THE HIGH STREET. 231
Lord Philiphaugh, one of the judges appointed after the Revolution. He sat in the Convention
of Estates which assembled at Edinburgh, 26th June 1678, and was again chosen
to represent the county of Selkirk in Parliament in the year 1681, when he became a
special object of jealousy to the government. He was imprisoned in 1684 ; and under the
terror of threatened torture with the boots, he yielded to give evidence against those
implicated in the Rre House Plot. He had the character of an upright and independent
judge, but his contemporaries never forgot ‘‘ that unhappy step of being an evidence to
save his life,”’ a weakness that most of those who remembered it against him would
probably have shown in like circumstances.
A little further down the close another doorway appears, adorned with an inscription
and armorial bearings. At the one end of the lintel is a shield bearing the arms of Bruce
of Binning, boldly cut in high relief, and at the other end the same, impaled with those of
Preston, while between them is this inscription, in large ornamental characters,
GRACIA DEI * ROBERTUS * BRUISS
In the earlier titles of property in this close, it is styled Bruce’s Close, and the family have
evidently been of note and influence in their day. We were not without hope of being
able to trace their connection with the celebrated Robert Bruce, who, as one of the ministers
of Edinburgh, became an object of such special animosity to James VI. ; and the vicinity
of the old mansion to the ancient church where he officiated renders it not improbable in
the absence of all evidence.’
Still farther down, another doorway, ornamented with inscriptions and armorial bearings:
gives access to a large and handsome dwelling on the first floor, adorned at its entrance
with a niche or recess, formed of a pointed arch, somewhat‘ plainer than the (‘ fonts ”
described in Blyth’s Close. Here was the residehce of the celebrated Sir Thomas Craig, who
won the character of an upright judge, and a man of eminent learning and true nobleness
of character, during the long period of forty years that he practised as a lawyer, in the
reign of Queen Mary and James VI. One of his earliest duties as a justice-depute was the
trial and condemnation of Thomas Scott, sheriff-depute of Perth, and Henry Yair a priest,
for having kept the gates of Holyrood Palace during the assassination of Rizzio. He
appears to have been a man of extreme modesty, and little inclined from his natural disposition
to take a prominent part in public affairs. Whether from timidity or difEdence, he
left Sir Thomas Hope to fulfil the duties which rightly devolved on him, as advocate for
the Church, at the famous trial of the six ministers. He was of a studious turn, and readier
in the use of his pen than his tongue. His legal treatises are still esteemed for their great
learning ; and several of his Latin poems are to be found in the “ Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum,”
containing, according to his biographer Nr Tytler, many passages eminently poetical.
It is a curious fact, that although repeatedly offered by King James the honour of knighthood,
he constantly refused it ; and he is only styled (‘ Sir Thomas Craig,” in consequence
Hackay’s Memoirs. ’ In the Book of Retoum, vol. ii., Nos. 26 and 30, in the year 1600, Robert Bruce, heir male of Robert Bruce of
Binning, his father, appears as owner of various hnds in Linlithgow, anciently belonging to the F’rioress and Convent
of the B. V. Yary of Elcho, with the chuich lands of the vicarage of Byning.
a The inscription, now greatly defaced, is, Gratia Dei, Thiromas T . . . .
