222 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street
On becoming provost, he was easily led by his
religious persuasion to become a sort of voluntary
exchequer for the friends of the National Covenant,
and in 1641 he advanced to them IOO,OOO merks
to save them from the necessity of disbanding their
army; and when the Scottish Parliament in the
same year levied 10,000 men for the protection of
their colony in Ulster, they could not have embarked
had they not been provisioned at the expense
of Sir William Dick. Scott, in the ? Heart
of Midlothian,? alludes to the loans of the Scottish
Crcesus thus, when he makes Davie Deans say,
?My father saw them toom the sacks of dollars
out 0? Provost Dick?s window intil the carts that
carried them to the army at Dunse Law; and if
ye winna believe his testimony, there is the window
itself still standing in the Luckenbooths, five doors
aboon the Advocates? Close-I think it is a claithmerchant?s
the day.?
And singular to say, a cloth merchant?s ?booth ?
it continued long to be. ?
In 1642 the Customs were let to Sir William
Dick for zoz,ooo merks, and 5,000 merks of
gassum, or ? entrense siller;? but, as he had a
horror of Cromwell and the Independents, he advanced
~20,000 for the service of King Charlesa
step by which he kindled the wrath of the prevailing
party; and, after squandering his treasure
in a failing cause, he was so heavily.mulcted by
extortion of L65,ooo and other merciless penalties,
that his vast fortune passed speedily away, and he
died in 1655, a prisoner of Cromwell?s, in a gaol at
Westminster, under something painfully like a want
of the common necessaries of life.
He and Sir William Gray were the first men of
Edinburgh who really won the position of merchant
princes. The changeful fortunes of the former are
commemorated in a scarce folio pamphlet, entitled
?The Lamentable State of the Deceased Sir William
Dick,? and containing .several engravings.
One represents him on horseback, escorted by halberdiers,
as Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and superintending
the unloading of a great vessel at Leith ;
a second represents him in the hands of bailiffs;
and a third lying dead in prison. ?The tract is
highly esteemed by collectors of prints,? says Sir
Walter Scott, in a note to the ?Heart of Midlothian.?
?The only copy I ever saw upon sale
was rated at L30.?
Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees (a place now
called Moredun, in the parish of Liberton) who
was Lord Advocate of Scotland from 1692 until
his death in 1713, a few months only excepted,
gave a name to the next narrow and gloomy
alley, Advocates? Close, which bounded on the
east the venerable mansion of the Lords Holyroodhouse.
His father was provost of the city when Cromwell
paid his first peaceful visit thereto in 1648-9,
and again in 1658-9, at the close of the Protectorate,
The house in which he lived and died
was at the foot of the close, on the west side,
before descending a flight of steps that served te ;
lessen the abruptness of the descent. He had
returned from exile on the landing of the Prince of ,
Orange, and, as an active revolutionist, was detested
by the Jacobites, who ridiculed him as /amc
Wyhe in many a bitter pasquil. He died in 1713,
and Wodrow records that ? so great was the crowd
(at his funeral) that the magistrates were at the
grave in the Greyfriars? Churchyard before the
corpse was taken out of the house at the foot of
the Advocates? Close.?
In 1769 his grandson sold the house to David
Dalrymple, afterwards Lord Westhall, who resided
in it till nearly the time of his death in 1784.
This close was a very fashionable one in the days
of Queen Anne, and was ever a favourite locality
with members of the bar. Among many others,
there resided Andrew Crosbie, the famous original
of Scott?s ?Counsellor Pleydell,? an old lawyer
who was one of the few that was able to stand his.
ground in any argument or war of words with Dr.
Johnson during that visit when he made himself
so obnoxious in Edinburgh. From this dark and
steep alley, with its picturesque overhanging
gables and timber projections, Mr. Crosbie afterwards
removed to a handsome house erected by
him in St. Andrew?s Square, ornamented with lofty,
half-sunk Ionic columns and a most ornate attic
storey (on the north side of the present Royal
Bank), afterwards a fashionable hotel, long known
as Douglas?s and then as Slaney?s, where even
royalty has more than once found quarters. By
the failure of the Ayr Bank he was compelled to
leave his new habitation, and?died in 1784 in such
poverty that his widow owed her whole support to
a pension of A50 granted to her by the Faculty of
Advocates.
The house lowest down the close, and immediately
opposite that of Sir James Stewart of
Goodtrees, was the residence of an artist of some
note in his time, John Scougal, who painted the
well-known portrait of George Heriot, which hangs
in the council room of the hospital. He was a
cousin of that eminent divine Patrick Scougal,
parson of Saltoun in East Lothian and Bishop of
Aberdeen in 1664.
John Scougall added an upper storey to the old
land in the Advocates? Close, and fitted up one of
