last century were little behind those of the present in point of useless elaboration.

‘Thursday, December 9, 1703.—Near Dundee, at Dudhope, there is to be taught, by a gentlewoman from London, the following works, viz.—1. Wax-work of all sorts, as any one’s picture to the life, figures in shadow glasses, fruits upon trees or in dishes, all manner of confections, fish, flesh, fowl, or anything that can be made of wax.—2. Philligrim-work of any sort, whether hollow or flat.—3. Japan-work upon timber or glass.—4. Painting upon glass.—5. Sashes for windows, upon sarsnet or transparent paper.—6. Straw-work of any sort, as houses, birds, or beasts.—7. Shell-work, in sconces, rocks, or flowers.—8. Quill-work.—9. Gum-work.—10. Transparent-work.—11. Puff-work.—12. Paper-work.—13. Plate-work on timber, brass, or glass.—14. Tortoise-shell-work.—15. Mould-work, boxes and baskets.—16. Silver landskips.—17. Gimp-work.—18. Bugle-work.—19. A sort of work in imitation of japan, very cheap.—20. Embroidering, stitching, and quilting.—21. True point or tape lace.—22. Cutting glass.—23. Washing gauzes, or Flanders lace and point.—24. Pastry of all sorts, with the finest cuts and shapes that’s now used in London.—25. Boning fowls, without cutting the back.—26. Butter-work.—27. Preserving, conserving, and candying.—28. Pickling and colouring.—29. All sorts of English wines.—30. Writing and arithmetic.—31. Music, and the great end of dancing, which is a good carriage; and several other things too tedious here to be mentioned. Any who are desirous to learn the above works may board with herself at a reasonable rate, or may board themselves in Dundee, and may come to her quarterly.’—Advertisement in Edinburgh Gazette, 1703.

‘The great end of dancing.’

Another distinguished Edinburgh boarding-school of the last century was kept by two ladies, of Jacobite predilections, named the Misses Ged, in Paterson’s Court, Lawnmarket. They were remarkable at least for their family connections, for it was a brother of theirs who, under the name of Don Patricio Ged, rendered such kindly and effective service to Commodore Byron, as gratefully recorded in the well-known Narrative, and gracefully touched on by Campbell in the Pleasures of Hope:

{233}

‘He found a warmer world, a milder clime,

A home to rest, a shelter to defend,

Peace and repose, a Briton and a friend.’

Another member of the family, William Ged, originally a goldsmith in Edinburgh, was the inventor of stereotype printing. The Misses Ged were described by their friends as of the Geds of Baldridge, near Dunfermline; thorough Fife Jacobites every one of them. The old ladies kept a portrait of the Chevalier in their parlour, and looked chiefly to partisans of the Stuarts for support. They had another relative of less dignity, who, accepting a situation in the Town-guard, became liable to satiric reference from Robert Fergusson:

‘Nunc est bibendum, et bendere bickerum magnum,

Cavete Town-guardum, Dougal Geddum, atque Campbellum.’

Dougal had been a silversmith, but in his own conceit his red coat as a Town-guard officer made him completely military. Seeing a lady without a beau at the door of the Assembly Room, he offered his services, ‘if the arm of an old soldier could be of any use.’ ‘Hoot awa, Dougal,’ said the lady, accepting his assistance, however; ‘an auld tinkler, you mean.’

THE LAST OF THE LORIMERS.

To return for a moment to the archiepiscopal palace. It contained, about eighty years ago, a person calling himself a Lorimer—an appellative once familiar in Edinburgh, being applied to those who deal in the ironwork used in saddlery.[196]

{234}

LADY LOVAT.

The widow of the rebel Lord Lovat spent a great portion of a long widowhood and died (1796) in a house at the head of Blackfriars Wynd.

Her ladyship was a niece of the first Duke of Argyll, and born, as she herself expressed it, in the year Ten—that is, 1710. The politic Mac Shemus[197] marked her out as a suitable second wife, in consideration of the value of the Argyll connection. As he was above thirty years her senior, and not famed for the tenderest treatment of his former spouse, or for any other amiable trait of disposition, she endeavoured, by all gentle means, to avoid the match; but it was at length effected through the intervention of her relations, and she was carried north to take her place in the semi-barbarous state which her husband held at Castle Downie.

Nothing but misery could have been expected from such an alliance. The poor young lady, while treated with external decorum, was in private subjected to such usage as might have tried the spirit of a Griselda. She was occasionally kept confined in a room by herself, from which she was not allowed to come forth even at meals, only a scanty supply of coarse food being sent to her from his lordship’s table. When pregnant, her husband coolly told her that if she brought forth a girl he would put it on the back of the fire. His eldest son by the former marriage was a sickly child. Lovat therefore deemed it necessary to raise a strong motive in the step-mother for the child being taken due care of during his absence in the Lowlands. On going from home, he would calmly inform her that any harm{235} befalling the boys in his absence would be attended with the penalty of her own death, for in that event he would undoubtedly shoot her through the head. It is added that she did, from this in addition to other motives, take an unusual degree of care of her step-son, who ever after felt towards her the tenderest love and gratitude. One is disposed to believe that there must be some exaggeration in these stories; and yet when we consider that it is an historical fact that Lovat applied to Prince Charles for a warrant to take President Forbes dead or alive (Forbes being his friend and daily intimate), it seems no extravagance that he should have acted in this manner to his wife. Sir Walter Scott tells an additional story, which helps out the picture. ‘A lady, the intimate friend of her youth, was instructed to visit Lady Lovat, as if by accident, to ascertain the truth of those rumours concerning her husband’s conduct which had reached the ears of her family. She was received by Lord Lovat with an extravagant affectation of welcome, and with many assurances of the happiness his lady would receive from seeing her. The chief then went to the lonely tower in which Lady Lovat was secluded, without decent clothes, and even without sufficient nourishment. He laid a dress before her becoming her rank, commanded her to put it on, to appear, and to receive her friend as if she were the mistress of the house; in which she was, in fact, a naked and half-starved prisoner. And such was the strict watch which he maintained, and the terror which his character inspired, that the visitor durst not ask, nor Lady Lovat communicate, anything respecting her real situation.’[198] Afterwards, by a letter rolled up in a clew of yarn and dropped over a window to a confidential person, she was enabled to let her friends know how matters actually stood; and steps were then taken to obtain her separation from her husband. When, some years later, his political perfidy had brought him to the Tower—forgetting all past injuries, and thinking only of her duty as a wife, Lady Lovat offered to come to London to attend him. He returned an answer, declining the proposal, and containing the only expressions of kindness and regard which she had ever received from him since her marriage.

The singular character of Lord Lovat makes almost every particular regarding him worth collecting.

Previous to 1745, when the late Mr Alexander Baillie of Dochfour was a student at the grammar-school of Inverness,{236} cock-fights were very common among the boys. This detestable sport, by the way, was encouraged by the schoolmasters of those days, who derived a profit from the beaten cocks, or, as they were called, fugies, which became, at the end of every game, their appropriated perquisite. In pursuit of cocks, Mr Baillie went to visit his friends in the Aird, and in the course of his researches was introduced to Lord Lovat, whose policy it was, on all occasions, to show great attentions to his neighbours and their children. The situation in which his lordship was found by the schoolboy was, if not quite unprecedented, nevertheless rather surprising. He was stretched out in bed between two Highland lasses, who, on being seen, affected out of modesty to hide their faces under the bedclothes. The old lord accounted for this strange scene by saying that his blood had become cold, and he was obliged to supply the want of heat by the application of animal warmth.

It is said that he lay in bed for the most part of the two years preceding the Rebellion; till, hearing of Prince Charles’s arrival in Arisaig, he roused himself with sudden vehemence, crying to an attendant: ‘Lassie, bring me my brogues—I’ll rise noo!’

One of his odd fancies was to send a retainer every day to Loch Ness, a distance of eight miles, for the water he drank.

His intimacy with his neighbour President Forbes is an amusing affair, for the men must have secretly known full well what each other was, and yet policy made them keep on decent terms for a long course of years. Lovat’s son by the subject of this notice—the Honourable Archibald Campbell Fraser—was a boy at Petty school in 1745. The President sometimes invited him to dinner. One day, pulling a handful of foreign gold pieces out of his pocket, he carelessly asked the boy if he had ever seen such coins before. Here was a stroke worthy of Lovat himself, for undoubtedly he meant thus to be informed whether the lord of Castle Downie was accustomed to get remittances for the Chevalier’s cause from abroad.

After the death of Lord Lovat, there arose some demur about his lady’s jointure, which was only £190 per annum. It was not paid to her for several years, during which, being destitute of other resources, she lived with one of her sisters. Some of her numerous friends—among the rest, Lord Strichen—offered her the loan of money to purchase a house and suffice for present maintenance. But she did not choose to encumber herself with debts which she had no certain prospect of repaying. At length the{237} dispute about her jointure was settled in a favourable manner, and her ladyship received in a lump the amount of past dues, out of which she expended £500 in purchasing a house at the head of Blackfriars Wynd,[199] and a further sum upon a suite of plain substantial furniture.

It would surprise a modern dowager to know how much good Lady Lovat contrived to do amongst her fellow-creatures with this small allowance. It is said that the succeeding Lady of Lovat, with a jointure of £4000, was less distinguished for her benefactions. In Lady Lovat’s dusky mansion, with a waiting-maid, cook, and footboy, she not only maintained herself in the style of a gentlewoman, but could welcome every kind of Highland cousin to a plain but hospitable board, and even afford permanent shelter to several unfortunate friends. A certain Lady Dorothy Primrose, who was her niece, lived with her for several years, using the best portion of her house, namely, the rooms fronting the High Street, while she herself was contented with the duller apartments towards the wynd. There was another desolate old person, styled Mistress of Elphinstone, whom Lady Lovat supported as a friend and equal for many years. Not by habit a card-player herself, she would make up a whist-party every week for the benefit of the Mistress. At length the poor Mistress came to a sad fate. A wicked, perhaps half-crazy boy, grandson to her ladyship, having taken an antipathy to his venerable relative, put poison into the oatmeal porridge which she was accustomed to take at supper. Feeling unwell that night, she did not eat any, and the Mistress took the porridge instead, of which she died. The boy was sent away, and died in obscurity.

An unostentatious but sincere piety marked the character of Lady Lovat. Perhaps her notions of Providence were carried to the verge of a kind of fatalism; for not merely did she receive all crosses and troubles as trials arranged for her benefit by a Higher Hand, but when a neighbouring house on one occasion took fire, she sat unmoved in her own mansion, notwithstanding the entreaties of the magistrates, who ordered a sedan to be brought for her removal. She said if her hour was come, it would be vain to try to elude her fate; and if it was not come, she would be safe where she was. She had a conscientiousness almost ludicrously nice. If detained from church on any occasion, she always doubled her usual oblation at the plate next time. When her{238} chimney took fire, she sent her fine to the Town-guard before they knew the circumstance. Even the tax-collector experienced her ultra-rectitude. When he came to examine her windows, she took him to a closet lighted by a single pane, looking into a narrow passage between two houses. He hesitated about charging for such a small modicum of light, but her ladyship insisted on his taking note of it.[200]

Lady Lovat was of small stature, had been thought a beauty, and retained in advanced old age much of her youthful delicacy of features and complexion. Her countenance bore a remarkably sweet and pleasing expression. When at home, her dress was a red silk gown, with ruffled cuffs, and sleeves puckered like a man’s shirt; a fly-cap, encircling the head, with a mob-cap laid across it, falling down over the cheeks, and tied under the chin; her hair dressed and powdered; a double muslin handkerchief round the neck and bosom; lammer-beads; a white lawn apron, edged with lace; black stockings with red gushets; high-heeled shoes.[201] She usually went abroad in a chair, as I have been informed by the daughter of a lady who was one of the first inhabitants of the New Town, and whom Lady Lovat regularly visited there once every three months. As her chair emerged from the head of Blackfriars Wynd, any one who saw her sitting in it, so neat and fresh and clean, would have taken her for a queen in waxwork, pasted up in a glass-case.

Lady Lovat was intimate with Lady Jane Douglas; and one of the strongest evidences in favour of Lord Douglas being the son of that lady [202] was the following remarkable circumstance: Lady Lovat, passing by a house in the High Street, saw a child at a window, and remarked to a friend who was with her: ‘If I thought Lady Jane Douglas could be in Edinburgh, I would say that was her child—he is so like her!’ Upon returning home, she found a note from Lady Jane, informing her that she had just arrived in Edinburgh, and had taken lodgings in —— Land, which proved to be the house in which Lady Lovat had observed the child, and that child was young Archibald Douglas. Lady Lovat was a person of such strict integrity that no consideration could have tempted her to say what she did not think; and at{239} the time she saw the child, she had no reason to suppose that Lady Jane was in Scotland.

Such was the generosity of her disposition that when her grandson Simon was studying law, she at various times presented him with £50, and when he was to pass as an advocate she sent him £100. It was wonderful how she could spare such sums from her small jointure. Whole tribes of grand-nephews and grand-nieces experienced the goodness of her heart, and loved her with almost filial affection. She frequently spoke to them of her misfortunes, and was accustomed to say: ‘I dare say, bairns, the events of my life would make a good novelle; but they have been of so strange a nature that nobody would believe them’—meaning that they wanted the vraisemblance necessary in fiction. She contemplated the approach of death with fortitude, and in anticipation of her obsequies, had her grave-clothes ready and the stair whitewashed. Yet the disposal of her poor remains little troubled her. When asked by her son if she wished to be placed in the burial-vault at Beaufort, she said: ‘’Deed, Archie, ye needna put yoursel’ to ony fash about me, for I dinna care though ye lay me aneath that hearthstane!’ After all, it chanced, from some misarrangements, that her funeral was not very promptly executed; whereupon a Miss Hepburn of Humbie, living in a floor above, remarked, ’she wondered what they were keeping her sae lang for—stinkin’ a’ the stair.’ This gives some idea of circumstances connected with Old Town life.

The conduct of her ladyship’s son in life was distinguished by a degree of eccentricity which, in connection with that of his son already stated, tends to raise a question as to the character of Lord Lovat, and make us suspect that wickedness so great as his could only result from a certain unsoundness of mind. It is admitted, however, that the eldest son, Simon, who rose to be a major-general in the army, was a man of respectable character. He retained nothing of his father but a genius for making fine speeches.[203] The late Mrs Murray of Henderland told me she was present at a supper-party given by some gentleman in the Horse Wynd, where General Fraser, eating his egg, said to the hostess: ‘Mrs ——, other people’s eggs overflow with milk; but yours run over with cream!’

{240}

THE COWGATE.

House of Gavin Douglas the Poet—Skirmish of Cleanse-the-Causeway—College Wynd—Birthplace of Sir Walter Scott—The Horse Wynd—Tam o’ the Cowgate—Magdalen Chapel.

Looking at the present state of this ancient street, it is impossible to hear without a smile the description of it given by Alexander Alesse about the year 1530—Ubi nihil est humile aut rusticum, sed omnia magnifica! (‘Where nothing is humble or homely, but everything magnificent!’) The street was, he tells us, that in which the nobles and judges resided, and where the palaces of princes were situated. The idea usually entertained of its early history is that it rose as an elegant suburb after the year 1460, when the existing city, consisting of the High Street alone, was enclosed in a wall. It would appear, however, that some part of it was built before that time, and that it was in an advanced, if not complete, state as a street not long after. It was to enclose this esteemed suburb that the city wall was extended after the battle of Flodden.

HOUSE OF GAVIN DOUGLAS THE POET—SKIRMISH OF CLEANSE-THE-CAUSEWAY.

So early as 1449, Thomas Lauder, canon of Aberdeen, granted an endowment of 40s. annually to a chaplain in St Giles’s Church, ‘out of his own house lying in the Cowgaite, betwixt the land of the Abbot of Melrose on the east, and of George Cochrane on the west.’ This appears to have been the same Thomas Lauder who was preceptor to James II., and who ultimately became Bishop of Dunkeld. We are told that, besides many other munificent acts, he purchased a lodging in Edinburgh for himself and his successors.[204] That its situation was the same as that above described appears from a charter of Thomas Cameron, in 1498, referring to a house on the south side of the Cowgate, ‘betwixt the Bishop of Dunkeld’s land on the east, and William Rappilowe’s on the west, the common street on the north, and the gait that leads to the Kirk-of-Field on the south.’

THE COWGATE.
‘Nothing is humble or homely, but everything magnificent!’

Page 240.

{241}

From these descriptions we attain a tolerably distinct idea of the site of the house of the bishops of Dunkeld in Edinburgh, including, of course, one who is endeared to us from a peculiar cause—Gavin Douglas, who succeeded to the see in 1516. This house must have stood nearly opposite to the bottom of Niddry Street, but somewhat to the eastward. It would have gardens behind, extending up to the line of the present Infirmary Street.

We thus not only have the pleasure of ascertaining the Edinburgh whereabouts of one of our most distinguished national poets, but we can now read, with a somewhat clearer intelligence, a remarkable chapter in the national history.

It was in April 1520 that the Hamiltons (the party of the Earl of Arran), with Bethune, Archbishop of Glasgow, called an assembly of the nobility in Edinburgh, in order to secure the government for the earl. The rival magnate, the Earl of Angus, soon saw danger to himself in the great crowds of the Hamilton party which flocked into town. Indeed warlike courses seem to have been determined on by that side. Angus sent his uncle, the Bishop of Dunkeld, to caution them against any violence, and to offer that he should submit to the laws if any offence were laid to his charge. The reverend prelate, proceeding to the place of assembly, which was in the archbishop’s house, at the foot of Blackfriars Wynd, found the Hamilton party obstinate. Thinking an archbishop could not or ought not to allow strife to take place if he could help it, he appealed to Bethune, who, however, had actually prepared for battle by putting on armour under his rochet. ‘Upon my conscience, my lord,’ said Bethune, ‘I know nothing of the matter,’ at the same time striking his hand upon his breast, which caused the armour to return a rattling sound. Douglas’s remark was simply, ‘Your conscience clatters;’ a happy pun for the occasion, clatter being a Scotch word signifying to tell tales. Gavin then returned to his lodging, and told his nephew that he must do his best to defend himself with arms. ‘For me,’ he said, ‘I will go to my chamber and pray for you.’ With our new light as to the locality of the Bishop of Dunkeld’s lodging, we now know that Angus and his uncle held their consultations on this occasion within fifty yards of the house in which the Hamiltons were assembled. The houses, in fact, nearly faced each other in the same narrow street.

Angus now put himself at the head of his followers, who, though not numerous, stood in a compact body in the High Street. They were, moreover, the favourites of the Edinburgh{242} citizens, who handed spears from their windows to such as were not armed with that useful weapon. Presently the Hamiltons came thronging up from the Cowgate, through narrow lanes, and entering the High Street in separate streams, armed with swords only, were at a great disadvantage. In a short time the Douglases had cleared the streets of them, killing many, and obliging Arran himself and his son to make their escape through the North Loch, mounted on a coal-horse. Archbishop Bethune, with others, took refuge in the Blackfriars’ Monastery, where he was seized behind the altar and in danger of his life, when Gavin Douglas, learning his perilous situation, flew to save him, and with difficulty succeeded in his object. Here, too, local knowledge is important. The Blackfriars’ Monastery stood where the High School latterly was, a spot not more than a hundred yards from the houses of both Bethune and Gavin Douglas. It would not necessarily require more than five minutes to apprise Douglas of Bethune’s situation, and bring him to the rescue.

The popular name given to this street battle is characteristic—Cleanse-the-Causeway.

COLLEGE WYND—BIRTHPLACE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

The old buildings of the College of Edinburgh, themselves mean, had for their main access, in former times, only that narrow dismal alley called the College Wynd,[205] leading up from the Cowgate. Facing down this humble lane was the gateway, displaying a richly ornamented architrave. The wynd itself, strange as the averment may now appear, was the abode of many of the professors. The illustrious Joseph Black lived at one time in a house adjacent to the College gate, on the east side, afterwards removed to make way for North College Street.[206] Another floor of the same building was occupied by Mr Keith, father of the late Sir Alexander Keith of Ravelston, Bart.; and there did the late Lord Keith reside in his student days. There was a tradition, but of a vague nature, that Goldsmith, when studying at the Edinburgh University, lived in the College Wynd.

OLD HOUSES, COLLEGE WYND.
Near here Sir Walter Scott was born.

Page 242.

The one peculiar glory of this humble place remains to be mentioned—its being the birthplace of Sir Walter Scott. In the third floor of the house just described, accessible by an entry{243} leading to a common stair behind, did this distinguished person first see the light, August 15, 1771. It was a house of plain aspect, like many of its old neighbours yet surviving; its truest disadvantage, however, being in the unhealthiness of the situation, to which Sir Walter himself used to attribute the early deaths of several brothers and sisters born before him. When the house was required to give way for the public conveniency, the elder Scott received a fair price for his portion of it; he had previously removed to an airier mansion, No. 25 George Square, where Sir Walter spent his boyhood and youth.

25 George Square.

In the course of a walk through this part of the town in 1825, Sir Walter did me the honour to point out the site of the house in which he had been born. On his mentioning that his father had got a good price for his share of it, in order that it might be taken down for the public convenience, I took the liberty of jocularly expressing my belief that more money might have been made of it, and the public certainly much more gratified, if it had remained to be shown as the birthplace of a man who had written so many popular books. ‘Ay, ay,’ said Sir Walter, ‘that is very well; but I am afraid I should have required to be dead first, and that would not have been so comfortable, you know.’

In the transition state of the College, from old to new buildings, the gate at the head of the wynd was shut up by Principal Robertson, who, however, living within the walls, found this passage convenient as an access to the town, and used it accordingly. It became the joke of a day, that from being the principal gate it had become only a gate for the Principal.[207]

{244}

THE HORSE WYND.

This alley, connecting the Cowgate with the grounds on the south side of the town within the walls, and broad enough for a carriage, is understood to have derived its name from an inn which long ago existed at its head, where the Gaelic Church long after stood. Although the name is at least as old as the middle of the seventeenth century, none of the buildings appear older than the middle of the eighteenth. They had all been renewed by people desirous of the benefit of such air as was to be had in an alley double the usual breadth. Very respectable members of the bar were glad to have a flat in some of the tall lands on the east side of the wynd.[208]

On the west side of the wynd, about the middle, the Earl of Galloway had built a distinct mansion, ornamented with vases at top. They kept a coach and six, and it was alleged that when the countess made calls, the leaders were sometimes at the door she was going to, when she was stepping into the carriage at her own door. This may be called a tour de force illustration of the nearness of friends to each other in Old Edinburgh.

TAM O’ THE COWGATE.

A court of old buildings, in a massive style of architecture, existed, previous to 1829, on a spot in the Cowgate now occupied by the southern piers of George IV. Bridge. In the middle of the last century it was used as the Excise-office; but even this was a kind of declension from its original character. It is certain that the celebrated Thomas Hamilton, first Earl of Haddington, President of the Court of Session, and Secretary of State for Scotland, lived here at the end of the sixteenth century, renting the house from Macgill of Rankeillour.[209] This distinguished person, from the circumstance of his living here, was endowed by his master, King James, with the nickname of Tam o’ the Cowgate, under which title he is now better remembered than by any other.

The earl, who had risen through high legal offices to the peerage, and who was equally noted for his penetration as a{245} judge, his industry as a collector of decisions, and his talent for amassing wealth, was one evening, after a day’s hard labour in the public service, solacing himself with a friend over a flask of wine in his house in the Cowgate [210]—attired, for his better ease, in a nightgown, cap, and slippers—when he was suddenly disturbed by a great hubbub which arose under his window in the street. This soon turned out to be a bicker between the High School youths and those of the College; and it also appeared that the latter, fully victorious, were, notwithstanding a valiant defence, in the act of driving their antagonists before them. The Earl of Haddington’s sympathies were awakened in favour of the retiring party, for he had been brought up at the High School, and going thence to complete his education at Paris, had no similar reason to affect the College. He therefore sprang up, dashed into the street, sided with and rallied the fugitives, and took a most animated share in the combat that ensued, so that finally the High School youths, acquiring fresh strength and valour at seeing themselves befriended by the prime judge and privy-councillor of their country (though not in his most formidable habiliments), succeeded in turning the scale of victory upon the College youths, in spite of their superior individual ages and strength. The earl, who assumed the command of the party, and excited their spirits by word as well as action, was not content till he had pursued the Collegianers through the Grassmarket, and out at the West Port, the gate of which he locked against their return, thus compelling them to spend the night in the suburbs and the fields. He then returned home in triumph to his castle of comfort in the Cowgate, and resumed the enjoyment of his friend and flask. We can easily imagine what a rare jest this must have been for King Jamie.

A Court of Old Buildings.

{246}

When this monarch visited Scotland in 1617, he found the old statesman very rich, and was informed that the people believed him to be in possession of the Philosopher’s Stone; there being no other feasible mode of accounting for his immense wealth, which rather seemed the effect of supernatural agency than of worldly prudence or talent. King James, quite tickled with the idea of the Philosopher’s Stone, and of so enviable a talisman having fallen into the hands of a Scottish judge, was not long in letting his friend and gossip know of the story which he had heard respecting him. The Lord President immediately invited the king, and the rest of the company present, to come to his house next day, when he would both do his best to give them a good dinner and lay open to them the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone. This agreeable invitation was of course accepted; and the next day saw his Cowgate palazzo thronged with king and courtiers, all of whom the President feasted to their hearts’ content. After dinner the king reminded him of his Philosopher’s Stone, and expressed his anxiety to be speedily made acquainted with so rare a treasure, when the pawky lord addressed His Majesty and the company in a short speech, concluding with this information, that his whole secret lay in two simple and familiar maxims—‘Never put off till to-morrow what can be done to-day; nor ever trust to another’s hand what your own can execute.’ He might have added, from the works of an illustrious contemporary:

‘This is the only witchcraft I have used;’

and none could have been more effectual.

A ludicrous idea is obtained from the following anecdote of the estimation in which the wisdom of the Earl of Haddington was held by the king, and at the same time, perhaps, of that singular monarch’s usual mode of speech. It must be understood, by way of prefatory illustration, that King James, who was the author of the earl’s popular appellation, ‘Tam o’ the Cowgate,’ had a custom of bestowing such ridiculous sobriquets on his principal councillors and courtiers. Thus he conferred upon that grave and sagacious statesman, John, Earl of Mar, the nickname Jock o’ Sklates—probably in allusion to some circumstance which occurred in their young days when they were the fellow-pupils of Buchanan. On hearing of a meditated alliance between the Haddington and Mar families, His Majesty exclaimed, betwixt jest and earnest: ‘The Lord hand a grup {247}o’ me! If Tam o’ the Cowgate’s son marry Jock o’ Sklates’s daughter, what’s to come o’ me?’ The good-natured monarch probably apprehended that so close a union betwixt two of his most subtle statesmen might make them too much for their master—as hounds are most dangerous when they hunt in couples.

The Earl of Haddington died in 1637, full of years and honours. At Tyningham, the seat of his family, there are two portraits of his lordship, one a half-length, the other a head; as also his state-dress; and it is a circumstance too characteristic to be overlooked that in the crimson-velvet breeches there are no fewer than nine pockets! Among many of the earl’s papers which remain in Tyningham House, one contains a memorandum conveying a curious idea of the way in which public and political affairs were then managed in Scotland. The paper details the heads of a petition in his own handwriting to the Privy Council, and at the end is a note ‘to gar [that is, make] the chancellor’ do something else in his behalf.

A younger son of Tam o’ the Cowgate was a person of much ingenuity, and was popularly known, for what reason I cannot tell, by the nickname of ‘Dear Sandie Hamilton.’ He had a foundry in the Potterrow, where he fabricated the cannon employed in the first Covenanting war in 1639. This artillery, be it remarked, was not formed exclusively of metal. The greater part of the composition was leather; and yet, we are informed, they did some considerable execution at the battle of Newburnford, above Newcastle (August 28, 1640), where the Scots drove a large advanced party of Charles I.’s troops before them, thereby causing the king to enter into a new treaty. The cannon, which were commonly called ‘Dear Sandie’s Stoups,’ were carried in swivel fashion between two horses.

The Excise-office had been removed, about 1730, from the Parliament Square to the house occupied many years before by Tam o’ the Cowgate. It afforded excellent accommodations for this important public office. The principal room on the second floor, towards the Cowgate, was a very superb one, having a stucco ceiling divided into square compartments, each of which contained some elegant device. To the rear of the house was a bowling-green, which the Commissioners of Excise let on lease to a person of the name of Thomson. In those days bowling was a much more prevalent amusement than now, being chiefly a favourite with the graver order of the citizens. There were then no fewer than three bowling-greens in the{248} grounds around Heriot’s Hospital; one in the Canongate, near the Tolbooth; another on the opposite side of the street; another immediately behind the palace of Holyrood House, where the Duke of York used to play when in Scotland; and perhaps several others scattered about the outskirts of the town. The arena behind the Excise-office was called Thomson’s Green, from the name of the man who kept it; and it may be worth while to remind the reader that it is alluded to in that pleasant-spirited poem by Allan Ramsay, in imitation of the Vides ut alta of Horace:

‘Driving their ba’s frae whins or tee,

There’s no ae gouffer to be seen,

Nor doucer folk wysing a-jee

The byas bowls on Tamson’s green.’

The green was latterly occupied by the relict of this Thomson; and among the bad debts on the Excise books, all of which are yearly brought forward and enumerated, there still stands a sum of something more than six pounds against Widow Thomson, being the last half-year’s rent of the green, which the poor woman had been unable to pay. The north side of Brown’s Square was built upon part of this space of ground; the rest remained a vacant area for the recreation of the people dwelling in Merchant Street, until the erection of the bridge, which has overrun that, as well as every other part of the scene of this article.[211]

{369}

INDEX.

Abbey Chapel, 206.
Abbey Hill, 10, 316.
Abbey Zett (Yett, Gate), 257.
Abbotsford, 25, 83.
Aberuchil, Lord, 72.
Acheson House, 313.
Acheson, Sir Archibald, of Abercairny, 314.
Actors, Canongate Theatre, 346.
Adam Street, 187.
Advertiser, Edinburgh, 5, 49.
Advocates’ Library, 113.
Ainslie, Sir Philip, 300.
Airth, Laird of, 38.
Aitchinsoune, Thomas (Cunyie House), 260.
Aldridge, Robert, dancing-master, 151, 153.
Alesse, Alexander, 240.
Alison Square, 358, 359.
Aloetic medicine, an, 27.
Alston, Tony, 346.
Alva, Lord Justice-clerk, 204-208.
Ambrose’s Tavern, 366.
Amory, Captain, 355.
Anchor Close, 162.
Anderson, Samuel, anecdote of, 305.
Anderson’s pills, 27.
Angus, Earl of, 241.
Antemanum Club, 149.
Arbuthnot, Lord, 307.
Ardwell, residence of M’Culloch of, 362.
Argyll, 15, 51, 156, 175, 234, 307, 308, 345.
Arnot, Hugo, 4, 12, 36, 46, 49, 171.
Arran, Earl of, 241.
Arrot, Dr, 10.
Assemblies, 3, 14, 44, 265.
Assembly Close, 59.
Assembly Rooms, 43, 46, 195, 233, 253, 265.
Assembly, The, a play by Dr Pitcairn, 310.
Auchans House, Dr Johnson at, 197.
Auld Reekie, 138, 152.
Auld Robin Gray, author of, 277.
Aytoun of Inchdairnie, 123, 270.
Back Stairs, the, 291.
Baijen-hole, 112.
Baillie, Alexander, of Dochfour, 235.
Baird, Mr, of Newbyth, 20.
Baird’s Close, Castlehill, 58.
Baird, Sir David, 20.
Balcarres, Countess of, 277.
Balfour, James, accountant (‘Singing Jamie’), 141-143.
Balfour, Sir James (Lord Lyon), 315, 316.
Ballantyne, printer, 143.
Bank Close, Old, 70, 94.
Bank of Scotland, 70.
Bankton House, oratory at, 29.
Bannatyne Club, 73.
Bannatyne, Sir William Macleod, 10, 129, 317.
Banquet at Mint House to Danish lords, 260.
Barnard, Mr, violinist, 253.
Bassentyne’s house, 257.
Bearford’s Parks, 366.
Beatoun, Archbishop, 117.
Begbie’s murder, 36, 280.
Beith’s or Bess Wynd, 93, 113.
Bellamy, Mrs, 347-350.
Bell, Benjamin, surgeon, 355.
Bell’s Wynd, 46.
Bethune, Archbishop, 228, 241.
Bethune, Cardinal, 228.
Bickers (street fights of boys), 189, 245.
Birrel, the chronicler, 38.
Bishop’s Land, 269.
Black, Alexander, of Balbirney, 211.
Blackbird, a Jacobite, 30.
Blackfriars’ Monastery, 242.
Blackfriars Wynd, 10, 38, 223, 228, 234, 237, 238, 241, 257.
Black, Joseph, Professor, 242, 289.
Black Wigs Club, 155.
Blair, Dr, 56, 136, 288, 334.
Blair, Hugh, merchant, 72.
Blair, Rev. Robert, 307.
Blair’s Close, 18.
Blue Blanket, 183.
Blue-gowns—their annual assembly, 102.
Bluidy Mackenzie, 224.
Blyth’s Close, 22.
Boar Club, 151, 153.
Boarding-schools of last century, 230.
Bonnet Lairds’ Club, 155.
Bonnington, 348.
Booths, 3, 110.
Boroughmoor, 271.
Boswell, James, 16, 55, 60, 172, 197.
Boswell, James, advocate, 125.
Boswell, Sir Alexander, 126, n., 146, 266.
Bothwell, Adam, Bishop of Orkney, Commendator of Holyrood, 71, 97.
Bothwell, Anne, her Lines, 97.
Bothwell Bridge, 289.
Bothwell, Earl of, 38, 83, 121, 256.
Bow, angle of, 46.
‘Bowed Joseph,’ a general of mobs, 184-188.
Bowfoot, 50.
Bowhead, 27, 41.
Bowhead Saints, 30.
Bowling-greens, 247.
Bow, the West, 26, 53, 133.
Boyd, James, White Horse Inn, 172.{370}
Boyd, Lord, 121.
Breadalbane, Earl of, 180.
Bridge, North, 269, 283, 360.
Bridges, the, 53.
British Linen Company’s Bank, 280.
Brodie, Deacon, 76, 91.
Brodie’s Close, 76.
Broomfield, Andrew, 124.
Brougham, Lord, 80.
Broughton, 360.
Broughton, Baron of, 367.
Brownhill, James, joiner, 55.
Brown, James, builder, 5.
Brown, Mrs, of Coalstoun, 266.
Brownonian System Club, 156.
Brown’s Close, 18.
Brown Square, 5, 248.
Bruce, Dame Magdalen, of Kinross, 19 n.
Bruce of Kennet, 3.
Bruce of Kinnaird, 210.
Bruntsfield Links, 5.
Bryce, his small shop, 101.
Buccleuch, Duchess of, 327.
Buccleuch, Duke of, 328.
Buchanan, George, 288 n.
Buchan, Earl of, 98.
Burke, Edward (Ned—a chairman engaged in the escape of Prince Charles), 177.
Burleigh, Lord, 307.
Burnett, Miss, of Monboddo, 251.
Burning, strange tale of a, 298.
Burns, Robert, 7, 14, 106, 164, 251, 351, 358, 362, 365.
Burton, Mrs, 58, 60.
Burt’s Letters, 176.
Busks, enormous size of, 201.
Bute, Lord, 10, 316, 317.
Byres of Coates, 95.
Byres’s Close, 96.
Caddies (street messengers), 175.
Cairnie, Lady, 124.
Caithness, Earls of, 77.
Caledonian Club, 155.
Caledonian Mercury, 15.
Calton, 149.
Calton Hill, 83, 297, 360.
Cambuskenneth, Abbot of, 223.
Campbell, Alexander, 180, 345.
Campbell, Lady Eleanor, 64.
Campbell, Mrs, of Monzie, 205, 208.
Campbell, Mungo, 90.
Campbell of Laguine, 134.
Campbell, Sir James, of Aberuchil, 72.
Campbell, Thomas, poet, 167, 359.
Canal, Forth and Clyde, 5.
Canongate, 3, 8, 11, 65, 295-301.
Canongate Council House, 71.
Canongate Theatre, 346.
Canongate Tolbooth, 248.
Canonmills, 154.
Cant’s Close, 221.
Cape Club, 149.
Cardross, Lord, 98.
Carrubber’s Close, 15.
Carters of Gilmerton, the, 4.
Castle-hill, 11, 18, 20, 22, 39, 150.
Castle Street, 8.
Cathcart, Robert, 39.
Cat Nick on Salisbury Crags, 91.
Cats, a lover of, 16.
Cayley, Squire, or Captain, 291.
Chairmen, 176.
Chalmers, Miss (Mrs Pringle), 251.
Chalmers, Miss, of Pittencrief, 251.
Chalmers’s Entry, 168.
Changes of the last hundred years, 1.
Chapman, Walter, printer, 109.
Charles I., 64, 170, 301, 306, 321.
Charles II., 260, 327.
Charles X., 228.
Charles, Prince, 27, 28, 48, 72, 175, 177, 181, 219, 235, 236, 269.
Charlotte Square, 9.
Charteris, Colonel, 328.
Chessels’s Court, 27, 91.
Chiesly of Dairy, 75, 211.
Circulating Library, 15, 104.
Citadel of Leith, inhabitants in 1745, 19.
City Guard, 4, 31, 84, 148, 179, 233, 238, 348.
Clarinda, 358.
Clarke, Stephen, musician, 253.
Clattering of tinsmiths in West Bow, 42.
Claudero, pamphleteer, 330.
Claverhouse, 6.
Cleanse the Causeway, 117, 241, 242.
Cleghorn, Miss, 251.
Clerihugh’s Tavern, 162.
Clerks, drucken, of Sir William Forbes, 138.
Clerk, Sir John, of Penicuik, 193.
Clubs, convivial, 149-157.
Coalstoun, Lord, and his wig, 96.
Coates, Sir John Byres of, 95.
Cockburn, Mrs, author of Flowers of the Forest, 58.
Cock-fights, 236.
Coffee-house, John’s, 112.
Coffee-house, Netherbow, 332.
Coffin, the, 166.
Coinage, 260.
Coke, William, bookseller, 167.
College of King James, 259.
College Street, North, 242.
College, the, 3.
College Wynd, 3, 242.
Colquhoun, Sir James, 132.
Commendator Bothwell’s house, 97.
Commercial Bank, 265.
Concerts, 249, 251.
Constable, Archibald, 7.
Convivial clubs, 149-157.
Convivialia, 138-157.
Corelli, musician, 254.
Corri, Signor and Signora Domenico, 250, 253.
Court of Session Garland, a burlesque poem, 124, 125.
Court, the Dirt, 115.
Covington, Lockhart of, 129.
Covington, Lord, fate of his gown, 130.
Cowgate, 72, 223, 240, 244, 257.
Cowgate Port, 152.
Craigie, Lord President, 9.
Craig, James, 7.
Crawford, Earl of, 311.
Crawfuird, 39.
Creech, Provost, bookseller, 9, 103, 339.
Crighton Street, Potterrow, 59.
Criminal Trials, by Hugo Arnot, 13.
Crochallan, a convivial society, 164.
Cromarty, Earl of, 225.{371}
Cromwell, Oliver, 99, 122, 193, 307, 360.
Crosbie, advocate, 153.
Cross, the, 4, 174, 175;
taken down, 178 n.
Cullen, Dr, 261.
Cullen, Lord, 263.
Cullen, Robert, mimic, 261.
Culloden, 177.
Cumming of Lyon Office, 167.
Cunliffe, Sir Foster, of Acton, 252.
Cunningham, Rev. Mr, 352.
Cunyie House (Mint), 257, 260.
Dalrymple, Miss, New Hailes, 131.
Dalrymple, President, 123.
Dalrymple, Sir David (Lord Hailes), 126 n., 131, 300.
Dancing in Edinburgh, 44;
Allan Ramsay on, 44;
Goldsmith on, 45.
Danish lords entertained, 260.
Darien Expedition, the, 52.
Darnley, 71, 83, 107, 121, 256.
David I., 295.
Davidson’s Close, 170.
Defensive Band, 152.
Defoe, 337.
‘Deid-chack,’ the, 114.
De la Cour, artist, 9.
De Witt’s map, 259.
Dhu, Sergeant John, 180.
Dick, Lady Anne, of Corstorphine, her eccentricities and verses, 225.
Dick, Sir William, &c., 78, 100.
Dicks of Prestonfield, 78.
Dickson, Andrew, golf-club maker, 321.
Dickson, Rev. David, 307.
Dickson’s Close, 222.
Dirt Court, the, 115.
Dirty Club, 155.
Diurnal, the, of a Scottish judge, 139.
Doctors of Faculty Club, the, 155.
Doctor, the Tinklarian, 41.
Donacha Bhan, a Highland poet, 180.
Donaldson, Alexander, bookseller, 48.
Donaldson, James, bookseller, 49.
Douglas, Archibald, 238.
Douglas, Duke of, 9, 69.
Douglas, Gavin, poet, 240.
Douglas, Jeanie, Adam Smith’s cousin, 319.
Douglas, Lady Anne, ghost of, 343.
Douglas, Lady Jane, 69, 238.
Douglas’s Tavern, 162.
Douglas, tragedy of, 347.
Doune, Lord, 307.
Dowie, Johnnie, 138, 166.
Dowie’s Tavern, 138, 166.
Drem, Barony of, 50.
Dresses, ladies’, of last century, 199.
Drinking customs, 138, 143.
Drumlanrig, 336, 339, 340, 343.
Drummond, Bishop Abernethy, 229.
Drummond, Pious Club poet, 150.
Drummond, Provost, 5, 6, 360.
Drummore, Lord, 9, 125.
Drumsheugh, 205.
Dryden, 327, 344.
Duff, Miss (Countess of Dumfries and Stair), 230.
Dunbar’s Close, 100.
Dunbar, Willie, 164.
Dundas, Robert, of Arniston, Lord President, 127, 132, 140.
Dundee, Lord, 30, 366.
Dundonald, Earl of, 69.
Dunglass Castle, 99.
Dunkeld, Bishop of, 223, 240.
Dun, Lady, 124.
Durie, Abbot of Dunfermline, 273.
Easter Road, 328, 360.
Edward or Udward, Nicol, Provost, 210.
Eglintoune, Countess of, 192-198.
Eglintoune, Earl of, 90, 162, 192.
Eglintoune, Miss (Lady Wallace), 276.
Elcho, Lord, 307.
Elibank, Lord, 14.
Elliot, Jeanie, of Minto, 6.
Elliot, Lady, of Minto, 266.
Elliot, Sir Gilbert, of Minto, 206.
Elphingston, Lady Betty, 124.
Elphinstone, James, 49.
Errol, Earl of (Constable), 103.
Erskine, Alexander, the Hon., 98.
Erskine, Harry, epigram by, on Hugo Arnot, 12.
Erskine, James, of Cambo, 98.
Erskine, James, of Grange, 211.
Euphame, Mrs (Effie Sinclair), 230.
Excise Office, 91, 244, 247, 248.
Executioners of Edinburgh, 51.
Faculty of Doctors’ Club, 155.
Falconer, William, author of The Shipwreck, 285.
Female dresses of last century, 199-203.
Ferguson, Dr, 56.
Fergusson, Governor, his house in the Luckenbooths, 10.
Fergusson, Robert, 26, 114 n., 148, 149, 162, 180, 233, 271, 349.
Fergusson, Robert, the Plotter, took refuge in Old Tolbooth, 88.
Fergusson, Walter, writer, digs for water in James’s Square, 335.
Fife’s Close, Bailie, 265.
Findlater, Earl of, 231.
Fishmarket Close, 140.
Fives, the game of, 344.
Flockhart’s, Lucky, Tavern in Potterrow, 168.
Flowers of the Forest, the author of, 58.
Foliot, John and Bartoulme, 209.
Foote, Samuel, anecdotes of, 363-365.
Forbes, Lord President, 123, 125, 235.
Forbes, Rev. Robert, Bishop of Orkney, 19 n.
Forbes, Sir William, 115, 138, 199, 251.
Fore-stairs, 100, 271.
Forrest, David, 273.
Forrester, Sir Andrew, 293.
Forrester’s Wynd, 3.
Forster of Corsebonny, 214.
Forth and Clyde Canal, 5.
Fortune’s Tavern, 143, 161, 192, 251.
Foulis, William, of Woodhall, 124.{372}
Fountainhall, Lord, anecdote of, 61.
Fyvie, Lord, 120.
Gabriel’s Road, 366.
Galloway, Earl of, 244.
Gallow Lee, the, 75, 185, 361.
Gallows Stone in Grassmarket, 51.
Gardenstone, Lord, 132.
Gardiner, Colonel, his oratory, 29.
Gask family, 10.
Gay, John, poet, 4, 338, 339.
Geddes, Jenny, and her stool, 105, 106.
Ged, Dougal, of Town-guard, 233.
Ged, Misses, their boarding-school, 232.
General’s Entry, the residence of Burns’s ‘Clarinda,’ 358.
George II., 279.
George III., 16, 197, 275.
George IV., 269.
George IV. Bridge, 70, 167, 244.
George Square, 5, 8, 169, 243.
George Street, 46, 53.
Gibson of Durie, 121, 124.
Gilmerton, carters of, 4.
Gilmour, Lord President, 122.
Gilmour, Mr Little, of the Inch, 76.
Gilson, Mr, singer, 253.
Giornovicki, violinist, 254.
Glencairn, 25, 352.
Glenlee, Lord, 5.
Glenorchy, Lady, 226, 205, 206.
Goldsmith, 242, 265.
Goldsmith, account of a dancing assembly in Edinburgh, 45.
Goldsmiths in Parliament Square, 111.
Golfers’ Land, 320.
Golf, the game of, 52;
Charles I. plays on Leith Links, 321.
Goolister, Henry, Captain, 260.
Gordon, Captain, 181.
Gordon, Duchess of, 145, 252, 275, 276, 313, 316, 361.
Gordon family, 18, 316.
Gordon, Mr, of Ellon, 366.
Gourlay, Robert, house of, 70, 71.
Grace, Countess, of Aboyne and Murray, 66.
Grange, Lady, story of, 211-221.
Grange, Lord, 15, 211.
Grassmarket, 18, 26, 50, 51, 171, 260.
Gray, Sir William, of Pittendrum, 64, 76.
Green Breeks, a noted fighter, 190.
Gregory, Dr John, 172.
Greping-office Tavern, 159.
Greville, Lord, 262.
Greyfriars, 93, 95, 109, 224, 288.
Guard, City or Town, 84, 148, 179, 233, 238, 348.
Guard-house, 84, 140, 180.
Guise, Mary of, 22.
Guthrie, Bishop Henry, 307.
Guthrie, Rev. James, 307.
Haddington, Earl of, 99, 244.
Hailes, Lord (Sir D. Dalrymple), 126, 131, 300.
Haining, Lord, 125.
Halkerston’s Wynd, 5, 117, 366.
Halket, Miss, of Pitferran, 252.
Halyburton, James, 222.
Hamilton, ‘Dear Sandie,’ 247.
Hamilton, Duke of, 172, 308.
Hamilton, Marie, 295.
Hamiltons of Pencaitland, 270.
Hamilton’s Tavern, Mrs, 345.
Hamiltons, the, 241.
Hamilton, Thomas (Tam o’ the Cowgate), Lord President, first Earl of Haddington, 244.
Hammermen of Canongate, 313.
Hangman’s Craig, 52.
Hangmen of Edinburgh, 51.
Ha’s, Jenny, Ale-house, 142, 339.
Harcarse, Lord, 123.
Haunted houses, 35.
Hawley, General, 181.
Hay, advocate, Lord Newton, 139.
Hay, a young criminal, singular escape, 92.
Hay, Miss, of Hayston, 251.
Heart of Midlothian, 82.
Heckler, the, a lunatic litigant, 135.
Hell-fire Club, 153.
Henderland, Lord, 118.
Henderson, Alexander, tombstone of, 288.
Hepburn of Bearford, 366.
Herd, David, 167, 168.
Heriot, George, 50, 113-116;
stock with which he commenced business, 112 n.;
a costly fire, 113.
Heriot’s Hospital, 93, 247, 310.
‘He that tholes overcomes,’ 47.
High Constables, 346.
High School, 76, 242, 245.
High School Wynd, 257.
High Street, 8, 11, 29.
Hilderstone, 367.
History of Edinburgh, by Hugo Arnot, 12.
History of England, by Hume, 56.
Hogg’s, Daniel, Tavern, 151, 153.
Holderness, Lord, 323.
Holstein, Duke of, entertained, 78.
Holyrood, 11, 28, 206, 209, 228, 248, 256, 260, 295, 321, 344.
Holyrood, Chapel of, 109.
Holyroodhouse, Lord, 97.
Home, Countess of, 306.
Home-Drummond of Blairdrummond, 252.
Home, Earl of, 307.
Home, Miss Betsy, 251.
Hoop, the, as worn by ladies, 200.
Hope of Rankeillor, 216, 218.
Hope’s Close, 70.
Hope, Sir Thomas, K.C., 70, 72, 73, 74.
Hope, Sir Thomas, of Kerse, 72.
Hopetoun, Earl of, 204, 342.
‘Horn Order,’ the, 157.
Horse Wynd, 59, 239, 244.
Howard, Lady Elizabeth, 316.
Hume, David, 55-59, 162.
Hume, Misses, of Linthill, 231.
Humphrey, Duke, 107.
Hunter, John, Professor, 133.
Huntly, Marquis of, 19, 175, 210.
Hyndford’s Close, 264, 275.
Inchdairnie, Aytouns of, 270.
Inch, the, 76.{373}
Industrious Company Club, 154.
Infirmary Street, 241.
Innes, Gilbert, of Stow, 289.
Innes, Mrs Gilbert, of Stow, 61.
Inn, White Hart, 2.
Inn, White Horse, 2.
Irvine, Robert, 366.
Irving, General, 27.
Irving, Mrs, her recollections of the ’45, 27, 28.
Jack’s Land, 56.
Jacobite blackbird, a, 30.
Jail, 3, 83.
James I., 83, 307.
James II., 321, 327.
James III., 183.
James IV., 272.
James V., 229.
James VI., 38, 77, 175, 183, 210, 244, 260, 344.
James’s Court, 55-62, 172.
James’s Square, 335.
Jameson, George, painter, 288.
Jardine, Miss, 252.
Jeddart staff possessed by each citizen, 100.
Jeffrey, Francis, 265.
‘Jock o’ Sklates’ (Earl of Mar), 246.
John’s Coffee-house, 148.
Johnson, Dr Samuel, 16, 49, 60, 172, 197.
Johnston, James, of Westerhall, 37.
Johnston, Miss Lucy, 252.
Justice in bygone times, 120.
Kames, Lord, 130;
scene at the death of, 130;
his house, 300.
Kay’s portraits, 181.
Keith, Bishop, 170.
Keith, Mrs, 230.
Keith, Sir Alexander, of Ravelston, 242.
Keith, Sir Robert, ambassador, 230.
Kelly, Earl of, 255.
Kennedy, Sir Archibald, 194.
Kennedy, Susanna, 192.
Kerr & Dempster, goldsmiths, 111.
Kerr, goldsmith, Parliament Square, 3.
Ketten’s, Michael, shoe-shop, 83.
Kincaid, Mr (a great dandy), king’s printer, 277.
King’s Bridge, 18.
King’s Park, 91.
King’s Stables, 260.
Kinloch, Miss, of Gilmerton, 252.
Kinloch, Sir Francis and Mrs, 124.
Kinnaird, Miss, having second sight, 210.
Kirkcudbright, Lord, 265.
Kirk o’ Field, situation of, 256, 259.
Knockers, 207.
Knowles, Admiral, 304.
Knox, John, 25, 84, 105, 107, 109, 271, 279.
Krames, 102, 119.
Ladies and the drinking customs, 143, 147.
Ladies of Traquair, 286.
Lady’s Steps, the, payments made at, 103.
Laigh shops, 145.
Lally-Tollendal, Count, 252.
Lament, a, by Anne Bothwell, 97.
Lang Gait, or Lang Dykes, 6, 366.
Lauderdale, Duchess of, 307.
Lauderdale, Duke of, 122.
Lauder, Sir Andrew, 61.
Lauder, Sir Thomas Dick, 61.
Lauder, Thomas, Canon of Aberdeen, 240.
Lawnmarket, 11, 26, 27, 39, 70, 223.
Lawnmarket Club, 156.
Leith Links, 320.
Leith Street, 283.
Leith Walk, 281, 283, 360.
Leith Wynd, 149, 258, 281, 284.
Lennox, Earl of, 107.
Leslie, General, 39, 193, 360.
Leslie, Lady Mary, 328.
Leven, Lord, 124, 311.
Liberton’s Wynd, 166.
Lind, Mr, of the ‘Pious Club,’ 150.
Lindsay, Sir Alexander, of Evelick, 17.
Linlithgow road, 214.
List of Notables who lived in Canongate, 296.
Little, William, of Liberton, 76.
Lockhart of Carnwath, 209.
Lockhart of Covington, 129.
Lockhart, President, murder of, 75.
Lockhart’s Court, 209.
Lodge, Canongate Kilwinning, 305.
Logan, Rev. George, 27.
Long Way, the, 214.
Lord’s Day, walking on the, condemned, 11.
Lorimer, the, a deceased trade, 233.
Lorne, Lord, 308.
Lothian, Earl of, 307, 323.
Lothian Hut, 323.
Lothian, Marchioness, 323.
Loudon, Earl of, 64.
Loudoun, Chancellor, 307.
Loughborough, Chancellor, his house in the Mint Close, 263.
Lounger, the, 6.
Lovat, Lady, 234-239, 286.
Lovat, Lord, 205, 213, 214, 234, 235.
Luckenbooths, 10, 95-104, 272, 339.
Lucky Fykie’s Tavern, 168.
Lucky Middleman’s Tavern, 145, 146 n.
Lyon Close, Old, 323.
Macalpine’s, Saunders, sedan-chair, 4.
M’Crie, Dr, 273.
M’Culloch, David (Wee Davie), 363.
M’Culloch of Ardwell, residence of, 362.
Macdonald, Sir Alexander, of Sleat, 216.
Macdowalls of Logan, 60.
Macduff of Ballenloan and his two law pleas, 136.
Macfarlane, John and Mrs, 291.
Macfarlane, William, judge, 60.
Macgill of Rankeillour, 244.
Macintyre, Duncan (Donacha Bhan), poet, 180.
Mackenzie, Henry, attorney, 154.
Mackenzie, Henry (Man of Feeling), 6, 288.
Mackenzie, Hon. Stuart, 316.
Mackenzie, Sir George, 93, 103, 223, 224, 225, 288.
Mackoull, James, Life and Trial of (supposed Murderer of Begbie), 282.{374}
Maclaurin, John, advocate, 125.
M’Lehose, Mrs, house of (Clarinda of Burns), 358.
Maclellans of Galloway, 265.
Maclennan, Rev. Roderick, St Kilda, 217.
Macleod, Alexander, of Muiravonside, 177.
Macleod, John, of Muiravonside, 214.
Macmoran, Bailie, killed, 76;
banquets held in house of, 77, 78.
Macrae, Mr, Marionville, tragical story of, 351.
Magdalen Chapel, Cowgate, 248 n.
Mahogany Land, 47, 100.
‘Maiden,’ the, 71.
Maitland, History of Edinburgh, 209, 271, 272.
Mally Lee, a ballad, 202.
Mansfield, Earl of, 17, 265.
March, Lady, 103.
Mar, Countess of, 74, 213, 220.
Mar, Earl of, 5, 98, 119, 246.
Marionville, villa of, 323;
theatricals at, 351.
Martin’s Wynd, story of, 209.
Mary King’s Close, 36.
Mary of Guise, her house in Edinburgh, 22;
her resistance to the Reformation, 25;
erection of Free Church Hall on the site of her house, 25.
Mary, Queen, 71, 83, 109, 163, 257, 260, 271, 287.
Mary, Regent, 23.
Maugaret, Braid Ransome, 260.
Maule, William, 318.
Maxwell, Lady, of Monreith, her house, 275.
Maxwell, Sir William, 355, 356.
Meadows, the, 5.
Meldrum, George, of Dumbreck, 121.
Melrose, Abbot of, his ‘lodging’ in Edinburgh, 223.
Melville, Lord, 127 n., 140, 145, 305.
Merchant Street, 248.
‘Meridian,’ a, 147.
Meuse Lane, St Andrew Street, 13.
Mickle, William Julius, on Parliament Close, 116.
Miller, Sir William, of Glenlee, 251.
Milliners, a story of two, 323, 324.
Mint Close, 10, 260, 263.
Minto, Lord, 325.
Mint, the, 257-259.
Mirror, magic, story of a, 65.
Mirror, the, 6.
Mitchell, William, pamphleteer, 41, 42.
Mobs of Edinburgh, 183-188.
Modena, Mary of, 344.
Monastery, the Blackfriars’, 242.
Monboddo, Lord, 59, 132, 133, 303.
Monk, Peter, admiral of Denmark, 260.
Monmouth, Duchess of, 327.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 69, 220.
Montgomery, Lady Margaret, 328.
Montrose, Marquis of, 108, 170, 175, 308.
Moray, Bonny Earl of, 312.
Moray, Countess of, 307.
Moray House, Canongate, 306.
Moray, Lord, 66 n.
Morocco’s Land, 299.
Morton, Regent, 25, 71, 120, 260.
Motte, De la, French ambassador, 71.
Mound, the, 23, 55.
Moyses’s memoirs, 71, 210.
Murder, extraordinary, 366.
Mure, Baron, 316.
Murkle, Lord, 124.
Murray, Hon. Miss Nicky, ball directress, 265-268.
Murray, Miss, of Lintrose (‘Flower of Strathmore’), 251.
Murray, Mr, of Henderland, 16, 17.
Murray, Mrs, of Broughton, 175.
Murray, Mrs, of Henderland, 15, 239.
Murray, Regent, 38, 106.
Murray, Sir John A. (Lord), erects a statue to Allan Ramsay, 18.
Murray, Sir Peter, of Balmanno, 226.
Music Hall, 253.
Musselburgh Links, 355.
Mutrie’s Hill, 5, 7, 367.
Mylne, Robert, architect, 252.
Mylnes, family of, 204.
Mylne Square, 204.
Nairne, Katherine, her tale of guilt and escape from justice, 88.
Nairn’s Close, 22.
Neale, John (built first house in Princes Street), 7.
Negligée, the, 199.
Negro servants, 69 n.
Netherbow Port (fortified gate), 1, 149, 257, 258, 271, 272, 281, 331, 332.
Newberry, Mr J., his books for the young, 41.
Newhall, Lord, 124.
Newhaven, fishwomen of, 4.
New Street, 8, 16, 131, 284, 300, 347.
Newton, Lord, 44, 139.
New Town, first house in, 8;
Hume’s house in, 58.
Nichol, Andrew, diarist, 106.
Nichol, Andrew (‘Muck Andrew’), claimant-at-law of a midden-stead, 136.
Nicolson Square, 358.
Niddry Street, 241.
Niddry’s Wynd, 121, 209, 212, 249.
Nimmo, Miss, in whose house Burns met Clarinda, 358.
North Back of Canongate, 170.
North Bridge, 6, 269, 283, 360.
North, Christopher, 167.
Northesk, Earl of, 204.
North Loch, 8, 23, 64, 117, 118, 366.
Norton, Baron, 316.
Odd Fellows Club, 155.
Ogilvie, Hon. Mrs, her boarding-school, 231.
Old Bank Close, 70.
Oliphant, Miss, of Gask, house of, 10.
Oliver & Boyd, publishers, 280.
Oratories, a feature in houses of a certain era, 29.
‘Order of the Horn,’ the, 156.
Ormistounes, Laird of, 257.
Oswald, Mr, of Auchincruive, 252.
Oyster cellars, 145.{375}
Paganini, 254.
Pages, keeping of, 328, 329.
Palmerston, Lord, a pupil of Dugald Stewart in Edinburgh, 323.
Panmure, Earl of, 318.
Panmure House, 318.
Paoli, General, 172.
Parliament Close, 109-116, 142, 159, 337.
Parliament Council, 115.
Parliament House, 8, 85, 106, 110, 119.
Parliament House worthies, 134-137.
Parliament Square, 3, 115, 247.
Paterson, John, a golfing shoemaker, 320.
Paterson, Lady Jane, 212.
Paterson’s Court, 232.
Paton, George, antiquary, 167.
Patullo, William, 35.
Peat or Pate, a, 123.
Peebles, Peter, 134.
Peebles Wynd, 39.
Pettigrew, Rev. Mr, of Govan, 160.
Picardy Place, 140.
Pigs, 276.
Pinners, 201.
Pious Club, the, 149.
Pitcairn, Dr, 158, 160, 166, 287, 310, 320, 345.
Pitcairn, Miss, 345.
Pitfour, Lord, 129.
Pitilloch, Mr, advocate, 123.
Playfair, architect, 50
Pleasance, 187.
Poker Club, the, 3, 162.
Poole, Miss, singer, 253.
Population returns, the first in Scotland, 20.
Porteous, Captain (Porteous Riot), 42, 47, 51, 111, 133, 180, 184.
Portobello, origin of village of, 332 n.
Post-office Close, 129 n.
Post-office, old arrangement of, 129 n.
Potatoes, earliest trace of, in Scotland, 325.
Potterrow, 59, 168, 247, 358.
Prebendaries’ Chamber, 256, 259.
Prentice, Henry, introducer of the field-culture of potatoes, 325.
Press, printing, used in the rebel army, 72.
Prestonfield, 78.
Primrose, Lady Dorothy, 237.
Primrose, Lord, 124.
Primrose, Viscount, a profligate, 64.
Princes Street, 53, 214, 366.
Princes Street Gardens, 18.
Princes Street one hundred years ago, 6.
Princes Street, the naming of, 7.
Pringle, Dr and Miss, Newhall, 124.
Pringle, Mr, of Haining, 251.
Puppo, Signor, violinist, 253.
Queen Mary, 71, 83, 109, 163, 257-259, 271, 287.
Queensberry, Catherine, Duchess of, 339.
Queensberry House, 142, 320, 336.
Queensberry, second Duke of, strange story of, 336.
Queensberry, third Duke of, and poet Gay, 338.
Queen’s garden, 257.
Queen Street, 9.
Raeburn, Sir Henry, portrait-painter, 354.
Rambler, the, reproduced in Edinburgh, 49.
Ramsay, Allan, the painter, 16, 17.
Ramsay, Allan, the poet, 4, 14-18, 44, 104, 161, 248, 288, 295, 339, 346.
Ramsay, Christian, 16.
Ramsay Gardens, 16.
Ramsay, General John, 16.
Ramsay, Lady, of Bamff, 353.
Ramsay, Miss, anecdote of, 323.
Ramsay’s Inn or Tavern, 152, 171, 276.
Ramsay, Sir Andrew, Provost, 32.
Ramsay, Sir George, of Bamff, killed in a duel, 353-356.
Rats, pets of Lady Eglintoune, 197, 198.
Rats, town, 179, 186.
Rattray, Clerk, Sheriff, 281.
Register House, 7, 366.
Reinagle, Joseph, ’cellist, 253.
Renton, Eleonora, of Lamerton, 304.
Restalrig, 323, 326, 351.
Riddel’s Close, Lawnmarket, 55, 76.
Risps or tirlin’-pins on doors, 207.
Rivane, Generall, 40.
Robertson, Principal, 80, 162, 243, 262, 288.
Rochester, Earl of, 122.
Rockville, Lord, 230.
Rollo, Lord, 270.
Romieu, Paul, a noted watchmaker, 46.
Rope for hanging Porteous bought, 47.
Rose Court, George Street, 7.
Rose, Dr Alexander, Bishop of Edinburgh, 170.
Rosehaugh’s Close (Strichen’s), 224.
Ross House, George Square, 209 n.
Rosslyn, Earl of, 263.
Rothes, the Duke of, his rough remark, 51.
Roxburgh Street, 187.
Royal Bank, 7, 367.
Royal Bank Close, 154.
Ruddiman, Thomas, 27.
Rumple-knot, the, 201.
Runciman, painter, 149.
Rutherford, Dr Daniel (Professor), 264, 277, 328.
Rutherford, Miss, Sir Walter Scott’s mother, 231.
Ruthven, Mr, 300.
Rye-House Plot, 88.
St Andrews, Bishop of, 223.
St Andrew Square, 6, 8, 58.
St Cecilia’s Hall, 152, 249.
St Clair, Lord, 124.
St David Street, a joke about name of, 58.
St Giles’s, booths around, 3, 110.
St Giles’s, characteristics of the High Kirk, 114.
St Giles’s Church, endowment to chaplain of, 240.
St Giles’s Churchyard, 109.
St Giles’s Clock, 8.
St Giles’s, memoranda of Old Kirk of, 105-108.
St Giles’s, Old Kirk described, 114.
St Giles’s, position of, relative to Heart of Midlothian, 82.
St Giles’s Street, suggested name for Princes Street, 7.
St Giles, statue of, thrown into North Loch, 118.{376}
St Giles’s, Tolbooth Church described, 114.
St James’s Square, 335.
St John’s Cross, 301.
St John’s Street, 8, 302.
St Mary-in-the-Fields (Kirk o’ Fields), situation of, 256.
St Mary’s Wynd, 171, 258, 276, 287.
Saints, Bowhead, the, 30.
Salisbury Crags, 91.
Sanctuary, 260.
‘Saving the ladies,’ 147, 251.
Schetky, J. G. H., musician, 152, 253.
Scott, Sir Walter, 6, 24, 31, 38, 87, 134, 140, 143, 147, 181, 182, 190, 231, 242, 243, 264, 277, 293, 298, 327, 328, 365.
Scott, Walter, W.S., 335.
Scott, William, Lord Stowell, 172.
Scoundrels’ Walk, the, 115.
Seafield, Earl of, 309.
Selkirk, Earl of, 156, 264.
Sellar, Mrs, milliner, anecdote of, 324.
Shakspeare Square, 151.
Sharpe, Charles Kirkpatrick, antiquary, 304.
Ship Tavern, Leith, 284.
Shows in Leith Walk, 362.
Shut-up houses in Old Town, 35.
Siddons, Mrs, 345.
Silvermills, village of, 367.
Sinclair, Effie (Mrs Euphame), her boarding-school, 230.
Sinclair, Sir Robert, of Longformacus, 230.
Sinclair, Sir William, of Mey, 77.
Singing Jamie Balfour, 141.
Sinkum the Cawdy, 130.
Skull, the, of George Buchanan, 288 n.
Smeaton, Mr, singer, 253.
Smellie, William, printer of Burns’s Poems, 164.
Smith, Adam, 57, 318.
Smith, David, of Methven, 252.
Smith, ‘General’ Joe, leader of Edinburgh mobs, 184.
Smollett, a sister of, 303.
Smollett, Tobias, 56, 303.
Snuff-taking, prevalence of, 200.
Somerville, Braid Hugh, a street fight in 1640, 39.
Somerville family, arms of, 43.
Somerville, Lord, and his method of litigation, 120.
Somerville, Major, his combat with Captain Crawford, 39.
Somerville of Cambusnethan, 120.
Somerville, Peter and Bartholomew, 43.
Somervilles, Memorie of the, 37.
Sommers, Thomas, 149.
South Back of Canongate, 258.
South Bridge, 209.
Speaking House, the, 312.
Spendthrift Club, the, 150, 345.
Spottiswoode, John, of Spottiswoode, 119, 269.
Springfield, 362.
Stabilini, musician, 254.
Stair, Countess of, 63-69.
Stair, Earl of, 63, 67, 123.
Stamp-office Close, 143, 162, 192.
Star and Garter Tavern, 162.
Stays, 199.
Steell, Sir John, sculptor, 18.
Steil, John, musician, 161.
Stewart, Archibald, Provost, 48, 181.
Stewart, Dugald, Professor, 323.
Stewart, General, of Garth, 72.
Stewart, James, 25.
Stewart, Robert (Rob Uncle), 72.
Stewart, Sir William, killed in Blackfriars Wynd, 38.
Stewarts of Bonskeid, 181.
Stinking Close, 34.
Stipends of Scotch Church, 20.
Stomacher, the, 199.
Strachan, Lord, 124.
Straiton, Colonel Charles, 293.
Strichen, Lord, 224, 236.
Strichen’s Close, 222.
Sutherland, Countess of, 205.
Sutherland, Earl of, 205, 288.
Sweating Club, 154.
Swift, 314, 315.
Swine roaming in the streets, 100.
Swinton, Margaret, 293.
Syme, Mrs, 80.
Syme, Robert, W.S., 61.
Tailors’ Hall, Cowgate, 346.
Tam o’ the Cowgate (first Earl of Haddington), 244, 367.
Tappit-hen, 151.
Taverns of old times, 158-173.
Taylor, the Water-Poet, 138.
Tea-parties, fashionable hour for, 286.
Telfer, Mrs, Smollett’s sister, 303.
Templars’ Lands in Grassmarket, 50.
Tenducci, singer, 253, 304, 305.
Tennis Court, 344, 345.
Theatre in Canongate, 346.
Theatre in Carrubber’s Close, 15, 346.
Theatre Royal, 7.
Theatres, early, in Edinburgh, 344, 346, 347.
Theophilus, Nicholaus, 260.
Thomson, George, his account of music in Edinburgh in last century, 249-254.
Thomson, poet, 7.
Thomson’s, Mrs, lodgings, 171.
Thomson, William, dagger-maker, 39.
Thrale, Mrs, 60.
Threipland, Sir Stuart, of Fingask, 269.
Tinklarian Doctor (William Mitchell), a prating fanatic, 41.
Tinwald, Lord Justice-Clerk, 9.
Tirlin’-pins, 207.
Toddrick’s Wynd, 257.
Tod’s Close, 22.
Tolbooth, Canongate, 248, 319.
Tolbooth Church, 53, 105, 107, 114, 115.
Tolbooth, Old, 82-94, 179.
Tolbooth or ‘Towbuith’ Whigs, 21, 115.
Topham, Major, 49, 176, 267.
Town-guard, the, 4, 30, 84, 148, 179-182, 233.
Town Rats, the, 179, 186.
Town-wall, 258.
Tradesman, habits of an old Edinburgh, 148.
Traquair, ladies of, 286.
Tron Church, 39, 58, 143, 144, 209.
Tulzies (street fights), 37.{377}
Tweeddale Court, 280.
Tweeddale, Marquis of, 225, 279.
Tytler, Alexander, 289.
Tytler of Woodhouselee, 152, 321.
Udward’s house in Niddry’s Wynd, 210.
Union Club, the, 155.
Union, the, legends of, 309.
University, the, 259.
Urbani, Mr, singer, 253.
Veronica, Miss, 60.
Violante, Signora, 346.
Wallace, Lady, 276, 277.
Wall, town, 258.
Ward’s Inn, 355.
Warriston, 175.
Water-gate, 150, 170, 308, 344.
Water of Leith, 367.
Waterstone, John, 39.
Watson, George, 50.
Webster, Dr Alexander, of convivial memory, 20, 115, 162.
Webster’s Close, 20.
Weigh-house, the, 27, 39.
Weir, Grizel, 32.
Weir, Major, wizard, 26, 31-37.
Wemyss, Earl of, 111, 305.
Wemyss, Laird of, 38.
West Bow, 26-54, 133.
West Port, 75, 245.
Whey Club, the, 156.
Whigs, Tolbooth, 21, 115.
Whitefield, George, in Edinburgh, 7.
Whiteford House, 10.
White Hart Inn, 2, 171.
White Horse Inn, 2, 170, 172.
White Horse Stables, 170.
Whitesmiths of the Bow, 26, 42.
Wig Club, the, 155.
Wig, the, of Lord Coalstoun, 96.
Williamson of Cardrona, 165.
Williamson, Peter, 114.
Wilson, Daniel (Memorials of Edinburgh), 222.
Wilson, James (Claudero), 330.
Wilson the smuggler, 52, 180.
Wodrow, historian, 15.
Wooden-fronted houses, account of, 271.
Woodhead, 61, 62.
Woodhouselee, Lord, 130.
Wood, Lang Sandy, 6.
Wood’s Farm, 6, 366.
Woods, Mr, actor, 149.
Worthies, the, of Parliament House, 134.
Writers’ Court, 162.
Young, Alexander, W.S., 59.
Young Bibles, 277.
Young, John, 7.
York, Duke of, 80, 181, 248, 344.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Mr W. B. Blaikie (The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. ii.) gives a list of the occupants of a first-class tenement some years subsequent to the ’45 Rebellion: ‘First-floor, Mrs Stirling, fishmonger; second, Mrs Urquhart, lodging-house keeper; third-floor, the Countess Dowager of Balcarres; fourth, Mrs Buchan of Kelloe; fifth, the Misses Elliot, milliners and mantua-makers; garrets, a variety of tailors and other tradesmen.’

[2] Pamphlet circa 1700, Wodrow Collection, Adv. Lib.

[3] Brown Square finally disappeared with the making of Chambers Street.

[4] Mr William Cowan, in vol. i. of The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, says this exemption applied to the three eastmost tenements in Princes Street.

[5] The late Bruce J. Home drew up in 1908 ‘A Provisional List of Old Houses Remaining in High Street and Canongate,’ which was printed, with accompanying map, in the first volume of The Old Edinburgh Club Book. The statement is therein made ‘that since 1860 two-thirds of the ancient buildings in the Old Town of Edinburgh have been demolished.’ The map showed, coloured in red, the remaining buildings of the Old Town which had survived until the beginning of the twentieth century.

[6] This jest was doubtless based on Swift’s famous poem on Vanbrugh’s house (1704). The peculiar architectural features of Allan’s ‘goose pie’ have been almost entirely obliterated by recent alterations. Only the two circular upper stories remain in their original form.

[7] ‘My mother was told by those who had enjoyed his plays, that he had a child’s puppet stage and a set of dressed dolls for actors, which were in great favour with old and young.’—C. K. Sharpe’s note in Wilson’s Reminiscences.

[8] King’s Bridge crosses King’s Stables Road, and the access from it is Johnston Terrace.

[9] When Mrs Cockburn, author of ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ entered on occupation of the house in 1756, it was described in the Baird titles as ‘my lodging in the castle-hill of Edinburgh, formerly possessed by the Duchess of Gordon.’

[10] A Board-school now occupies the site of the mansion. The doorway referred to is rebuilt into the school-house.

[11] George, sixth Earl of Huntly, took his last illness, June 1636, in ‘his house in the Canongate.’ George, the first duke, who had held out the Castle at the Revolution, died December 1716, at his house in the Citadel of Leith, where he appears to have occasionally resided for some years. I should suppose the house on the Castle-hill to have been inhabited by the family in the interval.

The Citadel seems to have been a little nest of aristocracy, of the Cavalier party. In 1745 one of its inhabitants was Dame Magdalen Bruce of Kinross, widow of the baronet who had assisted in the Restoration. Here lived with her the Rev. Robert Forbes, Episcopal minister of Leith [afterwards Bishop of Orkney], from whose collections regarding Charles Edward and his adventures a volume of extracts was published by me in 1834. [The Lyon in Mourning is here referred to, from which Dr Chambers published a number of the narratives in his Jacobite Memoirs (1834), and from which he also utilised some information of the Rebellion of 1745 in the preparation of his History of the Rebellion. At his death he bequeathed the work to the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, where it now remains. It consists of eight small octavo volumes of manuscript of about two hundred pages, each bound in black leather, with blackened edges, and around the title-page of each volume a deep black border. The collection was the work of the Rev. Robert Forbes, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, who became in 1762 Bishop of Ross and Caithness. It was treasured by his widow for thirty years, and then bought by Sir Henry Stewart of Allanton in 1806. Dr Robert Chambers unearthed it for historical purposes, and later purchased it from Sir Henry Stewart. Some relics which Forbes succeeded in obtaining from his correspondents—such as a piece of the Prince’s garter, a piece of the gown he wore as Betty Burke, and of the string of the apron he then had on, a fragment of a waistcoat worn by the Prince, and other things—were preserved on the inside of some of the boards of the volumes. The Lyon in Mourning was edited by Mr Henry Paton from the manuscript in the Advocates’ Library, and published in three volumes by the Scottish History Society (1895).] Throughout those troublous days, a little Episcopal congregation was kept together in Leith; their place of worship being the first floor of an old, dull-looking house in Queen Street (dated 1615), the lower floor of which was, in my recollection, a police-office.

[12] Webster’s Close became Brown’s Close when the property changed hands, and two brothers of that name occupied the house. To Brown’s Close the recently formed Society of Antiquaries of Scotland removed in 1794 from Gosford’s Close, because the latter was too narrow to admit of the members being carried to the place of meeting in sedan-chairs.

[13] Before the Government bounty had supplemented the poor stipends of the Scotch Church up to £150, many of them were so small that the widow’s allowance from this fund nearly equalled them. Such was the case of Cranshaws, a pastoral parish among the Lammermoor Hills. A former minister of Cranshaws having wooed a lass of humble rank, the father of the lady, when consulted on the subject, said, ‘Tak’ him, Jenny; he’s as gude deid as living!’ meaning, of course, that she would be as well off as a widow as in the quality of a wife.

[14] ‘The monograms of the name of our blessed lady are formed of the letters M. A., M. R., and A. M., and these stand respectively for Maria, Maria Regina, and Ave Maria. The letter M. was often used by itself to express the name of the Blessed Virgin, and became a vehicle for the most beautiful ornament and design; the letter itself being entirely composed of emblems, with some passage from the life of our lady in the void spaces.’—Pugin’s Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume, 1844.

[15] Keith’s History.

[16] The New College and Assembly Hall of the (United) Free Church.

[17] Fellows.

[18] Busy.

[19] Not improbably this was done in a spirit of literal obedience to the injunction (Matthew vi. 6): ‘Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet.’ Commentators on this passage mention that every Jewish house had a place of secret devotion built over the porch.

[20] When Colonel Gardiner occupied it the house was known as Olive Bank. It was later changed to Bankton House by Andrew Macdowall, who, when raised to the Bench in 1755, took the title of Lord Bankton.

[21] Bankton House has been burned down and rebuilt since this was written.

[22] History of Edinburgh, p. 205, note.

[23] Before Major Weir took up house in the West Bow he is said to have lodged in the Cowgate, where he had as a fellow-lodger the fanatic Mitchell (Ravaillac redivivus), who attempted to shoot Archbishop Sharpe.

[24] Sir Andrew Ramsay was provost of the city, first from 1654 till 1657, and then continuously for eleven years, 1662-73. It was he who obtained from the king the title of Lord Provost for the chief magistrate, and secured precedence for him next to the Lord Mayor of London.

[25] The Rev. Mr Frazer, minister of Wardlaw, in his Divine Providences (MS. Adv. Lib.), dated 1670.

[26] Satan’s Invisible World Discovered.

[27] The causeway. A skirmish fought between the Hamiltons and Douglases, upon the High Street of Edinburgh, in the year 1515, was popularly termed Cleanse the Causeway.

[28] Cane.

[29] Hamstringed.

[30] Memorie of the Somervilles, vol. ii. p. 271.

[31] This house was demolished in 1836.

[32] Jackson’s History of the Stage, p. 418.

[33] See Notes from the Records of the Assembly Rooms of Edinburgh. Edinburgh: 1842. In the eighteenth century a lady’s ‘night-gown’ was a special kind of evening-dress, often of silk brocade, &c., other than full dress; and a gentleman’s night-gown was a dressing-gown, not a bed-garment.

[34] It was a ball in the room of the Old Assembly Close building which Goldsmith describes in the letter quoted, and in which public assemblies were revived in 1746. The new rooms in Bell’s Wynd were opened in 1756.

[35] Called the ‘Ovir Bow Port.’ It stood about the line of the present Victoria Terrace.

[36] This house was demolished in 1835, to make way for a passage towards George IV. Bridge.

[37] Taken down in 1839.

[38] Demolished in 1833.

[39] The narrow, crooked West Bow, descending very steeply from the Lawnmarket to the Grassmarket, has been almost wholly obliterated by Victoria Street, a comparatively wide and gradually sloping street which crosses the line of the old West Bow from George IV. Bridge. Victoria Street was built in 1835-40; and only a few houses on one side of the head of the Bow still stand, and these have been rebuilt.

[40] From whom it got its name—James’s Court.

[41] A ‘land’ still standing (1912) as it was when Hume lived there. It was also the residence of the Countess of Eglinton when she left the Stamp Office Close in the High Street. See p. 192.

[42] Burton’s Life of Hume, ii. 173.

[43] Formerly called Blair’s Close (p. 19). The name was altered to Baird’s Close when the Gordon property passed into the possession of Baird of Newbyth.

[44] Mrs Cockburn, writing to Miss Cumming at Balcarres, describes ‘a ball’ she gave in this house. ‘On Wednesday I gave a ball. How do ye think I contrived to stretch out this house to hold twenty-two people, and had nine couples always dancing? Yet this is true; it is also true that we had a table covered with divers eatables all the time, and that everybody ate when they were hungry and drank when they were dry, but nobody ever sat down.... Our fiddler sat where the cupboard is, and they danced in both rooms. The table was stuffed into the window and we had plenty of room. It made the bairns all very happy.’—Mrs Cockburn’s Letters, edited by T. Craig Brown.

[45] His lordship died September 20, 1722 (Brunton and Haig’s Historical Account of the Senators of the College of Justice).

[46] A stuff brought, I believe, from Spain, and which was at one time much in fashion in Scotland.

[47] Lady Stair’s Close was originally a cul de sac. When the Mound was begun a thoroughfare was cut through the garden, making the close the principal communication between the Lawnmarket and Hanover Street, then the western extremity of the New Town. The name it first bore was ‘Lady Gray’s Close,’ after the wife of the builder of the house, and that of Lady Stair’s Close was given to it (The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. iii.) early in the eighteenth century, when the house passed into the possession of the first Lady Stair, a granddaughter of Sir William Gray of Pittendrum. Lord Rosebery, who represents a branch of the Primroses (other than that to which the second viscount, mentioned below, belonged), restored the house and presented it to the city in 1907.

[48] ‘Grace, Countess of Aboyne and Moray, in her early youth, had the weakness to consult a celebrated fortune-teller, inhabiting an obscure close in Edinburgh. The sibyl predicted that she would become the wife of two earls, and how many children she was to bear; but withal assured her that when she should see a new coach of a certain colour driven up to her door as belonging to herself, her hearse must speedily follow. Many years afterwards, Lord Moray, who was not aware of this prediction, resolved to surprise his wife with the present of a new equipage; but when Lady Moray beheld from a window a carriage of the ominous colour arrive at the door of Darnaway, and heard that it was to be her own property, she sank down, exclaiming that she was a dead woman, and actually expired in a short time after, November 17, 1738.’—Notes to Law’s Memorials, p. xcii.

[49] Lady Primrose’s story forms the groundwork of one of Sir Walter Scott’s best short stories, My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror.

[50] This story loses its point by the discovery made in St Peter’s upon Cornhill, London, of the marriage register of the second Earl of Stair with Lady Primrose, 27th March 1708. Thus they were married persons several years before the presumed date of this story. Miss Rosaline Masson announced the discovery in an article in Chambers’s Journal for 1912, entitled, ‘The Secret Marriage of Lady Primrose and John, Second Earl of Stair.’ She makes this comment: ‘The testimony of John Waugh, Parson, has lain buried for over two hundred years in the old Register in the city; but the tale, whispered one day, some time about the year 1714, in the High Street of Edinburgh, first among the strutting gallants and loungers at the Cross at noon, and later on, over the delicate tea-cups, in the gossipy gatherings of the fair sex—that tale was nowise buried. It has never died. Did not Kirkpatrick Sharpe repeat it, sixty years after Lady Stair’s death, to young Robert Chambers, at that time collecting material for his inimitable book, Traditions of Edinburgh?’ The article further tries to answer the question why the Earl of Stair and the young widow made this clandestine marriage, which gave opportunity for the story.

[51] Negroes in a servile capacity had been long before known in Scotland. Dunbar has a droll poem on a female black, whom he calls ‘My lady with the muckle lips.’ In Lady Marie Stuart’s Household Book, referring to the early part of the seventeenth century, there is mention of ‘ane inventorie of the gudes and geir whilk pertenit to Dame Lilias Ruthven, Lady Drummond,’ which includes as an item, ‘the black boy and the papingoe [peacock];’ in so humble an association was it then thought proper to place a human being who chanced to possess a dark skin.

[52] Raised to the Bench with the title of Lord Kerse.

[53] The lintel bearing this legend is preserved in a doorway at the top of the staircase of the Free Library, George IV. Bridge. The Cowgate portion of the Library building (1887-89) occupies the site of Sir Thomas Hope’s house.

[54] While King’s Advocate, Sir Thomas Hope had the unique experience of pleading at the Bar before two of his sons who were judges—Lord Craighall and Lord Kerse. There is a tradition that when addressing the Court he remained covered, and that from this circumstance the Lord Advocates still have this privilege, although they do not exercise it. Probably the custom introduced by Sir Thomas Hope originated in his being an officer of state, which entitled him to sit in parliament wearing his hat, and he claimed the same privilege when appearing before the judges.

[55] See a Memoir by Sir Archibald Steuart Denham in the publications of the Maitland Club.

[56] The site of Chiesly’s house is that occupied by the Episcopal Church Training College in Orwell Place.

[57] In The Domestic Annals of Scotland the place of his execution is given as Drumsheugh, and Sir Walter Scott says he was hanged near his own house of Dalry.

[58] This was the first High School, built in 1578 in the grounds of the Blackfriars’ Monastery, of which David Malloch, or Mallet, was janitor in 1717. The building faced the Canongate. In 1777 it was replaced by the building now facing Infirmary Street and used in connection with the university. It is this later building that is associated with Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham, Lord Jeffrey, Lord Cockburn, and other eminent men of the last quarter of the eighteenth and first quarter of the nineteenth century.

[59] The Mechanics’ Library was discontinued when the Free Library was opened. Bailie Macmoran’s house is now used as a university settlement.

[60] After being the residence for a time of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik and other notable citizens, it was latterly occupied by the widow (the seventh wife) of the Rev. David Williamson—‘Dainty Davie’—minister of St Cuthbert’s Church at the time of the Revolution.

[61] The house is marked No. 21. Its back windows enjoy a fine view of the Firth of Forth and the Fife hills. The registration of his lordship’s birth appears as follows: ‘Wednesday, 30th September 1778, Henry Brougham, Esq., parish of St Gilles (sic), and Eleonora Syme, his spouse, a son born the 19th current, named Henry Peter. Witnesses, Mr Archibald Hope, Royal Bank, and Principal Robertson.’ The parts of the New Town then built belonged to St Giles’s parish.

[62] These verses are to be found in a curious volume, which appeared in London in 1618, under the title of Essayes and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners, by Geffray Mynshul, of Grayes Inn, Gent. Reprinted, 1821, by W. & C. Tait, Edinburgh. The lines were applied specially to the King’s Bench Prison.

[63] A large white house near the Castle, on the north side of the street, and now (1868) no more.

[64] Katherine Nairne was the niece of Sir William Nairne, later a judge under the title of Lord Dunsinnane, and it was currently reported that her escape from the Tolbooth was effected through his connivance. Sir William’s clerk accompanied the lady to Dover, and had great difficulty in preventing her recognition and arrest through her levity on the journey.

[65] Up to the year 1830, when George IV. Bridge gave easy access to Parliament House, this quaint custom was followed by Lord Glenlee, who walked from his house in Brown Square, down Crombie’s Close, across the Cowgate, and up the Back Stairs.

[66] Napier of Merchiston.

[67] This projection is still a notable architectural feature in the open space at the back of the tenement referred to. The original windows have been built up. One of the lettered stones bearing the words, ‘Blessit be God for all his giftis’—a favourite motto with old Edinburgh builders—was removed to Easter Coates house, where it may still be seen in that now old building adjoining St Mary’s Cathedral.

[68] From this tradition it was known as ‘The Cromwell Bartizan.’ Dunbar’s Close did not get its name from its supposed association with Cromwell’s soldiers, but from a family that lived in it. At an earlier period it was known as Ireland’s Close.

[69] Edinburgh was not in this respect worse than other European cities. Paris, at least, was equally disgusting. Rigord, who wrote in the twelfth century, tells us that the king, standing one day at the window of his palace near the Seine, and observing that the dirt thrown up by the carriages produced a most offensive stench, resolved to remedy this intolerable nuisance by causing the streets to be paved. For a long time swine were permitted to wallow in them; till the young Philip being killed by a fall from his horse, from a sow running between its legs, an order was issued that no swine should in future run about the street. The monks of the Abbey of St Anthony remonstrated fiercely against this order, alleging that the prevention of the saint’s swine from enjoying the liberty of going where they pleased was a want of respect to their patron. It was therefore found necessary to grant them the privilege of wallowing in the dirt without molestation, requiring the monks only to turn them out with bells about their necks.

[70]

‘To recreat hir hie renoun,

Of curious things thair wes all sort,

The stairs and houses of the toun

With tapestries were spread athort:

Quhair histories men micht behould,

With images and anticks auld.

The description of the qveen’s maiesties
maist honorable entry into the town of
edinbvrgh, vpon the 19. day of maii, 1590.
By john bvrel.’—Watson’s Collection of Scots
Poems (1709).

[71] In the early times these privileged beggars were called ‘Bedesmen,’ from telling their beads as they walked from Holyrood to St Giles’. From the erection of the Canongate Church in 1690 the ceremony took place there, until it was discontinued in the first years of Queen Victoria’s reign. A well-known worthy of this community was reputed in 1837 to possess property which yielded an annual income of £120.

[72] We learn from Crawford’s History of the University (MS. Adv. Lib.) that the service was read that day in the Old Kirk on account of the more dignified place of worship towards the east being then under the process of alteration for the erection of the altar, ‘and other pendicles of that idolatrous worship.’

[73] Notes upon the Phœnix edition of the Pastoral Letter, by S. Johnson, 1694.

[74] Wodrow, in his Diary, makes a statement apparently at issue with that in the text, both in respect of locality and person:

‘It is the constantly believed tradition that it was Mrs Mean, wife to John Mean, merchant in Edinburgh, who threw the first stool when the service-book was read in the New Kirk, Edinburgh, 1637, and that many of the lasses that carried on the fray were preachers in disguise, for they threw stools to a great length.’

[75] A newspaper commenced after the Restoration, and continued through eleven numbers.

[76] Small stools.

[77] See St Giles’, Edinburgh: Church, College, and Cathedral, by the Rev. Sir J. Cameron Lees, D.D.; also Historical Sketch of St Giles’ Cathedral, by William Chambers, by whom the cathedral was restored in 1872-83. Regarding the reinterment of Montrose, there is a narrative, with some fresh light on the subject, in the paper, ‘The Embalming of Montrose,’ in the first volume of The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. The monuments to Knox, the Earl of Murray, and the Marquises of Argyll and Montrose are quite modern.

[78] St Giles’ churchyard was divided into two terraces by the old city wall (1450), which was built half-way down the sloping ground on the south side of the High Street. A part of this wall was exposed in 1832 when excavations were made for additional buildings at the Advocates’ Library.

[79] Previous to 1681 the inhabitants of Edinburgh were supplied with water from pump-wells in the south side of the Cowgate.

[80] Which also were destroyed in the fires of 1824.

[81] The Wemysses’ footman was one of the few arrested on suspicion of being a ringleader in the Porteous riot.

[82] John’s Coffee-house was then situated in the north-east corner of Parliament Close.

[83] Baijen-hole, see note, p. 155.

[84] In the early times above referred to, £100 was accounted a sufficient capital for a young goldsmith—being just so much as purchased his furnace, tools, &c., served to fit up his shop, and enabled him to enter the Incorporation, which alone required £40 out of the £100. The stock with which George Heriot commenced business at a much earlier period (1580)—said to have been about £200—must therefore be considered a proof of the wealth of that celebrated person’s family.

[85] Peter had, in early life, been kidnapped and sold to the plantations. After spending some time among the North American Indians, he came back to Scotland, and began business in Edinburgh as a vintner. Robert Fergusson, in his poem entitled The Rising of the Session, thus alludes to a little tavern he kept within the Parliament House:

‘This vacance is a heavy doom

On Indian Peter’s coffee-room,

For a’ his china pigs are toom;

Nor do we see

In wine the soukar biskets soom

As light’s a flee.’

Peter afterwards established a penny-post in Edinburgh, which became so profitable in his hands that the General Post-office gave him a handsome compensation for it. He was also the first to print a street directory in Edinburgh. He died January 19, 1799.

[86] Provost Creech was the first who had the good taste to abandon the practice.

[87] See Collection of Original Poems by Scotch Gentlemen, vol. ii. 137 (1762).

[88] An Edinburgh term applied to a class of rogues. Probably a corrupt pronunciation of the English word cully—to fool, to cheat.

[89] Where the North Bridge now stands.

[90] A full description of the old Parliament Hall, with a plan showing the divisions and the arrangements of the ‘booths,’ is given in Reekiana; or, Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh. It is not now called the Outer House.

[91] Several of the illustrations in the present section are immediately derived from a curious volume, full of entertainment for a denizen of the Parliament House—The Court of Session Garland. Edinburgh: Thomas Stevenson. 1839.

[92] A Moral Discourse on the Power of Interest. By David Abercromby, M.D. London, 1691. P. 60.

[93] John Sinclair of Murkle, appointed a Lord of Session in 1733.

[94] Alexander Leslie, advocate, succeeded his nephew as fifth Earl of Leven, and fourth Earl of Melville, in 1729. He was named a Lord of Session, and took his seat on the bench on the 11th of July 1734. He died 2nd February 1754.

[95] Sir Walter Pringle of Newhall, raised to the bench in 1718.

[96] Andrew Fletcher of Milton was appointed, on the resignation of James Erskine of Grange, Lord Justice-clerk, and took his seat on the bench 21st June 1735.

[97] Probably Gibson of Pentland.

[98] Hew Dalrymple of Drummore, appointed a Lord of Session in 1726.

[99] Afterwards Lord Dreghorn.

[100] Author of a Treatise on Election Laws, and Solicitor-general during the Coalition Ministry in 1783.

[101] Afterwards Lord Polkemmet.

[102] Afterwards Lord Eskgrove and Lord Justice-clerk.

[103] Alexander Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck, the author’s father—appointed to the bench in 1754; died 1782. This gentleman was a precise old Presbyterian, and therefore the most opposite creature in the world to his son, who was a cavalier in politics and an Episcopalian.

[104] Afterwards Lord Braxfield—appointed 1776; died 1800, while holding the office of Lord Justice-clerk. Lord Braxfield is the prototype of Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston.

[105] Alexander Lockhart, Esq., decidedly the greatest lawyer at the Scottish bar in his day—appointed to the bench in 1774; died in 1782.

[106] Andrew Pringle, Esq.—appointed a judge in 1759; died 1776. This gentleman was remarkable for his fine oratory, which was praised highly by Sheridan the lecturer (father of R. B. Sheridan) in his Discourses on English Oratory.

[107] Henry Home, Esq.—raised to the bench 1752; died 1783. This great man, so remarkable for his metaphysical subtlety and literary abilities, was strangely addicted to the use of the coarse word in the text.

[108] Sir David Dalrymple—appointed a judge in 1766; died 1792. A story is told of Lord Hailes once making a serious objection to a law-paper, and, in consequence, to the whole suit to which it belonged, on account of the word justice being spelt in the manner mentioned in the text. Perhaps no author ever affected so much critical accuracy as Lord Hailes, and yet there never was a book published with so large an array of corrigenda et addenda as the first edition of the Annals of Scotland.

[109] George Brown, Esq., of Coalstoun—appointed 1756; died 1776.

[110] Alexander Fraser of Strichen—appointed 1730; died 1774.

[111] James Erskine, Esq., subsequently titled Lord Alva—appointed 1761; died 1796. He was of exceedingly small stature, and upon that account denominated ‘Lordie.’

[112] James Veitch, Esq.—appointed 1761; died 1793.

[113] Francis Garden, Esq.—appointed 1764; died 1793—author of several respectable literary productions.

[114] Robert Dundas, Esq., of Arniston—appointed 1760; died 1787.

[115] The bench being semicircular, and the President sitting in the centre, the seven judges on his right hand formed the east wing, those on his left formed the west. The decisions were generally announced by the words ‘Adhere’ and ‘Alter’—the former meaning an affirmance, the latter a reversal, of the judgment of the Lord Ordinary.

[116] The term of the summer session was then from the 12th of June to the 12th of August.

[117] Henry, first Viscount Melville, then coming forward as an advocate at the Scottish bar. When this great man passed advocate, he was so low in cash that, after going through the necessary forms, he had only one guinea left in his pocket. Upon coming home, he gave this to his sister (who lived with him), in order that she might purchase him a gown; after which he had not a penny. However, his talents soon filled his coffers. The gown is yet preserved by the family.

[118] ‘To See’ is to appoint the petition against the judgment pronounced to be answered.

[119] John Erskine of Carnock, author of the Institute of the Law of Scotland.

[120] Thomas Miller, Esq., of Glenlee—appointed to this office in 1766, upon the death of Lord Minto. He filled this situation till the death of Robert Dundas, in 1787, when (January 1788) he was made President of the Court of Session, and created a baronet, in requital for his long service as a judge. Being then far advanced in life, he did not live long to enjoy his new accession of honours, but died in September 1789.

[121] John Campbell, Esq., of Stonefield.

[122] James Burnet, Esq.—appointed 1767; died 1799.

[123] James Fergusson, Esq.—appointed 1761; died 1777. He always wore his hat on the bench, on account of sore eyes.

[124] Robert Bruce, Esq.—appointed 1764; died 1785.

[125] Alexander Tait, Clerk of Session.

[126] He was the grandson of Lord President Lockhart, who was shot by Chiesly of Dalry (see p. 75).

[127] Within the memory of an old citizen, who was living in 1833, the Post-office was in the first floor of a house near the Cross, above an alley which still bears the name of the Post-office Close. Thence it was removed to a floor in the south side of the Parliament Square, which was fitted up like a shop, and the letters were dealt across an ordinary counter, like other goods. At this time all the out-of-door business of delivery was managed by one letter-carrier. About 1745 the London bag brought on one occasion no more than a single letter, addressed to the British Linen Company. From the Parliament Square the office was removed to Lord Covington’s house, above described; thence, after some years, to a house in North Bridge Street; thence to Waterloo Place; and finally, to a new and handsome structure on the North Bridge.

[128] Lord Gardenstone erected the building (in the form of a Grecian temple) which encloses St Bernard’s Well, on the Water of Leith, between the Dean Bridge and Stockbridge. He also founded the town of Laurencekirk in Kincardineshire, which he hoped to make a manufacturing centre.

[129] Notes to Redgauntlet.

[130] Lord Grange, whose Diary of a Senator of the College of Justice was published in 1833.

[131] Lord Newton was known as ‘The Mighty.’ Lord Cockburn says it was not uncommon for judges on the bench to provide themselves with a bottle of port, which they consumed while listening to the case being tried before them.

[132] This story is told of John Clerk, who afterwards sat on the bench as Lord Eldin.

[133] It was very common for Scotch ladies of rank, even till the middle of the last century, to wear black masks in walking abroad or airing in a carriage; and for some gentlemen, too, who were vain of their complexion. They were kept close to the face by means of a string, having a button of glass or precious stone at the end, which the lady held in her mouth. This practice, I understand, did not in the least interrupt the flow of tittle-tattle and scandal among the fair wearers.

We are told, in a curious paper in the Edinburgh Magazine for August 1817, that at the period above mentioned, ‘though it was a disgrace for ladies to be seen drunk, yet it was none to be a little intoxicated in good company.’

[134] The principal oyster-parties, in old times, took place in Lucky Middlemass’s tavern in the Cowgate (where the south pier of the [South] bridge now stands), which was the resort of Fergusson and his fellow-wits—as witness his own verse:

‘When big as burns the gutters rin,

If ye ha’e catched a droukit skin,

To Luckie Middlemist’s loup in,

And sit fu’ snug,

Owre oysters and a dram o’ gin,

Or haddock lug.’

At these fashionable parties, the ladies would sometimes have the oyster-women to dance in the ball-room, though they were known to be of the worst character. This went under the convenient name of frolic.

[135] The cry of ‘Gardy loo!’ at this hour was supposed to warn pedestrians; but, as Sir Walter Scott says, ‘it was sometimes like the shriek of the water-kelpie, rather the elegy than the warning of the overwhelmed passenger.’

[136] This highly appropriate popular sobriquet cannot be traced beyond the reign of Charles II. Tradition assigns the following as the origin of the phrase: An old gentleman in Fife, designated Durham of Largo, was in the habit, at the period mentioned, of regulating the time of evening worship by the appearance of the smoke of Edinburgh, which he could easily see, through the clear summer twilight, from his own door. When he observed the smoke increase in density, in consequence of the good folk of the city preparing their supper, he would call all the family into the house, saying: ‘It’s time now, bairns, to tak’ the beuks, and gang to our beds, for yonder’s Auld Reekie, I see, putting on her nicht-cap!’

[137] This gentleman, the ‘revered defender of beauteous Stuart,’ and the surviving friend of Allan Ramsay, had an unaccountable aversion to cheese, and not only forbade the appearance of that article upon his table, but also its introduction into his house. His family, who did not partake in this antipathy, sometimes smuggled a small quantity of cheese into the house, and ate it in secret; but he almost always discovered it by the smell, which was the sense it chiefly offended. Upon scenting the object of his disgust, he would start up and run distractedly through the house in search of it, and not compose himself again to his studies till it was thrown out of doors. Some of his ingenious children, by way of a joke, once got into their possession the coat with which he usually went to the court, and ripping up the sutures of one of its wide, old-fashioned skirts, sewed up therein a considerable slice of double Gloster. Mr Tytler was next day surprised when, sitting near the bar, he perceived the smell of cheese rising around him. ‘Cheese here too!’ cried the querulous old gentleman; ‘nay, then, the whole world must be conspiring against me!’ So saying, he rose, and ran home to tell his piteous case to Mrs Tytler and the children, who became convinced from this that he really possessed the singular delicacy and fastidiousness in respect of the effluvia arising from cheese which they formerly thought to be fanciful.

[138] The dress of the Edinburgh Defensive Band was as follows: a cocked hat, black stock, hair tied and highly powdered; dark-blue long-tailed coat, with orange facings in honour of the Revolution, and full lapels sloped away to show the white dimity vest; nankeen small-clothes; white thread stockings, ribbed or plain; and short nankeen spatterdashes. Kay has some ingenious caricatures, in miniature, of these redoubted Bruntsfield Links and Heriot’s Green warriors. The last two survivors were Mr John M’Niven, stationer, and Robert Stevenson, painter, who died in 1832.

[139] One of the panes is now (1847) destroyed, the other cracked. [The tavern is now out of existence.]

[140] Souters’ clods and other forms of bread fascinating to youngsters, as well as penny pies of high reputation, were to be had at a shop which all old Edinburgh people speak of with extreme regard and affection—the Baijen Hole—situated immediately to the east of Forrester’s Wynd and opposite to the Old Tolbooth. The name—a mystery to later generations—seems to bear reference to the Baijens or Baijen Class, a term bestowed in former days upon the junior students in the college. Bajan or bejan is the French bejaune, ‘bec jaune,’ ‘greenbill,’ ‘greenhorn,’ ‘freshman.’

[141] The fullest account yet published of this extraordinary coterie is that of Mr H. A. Cockburn in The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. iii. Creech refers to it in ironical terms as ‘the virtuous, the venerable and dignified Wig who so much to their own honour and kind attention always inform the public of their meetings.’ The reputation of the club was very different.

[142] The following were other eighteenth century Edinburgh clubs:

The Poker Club originated in a combination of gentlemen favourable to the establishment of militia in Scotland, and its name, happily hit on by Professor Adam Ferguson, was selected to avoid giving offence to the Government. A history of the club is given in Dugald Stewart’s Life, and also in Carlyle’s Autobiography, where he says: ‘Dinner was on the table soon after two o’clock, at one shilling a head, the wine to be confined to sherry and claret, and the reckoning called at six o’clock.’ The minutes of this interesting club are preserved in the University Library.

The Mirror Club, formed by the contributors to the periodical of that name. It had really existed before under the name of ‘The Tabernacle.’ ‘The Tabernacle,’ or ‘The Feast of Tabernacles,’ as Ramsay of Ochtertyre calls it, was a company of friends and admirers of Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville.

The Easy Club, founded by Allan Ramsay the poet, consisted of twelve members, each of whom was required to assume the name of some Scottish poet. Ramsay took that of Gawin Douglas.

The Capillaire Club was ‘composed of all who were inclined to be witty and joyous.’

The Facer Club, which met in Lucky Wood’s tavern in the Canongate, was perhaps not of a high order. If a member did not drain his measure of liquor, he had to throw it at his own face.

The Griskin Club also met in the Canongate. Dr Carlyle and those who took part with him in the production of Home’s Douglas at the Canongate playhouse formed this club, and gave it its name from the pork griskins which was their favourite supper dish.

The Ruffian Club, ‘composed of men whose hearts were milder than their manners, and their principles more correct than their habits of life.’

The Wagering Club, instituted in 1775, still meets annually. An account of this club is given in The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. ii.

Others may be mentioned by name only: The Diversorium, The Haveral, The Whin Bush, The Skull, The Six Foot, The Assembly of Birds, The Card, The Borached, The Humdrum, The Apician, The Blast and Quaff, The Ocean, The Pipe, The Knights of the Cap and Feather, The Revolutionary, The Stoic, and The Club, referred to in Lockhart’s Life of Scott.

Of a later period than those mentioned above were The Gowks Club; The Right and Wrong, of which James Hogg gives a short account; and The Friday Club, instituted by Lord Cockburn, who also wrote an interesting history of it, recently printed by Mr H. A. Cockburn, in vol. iii. of The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club.

[143] The Scottish peers on occasions of election of representatives to the House of Lords frequently brought their meetings to a close by dining at Fortune’s Tavern.

[144] See note, p. 157.

[145] ‘The wags of the eighteenth century used to tell of a certain city treasurer who, on being applied to for a new rope to the Tron Kirk bell, summoned the Council to deliberate on the demand; an adjournment to Clerihugh’s Tavern, it was hoped, might facilitate the settlement of so weighty a matter, but one dinner proved insufficient, and it was not till their third banquet that the application was referred to a committee, who spliced the old rope, and settled the bill!’—Wilson’s Memorials of Old Edinburgh.

[146] Since this was written, the whole group of buildings has been taken down, and new ones substituted (1868).

[147] The ‘White Horse’ is introduced in The Abbot—it was the scene of Roland Græme’s encounter with young Seton.

[148] The Corsican patriot whose acquaintance Boswell made on his tour abroad. Johnson characterised him as having ‘the loftiest port of any man he had ever seen.’

[149] Peter Ramsay was a brother of William Ramsay of Barnton, the well-known sporting character of the early part of the nineteenth century.

[150] A punning friend, remarking on the old Scottish practice of styling elderly landladies by the term Lucky, said: ‘Why not?—Felix qui pot——’

[151] The following curious advertisement, connected with an inn in the Canongate, appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant for July 1, 1754. The advertisement is surmounted by a woodcut representing the stage-coach, a towering vehicle, protruding at top—the coachman a stiff-looking, antique little figure, who holds the reins with both hands, as if he were afraid of the horses running away—a long whip streaming over his head and over the top of the coach, and falling down behind—six horses, like starved rats in appearance—a postillion upon one of the leaders, with a whip:

‘The Edinburgh Stage-Coach, for the better accommodation of Passengers, will be altered to a new genteel two-end Glass Machine, hung on Steel Springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue it from Hosea Eastgate’s, the Coach and Horses in Dean Street, Soho, London, and from John Somerville’s in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every other Tuesday, and meet at Burrowbridge on Saturday night, and set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Friday. In the winter to set out from London and Edinburgh every other [alternate] Monday morning, and to go to Burrowbridge on Saturday night; and to set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed, if God permits, by your dutiful servant,

Hosea Eastgate.

‘Care is taken of small parcels according to their value.’

[152] The pillar was restored to Edinburgh, and for some years stood within an enclosed recess on the north side of St Giles’. When Mr W. E. Gladstone rebuilt the Cross in 1885, a little to the south of its former site, between St Giles’ Church and the Police Office, the original pillar was replaced in its old position.

[153] Bishop Forbes inserts in his manuscript (which I possess) a panegyrical epitaph for Ned Burke, stating that he died in Edinburgh in November 1751. He also gives the following particulars from Burke’s conversation:

‘One of the soles of Ned’s shoes happening to come off, Ned cursed the day upon which he should be forced to go without shoes. The Prince, hearing him, called to him and said: “Ned, look at me”—when (said Ned) I saw him holding up one of his feet at me, where there was de’il a sole upon the shoe; and then I said: “Oh, my dear! I have nothing more to say. You have stopped my mouth indeed.”

‘When Ned was talking of seeing the Prince again, he spoke these words: “If the Prince do not come and see me soon, good faith I will go and see my daughter [Charles having taken the name of Betty Burke when in a female disguise], and crave her; for she has not yet paid her christening money, and as little has she paid the coat I ga’e her in her greatest need.”’

[154] ‘Upon the 26th of February [1617], the Cross of Edinburgh was taken down. The old long stone, about forty footes or thereby in length, was to be translated, by the devise of certain mariners in Leith, from the place where it had stood past the memory of man, to a place beneath in the High Street, without any harm to the stone; and the body of the old Cross was demolished, and another builded, whereupon the long stone or obelisk was erected and set up, on the 25th day of March.’—Calderwood’s Church History.

[155] See Domestic Annals of Scotland, ii. 436.

[156] Waverley Annotations, i. 435.

[157] What is said to be the original Blue Blanket is still preserved in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland.

[158] Scots Magazine, June 1767.

[159] The skeleton of this singular being exists entire in the class-room of the professor of anatomy in the College.

[160] Notes to Waverley.

[161] Waverley Annotations, i. 70.

[162] The buildings in this alley are now demolished.

[163] He is said to have been a nobleman of considerable talent, and a great underhand supporter of the exiled family; see the Lockhart Papers. George Lockhart had married his daughter Euphemia, or Lady Effie, as she was commonly called. In the Edinburgh Annual Register there is preserved a letter from Lord Eglintoune to his son, replete with good sense as well as paternal affection.

[164] The earl was forty-nine and Miss Kennedy twenty.

[165] The anecdote which follows is chiefly taken from The Tell-tale, a rare collection, published in 1762.

[166] Notes by C. K. Sharpe in Stenhouse’s edition of the Scots Musical Museum, ii. 200.

[167] As a specimen of the complimentary intercourse of the poet with Lady Eglintoune, an anecdote is told of her having once sent him a basket of fine fruit; to which he returned this stanza:

‘Now, Priam’s son, ye may be mute,

For I can bauldly brag wi’ thee;

Thou to the fairest gave the fruit—

The fairest gave the fruit to me.’

The love of raillery has recorded that on this being communicated by Ramsay to his friend Eustace Budgell, the following comment was soon after received from the English wit:

‘As Juno fair, as Venus kind,

She may have been who gave the fruit;

But had she had Minerva’s mind,

She’d ne’er have given ’t to such a brute.’

[168] An old gentleman told our informant that he never saw so beautiful a figure in his life as Lady Eglintoune at a Hunters’ Ball in Holyrood House, dancing a minuet in a large hoop, and a suit of black velvet, trimmed with gold.

[169] Snuff-taking was prevalent among young women in our grandmothers’ time. Their flirts used to present them with pretty snuff-boxes. In one of the monthly numbers of the Scots Magazine for the year 1745 there is a satirical poem by a swain upon the practice of snuff-taking; to which a lady replies next month, defending the fashion as elegant and of some account in coquetry. Almost all the old ladies who survived the commencement of this century took snuff. Some kept it in pouches, and abandoned, for its sake, the wearing of white ruffles and handkerchiefs.

[170] A gown then required ten yards of stuff.

[171] This verse appears in a manuscript subsequent to 1760. The name, however, is Sleigh, not Lee. Mrs Mally Sleigh was married in 1725 to the Lord Lyon Brodie of Brodie. Allan Ramsay celebrates her.

[172] James Erskine on ascending the bench first took the title of Lord Tinwald, from his estate in Dumfriesshire. That of Lord Alva he assumed when he purchased the family estate of Alva, in Clackmannanshire, from his eldest brother, Sir Charles Erskine.

[173] The site of Mylne Square is now occupied by the block of buildings directly opposite the north front of the Tron Church.

[174] The first of this name was made ‘master-mason’ to the king in 1481, and the position descended in regular succession in the family till 1710, when they adopted the style of architect.

[175] Lady Glenorchy built a chapel, which was named after her, on the low ground to the south of the Calton Hill. The chapel was swept away, along with that of the fine Gothic building Trinity College Church, for the convenience of the North British Railway. The lady’s name is still preserved in Lady Glenorchy’s Established Church in Roxburgh Place and Lady Glenorchy’s United Free Church in Greenside.

[176] The Canongate seems to have been paved about the same time. In 1535 the king granted to the Abbot of Holyrood a duty of one penny upon every loaded cart, and a halfpenny upon every empty one, to repair and maintain the causeway.

[177] George Lockhart of Carnwath lived here in 1753. Afterwards he resided in Ross House, a suburban mansion, which afterwards was used as a lying-in hospital. The park connected with this house is now occupied by George Square. While in Mr Lockhart’s possession Ross House was the scene of many gay routs and balls.

The Lords Ross, the original proprietors of this mansion, died out in 1754. One of the last persons in Scotland supposed to be possessed by an evil spirit was a daughter of George, the second last lord. A correspondent says: ‘A person alive in 1824 told me that, when a child, he saw her clamber up to the top of an old-fashioned four-post bed like a cat. In her fits it was almost impossible to hold her. About the same time, a daughter of Lord Kinnaird was supposed to have the second-sight. One day, during divine worship in the High Church, she fainted away; on her recovery, she declared that when Lady Janet Dundas (a daughter of Lord Lauderdale) entered the pew with Miss Dundas, who was a beautiful young girl, she saw the latter as it were in a shroud gathered round her neck, and upon her head. Miss Dundas died a short time after.’

[178] Both facts from Moyses’s Memoirs.

[179] In the house to the north of this was a shop kept by an eccentric personage, who exhibited a sign bearing this singular inscription:

ORRA THINGS BOUGHT AND SOLD—

which signified that he dealt in odd articles, such as a single shoe-buckle, one of a pair of skates, a teapot wanting a lid, or perhaps, as often, a lid minus a teapot; in short, any unpaired article which was not to be got in the shops where only new things were sold, and which, nevertheless, was now and then as indispensably wanted by householders as anything else.

[180] The present article is almost wholly from original sources, a fact probably unknown to a contemporary novelist, who has made it the groundwork of a fiction without any acknowledgment. Some additional particulars may be found in Tales of the Century, by John Sobieski Stuart (Edinburgh, 1846). In the Spalding Miscellany, vol. iii., are several letters of Lord Grange, containing allusions to his wife; and a production of his, which has been printed under the title of Diary of a Senator of the College of Justice (Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1833), is worthy of perusal.

[181] Here and elsewhere a paper in Lord Grange’s own hand is quoted.

[182] ‘Then, and some time before and after, there was a stage-coach from hence to England.’ So says his lordship; implying that in 1751, when he was writing, there was no such public conveniency! It had been tried, and had failed.

[183] If we could believe Lord Lovat, however, he personally was innocent, and regretted he was innocent, of any association with the abduction of Lady Grange. ‘They said it was all my contrivance, and that it was my servants that took her away; but I defyed them then, as I do now, and do declare to you upon honour, that I do not know what has become of that woman, where she is or who takes care of her, but if I had contrived and assisted, and saved my Lord Grange from that devil, who threatened every day to murder him and his children, I would not think shame of it before God or man.’—Letter of Lord Lovat’s quoted in Genealogie of the Hayes of Tweeddale.

[184] About four gallons.

[185] Named after John Cant, a pious citizen of the sixteenth century, who, with his wife, Agnes Kerkettle, was a contributor to the foundation of the Convent of St Catherine of Siena on the south side of the Meadows. The district is now known as Sciennes—pronounced Sheens.

[186] Only fragments of the ancient buildings remain in Cant’s and Dickson’s Closes.

[187] At the head of the Old Bank Close, to the westward; burned down in 1771.

[188] Only a small portion of this building now remains.

[189] The Advocates’ Library.

[190] In the parish of Borthwick.

[191] This anecdote was related to me by the first Lord Wharncliffe, grandson’s grandson to Sir George, about 1828.

[192] Cromarty, at seventy, contrived to marry ‘a young and beautiful countess in her own right, a widow, wealthy, and in universal estimation. The following distich was composed on the occasion:

Thou sonsie auld carl, the world has not thy like,

For ladies fa’ in love with thee, though thou be ane auld tyke.’

C. K. Sharpe, Notes to Law’s Memorials, p. xlvii.

[193] This historic building was demolished many years ago. Its main front faced the Cowgate, and to the north and east were extensive gardens.

[194] In this house, too, Queen Mary was entertained at a banquet given by the citizens. ‘Upon the nynt day of Februar at evin the Queen’s grace come up in ane honourable manner fra the palice of Holyrudhouse to the Cardinal’s ludging in Blackfriars Wynd, ... and efter supper the honest young men in the town come with ane convoy to her,’ and escorted her back to Holyrood.—Diurnal of Occurrents.

Before the opening of the original High School in the grounds of the Blackfriars’ Monastery the pupils were temporarily accommodated in Beaton’s palace.

[195] The title ‘Ambassador Keith’ is usually applied to Sir Robert’s father, who, after several minor diplomatic appointments on the Continent, was the representative of Great Britain at the court of St Petersburg. An interesting sketch of him, under the title of ‘Felix,’ by Mrs Cockburn, is appended to the volume of that lady’s Letters, edited by Mr T. Craig Brown. Miss Keith, known to Edinburgh society as ‘Sister Anne,’ was Scott’s ‘Mrs Bethune Balliol’ of the Chronicles of the Canongate. This gentleman was absent from Edinburgh about twenty-two years, and returned at a time when it was supposed that manners were beginning to exhibit symptoms of great improvement. He, however, complained that they were degenerated. In his early time, he said, every Scottish gentleman of £300 a year travelled abroad when young, and brought home to the bosom of domestic life, and to the profession in which it might be his fate to engage, a vast fund of literary information, knowledge of the world, and genuine good manners, which dignified his character through life. But towards the year 1770 this practice had been entirely given up, and in consequence a sensible change was discoverable upon the face of good society. (See the Life of John Home, by Henry Mackenzie, Esq.).

[196] It is curious to observe how, in correspondence with the change in our manners and customs, one trade has become extinct, while another succeeded in its place. At the end of the sixteenth century the manufacture of offensive weapons predominated over all other trades in Edinburgh. We had then cutlers, whose essay-piece, on being admitted of the corporation, was ‘ane plain finished quhanzear’ or sword; gaird-makers, whose business consisted in fashioning sword-handles; Dalmascars, who gilded the said weapon; and belt-makers, who wrought the girdles that bound it to the wearer’s body. There were also dag-makers, who made hackbuts (short-guns) and dags (pistols). These various professions all became associated in the general one of armourers, or gunsmiths, when the wearing of weapons went into desuetude—there being then no further necessity for the expedition and expediency of the modern political economist’s boasted ‘division of labour.’ As the above arts gave way, those which tended to provide the comforts and luxuries of civilised life gradually arose. About 1586 we find the first notice of locksmiths in Edinburgh, and there was then only one of the trade, whose essay was simply ‘a kist lock.’ In 1609, however, as the security of property increased, the essay was ‘a kist lock and a hingand bois lock, with an double plate lock;’ and in 1644 ‘a key and sprent band’ were added to the essay. In 1682 ‘a cruik and cruik band’ were further added; and in 1728, for the safety of the lieges, the locksmith’s essay was appointed to be ‘a cruik and cruik band, a pass lock with a round filled bridge, not cut or broke in the backside, with nobs and jamb bound.’ In 1595 we find the first notice of shearsmiths. In 1609 a heckle-maker was admitted into the Corporation of Hammermen. In 1613 a tinkler makes his appearance; Thomas Duncan, the first tinkler, was then admitted. Pewterers are mentioned so far back as 1588. In 1647 we find the first knock-maker (clock-maker), but so limited was his business that he was also a locksmith. In 1664 the first white-iron man was admitted; also the first harness-maker, though lorimers had previously existed. Paul Martin, a distressed French Protestant, in 1691, was the first manufacturer of surgical instruments in Edinburgh. In 1720 we find the first pin-maker; in 1764, the first edge-tool maker and first fish-hook maker.

[197] The Highland appellative of Lord Lovat, expressing the son of Simon.

[198] Quarterly Review, vol. xiv. p. 326.

[199] First door up the stair at the head of the wynd, on the west side. The house was burnt down in 1824, but rebuilt in its former arrangement.

[200] [The window-tax was first imposed in 1695, and repealed in 1851.]

[201] An old domestic of her ladyship’s preserved one of her shoes as a relic for many years. The heel was three inches deep.

[202] [The view of the famous ‘Douglas Cause,’ affirmed in the House of Lords in 1771.]

[203] Mrs Grant of Laggan held another opinion of General Simon Fraser. A pleasing exterior covered a large share of the paternal character—‘No heart was ever harder, no hands more rapacious than his.’

[204] Myln’s Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld. Edinburgh, 1831.

[205] Originally the name was the ‘Wynd of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Fields,’ as being the approach to the collegiate church so named which stood on the site of the University—the ‘Kirk o’ Field’ of the Darnley tragedy.

[206] Now Chambers Street.

[207] A small ‘bit’ of College Wynd, ending in a cul de sac, is all that remains of this once leading thoroughfare between the city and the ‘Oure Tounis Colledge.’

[208] When it became an unfashionable place of residence it was dubbed by the fops of the town ‘Cavalry Wynd.’ The northern end of Guthrie Street is the site of the old Horse Wynd.

[209] Macgill was King’s Advocate to James VI., and is said to have died of grief when his rival, Thomas Hamilton, was preferred for the presidentship.

[210] Most of the traditionary anecdotes in this article were communicated by Charles, eighth Earl of Haddington, through conversation with Sir Walter Scott, by whom they were directly imparted to the author.

[211] Near by is the Magdalen Chapel, a curious relic of the sixteenth century, belonging to the Corporation of Hammermen. It was erected immediately before the Reformation by a pious citizen, Michael Macquhan, and Jonet Rhynd, his widow, whose tomb is shown in the floor. The windows towards the south were anciently filled with stained glass; and there still remain some specimens of that kind of ornament, which, by some strange chance, had survived the Reformation. In a large department at the top of one window are the arms of Mary of Guise, who was queen-regent at the time the chapel was built. The arms of Macquhan and his wife are also to be seen. In the lower panes, which have been filled with small figures of saints, only one remains—a St Bartholomew—who, by a rare chance, has survived the general massacre. The whole is now very carefully preserved. When the distinguished Reformer, John Craig, returned to Scotland at the Reformation, after an absence of twenty-four years, he preached for some time in this chapel, in the Latin language, to a select congregation of the learned, being unable, by long disuse, to hold forth in his vernacular tongue. This divine subsequently was appointed a colleague to John Knox, and is distinguished in history for having refused to publish the banns between Queen Mary and Bothwell, and also for having written the National Covenant in 1589. Another circumstance in the history of this chapel is worthy of notice. The body of the Earl of Argyll, after his execution, June 30, 1685, was brought down and deposited in this place, to wait till it should be conveyed to the family burying-place at Kilmun.

[212] The amateurs who took the lead as choristers were Gilbert Innes, Esq. of Stow; Alexander Wight, Esq., advocate; Mr John Hutton, papermaker; Mr John Russel, W.S.; and Mr George Thomson. As an instrumentalist, we could boast of our countryman the Earl of Kelly, who also composed six overtures for an orchestra, one of which I heard played in the hall, himself leading the band.

[213] See a different account of this custom, p. 147.

[214] [‘John M. Giornovicki, commonly known in Britain under the name of Jarnowick, was a native of Palermo. About 1770 he went to Paris, where he performed a concerto of his famous master Lolli, but did not succeed. He then played one of his own concertos, that in A major, and became quite the fashion. The style of Giornovicki was highly elegant and finished, his intonation perfect, and his taste pure. The late Domenico Dragonetti, one of the best judges in Europe, told me that Giornovicki was the most elegant and graceful violin-player he had ever heard before Paganini, but that he wanted power. He seems to have been a dissipated and passionate man; a good swordsman too, as was common in those days. One day, in a dispute, he struck the Chevalier St George, then one of the greatest violin-players and best swordsmen in Europe. St George said coolly: “I have too much regard for his musical talent to fight him.” A noble speech, showing St George in all respects the better man. Giornovicki died suddenly at St Petersburg in 1804.’—G. F. G.]

[215] G. T., it may now be explained, was George Thomson, the well-known and generally loved editor of the Melodies of Scotland. He might rather have described himself as Nonogenarius, for at his death, in 1851, he had reached the age of ninety-four, his violin, as he believed, having prolonged his life much beyond the usual term.

[216] The earl was the leader of the amateur orchestra of St Cecilia’s Hall, which included Lord Colville, Sir John Pringle, Mr Seton of Pitmedden, General Middleton, Lord Elcho, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Mrs Forbes of Newhall, and others of the aristocracy. General Middleton was credited with ‘singing a song with much humour,’ which he sometimes accompanied with a key and tongs. Sir Gilbert Elliot, who played the German flute, was the first to introduce that instrument to a Scottish audience. St Cecilia’s Hall has passed through many vicissitudes since then, and is now a bookbinder’s warehouse, but its fine ceiling and the orchestral balcony at the southern end are still preserved as memorials of its early days.

[217] About seventy paces to the east of the site of the Prebendaries’ Chamber, and exactly opposite to the opening of Roxburgh Place, was a projection in the wall, which has been long demolished and the wall altered. Close, however, to the west of the place, and near the ground, are some remains of an arch in the wall, which Malcolm Laing supposes to have been a gun-port connected with the projection at this spot. It certainly has no connection, as Arnot and (after him) Whitaker have supposed, with the story of Darnley’s murder. [This relic of the Flodden wall is now removed, but a portion of the wall itself still stands behind the houses at the north-east junction of Drummond Street and the Pleasance. Another portion was recently discovered at the east end of Lothian Street, between that street and the Royal Scottish Museum. Another part forms the north side of a cul de sac at Lindsay Place, and at the Vennel is the largest part of this old wall, with one of its few towers, forming the western boundary of the grounds of Heriot’s Hospital.]

[218] Hose in those days covered the whole of the lower part of the person.

[219] This indicates pretty nearly the site of the house of Bassendyne, the early printer. It must have been opposite, or nearly opposite, to the Fountain Well.

[220] Now removed and the site built over. There was also a Cunyie House in Candlemaker Row, which was used as the Mint during the regency of Mary of Guise.

[221] The Assembly Room, afterwards occupied by the Commercial Bank, was in Bell’s Wynd, to which place it was removed in 1756 from the older room in Assembly Close. A scallop-shell above the entrance to Bell’s Wynd long commemorated the site of the Clamshell Turnpike, the lodging of the Earl of Home, to which Queen Mary, accompanied by Darnley, retreated on their return from Dunbar in 1566, rather than enter Holyrood so soon after the murder of Rizzio.

[222] It must have been after Miss Nicky Murray’s day that an Edinburgh Writer to the Signet, describing the unruliness of an assembly, writes: ‘I saw an English lady stand up at the head of a sett with a ticket No. 1 of that sett. By-and-bye my namesake, Miss Mary ——, came up, hauling after her a foolish-looking young man, who did as he was bid, and with all the ease in the world placed herself above the stranger, No. 1. The lady politely said there must be some mistake, for she had that place. “No,” said Miss Mary, “I can’t help your ticket, for I have the Lady Directress’s permission to lead down the sett!” The lady had spunk, and scolded, for which I liked her the better; only she dealt her sarcasms about Scotch politeness, Edinburgh manners, and so forth, rather too liberally and too loudly.’

[223] [The right of this house to be called ‘John Knox’s House’ has been strenuously disputed; several other houses in which Knox actually lived have been identified by Robert Miller, F.S.A. Scot., Lord Dean of Guild of Edinburgh, in John Knox and the Town Council of Edinburgh, with a Chapter on the so-called ‘John Knox’s House’ (1898). For the genuineness of the tradition, said not to be older than 1806, see Lord Guthrie’s John Knox and John Knox’s House (1898).]

[224] The following advertisement, inserted in the Edinburgh Courant of August 1, 1754, illustrates the above in a striking manner: ‘If any person has lost a LARGE SOW, let them call at the house of Robert Fiddes, gardener to Lord Minto, over against the Earl of Galloway’s, in the Horse Wynd, where, upon proving the property, paying expenses and damages done by the said sow, they may have the same restored.’

[225] Lord Lindsay’s Lives of the Lindsays, iii. 190.

[226] ‘During this peaceable time [1668-1675], he [John, Earl of Tweeddale] built the park of Yester of stone and lime, near seven miles about, in seven years’ time, at the expense of 20,000 pound; bought a house in Edinburgh from Sir William Bruce for 1000 pound sterling, and ane other house within the same court, which, being rebuilt from the foundation, the price of it and reparations of both stood him 1000 sterling.’—Father Hay’s Genealogie of the Hayes of Tweeddale (Edinburgh, 1835), p. 32.

[227] The notes are thus described in the Hue and Cry: £1300 in twenty-pound notes of Sir W. Forbes and Company; £1000 in twenty-pound notes of the Leith Banking Company; £1400 in twenty, ten, and five pound notes of different banks; 240 guinea and 440 pound notes of different banks—in all, £4392.

[228] It was in this part of the High Street also that Robert Lekprevick, the Scottish printer, lived before he removed to St Andrews in 1571.

[229] ‘—— deliure a Jacques le tailleur deux chanteaux de damas gris broches dor pour faire vne robbe a vne poupine;’ also ‘trois quartz et demi de toille dargent et de soze blanche pour faire vne cotte et aultre chose a des poupines.’—Catalogues of the Jewels, Dresses, Furniture, &c. of Mary Queen of Scots, edited by Joseph Robertson. Edinburgh, 1863, p. 139.

[230] A skull represented as Buchanan’s has long been shown in the College of Edinburgh. It is extremely thin, and being long ago shown in company with that of a known idiot, which was, on the contrary, very thick, it seemed to form a commentary upon the popular expression which sets forth density of bone as an invariable accompaniment of paucity of brain. The author of a diatribe called Scotland Characterised, which was published in 1701, and may be found in the Harleian Miscellany, tells us that he had seen the skull in question, and that it bore ‘a very pretty distich upon it [the composition of Principal Adamson, who had caused the skull to be lifted]—the first line I have forgot, but the second was:

“Et decus es tumulo jam, Buchanane, tuo.”’

[231] [Dr David Hay Fleming has shown that the contemporary evidence is all in favour of the Covenant’s having been signed in the Greyfriars’ Church, and not in the churchyard; see a chapter by him in Mr Moir Bryce’s Old Greyfriars’ Church, Edinburgh (1912). And in the same book Mr Moir Bryce has proved that the small strip of ground long erroneously believed to be the Covenanters’ prison was not separated off till 1703-4, and that the Covenanters were interned on a much larger area to the east, now built over.]

[232] The Back Stairs, built on the site of St Giles’ Churchyard, gave direct communication between the Cowgate and Old Parliament Square. It was by this way that Robertson the smuggler escaped from the Tolbooth Church, where he and his accomplice Wilson had been taken, as was usual with condemned prisoners, the Sunday before their execution. It was Porteous’s behaviour at the execution of Wilson that led to the riot and his own death in the Grassmarket.

[233] The pistols belonged to Mr Cayley himself, having been borrowed a few days before by Mr Macfarlane.

[234] A little below the church.

[235] Subjoined is a list of persons of note who lived in the Canongate in the early days of the late Mr Chalmers Izett, whose memory extended back to 1769:

‘DUKES.
Hamilton.
Queensberry.

EARLS.
Breadalbane.
Hyndford.
Wemyss.
Balcarras.
Moray.
Dalhousie.
Haddington.
Mar.
Srathmore.
Traquair.
Selkirk.
Dundonald.
Kintore.
Dunmore.
Seafield.
Panmure.

COUNTESSES.
Tweeddale.
Lothian.

LORDS.
Haddo.
Colvill.
Blantyre.
Nairn.
Semple.
A. Gordon.
Cranstoun.

L. OF SESSION.
Eskgrove.
Hailes.
Prestongrange.
Kames.
Milton.
Montgomery.
Bannatyne.

BARONETS.
Sir J. Grant.
Sir J. Suttie.
Sir J. Whiteford.
Sir J. Stewart.
Sir J. Stirling.
Sir J. Sinclair, Glorat.
Sir J. Halkett.
Sir James Stirling.
Sir D. Hay.
Sir B. Dunbar.
Sir J. Scott, Ancrum.
Sir R. Anstruther.
Sir J. Sinclair, Ulbster.

COMMANDERS-IN-CHIEF.
General Oughton.
General Skene.
Lord A. Gordon.
Lord Moira.

EMINENT MEN.
Adam Smith.
Dr Young.
Dugald Stewart.
Dr Gardner.
Dr Gregory.

BANK.
Douglas, Heron, and Company.

LADIES’ BOARDING-SCHOOL.
Mrs Hamilton, Chessels’s Court.

PRINCIPAL INNS.
Ramsay’s, St Mary’s Wynd.
Boyd’s, Head of Canongate.

‘Two coaches went down the Canongate to Leith—one hour in going, and one hour in returning.’

[236] Removal.

[237] ‘At a former period, when the Canongate of Edinburgh was a more fashionable residence than at present, a lady of rank who lived in one of the closes, before going out to an evening-party, and at a time when hairdressers and peruke-makers were much in demand, requested a servant (newly come home) to tell Tam Tough the hairdresser to come to her immediately. The servant departed in quest of Puff, but had scarcely reached the street before she forgot the barber’s name. Meeting with a caddy, she asked him if he knew where the hairdresser lived. “Whatna hairdresser is ’t?” replied the caddy. “I ha’e forgot his name,” answered she. “What kind o’ name wus ’t?” responded Donald. “As near as I can mind,” said the girl, “it was a name that wad neither rug nor rive.” “The deil ’s in ’t,” answered Donald, “but that’s a tam’d tough name.” “Thank ye, Donald, that’s the man’s name I wanted—Tam Tough.”’—[From an Edinburgh Newspaper.]

[238] The inscription is now removed.

[239] With the exception of Lord Kames’s house, all the others referred to have been swept away by the North British Railway and the Corporation Gasworks, which at one time occupied the eastern side of the street.

[240] Although it was outside the wall, the city authorities claimed jurisdiction over the Canongate as far as St John’s Cross, notwithstanding that the Canongate was a separate burgh, which it continued to be till the middle of the nineteenth century. Proclamations were made at St John’s Cross as well as at the Mercat Cross in the High Street, and at it the Canongate burgh officials joined the city fathers when paying ceremonial visits to Holyrood.

[241] Strap in Roderick Random was supposed to represent one Hutchinson, a barber near Dunbar. The man encouraged the idea as much as possible. When Mr [Warren] Hastings (governor of India) and his wife visited Scotland, they sent for this man, and were so pleased with him that Mr Hastings afterwards sent him a couple of razors, mounted in gold, from London.

[242] For many years the Practising School for Teachers under the management of the Free Church of Scotland, now the Training College for Teachers under the Provincial Council of Education.

[243] The terraces have long since been deprived of their last semblance of the old gardens; but while recent excavations were being made for an extension of the educational buildings, the statue of the boy was discovered underground in the lowest terrace. The statue is preserved, and forms a connecting link between ‘My Lady Murray’s Yards’ and the ‘Yards’ of the modern school.

[244] On the north side of the High Street, opposite the Tron Church. The site is now covered by the opening of Cockburn Street.

[245] I was indebted to my friend Dr John Brown (Horæ Subsecivæ, p. 42) for drawing my attention to a quotation of Seneca by Beyerlinck (Magn. Theatr. Vit. Human., tom. vi. p. 60), involving this fine expression. Some one, however, has searched all over the writings of Seneca for it in vain.

[246] The close entering by the archway at the east end of the house, now called ‘Bakehouse Close,’ was formerly ‘Hammermen’s Close.’

[247] ‘The Speaking House’ is now recognised as a town mansion of the Huntly family. It is said to be associated with the first marquis, who killed the ‘Bonnie Earl of Moray’ at Donibristle, and died in 1636 at Dundee on his way north to Aberdeenshire. His son, the second marquis, who was beheaded in 1649, was residing in this house ten years prior to his execution, and in it his daughter Lady Ann was married to Lord Drummond, third Earl of Perth.

[248] Which he named Gosford, after the estate in East Lothian, which was acquired by Sir Archibald’s ancestor, a wealthy burgess in the reign of Queen Mary. The Viscounts Gosford take their title from the Irish estate.

[249] In his MS. Diaries in the Advocates’ Library.

[250] In an advertisement in a Jacobite newspaper, called The Thistle, which rose and sank in 1734, the house is advertised as having lately been occupied by the Duchesses of Gordon and Perth. [1868. It is in the course of being taken down to make way for a railway.]

[251] In 1864 this favourite Scottish pastime was resuscitated on Leith Links, and is now enjoyed with a relish as keen as ever.

[252] Archæologia Scotica, i.

[253] A newspaper, giving an account of Lord Palmerston’s visit to Edinburgh in 1865, mentions that his lordship, during his stay in the city, was made aware that an aged woman of the name of Peggie Forbes, who had been a servant with Dugald Stewart, well remembered his lordship when under the professor’s roof in early days. Interested in the circumstance, Lord Palmerston took occasion to pay her a visit at her dwelling, No. 1 Rankeillor Street, and expressed his pleasure at renewing the acquaintance of the old domestic. Dr John Brown had discovered the existence of this old association, and with it a box of tools which were the property of ‘young Maister Henry’ of those days. The sight of them called up within the breast of the Premier further associations of days long bygone.

[254] Robertson, in his Rural Recollections (Irvine, 1829), says: ‘The earliest evidence that I have met with of potatoes in Scotland is an old household book of the Eglintoune family in 1733, in which potatoes appear at different times as a dish at supper.’ They appear earlier than this—namely, in 1701—in the household book of the Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, where the price per peck is intimated at 2s. 6d.—See Arnot’s History of Edinburgh, 4to, p. 201.

[255] A noted brewer, much given to preaching. Of him Claudero says:

‘Our souls with gospel he did cheer,

Our bodies, too, with ale and beer;

Gratis he gospel got and gave away;

For ale and beer he only made us pay.’

[256] This thriving parliamentary burgh originated in a cottage built, and long inhabited, by a retired seaman of Admiral Vernon’s squadron, who gave it this name in commemoration of the triumph which his commander there gained over the Spaniards in 1739. There must have been various houses at the spot in 1753, when we find one ‘George Hamilton, in Portobello,’ advertising in the Edinburgh Courant that he would give a reward of three pounds to any one who should discover the author of a scandalous report, which represented him as harbouring robbers in his house. The waste upon which Portobello is now partly founded was dreadfully infested at this time with robbers, and resorted to by smugglers; see Courant. [Portobello, while remaining one of the ‘Leith burghs’ for parliamentary purposes, was municipally incorporated with Edinburgh in 1896. Claudero’s ‘Frigate Whins’ are better known as the ‘Figgate Whins.’]

[257] Claudero could have little serious expectation that several of these predictions would come to pass before he had been forty years in his grave.

[258] A celebrated and much-esteemed fishing-rod maker, who afterwards flourished in the old wooden land at the head of Blackfriars Wynd. He survived to recent times, and was distinguished for his adherence to the cocked hat, wrist ruffles, and buckles of his youth. He was a short, neat man, very well bred, a great angler, intimate with the great, a Jacobite, and lived to near a century. He had fished in almost every trouting stream in the three kingdoms, and was seen skating on Lochend at the age of eighty-five.

[259] This seems to bear some reference to the seizure of young Macdonald of Kinlochmoidart at Lesmahagow in 1745.

[260] Introduction to Law’s Memorials, p. lxxx.

[261] See letters of Gay, Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, in Scott’s edition of Swift.

[262] In a letter from Gay to Swift, dated February 15, 1727-8, we find the subject illustrated as follows: ‘As to my favours from great men, I am in the same state you left me; but I am a great deal happier, as I have expectations. The Duchess of Queensberry has signalised her friendship to me upon this occasion [the bringing out of the Beggar’s Opera] in such a conspicuous manner, that I hope (for her sake) you will take care to put your fork to all its proper uses, and suffer nobody for the future to put their knives in their mouth.’

In the P.S. to a letter from Gay to Swift, dated Middleton Stoney, November 9, 1729, Gay says: ‘To the lady I live with I owe my life and fortune. Think of her with respect—value and esteem her as I do—and never more despise a fork with three prongs. I wish, too, you would not eat from the point of your knife. She has so much goodness, virtue, and generosity, that if you knew her, you would have a pleasure in obeying her as I do. She often wishes she had known you.’

[263] Record of that Society.

[264] The date over the exterior gateway of the Tailors’ Hall, towards the Cowgate, is 1644; but it is ascertained that the corporation had its hall at this place at an earlier period. An assembly of between two and three hundred clergymen was held here on Tuesday the 27th of February 1638 in order to consider the National Covenant, which was presented to the public next day in the Greyfriars Church. We are informed by the Earl of Rothes, in his Relations of the transactions of this period, in which he bore so distinguished a part, that some few objected to certain points in it; but being taken aside into the garden attached to this hall, and there lectured on the necessity of mutual concession for the sake of the general cause, they were soon brought to give their entire assent.

[265] The announcements of entertainments given at this fashionable place of amusement in the eighteenth century make amusing reading to-day. ‘February 17, 1743. We hear that on Monday 21st instant, at the Tailors’ Hall, Cowgate, at the desire of several ladies of distinction, will be performed a concert of vocal and instrumental music. After which will be given gratis Richard the Third, containing several historical passages. To which will be added gratis “The Mock Lawyer.” Tickets for the Concert (on which are [sic] printed a new device called Apology and Evasion) to be had at the Exchange and John’s Coffee-houses, and at Mr Este’s lodgings at Mr Monro’s, musician in the Cowgate, near Tailors’ Hall. As Mrs Este’s present condition will not admit a personal application, she hopes the ladies notwithstanding will grace her concert.’

[266] Among the audience on the first night of the performance of Douglas were the two daughters of John and Lady Susan Renton, one of whom, Eleanor, was the mother of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, to whom the author in his ‘Introductory Notice’ expresses his indebtedness for assistance on the first appearance of this work. And it was for attending one of the performances that the minister of Liberton Church brought himself under sentence of six weeks’ suspension by the Presbytery of Edinburgh—a sentence modified in consideration of his plea that though he attended the play, ‘he concealed himself as well as he could to avoid giving offence.’

[267] Maitland, in his History of Edinburgh, 1753, says that the encouragement given to the diversions at the house ‘is so very great, ’tis to be feared it will terminate in the destruction of the university. Such diversions,’ he adds, ‘are noways becoming a seat of the Muses.’

[268] The Theatre Royal in Shakespeare Square, where the General Post Office now stands.

[269] Letter of Captain Amory, MS.

[270] The north and south sides only of this square now remain. The west was removed to make a thoroughfare—Marshall Street, connecting Nicolson Square and Potterrow.

[271] The site was midway between Edinburgh and Leith, now represented by Shrub Place.

[272] Sir Walter’s brother Thomas was married to a sister of Mr M’Culloch.

[273] It was also along this road that the anxious citizens, watching on the Castle esplanade, saw the royalist cavalry retiring at full gallop from Coltbridge on the approach of Prince Charlie and his Highland army.

[274] In Mr Lockhart’s clever book, Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, the murderer is called Gabriel. A work called Celebrated Trials (6 vols. 1825) gives an erroneous account of the murder, styling the murderer as the Rev. Thomas Hunter.

[275] See Domestic Annals of Scotland, i. 407.

	PAGE
The Changes of the Last Hundred Years	1
The Castle-Hill	11
Hugo Arnot—Allan Ramsay—House of the Gordon Family—Sir David Baird—Dr Webster—House of Mary de Guise.
The West Bow	26
The Bowhead—Weigh-house—Anderson’s Pills—Oratories—Colonel Gardiner—‘Bowhead Saints’—‘The Seizers’—Story of a Jacobite Canary—Major Weir—Tulzies—The Tinklarian Doctor—Old Assembly Room—Paul Romieu—‘He that Tholes Overcomes’—Provost Stewart—Donaldsons the Booksellers—Bowfoot—The Templars’ Lands—The Gallows Stone.
James’s Court	55
David Hume—James Boswell—Lord Fountainhall.
Story of the Countess of Stair	63
The Old Bank Close	70
The Regent Morton—The Old Bank—Sir Thomas Hope—Chiesly of Dalry—Rich Merchants of the Sixteenth Century—Sir William Dick—The Birth of Lord Brougham.
The Old Tolbooth	82
Some Memories of the Luckenbooths	95
Lord Coalstoun and his Wig—Commendator Bothwell’s House—Lady Anne Bothwell—Mahogany Lands and Fore-stairs—The Krames—Creech’s Shop.
Some Memoranda of the Old Kirk of St Giles	105
The Parliament Close	109
Ancient Churchyard—Booths attached to the High Church—Goldsmiths—George Heriot—The Deid-Chack.
Memorials of the Nor’ Loch	117
The Parliament House	119
Old Arrangements of the House—Justice in Bygone Times—Court of Session Garland—Parliament House Worthies. {xviii}
Convivialia	138
Taverns of Old Times	158
The Cross—Caddies	174
The Town-Guard	179
Edinburgh Mobs	183
The Blue Blanket—Mobs of the Seventeenth Century—Bowed Joseph.
Bickers	189
Susanna, Countess of Eglintoune	192
Female Dresses of Last Century	199
The Lord Justice-Clerk Alva	204
Ladies Sutherland and Glenorchy—The Pin or Risp.
Marlin’s and Niddry’s Wynds	209
Tradition of Marlin the Pavier—House of Provost Edward—Story of Lady Grange.
Abbot of Melrose’s Lodging	223
Sir George Mackenzie—Lady Anne Dick.
Blackfriars Wynd	228
Palace of Archbishop Bethune—Boarding-Schools of the Last Century—The Last of the Lorimers—Lady Lovat.
The Cowgate	240
House of Gavin Douglas the Poet—Skirmish of Cleanse-the-Causeway—College Wynd—Birthplace of Sir Walter Scott—The Horse Wynd—Tam o’ the Cowgate—Magdalen Chapel.
St Cecilia’s Hall	249
The Murder of Darnley	256
Mint Close	260
The Mint—Robert Cullen—Lord Chancellor Loughborough.
Miss Nicky Murray	265
The Bishop’s Land	269
John Knox’s Manse	271
Hyndford’s Close	275
House of the Marquises of Tweeddale—The Begbie Tragedy	279
The Ladies of Traquair	286{xix}
Greyfriars Churchyard	288
Signing of the Covenant—Henderson’s Monument—Bothwell Bridge Prisoners—A Romance.
Story of Mrs Macfarlane	291
The Canongate	295
Distinguished Inhabitants in Former Times—Story of a Burning—Morocco’s Land—New Street.
St John Street	302
Lord Monboddo’s Suppers—The Sister of Smollett—Anecdote of Henry Dundas.
Moray House	306
The Speaking House	312
Panmure House—Adam Smith	318
John Paterson the Golfer	320
Lothian Hut	323
Henry Prentice and Potatoes	325
The Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth	327
Claudero	330
Queensberry House	336
Tennis Court	344
Early Theatricals—The Canongate Theatre—Digges and Mrs Bellamy—A Theatrical Riot.
Marionville—Story of Captain Macrae	351
Alison Square	358
Leith Walk	360
Gabriel’s Road	366
INDEX	369

	PAGE
An Elegant Modern City	Frontispiece
Map of Edinburgh, Old and New	xxvi
A series of towers rising from a palace on the plain to a castle in the air	Colour Drawing		1
White Hart Inn, Grassmarket	”	”	2
Newhaven Fishwife	”	”	4
Rouping-Wife	”	”	9
The Castle-Hill	”	”	11
Duke of Gordon’s House	”	”	18
The Bowhead	”	”	27
Grassmarket, from west end of Cowgate	”	”	50
Edinburgh, from the Calton Hill	”	”	83
St Giles, West Window	”	”	105
Heriot’s Hospital, from Greyfriars Churchyard	”	”	113
A Suggestion of the North Loch and St Cuthbert’s, from Allan Ramsay’s Garden	”	”	117
The Parliament House	”	”	128
‘Auld Reekie,’ from Largo	”	”	152
Upper Baxter’s Close, where Burns first resided in Edinburgh	”	”	164
White Horse Inn	”	”	170
Forenoon at the Cross	”	”	174
The Town-Guard	”	”	179
The Castle, from Princes Street	”	”	214
Blackfriars Wynd	”	”	228
The Cowgate	”	”	240
Old Houses, College Wynd (near here Sir Walter Scott was born)	”	”	242
John Knox’s Manse	”	”	274
Greyfriars Churchyard	”	”	288
St John’s Close, Entrance to Canongate Kilwinning Mason Lodge	”	”	305

Blair’s or Baird’s Close	1	Castlehill Walk or Esplanade		A	Allan Ramsay’s House	a
Brown’s Close	3				Blyth’s Close	2
Webster’s Close	5	CASTLEHILL		B	Nairn’s Close	4
Site of the Duke of Gordon’s House	b	Weigh-House		d	Tod’s Close	6
					Site of Mary of Guise’s House	c

West Bow	CC	LAWNMARKET		D	Mylne’s Court	8
Angle of Bow	Z	Tolbooth		e	James’s Court	10
Riddel’s Close	7	Luckenbooths		f	Lady Stair’s Close	12
Brodie’s Close	9	St Giles’ {	Haddo’s Hole Church	g	Upper Baxter’s Close	14
Old Bank Close	11		Tolbooth Church	h	Wardrop’s Court	16
Liberton’s Wynd	13		Old Church		Paterson’s Court	18
			New Church

Hope’s Close	15	HIGH STREET		EE	Dunbar’s Close	20
Beith’s or Bess Wynd	17	Cross		x	Byres’s Close	22
Parliament Close	19	Guard House		i	Writers’ Court	24
Parliament House	k	Tron Church		j	Royal Exchange	26
Back Stairs	21				Mary King’s Close	28
Fishmarket Close	23				Post-Office Close	30
Assembly Close	25				Anchor Close	32
Bell’s Wynd	27				Lyon Close	34
Peebles Wynd	29				Jackson’s Close	36
Marlin’s Wynd	31				Fleshmarket Close	38
Niddry’s Wynd	33				Fleshmarket	m
Site of St Cecilia’s Hall	l				Greenmarket	n
Dickson’s Close	35				Halkerston’s Wynd	40
Cant’s Close	37				Carrubber’s Close	42
Strichen’s Close	39				Bailie Fife’s Close	44
Blackfriars Wynd	41				Chalmers’ Close	46
Todrick’s Wynd	43				John Knox’s Manse	p
Mint Close	45
The Old Mint	o
Hyndford’s Close	47
Tweeddale Court	49	Nether Bow Port.		F

St Mary’s Wynd	51				Leith Wynd	48
Chessels’s Court	53				Morocco’s Land	50
Weir’s Close	55				New Street	52
Old Playhouse Close	57				Jack’s Land	54
St John’s Close	59				Tolbooth Wynd	56
St John’s Street	61	CANONGATE.			Canongate Church	58
Moray House	63				Canongate Churchyard	q
Speaking House	65				Panmure House	60
Acheson House	67				Golfers’ Land	62
Queensberry House	69				White Horse Inn	64
					Water Gate	r