I10 QUEENSFERRY TO MUSSELBURGH.
principal advisers, have quite disappeared. The house of Lord Balmerino
and part of the mansion of Logan of Restalrig are the only relics of a grey
antiquity that yet survive.
The house of Balmerino has now passed into the possession of the
Roman Catholic church, and is partly occupied as a schoolroom. It enters
by No. 10 Kirkgate, but the building is so shut in that little of it can be
seen except on a close inspection. Here, in 1650, Lord Balmerino had the
honour of entertaining Charles 11. during his short sojourn in Scotland.
According to the Diary ofNicoZZ the King had come from Stirling, where he
was residing, to review the army which was drawn up on the Links. After
that he appears to have gone to Edinburgh, where he was .‘feasted by the
town in the Parliament House,’ and thence returned on foot to Leith,
‘ abyding for the nicht wi‘ Lord Balmerinoch.’
The last Lord of this family was Arthur, who suffered on Towerhill in
1746 for his complicity in the rebellion of the preceding year. He seems
to have been a keen and loyal Jacobite ; was out with Mar in 1715, holding a
command at the battle of Sheriffmuir; was out again in 1745, when he was
taken prisoner at Culloden, camed to London, tried at Westminster, and
sentenced,’along with the Earls of Cromarty and Kilmarnock for the like
offences, to be beheaded. Both before and after his trial, he conducted himself
as became a brave man and a gallant soldier. Maintaining his principles
to the last, he neither sought for nor expected mercy; and when at last led
forth to execution, he surveyed with a calm and gentlemanly mien all the
terrible preparations, inspecting the block with great minuteness, taking
up the axe and testing its edge with his finger, examining the coffin and
reading the inscription on its lid, and then, as if perfectly satisfied that all
was as it should be, calmly and resolutely resigned himself to his fate. Thus
died the last Lord of Balmerino.
The mansion of Logan, again, stood on the crag overhanging the loch of
Lochend. Part of it still survives, and is used as offices in connection with a
large house erected on the site of the old one. Judging from what remains
of it, it must have been a very strong place; and if well armed and provisioned,
capable of holding out and offering a stem resistance to any enemy,
however brave or determined, This family, it would seem, like many of the
nobility and gentry of the time, suffered a heavy reverse of fortune. The last
of the name who held the paternal estates, being deeply involved in the
Gowrie Conipiracy, but dying before his share in it uias fully disclosed, ‘ his
eldest son, and all lineally connected, were summoned to compear before the
