178 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
I., who hoped thereby to gain him over from the Presbyterians. In this, however, the
King was completely disappointed. At the period of his acquiring Gourlay’s house, he was
actively engaged in organising the national resistance of the liturgy, and in framing the
Covenant, which was subscribed in the following year by nearly the whole of Scotland.
He appears, from his Diary,’ to have taken a minute and affectionate interest in all that
concerned the members of his numerous family, long after they had left the parental roof.
The ancient mansion seems to have been purchased for his son, Sir Thomas, who, with his
elder brother, Sir John Hope of Craighall, both sat on the bench while their father was
Lord Advocate ; and it being judged by the Court of Session unbecoming that a father
should plead uncovered before his children, the privilege of wearing his hat while pleading
was granted to him, and we believe still belongs to his successors in the office of King’s
Advocate, though fallen into disuse.
From Sir Thomas Hope the upper part of the old mansion was purchased by Hugh
Blair, merchant in Edinburgh, and grandfather, we believe, of the eminent divine that bore
his name. From him it came into the possession of Lord Aberuchill, a Senator of the
College of Justice ; and various other persons of rank and note in their day occupied the
ancient dwelling ere it passed to the plebeian tenantry of modern times.
The most interesting of its latter occupants was the celebrated lawyer Sir George Lockhart,
the great rival of Sir George Mackenzie, appointed, in the year 1658, Advocate to
the Protector during life, and nominated Lord President of the Court of Session in 1685.
He continued at the head of the Court till the Revolution, and would undoubtedly have
been reappointed to the office, had he not fallen a victim to private revenge. Chiesly of
Dalry, an usuccessful litigant, exasperated, as it appeared, by a decree of the Lord President
awarding an aliment of 1700 merks, or g93 sterling, out of his estate, in favour of
his wife and ten children, conceived the most deadly hatred against him, and openly declared
his resolution to be revenged. On Sir James Stewart, advocate, seeking to divert him from
the purpose he avowed, he fiercely replied,--“ Let God and me alone ; we have many things
to reckon betwixt us, and we will reckon this too ! ” The Lord President was warned of
Chiesly’s threats, but unfortunately despised them. The assassin loaded his pistols on the
morning of Easter Sunday, the 31st March 1689; he went to the New Kirk,-as the
choir of St Giles’s Church was then styled,-and having dogged the President home from
the church, he shot him in the back as he was entering the Old Bank Close, where he
resided. Lady Lockhart,-the aunt of the witty Duke of Wharton,-was lying ill in bed.
Alarmed at the report of the pistol, she sprang up, and on lea,rning of her husband’s
murder rushed out into the close in her night-dress, and assisted in raising him from the
ground. The assassin, on being told that his victim had expired immediately on being
carried into the house, coolly replied,--“ He was not used to do things by halves.”
The murderer being taken red-Band, and the crime having been committed within the city,
he was brought to trial on the following day before Sir Magnus Prince, the Lord Provost,
as High Sheriff of the city. Although he made no attempt to deny the crime, he was put
.
1 The following entry appeara in his Diary, “ 7 January 1641, Payit to David cfourlay, Jc merks, quhilk he afimit
to be awio to him of the pryce off his tenement sauld to my son Sir Thomas, and thin gevin be him to his sone Thornam
Gourlay quhen he waa going furth off the country.” On 25th December 1644, is the brief entry, “Good David
Gourlay departit at his hous in Prestounpannis, about 8 hours of nycht.”-Hope’s Diary, Bann. Club, pp. 123,
210.
THE LA WNMARKET. I79
to the torture, by special authority of the Estates, to discover if he had any accomplices.’
The very next day he was dragged on a hurdle to the Cross, his right hand struck off
while dive, and then hanged, with the pistol about his neck, after which his body was
hung in chains on the Gallow-lee, between Leith and Edinburgh, and his hand affixed to
the West Port.’ The Castle being then under siege, and held out by the Duke of
Gordon on behalf of King James, a parley was beat by the besiegers, for a cessation of
hostilities during the interment of the President in the Greyfriars’ Churchyard, which
was readily granted.’
The house of Dalry belonged
latterly to William Kirkpatrick,
Esq., of Allisland, whose grandson
related to us that the servants were
afraid to venture alone. into the
back kitchen, and would not, on
any consideration, approach it after
dark, uuder the belief that Chiesly’s
bones had been carried off by his
relatives and buried there, and that the ghost of the murderer haunted the spot. On
his grandfather repairing the garden wall at a later period, an old stone seat, which stood
in a recess in the wall, had to be removed, and underneath was found a skeleton, entire,
except the bones of the right hand ;-without doubt the remains of the assassin, that had
been secretly brought thither from the Callow-lee.
Great exertions were used with the Improvements’ Commissioners to induce them to
preserve the interesting fabric associated with such various characters and national events,
but in vain ;-civic rulers are ever the slowest to appreciate such motives. The demolition
of this, as well as of several surrounding buildings, brought to light numerous fragments
of an earlier erection, evidently of an ecclesiastical character, several of which we have had
engraved. These were used simply as building materials, the carved work being built into
the wall, and the stones squared on the side exposed. Numerous fragments of shafts,
mullions, and the like, also occurred among the ruins ; and an inspection of the earliest
writs and evidents of the property, serve to show that a building of considerable extent
had existed here prior to the Reformation, in connection with Cambuskenneth Abbey.
It is styled, in the earliest of these, “ all and hail1 these lands, houses, and stables, biggit
and waste, lying within ye tenement sometime pertaining to the Comendator and Convent
of Cambuskenneth,” and included both William Little’s mansion to the west, and a portion,
at least,of the buildings in Gosford’s Close, to the east. But the most interesting
and conclusive evidence on this subject is derived from these sculptured fragments rescued
from the ruins of the more recent building ; and judging from them, and from the plainer
1 It is a curious fact connected with the trial, that the Estatea of Parliament paged a special act empowering his
judges to examine him by the torture, although, only ten days after this trial, they declared King James to have
forfaulted the Crown, by illegal assumption and exercise of power, and “that the use of torture, without evidence, is
contrary to law.” ’ Crim. Registers of Edinburgh. h o t ’ s Crim. Trials, pp. 168-173.
Siege of the Castle of Edinburgh, 1689, Bann. Club, p. 47.
YIGmmE.-Carved stone from Old Bank Close, in the collection of A. G. Ellia, Esq.
