... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Nicolson Sheet
There was then in Edinburgn a merchant, named
Charles Jackson, to whom ...
Book 4 p. 335
(Score 0.55)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Cunie.
East of St. Katherine?s is a rising ground now
called Grace Mount, and of old ...
Book 6 p. 330
(Score 0.54)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Cunie.
East of St. Katherine?s is a rising ground now
called Grace Mount, and of old ...
Book 6 p. 329
(Score 0.54)
... SKETCHES, 333
The length of the island appears to be about three miles from the westernmost point to ...
Book 9 p. 443
(Score 0.54)
... MEAfORIA L S OF EDINBURGH.
the very finest specimens of this ancient style of building in Edinburgh, having ...
Book 10 p. 291
(Score 0.54)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Wardie.
In this district evidences have been found of the
luck,? and it sometimes ...
Book 6 p. 306
(Score 0.53)
... WEST BOW AND SUBURBS. 343
when the Lords of the Congregation I‘ past to Halyrudhous, and tuik and ...
Book 10 p. 375
(Score 0.53)
![APPENDIX. 4-29
of the conhgration. In 1678 the furnishing of the steeple waa completed, by putting up there the old clock
that had formerly belonged to that of the Weigh-house.
The bequest of Thomas Moodie appears to have cost ita trustees some little concern aa to how to dispm of
it, a few years having sufficed to effect very radical changes on the ideas of the civic Council tu to the church
accommodation required by the citizens. The Town of Edinburgh
obtain an act anent Thomas Moodie’s legacy and mortification to them of 20,OOO merks, that in regard
they have no use for a church (which was the end whereto he destined it), that therefore they might be allowed to
invert the same to some other public work The Articles and Parliament recommended the Town to the Privy
Council, to see the will of the defunct fuElled as near as could be; for it comes near to sacrilege to invert a
pious donation. The Town offers to buy with it a peal of Bells to hang in St Gile’s Steeple, tu ring musically
and to warn-to Church, and to build B Tolbooth above the West Port of Edinburgh, and to put Thomas
Moodie’s name and arms thereon. Some thought it better to make it a stipend to tbe Lady Pester’s Kirk, or
to a minister to preach to all the prisoners in the Canongate and Edinburgh Tolbooths, and at the Correctionhouse,
Sunday about.” In the records of the Privy Council, May 15,1688, when Moodie’s bequest was Snally
appropriated towards providing the ejected burghers of Canongate with a Parish Church, it appears that the
annual interest of it had been appropriated to the payment of the Bishop of Edinburgh’s house rent. (Fonntsinhnll‘
s Decisions, voL i p. 505.) The arms of Moodie now form a prominent ornament on the front of the
Canongate Church. In the vestry an elevation of the church is i~servdh,a ving a steeple attached to ita south
front ; but the funds which had been raised for this ornamental addition were appropriated to build the Chapel
of Ease at the head of New Street.
Fountainhall records in 1681 (VOL i p. 156),
LADYP EFYPCEHRvR’ScE -The Inventar of Pious Donations appends to a long list of pious mwtdjicath by
Lady Yester, a genealogical sketch, which we correct and complete from Wood, who thus describw the ecclesiastical
origin of the Lothiin family :--“ Mark Ker, second son of Sir Andrew Ker of Cessford, entering into
holy orders, was promoted in 1546 to the dignity of Abbot of Newbottle ; which station he possessed at the
Reformation, 1560, when he renounced the profession of Popery, and held hie benefice in commendam, . . .
He married Lady Helen Lesly, second daughter of George fourth Earl of Rothes, and by her had issue,
Mark. On the death of hie father in 1584, the Commendatorship of Newbottle, to which the latter had been
provided by Queen Mary in 1567, waa ratified to him by letters under the Qreat Seal ; and he was also
appointed one of the extraordinary Lords of Seasion in his father’s place, 12th November 1584. He had the
lands of Newbottle erected into a barony, with the title of a Baron, 28th July 1587,” &c This waa the father
of Lady Yester, of whom the following account appears in the Inwentar: “The e‘ Dame Margaret Ker was
the eldest [the third] daughter of Mark Commendator of Newbottle, one of the 101 of council and -ion, yrafter
E. of Lothian, procreat betwixt him and LMargaretJ Maxwell, a daughter of Jo. lo/ Herries, In her young
years she was 1st married to Ja Lo. Hay of Yester, and by her wise and vertuous government, she was most
instrumental in preserving and improving of the s‘ estate. By him she had two sons, Jo. 10/ Hay of Pester,
yrafter E. of Tweedale, and Sir Wm. her 2d son, for whom she purchased the Barrone of Lmplam, &c, The s’
Dame Margaret Ker having lived many years a widow, she married Sir Andrew Ker, younger of Fernyhirst,
and procured his father to be made Lo/ Jedburgh. Besides the many Gardens, Buildin- Parka, made be her
in all placea belonging to her husband, in every paroch qr either of her husbands had money-renN she erected
and built Hospitals and e0hooI.a’ After this follows the list, which is altogether -rising, aa evidence of continued
muniticence and benevolent piety ; among which are the following item +
“Towards the building of the Town [Tron?] Kirk of Ehr., &e gifted loo0 m.
“She built an kirk near the High School in Ed’., and bestowed toward the building y’of $lOOOa with 5000
h~ for the use of the minister of $e e‘ church, and a little before her death caused joyne y’to an little Isle for
the use of the minister, q* she lies interred, with an tomb in the wall, with this inscription :-](images/thumbs/memorials/memorials_v1_Page_486.gif "Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time Page 468")
... 4-29
of the conhgration. In 1678 the furnishing of the steeple waa completed, by putting up there the ...
Book 10 p. 468
(Score 0.53)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. lcolinton.
the Belitice Puetaruni Scuiurum. He was a convert
to the Protestant ...
Book 6 p. 322
(Score 0.52)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. rLeith .
but by bringing ordonnance from the Castell to the
shoare, to dins at them so ...
Book 5 p. 184
(Score 0.51)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. Holyrood.
Wllliam, who had property in Broughton, after his
death, none bore even ...
Book 3 p. 50
(Score 0.51)
... HANNAH ROBERTSON. 21
of stone with a
Panmure of Forth, and was the last who possessed
this house, in ...
Book 3 p. 21
(Score 0.51)
... HANNAH ROBERTSON. 21
of stone with a
Panmure of Forth, and was the last who possessed
this house, in ...
Book 3 p. 22
(Score 0.51)
... KATHERINE OSWALD, WITCH. 339
The same Sir John seems to have possessed
property in East Lothian.
In ...
Book 6 p. 339
(Score 0.51)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Corstorphine.
of the House of Orkney. He is represented in
armour of the fifteenth ...
Book 5 p. 118
(Score 0.51)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH, [Great King Street,
in July, .1836, was appointed to the chair of logic
and ...
Book 4 p. 196
(Score 0.5)
![North Bridge.] JOHN EARL OF MAR. 335
have foreseen; we say long-suggested, for, though
not carried out till the early years of George 111.?~
reign, it had been projected in the latter end of
the reign of Charles 11.
The idea was first suggested when James VII.,
as Duke of Albany and York, was resident Royal
Commissioner at Holyrood, in the zenith of the
only popularity he ever had in Scotland. Vast
numbers of the Scottish nobility and gentry flocked
.around him, and the old people of the middle of
xhe eighteenth century used to recall with delight
the magnificence and brilliance of the court he
gathered in the long-deserted palace, and the
general air of satisfaction which pervaded the
entire city.
Despite the recent turmoils and sufferings consequent
on the barbarous severity with which the
Covenanters had been treated, Edinburgh was prosperous,
and its magistrates bestowed noble presents
upon their royal guest; but the best proof of the
city?s prosperity was the new and then startling idea
s f having an extended royalty and a North Bridge,
;and this idea the Duke of Albany warmly patronised
and encouraged, and towards it gave the citizens a
grant in the following terms :-
?That, when they should have occasion to
enlarge their city by purchasing ground without
tthe town, or to build bridges or arches for the accomplishing
of the same, not only were the propietors
of such lands obliged to part With the same
an reasonable terms, but when in possession thereof,
they are to be erected into a regality in favour of
the citizens ; and after finishing the Canongate
church, the city is to have the surplus of the
20,ooo merks given by Thomas Moodie, in the
year 1649, with the interest thereof; and as all
public streets belong to the king, the vaults and
cellars under those of Edinburgh being forfeited to
the Crown, by their being built without leave or
consent of his majesty, he granted all the said
vaults or cellars to the town, together with a power
to oblige the proprietors of houses, to lay before
their. respective tenements large flat stones for the
conveniency of walking.?
James VII. had fully at heart the good of Edinburgh,
and but for the events of the Revolution
the improvements of the city would have commenced
seventy-two years sooner than they did, but
the neglect of subsequent monarchs fell heavily alike
on the capital and the kingdom. ?Unfortunately,?
. :says Robert Chambers, ?the advantages which
Edinburgh enjoyed under this system of things
were destined to be of short duration. Her royal
:guest departed, with all his family and retinue, in
May, 1682. In six years more he was lost both
:o Edinburgh and Britain; and ?a stranger filled
:he Stuart?s throne,? under whose dynasty Scotland
?ined long in undeserved reprobation.?
The desertion of the city consequent on the
Union made all prospect of progress seem hopeless,
yet some there were who never forgot the cherished
idea of an extended royalty. Among various
plans, the most remarkable for its foresight was that
3f John eighteenth Lord Erskine and eleventh
Earl of Mar, who was exiled for his share in the
insurrection of I 7 I 5.
His sole amusement during the years of the long
exile in which he died at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1732
was to draw plans and designs for the good of his
beloved native country and its capital; and the
paper to which we refer is one written by him in
1725, and mentioned in vol. 8 of the ?Old Statistical
Account of Scotland,? published in 1793.
?All ways of improving Edinburgh should be
thought on : as in particular, making a Zarge bridge
flfhree arch, over the ground betwixt the North
Loch and Physic Gardens, from the High Street at
Liberton?s Wynd to the Multersey Hill, where
many fine streets might be built, as the inhabitants
increased. The access to them would be easy on
all hands, and the situation would be agreeable and
convenient, having a noble prospect of all the fine
ground towards the sea, the Firth of Forth, and
coast of Fife. One long street in a straight line,
where the Long Gate is now (Princes Street?) ; on
one side of it would be a fine opportunity for
gardens down to the North Loch, and one, on the
other side, towards Broughton. No houses to be
on the bridge, the breadth of the North Loch ; but
selling the places or the ends for houses, and the
vaults and arches below for warehouses and cellars,
the charge of the bridge might be defrayed.
? Another bridge might also be made on the other
side of the towq, and almost as useful and commodious
as that on the north. The place where it
could most easily be made is St. Mary?s Wynd, and
the Pleasance. The hollow there is not so deep, as
where the other bridge is proposed, so that it is
thought that two storeys of arches might raise it near
the level with the street at the head of St. Mary?s
Wynd. Betwixt the south end of the Pleasance and
the Potter-row, and from thence to Bristo Street,
and by the back of the wall at Heriot?s Hospital, are
fine situations for houses and gardens. There would
be fine avenues to the town, and outlets for airing
and walking by these bridges ; and Edinburgh, from
being a bad incommodious situation, would become
a very beneficial and convenient one ; and to make
it still more so, a branch of that river, called the
Water of Leith, misht, it is thought, be brought](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p155.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. II Page 335")
... Bridge.] JOHN EARL OF MAR. 335
have foreseen; we say long-suggested, for, though
not carried out till the ...
Book 2 p. 335
(Score 0.5)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. Leith.
or ripple or burnished face of water, the very
aspect of which is luxury in a ...
Book 5 p. 166
(Score 0.5)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Hawthornden.
walls seven feet thick, and the remains of a banqueting-
hall with large ...
Book 6 p. 354
(Score 0.5)
![High Street.3 CHANGES IN THE HIGH STREET. 203
Mortality,? I 7041 gives us the long inscription on the
tomb of the Colonel?s wife, in the Greyfriars, beginning
:-? Nic $osita Rdiquire Lectissrna rnatronq
Jeanne ]ohnsone, conizcgl?s Archibaldi Row, Re@
Scloppetarz>rum, hpmzis,? &c. She died in
1702.
On the 8th of March Anne was proclaimed
Queen of Scotland, at the Cross, with all the usual
solemnities.
In January, 1703, George Young, merchant in
the High Street, was appointed by the Provost, Si1
Hugh Cunningham, and the Council, to act a
a constable, and along with several other citizen:
of respectable position, ? oversee the manners and
order of the burgh, and the inhabitants thereof,
and on the evening of the 24th, being Sunday, he
went through some parts of the city to see ?that
the Lord?s day, and the laws made for the observance
thereof, were not violated.? ? In the house
of Marjory Thom, a vintner, this new official found,
about 10 P.M., several companies in several rooms,
and expostulated with her on the subject, aftei
which, according to his own account, he quietly
withdrew.
As he proceeded up the close to the High Street,
he and his comrades were followed by Mr. Archi.
bald Campbell, son of the Lord Niel Campbell,
who warned him that if he reported Marjory?s
house to the magistrates, he would repent it. This
affair ended in a kind of riot next day, in Young?:
shop, opposite the Town Guard House, and Campbell
would probably have slain Young, had not the
latter contrived to get hold of his sword and keep
it till the Guard came, and the matter was brought
before the Privy Council, when such was the
influence of family and position, that the luckless
Mr. Young was fined 400 merks, to be paid to
Campbell, and to be imprisoned till the money
was forthcoming.
On the 14th of February, 1705, appeared tlie
first number of the Bdinbwgh Courant, a simple
folio broadsheet, published by James Watson, in
Craig?s Close. Its place was afterwards taken by
MacEwen?s Rdifzburgh Evening Courant, in I 7 18,
a permanent success to this day. It was a Whig
print, and caused the starting of the now defunct
Caledonkn Mercury, in the Jacobite interest,
a little quarto of two leaves.
According to the Courant of April gth, 1724 the
denizens of the High Street, aud other greater
thoroughfares, were startled by ?a bank ? of drums,
beating up for recruits for the King of Prussia?s
-
gigantic regim?ent of Grenadiers. Two guineas as
bounty were offered, and many tall fellows were
enlisted. The same regiment was recruited for
in Edinburgh in 1728.
By the year 1730 great changes had been
effected by the magistrates in enforcing cleanliness
in the streets, and repressing the habit (accompanied
by the temble cry of Gardezl?eau) of throwing slops
and rubbish from the windows. Sir James Dick of
Prestonfield, the wise provost of 1679, transported
away by personal energy a vast stratum of the
refuse of ages, through which people had to make
literal lanes to their shops and house-doors and
therewith enriched his lands by the margin of
Duddingston Loch (Act of Parl. James VII., I.,
cap. IZ), till their fertility is proverbial to the
present day. But still there was no regular system
of cleaning, and though Sir Alexander Brand, a
well-known magistrate and manufacturer of Spanish
leather gilt hangings, made some vigorous proposals
on the subject, they were not adopted, till in
1730 the magistrates endeavoured by the strong arm
of the law to repress the obnoxious habit of
throwing household litter from the windows, a
habit amusingly described by Smollett forty years
after in his ?? Humphrey Clinker.?
On the 6th of September, 1751, the fall of
a great stone tenement on the north of the High
Street, near the Cross, six storeys in height, with
attics, sinking at once from top to bottom, and
occasioning some loss of life, caused a general
alarm in the city concerning the probable state of
many of the more ancient and crumbring houses.
A general survey was made, and many were
condemned, and orderec! to be taken down.
But from 1707 Edinburgh stood singularly still
till 1763, when the citizens seemed to wake
fiom their apathetic lethargy. After that period
the erection of adjuncts to the old city (tcr
be referred to in their own localities) led to the
general desertion of it by all people of position and
wealth. Among the last who lingered there, and
retained his mansion in the High Street, was
James Fergusson of Pitfour, M.P., whose body was
borne thence in October, 1820, for interment in the
Greyfriars Churchyard.
In the March of 1820 the High Street was
iighted with gas for the first time. ? This has been
done,? says a print of the day, ?by the introduction
of a single cockspur light into each of the
old globes, in which the old oil lamps were formerly
suspended.?](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p023.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. II Page 203")
... Street.3 CHANGES IN THE HIGH STREET. 203
Mortality,? I 7041 gives us the long inscription on the
tomb of the ...
Book 2 p. 203
(Score 0.5)
![High Street.] THOMAS BASSANDYNE, PRINTER. 207
in an investment in favour of John Preston, Commissary,
dated 1581, is described as ?that tenement
of lands lying in the said burgh on the south
side of the High Street, and on the entry of the
wynd of the Preaching Friars, formerly waste,
having been burnt by the English.? Thus it
would appear to have been built between 1544
and 158I-probably near the former date, as the
situation being central it was unlikely to remain
long waste.
In 1572 it suffered greatly during the siege of
the Castle, in common with the Earl of Mar?s
mansion in the Cowgate, and Baxter?s house in
Dalgleish?s Close.
Its proprietor, John Preston, in 1581, though the
son of a baker, was an eminent lawyer in the time
of James VI., who was raised to the Bench in
March, 1594, as Lord Fentonbarns (in succession
to James first Lord Balmerino) and died President
of the Court in 1616. His mode of election
was curious. ?The King,? says Lord Hailes,
?named Mr. Peter Rollock, Bishop of Dunkeld,
Mr. David MacGill of Cranstoun-Riddel, and Mr.
Preston of Fentonbarns, requesting the Lords to
choose the fittest of the three to be an Ordinary
Lord of Session. The Lords were solemnly sworn
to choose according to their knowledge and conscience.
In consequence of this, coigecfi in $ileum
;zominibus [by ballot], the Lords elected Mr. John
Preston.?
Before his death he attained to great wealth and
dignity; he was knighted by King James, and his
daughter Margaret wzs married in this old house to
Robert Nairn of? Mackersie, and became mother
of the first Lord ?Nairn, who was placed in the
Tower of London by Cromwell in 1650, with many
others, and not released till the Restoration, ten
years after.
The senator?s son, Sir Michael Preston, succeeded
him in possession of the mansion in 1610.
Preston, together with Craig and Stirling, is
mentioned in a satirical production of Alexander
Montgomery, author of ?The Cherrie and the
Slae,? and before whom he had become involved
in a tedious suit before the Court of Session, and
was at one time threatened with quarters in the
Tolbooth. He wrote of Fentonbarns as-
? A baxter?s bird, a bluitter beggar born?
The old house narrowly escaped total destruction
by a fire in 1795, thus nearly anticipating that
,of later years. It was the last survivor of the long
and unbroken range of quaint and stately edifices
on the south side of the street, between St. Giles?s
and the Nether Bow. An outside stair gave access
to the first floor, the stone turnpike stair of which
bore the abbreviated legend in Gothic characters-
DEO. HONOR . ET. GLIA.
A little lower down the street, and nearly
opposite the house of John b o x , dwelt Thomas
Bassandyne, in that tall old mansion we have
already referred to in an early chapter as having
had built into its front the fine sculptured heads of
the Emperor Septinius Severus and his Empress
Julia, and having between them a tablet inscribed,
? In sudorc vuh fui vecmir pane tz~o,? which
Wilson shrewdly suspects to have been a fragment
of the adjacent convent of St May, or some other
old monastic establishment in Edinburgh.
Here it was that Thomas Bassandyne, a famous
old Scottish typographer, in conjunction with
Alexander Arbuthnot, undertook in 1574 the then
arduous task of issuing his beautiful folio Bible,
with George Young, a servant (clerk) of the Abbot
of Dunfermline, as a corrector of the press ; the
?? printing irons,? or types were of cast-metal. The
work of printing the Bible proved a heavier task
than they expected, as it had met with many impediments
; and before the Privy Council, which
was giving them monetary aid, they pleaded for
nine months to complete the work, or return the
money contributed towards it by various Scottish
parishes. In this we see the first attempt to
publish by subscription. Here, too, Thomas
Bassandyne printed his rare quarto edition of Sir
David Lindesay?s Poems in 1574. His will is
preserved in the Banizatyne MisceZZany, and from
it it appears, that his mother was life-rented in that
part of the house which formed the printer?s
dwelling, the annual rent of which was eight
pounds ; while the remainder that belonged to
himself, was occupied by his brother Michael. At
all events, he leaves in his will ?his thrid, the
ane half thairof to his wyf, and the vthir half to
his mother, and Michael and his bairnes,? in
which says the memorialist of Edinburgh, we
presume, to have been included the house, which
we find both he and his bairns afterwards possessing,
and for which no rent would appear to
have been exacted during the lifetime of the
generous old printer.
His house is repeatedly referred to in the evidence
of the accomplices of the Earl of Bothwell in the
murder of Darnley, an event which took place
during the life of Bassandyne, beneath whose house
was one occupied by a sword slipper, with whom it
is said lodged the Black John of Ormiston, one of
the conspirators, for whom the rest called on the
night of the murder.](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v2p027.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. II Page 207")
... Street.] THOMAS BASSANDYNE, PRINTER. 207
in an investment in favour of John Preston, Commissary,
dated 1581, ...
Book 2 p. 207
(Score 0.5)
... MENORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
Kennedy’s Close, High Street, 247
Benneth III., 246
Ker of Fawdonside, ...
Book 10 p. 505
(Score 0.5)
... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [WaniStolL
The cost to the Government of fencing in the
-ground, planting, &c., up ...
Book 5 p. 98
(Score 0.49)
Go back to Edinburgh Bookshelf
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![THE CASTLE -4ND GLEN. 34 7 Roslin.]
further repaired, as an ornate entrance seems tc
show, with its lintel, inscribed ? S.W.S., 1622.??
The same initials appear on the half-circular pedi.
ment of a dormer window. Above this door, which
is beautifully moulded and enriched, is a deep and
ornate squqre niche, the use for which it is difficult
to conceive.
From its windows it commands a view of the
richly-wooded glen, between the rocky banks and
dark shadows of which the Esk flows onward with
a ceaseless murmur among scattered boulders,
where grow an infinite variety of ferns. The
eastern bank rises almost perpendicularly from the
river?s bed, and everywhere there is presented a
diversity of outline that always delights an artistic
eye.
The entrance to the castle was originally by a
gate of vast strength, and the whole structure must
have been spacious and massive, and on its northern
face bears something of the aspect of old Moorish
fortresses in Spain. A descent of a great number of
stone stairs conducts through the existing structure
to the bottom, leading into a spacious kitchen,
from which a door opens into the once famous
gardens. The modern house of 1563 is ill-lighted
and confined, and possesses more the gloom of
a dungeon-like prison than the comforts of a residence.
Grose gives us a view of the whole as they
appeared in 1788--? haggard and utterly dilapidated-
the mere wreck of a great pile riding on a
l ~ t l e sea of forest-a rueful apology for the once
grand fabric whose name of ? Roslin Castle ? is so
intimately associated with melody and song.?
It is unknown when or by whom the original
castle was founded. It has been referred to the
year 1100, when William de St. Clair, son of
Waldern, Count of St. Clair, who came to England
with William the Conqueror, obtained from
Malcolm 111. the barony of Roslin, and was
named ?the seemly St. Clair,? in allusion to his
grace of deportment ; but singular to say, notwithstanding
its importance, the castle is not mentioned
distinctly in history till the reign of James II.,
when Sir William Hamilton was confined in it in
1455 for being in rebellion with Douglas, and again
when it was partly burned in 1447.
Father Richard Augustine Hay, Prior of St.
Piermont, in France, who wrote much about the
Roslin family, records thus :--
?About this time, 1447, Edmund Sinclair of
Dryden, coming with four greyhounds and some
rackets to hunt with the prince (meaning William
Sinclair, Earl of Orkney), met a great company of
rats, and among them an old blind lyard, with a
straw in his mouth, led by the rest, whereat he
greatly marvelled, not thinking what was to follow;
but within four days after-viz., the feast of St.
Leonard, the princess, who took great delight in
little dogs, caused one of the gentlewomen to go
under a bed with a lighted candle to bring forth one
of them that had young whelps, which she was
doing, and not being very attentive, set on fire the
bed, whereat the fire rose and burnt the bed, and
then rose to the ceiling of the great chamber in
which the princess was, whereat she and all that
were in the dungeon (keep?) were compelled to fly.
? The prince?s chaplain seeing this, and remembering
his master?s writings, passed to the head of
the dungeon, where they were, and threw out four
great trunks. The news of this fire coming to the
prince?s ears through the lamentable cries of the
ladies and gentlemen, and the sight thereof coming
to his view in the place where he stood-namely,
upon the College (Chapel?) Hill-he was in sorrow
for nothing but the loss of his charters and other
writings; but when the chaplain, who had saved
himself by coming down the bell-rope tied to a
beam, declared how they were saved, he became
cheerful, and went to re-comfort his princess and
the ladies, desiring them to put away all sorrow,
and rewarded his chaplain very richly.? The
i? princess ? was the Elizabeth Countess of Roslin,
referred to in page 3 of Vol. I.
In 1544 the castle was fired by the English
under Hertford, and demolished. The house of
1563, erected amid its ruins nineteen years after,
was pillaged and battered by the troops of Cromwellin
1650.
+4t the revolution in 1688, it was pillaged again
by a lawless mob from the city, and from thenceforward
it passes out of history.
Of the powerful family to whom it belonged we
can only give a sketch.
The descendants of the Norman William de St.
Clair, called ihdifferently by that name and Sinclair,
received from successive kings of Scotland
accessions, which made them lords of Cousland,
Pentland, Cardoine, and other lands, and they lived
in their castle, surrounded by all the splendour of a
rude age, and personal importancegiven by the
acquisition of possessions by methods that would
be little understood in modern times.
There were three successive William Sinclairs
barons of Roslin (one of whom made a great
figure in the reign of William the Lion, and gave
a yearly gift to Newbattle,pro saZufe mime we)
before the accession of Henry, who, by one account,
is said to have mamed a daughter of the
Earl of Mar, and by auother a daughter of the Earl](images/thumbs/old_new_edin_v6p166.gif "Old and New Edinburgh Vol. VI Page 347")
