196 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGR, [High Street.
Torthorwald could defend himself, ran him through
the body, and slew him on the spot.
Stewart fled from the city, and of him we hear
no more ; but the Privy Council niet twice to consider
what should be done now, for all the Douglases
were taking arms to attack the Stewarts of
Ochiltree. Hence the Council issued imperative
orders that the Earl of Morton, James Commendator
of Melrose, Sir George and Sir Archibald
Douglas his uncles, William Douglas younger of
Drumlanrig, Archibald Uouglas of Tofts, Sir James
Dundas of Arniston, and others, who were breathing
vengeance, should keep within the doors of
their dwellings, orders to the same effect being
issued to Lord Ochiltree and all his friends.
? There is a remarkable connection of murders
recalled by this shocking transaction,? says a historian.
?? Not only do we ascend to Torthorwald?s
slaughter of Stewart in 1596, and Stewart?s deadly
prosecution of Morton to the scaffold in 1581 ; but
William Stewart was the son of Sir William Stewart
who was slain by the Earl of Bothwell in the Blackfriars
Wynd in 1588.?
A carved marble slab in the church of Holyrood,
between two pillars on the north side, still marks
the grave of the first lord, who took his title from
the lonely tower of Torthonvald on the green brae,
between Lockerbie and Dumfries. It marks also
the grave of his wife, Elizabeth Carlyle of that ilk,
and bears the arms of the house of Douglas,
quartered with those of Carlyle and Torthorwald,
namely, beneath a ch2f charged with three pellets,
a saltire proper, and the crest, a star, with the inscription
:-
? Heir lyis ye nobil and poten Lord Jarnes Dovglas, Lord
of Cairlell and Torthorall, vlm maned Daime Eliezabeth
Cairlell, air and heretrix yalof; vha vas slaine in Edinburghe
ye xiiii. day of Ivly, in ye zeier of God 1608-vas slain in
48 ze.
The guide daily reads this epitaph to hundreds
of visitors ; but few know the series of tragedies of
which that slab is the closing record.
In the year 1705, Archibald Houston, Writer to
the Signet in Edinburgh, was slain in the High
Street. As factor for the estate of Braid, the property
of his nephew, he had incurred the anger of
Kennedy of Auchtyfardel, in Lanarkshire, by failing
to pay some portion of Bishop?s rents, and Houston
had been ?put to the horn? foithis debt. On the
20th March, 1705, Kennedy and his two sons left
their residence in the Castle Hill, to go to the usual
promenade of the time, the vicinity of the Cross.
They met Houston, and used violent language, to
: which he was not slow in retorting. Then Gilbert
Kennedy, Auchtyfardel?s son, smote him on the
L. I. D. E. C.?
face, while the idlers flocked around them. Blows
with a cane were exchanged, on which Gilbert Kennedy
drew his sword, and, running Houston through
the body, gave him a mortal wound, of which he
died. He was outlawed, but in time returned
home, and succeeded to his father?s estate. According
to Wodrow?s ? Analecta,? he became morbidly
pious, and having exasperated thereby a
servant maid, she gave him some arsenic with his
breakfast of bread-and-milk, in 1730, and but for
the aid of a physician would have avenged the
slaughter gf Houston near the Market Cross in
1705.
One of the last brawls in which swords were
drawn in the High Street occurred in the same
year, when under strong external professions of
rigid ?Sabbath observance and morose sanctity of
manner there prevailed much of secret debauchery,
that broke forth at times. On the evening of the
2nd of February there had assembled a party in
Edinburgh, whom drinking and excitement had so
far carried away that nothing less than a dance in
the open High Street would satisfy them. Among
the party were Ensign Fleming of the Scots
Brigade in the Dutch service, whose father, Sir
James Fleming, Knight, had been Lord Provost in
1681 ; Thomas Barnet, a gentleman of the Horse
Guards ; and John Galbraith, son of a merchant in
the city. The ten o?clock bell had been tolled in
the Tron spire, to warn all good citizens home;
and these gentlemen, with other bacchanals, were
in full frolic at a pzrt of the street where there was
no light save-such as might fall from the windows
of the houses, when a sedan chair, attended by two
footmen, one of whom bore a lantern, approached.
In the chair was no less a personage than David
Earl of Leven, General of the Scottish Ordzance,
and member of the Privy Council, proceeding on
his upward way to the Castle of which he was
governor. It was perilous work to meddle with
such a person in those times, but the ensign and his
friends were in too reckless a mood to think of
consequences; so when Galbraith, in his dance
reeled against one of the footmen, and was warned
off with an imprecation, Fleming and his friend of
the Guards said, ? It would be brave sport to overturn
the sedan in the mud.? At once they assailed
the earl?s servants, and smashed the lantern. His
lordship spoke indignantly from his chair ; then
drawing his sword, Fleming plunged it into one
of the footmen ; but he and the others were overpowered
and captured by the spectators.
The young ?rufflers,? on learning the rank of
the man they had insulted, were naturally greatly
alarmed, and Fleming dreaded the loss of his corn
?
