THE HIGH STREET AND NETHER BOW. 265
man, the Regent Morton, and an associate with him in the murder of Riazio ; so that, if
the sculpture over the doorway be a device adopted by the Morton family, the corresponding
one, already described in the Castle Hill, may be considered as affording considerable
probability of that house having been the mansion of the Regent. William Douglas,
Lord Whittinghame, resigned his office as a judge in 1590, and was succeeded by his son
Archibald, the granter of the disposition referred to, a special favourite of James VI.,
who accompanied him on his matrimonial voyage to Norway, and was rewarded for his
“ lovable service ” soon after his return by this judicial appointment.
The portion of the wynd below this old mansion included, along with the building
of 1564, recently swept away to make room for an extensive printing-office, another
which was long used as a Roman Catholic Chapel. This was an antique stone fabric,
from which a curiously-projecting timber front was removed only a few years before its
desertion as a place of worship. On the fifth flat of this tenement, approached by a
steep and narrow turnpike stair, a large chamber was consecrated to the worship of the
Roman Catholic Church during the greater part of last century, and probably earlier.
When we last visited this primitive retreat of “ Old Giant Pope, after the many
shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger daya,” there still remained painted, in
.simple fashion, on one of the doors immediately below the chapel, the name of the old
Bishop, Mr Hay. This was the once celebrated opponent of Bishop Wm. Abernethy
Drummond, of the Scottish Episcopal Church, under the initials G. H., and well worthy
of note in the history of the locality as the last of the Bishops of Blackfriars’ Wynd,
where the proudest nobles of Scotland were wont of old to give place to the dignitaries of
the Church.
Nearly opposite to this, a large and ancient tenement stood entire in the midst
of ruins, the upper story of which was also used as a chapel. It was dedicated to St
Andrew, and formed the chief Roman Catholic place of worship in Edinburgh, until it
was abandoned in the year 1813 for the ecclesiastical edifice at Broughton Street,
dedicated in honour of the Virgin Mary. The interior of the chapel retained much
of its original state till its demolition. The frame-work of the simple altarpiece
still remained, though the rude painting of the Patron Saint of Scotland, which
originally flled it, had disappeared. Humble as must have been the appearance of this
chapel, even when furnished with every adjunct of Catholic ceremonid for Christmas or
Easter festivals, aided by the imposing habits of the officiating priests that gathered
around its little altar, yet men of ancient lineage were wont to assemble among the
worshippers; and during the abode of the royal exiles at Holyrood Palace, Count
d’Artois, the future occupant of the French throne, with the princes and their attendants,
usually formed part of the congregation. An internal staircase formed a private entrance
for the priests and other officials from the floor below, where the straitened accommodations
it afforded sufficed for the humble residence of these successors of the Cardinals
and Archbishops who once dwelt in the same neighbourhood. The public accesa was by
a projecting stone staircase, which formed the approach to the different floors of the
building. Over this doorway was a sculptured lintel, with a shield of arm6 in the centre,
bearing three stars in chief, with a plain cross, and over it two swords saltier ways.
On either side of this was cut, in large antique characters, the inscription MISERERE
2 L
266 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
ME1 DEVS ; and below, the initials G. G. The latter has been mistaken for the date
1616 ; but no one who examined the style of the doorway and inscription could feel any
hesitation in assigning to it a date of fully a century earlier.
Only one other old building remained on the west side of the wynd, bearing the pious
inscription over its entrance :-THE FEIR OF THE LORD IS THE BEWNNMG OF AL VISDOME.
Below this, at the corner of the Cowgate, formerly stood the English Episcopal
Chapel, founded by Lord Chief Baron Smith in 1722. It was a plain edifice, possessing
no external features of an ecclesiastical character, as may be seen in our engraving of
The
building existed exactly a century, having been demolished in 1822, after serving during
that period as the place of worship of all loyal and devout Episcopal High Churchmen,
at a time when Episcopacy and Jacobitism were nearly synonymous in Scotland.
The interest that attaches to it as a feature of the olden time, when such a sight was
deemed the most suitable that could be selected for a chapel, probably attended by a
congregation including a greater array of rank and fashion than any that now assembles
in Edinburgh, is further increased from its having been the place of worship of Dr
Johnson when residing with Boswell, in 1773.
Here also, and not improbably on the same site, was the town mansion of William
St Clair, Earl of Orkney, the founder of Roslin Chapel, who maintained his Court at
Roslin Castle with a magnificence far surpassing what had often sufficed for that of the
Scottish Kings. He was royally served at his own table-if we are to believe the
genealogist-in vessels of gold and silver ; Lord Dirleton being his master of the household,
Lord Borthwick his cup-bearer, and Lord Fleming his carver, with men of ancient
rank and lineage for their deputies. His Princess, Margaret Douglas, was waited on,
according to Father Hay, by seventy-five gentlewomen, whereof Hty - three were
daughters of noblemen, “all cloathd in velvets and silks, with their chains of gold,
and other pertinents ; togither with two hundred rideing gentlemen who accompanied
her in all her journeys. She had carried before her, when she went to
Edinburgh, if it were darke, eighty lighted torches. Her lodgeing was att the foot
of Blackfryer Wynde; so that, in a word, none matched her in all the countrey, save
the Queen’s Majesty.”
Directly opposite to the site of Baron Smith’s Chapel stood one of the palatial edifices
of the old capital, popularly known as Cardinal Beaton’s house-a sdEciently humble
and unpretending structure, which undoubtedly formed an archiepiscopal residence of no
mean character in the sixteenth century. This ancient mansion, however, falls more
correctly to be treated of as one of the most interesting among the older features of the
Cowgate. The vignette at the beginning of the chapter exhibits the richest group of
mottoes to be found on any building in Edinburgh. They formed the decorations on the
architrave of a decayed old stone land on the same side, near the head of the Vnd.
A shield, charged with armorial bearings, was sculptured on the left side of the doorway,
as represented in the woodcut, with the initials E. K., and the date 1619.
above this, at the head of the east side, was one of much more pretension externally,
having a front to the wgnd of polished ashlar, and a range of unusually large windows,
Cardinal Beaton’s House,” where it appears on the further side of the wynd,
The building .
Genealogie of the Sainte Claires of Rosslgn, p. 26.
