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cyloagate.1 HANNAH ROBERTSON. 21
of stone with a
Panmure of Forth, and was the last who possessed
this house, in which he was resident in the middle
of the last century, and was succeeded in it by the
Countess of Aberdeen.
From 1778 till his death, in 1790, it formed the
residence of Adam Smith, author of ? The Wealth
of Nations,? after he came to Edinburgh as Commissioner
of the Customs, an appointment obtained
by the friendship of the Duke of Buccleuch. A few
days before his death, at Panmure House, he gave
orders to destroy all his mandscripts except some
detached essays, which were afterwards published
by his executors, Drs. Joseph Black and Janies
Hutton, and his library, a valuable one, he left to
his nephew, Lord Reston. From that old mansion
the philosopher was borne to his grave in an obscure
nook of the Canongate churchyard. During
the - last years of his blameless life his bachelor
household had been managed by a female cousin,
Miss Jeanie Douglas, who acquired a great control
? had attained her
From her published memoir-which, after its first
appearance in 1792, reached a tenth edition in
1806, and was printed by James Tod in Forrester?s
Wynd-and from other sources, we learn that she
was the widow of Robert Robertson, a merchant
in Perth, and was the daughter of a burgess named
George Swan, son of Charles 11. and Dorothea
Helena, daughter of John Kirkhoven, Dutch baron
of Ruppa, the beautiful Countess of Derby, who had
an intrigue with the king during the protracted
absence of her husband in Holland, Charles, eighth
earl, who died in 1672 without heirs.
According to her narrative, the child was given
to nurse to the wife of Swan, a gunner at Windsor,
a woman whose brother, Bartholomew Gibson, was
the king?s farrier at Edinburgh; and it would
further appear that the latter obtained on trust for
George Swan, from Charles 11. or his brother the
Duke of York, a grant of lands in New Jersey,
where Gibson?s son died about 1750, as would
over him.
At the end of Panmure Close
was the mansion of John
Hunter, a wealthy burgess, who
was Treasurer of the Canongate
in 1568, and who built it in
1565, when Mary was on the
throne. Wilson refers to it as
the earliest private edifice in
the burgh, and says ?it consists,
like other buildings of
the period, of a lower erection
forestair leading to the first floor, and an ornamental
turnpike within, affording access to the
upper chambers. At the top of a very steep
wooden stair, constructed alongside of the latter,
a very rich specimen of carved oak panelling
remains in good preservation, adorned with the
Scottish lion, displayed within a broad wreath and
surrounded by a variety of ornaments. The doorway
of the inner turnpike bears on the sculptured
lintel the initials I. H., a shield charged with a
chevron, and a hunting horn in base, and the
date 1565.? It bore also a comb with six teeth.
It was demolished in August, 1853.
A little lower down are Big and Little Lochend
Closes, which join each other near the bottom and
TU into the north back of the Canongate. In the
former are some good houses, but of no great antiquity.
One of these was occupied by Mr. Gordon
of Carlton in 1784; and in the other, during the
close of the last and first years of the present century,
there resided a remarkable old lady, named
Mrs Hannah Robertson, who was well known in her
time as a reputed grand-daughter of Charles 11.
appear from a notice in the
Lndon ChronicZe for 1771.
Be all this as it may, the old
lady referred to was a great
favourite with all those of
Jacobite proclivities, and at the
dinners of the Jacobite Club
always sat on the right hand of
the president, till her death,
which occurred in Little Lochend
Close in 1808, when she
eighty-fourth year, and a vast - . . .
concourse attended her funeral, which took place
in the Friends? burial-place at the Pleasance.
Unusually tall in stature, and beautiful even in old
age, her figure, with black velvet capuchin and
cane, was long familiar in the streets of Edinburgh.
From a passage in the ?Edinburgh Historical Register?
for 1791-2, she would appear to have been
a futile applicant for a pension to the Lords of the
Treasury, though she had many powerful friends,
including the Duchess of Gordon and the Countess
of Northesk, to whom she dedicated a book named
?? The Lady?s School of Arts.?
One of the most picturesque and interesting
houses in the Canongate is one situated in what
was called Davidson?s Close, the old ?White Horse
Hostel,? on a dormer window of which is the date
1603. It was known as the ?White Horse? a
century and more before the accession of the
House of Hanover, and is traditionally said to
have taken its name from a favourite white palfrey
when the range of stables that form its basement
had been occupied as the royal mews. The adjacent
Water Gate took its name from a great

... 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)

cyloagate.1 HANNAH ROBERTSON. 21
of stone with a
Panmure of Forth, and was the last who possessed
this house, in which he was resident in the middle
of the last century, and was succeeded in it by the
Countess of Aberdeen.
From 1778 till his death, in 1790, it formed the
residence of Adam Smith, author of ? The Wealth
of Nations,? after he came to Edinburgh as Commissioner
of the Customs, an appointment obtained
by the friendship of the Duke of Buccleuch. A few
days before his death, at Panmure House, he gave
orders to destroy all his mandscripts except some
detached essays, which were afterwards published
by his executors, Drs. Joseph Black and Janies
Hutton, and his library, a valuable one, he left to
his nephew, Lord Reston. From that old mansion
the philosopher was borne to his grave in an obscure
nook of the Canongate churchyard. During
the - last years of his blameless life his bachelor
household had been managed by a female cousin,
Miss Jeanie Douglas, who acquired a great control
? had attained her
From her published memoir-which, after its first
appearance in 1792, reached a tenth edition in
1806, and was printed by James Tod in Forrester?s
Wynd-and from other sources, we learn that she
was the widow of Robert Robertson, a merchant
in Perth, and was the daughter of a burgess named
George Swan, son of Charles 11. and Dorothea
Helena, daughter of John Kirkhoven, Dutch baron
of Ruppa, the beautiful Countess of Derby, who had
an intrigue with the king during the protracted
absence of her husband in Holland, Charles, eighth
earl, who died in 1672 without heirs.
According to her narrative, the child was given
to nurse to the wife of Swan, a gunner at Windsor,
a woman whose brother, Bartholomew Gibson, was
the king?s farrier at Edinburgh; and it would
further appear that the latter obtained on trust for
George Swan, from Charles 11. or his brother the
Duke of York, a grant of lands in New Jersey,
where Gibson?s son died about 1750, as would
over him.
At the end of Panmure Close
was the mansion of John
Hunter, a wealthy burgess, who
was Treasurer of the Canongate
in 1568, and who built it in
1565, when Mary was on the
throne. Wilson refers to it as
the earliest private edifice in
the burgh, and says ?it consists,
like other buildings of
the period, of a lower erection
forestair leading to the first floor, and an ornamental
turnpike within, affording access to the
upper chambers. At the top of a very steep
wooden stair, constructed alongside of the latter,
a very rich specimen of carved oak panelling
remains in good preservation, adorned with the
Scottish lion, displayed within a broad wreath and
surrounded by a variety of ornaments. The doorway
of the inner turnpike bears on the sculptured
lintel the initials I. H., a shield charged with a
chevron, and a hunting horn in base, and the
date 1565.? It bore also a comb with six teeth.
It was demolished in August, 1853.
A little lower down are Big and Little Lochend
Closes, which join each other near the bottom and
TU into the north back of the Canongate. In the
former are some good houses, but of no great antiquity.
One of these was occupied by Mr. Gordon
of Carlton in 1784; and in the other, during the
close of the last and first years of the present century,
there resided a remarkable old lady, named
Mrs Hannah Robertson, who was well known in her
time as a reputed grand-daughter of Charles 11.
appear from a notice in the
Lndon ChronicZe for 1771.
Be all this as it may, the old
lady referred to was a great
favourite with all those of
Jacobite proclivities, and at the
dinners of the Jacobite Club
always sat on the right hand of
the president, till her death,
which occurred in Little Lochend
Close in 1808, when she
eighty-fourth year, and a vast - . . .
concourse attended her funeral, which took place
in the Friends? burial-place at the Pleasance.
Unusually tall in stature, and beautiful even in old
age, her figure, with black velvet capuchin and
cane, was long familiar in the streets of Edinburgh.
From a passage in the ?Edinburgh Historical Register?
for 1791-2, she would appear to have been
a futile applicant for a pension to the Lords of the
Treasury, though she had many powerful friends,
including the Duchess of Gordon and the Countess
of Northesk, to whom she dedicated a book named
?? The Lady?s School of Arts.?
One of the most picturesque and interesting
houses in the Canongate is one situated in what
was called Davidson?s Close, the old ?White Horse
Hostel,? on a dormer window of which is the date
1603. It was known as the ?White Horse? a
century and more before the accession of the
House of Hanover, and is traditionally said to
have taken its name from a favourite white palfrey
when the range of stables that form its basement
had been occupied as the royal mews. The adjacent
Water Gate took its name from a great

... 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)

74 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Holyroob
chateau of Chantilly, from plans by the royal
architect, Sir William Bruce of Balcaskie and
Kinross, the palace as we find it now was built by
Charles 11. and James VII., with a zeal that has
been supposed to imply forethought of having a
fit retreat in their ancient capital if driven from
that of England. The inscription in large Roman
letters-
FVN . BE. RO . MYLNE . MM . IVL . 1671-
marks the site of the foundation of the modern
additions ; it is in a pier of the north-west piazza.
Before the Antiquarian Society in 1858 was
read a statement of the ? Accounts of Sir William
Bruce of Balcaskie, General Surveyor of H.M.
Works, 1674-9.?? The re?ckoning between these
years was it;160,000 Scots, of which sum four-fifths
were spent on Holyrood, the new works on which
had been begun, in 1671, and so vigorously carried
on, that by January, 1674, the mason-work had been
nekly completed. The Dutch artist, Jacob de
Urt, was employed to paint ? One piece of historia
in the king?s bed-chamber? for A120 Scots. The
coats-of-arms which are above the great entrance
and in the quadrangle were cut from his designs.
Holyrood Palace is an imposing quadrangular
edifice, enclosing a piazza-bounded Palladian
court, ninety-four feet square. Its front faces the
west, and consists of battlemented double towers
on each flank. In the centre is the grand entrance,
having double Doric columns, above which
are the royal arms of Scotland, and over them an
octagonal clock-tower, terminating in an imperial
crown.
The Gallery of the Kings, the largest apartment
in the palace, is 150 feet long by 27 feet broad,
and is decorated by a hundred fanciful portraits
of the Scottish kings, from Fergus 1. to James VII.,
by Jacob de Urt, and there is an interesting
portrait of Mary and of the latter monarch, and at
the end of the gallery are four remarkable paintings,
taken from Scotland by James VI., and sent
back from Hampton Court in 1857. They represent
James 111. and his queen Margaret of Denmark
(about 1484), at devotion; on the reverses
are Sir Edward Boncle, Provost of Trinity College
; the figure of St. Cecilia at the organ represents
Mary of Gueldres, and the whole, which are by
an artist of the delicate Van Eck school, are
supposed to have formed a portion of the altarpiece
of the old Trinity College Church. In this
gallery the elections of the Scottish peers take place.
Beyond it are Lord Darnley?s rooms ; among the
portraits there are those of Darnley and his
brother, and from thence a stair leads to Queen
Mary?s apartments above. The Tapestry Room
contains two large pieces of arras, and among
several valuable portraits one of James Duke of
Hamilton, beheaded in 1649.
The Audience Chamber-the scene of Mary?s
stormy interviews with Knox-is panelled and
embellished with various royal initials and coatsarmorial
; the furniture is richly embroidered, and
includes a venerable state-bed, used by Charles I.,
by Prince Charles Edward, and by Cumberland on
the night of the 30th January, 1746. Mary?s bedchamber
measures only 22 feet by 18 feet, and at
its south-west corner is her dressing-room, The
ancient furniture, the faded embroideries and
tapestries, and general aspect of this wing, which
is consigned peculiarly to memories of the past
are all in unison with the place ; but the royal
nursery, with its blue-starred dome, the Secretary
of State?s room, with the royal private apartments
generally now in use, are all in the south and
eastern sides of the palace, and are reached by a
grand staircase from the south-east angle of the court.
CHAPTER XI.
HOLYROOD PALACE (concZdaf).
The King?s Birthday in 1665-James Duke of Albany-The Duchess of York and G e n d Daltell-Funeral of the Duke of Rothes - A
Gladiatorial Exhibition-Departure of the Scottish Household Troops-The Hunters? Company?s Balls-Fmt and Second Viis
of the Royal Family of France-Recent Improvements-St. h e ? s Yard removed-The Ornamental Fountain built.
IN the IntelZ&zce for the 1st of June, 1665, we
have a description. of the exuberant loyalty that
followed the downfall of the Commonwealth.
?Edinburgh, May 29, being His Majesty?s birthday,
was most solemnly kept by all ranks in this
city. My Lord Commissioner, in his state, With
his life-guard on horseback, and Sir Andrew
Ramsay, Lord Provost, Bailies, and Council in their
robes, accompanied by all the Trained Bands in
arms, went to church and heard the Bishop of
Edinburgh upon a text well applied for the work
of the day. Thereafter thirty-five aged men in

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Holyroob chateau of Chantilly, from plans by the royal architect, Sir William Bruce of ...

Book 3 p. 74
(Score 0.51)

34 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Wright?s H0u.w~
good behaviour of William Douglas of Hyvelie
(Reg : Privy Council Scot.). His son Robert, who
was a visitor at the house of William Turnbull of
Airdrie, then resident in Edinburgh, on the 4th
of September, 1608, ? by craft and violence,?
carried off a daughter of the latter in her eleventh
year, and kept her in some obscure place, where
her father could not discover her. Turnbull
brought this matter before the Privy Council, by
Nhom Robert Napier was denounced as a rebel
and outlaw. Of this old family nothing now
remains but a tomb on the north side of the
choir of St. Giles?s; it bears the Merchiston crest
and the Wrychtishouse shield, and has thus been
more than once pointed out as the last restingplace
of the inventor of the logarithms.
The Napiers of Wrychtishousis, says the biographer
of the philosopher, were a race quite dis
tinct from that of Merchiston, and were obviously
a branch of Kilmahew, whose estates lay in Lennox.
Their armorial bearings were, or on a bend azure,
between two mullets or spur rowels.
In its later years this old mansion was the residence
of Lieutenant-General Robertson of Lude,
who served throughout the whole American war,
and brought home with him, at its close, a negro,
who went by the name of Black Tom, who occupied
a room on the ground floor. Tom was again and
again heard to complain of being unable to rest
at night, as the figure of a lady, headless, and
with a child in her arms, rose out of the hearth,
and terrified him dreadfully ; but no one believed
Tom, and his story was put down to intoxication.
Be that as it may, ? when the old mansion was
pulled down to build Gillespie?s Hospital there was
found under the hearthstone of that apartment a
box containing the body of a female, from which
the head had been severed, and beside her lay the
remains of an infant, wrapped in a pillow-case
trimmed with lace. She appeared, poor lady, to
have been cut off in the blossom of her sins ; for
she was dressed, and her scissors were yet hanging
by a ribbon to her side, and her thimble was also
in the box, having, apparently, fallen from her
shrivelled fingers.??
If we are to judge from the following notice in
the Edinburgh HeraZd for 6th April 1799, the
mansion was once the residence of Lord Barganie
(whose peerage is extiiict), as we are told that by
Gillespie?s trustees, ?I Barganie House, at the
Wrights Houses, has been purchased, with upwards
of six acres of ground, where this hospital is to be
erected, The situation is very judiciously chosen;
it is elevated, dry, and healthy.?
In 1800 the demolition was achieved, but not
without a spirited remonstrance in the Edinburgh
Mopzinc for that year, and Gillespie?s Hospital,
a tasteless edifice, designed by Mr. Burn, a builder,
in that ridiculous castellated style called ?&Carpenter?s
Gothic,? took its place. The founder, James
Gillespie, was the eldest of two brothers, who occupied
a shop as tobacconists east of the Market
Cross, Here John, the younger, attended to the
business, while the former resided at Spylaw, near
Colinton, and superintended a mill which they had
erected there for grinding snuff; and there snuff
was ground years after for the Messrs. Kichardson,
105, West Bow. Neither of the brothers married,
,and though frugal and industrious, were far
from being miserly. They lived among their workmen
and domestics, in quite a homely and
patriarchal manner, ? Waste not, want not ? being
ever their favourite maxim, and money increased in
their hands quickly. Even in extreme age, we are
told that James Gillespie, with an old blanket
round him and a night-cap on, both covered with
snuff, regularly attended the mill, superintending
the operations of his man, Andrew Fraser, who
was a hale old man, living in the hospital, when
the first edition of I? Kay ? was published, in I 838.
James kept a carriage, however, for which the Hon.
Henry Erskine suggested as a motto :-
?Wha wad hae thocht it,
That noses had bocht it??
He survived his brother five years, and dying at
Spylaw on the 8th April, 1797, in his eightieth
year, was buried in Colinton churchyard. By his
will he bequeathed his estate, together with _f;I 2,000
sterling (exclusive of A2,700 for the erection and
endowment of a school), ? for the special intent and
purpose of founding and endowing an hospital, or
charitable institution, within the city ,of Edinburgh
or suburbs, for the aliment and maintenance of old
men and women.?
In 1801 the governors obtained a royal charter,
forming them into a body corporate as ?The
Governors of James Gillespie?s Hospital and Free
School.?.
The persons entitled to admittance were :-first,
Mr. Gillespie?s old servants ; second, all persons
of his surname over fifty-five years of age; third,
persons of the same age belonging to Edinburgh
and Leith, failing whom, from all other parts of
Midlothian. None were to be admitted who had
private resources, or were otherwise than ? decent,
godly, and well-behaved men and women.?
In the Council-room of the hospital-from
which the school was built apart-is an excellent

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Wright?s H0u.w~ good behaviour of William Douglas of Hyvelie (Reg : Privy Council ...

Book 5 p. 34
(Score 0.51)

196 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH, [Great King Street,
in July, .1836, was appointed to the chair of logic
and metaphysics, in succession to Professor David
Ritchie. In the interval between his appointment
and the commencement of the college session, in
the November of the same year, he was assiduously
occupied in preparing to discharge the
duties of the chair, which (according to the
practice of the University) consist in the delivery
of a course of lectures on the subjects assigned
to it.
On his appointment at first, Sir William
Hamilton would seem to have experienced
considerable difficulty in deciding on the character
of the course of lectures on Philosophy, which,
while doing justice to the subject, would at the
same time meet the requirements of his auditors,
usually comparatively young students in the second
year of their University curriculum. His first
course of lectures fell to be written during the
currency of the session 1836-7. He was in the
habit of delivering three in each week; and each
lecture was usually written on the day, or more
probably on the evening and night, before its
delivery. His ? Course of Metaphysics? was the
result of this nightly toil.
His lectures on Logic were not composed until
the following session, 1837-8. A commonplace
book which he left among his papers, exhibits in a
very remarkable degree Sir William?s power of
appreciating and making use of every available
hint scattered through the obscurer regions of
thought, through which his extensive reading
conducted him, says the editor of his collected
work, and no part of his writings more completely
verifies the remark of his American critic, Mr.
Tyler :-? There seems to be not even a random
thought of any value which has been dropped
along any, even obscure, path of mental activity,
in any age or country, that his diligence has not
recovered, his sagacity appreciated, and his
judgment husbanded in the stores of his knowledge.?
The lectures of Sir William Hamilton, apart from
their very great intrinsic merit, possess a high
acapemical and historic interest From 1836 to
1856-twenty consecutive years-his courses of
Logic and Metaphysics were the means by which
this great, good, and amiable man sought to imbue
with his philosophical opinions the young men
who assembled in considerable numbers from his
native country, from England, and elsewhere ; ?? and
while by these prelections,? says his editor in
1870, ? the author supplemented, developed, and
moulded the National Philosophy-leaving thereon
the ineffaceable impress of his genius and learning
-he at the same time and by the same means
exercised over the intellects and feelings of his
pupils an influence which for depth, intensity, and
elevation, was certainly never surpassed by that of
any philosophical instructor. Among his pupils
are not a few who, having lived for a season under
the constraining power of his intellect, and been
Led to reflect on those great, questions regarding
the character, origin, and bounds of human
knowledge which his teaching stirred and
quickened, bear the memory of their beloved and
revered instructor inseparably blended with what
is highest in their present intellectual life, as well
as in their practical aims and aspirations.?
At the time of his death, in 1856, he resided,
as has beeu stated, in No. 16 Great King Street,
and he was succeeded by his eldest son, Willigm,
an officer ofthe Royal Artillery. Since his death
a memoir of him has appeared from the pen of
Professor Veitch, of the University of Glasgow.
In No. 72 of the same street lived and died
another great Scotsman, Sir William Allan, R.A.,
whose fame and reputation as an artist extended
over many years, and whose works are still his
monument. We have already referred to his .
latter years in our account of the Royal Academy
and the ateZier of his earlier days in the Parliament
Close, where, after his wanderings in foreign lands,
and in the first years of the century, he was wont
to figure ?by way of robe-de-chambre, in a dark
Circassian vest, the breast of which was loaded
with innumerable quilted lurking-places, originally,
no doubt, intended for weapons of warfare, but
now occupied with the harmless shafts of hair
pencils, while he held in his hand the smooth
cherry-wood stalk of a Turkish tobacco-pipe,
apparently converted very happily into a palette
guard. A swarthy complexion and profusion of
black hair, tufted in a wild but not ungraceful
manner, together with a pair of large sparkling
eyes looking out from under strong shaggy brows
full of vivacious and ardent expressiveness, were
scarcely less speaking witnesses of the life of
romantic and roaming adventure I was told this
fine artist had led.? In spite of his bad health,
which (to quote ?Peter?s Letters?) ?was indeed
but too evident, his manners seemed to be full of
a light and playful sportiveness, which is by no
means common among the people of our nation,
and still less among the people of Scotland;
and this again was every now and then exchanged
for a depth of enthusiastic earnestness still more
evidently derived from a sojourn among men
whose blood flows through their veins with a heat
and rapidity to which the North is a stranger.?

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH, [Great King Street, in July, .1836, was appointed to the chair of logic and ...

Book 4 p. 196
(Score 0.51)

Queen Spcet.1 PROFESSOR WILSONS MOTHER. I < <
He died of disease of the heart at 52, Queen
Street, on the 6th May, 1870, and never was man
more lamented by all ranks and classes of society ;
and nothing in life so became him, as the calmness
and courage with which he left it.
His own great skill had taught him that from
the first his recovery was doubtful, and in speaking
of a possibly fatal issue, his principal reason for
desiring life was that he hoped, if it were God?s
will, that he might have been spared to do a little
more service in the cause of hospitak reform ; all
his plsns and prospects were limited by this reference
to t!ie Divine will.
?If God takes me to-night,? said he to a friend,
? I feel that I am resting on Christ with the simple
faith of a child.? And in this faith he passed
away.
His funeral was a great and solemn ovation
indeed ; and never since Thomas Chatmers was laid
in his grave had Edinburgh witnessed such a scene
as that exhibifed in Queen Streqt on the 13th May.
From the most distant shires, even of the Highlands
aed the northern counties of England, and
from London, people came to pay their last tribute
to him whom one of the London dailies emphatically
styled ?the grand old Scottish doctor.?
St. Luke?s Free Church, near his house, was made
the meeting place of the general public. In front
of the funeral car were the Senatus Academicus,
headed by the principal, Sir Alexander Grant of
Dalvey, and the Royal College of Physicians, all
in academic costume; the magistrates, with all
their official robes and insignia; all the literary,
scientific, legal, and commercial bodies in the city
sent their quota of representatives, which, together
with the High Constables and students, made altogether
1,700 men in deep mourning.
The day was warm and bright, and vast crowds
thronged every street from his house to the grave
on the southern slope of Wnrriston cemetery, and
on every side were heard ever and anon the
lamentations of the poor, while most of the shops
were closed, and the bells of the churches tolled.
The spectators were estimated at IOO,OOO, and
the most intense decorum prevailed. An idea of
the length of the procession may be gathered from
the fact that, although it consisted of men marching
in sections of fours, it took upwards of. thirty-three
minutes to pass a certain point.
A grave was offered in Westminster, but declined
DY his family, who wished to have him buried
among themselves. A white marble bust of him
by Brodie was, however, placed there in 1879.
NO. 53 Queen Street, the house adjoining that
of Sir James, was the residence of Mrs. Wilson,
mother of Professor John Wilson, widow of a
wealthy gauze manufacturer. Her maiden name
was Margaret Sym, and her brother Robert figures
in the Noctes Ambrosiamz, under the cognomen of
I? Timothy Tickler.? Wilson?s Memoirs ? contain
many of his own letters, datedfrom thke, after r806
till his removal to Anne Street. There he wrote his
I? Isle of Palms,? prior to his marriage with Miss
Jane Penny in May, I 8 I I, and there, with his young
wife and her sisters, he was resident with the old
lady at the subsequent Christmas. His father
left him an unencumbered fortune of ~ 5 0 , 0 0 0 ,
which had enabled him to cut a good figure at
Oxford.
?A little glimpse of the life at 53 Queen Street,
and the pleasant footing subsisting between the
relatives gathered there, is afforded in a note of
young Mrs. Wilson about this time to a sisterYm
says Mrs. Gordon. ?She thanks ?Peg? for her
note, which, she says, ?was sacred to myself. It is
not my custom, you may tell her, to show my
letters to John.? She goes on to speak of Edinburgh
society, dinners, and evening parties, and
whom she most likes. The Rev. Mr. Morehead is
Mr. Jeffrey is ? a homd little
man,? but ? held in as high estimation here as the
Bible.? Mrs. Wilson senior gives a ball, and 150
people are invited. ? The girls are looking forward
to it with great delight. Mrs. Wilson is very nice
with them, and lets them ask anybody they like.
There is not the least restraint put upon them.
John?s poems will be sent from here next week.
The large size is a guinea, and the small one
twelve shillings.? ?
Elsewhere we are told that John Wilson?s
? home was in Edinburgh. His mother received
him into her house, where he resided till 1819.?
She was a lady whose domestic management
was the wonder and admiration of all zealous
housekeepers. Under one roof, in 53 Queen
Street, she contrived to accommodate three distinct
families; and there, besides the generosity exercised
towards her own, she was hospitable to all, and
her chanty to the poor was unbounded ; and when
she died, ?it was, as it were, the extinction of a
bright particular star, nor can any one who ever
saw her altogether forget the effect of her presence.
She belonged to that old school of Scottish ladies
whose refinement and intellect never interfered
with duties the most humble.?
In those days in Edinburgh the system of a
household neither sought nor suggested a number
of servants ; thus many domestic duties devolved
upon the lady herself: for example, the china
-usually a rare set-after breakfast and tea, was
a great favourite

... Spcet.1 PROFESSOR WILSONS MOTHER. I < < He died of disease of the heart at 52, Queen Street, on the ...

Book 3 p. 155
(Score 0.51)

Moming+3c] THE ROYAL EDINBURGH ASYLUM. 39
sions and villas seem to crowd and jostle each other,
till it has become an integral part of Edinburgh;
but the adjacent hamlet of Tipperlinn, the abode
chiefly of weavers, and once also a summer resort,
has all disappeared, and nothing of it now remains
but an old draw-well The origin of its name is
evidently Celtic.
Falcon Hall, eastward of the old village, is an
elegant modem villa, erected early in the present
century byawealthy Indian civilian, named Falconer;
but, save old Morningside House, or Lodge, before
that time no other niansion of importance stood
here.
In the latter-which stands a little way back kom
the road on the west side-there died, in the year
1758, William Lockhart, Esq., of Carstairs, who
had been thrown from his cliaise at the Burghmuir-
head, and was so severely injured that he expired
two days after. Here also resided, and died
in 1810, William Coulter, a wealthy hosier, who was
then in office as Lord Provost of the city, which
gave him a magnificent civic and military funeral,
which was long remembered for its grandeur and
solemnity.
On this occasion long streamers of crape floated
from Nelson?s monument ; the bells were tolled.
Mr. Claud Thompson acted as chief mourner-in
lieu of the Provost?s only son, Lieutenant Coulter,
then serving with the army in Portugal-and the city
arms were borne by a man seven feet high before
the coffin, whereon lay a sword, robe, and chain
of office.
Three volleys were fired over it by the Edinburgh
Volunteers, of which he was colonel. A portrait
of him in uniform appears in one of Kay?s
sketches.
In 1807 Dr. Andrew Duncan (already noticed
in the account of Adam Square) proposed the
erection of a lunatic asylum, the want of which
had long been felt in the city. Subscriptions came
in slowly, but at last sufficient was collected, a
royal charter was obtained, and on the 8th of June,
1809, the foundation stone of the now famous and
philanthropic edifice at Morningside was laid by
the Lord Provost Coulter, within an enclosure, four
acres in extent, south of old Morningside House
Towards the erection a sum of LI,IOO came from
Scotsmen in Madras.
The object of this institution is to afford every
possible advantage in the treatment of insanity.
The unfortunate patients may be put under the
care of any medical practitioner in Edinburgh
(says the Scots Magmine for that year) whom the
relations may choose to employ, while the poor
will be attended gratis by physicians and surgeons
appointed by the managers. In every respect,
it is one of the most efficient institutions of the
kind in Scotland, It is called the Royal Edinburgh
Asylum, and has as its patron the reigning
sovereign, a governor, four deputies, a board of
managers, and another of medical men.
The original building was afterwards more than
doubled in extent by the addition of another, the
main entrance to which is from the old road that
led to Tipperlinn. This is called the west department,
where the average number of inmates is
above 500. It is filled with patients of the humbler
order, whose friends or parishes pay for them 6 1 5
per annum.
The east department, which was built in 1809, is
for patients who pay not less than A56 per annum
as an ordinary charge, though separate sitting-rooms
entail an additional expense. On the other hand,
when patients are in straitened circumstances a
yearly deduction of ten, or even twenty pounds, is
made from the ordinary rate.
In the former is kept the museum of plaster
casts from the heads of patients, a collection continually
being added to ; and no one, even without
a knowledge of phrenology, can behold these lifeless
images without feeling that the originals had
been afflicted by disease of the mind, for even the
cold, white, motionless plaster appears expressive
of ghastly insanity.
In the west department the patients who are
capable of doing so ply their trades as tailors,
shoemakers, and so forth; and one of the most
interesting features of the institution is the
printing-office, whence, to quote Chambers?sJournal,
?is issued the Morningside Mirror, a monthly
sheet, whose literary contents are supplied wholly
by the inmates, and contain playful hits and puns
which would not disgrace the habitual writers of
facetious articles.??
From the list of occupations that appear in the
annual report, it would seem that nearly every
useful trade and industry. is followed within the
walls, and that the Morningside Asylum supplies
most of its own wants, being a little world complete
in itself.
Occupation and amusement here take the place
of irksome bondage, with results that have been
very beneficial, and among the most extraordinary
of these are the weekly balls, in which the patients
figure in reels and in country dances, and sing
songs.
At the foot of Morningside the Powburn takes the
singular name of the Jordan as it flows through a
farm named Egypt, and other Scriptural names
abound close by, such as Hebron Bank, Canaan

... THE ROYAL EDINBURGH ASYLUM. 39 sions and villas seem to crowd and jostle each other, till it has ...

Book 5 p. 39
(Score 0.51)

6 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Canongate
attendants to say such prayers by her bedside as ? the seventeenth century, and the lofty buildings on
were fitting for a person not expected to survive a
mortal disorder.
? He ventured to remonstrate, and observed that
her safe delivery warranted better hopes; but he
was sternly commanded to obey the orders first
given, and with difficulty recollected himself
sufficiently to acquit himself of the task imposed
on him, He was then again hurried into the chair ;
but as they conducted him down-stairs he heard
the report of a pistol! He was safely conducted
home, and a purse of gold was forced upon
him; but he was warned at the same time
that the least allusion to this dark transaction
would cost him his life. He betook himself to
rest, and after long and broken musing, fell into a
deep sleep. From this he was awakened with the
dismal news that a fire of uncommon fury had
broken out in the house of -, near the head of
the Canongate, and that it was totally consumed,
with the shocking addition that the daughter of the
proprietor, a young lady eminent for beauty and
accomplishments, had perished in the flames. The
clergyman had his suspicions ; but to have made
them public would have availed gothing. He was
timid ; the family was of the first distinction; above
all, the deed was done, and could not be amended.
?Time wore away, and with it his terrors; but
he became unhappy at being the solitary depositary
-of this fearful mystery, and mentioned it to some
of his brethren, through whom the anecdote
acquired a sort of publicity. The divine had long
been dead when a fire broke out on the same spot
where the house of - had formerly stood, and
which was now occupied by buildings of an inferior
description. When the flames were at their height,
the tumult that usually apends such a scene was.
suddenly suspended by an unexpected apparition.
A beautiful female in a nightdress, extremely rich,
but at least half a century old, appeared in ,the
very midst of the fire, and uttered these tremendous
words in her vernacular idiom :-? Anes bumeddwice
burned-the third time 1?11 scare you all ! ?
The belief in this story was so strong, that on a
fire breaking out, and seeming to approach the
fatal spot, there was a good deal of anxiety testified
lest the apparition should make good her denunciation.?
I
According to a statement in Nates and Queries,
this story was current in Edinburgh before the
childhood of Scott, and the murder part of it
was generally credited, He mentions a person
acquainted with the city in 1743 who used to tell
ithe tale and point out the site of the house. It is
Remarkable that a great fire did happen there in
.
the spot date from that time.
Of the plague, which in 1645 nearly depopu- .
lated the Canongate as well as the rest of Edinburgh,
a singular memorial still remains, a little lower
down the street, on the north side, in the form of
a huge square tenement, called the Morocco Land,
from the effigy of a turbaned Moor, which projects
from a recess above the second floor, and having
an alley passing under it, inscribed with the following
legend :-
? MISERERE MEI, DOMINE : A PECCATO, PKOBRO,
DEBITO, ET MORTE SUBITA. LIBERA ~~1.6.18.?
Of the origin of this edifice various romantic stories
are told: one by Chambers, to the effect t5at a
young woman belonging to Edinburgh, having been
taken upon the sea by an African rover, was sold
to the harem of the Emperor of Morocco, whose
favourite wife she became, and enabled her brother
to raise a fortune by merchandise, and that in
building this stately edifice he erected the black
nude figure, with turban and necklace of beads, as
a memorial of his royal brother-in-law; but the
most complete and consistent outline of its history
is that given by Wilson in his ? Memorials,? from
which it would appear that during one of the
turnults which occurred in the city after the accession
of Charles I., the house of the Provost, who had
rendered himself obnoxious to the rioters, was
assaulted and set on fire. Among those arrested as a
ringleader was Andrew Gray, a younger son of the
Master of Gray, whose descendants inherit the
ancient honours of Kinfauns, and who, notwithstanding
the influence of his family, was tried, and
sentenced to be executed on the second day
thereafter.
On the very night that the scaffold was being
erected at the Cross he effected his escape from
the City Tolbooth by means of a rope conveyed
to him by a friend, who had previously given some
drugged liquor to the sentinel at the Puir-folkspurses,
and provided a boat for him, by which he
crossed the North Loch and fled beyond pursuit.
Time passed on, and the days of the great civil
war came. ? Gloom and terror now pervaded the
streets of the capital. It was the terrible pear
1645-the last visitation of the pestilence to Edinburgh-
when, as tradition tells us,? says Wilson,
?grass grew thickly .about the Cross, once as
crowded a centre of thoroughfare as Europe could
boast of.?
The Parliament was compelled to sit at Stirling,
and the Town Council, on the 10th of April,
agreed with Joannes Paulitius, M.D., that he
should visit the infected at a salary of AS0 Scot

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Canongate attendants to say such prayers by her bedside as ? the seventeenth century, ...

Book 3 p. 6
(Score 0.5)

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

... CASTLE -4ND GLEN. 34 7 Roslin.] further repaired, as an ornate entrance seems tc show, with its lintel, ...

Book 6 p. 347
(Score 0.5)

cantoned with other four in the angles. The tiar, or
bonnet, was of purple velvet; but, in 1685, it got a
.cap of crimson velvet, adorned with four plates of
gold, on each of them a great pearl, and the bonnet
-is trimmed up with ermine. Upon the lowest circle
there are eight small holes, two and two, on the
-four quarters of the crown, which mere for lacing
-or tying thereto diamonds or precious stones.
The crown is g inches in diameter, 27 inches
about, and in height from the under circle to the
top of the cross patee 6; inches.
The sceptre : its stem or stalk, which is of
silver double overgilt, is two feet long, of a hexagon
form, with three buttons or knobs; betwixt the
first button and the second is the handle of a
hexagon form, furling in the middle and plain.
Betwixt the second button and the third are three
sides engraven. From the third button to the
capital the three sides under the statues are plain,
and on the other three are antique engravings. Upon
the top of the stalk is an antique capital of leaves
embossed, the abacus whereof arises round the
prolonged stem, surrounded with three little statues;
between every two statues arises a rullion in the
form of a dolphin ; above the rullions and statues
stands another hexagon button, with oak leaves
under every corner, and down it a crystjl (beryl?)
globe. The whole sceptre is in length 34 inches.?
The statues are those of the Virgin, St. Andrew,
and St. James. The royal initials, J. R. V. are
engraved under them. If James V. had this
sceptre made, the metallic settings of the great
beryl belong to some sceptre long anterior to
his time.
The sword is in length 5 feet ; the handle and
pommel are of silver overgilt, in length 15 inches.
The pommel is round and somewhat flat on the two
sides. The traverse or cross OF the sword, which
is of silver overgilt, is in length 17h inches; its
form is like two dolphins with their heads joining
and their tails ending in acorns; the shell is
hanging down towards the point of the sword,
formed like an escalop flourished, or rather like
a green oak-leaf. On the blade of the sword
are indented with gold these letters-JuLIus 11. P.
The scabbard is of crimson velvet, covered with
silver wrought in philagram-work into branches oj
the oak-tree leaves and acorns.?? Such are the
Scottish regalia, which, since the destruction 01
those of England by Cromwell, are the only ancien!
regal emblems in Great Britain.
The sword of state is of an earlier date than the
rod of the sceptre, being presented by the rvarlikr
Pope Julius to James IV. with a consecrated hai
in 1507. The keys of St. Peter figure promhentlj
among the filagree work. After the fall of the Castle
of Dunottar, in 1651, the belt of the sword became
an heirloom in the family of Ogilvie of Barras.
The great pearl in the apex of the crown is
alleged to be the same which in 1620 was found
in the burn of Kellie, a tributary of the Ythanz
in Aberdeenshire, and was so large and beautiful
that it was esteemed the best that had at any time
been found in Scotland.? Sir Thomas Menzies,
Provost of Aberdeen, obtaining this precious jewel,
presented it to James VI., who in requital gave
him twelve or fourteen chaldron of victuals about
Dunfermline, and the custom of certain merchant
goods during his life.? *
Before quitting the Castle of Edinburgh, it is impossible
to omit some special reference to Mons
Meg-that mighty bombard which is thirteen feet
long and two feet three and a half inches within the
bore, and which was long deemed by the Scots a
species of palladium, the most ancient cannon in
Europe, except one in Lisbon, and a year older
than those which were made for Mahomet 11.
Not a vestige of proof can be shown for the popular
error that this gun was forged at Mons, while unvarying
tradition, supported by very strong carroborative
evidence, proves that she was formed by
Scottish artisans, by order of James II., when he
besieged the rebellious Douglases in the castle
of Thrieve, in Galloway, during 1455. He posted
his artillery at the Three Thorns of the Carlinwark,
one of which is still surviving ; but their fire proving
ineffective, a smith named M?Kim, and his sons,
offered to construct a more efficient piece of ordnance.
Towards this the inhabitants of the vicinity
contributed each a ,rrczud, or iron bar. Tradition,
which never varied, indicated the place where it was
forged, a mound near the Three Thorns, .and when
the road was formed there, that mound was discovered
to be a mass of cinders and the iron dCbris
of a great forge. To this hour the place where the
great gun was posted is named Knock-cannon. Only
fwo of Meg?s bullets were discharged before Thrieve
surrendered, and it is remarkable that both have
been found there. ?The first,? says the New
Statistical Accowif, <?was, towards the end of thk
last century, picked out of the well and delivered to
Gordon of Greenlam. The second was discovered
in 1841, by the tenant of Thrieve, when removing
an accumulation of rubbish.? It lay in a line direct
from Knock-cannon to the breach in the wall. To
reward M?Kim Jarnes bestowed upon him the
forfeited lands of MolIFnce. The smith is said to
have nanied the gun after his wife ; and the con-

... with other four in the angles. The tiar, or bonnet, was of purple velvet; but, in 1685, it got a .cap of ...

Book 1 p. 74
(Score 0.5)

138 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Restalrig.
latter married a lady whom Burke calls ?Miss
Alston, of America,? and died without any family,
and now the line of the Nisbets of Dean and
Craigantinnie has passed completely away ; but
long prior to the action recorded the branch at
Restalrig had lost the lands there and the old
house we have described.
In the beginning of the last century the proprietor
of Craigantinnie was Nisbet of Dirleton, of
the male line of that Sir John Nisbet of Dirleton
who was King?s Advocate after the Restoration.
It was subsequently the property of the Scott-
Nisbets, and on the death of John Scott-Nisbet,
Esq., in 1765, an action was raised against his
heirs and trustees, by Young of Newhall, regarding
the sale of the estate, which was ultimately carried
to the House of Peers.
Craigantinnie was next acquired by purchase by
William Miller, a wealthy seedsman, whose house
and garden, at the foot of the south back of the
Canongate, were removed only in 1859, when the
site was added to the Royal Park. When Prince
Charles?s army came to Edinburgh in 1745, he
obtained 500 shovels from William Miller for
trenching purposes. His father, also Wdliam Miller,
who died in 1757, in his eightieth year, had previously
acquired a considerable portion of what is
now called the Craigantinnie estate, or the lands
of Philliside, and others near the sea. He left
.&20,000 in cash, by which Craigantinnie proper
was acquired by his son M7illiam. He was well
known as a citizen of Edinburgh by the name of
?? the auld Quaker,? as he belonged to the Society
of Friends, and was ever foremost in all works of
chanty and benevolence.
About 1780, when in his ninetieth year, he
married an Englishwoman who was then in her
fiftieth year, with whom he went to London and
Pans, where she was delivered of a child, the late
William Miller, M.P. for Newcastle-under-Lyne ;
and thereby hangs a story, which made some stir
at the time of his death, as he was currently averred
to be a changeling-even to be a woman, a suggestion
which his thin figure, weak voice, absence of
all beard, aad some peculiarity of habit, seemed to
corroborate. Be that as it may, none were permitted-
save those interested in him-to touch his
body, which, by his will, lies now buried in a
grave, dug to the great depth of foity feet, on the
north side of the Portobello Road, and on the
lands of Craigantinnie, with a classic tomb of considerable
height and beauty erected over it.
At his death, without heirs, the estate passed into
the hands of strangers.
His gigantic tomb, however, with its beautiful
sculptures, forms one of the most remarkable
features in this locality. Regarding it, a writer in,
Tem~jZe Bar for 1881, says :-?? Not one traveller
in a thousand has ever seen certain sculptures
known as the ? Craigantinnie Marbles.? They arel
out of town, on the road to Portobello, beyond the
Piershill cavalry barracks, and decorate a mausoleum
which is to be found by turning off the high
road, and so past a cottage into a field, green and?
moist with its tall neglected grass. There is something
piquant in coming upon Art among humble?
natural things in the country or a thinly peopled
suburb.? After referring to Giotto?s work outside
Padua, he continues : ? It is obvious there is no
comparison intended between that early work of
Italy, so rich in sincere thought and beautiful expression,
and the agreeable, gracious and even
manly hbour, of the artist who wrought for modern
Scotland, the ?Song of Miriam? in this Craigantinnie
field. Still there is a certain freshness of pleasure
in the situation of the work, nor does examination
of the art displayed lead to prompt disappointment.?
Standing solitary and alone, westward of Restalrig
Church, towers the tall villa of Marionville,
which, though now rather gloomy in aspect, was
prior to 1790 the scene often of the gayest private
theatricals perhaps in Britain, and before its then
possessor won himself the unenviable name of ?? the
Fortunate Duellist,? and became an outcast and
one of the most miserable of men, The house is
enclosed by shrubbery of no great extent, and by
high walls. ?Whether it be,? says Chambers,
? that the place has become dismal in consequence
of the rise of a noxious fen in its neighbourhood,
or that the tale connected with it acts upon the
imagination, I cannot decide ; but unquestionably
there is about the house an air of depession and
melancholy such as could scarcely fail to strike the
most unobservant passenger.?
Elsewhere he mentions that this villa was built,
by the Misses Ramsay, whose shop was on the
east side of the old Lj-on Close, on the north side
of the High Street, opposite the upper end of the
City Guardhouse. There they made a fortune,
spent on building Marionville, which was locally
named hjpeet Ha? in derision of their profession.
Here, for some time before 1790, lived Captain
James Macrae, formerly of the 3rd Regiment of
Horse (when commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel
Sir Ralph Abercrombie), and now known as the
6th Dragoon Guards, or Carabineers ; and his story
is a very remarkable one, from the well-known
names that must be introduced in it. He was
Macrae of Holemains, whom Fowler, in his Ren-,

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Restalrig. latter married a lady whom Burke calls ?Miss Alston, of America,? and died ...

Book 5 p. 138
(Score 0.49)

92 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Mound.
design, which shall consist of two departments : the
m e appropriated to the remains of ancient sculpture,
and the other to the study of living models.
From that time matters went on peacefully and
pleasantly till 1844, when 8 dispute about entrance
to their galleries ensued with the subordinates of
the Board of Manufactures, in whose building they
were-a dispute ultimately smoothed over. In
1847 another ensued between the directors of the
Royal Institution and the Academy, which led to
some acritnonious correspondence ; but all piques
and jealousies between the Academy and the Royal
Institution were ended by the erection of the Art
Galleries, founded in 1850.
Six months before that event Sir William Allan,
the second president, died on the 2 2nd of February,
after occupying the presidential chair for thirteen
years with much ability. It is to be regretted that
no such good example of his genius as his ?? Death
of Rizzio? finds a place in the Scottish National
Gallery, his principal work there being his large
unfinished picture of the ?? Battle of Bannockburn,?
a patriotic labour of love, showing few of the best
qualities of his master-hand, as it was painted
literally when he was dying. ?TO those who were
with Sir William in his latter days it was sadly
interesting to see him wrapped up in blankets,
cowering by his easel, with this great canvas
stretched out before him, labouring on it assiduously,
it may be truly said, till the day on which he
died,? writes a brother artist, who has since
followed him. ? The constant and only companion
uf his studio, a long-haired, glossy Skye terrier, on
his master?s death, refused to be comforted, to eat,
.or to live.?
His successor was Sir John Watson, who added
the name of Gordon to his own. He was the son of
Captain JamesWatson, RN., who served in Admiral
Digby?s squadron during the first American war,
Among his earlier works were the ? Shipwrecked
Sailor,? ? Queen Margaret and the Robber,? ?A
Boy with a Rabbit,? ?The Sleeping Boy and
Watching Girl? (his own brother and sister); but it
was as a painter of portraits strictly that he made
his high reputation; though it is said that the
veteran, his father, when looking at the ? Venus and
Adonis ? of Paul Veronese, declared it ? hard as
flints,? adding, ?I wouldn?t give my Johnny?s
? Shipwrecked Sailor? for a shipload of such.?
In early life he lived with his father in 27 Anne
Street, which he left regularly every morning at
nine o?clock, ?and walking down the beautidul
and picturesque footpath that skirted the bank
af the Water of Leith, he passed St. Bernard?s,
where almost invariably he was joined by the
portly figure of Sir Henry Raeburn. Engaged in
conversation, no doubt beneficial to the younger
but rising artist, they proceeded to Edinburgh-
Raeburn to his gallery and painting-room, No. 32
York Place, and John Watson to his apartments
in the first flat of No. 19 South St. David Street,
or, latterly, 24 South Frederick Street.??
During his presidency the Art Galleries were
completed and opened. By the Act 13 and 14
Vict., cap. 86, the entire building and property were
vested in the Board of Manufactures, as well as the
appropriation of the buildings when completed,
subject to the approbation of the Treasury, without
the sanction of which no fee for admittance
was to be charged on any occasion, except to the
annual exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy.
?The general custody and maintenance of the
whole building shall be vested in the Board of
Manufactures,?? says the Government minute of
28th February, 1858 ; ?but the Royal Scottish
Academy shall have the entire charge of the councilroom
and library and of the exhibition galleries
during their annual exhibitions.?
After continuing in the exercise of his profession
until within a few weeks of his death, Sir John
Watson died at his house in George Street, 1st
June, 1864, in his seventy-sixth year, having been
born in 1788.
He was succeeded as president and trustee by
Sir George Harvey, born in Stirlingshire in 1805,
and well known as a painter successfully of historical
subjects and fabZeaux de genre, many of them
connected with the stirring events of the Covenant
He became a Scottish Academician in 1829, since
when his popularity spread far and wide by the
dissemination of numerous engravings from his
works. He was president only twelve years, and
died at Edinburgh on the zznd of January, 1876, in
his seventy-first year.
He was succeeded by Sir Daniel Macnee, R.S.A.,
who was also born in Stirlingshire in 1806, and
began early to study at the Trustees? Academy with
Duncan, Lauder, Scott, and other artists of native
repute. He rapidly became a favourite portrait
painter in both countries, and his famous portrait
of the Rev. Dr. Wardlaw won a gold medal at the
Paris International Exhibition of 1855. He has
painted many of the most prominent men of the
time, among them Lord Brougham for the College
of Justice at Edinburgh.
In connection with Scottish art we may here
refer to the Spalding Fund, of which the directors
of the Royal Institution were constituted trustees
by the will of Peter Spalding, who died in 1826,
leaving property, ? the interest or annual proceeds

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Mound. design, which shall consist of two departments : the m e appropriated to ...

Book 3 p. 92
(Score 0.49)

I 68 OLD. AND NEW EDINBURGH. [St. Andrew Square.
Natural Phenomena,? and many other scientific
and geographical works that have won the firm
more than European reputation, including the
? Royal Atlas of General Geography,? dedicated tc
her Majesty, the only atlas for which a prize medal
was awarded at the International Exhibition oi
London, 1862. Alexander Keith Johnston, LL.D.,
F.R.S., died on the 9th of July, 1877; but the
firm still exists, though removed to more extensive
premises elsewhere.
No less than twenty-three Societies and Associa.
tions of various kinds have chambers in No. 5,
including the Obstetrical, Botanical, Arboricultural,
and Geological Societies, together with the Scottish
branch of the Army Scripture Readers and Soldiers
Friend Society, the mere description of which would
require a volume to themselves.
In the entire square there are above twenty
insurance societies or their branches, and several
banks, and now it is one of the greatest business
centres in the city.
No. 6 was till 1879 the Scottish Provident In.
stitution, established in I 838, and incorporated
ten years subsequently. It is a mutual assurance
society, in which consequently the whole profits
belong to the assured, the policy-holders at the
same time, by the terms of? the policies and by the
deed of constitution, being specially exempt from
personal liability.
No. 9 was in 1784 the house of Sir Michael
Bruce, Bart., of Stenhouse, in Stirlingshire. He
married a daughter of General Sir Andrew Agnew
of Lochnaw, heritable sheriff of Galloway, and
died in 1795. The whole site is now covered by
the Scottish Widows? Fund ofice.
No 12, once the residence of Campbell of Shawfield,
is now the office of the London Accident
Company; and No. 14, ?which no longer exists,
was in 1810 the office of the Adjutant-General for
Scotland.
In No. 19 (now offices) according to one authority,
in No. 21 (now also offices) according to Daniel
Wilson, was born on the 19th of September, 1779,
Henry, Lord Brougham and Vaux, the future Lord
Chancellor of Great Britain, son of Henry Brougham
.of Scalis Hall, Cumberland, and Brougham Hall,
Westmoreland, by Eleanor, daughter of the Rev.
James Syrne, and maternal niece of Robertson the
Scottish historian.
A. and C Black?s ?? Guide ? assigns the third floor
of No. ZI as the place where Brougham was born.
The birth and existence of this illustrious statesman
depended upon a mere chance circumstance, which
has in it much that is remarkable. His father was
about to be married to a young lady resident near
~ ~ ~
his family seat, to whoni he was passionately attached,
and every preparation had been made for
their nuptials, when the lady died. To beguile his
sorrow young Brougham came to Edinburgh, where,
when idling on the Castie Hill, he chanced to
inquire of a person where he could find a suitable
lodging. By this person he was not directed to
any fashionable hotel, for at that time scarcely such
a thing was known in Edinburgh, but to Mrs.
Syme, sister of Principal Robertson, widow of the
Rev. Mr. Syrne, yhilom minister of Alloa, who
then kept one of the largest boarding-houses in the
city, in the second flat of MacLellan?s Land, at the
Cowgate Head, the windows of which looked up
Candlemaker Row.
There he found quarters, and though it does not
appear that he intended to reside permanently in
Edinburgh, he soon found occasion to change that
resolution by falling in love with Miss Syme, and
forgetting his recent sorrow. He married her, and
after living for a little space with Mrs. Syme, removed
to st. Andrew Square.*
The future Lord Brougham received the first
seeds of his education at the High School, under
Mr. Luke Fraser, and afterwards under Dr. Adam,
author of the ?Roman Antiquities;? and from
there he passed to the University, to become the
pupil of Dugald Stewart, Black, Robertson, and
other well-known professors, prior to his admission
to the Scottish bar in 1800.
No. 22, now the office of the Scottish National
Fire and Life Assurance Company, was for years
the residence of Dr. James Hamilton, who died in
1835, and whose figure was long remarkable in the
streets from his adherence to the three-cornered hat,
the collarless coat, ruffles, and knee-breeches, of a
past age, with hair queued and powdered; foryears
too he was in every way one of the ornaments of
the metropolis.
His grandfather, the Rev. William Hamilton (a
branch of the house of PreSton) was Principal of
the University in 1730, and his father, Dr. Robert
Hamilton, was a distinguished Professor of theology
in I 754.. At an early age the Doctor was appointed
one of the physicians to the infirmary, to Heriot?s,
the Merchant-maiden and Trades-maiden Hospitals,
and he was author of one or two of the most
elegant professional works that have been issued
by the press. The extreme kindliness of his disposition
won him the love of all, particularly of
the poor, With the costume he retained much of
the gentle courtesy and manly hardihood of the
In one of his earlier publications, Robert Chambm states that
Brougham was born at No. 8 Cowgate, and that his father afterwards
moved to No. 7 George Street.

... 68 OLD. AND NEW EDINBURGH. [St. Andrew Square. Natural Phenomena,? and many other scientific and geographical ...

Book 3 p. 167
(Score 0.49)

375 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Moultray?s Hill.
country where pedigree is the best ascertained of
any in the world, the national record of armorial
bearings, and memoirs concerning the respective
families inserted along with them, are far from
being the pure repositary of truth. Indeed, there
have of late been instances of genealogies inrolled
in the books of the Lyon Court, and coats of arms
with supporters and other marks of distinction
being bestowed in such a manner as to throw
ridicule upon the whole science of heraldry.?
For a time tlie office was held by John Hooke
Campbell, Esq., with a salary of A300 yearly.
Robert ninth Earl of Kinnoul, and Thomas tenth
Earl, held it as a sinecure in succession, with a
salary Of A555 yearly ; for each herald yearly,
and for each pursuivant A16 13s. 4d. yearly were
paid ; and on the death of the last-named earl, in
1866, the office of Lord Lyon was reduced to a
mere Lyon Ring, while the heralds and pursuivants
were respectively reduced to four each in number,
who, clad in tabards, proclaim by sound of trumpet
and under a guard of honour, at the market cross,
as of old, war or peace with foreign nations, the
proroguing and assembly of Parliament, the election
of peers, and so forth.
The new Register House stands partly behind
the old one, with an open frontage in West
Register Street, towards Princes Street. It was
built between 1857 and 1860, at a cost of &27,000,
from designs by Kobert Matheson. It is in a
species of Palladian style, with Greek details. It
serves chiefly as the General Registry Ofice for
births, deaths, and marriages, with the statistical
and index departments allotted thereto. A supplemental
building in connection with both houses
was built in 1871, from designs by the same architect.
It is a circular edifice, fifty-five feet in
diameter, and sixty in height, relieved by eight
massive piers and a dado course, surmounted by a
glazed dome, that rises within a cornice and balustrade.
It serves for the reception of record volumes
in continuation of those in the old Register House.
In the new buildings are various departments
connected with the law courts-such as the Great
Seal Office, the Keeper of the Seal being the Earl
of Selkirk; and the office of the Privy Seal, the
keeper of which is the Marquis of Lothian.
The latter was first established by James I., upon
his return to Scotland in 1423. In ancient times,
in the attestation of writings, seals were commonly
affixed in lieu of signatures, and this took place
with documents concerning debt as well as with
writs of more importance. In writs granted by
the king, the affixing of his seal alone gave them
.
sufficient authority without a signature. This seal
was kept by the Lord High Chancellor; but as
public business increased, a keeper of the Privy or
King?s Seal was created by James I., who wished
to model the officials of his court after what he
had seen in England ; and the first Lord Keeper
of the Privy Seal, in 1424 was Walter Footte,
Provost of Bothwell. The affixing of this seal to
sny document became preparatory to obtaining the
great seal to it. It was, however, in some cases, a
sufficient sanction of itself to several writs which
were not to pass the great seal; and it came at
length to be an established rule, which holds good
to this day, that the rights of such things as might
be conveyed among private persons by assignations
were to pass as grants from the king under his
privy seal alone ; but those of lands and heritages,
which among subjects are transmitted by disilositions,
were to pass by grants from the king under
the great seal. ?Accordingly, the writs in use to
pass under the privy seal alone were gifts of offices,
pensions, presentation to benefices, gifts of escheat,
ward, marriage and relief, z r l t i m r s hares, and such
like ; but as most of tlie writs which were to pass
under the great seal were first to pass the privy
seal, that afforded great opportunity to examine
the king?s writs, and to prevent His Majesty or his
subjects from being hurt by deception or fraud.?
In the new Register House are also the Chancery
Office, and the Record of Entails, for which an Act
was first passed by the Parliament of Scotland in
1685, the bill chamber and extractor?s chamber, the
accountant in bankruptcy, and the tiend office, Src.
In front of the flights of steps which lead to the
entrance of the original Register House stands the
bronze equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington,
executed bySir John Steell, RS.A.,a native sculptor.
The bust taken for this figure so pleased the old
duke that he ordered two to be executed for him,
one for Apsley House, and the other for Eton. It
was erected in 1852, amid considerable ceremony,
when there were present at the unveiling a vast
number of pensioners drawn up in the street, many
minus legs and arms, while a crowd of retired
officers, all wearing the newly-given war-medd,
occupied the steps of the Register House, and were
cheered by their old comrades to the echo. Many
met on that day who had not seen each other since
the peace that followed Waterloo ; and when the
bands struck up 5uch airs as ?The garb of old
Gaul,? and ?The British Grenadiers,? many a
withered face was seen to brighten, and many an
eye grew moist; staffs and crutches were brandished,
and the cheering broke forth again and again.

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Moultray?s Hill. country where pedigree is the best ascertained of any in the world, ...

Book 2 p. 372
(Score 0.49)

Inverleith.] MRS. ROCHEID OF INVERLEITH. s 95
to the estate of?his maternal grandmother, took
the name of Rocheid. His son, James Rocheid
.of Inverleith, was an eminent agriculturist, on
whose property the villas of Inverleith Row were
built.
He died in 1824 in the house of Inverleith.
He was a man of inordinate vanity and family
pride, and it used to be one of the sights of Stockbridge
to see his portly figure, in a grand old family
carriage covered with heraldic blazons, passing
through, to or from the city; and a well-known
anecdote of how his innate pomposity was humbled,
is well known there still.
On one occasion, when riding in the vicinity, he
took his horse along the footpath, and while doing
so, met a plain-looking old gentleman, who firmly
declined to make way for him; on this Rocheid
ordered him imperiously to stand aside. The
pedestrian declined,saying that the otherhad no right
whatever to ride upon the footpath. ?DO you
know whom you are speaking to ?? demanded the
horseman in a high tone. ? I do not,? was the
quiet response. ?Then know that I am John
Rocheid, Esquire of Inverleith, and a trustee upon
this road !
? I am George, Duke of Montagu,? replied the
other, upon which the haughty Mr. Rocheid took
to the main road, after making a very awkward
apology to the duke, who was then on a visit to
his daughter the Duchess of Buccleuch at Dalkeith.
He had a predilection for molesting pedestrians,
and was in the custom of driving his carriage along
a strictly private footpath that led from Broughton
Toll towards Leith, to the great exasperation of
those at whose expense it had been constructed.
It is of his mother that Lord Cockburn gives
us such an amusing sketch in the ?? Memorials of
his own Time,?-thus: ICLacly Don and Mrs.
Rocheid of Inverleith, .two dames of high and
aristocratic breed. They had both shone at first
as hooped beauties in the minuets, and then as
ladies of ceremonies at our stately assemblies ; and
each carried her peculiar qualities and air to the
very edge of the grave, Lady Don?s dignity softened
by gentle sweetness, Mrs. Rocheid?s made more
formidable by cold and severe soleinnity. Except
Mrs. Siddons, in some of her displays of magnificent
royalty, nobody could sit down like the Lady
of Inverleith. She would sail like a ship from
Tarshish, gorgeous in velvet or rustling silk,
done up in all the accompaniment of fans, earrings,
and finger-rings, falling-sleeves, scent-bottle,
embroidered bag, hoop and train, all superb, yet all
in purest taste ; managing all this seemingly heavy
rigging with as much ease as a full-blown swan
Who are you, fellow ? ?
does its plumage. She would take possession of
the centre of a large sofa, and at the same moment,
without the slightest visible exertion, cover the
whole of it with her bravery, the graceful folds
seeming to lay themselves over it, like summer
waves. The descent from her carriage too, where
she sat like a nautilus in its shell, was a display
which no one in these days could accomplish or
even fancy. The mulberry-coloured coach, but
apparently not too large for what it carried, though
she alone was in it-the handsome, jolly coachman
and his splendid hammer-cloth loaded with lacethe
two respectful livened footmen, one on each
side of the richly carpeted step, these were lost
sight of amidst the slow majesty with which the
lady came down and touched the earth. She presided
in this imperial style over her son?s excellent
dinners, with great sense and spirit to the very last
day almost of a prolonged life.?
This stateliness was not unmixed with a certain
motherly kindness and racy homeliness, peculiar to
great Scottish dames of the old school.
In InverleithTerrace, oneof thestreetsbuilt on this
property, Professor Edmonstone Aytounwas resident
about 1850 ; and in No. 5 there resided, prior to his
departure to London, in 1864, John Faed, the eminent
artist, a native of Kirkcudbright, who, so early
as his twelfth year, used to paint little miniatures,
and after whose exhibition in Edinburgh, in 1841,
his pictures began to find a ready sale.
In Warriston Crescent, adjoining, there lived for
many years the witty and eccentric W. R. Jamieson,
W.S., author of a luckless tragedy entitled
?Timoleon,? produced by Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham,
at the old Theatre Royal, and two novels, almost
forgotten now, ? The Curse of Gold,?? and ? Milverton,
or the Surgeon?s Daughter.? He died in obscurity
in London.
Inverleith Row, which extends north-westwards
nearly three-quarters of a mile from Tanfield Hall,
to a place called Golden Acre, is bordered by a
row of handsome villas and other good residences.
In No. 52, here, there lived long, and died on
6th of November, 1879, a very interesting old
officer, General William Crokat, whose name was
associated with the exile and death of Napoleon
in St. Helena. ?So long ago as 1807,? said a
London paper, with particular reference to this
event, ? William Crokat was gazetted as ensign in
the 20th Regiment of Foot, and the first thought
which suggests itself is, that from that date we are
divided by a far wider interval than was Sir Walter
Scott from the insurrection of Prince Charlie, when
in 1814, he gave to his first novel the title of
?Waverley, or ?Tis Sixty Years Since.? There is

... MRS. ROCHEID OF INVERLEITH. s 95 to the estate of?his maternal grandmother, took the name of ...

Book 5 p. 95
(Score 0.49)

132 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [West Church.
the 27th October, 1592, by ?(the hail1 elderes, deacones,
and honest men of ye parochin . . . .
quha hes agreit, all in ane voice, that in all tymes
coming, thair be ane preaching everie Thursday,
and that it begin at nyne hours in ye morning, and
ye officer of ye kirk to gang with ye bell at aught
hours betwixt the Bow Fut and the Toun-end.?
This Thursday sermon was kept up until the middle
of the eighteenth century. The ?? toun-end ? is
supposed to mean Fountain Bridge, sometimes of
old called the Causeway-end.
. In 1589 the Kirk Session ordained that none in
the parish should have ?? yair bairnes ? baptised,
admitted to mamage, repentance, or alms, but
those who could repeat the Lord?s Prayer, the
Belief, and the Commandments, and ?gif ane
compt yair of, quhen yai ar examinet, and yis to be
publishit in ye polpete.? In the following year a
copy of the Confession of Faith and the National
Covenant was subscribed by the whole parish.
From the proximity of the church to the castle,
in the frequent sieges sustained by the latter, the
former suffered considerably, particularly after the
invention of artillery. At the Reformation it had
a roof of thatch, probably replacing a former one
of stone. The thatch was renewed in 1590, and
new windows and a loft were introduced; two
parts of the expense were borne by the parish, the
other by Adam, Bishop of Orkney, a taxation
which he vehemently contested. Among other
additions to the church was ?a pillar for adulterers,?
built by John Howieson and John Gaims in August,
1591. The thatch was removedand theroof slated.
In 1594 a manse adjoining the church was built
for Mr. Robert Pont, on the ?site of the present
one, into which is inserted an ancient fragment of
the former, inscribed-
RELIGIOXI ET POSTERIS
IN MINISTERIO.
S.R. P. G. A. 1594
The burying-ground in those days was confined
to the rising slope south-west of the church, and
as ? nolt, horse, and scheipe ? were in the habit
of grazing there, the wall being in ruins, it was
repaired in 1597. The beadle preceded all funerals
with a hand-bell-a practice continued in the
eighteenth century.
-In consequence of the advanced age of Messrs.
Pont and Aird, a third minister, hlr. Richard
Dickson, was appointed to the parish in May, 1600,
and in 1606 communion was given on three successive
Sundays. On the 8th of May that year the
venerable Mr. Pont passed from the scene of his
labours,and is supposed to have been interred within
the church. To his memory a stone was erected,
which, when the present edifice was built, was removed
to the Rev. Mr. Williamson?s tomb on the
high ground, in which position it yet remains.
His colleague, Mr. Aircl, survived hini but a few
months, and their succkssors, Messrs. Dickson and
Arthur, became embroiled with the Assembly in
16 I 9 for celebrating communion to the people
seated at a table, preventing them from kneeling,
as superstitious and idolatrous. Mr. Dickson was
ordered ?to enter his person in ward within the
Castle of Dumbarton,? and .Mr. Arthur to give
communion to the people on their knees ; but he
and the people declined to ??comply with a practice
so nearly allied to popery.? Mr. Dickson was
expelled in 1620, but Mr. Arthur was permitted to
remain. Among those who were sitters in the
church at this time were Williani Napier, of the
Wrytes house, and his more illustrious kinsman,
John Napier, of Merchiston, the inventor of logarithms,
whose ?dasks,? or seats, seem to have
been close together.
The old church, like that of Duddingstone, was
furnished with iron jougs, in which it appears that
Margaret Dalgleish was compelled to figure on the
23rd of April, 1612, for her scandalous behaviour;
and in 1622, John Reid, ?poltriman,? was publicly
rebuked in church for plucking ?geiss upon the
Lord his Sabbath, in tyme of sermon.?
We are told in the ? History of the West Church,?
that ? in 1622 it was deemed proper to have a bell
hung in the stekple, if the old ruinous fabric which
stood between the old and new kirks might be so
called,? for a new church had been added at the
close of the sixteenth century. In 1618 new communion
cups of silver were procured. ?They were
then of a very peculiar shape, being six inches in
height, gilt, and beautifully chased; but the cup
itself, which was plated, was only two inches
deep and twenty-four in circumference, not unlike
a small soupplate affixed to the stalk of a candlestick.
On the bottom was engraved the following
sentence :-I wiz fa& flse COVJ of saZvafimnc and caZ
@one fhe name of fh b ~ d I I 6 PsZm. I 6 I 9 ; and
around the rim of the cup these words :-Fw fire
Vmf Kirk ovfvith EdinhrgAe.?
The year 1650 saw the church again imperilled
by war. Its records bear, on the 28th July in that
year, that ? No sessione was keiped in the monthe
of August, because there lay ane companie at the
church,? the seats of which had been destroyed
and the sessioners dispersed, partly by the army
of Cromwell, which lay on the south side of the
parish, and that of the Scots, which lay on the
north; and on the 13th of that month, after
Cromwell?s retreat to Dunbar, the commission of

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [West Church. the 27th October, 1592, by ?(the hail1 elderes, deacones, and honest men ...

Book 3 p. 132
(Score 0.49)

346 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [North Bridge.
Newcastle, to witness what all spoke of with
wonder. There were one day applications for 2,557
places, while there were only 630 of that kind in
the house. Porters and servants had to bivouac
for a night in the streets, on mats and palliasses, in
order that they might get an early chance to the
box-office next day. The gallery doors had to
be guarded by detachments of military, and the
bayonets, it is alleged, did not remain unacquainted
with blood. One day a sailor climbed to a window
in front of the house, for a professional and more
expeditious mode of admission ; but he told afterwards
that he no sooner got into the port-hole
than he was knocked on the head, and tumbled
down the hatchway. Great quantities of hats,
wigs, and shoes, pocket-books, and watches, were
lost in the throng, and it was alleged that a deputation
of London thieves, hearing of the business,
came down to ply their trade.? *
So much were the audience moved and thrilled,
that many ladies fainted, particularly when Mrs
Siddons impersonated Isabella in the Fatal Mar-
. riage, and she had to portray the agony of a wife,
on finding, after a second marriage, that her first
and most loved husband, Biron, is alive ; and concerning
this a curious story is told. A young
Aberdeenshire heiress, Miss Gordon of Gicht, was
borne out of her box in hysterics, screaming the
last words she had caught from the great actress,
?Oh, my Biron ! my Biron ! ? There was something
of an omen in this. In the course of a short
time after she was married to a gentleman whom
she had neither seen nor heard of at the epoch of
Mrs. Siddons? performance, the Honourable John
Byron, and to her it proved a ? fatal marriage,? in
many respects, though she became the mother of
the great Lord Byron. A lady who was present
in the theatre on that night died so recently as
In 1786 there died in hkr apartments in Shakespeare
Square an actress who had come to fulfil an
engagement, Mrs. Baddeley, a lady famous in those
days for her theatrical abilities, her beauty, and the
miseries into which she plunged herself by her imprudence.
Her Ophelia and inany other characters
won the admiratipn of Ganick; but her greatest
performances were Fanny in the Clandestine Ma7-
riage, and Mrs. Beverley in the Gamester.
In I 788 a new patent was procured in the names
of the Duke of Hamilton and Henry Dundas,
afterwards Viscount Melville, with the consent of
Mr. Jackson, at the expense of whom it was taken
out.
1855.
. - _. ~-
? Sketch of the Theatre Royal,? privately printed.
Mr. Jackson, the patentee, having become
bankrupt, Mr. Stephen Kemble leased the theatre
for one year, and among those he engaged in 1792
were Mr. and Mrs. Lee Lewes, of whom Kay gives,
us a curious sketch, as ?Widow Brisk? and the
?Tight Lad ? in the Road to Ruin. They had previously
appeared in Edinburgh in 1787, and became
marked favourites. Towards the close of
their second season Kemble played for a few nights,
while Mrs. Lewes took the parts of Lady Macbeth
and Lady Randolph.
Mrs. Esten, an actress greatly admired, now
became lessee and patentee, while Stepheo Kemble,
disappointed in his efforts to obtain entirely the
Theatre Royal, procured leave to erect a? rival
house, which he called a circus, at the head of
Leith walk, the future site of many successive
theatres. Mrs. Esten succeeded in obtaining a.
decree of the Court of Session to restrain Kemble
from producing plays; but the circus was nevertheless
permanently detrimental to the old theatre,
as it furnished entertainments for many years too
closely akin to theatrical amusements.
The ?? Annual Register ? for I 794 records a riot,
of which this theatre was the scene, at the time
when the French Revolution was at its height.
The play being Charles the Fir.rt, it excited keenly
the controversial spirit of the audience, among
whom a batch of Irish medical students in the pit
made some of their sentiments too audible. Some
gentlemen whose ideas were more monarchical, rose
in the boxes, and insisted that the orchestra should
play God Save the King, and that all should hear it
standing and uncovered; but the young Irish
democrats sat still, with their hats on, and much
violence ensued.
Two nights afterwards a great noise was made all
over the house, and it became evident that much
hostility was being engendered. On the subsequent
Saturday the two sets of people having each found
adherents, met in the house for the express purpose
of having a 4?row,?? and came armed with heavy
sticks, for there was a wild feeling abroad then, and
it required an outlet.
When the democrats refused to pay obeisance to
the National Anthem and respond to the cry of
? Off hats,? they were at once attacked with vigourchiefly
by officers of the Argyleshire Fencibles-and
a desperate fray ensued ; heads were broken and
jaws smashed on both sides, and many were borne
out bleeding, and conveyed away in sedans ; and
conspicuous in the conflict on the Tory side
towered the figure of young Walter Scott, then a
newly-fledged advocate. He never after ceased
to feel a glow of pleasure at the recollection of this

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [North Bridge. Newcastle, to witness what all spoke of with wonder. There were one day ...

Book 2 p. 346
(Score 0.49)

[The Cowgate. 262 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH.
Chapel, and quhat expensis he makis thaeron
sal be allowit to him in his accomptis.?
In one window, a Saint Bartholomew has
strangely escaped the destructive mobs of 1559 and
1688; but its tints are far inferior to the deep
crimson and gold of the royal arms. It is remarkable
that one other feature has also escaped destruction,
the tomb of Janet Rhynd, with the following
icscription in ancient Gothic characters :-
peir I Q ~ ant bonorabfl booman, 3anet P(pn8, pe
SS~ous of umqttbiI fliccI flakquben, Burgess
of c?DJ. founBer of pis place, am Betessit ge
iiii b q of Becemr., PO Bno Jl!lc.B?bii.
Impaled in one shield, the arms of the husband
and wife are in the centre of the sculptured stone,
which is now level with a platform at the east end
of the chapel for the accommodation of the officials
of the Corporation.
The hospital was founded in 1504--nine years
before Flodden ; but the charter by which its permanent
establishment is secured by Janet Rhynd, who
gave personally ;6z,ooo Scots, is supposed to have
been dated about 1545 in the reign of Mary, and
as one of the last deeds executed for a pious purpose,
is now remarkable in its tenor.
The chapel is decorated at $s east end with the
royal arms, those of the city, and of the twentytwo
corporations forming the ancient and honourable
Incorporation of Hammermen, ? the guardians
of the sacred banner, the Blue Blanket, on the unfurling
of which every liege burgher of the kingdom
is bound to answer the summons.?
On the walls are numerous tablets recording the
names and gifts of benefactors. The oldest of
these is supposed to be a daughter of the founders, ?? Isabel Macquhane, spouse to Gilbert Lauder,
merchant burgess of Edinburgh, who bigged ye
crosshouse, and mortified jE50 out of the Caussland,
anno 1555.? ?John Spens, burgess of
Edinburgh,? tells another tablet, ? bestowed IOO
lods of Wesland lime for building the stipel of this
chapell, anno I 6 2 I.?
Eleven years after the quaint steeple was built
a bell was hung in it, which bears round it, in large
Roman characters,-
SOLI DEO GLORIA MICHAEL BURGERHUVS ME FECIT.
ANNO 1632.
And underneath, in letters about half the size, is
the legend,
God bCis the Hammermen of MagdaZen Chapel.
The bell is still rung, though not for the objects
detailed in the will of Janet Rhynd, and in 1641
it was used to summon the congregation of the
Greyfriars, who paid for its use A40 Scots yearly.
When the distinguished Reformer John Craig
returned to Scotland at the Reformation-escaping
from Rome on the very day before he was to perish
in a great auto-da-fe-after an absence of twentyfour
years, he preached for some time in this chapel
in the Latin language, to a select congregation of
the learned, being unable from long disuse to hold
forth in the Scottish tongue. He was subsequently
appointed colleague to John Knox, and
is distinguished in history for having defied even
Bothwell, by refusing to publish the banns of his
marriage with Mary, and also for having written the
National Covenant of 1589.
The General Assembly of 1578 .met in the
Magdalene Chapel, and on the 30th of June, 1685,
the headless body of the Earl of Argyle-whose
skull was placed on the north gable of the Tolbooth
-was deposited here, prior to its conveyance to
Kilmun-the tomb of the Campbells-in Argyleshire.
Among the sculpture above the door of the chapel
there remains an excellent figure of an Edinburgh
hammerman of 1555 inthe costume of the period,
in doublet and trunk-breeches, with peaked beard
and moustache, with a hammer in his right hand.
The arms of the corporation are azure, a hammer
proper, ensigned with the imperial crown.
St. Eligius, Bishop and Confessor, was the
patron of the Edinburgh hammermen; but, as
the Scots always followed the French mode and
terms, he has always been known as St. Eloi,
whose altar in St. Giles?s Church was the property
of the corporation. It was the most eastern of the
chapels in that ancient fane. The keystone of
this chapel alone is preserved. It is a richlysculptured
boss formed of four dragons with distended
wings, each different in design. The
centre is formed by a large flower, in which is
inserted the iron hook, whereat hung the votive
lamp over the altar of St. Eloi, who is referred to in
all the historical documents of the corporation.*
According to the Bollandists, he had been a goldsmith
early in life, and became master of the Mint
to Clotaire II., on some of whose gold coins his
name appears. He died Bishop of Noyon about
659, and Kincaid in his history (1794) says that
in the Hammermen?s Hall a relic of him is shown,
?? called St. Eloi?s gown.? This was probably some
garment which had clothed a statue.
The chapel proper has latterly become the property
of the Protestant Institute of Scotland, whose
chambers are close by at I 7, George IV. Bridge.
It is impossible to quit this locality without some
An engraving of this keystone will be found on p 147,
Vol. I.

... Cowgate. 262 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. Chapel, and quhat expensis he makis thaeron sal be allowit to him in his ...

Book 4 p. 262
(Score 0.49)

326 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. 11745.
-the identical vehicle in which the deputies had returned
from Gray?s Mill, and the driver of which
wanted to pass out at that critical juncture. ?Open
the port,? he cried, ?for I behove to get out.? ?You
cannot,? yeplied the sentinel, ?without an order from
Provost Stewart.? ?Let the coach out instantly,?
said James Gillespie, under-keeper of the gate,
?:for I have an order to that effect.? ?Oh, sir, ?tis
very well; you have the keys of the port and must
answer for it,? replied the soldier,. as he pulled
back the ponderous gate in the arch between its
two massive towers.
At that moment a Highlander sprang in and
wrested his musket from him ; it was the chief of
Lochiel; and immediately the whole clan Cameron
advanced up the street, with swords drawn and
colours flying, their pipes playing
? We?ll awa to Shirramuir,
And haud the Whigs ip order.?
Other noise there was none, and no bloodshed;
not an armed man was to be seen on the streets, to
the astonishment of the Highlanders, who saw only
the people in their nightdresses, at the windows,
by the light of the early dawn.
They seized the Guard-house, disarmed the
Guard, captured the cannon and arsenal, placed
pickets at the eight principal gates with the
utmost order and regularity, while the magistrates
retired to their houses, aware that their authority
was ended. .
Generals Guest and Preston hoisted the royal
standard on the Castle, and fired a few cannon to
warn all to keep from its vicinity, and, meanwhile,
after two hours? sleep, Charles prepared to take
possession of the palace of his forefathers. Making
a tour to the south, to avoid the fire of the Castle
till he reached Braidsburn, he turned towards the
city as far as the Hare Stone, a mass of granite
on the turnpike road near Morningside-the old
banner stone of the Burghmuir. He then wheeled
to the east by the beech-shaded Grange Loan (now
bordered by villas, sequestered and grassy then),
which leads by the old house of the Grange to the
Causeway side
Near Priestfield he entered the royal parks by
a breach that had been made in the wall, and
traversed the Hunter?s Bog, that had echoed so
often .to the bugles of his ancestors. Leaving his
troops to take up their camp, about noon he rode
-with what emotions we may imagine-towards
old Holyrood, of a thousand stirring memories,
attended by the Duke of Perth and Lord Elcho,
with a train of gentlemen and the veterans of his
Highland guard-veterans of Sherriffmuir and Glenshiel-
eighty in number, at the very time that Sir
John Cope?s armament was disembarking at Dunbar.
On reaching the eminence below St. Anthony?s
chapel and well, when for the first time he came
in sight of the old palace, he alighted from his
horse, and paused to survey the beautiful scene.
Then descending to the Duke?s Walk (so called
because it had been a favourite resort of his grandfather,
to whose flagrant misgovernment he owed
his exile) he halted for a few minutes to show himself
to the people, who now flocked around him in
great numbers with mingled feelings of ccriosity
and admiration. Loud huzzas came from the
crowd, and many of the enthusiastic Jacobites
knelt down and kissed his hand. He then
mounted his horse-a fine bay gelding, presented
to him by the Duke of Perth-and rode slowly
towards the palace. On arriving in front of Holyrood
he alighted, and was about to enter the royal
dwelling, when a cannon ball fired from the Castle
struck the front of Jarnes V.?s tower, and brought
down a quantity of rubbish into the court-yard.
No injury was done, however, by this gratuitous
act of annoyance, and the Prince, passing in at the
outer gate, and proceeding along the piazza, and
the quadrangle, was about to enter the porch of
what are called the Duke of Hamilton?s apartments,
when James Hepburn of Keith, who had takeii
part in the rising of 1715, ?a model of ancient
simplicity, manliness, and honour,? stepped from
the crowd, bent his knee in token of homage, and
then drawing his sword, raised it aloft, and marshalled
the way before Charles up-stairs.?
On this day Charles wore a short tartan coat, with
the star of St- Andrew, a blue velvet bonnet, and
white cockade, a blue ribbon over his shoulder,
scarlet breeches, and military boots, Tall, handsome,
fair, and noble in aspect, he excited the
admiration of all those fearless Jacobites, the ladies
especially. ?All were charmed with his appearance,?
says Home; ?they compared him to
Robert Bruce, whom he resembled, they said, in
his figure and fortune. The Whigs looked upon
him with other eyes; they acknowledged that he
was a goodly person, but observed that even in
that triumphant hour, when about to enter the
palace of his fathers, the air of his countenance was
languid and melancholy; that he looked like a
gentleman and man of fashion, but not like a hero
or conqueror.? He adds, however, that he was
greeted with acclaim by the peasantry, who, whenever
he went abroad, sought to kiss his hand3 and
even to touch his clothes.
At one o?clock on the same day a body of the
Cameron clansmen was drawn up around the

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. 11745. -the identical vehicle in which the deputies had returned from Gray?s Mill, and ...

Book 2 p. 326
(Score 0.49)

382 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Gregfriars Church.
encroaching on one not fit to be touched ! The
whole presents a scene equally nauseous and unwholesome.
How soon this spot will be so surcharged
with animal juices and oils, that, becoming
one mass of corruption, its noxious steams will
burst forth with the prey of a pestilence, we shall
not pretend to determine ; but we will venture to
say, the effects of this burying-ground would ere
now have been severely felt, were it not that, besides
the coldness of the climate, they have been checked
by the acidity of the coal smoke and the height of
the winds, which in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh
blow with extraordinary violence.?
h o t wrote fully a hundred years ago, but since
his time the interments in the Greyfriars went on
till within a recent period.
George Buchanan was buried here in 1582,
under a through-stone, which gradually sank into
the earth and disappeared. The site, distinctly
known in 1701, is now barely remembered by tradition
as being on the north slope of the churchyard;
but a monument in the ground, to the great
Latin scholar and Scottish historian, was erected
by the late great bibliopole, David Laing, so many
years Librarian of the Signet Library, at his own
expense. An essential feature in the memorial is a
head of Buchanan in bronze, from the best likeness
of him extant. The design was furnished by D.
W. Stevenson, A.R.S.A.
Taking some of the interments at, random, here
is the grave of George Heriot (father of the founder
of the adjacent hospital), who died in 1610; of
George Jameson, the Scottish Vandyke, who died
in 1644; and of Alexander Henderson, 1646, the
great covenanting divine, and leading delegate from
Scotland to the Westminster Assembly, and the
principal author of the Assembly?s Catechism. His
ashes lie under a square pedestal tomb, erected
by his nephew, and surmounted by a carved urn.
There are long inscriptions on the four sides.
John Milne?s tomb, 1667, Royal Master Mason
@y sixth descent), erected by his nephew, .Robert
Milne, also Royal Master Mason, and builder of
the modem portions of Holyrood House, records
in rhyme how-
? John Milne, who maketh the fourth John,
And, by descent from father unto son,
Sixth Master Mason to a royal race
Of seven successive kings, sleeps in this place.?
It is a handsome tomb, with columns and a
pediment, and immediately adjoins the eastern or
Candlemaker Row entrance, in the formation of
which some old mural tombs were removed;
among them that of Alexander Millar, Master
Tailor to James VI., dated 1616--Xiit Pnkcz$s et
Civium Zucfu decotafus, as it bore.
A flat stone which, by 1816, was much sunk in
the earth, dated 1613, covered the grave of Dr.
John Nasmyth, of the family of Posso, surgeon of
the king of France?s troop of Scottish Guards, who
died in London, but whose remains had been sent
to the Greyfriars by order of James VI.
The tomb of Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh-
the celebrated lawyer, and founder of the
Advocates? Library, and who, as a persecutor, was so
ahhorred by the people that his spirit was supposed
to haunt the place where he lies-is a handsome
and ornqte octagon temple, with eight pillars, a
cornice, and a dome, on the southern side of the
ground, and its traditional terrors we have already
referred to. But other interments than his have
taken place here. One notably in 1814, when
the widow of Lieutenant Roderick Mackenzie of
Linessie was, at her own desire, laid there, ?in
the tomb of the celebrated Sir George Mackenzie,
who was at the head of the Lochslin family, and
to whom, by the mother?s side, she was nearly
related.? (GenfZeman?s Mng., 1814.)
Near it is the somewhat remarkable tomb of
William Little, whilom Provost of Edinburgh in
1591. He was Laird of Over Liberton, and the
tomb was erected by his great-grandchild in 1683.
His kinsman, Clement Little, Advocate and Commissary
of Edinburgh, whose meagre library formed
the nucleus of that of the university, is also buried
here. It is a mausoleum, composed of a recumbent
female figure, with a pillar-supported canopy above
her, on which stand four female figures at the
several corners. The popular story is that the
lady was poisoned by her four daughters, whose
statues were placed over her in eternal remembrance
of their wickedness; but the effigies are in
reality those of Justice, Charity, Faith, &c., favourite
emblematical characters in that age when the
monument was erected; and the object in placing
them there was merely ornamental.
Here are interred Archibald Pitcairn, the poet,
1713, under a rectangular slab on four pillars, with
an inscription by his friend Ruddiman, near the
north entry of the ground; Colin MacLaurin, the
mathematician, 1746; and William Ged, the inventor
of stereotype printing.
Here was worthy and gentle Allan Ramsay committed
to the grave in 1758, and the just and u p
right Lord President Duncan Forbes of Culloden,
elevenyears before that time. Another famous Lord
President, Robert Blair of Avontoun, was laid here
in 1811.
Here, too, lie the two famous Monros, father and

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Gregfriars Church. encroaching on one not fit to be touched ! The whole presents a ...

Book 4 p. 382
(Score 0.49)

:a brave prince, demanded instant restitution, and,
at the head of an army, laid siege to the Normans
in the border stronghold.
At this time,the winter snow was covering all the
vast expanse of leafless forest, and the hills-then
growing only heath and gorse-around the Castle of
Edinburgh; and there the queen, with her sons
Edmond, Edgar, and David, and her daughters
Mary and Matilda (surnamed the Good, afterwards
queen of Henry I. of England), were anxiously
waiting tidings from the king and his son Edward,
who?had pressed the siege of Alnwick with such
severity that its garrison was hourly expected to
surrender. A sore sickness was now preying on
the wasted frame of the queen, who spent her days
in prayer for the success of the Scots and the
safety of the king. and prince.
All old historians vie with each other in praise of
the virtuous Margaret. ?? When health and beauty
were hers,? says one writer, ?she devoted her
strength to serve the poor and uncultivated people
whom God had committed to her care; she fed them
with her own hand, smoothed their pillow in sickness,
and softened the barbarous and iron rule of
their feudal lords. No wonder that they regarded
her as a guardian angel among them.?
She daily fed three hundred,? says another
authority, ?waiting upon them on her bended
knees, like a housemaid, washing their feet and
kissing them, For these and other expenses she
not only parted with her own royal dresses, but
more than once she drained the treasury.?
Malcolm, a Celt, is said to have been unable to
read the missals given him by his fair-haired Saxon,
but he was wont to kiss them and press them to
his heart in token of love and respect.
In the castle she built the little oratory on the
very summit of the rock. It stands within the
.citadel, and is in perfect preservation, measuring
about twenty-six feet long by ten, and is spanned
by a finely ornamented a p e arch that springs from
massive capitals, and is covered with zig-zag mouldings.
It was dedicated to her in after years, and
liberally endowed.
?There she is said to have prophetically announced
the surprise of the fortress in 1312, by
causing to be painted on the wall a representation
of a man scaling the Castle rock, with the inscription
underneath, ? Garak-vow Franfais,? a prediction
which was conveniently found to be verified
when the Castle was re-taken from the English by
William Frank (or Francis) and Earl Randolph ;
though why the Saxon saint should prophesy in
French we are left to conjecture.?
Comzcted with the residence of Edgar Atheling?s
sister in Edinburgh Castle there is another
legend, which states that while there she commissioned
her friend St. Catharine-but which
St. Catharine it fails to specify-to bring her some
oil from Mount Sinai; and that after long and
sore travel from the rocks of Mount Horeb, the
saint with the treasured oil came in sight of the
Castle of Edinburgh, on that ridge where stood
the Church of St Mary, built by Macbeth, baron
of Liberton. There she let fall the vessel containing
the sacred oil, which was spilt; but there
sprang up in its place a fountain of wonderful
medicinal efficacy, known now as the Balm Well
of St. Catharine, where the oil-which practical
folk say is bituminous and comes from the coal
seams-may still be seen floating on the limpid
water. It figuted long in monkish legends. For ?
vges a mound near it was alleged to be the tomb of
St Catharine; and close by it James IV. erected a
beautiful little chapel dedicated to St. Margaret,
but long since demolished.
During the king?s absence at Alnwick, the queen,
by the severity of her fastings and vigils, increased
a heavy illness under which she laboured. Two
days before her death, Prince Edgar, whom some
writers call her brother, and others her son, arrived
from the Scottish camp with tidings that Malcolm
had been slain, with her son Edward.
? Then,? according to Lord Hailes, who quotes
Turgot?s Life of SL Margaret, ?? lifting up her eyes
and hands towards heaven, she said, Praise and
blessing be to Thee, Almighty God, that Thou hast
been pleased to make me endure so bitter anguish
in the hour of my departure, thereby, as I trust, to
purify me in some measure from the corruption of
my sins; and Thou, Lord Jesus Christ, who
through the will of the Father, hast enlivened
the world by Thy death, oh, deliver me ! ? While
pronouncing ? deliver me? she expired.?
This, according to the Bishop of St. Andrews,
Turgot, previously Prior of Durham, was after she
had heard mass in the present little oratory, and
been borne to the tower on the west side of the
rock ; and she died holding in her hand a famous
relic known as ?the black rood of Scotland,? which
according to St. Elred, ?was a cross an ell long,
of pure gold and wonderful workmanship, having
thereon an ivory figure of our Saviour marvellously
adorned with gold.?
This was on 16th of November, 1093, when she
was in the forty-seventh year of her age. Unless
history be false, with the majesty of a queen and
the meekness of a saint Margaret possessed a
beauty that falls but seldom to the lot of women ;
and in her time she did much to soften the

... brave prince, demanded instant restitution, and, at the head of an army, laid siege to the Normans in the ...

Book 1 p. 18
(Score 0.49)

St Andrew Square] ROYAL BANK
bank. The other existing banks have all been
constituted by contracts of co-partnery since the
year 1825, and, with the exception of the Caledonian
Banking Company, are all carrying on
business under the Companies Act of 1862. With
this office is incorporated No. 41, which, in 1830,
was the shop of Messrs. Robert Cadell and Co.,
the eminent booksellers and publishers.
The Royal Bank of Scotland occupies a pre
minent position on the west side of the square, in a
deep recess between the British Linen Company
and the Scottish Provident Institution.
It was originally the town house of Sir Lawrence
Dundas, Bart., and was one of the first houses
built in the square, on what we believe was intended
as the place for st. Andrew?s church. The
house was designed by Sir William Chambers, on
the model of a much-admired villa near Rome, and
executed by William Jamieson, mason. Though
of an ancient family, Sir Lawrence was the architect
of his own fortune, and amassed wealth as a conimissary-
general with the army in Flanders, 1748 to
1759. He was the second son of Thomas Dundas,
a bailie of Edinburgh, whose diffculties brought
him to bankruptcy, and for a time Sir Lawrence
served behind a counter, He was created a
baronet in 1762, with remainder, in default of
male issue, to his elder brother, Thomas Dundas,
who had succeeded to the estate of Fingask. His
son Thomas was raised to the peerage of Great
Britain as Baron Dundas of Aske, in Yorkshire, in
August, 1794 and became ancestor of the Earls of
Zetland.
About 1820 the Royal Bank, which had so long
conducted its business in the Old Bank Close in
the High Street, removed to the house of Sir
Lawrence Dundas.
We have thus shown that St. Andrew Square is
now as great a mart for business as it was once a
fashionable quarter, and some idea may be had of
the magnitude of the interests here at stake when
it is stated that the liabilities-that is, the total sums
insured-of the six leading insurance houses alone
exceed ~45,ooo,ooo, and that their annual income
is upwards of ~1,8oo,ooo-a revenue greater than
that of several States !
Melville?s monument, in the centre of the square,
was erected in 1821, in memory of Henry Dundas,
first Viscount Melville, who was Lord Advocate in
1775, and filled some high official situations in the
Government of Britain during the administration
of William Pitt He was raised to the peerage in
OF SCOTLAND. 171
1802, and underwent much persecution in 1805
for alleged malversation in his office as treasurer to
the navy; but after a trial by his peers was triumphantly
judged not guilty.
Designed by William Burn, this monument consists
of pedestal, pillar, and statue, rising to the
height of 150 feet, niodelled after the Trajan
column at Rome, but fluted and not ornamented
with sculpture; the statue is 14 feet in height.
The cost was _f;8,ooo, defrayed-8s the inverse
side of the plate in the foundation stone states
-?by the voluntary contribbtions of the officers,
petty-officers, seamen, and marines of these united
kingdoms.? It was laid by Admirals Sir D a d
Milne and Otway, naval commander-inchief in
Scotland, after prayer by Principal Baird, on the
anniversary of Lord Melville?s birthday. In the
stone was deposited a great plate of pure gold,
bearing the inscription. A plate of silver bearing
the names of the committee was laid in the stone
at the same time.
The Hopetoun monument, within the recess in
front of the Royal Bank, is in memory of Sir John
Hope, fourth Earl of Hopetoun, G.C.H., Colonel
of the gznd Gordon Highlanders, who died in
1823, a distinguished Peninsular officer, who assumed
the command of the army at Corunna, on
the fall of his countryman Sir John Moore. It was
erected in 1835, and comprises a bronze statue, in
Roman costume, leaning on a pawing charger.
West Register Street, which immediately adjoins
St. Andrew Square, is a compound of several
short thoroughfares, and contains the site of
?( Ambrose?s Tavern,? the scene of Professor NIson?s
famous ?Noctes Ambrosianze,? with a remnant
of the once narrow old country pathway
known as Gabriel?s Road. cG Ambrose?s Tavern,?
a tall, three-storeyed edifice, like a country farmhouse,
enjoyed much repute independent of the
?Noctes,? and was removed in 1864. Hogg, the
Ettrick .Shepherd, who was fond of all athletic
sports and manly exercises, was long made to
figure conspicuously in these Noctes ? in BZack3
wmZs Magazine, which gave his name a celebrity
beyond that acquired by his own writings.
At one of the corners of West Register Street is
the great palatial paper warehouse of the Messrs
Cowan, one of the most elaborately ornate busiqess
establishments in the city, which was erected in
1865, by the Messrs. Beattie, at a cost of about
A7,000, and has two ornamental fronts with chaste
and elegant details in the florid Italian styk

... Andrew Square] ROYAL BANK bank. The other existing banks have all been constituted by contracts of co-partnery ...

Book 3 p. 171
(Score 0.48)

The TolbOoth.1 PORTEOUS EXECUTED. 131
some proposed to slay hini on the spot, was told
by others to prepare for that death .elsewhere
which justice had awarded him ; but amid all their
fury, the rioters conducted themselves generally with
grim and mature deliberation. Porteous was allowed
to entrust his money and papers with a person who
was in prison for debt, and one of the rioters kindly
and humanely offered him the last consolation religion
can afford. The dreadful procession, seen
by thousands of eyes fiom the crowded windows,
was then begun, and amid the gleam of links and
;torches, that tipped with fire the blades of hundreds
of weapons, the crowd poured down the
West Bow to the Grassmarket. So coolly and
deliberately did they proceed, that when one 01
Porteous? slippers dropped from his foot, as he was
borne sobbing and praying along, they halted, and
replaced it In the Bow the shop of a dealer in
cordage (over whose door there hung a grotesque
figure, still preserved) was broken open, a rope
taken therefrom, and a guinea left in its stead.
On reaching the place of execution, still marked
byan arrangement of the stones, they were at a loss
for a gibbet, till they discovered a dyer?s pole in it:
immediate vicinity. They tied tbe rope round the
neck of their victim, and slinging it over the cross
beam, swung him up, and speedily put an end tc
his sufferings and his life ; then the roar of voicez
that swept over the vast place and re-echoed up the
Castle rocks, announced that all was over ! BUI
ere this was achieved Porteous had been twice le1
down and strung up again, while many struck him
with their Lochaber axes, and tried to cut off hi:
ears.
Among those who witnessed this scene, and nevei
forgot it, was the learned Lord Monboddo, who had
that morning come for the first time to Edinburgh.
When about retiring to rest (according to ? Kafi
Portraits ?) his curiosity was excited by the noise and
tumult in the streets, and in place of going to bed:
he slipped to the door, half-dressed, with a nightcap
on his head. He speedily got entangled in
the crowd of passers-by, and was hurried along with
them to the Grassmarket, where he became an
involuntary witness of the last act of the tragedy.
This scene made so deep an impression on his
lordship, that it not only deprived him of sleep foi
the remainder of the night, but induced him to
think of leaving the city altogether, as a place unfit
for a civilised being to live in. His lordship
frequently related fhis incident in after life, and
on these occasions described with much force the
effect it had upon him.? Lord Monboddo died
in 1799.
As soon as the rioters had satiated their venzeance,
they tossed away their weapons, and quietly
dispersed; and when the morning of the 8th September
stole in nothing remained of the event but
the fire-blackened cinders of the Tolbooth door, the
muskets and Lochaber axes scattered in the streets,
and the dead body of Porteous swinging in the
breeze from the dyer?s pole. According to the
Caledonian Mercury of 9th September, 1736, the
body of Porteous was interred on the second day
in the Greyfriars. The Government was exasperated,
and resolved to inflict summary vengeance
on the city. Alexander Wilson, the Lord Provost,
was arrested, but admitted to bail after three weeks?
incarceration. A Bill was introduced into Parliament
materially affecting the city, but the clauses for
the further imprisonment of the innocent Provost,
abolishing the City Guard, and dismantling the
gates, were left out when amended by the Commons,
and in place of these a small fine of Az,ooo
in favour of Captain Porteous? widow was imposed
upon Edinburgh. Thus terminated this extraordinary
conspiracy, which to this day remains a
mystery. Large rewards were offered in vain for
the ringleaders, many of whom had been disguised
as females. One of them is said to have been
the Earl of Haddington, clad in his cook-maid?s
dress. The Act of Parliament enjoined the proclamation
for the discovery of the rioters should be
read from the parish pulpits on Sunday, but many
clergymen refused to do so, and there was no power
to compel them ; and the people remembered with
much bitterness that a certain Captain Lind, of the
Town Guard, who had given evidence in Edinburgh
tending to incriminate the magistrates, was rewarded
by a commission in Lord Tyrawley?s South British
Fusiliers, now 7th Foot.
The next prisoner in the Tolbooth who created
an intensity of interest in the minds of contemporaries
was Katharine Nairn, the young and
beautiful daughter of Sir Robert Nairn, Bart, a
lady allied by blood and marriage to many families
of the best position. Her crime was a double
one-that of poisoning her husband, Ogilvie of
Eastmilne, and of having an intrigue with his
youngest brother Patrick, a lieutenant of the Old
Gordon Highlanders, disbanded, as we elsewhere
stated, in 1765. The victim, to whom she had
been mamed in her nineteenth year, was a man
of property, but far advanced in life, and her
marriage appears to have been one of those unequal
matches by which the happiness of a girl is sacnficed
to worldly policy. On her arrival at? Leith in
an open boat in 1766, her whole bearing betrayed
so much levity, and was so different from what
was expected by a somewhat pitying crowd, that a

... TolbOoth.1 PORTEOUS EXECUTED. 131 some proposed to slay hini on the spot, was told by others to prepare for ...

Book 1 p. 131
(Score 0.48)

234 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
~~ ~~ ~~~ ~
the evil passions indulged in by many, Hamilton
draws the contrast thus :-
U Unlike, 0 Eglintoun ! thy happy breast,
Calm and serene, enjoys the heavenly guest ;
From the tumultuous rule of passions freed,
Pure in thy thought and spotless in thy deed ;
In virtues rich, in goodness unconfined,
Thou shin?st a fair example to thy kind ;
Sincere and equal to thy neighbour?s name,
How switl to praise ! how guiltless to defame !
Bold in thy presence bashfulness appears,
And backward merit loses all its fears.
Supremely blest by Heaven-Heaven?s richest grace
Confest is thine, an early blooming race ;
Whose pleasing smiles shall guardian wisdom arm,
Divine instruction ! taught of thee to charm ;
What transports shall they to thy soul impart
(The conscious transports of a parent?s heart),
When thou behold?st them of each grace possest,
And sighing youths imploring to be blest ;
After thy image formed, with charms like thine,
Or in the visit, or the dance to shine!
Thrice happy who succeed their mother?s praise,
The lovely Eglintounes of other days.?
Save Lady Frances, all her daughters were well
married; but her eldest son, Earl Alexander, was
her especial favourite. In his youth, she said, she
preserved the goodness of his nature by keeping
his mind pure and untainted, and giving him just
ideas of moral life. She is said never to have
refused him a request but once. On the accession
of George 111. to the throne, the young earl was
appointed one of the lords of the bedchamber.
Proud of his stately mother and of her noble figure,
he begged that she would walk in the procession
zt his Majesty?s coronation ; but the Countess-a
true Jacobite-excused herself, that she was too
old to wear robes now. His melancholy death at
the hands of Mungo Campbell, in 1769, well nigh
overwhelmed her. Indeed, she never entirely recovered
from the shock of seeing her beloved son
borne home mortally wounded.
During Dr. Johnson?s visit to her, it came out that
she was mamed before he was born ; upon which
she smartly and graciously said to him that she
might have been his mother, and now adopted him ;
and at parting she embraced him, a mark of affection
and condescension which made a lasting impression
upon the mind of the great literary bear. In 1780
she died at Auchans, at the age of ninety-one, preserving
to the last her grandeur of mien and her marvellous
purity of complexion, a mystery to all the
women of her time, and the secret of which was said
to be that she periodically bathed her face with sow?s
milk/ ?? I have seen a portrait,? says Chambers,
?(taken in her eighty-first year, in which it is observable
that her skin is of exquisite delicacy and
tint. Altogether the Countess was a woman of
ten thousand! . . . . One last trait maynow
be recorded : in her ladyship?s bedroom was hung
a portrait of her sovereign de jure, the ill-starred
Charles Edward, so situated as to be the first object
which met her sight on awaking in the morning.?
With the state leve?es of the old Earl of Leven
as High Commissioner at Fortune?s tavern the
ancient glories of the Stamp Office Close faded
away; but an unwonted spectacle was exhibited at
the head thereof in 1812-a public execution.
On the night of the 31st December, 1811, a
band of young artisans and idlers, most of them
under twenty years of age, but so numerous and
so well organised as to set the regular police of the
city at defiance, sallied forth, about eleven o?clock,
into the streets, then crowded as usual at that
festive season, and proceeded with bludgeons to
knock down and rob every person of decent appearance
who fell in their way-the least symptom
on the part of the victims to resist, or protect their
property, proving only a provocation to fresh outrages.
These desperadoes had full possession of
the streets till two in the morning, for the police,
who at that period were wretchedly insufficient,
w-ere rquted and dispersed from the commencement
of the murderous riot.
One watchman, who did his duty in a resolute
manner, was killed on the spot ; a great number of
persons were robbed, and a greater number dangerously,
some mortally, wounded. When the
police recovered from their surprise, assisted by
several gentlemen, a number of the rioters were
arrested, some with stolen articles in their possession,
and the chief ringleaders were soon after
discovered and taken into custody.
Four were tried and convicted; and three of
these young lads were sentenced to be hanged.
The magistrates had them executed on the zznd
of April, 181 2, on a gallows erected at the head of
the Stamp Office Close, in order to mark more
impressively the detestation of their crimes, and
because that place had been the chief scene of the
bloodshed during the riot.
A small work entitled ?? Notes of Conversations,?
with these young desperadoes, was afterwards published
by the Reverend W. Innes.
In 1821 the Stamp Office was removed from
this close to the new buildings erected at Waterloo
Place.

... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street. ~~ ~~ ~~~ ~ the evil passions indulged in by many, Hamilton draws the ...

Book 2 p. 234
(Score 0.48)

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