THE HIGH STREET AND NETHER BOW. 259
escape from the shot of an assassin, which struck the candlestick before him as he sat at
his studies ; and within these walls he at length expired, in the sixty-seventh year of his
age, ‘‘ not so much oppressed with years as worn out and exhausted by his extraordinary
labour of body and anxiety of mind.”
A range of very picturesque buildings once formed the continuous row from ‘‘ Knox’s
corner,” to the site of the ancient Nether Bow Port, but that busy destroyer, Time, seems
occasionally to wax impatient of his own ordinary slow operations, and to demolish with
a swifter hand what he has been thought inclined to spare. One of them, a curious
specimen of the ancient timber-fronted lands, and with successive tiers of windows divided
only by narrow pilasters, has recently been curtailed by a story in height and robbed of
its most characteristic featnres, to preserve for a little longer what remains, while the
house immediately to the east of Knox’s, which tradition pointed out as the mansion of
the noble family of Balmerinoch, has now disappeared, having literally tumbled to the
ground, Immediately behind the site of this, on the west side of Society Close, an
ancient stone land, of singular construction, bears the following inscription over its main
entrance :-R * H There
appears to have been a date, but it is now illegible. The doorway gives access to a curious
hanging turnpike stair, supported on corbels formed by the projection of the stone steps
on the first floor beyond the wall. This is the same tenement already referred to as the
property of Aleson Bassendyne, the printer’s daughter. The alley bears the name of
Bassendyne’s Close, in the earliest titles ; more recently it is styled Panmure Close, from
the residence there of John Naule of Inverkeilory, appointed a Baron of the Court of
Exchequer in 1748-a grandson of the fourth Earl of Panmure, attainted in 1715 for his
adherence to the Stuarts. The large stone mansion which he occupied at the foot of the
close, was afterwards acquired by the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge,
founded in 1701, and erected into a body-corporate by Queen Anne. Its chief apartment
was used as their Hall; from which circumstance the present name of the close
originated.
The old timber land to the east of this close is said to have been the Excise Office
in early times, in proof of which the royal arms are pointed out over the first floor.
The situation was peculiarly convenient for guarding the principal gate of the city, and
the direct avenue to the neighbouring seaport. It is a stately erection, of considerable
antiquity, and we doubt not has lodged much more important official occupants than the
Hanoverian excisemen. It has an outside stair leading to a stone turnpike on the first
floor, and over the doorway of the latter is the motto DEW - BENEDICTAT. Since
George II.’s reign, the Excise Office has run through its course with as many and
rapid vicissitudes as might sufiice to mark the career of a prufligate spendthrift. In its
earlier days, when a floor of the old land in the Nether Bow sufficed for its accommodations,
it was regarded as foremost among the detested fruits of the Union. From thence
it removed to more commodious chambers in the Cowgate, since demolished to make way
for the southern piers of George IV. Bridge. Its next resting-place was the large tenement
on the south side of Chessel’s Court, in the Canongate, the scene of the notorious
Deacon Brodie’s last robbery. nom thence it was removed to Sir Lawrence Dnndas’s
splendid mansion in St Andrew Square, now occupied by the Royal Bank. This may
HODIE * MIHI * CRAS . TIBI . CVR * IGITVR CVRAS *
