228 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
worthy, faithfu’ Provost Dick,”-than ever was either the Bishop of Orkney, or my Lord
Holyroodhouse. Sir William Dick of Braid, an eminent merchant of Edinburgh, and
proyost of the city in the years 1638 and 1639, presents, in his strangely chequered history,
one of the most striking examples of the instability of fortune on record. He was reputed
the wealthiest man of his time in Scotland, and was generally believed by his contemporaries
to have discovered the philosophers’ stone I Being a zealous Covenanter, he advanced at
one time to the Scottish Convention of Estates, in the memorable year 1641, the sum of
one hundred thousand merks, to save them from the necessity of disbanding their army ;
and, in the following year, the customs were sett to him, “ for 202,000 merks, and 5000
merka of girsoum.’’e On the triumph of Cromwell and the Independents, however, his
horror of the Sectaries ” was greater even than his opposition to the Stuarts, and he
advanced %20,000 for the service of King Charles. By this step he provoked the wrath
of the successful party, while squandering his treasures on a failing cause. He wm
unsparingly subjected to the heaviest penalties, until his vast resources dwindled away in
vain attempts to satisfy the rapacity of legal extortion, and he died miserably in prison, at
Westminster, during the Protectorate, in want, it is said, of even the common necessaries of
life.a This romance of real life, was familiar to all during Sir Walter Scott’s early years,
and he has represented David Deans exultingly exclaiming :-“ Then folk might see men
deliver up their silver to the State’s use, as if it had been as muckle sclate stanes. My
father saw them toom the sacks of dollars out 0’ Provost Dick’s window, intill the carts
that carried them to the army at Dunse Law ; and if ye winna believe his testimony, there
is the window itsell still standing in the Luckenbooths,-at the airn stanchells, five doors
abune Advocate’s Close,”’ The old timber gable and the shnchelled window of this
Scottish Crcesus, have vanished, like his own dollars, beyond recall, but there is no doubt
that the modern and unattractive stone front, extending between Byres’ and Advocate’s
Closes only disguises the remarkable building to which such striking historical associations
belong. The titles include not only a disposition of the property to Sir William Dick
of Braid, but the appraising and disposition of it by his creditors after his death ; and its
situation is casually confirmed by a contemporary notice that indicates its importance at
the period. In the classification of the city into companies, by order of Charles I., the
third division extends “from Gladstone’s Land, down the northern side of the High
Street, to Sir William Dick’s Land.”6 The house was afterwards occupied by the Earl of
Kintore, an early patron of Allan Ramsay, whose name was given to a small court still
~ remaining behind the front building, although the public mode of access to it has disappeared
since the remodelling of the old timber land.
Archaeologia Scottica, vol. i. p. 336.
Sir Thomas Hope’s Diary, Bano. Club, p. 158.
These changes of fortune are commemorated in a folio pamphlet, entitled “ The lamentable state of the deceased
It contains several copperplates, one representing Sir William on horseback, and attended with
A second
The tract is greatly
Sir Walter Scott mentions, in a note to the Heart of Midlothian, that the only copy he ever eaw
Scott says Gosfwd’s Close, but it is obviously a mistake, as, independent of the direct evidence we have of the true
Gersome, or elzheam siller, now pronounced Grassurn.
Sir William Dick”
guards, aa Lord Provost of Edinburgh, superintending the unloading of one of his rich argosies at Leith.
exhibits him ea arrested, and in the hands of the bailiffs, and a third presents him dead in prison.
valued by collectors.
for d e was valued at 230.
site of Sir WiUiam Dick’# house, that close W~JJn ot in the Luckenbooths, the locality he correctly mentions.
.
Maitland, p. 285.
