178 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Parliament Close.
their money brought on horseback to the Parliament
Close, where r the company?s business was
thenceforward wholly restricted for a time to
lending money, and all transactions to be in
Edinburgh.
In the fire we have mentioned as occumng in
1700 the bank perished. Assisted by the Earl of
Leven, Governor of the Castle and also of the
bank, with a party of soldiers, and by David Lord
Futhven, a director, who stood in the turnpike
stair all night, keeping the passage free, the cash,
bank-notes, books, and papers, were saved. Thus,
though every other kind of property perished, the
struggling bank was able to open an office higher
up in the city.
In that fire the Scottish Treasury Room perished,
with the Exchequer and Exchange, and the Parliament
Square was afterwards rebuilt (in the picturesqae
style, the destruction of which was so
much regretted), in conformity with an Act passed
in 1698, regulating the mode of building in Edinburgh
with regard to height, Convenience, strength,
and security from fire. The altitude of the houses
was greatly reduced. Previous to the event of
1700, the tenements on the south side of the
Parliament Close, as viewed from the Rirkheugh,
were fifteen storeys in height, and till the
erection of the new town were deemed the most
splendid of which the city could boast.
Occurring after ? King William?s seven years of
famine,? which the Jacobites believed to be a curse
sent from heaven upon Scotland, this calamity
was felt with double force; and in 1702 the Town
Council passed an Act for ?? suppressing immoralities,?
in which, among the tokens of God?s wrath,
?the great fire of the 3d February? is specially
referred to.
Notwithstanding the local depression, we find
in 1700 none of the heartless inertia that charac.
terised the city for sixty years after the Union.
Not an hour was lost in coinmencing the work
of restoration, and many of the sites were bought
by Robert Mylne, the king?s master-mason. The
new Royal Exchange, which had its name and the
date 1700 cut boldly above its doorway, rose tc
the height of twelve storeys on the south-deemed
a moderate altitude in those days. On its eastern
side was an open arcade, with Doric pilasters and
entablature, as a covered walk for pedestrians,
and the effect of the whole was stately and im.
posing. Many aristocratic families who had been
burned out, came flocking back to the vast tene
ments of the Parliament Close, among others tht
Countess of Wemyss, who was resident there in 2
fashionablz flat at the time of the Porteous mob
(?Hist: of Bank of Scot.,? 1728.)
.
and whose footman was accused of being one of
the rioters, and who very nearly had a terrible
tragedy acted in her own house, the outcome of
the great one in the Grassmarket.
It is related that the close connection into
which the noble family of Wemyss were thus
brought to the Porteous mob, as well as their
near vicinity to the chief line of action, naturallj
produced a strong impression on the younger
members of the family. They had probably been
aroused from bed by the shouts of the rioters
assembling beneath their windows, and the din of
their sledge-hammers thundering on the old Tolbooth
door. Thus, not long after the Earl of
Wemyss-the Hon. Francis Charteris was born
in 1723, and was then a boy-proceeded, along
with his sisters, to get up a game, or representation
of the Porteous mob, and having duly
forced his prison, and dragged forth the supposed
culprit, ?the romps got so thoroughly into the
spirit of their dramatic sports that they actually
hung up their brother above a door, and had weli
nigh finished their play in real tragedy.,?
The first coffee-house opened in Edinburgh was
John Row?s, in Robertson?s Land, a tall tenement
near the Parliament House. This was in 1673.
It was shut up in 1677, in consequence of a
brawl, reported to the Privy Council by the
Town Major, who had authority to see into such
matters.
The north-east corner of the Parliament Close
was occupied by John?s coffee-house. There, as
Defoe, the historian of the Union, tells us, the
opponents of this measure met daily, to discuss
the proceedings that were going on in the Parliament
House close by, and to form schemes of
opposition thereto; and there, no doubt, were
sung fiercely and emphatically the doggerel rhymes
known as ?? Belhaven?s Vision,? of which the only
copies extant are those printed at Edinburgh in
1729, at the Glasgow Arms, opposite the Corn
Market; and that other old song, which was
todched by the master-hand of Burns :-
?I What force or guile could not subdue,
Through many warlike ages,
Is now wrought by a coward few
For hireling traitor?s wages ;
The Englishsteel we could disdain,
Secure in valour?s station ;
But England?s gold has been our bane-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation ! ?
John?s coffee-house was also the resort of the
judges and lawyers of the eighteenth century for
consultations, and for their ?? meridian,? or twelve
o?clock dram ; for in those days every citizen had
