240 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
When the Company of Merchant Tailors in
London requested James to become a member of
their guild, he declined, on the plea that he ?was
already free of another company,? and referred to the
similar corporation in his native capital, but added
that his son Henry, the Prince of Wales, would
avail himself of the honour, and that he himself
would be present at the ceremony.
From ?? Guthrie?s Memoirs? we learn that in
1643 a solemn and important meeting was held in
the Tailor?s Hall between the conservators of peace
with England and commission of the General
Assembly.
St. Magdalene?s Chapel,
and the modern Mary?s
Chapel in Bell?s Wynd,
form the chief halls of the
remaining corporations of
Edinburgh that have long
survived the purposes for
which they were originally
incorporated.
In August, 1758, there
occurred a dreadful fire in
Carrubber?sClose, onwhich
occasion four tenements
containing fifteen famiiies
were burned down, and
many personswere severely
injured.
Towards the end of the
eighteenth century gentility
was still lingering
here, for in the Edizburgi
Adverfiser for 1783 we
read of the house of Stuart
Barclay of Collairniehaving
a drawing-room
in its ruins thirty-five persons, and shooting out
into the broad street a mighty heap of rubbish. A
few of the inmates almost miraculously escaped
destruction from the peculiar way in which some of
the strong oak beams and fragments of flooring
fell over them; and among those who did so
was a lad, whose sculptured effigy, as a memorial
of the event, now decorates a window of the new
edifice, with a scroll, whereon are carved the
words he was heard uttering piteously to those
who were digging out the killed and wounded:
?? Heave awa, lads, I?m no deid yet !?
ST. PAUL?S CHAPEL, CARRIJBBER?S CLOSE.
- -
measuring Igft. by 14ft.-being for sale; and also
. that belonging to Neil Campbell of Dantroon, at
the foot of the close.
At the head of Bailie Fyfe?s Close, No. 107,
High Street, there stood a stately old stone tenement,
having carved above one of its upper
windows a shield bearing two mullets in chief, with
a crescent in base-the arms of Trotter, with the
initials I. T. I. M., and the date 1612. Elsewhere
there was another shield, having the arms of the
Par?ieys of Yorkshire impaled with those of Hay,
and the legend Be. Pasienf , in. the. Lord, and to
this edifice a peculiar interest is attached.
After standing for close on 250 years, it sank
suddenly-and without any premonitory symptoms
or warning-to the ground with a terrible crash at
midnight on the 10th of November, 1861, burying
In Chalmer?s Close an
old house was connected
in a remote way with
the famous Lord Francis
Jeffrey, whose grandfather
dwelt there when in the
trade as a barber and periwig
maker, and the old
close is said to have been
in his boyhood a favourite
haunt of the future judge
and critic.
In large old English
letters the name JOHN
HOPE appears cut over
the doorway of an adjacent
turnpike stair, with
a coat pf arms, now completely
obliterated, and
on the bed-corbel of the
crowstepped gable is another
shield, sculptured with
a coat armorial and the
initials I. H. Moulded
mullions and transoms
divided the large windows. -
a rather uncommon feature in Scottish domestic
architecture; and from the general remains of
decayed magnificence, the name, initials, and armc,
this is supposed-but cannot be absolutely declared
-to be the mansion of the founder of the noble
family of Hopetoun, John de Hope, who came from
France in the retinue of Magdalene of Valois, the first
queen of James V., and who, with his son Edward,
bad two booths eastward of the old Kirk Style.
But the name of Hope was known in Scotland in
the days of Alexander 111. ; and James III., in
1488, gave to Thomas Hope a grant of some land
near Leith.
No. 71 is Sandiland?s Close, where tradition, but
tradition only, avers there dwelt that learned and
munificent prelate, James Kennedy, Bishop of
Dunkeld, Lord High Chancellor, and the upright
High Street.] BISHOP KENNEDY. 241
counsellor of James 11. and James 111. The
building indicated as having been his residence is
a large stone tenement of great antiquity on the
east side, having thereon a coat of arms and a
mitre, which were removed a few years ago ; and
our best antiquary asserts that ?? the whole appearance
of the building is perfectly consistent with
the supposition? that it had been Bishop Kennedy?s
abode. ? The form and decorations of the
doorways all prove an early date ; while the large
?A large and convenient house, entering by a
close mostly paved with flagstones, on the north
side of the street near the Nether Bow, consisting
of eight rooms, painted last year, or papered, some
with Chinese paper ; a marble chimney-piece from
the ceiling in one, concaves and slabes (sic) two
other of the rooms ; the drawing-room elegantly
fitted up, painted, gilded, and carved in the newest
style, with light closets to all the bed-rooms and
other conveniences to the dining-room and parlour ;
HOUSE IN HIGH STREET WITH MEMORIAL WINDOW, I? HEAVE AWA, LADS, I?M NO DEID YET !?
and elegant mouldings of the windows, and the
massive appearance of the whole building, indicate
such magnificence as would well consort with the
dignity of the primacy at that early period.?
Bishop Kennedy, author of a history of his
own times, now lost, died in 1466, and was interred
at St. Andrews.
. Baron Grant?s and Bailie Grant?s Closes were
among the last alleys on this side, adjoining the
Nether Bow Port. An advertisement in the Edinburgh
Cvurani for 1761, in describing the house of
Mr. Grant (who was a Baron of the Exchequer
Court) as offered for sale, gives us a pretty accurate
idea of what a mansion in the Old Town was in
those days :-
31
wine cellar and large kitchen, a coal-fauld, fire-room
for servants, and larder; a hen-house and cribbs,
for feeding all sorts of fowls ; a house for a sedanchair;
a rack to contain 10 gross of bottles, all
built and slated; a garden extending down the
greatest part of Leith Wynd, planted with flowering
shrubs, and servitude for a separate entry to it,
passing by the gate of Lord Edgefield?s house.?
The garden referred to must have been bounded
by the massive portion of the eastern wall of the
city, which fell down about twenty years ago ; and
the Lord Edgefield, whose neighbour the Baron
had been, was Mr. Robert Pringle, who was raised
to the Bench in 1754, and, dying ten years after,
was succeeded by the well-known Lord Pitfour.
