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THE HIGH STREET AND NETHER BOW. 275 withstanding the elucidation of it referred to above, the question remains with most of them as interesting and mysterious as at first, “ Who murdered Begbie ? ” This eastern nook of the Old Town has other associations with men eminent for talents and noted for their deeds, though tradition has neglected to assign the exact tenements wherein they dwelt of yore, while mingling with the living crowd. Here was the abode of Robert Lekprevik, another of our early Scottish printers, to whom it is probable that Bassendyne succeeded, on his removal to St Andrews in 1570. Here, too, appears to have been the lodging of Archbishop Sharp. Nicoll tells us that the newly-consecrated bishops, on the 8th of May 1662, “being all convenit in the Bishop of St Androis hous, neir to the Neddir Bow, come up all in their gownis, and come to the Parliament, quha wer resavit with much honour, being convoyit fra the Archebischop of Sant Androis hous with 2 erles, viz., the Erle of Kellie and the Erle of Weymis.” Of scarce less interest is the history of a humble barber and wig-maker, who carried on business at the Nether Bow, where his gifted son, William Falconer, the author of “ The Shipwreck,” is believed to have been born about 1730. Here, at least, was his home and playground during his early years, while he shared in the sports and fropcs of the rising generation ; all but himself long since at rest in forgotten graves. World’s End Close is the appropriate title of the last alley before we reach the site of the Nether Bow Port, that terminated of old the boundaries of the walled capital, and separated it from its courtly rival, the Burgh of Canongate. It is called, in the earliest title-deed we have seen connected with it, Sir James Stanfield’s Close ; and though the greater part of it has been recently rebuilt, it still retains a few interesting traces of former times. Over the doorway of a modern land, a finely carved piece of open tracery is built into the wall, apparently the top of a very rich Gothic niche, similar to those in Blyth’s Close and elsewhere ; and on the lintel of an old land at the foot of the close, there is a shield of arms, now partly defaced, and this variation of the common m o t t o : - P ~ u ~.~ T~HE . LORD. FOR . AL . HIS . GIFTIS . M . S. With which pious ascription we bid adieu for a time to Old Edinburgh, properly EO called, and pass into the ancient Royal Burgh of Canongate. l Thii, we presume, was Sir James Stanfield of Newmills, or Amesfield, whose death took place in 1688, under circumstance8 of peculiar mystery. He was found drowned, and suspicion being excited by a bvty funeral, and the fact, as waa alleged, that his wife had the grave clothea all ready for him before his death, the Privy Council appointed two surgeona to examine the body, who reported that the corpse bled on being touched by his eldest SO& Philip. .His servants were apprehended and put to the torture, without eliciting any further proof, and yet, on very vague circumstantial evidence, added to the miraculous testimony of the murdered man, thp son-a notorious pmfligatewas condemned to death, and hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh. His tongue waa cut out foe curaing his father, his right hand struck off for parricide, his head exposed on the east port of Haddington, as nearest the scene of the murder, and his body hung in chains on the Callow-lee, between Edinburgh and Leith. He died denying his guilt, and Fountainhall adds, afkr recording sundry miraculous evidences against him: “Thk is a dark case of divination, to be remitted to the great day; only it ia certain he was a bad youth, and may serve as a beacon to all profigate persona” ... HIGH STREET AND NETHER BOW. 275 withstanding the elucidation of it referred to above, the question remains ...

Book 10  p. 299
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L UCKENBOOTHS AND PARLIAMENT CLOSE. 187 western portion of the Tolbooth, the ruinous state of which at length led to the royal command for its demolition in 1561,-not a century after the date we are disposed to assign to the oldest portion of the building that remained till 1817,-and which, though decayed and time-worn, was so far from being ruinous even then, that it proved a work of great labour to demolish its solid masonry. In a charter granted to the town by James 111. in 1477, the market for corn and grain is ordered to be held (‘ fra, the Tolbuth up to Libertones Wynde,”l and we learn from the Diurnal of Occurrents, that the tour of the Auld Tolbuyth wes tane doun in 1571.”9 The first allusion indicates the same site for the Tolbooth at that early period, as it occupied to the last, and seems to codkm the idea suggested as to the earlier fabric. The name TolJooth literally signifies tax-house,8 and the existence of a building in Edinburgh, erected for this purpose, might be referred, with every probability, to even an earlier period than the reign of David I., who bestowed considerable grants on his monastery of the Holy Cross, derivable from the revenues of the town.‘ From the anxiety of the magistrates to retain the rents of 1 heir ‘‘ laigh buthis ” in this ancient building, another site was chosen in 1561 for the New Tolbooth, a little to the south of the old one ; and some ten years later, as appears from the old diarist, the tower was at length demolished, and also probably the whole of the most ancient edifice. One of the carved stones from the modern portion of the building,-apparently the centre crow-step that crowned the gable,-was preserved, among other relics of similar character, in the nursery of Messrs Eagle and Henderson, Leith Walk. It bore on it the city arms, sculptured in high relief, and surmounted by an ornamental device with the date 1641. The style of the new building, though plain and of rude workmanship, entirely corresponded with this date, being that which prevailed towards the close of Charles L’s reign. The unsettled state of the country at that period, and the heavy exactions to which Edinburgh had been exposed, both by the King and the covenanting leaders, abundantly account for the plain character of the latter building. The only ornaments on the north side consisted of two dormer windows, rising above the roof, with plain string-courses marking the several stories. The ornamental north gable of the most ancient portion of the building, appears to have been the place of exposure for the heads and dismembered limbs of the numerous victims of the sanguinary laws of Scotland in early times. In the year 1581, the head of the Earl of Morton “was sett upon a prick, on the highest stone of the gavel1 of the Tolbuith, toward the publict street,” and the same point,-after doing the like ignominious service to many of inferior note,-received, in 1650, the head of the gallant Marquis of Montrose, which remained exposed there throughout the whole period of the Commonwealth, and was taken down at length, shortly after the Restoration, with every demonstra- Yaitlaud, p. 8. * Diurnal of Occurrenta, p. 252. ’ ‘* Mr Cfeorge Ramsay, minister at Laswaid, teaching in Edinburgh [1593], charged the Lords of the Colledge of Justice with selling of jutice. He said they sold in the Tolbuith, and tooke payment at home, in their chambers : that the place of their judgement was justlie called Tool-buith, becaue there they tooke toll of the subjecta.”-Calderwood’s Hist. vol. v. p. 290. It is perhaps worthy of notice in regard to thia subject, that the site of the Weigh-house, which, like the Tolbooth, eucroached on the main street, “ was granted to the Edinburghers by King David II., in the 23d year of his reign, anno For this he was summoned before the judges, but was dismissed, after Borne contention. 1352.”-Yaitland, p. 181. ... UCKENBOOTHS AND PARLIAMENT CLOSE. 187 western portion of the Tolbooth, the ruinous state of which at length led ...

Book 10  p. 205
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208 OLD AND ?NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street. there was born in 1741 his son, the celebrated statesman, Henry Viscount Melville. There long abode, on the first floor of the ? Bishop?s Land,? a fine old Scottish gentleman, ?? one of the olden time,? Sir Stuart Thriepland, of Fingask Castle, Bart., whose father had been attainted after the battle of Sheriffmuir, which, however, did not prevent Sir Stuart from duly taking his full share in the ?45. His wanderings over, and the persecutions past, he took up his residence here, and had his house well hung, we are told, with well-painted portraits of royal per- He died 1 sonages-but not cf the reipinn house. One of the most famous edifices on the north side of the High Street was known as ? the Bishop?s Land,? so called from having been the town residence of John Spottiswood, Archbishop of St. Andrews in 1615, and son of John Spottiswood, Superintendent of Lothian, a reformed divine, who prayed over James VI., and blessed him when an infant in his cradle, in the Castle of Edinburgh. From him the Archbishop inherited the house, which bore the legend and date, BLISSIT .BE .YE. LORD. FOR.ALL. HIS. GIFTIS. 1578. consequently it must have been built when the Superintendent (whose father fell at Flodden) was in his sixty-eighth year, and was an edifice sufficiently commodious and magnificent to serve as a town residence of the Primate of Scotland, who in his zeal to promote the designs of James VI. for the establishment of Episcopacy, performed the then astounding task of no less than fifty journeys to London. The ground floor of the mansion, like many others of the same age in the same street, was formed of a deeply-arched piazza, the arches of whichsprang from massive stone piers. From the first floor there projected ~. ALLAN RAMSAY. (From the Portrait in ihe 1761 Edition e/ has ?Poems.?) a fine brass balcony, that must many a time and oft have been hung with gay garlands and tapestry, and crowded with the fair and noble to witness the state pageants of old, such as the great procession of Charles I. to Holyrood, where he was crowned by the archbishop King of Scotland in 1633. From this house Spottiswood was obliged to fly, when the nation en mnsse resisted, with peremptory promptitude, the introduction of the Liturgy. He took refuge in London, where he died in 1639, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. In 1752 the celebrated Lady Jane Douglas, wife of Sir George Stuart of Grantully, and the heroine of the famous ? Douglas cause,? was an occupant of ?? the Bishop?s Land,? till she ceased to be able to afford a residence even there. Therein, tDo, resided the first Lord President Dundas, and - - in 1805, and the forfeited honours were generously restored by George IV. in 1826 to his son, Sir Patrick M. Thriepland of Fingask, which had long before been purchased back by the money of his mother, Janet Sinclair of Southdun. On the third floor, above him, dwelt the Hamiltons of Pencaitland, and the baronial Aytouns of Inchdairnie. hlrs. Aytoun was Isabel, daughter of Kobert, fourth Lord Rollo, ? and would sometimes come down the stair,? says Robert Chambers, ? lighting herself with a little waxen taper, to drink tea with Mrs. Janet Thriepland (Sir Patrick?s sister)-for so she called herself, though unmarried. In the uppermost floor of all lived a reputable tailor and his family. All the various tenants, including the tailor, were on friendly terms with ? each other-a pleasant. thing to tell of this bit of the old world, which has left nothing of the same kind behind it in these days, when we all live at il greater distance, physical and moral, from each other.? This fine old tenement, which. was one of the most aristocratic in the street till a comparatively recent period, was totally destroyed by fire in 1814. Eastward of it stood the town-house of the Hendersons of Fordel (an old patrician Fifeshire family), with whom Queen Mary was once a visitor; but it, too, has passed away, and an ... OLD AND ?NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street. there was born in 1741 his son, the celebrated statesman, Henry ...

Book 2  p. 208
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288 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH. deemed it prudent to renounce the orders that had been tarnished by a composition 60 unwonted and unclerical. The more recent history of the Edinburgh stage is characterised by no incidents of very special note, until the year 1768, when it followed the tide of fashionable emigration to the New Town, and the Theatre Royal was built in the Orphan’s Park,’ which had previously been the scene of Whitfield’a labours during his itinerant visits to Edinburgh. The eloquent preacher is said to have expressed his indignation in no measured terms when he found the very spot which had been so often consecrated by his ministrations thus being set apart to the very service of the devil. The front land in the Canongate through which the archway leads into the Play-house Close is an exceedingly fine specimen of the style of building prevalent in the reign of Charles I. The dormer windows in the roof exhibit a pleasing variety of ornament, and a row of storm windows above them gives a singular, and, indeed, foreign air to the building, corresponding in style to the steep and picturesque roofs that abound in Strasbourg and Mayence. A Latin inscription on an ornamental tablet, over the doorway within the close, is now so much defaced that only a word or two can be deciphered. The building where Ryan, Digges, Bellamy, Lancashire, and a host of nameless actors figured on the stage, to the admiring gaze of fashionable audiences of lad century, has long since been displaced by private erections. Nearly fronting the entrance to this close, a radiated arrangement of the paving indicates the site of St John’s Cross, the ancient eastern boundary of the capital. It still marks the limit of its ecclesiastical bounds on the south side of the street, and here, till a comparatively recent period, all extraordinary proclamations were announced by the Lion Heralds, with sound of trumpets, and the magistrates and public bodies of the Burgh of Canongate joined such processions as passed through their ancient jurisdiction in their progress to the Abbey. A little further eastward is St John’s Close, an ancient alley, bearing over an old doorway within it, the inscription in bold Roman characters :-THE . LORD . IS . ONLY. MY. ~VPORT. Immediately adjoining this is St John Street, a broad and handsome thoroughfare, forming the boldest scheme of civic improvement effected in Edinburgh before the completion of the North Bridge, and the rival works on the south side of the town. This aristocratic quarter of last century was in progress in 1768, as appears from the date cut over a back doorway of the centre house j and soon afterwards the names of the old Scottish aristocracy that still resided in the capital-Earls, Lords, Baronets, and Lords of Session-are found among its chief occupants. Here, in No. 13, was the residence of Lord Monboddo, and the lovely Miss .Burnet, whose early death is so touchingly commemorated by the Poet Burns, a frequent guest at St John Street during his residence in the capital; and within a few daors of it, at No 10, resided James Ballantyne, the partner and confidant of Sir Walter Scott in the literary adventures of the Great Unknown. Here was the scene of those assemblies of select and favoured guests to whom the hospit- ’ So called from ita vicinity to the Orphan’s Hospital, a benevolent institution which obtained the high commendations of Howard and the aid of Whitfield during the repeated visits made by both to Edinburgh. A very characteristic portrait of the latter is now in the hall of the new Hospital erected at the Dean. The venerable clock of the Nether Bow Port has also been transferred from the steeple of the old building to an elegant site over the pediment of the new portico, where, notwithstanding such external symptoms of renewing ita youth, it still asserts ita claim to the privileges and immunitiea of age by frequent aberrations of a very eccentric character. ... MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH. deemed it prudent to renounce the orders that had been tarnished by a composition ...

Book 10  p. 312
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238 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH. The entry money to the Club, which was originally half-a-crown, gradually rose to a guinea, and it seems to have latterly assumed a very aristocratic character. A great regard for economy, however, remained with it to the last. On the 10th of June 1776 it is resolved, that they shall at no time take bad half-pence from the house, and also recommend it to the house to take none from them I ” and one of the last items entered on their minutes, arises from an intimation of the landlord that he could not afford them suppers under sixpence each, when it is magnanimously determined by the Club in full conclave, I‘ that the suppers shall be at the old price of four-pence half-penny I ” Sir Cape, the comedian, appears to have eked out the scanty rewards of the drama, by himself maintaining a tavern at the head of the Canongate, which was for some time patronised by the Knights of the Cape. They afterwards paid him occasional visits to Comedy Hut, New Edinburgh, a house which he opened beyond the precincts of the North Loch about the year 1770, and there they held their ninth Grand Cape, as their great festival was styled, on the 9th of June of that year.’ This sketch of one of the most famous convivial clubs of last century will suffice to give some idea of the revels in which grave councillors and senators were wont to engage, when each slipt off his professional formality along with his three-tailed wig and black coat, and bent his energies to the task of such merry fooling, while his example was faithfully copied by clerk and citizen of every degree. “ Such, 0 Themis, were anciently the sports of thy Scottish children! ” The same hanut of revelry and wit witnessed in the year 1785 the once celebrated charlatan, Dr Katterfelto, immortalised by Cowper in “ The Task,” among the quackeries of old London,- With his hair on end, At hia own wonders wondering for his bread ! His advertisement a sets forth his full array of titles, as Professor of Experimental Philosophy, Lecturer on Electricity, Chemistry, and Sleight of Hand, &c., and announces to his Patrons and the Public, that the Music begins at six and the Lecture at seveu o’clock, at Craig’s Close, High Street. Another of the old lanes of the High Street, which has been an object of special note to the local antiquary is Anchor Close. Its fame is derived, in part, at least, from the famouR corps of Crochallan Fencibles, celebrated by Burns both in prose and verse-a convivial club, whose festive meetings were held in Daniel Douglas’s tavern at the head of the alley. Burns was introduced to this club in 1787, while in Edinburgh superintending the printing of his poems, when, according to custom, one of the corps was pitted against the poet in a contest of wit and irony. Burns bore the assault with perfect good humour, and entered into the full spirit of th’e meeting, but he afterwards paid his antagonist the compliment of acknowledging that ‘‘ he had never been so abominably thrashed in all his life I ” The name of this gallant corps, which has been the subject of learned conjecture, is the burden of a Gaelic song with which the landlord occasionally entertained his guests.a The Club was founded by Mr William Smellie, Author of the Philosophy of Natural History, and numbered among its members the Honourable Henry Erskine, Lords Newton 1 Provincial Cape Cluba, deriving their authority and diplomss from the parent body, were auccessively formed in Glasgow, Manchester, and London, and in Charlestown, South Carolina, each of which was formally established in virtue of a royal mmmisaion granted by the Sovereign of the Cape. The American off-ahoot of this old Edinburgh frat’er Cnaitleyr loisn ascaMidI Mto ebme ust~ilyl J,f alonuurairsyh in2g4 tihn, t1h7e8 S8.o uthern States. Kerr’a Life of William Smellie, vol. ii. p. 256. ... MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH. The entry money to the Club, which was originally half-a-crown, gradually rose to a ...

Book 10  p. 259
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156 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH, which appears prominently in our view of the Castle Hill, with the inscription LAVS DEO, and the date 1591, curiously wrought in antique iron letters on its front. The most ancient portions of the interior that remain seem quite as early in character as those we have been describing ; and indeed the back part of it, extending into the dose, has apparently been built along with the mansion of the Queen Regent. The earliest titles of this building now existing are two contracts of alienation, bearing date 1590, by which the upper and under portions of the land are severally disposed of to Robert M‘Naught and James Rynd, merchant burgesses. The building, in all probability, at that period was a timberfronted land, similar to those adjoining it, which were taken down in 1845. Immediately thereafter, as appears from the date of the building, the handsome polished ashlar front, which still remains, had been erected at their joint expense. In confirmatiou of this there is sculptured, under the lowest crow-step at the west side of the building, a shield bearing . an open hand, in token of amity, as we presume, with the initials of both proprietors.’ In an apartment on the second floor of this house, an arched ceiling was accidentally discovered some years since, decorated with a series of sacred paintings on wood, of a very curious and interesting character, A large circular compartment in the centre contsins the figure of our Saviour, with a radiauce round His head, and His left hand resting on a royal orb. Within the encircling border are these words, in gilded Roman letters, on a rich blue ground, Ego sum via, veritas, et vita, 14 Johne. The paintings in the larger compartments represent Jacob’s Dream, Christ asleep in the storm, the Baptism of Christ, and the Vision of Death from the Apocalypse, surmounted by the symbols of the Evangelists. The distant landscape of the Lake of Galilee in the second picture presents an amusing, though by no means unusual liberty, taken by the artist with his subject. It consists of a view of Edinburgh from the north, terminating with Salisbury Crags on the left and the old Castle on the right! This pictorial license affords a clue as to the probable period of the work, which, as far as it can be trusted, indicates a later period than the Regency of Mary of Guise. The steeples of the Nether Bow Port and the old Weighhouse are introduced-the first of which was erected in the year 1606, and the latter taken down in 1660. The fifth picture, and the most curious of all, exhibits an allegorical representation, as we conceive, of the Christian life. A ship, of antique form, is seen in full sail, and bearing on its pennon and stern the common symbol, IHS. A crowned figure stands on the deck, looking towards a burning city in the distance, and above him the word VB. On the mainsail is inscribed Curitus, and over the stern, which is in the fashion of an ancient galley, [Salpiencia. Death appears as a skeleton, riding on a dark horse, amid the waves immediately in front of the vessel, armed with a bow and arrow, which he is pointing at the figure in the ship, while a figure, similarly armed, and mounted on a huge dragon, follows in it.s wake, entitled Persecutio, and above it a winged demon, over whom is the word Diaboolus. In the midst of these perils there is seen in the sky a radiance surroundiig the Hebrew word i71iV, and from this symbol of the Deity a hand issues, taking hold of a line attached to the stern of the vessel. The whole series is executed with, great spirit, though now much injured by damp and decay. The broad borders between them are richly decorated with every variety of flowers, fruit, harpies, birds, and fancy 1 This is oue undoubted example of the date on a building being put on at a considerably later period than its erection, an Occurrence which we have fouud reason to auapect in various other instancea. ... MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH, which appears prominently in our view of the Castle Hill, with the inscription ...

Book 10  p. 169
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ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES. 389 Remedy, and others, with the royal master printer. Only one month thereafter, Scotland lay at the mercy of her southern rival. Her King was slain; the chief of her nobles and warriors had perished on Flodden Field ; and adversity and ignorance again replaced all the advantages that had followed in the train of the gallant James’s rule. Thenceforth the altars of St Giles’s Church received few and rare additions to their endowments. There is good reason for believing that Walter Chepman lies buried in the south transept of the Church, close by the spot where “the Good Regent,” James Earl of Murray, the Regent Morton, and his great rival the Earl of Atholl, are buried, and adjoining the aisle where the mangled remains of the great Marquis of Montrose were reinterred, with every mark of honour, on the 7th of January 1661. This receives strong corroboration from an agreement entered in the Burgh Registers, 30th June 1579, by which the Council ‘‘ grants and permits that upon the west part of Walter Chepmanis Iyle, fernent the Earl of Murrayis tomb, sal be broken, and thair ane burial-place be maid for the Earl of Athole.” The Regent’s tomb, which stood on the west side of the south transept, was on many accounts an object of peculiar interest. As the monument erected to one who had played so conspicuous a part in one of the most momentous periods of our national history, it was calculated to awaken many stirring associations. The scene which occurred when the Regent’s remains were committed to the tomb was itself not the least interesting among the memorable occurrences that have been witnessed in the ancient Church of St Giles, when the thousands who had assembled within its walls were moved to tears by the eloquence of Knox. “Vpoun the xiiij day of the moneth [of Februar, 15701, being Tyisdaye,” says a contemporary, “ my lord Regentis corpis being brocht in ane bote be sey fra Striueling to Leith, quhair it was keipit in Johne Wairdlaw his hous, and thairefter caryit to the palace of Halyrudhous, wes transportit fra the said palace of Halyrudhous to the college kirk of Sanctgeill in this manner ; that is to say, William Kirkaldie of Grange knycht, raid fia the said palice in dole weid, beirand ane pensall quhairin wes contenit ane reid lyoun ; efter him followit Coluill of Cleishe, maister houshald to the said regent, with ane vther pensell quhairin wes contenit my lord regentis armes and bage ; efter thame wes the Erlis of Athole, Mar, Glencarne, lordis of Ruthvene, Methvene, maister of Grahame, lord Lindsay, with diuerse vtheris barronis, beirand the saidis corpis to the said college kirk of Sanctgeill, quhairin the samyne wes placeit befoir the pulpett; and thairefter Johne Knox minister made ane lamentable sermond tuitching the said murther ; the samin being done, the said corpis wes burijt in Sanct Anthoneis ple within the said college kirk.”’ The Regent’s tomb was surmounted with his arms, and bore on the front of it a brass plate with the figures of Justice and Faith engraved thereon, and the epitaph composed by Buchanan a for the purpose :- IACOBO STOVARTO, MORAVIX COMITI, SCOTIAJ PROREGI ; VIRO, BTATIS SVB, LONGE OPTIMO: AB DSIMICIS, OWVIS XEYORIH: DETERRIMIS, EX INSIDIIS EXTINCTO, CEV PATRI COMNVNI, PATRIA MCERENS POSVIT. 1 Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 168. Calderwood’s Ekt, voL ii p. 626. ... ANTIQUITIES. 389 Remedy, and others, with the royal master printer. Only one month thereafter, ...

Book 10  p. 427
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I22 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH. well's time, and, to all appearance, coeval with the battery, but its commanding .position and extensive view are not unlikely to have arrested his notice. Considerable portions of the western fortifications, the parapet wall, and port holes of the half-moon battery, and the ornamental coping and embrazures of the north and east batteries, as well as the house now occupied by the barrack sergeant, are of a much later date. The building last mentioned, situated immediately to the north of the grand parade, bears a close resemblance in its general style to the Darien House, erected in 1698, and the whole may, with every probability, be referred to nearly the same period, towards the close of William III.'s reign. Very considerable alterations have been made from time to time on the approach to the fortress from the town. The present broad esplanade was formed chiefly with the rubbish removed from the site of the Royal Exchange, the foundation of which was laid in 1753. In the very accurate view of the Castle furnished by Maitland, from a drawing by T. Sandby, which represents it previous to this date, there is only a narrow roadway, evidently of artificial construction, raised nearly to the present level, which may probably have been made on the destruction of the Spur, an ancient battery that occupied a considerable part of the Castle Hill, until it was demolished by order of the Estates of Parliament, August 2, 1649.l The previous elevation of the ground had evidently been no higher than the bottom of the present dry ditch. The curious bird's-eye view of the Castle, taken in 1573 (a fa-simile of which is given in the 2nd volume of the Bannatyne Miscellany), and all the earlier maps of Edinburgh, represent the Castle as rising abruptly on the east side, and in that of 1575, from which we have copied a view of the Castle,' the entrance appears to be by a long flight of steps. It may perhaps be considered as a confirmation of this, that: in the representations of the fortress, as borne in the arms of the burgh, a similar mode of approach is generally shown.' . Immediately within the drawbridge, there formerly stood an ancient and highly ornamental gateway, near the barrier guard-room. It was adorned with pilasters, and very rich mouldings carried over the arch, and surmounted with a remarkably curious piece of sculpture, in basso relievo, set in an oblong panel, containing a representation of the famous cannon, Mons Meg, with groups of ancient artillery and military weapons. This fine old port was only demolished in the beginning of the present century, owing to its being found too narrow to give admission to modern carriages and waggons, when the preseut plain and inelegant gateway was erected on its site. Part of the curious carving alluded to has since been placed over the entrance to the Ordnance Office in the Castle, and the remaining portion is now preserved in the Antiquarian Museum.' Immediately to the west of this, another ancient ornamented gateway still exists. Bannatyne Misc., vul. ii. p. 398. dnte, p. 8. ' In the survey of the Caatle, taken for Sir William Drury in 1572, the following detlcription occurs :-" On the fore parte eatwarde, next the towne, standa like iiij= foote of the hanle, and next unto the same stands Davyes Towre, and from it a courten, with vj cannons, in loopea of atone, lookingein the atreatwarde ; and behynd thesamestandes another teare of ordinance, lyke xvj foote clym above the other ; and at the northe ende standa the Couatablea Towre; and in the bottom of the 8am0, is the way into the Caatle, with XI" steppes." The number of the atepps is in another hand, the YS. being partially injured.-Bann. Misc., vol. L p. 69. They were preserved, and placed in their present situations through the good taate of R. M'Kerlie+ Esq., of the Ordnance Office, to whose recollections of the old gateway, when an officer in tbe garrison in 1800, we are mainly indebted for the ahove description. + Vide pp. 1 and 6, for views of these stones. ... MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH. well's time, and, to all appearance, coeval with the battery, but its commanding ...

Book 10  p. 133
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Kolyrood.] THE COFFIN OF JAMES V. 65 Appended to this scroll was a minute of thei possessions, with a hint of the pecuniary advantager to result from forfeiture. This dangerous policy James repelled by exclaiming, ?? Pack you, javels ! (knaves). Get you to your religious charges ; reform your lives, and be not instruments of discord between me and my nobles, or else I shall reform you, not as the King of Denmark does, by im prisonment, nor yet as the King of England does by hanging and heading, but by sharp swords, if I hear of such hotion of you again ! ? From this speech it has been suppqsed that Jxnes contemplated some reform in the then dissolute Church. But the rout at Solway followed; his heart was broken, and on learning the birth of his daughter Mary, he died in despair at Falkland, yet, says Pitscottie, holding up his hands to God, as he yielded his spirit. He was interred in the royal vault, in December, 1542, at Holyrood, where, according to a MS. in the Advocates? Library, his body was seen by the Earl of Forfar, the Lord Strathnaver, and others, who examined that vault in 1683. ?We viewed the body of James V. It lyeth within ane wodden coffin, and is coverit with ane lead coffin. There seemed to be hair upon the head still. The body was two lengths of my staff with twa inches more, which is twae inches and more above twae Scots elms, for I measured the staff with an ellwand afterward. The body was coloured black with ye balsam that preserved it, and which was lyke melted pitch. The Earl of Forfar took the measure with his staf lykewayes? On the coffin was the inscription, flhstris Scoturum, Rex Jacobus, gus Nominis E, with the dates of his age and death. The first regent after that event was James, second Earl of Arran (afterwards Duke of Chatelherault, who had been godfather to James, the little Duke of Rothesay, next heir to the crown, failing the issue of the infant Queen Mary), and in 1545 this high official was solemnly invested at Holyrood, together with the Earls of Angus, Huntly, and Argyle, with the collar and robes of St. Michael, sent by the King of France, and at the hands of the Lyon King of Arms. We have related how the Church suffered at the hands of English pillagers after Pinkie, in 1547. The Palace did not escape. Seacombe, in his ?? History of the House of Stanley,? mentions that Norns, of Speke Hall, Lancashire, an English commander at that battle, plundered from Holyrood all or most of the princely library of the deceased King of Scots, James V., ?particularly four large folios, said to contain the Records and Laws of Scotland at that time.? He also describes a grand piece of wainscot, now in Speke Hall, as having been brought from the palace, but this is considered, from its style, doubtful. During the turmoils and troubles that ensued after Mary of Guise assumed the regency, her proposal, on the suggestion of the French Court, to form a Scottish standing army like that of France, so exasperated the nobles and barons, that three hundred of them assembled at Holyrood in 1555, and after denouncing the measure in strong terms, deputed the Laird of Wemyss and Sir James Sandilands of Calder to remonstrate with her on the unconstitutional step she was meditating, urging that Scotland had never wanted brave defenders to fight her battles in time of peril, and that they would never submit to this innovation on their ancient customsc This spirited remonstrance from Holyrood had the desired effect, as the regent abandoned her pro-- ject. She came, after an absence, to the palace in the November of the following year, when the magistrates presented her with a quantity of new wine, and dismissed McCalzean, an assessor of the city, who spoke to her insultingly in the palace on the affairs of Edinburgh; and in the following February she received and entertained the ambassador of the Duke of Muscovy, who had been shipwrecked on his way to England, whither she sent him, escorted by 500 lances, under the Lord Home. After the death of Mary of Guise and the arrival of her daughter to assume the crown of her ancestors, the most stirring scenes in the history of the palace pass in review. ... THE COFFIN OF JAMES V. 65 Appended to this scroll was a minute of thei possessions, with a hint of the ...

Book 3  p. 65
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246 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street. OF the house of Provost Nicol Edward (or Udward, to which we have referred) a very elaborate description is given in the work entitled ? Minor Alexander Clark?s house, at the same wynd head.? In after years the lintel of this house was built in to Ross?s Tower, at the Dean. It bore this legend :- ?THE LORD IS MY PROTECTOR, ALEXANDRUS CLARK.? Nicol Edward was Provost of Edinburgh in 1591, and his house was a large and substantial building of quadrangular form and elegant proportions. The Chancellor at this time was Sir John Maitland of Lethington, Lord Thirlestane. Moyses next tells us that on the 7th of February, George Earl of Huntly (the same fiery peer who fought the battle of Glenlivat), ? with his friends, to the number of five or six score horse, passed from his Majesty?s said house in Edinburgh, as intending to pass to a horse-race in Leith ; but after they came, they passed forward to the Queensferry, where they caused to stop the passing of all boats over the water,? and &ossing to Fife, attacked the Castle of Donnibristle, and slew ?? the bonnie Earl of Murray.? From this passage it would seem that if Huntly?s six score horse were not lodged in Nicol Edward?s house, they were probably billeted over all the adjacent wynd, which six years after was the scene of a homicide, that affords a remarkable illustration of the exclusive rule of master over man which then prevailed. On the first day of the sitting of Parliament, the 7th December, 1597, Archibald Jardine, niasterstabler and servitor to the Earl of Angus, was slain, through some negligence, by Andrew Stalker, a ,goldsmith at Niddry?s Wynd head, for which he was put in prison. Then the cry of ??Armour !? went through the streets, and all the young men of Edinburgh rose in arms, under James Williamson, their captain, ?? and desirit grace,? as Birrel records, ?for the young man who had done ane reckless deed. The King?s majesty desirit them to go to my Lord of Angus, the man?s master, and satisfy and carved his arms, with an anagram upon his name thus :- ?* VA @UN VOL h CHRIST ?- pacify his wrath, and he should be contentit to save his life.? James Williamson thereupon went to the Earl of Angus, and offered, in the name of the young men of the city, ? their manreid,? or bond of man-rent, to be ready to serve him in war and feud, upon which he pardoned the said Andrew Stalker, who was immediately released from prison. In December, 1665, Nicoll mentions that a doctor of physic named Joanna Baptista, acting under a warrant from his Majesty Charles II., erected a stage between the head of Niddry?s Wynd and Blackfriars? Wynd, whereon ?he vended his drugs, powder, and medicaments, for the whilk he received a great abundance of money.? In May, 1692, we read that William Livingstone, brother of the Viscount Kilsyth, a cavalier, and husband of the widow of Viscount Dundee, had been a prisoner in the Tolbooth from June, 1689, to November, 1690-seventeen months ; thereafter, that he had lived in a chamber in the city under a guard for a year, and that he was permitted to go forth for a walk daily, but still under the eye of a guard. In consequence of his being thus treated, and his rents being sequestrated by the Revolutionary Government, his fortune was entirely ruined. On his petition, the Privy Council now permitted him ? to go abroad under a sentinel each day.from morning to evening furth of the house of Andrew Smith, periwig-maker, at the head of Niddry?s Wynd,? he finding caution under A;1,500 sterling to remain a prisoner. Under an escort of dragoons he was permitted to leave the periwig-maker?s, and visit Kilsyth, after which he was confined in two royal castles and the Tolbooth till 1693, ?so that, as a writer remarks, ?in the course of the first five years of British liberty, Mr. Livingstone must have acquired a tolerably extensive acquaintance with the various forms and modes of imprisonment, so far as these existed in the northern section of the island.? ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street. OF the house of Provost Nicol Edward (or Udward, to which we have ...

Book 2  p. 246
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KING’S STABLES, CASTLE BARNS, AND CASTLE HILL. ‘39 of carved wood work, exhibiting traces of gilding. An explosion of gunpowder, which took place in the lower part of the house in 1811, attended with loss of life, entirely destroyed the ancient fireplace, which was of a remarkably beautiful Gothic design. Notwithstanding the comparatively modern decorations, the house s till retains unequivocal remains of a much earlier period. The sculptured doorway in Blair’s Close, already alluded to, forming the original main entrance to the whole building, is specially worthy of notice, and would of itself justify us in assigning its erection to the earlier part of the sixteenth century. It very nearly corresponds with one still remaining on the west side of Blackfriar’s Wynd, the entrance to the turnpike stair of an ancient mansion, which appears, from the title-deeds of a neighbouring property, to have been the residence of the Earl of Morton. In the latter example, the heraldic supporters, though equally rudely sculptured, present somewhat more distinctly the same features as in the other, and both are clearly intended for unicorns.’ The south front of the building is finished with a parapet, adorned with gurgoils in the shape of cannons, and on the first floor * (in Blair’s Close) there is still remainins an ancient fireplace of huge old-fashioned dimensions. The jambs are neatly carved Gothic pillars, simiiar in design to several that formerly existed in the Guise Palace, Blyth’s Close ; and the whole is now enclosed, and forms a roomy coal-cellar, after having been used as a bedcloset by the previous tenant in these degenerate days. As late as 1783, this part of the old mansion was the residence of John Grieve, Esq., then Lord Provost of Edinburgh. This house has apparently been one of special note in early times from its substantial magnificence. It is described in one of the deeds as ;; that tenement or dwelling-house called the Solate House of old, of the deceased Patrick Edgar,” a definiiion repeated in several others, evidently to distinguish it from its humble thatched nei&%ours, ‘; lying on the south iide of the High Street of Edinburgh, near the Castle wal1,between the lands of the deceased Mr A. Syme, advocate, on the east, the close of the said Patrick Edgar on the west,” &c. It is alluded to in the Diurnal of Occurrents, 7th September 1570, where the escape of Robert Hepburn, younger of Wauchtoun, from the Earl of Morton’s adherents, is described It is added-‘; He came to the Castell of Edinburgh, quhairin he was ressauit with great difficultie ; for when he was passand in at the said Castell zett, his adversaries were at Patrik Edgar his hous end.” This mansion was latterly possessed, as we have seen, by the Newbyth family, by whom it was held for several generations ; and here it was that the gallant Sir David Baird was born and brought up.‘ It is said also to hare been F 1 The adoption of the royal supportera may possibly have been an assumption of the Regent’s, in virtue of his exercise of the functions of royalty. In which case, the building on the Castle Hill might be presumed alm to be his, and deserted by him from ita dangerous proximity to the Castle, when held by his rivals. This, however, is mere conjecture. A note in the Diurnal of Occurrents, 20th Nov. 1572, states-“ In this menetyme, James Earle of Mortouo, regent, lay deidlie seik j his Grace waa lugeit in Williame Craikia lugeing on the sout\ syid of the trone, in Edinburgh.” a To prevent misconception in the description of buildings, we may state that, throughout the Work, the floors of buildings are to be understood thus :-Sunk, or area floor, ground floor, 6rat floor, second floor, bcc., reckoning from below. ’ Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 186. ’ On Sir David Baird’s return from the Spanish Campaign, he visited his birth-place, and examined with great interest the acenes where he had passed his boyhoodi Chambem haa furnished a lively account of this in hm Traditions, vol. i. p. 155. ... STABLES, CASTLE BARNS, AND CASTLE HILL. ‘39 of carved wood work, exhibiting traces of gilding. An ...

Book 10  p. 150
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THE HIGH STREET. 229 Advocate’s Close, which bounds the ancient tenement we have been describing on the east, derives its name from Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees,’ who returned from exile on the landing of the Prince of Orange, and took an active part in the Revolution. He was an object of extreme dislike to the Jacobite party, who vented their spleen against him in their bitterest lampoons, some of which are preserved in the Scottish Pasquils; and to them he was indebted for the sobriquet of Jamie Wylie. Sir James filled the oEce of Lord Advocate from 1692 until his death in 1713, one year excepted, and had a prominent share in all the public transactions of that important period. Being go long in the enjoyment of his official title, the close in which he resided received the name of “ the Advocate’s Close.” The house in which he lived and died is at the foot of the Close, on the west side, immediately before descending a flight of steps that somewhat lessen the abruptness of the steep descent.” In 1769, Sir James Stewart, grandson of the Lord Advocate, sold the house to David Dalrymple of Westhall, Esq., who, when afterwards raised to the Bench, assumed the title of Lord Westhall, and continued to reside in this old mansion till his death.3 This ancient alley retains, nearly unaltered, the same picturesque overhanging gables and timber projections which have, without doubt, characterised it for centuries, and may be taken as a very good sample of a fashionable close in the paluy days of Queen Anne. It continued till a comparatively recent period to be a favourite locality for gentlemen of the law, and has been pointed out to us, by an old citizen, as the early residence of Andrew Crosbie, the celebrated original of ‘‘ Councillor Pleydell,” who forms so prominent a character among the dramatis person@ of The same house already mentioned as that of Sir James Stewart, would answer in most points to the description of the novelist, entering as it does, from a dark and steep alley, and commanding a magnificent prospect towards the north, though now partially obstructed by the buildings of the New Town. It is no mean praise to the old lawyer that he was almost the only one who had the courage to stand his ground against Dr Johnson, during his visit to Edinburgh. Mr Crosbie afterwards removed to the splendid mansion erected by him in St Andrew Square, ornamented with engaged pillars and a highly decorated attic story, which stands to the north of the Royal Bank ; ‘ but he was involved, with many others, in the failure of the Ayr Bank, and died in such poverty, in 1785, that his widow owed her Bole support to an annuity of 350 granted by the Faculty of Advocates. The lowest house on the east side, directly opposite to that of the Lord Advocate, was the residence of an artist of some note in the seventeenth century. It has been pointed out to as by an old citizen recently dead ’ as the house of his (‘ grandmother’s grandfather,” the celebrated John Scougal,‘ painter of the portrait of George Heriot which now hangs in Guy Mannering.” 1 Now called “Moredun” in the parish of Lihberton. The house was built by Sir James SOOU after the Revolution. Sir James Stewart, Provost of Edinburgh in 1648-9, when Cromwell paid his first visit to Edinburgh, and again in 1658-9, at the close of the Protectorate,-purchased the ancient tenement which occupied this site, and after the Revolution, his son, the Lord Advocate, rebuilt it, and died there in 1713, when, “so great was the crowd,” 88 Wodrow tells in his Analecta, “that the magistrates were at the grave in the Greyfriam’ Churchyard before the corpse waa taken out of the house at the foot of the Advocate’a Close.”-Coltnew Collectiona, Maitlaud Club, p. 17. a The house appears from the titles to have been sold by Lord Westhall, in 1784, within a few weeks of hia death. ‘ Now occupied aa Douglas’s Hotel. a John Scougal, younger of that name, was a cousin of Patrick Scougal, consecrated Bishop of Aberdeen in 1664. He added the upper story to the old land in Advccate’e Cloae, and fitted up one of the floors as a picture gallery; iome Mr Andrew Greig, carpet manufacturer. ... HIGH STREET. 229 Advocate’s Close, which bounds the ancient tenement we have been describing on the east, ...

Book 10  p. 249
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Pleasance. ST. LEONARD?S CHAPEL. 383 entirely to act as barbers. In consequence, the council, on the 26th July, 1682, recommended the new corporation to supply the city with a sufficient number of persons qualified ?to shave and cut hair,? and who should continue to be upon it ; but in 1722 it ceased to have all connection with the barbers, save that the latter were obliged to enter all their apprentices in a register kept by the surgeons. By a charter of George III., dated 14th March, 1778, the corporation was erected into ?The Royal College of Surgeons of the City of Edinburgh,? a document which established a scheme of provision for the widows and children of members. In the old edifice overlooking the Pleasance the College held all its Castle of Clouts,? in the spirit of that talent which , the Scots have of conferring absurd sobriquets. By the wayside to Duddingstone, south of the Pleasance, a rising piece of ground or slight eniinence is called Mount Hooly, a corruption of Mount Holy, which marks the site of the chapel of St. Leonard and of a hospital dedicated to the same saint. As is the case with most of the ecclesiastical edifices in Edinburgh, nothing is known as to when or by whom either the chapel or hospital was built, and not a vestige remains of either now. The chapel, ere it became a ruin, rva?s the scene of a remarkably traitorous tryst, held by the _. ~ - -- -- - meetings till the erec- ~ ~ ~ --/ - tion of the new hall, to be referred to in its place; but the name of the first establishment still survives in the adjacent Surgeon Square. In it was a theatre for dissection, a museum, in which a mummy was long the chief curiosity, and the hall was hung with portraits Qf surgeons who had grown to eminence after it was built. W i 11 i am S m e 11 i e, F.R.S. and F.A.S., an eminent printer, and DAVIE DEANS? COTTAGE. known as the (FTOIIZ a Vzpette by &oars, #ubZrs/red I- the Fzrsf Edition of Robert author of the ?Philo- Chambers?s ? Tradrho~rso~Ed~irbsrgh,? 1825 ) sophy of Natural His- Douglas faction on the 2nd of February, 1528, having nothing less in view than the assassination of their sovereign, James V., ?the Commons King,? who was the idol of his people. They were to enter the palace of Holyrood by a window near the head of the king?s bed in the night, and under the guidance of Sir James Hamilton, one the monarch loved and trusted much; but the dastardly plot was discovered in time, and by the energetic measures taken to crush the devisers of it, peace of the quaint old houses of the Pleasance in 1740. A quaint three-storeyed edifice, having a large archway, peaked gables, and dormer windows, bearing the date of 1709, stood on the south side of the Pleasance, and was long known as ? Hamilton?s Folly,? from the name of the proprietor, who was deemed unwise in those days to hiild a house so far from the city, and on the way that led to the gibbet on which the bodies of criminals were hung. But the latter would seem to have been in - use till a much later period, as in the Cournnt for December, 1761, there are advertised for sale four tenements, ?lying at the head of the Pleasance, on the east side of the road leading to the gibbet.? Here still stands a goodly house of three storeys, which was built about 1724 bya wealthy tailor, and which in consequence has been denominated ?(the for a period. At St. Leonard?s Loan, which bounded the property of the abbots of Holyrood on the south, separating it on the side from the western flank of the vast Burghmuir, there stood in ancient times a memorial known as Umphraville?s Cross, erected in memory of some man of -rank who perished there in a conflict of which not a memory remains. The cross itself had doubtless been demolished as a relic of idolatry at the Reformation ; but in 1810, its base, a mass of dark whinstone, with a square hole in its centre, wherein the shaft had been fixed, was still remaining on the ancient site, till it was broken up for road metal! In his ? Diary,? Birrel records that on the 2nd April, 1600, ? being the Sabbathday, Robert Achmuty, barber, slew James Wauchope at the com ... ST. LEONARD?S CHAPEL. 383 entirely to act as barbers. In consequence, the council, on the 26th July, ...

Book 2  p. 383
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L UCKENBOOTHS AND PARLIAMENT CLOSE. 185 dropped whole and complete into the midst of the pent-up city. west corner of St Giles’s Church, so close to that ancient building as only to leave a narrow footpath beyond its projecting buttresses ; while the tall and gloomy-looking pile extended so far into the main street that a roadway of fourteen feet in breadth was all that intervened between it and the lofty range of buildings on the opposite side. We cannot better describe this interesting building than in the lively narrative of Scott, written about the time of its demolition,-“The prison reared its ancient front in the very middle of the High Street, forming the termination to a huge pile of buildings called the Luckenbooths, which, for some inconceivable reason, our ancestors had jammed into the midst of the principal street of the town, leaving for passage a narrow way on the north; and on the south-into which the prison opens--a crooked lane, winding betwixt the high and sombre walls of the Tolbooth and the adjacent houses on the one side, and the buttresses and projections of the old cathedral upon the other. To give some gaiety to this sombre passage, well known by the name of the Krames, a number of little booths or shops, after the fashion of cobblers’ stalls, were plastered, as it were, against the Gothic projections and abutments, so that it seemed as if the traders had occupied every buttress and coigne of vantage,’ with nests bearing the same proportion to the building as the martlet’s did in Macbeth’s Castle.” The most prominent features in the south front of the Tolbooth,-of which we furnish an engraving,-were two projecting turret staircases. A neatly carved Gothic doorway, surmounted by -a niche, gave entrance to the building at the foot of the eastern tower; and this, on its demolition in 1817, was removed by Sir Walter Scott to Abbotsford, and there converted to,the humble oEce of giving access to his kitchen court.’ Some account has already been given, in our brief sketch of the period of Queen Mary,’ of the mandate issued by her in 1561, requiring the rebuilding of the Tolbooth, and the many difficulties that the city had to encounter in satisfying this royal command. The letter sets forth, that “ The Queiny’s Majestie, understanding that the Tolbuith of the Burgh of Edinburgh is ruinous and abill haistielie to dekay ind fall doun, quhilk will be warrap dampnable and skaythfull to the pepill dwelland thairabout . . . without heistie remeid be providit thairin. Thairfor hir Heines ordinis ane masser to pass alid charge the Provest, Baillies, and Counsale, to caus put workmen to the taking doun of the said Tolbuith, with all possible deligence.” ‘‘ In obedience to the Queen’s command,” says Maitland, It has already been shown, however, in the earlier allusions to the subject, that this is an error. The new building was erected entirely apart from it, adjoining the south-west corner of St Giles’s Church, and the eastern portion of the Old Tolbooth bore incontestible evidence of being the work of a much earlier period than the date of Queen Mary’s mandate. It stood at the north-. the Tolbooth was taken down.” 1 Sir Walter Scott remarks, in a note to the edition of his works issued in 1830,--“Last year, to complete the change, a torn-tit waa pleased to build her nest within the lock of the Tolbooth,--a strong temptation to have committed n sonnet.” The nest we must preaurne to have occupied the place of the lock, the key-hole of which, when deprived of the scuteheon, would readily admit the tom-tit. The original lock and key, which were made immediately after the Porteous mob, were in the possession of Messrs Cormack & Son, Leith Street, and formed the most substantial produc tions of the Locksmith’s art we ever eaw. The lock measured two feet long by one broad ; and the key, which waa a‘oout a foot long, looked more like a huge iron mace. Ante, p. 71. Maitland, p. 21. 2 A ... UCKENBOOTHS AND PARLIAMENT CLOSE. 185 dropped whole and complete into the midst of the pent-up city. west ...

Book 10  p. 203
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282 MEMORIALS OF ED?NBURGH. Sir John Smith at length yielded to the exhortations of his friends, who urged him in so dreadful an alternative to accept the ofFe, of the Moor: The fair invalid was borne on a litter to the house near the head of the Canongate where he had taken up his abode, and, to the astonishment and delight of her father, she was restored to him shortly afterwards safe and well. * The denouement of this singular story bears that the Moorish leader and physician proved to be Andrew Gray, who, after being captured by pirates, and sold as a slave,‘ had won the favour of the Emperor of Morocco, and risen to rank and wealth in his service. He had returned to Scotland, bent on revenging his own early wrongs on the Magistrates of Edinburgh, when, to his Burprise, he found in the destined object of his special vengeance, a relative of his own. He married the Provost’s daughter, and settled down a wealthy citizen of the Burgh of Canongate. The house to which his fair patient was borne, and whither he afterwards brought her as his bride, is still adorned with an effigy of his royal patron, the Emperor of Morocco; and the tenement has ever since borne the name of Morocco Land. It is added that he had vowed never to enter the city but sword in hand; and having abandoned all thoughts of revenge, he kept the vow till his death, having never again passed the threshold of the Nether Bow Port. We only add, that we do not pretend to guarantee this romantic legend of the Burgh; all we have done has been to put into a consistent whole the different versions related to us. We have had the curiosity to obtain a sight of the title-deeds of the property, which prove to be of recent date. The earliest, a disposition of 1731, so far confirms the tale, that the proprietor at that date is John Gray, merchant, a descendant, it may be, of the Algerine rover and the Provost’s daughter. The figure of the Moor has ever been a subject of popular admiration and wonder, and B variety of legends are told to account for its existence. Most of them, however, though differing in almost every ot8her point, seem to agree in connecting it with the last visitation of the plague. A little to the eastward of MoroccQ Land, two ancient buildings of less dimensions in every way than the more recent erections beside them, and the eastern one, more especially of a singularly antique character, form striking features among the architectural elevations in the street. The latter, indeed, is one of the most noticeable relics of the olden time still remaining among the private dwellings of the burgh. It is described in the titles as that tenement of land called Oliver’s Land, partly stone and partly timber ; and is one of the very best specimens of this mixed style of building that now remains. The gables are finished with the earlieit form of crowstep, considerably ornamented. A curiously moulded dormer window, of an unusual form, rises into the roof; while, attached to the floor below, The remainder of the tale is soon told. * Numerous references will be found in the records of the seventeenth century to similar slavery among the Noors. In “Selections from the Registers of the Presbytery of Lanark,’’ Abbotsford Club, 1839, is the following :-“27th Oct. 1625.-The quilk day ane letter ressavit from the Bishope for ane contributioun to be collectit for the releaff of some folks of Queinsfarie and Kiogorne, deteinet under slaverie by the Turks at Salie.” Again, in the “Minutes of the Synod of Fyfe,” printed for the same Club :-“2d April 1616, Anent the supplication proponed be Mr Williame Wedderburne, minister at Dundee, making mentione, that whairas the Lordis of his Hienes’ Privie Counsel1 being certanelie informed that Androw Robertaon, Johne Cowie, Johne Dauling, James Pratt, and their complices, marineris, indwellaris in Leyth, being laitlie upon the coast of Barbarie, efter ane cruell and bloodie conflict, were overcome and led into captivitie be certane merciless Turkes, who preuented them to open mercatt at Algiers in Barbarie, to be sawld 98 slaves to the crueu barbarians,” &c. ... MEMORIALS OF ED?NBURGH. Sir John Smith at length yielded to the exhortations of his friends, who urged him ...

Book 10  p. 306
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ECCLESIA STICAL ANTIQ U’TIES. 391 The plan of the architect proved after all a total failure, and a new hall had to be provided elsewhere for the meetings of the General Amembly of the Church. The removal of this important national monument was not effected without considerable oppositich, and itd destruction in the face of repeated remobstrance8 teflects indelible disgrace oli all who had a share in it. The brass plate, with the inscriptioh prepared by Buchanan for this tomb, has been rescued from the general wreck, and is now preserved by the descendants of the Regent at Dunnybristle House. We trust it is preserved to be again restored to the place where it so lohg formed the chief point of attraction. The same transept, styled the Old Church,’ was the Bcene of Jenny Geddea’s famous onslaught on the Deab of St CCiles’s, owing to the alterations *hich were in progress on the choh at the period when the use of the liturgy ka8 attempted to be enforhed, in order to adapt it €ot the cathedral service.’ A very characteristic episode 6r by-play, which was enacted in B corner of the church while the heroihe of the Cuttg Stool was playing her more prominent part with the Dean, is thus narrated by a contemporary :-“A good Christian woman, much deeirous to temove, perceaving she could get no passage patent, betooke herselfe to her Bible in a remote corner of the chutch. As she waa there stopping hep eates a€ the V O ~ C !o~f popische chapmers, %htme she remarked to be veri6 headstrong in the pablict practise of their antichristiane rudiments, 8 young man sitting behind het beganne to sodnd foatth, A m ? At, the hearing therof, she quicklie turned her about, and after she had warmed both his cheekes with the weight of her hands, she thda schott against hiui the thunderbolt of her zeal-‘ False theefe I (said she) is thete no nthet parte of the kirke to sing masse in but thou mud sing it at my lugge I ’ The young man, being dashed with such ane hote uhexpected rencounter, gave place to silence in siglie of his recantatione.” The erection of the Bishoprie of Edinburgh in 1633, and the appointaent of the Collegiate Church of St Qiles to be the cathedral of the diocese, led to its temporary restoration internally to bornething like its alicient appearance. But ere the royal dommands codd be carried into effect for the demolition of all ita galleries and subdivisions, and its adaptation as the cathedral church of the new bishop, the entire syateui of Church polity for which these changes were designed had come to a violent end, involving many more important things in its downfall. ‘6 In this Isle,” sayd Kincaid, (( are sundry inscriptiohs in Sason characters, cut on the pavement, of very coarse sculpture.” Similar ancient monuhents cgvered the floor in other parts of the church, but every vestige of them has been swept away in the impoaementa of 1829. A large portion of one, boldly cht and with the date 1508, waa preserved in the nursery of the late firm of Messra Eagle & Henderson. The inscription ran round the edge of the stone in Gothic characters, and Contained the same and date thds :- gacobi . lame . qui obiit e ano Pm . m* + bo + ocfabo. A shield in the centre bore 8 lamb, well executed, lying with its feet drawn together, Other two of these monumental stones, now completely defaced, form the paving front of the Fountain Well ! Lord Rotheal Relation, Append. p. 198. “In the year 1636, the Town Council ordered one of the Bailiffs and one of the Clerhe of Edinbtugh to desk Jam- Hanna, the Dean of St Gilea’a Church, to repair to Durham, to take a Draught of the Choir of the Cathedral Church in that city, in order to fit up and beautify the inside of St Qiles’a Church after the eame manner.”-Maitland, p. 281. A Breefe and True Relatione of the Broyle, &a, 1637. ... STICAL ANTIQ U’TIES. 391 The plan of the architect proved after all a total failure, and a new hall had ...

Book 10  p. 429
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tunate creature were chained in '{the good old may be imagined. times " romancists write so glibly of. The origin of all these vaults is lost in antiquity. There prisoners have made many desperate, but in the end always futile, attempts to escape-particularly in 1761 and in 1811. On the former occasion one was dashed to pieces ; on the latter, a captain and forty-nine men got out of the fortress in the night, by cutting a hole in the bottom of the parapet, below the place commonly called the Devil's Elbow, and letting themselves down by a Tope, and more would have got out had not the nearest sentinel fired his musket. One fell and was killed zoo feet below. The rest were all re-captured on the Glasgow Road. In the Grand Parade an octagon tower of considerable height gives access to the strongly vaulted crown room, in whicb the Scottish regalia are shown, and wherein they were so long hidden from the nation, that they were generally believed to have been secretly removed to England and destroyed; and the mysterious room, which was never opened, became a source of wonder to the soldiers, and of superstition to many a Highland sentinel when pacingon his lonely post at night. On the 5th of November, 1794, in prosecuting a search for some lost Parliamentary records, the crown-room was opened by the Lieutenant- Governor and other commissioners. It was dark, being then w.indowless, and filled with foul air. In the grated chimney lay the ashes of the last fire and a cannon ball, which still lies where it had fallen in some past siege ; the dust of eighty-seven years lay on the paved floor, and the place looked grim and desolate. Major Drummond repeatedly shook the oak chest; it returned no sound, was supposed to be empty, and stronger in the hearts of the Scots waxed the belief that the Government, " It was with feelings of no common anxiety that the commissioners, having read their warrant, proceeded to the crown-room, and, having found a11 there in the state in which it had been left in 1794, commanded the king's smith, who was in attendance, to force open the great chest, the keys of which had been sought for in vain. The general impression that the regalia had been secretly removed weighed heavily on the hearts of all while the labour proceeded. The chest seemed to return a hollow and empty sound to the strokes of the hammer; and even those whose expectations had been most sanguine felt at the moment the probability of bitter disappointment, and could not but be sensible that, should the result of the search cmfirnl those forebodings, it would only serve to show that a national affront-an injury had been sustained, for which it might be ditficult, or rather impossible, to obtain redress. The joy was therefore extreme when, the ponderous lid of the chest having been forced open, at the expense of some time and labour, the regalia were discovered lying at the bottom covered with linen cloths, exactly as they had been left in 1707, being I 10 years before, since they had been surrendered by William the ninth Earl Marischal to the custody of the Earl of Glasgow, Treasurer-Deputy of Scotland. The reliques were passed from hand to hand, and greeted with the affectionate reverence which emblems so venerable, restored to public view after the slumber of more than a hundred years, were so peculiarly calculated to excite. The discovery was instantly communicated to the public by the display of the royal standard, and was greeted hy the shouts of the soldiers in garrison, and a vast multitude assembled on the Castle hill ; indeed the rejoicing was so general and sincere as plainly to show that, however altered in other in wicked policy, had destroyed its contents j but ' respects, the people of Scotland had lost norhing of murmurs arose from time to time, as the years went that national enthusiasm which formerly had dison, and a crown, called that of Scotland, was ac- played itself in grief for the loss of those emblematic honours, and now was expressed in joy for their I tually shown in the Tower of London ! of Cardinal York, the Prince Regent, afterwards I Covered with glass and secured in a strong iron, ... creature were chained in '{the good old may be imagined. times " romancists write so glibly of. ...

Book 1  p. 71
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Leith Walk.] MCCULLOCH OF ARDWELL. ~ _ _ _ ofArdwell, a commissioner of the Scottish Customs, and a man famous in his time for hospitality, pleasantry, and wit, and known as a spouter of halfinjury to the new and?splendid one at Inverleith Row. Shrub Hill, the villa on a little eminence north. ward of the Botanical Gardens, in 1800 was the property of the dowager Lady Maxwell, and appears as such in the map of 1804. She was Lady Maxwell of Monreith, whose husband died in 1771, and whose second daughter Jane became Duchess of Gordon in 1767, The Leith Directory for 1811 gives Lady Nairn a residence in Pilrig Street, but she must have held this title through Scottish courtesy, as the attainted peerage was not restored by Act of Parliament till 17th June, 1824. She must have been Brabazon Wheeler, widow of Lieut.-Colonel John Nairn, who but for the attainder would have succeeded as fourth Lord Nairn. Pilrig Free Church, at the north corner of this street and Leith Walk, was built in 1861-2, and is in the early Decorated Gothic style, with a double transept, and has a handsome steeple 150 feet in height. The fine old but unused avenue of stately trees, that opened westward from the Walk to the old Manor House of Pilrig, has now given place to a street of workmen?s houses, named after the pro. prietor, Balfour Street, and lower down, near the bottom of the Walk, is Springfield Street, named , he may he is no mean hand at an epigram.? Ardwell came forward to apologise for his fun. ?My dear sir,? said Foote, ?no apology is nechaise with four horses from the Kh$s Arms Inn, at the same time that two strangers did so in another vehicle, and with difficulty amid the drifted snow they all reached the summit of Erickstane Brae, a lofty hill at the head of Clydesdale, along the side of which, above a most perilous declivity, the public road passes. ,Further progress being impossible, a consultation was held, and they all resolved to return to Moffat ; but, as wheeling the carriage round proved a dangerous operation, ? Wee Davie ? was wrapped up and laid on the snow till that was accomplished, and after reaching the inn Ardwell discovered that his two companions were Samuel Foote the cele. brated player and another favourite son of Thalia. On reaching the inn, Foote entered it in no good humour-as he walked with difficulty, having lost a leg-and ordered breakfast, while his luggage was taken off the chaise; and after this was done, he ?ound a written paper affixed to the panel. In some anger he demanded, ?What rascal has been placarding this ribaldry on my carriage I? Then pausing, however, he read the following lines :- ? While Boreas his flaky storm did guide, Deep covering every hill o?er Tweed and Clyde, The North-wind god spied travellers seeking way, Sternly he cried : ? Retun your steps, I say ; Let not OIK hot, ?tis my behest, urofane time.? It would appear that in the winter of 1774-5 Mr. McCulloch visited his country mansion of Ardwell (near Gatehouse in Kirkcudbright), which is still possessed by his descendants, in order to be present at an election, together with a friend named Mouat. After a week or two they set out on their return to Edinburgh, Mr. McCulloch bringing with him his infant son, familiarly known as ?Wee Davie,? and the trio, after quitting Dumfries, were compelled by a snowstorm to tarry at Moffat for the nighr Early next morning they departed in a occasion when afterwards at the Theatre Royal, he set apart a night or two for a social meeting with I McCulloch of Ardwell, at Springfield, on Leith Walk. ?In the parlour, on the right hand side in entering the house, the largest of the row,? says Chambers in 1869, ? Foote, the celebrated wit of the day, has frequently been associated with many Edinburgh and Leith worthies, when and where he was wont to keep the table in a roar.? McCulloch of Ardwell died in 1794 in his fiftythird year. ? Wee Davie? died thirty years afterwards at Cheltenham. ... Walk.] MCCULLOCH OF ARDWELL. ~ _ _ _ ofArdwell, a commissioner of the Scottish Customs, and a man famous ...

Book 5  p. 163
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9d OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Castle HX one going plump down a vent they set up a shout of joy. Sir David laughed, and entreated the father of the lads ?? not to be too angry ; he and his brother,? he added with some emotion, ?when CANNON BALL IN WALL OF nowE IN CASTLE KILL. living here at the same age, had indulged in precisely the same amusement, the chimneys then, as now, being so provokingly open to attacks, that there was no resisting the temptation.? From the Bairds of Newbyth the house passed to the Browns of Greenbank, and from them, Brown?s Close, where the modern entrance to it is situated, On the same side of the street Webster?s Close served to indicate the site of the house of Dr. Alexander Webster, appointed in 1737 to the Tolbooth church.. In his day one of the most popular men in the city, he was celebrated for his wit and socid qualities, and amusing stories are still told of his fondness for claret With the a s sistance of Dr. Wallace he matured his favourite scheme of a perpetual fund for the relief of widows and children of the clergy of the Scottish Church; and when, in 1745, Edinburgh was in possession of the Jacobite clans, he displayed a striking proof of his fearless character by employing all his eloquence and influence to retain the people in their loyalty to the house of Hanover. He had some pretension to the character of a poet, 2nd an amatory piece of his has been said to rival -the effusions of Catullus. It was written in allusion to his mamage with Mary Erskine. There is one wonderfully impassioned verse, in which, after describing a process of the imagination, by which ?he comes to think his innamarata a creature of more . derives its name. than mortal purity, he says that at length he clasps her to his bosom and discovers that she is but a woman after all ! ?? When I see thee, I love thee, but hearing adore, I wonder and think you a woman no more, Till mad with admiring, I cannot contain, And, kissing those lips, find you woman again ! ? He died in January, 1784. Eastward of this point stands a very handsome old tenement of great size and breadth, presenting a front of polished ashlar to the street, surmounted by dormer windows. Over the main entrance to Boswell?s Court (so named from a doctor who resided there about the close of the last century) there is a shield, and one of those pious legends so peculiar to most old houses in Scottish burghs. 0. LORD. IN. THE. IS. AL. MI. TRAIST. Andthis edifice uncorroborated tradition asserts to have been the mansion of the. Earls of Bothwell. A tall narrow tenement immediately to the west of the Assembly Hall forms the last ancient building on the south side of the street. It was built in 1740, by hfowbray of Castlewan, on the site of ? a venerable mansion belonging to the Countess Dowager of Hyndford (Elizabeth daughter of John Earl of Lauderdale), and from him it passed, about 1747, into the possession of William Earl of Dumfries, who served in the Scots Greys and Scots Guards, who was an aide de camp at the battle of Dettingen, and who succeeded his mother, Penelope, countess in her own right, and afterwards, by the death of his brother, as Earl of Stair. He was succeeded in it by his widow, who, within exactly a year and day of his death, married the Hon. Alexander Gordon (son of the Earl of Aberdeen), who, on his appointment to the bench in 1784, assumed the title of Lord Rockville. He was the last man of rank who inhabited this stately uld mansion ; but the narrow alley which gives?access to the court behind bore the name of Rockville Close. Within it, and towards the west there towered a tall substantial edifice once the residence of the Countess of Hyndford, and sold by her, in 1740, to Henry Bothwell of Glencome, last Lord Holyroodhouse, who died at his mansion in the Canongate in 1755. The corner of the street is now terminated by the magnificent hall built in 1842.3, at the cost of &16,000 for the accommodation of the General Assembly, which sits here annually in May, presided over by a Commissioner, who is always a Scottish nobleman, and resides in Holyrood Palace, where he holds royal state, and gives levCes in the gallery of the kings of Scotland. The octagonal ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Castle HX one going plump down a vent they set up a shout of joy. Sir David ...

Book 1  p. 90
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lies directly at the south-eastern base of Arthur's Seat, and has long'been one of the daily postal districts of the city. Overhung by the green slopes and grey rocks ok Arthur's Seat, and shut out by its mountainous mass from every view of the crowded city at its further base in Duddingston, says a statist, writing in 1851, a spectator feels himself sequestered from the busy scenes which he knows to' be in his immediate vicinity, as he hears their distant hum upon the passing breezes by the Willow Brae on the east, or the gorge of the Windy Goule on the south; and he looks southward and west over a glorious panorama of beautiful villas, towering , ' From the style of the church and the structure of its arches, it is supposed to date from the epoch of the introduction of Saxon architecture. A semicircular arch of great beauty divides the choir from the chancel, and a Saxon doorway, with fantastic heads and zig-zag mbuldings, still remains in the southern face of the tower. The entrance-gate to its deep, grassy, and sequestered little buryingground, is still furnished with the antique chain and collar of durance, the terror of evildoers, named the jougs, and a time-worn Zouping-on-stone, for the use of old or obese horsemen. Some interesting tombs are to be found in the burying-ground ; among these are the marble obelisk castles, rich coppice, hill and valley, magnificent in semi-tint, in light and shadow, till the Pentlands, or the 1 on e 1 y Lam m er m u i r ranges, close the distance. The name of this hamlet and parish has been a vexed subject amongst antiquaries, but as a surname it is not unknown in Scotland : thus, among the missing charters of Robert Bruce, there is one to John Dudingstoun of the lands of Pitcorthie, in Fife; and among the gentlemen GATEWAY OF DUDDINGSTON CHURCH, SHOWING TIIE JOUCS AND LOUPING-ON-STONE. slain at Flodden in I 5 I 3 there was Stephen Duddingston of Kildinington, also in Fife. Besides, there is another place of the same name in Linlithgowshire, the patrimony of the Dundases. The ancient church, with a square tower at its western end, occupies a green and rocky peninsula that juts into the clear and calm blue loch. It is an edifice of great antiquity, and belonged of old to the Tyronensian Monks of Kelso, who possessed it, together with the lands of Eastern and Western Duddingston ; the chartulary of that abbey does not say from whom they acquired these possessions, but most probably it was from David I. Herbert, first abbot of Kelso, a man of great learning and talent, chamberiain of the kingdom under Alexander I. and David I., in 1128, granted the lands of Eastern and Western Duddingston to Reginald de Bosco for an annual rent of ten marks, to be paid by him and his heirs for ever. erected to the memory of Patrick Haldane of Gleneagles by his unfortunate grandson, whose fate is also recorded thereon; and that of James Browne, LLD., Advocate, the historian of the Highlands and Highland clans, in the tower of the church. In the register of assignations for the minister's stipends in the year 1574, presented in MS. by Bishop Keith to the Advocates' Library, Duddingston is said to have been a joint dependence with the Castle of Edinburgh upon the Abbey of Holyrood. The old records of the Kirk Session are only of the year 1631, and in the preceding year the lands of Prestonfield were disjoined from the kirk and parish of St. Cuthbert, and annexed to those of Duddingston. On the r8th'of May, 1631, an aisle was added to the church for the use of the Laird of Prestonfield, his tenants and servants. David Malcolme, minister here before I 741, was an eminent linguist in his time, whose writings were commended by Pinkerton, and quoted with respect by Gebelin in his Monde Plillit$ and Bullet in his Mkmoirrs Celtiques; but the church is chiefly famous for the incumbency of the Rev. John Thomson, a highly distinguished landscape painter, who from his early boyhood exhibited a strong predilection for art, and after being a pupil of Alexander Nasmyth, became an honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy. He became ... directly at the south-eastern base of Arthur's Seat, and has long'been one of the daily ...

Book 4  p. 314
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Canongate.] , THE MOROCCO LAND. 7 per month. A number of the ailing were hutted in the King?s Park, a few were kept at home, and aid for all was invoked from the pulpits. The Session of the Canongate ordained, on the 27th of June, that, ?to avoid contention in this fearful time,? all those who died in the park should be buried therein ; for it would seem that those who perished by the plague were buried in places apart from churchyards, lest the infection might burst forth anew if ever the graves were reopened.? Maitland records. that such was the terror prevailing at this period that the prisoners in the Tolbooth were all set at liberty, and all who were not free men were compelled, under severe penalties, to quit the city, until at length, ? by the unparalleled ravages committed by the plague, it was spoiled of its inhabitants to such a degree that there were scarcely sixty men left . capable of assisting in the defence of the town in case of an attack,? At this crisis a large armed vessel of peculiar rig and aspect entered the Firth of Forth, and came to anchor in Leith Roads. By experienced seamen she was at once pronounced to be an Algenne rover, and dismay spread over all the city. This soon reached a culminating point when a strong band landed from her, and, entering the Canongate by Moors. After some conference with his men he intimated his possession of an elixir of wondrous potency, and demanded that the Provost?s daughter should be entrusted to his skill, engaging that if he did not cure her immediately to embark with his men, and free the city without ransom. After considerable parley the Provost proposed that the leader should enter the city and take up an abode in his house.? This was rejected, together with higher offers of ransom, till Sir John Smith yielded to the exhortations of his friends, and the proposal of the Moor was accepted, and the fair sufferer was borne to a house at the head of the Canongate, wherein the corsair had taken up his residence, and from thence she went forth quickly restored and in health. The most singular part of this story is its denouement, from which it would appear that the corsair and physician proved to be no other than the condemned fugitive Andrew Gray, who had risen high in the favour and service of the Emperor of Morocco. ?He had returned to Scotland,? says Wilson, ?? bent on revenging his own early wrongs on the magis-. trates of Edinburgh, when, to his surprise, he found in the destined object of his special vengeance relation of his own. He married the Provost?s daughter, and settled EFFIGY OF THE MOOR, MOROCCO LAND. the.Water Gate, advanced to the Netherbow Port and required admittance. The magistrates parleyed with their leader, who demanded an exorbitant ransom, and scoffed at the risk to be run in a plague-stricken city. The Provost at this time was Sir John Smith, of Groat Hall, a small mansion-house near Craigleith, and he, together with his brother-in-law, Sir William Gray, Bart., of Pittendrum, a staunch Cavalier, and one of ?the wealthiest among the citizens, to whom we have referred in our account of Lady Stair?s Close, agreed to ransom the city for a large sum, while at the same time his eldest son was demanded by the pirates as a hostage. ? It seems, however,? says Wilson, ?that the Provost?s only child was a daughter, who then lay stricken of the plague, of which her cousin, Egidia Gray, had recently died. This information seemed to work an immediate change on the leader of the - ?Dom. Ann.,? Vol. 11. down a wealthy citizen in the burgh of Canongate. The house to which his fair patient. was borne, and whither he afterwards brought her as his bride, is still adorned with an effigy of his royal patron, the Emperor of Morocco, and the tenement has ever since borne the name of the Morocco Land. . . . . We have had the curiosity to obtain a sight of the title-deeds of the property, which prove to be of recent date. The earliest, a disposition of 1731, so far confirms the tale that the proprietor at that date is John Gray, merchant, a descendant, it may be, of the Algerine rover and the Provost?s daughter. The figure of the Moor has ever been a subject of pcapular admiration and wonder, and a variety of legends are told to account for its existence. Most of them, though differing in almost every other point, seem to agree in connecting it with the last visitation of the plague.?? Near this tenement, a little to the eastward, was the mansion of John Oliphant of Newland, second ... , THE MOROCCO LAND. 7 per month. A number of the ailing were hutted in the King?s Park, a few were ...

Book 3  p. 7
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Edinburgh Cad:.] CORONATION OF CHARLES I. 51 and long it was since Edinburgh had been the scene of anything so magnificent. Every window was crowded with eager faces, and every house was gay with flowers, banners, and tapestry. *? Mounted on a roan horse, and having a saddle of rich velvet sweeping the ground, and massive with pasements of gold, Alexander Clark, the Provost, appeared at the head of the bailies and council to meet the king, while the long perspective of the crowded street ( then terminated by the spire of the Nether Bow) was lined (as Spalding says) by a brave company of soldiers, all clad in white satin doublets, black velvet .breeches, and silk stockings, with hats, feathers, scarfs, and bands. Thesegallants haddaintymuskets, pikes, and gilded partisans. Six trumpeters, in gold lace and scarlet, preceded the procession, which moved slowly from But most of the assembled multitude looked darkly and doubtfully on. In almost every heart there lurked the secret dread of that tampering with the Scottish Church which for years had been conspicuous. Charles, with great solemnity, was crowned king of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, by the Bishop of St. Andrews, who placed the crown upon his head; and on the 18th July he left Edinburgh on his return to London. Under the mal-influence of the zealot Laud ruin and civil war soon came, when Episcopacy was imposed upon the people, A committee of Covenanters was speedily formed at Edinburgh, and when the king?s commissioner arrived, in 1638, he found the Castle beset by armed men. His efforts at mediation were futile ; and famous old ?Jenny Geddes? took the initiative the- Privy Seal; Morton the Treasuw?s golden mace,with its globe of sparkling beryl ; the York and Norroy English kingsat- arms with their heralds, pursuivants, and trumpeters in tabards blazing with gold and embroidery; Sir James Balfour, the Scottish Lion king, preceding the spurs, sword, sceptre, and crown, borne by earls. Then came the Lord High Constable, riding, with ,his blton, supported by the Great Chamberlain and Earl Marshal, preceding Charles, who was arrayed in &robe of purple velvet once worn by James IV., and having a foot-cloth embroidered with silver and pearls, and his long train upborne by the young Lords Lorne, Annan, Dalkeith, and Kinfauns Then came the Gentlemen Pensioners, marching with partisans uplifted ; then the Yeomen of the Guard, clad in doublets of russet velvet, with the royal arms raised in embossed work of silver and gold on the back and breast of each coat-each company commanded by an earL The gentlemen of the Scottish Horse Guards were all armed d la cuirassier, and carried swords, petronels, and musketoons.? of trained Scottish officers and soldiers, who had been pushing their fortune by the shores of the Elbe and the Rhine, in Sweden and Germany, came pouring home to enrol under the banner of the Covenant ; a general attack was concerted on every fortress in Scotland; and the surprise of Edinburgh was undertaken by the commander of the army, Sir Alexander Leslie of Balgonie, Marshal of Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus-a soldier second to This he achieved successfully on the evening of the 28th March, when he blew in the barrier gate with a petard. The Covenanters rushed through the Spur sword in hand, and the. second gate fell before their sledge-hammers, and then Haldane of Gleneagles, the governor, gave up his sword. That night ieslie gave the Covenanting lords a banquet in the hall of the Castle, .w&reon they hoisted their blue standard with. the miotto, ? For an oppressed kirk and broken? Covenant? Montrose?s regiment, 1,500 strong, replaced the gamson ; Lord Bdmerbo was appointed goxernor, and many ... Cad:.] CORONATION OF CHARLES I. 51 and long it was since Edinburgh had been the scene of anything so ...

Book 1  p. 51
(Score 0.24)

180 OLD AKD NEW EDINBURGH, [Leith. 1596-7. In 1578 an Act of Parliament was passed to prevent ? the taking away of great quantities of victual and flesh from Leith, under the pretence of victualling ships.?. In the same year a reconciliation having been effected between the Earl of Morton and the nobles opposed to him, the Earls of Argyle, Montrose, Athole, and Buchan, Lord Boyd, and many other persons of distinction, dined with him jovially at an hostelry in Leith, kept by William Cant. There was considerable alarm excited in Edinburgh, Leith, and along the east coast generally, by a plague which, as Moyes records, was brought from Dantzig by John Downy?s ship, the WiZZiam of ~ 5 t h . By command of the Privy Council, the ship was ordered, with her ailing and dead, to anchor off Inchcolm, to which place all afflicted by the plague were to confine themselves. The crew consisted of forty men, of whom the majority died. Proclamation had been made at the market-cross of every east coast town against permitting this fated crew to land. By petitions before the Council it appeared that William Downie, skipper in Leith, left a widow and eleven children; Scott, a mariner, seven. The survivors were afterwards re- Trades of Leith were declared independent of those of Edinburgh by a decree of the Court of Session. In October, 1589, James VI. embarked at Leith for Norway, impatient to meet his bride, Anne of Denmark, to whom he had been married by proxy. She had embarked in August, but her fleet had been detained by westerly gales, and there seemed little prospect of her reaching Scotland before the following spring. Though in that age a voyage to the Baltic was a serious matter in the fall of the year, James, undaunted, put to sea, and met his queen in Norway, where the marriage ceremony was performed again by the Rev. David Lindsay, of Leith, in the cathedral of St. Halvard at Christiania, and not at Upsala. THE ARMS moved to Inchkeith and the Castle of Inchgarvie, and the ship, which by leaks seemed likely to sink at her anchors, was emptied of her goods, which were stored in the VOW~S,? or vaults, of St. Colm. In 1584 Leith was appointed the principal market for herrings and other fish in the Firth of Forth. Five years subsequent to this we find that the despotic magistrates of Edinburgh summoned nearly one half of their Leith vassals to hear themselves prohibited from the exercise of their various trades and from choosing their deacons in all time coming. They had previously thrust two unfortunate shoemakers into prison, one forprefending that he was elected deacon of the Leith Incorporation of the craft, and the other for acting as his officer; and we are told that, notwithstanding the remon- *strances of the operatives, no attention was paid to their statements, and ? they were proceeded against as a parcel of insolent and contumacious rascals ;? and it was not until 1734 that the Incorporated OF LEIlH. - , as some assert. After remaining for some months in Denmark, the royal pair on the 6th of May, landed at the pier of Leith (where the King?s Work had been prepared for their reception), amid the booming of cannon, and the discharge of a mighty Latin oration from Mr. James Elphinstone. It is remarkable that James, whose squadron came to anchor in the roads on the 1st of May, did not land at once, as he had been sorely beset by the incantations of witches during his voyage ; and it is alleged that the latter had declared ? he would never have come safely from the sea had not his faith prevailed over their cantrips.? They were more successful, however, with a large boat coming from Burntisland to Leith, containing a number of gifts for the young queen, and which they contrived to sink amid a storm, raised by the remarkable agency of a chrisfened cat, when all on board perished. In 1595 James wrote a letter at Holyrood, addressed to ? the Bailyies of Lethe,? at the instance of William Henryson, Constable Depute of Scotland, interdicting them from holding courts to consider actions of slaughter, mulctation, drawing blood, or turbulence. (Spald. Club Miscell.) In the following year, by a letter of gift under the Privy Seal, .he empowered the Corporation of Edinburgh to levy a certain tax during a certain period towards supporting and repairing the bulwark pier and port of Leith ; and in a charter of Niladamus, ... OLD AKD NEW EDINBURGH, [Leith. 1596-7. In 1578 an Act of Parliament was passed to prevent ? the taking away ...

Book 5  p. 180
(Score 0.24)

216 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH. Lord Kinnoull and several other prisoners were equally successful in getting out of the castle, by letting themselves down over the rock with their sheets and blankets cut into strips ; and others confined in the Canongate Tolbooth effected, by like means, a similar jail delivery for themselves.’ When a better understanding had been established between the Protector and hia Scottish subjects, the old hall was restored to more legitimate uses. There, in the following year, General Monck and the leaders of the Commonwealth were feasted with lavish hospitality, and the courts of law resumed their sittings, with an honest regard for justice scarcely known in Scotland before. glorious Restoration,” under the auspices of the once republican general ; and the vice-regent and royal commissioner, the Duke of York, was feasted with his fair princess and daughter, attended by the beauty and chivalry of Scotland, anxious to efface all memory of former doing in the same place. But sad as was the scene of Scotland‘s children held captive in her own capital by English jailers, darker times were heralded by this vice-regal banquet, when the Duke presided, along with Dalaiell and Claverhouse, in the same place, to try by torture the passive heroism of the confessors of the Covenant, and the astute lawyer, Sir George Mackenzie, played the part of king’s advocate with such zeal, as has won him the popular title which still survives all others, of “ Bluidy Mackenzie.” The lower rooms, that have so long been dedicated to the calm seclusion of literary study, are the same that witnessed €he noble, the enthusiastic, and despairing, alike prostrate at the feet of tyrants, or subjected to cruel tortures by their merciless award. There Guthrie and Argyll received the barbarous sentence of their personal enemies without. form of trial, and hundreds of less note courageously endured the fury of their persecutors, while Mercy and Justice tarried at the door. A glimpse at the procedure of this Scottish Star Chamber,-furnished by Fountainhall, in his account of the trial of six men in October 1681, on account of their religion and fanaticism,”-may suffice for a key to the justice administered there. Garnock,. one of the prisoners, having railed at Dalziell in violent terms, “the General in a passion struck him with the pomel of his shable on the face, till the blood sprung.”a With such men for judges, and thumbekins, boots, and other instruments of torture as the means of eliciting the evidence they desired, imagination will find it hard to exceed the horrors of this infamous tribunal. Aninteresting trial is mentioned by Fountainhall as having occurred in 1685.8 Richard Rumbold, one of Cromwell’s old hopsides, was brought up, accused of being implicated in the Rye House Plot. He had defended himself so stoutly against great odds that he was Then came the 1 The Scottish prisoners would seem to have been better acquainted with the secrete of their own strongholds than their English jailem. Nicoll remarks, “ It waa a thing admirable to considder how that the Scottia prissoneris being so cloalie keepit heir within the Castle of Edinburgh, and in the laich Parliament Hous, and within the Tolbuith of the Cannogait, and daylie and nychtlie attendit with a gaird of sodgeris, sould Ea oft escaip imprisaonment. And now laitlie, npone the 27 day of Maij 1654, being Settirday at midnicht, the Lord Kynnoull, the Laird of Lugtoun, ane callit Marechell, and another callit Hay, by the nioyen of one of the Inglische centrie escapit forth of the Castell of Edinburgh, being lat doun be thairawin bedscheittis and blankettis, hardlie knut. AlI these four, with ane of the Inglische centrie, escapit. Thair waa ane uther prettie gentill man, and a brave sodger, eavaping to do the lyke, he, in his doungoing, fell and brak his neck, the knotia of the scheittia being maid waik by the former persoues wecht that past doun before him.” -Nicoll‘s Diary, p. 128. ’ Fountainhall’s Decisions, voL i. p. 159. Ibid, vol. i p. 365. ... MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH. Lord Kinnoull and several other prisoners were equally successful in getting out of ...

Book 10  p. 235
(Score 0.24)

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