170 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Parliament House.
the old High School in 1659, and studying law
at Leyden, became a member of the Faculty of
Advocates on the 5th June, 1668, from which
period he began industriously to record the decisions
of the Court of Session. He was one of the
counsel for the Earl of Argyll in 1681, and four
years after was M.P. for West Lothian. To the
arbitrary measures of the Scottish Government he
offered all constitutional resistance, and for his
zeal in support of the Protestant religion was exposed
to some trouble and peril in 1686. He
firmly opposed the attempt of James VII. to
abolish the penal laws against Roman Catholics in
Scotland; and in 1692 was offered the post of
Lord Advocate, which he bluntly declined, not
being allowed to prosecute the perpetrators of the
massacre of Glencoe, which has left an indelible
stain on the memory of William of Orange. He
was regular in his attendance during the debates
on the Union, against which he voted and protested;
but soon after age and infirmity compelled
him to resign his place in the Justiciary
Court, and afterwards that on the Bench. He
died in 1722, leaving behind him MSS., which are
preserved in ten folio and three quarto volumes,
many of which have been published more than
once.
Few senators have left behind them so kindly
a memory as Alexander Lockhart, Lord Covington,
so called from his estate in Lanarkshire. His
paternal grandfather was the celebrated Sir GCorge
Lockhart, President of the Court of Session ; his
maternal grandfather was the Earl of Eglinton ;
and his father was Lockhart of Camwath, author
of the Memoirs of Scotland.?
He had been at the Bar from 1722, and, when
appointed to the Bench, in 1774, had long borne
the reputation of being one of the most able
lawyers of the age, yet he never realised more
than a thousand a-year by his practice. He lived
in a somewhat isolated nlansion, near the Parliament
Close, which -eventually was used as the
Post Office. Lockhart and Fergusson (afterwards
Lord Pitfour, in 1764, being rival advocates, were
usually pitted against each other in cases of
importance. After the battle of Culloden, says
Robert Chambers, ? many violently unjust, as well
as bloody measures, were resorted to at Carlisle in
the disposal of the prisoners, about seventy of
whom came to a barbarous death.? Messrs. Lockhart
and Fergusson, indignant at the treatment
of the poor Highlanders, and the unscrupulous
measures of the English authorities to procure convictions,
set off for Carlisle, arranging with each
other that Lockhart should examine the evidence,
while Fergusson pleaded, and addressed the jury-
Offering their services, these were gladly accepted
by the unfortunates whom defeat had thrown at
the mercy of the Government. Each lawyer
exerted his abilities with the greatest solicitude,
but with little or no effect; national and political
rancour inflamed all against the prisoners. The
jurors of Carlisle had been so temfied by the
passage of the Highland army-orderly and peaceful
though it was-that they deemed everything
like tartan a perfect proof of guilt ; and they were
utterly incapable of discriminating the amount of
complicity in any particular prisoner, but sent all
who came before them to the human shamblesfor
such the place of execution was then namedbefore
the Castle-gate. At length one of the tww
Scottish advocates fell upon an expedient, which?
he deemed might prove effectual, as eloquence had
failed. He desired his servant to dress himself in
a suit of tartan, and skulk about in the neighbourhood
of Carlisle, till he was arrested, and, in the
usual fashion, accused of being ?a rebel.? As
such the man was found guilty by the English
jury, andwould have been condemned had not
his master stood forth, and claimed him as his
servant, proving beyond all dispute that he had
been in immediate attendance on himself during
the whole time the Highland army had been in
the field.
This staggered even the Carlisle jury, and, when
aided by a few caustic remarks from the young and
indignant advocate, made them a little more cautious
in their future proceedings. So high was the
estimation in which Lockhart of Covington (who
died in 1782) was held as an advocate, that Lord
Newton-a senator famous for his extraordinary
judicial talents and social eccentricities-when at
the Bar wore his gown till it was in tatters; and
when, at last, he was compelled to have a new
one made, he had a fragment of the neck of the
original sewed into it, that he might still boast he
wore ?? Covington?s gown.? Lord Newton, famous
in the annals of old legal convivialia, died so late
as October, 18-11.
Covington, coadjutor to Lord Pitfour, always
wore his hat when on the Bench, being afflicted
with weak eyes.
Lords Monboddo and Kames, though both
learned senators, are chiefly remembered for
their eccentricities, some of which would now
be deemed vulgarities.
The former, James Burnet, who was raised to
the Bench in 1767, once embroiled himself in a
law-plea respecting a horse, which belonged to
himself. He had committed the animal, when ill,
Parlirmcnt House.] LORDS MONBODDO, KAMES, AND HAILES 171
ministration of certain medicines ; but the famer
went beyond these, and mixed in it a considerable
quantity of treacle. As the horse died next
morning, Lord Monboddo raised a prosecution for
its value, and pleaded his own cause at the Bar.
He lost the case, and was so enraged against his
brother judges that he never afterwards sat with
them on the Bench, but underneath, among the
clerks. This case was both a remarkable and illl
amusing one, from the mass of Roman law quoted
on the occasion.
Though hated and despised by his brethren for
his oddities, Lord Monboddo was one of the most
learned and upright judges of his time. ?His
philosophy,? says Sir Walter Scott, ?as is well
known, was of a fanciful and somewhat fantastic
character ; but his learning was deep, and he possessed
a singular power of eloquence, which re-
,,mhded the hearer of the os ro&ndum of the Grove
or Academe. Enthusiastically partial to classical
habits, his entertainments were always given in the
evening, when there was a circulation of excellent
Bordeaux, in flasks garlanded with roses, which
were also strewed on the table, after the manner
Qf Horace.?
The best society in Edinburgh was always ?ta be
found at his house, St John?s Street, Canongate.
His youngest daughter, a lady of amiable disposition
and of surpassing beauty, which Burns
panegyrised, is praised in one of the papers of
the Mirror as, rejecting the most flattering and
advantageous opportunities of Settlement in marriage,
that she might amuse her father?s loneliness
and nurse his old age.
He was the earliest patron of one of the best
scholars of his time, Professor John Hunter, who
was for many years his secretary, and wrote the
first and best volume of his lordship?s ? Treatise on
the Origin of Languages.? When Lord Monboddo
travelled to London he? always did so on hoeeback.
On his last journey thither he ?got no
farther than Dunbar. His nephew inquiring the
Teason of this, ?.?Oh, George,? said he, ? I find I
am noo aughty-four,? The manners of Lord Monboddo
were as?odd as his personal appearance.
He has been described as looking ?more like an
.old stuffed monkey dressed in judge?s robes than
anything else;? and so convinced is he said to
have been of his fantastic theory of human tails
that, when a child was born in his house he would
watch at the chamber door, in order to see it in its
first state, as he had an idea that midwives cut the
tails off!
He never recoveied the shock of his beautiful
in 1790. He kept her portrait covered with black
cloth; at this he would often look sadly, without
lifting it, and then turn to his volume of Herodotus.
He died in 1799.
The other eccentric we have referred to was
Henry Home, Lord Kames, who was equally distinguished
for his literary abilities, his metaphysical
subtlety, and wonderful powers of conversation j
yet he was strangely accustomed to apply towards
his intimates a coarse term which he invariably
used, and this peculiarity is well noted by Sir Walter
Scott in ?Redgauntlet.? He was raised to the
Bench in 1752, and afterwards lived in New Street,
in a house then ranking as one of the first in the
city, The catalogue of his printed works is a very
long one.
On retiring from the Bench he took a public
farewell of. his brother judges. After a solemn
and pathetic speech, and shaking hands all round,
as he was quitting the Court, he turned round,
and exclaimed, in his familiar manner, ?Fare ye
a? weel, ye auld -? here using his customary
expression. A day or two b.efore his death he
told Dr. Cullen that he earnestly wished to be
away,?as he was exceedingly curious to learn the
manners of another world ; adding, ? Doctor, as I
never could be idle in this world, I shall gladly
perform any task that may be imposed upon me
in the next? He died in December, 1782, in
his 87th year.
Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, the annalist
of Scotland, was raised to the Bench in 1766. He
had studied law at Utrecht, and was distinguished
for his strict integrity, unwearied diiigence, and dignity
of manner, but he was more conspicuous as
a scholar and author than as a senator. His researches
were chiefly directed t9 the history and
antiquities of his native country; and his literary
labours extended over a period of close on forty
years. .4t his death, in 1792, an able funeral
sermon was preached by the well-known b r .
Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk; and, as no will
could be found, the heir-male was about to take
possession of his estates, to the exclusion of his
daughter, but some months after, when she was
about to give up Ne% Hailes, and quit the house
in New Street, one was found behind a windowshutter,
in the latter place, and it secured her iu
the possession of all, till her own death, which
took place forty years after.
Francis Gardner, Lord Gardenstone, appointed
in 1764, was one of those ancient heroes of the
Bar, who, after a night of hard drinking, would,
without having been in bed, or studying a case,
