THE CANONGA TE AND ABBE Y SANCTUAR Y. 297
VMBRA.” On another :-‘‘ UT TU LINGVB TVB, SIC EGO YEAR : AVRIUN DOMINVS sw.” A
third tablet bears the date, with an inscription of a similar character ; but theae have long
been concealed by a painting of Lord Nelson, which forms the sign of a tavern now
occupying a portion of the old Marquis’s mansion. On an upright tablet, at the west
end, is the ingenious emblem of the resurrection referred to in the description of an
ediflce in the Old Bank Close, which was similarly adorned.
On the east side of the Bakehouse or Hammermen’s Close, an ornamental archway,
with pendant keystone, in the fashion prevalent towards the close of James VL’s
reign, forms the entrance to a small enclosed court, surrounded on three sides by the
residence of Sir Archibald Acheson of Glencairney, one of the Lords of Session appointed
soon after the accession of Charles L He was created by the King a Baronet of Nova
Scotia in 1628, and was afterwards appointed one of the Secretaries of State for Scotland.
Over the pediment above the main entrance the Baronet’s crest, a Cock standing on a
Trumpet, is cut in bold relief; and below, the motto vigiZanti6us, with a cypher containing
the letters A. M. H., being the initials of Sir Archibald Acheson, and Dame Margaret
Hamilton his wife. The date on the building is 1633, the same year in which Charles I.
paid his first visit to his native capital. The building is a handsome erection in the style
of the period; though a curious proof of the rude state in which the mechanical arts
remained at that date is afforded by the square hole being still visible at the side of the
main doorway, wherein the old oaken bar slid out and in for securely fastening the door.
The three sides of the court are ornamented with dormer windows, containing the initials
of the builder and his wife, and other architectural decorations iu the style of the
period. .
The range of houses to the eastward of the patrician mansions described above still
includes many of an early date, and some associated with names once prominent in
Scottish story. Milton House, a handsome large mansion, built in the somewhat heavy
style which was in use during the eighteenth century, derived its name from Andrew
Fletcher of Milton, Lord Justice-clerk of Scotland, who succeeded the celebrated Lord
Fountainhall on the Bench in the year 1724, and continued to preside as a judge of the
Court of Session till his death in 1766. He was much esteemed for the mild and
forbearing manner with which he exercised his authority as Lord Justice-clerk after the‘
Rebellion of 1745. He sternly discouraged all informers, and many communications,
which he suspected to have been sent by over-officious and malignant persons, were found
in his repositories aft,er his death unopened.’ He was a nephew of the patriotic Fletcher
of Salton, and an intimate friend and coadjutor of Archibald, Duke of Argyle, during
whose adminiatration he exercised a wise and beneficial control over the government
patronage in Scotland. The old mansion which thus formed the mimic acene of court
levees, where Hanoverian and Jacobite candidates for royal favour elbowed one another in
the chase, still retains unequivocal marks of its former grandeur, notwithstanding the
many strange tenants who have since occupied it. The drawing-room to the south, the
windows of which command a beautiful and uninterrupted view of Salisbury Crags and
St Leonard’s Hill, has its walls very tastefully decorated with a series of designs of landscapes
and allegorical figures, with rich borders of fruit and flowers, painted in distemper.
Brunton and Haig’a Senators of the College of Justice, p. 499,
2 P
