High Street.] THOMAS BASSANDYNE, PRINTER. 207
in an investment in favour of John Preston, Commissary,
dated 1581, is described as ?that tenement
of lands lying in the said burgh on the south
side of the High Street, and on the entry of the
wynd of the Preaching Friars, formerly waste,
having been burnt by the English.? Thus it
would appear to have been built between 1544
and 158I-probably near the former date, as the
situation being central it was unlikely to remain
long waste.
In 1572 it suffered greatly during the siege of
the Castle, in common with the Earl of Mar?s
mansion in the Cowgate, and Baxter?s house in
Dalgleish?s Close.
Its proprietor, John Preston, in 1581, though the
son of a baker, was an eminent lawyer in the time
of James VI., who was raised to the Bench in
March, 1594, as Lord Fentonbarns (in succession
to James first Lord Balmerino) and died President
of the Court in 1616. His mode of election
was curious. ?The King,? says Lord Hailes,
?named Mr. Peter Rollock, Bishop of Dunkeld,
Mr. David MacGill of Cranstoun-Riddel, and Mr.
Preston of Fentonbarns, requesting the Lords to
choose the fittest of the three to be an Ordinary
Lord of Session. The Lords were solemnly sworn
to choose according to their knowledge and conscience.
In consequence of this, coigecfi in $ileum
;zominibus [by ballot], the Lords elected Mr. John
Preston.?
Before his death he attained to great wealth and
dignity; he was knighted by King James, and his
daughter Margaret wzs married in this old house to
Robert Nairn of? Mackersie, and became mother
of the first Lord ?Nairn, who was placed in the
Tower of London by Cromwell in 1650, with many
others, and not released till the Restoration, ten
years after.
The senator?s son, Sir Michael Preston, succeeded
him in possession of the mansion in 1610.
Preston, together with Craig and Stirling, is
mentioned in a satirical production of Alexander
Montgomery, author of ?The Cherrie and the
Slae,? and before whom he had become involved
in a tedious suit before the Court of Session, and
was at one time threatened with quarters in the
Tolbooth. He wrote of Fentonbarns as-
? A baxter?s bird, a bluitter beggar born?
The old house narrowly escaped total destruction
by a fire in 1795, thus nearly anticipating that
,of later years. It was the last survivor of the long
and unbroken range of quaint and stately edifices
on the south side of the street, between St. Giles?s
and the Nether Bow. An outside stair gave access
to the first floor, the stone turnpike stair of which
bore the abbreviated legend in Gothic characters-
DEO. HONOR . ET. GLIA.
A little lower down the street, and nearly
opposite the house of John b o x , dwelt Thomas
Bassandyne, in that tall old mansion we have
already referred to in an early chapter as having
had built into its front the fine sculptured heads of
the Emperor Septinius Severus and his Empress
Julia, and having between them a tablet inscribed,
? In sudorc vuh fui vecmir pane tz~o,? which
Wilson shrewdly suspects to have been a fragment
of the adjacent convent of St May, or some other
old monastic establishment in Edinburgh.
Here it was that Thomas Bassandyne, a famous
old Scottish typographer, in conjunction with
Alexander Arbuthnot, undertook in 1574 the then
arduous task of issuing his beautiful folio Bible,
with George Young, a servant (clerk) of the Abbot
of Dunfermline, as a corrector of the press ; the
?? printing irons,? or types were of cast-metal. The
work of printing the Bible proved a heavier task
than they expected, as it had met with many impediments
; and before the Privy Council, which
was giving them monetary aid, they pleaded for
nine months to complete the work, or return the
money contributed towards it by various Scottish
parishes. In this we see the first attempt to
publish by subscription. Here, too, Thomas
Bassandyne printed his rare quarto edition of Sir
David Lindesay?s Poems in 1574. His will is
preserved in the Banizatyne MisceZZany, and from
it it appears, that his mother was life-rented in that
part of the house which formed the printer?s
dwelling, the annual rent of which was eight
pounds ; while the remainder that belonged to
himself, was occupied by his brother Michael. At
all events, he leaves in his will ?his thrid, the
ane half thairof to his wyf, and the vthir half to
his mother, and Michael and his bairnes,? in
which says the memorialist of Edinburgh, we
presume, to have been included the house, which
we find both he and his bairns afterwards possessing,
and for which no rent would appear to
have been exacted during the lifetime of the
generous old printer.
His house is repeatedly referred to in the evidence
of the accomplices of the Earl of Bothwell in the
murder of Darnley, an event which took place
during the life of Bassandyne, beneath whose house
was one occupied by a sword slipper, with whom it
is said lodged the Black John of Ormiston, one of
the conspirators, for whom the rest called on the
night of the murder.
