318 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The West Bow.
Jambites pointing t a it with mingled howls and
jeers, as a proof of the enslavement of Scotland.??
Outside the archway of the Bow Port, and on
the west side of the street, was the house of Archibald
Stewart, Lord Provost of Edinburgh in the
ever memorable year 1745. Its upper windows
overlooked the Grassmarket, and it was as full of
secret stairs, trap-doors, little wainscoted closets,
and concealed recesses, as any haunted mansion
in a nursery tale. In one apartment there stood
a cabinet, or what appeared to be such, but which
in reality was the entrance to a trap-stair. It is
unknown whether Provost Stewart-whose Jacobite
proclivities are well known, as they brought him
before a court on charges of treason-contrived
this means of retreat, or whether (which is more
probable) it had been a portion of the original
design of the house ; but local tradition avers that
he turned it to important use on one occasion. , It is said that during the occupation of Edinburgh
by the Highland army in 1745 he gave a
secret entertainment to Prince Charles and some
of the chiefs of his army ; and it was not conducted
so secretly but that tidings of it reached the officer
commanding in the adjacent Castle, which was then
garrisoned chiefly by the 47th or Lascelles Regiment.
A party of the latter was sent to seize the
Prince if possible, and, to do so, came down the
Bow from the street of the Castle Hill. Fortunately,
their own appearance created an alarm, and before
they gained admission the guests of the Provost
had all disappeared by the?secret stair.
Tradition has never varied in the relation of
this story, but the real foundation of it is difficult
of discovery, This house stood at the foot of
Donaldson?s Close, and Archibald Stewart was th(!
third chief magistrate of Edinburgh who had inhabited
it.
In subsequent years it came into possession of
Alexander. Donaldson, the well-known bookseller,
.whose litigation with the trade in London made
much noise at one time, as he was in the habit of
deliberately reprinting the most modem English
works in Edinburgh, where, before his epoch, both
printing and publishing were at the lowest ebb.
Refemng to the state of this branch of industry at
the time he wrote (1779), Arnot says:--?Till
within these forty years, the printing of newspapers
and of school-books, of the fanatic effusions of
Presbyterian clergymen, and the law-papers of the
Court of Session, joined to the patent Bible printing,
gave a scanty employment to four printinghouses.
Such, however, has been the increase of
this trade by the reprinting of English books, that
there are now no fewer than twenty-seven printingoffices
in Edinburgh.? In our own time there are
about eighty.
From his printing-house in the Castle Hill,
Alexander Donaldson issued the first number of
his once famous newspaper, The Edinburgh Advertiser,
on the 3rd of January, 1764. It was a large
quarto, and was also issued and sold from his shop,
?I near Norfolk Street in the Strand, London ;?, and,
his first number contains the following curious.
advertisement, among others :-
?Any young woman not under IS, nor much
over 30 years of age, that is tolerably handsome,
and would incline to give her hand to a Black
Prince, upon directing a letter to F. Y., care of the
Publisher, will be informed particularly as to this.
matrimonial scheme, which they may be assured
is a good one in every respect, the colour of the
husband only excepted. If desired, secresy may
be depended on.?
For a long course of years this journal, prominent
as a Conservative organ, proved a most lucrative
speculation; and as all his other undertakings
prospered, he left, together with his old house in
the Bow, a rich inheritance to his son, the late Mr.
James Donaldson, who eventually realised a large
fortune, the mass of which (about ;t;240,000) at
his death, in 1840, he bequeathed to found the
magnificent hospital which bears his name at the
west end of the city.
Six years before his death the old house in the
Bow, where he and his father had resided for so
many years, and wherein they had entertained most
of the literati of their time, was burned to the
ground.
Lower down than the house of the Donaldsons
was an ancient edifice, with a timber front of picturesque
aspect, in former times the town mansion
of the Napiers of Wrightshouse-a family which
passed away about the close of the 17th century,
but was of some importance in its time.
Alexander Napier of Wrightshouse appears as
one of an inquest in 1488. His coat armorial
was a bend, charged with a crescent between two
mullets. He married Margaret Napier of Merchiston,
whose father, Sir Alexander, was slain at
Flodden, and whose brother (his heir) was slain at.
Pinkie. In 1581, among the names of the Commissioners
appointed by James VI., ?anent the
cuinze,? that of William Napier of the Wrightshouse
appears; and in 1590 his sister Barbara.
Napier was accused of witchcraft on the 8th of Mayr
and of being present at the great meeting of Scottish
witches held by the devil in North Berwick.
The wife of Archibald Douglas (brother of the
Laird of Carshoggil), her trial was one of great
