L UCKENBOOTHS AND PARLIAMENT CLOSE. 209
so thick that they only got out a small cabinet with great difEculty. But albeit, his
papers were lying on the floor, or hung about the walls of his closet in pocks, yet they
durst not stay to gather them up, or take them, though they were desired to do it, so
that that cabinet, and Alexander Christie, his servant’s lettron, which stood near the
door of his lodging, with some few other things, was all that was got saved, and the rest,
even to his Lordship’s wearing cloths, were burnt.” A very lively and graphic account
of this conflagration or “ epitome of dissolution,” as it is there styled, is furnished
in a letter written at the time of its occurrence by the celebrated Duncan Forbes of
Culloden, to his brother Colonel Forbes, wherein Lord Crossrig fi@res in a special
manner. It is dated “ Edinburgh, 6th February 1700,” and thus describes the event :- ‘‘ Upon Saturday’s night, by ten a clock, a fyre burst out in Mr John Buchan’s closet
window, towards the Meal1 Mercate. It continued whill eleven a clock of the day, with
the greatest frayor and vehemency that ever I saw fyre do, notwithstanding that I saw
mer are burnt, by the easiest computation, betwixt 3 and 400 familys ;
all the pryde of Eden’ is sunk ; from the Cowgate to the High Street all is burnt, and
hardly one stone left upon another. The Commissioner, President of the Padt, Rest of
the Session, the Bank, most of the Lords, Lawyers, and Clerks, were all burnt, and
many good and great familys. It is said just now, by S’ John Cochran, and Jordanhill,
that ther is more rent burnt in this fyre than the whole city of Glasgow will amount
to. The Parliament House very hardly escapt ; all Registers confounded; Clerks
Chambers, and processes, in such a confusion, that the Lords and Officers of State are
just now mett at Rosse’s Taverne, in order to adjourneing of the Sessione by reason of
the dissorder. Few people axe lost, if any att a11 ; but ther was neither heart nor hand
left amongst them for saveing from the fyre, nor a drop of water in the cisternes ; twenty
thousand hands flitting ther trash they know not wher, and hardly twenty at work.
These babells, of ten and fourteen story high, are down to the ground, and ther fall’s
very terrible. Many rueful spectacles, such as Corserig naked, with a child under his
oxter, happing for his lyEe ; the Fish Mercate, and all from the Cow Gate to Pett Street’s
Close, burnt; The Exchange, waults, and coal cellars under the Parliament Close, are
still burneing.” ’
Among other renters of the numerous lodgings into which the lofty old lands were
divided, the Faculty of Advocates are named as occupying one in (( the Exchange Stairs ”
for their library, at the yearly rent of two hundred and forty pounds Scots. Within this
the nucleus of the valuable library now possessed by them had been formed, on the
scheme suggested by its founder, Sir George Mackenzie, “ that noble wit 6f Scotland,”
as Dryden terms him, whose name, while it wins the respect o‘f the learned, is still
coupled among the Scottish peasantry with that of “ the bluidy Clavers’,” and mentioned
only with execrations, for the share he took, as Lord Advocate, in the persecution of the
Covenanters, during the reign of Charles IL Under his direction and influence the fines
, London burne.
Act. Parl. vol. x. p. 284. ’ Culloden Papers, p. 27. In a pasquinade in Wodrow’s Collectionq purporting fa be “A Letter from the
, Ghost of Sir WiUiam Anstruther of that ilk, once senatour of the Colledge of Justice,’’ to his former colleagues,
and dated, ‘‘ EZysian Pielda, 27 January 1711,” the Lord Crossrig and E. Lauderdale are the only Lords of Seasion he
meets with “in the agreeable aboads,” a compliment to the former somewhat marred by the known character of his
aasociata.
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