9d OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Castle HX
one going plump down a vent they set up a shout
of joy. Sir David laughed, and entreated the
father of the lads ?? not to be too angry ; he and
his brother,? he added with some emotion, ?when
CANNON BALL IN WALL OF nowE IN CASTLE KILL.
living here at the same age, had indulged in precisely
the same amusement, the chimneys then, as
now, being so provokingly open to attacks, that
there was no resisting the temptation.? From
the Bairds of Newbyth the house passed to the
Browns of Greenbank, and from them, Brown?s
Close, where the modern entrance to it is situated,
On the same side of the street Webster?s Close
served to indicate the site of the house of Dr.
Alexander Webster, appointed in 1737 to the
Tolbooth church.. In his day one of the most
popular men in the city, he was celebrated for his
wit and socid qualities, and amusing stories are
still told of his fondness for claret With the a s
sistance of Dr. Wallace he matured his favourite
scheme of a perpetual fund for the relief of
widows and children of the clergy of the Scottish
Church; and when, in 1745, Edinburgh was in
possession of the Jacobite clans, he displayed a
striking proof of his fearless character by employing
all his eloquence and influence to retain the
people in their loyalty to the house of Hanover.
He had some pretension to the character of a poet,
2nd an amatory piece of his has been said to rival
-the effusions of Catullus. It was written in allusion
to his mamage with Mary Erskine. There is
one wonderfully impassioned verse, in which, after
describing a process of the imagination, by which
?he comes to think his innamarata a creature of more
. derives its name.
than mortal purity, he says that at length he clasps
her to his bosom and discovers that she is but a
woman after all !
?? When I see thee, I love thee, but hearing adore,
I wonder and think you a woman no more,
Till mad with admiring, I cannot contain,
And, kissing those lips, find you woman again ! ?
He died in January, 1784.
Eastward of this point stands a very handsome
old tenement of great size and breadth, presenting
a front of polished ashlar to the street, surmounted
by dormer windows. Over the main entrance to
Boswell?s Court (so named from a doctor who resided
there about the close of the last century)
there is a shield, and one of those pious legends
so peculiar to most old houses in Scottish burghs.
0. LORD. IN. THE. IS. AL. MI. TRAIST. Andthis
edifice uncorroborated tradition asserts to have
been the mansion of the. Earls of Bothwell.
A tall narrow tenement immediately to the west
of the Assembly Hall forms the last ancient building
on the south side of the street. It was built in
1740, by hfowbray of Castlewan, on the site of ?
a venerable mansion belonging to the Countess
Dowager of Hyndford (Elizabeth daughter of
John Earl of Lauderdale), and from him it passed,
about 1747, into the possession of William Earl of
Dumfries, who served in the Scots Greys and Scots
Guards, who was an aide de camp at the battle of
Dettingen, and who succeeded his mother, Penelope,
countess in her own right, and afterwards, by the
death of his brother, as Earl of Stair. He was succeeded
in it by his widow, who, within exactly a
year and day of his death, married the Hon.
Alexander Gordon (son of the Earl of Aberdeen),
who, on his appointment to the bench in 1784,
assumed the title of Lord Rockville.
He was the last man of rank who inhabited this
stately uld mansion ; but the narrow alley which
gives?access to the court behind bore the name
of Rockville Close. Within it, and towards the
west there towered a tall substantial edifice once
the residence of the Countess of Hyndford, and
sold by her, in 1740, to Henry Bothwell of Glencome,
last Lord Holyroodhouse, who died at his
mansion in the Canongate in 1755.
The corner of the street is now terminated by
the magnificent hall built in 1842.3, at the cost
of &16,000 for the accommodation of the General
Assembly, which sits here annually in May, presided
over by a Commissioner, who is always a
Scottish nobleman, and resides in Holyrood Palace,
where he holds royal state, and gives levCes in the
gallery of the kings of Scotland. The octagonal
.The Castle Hill~l LORD SEMPLE 9s -
spire which surmounts the massive Gothic tower at
the main entrance rises to an altitude of 240 feet,
and forms a point in all views of the city.
. Many quaint closes and picturesque old houses
were swept away to give place to this edifice, and
to the hideous western approach, which weakened
the strength and destroyed the amenity of the
Castle in that quarter. Among these, in ROSS?S
Court, stood the house of the great Marquis of
Argyle, which, in the days of Creech, was rented by
a hosier at f;~a per annum, In another, named
Remedy?s Close-latterly a mean and squalid alley
-there resided, until almost recent times, a son of
Sir Andrew Kennedy of Clowburn, Bart., whose
title is now extinct ; and the front tenement was
alleged to have been the town residence of those
proud and fiery Earls of Cassillis, the ?kings ol
Qrrick,? whose family name was Kennedy, and
whose swords were seldom in the scabbard.
Here, too, stood a curious old timber-fronted
?? land,? said to have been a nonjurant Episcopal
chapel, in which was a beautifully sculptured Gothic
niche with a cusped canopy, and which Wilson
supposes to have been one of the private oratories
that Arnot states to have been existing in his time,
and in which the baptismal fonts were then re.
maining.
On the north side of the street, most quaint was
the group of buildings partly demolished to make
way for Short?s Observatory. One was dated 1621
another was very lofty, with two crowstepped gqble2
and four elaborate string mouldings on a ,smootf
ashlar front. The first of these, which stdod at thc
corner of Ramsay Lane, and had some very ornate
windows, was universally alleged to be the towx
residence of that personage so famous in Scottisf
song, the Laird of Cockpen, whose family namt
was Ramsay (being a branch of the noble family 01
Dalhousie) and from whom some affirm the lane
*to have been called, long before the days of tht
.poet. .By an advertisement in the Bdinburgh Cw
,runt for January, 1761, we find that Lady Cockper
was then resident in a house ?? in the Bell Close,?
the north side of the Castle Hill, the rental o
which was A14 10s.
? The last noble occupants of the old mansion
were two aged ladies, daughters of the Lord Graq
of Kinfauns. The house adjoining bore the datc
as mentioned, 1621 ; and the on: below it was :
fine specimen of the wooden-fronted tenements
with the oak timbers of the projecting gable beauti
fully carved. During the early part of the I8tt
century this was the town mansion of David thirc
Earl of Leven, who succeeded the Duke of Gor
don as governor of the Castle in 1689, and beliec
ii; race by his cowardice at Killiecrankie. ?No
ioubt,? wrote an old cavalier at a later period,.
? if Her Majesty Queen Anne had been rightly inormed
of his care of the Castle, where there were
lot ten barrels of powder when the Pretender was
m the coast of Scotland, and of his courteous beiaviour
to ladies-particularly how he horsewhipped
be Lady Mortonhall-she would have made him
L general for life.?
Close by this editice there stands, in Semple?s
Zlose, a fine example of its time, the old family
nansion of the Lords Semple of Castlesemple.
Large and substantially built, it is furnished with a
?rejecting octagonal turnpike stair, over the door
:o which is the boldly-cut legend-
PRAISED BE THE LORD MY GOD, MY STRENGTH
AND MY REDEEMER.
ANNO h b f . 1638.
Over a second doorway is the inscription-Sedes,
Manet optima Cdo, with the above date repeated,
and the coat of arms of some family now unknown.
Hugh eleventh Lord Semple, in 1743 purchased
the house from two merchant burgesses of Edinburgh,
who severally possessed it, and he converted
it into one large mansion. He had seen much
military service in Queen Anne?s wars, both in
Spain and Flanders. In 1718 he was major of the
Cameronians; and in 1743 he commanded the
Black Watch, and held the town of Aeth when it
was besieged by the French. In 1745 he was
colonel of the 25th or Edinburgh Regiment, and
commanded the left wing of the Hanoverian army
at the battle of Culloden.
Few families have been more associated with
Scottish song than the Semples. Prior to fie
acquisition af this mansion their family residence
appears to have been in Leith, and it is referred to .
in a poem by Francis Semple, of Belltrees, written
about 1680. The Lady Semple of that day, a
daughter of Sir Archibald Primrose of Dalmeny
(ancestor of the Earls of Rosebery), is traditionally
said to have been a Roman Catholic. Thus,
her house was a favourite resort of the priesthood
then Visiting Scotland in disguise, and she had a
secret passage by which they could escape to the
fields in time of peril.
Anne, fourth daughter of Hugh Lord Seniple,
was married in September, 1754 to Dr. Austin,
of Edinburgh, author of the well-known song,
?For lack of gold,? in allusion to Jem, Drum-
* ? M i m l h e a soo?;ca.-
