70 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Edinburgh Castle.
?? by a net tied to an iron ring ; he fell and fractured
by Miss Balrnain, who remained in her stead, and
who was afterwards allowed to go free. ,
In 1752 the Castle received a remarkable
prisoner, in the person of James Mhor Macgregor
of Bohaldie, the eldest of the four sons of,Rob
Roy, who had lost his estate for the part he had
taken in the recent civil strife, ?and holding a
major?s commission under the old Pretender.?
Robin Oig Macgregor, his younger brother, having
conceived that he would make his fortune by
at his captious employers. ~ ?An old and tattered
great-coat enveloped him ; he had donned a leather
apron, a pair of old shoes, and ribbed stockings.
A red night-cap was drawn to his ears, and a.
broad hat slouched over his eyes.? He quitted
the Castle undiscovered, and left the city without
delay; but his flight was soon known, the city
gates were shut, the fortress searched, and every
man who had been on duty was made a prisoner.
A court-martial, consisting of thirteen officers, sat
-
considered as the chief instigator of this outrage,
thus the vengeance of the Crown was directed
against him rather than Robin, ?who was considered
but a half-wild Highlandman ; ? and in
virtue of a warrant of fugitation issued, he was
arrested and tried. The Lords of Justiciary
found him guilty, but in consequence of some
doubts, or informality, sentence of death was
delayed until the 20th of November, 1752. In
consequence of an expected rescue-meditated by
Highlanders who served in the city as caddies,
chairmen, and city guards, among whom Macgregor?
s bravery at Prestonpans, seven years before,
made him popular-he was removed by a
warrant from the Lord Justice Clerk, addressed
to General Churchill, from the Tolbooth to the
Castle, there to be kept in close confinement till
his fatal day amved.
But it came to pass, that on the 16th of November,
one of his daughters-a tall and very
handsome girl-had the skill and courage to disguise
herself as a lame old cobbler, and was
ushered into his prison, bearing a pair of newlysoled
shoes in furtherance of her scheme. The
sentinels in the adjacent corridors heard Lady
Bohaldie scolding the supposed cobbler with considerable
asperity for some time, with reference to
the indifferent manner in which his work had been
his- skull,? on tlie rock facing Livingstone?s Yards,
-the old tilting ground, oin the south side of the
Castle? rock. This was a singularly unfortunate
man in his domestic relations. His eldest son was
taken prisoner at Carlisle, and executed there with
the barbarity then usual. His next son, Thomas,
was poisoned by his wife, the famous and beautiful
Katherine Nairne (who escaped), but whose paramour,
the third son, Lieutenant Patrick Ogilvie of
the 89th or old Gordon Highlanders (disbanded
in 1765), was publicly hanged in the Grassmarket.
In July, 1753, the last of those who were tried
for loyalty to the House of Stuart was placed in
the Castle-Archibald Macdonald, son of the aged
Cole Macdonald of Barrisdale, who died a captive
there in 1750. Arraigned as a traitor, this unfor.
tunate gentleman behaved with great dignity before
the court; he admitted that he was the person
accused, but boldly denied the treason, and asserted
his loyalty to his lawful king. ?On the
30th March he was condemned to die; but the
vengeance of the Government had already been
glutted, and after receiving various successive reprieves,
young Barrisdale was released, and permitted
to return to the Western Isles.?
From this period till nearly the days of Waterloo
the Castle vaults were invariably used in every war
tunate creature were chained in '{the good old may be imagined.
times " romancists write so glibly of. The origin
of all these vaults is lost in antiquity.
There prisoners have made many desperate, but
in the end always futile, attempts to escape-particularly
in 1761 and in 1811. On the former
occasion one was dashed to pieces ; on the latter,
a captain and forty-nine men got out of the fortress
in the night, by cutting a hole in the bottom of
the parapet, below the place commonly called the
Devil's Elbow, and letting themselves down by a
Tope, and more would have got out had not the
nearest sentinel fired his musket. One fell and
was killed zoo feet below. The rest were all
re-captured on the Glasgow Road.
In the Grand Parade an octagon tower of considerable
height gives access to the strongly vaulted
crown room, in whicb the Scottish regalia are
shown, and wherein they were so long hidden
from the nation, that they were generally believed
to have been secretly removed to England and
destroyed; and the mysterious room, which was
never opened, became a source of wonder to the
soldiers, and of superstition to many a Highland
sentinel when pacingon his lonely post at night.
On the 5th of November, 1794, in prosecuting
a search for some lost Parliamentary records,
the crown-room was opened by the Lieutenant-
Governor and other commissioners. It was dark,
being then w.indowless, and filled with foul air. In
the grated chimney lay the ashes of the last fire
and a cannon ball, which still lies where it had
fallen in some past siege ; the dust of eighty-seven
years lay on the paved floor, and the place looked
grim and desolate. Major Drummond repeatedly
shook the oak chest; it returned no sound, was
supposed to be empty, and stronger in the hearts
of the Scots waxed the belief that the Government,
" It was with feelings of no common anxiety that
the commissioners, having read their warrant, proceeded
to the crown-room, and, having found a11
there in the state in which it had been left in 1794,
commanded the king's smith, who was in attendance,
to force open the great chest, the keys of which had
been sought for in vain. The general impression
that the regalia had been secretly removed weighed
heavily on the hearts of all while the labour proceeded.
The chest seemed to return a hollow and
empty sound to the strokes of the hammer; and
even those whose expectations had been most
sanguine felt at the moment the probability of bitter
disappointment, and could not but be sensible that,
should the result of the search cmfirnl those forebodings,
it would only serve to show that a national
affront-an injury had been sustained, for which it
might be ditficult, or rather impossible, to obtain
redress. The joy was therefore extreme when, the
ponderous lid of the chest having been forced open,
at the expense of some time and labour, the regalia
were discovered lying at the bottom covered with
linen cloths, exactly as they had been left in 1707,
being I 10 years before, since they had been surrendered
by William the ninth Earl Marischal to the
custody of the Earl of Glasgow, Treasurer-Deputy
of Scotland. The reliques were passed from hand
to hand, and greeted with the affectionate reverence
which emblems so venerable, restored to public
view after the slumber of more than a hundred
years, were so peculiarly calculated to excite. The
discovery was instantly communicated to the public
by the display of the royal standard, and was
greeted hy the shouts of the soldiers in garrison,
and a vast multitude assembled on the Castle hill ;
indeed the rejoicing was so general and sincere as
plainly to show that, however altered in other
in wicked policy, had destroyed its contents j but ' respects, the people of Scotland had lost norhing of
murmurs arose from time to time, as the years went that national enthusiasm which formerly had dison,
and a crown, called that of Scotland, was ac- played itself in grief for the loss of those emblematic
honours, and now was expressed in joy for their I tually shown in the Tower of London !
of Cardinal York, the Prince Regent, afterwards I Covered with glass and secured in a strong iron,
