?-a --It OLD AND? NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street,
Baron of the Exchequer Court in 1748, and grandson
of James of Balumby, fourth Earl of Panmure,
who fought with much heroic valour at the battle
of Dunblane, and was attainted in 171s.
The spacious stone mansion which he occupied
at the foot of the close, and the north windows of
which overlooked the steep slope towards the
Trinity Church, and the then bare, bleak mass of
the Calton Hill beyond, was afterwards acquired
as an office and hall by the Society for the Propagation
of Christian Knowledge and the Plantation
of Schools in the Highlands ?for the rooting out
of the errors of popery and converting of foreign
nations,?? a mighty undertakiog, for which a charter
was given it by Queen Anne in 1709. Thus the
alley came to be called by its last name, Society
Close.
Such were the immediate surroundings of that
old manse, in which John Knox received the
messengers of his queen, the fierce nobles of her
turbulent Court, and the Lords of the Congregation.
It is to the credit of the Free Church of Scotland,
which has long since acquired it as a piece of
property, that the progress of decay has been
arrested, and some traces of its old magnificence
restored. A wonderfully picturesque building of
three storeys above the ground floor, it abuts on the
narrowed street, and is of substantial ashlar, terminating
in curious gables and masses of chimneys.
A long admonitory inscription, extending over
nearly the whole front, carved on a stone belt,
bears these words in bold Roman letters :-LUFE
GOD. ABOVE. AL. AND. YOVR. NICHTBOUR . A S . YI
SELF. Perched upon the corner above the
entrance door is a small and hideous effigy of the
Reformer preaching in a pulpit, and pointing with
his right hand above his head towards a rude
sculpture of the sun bursting out from amid clouds,
with the name of the Deity inscribed in three
languages on its disc, thus :-
8 E O Z
D L U S
G O D
On the decoration of the efligy the pious care of
successive generations of tenants has been expended
with a zeal not always appreciated by
people of taste. The house contains a hall, the
stuccoed ceiling of which pertains to the time of
Charles II., when perhaps the building was repaired.
M?Crie, in his Life of Knox, tells us, that the
latter, on commencing his duties in Edinburgh
in 1559, when the struggles of the Reformation
were well nigh over, was lodged in the house of
David Forrest, a citizen, after which he removed
permanently to the house previously occupied by
the exiled abbot of Dunfermline. The magisS
trates gave him a salary of Azoo Scots yearly, and
in 1561 ordered the Dean of Guild to make him B
warm study in the house built of ?? dailles ?-i.e., to
be wainscoted or panelled.
This is supposed to be the small projection,
lighted by one long window, looking westward up
the entire length of the High Street ; and adjoining
it on the first floor is a window in an angle of the
house, from which he is said to have held forth to
the people in the street below, and which is still
termed ? the preaching window.?
In this house he doubtless composed the ?? Confession
of Faith ? and the ? First Book of Discipline,?
in which, at least, he had a principal haad,
and which were duly ratified by Parliament j and
it was during the first year of his abode in this
house that he lost his first wife, Marjory Bowes
(daughter of an English border family), whom he
had married when an exile, a woman of amiable
disposition and pious deportment, but whose
portrait at Streatlam Castle, Northumberland, is
remarkable chiefly for its intense ugliness. She
was with him in all his wanderings at home and
abroad, and regarding her John Calvin thus expresses
himself in a letter to the widower:-
?? Uxu~em nactus uas cui non rgeriuntur passim
siivziZes?--?you had a wife the like of whom is not
anywhere to be found.? By her he had two sons.
Four years after her death, to this mansion,
when in his fifty-ninth year, he brought his second
Wife, Margaret Stewart, the youngest daughter of
Andrew, ?the good? Lord Ochiltree, who, after
his death, mamed Sir Andrew Kerr of Faudonside.
By his enemies it was now openly alleged that
he must have gained the young girl?s affections by
the black art and the aid of the devil, whom he
raised for that purpose in the yard behind his
house. In that curious work entitled ?? The Disputation
concerning the Controversit Headdis of
Religion,? Nicol Bume, the author, relates that
KIIOX, on the occasion of his marriage, went to the
Lord Ochiltree with many attendants, ?on a.ne
trim gelding, nocht lyk ane prophet or ane auld
decrepit priest as he was, bot lyk as had been ane
of the Elude Royal, with his bands of taffettie
feschnit With golden ringis and precious stones ;
and, as is plainlie reportit in the countrey, be
sorcerie and witchcraft did sua allure that puu
gentilwoman, that scho could not leve without
him? Another of Knox?s traducers asserts, that
not long after his marriage, ?she (his wife) lying
in bed and perceiving a blak, uglie ill-favoured man
(the devil, of course) busily talking with him in the+
