THE HIGH STREET AND NETHER BOW. . 261
church, and the lively expression and spirit of the ‘‘ General Assembly,” and others of
his own etchings, amply justify the character he enjoyed among his contemporaries as a
truthful and humorous delineator of nature. He succeeded Runciman as master of the
Academy established by the Board of Trustees, the classes of which then met in the
College, while he received private pupils at his own house in Dickson’s Close.‘ A little
lower down the close on the same side, an old and curious stone tenement.bears on its
lower crowstep the Haliburton Arms, impaled with another coat, on one shield. It is a
singularly unique and time-worn edifice, evidently of considerable antiquity. A curious
double window projects on a corbeled base into the close, while the whole stone-work is
so much decayed as greatly to add to its picturesque character. In the earliest deed
which exists, bearing the date 1582, its first proprietor, Master James Halyburton--a
title then of some meaning-is spoken of in indefinite terms as umpb or deceased ; so
that it is a building probably of the early part of the sixteenth century. It afterwards
was the residence of Sir John Haliday of Tillybole. The moat interesting fact, however,
brought out by these early titles, occurs in defining the boundaries of the property,
wherein it is described as having “ the trans of the prebendaries of the kirk of Crightoun
on the east pairt and oyr partes ; ” so that a considerable part of Cant’s Close appeara
to have been occupied in early times by ecclesiastical buildings in connection with
the church of Crichton, erected into a collegiate foundation in 1449 by Sir Wm.
Crichton, Lord High Chancellor of Scotland.’ Directly opposite to the site of this
is another ecclesiastical edsce, the mansion of the Abbot of Melrose, which enters
from Strichen’s Close. It is a large and substantial stone building, enclosing a small
square or court in the centre, the original access to which seems to have disappeared.
The whole building has evidently undergone great alterations; and over one of the
doorways, a carved stone bears a large and very boldly cut shield, with two coats of
arms impaled, and the date 1600. There seems no reason to doubt,,however, that the
main portion of the Abbot’s residence still remains. The lower story is strongly vaulted,
and is evidently the work of an early date. The small quadrangle also is quite in
character with the period assumed for the building; and at its north-west angle in Cant’s
Close, where a curiously carved fleur-de-lis surmounts the gable, a grotesque gurgoil of
antique form serves as a gutter to the roof. Here, therefore, we may assign with little
hesitation the residence of Andrew Durie, nominated by James V. to the Abbey of Melrose
in the year 1526 ; and whose death, Knox assures us, was occasioned by the terror
into which he was put on the memorable uproar on St Giles’s day 1558. The close, which
is called the Abbot of Melrose’a in its earlier titles, assumes that of Rosehaugh Close at a
later period, from the Abbot’s lodging having become the residence of the celebrated Sir
George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, King’s Advocate for Scotland after the Restoration.
During a great part of last century, this ancient mamion was occupied by Alexander
Fraaer of Strichen, who was connected by marriage with the descendants of Sir George
- 1
Caledonian M m l y , Nov. 15, 1788.-His terms were one guinea per month for three lessons in the week, a fee
that undoubtedly restricted hia private clawes at that period to the most wealthy and fashionable atudenta of art. The
date of the advertisement is the year of hia marriaga ’ “ X t appeara from old writinga and charters connected with the how, that the tenement fronting the street, by
which it waa bounded on the north, had been, before the Reformation, the lodging of the Provost of CriohtoxL’’-Tdtions,
voL i p. 92. The old building ia long aince destroyed.
