HEAD OF WEST BOW
LAWN MARKET.
THE LA WNMARKET. 183
courage failed them, and they marched hastily home again without having even seen the
enemy. This corps of martial burghers became a favourite butt for the Jacobite wits ; and,
among other proofs of their self-devoted zeal, it transpired that the gallant penman had
secured within his waistcoat the professional breastplate of a quire of paper, and prepared
himself for his expected fate by affixing thereon a label, inscribed,--“ This is the body of
Andrew Maclure, let it be decently interred,” in the hope that he might thereby be secure
of Christian burial !
Before closing the chapter, we may add that the Lawnmarket appears to have been,
at all periods, a place of residence for men of note. In 1572 Mr Henry Killigrew, the
ambassador of Queen Elizabeth, arrived at Edinburgh to congratulate the Earl of Morton
on his accession to the Regency,”when he ‘‘ depairtit to Dauid Forrestaris lugeing abone
the tolbuith,” ’ in the same neighbourhood as the mansion in Old Bank Close, soon afterward
occupied by Sir William Durie. So long as Edinburgh continued to be the seat of
the Scottish Parliament, its vicinity to the Parliament House made the Lawnmarket be
selected as a favourite place of residence, as appears from numerous passing allusions to
the old nobility, though the particular houses referred to cannot now be traced. Defoe,
for example,-who was resident in Edinburgh at the period,-tells us in his history of the
Union, that on the 28th October 1706, the Parliament sat late, and the Parliament Close
was so full of people waiting the result of their decision, that the members could scarcely
get out. On this occasion the Duke of Hamilton, the popular favourite, who was usually
conducted in triumph by the mob to his lodgings in the Abbey, iL on leaving the house,
was carried up to the Lawnmarket, and so to the lodgings of the Duke of Atholl,” who
was appointed, as Loclchart tells us, in the place of the Duke of Queensberry at the
beginning of this session of parliament, the latter wishing to see the course of public
affairs before he ventured himself to face the difficulties of that period, ‘‘ and therefore he
sent the Duke of Atholl down as Commissioner, using hi& as the monkey did the cat
in pulling out the hot roasted chestnuts.”‘ Here also was the house of Sir Patrick
Johnston, the city member,-tradition points out the old land still standing at the head
of Johnston’s Close:-which was attacked and gutted by the same excited mob, in their
indignation at his favouring the unpopular measure of the Union.
l Adjoining Mr Yaclure’s house waa the Baijen Hole, an ancient and once celebrated baker’s shop 1 The origin of
this epithet haa puzzled our local historiana, but it occurs in Crawfurd’a History of the Univemity of Edinburgh, BB
applied to the junior class of Students, whose patronage, above a century ago, of a famed apeciea of rolls manufactured
there, under the name of Souter’r CZods, had doubtlesa led to this title fer the place, which resembled the high shqpr
still remaining underneath the oldest houses of the High Street.
Craufurd’s Memoirs, p. 244.
This we have on the authority of an old man, a pewterer, who haa been an inhabitant of Xhe Bow for the last Wty
8 Diurnal of Occurrenta, p. 313. 4 Lockhart’s Hems. p. 139.
yearn.
