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238 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Grassmarket.
Watt and Downie, they were brought to trial respectively
in August and September, and the facts
were fully proved against them. A letter from
Downie, treasurer of the Committee of Ways and
Means, to Walter Millar, Perth, acknowledging the
receipt of LIS, on which he gave a coloured
account of the recent riots in the theatre on the
performance of ?? Charles I.? was produced and
identified; and Robert Orrock stated that Downie
accompanied Watt to his place at the Water of Leith,
where the order was given for the pikes.
William Brown said that he had made fifteen of
these weapons, by order of Watt, to whom he
delivered them, receiving 22s. 6d. for the fifteen.
Other evidence at great length was led, a verdict of
guilty was returned, and sentence of death was
passed upon the prisoners-to have their bowels
torn out, and to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.
The punishment of Downie was commuted to
transportation ; and on the royal clemency being
announced to him he burst into tears, and kneeling
on the floor of the vault above the portcullis
he exclaimed, in ecstasy, ?Oh, glory be to God,
and thanks to the king! Thanks to him for his
goodness ! I will pray for him as long as I live !
He had a wife and children,. and for years had
enjoyed the reputation of being a sober and respectable
mechanic.
Previous to his execution Watt made a full confession
of the aims and objects contemplated by
the committees and their ramifications throughout
Britain. He was in his thirty-sixth year, and was
the natural son of a gentleman of fortune in Angus.
He was executed on the 15th October, 1794 The
magistrates, Principal Baird, the. city guard,. and
town officers, with their halberds, conducted him
from the Castle to the place of death at the end of
the Tolbooth about two o?clock, The sheriff and
his substitute were there, in black, with white
gloves and rods. The hurdle was painted black, but
drawn by a snow-white horse. It was surrounded
by constables and zoo of the Argyle Fencible
Highlanders, stepping to the ?? Dead March.?
Watt was a picture of the most abject dejection.
He was wrapped up in an old greatcoat, and wore
a red night-cap, which, on the platform, he exchanged
for a white one and a round hat ; but his
whole appearance was wretched and pitiful in the
extreme, and all unlike that of a man willing to
die for conscience, or for country?s sake. After
his body had hung for thirty minutes, it was cut
down lifeless and placed on a table ; the executioner
then Came forward with a large axe, and
with two strokes severed from the body the head,
which fell into a basket, and was then held up by
the hair, in the ancient form, by the executioner, who
exclaimed, ?? This is the head of a traitor !
The crowd on this occasion was slow in collecting,
but became numerous at last, and showed little
agitation when the drop fell; ?but the appearance
of the axe,? says the Annual Regzkter, ?a
sight for which they were totally unprepared, produced
a shock instantaneous as electricity; and
when it was uplifted such a general shriek or shout
of horror burst forth as made the executioner delay
his blow, while numbers .rushed off in all directions
to avoid the sight.? The remains were
next put into a coffin and conveyed away. The
handcuffs used to secure Watt while a prisoner in
the Castle were, in 1841, presented by Miss Walker
of Drumsheugh to the Antiquarian Museum, where
they are still preserved.
C H A P T E R XXXI.
THE COWGATE.
?The Cuwgate-Origin and Gend History of the Thoroughfare-First Houses built the-TheVernour?s Tenement-Alexander Ale-Division
of the City in ~gx-?Dichting the Calsayy in qrS-The Cowgate Port-Beggars in 1616Gilbert B1akha.I-Names ofthe most Ancient
Closes-The North Side of the Street-MacLcllan?s Land-Mrs Syme-John Nimmo-Dr. Qraham-The How of Si Thomas Hope
and Lady Mar-The Old Back Stairs-Tragic Story of Captain Caylq-Old Meal Market-Riots in 1763-The Episcopal Chapel, now
St. Pauick?s Roman Catholic Church-Trial of the Rev. Mr. Fitzsimmons
THE Cowgate is, and has always been, one of the
most remarkable streets in the ancient city. A
continuation of the south back of the Canongate
it runs along the deepest part of a very deep gorge,
into which Blair, Niddry, and St. Mary?s Streets,
with many other alleys, descend rapidly from the
north and others from the south, and though high
in its lines of antique houses, it passes underneath
the overspanning central arch of the South Bridge
and the more spacious one of George IV. Bridge,
and, though very narrow, is not quite straight.
For generations it has been the most densely
peopled and poorest district in the metropolis, the
most picturesque and squalid, and, when viewed ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Grassmarket. Watt and Downie, they were brought to trial respectively in August and ...

Book 4  p. 238
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Parliament Close.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE.
Probable Extinction of the Court of Session-Memorabilia of the Parliament Close and SquartGoldsmiths of the Olden Time-George Henot-
His Workshq-His Interview with James VI.-Peter Williamson?s Tavern-Royal Exchange-Statue of Charles 11.-Bank of Scotland-
The Fire of 17oo-The Work of Restoration-John Row?s Coffee-house-John?s Coffee-house-Sylvester Otway-Sir W. Forber?s Bank-
Si Walter Scott?s Eulogy on Si W i U i Forks-John Kay?s Print-shop-The Parliment Stairs- James Sibbald-A Libel CascFire
in June, 1824-Dr. Archibald Pitcairn-The ? Greping Ofice?-Painting of King Charles?s Statue White-Seal of Amauld Larnmius.
A CHANGE has come over the scene of their
labours and the system of. the law which these
d d lords could never have conceived possiblewe
mean the system that is gradually extending in
Scotland, of decentralising the legal business of the
country-a system which stands out in strong con-
,trast to the mode of judicial centralisation now
prevailing in England. The Scottish county
courts have a jurisdiction almost co-extensive
with that of the Supreme Court, while those of
England have a jurisdiction (without consent of
parties) to questions only of value. This gives
them an overwhelming amount of business, while
the supreme courts of Scotland are starved by the
ipferior competing with them in every kind of litigation.
Thus the Court of Session is gradually
dwindling away, by the active competition of the
provincial courts, and the legal school becomes
every day more defective for lack of legal practice.
The ultimate purpose, or end, of this system
will, undoubtedly, lead to the disappearance of the
Court of Session, or its amalgamation with the
supreme courts in London will become an object
of easy accomplishment ; and then the school from
whence the Scottish advocates and judges come,
being non-existent, the assimilation of the Scottish
county courts to those of England, and the sweep
-ing away of the whole legal business of the country
to London, must eventually follow, with, perhaps,
the entire subjection of Scotland to the English
courts of law.
A description of the Parliament Close is given in
the second volume of ?? Peter?s Letters to his Kinsfolk,?
before the great fire of 1824 :-
?The courts of justice with which all these
eminent men are so closely connected are placed
in and about the same range of buildings which
in former times were set apart for the accommodation
of the Parliament of Scotland. The main
approach to these buildings lies through a small
.oblong square, which from this circumstance takes
the name of fhcParlianient Close. On two sides
this close is surrounded by houses of the same
gigantic kind of elevation, and in these, of old,
were lodged a great proportion of the dignitaries
and principal practitioners of the adjacent Courts.
At present, however (181g), they are dedicated,
like most of the houses in the same quarter of the
city, to the accommodation of tradespeople and
inferior persons attached to the courts of law.
. . . . The southern side of the square and a
small portion of the eastern are filled with venerable
Gothic buildings, which for many generations
have been dedicated to the accommodation
of the courts of law, but which are now shut out
from the eye of the public by a very ill-conceived
and tasteless front-work, of modern device, including
a sufficient allowance of staring square
windows, Ionic pillars, and pilasters. What beauty
the front of the structure may have possessed in
its original state I have no means of ascertaining ;
but Mr. Wastle (J. G. Lockhart) sighs every time
we pass through the close, as pathetically as could
be wished, ?over the glory that hath departed.?
The old Parliament House, the front of which
has been destroyed and concealed by the arcaded
and pillared facade referred to, we have already
described. The old Goldsmiths? Hall, on the
west side, formed no inconsiderable feature in the
close, where, about 1673, the first coffee-house
established in the city was opened.
The Edinburgh goldsmiths of the olden time
were deemed a superior class of tradesmen, and
were wont to appear in public with cocked hats,
scarlet cloaks, and gold-mounted canes, as men of
undoubted consideration. The father of John
Law of Lauriston, the famous financial projector,
was the son of a goldsmith in Edinburgh, where
he was born in April, 1671 ; but by far the most
famous of all the craft in the old Parliament Close
was George Heriot.
Down to the year 1780, says a historian, perhaps
there was not a goldsmith in Edinburgh who did
not condescend to manual labour. In their shops
every one of them might have been found busy
with some light work, and generally in a very plain
dress, yet ever ready to serve a customer, politely
and readily. The whole plate shops of the city
being collected in or near the Parliament Close,
thither it was that, till the close of the eighteenth
century, country couples resorted-the bride to get
her bed and table napery and trousseau ; there, too,
were got the nuptial ring, and ?? the silver spoons,?
and, as the goldsmiths of the city then kept scarcely ... Close. CHAPTER XIX. THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE. Probable Extinction of the Court of Session-Memorabilia of ...

Book 1  p. 174
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secluded character of the place inust have been
destroyed. ?? Queen Mary granted the gardens of
-the Greyfriars? monastery to the citizens in the
year 1566, to be used as a cemetery, and from
that period the old burial-place seems to have
and are now said to be among the miscellaneous
collections at Holyrood. Begun in 1632, the hall
with its adjacent buildings took seven years to
erect; but subsequently the external portions of
the edifice were almost totally renewed. Howell,
the citizens forgot that their Exchange was built
over their fathers? graves.? Yet within six years
after Queen Mary?s gr.ant, Knox was interred in
the old burial-ground. ?Before the generation
had passed away that witnessed and joined in his
funeral service,? says the author of ? Memorials of
Edinburgh,? ?the churchyard in which they laid
him had been converted into a public thoroughfare !
We fear this want of veneration must be regarded
as a national Characteristic which Knox assisted
to call into existence, and to which we owe much
of the reckless demolition of those time-honoured
monuments of the past which it is sow thought a
weakness to deplore.?
As a churchyard in name it last figures in 1596
as the scene of a tumult in which John Earl of
Mar, John Bothwell, Lord Holyroodhouse, the
Lord Lindsay, and others, met in their armour,
and occasioned some trouble ere they could be
pacified. It was the scene of all manner of rows,
when club-law prevailed ; where exasperated litigants,
sick of ?the law?s delays,? ended the matter
by appeal to sword and dagger ; and craftsmen and
apprentices quarrelled with the bailies and deacons.
It has been traditionally said that many of the
tombstones were removed to the Greyfriars? churchyard;
if such was the case no inscriptions remain
built here lately,? and regretting that Charles I. did
not inaugurate it in person, he adds that ?they
did ill who advised him otherwise.? The time
had come when old Scottish raids were nearly past,
and when revolutions had their first impulse, not
in the battle-field, but in deliberative assemblies ;
thus the Parliament that transferred its meetings
from the old Tolbooth to the new House in 1639
had to vote ?? the sinews of war ? for an aymy
against England, under Sir Alexander Leslie, and
was no less unprecedented in its constitution and
powers than the place in which it assembled was a
new edifice. Outside of a wooden partition in the
hall was an oak pulpit, where a sermon was preached
at the opening of parliament; and behind was a
small gallery, where the public heard the debates
of the House.
To thousands who never saw or could have
seen it the external aspect of the old Parliament
House has been rendered familiar by Gordon?s
engravings, and more particularly by the view of it
on the bank notes of Sir William Forbes and Co.
Tradition names Inigo Jones as the architect, bit
of this there is not a vestige of proof. It was
highly picturesque, and possessed an individuality
that should have preserved it from the iconoclastic
?improvers? of 1829. ?There was a quaint
The Parliament Hall, which was finished in
1639, at the expense of the citizens, costing
A11,600 of the money of that time, occupies a
considerable portion of the old churchyard, and
possesses a kind of simple grandeur ? belonging
to an anterior age. Its noblest feature is the roof,
sixty feet in height, which rests on ornamental
brackets consisting of boldly sculptured heads,
and is formed of dark oak tie-and-hammer beams
with cross braces, producing a general effect suggestive
of the date of Westminster or of Crosby
Hall. Modern corridors that branch out from it
are in harmony with the old hall, and lead to the
various court rooms and the extensive libraries of
the Faculty of Advocates and the Society of
Writers to the Signet. The hall measures 122 feet
in length by 49 in breadth, and was hung of old
with tapestry and portraits of the kings of Scotland,
some by Sir Godfrey Kneller. These were bestowed,
in 1707, by Queen Anne, on the Earl of Mar,
?
we are told, ?and the rude elaborateness of its
decorations, that seemed to link it with the courtiers
I of Holyrood in the times of the Charleses, and its
last gala days under the Duke of York?s viceregency.
Nothing can possibly be conceived more
meaningless and utterly absurd than the thing that
superseded it ?-a square of semi-classic buildings,
supported by a narrow arcade, and surmounted by
stone sphinxes.
Above the old main entrance, which faced the
east, and is now completely blocked up and hidden,
were the royal arms of Scotland, beautifully
sculptured, supported on the right by Mercy holding
a crown wreathed with laurel, and on the
left by Justice, with a palm branch and balance,
with the inscription, Stant his feZiciin r p a , and
underneath the national arms, the motto, Uni
unionurn. Over the smaller doorway, which forms
the present access to the lofty lobby of the House,
were the arms of the city, between sculptured ... character of the place inust have been destroyed. ?? Queen Mary granted the gardens of -the Greyfriars? ...

Book 1  p. 158
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90 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Mound,
Sculpture had its origin early in the present
century, though in past times the Scottish School
of ?Painters ranked among its number several
celebrities. Of these the most noted was George
Jameson, born at Aberdeen in 1586; he studied
under Rubens, and won himself the name of the
Scottish Vandyke. Charles I. sat to him for his
portrait, as did many other great Scotsmen of the
period. He was succeeded by the elder Scougal,
a painter of many works ; Scougal the younger ; De
Witte ; Nicolas Hude, a French Protestant refugee;
John Baptist0 Medina, a native of Brussels, whose
son John was a ?( Limner? in Hyndford?s Close
in 1784; Aikman; Wait; Allan Ramsay (son of
the poet); Norrie, the landscape painter;? the
Runcimans, Brown, and latterly David Allan,
Graham, Wilkie, Gibson, Thomson, Raeburn, and
the Watsons.
The first movement towards fostering native
art was, undoubtedly, the appointment by the
Board of Trustees, in 1760, of a permanent
master for the instruction of the youth of both sexes
in drawing, thus Iaying the foundation of a School
of Design. The second important organisation
was that named the ?Institution for the En.
couragement of the Fine Arts,? founded on the 1st
of February, 1819, on the model of the British
Institution of London, for the annual exhibition oi
pictures by old masters, and subsequently those
of living artists. It consisted chiefly of gentlemen,
who, on the payment of A50, became shareholders
or life-members. The first exhibition by the Institution
was in York Place, in March, 1819, but
owing to certain complications between it and
artists generally, they were, even if members, not
permitted to exercise the sliL!itest control over the
funds.
Prior to this time the leading artists resident in
Edinburgh had associated together for the purpose
of having an annual exhibition of their works,
which was also held in York Place. The first of these
occurred in 1808, and Lord Cockburn refers to it
as the most gratifying occurrence of the period, and
as one that ?proclaimed the dawn of modern
Scottish art.?
Among the pictures shown on that auspicious
occasion the catalogue records three by George
Watson, including the portrait of the celebrated
Bishop Hay; three by A. Nasmyth; two by
Douglas, one being a portrait of Mrs. Boswell of
Auchinleck ; three fancy pictures by Case ; ?? The
Fa1 of Buchan crowning Master Gattie,? by W.
Lizars; a black chalk landscape by Thomson;
and in the succeeding year, 1809, the catalogue
mentions, briefly noted, five by Raeburn, including
his Walter Scott; three by Gorge Watson, one
being the ?? Portrait of an Old Scots Jacobite;?
three by Thomson of Duddingston ; a fancy picture
of Queen Mary, by.John Watson, afterwards Sir J.
W. Gordon.
Carse, called the Teniers of Scotland, died early ;
but ?this exhibition did incalculable good. It
drew such artists as we had out of their obscurity;
it showed them their strength and their weakness :
it excited public attention: it gave them importance.?
During five exhibitions, between 1809 and 1813,
the members thus associated saved ,61,888, hut
not being sufficiently restricted by their laws from
dissolving at any time, the sum amassed proved a
temptation, and it was divided among the exhibitors.
The Society then broke up and dispersed, and it
was while they were in this state of disorganisation
that the Directors of the Institution, finding the
old masters not sufficiently attractive to the public,
made overtures to the artists for an exhibition of
modern pictures and sculpture under their auspices,
and to set the proceeds aside for the benefit of the
said artists and their families.
Thus the first exhibition of the works of living
artists under the direction of the Institution took
place in 1821, and it proved such a success that it
was repeated yearly till I 82 9.
The Institution had in 1826, besides one hundred
and thirty-one ordinary members, thirteen
honorary, five of whom were artists, under the title
of Associate Members, and the exhibitions were
held in the Galleries of the Royal Institution, for
which an attnual rent of A380 was paid; but as
great discontent was expressed by artists who
were Associate Members, because they were denied
all consideration in the inanagement in the year
mentioned, they resolved to found a Scottish
Academy.
It was in the summer of 1826 that the document
by which this important movement was inaugurated
went round for signature in the hands otillr. William
Nicholson. When published, twenty-four names
appeared to it : those of thirteen Academicians,
nii e Associates, and two Associate Engravers.
The first general meeting of ?The Scottish
Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture,?
was held on the 27th of May, 1826, Mr. Patrick
Syme in the chair, and the following gentlemen were
elected as office-bearers for the year :-George
Watson, President ; William Nicholson, Secretmy ;
Thomas Hamilton, Treamrn: The Council consisted
of four.
Mr. George Watson, who has been justly
deemed the founder of the Academy, was the son ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Mound, Sculpture had its origin early in the present century, though in past times ...

Book 3  p. 90
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34 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Wright?s H0u.w~
good behaviour of William Douglas of Hyvelie
(Reg : Privy Council Scot.). His son Robert, who
was a visitor at the house of William Turnbull of
Airdrie, then resident in Edinburgh, on the 4th
of September, 1608, ? by craft and violence,?
carried off a daughter of the latter in her eleventh
year, and kept her in some obscure place, where
her father could not discover her. Turnbull
brought this matter before the Privy Council, by
Nhom Robert Napier was denounced as a rebel
and outlaw. Of this old family nothing now
remains but a tomb on the north side of the
choir of St. Giles?s; it bears the Merchiston crest
and the Wrychtishouse shield, and has thus been
more than once pointed out as the last restingplace
of the inventor of the logarithms.
The Napiers of Wrychtishousis, says the biographer
of the philosopher, were a race quite dis
tinct from that of Merchiston, and were obviously
a branch of Kilmahew, whose estates lay in Lennox.
Their armorial bearings were, or on a bend azure,
between two mullets or spur rowels.
In its later years this old mansion was the residence
of Lieutenant-General Robertson of Lude,
who served throughout the whole American war,
and brought home with him, at its close, a negro,
who went by the name of Black Tom, who occupied
a room on the ground floor. Tom was again and
again heard to complain of being unable to rest
at night, as the figure of a lady, headless, and
with a child in her arms, rose out of the hearth,
and terrified him dreadfully ; but no one believed
Tom, and his story was put down to intoxication.
Be that as it may, ? when the old mansion was
pulled down to build Gillespie?s Hospital there was
found under the hearthstone of that apartment a
box containing the body of a female, from which
the head had been severed, and beside her lay the
remains of an infant, wrapped in a pillow-case
trimmed with lace. She appeared, poor lady, to
have been cut off in the blossom of her sins ; for
she was dressed, and her scissors were yet hanging
by a ribbon to her side, and her thimble was also
in the box, having, apparently, fallen from her
shrivelled fingers.??
If we are to judge from the following notice in
the Edinburgh HeraZd for 6th April 1799, the
mansion was once the residence of Lord Barganie
(whose peerage is extiiict), as we are told that by
Gillespie?s trustees, ?I Barganie House, at the
Wrights Houses, has been purchased, with upwards
of six acres of ground, where this hospital is to be
erected, The situation is very judiciously chosen;
it is elevated, dry, and healthy.?
In 1800 the demolition was achieved, but not
without a spirited remonstrance in the Edinburgh
Mopzinc for that year, and Gillespie?s Hospital,
a tasteless edifice, designed by Mr. Burn, a builder,
in that ridiculous castellated style called ?&Carpenter?s
Gothic,? took its place. The founder, James
Gillespie, was the eldest of two brothers, who occupied
a shop as tobacconists east of the Market
Cross, Here John, the younger, attended to the
business, while the former resided at Spylaw, near
Colinton, and superintended a mill which they had
erected there for grinding snuff; and there snuff
was ground years after for the Messrs. Kichardson,
105, West Bow. Neither of the brothers married,
,and though frugal and industrious, were far
from being miserly. They lived among their workmen
and domestics, in quite a homely and
patriarchal manner, ? Waste not, want not ? being
ever their favourite maxim, and money increased in
their hands quickly. Even in extreme age, we are
told that James Gillespie, with an old blanket
round him and a night-cap on, both covered with
snuff, regularly attended the mill, superintending
the operations of his man, Andrew Fraser, who
was a hale old man, living in the hospital, when
the first edition of I? Kay ? was published, in I 838.
James kept a carriage, however, for which the Hon.
Henry Erskine suggested as a motto :-
?Wha wad hae thocht it,
That noses had bocht it??
He survived his brother five years, and dying at
Spylaw on the 8th April, 1797, in his eightieth
year, was buried in Colinton churchyard. By his
will he bequeathed his estate, together with _f;I 2,000
sterling (exclusive of A2,700 for the erection and
endowment of a school), ? for the special intent and
purpose of founding and endowing an hospital, or
charitable institution, within the city ,of Edinburgh
or suburbs, for the aliment and maintenance of old
men and women.?
In 1801 the governors obtained a royal charter,
forming them into a body corporate as ?The
Governors of James Gillespie?s Hospital and Free
School.?.
The persons entitled to admittance were :-first,
Mr. Gillespie?s old servants ; second, all persons
of his surname over fifty-five years of age; third,
persons of the same age belonging to Edinburgh
and Leith, failing whom, from all other parts of
Midlothian. None were to be admitted who had
private resources, or were otherwise than ? decent,
godly, and well-behaved men and women.?
In the Council-room of the hospital-from
which the school was built apart-is an excellent ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Wright?s H0u.w~ good behaviour of William Douglas of Hyvelie (Reg : Privy Council ...

Book 5  p. 34
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66 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Holyrood.
CHAPTER X,
HOLYKOOD PALACE (continued).
.Queen Mary?s Apartments-Her Amval in Edinburgh-Riot in the Chapel Royal-? The Queen?s Maries ?-Interview with Knox-Mary?s
Marriage with Darnley-The Position of Rizzio-The Murder of Rurio-Burial of Darnley-Marriage of Mary and Bothwell-Mary?s Last
Visit to Holyrood-James VI. and the ? Mad? Earl of Bothwcll-Baptism of the Queen of Bohemia and Charles I.-Taylor the Water-poet
at Holyrood-Charles I.?s Imprisonment-Palace Burned and Re-built-The Palace before 1 6 5 T h e Present Palace-The Quadranglb
The Gallery of the Kings-The Tapestry-The Audience-Chamber.
A WINDING stair in the Tower of James V. gives
access to the oldest portion of the palace, known
.as ? I Queen Mary?s Apartments,? on the third floor,
and forming the most interesting portion of the
whole edifice, To the visitor, in Mary?s bedchamber
there seems a solemn gloom which even
the summer sunshine cannot brighten, ruddy
though the glare may be which streams through
that tall window, where we can see the imperial
crown upon its octagon turret. The light seems
only to lay too bare the fibres of the old oak
floor and all the mouldering finery ; a sense of the
pathetic, with something of horror and much of
sadness, mingles in the thoughtful mind; and
much of this was felt even by Dr. Johnson, when he
stood there with Boswell on the 15th of August,
r773.?
With canopy and counterpane, dark and in
shadow, there stands the old pillared bed, with its
crimson silk and satin faded into orange, wherein
slept, and doubtless too often wept, the fair
young Queen of Scotland-she who spent her
happy teens at the Bourbon court, her passionate
youth so sorrowfully in grim grey Scotland, and
who gave up her soul to God at Fotheringay, in
premature old age, and with a calm grandeur that
never saint surpassed.
On the wall there hangs the arras wrought with
the fall of Phaeton, now green and amber-tinted,
revealing the gloomy little door through which
pale Ruthven and stern Darnley burst with their
daring associates, and close by is the supper-room
from whence the shrieking Rizzio was dragged,
and done to death with many a mortal wound.
To the imaginative Scottish mind the whole place
conjures up scenes and events that can never die.
The day on which the queen arrived at Leith,
after a thirteen years? absence from her native land,
was, as Knox tells us, the most dull and gloomy in
the memory of man. She had come ten days
before she was expected, and such preparations as
the now impoverished people made-impoverished
by foreign and domestic strife since Pinkie had been
lost-were far from complete. The ship containing
her horses and favourite palfrey had been
lawlessly captured by an English admiral ; but
her brother, Lord James Stuart, supplied steeds ;
and Mary, who was accompanied by her uncles,
the Dukes d?Aumale, Guise, Nemours, the Cardinal
of Lorraine, the Grand Prior, the Marquis d?Elbauf,
and others, could not restrain her tears of mortification
at the gloom and general poverty that appeared
on every hand.
She made her public entry into the city on the
1st of September, and her reception, though
homely, was sincere and cordial, for the Scots
of old had a devotion to their native monarchs
that bordered on the sublime ; and now the youth
and beauty of Mary, and the whole peculiarity
of her position, were calculated to engage the
interest and affection of her people.
The twelve citizens who bore a canopy over
her head were apparelled in black velvet gowns
and doublets of crimson satin, with velvet bonnets
and hose. All citizens in the procession had
black silk gowns faced with velvet and satin
doublets, while the young craftsmen, who marched
in front, wore taffeta. The Upper and Salt Trons,
Tolbooth, and Netherbow were all decorated with
banners and garlands as she proceeded to Holyrood.
The apartments she first occupied were on the
ground floor, and BrantBme gives an amusing
account of the manner in which the citizens
endeavoured to provide for her amusement for
several nights, to the grievous annoyance of her
refined French atteqdants. There came under
her windows,? says he, ? five or six hundred citizens,
who gave her a concert of the vilest fiddles
and little rebecs, which are as bad as they can
be in that country, and accompanied them with
singing psalms, but so wretchedly out of tune
and concord that nothing could be worse.
what melody it was ! what a lullaby for the night ! ?
?They were a company of honest men,? according
to Knox, ?who with instruments of music
gave her their salutations at her chamber window.??
Mary, with policy, expressed her thanks, but removed
to a part of the palace beyond the reach
of this terrible minstrelsy.
She was only nineteen, with few advisers and
none on whom she could rely, and was ignorant
of the people over whom she had been called to
govern. Protestantism was now the only legal
Ah !? ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Holyrood. CHAPTER X, HOLYKOOD PALACE (continued). .Queen Mary?s Apartments-Her Amval ...

Book 3  p. 66
(Score 0.22)

sacres will, in a short space, run a great length. I desire
you may disperse this news abroad, if it be not in town
before your receipt of this ; for that country, and the North
of England, without speedy relief, is jn great danger of
depopulation. And the Duke of Gordon h$th in his possession
the Castle of Edinburgh, whereby he can at pleasure
level that city with the ground. At twelve of the clock yesternight
our Governor, LieutXollonel Billingsley, dispatched
an Express to the Lords Danby and Lumley for drawing their
forces to this town. I received yours to-day, which being
Sabbath-day, I beg your pardon for brevity.
? I was told they see the fires and burnings of those Rebels
at Edinburgh ; this is the beginning of the discovery of the
Popish intrigue. God defend England from the French, and
his Highness the Prince of Orange from the bloody Popish
attempts I
?London : Published by J- Wells, St. Paul?s Alley, St.
Paul?s Churchyard, ~688.?
Tidings of William?s landing filled the Scottish
Presbyterians with the wildest joy, and the magis-
THUMBIKIN.
( F m the Musewnr ofthe Society of Antiguarirs of Scutland.)
trates of Edinburgh, who but two years before
had been extravagant in their protestations to
James VII., were among the first to welcome the
invader; and the city filled fast with bands of
jubilant revolutionists, rendering it unsafe for all of
cavalier tenets to be within the walls. On the 11th
of April, 1688, William and Mxry were proclaimed
at the cross king and queen of Scotland, after an
illegally constituted Convention of the Estates,
which was attended by only thirty representatives,
declared that King James had forfeited all title to
the crown, thus making a vacancy. A great and
sudden change now came over the realm. ? Men,?
says Dr. Chambers, ?who had been lately in
danger of their lives for consciencl sake, or
starving in foreign lands, were now at the head
of affairs! The Earl of Melville, Secretary of
State ; Crawford, President of Parliament ; Argyle,
restored to title and lands, and a Privy Councillor;
Dalrymple of Stair, Hume of Marchmont,
Stewart of Goodtrees, and many other exiles,
came back from Holland, to resume prominent
positions in the public service at home; while
the instruments of the late unhappy Government
were either captives under suspicion, or living
terror-struck at their country houses. Common
people, who had been skulking in mosses from
Claverhouse?s dragoons, were now marshalled into
Y regiment, and planted as a watch on the Perth
md Forfar gentry. There were new figures in the
Privy Council, and none of them ecclesiastical.
There was a wholly new set of senators on the
bench of the Court of Session. It looked like a
sudden shift of scenes in a pantomime rather than
a series of ordinary occurrences.? For three days
and nights Edinburgh was a wild scene of pillage
and rapine. The palace was assailed, the chapel
royal sacked ; and the Duke of Gordon, on finding
that the rabble, drunk and maddened by wine and
spirits found in the cellars of cavalier families who
had fled, were .wantonly firing on his sentinels,
drew up the drawbridge, to cut off all communication
with the city; but finding that his soldiers
were divided in their religious and political
opinions, and that a revolt was impending, he
called a council of officers to frustrate the attempt ;
and the Lieutenant-Governor, Colonel John Winram,
of Liberton and the Inch House, Colonel of
the Scots Foot Guards in 1683, undertook to
watch the men, forty-four of whom it was deemed
necessary to strip of their uniforms and expel from
the fortress. In their place came thirty Highlanders,
onqthe 11th of November, and 300n after
forty-five more, under Gordon of Midstrath.
By the Privy Council the Duke was requested,
as a Roman Catholic, to surrender his command
to the next senior Protestant officer; but he declined,
saying, ?I am bound only to obey King
James VII.?
A few of the Life Guards and Greys, who had
quitted the Scottish army on its revolt, now reached
Edinburgh under the gallant Viscount Dundee,
and their presence served to support the spirits of
the Royalists, but the friends of the Revolution
brought in several companies of infantry, who were
concealed in the suburbs, and 6,000 Cameronians
marched in from the west, under standards inscribed,
?O For Reformation according to the Word
of God,? below an open Bible. These men
nobly rejected all remuneration, saying, with one
voice, ?We have come to serve our country.?
Their presence led to other conspiracies in the
garrisan, and the Duke of Gordon had rather a
harassing time of it.
The friends of William of Orange having formed
a plan for? the assassination of Dundee and Sir
George Mackenzie of Rosehahgh, compelled them ... will, in a short space, run a great length. I desire you may disperse this news abroad, if it be not in ...

Book 1  p. 62
(Score 0.22)

Parliament House.] THE COLLEGE OF JUSTICE. -
a vote among themselves in favour of that protest,
declaring it to be founded on the laws of the realm,
for which they were prosecuted before Parliament,
and sharply reprimanded, a circumstance which
gave great offence to the nation..
The affairs ot the Faculty are managed by a
Dean, or President, a Treasurer, Clerk, and selected
Council ; and, besides the usual branches
of a liberal education, those who are admitted
.as advocates must have gone through a regular
course of civil and Scottish law.
Connected with the Court of Session is the
Society of Clerks, or Writers to the Royal Signet,
whose business it is to subscribe the writs that
pass under that signet in Scotland, and practise as
attorneys before the Courts of Session, Justiciary,
and the Jury Court The office of Keeper of the
Signet is a lucrative one, but is performed by a
deputy. The qualifications for admission to this
body are an apprenticeship for five years with one of
the members, after two years? attendance at the University,
and on a course of lectures on conveyancing
given by a lecturer appointed by the Society, and
also on the Scottish law class in the University.
Besides these Writers to the Signet, who enjoy
the right of conducting exclusively certain branches
.of legal procedure, there is another, but? inferior,
society of practitioners, who act as attorneys before
the various Courts, in which they were of long
standing, but were only incorporated in 1797, under
the title of Solicitors before the Supreme Courts,
The Judges of the Courts of Session and Justiciary,
with members of these before-mentioned
corporate bodies, and the officers of Court, form
the College of Justice instituted by James V., and
of which the Judges of the Court of Session enjoy
the title of Senators.
The halls for the administration of justice immediately
adjoin the Parliament House. The Court
af Session is divided into what are nanied the
Outer and Inner Houses. The former consists of
five judges, or Lords Ordinary, occupying separate
Courts, where cases are heard for the first time;
tbe latter comprises two Courts, technically known
.as the First and Second Divisions. Four Judges
sit in each of these, and it is before them that
litigants, if dissatisfied with the Outer House decision,
may bring their cases for final judgment,
unless .afterwards they indulge in the expensive
luxury of appealing to the House of Lords.
The Courts of the Lords Ordinary enter from
the corridor at the south end of the great hall, and
Those of the Inner House from a long lobby on the
east side of it.
Although the .College of Justice was instituted
by James V., and held its first sederunt in the
old Tolbooth on the 27th of May, 1532, it
was first projected by his uncle, the Regent-
Duke of Albany. The Court originally consisted
of the Lord Chancellor, the Lord President,
fourteen Lords Ordinary, or Senators (one-half
clergy and one-half laity), and afterwards an indefinite
number of supernumerary judges, designated
Extraordinary Lords. The annual expenses of
this Court were defrayed from the revenues of
the clergy, who bitterly, but vainly, remonstrated
against this taxation. It may not be uninteresting
to give here the names of the first members of the
Supreme Judicature :-
Alexander, Abbot of Cambuskenneth, Lord
President ; Richard Bothwell, Rector of Askirk
(whose father was Provost .of Edinburgh in the
time of James 111,); John Dingwall, Provost of
the Trinity Church; Henry White, Dean of
Brechin ; William Gibson, Dean of Restalrig ;
Thomas Hay, Dean of Dunbar; Robert Reid,
Abbot of Kinloss ; George Kerr, Provost of
Dunglass ; Sir William Scott of Balwearie ; Sir
John Campbell of Lundie ; Sir James Colville
of Easter Wemyss; Sir Adam Otterburne of
Auldhame ; Nicolas Crawford. of Oxengangs ; Sir
Francis Bothwell (who was provost of the city
in 1535); and James Lawson of the Highriggs.
The memoirs which have been preserved of
the administration of justice by the Court of
Session in the olden time are not much to its
honour. The arbitrary nature of it is referred to
by Buchanan, and in the time of James VI. we
find the Lord Chancellor, Sir Alexander Seaton
(Lord Fyvie in 1598), superintending the lawsuits
of a friend, and instructing him in the mode and
manner in which they should be conducted. But
Scott of Scotstarvit gives us a sorry account of
this peer, who owed his preferment to Anne of
Denmark. The strongest proof of the corrupt
nature of the Court is given us by the -4ct passed
by the sixth parliament of. James VI., in 1579,
by which the Lords were prohibited, ? No uther be
thamselves, or be their wives, or servantes, to take
in ony times cumming, bud, bribe, gudes, or geir,
fra quhat-sum-ever person or persones presently
havand, or that hereafter sal1 happen to have
ony actions or causes persewed before them,?
under pain of confiscation (Glendoick?s Acts, fol.).
The necessity for this law plainly evinws that
the secret acceptance of bribes must have been
common among the judges of the time; while,
in other instances, the warlike spirit of the people
paralysed the powers of the Court.
When a noble, or chief of rank, was summoned tu ... House.] THE COLLEGE OF JUSTICE. - a vote among themselves in favour of that protest, declaring it to ...

Book 1  p. 167
(Score 0.22)

Craiglockhart.1 THE CRAIG HOUSE. ? 43
at Marischal College, Mr. Burton was apprenticed
to a legal practitioner in the Granite City, after
which he became, in 1831, an advocate at the
Scottish Bar. Among the young men who crowd
the Parliament House from year to year he found
little or no practice, and he began to devote his
time to the study of law, history, and political
economy, on all of which subjects he wrote several
papers in the Edinburgh Review and also in the
Westminster Rmiew. He was author of the ?Lives?
of David Hume, Lord Lovat, and Duncan Forbes
of Culloden, ?Narratives of the Criminal Law of
Scotland,? a ?History of Scotland from Agricola
to the Revolution of 1688,? and another history
from that period to the extinction of the last
Jacobite insurrection. ? The Scot Abroad ? he
published in 1864, and ?The Book Hunter.? In
1854 he was appointed secretary to the Scottish
Prison Board, and on its abolition, in 1860, he
was corhnued as manager and secretary in connection
with the Home Office. Soon after the
publication of the first four volumes of his early
?History of Scotland,? the old office in the Queen?s
Scottish Household, Historiographer Royal, being
vacant, it was conferred upon him.
At the quaint old Craig House, which is said
to be haunted by the spectre known as ?The
Green Lady,? he frequently had small gatherings
of literary visitors to the Scottish capital,
which dwell pleasantly in the memory of .those
who took part in them. He was hospitably inclined,
kind of heart, and full of anecdote. ? His
library was a source of never-failing delight,? says
a writer in the Scotsman in 1881 ; ?but his library
did not mean a particular room. At Craig House
the principal rooms are e?z suite, and they were all
filled or covered with books. The shelves were
put up by Mr. Burton?s own hands, and the books
were arranged by himself, so that he knew where
to find any one, even in the dark; and one of the
greatest griefs of his life was the necessity, some
time ago, to disperse this library, which he had
spent his life in collecting. In politics Mr. Burton
was a strong Liberal He took an active part in
the repeal of the Corn Laws, and was brought into
close friendship with Richard Cobden.?
The work by which his name will be chiefly
remembered is, no doubt, his ?History of Scotland,?
though its literary style has not many charms ; but
it is very truthful, if destitute of the brilliant wordpainting
peculiar to Mawulay. ?? It is something
for a man,? says the writer above quoted, to have
identified himself with such a piece of work as the
history of his native country, and that has been
done as completely by John Hill Burton in connection
with the ? History of Scotland? as by any
historiar of any country.?
Immediately under the brow of Craiglockhart,
on its western side, there are-half hidden among
trees and the buildings of a farm-steading-the
curious remains of a very ancient little fortalice,
which seems to be totally without a history, as no
notice of it has appeared in any statistical account,
nor does it seem to be referred to in the ?Retours.?
It is a tower, nearly square, measuring twentyeight
feet six inches by twenty-four feet eight inches
externally, with walls six feet three inches thick,
built massively, as the Scots built of old, for
eternity rather than for time, to all appearance.
A narrow arched doorway, three feet wide, gives
access to the arched entrance of the lower vault
and a little stair in the wall that ascended to the
upper storey. Though without a history, this
sturdy little fortlet must have existed probably
centuries before a stone of the old Craig House
was built.
A little way northward of this tower, on what
must have been the western skirt of the Burghmuir,
stood the ancient mansion of Meggetland, of which
not a vestige now remains but a solitary gate-pillar,
standing in a field near the canal. In the early
part of the eighteenth century it was occupied by a
family named Sievewright ; and Robert Gordon, a
well-known goldsmith in Edinburgh, died there in
A little way westward of Craiglockhart is the old
manor-house of Redhall, which was the property of
Sir Adam Otterburn, Lord Advocate in the time of
James V. ; but the name is older than that age, as
Edward I. of England is said to have been at
Redhall in the August of I 298.
In the records of the Coldstream Guards it is
mentioned that in August 18th and ~ 4 t h ~ before
the battle of Dunbar, in 1650, ten companies of that
regiment, then known as General Monk?s, were
engaged at the siege of Redhall, which was carried
by storm. This was after Cromwell had been
foiled in his attempt to break the Scottish lines
before Edinburgh, and had marched westward from
his camp near the Braid Hills to cut off the supplies
of Leslie from the westward. but was foiled again,
and had to fall back on hnbar, intending to retreat
to England.
Apathway that strikes off across the Links of
Bruntsfield, in a south-easterly direction, leads to
the old and tree-bordered White House Loan,
which takes its name from the mansion on the east
side thereof, to which a curious classical interest
attaches, and which seems to have existed before
the Revolution, as in 1671, James Chrystie, of
1767- ... THE CRAIG HOUSE. ? 43 at Marischal College, Mr. Burton was apprenticed to a legal practitioner in ...

Book 5  p. 43
(Score 0.22)

270 OLD AND *NEW EDINBURGH. [Brown Square.
Till about 1780 the inhabitants of these districts
formed a distinct class of themselves, and had their
own places of amusement, independent of all the
rest of the city. Nor was it until the New Town
was rather far advanced that the sowfh side lost its
attractions; and we are told that, singular as it
may appear, there was one instance, if not more, of
a gentleman living and dying in this southern district
without having once visited, or even seen, the
New Town, although at the time of his death it
had extended westward to Castle Street. (Scott?s ?? Provincial Antiquities.?)
In the notes to ? Redgauntlet,? the same author
tells us, that in its time Brown Square was hailed
?as an extremely elegant improvement ? on Edmburgh
residences, even witli its meagre plot of
grass and shabby iron railings. It is here he
places the house of Saunders Fairford, where Man
is described as first beholding the mysterious Lady
GreenmanfZe, and as being so bewildered with her
appearance, that he stood as if he had been
senseless. ? The door was opened, out she went,
walked along the pavement, turned down the
close (at the north-east end of the square leading
into the Cowgate), and put the sun, I believe,
into her pocket when she disappeared, so suddenly
did dulness and darkness sink down on the
square when she was no longer visible.?
To show how much this new locality was thought
of, we will here quote a letter in the Edinburgh
Adverfiser of 6th March, 1764 (Vol. I.) :-
?Su,-\Vith pleasure I have observed of late
the improvements we are making in this metropolis,
and there is nothing which pleases me yore than
the taste for elegant buildings, than which nothing
can be a greater ornament to a city, or give a
stranger a greater impression of the improvement
of the inhabitants in polite and liberal arts.
? That very elegant square, called Brown Square,
which, in my opinion, is a very great beauty to the
town, is now almost finished, and last day the
green pasture was railed in. Now, I think, to
complete the whole, an elegant statue in the
middle would be well worth the expense; and I
dare say the gentlemen who possess houses there
would not grudge a small sum to have that part
adorned with an equestrian statue of his present
Majesty George the Thud, and which I should think,
would be contributed to by public subscriptions,
set a-foot for that purpose. Whie we are thus
making such improvements, I am surprised nobody
has ever mentioned an improvement on our
College [the old one was then extant] which, as it
now is, gives strangers but an unfavourable idea of
our University, which, however, is at present so
flourishing. . . . , To have a handsome building
for that purpose is surely the desire of every good
citizen. This could be easily accomplished by
various means. Suppose a lottery should be proposed,
every student I dare say would take a
ticket, and I would venture to ensure the success
of it.?
But George 111. was fated not to have a statue
either in Brown Square or Great King Street, according
to a suggestion some sixty years afterwards
; yet as a proof that the square was deemed
alike fashionable and elegant, we may enumerate
some of those who resided there. . Among them
were the Dowager Lady Elphinstone (daughter of
John sixth Earl of Wigton) who had a house here
in 1784; Henry Pundas (afterwards Viscount
Melville), when a member of the Faculty of Advocates;
Sir Islay Campbell, Bart., of Succoth, in the
days when it was the custom of the senators to
walk to court in the morning, with nicely powdered
wigs, and a small cocked hat in the hand-a practice
retained nearly to the last by Lord Glenlee:
he was afterwards Lord President. He bought
Lord Melville?s house in Brown Square, and after
a time removed to York Place.
His successor in the same residence, No. 15,-
was John Anstruther of that ilk, Advocate, with
whom resided the family of Charles Earl of
Traquair, whose mother was a daughter of Sir
Philip Anstruther of Anstrutherfield. Other residents
were Lord Henderland and the future Lord
President Blair of Avontoun, both when at the bar,
and William Craig, afterwards a Lord of Justiciary
in 1792; Sir John Forbes-Drummond, when a
captain of the Royal Navy, and before he became
Baronet of Hawthornden ; Henry Mackenzie, the
ubiquitous ? Man of Feeling ; ? Lord Woodhouselee,
and the Lord President Miller, whose residence
was the large house (No. 17) with the painted front,
on the north side, the interior of which, with its
frescoes and panelings, is now one of the finest
specimens remaining of a fashionable Edinburgh
mansion of the eighteenth century; and therein
lived and died his son Lord Glenlee, who (uZtimus
Scoforum 2) resisted the attraction of three successive
New Towns, to which all his brethren had
long before fled.
He retained, until within a few years of his death,
the practice referred to, of walking daily to Court,
hat in hand, with a powdered wig, through Brown
Square, down Crombie?s Close, across the Cowgate,
xnd up the Back Stairs to the Parliament Houser
ittended by his valet, and always scrupulously
kessed in black. In 1838, when nearly eighty
years of age, this grand lord of the old school, ... OLD AND *NEW EDINBURGH. [Brown Square. Till about 1780 the inhabitants of these districts formed a distinct ...

Book 4  p. 270
(Score 0.22)

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

Book 3  p. 155
(Score 0.22)

146 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [George Smn
could be done.? On leaving the church, the
protestors proceeded to Tanfield Hall, Canonmills,
where they formed themselves into ?The General
Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland,? and
chose Thomas Chalmers, D.D., as their moderator;
so ?? the bush burned, but was not consumed.?
It was a remarkable instance of the emphatic
assertion of religious principle in an age of
material things of which St. Andrew?s church was
the scene on the 18th of May. It was no sacrifice
of blood or life or limb that was exacted,
or rendered, as in the days of ?a broken covenant
;? but it was one well calculated to excite
the keenest emotions of the people-for all these
clergymen, with their families, cast their bread upon
the waters, and those who witnessed the dark procession
that descended the long steep street towards
Tanfield Hall never forgot it.
Opposite this church there was built the old
Physicians? Hall-the successor of the still more
ancient one near the Cowgate Port. The members
of that college feued from the city a large area,
extending between the south side of George Street
and Rose Street, on which they erected a very
handsome hall, with rooms and offices, from a
design by Mr. Craig, the architect of the new city
itself.
The foundation stone was laid by Professor
Cullen, long a distinguished ornament of the
Edinburgh University, on the 27th November, I 775,
after a long discussion concerning two other sites
offered by the city, one in George Square, the
other where now the Scott monument stands. In
the stone was placed a parchment containing the
names of the then fellows, several coins of 1771,
md a large silver medal. There was also another
silver medal, with the arms of the city, and an
inscription bearing that it had been presented by
the city to Mr. Craig, in compliment to his professional
talents in 1767, as follows :-
JACOBO CRAIG,
AHCHITECTO,
PROPTER OPT1 IM U M,
EDINBURGI NOVI
ICHNOGRAPHIUM,
D.D.
SENATUS,
EDINBURGENSIS,
MDCCLXVII.
This building, now numbered among the things
that were, had a frontage of eighty-four feet, and
had a portico of four very fine Corinthian columns,
standing six feet from the wall upon a flight of
steps seven feet above the pavement. The sunk
floor, which was all vaulted, contained rooms for the
librarian and other officials ; the entrance floor
consisted of four great apartments opening frcm a
noble vestibule, with a centre of thirty-five feet :
one was for the ordinary meetings of the college,
and another was an ante-chamber; but the principal
apartment was the library-a room upwards of
fifty feet long by thirty broad, lighted by two rows
of windows, five in each row, facing Rose Street,
and having a gilded gallery on three sides. On this
edifice A4,800 was spent.
In 1781, the library, which had been stored up
in the Royal Infirmary, was removed to the hall,
when the collection, which now greatly exceeds
6,000 volumes, was still comparatively in its
infancy. Dr. Archibald Stevenson was the first
librarian, and was appointed in 1683 ; in 1696 a
law was enacted that every entrant should contribute
at least one book to the library, which was
increased in 1705 ? by the purchase of the books
of the deceased Laird of Livingstone for about
300 merks Scots;? and the records show how year
by year the collection has gone on increasing in
extent, and in literary and scientific value.
The two oldest names on the list of Fellows
admitted are Peter Kello, date December IIth,
1682, and John Abernethy, whose diploma is
dated June gth, 1683, granted at Orange, and
admitted December qth, 1684, and a wonderful
roll follows of names renowned in tke annals of
medicine. The attempt to incorporate the practitioners
of medicine in Scotland, for the purpose
of raising alike the standard of their character and
acquirements, originated in 1617, when James VI.
issued an order in Parliament for the establishnient
of a College of Physicians in Edinburgh-an order
which recites the evils suffered by the community
from the intrusion of uhqualified practitioners. He
further suggested that three members of the proposed
college should yearly visit the apothecaries?
shops, and destroy all bad or insufficient drugs
found therein ; but the year 1630 came, and found
only a renewal of the proposal for a college,
referred to the Privy Council by Charles I. But
the civil war followed, and nothing more was done
till 1656, when Cromwell issued a patent, still extant,
initiating a college of physicians in Scotland,
with the powers proposed by James VI.
Years passed on, and by the opposition principally
of the College of Surgeons, the universities,
the municipality, and even the clergy, the charter
of incorporation was not obtained until 1681, when
the great seal of Scotland was appended to it on
St, Andrew?s day. Among other clauses therein
was one to enforce penalties on the unqualified
who practised medicine; another for the punishment
of all licentiates who might violate the laws ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [George Smn could be done.? On leaving the church, the protestors proceeded to ...

Book 3  p. 146
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282 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
style, with many ornate gables, dormer windows,
%ut was a second time stolen ; and in the strangulation
on the scaffold, and the being fouricl in a
ditch among water, the superstitious saw retributive
justice for the murder of which he was
assumed to be guilty. ? I t will be acknowledged,?
says the author of the ? Domestic Annals,?
?that in the circumstances related there is not a
particle of valid evidence against the young man.
The surgeons? opinion as to the fact of strangulation
is not entitled to much regard ; but, granting
its solidity, it does not prove the guilt of the ac-
.cused. The horror of the young man on seeing
his father?s blood might be referred to painful recol-
Jections of that profligate conduct which he knew
had distressed his parent, and brought his grey
hairs with sorrow to the grave-especially when we
reflect that Stanfield would himself be impressed
with the superstitious feelings of the age, and might
.accept the hzmorrhage as an accusation by heaven
on account of the concern his conduct had in
shortening the life of his father. The whole case
:seems to be a lively illustration of the effect of
superstitious feelings in blinding justice.?
We have thus traced the history of the High
Street and its closes down once more to the
Nether Bow.
In the World?s End Close Lady Lawrence was
a residenter in 1761, and Lady Huntingdon in 1784,
and for some years after the creation of the New
Town, people of position continued to linger in the
Old Town and in the Canongate. And from Peter
Williamson?s curious little ?? Directory ? for 1784,
we can glean a few names, thus :-
I Scottish gentleman, who, though he did not partici-
Lady Mary Carnegie, in Bailie Fyfe?s Close;
Lady Colstoun and the Hon. Alexander Gordon,
on the Castle Hill; General Douglas, in Baron
Maule?s Close; Lady Jean Gordon, in the Hammerman?s
Close; Sir James Wemyss, in Riddle?s
Close; Sir John Whiteford of that ilk, in the
Anchor Close ; Sir Jameg Campbell, in the Old
Bank Close; Erskine of Cardross, in the Horse
Wynd ; Lady Home, in Lady Stair?s Close.
In Monteith?s Close, in 1794, we find in the
? Scottish Hist. Register for 1795 recorded the
death of Mr. John Douglas, Albany herald, uncle
of Sir Andrew Snape Douglas, who was captain of
the Queen CharZoffe, of IIO guns, and who fought
her so valiantly in Lord Bridport?s battle on ? the
glonous 23rd of June, 1795.? The house occupied
?by Lady Rothiemay in Turk?s Close, below
Liberton?s Wynd, was advertised for sale in the
Couranf of 1761 ; and there lived, till his death in
1797, James Nelson, collector of the Ministers?
Widows? Fund.
In Morrison?s Close in 1783, we find one of the
most fashionable modisfes of Edinburgh announcing
in the Adverfiser of that year, that she is from ?one
of the most eminent houses in London,? and that
her work is finished in the newest fashions :-
? Chemize de Lorraine, Grecian Robes, Habit Bell,
Robe de Coure, and Levites, different kinds, all in
the most genteel and approved manner, and on the
most reasonable terms.?
In the same year, the signboard of James and
Francis Jeffrey, father and uncle of Lord Jeffrey,
still hung in the Lawnmarket.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
NEW STREETS WITHIN THE AREA OF THE FLODDEN WALL.
h r d ?Cockburn Street-Lord Cockburn-The Scotsmun NewspapeFCharles Maclaren and Alexander Russel-The Queen?s Edinburgh
Rifle Brigade-St. Giles Street-Sketch of the Rise d Journalism in Edinburgh-The EdinQxrgk Courunt-The Daily Rnrieur-Jelfrey
Street-New Trinity College Church
THE principal thoroughfare, which of late years has
been run through the dense masses of the ancient
alleys we have been describing, is Lord Cockburn
Street, which was formed in 1859, and strikes
northward from the north-west corner of Hunter?s
Square, to connect the centre of the 012 city with
-the railway terminus at Waverley Bridge ; it goes
curving down a comparatively steep series of slopes,
and is mainly edificed in the Scottish baronial
lofty tenements in many of the closes that descend
from the north side of the High Street, and was
very properly named after Lord Cockburn, one
entitled to special remembrance on many accounts,
and for the deep interest he took in all matters
connected with his birthplace. When he died,
in April, 1854, he was one of the best and kindliest
of the old school of ?Parliameht House Whigs,?
and was a thorough, honest, shrewd, and benevolent
and conical turrets, high over all of which towers
. the dark and mighty mass of the Royal Exchange.
This new street expdses aromantic section of the
pate to any extent in the literary labours of his
contemporaries, has left behind him an interesting
volume of ? Memorials.? Many can yet recall his ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street. style, with many ornate gables, dormer windows, %ut was a second time ...

Book 2  p. 282
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166 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. Leith.
or ripple or burnished face of water, the very
aspect of which is luxury in a summer day.?
North Leith is bounded on the north ?by the
Firth of Forth, on the south and east by the stream
which gives its name to the whole locality, dividing
it from South Leith, and on the south and west
by St. Cuthbert?s. It is oblong in form, and has
an area of only 517 acres, Its surface is nearly a
uniform level, and with the exception of some
garden grounds is covered by streets and villas.
Between North Leith and Xewhaven the coast has
been to a considerable extent washed away by the
encroaching waves of the Firth, but has now received
the aid of strong stone bulwarks to protect
it from further loss.
The Links of North Leith, which lay along the
coast, were let in 1595 at the annual rent of six
merks, while those of South Leith were let at a rent
of thirty, so the former must have been one-fifth of
the extent of the latter, or a quarter of a mile long
by three hundred yards in breadth. For many
years the last vestiges of these have disappeared
and what must formerly have been a beautiful and
grassy plain is now an irreclaimable waste, where
not partially occupied by the railway and goods
station, regularly flooded by the tide, and displaying
at low water a thick expansion of stones and
pebbles, washed free from mould or soil.
The earliest reference td Leith in history is in
King David?s famous charter to Holyrood, aim
1143-7, whereir. he gives the water, fishings, and
meadows to the canons serving God therein, ?? and
Broctan, with its right marches ; and that Tnverlet
which is nearest the harbour, and with the half of
the fishing, and with a whole tithe of all the fishing
that belongs to the church of St. Cuthbert.?
This charter of King David is either repeated or
quoted in all subsequent grants by charter, or purchases
of superiority, referring to Leith ; and by it
there would seem to have been in that early age
some species of harbour where the Leith joins the
Firth of Forth ; but there is again a reference to it
in 1313, when all the vessels there were burned by
the English during the war waged by Edward II.,
which ended in the following year at Bannockburn.
On the 28th of May, 1329, King Robert I. began
all the future troubles of Leith by a grant of it to
the city of Edinburgh, in the following terms :-
U Robert, by the grace of God King of Scots, to
all good men of his land, greeting: Know ye that
we have given, granted, and to perform let, and by
this our present charter confirmed, to the burgesses
of our burgh of Edinburgh, our foresaid burgh of
Edinburgh, together with the port of Leith, mills,
and their pertinents, to have and to hold, to the
said burgesses and their successors, of us and our
heirs, freely, quietly, fully, and honourably, by all.
their right meithes and marches, with all the commodities,
liberties, and easements which justiy pertained
to the said burgh in the time of King:
Alexander, our predecessor last deceased, of good
memory ; paying, therefore, the said burgesses and
their successors, to us and our heirs, yearly, fiftytwo
merks sterling, at the terms of Whitsunday, and
Martinmas in winter, by equal proportions. In
witness whereof we have commanded our seal to
be affixed to our present charter. Tesfihs, Walter
of Twynham, our Chancellor ; Thomas Randolph,
Earl of Moray, Lord of Annandale and Man, our
nephew ; Janies, Lord of Douglas ; Gilbert of Hay,
our Constable ; Robert of Keith, our Marischal1 of
Scotland, and Adam Moore, knights. At Cardross,
the 28th of May, in the twenty-fourth year of our
reign.? (Burgh Charters, No. iv.)
From the date of this document a contest for the
right of superiority commenced, and till the present
century Leith was never free from the trammels
imposed upon it by the city of Edinburgh ; and the
town council, not content with the privileges given
by Robert Bruce, eventually got possession of the
ground adjacent to the harbour, on the banks of
the river.
In those days the population of the infant port
must have been very small. In the index of missing
royal charters in the time of King Robert II.,
there is one to John Gray, Clerk Register, ? of ane
tenement in Leith,? and another to the monastery
of Melrose of a tenement in the same place;
and in 1357, among those?who entered into an
obligation to pay the ransom of King David II.,
then a prisoner of war in England, we find
? William of Leith,? no doubt a merchant of substance
in his day.
Thomas of Leith, or another bearing the same
name, witnessed a charter of David, Earl of Orkney,
in 1391.
Sir Robert Logan of Restalrig, a man of heartless,
greedy, and rapacious character, began to
contest the-citizens? claim or right of superiority
over Leith, and obliged them to take a concession
of it from him by purchase or charter, dated the
31st of May, 1398 ; and to this document we have
referred in a preceding chapter. Prior to this, says
Maitland, the course of traffic was restricted by
him ?to the use of a narrow and inconvenient lane,
a little beneath the Tolbooth Wynd, now called the
Burgess Close.?
As we have related in the account of Restalrig,
Sir Robert Logan granted to the community of
Edinburgh a right to the waste lands in the vicinity
(Burgh Charters, Xo. vi.) ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. Leith. or ripple or burnished face of water, the very aspect of which is luxury in a ...

Book 5  p. 166
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High Street.] THE BRITISH LINEN COMPANY. 279
resided here was John, fourth Marquis, who was
Secretary of State for Scotland from 1742 till 1745,
when he resigned the office, on which the Government
at once availed themselves of the opportunity
for leaving it vacant, as it has remained ever since.
He died in 1762, and soon after the carriageentrance
and the fine old terraced garden of the
house, which lay on the slope westward, were
removed to make way for the Episcopal church in
the Cowgate-doomed in turn to be forsaken by
its founders, and even by their successors.
From the Tmeeddale family the mansion passed
into the hands of the British Linen Company, and
became their banking house, until they deserted it
for Moray House in the Canongate, from which they
ultiniatelymigrated to a statelier edifice inSt. Andrew
Square. This company was originally incorpo-
Tated by a charter under the Privy Seal granted by
George 11. on the 6th of July, 1746, at a time
when the mind of the Scottish people was still
agitated by the events of the preceding year and
the result of the battle of Culloden; and it was
deemed an object of the first importance to tranquillise
the country and call forth its resources, so
that the attention of the nation should be directed
to the advantages of trade and manufacture. With
this view the Government, as well as many gentlemen
of rank and fortune, exerted themselves to
promote the linen manufacture, which had been
lately introduced, deeming that it would in time
become the staple manufacture of Scotland, and
provide ample employment for her people, while
.extensive markets for the produce of their labour
would be found alike at home and in the colonies,
then chiefly supplied by the linens of Germany.
By the Dukes of Queensberry and Argyle, who
became the first governors of the British Linen
Company, representations to this effect were made
to Government, and by the Earls of Glencairn, Eglinton,
Galloway, Panmure, and many other peers,
together with the Lord Justice Clerk Fletcher of
Saltoun, afterwards Lord Milton, who was the first
deputy governor, and whose mother, when an exile
in Holland during the troubles, had secretly obtained
a knowledge of the art of weaving and of
dressidg the fine linen known as ? Holland,? and
introduced its manufacture at the village of Saltoun;
by the Lord Justice Clerk Alva ; Provost George
Drummond ; John Coutts, founder of the famous
banking houses of Forbes and Co., and Coutts
and Co. in the Strand; by Henry Home, Lord
Kames ; and many othqs, all of whom urged the
establishment of the company, under royal sanction,
and offered to become subscribers to the undertaking.
A charter was obtained in accordance with their
views and wishes, establishing the British Linen
Company as a corporation, and bestowing upon
it ample privileges, not only to manufacture and
deal in linen fabrics, but also to do all that
might conduce to the promotion thereof; and
authority was given to raise a capital of ~roo,ooo,
to be enlarged by future warrants under the
sign manual of his Majesty, his heirs and successors,
to such sums as the affairs of the company
might .require. After this the company engaged to
a considerable extent in the importation of flax and
the manufacture of yarns and linens, having warehouses
both in Edinburgh and London, and in its
affairs none took a more active part than Lord
Milton, who was an enthusiast in all that related to
the improvement of trade, agriculture, and learning,
in his native country; but it soon became apparent
that the company ? would be of more utility, and
better promote the objects of their institution, by
enlarging the issue of their notes to traders, than
being traders and manufacturers themselves.?
By degrees, therefore, the company withdrew
from all manufacturing operations and speculations,
and finally closed them in 1763, from which year
to the present time their business has been confined
to the discount of bills, advances on accounts,
and other b.ank transactions, in support of Scottish
trade generally, at home and abroad. ?By the
extension of their branch agencies to a great number
of towns,? to quote their own historical report, ? and
the employment in discounts and cash advaqces of
their own funds, as well as of that portion of the
formerly scanty and inactive money capital of Scotland
which has been lodged with the company, they
have been the means of contributing very materially
to the encouragement of useful industry throughout
Scotland, and to her rapid progress in agricultural
and mechanical improvements, and in commercial
intercourse with foreign countries. As regards the
particular object of the institution of the companythe
encouragement of the linen manufa.cture-considerably
more than half of the flax and hemp
imported into the United Kingdom, is now (in
1878) brought to the Scottish ports.?
Now the bank has nearly eighty branch or subbranch
offices over all Scotland alone. The company?s
original capital of AIOO,OOO has been
gradually increased under three additional charters,
granted at different times, under the Great Seal
By Queen Victoria, their fourth charter, dated 19th
March, 1849, ratifies and confirms all, their privileges
and rights, and power was given to augment
their capital to any sum not exceeding A r,5oo,ooo
in all, for banking purposes. The amount of new ... Street.] THE BRITISH LINEN COMPANY. 279 resided here was John, fourth Marquis, who was Secretary of State ...

Book 2  p. 279
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6 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Canongate
attendants to say such prayers by her bedside as ? the seventeenth century, and the lofty buildings on
were fitting for a person not expected to survive a
mortal disorder.
? He ventured to remonstrate, and observed that
her safe delivery warranted better hopes; but he
was sternly commanded to obey the orders first
given, and with difficulty recollected himself
sufficiently to acquit himself of the task imposed
on him, He was then again hurried into the chair ;
but as they conducted him down-stairs he heard
the report of a pistol! He was safely conducted
home, and a purse of gold was forced upon
him; but he was warned at the same time
that the least allusion to this dark transaction
would cost him his life. He betook himself to
rest, and after long and broken musing, fell into a
deep sleep. From this he was awakened with the
dismal news that a fire of uncommon fury had
broken out in the house of -, near the head of
the Canongate, and that it was totally consumed,
with the shocking addition that the daughter of the
proprietor, a young lady eminent for beauty and
accomplishments, had perished in the flames. The
clergyman had his suspicions ; but to have made
them public would have availed gothing. He was
timid ; the family was of the first distinction; above
all, the deed was done, and could not be amended.
?Time wore away, and with it his terrors; but
he became unhappy at being the solitary depositary
-of this fearful mystery, and mentioned it to some
of his brethren, through whom the anecdote
acquired a sort of publicity. The divine had long
been dead when a fire broke out on the same spot
where the house of - had formerly stood, and
which was now occupied by buildings of an inferior
description. When the flames were at their height,
the tumult that usually apends such a scene was.
suddenly suspended by an unexpected apparition.
A beautiful female in a nightdress, extremely rich,
but at least half a century old, appeared in ,the
very midst of the fire, and uttered these tremendous
words in her vernacular idiom :-? Anes bumeddwice
burned-the third time 1?11 scare you all ! ?
The belief in this story was so strong, that on a
fire breaking out, and seeming to approach the
fatal spot, there was a good deal of anxiety testified
lest the apparition should make good her denunciation.?
I
According to a statement in Nates and Queries,
this story was current in Edinburgh before the
childhood of Scott, and the murder part of it
was generally credited, He mentions a person
acquainted with the city in 1743 who used to tell
ithe tale and point out the site of the house. It is
Remarkable that a great fire did happen there in
.
the spot date from that time.
Of the plague, which in 1645 nearly depopu- .
lated the Canongate as well as the rest of Edinburgh,
a singular memorial still remains, a little lower
down the street, on the north side, in the form of
a huge square tenement, called the Morocco Land,
from the effigy of a turbaned Moor, which projects
from a recess above the second floor, and having
an alley passing under it, inscribed with the following
legend :-
? MISERERE MEI, DOMINE : A PECCATO, PKOBRO,
DEBITO, ET MORTE SUBITA. LIBERA ~~1.6.18.?
Of the origin of this edifice various romantic stories
are told: one by Chambers, to the effect t5at a
young woman belonging to Edinburgh, having been
taken upon the sea by an African rover, was sold
to the harem of the Emperor of Morocco, whose
favourite wife she became, and enabled her brother
to raise a fortune by merchandise, and that in
building this stately edifice he erected the black
nude figure, with turban and necklace of beads, as
a memorial of his royal brother-in-law; but the
most complete and consistent outline of its history
is that given by Wilson in his ? Memorials,? from
which it would appear that during one of the
turnults which occurred in the city after the accession
of Charles I., the house of the Provost, who had
rendered himself obnoxious to the rioters, was
assaulted and set on fire. Among those arrested as a
ringleader was Andrew Gray, a younger son of the
Master of Gray, whose descendants inherit the
ancient honours of Kinfauns, and who, notwithstanding
the influence of his family, was tried, and
sentenced to be executed on the second day
thereafter.
On the very night that the scaffold was being
erected at the Cross he effected his escape from
the City Tolbooth by means of a rope conveyed
to him by a friend, who had previously given some
drugged liquor to the sentinel at the Puir-folkspurses,
and provided a boat for him, by which he
crossed the North Loch and fled beyond pursuit.
Time passed on, and the days of the great civil
war came. ? Gloom and terror now pervaded the
streets of the capital. It was the terrible pear
1645-the last visitation of the pestilence to Edinburgh-
when, as tradition tells us,? says Wilson,
?grass grew thickly .about the Cross, once as
crowded a centre of thoroughfare as Europe could
boast of.?
The Parliament was compelled to sit at Stirling,
and the Town Council, on the 10th of April,
agreed with Joannes Paulitius, M.D., that he
should visit the infected at a salary of AS0 Scot ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Canongate attendants to say such prayers by her bedside as ? the seventeenth century, ...

Book 3  p. 6
(Score 0.22)

Newhaven.] REV. DR. FAIRBAIRN. 303
In 1820 there were landed at the old stone
pier of Newhaven, John Baud and fourteen other
prisoners, ?f Radicals ? who had been taken after
the skirmish at Bonny Bridge, by the 10th Hussars
and the Stirlingshire yeomanry. They had been
brought by water from the castle of Stirling, and
were conveyed to gaol from Newhaven in six carriages,
escorted by a macer of justiciary, and the
detachment of a Veteran Battalion.
In the following year, and while railways were
still in the womb of the future, the Scots Magazine
announces, that a gentleman who had left
Belfast on a Thursday, ?reached Glasgow the
same evening, and embarked on board the Tounit
(steamer) at Newhaven on Friday, and arrived at
Aberdeen that night. Had such an event been
predicted fifty years ago, it would have been as
easy to make people believe that this journey would
have been accomplished by means of a balloon.?
About five hundred yards westward oi the stone
pier, a chain pier was constructed in the year 1821,
by Captain (afterwards Sir Samuel) Brown, of the
Royal Navy, at the cost of A4,ooo. It is five
hundred feet long, four feet wide, has a depth
at low water of from five to six feet, and served
for the use of the steam packets to Stirling,
Queensferry, and other places above and below
Leith; yet, being unable to offer accommodation for
the bulky steam vessels that frequent the harbour
of the latter or that of Granton, it is now chiefly
used by bathers, and is the head-quarters of the
Forth swimming club.
It was opened on the 14th of October, ISzr,
and was afterwards tested by a weight of twentyone
tons placed upon the different points of
suspension. In 1840 it became the property of
the Alloa Steam Packet Company.
In 1838 Newhaven was erected into a quoad
sma parish, by the aathority of the Presbytery .of
Edinburgh, when a handsome church was erected
for the use of the community, from a design by
John Henderson of Edinburgh.
Near it, in Main Street, is the Free Church,
designed in good Gothic style by James A. Hamilton
of Edinburgh, an elegant feature in the locality,
but chiefly remarkable for the ministry of the late
Rev. Dr. Fairbairn, who died in January, 1879-
a man who came of a notable race, as the wellknown
engineers of the same name were his
cousins, as was also Principal Fairbairn of Glasgow.
He was ordained minister at Newhaven in 1838.
The great majority of his congregation were fishermen
and their families, who were always keenly
sensible of the mode in which he prayed for those
who were exposed to the dangers of the deep.
During his long pastorate these prayers were.a
striking feature in his ministrations, and Charles
Reade, while residing in the neighbourhood, frequently
attended Newhaven Free Church, and has,
in his novel of ? Christie Johnstone,? given a lifelike
portrait of his demeanour when administering
consolation, after a case of drowning.
Perhaps the most useful of thii amiable old
pastor?s philanthropic schemes was that of the
reconstruction of the Newhaven fishing fleet. He
perceived early that the boats in use were wholly
unsuited for modem requirements, and some years
before his death he propounded a plan for replacing
them by others having decks, bunks, and
other compartments. As soon as a crew came forward
with a portion of the money required, Dr. Fairbairn
had no difficulty in getting the remainder
advanced. Thirty-three large new boats, each
costing about Lzso, with as much more for fishing
gear, were the result of his kindly labours. They
have all been prosperous, and hundreds of the
inhabitants of Newhaven, when they stood around
his grave, remembered what they owed to the
large-hearted and prudent benevolence of this old
ministei.
In 1864 a local committee was appointed for
the purpose of erecting a breakwater on the west
side of the present pier, so as to form a harbour
for the fishing craft. Plans and specifications
were prepared by Messrs. Stevenson, engineers,
Edinburgh, and the work was estimated at the
probable cost of L;~,OOO ; and while soliciting aid
from the Board of Fisheries, the Board of Trade,
and the ,magistrates of Edinburgh, the fishermen
honourably and promptly volunteered to convey ?
all the stonework necessary in their boats or otherwise
from the quarry at? Qleensferry.
The fishermen of Newhaven rarely intermany
With the women of other fisher communities ; and
a woman of any other class, unacquainted with the
cobbling of nets, baiting and preparation of lines,
the occasional use of a tiller or oar, would be useless
as a fisherman?s wife; hence their continued
intermarriages cause no small confusion in the
nomenclature of this remarkable set of people.
The peculiar melodious and beautiful cry of the
Newhaven oyster-woman-the last of the quaint
old Edinburgh street cries-is well known ; and so
also is their costume ; yet, as in time it may become
a thing of the past, we may give a brief description
of it here. ?A cap of linen or cotton,?J says a
writer in Chambers?s EdinQurgh Journal, ?? surmounted
by a stout napkin tied below the chin,
composes the investiture of the hood ; the showy
structures wherewith other females are adorned
,
. ... REV. DR. FAIRBAIRN. 303 In 1820 there were landed at the old stone pier of Newhaven, John Baud and ...

Book 6  p. 303
(Score 0.22)

292 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Inchkeith.
greatly enhanced the beauty and grandeur of this
interesting prospect by bringing the ships so much
nearer to this coast, and consequently so much
more within the immediate view of the metropolis
and its environs.?
From this it would appear that,prior to 1801,
all vessels leaving the Firth from Leith and above
it, must have taken the other channel, north of
Inchkeith.
With the exception of erecting the now almost
useless Martello tower, Government never made
any effort of consequence to defend Leith or any
other port in Scotland; thus it was said that Napoleon
I., aware of the open and helpless condition
of the entire Scottish coast, projected at one time
the landing of an invading army in Aberlady Bay ;
but in defiance of the recommendation and urgent
entreaty of many eminent engineers and military
officers, that Inchkeith, the natural bulwark of the
Forth, and more particularly of the port of Leith,
should be fortified, the British Government let a
hundred years, from the time of the pitiful Paul
Jones scare, elapse, ?? leaving,? as the Scofsman of
1878 has it, ?the safety of the only harbour of
refuge on the east coast, and the wealthiest and
most commanding cities and towns of Scotland ?to
the effectual fervent prayers ? of ?longshore parish
ministers.?
For five and twenty years the Corporations of
Edinburgh and Leith, the Merchant Company, the
Chambers of Commerce and other public bodies,
urged the necessary defence of Leith in vain.
Shortly before the Crimean war, the apathetic
authorities were temporarily roused by the number
of petitions that poured in upon them, and by
iiequent deputations from Fifeshire as well as
Midlothian, and slowly and unwillingly they
agreed to proceed with the fortification of Inchkeith.
Colonel John Yerbury Moggridge, of the Royal
Engineers in Scotland, was instructed to visit the
island and prepare plans, in 1878, based upon
sketches and suggestions, furnished some twenty
years before, and a commencement was made in
the summer of that year, the work being entrusted
to Messrs. Hill and Co., of Gosport, the contractors
who built most of the powerful fortifications at
Portsmouth and Spithead.
In shape Inchkeith may be described as an irregular
triangle, with its longest side parallel to the
shore at Leith. Three jutting promontories form
the angles-one looking up the Firth at the west
end is above a hundred feet in height; another
faces the direction of Kinghorn, and is fifty feet
less in altitude; the third, facing the south or Leith
(Herald and Chronicle.)
quarter, shows a more rounded outline than the
other two.
On these it was suggested the forts should be
built, and connected together by a military road a
mile and a half long.
The workmen, at first 120 in number, were
hutted on the island for the week, and only came
back to Leith on Saturday night to return to their
labour on the Monday morning. The August of
1878 saw Colonel Moggridge fairly at work, and
the little cove or landing-place at the south-west
quarter of the island, encumbered with piles of
rails, tools, tackling, and all the paraphernalia of
the contractor, while the operations for cutting the
military road, in face of the cliff, ninety feet high,
overhead, were at once proceeded with.
The huts of the workmen were double lined
wooden houses, covered with felt, like those in
Aldershot camp, and were situated in the hollow
between the lighthouse hill and the west promontory.
Around the interior of the huts were sleeping
bunks for the men, ranged in three tiers, and in the
centre were tables on each +de of a cooking stove.
No spirituous liquor was allowed to be landed.
The old wells were all cleaned out and deepened,
and as the work proceeded the aspect of the whole
western face of, the island changed rapidly.
The men worked from six in the morning till
eight in the evening, with two hours interval for
dinner and -tea, and were paid extra for the two
hours between six and eight o?clock in the
evening.
In the formation of the military road, two objects
had to be kept in view-easy gradients, and. as
much cover as possible from the long range guns of
an enemy coming up the Firth. Thus, the path
commences at the north emplacement, and bends
westward from the lighthouse hill, which completely
shelters it from the north and west. A short branch
diverges towards the western battery, but the main
road, eighteen feet wide, is carried under and partly
along the face of the cliffs, which overlook the
cove, where alone a landing could be effected by
an armed force ; and there, no doubt, it was that
Strozzi was slain, when the island was stormed by
the French.
Trending then southwards, the road passes along
a small plateau facing Leith; and beyond it, the
steep face of the hill has been cut into, and the
road built up, till it emerges on the comparatively
level southern point. The whinstone and conglomerate
blasted from the cuttings were utilised in
the formation of seaward parapets, and in making
the foundation of the road solid and dry to bear the
heaviest traffic, ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Inchkeith. greatly enhanced the beauty and grandeur of this interesting prospect by ...

Book 6  p. 292
(Score 0.22)

to him an intimation that he was to be made
prisoner, and advised him to lose no time in
assuming the defensive. On this he sent his uncle,
the ?fambus Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld,
to remonstrate with the archbishop, Arran, and
others present, ? to caution them against violence,
and to inform them that if they had anything to
allege against him he would be judged by the laws
of the realm, and not by men who were his avowed
enemies.? Meanwhile he put on his armour, and
drew up his spearmen in close array near the
Nether-Bow Port-the Temple Bar of Edinburgh
-a gate strongly fortified by double towers.
When the Bishop of Dunkeld entered the archbishop?s
house in the Blackfriars Wynd he found
all present armed, and resolved on the most desperate
measures. Even the archbishop wore a coat
of mail, covered by his ecclesiastical costume, and
in the dispute that ensued he concluded a vehement
speech by striking his breast, and asseverating-??
There is no remedy ! The Earl of Angus
must go to prison. Upon my conscience I cannot
help it 1 ?
As he struck his breast the armour rattled.
? How now, my lord ? ? said the Bishop of Dunkeld
; ? I think your conscience clatters! We
are priests, and to bear arms or armour is not
consistent with our profession.?
The archbishop explained ? that he had merely
provided for his own safety in these days of continued
turmoil, when no man could leave his house
but at the hazard of his life.?
Numbers of citizens and others had now joined
Angus, who was exceedingly popular, and the people
handed weapons from the windows to all his followers
who required them. He barricaded all the
entrances to the steep wynds and closes leading from
the High Street to the Cowgate, and took post
himself near the head of the Blackfriars Wynd.
Sir James Hamilton of Finnart came rushing upward
at the head of the Hamiltons to attack the
Douglases. Angus, who knew him, ordered the
latter to spare him if possible, but he was onc
of the first who perished in the fierce and bloody
fray that ensued, and involved the whole city in
universal uproar.
?A Hamilton ! a
Hamilton ! Through ! Through ! ? such were the
adverse cries.
The many windows of the lofty and gable-ended
houses of the High Street were crowded with the
excited faces of spectators ; the clash of swords and
crash of pikes, the shouts, yells, and execration:
of the combatants as they closed in fierce conflict
added to the general consternation, and killed and
?A Douglas ! a Douglas !?
vounded began to cumber the causeway in every
iirection.
The Hamiltons gave way, and, sword in hand,
he exasperated Angus drove them headlong down
be Blackfriars Wynd, killing them on every hand.
r?he Earl of Arran and a kinsman hewed a passage
)ut of the m t e , and fled down an alley on the north
iide of the High Street. At the foot they found
I collier?s horse, and, throwing the burden off the
tnimal, both mounted it, though in armour, swam
t across the loch to the other side, and escaped
tmong the fields, where now Princes Street stands.
Many Douglases perished in the skirmish, which
was long remembered as ?? Cleanse the Causeway.?
3f the Hamiltons eighty were slain on the spot,
including Sir Patrick son of the first Lord Hamilton,
and the Master of Montgomery, according to
Hawthornden. The archbishop fled to the adjacent
Blackfriars church for sanctcary, but the
Douglases dragged him from behind the altar,
rent his episcopal habit from his back, and would ?
have slain him had not the Bishop of Dunkeld
interfered; and he was permitted to fly afoot to
Linlithgow, sixteen miles distant.
Towards the termination of the fight 800 border
troopers, under the Prior of Coldingham (Angus?s
brother), came galloping hi, and finding the gates
and wickets closed, they beat them in with hammers;
but by that time the fray was over.
This was but a specimen of the misrule that
pervaded the whole realm till the arrival of the
Regent Albany, when the Parliament at Edinburgh
named four peers as guardians of the young king
and his infant brother, permitting the queen to name
other four. On this being adjusted, the Duke of
Albany and these peers in their robes of state,
attended by esquires and pages, proceeded to the
Castle, at the gate of which they were received by
a singular tableau of an imposing description.
The bamers were thrown open, and on the
summit of the flight of forty steps which then gave
access to them, stood the beautiful queen of that
heroic king who fell at Flodden, holding by the
hand the little James V., while a pace or two
behind her stood a noble lady, supporting in her
arms his infant brother. With real or affected
sweetness of manner she asked their errand.
? Madam,? replied the royal duke, ? we come
by the authority of Parliament to receive at your
hands our sovereign and his brother.??
Margaret Tudor stepped back a pace, and
ordered the portcullis to be lowered, and as the
grating descended slowly between her and the four
delegates, she said :-
? I hold this Castle by gift from my late husband, ... him an intimation that he was to be made prisoner, and advised him to lose no time in assuming the defensive. ...

Book 1  p. 39
(Score 0.22)

Convi~ialii] THE SPENDTHRIFT CLUB. 12.5
called one of his brother boars by his proper outof-
club name, the term < Sir ? being only allowed.
The entry-money, fines, and other pecuniary acquisitions,
were hoarded for a grand annual dinner.?
In 1799 some new officials were added, such
as a poet-laureate, champion, archbishop, and chief
grunter, and by that time, as the tone and expenses
of the club had increased, the fines became
very severe, and in the exactions no one met with
any mercy, ?? as it was the interests of all that the
& should bring forth a plenteous farrow.? This
practice led to squabbles, and the grotesque fraternity
was broken up.
The COUNTRY DINNER CLUB was a much more
sensible style of gathering, when some respectable
citizens of good position were wont to meet on the
afternoon of each Saturday about the year 1790 to
dine in an old tavern in Canonmills, then at a
moderate distance from town. They kept their
own particular claret. William Ramsay, a banker,
then residing in Warriston House, was deemed
?( the tongue of the trump to the club,? which entirely
consisted of hearty and honest old citizens,
all of whom have long since gone to their last account.
The EAST INDIA CLUB was formed in 1797, and
held its first meeting in John Bayll?s tavern on
the 13th of January that year, when the Herald
announces that dinner would be on the table at the
then late and fashionable hour of four, but the body
does not seem to have been long in existence ; it
contributed twenty guineas to the sufferers of a fire
in the Cowgate in the spring of 1799, and fifty to
the House of Industry in 1801.
John Bayll managed the ?George Square assemblies,?
which were held in Buccleuch Place.
His tavern was in Shakespeare Square, where his
annual balls and suppers, in 1800, were under the
patronage of the Duchess of Buccleuch and Mrs.
Dundas of Amiston.
Of the CAPE CLUB, which was established on
the 15th of March, 1733, and of which Fergusson
the poet and Runciman the painter were afterwards
members, an account will be found in Vol. I.,
which, however, omitted to give the origin of the
name of that long-existing and merry fraternity,
and which was founded on an old, but rather weak,
Edinburgh joke of the period.
Some well-known burgess of the Calton who WE
in the habit of spending the evening hours with
friends in the city, till after the ten o?clock drum
had been beaten and the Netherbow Port wa:
shut, to obtain egress was under the necessity 01
bribing the porter there, or remaining within the
walls all ni&it. On leaving the gate he had tc
turn acutely to the left to proceed down Leith
Wynd, which this facetious toper termed ?? doubling
the Cape.? Eventually it became a standing joke
in the small circle of Edinburgh then, ?and the
Cape Club owned a regular institution from 1763,?
says Chambers, but its sixty-fifth anniversary is
announced in the HeraZd of 1798, for the 15th of
March as given above.
The SPENDTHRIFT CLUB, was so called in ridicule
of the very moderate indulgence of its members,
whose expenses were limited to fourpence-halfpenny
each night, yet all of them were wealthy or
well-to-do citizens, many of whom usually met after
forenoon church at the. Royal Exchange for a walk
in the country-their plan being to walk in the
direction from whence the wind blew and thus
avoid the smoke of the city. ? In 1824,? says
ChamberS, ?? in the recollection of the senior members,
some of whom were of fifty years? standing,
the house (of meeting) was kept by the widow of a
Lieutenant Hamilton of the army, who recollected
having attended the theatre in the Tennis Court at
Holyrood when the play was the ? Spanish Friar,,
and many of the members of the Union Parliament
were present in the house.?
The meetings of this club were nightly, till reduced
to four weekly, Whist was played for a
halfpenny. Supper originally cost only twopence,
and half a bottle of strong ale, with a dram, cost
twopence-halfpenny more ; a halfpenny to the
servant-maid, was a total of fivepence for a night of
jollity and good fellowship.
The PIOUS CLUB was composed of respectable
and orderly business-men who met every night,
Sundays not excepted, in the Pie-house-hence their
name, a play upon the words. We are told that
?the agreeable uncertainty as to whether their
name arose from their pie& or the circumstance of
their eating piesy kept the club hearty for many
years.?
Fifteen members constituted a full night, a gill of
toddy to each was served out like wine from a d e
canter, and they were supposed to separate at ten
o?clock.
The ANTEMANUM CLUB was composed of men of
respectability, and many who were men of fortune,
who dined together every Saturday. ? Brag? was
their chief game with cards. It was a purely convivial
club, till the era of the Whig party being in
the ascendant led to angry political discussions, and
eventual dissolution.
The SIX FEET CLUB was composed of men who
were of that stature or above it, if possible. It was
an athletic society, and generally met half-yearly at
the Hunter?s Tryst, near Colinton, or similar places, ... THE SPENDTHRIFT CLUB. 12.5 called one of his brother boars by his proper outof- club name, the term ...

Book 5  p. 125
(Score 0.21)

University,] A STUDENTS? RIOT. I1
placed in the city charter room; and this order
occurs often afterwards, or is referred to thus :-
?? In 1663 the magistrates came down with their
halberts to the college, took away all our charters
and papers, declared the Provost perpetual rector,
though he was chancellor before, and at the same
time discharged university meetings.?
During the summer of 1656 some new buildings
were in progress on the south side of the old
college, as the town council records state that
for the better carrying on thereof, ?there is a
necessitie to break down and demolishe the hous
neirest the Potterrow Port, which now the Court du
Guaird possesseth ; thairfoir ordaines the thesaurer
with John Milne to visite the place, and doe therin
what they find expedient, as weil for demolishing
the said hous as for provyding for the Court du
Guaird utenvayis.?
During the year 1665 some very unpleasant relations
ensued between the university and its civic
patrons, and these originated in a frivolous cause.
It had been the ancient practice of the regents of
all European seminaries to chastise with a birch
rod such of the students as were unruly or committed
a breach of the laws of the college within
its bound. Some punishment of this nature had
been administered to the son of the then Provost,
Sir Andrew Ramsay, Knight, and great offence was
taken thereat.
In imitation of his colleagues and predecessors,
the regent, on this occasion, had used his own
entire discretion as to the mode and amount of
punishment he should inflict ; but the Lord Provost
was highly exasperated, and determining to wreak
his vengeance on the whole university, assumed the
entire executive authority into his own hands.
?? Having proceeded to the college, and exhibited
some very unnecessary symbols of his power within
the city-the halberts, we presume-on the tenth
of November he repaired to the Council Chamber
and procured the following Act- to be passed :-
Th CoumiZ agrees fhut fhe Provosf of Edinburgh,
present and to come, 6e &ways Rector and Governor
uf fhe roZZege in a21 time coming.? The only important
effects which this disagreeable business
produced were, that it was the cause of corporal
punishment being banished from the university,
and that no rector has since been elected,? adds
Bower, writing in 1817. ?The Senatw Arademiclls
have repeatedly made efforts to revive the election
of the ofice of rector, and have as often failed
of success.?
A short time before his death Cromwell made a
grant to the college of &zoo per annum, a sum
which in those days would greatly have added to
the prosperity of the institution ; but he happened
to die in the September of the same year in which
the grant was dated, and as all his Acts were
rescinded at the? Restoration, his intentions towards
the university came to nothing. The expense of
passing the document at the Exchequer cost about
L476 16s. Scots; hence it is extremely doubtful if
the smallest benefit ever came of it in any way.
The year 1680 saw the students of the university
engaged in a serious riot, which created a profound
sensation at the time.
?i After the Restoration, the students,? says
Amot, ? appear to have been pretty much tainted
with the fanatic principles of the Covenanters,?
and they resolved, while the Duke of Albany and
York was at Holyrood, to manifest their zeal by a
solemn procession and burning of the pope in effigy
on Christmas Day, and to that end posted up the
following :-
??I?HESE are to give notice to all Noblemen, Gentlemen,
Citizens, and others, that We, the Students of the Royal College
of Edinburgh (to show our detestation and abhorrence of
the Romish religion, and our zeal and fervency for the Protestant),
do resolve to bum the effigies of Anfi-ch&f, the
Pqe of Rome at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh, the 25th of
December instant, at Twelve in the forenoon (being the
festival of Our Saviour?s nativity). And as we hate tumnlts
as we do superstition, we do hereby (under pain of death) discharge
all robbers, thieves, and bawds to come within 40
paces of our company, and such as shall be found disobedient
to these our commands, Sibi Caveant.
? By our Special command, ROBERT BROWN, Secretary
to all our Theatricals and Extra L i t d Divertisements.?
?AN ADVERTISEMENT.
This announcement filled the magistrates with
alarm, as such an exhibition was seriously calculated
to affront the duke and duchess, and, moreover,
to excite a dangerous sedition. According to a
history of, this affair, published for Richard Janeway,
in Queen?s Head Alley, Paternoster Row, 1681,
the students bound themselves by a solemn oath
to support each other, under penalty of a fine, and
they employed a carver, ?who erected then a
wooden Holiness, with clothes, tiiple crown, keys,
and other necessary habiliments,? and by Christmas
Eve all was in readiness for the display, to prevent
which the Lord Provost used every means
at his command.
He sent for Andrew Cant, the principal, and
the regents, whom he enjoined to deter the
students ? with menaces that if they would not, he
would make it a bloody Christmas to them.? He
then went to Holyrood, and had an interview with
the duke and the Lord Chancellor, who threatened
to march the Scottish troops into the town. Meanwhile,
the principal strove to exact oaths and
promises from the students that they would re ... A STUDENTS? RIOT. I1 placed in the city charter room; and this order occurs often afterwards, or is ...

Book 5  p. 11
(Score 0.21)

94 . OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Inverleith.
the long hill on the south side of the West Port,
from Cowfeeder Row to the Bristo Port, the eastei
and wester crofts of Bristo, nearly down to the lsnds
of the abbey of Holyrood.
Of the old fortalice of this extinct race, and ol
their predecessors-which stood on the highesi
ground of Invorleith, a little way west of where
we find the modern house now embosomed among
luxuriant timber-not a vestige remains. Even
its ancient dovecot-in defiance of the old Scottish
superstition respecting the destruction of a dovecot
-has been removed. ?The beautiful and sequestered
footpath bordered (once ?) by hawthorn
hedges, known by the name of Gabriel?s Road,?
says a local writer, ?is said to have been constructed
for the convenience of the ancient lairds
of Inverleith to enable them to attend worship in
St. Giles?s.?
No relics remain of the ancient dwelling, unless
we except the archery butts, 600 feet apart,
standing nearly due south of Inverleith Mains, the
old home farm of the mansion, and the two very
quaint and ancient lions surmounting the pillars of
the gate at the north end of St. Bernard?s Row,
and which local tradition avers came from the
Castle of Edinburgh.
Of the different families who have possessed this
estate, and inhabited first the baronial tower, and
latterly the manor-house there, but a few disjointed
notices can alone be gleaned.
?The lands upon which I live at Inverleith,?
says the late eminent antiquary, Cosmo Innes, in
his ?Scottish Legal Antiquities,? ? which I can
trace back by charters into the possession of the
baker of William the Lion, paid, in the time of
King Robert I., a hundred shillings of stediizgs.
(The coinage of the Easterlings.) Some fields beside
me are still called the Baxteis (i.e., Baker?s)
Lands.?
And this is after a lapse of seven hundred
years.
Among the charters of Robert I. is one to
William Fairly of the lands of Inverleith, in the
county of Edinburgh. Among those of David 11.
is another charter of the same lands to William
Ramsay ; and another, by Robert II., of the same
to David Ramsay.
The date of the latter charter is given in the
?Douglas Peerage? as the 2nd of July, 1381, and
the recipient as the second son of the gallant and
patriotic Sir William Ramsay of Dalhousie, who
drew the English into an ambuscade at the battle
of Nisbetmuir in 1355, and caused their total
rout.
In time to come Inverleith passed to the Touris.
In 1425 John of Touris (or Towers) appears a?
a bailie of Edinburgh, with Adam de Bonkill and
John Fawside.
In 1487 William Touris of Innerleith (doubtless
his son) granted an annuity of fourteen merks for
the support of a chaplain to officiate at St. Anne?s
altar, in St. Cuthbert?s Church. George Touris was
a bailie of the city in 1488-92, and in the fatal year
of Flodden, 1513, 19th August, he is designated
?President? of the city, the provost of which-
Sir Alexander Lauder-was killed in the battle ;
and Francis Touris (either a son or brother) was
a bailie in the following year.
? In the ?? Burgh Records,? under date 1521, when
the Lairds of Restalrig and Craigmillar offered at
a Town Council meeting to be in readiness tw
resist the king?s rebels, in obedience to his royal
letters, for the safety of his person, castle, and
town; hereupon, ? Schir Alexander Touris of-
Innerleith protestit sik lik.?
In 1605, Sir George Touris of Garmilton,
knight, succeeded his father John of Inverleith in
the dominical lands thereof, the mill and craig ofi
that name, the muir and fortalice of Wardie, and
Bell?s land, alias the ? Lady?s land of Inverleith.?
Sir John Touris of Inverleith mamed Lady
Jean Wemyss, a daughter of the first Lord Wemyss
of Elcho, afterwards Earl, who died in 1649. In
1648 this Sir John had succeeded his father, Sir
Alexander Touris, knight in the lands of Inverleith,
Wardie, Tolcroce, Highriggs, &c.
The epoch of the Commonwealth, in 1652, saw
John Rocheid, heir to his father James, a merchant
and burgess of Edinburgh, in ?? the Craig of Inverleith,?
(? Retours.?) This would imply Craigleith,
as from the ?Retours ? in 1665, Inverleith, in
the parish of St. Cuthbert?s, went from James Halyburton,
proprietor thereof, to Alexander, his father.
And in ?? Dirleton?s Decisions,? under date 1678,
Halyburton, ? late of Inverleith,? is referred to as
a prisoner for debt at Edinburgh. So from them
the estate had passed to the Rocheids.
Sir James Rocheid of Inverleith, petitioned the
Privy Council in 1682, for permission to ?? enclose
and impark some ground,? under an Act of 1661 ;
and in 16yz he entailed the estate. In 1704 he was
made a baronet.
In the ?Scottish Nation,? we are told that
Rocheid of Inverleith, a name originating in a
personal peculiarity, had as a crest a man?s head
rough and hairy, the same borne by the Rocheids
of Craigleith. The title became extinct in the
person of Sir Jarnes, the second baronet, whose.
daughter and co-heiress, Mary, married Sir Francis
Kinloch, Bart., and her third son, on succeeding. ... . OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Inverleith. the long hill on the south side of the West Port, from Cowfeeder Row to ...

Book 5  p. 94
(Score 0.21)

106 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Ravelston.
shady with wood, strikes from the Murrayfield Road
northward past the ancient and modem houses of
Ravelston. The latter is a large square-built mansion
; the former is quaint, gable-ended and crowstepped,
and almost hidden among high old walls
and venerable trees.
In the ? Burgh Records,? under date I 5 I I, the
Quarry at Ravelston appears to have been let to
Robert Cuninghame, by ? William Rynde, in the
name and behalf of John Rynde, clerk, prebender
of Ravelston,? with the consent of the magistrates
and council, patrons of the same.
On the old house are two lintels, the inscriptions
on which are traceable. The first date is doubtless
that of its erection ; the second of some alteration
or repair.
GF-NE QUID NIMIS. 1622. J B.
These are the initials of George Foulis of Ravelston
and Janet Bannatyne his wife. The other is
on a beautiful mantelpiece, now built up in the old
garden as a grotto, and runs thus, but in one long
line :-
The first over the enpance bears,
IM. AR. 1624. YE . ALSO . AS . LIVELY . STONES .
ARE . BUILT . AS , A SPIRITVAL . HOVSE.-I PETER.
The tomb of George Foulis of Ravelston was
in the Greyfriars Churchyard, and the inscription
thereon is given in Latin and English in Monteith?s
? Theatre of Mortality, 1704.?
He is styled that excellent man, George Foulis
of Ravelstoun, of the noble family of Colintoun,
Master of the king?s mint, bailie of the city of
Edinburgh, and sixteen years a Councillor. He
died on the 28th of May, 1633, in his sixty-fourth
year. The death and?burial are also recorded ol
?I his dearest spouse, Janet Bannatyne, with whom
he lived twenty-nine years in the greatest concord.?
It
was one of these daughters that Andrew Hill, a
musician, was tried for abducting, on the 4th of
September, 1654. One of the many specific
charges against this person, is that with reference
to the said Marian Foulis, daughter of Foulis of
Ravelston : ?he used sorceries and enchantments
-namely, roots and herbs-with which he boasted
that he could gain the affection of any woman he
pleased,? and which he used to this young lady.
?The jury acquitted him of sorcery, strange to record
in those times, ? as a foolish boaster of his skill
in herbs and roots for captivating women,? but
condemned him for the abduction ; and while the
judges delayed for fifteen days to pass sentence he
was so eaten and torn by vermin in prison that
he died !
In 1661 John Foulis of Ravelston was created
a baronet of Nova Scotia
The tomb records that he left six daughters.
In his notes to ?Waverley,? Sir Walter Scott refers
to the quaint old Scottish garden of Ravelston
House, with its terraces, its grass walks, and stone
statues, as having, in some measure, suggested to
him the garden of Tullyveolan.
The baronetcy of Ravelston was forfeited by the
second who bore it, Sir Archibald, who was beheaded
for adherence to Prince Charles, at Carlisle, in
I 746, and the lineal representatives of the line are
the Foulises, Baronets of Colinton, who represent
alike the families of Colinton, Woodhall, and
Ravelston.
The second baronet of the latter line, who was,
says Burke, the son of the first baronet?s eldest
son, George Primrose Foulis, by whom the lands of
Dunihac, were inherited in right of his mother
Margaret, daughter of Sir Archibald Primrose, and
mother of the first Earl of Rosebery, bore the
designation of Sir Archibald Primrose of Ravelston,
whose family motto was 27iure etjure.
In time the lands of Ravelston were acquired
by the Keith family, and in 1822, Alexander Keith
of Ravelston and Dunnottar, Knight-Marischal .of
Scotland, was created a baronet by George IV.
during his visit to Edinburgh. Dying without
issue in 1832, the title became extinct, and the
office of Knight-Marischal passed to the Earl of
Erroll as Lord High Constable of Scotland.
No. 43 Queen Street was the town residence of
the Keith family at the time of the royal visit.
A writer in BZackwood?s Magazine, on oldfashioned
Scottish society, refers to Mrs. Keith of
Ravelston, thus :-
?? Exemplary matrons of unimpeachable morals
were broad in speech and indelicate in thought,
without ever dreaming of actual evil. So the
respectable Mrs. Keith of Ravelston commissioned
Scott, in her old age, to procure a copy
of Mrs. Behn?s novels for her edification. Shk
was so shocked on her first attempt at a perusal
of them, that she told him to take ? his bonny book
away.? Yet, she observed, that when a young
woman she had heard them read aloud in a company
that saw no shadow of impropriety in them.
And whatever were the faults of old Scottish
society, with its sins of excess and its shortcomings
in refinement, there is no disputing that
its ladies were strictly virtuous, and that such slips
as that of the heroine of ? Baloo, my Boy,? were so
rare as to be deemed worthy of recording in rhymes.
So the reformation of manners was as satisfactory
as it was easy, since the foundations of the new
superstructure were sound.?
From Ravelston a rural road leads to Craigcrook
Castle, which for thirty-four years was the ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Ravelston. shady with wood, strikes from the Murrayfield Road northward past the ...

Book 5  p. 106
(Score 0.21)

186 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Picardy Place.
It would appear that so early as 1730 the
Governors of Heriot?s Hospital, as superiors of the
barony of Broughton, had sold five acres of land
at the head of Broughton Loan to the city, for the
behoof of refugees or their descendants who had
come from France, after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. A colony of these emigrants,
principally silk weavers, had been for some time
attempting to cultivate mulberry trees on the slope
of Moultree?s Hill, but without success, owing to
the variable nature of the climate.
The position of the houses forming the village of
Picardie, as these poor people named it, after their
native province, is distinctly shown in the map of
1787, occupying nearly the site of? the north side of
the present Picardy Place, which after the Scottish
Board of Manufacturers acquired the ground, was
built in 1809.
More than twenty years before that period the
magistrates seem to have contemplated having a
square here, as in 1783 they advertised, ?to be
feued, the several acres, for building, lying on the
west side of the new road to Leith, immediately
adjoining to Picardy Gardens. The ground is
laid out in the form of a square. The situation is
remarkably pleasant. . . . According to the plan,
the buildings will have plots of background for the
purpose of gardens and offices ; and the possessors
of these will have the privilege of the area within
the Square, &c. Further particulars may be had
on applying to James Jollie, writer, the proprietor,
Royal Bank Close, who will show the plan of the
ground.? (Edin. Advert., 1783.)
This plm would seem to have been abandoned,
aAd a street, with York Place, in direct communication
with Queen Street, substituted.
Among the earliest occupants of a house in
Picardy Place was John Clerk, Lord Eldin, who
took up his abode in No. 16, when an advocate at
the bar. The grandson of Sir John Clerk 01
Penicuick, and son of John Clerk, author of a
celebrated work on naval tactics, Lord Eldin was
born in 1757, and in 1785 was called to the bar,
and so great were his intellectual qualities-at a
time when the Scottish bar was really distinguished
for intellect-that, it is said, that at one period he
had nearly half of all the court business in his
hands; but his elevation to the bench did not
occur until 1823, when he was well advanced in
life.
In ?Peter?s Letters? he is described as the
Coryphzus of the bar. ? He is the plainest, the
shrewdest, and the most sarcastic of men; his
sceptre owes the whole of its power to its weightnothing
to glitter. It is impossible to imagine a
physiognomy more expressive of the character of a
great lawyer and barrister. The features are in
themselves good, at least a painter would call them
so, and the upper part of the profile has as fine
lines as could be wished. But then, how the
habits of the mind have stamped their traces on
every part of the face ! What sharpness, razor-like
sharpness, has indented itself about the wrinkles of
his eyelids; the eyes themselves, so quick, so grey,
such bafflers of scrutiny, such exquisite scrutinisers,
how they change in expression-it seems almost
how they change their colour-shifting from contracted,
concentrated blackness, through every
shade of brown, blue, green, and hazel, back into
their own gleaming grey again. How they glisten
into a smile of disdain! . . . He seems to be
affected with the most delightful and balmy feelings,
by the contemplation of some soft-headed,
prosing driveller, racking his poor brain, or bellowing
his lungs out, all about something which he,
the smiler, sees so thoroughly, so distinctly.?
Lord Eldin, on the bench as when at the bar,
pertinaciously adhered to the old Doric Scottish of
his boyhood, and in this there was no affectation;
but it was the pure old dialect and idiom of the
eighteenth century. He was a man of refined
tastes, and a great connoisseur in pictures He
was a capital artist; and it is said, that had he
given himself entirely to art, he would have been
one of the greatest masters Scotland has ever
produced. He was plain in appearance, and had
a halt in his gait. Passing down the High Street
one day, he once heard a girl say to her companion,
? That is Johnnie Clerk, the lame lawyer.? ?? No,
madam,? said he ; ?I may be a lame man, but not
a lame lawyer..? -
He died a bachelor in his house in Picardy
Place, where, old-maid-like, he had contracted such
an attachment to cats, that his domestic establishment
could almost boast of at least half a dozen of
them; and when consulted by a client he was
generally to be found seated in his study with a
favourite Tom elevated on his shoulder or purring
about his ears.
His death occurred on the 30th May, 1832,
after which his extensive collection of paintings,
sketches, and rare prints was brought to sale in
16 Picardy Place, where, on the 16th of March,
1833, a very serious accident ensued.
The fame of his collection had attracted a great
crowd of men and women of taste and letters, and
when the auctioneer was in the act of disposing of
a famous Teniers, which had been a special favourite
of Lord Eldin, the floor of the drawing-room gave
way. ?The scene which was produced may be ... OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Picardy Place. It would appear that so early as 1730 the Governors of Heriot?s ...

Book 3  p. 186
(Score 0.21)

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