238 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
other, Willielmina, became the wife of John Lord
Glenorchy.
The fate of the Earl of Sutherland, and of his
countess, whose beauty excited the admiration of
all at the coronation of George III., was a very
cloudy one. In frolicking with their first-born, a
daughter, the earl let the infant drop, and it sustained
injuries from which it never recovered, and
the event had so serious an effect on his mind,
that he resorted to Bath, where he died of a
malignant fever. For twenty-one days the countess,
then about to have a babe again, attended him
unremittingly, till she too caught the distemper, and
predeceased him by a few days, in her twenty-sixth
year. Her death was sedulously concealed from
him, yet the day before he expired, when delirium
passed away, he said, I am going to join my dear
Wife,? as if his mind had already begun to penetrate
the veil that hangs between this world and the
next.
In one grave in Holyrood, near the north-east
corner of the ruined chapel, the remains of this
ill-fated couple were laid, on the 9th of August,
1766.
Lady Glenorchy, a woman remarkable for the
piety of her disposition, was far from happy in her
marriage j but we are told that she met with her
rich reward, even iii this world, for she enjoyed
the applause of the wealthy and the blessings of the
poor, with that supreme of all pleasures-the conviction
that the eternal welfare of those in whose
fate she was chiefly interested was forwarded by
her precepts and example.?
In after years, the Earl of Hopetoun, when
acting as Royal Commissioner to the General
Assembly, was wont to hold his state levees in the
house that had been Lord Alva?s.
To the east of hfylne?s Square stood some old
alleys which were demolished to make way for the
North Bridge, one of the greatest local undertakings
of the eighteenth century. One of these alleys was
known as the Cap and Feather Close, immediately
above Halkerston?s Wynd. The lands that formed
the east side of the latter were remaining in some
places almost intact till about 1850.
In one of these, but which it was impossible
to say, was born on the 5th of September, 1750,
that luckless but gifted child of genius, Robert
Fergusson, the poet, whose father was then a clerk
in the British Linen Company; but even the site
of his house, which has peculiar claims on the
interest of every lover of Scottish poetry, cannot
be indicated.
How Halkerston?s Wynd obtained its name we
have already told. Here was an outlet from the
ancient city byway of a dam or dyke across the
loch, to which Lord Fountainhall refers in a case
dated zIst February, 1708. About twenty years
before that time it would appear that the Town
Council ?had opened a new port at the foot
of Halkerston?s Wynd for the convenience of those
who went on foot to Leith; and that Robert
Malloch, having acquired some lands on the other
side of the North Loch, and made yards and built
houses thereon, and also having invited sundry
weavers and other good tradesmen to set up
on Moutree?s Hill [site of the Register House], and
the deacons of crafts finding this prejudicial
to them, and contrary to the 154th Act of Parliament,
I 592,?? evading which, these craftsmen paid
neither scot, lot, nor stent,? the magistrates closed
up the port, and a law plea ensued between them
and the enterprising Robert Malloch, who was
accused of filling up a portion of the bank of the
loch with soil from a quarry. ?The town, on the
other hand, did stop the vent and passage over the
loch, which made it overtlow and drown Robert?s
new acquired ground, of which he complained as
an act of oppression.?
Eventually the magistrates asserted that the loch
was wholly theirs, and ?( that therefore he could
drain no part of it, especially to make it regorge
and inundate on their side. The Lords were
going to take trial by examining the witnesses, but
the magistrates prevented it, by opening the said
port of their own accord, without abiding an order,
and let the sluice run,? by which, of course, the
access by the gate was rendered useless.
Kinloch?s Close adjoined Halkerston?s Wynd, and
therein, till about 1830, stood a handsome old
substantial tenement, the origin and early occupants
of which were all unknown. A mass of curious
and abutting projections, the result of its peculiar
site, it had a finely-carved entrance door, with
the legend, Peir. God. in . Luzy., 1595, and the
initials I. W., and the arms of the surname of
Williamson, together with a remarkable device, a
saltire, from the centre of which rose a crosssymbol
of passion.
Passing Allan Ramsay?s old shop, a narrow bend
gives us access to Carrubber?s Close, the last stronghold
of the faithful Jacobites after 1688. Episcopacy
was abolished in 1689, and although from
that period episcopal clergymen had no legal provision
or settlement, they were permitted, without
molestation, to preach in meeting-houses till I 746 ;
but as they derived no emolument from Government,
and no provision from the State, they did not,
says Arnot, perplex their consciences with voluminous
and unnecessary oaths, but merely excluded
