296 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
its quaint old lions, in which the Unionists are said to have been scared while signing
some of their preliminary treaties, is still there. The upper terrace is shaded by a magnificent
thorn tree, which appears to be much older than the house; on the second, a
curious arbour has been constructed by the interlacing stems of trees, twisted into the
fantastic forms in which our ancestors delighted; and on the lowest terrace, a fine fountain
of clear water is guarded by the marble statue of a little fisher, with his basket at his feet,
5lled with the mimic spoils of the rod and line. The garden has a southern aspect, and
is of large dimensions, and both it and the house might still afford no unsuitable accommodation
to the proudest Earl in the Scottish Peerage.’
Directly opposite to the Old Tolbooth, and not far removed. from the stately mansion
of the Earls of Moray, is an antique fabric of a singularly picturesque character, associated
with the name of one of the adversaries of that noble house-George, first Marquis of
Huntly, who murdered the Bonny Earl of Moray in 1591.. The evidence, indeed, is not
complete which assigns this as the dwelling of the first marquis, but it is rendered exceedingly
probable from the fact that his residence was in the Canongate, and that this
fine old mansion was occupied at a later period by his descendants. In June 1636, he
was carried from his lodging in the Canongate, with the hope of reaching his northern
territories before his death, but he got no farther than Dundee, where he died in his
seventy-fourth year.8 The aame noble lodging was the abode of the unfortunate Marquis,
who succeeded to his father’s title, and perished on the block at the Cross of Edinburgh in
1649. Ten years before that, their old mansion in the Canongate was the scene of special
rejoicing and festivity, on the occasion of the marriage of his eldest daughter, Lady Ann
with the Lord Drummond, afterwards third Earl of Perth, who was ane preceise puritane,
and therfore weill lyked in Edinburgh.” * The house was occupied, when Maitland wrote,
by the Duchess-Dowager of Gordon; and through a misinterpretation of the evidence
given by some of the witnesses concerned in the murder of Darnley in 1567, he pronounces
it to have been the Mint Office of Scotland at that period. If the date on the building,
which is 1570, be that of its erection, it settles the question. But, at any rate, an examination
of the evidence referred to leaves no doubt that the Mint was situated at the period
entirely without the Canongate, and in the outer court of the Palace of Holyoood,’ though
this has uot prevented the historian being followed, as usual, without investigation by later
writers. We have engraved a view of this curious old mansion as it appears from the
Bakehouse Close. It presents an exceedingly picturesque row of timber-fronted gables
to the street, resting on a uniform range of ornamental corbels projecting from the stone
basement fitory. A series of sculptured tablets adorn the front of the building, containing
certain pious aphorisms, differing in style from those so frequently occurrikg on the buildings
of the sixteenth century. On one is inscribed :-“ CONSTANTPIE CTORI RES MOBTALIVM
Moray House was for aome time occupied by the British Linen Company’s Bank ; and, since 1847, has been used as
the Free Church Normal School, and the fine terraced gardens deacribed above transformed into a playgronnd for the
wholam. ’ Spaldmg’e History of the Troublea, vol. i p. 42. ’ Ibid, vol. i p. 177.
4 “Incontinent the Erle [Bothwell], French Paris, William Powry, semitar and porter to the eaid Erle, Pat. Wil-
~ouna, nd the deponar, geid down the turnpike altogidder, and endlong the back of the Queenis garden puhiZZ mo cum
to the Cunzie-Eow, and the back of the stabilk [seemingly what is now called the Howa Wynd], quhill eow cum to the
Cannongate foreanent the Abbey eet.”-Deposition of Cfeorge Dalgleiah ; Crim. Trials, Supp. p. 495.
