.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.-
