138 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
bounded on the east by Brown’s Close, and forms a detached block of houses of various
dates and styles, all exhibiting considerable remains of former magnificence.
The house that now forms the kouth-west angle towards the Castle Hill bears, on the
pediment of a dormer window facing the Castle, the date 1630, with the initials A. M.,
M. N. ; and there still remains, sticking in the wall, a cannon ball, said to have been shot
from the Castle during the cannonade of 1745, though we are assured that it was placed
there by order of government, to indicate that no building would be permitted on that
side nearer the Castle. Through this land‘ there is an alley called Blair’s Close, leading
by several curious windings into an open court behind. At the first angle in the close,
a handsome gothic doorway, of very elegaut workmanship, meets the view, forming the
entry to a turnpike stair. The doorway is surmounted with an ogee arch, in the tympanum
of which is somewhat rudely sculptured a coronet with supporters,--‘( two deerhounds,”
says Chambers, ‘‘ the well-known supporters of the Duke of Goidon’s arms.” ’
This accords with the local tradition, which states it to have been the town mansion of
that noble family ; but the style of this doorway, and the substantial character of the
whole building, leave no room to doubt that it is an erection of a much earlier date
than the Dukedom, which was only created in 1684. Tradition, however, which is never
to be despised in questions of local antiquity, proves to be nearly correct in this case, as
we find, in one of the earliest titles to the property now in the possession of the City Improvements
Commission, endorsed, I-‘ Disposition of House be Sir Robert Baird to William
Baird, his second son, 1694,” it is thus defined,-“All and hail that my lodging in the
Caste1 Hill of Edinburgh, formerly possessed by the Duchess of Gordon.” This appears,
from the date of the disposition, to have been the first Duchess, Lady Elizabeth Howard,
daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. She retired to a Convent in Flanders during the lifetime
of the Duke, but afterwards returned to Edinburgh, where she principally resided
till her death, which took place at the Abbey Bill in 1732, sixteen years after that of
her huaband.
In 1711, her Grace excited no small stir in Edinburgh, by sending to the Dean and
Faculty of Advocates, -‘aI silver medal, with a head of the Pretender on one side, and on
the other the British Isles, with the word Reddite.” On the Dean presenting the medal,
the propriety of accepting it was keenly discussed, when twelve only, out of seventyfive
members present, testxed their favour for the House of Hanover by voting its
rejection.s
The most recent of the interior fittings of this mansion appear old enough to have
remained from the time of its occupation by the Duchess. It is finished throughout with
wooden panelling, and one large room in particular, overlooking the Castle Esplanade, is
elegantly decorated with rich ‘carvings, and with a painting (one of old Norie’s pictorial
idornments) filling a panel over the chimney-piece, and surrounded by an elaborate piece
.
1 The term ImuZ, in this and similar instances throughout the Work, is used according to its Scottish acceptation,
* Traditionq vol. i p. 153.
* Norie, a house-decorator and painter of the last century, whom works are very common, painted on the panels of
Pinkerton remarks, in his introduction to the ‘‘ Scottish Gallery,” 1799,-“Norie’a
and signifies a building of several stories of separate dwellings, communicating by a common stair.
Douglas’s Peerage, vol. i. p. 654.
the older houaea in Edinburgh.
genius for landacapea entitles him to o place in the list of Scotch paintera”
