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
298 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
They are said to be the work of a foreign artist, and are executed with great spirit.
From the style of the landscapes more especially, we feel little hesitation in ascribing the
whole to the pencil of Francesco Zuccherelli, who had a high reputation in England
during the earlier part of the eighteenth century, Interspersed among the ornamental
borders there are various grotesque figures, which have the appearance of being copies
from an illuminated missal of the fourteenth century. They represent a cardinal, a monk,
a priest, and other churchmen, painted with great humour and extreme drollery of
attitude and expression. They so entirely differ from the general character of the composition,
that their insertion may be conjectured to have originated in a whim of Lord
Milton, which the artist has contrived to execute without sacrificing the harmony of his
design. An elegant cornice, finished with painting and gilding, and a richly stuccoed
ceiling, complete the decorations of this fine apartment.
The house was occupied for some time as a Roman Catholic School, under the care of
the Sisters of Charity of St Margaret’s Convent. The pupils particularly attracted the
attention of her Majesty Queen Victoria on her visit to the capital in 1842, as they
strewed flowers in her path on her approach from the palace of her ancestors by the
ancient royal thoroughfare of the Canongate. It has since been used as a Deaf and
Dumb School, and was afterwards appropriated to the benevolent objects of the Royal
Maternity Hospital, but is now the property of a large engineering firm.
The fine open grounds which surround Milton House, with the site on which it is
built, formed a large and beautiful garden attached to the mansion of the Earls of
Roxburghe. Lord Fountainhall reports a dispute, in 1694, between the Trades of
Canongate and the Earl of Roxburghe, in which the Lords declared his house in the
Canongate free, and himself empowered, by right of certain clauses in a contract between
the Earl, the Town of Edinburgh, and Heriot’s Hospital, to employ artificers on his
house who were not freemen of the burgh.’ Such contentions, originating in the jealousy
of the Corporations of the Canongate, are of frequent occurrence at the period, and show
with how despotic a spirit they were prepared to guard their exclusive rights. On the
2d June 1681, a complaint was laid before the P r i v Council by the celebrated
Lord Halton, afterwards Earl of Lauderdale,’ stating that he was then building a
lodging for himself in the Canongate, and having employed some country masons,
the craftsmen of the burgh assaulted them, and carried off their tools. In the evidence,
it is shown that even a freeman of the capital dared not encroach on the bounds of the
Canongate; and that, “in 1671, the Privy Council fined David Pringle, chirurgeon,
for employing one Wood, an unfree barber, to exerce his calling in polling the
. children’s heads in Heriot’s In this case Lord Halton seems also to
have been left free to employ his own workmen; but the craftsmen were declared
warranted in their interference, and therefore free from the charge of rioting. The
Earl of Roxburghe’s mansion appears, from Edgar’s map, to have stood on the west
side of the garden, and to have been afterwards occupied by his brother John, the fifth
I Fountainhall’s Decisions, vol. i. p. 614.
Queenaberry House having been built on ground purchased from the Lauderdale family (Traditions, vol. i. p. 280),
Fountainhall’s Decisions, 801. i. p, 135-9.
it seems probable that that ducal mansion occupies the site of Lord Halton’s house.
