which is of great height, contains a large painting
over the stone fireplace of the Adoration of the
Vise Men.
A few steps from this was the old Bank Close
(so-called from the Bank of Scotland having
been in it), a blind alley, composed wholly
of solid, handsome, , and massive houses, some
of which were of great antiquity, and of old
named Hope?s Close, from the celebrated Sir
Thomas Hope, King?s Advocate in the time
of Charles I., prior to whom it had borne the
name of Mauchine?s Close, about the year 151 I.
Here, on the site of
the present Melbourne
Place, stood a famous old
mansion, almost unique
even in Edinburgh,
named Robert Gourlay?s
House, with the legend,
above its door, ?0 Lord
in fhe is a2 my fraift
1569?; and it is somewhat
singular that the owner
of this house was neither
a man of rank nor of
wealth, but simply a messenger-
at-arms belonging
to the Abbey of Holyrood,
an office bestowed upon
him by the Commendator,
Adam Bothwell,
Bishop of Orkney. In
I 5 74 Robert Gourlay
was an elder of the kirk,
and in that year had
to do his public penance
therein ?(for franqorfing
wheat out of the counfrie.?
In 1581, when the Regent
Morton was about to
suffer death, he was placed in Gourlay?s house
for two days under a guard; and there it was
that those remarkable conferences took place
between him and certain clergymen, in which,
while protesting his innocence of the murder of
Darnley, he admitted his foreknowledge of it.
Among many popular errors, is one that he invented
the ? maiden? by which he suffered ; but it
is now known to have been the common Scottish
guillotine, since Thomas Scott was beheaded by it
on the 3rd of April, 1566.
On the 7th of January, 1582, Mopse tells us in
his Memoirs, ?there came a French ambassador
through England, named La Motte (Fenelon), he
was lodged in Gourlay?s house near Tolbooth, and
had an audience of his Majesty; with him there
also came another ambassador from England,
named Mr. Davidson, who got an audience also
that same day in the king?s chamber of presence.?
This was probably a kinsman of De la Motte,
the French ambassador, who was slain at Flodden.
He !eft Edinburgh on the 10th of February.
Herein resided Sir William Drury during the siege
of the Castle in 1573, and thither, on its surrender,
was brought its gallant defender before death, with
his brother Sir James Kirkaldy and others ; and it
was here that in later years the great Argyle is said to
. .
DEACON BRODIE. (After Kay.)
havhpassed his last hours
in peaceful sleep before
his execution. So Robert
Gourlay?s old house had
a terrible history. By
this time the house had
passed into the possession
of Sir Thomas Hope.
Hence it has been conjectured
that Argyle?s last
sleep took place in the
high Council Room,
whither, Wodrow says, he
was brought before rxecutim.
John Gourlay, son of
Robert, erected a house
at the foot of this ancient
close. It bore the
date I 588, with the motto,
Spes aZtera vife. Herein
was the Bank of Scotland
first established in 1695,
and there its business
was conducted till 1805,
when it was removed to
their new office, that stupendous
edifice . at the
head of the entrance to the Earthen Mound. Latterly
it was used as the University printing-office ;
and therein, so latelyas 1824, was in use, as a proof
press, the identical old wooden press which accompanied
the Highland army, in 1745, for the publication
of gazettes and manifestoes.
Robert Gourlay?s house passed from the possession
of Sir Thomas Hope and Lord Aberuchill into that
of Sir George Lockhart (the great legal and political
rival of Sir George Mackenzie), Lord President of
the Session in 1685, and doomed to fall a victim to
private revenge. Chiesly of Dalry, an unsuccessful
litigant, enraged at the president for assigning
a small aliment of A93 out of his estate-a fine one
south-westward of the city-to his wife, from whom
