THE HIGH STREET. 247
motto :-THE - BEIR - OF - THE * LORD IS THE BIGENEN * OF VISDOM *
I a H *; and another bears a shield of arms, with an inscription partially defaced.
We have not discovered any names among its earlier occupants worthy of note; but
immediately adjoining it, on the site of the west side of Hunter Square, formerly stood
Kennedy’s Close, a scene associated with one of the most eminent among the distinguished
men of early times. In a MS. memorandum book of George Paton, the Antiquary,
the following note occurs :-“ George Buchanan took his last illness, and died in
Kennedy’s Close, first court thereof on your left hand, f i s t house in the turnpike, above
the tavern there ; and in Queen Anne’s time this was told to his family and friends who
resided in that house, by Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees, Lord Advocate.” A refereuce
to Edgar’s map shows that the close consisted of two small courts connected by a narrow
passage, the sight of the first of which will exactly correspond with that of the present
Merchants’ Hall. Here the eminent Scottish historian and reformer closed his active and
laborious life on the 28th of September 1582. Finding, when on his deathbed, that the
money he had about him was insufficient to defray the expenses of his funeral, he sent his
servant to divide it among the poor, adding-“ that if the city did not choose to bury him,
they might let him lie where he was.” He was interred on the following day in the Greyfriars’
Churchyard. It iu justly to be regretted that the spot cannot now be ascertained,
notwithstanding that, on an application made to the Towu Council, so recently as 1701,
‘( the through-stane ” was directed to be raised in order to preserve it.’
In the centre of the High Street, in front of the Black Turnpike, the ancient citadel of
the Town-Guard cumbered the thoroughfare till near the close of last century, protected by
its ungainly utility from the destruction that befell many of the more valuable relics of
antiquity. During Cromwell’s impartial rule in Edinburgh, it formed the scene of many
of his acts of guid discipline, causing drunkardis ryd the trie meir, with Btoppis and
muskettis tyed to thair leggis and feit, a paper on thair breist, and a drinking cap in thair
handis.” a This obsolete instrument of punishment, the wooden mare, still remained at
the end of the old Guard-house, when Ray, the Caricaturist, made his drawing of it immediately
before its destruction. The chronicles of this place of petty durance, could they
now be recovered, would furnish many an amusing scrap of antiquated scandal, interspersed
at rare intervals with the graver deeds of such disciplinarians as the Protector, or the
famous sack of the Porteous mob. There, such fair offenders as the witty and eccentric
Miss Mackenzie,’ daughter of Lord Royston, found at .times a night’s lodging, when she
and her maid sallied out disguised as preux chevaliers in search of adventures. Occasionally
even a grave judge or learned lawyer, surprised out of his official decorum by
the temptations of a jovial club, was astonished on awaking to find himself within its
.
1 The following is an extract from the Council Recorda, 3d December 1701 :-“ The Council beinfinformed that the
through-stane of the deceast George Buchanan lyes sunk under the ground of the Greyfriara, therefore they appoint the
chamberlain to raise the same, and clear the inscription thereupon, so aa the same may be legible.”-Bann. Mkc. vol. 2.
p. 401. The sight whereon his dwelling stood would form no inappropriate place for a commemorative tablet tu replace
the lost “ through-stane.” Dr Irving, his biographer, haa strangely persisted, in the face of this evidence, to af6rm that
“his ungrateful country never afforded his grave the common tribute of a monumental atone.”-(Irving’s Life of
Buchanan, p. 309.) A skull, believed to be that of the historian, is preserved in the Museum of the University of
Edinburgh, and is 80 remarkably thin as to be transparent The evidence in favour of thi tradition, though not altogether
conclusive, renders the truth of it exceedingly probable.
* Nicoll’s Diary, p. 69. Ante, p. 169.
248 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
impartial walls, among such strange bed-fellows as the chances of the night had offered to
its vigilant guardians. The demolition of the Cross, however, rendered the existence of
its unsightly neighbour the more offensive to all civic. reformers. Ferguson, in his
“ Mutual Complaint of the Plainstanes and Causey,” humorously represents it as one of
the most intolerable grievances of the latter, enough to I‘ fret the hardest stane ; ” and at
length, in 1785, its doom was pronounced, and its ancient garrison removed to the New
Assembly Close, then recently deserted by the directors of fashion. There, however, they
were .pursued by the enmity of their detractors. The proprietors of that fasAionabZe district
of the city were scandalised at the idea of such near neighbours as the Town-Rats, and by
means of protests, Bills of Suspension, and the like weapons of modern civic warfare,
speedily compelled the persecuted veterans to beat a retreat. They took refuge in
premises provided for them in the Tolbooth, but the destruction of their ancient stronghold
may be said to have sealed their fate ; they lingered on for a few years, maintaining
an unequal and hopeless struggle against the restless spirit of innovation that had beset
the Scottish capital, until at length, in the year 1817, their final refuge was demolished,
the last of them were put on the town’s pension list, and the truncheon of the constable
displaced the venerable firelock and Lochaber axe.
VIoaETTE-hchaber axe8 from the Antiquarian Museum.
