THE WEST BOW AND SUBURBS. 341
for it the savoury title it retained to the last, still preserved some remains of ancient
grandeur, as appears in our view, where an ornamental building is introduced, which had
probably formed the summer house of some neighbouring patrician’s pleasure-grounds
ere the locality acquired its unenviable distinction. The inventory of the tenants who
were at length ejected by the inexorable commissioners, forms, we think, as strange a
medley as ever congregated together in one locality. It is thus described ;-‘4 All
and hail these laigh houses lying in the said West Bow, in that close commonly
called the Stinking Close of Edinburgh, some time possessed, the one thereof by John
Edward, cobbler; another by Widow Mitchell; another by John Park, ballad crier;
another by Christian Glass, eggwife ; another by Duncan M‘Lachlan, waterman ; and
another by Alexander Anderson, bluegown; . . . and with shops, cellars, &c.,
are part of that tenement acquired by Sir William Menzies of Gladstanes, 29th April
1696.”
Beyond the singular group of buildings thus huddled together, the Bow turned abruptly
to the south, completing the Z like form of the ancient thoroughfare. Here again, and
scattered among the antique tenements that surround the area of the Grassmarket, we
find the gables and bartizans surmounted with the stone or iron cross that marks the
privileged Templar Lancls. These powerful soldier-priests possessed at one time lands
in every county, and nearly in every parish, of Scotland ; and wherever they permitted
houses to be erected thereon, they were required to bear the badge of their order, and
to submit to the jurisdiction of no local court but that of their spiritual lords. When
their possessions passed into secular hands at the Reformation, they still retained their
peculiar privileges and burdens, and their exemption from the exclusive burghal restrictions
was long a subject of heart-burning and discontent to the chartered corporations
and the magistrates of Edinburgh. The Earl of Haddington is still Lord Superior of
the Temple Lands, and his representative used to hold Baron’s Courts in them occasionally,
until this imperium in imperio was aboliclhed by the Act of 1746, which extinguished the
ancient privileges of pit and gallows, and swept away a host of independent baronies all
over the kingdom. We cannot leave the West Bow, however, once the principal entry
into the town, without glancing at the magnificent pageants which it witnessed through
successive centuries. Up this steep and narrow way have ridden James IV. and V., his
Queen, Mary of Guise, and their fair and ill-fated daughter Queen Mary. Here, too, the
latter rode in no joyous ceremonial, with Bothwell at her side, and his rude border spearmen
closing around her ; though they had thrown away their weapons as they approached
the capital, that the ravished Queen might appear to her subjects as the arbiter of her
own fate. To those who read aright the history of this calumniated and cruelly wronged
Queen, few incidents in her life are more touching than when she rode up the Bow on this
occasion, and turning her horse’s head, was about to proceed towards her own Palace of
Holyrood. It is the very culminating point of her existence ; but the die was already cast..
Bothwell, who had assumed for the occasion the air of an obsequious courtier, now seized
her horse’s bridle, and she entered the Castle a captive, and in his power. By the same
street her son, James VI., and his Queen, Anne of Denmark, made their ceremonious
entries to the capital ; and in like manner, Charles I., Oliver Cromwell, and James VIL,
while Duke of York, accompanied by his Queen and daughter, afterwards Queen Anne.
